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mikiruie · 1 month ago

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THROUGH THE WIND AND RAIN . . .

── TOBIO KAGEYAMA ﹕ 影山飛雄 ┊͙ HAIKYUU!! ◝✩

𓋜 hq. masterlist // general masterlist.

premise. even while seperated by thousands of miles of stretching oceans— there is solace in the rain’s shared song.

content. fiancé!kageyama / f!reader. fluff. established relationship (engaged). LDR + ali roma!kageyama (reader lives in japan, ≠ being japanese). lovesick!tobio :3 !!

word count. 7.6k

soundtrack. absence of you : grentperez.

écoute chérie! ᰔ this fic ended up being a lot longer than i intended . . . anyways !! first fic on this bloggie yayy ‹𝟹

22:58

“Is it also raining over there?”

Your head turns away from your open laptop screen and towards the windows of your apartment, watching as the trickling rain pours down outside your house.

With the curtains drawn open, you have a perfect view of the cars that pass by— watching and listening as their tires splash through the puddles of water that have formed on the street’s open roads, hearing light taps against your windows as streams of droplets hit the streaked, rain frosted glass.

You hear the faint tinkling of showering water vaguely in the background of Tobio’s call too, and your head tilts obviously at the sound, something that your fiancé manages to pick up with ease as he looks behind him towards where you’re staring out at his dark balcony’s windows.

“Oh,” he murmurs lightly, turning back around to face you (or more accurately, his phone screen that has you on it). “It’s raining here too— in Italy, I mean.”

Tobio’s shakily-hand held phone camera soon leaves the dining table it was propped up on, the front view getting covered by the palm of his hand as he makes his way across his living room and over to his balcony, the curtains closed and sliding door locked.

“I don’t know if you can see it that well,” he mumbles. The door to the outside deck unlocks with a light click as he steps outside, slippers padding softly against the smooth stone flooring of his apartment once he crosses over the lip of the door’s frame and onto the balcony. “But it’s pretty heavy over here.”

He flips the camera around, holding the phone up and moving the curtains out of view to show you the rain outside his own home, and just like he mentioned it’s much harsher than your rain back in Japan.

Against the reflective light of the moon in Rome’s night sky is a cascade of water that bombards you from all sides, droplets heavier than the rain you have back in Japan, hitting the cobblestone walkways outside of Tobio’s house with a resounding echo.

The rain falls at a much, much faster pace too as it almost seems never ending, the millions of raindrops bouncing off one another nearly blending into the sound of a single mass against the inky backdrop of the night sky— like a wind chime.

It’s a full moon tonight you realize as Tobio slowly maneuvers his phone around for your convenience, showcasing not only the torrent of rain that blinds his frosted windows but also the surrounding cityscape of his apartment.

You’ve only ever seen it in the daytime through brief glimpses during your facetime calls, but now without the sun and brilliant blue skies as its backdrop it looks completely different, dipped and steeped in a vat of red wine with only the moon and the street lamps to light the way.

You find that by craning your head just a bit to the sides that the raindrops have a special sheen to them, almost holographic in their nature. Single masses that have no one colour to them in their true nature, shimmering with a mirage of light in the afterglow of Rome’s street lamps.

Fractals of tiny rainbows burst at the sides of the water’s tension, and each droplet magnifying the light of the moon and lamps tenfold, merging into what seems to become a single stream of glimmering gold.

Perhaps it’s just a trick of the barely visible light light, or maybe something to do with the fact you’re on a crinkly video call— but the shifting perspective of the iridescent water droplets glowing in tune with the speckles of centuries old stars in Rome’s barely lit skyline is incredible to witness up close, and you’re almost jealous that this is the sight that Tobio gets to fall asleep to just outside his window every night.

The rain pour oddly likens to the same scene you’d get if you took a quaint little snow globe and shook it around vigorously in the palm of your hands, watching as the faux snowflakes inside swirl and whoosh around in the glass dome before falling slowly back down to the base of the globe, the flurry of white snow reminding you of the rain drops you’re bewitched by.

You look down at the engagement ring that sits on your finger, given to you by Tobio two years prior. Smoothing your thumb over the ornately cut princess-styled gemstone on the gold band, you realize it also bares a striking resemblance to the tiny raindrops just outside both of your windows.

Like a little piece of the quiet scenery you get to both wear together, even when far apart— and the constant downpour of rain on both ends of the call may be a reminder of that fact.

Tobio eventually shuts the door with a shiver running up his spine, bringing you out of your thoughts as he steps back inside his apartment.

“Sorry,” he apologizes quickly, breaking the silence. His eyes flit back to the now closed glass door, gaze lingering as the camera slowly begins to walk away from the view— you wonder if he was also admiring the rain shower along with you.

“It just gets kind of cold having it open when it rains.”

“It’s okay,” you smile, still mindlessly fidgeting with your ring. It fits much better on your finger now than before, courtesy of your fiancé having it re-sized for you when you last visited. It’s no longer constricting to wear, yet still loose enough for you to twirl around for fun.

A part of you thinks that Tobio ensured that for you unknowingly.

“We wouldn’t want you to get sick now during the season, would we?”

With a laugh muffled behind pursed lips he sits back down at his small dining table again, the feet of his chair scratching against the hardwood flooring when he scoots the chair in forward, carefully propping his phone upright against his napkin holder. “Y’know, I wasn’t prepared for Rome’s weather at all when I came here.”

“The weather here is a lot more turbulent than in Japan,” as if to perpetuate his point further, the rain in the background seems to pick up speed, the faint tapping against his window from the droplets now turning into more thunderous thumps.

Amused, you shift up against the pillows of your bed, adjusting your laptop sat atop your blanket. Tobio’s lips unknowingly jutt out into a pout seeing you all warm and cozy in bed without him, though if he were to do the same right now he’d probably pass out in the confines of his sheets while still on call with you.

It’s one of the reasons he’s calling from his dining room table and not situated nicely inside the cocoon of his freshly washed bedsheets.

Although tempting, Tobio wants to make sure he gives you his full attention whenever you both call, considering both of your busy schedules and the time zone differences between the two countries you currently occupy makes it hard to coordinate a set time to call each day, and ultimately your lifestyles can’t afford daily calls much to both of your chargins.

It usually boils down to ‘literally whenever we are both free,’ though he admits it’s not nearly as often as he’d like it to be.

Free can mean many things, and unfortunately for Tobio you refuse to call him while you’re in the shower (he doesn’t understand that one, he’s seen all of you and then some anyway), or while grocery shopping (something about you needing full concentration to select the perfect box of plump, sweet strawberries, whatever that means.

Strawberries are strawberries, no?)

“Well how are you holding up over there?” A playful grin slowly spreads across your face as you mess around with the facetime filters, giving Tobio a few silly cat ears and a tail as you sift through the available options.

Your finger drags along the trackpad of your laptop as you doodle away funny little shapes and swirls beside Tobio, giving him a bright red clown nose and some pink cheeks for funsies while he in your mind remains oblivious to your actions.

You let out a quiet giggle to yourself when his facetime background changes from the interior of his Rome apartment to a poorly edited in beach scene ripped straight from Google images, complete with his own coconut drink and a straw on your end of the call.

Tobio’s lips curl in on themselves, his teeth biting at the lower one as if he’s containing a smile of his own while you hum delightfully in idle tranquility, seemingly unaware of his gaze on you.

You’re acutely conscious of it though from the way his head dips down, using his bangs to mask the barely passable snicker he disguises as a poorly trained cough before regaining his posture, a gesture he inherited from his sister.

“Is it hard living by yourself? Living without me?”

Tobio’s shoulders lift in a mild shrug, and the green screened background near his back and arms glitches whenever he makes even the slightest movement. “I wouldn’t say that,” he jokes, stretching up against the backrest of his chair, muscles still sore from his practice matches earlier in the day.

A whine escapes past your pouted lips at his quip as you jeer back to him. “You’re making me feel sad now! Next time I’m not going to pick up your call no matter how many times you spam text me.”

“Hey, hey hey now . . .” His camera suddenly falters, stumbling in on itself from how hard he jerks his dinner table in shock before falling flat on its face, your inexplicable laughter ringing through loudly from the phone’s speakers and into his ears as Tobio props the device back up, fingers covering the camera momentarily before it eventually stabilizes again.

Now it’s his turn to sulk, the corners of his mouth visibly drooping into a slight frown as you continue to chuckle at his misfortune. If he dipped his head any lower, you’d be able to see his blush along the curve of his neck.

“That wasn’t very nice, love” he grumbles, slumping back down into his chair as you smugly hum in response. “Well you’re not being the sweetest either right now, Tobio.”

“Fine,” he sighs, crossing his arms. The loose home shirt he wears flexes with each movement he makes, “I’m sorry— will you still call me tomorrow?”

“Of course,” relief flashes in his eyes for a split second as his chest rises and falls with each breath, “Did you think I was actually not going to pick up?”

“. . . Only a little.”

“I would never do that to you,” Your tongue blips out to him on camera, all pixelated as a small clump of red dots inside his phone’s screen and Tobio can’t help but hide his bashful smile behind his hands again at your cheekiness. “How could I say no to your face?”

“You just did nearly two minutes ago.”

“Well that was two minutes ago!”

The both of you fall into another cesspool of bubbly giggles as you bicker back and forth with one another, your voices accompanied and carried across the oceans with the help of the rain in the background. The white noise drowns out the rest of the world, allowing the two of you to focus solely on one another’s prescience in the few hours you have together in comfortable solitude.

Tobio tells you everything during his calls— and you really do mean everything. He lets you know of every brand deal he’s received, how he figured out that he was putting weight on the wrong part of his foot whenever he dug a ball and now his receives are getting much better now (you can hardly believe that he thinks there’s still even more to himself that he can find improve upon) and the mundane details of his day to day life in Rome as well too.

He told you a few days ago through text that it’s currently raspberry season in Italy which starts in May, the miscellaneous message soon accompanied by a cute photo of him and his teammates out raspberry picking in a large farmer’s field in the countryside of Rome as a team bonding exercise.

You saved the adorable sight almost immediately into your photo album, sometimes finding yourself opening your phone several times throughout the day just to peek at it again whenever you missed his presence.

Now instead of the baseball cap and wicker basket he carried with him in the photo earlier in the week, he sits in front of your laptop screen, fingers reaching below the camera for a moment before coming back up to pop something into his mouth.

Your head cranes a little to the right instinctually, trying to catch a glimpse at what he’s eating before realizing you can’t actually do that over facetime.

“What’re you eating?”

“Raspberries,” he mumbles through a mouthful of them, taking his phone and showing you the inside of the bowl in his hands, light blue on the outside and white in its interior that’s filled to the brim with the fruits. “Ushijima-san told me they’re high in fiber, vitamin C and K.”

You’re reminded of the photo he sent you a few days prior, giggling to yourself in giddy happiness at the fact that he must be eating the fruits he picked with his teammates. “Y’know you can also eat them just because they’re tasty, right Tobio?”

He pops another one into his mouth, cheeks puffing out on the right side like a chipmunk as he chews. “Well, that too is a plus.”

Tobio’s bowl is nearly filled to the brim of the fruits, a hefty serving you presume for a seemingly late night snack for the star athlete. You question his unusual timing since the Tobio you know is all about order in his regimen when it comes to maintaining his healthy figure for volleyball.

“I wanted to feel like I’m eating with you,” he timidly admits when asked, and you tease his sincerity before an idea comes to mind, your fiancé’s head cocking to the side once he sees you leap out of bed in a hurry.

“Wait a second, stay right there!” You shout to him before your body quickly leaves the frame of your laptop screen, leaving Tobio in a stunned silence as he attempts to call back out to you, the padding of your footsteps against the floorboards of your home soon disappearing along with your figure too.

“I’m not going anywhere, babe—” he mutters to himself, squinting at his phone screen as he tries to figure out where you scurried off to. The door to your room is left slightly ajar, but the darkness of your hallway shrouds the rest of your household in his sights.

His eyes take a preliminary glance around your room to fulfill your absence in stead, his view confined to the singular angle your laptop can show him from on your bed as he attempts to scour the small window space he can, checking and noticing for the subtle changes you’ve made after your recent weekly room clean up.

Tobio finds that you swapped out your old floor length mirror for a new one, since the old one had a crack in it after it unfortunately fell during one of your last facetime calls.

He takes note of the many papers that pile on top of one another on your work desk, and his brows furrow at the sight. He hates to think of how easily it could be for you to slip into accidentally overworking yourself now that he’s not around to reprimand you, though he’s not one to talk about maintaining a healthy work-life balance either with volleyball.

Tobio’s gaze soon drifts away from the seemingly massive mound of manila folders and printer paper before stopping momentarily. His eyes glance downwards, a wicker basket woven flower pot caught in his sights, before crawling back up again.

There, sitting on your desk right beside your printer is a familiar looking potted plant; its white petals shimmer beautifully underneath the glow produced by your room’s ceiling fan’s cheap LED light bulb, the golden spun colour of the flower’s bulbs emerging from inside the core atop their green stems.

Three heads of pretty, flowered plants are neatly laid in the small bed of soil in the pot, the dirt dark in colour as the flower’s roots soak in the hydration-rich nutrients from the loam.

Tobio recognizes the species immediately, drinking in its innocuous appearance in your room— the Madonna Lily. Italy’s national flower.

He coughs up his raspberries in a fit of momentary shock, reveling in the discovery as he shoves his phone closer to his eyes to inspect it further. The plant seems well taken care of, blooming well even in a confined office-bedroom space. A small spritzer bottle filled halfway to the top with water sits just beside the stunning flower, meaning you probably had watered it not long ago before your call with him.

Its leaves are vibrant and healthy, and the blossoms open up to the ceiling, revealing their bright golden bulbs from inside.

Tobio’s seen and been given many a white lily in his time playing for Ali Roma, he can barely keep track of the massive bouquets he receives from sponsors and fans at every game with the gorgeous flower, all beautifully tied together with long satin bows accented in the colours of white, orange and green for his beloved team within the confines of clear, wrinkle-less cellophane.

But the lone pot in your room calls out to him especially, it’s beauty and obvious care and attention gone into helping it flourish outshining even the most spectacular of floral arrangements he’s ever been given.

He’s heard from a few of his native Italian teammates that the white lilies of Italy symbolize rebirth and are frequently associated with the rejuvenation of the soul— but they also resemble both everlasting purity and commitment.

And if Tobio had to describe you in two words of his own, he’d pick those qualities of the stunning lily to do so.

A few beats of silence pass of him admiring the quiet entity of life before he hears your rapidly approaching footsteps again, jerking his head away from his phone screen and sadly having to tear his eyes from the plant as the door to your bedroom swings wide open, revealing your pajama-clad self once more as leap back onto your bed, a big bowl with the same familiar fruit he was just snacking on sat in the lap of your legs, the traces of water on your just-washed hands bringing heat to Tobio’s cheeks.

“What’re you doing?”

You hum mindlessly as you fluff up the pillow behind your back for a moment before turning back to him and beaming.

“I’m going to feed you raspberries through the screen,” You take one of the nice big ones for Tobio out of the bowl and show it to your camera, letting your fiancé see the fruit from all angles. It’s plump and juicy, and the nice red colour to it and size is deserving for Tobio, you bet it’s as sweet as him.

You still feel the leftover water residue on the fruit’s surface from when you washed them underneath the pads of your fingertips as you steady the bowl and lower it down to Tobio’s mouth on your screen.

“Say ahhh!”

Even while within the confines of his own home, a blush spreads across the expanse of Tobio’s neck and the apples of his cheeks at your actions, shyly opening his mouth for the camera, head pivoting around his dining room like he’s worried some paparazzi is going to catch him being all cute and sappy.

He straightens up when your hand suddenly retracts from the camera’s view, taking with it the raspberry as your saddened face takes center stage on his phone screen.

Tobio’s eyebrows cinch together worriedly, confused at the sudden change in demeanour. “Why’d you stop, love?”

You huff, cheeks puffing out in an adorable show of stubbornness. Tobio wishes he was there to pinch them in person, and he refrains from reaching out and doing it himself.

“You’re not saying ahhh!”

He sputters a bit on his end of the call, scarlet blush spreading to the tips of his ears. “Do I have to . . .”

“Yes, it’s part of the experience!” You make a point to pick up another juicy raspberry for yourself from your bowl, saving the one previously meant for Tobio and popping it into your mouth, audibly singing in delightful praise at its taste.

“Now open wide, Tobio! Say ahhh~”

The adam’s apple of Tobio’s throat bobs in your peripheral as you lift the same raspberry from earlier up to your camera again, slowing inching to where Tobio’s mouth is hung open on your laptop screen before he closes around the berry, pretending to chew and savor it’s taste as you gleefully giggle at the sight of the ever blossoming red that crawls down his neck and all across the top half of his chest visible through the cut outs of his home shirt.

“It’s yummy,” you hear him whisper, voice low and intimate in the tranquility that lies between you two, feeling separated only by a flimsy screen and not by several countries.

He can taste the tangy sweetness from his raspberries previously still left on the tip of his tongue, though he likes to imagine that it’s left behind from the digital raspberry you shared with him just now.

His tongue darts out to lick his lips subconsciously, swiping across the bottom lip to capture any lingering flavors of the fruit remaining. “I did tell you awhile ago that the raspberries are in season this time of year, right?”

“Yep!” You pop the ‘p’ in your sentence with a giggle, “Don’t you remember the photo you sent me? Of you and your teammates out raspberry picking!”

His eyes roll to the ceiling of his apartment in thought as he recalls the last few days, thought bubbles metaphorically popping up above his head before he lets out a noise of confirmation. “Oh, yeah I did send you that. I’m surprised you remember.”

“You only sent it like, four days ago Tobio.”

He shrugs it off easily, ignoring the pale blush that dusts his nose and cheek bones that you had recalled that photo he sent you on a whim as an update to his life in Italy, and he takes another raspberry out from his bowl, letting the sourish-with a tinge of sweetness flavour of the fruit pop in his mouth once he bites down on the morsel.

The two of sit in comfortable silence as you pretend-feed each other raspberries, with you “feeding” Tobio most of yours and he reciprocates whenever you give him one.

“It’s so we’re even,” he digresses afterwards, and while you eventually do feast the raspberries you hand to Tobio through the scrithy facetime call screen, Tobio saves the ones he feeds you on his end of the line— placing them back into his bowl after you fake swallow the fruit, letting it fall back into his bowl and choosing a different fruit of his own to bring to his lips.

In his mind those berries are specially reserved for you only, and even if you can’t eat them yourself, Tobio doesn’t feel it right to eat them.

The freshness of the raspberries on your tongue sweetens your video call with Tobio just a little more when it seems as the sounds on both your ends heighten frighteningly, the quality of your screen becoming diluted as time rolls on through the thunderous booms that peer outside your windowsill.

Rain hurls down from the sky, blanketing both your hometown and the capital of Italy in its wake, but it’s Tobio it feels as though you’ve both made a small little space for yourselves to shield each other from the storm.

“I saw you on the news again today,” you hum contently as the two of you snack on your raspberries against the backdrop of rain on both your calls, Tobio’s being obviously louder as the storm outside continues to grow more tumultuous the longer your call stretches on for.

This is probably one of your longest video calls together so far, almost reaching three and a half hours when you check the time at the top of your laptop. It’s a surprise that your dingy cell service has managed to hold on for this long in the weather’s conditions.

“They were talking about how your contract with Ali Roma is ending soon, and speculating when or if you’ll renew it.”

Tobio freezes up when you mention the news broadcast, almost scared of speaking up with his throat feeling tight, mouth running dry as he stiffens up his posture. A distinctive trait of his you notice when he’s nervous. “Yeah . . . yeah I’ve been hearing about that too.”

“I mean, it is about you,” you chuckle to yourself, a bit too causally compared to how Tobio feels inside. “So! Have you decided if you’ll stay there for another term?”

“It depends,” he swallows down his worries, eventually gathering the courage to ask “will you be upset if I do?”, hesitance laced in the throes of his words as he waits for your reply in skittish tensity.

It’s been hard for Tobio to dance around the subject ever since news broke out, and everytime he calls he’s unsure how to bring it up.

Ali Roma has helped in advancing his career tremendously, and he’d love to keep moving up the ranks and continue playing on the world stage alongside his teammates— but then there’s you, across the sea waiting for him at home. Cheering him on from not the stands of an Italian stadium but on the couch in your shared home in another country, rooting and whooping at a TV screen whenever he’s up to serve.

He’s been telling his social media managers to try and quell the spread of rumors before he decided on accepting another contract term, scared of you finding out and expressing your displeasure about the renewal before he had a chance to talk it out with you.

Despite Tobio’s endless passion and drive for volleyball, he knew that his heart belonged with you— and he wanted to ask how you felt about the decision before he had the final say.

It’s been nearly three years since he asked you the fateful question of if you’d take his hand in marriage.

He still remembers the way he almost foolishly dropped the ring when he got down on one knee, clumsily taking the box out of his suit jacket’s pocket and hastily recited the lines he had practiced for over a month about your importance in his life and how grateful he would be to marry you— and the way you graciously accepted him with open arms before he was even done speaking.

He also can recall clearly how you nearly knocked him over onto the ground by the sheer force of your glee alone, too enraptured by the high of the moment to notice you had basically caged him in your arms on the dirt trail of your home town’s park.

And while you’re as sweet, loving and as patient as a person can ever be, what with letting him play overseas and all (you’re a literal angel in Tobio’s eyes), Tobio knows that with time, patience can be worn down like running water in a riverbank, smoothing over the stones and pebbles that have sunk to the bottom.

It erodes away the longer you stretch it thin, and your three year engagement anniversary is coming up soon, and yet he’s not there with you. Instead, he’s in Italy, furthering his goals while you’re home, hard at work on your own he knows but he fears that his constant absence has taken a heavy toll on your heart.

He wonders if you’ve grown restless of waiting for your fiancé to come back to your awaiting arms, and if you’re just too nice to admit your frustrations to him directly whenever you call.

And the thought of that worries him. You’ve always been the one in the relation to anchor Tobio’s incessant and seemingly never ending worrying, being the stability he needs when his insecurities overshadow his rational thinking, and it’s more often than not that you’re practically the one holding him together better than himself whenever he’s overseas.

(it’s embarrassing to admit himself how much of a driving force you are in his life.

The gentle guiding light he needs when he goes tunnel vision and can’t see straight or think clearly).

It was you after all who suggested he take the leap of faith to move to Rome and play for Italy, you who gave him the push of encouragement he needed to further his career even when it seemed to go against your own best interests.

And while you’ve reassured him several times over that the length of his stay in Italy and your prolonged engagement means absolutely nothing to you, Tobio worries that soon, you’ll become tired of waiting for a day that will potentially never come.

His greatest wish is to marry you proudly in front of all your family and friends, to entangle your paths forever with each other while you exchange vows written for one another underneath a pretty white arch— and how is he supposed to do that when he’s thousands of kilometers away from you across the sea?

“Hm? No, of course not,” Your airy voice cuts through the rapidly growing thoughts in his head, head tilting on his phone’s screen. Your brow raises slightly as you question him. “Why do you ask?”

“Did you think I was going to be mad at you?”

Tobio brings a hand up to his neck, brushing at the recently buzzed off sections that are already starting to grow back after his most recent haircut. “Uhm, if I say maybe— or wait, if I say no will you—”

You interrupt his soon to be nervous rambling firmly but gently, shushing him with a soothing series of “Hey, listen to me” coupled with a few chants of his name, as if you were calming down a scared, jittery kitten.

Your lips purse in thought, contemplating your next words carefully. You know how Tobio can get about topics concerning your long distance relationship, eventually being able to settle him down so you can speak.

“Tobio,” you start, and his ears perk up intently at his name. “I knew because I know you like the back of my hand, you’re always so nervous to talk to me about anything relating to your work— I also knew about the renewal for a while now.”

“Really?” His eyes widen in shock, and he grabs his phone instinctively as he shoots up out of his chair, the screech of the legs against his floors echoing in the background. “But I haven’t decided on anything yet because—”

“Because of me, am I right?”

Tobio can’t find any way to argue against you when you smile at him so sincerely, it almost feels unreal for him the way you so comfortably can say what he’s thinking.

You don’t look angry, frustrated or even upset in the slightest even if he was technically hiding the news from you so he could bring it up at the right time.

Just what did he do to deserve you?

Thunder booms outside his Rome apartment, the rain crashing down louder than before. The storm must be picking up in strength, and your call’s audio grows distorted and scratchy on his end of the call— the bars of cell service at the top right of his phone are depleting quickly, the connection crumbling with each second.

After a few pressing minutes of “Hello? Tobio, can you hear me?” and “No, not really— wait now I can” from both of you, you finally manage to get a clear, concise point across to your nervous wreck of a fiancé.

“You don’t have to be so paranoid about what I will think,” you tell him, putting the bowl of raspberries off to the side of your lap now as you scorch closer to your laptop, allowing Tobio to see you more clearly now.

“That’s your decision to make, and I’ll support you no matter what.”

Heat singes across your cheeks dreamily at your next words, and you’re a little embarrassed at how your eyes grow glassy at the recollection. “Though, I do appreciate how you always wait to consult me first.”

Your hand goes to caress the outline of his cheek in your laptop’s screen, as silly as it may be to anybody who would witness it, it’s the closest you can get to the real deal in your current circumstances.

Tobio reacts accordingly as if he can feel it himself, stiffening at the gentle brush of the back of your fingers against his skin, and he wishes so desperately to be able to lean into its touch.

He settles for resting his cheek in the palm of his hand as a substitute.

“You’re so sweet, Tobio.”

The tips of Tobio’s own ears bloom a deep shade of crimson red in response, the few parts of his collarbone that you manage to see underneath his navy t-shirt blushing a slight hue of pink as well against his skin as he shyly murmurs a quiet “I miss you a lot, y’know. . . ” amidst the thunderous applause of the whipping winds and roiling crashes of water that pound outside his windows.

He can hear the trees thrashing around outside, their leaves swaying violently against the brick walls of his apartment.

Tobio reaches over to turn up the volume of his phone more to hear you more clearly, not wanting your voice to become drowned out by the storm raging on outside. When he sits back up in his chair, he has to take a moment to calm his racing heart, the thumping beat loudly booming in the back of his mind.

“It doesn’t feel right without you here with me,” he admits, gaze downcast into his hands, clasped into one another as he stares into the abyss of the empty crevices of his palm’s folds. In his mind he imagines his left hand as yours, intertwining with his own so he could run his thumb over the jewel of your engagement ring.

He misses the cool feel of the gold against your warm skin, hoping to one day be able to feel that with your wedding band instead. “I guess that’s why . . . I always want to ask you for permission before I decide.”

His hands clam up uncharacteristically, sweat pooling at the pads of his fingertips. He wipes them in the fabric of his home sweats to dry them, staining the grey linen.

“You— you’re more important to me than volleyball . . . ”

Your heart skips a beat. Then two more, swelling up tightly at his words.

You’ve always known Tobio to be a bit tentative than others about how he phrases his words, him being self-aware that at times he can come off as a bit too forward or overly aggressive on something if his stances are not structured correctly.

Whenever he speaks to your friends, fans or even in his own interviews with highly esteemed reporters, he always takes a deep pause, letting their own questions ruminate in his mind so he can come up with a cohesive response, one that isn’t too self imposing.

But to hear him say something assuredly, even with the unconscious stutter in his words has your face singeing with heat, and the sight of Tobio’s furious blush makes you incessantly wish that you were right beside him to pull him into a long, heartfelt embrace, arms wrapping around your own forearms to satiate the desire.

Goosebumps litter the surface of your skin, and the hairs on the back of your neck stand up as the patter of rain blares through your eardrums.

Tobio’s eyes peer back up to meet your own, and he sees that through the crunchy quality of your laptop’s monitor, your mouth opens to speak. “Tobio . . . I—”

And in an instant, the heralding tone of the call dropped notification pings through his device’s speakers, and Tobio’s jumping out of his seat in a moment’s notice once your face no longer occupies his phone screen.

He swipes downward from his screen, with a tab saying your call together ended at four hours, twenty-seven minutes and thirty-two seconds.

Muttering out low curses in quick succession, he quickly checks his phone app, seeing that your call was severed. The cell service bars at the top of his screen flicker between two and three, the weak connection only further emulated when a large flash of thunder strikes outside his apartment with the enslaughg of heavy downfalls of rain drops pooling in large puddles outside on the roads and sidewalks.

Three booms of thunder follow suit in the course of the lightning, their resounding echo feeling akin to an earthquake and enveloping his house from all sides.

His apartment feels much smaller now with the sea of sounds that crash around just past his brick walls and glass windows. It’s so loud outside now he realizes, monstrously so now that your calm voice no longer accompanies him, and the resounding silence of his apartment now feels empty without your presence.

The vast distance of ocean that separates you two seems more intrinsically noticeable now to him, and Tobio wonders if you feel the same on your end too back home when the line dropped and you could no longer see his face on your own laptop.

“Fuck,” Tobio’s thumb hovers over the call back button, ready to start up another glitch-filled video call when he’s nearly startled once more when his phone buzzes back to life, with your contact name soon flashing across the top of his screen.

He picks it up almost immediately, clearing his throat before speaking.

“Hello?”

“Tobio!” You chirp from the other end, and even without the video accompanying it he can still see and hear the way your smile reveals your teeth in a happy grin and your eyes crease at the ends from glee.

You sound just as relieved as he does, though a lot more sure of yourself than he does. Tobio wonders how you can still remain so chipper after all that while he feels like he’s been left on a lone lighthouse on a rock in the middle of a sea-born typhoon.

“Sorry, the call must’ve dropped! I couldn’t video call you back with my bad service so this is the best I can do,” your voice trails off towards the end of your sentence, your smile audibly dropping to a half one in its stead. Tobio’s tongue clicks against the porcelain of his teeth, swallowing and clearing his throat once more.

He wants to make you feel better, lift up your spirits the way you do his even when the stormy night sky has plans otherwise for him.

“It— it’s okay,” he recites in his mangled attempts to assure you, “the storm outside for me is pretty bad right now, so I probably wouldn’t be able to video call anymore too . . .”

Your disheartened “Aww” from the other end nearly breaks his heart into two, and he can practically envision the way your lips tug downwards, demeanor visibly deflating when he reaffirms your suspicions.

You bounce back quickly though, with a “don’t worry about it,” soon followed by “we can call back when the storm clears up tomorrow, okay?”

He lets out a low hum of agreement, and silence blankets over your call again as the two of you wait and see who has the gall to hang up first.

Neither of you wish for your time spent together to end so abruptly due to the rain, though it’s not anything that’s in your control either.

Once Tobio moved to Italy, the ball was no longer in your court. And the two of you have to rise early for your respective careers tomorrow (technically, now today) as well, once you take a glance at the wall mounted clock in your room that’s almost struck close to twelve in the morning by now.

“So . . .” you drawl out of awkwardness, and Tobio coughs into his closed fist. “. . . So.”

“I’ll call you tomorrow, then?”

“Yeah,” he mumbles meekly, “do you know what time you’ll call me?”

“No,” you tell him sadly, “but as soon as I’m off work, I will.”

“You promise?” He knows it’s childish to ask you ‘to promise’ him such a thing (he’s twenty-eight now for god’s sake), but he can’t help it when you let out a little giggle, his ears burning red again at your giddiness. “Yes, Tobio. I promise.”

“Okay,” his lips purse, but before he can speak you cut him off unknowingly with words woven from the sweetest honey imaginable, causing him to suck in a hasty breath of air in an instant.

“I love you, Tobio.” You sigh, twirling the ends of your hair around your finger as your gaze lingers on the lily sitting atop your desk.

It’s not a replacement for your beloved fiancé, but when the odds are stacked against you, anything to keep a piece of him close to home helps.

“And I miss you, so . . . so you better do your best on your new contract renewal! You gotta beat Shoyo-kun during the next volleyball game or else we’re never going to get married at this rate!”

“O— of course I will!” He sputters out nonsensically as you burst into a fit of laughter once more, knowing that all it takes is saying his old high school rival’s name in the same sentence as volleyball for him to get pumped up.

“Like hell I’ll let stupid Hinata beat me at an international level!”

“Yeah!” You cheer for him, smiling through your teeth into your phone screen, “And then you’re going to come home and marry me, you got that!”

He almost doesn’t seem to know what he’s even agreeing to, only giving you a solid “Yeah!” in return. He might not know what it is right now, but you know that his subconscious does, and that’s enough for you to rest easy for tonight.

“Hehe, okay then! Bye Tobio! I gotta sleep now, mwah!”

You blow him a quick kiss through the line before ending the call immediately afterwards, giving him no time to respond other than a sharp “What— huh?!” before you’re throwing your phone across your bed and burying yourself into your pillows and bedsheets, lightheaded as you inhale the scent sticking to their threads.

It only smells of you now.

You miss when the linen of your bed and the seams of your cushions didn’t just carry your scent; when it also included his as well, back when he slept comfortably next to you and was freely able to wrap his arms around your figure as you both drifted off to dreamland in the comfort of each other’s body warmth.

You miss the liveliness that Tobio brought to your shared home. You fondly remember waiting for him to come home from late practice just so you could indulge yourselves in each other’s presence after his shower, and sending him off in the early morning as you too went about on your own commute to work on your own.

Rain drops hammer down harshly outside your window, and while it may have been a nuisance to deal with any other day and was also the main culprit of your early-ending call, it seems oddly calming now— knowing that on the opposite end of the earth, the rain kisses down on Tobio’s roof top too.

A piece of you stretches from one country to another, showering your love for him even when your eyelids are heavy, voice afflicted with a groggy strain as a yawn slips past your lips.

You’re too tired to take off your engagement ring, normally keeping it tucked away in its velvet box for safekeeping in your bedside drawer as you sleep but for tonight, you choose to absentmindedly play with the gem on the golden band whilst taking a look outside the window through your open curtains.

The night is dreary and stormy, skyline painted a vivid ocean of black and dark blue-ish tinted purple. You can’t even see the thunderous cumulonimbus clouds overhead, the only visible sign of the rain above are the droplets that manage to stain your window prettily in their wake.

Your breathing stills as you settle yourself in bed, readying your mind and body for the long day ahead tomorrow, the rain acting as a backdrop of white noise that carries many sounds in its stormy, splendorous path.

And now, it simmers to a blur in your mind as sleep overtakes your body, and you wait patiently for the rain to carry away your goodbye kiss off to Rome thousands of miles away for your sweet, hotheaded and lovestricken fiancé.

The thunderstorms you and Tobio both bare tonight aren’t the same at all, though it wasn’t always this way.

And you hope that soon you won’t have to bare yours alone, no matter how much the rain crashes outside or the whirlwinds whip and threaten to pull down withstanding trees to the ground with their strength.

Under the storm clouds overheard your roof, the rain’s cataclysmic song sings you to sleep in an odd fashion.

Thunderous, constant, breathtaking and everlasting— all the qualities you find in a certain setter currently situated in Central Italy, who waits for the day he’ll be able to fly back home to you, so that you can be underneath the same clouds and domes of rain together once more.

reblogs ++ comments are greatly appreciated !! ꒰ ˆ ᗜ ˆ ˶ ꒱

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