Archive of Our Own

Shouyou’s brain-to-mouth pipeline is a tripwire.

He’s very good at feeling and he’s even better at letting everyone know he’s feeling. Suga says it’s a good thing. Daichi also says it’s a good thing but could you maybe do it a little quieter, or not at all when Ukai is trying to coach, thanks. Tsukishima says it’s annoying. Asahi says he doesn’t know how Shouyou does it.

Shouyou also doesn’t know how Shouyou does it but he’s equally unsure of how couldn’t he do it. When he feels, he feels hard. Feels far and wide. If he couldn’t get it all out of him he’d explode, and Shouyou is certain that that would interrupt Ukai more than just talking.

Sometimes, words don’t make it out in time. That’s when gwah! and fwah! happens. Other times, the words come out too quickly. One after another after another. That’s what’s happening right now.

“That was amazing! It was so cool! You stopped it right in front of my hand, how is that even possible? I was super scared even though I knew it would work and I didn’t think it would go wrong but wow! You really are awesome, Kageyama!”

Kageyama’s face falls so fast, it stuns Shouyou into silence. Now that he has stopped talking in exclamation points, the gym seems unbearably quiet. Shouyou would probably find it in himself to blush if his ears weren’t roaring with the blood of his success. His hand fucking smarts like he’s smacked its skin off. He wonders if he’ll look over at the volleyball and see his palm on it.

He isn’t going to look over at the volleyball because he only wants to look at Kageyama. Shouyou is vibrating with his happiness so his vision is a little blurry, but not blurry enough to obscure Kageyama’s face. His jaw is swinging on its hinges, kicked open with his shock. He’s so still it looks like he has never moved a muscle in his life, like he never learned how to, and Shouyou knows that’s not true because when Kageyama plays he moves like he was born to. Where did all the blood in his cheeks go? Just a few seconds ago it had been flushing his whole face up. Now it looks like he might need to be given some, immediately.

Before Shouyou can worry too much, the blood comes rushing back. Violently. Kageyama snaps his mouth shut as his face flares up, arms dangling limply at his sides like someone cut the strings that were keeping him so still. His eyes look into the middle distance. If Shouyou had to guess, he’d say Kageyama looks embarrassed.

“You’re a dumbass,” Kageyama mumbles, face aflame.

Shouyou beams. The words flood back out of his mouth.

“Amazing! Awesome! So cool!”

He knows he hasn’t got the most extended vocabulary, but he knows he’ll never run out of ways to call Kageyama amazing. And if he does run out, he’ll just start over.

Distantly, he can hear Kageyama telling him to shut up. That has never worked on Shouyou before and it won’t work now, no way. They just tried their new quick for the first time! Tried and succeeded! Shouyou couldn’t shut up if he tried, and he won’t, because he’s too busy jumping so high he can finally see where the ball ended up: on the other side of the court, far behind the Fukurodani Academy players who are still looking at Shouyou with something approaching terror in their eyes.

“Alright, rein it in,” Daichi claps Shouyou on the back hard enough to settle him back down on earth. “Good job, kids. All that practice paid off.”

“Thank you!” Shouyou and Kageyama yelp in unison, tipping into a quick bow before moving to take their places on the court again.

Shouyou is still on. So, so on, he can feel how on he is in his bones, can taste it when he runs his tongue over his gums. Electricity snaps through his sore muscles, tightens them up with anticipation. He has sipped at glory again. All it does is cement the addiction. All it does is make him want to devour.

He peeks a glance at Kageyama. There’s something weird in those blue eyes. Apprehension, or something. Confusion, maybe.
Perhaps Shouyou hadn’t made it clear enough.

“So amazing!” he whispers out of the corner of his mouth.

Shouyou watches Kageyama’s chest stutter, an aborted little up-down as he chokes on air, or on words, or on whatever clogs Kageyama’s throat when he has something to say but doesn’t know how to. The blush climbs underneath his floppy hair, ink-black swallowing the red up.

Then, Kageyama rolls his eyes.

“Idiot,” he mutters, just before the whistle blows.

“...And that’s good! Everyone bring it in, come on. Hinata, I said that’s enough.”

Shouyou grumbles and trudges away from the ball. He hadn’t even done anything yet. He just wanted to see if he could have actually made that receive if he’d been a few inches to the left…

“Ow. Watch it.”

Shouyou sticks his tongue out at Tsukishima as he passes. He might have felt bad for bumping into him if Tsukishima wasn’t such a raging asshole. Predictably, Tsukishima clicks his tongue in irritation but otherwise ignores him. Shouyou sticks his own tongue out even further.

Then Yamaguchi pinches it.

“Yamaguchi!” Shouyou tries to wail, tongue held captive.

“It’s second year, Hinata-kun,” Yamaguchi grins at him. “If you’re not going to be more mature, you’re going to have to start facing consequences for it.”

Personally, Shouyou doesn’t think holding someone’s tongue out of their mouth is the pinnacle of maturity, but he can’t exactly voice the thought. He flails at Yamaguchi, hoping to land a hand somewhere uncomfortable, but then someone flicks the back of his head.

“Ow,” he echoes Tsukishima, rubbing the sore spot.

“Ow,” Yamaguchi echoes him, releasing Shouyou’s tongue, rubbing his own head, and glaring at Tsukishima. “What was that for?”

“Yeah, Tsukishima, what was that for?” Shouyou parrots, mostly to be annoying.

“Wasn’t me,” Tsukishima deadpans, then tips his chin away from him. “King’s getting tired of you, too.”

Shouyou whips around, face a perfect picture of betrayal, to stare daggers at a clearly irritated Kageyama.

“Ukai has been staring at you both for two minutes now,” he hisses. “Shut up, already.”

Gulping, Shouyou dares to glance at Coach Ukai. The glare that greets him shuts him up more than a pinched tongue ever could. Takeda-sensei softens the blow with an exasperated, fond smile, and Nishinoya and Tanaka are giggling very obviously into their palms which isn’t so bad either, and Yachi is standing next to Takeda-sensei looking like she wants to die for them, but it’s not enough to stymie the humiliation. It burns even worse when Shouyou takes note of the rest of the team staring at them, crowded around Ukai in waiting for the speech that Shouyou had definitely just interrupted.

“Sorry, coach,” he mumbles. Yamaguchi follows suit, blushing so fiercely Shouyou swears he can feel his body temperature climb.

Ukai sighs, stuffing one hand into his tracksuit pocket and shoving his headband further through his hair with the other.

“You’re lucky you’re some of the best volleyball players I’ve coached,” he grunts. “And being that you’re some of the best volleyball players I’ve coached, it might do you some good to keep your mouths shut when I’m talking about our next interhigh tournament, don’t you think?”

Anticipation lances clean through the embarrassment. Shouyou stands to attention and nods. He’s sure as shit listening now.

“Mhm. I thought so, too,” Ukai says, then clears his throat to address the whole team. “Practice was good today, as usual. You’re all getting better at communicating with each other, understanding what each other needs and how to give it. You’ll keep this up if you want to even sneeze at the interhighs, let alone play. Right?”

“Right!” the Karasuno High School Boys’ Volleyball Team chirps back.

Ukai nods his approval. Then his face goes kinda grim, gets this shadow over it. Shouyou sees some of his underclassmen swallow at the change. He has been on the receiving end of this storm for over a year now, and he wishes he could tell his kouhais that they’ll get used to it, but he has never told a lie in his life. Even Noya and Tanaka look weathered. Ukai wears determination darker than any of them.

“The better you get, the better your opponents will, too. The lineup for the interhighs is nothing you can’t handle, but it’s nothing you’ll handle easy either. But there’s nothing this team can’t win, and I want you playing like there’s nothing you can lose. Am I clear?”

“Yes, sir!”

The affirmative rumbles under Shouyou’s feet, an earthquake to rival the storm still roiling on Ukai’s face. But the sun peeks through it with their coach’s smile, cocked up in a feral half-grin that makes Shouyou want to run and jump and fly.

“Hm. Good. Takeda-sensei?”

“We’ll be adding an extra session of practice every other week,” Takeda-sensei continues, sounding more buoyant than usual after the heavy gravel in Ukai’s voice. “We need to figure out what day works best for everyone, so go home, discuss with your parents, and come back for tomorrow’s practice with an answer, if you can.”

Shouyou wants to say that he’s free all day every day, will skip school if he needs to, but he can’t imagine that will go very well.

"I’m very proud of you all,” Takeda-sensei is saying when Shouyou tunes back in. “You’re all doing so well to make the team a proper working unit, a well-oiled machine with all its parts functioning in ceaseless harmony. It’s… it’s really quite beautiful.”

Takeda-sensei sounds a little teary. Shouyou squirms on his feet.

“I am so, unutterably honoured to be your advisor, and I always will be!” Takeda-sensei exclaims. His glasses are all fogged up.

“Uh. Okay, sensei, thank you.” Ukai pats Takeda-sensei on the back. It’s the most awkward thing Shouyou has ever seen.

“Thank you, sensei!” he calls with the rest of the team, because for all Takeda-sensei’s histrionics, Shouyou knows they’re all just as honoured to play for sensei as sensei is to support them.

“Alright, get outta here,” Ukai dismisses them, sounding far too relieved about it. “Go on, clean up. Last one out is opening the club room with Ennoshita tomorrow morning.”

Everyone books it. Shouyou hears Ennoshita grumble, “It’s not even that early…”

Shouyou busies himself with the volleyball net. Ennoshita gets to the club room even before him and Kageyama.

As he squeaks along the gym floor, scooping up volleyballs and chucking them into the cart almost every time (Kageyama gets them in perfectly because he’s the worst), the excitement persists. Shouyou feels it thrum in his fingers, dancing in his bloodstream and turning it the colours of Karasuno, orange and black and gritty and glorious. He wants to sip at glory again, wants to feel it coat his tongue, wants to spit it out so he can slurp it back up. He wants to be on a court again, wants to be an opponent again. Wants to beat an opponent again.

The fervour lingers even once he’s in the club room, stripping off with the rest of the team, changing back into their uniforms. He blames the adrenaline, the bloodlust, for why he gasps when his roaming, antsy eyes land on Kageyama changing next to him.

“Wow, Kageyama.”

Kageyama turns to him. “What?”

Now, Shouyou has seen Kageyama in various states of undress. It’s part and parcel of being on a volleyball team, of sharing a tiny club room, of needing to whip in and out of uniforms and jerseys when there’s barely any space to breathe, much less to avoid glimpses of the bodies tucked up next to you. There’s nothing new, is the point. Except Kageyama, shirtless and confused next to him, looks pretty fucking good all of a sudden.

Kageyama’s got so much… skin. It stretches smooth and shining over his taut muscles, canvassing the dips and planes of him. It’s a nice colour. A painter’s colour, one of those in between hues that has a fancy-sounding name. It isn’t beige or tan or golden or almond but it’s all of them. Kageyama’s so colourful. Even his nipples aren’t just brown, they’re—rosy? What would Shouyou mix to make the shade of Kageyama’s nipples?

Why is he staring at Kageyama’s nipples?

“Oi!” Kageyama barks, smacking Shouyou upside the head. “Quit staring, idiot!”

Oh, Kageyama is blushing now. Even more colours, good. The rouge is tasteful on the apples of Kageyama’s cheeks, soft brushstrokes of scarlet. And, well, now that he’s here, he might as well look at Kageyama’s eyes. That’s a whole lot of blue. Sharp, icy, cold, dark, bottom of a river blue. And his hair is bottom of the ocean black.

Maybe Shouyou should stop staring. He’s running out of colours.

He figures he should explain himself but he really has no idea what just happened. Wasn’t he just thinking about volleyball?

After he blinks a few more times, tries to remind himself that he’s a normal human being who says normal human things, he shrugs.

“You’ve got nice muscles, Kageyama.”

Kageyama splutters. Nishinoya bursts out laughing. So, he’d said that too loud. Fine.

“Ah, he’s right though!” Nishinoya chortles, bobbing over to slap Kageyama hard on the back. Shouyou wants to turn Kageyama around and see if there’s extra pink on his shoulder blade now. “You’ve been getting bigger, Kageyama!”

Kageyama quails. He glares at Shouyou so hard Shouyou actually starts to wonder if he’s being weird. But rather than give Kageyama any sort of higher standing, he simply shrugs again.

“I don’t know. You just look good.”

Tsukishima is snickering in the corner and that is categorically not a good sign, but Shouyou hadn’t lied. Shouyou doesn’t lie. Kageyama does look good. Maybe even better than good. He’s always been tall, yes, but now the tall has more to back it up. Now it has strong and lithe and supple. And pretty. Kageyama is fucking pretty.

Question is, why is Shouyou doing all this noticing now? What’s different about Kageyama now that has Shouyou thinking about colours and shit? What happened to just being jealous about his height?

That’s what’s different this time, Shouyou guesses. He’s waiting for the envy and it isn’t coming. He’s looking up at all five-foot-eleven inches of Kageyama Tobio and for the first time in his life, he isn’t bothered about the height. Just means there’s more of Kageyama to see.

Shouyou’s stomach drops.

“Don’t laugh at your peers, Tsukishima!” Noya fake-scolds, throwing a sweaty towel in the walking beanpole’s general direction. “Nothing funny about your teammates getting stronger!”

“Not as strong as me, though,” Tanaka preens, ripping his shirt back off to shove his muscles in the faces of anyone too shocked to stop him. The first years get the brunt of it. Ennoshita shoves Tanaka’s face into a cupboard.

The hysterics are enough to get the spotlight off Shouyou and Kageyama, which is great because Shouyou is realising that it’s definitely weird to wax lyrical about how good your best friend looks half naked. It’s even weirder to think lyrical about how good they’d probably look completely naked. He’s got enough presence of mind to keep that to himself, though. He’ll have a crisis about it later.

“Sorry,” he mutters to Kageyama, turning his back on him to finish getting dressed.

Kageyama doesn’t respond.

“Wah, Hinata, you look so grown up!”

“Thank—oof. Thank you, Sugawara-senpai!”

By the time Suga lets Shouyou out of the headlock, Shouyou is sure he’s been noogied so hard, he’s lost the four-point-five inches he’d grown in the last year. He’ll be very disappointed if that’s true; he only just got this suit.

“Congratulations, Hinata-kun!” Daichi grins, running a too-strong, too-big hand in Shouyou’s hair.

“Thanks, Daichi-san!”

Asahi’s congratulations is a lot more tame, thank god. He offers a small smile and a smaller nod. “Well done, Hinata-kun.”

When Shouyou grins, his wisdom teeth show.

Tanaka, Nishinoya, and Kiyoko join the fray soon after. Kiyoko kisses Shouyou’s cheek when she congratulates him. Shouyou short circuits while Tanaka and Noya get on their knees and pray to a higher power that they might be next. Daichi flicks them both in the forehead once they stand up. It’s like nobody ever left, like nobody’s ever leaving.

Shouyou clutches his certificate of graduation in his sweaty palm.

He is multitudes of joy. He cannot contain how happy he is. Every single person here holds a thread in him. Tugging on one tugs on them all, and they spool around him, laughing and crying and remembering. Noya paused his travels around the world just to be here. Suga skipped his college classes to catch an early enough train to make it back. Asahi had an interview with a clothing company that he turned down because it fell on graduation day. Shouyou looks at his former upperclassmen. He isn’t the only one who’s all grown up.

Their love is thick, bleeds thicker. It makes him only slightly less terrified for what he’s going to do tomorrow. What he has to do.

Eventually, Shouyou’s mother tugs him away from the crowd, though not before snapping several pictures (Shouyou’s eyes are somehow closed in every single one of them). Natsu tugs on his arm, clamouring about the lunch they’re going to have once they make their way through the reams of Karasuno High’s graduating class. Shouyou’s mouth waters at the promise of food, but he’s not done here. The three best years of his life happened on these grounds with these people; he’ll never be done here.

“You can head to the car,” he tells his mother, grinning bashfully at her exasperated huff. “I’ll try not to be long, I promise.”

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep, love,” she sighs. “We’ll wait.”

Given the okay, Shouyou takes off as fast as his suit will allow him. There’s too much to see, too much to touch. If he can’t remember every footprint on every tile of every hallway, he’ll know he didn’t stay long enough. He wants to be able to paint the dirt on the walls with his eyes shut. Three years felt like forever three years ago.

His wanderings bump him into Yachi, who’s gazing up at the gym with such profound sadness, with whole lifetimes of it. Shouyou gulps and stands next to her.

“Are you okay, Yacchan?”

Yachi sniffs. “It feels like we never even stepped foot inside.”

So, no, then.

Shouyou sighs, drapes an arm around her quivering shoulders. Yachi sniffles into the lapels of his suit. He doesn’t so much mind buying a new one now.

“Are you—,” Yachi starts, then sobs some more. Shouyou pats her shoulder and waits. “Are you still leaving tomorrow?”

Shouyou gulps his tongue down his throat.

“Yeah,” he says when it’s back up. “Yeah, yes. I am.”

“Ah, I’m sorry, Shouyou-kun,” Yachi cries, rubbing vigorously at her weepy eyes, wrinkling the cuff of her blouse. “I shouldn’t be such a drama queen. You’ve got much more to worry about. Brazil is so far away.”

It is, isn’t it?

“I don’t know if I’m doing the right thing,” Shouyou whispers because he suddenly can’t speak louder. It was easier to wrap his mind around Brazil when his mind was the only thing he had to worry about. But now Yachi knows. Now all his friends know. Now his mother knows, his sister. The threads constrict around his throat, wrapping it in a pretty little bow and pinching his trachea.

“Nobody knows they’re doing the right thing while they’re doing it,” Yachi says, patting Shouyou’s stomach. “Do you still want to?”

Shouyou nods. “I’m gonna get better and that’s where I’m gonna do it.” His voice is reed-thin because his windpipe still feels newborn in diameter.

“Then you don’t need to know if it’s right,” Yachi says, like it’s obvious.

Ever so slightly, ever so slowly, oxygen finds its way back inside Shouyou’s body. As his throat reopens the air stops whistling, starts sailing. His lungs balloon with it. Shouyou hugs Yachi tight, partly because he wants to but mostly because if he tries to talk he’ll cry, and Yachi only just stopped.

“Oh,” she chirps, squeezing him round the middle. “I’ll miss you too, Shouyou-kun.”

He wants to thank Yachi for breathing life back into him. He doesn’t have the words so he pulls her even closer to his chest. Maybe she’ll feel his lungs swelling with the breath she put there.

The longer the hug lasts, the more Shouyou realises he’s stalling. He’s not entirely sure why until Yachi pats his back with all the gravitas of a mother sending her child off to war.

“He’s inside.”

And there it is.

The thickest thread of all tugs sharp on Shouyou’s heart and draws him into the gym. Yachi squeezes his hand when he leaves like she knows just how strong that thread is, how supreme. She probably does; Shouyou hasn’t ever been quiet about it.

He slides open the gym door. Kageyama stands inside with a volleyball in his hand. Shouyou feels his soul quiver then settle then lurch.

“Getting some extra practice in, Kageyama?” Shouyou croaks.

Kageyama huffs. Spins the ball in his palms. Doesn’t look up.

And fuck, if he doesn’t look all possible kinds of good. Shouyou knows that if he was close enough, if he could bear to bridge the gap, Kageyama’s navy blue suit would be making his eyes glow. His shoulders are broad, his chest wide. His legs go on forever. Still, there’s no jealousy. Shouyou hasn’t been jealous of Kageyama’s body in over a year. He’s been a lot of different things about Kageyama’s body.

That body is going to the Olympics soon, Shouyou remembers. He’s going to see that body on a screen someday, setting to people who aren’t him.

Between one blink and the next, Kageyama finally looks up. Shouyou squeaks, embarrassing. Kageyama quirks a brow but doesn’t comment on it. He looks Shouyou up and down and—

He looks Shouyou up and down.

Shouyou wonders what he’s seeing. Wonders if he likes it, if he’ll miss it. All of a sudden, he’s glad that Suga just told him he looks all grown up.

“You’re leaving tomorrow.”

Shouyou nods his answer.

“When?”

Shouyou winces. “Seven in the morning.”

Kageyama snorts. One corner of his mouth jerks. “As if you’ll wake up that early.”

Shouyou makes a funny noise and blunders inside, dress shoes squeaking so differently on the gym floor that it would feel really weird and wrong if he wasn’t gearing up to chew Kageyama out.

“Excuse you, I’ve been waking up early every day for three years to race you to this very building!”

Kageyama grins and looks evil and hot. “Yeah, and you still mostly lost.”

“Barely! I bridged the gap, didn’t I?”

“You can’t have bridged a gap if there’s still a gap.”

“Since when did you get all philosophical! You’re such a loser, Kageyama-kun.”

Kageyama’s smile makes his teeth catch on his lower lip. “Takes one to know one.”

“Gah!” Shouyou bristles, rolling his eyes, throwing his hands up in the air, stomping his foot for good measure. “Okay, whatever. I’m gonna be right on time tomorrow, since you asked, so thanks for the concern.”

It’s not like he expected Kageyama to laugh or anything, but the way his face goes very carefully blank comes out of nowhere too. Shouyou could write on him, he’s so blank. Wants to paint him with all the colours he’s grown to… like. He will not call it anything more, not now that he’s about to leave before it can feasibly become anything more.

Kageyama nods very stiffly. Up, down. Shouyou imagines oiling up his neck. He flips the ball from one hand to the other and it looks… off. It’s got a dream-filter to it where everything is just wrong enough to clue you in that you’re not awake. Kageyama has never looked like he doesn’t know what to do with a ball he’s holding, before now.

Shouyou did that to him. Is doing that to him. Shouyou is going to leave in less than twenty-four hours and for some reason, that fact is making Kageyama’s fundamental filaments fray. Shouyou fidgets, fraught with feeling. He isn’t worried about Kageyama because Kageyama is amazing, but now might be a good time for a reminder. Shouyou will swear to never play volleyball again before he leaves this gym with Kageyama looking like this the last time he sees him.

He draws himself up. Stares dead into Kageyama’s eyes. They are glowing. Electric, bruise blue.

“You’ll always be the best setter I’ll ever play with. Ever.”

Kageyama drops the ball.

Shouyou wasn’t even done talking but the sound of the ball bouncing against the gym floor cuts him short. It rolls away from them like it can’t stand the tension. Shouyou strongly considers following it. He always treads this shaky line between not knowing what to say and saying too much. He figures he might have just veered too far to one side.

“Thanks.”

Shouyou startles. If he hadn’t seen Kageyama’s mouth open and close, he would have gone to the grave believing that Kageyama hadn’t said that. Hadn’t thanked him.

Quite abruptly, Shouyou wants to cry.

He wants to fall to the ground, to this floor that has cradled him for three years, and weep. He wants to curl in on himself because maybe if he packs himself up as small as everyone has always told him he is, he’ll only feel small things. Emotion wells inside him and for a terrifying moment there is truly nowhere for it to go except out his eyes. But he blinks, shakes himself out, and pushes it all to his toes. Stands his ground and clicks his tongue.

“Thanks? Thanks? That all you’ve got to say, Wordy-yama-kun?” Shouyou puts his hands on his hips, gets all up in Kageyama’s space because it’s what he does best. “Aren’t you gonna say that I’ll always be your best spiker?”

Kageyama’s brows furrow. Shouyou can see his brain thinking, can see him trying to catch up with everything he probably saw on Shouyou’s face, trying to reconcile how it all got them here, with Shouyou being a brat as per usual. And maybe it’s because it is per usual that he finds it in himself to grin back, sharp and sharky.

“Maybe,” he answers. “If you stay good enough while you’re gone.”

It’s exactly what Shouyou needed; a challenge.

“If,” he scoffs, waving a dismissive hand in the air. “I’ll be working just as hard as you.”

Kageyama nods again. “You’d better.”

For a moment, Shouyou wants to offer to shake on it, but he knows he doesn’t need to. They’d made all their promises in first year. Everything will change but those covenants won’t.

Knowing that, remembering that, Shouyou doesn’t feel quite so hopeless anymore. There’s a terrifying out there out there, and he’s about to fly soul first into it, but he knows someone, somewhere, will be matching him step for step. Kageyama had said it himself; Shouyou flies higher than everyone, and the gym was never going to contain him forever.

He smiles. The wisdom teeth come back out.

“Well. See you later, Kageyama!”

Kageyama’s cheeks dimple. “See you later.”

Shouyou feels his wings snap open.

You never know what makes home home until you’ve left it.

The sun shines differently in Brazil. There’s a brilliance to it that demands attention. It seeps into your clothes, then burrows under your skin, then toasts your organs, then radiates back out and asks for more. It makes the sky wiggle with that heat haze of a desert mirage. Though that might just be the dehydration.

Shouyou’s chest heaves with his pants. He definitely overworked himself. There’s a tightness in him, the tightness of asking too much of your body for too long. Someone’s holding his heart and squeezing to stop it from getting bigger than his frame can hold. He imagines it squelching in their palm.

Sand sticks gritty to his skin, a million gnarled grains for every pore. His volleyball sits a few feet away, looking expectant. It’s rare that Shouyou ever wants to not play volleyball but even legends have limits, particularly on sand. Sand is one unforgiving motherfucker, slippery and unreliable. Shouyou loves playing on it, he knows he does, and even that love is telling him he has overdone it.

He winces remembering the squish of the sand underneath him. It’s pretty hard to jump when the ground wants to swallow you up. He can feel every fibre of his muscles. You could slice him open right now and blindfold him, and he’d stick his finger inside himself and tell you which cuts of his flesh are striated, which ones smooth. You could hang the raw, bloody slabs of him in a butcher’s window for purchase and he’d be thankful, because at least the gravity would force his muscles to relax.

The fucking sun doesn’t help, either. He can literally feel his skin darkening.

Shouyou reaches for his water bottle and something dies inside him when he remembers it’s empty. It’s not like he needs another reason to finally get off the beach but he’s made his body do so much today. Asking it to stand up seems like overkill.

And he can’t lie, this beach is the kind of gorgeous that odes are written for. The sky and sea don’t just meet, they kiss. The sun is ferocious on everything except for the waves, where it tickles their tips with iridescent light and streaks them with aquamarine. Whenever Shouyou blinks, he sees the beach in the backs of his eyelids. Though that definitely means he has been staring too long, he doesn’t mind a forever that looks like this.

Eventually, Shouyou finds the strength to stand. The way the sand dips beneath his feet makes him groan, phantom strain tugging at his sore muscles. He scoops up his ball, water bottle, and backpack, then gingerly makes his way off the beach.

By the time he reaches a food stall, the sun isn’t quite so oppressive, at least not in the hellfire-flame way of before. It’s mellower but thicker, bathwater warmth. Shouyou’s sandals stick to the tarmac when he thanks the vendor for his cheese bread, and he almost trips and sends it flying.

All in all, it’s too successful a day. Even though all he did today was bump the ball for himself a bunch, working on his receives, Shouyou knows he is getting stronger, faster, smarter. Still, it’ll all be kind of pointless if he drops dead from over-exertion.

Inside his dorm isn’t much cooler than outside, but it’s darker. Shouyou stumbles around blind for a while as his eyes adjust, hanging his backpack on the tiny hook in the kitchen. His delivery bag sits on the kitchen counter, vapid and maddening. Shouyou sighs. He doesn’t mind food delivery but it’ll be even harder biking around with the abuse he’s put his legs through today. And he literally can’t afford a day off, not since his wallet was stolen. He’s not quite sure how much money was in it but he doesn’t think he’s made it all back yet.

Nobody told him dream chasing was easy. They also didn’t tell him that it was this hard.

Shouyou doesn’t just flop onto his bed, he thuds. His roommate isn’t here which he feels bad for being relieved about. He hates feeling better because a certain person isn’t around him. There’s nothing bad about Pedro, he’s just quiet, and Shouyou has a sneaking suspicion that the language barrier isn’t the only reason why. Shouyou swears he used to be so much happier around people, regardless of the crowd. What changed that, growing up or moving to another continent? He can’t tell. He gets the feeling that the Hinata Shouyou of five years ago not only wouldn’t recognise him, but might feel sad for him.

Shouyou snaps his phone up and unlocks it, desperate for distraction. He thumbs through his social media feeds. Noya met up with Asahi somewhere tropical-looking and far away, that’s cute. Suga taught his first elementary school class a couple of days ago, that’s even cuter. Kenma’s latest stream only just ended, two hours ago when Shouyou had tripped trying to pick up a receive and eaten sand.

Kageyama doesn’t post on social media.

It’s not out of character for him. ‘Kageyama’ and ‘social’ and ‘media’ aren’t bedfellows. He has all the accounts but they’re collecting dust. He’ll only come online to like a couple of posts here and there.

Shouyou’s. He always likes Shouyou’s.

He misses Kageyama differently to how he misses his friends and his family. He misses him the way you’d miss something you didn’t get to have. The way you’d miss something you missed out on. Whatever his heart feels for Kageyama, it didn’t get to feel it to the fullest. It’s trying to catch up now, with a couple oceans and a few million metres separating them.

Shouyou blinks and his eyelashes speckle his cheeks with wet. He starts to see his tiny dorm bedroom in waves, like the heat haze has followed him inside.

And because the universe loves its jokes, Kageyama posts right as Shouyou wipes his tears away.

Heart thumping with love that feels a little too much like fear, Shouyou navigates to Kageyama’s post and turns up his volume. It’s uncaptioned because Kageyama is a dork but Shouyou doesn’t think he’d pay attention to a caption anyway, not when he’s got a Kageyama service ace to contend with. Because that’s what the post is; a snippet of a highlight reel from one of Kageyama’s most recent matches. He is a vision in Japan National red, tall and long and mesmerising as he steps up to the end line, sets up his serve, and hammers it right onto the corner of the court on the other side of the net. Kageyama grins. It’s a small smile, just the tip of his mouth poking into his cheek, yet it drips with that glory Shouyou is still addicted to, still chasing. Shouyou wants to eat it off Kageyama’s face, suck it up into his own mouth, and bare his teeth back.

Desire is a hedonist in Shouyou. Gnarly things like glory and sweat tracks and sore muscles and Kageyama’s muscles rub it real good.

He’s marinating in cooling perspiration, rusting in dried sand, and the bloodlust makes him feel like an animal again, like something that wants things again.

His cock throbs in his shorts.

All it takes is one more look at Kageyama’s teeming smile and Shouyou’s hand is locking around himself to pump his pleasure out.

The air is so close to him. Shouyou’s moan hovers just above his mouth, trembling in the humidity. He fists his plump cock, wrestles it into weeping for him, into drooling. Shouyou’s phone rests limp in his other hand. He doesn’t need it; Kageyama has been imprinting in his mind’s eye long before any beaches could.

Shouyou goes dizzy thinking of him. Yearning mutates into hunger with every pass of his hand. Tension makes his stomach turn and he bucks his hips up, fucking himself, chasing the triumph he can still see on Kageyama’s face when he closes his eyes. He can barely breathe around how good he feels, can feel all his blood pumping in his dick and he squeezes his cockhead in time with it. He’s so wet with how much he wants.

He wonders what Kageyama looks like when he touches himself. Those big hands on his big body. Long fingers grazing up his cock, sweat licking every perfect inch of his skin. He bets that Kageyama shakes when he comes. That stiff, sure body just fucking trembling with his pleasure, coming apart at the seams, spilling into the cupped palm that slaps all his serves into their opponents’ faces.

Thighs twitching, Shouyou tugs himself harder. His cock feels red, feels full and flushed. He runs his tongue over his gums and cries out at how his bliss tastes, slick and tart. Pleasure fills his panting mouth with saliva. Kageyama would kiss him and drool because there’s so much flavour to his arousal, he’s packed thick with it. He would taste Shouyou in the back of his mouth and his glands would smart and throb and make him cry out Shouyou’s name like he does when they win things together.

“G—gonna come,” Shouyou wails because he loves the way his cock kicks when he hears himself say it.

A few more seconds and oh, it’s the part where he can almost count exactly how many more pulls it will take. He’s wet up to the backs of his knuckles with precome and he’s so close it’s agony, it hurts so good how much he wants to come. He squeezes his eyes shut and fucks his hips forward, and Kageyama fills his brain again. All his long lines and his pretty face. His back, his shoulders, his chest, his nipples, god, that rosy-brown colour that Shouyou wants to set against his teeth and taste how it pebbles up, fuck.

He comes in thick spurts, forceful ones that shove his slit open so fucking good, it feels so fucking good. He cries with pleasure, dies with pleasure. His hand strokes through it, tugging out every last drop until his spine has the tensile strength of an elastic band pulled one time too many, slack and sated. Shouyou pumps until his molars grind together with overstimulation, and then pumps even more.

Only once his muscles start to scream at him again does he relent, ripping his hand off himself as if his cock will burn him if he holds on any longer. He heaves, feeling like he had a few hours ago on the beach; wrung out, over-exerted. But the abating pleasure sweetens the fatigue, kissing his trembling limbs as he comes down.

Shouyou sighs and starts to clean himself up, wincing when he registers just how sore his cock is, how rough he’d been. Kageyama does that to him; makes him take more than he should, makes him love it.

Kageyama.

Shouyou shuffles amidst his bedsheets for his phone and opens Kageyama’s post back up. Kageyama’s razor grin is still frozen on the screen and Shouyou has to click out of it before his dick actually starts crying. He pokes around the post until he finds the comment section and starts tapping with shaky, eager thumbs.

wow!!!!!! awesome play kageyama, the king reigns again!!

After rubbing one out to Kageyama the way he just did, the comment feels hopelessly juvenile. But it’s not like he’s going to rave on public media about what he wants to do to Kageyama’s nipples. He’s probably got enough followers doing that.

Later, when Shouyou is fed and showered (and mostly ignored by Pedro once he returns), his phone buzzes with Kageyama’s response. Shouyou gets only a tiny bit ecstatic when he reads it.

thank you. now get off this app and get back to work so you can join me.

Shouyou plugs his phone in to charge and nestles down under his sheets. It’s far too hot to sleep covered up but he misses Kageyama so much and hearing from him makes him want to burrow down under blankets like a cute thing.

Get back to work so you can join me.

Anyone else would crack under the pressure, would splinter into exhausted shards of I’ve been working so hard I’ve whittled myself down to butcher’s meat in my head, don’t you dare tell me to work harder. Shouyou isn’t anyone else. Shouyou is Shouyou, and Kageyama is Kageyama, and when one tells the other to get back to work, it’s more than just motivation, it’s expectation. It’s hope. It’s the other side of see you later.

Shouyou falls asleep but he knows he’ll still be chasing his dreams when he wakes up.

He'd forgotten how cold winters are in Japan.

Shouyou shivers into his thick coat, rubbing his bare hands together. He’d lost his mittens in his packing frenzy and hadn’t wanted to risk missing his flight to buy new ones. He’s almost certainly going to get frostbite but he’ll happily choose pneumonia in Miyagi over warmth in a Brazilian airport.

He’s home.

Home is leaden skies and quiet streets. It would probably be a lot louder if he’d told anyone he was coming back today, but he’d wanted to surprise them. His family and friends think his flight is tomorrow.

Despite the frigid temperatures and the whole nobody-knowing-he’s-here thing, it’s still a pretty warm welcome. Shouyou is so happy to be home he thinks he could sing something about it. He hikes his bag up on his back and makes his way around, footsteps following trails he last made almost four years ago. Muscle memory takes the wheel and he sits back to enjoy the ride. He passes Sakanoshita, the laundrette, the media store where he watched his first volleyball game. ‘Passes’ being the operative word here. He knows where his final destination is.

He’s outside Karasuno once the sun begins to set. The sky starts flooding with nighttime and Shouyou’s high school glows from the inside out, bruising the twilight with the fluorescence streaming from its windows. Shouyou chokes on a gasp and shudders out a sigh. He’s hard-pressed to capture how it feels, being back here. It’s like he’s trying to stuff himself into a hollow that doesn’t fit him anymore. Like he has bulked up physically and emotionally. His high school isn’t big enough to contain his multitudes now.

He steps onto school grounds anyway. Walks right into his own ghost story and waits to get haunted.

It’s a very soft kind of chilling, Shouyou thinks. A haunting with the edges smoothed off. There are moments that stab sharp at his heart and feel like missing a step going down the stairs, but every memory is so imbued with happiness that even those moments don’t hurt too long. Nostalgia swims through Shouyou’s veins as he walks around his old school, seeing himself through hindsight’s telescope and finding that he wouldn’t have changed a thing. Even the losses he’d endured, academic and athletic alike, hadn’t stayed crushing for long. Karasuno has this charm to it that looks sadness in the face and dares it to blink first.

The gym is a fraction harder to stomach than the main building. Really, Shouyou attended school here, at least the parts that counted. All the lights are off and it’s not as pretty a picture. Shouyou likes it that way. This is the home of Karasuno High School Boys’ Volleyball, and they never pretended to be glamorous. They were too busy crawling through the dirt toward victory.

Shouyou has had quite the fill of victory, more than he could have ever hoped for. His years on Brazil’s beaches paid off not just in the added strength to his muscles. If there’s one good thing about sand, it’s that it doesn’t hurt as much to fall onto, and Shouyou had had to fall plenty to get used to it. Had had to get back up plenty, too, and he supposes it’s the getting back up that bought him his notoriety. His name whispered in the right places, ears listening at the right times. Getting onto MSBY Black Jackals had been almost too easy, would have felt like a fluke if he didn’t have the bruises and the build and the bravery to show for it.

He’s on the world stage now. He’s ever closer to the pedestal he had always proclaimed he would stand on, not five feet away from where he stands now. It’s only now, with all the years and tears and fears between Karasuno Shouyou and present Shouyou, that he realises how tough those shoes had been to fill. How much he had been promising himself.

He’d do it all over again in a heartbeat.

Speaking of his heartbeat; someone is walking in time with it.

Shouyou stands stock still. He’d been joking about the ghost story. He didn’t actually want to be haunted!

Wondering if he should run away and also trying to justify to himself that he’s an alumnus here, he isn’t actually doing anything wrong, Shouyou takes a deep breath and turns in the direction of the footsteps. They get louder and louder, closer and closer, and Shouyou has to suppress a squeak when their owner turns the corner round the gym wall and stops.

The scariest ghost of them all stares back at him.

For a second, Shouyou isn’t sure. It has been a long time since he’s seen this person up close. How is he to know that it’s really him? Shouyou can barely recognise himself in the mirror these days. All this is, is a cruel trick, a wicked concoction of that old jokester, the universe, and its best friend nostalgia.

“Hinata,” Kageyama says.

The universe is really fucking good at pranks. It sounds just like him.

“K—Kageyama,” Shouyou rasps. He might as well play along.

Kageyama steps forward, hands stuffed deep into his jacket pockets. He looks normal, completely unbothered. All his surprise is in his eyes, opened just a smidge too wide. His jaw is clenched, Shouyou can see the bone working. How many words is he locking up behind that perfect mouth?

“You’re back.”

Shouyou is a little less sure about the whole celestial prank theory now. There are cadences in Kageyama’s low voice that not even the universe could drum up. He isn’t used to Kageyama sounding… affected. Emotional. And he sounds like he’s hiding most of it, which must mean there is even more emotion inside him than the threads leaking out of his mouth are willing to betray. Shouyou feels so, so small.

He gulps. “I’m back.”

I’m here! he wants to shout. I’m here and I’ve missed you and I came back for you and we promised to meet on the world stage so why the fuck are you here!

But if he’s being honest, Karasuno has always meant the world to him. And Kageyama has always been the centre of it.

Kageyama is suddenly racing towards him like he heard every word Shouyou just thought.

“Kageyama??” he quails, taking a step back. He shoves his hands out in front of him. “What’s wrong? I didn’t even do anything!”

Kageyama breaks right past his flimsy barrier and grabs two mittened fistfuls of Shouyou’s coat.

“Shut up.”

And he’s kissing him.

It’s a punch of a kiss, hard and firm and uncompromising. Shouyou hadn’t realised how much feeling he was losing in his lips until Kageyama started kissing it back. He muffles a moan of intense, aching relief into Kageyama’s mouth and surges forwards. Kageyama doesn’t skip a beat, tugging Shouyou off his feet and kissing him so fervidly Shouyou has a fleeting terrifying amazing thought that he might get swallowed up. What a way to go, he sighs as he is punch-kissed, punch-drunk. Consumed by Kageyama Tobio.

Right as he’s starting to accept his fate, Kageyama pulls away, their lips smacking with the separation. Shouyou stares hard into those hard eyes, flint and crystal staring back. Kageyama’s eyelashes are long and dark. The way they fan around his eyeballs reminds Shouyou of peacock feathers. And bleeding ink.

He doesn’t remember putting his hands in Kageyama’s hair but that’s where they’re at, coiled taut in pitchy locks. What’s it so fucking smooth for? The hell does he wash his hair with, the elixir of life?

With every intent to mess it all up, Shouyou tugs hard on his hair and brings Kageyama back down to his mouth. Kageyama follows immediately, bending down and wrapping his arms around Shouyou’s waist to pick him up. Shouyou yelps a happy noise into and around Kageyama’s tongue.

Kageyama Tobio kisses with tongue.

It laps gently at Shouyou’s lower lip, small, soft kitten licks before he purses his lips together and kisses properly. Kageyama alternates, licking and kissing in equal measure so Shouyou gets so warm around his mouth and in his cheeks. Shouyou can’t stop making noises every other second, humming at every swipe of tongue or graze of teeth. Kageyama is still holding him up, bringing him level, and Shouyou isn’t used to being at this altitude so maybe that’s why he’s getting light-headed. Or most likely Kageyama just kisses so good it’s literally breathtaking, breathstealing.

Shouyou’s lips tingle with the air he’s not getting and his sounds must cross into gaspy territory because Kageyama breaks away again and sets him down. He stays hooked around Shouyou’s waist, though. Shouyou goes cross-eyed trying to keep him in focus, though again, that might just be the kisses.

“Jesus,” Shouyou pants, watching his breaths plume out in small clouds in Kageyama’s face. Kageyama doesn’t even flinch, he’s looking at Shouyou so intently.

Shouyou’s mouth sparks. “You kiss well, Kageyama. Who’s been teaching you, hm?”

Shouyou resolutely does not want to know that answer, but it’s worth the irritation that turns down Kageyama’s kiss-plump mouth. He looks much more familiar now, at least until his eyes soften when Shouyou barks out a laugh. They’ve never done that before. If anything, they’d harden.

Shouyou goes quiet when Kageyama dips down to kiss him again, the barest brush of his mouth like he’s trying to figure out how to paint Shouyou’s lips.

“Doesn’t matter,” he remarks. “Because it wasn’t you.”

Ah, hell. Shouyou remembers the last time they were near this gym, when he’d felt too full of emotion, engorged on it. He’d wiped his tears away then but his hands are busy now, warm in Kageyama’s hair. He lets himself cry.

“I missed you,” he whispers.

Kageyama flinches and nods. “I missed you, as well. But you got better like you said, and now you’re here.”

Shouyou can hardly see for all his tears. “Now I’m here.”

Then Kageyama blinks, clearly remembering something. “Why are you here? I thought your flight was tomorrow.”

Shouyou manages a watery grin. “Surprise!”

Kageyama rolls his eyes. “So weird.”

“Okay, Mr. I-Walk-Around-Karasuno-In-The-Dark-All-Alone-Because-I-Have-No-Life.”

“And what were you doing here, then?” Kageyama bites back, releasing Shouyou to poke him hard in the side. Shouyou feels it even through all his layers.

“Ouch. I don’t know, really,” he admits, rubbing his side. He looks up at the gym, feels the nostalgia tickle between his ribs. “I didn’t really know where I was going until I got here.”

Shouyou thinks that statement has been ringing true about this place since he first signed up to attend it.

Kageyama hums. “Me too, I think.” Then he looks unmistakably awkward, shuffling from foot to foot and looking too much like a child in his giant strong body. “Where are you staying?”

Shouyou’s heart skips about four beats.

“Um. I’m not, I guess. Not yet,” he says, hardly daring to look at Kageyama but forcing himself to. “I was gonna find a hotel nearby, or something.”

Discomfort temporarily forgotten, Kageyama raises a disapproving eyebrow at him. “There are no hotels nearby.”

“Alright, so I didn’t think it through!” Shouyou exclaims. “Why are you asking anyway, nosy?”

And like it never left, the unease returns. Kageyama’s eyes dart everywhere, looking at everything but Shouyou. Shouyou knows just what Kageyama is treading on eggshells around, but he can’t even dare to believe that he’ll say it. That he’ll offer.

But Kageyama never just meets expectations. He always has to exceed them. After he visibly steels himself, setting his shoulders with very obvious, very adorable determination, he turns back to Shouyou, and asks.

“Would you like to stay with me?”

He couldn’t sound less happy about it, to be honest, but Shouyou knows better. He knows all Kageyama’s tells, and no amount of oceans or metres was going to change that. Kageyama is brimming with hope, just barely vibrating with it.

It’s all too easy for Shouyou to wipe his tears away, force his hand into Kageyama’s, and beam. “When are you going to realise, stupid? Where you go, I go.”

Kageyama’s rented townhouse is probably really nice. Shouyou resolves to check it out some more once Kageyama stops kissing his neck.

Struggling to take off his coat, Shouyou tries and fails not to whine as Kageyama maps his throat with his lips and teeth. He isn’t feverish and restless with it like Shouyou has imagined. No, he warms Shouyou slowly, stoking the coals glowing in the pit of Shouyou’s stomach, poking at them, turning them, coaxing them into burning up. Whenever Shouyou swallows, Kageyama’s tongue latches onto the bob of his throat and follows it all the way down to the hollow between his collarbones, which he drops a kiss to before making his way back up.

Shouyou was by no means the pagan saint of virtue while he was away, and still Kageyama finds a way to best him.

“Lemme…” Shouyou trails off as Kageyama claims his lips again, cupping his flaming face. “Lemme take my shoes and coat off, ‘Yama, it’s getting hot in here.”

Kageyama makes a noncommittal noise but helps Shouyou unzip his coat and shrug out of it while they both kick off their shoes. His hands are warm on Shouyou’s shoulders. Big. He doesn’t even move them, just keeps them there, keeps Shouyou still. The thought that Kageyama might be the type to hold people down has the backs of Shouyou’s knees sweating.

“Won’t you give me the grand tour, Kageyama-kun?” Shouyou teases with the one breath he’s allowed before Kageyama kisses him again.

“No,” he says, and bites Shouyou’s lip.

“That’s not very hospitable.”

“How are you talking this much?”

Shouyou laughs. “Guess you’ll have to kiss me harder.”

The irritated groan Kageyama lets out rumbles in his chest. Shouyou feels his sternum hum with it.

“Move.”

Well. Without that grand tour, Shouyou doesn’t know where to move to.

“Up here, dumbass.”

Shouyou blinks some focus into his vision and even though all the lights are still off, he can see with perfect clarity that Kageyama is holding his arms out, palms up. He wants to lift Shouyou up again.

A frisson of arousal whispers up Shouyou’s spine.

He resettles his arms around Kageyama’s neck and hops up into his hold, narrowly missing clocking Kageyama in the chin with his head. Kageyama grunts but shifts Shouyou more securely in his arms.

“You’d better be much more coordinated with your jumps than that for how long you’ve been gone.”

“Heh,” Shouyou giggles, poking Kageyama’s forehead as he walks them further into the unlit house. “You missed me, didn't you? Hmmm?”

“Stop. I already told you,” Kageyama grumbles.

“You can tell me again. I won’t mind.” Shouyou draws his mouth to Kageyama’s ear, mouths wetly at the lobe. “I missed you. So much.”

Kageyama trips over his own feet, breath hitching. Shouyou’s laugh jumps when he’s almost dropped on his ass, but Kageyama hikes him back up and clutches him closer.

“Still so damn annoying,” he mumbles, and it’s shot through with so much promise, so much just you wait, that Shouyou feels sick to his stomach with how much he needs him.

Shouyou pays Kageyama back in kind for earlier, nipping at his neck with nary a modicum of finesse. He loses himself in the feeling of Kageyama’s skin goosebumping under his touch. When he sucks just above his collarbone, Kageyama moans very quietly. Shouyou bucks his hips because it’s the prettiest sound he’s ever heard, and he sucks harder to hear it again, to taste Kageyama’s skin between his teeth. Sucks until he feels the flesh get hot with the blood he’s coaxing just beneath the surface.

“Fuck,” Kageyama hisses, right before he dumps Shouyou onto what is thankfully a bed and not the floor.

“Yeah,” Shouyou says, stupidly.

Hardly daring to breathe, Shouyou watches as Kageyama settles atop him, climbing up his body. There’s not much body to climb up, to be honest, not in the height department, but Kageyama still takes his time. Slow, calculating, mapping. Light blooms into the room from the streetlamps outside, slotting between the slats of Kageyama’s blinds. Kageyama looks up at Shouyou right as he crosses paths with a shaft of sultry gold. His eyes plumb through the depths of Shouyou’s soul. Shouyou knows what he’ll see there. His thighs twitch either side of Kageyama’s hips.

“I’ll be back,” Kageyama says suddenly, deep voice shocking Shouyou out of the limbo Kageyama’s eyes had put him in. He shifts off the bed and points a long finger at Shouyou. “Wait here.”

Shouyou finds his voice and snorts. “Actually, I was thinking of going to order some food.”

Kageyama glares.

“Pfft. Lighten up, Kageyama.”

He isn’t dignified with a response. Kageyama leaves the room and Shouyou lets his heart race.

How can he possibly reconcile the Kageyama he’d left behind with the Kageyama he’d just had between his legs? When you’re right by someone’s side for the better part of three years, it’s more than a little jarring to leave, come back, and find them changed. Grown. Shouyou knows he has done his fair share of growing, too. It doesn’t make it any easier. He doesn’t regret a single step of his journey but he’ll always wish he’d had Kageyama with him for the latter half of it.

Shouyou squirms in Kageyama’s bed, crossing and uncrossing his legs, feeling dreadfully overdressed. He knows where the night is going, or at least, he knows where he wants it to go. He’s still coming to grips with the fact that Kageyama wants the same thing. Has wanted the same thing. Shouyou wants to ask hard questions. How long? As long as me, or only since I left? How do you know how to kiss so well? Did you kiss anyone and pretend it was me? Did you fuck anyone and pretend it was me? He just knows he isn’t ready for hard answers.

He can hear Kageyama pottering around in a different room. Fondness blooms through his chest, makes his lungs flutter. Kageyama potters. That’s so fucking cute.

Still swooning over how this hot, stupid, genius man shuffles around his house like he’s in his golden years, Shouyou is looking moony and dumb when Kageyama comes back. He’s holding lube, condoms, and a towel. He’s so tall he fills his whole doorframe.

Shouyou sits up and sniffs. “Hi.”

Kageyama presses his lips together. “Your clothes are still on.”

“I—Well, you didn’t exactly tell me to take them off.”

“I need to tell you to do everything?”

Mmm, couldn’t hurt, Shouyou thinks but doesn’t say.

Instead, he busies himself with discarding his clothes, starting to wriggle out of his socks and pants. When he pulls his shirt over his head, he realises Kageyama is still standing there. Staring at him.

Shouyou feels his cheeks tingle with his blush. “You just gonna watch?”

Kageyama looks for a hot second like he might say yes. Shouyou’s stomach clenches around the tension coiling in its pit.

But then Kageyama grunts, says, “Catch,” and lobs the lube at Shouyou’s face.

“Oh, my god,” Shouyou complains, snagging it out of the air before it takes his eye out. “Why?”

“Checking your receives,” Kageyama grins, tossing the condoms and washcloth to Shouyou’s side and reaching behind his head to pull his shirt off.

“Oh.”

Later, Shouyou will smack himself for sounding so horribly in love with just one barely-even-a-word word. Later there will be time for a lot of things. Now is the time to marvel at Kageyama Tobio’s bare torso.

It’s thicker than Shouyou remembers. Corded in more places. Stacked with sinew, begging to be bitten into. Shouyou’s gaze lingers on the swells of Kageyama’s pecs, the brawny webbing of his ribs, the cross-hatch of his abs. The slope of his hipbones, the dusting of dark hair between them that tracks down into the waistband of his sweatpants.

Shouyou ticks his eyes up, feeling feral again. Kageyama goes rigid for a beat, but it’s enough to make something inside Shouyou want to chase after him.

“You’re too far away, Kagayama-kun,” Shouyou says.

Kageyama hesitates and Shouyou revels in it, laps up his trepidation. He knows Kageyama will listen, because he knows Shouyou will hunt him if he runs.

A few more heavy, sex-saturated seconds pass, then Kageyama treads forward. Shouyou sighs his satisfaction, staring Kageyama down until he’s standing right in front of him, back between his legs. Shouyou tilts his mouth against the taut skin of Kageyama’s lower abdomen. It stretches even tighter when Kageyama inhales sharply.

“Touch me,” Shouyou mutters, licking his lips and planting them afresh on Kageyama’s hipbone, sucking the skin wet. “I want you to.”

“Hinata,” Kageyama shudders out on a breath, and runs a long-fingered hand through Shouyou’s hair.

Pleased, Shouyou indulges. He thinks about colours again as Kageyama’s skin starts to flower with reds, soon-to-be purples, promised blues. If he kisses a little higher, he could trace Kageyama’s nipples with his tongue the way he does in almost every dream he has had since second year. But he can smell sex in Kageyama’s pants, can feel him hot and vital just inches from his chin. Shouyou will work his nipples later. He wants his mouth fuller than that.

Still busy with the mark he’s sucking right beneath Kageyama’s belly button, Shouyou brings a hand up and palms the shape of Kageyama’s cock.

“Shit,” Kageyama hisses, fingers tightening in Shouyou’s hair.

“Okay?” Shouyou asks, peeking up at Kageyama while he flattens his tongue against the bruise he’s made in the shape of his front teeth.

“Y—yeah,” Kageyama stumbles. He cards down the back of Shouyou’s head, gently nudges him forward, encouraging. “You can.”

Shouyou does, shimmying Kageyama’s pants and boxers down his slim, multicolour hips. He doesn’t even wait to see what Kageyama’s cock looks like because he’s popping it between his lips instantly. There’s too much saliva in his mouth and he’d rather put it around Kageyama’s dick than let it pool onto the floor. He doesn’t want to be rude.

“Oh,” Kageyama groans.

Shouyou looks up just in time to see him throw his head back. The smooth, strained column of Kageyama’s throat makes Shouyou drool even more with the urge to suck it black and blue, and he slurps around his mouthful. Kageyama’s hips jump. Shouyou’s throat clicks and accepts Kageyama deeper.

Funny thing is, Kageyama’s hips only buck that one time. Shouyou is supping on his soul through his dick, teasing his tongue through Kageyama’s slit and hollowing his cheeks to draw every inch of him inside, and Kageyama barely moves a muscle. He lets Shouyou take the lead, lets him bob his head up and down while he pets Shouyou’s hair, tucks his fingers behind his ears, runs his thumb along the nape of Shouyou’s neck. He’s letting Shouyou feast as fast or as fast as he wants. Cock throbbing in his boxers as much as Kageyama’s is on and under his tongue, Shouyou moans.

“Fuck. Oh fuck,” Kageyama sighs.

Mm, filthy Kageyama, swearing so much. Which one of them has the dirtier mouth, Shouyou muses; Kageyama, spitting out curses, or Shouyou, sucking up all Kageyama’s precome? Maybe it’s a tie.

If you asked Shouyou later, he’d tell you he’s certain he can taste the difference when Kageyama starts to get close. He doesn’t need Kageyama’s whinier moans or his twitchier hands to clue him in. There’s a heaviness to his precome that hadn’t been there before, traces of something gooey and galvanising. Shouyou shoves his mouth all the way to Kageyama’s balls and draws that heady taste right to the back of his throat. God, the back of his throat. Apparently Kageyama’s big everywhere.

“Hinata!” Kageyama cries, thighs trembling when Shouyou’s palms settle atop them. “Oh, oh Hinata, fuck.”

Crammed full of Kageyama’s cock, Shouyou swallows and swallows, feels it swell against the insides of his neck. Oh, it tastes good, oh, it tastes like fucking winning.

“Shit, shit, shit, Hinata,” Kageyama hisses, hands opening and closing in fists in Shouyou’s hair. “Close, 'm close—ah!”

Sadly, that’s all the noise Kageyama makes when he comes, as if all his capacity to create sound floods out of his dick. He shakes up a fucking storm, though, quivering in place as he pumps Shouyou’s mouth full of his come. Shouyou moans happily, flicking his tongue at Kageyama’s balls as he drinks his fill, feeling warm and sated and horny.

Kageyama has to tug Shouyou off by the hair to stop him from sucking his dick off. Shouyou licks around the roof of his mouth, smacks his lips, and grins.

“Good?”

Kageyama looks vaguely shell-shocked.

Shouyou laughs, rocking back onto Kageyama’s bed with glee. “Oh, man, you should see your face!”

“Where did you learn to do that?” Kageyama sounds outraged and it only makes Shouyou laugh harder.

“Ask me no questions, Kageyama-kun, and I’ll tell you no—mmph!”

“Okay,” Kageyama snaps into Shouyou’s mouth, sucking a bruising kiss onto his bottom lip. “My turn.”

Shouyou has the presence of mind to be a little trepidatious. He has the presence of body to be so turned on he might pass out.

“Why are your fucking boxers still on?” Kageyama barks as he bullies Shouyou up the bed, wresting his boxers off as he does.

“Ah—got distracted,” Shouyou breathes.

Kageyama tuts at him, then shoves his legs up with large hands pushing on the backs of Shouyou’s thighs. Shouyou gags on his own Kageyama-tasting spit, suddenly very exposed and suddenly very bashful about it. Kageyama takes one look at him and huffs out his nose.

“No way you’re acting shy right now,” he snickers, fishing around for the lube bottle and snapping its cap open.

Shouyou blows a raspberry at him.

“Right.” Kageyama rolls his eyes, slicking his fingers up. “Hold still.”

Ah, so he does like Kageyama telling him what to do.

Shouyou tries not to close his legs as Kageyama brushes wet fingers over his hole. His face flames furiously. He’s a little hairy, didn’t have time to shave before his flight, but Kageyama pets at him gently like he doesn’t care, like he just wants in but he wants to make sure it doesn’t hurt. Shouyou kind of wants to tell him he doesn’t need quite this much working up, he knows how the game goes, but before he can form the sentence, Kageyama presses a finger inside.

A low moan thrums its way out Shouyou’s mouth, followed by a gasp when Kageyama starts to pump. It’s a slow, steady thrust, wrist twisting to butter all of Shouyou’s insides up with lube. Shouyou sighs, toes curling.

“Another one?” he asks. It’s been all of ten seconds.

“Be patient,” Kageyama scolds him. He waits all of five.

“Mmm,” Shouyou moans once a second finger joins in. He’s starting to feel the stretch now, rim quivering as it widens around Kageyama’s knuckles. “Yeah, that’s good. That’s real good, ‘Yama.”

Kageyama leans down and kisses the tip of Shouyou’s cock. Shouyou has a brain haemorrhage.

All he does is kiss it, though. One chaste press of his lips, another when Shouyou relaxes more, starts to rock with the feeling. It starts to feel like a reward, and Shouyou wants to earn it. When three fingers knock their way inside, he doesn’t even flinch, just breathes deeply through his nose and lets his body open up like he knows it yearns to. This time, Kageyama takes the tip of his cock into his mouth and sucks. Once.

“Shit, Kageyama,” Shouyou hisses, abs drawn tight, fingers twisting the sheets into spirals. His cock falls back to his taut stomach, wet with precome and the barest minimum of Kageyama’s spit.

Slowly but surely, the pleasure ratchets up. Kageyama’s fingers are considerate and leisurely. He starts scissoring them when Shouyou’s moans become whines, noises sitting in his throat rather than in his chest. Shouyou starts to wriggle on the bed, because while this feels good, really good, there’s an itch that just isn’t being scratched. An ache he really needs rubbed.

“Um. Kageyama.”

Kageyama tilts his head, eyes carefully curious. “Hm.”

How to put this delicately?

“Could you, uh. Kinda just, do it… a little more up?”

Kageyama glowers at him. Coming from down there, between his legs, level with his asshole, it’s the hottest thing Shouyou has ever seen.

He says, “No.”

And, oh, he’s avoiding it on purpose. Egging Shouyou on. Keeping his cock distressingly hard because he wants Shouyou to beg with every fibre of his being for it.

Even as Shouyou moans his heart into palpitations, he feels silly. As if Kageyama fucking Tobio doesn’t know where the prostate is. Precision is his profession.

“Okay, shit, sorry, I’m ready now,” Shouyou pants, fucking his hips down onto Kageyama’s keen, mean fingers. “Want it, want you, I can take it.”

Kageyama has the audacity to look down at his own cock before raising an eyebrow at Shouyou. “Can you?”

“Jesus, yes! Yes, Kageyama, please, I want it. I’ve wanted it so long, don’t you want it too?”

Shouyou imbues his voice and his pout and his eyes with every ounce of temptation he has ever learned. His body runs hot with his need and it must translate well because Kageyama curses and slips his finger out, no, no, no, but then—

“Yes, yes, yes,” Shouyou coos as Kageyama rips open a condom and slides it down his cock. Shouyou can see the veins on that thing even through the latex, god, he fucking wants it.

Kageyama’s chest visibly heaves as he tries to shift Shouyou into something fuckable. Sweat courses down all his svelte muscles, glinting in the fuzzy lowlight from outside. He looks every bit the creature Shouyou feels when he thinks of him, and something base rears its head in Shouyou’s psyche.

Faster than he can question it, he wraps his legs around Kageyama’s waist and flips them. Kageyama yells, bouncing on his back until Shouyou settles properly atop him, cradling Kageyama’s hips with his thighs.

“What—” Kageyama starts, but Shouyou dives down and kisses his complaints quiet.

For all that he wants to eat Kageyama alive, Shouyou mellows out fast with his lips on Kageyama’s. They slot together seamlessly, damp all over their mouths with ardour, drooling greed. He pecks Kageyama slow, counting the heartbeats under his palms and giving him a kiss for each one.

“Been saying it forever,” he whispers when he straightens up, feeling for Kageyama’s cock underneath him. “Wanted to meet you on top.”

He feels the tip snag on his rim and lets gravity swallow it up.

Full.

Brimming, brimmed. Overflowing.

How many years does Shouyou sit there, taking Kageyama’s cock up his ass and feeling his organs shift around it?

It’s beyond pleasure, it’s sensation. Shouyou notches Kageyama further inside him and pulsates with the fullness. He’s being fed so well, quenched so deep.

“Beautiful.”

His eyes fly open.

“H-huh?”

Kageyama Tobio peers up at him through ink-black, peacock lashes. “You’re beautiful, Hinata.”

Shouyou bottoms him out and screams.

He wishes he could stop to savour this, to chew his food before he swallows, but the tip of Kageyama’s dick is somewhere in his diaphragm and he can barely breathe and he wants to come on the love of his life’s cock before he dies and Kageyama thinks he is beautiful.

“Ah, ah, ah,” Shouyou whimpers, probably pushing a brand of his hands into Kageyama’s pecs with how hard he rides him.

“Fuck, fuck, Hinata, yes,” Kageyama sobs, fingers gripping Hinata’s hips, fucking into him, fucking so far into him.

“I’m—Kageyama, I’m…”

“I know,” Kageyama grunts. “I know, me too.”

“No, not that,” Shouyou pants. But also yes, that, because he is so fucking close he feels like he could come from his eyes.

“I’m b—oh, fuck,” he starts, pleasure crawling out of every open hole, and his stuffed one, too. “I’m beautiful?”

Kageyama doesn’t drop his rhythm for a second. “So beautiful.”

Shouyou comes.

It streams out of him in rivers, pulsing and lurid. Bliss wracks him to his core, shocks up his spine and his legs and his arms and his cock. He’s spilling so hard the force of it is holding his cock aloft.<

“Coming, I’m c-coming,” he mewls as it happens, like he can’t believe it even as he watches it splatter over Kageyama’s rippling stomach. “Oh, fuck, I’m coming.”

And it turns out Kageyama does make noise when he orgasms. He just has to do it hard enough.

Shouyou can’t even describe the sounds Kageyama makes, the way he moans as he fucks his dick inside one more time and keeps it there. Shouyou squeezes his hole rhythmically (he’s not entirely sure he’s doing it on purpose, it feels pretty instinctual), milking Kageyama out, wringing his balls dry. Kageyama whines so sweetly it’s almost a croon.

They fall back down to earth with time, landing hard but landing happy. Shouyou slumps off Kageyama’s spent cock into the mess he made. Kageyama protests for approximately two and a half seconds before he gives up and wraps shaky arms around Shouyou’s back. Shouyou has never been so pleased to be so disgusting.

He drops a kiss or two to Kageyama’s collarbone. Kageyama walks his fingers down the divot of his spine. Shouyou’s omnipresent hankering for glory purrs its satisfaction.

Shouyou has always been good at feeling, but he has always been better at letting everyone know he’s feeling, what he’s feeling.

It is all too easy to say, “You’re beautiful, too, Tobio.”