four times hinata and

When it happens, it’s not romantic. Things between them have never been romantic, after all. They’re too stupid for that.

i.

Trainings some days are good. Some days, Hinata walks out of the gym with bruised palms and sore legs, but even so, he manages to feel like he’s floating, high on the knowledge that he’s improving, that he’s doing things right, that he’s pulling his weight in this team—this team that means so much to him, now, and the hours they spend together on the court are more than enough to fill his chest with so much sweet satisfaction that it makes all the sweat and the pain and the bruises disappear.

There are other days, though, that go not so well. Hinata knows that it’s only natural, that without the lows, the highs wouldn’t be highs, but even so—even so it still hurts when an hour passes without him landing as many hits as he’d like to, when he tries, dammit, he tries but he’s still not getting it right.

His teammates are kind, but that doesn’t make it hurt any less. Those days, Hinata doesn’t float out of the gym. He shuffles, feet dragging against the ground, and the weight that curls in the pit of his stomach feels like it’s dragging him down, makes him wonder if the jumps he’d managed to pull off just a week ago were just sheer dumb luck.

Today is another spectacularly bad practice—while Hinata usually doesn’t let anything faze him (not even serving a ball directly to the back of Kageyama’s head), today had just… not gone well.