Archive of Our Own

Hinata woke up with his bedsheets tangled around him, and immediately rolled over and slapped blindly at his headboard shelf to grab for his phone.

He squinted at the light of the screen, almost blinding in the pre-dawn darkness of his room. As usual, there was a message waiting for him. It had been sent after midnight, when Kenma must have finished his game and finally seen the last message Hinata had sent before falling asleep.

Subj: Re: Prelim final tomorrow aahh!!!
Kozume Kenma [12:23am]: Good luck.

Hinata let his breath out in a big puff and flopped down, letting his phone drop on the pillow beside him. He smiled up at the ceiling.

It was a good day. Today, they would win their match, and earn their place at Interhigh.

Subj: Bus seats
Hinata Shouyou [6:44am]: Tanaka-san says being VC means you get second choice of bus seat after capt. Is that true does your team give you 2nd choice too?
Hinata Shouyou [6:46am]: Where do you sit usually???
Kenma Kozume [6:50am]: For us, whoever boards first chooses first. Kicking someone out of their seat seems like a hassle.
Kenma Kozume [6:57am]: I like the back row, though.

Subj: Cat billboard
Hinata Shouyou [7:21am]: [img attached]
Hinata Shouyou [7:21am]: you
Kozume Kenma [7:23am]: Since it has orange fur it would be you.
Hinata Shouyou [7:25am]: 😝🐈

Subj: 194.2
Hinata Shouyou [9:09am]: Kogane said he’s 194.2 cm now!!! more than a cm taller than 1st yr training camp >:( Wait Kenma have you gotten taller since Golden Week?
Hinata Shouyou [9:12am]: And is Lev taller too?
Hinata Shouyou [9:13am]: Actually, don’t tell me. But if it’s less than .3cm tell him that I grew more bc I did
Kozume Kenma [9:16am]: Lev says he’s .4cm taller than Golden Week.
Hinata Shouyou [9:16am]: I said DON’T tell me!!! Augghhh

Subj: Don’t forget
Kozume Kenma [9:54am]: Remember you said you wanted to wear the compression sleeves for this match.
Kozume Kenma [9:56am]: And tell Kageyama not to go for the pipe too early.

 

Subj: [No subj]
Hinata Shouyou [11:40pm]: We lost

Hinata sat hunched over on the bus, his head jammed up against the back of the seat in front of him. Probably indenting permanent crease marks on his forehead from the texture of the material. But whatever.

Normally he’d be next to Kageyama, but Kageyama had thrown himself immediately into a single-wide seat and pulled his team jacket up completely over his head. He probably wouldn’t be ready to listen to what anyone else had to say until tomorrow or even Monday. Still, that coping mechanism was at least better than some of his previous ones.

The other members of Karasuno were scattered around the rest of the bus, in various states of sleep and dejection. All was quiet except for a murmured conversation up front, between Taketora-sensei and Yachi. The sun was high overhead, and the whole bus felt hot and sweaty.

Hinata’s hands were curled up into fists, his fingernails biting into the palms of his hands.

The Iron Wall of Date…

When Karasuno had won their match against them back at the Interhigh prelims last year, Aone had bowed to Hinata, across the net. But now Date Tech had won, and Hinata had been so in his own head with anger afterwards that Aone could have been dancing the can-can in their lineup and Hinata wouldn’t have noticed. He hadn’t even looked at him, just walked away. What kind of whiny baby was he, that he couldn’t even show respect to his friend?

Hinata pulled his head back, and then butted it into the back of the seat again. Narita made a small noise of complaint from in front of him, but didn’t say anything.

And he had been so happy talking with Koganegawa again this morning, when he ran across him in the hall outside the bathrooms. But after, he was just pissed off at him. It wasn’t fair that he was still growing, even though he was already so tall. It wasn’t fair that Karasuno couldn’t read so many of his sets, when Date Tech seemed to see right through Kageyama’s. Both Kogane and Hinata were first years, and both had started high school volleyball with a lot to learn– and hadn’t Hinata put in more work than him? Strived more, suffered more? Why couldn’t he surge ahead, better than anyone? Why couldn’t he be the best?? It wasn’t fair.

The smack of the ball going down, propelled off of the Iron Wall’s reaching hands. Bam! Over and over, slamming the court on their side of the net. And Hinata’s touches just spiraling off into the stands. And Tanaka’s attempted straight shots landing out of bounds, searching for that perfect angle and finding the course too narrow after all. And blocks, constantly, block after block. Bunch blocks, read blocks, kill blocks. Bam! Bam! Bam!

And now they had lost, and they were done, and they weren’t going to be able to–

Hinata’s phone buzzed in his pocket, and he screwed up his eyes even tighter. A reply from Kenma, probably. For once, he didn’t scramble to look. He didn’t want to see it.

The phone buzzed again. And then again. It kept going, rhythmic – someone was calling.

Hinata leaned back reluctantly, pulled it out of his jacket, and looked at the screen. He stared at it for a moment, then, his movements jerky and automatic, answered the call and held it up to his ear.

There was a quiet pause. Outside the bus windows, trees rolled by, and the short squat buildings of the Sendai suburbs.

“Shouyou” Kenma said.

“Hi,” said Hinata.

He leaned sideways, so his head was resting against the window.

He was sitting in the back row, Kenma's favorite. If Kenma were on the bus with him right now, maybe he would have sat down beside him, right in the next seat. His leg against Hinata’s leg. If he wanted the window that would be okay, too. Hinata would have climbed up over him so they could switch.

“Are you on your way home?” Kenma said.

“I’m sorry,” Hinata said, a non sequitur, and he was embarrassed to hear the squeak of unshed tears in his own voice.

Kenma just made a soft hmm sound. That was the sound he made when he was developing a thought but didn’t know how to say it yet. Hinata took a moment to sniff, and scrub at his eyes.

“Why?” Kenma asked. His voice was a little echoey. Maybe he was in a hallway somewhere.

And why was Hinata sorry? He had said it reflexively, but it was true.

“Because we won’t be able to play you guys at Interhigh,” Hinata said, and speaking it out loud, the full weight of it settled over him.

Because after all that, none of the little things mattered. The frustration of being blocked didn’t matter, the pain of failing a rebound or missing a serve didn’t matter, the yells of the crowd screaming go, go, Dateko! didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered in the end was the loss, the final point that had meant they were off the court, and they weren’t going to be able to play in Tokyo, not in the Interhigh. No Battle of the Garbage Dump this time.

The bus drove on. Hinata thought he could hear the quiet noise of Kenma breathing, on the line. It was a nice sound.

“There’s the Spring Tournament, still,” said Kenma.

“But it won’t be–” Hinata started, then stopped. It won’t be the same, he didn’t say. Not without you.

He didn’t want to get into it. Whenever they got anywhere close to the subject, Kenma’s texts always got shorter, less frequent, less open– more like the ones he used to send back in Hinata’s first year, when the two of them had just become friends. Hinata didn’t like that. It had taken him a long time to get them where they were now. The ease of their messages, passing back and forth. Like real friends. Close friends.

And the one time they talked about it in person, after the practice match during Golden Week– when Kenma had told him in his soft voice that he wasn’t planning to stay on the team for the full season, that he was leaving after Interhigh– his face had looked so pinched and worried about it afterwards that Hinata had changed the subject quickly, seizing on an interruption from Karasuno’s new first year libero who wanted to ask Hinata a question about serve receive.

“Yeah,” he said into the phone, his voice tight. “There’s always the Spring Tournament.”

They stayed on the phone for a while longer, but neither said anything more. Eventually, the rhythmic bumping of the bus and the exhaustion of the morning lulled Hinata into an uncomfortable half-sleep, and when he woke up, his phone had slipped down in between his seat and the side of the bus, and when he fished it out the call had ended.

He checked, but there were no new messages.

At home, Hinata’s mom shooed him into his room, with orders to try to take a nap, like he was a toddler. Ever since the Kamomedai match in January, she had become overly-cautious about big competitions, and worried that he’d push himself too far again.

But his fitful sleep on the bus earlier left him antsy and wide awake now. He tried to watch a recorded game, but it made him too mad. He wrote out a dozen text messages to Kenma, then deleted them before sending. Finally, he simply paced the confines of his room, like an animal in its zoo enclosure, waiting for a chance to escape.

It was late in the afternoon before he had really started to calm down, when Natsu’s voice rang out through the house.

“Shou-chan!” she yelled. She certainly didn’t care if he was sleeping or not. “Your friend is here!”

His friend? He slumped out of his room into the hallway. It wouldn’t be Kageyama, he never visited people’s houses. And Yachi wouldn’t come all the way to Yukigaoka so late in the day. Maybe Yamaguchi was checking on him?

He reached the end of the hall, and froze, one foot still in mid-step.

“Kenma?!”

He was wearing his school uniform, but with his Nekoma hoodie on top. He looked so out of place somehow, next to the shoe cubby in the genkan. How could Kenma be here, in the same place as the umbrella stand, as Natsu’s school bag and the vase where his mom sometimes put cut flowers from the backyard?

Natsu, a little disconcerted by Kenma and Hinata staring at each other, turned suddenly shy, and ran around to stand behind Hinata’s legs, peering around him.

Hinata’s mom, coming in from the kitchen to see what the fuss was about, smiled at the visitor.

“Sorry for the intrusion,” Kenma said to her softly, head bobbing.

“This is Kozume Kenma, from Nekoma,” Hinata said suddenly. “He’s a setter!” he added for some reason.

“Welcome, Kenma” she said, glancing at Kenma’s duffel bag, then back over at Hinata. “Shouyou, is Kenma going to be staying the night?”

With a little squeeze of her expression, she sent him the secret message that she was annoyed at him, for not saying that Kenma was visiting. But how could he have said Kenma was visiting when he didn’t even know?

Hinata noticed that Kenma had his sleeves pulled down over his hands, in the way he did when he was nervous and trying to comfort himself.

“...Yeah!” Hinata said, finally, the word exploding out of him. “Mm hm! He’s staying!!”

In Hinata’s room, Kenma sat on the edge of Hinata’s bed, and Hinata sat on his desk chair. He was spinning back and forth, just slightly, turning until his leg bumped the desk, and then back, and then turning again. Bump, bump.

“I can’t believe you took the train all the way to Miyagi!” Hinata said, his voice almost its normal brightness. “And how did you even get here from the station??”

“Tsukishima Akiteru gave me a ride,” Kenma said.

“Huh??” said Hinata. “Tsukishima’s brother?”

“Yeah. Apparently he and Kuro text sometimes. About Tsukki, I guess. So Kuro asked him.”

Hinata stared at him, taking this information in.

“Kuro likes to meddle in things,” Kenma added. His face could be very expressive, when annoyed. It was cute. Hinata turned away, spinning his chair around completely and facing his desk, where he fiddled with a random pencil.

“Well, you didn’t have to,” he said, to the pencil. “I’m, like, okay! And everything.” He felt Kenma’s eyes on the back of his head– like laser beams, boring into his skull until he could look right into Hinata’s brain and see all his stupid thoughts.

“It’s okay if…” Kenma said, and then stopped.

There was a little crack in the surface of Hinata’s desk. He fit his fingernail into it, like he’d done many times before, when bored with his homework, mind drifting. Thinking of volleyball. Thinking of Kenma.

Hinata thought he wasn’t feeling the laser-beam feeling any more, of Kenma looking at him. After a minute, he risked turning around.

Kenma had slid off the side of Hinata’s bed, and was sitting with his arms around his knees and head down, hair falling around his face like a curtain.

“Hey, Kenma!” Hinata said, “wait, what’s wrong?” And he slid off of his chair too, scrambling forward towards Kenma, crowding up to him and touching his shoulder . Kenma flinched, and Hinata immediately let go again and started to move away, but then Kenma grabbed the front of his shirt to stop him, and was looking up at him, frantic.

“No, don’t comfort me!” he said. “I’m here to cheer you up!”

For a moment the two of them looked at each other, stricken. Then the tension broke, and Kenma smiled and Hinata, laughing, pulled Kenma into a half-hug.

“We’re both pretty bad at comforting people, I think,” Hinata said, into his bedspread where his face was smushed up against it.

“Yeah,” said Kenma over Hinata’s shoulder. “I thought talking would be easier in person, but…”

He trailed off. There was a little movement in the hug, Kenma adjusting. Then some clicking sounds for a minute. Hinata’s phone buzzed in his pocket. He shifted slightly, so he could pull it out and look.

Subj: [No subj]
Kozume Kenma [5:48pm]: Sometimes it’s easier to write something than to say it.

Hinata nodded, up against Kenma’s shoulder.

The next texts came quickly. Kenma was a faster texter than Hinata, even with one hand.

Kozume Kenma [5:48pm]: It’s easier to write– that I’m sad too. About how we won’t be at Interhigh together. And that
Kozume Kenma [5:49pm]: that I think about you all the time.

Hinata was holding his whole body perfectly still. He didn’t say anything– if he spoke, that might break the spell. Kenma might stop holding him, might stop texting him. After a second, the clicking noises of Kenma texting began again.

Kozume Kenma [5:49pm]: At first it was just about playing volleyball.

A pause.

Kozume Kenma [5:50pm]: But then it was other things too.
Kozume Kenma [5:50pm]: I don’t know what to do with it. I’ve never felt this way before.
Kozume Kenma [5:50pm]: It’s too much.

Hinata didn’t know what to think, what to do. He could feel that Kenma was very still, just as still as he was.

“Sorry,” Hinata breathed out, and suddenly Kenma was moving, pushing at Hinata, and at first Hinata thought he was pushing him away, but no, Kenma was just looking at him, searching his face.

“Don’t say sorry,” Kenma said, his voice quiet but urgent.

His face was very close to Hinata’s like this, and his gaze was fastened on him. It was his analysis look, the one Hinata remembered watching him from across the net. Taking everything in.

One of his hands was still curled in the fabric of Hinata’s shirt front, and it clenched reflexively.

He moved his face even closer. Hinata was holding his breath. Closer, closer– until Kenma’s lips made contact, softly, with the apple of Hinata’s left cheek.

It was just a soft, dry smoosh of a cheek kiss. Not entirely different than the way you’d be kissed by an old aunt. But it was Kenma, and his hair was brushing against the side of Hinata’s face, and yes, it was very different indeed.

Hinata’s lips were near Kenma’s ear, like this. He could whisper something to him, if he wanted. But his throat felt like it was full, no words could come out.

He felt a buzzing, under his skin. On the side of his face, but also in his chest, under where Kenma’s hand was still holding his shirt. And on his stomach, too, where he realized Kenma’s knee was pressing against it. Three points of contact, and each one was prickling, like a sparkler held up to his skin.

This cheek kiss was lasting a long time. He started to turn his head, but then Kenma was already pulling back.

Kenma looked at him again. What did he see, in Hinata’s eyes? Hinata didn’t even know what he was thinking, but somehow he was sure that Kenma knew. He knew everything, right? He was always one step ahead. Even when a team thought they were tricking him, Kenma already controlled the court.

Kenma took his free hand and brought it up to Hinata’s face, and, turning his head slightly by the chin, leaned forward again to kiss the opposite cheek. Four points of contact, now- stomach, chest, chin, cheek. Hinata was one big spark. This time the kiss was briefer, and Kenma pulled back after only a second.

Then he moved Hinata’s chin to angle him straight forward, and took a deep, shaking breath, and leaned forward again.

So no, Karasuno wasn’t going to Interhigh. And the next time they played the Battle of the Garbage Dump for real again, whether in the Spring Tournament, or even Hinata’s third year, Kenma wouldn’t be there, waiting for him on the other side of the net. And yes, Tokyo and Miyagi were still hours away from each other, even on the Shinkansen.

But for now, Kenma was here in his bedroom, his mouth warm against his, his hand letting go of his chin in order to grab his waist and pull him closer, letting out a little noise when Hinata opened his mouth. The late afternoon sun was falling across them through Hinata’s window, and there would be tamago kake gohan for dinner, and Kenma could help him read Natsu her goodnight story, and then maybe, if Kenma was feeling especially nice, there would even be volleyball in the backyard, before bed.