King and lionheart

AN: Characters might be slightly OOC, but I really wanted to try my hand at writing this pairing. Hope you enjoy it :)

Warm fingers against cool leather – a grunt and a splash of sand as a ball hits the opposite side of the court before skipping towards the idling waves of the Atlantic. The shape of blue and yellow is lost to sight in the shadows, away from city lights. Oikawa Toru heaves after a moment, then turns to smirk at his shorter companion, lean fingers threading through wind-swept hair. Hinata Shoyo's amber eyes watch him with a glint as he huffs, pulling and releasing the collar of his shirt in a futile attempt to cool down. (The streetlights wreath him – pale yellow above orange, glistening against sun-loved skin. Oikawa's breath hitches.)

"You're wearing yourself out." his voice is barely a whisper into the ocean-scented breeze, but Hinata registers his lips moving, knows the look of playful spite etched into the lines of his face, the subtle arch of his brow; Tired, Chibi-chan?

"Nope,"he breathes in response. Strays howl in the distance, near Praça do Lido, and patrons laugh in the barracas west of the court, a muffled yet merry sound. Hinata Shoyo stills to listen. The amicably sharp rustle of palm trees had watered down the memory of susurrus of sakura blossoms a spring ago. Yet, a taut voice spears the serenity of the moment (A sliver of thought creeps upon him – Asahi-san?) and Hinata turns to meet sandalwood skin stretching and bending in the air, two courts away. A hit – and two men bellow in celebration, familiar yet foreign; the rush of the ghost of the moment banished as Toru shakes the sand off their towels. (Hinata stares – and wonders when the line between business and pleasure blurred between him and Brazil, when did agitation give way to falling into a pattern of senseless peace. His chest no longer feels like steel in moments he fails to recall the timbers of his ex-teammates' voices; the inconspicuous hollowness perished from its cage in between his ribs with the same quiet ease with which it had settled there, exiled by nothing but a delicate teeter of warmth.) "I'll go get the ball."

Oikawa's hand gently rests against his chest, blocking his stride. "That's enough for today."he says. "Besides, Monchique is about to close any minute now. I don't believe we'll even make it." He feels regret settle on Shoyo's shoulders, a fleeting downward motion before he plucks himself from him to reach for a sand-covered rucksack. Oikawa peruses the intemperate flex of his muscles as he tugs at a stubborn zipper. The air about him feels distant – and Toru knows it to be his way of dealing with the announcement he made yesterday morning. (I leave on the 25th.)

Oikawa Toru's days were numbered. And Hinata Shoyo wished to defy the Earth's weary course – to steal seconds, minutes, days. Years. Horror threatened to freeze him solid if he thought of a single golden morning wherein Oikawa does not meet him at the corner of Rua Dantas and Avenida Atlantica; of one morning when he stands before the looming wall – alone.

Shared late-night dinners – brunches and skipped lunches – became a custom of theirs during this short period of Toru's stay. They would wander the alleys in search of pleasant scents and affordable prices; Toru always paid, regardless of Hinata's insistence. (A senpai always treats his underclassmen.) They spoke of volleyball to tunes of samba and laughed to the melody of sertanejos. Hinata would dance on certain occasions if his intake of alcohol happened to surpass his usual (a can) – and Toru would watch him pester more-than-willing dancers to show him the footwork, the sway of their hips. Hinata would taunt him with feathers and empty threats but Toru would never budge. He would recount it all the morning after, as they sat on the warm sand, a striking radiance to him. (The dawn, Hinata infers. It must be the breaking of the dawn.) They would make promises they both knew they could never fulfil.

For Oikawa Toru couldn't stay. And Hinata Shoyo couldn't leave.

(So one wonders whether one could squeeze a lifetime of happiness within numbered days.)

Toru settles on the ground, reaching for their daily prize, tucked away in a rundown cooler borrowed from the younger man's ardent fans. Dark blue cans hiss as he opens them, one by one; the sound appears to tether Hinata to the moment. He takes the offer of a drink somewhat bewilderedly, discarding the bag, then falls onto the sand beside the taller man in a heap of lawless limbs. (Oikawa cannot soothe the prickling of skin where Shoyo's shoulder grazed his flesh.) The murmur of waves lulls them into silence.

Hinata lays spread eagle and watches the waning moon in the heaven's arch, relishing the first pinches of fresh Brazilian nights on the skin of his arms. He hears a suppressed sneeze escape Oikawa's lips and wrestles away a laugh. Something about the discovery of the Grand King's weakness stirred a peculiar mirth in him. Oikawa Toru detested cold and over-saccharine drinks with the same passion with which he loved volleyball and Takeru. There was a subtlety to every aspect of him. The Oikawa he learned did not resemble the boy he remembered from girls' magazines – an overzealous, ever-smiling ideal of flawless skin and prim-and-proper temper – nor the fierce opponent he came to know early in his career. This (His) Oikawa looked like freedom and steel. (He nearly chuckles again, utterly unaware of Oikawa's eyes on him.) The unrelenting line of his shoulders was reminiscent of indoor courts – of Ushiwaka, in the same way that the lilted tone of his care made him think of Sugawara-san. There was Kuroo-san in his court manners and Argentina in his moves. Nishinoya in his resolve. (Surreptitiously, there was also him – Hinata smiled; there was Hinata Shoyo in his worldview. I'll stand on that stage, Shrimp. You will all bow before me.)

Japan (All his life) might've been far, but Shoyo wished to hold onto the piece of it breathing by his side.

"Like what you see, Chibi-chan?" Amber grazes brown, prompting Hinata to offer a sheepish smile as a hint of apology.

"I do." The slight upward motion of Oikawa's lids escapes him. "You're much less intimidating now."

"Oh, so you used to find me intimidating? How so?" Oikawa nudges him with a smirk. A playful push in return arrives in welcome and Toru notes the day's tension has dissipated between them, leaving them flush and with an air of waning ebullience.

"I did, yeah" he confesses perfunctory. "You were talented – and scary. Ushiwaka wanted you. Tobio feared you." he adds with a feathery laugh. "But I like you more as you are now."

Toru does not bother to mask his amusement. "And what am I like now?"

Hinata shrugs. "Bolder. Somehow – grander?"

"Grander? Chibi-chan seems to know his way around words."

"I mean it. You're different – a good kind of different. You're still the Grand King and yet you're – freer?" The lines near the root of his nose scrunch and Hinata clicks his tongue in annoyed dissatisfaction. "No. I guess you're in a better place." The ensuing reticence betrays Oikawa's surprise. Hinata's gaze does not falter as it roams him.

"Do you not like yourself, Oikawa-san?"

Toru takes a sip of his beer and wonders when the inquisitive man beside him relinquished the idealistic, impressionable boy of his youth. Oikawa is aware that life spares no one, but cannot fathom that it carved this young man – sun-kissed skin, all ripe muscle – out of that little boy. Women come in throngs to see him play, they preen and joust for a jiff on the edge of his line of sight; men stand rooted, awash with green envy each time he springs – a spear let loose in the wind; ceaseless, relentless. More. Ninja – old men murmur whilst their wives speak of a glowing, handsome young man. (Sun sprinkled him with cinnamon-coloured spots that clustered like constellations on the hills of his cheeks. Oikawa saw women trace them and attributed the ardour that burned his ribs to ash to purest envy. Yet he wished to be the one to read them as they were never read before.) They seek him like sunflowers do sunlight. He never denies them a piece; Toru sometimes wonders, in the nest of his own lovers, whether Shoyo feeds on the ability to incite exhilaration in others. He viewed him as a simple complexity, a whimsical pet whose needs you could never ascertain, yet they always appeared to be met. However, maybe, just maybe, Chibi-chan was an entirely complex simplicity; an ever-coveting crow.

"I do,"he utters after a moment. Shoyo tilts his head. "I like myself. I like where I am."

"Argentina?"

A nod.

"Then, do you not miss Japan?"

He laughs, a mirthless sound. "You make a home where you must, Chibi-chan." Where life takes you, Hinata.

The commotion near the barracas grew louder, Hinata could make out drunken cusses above the inviting rhythm of samba. He thought of the girl from last night, Sofia – or some other name – and the set of steps she showed him in the dimmest corner of the bar. Ouça a batida, she kept reiterating, pointing towards the band where Toru stood, leaning on the high table, engaged in conversation with a female patron. Hermoso, she called him. Hermoso – and an arm against his chest. Sofia had smacked him, vicious finger aligned with Toru's proud back. Ouça a batida da música, não do teu coração, she shouted, pressing her palm to his chest. Shoyo did not understand then. But – broad palm against his own chest – he feels the dart of his heart and listens to the distant sound of music, a beat of a dozen volleyballs.

Ouça a batida da música.

"Oikawa,"the lack of honorifics promptly catches the taller man's attention. "Would you ever leave volleyball?"

"Even if I wanted to, I wouldn't know how." He flicks the beer can with his fingers, staring at the starlit sky. "You know, my girlfriends used to accuse me of dating the sport and not them. And I don't blame them. I spent every waking moment inside that gym, polishing a dull weapon." He squeezes the fabric of his shorts, the hem above the right knee, and clashes with Shoyo's eyes. "I was given another chance, Chibi-chan. I would never forgive myself if I let it go to waste."

I would never forgive myself if I let it go to waste.

Hinata Shoyo shifts abruptly – and Oikawa's eyes caress the lines of the shorter man's biceps as he props himself on one elbow, utterly void of thought, unaware of a streak of liquor escaping through the corner of his parted mouth. Oikawa can smell the earthy aroma of beer in the ghost of Hinata's breath against his face, a mere volleyball's width apart. Time slithers to a standstill. The sea rests, the lights of Rio fade before the amber gaze of Chibi-chan's eyes and the rush of Oikawa's heart. Alcohol, he thinks, squeezing the half-full can. Alcohol.

Hinata cuts through the silence like honey through milk. "You're cold."

"I am." He wasn't. The shivers fleeting down his spine had other instigators. (Amber-eyed and made of pure, bronze muscle.)

"Yeah?" A tilt of his head.

A breathless nod. "Yeah." He could count the specks on his face – he wished to, but his eyes were riveted on the invitingly sweet curve of Hinata's lips, the manner in which their corners rose and stretched. (Drunk, he muses. Inebriated.)

"Good."

The warmth is plucked from him as swiftly as it bloomed. Oikawa watches, with gushing bewilderment, as Hinata rises with a start; the motion makes Toru dizzy. (Or was it perhaps the onrush of stimulus as the world stirred back to life?) He takes an instant to dust the sand off his legs before extending a calloused hand. Toru regards it, sensing the heat coat his cheeks. (He'd seen him do it. A flash of a charming smile and he was hugging corners with pretty ladies. Chibi-chan was older. Bolder. Brimming with vivacity. Devoid of childhood innocence.)

"There's no one home tonight." he explains, boasting a disarming smile. "You can sleep over."

Ah, stupid…Oikawa chuckles. He closes his eyes for the briefest moment, allowing the last of embers of an unknown emotion to dissipate, leaving numbness in its wake. It's Chibi-chan, he spins the thought. And you're drunk. (Strong arms sheltering him. The mild scent of sweat, the alerting feel of cold metal against his back. Black hair tickling the root of his throat as Hajime nibbles at the soft skin above his collarbone. A one-way ticket resting atop a heap of discarded clothes. I'm sorry. I have to.)

Wordlessly, Hinata Shoyo takes a hold of his hand – Oikawa's eyes snap open – twining their fingers and pulling him to stand. He pokes the side of Toru's shoulder before trekking towards the lights.

"I hope you haven't watched the recent One Piece episode! Oh, and if you have, don't spoil it!"

I have…Never.

Constellations shine above the city lights, winds still and the ocean calms. Somewhere on Copacabana beach, Oikawa Toru wastes no moment reaching Hinata Shoyo's side.

~X~

Oikawa Toru awakens in the thinnest light of dawn to the wafting scent of mackerel and the crackling of oil on a heated pan. The ventilator breeze ghosts across the exposed skin of his shoulders and legs, leaving a trail of goosebumps in its wake. He lays and basks in the sound of children's games seeping through the door left ajar while the occasional string of curses from a speeding cyclist spears the last of sleep out of him. Disgruntled, Oikawa tosses and turns before resigning to knead the balls of his eyes so as to dispel the remnants of drowsiness. The world dances in blotches before it stills to reveal a white ceiling, a sandalwood fan right above him. A muffled yell comes from the kitchen, followed by the onrush of water. Oikawa smiles and lets his arm fall to the side – Hinata's warmth still oozed off the pillow beside him; the sensation incites his fingers to pull it closer, flush against his face. He buries his lips in the hollow where Hinata's head had rested – the lingering scent of alcohol and maracuja shampoo tugs at his memory. He thinks of a pair of strong thighs wrapped around his waist, the feel of supple skin as his nails rake through it, the taste of another's lips at the crest of his pleasure. He entertains the idea of succumbing to the imagination when a weight settles over him, light friction against his hips met with a groan.

His laughter resonates with summery mirth. "Is the Great King drained?" Oikawa's head snaps to look at him with utter mortification – and he finds him grinning, the Sun's canvas painted in splotches of its rays that snuck past the weathered blinds. Beautiful. "Good morning," he greets him, casually scratching the spot above the hem of a shirt Oikawa recognized as his. Then, as precipitately as he came, Hinata pulls at the sheets draped across Oikawa's mid and deftly rolls off him to disappear through the door.

"I made breakfast! Hurry, it'll cool down!"

"Coming…"he breathes to an empty room. Oikawa Toru rises from Shoyo Hinata's bed with a huff and follows the hum of Chibi-chan's voice into the kitchen. Two plates of mackerel and toasted French bread rolls laid waiting atop a small oval table Hinata was seated at. Toru identified the wide open balcony door as the source of the street noise that chipped the sleep away from him – sunrays glided across the pallid faces of buildings as the Sun slowly woke. Argentina, a thought – a fact – sprouted, one he wished he could weed out.

"Thinking of San Juan?" Oikawa looks at him as if made aware of his presence for the first time. Hinata now stands in his line of sight, leaning against the balcony doorframe, facing away from him.

Oikawa wishes he could lie to him. "Yes."

"If we'd had this conversation two days ago, right before you told me you were going back, I would've been childish. I would've gotten mad because I would be letting a piece of home go." A sound escapes him, so barely audible that Oikawa cannot discern its nature. "I thought I was homesick. I thought you re-ignited the high school boy in me – the boy who uprooted himself from home to follow a wobbly dream. I anchored myself to you because I thought you were home."

"Chib-"His eyes blazed like two suns as he met Oikawa's gaze; the sight took the older man aback.

"You're not home." He announces with a smile, carefully observing the ensuing creasing of Oikawa's brow. "You're volleyball."

"I'm…volleyball?"

Hinata nods, crossing the room to stand before him. Oikawa felt trepidation creep into every pore of his being. A desire to flee. "I can leave home. I left home." His eyes shift poignantly towards the picture Oikawa knew was hanging on the wall behind him. (Tsukishima and the pinch server. The blond manager girl. Chibi-chan. And Kageyama Tobio. It burned itself in his retinas, deeper with every visit. More violent with every inappropriate thought he ever had of the man before him.) "I left it for volleyball because I couldn't leave volleyball. I could never let it go. At least not until I've made my peace with it."

Dread swells around Oikawa's heart. A torrent of words leaves his mouth: "You're not gonna play? Why are you thinking of quitting? Now? What was the point of even goi-"

"Toru." The sound of his name on Hinata's lips punches the air out of his lungs. He stares at him like a frightened boy. "You are my volleyball. So I'm asking you to consider repeating what happened last night, well, indefinitely."

Minutes run their course. The business of the morning fills the space between them in Hinata's small apartment on Rua Carvalho de Mendonça, deafening the erratic beat of Oikawa Toru's heart. Booming, sharp voices – and Oikawa is a teenager again. You don't have to gos whispered against his ear, stays like ardent pleas, there is a place for you heres (a gesture at his heart) buried behind a veil of tears and sleepless machinations of what ifs and what could've beens had he just stayed. And Oikawa Toru could not stay. There was a hunger in him greater than any desire of the flesh. He was famished – and they could not understand (never the way he wished them to). Oikawa needed to satiate it even if it meant he would burn out in the fires of starfall, never to carve his name (in his own sweat, his own blood) among the remembered. He yearned to try.

"Chibi-chan-"

"Shoyo."

"-I can't stay."he croaks. "I told you last night – you should understand! You say it's the same for y-"

Hinata Shoyo takes a hold of his hand with a tender smile. He laces their fingers over his heart – Toru stares, as if able to see inside the flesh, the bold surety of the rhythm of his heartbeat.

"I'm not asking you to stay, not physically." He feels his fingers wind themselves in his hair, the emotion behind the gesture almost alien. "I want you to go. I want you to become the Grand King of the International Court and I want to watch you rise through the ranks as an equal, maybe to one day stand there as your minion. I want to be there with you in whatever way. For my sake and yours."

He tugs at his hair to lean Oikawa's forehead against his own.

"I want you to have volleyball." Oikawa's eyes close once he feels him speak against his lips. "But I also want you to have me. I want to have you."

Oikawa Toru's hands find Hinata Shoyo's waist with practiced ease as the shorter man kisses him. Although devoid of last night's want, it is imbued with unbridled affection - if one could shed skin out of sheer avarice to feel more (all) of the other, Oikawa knew they would've done it. There was no uncharted territory for him on the plane of Hinata's chest, no sound his ears had not already gobbled to remember in a moment of need. And soon, as Oikawa set their pace, Hinata takes charge; he is somehow broader, grander, his hands larger on Oikawa than he ever remembered them being on the ball. (And gentler, powerful but acutely aware of their strength.) A sense of pride engulfed him somewhere underneath the torrent of pleasure, hubris of a man who knew none of those who wished to have the man before him would get to witness this sight.

(If Oikawa Toru has it his way, he will be the last to see it.)

They lay in the golden hour, a heap of entangled limbs in Hinata's bed, giggling like schoolboys before their crushes. Hinata traces the line of Oikawa's neck, their noses touching.

"So, where do we go from here?" Toru asks, bumping his nose.

Shoyo shakes his head. "We'll figure it. But we are the goal."

Oikawa laughs. "You even sound like me."

To his surprise, Shoyo does not disagree. "I think that's, why it's you with me here. Why I think there can't be anyone else here."

"You make it sound like destiny."

Hinata shrugs. "You are a setter. I'm a wing spiker." Their laughter blends together so smoothly Oikawa wonders how he had not noticed it before.

Hinata pecks him. "You're a king and I'm a lionheart."

A mischievous glint graces Oikawa's eyes. "Serve your king, then."

The weight of the golden ring hanging from his neck is but a taste of ambrosia. Oikawa Toru watches thousands raise in reverence once the final note of the Argentinian national anthem evanesces in the air. The applause is deafening – a signal for the sea of cameras to flood them. Raul tugs at his sleeve like lifeline – Allí, and Toru is swept away with him, past curious faces and prodding voices.

Brown meets hazel underneath reflector lights. (Raul grins beside him – Vino a verte.)

Toru greets him with: "I thought you flew back to Brazil this morning." And Hinata beams.

"It's not every day that your husband wins the Olympics."

Oikawa Toru takes the medal off to decorate the shorter man's neck.

"I won a long time ago. That night in Brazil."

Cameras flash and clamor rises as Oikawa Toru kisses Hinata Shoyo without a care in the world.

~X~

Bonus scene:

Gentle strums of guitar pierce the quiet of a cold Japanese night; Iwaizumi Hajime lifts his head away from the anatomy notebook to stare at the buzzing device on the edge of his desk, alight with a name he doubted would ever grace the turquoise screen again. (Now I rule the world and the starry sky, spreading above. It nearly makes him chuckle. He was but a fifteen-year-old boy with string-stains on his fingers, covering a song for a childhood sweetheart that life will tear from him in two years' time. He wonders why he never bothered to change it, but – You're still waiting. You would've been waiting. Always.) For the briefest instant, he entertains the idea of swiping the call left, of severing the last of tethers that tied him to the man – and his finger hovers above the red icon, filled with thumping blood and crippled by ghosts of attachment. Oh, it would be so easy – a flick of a motionless knuckle, a sigh leaving chapped, lonesome lips. The last sight of him to ever seduce his mind as he lays to sleep.

(I love you.

But you have to go.)

Iwaizumi Hajime knows no catharsis was ever found in relief. So he counts the seconds before the motion, so innate when it came to him, and presses the phone to his ear.

A heartbeat of silence meets him on the other end.

"Do you know what time it is?" The imagined scold in his tone a mere whisper of a hurting boy.

The rustle he hears must be the overly familiar apologetic smile. "I'm sorry." He says – and Hajime closes his eyes to drown in it for a short while. "But I don't think there is a right time." Not when it comes to us.

"What are you doing?" He inquires to stall the silence.

"Studying. Some of us still have exams."

Toru does not react; it fosters an inkling in Hajime. "I owe Issei four thousand yen then."

"You made a bet?"

"Issei did. I just claimed you would not be studying on a Saturday night."

Not back then. (Skin against skin. Muffled moans and hushed pants, a soundtrack to a movie marathon they would never finish.)

"You sound different." The thought leaves his lips, swift and careless, yet Hajime does not regret it.

Toru seems pleased. "Good or bad?"

"The verdict's still out."

He laughs – the sound is somehow plush, burgeoning. (Summer in Argentina and summer in him.)

"You're probably wondering why I'm calling." He can see him shift as he stands, his back bending in arrow-straight pride, his eyes commanding.

"I am." But I'm also glad.

"I'm in Rio. With Chibi-chan." A half-answer. A sting in between the ribs.

"Hinata?" His voice comes level.

"He's all grown up." The weight of the besetting fact is reduced to a sigh. "I don't think you'd recognize him."

Hajime cracks (a smile). "And? What have you been doing?"

"Getting to know the locals. Dancing. Volleyball." His tone is laced with consideration, just as when he would speak with Takeru. (Hajime wrestles away a wry laugh.) "It's been fun again. I'm…I guess I'm happy."

He watches the ink of his notes bleed, like a silent scream. "I'm glad. I'm sure Tobio would be too."

Oikawa clicks his tongue at the mention. "Tobio-chan asked if that made Hinata an 'honorary royal'"

"Does it?"

The rustle implies a shrug. "Guess it does, once I'm king."

Iwaizumi Hajime disguises a weep with a cough. "Sorry," A broken string. "I caught a cold, I guess."

"You never drink your tea with honey." He pretends to scold him.

"Yeah. I guess old habits die hard."

A sense of awkwardness nestled in between them like first kiss jitters.

"I should go." Oikawa Toru sets the tone again. "Packing awaits. I leave for Argentina tomorrow."

"Oh. What about- what about Hinata?"

"I didn't ask him to come. He didn't ask me to stay." The lilt in his voice betrays a smile. Iwaizumi clings to a fistful of his shirt to hold in the onrush of toe-curling shivers. (He understands.)

"Hajime," He seems to dust away all traces of fondness as Iwaizumi's name rolls off his tongue. "I'm sorry we didn't work out."

"I'm sorry too."

"Happy birthday." He whispers. "Goodbye."

Iwaizumi Hajime ends the call.