A/N Lol I added a bit at the end. Please enjoy.
The five of them find seats in the small living room. The television is on but muted so they can chat — there's still eight minutes before the game starts. Sugawara Koushi's cell phone rings, and he raises his eyebrows when he sees the caller's name. Tanaka Ryuunosuke leans over Suga's head and reads it out loud.
"Tsukishima… oi, the tall one! Glasses! Problematic!" He grimaces. "What the hell does he want?"
"Excuse me," says Suga as Sawamura Daichi asks, "Why do you have his number in your phone?"
Suga smiles demurely and tells everyone to cool it as he shuts the door to his bedroom. "Hello?" he picks up.
"Ah, hey, uh." There is a long, uncomfortable pause. "This is —"
"Tsukishima Kei, right?" Suga smiles.
"Yeah. I was wondering… the freak quick are on the national team now? I mean, do you remember Kageyama To—"
"And Hinata Shouyo, yes. We've followed their progress rather avidly. I'm afraid we're their biggest fans."
"…You and —"
"Daichi-san, Tanaka-san, Asahi-san, and Nishinoya-san are all currently at my apartment to watch the game. Which should be starting any minute. Can I help you with something, Tsukishima?"
Suga resists tapping his foot or allowing his smile to falter. The others will force him to hang up as soon as the game starts, anyway.
"What channel?" says Tsukishima, and Suga's grin brightens.
"Three. If you're in Kyoto —"
"I'm not."
"Well, enjoy the game, Tsukishima-kun."
"Yeah… you too."
They hang up.
"What'd he want?" Tanaka brazenly asks as soon as Suga opens the door.
"The channel for the game."
"Ah, no way? He wants to watch it?"
"Of course! Everyone in Japan wants to watch it!" shouts Nishinoya, pumping the hand holding his beer into the air, and Asahi places a steadying hand on the shorter man's head. "Sorry, man, did I spill —"
"It's on!" Asahi shouts at the television, and everyone cheers. Every single drink in the room sloshes over to splatter on furniture or floor. After drinking deeply from his own cup, Suga darts to the kitchen for a towel and starts mopping up what he can.
A hand falls on his arm. "Don't mind, don't mind," says Daichi, but his eyes are glued to the screen. "They're both starting."
"Of course," Suga says, and straightens. His eyes find the ball and he is immediately swept into the game. It's fast - the saves and attacks are hard to follow - but slow at the same time. It's been nearly two minutes, and the ball has not touched the floor.
Shouyo is easy to find, with his bright hair, as is Kageyama to the trained eye, but Suga suspects Tanaka, who has not watched every game of this tournament, might be struggling to find him. "Number two," he says for his benefit. "He's the…" But his thought is lost as he watches the Japanese team. The libero sends the ball straight to Kageyama, and Suga gets an old familiar feeling in his gut. He knows it's about to happen.
Not half a second later, the crowd on the screen and the room of old high school friends erupt in roaring cheers, just as Hinata Shouyo touches back down to earth and claps his two nearest teammates on the shoulder. The camera follows him for a few seconds. He's smiling brilliantly at someone off-camera. He's not even sweating. Suga wonders with a touch of nostalgia whether he got sick before this match.
"Gahhh, that's our decoy!" Nishinoya shrieks, pounding his fist on Asahi's armrest. "Flying Crows, wahhh!"
Each point is as dragged out as the first, but Japan keeps a steady lead of at least two points all the way through the set, and the guys in Suga's apartment are at the edge of their seats the whole time. Only one timeout is called — by Kageyama, with the score at 23-20. During the commercial break, Daichi groans, "I would pay anything to be in that huddle right now."
"Why did they call a timeout?" Tanaka says, grabbing the towel from Suga and scrubbing ineffectually at a stain on the couch. "We're ahead. I didn't see an injury or anything."
"Maybe they want to change their play," Daichi says thoughtfully. "We don't exactly have a comfortable point buffer at the moment." He smirks. "I bet Kageyama has some genius idea to let us pull ahead."
The ball goes back into play. The Japanese serve brings an end to the set. Suga, however, stares intently at the images of the team just before they pass into another commercial break.
"Good game, isn't it?" Daichi says to him, and Suga startles.
"It's certainly holding our attention," he replies, smoothing his face.
"What is it," Daichi says anyway.
"Oh. I don't know, but. Did you think Shou-chan was moving as fast as before, during that set?"
Everyone, including Tanaka who has his fingers in the hotpot, pauses. "…Are you joking, Suga-san?" asks Asahi.
"Yeah, Suga, you're going crazy if you think Shouyo's gotten slower since high school," Tanaka says before cramming a dumpling into his mouth.
"I don't mean since high school. I mean since the last match." He focuses on Daichi but notes Nishinoya's ponderous frown. "Am I seeing things?"
Daichi gives him a hard look. "I don't mark speed as well as you do, you know that. I haven't noticed anything, but…"
"The timeout," Nishinoya says finally. "If Shouyo's not at his best, maybe that was Kageyama giving him a breather." He shrugs in irritation. "I wish I'd seen all of their games this year. Then I might have a better idea of —"
Tanaka shakes his head. "Listen to us."
They all blink at him in surprise. "What?" Suga asks.
Tanaka rolls his eyes and flexes both arms. "They're gonna win! Hinata's faster than a goddamn lightning strike, and Kageyama's a fucking artist with a volleyball. Slower by a couple milliseconds today, so what? They're where they'd always said they'd be — at the top! And you guys seriously have doubts?"
Suga could not keep from laughing at himself. "Of course you're right, Tanaka."
"Ryu!" cries Nishinoya. "You said it best! They're gonna win!"
"Damn right! Damn right!" Tanaka roars, and flings off his shirt.
"Please don't do that," Asahi says with a hand over his eyes, and everyone starts laughing then. Tanaka's shirt stays on the floor. Suga sighs inwardly but at the same time betrays himself with the thought, I so wish they all lived in town.
After high school they'd all of them gone to different universities where only Nishinoya continued to play volleyball for school. Suga got a call from Asahi after their third year, though. Despite the distance, Asahi and Nishinoya had stayed close and in touch, much like Suga and Daichi had. Asahi told him that he was worried about their short friend, because he'd stopped playing volleyball but claimed he had no injury.
"I mean, for Noya-san, that's kind of like death, right?" Asahi had said, his voice trembling and high-pitched. "I can't figure out what happened. He won't tell me!"
Suga had promised he'd ask and in fact had called Nishinoya as soon as Asahi had calmed down enough to hang up.
There had been a long pause following Suga's question.
"I've met someone," Nishinoya said eventually, and Suga sucked in a breath. "Or rather, just figured out something about someone, and about myself, and…" He sighed loudly. "I'm a libero. I'm not gonna be on a court and not be libero. But it's rough, physically, and I don't want to get so hurt that I can never play again. Or worse."
"So… you instead choose to never play again?"
"Is that what Asahi told you?" Nishinoya started laughing. "Ugh, that idiot, no wonder both of you sound so worried. I'm just not on the university team anymore. I'm still on my city's team! Man, I don't think I could go cold-turkey from this. I'm basically addicted."
Suga let out a breath of relief, then remembered the rest of what Nishinoya had said. "Um. So. This person you met, or whatever. Are you, uh, dating?"
"Th-th-that's — can I get back to you on that?"
Needless to say, Suga is about to tear out his hair over Are They Or Aren't They with Nishinoya and Asahi, but he doesn't quite have the courage to ask outright.
"Second set!" Daichi calls to everyone in the kitchen, and Suga swipes a paper napkin before returning to the couch with his full plate. The rest of them mutter, "Let's eat," absently, their eyes again glued to the screen.
They follow the game. It continues to move like the first set, until —
"What the FUCK was that?" Tanaka yells into the startled silence. The crowd at the game is quiet. It's shock, thinks Suga calmly, and takes a long sip of his beer.
"They're fine. It's not as if this is a new thing," he tells them with a grin, but Tanaka looks horrified.
"Has that happened at any other game this year?!" he yells, pointing at the television, where Hinata grabs Kageyama's offered hand and allows himself to be pulled back onto his feet. "Has that happened since high school?! Since their first year?!"
"He's having an off game," Suga soothes. "And he looks fine, look, he's not bleeding —"
"I don't care if he's fine!" Tanaka says, and their eyes widen. "That was a low, dirty trick! They know they're in trouble and they targeted our Hinata!"
"Oh!" Nishinoya says, realizing, and a stormcloud gathers in his gaze. "Oh!"
And then the two of them are roaring at the television screen, shaking their fists and pointing. "Delinquents! Sore losers!"
"Guys! Calm down, my landlady will hear you. Really, I think it's just Hinata having an off game! Do you think he couldn't have dodged it or received it if he weren't? Sometimes spikes go awry like that."
"At the international level? I don't think so!" Nishinoya crows.
"Yeah!" Tanaka shouts.
"Scumbags! Assholes!"
"Nobody does that to our kouhai!"
"Yeah!"
"Oh god," Daichi says, putting both hands over his face but staring between his fingers at the screen. "Don't look now, but Kageyama seems to have the same impression these two loudmouths do."
On the screen, Hinata and the Japanese libero are dragging a furious Kageyama away from the ref stand. "You tell him, Kageyama!" cheer the idiots in the apartment. Once the three are back on the court and Kageyama looks mostly like he won't start yelling again, Hinata reaches up and musses Kageyama's hair. There's that sunny smile, even as Kageyama barks something at him — probably to get back in position.
It's now Kageyama's turn to serve. Suga feels only a little bad for the other team.
He scores six times before they break his streak, and then it's 23-16, Japan. Kageyama calls another timeout, and Suga scrutinizes the two-second shot of Hinata's face, which reveals no further evidence of his off-game. He's sweaty, and perhaps a little tired — but overwhelmingly determined.
"They're going to win," Suga whispers, and only Daichi hears him.
"Yeah," he whispers back, after a moment of staring.
"I knew it, but I didn't really… not til this moment."
Daichi gives him a lopsided grin. "Yeah."
Suga grins so hard he thinks he might stick that way, and has to cover his face with his hands. "Awesome!" he says into his palms, and Daichi tousles his hair.
"The serve!" Asahi calls out. Japan receives. Kageyama moves under the ball — Suga is barely watching, because Hinata has just started sprinting. It's gonna happen again.
The crowd's screaming is deafening as the ball slams onto the court; the commentators are nearly drowned out. "Game point for Japan," they say.
The serve flies over the net. Received. Japan organizes a defense — Suga can see the libero yell and point. Then the toss, spike. Hinata receives, and flies as soon as the ball leaves his arms. Kageyama's toss. Hinata spikes air into the faces of his blockers.
A wing spiker who has scored only twice the entire game, Yamamoto, jumps less than a second behind Hinata — too late for the blockers across the net. He slams the ball onto the opposite end of the court, and Suga can't keep himself from screaming along with the rest of his friends. This isn't the football world cup, so he knows they'll get a visit from his landlady for being so loud, but it will be worth it.
"That's our decoy!" they yell in each others' faces. "That's our kouhai!"
"Wahhh!" Nishinoya wails, and Asahi looks panicked for a second before Tanaka swings an arm over the short guy's shoulders and wails along with him.
"They did it! They really did it!" they sob at each other, drinking their beer through their happy tears. "Kanpai! Kanpai!"
"Okay okay, guys," Daichi says, lowering his hands like a conductor to make them lower their voices, but it is nowhere near as effective as what is happening on the screen. Japan has just won the men's volleyball World Championship, but the crowd has stopped celebrating. The Japanese team, sans Hinata and Kageyama, is in a tight circle, arms over each others' shoulders but facing outward, looking… protective. The point of view switches to cameras above the court so the world can see what exactly the team is protecting.
Suga hears Tanaka — it has to be Tanaka — drop his beer on the floor. No one moves to clear it up. Suga thinks, I might as well, because he knew this was coming. He tears his eyes from the TV, slips from Daichi's side and picks up the can, and throws the already dirty towel down over the spill. Tanaka, above him, with Nishinoya's arm still around his chest, is stuttering. Nishinoya looks pale until Asahi moves quietly to his other side, and then he blushes, and Suga has them.
On the screen, Kageyama has come out of his kneel and Hinata has leapt on him, legs around his waist and foreheads pressed together and they aren't kissing but it's hard to watch, their happiness shines too brightly.
Nishinoya pulls away from Tanaka, whose mouth has closed, but before Nishinoya can say what Suga already knows he's going to say, Tanaka asks, "Were they even dating?"
None of them know how to handle that. They don't know how to handle Tanaka. It was never something Suga had brought up with him because they like him, so much that they'd never found the courage to broach such a delicate topic, when they might lose his friendship. As Daichi put it one day, "Hypothetical homophobia aside, it would be really shitty to be a seventh wheel in anything." And so Suga had left it alone.
We're all cowards. Well, we've got to tell him now.
"Yes," Suga says, and looks at him steadily. And Tanaka rolls his eyes.
"Are you fucking kidding me?"
Nishinoya is about to hit him, and Asahi's not going to hold him back. Tanaka ignores the dangerous aura to his right and keeps talking, looking exasperated.
"All this time, you knew about those two having an adorable, secret, high-school-sweetheart relationship, and you didn't bother to tell me?" he accuses Suga, and then glances around at the rest of them. "Did you all know?" he cries dramatically, holding a hand over his heart.
Nishinoya looks supremely confused for two seconds, then slaps Tanaka on his back, smiling widely. "Yeah Suga-san! Why didn't you tell the rest of us, hey?"
"Oi oi…" Suga said, at a loss and thinking, Coward!
"And you didn't even ask about my secret, adorable, high-school-sweetheart romance?" Tanaka complains, and Nishinoya chimes, "Yeah yeah!" before he realizes what's been said. "Wait, what?"
Tanaka sighs heavily, looking enormously pleased with himself. He pulls out his cell phone and makes a call. "Darling~ yes, did you watch the whole thing? And you saw those idiots — yes, yes, you were right, but, would you put the call on video? I told the guys about —" There is a tiny squeal from the phone. "Yes, it's alright. Anyway, video, sweetie!" Tanaka hits a button on the phone screen and holds it in their faces.
Shimizu Kiyoko is waving at them in rather low resolution on the phone. Her entire face is bright pink.
"WHAT!" shrieks Nishinoya, grabbing the phone and glaring at it. Asahi blushes and frowns. "Is this for real?!"
"It's really me. And I'm really dating Ryu-kun," says Kiyoko in a small, bored voice. "We went to the same university."
"I wore her down," Tanaka says and waves to her before ending the call.
"That's not something to be proud of, Tanaka," says Daichi with a helpless grin.
"Asahi and I!" shouts Nishinoya, and when all their eyes fall on him he bites his lip. "Asahi and I are together," he says in a less-confident tone.
"Fucking finally," Tanaka says, and smiles. "Really, Noya-san, did you think you were being sneaky?" Asahi looks horrified, and Nishinoya puffs out his chest, grinning again.
"That's everybody, then," Daichi says, sounding surprised, and Asahi, Nishinoya, and Tanaka all turn to look at him in confusion.
"Captain? Who are you…" says Tanaka, and then Asahi's eyes bug out, and he says, strangled, "Sugawara-san?"
Suga nods, taking Daichi's hand, and the other three fall over themselves.
"What."
"I cannot believe. When. How."
"When."
"Just after graduation, actually," Daichi says, rubbing the back of his head with his free hand, and Suga thinks fondly, he's so happy they didn't figure it out.
Asahi comes out of his shock first. "I really should have seen that."
"No one could have seen that," growls Tanaka, who then points at Daichi. "You were gonna be with Michimiya-san! I was so sure!"
Daichi continues to rub the back of his head, but looks markedly less comfortable. "Yeah… well… we had a talk and… it all worked out for the best…"
"Gahh!" Tanaka yells, and sits on the couch. "My entire worldview has changed."
"Mine too," Nishinoya moans, flopping down beside him, and Daichi starts berating them both for being so unobservant. Suga takes the chance to check his phone.
He has two new messages.
Kageyama Tobio: Decided. After we win. Keep watching.
Hinata Shouyo: YOU WONT BELIEEV WHAT JSUT HAPPEND
Iwaizumi Hajime hits speed-dial and carries his empty plate, chopsticks, and glass back to the kitchen in one hand.
"Hello!" says Oikawa Tooru on the other end. "Did you forget something else?"
"Nah. It's over. Japan wins 2-0."
"Hm. I really wish you hadn't called me just for that, Iwa-chan."
"Don't fucking call me that."
"Oh, Iwa-chan, I can't stay mad at you."
"The freak duo played really well. And then your prodigy proposed. Just like I said he —"
Click.
Iwaizumi Hajime leaves his dishes in the sink, wipes his hand on his pants, and hits redial.
"What."
"Get us some more rice milk, idiot," he says, as gently as he can, hangs up, and returns to the living room to switch off the TV.
The dishes are out of sight and the beer stains will have to be dealt with another day, Suga thinks, glancing around the living room. The others are shuffling around although they're supposed to be getting their coats so they can catch their trains back home. But when he looks at them, as they stare silently at the things on his walls and feign interest, he realizes why they're stalling. He meets Daichi's eyes and shrugs his shoulders like, Yeah, you were right.
He goes to the hall closet where their coats are and Asahi dejectedly says, "Thanks for having us," before he sees what Suga is pulling out of the bin at the bottom of the closet. Nishinoya gasps. Tanaka blushes and looks like he might cry. Suga basks in Daichi's approving gaze.
In his hands is a volleyball.
"So?" he asks them. "Best two out of three?"
Author's Note.
This anime has ruined me. Like. I have ships in everything, right? But I never write romance. The obvious conclusion to draw, dear reader, is that I have lost control of my life.
I literally have nothing more to say for myself. good lord I even wrote a bit of that stupid trash ship at the end. they don't even matter. And I didn't write Kageyama or Hinata any actual lines because if I try to even imagine their interactions I get so emotional I can't? write? Like. Like. I am in so deep. Please send help. (Hah lol please don't I love it here oh mygod)
Review or w/e idfc anymore~