Archive of Our Own ^beta

Brazil is hot. It’s so fucking hot. It’s like God took the frying pan off the stove and slapped it onto this part of the world and forgot about it. Shoyo supposes that said frying pan would be the sun, however, for better or worse, they couldn’t remove the sun, so he makes his peace with it. 

What takes longer to make peace with is the sand. There is no hardwood in beach volleyball, no still air or regulated light either. He is as vulnerable to the elements as a newborn calf. The metaphor is even more accurate for the way he stumbles on his own legs on the beach. 

“Damn it!” He groans, pushing himself up from yet another failed dive for the ball which had landed out of reach. He hears a chuckle and when he looks up, his beach partner is offering him a hand.

“Tudo certo?” All good? Shoyo deceivers the words and pulls an answer from the back of his mind slowly. 

“Envergonhado.” Embarrassed. 

He takes the hand, letting himself get pulled up with a jovial smile from his partner. He says something else, too, but Shoyo doesn’t understand, so he just smiles back. Brow furrowed, he pulls another word from his limited vocabulary in the back of his mind, one he has become familiar with in the past few weeks. 

“De novo?” Again?

His partner nods. They get back into position, sinking down to their knees, their hands at the ready, and Shoyo quietly grits his teeth. 

… 

It began, as many things do, with a boy. 

Tobio Kageyama was an asshole. Beyond that, he was infuriating. He was talented, a genius, perfect in every way Shoyo wasn’t at the young age of fourteen, and most of all, he was alone. 

Shoyo had disliked him intensely and immediately, but, in a way, Shoyo had been alone too. Maybe that was what made them click, two people mutually blind in their stewed obsession clashing like a shower of sparks, forging something new. 

However, it was far beyond obsession, beyond the partnership in the realm of the court, for them to know the other the way they did the lines of their hands. 

…

It was easier than it probably should have been for Shoyo to make the life-altering decision to go halfway across the world to a country he knew nothing about to play a sport that he never played before. There was no fear, no how or why in his mind, just that he knew that this was what he needed to do. 

Shoyo sucked at basically everything, so he had to get better at basically everything. Thus, beach volleyball, and Japan wasn’t the place for such a sport, so he had to go. No longer was Miyagi the cradled nest of rebirth it had once been, not when he still rested in its infantile confines while others soared from it, outpacing him so blatantly. 

He had to leave, that was all there was to it.

Making the decision was one thing, but telling others was another. His mother knew, and his sister knew; he had told both of them immediately, even if he was met with furrowed brows and wet eyes. His coaches knew too; of course they did, they were the ones who set it all up for him, but apart from those people… no one else knew. 

It wasn’t on purpose that he didn’t tell his teammates Shoyo just… forgot. Genuinely. They were preparing for the Spring Tournament, and between the blur of practice-school-practice-sleep that consumed his life, the news of Brazil got swept up in the brilliant exhilaration of it all. 

Kageyama’s plans didn’t get swept up in everything, though. They had instead stopped everything. At least, that was the only way Shoyo could think of to explain how the world froze, his breath stuttering and his mind quiet except for the news that rattled in his ears when at long last, it had reached him. 

The V league. Kageyama was going to go to the V league right out of high school. He had already gotten offers. 

Shoyo found out through Yachi. It honestly would have been nicer to just slap him in the face, that at least would have been direct, not some bygone echo passing like an afterthought to him.

When the world unfroze again, all Shoyo could feel was all-consuming jealousy. He absolutely seethed in it, fists clenched so hard it hurt. The thing that Shoyo would have to train for years for, Kageyama would get because of the outstretched palm.

It wasn’t surprising. It wasn’t new. 

Kageyama was a prodigy, he was not. The setter getting singled out for his pure genius wasn’t new, not at all, it was the only reason why Shoyo was able to be there in the first place, but still, it didn’t change the ugly veins of envy that ran through his being . It didn’t change that Shoyo still wanted so badly that he ached for it. 

He ignored it, swallowing down the jealousy and hurt because it burned the fuel of ambition within him to push, to catch up. He was going to be the one to win this time and he was going to claw it from fate’s hands if he had to. He was going to make sure of it.

The strange thing was that the jealousy wasn’t new, the want wasn’t either, but this feeling was new. Something in his chest hurt. 

The closest to this feeling sitting in his chest like a stone was in his first year, the weeks after they had truly fought for the first time. But that couldn’t be the case now, they weren’t fighting. 

Something in Shoyo knew it was a different feeling than that. But he didn’t understand it, it was strange. 

He ignored it. He continued like nothing had changed because nothing had yet. He still had a year and a half of high school, two and a half before he could step foot in Brazil, he threw himself into volleyball anew to fill the time. 

If he did it partly to make that feeling go away, that’s no one’s business, but it was a relief all the same. The familiarity of getting lost in it all, letting the faint ache in his chest melt into the blurred background, was relieving in its predictability. 

Even when he wasn’t in the air or chasing after balls or slugging through class, his attention continued to be swallowed by new things, exciting things. They had new first years, a whole six of them. Six people who now looked to them, to him, to Shoyo of all people, for guidance. 

“You need to watch the game more to do the receives.”

It was late afternoon, almost evening, and practice had already finished but the gym wasn’t empty. Technically, Shoyo shouldn’t be in the gym at all, his ankle was still tender from where he had rolled it in the previous week, but he was here all the same, making good on his offer to the first-years who had stayed behind for extra practice. 

From the blank looks on their faces, though, he wasn’t helping much at all. 

Another new thing was that after they had lost their defensive cornerstone of Daichi, it was put to him to fill it in. Him! Something had clicked last year with his receives, sure, but even then it was far from perfect. He and Ennoshitta couldn’t cover the court like Daichi could, even with Nishinoya taking the brunt of the burden. 

And even worse, next year, neither of the upperclassmen would be there. Shoyo had to try and shape worthy replacements, lest the team completely crumble. 

It was at times like this, standing in front of uncanny reflections of his past naivety, that Shoyo understood exactly how much of a gift the third years had been with their endless patience and invaluable ability to simply explain things. Putting words into coherent sentences was more difficult than playing a five-set game in some ways. 

“Like- the job of the blockers is to block so you don’t need to be there, instead you have to be where they aren’t.” 

“Isn’t that just logic?” One of the first years, Minoru, piped up. 

“Yeah but then you have to watch the spiker. Really watch them. And not panic. That’s the most important part.” 

Healing the team was difficult. They had taken Daichi, Suga, and Asahi for granted, and had relied so much on their solid foundation that now they threatened to crumble in the void of it. Out of the three, though, Suga’s absence could be felt most harshly of all. 

Karasuno’s control tower, the one who kept everyone, everyone, in line and on track was gone. Instead, there was Kageyama, who as much as he didn’t talk about his feelings, was clearly struggling under the pressure of it. Keeping people balanced on the needle tip of perfection was already difficult from a purely mechanical aspect but also from an emotional aspect? Shoyo was just glad it wasn’t him. 

The first years were the blessing the team had needed. Six in total, two wing spikers, a middle blocker, two liberos, and a setter. The setter, Minoru, the one who had piped up, stuck out. 

At first glance, the boy wasn’t much of anything, not especially tall or talented, but he was from Kindaichi. He had come here for Kageyama, just for Kageyama. 

The shock that had flitted across the setter’s face was an expression Shoyo had never seen on him before. The disbelief, the pride of being such a shining example was swallowed by memories of his time from that place. Minoru had known Kageyama then, and had probably played with him too. He had come here anyway despite that. 

However, unlike Kageyama, this setter wasn’t a prodigy. His receiving sucked, so naturally, it had been dumped onto Shoyo with his first-hand experience of learning how to not such to form him into something worthwhile on the court, something that could fill in for the King even for a short time. 

“Positioning is everything for a setter, right?” Shoyo slowly said to the other boy, brow furrowed as he strung passing thoughts together into something understandable. “And volleyball is about connected play. If the ball cannot be hit up, it can’t start so it is important that everyone knows how to do that enough for people like you to handle it from there.” 

“Yeah but how can you cover the whole court to do that, then?” Another one of the first years, Shuto, a wing spiker who was a rookie in the sport yet showed immense promise, said, his hand raised. 

That question, at least, Shoyo knew the answer to. 

“Do you know what a split step is?” They all shake their heads. 

“It’s a thing in tennis where instead of just stepping you-”

Shoyo’s voice got cut off as the gym door suddenly slammed open with enough force for it to bounce back off the other wall. 

They all swiveled around towards the noise, mouths open in shock as Kageyama leaned against the doorframe, a hand still on the handle, panting. The strands of his hair were disheveled as if he had just sprinted here. 

“What-” 

“Get out,” Kageyama snapped at the first years, shooting them a look. All their mouths gaped even wider. 

“Huh?” 

Apparently, whatever patience Kageyama had had ran out quite some time ago. He stalked across the gym, seizing Shoyo by the front of his shirt and yanking, dragging the spiker across the gym to one of the less occupied corners. 

Shoyo stumbled a few steps forward due to the force, unconsciously hissing as too much weight got put on his ankle before the shock of the situation wore off. He began to twist, his hands pushing against Kageyama as the other continued to drag him and Shoyo dug his heels in petulantly. 

“Kageyama, what the-”

“We need to talk.” 

“What the-!” 

Shoyo glanced where the first years were only to see the last of them scrambling out the door. One of them shuts it behind them helpfully, leaving Shoyo with a very ticked-off Kageyama as finally, he was able to tear out of the other’s grip, rounding on him furiously. 

“What the hell is wrong with you?!” He hissed. “You can’t do that!”

“You’re going to Brazil?” Shoyo blinked, his anger wavering for a moment. 

“Huh? Yeah?” 

Now? That was being brought up now?

Kageyama stepped back, staring at him with a peculiar look. Shoyo stared right back at him, more confused than ever before. 

“You’re going to Brazil.” 

“Yes? What the hell is wrong with you, Kageyama? You can’t treat the first years like that!” His anger came back in a rush, his voice climbing. 

“We’re their upperclassmen! You can’t-” 

Kageyama cut him off, yelling above him. 

“You’re going to Brazil and you didn’t think to even tell me about this?!”  

“What?! Why are you bringing that up now?!” 

“It’s kind of a huge decision to go across the world, you know!” 

“Yeah, I know! That’s why I made it!” 

“And you’re doing it anyway without consulting anyone?!” 

“I’ve talked with the coaches! What the hell-”

“But not with me!” Kageyama cut him off again, breathing heavily. His eyes were abnormally bright. “But not with me.” 

Shoyo stared at him, dumbfounded. The absolute audacity of Tobio Kageyama. The gall.

“Is that why you’re so upset? Because I didn’t tell you?!”

“Yes!” 

“Well, you didn’t tell me about the V league, you fucking hypocrite!” 

Kageyama’s mouth opens but nothing comes out. Shoyo continued to yell. 

“Didn’t think of that, did you!” 

The setter gritted his teeth, quiet for a few moments. Very slowly, he opened his mouth again, the words dragging out of him even slower. He wasn’t yelling anymore, instead, there was a steely flatness to his tone, lower than it was before. 

“You didn’t ask.” 

Shoyo didn’t lower his tone. He continued to yell because who was Kageyama to fight with him about this? Who was he to tell Shoyo what to do when he himself couldn’t even let him know that he had offers already?! 

“I didn’t know! How the actual hell could I have known to ask?!” 

Kageyama fell completely silent as if stumped for what to say. His gaze dropped to the ground before he looked away at one of the walls, avoiding the other’s face. He looked almost ashamed. 

Shoyo balled his fists. He stepped closer to the other. 

“I’m your partner!” Kageyama didn’t look at him. Shoyo grabs the front of his shirt, shaking him. “You should have… I don’t know, asked! Said something to me! Where you go affects me too, you know!” 

Because wherever Kageyama went, Shoyo would follow. Be it the college, national, or world stage, he would follow no matter what. No matter how long it took or what it took to get to that level, he would follow. 

“I know,” Kageyama admitted, his voice flat. He reached up, grabbing Shoyo’s wrists. His hands are warm. “But you didn’t tell me about Brazil either. Did you think that that decision didn’t affect me either?” 

In some way, it wasn’t only Shoyo who would follow the other anywhere. Except now, Kageyama couldn’t follow him across the world, not like this, just like how Shoyo couldn’t follow him to the V league, not yet. 

They were at the point where the bridge they had been building ran out of new materials to continue it and they were stuck. 

“I have to get better.”

It was a hard pill to swallow, but a truthful one. Shoyo would never truly be good enough to stand on the stage with monsters if he relied so heavily on his setter. 

Slowly, deliberately, Kageyama pulled Shoyo’s hands off of his shirt and the other went easily. He had no anger left to fuel his grip. 

“So you’re going to Brazil,” Kageyama whispers, dropping Shoyo’s hands. 

“Yes.” 

The boy took a deep breath, one of those breaths you took before making a decision and when he let it out, the tension drained from him. There was a fierce look in Kageyama’s eye, one that was oh-so-familiar. It was the one that made Shoyo want to fight him, tooth and nail. Today, it was more than that. 

“You better not waste a single second.” 

“Who do you think I am? Of course, I won’t.” Shoyo responded boldly. 

He jabbed a finger into Kageyama’s chest, right over his heart, hard. He hoped it left a bruise in the shape of his fingertip if even just to show the world that he put a mark on this glorious setter before anyone else could. 

“I’m going to beat you.” 

A smile cut across Kageyama’s face. He leaned down until they were face to face, sharing the same air. Shoyo’s palms sweat in a way they haven’t ever before but he barely notices it, baring his teeth back in the other’s taunting face. 

“You can try.” 

…

Shoyo had expected a lot of things from Brazil. He had expected that the weather would be different, the food different, and the language and customs too. He had expected these changes just like how he knew that here, he was a fully-fledged adult even while in Japan he still had to wait a year. An obvious difference, one he could prepare for.

What he hadn’t expected was to feel this lonely. 

“O que você gostaria de beber?” The polite, if not a little bored, barista asks him fluently. 

“Um, café por favor,” Shoyo says. This was simple enough. 

“Que tipo?” He had been wrong, not simple. 

“Huh?” The barista regards him with her unmoving eyes. 

“Preto, cafezinho, com leite, espresso? Que tipo?” 

Shoyo stares at her blankly. She looks back at him eyebrows raised, waiting. Not unkind, just tired, just doing her job, the one he was making far more difficult than it should be. 

“...cafezinho?” Finally, she looks away with those unmoving eyes and he can breathe a bit better. The fluttering panic stays alive in his chest, as does every instinct in him that screams to get out . 

“Maravilhoso, o total é-”

He somehow gets through the interaction and takes the receipt with his number. He stares blankly at the little 76 printed in black ink, his line number helpfully circled by the barista. 

How was this said again? Six is seis, he knew that but seventy? Seventy seventy seventy…

He scrolls through the list of translations on his phone which grows bigger every day. 

Sentena. Sentena seis- no. Sentena e seis. Yes. Sentena e seis. Sentena e seis.

He repeats the words into his mind, trying to carve a place for them in the dull buzzing static that muffles the people around him. Unconsciously, he crumples the little piece of paper in his palm.

When his coffee comes, it’s unassuming dark hot liquid in a small cup. It’s both so bitter and sweet at the time that it makes his lips purse. It is already hot outside but the coffee is even hotter, burning him for his desire to leave as quickly as possible. 

He waits for it to cool by checking his phone. It’s almost two PM. It’s Thursday. His texts to both Kenma and Yachi remain unread in their inboxes. It’s almost two AM on a Friday for them in Japan, of course, they wouldn’t have read them yet, they were sleeping. 

Shoyo scrolls down below the two contacts. There are other messages, older and unanswered or finished conversations with no hook to continue off of. He shuts off his phone but as he places it down on the table, the screen accidentally lights up again. 

All of their third-year faces stare back at him from where they’re frozen in another time. 

A sudden burst of laughter makes Shoyo look up sharply. There is a group of teens borderline shrieking at each other on the other side shop, their words lost by speed or volume or simple ignorance on his end. 

Shoyo takes his coffee and moves to one of the outside tables, heat be damned. He doesn’t look around again just like he doesn’t focus on his phone. He instead focuses solely on the coffee as if it would save him from the knot in his stomach. 

Here, there is a world around him. It is as bright and hot as it is beautiful. 

The sun shines down unrelenting and under it, people thrive. They mill and play at the beach and chatter in the streets. They speak to each other loudly or quietly, share conversations, and hold hands. They embrace and smile. They move with innate knowledge, with a quiet stable purpose that is as entwined with the land around them as it is inside of them. They laugh, heads thrown back, and smiles pulled wide. 

Here, there is a world around him. It is beautiful and it is out of reach. 

Shoyo cannot connect with it. He is alone in another country on the other side of the globe. He had never left Japan before this, but here he was, staring at signs with symbols he could not even begin to decipher, which oriented nothing, and quietly drinking coffee that he had never liked in the first place like that would change here. 

He is alienated in such a quiet, personal way that he didn’t even realize it until his bags were fully unpacked in a house with a roommate he couldn’t talk to. 

Somehow, even worse than the loneliness that bores itself into his bones is the frustration. Beach volleyball is different in every minuscule way from indoor volleyball which is important. 

Shoyo wakes up and he goes down to the beach. He tries to play and falls. He misjudges timing and falls. He jumps and swings and misses. He jumps and he is too low. In the evenings he does deliveries in streets he doesn’t know the names of. He falls asleep looking at his lock screen, tapping it over and over and over again like it would change anything. 

The next day, he wakes up and goes to the beach again and fails again. 

It’s frustrating. Shoyo’s impatient, he knows that, but he also knows that he has learned these skills, that he won them, clawed them into his grasp over the hundreds of practices and games he played before. Now, even that had been snatched back, leaving him with nothing. 

Shoyo feels like he is fourteen again on a court in an unfamiliar world. He is drowning as much as he is fighting to stay afloat. He’s stagnant, yet something in him still fights, but undeniably, he is losing, because staying frozen inches from the surface still means that you can’t draw breath. 

It’s sickeningly familiar. 

“The number you have reached is unavailable. At the tone please record your message-” 

The mechanical voice of the phone line makes him jolt as if burned. Shoyo pulls the phone away from his ear, the phone that he doesn’t remember reaching for. The screen is horribly bright in the darkness of the night. 

“Oh,” He breathes out into the air, empty but for himself. He’s shaking, he’s realizing, curled up the way he is. 

He places the phone on the ground, pushing it as far away as he can, but for some reason, he doesn’t hang up the voicemail. He just covers his face with his hands and tries to breathe. 

What was wrong with him?

This was his choice. He made this choice, happily, excitedly, even. Shoyo clenches his fists, but the familiar ache isn’t enough to pull him away from the horrible truth. 

He doesn’t know what he’s doing. 

He sniffs, wiping his stinging eyes furiously as familiar frustration bubbles up in him. He doesn’t look for tissues and there is no one there to give him one. He’s alone because he chose to be alone here. 

He wanted this so badly. He wanted it so badly becuase he he wanted to thrive, but he just can’t. Nothing is working when everything, everything down to his very senses, is being rejected by this strange world. 

But he doesn’t want to leave either. 

Maybe that’s the most confusing part, he doesn’t want to go back because if he goes back, the small death of failure would taint his every breath. He doesn’t want to go back to a life without this. He doesn’t know how. 

Shoyo takes in a shuddering breath, pushing the hair back from his forehead and feeling the sweat that has gathered there in the humid air dry cooly. 

He came here to get better. Nothing is working. Both are correct, factual statements. Both can be felt within his being with how all of him wreaths and twists tight. 

It had been in middle school when they had taught them in depth what happens in a butterfly’s chrysalis. The insect digests its own body from the inside out using its own enzymes, moving its little brain and set of lungs around in the goop until something new can be reformed around them. A beautiful butterfly in place of a larvae.

Shoyo is not a butterfly, he is not nearly as beautiful or elegant or fragile, but like one, he is trying to transform into something else. Maybe this is just the time when his body liquifies so that things could change. Because, if all else fails, he’s here to change. If this is what it took, so be it, he would grit his teeth and endure. 

Shoyo raises his head at last and his gaze immediately falls on the phone. Its screen is dark, the voicemail is automatically cut off for being too long. Shoyo hadn’t even realized when it had happened. 

The empty ache in his chest hasn’t faded. Shoyo wanted to change, if this is what it took, so be it, but he is human. He lives in the present. Knowing things will get better doesn’t stop moments like this from hurting now.

…

Out of all the people Tobio was with when he got the call, it was Tsukishima. 

Tobio was helping him pack his stuff up for his move to university. Supposedly, he was the only one available to help, but Tobio suspects he was picked because he was the one who would most likely be able to actually move the boxes rather than just strain against them. 

Tobio’s phone rang and pushing his hair off his sweaty brow, he pulled out his phone, glancing at the screen. It wasn’t from any number he knew. He picked it up anyway. He found out very quickly who was on the other side. 

He froze. 

His mouth half opened but nothing came out as he listened through the loud buzzing sound that suddenly filled his ears. They asked him if he wanted it and he said yes so quickly he couldn’t even draw breath for it. Then it was over as quickly as it had come, and he was standing with his phone still in hand, the line dead, and his fate confirmed. 

Across the room, Tsukishima eyed him. He had waited until Tobio’s hand had dropped before speaking as if he already knew. 

“Who was that?” His voice was very even, almost too even. Tobio tried to speak but nothing came out. He cleared his throat and tried again. 

“The national team.” His voice was hoarse as if he were just screaming. Tsukishima whistled lowly. Even he couldn’t pretend to scoff at that. 

“The shrimp is going to kill you.” He sent Tobio another look. “And if you don’t tell him, he’s going to kill you even more.” 

“I’m going to play for Japan, Tsukishima.” 

“Yeah, King,” Tsukishima said, raising an eyebrow. “You knew that.” 

“But not so soon this is-” Tobio took a deep breath. “Weird.” 

That was the only way to describe it. It was weird and exhilarating and amazing. It was what he wanted.

Of course, he told Shoyo. He told him when they were sitting on the porch of Tobio’s house, enjoying the summer evening air as the sun began to set. Tobio told him before he had told any of the coaches. 

First, when the words had just left this mouth, Shoyo stared at him, open-mouthed. Tobio could read all the emotions that passed through his face then, open as a book. Jealousy, anger, pride, happiness, sadness- it was all over in less than a second and then Shoyo was yelling. 

He launched himself at Tobio, hands bruisingly tight on his shoulders as he just shook him, half-formed words tumbling out in one loud jumble that already started to give him a headache. 

“Japan, Tobio, Japan! You’re going to play for Japan! You can go to the Olympics!”

Tobio knew the other felt bitter, there was no way he couldn’t, but what was the important thing was that there was no bitterness in his words. Shoyo wanted to be on the world stage just as desperately as him, maybe even more with how he had had to force everything into his favor, but now, even when he was left behind, he was still happy for Tobio. 

That was just the kind of person he was. 

Tobio moved to Tokyo. He packed alone and boarded the train alone. 

In a way, it was new, but the emptiness of the apartment in Tokyo wasn’t. After his grandfather died and Miwa moved to go to cosmetology school, it had only been just Tobio and his grandmother. He didn’t mind living alone, really. It was peaceful, it gave him space to think, but the city was different. 

It was new with how it sprawled out endlessly, and new with how Tobio was there permanently now rather than just for nationals. 

The city was new, but it was predictable in the way nonliving things were. Tobio could learn the subway tunnels the bus routes, and the stores that lined each corner. The people were the difficult part of this place. Not all of them were new. Maybe if they had been, it would have been easier, a full fresh start, not whatever this limbo was. 

It was an alien feeling to play with people who Tobio had fought tooth and nail against so soon in the past. Everything was different yet the same. It was still volleyball. Tobio was still a setter for his spikers, and it was still his job to pull every inch of potential out of his teammates. 

But these weren’t his teammates- they were! But they weren’t his. It was the most confusing part of it all. 

The practice game in the gymnasium was going as well as it could for some of the best people in the country people being thrown into a room at random while also playing against people who were also some of the best of the best in the country. Even in the short time he had been away from this, Tobio had missed the rhythm of the game, the ever-connecting link that led the volleyball from play to play. 

His eyes tracked the ball, following it as someone bumped it, the ball flying high in a beautiful rainbow arc, a fast and clean receive. It was perfect for-

“Fuck!” 

The spiker swore as the ball whizzed past his hand, unhittable with how little warning there was before the ball was unleashed at a sudden crazed angle. The ball tumbled onto their court despite his teammates’ dives, and suddenly all eyes were on Tobio. 

Something hot bloomed across his face. It stung horribly deep. 

“Sorry, that was my fault.” 

“Kageyama!” 

It took everything in Tobio not to flinch as the coach yelled his name, waving at him impatiently to come over. Everyone was still watching him as he slowly walked towards him as if to the gallows.

“What was at?” The coach demanded immediately once the setter was earshot. Tobio clenched his fists, not making eye contact. 

“A force of habit. I’m sorry, coach.” 

“I’ve watched you play at the last youth camp, you didn’t mess up like this before. That set had thought and purpose behind it, not just a freak accident. ” 

“It’s one of my team’s old plays, coach.” 

“Is this going to be an issue? Your precision is the reason you’re here, you know that, if you can’t unlearn your habits there are going to be problems.” 

“I understand. It won’t be an issue.” 

“Alright.” The coach waved him off finally. “Keep playing, but I’m watching you. No more freak balls.” 

The incident was swept away quickly under the pace of training and natural stress that occurred while trying to live under the pressure of shaping up at the highest echelon of the sport. The people around him forgot and they smiled at him at the end of the day as they did the next and the next. 

But Tobio couldn’t let it go. He couldn’t. Like an itch, it persisted, impossible to ignore. 

The itch got worse when he was placed in a group with Hoshiumi. 

Hoshiumi was just as fast and just as strong as he remembered from the singular time they had played each other in his first year. He was still every bit a terror in the air he had been before but now he was even better, fine-tuned. 

His aerial skills were sharper and each set aimed at him seemed to get sucked into his hands as if by an unstoppable force. When he was there, at the apex of flight, he could do whatever he damn well pleased, striking the blocker’s hands, the floor, the line, it didn’t matter, he had complete freedom and control. 

Hoshiumi was the fastest one on the team. He jumped the highest. He thrived under the pressure of the top. Tobio couldn’t keep his eyes off him. 

He gave Hoshiumi quick balls. The spiker didn’t even blink. He gave him faster ones than those. Hoshiumi took them in stride. Tobio gave him even faster ones. Hoshiumi hit them all. 

Tobio wasn’t doing it consciously, he just pushed like he was so used to, demanding faster, higher, run-jump-score now. Tobio pushed Hoshiumi like he had only a few before. 

Tobio set the ball, and the ball connected with the spiker’s palm. It flew past the opposing blocker’s hands, landing with a loud boom on the ground, a resounding final point for their side, winning the match. 

Tobio turned, smiling, joy flittering in his chest like a live spark, but instead of celebrating, Hoshiumi rounded on Tobio, teeth bared, bristling. It made the smile freeze on the setter’s face, the exhilaration melting into confusion. 

Why wasn’t he happy? 

“Stop treating me like him!” Hoshiumi yelled, stalking over to Tobio and grabbing the front of his shirt. The setter looked at him, perplexed. 

“What?” It worked, didn’t it? It had been working the entire time they were playing together. 

“I’m not your high school partner!” 

“But it worked.” 

The answer seemed to infuriate the other more. Hoshiumi stepped back, his fists clenched as he glared at Tobio. He stabbed a finger in the other’s direction, resolute dedication filling his voice. 

“I’m not going to play with you until you fix this.” 

Without even waiting for Tobio to react to his declaration, he turned, storming off towards the opposite side of the court where the coach looked on, his eyebrow raised. Tobio was switched to another team net practice game, and no such problems arose, but he was slower than normal after the confrontation, his mind grating on itself as it combed through the interaction again and again. 

What was wrong? They were doing well, Hoshiumi could hit his tosses excellently. It was fine. 

But it wasn’t fine, because a setter was supposed to help their spikers as much as demand from them. Hoshiumi hadn’t been helped by him, he had been burdened. Even it had worked, it had restricted the freedom he coveted in the air, narrowing his plays. 

Tobio stared at the ceiling in the dark in bed, mind still too full for him to even think of sleep. 

If you get stronger, I guarantee, someone even stronger will appear.

That was what his grandpa had said. 

Tobio was playing on the national team. He was achieving his dreams, playing against the strongest, yet in his stomach rested a stone. It was barely noticeable, but now that Tobio looked for it, he noticed it. Now it was an unmovable unignorable thing that had festered in the face of his willful ignorance 

It was the space that lay empty within him. A disconnection. It wasn’t new, 

Tobio had carried this jagged stone, this empty space, for so many years before until… high school. 

He had forgotten about it until now. Now this little stone, this jagged empty hollow, it lay empty again, and he didn’t know what to feel about it. 

Tobio was dumb, but not when it came to this. Volleyball was the only thing he knew reliably. Shoyo was too wrapped up in volleyball for him not to know this was because of him. Because he wasn’t here anymore, but it was more than that. 

Tobio thought about Hoshiumi. He observed him in his memory and wondered. 

If it would have been possible, could he fill that void? 

Hoshiumi was an amazing player. He flew like he was born to and spiked like it was breathing. He fought every moment in the air and had overcome all the things that had wished to tie him down. 

Hoshiumi was brash. He was crass and arrogant in a way that befits him. He was a prodigy, an all-rounder. He made people bend to him and his will, and fully used his teammates to boost himself to greater heights where he thrived. He was the one who had yelled at Tobio about his sets.

He wasn’t Shoyo. 

They were both loud, they were both enthusiastic, they both followed after the ball doggedly and both jumped with a will that seemed to defy all the laws of the universe, but they couldn’t ever be interchangeable. 

Shoyo was… bright. He was stupid. He was devoted. He was there. He always was there. Somewhere along the way, Tobio had come to expect that. 

There was a trust there that ran deeper than just simple partners on the same side of the court because teammates changed. They were there, and then they weren’t; they quit, or they ran forward, or they just became stagnant and were left behind. Shoyo didn’t fit anything like that. 

Shoyo was genuine. It was the only way to describe him, he was always exactly himself. He always said things he meant and did things that he knew. He didn’t think, he did, and he shone.

Tobio wanted that genuineness because it was what was easy about him. It made it so easy to step close and Tobio had gotten used to being in the sun. 

He had because Shoyo had let him. He had let Tobio step close and push. He had let him step close and peel back the layers of his being with the blade called trust and reform him because he trusted him.

And Tobio had let him do the same. 

Had. 

Now, that bone-deep trust was gone and Tobio didn’t have a connection, not with him, not with anyone else. He didn’t know how to even start again. He didn’t know if he wanted to. 

Hoshiumi wasn’t Shoyo. He never would be. 

Tomorrow, Tobio would apologize, and Hoshiumi would accept, that was just the kind of person he was, and then he would demand perfect sets on his terms, and Tobio would give them to him. 

But tonight, in the dark, Tobio turned to stare at the blank wall. 

I’m trying to play like you’re still here; that is what he should have said through a text or a call. Meaningful in a quiet way just like how it is mildly humorous, the ever-stubborn King that he was always so reluctant to change his ways. 

But Tobio didn’t. He didn’t even pick up the phone. 

…

Hearing someone speak Japanese close to Shoyo when he is in one of his slumps is like being dunked in a bucket of cold water. 

It makes him whirl around, heart beating faster than it has in weeks as hope rises in his chest. Someone was here from home his home, he didn’t care who they were, what gender or age or anything, someone was here and he wouldn’t be so horribly lonely. 

The hope shining in his chest is overtaken by pure shock as he sees exactly who is speaking Japanese. 

Oikawa was the last person Shoyo had expected in a place like this, but there he was bare paces away. He’s older, the slightly rounded features of teenage years shed, but still with brown hair and brown eyes and an air of power around him but now it is quieter, as if dampened. 

And he’s gawking at Shoyo too. Clearly, Shoyo was the last person he had expected as well. It’s surreal, the pure coincidence of it all. 

“Is this real life?” 

“What are you doing here?!” 

Nothing could have kept the pure delight out of Shoyo’s tone. Someone is here, yes, someone who, in any other setting, he would have run away from, but Shoyo is far too desperate not to try and cling to some part of home. 

“That’s my line.” Oikawa is smiling widely, striding closer in order for them not to shout. His eyes sweep over Shoyo, taking him in. “Man, you’ve grown. Not the skinny first year anymore.” 

Oikawa’s grin becomes more teasing. It’s new and strange how fitting the expression is on his face. Shoyo isn’t used to it being pointed at him.

“You’ve even grown a little taller, that’s a big achievement.” 

Shoyo laughs. He can’t do anything else, he has missed this so much. The familiarity, his language, the banter, it’s almost like home. 

It’s surreal going out to eat with Oikawa. It is the first time he has had a companion to do these mundane tasks with, and even longer to have the ability to chatter meaninglessly with someone. 

“Why Argentina?” Inevitably, the conversation steers towards volleyball, if it had ever left in the first place. 

“I was offered a place in their team after our final loss against Shiritorizawa.” 

“And how has that been going lately?” The question makes Oikawa pause, his mouth twisting. 

“Ardous.” He stabs the fork into the food before him with maybe a little more force than was necessary. “Do you have any plans on meeting up with Tobio in Rio?” 

It’s Shoyo’s turn to have his mouth twist.

“Hm?” He hums back, avoidant. 

“He’s going to be here next month for the Olympics.” Oikawa is looking at him, eyebrows raised. 

Yes, the Olympics. They only reason Tobio would be in Rio.

“Right. The Olympics.” Oikawa’s eyebrows raise even higher. 

“So, will you?” Shoyo don’t meet his gaze as he takes another bite of food. 

“Probably not.” 

“Why?” 

Because there simply was too much distance between them. Because Tobio was going to the Olympics as a setter for all of Japan. Because Shoyo was back where he was four years ago. 

“I have a part-time job.” 

Oikawa laughs but from the glint in his eye, he knows it’s a lie. He doesn’t press, not yet, he has the whole week for that. 

They do end up playing a game of beach volleyball. It’s as difficult as ever, but it’s almost vindicating to be beside someone who sucks even more than him. They both end up in the sand and lose horrifically, and Shoyo really doesn’t care.

“You know, it has been difficult.” He looks up at Oikawa, smiling brightly. “But I’m really happy you’re here now.” 

Oikawa smiles back, but there are more layers to his eyes, something deeper than just simple joy. Fascination. Interest. Potential. Potential that had time to breathe, even whole days of it. 

“Buy me dinner then.” 

…

The text comes when the team is packing up from morning practice. Tobio stares at the little message icon for a moment, surprised that they had some overlap for the first time in weeks, it was late in Brazil. He clicks on the icon and it takes all of him for his mouth not to flop open. 

What the actual fuck was Shoyo doing with Oikawa of all people? And in Brazil of all places?!

Tobio is still staring at it, flabbergasted as Ushijima passes my him. Tobio blindly grabs for him, tugging to get his attention. His teammate turns, nonplussed, until Tobio turns the phone around, and then a distasteful look overtakes his face. 

“Shoyo Hinata from the concrete and Oikawa,” he mutters darkly. 

“In Brazil.” 

Ushijima blinks, looking closer, seemingly taking in both the dark sky and the beach in the background of the picture for the first time. 

“Brazil?” 

“Shoyo went there to train.” Tobio turns off his phone, shoving it into his pocket lest he stare at it embarrassingly long in front of his teammates. 

“Why?” 

“Beach volleyball.” 

“I see. Is he switching?” 

“No, just training.” Tobio swings his bag over his shoulder. 

“Hm.” Ushijima contemplates, swinging his bag over his shoulder as well. “He always was surprising.” 

The two walk out of the locker room together. When they had been offered the contract for the national team, the board had also offered apartments close to the main stadium, heavily subsidized for any athlete who wanted it. Tobio had taken up the offer without a second thought, anything to get closer to the arena, and so had Ushijima, just a building over. 

The seven-minute walk was one usual trodden in silence but this time, surprisingly, it’s Ushijima who breaks the long practiced quiet between the two. 

“How is Shoyo?” 

Tobio thinks of the picture, already burned into his mind. 

Shoyo didn’t seem to be completely deteriorating. There is a new color to his skin and a flush on his cheeks, but even from that single image, Tobio had noticed the circles beneath his eyes. Not sleep deprivation, not necessarily, but instead a sort of weight without a name that hung on. 

“We don’t talk.” 

They didn’t talk until it was four AM and he was getting panicked calls that he couldn’t answer, empty voicemails and sporadic texts about everything but what mattered. 

“Why?” 

Tobio’s pace slows, and beside him, Ushijima mirrors him, brow furrowed. 

Why?

No one had asked why before, not even himself. It just was , was in the way things were naturally. The sky was blue, you had seven seconds to serve the ball, they didn’t talk. They had separate lives now, separate paths yet-

“We don’t need to.” He continues his pace again. 

They worked like the hands on a clock. Even separated, they moved with the same driving purpose. They would meet again one day in some place, some time, just that time wasn’t now. 

Tobio just has to wait. 

…

They are adults now but they are young, it’s inevitable that they will eventually make their way into a club. It’s more shocking that it takes them to day five of Oikawa’s seven limited days for them to do so. 

The place they end up is a small to medium-sized bar and dance floor, the air is hazy and thick, tinged purple from the lights and the music is loud, but not ear-splitting. It’s a little early for the peak time of activity, only nine rather than the typical ten, but it gives them an opening to actually claim a table for themselves. 

“Is this a gay bar?” Oikawa asks it so suddenly after a comfortable silence had enveloped the two for so long that Shoyo spits out a bit of his drink, a Batida he had taken a slow liking to.

“What?!” He coughs. Oikawa raises an eyebrow, deadpan.

“Isn’t Rio supposed to have a really lively gay scene?” 

“There are clearly women here and how should I know?!” Shoyo still sputters, grabbing for a napkin to wipe up the mess. If his cheeks are pink under the lights, that’s a secret between him and god. 

Oikawa, resting his chin on a hand, is smiling in that borderline mean way as he watches Shoyo fluster, entertained. 

“There are quite a few in Argentina.” 

“And you have been to them?” 

Shoyo stands to drop the used napkins in the trash but Oikawa motions for them, taking them and throwing them through the distance into the trashcan nearby. Shoyo wants to flick him. 

“Show off.” 

“I’m perfect,” the other preens. “And yes, I have. Some are good.” 

“How does it compare here?” 

“I thought you said this wasn’t a gay club?” Shoyo glares at him. Oikawa smirks back, knowing he has gotten under Shoyo’s skin in his signature way, even playfully. Eventually, he relents. 

 “It’s smaller, but it’s nice. More intimate.” He takes a sip of his own drink. “The drinks are better, though. What’s this again?” 

“Caipirinha.” 

“Caipirinha,” Oikawa repeats the word, draining the last of his glass. “We have a lot of wine in Argentina, not that I can really drink it, but the Mate is good.” 

“Mate?” 

“Yerba Mate, it’s sort of like the tea back home you leave the leaves in when you drink it. Also, it's drunk from a gourd with a special straw, not a cup.” 

“Cool,” Shoyo responds, rattling the ice of his empty drink, seeking the last drops. The music covers the sound but Oikawa didn’t miss it. 

“Are you going to get another one?” 

“Yeah.” 

“Can you get me another? I don’t know how to say it in Portuguese.” Fake nativity coats his words in such an artificial way that Shoyo can’t help but snort at the ridiculous display. He makes a show of thinking, almost wanting to say no just to spite Oikawa for his needling all evening. 

“You can use my card,” the other offers so generously. 

“That’s all you needed to say,” Shoyo smiles brightly, readily taking the plastic from the other’s fingers when offered. “Same thing?” 

“Yes.” 

“Be back in a minute.” 

Sifting through the people to the bar, it takes a few minutes for Shoyo to get his order in with the surrounding chaos so as he waits, he observes the people around him. 

This isn’t his first or even his second time being here, one of his beach partners had invited him after a particularly up-and-down day of games to make him feel better. He had had to be physically dragged through the door by the arm that time, his mind still screaming illegal even at the thought of stepping foot inside. 

That was one of the strange things Shoyo knew was different. Here, he was an adult. This was normal. Experiencing it was completely different, however. 

“O que eu entendo de você?” What can I get you, the bartender asks him. Her hair is down and loose, dark, her eyes a light shade, lined expertly in black. 

“Uma Caipirinha e uma Batida por favor.” One Caipirinha and one Batida please. 

He had repeated this so many times in his head already that the words almost sounded natural on his tongue. 

“Tudo bem.” She grabs two glasses to begin making the drinks. “Cartão ou guia?” Card or tab?

He had studied the words for this. He had searched them up explicitly to make sure. 

“ Cartão .” Card. 

“Clara.” Sure. Her light eyes glance away from the drinks to the corner a certain smile appears on her face. “As bebidas são para você e seu amigo?” For you and your friend?

“Sim.” Yes

“Tão bonito. De onde você é?” So handsome. Where are you from?

The back of Shoyo’s neck heats. He scratches it absentmindedly but his voice is steady. 

“Japão”

“E seu amigo?” And your friend?

“Também do Japão.” Also from Japan. 

“Ah, viagem de verão?” Summer trip? 

“Não, somos jogadores de voleibol.” No, we’re volleyball players.

“Você deveria me ensinar algum dia.” You should teach me sometime. She winks at him, placing their finished drinks on the counter. “Pergunte pela Ana.” Ask for Ana. 

She gives him one last smile before turning away in a whoosh of dark hair, leaving Shoyo to try not to trip as he stumbles through the crowd.

“Did she give you her number?” Shoyo can barely set down the drinks before Oikawa is on him. Clearly, the other had been watching. 

“No,” Shoyo technically doesn’t lie through his teeth but Oikawa sees right through it, smiling widely like a sated cat, the new drink comfortably in his hand as he takes a swig. 

“You totally did.” 

“She gave me her name, not her number.” Shoyo takes a gulp of his own drink. It’s unwise to be drinking this fast, his head will remind him tomorrow, but really, he doesn’t care at this point. He’s having fun. 

“Oh? You said no?” 

“I said nothing.” 

“What, she’s not your type? I would expect that but she is pretty.” Shoyo blinks, his mind hanging onto the other’s words. 

“Wait, you know my type?” Oikawa leans shrugs, coy. 

“I don’t know, you tell me. Was it because she’s a woman?” 

“No, I like women just fine.” 

“And men?” 

“Them too.” 

“Not tall enough, then?” 

“We’ve talked literally once.” Shoyo absentedly stirs his drink. “What’s you’re type?” 

“Hmm.” Oikawa taps his fingers on the table absentmindedly, scanning around the room, as if looking for an example. “Someone with a personality that brings them out of the crowd.” 

His eyes land on Shoyo. They linger for a moment too long before slipping back down to his drink, already half empty. He downs it in a few more swallows, letting the glass fall empty beside its predecessor before offering a hand. 

“Do you want to dance?” 

Shoyo looks at his hand. 

Fuck it.  

He downs the rest of his drink too. It burns his throat, he doesn’t care. 

“Sure.” He takes the hand and allows himself to be pulled onto the dance floor. 

It’s hotter here, pinpricks of sweat line Shoyo’s brow in no time. There are bodies around him, pressing, but he doesn’t feel lost, he doesn’t feel like he is drowning. Oikawa is across from him, looking at him. 

They dance to the music in the club that is not a gay club and simply enjoy getting lost in the beats of it as the drinks run through them, taking hold. They are athletes, they can’t drink often, but it doesn’t make it any less fun when they can.  

The alcohol makes the room dizzy in a pleasant way. It makes his body warm and alive as the colors swirl in tandem with the music, rushing like a tidal wave as he closes his eyes. 

The next thing he knows, he’s pressed against someone. If they had come to him or he to them or if they had been pushed together somehow by some universal force, it doesn’t matter. Oikawa smiles down at him, not in a needling way, but something that paired divinely with that lingering gaze that is back on him. 

Shoyo smiles and feels for the other’s hands. He laces his own fingers through them, lifting them until they can be placed on his hips and they sway to the music. He stares up, uninhibited, and Oikawa stares right back. They both know. 

“You know, you’ve changed,” Oikawa says, leaning close to his ear to be heard over the music. 

Shoyo hums, draping his arms over Oikawa’s shoulders. Their height difference makes them stick up strangely and his body stretch but it doesn’t stop him, not one bit. He leans closer, eyes bright. 

The corner of his mouth ticks up, coy with the confidence only liquid courage could bring. That and experience. This isn’t the first time for Shoyo. 

Oikawa notices it far too late. A thrill shivers up his spine.

When the fuck did this happen?

“How so?” Oikawa can’t look away, he doesn’t want to. 

“We’re not kids anymore.” 

He runs his hands over Shoyo’s sides. He's grown, none of the short bouncy twig he was before. Boader, tanner, more mature.  

Oikawa slips his hands under Shoyo’s shirt. He lets his fingertips trail along the skin and feels how Shoyo’s skin shivers in goosebumps under his touch, before settling his hands in the dip of the other’s waist. Here, he’s softer in the sea of lean muscle and bone of the rest of his body. Oikawa pulls him closer, pressing his fingers into that smooth, soft flesh, and Shoyo lets him. 

The space between them is negligible. They share the same air, their noses touching ever so slightly. Shoyo’s eyes flick down.

“No, we’re not kids anymore,” Shoyo breathes against his lips. 

He glances up once before smiling that bright intoxicating smile. Bottled sun and adrenaline. Just for Oikawa, just for him to drink in. He does. He takes everything he is offered. 

“Isn’t it great?” 

 Oikawa closes the last inch of difference, but it doesn’t matter in the end; they fold into each other with predictable, unpracticed ease. It’s sweet, like how the liqueur here is dizzyingly refreshing yet equally intoxicating in the surrounding heat of the world. They don’t want to stop so they don’t.

… 

Brazil is where Shoyo got his first taste of attention. 

High school was… complex. If he would’ve chosen to chase it, Shoyo would have had some sort of attention, but the thing is, he didn’t. There was no spare attention of his own for him to chase that kind of attention, volleyball had been his vice and calling in equal measure, something that he had always followed a single minded intensity that scared that potential away in one way or another. 

But here, in Brazil, it was different. He no longer had school to fill in the gaps of his life, he instead had free time. New, not unpleasant, but new. Strange in a way that doesn’t feel unbelievable but instead… disconnected. 

First, there was a girl, local, beautiful, talented . She smiled at him through her dark glossy hair on the beach, coy in an unexplainable way that made him weak at the knees. He plays a round with her just for fun. They worked surprisingly well together for strangers, tosses being answered with hits and receives with connects. She had a good serve, too. 

They had communicated through volleyball because his sentences were elementary, and his understanding even less evolved. She simplified her words for him and used touch and motion to fill in the gaps, but at the times he still didn’t understand, she laughed. 

It wasn’t in a mean way, but in a way that somehow captured how bizarre this all was. He’s on the wrong side of the planet in a world which alienates him, the two of them couldn’t be less alike if not for their place at the court on the beach. 

On one of their breaks, she smiles at him over the rim of her water bottle and there is something in her eyes. 

There was something lingering in her touches that made his skin break out in goosebumps and sticky sweet in her words that made him cling to her. When she took him home, confident and giving in equal measure, he was helpless to not try and reciprocate. 

He was clumsy, inexperienced. She guided him the first time, patient. It’s good. He thanked her after in the night, still sprawled in the bed and as all the times before in their shared time, she smiled at him. 

She brushed a lock of his hair behind his ear and cooed things he didn't understand. He didn’t mind, not when her smile was like that, fond, indulgent. 

He doesn’t see her again after they waved goodbye the next morning, she doesn’t turn up on the beach again. He wished a few times that he would see her again, if even briefly just to catch her name. She seemed kind, played well, and gave him tosses, there wasn’t much more Shoyo could really ask for. 

The second was a boy from Switzerland, a student. Shoyo learned from the last time and got his name, Leo. He had light eyes, almost grey in color rather than any shade of blue, but the novelty didn’t make them any less pretty in the sun when he looked to Shoyo on the beach. 

They communicated in broken Portuguese and almost as broken English that somehow was just not broken enough for it to work. Unlike the girl, he didn’t guide Shoyo so much as fumbled with him. They giggled together about it like high schoolers, quiet in the night, this time at Shoyo’s place, solely his for the weekend with Pedro gone to visit family. 

 Leo left in the morning with a simple wave and Shoyo didn’t see him again either, but it was for the better. He was nice, but he wasn’t what Shoyo needed in his life, not in the long term, and Shoyo wasn’t what Leo needed either. 

It becomes not a pattern nor a habit but an option in his life, something to fill the nights. There are others who he doesn’t go home with but that he kisses or holds or does both. There are others he does go home with and fills in the cracks of his being with simple indulgence. 

It’s easy. It’s nice, a good distraction from the gaping hole in his chest that just screams empty , but he’s not doing it to feel whole either. Even on days when he can barely feel the loneliness, it’s nice. Shoyo doesn’t need a complex reason to have fun, to enjoy himself in this way. 

Sleeping with Oikawa, in hindsight, was an obvious inevitability. He plays well, tosses to Shoyo in perfect easy arcs after the first few tries, adapting quickly. In a way, the sex is the same. It’s easy. It’s good. It’s what they both want, and there is nothing stopping them, so they take it. 

They work well together, and their connection in the night is like cotton candy in the humidity, not meant to last as it melts sweet in fleeting pleasure on their tongues. 

They are not what the other truly needs. Their plans for this life do not contain each other and there are no expectations or strings because of it. Maybe that is what makes it better, the trust that is born from companionship in pure isolation bursting into a shower of sparks as beautiful if brief as a firework. 

It’s deep in the night when it all comes to an end. They both lay in bed, Oikawa sitting up, leaning against the headboard in a casual slump, and Shoyo lying close, still entangled in the sheets lazily. His fingers trace the other’s forearm over the covers lightly, fingertips running down over his wrist and palm before going up again in long, soothing, mindless strokes as he stares unabashedly. 

It’s interesting to see Oikawa like this, open, human. He wasn’t the pounding force beating them on the court into submission anymore one perfect set and executed plan at a time, he wasn’t there to crush Shoyo’s dreams, he simply was like him, two years older, and in a way, even more lonely. 

“Did you come to Argentina right after graduation?” The question isn’t probing, but it’s curious in a light way like a child’s would be. Knowing for the sake of knowing, like a favorite color, yet about the only subject they really knew. 

“I did.” 

“Is it difficult for you to keep contact with the people at home?” 

“Home,” Oikawa repeats the word, turning it over in his mouth, eyes staring at some point far away in space. Somehow, the word sounds foreign against his tongue. 

Home, the concept of it, was complex. Was home the little countryside village, filled with mediocrity and family, or was it on the other side of the world, shining and terrifying and empty? He didn’t know yet, it was too early to know if all the sacrifice had been worth it. Maybe one day he would know, but he now he didn’t. 

“I have a call with my parents once a week, sometimes twice if they get anxious.” 

“Any siblings?” Shoyo turns to face the other fully, voice still full of that harmless curiosity. 

“No, I’m only child. Maybe that’s why they’re so nervous sometimes with me here.” 

“What about your old teammates?” 

The curiosity was harmless but it didn’t mean that it was necessarily kind in it’s digging. Oikawa swallows before speaking. 

“I keep in contact with Kindaichi and Kunimi. We text pictures and stuff. They told me how you beat them every year.” He chuckles mildly. “After all the times I beat you, they had to ruin my legacy.” 

“Except that last time.” Oikawa rolls his eyes, slipping a hand into Shoyo’s hair indulgently, brushing the locks back from his brow. 

“Well, even Shiritorizawa was overwhelmed by your freak show, so I think that was an extenuating circumstance. I guess I can’t blame them too much if they ahd to deal with you two all three years.” Oikawa’s hand falls and his eyes become far away again. 

“But they’re the only ones really.” 

“Not anyone from your year?” 

“Do you keep in contact with your old teammates?” 

“Mostly Yachi and Yamaguchi, they are going through university right now so we update each other about our progress. Tsukishima keeps leaving me on read so I have to get my updates about him through both of them. Suga still texts me every few months, checking in.” 

“Ah yes, Mr. Refreshing. He seems the type to do that.” Oikawa turns his full attention on the spiker beside him, the afterglow in his gaze fading into acute interest. “But not Tobio.”

Silence. His head cocks. 

“You don’t talk.” 

Shoyo looks away, propping hismelf up on the pillows at last but he stays silent, not refuting the statement. It was basically the truth, anyway. 

One reason for it, of course, the time difference. Japan is a whole twelve hours ahead of Brazil. When he’s waking up, Tobio is getting ready to sleep. The overlap is miniscule for athletes with long sleep requirments and many responsibilities that clog their days. 

They text. Sometimes. A sporadic call and response, a message and then five hours later a response. Another four hours and then another message returned. Silence for another week before another text. Three, sometimes. 

They have their own lives, their own things to do. They don’t play tohgether, not anymore, what is there to talk about?

The thing is, it’s not surprising. They had never been particularly good at communication, growing up didn’t magically solve the issues they had had since their first year. And beyond that, Shoyo’s mind is too homesick, too filled with this confusing world to fixate on blue eyes or perfect sets like he used to. 

He has work to do, he came here to train. 

“Brazil is far away from Japan just like Argentina is.” 

“I know, it made it easier.” Shoyo’s eyebrows raise in surprise as the pieces slowly click together. 

“You don’t talk to them on purpose.” Oikaway shrugs a little. He’s not meeting Shoyo’s eyes. 

“Some of them. Sometimes… things transfer off the court, and sometimes, they don’t transfer particularly well when big changes happen, and it’s just easier to loosen your grip on them. I would say, you know how it is, but you two never…?” 

He makes a gesture with his free hand. Despite himself, Shoyo feels the blush rise high on his cheeks. He tries to hide it behind his hand unsuccessfully. 

“No”

“Huh.” Shoyo glares through his fingers. 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he says, defensive. 

“Come on, the freak duo? You couldn’t be seen more than ten feet from each other. Closeness often begets connection, I would know.” 

“Begets.” Shoyo rolls his eyes, deflecting as he deflates into the blankets around him. 

“Yes. Begets. You know what that means?” 

“Yes, I know what it means.” Shoyo stares at the ceiling, wishing the bed would swallow him whole. Out of all the conversations he wanted to have right now, this was near the bottom of the list. 

“And really, no. We weren’t anything.” 

“And now?” Oikawa doesn’t let him escape the conversation. Shoyo purses his lips tightly. 

“We aren’t talking,” He confirms lowly. 

“Why?” 

Why?

No one had asked that question so directly before. Why were they not talking? Why did Shoyo not put more energy into connecting with the person he had been attached to for three years? 

Well, Shoyo is jealous. The feeling itself wasn’t the reason why they haven’t been talking; it drives him instead. He wants what Tobio has, he wants desperatly. He wants to get to the top, the peak, he wants to hit those perfect sets on the world stage like others had. He wants it so bad he shakes with it sometimes, fingers white knuckled as if he could drag himself there through sheer force of will. 

But he isn’t there yet, he is training for that rise. It would come in time, yes, but now simply… it isn’t time. They have very little to talk about if not volleyball. They don’t have the innate vulnerability to do anything else, and in their years of being mentored, no one had ever taught them how to try.

“We’re both busy.” 

Yes, he knows the answer to the why question. 

Oikawa lets the pitiful answer go because he knows the answer to the why too, if in his own way. Oikawa is not Shoyo, but on some level, he knows. He understands. 

“Do you miss him?” Oikawa asks. 

“Of course.” 

“No, do you miss him?” 

That question, however, Shoyo didn’t know the answer to. 

“Do you… miss… him?” He asks back instead, guessing.

Oikawa is the one to look away this time. There’s something like grief on his face, but there isn’t regret. 

“I don’t think so.” 

Out of all the things he could have answered with, that was the answer Shoyo was most terrified of them all. 

…

Making it to the Spring Tournament after losing to Date Tech in the finals of the Interhigh Prelims was equally exhilarating as it was purely frustrating. It was exhilarating because they were back. It was frustrating because the hunger roars louder than ever before. They had been here once, and, finally, they were back again. 

It made Tobio’s teeth ache. 

Their first match could only be described as a ruthless dismantling, as clinical as it was relentless. They won in straight sets, 25-18 and 25-19, but it did nothing to quell the hunger that hollowed him from the inside out. 

There was a simmering energy that reached down to his bones. It followed him no matter what he did, even when he filed his nails, the usually calming ritual doing nothing to soothe him. 

He was restless, that’s the only way to describe it, and he wasn’t the only one. 

The second day of the tournament as they waited for the game before them to finish so that the court could officially become theirs, Hinata was vibrating in his skin next to Tobio, shifting from foot to foot and looking around as if taken by an uncontrollable tic. It didn’t help his own inherent restlessness, instead driving him to snap his teeth at the other even more viciously than usual. 

“Stop fidgeting, it’s fucking annoying.” Hinata wasn’t one to ever take abuse lying down, so naturally, he snapped back. 

“I’m the one fidgeting? Take a look at yourself, asshole!” 

“I’m not the one vibrating like my bones are going to hatch!”

“Shut your stupid mouth-”

“I can’t- I can’t! You two!” 

Ennoshita rounded on the pair, his normally mild manner lapsing into the much darker. Immediately, both of their mouths snapped shut. 

“Both of you! Take a walk!” 

“Now?” They said in unison. Hinata had to duck the elbow Tobio threw at him and Tobio had to sidestep the one Hinata threw back just as quickly. 

“Yes now!” 

“But the game is finishing up soon!” 

“Don’t care, go!” 

“Ooo the freaks got put on timeout,” Tsukishima snarked behind his hand, purposefully loud. 

“Shut your mouth, Tsukishima!” 

“Hey, Tsukki-” Tanaka called from within the thicket of the main group. 

“Don’t call me that.” 

“I wouldn’t test Ennoshitta right now!” He continued as if uninterrupted. 

“Seriously dude, he’s pissy,” Nishinoya added, grinning. 

“Nishinoya!” It would have been a funny sight watching all the blood drain out of their upperclassmen’s faces if they wouldn’t have been so indignant already. 

‘Taking a walk’ in their minds consisted of going just far enough from the main arena to be out of sight, but not out of sprinting distance once the correct time of a ‘walk’ had been reached. How long was that, anyway? 

Thankfully, the merchandise stand was still within sprinting distance, so that was where they sequestered, not speaking but still standing close as they looked through the available pickings. 

They perused, yes, but they didn’t relax, they couldn’t. Even if this was their second nationals, it still felt like a completely different world with so much foreign energy and so much talent grouped in one building that it was filled to bursting. 

“Shoyo!”

Some talent that Tobio disliked intensely. They both turned at the familiarly accented voice. 

Miya Atsumu was waving at them, a half-smirk curling his lips like his face couldn’t rest on any other expression. 

The setter walked confidently, and purposefully, but with a glance, Tobio realized that he was not alone. The other half of the Miya twins watched from a distance but still in earshot, waiting his brother’s shenanigans out in the no-splash zone. 

Tobio’s eyes narrowed as Atsumu came closer and closer. Between the two, he greatly preferred Osamu despite never talking directly with the boy. Maybe that was actually why Osamu didn’t grate on him the way Astumu did. 

“Miya,” Hinata greeted, and Tobio knew it was not out of politeness that he didn’t use Atsumu’s given name, it was because he still didn’t know which twin was which. Atsumu’s half-smirk morphed into something else as he finally came to a stop in front of them. It stretched his mouth out more and made his eyes come alight.

“We missed ya at the Prelims.” 

“Who is we?” Osamu called.

“Shut yer trap, ‘Samu!” Atsumu yelled back, whirling around. When he turned back, Tobio could see two spots of pink high on his cheeks that weren’t there before. 

Huh.

“Date Tech beat us last time, but not this time! We beat them and we’re going to beat you too.” Hinata smiled back at Atsumu, eyes sparking with intensity in the way unique only to him. “Again.” 

Atsumu leaned into the challenge, closer to Hinata, drawn in by the dazzling nature of the decoy.

“Confident, aren’t ya? Ya aren’t the only ones who have been working. I’ve been waiting for our rematch, yer not going to surprise us this time.” 

“Nothing seemed much different at Camp this year.” Tobio interrupted. 

Finally, Atsumu glanced up from Hinata, looking Tobio in the eyes for the first time this entire conversation. Something like annoyance twisted in the other setter’s face almost undetectably. Tobio saw it because he was looking for it. 

“Tactful as ever, Tobio. Hey, did ya have any luck ever getting that stick outta yer ass in the time been then and now?” 

Tobio stepped forward, stopped only by Hinata grabbing onto his arm as the call from Osamu further away broke off the altercation before it could start for real. 

“‘Tsumu, our court’s game finished! Being captain won’t stop me from beating yer ass if ya don’t get over here!”

Slowly, reluctantly, Atsumu turned away from them to his twin, now standing with his arms crossed, eyebrow raised. He threw one last wave back towards them. 

“See ya on the court, Shoyo.” His eyes narrowed. “Tobio.” 

Tobio’s own eyes narrowed back at him. Time hadn’t made him like Atsumu any more than he had before. If possible, it made him like him even less. 

“Do you two have beef or something?” 

Hinata looked curiously at Tobio as the twins’ figures disappeared once more into the crowd. He was still holding Tobio’s arm. The setter pulled out of the grip, ignoring how his skin prickled or how much colder it was there now despite the room being abnormally warm. 

“He’s infuriating.” Hinata scoffed, rolling his eyes.

“You probably say that about everyone.” 

But Tobio didn’t. Contrary to popular belief, Tobio didn’t think everyone was annoying, he just didn’t get them. It was difficult. He didn’t know what they felt, a lot of the time he simply didn’t care but-

Atsumu was a specific kind of infuriating that got under his skin. It wasn’t the cockiness, the other had the talent to back up his big talk, he just couldn’t put his finger on it. Something about him just made Tobio grind his teeth.

“He has asked about you before.” Hinata’s face snapped up, eyebrows shooting towards his hairline. Something shone in his eyes that made Tobio’s annoyance indespicably grow. 

“What? When?” 

“Training camp.”

  Asked is a little bit of an understatement. He had stalked up to Tobio at camp at, count it, the first of their breaks and had straight up demanded Hinata’s number. Naturally, Tobio had declined, he didn’t know what the hell the other was going to use it for, they had nationals to focus on, he didn’t need Atsumu somehow worming his way into his spiker’s head and messing with it. 

“Why?” 

“No clue. Maybe he knew from last year that without you the team could fall apart without you and wanted to try and throw you off so close to the tournament.” 

Hinata grimaced at the reminder of last year’s nationals. It wasn’t a memory either of them liked to revisit, the biting loss that still throbbed like an old unhealed wound, weeping even after so long. 

“Is that why he came up today, you think? Mind games?” Hinata murmured, contemplating. 

Tobio paused, turning to look at Hinata completely. He answered bluntly, watching the other’s face. 

“I think he likes you.” 

Hinata’s eyes grew wider. His mouth opened and closed a few times before he could get words out again. 

“Like, like-likes?” Tobio shrugged. He was not really one for the intricacies of people, he knew that, but he had seen that kind of blush on the cheeks of the girls who would giggle before coming up to him, letters in hand. 

He didn’t look away from Hinata’s face for a single second as he responded. 

“Maybe.” 

“Huh.” Hinata’s brow was furrowed. He was thinking. 

Tobio shouldn’t have brought this up, not now, their match against Inarizaki was tomorrow, and none of them needed feelings clouding their play. It would be best to resolve this as quickly as possible, that was the only reason why he pressed the other further.

“Do you like him?” Hinata shot him a look as if confused, meeting the setter’s unwavering gaze. 

“Like-like?” 

“Sure.” 

“I don’t know him.” 

Hinata turned back towards the racks of merchandise as if that was the simple end to it because, for him, it was. 

Maybe it would be different if Atsumu would play on the same side as Hinata, if he could learn to know him. Maybe then he could build that bond, the trust something else could grow from. Maybe it would be different if he were the one putting up tosses for Hinata. 

Tobio forces it out of his mind. 

“We’re going to crush him tomorrow.” 

The claim was presumptuous, they had to get through the day’s matches first, but Hinata grinned at him with equal driving will that could be so easily mistaken for arrogance.

“We will.” 

Their game against Inarizaki was brutal. Tobio couldn’t remember if the Shiritorizawa game in their first year was even this difficult, their inexperience and all five sets included. 

Inarizaki took the first set after a short deuce at 27-25, and Kurasuno took the second set cleanly at 23-25, overall a nearly perfect mirror of their first game together. The only difference now was that instead of having to worry about putting pressure on Aran, they instead had to put pressure on the twins lest they run away with the game all while Inarizaki ruthlessly picked on their defense, still not completely recovered to its former glory even after so long without Daichi. 

The third set came down to a deuce, of course it did, but it became the longest deuce anyone had seen in a long time. It stood at 32-32 even and was still running. 

It was Tobio’s serve. The ball spun in his palms, the only thing he focused on in the darkness around him as he breathed. 

He would stop the rotation of the ball. He would wait for the whistle. He would wait and wait and wait until the moment when the anticipation in the gym peaked and then broke, and yet he would continue to wait. 

Only when it is almost too late would he throw the ball. He would throw it high and clear and he would step three times, jumping to meet it in the air before slamming it down with his hand, landing between the seam of the libero and the line in the back corner, scoring a point.

He saw it. He could taste it. 

Fwee!

Tobio waited. He breathed and counted by the beats of his heart. As he predicted, the silence spirals as anticipation grows. Then it broke. Unconsciously, one’s muscles loosened, one’s senses dulled with the very adrenaline made to sharpen it. 

Tobio threw the ball. 

Step step step squeak- SLAM!

The ball fell right where he wanted it. The score ticked up 32-33. Dully, he heard the rallying cry of his teammates, but he pushed the sound away, focused once more on the ball once more as it came to his hands. He spun it, contemplating, visualizing. 

He waited. 

Fwee!

Boom-boom. Boom-boom. 

His heartbeat was loud in his ears. Just him and the ball, him and the darkness. The calm before a storm.

Step step step squeak- Slam

The toss wasn’t fully right this time, there wasn’t enough force behind it. The libero intercepted it and the ball seemed to fly up into Atsumu’s hands as if mangetized. 

The opposing setter was in the back, so no setter dump would be possible. Suna was also in the back, but Suna’s strength was never row attacks. There was some first-year in the front row, but he has been consistently jumping lower this set. There’s Ginjima, the outside hitter, he was good and reliable, but there’s also-

“Samu!” 

Osamu jumped but Karasuno’s wall met him in the air. He hit the ball hard but the jump was low, sloppy, almost half-hearted. Tsukishima soft-blocked it easily. 

“One touch!” 

“Got it!” Hinata received the ball from where it began to fly dangerously far. It came imperfectly to Tobio’s hands but it was high and that was all he needed.

“Tanaka!”

“Yes!” Tanaka hit the open cross-shot. It sailed, landing… on the line? Not on the line? They waited, for the verdict in silence. The flags went up. 

“Sorry about that!” 

“That was a hair over, shake it off! You’ll get it next time!” 

33-33, the deuce continued.

33-34

34-34

34 -35

35-35

Over and over and over again, messier and messier each time as honed edges and practiced jumps got crushed under the weight of gravity and dulling exhaustion. The word was covered in a fine haze, and their bodies begged to crumble, but they all continued to move, to fight. 

Tobio’s heart was pounding, his body sorer than ever before after so many days of rigorous play and acute stress. He set the ball to Tanaka and this time, he pushed it through, a shining example from their new ace. 

35-36

It was Suna’s serve. Atsumu rotated to the front. Tobio was also in the front with Tsikishima and one of the new first years, Shuto, a wing spiker with a powerful swing and a solid receive but not enough vertical to be considered extraordinary. Nishinoya, Ennoshitta and Hinata all crouch in the back, on guard. 

Fwee!

Toss- hit. A jump floater, new to Suna’s arsenal, and as annoying as ever. 

“Mine- shit!” The ball seemed to roll itself out of Ennoshita’s hands. “Sorry!” 

“It’s okay, no one could have gotten that!” 

“Yeah!”

36-36

Fwee!

Toss- hit. It had some spin this time. 

“Got it!” Nishinoya caught the ball this time beautifully in an overhand pass, setting it up right to their ace. 

“Tanaka!” 

This time the hit was powerful, breaking through the triple block. Atsumu received it, but it was messy. The ball flew out of control, tumbling through the air towards the left side of the court, surely out of bounds, too far to reach- 

“Samu, don’t ya dare give up on me now!” 

“Ya fucking-”  

Osamu dove for the ball. It was a messy dive, everyone could hear skin shriek against the floor and see the way the spiker’s body overstretched itself, but his wrist caught the ball, sending it up in a curve back toward his twin. 

“Asshole! Hit the ball!!”

Atsumu jumped, and his palm met the ball in the air. It exploded off his hand with a resounding boom, far more power than a setter should have on a dump, grazing the side of Tsukishima’s hand that couldn’t get a hold on it enough to kill its momentum but enough to throw its spin off. The ball barely caught the edge of one of Nishinoya’s arms before ricocheting off, bouncing along the floor at an unsavable angle. 

The score flicked up, 37-36. 

When Tsukishima landed, his breath came in sharp pants, hands bracing against his knees for support. Tobio couldn’t even muster the energy to yell at him even if he wanted to, he’s exhausted, they all are. From the way Atsumu had to pull his twin roughly off of the floor, the feeling was mutual. 

Yet the deuce went on. 

Suna’s serve, and it was Hinata this time who caught the ball, but the arc of it was too low for a normal set. Without thinking, Tobio slides under the ball, crouching, hands raised and steady even as his thighs scream in protest. 

Hinata was in the back row, he jumped up, using the momentum from the recieve, but it was still slow. Ennoshita was open but back attacks have never gone well with him. Atsumu and Osamu were still in the front row, matching with Shuto, both cutting the spiker off with their superior height both naturally and in the air as well as protecting against Hinata’s possible pipe. No, they would block either of them for sure, so all that was left was- 

“Tsukishima!” Tobio set the ball high. He didn’t stoop beneath the weight of the game, not yet, and he wouldn’t allow the other to even think of doing so either. 

“Damn you!” 

Tobio made the right call. 

Tsukishima jumped high, and his hand met the ball squarely. It hit clear over the top of the triple block but didn’t meet the floor, it instead met the other libero’s arms and up flew the ball once more. 

“Chance ball!” Atsumu flew under the ball, arms raised. It’s a clean pass so likely-

Tobio slid into the place beside Tsukishima and Shuto as the ball flew towards Osamu once more. They, more than any team knew the ideal opening for a freak quick.

They jumped as one, a wall against one spiker. Osamu jumped with a grunt, gritting his teeth, and swung with all the power he had left. When he landed, one of his knees buckled, making him stumble. 

The ball hit the top of Tobio’s fingers. Not a one-touch but not a block out either, not yet; the ball flew away in a high, fast arc away from any of their reaches. 

“Get it!” 

He didn’t know who yelled it, if it was him or Tsukishima or Nishinoya, standing too close to the front line, there to catch a possible dink, to turn and sprint for the ball. He still tried but they all knew he wouldn't make it. 

It was Hinata who was closest. 

He was the one who turned his body, eyes latched onto the ball, and he ran for it, fighting gravity and speed with speed of his own. He ran like everything depended on it because it did. He threw himself forward, he dove, hand outstretched until his tendons burned and his joints screamed.

The ball caught the tips of his fingers. It lurched up in a sickening short arc away from the court, away from him, and landed on the floor with a dull thunk of finality. 

Time was frozen for a moment and as the moment broke, the whistle blew. The game ended 38-36, Inarizaki’s favor. Karasuno was eliminated in the top eight. 

Hinata didn’t get up off of the floor, his still outstretched hand limp. It was Yamaguchi who had to pull him off of the ground, his face already wet with tears where Hinata’s remains blank as if he was still registering it was over. 

When he took his place in the line, he didn’t look at Tobio and Tobio couldn’t look at him either. They bowed ninety degrees at the waist and said thank you for the game without hearing or feeling any of it. 

It’s only when they are going down the line, shaking hands, does the world around them begins to register again through the feeling of crushing loss. Sound trickled back again into Tobio’s ears, breaking through the numbing sound of empty static. 

“-call me.” Atsumu was smiling down at Hinata, their hands still locked in a handshake below the net. “There are setters who would put their trust in ya more-” 

“What the fuck did you just say?”  

Tobio broke away from his own handshake with another player, not caring about the rudeness of it, stalking down the line until he too was facing Atsumu across the net, a shadow at Shoyo’s back. Something deep in him burned, an acute rage that could very well become all-consuming. 

Trust. This asshole spoke of trust to Tobio, trust in his spiker, in Hinata. In all sixteen years of his life, Tobio hadn’t heard anything more stupid than that. 

Atsumu smirked at him, dropping Hinata’s hand and Tobio wanted to drive his fist into his face. 

“Nothin’.” He turned away, lightly waving at Hinata, still smirking. “But really Shoyo, call me. I promise ya a good time.” 

As he walked away, Osamu slung an arm around his brother’s shoulders, leaning for support. Atsumu wrapped an arm around the other’s side, helping him walk away from the court.

“Yer hopeless. I’m not helping clean up if ya get jumped,” Osamu insulted but lists heavily into the other’s side anyway.

“Shut up,” Atsumu retorted without much heat, letting the other use him as a crutch wordlessly.

It was the closest the two had ever come to affection that Tobio had seen, but it did nothing to cool the bitterness that burned within him. 

They lost. 

“Why is he asking you to call him, you don’t even have his number.” He absentmindedly snapped, his fists still balled by his sides. Hinata finally turned, looking up at him. He held up the slip of paper the other setter had evidently slipped to him in the handshake. Something in Tobio screamed.

 The absolute audacity of this little-

“Did you really not give me the set back there because you think I wouldn’t have been able to put in through?” 

What an idiotic question. Tobio reviewed the play in his mind. 

To anyone else maybe it would be possible in their eyes but to him, with his almost innate understanding of all of Hinata’s movements-

“I didn’t give it to you because you had just received it, and your jump was unbalanced. You can do one or the other, not both, I’m not going to clean up your messes and reward bad habits.” 

Hinata kept looking at him. He didn’t smile, the loss stung them both too badly for them to muster any semblance of humor or joy, but the bitterness in his eyes wasn’t directed at the other either. 

“I thought so.” 

…

Things get better. 

The paralyzing loneliness mutes as, slowly, the world of Brazil opens its stiff petals to him at last. The homesickness, too, fades to a dull background ache, easily ignored because now, he has people here. Friends. 

Pedro feels very much like Brazil as a whole to Shoyo, the more he understands the language, the closer they get. It’s One Piece at first, dubbed anime of questionable quality, and quiet chatter in the space between early mornings and evenings. It’s shared memories and people as they grow from cohabitating to friends. 

“Who’s this?” 

Shoyo picks up one of the picture frames on Pedro’s dresser. It’s the first time he is in the other’s room, it reflects a lot of the house in some ways, but the pictures are new. There are a few that are clearly family photos, but some others are just Pedro and a younger girl. They have their arms around each other, both smiling.

Pedro glances up from where he is trying to plug in the game they want to play, recognition immediately filling his features when he catches sight of the photo. 

“That’s my irmãzinha , Julia.” 

“ Irmãzinha?”

“Younger girl sibling.” 

“Ah.” Little sister, irmãzinha. Shoyo turns the word over in his mind. “How old is she?

“She’s fifteen now.” Pedro straightens up, handing a controller to the other. Shoyo puts down the picture, taking it with a thankful smile. “Do you have siblings?” 

Irmãzinha. Irmãzinha. Irmãzinha.

“A younger sister as well. Her name is Natsu, she’s eleven.”

“Does she miss you here?” 

“Yeah. She didn’t want me to leave but she seems happy enough now when we call. She’s going to begin middle school soon.” 

“Do you miss her?” 

“Of course.” 

“Anyone else?” 

“My old teammates, classmates, coaches, I’m sure anyone would.” Shoyo shrugs noncommittally, clicking through the character options on the screen absentmindedly. “You probobly miss your school friends and your family as well.” 

“Yeah, but they’re a lot closer than yours are. I’m going next weekend to visit for my dad’s birthday.” 

“Nice! I’m sure they will be happy to see you.” 

They play the game in silence for a few moments before Pedro breaks the quiet again. 

“Do you miss Japan?” 

“Of course.” How could he not? It is all he has known for all his life. Well, until now. “But I’m coming to like Brazil a lot more.” 

“Do you have anyone back in Japan waiting for you?” At the confused look on Shoyo’s face, he continues. “Girlfriend? Boyfriend?” 

Waiting. Boyfriend. Those two words sound foreign when placed so close together, like it was natural for the two things to overlap. 

Wryly, Shoyo smiles. He shakes his head, focusing his eyes back on the game. 

“No. I never had anything like that.” 

The world of Brazil slowly opens itself to Shoyo. It sinks into his skin like the sun which makes him tan. His before pale translucence of the indoors to the bronze of the wind and sea follows the same path as beach volleyball; it gets easier. 

The elements stop clinging to his every movement like it has given up trying to scare him away, or maybe, he has just gotten used to them. The sand is frustrating but it is kind. It needs to be worked with on its terms, pushed into rather than against, for him to fly. 

He learns how to step into the sand with his momentum rather than stopping, sequestering it, and exploding up like he used to. He still can’t always hit the ball right, but he claws his wings back one jump at a time, one set and match at a time.

Time passes and Shoyo barely feels it. Homesickness continues to slumber in his chest as his hair grows longer. He gets it cut shorter than he has ever had it, easier to wash and put under a cap that way. He likes it. He likes running his fingers through it and likes it when others do too. 

He continues coming to the beach day after day. A year slips by and in one random moment in time, he can jump high enough to clear the ball right over the blocker’s hands. When he lands, he looks at his hand, the red of his palm. He squeezes his fist so tight it hurts. It feels like vindication. 

He made it. 

Shoyo learns to love what he always has away from Miyagi. He learns to love Brazil. 

Beach volleyball is fluid, in its play, in its movements, but also in its partnering system. Before, Shoyo had one partner for three years, rain or shine, whether he liked it or not. Now, he’s had over seven, all in quick succession, passing through like an ever-revolving door, dizzying in the beginning until he understands that this was simply normal. Another thing to get used to like the wind or the angle of the sun. 

That was until Heitor. Heitor is a blessing that seeks him out. He brings some true stability to it all. 

It’s easy. It fits. It fits not like it’s fate or like his missing piece but like gears that have been grinding against each other, the teeth always slightly off-kilter, until now, as all at once and all too suddenly, everything slides together. Shoyo is swallowed into the tandem of the machine like he was placed there on purpose this whole time rather than just being a misplaced mistake. 

It’s a good feeling. It’s liberating. It makes him hungry so he flies. He flies, and he spikes, and he sets, and he receives, and they win, and he’s happy. He creates a life where before there was none, relationships where there weren’t any. 

It’s the little moments that he holds close, sunsets sprawled onto the sand, fingers sinking into the lingering warmth as the red sliver of the sun slips beneath the horizon before his eyes, a drink in reach just like how the courts were bare paces away. All is well, all is calm. The air is rustling like fingers through silk and the light is as soft as the stuff. The air is sweet. 

Shoyo rises with the sun and goes down with it, but there are these suspended moments of limbo, dawn and dusk, where it’s just him and the light. Sometimes, someone else is there in these moments, and it’s still sweet and soft and precious all the same. It just gets filed differently in his memory, in the warm box of friends rather than the whole of himself. He likes it.

“Why did you actually come to train?”

It’s one of those moments, with the sun suspended and warm. Heitor is sprawled casually beside him in the sand, watching the sunset as well, the sweat still not fully dried on his brow from their last match. 

“To get better.” 

The answer is as simple as ever. It’s one he has repeated so many times it has lost it’s meaning. Heitor, unlike so many others, sees that. Getting better wasn’t enough this time, the reason for trading three years of his life cannot be contained within only three words. 

“Yeah, but beyond that. Why do you want to get better so badly?” 

Why. That question again. Unspoken. Almost forgotten from so long ago. Why was he doing this? Had he never verbalized it? Something he knew within himself so clearly? 

“I want to keep up so I can keep having amazing setters give me tosses.” 

“Right, indoor there’s a whole position for that.” Heitor turns his head to him and Shoyo meets his gaze unflinchingly. The orange light bathes them both. 

“Anyone in particular you want to keep giving you tosses?” 

Despite himself, a corner of Shoyo’s mouth quirks. Everyone seems to read the lines of his being so obviously. 

“My old partner.” 

Beside him, he curls his fingers through the sand, enfolding the cooling granules in his fist. When he squeezes it, it stops his fingers and almost pushes back. Shoyo looks down at it. 

“Partner?” Heitor asks, catching onto the ambiguously loaded word. 

“My setter, the one that was on my team,” Shoyo explained, still looking at his fist and feeling the sand within it. “I’m not going to let him beat me again.” 

“I thought you played on the same team?” 

“We didn’t always play together.” Shoyo smiles ruefully at his hand. He uncurls his fingers, pouring the sand out, brushing away anything that was left sticking to his skin. “He wiped the floor with me in middle school and we’re not on the same team now. Now, I get to beat him.” 

“That seems a bit counterproductive, wanting to beat him and have him toss to you at the same time.” Shoyo shrugs, but he’s still smiling a little. With what, it would take too long to find out. All he knew was that it burned. 

“I didn’t really think it through before I promised to beat him, I was young.”

“How young?”

“Fourteen.”. 

“And him?” 

“Also fourteen. He’s actually younger than me, but taller. Stupidly taller.” 

“Just listening to that makes me feel old.” Heitor lets his hand fall into the sand again. “Youth and dumb promises.” 

“It sounds like you have experience with them.” Heitor chuckles even as Shoyo continues to survey him almost slyly, ready to try to wheedle out information from his teammate. 

“What’s his name?” Heitor changes the subject clunkily but Shoyo still bites onto the bait regardless. 

“Tobio Kageyama.” The name feels almost more foreign on his tongue than Portuguese does now. He hasn’t said it since Oikawa was here, almost a year ago. 

“That name sounds familiar, didn’t he play in the Olympics?” 

“Yes, he did.” The admission finally makes Heitor’s eyebrows were raised towards his hair, surprised as if it wasn’t normal to know an Olympian like it was nothing. 

“You’ve never talked about him before.” 

“Oh, well, that’s because we don’t talk? So there isn’t much for me to say about him.” Shoyo says it like a question as it would soften the hard truth. 

“You don’t talk?”

“Yeah.” 

“But you think that he’s waiting for you in Japan?” Heitor slowly spells out.

Shoyo blinks. 

“...yeah.” 

There’s a strange look on the other man’s face. 

“What?” 

“You know, if you would be talking about a lover, I would call this whole no-talking situation something else-” 

“It’s not like that,” Shoyo says sharply, cutting him off. “He wouldn’t do that.” 

“But he’s waiting for you to fulfill a childhood promise for three years. Across the ocean. With other Olympic-level players. And with probably all of the Japanese fan population at his feet.” 

Three years is a long time. It’s a long time normally but it’s a long time to be at the top, waiting, when everything and everyone around you is filled with budding raw talent, waiting for boons from your hands. 

Shoyo has never deluded himself into thinking that this… whatever that they have, is some sickly sweet story. Tobio will not wait, like the princess in the tower waiting to be saved because the world doesn’t revolve around Shoyo. It’s not waiting for him, he is the one who has to make it stare. He's the one who has to claw his way there. 

Tobio will wait for him as one waits for a signal in a game. He will play, and he will use everything at his disposal that he has in the moment, but when he sees that signal, he will know it will be time. He will move with that signal just like he would play naturally, only this time with something concrete in mind. 

At least, that is what Shoyo imagines. 

Why would Tobio wait? Why would he wait for this signal, this single moment of concrete plan in a sea of freedom brought on by the strength around him?

“He has to wait.” 

He promised, he promised , just like how Shoyo promised to give that signal. One moment, one bond everything spiraled from. One promise that their futures were built brick by brick from. To abandon that, would be to abandon what they were. 

At least, that is what Shoyo imagines. They don’t talk. 

…

There was a shift in their third year. Maybe it was the renewed hunger after their chance had been so cruelly snatched from them last spring national, or maybe it had sunk in that this was the last year that they would all play together. This was the last year where things would be simple in their truth, drawn for them by the lines of the school year and practices and competitions. 

After this year, there would be none of that. There would only be uncertainty and promises made so long ago. 

This was also the year when everything seemed so unnecessarily complicated outside of volleyball. 

“Again?!” Shoyo couldn’t stop himself from yelling as Kageyama shuffled into practice a whopping eleven minutes late, face disgruntled and still pulling on his knee pads

“Shut up,” the setter muttered darkly, grabbing one of the balls from the bin and spinning it between his hands. The first years on the other side of the net paled in the face of Kageyama’s monster serves but still sank into their knees more firmly, bracing. 

“The King bats away yet another peasant’s heartfelt feelings,” Tsukishima singsonged from behind them knowingly.

Kageyama turned his head to shoot him a nasty glare full of venom but instead of hitting the other, he redirected his simmering anger to the ball, throwing it up in the air. One of the poor first years yelped as it caught his arms, ricocheting wildly out of control even more forceful than usual. 

“Who was it this time?” 

Shoyo still hadn’t moved from where he was when Kageyama had initially walked in, his arms crossed. He was staring at the setter intensely but the other didn’t even glance at him as he turned back to the bin for another ball. 

“I don’t know, a girl and her other friend from the class over.” Kageyama picked up another ball, spinning it. “They just kept talking and talking.” 

“You’re cruel, Kageyama,” Yamaguchi interjected without much heat, walking over to see what the fuss was that had stalled practice. From the tone of his voice, he wasn’t one bit surprised about the topic of conversation, just like everyone else. 

“It probably takes a lot of courage to confess, you know.” 

Kageyama huffed, throwing the ball up again. His hit is still as angrily strong as the last one. Another first-year yelped. 

“Well, can’t they confess to someone else? I’m just going to have to turn them down anyways, I have no interest in that.” 

“I don’t think that’s how it works-” 

“In girls or in dating?” Tsukishima goaded. Kageyama turned around fully this time, pointing the new ball he was holding threateningly at the other. 

“I’ll serve at you next.” The blond smirked at the retort, somehow even more smug than before, raising his hands as if in surrender even when his face remained more punchable than ever. 

Practice continued, as did the confessions. They weren’t new, not inherently, Kageyama had been getting them since their first year, but it was never this many. It only mattered now because now interfered with volleyball. 

That’s the reason Shoyo told himself to justify why he was standing at the door, tapping his foot impatiently four minutes after practice started a week later. Much like Shoyo, Kageyama had always showed up early, a habit that had started at the beginning of their first year. The fact that he wasn’t here now only meant one thing.

Something in Shoyo snapped. 

“I’ll be back, Yachi!” He called over his shoulder, wrenching the door to the gym open. The manager looked up, her eyes blowing wide as she immediately understood both what he was going to do and how insanely stupid it was at the same time. 

“Shoyo wait-” 

He didn’t hear the rest of what she said; he was already out the door, running through the school’s halls, still filled with people. He ran past them in his gym clothes, collecting many strange looks along the way but he didn’t care. He knew where he needed to go and something in him was fiery hot, bright in his chest and stomach.

Shoyo skidded through the door of the classroom, a hand on its frame to catch his breath, but his eyes were wide open as his guess was proven correct. 

Kageyama stood, face slightly twisted from its usual blank mask with discomfort as two girls were in front of him, both holding letters even if only one of them was half talking, half stuttering her confession out to him. From another letter placed on a desk nearby, they weren’t the first and, in all likelihood, would not be the last. 

Something ugly welled up in Shoyo and before he could register what he was doing, he was yelling. 

“Tobio!” 

Both the girls whirled around, but Shoyo didn’t even think to look at their faces and decipher what was there, be it anger or shock or anything else. No, he only had eyes for Kageyama. He watched how the other’s gaze snapped up, how it widened in surprise as the shock of having his given name shouted across the room so unexpectedly set in. 

“If you’re late to practice one more time, I will strangle you!” 

All the girls’ mouths flopped open, but the threat almost seemed to take all the accumulated tension out of Kageyama’s form. His face smoothed back into familiar blankness, safe in its practiced familiarity as he fell back into their usual rhythm. 

“As if you could reach.” He sidesteped the girls, ignoring them, and walking instead to meet Shoyo at the door. 

“You wanna find out?!” Shoyo gritted out, still burning brightly inside. 

Kageyama cocked his head, and one of those smiles quirked his lips. A small thing, provoking as it was smug. Shoyo bristled, not looking away. 

“I’ll beat you to the gym instead.” 

Still in full uniform and bag slung on one shoulder, Kageyama dashed out the door, taking the lead in a race that he had started without warning. Shoyo stayed frozen for a second, stunned.

“You- ugh!” 

He sprinted after Kageyama, whipping around the door back into the halls, chasing his disappearing form, this time gaining double the disapproving looks he had before. It was a miracle no teachers were here to witness the careless display, they would have been punished for such a blatant disturbance for sure. 

Kageyama won that time, no surprise with his head start and his longer legs, but they both lay gasping a few feet from the door of the gym, catching their breath before having to face the storm that inevitably lay inside the building. They were so late to practice, coach was so going to kill them. 

For the first time, they didn’t care. 

“Tobio?” Shoyo glances to where Kageyama- Tobio is looking at him strangely from the ground, head lifted slightly to look at him better. They had never had this conversation before. 

“Yeah.” 

The wheezy quality of Shoyo’s voice as he caught his breath almost covered the uncertainty that lay within it. With a groan, Shoyo forces himself off of the beautifully cool ground, sitting up and wiping his brow. 

“It’s your name.” 

“Do I get to call you Shoyo now, then?” 

“You’re the last one to start calling me that, you know.” Tobio dropped his head back against the ground. He huffed and it could almost be a laugh. 

“Dumbass.” 

“Idiot.” 

In their third year, something shifted.

Tobio wasn’t late to practice again, and for some reason, the confessions slowed. When Shoyo asked why, Tobio just shrugged but Shoyo could tell that he was hiding something, but Shoyo didn’t press press either. He had gotten what he wanted, and what was the saying? Don’t criticize the gift if you like it? He had his setter back all to himself again, Shoyo wasn’t about to go digging as to why. 

Practice was smooth, and the team, for what felt like the first time since their first year, was fully functional. They were a smooth machine that cut through the competition with a honed edge and with an efficacy that could only be described as mechanical. 

They were good. They were fantastic. In their third year, they made it past day three for the first time ever at nationals. They went to semi-finals. They stood on center court. 

They lost. 

Shoyo was numb. The ball hit the floor of their court, his ball that he spiked into the other team’s block, and with it, went everything he had put into clawing for that national title. 

The ball hit the floor and with it, shock imbued itself into his bones. Then, slowly, it faded, leaving the numbness. All that painful realization was condensed into a few minutes as they bowed and then bowed again to the people around them. 

The people clapped for them but he couldn’t hear it. All he could focus on was keeping most of the tears in his eyes and his head down as they walked off the court, center court, the last court he would ever step foot on with this team, and then immediately separated, speed walking to the closest bathroom, blessedly empty. 

Shoyo only had time to turn on a faucet, letting the rush of the water fill the tiled space before he began to cry. It was not the kind of crying that first started as a little ripple, like a current in a smooth lake, and then grew and grew, no, it was a torrent. 

Shoyo let out a sound that was more of a broken sob than a whine, something that cut him open from neck to hip and let everything spill out. Cries wracked his frame so quickly he could barely grab onto the sink in time for support.

Surely, this had been their game to win. Their last chance, their final run. Surely this had been their chance at glory, the hero always won in the end, didn’t they? 

Shoyo didn’t even try to kid himself. 

They had never been heroes, they were high schoolers, just like everyone else they had faced. They hadn’t won because the other team had just been better. Faster, smarter, jumped higher, strategized better. Karasuno was now third in the nation, they were the third-best high school team in the entirety of Japan, that was more than someone like him could ever ask for but-

He had wanted to win. He had wanted to win so badly he burned with it. And even with it all, every modicum of effort poured into this game, they had lost. The final divisive point had been scored by his hand in the worst way it possibly could have. 

Shoyo’s chest heaved with heavy sobs, the ugly kind of crying that makes your face all splotchy and your nose run when, over the sound of himself and the running faucet, he heard the door open with a soft woosh. 

Shoyo glanced up, his eyes connected with Tobio’s. The setter was frozen in the doorway, his face far paler than normal and his shoulders still. On instinct, Shoyo turned away, bringing up a hand to shield his face as if it would hide the pure hurt in it all from his partner. 

But he couldn’t. Not from Tobio. 

There’s no stabbing insult, no threat between the two now, they were both too drained to fight, too mutually crushed. It was worse this way with the two of them in the same space, they reflected off each other, always had, and now it multiplied everything. 

Quietly, Tobio let the bathroom door fall shut behind him. He stepped through the space between them and still, Shoyo didn’t turn towards him, his shoulders shaking and gasped breathes echoing off the tile. 

“Hey-” Tobio’s voice was shaking, hanging on by a thread, the word dry as if it was the only one he could croak out. 

He caught one of Shoyo’s wrists, pulling the hand away from his face. The other let him but he didn’t turn around. Tobio was the one who had to pull him, forcing Shoyo to face his setter fully. 

“Hey,” he repeated softer, watery. There was an ache in his chest and it hurt. It made his eyes sting, and the world swim, and he couldn’t stop it. 

Shoyo finally looked at him, and something in him seemed to deflate. 

He closed the minimal gap between them, crashing into Tobio. The air rushed out of his lungs as Shoyo clung to him with white-knuckled hands and cried into his jersey. Tobio could feel the way he trembled with it all, all this overwhelming emotion. 

Without another word, Tobio wrapped his arms around his partner, hands too busy to even try and muffle the low sob that was wrenched from him just like how his breath left his lungs. He squeezed on tight instead. He squeezed so hard his hands ached with it. 

What a mess. What a bitter failure. 

They were so close. They had played on the center court, but they didn’t win. They hadn’t won nationals, only third palace. Statistically, bronze medalists were happier than silver ones. Statistically, they would have been even more crushed if they had lost that game in the finals, but there wasn’t anything in the world any of them wouldn’t give for one more game.

They had done well, but they had wanted better. It hadn’t been enough and they were left with the shattered pieces like broken glass to pick up. It was cutting. 

“I don’t want this to end.” Shoyo held onto Tobio tighter. He could barely breathe with how much he was sobbing. “I don’t want to go yet.” 

“...me neither,” Tobio whispered.

This was their last game together. This was the last time they would play together before everything changed. Their last game hadn’t been in finals, but a step away. It hadn’t been a perfect ending, and now they had to deal with it. 

Something within Tobio knew that it hurt more that this was an ending than anything else. He didn’t say it, but he felt it. This was it. This was going to be it for a long, long time.

But for a moment, in that one suspended moment, they just held each other. 

They were crying in the bathroom at nationals, knowing that the world was going to keep turning and the birds flying, but still, they stayed wrapped in the embrace of another who understood exactly how deep the hurt within them goes. 

…

It’s horribly hot in Japan in June. It’s more than the dry, blazing heat of Brazil; it’s humid, like god put the country in a steamer basket over a pot of boiling water and forgot about it. 

Shoyo relishes the choking mugginess of the heat. It feels like the familiar weight of home. It feels right. Comforting in its predictability. 

The people aren’t predictable like the weather, two years can change a lot. It makes Shoyo double-take when Natsu is taller, almost the same height as him much to her delight and his chagrin. It makes him stare at the way the lines on his mother’s face are deeper, things he never would have noticed if not for the time he spent away. 

The world didn’t stop when he went to Brazil, even if it had felt like it in that other world. Everyone had continued on even when not in his gaze, not on his mind. 

Yachi is the first to meet him. 

Her hair is longer now, she wears it in a ponytail rather than loose as she did before. Her face is more angular than it was before, and she is a few centimeters taller, too. But even two years later, she nearly dissolves into joyful tears the moment he opens the door for her, catching her in a hug as the realization that he’s really back hits her fully. 

Kenma comes all the way from Tokyo next. He’s barely taller than Shoyo now, just a little more than an inch. It’s strange to see. His hair has grown too, but the outgrown blond tips remain. 

“Do you still bleach it?” Shoyo asks, noting the impossible static nature of the color. Kenma just shrugs noncommittally. 

“Kuro does sometimes.” 

Maybe people didn’t change as much as he had feared. 

It’s nice. That’s the only way he can describe it, reconnecting with the world he had left behind, so different yet so achingly familiar. It’s nice because he’s home. 

It was difficult to get used to Brazil, but he had, and now it’s difficult to get used to Japan again. The coffee here oscillates between too sweet and not sweet at all; the air is much stiller as if holding its breath, and it rains far more, too. 

The streets are quieter, the trains even more so. All of this once upon a time, he hadn’t noticed but how he did now. Now it felt weird all over again, but it was easier than it had been in Brazil. He had his family here, his friends. 

He also has volleyball back. His volleyball. 

The MBSY Black Jackles are not a new team, they have been around since the 50s, but it has only been in recent years that they became revitalized through new sponsorship and new blood. 

They have potential, players of name, and most importantly, are holding open tryouts. They are the best Shoyo could ever ask for as an unknown to their field. Of course, he goes. 

He does well; he has to, after everything he has poured into this. He is invited back for the second day of tryouts, and then the third. On the fourth, they aren’t alone in the gym anymore, there are players there in the home jersey colors. 

“Shoyo!”

A familiar voice calls to him. Shoyo turns and it isn’t a surprise that Miya Atsumu is waving at him. Shoyo knew he was here, it was just different seeing him in person after so many years rather than on a player roster.

He’s taller and broader too. His hair has changed, not as flat as it was before and toned. He’s grinning at Shoyo in his signature cocksure way, he grins as if in triumph.

“I told ya I would set to ya one day.” 

Shoyo smiles back at him. 

“You did.”

…

Shoyo moves to Osaka. His family helps him move, but it’s a surprisingly dull affair. After traveling abroad for so long, even this major life step feels small in comparison, hours by train rather than by plane away from his beginnings. 

What is new is the apartment. It’s quiet, empty. There is only him, after all, no roommate, not this time, only teammates as close neighbors. It’s disquieting. Pedro was a silent, steadying presence in the place he called home in Brazil, his sister a loud, energetic presence in his childhood home, but here, there was no one but him. He’s alone two doors down from the people he calls teammates now, friends. 

Shoyo doesn’t spend a lot of time in the apartment. He’s on the court, mostly. After going too long without it, it’s like a glorious revitalization every time his feet meet the hard boards of the floor and he smells the familiar mixture of icy hot and air conditioning. 

Tonight is no exception. The sun is gone, dipped so far below the horizon there isn’t even a smidge of grey or blue left over, only inky blackness in which the lit gymnasium pools in a spot of bright light for Shoyo to swim in.

It’s a familiar sea, one that Shoyo has become as intimately familiar with as with the stinging of the palm of his hand. He swam alone in this oasis when he was thirteen, it only was when he was fifteen when he got someone to swim with. He’s twenty-one now, and he hasn’t been alone since those first years, not even now. 

A thrill of satisfaction shivers up Shoyo’s spine as he jumps up to block, and unlike all those years ago, the ball hits his hands, killing its momentum and making it fall. However, it doesn’t hit the floor, not with Sakusa there to dive under it covering for Bokuto, but it still feels good nonetheless.

The feeling of a receive is different from he feeling of a block, more familier. It’s solid, like the sound of a clap in an empty auditorium as the ball hits his wrists as the ball is sent back to them once more, curving up in a beautiful arcing line, high, slightly spinning, ideal.

But even a hundred successful blocks and a thousand receives could never compare to the feeling when Shoyo jumps, when he soars , and his hand meets the leather of the ball in a resounding boom as he sends it powerfully to the floor. The ball arcs up once more, this time in victory, as the point is won in their favor. 

“Nice one, Shoyo!” Bokuto calls from across the net, hooting like he was the one who made the point. Shoyo doesn’t try to hold back his smile, grinning widely as he wipes his face with the edge of his shirt, panting. 

His humming reverie is only broken when another figure shuffles into his view, eyebrows raised, sucking his attention from the rest of the court to him like nothing else could. 

“How was that?” 

Atsumu is just as irritatingly perfect as he was five years ago. 

“Great, but can you make it like- drop more?” 

“Hm?”

“Like have it curve to the apex and then drop down more,” Shoyo tries to describe, motioning with his hands. Atsumu tilts his head, mulling it over as if visualizing before slowly nodding. 

“Sure.” 

The next toss Shoyo gets does drop more. It’s rough around the edges, unpracticed, but it has potential, lots of potential. 

“How was that?” 

“Better.” 

“Good.” Atsumu spins the ball in his hands, preparing to serve, but his eyes are still on Shoyo. “Hey, Shoyo?”

“Yeah?” 

“For the next one, jump as quick as ya can.” 

Shoyo tilts his head. The corner of his mouth quirks up. 

“Like in high school? You want to do the freak quick?” 

“Oh, this isn’t going to be the freak quick.” Atsumu’s eyes spark. “It’s going to be better.” 

Atsumu hasn’t changed. He’s as arrogantly perfect as he was before, as confident and talented. He’s still the setter demanding the msot out of his setters, he still is the one experimenting with every breath as he plays, innovating as he constantly moves. 

Atsumu hasn’t changed, but Shoyo has. It’s not new, he has been changing for a long time, but they… have changed. That’s new.

Atsumu doesn’t leave him alone. It’s not so much pushy as it is filling. Atsumu fills the empty space, first, the silences that come between training, the moments early in the morning or late at night. Later, he fills the too-quiet apartment with knocks at the door and then chatter, complaints about his brother, and old news from their high school days. 

Atsumu orders food in the late nights and they eat on Shoyo’s bed like heathens. He takes Shoyos water bottle with him when he goes to the fountain. He texts Shoyo incestently, unendingly. His contact is at the top of the message app, always blue, always something new. 

Shoyo doesn’t notice how much Atsumu Miya inserts himself into every hollow nook and cranny Shoyo has until his days are filled with blond hair as much as they are volleyball. 

Even when Shoyo does notice, he doesn’t know what to do about it. In truth, he doesn’t know if he wants to do anything about it. It was nice, having someone there, someone he could talk to about anything, someone who understood. But even if it was nice, it was anything but easy.

“Why didn’t ya ever call me in high school?” 

“Hm?” Shoyo glances over at Atsumu who is sprawled on his bed, phone abandoned at his side. There's a curiosity in his eyes but it’s anything but light. Shoyo swallows. 

“Why didn’t ya call me?”

“Why would I have?” 

Shoyo is playing dumb. He knows. He knows Atsumu liked him in high school. Shoyo hadn’t. 

Atsumu is looking at him intensely. There’s a strange look on his face, one that makes Shoyo look away. Something flighty stirs in his chest, something that wants out.

“Were ya together with Kageyama?” Atsumu says the name that hangs over them like a spectator. 

“No, I wasn’t.” Shoyo frowns at Atsumu. “You know I wasn’t.” 

Atsumu sits up, pushing himself off the bed until he can walk to Shoyo. They are face-to-face. Shoyo doesn’t meet Atsumu’s eyes because he knows that there will be something there, something raw as it is jagged. 

“I want to kiss ya, Shoyo.” Shoyo swallows again, but his voice is steady. 

“I know.” 

“Would ya let me?” 

Shoyo tells the truth.

“Yes.” Atsumu lets out a shuddering breath. 

“Why now?” 

For someone like him, it’s obvious. Shoyo is predictable. 

“You’re my setter.” He says it’s like an explanation. Maybe to him, it is, but Atsumu’s mouth still twitches, unsatisfied. 

“I was a setter before too.” He steps ever closer. Shoyo wants to step back but instead, his body freezes. “So was he.” 

Finally, Shoyo meets the other’s burning gaze. There’s a strange look in his eyes, on his face, a closed-offness that is uncharacteristic. When Shoyo speaks, it is held steady with the iron will that Atsumu had fallen in love with. 

“But you’re here now, aren’t you?” 

But what about later? What about in three months, a year, two years? Will Atsumu still be the only one there? Will he be there? 

“I’m not him, y’know,” Atsumu murmurs. “I never will be.” 

Shoyo sighs through his nose, looking away. 

“I know,” he replies softly. “You’re not him. You’re you. You’re Atsumu Miya.” 

Not Tobio Kageyama. 

Atsumu scoots closer. 

“And I’m you’re setter.” 

His eyes flit across Shoyo’s face as if he’s looking for something. Slowly, Shoyo looks back. In a way, he is still unreadable, but there’s a soft edge, one worn down through the handling of a ball, the call of a voice over the thumping heartbeat-like sound of the court, the blood in their ears. 

“You are.” 

There are no passionate fireworks when they kiss, instead, it’s more like melting. Melting metal meeting melting metal, alloying, intermingling in a way that it shouldn’t yet it does. It’s not simple, it’s not easy but it’s comforting. It’s nice.

They only meet in the apartment. Volleyball is separate from whatever spark they may have, and they keep it that way. They don’t talk about it too, they slip into a comfortable routine, a push and pull that gives a stability they had been lacking before. It almost works. 

There are cracks, cracks that, in truth, Shoyo doesn’t want to mend. The volleyball season is coming up, his debut. Butterflies erupt in his stomach at the very thought of standing on the court with this new team in front of everyone. Of winning. He doesn’t have the energy to dig into the pillars of salt this was built of. 

Sometime within the coming weeks, Shoyo’s profile goes up on the Black Jackel’s page with the other rookies, announcing him to the season. His picture turned out good if Shoyo would say himself; the uniform is well-fitting, the 21 proud on his chest and the ball comfortably held in one hand that he holds out to the camera, grinning. 

He almost forgets about it by the next day, wrapped up in so much last-minute training that besides the first few messages he got congratulating him officially on making the team, there isn’t much to celebrate this turning point in his life. 

When the message comes in, it’s so unobtrusive Shoyo would have missed it any other day. But here, lying in bed in the dead of night, he doesn’t. 

You can palm the ball now?

Shoyo has to stare at the words, taking them in. Slowly, he types back. 

I have for a while

When? 

Second year in Brazil

Your hand is bigger now

I didn’t stop growing when I graduated, you know

It’s just strange to see it 

Shoyo smiles into the palm of his hand, staring at the words. The first text in two whole months and it makes him giddy like he’s fifteen again.

“Who are ya texting?” Atsumu asks, rolling over and straining to peak over Shoyo’s side but he’s just too far away to see clearly. Shoyo directs his smile to him, the expression not fading even as he turns off the phone, pushing it away. 

“Your mortal enemy.” 

“How the hell did ya get ‘Samu’s number?” 

…

Brazil was hot but wasn’t as hot as Japan in July. 

All the same, Tobio was thankful his sport was played indoors, air conditioning was one of the most fantastic modern inventions. Although cool, the atmosphere in the gym had an electric quality to it. It was not static but instead it was buzzing. It was the Olympics after all. 

Brazil was interesting. The language was different, the food and customs too, but Tobio had expected that. The Olympic Village was a patchwork of cultures and languages, a sort of controlled chaos that was a familiar kind of instability. It felt almost like high school, like rushing youth. It was exciting. He was shaking with it on the first day. 

What Tobio hadn’t expected was for Brazil to feel almost… empty. He thought not of what was there in front of his eyes or shivering through his veins but of what wasn’t. 

What were the beaches like? Were they warm? 

What were the people like? Strangers comfortable in this world, how did they play? Did they set well? Did they jump high? Receive well? Did they have powerful serves and an eye for the needle-tipped balance the weight of the court swayed on? 

Brazil was nice, but what about this world was so fascinating? What about this world was so perfect? That made it the place? 

His mind was blank when he set the ball high and fast, too fast. It was a ball meant for someone who wasn’t there. 

Hoshiumi could barely get a hand on it, too surprised to react cleanly, sending it just barely tumbling over the net to the other side of the court. It was almost nostalgic, the messiness of it. He was the only one, however, who seemed to take something bittersweet from it. 

“Kageyama, too fast!” Hoshiumi landed, rounding on him. “We’ve been over this before!” 

“Sorry.” He looked away, ashamed. It had been a long time since he had slipped up. “Force of habit.” 

“Are you thinking about him?” Hoshiumi was planted in front of him, hands on his hips, an unmovable confronting force. “Is it because we’re in Brazil?” 

“Yes.” Tobio reluctantly admitted. It was strange acknowledging it out loud. He kept his thoughts to himself normally, but they always seemed to leak out when it came to Shoyo. 

Hoshiumi huffed, still unimpressed at the lack of control in his display. They had thought that particular habit had been broken, but seemingly, it had just laid dormant for a time. 

“Well, if you’re so stuck on him, get him out of your system.” 

“Huh?” Tobio blinked up, confused. Get Shoyo out of his system? 

“Get him out of your system. We have games to win, Kageyama. You’re in the right place to do that now, aren’t you?” Hoshiumi repeated. There was something glinting in his eye, humor. 

“How would that work?” Hoshiumi fixed him with a deadpan stare. 

“You seriously cannot be this dense.” 

Oh. oh. 

Tobio’s face flooded bright red. The color stood out like a waving flag no matter how he tried to hide it uselessly behind a hand. 

“It’s not like that!” He hissed out indignantly.

“You sure? Because everyone could see the way you two-” 

“Hoshiumi!” 

“You’re like, what, half an hour away from him? An hour? All I’m saying is that if you wanted to-” 

“I am not having this conversation with you.” Tobio turned, purposefully walking away in large strides as if it would help the red that tinged his face fade. 

“You can’t run away from the truth, Kageyama!” Hoshiumi yelled after his retreating figure. “And you better not give me any more bad tosses, I’ll strangle you!” 

“You can try and reach!” 

“Fuck you, I can jump!” 

“So can I!” 

Even halfway across the globe, in this strange foreign world, there was still some familiarity in this place. His teammates were a comfort in this place, whether that be for his native language or the understanding that what had been built between them all couldn’t be shaken despite all the changes, not after it had been built inch by perilous inch. 

Yes, it had been a shift after high school, playing side by side with others he had considered rivals, but it was just volleyball. Simple to understand and complex to execute. 

If Shoyo had been just volleyball, maybe it would have been easier. 

The line rang quietly against Tobio’s ear as he waited for the call to, hopefully, get picked up. He fixed his eyes on a nearby clock, frowning to himself. It shouldn’t have been too late yet, the other should still be awake. Thankfully, his intuition was correct. 

“Hey, Tobio!” 

“Suga. Hi. Is this a bad time?”

“Not at all, I’m just reviewing some lesson plans,” Suga answered mildly, the sound of rustling pages faintly coming through the call. His voice was a bit hoarse as if he had a cold even in the middle of summer. 

“How’s the job going?” 

“Oh, the kids are great. They’re starting me out in third grade, and right now, it’s still on a trial basis, but it’s going smoothly. The school board has been a bit of a pain in the ass with the paperwork and timeline and evaluations , but when have they not been.” 

Suga coughed, the sound far away as if he had turned away from the microphone. 

“Are you sick?” Tobio frowned, the action somehow filling the tone of his voice.

“I’m an elementary school teacher, I’m constantly sick.” 

Suga’s voice came closer again, still hoarse, but Tobio could tell that he was giving him one of his knowing smiles. Maybe it was the nostalgia that threatened to overwhelm Tobio from where it simmered under his skin, but he wished that he could see it in person. This would be easier like that. 

“You haven’t even finished your first year, though.” 

“And hopefully my immune system will have built itself up by the second. I don’t know how teachers did this before tissues were invented.” Suga blew his nose, and there was more rustling like he was pushing the papers that surrounded him away. 

“But you didn’t call to ask about my work.” 

“No, I didn’t,” Tobio admitted. It was a testament to how well Suga knew him that he didn’t take offense to the blunt remark. 

“What’s on your mind? How’s Brazil?” 

“Hot, but it’s less humid than it is in Japan. It’s louder, but the breeze from the sea is nice, though. Fewer birds than in Miyagi too.” Tobio paused, mulling it over. 

“It’s empty.” 

Suga snorted. 

“How can anything be empty when Mr. Larger-than-life Shoyo Hinata is there?” 

Suga chuckled, but his friendly laughter quickly died when Tobio didn’t respond. 

“You haven’t met with him, have you?” Something in his voice tells Tobio that Suga wasn’t surprised by it. It’s not surprising that he was unsurprised, Tobio could never get anything past him. 

“No, I haven’t,” Tobio admitted quietly, almost like a secret and he didn’t know why. 

“Are you two not on good terms?” 

“No, we’re fine.” He thought, at least. Once again, they didn’t talk. How could something change between them if they didn’t talk? He at least hadn’t changed, he didn’t think he had, at least. 

“Are you too busy? I know you have some free time between training but does it not line up with Hinata? Is he too busy?” 

“No, it’s not that, we just don’t talk.” The line fell silent. Seconds ticked by and Tobio checked to make sure the call was still connected. 

“Are you still there?”

“Do you want to meet with him?” 

Not being able to and not wanting were two different questions. 

“I don’t know?” It was more a question than a statement. Tobio hadn’t expected to be forced to confront that difference. He didn’t know his answer. 

“Why?” 

Why? Again, that question, why? Why did why keep coming up? Why did they need to know? Why did he need to know? He was fucking happy in his ignorance, he didn’t want to dig into it. If it worked, why change it?

“We don’t talk,” He repeated like it was an explanation. 

“That’s not an answer, Tobio,” Suga rebuffed, pressing him harder like he sensed the sore spot instead of backing off like the other wanted.

“It is, actually.” Tobio shot back, a new touchy edge sharpening his voice. 

“Not when even you know it’s an excuse. Why do you not talk?” 

Because the time difference was difficult. Because Tobio’s life was completely encompassed by volleyball. Because he didn’t know what he was doing. 

Because that was what it was, wasn’t it? He didn’t know what the fuck he was doing. He didn’t know if this would work. 

He didn’t want to know because the uncertainty of the answer was paralyzing. It was paralyzing in a way that was slow like a poison freezing each of his cells, all of his joints and organs one by one in a deadly crawl. He had for so long ignored that crawl, but it had continued, and he didn’t want to know where it finally ended. 

“You know, you’ve always liked him.” 

Suga’s voice was warm, fond. He sounded younger, like he was in the gym again in the early golden hours of the morning, a control tower guiding everything with a silent draw rather than loud demands, picking up on details where others saw none. He was everything Tobio wasn’t. 

“Like-like?” 

“You tell me. You didn’t treat anyone else like that.”

No one else had pushed him to limits even he didn’t know existed. No one else had made him change himself. Made him grow. Made him agonize every angle and edge until there was nothing but smooth perfection to slide off of into the sky, boosted to heights unknown by man, yet craved all the same.

Tobio was just a man.

“I was fifteen.”

He had been a boy. One filled with such ambition and confidence that the sky didn't seem undefeatable. The sky and the boy who had flown into it. 

“And that makes it so different? You two circled each other like god damned planets.” 

Tobio didn’t answer. He couldn’t, he didn’t know what he could say, so he stayed silent instead. Suga filled the air with his voice and it helped. It guided him. 

“Are you not meeting him because you’re scared that that like would change?” 

“For him or me?” 

“For anyone. Two years is a long time to wait for someone, things change.” 

Tobio sighed, letting his head fall back against the wall, phone still in hand. He gripped it tighter as if to brace himself for a storm that would never come because it had been here the whole time. 

The whole goddamned time.

“Yeah.” 

Shoyo was extraordinary. He shone, it was his nature, and he just naturally pulled people in. They wanted him. Whether to cultivate, to utilize, to simply soak in that light; it didn’t matter. There would always be others. 

Tobio wasn’t jealous because of the knowledge that Shoyo could choose others, not really, Shoyo had every right to pick whoever he wanted. Tobio was- he was scared because Shoyo was it for him. He had been it for Tobio since he was fifteen. What was so terrifying was that Shoyo had options but Tobio didn’t. 

Tobio could play with others, he could play excellently with others, he could cultivate and utilize them, he could win and he could be the puppeteer of a team, but he couldn’t click with them on that level. It just didn’t work, he couldn’t know them. Tobio only had one other half, and it wasn’t up to him if Shoyo wanted to complete the circle or not. 

Of course, he was scared of this changing; this was all he would ever be. If things would change and Shoyo would leave him behind, what then? What about him?

Of course, Tobio didn’t want to talk to him. Ignorance was always bliss but it also helped because-

“I like him,” he murmured, soft. “But I’m waiting for him to come to me.” 

“Why?” Suga asked just as softly. 

“Because that is the only way this could work.” 

Shoyo had to choose first. He had to fulfill his promise, and Tobio would fulfill his. The flying star had to come to rest in his hand, and Tobio would hold his palm out until there was nothing but darkness left if he had to. 

“And I’m going to wait for as long as it takes.”

…

A week and a half later, it was almost midnight when Tobio got the text, the first in almost three weeks. Normally, he wouldn’t even see it, not at this time, but he was still up because they had just lost. It had been a good game, yes, but it still hurt.

Nice service ace

It was just one line, one he was even used to hearing from the people around him for so many years, but it still made him crush a delirious smile under his hand all the same when he stared at it. 

So stupid. 

…

It was the day of graduation, and Tobio was hitting serves in the gym, diploma propped carelessly aside. He didn’t think about the ceremony, the look on his sister’s face when they had found each other in the crowd, the space beside them that should have been filled by someone else. Instead, he got lost in the rhythm and sound of throw-hit-connect. 

He didn’t feel sad high school was over, but he didn’t feel elated either, not like others around him. He didn’t know what he felt, this strange tension like a rubber band pulled too far back under his skin or the blank fog of his mind as his body simply moved to do the only thing he knew. 

He had already signed the contract with the Schweiden Adlers weeks ago. They were a good team, one of the best, they had the talent, funding, and publicity that guaranteed a real chance at wider greatness, but they were in Tokyo. 

Tobio knew how long it took to get from Miyagi to Tokyo, he knew it like the back of his hand after so many trips there over the years, but this would be his last trip for a long time. There was no demand for him to return, no school needing his presence, he was supposed to go and stay there. 

Strange. That was the only word he could use, strange. 

He turned it over in his mind as he threw up another ball, mind still blurry with strange emotion, so blurry that he didn’t compute the whirl of color and energy sliding under a serve to receive the ball. It sailed high in a beautiful arc, but a little too to the left. Almost perfect. 

The ball hit the floor, and Tobio stared at Shoyo across the net, and Shoyo stared back at him. Tobio wasn’t even surprised. 

This happened every year, every year since the first. This was the first time, though, that Shoyyo didn’t sink down into his knees again for another receive, instead, he straightened up. Tobio eyed him warily as the spiker ducked beneath the net separating them. The wariness within him didn’t fade even when Shoyo stilled to a stop in front of him. 

“Show me your jump serve,” he said with the same demand as he did when asking for a toss. Tobio blinked. 

“You’ve seen it a thousand times.” Shoyo stared at him with those intense eyes. 

“Teach me your jump serve,” he clarified. 

It took a moment to register, the new demand. In their three years, Shoyo never asked once asked Tobio to teach him how to do a jump serve, he had never asked Tobio to teach him anything.  

Tobio only hesitated for a moment. 

“Fine.” 

Tobio tried. He tried, but that try was a lie; he didn’t really try, just as Shoyo didn’t try to learn. They both knew nothing would come of this, it was far too little too late for anything to come of practicing now. Something to pass the time. To stall. 

They both knew it wasn’t the jump serve that Shoyo wanted. It was this he wanted because this was the last day. They both knew it. They had for a long time. 

“Use less of your palm and more the heel of your hand.” Tobio demonstrated the correct position on his ball while looking at Shoyo’s. “Also put your hand higher up on the ball.” 

The spiker moved his hand, but it still wasn’t correct. Without thinking, Tobio dropped his ball and reached over, his hands closing over Hinata’s to correct the positioning. With burning concentration, he kept his eyes pointed at the ball and nowhere else. 

“Like this.” 

The others’ hands were warm, callused. They were different from Tobio’s. In the seconds the touch spiraled on, he decided he liked it. He liked it a lot. 

“Got it?” He deliberately dropped his hands, finally able to look up. 

“Okay,” Shoyo said, but for once, he wasn’t looking at the ball. 

Instead, he was looking at Tobio. He was staring at him, maybe he had been the entire time, every spear of intensity pointed right into his teammate's face, his setter’s face, his-

Tobio stepped away. He swallowed, looking away, but even staring at the net where no game was being played, no opponents laying in wait, wasn’t enough to distract him from the sound of a ball dropping. 

He felt the warmth of another body, a hand, grabbing his arm. It pulled him with a soundless insistence that was irresistible. Tobio had always been bad at telling Shoyo no, and at times like this, he didn’t want to. 

Shoyo pulled him until they were face to face. In the minimal space between them, Tobio’s blue eyes met Shoyo’s brown, but in the light of the afternoon streaming through the windows, calling them simply brown was a disservice. They were more orange like his hair, glowing, burning like coals. 

“You’re going to wait for me, right?” 

Shoyo’s words were as soft as they are demanding, ever unchanging, he called for Tobio to reaffirm his promise the same way he called for a toss. 

“As long as you are going to keep playing catch up,” 

When Tobio spoke, it was in the same tone, the same imbued demand for breathless perfection. It made Shoyo’s breath stutter; Tobio could feel it; that was how close the other was. It was too close.

All the air seemed to be pulled from the room as Shoyo breathed in once more, before stepping closer. In the span of a second, his hand found the back of Tobio’s neck and pulled him down just as he rocked up onto his toes. 

Shoyo kissed him. It was rushed and inexperienced and as quickly over as it began. 

Tobio blinked, suddenly disoriented by the light around them as Shoyo stepped out of his space. 

“I just wanted to do that at least once,” he whispered. 

Tobio stared at him, his fingers coming up to brush his lips. They buzzed under his touch. Shoyo watched him. He must have seen something because he smiled. 

“See you later, Tobio.” 

It was one of those full smiles, the ones that were simply Shoyo, the intoxicated essence of him all. Tobio drank him into every pore. He smiled back.

“See you later, Shoyo.” 

…

Meeting Shoyo again after two years in the bathroom, of all places, is surprisingly unsurprising. Maybe Tobio had gone there just to see if old habits died hard. Seemingly, they did. He’s here.

“Is your stomach going to be okay today?” 

Slowly, Shoyo turns. He’s grinning. He’s grinning so hard it looks like it hurts. 

“The old me who would get sick before a match is long gone.” 

“Finally, idiot.” 

Shoyo’s smile becomes impossibly wider. It’s familiar, the weight of the retort, but it’s different now. It carries so much more in so little.

Something trills high and clear in Tobio’s veins, excitement. He hasn’t anticipated a match this much in a long time. The familiar, intense, wild glint in Shoyo’s eyes gives away the feeling in the other, too. 

Tobio sweeps his eyes over the other, sizing him up, as Shoyo does the same to him. It’s only for a few seconds, that’s all they can afford, and it’s not nearly enough, but it’s more than they have had in years. It’s divine.

Shoyo opens his mouth again, but what he would have said Tobio never finds out because before Shoyo can get a word out, an arm drapes itself casually - very much not casually, poised, on guard, claiming - over his shoulders. 

“Hey, Tobio.” Astumu pulls his name out longer than it should be, stretching the syllables as if he were teasing. The barely masked hostility on his face erases the notion immediately. “Wouldja mind not pickin’ a fight with my spiker, hm?” 

Despite himself, Tobio feels his eye twitch. The years had not made him like Miya Atsumu any more than he had before and clearly, the feeling was mutual. 

“I’m not starting anything but I’ll finish it, Miya.” 

The other setter cocks his head, eye slightly narrowed. To anyone else, it would look like posturing, but not abnormal, teammates looking out for each other. Tobio knows better. 

He knows that Miya Atsumu has liked Shoyo for a long, long time, and the peaceful balance he may or may not have indulged in for the past months now is… changing. 

Tobio isn’t afraid of Miya Atsumu. On the court, he’s a genius opponent. Off the court, he’s someone Tobio doesn’t waste the words disliking. He’s someone Shoyo doesn’t use many words to describe, either. 

The air is tense, but it is short-lived. As if having a sixth sense for delicate situations, Bokuto bursts in with half of the pro volleyball population in tow. The atmosphere devolves into chaos quickly, and in the fray of jabs and confusion, Tobio loses sight of Shoyo. Their reunion, if such a meeting could even be called it, is cut short, but the other’s presence lingers in Tobio’s mind like the warmth of the sun in a stone. 

It is strange, seeing him again. He’s different, older. He’s tanned now, too. 

His shoulders are broader, his legs thicker, both finally filled out enough that the black uniform that clothes him hugs him beautifully in a way it hadn’t before. It clings now, spanning alluringly across his chest and over his thighs, clinging.

Even from a glance, Tobio can see the work that he has put in. He wants to run his hands over those muscles, he wants to feel the physical representation of the past two years. He wants to put his mouth on his skin and suck his own marks onto that beautiful canvas, bruises, ones that can’t be brushed off.

He wants to see Shoyo fly. He wants to put up the ball for him and see him soar. He wants to serve the ball at him an see him sink or sail in the face of the challange. He wants to stand close enough to feel the heat of his skin and see the exact look in his eyes. He wants to dissect it, to absorb it down to his marrow like a stone in the sun. 

He wants him. He wants him so bad it hurts. He wants to win against him, he wants to toss to him, he wants to kiss him and knot his fingers in his-

The air in the stadium is alive with a buzz. Tobio can’t see them, but he knows his old teammates are here, somewhere, he can hear their voices. He will find them later, but now, he focuses forward. He will not let this go to waste. 

Shoyo’s grip is strong and his eyes burning when they shake hands under the net. Tobio stares back unflinchingly into the challenge, he revels in it. He has been waiting for this for six years. So has Shoyo. 

It’s his serve first. He aims for Shoyo on purpose. It sends a thrill through him when the ball is caught on the other’s arms comes up in a beautiful arc, but something far greater comes alive within him when he sees him run, him fly.

The quick lands beautifully with a resounding boom that echoes across the stadium. Shoyo’s yell of success is worth more than a hundred resounding quicks. 

“I’m here!” 

Tobio stares. There is nothing else he can do but stare across the net. Shoyo turns as if he had been waiting for this, stares right back. When their gazes meet, it feels like there is nothing separating them. They look through the distance like it isn’t there and they breathe as if in tandem. 

So much has changed. They have changed so much but - still - Tobio knows him. 

He knows him like the skin of his palm or the color of his eyes. He knows him like the leather of the ball against his fingertips in the air and the dull throb of a receive on his arms. It’s innate. It’s bone-deep. Instinctual, not learned. He doesn’t know when it began. 

Perhaps, there was no beginning to it. It had always been there, dormant, rising one day, not into existence, but to presence. It had simply slipped in with the other lines of his growing life like another flower blooming on a branch in spring, altogether nothing notable but on its own, in insolation from anything and everything else, beautiful. Made up of a thousand microscopic parts that just came to be at the right time. 

Tobio knows him. Not two oceans or twenty thousand kilometers or two years could change that. You don’t forget your soul, not the shape of it, not the sound of it, not the sight of it. He knows as he breathes and he knows as Shoyo does. They both know. They have for a long time. 

Maybe it’s just now, in this singular frozen moment on the court of their own domain, just them and their breaths, that they realize how deep that knowing truly goes. They say distance makes the heart fonder, after all, and they are both ravenous. 

Across the net, Tobio returns the grin at Shoyo. He doesn’t hold anything back, not anymore. 

“Took you long enough.” 

Just like all of those years ago, he’s here. He’s here and he’s staying. His work has been fulfilled, and now the fruits are waiting to be reaped. Tobio is ready for him. All of him. He will take the fruits and suck the sweetness from their skins until he bursts before he would even think of pausing to come up for air. 

Shoyo is amazing. It is to be expected, he wouldn’t waste another three years since high school ended, but it makes Tobis’s breath hitch for a moment. Gone is the wreckless abandon, instead, there is fine-tuned control. Where there was simply speed, now there is godly balance, and where there was height, now there is so much more. 

But through it all, the look in his eyes hasn’t changed, that intense spark, the demand engrained into every modicum of his being for the best. It makes Tobio’s teeth ache like they haven’t for a long time as he rises up to answer. He pushes harder, faster, to catch up, to keep up.

If you get stronger, I guarantee, someone even stronger will appear.

Sixteen years after that conversation, Tobio knows exactly what his grandfather meant by those words. Shoyo’s perfect. He had almost forgotten it, his radiance.

No, that was a lie, he hadn’t forgotten it one bit. There was no forgetting that. The memories had still lingered in his body for months. Tobio had put up more sets for a ghost than he would like to admit, and when he sees what he has missed so dearly, it makes sense why he did. There is no forgetting this.

Something inside of him quivers with speechless energy as he faces off against his greatest rival, his closest partner beat for beat, step for step. Tobio serves and Shoyo receives. Shoyo spikes and Tobio blocks. Shoyo puts up sets for his teammates and Tobio dumps balls for his. 

Their souls resonate, beat for beat, step for step, hit for hit, and the court sings. They jump and dive and push until their muscles scream. 

It’s a good game. A fantastic one, even. He never wants it to end. He wants the burn in his legs and his lungs to keep cremating him if it means he can play just a little more. Serve-bump-set-spike-block-dive-set-spike-block-recieve-spike-set-spike-block-receive-recieve-spike-receive–dive-floor-whistle, he never wants it to end. He wants to keep playing like this forever. 

Across the net, Shoyo jumps high and gorgeous, and Tobio jumps with him, arms outstretched to cut off that beautiful flight. For the modicum of a second, he’s not looking at the ball, he’s looking at Shoyo, and for that split moment in time, Tobio almost thinks he sees Shoyo looking at him too. 

When Shoyo hits at the edge of his fingers, Tobio blocks him with his whole hand. He somehow knew, reading movements or maybe fate like the lines of his palm. 

And just like in middle school the ball tumbles down, killed. But this isn’t middle school, not anymore. Shoyo twists his body and hits it up again with his foot. 

They land and Shoyo moves like greased lightning, dashing across the court, the very picture of coiled power as he leaps, outstretched and dazzling. He’s beautiful. It’s mesmerizing, so mesmerizing that Tobio falls into the same trap he himself had helped lay all those years ago. 

When he finally is able to tear his gaze away, it’s too late. He jumps but Bokuto spikes the ball down with a finite boom as if he hadn’t jumped in the first place. The whistle sounds and they lose. They have lost because of his mistake, his bite on the brilliant luminous decoy he had fed kindling to. 

Tobio stares where the ball was slammed down and bizarrely, he smiles. The disappointment stings him like needles but he smiles.

Maybe it is because every point one of his spikers earns is one of his points and that, despite their every difference, Shoyo is still his spiker. Maybe it’s because, after six years, the promise that was made between children has been fulfilled at last. Maybe it’s because he’s simply happy to have played such a game against someone so brilliant. 

If one reason or another is the reason he smiles, truly, he doesn’t care. 

Their war is over, if for now, at least, neither of them could ever truly give up the fight. However, now something new has opened, space. Space for other things. After years and years, they stand on even ground at last. 

When they meet at the net, neither of them is smiling, they are staring with an immovable intensity that can only come from unreachable depths within. They breathe the same air as one once more, and they resonate. 

“You’re here.” And you’re staying.

“I’m here.” And I’m staying. 

They’re here. They’re done running. 

…

A few paces away, Astumu watches silently. He can’t pretend like he’s not staring. He can’t make himself look away. It’s horrible. 

He sees the way they look at each other; like there is nothing else in the world. 

It was always going to end like this. He had been warned over and over again and had ignored it every time because some surviving part of him from high school and really believed that this time, against Tobio Kageyama, he could win. That this time, it would be different. 

Shoyo Hinata shone just like he had a shadow. They couldn’t be divorced from one another while the sun still set in the west and rose in the east. 

For the past two years, Atsumu had throught that he had been competing against Tobio, his talent, his thoughts, his feelings. He had been kidding himself because in those two years, he hadn’t even been a player in the game. 

…

“You didn’t use your face to receive this time so that was a success!” 

Tsukishima isn’t even fully in range before he begins needling, calling out to where Shoyo is making his way through the crowd towards the knot of his three other first-year classmates. Shoyo can’t help but glare at the other man, barely holding back the impulse to flip him off in public.

“I haven’t done that since first year!” he yells back instead.

“And at quarter-finals third year!”

“That receive got us into semi-finals, asshole, you can’t make fun of it!” 

“But you still made it with your face!” Beside him, Yamaguchi elbows him, the smile bright on his face. 

“Oh my god, it hasn’t even been two minutes.” 

“Don’t act the saint, Tadashi, you were thinking the same thing.” 

“Yeah, but you don’t have to say it-” 

Finally, Shoyo finishes weaving through the crowd and stands in front of his former classmates. Yachi is smiling widely at him, reaching out for a tight hug that he gladly accepts. 

“Well done, Shoyo!” 

“Thank you, Yachi!” He glares at Tsukishima again, but there isn’t heat behind it. “See, this is how you congratulate a person. It won’t kill you, I promise.” 

“There’s a first time for everything,” Tsukishima brushes off easily. “It was a good match, it even had the great perk of seeing one of my two least favorite people lose.” 

Yachi is the one to elbow him this time as she pulls away from Shoyo. 

“Stop being an asshole!” 

“You’re asking for nothing short of a miracle, you know,” Yamaguchi quips before turning back to Shoyo. “Seriously though, great game.” 

“Thanks,” The man accepts, smiling brightly. 

“That last rally, wow! I really thought you were going to get that ball.” 

“I thought Kageyama was going to fall for it,” Yachi pipes in. 

“He did,” Tsukishima says, his eyes fixed elsewhere. “Didn’t you, King?” 

Tobio shuffles around a few people before joining the little group. 

“I did.” He admits, taking Tsukishima more off guard than if he would have blatantly denied it. 

“Oh? Brought down by your own creation.” 

They may have grown but the ever-turning wheel of insults had never stopped. But today is different, Tobio doesn’t snark back. He’s smiling. It’s a small smile but it’s a smile nonetheless. The sight itself is enough to get them all to stare dumbfounded for a moment. 

“It was a good game,” Kageyama says, still smiling, but he’s looking into at Tsukishima or Yamaguchi or Yachi, he’s looking at Shoyo. “You didn’t waste your time in Brazil.” 

“When have I ever joked about getting better at volleyball?” Shoyo huffs.

“Never,” Tobio responds mildly. 

“Kageyama!” A yell makes them turn. Hoshiumi’s eyes are burning across the room, boring into them. “Coach wants us all in the locker room, it’s time to get chewed out!” 

The group all dryly chuckles, the setter nodding towards the spiker, yet Hoshiumi doesn’t move. He is looking at Shoyo now. His lips purse for a moment before he yells again.

“That was a good game, Hinata! I’m going to beat you next time!” A wide smile breaks across Shoyo’s face. 

“You can try!” He calls back and Hoshiumi greets the challenge with a wild grin of his own before slipping back into the halls towards the lockerrooms 

“He hasn’t calmed down I see,” Yamaguchi mutters under his breath, clearly the memories of the short spiker still clear in his mind with distaste. 

“No one has calmed down at all. All crazy people like normal,” Tsukishima mutters back, loud enough for them all to hear. Yachi snorts and Shoyo rolls his eyes. 

“Shut your mouth, Tsukishima.” 

“Yeah yeah. Anyways, don’t you two have big important after-game meetings to be to.” He flicks his hands at them. “Shoo, we’ll meet later.” 

“Where?” Tobio asks, perking up. It has been over two years since they last were all together. 

“No clue.” 

“That’s such a great help, asshole-” Shoyo grabs the sleeve of Tobio’s jersey, pulling them towards the hall, cutting off the fight before it can really start. 

“See you then!” He waves, dragging Tobio faster. The quicker they got done with this, the quicker they could be with their friends. 

“Let go, idiot.” Tobio shakes off Shoyo’s hand but he doesn’t step away from his side as they walk towards the locker rooms. Shoyo peers up at him, observing. 

“Where’d you go after the game?” Tobio is silent for a moment. 

“I went to talk with Kindaichi and Kunimi.” 

“Oh,” Shoyo says, his eyebrows raising, surprised. “How are they?” 

“They looked good.” He has that small smile on his face. It’s a rare look on him, serene. “We’re going to play together again one day.” 

 It has been a long time since Shoyo has seen this look on him, contented. 

“Good.” 

They split off to get changed, not exchanging so much as a goodbye knowing they would meet again so soon. 

As soon as he enters the locker room, Shoyo can’t keep the smile off of his face as he is greeted in the true Jackels fashion, brimming with joyous victory and loud. 

“There he is!” Shoyo can’t brace himself before someone picks him up and twirls him in a circle as if he weighs nothing. “My pupil shining to the end! You were so amazing, Shoyo!” 

Shoyo wheezes out a laugh as Bokuto’s arms squeeze tighter around him in pure joy. He pats blindly behind him, pushing against his shoulders to try and beg for some more air. 

“He needs to breathe, Bokkun!” Atsumu calls, poking his head out of the mess of bodies, already fully dressed. 

As Bokuto finally drops Shoyo, he walks over, not reacting as Shoyo begins to change in front of him, as familiar with the locker room as any of them were.

“The team is going out, dinner, just the team and some plus ones.” 

“Akashi is here!” 

“Shut up!” The entire locker room says as one. 

Shoyo snorts, pulling a proper shirt over his head. As he emerges from the neckline, Atsumu is still looking at him. There’s something strange in his eyes. 

“Are ya going to come?” 

“No, I’m going to have to skip this one. My old teammates are here, we’re going to go and catch up. Probably get really drunk too.” 

“And Kageyama’s going to be there?” 

“Of course.”

Atsumu pulls away. 

“Have fun.” He smiles at Shoyo. “Really, ya deserve it. Ya were amazing today.” 

“Thanks to you,” Shoyo smiled back, hoisting his bag onto his shoulder. “See you.” 

“See ya.” 

…

The restaurant they all agree on in their revitalized group chat is a little hole-in-the-wall place that both Tobio and Yachi can vouch for. It has dim lighting and tables that were in need of a new layer of lacquer, but their food was good and their drink menu was as extensive as it was reasonably priced. 

They sequester at a table in the corner, all five of them side by side like nothing has changed, but they talk about what is new. Long gone in the mention of nationals or tests, instead, it's real matches and university, or bitchy coworkers and personal anecdotes. 

Shoyo smiles when it’s his turn to speak, taking a deep breath. 

Shoyo speaks of Brazil, of Pedro and Heitor and Nice, of the kids he taught and the tourists, and how difficult beach volleyball was. He speaks like he would paint, layers added one at a time, almost haphazardly until they all come together to something greater, something so vivid you could almost taste the mixture of lime liquor on your tongue or feel the grit of sand between your fingers, under your nails, smell the scent of the ocean and hear the chatter of a foreign world that had after such insistence, opened its arms to you. 

Tobio is smiling too. 

It’s a smile that pulls at his lips out of his control, just like the warm swell in his chest that expands against his ribs. Even when he tries to hide behind his drink, and tries to compose himself, he can’t. The alcohol that begins to get mixed into the conversations as the sun eclipses into the horizon before sinking behind it doesn’t help. 

Seeing Shoyo again is… amazing, but he’s not the only one there. As much as Tobio would like to simply sit and watch silently, it has been a long time since he has spoken with the others. It had been even longer since the conversation had flowed like this between them, unfettered by phones, time differences, or scheduling difficulties. 

“If I have to handwrite one more paper, I’m going to get carpal tunnel,” Tsukishima complains, louder and more open than he had been an hour before, plied with ridiculous creations called Kahlua milk cocktails that he was way too fond of. “It is 2018; we have computers, for god’s sake, if professors can realize that.” 

“You’re a history major, you can’t complain about your teachers being old school,” Yamaguchi mutters none too quietly, earning him a light glare. 

“Oh, but I will It’s not my problem that they can’t evolve past the year 1970.” Tsukishima takes a drink from the abomination before sighing, rolling one of his wrists mournfully. “It’s the final year, though, so I’m almost done.” 

“Is it affecting your volleyball at all?” 

Yachi has her chin cupped in a hand propped on the table, her face already a little red, giving away the fact that the clear liquid at her elbow was not water but instead something much stronger. 

“Not yet, the doctor says it might be soon, though.” 

“Can you get a note for that or something?” 

“And have my grade tank as a result? No thanks.” 

“But your season starts soon, doesn’t it?” Tobio states, finally speaking for the first time in an especially long stretch of the conversation, drawing all eyes to him. He looks at Tsukishima, eyebrows raised. “Division two starts a week later than us.” 

The blond is the one to look away first from Tobio’s scrutiny. It has become unfamiliar after so many years away from a shared court. 

“Yeah.” 

“When’s your first game?” 

“You don’t need to come.” Tsukishima tries to wave him off preemptively but Tobio presses, insistent. 

“I want to,” he interjects. Tsukishima glances at him and seemingly, sees something that makes him huff. He scoops up his drink again, leaning back in his chair. 

“As blunt as ever, aren’t you, King? You haven’t changed.” He takes another sip. “It’s on the twenty-fifth.” 

The twenty-fifth, Tobio mentally counts, was a Sunday. They had a game Friday that week and a training session early on Saturday but- yes, he could be there. 

“You should get that doctor’s note, though, you’re far too young to retire yet if your wrists give out,” Tobio muses out loud. 

Yamaguchi snorts, almost knocking over one of the glasses on the too-cramped table causing a chain reaction of yelps and scrambling that ends with at least one dish on the floor and Tsukishima hanging his head like he wants to dissolve into the floor. 

“Why do I even bother?” 

“Because you like us,” Yamaguchi smiles sheepishly, patting the other on the back. “How’s the job at the design company going, Yachi? Did that stupidly overcrowded order ever get sorted out?” 

Yachi groans loudly, reaching for her drink as if bracing herself to relive whatever hurricane had swept through her life. Tobio smiles, lifting his own glass to take a sip, but when he tips it back, nothing remains but ice. He glances down, almost confused, before putting it down completely. 

“Do you want another?” Tobio turns his head to Shoyo, the other uncharacteristically silent all throughout this. 

“No, I've had enough.” 

He’s an athlete, after all, his body is his main asset, so alcohol may as well be the devil to people like them. He tries to focus on Yachi still speaking animatedly, but Tobio can’t make out all of her words already. 

Tiredly, he runs a hand down his face, letting his eyes fall shut. The world is blurring a little around him, not just from the drinks but also from the exhaustion. It had been a good game, the best he can remember in a long time, but now, he just wants to go to bed. 

There’s a tap against his closed hand on the table. 

Tobio looks down and Son's fingers are nudging at him as if asking for something. Wordlessly, he flips it over, opening his curled fingers so that his palm faces the ceiling, mild confusion buzzing through him as he waits, watching for what will come of his open vulnerability. 

He watches as, very slowly, Shoyo’s hand moves over his. 

His fingers move tentatively, a tight brush of air and heat more than anything as he traces up the lifeline of Tobio’s palm, fingers following the soft curve of it until it gives into the headline. He follows that too, tracing the born seams and folds worn into his skin. 

He follows the heart line and feels the familiar calluses that rest there, the skin worn rough and thick from the countless serves over the years, yet it’s not a bad feeling. It’s satisfying, work and power folded into the form of familiar human flesh and bone. So much in so little. 

As Shoyo traces up, his fingertips sliding up over song tendons and knobbed bone until he reaches the perfectly manicured nails. Here, right where Tobio sets the ball all game, is surprisingly uncalloused. It’s strong, reliable and perfect as he knows, but it’s cared for in a way no other part of him is. 

Shoyo lingers here. Fingertips brushing Tobio’s, pads pressing to pads one by one, deliberate, short nails running over skin, pressing, as if just to see how the tendons stretched and the flesh indented. He moves as if to see the human in the shell of the prodigy. 

A shiver runs down Tobio’s spine, but he doesn’t move.

As quietly as Shoyo had moved his fingers up his hand, he moved down it again. He skips past all the lines of his palm and instead settles on his wrist, two fingers pressing down to where the dull boom boom boom of life runs, of the pumping of his heart and the blood in his veins. 

It’s fast, however, it’s not panicked. It’s elevated like they would be in a game, running and jumping and having the time of their lives. They aren’t playing a game now.

When Shoyo finally looks up, Tobio is staring at him. He has been staring at him this whole time. He has since he was fourteen. 

When Shoyo offers a smile, somewhat dopey with the drinks he has had but still shining with genuineness, something behind Tobio’s eyes softens in a way that could never be conscious. 

Quietly, he flips his hand around again and links a few of their fingers together to rest on the table. Meaningful, unobtrusive touch. 

“You know, I never took you for a quiet drunk,” Tobio murmurs. Shoyo softly hums in response. 

“I’m not normally, I’m just… happy.” He tilts his head toward Tobio and he smiles again, warm and bright. It never gets old, it never stops feeling like something grander and more meaningful than any small thing should be, something to be cherished in cupped hands and soaked in. 

“I’m so happy right now, Tobio.”

Shoyo has made it. He has beaten Tobio. He has won. He is home again. They’re here side by side once more. There is no reason he shouldn’t be on top of the world. This here, is everything he has ever wanted. 

“I’m happy you’re back,” Tobio says so softly, Shoyo almost misses it. But he doesn’t. 

Three years ago, neither of them would have been able to say that. They didn’t have the maturity to. They had trust, trust that grew to unwavering faith, but they didn’t have the vulnerability, the knowledge on how to be vulnerable. They were young dumb boys then. 

Not anymore, though. Oh, how they have grown. 

“...Idiot.” Shoyo doesn’t know who he says it to. “Come on.” 

He stands, pulling Tobio by their linked fingers. The other follows easily, if a little more unsteadily. Out of the two of them, Shoyo clearly had more experience drinking. 

“You’re leaving for the night?” Yachi looks at them and Shoyo can’t tell if she’s sad or if she simply is too intoxicated to project her emotions much through her slurred words. 

“Yeah, will you be alright here?” 

“We’ll be okay, Shoyo.” Yamaguchi smiles at them, waving. Beside him, Tsukishima gives them a look over the cocktail he is still sipping. The corner of his mouth is ticked up. He is far too sober to let this slide tomorrow, but tonight, he is quiet about it. Maybe they have all grown a bit.

“We got her.” 

“Get home safe!” Yachi stands, swaying slightly as she pulls both of them into a simultaneous hug. “This has been so great, we should do this again.” 

“We’ll talk tomorrow again and see if you’re still saying that with the headache you’re going to have.” 

“Don’t even say that right now,” Yachi whines, hiding her flushed face in her hands, knowing the fate that awaited her in a few hours. 

“Good luck!” Shoyo laughs as he drags Tobio behind him out the door, waving until they are out of sight. 

The night is warm, but it’s not hot. Their skin doesn't sweat as much as it is embraced by the weather. The night is all soft breeze, crickets, and the sound of their footsteps on the ground beneath them. 

Neither of them has let go of the other’s fingers, still looped so completely together that they can feel their pulses, fast and steady. 

Slowly, Tobio slows to a stop in the middle of the street and Shoyo mimics him. There is no one around, it's just them and the lights above. Very slowly, deliberately, he turns. He looks down at Shoyo who is already looking at him. 

He knows. 

“Can I kiss you?” His voice is steady, more sure than he feels under the buzz of alcohol, something like butterflies in his chest. 

“Yes.” Shoyo doesn’t hesitate before speaking. He knew what Tobio was going to ask the moment they had stopped. 

Tobio steps forward.

“Will you leave again?” 

Shoyo tilts his head up to keep their gazes connected, his eyes taking on that intense look he sometimes gets. This time, it isn't about volleyball. Maybe for the first time, it isn’t, but maybe this also wasn’t the first time it wasn’t about volleyball and instead about a person. One person. 

“No.” He steps forward, closing the space between them completely. He raises a hand, pressing it against the back of Tobio’s neck, bare skin touching bare skin. “We’re done running, remember?” 

It’s Shoyo who pulls him in once more, but it’s Tobio who gives into the movement, finishing it. It’s he who holds Shoyo’s face in both hands with the deliberate and sound pressure of someone who knows exactly what they are doing and presses his lips to his. 

They kiss and the world keeps turning. The birds keep flying and the land isn’t taken over by any unstoppable force. It’s nothing grand, nothing revolutionary. It doesn’t matter in the history of the world, but it matters to them. It matters to them because it has been seven years since that first day, and they are exactly where they want to be. It matters because they are here now and they know this means something in their lives. 

It’s perfect. It’s in the middle of the fucking street and they don’t care, it’s perfect. Their hearts beat and something expands within their chests, something warm that takes their breath away and fills it with saccharine sweetness. It’s perfect. 

They make it to Tobio’s apartment, how, they don’t know and they don’t care. The door is locked and they are alone. It has been six years in the making when they finally fall into bed together, and unlike all the other times, it’s not simple, it’s not easy, it’s raw.  

It’s two souls pried open with will and grit, bared to each other at last. It’s vulnerable in a way they never were before, connection in a way that shouldn’t be possible. It’s sweet. They cup each other’s faces, they look into each other's eyes. They don’t blink in fear of missing a single second of this. 

It’s precious in a way only this could be. They hold onto it and don’t let go, don’t speak but instead breathe and soak it in under the cover of darkness. After, they lay silently, breathing, not speaking, until Shoyo pulled away from their curved form under the sheets. 

“This is getting gross.” Tobio glances down, disgruntled, as Shoyo rolls to the edge of the bed, sitting up. “Do you have wipes?” 

The man sighs, running a hand down his face as the last of the afterglow slips away, and the reality that yeah, this was getting gross, slipped in instead. 

“Second drawer.” 

“Mm, prepared, aren’t you?” 

“I’m stupid but not that stupid.” 

Shoyo rolls his eyes, throwing a few of the wipes at him as well as his boxers from the floor. 

“Put your clothes on then, stupid.” 

It’s casual, the way Shoyo wipes himself down and then starts to redress in front of him as if nothing has changed from years ago. But things have changed. Tobio sees it in the light of the single lamp against Shoyo’s tan skin. 

He can’t take his eyes off of the other as he runs the wipes over his own skin, barely glancing to half-heartedly throw them towards the trashcan (missing) before pulling on the boxers and Shoyo pulls on his own. Something in him makes him speak up. 

“Come here?” 

It’s a request, not a demand, softer than anything they have spoken to each other all night. Shoyo turns, eyebrows raised to find Tobio, sitting at the edge of the bed, hand outstretched. 

“Please?”

Cautiously, eyes slightly narrowed as if waiting for a trick, Shoyo places his hand into Tobio’s. Tobio closes his fingers around the other’s open palm and tugs, and Shoyo allows himself to get pulled forward, closer and closer until he stands between Tobio’s legs, towering over the setter’s seated figure for a change. 

They stand so close that they can feel the heat of the other’s skin through the air, but they aren’t touching, not except for their hands in a loose hold. Neither remark on the position. 

Shoyo is watching Tobios still with those narrowed eyes but Tobio isn’t looking back at him, he is instead absorbed with the body in front of him. Shoyo has to resist the old immature urge before his locker room days to cross his arms over his chest to hide. The urge comes back now under Tobio’s piercing attentive gaze that is trained unwaveringly upon him, all of him. 

It feels wholly vulnerable. He can’t tell yet if it’s horrible or not because Tobio is blank, reacting as he simply takes in everything that has become of Shoyo. 

Slowly, Tobio raises his free hand, and even more slowly, with aching lightness as if he was afraid to damage what lay beneath his palm, he sets his other hand down on Shoyo’s clothed hip. 

The touch causes goosebumps to break out over the other’s skin. Shoyo inhales sharply as the heat of his palm sinks through the cloth to mingle with him. Tobio’s thumb skims over the ridge of bone lightly. 

Shoyo doesn’t remove the hand from his body. He’s still waiting. It’s the clearest sign of allowance he could have given without words. 

Tobio moves his hand up from Shoyo’s skip, fingers skimming over cloth to brush against skin. He presses his fingertips a bit harder, just to feel the pressure of the muscle and the edge of bone beneath them. His hand moves up each of Shoyo’s ribs and travels to his back. Tobio slides his fingers down each vertebrae as if counting them. 

Shoyo shivers. He doesn’t move. 

Tobio releases their hands, almost forgotten, to rest it on the other’s waist, mirroring where his first hand came to rest. Shoyo is softer here between the gap of his rib and hip bones, but there is muscle under the tan expanse. Where before there was nothing but skin, sinue, and bone, now there was growth. Tobio spreads his hands and feels all the change. 

“What are you doing?” Shoyo’s voice is hoarse. Tobio finally looks up at him, hands around the other man’s waist as if it’s the most natural thing in the world. 

“You’ve changed.” 

Gently, he pulls. Shoyo shuffles another two steps closer, and Tobio leans. He rests his forehead on the other’s stomach like it is meant to be there. Shoyo can feel that he’s shaking, but it takes a moment for him to realize it’s from laughter rather than from anything else. 

It’s not cruel laughter, it’s giddy laughter, the kind you hear from children at night under the covers where you can hide from anything. It's the kind of giddy laughter that bubbles through you in the early hours of delirium or after intense stress, catharsis in one long drawn-out sound, but here it is, clear as day. 

Tobio looks up again. He’s smiling. It’s sweet.

“This is great.” 

He moves his hands, tracing lightly up the other’s chest and dancing over his shoulders and down his arms until they reach his hands. He intertwines their fingers like they are fifteen again, resting his cheek on the other’s body to look up through his lashes. The smile is still there. The giddiness is still there. 

“This is so great.” 

Shoyo can only breathe. Something bright wells in his chest like a burst of light, something untouchable and saccharine sweet. He leans forward and rests his cheek on Tobio’s hair. The soundless giggle that comes out of him and makes them both shake is something he can’t stop. He doesn’t want to. 

“Isn’t it?” 

…

In some ways, it’s not surprising how they grow into each other like they had never stopped. In other ways, it’s still difficult. 

There is still distance, Osaka is a five-hour train ride from Tokyo, but it’s a whole lot shorter than a flight across the world. Their schedules don’t align most of the time, it’s volleyball season, after all, it’s lucky if they can be side by side for a few hours every week, a full night a rarity like no other.

But in some ways also, it’s simple. It’s simple like nothing has been before. 

The morning is young, too young for any sane person to be awake but the alarm rings, grating against the otherwise silent air of the bedroom. Tobio peels his eyes open, joints cracking as he feels around, half-blind, for the phone, shutting off the sound clumsily. 

By the time he gets it to shut off, it’s too late, Shoyo has already awoken. Tobio can tell from the feeling of the other’s body on his, shifting from where they had laid curled into each other. Shoyo moves to sit up, but Tobio reaches, wrapping his arms around the other’s body, keeping him in place. 

Shoyo huffs, speaking but his voice is still thick with the dregs of sleep. 

“Tobio, we have to get up.” Shoyo tries again to sit up but Tobio tightens his grip further. 

“Mmm… c’mere.” Tobio pulls Shoyo’s head closer, kissing the crown of the unruly locks. He runs his fingers through it, pushing it off Shoyo’s forehead, indulging. 

Shoyo’s hair is lighter than it was two years ago, bleached by the sun into light highlights of strawberry blond within in the red. On their first morning together, Tobio had separated the lighter strands from the darker mass. Old and new, the past and the change that formed the now. 

“We have early morning practice today.” Shoyo reminds, but there is no edge of urgency in his voice, he sinks into Tobio’s hold, giving up on even trying to fight off the seductive pull of warm sheets and sleep. 

“We have it every day,” Tobio mutters into the other’s hair, still not resurfacing. He feels Shoyo’s hand dip under his shirt where it has ridden up to run his fingers up and down Tobio’s spine, the other hands lightly back in neutral response. Tobio shivers at the touch. 

“And I have that photoshoot later too.” 

“Which one?” Tobio finally pulls away from Shoyo’s hair, resting his cheek instead upon it, voice clearer 

“Calvin Klein.” 

“Mmm, sexy. Can I come?” 

“Do you have practice at four?” Tobio opens his eyes, surprised, but flicking over his mental calendar all the same. 

“I get off at three thirty.” 

“Then sure.” Tobio blinks. 

He leans back to put enough space between them for Shoyo to look up at him too. The other’s eyes are sparking in that mischievous way when he knows exactly how to throw Tobio off kilter. 

“Really?” 

“You’re not really going to steal secrets from us by watching us pose. Although, feel free to steal the angles, it could do you some good in your own photoshoots” Shoyo pokes his chest. “Mr. Stiff as a board.”

“Shut up.” He pushes Shoyo’s face away but the movement is barely a real nudge. Shoyo comes right back to him as if magnetized. 

“You know, Atsumu is going to be there,” he warns Tobio but it’s a given. Tobio just hums noncommittedly. 

“Yeah, but you’re there.” 

“And Omi too. They bicker. It gets loud sometimes.” 

“Who?” 

“Sakusa, the other starting rookie. Freaky Wrists.” 

“Oh him.” 

He had been a pain during their match but from one player to another. Tobio could admit how admirable the player’s qualities were, and how much potential he still had to be exploited. 

“He lets you call him that?” Shoyo snorts. 

“Not really.” 

“Mmmm, reminds me of someone.” 

“Shut up.” 

Another alarm rings, somehow even more grating than it was before. In tandem, the two groan, but slowly untangle themselves from this little domestic world they had curated and instead prepare to slip back into their own separate worlds. 

Tobio still walks him to the train station. 

“See you at four?” Shoyo calls one foot already almost on the train. Tobio nods and gets one of those dazzling smiles in return before the other is whisked away, waving. 

Even though the air still was temperate, Tobio could feel his cheeks heat a little. 

The color fades quickly, but the lingering feeling of uncharacteristic impatience that buzzes in his core doesn’t change all throughout practice. It’s not in his mind, not when his mind is consumed by the familiar mantra of angles and trajectories and possible plays, but the lingering adrenaline continues to live in his body, his movements just a little bit faster than they were a day before. 

“You’re in a good mood today,” Ushijima remarks after a particularly perfect set that makes a grin slit across Tobio’s face. The setter shrugs with a shoulder, ignoring how his stomach flips on itself. How anyone could call this feeling ‘butterflies’, he doesn’t understand. 

“I’m going to see Shoyo again later.” Ushijima nods sagely, turning back towards the bin of balls near them. 

“Please send him my regards.” 

“And tell him I'm going to beat him next time!” Hoshiumi yells across the net, not even trying to hide his eves-dropping. Tobio can’t help but snort. 

“That would be the fourth time,” he points out helpfully, spinning a ball in his hands. “Isn’t the phrase less is more?” 

“Shut up and serve the damn ball!” 

The impatience lingers, but his mind stays clear. 

Before, Tobio heard about athletes swearing off relationships due to distraction from their end goal, but now, when Tobio is in the same position, the notion is foreign. Shoyo is so enwrapped with volleyball that there is no dramatic change in his life, what is still what it always was; just now, he has someone to call his own for the first time. 

Tobio throws the ball. He hits it and it meets the line of the court with a boom.

The shoot is in Tokyo, not Osaka, and it is the only reason that he is able to extract himself off the courts and get himself onto the train in time. Every few minutes, Tobio glances at the directions Shoyo sent him as if they would change if he looked away too long, but they don’t, and he’s in front of an imposing building in all too little and much time. 

The woman at the front desk looks up as he enters, and her eyes widen slightly with recognition. 

“Are you here for the shoot?” 

“Yes, I’m looking in.” She points towards the elevators. 

“Third floor, first door on the right.” 

In the back of his mind, Tobio wonders if there should be more security than this. He arrives in front of the door with no issues. It doesn’t even need a keycard to get it, the handle moves easily under his palm. 

The studio of the shoot is bustling with people, the buzzing chaos engulfing enough hat no one gives him a second look when he slips in and shuts the door with a light click behind him. It is only when Tobio is nearly bowled over by a sudden heavy force slamming into him that his presence is acknowledged. 

“You came!” Shoyo crows all too loudly directly in his ear, purposefully oblivious to the way Tobio stumbles under his weight. 

“I said I would, dumbass.” But Tobio is also smiling a little too, detangling their limbs for the second time that day. 

“Shoyo where did you-” A familiar voice crosses the space before cutting off and then another heavy force hits the two. 

“Oof-!” Both Tobio and Shoyo stumble even with their combined strength. 

“No one told me that Kageyama was part of the shoot!” Bokuo cries from where he clings to the pair. 

“Because he isn’t.” Sakusa looks thoroughly unimpressed by his teammates' antics as he watches from afar. Seemingly he hasn’t changed at all since training camp. “He’s only here because Shoyo wants him to be.” 

“Hey, why do you get to know and not me?” 

“Because I listened to Shoyo’s ramblings at the beginning of practice rather than joining in.” 

“Who’s here?” A third voice calls, and the very person Tobio had been bracing himself to see comes into view as, finally, Bokuto stops attempting to suffocate them. 

Atsumu doesn’t look impressed when he catches sight of them. To be fair, neither does Tobio.

“Shoyo, you’re up! Sakusa and Bokuto, we need you in the dressing rooms!” 

“Okay!” Shoyo turns to him. “This is the part where you wish me luck.” 

“It’s a photoshoot, not a game.” 

“Play along,” Shoyo whines, crowding in closer

“Go pose, poser.” Tobio shoves him lightly away, his lips twitching. 

It should have been weird, watching like a ghost as Shoyo bounced over to the camera team, greeting them enthusiastically before getting pulled into a conversation about lines, vision, mood, and whatever the hell else went into something like this, but it isn’t. 

There was no embarrassment in the air, years in locker rooms would stip that awkward edge from any person after being in the presence of so many people in varying degrees of undress, instead there was just Shoyo. Bright, blistering Shoyo with the way he put thought into every movement now, how care underlined every word he said. 

In a way, it was the picture of him in volleyball, in something passionate even when it was something as mundane as this.

Tobio didn’t stand in the way of the crew, almost ten feet back from where the mess of equipment lay, but he was still tall enough to see clearly. Shoyo steps into the box of light where the shoot would take place, still intently listening to the muddled directions that try to pull him in every direction at once. 

Tobio doesn’t watch him get into position for the first take, Atsumu steps into the space by his side, stealing his attention. 

There is silence for a moment, the two just watching the crew and animated chatter. The air is heavy with tension that had never faded since their first meeting but now is thicker than it had ever been before, like ozone before a lightning storm. It’s Atsumu who breaks it first. 

“Y’know, I hated ya in high school.” Tobio doesn’t miss a beat. 

“I knew.” It had been obvious, so obvious that even Tobio had known. 

“Yeah, but I hated ya not because of yer playing, even if it was spineless, I hated ya because of him.” There is emotion in his voice, so thick it’s paralyzing. “Ya don’t know how lucky ya are to have someone like that.” 

Tobio doesn’t speak. It seems to irritate Atsumu more than if he had jabbed back. The man laughs a cruel humorless thing, antagonizing.

“He’s everything that a setter could ever ask for, that a teammate or friend could ask for, and ya barely acknowledged him.”

Atsumu turns his gaze upon Tobio, still watching, still probing for something, anything. Tobio doesn’t meet his eye, too busy staring at the light before him. 

“But why would ya? Ya have known nothing else, haven’t you, King? Taken him for granted.” 

Something sharp writhes in Tobio’s chest, something burning and fierce. All these years, Atsumu hadn’t changed. 

“You don’t know anything.” 

Atsumu doesn’t know about the dropped balls. He doesn’t know about the feeling of pure relief, of euphoria of having someone, finally, finally matching pace with him. He doesn’t know what Tobio has had to do to get here, how he has been contorted to change, how he has been ripped apart at the seams and put back together again and again until something better came to be. 

“No, but I know him.” There is anger in his voice just as there is bitterness in it, but there is also something resigned there. A blunt wounded edge. “And he deserves someone who’ll treasure him.” 

“And that’s you?” Tobio says, deadpan. 

“He doesn’t want me when yer here.” Tobio scoffs. It’s loud, not kind, he doesn’t intend for it to be. 

“This is what this is about? You’re angry because he’s with me?”

“Yes.”

“Grow up, Miya, you are surrounded by people like him.” 

“Yeah, I am, but so are ya.” Atsumu steps closer. Finally, Tobio tears his eyes away from the light, looking Miya in the eye, glaring back. “Three years ya played with them, and three years ya didn’t so much as call him.” 

“I don’t have to explain myself to you.” His words are clipped, short and cold, but still, within him, something burns. Pressure building. 

“Ya don’t get the right to throw someone away and accept them when they're strong again,” Miya presses, unaware of that pressure. Or maybe he is. Maybe he wants Tobio to burst. Maybe he wants to see the King’s veneer crack. 

“You. Know. Nothing.” 

The pressure grows.

“You left him behind ever since that last year in high school, only deigning to set your sights upon him again when he could match you again, do you know how shitty you are to do that?”

“Oh, that’s rich from you,” Tobio shoots back. Atsumu had never been a saint either. 

“I would have taken him that first match,” Atsumu says and Tobio knows it's true. “I wouldn’t have let go.”

“But you didn’t.” Tobio steps ever closer. They’re face to face, locked in this web of their own creation. “And you thrived still because there were others.” 

“And you didn’t?” 

Cracks in the facade, the pressure breaks through.

“He’s it for me,” Tobio finally snaps, his words a harsh hiss connecting with the air. “There is no one else.” 

He jabs a finger into the other’s chest, hard. He hopes it bruises. He hopes it ruins the other’s shot. 

“For you, there are many people you can choose but for me, there is only one. I will choose him every time because he. Is. It.” 

Tobio forces himself to step back. He takes a breath. The fury doesn’t fade, but his control hardens. He is the guide, if he gets lost in the sea of whirling emotion, everything else doesn’t have a chance. 

“You forget it was Shoyo’s choice as well, not just mine. Stop treating him like a stepped-on dog, Shoyo takes, he doesn’t idle, not when he wants something.” 

Atsumu has a strange look on his face as he watches Tobio. He must see something because slowly, his lips curl into a humorless smile. 

“That’s the worst part, isn’t it?” He glances at the shoot stage, at the light. The resigned edge to him hasn’t faded, it has only grown more apparent, the wound throbbing in time with a heartbeat. “Maybe in another life.” 

Tobio can’t bear to look at him anymore. He instead looks back to the stage as well. Shoyo isn’t paying attention to them, no one is, but all their attention is on him. Slowly, he takes another breath. 

“Maybe.” He swallows. “I think that’s why I hated you in high school as well.” 

“Not much to be done about it now, isn’t there?” Atsumu turns to him again. “Yer a good setter Tobio-” 

“I know.” 

“Arrogant, much? Yer a good player. I’m a good player. So let's just play now and don’t deal with anything else.” “Okay.” 

“Perfect.” The other turns away again. “I still don’t like you.”

“The feeling is still mutual.” 

“Miya!” One of the staff calls. “You’re up after Sakusa, we need to do final fittings!” 

“Of course.” 

With a final glance, Atsumu moves away, and finally, Tobio can breathe fully again. He hadn’t even realized he had been shaking until he reached to run a hand through his hair and felt the tremor. 

The shock from that simple fact, the clarity illuminating the disconnection from the body he prides himself on being so in control of betraying his turmoil, is enough to miss the photographer calling for a switch and for Shoyo to part from the stage, walking up to him.

“Of course.” 

With a final glance, Atsumu moves away, and finally, Tobio can breathe fully again. He hadn’t even realized he had been shaking until he reached to run a hand through his hair and felt the tremor. 

The shock from that simple fact, the clarity illuminating the disconnection from the body he prides himself on being so in control of betraying his turmoil, is enough to miss the photographer calling for a switch and for Shoyo to part from the stage, walking up to him. 

“You okay?” Tobio starts, the other suddenly very close, but still nods without really meaning it. Shoyo squints at him, suspicious. “You don’t look fine.” 

“I’m fine,” Tobo says with a wooden tongue. “Are you done?” 

“Not yet, one more outfit.” 

“This is an outfit?” Tobio snarks, eyebrow raised, pinching the thin clinging material of the other's shirt. Shoyo bats his hand away, smoothing the cloth down again. 

“You just have no taste.” 

Tobio is still too thrown off to come up with a response.

The shoot is over quickly after that. Shoyo is the first of the four to be let go, all needed shots taken. Tobio waits for him by the elevator as he waves goodbye to everyone, bowing before the staff and yelling into the dressing room where a mix of annoyed and jovial shouts are returned to him. Shoyo is smiling when they ride the elevator down and still smiling when they take the train back to Tobio’s apartment in comfortable silence. 

But Tobio was still thinking. He’s not spiraling per say, but the conversations with Atsumu had stuck like gum underneath your shoe, noxious, annoying, irremovable. 

There were many setters in the V league, many fantastic ones. Tobio was very good, but he wasn’t extraordinary compared to others of the same caliber, not anymore. In high school, he had been a prodigy in his own right but now… now there were others. There always would be others. 

Shoyo has only been playing in a V league team for less than a year and only with one team. There would be other teams, people like them moved around. He would play with others. Others would give him amazing tosses, and Shoyo would hit them with the same zeal as always because volleyball was volleyball, no matter from whose hands. 

There was a pattern to Shoyo’s… partners. Tobio had seen how he fit into that pattern when Shoyo told him about it, he also had seen how the others had in the past. He now saw how many others would too, if given the chance. 

It wouldn’t be wrong for Tobio to be another link in Shoyo’s chain of partners, he had the right to create one as long as he pleased. It wasn’t Shoyo’s fault Tobio would never be able to create a chain, it wasn’t his responsibility. 

But Tobio doesn’t want to be another link. He doesn’t want to be alone. 

“What were you talking with Atsumu about?” Tobio looks up. They're in the apartment now, just the two of them with the door firmly shut on the outside world. 

“Hm?” 

Shoyo is looking at him strangely. 

“You two were speaking. Neither of you looked particularly happy.” 

Tobio plays with his fingers if just to not look at the other, quiet. 

He doesn’t speak for some time, and Shoyo doesn’t push, he instead waits like he knows Tobio is thinking, forming the words slowly, more carefully than he had in a long time. 

“Hey,” Tobio’s voice is purposefully flat when he finally speaks. “If you didn’t meet me, would you be with Atsumu?” 

Shoyo’s eyebrows raise. He almost looks confused.

“If I didn’t meet you, I wouldn’t be here with him,” he says simply, obviously. It takes Tobio’s breath away. 

“But if you were, would he be… it.” 

“‘It’,” Shoyo repeats. He’s staring at Tobio in that intense way, in that calculating way. 

Slowly, Shoyo walks to him, stopping in front of him. He reaches, taking Tobio’s hands in his own, unknotting his fingers from each other. His hands are colder than Tobio’s, but it’s not unpleasant. 

Slowly, he presses a kiss to one of Tobio’s knuckles. It makes him flush, heat rising in his cheeks that makes him look away, but he can’t shield his face, not with Shoyo still holding his hands so firmly. 

“Tobio.” Shoyo presses another kiss to his knuckles, then another. “Look at me?” 

Slowly, reluctantly, Tobio meets Shoyo’s eyes, the burning brown just as intense as before but now his face is different. It’s soft. 

“You’re so stupid.” He rubs a thumb over Tobio’s skin, sweet. “There is no universe where there is no us .” 

He kisses Tobio. He goes on his toes to reach, Tobio too frozen to be of much use as the sensation washes through him. Shoyo releases his hand and winds his arms around his shoulders, pulling him down to get better reach, but he doesn’t stop kissing him in that languid way. 

“Beautiful boy,” he murmurs against his lips. 

“Stop it,” Tobio whispers because there is something terrified in him. 

“Beautiful, beautiful boy. My beautiful, beautiful boy.” 

Shoyo doesn’t stop. He lets go of Tobio’s hands and cups his face like something precious. He peppers kisses across his cheeks, the corner of his mouth, the bridge of his nose, his closed eyelids, every piece of him he can reach. 

“All mine. You’re all mine.” 

“I know,” Tobio protests half-heartedly but Shoyo shushes him. Tobio can’t even whimper. 

“Then act like it.” Shoyo brushes his thumbs over Tobio’s cheeks, continuing to cup them, whole and bright. He smiles at Tobio, every bit the light he has always been 

“It will always be you. Every time, I will always choose you.” He presses a kiss to his lips. “I promise.” 

And Tobio- 

Tobio lets out a shuddering breath and believes him because Shoyo Hinata has never made him a promise he hasn’t kept. 

…

It began, as many things do, with a boy, but what made this different is that it would end with two. 

Maybe it had always been the both of them unknowingly and fate had tipped its hand, jostled the needle-tipped scales that balanced so precariously until they bumped into each other and could never separated again by the weight of cosmic gravity. 

But also, maybe fate had done nothing. Maybe it had just been them, two lonely people, stewed in a mutual vice so oveaking that they simply grew into each other like two thees planed too close together. 

However, it was far beyond something so physical as plants or scales or gravity that the two came together to form one. 

…

They make the national team. 

Tobio hadn’t even gotten his call before Shoyo slammed the door of the apartment open, his mouth opening and closing, unable to form words as the phone rested limply in his hand. Tobio could barely brace himself before Shoyo threw himself at the other, shrieking and yelling unintelligible words in equal measure. Tobio caught him all the same. 

He didn’t need words to understand what had happened, he just hung on as tight as the other did to him, the smile on his face equally created by elation and pride squashed in the orange hair. 

Tobio was the number one setter in the nation, he was going to make the team again, he didn’t need the call, but the rush of being invited to the world stage not once but twice is compatibly nothing to the rush of dizzying warmth that floods all of him at the realization they’re going to play together again. Tobio is going to set for Shoyo again and Shoyo is going to spike for him again. 

And they do. Tobio sets and Shoyo spikes. Over and over again, slipping into an old well-worn grove made sharper than it ever once was with the honed edge of change. It’s great. It’s the best thing ever. 

It’s two weeks before the Olympics. It is two weeks before they have the biggest game of their lives and for the first time in months, they aren’t thinking about it. They are thinking about each other, looking, seeing each other because the word that had been danced around for so long finally passes through one of their lips. 

“Marry me,” Shoyo says with all the demand as he does when calling for a toss. Sure. All-encompassing. “Marry me, Tobio.” 

It was impulsive. It was inevitable. 

Love is a difficult word. It’s heavy, it carries a weight that cannot be outmatched by any other word, even by knowing. You can know someone and despise them. You can know someone and not give a damn if they breathed or not. You cannot love someone without knowing them. It’s the next step from knowing. 

Perhaps, there was no beginning to their love. It simply came to be one day, the evolving stage in their cycle of obsession in their lives. Maybe it grew from the bond that tied them together maturing into something soft, delicate, something breakable yet something untouched until they could run forward and match pace for the first time. 

Maybe it had been then when it had happened. Maybe it had happened when they were fourteen on the stairs, they just didn’t know it yet. Either way, the endpoint is the same. 

They love each other like they know each other, innately. And though all the time, though all of life, here they were, staring, because they were still here. They still had the other as the other had them. 

“Okay,” Tobio whispers. “I’ll marry you.” 

And it would be this moment, not any single block or toss or spike or match or game, but this, a culmination of it all, that would never be lost under the layers of memory or time because there was no single limit to the promise of endless forever. 

Fin