#cuz im incapable of not talking about them ♡

[lovingvolleyboys]

Shoyo's been dating Kageyama- well, he really should call him Tobio now- for about a year. There have been ups, downs, arguments, teasing, kisses, fights, and all the things Shoyo expected. He truly thinks he might spend the rest of his life wrapped up in muscled arms, staring at dark blue eyes - he knows it's too early to be sure, of course, especially given his luck, but something about it feels right.

They have always been on the same wavelength. Now more than ever, though, it's like he can read Tobio's mind - he knows when he's stressed, happy, bored, excited. He would recognise any meaning from just a glance. 

There's only one thing Shoyo doesn't recognise when Tobio does it.... flirting.

He knows Tobio flirts, and he knows that by now, after two birthdays spent kissing under glow-in-the-dark stars, he should probably recognise when it happens, but he can't help it. Tobio and him, despite all the similarities and the same thoughts and the way they're both the same strain of weird, really are quite different. Shoyo loves like he does all things; with his chest, radiant like sunlight, openly and constantly, with grand gestures and strong declarations. He shouts words of affirmation in matches, and is relentless in terms of physical touch.

Tobio, though... Shoyo used to fear that he didn't love as vibrantly as Shoyo did, or care and want as deeply as the valleys Shoyo would run through to get to him. Sometimes, when he lies awake late at night, eyes tracing the luminescent shapes stuck to his cieling, he still fears that. But he's learning to accept that Tobio, reserved and stupid and stubborn, loves simply in a different way.

Flirting doesn't need to be verbal, Shoyo figures, as he holds his hands to his chest. It's not always winks, or smiles, or pickup lines, either.

Flirting is the way Tobio always finds space for him on the bus (mysteriously in the seat beside him). Flirting is the way Tobio hands him meat buns and candy and orange slices without him having to ask. Flirting is the way Tobio nods with certainty when Shoyo does something just right, like he never had any doubt he'd manage it.

After a year of running his fingers through short black hair, and staring at fluttering dark eyelashes as they lean in to kiss, Hinata begins to understand that maybe Tobio's love is simply in a different language to his; in every small moment, in the teasing and the glances, in the gifts he offers with a shy blush. Tobio is once again a king, Shoyo his loyal knight, and he sees now that when Tobio kneels before him it is as his lover, not his regent.

When Tobio does it, flirting isn't easy to recognise, not at first - but when Shoyo takes the time to slow down, translate the movements and the patience, he understands that it is in everything Tobio does.

Hopefully, it is in everything Tobio will do, as his partner, his best friend, and one day... as his husband.