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i: senhor hinata, mês 1.5: rio de janeiro
Pedro has been staring at his pathophysiology textbook with little interest, humming to the music in his earbuds while his finger coated glossy pictures, when the door swings open.
“ Opa! ”
“ Oi ,” he returns, stopping his humming as if he never was enjoying himself.
Shouyou coming back means it’s eleven PM, which means he should think about going to bed. He wouldn’t really think about that without him. Shouyou’s gonna harass him about it, anyway.
“Como vai?” He hears thumping as Shouyou locks his bike to the outside stairwell, leaving the door open. Three mosquitoes fly in.
It takes him a little longer than usual to come in, Pedro notes. Not like he’s paying attention or anything.
“ Bom ,” he returns. He flicks another page in the textbook and wonders if he has any leftover food from deliveries that were canceled.
The door finally slams shut. “ Bom! Meu também! ” He hadn’t asked how Shouyou’s day was in return, but he supplies it anyway.
Shouyou never seems to care that Pedro never seems to care about him. It’s almost meaner than being outright mean and he knows it, but he just…he just can’t bring himself to be nice. It’s too much work on his overwhelmed brain.
He notices, after sulking for a solid minute, that Shouyou hasn’t spoken anymore—he went straight to his room. Usually, he’d try asking him a few more questions in broken Portuguese, or try to read his nursing school homework (and fail). Maybe Pedro’s indifference finally got to him. Shit.
Feeling his stomach sink, he calls out, “ Voce quer…?” because Shouyou would usually excitedly call back ONE PIECE!
But the only sound from the bedroom is a quick stumble of socked feet, and it takes twenty seconds for him to come out. Pedro counts. And he watches as Shouyou emerges, holding the newest issue of Shounen Jump in response. He watches the strained smile on his pale face.
He watches bright-red blood drip down Shouyou’s right thigh and right forearm onto the linoleum of their apartment.
Shouyou freezes, then pulls into himself as he traces his gaze from the road rash on his limbs to the thin trail of blood on the floor. “ Disculpe! Disculpe… ah,” he says nervously, as if waiting for Pedro to lash out at him.
He would never do that. But he can see why Shouyou would think it, since he’s an asshole.
So instead of freaking out about blood stains on the floor, he grasps Shouyou’s arm and pulls him to the couch. “ O que aconteceu .”
It’s not a question— what happened, he demands. Shouyou is quiet (he’s never quiet) and still (he’s never still) as Pedro inspects the wounds swathing over his skin. The lacerations are only superficial; they don’t look like they need stitches. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t painful. Pedro gets a feeling he’s quiet and still in part because he’s hurting.
It makes him feel uneasy. Maybe he’s not such an asshole—he has empathy.
“ Eu…em…” Shouyou starts.
Pedro waits patiently. He wonders if his face looks blank, uncaring.
“ Disculpe, eu… ah, can we just talk in English?” He says suddenly.
“Okay.” This is the first time Shouyou’s ever requested this. They might have the same proficiency in it (read: not great) but they never practice. “What happened?”
“I forgot how cars drive here,” he laughs nervously. “I fell.”
“Off the bike?” That would explain the number of lacs.
“ Sim .”
“You hurt the bike, too?” He’s not sure why he asks that.
“Only a little.” He sighs, then adds, “I’m glad. I need the bike to work.”
“You can’t work,” Pedro rushes out. “Not when you are hurt. Here.”
He reaches under the table for the first-aid kit—Shouyou always tapes up his fingers with it—and pulls out what he needs. Little by little, he cleans and dresses the wounds.
Shouyou starts reading off Boruto in Portuguese at some point. His blood gets all over Pedro’s fingers. But the bleeding stops quickly. That said, they both work slowly—Shouyou’s mouth and Pedro’s fingers. Neither of them want to mess up, he supposes.
As he ties off the final piece of gauze, Shouyou starts: “Thank—”
“No,” Pedro says instead. “We will talk tomorrow. Go to sleep.”
Shouyou’s face falls.
Pedro quickly adds: “Your wounds need to heal.”
Then a smile graces his face. “ Sim .”
He watches as Shouyou limps to the bedroom, closing the door quietly with a wave goodnight.
He wonders if Shouyou ate anything this evening if he didn’t get any canceled orders.
He wonders if Shouyou misses where cars drive on the left-hand side of the road.
He wonders if now’s a good time to be a better roommate.
ii: señor oikawa, mes 1.5: buenos aires
“ Es dos ciento pesos. Necesito dos.”
Oikawa knows most people consider him to be a little arrogant. He honestly felt it to be one of his strengths—Oikawa’s arrogance is more the masking of his weakness. It’s an essential skill on the court.
“ Che, vamos! ”
He is not “arrogant” here as he fishes around for two 100-peso bills that he doesn’t have. He’s been paying for everything with cash—his credit card doesn’t work here. Not that he’s got any credit anyway. He’s 19 and doesn’t have a job to speak of.
“ Lo siento ,” he says brokenly, not sure if that’s the phrase to use. “ Lo siento. Tengo—solo tengo un… ” he holds up his 1000-peso bill, the last in his pocket, unsure of the word for thousand. Why Argentines are so big on exact change, he doesn’t know. Something about economic crisis.
The man behind the counter takes the money with a huff and Oikawa thanks whatever power out there that he didn’t ask for a credit card—he hasn’t called the company yet to get the international hold off his account because he has an Argentine SIM card and it won’t let him call internationally. Exact change it’ll have to be.
He leaves down the street with a wad of 100-pesos bills and a spinach empanada. He bites into it—a little too dry to warrant the whole exchange.
God.
“You’re okay,” he says under his breath, trying to figure out that whole exchange. “You’re fine.”
It had been like this for a while—disorienting. Most people were nice and most people were patient. They’d use translating apps and gesticulate until they found a solution. But then someone wouldn’t be nice or patient, and it was like everything reset.
His hands shake as he steps out of the way of foot traffic and pulls out his phone to view his route, trying not to look like a target and get his phone stolen. Apparently that’s a thing here. And why did Buenos Aires not have a grid street system? Down another two blocks and diagonally west until he hits the river and then a colectivo bus and then CeNARD, so he can sign his papers for the national team.
That’s all. He can do it, easy.
He gets back to walking the streets and practices in his head what he’s gonna say to the bus driver. Buen día. A Libertador y Crisologo Larralde, por favor. Gracias.
Buen día. A Libertador y Crisologo Larralde, por favor. Gracias.
Buen día. A Li—
The bus approaches and Oikawa waits.
Then the bus passes right by him.
What the fuck .
“ Chico .”
Oikawa whips his head around. There’s an older lady hunched over an issue of Clarín , wearing a cardigan despite the humid heat.
“El proxima vez, levantense el brazo, ” she says, lifting her arm. “Así. ”
It takes a few seconds for that to process. He tries to keep his expression neutral… oh , he was supposed to flag the bus down. Oh. He feels truly stupid now.
“ Gracias ,” he says, bowing slightly. “ Gracias .”
“No te preocupes ,” she says with a slight smile. “De donde sos?”
Oh, he’s been asked this question a million times. “De Japón. Soy un atleta.”
“ Oh, que lindo.” What is it with every old lady calling him cute? “Te gusta Argentina? ”
And he has to think for a moment about that. Everyone he meets asks him the same question, and he’s never sure what to say except sí .
“Es un cambio grande, no?” she says before he can lie. “Ten fe. Todo será bien.”
Then she lifts her arm for the next bus and leaves him at the stop.
iii. senhor hinata, mês 3: ipanema
“Pedro!” Hinata yells, skidding around the corner in their apartment. “ Feliz aniversário !”
“ Obrigado .” Pedro flushes scarlet. “ Porém, my birthday isn’t until tomorrow.”
“Oh.” Hinata stops in his tracks. “Really?”
Pedro nods, not looking away from the soccer game on the TV.
Hinata studies it for a bit—the red and black jerseys passing the ball back and forth. “Who’s playing?”
“Flamengo e Grémio.”
“Who’s winning?”
And Pedro grins wickedly. “Flamengo.”
And Hinata knows what he has to do.
***
Ipanema is lively on a Friday night: there’s bossa nova playing from the bars along the beach, women in sundresses with caipirinhas in their hands, and volleyball players on the public courts. It’s been a long day of deliveries, so he wants to have fun—he wants to stop and challenge them. But he moves on, because he’s here for one thing tonight.
Sellers with their counterfeit soccer jerseys.
Now, it would be a better gift for Hinata to buy Pedro a real jersey. But he can’t afford that right now, and this is the next best thing. It’ll cost him 100 reals. Easy.
“Opa ,” he greets to the seller—tall and big and a little intimidating. “Que tal?”
“Hello,” he booms. “Welcome to Rio!”
Hinata tries not to feel offended. He gets this a lot, looking the way he does and speaking the way he does. So he nods and takes a look at the selection.
He’s laid out a sheet on the black and white tiled sidewalk, protecting the jerseys from the dirt and sand. There’re the national team’s jerseys, old Pele jerseys, and even some Argentine ones—Boca Juniors, River Plate, and a variety of Maradona and Messi gear. And there’s plenty of Flamengo ones.
“Quanto eles custam?” He asks, pointing to the red and black striped jersey. The decals are printed, not vinyl, and there’s no pretty embroidery like he knows there should be. But the gist is there! And Pedro would probably appreciate the gesture anyway!
“500 reals,” he replies, grinning widely.
Bullshit. He barely has that in his wallet and it’s not for blasting on a jersey when he has to feed himself.
“A sério?” There’s no way.
“Yes.” There’s the grin again. It’s predatory—he’s used to scamming tourists all day.
At times like these, Hinata wishes he spoke better Portuguese. He’d be able to bargain if he could speak in his native language here. So he whips out his phone to translate.
“Would you be willing to barter?” He reads off.
And the man gestures for his phone to type back. Hinata, acting automatically, hands it to him.
And then he darts off with the phone.
“Oye!” He calls, chasing after him, but this guy is experienced. He ducks and sprints across the street and Hinata loses him to the passing traffic.
Think, Hinata. There are usually cops along the beach at night. They’d…maybe help.
He searches and finds a couple leaning against a bike rack, chatting with each other. Hinata jogs over, rushing with adrenaline still.
“Desculpe,” he starts.
They look up at him.
“Uma pessoa roubou,” he says, knowing the grammar is wrong but getting the point across. “Meu celular.”
They straighten up, and one starts speaking. “Where did he go?”
More English. Great. “Por aqui,” he says, pointing towards the street.
“Who?”
Hinata points toward the jersey area.
And Hinata doesn’t know what he was expecting, but it wasn’t for them to laugh .
***
So it turns out that the seller does that a lot. He went to the station and filed a report, but was essentially told he wouldn’t get it back. All his photos, gone. The case Natsu gave him, gone. The 100 reals stashed in there, gone.
It hurts, honestly, he thinks as he walks back home, phone-less and jersey-less. He was trying to be nice . He was trying to be trusting .
But he’s seen as a tourist, a target. And maybe he always will be.
iv: señor oikawa, año 2: la paz - san juan
They had won . The Argentines won the tournament, beating all of Sudamerica. Holy shit. It was years in the making, but Oikawa won his first international title.
So they had to go out, of course, and enjoy their host city. La Paz glitters at night; the hills dot with city lights and blink with soaring teleforicos , and the cobbled streets glow with streetlights and the fluorescence of TVs playing in bars.
And he drinks himself fucked , crawling from pub to pub with his team, enjoying the sights and sounds and smells of the highest capital in the world. But this is not the problem, no.
The problem is the street food. He’s filled himself with corazón de vaca , drowned himself in api morada. It’s all greasy and sweet and perfect when he’s had so many bottles of Cordillera and maybe a couple of tequila shots.
Oh. And also the mosquitoes, when they went out of town to hike and take photos. Those too. But there are always mosquitoes. So he doesn’t think that’s why he’s sick the morning after he and the team gets home.
“Toto?” His roommate calls, banging on the bathroom door. “‘ Tá bien ?”
“ Sí ,” he replies, breathy, trying to suck in air without puking again.
He fails. But he’s fine, it’s true.
He can hear Martín wince on the other side of the door. “ Puedo ayudar? Querés agua, o…algo asi ?”
“ No ,” he says. He doesn’t need the help of the team’s libero—his two-years-younger, mildly-overbearing roommate. It’s embarrassing, when Oikawa is supposed to be the one in charge. “ No .”
“Los pibes y yo mateamos afuera, en el patio. Tal vez te ayudaría—”
“No, ” he insists. The thought of bitter mate makes him sick , even though enjoying mate with the team is his favorite part of Argentine tradition. Passing it around, chatting, eating pan dulce . He can schmooze and improve his position on the team, he can practice his Spanish, he can use his charisma to not seem like an outsider. It’s great, and over the year, he’s gotten very good at it.
But not now.
“ ...Bueno, descansa, ” his roommate says with some finality, since he stays silent.
Oikawa can hear his footsteps moving away, and it hurts him a little, inexplicably, to think about him and his friends enjoying mate and merienda out on the patio. But he can barely think , he hurts so bad. His bones ache, his stomach cramps continuously. How could he possibly rest like this?
He wants to be home more than ever. He thinks irrationally about his mother. What if he fucking dies here in their tiny apartment with no AC?
There’s a Maradona poster in the bathroom, for some reason. Martín is not the most tasteful or subtle guy. Oikawa stares at it as he zones out: the blue and gold blurs together in his vision and the ultra-bright green of the pitch beneath the cleats looks fuzzy.
He hurts.
He reaches for his phone without even thinking and flicks to the only contact he can really bear to be weak around.
It rings. Rings. Rings.
“Hey, I’m with my girlfriend, can you give me, like, an hour? ” His tanned California face moves through what seems to be a hallway.
Oikawa can’t even say anything except stare at the screen pitifully. He feels a drop of sweat crawl down his face and onto his phone.
“ Yo, you look awful. What’s wrong? ”
“I dunno,” he chokes out. “I’m sick, I feel like I’m dying.”
“. ..You aren’t being whiny. You’re being serious. ” Iwaizumi narrows his eyes at him.
“Yeah,” he whimpers. Whimpers .
A door opens—sun hits Iwaizumi’s face. “Tell me what’s going on.”
“I’m—I dunno, I can’t stop puking.”
“ Did you eat something bad? ”
“Not yesterday.”
“It doesn’t have to be yesterday. What did you eat? ”
“Cow heart—” And the thought of the taste sends him over the toilet.
“ Oh .” Iwaizumi winces. “ Where were you? Argentina? ”
“No, Bolivia.” He chokes a little. “We won, Iwa-chan.”
“ Yeah?” Iwaizumi’s voice is gentle. “That’s good.”
Oikawa stays silent, because if he opens his mouth, he may cry.
“ Hey. Don’t cry,” Iwaizumi says. “Look, I have a couple of ideas. Let me look some things up and I’ll call you back in a little while.”
He gulps. “Okay.”
“ Okay. ” Iwaizumi brings his face close to the camera. “ Drink water, Shittykawa.”
The line clicks off, so Oikawa climbs into the bathtub and closes his eyes.
***
He wakes up in a haze to the sound of something banging.
“...to. Toto! Abre la puerta!”
What?
He struggles to get up. That’s Martín, he knows. So he grips the edge of the bathtub, trying to rise, fighting the dizziness that accompanies it. He’s nauseous. His stomach turns. The world spins. But he opens the door as asked.
“Ay.” His roommate grimaces. “Díos.”
“That bad?” he finds himself saying.
“Qué?”
He just blinks back. He forgot how to say that in Spanish.
“Pensé que estabas muerto,” he says. “Han pasado tres horas.”
“ Perdón,” is all he can come up with in response to his worry. It doesn’t feel like it’s been three hours, but there’s no outside light in the bathroom.
Martín laughs a bit, but still looks wary. “Tomaste agua? Powerade?”
“No,” he admits. And his tongue is dry because he hasn’t.
“Bueno, voy al kiosco y comprarlos.” Martín shifts on his feet. “No sé que hacer. Puedo sacarte al hospital?”
“No,” Oikawa blows him off—blows him off for trying to offer to care for him and for the hospital. It’s embarrasing. “‘Ta bien.”
He blinks, owlish and confused. “ Seguro?”
“ Seguro .”
Martín shrugs. “Bueno, me voy. Toma la temperatura.” He tosses him a thermometer.
Oikawa catches it clumsily and sticks it in his mouth as he walks away. It’s an old mercury one—he’s not sure how long he should keep it in. But he doesn’t feel like asking.
The front door swings open with a whine. “ Me mándalo! ”
“Okay,” he calls back, muffled around the rod.
He decides to leave it in there for a bit and scroll on his phone, ready to send the number to him. Then the motion makes his eyes hurt, so he puts it down.
He lays back down in the tub, staring at the Maradonna poster again. He always dreamed of being on a poster. UPCN might put him on one eventually.
And he drifts off without much fanfare, feeling the thermometer drop out of his mouth.
***
The next time he wakes, he’s much more disoriented, because there’s lots of sounds surrounding him.
“Toto!”
“Oikawa. Oikawa!”
He blinks. He’s still in the bathtub, but there’s puke on him. Ew. And Martín is there, and Iwaizumi? Iwaizumi’s in California…
“ Toto, acá,” Martín urges and wiggles the phone in his hand.
Oh.
“Hey, dumbass. Listen. Your roommate said you wouldn’t wake up. He took your temperature and it was way too high.”
“‘Mmkay.”
“Y ou need to go to the hospital. We think you have dengue .”
“..What the fuck is that?”
Martín pipes up, “Recuerdas cuando Cavanna enfermó por la picadurita de un mosquito?”
Oikawa barely comprehends that. “Mosquito? ”
“Did you get any mosquito bites in Bolivia? ” Iwaizumi asks.
“Yeah,” he murmurs. “But…”
Iwaizumi doubles down, “ Even if it’s not, you need to get checked out. It’s not normal to have food poisoning with a fever. ”
Oikawa finds that he doesn’t even really care. He blinks sleepily, forgetting about the puke on his lap, but startles back awake when Martín pokes him with a bottle of manzana Powerade.
“ Toto…” he says. “ E’toy preocupado de tí.”
“ ‘Ta bien, ” he says. And it’s the only thing he can generate with his mouth. “‘Ta bien. ”
“ No ,” Martín insists. “Vamos al hospital.”
“ Yeah. Hospital,” Iwaizumi echoes in English. “I’m serious, Tooru. This can kill you .”
“Iwa-chan…”
“ Your roommate is gonna keep me updated. By the next time I call, you better have gone with him to the hospital. ”
Iwaizumi hangs up on them, and Martín gets to work. “ Dale. Necesitas ropa nueva y un buzo.”
Oikawa sways in the spinning room as Martín heaves him up and peels off his soaked shirt, then slips a Boca Juniors sweatshirt over his head. If he had the energy to be embarrassed, he would. If he had the energy to be smug that Iwa-chan was paying attention to him instead of his girlfriend, he would.
But he’s not as proud as he used to be.
***
It’s true—he had dengue. Martín hauled him in a Cabify and took him to the public hospital, where they waited for four hours to be seen by the single doctor in the ER. But at least it was free. God knows Oikawa didn’t have the money to pay for a hospital visit.
But they sent him home, told him to take paracetamol. Drink water. Rest. There’s no cure.
Oikawa’s not a restful person. But they didn’t call it quebranta huesos for nothing. He couldn’t make it out of his bed for three days and couldn’t make it to practice for another three after that.
But Iwaizumi was pleased with him for taking responsibility, sucking it up, and taking care of it. And that made up for a lot of the bullshit.
v. los
dos/os dois, mes 28/mês 7: copacabana
Oikawa huffs quietly as they sit on the sand together, watching the waves, but otherwise remains silent. So Hinata doesn’t interrupt him. It’s a blessing in and of itself to have someone familiar near him after so much time away from home—he wouldn’t dare get in the way and fuck this up.
The silence finally breaks as Oikawa sighs out a breath, grasps at the backpack he’s been carrying around all day, and asks, “ Querés matear? ”
Hinata snaps his eyes to where Oikawa is intently focusing on a spot on the sand. “Yes!”
“Okay, dale, ” he murmurs, unzipping his bag to produce his mate set—it’s beautiful. His mate is covered in deep brown leather and pressed silver, and his bombilla has an engraving of the borders of Argentina. And his thermos—plastic, bright blue, and probably meant for a child—has Maradona’s smiling face on it.
Hinata grins. “Didn’t know you were a football fan.”
“I had to buy it at the airport, I forgot to bring mine,” he grumbles, tracing Hinata’s gaze, then clicks his tongue. “Don’t tell me you don’t own any Pelé merch.”
“Pedro—my roommate—and I have a jersey we share. But that’s all.”
The mood shifts again, quiet and a little awkward, but Oikawa prepares the mate with the speed of an experienced cebador . He shuffles the yerba in and pours the steaming water perfectly next to the well-crafted montaña .
“...You like Argentina?” Hinata asks. “You’re into the, y’know, traditions and stuff.”
Oikawa stares very intently at the mate, then at the horizon over Copacabana. “Do you want me to be honest with you?”
Hinata nods eagerly.
Oikawa takes a long drag of the mate del bobo , then says, “I had to work my way up. My Spanish sucked. Didn’t know how to use vos. Didn’t know the numbers.” He blinks as he stares down at the mate . “I, uh, still have trouble getting groceries sometimes.”
Hinata tries to slap a hand over his mouth in time to keep the laughter in, but it still escapes. “Oikawa Tooru? Not brave enough for the grocery store?”
He blushes scarlet and shoves the bombilla in his mouth, saying nothing.
“I dunno, I just kinda flounder around still,” Hinata admits. “Brazilian Portuguese is hard, and I don’t really understand when they speak in English to me, either. And everyone thinks I’m a tourist anyway.”
“What’s it been for you, though? Three months?”
Oikawa passes the mate over and Hinata starts to drink, shivering with the bitter taste. “A few more than that.”
“Whatever, you’re fine.” Oikawa blows him off with a pssh . “Besides, it’s not like you’ve got teammates to communicate with.”
“They don’t use English around you?”
“Did the first week. Then that was it.”
“...That’s kinda shitty.” The bombilla makes a bubbling sound as he finishes his serving of the ronda . “Here.”
“It was fine.” Oikawa takes the mate back, filling it up again. “Wasn’t that hard. Iwa-chan coached me a little before I left.”
From what Hinata could remember, Iwaizumi’s grades in school were not nearly as good as Oikawa’s. But it’s none of his business what they were really doing. “What’s he up to?”
“University. America.” He stares down at a few floating leaves in the mate . “Girls.”
“Oh, really?” Hinata tries to gracefully follow that up. He remembers the snickers of his upperclassmen back in his first year—jokes about the Seijoh captain and his vice and other things they might share.
“It suits him,” Oikawa settles on.
A wave crashes. Oikawa sucks down the mate .
“Can I ask you a question?”
Oikawa huffs. “Sure. What’ve I got to lose at this point?”
“Were you and Iwaizumi…” Hinata starts. “There’s no good way to ask this question, is there?”
“No, there’s not,” Oikawa barks out a laugh. “Yes, we were. That’s all I’ll give you.”
“But long-distance didn’t—”
“No.” Oikawa passes the mate to Hinata. “It did not.”
Hinata sips it down—the taste has gotten milder with time. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.”
Crash. Crash. A seagull caws.
“You still buds with anyone from back there?” He gestures across the ocean.
Hinata sighs. Is he? “I mean, I call people when I can. But most everyone’s busy with university or…real life.”
Oikawa takes the mate back. “Real life, huh?”
Hinata laughs. “Yeah, I mean, I deliver UberEats for a living and try to track players down on municipal volleyball courts. How can you call that real life?”
Oikawa turns and grins at him. “So you’re starting to get disillusioned.”
“Well, I wouldn’t go that far, but—well, you know what I mean.”
“I do.” Oikawa lodges the mate in the sand, turning to face him more. “Look. If you were here to try to meet anybody’s expectations or impress anyone, you wouldn’t be here.”
“Hey,” he murmurs, somewhat hurt.
“You’re here because you’re still chasing something. That’s real enough for you.”
Hinata listens to the waves, to the quiet bossa nova coming from a bar farther up Copacabana. He watches the mountains—Sugarloaf in the distance, looking over the hotels and the business and the favelas and the people, people, people. And Oikawa.
And him.
“What if I don’t belong anywhere?” Hinata finds himself saying.
“Oh, be serious,” Oikawa laughs. “Who cares if you ‘belong’ or not? Who cares if you speak the language? Who cares if you can go to the grocery store without getting embarrassed?”
“Um.”
“No one but you, shrimpy. Literally no one cares. Do you think they care?”
He points at two drunk girls tripping over the tiled sidewalk barefoot.
“Or them?”
A couple making out in knee-deep water.
“Or him?”
A man and his guitar, hat facing upwards to collect tips.
“Or me?”
That one makes Hinata jump.
Oikawa pauses, then tilts his head. “Oh my God. You think I care.”
Hinata frowns.
“Wait, that sounded bad.” Oikawa puts a hand up. “Hinata-chan. I don’t give a fuck if you feel like you’re failing, or falling behind Tobio-chan, or not fitting in. You’ve still got arms and legs to play volleyball, you’re not homeless, and you’re still happy enough to give a damn about me.”
His bottom lip trembles.
“You’re doing fine.” Oikawa offers a rare, genuine smile. “If that’s what you want to hear.”
Hinata looks away, towards the rising moon.
“Alright, now you’re getting pathetic,” Oikawa groans. “C’mon. Mate’s done, now you’re treating me to dinner.”