Where are the most hollow of your bones,
those that could snap at a touch?
Tell me, and I will fill their airy spaces
with oxygen and flame.
Jaegerjaquez's receive was smooth, but so high. Duibhne hadn't made him work for it, and he, in turn, was passing like he didn't want her to work for it either. Might be a bit of condescension there, in that height. Kalypso didn't care.
She settled beneath the ball, watching it drop toward her. Watching Jaegerjaquez stalk through his approach. Watching, with the very edge of her vision, Yang at the opposite attack line.
Yang left his positioning early, before the set had even reached her hands, gliding back into the dig zone. Prick-not like there was an alternative set for her, not with just the one hitter and him already charging through the most basic possible approach. Still.
Kalypso considered, for an instant, a dump.
Think about each other.
Earn this, she thought, teeth gritted, and set Jaegerjaquez the high outside he clearly loved and that-in fairness-she'd promised him.
He hit it straight at Yang, like he was firing a gun at the other outside's chest.
Kalypso didn't see him swing, frankly-she was already under the net, sinking into the setter's spot on Yang's side, waiting. High outside sets were going to give her plenty of time to get over here, and plenty of time, therefore, to give Yang all sorts of cheeky little tidbits to chase.
Low arc, tight backspin-it couldn't be more opposite. She had very little time, and he had even less-
Challenge.
Sure. He wanted a breakneck tempo, she'd deliver.
Kalypso jumped to meet Yang's pass, and fired a quick shoot set toward him. He was airborne, waiting; if she'd slowed the pace down at all, he'd have landed before the ball reached him.
His hit pounded off Jaegerjaquez's passing platform, high again, backspun elegantly.
Kalypso slid beneath it and set him another high outside. This one, though, he didn't smash straight into Yang. He cut, and without a doubt would have taken the rally if Kalypso hadn't been most of the way to the setter's spot and therefore been directly in the crossfire.
She took it overhand, ungrounded, off balance because she'd been mostly past the cut's trajectory when it sliced past. Her own jerking, cancelled momentum nearly put her on the ground, and when Yang came surging after her high recovery in a full approach, she got out of his way by scrambling back under the net.
Jaegerjaquez was caught flat-footed. Yang's hit pounded off the line behind him.
"Fuck's sake," snapped Jaegerjaquez.
"Unlucky," purred Yang, very clearly not meaning it.
Kalypso shook out her hands and took up the setting spot on Jaegerjaquez's side again. Duibhne was readying another serve. She put a hand behind her back for Jaegerjaquez again, ring finger and thumb touching to call a 32 set this time. She raised her other hand to her chest to call the same for Yang-
"Hell no," snarled Jaegerjaquez from behind her.
Duibhne tossed for the serve before she had time to react.
The receive came high again. She had more than enough time for indignation, and then to see him start the same approach she'd seen half a hundred times already. He wanted a hut, again, and if she set him anything else, she'd blow the entire rally.
She set him his fucking hut. He hit it hard and square, not quite straight at Yang but not far enough to make him move more than a step. Kalypso, with all the time from that high floaty set to kill, was already waiting for the pass. Frustration started to boil in her stomach.
She wanted to play. To play, not to stroll through these hollow motions. She wanted to work, to risk something, to feel something. Jaegerjaquez was better off Flaring, better off tilted, if he was just gonna be another Duibhne otherwise.
Yang, on the other hand-
Another low pass from him, so low a taller setter might struggle. It gave her nearly no time to think-but enough time, just enough, to see.
He hadn't started his approach. She'd called a 32. His pass all but demanded another viciously fast tempo, but-
Kalypso set the 32, and Yang glided into it, hammering the ball into the shallow middle. Jaegerjaquez got there. High, again, out-of-system but very workable…if all he wanted was a hut. It was almost leisurely, getting into position to set him.
His hit was good-but not good enough to justify the uncontested way it slammed into the floor of the court. Yang, opposite, had straightened up out of readiness even before Jaegerjaquez had contacted the ball. His coin-gold eyes narrowed dismissively. The echo of the hit off the floor didn't hide his scoff.
No, thought Kalypso, desperation churning into bile. No, don't stop playing!
And with that plea, that panic, came the full force of her Lamb chemistry.
She'd do anything to keep him playing, wouldn't she? She could give Jaegerjaquez hut sets and Yanganything, whatever he wanted, she'd do anything they asked-
She bit down on instinct. A sharp burst of pain, a wash of metallic wetness in her mouth-Kalypso swallowed, tried not to choke. As she slid under the net, she didn't look at Yang, and she didn't give him any set signal either. I'll do it myself, she thought, in a fury now that wasn't about the men anymore. I'll play whether you do or not. I'm going to play. You can't stop me.
Even if the traitorous Lamb within her throttled her about it, she'd play.
She did not look at Jaegerjaquez, not while she flashed him the two-fingered gun sign of a fast outside call. His Flare in answer hit her like a heatwave, but who fucking cared?
Abarai served.
Yang passed high.
Kalypso snarled as she watched that slow ball descend toward her, as Yang stalled his approach, forcing the high slow set in return. The blue-hot Flare from the opposite side of the court might as well have been her own. She set him the hut, and becauseshewas still playing, she burst under the net as if it mattered that she got there fast, as if Jaegerjaquez wasn't going to send her the slowest pass in the world.
He didn't surprise her, tragically.
It was a savage hit from Yang, and Jaegerjaquez barely got under it. A small part of her blinked through the bitterness and recognized that a high in-system pass off of that hit was not really something to be furious about. If Kalypso's set was just a bit higher, just a bit slower, just a bit wider in response, Jaegerjaquez probably mistook that for gratitude. Appreciation. Submission, even.
More fool him.
The set left her hands, and hunger took over. One step-under the net-one wide lunge to cover the distance, two quick and silent steps together to chamber the upward burst-
It worked because he wasn't paying attention, because he was hitting mechanically, because he never in a hundred years expected his setter in a pepper drill to shove his hit back down his own throat. The ball hit the ground before they did.
Triumph flooded her, and no one's chemistry could drown it.
Her momentum sideways hadn't been canceled, and she landed with a bit of a stagger, heart hammering, half-blind with adrenaline and the sizzling interference of Flares.
"Oy."
The sound came out of him like a bullet. It hit the Lamb within her in the gut, and Kalypso had to fight a bit for breath. Jaegerjaquez's huge blue eyes held shock that was seconds from curdling into murder.
"Don't you want to play?" she demanded.
"Get off my court," said Yang quietly behind her. Kalypso whirled, thunderstruck-and realized he was talking to Duibhne, who was for some reason halfway to the attack line, looking like he was squaring up for some kind of fight.
"Yah," she said to him, backing up to duck under the net to Jaegerjaquez's side. "Serve, go on."
Duibhne stopped, staring from her to Jaegerjaquez, tension crackling off him in a Flare of his own. Why the fuck that was happening, anyone's guess. At least Yang wasn't-
"Are you so desperate to be worked like a dog?"
Kalypso met those narrowed golden eyes and smothered the Lamb's 'yes' that tried to come out of her throat. The answer was 'yes,' but not that chemical, collared kind.
"Work me," she said to Yang, and folded over into readiness. Could Duibhne get on with it already? "I get vicious if I'm bored."
"Tch."
"Fucking play," Kalypso snapped, to that snarl behind her and to the whole gymnasium.
For the first time, Jaegerjaquez's receive came to her low. He bolted past her out of the reception zone before it came off her hands, his Flare tearing at her skin, stinging her eyes.
Across the net, the black serration of Yang's Flare answered like it never had before.
Yes. Yes. Finally.