Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

Oikawa is on the court.

There’s sweat beading around his hairline. He’s paused, strung tight and strong along the sharp edge of the end line, eyeing where he plans to send the ball. He’s not just working on power and height; Oikawa can aim.

Kageyama’s heart is in his throat. He wants.

Oikawa steps back, back, and runs; doesn’t need to check to see his feet were in the right place, doesn’t need to measure his steps. The shape of the court is in his bones by now.

The empty plastic water bottle on the opposite side crinkles and snaps as it’s knocked over. Another jump serve, another bottle crinkling in the wide empty space of the court. The sound ricochets, and Kageyama can’t help but track the long sure stride of Oikawa’s leg to the line of his wrist.

They have a small practice match scheduled for later today, just the Kitagawa Daiichi team split in two and running drills, but Oikawa is already here; and so, Kageyama is here, too.

And maybe today will be the day Oikawa lets him step out onto the court with him. Maybe today, just this once. But if Oikawa had seen Kageyama crouched near the ball cart, he had made no sign of it. Another water bottle crinkles somewhere to Kageyama’s right. Surely, surely.

“Oikawa-san—”

“Can’t you see I’m busy, Tobio-chan?” Oikawa’s voice is petulant and snappish and he doesn’t look over at all. He’s lining up for the water bottle in the far left corner of the court, right on the end line. He’s practicing a jump serve that can turn the game around.

Kageyama wonders if it was better being ignored. But he watches. The long sure stride, the line of the wrist, and when Oikawa leaps into his serve, Kageyama straightens up, a small gasp deep inside his lungs. Oikawa is beautiful like this. It’s like watching someone in flight, the air hanging suspended around him in one long impossible moment.

And Kageyama wants. He wants.

Oikawa is only fifteen, but he’s already so, so tall. When he stands in the lineup, it’s like Kageyama can see the outline of what Oikawa will grow into. The shape of it is amazing. He’s amazing, and Kageyama hopes that he can one day cast a shadow just as grand, maybe stand just as tall. Taller, even. Kageyama wants to stay on the court forever. He feels something breathless inside his chest, feels it press right up against his throat. Kageyama doesn’t know what to do with it.

The rest of the team finds them like this — Oikawa hitting jump serve after jump serve in continuous echoes that fill the gym, and Kageyama, wide-eyed and watching, the turn of his own wrist slowly retracing the same perfect arc of Oikawa’s. His feet planted just as sure. His breathing, in on the run-up, out on the leap.

Kageyama’s team loses.

He’s surrounded by teammates on all sides, all in a line, all ready to acknowledge their opponents, but it's only Oikawa he sees. He's languid, still out of breath, but smiling. And why wouldn't he be? Oikawa's team won.

Kageyama feels the loss take up space bigger than he expects in his chest. It didn't matter that his team had Iwaizumi, their libero, Kindaichi — Oikawa was on the court. Kageyama's team lost. He feels a tense rod squeeze in his sternum. His team lost to Oikawa's team.

It takes too many moments for Kageyama's feet to move him forward, and now he is at the end of the line. He bows to his senpai and fellow first-years across the net, moves with his team to shake hands with the other players around the woven nylon. First Kunimi, then Fujikawa, Arakata, Hino-san, Yonomine-san, Tao-san, and — Oikawa-san.

Kageyama looks up at Oikawa and feels his spine bend a little deeper than he had bowed for anyone else. His eyes close tight. "Thank you for the opportunity to learn from you," Kageyama says. He extends his hand, but he doesn’t feel anything, not even after he takes a deep breath. When he looks up, Oikawa is staring right over him, as if looking forward to a place where Kageyama isn’t.

When Oikawa finally shakes his hand, nose scrunched in displeasure, it’s like he barely touches Kageyama at all.

 
Kageyama’s on the court.

So is everyone else; it's just that Nakamura is the person he’s focused on. Kageyama’s finally grown the extra three centimetres he wanted to get the kind of control he needs in his serves; Nakamura is the promising libero he wanted to carry their team after Nishinoya-senpai graduated. While Iwaizumi grabs the twelfth person they need to finish their pickup game, Kageyama sees time for practice. He wants to finally aim his serves with ten-centimetre accuracy; Nakamura needs to master tough receives.

Kageyama squints across the net at his kouhai. “Take a wider stance!”

“Right!” Nakamura shouts, and settles lower, arms spread.

Kageyama bounces, spins the ball, closes his eyes. Imagines the long lines of a perfect serve, the wrist, the length. He opens his eyes and runs, jumps, aims.

The ball slams exactly in the middle of Nakamura and Hirano-san. Nakamura’s jaw drops.

“Damn, kid!” Hirano-san laughs.

Kageyama allows himself a moment’s glow of pride. “Nakamura-kun, did you see it this time?”

“Yes!” Nakamura bounces, runs after the ball so he can hit it back to Kageyama. “I saw! I think I get it, Kageyama-senpai. Do it again!”

So Kageyama does. This time, Nakamura dives and gets a piece of it, and Hirano-san is able to pop it up into a solid set. Kageyama grins fierce.

“Great job!” Kageyama calls. Nakamura punches the air.

“Told you,” Kageyama hears Iwaizumi say behind him, and turns to see—

“Oikawa-san.”

He’s shocked. It’s been years. Kageyama is fifteen, thirteen, wears a velvet weight on his shoulders. He can’t read anything in Oikawa’s face, but the longer he looks, the more tangled he feels. In his mind, Oikawa was a spectre, a goalpost, a summit. But Kageyama has scaled many mountains, worked hard for his accolades, sometimes texts Kindaichi on the weekends.

And here is just a man, wearing an ugly t-shirt.

Iwaizumi smacks Oikawa's spine and Kageyama blinks back to the court. "Didn't we come to play?" Iwaizumi announces, ushering a sour Oikawa forward.

“This our sixth?” Goya-san asks, suddenly next to Kageyama.

“He’s your sixth,” says Iwaizumi.

Goya-san looks Oikawa over in his way. Kageyama feels his stomach twist. Does Goya-san see his sharp eyes, too? The shadow of a crown?

“Oikawa,” he says with a slight bow. “I’ll be in your care.”

“Sixth spot’s the right front spiker,” says Goya-san, walking off. “You’re tall, you’ll do.”

Oikawa’s eyebrow cocks up. Kageyama's very aware that he and Oikawa have never played on the same court on the same side ever in his entire life. And Oikawa’s not a wing spiker. He wants to explain he's the setter on this team. He wants to apologise for something he can't name. He wants to call Yamaguchi to have him be their twelfth, instead. He wants.

Kageyama doesn’t know what’s on his face as he looks at Oikawa, but Oikawa looks right back, rolls his eyes with a soft tch, and walks over to the net.

Oikawa is still so tall.

Kageyama blinks at the ground, willing the hot heat in his cheeks and tight strings in his lungs go anywhere, anywhere else.

“Kageyama, let’s go!”

“Sorry!” Kageyama jogs to his spot. He knows Iwaizumi’s looking at him and Nakamura, too — but Kageyama’s eyes drift right. Oikawa is not looking back; he’s watching the server on the other side.

Watch me, instead, Kageyama thinks.

“Hirano, nice serve!”

“Fat chance!” Goya-san shouts back.

“Get wrecked, B Team!” Hirano-san laughs, and serves quick and clean to their back line. Their libero gets it, pops it up to Kageyama, who plants his feet underneath it and—

“Here!” Oikawa calls. Kageyama’s spooked, but his body knows what to do when Oikawa asks for something. His hands send off a toss. Oikawa spikes. The ball slams into the court and bounces back up to the hollers and taunts of the Neighborhood Association.

Someone pounds him on the back. Kageyama’s in a daze.

“One-nothing, Iwa-chan!”

“Go back to Keio,” Iwaizumi growls.

Oikawa catches the ball thrown to him and glances at Kageyama. “A little higher next time, Tobio-chan.”

Goya-san’s eyebrows graze his receding hairline. Kageyama pinches himself.

Oikawa smiles the same razorslice smile and walks beyond the back line for his chance to serve. Kageyama knows the motion of it before he begins: the long sure stride, the line of the wrist, the air suspended in elegant flight. Oikawa doesn't see Kageyama watch, but Kageyama can’t do anything else. It’s beautiful. Oikawa serves and it’s like time stops.

Then, there’s a shout — someone — Nakamura picks up the serve. But there’s no time for praise; their setter tosses to Iwaizumi.

“One touch!”

The rest is slow motion: Kageyama pivots to see the ball sail off the tips of their blocker’s fingers right and back, back to Oikawa; Oikawa, whose knees bend and shift, eyes scanning the court, must see what Kageyama sees; sees the other team, used to Kageyama setting, has guarded every other player except Kageyama; Kageyama, who is a strong spiker, and who is wide, wide open.

Oikawa locks eyes with him and points right there.

By the time Kageyama’s jumped, the ball is sailing up to meet him. Clear as day, sure like morning — is this how Hinata felt for his very first toss? Like nothing else mattered, like just getting the set was a win in itself?

This is my chance, Kageyama thinks, and swings his palm.

He lands.

“It’s out!”

“Shittykawa, you show off!” Iwaizumi shouts.

“Damn it!” Kageyama says. He can’t help himself; he looks back to Oikawa.

And Oikawa looks forward with something in his eyes that doesn’t feel cold, doesn’t feel like missed tosses or bad spikes. It makes Kageyama’s skin prickle, adrenaline jump in his chest.

It’s interest, Kageyama realises.

But the moment dissolves when Oikawa blinks, and throws up a hand with another fake smile.

“Don’t mind, don’t mind, Tobio-chan!” Oikawa calls. “You’ll get that point back the next time you serve.”

It’s a directive and an entreaty. Kageyama nods again, walks back to his place, takes a deep breath while the other team’s server bounces the ball. “One-one!” they shout over.

“Nice receive,” he tells Nakamura.

Nakamura smiles, jerks his chin at Kageyama’s back line. “Who is he?”

Kageyama thinks about crowns and taunts, dropped tosses and pulled eyelids and serves too vicious to see. How to learn by watching when the doing won’t work. But he remembers, too, how to shake off a mantle, how to earn someone’s trust, how it sounds when your spiker calls out an “I’m here!” How every opponent has something to teach.

“Someone to learn from,” Kageyama decides. “Pay attention.”

“I have been!” Nakamura says. “He serves just like you.”

 
The two of them have earned their spots on the court.

It’s in the pace of their lungs. It’s in the very shape of their bones. When Oikawa first came to Tokyo, and when Kageyama came a few years later, the national team became their biggest stage. The wide open court gleamed like something new and exciting all over again — a dream too long in the making.

The Summer Games in Los Angeles feel like an impossible future with too few years to get there.

“Again,” Oikawa says. His voice is tight, exhaustion controlled only by the practice of years. They’re standing together near the net, long after the sun has set, sweat sticking t-shirts uncomfortable and hot to the skin. Evening sky filters through the rafters of the university gym, and Kageyama frowns at the volleyball in his hands. He’s tired, too.

“Oikawa-san, please—”

“Watch, Tobio,” Oikawa says as he takes the volleyball from Kageyama’s hands and tosses it high. It doesn’t matter how long, it doesn’t matter how many times. Kageyama watches the fluid motion of Oikawa’s hands with his heart in his mouth. This was the shape he’d always wanted to grow into. But.

“I’m always watching, Oikawa-san,” Kageyama snaps. He’s breathless. He’s frustrated. He’s somewhere in-between, and when he catches the falling volleyball, his lungs feel tight with too much. Maybe Kageyama will never know what to do with this feeling. He tries to smooth it out anyway, letting the tension bleed into the way he grips the volleyball tight instead. “I’m always watching,” he tells Oikawa. “Please watch me, too.”

Kageyama looks up. Oikawa’s whole body is still. He holds Kageyama’s gaze and nods. Permission? Concession? A chance either way.

The arc of Kageyama’s wrist is perfect. The line of his arm is sure. And it’s his, and yes, somewhere in there it’s Oikawa’s, too, but if it’s Oikawa’s, it’s also Suga’s, and Hinata’s, and every other bright light that’s touched him. Kageyama is more than the lessons he’s learned. He just wants to be seen past the shadow he isn’t.

His beautiful toss seems to set Oikawa alight. There’s something of the twilight in his eyes. There’s something sharp to his mouth. Oikawa reaches over, and ruffles his hair.

“Yes,” Oikawa smiles as Kageyama squawks indignantly. But Oikawa’s face no longer looks tired. It’s looking ahead.

  
The court is waiting for them tomorrow.

This is what Kageyama thinks as he tosses a volleyball at the wall. The call with Hinata just now helped settle his nerves a bit, but not enough. It doesn’t take away from the fact that Kageyama’s across the ocean, here in Los Angeles for the Olympics. Japan is so far away, and the opening match is so close.

Just as the ball’s falling into his hands, a whole lot of something is being poured onto him. Kageyama sits up immediately and plucks up a square, examining the packaging closely. A condom. Condoms. All around him. On his clothes, on his bed. He looks up and sees Oikawa’s face above his own.

“I — I thought you were going to the clinic,” says Kageyama.

“Where do you think I got all these?” Oikawa shows him the empty duffel bag in his hands. “I thought you could use a chance to relax, Tobio-chan! I can even tell you some spots if you want.”

It takes a second, but Kageyama colours. Sputtering and then keeping quiet, Kageyama turns away and, after a moment, speaks again. “Coach put us on taper.”

“Ah, always so responsible,” Oikawa clicks his tongue.

“You have such a bad personality, Oikawa-san.”

“I'm sure you can find something easier to swallow than my personality.”

Kageyama flings a handful of condoms at Oikawa, who yelps before the silence settles in between them. He can hear rustling from Oikawa’s side of the room, his routine restlessness before any meaningful game. While it used to make him nervous, time has softened it, made it a familiar sound. Something in his chest settles, then stutters. The match is tomorrow.

He’s about to go back to bouncing the volleyball on the wall, but a hand stops it. “Hey.” Kageyama tilts his head. Oikawa.

“You didn’t come all the way here to lose,” Oikawa says and drops his hand from the ball. “And you didn’t drag me out to extra practices for nothing, did you? Just relax. You’re stressing me out.”

Kageyama looks up at Oikawa and sees nothing but confidence, assurance. “We can do this,” Oikawa says.

“Thanks,” says Kageyama, sitting up. Oikawa stays close, and it’s good until Kageyama's nerves need room. He stands and bows slightly as he goes to leave. "Please clean up this mess, Oikawa-san."

"Take one for the road, Tobio-chan!"

 
The sound of their first victory rings in the stadium, strong and deafening. Kageyama is barely focused on the chaos. Instead, he looks through the crowd of jerseys and searches for Oikawa. Oikawa finds him first.

He’s quick to close the distance. Oikawa has a smile bigger than anything Kageyama’s ever seen, and even as he walks, his figure’s not as daunting as it used to be. It’s a shape Kageyama’s grown into, and maybe even beyond. He’s trained for years, years of frustration and dedication that lead up to this moment, the audience cheering for their country, for their team.

Kageyama can feel the warm strength of Oikawa’s arm around his shoulders. It easily brings him into the circle of their team, where everyone else is quick to grin and ruffle his hair and celebrate. Tears gather in his eyes.

“We did it,” Kageyama breathes, awed. “We really did it.”

Oikawa laughs. “We did, Tobio.”

 
After everything’s said and done, Kageyama’s back in the room and sitting on his bed, pillow on his lap. They’ve won. They’re moving on. They’re one step closer. Something is warm and rattling in his chest, about to burst.

“What kind of expression is that?”

Kageyama’s attention snaps to Oikawa, who’s closing the door behind him. Kageyama feels his breath catching in his throat, nestled in his lungs; a familiar feeling, except instead of on the court, Oikawa is here and coming closer, still.

Oikawa sits, and Kageyama notices their knees are just centimetres apart. The space between is so small that Kageyama can smell mint soap and citrus hand cream, so intimate that Kageyama doesn’t dare move in case it disappears. He watches Oikawa’s hands on his lap and traces the outline of them with his eyes. There’s the curve of calluses, long nimble fingers imbued with power, the line of tendon down Oikawa’s wrist.

Suddenly, Oikawa raises a hand and his fingers move to brush Kageyama’s hair away with a touch so gentle it closes his eyes. He remembers being twelve and standing in the Kitagawa Daiichi gym, helplessly watching Oikawa leap to serve from metres away. Now they’re here in the Olympic Village dorm room, in Los Angeles, no distance between them of skill, or skin. It’s real.

“You know,” Oikawa says, “you should save your crying for when we win gold.”

That makes Kageyama look up. He can see hints of red circling Oikawa’s eyes — same as his own. “You cried, too, Oikawa-san.”

“You’re such a brat,” Oikawa retorts, but his tone is softer, softer than when he’s calling for him on the court. His thumb brushes Kageyama’s cheek and rests there a moment, before he pulls back to get dressed, to dry his hair.

Kageyama’s left looking at his own hands. They’re just as worn as Oikawa’s, if not moreso. He’s thought about it before, but they really remind him of how much he’s put into this: early morning runs, practice late into the night, the taping and retaping of his fingers. Even just a few years ago, the idea of Los Angeles had seemed so far away. Now they’re here.

This is just the beginning of them together, he knows. There must be a lot more to come.

Oikawa and Kageyama are on the court.

There’s sweat beading along their hairlines. It’s hot under the lights, and they’re burning bright, a restless fire thrumming in their bones kindled by years of hard work, a thirst to win. Revenge. It's difficult not to think again about their fourth set, a badly timed block, the close loss. They’re tied.

Kageyama watches as Oikawa towels off the sweat dripping down the back of his neck, then follows Oikawa’s gaze to the wide open arena. This place belongs to them. The bright blue of the court, the rafters lanced by light, and the proud pennants of their team.

“So messy, Tobio,” Oikawa says, interrupting his train of thought. Even at a time like this, Oikawa has to make a comment — but Kageyama can't dwell for long because Oikawa’s throwing his towel over and he has to catch it.

“Gross, Oikawa-san.” Kageyama wrinkles his nose, but he runs the towel through his bangs anyway, takes a deep breath. It helps even out the staccato of his heart as the crowd grows louder. He can see the referees are coming back to take their place courtside, and his heart lurches once more.

It’s the fifth and final set of the gold medal game, and the whole world is watching.

Oikawa claps a hand on each player’s shoulder as they jog to take their place on the court; encouraging words, absolute trust. Team Japan's colours suit him well, the red stretched proud and brilliant across the breadth of his shoulders, the captain’s #1 like a beacon for his team. And Kageyama’s jersey is his for a reason; endless days of practice and dedication, calluses on his hands to prove it. This setter’s #2 is his to own.

“You ready yet?”

Oikawa walks beside him, warm hand clapping Kageyama on the back to send him out, too. And Oikawa’s hand lingers, long fingers pressing gentle and insistent as they run down his spine to rest there. It’s exhilarating. It’s the air tight in his lungs. Kageyama can feel all that warmth fill him, with Oikawa right here by his side. They’re halfway around the world and nothing has ever felt more like home than this, their team, them.

Kageyama remembers the shape of the future he thought he would have all those years ago. How he thought he could only grow in the shade from someone else’s skill. But there are too many lights to cast any doubts now, and they glow on the sweat of his forehead, bright on his shoulders like a circlet of gold, an effortless mantle, a hard-earned crown.

They’re matched, stride for stride. He and Oikawa, they’re the same height now. He's not chasing after the back of the boy with a beautiful serve. They walk together onto this stage as more than anything they were alone.

"Let's win," Kageyama says, and hears laughter afterward.

Kageyama looks over to Oikawa and sees him smiling, eyes focused on what's in front of them. When Kageyama looks in the same direction, at the court they’re sharing now, it feels like gold is close enough to touch.