Chapter Text
Shoyo flops down. The heat of his skin is sickening; he can hear his own sweat slick against the polished gymnasium floor, and his ragged breaths are far too hot. It's like he's burning up, a fever that he can't sleep through. Playing volleyball in the Karasuno gymnasium at this time of year has always been pleasant, but this time, it's-
Tobio joins him on the floor, far more gracefully, his long fingers first seeking purchase, then tucking his legs under his weight, but he ends up in a heap, on his belly. He groans, baritone and reverberating, and then says, "You need a haircut, dumbass."
It's sharp.
They walk the knife's edge. Graduation is two weeks away. The cherry blossoms are pink and white and delicate, and the clouds are parting to embrace the sun. Everything changes around spring. Shoyo supposes that this should, too. It makes sense that what was once soft and fond would change into something corrosive.
Laughing, Shoyo replies, "You think so?"
"Yeah," Tobio snorts; his hand reaches, and he takes a shock of Shoyo's bright hair, twists it between the pads of his fingers. "You look like a girl."
"You know what those look like?" Shoyo bites back, not a hint of malice in him. He leans into Tobio's touch. His hands are so much bigger; they cup his face sweetly. Shoyo could delude himself like this, at the edge of his teenage years with his whole life ahead of him, next to him.
He doesn't. The past three years have been almost gloriously never-ending. It was Kageyama and Hinata, Hinata and Kageyama, and then the lines blurred, and the boundaries slipped, and suddenly, it was hard to have one without the other. Tobio was not his first love, for that would be volleyball. But he was Shoyo's first partner — something more than a friend, more than a setter, more than himself. He doubts that Tobio even knows how much he takes up of Shoyo's world.
Yet, their time draws to a close. Shoyo wonders if he should tell him now, at least. Tobio's fingers are still in his hair, even though his scalp is definitely sweaty, and Tobio hates having wet hands, and the air is hot and fizzling and palpable, and they graduate soon. He doesn't have any other opportunities; he doesn't know if he will have Tobio like this again. He could say it. "I love you." Shoyo does — he does love Tobio. He would be a fool not to.
The risks outweigh the benefits, though. Tobio has probably never thought about anything other than volleyball in his whole life. Shoyo doubts he even knows what a crush is, or what it would mean to be someone's boyfriend. It's part of his appeal, if Shoyo were to be honest, but it still makes things difficult. He could say, "I love you," and Tobio could reply with, "I love you too."
Or, "What?"
Or, "Gwuh?"
Or, "Eh?"
Or, and this is, by far, the worst one, "Hmph."
Shoyo's fine with them just being friends. He really is. He would rather have Tobio like this than not at all.
"I should get a haircut, though," he muses, half as a distraction for himself, and half to get more time out of Tobio before it all fades to static. "I can't see the ball."
"The ball can't see you, either."
"That's cause it doesn't have eyes, stupid."
"Bad joke."
Yes, he thinks, as Tobio chortles despite himself, I'm fine with this.