i want you, bless my soul

by herkisser

Summary:

“Come on then, angel,” Miya smiles, just between the two of them, then grabs Kiyoomi around the middle and spins him in circles all around the room, dodging furniture and cheering teammates and dubious puddles on the floor and their own flying feet, laughing. He’s so beautiful. Miya. Ridiculous fucking man. And he looks at Kiyoomi like he thinks he’s beautiful, too, with all of his odd angles and bushy eyebrows and thin lips. Not that there isn’t some sort of charm to that, if you like the graveyard keeper, haunted doll aesthetic, but—it’s Miya Atsumu. Kiyoomi can’t ever imagine someone that fucking radiant and shit with all of his own gloom and doom.

(Or, Sakusa Kiyoomi vs pet names: FIGHT.)

Sometimes you get so close to someone,
you end up on the other side of them.
Richard Siken, The Long and Short of It

 

“Hey, Omi-kun, can ya pass me a water bottle?”

Kiyoomi tries glaring something frigid enough to freeze hell. Miya does not look up. Kiyoomi then curses all of the however-many generations of ancestors Miya has, and reaches over to close his fingers around cool clear plastic. 

He presses it into Miya’s neck, because he knows that that’s where the heat pools. “The pinnacle of laziness,” he grumbles petulantly. “I hope your pillow is warm tonight.”

Miya—melts. Just a little. Probably because he doesn’t know Kiyoomi’s just cursed all his ancestors. He pools under the shock of cold, just like sweat under a jaw. Eyes closed, rigid tension wiring out of those shoulders broad enough to fit snugly in the cup of Kiyoomi’s palms. “Picturin’ me in bed, Omi-omi? What am I wearin’?” His voice drops lower. “Or, don’t tell me…” 

He still hasn’t taken the water bottle from Kiyoomi’s hand, who’s stood over his seated form, pressing it to his neck like an executioner. Kiyoomi whacks him on the forehead with it, hard. “Don’t fucking finish that sentence if you know what’s good for you.” 

Miya finally, finally cracks his eyes open. He grins up at Kiyoomi, lazy eyes drooping lower somehow. Exhausted. Lively still. “Maybe I like someone bossin’ me around,” he says around his wide-looped teeth, his right canine crooked charmingly. He reaches up to take the bottle from Kiyoomi, grabbing it by the base and allowing him to let go of its neck. “What about that, huh, Omi? What then?” 

Kiyoomi narrows his eyes, face pinching. “I should have reported you for harassment yesterday,” he gripes. “Tomorrow’s headlines: ‘MSBY setter Miya Atsumu, the face behind the mask.’”

Miya laughs, scratchy from the remnants of a— a fishbone, Kiyoomi realises with something needlessly soft. From yesterday, when they’d all bullied Kiyoomi into accompanying them for dinner, and he had pretended it was a great big inconvenience. Hinata had hip-checked him into the booth beside Miya and then taken the seat directly across from him, making meaningful faces all night. Kiyoomi had wanted to drown himself in his glass of water. Then, Inunaki must have said his usual evil-spirited imp shit, because Miya had choked himself three-quarters to death laughing. Kiyoomi had grabbed the stocky nape of his neck the way you’d hold a bottleneck, and with all the exasperation of a mother of three, shoved plain rice down his throat until the bone dislodged and Miya stopped sounding like an underwater bomb. The table had fallen silent. Meteor-shower silent. Then Hinata had said something about the pickle being crisp, and the chatter resumed smoothly.

“Goddammit,” says Miya now, shaking his head. “I hate that no one knows yer the funniest bastard alive sometimes. That stony face of yers as ya say the most absurd fuckin’ shit. Priceless.” 

Kiyoomi raises an eyebrow. “Absurd? I don’t think so.” 

Miya waves him off. “Yeah, yeah. Can’t let anyone know ya’ve ever felt a single feelin’ in yer life. Hey, Omi, know what a feeling is? Now, it’s nothin’ to be scared of—” 

And then Miya’ll say callous shit like this. Things that make Kiyoomi purse his lips to keep from screaming, make him swallow dry to force down things like Do you have any idea? Do you have a single damn clue? Did you ever, or is it somehow me being stupid when you’re the one walking around with extra hand sanitiser in your pockets? 

It’s a joke, a little at his expense, but… extra sanitiser. Kiyoomi will want him anyway. 

“Shut up,” he huffs, rolling his eyes. “Like you’d know restraint if it up and punched you in the face.” 

“Monk shit,” Miya snorts. “What’s the use of restraint? If I love ya, I love ya, because I love ya. Y’know? It doesn’t have to be so complicated. Ya just… let life take ya where she takes ya. Nothing’s unnecessary if ya know how to look at it, and where does that leave all this hesitatin’? If not now, when?” 

Kiyoomi considers his options for a split-second. He could scoff, get up, say a perfunctory goodbye, and leave. But then he finds himself sitting down next to Miya, readying himself for the soul-spilling he’s about to do. Is this just the effect that Miya has on people? He’s not comforting by any means. But… something. Something about that stalwart honesty. 

“In high school,” he starts, “I sat in this exam. Can’t remember what, but it must’ve been literature. The first question was this passage about life and self-control. ‘Only he who abstains can taste the true pleasure of life.’ It aligned so perfectly with everything my parents taught me that I’ve been living like I’m being watched ever since.” 

Miya looks at him, birdwatcher-quiet. Then he smiles, close-mouthed for faint dimples to poke in. He really shouldn’t be doing that, not for Kiyoomi’s soft-underbellied passerine heart. 

“This is some real high school gym talk right here, don’t’cha agree?” he says, wiggling his eyebrows in place of bumping Kiyoomi’s shoulder. Then he shrugs, only his right shoulder going up. “‘s OK to be reserved. I didn’t mean it like that. Ya shouldn’t listen to germs like me anyway. And I know yer not heartless. I just think that’cha should know that people can’t… read yer mind, y’know?” 

Kiyoomi frowns. “Why should they?” 

Miya’s begun to look increasingly more caught as this weird conversation progresses, eyes flitting everywhere except Kiyoomi’s. Like an unannounced visitor, like spooked birds. “I dunno,” he settles on saying, with the curious, one-shouldered shrug again. “Don’t’cha think it’d be nice? To be understood?” 

(Did I raise you—) 

Kiyoomi shifts. Looks at the rafters, the halogens. The team milling about like lost letters. Back down at Miya, inexplicably not with them. No, sitting here, bottle in hand, choosing to look at him just when he wouldn’t notice. “Do you think you don’t understand me?” 

“I know I don’t understand ya,” Miya corrects. Kiyoomi hasn’t ever seen him so pensive. Abruptly, so very abruptly, it dawns on him that they’re really not in high school anymore. There’s no trudging back home weighed down by backpacks, because home is six hours away by train. The light is dim but stark. Miya’s eyes are surer than they used to be five years ago, less stormy. 

Kiyoomi waits for him to follow up with I want to, though, but he doesn’t. Kiyoomi thinks of saying Do you want to? but he doesn’t, either. He’s not jumping off this cliff, not today, not ever. Not without Miya by his side, which he knows won’t happen. 

“There’s nothing to understand,” he says simply. “I’m just me. You’ve known me for years.” 

A few seconds pass. “If that’s what’cha think, Omi.”

Kiyoomi nods, unsure of what else to do. The light stays dim, tube lights mounted too high up in the ceiling to be anything else. He wonders what Miya means by all of this. He still hasn’t drunk any water, the bottle lax in his hands. He’s still sitting next to Kiyoomi, not quite close enough, not quite quiet. Breath shot. Fingers cupped. 

“Omi-kun,” Miya says, redundantly. There’s no one else he could be talking to. Lamp-moth phenomenon. “Omi-kun, let’s go home. I’m starvin’.” 

In the end, Miya doesn’t drink the water. Kiyoomi only minds a little. 

+

In Kiyoomi’s dreams, Atsumu is there. Standing by the open window in Kiyoomi’s bedroom, watching the rain bruise the cement courtyard a darker grey. In his hands, there is an apple, yellow-freckled and green-cratered because Kiyoomi doesn’t know how to pick produce, and a kitchen knife. He starts peeling the apple in one long continuous drag, red peel spiralling out. Inexplicably, Kiyoomi knows that they only have until the apple is peeled. 

In Kiyoomi’s dreams, Atsumu is braver and he himself softer. 

I lied, Atsumu says, and unlike the real thing, turns to look him in the eyes. I’m a coward and a hypocrite. ‘Where does that leave all this hesitatin’?’, indeed. I’m a hypocrite. Do ya get it, Omi, do ya? Did ya hear what I didn’t say? 

Kiyoomi is afraid to step closer. Why do you always have to speak in tongues? he cries. Why can’t you be brave for once?

The rain stops. Atsumu stops too. Why can’t you?

Kiyoomi sits down on a Persian carpet he doesn’t own. He looks down at the stitching, the bedecked ivory elephants, and realises it’s the carpet in Motoya’s living room. You’re not real, he says, hollow. You’re not real, you would never not be brave. 

Love, Atsumu says, caws like a bird, screams, whispers, sings. Or maybe he doesn’t open his mouth at all. Love, I— I. I’m—

The apple peel reaches the floor and still Atsumu’s hands don’t stop. He never peels his apples. Kiyoomi knows he never peels his apples; has seen him cursorily run them under the tap and bite into them, teeth to skin. Has seen him laugh when he realises he’s forgotten to peel the sticker again. Then why won’t this peeling, this shucking, this undressing end? Why has Atsumu fallen silent? Why, God, why is there nothing left to say? Is this how it’ll end, if it ever starts, in this graveyard of words? 

Kiyoomi wakes up with the cloying heat of stars behind his eyes. 

+

Sunday evening. Kiyoomi’s phone rings.

“What?” he spits into the speaker. 

“Not even a hello?” Miya laughs. His voice always sounds different on call. Older. Synthetic. “I’ve learnt that that’s just how ya show affection. Anyway. Let’s go to the convenience store.” 

Kiyoomi frowns, placing his book face-down on the arm of his chair. “Why?” 

“I’ve seen yer fridge, Omi,” Miya tuts. “Pitiful. Get down here; I’m waitin’ by the gates.” 

Kiyoomi is… appalled. Yeah. Disgusted. “You’re already here?” 

“Of course I am.” Miya’s sleazy grin is evident in his voice. “Like hell ya could refuse my charms.”

“I am,” Kiyoomi says. “Refusing you, that is. I’m fine with my beer and spite and bread, thank you very much.” 

“No, yer not,” Miya replies cheerfully. “Don’t keep me waitin’ too long, Omi dear.” 

That’s certainly new. 

Miya hangs up. Kiyoomi blinks. 

Five minutes later sees Kiyoomi shivering in the January air, breathing out smoke spirits. Miya waves when he sees him, swinging his entire arm like a child. Kiyoomi can’t help but smile behind the mask, can’t help it when his heart lurches like a body on an overcrowded train. 

It’s sometimes easy to forget that the acne-ridden, flute-voiced boy you scowled at in high school gets his own pay cheque now, files taxes and buys groceries and pays the bills. Pays rent. Pays for extra sanitisers. Pays attention. Pays you attention, specifically, and what a life it is. At sixteen you think nothing could be better than forgetting him forever; and at twenty-three you miss him when he leaves. When he never even stays in the first place, only a familiar shape on the sidelines, a bird on a powerline watching clouds drift by. 

(When you wish he would stay. Just linger for a while.) 

They walk to the konbini, exactly seven minutes and thirty-six seconds away if you keep trying to sneak glances at someone. Exactly seven minutes away if you’re alone and lonely and the difference has muddled in your head. Seven minutes and fourteen seconds if you jump over the wobbly blocks of asphalt, but that’s useless if you stall by an extra few seconds for someone, who you don’t know has been sneaking glances at you, to catch up. 

“I woke up to two perverted birds fuckin’ on my windowsill,” Miya says amiably. “Right by my face.” 

“What,” says Kiyoomi. “You have a window by your bed?” 

Miya’s mouth twitches. “How else is the sunshine s’pposed to greet me? Alarms don’t do shit.” 

He then laughs at the look on Kiyoomi’s face, even if he can only see his eyes.

(Is this staying, then? Is this greeting the sun? Facing the music? Insert metaphor; gain distance?)

Kiyoomi had, at a lonely time, forgotten what it felt to feel weightless. Losses dragged at his heart, and victories rang hollow. On a stage, his name was called, and someone had to poke him in the spine for him to get up and get that certificate. The touch, only a fingertip through three layers of cotton, still burned with the fire of cold stars. He remembers the gooseflesh more than the applause. He hadn’t even looked for nee-chan or Motoya in the crowd, a ringing in his ears. 

And then he’d walked into the MSBY gym, and Bokuto Koutarou had gasped like a nun who’d stumbled upon the clergy’s orgy. Palm-volleyball phenomenon. Miya Atsumu had raised his eyebrows at him, as if to say, That all ya can do? 

Kiyoomi had felt it again, then. The butterflies or fireflies or swallows or shrikes or whatever. Something winged knocking its feet on the ledge of his ribs as it soared, taking him with it. 

“Rooh Afza,” Miya gasps and chokes the instant they step foot inside, eyes bulging out like those of a fish in peril. “They haven’t stocked this brand here in light years, Omi, oh my God.” 

Kiyoomi raises his eyebrows. “Didn’t you look in other places?”

Miya glances at him over his shoulder, three bottles of the syrup clutched to his heart. “Didn’t I look in other places?” he repeats, offended. “I went ‘s far’s askin’ Samu to keep a lookout for it and the rabid bitch made me wash his dishes!” 

Kiyoomi smiles, and looks away. 

He scans the aisle of cleaning supplies with disinterest. He didn’t really have a plan, coming here. He really is fine with his beers and his bread and his ‘pretentious’ candles. He only wanted to see Miya, and maybe Miya wanted to see him too, judging by the way he’s following Kiyoomi around like a lost puppy. 

“Fuck healthy,” Miya proclaims, much to the horror of a young mother nearby, before snatching up a bunch of chips. 

“Shut up,” Kiyoomi hisses, and makes him put it back. 

Miya throws him a wounded look. “Oppressor.” 

“Eggs,” Kiyoomi tells him. “It’s all eggs to me.” 

It’s easy to forget the boy you once knew is all grown-up now, but not when he laughs. A tremendous bark of a laugh, root-tearer, heart-snatcher, the one you first heard nearly a decade ago from outside the locker rooms you’d staunchly refused to go inside of. It’s not easy to forget all that, not when you can now hear the newborn iron behind it, the steel. The weight of a fondness you are so very afraid of carrying. 

Miya feigns wiping tears, hiccuping out leftover giggles. “OK, Omi. We’ll get’cha yer eggs.” 

Kiyoomi catches the way his mouth stumbles over the pause between Omi and we’ll, opening again too quickly, like he’d meant to say something more and thought better of it. 

Omi dear, his treacherous heart supplies with sadistic glee. O-mi de-ar. 

“Come on then,” Kiyoomi mumbles, beelining to the jam jars. The egg cartons are stored under those, God knows why. “Get them out for me.”

Miya shakes his head. “Yer so the youngest child,” he teases, but crouches down anyway. 

“They’re dusty,” Kiyoomi argues, a disgusted curl to his lower lip. “I usually screw my eyes shut and pretend I’m numb, but I have you with me now. The perfect mule.”

Miya snorts, re-emerging with two cartons stacked one on top of the other in his steady hands. Ridiculously, Kiyoomi would trust them with champagne flutes and nail polish and hearts. “Ya sure know how to make a man feel special.” 

Kiyoomi rolls his eyes, and doesn’t reply. 

They get milk, because Kiyoomi is trying to beat the lactose intolerance into submission; toothbrushes, but only after Miya gives him such a graphic description of the disturbing state of the bristles on the one he’s currently using that Kiyoomi has to grimace; and an unadvisable amount of bread, because Kiyoomi can’t cook for shit. 

“I hafta wonder sometimes,” Miya muses, a hip cocked to the side as he watches Kiyoomi, “how ya keep yer little show runnin’.” 

Kiyoomi frowns. “What show?” 

Jazz hands. “The show o’ life, baby.” 

Kiyoomi kicks him in the shin with the toe of his sneakers, and does not pout (no matter what Miya will later claim). Someone else’s champagne flutes and nail polish and heart, he decides. Hearts, plural, to match the two Miya wears on each sleeve. Spares that Kiyoomi doesn’t have, because one is enough trouble. One is enough when it perks up every time Miya smiles. One is enough when it does whatever it just did at baby. One is enough when it sings a little tune and twirls face-first into fountains when Miya looks at Kiyoomi, and laughs. 

(Did I raise you to be—) 

Not that he does that often anymore. He only looks when he thinks Kiyoomi won’t notice, and see—they’re not sixteen anymore. They’re really fucking not sixteen anymore. 

Waiting in line to pay is the comfortable kind of awkward, where you think you should say something but all you can do is look away. Hide a smile at nothing in particular. Of course not for Miya, who chatters Kiyoomi’s ears off without respite; only for Kiyoomi, who can’t remember the last time they were alone like this. 

Standing outside, bags in hand, wallets a little lighter, is a different story. 

Miya shifts his weight from one foot to the other, watching the bugs cluster around the halogens on the overhead sign with great interest. He looks like he has something to say, and has now made it Kiyoomi’s problem. 

(Why can’t you be brave for once? Kiyoomi remembers not asking.) 

“You’re not sixteen, Miya,” he says mildly. “Use your words.” 

Despite what his words might suggest, it’s really not easy to forget how much time has passed when Miya heaves a great big sigh, then swallows. Kiyoomi traces the bob of his Adam’s apple. Up and down and up again. Like the seismogram of a heart-quake. Then he sighs again. Stands up straighter, and looks at Kiyoomi, coloured soft by the warm-toned streetlights. 

“‘m not outta detergent,” he blurts out, “or milk or toothpaste or cookies or whatever I just bought. I don’t even know. I mean. I was outta Rooh Afza but I didn’t know they’d have some in stock.”

Well, it definitely feels like an earthquake in there now. Did ya hear what I didn’t say? he remembers not hearing. 

Kiyoomi purses his lips. “Seems like a waste of money,” he deflects. 

Miya’s jaw drops. 

“You bought choco-chip cookies,” Kiyoomi continues briskly, “three bottles of Rooh Afza, a tube of that disgusting clove toothpaste—toothbrush free—and one five-kilogram megapack of laundry detergent. How are you carrying all that shit?” 

Miya’s jaw closes shut. “I—” he starts, then stops. Kiyoomi has never seen him speechless. Something inside him curls with cat-like satisfaction. “Ya want some Rooh Afza?” he finishes lamely.

“I’ve never had any,” Kiyoomi admits. 

“Never had any—” Miya wheezes, eyes bulging. He digs out a bottle from his bags and thrusts it into Kiyoomi’s hands. “Ya’ll go home, and ya’ll make some, and ya’ll tell me how grateful ya are that I’m in yer life.” 

“Okay,” says Kiyoomi.

“Why should ya do that, ya as— what?”

“Okay,” he repeats. “I’ll try it.” 

Miya grins wider than anything Kiyoomi’s ever seen before, something almost child-like in its intensity. “I knew one day ya wouldn’t be a difficult gremlin creature. I always had faith in ya, Omi dear. Always.” 

“Goodbye,” Kiyoomi sighs. 

(I’ll do anything you say, he can’t help but think as he turns around, if you say it with your smile.) 

Miya’s supernova laughter follows him home. 

+

Kiyoomi sits on his bed and watches the seconds tick by on his digital clock, knees pulled up to his chest. His hunched shadow rocking back and forth on the wall looks like that of a kid Goliath’s. Don’t look at the shadows at night, Miya had told all of them once when Adriah was making shadow-puppets on the floor. He’d shrugged one shoulder when they’d asked why. We were just always told to never do that. 

Kiyoomi pulls his eyes away from the spindly, monstrous projection of his hand in the air, and finds 00:00 waiting for him below it. He sighs. He doesn’t feel twenty-four. He’s always going to be fourteen and staring at shards of glass on the floor. He’s always going to be nineteen and weeping into his tomb-palms. He’s always going to be twenty-two and— 

What difference does it make? 

Motoya calls, as always. Kiyoomi picks up, as always. 

“Happy birthday!” his cousin, half-banshee, screeches. “One year closer to death!” 

“My only hope in these trying times,” Kiyoomi deadpans. “The sweet release of death.”

Motoya laughs. “Aw, don’t say that just ‘cause you miss your older cousin so much! I promise I’ll catch the first train over!”

“Do not,” says Kiyoomi, horrified. “Do not. Nothing. I’m doing nothing. I doubt anyone on the team even knows. I went back home for last year’s.”

Motoya is silent for a few seconds. “...What.” 

“What?” 

“Nothing. Nothing at all. Wow, Kiyo-chan, look at the time! Better get sleepin’!” 

“Motoya, what—”

The tone beeps as Motoya hangs up. Kiyoomi stares at the screen, suddenly scared for his life. What does his cousin know that he doesn’t? 

Kiyoomi groans. He should be asleep anyway; there’s an early morning practice tomorrow, 6 a.m. sharp. He has to be up in four hours, and now he’s mad at himself for giving into the childish urge to wait for midnight, but hey, he’s twenty-four while doing it. 

He squints down at his messages. There are poorly-spelt birthday wishes from his sister’s number, probably his niece sneaking the phone from under her tired, sleeping mother’s pillow again. Sure enough, more Jackals. His good-for-nothing, disturbingly successful older brother. Motoya’s sisters. 

The only wish he bothers replying to, pathetically, is the oldest one, buried dozens deep under contact names he sees only on this day every year. 

Miya. A. MSBY
happy birthday omi!!
🎂🍻‼️
00:00

Me
Thank you.
I didn’t think you knew it was today
00:07

Miya A. MSBY
anything for my only loving cactus 😁
*living lmao
n wdym u didnt think i knew it was today
the only reason black jackal bokuto koutarou isnt outside ur window serenading u w a guitar is bc we told him youd call security
00:07

Me
What the fuck
00:07

Miya A. MSBY
arent u glad to have us as teammates 😍
00:07

Me
Shut up and go to sleep
00:07

Miya A. MSBY
dont u tell me wht to do
Read 00:08

Kiyoomi sighs, putting his phone on the bedside table and rolling over to face the wall. The dip of his waist forms a shadow-valley on the wall. He turns back around to switch off the lamp he’d forgotten, because you do not look straight into shadows at night. 

He wraps his arms around himself, only a very tall kid boy child, and goes to sleep. 

He wakes up four hours later to a lavender sky (steel in places) and those annoying fucking birds. He grimaces at how puffy his eyes feel, then at the sting of the water he throws on his face. His curls frizz out like electrocuted worms and his eyes are ringed nearly purple. He smiles, then pouts, then smiles again at the mirror, trying it out. His gums flash pink. His flesh is twenty-four now. He’s two years out of university, and two years inside the dream. The only dream. 

He feels like a stone tied to his own feet. He tries to shake himself awake and is struck by his own weight, the things knocking helter-skelter inside himself. He was supposed to be stone. He was supposed to be glass. God, why does everything feel that much closer and farther still from the epicentre of himself, that great big tear? 

What tore him in the first place? 

(He was good. He was always good. He was always, always good.)

He checks the time on his phone. There’s a new notification on his lockscreen from Mother. He switches his phone off, a fourteen-year-old with shards in his very eyes and ears and throat.

(Did I raise you to be careless, Kiyoomi?)

For the record, Kiyoomi goes to practice extremely reluctantly. He saw Bokuto’s birthday message, in all capitals with its sixteen hundred emojis and kaomojis, and knows he’s going to have to hear the same thing full-volume before it’s even six in the morning. The prospect nearly makes him skip altogether. 

But of course he doesn’t. Sure, the knockback from the sheer number explosion of sound the second he walks into the gym definitely sends him careening back a couple of paces, but— Hinata’s nationwide toothy grin. Bokuto’s hooting. Barnes’ good-natured wheedling for cake. Miya’s little smile, the one that crinkles his eyes. 

“Thank you,” Kiyoomi says. There’s nothing else to say. Nothing that would matter. 

“I can’t believe,” Miya says loudly, “that ya thought we wouldn’t remember. I’m actually hurt, Omi. Wounded. How could’ja think so little of us?” 

Kiyoomi coughs, face flaming as offended gasps sound all around. “It wasn’t— It wasn’t because of any of you. Birthdays aren’t really that big of a deal for us. I didn’t think you people would… react like this.” 

“You spent your last birthday back in Tokyo!” Hinata bounces, his voice far too sunny for an overcast March morning. “We were so bummed out, Omi-san, but we thought you’d feel bad if we told you that! I’m telling you now so you don’t feel guilty! Ah, happy birthday again, I really can’t believe we’re the same age!” 

Kiyoomi blinks. 

“Are you on coke?” Inunaki asks Hinata, seemingly with genuine wonder. He looks almost as bad as Kiyoomi, his body wilting in on itself like a morning glory. “Meth? Weed? Hinata-kun, where does your dealer live and do you think I could get away with murder?” 

“What’ve those got to do with each other?” says Hinata, still smiling. 

Meian sighs, shaking his head. “Happy birthday, Sakusa,” he says warmly, then barks out: “As a birthday present, why don’t’cha idiots do yer damn warm-ups?”

Kiyoomi— smiles. Maybe it doesn’t have to be so bad, actually. The less alone he is, the farther away his supercut of bad memories seems, when just six hours ago there was a weight on his chest so very insurmountable. 

He rolls his wrists, and dreams roll out under his feet. 

Afterwards, Miya approaches him, freshly showered. 

“No,” Kiyoomi says immediately. 

Miya splutters. “Ya didn’t even hear what I had to say!” 

“Whatever it is, the answer is no,” Kiyoomi says severely, and makes to turn around. 

“Free umeboshi onigiri,” Miya lilts, then snorts like a pig when Kiyoomi spins a rapid one-eighty. “Tch, Omi. I could sell ya for fuckin’ onigiri and ya’d go.” 

“Shut up,” Kiyoomi sings in the same breezy little tune. “Enough talk about selling people. Let’s go.” 

Onigiri Miya looks the same as it did the last time Kiyoomi was here, half a year ago. All wonky, weird table legs and walls of split-bamboo that Miya likes to say he chopped and drove over from Hyogo himself and ‘80s J-rock perpetually playing from a radio on the counter that looks about as old as Eden. 

Some sort of freaky twin sense must tingle, because the back door hinges open and Osamu’s grey eyes peek through, then his entire unimpressed face once he sees who exactly is trying to touch the light fixtures made of rope on his tippy-toes. 

Kiyoomi slinks away from Miya, signalling to Osamu with his hands. I do not know this guy, he mouths. I am a victim. 

Osamu, smile-eyed, tips his cap at him. Then he barks, “Oi! If ya wanted to be such a clown, ya should’a joined the damn circus!” 

Miya sticks out his tongue. At least he has both feet flat on the ground now. “Oh, like ya abandoned me ‘n’ volleyball to run this old thing? Yer goin’ outta business, Samu.” 

Osamu’s face turns murderous. He steps forward, uncaring of the phone cameras pointed at them from behind amused patrons. A video of the twins hashing it out goes vaguely viral every other week, so maybe he’s really stopped caring by now. Kiyoomi has a brief moment of panic, because it genuinely looks like Osamu’s going to sock Miya in the nose and break it for the fourth time. 

(The first time, a rock after tumbling down milk teeth-first from his bicycle. Second, Osamu’s highschool-laden fist. Third, and only a few months ago, a volleyball, because he’d been distracted.) 

“Ah-ah,” Miya cuts in, like the little bitch he is, then wraps his fingers around Kiyoomi’s sleeve. He yanks him in, knocking them together like bodies on an overcrowded train. “Ya have a very esteemed guest here, Samu. Don’t show yer piggishness. He’ll never return.”

Kiyoomi shrugs off Miya’s hand, and dips his head in greeting. “I like you better,” he states, loud enough for Osamu to grin as Miya gasps like a jilted concubine. “Less bleached braincells.” 

Osamu snorts. “Or the lack thereof. Happy birthday.” 

“Or the lack thereof,” Kiyoomi agrees. “Thank you.”

“Hey!” Miya says indignantly. 

Kiyoomi ignores him and beelines to a table in the corner, his table, and Miya follows, still cursing them out colourfully. There’s a little bamboo shoot inside a vase on the table, much taller than it was six months ago. Or maybe it’s a different one entirely.

Once seated, Kiyoomi tugs his mask down under his chin, still smiling. Miya shuts his still-running mouth almost instantly. 

Not that the peace lasts for long. “I should ask for a family discount,” he muses.

Kiyoomi makes a face. “I don’t think he’d give you any.”

Miya nods emphatically. “I know, isn’t he such a bitch?” 

The look Kiyoomi gives him only makes him laugh. 

A sigh. “I wish Power Rangers existed.” 

“I’ve forgotten how they worked,” Kiyoomi says, frowning. “Weren’t there these transformer things?” 

“I think so.” One-shouldered shrug. “I’ve forgotten too.” 

“What a tragic pair we make,” Kiyoomi says drily. “We’re taking this shit to-go, right?” 

“What?” Miya yelps, far too quickly. “No, no, Omi, what’re ya talkin’ about? We’re eatin’ here. And then ya can go home, don’t worry.” 

Kiyoomi squints suspiciously. “Why?” 

“Maybe I just wanna spend time with ya,” Miya replies shamelessly. “Ever thought of that? Oh wait, ya thought I didn’t know yer damn birthday; why’d I ever want to spend time with ya, ‘s that it?” 

“Let that go already,” Kiyoomi groans. “I never said that.” 

“It was implied!” 

“As if you’d understand implications if they slapped you in the face,” Kiyoomi sniffs. 

Miya puts his chin on the heel of his hand and smiles. The one from the gym. Dimpled, all in the eyes. “I don’t think I’m the one missing implications here, Omi.” 

Kiyoomi’s brain short-circuits. 

That—was flirting, right? Right? 

Was it? 

Osamu reappears, entirely oblivious to Kiyoomi’s inner crisis. Miya immediately starts whining for that discount. 

“Ya say I’m goin’ outta business then try to exploit me,” Osamu replies, disgusted. 

For a time, Kiyoomi had thought of him as less dramatic than Miya, but no, all this time has taught him that they’re both mostly the fucking same. Osamu’s just quieter about his pettiness. Miya had told him about the time he painted his toes all colours of the rainbow to piss off their mother after a fight, and Kiyoomi’s never looked at his soft-spoken half the same. 

The rainbow wasn’t the problem, Miya’d giggled, a hand on his face, or even the damn toes. It was how streakily he’d applied it. 

Above Kiyoomi’s head, the fight wraps up with Miya promising never to buy anything from this restaurant ever again. Osamu says Good riddance and spins on his heel.

Some very emphatic eyebrow-wiggling. “Can ya see how much he hates me?” 

“Oh yes,” agrees Kiyoomi, digging in. “I saw his evil rat-grey eyes. You don’t have much time left. Give me his number so I can help.”

An affronted huff. Silence. Blissful silence. 

But then: “My little sugarplum,” Miya giggles suddenly. 

“What?” Kiyoomi says, mildly disturbed. 

“No, I’m just—thinkin’,” he answers in a reedy voice, “about someone lookin’ at ya and yer plums and thinking, oh, sugarplum.” 

“You should think less,” Kiyoomi says with abject disgust. “A lot less. You should breathe even lesser. Never breed, Miya. The world doesn’t need that.” 

Miya laughs harder, either at Kiyoomi’s barbs or more of his own deranged thoughts. “Wait, no, ya’d be my little sour plum,” he chokes, and it’s the latter, then. 

“...Pickled plum,” Kiyoomi mumbles before he can help it.

Miya does a double-take. “What?” 

Heat shoots right down to Kiyoomi’s fingertips. “What?” he snaps, mortified. “I didn’t say anything.” 

“No, ya said pickled plum.” The absolute impish glee in Miya’s voice gets more pronounced as he continues, “Omi, ya wanna be my little pickled plum?”

“Shut the fuck up.” 

“No,” Miya continues, still grinning wretchedly, “no, Omi, I’d take good care of ya. I’d put’cha right in the old honey jar. I’d use ya to make special crumble for Onigiri Miya ‘n’ yer spiteful little soul could rejoice in givin’ half the voting population cavities.” 

“Are your—wires crossed? Were you dropped on your head as a child?” 

“I was loved a little too hard,” is what he answers with. “Got away with too much.” 

I will let you get away with anything too, is what sixteen-year-old Kiyoomi would have said. Sixteen-year-old Atsumu would have dropped his heart onto the floor and watched it shatter, he’s sure. Or maybe not. No, maybe they could’ve grown together, started something they’d later regret, then even later think fondly about. Perpendiculars.

Something of an unhappened future, past flashes through Kiyoomi’s head. Nothing of it shows on his face. 

“What,” he says instead, raising his eyebrows, “like I’m letting you troupe of monkeys get away with your surprise birthday party?” 

It’s comical, how quickly Miya’s face falls.

He puts his head in his hands, moaning, “Ya weren’t fuckin’ s’pposed to know. Drat ya. Fuckin’ shit balls. Wan-san’s gonna piss on my corpse.” 

“He isn’t that uncivilised.” Kiyoomi puts his chin on the backs of his fingers. “How the fuck did you think you could keep this from me?” 

Miya peeks at him from between the gaps in his fingers. “Are ya mad? Don’t be mad, Omi-omi, we love ya so. I mean, if ya are mad then we’ll make it up to ya tenfold, I didn’t want to say that ya shouldn’t be mad just ‘cause ya know we meant well—”

“Shut up, Miya,” he says, and is disgusted at how fond he sounds. “I’m not mad.”

Miya’s entire face re-emerges. “Thank God.” 

Kiyoomi fidgets with the salt shaker. “I just never had this much excitement for it, you know? Just another day in the year. It’ll come again next year and soon enough I’ll just die.”

“Don’t say that,” Miya snaps. “That’s no way to talk about my little pickled plum.”

“Will you stop?” 

“Never,” he grins. “Ya have us now, Omi. None of us are normal about birthdays. Ya should’ve seen mine ‘n’ Samu’s back when we were kids. We went ‘round the neighbourhood and invited everyone without telling our poor mother. She was so unprepared that we had to have somethin’ of a tea party out in the backyard, and she couldn’t even make minced meat outta us ‘cause it was our birthday and there were no scoldings on birthdays.” 

I have you now? 

Kiyoomi shakes his head. “That’s so stupid.” 

Miya grins. “Ah, is it? Seems sensible to me. Never mind, Omi. When ya open the door, have the decency to act a little surprised, OK?” 

+

Kiyoomi does, in fact, have the decency to do so, a twenty-five minute walk and six flights of stairs later. (The elevator still doesn’t work.) The wide-eyed look on his face isn’t even all manufactured. He doesn’t know what he’d been expecting, but it hadn’t been this. 

This being all the lights turned off, exactly as Kiyoomi had left them. This being most of his teammates hiding in the dark like the world’s worst hide-and-seek players, Hinata peeking from behind the curtains like he’s confused as to why the seeker hasn’t found him yet, the thought of being forgotten never crossing his mind. 

So Kiyoomi finds him. Tugs the curtain back and lets Hinata’s somehow bellowing grin settle into his brittle bones. 

“Happy birthday, again! And again! And again! Don’t you think we’re going to spend so many years together?” he says with all that thoughtless care in his eyes. 

“Yes,” Kiyoomi finds himself saying. “I’m stuck with you people, aren’t I?” 

Miya switches on the lights. From there, the people pop out like Whac-a-Moles. Show him the garishly-wrapped boxes they’ve dragged along for him, then make a precarious Jenga-like tower beside the fridge with them. Disperse like dust from a storm, gather together again with gravity. 

“I hate all of you,” Kiyoomi lies. 

Inunaki bounds out of Kiyoomi’s own kitchen with a cake as big as his head. Someone—Bokuto, probably—has painstakingly lit up twenty-four candles on a separate melamine plate because Kiyoomi would rather be lobotomised than stuff candlewax into cream. He’s never told them this. They just knew. 

He laughs, head in his hands. He can’t help it. Who the fuck would light twenty-four candles, carefully let them drip wax, then stick all of them upright? For anyone? 

“Come on, Sakusa-kun,” Adriah smiles. “Stop having a crisis. Cut that damn cake.”

Kiyoomi cuts the damn cake. It’s butterscotch, because everyone likes butterscotch, Omi, what? 

It’s only downhill from there. 

Someone locks the door. No fucking escape now. There are pink and red paper hearts strung up over the bathroom door, and Kiyoomi doesn’t want to know why. Sticky note on the mirror, and Meian’s calm, adult chicken scratch: If you’re mad about this then I offer my sincerest apologies. Can’t offer much else. Ask Atsumu-kun for compensation. You know he’d do anything. 

Kiyoomi washes his face, slaps his cheeks for good measure. He tilts his head, getting a clear view of Miya standing on a chair and stacking plastic cups on Bokuto’s rock-hard, spiky head. 

You know he’d do anything, indeed. 

Kiyoomi disperses into the dust as well, so to speak. Actually, he doesn’t so much disperse as he does slither in. Someone’s switched the lights back off and thrown open all the windows, twilight shadows dancing on the walls. Twenty-four entire candles are enough light for a small living room, who’d have thought? 

Bokuto knocks over Inunaki’s house of cards and so Inunaki cranes his head and bites him full on the chin. Hinata cheerfully downs… something from the hip flask Inunaki gave him to ‘complete the mobster look’. Meian is, predictably, Facetiming his wife and daughter, showing off Kiyoomi’s fridge magnets. Disgusting.

Miya flounces over, seemingly done torturing Solo cups. “Why are ya wallflowerin’ at yer own party?” 

“I can see you all from over here,” Kiyoomi replies. “Except Barnes. Where is Barnes. Oh no.”  

“By the Hanoi Tower.” Miya smiles wide and loopy. “Lookin’ ‘s all right and all, but won’t’cha join us?” 

Kiyoomi doesn’t… own any Towers of Hanoi. He frankly doesn’t want to ask. “I’ve joined you,” he says. “I’ve joined you. Can’t you see?” 

Miya hums thoughtfully. “And do ya think this is enough? Stayin’ on the sidelines?” 

“It’s enough for me,” says Kiyoomi, turning to look at Miya, a tick in his eyebrows. 

Miya looks and looks and looks. “Maybe so. I can stay on the sidelines with ya. But…”

“It won’t be enough for you,” Kiyoomi surmises. Stone sinking. Lili lili birdbath. “Not for long.” 

“It would,” Miya says immediately, earnestly. “It would be more than. But ya gotta understand, Omi, sidelines run from me. They’re shit-scared, ya see. If I stay, wallflowerin’ time’s over. And I don’t want—” 

He cuts himself off. His face pinches into something unfamiliar, and he doesn’t continue. 

Kiyoomi leans his head back against the wall, shoulders slumping. Don’t want— what? You to regret this? You to resent me? 

“I think you’re overestimating yourself a little,” he replies, shuffling the tiniest bit closer. “The sidelines love me. Even a horrid face like yours couldn’t scare them away. I’d only be where I want to be, Miya, what do you take me for?” 

He watches the words land. Like rovers on unfamiliar terrain. Paper airplanes on baking asphalt. A sailor taking the long way home. Watches, as something lights up in Miya’s eyes, something golden. 

I had to be there to be loved, Kiyoomi thinks. I have to be here to be loved. But you don’t. Why don’t you? 

I have been here for years and years. 

“Don’t say the wrong thing,” Kiyoomi warns, even as he burns up inside. He’s said far too much. He’s given far too much, hasn’t he? Exult o shores, and ring o bells. Oh God, how did the rest go? How did he forget? 

“If I did,” Miya hedges, “would ya forgive me?” 

Yes. A thousand times over. “I won’t let you get away with anything, if that’s what you’re asking.” 

Miya— smiles. Wide enough to eat the sun as a strawberry. Wide enough to gnash Kiyoomi’s heart to pulp. Wide enough for that little crooked tooth to show. 

“Come on then, angel,” he says, just between the two of them, then grabs Kiyoomi around the middle and spins him in circles all around the room, dodging furniture and cheering teammates and dubious puddles on the floor and their own flying feet, laughing. He’s so beautiful. Miya. Ridiculous fucking man. And he looks at Kiyoomi like he thinks he’s beautiful, too, with all of his odd angles and bushy eyebrows and thin lips. Not that there isn’t some sort of charm to that, if you like the graveyard keeper, haunted doll aesthetic, but—it’s Miya Atsumu. Kiyoomi can’t ever imagine someone that fucking radiant and shit with all of his own gloom and doom. 

“The fuck do you mean by ‘angel’?” Kiyoomi means to sound annoyed, but he can’t help sounding amused. “I’m not some girl you need to seduce.” 

“When did I say that?” Miya replies, entirely unoffended. “The light hit the back of yer head and frizzed out like a halo. I only said what I saw, Omi.” 

Kiyoomi’s heart— bursts. Explodes. Goes boom. And maybe he does have spares lying around somewhere, because something beats renewed. Outwardly, he rolls his eyes, but holds Miya tighter, hands migrating from their safe spots on his shoulders to crossing at the nape of his neck. Miya grins like he’s won the damn lottery, and right, right. They’re not sixteen anymore. 

“Now, see, I can’t help it if ya look like an angel. Yer personality though… tch.” 

Kiyoomi makes a face. “You don’t get to talk to me about personalities, whore.” 

Miya laughs, looking properly taken off-guard for once. “Yer a weird little guy, aren’t’cha?” 

“You would burn in a church. Agonisingly.” 

Miya puts his thumbs against any soft skin he finds, and digs. “So would you.” 

Kiyoomi can’t quite help it when his lips part in a little gasp, sticky with something sweet and bitter. He’s living in a fucking cliché now, apparently, because does the world really go silent and buzz around them? Does it narrow down to the width of Miya’s shoulders and his own elbows? Miya’s eyes drop to his mouth, beetle-moons. Satellites from another planet bespelled to orbit his pupils now, as Kiyoomi somehow lurches closer and—

Barnes trips on the wannabe Jenga tower and hits the floor with all the embarrassed urgency of an unfortunate office building. Shouts erupt all around. Bokuto’s thunderclap laughter. 

Did I raise you to be careless? 

Kiyoomi slowly, steadily leans back, tucking his unruly hair behind his ear with shaking hands. Miya closes his eyes for a second, and when he opens them again, there’s a half-smile on his face, equal parts irritated and fond. 

“Ya think he broke somethin’?” 

Kiyoomi lets Miya settle closer into his side, like two peas re-sealing themselves inside a pod. “The floor would have cracked with him.” 

Miya snorts, ungraceful and ugly. Completely piggish. Kiyoomi wants to hear it a hundred million more times, if only for the way it makes his own lips twitch. 

I will let you get away with anything too, he would have said. For now, he lets the candles burn to nothing, and knows that he does it with someone, with Miya.

This silence is important too. The first of the many silences of the fledgling world learning to dance between their bodies. 

+

Miya picks up on the first damn ring. Jobless ass. 

“What can I do for ya?” he says cheerfully. “See? That’s my customer service voice for when I blow it ‘n’ don’t have a degree to fall back on. Oh, whatever happened to Miya Atsumu, such a promisin’ boy? Heard he works in 7-Eleven now.” 

“Miya, what the fuck?” Kiyoomi says, tucking his phone between his ear and shoulder. “Forget it. How quickly can you get here. I’m not asking.”

“What happened?” Miya asks, and the genuine worry in his voice really would’ve given Kiyoomi butterflies if he weren’t trying to sink into the floor. 

“The rice exploded.” 

“The what?” 

“The rice exploded. It’s on the ceiling.” 

“You—” Rustling. A thud. A compound swear Kiyoomi hasn’t heard since high school. “Fuck, I stubbed my toe. This is all yer fault. What do ya expect me to do about the rice on yer ceiling?” 

“Fucking shut up.” He runs a hand down his face. “Shut up and get over here. This isn’t very customer service of you.” 

“Shit, yer right. Hold on, I’m comin’.” 

Kiyoomi waits at ground zero for half an hour. He gingerly picks up the lid of the pressure cooker, blown out into the living room, and washes it clean. He watches the rice stuck on the ceiling until it gets too depressing. 

Miya doesn’t bother knocking. From outside he bellows, “LET ME IN, OMI!” 

Kiyoomi sighs, slinking over to his front door. “I’m having a horrible day,” he announces.  

“And I’m the cure-all for horrible days!” Miya grins, twirling inside. “Where’s yer ceiling?” 

“Quackery,” says Kiyoomi. He points a finger. “Quack. Nostrum.”

“Don’t badmouth me. I brought onigiri. And fruitcake.” 

Kiyoomi’s shoulders sag. “Thank you. Sorry. I don’t know what to do. I’m never so careless. I don’t know how this happened.” 

Miya gives him a warm smile, a real one. Maybe he actually is a cure. Is this what they meant by panacaea? “Hey, hey. ‘s okay. This is actually mad funny, if ya think about it. How… how the hell?” 

Kiyoomi laughs tiredly. “I don’t even know. Too much water? But that only ever makes the rice mushy, not explosive.” 

Miya shakes his head. “I’ll go wash my hands, Omi. Ya sit the fuck down. Look like yer ‘bouta keel over.” 

He sinks into a chair like he’d been waiting for someone to tell him to. Maybe he was. He doesn’t know what to do with himself. He wants to call his mother. 

“I want to call my mother,” he tells Miya. 

“Couldn’t hear ya,” Miya calls back over the rush of running water from the kitchen sink. He looks up and whistles. “Wowie, Omi. Ya weren’t lyin’.” 

“Why would I lie about this?” Kiyoomi puts his face in his hands. “I don’t know why I asked you to come. Miya. Why’d you show up? Get out. I don’t actually want you here. Go.” 

Miya considers him with narrowed eyes, two fingers digging into his chin. “I lied that day, y’know. I do understand ya. Just a li’l. And I know yer lyin’ ‘cause there’s no one else ya’d want here other than me.” 

Kiyoomi closes his eyes, curling a hand into his hair. Just to hold onto something. “I’d want her.”

Miya puts his hands on his hips, surveying the ceiling. “Who?” 

“My mother. She’d know what to do.” 

Miya shrugs. “Then call her.” 

“She’d be disappointed.” 

“What are sons better at than disappointin’?” Miya laughs. “Call yer mother if ya think it’ll help.” 

“No, Miya, you’re”—the last child a mother would be disappointed with—“not getting it. She’d be disappointed,” he repeats. Thrice for good luck. “She’d be disappointed.” 

“Then I’ll call mine,” Miya offers, walking back over to Kiyoomi, who watches as he trails a hand over the gnarled wooden cabinet absentmindedly. “She’d laugh her wheezy ol’ lungs out.” 

Kiyoomi scowls up at him. “Don’t even think about it, swine.” 

“Aw, c’mon,” Miya whines. “I’ll tell her that I fuckin’—accomplished this. Please? Pretty please?” 

“She’d never believe you,” he argues. “Your brother is a chef.” 

“Dubious term for someone who rolls rolly-polly riceballs, but sure.” Miya grins at him, plopping down cross-legged on the floor. “She’d believe it. I’ve taken credit for worse.” 

Kiyoomi sighs, propping his chin up on his palm. “The floor’s cold, Miya. There’s a couch right behind you.”  

Miya’s face twists into actual incredulity. “Darlin’, this piece of ass is Hyogo born ‘n’ raised. Has yer prissy ass ever even made a snowman?” 

Kiyoomi ignores all of that summarily. “How do we get the rice off the ceiling?” 

“Classic segue,” he mocks. “Fuck you, I hafta show okan first. Then we can just scrape it off after it dries.” 

“I didn’t call you here to have my failures paraded around,” Kiyoomi says indignantly, kicking half-heartedly at Miya’s knees. 

“But’cha called,” he sing-songs, batting at his ankle. “They’re only failures if ya look at them as failures, y’know. This ain’t a failure to me. This is the funniest shit I’ve seen in my life. By Jove, the ceilin’?” 

Kiyoomi kicks him again, gripping onto the arms of his chair for support. This time, Miya catches his ankle and starts tickling the abnormally sensitive soles of his feet without batting an eye. He keeps an iron grip even as a steadily-reddening Kiyoomi thrashes with all his might, laughing and making sounds that would make a locomotive engine proud. 

“Stop!” he gasps. “Oh my God, stop.” 

Miya, surprisingly, stops. “That was a squeak,” he says in wonder. “Ya squeaked.” 

“I’m not a fucking mouse,” Kiyoomi snaps, immediately tucking his feet under himself on the chair. “And what the fuck, Miya? Who just—just—tickles people?” 

“Miya Atsumu does,” he replies, pointing at his own shit-eating face. “Yer laughin’, though.” 

“You were tickling me! Of course I laughed!” 

Miya grins wider. Traitorously, Kiyoomi’s lips twitch up too. 

He sighs again. This is getting ridiculous. Fuck Miya and all his cure-all-ness. “Call your mother if you want to. There’s probably packet soup somewhere. I’ll just make that.” 

“I could stir-fry some vegetables,” Miya mumbles, looking at the list of contacts on his phone. “What were ya plannin’ on havin’ with the rice?” 

“You will not react,” Kiyoomi says monotonously. “You will not laugh. You won’t smile. Fuck you, don’t even breathe when I say it.” 

“That bad?” Miya grins, holding the phone up to his ear now.

Kiyoomi waits until Miya-san picks up and Miya won’t be able to answer. “Milk. I’d get hungry at night because okaa-san and otou-san were always home late. There’d be rice leftover from lunch because our little cook made good food but had no damn perception of measurement. I was six or something, so I just mixed milk and rice in a bowl with some sugar. I’ve had it whenever I feel lazy ever since.” 

Miya’s eyes widen at his words even as he crows: “Ya won’t believe what I’ve just accomplished.” 

He holds the phone out and puts it on speaker. Immediately: “What, are ya in jail? Need yer brother to bail ya out but need me to ask him?” 

“Kaa-chan,” Miya whines. “Ya know I’d for sure be the one bailin’ Samu out. Ya should see the lines on his forehead from all that scowlin’ he does at his poor employees. Anyway. Tell me, have ya seen rice?” 

“Yes, Tsumu, I’ve seen rice. I dunno if ya know, but I think there’s some fifty or so paddy fields right behind the house?” 

“Yes, yes, fine, excellent. But have ya ever seen rice on the ceilin’?” 

Silence. Then a tone beeps to show a video call request. Miya, ignoring all of Kiyoomi’s frantic gesturing, accepts. 

“What have ya done?” Miya-san says, clearer now. Exasperation like summer’s day, bright. 

Miya grins and walks into the kitchen, showing his mother the newly-textured ceiling. “Look,” he says. “Ain’t it marvellous? Like a modern art piece.” 

“The fuck,” she says, with feeling. “How have ya done this?”

“What can I say, I’m a miracle.” 

“That ain’t yer ceiling, boy,” she says, and Kiyoomi knees Miya in the back. “Where are ya?”

Miya, the idiot, glances back at Kiyoomi while still in frame. “The old age’s gettin’ to ya, woman. This is my ceiling.” 

“Don’t insult me. Whose poor kitchen are ya playin’ for laughs?”

“Pow-pow,” Miya says into the speaker. “Kch-skirk. Click-clack. Bad—connection. Cutting—off.” Then he mutes himself. “Should I tell her?” 

“You animal,” Kiyoomi says, aghast. 

“I didn’t think she’d know what my ceiling looked like!” 

“What the fuck kinda excuse is that?!” 

“Hello? Why can’t I hear ya?” 

Kiyoomi clicks his tongue and in a fit of madness, reaches over and unmutes the call. He takes Miya’s wrist and tugs himself into frame, squeezing in with Miya. 

“Hi,” he says. “I’m sorry. Your son didn’t get rice on the ceiling. It was me.” 

Miya looks bamboozled, which doesn’t actually happen all that often. “Omi—” 

Miya-san laughs, crackly through the shitty speakers on Miya’s phone from the time he dropped it and had to get the motherboard fixed except they fucked up his speakers in the process. Kiyoomi quite reasonably told him to sue, but when does Miya ever listen to reason, or Kiyoomi. “Hi to ya too,” she says warmly. “That’s quite the darn achievement, honey.” 

Kiyoomi waits for it. The fizzle in his heart, the one he still isn’t entirely sure isn’t just liver damage or something. The stupid fucking winged things, because maybe if it was just the pet names, he could have gone to therapy or something and moved on with his life. 

Nothing happens. Not that Kiyoomi wanted to get butterflies because of Miya Atsumu’s mother all that much, but the alternative is that oh God, it really isn’t a pet name thing, it’s a Miya Atsumu thing. 

Sure, sure, he’s known this for some time, but right now, he feels like Buddha under that damn peepal tree. Enlightened. The cause of suffering is desire. To end suffering, one must end desire. To end desire, one must follow the eight-fold path. Or was it ten-fold? Doesn’t fucking matter, actually. Kiyoomi’s now hyper-aware of the fact that this is the first time he’s talking to Miya’s mother, the mother-in-law of his clandestine dreams, and he’s just told her that he can’t cook rice. That he can, but even this so very mild-tempered grain puffs up and explodes on him. “I’m,” Kiyoomi says, “so sorry.” 

Miya does nothing. Only continues to hold the phone up. 

She laughs again. “What’re ya sorry for? I was bored anyway.” 

Tell me I’m all right, he wants to say. Please tell me I’m all right.

Maybe he should go to therapy regardless of his cognition’s general consensus on pet names. Motoya sure seems to think so. Your inner child wound things, he’d said once, gesturing broadly, and Kiyoomi’s never heard it put so lucidly nor so dishearteningly. 

“Tell me, Kiyoomi-kun,” she continues, “how’re ya plannin’ to get that off?” 

Why does she know his name? Why is she using his first name? Does Miya talk about him? What does he say? Why did Miya choose now of all times to shut the fuck up? 

Kiyoomi unsticks his throat from itself. “Well, Miya said we could just scrape it off.” 

“Yeah,” she nods. “That’d work. Ugh, ya poor boys. Apartment buildings ‘n’ their ten square feet flats with three-foot ceilings. Ya’d never manage to get rice on the ceilin’ here.” 

“That’s ‘cause we have no ceilin’,” Miya butts in, sounding like they’ve had this conversation a million times. “How many times do I have to tell ya to get one installed?” 

“But then ya wouldn’t hear the rain on the tin,” she argues, and it must be a good argument, because Miya’s face softens immediately. In a way Kiyoomi’s never seen before, not anything half as longing. “Come visit soon. And Kiyoomi, make sure to tag along with this fool, yeah?” 

“Okay,” Kiyoomi chokes out, and then his airways clear. “I will.”

Miya says something more to her, softer. Kiyoomi looks away, back up at the ceiling. He feels better. Calmer, for one thing. 

“Come on,” he says, lighter too. “Get a chair. We’re scraping this shit off.” 

Miya very magnanimously sacrifices his transit pass in scraping the rice off. Later, Kiyoomi won’t be able to tell you how, but they get it done. He just doesn’t remember any of it, try as he might. He thinks, alone in the kitchen a few weeks later, that there was a lot of laughing. There always seemed to be, whenever Miya was involved. 

“My biceps have biceps of their own now,” Miya grunts in the present, collapsing against the doorframe. “Omi, I ain’t sweepin’ that shit, I’m begging. I’ll even get’cha the broom and the dustpan. I can’t do it.” 

Kiyoomi makes a face at him. “As if I’d trust you to do a good job of it anyway.” 

Miya laughs, then sets about finding Kiyoomi’s collection of brooms. He finds it eventually, if his loud snort is anything to go by. He reappears, giving him one with a bow and a flourish. 

“Tell me about the milk and rice,” says Miya, wordlessly picking up the discarded pressure cooker and holding it under the running tap. 

Normally, Kiyoomi’s hackles would rise. But fucking hell, he’s just scraped rice off the ceiling with this moron, and that’s gotta count for something. For many, many somethings. “It’s just milk and rice,” he shrugs. “It’s best to cook the rice in a saucepan so that it isn’t sticky, but mine still smells like turmeric from that one time so I used the cooker. Oh, Miya, you really don’t have to wash it. I’ll deal with it tomorrow.” 

Normally, Miya would go on and on about debts and favours and dashin’ gallantry, but—rice-scraping syndrome. He’s not-sixteen-year-old roadkill too. “Nonsense,” he says. 

Kiyoomi snorts, sweeping all of the flakes into the dustpan. “Sweeping and washing. Like little maids. Who would’ve thought?” 

Miya smiles. “Ya think sixteen-year-old you would’a cried if he saw us now?” 

“Yes,” he nods. “And then he’d think that what the hell, why did the world hate him so much?” 

“The fuck does ‘the world’ matter anway,” Miya says airily. “I’m not takin’ offence just this once.”

“Many thanks,” Kiyoomi responds drily. “Really, what do you matter, anyway?”

Worryingly, Miya only smiles, and says nothing. 

Once their sweeping and washing is done, they migrate to the couch. Miya hits the cushions with an oof and a warbled expression of relief. Kiyoomi elects to sit in a much more dignified manner, thank you very much. (He sprawls.) 

Miya’s head lolls back against the back of the couch. Kiyoomi fights not to stare at the ribbed column of his neck. “What time ‘s it, Omi?” 

He glances at the clock on the wall, and startles. “Oh. It’s 10 p.m.” 

“Damn. Get take-out or somethin’. I’m beat.” 

Kiyoomi groans, squeezing his eyes shut. His back aches all over. “Shut up for once in your damn life, Miya, I’m not asking.” 

“Yer beggin’?” Miya offers, a tad hopefully. 

Kiyoomi cracks open his eyes just to glare. “No. Stop talking. Get out, actually.” 

Miya pouts. “No,” he echoes. “Like hell I’m gettin’ up any time soon.” 

Kiyoomi snorts, tucking his knees in a little more presentably when they feel less jammed. Jesus. He’s an athlete, this shouldn’t be happening to him. He feels very wronged, actually. If only there were someone upstairs to report these petty grievances to. 

He’s grumbling about this in his head when Miya curls up like a foetus and lays his head in Kiyoomi’s lap. He grumbles incoherently into Kiyoomi’s knees, pillowing his cheek on the back of his hand, palm pressed to Kiyoomi’s worn sweatpants. 

Holy shit. Did Kiyoomi slip off the chair while cleaning the ceiling and die? Is he dead? 

“Yer so bony,” Miya complains. Then reconsiders, apparently. “Nah, my own luscious thighs’ve just skewed my standards.”

Miya Atsumu? Is complaining? That Sakusa Kiyoomi? Is bony? 

Is this a bad porno of a purgatory Kiyoomi’s died into? Is this his eternity? 

“I’ll throw you to the floor,” he warns. “Your head will crack open and then you’ll die.” 

“And ya’d go to jail for negligence or some shit,” Miya dismisses, tucking both hands underneath his cheek now. Kiyoomi sleeps on his back like a corpse. He’s never seen someone of this size curled up into something so small. Something juvenile and protective raises its head up inside him. Against his better judgement, he smooths a hand down Miya’s side and back up again, like the tide to a moon of want. To many moons of want. Miya shivers in contentment. “Keep doin’ that and I’ll fall asleep.”

“Don’t you dare,” Kiyoomi frowns, but doesn’t stop. 

Miya grumbles something inaudible again, and then—horror of horrors—rolls over. Rolls over. Rolls over. Facing Kiyoomi. He looks up, glaring. “Don’t do that then. ‘Don’t you dare’, he says.” 

“You’re”—Kiyoomi swallows—“a little close, aren’t you?” 

Miya makes an innocent face, all wide eyes and raised eyebrows. “Want me to move?” 

Kiyoomi narrows his eyes down at him. Miya laughs loudly, and does not move. Instead, he wraps his arms around Kiyoomi’s stomach and settles there like silt along a river. 

“Tell me, Omi,” and his voice lightens to the curve of his smile, “how long’ve ya been in love with me?” 

“You showed up to my college with my name on your back,” Kiyoomi mutters helplessly. The nose writing nonsense along his hipbone pauses, and the face attached to it smiles. “Don’t fucking smile. How long have you been in love with me, you crackhead?” 

“A long time,” Miya says vaguely, smiling still. “Longer than ya, at any rate.” 

Kiyoomi scowls, gently digging his knuckles down into Miya’s temple. “No the fuck you haven’t.” 

Miya laughs, something soft and warm around the edges. The intimacy of it scalds Kiyoomi’s skin, and he isn’t sure what he’s doing anymore. “Yes the fuck I have,” he argues. 

He scratches Miya’s dark undercut with his blunt nails, back and forth, back and forth. Up and down, down and up. “Then tell me.” 

“It didn’t happen in a day, y’know. It took time. I didn’t wake up one day and decide I was in love with ya. That’s not what happened.” 

“Tell me,” Kiyoomi repeats. “Please.” 

Miya looks at him. Settles. “College too,” he answers. “I got held up in traffic ‘n’ ya’d fallen asleep on yer desk. I wasn’t even mad about the three hours it took to get there. I put ya in bed and tucked ya in and read a book o’ yers ‘til ya woke up.” 

“I had this horrid viva voce the next day,” Kiyoomi remembers. “English. I was exhausted.”

Miya nods. “Then ya woke up, and glared at me, and it hit me like a lightbulb smashin’ over my head.”

Kiyoomi doesn’t say anything for a long while. “We wasted a lot of time, didn’t we?” 

“Some days I wanted to shout it off the rooftops. Ya don’t even know, Omi.” 

“And I thought I’d take you to the grave,” Kiyoomi whispers. “That you’d never know.” 

Miya wrinkles his nose. “Yer a little dumb, aren’t’cha?” 

“Who are you calling dumb, Mr. Took The Three-Hour Train Back and Forth To See Me?” 

“I’ve been called an idiot over ya far too many times, darlin’,” Miya says, a little furrow to his brow that Kiyoomi wants to kiss away. “Knowin’ ya, ya never told anybody.” 

“Do not fucking call me— Why are you making a face?”

“I ain’t makin’ any face.” 

“Yes, you are.”  

The face grows even more. “Hallucinations are serious business, Omi.”

“You’re smiling,” Kiyoomi says furiously. “Stop that.” 

“I can’t help it,” Miya snaps, flustered himself now. Ridiculous. “Yer blushing.” 

Kiyoomi’s hands fly to his warm face. “I’m not a teenager, I don’t blush,” he spits out. 

“Yer so cute,” Miya laughs. “It’s ridiculous.” 

“Which of your two eyeballs saw me being cute?” he hisses. 

“See?” Miya flaps a hand at his face. “Who just says cute shit like that?” 

Kiyoomi smiles, feeling the force of it tug back his heavy-set eyes. It makes him look younger, like a graveyard keeper with good skin. “Go away,” he says, and shoves Miya’s face away by the palm.

+

It becomes something of a thing. 

Or, well. It was already a thing. Possibly always had been. Doesn’t matter. Miya just—comes over sometimes. Cooks or something. Lays his head down on Kiyoomi’s shoulder with the cable telly on mute. Sometimes, only the least and most of times, stays, one leg falling off the couch and snoring when Kiyoomi finds him in the pink, Venus-lit mornings. 

Come with me, Kiyoomi practises saying in the mirror. Come with me. Wear my clothes and sleep in my bed. You don’t have to do anything else. Can you do that? Will you do that? 

Not that he ever actually says anything of the sort like some common hussy. He just… tosses his favourite grey comforter at Miya’s head, and leaves his bedroom door cracked open. Just a little. 

It’s a tad strange. Like it probably should be, for people and stories as convoluted as theirs. The wrongness keeps their fruits fresh. Spoils all their memories of this time with its tenderness—the extra hand sanitisers, the spoken Did you eats and asked Did you think of mes and smiled I thought of yous and unspoken I hope you thought of mes, the sight of Miya standing in the kitchen, maroon shirt curving over his bent neck, peeling apples only for Kiyoomi. 

“Why do ya have four toothbrushes?” Miya asks one such halcyon day, sounding genuinely perturbed. “The fuck else are ya brushin’?” 

Kiyoomi, washing rice, pauses. “Oh,” he laughs. “Didn’t I tell you?” 

A pause for dramatic effect. “No?”

“I went over to Motoya’s for a few days but forgot my toothbrush so I went out to buy one. When I came home I found out that he’d also gone and bought two whole toothbrushes for me. I went with zero and came back with three. So. Four.” 

“Wow,” Miya says, shaking his head. “Yer actually a disaster, aren’t’cha?” 

“Wasn’t the rice incident enough to tell you that?” Kiyoomi snorts. 

“Speakin’ of,” Miya says with fake trepidation, “are ya sure ya’ll manage with that? Should I help?”

“Fuck off,” he snaps back. “You mess up rice once and suddenly it’s all you’ve ever done.” 

Kiyoomi can tell without looking that Miya raises his hands. “To be fair, baby, it did hit the ceiling.” 

Kiyoomi turns around to hiss at him. “What part of fuck off do you not understand?” 

“All right, all right, fucking off,” Miya laughs, then proceeds to go and mooch off Kiyoomi’s Netflix account. 

Kiyoomi joins him thirty minutes later with two bowls of milk and rice in his hands, and Miya only yawns once through the documentary about Chinese calligraphy brushes that he makes him watch. Increasingly, he looks at Kiyoomi, and only glances sometimes at the TV. 

He rubs at his chin self-consciously. “What are you looking at?” 

Miya swallows before answering. “This time every year,” he says, “all of okan’s flowers bloom. I’m imaginin’ ya beside them.” 

Kiyoomi’s face flames. “Jerk.” 

Miya pouts. “I compliment ya and ya call me a jerk. How is this done, Omi?”

“Do you ever shut up?” 

“Make me,” Miya grins. 

Kiyoomi wrinkles his nose. “Don’t talk with your mouth full.”

Miya rolls his eyes, but doesn’t stop looking. 

When the documentary is long over and they’re done eating, Miya wordlessly takes Kiyoomi’s bowl and spoon and washes them with his own, carefully placing the spoons where they should be and the bowls upside down on the drying rack over the basin. Kiyoomi watches him with his chin hooked over the back of the couch, something in him screaming with longing. 

“Come back,” he says dolefully. Then: “Don’t just wipe your hands on your pants, the fuck.”

“But ya said come back all sad ‘n’ shit,” Miya protests. “Can’t ever win with ya.” 

Kiyoomi doesn’t reply, only watches Miya dutifully dry his hands on the towel hanging over the sink. Miya sits down on the couch and Kiyoomi immediately curls around him, laying his head on his shoulder. 

“Omi?” Miya says uncertainly, putting his arm around Kiyoomi anyway. How does he always seem to know exactly what he wants? When to pull away, when to draw closer? It’s ridiculous. “What happened?” 

Kiyoomi shakes his head, sighing. “It’s stupid.”

“That tickles,” Miya says, jerking. “Sorry. Jesus. It’s not stupid if it makes ya cling to me like this. I thought ya’d rather die.” 

Kiyoomi glares, makes to push off. “Oh, really? Want me to stop clinging? I would rather die—” 

Miya’s other arm comes up around him as well, trapping him in place. Kiyoomi settles back down, flattens into Miya’s side like a shadow. 

“I’m sorry,” Miya says again. “What is it, Omi? What’s botherin’ ya?”  

“I told you,” Kiyoomi says stubbornly. “It’s stupid.” 

Miya shakes him a little. Like sand in an hourglass. “And I told’ja that it’s not, if it’s makin’ ya this sad.” 

“I just—” Kiyoomi sighs. “I miss my mother. It’s irrational.” 

Confusion colours Miya’s voice. “Call her, then.” 

Kiyoomi burrows further into Miya’s shoulder so that there’s no chance of his face being seen. “We… The last time we talked, we fought.”

“And how long ago was that?” 

“Six months ago,” he whispers.

Miya’s arms tighten. “And is that it? One fight ‘n’ ya close the book, over and done with? Was it something ya can’t come back from?”

“It was… a long time coming, probably. I said things I shouldn’t have. Didn’t mean either. Questioned things that weren’t in my place to question. She said a lot, too, I’d never seen her this angry.” 

Miya presses a lingering kiss to the top of Kiyoomi’s ear. “Then is that it? Won’t ya forgive each other?” 

Kiyoomi hates how simple it sounds, laid out like that. Trust Miya to get to the heart of things and shoot it dead. “It isn’t that simple,” he says, shaking his head. “I don’t even know how to start telling her what I actually meant.” 

“Ya start by callin’ her,” Miya replies softly. “Ya say yer piece and let her know. What’s next is out of yer hands.” 

“That’s easy for you to say,” Kiyoomi says snippily. “Look how easygoing Miya-san is.”

He regrets the words the second they’re out of his mouth. But Miya doesn’t seem to mind. He only hums. “Yes, but Samu ain’t. Ya should’a seen the dinners after he told me he was quittin’ volleyball. Didn’t take us six months, but it felt like it. It felt like six hundred years.” 

“Imagine how I feel,” says Kiyoomi. He tentatively holds Miya back, wrapping tired arms around his waist. “We did things wrong from the start, I think. I wasn’t wrong to feel wronged, I was wrong in the way I went about addressing it.” 

“Then set it right,” Miya says simply. “Omi, are ya goin’ to spend the rest of yer life not talkin’ to yer mother? Is that really what ya want?” 

“Most times,” Kiyoomi confesses around the bird in his throat, “I don’t even have the time to think about her.” 

“Okay,” Miya says, knocking their temples together. Kiyoomi wonders which two humans first decided to hold each other like this, decided that face to face wasn’t enough, no, they needed to be skin to skin. Fingertip to fingertip. How did they bear it? This bareness? “But yer here now, aren’t you? Thinkin’ of her. It’s makin’ ya sad, Omi. Ya know I can’t see ya sad.” 

Kiyoomi wrinkles his nose so that Miya knows he’s joking. “Typical of you. Make it all about you, go on.” 

“It doesn’t matter,” Miya ploughs on, relentless. “How far ya go or how little ya remember. You will always be sad, Omi. It won’t go away. If there’s a chance to make it better, won’t’cha take it?” 

“And what if it only makes it worse?” 

“Then at least ya know that.” 

“Will you hold me?” 

“Yes,” Miya says unhesitantly. 

Some part of Kiyoomi will always expect to be laughed off. Is this—God, is he un-fixable? Is that what all these years of tiptoeing have led to? The realisation that maybe something inside him has been wrong all along? 

“Is this the part where I thank you,” he asks instead of voicing all this, “or the part where I say something back? I really don’t know.”  

Miya smiles. “This is the part where yer the star. Every part is yer part, sour little plum. I’m just the longest-runnin’ gag. Hey, that’s plenty romantic. Here, say, If my life were a sitcom, ya’d be the longest-running joke.”

Kiyoomi laughs because he’s tired of pretending he doesn’t find Miya funny. He’s grown used to laughing at himself, alone with his textbooks and highlighters and pity. So to come across someone so dedicated towards the absurd task of making him laugh through this horrible sorrow is—unbearable. He doesn’t even get it. He’s… him, and Miya’s Miya, so why—?

(Kiyoomi’s seen the list on his phone. Not that he meant to snoop. It’s just that Miya left it unlocked in his hands and the notes app was right there and maybe Kiyoomi wanted to know every single thing about him and maybe he realised he’d bitten off more than he could chew when the first file he opened said made him laugh 58 times ths week i could figjt god instead of something sane like dentist tmr.Then below this stunningly grammatical sentence: 51. its going to get to my head.Kiyoomi scrolled and scrolled and scrolled until that sakusa kids eyes fold up when he smiles, dated 2012, copied and pasted from an old phone.) 

“If my life were a sitcom, you’d be a part of the main cast with me,” he says. 

Miya’s smile gets gentler, and this. This is the most longing Kiyoomi’s ever seen on a face, not pictured even in the mirror at too-little-too-late o’ clock. “Do ya remember bein’ fifteen, Omi?” 

I could never forget. “Yes.” 

Miya’s hands, the ones linked loosely together at Kiyoomi’s shoulder, fall. Curl instead around his waist like old poems. “Do ya remember bein’ fifteen and that terrible realisation that yer mother wasn’t gettin’ younger?” 

Kiyoomi understands now, why Miya had shifted to hold him steadier. There’s no dropping ship and leaving after this. There’s no extricating Miya from the spaces between the bones of his spine now. “Fuck off,” he says wetly. 

“Not just that,” he continues ruthlessly, “she was gettin’ older ‘n’ greyer ‘n’ frailer? Call yer mother, Omi. ‘s all right. Yer all right. I’ll hold ya.”  

“Do you remember,” Kiyoomi asks instead, “when you’d asked me if I thought it’d be nice being understood?” 

“Yes,” Miya replies, taking the change in his world-long stride. “I’d asked ya for water. I remember.”

Kiyoomi nods. “It’s not that there’s nothing to know,” he says, the words falling out of him like stars. “It’s never been that. It’s just that after so many years of never being heard, I thought it would be better not to speak at all. Okay? Okay.”

“Yer shakin’,” says Miya. “Omi.” 

“It’s the sheer ignominy of being known,” he says drily. “...I can’t trust that she won’t just misunderstand again. I can’t trust that we won’t do what we always end up doing.” 

“What if ya don’t?” Miya insists. “‘s it enough to give up somethin’ ya only get once?” 

“If I say yes?” Kiyoomi whispers like the words are escaping criminals. 

“Then the answer is yes. I’ll always be there on the rougher days. Ya can even be the little spoon if ya want.” 

“I hate you so much,” Kiyoomi says, then firmly presses his lips to Miya’s cheek. He pushes off of him as he reaches for his phone, curling up on the other arm rest. 

The call connects. “Hello?” she says uncertainly. 

“Okaa-san,” Kiyoomi says, feeling some knot in his heart loosen and tighten rhythmically with just her voice, “I blew up rice the other day.” 

A pause. “Blew up?”

“Yeah. Right to the ceiling. Me and a teammate had to scrape it off with our transit passes.” 

“I knew this career was a mistake,” she says, but there’s a lightness to her voice. Something stilted, unsure, and Kiyoomi wonders if she’s stared at her phone and thought about what she should have said, too. “Well, other than that, are you… well? You haven’t called.”

“You haven’t either,” Kiyoomi points out, and it’s so easy. To fall back into all the accusations and anger with her. So easy to want to hurt. It scares him. Excluding his father, she’s the only one who remembers who he was as a child, and that has to count for something, right? 

It has to count for something. 

“I know,” she says, and nothing else. But then, wonder of wonders, she continues, “I didn’t think you… would like to hear from me. Given our last parting. I was angry.” 

“I didn’t,” Kiyoomi agrees unsteadily. “Want to hear from you. I was angry as well.”

Surprisingly, she laughs. It’s a wind-chime of a sound. Kiyoomi doesn’t remember ever hearing it in its true, bell-like resonance. “Look at us,” she says warmly, “saying what we mean.”

Kiyoomi smiles reflexively. Miya grins right back. “And meaning what we say. Can you teach me to make rice?” 

“Well,” she says after a pause, “your father only hired Ino-san after we discovered we were both horrible at cooking. So probably not.” 

“...Was that a joke?” 

“Don’t go sounding so surprised,” she snaps, and Kiyoomi can almost see the furrow in her brow. “Is that even a question to ask somebody? Of course I can teach you how to make rice.”

“Let’s make rice,” he agrees. “The next time I come home.”

“We’ll give your father even more grey hairs,” she says conspiratorially, and he doesn’t remember being part of any conspiracies, so he almost, nearly— cries. 

He doesn’t, but he can’t quite keep the waver from his voice. “Okay. Don’t back out on me.” 

“Kiyoomi,” she says, and he hasn’t heard his given name in so long. “Kiyoomi, we’ll talk, all right? Call me everyday. We’ll fix this.”

It stings. No, it hurts, to be told so unequivocally that it was broken. That they let it break and fester. 

“We will,” he whispers. “Do you promise?”

Some part of him expects to be called childish. To be told that there are no promises and no people to ever call your own. There is no one you can know fully, and there never will be, but—extra hand sanitisers. Sometimes, when you know someone, you know them forever. You cannot unlearn by heart. 

But no. For once, no.

“I promise,” she says, and that’s that. 

“How is otou-san?” he deflects, unsure now.

“Oh, the same old,” she replies. “He collects the magazines, you know.”

“What?” 

“Every single one. The day they come out.” 

“Then where was all this love when I needed it?” he says before he can stop himself. 

Quieter. Quieter, so that Miya doesn’t overhear. It’s futile, of course. Not eavesdropping is hard when the world is only the length of a loveseat plus the three centimetres between the side of Kiyoomi’s foot and Miya’s thigh. 

He feels Miya’s eyes land on the side of his face. The space between them fizzles out when Miya reaches over and moulds a hand around Kiyoomi’s calf, curving like a rib bone.

“It was there,” she says, quietly too. He closes his eyes. Imagines her face, her morning star face. “You always had it. You will always have it.” 

Older ‘n’ greyer ‘n’ frailer. “You have always had me too.” 

“It felt like I had you the longest,” she says. “Even when I really didn’t. I didn’t see you much, when you were growing up. And then suddenly you left.” 

“You didn’t see me much because you chose not to, okaa-san. How could you have bound me to yourself without a reason to stay?” 

Do ya want me to leave? Miya mouths. 

Kiyoomi curls a hand over the one on his calf in reply. He shakes his head for good measure. Mouths, Stay, just for the road. 

A small, frustrated sound. It’s so very easy. “I had to work, Kiyoomi, do you think everything you have came out of thin air?” 

“You,” he says weakly, always that little child pouring cold milk in rice because he couldn’t reach the stove and warm it up yet, “had a little boy waiting for you to come home, every damn night. I used to cry myself to sleep, every damn night. Would it all have burnt to the ground if you came home earlier? Would it have killed you to go to parent-teacher meetings, or, or, or—look at the drawings on the fridge? Would it have killed you to tell me you were proud of me?” 

“Kiyoomi,” she says, stricken. She sounds like she’s about to cry as well and maybe his whole world slants sideways. Parents don’t cry. Teachers don’t exist outside schools. “I didn’t know.”

“How could you have?” he whispers, when all he feels like doing is shrieking. Shrieking until this song of the shrike leaves him. Until the sorrow seeps out like smoke. 

“I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s okay,” he says automatically, reflexively horrified at the notion of a parent apologising. Miya’s rib-hand leaves his calf and reaches for his hand.

“No, Kiyoomi, I’m sorry.” 

“Okaa-san,” he says, panic rising in his throat, “will we be all right?” 

“We’ll have to be. Do you remember when I’d carve your height into the wooden door? These days, I keep seeing it in my dreams. Doing that. You smiling. Gap in your front teeth. Do you remember?” 

No. “Bits and pieces,” he lies. “We’ll have to be. We will be. We will be. I’m sorry too.” 

“I’m proud of you,” she says, desperation clanging around in her voice like pots and pans. “Kiyoomi. I’ll always be proud of you.” 

“Thank you. I don’t know what else to say. Okaa-san.” 

“We hang up,” she replies. “Then we try again tomorrow. Okay?”

“Okay,” he agrees softly. “Okay.” 

Love you, he thinks of saying, the way Miya always ends calls with his mother. 

“Bye,” he says instead. 

“Bye,” she says, and it doesn’t sound like parting at all. 

Kiyoomi lets the phone fall to the couch cushions. He puts his face in his hands, gulping down air like a bird. He roots around blindly for Miya with a hand, the other still clamped over his eyes. 

Miya finds him. Or maybe Kiyoomi finds him. Unerringly. 

Even the world stops dancing. Narrows from a loveseat to the width of Miya’s knuckles.

“Is this the part where I say I told ya so and ya hit me, or the part where I say something stupid and ya laugh at me?” 

Kiyoomi laughs before that something stupid. “The part where I get to hit you.” 

“Teammate,” Miya repeats, playful as wind. “Teammate. Is that all I am to ya, ya heartless bastard? After everythin’ I gave ya? My Rooh Afza, my scratched-up transit pass, my—” 

“Atsumu,” Kiyoomi says, because no, maybe he doesn’t want to hit Miya, not right now. 

Atsumu’s mouth clicks shut mid-rant. “Yes?” 

Kiyoomi leans over, takes his face in his hands, and kisses him. Atsumu’s breath hitches, his hands rising then freezing mid-air, poised over Kiyoomi like petals. Ribcage to heart.

“Thank you,” he whispers into parted lips. “For more than you know.” 

Atsumu’s hands splay one above another on his back, lowest rib, shoulder blade. Probing for wings. “Don’t say that,” he says, then surges up to kiss him again, again, again, until the names don’t matter. 

+

“Heart inside my heart,” Atsumu whispers into the left side of his neck. A will-o’-the-wisp’s worth of sound, as though he doesn’t quite want him to hear it. Sunders Kiyoomi’s spine, makes him feel like a bag of stars. A lucky bag of lucky stars, pulsating in lucky, broken fits and starts. Gasping. Counting out the toothy kisses and rattle breaths until— “My heart of hearts.” 

+

In Kiyoomi’s dreams, Atsumu lays his golden head down in his lap again and curls around his cross-legged knees like a child. Like a very tall child who tucks his face into the bone of his mother’s shoulder, or the meat of a soft inner thigh when he can afford it, so he can be warm. Be warm again, after the storms ravage him hollow and hanging like carcasses strung up in a butcher’s.

Gold, Kiyoomi tells him, just to make sure. He touches Atsumu’s hair, that shock of light. You are so golden. I could sink my teeth right into you. 

Atsumu— turns his head and watches the waves crash outside Kiyoomi’s bedroom window. Great big blue waves, glowing with bioluminescence like a thrall of aquatic fireflies. Lavender sky, sun small little tear drop, melting into the horizon. No shore to speak of. 

What do ya think those waves are knockin’ on? 

Us, Kiyoomi replies without hesitation. Us. Wearing us down. 

‘s almost gentle, ain’t it? All this erodin’? Atsumu turns his head the exact forty-five degrees required for him to look back up at the swan neck-dip of Kiyoomi’s chin and throat. Leaves light trails in his wake, more fireflies. Did ya hear what I didn’t say?

I heard. 

I knew ya would. 

Something corrodes. Kiyoomi’s walls aren’t this cheerful shade of sunflower. They’re a drab white.

But you’re me, he says. I’m talking to myself through my subconscious’ version of Atsumu. 

Well fuckin’ yeah, Atsumu snorts. Pathetic. But’cha wish that I could be just as stupid as ya are about me. Ya want to hear someone say that yer not alone in this desperation. 

A green wave climbs up the window and spills into the room. The walls are wrong. The photos on the wall are only impressionistic brushstrokes, two silhouettes in grey. Kiyoomi doesn’t have any photos in his bedroom. His walls are not yellow.

So, he says: Fuck off. Fuck off. 

Atsumu tuts. That’s not what’cha should say. 

Oh, really? Kiyoomi pokes him in the forehead. What should I say, then? 

Sweetheart, Atsumu smiles, the softest of smiles, forget something here, in this cave of our dreamin’. And when ya come back for it, do me the honour of stayin’. 

When Kiyoomi wakes up crying, Miya isn’t there. The other side of the bed is still warm.

+

The front door bangs open the second Kiyoomi steps into the living room.

“It takes seven minutes to get here from that konbini,” Atsumu pants. “I know ‘cause ya told me. Well, Omi-omi, it takes only ‘bout three minutes if ya run.” 

“You didn’t even fucking smooth out the sheets when you left,” is what Kiyoomi’s mouth deems appropriate to spit out in this very moment. “And you left the door unlocked?” 

Because he wouldn’t be gone long, his mind supplies unhelpfully. 

“I,” says Atsumu, looking properly awkward for once, “am so sorry.” 

Kiyoomi raises an eyebrow at him. “Oh, you fucking will be.” 

“I didn’t— I hadn’t left. I’d just gone down to the konbini and then I thought that maybe ya’d’ve woken up by now and then I ran back. Look, I got a goodwill flower for ya,” he says haphazardly, and holds out a tiny little daisy. 

Kiyoomi takes it and dwarfs it between his thumb and index, seething. (He doesn’t let the petals bend even a little bit.) “Motherfucker.” 

Atsumu laughs, breathless. Punched-out. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard ya swear this much.” 

“Thin ice, Miya,” Kiyoomi hisses. “Thin ice.” 

“I lied,” Atsumu says gracelessly (again), and then just doesn’t stop, “I don’t hate that no one knows yer the funniest bastard alive. I want ya all to myself and see, ya could cart me off to an institution for this and I wouldn’t fuckin’ mind. Sometimes, I look at ya and want to squish ya into a passport-sized photo to keep in my wallet. Yer little curls anger me. Gosh, yer damn—eyes make me want to crawl into a well and die. Ya tap a cup three times before drinking from it. Ya think God patted himself on the back after makin’ yer face? He probably said to his angels, I’ll never fuckin’ surpass this, throw a party, yo. Invite ‘em fallen ones from down under, too, eh? Ya think demons saw ya smiling and thought, I’ll be damned, maybe there’s somethin’ I’ll never make ugly? ‘cause I do. I’m completely stupid about ya, Omi, absolutely fuckin’ moronic. Samu likes to say ya got me wrapped ‘round the very tip of yer pinky and okan keeps tellin’ me to grow a pair ‘n’ ‘fess up already so I can bring ya home. O— Kiyoomi, I’ve been paying that cunt Sunarin not to tell yer cousin.” 

“Oh, oh,” Kiyoomi hisses hysterically, jabbing a finger at Atsumu’s forehead, “you want to talk? Every time you come over I consider hiding something of yours so you have to stay and fucking look for it! You think your keys just up and pranced away that one time? You went to the bathroom and I stuck them inside that succulent like the lunatic I am! The lunatic you’ve made me! The shame nearly destroyed me!”

Atsumu’s eyes bug out unflatteringly. “And then ya didn’t invite me over for two weeks.”

“Did you listen to a word I said?” Kiyoomi doesn’t think he’s ever screeched so loud. He wasn’t raised to be fucking careless. He wasn’t. God, he wasn’t. “I’m not— I’m fucking insane, or something. Raving mad. I break everything I touch.”

“Kiyoomi,” Atsumu says again, and the look in his eyes is so soft. Kiyoomi’s never seen anything half as adoring, and oh God, what does he do with it? He flinches when Atsumu takes his hands and tucks them between his own two palms. “Kiyoomi, yer not insane. Don’t talk about the love of my whole damn life like that. I’m not somethin’ ya can break. I’m not glass. I’m just me. Astumu. Miya. Haven’t’cha known me for years?” 

“That’s not nice,” Kiyoomi croaks, voice strangled. The love of my whole damn life. The love of my whole damn life. “Using my own words against me.” 

“If yer insane, Omi, then I’m a cheat. And fuck you, we play volleyball for a living. No cheats. Very respectable.” He tuts. “There ya go again, insulting my very significant person like that.” 

Kiyoomi doesn’t reply. Can’t reply. He feels sixteen again, when everything had been a tiny apocalypse. 

“Why?” he says, and isn’t it devastating. Having to ever ask. “Why me?” 

“Because yer Sakusa Kiyoomi,” Atsumu replies, like it’s obvious. “Because yer you. Don’t’cha get it? How insane you make me?” 

“What if you leave,” Kiyoomi says pitifully. 

Atsumu holds his eyes and hands, steady, steady. Champagne flutes and nail polish and hearts. His own. All his own. “And what if you do?” 

“Oh.”

“Yeah, oh,” Atsumu says. It should feel mocking, but it doesn’t because it isn’t. He’s the kindest person Kiyoomi knows. You can’t take him to trade fairs because he’ll buy everything and say They don’t have much, ya know. “Idiot. I have as much at stake. And if I lose it all, at least I know that.” 

Kiyoomi makes some sort of distressed sound, and throws his arms around Atsumu, outside clothes be damned. He’s going to take a shower anyway, he doesn’t care. He cradles the flower in the dip of Atsumu’s shoulder blades. Atsumu holds him back like a meeting. Of hearts or souls or whatever makes you want to make sure someone drinks enough water throughout the day.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers against his neck, squeezing his eyes shut. 

“Don’t apologise,” Atsumu says. “Don’t ya dare.” 

“Don’t fucking tell me what to do,” Kiyoomi snaps. “Sorry you had to run.” 

“Sorry for whatever ya felt when ya thought I was gone. I’ll—fuckin’ leave a note or somethin’.” 

“I’d like that,” he nods, and he hates it when his voice goes wobbly again. “You shouldn’t have to.”

“Fuck ya mean,” Atsumu says with conviction. “I’m gonna make cranes and roses out of them. Little paper boats. And yer gonna collect every single one.” 

Of course Kiyoomi will. “Can you help me paint my bedroom walls?” 

“All of a sudden?” Atsumu laughs. “Of course. What colour are ya thinkin’?” 

“Yellow. Sunflower something.”

“As long as it’s not fuckin’ neon green.” 

“Hey,” Kiyoomi warns. 

“What?” Atsumu says. “Itachiyama always looked like a bunch’a highlighters.” 

“Just for that we’re doing neon green.” 

Atsumu makes a face. “Ya wouldn’t be able to sleep in a room like that.”

I sleep whenever I hold you. “Spite is a powerful thing.” 

Atsumu draws back, but he continues to hold Kiyoomi by the shoulders. “I’m sure it is, ya passive-aggressive bastard,” he says fondly. 

Kiyoomi can’t bear it. What does Atsumu see anyway? Because yer Sakusa Kiyoomi. But who the hell is that? Surely not the Sakusa Kiyoomi that Kiyoomi knows. Surely, surely not. It doesn’t matter how many cranes Atsumu folds or how many walls they paint. He will always be sad. 

“I had to be there to be loved,” he tries again, just to make sure Atsumu sees who he is. 

“Maybe,” Atsumu concedes. “But not to me. If ya had to be there, then why would I ever leave? I leave ‘cause I love ya. I stay because of that too. Do ya get it?”

“The missing means I love you,” Kiyoomi says. “I get it. But not— no, okay. Okay.” 

“Yeah,” he nods. “Okay. Exactly. Did ya eat?” 

Kiyoomi glares. “Does it look like I’ve eaten?” 

Atsumu grins. “Good thing I got pancake mix ‘cause I forgot the eggs.” 

Kiyoomi laughs. “Here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to shower because I just hugged your disgusting outside clothes. You will sit anywhere except my bed and the armchair. Then you will shower. And then we make breakfast.” 

“But yer gonna hafta hug me a little longer first,” Atsumu hedges. 

Kiyoomi pulls him closer again. “Okay.” 

He feels more than sees the smile against his neck. 

“What brought on your impassioned spiel, anyway?”

Atsumu’s laugh fans out against the side of his throat like a sea fan. “I saw a green toothbrush and thought it’d look good in yer collection.” 

“Did you get it?” 

“I did.” 

Kiyoomi hums. “By the way,” he mumbles, “‘only about three minutes’ is an unacceptable measurement. We’ll time it properly later.”

Atsumu laughs, his fingers digging into Kiyoomi’s ribs, his waist. Calloused, pulverised-star palms steal their way under Kiyoomi’s shirt, tiptoe up the cold sickle of his spine. Come to rest atop his shoulders, curling over the whole of him like a wave. 

“Whatever ya want,” Atsumu promises, forehead to collarbone. 

“For what it’s worth, you’re the love of my whole damn life too,” Kiyoomi whispers back, and wonders too.

+

“Don’t think I didn’t notice the pet names,” Kiyoomi mutters at Atsumu’s back. His very bare, very muscled, very golden back. Wheat-golden. Rumpelstiltskin-would-be-proud golden. 

“Oh?” says Atsumu gleefully. He turns around, dripping ladle in hand. “Did they work?” 

A bead of curry glides down the curve of the ladle, perilously close to falling splat on the floor. “Disgusting creature,” Kiyoomi grimaces, and actually means it. 

Atsumu smiles; the odd one. You know which. And see, Kiyoomi knows what’s coming, anticipates it even, tongues his cheek as he watches him carefully place a lid on the pot and turns the flame down low, and still somehow— freezes when Atsumu pounces. 

“Oh no,” he says as he peppers kisses all over Kiyoomi’s face, “look at this disgustin’ creature. Oh nooo. Cue scream. Rah.” 

Kiyoomi laughs and laughs and laughs. “Get off.” 

“Holy shit, that was a giggle,” Atsumu mumbles into his cheek. 

“I’m not some teenage girl,” Kiyoomi says indignantly, trying to push him off to no avail. Of course not. Atsumu-Kiyoomi phenomenon.

“No,” Atsumu says, resuming his attack. “Giggles. That’s you.” 

He kisses the mole on the left side of Kiyoomi’s neck and it tickles like a feather, and Kiyoomi only laughs. He does not giggle. What a disgusting word. He has never giggled a day in his life. 

Atsumu’s mouth opens on his throat like fucking Tweety Bird’s smile. “Giggles, are ya ticklish?” he sing-songs. “However will giggles survive?” 

“Miya.” 

“Kiyoomi,” Atsumu says sweetly, then finally kisses his mouth. “I still like pickled plum best, though. Very annoying.” 

“Shut up,” Kiyoomi sighs, and agrees. 

Notes:

i had to be there to be loved said marie howe oh no said i