Chapter Text
The mall they stop at to freshen up in the morning is thirty-five minutes away from Sakusa Enterprise.
There’s an anxiety that simmers in Kiyoomi’s gut as they exit Atsumu’s truck and make their way into northport MALL. They’re too close. Less than a one-hour drive separates Kiyoomi from his father’s clutches. The sparsely populated streets are not helping his sense of paranoia. Neither is the pale morning light that sheds clarity on his situation.
Sakusa Kiyoomi ran away from home like some American teenager in a Hollywood movie or some protagonist of a #1 New York Times Best Seller. He may have dreamt of getting lost in a fictional world as an isolated child, but this isn’t quite what he had in mind.
Hunched low over a public sink, washing his face with grocery store-grade soap. He wishes he had the foresight to pack his facewash.
Atsumu sluices water through his hair and rubs at his eyes with wet fingers. Then he shakes them dry like a golden retriever drying in the air, splattering water everywhere. Kiyoomi sidesteps the offending droplets with a cringe that has Atsumu laughing. “Sorry, Omi.”
They pat their faces dry and then exit into the mostly empty mall. Stores were still in the process of opening their doors, workers were showing up for their shifts with cups of coffee. He envies their warm winter jackets and hot beverages, shivering once again.
“Come on,” Atsumu says, turning right. “First order of business: FUJI GARDEN. We grab some groceries for the road. Then we’re gettin’ ya a jacket 'cause ya look like yer gonna freeze over.”
Kiyoomi bristles, looking away with a blush. “Shut up,” he mutters, shoving his hand in his—in Atsumu’s —hoodie pockets.
“Then we can stop by Alpen Outdoors and buy a tent,” Atsumu carries on like Kiyoomi hadn’t spoken. “Samu and I bought our first camping gear from there”—
—“Camping gear?” Kiyoomi interrupts in bewilderment and comes to a sudden stop. “What.”
“Yeah!”
A young girl points at Kiyoomi’s gaping mouth only to be chastised by her mother who tosses Kiyoomi an apologetic smile. He quickly recomposes himself, jogging to catch up with Atsumu. “We’re going camping?”
“That’s the plan,” Atsumu agrees. “Ever been camping, Omi? It heals the soul. And I think some healing might be in order for both of us.”
When Atsumu side-eyes him, Kiyoomi shuts his mouth with a click. Kiyoomi has never been camping, in fact, his closest call to nature was a school trip to Fuji-Hakone-Izu National Park to view Mount Fuji and explore the lakes. Unfortunately, he doesn’t hold fond memories of that experience. It mostly involved swatting away at insects and trying to evade elementary school students’ grubby fingers as they chased him around and yelled ‘boggers alert!’ or some variation of that.
He winces at the memory, which doesn’t escape Atsumu.
“Ah,” Atsumu says knowingly. “Forgot yer a city boy, Omi.”
“Uh, okay?” Kiyoomi’s face suffuses with confusion. “What does that make you, a forest boy? A monkey?”
Instead of being offended, Atsumu barks out a laugh loud enough to gather the attention of the security man standing at the foot of the escalators. Kiyoomi half-wonders if they’re about to get arrested. “Shh! Keep it down, will you?”
The security guard looks away despite Atsumu’s guffaws. “You know, if you want to keep acting uncivilised maybe I should start calling you Tarzan…”
Atsumu thumps him on the back none-too-gently. “Yer hilarious, Omi.”
At FUJI GARDEN, Atsumu makes a beeline to the coolers to grab and open an iced coffee much to Kiyoomi’s abject horror. “What are you doing?!”
Releasing a blissed sigh, Atsumu pats Kiyoomi’s back using his free hand. “Relax, Omi-Omi, I need my caffeine fix to function, I’ll pay for it on our way out, obviously.”
“Obviously ?” Kiyoomi splutters. “Obvious to who? Do you think Security-san over there won’t judge the integrity of your character according to the bleached colour of your hair?”
“Hey! What’s wrong with my hair!?”
“It’s fake,” Kiyoomi huffs, confiscating Atsumu’s coffee. “You’re paying for this now.”
Scandalised, Atsumu hurries after him. “Sakusa Kiyoomi! How dare you!?” He pouts all the way to the checkout counter and continues to pout long after they have paid and gone back.
“You have no appreciation for beauty,” Atsumu mutters under his breath as he places a pineapple in the cart.
Kiyoomi eyes them both sceptically. “How exactly do you plan to eat this on the road…?”
“This is for when we camp,” Atsumu says, adding yet another pineapple.
“That still doesn’t answer my question, how will you eat it?”
“Uh. I’ll peel it?”
“With what?”
“Ohh—a knife, duh, Omi!”
Atsumu turns around to grab a watermelon. Kiyoomi certainly doesn’t remember spying chef knives in the car but at this point, he wouldn’t be surprised if Atsumu kept them up his sleeve like the circus act that he could be.
They’re back on the road by noon, truck loaded with supplies, and by now Kiyoomi’s phone has started chiming periodically. It makes him twitch each time the vibrations jolt through his skin, until, at one point, Atsumu presents his hand palm up to Kiyoomi. “Give it to me.”
“What.”
Atsumu spares him a look as he changes lanes. “Your phone.”
Kiyoomi’s phone vibrates once more. His lips tremble. “Why would I do that?”
“Omi,” Atsumu says, softer. “Your phone, please.”
Wordlessly, Kiyoomi places his iPhone in Atsumu’s hand and watches as the blonde switches it off and pockets it.
“But what if there’s an emergency”—
—“The team knows you’re with me,” Atsumu cuts off, stunning Kiyoomi into silence. “I told Bokkun on my way out, and he said he’ll tell the others.”
“Oh.”
Atsumu smiles, crooked and roguish. “Yer family can think I kidnapped ya fer all I care.”
Shaking his head, Kiyoomi looks out of his window to hide the sudden blush he can feel rising in his cheeks. “Shut up.”
On the highway, cars race away, and mountains drift in the distance as they leave the heart of the city behind, and with it Kiyoomi’s waking nightmare. He ignores the way his heart trips and kicks in his chest, because even he can admit this is a silly way to deal with his problems.
Kiyoomi’s father hadn’t held a gun to his head. It’s Kiyoomi’s misplaced sense of duty that drags him to the gutter time and again. That’s not to say he holds any delusions as to what comes next. His father hasn’t threatened him since Kiyoomi was a child refusing to participate in social outings, but he knows better than to expect a timeout and a slap on the wrist now.
“Omi,” Atsumu says, knocking him out of his morbid thoughts. “What do ya like ta listen to?”
“Oh. Um.” Kiyoomi swallows the lump in his throat. “I don’t really… have a particular taste in music.”
Atsumu side-eyes him. “I won’t judge ya if yer a One Direction fanboy, or something.”
Against his better judgement, Kiyoomi makes a face. “What’s wrong with One Direction?”
“Ah! I knew it!” cackles Atsumu gleefully, and immediately reaches for the radio. “Yer in luck, Omi, Sunarin had a Directioner phase and Samu kept an album in the truck for him.”
“I didn’t say I’m a fan, I just asked what was”—
—“Nuh-uh! No take backsies!”
The radio blares to life with an obnoxious note and then an upbeat tune fills the car.
Oh, I just wanna take you anywhere that you'd like
We could go out any day, any night
Baby, I'll take you there, take you there
Baby, I'll take you there, yeah
Oh, tell me, tell me, tell me how to turn your love on
You can get, get anything that you want
Baby, just shout it out, shout it out
Baby, just shout it out, yeah
“Oh my God,” Kiyoomi mouths to himself as Atsumu starts shamelessly pelting out lyrics at Kiyoomi, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel and bobbing his head along. “And I’m the fanboy?”
“Hey, everyone had a One Direction phase at some point,” Atsumu giggles. “Ma certainly did.”
“…How old is your mother?”
“Eh. Forty-something? The details were lost in translation, the papers burnt, the memories buried. No one knows. And it would be very unwise to ask.”
Kiyoomi can’t help it, he starts chuckling and hates that it makes Atsumu grin wider like he won or something. “I bet you take after her by the sound of it…”
Atsumu nods sagely. “Spitting image. Or so I’m told. Mind ya our faces look nothing alike, but I’ve been told it’s something to do with ominous auras.”
“You hardly give off ‘ominous’ auras, Miya.”
“Oh yeah? Wait till I’m telling ya all the creepy ghost stories I know over a campfire.”
Kiyoomi’s face must spell his disbelief for Atsumu starts cackling again. “You’ll see, Omi. Also, can ya sing? Y’look like ya can totally sing.”
“Now why would you think that?”
“… you give off theatre kid auras.”
“What the fuck does that even mean, Miya?”
By then Atsumu is laughing so hard, he's half bent over the steering wheel to peer out the windshield through his tears.
“If we’re going off auras here,” Kiyoomi adds with a sneer that he can feel twitching as laughter tickles his throat. “You must be one of the little monkeys that kept jumping on the bed and falling down to bump your head…”
“Awww Omi, that’s the same joke twice! What’s it with you and monkeys? Hey, hey, y’know what they call a flying monkey?”
“I shudder to ask.”
“A hot air baboon!”
Kiyoomi’s abdominals spasm. “Okay that’s it, turn the car around, I’ll take my chances with the stuffy businessmen.”
“Ha! Like those aren’t just a bunch o’ gorillas themselves.” Atsumu’s wide gleaming smile is brighter than the afternoon sun, his face radiating a sincerity that steals Kiyoomi’s breath. “Yer such a prickly sea urchin, Omi-Omi. But at least yer cute.”
He's about to fire back a sly response when his teeth click shut and he chokes on his next breath. “S-shut up!”
Smooth. Real dignified, Kiyoomi.
That innocent statement capitulates him into silence interrupted only by a decade-old One Direction song. Atsumu sings along merrily—the lyrics hilariously wrong —and switches lanes like he has been taking this road his whole life. An hour in, Kiyoomi is forced to break the silence, his curiosity getting the best of him. “Where are we going?”
“D’ya know about the Minami Alps National Park?” Atsumu lowers the volume of the radio and pulls out his phone to type in a quick Google search. “It’s on the way, and it’s pretty.”
He tilts his screen at Kiyoomi to show him a green, flower-dotted mountain and acres of nature surrounding it. The blue sky on the horizon is vivid, nature cloaked in spring even in the middle of autumn. “Pretty isn’t it?”
Kiyoomi nods dumbly.
It’s so pretty that he has trouble believing the pictures aren’t photoshopped. “Do you know a lot of places like this?”
“Eh, I guess. Samu and I go on summer staycations all the time, so we’ve been ta a lot of places around Japan. We hiked through Nara once, it was crazy challenging but we had the time of our lives.”
Objectively, when looking at Atsumu’s summer tan, freckled shoulders, and ripped thighs, he does scream ‘outdoorsy person’. But Kiyoomi hadn’t put much thought into what that meant before. “You do seem like someone who’d enjoy hiking.”
“It doesn’t sound all that fun in theory but once yer there, it’s like yer in another world. Time slows down, everything is green, ya get to hear and enjoy nature, and yeah I guess it can be physically challenging depending on the trail but hey, we play volleyball for a living.”
The reminder sobers Kiyoomi up. “Yeah…”
Atsumu allows him a minute of silence but he seems to clue in on the sudden shift of his mood. “Y’know Omi, just cause yer parents had a different vision for yer future doesn’t mean you don’t deserve to pursue whatever the heck ya want.”
His parents weren’t big fans of his choices but save for expressing their disapproval and imposing a bachelor's degree, they hadn’t stopped Kiyoomi from signing a contract with a professional volleyball team. He wonders now if he’d been naïve to expect them to remain uninvolved. “My parents may not be very… parental, but they gave us a lot. We always bought everything we could’ve ever wished for. Money was never an issue. Vacations abroad, music classes, dance, cars, high-end clothes… they pay my rent. They paid for my schooling and tuition fees. Throwing all that back in their face doesn’t feel right.”
When he chances a look at Atsumu, his lips are pursed thoughtfully. “Look… I know it’s not my place, but yer relationship with yer parents shouldn’t be transactional. Money shouldn’t be used to manipulate you into compliance. It’s not my place, but yer dad treatin’ ya and yer siblings like property pisses me off.”
Kiyoomi can’t help his little snort. “In most ways, we really are. My parents didn’t have children out of some paternal desire to nurture. It works differently in the world of business.”
“Yeah well, fuck that,” Atsumu mutters, turning up the radio again. “Anyway Omi, we’re on a leisurely retreat right now, no more talk about work or parents!”
He's grateful for the change of topic because his anxiety, ever-present in the back of his throat, has started flaring again and throwing up in Atsumu’s car would be mortifying.
The three-hour drive passes without further conversation, the One Direction songs switched off in favour of playing more recent hits.
Atsumu sings along, voice hypnotic and haunting, stunning Kiyoomi into silence. He sacrifices diction and breathing techniques for emotive expression in a way that’s so inherently Atsumu .
Whenever I’m alone with you
You make me feel like I am home again
Whenever I’m alone with you
You make me feel like I am whole again
Kiyoomi swallows thickly, his throat constricting. He can’t place the emotion welling up in his chest, but part of him is strangely moved close to tears.
Atsumu doesn’t take his eyes off the road, and doesn't seem bothered by having Kiyoomi as an audience. He sings his heart out as though Kiyoomi’s presence alone compels him to perform for him.
However far away, I will always love you
However long I stay, I will always love you
Whatever words I say, I will always love you
I will always love you…
What is this? Kiyoomi palms at his chest as his heart leaps and aches. Atsumu’s voice rasps and dips and Kiyoomi’s heart swoops with it. It’s akin to free falling.
To his rising mortification, he can’t look away from Atsumu’s side profile. The sun sheds golden light on his hair and he finds himself thinking that Atsumu looks ethereal like this. And what a bewildering thought to have about someone who’s usually so loud and brash.
Atsumu lowers his window as they enter the premises of Mount Kitadake Area, resting his elbow along the edge of the window as he twists the steering wheel in a full 360° to take a sharp U-turn.
Oh my god, Kiyoomi thinks at the sudden clench of his stomach. Oh no, no, no.
Kiyoomi knows what this is. Kiyoomi has felt this way before, just once, when he was in college and was meeting Ushijima Wakatoshi regularly for coffee.
In fact, he remembers it vividly because Motoya wouldn’t shut the fuck up about his embarrassing crush on someone with the “emotional range of a fucking celery”.
And if this sudden epiphany that Kiyoomi was having is to be believed… then Kiyoomi is crushing on the polar opposite of Ushijima Wakatoshi.
Oh shit, Kiyoomi has a crush on Miya Atsumu.