Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

part ii

We were in the gold room where everyone
finally gets what they want, so I said what do you
want, sweetheart? and you said kiss me.

—Siken

✧

Nothing makes me lonelier than your indifference. Does that get you hot and bothered, baby? Do you feel like a god when you make me this way?

✧

In Brazil, Shouyou had missed Kenma desperately. That much is undeniable. But in truth, Shouyou hadn’t seen Kenma in person for at least a year after he came back to Japan from Brazil. There were lots of practical reasons for this, on either of their ends — Kenma was running his businesses in Tokyo, Shouyou was to tryout and then train with the MSBY Black Jackals in Osaka. Because they were busy. Because they were far apart. Because they both belonged to a thousand things before they belonged to one another.

Maybe it’s only natural, for a meeting postponed by a year to break with the force of its own collision. All that untapped energy, scattered. 

Summer passes. Shouyou returns to Osaka to train with the MSBY Black Jackals for next season’s V1 circuit, the first one he is to play in. Kenma waves him off at the train station with a smile that, for once, is impossible for Shouyou to decipher. Shouyou waves back from a dusty passenger window, watching as Kenma’s masked, black-clad figure shrinks smaller and smaller from where he stands on the shaded platform. 

And with this goodbye, summer turns to autumn. Shouyou thinks this might be the end of it; and why wouldn’t it be? They both had their fun. Now it’s time to let go.

Shouyou does so quietly, and lets go of each long summer night, the turquoise pool, the wine, the skyline, the sprawling house. Spilled hair, gold eyes, body cut from the moon. A delicate hand. Let go, let go. 

It’s not all that difficult. His attention shifts easily to volleyball, the new season, seeing his teammates again. He submerges himself in promises—to make it to first string, to beat Kageyama, to push his limits further. It takes all of Shouyou’s effort, all of his patience. 

All the while Kenma expands his business, increases his viewership, lets his name echo off the walls of the world. There’s Kenma and then there’s Koduzken, who looms over everything like a waiting god, whose dark floor of a shadow passes by Shouyou like another sky. But he knows that Kenma’s just as busy, busier, has a thousand commitments to direct all his time and attention to. 

Shouyou still texts Kenma often, still FaceTimes him semi-regularly. There’s sexting too, but only a little. If Kenma were a different person, they might sulk at the way Shouyou puts more time into practice than calling, might accuse him of neglecting their friendship for volleyball. If Shouyou were any different, he might take it personally when Kenma doesn’t text back for weeks at a time, might roll his eyes when Kenma uploads a video instead of returning Shouyou’s call. 

But Kenma and Shouyou aren’t different people. No matter how much they might change, they will always have their origin in that mutual understanding—no, mutual expectation, conveyed in words like next time, I’ll make you feel more than just ‘okay’ about volleyball. Or stay interesting. Or, but not in so many words, I expect you to turn into a wilder and more beautiful version of yourself by the time I see you again. 

A promise to perpetually become. But it’s expectation fuelled with belief, with knowledge—because how could Shouyou and Kenma ever do anything but become?

Over the year the both of them do exactly that—pushing the limits of transformation, getting brighter and bolder with each spike and stream and set and launch.

Shouyou’s first run through a V-league season comes and goes. He doesn’t just manage to catch up with Kageyama; he beats him and the rest of the Adlers, while Kenma watches live from his living room in Tokyo. 

After the Adlers game, Shouyou’s popularity in the volleyball world seems to soar overnight. And the more known Shouyou becomes, the more sought out he is by different companies. It’s not just Bouncing Ball, anymore. It’s Shouyou calling Kenma to say, hey, I signed with another sponsorship today. It’s Kenma telling him that’s so good, Shouyou. That’s so good. It’s the way his voice changes, lightens, gets so happy over the phone. 

And it’s Shouyou, devoid of any sensible reason, wondering why he wishes Kenma wouldn’t be so perfectly congratulating. A small, far, barely conscious part of Shouyou wishes Kenma would be more possessive about it. Like, brand loyalty? Not so much make us your sole affiliation, but make your affiliations with Bouncing Ball clear and come first. Before anything or anyone else, you were ours and don’t forget it, don’t ever forget it.

Shouyou frowns. Of course he doesn’t want that.

So he picks up sponsorships in Osaka for colognes and energy drinks and watches, a shampoo commercial, an Onigiri Miya advertisement. He uploads a handful of tagged Instagram posts of hotel towels and restaurant food and sportswear, each one another star-bright reminder that we believe in you to bring in more revenue for our business. Which is to say we believe in you. But privately Shouyou doesn’t forget, never forgets that Kenma believed in him before he was anything. Believed in him first.

A year passes like this.

✧

This coming, airless summer, just as he had the airless summer before it, Shouyou is to stay with Kenma in Tokyo. For a moment, he trips himself into thinking it won’t be anything like the last.

But Shouyou’s first night back sees him open, malleable beneath the heated steel of Kenma’s hands. It’s like no time has passed.

✧

Shouyou gets to learn Kenma at a more rapid pace than last summer. So he learns that Kenma gets more love letters from fans in June than in any other month of the year, for reasons that Shouyou can’t wrap his head around. It’s not February and it’s not October, either. It is, however, Shouyou’s birthday month, which Kenma off-handedly mentions in the same breath that he says well, warm weather makes some people want to be in love, I suppose. 

He learns that the quickest way to win Miso the cat’s affection is to feed her Wagyu beef, but she’ll only sleep on her back around people Kenma likes (and Miso’s slept on her back around Shouyou for as long as he’s known her). And sometimes Kenma will toss and tumble and murmur vague, faintly angry things in his sleep like put down the Little Yoshi pillows right now Lev I swear to god or Kuro I am going to kill you for real for this. Sometimes he’ll sleep-say Shouyou’s name too, but it never comes out angry, and rather more like a coo. Shouyou, he mumbles, once, soft enough that Shouyou nearly mistakes his own name for something entirely else. Shouyou, come back to me. Shouyou decides not to bring this up with Kenma the next morning. 

With the passing of nights, Shouyou learns that Kenma likes getting his hair pulled, likes a little knife-play, likes to kiss on the mouth while they fuck. As Shouyou also eventually learns, Kenma likely has a thing for humiliating him in public. His suspicions start when Kenma takes Shouyou shopping through Ginza district, where they stop by a tall, avant-garde building full of windows shaped like scattered ponds. It’s a shop called Mikimoto, Kenma tells him as they push their way through imposing glass double doors, which specializes in fine pearl jewellery.

Shouyou immediately feels out of place in his jeans and borrowed Bouncing Ball sweatshirt, although Kenma doesn’t seem to care at all that he’s dressed just as causally as Shouyou. White light scatters from an elaborate crystal chandelier overhead. The employees here wear crisp white button downs and know Kenma by name, and one of them immediately scurries to their side to offer a tray of champagne, which Shouyou has never seen happen in any jewellery store he’s walked into, ever. Shouyou wonders how many pearls Kenma must have bought from here for the employees to remember his name and treat him like this.

Kenma's examining a row of pearl chokers on red velvet beds when Shouyou gathers the nerve to ask, "Have you bought stuff here before?"

Kenma doesn't blink, eyes still fixed to the pearls. Like a cat staring at shiny things. "Yeah, a couple times."

"Really? For girlfriends?" Shouyou tries not to sound as affected as he feels. This gets Kenma to raise his head and look at him. 

"The pearls were for my mom."

Shouyou starts to flush. "Oh—" 

"Girls usually like diamonds." 

Shouyou’s mouth snaps shut. Kenma sips his champagne and casually rests a hand over the glass display that separates them from the pearls beneath, which Shouyou is fairly sure they’re not supposed to do here, but the employees just look on, smiling at him.

"What about you, Shouyou?” Kenma says, mouth curling into a smirk. It sends a small jolt of panic through Shouyou. “Do you like diamonds? Or pearls?"

“Huh, me?” Shouyou blinks at him. “Why?”

“So that I know what to get you.”

Shouyou blushes immediately. "Oh, that’s too—"

"Don't say it's too much.” Kenma tsks and shakes his head in playful disapproval. “I'll pretend you said pearls."

"Why," Shouyou starts to ask, but Kenma is already asking an employee if he could examine one of the chokers a little closer. 

It's gorgeous, even more so up close than when separated by the thick film of glass. Freshwater pearls sit on perfect, red velvet, reflecting light from the chandelier. Then Shouyou looks at the price tag: ¥825,000

"Wow," Shouyou says with quiet reverence, blinking. The employee momentarily leaves them alone with the pearls and their drinks. 

Kenma leans in to whisper low in Shouyou's ear, as if they aren’t the only ones there, "I want to see these pearls on you.”

Shouyou widens his eyes. “On me?”

Kenma’s breath is warm on Shouyou’s ear as he strings up a scene for him—he wants to put them on him, and take pictures of him in nothing but them, and pull the cord tight enough to have Shouyou gasping for air, then tight enough to snap. He wants the pearls to roll down Shouyou’s skin, mix with his hair, drop to the sheets, the floor. He wants to hear the pearls fall. Wants the rain of them to mix with Shouyou’s pretty moans as he comes.

By the time Kenma leans away, Shouyou's completely red in the face and resisting the urge to smooth a hand over the front of his jeans. Before Shouyou could even respond to any of it, Kenma's already laughing. 

"Just teasing, Shouyou. I would never buy a necklace made cheaply enough to break like that.” He’s still laughing. “And you wouldn’t find cheap ones here, anyway." 

Shouyou stares on as Kenma walks away, then turns his stare to the employee that had just stepped back into the room, smiling amicably. White teeth, red lipstick. Slightly jittery hands smooth down the sides of her black pencil skirt. Shouyou wonders if she’d overheard any of their conversation and blushes deeper. 

Kenma ends up buying the choker.

Days later, Kenma invites Shouyou to a board meeting and picks out everything for Shouyou to wear. Saint Laurent shirt made from jacquard-woven silk. Issey Miyake tapered trousers. Almond-toed Prada loafers. Shouyou can’t tell which brand the remote controlled vibrator had come from, however. 

Shouyou sits near the back and spends the hour watching Kenma present, tidy powerpoint slides projected on a white screen behind him. He doesn’t understand anything Kenma’s saying—something something sales projections, something something target demographics—but he likes the authority in Kenma’s voice, and his self-assured posture, and the cutting focus of his eyes. 

A little bored, Shouyou imagines the boardroom emptied of people, save for the two of them — maybe Shouyou’s straddling Kenma’s lap on the head chair, fingers ruining the bun he’d fixed for Kenma earlier. Or Kenma’s pressing him chest-first against the conference table, hands pinning Shouyou’s wrists to the small of his back, surface cool on Shouyou’s cheek. Or Shouyou’s going down on him under the table as Kenma keeps presenting to everyone else, all the while keeping his cool composure. It doesn’t help when Shouyou notices Kenma’s hand slipping into his pocket to thumb at a discreet remote, and the sudden motions that follow. 

Untouched, Shouyou is all live wire, all impulse. This entire hour, this entire week, he's felt like this—body stretched beyond permission, always swaying toward. A body whittled down to an unfed mouth.

And yet, Kenma doesn’t do so much as spare a glance in Shouyou’s direction, not even once during the meeting. Somehow the lack of attention bothers Shouyou more than anything else. 

By the end of the meeting Shouyou’s too far gone to move from his seat, watching helplessly as Kenma approaches him. His expression feigns near-perfect concern, but the slight slant of his mouth betrays his cruel amusement. 

Kenma’s colleagues linger in the room, mingling amongst each other, all of them far too near. Kenma keeps his composure cool and perfect as always, paying them no mind. Shouyou’s always bewildered at how unaffected Kenma can seem. 

“Are you okay, Shouyou?” Kenma’s voice is soft. Shouyou grits his teeth as Kenma brings a palm to his forehead. “You seem fevered. Do you need water?”

“Kenma, please,” Shouyou eventually says, voice a tight, small thing. “Please let me—” 

“Not now.” Kenma’s voice is somehow both blade-like and full of barred laughter. Shouyou grits his teeth, but he lets himself pocket the unspoken later. 

But before Shouyou could stop himself, he ends up saying, to his instant regret, “You kept ignoring me.” 

Kenma tilts his head to the side, cat-like, frowning. “What makes you think that?”

Shouyou’s cheeks burn. “I—during the meeting. You wouldn’t look at me, not once.”

Kenma gives him a long look. When he speaks again his voice is still gentle, but it sparks with some of his firmness from earlier. “You ought to pay closer attention, Shouyou. I’m always looking at you.” 

✧

Shouyou doesn’t remember how half the apple pie filling ended up in Kenma’s hair. Yes, he’d tried to bake apple pie again after his disaster of an attempt last summer. And yes, it’s turned out to be just as much of a disaster this time around, but for entirely different reasons. 

Shouyou’s doubled over laughing in Kenma’s kitchen, which again has become a mess of flour and apples and brown sugar—but not so much a mess as Kenma himself, who’s currently trying to comb through sticky hair with a funny, scrunched-up look of disgust. 

“Kenma, oh, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.” Shouyou dissolves into a fit of giggles again and Kenma scowls at him, but it’s playful, Shouyou knows it’s playful.

“Shouyou. You couldn’t have just bought it from the store this time?” 

“It’s not the same, Kenma! Store bought isn’t meaningful, don’t you know? I’m trying to put meaning into this pie.” 

“Well, your meaning is all over my hair.”

Shouyou laughs again, and approaches Kenma with an apologetic grin. He takes Kenma by the shoulders, leans in, and licks a stripe of apple syrup off Kenma’s forehead.

“Ugh, Shouyou!” Kenma shoves him away roughly, but he’s laughing now, too. 

“Mmm. You’re delicious,” Shouyou grins, licking sugar off his lips.

“Don’t be gross.” 

“But it’s true! It tastes a lot better than last year’s, I swear! C’mon, I’m serious, try it, Kenmaaa—” 

Later Shouyou watches Kenma emerge from the shower after washing away the rest of the pie, toned arms raised to towel-dry his hair.

Shouyou had another apology ready on his lips, he’d swear it, but it’s hard to get the words out when Kenma looks like this—sweatpants slung low, hips and skin and triangular shadows. The long, lean muscle of his torso. Shining, salt-licked.

If Shouyou were to give in to his worst impulse, he’d reach for him now, pull him close by the waist, then follow each small river down his stomach with his teeth. He’d kiss bruises beneath the soft shadows of Kenma’s jaw, neck, collarbones. Wrists. Thighs. Kenma always says no marks. No marks. Why not?

Same rules don’t apply to Shouyou. Later, a vaguely familiar, bluesy voice wafts in from the living room, and Shouyou steps in to find a lounging, hungry Kenma. He is perfect under the gold of the skylight. Shouyou asks what song is this again, I’m sure you’ve told me before, but somehow I’ve forgotten. He approaches Kenma slowly, movements so much like a predator afraid of spooking its prey even when it’s the other way around with them, isn’t it, has always been the other way around. 

Bengawan Solo, like the river, Kenma tells him. But before Shouyou could open his mouth to admit he doesn’t know that river, or the name of any river, probably—Kenma takes Shouyou’s jaw in one gentle hand and twists, exposing a neck faintly marred by still-healing bruises.

Kenma could kill him right now. He could kill him, yet Shouyou only shivers beneath his half-lidded gaze as it stops to study each diffused whirl of violet. Only stands very still, waiting, wanting. Only gasps when Kenma presses his mouth there to undo its healing, undo any pre-tense, undo Shouyou.

Shouyou breathes in. The whole world smells like apple and sandalwood.

✧

June starts to pass like a thing of his dreams, days rolling into one pleasure-filled blur. 

He is so lucky, Shouyou thinks. He has everything, nearly everything — he already gets to play volleyball every day. He gets to immerse himself so completely in something he loves. Somehow, staying with Kenma feels like a doubling of all the satisfaction he’d already gotten from his previous routine. He feels nearly overstimulated now, skin buzzing with the prospect of different kinds of touch.

And yet. And yet, it doesn’t feel like enough.

It’s always been easy to figure out the source of his own hunger, when it came to volleyball. With Kenma, he’s no longer sure. But he thinks he can identify a part of it, because Kenma is always so cool. Blasé, unbothered, unaffected, indifferent. All the while Shouyou, at the sparsest brush of Kenma’s cool, indifferent hand, is always unravelling. 

Shouyou will even feel this hunger on nights he likes best, ones where there’s no rush to to untangle or sleep just yet, and next morning’s promise no longer looms. Where Shouyou curls into Kenma’s chest, or Kenma curls into his, and they are sweaty and spent and happy, at once so careless and careful with one another. Where there’s no sound but Kenma’s heartbeat, Shouyou’s heartbeat after—syncopated but near, out of step but parallel.

Shouyou scrunches his eyes shut and grins and thinks there’s no way he could keep any of it off his face, all of this joy, all of the warmth he feels for Kenma. He doesn’t bother trying. When has he ever had reason to hide or limit his pleasure, his joy? 

Then he opens his eyes and witnesses Kenma witnessing him, amber eyes unreadable. 

So he leans in to whisper in Kenma’s ear, quiet enough that only he could hear it. Kenma gasps and blushes and laughs at him, rolls away to grab a pillow and hits him with it, scandalized. Shouyou raises his arms in defence and giggles even while getting pelted, just before he, too, steals a pillow from a corner of the bed and retaliates with teeth bared, eyes shining. 

If Shouyou had gave in to his worst impulse, he would have gone to see Kenma right after his first return. Fresh-faced and tan, Brazil still sweltering under his skin. 

Shouyou realizes, in time with an incoming swing, that he only wants to affect Kenma in an even slightly similar way. Only ever wants to nudge the borders of his feeling. It’s not a new desire; Shouyou has never stopped wanting this, for as long as he has known him. 

✧

“Next time, Kenma,” Shouyou smiles into the whisper. “I’ll make you desperate for me.” 

✧

Shouyou knows Kenma likes him. At least, that Kenma likes things about him. He likes Shouyou’s spontaneity. Likes that he’s “interesting.” He likes that Shouyou speaks to Kenma’s succulents while watering them, and that he reserves his softest voice for Miso the cat. He likes Shouyou’s medals, and his grin, and his moving hands. 

Maybe Kenma could like Shouyou like this, too, reclined and blushing and covered in lace. He could learn to like him needy. Could learn to like him wanting.

Shouyou takes a sharp breath. His hand falls to his forehead, suddenly too warm. 

✧

A translucent glass window lets Shouyou barely see Kenma—a slow-moving blur, impossible to make the outlines of, but there nonetheless. On opposite sides of the office window, they are only ghosts to one another.

Shouyou hovers by the door of the office for only a moment longer before tentatively coming inside, tightening the silk cord around the robe he’d found in Kenma’s closet. He can see Kenma now, the vivid whole of him. Sunlight touches the side of Kenma’s face, turning him half-gold behind the wood of his desk. 

Kenma’s accessorized a worn Bouncing Ball shirt with a black velvet choker. It’s an odd combination, but the sight of it makes Shouyou want to touch Kenma’s throat, feel the difference in softness between the velvet and his skin. Shouyou’s hands feel so empty at his sides.

Kenma doesn’t look up at first, attentively writing on paper documents with a silver-tipped fountain pen. But when he does look up, his gaze is hungry like he already knew that Shouyou would show up like this. Like this - blushing skin packaged in black silk. 

Kenma doesn’t bother asking why he’s here. He only says, “Come here, Shouyou.”

Shouyou draws closer. 

Kenma’s attention is fully off his documents now, gaze intense on Shouyou’s face, but he keeps on twirling the pen in his hand.

Kenma says, “Give me your hand.” 

Shouyou does so. 

Kenma presses Shouyou’s knuckles to the desk, so that his palm faces the ceiling. He plays with the hem of Shouyou’s silk sleeve, touch cool and careful, barely brushing over Shouyou’s wrist. Shouyou holds back a sigh.

“Why are you here?” Kenma finally asks, gaze soft but discerning.

You know why I’m here, Shouyou almost wants to insist. 

Instead he says, “Just missed you, Kenma.” He hates how it comes out almost petulant.

“You saw me this morning.” Kenma continues to play with the edge of his sleeve.

“Missed you anyway.” 

“Is that so?” Kenma smiles faintly. “A year must’ve been torture.”

“You have no idea.” Shouyou resists the urge to close his eyes and lose himself to the calming motions of Kenma’s thumb on his wrist. “I’m — sorry, am I interrupting your work?”

“Yes,” Kenma says, and the quick readiness of his answer makes Shouyou wince. But his tone stays light, almost anticipatory. “You shouldn’t just walk in here at any whim.”

“I’m sorry,” Shouyou says again, but not even he could know how genuine he’s being.

Then Kenma murmurs near Shouyou’s ear, “You know what you look like right now?”

Your only one. I want to look like your only one. He thinks of saying this, doesn’t.

“Tell me,” Shouyou says instead. It comes out breathless, urgent. “Tell me, Kenma.” 

Instead of replying, Kenma grips Shouyou’s wrist a little tighter, keeps it pinned against the dark wood of his desk, and writes stark, clean strokes overtop thin skin. A word in kanji. 玩弄物 .

Shouyou takes in a sharp breath. 

“If you want,” Kenma says, airily. “You could appear at my next livestream and show everyone your wrist.”

Shouyou gasps when Kenma curls a hand over his wrist, then he’s being pulled onto Kenma’s lap, bare legs dangling from the office chair. Kenma grips either side of Shouyou’s waist through the robe, pulls him closer to him. Close enough to have Shouyou gasping from the friction. Close enough to drag his mouth up Shouyou’s neck. 

His hand goes up to grip Hinata’s jaw then, pulls down so that their eyes meet. Kenma’s eyes are dilated, full of dark. 

Shouyou’s drool starts to collect on Kenma’s palm, still holding him. “Messy,” Kenma mumbles, thumb dragging up to wipe the corner of his mouth. 

“Kenma,” Shouyou says, voice low. He knits his hands nervously behind Kenma’s neck. “Take it off me?”

And Shouyou swears it’s the first time all month that something like surprise seems to flash in Kenma’s eyes. Then Kenma’s lids fall halfway, and Shouyou warms all over.

Kenma pulls away the robe’s silk belt, lets it drift to the carpet. He slips the robe down Shouyou’s shoulders, leaving him nearly bare. Only nearly—Kenma sees black lace, now, circling Shouyou’s thighs, his waist, his chest. 

Kenma smirks, fingers slipping under the lace garters on his thighs. His nails dig in and scratch lightly, teasing. “This all for me?”

Shouyou leans in to kiss him in response. Against his mouth, Kenma murmurs, “How sweet of you.” 

Shouyou is all impulse, all urgency. 

“You have nice thighs,” Kenma whispers, grinning as he kisses Shouyou again, and again, and again. “Why don’t you make them useful for me.” 

All racing blood, all burning, burning.

Shouyou rolls his hips down, gasps. Kenma lets out a breath that’s sharp and sounds something like relief, and Shouyou wants to laugh, almost, at the pool of silk on the floor, at the ease of everything, of getting to unravel someone who never unravels. He wants to laugh because he knows nobody else possesses that ease. Only Shouyou now, only him.

✧

“Okay, so. You’re not gonna believe this, but,” Shouyou pauses to take a dramatic breath, hands and eyebrows raised. Tsukishima and Kageyama stare at him.

The three of them had met up for gyoza and drinks at a small, dimly lit izakaya. Kageyama is leaning against Tsukishima’s shoulder, Shouyou is flailing in front of them, and neither of their expressions change. If anything, Tsukishima’s disinterestedly looking at something in the distance behind Shouyou, but Shouyou knows there’s nothing behind him but his seat’s leather upholster. 

Shouyou says, “You could at least pretend to be curious.” 

“Sorry,” Kageyama says, mechanically. “I am so curious.” 

Tsukishima adds, “I want to know what you’re about to say so bad.” 

“Like I was saying,” Shouyou clasps his hands together and gives a small, almost shy smile. With maybe a little too much enthusiasm, he says, “You’re not going to believe this, but I hooked up with Kenma last year!” 

“Wow,” says Kageyama. He takes a long sip of his drink.

“Right!”

“Was it, like, just once? Or…” Kageyama trails off awkwardly, eyes drifting anywhere but Shouyou’s face. 

Shouyou blushes. “Like, routinely?” 

“Wow,” says Kageyama again. He takes another long sip of his drink. 

“But what you’re actually about to tell us,” Tsukishima says, voice flat. “Is that you’re making the horrible decision of hooking up with him again this year. Like you did last year.” 

“Um,” Shouyou chuckles nervously. “Pretty much!”

“To quote Kageyama,” says Tsukishima. “Wow.” 

Shouyou continues, “So it’s like, everything I told you last year, about how he made me feel all gwaaaaah and stuff. I thought I’d just get over it in Osaka.” Shouyou buries his slowly reddening face in his hands. “But it’s been a year, and I’m still like this. I don’t know what to do. It’s awful, right?” 

“Yes, you poor thing,” starts Tsukishima, without a drop of a sympathy in his voice. “You get to fuck one of the richest men in Tokyo, who also happens to be obsessed with you, by the way. Every night, too, because you live in his giant mansion for free, alone with him, just the two of you. It’s a tragedy.“ 

“Shut up, Tsukishima,” Kageyama interrupts, shoving Tsukishima’s arm with a scowl. “You’re getting just as much dick as he is.”

“Community dick.” 

“Hey. It’s not nice to slut-shame,” Kageyama says, frowning at Tsukishima. He picks up a gyoza with his chopsticks. “And maybe your ex’s dick is community, but his heart isn’t.”

“What the fuck does that mean.”

Shouyou frowns at the change of subject, but asks, surprised, “Tsukishima, you’re back together with Kunimi?” 

“Obviously not. And he’s been seeing other people, whatever.” 

“Other people?” Hinata purses his lips. “Anyone we know?” 

Tsukishima smiles grimly. “Well. Kageyama, for one.”

Both Shouyou and Kageyama make a surprised, choking noise. Kageyama’s still working through a mouthful of gyoza when he says, “I told you not to tell Hinata that.”

Tsukishima glares darkly. 

“Wait, so you’re both—“ Shouyou’s gaze darts between the two of them, incredulous. “In the community?” 

Kageyama swallows, then tries, “It was an accident?”

“So you just, what, Kageyama?” Tsukishima scowls. “Fell mid-jump serve and landed on his dick?”

“I said I was sorry! In my defence, your ex is so hot.” 

“Thanks, that makes me feel better. But we’re not talking about this.” Tsukishima rolls his eyes, directing his attention to Shouyou again. “To be honest, Hinata, we kind of knew about you and Kozume-san already.” 

“What?” Shouyou widens his eyes. “When? How?”

“Just this morning. Us and the rest of the world, probably.”

“The world?” Shouyou frowns in confusion.

Instead of replying, Tsukishima says, “Hey, what’s this, by the way?” He taps away at something up on his phone.

Tilting his head to the side, Shouyou asks, “What’s what?”

“This.” Tsukishima flips his phone so that Shouyou can see the screen. The image brings immediate heat to his face. “What is this.” 

This happens to be Kenma’s Instagram story from this morning. It’s a hardly three-second video. On screen, two of Kenma’s fingers disappear into Shouyou’s mouth.

“Oh my god,” says Shouyou.

“Yeah,” Tsukishima agrees, without much empathy.

“Um.” Shouyou scratches the back of his head, and suddenly remembers the cryptic text Hoshiumi-san had sent him just that morning, a single emoji: “😐” (Confused, Shouyou only replied with “😊”). He’d gotten another text like that an hour later, but from Atsumu-san: “✌️ 😜 👄.” 

“I knew he took this video,” Shouyou admits, unable to stop himself from blushing at the memory. His fingers drum a nervous rhythm onto his drink’s cool glass. “But I didn’t know that he posted it? On his Instagram story? I don’t check social media all that often, anyway.”

“You really didn’t know?” Tsukishima’s expression is somehow equal parts disgusted and amused. “Pretty sure that’s an important detail to tell your boyfriend.”

“Oh. I’m not really sure if I’m,” Shouyou pauses, blushing harder. It strangely aches to admit. “His boyfriend. Yeah.”

“Okay. Boytoy, then.”

Shouyou blanches, immediately remembering the word Kenma wrote over his wrist the other day. If you want, you could appear at my next livestream and show everyone your wrist. 

The kanji’s long since faded away, the result of vigorous scrubbing in the shower, but still he rubs on the inside of his wrist with a thumb, a phantom compulsion.

Kageyama says, “So, you haven’t seen what people are saying?”

Shouyou shakes his head, frowning. “What’s there to say?”

Kageyama snatches the phone from Tsukishima beside him—much to the latter’s annoyance—and unceremoniously starts reading out headlines from the screen. “Popular Streamer Kodzuken and Rising Volleyball Star Hinata Shouyou Set Terrible Example For Social Distancing Protocols? Hinata Shouyou from MSBY Black Jackals Sucks on Youtube Celebrity Kozume Kenma’s Fingers Watch Video Here Now Not Clickbait?”

Shouyou cringes. “Okay I get it, Kageyama—“ 

“Kodzuken and Ninja Shouyou: An Item? Bouncing Ball CEO Kozume Kenma Shares Not Safe For Work Story on Instagram of Hinata Shou—“ 

“Kageyama.” 

“Oh my god.” Kageyama’s eyes widen suddenly. “Bouncing Ball Sponsorship a Euphemism for Sugar Baby Relationship?”

“What?” Shouyou finally pounces forward to snatch the phone from his hands. 

“Hey! Give it back, Hinata—“

“It’s not even your phone! And maybe if you didn’t start reading out stupid tabloid headlines about my relationship with Kenma—“ 

“What’s that? Your ‘relationship’ with Kenma?” Tsukishima interrupts, raising an amused eyebrow at the two of them. “Didn’t realize that was a word in your vocabulary now, Hinata.”

Shouyou ignores him, eyes skimming the headlines on Tsukishima’s phone. Popular Streamer Kodzuken Paying Hinata Shouyou for More than Just Advertisement?

“Man,” Shouyou says, nearly awed. “How do people get all this out of a three second video? Wait, is that a picture of Kenma with Kiko Mizuhara?”

“It’s very likely to be photoshopped by Kuroo-san. Anyway, you can never underestimate the delusions of gossip reporters,” Tsukishima says, outward somber expression only barely concealing his laughter. “But only you know what’s real between the two of you, anyway.”

It makes Shouyou freeze up. Does he know what’s real between them? Does he really? 

“Oh hey,” Kageyama says, having pulled out his own phone after the sound of a notification ping. A scary smirk starts to curl across his face. “Tsukishima, your ex just texted me.” 

“I am going to kill you,” Tsukishima declares, pushing himself off the table with terrifying intent. “I swear to God, Kageyama, I am going to fucking kill you.” 

✧

Sometimes Shouyou watches Kenma fall asleep next to him, and he gets to see the way his features soften. Mouth parting, brows unknitted, hair splayed long and stark over the white of the pillow covers. When he’s breathing this softly, Kenma looks so much younger, years unwinding on his face. Just like that, asleep under a whole dark, Kenma returns, just briefly, from sharp to delicate.

Delicate, but not in the way people used to assume about him back in high school, never the opposite of danger. Delicate as in open. As in an entire history between them, which has always been softer than it has ever been sharp, familiar as a face. 

It’s not like this every night. Only sometimes. Only, Shouyou thinks, when Kenma’s too tired to ask him to leave, instead wordlessly fitting himself to the plane of Shouyou’s chest, head bowed over, hands clinging to Shouyou’s arms.

They never wake at the same time. Sometimes Shouyou wakes to an empty bed and steps out to realize he’s woken to an empty house, too. Sometimes Shouyou wakes to Kenma still curled into him, breathing soft and even, and Shouyou tries to untangle himself as gently as he can, quietly as he can, and presses the slightest kiss to Kenma’s forehead before going out the door, off to start his morning routine. 

Shouyou runs up the foliage-bordered trails of Yoyogi park, everything pale gold and hazy with dawn, and tries to tamp down the quiet, stubborn regret that maybe he should’ve stayed. Maybe he should’ve waited for Kenma’s eyes to blink awake before leaving. Maybe these are moments he should have learned, by now, to safe-keep.

✧

Sponsor. Rival. Old friend. Patron. Lover? Provider and executioner both. Kenma. My Kenma.

It’s all confused in Shouyou’s head. There are a thousand names for what they are to each other. Certainly, there isn’t one perfect noun for all that Kenma is to Shouyou.

It would be easier if they were less. Less grand, less intense, less years, less meaning to each other.

Something in Shouyou disappears when Kenma kisses him. One less name, maybe, for what they are to one another. An impulse at the back of Shouyou’s mind beckons him to check. Burn away one title and see if they change, for better or for worse.

✧

At this point, Hinata’s stopped asking what exact business event is getting held at any decadent venue Kenma takes him to. He’s content enough to just sit and nod and sip his free champagne. Lately he’s been bringing Kageyama and Tsukishima along with him, with Kenma’s permission. 

They’re in a V2 TOKYO, sitting in a high-grade lounge high above Roppongi. It’s all black and gold decor, glass walls with city views, neon-violet dance floors, and more crystal chandeliers than in any other nightclub Shouyou’s stepped into, ever. 

“Rich people have a lot of parties,” observes Kageyama.

“So, what event is it this time?” asks Tsukishima, before taking an indulgent sip of his Kahlua and milk. 

“No idea,” says Shouyou cheerily.

“Kozume-san could be meeting up with the Yakuza for a multi-million yen drug smuggling trade, for all we know. And he would just get away with it. Because you’re you.”

“Whoah Tsukishima, did you watch the Kodzuken Yakuza theory video on Youtube too? And I mean, if he’s getting millions out of it, then it’s fine, right?” 

Tsukishima stares at Shouyou a long moment. Then he just sighs with a look of resignation and asks, “Did you fix things with Kozume-san?”

Shouyou frowns. “What’s there to fix?” 

Tsukishima gives him a look.

Laughing nervously, Shouyou adds, “Can we not talk about this here? Kenma’s coming back any second.” 

“Yeah, after he’s done mingling with a very long line of boring people in suits.” 

“Would he even care,” Kageyama murmurs. “He seems really coked up.” 

Tsukishima raises an eyebrow. “And how would you know that, Kageyama?” 

“Because I know what it looks like?” 

It’s not long until Kenma appears, slipping into the booth beside Shouyou with a small, content smile. It’s only then that Tsukishima and Kageyama scramble to behave themselves, sitting up a little straighter as they welcome Kenma back.

Kenma only smirks at them. “Clearly, you two haven’t had enough to drink.” 

By some stroke of chance—or Tsukishima’s Instagram story—Kuroo appears at Shouyou’s periphery and waves brightly at the four of them. 

“Oh wow, V Table reservation,” Kuroo whistles, making his way toward them. “Very fancy.” 

Kuroo slides into the booth beside Kenma, grinning. But before he could get another word in, Kenma turns to scowl at him and says, “You can’t sit with us.” 

“Kenma, c’mon.” Kuroo pouts. “You wouldn’t kick me out. You wouldn’t do this to your childhood friend.”

“Kuro, leave.” 

“Your bestie. Your day one.” 

“I will call security.” 

“It’s just as I feared. Money and fame hath made you cruel.” Kuroo shakes his head while surreptitiously reaching a hand toward the drinks on the table. “I can’t even recognize you right now.” 

“No, I’m still not talking to you after the Kiko Mizuhara incident.” Kenma’s halfway through shoving Kuroo off the booth. 

Kuroo scoffs, “I have never heard of Kiko Mizuhara in my life.” 

"Last year it was Hirai Momo from Twice. Now Kiko Mizuhara? Really, Kuro?”

“Kenmaaaa, I said I was sorry about Momo.” Kuroo somehow miraculously swipes Kenma’s half-full glass of patron from the table and downs it in one go. “I won’t photoshop photos of you beside hot celebs and anonymously submit them to various shūkanshi as a way of promotion ever again, I promise. I’m clean now!”

Tsukishima solemnly tells Shouyou, “He’s lying. He’s high on power and he’s lying.” 

To the side, Kageyama quietly murmurs to himself, “Wait, Kozume-san didn’t date Momo from Twice?”

After another round of drinks and a long, painful conversation in which Tsukishima and Kageyama drunkenly debate the chances of Kenma being in the Yakuza (turns out they had both watched the Kodzuken Yakuza theory video on Youtube), Kenma having been silently present for the entire debate, Kenma whispers in Shouyou’s ear asking if he wants to leave.

Shouyou takes in a sharp breath, nods. He could care less that Tsukishima’s judging gaze fixes to them the entire time they slip from the booth. 

✧

Under Tokyo's sprawling sky, black and starless above so much light pollution, Kenma beside him glows. He is all shadow and skin lit briefly violet in the night. 

There's hardly anyone around them when Shouyou stops mid-step to clutch Kenma's shoulder, pushing him against a storefront wall beside them. For a moment, Kenma looks only at the ground. Shouyou can't see his face under so many layers of shadow.

Kenma finally looks up at him. The headlights of passings cars reflect brief flares off his eyes. Then he smiles, expression devoid of surprise. He smiles so wide, lips parting in what must nearly be a laugh, and all at the sight of whatever he sees on Shouyou's on face.

Unable to help himself, Shouyou dips his head in and kisses Kenma on the mouth, hand coming up behind Kenma’s head, tilting him forward to be closer. 

Kenma makes a pleased sound against Shouyou's mouth, kisses back just as hard, just as deep. He's laughing into Shouyou's mouth, he realizes belatedly. Shouyou doesn't understand what's so funny. He bites down on Kenma's lip, as if to reprimand him. 

Kenma only hisses, laughs a little more, and Shouyou pushes his shoulders harder into the concrete. Kenma doesn't complain—only sinks his fingers into Shouyou's waist, rubs a thigh between Shouyou's legs. He delights in Shouyou's sharp exhale, in the way that Shouyou grinds against the pressure.

After another breathless minute, Shouyou cranes his head back, breathing heavily. Kenma looks wild before him—eyes wide, lips swollen. His hair had come undone from where Shouyou had combed away the tie. 

"Please," Shouyou says faintly, burying his face into Kenma’s neck. "Kenma. I wanna touch you."

He sounds pathetic. He knows he does. He presses a line of kisses up Kenma’s neck, sighing.

"Shouyou," Kenma breathes back, hand coming up to card through Shouyou's locks. "We're near the Peninsula." His fingers continue their, soothing, rhythmic movement atop Shouyou's hair. "Could book a room for the night." His voice goes a little lower, reaches just a little closer. His breath is hot and ticklish against Shouyou's ear. "Wanna?"

"Yes," Shouyou breathes out. "Yes. Please." 

They stop kissing for long enough to get to the hotel. Past the glass door entrance, the chandelier-lit lobby. Artificial cherry blossoms in tall brown vases, electric and scattering soft, pink light. He doesn’t spend a second without some part of him touching Kenma, moored by the warmth of Kenma’s hand staying on the small of his back as he books a room for the night. There are other people in the lobby, he knows, some of whom might recognize him or Kenma.

He doesn’t care. He’s not larger than life. Neither is Kenma, not when they’re alone together. They’re just Shouyou and Kenma now. Shouyou and Kenma, woven together by only history and desire. 

There’s warmly-lit halls, gleaming granite floors. There’s women in silk gowns laughing into phones, sparing hardly a glance at them. Or maybe they do, Shouyou doesn’t know. He hasn’t once looked away from Kenma’s face, sharp and handsome and half in shadow. Sometimes Kenma’s eyes dart back to him, looking at him looking. His pupils are dilated, the dark of them carrying enough fondness and hunger to make him dizzy. 

Alone in the elevator, it’s Kenma, now, who presses Shouyou’s back against the metal wall, who leans in to kiss him deep and senseless. Shouyou knows he’s making all kinds of noises into Kenma’s mouth, and that Kenma’s still silently laughing at him, even through a dozen kisses.

It makes Shouyou unreasonably happy to see Kenma’s hand shake as he swipes the keycard against the slot in the door. Shouyou’s lips haven’t left Kenma’s neck once since they’d entered the elevator — they press now more urgently, as Kenma gets the door open and drags them both in. The door closes and locks behind them. Shouyou’s mouth still hasn’t left Kenma’s neck.

The room is spacious and beautiful, linen furniture and white walls, a level high above the ground. The glittering field of Tokyo stretches into the night. Shouyou's kissing Kenma against the door before either of them could turn on a light switch, and he's desperate, he knows he is, but he doesn't care. Kenma's smiling against Shouyou's mouth, and he is so calm, so still, hands going to Shouyou's waist, and Shouyou thinks all over again that he's too calm, too cool. He doesn't want Kenma cool, anymore. He wants Kenma desperate for him. 

Shouyou hooks his fingers into Kenma’s belt loops and drags him to the bed, and Kenma's nearly laughing again, saying, "Shouyou, Shouyou. What's gotten into you, baby?" 

Shouyou’s breath stutters at the name. He tries to stifle it against Kenma's neck, biting down hard enough for Kenma to cry out. Not hard enough to bruise.

"No marks," Kenma reminds him softly, a sparse, breathy thing in Shouyou's ear. As if already anticipating Shouyou's insolence - and he's not insolent, he isn't - Kenma presses a long, hard kiss to Shouyou's mouth, stealing away any protest.

But it's not enough. 

The realization is almost enough to drag a sob from Shouyou’s throat. And so he kisses harder, lets his hands fly to Kenma's blazer, tries to push it down Kenma's shoulders. But Kenma's hands fly to Shouyou's wrists, stilling him. Again, a silent wait. 

Kenma whispers, “On the bed, Shouyou." 

Shouyou does as he asks, walks backward until his legs hit the bed's soft duvet. His eyes are wide. He's breathing hard. Kenma hasn't followed him there—he stays standing by the door, eyes discerning in the almost-dark.

"Take it off for me, Shouyou."

Shouyou hardly wastes a breath before his hands are flying to the bottom of his sweatshirt, something borrowed from Kenma's closet, pulling the fabric over his head in one swift motion. Kenma watches, but he still won't move any closer. Shouyou feels the distance between them like a burn. 

Shouyou says, "Please." 

Kenma shakes his head. Instead of approaching, he gently says, "All of it."

Shouyou lets out a sharp breath. He unbuttons his jeans and pulls them down with his briefs. Kenma's still watching intensely, and the knowledge of it makes Shouyou feel hot all over. 

Shouyou wants to touch himself, but he knows he can't, not until Kenma tells him to. He pulls his jeans to his ankles and kicks them to the floor until he's naked in the dark, until he's never felt more vulnerable—on display for Kenma and for the city all around them. 

Only then does Kenma approach him, until he’s close enough to look like more than only shadow. His blazer’s on the floor. Then Kenma has a hand against Shouyou’s chest, pressing him down on the sheets. He leans forward to capture Shouyou’s mouth, then moves his lips downward, chin to neck, to collarbone, to sternum, to nipple. Shouyou moans as Kenma lightly bites there, hand going to his other nipple, twisting.

“Kenma,” Shouyou keeps whispering, light-headed and weak. “Kenma, Kenma, please.” 

He doesn’t know what he’s begging for, anymore. 

Kenma’s moves his head down Shouyou’s chest, kisses a sweet trail down his abdomen, hand falling to massage the muscle of Shouyou’s inner thigh. Shouyou watches Kenma kiss down his skin, breath stuttering when Kenma’s eyes flicker up to watch his reaction, lips kissing a hot path below his navel.

It's so much. It's nearly too much. And yet, in spite of it all—the hot gold of Kenma's eyes, the scald of his touch on Shouyou’s thighs, his stomach—the back of Shouyou's mind keeps insisting that it's not enough. It’s not. 

Shouyou takes a fistful of Kenma's hair near his scalp and tugs gently, the way he knows Kenma likes it. He can give commands without speaking, too. He's pleading with his hands, his eyes: hurry, please hurry.

And Kenma's smirking, now, against Shouyou's skin, as if he knows exactly how badly Shouyou wants him. As if he’s always known exactly.

Shouyou wants more nearness, more touch, more mouth. He wants more warmth, more soft. He disgusts himself with the breadth of his wanting. Why is it never, never enough? 

Shouyou closes his eyes, and gasps out at the heat of Kenma's mouth on his cock. 

Sometimes Kenma calls him sweet things. Baby, Shouyou, sweetheart. Baby, my baby. Mine. Sometimes Kenma calls him by other names. My bird, slut, toy, so pretty like this, Shouyou, so pretty for me. 

Other times, like this, it’s only Shouyou. Shouyou, Shouyou, Shouyou. And Shouyou responds with rapid breath and rolling hips. Kenma, Kenma on his mouth, Kenma, please.

Kenma likes it when he begs. Shouyou hardly care for shame—likes it even, likes the way that nobody else knows how to turn him this bright, this red.

So when Kenma takes Shouyou in his mouth, it's like sickness, like history—their history spun until it is nearly unrecognizable. It’s as if they'd taken every emotion they'd ever felt for one another and switched it for desire. 

Kenma doesn't know how long he's waited. 

Which is why later, when Kenma brings wet fingers to his entrance, Shouyou stops him suddenly, pulls his head toward him to kiss him on the mouth. Which is why, burning with years of impatience, Shouyou whispers, wait, wait, let me. Let me.

Kenma's gaze is dark, unreadable. He nods his head anyway, lies back against the headboard at Shouyou's request. His shirt's still on, buttons half open, city light glowing off his sparse slice of chest. The sight of him makes Shouyou ache. 

Shouyou straddles his waist, over the slacks that Kenma's kept on, and slicks his fingers with the small bottle that had tumbled to the edge of the bed. Kenma watches as Shouyou wets his fingers and brings them behind his back, watches as Shouyou leans forward and flushes, working himself open. Shouyou's eyes flutter closed as he works, the sight of Kenma watching him becoming too overwhelming, too much. 

I’m always looking at you, Shouyou remembers Kenma saying. He’s lost in this remembering when his mouth falls open, when he moans long and sweet, when his back arches, when he knows he’s blushing all the way down his chest. 

And I’m always — Kenma, I’m always — performing for you. 

When he knows he’s stretched enough, he undoes Kenma’s pants, pulls them down to his knees. He strokes Kenma’s cock, gets it wet before he slowly seats himself on it. He wants to live in the short gasp that gets pulled from Kenma’s mouth. Shouyou stops for a moment, panting, and moans when Kenma’s nails dig into his hips, when he hears Kenma groan. It’s everything, to know that Kenma is just as affected as he is. That maybe he’s not the only one between them shattered. 

By now they’ve done this so many times, but it still feels new. It still feels obscene. Shouyou is somehow both same and different as he was only a week ago, riding Kenma on the cool leather of the sofa, knees buckling, allowing himself to be used like this.

All the while, Kenma digs his nails into Shouyou’s hips, and Shouyou hisses at the sweet sting of it. He likes it like this—a little harsh, a little painful. Not too soft, not gentle. Not treated like something breakable. He won’t break. He dares Kenma with the roll of his hips, with his hands steadying themselves over the flush of Kenma’s chest. 

“Kenma,” Shouyou murmurs, a breathless sound that melts into a moan. 

Want you to want me. Want you to want me like this.

“Shouyou. You look so good.” Kenma’s gaze is half-lidded, impossibly dark. “Perfect. Perfect, so good, when you fuck yourself on me like this.”

Shouyou wants to be perfect for him. He’s never wanted to be anything less. 

So he keeps himself perfect. He’s perfect as he rides. Perfect on the court. Perfect in his arms, coiled under him, above him, needy the way Kenma likes him to be. Perfect as he stutters and comes, knees digging into the mattress, mouth falling open, Kenma’s name falling out. He rides himself through it. He feels and hears when Kenma comes too, cock twitching inside him, the sudden hitch on his breath. Kenma’s always so calm, so cool.

Kenma’s perfect as he unravels. 

Shouyou collapses onto Kenma’s chest, who laughs breathlessly as he catches him, sweaty arms coming up around him. He doesn’t want to stop touching Kenma. Shouyou shifts to rest his head on Kenma’s lap, and he sighs at the motions of Kenma’s hands in his hair. 

Later, they rub each other down with damp washcloths as they wait for the bathtub to fill with warm water. Then in water, Shouyou’s head on Kenma’s chest. Kenma’s lean arms all around him. The calm rhythm of Kenma’s heartbeat. The long curtain of his hair, wet and gold-tinged, spilling over Shouyou’s collarbones, tickling his back. The feel of Kenma everywhere. He sees nothing but the shimmering expanse of Kenma’s chest below water, of Tokyo’s dark wisteria gleaming beyond the open window. Shouyou closes his eyes and feels nothing but heat—of the water, of Kenma, solid and steady at his back. He has never felt so warm. He has never felt so safe.

Then they spend forever in the water—Shouyou doesn’t know how long, only that it feels like hours, only that it feels like heaven, and therefore will never feel long enough. 

✧

—You’re my favourite.

—Say that again.

—You’re my favourite, my favourite. My favourite. 

✧

Shouyou can’t pinpoint the mistake.

No—it must be a string of mistakes, wrong words toppling over each other like a fucked up domino spiral. Wrong word after wrong word until the entire structure’s toppled over—but there must have been a first mistake. First domino, first push, first strand of wind. 

Maybe it’s a mistake, to indulge in merlot with Kenma when he comes home offering, and to talk and laugh and make out into the night, knowing full well he’s breaking his own heart in doing so. So maybe the mistake is accepting. 

Or the mistake lies in the first of things—first glass, first kiss, first to wrap their arms around the other. Or it’s the third glass, fifth kiss of the night, eighth second of thinking this is perfect, perfect, I couldn’t ask for anything more. 

Maybe it’s a mistake, when Shouyou fiddles with his hands and averts his eyes and starts to sweat, spiked anxiety his body’s brilliant way of warning him do not say what you’re about to say next. Ignoring that warning anyway, opening his mouth anyway, fuelled in part by too much merlot and in part by too much thinking. A mistake, when Shouyou bites back the urge to bolt and instead says, “Hey, Kenma, I’ve been thinking. What if we broke off our sponsorship?”

“Good one, Shouyou.” Kenma’s scrolling through something on his phone. He doesn’t look up from the screen.

“No, I’m serious.” 

Kenma looks up. “You’re serious.”

“I am.” Shouyou frowns.

“You want to sever ties with Bouncing Ball.”

“Yeah.”

“Why?” Kenma’s eyes flash with something like hurt, a rare, rare thing, but Shouyou doesn’t linger too long on it.

It’s definitely a mistake, when Shouyou replies, “I mean, I’m a public figure now. I keep getting other offers and stuff, other sponsorships. I’m making more than enough money now. So I was thinking, I don’t really need it anymore?”

Kenma stares at Shouyou, long and hard. Then he says, quietly, “You don’t need me anymore.” 

Shouyou widens his eyes. “Oh. No. No, that’s not what I meant, not at all.” 

“Is it not what you meant? You’re saying you don’t need Bouncing Ball. You don’t need me anymore.” 

And maybe Shouyou’s being too rash, too quick to frustration, when he ends up saying, “Okay, maybe you’re right, Kenma. I don’t know. Maybe I don’t need you anymore.”

Kenma stays silent for a long, long moment, just watching Shouyou. Then he says, low and bitter, “You think I don’t know that?”

“Huh?” Shouyou blinks, surprised. “Why do you still offer your help, then?”

Kenma doesn’t try to hide his disbelief. “Why do you still accept my help? Even when supposedly,” He’s glaring, now. “You don’t need me anymore.” 

Shouyou bites his lip. He doesn’t know how to answer, and in that lack of knowing Shouyou thinks he might be starting to understand, now, how stupid all of it really sounds. 

Almost desperately, Shouyou tries, “You know what they’re saying about us, right?”

Shouyou doesn’t need to specify who they is. They as in the media. They as in everyone else, so much like a far, other world long estranged from the one that Shouyou and Kenma had built. 

“Of course I do, Shouyou.” There is no surprise on Kenma’s face.

Shouyou frowns. “Why haven’t you brought it up with me before?”

“Because,” Kenma says, scowling. “It doesn’t matter? Only we know what’s real between us.”

It’s a close-enough echo of Tsukishima’s words, earlier. So it provokes the same responding thought from Shouyou. But what if I don’t know?

Plainly, Kenma says, “This is a stupid reason for you to sever ties with Bouncing Ball.” And it breaks Shouyou’s heart a little, when Kenma continues, “I really didn’t expect you, of all people, to care so much about what other people think.” 

But it’s not about other people. It’s not as if the version of them seen by the public is the only version of them that exists. In the dark, when there is nothing but touch between him—he knows that other eyes can’t have that, no matter how omniscient or prying. In the dark, finally, they are each other’s only witness.

Shouyou is still uncertain. When all the professional terms for what they are fall away, what are they underneath it all? Shouyou and Kenma. He doesn’t know if there’s anything left of the versions of them from high school, still gangly and uncertain and as new to the world as they were to each other.

Finally, Kenma says, “Shouyou, I need you to tell me what this is really about.”

They are old to each other, now.

“I’m grateful,” starts Shouyou, voice smoothened to something careful, slow. “You know I’m so grateful to you, Kenma.”

Something in Kenma’s eye flashes, wary and dangerous, but Shouyou keeps going.

“It’s really fun here, Kenma. I have so much fun in Tokyo with you. And you do all these things for me. You let me hang on your arm at parties. You feed me. You smoke me out.” Shouyou stops. His voice lowers. “You buy me things. You fuck me.”

Kenma’s expression smoothens into something almost completely blank. It terrifies Shouyou. Kenma doesn’t try to interrupt now, only folds his arms and lets him speak. He leans against the counter and downs the rest of his wine, eyes never leaving Shouyou’s.

“I didn’t mind before, what your intentions were. It didn’t matter, either way—and the sponsorship helped us both, didn’t it?”

Kenma stares, face still blank. But his knuckles are white from the grip he has around the stem of his wine glass, empty now. There’s a dark, stray drop at the corner of Kenma’s mouth. Shouyou resists the urge to close the distance and taste it. 

“But then I realized,” Shouyou stops, starts again. “I realized everything I’ve accepted from you, done with you, for you, has been out of love. Every single thing.” 

Shouyou doesn’t know why it hurts so much when even now, Kenma’s expression stays perfect, blank. He doesn’t understand how his admission could leave Kenma so unscathed, when even just saying it aloud opens Shouyou up so completely. He feels torn raw. An undressed wound. 

“You don’t—you can’t know how much that hurts.” Shouyou’s wide-eyed, desperate. He can’t stop speaking. “To know that everything I’ve done was done out of love. But that maybe you only do the same out of some twisted boredom. Because it entertains you, to watch me come apart like that.” 

And Shouyou hates how even after everything, the memory of Kenma saying this sends a terrible, sharp heat running through the core of him.

“That’s why you fuck me, right? Because it’s so—it’s so funny to you, how desperate I am for you? How pathetic for you. How much I want you.”

Kenma’s silence feels like a ringing in his ears. Exhaustion folds over Shouyou’s head in slow, thick waves. He feels unsteady on his feet—the most unsteady he’s felt since Brazil, since the sand under his feet, that relentless wind. The newness of everything.

“But I’m scared all the time because I could disappoint you at any moment. Because none of this really belongs to me.” Shouyou’s eyes haven’t left Kenma once. “Because nothing makes me lonelier than your indifference. Am I turning you on yet, Kenma? Do you feel like a god when you make me like this?”

Instead of replying to anything, Kenma steps forward and raises a hand to Shouyou’s face. Shouyou nearly stumbles back and away, but Kenma’s fingers only land gently, gently — smoothening over the skin of his cheek, coming away wet. Shouyou blinks in surprise. When did he start crying? 

For a moment, Shouyou imagines softness in Kenma’s expression. But it’s replaced so quickly by the burn of Kenma’s hand coming up to grip his jaw, tightly enough that Shouyou can’t say a thing anymore.

When Shouyou blinks, he expects to see anger. Shouyou could take cruel, scorned, sharp—but nothing had prepared him for the heartbroken expression on Kenma’s face, the thin, brittle edges of it. As if just a sigh would make him disappear completely. 

“Is it so hard to believe that I—” Kenma’s voice breaks, and a part of Shouyou’s heart breaks along with it. “That I just believe in you? Is that so strange? Is this the only reason why you—“ Kenma releases Shouyou’s jaw and steps back, expression overcome with something horrified.

“How could you think this?” Kenma’s backing away slowly now. Shouyou has never seen Kenma look like this. “How could you think any of this? After everything I’ve done for you, is this really how you see me?”

Shouyou’s eyes go wide with sudden understanding. “Wait, Kenma—“

“You, and everyone else. You all have these fucked up theories about what goes on in my head. And not one of you,” Kenma turns away, now, so that Shouyou can no longer see his face. “Expect me to just believe in you. Not even you. Not even you, Shouyou.”

Kenma is leaving. He’s leaving. 

“You know,” Kenma says finally, and the hurt in his voice has whittled down to something completely cold. “If I just wanted entertainment and sex, I could get that from anyone. Wouldn’t have to pay them, either.” 

Kenma is gone. Shouyou stands alone amongst the ruins of the world they’d built.

✧

Sometimes Shouyou get the impulse to bring a hand to the small of Kenma’s back at the crowded centre of Shibuya crossing and let himself linger for as long as he wants. Or to take Kenma by the waist and kiss him on the mouth during one of his streams, let all his fans know he's taken for, even if it’s a lie. He wants to kiss him under daylight, screen-light, spotlight, camera flashlight. 

He wants everyone to see them, and to just as quickly glance away. Out of shame. Out of a need to escape the unbearable title of witness. Out of an inability to understand what they are, too multiple for comprehension. He wants to render the world an intruder. 

Hey, look at me, Shouyou wants to laugh in everyone’s face. Look at me, look at us, look at who I belong to. 

Except he doesn’t. Except they belong to a thousand other things before they belong to each other. 

✧

Days after the fight, Shouyou’s scheduled to arrive in Shinjuku to shoot photos for another sponsor, this time for some burgeoning underwear company that’s gotten traction on Instagram. It’s an hour of posing half-naked against a plain white backdrop under too-bright lights and the scrutiny of camera lenses. But it goes quicker than planned, apparently, according to the photographer. You’re very photogenic Hinata-senshu, anyone ever tell you that? In fact, Shouyou has been told this several times over the past month. 

Even during the shoot, Shouyou’s still thinking about Kenma. He’s hardly seen him around the house for the past few days. He knows that part of the reason is because Kenma’s been busy with a new Bouncing Ball project launch, and Shouyou’s been busy too. But the lack of him feels heavier this time. A guilty weight on Shouyou’s chest. And the few times they do see each other, passing by in the kitchen or halls or entryway, it’s awkward. Their exchanges are curt. Clinical, almost.

Shouyou misses him desperately. He wonders if it’s selfish of him, to miss Kenma as much as he does. Especially after all that Shouyou had said to him.

Somehow, it doesn’t surprise Shouyou too much to find Kuroo lingering by the refreshments table.

“Kuroo-san?” Shouyou blinks. “What are you doing here?”

“Chibi-chan!” Kuroo picks out a sprinkle-covered donut and grins at him. “Oh, you know. Work stuff.”

Shouyou squints. “Did Kenma send you here?”

“Ha! No. He’s still not talking to me.” 

“Oh. He’s not talking to me either, I think.” 

“Wait. Kenma’s not talking to you?” Kuroo’s eyebrows rise. “He’s not talking to you, Chibi-chan?” 

Shouyou frowns. “Is it really that weird?” 

“Yes,” Kuroo replies instantly. 

For some reason, a pulse of annoyance runs through Shouyou at this. Maybe he’s just tired after the shoot, or he’s tired after the other day. Tired after this whole month. 

“Oh, Chibi-chan,” Kuroo says sympathetically, shaking his head. “You must’ve really fucked up, huh. At least we have that in common now. Together on the Kodzuken blocklist. Isn’t that comforting?”

Shouyou smiles weakly. “Not really, Kuroo-san.” 

“Love you too, Chibi-chan.” Kuroo sips from a styrofoam cup of coffee. “So, why he’s mad at you?” 

“Um. I might have suggesting breaking off my sponsorship with Bouncing Ball.” 

Kuroo nearly chokes on his coffee. He immediately brings a hand to his chest, thumping his chest as coughs. Shouyou winces.

“Chibi-chan,” Kuroo says finally, voice hoarse. He puts down his coffee and plants a hand on Shouyou’s shoulder, ensuring eye contact. “Now why would you do that?”

Shouyou is no longer sure if Kuroo’s disbelieving offence is coming from Kuroo the friend or Kuroo the PR representative.

Shouyou bites his lip, eyes averting. “Okay, I might be starting to realize it was stupid of me.” 

“Stupid,” Kuroo nearly laughs. “Yeah. That’s one way to put it. Stunningly self-sabotaging, there’s another way.” 

“It made sense to me at the time!” Shouyou frowns. “It’s not that I have anything against Bouncing Ball. I just—I don’t know. It’s making things complicated.”

“Making your relationship with Kenma complicated, you mean?”

“Yeah.”

“Like, in the eyes of the public? Or in your actual private relationships?”

“I don’t know. Both? Is there a difference?” 

Kuroo gives him a long look. Then he smiles in sympathy and says, “I don’t know exactly what happened, and you don’t have to fill me in or anything. But I think you should know, Kenma can get pretty touchy about the whole sponsorship thing.” 

“Really?” Shouyou frowns. “Why’s that? Isn’t it just one of those things that he does because he can.”

“That!” Kuroo points a dramatic finger at him. “That’s exactly what I’m talking about.”

Shouyou’s brows knit. “I’m not following.” 

“Okay, it’s like. When he’s doing an interview, and the interviewer asks why’d the great Kodzuken decide to sponsor a relative nobody like you—no offence. He gives a short, vague, Kenma-esque answer like because it was interesting, you know how he is. Which makes it sound like not that big of a deal. But then this one handsome guy in the audience teases him about how he shouldn’t use other people’s lives as entertainment.” Kuroo pauses to pick up and sip his coffee.

“By ‘this one guy,’ you mean you, right, Kuroo-san?” 

“Details. Anyway, Kenma gets super sulky, you know? He’s all like, at least I’m helping my friend. Which is true. He’s helped you out a lot, hasn’t he?”

“Yeah,” Shouyou says, quietly. A flare of guilt goes through him again. “He has. More than I deserve, probably.” 

Kuroo shakes his head, chastising. “Definitely don’t say that around him. Because that would make him even more mad to hear, and from anybody’s mouth, least of all yours.” 

With a pang, Shouyou thinks of Kenma saying not even you. Not even you, Shouyou.

“Anyway,” Kuroo continues. “All of this is to say, don’t underestimate how seriously Kenma takes the whole sponsorship thing. He genuinely doesn’t care what people think of him anymore, when it comes to most things. Maybe it’s ironic that it took becoming famous to get to that point. But he does care about the ways in which his intentions get construed, or misconstrued, especially when it comes to you, Chibi-chan.” 

It’s definitely guilt, now, that rushes through Shouyou’s stomach. But Shouyou hums and nods his head and lets Kuroo’s words sink in. “I think,” Shouyou pauses, frowns. “I think I really messed up this time.” 

“Don’t worry, Chibi-chan.” Kuroo pats Shouyou on the back, smiling softly. “Take it from someone who Kenma is also currently mad at for entirely different reasons. Just apologize first. He’ll get over it eventually.”

“Didn’t you apologize to him a bunch already, Kuroo-san?”

“Like I said. He’ll get over it eventually.” 

“Ah.” 

“Anyway, I’ve got a client I’m meeting with soon.” Kuroo says after checking his watch. “But nice seeing you, Chibi-chan. And good luck with Kenma.” 

“You too. I think you’ll need the luck more,” Shouyou admits, but not unkindly. Then he remembers something else and visibly brightens. “By the way, Kuroo-san! Do you think they’ll let me bring a slice of that apple pie home?” 

Shouyou points at the corner of the refreshments table where the pie in question sits in its tin, still untouched. He’s been eyeing it ever since coming in the studio, and is secretly relieved that nobody else seems all that interested in it. Kuroo is quiet for a moment. 

“Hinata,” Kuroo finally says. He studies Shouyou closely, but the smile he wears is gentle. “You really love him, don’t you.” 

Shouyou doesn’t respond to this. He doesn’t know how to. 

✧

To the side of Omotesandō, two animated women in floral print dresses talk and laugh and touch each other’s shoulders, and it takes Shouyou a moment to realize that they are in love. Shouyou watches the couple walk down the tree-lined avenue, hands folded together, and smiles softly to himself. It could have been like that. Somewhere else, he could have had that. 

Under the shade of the zelkova trees, Shouyou imagines an invisible, parallel world which might hover, suspended, a centimetre above him. Tsukishima’s drunkenly rambled on about the physics behind multiverse theory during parties in the past, and Shouyou hadn’t understood the science at all, but he thought the gist of it oddly romantic. 

In his mind’s eye Shouyou wakes to a burning Brazilian sun, which here will finally mean the opposite of loneliness, cheek pressed to the warmth of a familiar back. In this world, he trails kisses up a spine he can navigate with eyes shut, so much like a river he’s cartographed a thousand times over, and raises a hand to card through long, spilled hair. Kenma will wake and turn and laugh, looking at Shouyou with a transparent, bright-eyed affection that Shouyou will never misinterpret. And Shouyou will laugh along with him and roll into his arms and whisper near his ear—love, my love, I had the weirdest dream. 

This world’s Kenma buries his face in the fire of Shouyou’s hair and asks what his dream was about. The dream was about us, Kenma, can you believe it? But we weren’t like this, we were strangers, and I saw your face only once before you went away on a boat, and miles of water cut between us. Baby, I was stranded. I no longer knew you, but I never miss you any less, not even in my dreams.

Months will pass. Years will pass, a decade’s worth of perfect mornings where they rise with the sun and brew sweet coffee, and cut into pão doce fresh from the neighbour padaria, and twirl each other at the heart of a pale yellow kitchen to old Connie Francis or Nina Simone. A just-woken Miso will strut in to gaze at them, eyes the shade of gold softened by a history of being in love, and Shouyou will look up from those eyes and find the same gold mirrored on Kenma’s face. 

At night this Kenma will press his forehead against Shouyou’s to whisper I never want to be without you, as if it is a secret, and Shouyou will tilt forward to find Kenma’s mouth in the dark, and kiss him long and hard before he reels away again and tells him back, trembling, I never want to be without you again.

When Shouyou falls asleep that night, he doesn’t dream of Kenma; he dreams of nothing at all. It’s as if Kenma won’t let Shouyou have him, not even in his dreams. 

✧

It’s Shouyou’s birthday. He hadn’t actually remembered it was his birthday until he’d groggily opened his phone in the morning to a slew of notifications. He’d replied to them while eating breakfast, texts from Tsukishima, Kageyama, and his new teammates in the MSBY Black Jackals, ones he’d already expected. But there were also ones from old teammates and rivals, Sugawara and Daichi and Tanaka. Hoshiumi and Aone and Oikawa. There was one from Kuroo, too.

There wasn’t one from Kenma. He’d left the house before Shouyou could wake. 

It hurt a lot more than he thought it would. But Shouyou only shook his head, slapped his hands over his face, and told himself he’d make it a good day. He knew it would be, because later he’d be seeing the best people he could ask for. 

It’s evening when Shouyou opens the door to see Yachi, who jumps up and wraps her arms around Shouyou’s neck.

“Hinata, happy birthday!” Yachi’s holding a gift bag behind Shouyou’s neck, and whatever’s in it knocks against his back. Shouyou laughs and hugs her back just as tightly, tighter, and any remnant of his bad mood from earlier dissipates easily. His hand comes up to gently hold the back of her head, her hair tied up into a high ponytail. “I’m taking you hostage, by the way.” 

Yachi drives Shouyou to a crowded part of Aoyama district, and takes him by the hand to a matte black building framed by glowing blue neon. Blue Note Jazz Club. The entrance is shaded by an awning built to resemble the top of a grand piano. 

“Whoah,” Shouyou says, looking in awe up at the tiny silhouettes of people playing jazz instruments overtop the “lid” of the grand piano awning. He’s never been here before.

It’s dark inside the lobby, but Shouyou allows himself to be led by Yachi, still holding his hand, up a staircase—the walls are decorated with photos of famous Jazz musicians throughout history—and to a larger venue space. When Shouyou steps in, he’s met by a great crowd of voices. 

“Happy birthday, Shouyou!” 

It’s not only Kageyama and Tsukishima and Yamaguchi, but also his teammates from the Jackals — Atsumu and Sakusa and Bokuto. And to his greater shock, there’s Suga and Asahi and Daichi, the three of them standing to the side, grinning at him. Not only them. More. All their voices coalesce into one wide, gorgeous voice, which crashes over Shouyou now like a great wave of love. 

Shouyou rushes into the wave with arms wide open, wanting some part of him to touch everybody in this room. He’s laughing in disbelief and sheer affection, repeating thank you, thank you into everyone’s ear like a breathless mantra. Shouyou feels a little in love with all of them. 

It’s magical. There’s no other word to describe this night. It’s a beautiful venue, all dark wood and leather softened by warm golden lamps, and then a royal blue veil of light cast over everything. And later there will be dancing, and good food, and conversations with all the best people he could hope to see on this night. 

Almost all. In spite of himself, Shouyou scans the space and makes his careful way around, sighing in quiet frustration when he still cannot find him. 

But to Shouyou’s surprise, he finds Tsukishima and Kageyama speaking with a just-arrived Kunimi by the bar. He’s about to go up and greet Kunimi, but something about the sight of them makes him stop in his tracks. They look so private, heads bowed low and close together, all three of them touching in some way—Tsukishima’s arm pressed flush to Kageyama’s, Kunimi’s light grip on Tsukishima’s wrist, Kageyama’s hand at the small of Kunimi’s back. Their gazes on each other are gentle. Shouyou glances away from them, feeling oddly like an intruder at his own surprise birthday party.

There’s a woman on stage who makes her ways to the front of the jazz band, hair tied in a bun, all-black dress interrupted by glitter. She curls her hands around the mic on the stand and softly sways her hips to the music, sends a wink and a smile in the audience’s direction. 

It’s the start of a new song, the opening notes faintly familiar to Shouyou. Then the woman opens her mouth and begins to sing, in Japanese, the cover a Nina Simone song. Don’t try to blow out the sun for me, baby. 

Later in a booth with Kageyama and Tsukishima, Hinata gets a sudden epiphany and says, “Wait a minute. Isn’t Blue Note a really high end venue? How’d you get the money to book it?”

“Oh.” Kageyama’s face instantly shutters blank. Tsukishima shoots him a warning look. “Well we just. Had money lying around, you know. 

“Oh?” Shouyou raises his eyebrows. “Really?”

“Okay, maybe we had some help. Just some. Just a little.” 

“Uh huh.” Shouyou’s stomach is already flipping. 

“But I can tell you the venue was definitely not paid for by a CEO or a Youtuber or a stock trader, by the way,” Kageyama says, eye twitching a little. “Definitely nobody with those professions. And it definitely wasn’t their idea, either.”

Shouyou stares a second longer. He thinks his heart might beat out of his chest. “Kenma paid for the venue.”

“Psh! What! Kozume-san?” Kageyama chokes out an awkward laugh. “No? Of course not? Why would he pay for it? Hahahaha. Good one, Hinata.” 

Tsukishima sighs deeply. 

It’s almost midnight when Kageyama leads Shouyou to the lower floor of the jazz club, admitting that they had one more birthday surprise lined up for the night. There’s a gentle smile on his face as he says it. 

By this point Shouyou is about 90% certain he knows what—or who—this last “surprise” is, but it doesn’t stop the soft gasp from leaving his chest when he sees him. Kenma sits on a leather couch with his arms crossed, handsome and soft-edged under a cluster of warm light. Faint jazz music trickles down from upstairs, but in this moment it could be sound heard from an entirely other country. 

Then Kenma looks up at him and Shouyou loses his breath. Kageyama had already gone, Shouyou doesn’t know when. Kenma stands from the couch and slowly draws toward him, as if almost afraid that Shouyou’s only a mirage. 

“Shouyou,” Kenma says, voice so quiet, always quiet. “Happy birthday.”

✧

“This is definitely the most insane birthday I’ve ever had,” Shouyou says under his breath. Kenma hears it, though, and laughs at him. The sound makes Shouyou’s heart ache. He’d missed making him laugh.

“You ever been in one of these?”

“Obviously not.” Shouyou’s playing with the buttons on the side of his seat, trying to figure out to recline it. When he finally gets it, he makes a noise of triumph. “Ahhhh, so cool!”

From Minato, Kenma had driven Shouyou to the back of Haneda airport, where a private plane and a pilot had just been casually waiting, all ready to fly. Shouyou didn’t even know Kenma owned a private plane. 

But it’s beautiful inside, decked with white leather passenger seats and pale wood details. There’s enough space between Shouyou’s seat and Kenma’s in front of him to set up a table, currently folded against the walls of the plane. Beyond the round plane windows, there is only opaque black. 

Shouyou is still drinking in the sight and feel and sound of everything. He doesn’t try to hide his awe, has never felt the impulse to. He loves knowing Kenma, loves that knowing him has always meant a perpetual exposure to newness.

Kenma watches Shouyou from the seat across from him, expression fond. 

But then Shouyou remembers what Kuroo said at the shoot, and the guilt comes rolling back. He says, instantly, “I’m sorry, Kenma.” 

In that moment, Kenma’s eyes flicker with something so sad and all Shouyou wants to do is make it disappear. “I didn’t mean it. I really, really didn’t mean it. Of course I don’t want to cut off ties with Bouncing Ball.”

“Well, that’s good,” Kenma murmurs, eyes fluttering shut. “Explaining that to the public would’ve been a pain.”

Shouyou laughs weakly then, and he wants to take Kenma’s hands in his own. “I’ve been having lots of stupid thoughts lately.”

“Oh, I definitely know that.”

Shouyou thinks of saying I think you make me more stupid, actually. Everything I feel for you fills up my whole brain. It’s like there’s no room for anything else.

“Kenma,” Shouyou says, giving him a mock-stern look. “Like, I’ve been really, really stupid. You don’t even know—when I was in Osaka, and I’d gotten all these new sponsorships, I kind of—okay, not all of me, but a tiny, tiny part of me-wanted you to make a bigger deal out of it.” Shouyou gives a self deprecating little laugh, face burning hot. 

“Isn’t that weird? I wanted you to, I don’t know. Tell me the Bouncing Ball sponsorship was more important than all those other ones. Tell me it’s the most important, ‘cause it’s my first. But more than that—it’s most important, because it’s you.” Shouyou’s face softens, and he watches Kenma’s slowly soften in turn. “It’s you, Kenma.”

Kenma smiles, a small thing. “That so?”

“Yep!” Shouyou grins now, and it’s so easy like this, so nice like this, smiling and laughing and talking with Kenma in the middle of the sky. Looming high above earth, above everyone else—because they’ve never been anything smaller than larger than life. Because what they have together is too multiple for comprehension. “It’s weird, but I think it came from the same logic that led to me trying to cut off the sponsorship, too.”

Kenma asks, “And what logic would that be?” 

Shouyou’s silent for a moment, thinking. Then he says, “I’m sorry for being so lost in my own emotions that I ended up misreading yours.” 

Kenma startles, eyes widening. And it still feels so good, to surprise Kenma like that. To evoke emotion from him, any emotion.

Shouyou continues, “I’m sorry for assuming your intentions without talking to you first. And for trying to cut off the sponsorship, and for seeming ungrateful.”

“Shouyou,” Kenma starts, but Shouyou’s shaking his head. He still has more to apologize for, and saying it all aloud is making everything start to untangle and clear up inside his own head. 

Shouyou wants to be near Kenma. He wants to touch him. Frowning, he gets up from his seat, sits in the one next to Kenma’s. He rests his hands on the armchair between them as he goes on, face earnest, open. He’s missed getting to see Kenma’s face this close.

“And when I said I didn’t need you,” Shouyou starts again, voice going hushed. “What I should’ve really said was, that doesn’t mean I don’t want to stay with you. I want to stay with you — not because I need you. It’s because I want to. And you know, when I want something, I always want it so desperately.” 

Kenma smiles at this, nods but keeps silent. 

“I’ll end up doing anything to have it. Will do anything to have—you,” Shouyou admits, and it comes out almost as a sigh. “Even if it’s not the right thing, sometimes. Because you know,” Shouyou laughs, scratches the back of his head. “Sometimes the ideas I get are stupid. And I only get further away from what I want. But then I learn, I go back. I’m learning now, the way I’m always learning with you.”

Kenma reaches out a hand then to cup Shouyou’s cheek, gently, and Shouyou leans into it. His touch dislodges an exhale buried deep inside his chest.

“I never meant to get further from you. That’s the last thing I ever want. So instead of saying all those things I said the other day,” Shouyou says, and he takes a breath. He makes sure to catch Kenma’s eye. “I should’ve just told you the truth. In the plainest possible way.”

Softly, Kenma asks, “And what truth would that be.”

Shouyou says, “I love you. That’s what I meant. That’s what I always meant. You didn’t pay me for that, Kenma.” 

Shouyou watches the first tear fall from Kenma’s eye, painting a quiet, thin river down the curve of his cheek. Thoughtlessly, Shouyou raises a hand to wipe it with his thumb. When Kenma’s eyes flutter shut, Shouyou leans in to kiss the thin skin over his eyelid, and whispers I’m sorry, I’m sorry into the dark of Kenma’s hair. 

They stay like that for a while, holding each other in the quiet middle of the sky. 

✧

And later—

“Where are we going, by the way?” 

“That’s a surprise.”

Shouyou pouts. He’s straddling Kenma’s hips now, having slowly crawled away from his own seat a while ago. “Aww, Kenma.” 

“Patience, Shouyou. It’s only a three hour flight.” 

“Oh?” Shouyou purses his lips. Then his face brightens, struck with sudden mischief. “Ohhhh. That’s more than enough time to do things don’t you think?” Shouyou grins, and rolls his hips down once on Kenma’s lap.

And Kenma laughs, and it’s bright and loud and beautiful. “Do you ever calm down?”

“Hmmmm, I don’t see you complaining.” Shouyou leans in and says, “Is this safe, by the way?” 

Kenma shrugs, and kisses him harder. Shouyou feels molten. 

Against his mouth Kenma murmurs, over and over again, “Shouyou, happy birthday. Happy birthday, Shouyou.”

✧

When Shouyou steps out of the plane, he finds himself on the edge of Kohama Island.

“Kenma,” Shouyou nearly whispers, looking up at the wide, black sky. “You took me to Okinawa.” 

“Yeah,” Kenma says, falling into step beside him. He says it so casually, like he’d given Shouyou a perfectly normal present for his birthday, and not a private plane ride to a beautiful, secluded island.

“You got me Okinawa for my birthday.” Shouyou starts to laugh, disbelieving. “God, Kenma, you’re insane. You’re gonna ruin all birthday presents for me, forever, you know that?”

Kenma only smiles. “Good,” he says, before he brings a gentle hand to Shouyou’s jaw and kisses him on the mouth. 

Kenma’s booked three nights at an ocean-facing royal suite in Risonare Kohama, a secluded luxury resort. It’s the largest room they offer, complete with its own private pool and a jetted bathtubs. White walls and dark wood, Spanish roofs and bamboo blinds. A terrace overlooking the lagoon.

Shouyou enters the suite first, and gasps. On the centre coffee table, there’s a mango charlotte cake surrounded by subtropical floral arrangements—hibiscus, azaleas, violet iris. All of this, already waiting for him. 

They’re beautiful. Shouyou tells Kenma so, who nods, but his eyes haven’t left Shouyou once, still drinking in the full, happy sight of him.

“More cake?” Shouyou grins and licks his lips. He’s so full of affection he thinks he might burst from it. “Oh, good, I got kind of hungry after the plane ride.” 

Four days, three nights. It doesn’t feel like Kenma’s gotten him a plane ride, or a resort reservation, or a late June island trip for his birthday—it feels like he’s bought him time. Time with him, specifically. 

Tokyo was all quickness, all hurry. Standing still for a moment had meant getting left behind. So much of the time he’d spent with with Kenma had felt urgent, a rush of speed fuelled by impulse because any time thinking just meant more time lost. They have always been a horizon for one another, always the last light at the end of the world. Always beckoning each other’s chase. But that meant love born from the flotsam of brevity. That meant that they were always, at once, drawing too fast toward and too fast away from one another.

But time moves slow here, like honey. 

There’s no morning, no afternoon, no evening—only Kenma, sitting on red pillows with a book in the floating lounge. Only the two of them cart-wheeling down a white phantom island strip, surrounded on either side by glass plates of water. Only gliding with manta rays amid coral reefs, napping to the sound of waves on parasol-shaded deck chairs. Only falling into sand and making out past midnight, faces awash in the glow of scattered glass lanterns.

They climb a shaded wooden staircase to the summit of Ufudake, the island’s only standing mountain, and kiss as the sky bleeds the colour of warning. They eat Rafute stewed in brown sugar, seafood carpaccio mixed with Mozuku seaweed. They rent bikes and ride down a long, straight road bordered by unending fields of sugarcane, stopping a few times to introduce themselves to shaggy, free-roaming goats. Hello goat. My name is Hinata Shouyou, and I am in love, I am in love.

They fuck on the daybed of their suite, its woven armchairs, the wooden deck overseeing the ocean, in the shadow of the white parasol that sits near the edge of their pool. They kiss in the sand, the sea, the sky. Everywhere, everywhere. They are each other’s only witness. Only two in the world.

There is nothing but pale gold and saltwater for miles.

Four days, three nights. On their last morning, the two of them sit alone in the floating lounge to watch the sun come up and lighten the sky. Theirs are the only voices for miles, carried by wind to later sound in other countries.

Shouyou says, voice still dreamy with disbelief, “It’s almost like I’m in Brazil again.”

Kenma looks at him, surprised. “Really?”

“Hmmm. No, no not really.” Shouyou grins, wide and sincere. “It’s better ‘cause you’re here. I can’t believe you gave me actual paradise for my birthday.”

“I could’ve brought you here anyway. Birthday or not.”

“You’re crazy,” Shouyou laughs, and laughs some more. He tucks his face in the shadow of Kenma’s jaw. “Kenma. You must really love me, huh?”

Kenma turns to kiss the laughter off his mouth, deliberate and slow and sweet. Then he whispers against Shouyou’s lips, quiet enough that no one but Shouyou can hear it.

The water here is rumoured to teem with secret mermaids. Shouyou watches Kenma let his hair whip free and flag-like in the breeze, surrounded on all sides by pale gold and saltwater, and thinks yes, yes, they do exist here.

✧

‘Why would I stay if I don’t need you.’ That’s what you’re thinking, right? Truth is I burn so bright for your attention. I hardly know why. It’s been like this for so long that I no longer think of it. It’s like eating. It’s like the fact of my hand slicing through air. It’s reflex. It’s hopeless. Being near you is like that. You laugh and something in me resets. ‘Need’ is such a useless word, don’t you think, Kenma, in the face of all that? 

✧

On the plane ride back Tokyo, Shouyou sits up straight and turns to Kenma beside him in an almost frantic pivot. 

“Kenma,” Shouyou says, nervous. “Just to confirm. We’re like, exclusive right?” 

“Oh?” Kenma raises an eyebrow. “Huh. I dunno. I haven’t really thought about it.” 

Kenma laughs at Shouyou’s crestfallen expression, leans in, and easily dissolves his frown with kisses. Lifting a gentle finger to Shouyou’s cheek, Kenma whispers, “Just teasing. I’m all yours, Shouyou.” 

✧

They’re in Brazil the next time Shouyou kisses Kenma in front of an ocean, knee-deep in the secluded, green waters of Cachadaço beach.

That night, Shouyou dreams of Kenma. He later wakes to Kenma, too.