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His mother used to run her hand through his hair while putting him to bed. He recalls the blanket tucked under his chin, nightlight shiny in the corner. It cast a wide shadow over the wall, but looked more like the curve of the moon rather than a man, so he was never scared. She’d hum songs he can still recite despite years gone by, and the soulmark across her wrist would fill his view.
“There is someone out there for you,” she’d said, whispering it like it was a line that belonged in those songs-without-words. “Someone to uplift you in every moment. Someone to make you fly.”
Shouyou didn’t care much for soulmates as a child. He’d had more fun examining bugs under rocks or slinging mud. But he couldn’t deny the thrill he got in the quiet moments of those nights. To think there was someone out there who would be a perfect match for him. Like a best friend, but forever!
“What’re they gonna be like?” He’d asked.
His mother had smiled, the glow of the nightlight casting a halo of fire behind her hair. “That’s for you to figure out.”
With volleyball comes stinging palms, the taste of sweat, and the insistent burn along every muscle of his body. He loves it. Every kick off the ground that sends him flying through the air is a gift. It makes him think of his mother’s words and the concept of soulmates. Maybe it’s because Shouyou has never felt something more precious than the freedom of hanging midair as he connects with a ball.
This is what it must be like.
Giddiness, in its most breathtaking form.
Someone to make you fly.
“Idiot!” Kageyama screams, his voice a guttural echo in the gym. “You almost missed that one!”
“But I didn’t!” The takeoff was messy. Kageyama’s right, Shouyou didn’t come in as smoothly as usual. Doesn’t mean he’s going to admit it. He hit the ball anyway.
They play late into the evening, until Shouyou knows he’s pushed the limits of his mother’s good graces. Kageyama never talks about his family or when they expect him home. He just leaves when Shouyou does, face scrunched in that lemon-pucker agony.
The walk from the gym to the bike rack gives Shouyou enough time to peer at his companion. Plum-blue eyes and dark hair with straight, strong features. Kageyama is handsome. It’s just a fact. If he acted like a normal human being, maybe girls would be all over him. But he’s got no social skills and no other friends aside from the volleyball club.
“What are you looking at?” Kageyama snaps.
Shouyou sighs. “What would you do without me?”
“HAH?”
They race the rest of the way.
Shouyou does think about it.
The whole soulmate business, that is.
Most often, Shouyuo wants to punch Kageyama’s face in. Their rivalry makes him a better player, yeah. It’s just that Kageyama is so far ahead in his volleyball journey that sometimes it doesn’t feel great. Shouyou doesn’t feel ‘uplifted’ or whatever his mother had described. A burning need to prove himself is tangled up in the discomfort of not already being enough. The mountain looms, his wings still growing in their adult flight feathers. Kageyama’s sneer inspires spite, frustration…yearning.
Shouyou just…isn’t sure the ‘yearning’ part is for Kageyama. That’s what makes this all confusing. Everything is for volleyball. Kageyama makes Shouyou better at volleyball. He’s the setter that pushes Shouyou, that makes him see his own faults and areas of improvement.
While Shouyou sorts it all out, he doesn’t mind being just friends with Kageyama. Mostly because it’s kind of sad that the setter doesn’t have any. Especially in high school. Not even middle school, it sounds like!
Man, poor Kageyama.
Before the whole soulmate thing settles, Shouyou can try being that for him. A friend. A partner. Even if Kageyama makes it really difficult not to strangle him sometimes.
Before nationals, Shouyou is content with what they have. It’s supposed to just happen, right? They interact fine, they’re both focused on volleyball. When the day comes, everything will just click into place.
That’s what he tells himself, unable to sleep as nationals loom just hours away. It’s a passing thought. He still rolls out of the inn’s futon to grab another water from the vending machine. Excitement burns through him. It replaces his blood and fills every inch of him. They’re going to play at nationals. How cool would it be to win nationals and then have their soulmate marks bloom?
Shouyou touches his wrist. Empty. He drinks half the water bottle.
“Why are you out of bed?”
“AH!” He leaps over a foot into the air.
Suga stands there, a hand on his hip. He looks slightly admonishing, even with some of his hair sticking straight up. “Don’t you know how late it is, Hinata?”
Shouyou holds out his water. “Just thirsty!”
“Uh huh…have you slept at all?”
“Um…” Shouyou averts his eyes. He’s not great at lying.
“Hinata.”
“Um! Senpai! I have a question! You and Daichi-senpai are soulmates, right? How did it happen?”
Suga looks taken aback. “What…I mean, it wasn’t…”
He looks a little flustered, and immediately Shouyou realizes he must have overstepped.
“S-Sorry, ignore that! That was a weird thing to ask!” He tries to flee, but Suga stops him.
“It’s fine, Hinata. For me and Daichi…it just happened. Our hands brushed one day at practice, during our first year. We got lucky, I guess.”
“Whoa...” That is lucky. Some people sprout their marks by touch, other people are born with them. Even still, others just get them at random moments in their life.
You just know, people say. All the time. Shouyou’s only sure about volleyball, really. He has a pretty solid idea that Kageyama could be his soulmate, because who else would it be? It made sense. They could be volleyball rivals forever. Racing each other to the top. Maybe on opposite teams, playing for victory.
“Did you feel it?” he asks.
Suga smiles, and it’s the kind of expression that’s so soft and pretty that Shouyou feels like he’s seen something private. “I think we were always drawn to each other. So when it happened, it felt like…inevitable. Like the tide coming in.”
What a soothing descriptor.
Shouyou scrunched his nose a bit. Soothing…
That didn’t feel like Kageyama.
Oh well, all soulmates were different, weren’t they?
“What makes you ask?” Suga’s eyes flicker to Shouyou’s empty wrists.
Shouyou shrugs. “Just curious.”
Suga looks skeptical, but drags Shouyou back to bed without prying much more.
“One day, I’m gonna set for ya.”
Shouyou doesn’t know the name, can’t remember in the jumble of movement and desperation and elation. The exhaustion nearly ends him right then and there, but he’s still standing. A sweaty, trembling thing.
He likes those words though, staring after the broad back walking away. Mostly, he feels confused. Like there should be something else happening.
Nothing does.
He doesn’t win nationals. They say it was a longshot anyway, for rookies like them with not enough time or experience. Shouyou had never thought of it that way. Every game was individual. He devoured whoever stood before him, picking up new tricks, new skills. Or, at least, he thought he was able to stand his ground enough. Especially after the game with Nekoma. Being broken down and built back up didn’t kill him, it made him want to be stronger. Better. There’s nothing more fun than overcoming the next challenge.
Then he fails. Ankles giving out, fever overtaking him, sweat boiling over his skin and burning his eyes. He sobs his heart out because it was him who did this to himself. He didn’t prepare well enough, didn’t study. Had thrown himself in this sport without knowing the basics and assumed he could fly over the ladder without properly stepping on each rung.
It’s humbling.
It’s heart-shattering.
He’s never felt more worthless in his life, especially when Kageyama continues further with ease. A bitter pill. Uplift you in every moment, his mother had said. Kageyama had hammered home Shouyou’s lack of skill. He didn’t uplift anything. Shouyou pulled himself out of his depression and self-pity and frustration on his own. Built up his new drive using his own two hands and a new sense of consideration.
In its own way, that could be uplifting, couldn’t it?
A hands-off approach.
Shouyou grows tired of thinking about it. Maybe the reason that the soulmarks haven’t appeared is because they just aren’t ready yet. Shouyou’s wasting his time wondering about something that will happen one day, inevitably — like the tide, as Suga said. Maybe one day Kageyama and Shouyou will match that sensation of one breath, one heart, or whatever they say in those over-the-top stories.
One day…
A kernel of discomfort forms in his stomach. It’s the last time Shouyou allows himself to focus on the subject until graduation.
Brazil.
A few months in, after Oikawa and after Shouyou has gotten his head on straight, he realizes he hasn’t thought of soulmates in a while.
So when Yamaguchi calls him, the hours of the day opposite on each phone screen, Shouyou is blindsided by the sudden subject.
“It’s pretty!” he exclaims, glad for the quality of video calls these days. He can make out all the silvery, slashing colors around Yamaguchi’s freckled wrist.
Yamaguchi is bashful. “Thanks,” he says, his ears red. “I didn’t expect it to happen so late, or at all, really.”
“What’aya mean? Everyone knows you and Tsukki–”
“That’s just it, though. We worked better together, always. From the moment we really became friends. Years and years. And it never showed up until now.” Yamaguchi’s phone shifts as he shrugs. “Feelings aside, I was…I was almost ready to accept that we weren’t soulmates.”
“Feelings?”
A laugh. “Uh, yeah, Hinata. Feelings. You don’t need me to explain that, do you?”
“No! I just, I didn’t realize that you…”
“That I liked – er, like Tsukki?” Yamaguchi gives him a commiserating look, then cracks a smile. “Hinata, you wouldn’t realize a romance in front of you unless it hit you in the face. No, even then, unless it was a volleyball slamming your nose.”
Shouyou babbles, makes more small talk, and plays it off. In the back of his mind though, that kernel of discomfort that had formed those years ago aches like a loose tooth. Are you supposed to have feelings before a soulmate is revealed? Is that why he and Kageyama never connected? He always assumed the feelings would come after the reveal. Or that it would one day make sense.
Maybe it still will.
After all, there’s nothing more exhilarating than facing an opponent who pushes you to be your best.
Before he goes to bed that night, his phone flashes with a notification. He has a new follower on his socials.
Atsumu Miya.
Shouyou knows that name now. He follows back.
Kageyama starts wearing a wristband at some point. Shouyou notices it only briefly during one of the games. He’s too focused on the court, the ball, the plays. All these names he wishes he could stand beside.
It makes him run back to the beach, sand under his heels, and dream of flying.
“A soulmate is a dream,” his mother says.
“So it’s not real?”
“Of course it’s real. Wasn’t your dream last night to become an astronaut?”
Shouyou thinks about this. Yes. It was. When he nods, his mother laughs.
“We spend our lives choosing which dreams to turn into reality.”
The plane lands at 11AM. It’s sunny. The air is different in Japan, familiar in a too-sweet way. He wants to traverse old stomping grounds and eat food he hasn’t in awhile. And he does do some of that. But mostly he prepares for tryouts.
His mother is happy to see him, as is his sister. They’ve both aged since he’d left. Natsu more than his mother. It’s weird to see his little sister as a high school girl now, and she’s just as energetic as he used to be. But smarter. He makes sure of that. That crippling shame of failure is what shaped him, but that doesn’t need to be the path of everyone who plays volleyball.
“When are you going?” she asks. Her wrist is blank. She doesn’t ask him about soulmates, he doesn’t ask her either.
They’re sitting in the backyard. He used to show her silly volleyball exercises here. “Tomorrow.”
“Are you nervous?”
“No,” he replies honestly. “I’m excited!”
This time, his confidence isn’t based on ego. Just the crafting of skill and the understanding of his own limits. He knows where he stands and what he’s achieved. He knows exactly how he’s going to play tomorrow, and he can’t wait.
He eats well, gets a good night’s sleep, and sets his timers to get up in the morning. He meditates when the sun rises, then slips into familiar yoga stretches. After, it’s breakfast, eggs sizzling in the pan as his mother startles at the sight of him already up.
“Look at you,” is all she says, warm enough to fuel the summer season.
He goes to the tryouts. Black Jackals. He knows in his heart that this is it.
And it is. It is.
He’s soaring on cloud nine.
Shouyou is sitting in the locker room staring at his phone. He doesn’t know what expression he’s making, or if he’s making one at all. Every bit of warmth has faded from his body, leaving a cold, sinking sensation. One he recognizes, eerily, as one does the taste of cough medicine from childhood.
Kageyama had made a group text – a feat on its own – bearing the news of his recent engagement. In general, Kageyama is a brittle, dry texter. He hates calling, too, and usually replies to plans a day too late. It isn’t anyone’s fault, just the truth of adulthood. That doesn’t mean he just gave up the line of friendship with the old Karasuno team. He tries, and they can all see it. So it’s…fine.
But Kageyama has never told them about his family. Barely mentioned the sister he had, until they saw her in the flesh. He never talks about much beyond volleyball and a few other interests. Food, mostly. He’s single-minded, dedicated, and ornery. Awkward.
Shouyou loves texting. He’ll reply in big paragraphs or spread out sentences. He loves emojis and making plans when he has free time. Most often, he manages to meet up with Yamaguchi and Yachi. It’s easier for those who live closer. Multi-day trips are harder for athletes in-season. Everyone in his life probably knows nearly everything about it.
Engagement.
The texts from others are flooding in. No one even knew he was seeing someone. The wristband. A soulmate.
Kageyama’s text block at the start of the chat details in clipped, perfunctory words the flat truth of the matter. Ushijima and I are soulmates. We’ve been seeing each other for some time now and have decided to move forward with marriage. We’re considering this date–
As if he was writing a damn business note.
Ah. Shouyou realizes what he’s feeling.
Mortification.
The kind of frustrated, pointless embarrassment that has him burning with a kind of internal shame he can’t quite shake. He puts a hand over his face and feels glad that the locker room is practically empty now. It’s just him and—
“Shouyou-kun,” Atsumu sounds close. He likes doing that. Standing in Shouyou’s space. Smiling, an arm pulling him close. Leaning in. Must be used to climbing all over his twin and teammates or something. “What’s wrong?”
“Huh? What?” Shouyou laughs, or tries to, then rearranges his expression before turning. “It’s nothing!”
Atsumu is frowning. His heavy brows are drawn low, casting a broody shadow over his eyes. It would be menacing, but Shouyou knows it’s just worry. Atsumu is easy to read like that.
“It’s not nothin’,” is the gruff, accented reply.
Shouyou shrugs. He’s not sure he’s allowed to tell just yet. But he wants to. Atsumu makes it easy to talk. It’s why in the past few weeks they’ve spent hours just chatting during practice and at the dorms. So despite wondering if he should or not, Shouyou speaks. “Kageyama’s getting married.”
“What!?” Atsumu barks. “He’s – WHAT? Someone wanted to marry him?”
“Ushiwaka!”
Atsumu shivers and holds his own arms. “That’s so weird. Ugh. Actually, they deserve each other. They have the same awful glare…”
“You think?” It’s been years since Shouyou talked with Ushijima. He can’t say he knows anything about the man.
“Yeah. So, what about this has you lookin’ like…ya know.”
Shouyou thinks about exactly where the discomfort is coming from. The expectation that his soulmate was right in front of him, easy to find. He’d assumed they would just have the same need for volleyball that he did. Has he been looking at it wrong? Maybe it’s not a volleyball player at all. Maybe they don’t even know anything about volleyball. Opposites attract, right? That’s a popular trope!
…not one that he’d like.
“Kageyama told us all he’s getting married in a text, but none of us knew he was even seeing anyone,” he settles on, showing Atsumu his phone screen.
Atsumu leans into him further, brow furrowed as he reads, head dipped to make up for the height difference. He smells good. His hair is still a little damp from the showers. As he reads, his face screws up. “What the hell, is he even your friend?”
“Of course he is!”
Atsumu looks at him then, mouth pinched. Their faces are close. “Hey, Shouyou-kun, you don’t like him or anything, right?”
No tact. Shouyou finds he likes that straightforward attitude a lot. He laughs. “Only as a friend!”
And it’s the truth, honestly. He’s never thought about kissing Kageyama, or even holding his hand. He never considered the romantic implications because he never thought they made sense in the grand scope of him and Kageyama. Together. Not all soulmates are romantic, either. Now he knows better.
He feels like an idiot.
Shouyou sighs.
Atsumu hooks an arm around his shoulders. “C’Mon then, let's go get some food! My treat!”
“Whoa, your treat? Sure!”
The two of them spend hours sitting in a local shop until Shouyou nearly forgets that he never responded to the text. When Atsumu runs to the bathroom, Shouyou pulls his phone back out again.
You: BAKAYAMA!
You: JAPAN???
He hopes it seems natural. His shock is real, after all.
He wishes he could say it was easier to move past the mortification. It’s not about love or whatever, it’s about all the time and hope he put into the idea of a soulmate that wasn’t actually his. He’d kept pushing it off while working on volleyball, believing there would be time for figuring out how they would work together. Playing volleyball, maybe moving in together.
Or not. Now he knows they’d probably be miserable as roommates. They used to argue all the time on high school trips, they would have strangled each other in a living situation.
Shouyou scrubs a hand through his hair.
It’s fine, I can just keep looking.
His friends are all pairing up with their own soulmates. It’s not a competition but now it kind of feels like it is. Especially since Kageyama, once again, has beaten Hinata to it.
Late at night, he rolls around in bed and grows frustrated by the lack of sleep. He’s kept a pretty strict schedule with himself, from food to sleep to exercise. It’s gonna hurt like hell tomorrow when he’s running on under six hours of sleep.
Shouyou fluffs his pillow and adjusts his position. Ugh. This isn’t working.
He gets up and leaves his room, entering the shared kitchen for a glass of water. Of course there’s someone there, sitting at the table with one of the corner lamps on. Dyed blonde hair looks more yellow in the light – almost like back in high school.
“Whoa, Shouyou-kun, never thought I’d see ya here so late.”
“Can’t sleep.” He gets his water, then pauses. Instead of going back to his room, he sits down at the table with Atsumu. “What about you?”
A shrug. “Can’t sleep either.”
“Watch a scary movie?”
“No!” Atsumu exclaims, then winces at his own volume. The shifty look to his eyes says otherwise. “I just needed a snack!”
Shouyou stifles a laugh. “Oh? Did you want me to make you something, Atsumu-san?”
“What? I–” Atsumu glances down, realizing that there is, in fact, no food in front of him to support his lie. He pouts. “Oh, shut up.”
“Atsumu-san.”
“...what?”
“I really like your new hair a lot. I think it suits you.”
Atsumu’s hand immediately slips into the bedhead gracing his scalp. He scoffs a bit, but there’s a preening quality to the way he sits up that Shouyou recognizes. Oikawa used to do it too. “Of course it does, ya think I’d walk around with anythin’ that didn’t suit me?”
“Are you super fashionable, Atsumu-san?”
“Someone has to be.”
“I think Omi-san is pretty fashionable too!”
Atsumu scowls. “Omi-Omi just wears black and gets away with it. That’s not fashion!”
“Can you help me pick out a suit for Kageyama’s wedding, then?” It’s true that Shouyou isn’t sure what to get when it comes to anything fancier than athleticwear. It’s also true that he feels kind of miserable doing this alone.
Atsumu watches him for a moment, running a hand over his jaw. His eyes, bronze-gold and heavy-lidded, are soft in the warm lighting. “Alright, Shouyou-kun. I’ll make ya look better than the grooms.”
“Ah, I dunno if that’s…”
“Trust me! It won’t be hard.”
Shouyou laughs at Atsumu’s grumbling. He likes the sound of Atsumu’s voice, too, the drawl making his eyes heavy. When he goes back to his room to sleep, it’s to the memory of Atsumu knocking their shoulders together in the hall and sending him off with a tired smirk.
Playing against Kageyama isn’t weird. What Shouyou used to think was a sure-fire connection he now knows to just be anticipation. Hunger, of the competitive kind. He should have seen it sooner, really, when he learned that there were other setters aside from Kageyama who could match him.
Like Atsumu.
Huh. Now that I think about it…
It had been Atsumu who had shown Shouyou the truth—during that first Nationals, and then the second, when Inarizaki had beaten Karasuno.
”Congratulations,” he says when he meets Kageyama in the hall. He means it. He’s also never going to admit to Kageyama that he once thought they’d be soulmates. Mortifying. He might as well die, honestly.
Kageyama touches the wrap on his wrist with more gentleness than expected. His face twists and scrunches, the way it always does when he’s faced with something nice and doesn’t know how to respond in kind.
Shouyou will also never admit that he’s jealous. That it feels as though Kageyama has won. Beats him to volleyball, beats him to a soulmate, beats him to marriage. If Shouyou doesn’t win this game, he’s going to be so…
Frustrated. And determined.
”Thanks,” Kageyama finally says.
An arm curls over Shouyou’s shoulders, the scent of spicy cologne and woodsy detergent filing his lungs. Atsumu.
”Back off’a my wing spiker,” he says, his lip curled. There’s a thread of possession in his tone that goes right over Kageyama’s head, but rings out loud and clear in Shouyou’s.
He stays comfortable under the weight of Atsumu’s leaning frame.
They win the game.
There are some practices where Shouyou opens his eyes from meditation to find Atsumu staring at him. When the other man notices his attention, he perks up and jogs over. Omi-san, who usually sits by Shouyou for his own stretches, always scowls and moves away.
“Let's work on our combos, Shouyou-kun!”
Shouyou jumps up. “Sure thing, Atsumu-san!”
When they work together, it’s like everything else falls away. Or—no, that’s not the right way to put it. Everything is the court, and only the court. The ball, the people, his every breath, and every shift of Atsumu’s muscled frame. Shouyou can’t explain the sensation when they nail the set-up of a truly impressive spike, or a switch up where Shouyou sets.
He thinks he could drink up the smiles Atsumu sends his way. His palms sting from the amount of times he’s slammed both the ball and Atsumu’s hands in celebration.
“Ahh, playing with you is the best,” Atsumu exclaims, stretching his arms over his head.
Shouyou bounces on his heels. “I like playing with you, too! We’re super synced up! Like bluetooth!”
“Exactly!”
“Hey, hey!” Bokuto interjects. “I wanna play a bit too!”
The moment ends there, the world pouring back in. Shouyou can’t quite grasp the emotion he feels—it dangles just out of reach, taunting him. He watches the beads of sweat trail down the back of Atsumu’s neck as the man argues loudly with Bokuto, and wonders.
“No, not that tie.”
Atsumu pulls a bright orange tie from Shouyou’s hands, shoving it back on the shelf.
“It matches my hair, though,” Shouyou argues.
“Yeah, which means it’s highlighter orange, Shouyou-kun. Trust the master here, will ya?”
This is the second store they’ve been to and Shouyou is…surprisingly not ready to run away yet. It’s actually fun to walk around with Atsumu, talking about anything they want and trying on different clothes. Atsumu is goofy and kind of lame, but he’s hilarious, and has something to say about every little thing they do. Shouyou was pretty sure previously, but now he’s certain that Atsumu is a really good guy.
“Ok, ok, I’ll trust you.” He lets Atsumu hold up a variety of ties to his throat, Atsumu’s expression contemplative and overly focused.
When a tie looks good, he loudly proclaims so. When a tie is bad, he finds ways to insult the piece of fabric as if hoping the manufacturer themselves will hear it.
“You’re in the wedding party, but they don’t even care about how people are dressing…” Atsumu huffs and rolls his eyes.
“Is it that important?”
“It’s a wedding. The kind of thing ya only want to happen once! It should be a party. A spectacle. Ain’t no way I’d let someone show me up on my big day. I’d have everything planned. Just so I can make it so extravagant that my idiot brother couldn’t dare show me up when it’s his time.”
Atsumu holds out a tie, one that’s burgundy, and observes it with a critical eye.
“That looks like the red from Inarizaki!” Shouyou points out.
Atsumu quickly puts it down, the tips of his ears a faint red. “Wouldn’t go with yer hair anyway.”
“Are there any colors I would look good in?” Shouyou mutters despondently. It really has been a while since they started looking at ties, specifically.
“White.”
“I don’t think I can wear a white tie, Atsumu-san.
The flush trails down to Atsumu’s face. “Rights. Ties. Well, you’re also fine in black. Neutral colors, ya know. Or blue. Blue could be a nice contrast…”
He starts muttering to himself, and Shouyou looks off to the side. He spots a tie in the yellow section, which Atsumu had avoided. There’s a pretty, pale gold tie neatly folded next to one that’s a startling shade of mustard. He picks up the first, smiling brightly.
“I like this one.”
Atsumu comes over and frowns. “What? Why?”
“It’s a cool color. Like Atsumu-san’s hair.”
Amazingly, Atsumu doesn’t argue—much—and he snatches the tie from Shouyou’s hands when they get up to the register. “I’ll buy it.”
“What—but Atsumu-san, it’s my tie!”
“No buts.” Even when pushed, Atsumu doesn’t give a reason. “Just take it as a gift, will ya!? Stop arguin’!”
Shouyou huffs. “I’m buying lunch then.”
Atsumu pays, takes the bag, and presses it to Shouyou’s chest with a huff. “I want ramen.”
“Ramen it is!”
Shouyou takes Atsumu to the wedding as his plus one. He’s not sure why it makes sense, but it does. He’s taken to searching for the other man, gravitating to him in a room. When they play volleyball together, it’s like basking at the peak of a day. Frozen in a moment of joy that extends and extends and extends. Until they part.
They sit next to each other when the ceremony starts, and when Shouyou searches for that uncomfortable kernel that he’d placed inside himself he doesn’t find it. Ushijima and Kageyama are straight-faced and awkward, and despite the flares of emotion and the careful ways they talk, Shouyou isn’t sure he’s ever going to fully understand their personalities. Much easier to see them for who they are on the court than in intimate settings.
“Man, they look like cardboard cutouts,” Atsumu whispers to him.
Shouyou tries not to laugh. Both Ushijima and Kageyama have rather painful smiles. Them posing for pictures is a sight to see. “Like their ads!”
Atsumu slaps a hand over his mouth and starts humming the jingle that goes with Kageyama’s commercial.
Shouyou has to dig his hand against his thigh to stop the laugh, red-faced and sweating. He elbows Atsumu. “Stop it!”
Someone from Ushijima’s side of the family turns around to glare at them. They both sit up straight and Shouyou bites his tongue. He’s not sure how well he really schools his expression, however. He can feel his eyebrows twitching.
When it’s over and the reception starts, he’s finally dragged away from Atsumu by his old Karasuno friends. The loss of his plus one is startling. He finds himself tracking the setter’s progression through the crowd. He looks incredible in the deep maroon suit and black dress-shirt he’d picked out. No tie, because apparently it didn’t suit the ‘vibe’ he was going for. They didn’t match clothes, despite the tie at Shouyou’s throat. Somehow it didn’t matter.
“Earth to Shouyou,” Yamaguchi calls, snapping his fingers.
“Huh? What? Sorry, were you saying something?”
“Just wondering when you were gonna give us some good news…”
Shouyou glances at Yamaguchi, then at Yachi. Both of them look elated, while Tsukishima is sullenly pretending none of them exist. “Huh?”
“With Miya-san!” Yachi prods. “You know…”
“You guys are really close,” Yamaguchi finishes for her, then elbows Tsukki. “Right? You’ve noticed it too.”
Tsukishima rolls his eyes. “Hard not to notice tweedle dum and tweedle dee.”
Shouyou has the sense to know he’s being made fun of, but it’s been awhile since he’s let Tsukishima’s comments get his riled up. That’s not going to change tonight, either. “Yeah, me and Atsumu-san got really close! We’re like best friends!”
His stomach drops the moment the words are out of his mouth. He doesn’t like the way they taste.
“No, I mean...are you and him…together?” Yamaguchi lowers his voice, looking around like the paparazzi are prepped and ready to jump on them.
“What!” Shouyou squawks. “No! It’s not, we’re not–we’re not even soulmates!”
He hates the way his cheeks flush. Somewhere along the way, he’d realized just how handsome Atsumu is. This revelation, paired with teasing he’d yet to face, makes his tongue tie itself in knots.
“So? A lot of people don’t date their soulmates.”
Yachi nods along with Yamaguchi’s words. “Maybe yours will be platonic! Or maybe it is Atsumu!”
If only.
The thought startles him. It doesn’t come out of nowhere, though. The more he lets it echo in his head the more he realizes how right it sounds. How much he wants it to be true. It’s more than just playing volleyball, he likes to be around Atsumu even off the court. For anything. Be that for food, shopping, watching movies—-
“We’re just friends,” he reminds them weakly. Again.
“Oh? Seems you’re protesting a bit…” Like a shark smelling blood, Tsukishima takes interest and leans in closer with a domineering smile.
“You can tell us!” Yachi says, going the good cop route.
Shouyou would much rather not talk about this at all, actually. Because there’s nothing to tell. When he relays this, they don't seem to believe him at all. Heck, he barely believes it. But that might have to do more with his own uncertain and rapidly changing desires.
A voice overhead urges people to start congregating on the open dance floor, and the crowd excitedly shifts to comply. Shouyou takes advantage of this and pretends to get swept away. “Sorry, uh, talk later! See you on the floor!”
When the music starts up again, he finds Atsumu and drags him to the dance floor. In the midst of elated bodies, he never quite loses his grip on Atsumu’s hand. They dance for hours, until their suits are ruffled and the smiles etched on their faces threaten to become permanent.
He pretends, for a heartstopping moment, that this is their wedding. Then he feels stupid and guilty and elated all at once, which is a really weird combination of things to feel. Even worse than the sensation of your stomach climbing up to your throat when you reach the drop of a rollercoaster.
“That was fun!” Shouyou cries out, sucking down three cups of water between gasping breaths.
Atsumu looks down at him. It’s the kind of look that makes his already tired legs weak in the knees. “It was amazing.”
If they could live in this moment forever, Shouyou would. What a scary thought.
A week after the wedding, Atsumu invites Shouyou to the beach. He leaps at the chance, looking forward to the time off they get for the weekend. Since leaving Brazil, something he never thought he’d miss so much is constant and frequent access to sand. It was soothing to stand in and let it sink between his toes. And he liked the way his legs had to work extra hard to make him fly.
They eat lunch together, taking photos of the food and each other. Atsumu has sunglasses perched on his head, more for style than use. Even if the purpose is a bit dorky, Shouyou feels endeared. He wants to hold Atsumu’s hand across the table, and that’s when he knows that this really is different from any crushes.
When the sun starts getting lower on the horizon, they walk the beach. Neither of them had brought a bathing suit. It hadn’t been about swimming, really. Shouyou’s pretty sure that this was supposed to be something closer to a date. Or he has his hopes up.
Speaking of hope.
Shouyou wipes his hands on his shorts and finds a good spot on the beach to watch the waves.
“Can I tell you something?”
Atsumu sits down in the sand beside him. “Anything. Unless it’s about liking someone else more than me.”
Shouyou snorts. The tide rushes up and misses their feet by just a few inches. “I thought Kageyama was my soulmate.”
“Oh.” Atsumu’s face falls. He leans his arms on his knees and presses his chin into the crook of his elbow. “So…you did like him?”
“No. I don’t think I ever did, like that. I just….felt like it was expected. That it made sense.” He sighs. “Except the more I think about it now, the more I realize that it didn’t really make sense, it was just easy to believe. Just another thing I thought I had all figured out.”
“Sounds complicated. If you don’t want him, then who cares? What makes you need a soulmate so bad, huh?”
I just want one. He’d like to say that. It feels almost weird to even think about it, though. He wants to have a partner who makes him happy. Wants to make someone else happy. To hold hands and watch those sappy movies that he pretends he doesn’t.
Support. The older he gets the more he picks apart his mother’s words. Someone to uplift you in every moment. Yeah. Someone to come home to.
“I think I’m just excited to love someone.”
Atsumu scuffs his toes in the sand. “So yer in love with the idea of someone that ya may or may not meet, rather than lookin’ around at the people in front of ya.”
There’s a new kernel in Shouyou’s chest. This one is bright, more of a seed instead of a kernel. It takes root in his soul and his chest, and he feels it grow with every inhale. There is something so lovely about the flex of Atsumu’s hands and the sweep of his pale gold bangs. Their shoulders are an inch apart, the waves crashing and reaching, falling just short every time.
“I don’t know. Atsumu-san, aren’t you ever worried about getting it wrong and hurting someone’s feelings?”
“Only if they’re my feelings.”
At Shouyou’s continued silence, Atsumu sighs.
“Sure, Shouyou-kun. But that’s life. You either jump, or you don’t, and you don’t get anywhere if ya ain’t trying to fly.”
Shouyou puts his hand on Atsumu’s arm. His heart leaps to his throat. Atsumu’s jaw flexes, his pretty face burning red. Those fox-like eyes pin Shouyou in place, a butterfly on a display board.
“Atsumu-san, I think I–”
His hand prickles, silencing him. Brilliant, metallic gold blooms across his skin, painting an image of sun rays over rolling waves, and then a line of scarlet trees, broken only by the face of a fox peering through the trunks. It’s beautiful and loud and large, spanning from his knuckles down to his elbow. The design perfectly mirrors the one painting itself over Atsumu’s skin, in the exact same spot on the same arm – left.
Atsumu grabs Shouyou’s hand in a tight grip, dragging his attention back to a flustered, bright-eyed face and a determined slash of a mouth that Shouyou wishes he could kiss. Their soulmate marks are a perfect match. “Shouyou-kun. Do you remember back in high school, when I promised I’d set to ya one day?”
Shouyou gapes. He can’t get over the soulmarks. “Uh, I think, yes?”
“I’ve liked you since then. I like you right now.”
“Really? Wait—no fair! I was about to—”
Atsumu tightens his grip. “I don’t leap after things I don’t want.”
Shouyou beams. He swells with unseen emotion. It rolls through him, warmth and light and a swallowed sun. This is nothing like the expectation of waiting for a sudden change in heart. This was a slow crawl. He knows Atsumu’s habits, how well they get along. How well they fit.
He kisses him then. A clumsy thing, chaste and kind and just enough to show the heart on his tongue.
“Atsumu-san, I like you too.” The tide reaches them, foam washing over their feet. Neither of them move. There’s no more waiting for ‘one day’. Forever spans before them, as infinite and unknown as a dream.