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the photobooth is hinata’s idea, as are most bad ideas.
‘it’ll be fun!’ she says in excited tones, eyes brightening to rival the stars, ‘plus, noya-san said - ’
‘like you could trust anything nishinoya says,’ tsukki sniggers, flicking the end of her ponytail derisively over her shoulder.
‘shut up, tsukishima!’ comes the indignant reply. ‘anyways, noya-san said that she did this with tanaka and the others when they were first years, so,’ hinata finishes brightly, ‘we should continue the tradition. right, kageyama?’ she adds to the dark-haired girl beside her.
‘dumbass,’ kageyama mutters, tugging at her bangs.
‘so let’s go!’
yamaguchi thinks about being stuck in close quarters with these two idiots and an unwilling tsukki, and gets a somewhat ominous feeling about the whole situation.
---
it’s absolutely worse than she imagined.
the booth’s impossibly small, like it’s trying to squeeze itself into nonexistence, even more so with three other bodies with her. yamaguchi stretches out an arm, experimentally, and is met with cold, hard resistance.
they’re all cramped up on the one seat in the booth. yamaguchi finds herself wedged between a resisting tsukki and hinata, who has a heated argument with kageyama every five seconds and nearly takes off yamaguchi’s head with her arms on multiple occasions.
listening to hinata and kageyama scream themselves hoarse at each other, tsukki quietly slips on her headphones, turns the volume up, and opens flappy bird on her phone.
yamaguchi, caught between the crossfire of insults being thrown back and forth and the swish, thud, repeat of tsukki’s game, closes her eyes and reminds herself firmly that this is all for team spirit.
---
yamaguchi presses the button and watches the screen flash numbers at her, five, four, takes a furtive glance around to confirm that the others are still unaware, three, two leans back and faces the camera, face splitting a smile, full and true.
one!
---
‘eh?!’ hinata screeches when she sees the photos, snatching one out of yamaguchi’s hands. yamaguchi catches the edge of a blurry orange head and hides a smile. ‘i look terrible in all these pictures!’
kageyama snorts, ‘you always look terrible,’ but her expression sinks into a disgruntled frown, a tiny crease appearing above her eyebrows, when she glances down at the picture in her hand. yamaguchi tips her head sideways to look at it too.
and bursts into uproarious laughter, effectively cutting short hinata’s resentful ‘shut up you moron’. she immediately crowds around kageyama, tugging at kageyama’s hands, which have clamped shut over the offending picture. tsukki fingers her blond braid, feigning disinterest.
in the picture, when hinata finally wrenches it from kageyama’s unrelenting fingers, kageyama’s head is jolted back at a severe angle, to avoid hinata’s windmilling arms, her nostrils on full display.
kageyama’s uncomfortable squirming is audible in the silence, and then hinata chances a laugh, ‘kageyama-chan, look at how stupid i look in this picture.’ her finger moves over the glossy surface, directs their eyes to photo hinata.
photo hinata’s eyes are squinted shut, her mouth wide and gaping, most likely in the process of barraging kageyama with more insults. her arms are fuzzy, obscuring half her face - and kageyama makes a choked sound, somewhere between a cough and a laugh.
‘you always look stupid,’ comes the response, and hinata, predictably, pulls her hair, a small smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.
tsukki makes a displeased sound, frowning down at the picture. photo tsukishima stares back, expressionless, face lit up with bluelight from her phone, and beside her - she glances suspiciously at yamaguchi. ‘why are you the only one who looks good in all the photos?’
the evidence is spread out before them; yamaguchi, looking straight into the camera, grinning broadly from every picture.
‘photogenicity?’ yamaguchi offers weakly.
---
in the end, they take another photo, properly this time, sitting straight and beaming widely into the camera’s blinding flash, and this is the picture they take back to show noya-san and the others.
there’s another photo that yamaguchi secretly sneaks into her bag when no one’s looking. in it, hinata’s smirking at kageyama’s expression, her hands having stopped their wild motion to bat at a stray hair on top of kageyama’s head, tsukki’s looking down at her phone, eyes relaxed, and in the middle of it all, yamaguchi’s laughing, open and happy.
this is the picture yamaguchi frames and puts on her nightstand.
end