Chapter Text
“So… what if, hypothetically, I asked you to marry me,” asks Kageyama suddenly, breaking the silence of their attempted study session.
Hinata blinks. Kageyama must be pretty serious, he supposes, if the other boy is going to use big words like hypothetically when the longest word they use on a daily basis is volleyball.
“I think we’d have to be dating first,” he answers finally, leaning back in his chair to try to balance his pencil on his nose.
Kageyama snorts when the pencil rolls off his face and onto the floor. “Yeah, I guess.”
Sighing, Hinata picks up his pencil and shuts his textbook. He’s probably done enough studying for today, anyways, even if he just looked over one problem. It won’t help much to keep reviewing with a mild headache, anyway, right?
“Hey, toss to me?” he asks, dropping his textbook absentmindedly on his unmade bed, right on top of some scribbled notes and energy bar wrappers.
Kageyama makes a soft huffing noise, slams his textbook shut, and pushes himself to his feet in one swift motion, as though he’d already been expecting this.
“Get your jacket. It’s cold out,” he warns Hinata, reaching for his volleyball in one hand and his winter coat with the other.
“Yeah, got it,” Hinata calls over his shoulder as he slings his volleyball bag over his shoulder. “Let’s go.”
-
It is pretty cold out when they walk outside, the kind of cold that nips at Hinata’s nose and makes the tips of his fingers feel numb when he leaves them out of his pockets for too long.
Kageyama seems to notice this, too, because he frowns and wiggles his fingers when they stop at the empty park, then makes a setting motion at the sky. When he looks at his hands again, there’s a few melting snowflakes on them.
“Do you think you can spike like this?” he asks Hinata, and Hinata shrugs.
“Do you think you can set like this?”
Kageyama tosses the volleyball in the air and sets it straight up, catching it when it falls back down and making a contemplative hmm. “Maybe we should go to the university gym.”
“It’s definitely closed and probably locked up right now,” says Hinata. “We could try breaking in?”
Kageyama makes a face. “We could get arrested, dumbass. Let’s just practice here.”
Hinata looks up at the darkening sky, and a snowflake lands right on his nose. It’s pretty cold, but the snow is still light and barely-there, and they still have an hour or so until the sun completely sets.
“Okay,” he grins, slapping his cheeks and jumping up and down to get his blood pumping. “You’d better send me the best tosses, okay?”
Kageyama glances at him with an unreadable expression – something vaguely amused, maybe, or proud. “Don’t I always?”
Hinata’s lips curve into a smile, and he nods determinedly. “Then I’ll make the best spikes out of them,” he announces, feeling adrenaline pump through his veins.
Kageyama’s eyes flick to the volleyball in his hands, his expression softening. “Don’t you always?”
-
A few days later, Kageyama decides to get a job.
“There’s a bakery down the street that’s hiring,” he announces suddenly, when they’re sitting on a bench in the courtyard, “so I might not be able to study with you as much anymore.”
“What?” Hinata glances away from the snow piles on the ground to stare at him, eyes widening in surprise and confusion. “But you can’t cook. Or talk to people.”
Kageyama flushes. “Well… I thought I might try,” he says. “I don’t have enough money right now.”
“Not enough money for what?”
“For a ring,” Kageyama tells him with a frown. “They’re really expensive, you know.”
Hinata squints at him. “A ring?” he asks.
“An engagement ring, dumbass. How am I supposed to propose to you without one?”
It takes Hinata a few moments to fit the words together and sort through his memory, but he finally remembers Kageyama’s weird marriage question from a few days ago. “Ohh,” he says, and nods. “That makes sense. How much do they cost?”
Kageyama’s face pinches. “A few thousand,” he grumbles. “So I might have to work for a few months… maybe I can get longer weekend shifts, too. And I have some money saved up, so-”
“A few months?” Hinata screeches, before realizing he’s caught the attention of some other students passing through. His hands fly to his mouth.
Kageyama sighs. “I told you they were expensive,” he says, bluntly, and lifts his hand to shield his eyes from the weak rays of the sun.
It’s just stopped snowing yesterday, and the sun looks pale. Even though it’s still bright and hard to look at, it doesn’t feel all that warm. In fact, the air is crisp and cold enough to make the tip of Hinata’s nose red.
Hinata tries to gaze at the sun a little bit, but it stings his eyes too much, so he goes back to staring at the snow on the ground. His mind turns in circles: How long will Kageyama work for each day? Will they still be able to study together? To practice volleyball together?
“Do all the rings cost thousands of dollars?” he asks, kicking a few piles of sludgy snow by his boot.
“No,” answers Kageyama, after a brief moment of silence. His breaths look wispy in the air. “Some of them only cost four hundred or so. But I want to get you a good one.”
“I don’t care that much about the ring or how much it costs, really,” Hinata admits. “I’d rather get a four hundred dollar ring and spend more time with you than get an expensive one and have you work instead of play volleyball with me. Who cares about the ring, anyway? And isn’t this all hypothetical, too?”
Kageyama startles. “Oh,” he says softly, and stuffs his mittened hands deeper into his pockets. “Yeah. Then maybe I’ll only work for a month. I still don’t want to get you a really cheap one. Tsukishima will make fun of us.”
“Who cares what Tsukishima thinks?” whines Hinata, but he’s still happy.
He’s content, even if his hands are cold because he forgot to wear mittens, and that doesn’t matter too much when Kageyama glances at them and tosses his gloves over.
“You can’t spike with dry hands,” he explains, when Hinata grins and thanks him. “They’ll crack and bleed.”
“Bakageyama, then worry about your own fingers!” Hinata exclaims, his smile turning down into a frown. He tugs at Kageyama’s arms, but Kageyama just pinches his lips together and stuffs his hands deeper into his pockets.
Finally, Hinata relents with a huff, slipping the gloves over his fingers.
And, it might just be a trick of the hazy sunlight, but Kageyama looks almost like he’s smiling.
-
A few days later, Hinata gets a call from Sugawara while he’s stretched out in bed in his pajamas, idly using his phone to watch volleyball reruns.
It’s a Saturday, so Hinata can afford to laze around at ten in the morning. Kageyama, on the other hand, had left over an hour ago to work his first bakery shift.
Hinata’s feeling a little lonely; the silence of their dorm is a little unsettling. But it’s even more startling when his phone starts beeping and shaking in his hands.
He fumbles it for a moment, dropping it on his pillow before snatching it up and accepting the call. “Hello?”
“Congratulations!” sings Suga’s voice from the other end of the line, just a little bit crackly.
Hinata grins – even if they talk pretty often for high school acquaintances, it’s always nice to hear Suga’s voice. Not a moment later, however, his nose scrunches in confusion. “Congratulations on what?”
“On getting engaged to Kageyama, of course!” Suga replies brightly. “How was it? Was it romantic? Did he smile?”
“Oh, he told you about that?” Hinata asks, smile stretching wide. “He hasn’t even proposed to me yet, Suga-senpai. He just brought it up once.”
Suga pauses on the other end of the line, then says something indiscernible to someone with him. A few seconds later, his voice rings clearly again. “Really? What’s the holdup?”
“Ah…” Hinata says, then thinks for a moment. “Oh, yeah. He’s saving up money to buy me a ring,” he says, his mouth turning down into a frown. “Now he’s getting a job. What if we don’t have time to practice volleyball anymore?”
“Well, it won’t be that long, probably,” Sugawara says consolingly. “And I think it’s kind of romantic. Hold on… do you mind if I put you on loudspeaker? Daichi wants to talk to you, too.”
“It’s fine!” Hinata replies, then listens to the crackling sound of Suga fiddling with his phone.
“Hi, Hinata. Congratulations!” says a new voice after a few moments.
“Thank you, Sawamura-senpai!”
“Oh, right.” Sugawara’s voice comes back on, excited. “What do you think you’d want to wear to the wedding?”
Hinata blinks, surprised at the sudden question. “Oh, I don’t know,” he responds. “Maybe my volleyball uniform? Kageyama would probably like to wear his, too.”
“Oh,” says Daichi. “That sounds… interesting.”
“It sounds like you and Kageyama,” Sugawara laughs, and Hinata can faintly hear an oof from Daichi in the background. “Something formal might be better for a wedding, though. You get to wear your jerseys often already, after all.”
“Ah, I guess so…”
“So what would you like? Maybe a dress?” Suga jokes.
Hinata seriously considers it for a moment, then ends up deciding against it. “I’d have to wear heels,” he says, nose scrunching. “Then I’d trip and Kageyama will never let it go. I don’t think Kageyama would like wearing a dress either, though.”
“You don’t have to wear heels in a dress,” says Suga, with a barely suppressed laugh. “Ah, but that’s fine. You’d both look nice in suits, too.”
There’s a brief silence, where Hinata can just imagine Suga’s indulgent smile. Then, he hears quiet sniffles from the other line.
“Oh, Sugawara, don’t cry,” Daichi says, voice fond.
“I just… can’t believe he’s so grown up already! They’re growing so fast.” Hinata hears what vaguely sounds like Sugawara blowing his nose into a tissue.
“Suga-senpai, I’m fine,” says Hinata frantically. “I’m not old yet!”
“Ah, maybe we should go,” Daichi replies. “Goodbye, Hinata! Congratulations again.”
The phone call ends with an electronic beep, and Hinata stares at his phone, dumbfounded. He doesn’t really see what the big deal about a hypothetical wedding is, but he sure hopes no one else is going to cry about it.
-
A few days later, Kageyama is pacing around their dorms nervously when Hinata gets back from hanging out with a few of his other friends.
“Kageyama?” he asks, squinting. “Is something wrong? Did you take a test or something? Break a window with a volleyball again? Because I don’t know if we have enough money to-”
Kageyama jumps and whips around, face red. “No!”
He’s got his angry expression on, but that could mean he’s mad or embarrassed or nervous or just about anything, really.
Hinata shuffles over to his bed and flops on it. “Come here,” he insists, patting his bed. When Kageyama stares at him blankly in response, he huffs, jumps up, and hauls the other boy over before manhandling him onto the mattress. “Come here!”
“Okay, Bakageyama,” he says, when they’re all settled in. “What’s up?”
Kageyama mutters something under his breath, brows creased in what looks like irritation.
Hinata scoots over and pokes him in the side. “What was that?”
“Hey!” Kageyama jabs him in the stomach in retaliation, and Hinata squeaks, doubling over.
“Kageyama, what the heck?!”
“I’m trying to say-” Kageyama breaks off suddenly, looking left and right. Finally, he picks up a pillow and smothers Hinata’s face in it. “I can’t look at your face,” he grumbles, as Hinata flails around.
“Mfmfmff!” Hinata responds.
A moment passes before Kageyama finally speaks, voice uncharacteristically quiet. “Hypothetically, if I asked you to marry me, would you say yes?”
His grip on the pillow loosens, and Hinata takes the opportunity to rip it off his face and toss it to the other end of the room, where it falls on top of their laundry hamper with a soft oomph.
Kageyama stares at the pillow determinedly, as though it will give him the secrets of the universe, and Hinata is fed up with these avoidance tactics or whatever this is.
“Bakageyama, look at me!” he demands, grabbing at Kageyama’s arms. “Of course I’d say yes! I wouldn’t let you work all these stupid bakery shifts if I wasn’t going to! You can’t even greet customers without scaring them.”
“Oh,” says Kageyama. Then, turning away, he announces, “Dumbass, I knew that already. I just wanted to make sure.”
“Well… good,” replies Hinata, sitting back on his bed. “Good.”
“Good,” repeats Kageyama, and, looking anywhere but at Hinata, grabs Hinata’s hand quickly.
“Good,” echoes Hinata one last time, voice quieter, and laces their fingers together.