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He thinks it starts after Shiratorizawa’s loss, after Karasuno’s victory at the Inter-High; a part of him wants to say he knows for sure that’s when it happens.
There’s nothing special about how they meet, if anything, it’s repetitive, familiar; they’re just standing in the hallway by the bathroom, face-to-face with another confrontation minus Iwaizumi, Oikawa, and Aone. But it doesn’t make a difference to them whether or not the others were with them; there’s no more rivalry to be had or challenges to issue.
It had actually become just a simple, coincidental meeting.
Their eyes are still locked onto each other, the silence enduring, but Hinata finds that the shared silence isn’t too uncomfortable. It wasn’t comfortable by any means, but he could at least handle a few more moments of the not-so-heavy-but-not-so-light air; he finds that he isn’t scared of the ace anymore.
He opens his mouth to say something to break the silence only to be stopped by the sight of small patches of red on Ushijima’s cheeks; his own cheeks flush immediately.
“Congratulations. You’ve won our challenge,” he says, tone still gruff and deep and rumbling, but Hinata can hear the underlying message beneath it: you’ve proven me wrong, and I’m sorry.
Hinata stammers out a response, heart beating erratically because there is no way this person in front of him is Ushijima; he’s the ace of Shiratorizawa, the ace of Japan’s national team, and biggest of all — to him anyway — he’s his rival. He wants to scream at the sudden turn of events because of course, the day he’s finally not terrified, this happens.
“U-Uh, yeah! We did! I p-proved myself, yeah?!”
Ushijima raises an eyebrow at the response, but nods anyway. “I’ll be watching the nationals matches. Please win.” He bows respectfully, and with a seemingly last-minute choice, smiles softly.
“Y-Yeah, we’ll win! For us and all of the people before us!” Hinata’s voice isn’t as shaky or nervous anymore, a fire burning in his brown eyes as he gives a wild grin to the ace of Shiratorizawa; he can see his own intensity reach him, olive eyes mirroring brown ones.
“Good luck, and good bye.” The taller figure moves to turn and walk away.
“A-Actually, wait, Ushiwaka,” Hinata exclaims, only mildly wincing at him using his nickname. “We’re not rivals on the official courts anymore right? Or at least, not for a while..?”
Ushijima nods, staying silent and letting his face express his confusion; Hinata takes a deep breath before plunging into his request.
“Please train with me!”
The smaller boy is red-faced, mouth twisted into a half-grimace, just waiting for the eventual denial. When it’s still silent, he tries to stutter out an apology; after all, what kind of person would train with him if he had asked like that? He turns, starting to walk back to the buses that his team was probably waiting for him.
But he doesn’t get far, his body freezing up and eyes widening.
“I accept your offer, Hinata Shouyou.” His voice is strong and almost bellows out the answer, but Hinata can hear the slightest bit of happiness and amusement in the undertones, and the nearly invisible fondness that accompanied his name.
He turns his face, giving Ushijima a brief, but large grin before he starts genuinely travelling back to the buses. He feels the warmth rise to his cheeks, and the seeds of affection make a home for themselves in the deepest parts of his heart; butterflies start to migrate into his stomach.
--
Hinata grumbles for around the fiftieth time that night, sprinting across the court to reach the volleyball that was rolling towards the wall. He can hear the chuckles escaping Ushijima’s mouth as he ran back to the spot near him, hands clutching the ball tightly.
“Try again,” he comments, still standing by the bleachers and breathing heavily from his own workout.
Hinata shifts his weight to his back foot,stretches his arm out, and breathes. The tension in his shoulder eases and the ball suddenly feels a little heavier in his hand, as if it carried all of the weight Hinata had shouldered. He shifts one more time, body tuning out the former ace’s presence and eyes concentrating on the space in front of him.
One more breath, and the ball leaves his hand; for a moment, he zones out.
Everything around him slows down, mind somewhere else as it flickers through the last few months he had spent with Ushijima; from their true first meeting at Shiratorizawa to the challenges flung around in that dreaded bathroom to his embarrassing self practically yelling at him to train with him.
But then it changes into the more recent memories of them spending their nights together in the empty gym with only volleyball on their mind. It starts from their first training session when Hinata felt his nerves grip at him again and ended up shrieking high-pitched then moves to their twentieth training session where he sees Ushijima laugh genuinely for the first time after reading a funny ad in Shounen Jump and finally, all the way to now, with Hinata jumping high and his hand slamming the ball across the court.
It hits the floor exactly on the white lines.
He feels olive eyes burn into his skin, and he turns around to the sight of a wide-eyed Ushijima. But soon, the former ace is shaking his head, and a his lips curve into a small smile filled with so much pride for him that it hits Hinata like an oncoming truck and his breath is knocked out of him for a moment.
“That was a nice serve, Hinata. Continue doing what you did.” He turns red at the compliment and bows awkwardly before sprinting after the ball again.
After that, the rest of their training sessions pass by in a steady blur, only slowing down and becoming clearer as the new school year approached; but soon it’s the night before the first day of classes start and their last chance to practice together.
It’s a bittersweet feeling when the night comes to a close, their arms just grazing past each other as they walked each other back home. The silence is heavy with unsaid thoughts and suppressed emotions, and Hinata wants to cry because the last few weeks had been some of the best times in his life, and he didn’t want to leave it just yet.
So, he stops in the middle of the sidewalk underneath the less than bright streetlamp, body starting to shake as negativity starts to settle in his mind; his hands curl into tights fists with white knuckles, and he bites his bottom lip hard enough for a drop of blood to hit the cement. A tear falls down his cheek, and he hates it, hates it, hates it .
He notes that his heart is beating oddly again, but to a harsher rhythm that grows louder and louder until his own head is pounding in pain, and he finds himself kneeling on the floor with his hands gripping locks of his hair tightly; maybe he muttered some words, or maybe he didn’t, but it doesn’t matter when a pair of warm, calloused palms are suddenly cupping his cheeks.
Its touch is gentle, so, so gentle, and loving that Hinata can’t help but fall into it. A thumb brushes away the tear stains, and keeps stroking his red cheeks, calming the turmoil that had manifested in the tiny decoy in only seconds; he whimpers when the touch turns into his body being enveloped by Ushijima’s.
Then Hinata coughs and coughs again until he couldn’t stop, the tears welling up in his eyes at the lump in his throat, and he cries out again in pain. It takes a harsh hit of Ushijima’s palm against his back to get the lump out: a wild mess of flower petals, bloodstained.
“So, that’s why.”
Ushijima sounds odd, but Hinata can’t find the words to say it or the voice to speak with; he can still feel more of the bloody petals rising in his throat, and he coughs all the way home to a tearful mom and a sister with wide eyes looking at the petals in his hand.
He watches Ushijima head home, the bitterness tangible and his heartache spreading; the seeds of his affection for him grew, their roots stretching past the heart and digging themselves into his stomach; he looks away, and coughs into his palm again. The sight of a bloodstained, petal shakes him to his very core; he feels sweetly sick.
--
They don’t talk anymore, or at least, not like before.
Whereas their chats before were constant and never ending, going off into every topic they wanted to talk about, lasting until the late hours of night, now, it was just the opposite. Like there’s a distance between them that wasn’t there before, along with a wall that only further separated them.
His coughs get worse, and the flowers multiply instead of add; he can’t talk anymore, and breathing is harder now, a lump of petals always stuck in his throat; the tips tickle the insides of him until he had to spit it out, to admit defeat to a shitty disease he never wanted, to succumb to emotions that he wished he never felt.
But he knows. He knows it’s not true when he looks at the growing pile of surgery brochures on his desk and feels a twisting in his gut at the thought of losing his emotions, when he longingly reads all of their old chats and feels the warmth in his heart at each message, and especially when he hears Ushijima’s voice over the line; that’s when he coughs more, but he ignores it just to hear the former ace’s voice for a few seconds longer.
He doesn’t know when he’ll see him again, or if he’ll still be alive by the time it happens, so he takes what he can get, even if it’s just painful conversations told in clipped tones.
Sometimes, though, he gets greedy, just wishing for the the feeling of Ushijima’s arms surrounding him, letting his warmth envelope his tinier body, and to fall deeper into him; he just wants to be greedy for once, to have his hands be filled with the treasure that he fell in love with.
Hinata looks at his phone, and notes the date of his last text, feeling like crying. But he doesn’t; the appearance of flower petals stop him from crying, instead forcing him to keel over in pain at his dry throat and bloody lips.
His mom rushes in at the first noise, and she almost screams at the tiny body on the bedroom floor, eyes teary and hands grasping weakly at his throat. But all she does is avert her eyes at the sight, knowing how shameful it must have been for her son all these months; she just silently picks up the petals, the constant reminder of his and her pain, and throws them into the bin meant just for the flowers.
When she leaves the room after carrying her son up and into his bed, she shuts the door behind her and fishes out her phone. The familiar voice is soothing, if only momentarily, and she starts on her planning, and the phone call ends minutes later.
She leans against the door, hand clutching the fabric over her own heart and sighs; Hinata’s were always known for their large lungs, large hearts.
--
The plan comes to fruition months later in December, and Hinata finds himself standing in front of Ushijima for the first time in months. The feeling of fear was still gone, replaced by an aching emptiness everytime he looked up at the former ace.
There’s nothing special about this meeting, but at the same time, everything about this meeting was special; Hinata can’t pinpoint the exact reason why, but his heart tells him that it is, so he believes in the paradoxical specialty about their encounter.
He doesn’t know if Ushijima thinks the same way, but he doesn’t ask; he only smiles softly at him, and grasps his wrist, tugging him down the sidewalk that led them down a street of houses covered in Christmas lights. They’re pretty enough to make the boy forget about the plastic bag in his other hand, heavy with the weight of blossoms.
The day goes on like that, the decoy enjoying all of the lit up sights as he dragged the other in silence; the only sounds they make is when Hinata starts to cough, and Ushijima is leaning over him, gravelly hums escaping him as he helped him with removing the petals. By the end, the ace’s hands were tinted a light red from picking out all of the bloody flowers, the decoy’s throat hurting more than it ever did before.
The first, real conversation happens when it’s finally late at night in front of a beautiful home with gorgeous lights; Hinata is slightly sad he can’t enjoy the beauty of it with the feeling of Ushijima’s gaze on him, and the silent questions he wanted to ask.
“Hinata.” Said boy looks up at the taller figure, heart wincing at his voice; it still sounded deep and rumbling, but it was smoother now and held a quiet sort of strength to it. He knows that if Ushijima wanted, he could make the earth beneath him shake at his voice.
“I’m sorry for not talking with you more,” the ace apologizes, a frown marring his features. “I should have approached the problem with the flowers more maturely.”
The orange-haired boy just sighs, a tired smile on his face as he just breathes out a quiet, “I know. It’s fine.”
Except that it’s not, abd they know they’re both thinking it, but they don’t make a comment about it. Ushijima just moves on to the question he had been wanting answers to for a long a while now: “Who is it?”
It’s silent.
Hinata looks at him, eyes intense as he tried to scrutinize every part of Ushijima, wondering if the curiosity is genuine or just a trick on him; he doesn’t know why he bothered when he knows that the ace isn’t subtle or mean, just honest. He sighs and looks away, building up the voice to say the things that he had refused to before.
But he gives a single attempt in buying more time.
“Today was really fun, Ushijima.”
Hinata smiles at the ace, albeit fakely, and they soon start making their way home, the twinkling christmas lights illuminating their back and the scattered, blood-stained petals that trailed behind them. Hinata lets the smile drop, and he slows down, stopping on the same sidewalk from months ago, when the first of the flowers appeared; he turns, gives a sad smile before speaking.
“And to answer your question, these flowers, they were for you. They always were, Ushijima.”