Work Text:
After being exiled from the Kunimi household—someone had not appreciated being nagged in his own home and made it clear that not even his best friend would be given grace in the throes of finals week—Yuutarou decides to indulge in the sort of sentimentality that even Akira’s sweet tooth would have protested.
It comes as no surprise that their neighborhood park is deserted on a random Tuesday.
Well, park might also be too generous a word when yellow tape hangs loose around the whole perimeter and wild grass sticks out of every crack in the concrete. It’s really more of an abandoned lot that the youth co-opted for their leisure. With just a handful of trees and a few square meters of open space, they made do—often playing crude versions of whatever sport someone could get their hands on a ball for.
Yuutarou easily steps over a section of tape, plops down at the foot of the nearest tree, and closes his eyes. Ignoring the weight of his phone in his pocket, he thinks back to simpler times.
The first time Yuutarou played volleyball, the other kids deemed him tall enough to make up for the fact that his team only had five players. Instead of a net, they had two rocks marking either end of an imaginary center line. Rules only ever got enforced at the whim of such a fickle majority.
He couldn’t have known, back then, what he was getting into.
A childhood of receives sent way up into trees and overhand passes that felt more like basketball throws hadn’t prepared him for the hunger that would settle deep in the marrow of his bones. He remembers scraping his knee on that first day, hard enough to draw a little bit of blood, and wonders if whatever volleyball gods were watching mistook it for an offering.
When Yuutarou opens his eyes again, everything suddenly feels smaller and he has to take a moment to recalibrate. Then, as he’s coming back down to reality, his stomach growls.
He chuckles to himself. That hunger, he can actually satiate.
Still feeling nostalgic, he sets off for the bakery he used to frequent with his old team.
Now, Yuutarou clearly remembers said bakery being a six-and-a-half-minute walk from the southern gates of Aoba Johsai High School. (If the team was feeling particularly ravenous right before a big match, they could get there in under five. While reeling from a tournament loss, it might take closer to eleven.) He hadn’t accounted for the fact that he’s never had to get there from anywhere else before.
As he approaches a vaguely familiar corner, he decides he’s going to turn left this time. The orange kitten that comes out of nowhere, crashing cartoonishly into his legs, stops him right before he can follow through. Yuutarou cracks a smile and figures he’s not in any real rush. He bends down, tentatively reaching out.
Soon, the kitten’s cheek is brushing against the palm of his hand. He feels the soft rumble coming from the impossibly tiny creature more than he hears it.
“Thought you’d fucked off to Saitama.”
He startles, reflexively pulling his hand back. The kitten whines at the loss, and Yuutarou gives it an apologetic pat on the head. He looks up and finds himself under Kyoutani Kentarou’s sharp gaze. “S-Senpai!” He feels his face heat up as he stands. “Uhm, I did. Sort of. I’m between semesters right now, so…” He gestures lamely at their surroundings.
Kyoutani hums in acknowledgment. “I told you to stop calling me that.”
“Sorry,” Yuutarou says sheepishly.
As if sensing that it no longer has his undivided attention, the kitten yowls before taking off.
The roll of Kyoutani’s eyes tells him that the spiker fully expects him to keep making the same mistake—which is fair. Kyoutani insisted on dropping formalities two and a half years ago.
Yuutarou clears his throat and brings a hand to the back of his neck. “Actually, Kyoutani-san…”
Get on with it, the look Kyoutani gives him seems to say.
“The bakery,” Yuutarou starts. “The one the team would always go to. Do you remember it?”
Kyoutani shrugs. “Don’t know why I wouldn’t.”
“Well, I was wondering if you knew how to get there from here.” Yuutarou squirms a little under Kyoutani’s blank stare. Weakly, he tacks on, “I just always got there from Seijoh, you know?”
Mercifully, his senpai doesn’t call him an idiot. It’s not any more comforting, however, that Kyoutani starts walking off.
Yuutarou, bewildered, just watches him go.
No more than a couple of meters away from where Yuutarou is still standing, Kyoutani stops and looks over his shoulder with a raised eyebrow. “You comin’ or what?”
Oh. “Oh!” It comes out a little louder than intended, but Kyoutani doesn’t say anything as Yuutarou sidles up to him. (Apparently, he wasn’t even supposed to take a left at that corner.) “Are you sure? I was mostly hoping you would give me a few landmarks on the way there or something. I’m not completely hopeless with directions.”
“Was headed there anyway,” is the explanation Yuutarou gets. Kyoutani’s hands are stuffed in his pockets as he says it, and he doesn’t look anywhere but forward.
It isn’t long before they get to their destination.
Yuutarou probably could have made it on his own—not that he minds the company. With everything going on with university and volleyball, he was considering reaching out to Kyoutani over the break anyway. Maybe he can find the nerve to ask for some advice before they part ways.
Kyoutani does not hold the door open, but he does give it enough momentum so Yuutarou can slip through before it closes. (Yuutarou has watched him do the same thing to Yahaba and Watari enough times to see it for what it is. He knows it’s intentional because Yahaba got a faceful of door whenever Kyoutani wasn’t feeling so well-intentioned.)
“Pick somewhere to sit,” Kyoutani instructs. He doesn’t bother waiting for a response before walking up to the counter himself.
There’s not really enough people around to warrant it, but Yuutarou takes the request in stride. After realizing he doesn’t need to work out the logistics of seating a team that isn’t even here, he ends up choosing a table a little further into the bakery.
While waiting for Kyoutani, he pulls his phone out and swipes the camera open from the lockscreen. He’s fairly certain that the patch of scorched wood on his side of the table is from the time Hanamaki accidentally knocked the candle off Oikawa’s birthday cake. He snaps a quick picture and makes a mental note to send it to the old group chat later.
“Could’ve sworn that candle left a bigger mark.”
“Right?” Yuutarou snorts and sets his phone face-down on the table. He looks up in time to watch Kyoutani set his tray down, surprised to find a second meal next to the chicken curry and hōjicha. “Wow. You must be really hungry, senpai.”
Kyoutani looks at him like he’s an idiot and places the other dish right in front of him. It’s the seafood doria that Yuutarou typically got after tournaments, when he needed something more filling than the wide assortment of pastries. “They’ll have your drink out in a sec.” Yuutarou doesn’t trust whatever his face is doing that makes Kyoutani snicker before asking, “Genmaicha, right?”
“Y-Yeah! Thanks, s—” He catches himself early, but they both know what he was about to say. He clumsily plucks a pair of chopsticks from the tray and breaks them apart. “How much do I owe you?”
Across from him, Kyoutani lets out an unimpressed sigh. “S’on me. Just knock it off with the senpai shit.”
“I can do that,” Yuutarou says with a nervous chuckle. When he takes a bite of his food, he’s pleased to find that it’s just as good as he remembers. “Do you still come here often? I don’t think I’ve ever gone without the team.”
“Been comin’ here since middle school,” Kyoutani grumbles. “Felt weirder comin’ here with other people, but it was whatever. Only had to put up with it for like a year anyway.”
“Aww,” Yuutarou coos. “You loved us.”
Kyoutani glares at him but doesn’t bother denying it. (Never mind how that look hasn’t had its intended effect ever since the team discovered Yahaba could be more of a hardass than him.)
Yuutarou just grins back.
After that, both of them begin to earnestly dig into their food. Every other time Yuutarou was here, it had been with at least a dozen other teenagers. The lull that settles over them is certainly different but not unwelcome.
The drink that eventually arrives for Yuutarou is exactly how he likes it—lightly iced and with a splash of oat milk that the standard drink doesn’t have but Kyoutani clearly knew to ask for. Yuutarou thanks Kyoutani again and wonders, not for the first time today, just how much he knows.
“Where’s your friend anyway?” Kyoutani deflects, taking a sip of his own drink.
“Oh, Akira’s…” Yuutarou thinks about his sleep-deprived best friend answering the door with the imprint of calculator keys on his cheek. It’s a wonder that Yuutarou even lasted two and a half hours before getting kicked out. “...busy.”
“University kickin’ his ass?”
Yuutarou confirms as much with a nod and a grimace. Just a week ago, it was him going through hell. “It’s been kind of weird operating on different schedules,” he admits, “but I’m so glad I’m not him right now.”
“How long’ve you two known each other again?”
“Ten, maybe eleven years?” Now that he’s said it out loud, it sounds like an absurd amount of time. At nineteen, it’s more than half the time he’s been alive. “When my family moved into the neighborhood, Akira’s mom came by to welcome us and brought him along. Before they left, he walked up to me with a real serious look on his face and told me where the other kids liked to play.”
“He invited you to volleyball?”
“Football, actually,” Yuutarou points out with a laugh. “And technically, he invited me to take his spot. He wanted to sit out and could never convince them to let him. I don’t know why he thought bringing me would work, though. It’s not like anyone cared when teams ended up uneven.”
Kyoutani snorts. “That makes a lot more sense. How’d both of you end up in volleyball then?”
“The group would play just about anything,” Yuutarou explains. “As far as sports went, Akira always preferred volleyball ‘cause there was less court to move around in. I convinced him to join the school club with me in fifth grade.”
“D’you miss playing with him?”
“Of course I do,” comes his immediate response. “But it’s fine that he just plays for fun now. I mean, don’t we all?” And there are days, sure, that it hits Yuutarou a little harder, but he knows he’s already been so lucky.
Kyoutani’s nod is sympathetic. “Your new team any good?”
Yuutarou takes a moment to consider. He’s been doing a lot of that lately. “They’re alright,” is what he settles on. “How’re things with the Frogs?”
“S’been pretty good,” Kyoutani says. “Got subbed in during our last match and scored ‘nough points that they’re considering having me start for the first couple’f games next season.”
“Against the Spirits, right? I actually caught a bit of that match with my roommate. I swear I could feel your spikes through the screen,” Yuutarou muses. “Man…”
“You could’ve blocked that last one,” Kyoutani casually notes—as if he replayed the moment in his head, superimposed Yuutarou onto the other side of the net, and watched things play out in Yuutarou’s favor. Then, as if he’d also imagined Yuutarou playing alongside him, “But you could’ve given #7 a run for his money, too.”
The offer from the Tamaden Elephants sitting in Yuutarou’s inbox would probably agree.
Yuutarou swallows the last of his food and watches a bead of condensation trail down the side of his glass. “You really think so?”
“Do I look like the type to say shit I don’t mean?”
“I guess not,” he concedes. Then, because it’s easier to deflect, “You should have dropped by practice more often if you missed playing with your kouhai so much.”
Kyoutani doesn’t rise to the bait, instead narrowing his eyes at Yuutarou. “Which team?”
“Huh?”
“That’s what’s got you all in your head, isn’t it?” Yuutarou gets the feeling that Kyoutani isn’t really asking. “Been there, done that. Which team’s trying to lock you down and why won’t you let ‘em?”
Yuutarou sputters. “I—”
“Would you like to know,” Kyoutani cuts in, “how I knew the Frogs were right for me?”
Please, Yuutarou thinks hysterically. He schools his expression into something a little less desperate before asking, “How?”
“I didn’t,” Kyoutani admits. It is not what Yuutarou wanted to hear, and Kyoutani doesn’t stop there. “Couldn’t believe it when Mizoguchi said the Frogs had their eyes on me. Couldn’t believe it when I was at the official tryouts. Couldn’t believe it when I finally got a jersey.”
“And I thought Watari-san was bad at giving advice,” Yuutarou finds it in himself to quip.
“Does it matter what I believed, though?” Kyoutani asks. “I wanted to play volleyball. They were the best team that trusted me to.”
Could it really be that simple? Yuutarou thinks about the park, Kitagawa Daiichi, Aoba Johsai. He thinks about the prefectural finals against Karasuno—catching glimpses of old teammates in the crowd, shutting down that last freak quick right out of bounds, shaking Kageyama Tobio’s damn hand. He thinks about every tournament that ended early for him in Sendai, how he’s never been to Tokyo, what he could have in Saitama.
“I want to go even further,” stumbles out of Yuutarou’s mouth. He clears his throat and looks off to the side. “I know this is my chance to, but what if it doesn’t end up being enough?” There must be a line between hunger and starvation; he just doesn’t know where to draw it.
“It probably won’t,” Kyoutani agrees. “Ain’t that just more reason to keep going?”
Yuutarou takes in a shuddering breath and feels his lungs expand around his heart until they’re pressed right against his ribcage. “I hope you’re right.”
“Yeah, well,” Kyoutani chuckles, “I’m countin’ on it, too. I bet Argentina’s real nice, but it ain’t for me.”
Hearing Kyoutani allude to their former captain, Yuutarou can’t help but laugh. “Kyouken-chan doesn’t want to follow in his senpai’s footsteps?”
Kyoutani scowls. “Shoulda left you out on the streets when I had the chance.”
“Thanks again for the meal, senpai,” Yuutarou says with a grin. He lets it soften to a smile before continuing, “And thanks for believing in me. It means a lot to me that you do. You probably don’t wanna hear it, but—”
“You’re right,” Kyoutani interrupts. The tips of his ears are pink. “I don’t wanna hear it.”
“It was an honor to have played on the same side of the court,” Yuutarou tells him anyway. “When the time comes, I hope you’ll find me a worthy opponent.”
Kyoutani does not assure Yuutarou with something cliché like I already do. Instead, he asks, “You and what team?”
“The Elephants,” Yuutarou answers this time. It feels good to say out loud, so he laughs and says it again, “I think I’m joining the Elephants.”