Chapter 1
The room is dry and warm. Hinata’s snuggled up in a pile of blankets as white as the snow that falls outside the window. At his feet baby Natsu crawls in her playpen on the floor, gurgling at the colors flashing across the television screen. He can hear his mother behind him in the kitchen: She's standing at the stove stirring the bubbling thick mass of stew that fills the room with a rich, meaty smell. Hinata unconsciously pats his small belly underneath the layers of cloth.
He hears the sounds as she sets the spoon down and opens the oven, the buttery, balmy scent of freshly baked bread unfurling to mix with the already pleasant aromas of cooked food. Hinata’s stomach twists in on itself—he forgot to eat his afternoon snack and he’s hungry—but the blanket nest is comforting warmth concooned around his body, and he knows if he waits just a little longer, his father will walk through the door; then they’ll all sit down and eat stew together, in the warmth of their good, sturdy house that blocks out the wind and the snow and is safe.
Safe and warm and happy.
Hinata is happy.
Hinata breaks out of his reverie just in time to catch the tall pile of earth bricks about to fall over in front on him.
“Damn it Hinata, pay attenion!” Chaya, his spervisior/coworker on the brick line, yells at him.
“Sorry! Sorry boss!” Hinata shakes the remnants of his daydream out of his head and focuses on the task at hand, breaking big chunks of lava rock into small, equalteral bricks that will then be shipped off to some construction site to be bent into a rich person’s house.
Lava rock is staunch, and harder than plain rocks made of plain earth, so nobels pay a high price to have their walls built of the material. So for eight hours a day, six days a week, he bends lava rocks, or marble, or metals, into bricks that rich people will use to build their houses.
Hinata’s own house is a solid slab of brown rock that suits him just fine, which is good, since he’d never be able to afford a house made of marble anyway, but he’s glad that these nobels are willing to pay large amounts of money for the bricks he bends, since it puts food on the table.
Food on the table is good.
His stomach twists in on itself, reminding him of the reason his mind slipped into a daydream of the past: he’s hungry. The whistle sounds, signifying the end of the work day. Hinata bends his pile of bricks into the loading area, and then cleans up his work station. He takes a minute to carefully remove the dust that has settled onto his skin and into his hair and the folds of his clothes. Yachi always has a fit if he brings in a layer of dirt into the house, which is ironic, since their entire house, down to most of the furniture, is made of earth.
Hinata clocks out, and walks home through the dingy streets with an extra spring in his step. He only stops long enough to pet the big brown stray dog that lives in his corner of their neighborhood. He fishes out a small bit of bread he saved from his lunch, and watches with a smile as the dog gnaws on the hard end of crust.
When he gets home, Natsu welcomes him from where she sits on the floor in front of the coffee table sorting dried herbs on its earthen surface. Hinata tweaks her nose affectionately as he sits beside her to help her sort, though he mixes up mugwort with chrysanthemum, and chrysanthemum with coriander, causing Natsu more work than she started with. But she doesn’t get mad, just giggles at his ineptitude, and shows him the correct way to identify their differences, though they both know he’ll forget them by tomorrow morning.
“Dinner’s ready,” Yachi calls from the kitchen.
They sit down at the table to stew, echoing Hinata’s earlier dream, but there’s no meat in this one, because meat’s been as rare as hen’s teeth lately, and even when it’s available it’s too expensive for them to eat on the regular. To accompany it is dense brown bread, the same kind he fed to the stray dog.
Their de facto family sits together around their table made of rock that Hinata shaped with own two hands. The stew is thin and mostly root vegetables, but still delicious, because of Yachi’s knowledge of herbs. They slowly eat the stew to make it last, letting the hot liquid roll over their tongues and spread its warmth throughout their stomachs. The food they eat in their earthen house is tasty and hot and good.
They are warm.
The next day Hinata wakes up to excitedly hushed whispers and snickering. When he opens his eyes Yaichi and Natsu kneel next to him, holding between them a small plate on which rests a small, white cake with a thin, silver-coated candle sticking out of it, already half-burnt away.
“Happy Birthday!” they shout, then start singing. Hinata’s smile is so wide it hurts, because today is his birthday, and also his day off, and there’s cake, which they haven’t eaten in probably over a year, since it’s made with white sugar and white flour and butter and eggs, all expensive ingredients, especially since the food shortages started a few years ago.
He’s eighteen today, a fact that has him the happiest of all, because today is the day he can go register for pro-bending. He hurriedly blows out the silver candle, so they can save it for the next person’s birthday. Then they usher him out of bed, and he quickly washes up, and sits down to a breakfast of white cake and wild berries, the best breakfast he’s had in a while.
When the delicious breakfast is over, he’s about to get up to prepare everything for the day’s gathering, but Yachi and Natsu stop him.
“Wait, Nii-chan, one more!” Natsu excitedly announces, and from one of the kitchen cupboards, Yaichi takes a plain brown box tied with some brightly colored yarn.
“Another present?” Hinata asks, surprised, because he thought the cake had been his birthday present.
Natsu nods happily.
“Open it, open it!” Yachi chants happily.
So Hinata opens it, his second present of the day, feeling spoiled, but happy.
He isn’t sure what to expect, but as he stares at the pair of black gloves resting in the open box he feels his throat tighten. Pro-bending gloves. Real pro-bending gloves.
“How?” Hinata has trouble speaking around the tightening in his throat.
“Natsu’s been making deliveries on her own after school for a while now, saving up. Which means I can stay back here, waiting for customers. We make more that way,” Yachi explains, proudly, and the smile Natsu gives Hinata is modest and pleased at his astonishment.
“Ehh?! But is it safe?” is Hinata’s reply.
“Nii-chan! I’m eleven-years-old already!” Natsu wails. Then Yachi is ushering for him to try the gloves on, fretting that maybe she bought the wrong size and what will they do if they don’t fit, they can’t return them, and that’s months of hard work down the drain…
They fit perfectly.
They spend the morning and early afternoon gathering herbs and wild plants in the woods, because even though it’s Hinata’s birthday, they can’t afford to take the day off. Their one day of gathering is always Saturdays, and Yachi and Natsu need these things to help make their living.
It’s too dangerous for the girls to go into the woods on their own, without Hinata. They’re safe enough on their own in their small, familiar neighborhood in the gutter slums, where everyone knows them, but Hinata refuses to let them go out on their own beyond that, not into the inner slums and especially not into the woods. There’s too many human traffickers that snatch young women and girls, and even young boys. It’s the same reason he insisted Yachi live with them all those years ago, when both their parents never came back from the war. Yachi would have never survived on her own, since she wasn’t a bender. Then again, after Hinata realized he didn’t know how to do anything—from chores to paying bills to haggling to cooking—he knew they wouldn’t have survived on their own without her as well. So their family of orphans was born, and together, they live.
It’s a hot day. The sunshine filters through the leaves of the trees and the grass beneath their feet is vibrant and green and sweet in the hazy heat. Since there was a mid-summer shower a few days ago, the thickets are heavy with berries, which is good since they indulged in their supply at breakfast.
At home Natsu sorts the herbs, which Hinata is forbidden from doing (Natsu claims it’s because it’s his birthday and she’s giving him a rest and it has nothing to do with his horrible sorting skills.) Hinata stands in front of the only mirror they have in the living room, which is only a little worn around the edges, and frowns at his reflection.
Yachi is in the kitchen drying the mushrooms they found in the oven. Hinata can hear her humming in happiness; mushrooms go for a high price because of their meaty texture and because of something she tried to explain to him, called umami, which he doesn’t really get but thinks of as ‘fancy mushroom essence’. She comes into the living room and sees him staring at his reflection in the mirror.
“You look great! You’ll do great!” she reassures him, even though he’s wearing the same shirt and pants he always wears. He tries smoothing his hair down in the mirror, a futile attempt at vanity, and watches in the mirror as Yachi walks over to the coffee table, explaining to Natsu what each of the plants she’s set in a pile to the side mean.
Today is Hinata’s eighteenth birthday and he’s going to register to become a pro-bender. If he can make it past tryouts, if he passes the Selection, he’ll have a new job, one that doesn’t require him to bend bricks for rich people’s houses for eight hours a day, six days a week. They’ll have more money to live on, and maybe the chance to live in a better house themselves. Maybe they’ll even get a chance to live inside the city walls that are protected by guards and where police roam the streets to make sure the city is safe. He’ll work hard for that to happen.
They will be safe.
Kageyama sits on the floor of his room, oiling his pair of lionseal skin boots. His packed knapsack leans against the wall beside him.
“Can I come in?” his mom asks politely, before pushing aside the hanging pelt that functions as a door to his room.
“I made you some sea prune cookies,” she says, setting the plate down next to him along with a glass of milk. Kageyama nods his head in thanks; he’s long given up telling his mother he’s too old for milk and cookies and the assortment of other things she still insists on bringing him that make him feel all of five-years-old.
“Tobio,” she begins, and he inwardly grimaces at the familar tone of voice she’s using, “you know you don’t have to go. You’re not even eighteen yet.” It’s an argument she’s laid out for him half a dozen times before.
He replies in the same way he has half a dozen times before, “I’m going.” There is finality in his tone.
She sighs, a mom sigh, and leans down to brush the hair off his forehead. “Well, you still have until sunrise to change your mind.” Kageyama grimaces at her back as she exits the room.
He knows at least half her agitation is natural, mothers worry, and ever since his father has been gone, she’s constantly worried. The other half, his subconcious tells him, is because of him and his past. The ugly part of his brain tells him, she’s right.
But he ignores that part of his brain, just as he does every other time, and sets about putting a protective layer of turtleseal wax onto his lionseal boots, preparation for the journey ahead.
He picks up a cookie and bites into it.
It’s tasty.
In the morning the sun is bright in the sky as he puts on his layers of traveling clothes.
There’s only a few tears from his mother as he leaves, and there’s only a small twinge of guilt that scrapes at his insides at the reminder that she will be alone from now on, or at least until he returns. Guilt that he quickly assauges when he reminds himself she has his uncles and aunts and cousins to keep her company still, plus all the neighbors and everyone else in their home.
It’s not until hours after they set sail that he begins to feel nervous. He’d been kept busy the moment he boarded, they're their own crew after all. So it’s not until there’s a lull in activity and he finds himself standing at the side of the boat, looking at the sapphire waves lapping over one another, that he realizes: he’s leaving home, and he’s alone, truly alone. Not just the type of alone like when he was little and had to sit by himself at lunchtime, but got to come home to his mother and his family after a hard day.
Alone, alone.
Oh, well.
He’ll get used to it.
He has months until they reach their sister tribe in the North.
He’ll get used to it.
Hinata passes tryouts.
When he reflects on it, it’s not that surprising, considering that he works in a job where he gets to use his bending everyday, even if it is repetatively shaping bricks. It also may be attributed to the fact that there are other pro-bender fanatics at his job, and they may sometimes (ok, all the time) fool around during breaks trying to copy the moves they see in pro-bender matches.
It’s the Selection that’s got him worried.
He stands to the side in the waiting room, waiting for his number to be called for his match. He only gets one shot at this.
It works like this: Tryouts are to determine the level of bending the pro-bender hopefuls are at. There are so many people wanting to be pro-benders now-a-days and tryouts are an easy way to weed out the useless. Pass tryouts, and you move on to Selection, where the the teams who have open slots will watch you battle. Maybe they’ll pick you, maybe not. If not, you have to wait another three months until Selection opens again. If so…
Well, Hinata is hoping for the if so.
Even if you win your match, a team still might not pick you. Then you can try to go pro on your own, or form a team on your own. But if you get picked by one of the established teams in the league, you’ll have a set, steady job. The teams in the league have coaches and established match schedules and even sometimes, sponsers. Hinata loves bending. He absolutely loves pro-bending.
He loves his family more.
Hinata needs the job. The unstable paycheck of a solo pro-bender wouldn’t be enough. If he doesn’t make it, he’ll spend another chunk of his life making bricks. He's sort of sick of bricks, and he may sort of hate them as well, but since bricks have been good to him, he tries to not hate them.
At least if he wins his match he’ll get a small reward amount. Even if he doesn’t make a team it will be a bit of a consolation prize. Maybe they can buy some meat tonight, if he wins.
By the time his number is called, his stomach is grumbling so loudly he would’ve been embarassed if he wasn’t so terrified. He glaces at the seats full of unfamiliar faces. The Selection is a paid for event, so there are spectators in the stands. The tickets were too expensive for Yachi and Natsu to be able to attend, but he knows they’ll be watching the match on their old TV and cheering him on.
Hinata doesn’t recognize the guy he’s up against, even though he’s a pro-bending fantatic. Selections usually air on days he has work, and it would be foolish to lose a day of wages to watch.
The guy has about ten years on him, which means he has ten times the experience, in Hinata’s mind. Not to mention he also has ten times the muscle, and way more than ten centimeters on him. He also has a mustache, something Hinata will never be able to have.
Hinata thinks he’d look cool with a mustache.
Hinata’s wearing his new pro-bending gloves, that Yaichi has stitched a tree into, their own inside joke. He’s wearing his homemade helmet made of earth that he cleverly devised himself. He’s wearing his work clothes, which are also his everyday clothes, because clothes are freaking expensive and hard to make. He hopes they don’t get torn.
The guy standing opposite him has an entire professionally made pro-bending suit.
The timer goes off.
“Gwah!” Hinata screams, sending a large wave of rocks across the arena. He swoops his arms down, sending a volley of earth disks, one after the other.
His opponent blocks easily. He twists his arms, does some weird set-up Hinata’s never seen before and the entire floor beneath him rolls in a seismic wave that has Hinata falling on his ass. He hears appreciative whistles from the audience.
He rolls out of the way as a column of earth smashes into the ground where he was sitting mere seconds beforehand. Another comes flying at him, and he’s ducking and dodging around a living forest of rock that wants to smash his body to pieces.
“WAHH!” he screams, setting up an earth launching pad, that sends him streaking across the distance to his opponent. He blocks Hinata’s earth covered fist, but misses the chunk of rock that comes flying at him from the left. It sends moustache guy tumbling to the side, and Hinata makes a quick retreat. Sometimes the simplest moves are the best.
Hinata throws a mountain of earth at his stumbling opponent, but the guy dodges, quick on his feet despite his size.
Hinata stomps hard into the ground. Rocks and pebbles fly upward in a dust cloud that he sends flying at his opponent as hard and lethal as dozens of bullets.
“Buh bam!”
For some reason he hears laughing from the section of bending teams observing on the side.
As the dust clears, Hinata is only able to catch a glimpse of a rock wall, before a massive herd of bull shaped rocks comes stampeding at him. Hinata panicks, and screams and runs, and he hears more laughter from the stands as he wills his legs to run faster, lest he be gorged by a horn made of rock.
He runs around the arena dodging earth spikes the guy throws at him, and jumping over mounds and slabs of earth that spring up from the ground, trying to trip him. The bulls storm behind him.
After his second lap of the area, to a soundtrack of the audience’s laughter, he turns.
“Swoosh!!!!!!!!” he screams, throwing his arms at the gigantic animals, which dissinegrate into an enormous cloud of sand.
The audience goes silent. Or at least it sounds silent, after the massive thundering the bulls’ feet made.
Hinata twists his arms, forming a sand funnel—no, an entire sand tornado—that he sends to his stunned looking opponent. The tornado swallows the guy whole, and spits him out in seconds, launching him through the air and off the platform into the water below.
There’s a few moments of quiet where Hinata catches his breath, then loud clapping and laughing and shouting come from the stands, and he stares, in awe, at his surroundings, not quite comprehending.
“Well, that was amusing,” Suga muses, staring down at the pint-sized bender standing in the arena.
“I like his sound effects!” Nishinoya roars, hoisting himself up with the shoulders of the person in front of him.
Asahi only looks slightly harrassed at Nishinoya’s weight pressing down on his shoulders. “Uh, did anyone else notice that a lot of his rocks were shaped like bricks?”
Daichi barks a laugh. “I noticed.”
“Great,” Ennoshita quips, “let’s pick him. We can call him ‘The Builder’ or ‘Brickman’.”
“Hell yeah!” Tanaka and Nishinoya roar. “BRICKMAN!”
“No,” Ennoshita tries to inturrupt them, “I was only kidding….” But it’s a lost cause at the two sitting on either side of him launch into a loud contest of one upping eachother on brick-related pro-bending names.
Ennoshita and Asahi both sigh.
“His sand bending would be useful,” Kiyoko comments. Daichi and Suga exchange looks. It’s the first time Kiyoko’s commented on a match today.
This shuts both Tanaka and Nishinoya up.
“Kiyoko-chan has spoken!”
“Her word is team law!”
“Not just team law, kingdom law!”
“Not just kingdom law, world law!”
“The chibi-chan shall be the one to join our team.”
“And we’ll see Kiyoko-sama whip him into shape, like a beautiful domina-”
Ennoshita reaches out both his hands and slams his palms across both their faces.
Asahi sighs again.
“Well, we’ll see,” Suga comments pleasantly. “He does have a natural sort of showmanship, even if his moves are a bit rough. And showmanship leads to entertainment, which leads to the fans’ favor.”
“Which leads to more money,” Daichi finishes.
“More money!” Tanaka and Nishinoya croon.
“The next match is starting,” Asahi informs them, and they all shut up.
Afterward, Hinata learns that his opponent is known as The Conquistador. He walks up to him.
The older man eyes him angrily.
“Those bulls were so cool!” Hinata gushes, since he’s never been well at reading people. “Can you teach me how to do that?!”
The Conquistador looks at him, brow raised.
Then he punches Hinata square in the face.
And that’s how Hinata died.
Or at least he wishes.
After that incident, for quite a few weeks, his temporary nickname is Captain Oblivious. Which he hates, but given the other options he'd heard, Brickman of all things, (How had they even known he worked with bricks?) he only gets slightly depressed about it.
After two months at sea Kageyama learns some things.
1. He is a waterbender prone to seasickness.
2. He is a waterbender prone to seasickness.
3. He is a goddamn waterbender that gets seasick.
The spirit gods must be laughing at him.
He’d never known beforehand because apparently it only hits him on long voyages. He decides as soon as he earns enough he’s going to buy himself a sky bison, lack of airbending be damned.
When they get to the Northern Water Tribe his aunt and uncle along with Kindaichi, his second something-or-other-removed cousin (Kageyama never remembers this type of trivial information) are there to greet him. They offer to let him stay at their house over the cramped guest dorms and he accepts.
Kindaichi shows Kageyama around, and it’s not too bad, though Kageyama doesn’t really connect with anyone. Kindaichi has a friend named Kunimi, a quiet guy with his hair parted in the middle. Kunimi’s always around Kindaichi, which means he’s always at Kindaichi’s house as well. It doesn’t bother Kageyama since he’s often out training anyway, only home for dinner and to sleep and sometimes for breakfast.
Then one day, about a week after Kageyama’s arrival, he comes home early from training and finds Kindaichi and Kunimi in Kindaichi’s room, which he happens to be sharing, with their clothes off.
All of their clothes off.
Except for a pair of whalebone handcuffs Kindaichi has around his wrists.
Kageyama moves into the dorms after that.
The day after Kageyama walks in on him and Kunimi, Kindaichi knows his life is about to disintegrate before his very eyes like dust in a sandbending storm.
He waits for the fallout: For his mother to have a mental breakdown. For his father to disown him. For the neighbors to whisper. For the other trainees to taunt him and Kunimi. The Northern Water Tribe is full of tradition, and a relationship between two men is anything but traditional.
Except nothing happens.
Kageyama moves out of the house and over dinner he hears his mother saying that Kageyama decided to stay in the dorms because it was more convinient for his training, though he promised to come over and eat dinner often.
Kindaichi can’t quite believe his ears. It almost makes him feel bad, all those times he’d went along with the other older cousins and tried trapping Kageyama in an igloo or abandoning him on an iceburg. Almost. Kageyama had always instantaneously escaped the situation with waterbending anyway.
After talking to Kageyama a few times to feel him out it occurs to Kindaichi that it possibly never even occurred to Kageyama to tell. He thanks the gods that his cousin is a single-minded idiot who only cares about waterbending.
One day he happens to be eating in the mess hall with Kunimi when he overhears some people talking about Kageyama.
“They say on the way here, he’d ride on an iceburg fueled by a vortex that was able to keep up with the boat. For hours,” he hears a trainee whisper.
“That’s some Avatar level shit if I ever heard it,” the guy’s companion replies.
“There’s also that rumor, you know, the one that he could bloodbend since the age of eight”
“What? No way, that’s fucking freaky. An eight-year-old bloodbender?”
Kindaichi shifts in his seat uncomfortably. He thinks about going over to correct them. He sees Kunimi look at him out of the corner of his eye. He decides to let it go. Rumors will be rumors.
It’s not his story to tell, anyway.
Besides, no one ever believes in the rumors of a five-year-old bloodbender anyway. That's why they always die out so quietly.
The house they move into isn’t much bigger than their old one, but structually it’s a lot nicer. Hinata still has to bend them a table and chairs made of earth, along with a coffee table and couch. It’s only temporary though. Pretty soon they’ll save up enough and buy real furniture or at least a real couch made of material and stuffing soft enough to fall asleep on, like the one his parents had owned when he was little.
It’d taken him a few months just to save up enough to be able to afford the land rent for the house. It’d been hard, saving instead of spending the his newer, larger paycheck, but they’re behind the walls now, and the walls mean safety. At least more safety than outside.
Sometimes during practice he looks around at his teammates, people he’s seen on TV before, and still can’t believe that he’s part of Karasuno, the same team that had once been the home of his idol, the Little Giant, who had taken them to the Republic City Championships.
“Hinata!” Daichi calls. He’s standing at the far end of their practice gym near the small office underneath the section of bleachers.
“Yes captain!” Hinata runs over and bows.
“Uh, yeah, you can stop doing that already, remember?” Daichi reminds him, rubbing the back of his neck.
“Right! Sorry captain,” Hinata replies, then blushes. He can’t help it; with his short cropped hair and wide, solid shoulders Daichi looks just like the pictures of handsome military captains Hinata’s seen in his history books.
Suga, standing beside Daichi, chuckles.
“Anyway,” Daichi continues, “we’ve decided the teams.”
“Yes captain!” Hinata can barely contain his excitement.
“You’ll be in a unit with Ennoshita, Noya, and Tanaka.”
“Hell yeah!” Tanaka roars behind him, unexpectedly. Hinata finds himself being hoisted into the air.
“Welcome to the team!” Nishinoya shouts, starting to dance around Tanaka and Hinata.
Hinata sees Suga walk over to Ennoshita and pat him on the back with a smile.
“Kiyoko’s going to explain your strategies to you.”
“Yes captain!” Hinata cries. Tanaka puts him down.
“Alone,” Daichi says loudly and emphatically to Tanaka and Nishinoya as they start to head towards Kiyoko. They freeze in place then scatter away like disappointed ducklings.
Hinata makes his way to Kiyoko who’s sitting on one of the side benches. He tries to pay attention to what she says, but it’s hard because she’s the most beautiful person he’s ever seen. Just looking at her always has his head forgetting that it has a brain inside.
When she finishes talking, and he lies and says he understands everything perfectly, they have one last group meeting of the day before being dismissed from practice. When they walk outside the sun is low in the sky, the air dry and warm and dusty as the early autumn night settles.
“New team, let’s go out to celebrate!”
“A celebration?!” Hinata squeaks, as Tanaka and Nishinoya usher him down the street.
“Chikara don’t you dare walk away! It’s team bonding time,” Nishinoya shouts over his shoulder. Hinata hears Ennoshita sigh behind him.
Tanaka and Nishinoya lead them into the heart of the entertaintainment district, a place Hinata hasn’t been yet.
There’s storefronts and restaurants with strings of bright flashing lights and torches flickering in the air. Performers line the streets, small crowds pooling around them. Hinata stops to watch a female waterbender in a bright yellow costume fashion a floating castle of ice, which then morphs into a long, sleek dragon winding around the spectators' heads.
There’s stalls and vendors shouting about their goods, boxs and barrels of bright, shiny things that look pretty and wink and glitter in the lights.
“Ohhh, this is amazing!” he chirps at Ennoshita, looking at a display full of glowing crystals.
Ennoshita laughs. “Let’s get some food in our stomachs,” he suggests.
They stop at a stall with a red canopy.
“Since this is your first time here, you gotta start with the best,” Tanaka says to Hinata.
“The best?” he echoes in question.
“Best swarma in Ba Sing Se,” Nishnoya agrees. “Old man, give us four rough n’ tumbles.”
“Right away Noya!” replies the little old man behind the counter.
“Oh! Noya-san he knows you!” Hinata unnecesarily points out.
Nishinoya puffs his chest out proudly. “Of course he does! Karasuno is famous!”
“And you’re also one of his most frequent customers,” Ennoshita mutters under his breath. As they wait for their food Nishinoya and Tanaka cheer on a bare-chested man juggling flaming knives. Hinata covers his eyes, sure that the man’s going to miss and inadvertantly amputate his own arm.
“Meat!” Hinata cries, at the sight of the strangely shaped food the man sets on the counter.
“Yes it is Shouyou!” Nishinoya shoves the foreign food into his hand. “Eat up! My treat!”
“Ohhhh, Noya-san you’re the best!” Hinata cries, causing Nishinoya to puff out his chest yet again.
“You can say that again!”
"You're the best!" Hinata takes a bite. Flavors explode across his tongue. He thinks he may cry.
Luckily the others are too absorbed in inhaling their own food to notice his euphoric almost-breakdown. Down the street a firebender suddenly releases a billow of flames into the sky, which a waterbender evaporates into cloudly puffs of snow. Hinata’s eyes follow the whirl of glittering dots as they float to the ground.
He finishes his food faster than the others. Unable to stay still he crosses the street to a small vendor with little displays of bright hair baubles.
“Gift for your girlfriend?” the female vendor asks him. Hinata blushes.
“No, my sisters.”
“Do they have the same lovely orange hair as you?”
Hinata’s blush deepens.
“One has the same color hair as me. The other has blonde hair”—he pictures Yachi in his mind—“like sunshine.”
“Ahh, might I suggest these then.” The vendor selects a small handful of different items and sets them on a bare spot of table. He picks out what he thinks looks prettiest and she wraps each of them in tiny gossamer bags and ties the tops with ribbon. Hinata pays her.
“Hinata, we’re gonna go get get some drinks now,” he hears Ennoshita call.
Drinks? He could go for a drink. The swarma was delicious, but a little salty, so his throat does feel a tad parched. He follows them into a dark alley that he wouldn’t have dared ever turn down alone. Tanaka knocks at a door. Instantly, a scarily big man wearing bright purple pants answers.
“You’ll need to show him your Pro-ID.” Ennoshita says to Hinata. Hinata fishes the card out of his pocket and inadvertantly shrinks away from the giant of a man as he follows his teammates through the door.
Inside they walk through a dark hall that seems to radiate a beat through Hinata’s body. It’s narrow and lit by colored flouresent lights that fill the space with a purple tint a shade duller than the doorman’s pants. The hallway ends in a wall of red curtains. He watches each of his teammates step through the layers of velvet. Hinata follows.
On the other side of the fabric is another world.
The beat, it turns out, is a low thrumming music that intensies tenfold as soon as Hinata steps into the room.
It’s a huge room, almost as big as an old school pro-bending platform. On the left side is a long, long counter, with stools, and people sitting on the stools. Behind the counter are women standing in front of shelves of brightly colored bottles of liquid. Some of them glow. The bottles and the women.
There’s a large stage on the far end that extends into the middle of the room. There are small black tables surrounding the stage, filled with people. There are also an assortment of circular booths, flush with navy blue velveteen seats. They ring the room in uniform spacing. In the middle of each of these booths is a table, or to be more accuate, a miniature looking platform, with a pole jutting up the middle. What catches Hinata’s eye is that on some of these poles, men dance. Men wearing nothing but tiny, tiny shorts, and as they walk further into the room, closer to one of the booths with a dancing man on a platform, he sees tassles covering the man’s nipples.
Hinata squeaks.
The sound is instantly swallowed by the loud music, but it’s as if Ennoshita heard him anyway. He turns, his sleek black hair cast in a blue tint from the flashing lights overhead. Catching Hinata’s expression, he offers him an amused smile.
Hinata gulps.
He follows his teammates to an empty velvet booth. From there, he’s able to see that the people weaving amoung the tables are near-naked men as well.
“Is everybody naked here?!” he blurts out, in fascinated horror. Nishinoya and Tanaka start laughing uncontrollably. Ennoshita just gives him another amused smile and pats his shoulder.
He sees tall men and short men, muscular men, and thin men. Some have exquisitely dark, smooth skin, and some have skin as pale as starlight. All of them are beautiful. He watches one man, with his hair in a top knot, drop to the floor in front of a pole then thrust his hips in such an obscene way Hinata physically squirms.
Then Hinata realizes he’s looking at basically naked men and his eyes dart around, trying to find something appropriate to look at. He sees a middle-aged women sitting at one of the black tables grab a tall, handsomely bronzed guy walking by. She stuff a wad of paper bills into the tiny hem of his tiny shorts, then reaches down and slaps him on the ass. Hard.
The man laughs.
Hinata’s mouth drops open.
He watches as Tanaka gets up and heads to the long counter with the women behind it.
“The girl working at the bar is his sister,” Ennoshita explains to Hinata, as a man with silver eyes stops by their table and starts talking to Nishinoya. He has pink hearts on his chest, instead of tassles like the first guy Hinata saw. Hinata quickly averts his eyes.
“Tanaka’s nee-san?” They’re not too far from the bar, and from what Hinata can see they sort of do look alike. Then he notices that the women behind the bar are fully clothed.
“How come the women aren’t naked as well?” he blurts out. Ennoshita smiles.
“Because they’re the bartenders, not the entertainment.” Ennoshita explains. Hinata nods like he understands, which he really doesn’t. He watches as another woman walks over to Tanaka and ruffles the non-existent hair on his head. Nishinoya is still talking to the silver-eyed man. Ennoshita gives him a thoughtful look.
“Hinata, do you know where we are?” he asks kindly.
“A bar?” Hinata asks quizzically, because he’s pretty sure it is a bar, since Ennoshita just said so, even though it’s not like any bar he’s seen before in the slums.
“Yes, but do you know the type of bar?” Ennoshita questions, patiently.
Hinata’s brow wrinkles in confusion. A term pops into his head, one he remembers hearing from the boys at his old school.
“A gay bar?”
Ennoshita looks at him in surprise, then laughs.
“No, not a gay bar. A titty bar.”
“Titty bar?” Hinata sounds the word out in his mouth.
“A male titty bar!” Nishinoya breaks into the conversation. “Never been to a titty bar before Shouyou?”
“No!”
“Well, that’s alright, that’s what you have your senpai for. To teach you the ways of the world.”
Tanaka, with some crystal mugs of bright green liquid in hand, returns just in time to hear Nishinoya’s last sentence. He nods in agreement.
“Now drinks!” He thrusts a mug into each of their hands. “To our new group! The Wizened Senpais and the Fresh Newb.”
“We are not calling ourself that,” Ennoshita says firmly. They clink glasses and Hinata takes a sip of the green juice. It is a tasty concoction: sour and sweet. Bitter and fruity. Juicy and green and delicious.
“This is so good!”
His senpai smile at him. Their grins look feline in the flashing lights.
Hinata sips his juice. It’s not so bad here. People stop and talk to his senpai, whether they’re fans or friends he doesn’t know. The music flows through his body in an almost magical way. It makes him feel warm and fuzzy, like he’s floating through the air or on top of a tepid, gentle sea.
The lights above the stage flash and a loud voice says something he doesn’t really catch. Then a bunch of men run out, in animal costumes—or to be more correct, animal ears and tails, since the only other things covering their bodies are the tiny shorts and a variety of shapes stuck to their chests—not really enough material to be classified as costumes. He sees tassle and hearts and moons and jewels. The men dance on stage and Hinata finds himself nodding his head to the beat. It’s all in good fun, he realizes, as he sees people in the crowd, people of all ages, both men and women, cheering the guys on.
“Can I have another green juice?” he asks. He turns to see that only Nishinoya is in the booth still. He’s about to ask Noya where the other two went, but forgets to do so.
“Sure Shouyou!” Nishinoya signals to a passing guy and pretty soon, they have new mugs in their hands. Though the liquid inside is pink, not green.
“This isn’t the right color!” he informs Nishinoya. The lights of the club reflect blue off of Nishinoya’s tuft of bleached hair.
Nishinoya chuckles. “Try it, it’s good too.”
So Hinata trusts his senpai and takes a sip. It’s just as good as the last. A bit sweeter, but just as delicious.
Hinata sits back and sips his drink. He feels good. The lights feel good. The soft, cushy material of the booth feels good.
After some time, possibily minutes or hours or days, but maybe only seconds. He hoists himself up.
“I’m going to the bathroom!” he announces. Sometime in those minutes or hours or days his other senpai have returned.
“Let me show you where it is,” Ennoshita says, starting to get up.
“No, no I see it! Don’t worry Ennoshita-san,” Hinata waves vaguely at the signs indicating the restroom. His body tilts left and right as though the movement is magnified by music. He weaves his way through the crowd.
The hallway to the restrooms is empty, save for one of the male workers. He’s a bit taller than Ennoshita, maybe not much older than Hinata himself, with a bush of brown spiky hair on his head. His skin is pale ochre, and as Hinata walks towards him he realizes it’s covered in a layer of slick oil and glitter.
He’s gorgeous.
“Huh, you’re new here aren’t you?” the guy says, and Hinata reactively looks around for the person the guys talking to. He’d thought no one else was in the hallway.
“I’m talking to you.” The guy looks directly at Hinata, then smiles, transforming his stoic looking face into dashingly handsome. Hinata feels a little dizzy.
“Um, I’m just going to the bathroom,” Hinata mumbles.
“That’s fine.” The guy stands, unmoving, eyes on Hinata. Just as Hinata’s about to pass him he stretches his arm out, palm hitting the opposite wall, stopping him. “But you should have some fun with me first.”
Hinata whips his head around so fast it makes him lose his footing. He tries to right himself, but his balance seems strangely off, and his body teeters like a seesaw. He tips over against the wall behind him, causing himself to be trapped by it and the almost naked male body in front of him.
“Hhhnuh?” The noise that comes out of his mouth makes the guy laugh. He steps closer to Hinata.
The guy’s arm is muscular. His entire body is muscular. Hinata can feel the heat radiating off his skin. He smells musky and clean and sweaty and manly. Hinata’s eye level with his chest, which has two golden stars smack dab in the lower middle of his pecs. Their metallic sufaces shine in the light.
Hinata tries to turn his face away. The guy’s freehand comes up and nudges it back. He leans forward, his mouth coming close to Hinata’s ear. “Now, now, it’s impolite to not face someone when they’re talking to you.” His hand brushes Hinata’s side.
Hinata shivers.
The gold stars gleam in a strangely mesmerizing way as the guy’s body shifts . Hinata doesn’t know why he can’t seem to tear his eyes from them. He sees his teammates’ bare nipples all the time, in the changing room, or even just when Tanaka gets worked up and whips off his shirt. He has nipples himself. He knows women have nipples, though he’s never actually seen them in person, just in some dirty magazines his classmates had brought to school before, when he’d still been in school. Those pictures had made his pants feel uncomfortably tight for the rest of the school day.
Somehow, the fact that the guy’s nipples are covered by the shiny stars make them even more exciting than the ones he’d seen in the dirty magazine. He gulps, as the guy’s fingers glide down his own chest, drawing a languid circle around one of the stars. The action makes Hinata feel like his veins are on fire, blood erupting, skin too tight to contain it.
“Normally, I charge for this upfront, but seeing as it’s your first time, I’ll give you the first one for free.”
Hinata eyes follow as the guy’s fingers stop in their tracks, than slide down, forefinger and thumb grasping the topmost golden point of the star. Hinata’s breathing sounds too loud in his own ears.
The guy drags the point downward, agonizingly slow, revealing a milliter of dark pebbled skin…
Hinata squawks and turns, stumbling, half-running down the hallway, bathroom forgotten. For a terrifying second he worries that the guy is chasing after him, but then laughter echoes through the hallway, a humilating soundtrack to his retreat.
When he gets back to the booth, there’s a mug of blue juice waiting for him, and he downs it, hoping to cool the fire blazing across his skin.
It’s the last thing he remembers.
Kageyama walks through the streets as flames dance above him. The Autumn Equinox celebration is in full swing: makeshift stalls line the streets block after block, vendors cry and beckon at the crowd, children run around in decorative clothing, knocking into tourists that have traveled hundreds of miles just to partake in the event. It is a festive occasion.
He buys a simple milk flavored icepop. It’s cheap and good; the smooth flavor spreads pleasantly across his tongue.
Despite his usual tendency towards being a lonewolf, he hadn’t actually planned on attending the festivities solo. Coinciding with the festival had been the return of the Northern Water Tribe’s most famous pro-bender team, whose captain was one of the royal princes. It was something Kageyama hadn’t given two shits about, but apparently it had all the natives in a frenzy. So everyone he knows is at the huge, open to the public welcoming celebration that’s being held in the palace as part of the festivities.
There’s still a good number of people in the streets though, enough for Kageyama to naturally drift along with the current of the crowd as he tries to find the destination he’s looking for—or more accurately, the people he’s looking for. Kunimi had mentioned them: airbenders from the Northern Air Temple who are master weapons makers. A lot of benders take pride in their bending and refuse to master weaponry. Kageyama isn’t one of them.
Underneath the thick fabric of his yukata rest eight throwing knives, sharp things that he’d inherited from his late father. He’d broken the edge of one a few months ago, so he needs a weapons master skilled enough to repair it. Now if only he could find them, all the damn grilled squid stalls look the same…
“You lost?” a teasing voice asks. He turns to see a man, maybe two or three or ten (Kageyama’s not good with age) years older than him, wearing the most elaborate kimono Kageyama’s ever seen in his life. The fabric of the haori is an intricate floral pattern set against an ombre sea of silky cerulean swirls. The flowers glint in the light as though they’re embroidered with threads composed of real silver.
Rich gaudy foreigner, his clothes practically scream.
“You’ve walked by me three times now,” the guy explains in a sing-song voice. “So I’m pretty sure your lost. I know my way around here, I’m amazing with directions. I can help you find where you need to go.”
Kageyama just stares.
“Shy are you?” The guy smiles so wide his eyes crinkle. The expression, though seemingly innocent, raises alarm bells in Kageyama’s head. He almost physically reels back in surprise at how tense his body gets.
“No thanks,” Kageyama finally grunts out, before turning on his heel and walking back in the direction he came from, away from the guy.
“Ah! But I can definitely help you find where you need to go,” the guy’s voice follows after him, as does the sound of footsteps. “Or, on the off chance I’ve misread you and you don’t have a place to go, I can recommend you some great places. I’m very knowledable about these things.” He falls into step with Kageyama.
Kageyama side-eyes him but doesn’t slow down. Absentmindedly, his hand disappears up his sleeve, finger running along the flat edge of a knife.
“I’ve been away from the tribe for a while, and everyone’s at the palace for the celebration. But who wants to be stuck in the palace on a beautiful night like this?” the guy explains, as though Kageyama gives a shit.
“The strong silent type huh?” The guys winks at Kageyama, and Kageyama has the urge to punch him in the nose. He has the longest eyelashes Kageyama has ever seen on a human being. “Well, consider yourself lucky to have someone as fabulous as me as company!” The guy slinks an arm around Kageyama’s shoulders before Kageyama can stop him. It's too much; Kageyama violently shoves him off.
“What the hell?!” Kageyama grounds out, shifting into an attack stance.
The guys innocently holds up his hands. “My bad! Won’t happen again. I—”
The guy’s eyes cut to the right, and Kagayama follows them to see two guards approaching.
“Ah! Sorry got to go. Don’t miss me too much.” The guy winks to Kageyama then seems to shift into the crowd in the oppposite direction of the guards.
Douchebag was probably a thief or something.
Kageyama starts to walk toward the same direction he was headed in, but realizes he has no idea where he is now. Somehow, the guy led him to a completely new location. He decides to just walk some more. He’s bound to come across a familiar intersection.
“Hey hey hey!” A loud voice reaches him above the din of the crowd. “Come one and come all, we have the best weapons in the world!”
Weapons? Kageyama is looking for weapons.
Kageyama’s eyes scan the crowd until he locates a man with tall white hair standing in front of a stall that’s as wide as three regular units. A long black canopy featuring bright yellow swirls spans the set up. “Weapons made by the famous airbending masters Bokuto and Akaashi!”
Yes, he's definitely found the right place.
“Hello there my good sir! Bokuto Koutarou, master airbender and master weapon maker at your service!” Bokuto gives a grand bow to Kageyama, his chest puffed out proudly. He sweeps an exaggerated hand at the displays behind him full of weaponry. “How may I assist you? Looking for a new jaw blade this fine evening? Or perhaps, you’re hoping for something unique and custom-made?” Bokuto beams at him, his golden eyes sparkling like real topaz gems.
“I have a throwing knife that has a broken tip,” Kageyama says.
“Excellent! Akaashi! This guy needs some repairs done,” Bokuto says to the guy who’s been standing silently behind a table so far.
“Let’s have a look please!” Kageyama pulls the damaged blade from the front of his clothing. Almost reverantly, Bokuto accepts the knife. He holds it up to the light, examining it.
“This is some awesome craftsmanship!” he comments, voice losing it's professionalism and sounding like an excited child. “Really cool!” He beams at Kageyama as though pleased with him. His smile, though exuberant, isn't unpleasant.
“Look Akaashi you gotta see this!” Bokuto hands the knife over to his partner.
Akaashi has soft black hair that’s even darker than Kageyama’s and eyes that don’t exactly look bored, but aren’t very expressive either. He examines the weapon in silence.
“Hmm. Do you have another that I can compare it to?”
Kageyama slides out his wrist knife and hands it to Akaashi. Akaashi examines it thoroughly, before looking at Kageyama and nodding.
“Ok, I can fix it. Come back tomorrow and it’ll be ready.” Akaashi says shortly, before disappearing behind a stack of crates with both of Kageyama's knives.
“Thanks,” Kageyama says to Bokuto.
“No problem!” Bokuto beams at him again, as bright as lightning, and Kageyama turns to leave.
“Oh wait, what’s your name?” Bokuto asks.
“Kageyama Tobio,” Kageyama answers.
“Ok, Kageyama! Have a good rest of the night!” Bokuto waves at him as he leaves, then turns to attend to some new customers.
Kageyama only halfway down the street before he freezes. He shifts slightly, to make sure he’s not imagining things, then his arm flies up to his shoulder where one of his blades should be, but the spot is empty. Kageyama’s mind instantly flashes back to the annoying stranger and the way the annoying stranger had slung an arm around his shoulders, uninvited, as though they’d known eachother for ages. He turns on his heel, annoyed. He curses himself for letting his guard down and for getting so easily distracted. Rage seethes through Kageyama’s body, spreading hot and uninhibited.
The edges of his vision begin to turn as red as blood.
When Hinata awakens the taste in his mouth is synonymous to what he thinks it’d taste like if a purple pentapus from the waste sewers crawled into his mouth and died. Then resurrected itself. Then died again.
He’s in a strange room, or more accurately a single room home, that’s smaller than his own house, but a lot nicer. He sits up, then groans loudly. It feels like the dead purple pentapus in his mouth has company in the form of a herd of angry komodo rhinos stampeding through his head.
“Ahaha! Hangover Shouyou?” Nishinoya’s boisterous voice comes from somewhere behind Hinata’s head. Hinata can’t get up to see from where.
“Urgghhh,” is all Hinata can manage to get out. He hears Nishinoya’s light footsteps approaching him.
“Here drink this.” Nishinoya comes into view, stooping down to gently raise Hinata into a sitting position. Hinata just grips onto the older man’s shoulder for dear life. “Come on Shouyou it’ll help.”
Hinata manages to raise his head and sips the pale golden liquid from the teacup Nishinoya holds to his mouth. It has a lush mellow taste, vegetal and slightly sweet.
“Aged Moonpeach leaf tea,” Nishinoya explains. “Best hangover cure ever created.”
As a testament to his words Hinata’s head starts to feel less like the stomping grounds to a herd of rhinos, and more like a splitting headache. The pain continues to lessen with each sip.
“Good boy.” Nishinoya praises, as though Hinata’s a seven-year-old child or an obedient dog. By the end of the cup Hinata’s only suffering a light throbing pressure between his temples, but his mouth still tastes like death and rancid sea prunes.
Nishinoya helps Hinata to his feet and leads him to a small bathroom, where Hinata rinses his mouth about twenty times before he can swallow a mouthful of water without cringing. When he comes out of the bathroom Nishinoya’s sitting on the couch wearing a pair of black rimmed glasses and knitting what looks like a white and black kneesock.
“Better?” He beams at Hinata. “We still have two hours before practice, do you think you can handle some breakfast?”
“Oh crap!” Hinata runs to the door, headache forgotten. “Noya senpai, I have to go.” Nishinoya’s eyes follow Hinata to the door. “I forgot to tell Natsu and Yachi I was going out last night.”
“Eek! Sorry Noya-san,” Hinata apologizes for some reason. “Thank you for taking care of me.” He bows deeply as Nishinoya waves him out the door with his half-done kneesock.
When he walks through his own front door the first thing he sees is Natsu sitting on their earthern couch knees drawn to her chest, arms tightly wrapped around them. Yachi sits beside to her.
“Hinata,” Yachi says, the relief evident in her voice. Her hand is on Natsu’s shoulder. “You’re home.”
“I’m sorry!” Hinata cries. He swiftly walks over and crouches in front of Natsu. She eyes him wearily over her folded arms. “Natsu, I’m so sorry. I went out with my team, and I forgot to send a message! I didn’t mean—”
“Stupid Nii-chan!” Natsu cries and Hinata sees tears brimming on the edges of Natsu’s eyes. She’s refusing to let them fall.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” He throws himself onto the ground, bowing, forehead kissing the floor. “I’m so sorry!”
“Stupid, stupid, stupid, Nii-chan,” Natsu repeats. Yachi hands hoover anxiously in the air, unsure of whether or not intervene. He risks a peak at Natsu’s face. She growls when she meets his eyes, fierce tiny warrior that she is. He tries to look meek.
“Yeah, I’m stupid.” Natsu glares at him, then turns her head, refusing to meet his eyes. “I’m really stupid and really sorry.”
He fishes around in his pocket and takes out the tiny pouches.
“I’m not trying to bribe you or anything, but I have a present for you two.” He holds out the bags, one to Yachi, and one to Natsu. Yachi accepts hers easily, but Natsu gaze still stays turned to the side, refusing to look at him. Yachi looks at the siblings in understanding, then smiles encouragingly at Hinata and opens her bag.
“Oh, Hinata, it’s so pretty!” Yachi gushes, and Hinata knows she’s putting on an act for Natsu’s sake but he’s also pleased to hear genuine pleasure in her voice. Immediately she fiddles with the side of her hair. When she’s done, a small side ponytail sticks out, two small, lacquered replicas of white lotus blossoms securing the style in place.
“Does it look alright?”
Despite the fact that Yachi is as good as a sister to Hinata, Hinata still feels himself blush a bit. “Really pretty!”
Yachi flushes happily.
He sees Natsu peek at Yachi out of the corner of her eyes.
“Natsu, open yours! It must be really pretty too,” Yachi encourages.
Natsu turns to him still refusing to look directly in his eyes, but accepts the organza bag. She opens it and shakes the contents out. Resting in her palm are two hairbands decorated by sparkling clusters of tiny blue flowers.
“They’re called butterfly bush flowers,” Hinata explains, watching Natsu’s face lose its anger as she examines the shining hair ornaments.
“Oh Natsu, how cute! Let me help you put them in!” Yachi suggests. Natsu lets the older girl take the hairbands and turns her head so Yachi can work. Hinata sees her glance at him out of the side of her eye, a small smile forming on her face, and his whole body relaxes. This is the signal that he’s been waiting for. He’s forgiven.
“So cute Nat-chan!” Yachi squeals, at the two pigtails she’s fashioned, and Hinata nods vigorously in agreement. Natsu skips up to the mirror on the wall, and examines her appearance. She’s happy. She’s glowing. It makes Hinata happy. He gets up. “I have to go to practice now.”
As he leaves, he sees Natsu still standing in front of the mirror a huge smile on her face as she looks at her reflection. Despite seeing her smile Hinata frowns. The cuffs of her shirt don’t quite reach her wrists, and her pants are getting too short in the ankle. As he steps out the door he vows to himself that he’s going to buy her some new clothes as soon as his next paycheck comes in.
“I asked you if you wanted anything else when I was ordering!” Iwaizumi barks, as Oikawa steals half the cucumberquat fries on his plate in one swoop when he returns from the bathroom.
“I’m a growing boy Iwa-chan,” Oikawa says, around a mouthful of Iwaizumi’s fries. “You should know that I need the nourishment.” He takes a fry and points it cutely at Iwaizumi. “You should cut back on the saturated fats anyway. You don’t want your little, budding potbelly getting bigger than it already is.”
“Goddamnit you shitty trashcan,” Iwaizumi gets up and goes back to the counter to order. When he’s sure that Oikawa’s back is turned he covertly pats his stomach; it’s as flat as it was this morning. When he gets back to the table after only five minutes, the rest of his fries have vanished along with his seal burger. Oikawa eats like a teenage boy combined with seven pregnant ladies all at once.
Of course he never gains a pound.
He shoves a freshly cooked seal burger and cucumberquats fries at Oikawa, then sets his own new serving in front of him.
“Iwa-chan so thoughtful, “ Oikawa disgustingly coos, smiling. His smile brightens as he examines the burger, “And you remembered to leave out the sea prunes!” The prunes from Iwaizumi’s first burger lie on a napkin to the side.
“Shut up and eat, you freaking garbage disposal of a human being.”
Oikawa beams.
Halfway through his burger Iwaizumi looks up to see Oikawa smiling brightly at something behind him. He turns to see a pair of girls in bright kimonos giggling behind their hands.
“Is it possible for you to go ten minutes without having to stroke your own ego?”
“Iwa-chan,” Oikawa tsks as he shoves another handful of fries into his mouth. Oikawa looks cute even when eating large mouthfuls of fast food. It’s disgusting. Iwaizumi hopes the oil makes his skin breakout. “I know it’s hard for you to understand, since you’re as plain as these cucumberquats here, but it’s not my fault that I’m so beautiful everything I do causes people to swoon.” He waves a fry emphatically at Iwaizumi. “You know, there’s still hope that one day, you can be good looking as well. I heard they’ve invented this new thing called plastic surgery in Republic City.”
Iwaizumi throws a fry at his face. It bounces off of Oikawa’s unblemished skin, leaving a shiny smear of grease on his cheekbone. Iwaizumi decides not to tell him. “Hurry up and eat, we need to get back to the palace as soon as possible, we’re skipping out on our own celebration after all.”
“Yes, yes, mom,” Oikawa chews happily on a mouthful of food.
Iwaizumi’s almost done with his burger when a male voice roars behind him, “You!”
“Me?” Oikawa points to himself, a completely feigned expression of surprise on his face. Iwaizumi turns in his seat again, this time to see a young man staring at Oikawa angrily, fists clenched tightly as his sides.
Iwaizumi feels like banging his head into the table in front of him until he gives himself a concussion. They’ve only been back for three hours. Three hours.
He looks at Oikawa’s beautific smile. Goddamnit, what the fuck has he done now.
Yamaguchi meticulously works his way down the feed line, scooping up cabbages and carrots, along with an assortment of other fresh vegetables, into the sky bisons’ feeding troughs.
He likes his work, the animals soothe him and it’s quiet here, in the stables. He likes the other airbenders, but he loves the sky bison with their big hulking bodies that feel as soft as clouds look.
He feels the animals shift nervously in their stalls. They’ve been doing that a lot lately.
Shimada and the other airbending leaders have been talking. He knows this because he’s been eavesdropping, like he always has. It's easy for people to forget that he’s there.
Yamaguchi mulls over what he’d overheard.
The Avatar may be alive.
The thought is wondrous. For all of Yamaguchi’s life, there has never been an Avatar on this earth. The last Avatar was destroyed while in his Avatar state, breaking the Avatar cycle and leaving the world devastated.
At least that’s what the world has believed for the last eighteen years. Or most of the world.
On his floating home in the Eastern Air Temple, living with his guardian Shimada, he knows most of the older generation of airbenders don't believe the Avatar to be dead.
There are too many inconsistencies, the biggest being that the Spirit World hasn’t taken over the physical world, despite the supposed demise of the Avatar. If the Avatar was really dead, the spiritual imbalance of the world would have been thrown into chaos. At least, more-so than it has been.
Now there’s spirtual activity, the likes of which haven’t been seen since before Yamaguchi was born. He doesn’t quite understand what it is, but he knows it’s gotten Shimada and the other leaders excited. They’re about to host a conference with the other airbending leaders of the other temples.
Yamaguchi tries to tamp down the excitement he feels at the thought. There is a slight, slightly thrilling and equally terrifying, possibility Tsukishima Kei of the Western Air Temple will visit with his masters. He's known Tsukishima since he was little, though he only gets to see him a few times a year, if that.
As he finishes up the feeding, he wonders dreamily, what the world would be like if the Avatar was alive. Possibily no more civil and intercontinental wars. No more fighting or starving children. Maybe the world would be so nice, he and Tsukishima, if they ever became better friends, could travel it together. Or at least take a trip somewhere nice and warm, maybe see the ocean or the polar ice caps (though he thinks Tsukishima would probably complain about the cold). A place that would impress Tsukishima with Yamaguchi’s knowledge of the outside world, and where he’d say funny and witty things that would make Tsukishima laugh out loud.
He often wonders what Tsukki’s laugh sounds like. He calls him Tsukki in his mind, though never in person. Nicknames are intimate. He wonders if he'll ever be intimate with Tsukishima. Yamaguchi's cheeks flare.
Not intimate, intimate!
Just... intimate.
He isn't a pervert!
Most of the time.
Yamaguchi sets the shovel on its hook.
The Avatar, alive. That’d really be something.