Chapter Text
The first bouquet appears a week after their first practice match (against Aoba Johsai, thanks to the mended relationship between Karasuno’s official setter and Seijoh’s newly appointed, spikey-haired captain), not even a month into their third year. It shows up in Hinata’s locker, the flowers a little wilted and their leaves a bit crunched, but the smile that lights up the boy’s face is so ridiculously wide that the bent stems and bruised petals don’t matter. His team mates cheer when they see it, half the first years’ eyes big and round, the other half throwing their senpai thumbs up and matching smirks. The second years smile and cheer, while their captain just shoves his glasses up higher and sniffs. Hinata is flustered at the particular brand of attention, but glows nonetheless. The only one who doesn’t really react is Kageyama, standing off to the side as he yanks his kneepads off and tosses them into his bag.
“They’re just flowers, I don’t see the big deal,” is his response when Hinata pokes at him, receiving a pout from the shrimpy ace and an indignant whine.
To Hinata, they aren’t just flowers. He’s received a grand total of zero confessions in his life, compared to Kageyama’s three in the first month of their third year alone! (Hinata regrets coaching Kageyama on his smile big time.) He knows it probably has something to do with the fact he’s always been forgetful at looking at girls, he’s always been too familiar with them, not how boys normally are. He had a big time crush on Suga-san in first year (who didn’t?) and Kageyama had teased him endlessly for it, but he knows… confessions don’t really come around to guys like him.
But those flowers…
They are pretty obviously confession flowers, what with the little index card tied to one of the ribbons reading: I really like your smile. The words make Hinata’s stomach do flip-flops, and his heart won’t stop fluttering. Of course, silently, and only to himself, he wishes that there was a certain teammate’s name signed, but… the printed lettering is generic type, and there is no hand writing to go off of.
And the bouquet…
The whole thing is bound up with white tissue paper, all crisp and smelling the way new paper does, bunching at the base of the bouquet where it is tied with ten pale green ribbons. It’s bigger than his face, too, all blues and gold and white. The darker blue flowers all have round petals that are softer than velvet when Hinata brushes his nose against them. The lighter ones are fluttery and golden in the center, with no individual petals, spiraled lines twirling toward the edges, their curing vines draping over the paper. The white flowers are little, puffy clouds of tiny stars, and the golden are larger stars, their leaves pointy and sharp. It is… the perfect bouquet, to Hinata. He cradles it to his chest on his way home, ignoring Kageyama’s raised eyebrow.
Exactly a week later, he finds an identical bouquet found in the exact same place, only this time right before school instead of after evening practice. This time, it’s fresher, and the note is in silver hand writing. The hand writing looks… familiar… but it is over exaggerated and formal, and Hinata can’t figure out where he has seen it before.
This time, the note reads: I would be happy to watch you fly forever.
And, okay, that is really sweet. It makes Hinata daydream in class, doodling crappy flower doodles on the edges of his English worksheet. Unfortunately, he receives a sharp pencil jab to the back from his desk neighbor when he fails to even react to the teacher questioning him.
The thing is, Hinata’s torn between living his own personal fantasies for a moment and listening to the voice of reason that shows up every now and then in his head. Because while he wants so badly for those flowers to be from the grumpy setter he calls his best friend, he knows that isn’t exactly an option. Hinata knows Kageyama, and Kageyama definitely doesn’t have a crush on him, no matter how much Hinata dreams about it (which was a lot.)
Hinata keeps the notecards in his school bag, pulling them out in class and at lunch to gaze at them with a giddy grin, even if it means he has to avoid a jab to the head from Kageyama. Stupid Bakageyama is just jealous of Hinata’s nice presents!
The third bouquet is a week later, with the note reading: I enjoyed silence until I met you. It makes him want to get all teary for a moment. Does this person know how self conscious his chatter makes him sometimes, or are they just… nice?
And then a fourth. You’ll make it to the top of the world one day. (Tadashi oohs at that one, because they’ve talked about their dreams on their sleepovers, and that… well. The top of the world? Hinata would sell his soul to get there.)
A fifth. You’ve always been an ace in my eyes. (The entire damn team starts to get suspicious at that one, because that’s obvious volleyball jargon that’s implying a long time friendship, or at least acquaintanceship, but nobody on the team looks guilty, so maybe the girls’ team?)
Sixth. Your existence makes me believe in angels. (Hinata can’t even show that one to anyone, but he texts Kenma about it later, and Kenma says they must really like Hinata. Hinata blushes all day long.)
Seventh. You are the last minute winning spike at Nationals. (That’s even more volleyball related, but there were people to watch them at Nationals, and first year had been his spike that won Karasuno’s name back among the stars.)
Eighth. I never miss the sun in winter, thanks to you. (Hinata doodles cartoon suns and snowflakes and daydreams about having glowing hair for the rest of the day because of those words.)
The ninth bouquet’s notecard reads: I want to be the one to stand by your side forever. (It makes him think of the words invincible, and a promise that likely only he remembers.)
The day ninth bouquet that appears is the one that marks the shift in so many things, and the beginning of the two months that neither Hinata nor Kageyama will ever look back upon with anything but cringing regret.
Because the day Hinata receives the ninth bouquet is the day he receives his first in person confession.
Hinata and Kageyama are bickering about Interhigh when it happens (they’d lost to Seijoh, which brought back painful memories and a night of sleeping on Kageyama’s room floor, back to back as they pretended not to cry. They ended up curled around each other by morning.) They’re shoulder to shoulder under Hinata’s umbrella to hide from the August morning rain. But when they reach the gym, there’s a familiar blond haired boy standing there, looking completely at ease and smiling in a way that makes Hinata a little curious and a little confused. He knows him, they’re in homeroom class together, and they even get along pretty well. (Sora also caught him with his shirt off in the clubroom on the day Kageyama had been sick last year, and he kept that whole thing a secret, so Hinata likes him. He’s suspicious of him, because he’s sort of like the Great King and that guy is Hinata’s enemy big time, but he likes him.)
“Hiya Sora-kun!” Hinata greets him with a smile and a wave, to which Sora’s easy smile grows even wider.
“Hey there, Shouyou. I was hoping to catch you before practice, looks like I’m in luck!” There is a lilting cadence to Sora’s voice that makes Hinata feel like his words are rehearsed to perfection. He’s a little jealous, because he still stutters sometimes.
“What’re you doi–”
“What do you want with Hinata.”
Hinata jumps at the tone of Kageyama’s voice, because he knows that tone, he’s heard it a million times. It’s the tone used against him in junior high, the one used when people try intimidating them at matches, the one he even used on a rival team when they cornered one of the first years and he had started to cry.
“I just wanted to borrow him for a few minutes.”
Hinata can literally feel Kageyama’s aura darken and turn into that scary cloud, and he’s genuinely confused how Sora isn’t running for the hills. Hinata has been the target of the Kageyama glare about a million and three times, he knows what it is like.
“You have practice, I won’t keep you long!” Sora promises, and the way he’s smiling in an almost sheepish way, warm and a light, and it’s lost the rehearsed feel.
“Kageyama, I’ll be just a sec! Tell Tadashi I’m busy, kay? He’ll tell Tsukki and if Tadashi is telling him, Tsukki won’t be annoyed!” Hinata says to soothe his seething partner, one hand on Kageyama’s arm as he gently pushes him to the gym door, sticking his head in briefly to say to Haruto and Minoru as the second years tie their shoes by the door. “Heya, Noru, could you make sure Kageyama goes to talk to Tadashi-kun?” he politely ignores Kageyama squawk of indigence as he’s suddenly being escorted by his kouhai, and Hinata has to laugh as he watches Minoru bodily shove Kageyama along, Haruto nervously following behind and wringing his hands. But finally he can close the door, and he’s free to turn around and give his full attention to Sora.
“Kageyama-kun is as scary as I remember, then!”
Hinata laughs at that, because he’s in good spirits, and Sora’s smile is really, really attractive. “Heh, yep! Well, he looks scary, but he’s really just a big dork!”
“I’m sure he is,” Sora laughs again, but then his laugh dies down and he’s stepping close to Hinata, his smile falling into something that Hinata wants to call a smirk. “But I’m not here to talk about your setter, I’m here to talk about you.”
Hinata is not a complete idiot. He’s a little oblivious, yes, and he does stupid stuff like put his shoes on the wrong foot, circle all the answers on a test off-set by one, sleep in his binder, or even drink juice about a decade past the expiration date. He’s a little dumb sometimes, earning the title dumbass from Kageyama, but he knows that the smiley-smirk-thing on Sora’s face is definitely the kind of thing that turns into flirting.
So he stutters a bit when he says, “A-are we now? And why are we talking about me?” He’s got his back pressed up against the gym door now, his eyes big and his heart doing some sort of warm up routine that consists of a million erratic jumps in his chest cavity.
“I’ve seen how you watch Kageyama-kun,” Sora purrs, and now he’s so close that Hinata can see that his left eye is greener than his right one, which is much closer to ocean blue. “And last year, I saw how flustered you were in the moments we were alone.”
“And what does that have to do with catching me before practice?” Hinata’s breath has caught in his chest now, and there’s the memory of the smell of blue flowers swirling through his head. Could this be…? Could it have been Sora who gave him those flowers? Hinata knows he went to their official matches, and he’s commented on Hinata’s playing before. He even let Hinata ramble on about volleyball during the few times they hung out outside of class. So…
“Shouyou, will you go on a date with me?”
Hinata wants to run. Or hide. Or jump in the air and scream. Instead–
“Okay!”