Work Text:
The sunflower does not bloom in the winter.
It’s in the name - sunflower. Their blooming season lasts through summer into autumn, when the sun is most visible, then they slumber in the winter and spring.
Sunflowers are heliotropic. In the early stages, throughout the bright summer days, their heads track the sun’s path across the sky. Then, once night falls, they reorient themselves to face eastwards, waiting for the morning to come. On cloudy days, the flowers still look for their star, watching closely for her to appear - and if she never does, their movement halts, waiting for the day she returns.
The tap of Shouyo’s pencil against the desk is starting to get on Tobio’s nerves.
He wouldn’t mind if it was a consistent rhythm with reason or logic to it, or if there’d been a song playing that Shouyo was tapping along to. There isn’t. He’s tapping it completely at random between frantic scribbling on his homework sheet - speeding up when he’s struggling with a question, slowing down when he isn’t, and the metre is all off, and it’s just - noise. Tobio has half a mind to stand up and snatch it right out of his hand, and send him packing.
But he doesn’t.
It’s early January, right on the cusp of their final semester’s beginning, and though neither of them are planning to take university entrance exams, they’re studying hard anyways. Right now they’re both working on overdue math homework - Tsukishima has once again refused to give them his answer sheet, so they’ve decided this time to put their heads together, over at Tobio’s place. There’s an extra futon laid out for when Shouyo inevitably dozes off at the desk, as he tends to do, an overnight bag stashed under his chair, and Tobio’s only spare chopsticks are teetering on the edge of an empty cup of ramen.
They haven’t made much progress, but at least they’re trying.
“Do you have the answer for fifteen?” Tobio says, craning his neck to look up at Shouyo from his place on the floor. He gets a hum in reply, then the flipping of a page - his eyes narrow at the thought that Shouyo is winning, but then he sees all the empty question boxes.
“I got two point five.”
“Idiot. I got three point five.”
“Why am I the idiot when you don’t even know who’s right?” Shouyo replies, and he refuses to turn around because he’s smiling. Tobio can tell from the strain in his voice.
“You just are,” he mumbles back, but he’s re-doing the calculation anyways, and this time he gets two point five - and the second time, and the third time. He spots Shouyo smirking at him when he picks up the eraser. “Not a word. Remember whose house you’re in.”
Shouyo mocks his voice under his breath, pencil scratching against his own paper. “D’you have thirteen? I skipped it.”
Flipping his page, Tobio stares at his own blank answer box and scratches his head with the eraser end of his pencil. He says nothing, and the silence grows longer, and Shouyo slowly turns around to face him.
“Are you ignoring me or do you not know it?”
“No comment,” Tobio replies. “Unrelated: come sit down here and look at this question with me.”
Shouyo brings his worksheet to the floor, curling up beside Tobio, their thighs and knees touching. He’s leaning over, right into Tobio’s space, smelling of citrus and cup ramen, and Tobio thinks he wants to kiss him.
Tobio always wants to kiss him, but he never does.
He can’t concentrate on Shouyo trying to figure out question thirteen because his hair - stupid and long and almost a mullet, now, Tobio has been silently begging him to get a haircut already because at least then he can stop daydreaming about running his fingers through it - is tickling his chin, and his freckles are right in his face, so now all Tobio can think about is kissing them all like a dot-to-dot painting and spelling out I like you on his skin. Shouyo is scribbling on Tobio’s worksheet, but that means his head is resting on Tobio’s shoulder and he’s humming a melody under his breath, and Tobio’s heart is drumming the beat.
“I think that’s it,” Shouyo mumbles, circling a random number at the bottom of Tobio’s worksheet. “Is that what you got?”
“Yeah,” he replies, like a filthy liar. “You wrote it on my worksheet, idiot.”
“Shit. Let me copy it?”
He snatches his worksheet away and holds it just out of Shouyo’s reach. If they’d been standing, Shouyo would’ve been able to jump and grab it right back out of his hand. Instead Shouyo is cursing at him, leaning up on his knees to reach for it, close enough that Tobio really could kiss him, if he tried.
He doesn’t try.
“I literally answered it for you, stupid, give it to me--!”
“Use your big boy brain and figure it out again yourself.”
“Why should I?” Shouyo replies, a pout on his lips. Tobio should kiss the look right off his stupid face. “You should do it for me. Otherwise you owe me.”
He hates that Shouyo knows exactly what will push his buttons. It takes hardly three seconds for him to hand over the worksheet after that.
(Tobio thinks himself to be quite like a sunflower. He follows Shouyo like a bee to pollen, entranced, hardly able to look away. It has always been like this. If he can help it, it always will be.)
They work until Shouyo’s legs start bouncing, restless, and Tobio keeps working even after Shouyo gives up and resigns to annoying him with the eraser end of his pencil, poking him in the ribs with it until Tobio presses his elbows into his sides to block him - at which point he starts to poke his cheeks.
“I’m bored,” he grumbles. “You’re no fun all of a sudden.”
“It’s almost eleven. We can’t go out at this time.” Tobio glances out the window - because the next protest is surely going to be why not we’ve done it before. “And it’s snowing. I don’t have a spare scarf for you.”
Shouyo follows his gaze, eyes bright. “I don’t need a scarf, idiot. Let’s go make snow angels.”
“You’ll catch a cold,” Tobio replies. That excuse never works, as much as he tries. Shouyo has a very odd constitution, and it seems the only way he can actually get sick is via exhaustion.
“Don’t care. I brought my coat.” Shouyo is pointing at said coat, visible through the open doorway, hanging from the pegs in the hall. “Snow angels. Tobio, please.”
…
As sunflowers follow the sun, so too does Tobio follow Shouyo. So he finds himself standing outside at five minutes past eleven, watching Shouyo throw himself backwards into a heaped pile of freshly-fallen snow.
He sinks into it, giggling into the night, the tips of his ears tinted pink with cold already. Tobio doesn’t follow him into the snow - just sort of stands there watching him, enamored.
“Come here,” Shouyo says, and it’s very hard not to when faced with that sparkling look in his eyes, but Tobio stands his ground. “Boo. I’ll just make a lonely snow angel all by myself, then.”
“You do that.”
He watches for a while, as Shouyo lazily flails his arms back and forth, eyes closed. The entire time he’s grumbling under his breath about Tobio being boring, an idiot, occasionally about being cold - the only thing Tobio dignifies with a reply of I told you so, stupid - and, finally, with a pout on his pretty lips, that his snow angel needs a friend or he’ll die alone when the snow melts. Tobio joins him, then, partly to shut him up, but mostly because nothing should ever have to die alone.
He flops down right next to Shouyo, arms and legs spread out beside him. The cold is already seeping through his coat into his bones, but there’s a human space heater right next to him, so he can’t bring himself to mind.
“Oi.” He glances to his left and is met with snow, so he sits up to find Shouyo’s hand, outstretched. “They look better if you hold hands while you make them.”
Tobio thinks he hasn’t heard right for a moment, so he doesn’t move, but then Shouyo sits up and grabs his hand, mumbling about him being stupid (again), and suddenly Tobio is very, very warm.
He sinks back into the snow again, thanking the powers that be that it’s so cold outside, because he has a good excuse for the pink tint in his cheeks. Shouyo’s fingers are slim, not that much smaller than his own - but still, he’s winning - and warm. They both lie still for a little while, arms and legs thrown out into the snow, until Shouyo shifts and tugs Tobio with him to make their angels.
The snow is heavy on his biceps. It’s just like a late-night arm workout, except Shouyo is holding his fucking hand. Tobio interlaces their fingers and the movement of their arms stutters, but after a second’s hesitation Shouyo squeezes his palm, giggling, and flails his arm twice as fast.
“You’re gonna tear my arm off, idiot,” Tobio complains, but there’s no bite to it this time. “How long do these take?”
“As long as we want,” Shouyo replies, and he knows that means they’ll be out here for twenty minutes if Tobio doesn’t stop it sooner. “Did you bring your phone out? I want a picture.”
They stand up after three more minutes of Shouyo attempting to dislocate Tobio’s shoulder. He takes a few pictures, two of them blurry because they’re still holding fucking hands and taking a picture with one hand in the dark is kind of hard. He texts the clearest one to Shouyo, then glances up.
The snowflakes are still falling, covering his coat and the scarf Tobio ended up letting him borrow, gathering in his hair. The very tip of his nose is pink with cold, and even under the glow of the streetlamps, Shouyo glows like the brightest star in the sky.
Shouyo tugs on his hand, their fingers locked together. “Let’s change already, it’s freezing.”
“I told you so.”
“I told you so,” Shouyo mocks. “If it wasn’t for me you’d never do anything fun. You’d just rot and play volleyball.”
“Volleyball is fun.”
“Obviously I meant other things, idiot.”
They go back inside still holding hands, bickering over nothing, and Tobio is blooming.
Once they’ve both showered and changed it’s almost midnight, but neither of them are very tired, and Tobio is still chilled to the bone. Shouyo clambers into his bed with his laptop - not without a little more bickering about which of them has the warmest blankets - and they settle on watching the latest few episodes of One Piece, their thighs pressed against each other to share the laptop’s weight.
Shouyo’s head is on his shoulder, stupidly long hair brushing against Tobio’s face once again. He dares to tangle his fingers in it - with his free hand, because Jesus Christ they’re still fucking holding hands - and feels Shouyo go tense for a fraction of a second before he relaxes with a sigh, leaning properly against him.
God, he’s going to die. He’s seriously going to die.
“This is too long,” he mumbles, tugging at the orange tufts of hair between his fingers. “You’re gonna have to tie it back soon if you don’t cut it. Like Asahi-san.”
“Alright, mom,” Shouyo replies with a snort. “I like it long. I look rugged.”
“No one under six feet tall looks rugged.”
“Go to hell.”
“You go to hell.”
Shouyo huffs out a breathy laugh and tips his head back to meet Tobio’s eyes. “If I cut it, will you still play with it like this?”
Tobio would probably still manage to play with Shouyo’s hair if he went entirely bald, but he doesn’t say that. “Shut up and watch or I’ll pull it all out.”
“You literally started talking first,” Shouyo mumbles, but he goes quiet anyways. They watch in silence for hardly even a minute before he pipes up again. “It feels nice, y’know.”
Tobio’s heart is thudding so hard he thinks he might have a chance of going into cardiac arrest. “Then I’ll keep doing it.”
He digs his fingers into the roots, scratching gently at Shouyo’s scalp. It feels nice for him, too, but he’ll never say it out loud. He does, however, rest his own chin atop Shouyo’s head and breathe out softly, blinking at the laptop screen as he tries to remember what’s even going on in the show.
Lapsing into quiet is soothing. The weight of Shouyo’s body, his warmth, the repetitive back-and-forth of his thumb drawing patterns on the back of Tobio’s palm are all lulling him into sleep, but he refuses to close his eyes.
“You can sleep,” Shouyo says at some point - almost one, says the alarm clock, the dangerous hour where Tobio’s bordering on sleep deprivation and loses part of his brain-to-mouth filter. “I’ll get outta your bed.”
“No,” is Tobio’s reply before he can think. “I’m not tired yet.”
“You’re drooling in my hair.”
“Am not,” he huffs, but he shifts and closes his mouth properly anyways. “Stay here.”
“I’m staying.” Shouyo burrows into the blankets and closes the laptop, gently tossing it to land on the forgotten futon. “Don’t hog the blanket or I’ll cry.”
Tobio makes a sleepy noise in reply and shifts to lie flat on his back, Shouyo’s head resting in the crook of his arm.
“Tobio.”
“Mm.”
“Put your hand back in my hair.”
It’s the dangerous hour, so he doesn’t even think, tangling his fingers in ginger locks before the request is even finished.
“Move closer, I can’t reach properly.”
Shouyo inches across the bed until they’re just barely pressed into each other. “Better?”
“Mm. Warm.” Tobio turns and nestles his face in Shouyo’s hair, too - comes impossibly close to kissing his forehead, but he isn’t that far gone just yet. “Comfy?”
“Comfy,” Shouyo sighs, body going lax. “You know I starfish in my sleep, right?”
“I’m extremely aware,” he replies, twirling the locks of hair at the base of Shouyo’s neck around his middle finger. “I’d wake up to you in my bed regardless of where you fall asleep. This is just cutting out the middleman.”
Shouyo’s cheeks feel hot against Tobio’s skin. He counts that as another win for himself.
“That was one time and you certainly didn’t seem to mind all that much, considering you were cuddling me back.”
He subtracts the point from himself and gives it to Shouyo instead.
“Did I fluster you?” Shouyo chuckles, the sound vibrating in Tobio’s ribcage. “I made the great Kageyama Tobio blush?”
“I will kick you out of my bed.”
“No you won’t.”
It’s the dangerous hour, so: “… No, I won’t.”
Shouyo goes momentarily tense again, then relaxes as if nothing happened at all.
“You keep saying things like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like... that.” Tobio hopes his silence communicates the kind of stare he’d be giving Shouyo if the room was brighter. “You know what I mean.”
“I really don’t,” He lies, like a liar.
“Like. You’re playing with my hair and holding my hand and letting me sleep on you.”
“None of those are things I said.”
“Don’t be pedantic,” Shouyo replies, grumbling. “Tell me why.”
Tobio wonders if he should. The dangerous hour and the drumming in his chest make him want to, so badly he feels sick with it, like it’s clawing its way up his throat and spilling out of him on its own.
“I just want to,” he says instead, and it isn’t a lie, but it’s hardly the truth. “Do you not want me to?”
“… I want you to.”
“Then we don’t have a problem.” He presses his face back into Shouyo’s hair and really does kiss him this time - soft and subtle, but most definitely a kiss. “First to fall asleep wins.”
Shouyo’s eyes snap shut and he pretends to snore loudly. Tobio’s chest aches with quiet laughter.
He stretches, closes his eyes, and falls asleep exactly three minutes later, with the smell of citrus and snow filling his lungs. He dreams of an orange sunrise and two melting snow angels, hand-in-hand.
The rainy season lasts through the summer months, June and July. Oftentimes, the clouds will obscure the sun’s path, hiding her orange glow from the world until the downpour ends and the skies clear. The sunflower, in full bloom during the summer, is at first angered by her disappearance.
(She leaves with hardly any warning; a day or two of cloud and rain, and suddenly she’s gone.)
During these long rainy spells, the sunflower’s heliotropic movement halts. She faces the east instead, where the sun rises - because even if she can’t see her sun rising, moving across the sky, she can still feel her warmth in the morning. And it is a law of nature, isn’t it, that the sun will always come back? So the sunflower, however angry she may be, has faith that her sun will return to her.
Just as the sunflower waits for her sun to return, so too does Tobio wait for his. Japan to Brazil is an eastbound flight, after all, and if the sunflower can survive a distance of ninety-three million miles between her and her sun, then he can surely make it through just ten thousand between himself and his sun.