bygones
by karasuno volleygays

It was the first day of volleyball club practice at Aobajousai High School, and two fresh faces made their way to the start of their high school athletic careers. The club room probably looked like any other, but outside the door, Kindaichi’s hand paused on the handle before dropping limply to his side. Next to him, Kunimi didn’t elbow him or push him toward the door.That had to mean Kunimi felt it, too.It was strange and Kindaichi wasn’t sure how to put it into words, that cold knot of dread anchored deep in his belly at the thought of walking into a new team. It scared the hell out of him.A flash of anger coursed through him. Someone’s first day of practice with their favorite club in the school they always wanted to go to should have been a joyful thing. Instead, he stood a few steps from his goal, wondering if he wanted to cross that threshold after all.“You going in or not?” Kunimi leaned against the outside wall and crossed his arms. “I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t. I almost didn’t sign up this year, just in case he ended up here.”Neither needed to clarify who ‘he’ was. There wasn’t anyone more capable of sucking the joy out of a game than Kageyama Tobio.Kindaichi screwed his eyes shut and sighed. “Damn it. You’d think I’d be over this by now.” He smacked his forehead on the wall next to Kunimi. “I sound like a teenage girl.”Kunimi chuckled. “Teenage girl, rejected by teenage girls . . . sounds like business as usual to me.”“Hey!” Kindaichi whined, but the jibe still coaxed a smile out of him. “At least we can joke about it now. After a while, I feel like I forgot how to do that after a while.”“We’re going to be late,” Kunimi marked. Both fell silent, and neither made a move for the door.Mind full of things he never wanted to think about again and thus could not forget to save his life, Kindaichi thumped his forehead on the wall once more. He had a feeling he would regret whichever decision he made. Join the team and get haunted by Douche of the Year? Regret. Not join and be very aware of the volleyball-shaped hole in his chest? Regret.Perhaps it was for the best that someone solved that problem for him. Someone with a buzz cut, grin, and an iron grip grabbed his arm and dragged him into the club room. “Found a couple more!” his assailant called inside cheerily.Behind them, Kunimi shrugged and followed them inside.In the corner of the room, his former senpai from Kitagawa Daiichi sat and bickered in the corner like they always had. Some of their teammates look interested, others utterly done.Well this was disturbingly normal.At the sound of their entrance, the room burst into activity, with guys neither of them knew hailing them in greeting. “Uh, hi,” Kindaichi mumbled, offering a pinched smile and a wave.“Ah, my proteges have arrived,” Oikawa crowed, sauntering over to them and tossing an arm around each of their shoulders. “There aren’t enough people on the team taller than Iwa-chan, so your timing couldn’t be better.”“Cram it, asshat!” Iwaizumi threw a balled up sock at Oikawa’s face, smirking when it made contact. “Now put a sock in it before I throw something nastier.”Oikawa turned up his nose and huffed. “That’s my sock, so it is not nasty!”“Everything about you is nasty,” Iwaizumi fired, with a chorus of amused teammates miming their argument in the background like they had seen it a bunch of times. Oikawa stomped over to engage his best friend in a heated battle of infantile insults.“Ignore them,” said one of the older team members from nearby. He had mussy, slicked back hair that resembled Kindaichi’s, but without the pronounced point in the back. He shook his head and snorted. “Hope you guys don’t mind a side of three ring circus with your volleyball.?Kindaichi laughed nervously and accepted the proffered handshake. “We’re kind of used to it by now. I’m Kindaichi, and this is Kunimi.”“Sawauchi.” With that, Sawauchi went around the room, introducing a few new faces and helping them recall a few old ones.Behind them, a couple of lockers sat in wait for new owners. “Looks like those two are free. Make yourselves at home.”The word rang in Kindaichi’s ears. He liked to play volleyball and even enjoyed being around his teammates, but he had never experienced the feeling of the natural ease of something as simple as home.Kunimi bumped his shoulder against Kindaichi’s after Sawauchi left them to their own devices. “Looks like we had nothing to worry about, eh shallot head?”“Why are you like this?” Kindaichi moaned, and the two of them launched into a good-natured tiff of their own.Slowly the anxiety balled up in his belly began to abate, and Kindaichi started to realize that the concept of home in this new place, on this new team, weren’t so strange after all.

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Home Between Lovers
by sarah25

From the Start
Rachelle Ann Go — LyricsWhen We Were Young
Adele — LyricsWe Were Just Kids
Clean Bandit — LyricsPerfect Stranger
Jonas Blue — LyricsBefore I Fall in Love
Coco Lee — LyricsFeels Like Home
The Him (feat. Son Mieux) — Lyrics

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when in doubt
by karasunovolleygays

He had known it was coming for a while. Even if Oikawa hadn’t tipped him off, Yahaba had noticed hints dropped from Irihata and Mizoguchi that he would be the next captain of the team. It had seemed like a distant thought until the moment the ball dropped on their side of the court, putting an end to his senpais’ high school careers.Long after they returned to the school, Yahaba found himself meandering around the periphery of the grounds. He toed the occasional melting chunks of snow into the soggy grass — an activity just barely sufficient to keep his mind off of the overwhelming task that lay ahead of him.A living legend in high school volleyball was passing the torch on to him, and he had no idea how to keep a fire like that burning.Oikawa Tooru was the epitome of effort, of drive, of how close a human being could possibly get to perfection. Despite his various squabbles with friends and foes alike, the captain of the Aobajousai Volleyball Club commanded the attention of everyone around him. One could not help but look at him.For Yahaba, not being able to look away from the balls out way Oikawa played every second of every match might have been the most intimidating damn thing he had ever seen in his life.That skill, that finesse, that power — Yahaba had none of those things. He was an above average setter and probably even more mediocre in the leadership department. He scoured his brain, and the more he did, the less he believed he could ever contribute to the team in any meaningful way.A placeholder, a babysitter until one of the next generation of guys (probably Kindaichi, since Kunimi didn’t give a damn about anything three quarters of the time) took the reins — he would be ‘that guy after Oikawa’. No one would talk about Seijou volleyball with the name Yahaba on their lips in any capacity other than his attendance on the court.“Damn it.” Yahaba kicked a patch of slush just hard enough to drop him to his seat onto the turf with a loud squelch.He didn’t get up. Instead, he sat there with his arms around his knees and wondered who the coaches would pick if Yahaba turned down the position. Definitely not Kyoutani, since Mizuguchi was allergic to slacker behavior. Maybe he and Watari could switch places. He would take on the enormous burden that came with being the defensive anchor of the team for the chance to know exactly what was expected of him.While Yahaba pondered every conceivable way to escape his looming promotion, a familiar voice wafted over his shoulder with the smile that never seemed to leave his teammate and sort-of friend. “Mind if I join you?”Yahaba blinked and looked over his shoulder, reactionless as Watari dropped onto the wet ground beside him without waiting for an answer, mimicking Yahaba’s pose minus the storm clouds that had to be circling him at the moment.“Oikawa-san is looking for you.”“I know.”“It’s really an honor to even be considered for the captaincy, let alone get it.”“I know.”Watari sighed and propped his chin on his knees. “For what it’s worth, I get it.”Not answering, Yahaba drummed his fingers anxiously against his shins, beating back some of the cold that had already begun to leach into him from the frosted ground. He had not meant to be obvious about his discomfort, but Watari had apparently read him like a book.“I wish I could say something useful right now.” Out of the corner of his eye, Yahaba noticed Watari’s hands ball into fists until his knuckles were pale. “Our senpai gave us all they had to help us make it. They did their best, but did we?” He drew a shuddering breath. “Did I?”Yahaba shot to his feet and cast a long shadow over Watari’s compact form. “Say that crap again and you’ll be doing burpees until you rot.”That coaxed a smirk out of Watari. “I guess I owe Kyoutani a thousand yen. He said you would snap into captain mode in less than five minutes, but I figured you’d spend at least an hour worrying about whether you’re good enough.”Watari held out a hand, and Yahaba helped him to his feet. “I’m happy to be wrong, Shigeru.”Eyes narrowed as he glared at his teammate, Yahaba mulled over the conversation in his mind. It irked him when he drew the conclusion that Watari had sized him up fairly well and it had been Kyoutani cheering him on (in his own skunk-haired demon sort of way).“Yeah, yeah.” Yahaba sighed and headed back for the school, the brisk January winds turning the soggy seat of his pants into ice. Watari ambled alongside him, as buoyant as ever.After three hot showers to chase the cold out of his skin, Yahaba was the last one to leave the locker room. Even the upperclassmen had called it a night already. Out of habit, he turned out the lights and locked the doors behind him to head out into the early night.He nearly leapt out of his skin when he heard the gravelly strains of his voice from the shadows. “I was wondering when you’d show up.”“I’m really not in the mood for you right now, Kyoutani,” Yahaba growled under his breath.“Yeah?” Kyoutani emerged, hands stuffed into his jeans pockets and his face wrinkled into its omnipresent scowl. “Well, tough shit. You won’t get to run away from it forever.”Yahaba halted and spun on his heel, glaring at his future ace and current pain in the ass. “What right do you have to lecture me about running away? All you’ve ever done is run away.”Kyoutani bit back a comment and swallowed it, instead casting his gaze to the side and muttering, “Because I knew you’d always be there to do what had to be done.”“What?” Yahaba’s mouth dribbled open in stark surprise. In the two years he had known Kyoutani, there had never been an indication that his combative teammate had thought about him in any capacity other than how to get him to shut up as quickly as possible. Kyoutani had even said as much at some point.“Nobody ever needed me, but they always needed you.” Kyoutani leaned in close enough that the fog shrouding his breath mixed with Yahaba’s. “They didn’t pick you because there isn’t anyone else. They picked you because you’re you, dumbass.”Yahaba closed his eyes and willed himself to breathe. Nobody on the planet hated him more than Kyoutani, so the discordant notes of faith in Kyoutani’s voice rattled around in his head.He snapped back into reality when a shoe collided with his backside. “Now go home, Blondie. Get some rest, ‘cause we have a lot of work to do.”“Right.” Yahaba’s feet moved on their own accord toward the nearby bus stop that started his journey home every day since he started at this school. The haze didn’t lift, even when he drifted through the front door of his house.He had no idea Kyoutani held any other emotion toward him aside from irritation, but Yahaba had to admit he had similar thoughts about Kyoutani. When the team needed a boost, a change in energy, nobody had come to mind other than Kyoutani.They would fight, they would bicker, they would drive each other nuts; Yahaba was hard pressed to imagine what it would be like if they didn’t. But Kyoutani would be there, goading him into rising to the challenge. This time, he would be ready.For the first time since the seed of impending captaincy had been planted, Yahaba enjoyed the prospect of watching it grow up within him. His teammates were welcome additions to the garden — even Kyoutani.Then he and his new role would finally find themselves at home with each other.

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#memelove
by sarah25

Send in the Clowns
Judy Collins — LyricsWith Love
Christina Grimme — LyricsWith Laughter or With Tears
Seo in Guk — LyricsThis Is Home
Cavetown — LyricsWith You
Chris Brown — LyricsBy My Side
Acejax — Lyrics

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Header Image
Manga cap (HQ Ch 146)
Coloring in Paint Tool Sai by karasunovolleygays
Royalty free texture provided by bittbox.comPage Composition
Team captain karasunovolleygays
Website hosting software provided by carrd.co

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