Chapter Text
“Hey-ya, Kageyama-kun!”
“Hello… Atsumu-san?”
Tobio, naked and spent, was sitting at the tall counter. He was scowling, biting his chapped lips and absently fiddling with a stray bottle cap. The kitchen was warm, the light not too bright and a soft bar stool was cushioning his tired butt just right. There was a problem, though: he was ravenous, and the damn takeout was taking forever to reheat on the stove. And then another one — this damn call.
Shoyo, who stood across his partner, stirring the food busily, glanced at Kageyama and shook his head.
“That’s not Tsumu,” he mouthed still mainly focused on a ‘nobody-uses-a-microwave-for-this-god-food-Tobio’ paella.
Bustling noise from the phone on speaker was loud, the number was Atsumu’s, and the voice… inconclusive. Before Tobio managed to ask, the person on the other end scoffed, unimpressed:
“Almost. Wanna tell me why ma’ drunk brother talks ‘bou’ fuckin’ ya?”
A wooden spoon Shoyo’d had in his hand clattered onto the floor, scattering oily grains of rice around.
“THE HELL?!”
Tobio thought he heard a knuckle crack as Hinata’s hands clenched into fists.
“Oh, yar own boyfriend’s there, huh? So, so sorry, man. Now answer the damn question!”
Tobio was puzzled. ‘Brother’ meant Osamu, duh; ‘fucking’ meant fucking, apparently. But why on earth…
Oh. Shit.
Tobio inhaled sharply and looked across the counter at Shoyo, a flush of embarrassment rising over his pale skin from the neck up.
“Was it me specifically?” Surprisingly, Tobio’s voice gave nothing away. Emotional turmoil well and truly contained — a neat little blessing.
“Why, it was, thank ye fer askin’, buddy.”
Wow. Okay. You could collect enough poison from that phrase alone to murder the entire V.League with it. Tobio hated being the only one on the receiving end here.
“Hey, Samu-san. Can you, like… give us ten?” Hinata said with a funny voice, amused, but tense. He unclenched his fists with an effort, switched off the stove, stepped around the counter, and positioned himself behind Tobio. A firm palm landed on Tobio’s pale, broad, bitten nape, a thumb rubbing slow, soothing circles.
They stopped sucking each other off not even twenty minutes ago, Tobio thought. How was this happening?
“No can do, Sho-kun. Sakusa’s ETA’s like fifteen minutes, and I need ta’ know whether I kill ma’ brother ma’self or the’s an explanation there somewhere I can offer ta his partner. So make yer fuckboy talk. Fast.”
“We’ll call you back in two.” Hinata tapped the ‘end call’ button without waiting for a response, then gave Tobio’s traps a firm squeeze. “Talk, my fuckboy. What’s the short version?”
“I don’t know what he’s on about,” Kageyama deadpanned.
“Tobio!” Reproachful.
Tobio pursed his lips. Yeah, yeah. Short version.
This was not how he’d wanted to handle this. He wasn’t even sure himself what exactly this was, but Atsumu, the drunk bastard, had left him with no fucking out.
“So, you remember the skirt?” The phone started buzzing again and was immediately silenced by Hinata, then set face down. “Atsumu-san helped.”
“U-huh?”
Tobio stood up, and Shoyo’s hand travelled to the small of his back, sliding heavily down. Shoyo wasn’t letting go. Tobio felt every callus, each trail left by rough skin, burning, grounding him. Giving him a chance. He shuddered and sat back down, clutching his left thumb, pulling at it, twisting, and letting go. Shit.
“Tobio, love, we’ve got like forty seconds left. What happened there? Talk to me. I trust you, and we’ll handle this. Just… explain.” Shoyo’s voice was mild and coaxing, in stark contrast to the wave of fury that had engulfed the kitchen moments before. “Would you like me to stop touching you?”
“No. To the touching — no, keep… keep doing that.” Tobio leaned on the counter. His body was cold now, covered in a disgusting sheen of anxiety, his elbows sticking to the hard surface. But Hinata’s hand stayed firmly on him.
“About Atsumu?” Shoyo prompted.
Tobio pushed the heels of his hands into his eyes and started speaking in short, clipped sentences. Facts.
“I was awkward. Like I am.” Inhale. “I asked him for help. We met. He asked if we talked about him in bed, you and me, because… skirt. I think he was shy about the pictures? He tried deflecting, I told no, but I also…” Hard exhale. Pause. Inhale. “I wanted to get back at him.”
Fuck, Tobio thought. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
“It was petty, and I didn’t think it through. I told him that he was not… doing it for me. But I could see… us… I could see us having sex, and it could be enjoyable. In theory.”
Hinata’s hand, still kneading Tobio’s muscles, spasmed. Tobio tore his hands from his face, spots of light smearing the vision. He blinked rapidly, mortification level climbing up with an alarming speed. Oh, he’d fucked this up. Oh god.
“Not me and him! No-no-no, Sho, no! Like…”
“Like a… threesome? With my as good as married teammate?!” Shoyo stilled for a second, then slowly leaned away. His face was blurred by Tobio’s still-spotty vision, but there was definitely hurt there: mouth thin, ginger brows pinched like he was trying to understand and just couldn’t quite believe it.
“No. No! Like having two separate… things… in close proximity. Like… “double sex”?..” He was explaining it wrong, and — worse — using the stupid term stupid Atsumu came up with. Shit!
Tobio wanted a do-over on those cursed “facts”, so he pulled in some air, but then Hinata suddenly huffed like an amused cartoon horse, loud and rich. He laughed, disbelief and exasperation clear on his face.
“Double sex? Like your little “audience” dynamic? Ba-aby… wo-how, and you told it to the Miya Atsumu? Yikes!”
Tobio squirmed a little, deflating, ultimately glad he’d gotten his point across but extremely uncomfortable nonetheless. It had been surprisingly easy to run his mouth with Atsumu. Here, with Shoyo, it was getting far too real.
In contrast to Kageyama’s extreme tension, the revelation had left Shoyo boneless. He draped his buff body over the counter, pulled Tobio’s phone out from under himself, and tapped a missed-call notification.
“Yo.”
“It’s not about Atsumu fucking Tobio, at no point their dicks touch. It is a misunderstanding, but there’s obviously more to the story.”
“Is it embarrassin’?”
“Of course it’s embarrassing, what do you think. Please, tell Omi not to assume the worst, and we’ll talk… we’ll all talk tomorrow, all four of us. We’ll call them in the morning?” Hinata raised his eyebrows at Kageyama, who just shrugged. “Sorry you had to worry.”
There was silence on the other end. Then an exhale.
“Thank. F-fuck. Wow… Fucking setters! Shitheads, both of ‘em.” Osamu laughed sharply and clicked off.
Hinata shook his head, still disbelieving. Tobio sighed. His own body locked up when tension suddenly returned to the other man’s muscles. The ginger found his footing again and stood up.
“I’ll clean up the floor and plate the dinner. Then we’ll eat, and then talk about this, how does that sound?”
Tobio stayed silent. Naked, sweaty, embarrassed, he hated the prospect of discussing the parts of himself he pretended didn’t exist.
“Hey. Hey! Don’t be like this. I’m glad it’s not… what Samu thought it was.”
What you thought it was, echoed bitterly in Kageyama’s brain.
“But it’s still something we should discuss, yeah?”
If everything Shoyo had ever said about him and his relationship with control was true, the desire to lash out right now was natural. Didn’t mean it was a right thing to do, though. So Tobio remained silent.
How had a meaningless jab from yesterday landed him in this pile of shit today again?
Hinata sighed.
“It’s okay, baby. It’s fine. Tsumu can be too much, I’m honestly surprised you two talked at all… But you didn’t mean for it to happen this way, and I’m sure Tsumu didn’t mean to blab. He just can’t hold his liquor. In fact, this is exactly how we knew about the skirt situation in the first place.”
Wow. An unexpected — and shitty — angle which Tobio had completely missed. Yikes, indeed.
He stood up, still silent, and left the kitchen. He needed to shower again and find a bit of a breathing room somewhere without an audience.
In the bathroom, he stilled, lost for a second. Then flipped on the light switch and turned the small brightness wheel beside the mirror all the way down.
They’d just washed themselves here. Kageyama could almost see Shoyo, his perfect man, fucking his thighs, laughing, pulling Tobio’s wet moans out like nobody’s business…
Now Tobio was alone, carefully rearranging their toothbrushes, toothpaste and product tubes, shards of anger lodged in his throat. It seemed both catastrophic and trivial at once, like his mind was judging the situation from two different angles, and it was extremely hard to reconcile them.
“Sweetheart?” Ginger head peeked into the bathroom.
Tobio glowered. The new way the toiletries were arranged made him uneasy, and he immediately put everything back the way it had been.
“Do you want to shower again?”
Obviously.
“Stop it with the silent treatment. Is it shower or are you just hiding here?”
“I’ll be out in a sec.”
“So not an answer!”
Tobio turned away from the door and stepped into the basin. The curtain was transparent, so as far as hiding went — which was absolutely not what he was doing — the situation was less than ideal. Tobio turned on the water.
Hinata stepped fully into the bathroom, golden in the low light, and leaned against the doorframe. He was wearing Tobio’s old sweats and a tank top with a faded Zoro print. He folded his arms over his broad chest, clearly flexing.
“Can I watch?”
Tobio scrubbed his face with his palms and turned slightly, angling his body — and mostly soft dick — away. The effort earned him a snort from the doorway.
“You’re naked, Tobio. You’re a wet dream, all those fucking muscles on you... and your ass is on display. With my teeth marks on it. Can you really hide here?” Then after a beat: “Do you want to?”
Tobio kinda did. Or did he?
The next pause was so clearly charged with meaning, it made both of them uncomfortable. Tobio glanced through the water and the shower curtain at Hinata, whose muscles bunched even more as he rubbed his palms together. So, something else was coming. And sure enough, a moment later, it did — faster now, like floodgates got open:
“Okay! Never mind that! But! Boy oh boy, stumbling upon your kinks, baby! It makes me all kinds of fucked up inside in the best way possible, and you rarely talk, and you say you like whatever, but, like, not really, I can feel it, and, you know… I promised to discuss it later but I kinda can’t stop thinking about you spread open? I can’t stop thinking about showing you off, and fucking you, and… and this is the result.” Hinata pointed at his sweats with a clear semi, shy smile blooming on his lips. “Plus it’s you. Here. Naked.”
Tobio’s breath hitched.
“Jeez… You can watch, Hinata. About the rest… just fuck off for now.”
“Ri-ight, right… I’ll do that…”
Tobio, fighting a smile, started soaping himself up, choosing a much more fragrant body wash than he normally used.
He was enjoying Shoyo’s gaze and loving the way his partner’s eyes lingered. Yeah, he did want to regroup. But Hinata’s presence quenched the desire to wallow. Somehow his favourite ginger just knew. The fuck was that sorcery?
“Wanna dry me?” Tobio opened the curtain, his voice void of inflection.
Shoyo, still smiling, eagerly pulled out a fresh towel from a narrow shelf below the sink and wrapped his arms around Tobio’s broad frame.
“I love you, you big baby. I love everything about you.”
Tobio sighed, and Shoyo’s arms squeezed him even tighter.
“O-of…” Tobio knew he was not at his best mentally, but between the warm shower and Shoyo’s sincerity, there was zero bite left in him. “I love you too.”
After dinner, which came with a bunch of “fun facts” about paella and stories from Hinata’s life in Rio, Tobio felt marginally better. He didn’t kid himself: Hinata was not letting go of the juicy topic forever. But as promised, the discussion was shelved for now, and a lick of normalcy was nice.
They drank orange tea and watched the latest D2 game on the big screen in the living room. It was last week’s Frogs vs. Lions, which they had both somehow missed. Blocking was the Frogs’ superpower; offence was the Lions’. Hinata and Kageyama were both really loud about the long rallies, but their hearts were with the Frogs all the way. Which didn’t stop them from sending dozens of texts to the group chat with the loveliest freeze-frames of Tsukishima’s face.
The reply from the man himself was a single rolling-eyes emoji. Yamaguchi sent a bunch of pictures he’d taken at the same game, and Yachi sent a picture of a sticker she’d designed herself. It was an adorable cat-Tsukishima in his Frogs uniform. Hinata immediately called dibs on it, much to both Kageyama and Yamaguchi’s chagrin.
When the game was over, with the Frogs’ victory properly savoured, Hinata hopped off the couch to wash up for the night.
The reprieve was over.
Tobio was bone-tired then, his mental walls much lower than before. In this state, honesty might just be less excruciating. Or not.
“I’m done! Your turn!”
Tobio went. After washing his face, brushing his teeth, and putting on some face cream, he made a meticulous circuit of the flat, setting all the appliances to night mode, closing the curtains and switching on the dishwasher. He found a couple of drops of water on the counter and wiped them with the hem of his top, then picked up the warped bottle cap he’d been playing with earlier. This, he threw away.
“F’ fuck’s sake, Tobio.”
With a fortifying breath he went into the bedroom. Hinata, sweats still on, was sitting cross-legged in the middle of their bed. The light was soft, the curtains drawn, but the window was slightly ajar. Hinata loved fresh air.
“I was…”
“Cut the crap, baby, and come sit.” Tobio did, on the farther end of the bed. “Now why are you doing this?! Sit like a normal person! Yeah, face me, c’mon!”
Tobio sighed again and scrambled up, mirroring Hinata’s pose.
“Talk.” Hinata was almost buzzing with energy.
“Ugh-h. Okay. You called it earlier. It’s fucking embarrassing, and I don’t really want to go there.”
Kageyama brushed a hand through his bangs, a deliberate gesture that let the strands fall into his eyes and hide them. Hinata caught his long, callused fingers on their way down to Tobio’s lap and brushed a soft kiss against the tips.
“I know it is. I understand. But It’s me, Tobio, who else are you gonna share it with?” Then in an unexpected flash of some compressed emotion Hinata spat: “Fucking Miya?!”
It was so, so… Hinata. And true. True.
“Yeah… sorry ‘bout that.”
The curtain ballooned a bit, letting wind in, and then fell. Tobio shivered.
“No, Tobio, I don’t want you to feel bad. Just... Let’s start with the skirt?” As abruptly as before something changed in the mood, and Hinata’s whole body suddenly glowed with his signature smile. “Mind you, I might pop a boner, the mental image alone gives me a hard time…”
The ginger wiggled his brows, and Tobio scowled, cheeks reddening slightly.
“Alright. Fine. Mind you, I now understand how inappropriate it is, but at the time I had no idea… so. I didn’t just ask for help. I wanted Atsumu to lend me the skirt.”
Abject horror reflected in Hinata’s eyes.
“Did… he... is it…”
“God no, dumbass! Ew! I bought our own!” Pause. “Yeah, don’t do that!”
“Wha-… what?” Now Shoyo was practically wheezing, trying and failing to keep his serious face on.
“That, with your face! This much… bodily fluids… with the amount of time I know for sure you’re jerking off… it’s unnatural! My skirt is now probably ruined! I’m guessing theirs is… too… and I never would’ve wanted to touch it, had I known! Like, ever!”
Hinata tipped to the side, and a fit of giggles shook his whole frame.
“Oh my god, Kageyama… ha-a… What do you think happened after… Tsumu… after his ass was up in the air on those pics… god, baby…”
“Just shut up already!” Color was rising from Tobio’s neck up. He was hugging his sides now, eyes averted. “I know! Also, turns out the skirt was Sakusa’s, so… yeah, dumbass, stop it! Or I’ll stop talking.”
Now, with Shoyo’s perspective added, the whole situation was a hundred times more embarrassing. Good thing Hinata was slow at modelling things in his head and would never even think to ask about any alternatives. So Tobio would never have to share how he’d contemplated buying a female skirt off the rack…
“Okay-okay! Sorry, babe, go on. He agreed to help, and took you to a sex-shop, I presume?..”
“A high-end male fetish wear. That’s located behind a ramen shop for some reason.”
“Huh! In Tokyo?”
“Yeah. So, on the drive there I told him I can see us fuck — separately! — to which he reacted… enthusiastically? Sort of. Then he called our house a shoebox, and I offered to do it in a hotel… and then we went and bought the skirt.”
“… and you were a hundred percent sober for the whole duration of this conversation?..” Hinata was clearly amused. And something else, though Tobio couldn’t figure out what from his tone.
“Fuck you.”
“Were you sober, baby?”
“Hinata, dumbass! He was driving, and I was right after practice! Of course, we were!”
“Okay, okay, sorry for asking. It’s just… you never open up about things like this. And now you suddenly do.”
‘With someone else’ hung loud, unsaid. Hinata was back upright, seemingly relaxed, yet his eyes were stony.
“Is it a setter thing?”
Tobio had no idea how to answer that. It wasn’t something he kept secret on purpose, and Atsumu wasn’t even his friend. But the whole concept — the Talk — was somehow… shameful now. Odd that it wasn’t like this with others. He could see himself discussing it with almost anyone. But with Shoyo…
His heart rate picked up, and he swallowed audibly.
“Do you hate me now? Do you hate Miya?”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you? To be the only setter in my life…” Hinata’s flirty tone was off, flat. “No, Tobio. I love you. I’m trying to… understand. And I’m okay with Tsumu. He is how he is. And more often than not he’s Omi’s problem or Samu’s. But… not gonna lie, it kinda stings.”
Tobio cringed, feeling his heartbeat in the tremor of his fingers. He chose not to hide it from his partner. He needed to fix his other choices somehow, too, but nothing came. There seemed to be no clear way to explain the matter he didn’t fully understand himself.
“Thing is… I want to be a safe person for you, baby. Like… I want you to be able to talk to me about things. We connect, sure, but words are important. Especially in the bedroom. I kinda guessed you have the show off kink from our first time. I kinda know about you watching as well. But we never discussed it properly. Why? We talked about you never topping again, and it’s fine, unless…”
Yeah, Tobio was fully paralyzed by now. No breath. No blinking. His mouth had filled with saliva he was unable to swallow. He knew what was coming, Hinata’s train of thought taking the worst turn it possibly could.
“Is it… because of your ex? Are you afraid of me the way you were… of him?..” Ginger’s voice was getting huskier with every word. Until it broke.
The silence that followed was suffocating, the quiet rumble of car parking outside only amplifying it. The next gust of wind could very well take Tobio’s sanity and the most important relationship of his life with it, and he was mute again. What a fucking disaster.
“Sho,” he managed.
Round clock on the wall. Round coin on the nightstand from Lotte World, a present from Wakatoshi when he went to Korea last summer. Round phone charger. Round shadow from the night-light.
Round wet spot on Shoyo’s sweats.
A tear stain.
Shoyo’s tear.
In one swift motion, Tobio tackled his partner, dropping them both flat on the bed in a tangle of limbs. He kissed every single centimetre of Shoyo’s face, every tear that fell from his now-reddened eyes. Hinata was shaking in despair. Because of Kageyama.
“Shoyo, Shoyo, please… don’t. You’re nothing like him. You’re my life. Please, Sho, please…” He could do nothing more, only chant the same things, kiss away the tears, hug and stay close. The mood swings were typical for them: bickering went hand in hand with sincerity, shouts were interspersed with kisses, but tears… just because Tobio was too chickenshit to talk… that was a new low, even for him.
“Let me… let me find the words, Sho… let me try…”
Shoyo was half under him now, one knee hooked awkwardly over Tobio's thigh, returning the hug. It was as good a sign to start talking as any, but it didn’t make the words come any easier.
“Sano… you know he was controlling, he was unsafe. It did mess me up. It did. I was nineteen, and you were away, and nobody was here with me. I’m sorry I… kept it from you. From everyone. I don’t want to talk about him now. And I want you to know that this, our life, sex, my preferences… I trust you with all of it. And the way I feel about you is not the same as I did when I was with him.” Tobio kissed the ginger locks. Shoyo was hiding his face on Tobio’s chest now. Listening to Tobio’s frantic heart. “You are my safest place, Hinata. You’ve always been. And I’m terrified. Of loosing you. Of me… being too much… of a freak. For you.”
Too exposed. Far too fucking exposed. God, please, let it be worth it…
“Did he tell you that you were a freak, Yama?” Shoyo half-rose from Tobio’s chest, voice hoarse but steely.
“I don’t remember. It doesn’t matter.” Tobio closed his eyes not relaxing his hold on the other man. ”What matters is I like… letting people know I’m taken. Being yours. I like taken people, they feel… safe. And sex is hot. Sex between athletes is hot. Atsumu is both safe and hot, though not for me, as I’m… better than him? Huh…” Tobio opened his eyes, looked at the ceiling, then at Hinata, and raised his eyebrows. “Maybe it is a setter thing…”
Shoyo snorted and shoved at his chest, but Tobio didn’t let him go. They were looking into each other’s eyes, both suddenly still.
“I’m sorry, Sho. Sorry I stayed silent for so long, sorry I started sharing things with someone who wasn’t you. I do have those kinks, I don’t want to be with anyone but you, I… I do want to try it in a hotel room with Miya and Sakusa. If they are fine with it. And you. Is it… okay? Do you… how do you feel about it?”
Shoyo’s eyes were dry now — still red, but without tears. A small victory. The ginger shook his head, his locks catching the low light, and cupped Tobio’s cheek, running his thumb along a full lower lip.
“I’ll do anything for you, baby boy. I’m not big on actual sharing, but this… it sounds nice. So, sure, let’s try. I honestly doubt you’ll like it that much, though. Not the way you think you would, especially in the setup you’re describing. And it will be the same for Omi, he’s… particular. But we can talk about the specifics tomorrow. If Tsumu still got a partner by morning. Sounds good?”
Tobio nodded.
“I also wanna have a proper talk about this coach assistant you dated before me. I know you hate talking about him, and now is not the time. But someday. Soon. Can we do that?”
Tobio nodded again. It wasn’t that he hated talking about Sano. Not exactly. It was just another layer of shame, branding his insides. Shame and humiliation. And talking about the guy with Hinata, dragging the past out into the sunshine… But he’d do that. He could do that. For them. Soon, it seemed. Oh well.
“Can you kiss me now?” Tobio licked his lips, catching Hinata’s thumb with a wet tongue. “Or… would you maybe like to fuck my throat?”
With a punched out groan Hinata pushed his partner on his back and bit that filthy mouth, licking into it with force. His gentle hand turned cruel as it slid from Tobio’s cheek to his jaw, gripping it from the front.
“Giving me this alone, baby? What, your other hole is busy with something else?” All traces of hurt disappeared from Hinata’s eyes. There was a different fire there now. He pressed his thumb into Tobio’s left cheek and his middle finger into the right one, forcing Tobio’s mouth open as he breathed right into it, whispering hotly: “I’ll take you however I want. Every. Hole.”
Tobio moaned, pierced with pleasure and pain, wet tongue jutting out in offering. Hinata licked at it, sucked on it once and then pushed himself away, not acknowledging a thin breathy whine escaping his partner.
“Undress. And make it quick, I’m fucking tired.”