Chapter Text
Here’s a study in fear.
“I’ve never been more scared of you than in this moment,” Atsumu tells Shouyou, and it’s true.
Some ancient philosopher once said, all beauty is terror. Shouyou has never looked more beautiful than he does now, positively mortal with alcohol-slackened limbs and furrowed brows.
“I’m sitting on you, Atsumu-san.” He is. That’s making it worse, kind of.
“I saw Ushijima getting a drink at the bar,” Atsumu tries, licking his lips, “It looked like a cosmopolitan, I think.” Shouyou laughs at this.
“You’re right, that’s terrifying.”
“You don’t get it.”
Atsumu lowers his head onto Shouyou’s shoulder. “It’s because of you. They’re all here for you. To see you. They’ve stayed for you. Don’t you think that’s incredible?”
That’s scarier than anything Atsumu has ever known before, and he understands it only with a passing lethargy, the way you make sense of foreign concepts you’ve only beheld in books. Here they all are, friends from who knows when, all the titans of volleyball, all the laymen with day-jobs, whoever else has managed to cross Shouyou’s wake and withstood, for his sake, the test of time. Shouyou is like gravity. That’s blood-curdling, alright. Horrifying at a cosmic level.
The bar is a sight. It’s teeming with people, populous enough to be ants, haphazardly peppered around in little islands. It’s a little suffocating, as if the very air is trying to dense around Shouyou in apt attention. It is a wonder Shouyou ever had the audacity to think himself small, when his life is a living, breathing colossus.
Unfortunately, beauty can never leave its twin, and terror (predictably) comes to Atsumu in the shape of one Kageyama Tobio.
Maybe it is that same principle that makes Atsumu detach from Shouyou, even though it makes him feel like he’s shivering and naked in a room of strangers and more. Maybe it’s how his side was a shelter, but a cramped one, which made his lungs beg for freedom, and his mind right along. Maybe it’s how Tobio looks – as if every nerve in his body is tightly coiled around tension like Atsumu’s own – that beckons him over.
Atsumu rises. He makes a silly excuse about checking on Bokuto, not that it’s not called for, and he wobbles his way over to the leather couch. Tobio cannot hear him, if he has any faculties left to his control other than the slight movement of his mouth. He doesn’t scare Atsumu, not like this, not after he’s just survived all of Shouyou in deadly vicinity of his heat, all the rest of his life walking by around them.
Anyone else might have missed it, bubbling around in their hazy groups and laughter. Atsumu does not. Three syllables drip from Tobio’s mouth in a constant, well-practiced flow.
“Hinata.”
::
When Tobio was eighteen, he got on a bus to Tokyo. It was slow and rusted where the wheels connected to its frame. Tobio’s suitcase was that same red, worn and weeping like dried blood on the sidewalk.
“You have everything?” Miwa asked him, checking her watch in that ambiguous way older siblings feign wisdom. She knew it was everything, because she’d helped pack it all into the vacuum bags reducing Tobio’s readily tiny world into terrifying nothing, advising him on the very many mundane steps of a long bus journey that she assumed Tobio unaware of. He nodded.
He got on the bus, and Hinata with him. Hinata had a single backpack, half filled with snacks for the journey. They ate a lot, Tobio remembers. It was a good fix for other things they wanted to do with their mouths. Their seats were the most uncomfortable, right above the back wheels, and it shook them with violent rattles every time the bus halted and took off, as if they weren’t already trembling on the inside.
Tobio stared at the red of the rust. They both put great care into making sure their sides weren’t touching close enough to tempt their hands. Tobio thought about the red string of fate. They ate.
::
Six years, Atsumu has tried to detach from his shadow – not the one that disappeared of his own volition, one day, but the one that treacherously followed, and greedily grew, with a sure desire to hide him from the rest of the world – and here he is, square one.
Ultimately, he never does touch him, never does tell him to shake the name off of his soul. It is the nature of a shadow to be untouchable in presence; it is the duty of the backup setter, to know when to let go of the game.
“Tsum-Tsum.” He jolts when Bokuto catches him by the arm, “Come on.”
How he makes his way back to Omi’s side – how Bokuto drags him, rather, even though he’s a whole athlete with impressive bulk – Atsumu will never really know, and Bokuto will not remember in the morning. Omi – perhaps because the gin and tonic has gotten to him, or because he believes the alcohol disinfects the air around them, or because he can tell prodding Atsumu now will result in the kind of disaster even he couldn’t clean up – lets him sit a foot away on his left side. Atsumu leans his head backwards into the wall, lets his body melt out of his control, and waits.
Letting go has never been his forte. He’s greedy. He was given the gift of sight at birth, and he sees them now, as he always has. He doesn’t open his eyes, because the fear has become a tangible, haunting thing, hooked into his stomach, and he couldn’t defeat it if he tried. This is fine. Atsumu sits. Atsumu dreams.
In this dream, Shouyou touches his shoulder. Shouyou has this way about him. You don’t have to look at him to see him, because he is the sun that holds very the planet in place.
“I think,” Atsumu stops, “I’d like to leave now.”
In this dream, Shouyou grips him firmly by the sleeve.
“Okay.”
Okay.
Then, they’re back in reality, and diving through the crowd, and Atsumu only just dares to open his eyes.
He rests his forehead on the cool glass window of the taxi and remains like that, half in a dream, still, until he realizes hazily that they’ve arrived at the hotel. He pulls Shouyou by the hand as they move past the entrance. He kisses Shouyou in the elevator.
“What’s that for?” Shouyou stumbles as he tries to catch his breath. And Atsumu could say a million things. But he opts not to list any one of them.
::
Atsumu was born with a shadow attached to his hip, and the promise that it would be there forever. That was a lie. The one that’s stuck to him persistently – the haunting one, the chase at his heels – carries a breeze on him, like he really is a towering tree of massive height, and an uneasy set to his shoulders where a cape should rest.
Atsumu met Tobio before he knew any of this – before he knew he and Shouyou were cosmic entities to be orbited or strictly avoided – and he looked nothing like the wind, nothing like a king, and certainly nothing like the threat of forever.
When was the first time he realized? Some unremarkable U19 national match, which he can only pretend to have forgotten, where the coach experimented. It took that one tentative experiment.
Serendipity, maybe. Tobio was subbed in at the right time, with the best front formation, with the spirit of the opposite team cracked and crumbled. Serendipity, maybe. Probably not. Definitely enough, to get the gears turning, for the scouts to scribble a question mark next to Atsumu’s name.
“Where are you going?” He asked Tobio after, with a glare, feeling for the first time the lack of his faculties, maybe a little too affrontingly. This was lost entirely on Tobio.
“I need to phone someone.”
“Who?”
“Hinata.” Tobio replied, absentmindedly, like that should be enough explanation to Atsumu, the name of a scrawny boy he’d seen all of twice.
(It was.)
::
They lie awake in bed, after; Atsumu values these talks on the shared pillow, because they are the longest they ever have. Shouyou has his back to him. Atsumu admires him reverently: the muscled shoulders, the back with every nook and cranny defined, twisted in treacherous slants and scenic planes. He wonders all at once how many people have looked at Shouyou, as he does now; he wonders how many people have beheld him, bold enough to brave him in the eyes, and thought: I could fit the whole world here.
“Shouyou,” he whispers slowly, “Are you awake?” At first there’s no answer, and Atsumu almost opens his mouth to tell him this, to tell him his has been a six-year long affair with just the idea of him. Then Shouyou arches; Atsumu can follow the movement through every muscle, bulging under skin still too familiar with the sun.
“Yes.” Shouyou turns to him with a grin. “Can’t seem to drift.” He bolsters himself up by one arm, reaches for Atsumu with the other hand. An explorative mission, lingering over Atsumu like he is unknown terrain.
“Neither can I.” Atsumu looks at him. How could he fall asleep like this? Shouyou’s smile broadens crookedly. He plays with Atsumu’s fingers, brushes his own against his knuckles, fits them into all the gaps left in between.
“Let’s play a game.” Shouyou whispers. “You tell me one thing about you, and I’ll tell you one thing about me.” Atsumu makes a sound in the back of his throat, a hybrid thing he doesn’t even mean to huff out. Shouyou takes it as amusement. “I’ll go first. My favorite color is orange.”
What’s a thing that he wants Shouyou to know about him? When I look at you, I feel like you could be my whole world. If you wanted. Then Shouyou’s hand grazes a line down his right arm. Maybe even without. Maybe. But he has caught that thought before it can wring itself out of him.
“I like red.” Shouyou inches closer to him, lays his head on the edge of Atsumu’s pillow as he speaks into his neck.
“Hmm. I could tell. From your sofas.” Atsumu predicts the first kiss only after it has occurred, as he is syncing back into the tangible world. He has Shouyou next to him, but also in his mind, where his arm is still in Tobio's grasp.
“Can I ask you something, Shouyou-kun?”
“That’s not really how this game works, Atsumu-san.” Shouyou giggles next to him. “Tell me something about you.”
“Okay.” Atsumu thinks. “I jumped out of a window once. To get at Samu.”
“Wow. You weren’t hurt, were you?”
“No.” Atsumu shrugs. “It was the first floor. But it did the trick just fine.” His entire body slackens, suddenly and without his control, as Shouyou’s breath touches his neck.
“I’m glad, Atsumu-san.”
Shouyou’s hand wanders over his shoulder, slides down as he eases closer. Atsumu inhales, and he’s assaulted suddenly by the citrusy smell of Shouyou’s hair as he kisses his throat. What does he want to ask? Somehow, he is sure he has a million things he is wondering, but he can't phrase any of them well enough. Around him is all Shouyou, seeping into him through his nose, his eyes, his skin.
“Call me Atsumu.” He whispers, one of his arms closing around Shouyou as he does. Shouyou kisses his collar bone.
“Alright.” He flashes an atrocious grin, all molten sun even in the dark. “Atsumu.” A shiver goes through Atsumu. And then there’s nothing in his mind and it’s all Shouyou again, glorious sensory deprivation, as their lips meet and eyes close.
Once, when he was very young, Atsumu threw himself out of a window. It was at school, and off the first floor; he’d bruised his knees and his elbow hurt for a week, but everything vital was perfectly intact. At least, everything other than his mother's battered nerves.
He did it, because it was portfolio day, and his mother was spending more time looking at Osamu’s stupid finger painting of an apple tree. He’d tried to get her attention by other means – namely pulling on her sleeve, shouting at every moving thing around and throwing a crayon at a wall – but all these methods had failed him due to overuse.
The window is open, he remembered thinking. Why not.
::
The saying goes: no man is an island. This is fractionally true.
No man is an island, but teams are made of islands. This is a natural process. Inunaki and Meian are much older than them, Barnes and Adriah are brought closer by a superior acquisition of English and alienation from the land they inhabit.
Which has, somehow, landed Atsumu here, wherein the first fact about him – his utter, absolute, indisputably world-class quality as an asshole – seems strangely disrupted. Miya Atsumu could put a saint off himself by sheer existence, but upon joining the Jackals he finds himself pushed firmly to the only other island available.
“Can you pass me the salt, Omi-Omi.” Sakusa eyes Bokuto up and down, no doubt trying to gauge approximately how filthy he and the saltshaker are.
“No.”
“Mean,” Bokuto whines, but he is too busy scarfing down his dinner to mind just about anything, Atsumu suspects, including Omi’s eyes flitting back and forth between them.
“You wound me, Bokkun. My cooking is excellent, it needs no extra garnishing.” It’s true. Atsumu is a pretentious chef, whose extent of experience is limited to two cookbooks; an Italian one, which was a gift, and one on Japanese cuisine clearly meant for people who aren’t Japanese. “You were saying?”
At first Bokuto does a double take, like it is a surprise to him that he’s been saying anything at all, and then he remembers with a comical smack of his fist into his hand.
“Yeah! Tryouts are coming up.” He puts his hands on his waist and nods as if this should really be a grand revelation to everyone present. Omi sighs and decides to reach for the bottle opener.
::
(Hinata Shouyou invades their island on a Saturday. It is an inside attack, made by a slightly drunk Bokuto in Atsumu’s apartment.
Bokuto is almost offended when they don’t know the significance of tryouts. They’re rare, Atsumu supposes. That’s about it.
“My disciple is trying out,” Bokuto pouts, between sips of red wine, “Hinata Shouyou.”)
::
Sometimes, particularly when he’s mad at Osamu and he needs a tangible reason, Atsumu recalls his final match with Karasuno. They won, but he couldn’t throw it into Osamu’s face as a strike on the grand tally to happiness they kept, so how's he supposed to be the happier twin?
Atsumu stared at Hinata Shouyou’s retreating back. He remembers wanting to grab him by the shoulder, make his threatening promise real: “Someday, I’ll set for you.”
It feels a little like a threat, still, because maybe it really was. Shouyou in his dreams moves in the air like a whip held by one Kageyama Tobio; boring, stuck up, respectful Tobio, with his deadly aim and narrow eyes, bearing down on Atsumu always, breathing at the back of his neck. Tobio, who gets to play with Shouyou in high school, Tobio who goes to the Olympics instead of him and scores all of five aces.
Tobio had jumped high up with Shouyou one day, higher than Atsumu had predicted, and smacked his ball down; some kind of foreshadowing, no doubt, to all the things he would continue to slap out of Atsumu’s way, following him adamantly where even Atsumu’s own blood and breath failed.
That second match, the last one, their finale: he reached. He ran up to Shouyou, called him by name. “Shouyou-kun,” he all but screamed, flushed with more than sweat, “Wait up!”
And Shouyou did. Atsumu reached him and chanced that one glorious moment to look into his eyes through the net.
“Can I—" He started, tentatively, at a loss for what to say. Could he what, exactly? Can I love volleyball with you? Can I set for you? Can I become the wind for you?
“Hinata.” And suddenly there was an arm between them, too. And the arm seized Shouyou by the shoulder innocently, like that was its natural resting place. “We should go.”
::
(“Can I do the setting for the tryouts?” He asked Coach Foster, just one day after they’d lost to the Adlers in the semi-finals. Coach Foster looked at him the way Atsumu’s biology teacher used to look at embalmed bugs under a magnifying glass.
“You?”
“Yes,” Atsumu said, suddenly unsure of what to make of the disbelief. “Can I?”
“I don’t see why not?”)
::
It’s not often that Shouyou lets Atsumu stay over. Usually, sheer entry into his apartment is coveted; more often, when he does let Atsumu in, it is born out of some necessity – a tiresome workout (not of the nice kind) or perilous weather conditions – and cut short and sharp and sweet. This is a rare delicacy, for which he owes thanks to the sudden and unpredictable December snow.
In the morning, what wakes him up is Shouyou’s alarm. He darts awake as his eyes scan the room for what might be causing the blaring; upon identifying this as Shouyou’s phone he attempts to reach it, and his arm grazes Shouyou’s bare chest as he does.
Shouyou in the morning is a sight. His hair is all messed up, but his eyes are as sharp as ever when he opens them, stirred into consciousness by Atsumu’s touch; he looks first at him, then at his arm, and then at his screeching phone with all the steadiness of a field marshal before he rises.
“Shit.” He breathes, one hand trailing over his head in an attempt to nurse a headache, the other one busy fiddling with his phone. The blanket is barely hanging on to his frame. Atsumu is watching him. “I have to go.”
“Go?” Atsumu half asks, half hisses. Then, with more composure, “Where?”
“Out.” He turns, and the blanket really does slip away as he stands up. Atsumu watches still.
“Or you could stay. Plenty of incentive.” Shouyou gives him a look, a little more human now with half his body clothed.
“I can’t.”
“Why?” Atsumu rolls in bed towards him.
“I’m meeting a friend,” Shouyou says absentmindedly, scanning the floor for his socks.
“Why?” He laughs.
“For coffee. Are you the police?” Atsumu feels his skin light up. No, he thinks, I don’t really know what I am. Not to you, anyway.
Perhaps Shouyou notices his inner conflict, or maybe it is the absence of Atsumu’s usual retort that alerts him. He quickly steps over to him, gives him a peck on the lips, though the whole attempt is eclipsed by his picking up his phone. Maybe he really was just picking up his phone and thought Atsumu was moderately pleasing to the eye. Atsumu can never ascertain the particulars with Shouyou.
“I’ll see you at practice.”
Atsumu hears the front door open and close and sinks further into the pillows. Then, deciding that the blinding whiteness outside has no business harassing him today, he gets up to close the blinds.
It’s 7AM, he dimly notes, looking at his phone. One text from Osamu, sent at 6:12AM. God damn the food industry and its work hours. He clicks on the notification. It’s something stupid about a misspelled road sign, of which Osamu has dutifully taken a photograph as proof. Atsumu clicks the dial button.
“Isn’t your practice in the afternoon today? Why are you awake?” Osamu answers almost immediately. God damn the food industry.
“I’m sleeping with Shouyou.” He blurts out, not registering the first question. Osamu allows one moment of silence, probably to let Atsumu catch up with his mouth.
“I – what?”
Atsumu clicks off.
At this point and age, he should really know when not to open his mouth, but oh well. Osamu calls him back – three times, in fact – before he switches to periodical texts along the lines of exclamations, ominous exhortations, and exhausted annoyance. Atsumu feels a little sick in the stomach, like a paramour left in a mansion long after welcome.
He dresses himself lazily. Should he make the bed? Probably. He doesn’t. He opens the blinds, though. His tries to amble around the room as absentmindedly as Shouyou had that first time at his apartment, like he was an expert of all the readily severed strings attached to these affairs.
Shouyou’s apartment is no mansion. He doesn’t have much – a conventional, scarily underpopulated wardrobe, some succulents on a shelf, a leafy plant on the windowsill. His curtains are white. His sheets are white. His walls are white. The only thing betraying Shouyou’s patronage in the kitchen is a sharp and uncharacteristically expensive set of knives on his counter – which, characteristically, is made of white granite, too.
There he is, staring right at Atsumu in the living room, on cream wallpaper and over a grey sofa and opposite an Ikea dining table so flimsy a light breeze could knock it over. The photograph is encased in a sturdy, rectangular frame, black to match their uniforms. In the middle Atsumu spies Shouyou – grinning with the ball clutched to his chest, but when isn’t he doing either of those, anyway – and the damning gaze of blue next to him, fixed on Shouyou, unrelenting.
Atsumu thinks about this as he retrieves a mug from the cabinet – a tourist’s mug from Rio – and sits gingerly on a kitchen seat with his cup of instant coffee. He doesn’t wash it before he leaves.
::
To anyone who plays volleyball, Osamu is Atsumu’s twin, full stop. To anyone who couldn’t care less – and this happens to be the majority of people – Atsumu is Osamu’s asshole of a brother, a little overrated and exceedingly unpleasant.
Osamu was always the nicer twin. He was the little boy that said good morning when he walked by old ladies and patted stray dogs. He’d even had the decency to cry when he thought Atsumu smashed himself to smithereens, jumping out of the window to steal his spotlight.
Atsumu stole from Osamu one other time, a decade later. A stupid cookbook that his mother got Osamu for no reason.
“Did you take my cookbook?” Osamu asked, flitting around their room, searching for the glossy red of its cover.
“No,” Atsumu answered. “What would I do with a stupid cookbook?” Eventually, Osamu gave up. They didn’t talk about it again.
Osamu was always the nicer twin, but Atsumu didn’t think that would make him the happier twin, too. He still doesn’t. Really. He just can’t stand it sometimes, and that’s fine, he thinks. It’s fine that he has some impulses that are borderline criminal and definitely alarming, when it comes to stealing from Osamu.
::
“I’m sleeping with Atsumu-san.”
Kenma, to his credit, looks like he could not possibly care less. They’re in a funky café, and Shouyou can tell from every scent and the overarching neon color scheme that it’s probably a hipster favorite. Kenma is eating a spongey cake that’s been painted to look strikingly like a peach.
“I thought you didn’t like him.”
“I didn’t.” That’s not really true. Did he ever really dislike Atsumu, or just that he wasn’t someone else? “Not anymore.”
“That’s good. You’re on the same team.” Then, he rethinks this with all the slowness of sloppy clockwork. “That’s not good, is it. You’re on the same team.”
“No one knows. No one cares.” Shouyou shrugs. “It’s harmless.”
“Really.” Kenma fiddles with his phone. “Want some cake?”
::
Maybe it was a little premature to say doom always comes to Atsumu in the shape of Kageyama Tobio. Osamu has proven he can rise up to this challenge time and time again.
“Hey! Drop the knife.” Atsumu kicks at him. The ironic lack of safety in this action does little to faze him. Osamu rolls his eyes.
“I don’t trust you with a knife,” he says.
“Fuck you,” Atsumu replies. Osamu does not drop the knife.
Atsumu carries on washing peppers in the sink and makes absolutely no attempt to hide his displeasure. Osamu was already cooking some weird long roast dish in his kitchen when he arrived, thanks to the spare keys their mother had forced them to exchange when they first attempted to negotiate their move out of Hyogo.
“Fuck you,” he repeats.
“Get the oven up to 200,” Osamu responds.
The food is good, at least, begrudgingly so. It is prepared with none of Atsumu’s usual methodology – he hates watching Osamu eyeball everything, with the same one teaspoon dipped into twelve different spice containers and coming up, somehow, with different and correct amounts of them.
“Your kitchen is weirdly clean.” Osamu says this as he reaches into the freezer for the vanilla ice cream he knows is always stored in bulk. “Have you discovered you have a dishwasher recently?”
“No,” Atsumu replies. The correct answer is: I haven’t cooked here in a while, and Shouyou is scarily clean, like, he cleans while he cooks, it’s insane, and he doesn’t even let me touch a pot. But he doesn’t say that, and Osamu doesn’t ask, but gives him a look like he knows, anyway.
“So, are you going to talk about it?”
“What?”
“What do you think, dumbass?”
“Fuck you.”
Square one.
They clean together with well-practised coordination. Their mother forced this on them, too, in their last year of high school, finally having had her fill of patching up bilaterally inflicted bruises on both her sons.
“Do you go to practice together?” She asked, threateningly swinging a ladle at them. They nodded. “Then you will cook and clean together, and if I see you fight one more time, so help me, no volleyball or kitchen access until you’re both married.” Fear is a powerful motivator for Atsumu, as previously divulged.
Osamu picks out a bottle of wine from the fridge. All four bottles are the same white, anyway, because Atsumu mostly keeps them for aesthetics. He fills their glasses and sets them next to the bowls of melted ice cream.
“Is the sex good, at least?” He asks, and Atsumu throws a towel at him before he breaks out a surprised laugh.
“You have no idea.”
::
(“I like vanilla ice cream,” He tells Shouyou, absentmindedly kissing his fingers.
“I wouldn’t have expected that.” Shouyou sighs pleasantly. “I love vanilla.” Someone giggles.
“Your turn.” He kisses a collarbone now. “Tell me something about you.”)
::
One time, when Atsumu was very young, he’d gracefully flown out of a window for attention. He’s mastered two cookbooks out of spite and pride, and a jump serve out of jealousy. He, demonstrably, has an appetite – the same greed that he knows resides somewhere in Shouyou, cowering from sight.
“You haven’t planned to stay here for very long, have you.” He gestures at the white ceiling of his apartment and tries his best not to look at Shouyou.
“I don’t know.” Shouyou pulls the covers over himself. “Nothing is forever.”
Forever is a difficult concept to understand for some, but not Atsumu. Here’s the gist of it.
People are taught that forever never ends. That’s not really how it goes. Forever starts on October 5, 1995, when then-nameless Atsumu Miya is ripped from the comforts of a womb via C-section and brought into the world kicking and screaming and decidedly unamused by it. Following a few seconds where he is deposited onto a tray like a second thought, Osamu Miya is removed in much the same fashion. No man is an island, but maybe two babies could be, if they try hard enough.
They don’t. Forever ends on a spring Sunday, when they’re back from a lost tournament and sore all over and Osamu decides this day, out of every possible day of forever, is the time to end it.
What comes after forever? Nothing, for a while.
::
Asshole
Did you steal my keys
Read 00:43
You forgot them in the kitchen
Shut up im trying to sleep
Read 00:44
Sleep?
Or do you mean S L E E P
Read 00:44
I’m never giving those keys back
Read:44
::
When Atsumu was just about six years old, his father left one morning to buy milk, and then he never came back. He likes to start the story this way; it seems to him that it has more of a flair to it than saying his dad walked in front of a moving car, and that was that.
Atsumu always had this grotesque image of him, his blood mixed with the milk that he was sure, even at six, his father would have bought in a glass bottle, because he was the sort of man that cared about the environment and bought his wife flowers when he felt like it.
What he found more grotesque, once he was no longer six, was that his father lingered. He’d just made tea when he left, and they, thinking he was just late, had had their fill of it after breakfast, guessing at where he was. His wardrobe still smelled like him, even though Atsumu’s mother gave all his clothes away.
They kept his phone on, to inform acquaintances of his demise, where necessary. And people kept calling, and calling, and calling, and they were always too late.
::
If the Jackals had a team motto, it would be audacity. Bokuto routinely digs balls by feet, elbow, hell, chest. Omi keeps an evil command on the ball, even after it has left this hand. Shouyou attacks anywhere, from anywhere. Vertically, diagonally, running a whole loop in the back court. You never know.
“Did you see that?” he skips instead of walking, as he flies instead of jumping. The team roars around them after the score. “That was so fast. So fast!” Atsumu grins at Goshiki’s contorted face. Everyone else is looking at the replay screen to pinpoint exactly where and how Shouyou hit that last spike. Oh man, Atsumu thinks. He could do better. I’ll show you.
Sometimes Shouyou is subbed in Bokuto’s place, sometimes Barnes’, sometimes Omi’s. Somehow, he is jack of all trades and master of all, too. All he needs is a setter to match the game to his.
This is what Atsumu does. A glance at Shouyou reveals he is just as hungry for more as he is. Atsumu tastes his thirst. This is what he does.
Omi digs the ball cleanly, this time, with a crisp spin. In Atsumu, the audacity prevails. The ball goes to Shouyou again, in the front left, though three blockers wait for him. The toss finds him just right, fits into the callused terrain of his hand. Atsumu has mapped that hand masterfully, through forlorn kisses in the dark.
There is silence, after this next point. Even Shouyou doesn’t scream. He looks at Atsumu, really looks, at and into him.
::
Secrets have a way of coming out, eventually. One day, Atsumu will spill many, no doubt. Not yet.
“I don’t want an explanation,” Omi cautions now, threateningly waving a bottle of disinfectant spray towards Atsumu. “Just do not come near me.”
“Omi.” Atsumu takes a step forward as Omi takes a corresponding one backwards. “Omi. This isn’t what it seems.”
“It seems to me like you’re… involved with Hinata and, for a reason I can’t pinpoint, picking up a delivery for him half naked.” He rounds this off to a semi-question and points the disinfectant at Atsumu’s legs.
“Stop being dramatic, I’m wearing a robe.”
“A robe that is way too short and not your own.” Atsumu takes a step again. “Stay back.”
“Good morning, Omi-san!” Shouyou chooses that moment to pop his head in through the door. “Would you like to join us? I’ve cooked up your favorite for breakfast.” He pries the bag of groceries out of Atsumu’s hand.
Atsumu isn’t sure what to be more surprised with. That Omi, grudgingly – sheepishly (?) – retreats into his apartment and says that he’ll be over in ten minutes, or that Shouyou knows Omi’s favorite breakfast (?) somehow, or that said dish is pancakes. That Shouyou lets him keep the robe and all its latent meaning on.
“Don’t make fun of the shape,” Shouyou tells him while he pipes the pancake batter into little stars, “Just warning you. Let’s invite Bokuto-san, too!”
(Bokuto points at his robe at the doorway.
“Don’t, Bokkun, or I will seriously hurt you.”)
::
Atsumu has been in love, before. All through high school he was blissfully, utterly in love with Kita. A wet, young, happy kind of love that made him feel special, just like Kita was, that he never had to do any work for.
He never told Kita while it lasted, and how could he? But Kita always knew. Kita has a way with knowing things. Atsumu went to his graduation with the rest of the volleyball club, looked at him lost and grim. At some point, they all became a line ahead of Kita, a string of children held straight by respect, sharing hugs and a few words with him before they all departed for the final time.
Even now, Atsumu doesn’t know what he wanted to hear. Kita’s words to most people ranged from sentimentality, to reproach, to the recalling of shared memories.
“Take care. And take care of Atsumu, too.” He finally told Osamu, who was in the front of the line, “He needs it.”
Atsumu doesn’t know what he expected, but he knows how he greeted it. Most people at this point had already started to cry. He hadn’t, but just barely. He stood in front of Kita and contemplated, for a moment, if he should tell him.
“Atsumu.” Kita said, before Atsumu’s heart could spill. He held him by the cheeks. He smiled warm and mellow and suddenly he looked very old. “We’ll keep in touch.”
Then Atsumu started to cry.
::
(“Breakfast is my favorite meal of the day,” he tells Shouyou.
“Not dinner? Weirdo.”
“Can I take you out for dinner, then?” Atsumu takes a long, silent, wanting breath.
“Yeah. I’d like that.”)
::
Usually, Hinata dragged Tobio through life, incessantly and everywhere. Tobio pulled Hinata, just once. He wheeled his tiny red suitcase through myriads of people, foreign streets and tongues. He arrived at Hinata’s doorstep.
Hinata was flushed and already drunk, though he pretended he wasn’t. Tobio did not tell him he’d never been drunk before, either, when he reached for the lemon and tequila. When they ran out of lemon, he’d already lost the ability to taste the bitterness of the alcohol.
Tobio did not tell Hinata he’d never kissed anyone before, when he pulled him, just once. He remembers the rest in fluid, living detail. He dreams of it, sometimes. Not enough.
It felt a little like a dream, when he was lying on some couch in a bar in Sendai, like he was still waiting for Hinata to come back from his quest for lemons, like he’d imagined everything that happened after and everything that didn’t. He knew he was whispering his name, as he was doing then. He knew he wasn’t dreaming, when he saw Miya.
Hinata came this time, too, without the lemons. Tobio did not pull on him, but he did watch him pull Miya up and away and out.
::
Atsumu was blessed with the gift of sight at birth, but Shouyou violates some of these rules. There is an elusiveness to him. More on that later.
“Okay, I confess, I didn’t think the food would be that good here.” Atsumu points at their empty plates. “Hipster places? Normally not so hot.” Shouyou laughs.
“Kenma’s recommendation,” he says, and then adds, seeing the lack of recognition in Atsumu, “my friend that I met the other day? You met him at the party.” Still nothing. Shouyou sighs. “Kodzuken.”
That’s not who Atsumu had pictured, when Shouyou rose that morning like a sleepy god and left him still dreaming in bed. But then, he thinks, he hadn’t pictured dinner in a hipster restaurant when he phoned Osamu. He didn’t picture Shouyou dressed up like this – for this, here, with him. He’s here, Atsumu thinks, strangely.
“I forgot my keys at the gym,” he lies, knowing full well they’re in his coat pocket. Testing his limits, surgically. “Suppose I’m your guest tonight.”
“A guest?” Yes, Atsumu thinks. Go on. Say something more. Tell me what I am. “The most welcome.” Touché, then.
He has the urge to steal something, in Shouyou’s apartment. Something to prove to the world that he’s been in it. Amazingly, annoyingly, there’s nothing to steal, because there’s nothing to prove even Shouyou has been in there. Nothing except that stupid photo.
::
(Letting go has never been Atsumu’s forte.
“Here.” He tosses Osamu’s keys at Shouyou. He watches him trying to make sense of exactly why he’s holding them and fail. “For convenience,” Atsumu provides, anxiously. He feels himself blush in embarrassment and something else. Shouyou slips the keys onto his own keychain.)
::
The first time Kageyama got selected for the Japanese Men’s National Volleyball team, he was eighteen and the youngest he could have been. Takeda-sensei declared the selection after practice. They even had a barbecue party about it, later.
“I’ve chosen my jersey number,” He declared on the street one day, while they were walking back from school and keeping a very careful distance.
“Oh?”
“Yeah.” For some reason, Shouyou had assumed Kageyama would wear nine forever. “What is it?”
“Twenty.” He did a little huff, the one that caused his hair to spill into his eyes. “For the next Olympics.” And Shouyou knew what he meant, because Kageyama did, and that made him privy, too. When you’ll be here. Until.
“Good choice.” He said. They raced home.
::
It became clear halfway through the season that Shouyou would be offered an extension to his contract. The correct time for this would be right after the elimination round, before any other domestic teams would dare approach him, and squarely before national season, when international teams might get those same ideas.
When Shouyou was invited for a meeting to discuss his future with management, Atsumu wanted to buy him flowers. He didn’t. Bokuto did, however, invite everyone for a party at his and Akaashi’s apartment and in Shouyou’s honor.
The building is in the same block as Atsumu’s and made exclusively out of glass. His first time in there, Atsumu tested the strength of the windows by slamming a hand against them, terrifying Akaashi half to death.
“Don’t worry,” he assured them, “I jumped out of a window once. Didn’t kill me.”
“We are on the thirty-eighth floor,” Omi mused. Atsumu shrugged.
At the door, Bokuto greets him. “What, your boyfriend is getting a contract with the best team in Japan, and you didn’t even get him flowers?” Bokuto shakes his head. “You have much to learn from me, Tsum-Tsum. You can be my next disciple.”
“Shut up, Bokkun,” Atsumu swallows at boyfriend. Something squeezes fatally in his throat. “Where is yours, though?” Bokuto shrugs, either willingly or idiotically ignoring Atsumu’s earlier declaration.
“He’s gone to get the cake. Keiji takes things like this very seriously.”
They sit and wait for the arrivals, after. First after Atsumu is Omi, who fishes a very expensive looking bottle of champagne out of his bag.
“No roses?” He smirks at Atsumu. “Pity.”
“Hello!” Shouyou rushes in like morning light. “What are we having? I’m starving.”
::
Nobody really understands why Shouyou has bargained to get a two-year contract down to one.
“You’re so mean, Shouyou,” Bokuto whines, feigning tears, “You want to leave your master’s side so soon? So mean!”
“I don’t know!” Shouyou throws his hands up. Omi is looking at him quizzically, trying to discern what unfortunate neurological fault he possesses to make this mistake. “I don’t know. It’s scary when things are forever, you know?” Bokuto looks at Atsumu.
“I’ll get the cake,” Akaashi says.
Most people think forever never ends. They’re actually quite wrong.
For Atsumu, forever ended after a tournament that should have faded into insignificance gradually. Instead, he came home, and he looked behind, and suddenly his shadow was gone.
“I am walking the compromised path,” Osamu told him, trembling with latent anger, like that should be enough explanation. It wasn’t, so he got angrier. He was done with compromise.
“When you reach 80 years old,” he gritted out instead, holding Atsumu by the collar like a noose, “and have the confidence to say you’re happier than me, then make fun of me.”
::
When Atsumu and Osamu were very young, dad took them to the Sunflower Hill, a trip that basically is a rite of passage for Hyogo children.
Atsumu couldn’t possibly have been less impressed by it if he tried. He was never particularly fond of nature and saw no reason to provide Osamu opportunity to torment him with bugs, hey, and what were they going to do, anyway? Pat the flowers? But Osamu was going, naturally, and so he had to go, too.
“They look very sad.” Osamu declared. He didn’t sound upset about it, but did have a sort of scientific certainty to his little boy voice. He bent his head to imitate the flower’s droopiness. “Like that. You see?”
“They’re happy flowers, Osamu,” his father clarified. He pointed at the sky, at the blazing sun. “They say the sunflower’s in love with the sun, so he bends wherever the sun goes to reach her. See?”
“Cool.” Osamu said, a little breathlessly. He thought any and everything dad said was cool, which meant, naturally, that Atsumu had to think otherwise.
“That’s stupid.” Atsumu said. He kicked the soil. “It can’t ever reach the sun, dad, look. It’s stuck in the stupid ground. Why would that make him happy? Stupid.” He laughed. Osamu didn’t.
Bingo.
::
(“You know,” Bokuto started, when he caught Atsumu alone in the kitchen, “When I confessed to Keiji—”
“Bokkun, I am not in the mood for your—”
“When I confessed to Keiji.” Bokuto made a sound then with the plates he was washing, “It was right after I got the MSBY offer, and he was just starting college. You know what he said to me?”
Atsumu huffs. “I don’t know, Bokkun. I should get back.”
“No.” Bokuto says. He hands him a plate to dry. “He said, I’m very fond of you too, Bokuto-san.”
“Huh?”
“Yeah, I know. I remember thinking, this is what love must be.”
“If you’re trying to give me a pep talk on how it gets better, I’m literally going to fling you through the window.”
Bokuto snorts at this. Atsumu is not amused.
“Nope, it never gets better. But you gotta meet him where he is, even if it’s the exact opposite of where you want him to be.”
Atsumu swallows. “And if he doesn’t want to meet me where I am?”
“If?” Bokuto asks.
“If?” Atsumu echoes, slightly confused.
“I don’t know, I’m asking you. What if he doesn’t want to meet you where you are?”
The point of hunger is an endless reach for more, all the time. Atsumu is the master of both. Years ago, he made himself a promise: more volleyball, more happiness. An essential to this purpose is a national team career, which, while of course a great honor, only the best of the best know, is first an opportunity to play further and higher and harder.
Shouyou’s position on the Japanese national team is delivered to him in a red jersey by the number 10, a letter of congratulations, and absolutely no surprise from anyone around him except himself.
“Why 10?” Atsumu asks as he waters Shouyou’s plants, feigning absentmindedness. Shouyou shrugs.
“It feels right.” Fair enough, then.
Naturally, Atsumu wears 11. That feels right, too. He walks one step behind 10, with eyes sharp and intent, looking steadily on into doom. Or, in this case, jersey number 9.
Doom always did come to Atsumu in the shape of one Kageyama Tobio.
::
(“I’m nervous.” Atsumu says carefully, looking at the ceiling. He sees Shouyou anyway.
“I’m nervous, too.” That’s a first.)
::
Coach Hibarida has exactly one shot at this. One VNL roster of eighteen monsters, who have known each other for half a lifetime, become a little like each other’s wings, folding into and over one another in ten long years of limbo.
It’s risky and unheard of and a vision years in the making. If they lose, they’ll lose really hard, Tobio knows that. They won’t just lose the tournament. It’ll be something else. But. If they win?
It doesn’t matter, actually. Coach Hibarida has matched him with Hinata in the formation. Tobio couldn’t lose if he tried, when they brave the court together. The once great king bumps a fist with his once flightless partner in crime, and he knows everyone wonders why they weren’t called joint monarchs to begin with.
When Tobio sets the ball to Hinata, he actually wants to sigh something out. A plea, maybe. Whatever Hinata has imprinted in him in that weeping red. You can see Hinata still is the reigning god in Tobio’s one track mind, and he makes a point of it when the ball slams into the ground.
When Hinata hits these tosses, it looks like he’s coming home. It sounds deceptively soft. Once they’re sure the ball has landed where it must – and it does, nearly without fail – their hands meet to celebrate each other. This, entirely without fail.
::
No man is an island, the saying goes. Atsumu always thought teams were made of islands. It turns out Shouyou, given enough time, possesses enough gravity to form the mainland.
“I think he’s actually done it this time,” Suna says to Aran, outside of Atsumu’s field of vision, “I think he’s actually managed to get rid of his last braincell.”
Shouyou sits at the table opposite them, stuffing his face with food while telling some high school story. Flanking him on either side are Omi and Bokuto, Yaku and Hoshiumi and Hyakuzawa. Facing Shouyou and away from Atsumu is Number 9, plastered in white across the red of the national team jersey.
“You always said he was incredibly thoughtless,” Aran muses. Atsumu is sure Suna is pleased with his cooperation.
“He’s put my best expectations to shame, I’m telling you.”
“Will you stop talking about me like I’m not here?”
“Are you going to start acting like you’re here?” Atsumu turns to them. Suna looks completely expressionless, but then, this is always when he’s most annoyed. Aran has a bizarre softness to him.
“Are you okay?” Suna asks, only half-jokingly. Atsumu wonders.
::
(Orthopedic injuries never really heal. Every now and then, they still ache, here and there, stirred back into life by fever or pain or heartache.
Kageyama looks at him; his chest, where 10 is burning bright. He looks into Shouyou’s eyes.
“You’re here.” He says. It’s not like that first time, when he thought he was looking at an old friend become new on court. He means something else. He says it tentatively. They don’t shake hands.)
::
The triumph Atsumu feels at being Shouyou’s national team roommate is somewhat like how he felt when he jumped out of a window and succeeded in burying Osamu’s finger painting in history. They come back to the same room bone tired and collapse in their beds – beds, multiple – and, sometimes, they even talk about the day.
“What are you doing over the break?” This is what athletes call the brief summer window: three weeks between the end of the VNL and before they reconvene to sync back up for the Asian Championships. Three weeks of ice baths and cheat meals.
“Going back to Miyagi,” Shouyou replies. “You?”
Atsumu realizes he has absolutely no idea. He hadn’t even realized he’d have that decision to make. Something twists in his chest, the same thing that begs for release every time Tobio is subbed back into what should be Atsumu’s life.
“Do you believe in a sixth sense, Shouyou?”
“Like, when you know where the ball is going to go, so you block there?” It makes Atsumu smile. He kisses Shouyou quickly.
“Yeah. Like that.”
::
There is an elusiveness to Shouyou. This, Atsumu supposes, is what makes him the “perfect” decoy. Other people can call them boyfriends, and Shouyou won’t – but he doesn’t “not,” either, you know? That’s the way he is. He carries Atsumu’s keys around but hasn’t used them once, nor offered up his own. He will pack leftovers in Atsumu’s fridge but never tell him he has. It’s always a fun treasure hunt to open the fridge. Has Shouyou decided to leave him a treat today? No?
There is an elusiveness to Shouyou, and Tobio brings that out. When Shouyou plays with Atsumu, he is never a second thought; if he is a decoy, it is because the eye is trained on him always, everywhere, wherever. Forever. Shouyou is like that. You see him even without looking.
When he plays with Tobio, something amazing happens. Tobio gives him the toss so well and properly – and Atsumu knows, he knows it’s more than just practice – that you, out of respect for the shared thing they are, forget they are individual miracles, too. You forget Tobio could set that ball for anyone and Shouyou could hit it anywhere, because it is so spectacular that they choose to do it together.
So, it makes sense. It makes sense that in Coach Hibarida’s master plan – two formations, built around the greatest decoy and the strongest canon – Shouyou is matched with Tobio and he with Ushijima. It makes sense. But.
Do you believe in a sixth sense?
::
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::
That first spring inter-high, Shouyou fell onto the court suddenly, and his team went with him. This taught Atsumu some things. Sometimes, if you reach too far, too fast, too soon, your neck might just droop too much and snap in two.
Atsumu gets subbed out while they’re playing France, after he misses his serve; that means Shouyou will be in, soon. Atsumu can see him straining and gritting his teeth, leaping out of himself to be let on the court. They have to take this set to stay in the game.
Years later, they will call this the match that made the Monster Generation, capitals and all. This is the one. It takes one decision from Coach Hibarida: put Ushijima and Tobio in, together. And then? Then Atsumu sees Coach Hibarida see Shouyou without looking, for the first time. Atsumu knows nothing good ever comes when Coach Hibarida experiments.
Audacity always prevails. Atsumu hears the beeping that signifies someone will be subbed in and suddenly, inexplicably, he wants to vomit.
It is not Ushijima who takes up the vacant seat next to him. Hoshiumi throws himself onto it, trying to catch his breath, swallowing water in large gulps. “I hate him for playing both positions.”
A lot of things happen, during that match. Atsumu only remembers this:
It isn’t even the first or last point that Shouyou takes. Tobio hasn’t even set it for him. The ball, originally slammed down by Ushijima, has only just been bumped up by the opportune and unintentional placement of the French setter’s foot and crossed over to their side. Nobody sees it coming, and for one misguided moment, it seems like the ball will fall.
Shouyou flies. His hand meets the ball right above the net, at its apex, and sends it to the ground with a terrifying finality, the gateway to an equally terrifying turn in the match.
Tobio hasn’t even set him that ball, so there’s no reason Shouyou should turn to him, and scream with him, right off the bat, even as Yaku and Hyakuzawa pull at him from the shoulders. There’s no reason.
There is, however, ample reason for this lineup to start in the semis. It takes that one tentative experiment.
::
(“I wanted to see you.” Kageyama says, after the quarterfinals. It makes Shouyou smile.
“That’s the peril of living away, Kageyama. You’re going to have to miss a lot of people.”
“I won’t.” Kageyama says. He looks upwards, into the gym lights.)
::
Atsumu has a really, really mean serve. He mastered it entirely out of jealousy and a little sprinkle of spite. Here's how Osamu explained it:
“Now if you’d been all ‘I gotta do it to get good,’ then that would have been one thing,” he smirked in his Mr. Happier-Than-Thou way, “I wouldn’t mind cheering you up then. But that ain’t the case, is it?”
It’s not the case now, either. There’s nothing good about the fact that they’ve lost the gold to Brazil, Atsumu tells himself, standing on the podium with a silver medal around his neck. Except one thing.
Shouyou looked at the Brazilian team a certain way. Played a certain way, even. Like it was possible for him to be any better, you know? You could tell that was what he was thinking about. The whole time. Higher, stronger. Something Brazil taught him well and truly.
Atsumu always knew Shouyou hadn’t planned to stay for very long. Forever does, contrary to popular belief, come to an end, after all. But then he looked at Tobio and realized, gloriously, that even he wasn’t going to change that.
“Get so greedy you crash and burn, I don’t care,” Osamu had said, back then, and shrugged.
Yeah, Atsumu thinks. Fine by me.
::
Tobio has always been a creature of habit. The habits he had to acquire as a young volleyball player suddenly thrust into the spotlight were outlined this way by his predecessor Ushijima: always listen, don’t get emotional in public, and never forget your own water bottle, because you will catch a cold from someone else’s.
At some point, while he’s still relishing the podium – the tallest both he and Ushijima have ever stood on one – he realizes somebody has thrust an award for best setter in his hand. He realizes Hinata is standing next to him. He realizes he is wearing the red 9.
He doesn’t realize he’s clutched Hinata to his chest before he finds Hinata squeezing back. Desperately, he thinks, this is the plea. You’re here. We’re here.
Hinata pulls away first, but then, he always has.
::
Kagsfans: holy shit did you see how he held hinata !!!
kagehina.fangirl: I called it years ago I’m telling you
catkoz: they’re not together. I have inside information.
ninjashoyosgirlfriend: that was lowkey so hot wow
kagehina.fangirl: I’ll believe my eyes first @catkoz
volleyballslutss: anybody realize japan just won a silver medal or is it all about these gay idiots??
::
(Atsumu was blessed with the gift of sight. He didn't need it, to see them, when all the rest of the world could, too.
He never knew how to let go, before. That’s the point of greed. He doesn’t know what to say to Shouyou, before they part at the hotel lobby. He cups his face in his hands delicately and smiles at him and wants to cry. He looks into his eyes and thinks: I could fit the whole world in here.
“Keep in touch.” He says. He lets go.
“Hinata,” Tobio calls from the door. “We should go.”)
When Shouyou fell in that Spring Inter High and never got up, Atsumu thought some things. First, an overwhelming disappointment, which seems clearer now than in real time. Then, this: us, and the cats, and the seagulls. It took all three of us to get that monster down.
What does it take for Atsumu?
::
Shouyou lingers, Atsumu realizes. Maybe even harder than the dead.
It’s a strange kind of lingering, supported by no material evidence. It’s more like a way of things. His bed is made properly, when he comes back home – like those hotel beds, the ones you can’t pry the covers free from, that’s the way Shouyou makes it. The dishwasher is full, but clean. There’s no laundry to do.
“You’ve really lived here,” he said to Atsumu once. He thinks he gets it now. Could anyone tell Shouyou has lived here, too?
::
Kita has, for all intents and purposes, always seemed omnipotent to Atsumu. Atsumu can never tell when his phone calls will come, and he supposes that that’s a delicacy: they keep in touch.
“Something is troubling you,” he says over the phone now.
“Yeah,” Atsumu replies, because he can’t lie to Kita, and Kita wouldn’t fall for it, anyway.
“I’ve been watching you.” Atsumu knows Kita means more than the VNL. “You’ll be fine, Atsumu.”
“How do you know?”
“I do.”
“Anything else you want me to know?”
“You’re miserable.” Kita provides, a little airily. That’s it, Atsumu thinks. He hasn’t had the courage to say it himself, that he’s been miserable every second he’s been looking at Shouyou’s back and reaching. Kita coughs.
“I think you’re aware of that. I’m not sure you know you deserve to be happy.”
::
Atsumu pulled Osamu by the collar that day when forever ended, seething with a red, foreign rage, directed at anything and everything and Osamu himself.
“When we’re on our deathbeds,” he started, and he got angrier, when he realized he thought they’d be together then, too, though Osamu was leaving him already, “I’m gonna look you right in your face, and say I had the happier life!”
“Why don’t you come home for a bit?” That’s what Osamu says in his voicemail. “You know mom, she misses us. And I have a couple new onigiri flavors that I want to test out. Also, Suna called, and he…”
Atsumu clicks off.
::
(“I knew you’d come eventually.”
Bokuto scans the duffel bag in his hand, but he doesn’t say anything about it. Only this:
“Keiji’s in Tokyo. He’s not going to be back until Saturday.”
Maybe, until then, Atsumu wasn’t quite feeling as sorry for himself as he should have. Now, certainly, he does. He sits.
“You were right.” He says, resting his head on a cradle of his hands.
“You’re in love with him.”
“I’m miserable.” Same thing, really. Bokuto stands up and pats him on the back.
“Come on, Tsum-Tsum. I’ll take you home.”)
::
The thing about car rides is their inescapabilty. Once you’re stuffed into a car and go hurtling down the road at a (barely) civilly acceptable velocity, you are blissfully cut off from the rest of the world. This means anything that happens to you inside, like hitting a pedestrian or an unfortunate conversation, is simply collateral damage.
“How’d you know?” He asks Bokuto, looking out of his window. Akaashi’s car is perfectly clean, as always, and smells disgustingly like Bokuto’s aftershave.
“Shouyou left me his keys. To look after his plants.”
“I’m not a plant.” A snort.
“Nope.”
Bokuto looks at him, just for a moment, a sad, long gaze out of the corner of his eye.
::
Mothers have some weird traits, don’t they? Some kind of killer instinct.
Atsumu’s mother gives him a strange hug. It is strange, because his mother is approximately ten inches shorter than him and weighs less than his bag, but he still feels entirely and snugly covered by her embrace.
“I like that friend of yours.” She tells Atsumu. “Really has his head screwed on straight.” At that, Atsumu laughs despite himself.
Atsumu’s mother makes the best miso soup on earth – even Osamu agrees with this. There’s a sureness to miso soup. It’s simple. It’s as savory as it comes. It’s mom, and home, and at some point it was dad, too.
“There must be something different in here.” Atsumu feels gooey inside. “How do you make this? I make the exact recipe. Even got a cookbook, and it never turns out like this.”
“A cookbook?”
“Yes? I do cook, you know.” A gross lie, nowadays.
“Do return your brother’s book to him, if you have your own.”
“What book?”
“Oh,” she says, swinging a finger at him, playful and threatening and home, “you know exactly what I mean, you weasel. The Taste of Italy.”
“Nope. Doesn’t ring a bell at all.” He looks away. “This soup isn’t that special after all, huh.”
Then the smack lands.
::
Shouyou supposes it’s a little funny that Kageyama still lives with his mother.
Not all the time, of course. During the season, he lives in a house the Adlers provide to their players – usually foreigners – with a few of his teammates, and during international season he’s in this hotel or on that plane. During breaks, midseason or the summer window, he takes a train back home and settles in his childhood bedroom.
He did, at least. He has a whole other week to.
Moving to another continent is different, Shouyou knows this. He can’t take his laundry home anymore, or trek back for a break with a single backpack, he can’t just forget his phone charger and come back for it. He can’t come back for anything once he’s left.
The first time Kageyama was leaving, Shouyou didn’t have the heart to help him pack. This time, Miwa doesn’t have the time. They fold his clothes side by side. Shouyou makes him buy a new suitcase, because the old one can’t possibly be sufficient anymore, even with his terrifyingly efficient packing and tiny wardrobe. It is shiny and black and has a hard shell to protect its fragile contents.
“I missed you.” He says to Shouyou, like it’s not a sin, for the first time. He walks Shouyou home and says hello to his sister.
::
Osamu arrives on the third night, like a belated bad omen.
“I’m going to tell mom you took away my key.” He threatens, unwrapping the onigiri he’s brought to have mom taste test.
“You forgot your key.”
“Same thing.”
“Fuck you.” Osamu stuffs an onigiri into Atsumu’s face.
“You’ve lost weight,” he murmurs, and Atsumu pretends not to hear it as he chews absentmindedly, knowing Osamu would have wrapped fatty tuna in the rice.
“I don’t see you cleaning,” Mom peeks in through the door and throws an empty wrapper at Atsumu. “Remember the agreement?” Atsumu throws his hands up.
“He doesn’t come to practice anymore, mom.” He laughs. His mother isn’t amused.
“He doesn’t have to.” She gestures at Osamu, and Atsumu understands.
::
"You've grown." Shouyou's mother says to him, smiling. Shouyou laughs.
"Not all that much, mom. Just an inch or two." She shakes her head.
"I don't mean how tall you are. You've grown." To grow into something, Shouyou thinks, you have to grow out of another.
::
Osamu was always the nicer twin. He buys his girlfriend flowers because he feels like it, calls his mother every day and keeps a tentative, firm grasp on his asshole of a brother. He’s like that.
He’s the one that made sure to pay his respects regularly, to remember, despite his own aching heart, that breezy summer morning. He’s the one that walks slowly to the shrine, now, knowing his shadow will follow.
(“I think I always knew it, you know. That he jumped in front of that car. I think I always knew.”
Osamu doesn’t try to deny it. What is there to deny? They’d had the tea dad had made, that morning, and wondered why he hadn’t set himself a cup, too.
“He was deeply unhappy for a long time.” Even Osamu couldn’t quite say he was glad or happy for him.
“Why weren’t we enough?”
“Sometimes it’s like that.” Evidently.)
::
His mother puts Atsumu’s VNL medal on the wall of their living room. She always did that when he was in high school, but then he moved away, stupidly thinking he could ever be uprooted on his way to the sky, and took all his medals with him.
“You even played starting setter!” She cheers, taking a picture of it to send to grandma, and Atsumu doesn’t bother telling her there was no “starting” anything while they still maintained the two-wing plan, and that if there was, later, that would be Tobio. It’s okay that he enjoys this, he thinks. He can enjoy this.
She also insists that Osamu accompany him back home, even though it’s so out of his way, as per mothers and killer instinct. Osamu doesn’t complain about it. He does, though, tell her that he’ll pick up his keys while he’s there, and earns Atsumu another smack.
“I don’t want them back, you know.” He tells Atsumu, in his kitchen, cooking in three different pots at once, hoping Atsumu will understand what he means.
“Nah, you’ll have your stupid keys back soon.”
“You never know.” Osamu shrugs. “And, hey, let him keep them. I’ll have your locks changed, worst case scenario.”
Osamu ends up cooking him enough food to last him a whole week. He separates them into portions in matching glass containers and labels them by day. “Athletes,” he complains. He clicks his tongue multiple times while he changes Atsumu’s sheets. Atsumu hugs him at the doorway.
“Thank you,” he says.
“Fuck you,” Osamu replies, but he squeezes him back secretly. “Take better care of yourself.”
::
(“I love you,” he tells Hinata, at the airport. Hinata smiles at him, and it makes Tobio want to smile, too, just a little.
“I love you, too.”
Tobio knows it’s the truth. He knows this, too: at some point, between Japan and Brazil and while they were taking great care not to touch so as not to tempt their hands, the red string of fate snapped between them. They're on their own.)
Atsumu wakes up in his bed on day fourteen of the summer window and his sixth sense tells him: you will die today.
Alright, maybe it’s less the sixth sense and more the sounds coming from the kitchen. Possible. He supposes later that it probably isn’t a good idea to just walk into a break-in like that, but then, he did jump out of a window once, and came out unscathed, so he supposes also that he is excluded from conventional logic.
Shouyou is cooking in the kitchen, he thinks. Then, quizzically, Shouyou is cooking in the kitchen?
Shouyou turns to him and grins. He is a little sunburned, Atsumu notes. He seems to be real.
“Right on time for breakfast,” he sings, tossing him an apron that Atsumu is sure he didn’t have before, “Can you get the tea?”
“Why?” Shouyou’s head tilts.
“Come on, you love breakfast.” The kettle hisses in the background. “The tea.”
“Yes.” Atsumu murmurs, tying the apron around his waist and pouring the water into the teapot. Shouyou smears flour over his nose.
There is a sureness to it, like miso soup. To Shouyou, and the flowery aprons they are wearing, and the vanilla pancake batter Shouyou is transferring into an icing bag, no doubt to pipe into stars or smiley faces or hearts, because that’s the kind of person he is.
“My mom sent the aprons,” Shouyou clarifies, “She made them in this class about, uh, fabric dying? Fabric painting? One of her high school friends is running it.”
The pancakes are little flowers, today. Shouyou procures some apple jam – which his mother has sent also – and fries some eggs that he claims are the best Japan has to offer.
“Tell me more?” Atsumu forks his plate, out of the daze, smiling a dumb, dreamy smile, and he offers nothing of himself.
And, amazingly, Shouyou does.
::
(“I stole Osamu’s cookbook.” Atsumu confesses, playing with Shouyou’s hair in bed. “The Taste of Italy. Mom got it for him a couple years ago. I stole it.”
“Must be some really good recipes.” Shouyou shifts totally onto his chest to look him in the eyes.
“Not really.” Atsumu grins. “But he’ll never know, will he.” Shouyou laughs.
“Thank you for trusting me with this secret.”
I love you, Atsumu thinks.
“You came back.” He says instead, when Shouyou is already asleep.)
::
Atsumu reaches.
Big mistake.