Archive of Our Own

Make sure you bring an umbrella.

Funny how that works out. Yachi, indeed, had completely forgotten to grab the clear umbrella on the way out the door. 

If she had to guess, Yachi would say it was nearly four when she and Hinata were assigned watermelon delivery duty. Summer, in both a blessing and a curse, was in full swing, and it turned out that meant a week-long retreat to the countryside — Mr. Ukai, Senior, apparently had an old friend with a farm he used to play on as a kid. He declared a change of scenery and some fresh air and country sunshine would do the boys some good, invigorate their blood. So they packed their bags.

The infamous coach hadn’t been wrong so far in his theory. Two days in, and Yachi couldn't contain her awe in watching the whole team quickly be pushed to their limits with great success, only for them to push harder, go further than before. There's something about the rustic setting that makes everything better, like the world is full of potential and all the worst hardships are far away back home; here, the sky is bright and blue, the sun fiercely hot, the hills and forests vast, and the home cooked meals a perfect complement to heavy futons they passed out on at night.

Out of everything that could go wrong, it's almost a feat that the only hitch amidst it all came from her. 

Three weeks ago, Yachi Hitoka became unwillingly privy to the fact that she had a gigantic, unmanageable, huge, embarrassing crush on Karasuno High School’s official middle blocker and decoy extraordinaire.

—

Hinata Shouyou lives up to his name.

Yachi boasts an embarrassing amount of art dedicated to his profile. She’s absently doodled him surrounded by sunflowers and under spotlights and around stars; she draws the solstice of his eyes, over and over again, the picture of a silly girl possessed by her own feelings. Late at night, dropping off into slumber, she half-wonders if this is what it’s always like for artists — maybe Michelangelo or Da Vinci felt as arrested when they worked. Not that she could compare or ever be so great as any such painter, but, well, she can dwell on that another time. Right now, she is contending with the invisible hurricane named My Feelings Toward Hinata Shouyou and pretending it doesn’t exist as it tears the roof off of her heart.

If anything, it should be considered impressive how far she made it without noticing the oncoming storm; it was only a passing taunt that encouraged her to look at the skies to begin with.

“You draw Number 10 a lot, don’tcha?”

A nicely-manicured nail is pressed to some graphite on the notebook page, pointing at the outline of little black wings sprouting out of a tiny Hinata doodle. Yachi blinks without turning to her classmate. “Mm.”

“So, do you like, like him?”

The girl is coy about it, eyebrows waggling with humor in hopes of a reaction. She gets one.

Yachi stares, lips parted in silent response. A full thirty seconds pass before Yachi comes back to reality.

“Huh?” She's sincere, as if she’s just actually short-circuited and forgotten the question for real.

The bell rings, conveniently. Yachi blurts out something with the intention of bookending their conversation like a normal human, though she can’t recall what, and judging from the look on her friend’s face she may have just failed spectacularly — but she shuts her notebook with a snap and collects her things to shuffle back to her seat where can become safely lost in the ether of her shock for the rest of the period.

Of course, her heart had answered, immediately. Of course we like Hinata.

There hadn’t been a second of hesitation. The moment she had the thought, it had been like realizing her phone was in her back pocket even though she had been looking for it for an hour — so painfully simple, so stupidly just out of her line out of sight.

So obvious.

After class, she detours to the bathroom, and hides in a stall. She covers her mouth with her hands, smiling into her fingers where no one can see.

—

Life is like a shoujo manga.

The world is pink. When Yachi wakes up the next morning, her bed feels like candyfloss and she breathes in bubblegum. When she walks to school with her hair pulled up and a skip in her step, there’s practically rose petals on the ground and glitter in the clouds.

The filter carries all the way through her classes; all the way through saccharine notes on Japanese poets surrounded by hearts and tiny doodles of a spiky-haired redhead with summery eyes. It takes her all the way to the gym, where the object of her affection is taking flight over and over to send balls soaring across the room.

She smiles dreamily; narrowly avoids a volleyball to the head that sends strands of her hair floating, suspended.

It lasts a blissful day and a half. 

—

“O-kaaay,” the same classmate starts up once she corners her again, on a Friday no less. Yachi had done a very good job of avoiding her and any further interrogations, knowing they would probably not be fun.

She was right to. 

“So if you do like him, when are you gonna confess? You're gonna tell him, right?”

The problem was admittedly not the question. It was a perfectly good question. A valid, astute one. Yachi respected that the girl had been able to put two and two together and get four, when Yachi herself hadn’t even noticed the numbers to begin with — only pairs, figures in tandem. Their literature teacher up front rambles on dutifully and chalk scrapes and clacks across the board as students shuffle quietly in their seats, turning pages along with the lesson. Yachi can only stare blankly at some kanji cheat sheet on the far wall.

No — it was not the question. It was the answer, the realization, and the burden it had brought.

“W-well we’re—” Yachi swallows, her hands twisting in her lap. She doesn't want to talk about it. “W-we’re just friends, right now, in the s-same club.”

And Hinata is her friend — a dear friend. And he considers her a friend, too! But she's also a manager. And managers don’t fall asleep thinking of friends, trying to memorize all the lines of the muscles in their forearms. Managers don’t get an adrenaline rush when their friend finishes a set and dumps water on their head outside afterwards, drenching them, plastering their hair to their skin and droplets perching like clear pearls along their neck as they laugh and look like sunshine that decided to play volleyball. And managers certainly don’t want to breach personal spaces of said other friends and get so close it leaves their stomach in knots.

They don't confess, either.

When practice rolls around that afternoon, Yachi is oddly quiet — a hard contrast to yesterday's bubbly sighs. A few sympathetic teammates ask if she’s alright on the down-low, but she brushes it all off with forced happiness and a hand-wave excuse about long lessons. They sure were long today! It wasn’t a total lie.

Her mind snaps to the court as a heavy thwack captures her attention; a volleyball is ricocheting away, point clearly scored as evident by the familiar cadence of Hinata hooting and hollering in celebration. On the other side of the net is a surly-looking Tsukishima, evidently bypassed by sheer force of the spiker’s will, and from the level of Hinata's noisy enthusiasm, it had been a point well-earned.

“Again,” Tsukishima prompts. Everyone is quick to get back into position, eager to see where the momentum takes them.

Hinata is especially hungry. She can see it — that look, still lingering. He must have been playing a very close game with Tsukki. It’s like there’s no light in his eyes, like his pupils are just black punctuation marks in the center of his honey-brown irises. His smile, gleeful and starving, doesn’t quite reach them.

Something deep and heavy settles in the pit of Yachi’s stomach. A distant murmur, a ghost of a dream in her head, imagines him looking at her that way, and what it might mean.

No; that is not what friends do at all.

—

Hinata, as it turns out, does not look at her in that way, ever.

She starts doing stupid things, like comparing the way he approaches her to the way he approaches others. Despite their difference in gender, Yachi couldn’t remember the last time she felt some unnavigable distance between them or awkwardness due to it — but upon further observation, it seems to be because Hinata simply gets along with everyone just swimmingly.

And she knew that, of course! It just looked different in this kind of light. So, it’s okay if she allows herself the petulant, private pettiness of scribbling over a silly sketch of his stupid face in the corner of her notebook like it’s personally offended her. She glances over at Kiyoko like a hurt bird, and laments — maybe this is her fault. Kiyoko, after all, taught her so many important things, but had perhaps forgotten the more important one: don’t fall in love with any club members.

Simply, it would be the pinnacle of irresponsibility not only if she did, but if she did and then acted upon it. She was supposed to be their manager, not a girlfriend. And what if there was dating and then a fight or a problem and then a terrible breakup and hurt feelings and then the whole team becomes ruined forever? What happens if their not-so-secret weapon gets suspended and their manager gets disciplined or replaced? No, Yachi refused to be responsible for something like that. 

Her newfound resolution doesn't magically fix her feelings, of course; it does not solve the issue of maybe Kiyoko is just a fundamentally good person, and Yachi somehow fundamentally is not. Surely that would explain why she wouldn’t think to mention such a thing to her optimistic junior. Kiyoko has control over herself and her emotions, and must have generously assumed the same of her protege. Kiyoko doesn’t succumb to fantasies of a boy who’s not short, but fun-sized, and she certainly doesn’t let it unconsciously grow out of control and out of sight like a wild, abandoned garden fueled by generous summer storms and sunshine so hot it makes you want to just sleep.

No; Kiyoko remains beautiful and elegant and composed and everything Yachi has never been able to quite get down right.

There’s a familiar, plastic smack of a ball slapping at full-power into the flooring. Yachi turns her head to follow the ball’s trajectory backwards, and there’s Hinata again, haunting her from afar as he squeals at his successful spike and slaps his hands against Kageyama’s.

Instinctively, her insides bubble and fizz, itching to cheer him on like she would any other day. Hinata, after all, is positively infectious in his energy alone, and she’s never shied away from soaking some of it up for herself. That’s part of why they got along so well, she muses absently — feeding off of each other, being able to mutually plug in and meet exactly in the middle, perfectly in step without having to plan it all. Everything always worked out.

Yachi almost laughs, though her smile is vacant and doesn't reach her glassy eyes. How dumb. How stupid. How silly. She should have seen this coming from a mile away.

—

Something is kind of sad about falling in love and then immediately trying to fall out of it.

Yachi has a good head on her shoulders, and decides to thank her mother for that by cooking a few of her favourite dishes for dinner. In her room, on her desk, is her notebook, and on a fresh page is a highlighter-and-ink gameplan for nipping her feelings right in the bud. Any problem can be broken down into sections and steps and solutions; everything has a design.

Yachi knows her obstacle is one of connection; a close, proximal bond. The goal is to wither it until it turns into something safe. To make something wither, you have to withhold from it; restrict resources. The answer is distance, in every way she can.

She will refrain from seeking him out between classes. She will limit her cheering, cool off on starting superfluous conversations, and resist the urge to text. She will focus on her relationships with the others.

There's something even worse about it when the universe is plotting against you.

—

The plan in action goes mostly-kinda-pretty smooth. 

Yachi keeps her eyes facing forward. The natural lulls in conversation are met with her making excuses to dip out rather than spilling forth all the things crowding against her lips: How was your last English grade? Do you think about me sometimes? Did you want to grab fresh buns after practice? Is it true Kageyama slipped on a banana peel today? Can you help me stop feeling like this?

The repressed questions are angry, stinging hornets in her chest. She’ll just have to get used to it.

— 

If Hinata realizes something is amiss, he’s not too shabby at hiding it. But from the way he talks a little faster, leaving less gaps in their conversations, Yachi can't help but uneasily wonder if he notices more than he’s letting on.

Practice, too; less than a week in, she’s startled when Hinata makes an incredible receive on her side of the court, and rockets to his feet. His eyes are instantly hot and dark on hers as he beams, injecting his glee straight into her veins.

“Yachi! Did you see me?!” His voice carries through the whole gym, practically crackling from the sparks of his enthusiasm.

She's taken off-guard to an extreme. Yachi is already nodding on reflex, dumbstruck, her hair bouncing with the motion as she watches in slow-motion the way Hinata's face turns from wolfishly excited to utterly pleased, pleased that she’s given him the approval he sought.

Damn it he’s good. Damn it, damn it, damn it. She knows she'll have to try harder.

That day, just when she can sense practice is about to wrap up, she pretends to check her phone. The murmurs of grabbing snacks had reached her ears; she makes up an easy lie about her mom coming home early and needing her. She delivers her careful script to Kiyoko, and Ukai, and Sensei, and she’s sure she is the most obvious liar on the planet, stammering and stumbling over half her sentences — but somehow, not a soul seems to pay any of it a second glance. She’s let go early, by mercy or her own merits she does not know, and just as she’s pushing the doors open to escape, the whistle blows, signaling the end of the club meeting right on time.

Someone shouts something jubilant about fresh baked buns, but Yachi acts like she didn’t hear a thing, instead bitterly enjoying the secret point she’s earned in their private game.

Take that, Hinata, she thinks. 

The words are empty. She remembers, very quickly, how lonely it is walking home on your own.

—

Hinata’s single-minded attempts to coax her back into what they had persists in painful fashion.

But somewhere between week two and three, it stops.

—

She can feel everyone’s eyes on her sometimes. Between plays and matches and drills, she’d catch a sidelong stare from across the room, in a group, here and there. The question was always apparent: What’s up with Yachi and Hinata?

She ignores it, and keeps going through the motions. Fake it ‘til you make it.

The ultimate wrench in the plan, however, comes in swift at the hands of Ukai. Boisterous, explosive cheers follow the announcement of a week of special training — his sort-of-uncle's farm out in the country. Nobody can say no. Yachi can’t say no. Sharing an entire farm with the entire volleyball team is unavoidable.

It’s almost four o’clock when Asahi heads out the back to go find Suga, and when Ukai Sr. enters in his stead.

“Old Nishijima down the road has a bushel of watermelons I asked for — Hinata, Yachi, why don't the both of you make yourselves useful and go get them. It’s about a mile’s walk.”

Yachi is trying to charge her phone against the wall, and Hinata is just walking in, too, from using the toilet.

“Eh?” His dismay is rapid and apparent — why him? What about volleyball? But a cursory glance around the room shows both of them that, yeah, they are the only ones lounging in the main room; everyone else is outdoors and occupied. Whoops. 

Inevitably, her eyes and his meet, too. There’s a slow moment of molasses and honey and ichor between both of them that goes perfectly unacknowledged.

Hinata looks away first. “Yes, sir. On it.”

Yachi blinks. “Oh, uh, yes! Yes, we’re right on it.”

"Good." Ukai says gruffly, scratching his chest, and for an instant Yachi worries that he's scrutinizing them. But he just keeps walking. "Make sure you bring an umbrella."

—

Summer rain is a cruel mistress.

The skies had been cornflower blue all the way to the edges when they'd first walked out. They kept up an awkward, stilted rapport at first, pretending to properly participate in small-talk — until they both gave up and just padded along the hot dirt road in silence. 

Twenty minutes in, the west horizon was dark and roiling, the very dictionary definition of ominous.

Half an hour in, it was inevitable.

Neither of them remembered the umbrella.

It’s close to an hour and nearly three miles by the time they get to Nishijima's property. The storm clouds have been threatening to unleash for at least thirty minutes on their arrival, and Nishijima's kindly, frail wife wishes them safe travels as they collect the small sacks of melons from the porch. Yachi thinks the workout alone from carrying the fruit will be the death of them long before lightning or thunder, and honestly, she isn't too sure she's unhappy about the rain if it means a reprieve from the oppressive heat and their cargo.

When lightning strikes a mile away, of course when Nishijima is far behind them in the distance, she almost falls out of her skin. She yelps, and it’s a miracle that she doesn’t drop her watermelons — thankfully, they're still draped safely in their nets across her slumped shoulders.

“You okay?”

Hinata’s quip is sincere, of course. Yachi would never doubt his kindness — but his wary undertone is impossible to miss. No matter how hard he tries to hide it, his too-expressive mouth makes his feelings obvious by the way it twists like he’s tasted salt.

Her shoulders feel so heavy.

“Y-yeah,” Yachi mumbles. “Sorry. It just startled me. I’m not afraid of storms or anything.”

“I know.” 

She has no idea what Hinata means by that. 

“But you don’t have to apologize for it.”

Yachi doesn't know what to say. She just nods.

The thunder rumbling is low and slow-growing as they press on; luckily, the lightning seems to only move away. And then, naturally, the skies open up and an ocean's worth of water dumps onto their heads in a full-blown downpour. 

Fat raindrops splatter on every inch of her in a momentary, blissful reprieve from the heat, before quickly turning into the miserable discomfort of being in soaking, clinging clothes.

The miracle is that there’s cover.

He sees it before her. “Come on!” Hinata calls out, immediately breaking into an absurd sprint. Yachi blinks the water out of her eyes and sees the standing building just a stretch in front of them, down a side path. 

She dutifully ignores Hinata clearly slowing down to hang back, remain in her proximity on purpose.

They're both soaked through by the time they get to the wood shed; it's very old, with a reluctantly-sliding door and just enough cracks in the walls to let the meager light in. 

Impressively only one corner of the roofing has a leak, and both of them melt with relief when they see the worn bench in the corner that's still in good shape. Either way, if the shed belonged to some farmworker, it certainly was no longer needed or used.

And best of all, it was dry.

Hinata heaves his watermelons onto the floor with a great huff and a shrug, hastily reminding Yachi of the complicated part of the situation. Being trapped in a confined space with Hinata sounded just peachy. Fantastic. No complaints there at all.

“Well,” Hinata sighs, rolling his shoulders. He, at least, seems perfectly unperturbed by their circumstances. “I guess we can wait it out here.”

Sure. Yes. That made sense, obviously, and Yachi nodded, trying to catch her breath from running. She wobbles as she struggles to nudge the watermelons off of her back and onto the ground, plopping them right next to Hinata's with a grumpy kick.

And... That's it. Now they just waited.

Yachi flounders in silence, unsure where to look or stand to act natural. Did natural even matter now? Her face burned distractingly hot. This was the worst possible case scenario. What was she supposed to do? What was her strategy again? How on earth was she supposed to escape this in one piece?

She's just beginning to consider some far-fetched plan where she braves the very unsafe deluge to go seek help.

“Yachi?”

The sound of her name is like a meteor, and her head turns automatically. It feels like a comet plummeting into her stomach and exploding into butterflies and stardust. No, she scolds herself stringently, that’s not real. That is an adrenaline rush. She recalls those lovely hours at the beginning of all this mess, before everything became terrible.

And when they lock eyes, everything grinds to a halt.

Slow-motion is real. Later, she’ll conveniently recall that it's a side-effect of an adrenaline rush.

A droplet falls from the leaky ceiling, and plunks onto the flooring where a puddle gathers. The light in their musty room was murky and faint, but she could still easily make out the swath of dark citrus that was his matted hair. Some of it’s stuck to his face, sopping trails of rainwater that descend the slopes of his cheeks all the way down to the cut of his jaw, his neck, until it disappears into his plastered t-shirt. 

None of it compared to the look in his eyes.

Hinata stares at Yachi like she is his new obsession, and not a modicum of light reaches his gaze. There’s a pinpoint fixation in his stare that's anchored to her form and her form alone, rendering her immobile from its intensity. 

A bold shiver rolls down Yachi's spine; chills follow, which she weakly blames on getting wet. 

She knows that stare, and she's seen that look: Yachi remembers with perfect clarity that empty, eviscerating gaze Hinata gets in his eyes when he has come up against a tantalizing challenge. She's always marveled at it, laden with disbelief that Hinata, of all people, had a yandere streak in him.

Funny how that works.

The air is muggy, and thick; Yachi feels ten pounds heavier with her clothes clinging to her body.

It's absolutely pathetic when she chooses to give him a meaningful gesture of her head to indicate that she's listening to him. She knows it's kind of rude. Something's not very surprising about his presence in the room growing colder, denser, crowding her space without coming any nearer. Yachi numbly wonders if this is what it feels like to be trapped against the net with no escape, no way out.

He's Number Ten, Hinata Shouyou — and today, she is the ball.

Hinata takes a deep breath. “Yachi.” The pang in her chest is just as real the second time.

She’s so transparently obedient. Something about that doesn’t sting too much.

“Yes?”

His expression softens, just a fraction. A boulder is lifted off of her pathetic heart.

“How come you’re avoiding me?”

In the distance, thunder rumbles in that afternoon-nap-comfortable kind of way; Yachi thinks that’s a funny soundtrack choice for this moment. Nothing in the world could have braced her for the impact of his simple, well-earned question.

Her hands are shaking when she answers. “I’m not,” Yachi says dully.

Hinata, somehow, is very still. The sight of it is uncanny, his silhouette unmoving like a ghost against the light.

“Yachi.” He says again, low and metallic. “How come you’re avoiding me?”

There’s still hope, she thinks. There's still a tiny chance she can lie her way out of this. She didn’t get this smart for nothing. She can make her mom proud— 

And that thought, right there, is the one that trips her up and makes her entire train of thought derail and her resolve falter: she can see it, clear as day, what it would be like if she became her mother. Yachi envisions herself as beautiful; as hard and flawless as diamond, as valuable and as dazzling, and as just as distantly out of reach.

Yachi, with abrupt and rigid clarity, slams the breaks on that notion, and switches gears. She takes a deep breath. 

“Are you mad at me?”

Her hedging is immaculate, though unfortunately she’s too busy suffocating under her self-made grave to appreciate it.

“Is that what you thought?” Hinata is unmoved. His tone makes her think he saw right through her attempt — Yachi’s guts twists like they’re full of thistles and tacks. “You thought that I was mad at you for something, so you ran away?”

Ran away? Of course not, Yachi bristles. She’s no coward. Mama didn’t raise no... No...

The stress bubbles up and up until it connects to her tear ducts. Yachi steels herself instead; she grits her teeth and clenches her fists until her nails hurt against her skin, and even then she tamps all the pain down, far, far away from the surface.

Her face is hot, so traitorously hot, and she hopes and wishes desperately that he can’t see it in this dark room, that he can’t read her mind, that she’s not just giving it all away like a stupid girl in the humid air of this place a hundred miles from home.

“Yachi.” Hinata says, poisonous in his patience. “Answer me.”

She only wavers a moment before giving in, scooting over to lean against the wall and brace herself there; it’s a bit closer to Hinata, but endurable this way. “I’m sorry for running away,” she mumbles.

She hasn’t lied, technically. But her stomach still feels so sour, and she huddles against the wood, arms wrapped lightly around her middle.

“Why are you shaking?”

Yachi realizes that he sounds so composed. Why? Frustratingly, it hits a nerve — and Yachi is chilly. Yachi is dripping wet. Her shoulders ache from carrying the melons. She’s exhausted from the effort of her long-term deception, spread out over weeks and weeks, and she’s just tired of it all. 

Yachi is vulnerable. All of it adds up to too much kindling for one girl to take. 

When she snaps, her voice cracks traitorously; she shouldn’t have expected otherwise.

“What do you want from me! Why are you asking me so many questions!”

Yachi Hitoka makes her first mistake. Hinata Shouyou is delivered his first opening.

“Let’s sit down,” Hinata says in one breath. Yachi blinks, and he’s just there, right in front of her and in her face and grabbing her hand. He yanks her down in a single perfect motion to sit on the bench, swinging himself around easily to take the spot beside her. 

To his credit, he does let go, and gives her plenty of time to have a small heart attack. So considerate. No wonder she’s smitten.

Yachi kind of wants to throw up, or run away, and cry, or all of those things.

“Nothing ever gets fixed if you can’t talk about it most of the time,” Hinata musters on sagely. She can’t grasp anything he’s saying; he’s only a foot from her and up close, she can feel his radiating body heat, see the tiny shifts in his expression. He’s much more like an unattainable love interest from an adult manga than a wiseman, from here.

When Yachi fails to respond to him, Hinata’s head cocks. It’s some kind of dangerous, captivating motion, that leaves him directly fixated on her. 

When he begins to talk again, in that familiar, casual way, like he’s trying not to make things a big deal even though she can practically feel the maelstrom simmering just under his skin, she knows she never had a chance of surviving this. There was no winning against Hinata.

“If I did something, I want to know,” Hinata says first, and then the rest of it follows with all the speed and force of a riptide. “Because I want to apologize if I did! But if I did, I don’t know what it is. I don’t know what I did. And it feels like nothing I did worked, and I tried so much! I tried everything, but Yachi just got further and further away, until it felt like I couldn’t reach,” Hinata sucks in a breath through his teeth, brow furrowed, “and I hated it. So I... I thought I’d ask some of the others, because I couldn’t, uh, ask you, and they... they said...” 

It’s the first fumble in his speech, punctuated by the way his fists ball up against his thighs, jaw tight. He breathes in, and tries again: “They said you maybe just needed... space... since life is a different kind of hard for girls! And so if one is avoiding you, you should just leave her alone. And that’s fine! If you need to be alone, just say so. Even I want to be alone sometimes.” He jabs his thumb into his chest weakly. “It’s just...”

Hinata’s discomfort finally peaks. Yachi can only watch, numb, as he absently glares at some spot on the floor, or the wall. 

He can’t quite look at her.

“It’s just been forever,” he says, nursing his bottom lip in the momentary quiet, “since you looked at me. You always look like I’m not there. So I knew I must have done something if you were acting like that — but it felt wrong to leave you alone about it, and I... Now I wish I hadn’t listened to the senpais, if I’m bein’ honest.”

Hinata takes his first deep breath. For some reason, when he finally looks at her again, he’s wearing a half-hearted, out-of-place smile that doesn’t reach his eyes.

“I can’t sleep because I lay in bed and think about volleyball, and you’re always on the sidelines and ignoring me, and cheering for everybody else. And then, when I wake up, I feel so— rrrghh, and stupid, and I— I thought maybe, maybe I was just getting sick, but it wasn’t like that because everything was like drrrrrggg and kiiiiii like this and—” 

Hinata is vibrating, voice strangled as he’s possessed by the gravity of his own difficult explanation. For a moment, he stumbles — mouth open and then shut like a broken toy — and it’s sad, it’s so sad, and Yachi doesn’t know what to do. 

Hinata sits there lost and beseeching, until his searching gaze pauses directly on her lip-bitten mouth. He clearly figures something out, because he returns his attention to her eyes so fast she doubts her own eyes. 

“If you don’t cheer for me again,” Hinata murmurs with firm, aching honesty, “it feels like something inside of me is going to break.”

Inside of Yachi, something does break.

Yachi can’t even cry because she can’t catch her breath. Her poor brain is frying from how fast she’s attempting to process everything and still deal with the way her guilty heart is splintering like a smashed windshield, yet seizing with undeserved elation at his sweet, stupid, kindness and attention.

She is defenseless, so she crumbles.

“Hinata,” Yachi blurts, rushing to explain, to fix: “I’m... I’m always cheering for you! Even if I-I seem quiet — I promise, I promise, I promise I’m cheering louder than anyone in my heart!” 

It’s coming out hastily, and in the wrong order, but her whole nervous system is a tangled fishing line lost in a sea of gripping determination that is desperate to assure him that his observations were not the truth of the matter; that everything was very complicated and... “When you... W-watching you... play volleyball, i-is my favourite! Um, um, I mean that it— you! You’re the coolest one on the court to me! When you kyuuuuu and haaa and pssshh and, and all of those things, how you jump, it... it makes me feel like I can do it too! N-not volleyball, I mean! But— but I feel like the walls, those in my life, aren’t so... impossible, to see over. Sometimes I can see over them, too, because you! B-because of you! Your amazing jump! An amazing, flying Hinata! L-Like... Like maybe if I try hard, maybe I could fly too.”

Yachi takes a deep gulp of precious oxygen. She can’t get caught up in things, she has to mend this shut before Hinata’s instantly-ready mouth can interrupt her and undo all her progress. 

“And that’s something I need to do, um... by myself.” Even she can hear the hollowness in her tone. She presses on anyway. “I don’t want to get in anybody’s way. Especially yours, because—” Oh no. Oh no oh no oh no. She chokes, a lump appearing in her throat before she can get the rest of words out, and that hot, urgent pressure growing just behind her eyes, threatening to unravel her completely. Yachi bites her lip, blinking hard to clear away the tears, and unconsciously crushes the hem of her shirt in her sweaty hands. “You’re the best at volleyball, to me, and b-because volleyball is the best th-thing, to you... And I... d-don’t want to burden you with... with all my unnecessary f-feelings.” 

My unnecessary feelings. 

The phrase rightfully loops over and over in her own head; a foreboding bell rung in a ruined tower. Hot, violent shame wracks her immediately; how terrible that she could think such a thing of her own feelings towards Hinata. No matter how irresponsible, no much how much it hurt, no matter how impossible, it would do her no good to be so cruel to her own heart.

The rain is still pounding away on the roof. The sound is kind of nice by now; the thunder remained at a comfortable distance, and she was no longer as drenched as she had been when they first stumbled in. Yachi recognizes, too, the calculating expression worn on Hinata that means he’s mulling over what she’d just said.

...Maybe she can make it out of this yet. Maybe he’ll remain oblivious to her plight, and all of this can still be forgotten. Maybe the rain will stop, and Hinata will consider things solved, and they’ll head back together with a newfound lease on their friendship.

Yachi’s fingers press hard into the damp grain of the wooden bench. The thunderclouds roil again.

She should have known better. Hinata is sharper than anyone gives him credit for.

His attention hones in on her without warning.

“So you think I don’t have room for volleyball and Yachi.”

His head is cocked again, this time the other way. He’d look like a puppy if it wasn’t for the deceptively impassive look in his eyes.

He had processed that very efficiently, Yachi observed amidst the silent meltdown she was enduring inside of her. Her heart was pounding blood through her head. She fidgets as she stalls, feebly, “I don’t... understand—”

“I have room for both. Volleyball and all your feelings. Why wouldn’t I?”

Hinata is the one to move closer. He’s simple — his volleyball instincts are kicking in. She can tell he’s unconsciously making himself taller, broader, more imposing, all to push pressure back onto her.

A cold, nimble hand wraps around hers and doesn’t budge.

“Both?” She echoes in a daze.

“Both.” Hinata repeats. There’s something soothing about his voice when he says it. He’s being very serious about all this, and Hinata is rarely this serious — yet oddly enough, instead of asphyxiating her, Yachi just feels small and safe. It’s Hinata, after all. 

“So,” he says, “if you run away, there’ll be something empty inside of me, and that’s when I’ll break in two. But...”

Something in his demeanor shifts there. There’s a throatiness to his tone. Quiet.

“...If you tell me I’ve done something wrong, and that you can’t forgive me for it, I’ll figure something out.”

Oh.

Yachi crumples in defeat. She can’t endure anymore. Yachi collapses into his chest, her small fists crushed against his drenched cotton shirt as she lets a few measly tears squeeze through without a sound. The relief is heavenly anyway; it spills through her, bleeds into every fiber of her body like firecrackers so loud they drown out her own sorrows.

“Hinata,” she chokes out, muffled and thin, “I’m sorry! I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry! I miss you every day, even together d-during practice, and I’m sorry, I didn’t mean, but, b-but I like you so much, and i-it snuck up on me! And I’m sorry b-because I’m sc-scared because I know volleyball is the most important thing to you and I can’t beat volleyball and I don’t want to run away but I don’t want to ruin everything and I don’t know what to do!”

His reaction time, though it shouldn’t be, is astonishing.

“Yachiiii,” Hinata laughs gently, scratching the back of his head. The response is so unexpected it snaps her out of her tears. “I’ve got plenty of room for you. Quit worryin’.”

Yachi, in shock, gapes at him.

She drew back from his chest. It hadn’t exactly sunk in that she was almost in his lap, and that he was still staring at her very intently despite his easy smile. For a moment Yachi short-circuits, so very close to his face like this — and from here his eyes are darker than honey, and she can see which side of his mouth curls up more, and where his coppery hair parts around his ears. Her heart hammers over the sound of the downpour as she nauseously tamps down the embarrassing, sudden desire to kiss him. She wants to kiss him so much it’s making her stomach hurt. It wasn’t fair. It didn’t make sense. Yachi hiccups, fighting down a new rush of fresh tears as she realizes technically, she had just confessed — but did he? Had he?

Yachi doesn’t get the chance to find out; Hinata is busy glancing around the perimeter of their little hideout, lingering on the ceiling with a thoughtful frown.

“Hi... Hinata?” Yachi ventures, uncertainly.

“How long do you think it’ll rain for?” He asks. Strangely, his breakneck attention span and refreshing, blinding honesty are things she likes, things she’s familiar with, and the question makes her perk up a little. There’s something relieving about his straightforwardness.

Swallowing, Yachi bats away the lingering wetness on her eyelashes, and steadies herself. “Umm, considering all the clouds and stuff... I’d guess maybe, um, at least twenty minutes, or more?”

She always knew Hinata would be the reason she’d end up with whiplash: his expression instantly shifts to pleased as opposed to concerned, and she can’t keep up with it, let alone grasp why.

“How come—?”

“Is it okay if I hold your hand the whole time?”

Maybe she’s running a fever. Maybe she’s sick. Maybe the wet clothes had already gotten to her.

Should she just play along with all of this? She’s not exactly thinking straight, but it could be easier to just give Hinata what she wants. Like playing pretend.

Meekly, Yachi finds herself nodding, offering her hand to him. Hinata glows, grabbing hers easily and engulfing it with ridiculous heat.

There’s an entire mess of disbelief and joy and nerves and panic and relief fighting in her head so she can’t think. Surreal — this is all surreal. All of accumulates into silently freaking out, not being able to look him in the eye, and staring down at their joined hands like her life depends on it.

Surreal. She had taught him that word for English.

Carefully, she twists her wrist until it’s behind his, and lines their fingers up. She slides in between his snugly until they’re laced together.

Yachi gulps, and ignores her shaking, sweaty palms. “L-Like this?” 

It’s a weak attempt at flirting.

Hinata, however, has a look on his face like nothing she’s ever seen before. He’s stiff. Frazzled.

The blood drains out of her face. I overdid it. I messed up. I’m—

“You’re really nice, Yachi,” he says after a terse few moments, glancing away.

Yachi has no idea how to take that. She has no idea what he means. There’s a steadily growing boulder in her gut and her heart is in her throat — maybe he hadn’t understood what she said. Maybe he thought she meant she liked him as a friend, so when he said it...

“Thank... you?” She falters, at a loss for words as his thumb unexpectedly rubs a burning, delicious trail against the back of her hand. Stammering, she forces herself to squeak out, “Did I do... too much?”

To his credit, Hinata’s eyes widen as if she’s said something dreadful. 

“No! No, no, no, no, no, no. I want you to do whatever you want.”

Those words hit differently. She wondered if it was on purpose. Those words reached beneath her t-shirt, and under her track shorts, and into whichever panties she grabbed this morning. She couldn’t remember, because her brain was producing nothing but static and heat, heat that rushed through her nerves and veins until it coiled over and over in the pit of her belly where she couldn’t quite reach it.

Hinata squeezes her hand in his firmly, breaking her focus.

“Quit worrying, I said,” he repeats himself, though his tone is only teasing, affectionate. There’s something rough around the edges that she’s unused to hearing, but she likes it somehow and isn’t sure why.

Yachi nods frantically anyway. “Y-yes! Not worrying! Okay. I can do that.”

She can’t do that.

They just sit, at first, listening to the rain. The rhythm of it has a long, drawn-out tempo; it comes down in sheets that stretch on and on, pattering ceaselessly against the old roof and walls before easing into a brief lull and picking up again. It should be kind of nice in an atmospheric way, but not a single atom of Yachi’s body can relax.

Next to Hinata, she’s shivering and trying to repress it with fruitless determination. The combination of disbelief and adrenaline has left her nervous system a disaster, and still he clutches her hand in his without batting an eye. Both of his knees are bouncing up and down, alternating — too much pent-up energy, as usual — but he seems happy, and so neither of them say a peep.

What’s he thinking about?

Yachi doesn’t wonder about it like it’s a riddle or a test question — more so like where the universe might end, or how many flower petals she passes by in a single year. Those are questions like far-off dreams that she’ll never get the answer to, even if it’s fun to think about.

Not knowing isn’t exactly stellar, however. Unhelpfully, her teenage girl brain offers a flurry of reasonable doubts and concerns to fill in the blanks: Is he bored because I’m not talking? Does he wish the rain would stop so we can just go? He doesn’t think he’s obligated to hold my hand, right? Is my palm really sweaty? Oh no no no, please don’t notice, please don’t—!

“You... You don’t mind holding hands with me — r-right?”

Hinata’s worried stammer restarts Yachi's heart.

“N-n-n-n-no!” It comes out more forcefully than she intended, and surprises herself with the volume, cringing — before adding impulsively, softer, “You can do whatever you want with me! I-I’m okay with anything!”

This time when Hinata gets that funny look on his face, it doesn’t go away. The penetrating quality of his stare, trapped only beneath a thin veneer of self-control, threads straight into the seams of her already-throttled heart.

His knees stop bouncing. He offers a strained attempt at a smile. 

“Dunno if you should talk like that, Yachi.” Hinata mumbles.

Something dark and warm drips from his words. It takes her a moment to figure out what he means by it.

“Oh,” Yachi breathes out. “Oh. I-I’m sorry,” she adds, though she isn’t sure why. “But, um, i-it’s... fine. I trust Hinata.”

Yachi says all that — and she means it — but it’s only after she says it that his fingers tighten imperceptibly into hers, and she feels what Hinata is really thinking.

It’s past five by now, and the rain is going strong. Both she and Hinata are confined to a small, barely-lit shed from at least a mile away, and both of them are still damp and wearing wet clothes.

Hinata’s shirt is white. She had forgotten that in her mission to avoid him at all costs. It’s one of his plentiful undershirts, the same one she’s seen on the other members at one time or another. She’s seen the boys sweaty and shirtless more than once, in fact, but this situation is completely different in every single facet and angle and permutation, and the truth of the matter is that even though she tries not to look, even though she only peeks for a split second, she sees the ghost-white fabric meager on his smaller yet well-wrought anatomy and how it hides almost nothing. Her short-circuiting brain sears the image of every glistening muscle and bone and curve into her memory all over again. This definitely should not be allowed. Blushing, she averts her gaze down—

Oh. Hers is white too.

Conveniently, she’d forgotten about that. Her nice, cute, simple white t-shirt with its tiny chest pocket is soaked through — why wouldn’t it be? — and the charming star-pattern of her blue sports bra underneath it sears through the fabric. The swell of her chest, normally underwhelming in regular clothes, is for once accentuated by the pale cotton plastering to every inch of her skin and clinging. Yachi’s face burns, degree by degree, and her heart thumps and trips up in that very mortifying way that it only does when she’s in her room alone at night pretending that she’s not wondering about very inappropriate and adult things that she shouldn’t be.

“Oh,” she croaks, dumbly.

Hinata’s throat bobs. He just nods.

But despite the self-conscious misery — despite the embarrassment, and disbelief, and impropriety, and the million other extremely important things — Yachi finds herself thinking that she means everything she said before. If there’s anyone she could trust, it would be Hinata. If she had to be trapped in an old wooden shed with anybody, it would be Hinata. If she had to pick anyone in the whole world to see her bra — it would be the boy she would never admit to thinking of more than she should.

Better to just doodle him incessantly instead.

“Your...” Yachi’s head jerks up at the sound of Hinata’s throaty voice breaking her reverie. “Your, um, collar bone. Is pretty.”

He’s rubbing the back of his head with his free hand, staring at the ceiling as he tries valiantly to keep himself composed. The strength in his grip is dizzying and makes Yachi feel like he’s stapled her into the bench with him, never allowed to leave his side.

At her silence, he hesitantly slides his gaze back down, and her wide eyes give him pause. “Hey,” he whines, “don’t look at me like that.”

Yachi takes a deep, shaky breath. 

“D-d-do you...” She swallows, thickly. “D-do you want to touch it?”

Plop. The corner of the roof is still leaking. Hinata stares at Yachi. He stares at Yachi like he very, very much wants something.

Like he very, very, very badly wants to say yes.

When Hinata’s face relaxes, his round eyes go heavy-lidded, though they gleam strangely bright in the dark. Slowly, as if he’s convincing himself, he begins to nod.

“Mm.”

Yachi can’t hear a thing, not even her own breathing — but maybe it’s because she’s holding her breath. Little pieces of air between them grow charged and metallic like electricity is brewing, but if Hinata notices he pays it no mind; instead, he shifts his body to fully face hers, engrossed with the slender outline of her clavicle against her shirt.

Hinata reaches out — and his fingertips brush against cool, damp fabric.

Yachi stifles something — a small, inconsequential sound from her throat — and he is instantly ruined.

Hinata likes that small sound. As with most things he likes, Hinata latches onto it with feverish, hungry intent, urgent to milk it for all its worth.

Hinata would like to hear that sound again, though he isn’t sure how to.

His deft fingers press a little harder, and Yachi goes stiff — but not in a bad way. Hinata, too, is tense, and focused; he’s channeling that scary, captivating look he gets in the middle of a brutal match. 

Hinata continues painstakingly. He drags his touch along the bridge, taking his time to reach the end where the bone connects into her right shoulder. He traces back in the other direction, too, without asking permission, all the way to the rounded tip that leads to the left end.

It takes a moment before he snaps out of his trance and realizes Yachi is struggling, and when he blinks up to check on her, he is rended.

His fingertips are still perched on her clavicle when he takes in the sight of her parted lips, partially-bitten and shiny somehow, maybe from her tongue. She’s not smiling, exactly, but she doesn’t look unhappy, or mad, or... uncomfortable? Uncomfortable isn’t the right word, because she does look... strained, sorta. But it’s the hot, hazy look in her eyes, the kind he’s never seen before in his life, that makes him register how her skin burns under his touch, radiating straight through the threads of her shirt.

Dumbstruck, Hinata does the only thing that vaguely comes to mind. His thumb intimately slides in and over the dip in her sternum, before his fingers come to rest on the crown of the opposite side.

Like something out of his most unspoken dreams, Yachi muffles a strangled sigh by clamping her hand over her traitorous mouth.

Hinata inhales sharply. His hand freezes in place, and he just... watches her, waiting for more. He won’t do anything else. Everything she does is mesmerizing enough. 

He couldn’t have asked for more. Terribly, gloriously, Yachi squirms.

Hinata’s fingertips are like a brand on her skin, scalding and insistent and making her forget her manners, or how to think a single coherent thought at all. She can’t remember how to form syllables properly, let alone act right, and it’s made only worse by the crude, obscene impulses that flit through her mind. Was Hinata doing all this on purpose? Surely he couldn’t be — but she also knows, firsthand, that Hinata’s instinct is not to be trifled with. 

And he’s just... staring at her. Beyond flustered, Yachi gives up on hiding the blush that’s probably crept all the way down past her neck.

“Hi-Hinata,” Yachi stutters, lost as to what else she could possibly do. Hinata’s eyes light up, cheek quirking up in the corner.

“Ya-chi.” He says back, and it’s so tender, so intimate, that it sinks into her veins and burns through them, all the way to her aching center and with the blistering force of his best spike. His hand hasn’t moved a millimeter, and all she can think about is just how badly she wants him and yet doesn’t even understand how. She wants to touch him — but be touched by him? And then something else? She wants to crawl into his arms again. Feel him squeeze her tight. But — still more, somehow, she somehow wants more and the more she thinks about it, the more she can’t contain it, and the feeling bubbles up in her chest too fast until it’s stuffed with cotton and her eyes are on the brink of watering again—

“Hey, Yachi,” Hinata says breathlessly, head cocked and stare locked onto her. “I think your mouth is pretty too.”

Yachi stares back at Hinata. She feels herself nod. Lots.

The ruthless smile that unfurls across his face is unfair. He leans in slowly. He doesn’t even close his eyes.

The first kiss is soft and tentative, like his very own gentle experiment — a single delicate press, then a smooth brush as he pulls away. His lips aren’t chapped at all, just warm and quietly eager to find hers again. 

The second kiss is shortly thereafter, after he’s done glancing her over for any dissent; finding none, he smiles and cranes in again. This kiss is firmer. Longer.

Yachi’s whole body is shaking so badly she’s sure it can’t be good for her.

On the third, he starts to find his footing. On the fourth, she loses count completely.

Hinata seems to have figured something out; his mouth is slanted across hers and his left hand has finally given up, only for him to divert his palm to cup the space where her collarbone meets the juncture of her neck, her pulse. His thumb drags across her exposed throat, too, and Yachi makes a muffled sound against his mouth without realizing it.

There’s a distinct hiccup — she physically feels him go ramrod-straight, hands and all freezing in place for one moment — before the dam called Hinata Shouyou breaks in earnest.

“Yachiiii,” Hinata whines back against her own lips as if it’s a complaint, but everything else he does says otherwise — his mouth crushes against hers feverishly, kissing her over and over again like he’s trying to imprint it onto her. With surprising speed, he untangles their sweaty, cramped fingers to instead grip her hip steadily, and let his other hand creep further up past her jaw. There, his fingers can reach the nape of her neck and play with her hair, and all of it drags her closer and closer to him; he has an effortless strength in his arms, not even breaking the kiss as he pulls her across the bench, removing the gap between them.

The frantic, hungry pace of her heart doubles at the contact with another low, pulsing rush to her belly — the deep desire of craving him to the touch felt better, more sated — b-but more would be good, too, she frets, embarrassed. Her overwrought nerves make it hard to coordinate any part of her, but she manages to lightly place her hands on his shoulders as she tries her best to kiss him back. Yachi’s never kissed anyone before this; she has no frame of reference for how it’s supposed to be done, and how it’s supposed to feel. But she’s thinks she never, ever wants to kiss anyone but Hinata ever again, even if they’re doing this all wrong.

Maybe she is doing something right, though, because Hinata’s breathing hard, and she can feel how with every passing second he holds her tighter and tighter. She’s relying on instinct when she tilts her head, too, giving their noses less room to bump into one another, even though she kind of likes that, and then his thumb unknowingly digs into the soft place under her hip that she didn’t know was sensitive at all until that moment.

“HII-ii-nahh— mmmfff—!”

The cry is clearly not a bad one. In fact, it is the opposite, and just as Yachi’s foggy senses register her mortifying reaction, preparing her to crawl under a rock and die, Hinata’s hand flies to cradle her face again and drag her back to his mouth forcefully. There’s so many vibrations, Yachi realizes hazily, and they’re all over her mouth and it’s from him — it’s a long, shameless, groan of contentment from deep in Hinata’s chest.

Suddenly, sharply, she understands his response.

Yachi knows that all she has to do is just has to keep doing this until she figures out what part of it will grant her relief before she can talk herself out of it. Maybe Hinata senses her shift, because when her hands clamber up his shoulders to grab onto him and hoist herself messily onto his lap, he only hums through his teeth and helps her along.

Gingerly as she can, she rests on his thighs, legs half-perched and folding around his waist. Hinata gathers her hips in both hands and hauls her flush against him with a tight, raspy grunt.

Vaguely, Yachi registers that — under her, right at the crux of her thighs that she’s been so stringently trying to ignore — there’s something thick and solid where the center of his lap is, and Yachi thinks she knows what that is, and why that is, and if her face and skin get any hotter she’s surely going to explode.

“S-sorry,” Hinata gasps as he realizes it, too. Yachi shouldn’t keep pushing him like this — she shouldn’t want more from him.

Cheeks burning, Yachi settles in, planting herself right where they meet, and when she practically whites-out from an unanticipated brush of contact followed by a current of pleasure so fast and so hard it’s almost fatal, Hinata’s shame simply evaporates. 

Fingers tangle into her damp hair, sweet and hungry, yanking Yachi down for another, rougher kiss. She still isn’t sure what just happened to her, but she’s distracted — this time Hinata takes and takes, no longer concerned with figuring out what he was doing or how to do it right. He’s already found a rhythm. Yachi clings to the back of his shirt in a daze, still trying to keep up with him, until his lips move and he abruptly mumbles “taste” against her swollen mouth.

She tries to ask what he means. Instead, their lips part in perfect sync, and she finds that she can’t close her jaw or catch her breath because Hinata’s tongue is inside her mouth, touching hers.

Her moans are downright mortifying. She could have never anticipated in a thousand years how she might respond to him like this. Insatiable, Hinata explores her mouth in no hurry, and makes every brush of his tongue against hers count until leaves her reeling. He tilts his head, the fingers in her hair turning hers the way he wants, and just when she thinks there is nothing else he could possibly do to ruin her, he deepens the kiss until their teeth meet and he’s almost tasting her throat. 

Yachi is only faintly aware of her own motions; unconsciously, she writhes and rocks, trying to chase the ghost of that sensation she’d stumbled upon when she first sat on him. There’s drool all across her lips, and some of it is Hinata’s — and she doesn’t care, because right now she likes it so much no matter how gross it should be but isn’t. He’s hugged her covered in sticky sweat, she’s given him tissues for his nosebleeds. Every part of Hinata is just fine.

When she finally gestures with her own tongue, tentatively attempting a shy lick against his, she thinks she hears him groan Yaaachiii into her mouth.

More.

Shakily, Yachi cants her hips in just as the hand on her face detaches; the arm instead loops around her neck, hooking her in the crook of his elbow and allowing him to draw her obscenely close to him. The angle shifts, too — and Yachi gasps as his teeth chase down her bottom lip. 

The white-hot pleasure repeats, but just for a second. She feels it from where she rubbed against his — his... lap, and it was like nothing she could ever remember feeling. The heady rush it elicited was bright and intoxicating, and made Yachi acutely aware of how worryingly, comfortably slick she felt between her own legs.

She wishes he could touch her more. Her breasts feel swollen and suffocated in her bra, and she wonders if Hinata’s ever stared at her skirt while she walked away, maybe wondered what was under it. She can only imagine what it would be like if the hand on his hip snaked around to her back, reaching under one cheek to grope— Yachi automatically keens, flinching as she shivers from the force of her arousal at her sordid fantasies.

Hinata doesn’t seem to mind at all; every sound she makes is greedily swallowed up by his mouth. And his hips have twitched, maybe not of their own accord, finally unable to resist the unbearable tempo of her subtle rocking against him.

Almost. The endless chant for more shifts, startling Yachi even in the blissful fog of her arousal. Some base, instinctual part of her brain whispers terrible things — how good it would feel for him to touch there instead. He could make more turn into almost, and almost turn into perfect if she let him. Perfect would mean the clawing, aching clench in her belly would finally snap, grant her relief from the sticky, cloying weight that dragged tingles through her skin.

She wonders if she could ever make Hinata feel that way.

Her fingers reach around to cling to his back, give her any extra leverage, and as her nails lightly scratch, his teeth promptly nip. The mute she attempted to put on her vocal cords was long gone; everything he did to her elicited some gasp, some whine, some new, fascinating, humiliating noise that she had only ever made for him.

Urgently, she grinds herself down, moaning into his insistent kisses as the overwhelming pleasure rockets through her again, mounting slowly. She can only handle a tiny bit at a time, bit by bit — but the sticky heat between her legs is both miserably distracting and so unfairly good, making all the friction ease into something powerful and delicious. It’s so good she forgets to be embarrassed. Desperately, she wraps her arms around his neck, pleading senseless noises into his mouth as she rubs against him.

Close, Yachi thinks, the only coherent thing in her brain as her heart ricochets in her chest and her whole body feels warmer, tighter, too sensitive, Close. Close close close.

“Fffff-fffuck!”

The power behind the expletive was so strong Yachi didn’t even know where it came from. The room is suddenly spinning, though it’s not really bad, and then she— and oh, oh— she— she was so close, she was right there, if she could just—

“H-hey, Y-Yachi. Hey. Fuck. M’sorry.”

There’s two hands cupped firmly around her face now, and the colors in the room stop swirling. Beneath her, Hinata is gasping for air, his chest heaving like he’s just played a full tournament. She’s not quite sitting anymore, either; his thighs under her have spread just wide enough under her knees to make them remain taut, hovering her mere inches above his lap.

Hinata’s gaze is completely molten in a way she’s never seen in her life — a small supernova of apology and adrenaline and heavy restraint.

But he’s shaking. Badly. And she is, too; but Yachi glances down, and she sees— the outline of— well, and, if so, then they— 

If he feels that way, and she feels that way, then there’s no reason to stop.

Throat dry, she swallows, tries to find her voice. “Hi-hinata, I—”

“Please.”

Hinata’s voice is so thick it sounds like it’s about to crack from the effort of speaking alone. “D-don’t start begging, because I... I can’t. We shouldn’t.” 

Nothing he says is computing. Yachi feels sweaty and sick but on the verge of something that will make her feel so much better, and wouldn’t it help him, too? She just doesn’t understand. “B-but,” she warbles, “I want—”

His mouth crushes against hers. It’s a noisy, rough kiss, and he ends it by desperately licking straight over the seam of her lips like he’s a dog, pressing his damp forehead into hers with a hurt sigh.

“I won’t do things like that with Yachi like that out here,” he mumbles reluctantly, and she can feel his breath on her nose, her cheeks. “Y-you deserve better. I don’t wanna mess up your clothes.”

The implications of those words trickle down Yachi’s spine slowly, like honey. Funny; things meant to deter her were only having an embarrassingly opposite effect. Her insides clench, oversensitive to the point of throbbing, and no, no it’s not fair— it’s not okay how he’s like this. He can’t care so much. How could any boy be so considerate?

“B-but we—” Yachi complains, weakly, and Hinata just gently leans her back, edging her off of his lap to rest her against the wall.

“Nope,” he says. Hinata looks spent. There’s a hollow edge to his gaze. When he sits back to regard her, it steels, and he reaches out to tenderly smear the saliva from her mouth and chin. 

He uses the same hand to wipe off his mouth; there’s a faint, dry smile in its place. Yachi’s heart misses a full beat. 

“Do your best to wait, okay Yacchan?”

Yacchan. If he wasn’t holding her to the bench with one heavy palm on her waist, she’d kiss him this time, so hard, so much, that he’d see stars.

The low ache in her belly had barely subsided, even if she’d been defeated. Yachi’s nose scrunches up unwillingly; her eyes prickle again with a newfound itch to cry, burdened by her unfulfillment.

“Hey, hey, no crying! Think of it this way.” One nimble hand brushes her bangs back and out of her face. “This can be your punishment. It’ll count towards all the weeks you avoided me.”

Her face goes pale, then bright, bright red. “Wh-what?! What do you mean punishment? What about you, then, what are you being punished for?”

Hinata’s face softens, but his smile doesn’t quite finish.

“Making Yachi do embarrassing things I like.”

—

By the time he convinces her to stop covering her face, the sky is almost blue again.

—

The moment they walked in and saw Mr. Ukai’s face, she knew they were done for. 

Everyone knew. There was no hiding it. Silently, they stood in the entryway with their intended delivery, the blood draining out of their faces until they were icicles. Yachi is too petrified to look at Hinata.

“Tch! Should’ve known I couldn’t trust you two... Look at how red your mouths are! Did you even bother to clean yourselves up?!”

The shock is so strong she can’t even muster up tears. She wants to say something — explain, somehow — but it’s hopeless, unless the house collapses and she is blessedly put into a coma, or grave. She can already imagine the looks on everyone else’s faces — the disappointment. The displeasure. The disgust. She doesn’t want to fathom the things she will feel in response to it.

Beside her, Hinata is floundering, mouth ajar as he struggles. Yachi can see the instinct kicking in from the way he starts to bristle, move his shoulders as if to place himself between her and Ukai — but from his trembling back and white knuckles, she thinks maybe he’s about to panic, too. 

Yachi takes a deep breath through her nose, and sets her jaw. She won’t cry. 

Ukai sighs with displeasure, though he’s rolling his eyes and not exuding murderous intent. “Well... Tell me it was only one watermelon at least, you rotten thieves.”

The beat of silence that follows is long enough to be comical. An ancient electric fan in the corner of the room hums away, muddled with the distant shouting of voices beyond the walls as the team practices outside and the blare of cicadas.

Yachi, blank-faced, finished short-circuiting and restarts as her practiced muscle memory kicks in; she’s been getting away with this stuff for weeks.

“Y-y-yes sir! It was only the one!” she squeaks in response, voice not coming out nearly as confidently as she’d intended — but maybe that helps the lie look good. “And we’re very very sorry! We... we had walked a long way in the sun, and we were very hot, and then stuck in the rain a long time, and...”

“And we got hungry,” Hinata finished.

The double-meaning doesn’t escape her. She’s almost positive Hinata had even said it a bit... off.

Yachi is tomato red to her ears when she chances a peek at him from the corner of her eye, only to catch him staring back at her and desperately attempting to keep a straight face.

Yachi moves on reflex alone. 

One hand grabs the back of his head and slams it down in a sharp bow alongside her.

“We’re very sorry, Mr. Ukai!”

Milliseconds tick by as both their eyes tremble on the flooring. It’s the longest wait of her life.

“Oh, shut up.” Ukai’s already wandering past them the way they came in, a hand waving in the air like they were annoying little flies. “Go put the melons in the kitchen and wash up. You look like heathens.”

—

Suga is thankful he spots Mr. Ukai on his way to the mailbox.

The sun was only just starting to crawl down the horizon; back inside, dinner was about to get started since the watermelons had evidently arrived, but only after the last game finished and everyone started getting washed up. 

He jogs, cutting across the lawn to reach him faster. “Ukai!”

Ukai didn’t even flinch at the hollering, like he didn’t hear a damn thing. Grunting, he picked through his envelopes with disinterest, even when dirt kicked up from Suga scraping to a halt in front of him.

“Ukai,” he greeted, panting lightly, “I wanted to thank you again, for swapping Asahi and I out for Hinata and Yachi. You did such a huge favor for us, and I can’t thank you enough.”

Kids, Ukai wants to say. Wasting their time on foolish, trivial delights. The young setter before him practically glows with an undistilled enthusiasm, and it very nearly pulls at his heartstrings. 

Then Suga bows and Ukai wants to slap him upside the head. What is it with Karasuno and all this stuffy, humble crap? 

He settles on thwacking him with his mail.

“Get up, brat. I don’t wanna hear it.” 

Ukai trudges up the path back to the house, ignoring the boy’s sheepish laughter ringing behind him.

—

Nobody notices anything. If they do, they don’t show it, and they certainly don’t say a thing. 

There may or may not be a silent, collective sigh of relief when Hinata says something ridiculous at the dinner table later that night, and Yachi’s laugh mingles with everyone else’s for the first time in weeks.