Work Text:
Devoted: KGHN Domestic Week (2025) Love Language
Touch
One of the things known of Kageyama, for better or worse, is that when he deems commentary necessary on a topic or person, you’ll know that he’s being honest in his views and opinions.
Words of affirmation aren’t altogether infrequent the way they were when they were teenagers, but not common. Words of affection were the real rarity, even still.
But Shoyo’s lover’s hands were talkative, always had been. Red strands remaining between knuckles after he’d claimed he’d won their race but Kageyama disagreed. Tender pink tinged skin left in the print of a large palm that slung him to a different position on the court (later found to have been done for pretty good reason).
These were Kageyama’s public conversations. Rough, even if well-intentioned or necessary. People who knew them knew it was done with consent and familiarity: this is how the two of them play and communicate and get their feelings across. They’ve seen that understanding throughout years of it occurring.
What they didn’t see, hear, was the talking points Kageyama’s hands made in quiet. In the quiet glow of Sunday morning dust motes swaying in front of the open blinds. In the quiet of a living room with the TV off, and the soft compliment of the springs of their couch creaking under their shifting weight.
Shoyo had always been preoccupied with those hands. Sometimes, many times, awe surrounded that attention, but at times it was irritation or jealousy. Those were hands made for their sport, made to set, made to work in precision and power.
Little had Shoyo known how the digits that wielded such talent would be his for the taking by the time they were young 20-somethings. His for the holding under the blanket at Daichi and Suga’s apartment for an after-party sleepover. His for the brushing of his lips after bandaging a paper cut after an anger-tinged journal entry. His to feel pet instead of pull at his hair in the shadowed corner of an izakaya after too long in the warm lights and under the pressure of eyes and seats keeping them apart more than they’d like.
His to feel the devotion, the teasing, the love even if he didn’t hear it as often as others would think was right. The goosebumps on the back of his neck at a particularly light touch of Kageyama’s callused finger tips up the dip between his ribs and his hip bone? The healed mottling of green and yellow and purple circling his upper thighs where Kageyama had grasped and tugged and dug his fingers in in desperation?
Shoyo heard, saw, and felt Kageyama’s affection and love in every press of that large thumb pad to his bottom lip before their lips came together — mouths muffled before any words could interrupt. Felt it in the grip, just enough, around his ache as Kageyama prepped and pampered him within the dim lumens of their nightstand lamps. Knew it for all its rarity in the shaking in the long bones of his fingers as it placed the ring — a promise — onto its rightful place on Shoyo’s finger.
So, yes, people see how loud Kageyama is in public. The yelling, the frustration, the cacophony of their competitive spirits in every dumb race or eating contest (the tally still going strong, thank you very much). But, also no, Shoyo doesn’t think they really hear what Kageyama is saying, because it’s in his physicality. His love is in the palms of his hands, and Shoyo finds himself feeling quite lucky to be held in them.