Full.

Lacking nothing.

Hinata felt as though he was filled to the brim with contentment.

Kageyama was the most infuriating person he knew. Bossy beyond reason. Scary when it suited him. Denser than a brick wall. But Hinata would be lying if he said he wasn't the most comfortable person to be around.

Volleyball was their life blood. The very air they breathed. And to have someone with him as he struggled to the top was vastly preferred to being as alone as he had once felt.

Hinata smushed his entire right side against Kageyama as he held his phone in his lap so they could both see the screen. He was also comfortable in the physical sense. Cool skin and that weird-but-in-a-good-way rain smell that somehow Hinata could no longer stop noticing. There had been a time when Kageyama would have shoved him away, would have rolled his eyes and told him to stop being so damn clingy.

"Is this going to be like last time where it doesn't load?" Kageyama asked leaning into him and crossing his arms.

Hinata didn't miss the opportunity and elbowed him in the side in his unguarded ribs.

"Shut up! I have better signal here."

He promptly got his head shoved.

"Just play it, dumbass."

Hinata pressed the play button.

"Bokuto got his wisdom teeth removed and Kuroo recorded him," Hinata explained.

"Is that why he's acting drunk?" Kageyama arched an eyebrow at his senpai on screen. "I wonder how that works."

Hinata didn't have the faintest idea.

"It's too complicated for you to understand."

"Shut up!" Kageyama instantly retaliated, "As if you know."

"It's really high tech stuff," Hinata continued sticking his nose in the air.

Bokuto had started to panic about not being able to play volleyball with his teeth missing and Hinata managed to sneak a peek at Kageyama trying not to smile. His mouth always got really wobbly when he did as though he was embarrassed at his own joy. It was stupidly endearing.

Kageyama coughed into his fist in an effort to right himself. "Daichi plays just fine with one of his teeth missing. He has nothing to worry about."

"Sure, sure. But he's not thinking straight," Hinata said trying to look his teammate in the eyes without lifting his head off of his shoulder. "You would definitely panic if you thought something would keep you from playing too."

Kageyama wasn't looking at him. He was trained on the screen like a dog when it heard a squirrel in a bush.

"Kageyama?"

"Wait, wait." Kageyama sat up straighter. "Rewind it. What did he just say?"

Hinata had stopped paying attention, after all he had seen it a few times by now. He clicked to rewind to the past ten seconds. Kuroo had been laughing.

"Setters are so cool."

"Bokuto is just –

"Shut up. Just shut up a second."

He had said it so evenly, so tonelessly that Hinata immediately bit his lower lip. The video continued.

"SO pretty!"

Kageyama snatched the phone from Hinata's hands and brought it up closer to himself. It looked like he was trying to stare holes through the device by sheer willpower. Hinata was hesitant to get in between them; not when he looked like that. Should he say something?

"But mine though, he's my favorite."

Kageyama stood, taking the phone with him, leaving Hinata to fall against the gym wall and into the grass.

"Hey! A little warning next time!"

He was ignored. Kageyama started pacing like he wanted to run but had nowhere to go. Pent up energy like a star about to explode.

"That black hair is probably way softer than it looks…"

"What's wrong?" Hinata tried.

"…but it's nothing compared to those blue eyes."

"Hey, Kageyama!"

"I could swim in them forever."

"Kageyama talk to me!"

The sound of Bokuto falling out of the dentist chair and Kuroo's laughter filled the cracks in the air that weren't already full to bursting with tension.

Kageyama paused the video before it could finish. He didn't turn around when Hinata called his name again softly.

"Is this what you and Nishinoya were acting stupid over?" he asked.

Hinata tilted his head. "What does Nishinoya have to do with this?"

"Weeks ago," Kageyama said, voice still uncomfortably even, "When you couldn't focus for shit in practice. Is this was you two were thinking of?"

Hinata glared at a pile of torn up grass on the ground trying to recall the day Kageyama was talking about.

"Yeah, I think so. The day we left practice early and you were all pissy, right?"

"So you were never talking about me?"

Hinata's head snapped up.

"What? About you?"

Hinata was getting really sick of talking to his setter's back, watching his shoulders turn inwards and all his previous excess energy dissipate into the atmosphere to become unnatural stillness. He needed to know what his face looked like. What expression he was making. What he could do to help.

"I overheard you two talking in the clubroom," Kageyama said, "I heard you… reenact what he said. I thought you had been talking about me."

Hinata scrunched his face in confusion.

"Why would you think…," He paused, hearing the words tumbling through his head like a rockslide. Setter. Black hair. Blue eyes. It only made too much sense. Kageyama wouldn't have thought Hinata had meant a setter from a completely different school. And Suga didn't match the description. He thought Hinata was talking about a crush to his older teammate and put two and two together. "Oh. Oh, I see."

He hadn't looked at Kageyama that way even once before that video. Hadn't taken the time to appreciate the million wonderful things about his setter. Didn't know what it was like to be protected behind that glare instead of attacked by it. Didn't know how refreshing a single touch could be and how a brief slide of skin could set his heart to racing. Didn't know how badly he wanted Kageyama to succeed with him and not just after him. It hadn't been true before, but now…now, he understood what wanting to swim forever in blue meant.

Except here was Kageyama face to face with the prospect of Hinata's affection and he was turning his back on him. Hinata was being rejected. He wanted to vomit.

Hinata sat up properly on his knees, his hands shaking so much he needed to hold them to himself. "I'm sorry for causing trouble. It was never you."

Kageyama stiffened and inhaled deeply. Had that been the right move? Kageyama turned his head slightly, enough for Hinata to see the hard set of his jaw.

"Never me, huh?"

"No, never you." He repeated.

Kageyama released a shaky breath. Hinata swallowed around the words in his throat. Words that were begging to be said.

"Well," Kageyama said finally, slowly turning around, "That's one less problem to worry about."

He didn't look any different.

He looked so different.

He looked the way Hinata had always seen him, but that wasn't what he was used to anymore. That extra warmth that he thought had bled into Kageyama's expression every time he looked at him wasn't there. Maybe it never was.

It couldn't all have been a product of Hinata's imagination could it? It couldn't all have been wishful thinking behind rose colored glasses. There were tangible things that he had held. Real breadcrumbs that had led his feet down this path. Things like…

Kageyama tossed the phone back to Hinata who caught it easily. "Have to be careful how you say things. People might get the wrong idea."

Hinata scrambled to his feet, threads of hope yanking him upright like a puppet.

"What about the letter?"

"What letter?" Kageyama asked, one eyebrow slightly raised.

"The letter I found in your gym bag!" Hinata said pointing directly at Kageyama who looked like a deer in the headlights, "It had my name on it and everything."

"That…that wasn't," Kageyama started. He blinked. "Wait, you went through my stuff?"

"Not important!" Hinata plowed on. "I read it. You addressed it to me. I remember the last thing you wrote on it was 'I like you' so explain yourself!"

"It did not say that!"

"Yes, it did! It's been burned into my memory for probably forever so don't tell me it didn't."

"You've got it wrong," Kageyama insisted. "I re-wrote that letter a million times in a different notebook because I screwed it up that first try. I can't forget what I wrote down a million times."

"That's not how it seems to work for you when you flunk tests!"

"You fail the same things so I wouldn't be talking if I were you!"

"Then make it make sense!" Hinata said fingers curling desperately into his shirt above his chest. "Tell me what I saw so I can let it go!"

Kageyama fisted his hair in his hands and groaned. "The last sentence. It doesn't say 'I like you'. It says, 'I like volleyball more than I like you.'

Hinata looked to the sky and tried to piece it together.

"Why would you write me a letter like that?" He asked as calmly as he could.

"I thought you had a crush on me!" Kageyama said throwing his hands up, "I needed to practice turning you down."

Scissors to the puppet strings. Hinata let out a choked laugh. Kageyama really hadn't wanted Hinata. Like, at all.

"What's so funny?" Kageyama asked, mouth settling into a familiar frown.

Hinata clapped his hands together. "That letter made me think you had a crush on me too."

Kageyama swallowed. "Too?"

"But you don't," Hinata continued in as steady a voice as he could muster, "And you thought I liked you and I don't."

Kageyama flinched.

"It literally can't get any funnier." Hinata felt a pressure behind his eyes. "Unless you suddenly do like me."

"No," Kageyama said quickly, "Why would I?"

"Right." Hinata balled his fists together. "Why would you?"

A few beats of silence passed between them as they stared at each other. Hinata refused to cry in front of him. That would be immediately telling and he couldn't afford to be so vulnerable. Not right now. If he could just make it home without breaking down it would be enough.

Kageyama pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed, a gesture Hinata immediately recognized as a sign of stress.

"Ok, well, we're ok now. We're ok and nothing changed. Everything is alright and we don't have to worry and we'll be ok."

He said 'ok' a lot, but Hinata didn't mind. He needed all the convincing he could get. Kageyama took his hands back but left his head tilted down so his bangs fell over his eyes again. Hinata desperately wished he could run to him, brush the black curtain away; but Kageyama only did that when he felt uncomfortable and his touch, no matter how friendly, would probably be incredibly unwelcome.

"I'm going to go back to the room," Kageyama said, voice steadily becoming less even, like a paved road crumbling into gravel. "Daichi shouldn't be mad anymore." He walked past Hinata, careful to give him a wide berth. "I'll see you later."

Hinata turned to watch him leave. Watch him briskly walk and then jog around the corner of the building out of sight.

He was pretty sure he knew what would happen next.

Kageyama would go back to the clubroom. With any luck no one would be there, or if they were they would just assume Hinata was in the gym and not ask Kageyama for his whereabouts. Kageyama would need a head start since he walked to and from school and it would take a while for him to be far enough down the road that Hinata wouldn't accidentally pass him up on his bike.

Hinata would pedal furiously home without saying goodbye to anyone. He would let the familiar burn in his muscles push him home faster once he got to the hill. He would drop his bike on the front lawn and run into his house. If heaven showed him any pity his mom would just assume he was tired from a long day of practice and not come bother him so he could hide in his room for the rest of the night.

Yes, that is probably how it would all go later.

He dropped to his knees, cut strings disintegrating around him, his body boneless. For now though, he had privacy and too much time.

Once the tears started, they wouldn't be stopped. Hinata wouldn't make any noise; would demand silence of himself so he wouldn't accidentally summon a concerned teammate. He held a hand to his mouth trying to control himself. He wanted to keep himself together.

The tears didn't care what he wanted. They came anyway. Spilling quietly, draining him of everything. Leaving him completely

Empty.

**The truth always comes out doesn't it? Will it? 12/17/22**