I’ve made two fic rec lists so far, both of them for Sanders Sides (list 1 and list 2), and they were a lot of fun to make, and I’ve been reading a lot of Haikyuu fic lately, so I thought I’d go through my Ao3 bookmarks to make another one of these!
Since I read fic on Ao3, that’s where I’m going to be linking the fics. If I can find the author’s Tumblr, I’ll @ them as well!
I like the way your clothes smell by @mysecretfanmoments (75.3k words) Really, you’ve probably already come across this one, since if you sort by hits it’s the most popular Kagehina fic on Ao3 by MILES, but even if you have already read it, go read it again. It’s a canonverse fic where Kageyama confesses his crush to Hinata and they get together pretty early on and the rest of the fic is filled with awkwardness and fluff (and a good chunk of smut too, but if that’s not up your alley, all smut is marked and skippable). I love love LOVE this fic, it’s really well-written and in-character and absolutely adorable, and I can’t recommend it enough.
Prolong the Inevitable (I Know This Isn’t Real)by PiningTsukkiEnthusiast (26.2k words) This is a fake dating Tsukkiyama fic that I binge-read last night and I absolutely ADORE it. The premise for the fake dating is that Tsukishima wants to come out to his parents while also stopping them asking him why he’s single, so he and Yamaguchi make a plan to kill two birds with one stone and pretend to be dating. However (as you might be able to guess by the author’s username), Tsukishima is pining, and he’s liked Yamaguchi since junior high, and now it’s their third year of highschool and this wasn’t exactly his plan but he’s rolling with it now. Things get a little messy, but it’s absolutely adorable and it all works out in the end. I love this fic a LOT and if you like Tsukkiyama, I definitely 100% recommend.
The Crown and the Crow by @glenflower (Yuu_chi on Ao3) (9k words) This is also a pretty popular one. It’s a short but incredibly sweet Kagehina soulmate AU where everyone’s born with some sort of soulmark on their body. It’s pretty straightforward, but everything is so perfectly in-character and the writing is so good that it’s 110% worth checking out. (There is some mildly NSFW stuff at the very end, though, so beware)
The Mystery of Professor Yamaguchi’s Husband by @spadebrigade (3.3k words) I found this one a couple of days ago and I love it. You might’ve seen a Tumblr post pretty similar to this - Yamaguchi and Tsukishima are both professors at a university, and while Yamaguchi is really outspoken about his husband Kei, Tsukishima barely mentions the fact that he even has a husband. However, none of the students make the connection that they’re married to each other. The fic is written from Yachi’s POV, and it’s very enjoyable to read. Plus, she has a study group with Oikawa and Akaashi, and I really like that detail. Also, the author’s writing style is very nice to read. All in all I definitely recommend this fic!!
Crowchildren by crypsis (58.6k words) This one HURTS. It’s Kagehina, and it has Kageyama and most of the Karasuno team as so-called “crowchildren” - kinda… bird reapers? who take people to the afterlife when they die. The fic is really sad and it’s– OW. It does have some happy moments, but be prepared to have to go stare at a wall for a while (or cry). If major character death isn’t your thing, don’t read this, because death is a major theme in the fic. It’s really good, though, even if it did break me. Someone recommended this fic when asked about fics of similar angst levels to In Another Life, to give you an idea of what it’s like. (if you haven’t heard of In Another Life, it’s a really sad Bokuaka fic that’s kind of infamous in the fandom. Personally, though, this fic hit me harder than that did.)
ways to fly by viscrael (5.3k words) This is a really nice fic that I love a LOT. It explores how trans boy Hinata could fit into the canonverse storyline, and it makes sense and I love the trans Hinata headcanon so this fic means a lot to me.
Binding Problem by @majesticartax (ongoing, 221k words) Ok buckle up everyone, because THIS right here is my FAVOURITE fanfic of all time. Usually, I try to keep rec lists to completed fics only, but I’ll make an exception for this one, because hOLY SHIT. I’ve read it twice in the past month or so, and I would not hesitate to do it again because it’s so, SO worth it. It’s a slowburn canonverse Kagehina fic, and I fUCKING LOVE IT SO MUCH. It starts out with them in second year, but it goes on all the way to the end of their third year, which is where it currently is, 33 chapters strong. And when I say it’s slowburn, I mean slowburn. There is a happy ending and they do get together, but it is an entire JOURNEY to get there, and I love every second of it. It does get extremely angsty at points (seriously, chapter 23 murdered me and I still haven’t recovered), but them getting together is the most satisfying thing I’ve ever read, and I’d give a lot to be able to experience it again for the first time, because holy shit. hhhhholy shit. this fic is some good shit. If smut isn’t your thing, though, you should probably give it a pass, since there’s a decent amount of it throughout the fic, and it’s not really skippable. All in all, I’d give this fic a 1000/10 rating, and I really can’t recommend it enough. (And if you don’t mind smut, the rest of the author’s fics are also 100% worth checking out. Dial is another favourite of mine, but it’s very smutty so I didn’t include it as a seperate point on this list since smut isn’t meant to be the focus of this)
Acceptable Risk by @mysecretfanmoments (46.1k words) I know, I know, I’ve already got a fic by this author on this list, but all of their writing is so good I have to recommend it. This is a Kagehina in a college setting, although it’s canonverse in the sense that it can be seen as an alternate timeline where the events of the manga’s timeskip arc simply didn’t happen. In the fic, Kageyama and Hinata live together for college, and it’s a classic mutual pining situation where both of them have feelings but neither think the other reciprocates them. Pining happens, until eventual confessions, and the last two chapters end up being pretty heavy on smut. The fic can be read without those two chapters, though, and the first chapter does also have a nsfw portion, but it’s marked and skippable without impacting the fic much. All in all, this fic is ridiculously cute, and I love it so so much.
Coming out of the Cupboard by dancingwithwings (6.7k words) This is a really cute Daisuga fic from Daichi’s POV that follows them through their years at Karasuno, featuring pining Daichi and teasing Asahi and overall just very nice characterization and writing, and I love it a lot.
i wanna know you and i wanna love you by @spider-momo (9.2k words) More Kagehina (which shouldn’t be a surprise at this point)! It’s a third-year canonverse setting with mutual pining. I think one of the Ao3 tags it has describes it pretty well - “in which the ‘b’ in kagehina’s bromance slowly fades as the story progresses”. I love this fic a lot, because Kagehina is good for the soul. (I’ve read this three or four times and it still induces happy flapping. 17/10)
YOUTH by drunkvisuals (3.2k words) This is another heart-stoppingly cute Kagehina fic. It’s a songfic based on (unsurprisingly) YOUTH by Troye Sivan, and was incidentally the first Kagehina fic I ever read (and I’m very grateful it exists because otherwise I might never have started reading other Haikyuu fics and that would’ve been a great loss for me personally). It’s a “Kagehina through the years” thing, starting with them as second-years and ending with them in their first year of college. It’s really just a compilation of absolutely adorable fluff scenes, and I love it for that because really sometimes all we need is Kagehina fluff to be happy. The whole thing is very in-character and the writing is very nice to read, and all in all very happy flap-inducing, and I love it a lot. Definitely worth checking out!
Alright, that’s it (for now?). I hope you enjoy these fics as much as I did!
wait, i stumbled across this by accident but the description of YOUTH, i’ll cry right now 😭
oh my gosh, i’m so glad you enjoyed it and it was a gateway into reading other fics. as a writer, that means the absolute world. i haven’t heard of some of these fics so i will definitely need to check them out !
