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Shouyou has always been aware that he’s selfish.
Not in the way, he hopes, that makes him self-serving and blind to others. He’s not selfish in the sense that he won’t or does not want to share. He’s not selfish in the sense that he’ll take what he desires from others just as deserving.
But he is greedy.
And he is especially greedy for things that he wants.
Shouyou won’t take the last piece of food or snag the best spot to sit or hoard objects like a dragon. But when it comes to volleyball that tunnel vision descends, that little devil on his shoulder sniggering as his eyes become laser focused on the ball. He wants them. He wants every toss, every chance ball to fall in his direction, every spiker to target him, every blocker to have all eyes on him and only him.
He likes to think this deep, intrinsic urge inside of him tempers as he grows older. He simply cannot hit every toss or be the target in every rally. Volleyball is a team game – a mantra drummed into him from the moment that he stepped onto the court. His feelings of inadequacy, a thirst to prove himself wars within him as he chases each and every ball with a voracity that most would call him foolish for.
But he must share, and he must be aware of others.
Kageyama tells him once that it’s not all bad – that being so hungry for the ball is partly what makes him so unique as a decoy. That other players will always see him as a threat, as a target, as a player that they must always watch, because his never-ending appetite to have the ball all to himself is terrifyingly real.
It’s a motion, a movement that he must practice. When to dive for it and when to let others take the lead. When to be angry that the ball didn’t come to him and when to be happy that it went elsewhere.
The world stage beckons as a tiny, impossibly far away dot in the distance, a goal whose road feels ever longer. He sprints towards it in ways that are reckless, crashing camps that he received no invite for, pushing his body to limits that he was never supposed to break. His team suffers for his tunnel vision, their practice hindered, and the most important game of their lives is lost because of his own self-sabotaging drive.
Patience, they tell him. It’ll come.
These are lessons that are painful to learn. Humiliating to have laid bare.
And so Shouyou has always known that he is partial to selfishness, that his love for volleyball burns into a self-serving force strong enough to propel him halfway across the globe just for a snatch of a chance at his dream.
He’s learned to temper it. Learned when to indulge and when to let go.
He doesn’t think of it as a flaw. More of a trait that can be an aid as well as a weapon. A part of him that can rocket him to the pinnacle of his sport through sheer will. And a part that can also cause devastation if he is not careful with his recklessness.
When it comes to his sport, as competitive as it is collaborative, especially with your physicality working against you, it is not a flaw.
When it comes to areas far more personal, far more private, and altogether far more fragile, Shouyou knows that it is not an ideal way to be.
He finds that he doesn’t really care.
Especially when it comes to Kageyama.
So what if he’s greedy. So what if he wants every single one of Kageyama’s tosses. Why wouldn’t he? They’re all perfect. So what if he wants to receive every one of Kageyama’s serves, be on the court with him always, hoard every single tiny smile and breathless huff of laughter like they’re treasures.
In the beginning, Shouyou doesn’t give it much thought beyond his inclination to want things. He wants Kageyama’s tosses and his attention and his company and it all feels very comparable to the way that he feels about volleyball so why would he ever question it?
But distance, as they say, makes the heart grow fonder, and once high school ends and adulthood creeps in, that little, selfish, wanting ache only grows.
It’d been him of course that had dug his elbow into Kageyama’s side during graduation, caught sharp blue eyes and jerked his head with a mischievous smile. It’d been him that had silently convinced Kageyama to sneak out and dash for the gym, grabbing a ball and tossing it the moment that Shouyou was sure that they were alone.
If Kageyama is to be a professional athlete from the very next day, and if Shouyou is to be nothing except in limbo, then he will take every piece of Kageyama that he can get in these short few hours. Every toss, every serve, every crooked smile and solemn oath.
Then their time ends and Shouyou can do nothing more except meet Kageyama’s smile with a grin and promise him see you later.
And then he’s gone.
At first, Shouyou writes off the ache as simply missing getting to have everything that he wanted, whenever he wanted it. Tosses? Always available. A soundboard for strategy? Kageyama usually started the discussion. A practice partner, a rival, a lunch buddy, a friend to study with – there. Constantly. And then it was gone.
Shouyou watches Kageyama’s games. He expects it to sting – to see Kageyama at the top of the very best pro league in Japan, feel that familiar wrench between ineptitude and a thirst to prove himself. But it doesn’t. It’s an oddly proud feeling, watching everything that Kageyama had quietly worked so hard for – harder than anyone Shouyou has ever known – come into fruition.
He watches from afar, keeps a quiet distance under the guise of training – they’re to meet on the court again and not a second sooner – and at some point, he feels something inside of him creak.
He’s not completely oblivious, despite what Tsukishima might – quite rightly, some days – say. He’s not so blinkered to the world, not so thick headed to be utterly unaware of his own heart.
For years he’d scoffed at the girls at school who tittered after Kageyama and batted their eyelashes at him, at the boys who offered him shy smiles and tentative offers of company and conversation. Kageyama was handsome and oddly popular despite his gruff voice and awkwardness – a tall, dark athlete that seemed to everyone with an untrained eye to be effortlessly good at the sport that he championed.
And perhaps it’s distance or perhaps it’s the safety of viewing him through a lens, but Shouyou has to admit, as he has always really known, that Kageyama is handsome. Devastatingly so. And that it is not simple, objective appreciation but genuine attraction. A pull that he cannot deny.
For a year it’s easy enough to swallow. So he’s attracted. So he finds himself looking at Kageyama and liking a little bit more about him than just his skill and passion and unique way of being supportive. It’s fine, Shouyou’s distant and can only see Kageyama through a screen, so what does it matter if he stares in private?
This time, he can take his fill without hurting anyone at all.
But then the distance stretches and shrinks, like a rubber band so worn it’s just waiting to snap. Shouyou finally boards his plane to Brazil and, a few months later, so does Kageyama. Only Shouyou is stuck on the beach and Kageyama is an Olympian, and having everything that Shouyou wants dangled so maddeningly, so tantalisingly close to his nose wrenches his horrible, greedy heart in two.
He does his best to ignore the Olympics as a whole, the only tournament that he can’t bear to watch, until one evening when he’s rushing through the streets, trying to cram in a last-minute delivery. A commentator’s voice pierces the air. It’s in Portuguese and there are unnumberable people crowded around, their voices loud and drowning, and yet the tiny little tv above the street-side bar is deafening.
Shouyou can’t understand all of the words. He doesn’t need to. He hears Kageyama’s name, and his fingers close in around his brakes on reflex, his bike screeching to a halt, tyres scrabbling across the ground.
It still doesn’t sting when he watches Kageyama score that service ace. This time, it aches. It’s painful and it hurts for all of the wrong reasons.
It’s a visceral, cutting reminder of the gap in their skill sets, of their places on the wider volleyball stage. It’s agonising, but Shouyou has long since learnt to deal with this particular type of ache. Learnt to turn it into determination, into drive, to view it as a goal and less of a punishment.
This time, it hurts because in this moment, his heart has simply given up and cracked in two, all of his feelings and emotions towards Kageyama Tobio spilling forth in an unholy mess. It’d been so easy to ignore them when Kageyama had been right there, a challenge to face and a setter to coerce. It’d been even easier when he could only see him from behind the safety of a screen.
But somehow it’s the knowledge that they’re in the same country, only hours apart, and that if he really, really wanted to, he could simply pick up the phone and dial and hear Kageyama’s voice in his ear for the first time in months. And it’s this that breaks the dam.
Because Shouyou has always sort of known, deep in his selfish, selfish heart, that he’s wanted more from Kageyama than rivalry and camaraderie. That he’s more than simply attracted to him.
He rearranges himself back on his bike and pushes off to pedal back into busy city streets, somebody’s dinner going cold in the bag on his back. He’s probably going the wrong way. He can’t find it in him to care.
It’s so very strange to find himself in love with something – someone – and have it be so completely and utterly unattainable.
He’s not a fool. He’s not a heartless creature. He knows Kageyama Tobio better than probably the entire world and so he knows better than anybody how futile it is to be in love with him.
But impossibilities have never stopped Shouyou, so he lets himself love. Lets himself have dreams and desires, lets his mind wander and body yearn, all throughout Brazil and beyond, well after the Olympics and his training finishes, the sun fading until it’s just a tanned reminder on his skin.
He crashes home like a meteorite, finally standing shoulder to shoulder with Kageyama on the same stage, finally fulfilling a promise that he made so very long ago.
And still, in his soul, it’s not quite everything that he could wish for.
Not that it matters.
It’s a strange feeling, to be sure of something that he wants, and for the first time knowing that he’s never going to do anything about it.
No matter his greed, no matter how badly he yearns, and no matter how deeply he wants to reach out and take, the same way he has always done when it comes to Kageyama, in this particular instance he won’t.
Because Kageyama has never shown any interest, none at all, for anything vaguely like romance or sex or even simple attraction. He’s never reacted when someone comments on another’s beauty, never been interested in the various confessions that he’s received over the years, completely blank to any mention of innuendo. It’s not that he doesn’t like people or rejects their company – Shouyou knows better than anyone how much Kageyama enjoys being with others, even if he is rather quiet about it. He simply just isn’t interested in those kinds of relationships.
And Shouyou is a selfish, wanting, driven creature, but even that can’t overcome his desire to keep Kageyama in his life. Because he knows – or maybe he fears – telling Kageyama the true depths of his feelings and having their relationship shatter in his hands. He wants everything from Kageyama, will take every last scrap that’s thrown his way, but he’ll never ever want to hurt him. To make him uncomfortable, to force him into a situation that he does not want to be in.
Perhaps that too is selfishness.
So he swallows it down and keeps it to himself and because he is a terrible, greedy thing he holds onto the feelings. Never lets them fade nor pass, a love that he clings to with all the ferocity that he can muster.
He can’t have Kageyama, but that doesn’t mean he has to stop being in love with him.
He dates other people. He falls into their beds and invites them into his own. He goes out for dinners and coffee breaks and for strolls in beautiful places. Why shouldn’t he? He likes people, and people like him. He seeks company and affection and all of the things that he wants in tiny, bitten off pieces, sating the urge without ever really committing.
He makes mistakes at first. Accidentally lets people get too close, waits too long to break it off, recklessly hurting their feelings without meaning to. It takes practice and time, another humiliating lesson, before he’s able to see when that attachment starts and when to gently break away. How to communicate in the beginning that he’s only here for the casual and not the commitment.
He could, he knows, find someone. Someone to move on with, someone to help him get past the ache in his chest and discover a new kind of love.
But Shouyou doesn’t want to. The only thing that sounds worse than losing Kageyama is losing his feelings for him.
He cannot commit to someone else, for he is in love with another and nothing, not for the entire world, is going to sway him from his position.
He’ll stubbornly and selfishly hold onto his feelings for as long as they burn, no matter how it might hurt.
And even though Kageyama himself will probably never see it, blind as he is to such matters of the heart, there are others that do.
Some of his teammates give him the odd knowing look, both when he’s facing off against Kageyama and when they’re on the same side. Natsu, when she’s feeling cheeky, complains loudly, though her grievances fall on deliberately deaf ears. And then there’s Tsukishima and Yamaguchi and Yachi, who all look at him with varying degrees of awful things like sadness and pity, and Shouyou has to hold his head high and avoid their gazes each and every time.
One evening over dinner, Yachi suggests – in her roundabout yet oddly direct way – that Shouyou say something. She inserts her suggestion while Shouyou’s mid-rant about Kageyama. It’s only when her words slip free that he halts, realising on an embarrassing time delay that he’d slipped into complaining about how cool Kageyama is.
“No,” he says, short and terse.
“Why not?” she dares to ask.
Shouyou’s hands tighten over the tablecloth, and Yachi must sense his steadily building blood pressure, because she slips back into familiar, fretful panic, and hastily switches the subject.
But only until their meal is finished, because when they’re stepping out into fresh air, she gives him one of those looks and says, with a bravery that Shouyou can’t quite remember her possessing before: “You know, I think you might be pleasantly surprised if you said something to him.”
“What does that mean?”
But Yachi just continues to hold his gaze, and Shouyou drops it irritably, stubbornly refusing to rise to the bait. Because he damn well knows, and so does Yachi, and neither of these facts is going to sway him.
Stubborn as a mule, he’s been told.
The last time was by Tsukishima, over a beer in a tucked away bar, Yamaguchi and Yachi lost in a different conversation while Shouyou sits on the edge, somehow finding himself getting lectured again.
“Why do I have to say something?” Shouyou snaps at last, fed up of the condescending manner and the weary way that his friends regard him, like they’ve been waiting for years and are running out of patience. “If you’re all so convinced, why do I have to be the one who says something? It’s always me.”
It’s petty and childish and he can see it all on Tsukishima’s face, but he just doesn’t care. He knows Kageyama better than all of them, how pointless and unnecessarily damaging such a conversation would be, so what’s the point? Why flay himself, cause harm where he’s been so careful not to, just because it’s always him that speaks?
He’s content. He’s fine. He doesn’t need to speak on it; he doesn’t need Kageyama to know.
“You know, maybe you have a point,” is all Tsukishima says.
And Shouyou can’t even get him to elaborate, because then Tsukishima turns to answer Yamaguchi’s question and the topic is dropped.
These small, petty squabbles repeat themselves several times – well-meaning words from well-meaning friends, and on every single occasion Shouyou digs his heels in.
He’s getting so fed up that he’s considering sending everyone that he knows a blanket message telling them all to stop it – even those who haven’t said anything yet, just in case. The multitude of people and the frequency of suggestions should hint more than he’s willing to see, but all Shouyou feels is that he’s being nagged. A relentless badgering to do something that he simply does not want to do.
Irony hits one balmy summer’s evening, in the quiet of the gym specially reserved for the national volleyball team. He’s with Kageyama, of course, alternating between cooling down after a last-minute workout and tiny, petty competitions just to keep the energy up.
He’s irritable, though, grouchy and twitchy. A constant reminder of what people keep pushing him to open up about niggling incessantly at the back of his brain. It doesn’t help that Kageyama is right there. It especially doesn’t help that Kageyama is infuriatingly observant, and eventually barks at Shouyou to spill whatever it is that’s riling him up.
And, unfortunately, Kageyama has always been a good sounding board.
Shouyou still isn’t perfectly truthful. He still guards and hides the core of his frustrations, lest Kageyama catch a glimpse of what he’s been hoarding. But he allows himself to rant, lets himself speak freely about being pushed and goaded and coerced into spilling feelings that he doesn’t want to share. He mentions no names and speaks no lies, staying as vague as he can while opening up about how annoying it is to be pushed into saying something that he wants to keep to himself.
“Can I just be honest with you?”
Kageyama’s voice is loud and sharp, cutting through Shouyou’s mutterings, and Shouyou looks up at him with mild annoyance at first, unhappy with having been interrupted.
But then he sees the look on Kageyama’s face – that frown that isn’t really a frown, but more like Kageyama’s crumpling inwards in a vain attempt to hold his own feelings back. And then the words hit Shouyou on a time delay: such a short, brusque question that sobers him instantly. His frustrations melt in a moment, his shoulders slumping as a little sigh puffs from his nose.
“Of course, you’re always honest with me,” he says simply.
Unless it’s when his receives are decent, but right now feels inappropriate to crack a joke.
Kageyama looks down at him for a long moment, his face still scrunched and pouting, like he’s bracing for what he has to say. And in that second, Shouyou hates him – just a little bit – because it’s deeply unfair how handsome he still is even when he looks constipated.
Then the creases on Kageyama’s face smooth out and he looks weirdly, carefully blank as he says, crystal clear: “I think I’m in love with you.”
Shouyou would love to claim that the words soak in slowly. That he gapes up at Kageyama in attractive, open wonder. That his heart flutters and his blood sings and all of those lovely things that happen when you hear that somebody is in love with you.
But he doesn’t.
His breath leaves him in a rattling wheeze, his brain a whistle scratch of panic as his heart skips beating entirely, leaving him lightheaded and oddly woozy. His cheeks feel hot, and he knows that he must be luminous and clashing horribly with his hair as he gawps up at Kageyama, slack-jawed.
“You… what? Wait, what do you mean you ‘think’?”
It’s a stupid thing to say, completely off script from the lines that he’d written for himself in his daydreams.
It’s reflexive and brash and it must sting, because Kageyama’s face falls straight back into scowling. And the sight of it makes Shouyou’s stomach flip because he knows that that is the face Kageyama makes when he’s genuinely upset.
“I mean… really?” he forces himself to say, his tongue thick and unwieldy in his mouth. He clears his throat and does his best to not look like he’s about to faint, despite the wild pounding of his heart. “You really mean that?”
Kageyama’s face flickers, and Shouyou’s stomach flops all over again because Kageyama still looks upset and somehow, for the first time in years, Shouyou is messing this up so badly. But he can barely think, his brain struggling for any coherency. He never thought, not in any of his wildest dreams or hopes, that he would ever hear these words, and now that he has, he simply doesn’t know what to do.
“Yes,” Kageyama mutters at last, his words oddly small and cautious. “I did just say I was going to be honest.”
Something wrenches deep within Shouyou, and he bites down hard on his bottom lip, as he suddenly and viscerally feels absolutely wretched. “How long for?” he asks, very quietly, and he knows this still isn’t what Kageyama wants to hear. That it isn’t even what he wants to say. ‘Because I know I love you’ is what he wants to yell back, wants to scream it from the pit of his lungs.
But his tumbling thoughts are starting to give way to a terrifying clarity – that he has, somehow, for so many years, managed to get all of this so terribly, horribly, wrong.
Kageyama doesn’t quite lose his frown, but some of those creases ease, like he’s slowly going blank again, throwing up armour while he still has the fortitude for it. “Since high school, I suppose,” he says, equally as muted, shrugging one shoulder at a feeble attempt at nonchalance.
“… Oh,” is all Shouyou can squeak out in response, before he registers that there are tears tumbling down his face.
Dimly, he’s aware that Kageyama is now looking at him in open alarm. Ironic, really, that none of Kageyama’s more acerbic comments or blunter words over the years have set Shouyou off in the slightest. Instead, it’s the one thing that he’s wanted to hear the most that breaks him.
And, somewhere very deep down, he is happy. A tiny voice of ecstatic delirium is shouting at the very back of his brain. Unfortunately, it’s getting completely drowned out by something that feels terribly like guilt.
He’s spent all of these years thinking Kageyama to be utterly uninterested. That those kinds of relationships are not for him and Shouyou held back his own voice in some misplaced guise of being considerate. And stubbornly and selfishly and greedily he’d held onto his feelings, keeping them close to his chest and refusing to let them go, turning others away in favour of his cargo.
And all this time he could have just been honest instead and told Kageyama all along.
“Sorry – “ Kageyama starts to mumble.
“No, I’m supposed to be sorry!” Shouyou butts in, instinctively shouting to block off the apology before Kageyama can form it. He furiously swipes away the tear streaks with his palm, sniffing loudly to force himself back under control.
Kageyama’s face twists horribly, like he’s doing his very best to not similarly crumble, and Shouyou’s entire chest lurches guiltily. “Stop making that face for a second,” he begs. He knows that Kageyama is expecting something terrible, something like a rejection – the very same thing that Shouyou has been quietly terrified of.
And he knows that he needs to be honest and speak, now, before Kageyama gets the wrong end of all of this, and so he needs to do what he’s always done for something that he really, really wants.
He needs to be brave.
“Because… I mean… I know I’m in love with you, but you never really even reacted whenever someone mentioned dating or sex or any of that stuff before! So I thought you didn’t like that kinda stuff or that it wasn’t your thing, so I just… never said anything! And I know I’ve dated people here and there and slept around a bit – don’t look at me like that, it’s perfectly normal, Kageyama – but I could never be in a relationship with them either because I was in love with you the whole time! And people kept nagging me to say something, but I didn’t want to ruin anything between us because believe it or not you’re my best friend – and I know, I’m making terrible choices, but you are – so I refused. And now you tell me you’ve been feeling the same since forever and I could have said something all along but I didn’t, and I could have moved on, but I didn’t because I really wanted to just be in love with you and – “
Shouyou breaks off his rant with a heaving gasp.
The air rings silent, save for Shouyou’s soft pants as he regains his breath, and they both stand there, hovering on the precipice of something that they’ve both been a little too cowardly to explore.
Kageyama swallows heavily. “And… what do you want now?”
Shouyou’s tongue darts out and wets his lips, his fingers squeezing his hands in and out of fists. The question is like taking a torch to a fuse, lighting up the sort of adrenaline that he normally only experiences on the court.
He knows what he wants. He’s always known. And for too long he’s been hoarding it and keeping it secret, believing himself to be doing the right thing.
Years ago, Kageyama had told him that his selfish tendencies weren’t all bad. That occasion had been for volleyball. Shouyou wonders if the same can apply to here and now.
Time to find out.
“This,” he breathes, forgoing words for actions because the two of them have always communicated best without speaking.
Shouyou launches up on his tiptoes, reaching up and curling his hands around Kageyama’s collar, holding onto the fabric tightly so that Kageyama can’t get away. Shouyou sees blue eyes widen briefly with surprise before yanking Kageyama down and kissing him soundly, taking the last scrap of this man that had been kept from him.
Large hands grip him back, and it’s messy and bruising and uncoordinated, and exactly what Shouyou has been yearning for.
They grin sharply at each other when they part for air, high on their own daring.
Shouyou knows that he is selfish. Shouyou knows that he is greedy.
But as he stands here now, holding the last piece that he’s been craving, he can’t imagine being either of those things ever again.
Kageyama’s hands come up to cradle Shouyou’s jaw and drag him into another kiss and Shouyou sighs into it: finally, completely and utterly, satisfied.