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Atsumu hates Never Have I Ever, has never liked it actually. In school it was only ever used as another vessel through which his brother, Osamu, would find more ways to torture him and divulge all of his most grievous misgivings. Something about sitting in a circle sipping on flat Coke made them bold as someone would lower their voice and say, like it was a conspiracy, “Never have I ever…”
Atsumu has since found that his hatred of Never Have I Ever in high school was unwarranted; it’s so much fucking worse when you’re an adult—or in his case, at the age of twenty-one, an adult that doesn’t really feel like an adult. Either way, it’s so much fucking worse. And no, Osamu is not here, but the game turns out to be MSBY Black Jackals’s preferred choice of ice-breaker, and Atsumu, as the newest recruit to the first string team, must therefore endure it, and smile, and nod, and not panic about it. Though in high school it had been embarrassing revealing the secrets of things he had done, Atsumu quickly finds it’s just as embarrassing to be exposed for not doing… well, anything really in Atsumu’s case.
He sits in the corner of the booth the team had made a beeline for as soon as they entered the small, dark izakaya, a sound of cheering rising from the patrons when Meian had grinned, raising a hand to greet them.
Atsumu’s never been someone to be intimidated; he’s usually the one to intimidate. But he suddenly felt so incredibly out of his depth. Thomas had grinned at him, eyes creasing as he did, and Atsumu nodded back, pretending he wasn’t swallowing a small, tight bundle of nerves in his throat. Atsumu will always be the first to admit he has never been the best with people, but when there’s the possibility of his place on the team in jeopardy, it kind of terrifies him.
Four drinks in and tongues began loosening, voices became louder and Meian was the one to tap his beer glass dramatically and declare,
“As per our tradition, to welcome the Miya Atsumu onto our first string, let us play a game of Never Have I Ever.”
Which had Inunaki jumping in his seat and hooting, and Barnes rolling his eyes—that was all Atsumu took in before sticking his nose in his own glass, his second, of non-alcoholic beer. It was at this moment Atsumu regretted his dedication to the sport, even in pre-season, and really wanted some alcohol—though he vaguely remembers the last time he drank alcohol and the heavy, fuzzy feeling in his head and the absolute killer headache afterwards. But the way he was being shoved and crushed in on himself by the large bodies around him made him think, ’I could use a fucking drink.’
Which is funny to look back on now as Inunaki roars out laughing halfway through a story he’s telling that includes a condom full of paint, an interrupted threesome, and a crucifix, because Atsumu now really needs a drink. Instead, he sips lamely at the hot dregs of what is still his second non-alcoholic beer.
Maybe the worst part of all of this is that it is, in fact, still only pre-season. Pre-pre-season, really, and he knows that MSBY is this close to signing Bokutou Koutarou, which means going through all of this again, and going through all of this again means being faced with the fact that Miya Atsumu is only sipping his non-alcholic drink between Never Have I Ever’s because he is not experienced, at all, when it comes to romance, never mind sex, and everything so far has been about sex, sex, and more sex.
Atsumu hasn’t even had a fucking handjob. The height of his experience is the time he put on a condom to wank so he could see what it felt like and, unsurprisingly, it wasn’t as good as without it, so he never did it again. The raunchiest they’d ever gotten to in school was when Ginjima lowered his voice, looked around shadily and whispered,
“Never have I ever had a blowjob,” and Atsumu laughed, expecting no one to drink their stupid, flat Coke, until fucking Osamu did and admitted, with a goddamn casual shrug, to ‘a thing out back’ at Nationals with Sakusa fucking Kiyoomi, making Atsumu splutter on nothing but air and bile, wanting to stick rusty nails in his ears so far they lobotomised him into deleting it from his brain and—
“—Atsumu.”
There’s a roaring laugh around the table and Atsumu colours red as he looks up at all eyes on him.
“What?” he asks, hopelessly, helplessly, haplessly, and feels himself cave in a little on himself, even without the help of the six-foot-seven-tall monster of a man beside him.
“It’s your turn. Never have you ever…?” Meian instructs and smiles what Atsumu assumes is supposed to be a nice, mentoring, coaxing smile, but it’s sloppy and drunk and Atsumu has no fucking clue what to say.
“Uhhh…”
“Dont think!” Inunaki instructs, jumping over the table to smack Atsumu on the head. “First thing you think of.”
There’s too fucking much to think of.
“Something you think someone here might have done that you haven’t—”
Which is literally anything.
“A-tsu-mu,” someone, he isn’t really sure who, begins to chant, and then everyone’s joining in, “A-tsu-mu, A-tsu-mu, A-tsu-mu—”
They’re banging on the table in time to the beat they’ve started, and it’s beginning to speed up, and Atsumu has always really preferred silence when focusing, and goddammit he'd much prefer it if Osamu were here to embarrass him—at least then he could blame it on Osamu. Instead, there’s only him and his stupid, big, fat mouth that he never did learn to keep closed.
“Never have I ever had sex!”
It goes so awfully, incredibly silent around him. All eyes were already on him, but now it feels like they are really on him, and nearly everyone’s mouth is hanging wide open, like big, black eyes also staring into his sexless little soul. There’s a pit in his stomach that he wishes would swallow him, just fold him up and take him out of this nightmare.
It seems he can do a perfectly good job of absolutely destroying any social standing he has completely by himself, thank you very much—Osamu is entirely not needed on this planet at all. He’s a big boy and he’s a virgin and it’s been an hour—well, it feels like it’s been an hour—that everyone’s been staring at him.
“Never have I ever had sex,” he repeats, slowly this time as if they all hadn’t heard it already.
Like a chain reaction, Barnes on his right is the first to pick up his glass and drink, followed by Inunaki, and then Meian, and then it goes all around the table until it comes back to small, little Atsumu and his sad, little drink.
“That’s...” Meian clears his throat and scratches a spot behind his ear. “That’s very respectable, Atsumu.”
“It’s not by choice.”
Right, well, maybe those corny body swap movies aren’t fake and he actually is Osamu because why else would he say that? Why? Why, why, why, why, why?
He really doesn’t think crying from frustration would help him out any in this situation. Why the fuck is it so quiet all of a sudden? He swears he can hear his own heartbeat.
“Weren’t you… Didn’t you… Don’t you have a fanbase of fangirls that would probably very happily fuck you?”
He can’t recall the name of who’s asking this—some other new, foreign player.
“I’m gay,” Atsumu says.
Yup. Yup, yup, yup. They really needed to know that, not that he’s worried about what they’ll think—Inunaki’s threesome was with two guys and he’s pretty sure someone else has a boyfriend—but, like, was that really necessary?
“I’m sure there’s male fans—”
“I don’t want it to be with a stranger?” he says like it’s a question and then downs the dregs of his drink as if that’s going to do anything. Meanwhile, Meian is mumbling something about it being commendable again.
Atsumu needs to shut up.
“You know, someone will come along—”
Atsumu nods as everyone tries to cheer him up and tell him it’s okay. He knows it’s okay, but their saying it’s okay makes it feel less okay.
By the end of the night, he’s decided, he needs to get laid.
xxx
Atsumu was never really embarrassed by the fact that he hasn’t slept with anyone. Honestly, it’s not something he’s really thought about, caught up in rising to the top of the V. League and proving himself capable of transferring to MSBY, the team he narrowly missed out on getting a spot on when he was nineteen, and had been vying for, for two years now.
It never really crossed his mind, and it’s not like he’s never had offers. He’s hot, he knows he’s hot, other people know he’s hot, but it never felt quite right. He doesn’t have time for relationships, and the closest he had to one last year fizzled and died before it even got off the ground because he was ‘too invested in volleyball,’ which is ridiculous because that’s not possible. He’s had offers from strangers, and every other picture of him on Instagram has people noting their willingness to let him wrap his legs around their necks. Atsumu definitely could have had sex at any point he wanted to in his life, but he was a responsible young man, and his mother sat both him and Osamu down at the age of thirteen and talked them through how important sex is and how it’s not to be taken lightly and the fact that it is a Big Step™ in their lives.
Not that that last part seems to have stuck with Osamu since he was having oral sex out back at Nationals—
Nope, not something he needs to think about.
The moral of this story is thus;
1. Atsumu is hot.
2. Atsumu could have sex anytime he wants.
3. Atsumu thinks he’s made too big of a deal of this whole issue of bumping uglies and now just wants it over with. The great Jay-Z once said, “I got ninety-nine problems but a bitch ain’t one.” And it’s the same for Atsumu. He, in fact, only has one problem, and it’s the lack of a bitch. Well, a man (bloke, dude, mans?). That’s it. That is it.
Atsumu is laying on his couch the morning after the disastrous game of Never Have I Ever, not hungover, an arm over his face, periodically sighing, and going through all of this in his mind with the appropriate level of dramatics.
It’s like this that he thinks the universally damning words, Fuck it, followed by I really do need to get laid.
Atsumu rolls off his couch with a dull thud and plods into the kitchen, pulling out a notebook and pen. He jumps onto the counter, wags the pen in his hand a few times, and begins with the title.
People That Might Be Willing To Help Me Lose My V Card
He stares at the little characters, throws his head back a little too hard into the cupboard, squeezes his eyes closed, considers crying from frustration for the second time in less than twenty-four hours, and then underlines it.
Yeah, he’s doing this.
The problem is, though Atsumu is hot (very hot), he knows he can be less than friendly to most people. This isn’t a flaw—he just doesn’t give a shit about people he doesn’t need to, which means his list of possible candidates is meagre at best. The next problem is, well, he needs the person to also be gay, which knocks off a few more people. He may also have a false reputation as a playboy, but he does not want to be a homewrecker, so everyone in a relationship is also out. Which whittles his list down considerably. He’s not going to ask any of his new teammates, and he’s not going to ask anyone he hasn’t spoken to in over a year because how the fuck is that conversation going to go?
Hi it’s Atsumu, Miya Atsumu—
Yeah, I’m good, uh-huh. And you?
Oh yes, well, I’m here to actually ask you to sleep with me and I know I’ve not spoken to you since—
Hello? You still... Hello?
He does have some sense of pride… he thinks.
He looks back down at the little notepad that has small scribbles around the sides and one name. One singular name stares up at him among a forest of scribbly doodles that look like exactly nothing. A singular name that he really does not think he can call and ask to help him with this predicament.
Maybe he needs to broaden his search parameters. His stomach growls before he considers opening it to people that have been in a relationship for less than a year, which wouldn’t actually broaden his search much because, for some reason, all of his friends are already in long-term relationships. He’s twenty-one for fuck sake—long-term relationships at this age should be way less normal than him being a virgin.
His stomach growls again, and he puts down the pen and stares at the little characters he’s etched into the paper from running his pen over them again and again.
Suna Rintarou.
He can’t ask Suna. He just can’t.
xxx
Dating apps are, beyond a doubt, an absolute cesspool of the worst of the worst. Though, in desperation after failing to make a list, he’d opened one of those little apps, found something so demeaning about swiping left or right based on a few pictures, even though he knows he’s hot, and gave up on it pretty quickly. Then he picked up his phone, opened LINE and—
“Hey.”
Atsumu looks up at the voice and smiles all large and fake, but hopefully not obviously so. It’s the same smile he’s going to use when the sponsorships start rolling in, which is only a matter of time. What better way to test it out?
Suna stops by the small window seat Atsumu’s been occupying in the crowded coffee shop, and wrinkles his nose. “The hell is wrong with your face?”
Atsumu feels the smile fall and splash into the coffee that’s going cold between his hands. Maybe splatter and stain the new, crisp white t-shirt he’s wearing.
Right. This is Suna Rintarou, and he’s not someone to plaster false niceties where they’re not due. Which also means Atsumu is going to have to spend a lot longer in front of a mirror to perfect his smile.
“Screw you,” Atsumu mumbles before freezing because, well, that’s exactly what he’s about to ask to do. Screw him. Screw Suna. Stick his dick into Suna Rintarou and wiggle it around and push it in and pull it out in what he’ll hope is a satisfying rhythm. Or vice versa—have Suna stick his into him, he’s not fussy, and oh god, should he have made a playlist, isn’t that—
“Atsumu?” Suna’s still standing and Atsumu is staring at him, which is unlike Atsumu because one, Atsumu is always trying to not stare at Suna; and two, he’s not the type to get lost in his head.
“Yes, sorry, hi,” Atsumu says jumping to his feet so fast he almost spills, but thankfully doesn’t, his drink all over his crotch, which would most definitely not be a good way to ask someone to suck it. Coffee cock? Anyone?
Miya Atsumu may just hate himself. All the deities that have ever existed may just hate Miya Atsumu, too. He doesn’t care that he didn’t actually spill the coffee on himself—they must still hate him.
“Are you… okay?” Suna asks, which is quite nice until he continues. “Are you feverish? I’m not sacrificing my health just to hang out with you, y’know.”
“You’re an asshole.”
Suna’s mouth twitches at this. “Good, I was beginning to think I was losing my touch.” He glances at the counter and asks Atsumu if he wants anything before going up to order without waiting for Atsumu’s answer.
Still the same as ever. Except he’s not.
Even since the last time Atsumu saw him, he looks like he’s put on some extra muscle, and despite his brashness, his biting remarks don’t hold quite as much sharpness as they once did. Certainly nothing like when they first met and constantly clashed heads in a way that left Osamu sighing and rolling his eyes before walking away. Every now and then, when Atsumu is being particularly bratty, Suna may mumble a little, I knew there was a reason I used to want nothing to do with you, followed by a smirk because it always offends Atsumu in just the right way every time. And even if Atsumu knows he’s just trying to rile him up, it still works. Always.
None of this has anything to do with why he’s the last person Atsumu wants to ask to help him with this, even though one might be easily led to believe so. No, the reason is a lot worse.
Atsumu watches Suna pay and nod to the barista, and he contemplates his choices.
He’s gone out of his way to come visit Suna with some stupid excuse he doesn’t even remember and can’t risk being asked about, so he might as well just ask the damn question and get it over with so he can go home as soon as possible and lie on his bed and stare at the cracked ceiling with some sad music on in the background, just to make himself feel worse about his life.
Or he could drag it out until the end of the day, and ask just as he’s about to board the train back home, making his escape quick and effective. Also a very viable option.
“So what’s up?” Suna asks as soon as he sits down and brings his frothy drink to his lips.
Atsumu decides, then and there, to just ask as quickly as possible in an attempt to make it as painless as possible. Like a plaster, y’know, just… rip it off.
“Have sex with me.”
Now, if asking someone to suck your dick after spilling coffee on your crotch would have been the the worst way to ask someone to have sex with you, then actually getting coffee spat in your face after asking is the worst reply you could get. Which is exactly the response Atsumu gets.
He’s blinking coffee out of his eyes while Suna sputters and coughs, folding over on himself and throwing an elbow over his mouth, and begins slamming his fist against the table making the crockery shudder and clink, as he continues to sputter and hack. Atsumu watches his cup shudder and jump a little.
Right. Not the reaction he was wanting, but not the worst. Considering.
Atsumu picks up the few napkins he has, and begins dabbing at the coffee sloshed all over Suna’s side of the table, then remembers the bottle of coconut water he bought earlier, and offers it in Suna’s general direction. Suna, for his part, accepts. Though not before hitting Atsumu with what’s possibly the most murderous gaze Atsumu has ever seen on him (enough to make him blanch and feel bad for all of a millisecond).
The cap opens with a crack, and Suna straightens to take a few sips, followed by a few breaths, then he looks at Atsumu, looks at his half-spilled coffee that Atsumu never finished cleaning up and is, yup, dripping all over Suna’s crotch, and downs the entirety of the carton before handing it back, empty, to Atsumu with a glare and an insincere smile. An insincere smile he keeps on his face as he wipes up the last of the coffee, pushes the sopping mess of napkins into the centre of the table and finally looks up at Atsumu with his hands clasped on the table.
“What?”
“Have sex with me,” Atsumu says again but slower this time, because he’d said it once so he might as well say it again. His sense of shame and pride have long left the cafe, along with a jingle of the bell. “Please?” He tacks on because ‘manners.’
“No I—” Suna falters, and the smile drops into something flatter and more familiar on Suna’s face, which is to say, something unreadable. “I heard that, but… what?”
“I’m gonna be straight with you—”
“Not a very straight thing to ask, but okay—”
Atsumu elects to ignore that.
“—I’ve never had sex and I want it over with.”
Suna watches him a little, his gaze seeming to sink into Atsumu. Atsumu chooses to ignore that. It’s only awkward if he allows it to be awkward, if he lets his brain process the awkwardness of it all, which he will not.
“Don’t you have, like, fanboys that would—”
“Why is everyone so obsessed with my fan club?” Atsumu exclaims, throwing his hands into the air and slumping down in his seat as if he hadn’t thought the exact same thing, or that his teammates hadn’t also suggested the exact same thing.
“I’m just saying—” Suna pauses, and Atsumu watches as he shifts in his chair. He takes a napkin to dab at his crotch, Atsumu most certainly should not look at his crotch. “Why are you asking me?”
Atsumu looks down at his hands and begins to fiddle with his fingers.
Like a plaster, like a plaster, like a plaster.
“I want it to be someone I trust, and I don’t want to be a homewrecker, and I need it to be someone that’s, y’know, not straight. And well, you were the only person I could think of.”
Suna keeps his eyes fixed on his crotch and Atsumu tries to only look at the little bit of hair sticking out on the top of his head. Then Suna heaves a sigh, looks up, places the napkin on the table and looks Atsumu in the eye.
“Atsumu,” he says slowly, as if he’s reviewing every word from the word bank he stores in his mind, and the only thing he understands right now is Atsumu’s name. He closes his mouth and then opens it again. “I don’t know how to tell you this, but I don't think I’ll be any help.”
Atsumu scrunches his nose and goes through his checklist. He knows for a fact Suna Rintarou is not straight, has seen him make out with seven different guys on a single night out once, and he’s ninety percent sure he’s single because it would have been all over the Inarizaki group chat if he weren’t, because someone would know and would have spilled the secret, because that’s what happens. Someone knows someone enough to know these things and it gets passed through the group chat and made into a meme until someone does something else worthy of getting the group's attention. Suna Rintarou cannot be in a relationship.
“I’m a virgin, Atsumu.”
“What?” What? Oh. Oh. “Oh.”
“Yeah,” Suna says and begins to rise, picking up the backpack Atsumu hadn’t noticed, “so I’ll be no help.”
Then Suna takes a drink from his coffee and tilts his head. “Good to see you, Atsumu.”
He’s turning around, his coffee only half empty because he spilled a third of it, and there's a heavy hole in the bottom of Atsumu’s stomach.
“Rin,” he calls and bangs his knee against the table in his rush to catch up with him. A cup clatters and there’s coffee down his leg and soaking his sock, which is so much worse than where else it could have fallen because this is just uncomfortable.
“Rin, wait,” Atsumu says and finally catches up with him by the door. He steps out of the way of an incoming customer and Suna looks at him, irritated. “I’m sorry if I offended you.”
“You didn’t.”
“Okay… well, still, I am.” Atsumu runs his hand through his hair and deflates a little. “Can we, can we forget I asked? It’s just, there was a whole awkward thing with the team and I got—” he waves his hand in the vague direction of his head and sighs, his wet sock squishing as he shifts his weight from foot to foot—“I got stupid. Is that really a surprise?”
Suna snorts a brief laugh, and then steps back as someone else squeezes between them. “No, no. I guess not.”
Atsumu takes a breath and lets it out slowly. “Can we just, I don’t know, hang out? Are we too old to hang out now? Oh my god, are we—”
“Atsumu,” Suna says. “Shut up.”
Atsumu promptly clamps his mouth shut and presses his lips as tight as possible. Suna looks at him for a moment, another unreadable expression on his face, but there is something there, and Atsumu tries to put his finger on it, but it slips out from beneath the pad of his index finger and remains elusive.
“Sure,” Suna says and fixes his bag, looking around him, “I don’t have any other plans today.”
xxx
“Yes,” Suna says suddenly as they’re nodding their goodbyes at the turnstiles of the train station. He catches Atsumu’s wrist and, while scratching the back of his neck, drops his head and sighs. “Yes, I’ll— Fuck. Yes, I’ll sleep with you. I— Get it over with, you know. Better to be someone you trust— Stop looking at me like that.”
“Like what?” Atsumu asks, genuinely shocked because he kind of blacked out on how to function when Suna had started talking.
“Shocked and terrified.”
Atsumu nods and tries to school his face.
“We can… I don’t know, plan something, I guess?” Suna finishes.
Atsumu’s nodding a little too enthusiastically, so he stops himself, rolls his shoulders and tries to nod a little more normally. “That, yeah, that sounds like a good plan. And, eh, thanks for today and not just, y’know, running away from me.”
Suna is nodding now but it’s very stilted and incredibly awkward, even if Atsumu is trying to do that thing where he doesn’t allow himself to process it as awkward.
“I’ll, eh, I’ll chat to you soon then?” Atsumu offers and Suna nods again.
“Safe trip.”
Atsumu wants the ground to swallow him whole and to go back in time and have slept with someone before this became a thing, but here he is, blocking a fucking train turnstile with his best friend—and probably looking like a scene and a half just because of their sheer stature as volleyball players—organising a dick appointment to lose their virginities at the age of twenty-one. So normal. So not weird.
“That’s, I’ll, eh, I’ll text you when I’m free.”
Suna’s still nodding and then seems to catch himself. “Yup,” he says, popping the ‘p’ and noticeably cringing.
Does Atsumu just walk away? Do they hug? Do they shake hands like a fucking business agreement?
“Bye!” Atsumu squeaks instead, taps his pass and walks through the turnstile, before turning to wave at Suna.
But he’s already walking away, back facing Atsumu and hunched among the crowd.
It’s… it’s fine.
xxx
“So,” Suna asks two weeks later, standing in the genkan of Atsumu’s apartment, awkwardly pulling at the collar of his hoodie, looking… not uncomfortable, but also certainly not comfortable as he shifts his weight gently as if trying to a perfect equilibrium that might make all of this easier. He seems to decide there is not, and lets his hand fall to his side.
“So,” Astumu says, rocking on the balls of his feet. Why did he put shoes on when he’s not leaving his own apartment for god’s sake? He can smell the cologne he’s wearing, Gucci Guilty (of course), and becomes hyper aware of the feeling of denim against his legs and the fact that he’s wearing a shirt. Stark opposition to Suna’s sweatpants and hoodie.
“So… what’s the plan or whatever?” Suna shrugs, the backpack he’s wearing sliding down his arm, but he doesn’t make to fix it.
Atsumu blinks at him twice. “Well, uh, we’ll, y’know.” Atsumu clears his throat. “We’ll have sex?” Atsumu’s voice almost breaks on the last word and he really wishes he could fold up into himself until there’s nothing left.
“Yeah, I… I got that memo,” Suna says, though it has none of the bite.
“Are you… Are you still okay with this?” Atsumu asks, because the last thing he could want is Suna to feel pressured into this in any way, to not feel comfortable because, more than anything, he wants to make sure they don’t ruin the friendship Atsumu values a lot.
Even if he refuses to ever admit it out loud, Suna is one of his best friends.
This, too, though, is not the reason Atsumu did not want it to be Suna he sleeps with.
“Yes, yeah, I’m still good with it.”
“Okay,” Atsumu says.
“Okay,” Suna agrees and continues to fidget. They look at each other awkwardly for a whole five seconds that seem to expand and inflate with each millisecond so they feel like hours, days, weeks, months—Atsumu is aging exponentially until he’s nodding again.
“Okay,” Atsumu says.
“Okay,” Suna agrees.
Atsumu swallows and ignores the little lump that feels like a boulder barrelling down a hill to run him over. Okay. “Should we… bedroom?”
“Yes,” Suna agrees, but stays planted in place. Right. Atsumu is meant to lead him. Does he take his hand? That’s what they do in movies, right? The woman takes the man’s hand and leads him out of the club and back to her apartment where they share another drink and then tumble over each other, clothes falling behind them as they do, and then they fuck until morning, and then the man is gone as the sun starts to colour the sky.
Atsumu puts out a hand. Suna looks at it, curls his nose almost imperceptibly, opens his mouth to say something, but he clearly sees the mortification on Atsumu’s face at the fact that he thought this was a good idea, and seems to think better of it. Atsumu drops his hand, turns on his heel and begins to walk to the bedroom.
It’s clean, remarkably so. Atsumu isn’t dirty, but he can be messy. It smells faintly of lemon bleach, and strongly of the sandalwood candle he bought yesterday just for this, and had burnt for about two hours before Suna was supposed to get here. All of which is weird, so he’s not going to tell his best friend, his best dude, bro, bestie, buddy, that he bought a candle to light so they could, y’know, do the naughty, naked tango.
Atsumu walks in and promptly sits on the bed. Suna lingers in the doorway and looks around, then his eyes freeze.
“That’s—” he begins, and bites back a laugh. “That’s a lot of lube.”
Atsumu feels himself colour and knows his entire face is scarlet when he turns to look at his bedside locker which has four tubes of various lubes. He knows lube is important. He’s read about it before, so he figured it was best to be prepared. He also wanted Suna to have a choice. So he got strawberry, and cooling, and tingling, and regular.
“And that’s—” Suna seems to choke. “That’s a big dildo.”
This Atsumu agrees with. But some sort of pride told him he couldn’t buy one too small in case Suna then thought it meant that he had a small penis because that size was what he was used to. Atsumu had actually held this one beside his own penis and told himself if he was erect, the difference wouldn't be as astronomical, but he also couldn’t bring himself to do that comparison because then he wouldn’t be able to lie to himself anymore.
It’s a big dildo.
Then Atsumu realises what a ridiculous train of thought this was because Suna is going to see his penis. Hopefully erect. And he’s going to touch it. Hopefully pleasurably. And they’re going to fuck.
Oh god, they’re going to fuck.
Atsumu suddenly jumps to his feet, and begins to scold his dick for twitching at the thought of sleeping with Suna, and then remembers that no, his dick doing a little, happy wiggle is a good thing.
“Yeah, I,” Atsumu says, looking at him curiously, “I figured better safe than sorry.”
“That doesn’t look safe. It looks like we could knock someone out with it.”
“I— Yeah, it does, doesn’t it?” Then the pressure in his chest cracks and he laughs a little. Okay, this really is going to be okay, he thinks. It’s not that big of a deal. It’s just sex, and sex only has as much meaning and import as one assigns to it. Atsumu has decided to stop assigning import to it.
Damn. He’s sounding like a textbook here. But the important thing is that he’s not going to let it matter. He’s not going to let it bother him—outdated rhetoric can go crawl into a hole and wither away.
He’s going to have sex with his best friend, buddie, bro, hombre, Suna Rintarou.
Suna is smirking, too. “Maybe we should skip the dildo?”
“Good idea,” Atsumu agrees, then sits down again, then stands up again. Suna watches him and looks like he’s going to ask something when Atsumu takes a few steps forward to catch his wrist and pull him out of the limbo he’s been standing in under the doorframe, letting go again quickly because touching Suna for too long feels dangerous, and closes the door.
“So should we—” Atsumu starts and then waves his hand vaguely between them.
“Are we…” Suna scratches the back of his neck. “Are we going to kiss?”
Atsumu blanches. “I assume so?”
Suna nods. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“I just said ‘okay.’” He’s shifting his weight from foot to foot and his cheeks have turned pink, and it’s in that moment that Atsumu realises, he’s never seen Suna blush before.
Atsumu lifts his hand to him, thinks better of it, shifts his own weight, all the confidence from a moment ago gone, but a weird nervous excitement winding in his stomach.
“Condoms,” Suna blurts suddenly and Atsumu blinks a few times. He has four tubes of lube and a massive dildo. Does Suna really think he doesn’t have condoms?
“Yeah, they’re on the nightstand,” Atsumu tells him and Suna nods, takes in a deep breath then lets it out slowly. Suna, who has always been impassive and unbothered, seems worked up about this, about having sex. Atsumu would be lying if he said he wasn’t surprised—it’s throwing him off. He’s never, never, seen Suna like this.
He’s tempted to ask Suna again if he’s sure he wants to do this—he’s happy to give him another chance to opt out—but then Suna moves forward, places a hand on his chest and leans in close. So, so close. He hovers there, lips almost brushing against Atsumu’s, breath dusting over his lips. Atsumu smells the mint of toothpaste or gum underneath the lingering aroma of his candle, and feels his throat tightening, panic welling up in him, then he’s jolting with a high-pitched squeak—
“Porn?”
Suna’s hand is left dangling in mid-air, his lips are parted, eyes a little wide, and he’s completely pink now.
“Porn?” he asks.
“Porn,” Atsumu says, nodding. “It’ll get us in the mood, and maybe make it less awkward.”
Ah, yes, watching porn with your best bro to make the fact that you want him to do very naughty things to you feel less awkward. Solid plan.
Suna seems to recover himself. “Eh, sure,” he agrees and moves to sit on the bed. Atsumu sits beside him. Then they just sit there.
“Are you… Are you going to turn some on?” Suna asks and toys with the collar of his sweatshirt again.
“Right,” Atsumu says, jumping to his feet, and pulling out his phone, clicks through a few things. “Ehh, what do you like?”
Suna begins pulling off his hoodie beside him, and Atsumu feels the need to turn away as if this is something scandalous, watching his friend take off his hoodie, as if he hasn’t seen him shirtless plenty of times when they used to play together. Well, technically, he hasn’t seen this Suna shirtless—this stronger, broader version of Suna that looks like he could easily throw Atsumu against a wall, and that's no small feat considering Atsumu weighed over 70kg last time he checked.
“I don’t—” Suna says, folding the material and putting it on his lap. “I don’t like porn.”
Atsumu looks at Suna, who is pulling at the string of his poorly folded hoodie. “What?”
Suna shrugs and sighs. “I don’t like porn,” he repeats.
“Then what do you do when you need to—”
“Imagine something? Put my hand on my dick and play with it until I’m turned on? It’s not that weird.”
“I never said it was—”
“Atsumu, what the fuck kind of candle are you burning?”
“What?”
“It smells like smoke.”
Atsumu looks at Suna confused. He blew out the candle when he closed the curtains before Suna arrived.
Atsumu turns to his window.
The curtains are on fire.
Right. This is fine.
xxx
They’re standing staring at the scorch mark on Atsumu’s wall, a fire extinguisher in Suna’s hand because Atsumu had panicked too much to be useful. Suna sighs now, and places the extinguisher on the floor before going to the bed. Atsumu’s staring at his wall and thinking of the safety deposit he’ll never get back and how he shouldn’t have splurged on those new wireless headphones, and that new pair of sneakers, and a coffee machine even though he doesn’t drink coffee, and all the other irresponsible purchases he’d splurged on now that he has expendable income.
Behind him, Suna speaks.
“Atsumu, where did you get these condoms?”
“The old konbini by school, why?” He turns to look at Suna who’s eyeing the bottom of the package.
“When?”
“Uhh,” Atsumu wracks his brain for a moment, “a few years ago, five maybe?”
“When you were sixteen?”
Atsumu slumps, any anticipation he’d felt earlier has drained out of him and went up in smoke a long time ago. “Yeah, I—I had fangirls Sunarin, I thought I’d better be safe. I used to get a lotta chocolates you know.”
“You’re gay.”
“And I didn’t know that yet. Well, I hadn’t— This is irrelevant.”
Suna rolls his eyes. “You complained when I brought up your fangirls—or boys,” he corrects.
Atsumu drags his feet to the bed and collapses face down onto it. “It’s different when I mention them,” he mumbles into the also brand new duvet. He really tried to go all out for this.
“That doesn’t—”
“Why are ya asking about the condoms?” Atsumu interrupts, turning over to stare at his cracked ceiling.
“They’re expired.”
“Ah.”
“But we’re… we’re both safe since we’re...” Suna starts after a moment and waves a hand that Atsumu can only see from the edge of his vision.
“Virgins?” Atsumu offers.
“Yeah, that.”
They remain silent for a moment. Raw-dogging it is too close for friends, homies—even Atsumu knows that. It’s an unspoken rule that probably only applies to them, but it makes sense. They’re not doing this bareback if they do it at all.
It’s also just responsible not to do it condom-less.
“Sorry,” Atsumu mumbles and sits up, swinging his legs gently over the edge of the bed. Suna scratches the back of his neck, the muscles of his arm twitching.
“I was going to say it’s not your fault but… but it is.”
“Yeah,” Atsumu agrees.
Suna drops his hand and tugs at the leg of his sweatpants for a moment, shoulders deflating gently. “It’s fine, we, eh, we can try again some other time.”
Atsumu is dumbstruck for a moment and watches Suna’s hand now smoothing the soft material of his trousers, not looking at Atsumu.
“Yeah—yeah. I’m free most weekends until the season starts,” Atsumu agrees around the tightness in his throat.
“Okay.” Suna jumps off the bed a little too quickly, as if spooked, and then seems to linger in a weird stance to make up for it. “I’ll see you next weekend then?” he asks, his back turned to Atsumu.
He grabs his hoodie then slips out the door, leaving the words lingering behind him with Atsumu, who is trying to process, well, everything.
Atsumu jumps from the bed. The least he can do is walk Suna to the door—he was raised with manners, even if he doesn’t really use them that often.
Suna’s hopping on one foot by the door, pulling on his shoe when Atsumu catches up with him, and stops to watch the struggle. He wishes he had his phone to record it.
Finally, Suna straightens up and looks at Atsumu, who looks right back at him, and suddenly wants to tell him he’ll run to the konbini below the apartment to get more condoms and to stay so they can try again.
Or just to stay and have take-out like friends do.
He doesn’t though. He should, and yet, this all feels so terribly wrong all of a sudden.
“Next week,” Atsumu says weakly.
Suna nods, glances back at the door and then nods again.
“Next week.”
xxx
Bokuto Koutarou is signed on, officially, that Wednesday. He meets the team, officially, on Thursday. He gets to know them, officially, on Thursday night. Atsumu sinks into his seat as Bokuto roars laughing, detailing something about hot candle wax and chest hair that Atsumu is glad he’s not listening too.
Atsumu looks forlornly into his cup as someone snorts and begins to cough. He didn’t have to come, but not attending would have been more suspicious and somewhat sad and pathetic, as well as admitting to some sort of embarrassment and defeat that Atsumu is too stubborn to bear.
Meian gives him a smile at one point that just makes Atsumu regret his stubborn, hard-headedness. He pulls out his phone and looks at the message Suna had sent him earlier,
can do saturday
ill go to urs again.
Atsumu checks the time stamp, then the clock, and figures he’s let enough time pass for it not to be too soon—he doesn’t want to seem eager.
There is a reason he didn’t want it to be Suna he did this with.
cool
His finger hovers over the send button for a moment until he hears Bokuto shouting, ”He thought using teeth during a blowjob was a good idea!” before everyone erupts in laughter. Atsumu presses send, downs his drink, and excuses himself with a smile.
xxx
The plan is simple. Atsumu is going for passion. He's going to shred all of his embarrassment and dignity like he will with his clothes eventually, and he’s going to dive in head first (Dick first? Head of his dick first? Cock? Penis? What should he refer to it as? ‘Suck my dick’ sounds kind of insincere, right? That’s what you say to people to win an argument—). He’s bought new curtains and condoms, and has thrown the candle in the bin just to be extra safe. He’s wearing a t-shirt and sweats, he’s not wearing shoes, and he’s pacing his room, waiting for Suna, and then sits and stares at his bedroom door.
When the buzzer rings, he jumps to his feet. When there’s a knock at the door, he waits a moment, runs a hand through his hair, checks his breath, tries to remember if he put on deodorant, sniffs his armpits (he can’t tell), realises he’s now left it too long, and throws the door open.
Suna’s standing in the hallway that always seems dark, his EJP jacket on over a t-shirt and… he’s wearing jeans this time. Which doesn’t mean anything—maybe that’s all he had clean. Atsumu does not have time for this. Atsumu does not have the time to think about the semantics of clothes at a dick appointment. He does not.
“Hey,” he says, standing aside, letting Suna enter to toe off his shoes.
“Hey,” Suna nods and then Atsumu is talking.
“I think we should just go for it—”
“Wha—”
“We just start kissing and stripping and then we fuck. Do it all before it gets—” he waves his hands a little too emphatically, but this is a matter of urgency—“awkward. We just don’t think about it—”
He steps forward and takes the lapels of Suna’s jacket, tugging him slightly, which emphasises the difference in their height as he looks up the few centimeters into Suna’s slanted, green eyes that are forced wide, small pink lips parted slightly, and some of his dark hair falling in his eyes.
“We just fuck,” Atsumu says, feeling his heartbeat, and wondering if Suna can also feel it against his ribcage because they are standing so close.
“We just fuck,” Suna repeats, and swallows. Atsumu watches the bob of his throat.
“Is that… okay?” Atsumu asks and repositions himself, so his body isn’t touching Suna’s. It isn’t, but he can feel every inch of him running along his skin and tingling every nerve he has.
“Yeah.” Suna nods, his hair splaying a little again.
“Can I kiss you?”
“Yeah—yes.”
Atsumu watches his eyes and then lets his eyes fall to his lips, and feels the roaring panic in his body again, and that little nails-on-chalkboard voice in the back of his head reminding him of why he didn’t want to do this with Suna, his best friend for almost six years now, and it has nothing to do with the fact that he’s an asshole or because they’ve been friends for so long, or even the fact that he had thought that Suna wasn’t a virgin. There is a reason, which Atsumu refuses to admit to, and he buried it deep, deep down when he was about seventeen, when he knew their lives were going to be splitting up, running parallel, in a way, but so far apart.
Then Suna closes the distance between them and something sparks in Atsumu’s body, and he’s kissing Suna back. Suna’s hands are somewhere between his waist and his hips, pulling Atsumu in closer, then he’s catching Atsumu’s bottom lip between his lip and Suna is a good kisser—using the small, stunned gasp Atsumu emits to slide his tongue into Atsumu’s mouth and deepen the kiss.
Atsumu wants to get closer, but his hands are still on Suna’s jacket and beginning to dig into his own chest a little bit. There’s a strain in his forearm and he isn’t thinking about that—he’s only thinking about how it feels to have Suna kiss him, about the way their hips are almost pressed flush together and everything that’s in the way, stopping them from being closing that distance. He wants to close that distance.
“Room,” he mumbles, finally pulling away, half delirious from the kiss and the swirling mess of feelings running through his body. “My room.”
Suna’s flushed with colour, lips red from kissing but he nods, hands still on that awkward place between Atsumu’s hips and waist.
Atsumu stares at him for a moment longer, not able to think because there’s so much to think about right now that it’s too crowded, then nods and pulls away, taking a step back, not wanting to look away from Suna, somewhat scared that the illusion will break and this will all end and he’ll be forced to confront with the ice-cold sobering realisation that it’s not real.
He turns and walks to his room, understanding why the women in those movies take the man’s hand—they want to know they’re still there, so they know that they’re not going to be left alone. But as he opens the door and turns back around, Suna is still there, a little flushed, maybe a little embarrassed, but he's still there.
It’s fine. Atsumu isn’t alone. And his heart thuds against his chest in a way he’d rather it didn’t. This is sex, just sex. That’s all. They are friends that are about to do the dirty. Pals pawing at each other. Bros who bone. Mates who will… mate.
Atsumu goes to reach for him, a little aimlessly, an impulse, then Suna’s hands are on him again and his lips are back on his and they’re stumbling backwards and onto the bed. Atsumu’s hands go to Suna’s hair, and he feels such a sense of relief as he fists his hands into it.
Suna’s shifts, nudging Atsumu’s knees open so he can fit between them comfortably, and instinctively, Atsumu’s legs move around his waist, and finds his breathing hitching as Suna’s mouth moves to his jaw, to the tender spot of skin by Atsumu’s ear, triggering something in Atsumu that has his hips lifting from the bed and a liquid fire seeping through his body, pooling in his abdomen. His hands pull Suna up without his permission, and he pushes the jacket off Suna’s shoulders, and then his hands are on his jeans, undoing the top button. They’re tight jeans, and Atsumu fumbles with it, his normally steady and trustworthy fingers falling at the final hurdle.
He’s still fumbling and panicking enough that it’s becoming embarrassing and making him fumble more.
“I can—” Suna starts. Atsumu shakes his head but refuses to look up at his face. Atsumu’s job is to use his hands. This should not be so hard. Finally, it pops open and he’s ready to breath a sigh of relief and slide down the zipper when he stops and curses Suna Rintarou for not only wearing jeans to a dick appointment (as if Atsumu hadn’t last week), not only for them being so fucking tight, but also for the fact that the fly is entirely buttons.
“Fuck’s sake,” Atsumu mumbles and tries to fumble and pull open the next one, half-considering ripping the damn jeans, when Suna catches his hand and undoes it himself. Atsumu watches as he pulls open all of them (five?) effortlessly, and goes to peel them off and freezes. Atsumu looks up at him, but he seems to be looking at the bed beside Atsumu’s hip.
“Don’t look?” he asks, unsure, and for a moment Atsumu is confused until he realises. He means his penis. Do not look at his dick. His cock is off limits to see. Do not perceive the ding-dong.
Atsumu scrunches his eyes closed and throws his head back so it faces the ceiling. “Not looking,” he says. He can tell that Suna isn’t moving, doesn’t for a moment, until he’s pulling away. Atsumu fights the urge to open his eyes again.
“Maybe we should… get ourselves started?” He hears the unsteadiness in Suna’s voice and bites back the sarcastic retort of, What? Like a car?, instead saying,
“We don’t have to do this.”
His heart squeezes and his body feels wound up, waiting for Suna’s answer.
He doesn’t get one, not verbally anyway; instead, he hears some movement and then small thuds and then a large thud and a ‘shit’. WIthout opening his eyes because he was told not to look, Atsumu asks, “Is everything okay?”
“Yeah. I, uh, I just fell over.”
“... How?”
“Trying to get my jeans off.”
“Oh.” Atsumu nods and swallows thickly. He’ll take that as a good sign—not the falling over, the removing the clothes. And then there’s movement against his legs and he knows it’s Suna’s standing between them. He swallows again.
“Just… go with it, alright?” Suna asks.
Atsumu nods.
Then Suna’s mouth is back on his and he’s climbing onto the bed, in between Atsumu’s legs again that slide up around his waist. Suna’s hand goes to his face and Atsumu can feel him, all of him. And he can feel everything about himself, too—can feel every nerve burning like a firecracker, the heat and pulling in his abdomen, his heart that’s beating too fast for this, the way he’s becoming hard, and worst of all is the way he can feel the intent he’s pouring back into this kiss that shouldn’t be there.
He can feel the want that’s more than just physical.
Then those nails-on-chalkboard are back, but it’s diamond-on-glass that shatters spectacularly, unleashing more than Atsumu was willing to admit.
So he tightens his legs, squeezes his eyes closed further and pretends there’s nothing wrong. Until he feels the way Suna is hardening against him, his hips grinding against Atsumu’s, pulling a gasp out of him and he can’t do this anymore.
“Stop,” he breathes and pulls away. “Stop, no, stop—”
Suna’s gone, heat draining out of Atsumu, who keeps his eyes shut to it all, and not just because Suna asked, because they’re friends, but because of the reason Atsumu never wanted this to be done with Suna.
“Atsumu, are you okay?” There’s worry in his voice because yeah, Suna is a little bitch, a massive bitch, and a sarcastic asshole, but he can care when he needs to.
Nodding with his eyes still closed Atsumu says, “Yeah, yeah I just…” He opens his eyes to see Suna standing in his room, hands over his crotch, standing awkwardly with all his height, jeans and jacket tossed to the side, a strange look that can only be read as concern on his face.
Atsumu nods again, and forces himself not to stare at Suna, because looking at him too long is dangerous. He knows this. He knows it for a fact.
“Yeah I just… Cold feet, I guess.” Atsumu shrugs lamely and drops his eyes to his lap. “I’m sorry.”
“Are you—”
“I’m fine, Suna. I just said I’m fine. I just… I don’t want to, okay? That’s all.” Atsumu jumps to his feet and pushes past him to the jeans on the floor and holds them out to Suna without looking at him. “I think you should go,” he murmurs and, as Suna tries to talk again, drops the clothes and leaves the room.
He doesn’t look up from the TV when Suna emerges from the bedroom and into the living room. Suna lingers for a moment, maybe hoping Atsumu would say something.
He doesn’t.
Then he’s slipping silently out the door before Atsumu can reply. There was nothing he could have said.
The truth is, Atsumu didn’t want it to be Suna—didn’t want to just ‘sleep with’ Suna—because he likes Suna. He likes Suna as more than a friend, a homie, a bro, a bestie. Atsumu likes Suna as more than a friend, and has since he was seventeen when he watched as Suna talked animatedly about the documentary Black Fish and then moved on to detail all the reasons why it wasn’t the Titanic that sunk.
But he knows Suna has never felt the same way about him.
So he locked it down, buried it deep, hid it behind what he thought was thick, shatterproof glass. He may have even liked him as more than a friend for longer than that, but all that really matters is he likes Suna as more than a friend. And with the way he just left it, they may not even be friends anymore.
xxx
“Never have I ever—” Atsumu says, surprising everyone because it’s now an unspoken rule that he doesn’t have to participate in the game with his silly little non-alcoholic beer and insane lack of experience—“asked my best friend to fuck me in an attempt to lose my virginity. Only to then be hit with the weight of my feelings for him that I’ve been successfully hiding for years because I know he doesn’t like me back like that. All of which happened when his erect cock—or dick, or penis, or whatever your preferred word for it is—pressed against mine, causing me to freak out and be an absolute dick to him. Which sucks because he’s my best friend, and now I don’t think we’re even that..”
When he finishes, he downs the entirety of his non-alcoholic drink and then slams it on the table.
Once again, everyone is looking at him. He finds that he really, really doesn’t care.
“Are you… are you okay there, Atsumu?” Meian asks, finally breaking the silence.
“Nope.”
“You wanna talk about it?”
“Nope,” Atsumu repeats.
Inunaki hoists up his own drink in some sort of silent salute that the rest of the team joins in on. Bokuto claps him on the back and Thomas flags down a waitress and orders him another drink.
“You’ll sort it out,” Meian assures him.
Yeah, Atsumu doubts that.
xxx
Atsumu considers googling it.
He does not, for a second, consider asking his brother for his advice.
Atsumu also considers asking Reddit.
He doesn’t.
Instead he finds himself, in moments of aimlessness, opening Suna’s Instagram account, which has always been more active than necessary, and scrolling all the way back to the pictures of them in high school. He clicks through his Instagram stories, through pictures of food and clothes, hoping to get some hint as to how he’s doing.
He tries to find it within him to try and contact him, to figure all of this out, because, more than anything, Suna Rintarou is (was?) his friend. And he misses him.
He misses the subtweeting and the snide comments and the screenshots he’d send of thirsty fans on Atsumu’s own Instagram, with some sardonic comment attached to it.
He misses Suna.
But then pre-pre-season is over and pre-season flashes past him in snippets of interviews, Internet scrolls, funny looks from Osamu, training sessions, and the occasional (frequent) dramatic sigh.
Yet, through it all, he finds that he can’t quite pick up his phone to just text Suna.
Truthfully though, texting him—even calling him—wouldn’t be enough. It would be too insincere. He wants to talk to him, face-to-face, but this isn’t some sappy rom-com where he can show up outside Suna’s door with a dozen red roses. Suna would, more than likely, call the cops on him if he did that.
So he doesn’t.
Not that Suna texts him either—not that Atsumu blames him—this is Atsumu’s mess, his fault. It’s not up to Suna to try to fix it. Suna did nothing wrong.
“EJP,” Meian says to him a few days before the season starts, “will be our third match.”
“What?” Atsumu asks, thrown for a moment and then an icy fear trickles down the back of his neck. Does he know? How does he— Does everyone know?
“I may be wrong—this is just a hunch based on things I know about you and have noticed—but, if I’m not, then that might be your chance to fix things. After we beat them, of course.”
Atsumu stares at him blankly for a moment before nodding. “Y-yeah, of course.”
“If you do need to talk to someone, we’re all here for you. We’re your friends, you know. And sex is—” Meian makes a face— “relationships aren’t always easy. No one judges you, you know. We were just surprised that the Miya Atsumu, who’s pretty much been an idol since high school, hadn’t had sex yet. But we don’t judge you. We were worried you might’ve felt excluded or something, but it’s one of those things that’s hard to bring up. You know?”
Atsumu nods and lets out a long, overdue sigh. “Yeah, I do,” he pauses a moment before sighing again (maybe a little dramatically). “Thanks, Meian.”
“No problem,” he says, clapping Astumu on the back. “Now do you need the talk on—”
“Nope,” Atsumu says, jumping to his feet in embarrassment, until he sees Meian’s face. A joke. Of course.
“You’ll be fine,” Meian says, punching his arm. “Just don’t let him distract you during the game.”
xxx
He doesn’t. Atsumu is a professional. And he’s spent so long training himself not to stare at Suna Rintarou that it’s second nature. Although it’s not hard, because Suna makes sure to look everywhere but at him.
MSBY scrapes the win in the fourth set, and it’s only then he allows himself to look. He’s met with Suna looking right back at him, and then turning away to talk to Komori Motoya. Atsumu isn’t jealous, he isn’t, because he knows Komori is in a relationship. He isn’t jealous.
At the handshake under the net he lingers too long and asks, quite simply,
“Can we talk? Please?”
He expects Suna to say no, forcing him to continue holding his hand out while Inunaki behind him gets impatient that he’s not moving, just as the cameras start clicking with all eyes on him. But he’s used to that. And more than that, he finds that he doesn’t really care, because there’s only one pair of eyes he wants on him right now.
“Sure,” Suna replies and then moves along. Inunaki stabs a finger into Atsumu’s back to remind him he has more hands to shake. Atsumu really doesn’t care.
He finds Suna outside the locker rooms after he’s changed—a hat on, hunched in on himself, scrolling through his phone. Atsumu stops for a moment and wishes he’d practised what to say—he had decided to speak off the top of his head, but he’s regretting that now.
Suna looks up and pauses, before straightening up and slipping his phone into his pocket.
“I’m sorry—” Atsumu blurts and closes the gap. And he’s already started, he might as well keep going. “I’m sorry I was a dick. I’m sorry I asked you to do that. I’m sorry if I—”
“Wait,” Suna cuts him off and creases his brow in confusion. “You’re sorry?”
Atsumu hesitates. “Yeah, I’m sorry. I was a dick and you were just—”
“You’re not angry at me?” Suna interrupts again, leaving Atsumu confused.
“Angry? Why would I be angry?”
He hears voices become louder behind them, emerging from the locker rooms, and Suna grabs his arm, pulls him down the hallway, and tugs them into a secluded corner. Then he holds Atsumu at arm’s length and looks over his face, but Atsumu knows all he sees is confusion.
“Because I—” Suna’s voice seems to catch and he clears his throat. “I made it awkward.”
“... No… you didn’t?” Atsumu begins and speed-runs the disaster through his mind. “I was an asshole to you, so you’re angry at me.”
“I’m not— No?”
Now they’re both confused. And they’re standing in silence. Atsumu speaks up first.
“I… I don’t know what you think happened, but I, erm, I…” He takes a breath and tries to regain himself. “I acted like an asshole because I panicked. Truth is, now don’t get offended until I’m finished—”
“I’m already offended—”
Atsumu chooses to ignore the joke that still makes his lip twitch.
“I didn’t want to sleep with you at first because I like you. Suna, I really like you, and when we were… about to ‘get it on,’ it kinda hit me and I panicked.”
Atsumu takes a breath and waits for Suna’s answer. His answer that doesn’t come. His answer that he’s still waiting for.
“Rin…?”
“...You like me?”
“Yes and I know this might make it awkward, but I can’t have you hating me—”
“Atsumu, I don’t—fuck—you like me?” Suna digs the palm of his hand into his forehead and takes a breath. Atsumu is about to speak again when Suna says,
“Atsumu, I— I thought you were angry at me, that I made it awkward—” he seems to struggle for a few more moments until he places a hand on either side of Atsumu’s face. “I thought you realised I like you and that’s why you freaked out.”
What? What? “What?”
“You— you really didn’t know?”
“No? How was I meant to? All you do is insult me!”
“Atsumu, I travelled over four hours—twice—to try and sleep with you. That first day when you asked me? I didn’t want to because I didn’t want to just be someone you slept with. I didn’t text you because I thought you needed space. I…” Suna trails off and lets his hands fall.
“Is that why you didn’t want me to look at your penis?”
Suna laughs loud and awkward and almost a little pained. “I think so? I… I honestly don’t know. Maybe your dildo embarrassed me?”
Atsumu nods. “Yup, yeah, I get that. It’s fucking huge.”
“Why did you buy it then?”
“Because,” Atsumu says, exasperated at his own stupidity, “I didn’t want you to think I bought a small one because I was used to only seeing small— Can we go back to the awkward confessions? Please?”
Suna laughs, louder than Atsumu thinks he’s ever heard him laugh before.
“Can we get past the awkward confessions and kiss?” Suna asks, a smile still playing on his lips.
“Yes, yeah, good idea. I knew there was a reason I liked you,” Atsumu grins, and Suna goes to shove his shoulder, but the force dies, and instead, Suna’s hand stays there, burying into the material of Atsumu’s shirt.
“Can I—” Suna starts.
“Please just kiss me already,” Atsumu laughs and leans in.
When Suna kisses him this time, it feels easy, it feels natural, it feels good.
When Atsumu climbs onto the bus to go home with a smile on his face, all eyes are, once again, on him. And then there’s what can only be called a ruckus that shakes the vehicle—everyone’s shouting and cheering and stamping feet and chanting his name, over and over and over again. Meian comes up to slap him on the shoulder, then wraps his arm around it.
“No need to be scared of Never Have I Ever now, huh?” he laughs. Atsumu still disagrees, but finds himself laughing along anyway.
xxx
They do, eventually, end up having sex and lose their virginities. Though it’s terrible the first time. They fumble through it and, at one point, Suna accidentally headbutts Atsumu—hard enough to leave a bruise on his chin.
And it’s awkward. It’s so very, really awkward at first. Until Atsumu bursts out laughing at Suna falling off the bed and puts out a hand to help him up, but Suna pulls him to the floor and shoves his hand in his face to shut him up. And they laugh. Through it all, they laugh and leave kisses on each other’s collarbones and hip bones, and on the back of their shoulders and on awkward little places and soft, intimate places.
They’re left feeling tired, and not jaded, not disappointed, but with a weird sense of weightlessness that they didn’t expect because this is not how it happens in the movies.
“That was awful,” Suna says with a smile.
“It’s your fault,” Atsumu pouts and pokes him in the ribs in the spot he knows is ticklish.
“Well, then,” Suna replies, turning onto his side and bringing his face close to Atsumu’s. “Guess we’re just going to have to keep trying until we get it ‘right.’”