Chapter Text
Suna doesn’t remember how he got himself into this situation.
There are people grabbing at his hands and arms and chest; they’re made of some long faded yellow-brown wheat that looks grown and ready to pick right out of their skin. They poke and prick Suna as they guide him down a path made of soft, yet compact, dirt, surrounded by stones colored grey and a deep red. Rows of long, tall, thin plants appear as he is guided down this path, like their existence was unimportant until he arrived at this moment.
They soon arrive at a pit in the middle [or end] of the path. It’s deep. Sticky rice coats the bottom, if there is one. Suna opens his mouth to speak, but he remains silent. A familiar sense of panic washes over him as these people lower him into the sticky rice. Suna’s descent into the sticky rice alleviates multiple tense muscles at once, his jaw falls slack, and his eyes start drooping. He should panic considering the texture feels weird, and he feels pain in his lungs because he can’t breathe, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t feel the texture or the pain in his lungs because he falls asleep.
…
Suna feels some sense of consciousness come to him. He feels the very real weight of a soft blanket on him and in between his legs. The back of his head is resting on a heavy, tight pillow. Well, that’s not right. His eyes feel too crusty, too heavy, too much of everything to consider even opening them, so he doesn’t. After maybe 30 seconds, or 30 minutes, Suna decides to open his eyes. The first thing he is greeted by is not the empty, maybe grey or maybe white ceiling from the quiet place he calls his bedroom. Instead, he sees the wooden structure of the bottom of a top bunk bed — which is odd because he doesn’t sleep in a bunk bed. He takes a moment to rub his knuckles against his eyes because the blurriness in his vision is not from a lack of glasses before looking at the ripped flower wallpaper on his left. There are a couple of photos taped up on the wall — a current team photo of the Inarizaki boys volleyball team, a photo of Aran and the Miya twins when they were kids, a photo of a young woman who has Atsumu’s crooked smile and Osamu’s shiny eyes eating with two younger Miyans, and, more recently, a photo of Suna himself half-attempting a smile for a surprise photo, holding a can of some cold drink. Suna wants to find use for at least one of these photos, but there’s a weird, gross, intimate line that he drew, and he’d rather not cross it for now. Well, speaking of gross boundaries, Suna turns to his right to spot a grey-haired twin who reminds him of why he was there in the first place.
..
“Suna, wanna sleepover?”
Suna looks up from his phone. “Sleepover?”
Osamu offers a piece of chicken, and Suna accepts because the first time he refused he thought it would be embarrassing to personally feed your friend/teammate like a parent would feed their kid, but Osamu looked like someone told him his cat had been run over and put down. The act itself should be embarrassing, but Suna felt normal about it, and he thought that might be the embarrassing part.
“We have an off day tomorrow, so I thought it might be fine.” Osamu has the decency to swallow before he talks this time, unlike the multiple other times he got too excited or just had to offer his input while chewing whatever food he had packed for the day. Suna told him it was gross, so Osamu stopped doing it around him.
“Uh…” Suna tries to think of an excuse not to go, but he wasn’t booked out in the slightest. He didn’t have many friends outside of his volleyball team, and his mom doesn’t hold many high expectations of him (even if sometimes, just sometimes, he wished she did). Suna thought he should just say he has no excuse to not go, but he figures it might seem lame to outright say he had no plans. Embarrassingly enough, Osamu is someone he doesn’t want thinking he’s lame.
Osamu lowers the chopsticks he’s holding from his face, and like something right out of an analog horror, makes direct eye contact with Suna. “Suna, I know ya have no plans. Just say if ya don’t wanna go.”
Suna scoffs lightly. “Right. How do you know that?”
Osamu grabs a piece of chicken with his chopsticks. “Ya would’ve told me.” He stuffs the entire piece in his mouth. Suna hates that the puffed up cheeks that make Osamu look like a chipmunk makes him feel charmed. Suna grimaces.
“Okay, I’ll go.”
..
Osamu was the heaviest sleeper Suna has ever met. He was the equivalent of an immovable object; unluckily for him, Suna is an unstoppable force. Osamu sleeps with his mouth open, saliva slipping out, and it makes Suna think he must be dreaming of food. He also snores obnoxiously loud, like some kind of motorboat starting up. Worst of all, he is a sleep kicker. The bruises on Suna’s legs prove it. All these factors had Suna watching him sleep the night previously wondering what would wake him up. Now, it had him wondering if Osamu knew what Suna was going to do, would he still fall asleep peacefully next to him? Suna decides to start off with something simple, shaking Osamu awake. 7 A.M. is an evil time to wake up on a day without training, but Suna lets out a heavy, humorous breath at the thought of tricking Osamu into thinking it was a practice day.
Suna places a hand on Osamu’s shoulder. He realizes too quickly that his own touch was strangely gentle, and Osamu’s shoulder was thick. Well, it makes sense that Osamu’s had thick shoulders, and was well built, being an athlete and all. His arms were okay as well — lots of muscle and very strong. His hands also felt strong. His fingers were weirdly tough and soft at the same time; it makes Suna think about the times he watched Osamu apply hand lotion or something of the sorts for the sake of keeping his hands smooth. Suna tried poking fun at him once, but Osamu mumbled that the dry and cracked skin felt weird when he was handling certain ingredients while cooking. Suna decided to give him a pass on that. Suna squints at his own hands — long and thin, yet powerful and able to deliver strong spikes and blocks. Long and thin and cold and currently holding Osamu’s strong and soft and warm hands. Suna quickly pulls his hands back, curling his lip and furrowing his eyebrows. Had he been feeling up Osamu this entire time? He had gotten lost in thought, and instead of staying still, his hands decided to explore. Osamu hasn’t even flinched. His eyes are still shut, snores loud as hell, and saliva is still dripping out of his mouth. Suna wonders what alternative method he can use to wake him up. It’s a bit aggressive, but Suna wonders if pinching Osamu’s nose shut will jolt him awake. It’s the same method he uses to wake his sister, so maybe some kind of sibling instinct within Osamu will wake him up. Speaking of siblings, Suna can hear some shifting and yawning from the bunk bed above him. The mumbling from Atsumu doesn’t deter Suna from taking his pointer and thumb and using them to press Osamu’s nose into some flat pancake looking thing.
Osamu flinches. However, he doesn’t wake up. He uses his mouth to breathe through instead, which slightly silences the snoring. Suna sighs and removes his fingers. Suna stares and stares and stares at Osamu — tracing a soft jawline, thick lips, and thick eyelashes. After staring at Osamu’s lips for maybe too many seconds, Suna wonders if talking about food will wake him up. Osamu had a weird sixth sense when it came to food. It might be a summoning device for him.
Suna leans down so his lips are above Osamu’s ear. He finds himself feeling slightly light headed as blood rushes to his face. Now, he’s awkwardly leaning above Osamu with his shoulder poking out at an awkward angle and his breath fanning Osamu’s ear and half his face.
“I’m not even gonna ask.”
Suna isn’t sure how, but Atsumu somehow managed to get out of bed without any noise at all. Now, Atsumu stands in front of Osamu’s bed, stretching his arms across his chest. There’s no certain expression on his face. It’s blank, and blank is scary.
Suna backs away from Osamu’s ear and shrugs. Atsumu is the last person he wants having anything embarrassing about him in his brain. “I was trying to wake him up.”
Atsumu snorts. “Well, he ain’t Sleeping Beauty, so kissin’ him isn’t gonna do anythin’.”
As Atsumu starts stretching his left arm above his head, Suna tries to get a read on him. Is he teasing him just because? Or is he assuming something he shouldn’t? Despite the gross smile on Atsumu’s face, there was no certain answer coming to Suna’s head. It was better to shut down any ideas he might be getting. “I wasn’t trying to kiss him. I was gonna talk in his ear.”
“Ya were gonna wake ‘Samu up by makin’ him deaf?” Atsumu rolls his shoulders back and snorts. Suna shifts uneasily. “Some friend you are.”
Suna lets out a small breathy laugh — got him. “You’re making me out to be a bad friend? Who’s the one upperclassmen warn the first years about?”
Like clockwork, Atsumu stills. His face scrunches up in what seems to be a mix of confusion and offense. “Wait what? Yer makin’ that up.”
Suna shrugs and grins. He takes this as a silent victory. “Is it really that surprising?”
“Shut yer trap!” Suna flinches at Atsumu’s sudden volume. Atsumu points an accusatory finger at Suna. “I let ya into my home-“
”Osamu is the one who let me in.”
”-let ya eat my food-“
“Your mom is the one who cooked…”
”And yer STILL talkin’.” Atsumu puts his hands on his hips like some kind of dad scolding his kid for not doing their homework. He shakes his head in a disapproving manner while making small tsk sounds at Suna.
Fortunately, or maybe unfortunately, Suna can feel stirring next to him. He can only hope Atsumu doesn’t see the absolute record winning snap from his neck when he turns to look at Osamu. Osamu is not awake, but he is readjusting his position. He turns around and curls up into a fetus position, grabs a pillow and holds onto it like it’s the last time he’ll sleep. His snores have stopped, so Suna figures he might wake up soon.
Atsumu is doing whatever with his arms when his loud mouth decides to speak. “Wait, I think I smell ma cookin’-“
Like some kind of vampire, Osamu rises from the dead (sleep) and accidently (??) slaps Suna in the face when stretching out his arms. “What.”
Osamu is half asleep, probably running on instinct once the word “cook” came out of someone’s mouth. His eyes are half open and look like they’re being forced open and closed at the same time. The drool dripping out of his mouth has made a funny little puddle on his chin, and his hair is sticking out in every direction known to man. He suddenly looks like he regrets everything once he brings his fists up to his face to rub his eyes open. Atsumu cackles in the background, pointing at Suna as he trots out of the room and spewing something about how it serves him right. Suna rubs at the spot under his eye that Osamu managed to snipe once he decided it was worth it to get up.
Suna grimaces. It’s not painful, but he can still feel a bit of the sting from when Osamu’s nails scraped his face. He rubs his thumb against the (probably) white streaks under his eye. Suddenly, Suna is startled by the warmth from Osamu’s hand, gently pushing Suna’s hand off his face and replacing it with his own. “Sorry, I just felt the urge to get out of bed, dunno why.”
Osamu’s thumb presses down on the spot under Suna’s eyes. His eyes are squinting, filled with sleep and a funny focus. Despite the half dead look on Osamu’s face, he seems determined to lay all his care onto Suna. Suna wonders momentarily if it’s okay for him to be treated like some delicate flower, or maybe a better description would be a smoothened rock. Yes, that’s what Suna was: a smoothened rock who, at any point in time, could be inevitably cracked or eroded by the water that is time.
“I can think of a reason.” Suna cracks a teasing smile, pushing Osamu’s hand away from his warmed face.
“What reason?” Osamu asks. There’s a slight spark of disappointment in his eyes, maybe his voice as well.
“You run on complete impulse, don’t you?” Suna laughs a bit. Being a normal person in a house filled with two strange-
“You do too, don’t ya?”
Suna blinks at Osamu. Osamu doesn’t seem too moved by his own statement and crawls off the bed. He stretches his back before turning to Suna. “I’m gonna go see if my ma made breakfast, wanna come?”
Suna fiddles with his fingers. “I’ll go down later, gonna call my mom first.”
Osamu nods and leaves. Suna hears the thumps he makes as he runs downstairs. There’s a pull on his chest that tells him to go on downstairs, but the pull on his mind tells him to stay. It should be immature that he wants to prove Osamu wrong. You do too, don’t ya? It should be weird that a meaningless phrase already hangs over his head.
Suna has set firm boundaries with many people before because he has self respect — letting someone bug you because you feel too bad to say no is pretty lame. That’s what his dad tells him. Suna lets himself fall back onto Osamu’s bed and frowns. His dad has hammered many things into his head, especially being able to say no, yet Osamu has the face of someone who doesn’t take no. Suna wonders if it makes him lame. “Just say if ya don’t wanna go.” It probably does.
Suna looks back at the picture of himself hanging on the wall next to Osamu’s bed.
..
Osamu frowns at his phone. His eyebrows furrowed together make Suna think of two fuzzy caterpillars trying to meet. The thought makes Suna let out a quiet laugh, but more captivating was the confused expression painting Osamu’s face.
“You look constipated.” Suna opens his phone’s camera.
Osamu shrugs. “There’s a picture of ya in my gallery.”
Osamu turns his phone over to Suna, and sure enough, there’s a picture of him smiling awkwardly while holding a can at the camera. Suna squints at it. The picture itself isn’t bad, but Suna hates being caught off guard — much less in the gallery of Miya Osamu. His gut wells up in familiar disgust.
“Delete it.” Suna looks up at Osamu, mustering up a glare, hopefully conveying his message.
Osamu frowns. “Why? Ya look nice.”
All of a sudden his gut relaxes. Just nice? Suna brushes the thought aside and lets himself crack a smirk. “Well, maybe you should put me on your wall of pictures to prove it.”
Osamu’s face looks a bit red, and he pouts. Suna wants to take a bite to savor him; he quickly snaps a picture and laughs it off. They both silently smirk at each other like there’s some joke only they can understand — a calm ray of sun crashes over their shoulders.
Osamu nods. “Sure.”
..
Suna wonders if that picture is there because Osamu wanted to spite him. The idea of Osamu being spiteful made Suna want to try poking some different buttons. It lit a fire in both his mind and heart, and strangely enough, it’s become familiar.
Spitefulness isn’t something Suna ever regarded as exciting. His mom bit back at any person who irritated her even by an inch. Suna remembers calling her the Spite Queen in middle school; it got him grounded for a month. He had sat in his room with the feeling of a boiling kettle in his chest while firmly deciding spite was the bane of his existence. And yet, Miya Osamu being spiteful poured the boiling kettle into a cup and became chamomile tea. Suna slaps his palms onto his face and drags them down. He feels the pull at the bottom of his eyes as he groans. This was kind of pathetic.
He instantly stands up, causing a bit of dizziness, and decides to go downstairs to lavish himself in the scent of freshly cooked eggs and three bright faces that could probably keep the world running if the sun or the moon needed a break.