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The distant crack of thunder from outside the Karasuno gymnasium was of no concern to either Kageyama nor Hinata. When they were inside the gym, the only thing that existed was the volleyball, the net, and each other.
Which sounds poetic, but usually just led to a lot of bitter, nasty words being exchanged as frustrations were left with no escape but through their tunnel vision. When the explosive, post-practice energy wears off, and the sun has set, and neither of them are performing at their 100% best, things always seem to take a downhill turn.
Hinata didn’t understand why Kageyama hated him. They got along great a lot of the time. Sort of… Well, they got along fine. Kageyama was the first person Hinata when to see when he down the mountain before school, he’d walk his bike while Kageyama finished eating breakfast on the walk over. Kageyama would wait passively while Hinata hooked his bike up to the rack by the front gate, and then they take off to see who can touch the front doors of the gym first.
They flick erasers over at each other during class. Kageyama waits in the hallway, for Hinata to come running out, so they can practice their sets in a back and forth together. They tie their shoes, they stand together in line. Hinata stretches and compares his flexibility to Kageyama’s, wondering if it was because he was so short, or if Kageyama was good at everything, that stopped him from getting his chest as low.
The day is good. And then their afternoon practice wraps up, and they’re alone together. And the first twenty minutes of private practice go well, but the second twenty minutes don’t.
“Tired already?” turns into “god, can you pick the ball up or not?”
“Let’s see what you’ve got,” turns into “you’re never going to be good enough for this.”
“Should we take a water break?” turns into “do you think I can’t keep going?”
Hinata was not exactly innocent in this affair. He found as Kageyama got snippier with him, he started to give it right back. And by the end of the practice, they were getting in each other’s faces, shouting about who’s vault it was that that last ball went clean past Hinata’s hand.
“Well if you could play volleyball worth a damn, maybe you’d have hit it,” Kageyama will spit.
“I’d have hit it if anyone but you was setting!” Hinata shouts back. “I never have this issue with Sugawara!”
And Kageyama will scoff, and Hinata will scoff, and they’ll go back to practicing with scowls and boiling frustration in their chest.
All he wanted was to play. All he wanted was to play! But Kageyama always had to make it so miserable. So awful to do - Koji hadn’t even liked volleyball, and he’d helped Hinata learn a few basic moves without muttering complaints every ten seconds.
All he wanted was to play, and Kageyama was such a goddamn asshole.
Some days, Hinata was glad when Daichi made them shut it down early. He’d go home and practice his sets against the side of his house. It wasn’t as exciting, maybe, he couldn’t spike or do any dive practices, but at least nobody was there to berate and mock him.
But most days, Takeda had late meetings or marking to do, or some of his other teacher obligations, and Daichi allowed Hinata and Kageyama to keep the key to the gym knowing that Takeda would swing by before he went home to kick them out. Which meant most days, they practiced way past dark. Takeda would kick them out, and Kageyama and Hinata would mutter about how awful the other was as they went their separate ways. Kageyama on his ten minute walk home - Hinata for a forty-five minute bike ride, thirty minutes of which took him up a mountain.
He hadn’t really paid attention to the rain. To the thunder, to the flashes. Those distant rumbles had rolled in and gotten much, much louder, but it’s only lightly spitting rain when Hinata is unhooking his bike.
When Takeda had given them the boot, he’d offered to drive them home. But his vehicle can’t fit Hinata’s bike, and Kageyama is too prideful, so they both dismissed the offer and claimed a little rain couldn’t hurt them.
Hinata is left smelling rainwater off dusty asphalt as his bike hisses down the hill from the school. Tiny raindrops flick sharp against his cheeks, but he ignores it. He stands up and builds up speed, wanting to hit the incline of the mountain with as much momentum as possible.
He curves along the barrier, pumping his legs to try and prevent the inevitable - the slow down.
It’s miserable here. The rain has picked up, and even the stuff that has already fallen seems to be out to get him, thick raindrops plopping from heavy leaves above.
It’s only a few minutes until he’s soaked, made even worse by the loss of momentum for his bike. He’s still about ten minutes from the top of the mountain, but he swings himself off the seat and begins to push. Head down, trying not to shiver.
All this just to let Kageyama insult him for a few extra minutes. He should have left when Daichi told him to. But no, Hinata needed to prove he was better than everyone else, Hinata thought 20 extra minutes of practice would make up the difference between him and Aashi. Hinata had tunnel vision.
Crazy how a good old fashioned storm can turn tunnel vision into regret.
Thunder cracks loudly above him, and he flinches. A small red vehicle passes by him, and he steps to the side as he hears it tires crunching over wet pavement. Yellow high beams show off the blurry storm of rain ahead of him, and the curve of the mountain, the reflective stripping on the barrier he followed. The car disappears, and he’s pushed his way to the top of the mountain.
He tries to catch his breath, but through the rain it’s a challenge. He eyes the coiling road down the mountain, takes another breath, and pushes himself off and onto his seat.
This part would be easier, at least.
There’s a part of him that really loved the thrill, of going fast down the mountain. Speed was always part of his kit, but he couldn’t run this fast. This felt like flying without ever having to leave the ground.
It also stings like a bitch, the now torrential downpour assailing his cheeks and nose and forehead. He keeps having to flinch through the rain, as a particularly sharp raindrop hits the corner of his eye.
He feels his entire bike jerk to the side, the wheel beginning to swivel and frantically course correct as he tries to twist at his handles and regain control. He thinks, for a second, he’s about to go skidding across the road like a skipped stone, but he manages at the last second to get his balance back.
Just in time to lift his head to see truck lights barrelling down on him.
Unaware his clumsy maneuvering had thrown him from the shoulder into the centre of the road, the tight corners of the mountain path gave the driver of the narrow white truck almost no warning that a dumbass redhead had fumbled his way over the white line.
It’s all he can do to get out of the way.
He does the rapid, split second calculation that any solution is better than getting hit by a truck, and it’s all he can do to yank his hands to the side as the truck slams down on its horn.
He feels himself clear by inches. A gust of frigid, muddy air buffeting him as it cruises past him, honking its anger at his idiocy all the way.
The truck driver thinks it narrowly escaped a tragedy.
Hinata Shoyo thinks he’s narrowly escaped a tragedy.
But he’s still got far too much momentum on a downhill incline, and that sharp corner has no mercy - He’s lost control of his bike, and it goes slamming into the guard rail fast enough to twist itself up and throw Hinata down the side of the cliff.
He’s not even sure if he’s screamed once this whole time. He’s not even sure he’s taken a breath this whole time. He feels his shoulder crash through the bushes, hitting the rocks on the steep edge of the cliff. He feels his body skid, jacket and shirt riding up as rocks scratch through his side.
End over end, he hits the ground and the foliage again, and feels a snap.
The blurring pain explodes through his body, up from his ankle.
There’s a second burst of pain as he suddenly crashes to a stop, leg twisted against one of the tangled thorn bushes, yanking on that same damaged ankle in the process.
He lays back against the mud and the leaves and the rocks, heart hammering in his chest so painfully he thought he was about to enter a cardiac event - the pressure of his blood under his skin is astounding, his face burning hot despite the continuous onslaught of rain from above.
He swallows and closes his eyes, hands trembling violently against the earth as he tried to sit himself up.
Well that wasn’t so bad.
That wasn’t so bad.
Like his instincts had told him. Definitely better than getting hit by a truck. At least he was mostly okay.
He tries to look behind him, but a sharp pain in his neck tells him nope!
He has to shift his whole body back to see how far he had fallen.
Not…
Not that fall…
If he could just get back up to the side of the road…
Fighting back the heavy wobble in his throat, he uses his shaking hands to try and get himself up, untangling himself from the bushes. Immediately, climbing is not an option. The pain in his ankle is incredible, though when he yanks up his soaked and muddy pants, he can’t see anything immediately wrong with it, save for the fact that moving it felt like jabbing a knife into the joint.
Shit!
Wait-
What am I going to do?
He fumbles around in the rain and the mud, scrambling to try and find where his phone had gone.
It had been in his bag - where was his bag?
Terror beginning to grip through him, at the prospect of being stuck down here, hurt, broken, not even a phone to call for help, he whips his head around despite the flash of pain it causes, eyes frantically seeking through the dark for his back.
He wipes water from his eyes, and tries again.
Where-
There!
Not so far away, but through into a different bush. He could get to it. He could get to it.
He stifles an otherwise involuntary whimper, shifting his leg with that damaged - broken? - ankle underneath him, trying to put all his weight on the knee to crawl through the bushes.
Thorns tear up his arms as he reaches forward, and the thunderstorm above takes no mercy on him.
He hauls himself forward a step, trying to breath through the rain. His ankle drags against the earth, and he feels that wobble in his throat break.
I don’t want to be here.
I want to go home.
He reaches and grabs for his bag, dragging it over to himself and fumbling with fingers turning white from the cold to unlatch it and look for his phone.
He taps through to his mother’s contact on reflex, hitting the call button.
But as he’s calling, he realizes she’s not going to pick up.
I’m taking Natsu to her dance recital tonight, you’ll be okay to make yourself dinner? Make sure it’s something healthy!
The ringing disconnects without an answer, and that’s the last straw.
He feels himself break into sobbing before he even knows it’s going to happen, a half scream from his throat before he’s in hysterics, pressing his face down into his bag to cry and beg the universe to take mercy on him.
Stop the storm.
Stop the pain.
Let him be on the road.
Let his mother answer.
Just one thing, give him one thing, he can’t take all of this.
He’s just a kid, why is this happening?
Shaking, freezing from the rain, what the hell could he possibly do? How long would his mother’s phone be turned off?
He can’t be out here.
He can’t be here, he needs to go home, he needs to go to the doctor, he needs help.
He’s just a kid. It’s not fair.
His cold thumb taps the call button out of desperation.
He doesn’t know what else to do, so he calls Kageyama.
Maybe it’s because he knows Kageyama’s home is relatively close, at the bottom of the mountain. Maybe it’s because it’s the only name he can think of in the moment.
Maybe it’s just because, at the end of the day, when he needs to close his eyes and take a leap of faith, there’s nobody on this planet he trusts more than Kageyama to make the play work.
And Kageyama answers.
“Yo, dipshit,” Kageyama says. “What do you want?”
“I need help,” he says, immediately, voice cracking over his own tears. He wasn’t even aware of how raw his voice would sound, how many sobs were still racking his body. “It was raining, there was a truck, I tried to swerve, I hit the edge, I’m hurt, Kageyama - my mom isn’t answering, I-”
He cuts himself off with another hysterical sob, lifting his free hand to cover his mouth and try and shut himself up.
“Woah, woah-” Kageyama starts, and Hinata can hear him moving around on the other end. “What the hell are you talking about? Where are you? What happened?”
“The mountain pass,” Hinata croaks. “I fell, I’m sorry, I know-”
“Where?”
“Near the top, I-”
“I’m coming,” Kageyama replies, and for a second Hinata thinks he hears a door shut. Had Kageyama already been packing up.
“You are?” Hinata says.
“Yes, I’m coming. Hold on.”
None of that venom is in his voice. The spite and mockery from thirty minutes ago has dissolved. He sounds like a friend again.
“I’m sorry,” Hinata says, found coming out a little more breathless this time as he closes his eyes against the rain.
Kageyama doesn’t reply, and Hinata listens to the muffled movement on the other side of the phone blend into the downpour of rain around him.
The connection might have been lost - this damn storm!
“Kageyama?” he says, trying not to sound too much like a kid afraid of the dark. “Can you hear me?”
Silence.
“Kage-”
“Yes! Yes, I’m here, goddamn,” Kageyama comes back, voice muttering under his breath. “Sorry, I had to put my shoes on. I’m coming.”
“Don’t hang up on me,” Hinata croaks.
“Of course not, I need you to find you,” he replies. “Tell me again what happened?”
Hinata sniffles, trying to still his racing heart.
“I was… I got distracted by rain in my eye, and swerved onto the road while a truck was coming around a… a blind corner. And then I swerved again, but… I really lost control… hit the barrier…”
“You got hit by a truck?” Kageyama says.
“No, I… I hit a railing, went over… I think I broke my ankle…”
“Can you move it?”
“It hurts too much to try.”
“Ow.”
Hinata nods to himself, turning himself around to sit against his back, wincing as he moved his leg.
“It really hurts,” he repeats, though the audio from the other end of the phone has changed, he’s not sure if it’s Kageyama moving faster or the rain or something. Maybe the wind. It’s hard to tell. “If it’s broken, I won’t be able to play volleyball,” Hinata goes on, mostly because he cannot stand the silence right now. “Hah… I guess… I’ll really be as useless as you think…”
No response from Kageyama. He can hear him breathing on the other end, but Hinata gets the impression that Kageyama has pulled the phone away from his ear.
“Kageyama?” he prompts.
Nothing. Just the sound of footsteps and breathing.
Hinata falls silent at that, holding his phone closer to his ear, trying not to worry that Kageyama wasn’t actually coming, that he’d gone the wrong way. He sort of wants to shout and make sure Kageyama knew which mountain he had meant, but…
After a second, there’s a voice through his phone again, and Kageyama sounds breathless.
“Okay…” he’s wheezing. “I’m near the top. Where did you fall?”
“Just over the top, the first… the first corner down - how-”
He wants to ask how’d you reach the top so fast, but the answer occurs to him before he can.
Kageyama is running.
In the storm?
“Kageyama-”
“Okay, hold on-”
Hinata shuts his mouth, suddenly getting an overwhelming flush of guilt and anxiety. Would Kageyama be mad at him, for calling him out like this, during a storm? Why didn’t he take a bike - why didn’t he tell his parents to bring a car?
I swear, if I’d known you were just going to run here, I’d never have asked you to help!
Please don’t be mad.
I can’t take you being mad-
“Hinata?”
The distant, shouting call, not from his phone, but from the top of the mountain, cuts through his swarming thoughts. He shouts back.
“Here!” he calls, hoping his voice is even audible above the rain, it doesn’t feel strong enough to really make an impact. “Kageyama, I’m down here!”
The phone line disconnects.
A few cold seconds of feeling utterly alone are replaced when Kageyama suddenly appears over the edge of the railing, white-knuckled grip on the metal barrier as he stares down at him.
“What the hell, dude?” Kageyama shouts, flushed in the face and breathing heavily. “Are you okay?”
Oh my god-
The relief upon seeing Kageyama arrive is immeasurable, washing through Hinata and making every limb feel weaker.
“No,” Hinata croaked back. “My ankle is busted, I can’t get up the hill, and-”
“Hang on, hang on,” Kageyama mutters, and Hinata isn’t sure why he’s surprised to see Kageyama vault the barrier and go skidding down towards him.
“I’m sorry,” Hinata says, shaking slightly as Kageyama gets down to his level. “I’m really sorry, I know you probably are pissed that I-”
“Just shut the hell up,” Kageyama snaps, stepping around Hinata to kneel down on the lower side of the slope.
“Did you run here?” Hinata asks.
Kageyama looks up in surprise, as if having been caught doing something embarrassing.
“I… well… my parents aren’t home. So.”
“You didn’t bike?”
“I don’t own a bike,” Kageyama replies.
“So you ran?”
Kageyama stares at him for a second, as if annoyed or offended or baffled by this line of questioning - knowing him, all three - before saying: “You said you were hurt.”
“So you ran?” Hinata repeats.
Kageyama stares at him for a second, before scoffing and reaching forward to get an arm around him.
“Woah, what are you doing-”
“Getting you up, dumbass,” Kageyama mutters.
“Oh, god, wait-”
Hinata stifles a shriek of something akin to shock as Kageyama stumbles as he lifts him up from the ground, instinctively throwing his arms around his neck to cling onto him.
Kageyama stumbles slightly.
“Ohmygoddon’tfalldownthemountain-”
“I’m not gonna fall down the mountain!” Kageyama snaps back, adjusting to secure his arms around him, and slowly beginning to hike his way back up to the top.
Hinata holds him tighter, pressing his face down into a soaked jacket.
Jacket. No umbrella. A rainstorm, no car. He ran here.
It’s almost unbearably kind.
From Kageyama of all people.
Though Hinata wasn’t sure why he was surprised. Kageyama never failed him when it mattered, did he?
Hinata closes his eyes.
“Okay,” Kageyama says after a second. “If you’ll stop suffocating me for a second, I’m gonna sit you down on the railing.”
“Sure, okay-”
Hinata sniffles as he lifts his head, wondering if it was real or just in his head that the rain was beginning to lighten. He comes to rest on the railing, holding his leg out carefully as Kageyama leaps back over onto the road, grabbing his collapsed bike from some distance away and shaking it out to see if the tires still worked.
Hinata watches him for a moment, surprised by how small Kageyama looked soaked by rain. Especially considering his arms had felt like the safest place in the world a minute ago.
Hinata feels his heart beat in his chest, face heating up slightly.
He ran.
Kageyama is still trying to catch his breath, pulling the bike over to him.
“Not that I couldn’t carry you down the mountain, but… here, get on the seat, it’ll be easier to walk you down.”
Hinata nods slightly, and Kageyama holds the bike steady as he carefully balances on his good foot to get himself over the seat. Kageyama adjusts his hold and goes back to being quiet, pretending like this was the most technologically advanced process in the world, before settling in with one hand on the handlebars to help Hinata keep control of the bike.
They’re going back down the mountain, the way they came.
“But-” Hinata starts. “I live-”
“We have to go to a doctor, Hinata,” Kageyama replies. “I’m not taking you home.”
Hinata swallows back his reply.
“Okay.”
They continue to walk, Kageyama’s steps careful and controlled to keep the bike slow on the downhill.
“Why didn’t you call your mom?” Kageyama asks after a second.
“I did. She didn’t answer,” Hinata replies.
“Oh?”
“She’s out with Natsu. She’d have turned her phone off, for… who knows how long.”
“You didn’t call Ukai? Takeda?"
“I… I panicked,” Hinata says, looking away.
“So you called me?”
Hinata swallows his embarrassment. “Yeah.”
Kageyama is quiet for a moment, before nodding. “Good.”
“Good?”
“Yeah. Good.”
Hinata almost manages a smile, but decides to not risk making things worse and shuts his mouth, and lets Kageyama get him off the mountain. The rain definitely is beginning to let up, save for the heavy plopping water from the trees. And soon Hinata recognizes the old wooden fence at the end of the mountain, and the intersection Kageyama would meet him at before school.
“You know,” Hinata says, after a second. “Now that… now that I’m down here, and the rain’s stopping… it… feels like I might have over reacted,” he says, chuckling softly as he watches Kageyama turn them down his street.
“Don’t be stupid,” Kageyama mutters.
“I mean… I’m sorry if I… freaked you out or something,” Hinata replies.
“You didn’t over react,” Kageyama replies. “It’s fine. If you’re hurt, you call for help, that’s just common sense. Don’t be a moron about it.”
“I just feel really bad-” Hinata says, as Kageyama stops them walking in front of his house, and Hinata can look over the dark exterior, the wet path leading to the door. “Making you… do all this-”
“And I’d do it again,” Kageyama replies, more annoyed now. “I don’t know why you don’t understand that, you were hurt.”
“I-”
Hinata cuts himself off, because Kageyama has come around to him now, holding an arm out to help him off the bike. Hinata takes it, wincing at the jostling of his ankle as Kageyama takes a tighter hold under his arm.
They try to take a step like this, but Hinata tries to put even the slightest amount of pressure on his ankle to balance himself, lightning shoots up through his spine.
He tries not to whimper.
“Shit, just-”
“Kageyama don’t you-”
Before Hinata can warn against it, Kageyama has bent down to grab him under the knee, hauling him up into his arms again.
“Seriously, now you’re just showing off-” Hinata mutters, wrapping his arms around his shoulders to steady himself.
“You’ll be fine.”
“We could have made it work-”
“Really, just shut up,” Kageyama snaps back, and Hinata does as told, though he sulks about it a little bit.
The pain in his ankle is still pretty bad, really not getting any better. He notices, as they approach his front door, that it hadn’t even been shut all the way, and Kageyama is able to use his shoulder to nudge it open and get them inside.
He ran.
And he left without shutting the door.
In the rain.
Up a mountain.
After a moment, Hinata says: “You were worried about me.”
The statement seems to surprise Kageyama, who eventually just scoffs and brushes it off.
“What about it?”
“Nothing, nothing...”
It feels good. To know that when he called, it wasn't an annoyance, or inconvenience. It wasn’t helping someone because they were obligated to.
He ran. He was worried.
Hinata almost doesn’t want to let go, as Kageyama sits him down on the living room couch.
“I’ll get you something warmer to wear, since you’re a filthy mess,” Kageyama replies, immediately disappearing and leaving Hinata to appraise the inside of a house he had never even been able to imagine.
It’s…
Not at all what he hadn’t imagined.
It’s so clean.
Borderline empty.
He sees a couple of pictures hung up, not a spot of dust, but nothing… well, it wasn’t like Hinata’s place. With Natsu’s toys strewn about and his own dishes often forgotten on side tables. When he winces against the pain to look behind him, Hinata can see the open doorway to the kitchen table, where a single plate sat used.
He’d interrupted Kageyama eating. Alone. In this perfectly clean house.
Kageyama returns from down the hall.
“It’s gonna be big on your short ass, but here,” he says, tossing Hinata a hoodie. “I’m gonna call for an ambulance, I guess, to take you to the city-”
“No!” Hinata says. “Geez, no, please, oh my god, that’s so dramatic-”
“You’ve got a screwed up ankle, you need to see a doctor,” Kageyama replies.
“Just… no,” Hinata says. “When are your parents going to be back?”
“Thursday.”
“Thurs-” Hinata blinks rapidly. “Kageyama, that’s in six days. What the hell do you mean Thursday?”
“They’re on a business trip,” Kageyama replies, somewhat dismissively. “They’ll be back on Thursday.”
“Geez… okay, well… let me call my mom again…”
“Okay. But put on that hoodie, you look six seconds from freezing to death!” Kageyama shouts, disappearing into the kitchen behind him. Hinata can hear the clink of ceramic as he cleans up, and presses call on his mom’s number.
He ran.
He ran.
The call isn’t answered again, and he’s pretty sure his mother is going to freak the hell out when she realizes he’s been calling, but that’s an issue for another time.
“My mom’s still not answering,” Hinata says, putting his phone down to begin fussing with getting his soaked and muddy layers off. “I’ll keep trying. Is it… too much of an annoyance if I stay here for a bit?”
“Well you can’t bike home-” Kageyama mutters, as Hinata tugs the hoodie on over his head. It’s immediately comforting, and he sinks back a bit into the couch, wrapping his arms around himself and feeling himself begin to warm up a bit. He wished he could take a bath, lay in bed - but Kageyama was right, especially with his ankle all messed up, he needed to get that taken care of.
But the adrenaline was wearing off. And he was beginning to feel exhausted, way more than he normally would have. He’s still wet and cold, and he still wants a bath and something for the pain, but-
Clink.
He opens heavy eyes, not realizing how close to falling asleep he had been. Kageyama has set a glass of water on the coffee table, and he’s holding a hand out towards him.
“What’s that?” Hinata mumbles.
“Pain meds,” Kageyama replies. “For your broken as all hell ankle.”
“It’s not that broken-” Hinata scoffs, turning his attention down to his foot, which was somewhat awkwardly stretched out in front of him. He reached to pull up his pant leg. “See, it’s-” absolutely purple and black. “-alright it’s broken as hell. You win this time.”
Kageyama snorts, forcibly grabbing his hand to put the pills into it, then moving to grab a pillow from the far end of the couch. “Scoot down.”
“Excuse me?”
“Put it up on the arm of the couch, it’s basic first aid, and don’t make me repeat myself-”
Kageyama speaks in a room that leaves no space for argument, and Hinata carefully lifts his leg to accommodate the order. Kageyama reaches out to-
Hinata almost flinches on reflex, as Kageyama takes hold of his calf.
But the touch is gentle.
There’s no pain, no roughness, Kageyama holds his injured leg like it was made of spider silk, and carefully rests his foot down on the pillow, on the arm of the couch. Hinata keeps himself up on his elbows, to look back at him, surprised slightly by the fact that Kageyama doesn’t immediately move away, and instead seems to fall still once Hinata is settled.
“It’s gonna suck,” Hinata starts, feeling his skin begin to prickle in the silence. “Not playing volleyball for a bit.”
“You’ll get better,’ Kageyama replies, his voice seeming to jolt him back into action. He rather pointedly bends to pick up the water glass and re-place it on the counter, annoyed the pills had yet to be taken.
“Yeah, but I’ll probably be stuck on crutches for weeks,” Hinata says, chuckling slightly as he reached for the water glass. “In that time, I’ll fall behind, and you’ll find someone better to play with.”
“Nah,” Kageyama says, and Hinata yelps slightly as he feels a pillow get shoved under his back. “Take those pills. Get some rest. If your mother doesn’t call back in thirty minutes, I’m carrying you to the hospital myself.”
“You don’t need to do that-”
“Shut the hell up.”
Hinata does as told, then hurries to drink some of the water so that he could swallow the pills, hearing Kageyama wander off and further into his house.
A pretty big house, empty of almost everything. Kageyama, home alone for six more days.
Choosing to stay with Hinata at night, choosing to fight and bicker over coming home to this.
Choosing to go out into the rain when Hinata called.
Choosing to run.
If it had been Kageyama, who would he have called?
His parents aren’t home - they wouldn’t be home. Hinata had panicked, but he would likely only have had an hour to lay in pain in the cold. His mother would have come eventually.
Who would Kageyama have called?
“Hey, Kageyama?” Hinata calls back, tipping his head back against the pillow.
“Hmm?”
“If you ever need anything, you can call me, you know that?”
“Why the hell would I call you, you’ve got a broken ankle and no common sense.”
“I just mean… You know, if your mom’s ever not answering the phone.”
“The hell are you talking about?” Kageyama says, brow furrowing. “I’m changing your mom’s deadline from thirty minutes to twenty, you’re clearly delirious.”
This makes Hinata laugh.
“Yeah, maybe,” he says, wiggling the toes on his hurt foot slightly. “But… uh… thank you. For running.”
Kageyama stares back at him for a moment, before scoffing and looking away, redness beginning to creep up his cheeks. “Well, don’t make a deal out of it or anything. I need to change. Don’t fall off any more cliffs like I'm gone.”
Hinata nods slightly, still keeping his head tilted back to watch Kageyama disappear again, before shifting to settle further into the bed and close his eyes. He keeps his phone against his chest to make sure he hears it when his mom calls back, and allows himself to succumb to the adrenaline crash. He was safe here, after all.
He would probably feel safe anywhere, with Kageyama around.
But they’d probably be at each other’s throats tomorrow, so he wasn’t going to tell him that.