Chapter Text
2012
Miya Atsumu always prided himself on how observant he could be. How he picked up on every hint his team gave him, every desire for a higher set, a quicker tempo, whatever they wanted, it was done before they asked.
Atsumu finds himself distracted, properly, for the first time ever at the All-Japan Youth Training camp.
It takes him half a day to realise what’s happened.
Miya Atsumu can’t focus on anyone else but Sakusa Kiyoomi.
The gym is loud, as all training camps are. Filled to the brim with teenagers, Japan’s hopefuls. Conversations cut up by the screech of a whistle, the sharp shriek of shoes on the floor and balls slamming against anything and everything. Atsumu thrives off it, it pushes air into his lungs and life into his eyes like nothing else.
Sakusa Kiyoomi moves like nothing but him exists, and yet like his existence is the smallest thing in the room. Atsumu is entranced by him.
Nothing Sakusa does wastes energy. Every step he takes is specific, energy and motion conserved just to take him right where he needs to at the time. Atsumu could have written pages about him, all from the first day. The way he’d adjust his path, angling his shoulders just so, enough that no one could notice it properly, nothing he could be called out on, but still avoided making contact. The way Sakusa’s eyes tracked movements, flickering to the exits without ever lingering too long on anything.
Interest was the only word Atsumu could reasonably give himself to describe how he felt towards Sakusa, without opening a can of worms he didn’t know how to fish with.
That was all Atsumu allowed himself to have, interest. Sakusa was an insane outside hitter, so as a setter it was usual for him to pay more attention to him. That’s what he told himself.
For now.
Atsumu got paired with Sakusa for a set of drills on the first day. Set. Spike. Repeat. Sakusa terrified him at first, dark eyes fixed on the ball, and a wicked spin caused by some strange twist in his wrists.
He adjusts.
It’s instinctive, bullied into his muscle memory from years of training, the path of the ball changes ever so slightly. Higher, slightly further from the net. Sakusa moves as he always seemed to do, eyes on the ball.
It’s clean when Sakusa makes contact with it. A sharp crack of palm against rubber and the ball slams into the ground, loud enough to turn heads from across the gym.
“Miya,” the coach calls out, they both turn to look at him, sharp gold eyes and deep dark brown ones. “Good adjustment, keep it up.”
Atsumu grins, it’s bright and easy and the people around the coach smile back at him. His ma always called his smile contagious. Atsumu’s eyes are drawn to Sakusa, drawn to his hands. His wrists, the flexing from slight discomfort, unnoticeable if you were anything less than a freak about your spikers.
Clear as day for Atsumu.
He tucks it away for later.
By the time he makes it to dinner, Atsumu realises he’s tracking Sakusa. Not in a creepy way, he hoped, he wasn’t staring or hovering. But he knew where Sakusa was sitting, how he eats, how he leered over Kageyama about the crows match against Ushiwaka.
Atsumu studies the way Sakusa cleans everything before he touches it, how he relaxes when he’s away from everyone but the bushy eyebrowed Libero in the same horrendous colours as Sakusa.
Atsumu can’t find it in himself to be annoyed by any of it.
Oh.
Atsumu still couldn’t find it in him to care. He’d had crushes before, simple fleeting things, the girl in his first year who’d flashed him a shy smile when he stopped her from falling down the stairs. Kita when he’d made him a supply kit when he was under the weather at training. Aran when he hit the nastiest spike in practice.
This felt different. Something quieter. Something settling in his ribs rather than sparking across skin.
Atsumu mulls over the thought as he chews on rice, he decides on two things:
- He likes Sakusa.
- He will not make this Sakusa’s problem.
Easy. Simple. No worries.
—
Sakusa first notices Miya properly in the locker room, at the end of the first day and as Sakusa is slowly working through his routine of getting unready, socks, sanitise, shirt, sanitise. You can guess the rest.
Miya is impossible to ignore, he’s loud, animated and his voice with its ridiculous accent bounces around the changing room like he’s never heard of an indoor volume. The way he picks up a natural back and forth banter with nearly everyone in the locker room while still in boxers and one sock concerns Sakusa. So he waits, going through his routine while bracing for Miya to turn his irritation towards him, for the fake blond to get too close and try and touch him.
And yet, it never comes. Miya stays away from him, only directing a few quips his way about his nasty spikes and freaky wrists, along with other words Sakusa doesn’t bother paying attention to. It’s strange how normal it feels, how natural Miya pulls it off. None of the awkward stand-offish politeness when people realise his aversion to touch, just natural.
Miya hands him a towel at some point, and their fingers don’t brush, when someone makes a jab at Miya as he’s passing to Sakusa, Miya laughs, bright and jovial as ever, and yet it’s not in Sakusa’s space, it’s angled away from him, and a touch quieter than before.
Sakusa can’t quite figure out why that unsettles him more than clumsy, grimy contact would.
He chalks it up to fatigue, a new place, new people. He’s just distracted at the moment.
Still, Miya takes up space in the corner of his mind and draws his eye more than he would ever admit to.
Miya is casually careless in ways Sakusa was never allowed to be, and could never imagine being. Sprawling across benches to join in conversations, a foxy smile that claims the space on his face like it cost nothing to be there. Sakusa watched, feeling something twist in his guts as lights dance through Miya’s eyes when someone hits his sets cleanly.
Miya is everything Sakusa could never be, everything against what he was taught, everything correct.
Proper posture. Proper tone. Proper distance.
Sakusa felt his mouth dry at the sight of Miya seeming to wrap himself around the other players. Golden, toned arms reaching and reaching, always finding stars.
Later that night in the common room, away from the chaos of the court and the changing rooms, Sakusa tucks himself at the end of a sofa, curling up into himself. Only there due to Komori’s threats and wheedling. The room is lit by the soft glow of phones and the flicker of a TV, running rewatches of V-League matches Sakusa had already watched, Sakusa’s eyes are drawn to Miya.
The blond is on the floor, half way down the couch Sakusa is tucked away on, his accent thickening as he argues with someone about music, the tones drawing Sakusa in without him even realising.
He tells himself he’s just observing. That it’s professional curiosity, for the benefit of his team and his playing this week. All he’s doing is cataloguing his teammate-slash-rival’s dynamic.
Then Miya laughs. It’s full bodied, unguarded, the kind that comes from the gut. The kind that Sakusa only experienced from himself around Komori, and Sakusa feels something sharp bury itself in his chest.
Everything around him freezes, and he feels every muscle in his body tighten.
This is not what he needs.
This is not something Sakusa ever thought much about. Attraction, or anything along those veins. Sure, he was a teenage boy, he experienced desires, but it was never relevant. Romance and feelings were something to exist in the abstract, something other people stumble into but would complicate his life. Something the Sakusa name treats with polite distance and the correct names attached to it.
Not some no-name fake blond boy who speaks like he was raised in a rice paddy.
Expectations like that didn’t need words when they were said in a sigh or a look when Kiyoomi spoke too long about another boy on his team.
Sakusa had no language for what he was feeling, only rules.
No distractions. Nothing unnecessary. Nothing bad should be encouraged.
This was distracting.
This was unnecessary.
This is something he should not encourage.
Sakusa catches Miya watching him, feels ice flood his veins as gold eyes peer into his.
Miya’s eyes leave first, not through embarrassment or being caught, just thoughtful, like he’d seen something and was saving it for later.
Sakusa’s frown deepens.
He doesn’t know what that look meant, what that level of knowing meant.
He only knows that when Miya shifts closer later, gets up for a drink and drops onto the sofa next to him, still not touching, he doesn’t move away.
The realisation hits him quietly, like a misstep on familiar stairs.
He should.
He doesn’t.
That night, lying in his assigned bed, Sakusa stares at the ceiling long after the lights go out.
He tells himself this is temporary.
Training camp is a contained environment. Artificial. Intense. People form attachments here that don’t last. Everyone knows that.
Whatever this is, whatever these feelings are, they will fade.
He closes his eyes and tries not to think about the way Miya adjusted without being asked. The way he noticed.
Sakusa has spent years perfecting the art of being unnoticed, the youngest child in a big family, under the radar just enough to do what he wanted to within reason.
Someone seeing through him this easily feels like a threat.
And worse.
It feels like relief.