Kageyama wants to tell Hinata how he feels, but right now, he doesn't have the courage.
---
“You know,” Kageyama murmurs, Hinata asleep next to him, the team in varying states of rest. Nishinoya’s covers have completely come off, and he’s splayed out like a water balloon that hit the wall too hard - his leg is positioned on Asahi’s chest, and his entire fist is shoved in his own mouth, and Kageyama has no idea how he can be comfortable.
“I think I-” and he hushes himself. It hurts to say it, but it hurts more not to, and Hinata is so heavily asleep Kageyama wouldn’t be surprised if he never woke up. If the snoring in the room, like a tractor ploughing through a minefield, couldn’t wake Hinata, then surely three little - or three really rather big words, actually - wouldn’t do it.
"I think I love you."
An owl makes a sound outside the high-up window, and the stars are just visible against the midnight blue cloak of night. It's quiet for just a second, the gap between heaving breaths creating an ever so slight moment of serenity.
Hinata stirs, and Kageyama prays it's just the natural movement of his sleeping self. His arm brings itself up, and a speck of drool wells at the corner of his mouth; he exposes his pale stomach, and his knee twitches under the only part of the blanket not already discarded.
"Actually, I know I do."
He fights the urge to stroke Hinata's lightly freckled cheek, and debates the risks of threading through his wild ginger hair.
"I'll tell you one day."
The owl outside calls again, interrupted by an unceremonious snore.
tags: Getting Together, First Kiss, So much kissing, dont make me tag all the kisses please, Pining, Pining Kageyama Tobio, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Fluff, Little to No Angst
summary:
There are a hundred different ways to kiss. As Kageyama and Hinata’s relationship blooms, they start to discover a few.
chapter summary:
Kageyama pines after the one of the worst possible teammates he could pine for, and decides to buy some candy as a way of coming to terms with it.
—
It was no secret that Kageyama liked Hinata. Tsukishima teased him about it, Yamaguchi made unsubtle jabs and even Yachi passed around a few light-hearted glances. It seemed the only person who didn’t know that Kageyama liked Hinata was… well, Hinata.
He wasn’t thrilled when he realised it. Of all people, liking Hinata was possibly the most inconvenient for him. After all, Hinata didn’t even like Kageyama - he didn’t hate him anymore (or so Kageyama hoped), but the one person who was always, always annoying Kageyama, getting in his way and demanding tosses and starting fights just happened to be the one damn person Kageyama had a crush on.
Funny how that works.
It wasn’t like Kageyama hadn’t tried to tell him, of course. He’d tried over and over again, tried to break the ice, tried to at least insinuate to Hinata that there might be the tiniest, smallest, miniscule chance he might like him, but it had never come to anything. No matter what happened, something went wrong - Hinata didn’t understand, or he was interrupted, or worst of all (and most common), he committed a heinous act of self-sabotage.
Every time he tried to day he cared, it always came out wrong. “Babe” became “boke”, “dear” became “dumbass”, “friend” became “fucker”. Sometimes he’d choke on his words, or fumble his sentences, but no matter what, he just couldn’t be nice to Hinata.
He wanted to. He did. But he couldn’t even say “friend” in his presence, let alone “nice” or “like” or “kiss”.
Deep down, that’s what Kageyama wanted. He wanted to play volleyball, and he wanted to kiss Hinata Shoyo.
He was a simple guy.
He just wanted to give Hinata a kiss.
Give Hinata… a… kiss?
Kageyama steeled himself, clenching his jaw and furrowing his brow - he knew if Hinata were there (oh, gosh, if Hinata were there) he would have already made some unfunny quip about how grumpy Kageyama looked.
“Shut up,” he muttered, under his breath, to no-one.
He was gonna buy Hinata some Hershey’s kisses… because that was better than doing nothing, right?
Trudging into the Sakanoshita store at 9:18am, late for class and exhausted (he stayed up all night thinking about a certain ginger dipshit), Kageyama looked around for just about anything that had the word ‘kiss’ on it. He was desperate for something that would permit him to practise saying that word in front of Hinata, saying that he’d given Hinata one of those, saying just the word “kiss” and “Hinata” all at once.
“Welcome to Sakan- Kageyama? Why are you here, aren’t you late for class?”
Kageyama really didn’t wanna deal with Ukai’s lecture, so, like the mature and respectable adult (he was 15) that he was, he just ignored him and reached for the tell-tale brown Hershey’s packaging.
“Hey, Grumpy, did ya bring the rest of the dwarves?”
“...”
“Don’t just ignore me!”
“Hey, coach.”
“That’ll be 150 yen,” Ukai interrupted himself, before continuing, “why aren’t you in school? Ya ditchin’? You know you can’t go on the trips if you fail-”
“Here,” Kageyama handed over the money, eyes lingering for just a moment too long and his fingers brushed the word ‘kiss’, and Ukai seemed to understand.
“Ah. Well, kid, I’d get going if I were you. Your captain isn’t gonna be happy if he finds you skipping.”
It was a sweaty practise, and Kageyama couldn’t stop watching Hinata, but he could defend himself if pressed. Hinata’s jumping form was… particularly good today (Kageyama WASN’T looking at his butt, shut up), and he was really working hard for those kill blocks (he kept tensing the muscles in his arms, which Kageyama wasn’t staring at). He ran with extra vigour, today, and it was as if he knew Kageyama was watching (which he totally wasn’t, shush). Today more than ever, after his exhausting practise in which he tried harder than ever, he deserved a kiss from Kageyama. A Hershey’s kiss. Yeah. A Hershey’s kiss. Not an actual kiss, like with their mouths or anything. Kageyama definitely… didn’t want to give Hinata one of those.
“Hey,” he began, trying to reach for Hinata’s hand in the least aggressive way he knew how. He failed, and ended up slapping Hinata lightly on the wrist. In his mind, Kageyama kicked himself.
“Uh, you did… good. Today. Kind of. You did okay. You weren’t bad- well, you were bad, but you weren’t that bad-” he closed his mouth quickly, before any more mean (and completely unnecessary and untrue) comments could force their way out. “I mean, you did alright. Do you want one of these.”
Kageyama clenched his teeth so hard it wasn’t even a question - but there was no way Hinata would turn down free snacks anyway.
Shoyo reached for the bag, opening it, before smiling a way-too-mischievous smile and yelling way-too-loud, “Kageyamaaaa! These are kisses! Kageyama just gave me a kiss!”
“Will you SHUT UP?” Kageyama shouted back, before he could stop himself, his cheeks flushed and his hands shaking slightly with what he told himself was rage but was actually embarrassment and a crush he’d convinced himself was unrequited.
Hinata giggled, taking a silver-wrapped chocolate, ripping it open and putting it in his mouth whole as Kageyama cooled down.
“Thanks, Yamayama-kun!”
Kageyama stared for a moment, before offering Hinata another. “You know,” he tried, “you can actually eat the paper that comes in these.”
“Woah, for real?!” Hinata smiled with unrestrained glee (edible paper meant there was a morsel more food) before shoving three in his mouth at once, hardly even wasting time on getting rid of the aluminium foil. He’d gobbled up about a handful (which isn’t that many, because he had tiny hands) before Kageyama let him in on a secret.
“That was a lie. You should probably just eat the kiss.”
“What? But I ate like ten, and I’m not dead yet, so you MUST be able to eat them!”
Woah. That was… completely accurate, actually, in Kageyama’s mind. Nodding, Kageyama took one, and ate the paper with it, as if it was a celebration of achievement.
tags: Getting Together, First Kiss, So much kissing, dont make me tag all the kisses please, Pining, Pining Kageyama Tobio, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Fluff, Little to No Angst
summary:
There are a hundred different ways to kiss. As Kageyama and Hinata’s relationship blooms, they start to discover a few.
chapter summary:
Does Hinata know how Kageyama feels? He certainly acts like it.
---
Did Hinata know how Kageyama felt about him? Well, maybe. It wasn’t impossible. He knew for sure that Kageyama felt differently about him than he used to, but that wasn’t some kind of secret; he wasn’t so annoyed by him, nowadays, and Kageyama never seemed to get as angry at his teasing and jokes. Even when they fought, Kageyama’s punches were less impactful, and when he threw Hinata around it was more often a test of ability than a furious outburst.
Hinata had noticed things had changed. Kageyama never used to look at him for too long, but occasionally, recently, he’d catch Kageyama staring - when pressed he’d say he hadn’t noticed Shoyo was there, or he was trying not to be noticed by their teacher. Sometimes he’d get all bunched up and flustered around Hinata, like when Hinata asked for a bite of his food or a couple yen for a lollipop from the store. He’d shudder when Hinata nudged parts of him, when he pushed him playfully or grabbed his arm with impatience.
He wasn’t as angry at Hinata as he used to be. He used to be furious - not with Hinata, exactly, at least not at first. When he’d first met Hinata, he’d yelled at him - “what have you been wasting your time on for three years?!” - and he wasn’t angry at Hinata but with the way he had so much talent, with incredible reflexes and that jump, and yet he hadn’t seemed to do anything with it. And then, as they became teammates at Karasuno, he instead became angry at his inability to calm down, and at his disobedience, and at his nagging and big talk when he still lacked technique. Slowly, as they grew closer (or perhaps just less far apart), Kageyama began to admire those qualities, and instead of being furious with Hinata, he switched his fury to himself; why was he so weak, why was he so unable to talk like a human being, why and how and for fuck’s sake, Tobio-
Kageyama was so, so angry, not at Hinata, but at the way Hinata made him feel. He tried to repress it, because he knew if he attacked Hinata again like that night in the gym, he’d tear himself apart with guilt. Kageyama had upset Hinata once, and he never planned to do it again - and he feared that if, somehow, they were to fight again, it might take all the effort in the world to rebuild what they currently had.
What did they currently have? Well, it didn’t really seem like all that much. They were just nearly-friends, that was all; they didn’t eat together, didn't visit each other's homes, hardly spoke outside of school. Almost-friendly acquaintances, perhaps. And, yeah, that didn’t seem like all that much to the untrained eye, but to really understand what they had, you’d have to understand how far they’d come. They’d come from fighting and bruising each other over who walked into the gym first to snort-laughing at each other’s bad jokes, and Kageyama thanked the Heavens for that fact every morning. Hinata was the closest thing to a friend that Kageyama had, and Kageyama was so glad that Hinata stood beside him on the court, even if he never said anything, and even if they never stood together off of it.
Hinata was thankful for it too. Not only did it mean he wasn’t punched and headbutted and kicked and thrown around as often, it meant he actually got to see Kageyama laugh once in a while. The satisfaction of seeing someone as grumpy as Kageyama Tobio laugh was like sunshine for Shoyo’s soul, and knowing he was its cause was the capsaicin spice that danced on his tongue and made life just that tad more interesting.
“Team!” Daichi had yelled, and Kageyama snapped out of his thoughts, and moved his foot just an inch closer to his- his friend (nearly)- Hinata. “I want us to practise something new,” and he continued, “a double-setter set up. Our old bag of tricks is getting old, and I think we should try and perfect something new for the next time we go up against a strong team.”
Kageyama nodded. Double setter… so he’d get to watch Sugawara play, right? If he worked on the same team as him, he could analyse his style, and see how he could fit in. He could, as Hinata had taught him, adapt to his team, and mold himself into whatever shape they needed him to be.
And Tanaka leapt for the ball, and then there was a bang as it ricocheted off the polished wooden floor just beside Tanaka’s right ankle. He missed the shot - the set had been too fast, no way he could’ve reached it. The only person who could have was watching from the bench.
“Sorry,” forced Kageyama. “I’m used to Hinata. I’ll try again.”
Just for a moment, he switched his gaze to a haze of fuzzy, moving orange. His message was clear. “You wouldn’t have missed that. You’re here. You’ll hit every spike, so I’ll just toss you one.”
Hinata got it, loud and clear, and maybe it was one of those moments where their minds worked in harmonised synchronicity. Hinata nodded, and then, as if a twisted afterthought, blew a kiss in Kageyama’s direction.
Had it been tangible, it would’ve landed square on the dip between Kageyama’s collarbones. Even though it wasn’t, Kageyama could feel a light brush as he imagined where Hinata’s lips would’ve - should’ve - been, and he turned a brilliant shade of Nekoma-uniform-red. He felt his cheeks burn up, and his heart was either beating too fast to measure or had completely flatlined.
“What the- WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING AT, ASSHOLE? IT’S NOT LIKE YOU COULD’VE MADE THAT HIT EITHER!”
“BUT YOU JUST SAID IT WAS FOR ME!” Shoyo retorted, but there was no venom in his reply - instead a smile in his voice, and an unfamiliar sensation of butterflies in his tummy.
“WELL THAT DOESN’T MEAN YOU WOULD’VE HIT IT! YOU SUCK!”
“HEY!”
They bickered loudly across the room, and Daichi moved to stop them - before Sugawara took his forearm, and gave him a knowing glance. “Those two,” he murmured to his captain, “need to get this out of their systems.”
“Blowing a kiss?” snarked Tsukishima, and his sarcastic drawl was poison. “Now, now, you really think the king can handle that?”
On the inside, Tsukishima was disgusted. Can you two do your gross idiot romance somewhere else? he thought, but he was the only one - Yamaguchi smirked beside him, a cocky expression of I-told-you-so-Tsukki-ishness connecting his freckles. Even Daichi looked mildly amused with the new development in the freak duo’s relationship, and Tanaka was laughing at the dumbfounded blush on Kageyama’s face.
“Just-” started Kageyama, not really sure where he was going with his words, but knowing he had to go somewhere - “just watch and learn, Tanaka will hit it this time.”
