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Fading Sunlight masterlist

A Hinata Shoyo x childhood best friend!reader timeline

↳ A collection of things that have happened, between you and the boy who taught you how to fly.

@wowbyselene

It’s interesting how little difference he feels. That digit at the beginning of his age ticking upwards by one while the centimeters of his vertical drop by three. 

It reminds him of a question posed to Ushijima a year or so ago, just after the ace had announced that he would play his own last game soon before stepping aside to prioritize his new family. 

How do you feel about your retirement looming on the horizon? 

Looming? He always thought that was a weird way to phrase it. To Hinata, it looks more like a bright light. He’s been elevated so high that the sun now shines in his face, and when he’s ready, he’ll reach out and embrace it. 

But not yet. 

He wakes up next to you, pulling you close. Just like every year he’ll pretend not to see the Matsumoto Bakery box in the fridge, until you light the candles and place it in front of him. He’ll play a game at the beach with Natsu— she’s back in town on the off season too. He’ll respond to every well-wish and birthday message that he can, and not just with thumbs up reactions like Kageyama does. He’ll ask you to ride into town on your bikes again and eat dinner at Sakanoshita and sit on the curb until dawn begins to break on the horizon. 

There’s a lot of things he will do, still. 

Fading Sunlight masterlist

A Hinata Shoyo x childhood best friend!reader timeline

↳ A collection of things that have happened, between you and the boy who taught you how to fly.

@wowbyselene

With a fever it wasn’t like Hinata could share a room with the rest of his team, so he was staying in an adjoining space on the first floor of the inn. Coach Ukai and Coach Takeda had insisted on paying for the extra room out of pocket, despite Hinata’s protests that he would notify his mother and help her make the extra cost work, somehow. 

Honestly, the worst part about getting sick wasn’t that they had lost the game against Kamomedai. It didn’t even sting as bad, even though he knew it was the last official game he would stand on the court with Daichi, Sugawara, and Asahi for. It was the fact that on their last night in Tokyo, he had to eat dinner alone in his room instead of at a table surrounded by his team. No matter what he ate, his broken-down muscles could only repair themselves so much alone. 

He scoops soup and rice together, trying not to let his hands tremble as he brings the bowl to his mouth. It’s warm and moist but goes down dry. Swallowing it isn’t easy. 

The door slides open, and he looks up. You step into the room holding your own dinner. Hinata catches snippets of his team’s chatter as they sit around the dining table outside in the lobby before the door slides shut again. You’re wearing a surgical mask but he can see the corner of your eyes crinkle when you smile at him. 

Sitting against the opposite wall, well more than six feet apart, you slide off the mask and begin to eat without a word. 

The lump in his throat eases, and the rest of the soup goes down easy.

Fading Sunlight masterlist

A Hinata Shoyo x childhood best friend!reader timeline

↳ A collection of things that have happened, between you and the boy who taught you how to fly.

@wowbyselene

It’s Thursday already, three days since your fight with Hinata, and there’s only one more day before the training camp opens its dorms to overnight stays. You’re looking forward to being able to get of your feet and rest sooner than two hours after you leave Shiratorizawa– the extra distance biking home has really been wearing you down.

Tonight, Tsukishima’s decided to stay late to get extra practice in, so naturally you did as well, videotaping his blocks from the back and trying not to get in the way. You ignore the fluffy head of ginger hair that flickers in and out of your peripherals, always chasing after the ball. But when it comes time to go home, Tsuki waves you off. 

“My brother is picking me up today since he’s staying late at work. You’ll have to walk to the bus stop alone.” 

“Oh… alright.” Biking home nonstop is one thing, but having to walk through the city alone to get to a place where you could set off from is another matter entirely. Best to get a head start before it gets darker. 

You steel your nerves and step out into the darkness, trying to stay in the spotlights of streetlamps as you head down the street. But footsteps speeding up behind you make you pause, and suddenly Hinata has caught up to your side. 

The walk is the same– you’ve done it many times in the past. The path is familiar, but the silence stretches out as you reach the city limits and continue out onto the country road. 

“I’m sorry.” 

Hinata says nothing, but he smiles at you as if to say, everything is okay. You suppose that’s how he’s always been– for him, being okay is a habit. He walks you all the way to the porch of your home, and wave from the driveway when you take a last look out the window before closing the door. 

Reader and Tobio are roommates, not together! Reader’s moved to Tokyo to go to college, and since Kageyama is playing for the Adlers in the same area they live together.

Fading Sunlight masterlist

A Hinata Shoyo x childhood best friend!reader timeline

↳ A collection of things that have happened, between you and the boy who taught you how to fly.

@wowbyselene

“So is Kageyama’s really doing chores? I thought he still needed help to put his own pants on.”

“I put my pants on just fine, runt!” 

“Tobio’s not that bad of a flatmate. I can hear him snoring from next door, though.”

Hinata’s bright laugh comes out tinny through the speakers of your phone. You rest your head on Kageyama’s shoulder as you lean against the back of the couch, Kageyama holding the device while scowling. He keeps his arm steady so both you and Hinata can get a good look at each other, even through the distance. 

“So has Natsu decided which high school she wants to go to yet?” 

“Yeah, she’s applying to Niiyama Girls’ in the winter. I told her she should have gone to Karasuno, but she didn’t listen,” Hinata complains. “She told me to tell you that when you come home from college in July she wants to go shopping with you.” 

“I’ll hold her to it.” It takes everything you have not to let the wistfulness show in your voice. A month of living in Tokyo and a familiar face by your side hadn’t absolved you of homesickness. You think if you didn’t have Kageyama with you, you would have gone crazy. It was a stroke of luck that the team he had signed onto was close enough to the University of Tokyo that you were able to search for an apartment together.

The two boys continue talking, and you can’t help but notice that despite talking about volleyball, Hinata asks for none of Kageyama’s progress. It must sting, to be the only one left behind in Miyagi while Kageyama received dozens of offers to go pro right out of the gate. After all, you had known how it felt to be the one slipping behind.

Fading Sunlight masterlist

A Hinata Shoyo x childhood best friend!reader timeline

↳ A collection of things that have happened, between you and the boy who taught you how to fly.

@wowbyselene

You ignore the porch light flickering through your window as Hinata arrives home from training camp, stepping into his foyer across the way from your bedroom window. Like the other ball boys, he’d stayed late to clean the gym floors and so you had walked back to the bus stop with Tsukishima, and ridden the rest of the way home nonstop, trying not to look too closely at the shadows that followed. 

The slotted curtains hide you from view as you pull the camcorder out from your school bag, rewinding the footage to the beginning to organize for the day ahead. With Karasuno High School’s newspaper going online more and more, you thought the first years’ training camp would make the perfect time to transition into a more digital format for your column. Tsukishima had (begrudgingly) given you permission to record his progress through the whole camp, and it’s left you with hours of footage to comb through to pick out the right moments. 

You press play, eating dinner alone at your desk while you review. Tsukishima really is learning a lot from the other players, and it’s fascinating to see. But every so often you watch as your own camera work drifts off to the side, digital consciousness reaching outward to where you know, but won’t admit, Hinata is working just off screen. 

Fading Sunlight masterlist

A Hinata Shoyo x childhood best friend!reader timeline

↳ A collection of things that have happened, between you and the boy who taught you how to fly.

@wowbyselene

The bell chimes softly as you push open the door, stepping into the bakery and shoving your chilled hands into your pockets. There’s no other patrons inside, and Mr. Matsumoto barely glances up from his piping work at the counter when you approach.

“Where’s the boy today?” He says gruffly. His weathered hands tremble as they perch a birthday decoration on top of one of the icings. “Thought he’d be with you. I needed a few more gray hairs to even out my color.” He lets out a short barking laugh.

“He went on ahead.” You wave your hand, not bothering to explain what had went down at the training camp the day before.

Hinata hadn’t come to your front door to bike to school yesterday. He had taken your statement to heart, and so had you. He was ball boy by choice— by his or yours, you weren’t sure.

You pick up one cream bun from the display stand and picked out the number of coins you knew by heart. But when you place them on the counter, you find that there’s a second bun sitting in the coin tray.

Mr. Matsumoto is polite enough not to comment on the tears that land on the counter. He wipes them up with his washcloth and goes about his day.

You have no idea how much this comment means to me :')

Forgive me for going on a bit of a ramble below-

Fading Sunlight started as a way for me to get my writing spark back using my favorite character of all time. It's also a bit of a study on Hinata's journey through the Haikyuu series and who the 'reader' would be going along with that in all its joyful and painful moments. Growing up with someone like him, there would always be a time in which one of you would outpace the other and feelings of being 'left behind' or 'growing apart' might surface. There is a reason we call these things 'growing pains' and that's the feeling I wanted to capture.

Fanfiction, especially x reader fanfiction, tends to be highly indulgent. We imagine the perfect relationships for ourselves, with our favorite characters who offer no pushback because in our heads, they can be exactly what we want them to be. With Fading Sunlight, I've kind of had to force myself to write those painful moments, even ones that stretch out over long periods of time and lingered. It's self-indulgent because the reader is a very specific kind of person who matches who I am, but also not self-indulgent because it forces you to sit with uncomfortable moments in which you might feel left behind by the character you want to comfort you.

I wanted all of that to be conveyed, but as a college student I knew I didn't have time to write long chapters, so I settled with short, non-proofread oneshots. I do think I chose the wrong format for this series, because drabbles are meant to be 'emotionally complete' within the short amount of time it takes to read them. In the future, I think I will reformat this series.

Fading Sunlight masterlist

A Hinata Shoyo x childhood best friend!reader timeline.

↳ A collection of things that have happened, between you and the boy who taught you how to fly.

@wowbyselene

“Aren’t you going to take a nap?” 

“Nope. I’m so pumped right now, I don’t think I could sleep.” Hinata is practically vibrating while sitting upright on the bench, swinging his legs underneath him. “Did you see we’re playing Kamomedai later? It’s time to figure out who the real little giant is.”

The excitement of winning their match against Nekoma has colored his face with a blush so vivid it almost looks unnatural. The long sets and adrenaline must have clouded his mind, because he refused food when Daichi had offered. You think of the Matsumoto Bakery package you have stored back at the hotel room, and wonder if you should have brought it just to tempt him into putting some fuel into his body.

“At least try and sit still,” you remind him, nudging his leg with your own. The sweat on his skin is warm and it sticks to your leg. You wipe it off using the sleeve of your jacket. “You can be a giant as much as you want on the court. Down here you’re only as invincible as the rest of us.”

Fading Sunlight masterlist

A Hinata Shoyo x childhood best friend!reader timeline.

↳ A collection of things that have happened, between you and the boy who taught you how to fly.

@wowbyselene

“Hinata! Sugawara said you got lost on the run?” You jog alongside Hinata, regrouping with him. “What happened?”

“I met a guy up on the hill,” Hinata puffs out. Even after running all the way up the hill and back down, he’s still got enough stamina left in him to keep pace with you and the others. “He had volleyball shoes in his bag, and he said he was a setter for his school’s team.”

“Really?” You inquire. “What team did he play for?” You wrack your brain, trying to come up with the names of teams in the prefecture that you didn’t know yet. 

“I don’t know. He didn’t have his jersey on. But… he did say they were pretty good.” He’s got a faraway look in his eyes. “I just have a feeling I’m going to see him again, and soon.” 

Hinata has an uncanny sense for things sometimes, so you believe him. The wind ruffles your hair and somewhere not too far away, a cat sneezes.

Fading Sunlight masterlist

A Hinata Shoyo x childhood best friend!reader timeline.

↳ A collection of things that have happened, between you and the boy who taught you how to fly.

@wowbyselene

You had been up in the stands the during Hinata’s first– and last– ever volleyball game in middle school, too far up to hear what the dark-haired setter from Kiitagawa First had said to him from across the net. But Hinata has always been an expressive person, and you can tell from the way he clenches his firsts and the line of his brows that it bothered him more than any normal loss would. 

You had gone outside to meet him after the tournament had concluded, only to find him shouting something at the same boy. 

“You might be king who rules the court for now, but I’m going to win! One day, I’m going to stay on the court for longer than you!” 

There was a certain intensity to his voice that made you step back, like the 3-meter line from the volleyball court had suddenly been drawn across the gymnasium stairs in front of you. 

“Only the strong get to stay on the court. So if you want to keep playing, then you have to become stronger.”

The exchange was over in a matter of seconds, but you can tell that for Hinata that moment may as well have lasted a lifetime. 

Fading Sunlight masterlist

A Hinata Shoyo x childhood best friend!reader timeline.

↳ A collection of things that have happened, between you and the boy who taught you how to fly.

@wowbyselene

“You’re not supposed to be here!” You grab Hinata’s shoulder, pulling him off to the side of the gym as he yelps. You’ve been practically vibrating with tension ever since he showed his face in the Shiratorizawa Gym, casually standing by your side as if the Authorized Press pass around your neck on a lanyard meant nothing. “What the hell are you thinking? You’re lucky you didn’t get arrested for trespassing.” 

“Coach Ukai already told me that,” mutters Hinata. He’s still got a red mark on his forehead from bowing until his face hit the floor and declaring himself a ball boy. “I just wanted to practice with the rest of the guys, okay? I didn’t want to be sitting around doing nothing.” 

“What do you mean nothing? The rest of the team is still practicing at home.”

“Yes, but Kageyama got invited to the All-Japan camp, and Tsukishima got invited to this.” You can see the frustration lines in his face, the redness rising in his cheeks. “I just felt like I could be doing more, okay?” 

“So what? You’re just going to barge in here with everyone else who worked for it? You could have gotten me kicked out, Shoyo. I worked hard for this!” You shake the press pass in your hand. “And you almost got it taken away.”

“I worked hard too!” He snaps back. Hinata rarely gets upset, but you can see that something you said struck a nerve. “I couldn’t let Kageyama beat me.”

“This isn’t about beating Kageyama or even about volleyball anymore, Hinata. If you can’t see what the problem is here or why I’m mad at you, then we shouldn’t be talking at all. I’m here to write about the players, not you.” 

“What do you mean?” 

“You’re the ball boy until we leave this gym. I’m going to treat you like one.” You leave him standing on the sidelines, going back to fiddling with your camera. “See you around… ball boy.” 

Fading Sunlight masterlist

A Hinata Shoyo x childhood best friend!reader timeline.

↳ A collection of things that have happened, between you and the boy who taught you how to fly.

@wowbyselene

You were six years old the first time you had been invited to a slumber party. The girl hosting it, Yurika, lived in your neighborhood and her card was a light pink and blue that reminded you of evening sun on bluebird feathers. 

It was the first invitation you had ever received that had only one name on it, too– being in the same class as your best friend since Kindergarten meant people tended to take you as a package deal. You talked about endlessly in the upcoming week, only stopping when Hinata pinched his face together in a frown. 

“I’m going to miss you, though.” He complained, reaching his foot out in front of him to kick a rock out of the path of his bike wheels. “I was gonna ask you to come help me and my mom clean out the pantry. We could have eaten the leftover senbei together.” 

“It’s only two days. You can just save the rice crackers til I get back,” you remind him, knowing full well he wouldn’t be able to wait that long. “You’ll be fine without me.” 

You don’t miss the way that shakes his head and refuses to meet your eyes, so you really should have been less surprised when he showed up uninvited while you ran through sprinklers in the front yard. 

It was fine, really. The girls included him because he was fun enough to play with, and didn’t mind when they put clips in his hair. When it got dark, you waved to him as he biked off, shouting “See you on Monday!” and hoping he’d get the hint. But the next day, he was back at the front door, knocking to see if he could join in to play. 

Ten years later, he would do the same at Shiratorizawa Academy in Sendai City. The edge of your spiral notebook left indents in your hands when you spotted him.

Fading Sunlight masterlist

A Hinata Shoyo x childhood best friend!reader timeline.

↳ A collection of things that have happened, between you and the boy who taught you how to fly.

@wowbyselene

Summer bus rides were definitely in a list of your least favorite things, because the lack of air conditioner and the feeling of the seats sticking to the back of your legs was enough to drive you crazy. The ride back to Miyagi from Tokyo was nearly five hours, and being packed in with twelve sweaty, exhausted teenage boys was a whole other problem. 

You’re sitting in the back row, sandwiched between Kageyama and Hinata as you review your notes for class. You observe his sleeping face as he leans on your shoulder, in one of the only times he’s not in constant motion. They say people always look younger while asleep, but Hinata seems to be about the same to you. Maybe it’s the graduality of growing up with someone that strips all sense of change from their face until you truly look for it. 

“What’s that?” A tired Kageyama has stirred, muttering and jabbing a finger at the corner of your chemistry notebook. 

“Huh?” You look down at the paper. It’s Kuroo’s cat drawing, terrible bangs and all, waving and throwing a victory symbol at you. “Oh, Nekoma’s captain drew it. He said it would help me remember positive and negative ions.” You grin a little at the absurdity of it. 

Your remark has caught the attention of Tanaka and Noya, who shoot straight up in their seats. 

“Nekoma’s captain has their eye on you, eh? Hope that city boy is ready to square up,” Tanaka growls. Noya nods fervently, then reaches around to shove Hinata, who wakes with a yelp. 

“Wake up, Hinata! Nekoma’s captain is after your girl! Look what he did.”

You swipe at Noya to shut him up, but it doesn’t seem like Hinata’s heard him. He blinks the sleep out of his eyes, peering down at the doodle in your notebook. 

A frown comes over his face. “Just they wait! Nekoma won’t be winning so easily at the next training camp.”

Divorced from the context, his statement causes the whole bus to roar in laughter. 

Fading Sunlight masterlist

A Hinata Shoyo x childhood best friend!reader timeline.

↳ A collection of things that have happened, between you and the boy who taught you how to fly.

@wowbyselene

It’s a quarter to ten and night has long since fallen over Tokyo. While the outside air is quiet, there’s plenty of liveliness to be found in the 3rd gym, whether it be Lev’s whining from being made to jump blocks until his legs failed or Hinata chanting for just one more set to be sent to him. There’s not much reporting to be done here, but since your best friend had decided to stay late, you suppose there’s no harm in waiting for him.

“Is that chem homework I see?” A deep voice inquires. You look up in surprise to see that Nekoma’s captain has joined you. He attempts to get comfortable next to you, folding his lanky legs in and sitting cross-legged on the polished wooden floors. 

His name is Kuroo, you remember. “Yeah. I have trouble sometimes, remembering what a cation and an anion is. The terms like to mix themselves up in my head.”

“Try this.” Kuroo takes your pen and taps your notes, doodling in a black cat in the margins. “Cations are positive, and Nekoma always wins. So just cheer for us whenever you take your exams, yeah?” 

“Thanks.” You study the drawing, which has a sly grin and messy bangs. Strange, flirty, and oddly helpful, just like its creator. 

“No problem.” Kuroo grins. He turns his attention to the players still practicing, and you both watch as Hinata bounces upwards, shooting a spike past Lev’s ear. “That one never runs out of energy, does he?”

“He doesn't, but only when it comes to volleyball.” You smile. You think of all the times you’ve tried to get Hinata to slow down or help you with studying, or pretty much anything unrelated to a sport. “He’s selfish that way.” 

“Why wait around then, if you’ve got other things to do?”  

You think for a moment. “Watching him helps. He’s got enough passion for the both of us.”