An absurd drabble I wrote listening to The Skaters' Waltz by Emile Waldteufel (a good piece if you like classical music and even if you don't).
Outside, the snow glittered proudly, attracting the allure of one interior observer. Satori Tendou peered through the curtains before jubilantly skipping out his front door. The worn-out tread of his sneakers spun on the icy driveway, spiraling Tendou giddily. Holding a volleyball, he flipped it in the air, catching it again gracefully at the end of the drive. Today was the perfect day for his favorite winter outdoor pastime.
At the center of a nearby park was an ice rink open during the winter. Not too big and tucked away from the rest of the neighborhood, it afforded Tendou an immense degree of privacy. A pair of skates inside his backpack slung over his shoulder and volleyball tucked under his arm, Satori marched down the snow-packed path. He checked the coast was clear before carefully nestling the volleyball into the powder on the rink's knee wall. After tying his skates, he mounted the ice with a grin. No one on his team knew; this was his little secret. Yes, Satori wasn't just a volleyball player—he was a skater, a "volleyball skater," to be exact. Leaving the rubber sphere on the ledge for now, Tendou propelled onto his frozen court, gracefully slipping back and forth, kicking up his momentum, hands joined behind his back contentedly. He would warm up before going into his real exercise.
Treading the snow where Satori once walked, a pair of skates dangling from one hand, Kei Tsukishima halted when he saw the skating rink occupied by none other than the cocky redhead blocker from Shiratorizawa. Kei had hoped for a nice break from thinking about the next tournament, but today he would be denied that it seemed. Spinning gleefully without a care in the world, Satori Tendou behaved as if the ice belonged solely to him, no differently than how he'd acted on the court. No, Tsukishima didn't want to deal with this today. After all, he probably had homework to do; and even if not, he could find some other activity to preoccupy himself. There were far better uses for his time.
He almost got away when Tendou spotted him and skidded to an upright halt.
"What? Frightened?"
Tsukki stopped in his tracks and cast a spiteful glare. Clearly Satori's personality was identical on and off the court. Below, Tendou beckoned a challenge from Tsukishima. Frustrated at being taken lightly, today, just this once, Tsukki would take that challenge.
Kei was no stranger to this, whether Tendou realized it or not. He jettisoned onto the ice with power and poise, slipping around like nobody's business. Tendou gawked, having quite literally believed himself the greatest skater in the world up until this moment. Tsukishima, he wagered, was on more or less an equal level, and that was a ranking Satori couldn't stand for. Tendou grunted and thrust himself proudly, slipping seamlessly into flips and spins and every manner of airborne boasts he could come up with. Even so, Tsukishima imitated everything with relative ease, pissing Tendou off to the highest heavens. So what if Tsukishima were a fine skater? He for sure wasn't a volleyball skater. Tendou slid over to the wall and grabbed the volleyball he'd set there, then swirled back to the center of his half of the rink. He sneered. Here's the one sport Tendou was irrefutable master of.
Tendou tossed the volleyball up and, with flawless precision, matched his momentum to its gravitational arc, bouncing it up and down with sliding digs and jumping sets. This was the sport Tendou invented and reigned supreme in. Upon finishing his routine, Satori fired the ball into Tsukishima's hands. Kei appeared a little snubbed as Satori beamed proudly with arms crossed. Take that, first-year.
Kei grinned. Yes, he would take it. Gladly.
Satori didn't know where the boy had gotten the practice, but Kei just as gracefully set the ball for himself, mixing in spins and every skating technique imaginable. Tendou snarled. Who the heck did this upstart think he was? This mockery had to end. Tendou may have lost on the laminated court, but he would not lose on the icy one. After Kei jetted the ball back to Satori with an accomplished smirk, Satori decided this was war.
Tendou bounced the ball in place as if prepping a serve, a fact not unnoticed by Tsukishima. The redhead's wily smile curled as he caught the ball solidly in his palms. And then he tossed it high with a heavy forward arc. Satori bent down and propelled himself underneath the rubber sphere before leaping and striking it with a jump serve.
Instinctively Kei skated into the ball's trajectory, batting the ball back clumsily. Momentarily shocked Tsukishima even received the volley, Satori decided he'd play this one-man faceoff with all his might. He slid and dug the ball back into the stratosphere. And so they continued.
As they got into the groove of things, each player became more daring and stylish in their blocks and sets, mixing in sideways jumps and even digs with the legs. Neither of them thought to simply bounce the ball down in front of them, but without a net, it wouldn't be clear whose "side" of the slick court the ball would land on.
As their muscles began to ache, however, their returns progressively lost valor. The ball no longer traveled as far with each hit until suddenly, after one hit, it lost forward motion above the center of the rink. Both unwilling to let the ball hit the ice, Kei and Satori zipped below its point of descent. Their palms simultaneously crashed against either side in a joust, their forward inertia and converted into a gentle angular spin. Tsukishima and Satori twirled slowly, their eyes locked in a fierce duel to see who was stronger.
And then they stopped, the ball plopping on the ice between them.
"You're good," Satori complimented. "It pisses me off."
"Again, thanks," teased Tsukki. But this time Satori didn't get spiteful.
They were equals. Truly equals. On the volleyball court separated by a net with assigned jobs at different times, they couldn't fully sync. But here, they connected.
And that meant only one thing.
After a moment, the pair resumed their duel but in a different way. Telepathically coordinating their moves, they passed the ball joyfully to one another, tossing or returning the sphere in increasingly innovative and artful ways. Tsukki would gently set a ball as Tendou slid the opposite way and spiked it high, timed perfectly to Kei returning to the same spot to receive. Once more, the ball was set above dead center—this time in preparation for both players to converge simultaneously and receive it in unison. The plummeting ball contacted all four wrists at once and ascended above the tree branches that shaded the rink, until it was a tiny dot.
The faint breeze tilted the ball off-course slightly as it descended. And, to Tsukki and Tendou's chagrins, the ball bounded off a stray tree limb and nestled in a patch of twigs forty feet in the air.
Satori and Kei gawked at the volleyball held hostage by the frost-coated, wooden behemoth. It was too far to climb. Their game was over.
Without a word, each spun to one side of the rink resolved to leave. Both gripped the knee wall and paused. This had been fun, they each thought, but without the ball, there was no more competition to be had. There was no reason for them to stay, they thought.
Or was there?
Each volleyball skater glanced over his shoulder at the other, their eyes seemingly thinking the same thing. Just because they couldn't compete didn't mean they had to leave the court….
In short order, Tsukki and Tendou resumed their graceful dance—now an unashamed and unabashed duet. They locked hands, spun each other around, propelled against each other. As much as they hated one another, this was actually quite fun. None of their teammates had to know about this. They were all alone, save for the unnoticed smartphone filming their glorious recital through the leafless bushes.
Before long, their muscles began to swell to the point they couldn't ignore them anymore. Tsukki and Satori huffed as they finally succumbed to exhaustion. Not wanting to leave the volleyball stranded, Tendou curled up a sphere of snow and flung it at the top of the tree, missing the larger ball by a foot. Tsukki too missed and Tendou's next volley fell just short. Finally Kei fired a rocket snowball that imploded on impact with the rubber sphere. The volleyball cascaded down the curvature of the branches, tumbling over the limbs before careening off the side and looking to disappear behind a nearby bush. Instead, to Tsukki and Tendou's surprise, the ball ricocheted off the orange head of a person crouched behind the bare hedge, the boy toppling backward into the snow. Tendou and Kei gaped before marching up the hill to investigate.
Pressed into the snow, Shoyo Hinata rubbed his sore head, his cell phone lying on his chest. Before he knew it, Tendou lifted the smartphone and peered through the display at the downed Hinata, both Satori and Kei instantly noticing the phone was recording. Satori hit the stop button and glanced at his partner. There could be no evidence of this, they silently agreed, before both fiendishly beholding the gulping shrimp.
Shoyo was powerless against the giants who dragged him onto the ice in his sneakers, the pair whipping Shoyo around freestyle. Hinata fruitlessly fought against his captors' vice grips on his wrists until the taller boys mercilessly released their hostage, tumbling Shoyo onto the ice and letting him sprawl out in the center of the rink. Shoyo rubbed his pulsing back muscles as Tendou and Tsukki elegantly slid to the exits and departed the ice. Hinata clambered upright, but toppled down again in his traction-less tennis shoes, his chin banging on the thick ice. He gaped in abject dismay as—now in their regular shoes on the path—Tsukki brandished Shoyo's cell phone while a sneering Tendou waved goodbye. The pair sauntered down the path alongside one another, Tendou tossing the volleyball up and down, resolved to leave Hinata to his misery.