Level Pair (Haikyuu!! Winged AU)

Level Pair; Day Five 2/2

Safety lies in silence. It is easier to rectify what you miss by silence, than to secure what you lose by speaking. ~Ali ibn Abi Talib

It takes longer for Hinata's breath to even out indicating that he's finally asleep, and Kageyama is struggling to find that same sense of peace.

Level pairs, his mother had called them.

Two people who complimented each other so well, they were a perfect match. They were called level pairs, his mother had said, because they both brought out the best in each other and limited the worst, inadvertently bringing each other to the same point. They would rise and fall together, grow stronger or weaker in direct correlation with the other half. They could heal each other—and harm each other if they weren't careful.

But they were a story told to children and Kageyama had never really believed any of it. They were less than legend; they were myth. He didn't know of anyone who'd ever found their leveler. But... as Hinata drew in a deep breath and peacefully released it against his side, Kageyama saw it again.

The sad patch of feathers that remained around his destroyed wing base began emanating a soft golden-orange glow, the barest light reflecting off his fiery hair. Not for the first time, he tiredly watched them with fascinated awe. He was at a point where he even expected it, but it still floored him.

This had been a part of his mother's stories. This soft light... was 'binding', the healing potential of a leveler. It required complete and inherent trust on both sides and only really activated when both were content. With that strict requirement on serenity, it usually meant it happened when they slept. At first, Kageyama had convinced himself it wasn't binding, that it was just the capacity of healthy sleep. And weren't all the pairs in his mom's stories always male and female? That certainly seemed more logical, but hey what did he know? Still, there was no way.

Except... when Hinata had crashed out for a short while at midday yesterday, they hadn't glowed like this. When they'd glowed last night again, Kageyama had confirmed that it only happened when they were in contact. And it was then that it finally hit home.

Shouyou Hinata is his level pair.

And this glow, this binding, was the effect of being in contact with Kageyama. The depth of implicated potential had initially set him spinning. His mother had said there was no limit to the healing or harming capabilities of levelers, but none of the characters in her stories had ever been shorn of their wings completely. Still, Kageyama desperately wanted to believe. If his mother's stories were true and they perpetuated this long enough, Hinata should eventually regrow a full set of wings, right?

The very thought had nearly spurred him to spill it all to the redhead when he'd broken down earlier today—he'd wanted to so badly... except he couldn't. Not yet. Perhaps if he could have been sure Hinata would fully recover, he'd have caved and told him, but he refused to give him false hope only to crush it later if it wasn't possible.

But something else bothered him. Shouldn't they have noticed the other side effect of this connection? If this was 'binding', then the flip side was 'breaking'.

When they fought—really fought, their wings were said to burn. Neither he nor Hinata had ever set their wings on fire and they'd definitely not always gotten along. It might have been that Hinata was simply just that difficult to really rattle.

Kageyama had a plethora of times he'd nearly lost his mind with the other boy—like the instance Hinata had spoken of earlier today about when they'd tied him up and left him hanging in that ridiculously windy and chaotic updraft. Even if Kageyama'd been irrationally pissed over it all himself, Hinata didn't seem to notice. He'd come back the next day and, being the sweets fiend he is, he'd wanted them all to go back to that point because he'd seen a large patch of blueberries in a clearing that he'd wanted to collect. No one took him up on that but he'd still come back the following morning having gone and gotten them himself for Noya's mom. Kageyama had to grudgingly admit those were some of the best bars he'd ever tried.