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Hinata’s smile darkens and dies when Tobio calls him ‘dumbass’ one time too much. Their teammates try to warn him, whisper something behind raised hands, and Tobio remembers – fuck, Hinata just failed a test, his sister’s sick, family problems and other shit – but he still yelled at him for a missed spike. 

“It’s fine,” Hinata says during break, choking on the water he swallows too quickly, water on his neck and too much salt on his cheeks. 

“I didn’t mean it,” Tobio says. He wipes Hinata’s face with his thumbs, too clumsy and a bit awkward, but the touch of his forehead against Hinata’s is as gentle as someone like him can manage. “You’re good the way you are.” 

And Hinata stares, the sunlight caught in his amber eyes becoming bright again, as warmth spreads over his mouth. He nods, wild and enthusiastic, and Tobio feels a small hand squeeze his own before Hinata bolts onto the field again, shouting: “Toss to me, Kageyama!” 

It’s the night of his last chance to dance with Iwa, but Tooru breaks his promise. The ballroom is bursting with silk and dark suits, pastel-soft dresses and black, elegant gowns everywhere. It’s midnight when everyone cheers and glasses touch with silvery chinks when Tooru whirls around, laughing, eyes searching for Iwa to press his champagne flute against Iwa’s, and that’s when he sees it. The girls that kisses Iwa is pretty, gorgeous even with her long, golden lashes and a pink mouth that shines in the dim ballroom light. 

Tooru gently sets his glass onto a table. Iwa opens his eyes, sees him, pushes the girl away, his mouth falling open in a blur of Tooru’s last name, ‘no, wait, Oika – Tooru!’ 

He runs. Her dress was beautiful, she was beautiful, Iwa deserves only the best and that’s what he’s never been, never enough, not a girl and not anything at all. 

Tooru cries alone. Maybe it’s stupid to go to the old basketball field behind the school, where they used to practice, but he still does. His fingers find the sideline where he slumps down, the dirty sand where he once stepped into a shard of glass and cried so hard that his vision blurred. How Iwa looked so horrified and scared that he made Tooru promise something – “don’t you ever cry again, understood? I won’t let you cry again.” 

“Oikawa.” And of course, he wipes his tears, gets his stupid ass up and turns around, smile beaming as always, oh he wears it perfect like a mask with bloody war paint. “Iwa-chan, there you are, haha, I bet you were really busy with – “ 

“You promised.” Tooru’s broken laughter dies out. Iwa steps forward, fast, corners him against the metal fence, and Tooru’s always been weak to him, his everything. “What? Iwa, I don’t – “ 
“That you wouldn’t cry again, idiot. You promised me that.” There’s a warm thumb touching his cheek, catching his tears with the skin he’s grown to love more than his own soul. 

“Promise me again. Once more,” Iwa says, breath rough against Tooru’s shaking mouth. “That I won’t taste salt on your lips ever again.” 

And when Iwa pulls him close to his heart, the softness of his mouth melting into Tooru’s sobs, Tooru thinks that he can promise it for real, this time. 

The word “foster” almost sounds like forest, and Tobio loves forests almost as much as he loves thinking about what having a friend would be like. 

That’s why he isn’t scared when a man and a woman pick him up from that strange place one day and say something about “foster parents”. The new house is clean and warm, and Tobio’s eyes are wide when he sees the soft bed in a room that the woman says belongs to him. Late at night, when he can’t sleep because it’s really dark, he hears them say his name, whispered like it’s a secret. They say more things. “what drugs do to people, poor child” – and then the woman says a black, black word. It sounds like “a-b-lose” without the l, and Tobio doesn’t like it. He pulls the covers over his head and wonders when he’s going to go back to his mama, and if she’s going to be awake again then from her deep, kinda cold sleep, and maybe she’ll even cook him rice pudding. 

Years later, he’s not dumb anymore. Karasuno is a family without fitting the word even remotely, a team where he’s not the only one with feathers missing from his wings. They’re a team, and Kageyama is the one who sharpens their claws and levels all mountains in their way into dust. 

And then, there’s Hinata, and Kageyama finds out that he doesn’t need to fly when he can watch how Hinata rises in an arc of gold, a burst of hope surrounding him like a halo that Kageyama knows he’s lost a long time ago. 

It’s Hinata who’s one out of a million. He’s the soft “can I?” whispered into his ear, every time without laughing, before leaning his forehead against Kageyama’s shoulder after Kageyama chokes out a broken “y-yeah, god yes”. He’s the fingers barely brushing over Kageyama’s wrist, never gripping, only lingering with a breathtaking gentleness that Kageyama, that Tobio thought he would never deserve.