Karasuno Fight {One Shot Book}

Looking Back Before Moving Forward

Sorta non-canon timeskip AU I guess? I'm not sure what the fuck this is. But I wrote it, and it actually isn't that bad so meh. Plus sorta ambiguous Ennoshita and Narita! Enjoy nerds.

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"Do you think we were that small when were first years?" Narita asks, nodding at the group of boys running ahead on the empty street.

Ennoshita shrugs in response, his eyes darting from one head to another as he does a headcount of Karasuno's newly built boy's volleyball team. They're bright eyed and bushy tailed, jogging at an even pace, some even with an extra spring in their step. Ennoshita would not have described some of them as small, although they certainly did look young, as young as first years often did.

"We might have been small," Ennoshita answers. "Can't say I remember too well if any one of us were smaller than another besides Nishinoya. During our first year at Karasuno."

Narita laughs at that, a low but warm chuckle of agreement at Ennoshita's words. Narita had been a constant presence from the very start, steady in his stance and even more so in his words. Hearing and seeing him now, after so much time had passed, Ennoshita is struck with a fleeting feeling of nostalgia. Thrown back into a period of his life that he hadn't realized he missed. Though he had told himself he refused to partake in it should it happen, his cheeks grow warm all the same the more he thinks about it.

"Do you think they're ready for this?" He asks.

From where they're standing by the school gate, they can see, and hear, two boys yelling at each other from the head of the group, eerily familar in their shouting match for the spot to lead those behind them.

He remembers feeling somewhat relieved, being told that Karasuno wasn't doing so bad even after everyone who had helped made it great again was graduated and gone. Like Tanaka had told him a long time ago, what was the point of coming back on day if there was nothing to come back to?

"They'll get there," Narita says. "No new team without its kinks or bumps in the road. They'll be fine. Do you think they're ready?"

Ennoshita flushes a bit under Narita's knowing glance, a flood of embarrassment heating up his cheeks and spreading downwards towards his neck. He knows Narita remembers how he spent his third year, practically a single parent to a bunch of  rambunctious children with little to no inside (or even outside, if he was honest with himself) help, single handedly having to learn through trial and error how to keep his team on a tight leash, just to insure his own sanity remained in tact. His nature as a captain had never truly left, spurred to life once again by the rowdy yells of the group.

"I'll be fine." He says. Even now he's not sure if those words are a lie or not.

"Not too out of practice to whip some first years into shape?" Narita asks teasingly.

"Of course not." He barks, with more certainty this time.

"Then let's go." Narita beckons him over his shoulder with a curl of his fingers as he turns toward the gym. "We should go see if coach Ukai will still remember us in his old age. He isn't as young as he used to be."

It's Ennoshita who laughs this time, loud and clear, as he follows after Narita's retreating back. "Don't let him hear you say that. He'll probably make you run laps around the gym before doing a load or two of suicides."

"Yeah yeah." Is all Narita says in response.

Ennoshita smiles, the flaming heat in his face now calming to a dull warmth.

They both wanted this, needed this, some closure for the feeling that had been nudging insistently at the back of their heads for months now. This small moment of peace amongst the flood of responsibility and expectation and tiredness that came with being an adult. A feeling of clarity between him and Narita, as captain and vice captain, from a time so long ago.

They were going to put the fear of God into Ukai's latest bunch of hopefuls, make them realize that if they wanted their victory, they had to take it. So long as they did that, Ennoshita reckoned, they'd be just fine.