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Hinata's phone never stops ringing.
It's something Atsumu tries not to pay attention to but can't stop noticing if he tried. They're roommates, after all—teammates, friends, occasionally bedmates when alcohol makes him brave—but even with all those things, Atsumu is still too scared to ask.
And Hinata is too kind to tell him.
Hinata loves to kiss slowly, so sweet. He loves to be held, to be cradled, to have Atsumu's hands on his waist or his neck, running gently through his hair as their lips brush softly together. He loves leisurely makeouts and tangled limbs. Loves the feeling of their bodies pressed together, of Atsumu's lips on the top of his head.
Atsumu just loves him, but he is a coward, and he learned that early at seventeen.
"Hey, Hinata," Meian calls from the other side of the room where the rest of their teammates have assembled for a not-so-peaceful game of Go Fish. At this point, none of them bat an eye whenever Atsumu drags Hinata off to makeout in the corner. It's pretty much a part of their daily routine. "Your phone's ringing again. Want me to answer it?"
Hinata stills beneath Atsumu on the couch, just long enough for him to feel the cold seep into his bones. "N-no, it's okay," Hinata lies, turning a practiced smile towards their captain. "Just let it go to voicemail."
And so they do, same as always, only for the ringing to start back up again.
Atsumu moves off Hinata before he can ask him to, very careful not to look at his face. Hinata shudders to take a breath, but still he rises to accept his phone from Meian, a habit he can never seem to break.
He stares at the glowing screen for a very long time. Then, near the end of its second cycle, he turns it off completely.
He takes a seat next to Thomas. "So you're playing Go Fish?" he says, falsely bright.
No one asks any questions, but all of them, at some point, turn to shoot Atsumu looks filled with pity.
Atsumu's least favorite kisses are the apologies, mostly because Hinata has nothing to apologize for and Atsumu's a heinous fucking bastard for letting him try.
"Is this okay?" Hinata whispers, his breaths so quiet in the night, trembling and small.
What he really means is: Is this enough?
Despite what others believe, neither of them is stupid. Atsumu may be carved from selfish stone, built brick by brick on the most carnivorous foundation, but Hinata marks his vision clear, and for Hinata, Atsumu is incapable of being anything but gravely transparent.
They both know. They'd have to be blind not to.
But still Hinata's bed remains cold and they both pretend it's only for convenience that they spend every night blurring lines that they shouldn't.
The right answer is no, it's not enough. It's no, I love you. It's no, I can't do this anymore, it's killing me to keep doing this, I want to be with you, why can't I be with you?
The right answer it to walk away, to accept that Hinata's feelings aren't a mirror and Atsumu's fucking delusional if he thinks he can change things just by wanting it hard enough, trying to be good enough.
"Yeah," he lies instead. "It's perfect."
Atsumu doesn't ask, but unfortunately he still gets the answer.
"Shouyou."
Atsumu stiffens at someone using Hinata's given name, but he knows Hinata stiffens at the voice, at the person, because in the six years Atsumu has loved him, Hinata has never looked so ruined.
"Shouyou," Oikawa Tooru says again, looking far too out of place in the middle of the cold streets in Tokyo with his beach shorts and cropped sleeves. He is windswept and breathless, like he just stepped off a tropical plane and ran all the way here. His expression is fervent, filled with desperation. "Shouyou, I've been looking everywhere for you, I—I've called and texted and—"
"What are you doing here?"
The sheer rawness of Hinata's voice makes both of them flinch. Atsumu feels it like an old ache, like a wound in his chest he's harbored for years, pretending it doesn't exist, pretending it can't hurt him if he doesn't acknowledge it and he won't acknowledge it until he's dead.
Oikawa takes it like a slap, the hurt blooming visibly across his tormented face. "I—I wanted to see you," he whispers. "Is that really so impossible to believe?"
"Yes," Hinata says, near tears, another strike at all their armour, determined to cut them off at the knees. "Yes," he says again, somehow even more broken. "Yes. You shouldn't be here."
Oikawa flinches back a step, his shoulders curling in. "I—I know I messed up, but I—"
Hinata runs. They don't have time to anticipate it. And he is fast, faster than he's ever been, disappearing out of sight before either of them have a chance to react, leaving them stunned in his wake, shrouded in his dust, barely able to blink.
"What the hell did you do?" It's the first question Atsumu has dared to admit he's wanted to ask, ever since the first time he and Hinata kissed.
Oikawa only sinks to the ground, head in his hands, fully trembling. "Fuck," he whispers.
Atsumu burns, so he goes.
Hinata is on him the minute he arrives at their apartment, pushing him into the wall and dragging him down by the collar so he can crush their lips together.
He tastes salty and wet, his breathing heavy and shattered. He's so broken that every touch feels like it's carving into Atsumu like a blade, tearing him apart from the inside with jagged edges against pieces so fragile that they shred at even the slightest idea that Hinata is hurting, and it is killing him that this is what Hinata wants. That this is all Atsumu can give him.
A better person would tell him no.
Atsumu is not a better person.
Had anyone told him back in high school that Hinata Shouyou was a silent crier, Atsumu never would've believed him.
He should've known better. Sunshine people never break in public. Not about things that matter. They hold it in, shove it all in a deep, locked box in their shattered hearts until it becomes so full, so tattered, so ragged that they just can't keep it hidden anymore no matter how much they want to, no matter how hard they try.
Atsumu would've loved him anyway, in all his beautiful, broken pieces.
But Atsumu's heart is not what he wants.
"It's okay to love him," Atsumu murmurs. "There's nothing wrong with loving him."
Hinata continues to tremble in his arms, trying so desperately to pretend he isn't sobbing. Even when he cries, he's kind. He doesn't want to hurt anyone. Atsumu loves him for the effort alone.
"I can beat him up if he was really awful to you," he continues, "but I think you'd rather forgive him."
The gentle accusation makes Hinata choke on his lungs. "No. No, I can't—I—can't, it's too hard. I can't."
"Can't." Atsumu laughs quietly. "Now that's a word I never thought I'd hear you use."
"You don't understand. We were—we were together for almost two years, and then—when it was time for me to leave, he—he didn't want me—"
"I'd say that someone who's tried to call you every single day since you left—someone who scours the city just to find you the second he gets off the plane, who stares at you the way that he stares at you—isn't someone who doesn't want you."
Hinata swallows against his chest, cheek wet against Atsumu's bare shoulder. It's moments like these when he feels so tender and small in Atsumu's arms, stripped of the overwhelming presence that makes him a monster on the court until he's just a boy with a lovely heart that breaks with everyone else's.
It's moments like these when Atsumu likes to believe that in another life he'd have been able to protect him.
"I don't want to hurt you," Hinata whimpers.
And it's moments like these when Atsumu thinks he loves him the most. "You won't," he promises.
One last lie for the road.
Later, Osamu will call him an idiot. You could've kept him, he'll say. The one time you decide to be selfless and it's when you're sending the boy you love away.
There will be many times over the years where Atsumu agrees with him, but when he gets that letter in the mail on foil-rimmed cardstock telling him that he made the right decision—that Hinata is happy, happier than Atsumu ever could've made him—he can't bring himself to regret it.
Not fully, at least.