“Are you two listening?” Yachi asks, a nervous tremor in her voice.

“Yes!” they both answer---Hinata chipper, Tobio serious. He’s listening. He knows she’s speaking. The words just don’t resolve into anything meaningful in his head.

“Um...”

Is that sweat dripping down her face? She glances at both their faces, seeming discomfited. Does she know they’re holding hands?

With great effort, Tobio moves his hand away from Hinata’s, experiencing the cold shock of letting go. It’s like electricity: a shock when he touches Hinata, and a shock when he lets go. He feels space form again between them and doesn’t like it.

Yachi’s eyes flicker to Tobio’s arm, spotting the movement. Her eyes widen. “Um---um!”

Tobio blinks.

“If you were holding hands, and I’m not saying you were, you don’t have to stop!” she yells. The book she was teaching from is held up either like a weapon or a priest’s scepter. “I didn’t mean to, I just thought, you looked funny—!”

Tobio touches his face. What does he look like when Hinata touches him?

“It’s your fault,” Hinata tells him, seeing his curious expression. “It’s really weird when you look happy off the court.”

It’s really weird for him to be happy off the court. He doesn’t remember when that started happening either. Was it around the same time as he started caring about touches?

“I think it’s nice!” Yachi says, her tone still pitched too high---like she has to proclaim everything or she’ll be too shy to speak.

Hinata grins. “Me too.”

Tobio scowls, because he’s not sure what else to do. “Let’s get on with the lesson,” he mumbles, and the others comply. There’s a tiny smile tucked in the corners of Yachi’s mouth as she continues the lesson; Tobio wants to ask her why it’s there.

He doesn’t, though.

Later, when he and Hinata step outside Yachi’s house after a relatively unproductive tutoring session, Tobio catches their reflections moving in a window. He thinks of how weird Hinata says he looks when he’s happy and wonders if he could spot it.

Not speaking, he leans down and pecks Hinata on the cheek in the middle of Hinata’s sentence, which he wasn’t listening to anyway. He catches his reflection’s eyes in the window.

He looks like himself---dark hair, dark eyes, normal face. Well---slightly darker face. He still can’t kiss Hinata without blushing and feeling his stomach flutter madly. Unsatisfied with his own face, he looks at Hinata’s reflection. Hinata’s face has darkened too, and one of his hands has risen to touch his cheek, and he looks happy. It’s normal, seeing Hinata look happy, but it’s strange to think he caused it.

“What was that for?” Hinata mumbles, though he sounds pleased.

“Nothing,” Tobio says. Hinata nudges him.

“Yachi-san was right, you know,” he says seriously. “It is nice.”

Tobio doesn’t know what the appropriate response to that is, so he shoves him and starts to walk. Hinata squawks. 

“You can’t just push me around!” he says. “I’m your boyfriend now, you know!”

Tobio’s body feels light, his stomach squirming happily at the word boyfriend. A car passes on their side of the road, and for a second the windows feed his reflection back at him: mouth pressed tight to keep from smiling, eyes bright, cheeks flushed.