Chapter Text
It always starts the same.
Lips part slightly, breathing calm and involuntary action. The body is simply acting on its own natural instincts as focus shifts. A hand is raised slowly, calmly, with practiced motions. There is no baited breath, there is no tensing of muscles. Everything moves with the ease that comes with seasoned understanding of the process. Ink splashes on canvas as a brush sweeps across skin. A thin line to start, dragging across the predetermined base. Followed with a confident flick at the end, a simple upturn of the fingers. Then the wrist twists to drag the line back, making a connection diagonally until the brush meets the center. Filling in the empty expanse with color becomes quick, taking no longer than three bold strokes. The brush is put aside, replaced with a thin cotton swab. Soft and delicate compared to the rest of the process, with the tip barely swiping against unmarked skin, an edge becomes perfectly clean. A slow sigh gets released at the finished product, tongue poking out to swipe along dry lips.
Then repeat.
Line. Flick. Connect. Fill. Clean.
That was the pattern Rintarou followed; a routine of sorts for something as simple as lining your eyes with different colored makeup. Liquid, gel, felt. It was a way to reach serenity that rivaled the oceans during low tide. A quiet stillness that established peace of mind.
Rintarou couldn’t quite explain the reason he was drawn towards the intricacies of makeup and eyeliner. He never found himself in repetition on purpose, but there was something about the simple motion to produce elegant shapes that accentuate the curve of an eye, the drapes of a crease, the soft or hard angles of a face. Rintarou reveled in eyeliner. He also reveled in trying out new things on new canvases. Canvases of different faces.
“Suna-kun, could you help me with something?”
Kiyoomi had approached him that morning, hands held behind his back. He didn’t look uncomfortable, only nonplussed. It wasn’t as if Rintarou and Kiyoomi were strangers, they had a few things in common. One glaringly so. However, they rarely ever spent time with the other alone. Kiyoomi’s brows were drawn together and his teeth were pulling at the inside of his lip out of habit alone. An agreement found the two of them in Rintarou’s apartment, hovering around each other in the bathroom.
Kiyoomi had been sat down on a stool. While it would’ve been an awkward distance to maneuver around, Kiyoomi’s height had put Rintarou just a head taller. A nitrile glove on one hand, a brush in the other; the atmosphere was quiet, light.
“You’re sure I can do whatever I want?” Rintarou questioned for the third time that evening.
A nod from Kiyoomi. “It’s obvious you know more about this than I do. That’s why I asked your help in the first place.”
Rintarou reached out with the gloved hand, lightly holding onto Kiyoomi’s chin. He turned Kiyoomi’s head to both sides, eyes unblinking in steady focus. There was a whole different process beyond the physical placement of ink to canvas. Rintarou was analytical on the court and it played very well to being analytical about a person’s face. Where the lines of the face meet, how sharp the angles are, the crease of the eyelid. It all mattered.
In Rintarou’s eyes, Kiyoomi’s face was quite elegant. A mix of round and straight, like an arrow drawn taught in a bow. Each line felt deliberately placed, sketched out by the careful hand of an artist. His lips also fault weathered, pink pulled tight-lipped and unsettled. There was a distinct furrow in between his eyebrows, scrunching the skin and bleeding onto the bridge of his nose. The two distinct moles sitting atop his eyebrow like a signature brought out the softer side of his expression. Rintarou found every single swoop and dip of bone and muscle extremely purposeful, even radiant. He was unsure how an outside eye would view Kiyoomi, but he thought Kiyoomi was a perfect canvas. Beyond his general facial structure came the shape of his eyes. Large, unapplied due to the hooded, uninterested state Kiyoomi’s eyelids fell into. They were gorgeously round and pulled up at the ends. They made for a fun place to play.
Pulling back, Rintarou’s mouth lifted up on one side as he dipped the brush into the pot of liquid black ink on the sink. “Close your eyes,” Rintarou directed, angling Kiyoomi’s head down. “Don’t flutter your eyes like that,” Rintarou chided, running a gloved thumb over Kiyoomi’s brow bone.
Kiyoomi complied, relaxing after a moment. He settled a bit deeper into the stool to give himself as much comfort as possible given the situation. Not that there was much more comfort to achieve with the given state of their positions. Rintarou hovered over Kiyoomi, slowly entering his personal bubble with a slow exhale. The process begins with his lips parting, focus running through his palm to his fingertips in electric rods. The second Rintarou’s brush made contact with smooth porcelain skin, the entire world melted away into a haze. There was only the ink, brush, and skin. Until there was Kiyoomi’s pout deepening into something more akin to a grimace.
“What is it?” Rintarou mumbled, squinting as he kept a steady hand.
“Nothing.”
“I can see you frowning, there’s something on your mind. Just say it.”
With a slow, shuddering sigh, Kiyoomi relented. “I didn’t just want your help with makeup, admittedly. The thing is about this event, Atsumu convinced me,” a pause as Rintarou flicked up his wrist, “Atsumu and I are going public about our relationship tonight.”
Rintarou leaned back, expression screwed into astonishment. When the white’s of Kiyoomi’s eyes just barely peeked out Rintarou managed out, “Don’t open your eyes!”
Kiyoomi’s eyes immediately sealed shut. The atmosphere felt unruly, the electricity from Rintarou’s fingertips shanking off like a missed receive and crackling into the air. Rintarou had to blink to keep himself level from his minor panic about the lines of wet ink smearing. His tongue swiped across his sardonic bottom lip before continuing his work. Taking an endeavor into slightly lengthening the baseline of the wing.
“Okay,” Rintarou began, expression fairly bored. How had Miya Atsumu of all people kept their relationship unknown? With everyone. Rintarou was unsure if his brother even knew, considering how bad Osamu was with keeping secrets. Rintarou hazarded a guess that Atsumu must’ve cared about Kiyoomi so much that he kept silent for Kiyoomi’s sake.
“I’m just unsure of how to handle it. It was Atsumu’s idea to do it now, considering it’s been about six months. How did you deal with everything after you went public?”
Rintarou’s eyes flicked down to Kiyoomi’s hand in his lap, where he was running the pad of one thumb over the slope of each nail. “Well it was a bit different for me, because we weren’t both professional athletes.” Connecting line running all the way to the center of the lid. “That being said it did feel a little bit like it was the only thing that mattered after the announcement.”
“That’s my biggest concern. I don’t want my life to suddenly revolve around the basis of my relationship as opposed to my actual athletic skill and how I behave on the court. I’m a volleyball player, not a character in a shoujo manga.”
The level of exasperation was something Rintarou connected to strongly. He gave himself a moment to think as he filled in the wing, tongue pressing against the tip of his canine.
“You want my honest opinion?”
“That would be helpful,” Kiyoomi almost whispered.
“For the first week, you’re going to have to suck it up and deal with it.”
“But-”
Rintarou tapped a gloved finger against Kiyoomi’s lips, effectively shushing him. “Just one week. After that you can deflect onto Atsumu or switch the topic to volleyball and nobody will think twice. Trust me on this one.”
“Just a week?” Kiyoomi mumbled against Rintarou’s finger, jaw clenching and unclenching.
“Seven days and you may not even get questions for all of them. Just speak the truth about it when asked and all that constant pressure will fade away faster than you think.” Rintarou grinned as he pulled his wrist up, dragging the brush from the tip of the wing into Kiyoomi’s crease, a thin stripe of onyx pressed into the curve like a seal. “If my idiot of a boyfriend gets sought out to be barraged with questions then yours will get the brunt end of it.”
Kiyoomi hummed thoughtfully, hands finally going still in his lap apart from the minor twitch of his knuckles. Rintarou leant back to admire his handiwork of one eye and gave an appreciative nod before repeating the same steps on the other eye. His lip had gone slightly cracked from the excessive licks across plump skin coupled with his direct focus. Rintarou was about halfway through the connecting line when his curiosity got the better of him.
“So, Atsumu?” Rintarou questioned with a slight pull on his lips, even if Kiyoomi couldn’t see his light smile.
The rosy blush that immediately colored Kiyoomi’s ears was enough of a tell. His naturally pale complexion already flushing. “Yes, Atsumu.”
“How’d that happen?” Fill in the gap of skin between lines.
“It sounds so incredibly stupid when I think about it now. You know how he pursues me constantly. I never really could tell if he was just doing it to annoy me or if he was genuine. Six months ago he pulled his sleeves over his hands, held onto my face, told me how he felt, and kissed me while I was still wearing a mask.”
“You’re telling me Atsumu did that? Miya Atsumu, Japan’s most notable holder of foot-in-mouth disease, won you over?”
“I told you how it sounded. Do not repeat that. I’d rather leave everyone in the dark about that particular story.”
“My lips are sealed.” Drag the darkness into the crease.
“That means everyone. Your boyfriend is not exempt,” Kiyoomi insisted, blindly reaching out to push a finger into Rintarou’s chest. Missing slightly and poking at his ribcage instead.
Rintarou squirmed away from the jab with a barely contained laugh. “I’m serious, I won’t say anything.” Setting the brush down, Rintarou exchanged it with a cotton swab, raising it to his mouth before stopping halfway there, his tongue hanging out limply. He quickly snapped his mouth shut with a grimace and instead lightly ran it under a thin stream of water from the sink. He leant forward with a slow inhale, replacing his hand on Kiyoomi’s jaw, holding it steady so he could drag the tip of the cotton along the bottom line of each wing to straighten the edges. “Don’t open your eyes yet, it needs to set so you don’t smear it.”
Kiyoomi nodded once, subconsciously pushing his thumb into one of his wrists to massage it. His teeth also rolled over his bottom lip, weathering it further. Rintarou spotted the actions instantly. Rintarou hoisted himself onto the bathroom counter, lifting one leg onto the counter. He slouched forward to rest his chin atop his knee and moved his arms to wrap around the leg. “When we decided to go public it was actually pretty early on in our relationship,” Rintarou began, very little inflection in his tone.
Kiyoomi gave pause.
Teeth released lip.
Hand left wrist.
“It was less of a choice and more out of necessity. We just wanted to get ahead of the rumors and he was worried about my credibility as an athlete more than anything. I understand where you’re coming from. While I wasn’t really worried about actually doing it, I just didn’t want to make it a big deal. I knew it meant more to him than it did to me, but come the day before we were actually going to do it I sort of caved in on myself. He just sat me down and talked to me about it, assured me that people weren’t going to focus on this forever.”
Kiyoomi’s eyes slowly fluttered open.
“I mean I love him and of course I wanted everyone to know we were together, but I wanted them to know so I could have a weight off my shoulders not because I wanted to flaunt it. Listening to him assure me was all it took.” There was a deep set fondness in Rintarou’s eyes, lips settled in a barely there smile, only noticeable if you were looking for it. The sort of look you don’t find yourself making on purpose. Something that paints across your features more sweetly than eyeliner. It emphasizes all your best parts in a way that can be blinding. “If you want my advice, I’d say talk to Atsumu tonight before the event and just tell him how you’re feeling. We both know how brash he can be, but I’m sure he’ll understand.”
Kiyoomi’s lips turned up in his own version of a smile, higher on the right than on the left, a small dimple just barely peeking out. “Thank you. I don’t think you realize how helpful you’ve been.”
Rintarou rolled his eyes with a smirk, nudging Kiyoomi’s knee with his toe. “I’m just telling it like it is, Sakusa. Now take a look at my masterpiece.”
With a subtle groan, Kiyoomi stood up, leaning towards the mirror and turning his head back and forth to inspect the makeup lining his eyes. All sharp lines and a deliberate curve, mimicking the bow and arrow of Kiyoomi’s face. The color also mused with the darkness of Kiyoomi’s hair and irises. Rintarou’s smugness was apparent, clear as day, as he watched Kiyoomi deliberate. He was particularly proud of the way it seemed to lengthen Kiyoomi’s eyes.
“D’ya like it?” Rintarou said all too quickly.
“You have a really good eye,” Kiyoomi praised lightly. He had closed one eye and squinted slightly to get a full view. He pulled back and gave Rintarou a genuine smile with a nod.
“Alright, now go talk to ‘Tsumu before we all have to go to this stupid press release,” Rintarou offered with a wave of his hand, shooing Kiyoomi out.
“You know, you’re incredibly lucky,” Kiyoomi spoke softly while he was pulling on his coat, slipping his mask over his mouth.
“Mm?” Rintarou hummed, opening the door for Kiyoomi with a tilt of his head. “We’re the same breed of lucky if you really think about it.”
“I suppose you’re right.”
Rintarou guided Kiyoomi out the door, returning to his bathroom to fix up his hair. He found himself laughing to himself at the thought of Atsumu and Kiyoomi together. The contrast there was somehow completely right in a way Rintarou hadn’t thought would work. Reflecting back onto it, they always did seem to be somehow attached at the hip during any V-League gatherings. Initially it had seemed odd but their bickering was welcome soon after. Rintarou couldn’t help the second laugh that bubbled out of his throat.
His mind made no effort to stop itself from drifting back to his own public confession. It was quite possibly the most daunting day of his life, not because he was nervous, but because he assumed his life would change the axis on which it turned on. If he didn’t have that sobering presence beside him throughout Rintarou was sure he would’ve flown off the handle, in public, for the first time in his life. Lucky.
A ping from his phone alerted him from his thoughts and he tore his gaze from the mirror. A message banner popped up that made him snort lightly.
‘just closin up. i’ll wait for u here.’
‘be quick aho’
‘love you’
Rintarou pulled his finger through a few strands of his fringe, flattening down the feisty pieces of hair and swiped his tongue over his drying lips. Luck didn’t even begin to cover it.