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Hinata Shouyou rolls into Atsumu’s life on a Friday.
If someone had told him, two weeks prior, that he’d be religiously watching clips and videos of a volleyball player he met just that day — and got absolutely destroyed by — he’d punch them. He wouldn’t be that surprised, though.
Atsumu’s always been impatient and jittery. He gains obsessions that come and go — like the time he decided he really wanted to play in a band, after watching an anime about a light music club. He begged his mom for a guitar, and Osamu by default got one too, then he played it for a week and got bored. They sold both guitars a month later.
Point is, his likes and dislikes come in phases, and people have never been an exception.
That Friday, he splits his time in the evening between reviewing the footage of their match and crying in the bathroom. It’s a fairly even split, he thinks.
He pauses, sets the speed to 0.5x, then rewatches every clip, winding and rewinding to watch every individual frame of Hinata Shouyou’s leaps and jumps.
“Obsessed with another player?” Osamu mockingly asks, and he gets the urge to throw the tablet at his annoying twin’s head. “Don’t even think about throwing that at me. Mom’ll throw a fit.”
Atsumu scowls. Osamu’s kind of like a leech who looks exactly like him. They have the same face, but girls keep calling Osamu cute. Why? Maybe it’s because Osamu constantly looks like he’s brooding. Girls like mysterious guys, right? Whatever. It makes him look constipated. He settles for snickering to himself.
‘Samu looks at him across the room like he can hear his internal dialogue. He probably can guess it.
He sticks out his tongue and makes a face at Osamu.
By Monday, he’s still watching Karasuno videos over and over. He spends less time crying now, and more time zoning in on the blur of orange across the screen.
“‘Samu, I think I’m in love.” He breathes out, in awe as he watches him slam another lightning fast toss down, down. He sounds ridiculous, but he just knows. This is it
Osamu snorts again. “Again? You were just like this with Sakusa-san during the Interhigh.”
He squawks. “Omi-omi loves me!” As if to prove a point, he whips out his phone, gesturing wildly at the contact name (Omi-kun). Well, who wouldn’t fall in love with an opponent spiker after they obliterate you in a volleyball tournament?
“It’s another one of your phases,” Osamu says dismissively. “You’ll get over it.”
He hates it when Osamu is right, even though that is often the case. He forgets about Hinata Shouyou in a week.
There’s this theory, or paradox, or some mumbo jumbo about how there’s an infinite number of universes, comprising every single possibility in existence. In one of those universes at least, Atsumu never finds volleyball. By extension, neither does Osamu.
Well, that universe probably sucks. Volleyball’s essentially his entire life, the one thing he has managed to dedicate himself to for a period of time longer than six months. He thinks he’ll never get bored of setting a ball, ever. Like Osamu’s rice metaphor, he thinks he can play volleyball like he eats rice for the rest of his life.
(He neglects to ask Osamu if he thinks the same way, because of course he does, right? What reason does he have to not love volleyball?)
—
He and Osamu fight.
That in itself isn’t surprising; he and Osamu put distance between them sometimes — they used to fight over girls, when once upon a time, a girl asked him out, calling him “Osamu-senpai”. He ignored his brother for two days and returned to school with dyed blond hair. They fought over who’s doing the homework and who’s copying off of the other. They fought over who ate the pudding from the fridge, and whether Atsumu was responsible for buying a new carton (he wasn’t).
They’ve never fought like this.
—
Atsumu forgets about Hinata Shouyou, but he doesn’t forget about Hinata Shouyou. So when Karasuno doesn’t show up in the brackets on the outside of the gym in his third year interhigh, he feels like throwing a fit.
“Don’t,” Osamu warns, but he chucks the volleyball he’s holding straight at his twin anyway because how dare he tell him what to do? Osamu catches it, and makes a face at him. He sulks.
Their interactions, especially surrounding volleyball, are strained. The entire team feels the tension when they play, and he can’t bear the idea of ‘Samu leaving everything they’ve done together behind.
Atsumu’s always been described as the more energetic, more forceful twin. Also a bit more assholish, according to multiple sources — but he thinks he can give partial credit of his arrogance to his twin.
Osamu claims their ability has always been equal, but Atsumu admits — never aloud, but to himself — that perhaps Osamu’s natural ability has always been a bit higher. So he compensates by being the one who’s more driven, by being the one who takes control. Just like how as a setter, he, and he alone controls the direction and trajectory of the tosses, because he’s the one in charge.
And whereas in another world, his spikers would’ve grown resentful of him, Osamu is a spiker who he knows will never turn his back on him.
Well.
Osamu was a spiker who he knew would never turn his back on him.
They get eliminated in the quarter-finals, and this time Atsumu is the captain and he’s the one who has to hold the team together. So he makes the speech, the one about failures and successes and coming back at Spring High, and he manages to not tear up too much during the speech.
He cries himself sick later at home.
—
They enter the Spring High tournaments with a tension that only seems to have increased since Interhigh. All this time, Atsumu’s anger, his built up resentment, has been simmering — and now, he brings it to a boil.
This season could be — and is very likely — his last series of games with Osamu, ever. By Osamu’s own choice.
He hates it.
He hates the idea of being left alone, the idea that Osamu’s no longer there as someone Atsumu should be catching up to.
They go up against Karasuno in the second round, and all Atsumu sees is Hinata Shouyou.
He tells his other teammates often that there’s a difference between forgetting, and forgetting. They don't get it.
Osamu would, but Atsumu doesn’t wanna talk to him.
(he suspects that he knows anyway)
He hates that Osamu’s interest no longer aligns with his, that there’ll no longer be someone to whom he can toss with a-hundred-percent confidence.
(Because just like their imitation of the freak quick needs Osamu to trust in him, it needs him to trust in ‘Samu too)
Calling him a safety net would be low because that would imply he were nothing but a safety precaution — but that’s the feeling of comfort Osamu’s always given him when they played volleyball together, regardless of their childish antics, regardless of the way they go out of their way — mostly himself, if he’s honest — to antagonize each other.
They’re third years now, and this is the last tournament of his high school career. This is also the last tournament of Osamu’s volleyball career.
He lights himself on fire with the desire to win.
(Within him, there’s a childish and unrealistic desire that by playing well, by winning the tournament, Osamu will come back to volleyball. That he’ll feel the spark, he’ll feel the warmth of the fire as it burns for him, for volleyball.)
It’s been a year since they played Karasuno, and they’ve — he and Osamu — polished up their flashy moves too. Atsumu takes his moments between the Osamu-induced angst to take pride in the way Shouyou-kun watches his tosses.
The implication of him imitating Tobio-kun’s toss, even if it isn’t as perfectly accurate, had fallen flat on him previously, but he thinks he understands now, watching the hunger evident in the orange haired middle blocker’s eyes.
“Tobio-kun isn’t the only one who can toss like that,” he says aloud, and Osamu slams down the final ball of the third set on the other side of the net.
They go on to win the cup, one game after another. they reign as the champions, finally.
(and his unrealistic fairytale desires don’t happen, and Osamu drafts up plans to start a chain of onigiri stores, and Atsumu locks himself in the bathroom and cries)
That night, he regains his obsession with Hinata Shouyou. As he obsessively rewatches their game — despite them emerging as the victors — Osamu sighs from the other side of the room.
He sticks his tongue out and makes a face, and for a moment, it’s almost like everything’s okay again.
Then, it’s exam season, and even though he doesn’t want to go to university, he still studies. He pours over books with Osamu, and by the time exams are over, he forgets all about Shouyou-kun.
—
“On your deathbed, I’ll say I was happier than you!” He had shouted at his twin when Osamu had announced that he would quit volleyball after highschool. It felt right at the time, his anger, his fury brought to a boil by the audacity of Osamu, implying that anything could bring him joy the same way Volleyball will.
In that alternate universe where he never played volleyball, he thinks he’d be nowhere as happy as he is now.
(He wonders if Osamu would be the happier twin, in that universe)
But in this universe, he plays volleyball. He joins a tier 2 V-League team in lieu of attending university, and he thinks himself happy. A year later, he moves into a tier 1 V-League team. Bit by bit, he gets used to volleyball without Osamu.
He and Osamu talk more, now that he’s gotten over his abandonment complex and accepted that Osamu quitting volleyball wasn’t a personal attack on him. He gobbles up all the ramen that ‘Samu offers to buy him, and they talk just like the good old days. He’s content, he thinks.
Osamu left volleyball for food. “I wanna do business related to food,” he had said. Atsumu had wanted to laugh and cry at the same time.
Osamu worked hard, and eventually he opened a store called “Onigiri Miya”. He sold Onigiri. Atsumu refused to try it.
Much like how volleyball had been his exception to his constantly changing phases, food might’ve been Osamu’s exception.
A week later, Bokkun shows up with a box filled with Onigiri — with tuna filling — and he reluctantly takes one, then another, until the two of them finish an entire box on their own.
“That was meant for our whole team, Tsum Tsum!” Bokuto rebukes playfully. Atsumu shrugs and goes back to his new favorite hobby — stalking Onigiri Miya’s instagram account. He scrolls through the comments, looking for bad reviews, hate messages, but finds nothing. He sighs.
He later receives a message from his twin, with no words except a smug smiley emoji. He badmouths Bokuto in his head and calls him a snitch, then immediately takes it back because no one can really be mad at Bokkun. He settles for chucking his phone at the wall.
A week later, he and Osamu go phone shopping together.
—
Life has the weirdest ways of surprising you.
Hinata Shouyou rolled into his life on a Friday, and now that they’re holding tryouts for new members, Shouyou-kun backflips into the gym with a fucking tan, his sun-kissed skin a surface of bronze, his eyes a mass of glittering jewels.
He knew all about Shouyou-kun’s brazilian epescade, of course — he periodically messages Tobio-kun, both out of spite for the fact that he’s on the Olympic team, and just to annoy him — and he actually receives a response twice a week or so.
What he didn’t know was that Shouyou-kun could change this much; gone was the innocent, brazen highschooler, and god, Atsumu thinks he’s actually in love. Again.
“Atsumu-san?” And there are those earnest eyes, looking up to him with slight surprise.
“Shouyou-kun,” he answers, and his chest burns in the most pleasant way.
When Osamu had declared his undying love for food, he hadn’t understood him. He thought he’d never understand it.
(he thinks he might understand now)
—
He had a crush on Kita-san too, once, in his second year of highschool. Kita-san was cool, calculated, and told him not to overwork himself, like he actually cared. Of course, he immediately proceeded to overwork himself, but Kita-san’s voice, telling his teammates not to praise him for neglecting his health, rang in his head.
That was a phase too. He prepared a confession speech and a bouquet of flowers while Osamu laughed. A week later, he gave the flowers to his mom and burnt his speech to ashes with a lighter.
So why does this crush feel so different?
—
Shouyou-kun is the one who brings up the idea of doing their “freak quick”
It’s only been a day since he’s officially been accepted into the Black Jackals, yet their practices flow just as smoothly — if not smoother — with Shouyou-kun.
It’s been a while since Atsumu’s been this absorbed in someone else’s playing.
They’re doing their cool-down stretches, just the two of them, the rest of their team having left already. Their practice had been particularly grueling, the coach having put them in a 3 on 3 game — with Shouyou-kun and him on different teams. And god, as much as it was absolutely enthralling to watch him play from the other side, he wishes it were him who was tossing to shouyou, the one pushing the ball straight into his awaiting palm...
“Hey, Atsumu-san, why don’t we try to do our quick?” Shouyou-kun asks, all shimmering eyes and tanned skin, and Atsumu thinks his name sounds like heaven on his lips.
So this is what you had to deal with, he thinks of Tobio-kun's transformation, thinks of how he acted like a King with respect to everyone but him.
“Yeah, sure,” he answers, trying and failing to conceal the excitement palpable in his voice.
They reenter the gym and practice until the wispy rays of the sun disappear and melt into the darkness, until they’re tired and worn out and for the first time in a year, he returns home from volleyball without a single bitter thought about Osamu’s absence.
He’s thought about this before, being able to play on the same side of Shouyou-kun, but his imagination runs wild, and most of his imaginary scenarios stay imaginary.
Now that he plays with and not against Shouyou, he thinks he understands why he was never able to forget him.
(He thinks he’s the happier twin now, and this time, it's not just to spite Osamu)
He and Shouyou-kun spend more time together, sometimes with the team, sometimes without. They hold ‘team bonding activities’, initiated by Bokkun and Shouyou-kun out of pure goodwill and by Atsumu for his nefarious selfish purposes.
They — Shouyou-kun and him — also spend time alone, away from the literal stacks of sanitizing wipes that Omi-Omi brings to every gathering, or the sometimes overwhelming energy of Bokkun. they practice; Shouyou-kun’s a much more willing practice partner than Osamu has always been, and their first few practices, atsumu relishes in the feeling of having someone who’s just as enamored with volleyball as him.
In many ways, finding Shouyou-kun feels like going home. It feels like a second ‘Samu, except this one is significantly shorter, more energetic, and way more passionate about volleyball. He even laughs at Atsumu’s jokes, which he knows himself to be terrible.
Shou-kun’s blinding intensity can probably single handedly cripple a man, or maybe multiple. Or it might just be Atsumu.
All he knows is that if Shouyou were the sun, and a single gaze at him would render him blind, he’d gaze at him all day.
He and Osamu are better now — he can visit Onigiri-Miya and not feel the bile rise up in his throat. His last Shitfit ended when his phone screen had cracked against the dull paint coated concrete of his bedroom wall. His relationship with Osamu is balanced in phases too, but he's glad that this particular low phase is over. He’s missed him, not that he’ll ever say it out loud.
Six months after Shouyou joins the MSBY black jackals, they’re matched against the Addlers, their long time rivals, and also the team of Tobio-kun. Atsumu is busy partaking in his new hobby of ‘stalking Shouyou’ when Tobio-kun walks up to antagonize Shouyou.
So he does what any sane setter would do when confronted with Shouyou-kun’s ex-setter - walk up, and place his elbow on Shouyou’s shoulder. “Hey hey, don’t go picking fights with my wing spiker”.
Tobio-kun looks like he’s fuming a bit. He relishes in that.
They win the match against the Addlers, and standing across the net from Tobio-kun with Shouyou-kun by his side, he feels joy. He’s never felt a game as exhilarating as this. Tobio-kun looks at Shouyou-kun with what looks to be a mixture of a glower and a smirk, so he casually rests his elbow on his shoulder again — and watches as Tobio-kun turns the glower to him, a scowl on his face, steam practically erupting from his ears.
He remembers the way Tobio-kun was completely and utterly wrapped around Shouyou-kun’s finger — not that he can really say much about it, when he’s much the same way himself.
Both teams decide to go out to an Izakaya together, and soon, it’s Atsumu who has steam erupting from his ears. Shouyou-kun just has this presence that’s so easy to get along with, and of course everyone decides it’s a great time to crowd over him. Atsumu’s only spoken to him thrice in the span of twenty minutes, due to the constant interruptions and every other person constantly trying to hog his attention. He pouts in the corner, sipping his beer. Omi-kun looks at him with disgust.
They finally leave the Izakaya after two jealousy-filled hours, Atsumu clinging to Shouyou-kun in what he hopes is a very casual and friendly way. Evidently it isn’t, because even Bokkun’s looking at him weird. Whatever.
When they get back to their joint lodgings, Bokkun has the bright idea of watching a movie together. Omi-kun immediately tries to refuse, but Bokuto’s Bokuto and even he can’t quite resist him up in his face, pouting.
They turn on the TV and put on a shitty movie that Atsumu doesn’t pay much attention to. Shouyou-kun does, however, so he takes this as a sign from God to stare at him as much as he wants.
His hair is still fluffy for some reason, and Atsumu has this intense urge to run his hands through it. He resist it, with his superior willpower, and settles for ‘accidental’ bumps with Shouyou’s arm in the dark.
When the horribly cheesy movie finally ends, and the credits play, the room is dark. Day had long given in to night, and Bokkun and Omi-kun both look like they’re passed out, he turns to Shouyou-kun. He’s not drunk — or at least substantially less than previously, and all he knows is that he needs to monopolize him before everyone else starts getting their grubby hands on him…
“Shou-kun, have you ever had a girlfriend? Or a boyfriend, of course.” As soon as the words leave his mouth, he feels the urge to stab himself in the neck. It’s terribly unsmooth; even he can tell. The room is silent. Bokuto lets out a snore from next to him, Omi-omi wrinkles his nose unconsciously, and he’d be laughing if it wasn’t for the awkwardness hanging in the air.
Shouyou’s close — but not close enough. He and Atsumu and Bokuto are stuffed onto the same couch, Omi-omi on another one. A cheesy bonus scene plays, but neither of them are paying attention to it.
Shouyou isn’t responding, but his eyes are wide open, and he’s staring at Atsumu like he wants him to say something.
“Uhh, if you ever wanted to try a relationship, you could try me.” Atsumu sees Omi-kun’s nose twitch again, and now he really wants to deplete his own oxygen supply with the pillow he’s sitting on, because if his first line was lame, this one’s even lamer, and his face is so warm he thinks he might catch a fever, holy fuck is he—
“Atsumu-san, are you asking me out?” It’s easy to think of Shouyou like this innocent, easily flustered sixteen year old, but he really isn’t. He stares back at Atsumu with a certain intensity in his eyes, and the corners of his lips twitch upwards into what would be a smirk if it sat on anyone else’s face. “You know I notice you staring at me for the entire movie, right?”
His face goes from extremely warm to a boil, and he turns away from Shouyou dramatically, flailing his arms about. Shouyou laughs, and Atsumu thinks he can listen to that for the rest of his life. “Don’t worry, Atsumu-san, I like you too.”
For a long time — the past twenty three years of his life, precisely — he’s thought that volleyball was his only exception to his wavering interest. Relationships seemed pointless, until they didn’t, and then two weeks later they were pointless again.
Volleyball and Osamu had always been his crutches — then one broke, and he had to find another, but instead of finding a crutch, he found an entire fucking supernova.
The point is: he’s always thought his ‘phases’ only had one exception. Everything else was a temporary distraction in a sense; it was Volleyball or nothing — he was doomed, in a sense, to enjoy nothing in life but volleyball, and he had resigned himself to that a long, long time ago.
Two days later, he presses his lips against Shouyou’s for the first time, soft but demanding. He tastes like rice and curry and a promise of the future, and Atsumu thinks he’s found another exception to the rule.