Archive of Our Own ^beta

People driving fancy cars look like beetles to the stars

“I mean, it’s gotta be Atsumu, right?” Ginjima says when the topic in question first comes up. “Like, y’know, being the main setter an’ all.”

“Ha, hear that, ‘Samu? It’s gotta be me!” Atsumu immediately gloats, earning him a shove from his brother.

“Like hell it does? Who’d want you as captain?”

“Uhm, everyone? The first-years love me!”

Suna can’t help but snort at that, even as Osamu retorts right away, “They just like seeing me beat your ass, that’s it.”

“What, and you’d be so much better?” Atsumu asks with a raised eyebrow.

“I am actually a nice person and would be a fair leader, and not go ‘round calling poor first-years ‘scrubs’ just ‘cause they’re having an off day.”

“See, you’re too nice to be captain! Kita-san doesn’t mince his words, so I won’t either!” Atsumu huffs, and then suddenly grins as he sometimes does, with irritating self-satisfaction of knowing he’s right.

“Besides, I’m basically the team’s face at this point, right? I mean, I am the best setter in the country,” he says with dramatically fake nonchalance, “and everyone’s attention will be on me anyway, so I might as well just represent the team properly, right? Right?”

There’s barely a second of silence, but that’s enough of an answer—and it’s not like they didn’t know that already. Suna doesn’t think anyone in the team ever questioned it—it just makes sense: the famous Miya twins, Atsumu and Osamu, setter and ace, captain and vice-captain—

“Oh, shut up,” Osamu says with another annoyed shove at his brother, “You literally just admitted that you’re an attention whore.”

“Aw, it’s okay, my precious baby brother,” Atsumu replies with a playful pat on Osamu’s shoulder, “Don’t worry, I’ll still let you be my vice-captain!”

Osamu swats his hand away and pulls a disgusted face. “Ew, no thanks, that’s even worse.”

That seems to surprise not only Suna, but the others as well.

“Wait, you don’t wanna be vice?” Gin asks.

“Hell nah, not if he’s gonna be captain.” Osamu points with an accusing finger.

“What’s that supposed to mean!?”

“You’re gonna be annoyin’ as hell, and I’ll always have to clean up all your messes.”

“Excuse me!?”

“Yeah, I guess they would just argue about everything and not get anything done,” Suna muses.

“Oh yeah, they’d just fight even more!” Ginjima exclaims around a laugh, “I can just see Atsumu tryin’ to make a speech and then Osamu corrects him and they just start fighting—”

“Yeah, that’s exactly what would happen,” Suna agrees, “Coach would just have to keep them away from each other even more often.”

“And that’s why I won’t be vice-captain for this guy,” Osamu concludes.

Atsumu frowns and pouts at him, but ends up giving in with a sigh. “Guess it’ll be Suna after all.”

“Huh?” Suna looks up, bewildered. “Why me?”

“Who else could it be?”

“Uh, Gin?”

The twins both look at him with identical blank stares. Ginjima laughs awkwardly and scratches the back of his head.

“Aw, c’mon, y’know I ain’t cut out for that, I can barely keep up with you guys…”

“No, Gin, you’ll be great as vice-captain. I believe in you.”

His teammates give him that look again, even Ginjima joining in. Suna knows he’s never been good at faking sincerity.

“I am absolutely serious,” he still reaffirms.

“It’s okay Suna, you don’t have to be nervous!” Gin encourages him with a clap on his back, and it’s clear from his bright grin and the shine in his eyes that he’s as genuine as ever. “I think you’d be pretty good!”

“I’m not nervous,” Suna replies, “I just don’t want to be the one to run after Atsumu and clean up his messes.”

“Hey, I’m not gonna be that bad!”

Osamu snickers as Suna cocks an eyebrow. “Then get Osamu to be your vice-captain instead.”

“Nah, he’s gonna suck at anyway—Ouch!” The twins start fighting again, but eventually, everyone settles on Suna being the most likely vice-captain, as much as Suna himself doesn’t want it—he’d never ask for any type of title or extra responsibilities on top of it.

In the end, he doesn’t have much of a say in the matter, but he doesn’t think much of it, until a couple of days after the Spring High when they’re gathered in the gym with the whole club and bidding the third-years goodbye.

It’s a pretty standard affair, with thanks for the past three years and well-wishes for the future, nothing that Suna hasn’t heard before in previous years, and if he ended up tearing up a little after Kita’s surprisingly heartfelt speech, well—so did everyone else. He doesn’t stand out in the crowd of their large volleyball club until the coach announces Atsumu as their captain, and Suna as the vice-captain and they’re obligated to make speeches themselves.

Atsumu’s is surprisingly genuine too, thanking the third-years for taking care of them up until now, and promising to lead the team to victory in the next nationals, no matter what. He says the latter part with intimidating confidence, a kind of intensity that only comes with being a complete and utter volleyball maniac, and Suna feels a bit awkward having to follow up on that—so he just says “I look forward to it” instead.

“What the hell, Suna, that was so lame!” Atsumu exclaims, slapping him on the shoulder.

Suna frowns at him. “You already said everything important, I’m just here to be your babysitter anyway.”

The team laughs, Atsumu sputters indignantly and tells him he should at least be more enthusiastic about it—and life goes on.

It’s not a big change to what it was before anyway, just that the second-years are now the oldest ones in the club, and that Atsumu basks in the confidence of being approached with captainly matters. Osamu still calls him out whenever he gets just a little too full of himself though, so Suna doesn’t even have to do much in terms of keeping their captain grounded. Atsumu, for what he’s worth, even does his administrative tasks dutifully, so Suna’s experience in the volleyball club goes largely unchanged.

The weird comes a couple of months later, when the cherry blossoms bloom, they’re officially in their third year and new players join the team when Suna notices somewhat alarmingly that being vice-captain does give him more things to do that he’d initially bargained for; namely, the hoard of first-year students that for some reason seem to drift much more towards him for their innocuous first-year questions than to their actual club captain.

He doesn’t mind answering them by themselves—though he feels sympathetic to Kita and Aran and his other past captains and hopes he didn’t seem nearly as much of a headless chicken as some of these kids do—but it gets to an odd point where he’s stuck with maybe half a dozen people coming up to him at the end of every practice compared to Atsumu’s maybe one or two. Sure, it’s nothing compared to the good chunk that always stick to Ginjima, being definitely the most outgoing out of all of them, but Suna knows that he doesn’t strike anyone as the friendly or talkative type, so the fact that he’s attracting more than their objectively handsome and friendly-looking captain is, by all accounts, fucking weird.

He watches curiously one afternoon when he notices a group of three first-years standing slightly off to the side, talking amongst themselves, looking around nervously. Their gazes shift to Coach Kurosu, who’s already talking to a couple of students, then to Atsumu doing his stretches after the end of practice, closest to them, and then to Suna, who busies himself with looking at his phone instead of them. They end up walking past Atsumu and up to him anyway.

“Uhm, Suna-senpai?” one of them asks.

“Yeah?”

“We were, uh, wondering whether there’ll be training camps held here too? And if the whole club participates in those, or…?”

“Ah.” A reasonable question, Suna supposes. “Yeah, there are some, but who can participate changes all the time. You’ll get all the information from the coach when the time comes.”

“Oh, uhm, thank you!”

Suna decides to indulge in his curiosity, and asks, “Why did you go up to me and not to Atsumu?”

The first-years freeze up and look nervously at each other until the one furthest at the back speaks up.

“I mean, he’s just kinda intimidating, ya know?”

“Yeah, and he’s the Miya Atsumu! He’s basically famous!”

“And he seems so… intense?”

“Yeah, when he said that we’re gonna win nationals this year it was like he was super serious about it!”

“He was,” Suna tells them, and they flinch again. He supposes he can see where they’re coming from, because Atsumu is nothing if not serious about volleyball, to the point where he has little patience for people who aren’t, and even if his welcome speech was almost picture-perfect—confident, inspiring, inviting enough—his obsessive intensity definitely bled through. The fame Atsumu has gathered in the volleyball world, especially in their prefecture, also doesn’t help, though he would never say so to the setter outright.

Suna understands all that and yet, he has to hold back a snort as these kids are genuinely intimidated by their captain when he knows better than that.

“He’s just a high schooler too, you know,” he ends up saying to them, before leaning down slightly and whispering dramatically, “I might even have some really embarrassing pictures of him.”

“Can you show us?” the first-year at the front asks with starry eyes. Suna appreciates the enthusiasm and grins.

“Make it onto the team lineup and I just might.”

The kids visibly perk up and nod with determination, completely missing the way their captain walks up behind them.

“What are y’all whisperin’ about so secretively, hm?”

The first years freeze up all over again, but Suna doesn’t bat an eyelash.

“I promised I’ll show them the training camp pictures if they make it onto the team.”

Atsumu gasps, because as many training camps as they participated in during the last two years, there’s a very specific meaning behind the words the training camp pictures.

“You wouldn’t.”

Suna raises an eyebrow. They both know that he absolutely would.

“Don’t listen to him!” Atsumu suddenly exclaims and turns to the wide-eyed first-years. “Suna is just a filthy, dirty liar and you should never ever listen to him! No such pictures exist!”

“I can also pull them up right now if you want to—”

“No—!”

Atsumu lunges himself at his phone and tries to pry it from his hands, and as much as Suna usually hates being the center of attention like that, he doesn’t mind seeing Atsumu so frazzled, losing his scary image with every passing second as the first-years’ smiles widen at the display.

Sure, Atsumu has an intense love for volleyball, an unshakable desire to win, with the certain knowledge that his confidence is completely justified by his skills—but ultimately, he’s just a harmless high schooler like all of them. The kids would learn that eventually anyway, but he doesn’t mind helping out that process, just this once.

“Hey, you,” Atsumu’s voice carries through the gym with surprising seriousness and Suna is not the only one to turn and look at his captain, apprehension already gathering in his mind.

“Ah, uh, yes, captain?” The nervous first-years spiker next to him replies.

“What was that just now?” Atsumu all but growls.

“...A spike?”

“A lousy spike. You did way better earlier,” he continues ruthlessly, “So what’s up with that?”

“Uhm, I’m, uh, very sorry captain!” the first-year replies, “Y’see we did some pretty intense sports today and it was hot outside so I’m kinda tired— “

“So what?” Atsumu interrupts, venom and contempt dripping from his voice, “You think you’re the only one tired from practice? You think you can afford to slack off just because you’re a little tired—”

Suna sees Coach Kurosu take a deep breath, ready to interrupt Atsumu, but Osamu beats him to the punch.

“Tsumu, shut up!” he calls from the other side of the net.

“Ha? What do you want now?”

“Get off the guy’s back, he gets it.”

“Oh, so you can suddenly read minds? How come you never told me?”

“Because I don’t need to read minds to know that yours is full of shit,” Osamu says as he comes over to Atsumu’s side of the court, the poor first-year shirking away from the twins glaring daggers at each other.

“Uh-oh,” Ginjima whispers next to Suna. They can all see where this is going.

“Why do you even care, huh? Ya know that guy or somethin’?”

“I don’t need to know someone to call out you being an asshole again.”

“What, you just wanna let everyone slack off willy-nilly?” Atsumu cocks an eyebrow in challenge. “Think you know so much better when you don’t even wanna continue playing volleyball?”

Oh, dear.

“Oi, listen up you little—” Osamu grabs Atsumu by the collar and Suna gets almost excited about the first real Miya twins fight of the new school year, when the coach finally decides to step in.

“Atsumu, Osamu, that’s enough! Go cool your heads, both of you!” His command is as firm as it always is, but the sigh afterward shows that it’s not the first and probably not the last time he’s had to break up a fight between them.

Osamu scoffs and reluctantly releases his brother, though not without giving him a demonstrative shove first. The two glare at each other once more before storming off in different directions, Osamu to the locker rooms, and Atsumu outside, probably to the fountains. Business as usual, really.

“Everyone else, get back to practice!”

“Sheesh,” one of the first-years next to Suna says. “Does that always happen?”

“Eh, it’s not as bad usually,” Ginjima replies sheepishly.

“You get used to it,” Suna comments, because really, you do—some people are worried about Atsumu and Osamu whenever they get like this, but over the years Suna has realized that that’s just the way they are: needlessly competitive and aggravatingly stubborn, especially when it comes to each other. At the end of the day, there is still clear respect, a type of strange, warped affection throughout it all. They act like they would kill each other in a heartbeat, might even come close sometimes, but they would help each other hide a body, too.

“Still, y’know,” Ginjima says to Suna. “Maybe you coulda stepped in or something.”

“Huh? Why me?”

“Y’know, being the vice-captain an’ all…”

Suna huffs a laugh and shakes his head. “As if they’d ever listen to me.”

Gin doesn’t look all that convinced when he replies “Well, if you say so.”

Practice continues as usual, as it does after a patented Miya Twins Fight™—they wouldn’t be one of the best schools in the country if they were brought so out of orbit without two of their players. They can’t afford to, if they truly want to reach the undisputed top this year.

What is suddenly different from the norm is the fact that after a good fifteen minutes Coach Kurosu walks up to Suna’s court and waves him over.

“Go check up on Atsumu, will ya?”

Suna can’t exactly say no to his coach so unfortunately, he's forced to simply nod and head outside to find his moody captain.

Normally he’d be glad for the reprieve from practice, but he might almost prefer that over being tasked with diffusing a volatile nitroglycerin sample like Atsumu—while he and Osamu are truly equally bratty and childish at heart, at least Osamu only directs it at his twin brother, while Atsumu has no qualms about expressing it openly to the entire world. And more basically—Suna knows Osamu better than he does his twin. Being in the same class for over a year and spending most of their free time at school together made him learn how Osamu ticks, and they’ve come to a quiet understanding, a comfortable agreement where they often don’t have to exchange that many words to understand how the other is feeling in the moment. If Osamu and Atsumu don’t want to spend their lunch breaks together, it’s usually Suna that Osamu ends up hanging out with and venting his frustrations to.

He doesn’t have that with Atsumu. Sure, they’re friends—the four of them with Gin have been a staple part of the team for a while now and they hang out together often enough, but Suna can’t recall any meaningful instances where he and Atsumu just talked on their own. He knows how to diffuse Osamu. But Atsumu? Atsumu is an unknown landmine all on his own.

He finds the setter next to the water fountains, just as he expected, his wet hair dripping onto the concrete as he busies himself with doing pushups in the scorching late spring sun. Osamu often does the same to cool himself off, which has always been utterly incomprehensible to Suna.

Absolute weirdos, both of them.

Atsumu notices him approaching and stops his routine, sitting back with crossed legs.

“Yo,” he greets him, less prissy than Suna expected, but a bitter edge to his eyes remains. Suna abruptly realizes that he doesn’t even know what to start with—he probably should’ve asked Kita for tips and tricks, a Miya Twin Care Manual 101 since his captain seemed to have such a good grip on them. Suna should’ve known that he would be the closest equivalent to Kita left on the team, even if he has neither his stoic factualism, nor dedicated patience, or his sense of duty.

“Did you cool off?” is what he finally settles on.

“Yeah, yeah,” Atsumu waves his hand dismissively. “I know, I know, I shouldn't have yelled at Samu and disrupted practice, that kinda stuff.”

“You should also probably apologize to the kid.”

“Huh?” Atsumu’s head snaps up to him in bewilderment. “Why? I wasn’t wrong!”

“You were still being an asshole.”

“What, is it so bad that I want to try and motivate the first-years to do better?”

“What part of that was motivating?” Suna scoffs. “They’re all gonna run off from the club if you’re gonna keep being mean to them.”

“Kita-san was always direct and brutally honest! Why can’t I be?”

“Kita-san san was brutally honest, you were just being a dick. He would’ve just said ‘Hey, keep up’ and be done with it.”

Atsumu’s mouth curls in dissatisfaction and Suna crosses his arms.

“What, is apologizing beneath you, oh mighty captain?”

“Hell no!” Atsumu replies but it’s not angry, more so just petty, with a pout on his lips. “Anyway, you’re the one bein’ mean right now, Suna.”

“I’m just brutally honest,” he replies, and Atsumu rolls his eyes and gets up from the floor, patting down his shorts.

“Fine, if you wanna go soft on the poor children.”

“You should really care more about your image,” Suna comments casually. “It wouldn’t do for the first-years to spread rumors of you being some tyrannical captain, even if it’s the truth.”

“What? No, it’s not! I can be nice!”

Suna grins. “Prove it then. Apologize to the kid.”

Atsumu bites his lip but eventually just throws his hands up in the air. “Fine! I’ll show ya!” and stomps right back towards the gym.

Huh. That worked out surprisingly well, Suna realizes, and takes note. If he can’t calm Atsumu down with cold hard facts and Kita-san’s intimidation, maybe he’ll just have to use Atsumu’s pettiness against its owner. He follows behind swiftly, and while Atsumu isn’t exactly calm, he does seem to have regained his usual single-minded focus on the task at hand.

Atsumu chances a glance over at Osamu who’s back to practicing already, but quickly turns away and walks over directly to the first-year, Suna following behind, just in case.

“Hey. Satou-kun, right?” Atsumu addresses him, and the poor boy flinches.

“Uh, yes, captain?”

Atsumu hesitates just for a second, chancing a glance back at Suna who made sure to stare at him as blankly as possible. He won’t let him live it down if he doesn’t go through with this.

“I’m sorry,” Atsumu finally breaks out, with great strain in his voice. “I was too harsh on ya. I shouldn’t have done that.” He even adds a short bow at the end for good measure, and the rest of the club is again staring at him, perhaps in even more shock than before.

“That’s, uhm,” the first-year stammers, “That’s fine! I mean, you were right, I was kinda takin’ it easy and— “

“I see!” Atsumu immediately perks up at the chance to prove he’s right again. “In that case, you should— “

Suna pinches Atsumu in the arm.

“Ow!” The captain turns to him with an indignant frown, but Suna looks down at him just as directly as before. Atsumu rolls his eyes and all but groans in annoyance but turns back to the kid with a deep breath.

“What I mean is— Don’t... Push yourself too hard today. But I won’t let you slack off the next time, ya hear?”

“Yes!” The first-year immediately replies, and Atsumu turns back to Suna with a pout.

“Happy now?”

Suna makes a show of putting a hand on his face and pretending to evaluate Atsumu. “Could be better,” he starts with, and can’t help but smile. “But you’ll have enough chances to practice, I guess.”

“Sunaaa,” Atsumu whines, stretching his name out, but Suna just leaves him be and joins back up with his own practice group, Ginjima watching him almost in awe.

“Yo. You made Atsumu say sorry.”

Suna raises an eyebrow “So?”

“I mean, only Kita-san could really do that usually, or the coach if he threatened to send him home!”

Huh. He guesses that’s true—Osamu and Atsumu are both stubborn as mules, always unwilling to apologize to each other, and getting the latter to apologize to anyone else might be almost as difficult. He looks back at the court Atsumu stayed at, already back in the motions of setting and directing his teammates, his head in the game just as much as usual. Suna hums in thought.

“Must have gotten lucky, I guess.”

Their school days pass by in relative peace, the team diligently practicing for the oncoming Interhigh, but before they can even get to Hyogo’s preliminaries, there’s another hurdle their club has to overcome: the school festival.

“Alright, everyone!” Atsumu claps his hands once with the sheet of paper still in his hands. “So, we need to prepare some type o’ project for the school festival, so give me some ideas! Oh, and we can’t do a talent show ‘cause that’s what we did last year.” A couple of hands go down at that, but really, Suna knows it wouldn’t be nearly as interesting this year: no one could ever beat Aran in arm-wrestling or Kita-san in a staring contest, though it might also be because last year Osamu and Atsumu had once again almost beat each other to death after an argument when they were supposed to be showing off the ‘twin telepathy’ between them.

“How about a café?” a second-year pipes up and Suna notes down the suggestion on the whiteboard behind him and Atsumu.

“What if he had a concert? Some people here play instruments, right?” Someone else suggests.

“Well, our marching band is already doing an exposition, so we’d kinda suck compared to them,” Atsumu says, “but maybe a rock concert or something…” Suna writes down ‘rock concert’ on the board too.

“Maybe theater?” another kid says.

“Ugh, no, that’s so lame”, his friend next to him complains.

“Hey, that’s mean,” the first one replies, while someone else again shouts out “Let’s do a haunted house!”

“What about some type of food booth? With like, ramen, or onigiri or something?”

Suna doesn’t miss the way that Osamu perks up at the suggestion, just as he did at the idea of the café. Atsumu doesn’t miss it either, giving Osamu a long look, even if the spiker has yet to say anything himself.

More suggestions fly from all sides for a couple of minutes, even if they become increasingly unrealistic or just plain unpopular.

“Alright, any other ideas?” Atsumu asks tiredly at the very end, though it’s clear that pretty much all of the viable ideas are exhausted at this point.

“Good, let’s just vote on it! Personally, I’d be for one of the food ones, they seem pretty fun.” It’s a casual comment, but Osamu’s eyes widen at that, even as Atsumu seems to deliberately avoid looking at his twin, all while Ginjima looks in confusion between the two of them. Suna is also surprised, for that matter, considering how just yesterday the twins had gotten into another spat about Osamu’s choice not to pursue volleyball, but it’s probably why Atsumu decided to drop in his two cents—it’s a deliberate peace offering, a quiet show of support, even if he’s incapable of saying it vocally.

They vote by show of hands, Osamu’s going up only at the foodservice options, and those are also the ones that get the most votes overall—the stall getting more, since it’s easier to organize just selling stuff, rather than having to arrange seating arrangements and needing more people to participate in waiting on the tables in a café.

It’s only when they’ve squarely decided on the stall that Osamu finally chimes in with his own suggestions, and he pretty much ends up leading the discussion on what to make (something nice and portable, nothing too intricate like ramen), how much (enough to feed a majority of the festival visitors, spoken like a true overambitious maniac) and he even starts suggesting specific prices and how to source the ingredients, before Atsumu interrupts to tease him about getting ahead of himself when they haven’t even gotten a specific space on their campus, let alone approval for the idea itself.

A couple of days later the school council does give them the approval, which means Suna and Atsumu have to sit down one afternoon to figure out the supplies and manpower, and most importantly, money, they’ll need for all that shit.

“Ugh, aren’tcha supposed to be all smart and actually figure this out?” Atsumu whines, the pen he’d balanced on his upper lip falling gracelessly to the floor.

“What, you thought you would just let me do all the work?”

“Well no, but you’re friends with Osamu, and he’s good at economics.”

“And you’re his brother, shouldn’t you share some of his knowledge?”

“Samu doesn’t let me use his notes ‘cause he’s an ass like that,” Atsumu pouts, “even if he’s the one always stealing my English notes.”

Suna rolls his eyes and types a couple of numbers again into his calculator, clicking his tongue when it once again comes up above the budget they’re allowed to spend.

“Osamu really should’ve been vice-captain, he’d have figured this out by now.”

“Hey, don’t say that!” Atsumu exclaims. “Would you want to torture me that much?”

“Yes,” Suna replies immediately and takes out his phone, ready to open the chat of the meaner twin. “Whatever, I’ll text him so we can get this over with.”

“Nooo!” Atsumu whines, “He’ll make fun of me if I need his help!”

Suna doesn’t deign that with a reply and only sends Atsumu his best ‘Do I look like I care’ look.

“Pleeeaaase?” The captain puts his hand on Suna’s and pleads at him with wannabe puppy dog eyes. “C’mon, you always take his side anyway, it’s not fair.”

“I don’t take anyone’s side.”

“Nope, you bully me way more!”

“You’re just easier to bully because you’re more vain,” Suna deadpans. “But you’re both equally dumb, usually.”

“Yeah yeah, sure, I know that you’re like, besties an’ all,” Atsumu waves him off.

Suna raises an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, you guys, like, hang out all the time, just the two of you an’ stuff,” Atsumu replies. “It’s really mean, honestly, don’tcha care about me an’ Gin?” he adds dramatically.

“We hang out because we’re in the same class, but I wouldn’t call us best friends or anything…”

“Oh.” Suna looks up at Atsumu and finds an unusual type of surprise at his face—eyes wide but his mouth small, quiet… disappointed, almost?

“Hm, I mean, if he’s the person you hang out with most, isn’t he automatically your best friend?” Atsumu continues casually, almost fakely so.

Suna hums. “I guess. But I don’t think I ever really had a best friend in that sense.” He’s never been the type to do that—at least when he imagines a best friend, he thinks of sleepovers gushing about crushes and deep talks about his darkest thoughts in the dead of night—and no, he’s never really had someone like that. He and Osamu are good friends, sure, but he doesn’t think either of them is the type to do that.

“Aw, it’s fine, we can become best friends if you want to!” Atsumu claps him on the shoulder and Suna swats his hand away lightly.

“Hell no. You’re more like a kid I have to babysit.”

“See, there you go again with the bullying!”

It’s a couple of days later when Suna and Osamu are once again eating together during their lunch break, that Osamu knocks his leg against Suna’s under the table, making him look up from his phone.

“Yo.”

“Hm?”

“Do you know what you wanna do after graduating?” Osamu suddenly asks.

It catches Suna a little off guard—though maybe it shouldn’t, since they just received their career survey earlier today.

“I don’t know,” he replies honestly. “Probably just go to college and see what happens then.”

“You gonna keep playin’?”

“Probably,” Suna shrugs. “I might get scouted to a couple good places, so I could just take the best offer and go from there.”

“And going pro?” Osamu asks around a mouthful of rice.

“If I still feel like playing, sure, why not,” he smiles idly. “I can probably make Division 2, right?”

“You could make first if ya got off your ass more,” Osamu quips and knocks their ankles together with a wry smile.

“Not gonna happen,” Suna replies with the same cheekiness. “What about you? College too?”

Osamu’s smile, rare as it is, drops again as he looks outside. “Maybe, for business or somethin’. I’m also thinkin’ about culinary school, or goin’ straight to work in some restaurant.”

“Don’t they just use you as a cleaning boy if you’re just starting out?”

“Yeah, but it might be good for a while, to see how it actually works an’ stuff.”

Suna opens his phone again. “Sounds like a pain in the ass though.”

Osamu shrugs. “Maybe.”

Many people assume that Osamu is a like a more toned-down, calm and rational version of his twin brother, and in some ways, they’d be right: he is generally calmer, less aggressive to the outside world, as the only one who can really aggravate him is Atsumu, but Suna has always known that there’s something else about him, too. Even just in volleyball, he’s always competed with Atsumu almost as much as Atsumu has competed with him, and he is no less someone who is driven by ambition, by some primal drive to achieve whatever he wants to achieve, no matter the cost. Osamu may be less obvious about it, feels no need to make any grand proclamations, or wear his heart on his sleeve like his twin brother, but once he has a goal in mind, he’s less likely to stop than Atsumu, in many cases.

“What do you want to do in the long run?“ Suna asks him. “Have your own restaurant?”

“Yeah, that sounds cool,” Osamu looks out of the window, not focusing on scenery as much as looking ahead into the future. “Though there’s loads of good restaurants too, or food magazines and all that.”

“Well,” Suna comments lightly. “If all else fails, you could just do crazy challenge mukbangs.”

“Hey, I’m tryin’ to be serious here.”

“I’m completely serious.”

“Fuck you,” Osamu chuckles and Suna grins with him.

They sit in silence and continue eating in silence for a couple of minutes more when Osamu suddenly speaks up again.

“I think I wanna make Japanese food mostly. Stuff with rice.”

“That’s a lot of stuff,” Suna replies. “But it sounds cool. Home sweet some and all that.”

“Yeah.”

“I mean, you can see what you like doing at the school festival, right?” Suna suddenly remembers. “Did Atsumu show you what we came up with?”

“He wouldn’t let me look at the budget ‘cause he knows it sucks,” Osamu says.

“Hey, we worked really hard on it,” Suna mock-pouts.

“You’re probably the only reason it’s not complete garbage.”

“Honestly, it was pretty even. Atsumu really wanted to prove that we could do it without your help.”

Osamu hums in reply.

“You two have been hangin’ out quite a bit too, right?”

It’s not quite a change of topic Suna expected. “I mean, I guess? Mostly just for the organizational stuff.”

“Ya sure? Atsumu tells me ya did some super-secret gossiping about me,” Osamu says with a slight grin.

Suna rolls his eyes. “He’s just being a brat. You’re not interesting enough to gossip about anyway,” he jabs.

“I’m terribly hurt,” Osamu deadpans with a hand raised to his heart. “Truly, you’d abandon me like that?”

“Sorry, I refuse to take sides, “ Suna says.

“And yet you’re always meaner to me than to him.”

“Atsumu says the same thing.”

“Atsumu doesn’t know shit,” Osamu replies, and Suna chuckles, though he takes a moment to think about the validity of those claims.

“... I mean I hang out with you more, so I guess there’s more chances for me to be mean to you, but when Atsumu’s around, we both bully him.“

“For the sake of fairness, you should be way meaner to Atsumu from now on.”

“Nah, don’t feel like it.”

“What, you like him or somethin’?”

Suna’s head snaps up. “What? No,” he replies indignantly. “At least you don’t get offended and insult me right back, Atsumu just gets all whiny and annoying.”

Osamu eyes him for a couple of seconds that feel entirely too long for some reason—Suna averts his gaze, an uncomfortable tightness stirring in his chest, his tongue tasting like a bit of a lie—even if it’s not a lie. Of course, it isn’t.

He feels Osamu’s leg shift under their shared table, tucking itself away from Suna’s.

“.. Well, if you say so,” Osamu finally says, and they both get back to eating again, and it takes Suna a solid minute to get rid of the sudden clamminess in his hands.

The day of the school festival arrives, and Suna already hates it: really, it’s a terrible crime against humanity that the captain and vice-captain not only have to organize and sign off and relay things to the school administration all the time, but also be there at school at an ungodly hour to oversee the construction of the booth itself.

He arrives with a couple of wide yawns, feet dragging on the ground, though as he walks by all the other clubs setting up their stalls and projects for the day, he can already hear distinctly Miya-sounding shouting from the distance.

Gin and a couple of other club members greet Suna casually, clearly in the middle of unloading their bags with premade onigiri, or unfurling banners, or making themselves otherwise useful, while the twins stand in the middle of it all simply yelling at each other.

“I told ya, the shelves should be at the front you dolt, so people can actually see what we have on sale!”

“Yeah but then we’d have to put the register at the back an’ that’s gonna waste time an’ get in the way of people making more food!”

Suna takes a look at the constellation around the main stall itself being pretty much set up, just needing to be adorned with the banners and menus made specifically for it, as well as the display shelves they got for their onigiri. It’s just a couple of cheap boards filling three sides of a square, with more than enough room for everything they need to be displayed at the front, without disturbing the back, where they’ll be making more onigiri as needed.

“You guys do know that we can just put things around the corners, right?”

The twins look up at him in equal surprise, probably not having noticed him until now.

“That’s ugly,” they reply in unison.

“You guys are ugly,” Suna deadpans and picks up the cases from the ground to place them in the least offensive composition to the twins’ refined sensibilities, only now noticing the no less than seven large Tupperware clustered on the ground, each filled to the brim with onigiri of eerie uniform shapes and sizes.

Suna looks back at the twins. “How many did you make?”

“Well, you gave us the five kilograms of rice…” Osamu starts.

“And you used all of it? “

“Well, Samu did eat like ten of ‘em last night.”

“Oh shut up, you ate almost just as many! And ya didn’t even make them!”

“Hey, I made some!”

“What, three? And you ate those too!”

“I would’ve made more if ya didn’t chase me out of the kitchen!”

“Wait, Samu,” Gin starts suddenly. “So you made like, fifty onigiri all by yourself?”

“Uh, yeah?”

It’s really hard to forget sometimes, that Atsumu and Osamu are twins, but in moments like these, it’s abundantly clear—the sheer casualness of a going “Yeah, I just did this completely outlandish task that most people would perceive as useless, and it was as easy as breathing” is absolutely identical between them.

Eventually, everyone else on building duty appears too, the others who were tasked with making about a handful of onigiri in advance all feeling inadequate next to Osamu’s virtual truckload, while they set up all their other appliances necessary to continue making them throughout the day. Atsumu even gets it together for long enough to go over their schedule again and make a convincing enough speech, though he secretly admitted to Suna over texts that he never cared about the festival, and the only reason he tried at all was for Osamu’s sake—he swore Suna to secrecy right afterward, of course. Suna, for once, agreed willingly, though he didn’t mention that Atsumu’s intentions really aren’t as well hidden as he thinks they are.

And so, the school festivals opens to the public. Osamu, Suna and a couple of others take the first shift until lunch, which Suna deliberately chose just to get it over with, and Atsumu deliberately didn’t choose because he’s lazy and not all that forward-thinking when it comes to anything other than volleyball, deciding to just go off on his merry way with Ginjima.

“...You’re really excited about this, huh?”

Osamu is not all that emotive, but even with the few early visitors and other students milling about and looking at all the stands, he has a genuine smile spread all over his face.

“Yeah, I guess I am.”

Suna leans against the stall and looks back over the other club members sitting on the ground behind the ‘onigiri-making bench’ since they don’t have anything to do yet, his eyes then drifting to the still 4 other containers worth of onigiri sitting on the side.

“Was it really that fun to make all of those?” he asks.

“Yeah,” Osamu replies, looking out into the slowly filling rows of people. “I mean, it’s not like a match or anythin’, but it felt nice, y'know? And they taste damn good too.”

“Yeah, they do,” Suna agrees. He’d tried one of them since they were overabundant and he hadn’t eaten breakfast anyway, but he’d been pleasantly surprised at the same, even though he knows that Osamu is a good cook.

Osamu’s gaze flies back to him, and his eyes crinkle at the corner, genuinely, gratefully.

“Hey, Su—” Osamu speaks up again, when both he and Suna suddenly notice a group of girls with their school uniform looking up at them nervously from the other side of the counter. Suna expects him and Osamu to look at each other and go ‘So, who’s gonna have to talk to them?’ but Osamu seamlessly smiles at them politely and asks “What can I getcha?”

“Oh, uhm,” the girl at the front stutters, looking away from Osamu and towards the menu items bashfully.

“Can I get one, uh, salmon onigiri, please?”

Osamu nods, charming smile on his face like it’s second nature to him. “Comin’ right up.” Suna can tell that he’s not even being fake. He really is enjoying this, huh?

Osamu wraps the onigiri with a napkin while Suna makes himself useful and handles the payment at the register, and the other two girls follow right after with their own orders. They move a couple of polite steps away to try them all in unison, and it feels almost like slow motion when he sees them bite into them—and when their eyes widen not a second after, Osamu watches as well.

“That’s so good!“ One of them exclaims, still with her mouth half full and Osamu’s smile widens even more, even something of a proud blush forming on his cheeks.

“Thanks!” he calls over to them, taking them by surprise but they smile back as well.

“These are really good!”

“Yeah, for real!”

“We’ll be back for more later!”

“Please do,” Osamu tells them as he waves at them, though after they turn their backs and walk away, he immediately turns around and pumps his fist in the air with almost childish giddiness.

“Ah,” Suna notices. “You look a lot like Atsumu right now.”

“What.” Osamu’s glee gets immediately replaced by annoyed indignance as he frowns up at Suna. “Don’t insult me like that.”

“Believe it or not, it wasn’t an insult,” Suna replies.

Osamu’s face relaxes a little, but he still makes a show of rolling his eyes.

“Any comparison to him is an insult.”

“Maybe,” Suna concedes, “but you know when he gets really into something and you kinda want to be annoyed but you can’t because it’s actually kinda cool?”

“Oh, so you want to be annoyed at me?” Osamu says with a raised eyebrow.

“Uh, duh? Who the hell makes fifty onigiri in a night for a school festival?”

“It was fifty-four, actually.”

“See?” Suna tries to sound exasperated, but he also doesn’t quite manage to keep the pride out of his smile.

“No, but really. It’s cool that you’re so passionate. Even if it’s a little much.”

“Sheesh, Suna…” Osamu rubs the back of his neck, turning away bashfully just like the girl with an obvious crush did before, even if it’s just from a rare display of sincerity between.

They don’t get to linger on their mushy friendship feelings for long though, as their second group of customers approaches, and soon enough, the festival is in full swing. Their booth is busy as ever, with there always being at least a couple of people staying in line, and Suna is more than happy to be out of his shift by the time lunch rolls around.

“Ugh, I’m beat,” he groans. “Let’s get something to eat that’s not rice,” he bemoans, already remembering the festival-goers he saw walking around with paper plates of takoyaki throughout the morning.

“Oh? Go on ahead, I’ll stay here for a lil’ while.”

“What?” Suna’s head whips around, and Osamu doesn’t even look up from the onigiri he’s still forming, even if Suna doesn’t doubt that he could probably shape them in his sleep at this point. “Don’t you wanna at least get lunch or something?”

“I’ll eat some of these,” Osamu nods to the fresh row of onigiri.

Suna grimaces. He really should’ve expected this by now. “You’d think you’d get sick of them after a while.”

“Never,” Osamu replies, with a slight grin, but Suna can tell there’s a determination in his eyes, which shows that he’s perfectly serious about it.

“Just don’t forget to take a break, alright?” he says with a last clap on Osamu’s shoulder.

“Yeah, yeah,“ Osamu replies, in the same way Atsumu does when you tell him not to overdo it with the late-night serving practice he does at least once or twice a week.

Monsters, all of them.

Suna sighs as he steps out of the stuffy booth to get some actual fresh air, just to dive right into the festival crowd to see what else is out there besides various fillings stuffed into rice. He gets himself the takoyaki he wanted, looking around for something sweet to get as a dessert when he suddenly spots a familiar head in the crowd—it wouldn’t be someone remarkable normally, the man being of average height, wearing boring clothes and not having much of a presence, and Suna might very well have overlooked him if it wasn’t for the tell-tale white hair with darkened tips, which Suna never managed to figure out to be natural or not.

“Kita-san!”

Kita turns back to him, with a bubble tea in his hands as he smiles lightly up at Suna. Even with the almost 15cm height difference now, it feels as intimidating as ever.

“Oh, nice to see you Suna. How’re you doing?”

“Alright, I guess, “ he replies. “Same as usual, really.”

“The twins aren’t giving you too much trouble?” Kita asks as he continues to walk down between the rows of the festival, and Suna matches his pace with him.

“Pretty much as usual, too, just that Atsumu started using ‘I’m the captain so you gotta listen ta me!’ as an argument all the time.”

Kita chuckles. “Well, that does sound like him. Seems you’ve still got it under control though, vice-captain.”

Suna scratches behind his head awkwardly. “I’m not doing anything, really. It’s not like anyone can stop these monsters once they really get going.”

Kita looks up at him curiously. “Monsters?”

“You called them monsters during the Spring High, I think. It fits them pretty well.”

“Huh. I guess I did,” Kita replies and takes another sip from his bright pink bubble tea cup. “They’re certainly a pretty rare type of people. But, y’know,” he looks up at him again, and Suna feels yet again like a bunny being preyed on by a vicious fox in the dead of night. “I was referring to pretty much our whole team when I called them monsters.”

Well. That’s unexpected.

“What do you mean?”

“We had quite a few talented players—we still do—and most of them are quite ambitious to boot. Some more than others, of course.” He smiles idly at that, but Suna feels a heavy drop in his chest, something vaguely familiar, even if he usually tries to ignore it, or reason it away—

“You’re part of that, too,” Kita clarifies, and Suna’s eyes snap down to him.

“I’m not ambitious.”

Kita hums, still penetrating him with his studying gaze, seemingly unaware of just how unnerving his clear eyes are—or he’s particularly sadistic and enjoys having people’s very souls squirm in place when he looks at them.

“Well, perhaps you’re not an overachiever like Atsumu,” he concedes, “But you’re certainly skilled. And you hate losing, so you do put in at least the work necessary to keep winning. You wouldn’t have made it the team otherwise.”

Kita-san has always been great at telling people the truth they absolutely need to hear, but Suna has rarely been on the receiving end of that notion—he considers himself to be pretty self-aware overall, and he’s usually well-behaved enough (or smart enough not get caught for his pranks) to never have any big admonishments thrown at him—though that’s not really what Kita is doing. He feels the shame well up in him, for his inability to see the truth that Kita presents him with so clearly, even if he knows he’s not really being berated—his former captain never says things with any kind of judgment, only with the objective truth, for better or worse.

“... I guess, “ he slowly admits, though he still has enough pride in him to snark back, “But in that case, you’re still the most monstrous out of all us, Kita-san.”

“Huh?” Suna feels almost insulted at the genuine surprise surprise Kita shows on his face, tilting his head to the side. “Me? What do you mean?”

“I mean, your ability to stick to a routine like that is monstrous in and of itself. And you’re all perfect and composed all the time. It’s honestly not fair to mere mortals like us.”

A beat passes before Kita does something that Suna has only seen him do a handful of times in life: he laughs, openly at that.

“Well, that’s a surprise. And here I thought I was the mere mortal in our club all along.”

“You can’t tell me you didn’t know that we were all scared shitless of you.”

“What, me? Whyever would you be scared of me?” Kita replies, and Suna would think he was being sarcastic if he was anyone but himself—except he does smile in that secretive way of his that makes Suna doubt himself all over again. He never could figure out Kita in any meaningful way, though maybe he just needs to admit that some things are just beyond his reach of comprehension.

“Well, either way, I’m really not all that perfect. I do lack self-awareness sometimes, as you see.” He still smiles idly while taking a sip from his drink. “Everyone has their humanizing flaws, in that aspect.”

“Does having flaws make a monster more human?” Suna wonders out loud, not quite registering that he said the words at all until Kita hums in reply.

“Interesting question. I won’t argue that some people are still extraordinary—monstrous, as you say, despite having flaws.”

“And others maybe don’t have many glaring flaws, but aren't all that extraordinary either.”

He feels Kita’s eyes on him yet again, studying him with a renewed, penetrating focus.

“...So you think it’s better to be a monster with glaring flaws, rather than an average human with average strengths and weaknesses?”

The question makes Suna stop in his place like he’s being yanked by a chain he only now realized was there—he has no answer to give immediately. He knows that there’s nothing wrong with being average, most people are average, he is average, and technically, not having any big flaws would be a good thing—and yet, in his heart—

“Kita-san! Suna!”

Suna gets thrown out of his thoughts as he hears Atsumu call over across the street, followed closely by Ginjima, each with a crêpe in their hands and some questionable... green… slime? covering their clothes in thin strands.

“Gin, Atsumu, good to see you,” Kita smiles up at them kindly, their previous conversation seemingly forgotten.

“Ya didn’t tell us you were coming!” Atsumu accuses immediately.

“I found time quite spontaneously, really.”

“Didja see our onigiri booth yet? They’re pretty good!” Ginjima says.

“Oh, I don’t believe I have,” Kita replies, “I should probably do that now.”

“Shouldn’t you guys be over there anyway?” Suna asks. “Your shift started like, half an hour ago.”

“Well, ya see, we got a little sidetracked by the haunted house, and then we got some real good crêpes here— “ Gin explains with a sheepish look and a show of the pastry in question.

“Besides, Samu’s got it covered anyway,” Atsumu adds with a shrug.

“How do you know he’s there?” Suna asks.

“Didja really think you could get him anywhere away from those dumb onigiri?” Atsumu replies, and well—it does make sense, now that Suna thinks about it. “‘Sides, he’d be with ya if he wasn’t over there.”

Suna is almost about to ask why when Kita speaks up, the familiar icy cold captain that he is.

“Atsumu, Ginjima. It’s irresponsible to shirk your duties, even if someone else takes over for them.”

“Aw, c’mon, we just got a lil’ sidetracked—” Atsumu tries to weasel his way out, but one look from Kita shuts him down immediately.

“Ugh, fine, we were on our way there anyway! Honestly!”

All of them make their way back, and Suna finds Osamu just as he had left him: making onigiri, handing them over to an ever-growing line of hungry customers, all the while having the most content smile plastered on his face—that is, until he spots their group; more specifically, Atsumu.

“Oi, Tsumu!” A couple of the kids stood right in front of him flinch at his sudden change in tone. “What took ya so damn long!?”

“Shut up, we’re here now, aren’t we?” Atsumu replies and quickly passes the crowd and walks behind the counter, while Suna can hear not-so-quiet coos of “Oh my god, they’re twins—“ from a couple of girls in the line.

Osamu is about to throw another quip at his brother when he suddenly picks out Kita amongst their group, his face immediately changing to excitement yet again.

“Yo, Kita-san!” It’s the first time all day that Suna sees Osamu go away from the booth, Atsumu and Gin quickly taking his place in the production process.

“Hello, Osamu. I see you quite like doing this,” Kita comments fondly.

“Yeah, it’s been goin’ great,“ he says with a nod to the large line. “Hey, you want one? On the house, of course.”

“Oh no, I’ll line up and pay for your service.”

“C’mon, it’s free for club members, and you’re still our old captain!”

They hear a vague “Oi, Samu!” from behind them, even as Kita chuckles. “Well, if you insist.”

Osamu ducks back behind the counter again only to return with not only one onigiri, but one each from their entire selection, presenting them with the pride of a puppy bringing back a stick to its owner.

“Osamu, I really can’t accept all of these—”

“Then please give me your honest feedback in exchange!” Osamu all but pushes the onigiri onto Kita, “Don’t mince any words!”

Suna thinks he really must be a masochist for willingly subjecting himself to such criticism.

“Well… you are insisting,” Kita relents with a sigh and carefully takes the leftmost onigiri, not disturbing any of the others, and takes a decent bite out of it.

Even Suna looks on curiously as Kita chews on it thoroughly, closing his eyes in deep concentration while Osamu watches him with rap attention, knuckles tight on the plate.

“... It’s very good,” Kita ends up replying. “The filling is tasty and balanced, no flavour really overpowering any of the others.”

Osamu preens in delight but looks no less concentrated or serious when he leans in closer.

“Buuut…?”

“This is really just my personal preference,” Kita prefaces, “but I’ve grown up with the rice from my family’s farm, so I would ideally prefer that one in any rice dish.”

“Oh wow, really?” Osamu questions immediately. “Think I could get myself some of it?”

Kita chuckles. “Of course. Would it do as payment for this great set of onigiri?”

Osamu’s face lights up. “You got it Kita-san! Ah, I really should start tryin’ different rice varieties if I wanna make my own restaurant someday…”

”Oh? You already have plans for your own store?”

“Well, nothing set yet,” Osamu replies, looking almost lovingly over to the booth next to them. “But I’ve only done this for a few hours now and I can already see myself doin’ that for the rest of my life, honestly.” He says it with the fondest smile, pure unadulterated passion lit up in his eyes, so much like his twin brother’s that it makes that ugly, stupid, useless feeling rise up in Suna again.

“Well, if you ever do need a steady rice supplier, I’m sure we could figure somethin’ out,” Kita easily replies, Osamu’s grin widening even further, and he soon starts to ramble on about things that Suna gives up following after half a minute of restaurant and business jargon—it’s clear that for all of Osamu’s uncertainty but a few days ago, he’s already done plenty of research into how he would need to organize himself. The sheer fact that he’s been smiling all day and is so openly talking about his passion, and in turn raptly listening to Kita explaining something or other about how his family business is run, is proof enough of that.

A petty, ugly, terrible part of Suna wants to be snide and mean and make fun of Osamu for getting his head so full into an idea when graduation is still so far away. ‘Isn’t this just some lofty fancy?’ he wants to say, much like he sometimes wants to break down Atsumu when he yet again shows how obsessed he is with volleyball to an almost unhealthy degree—hell, Osamu doesn’t even have a track record of success except this stupid little booth, who does he even think he is, plucking this pure passion and dedication out of thin air when Suna himself—

It’s a petty, ugly, terrible line of thought, Suna realizes immediately, followed by another wave of deep shame. Truly, most of him is happy to see Osamu so excited—he’s proud that his friend has found something that makes him happy—and yet, at the moment, the ugly part has sunk its claws into him with a vice grip, and he starts wordlessly walking away from Osamu and Kita and Atsumu—all these incredible people that he and his mediocrity are forced to be surrounded by.

Truly, what is worse: to be a flawed monster, or an ordinary, unremarkable human?

The Interhigh preliminaries pass by them as quickly and without a challenge like any other, and it’s only a couple of weeks later when they file into the crowded gymnasium with every other team that qualified and is seeking refuge from the oppressive heat of Tokyo summer. Honestly, Suna is almost bored of the sight of the same locker rooms and halls and courts and camera rows for, what, the fifth time now? And yet somehow, that doesn’t stop Atsumu from being excited like a kid going to his first regional qualifiers when he steps into that gym once again.

“Tsumu, stop acting dumb,” Osamu calls him out on it.

“Shut up, Samu!” Atsumu replies, but without any of his usual bite as the grin doesn’t fade from his face in the slightest.

“What are you so excited for anyway?” Suna asks.

“I mean, it’s been a while since we’ve had to play in the first round!”

“Uh,” Ginjima speaks up, “Ain’t that, like, bad?”

“Why?” Atsumu turns around to the team. “We can win against anyone, be it in the first round or the finals.”

Ah. He really should be used to this Atsumu by now, so intensely confident—monstrous even, like he heard Kita say once with an odd type of fondness. Suna remembers distinctly the shiver he’d felt the first time when Atsumu showed that side of himself, two weeks into their first school year, challenging the then third-year setter and captain for the starting position in front of the whole team. It sounds laughable when he says it like that, but really, the entire gym went completely silent within a second, because even then Atsumu didn’t talk like an overconfident brat who doesn’t know his place—Oh, he knows where he’s supposed to be, and he isn’t afraid to push people out of that spot when it’s taken up by someone less worthy than him.

Atsumu still had been told off by numerous people that day, including the captain, the coach, and most of all Osamu, and Suna had quietly snickered about it with Ginjima later during their walk home. Hilarious, what so-called geniuses thought of themselves, right?

Little did they know that Atsumu would go on to play in every single match of his first-ever Interhigh but a few months later. Suna was brought out only twice as a pinch server then, while Ginjima stayed a benchwarmer the whole time. Gin had later told him on the bus just how much it had frustrated him and Suna could only hum in vague agreement—he’d never expected to play a major role in the first place, but the envy gnawed at him anyway.

Even as he made the team a year later, he still couldn’t get quite over it, no matter how irrational he knew it was—there will always be a difference between mere mortals and people like Atsumu, simple as that.

There’s no point in dwelling on it either, because when it comes to volleyball, a genius or a monster is only as good as the people he surrounds himself with, and Suna knows that they’re a pretty damn great team. It’s not too long before they win their first match against some nameless team from a weak prefecture and their match on the second day goes by just as quickly, so they have plenty of time to watch the match of their potential next opponents closely.

“Geez, what do they feed ‘em in Miyagi?”, Atsumu wonders out loud. Ginjima and Osamu hum in assent. They’d all wondered who this nebulous Datekou team would be if they somehow beat out the legendary Shiratorizawa, and the dark horse that trampled over them in the Spring High—but looking at them now it’s clear that without Ushijima and the solid defense of Karasuno’s previous third-years, neither team stood a chance against the sheer might of the iron wall, rivaling even Kamomedai in raw height and blocking power, without sacrificing a solid offense either.

“Yo, Suna,” Atsumu turns to him in the middle of the second set, the first being won by the Miyagi team. “Think ya can get past them?” he says almost teasingly.

Suna hums in thought and studies the court below them once again.

“The setter seems like an instinctive type, so I can probably bait him,” he concludes. “But that giant? No chance. He might be worse than the four-eyes from Karasuno.”

“Aw, you’re just saying that so I won’t rely on you too much, right?”

“No,” Suna says immediately, though he can see Osamu watching them with a knowing glint in his eye.

Well, maybe. He knows he’s good enough to get past the white-haired guy some of the time but it sure as hell isn’t going to be easy.

“Well, too bad,” Atsumu replies with a shrug and grins at him deviously. “‘Cause imma need ya to go all out against them tomorrow.”

“You think they’re gonna win?” Suna challenges. “It’s not like the other team doesn’t have a chance.”

“Nah,” Atsumu says with a look back at the court. “Even if they win the second set, Datekou is only gonna double down on their defenses in the third. They probably won’t last that long anyway.”

Suna hums noncommittally because he doesn’t want to let Atsumu know he’s right—not that it matters since 20 minutes later, Datekou leaves the court as winners once more. They even look up to them watching in the stands, and the white-haired giant points his finger specifically at Suna with an intense glare for whatever reason. The captain of the team, who already seems like a dick from afar, shuts down his ace’s arm quickly but throws them a no less threatening peace sign before they head off again.

“Aw, guess you’ll have to work hard after all?” Atsumu coos and even Osamu and Ginjima, the traitors, laugh at him.

They barely scrape out a win in the end, but not without Suna all but collapsing on the floor right then and there. He’s exhausted, and even the hilariously obnoxious way that Atsumu and Futakuchi keep glaring daggers at each other while sickly sweet poison drips out of their filthy mouths can’t remedy that. Truly, Suna was almost regretting playing volleyball at the end there because he’s had to jump and attack and dodge and block for a straight three sets without reprieve, and he knows it’s not necessarily going to get easier from here. Tournaments are a pain in the ass in that way.

“Ya doin’ okay?” Ginjima asks as he leans over Suna.

”I’m going to become one with the floor. Go on without me.”

“C’mon, ya can’t! What’re we gonna do without our vice-captain?” He already reaches for Suna’s arm to pull him up but Suna remains firmly planted on the floor, even if he feels the sweat from his uniform starting to seep below him.

“Yeah, vice-captain, we need ya around!” Atsumu says, suddenly closer than the last time Suna checked. “You were kinda the MVP there.”

“What, you’re not gonna claim the title for yourself?” Suna asks suspiciously.

“Well, since I’m the most important player in most games,” he gloats not-so-subtly, “I can hand the title over to someone else. Just this once.”

“Piss off,” Suna laughs and lets himself be pulled up like a ragdoll from the combined effort of his teammates.

The worst thing is that they have another match in only a couple of hours ahead of them, and a part of Suna really doesn’t want to go through that ever again, even if their next opponent seems somewhat easier to handle. Tournaments truly are a curse with how demanding they are of you, even if you’re used to practicing nearly every day already.

Still, Osamu helping Suna do his cool-down stretches, Ginjima handing him the closest sports drinks and bentos he can get his hands on, Atsumu giving the team a pep talk for their next match followed by the team’s idle chatter lulling him into a nap—this he can also only get at tournaments. He supposes he wouldn’t be playing volleyball if the blessings didn’t outweigh the curses, most of the time.

The next two matches pass with not quite easy, but definitely expected victories for them, earning them a spot in the finals yet again.

Then they play against Itachiyama, yet again.

It’s a tight five sets, each going into fierce deuces for several points, and during a time-out in the last one, Suna remembers something similar happening at the Spring High two years ago. He had been benched for the entire match then, and even as he knew that they were one of the best teams in the country, he didn’t believe that they would win—after all, they were up against the Itachiyama, and who was Inarizaki? A school that had a good run in the last couple of years, nothing more.

In the end, he’d held his breath at the last couple of points of the fifth set along with everyone else in the stadium, but when the ball landed on their side of the court, he could only release a sigh of resignation. It’s not like he could’ve changed anything about the outcome even if he had been out on the court.

This time, one and a half years later, Suna does stand on court pretty much for the whole match, and he can’t help but chuckle at himself for feeling so strangely motivated today. His teammates turn to him with confusion, because Suna is not one to laugh out of nowhere.

“What’s up?” Osamu asks him curiously.

Suna hums in thought once and looks around his teammates, his gaze finally landing on Atsumu standing on the opposite end of the circle. His expression is just as curious as to the others’, but there’s something more open about his eyes—something alert, expectant, and Suna can’t bring himself to look away when he says his next words.

“We can win this.”

Atsumu’s face falls into pure shock then, as do the rest of his team’s—before he’s viciously assaulted by all sides.

“What the heck, Suna!” Gin exclaims, on the verge of a sob, and Osamu playfully ruffles his hair, “Since when are ya so cool, huh?”

Atsumu makes his way over too, pulling Suna close with an arm around his shoulder.

“Ya heard what he said!” he calls out to the rest of the team. “Next time we walk back out, we’ll be national champions, ya hear!?”

They all shout in agreement at their captain’s motivational words, and even Suna joins in for once. Atsumu grins at him, and with a last clap on his back, they step onto the court again.

They return as losers.

Suna knows he wasn’t wrong—they could have won this, but sometimes he just isn’t tall enough, their first-year blocker isn’t skilled enough, and Sakusa and Komori seemed in even better form than usual today. Coupled with the occasional unlucky outs and net-in’s and what-not, it just ends up adding up to 24-22 in the fifth set—Inarizaki comes out as the nation’s runner-up, yet again.

Suna remembers his indifference back then, and he finds that he doesn’t feel particularly upset now either. They played an objectively good game, and are objectively still one of the best teams in the country, they proved themselves to be some of the best players nationwide from the hundreds that started not even a week ago. He knows that objectively, it’s all something to be proud of—and he is.

Still, a bitter aftertaste remains.

He tries to wash it out with water and food after they’re done thanking the spectators and slowly get ready for the final awards ceremony. Some people are still working on getting their tears under control, Osamu has gorged himself on no less than three onigiri before passing out from exhaustion, as he often does, and Ginjima, pretending that he isn’t still tearing up, is trying to wake him up futilely, and that’s the moment that Suna notices their captain missing—at the same time as the coach, apparently.

Coach Kurosu takes one look at the still sleeping Osamu, and then promptly turns around to Suna. The vice-captain looks off to the side deliberately, tries to avoid his coach’s eyes, as if it could actually make him invisible.

“Suna, can you go find Atsumu?”

Suna rolls his eyes and sighs deeply but stands up nonetheless, even as his legs protest painfully, threatening to liquefy under his weight. He walks around the gymnasium’s hallways, avoiding the curious glances of people that recognize his uniform, dipping into each bathroom he can find before finding Atsumu in one in a nearly deserted area.

His head hangs low, water dripping from his fringe, hands clutched around the sink to the point where Suna can see white knuckles shining through the skin. Atsumu doesn’t look up at Suna’s entrance, not even when he takes a couple of steps inside and the door clicks shut behind him.

“... Atsumu?”

He whips his head around, eyes wide and red at the edges, cheeks blotched.

“Oh,” Atsumu’s voice sounds weaker than usual as he wipes his face with the hem of his shirt. “Sorry, did coach call for me?”

“Yeah. The ceremony’s starting soon.”

Atsumu hums in reply and then proceeds to open the tap and splash himself with water again, slapping himself on the cheeks right afterward. He doesn’t look any better after doing it.

“Are you okay?” Suna can’t help but ask.

“I’ll be fine,” Atsumu replies, voice still hoarse, and looks away to the ground. “It just… fuckin’ sucks.”

“To lose?”

“To lose against Itachiyama again,” he says in almost a growl, “How many times has it been, like four? And we still can’t win against them, even though even you said that we could do it today—”

“We could have won,” Suna replies.

“But we didn’t! So what’s the point if we lost anyway!?”

“What, would you rather we didn’t have a chance against them at all?”

Atsumu falls quiet after that, biting at his lip in frustration. Suna isn’t exactly sure what to do, he’s never been good at comforting people, and he never thought that Atsumu of all people would ever need it from him. He awkwardly puts a hand on his captain’s shoulder, like he’s seen Osamu do a couple of times when he’s shown genuine care for his brother.

“We don’t need things like memories, remember?” Suna says for lack of better words, the dialect he’s become used to hearing still tasting odd when he tries to say it himself. “Yeah, we lost. It sucks. I also thought we could really win today, but… “ he drifts off awkwardly, mostly from Atsumu’s oddly clear eyes watching him like a hawk.

“...But we should focus on getting even better, and then we’ll beat them at the Spring High. It’s the more important tournament anyway,” he adds with a last-ditch attempt at humour, and he thinks he even hears Atsumu breathe out what sounds like a laugh before the setter almost makes Suna lose his balance with the way he throws his arms around him.

“You’re right,” he says into Suna’s shoulder. “I know you’re right, but just…” he breathes in harshly, wetly, and loosens his arms just slightly, but Suna pulls him back in with his own.

“It’s okay,” he says, and before he knows it Atsumu sobs and leans into him even further, gripping his uniform like it’s a lifetime, even as Suna tries to figure out what to do with his arms—he hopes that just running them up and down Atsumu’s back is comforting enough.

Suna doesn’t like losing. He also can’t deny that this loss stung more than most, but somehow, feeling Atsumu shake against him with quiet sobs, breathing into his shoulder harshly, warmth seeping into his shirt that might just be hot tears—it hits somewhere much deeper, discomfort and pure sadness clawing at Suna much stronger than just the disappointment of defeat.

It’s definitely a few minutes that they stay together like that, and Suna starts to worry about someone else having to come and look for them, when Atsumu retracts himself with a last sigh and a startlingly loud sniffle.

“Sorry,” Atsumu tells him with a weak smile.

“It’s okay,” Suna replies. “I just hope you didn’t get your snot all over me,” he adds teasingly.

“Hey! I didn’t!” The setter pouts and lightly punches at his arm, but he ends up smiling just a little wider too. He turns to the sink again and splashes water onto his face one last time before drying it off with a paper towel. He sneezes into it once for good measure and laughs hollowly at his reflection in the mirror.

“Damn, I really look like crap.”

“I could say that you always look like crap, but I won’t.”

“You literally just said it!” Atsumu exclaims indignantly, but he quickly styles his wet fringe as best as he can with his fingers and then turns to Suna with a grin. “Let’s go then!”

“I hope we’re not late,” Suna replies as he heads out of the bathroom, scouring the hallway for any clocks he can see the time on.

“It’ll be fine, it’s not like they can start without the captain and vice-captain, right?”

“I mean, they could always just pretend that Osamu is you.”

“Wow Suna, I really thought ya were a nice person in there, but you’re still actually a huge jerk.”

“Exactly. I have a reputation to maintain,” Suna replies nonchalantly, and Atsumu only laughs and knocks their shoulders together as they go back—it’s good to hear it, he realizes. Much better than crying.

By the time they’ve come back, Atsumu is almost back to his usual loud self and even Osamu doesn’t dare mention the remaining red puffiness around his eyes as they head back onto center-court for the final awards ceremony, just like they did in the previous couple of tournaments. Atsumu receives their second-place award with a polite bow for the cameras and his eyebrows only furrow a little as they all watch Sakusa Kiyoomi receive the winner’s trophy, though he looks like he doesn’t actually want it. Coach and Atsumu get nearly swarmed by interviewers right after, and even Osamu answers a question about being their ace, or something like that, while Suna somehow gets the rest of the team to change and get ready to take their belongings onto the bus back home.

Atsumu and Osamu race to see who can enter first and snatch the window seat, as they do, though Osamu always takes it a little slower after a tiring match, while Atsumu burns out the very last drop of the leftover adrenaline in an attempt to continue the thrill of the court even after it’s long gone. By the time Suna himself enters the bus, the twins are curled up against one another in the last row, eyes closed and shoulders tight, sleeping motionlessly against each other’s shoulders.

He sits down all by himself, headphones plugged into his phone, and brushes absentmindedly against his shoulder, suddenly reminded of Atsumu’s vulnerable weight on him.

And so their last Interhigh passes much like all the others did, and their summer passes with it—they take their loss in stride and then leave it behind them, using it as just another building block to propel themselves into the future.

Atsumu sulks for a good week in private after the finals, Osamu tells Suna, but if there’s anyone who embodies their team’s motto the most, it would be Atsumu; from the very first day that they get back to practice, he doesn’t say a word about their loss, only uses his all-consuming focus to look towards the future, a perfect Orpheus who wouldn’t fear for Eurydice—no, he would march out of the underworld with all the self-explanatory confidence that she would follow, and if she didn’t, well—she should’ve just walked faster, then.

That kind of dedication to progress is genuinely commendable, enviable to an almost sickening extent, but Suna finds it only obnoxious when Atsumu tries to drag him into it, too.

“Heeey, Suna, Rinrin, Rin-kun, my favourite vice-captain ever—”

“Liar, you always liked Aran-san the best.”

“Okay, fine, my second favourite vice-captain,” Atsumu amends, but still leans into Suna’s personal space with a deceptively innocent smile. “So… how would you feel about—”

“No.”

“C’mon you haven’t even heard what I said yet!”

“I already know it’s gonna be a pain in the ass, so no.”

“Just stay and practice with me for a lil’ bit, an hour, tops!”

“An hour’s way too long.”

“Half an hour! But I had this idea that you could pull off some amazing broad attacks, and I wanted to see them!”

Suna winces. It’s never a good sign if Atsumu gets ideas because they’re usually good ones. For his own gain, anyway. “...Why,” he asks with the deepest exasperation he can manage.

“Because you’re quick on your feet, your stamina’s been improving too, and you have the mid-air control to pull off a wide range of attacks even when moving into a certain direction, so I’d like to use you to your fullest potential.”

Suna’s mood drops even further, because Atsumu has actually thought about this and it’s not just a whim he just came up with on the spot, and he’s looking at Suna with his unshakable determination and the absolute certainty that he’s right and there’s no room for arguing otherwise.

“We’re pretty good as we are, why bother practicing something entirely new now?”

“C’mon, you saw how amazing Shoyou-kun’s broads are, right? And a little birdie told me that Glasses-kun has been practicing ‘em too,” he singsongs as he slinks an arm around Suna’s shoulder, not-so-subtly turning both of them in the direction of the courts again. And yes, Suna was impressed with Karasuno’s annoying blockers despite himself, of the jumpy tangerine’s speed and the robot’s completely detached focus on the game ahead of him, but that doesn’t mean he needs to try and get on their level, especially if he figures out that he won’t be able to reach it.

“Good for them,” he replies and slinks away under his captain’s hold, because sure, he does have a sense of competitiveness to some extent, and he wouldn’t mind just waking up the next morning and being better than them—but his intrinsic laziness is the primary decision-making force in his life, and once again it is telling him that practice, extra practice, extra practice with Atsumu, will be much more bothersome than it’s worth.

“Y’know Rinrin,” Atsumu croons from behind him, with that certain undertone of cockiness that puts Suna on edge immediately, “I’m gonna make you hit those broads anyway, y’know that, right? And I could also go to Coach and propose my idea to him outright, and it’s a good one, so he’ll definitely accept it, and when you end up messin’ up the attack it’s gonna be aaall on you, ya hear?” he continues, each word digging itself through Suna’s carefully crafted sloth, which quietly submits to the fact that it’ll probably be less effort to get it over with after all than to deal with Atsumu’s constant nagging later on.

An ambitious Atsumu is annoying as is, but he’s definitely at his most obnoxious when he’s right and he knows it. Suna never really had a chance.

“... Half an hour and then I’m leaving.”

Atsumu’s face has no right to be lighting up with as much genuine joy as it does.

“Okay, let’s go!” he calls and immediately snatches up a volleyball cart from one of the first-years and tosses a ball a couple of times to himself as if he wasn’t still warmed up anyway. Suna happens to meet the other third-years’ eyes as they leave to go to the locker rooms, Ginjima turning his head in confusion while Osamu’s gaze is somehow a mixture of both pity and disappointment. It mirrors Suna’s own emotional state quite well.

“Rinrin, c’mon!” Atsumu whines across the gym just as Suna sets his alarm for 28 minutes, and walks up to join him on his chosen half of the court.

28 minutes later the ringing echoes through the gym but it’s muffled by Suna’s panting, feeling an uncomfortable amount of sweat dripping down his temples as if he’d just played a full three-set match without break.

“What, already? C’mon, let’s do a little more—”

“Hell no,” Suna breaks out, “I’m done here.”

“But it was going so well!” Atsumu whines and attempts to make himself cute with a pout.

“Well, it won’t for much longer, and I’m getting hungry,” Suna replies, even if Atsumu isn’t wrong—it took a couple of tries to get the timing and positioning right, but Atsumu’s experiment was largely a success with his amazing aim and Suna’s flexibility and more than passable accuracy, even if it came at the expense of his now burning lungs and legs and his disgustingly drenched gym clothes.

Atsumu huffs but dutifully starts picking up the volleyballs from the floor and placing them in the cart as Suna undoes the net and they bring in the poles together—it’s all familiar motions and they don’t need to exchange any more words until Atsumu peers up at him curiously on their way to the locker room.

“What?”

“You’re not upset, are you?”

“Wha—” Where did that come from? “No. Why would I be?”

“I dunno, sometimes you just go all quiet and go away without tellin’ anyone, so I thought it might be one of those days. Guess not.”

Suna wants to get defensive at first because he’s not some social recluse or anything—but he thinks he knows what Atsumu is getting at. He couldn’t bring himself to talk to anyone, the day after the school festival.

“I just don’t have anything to say, really.”

“Huh,” Atsumu says as they enter the locker room, “Really, nothing?”

“Not all of us blurt out every thought we have, you know.”

“Hey, I don’t blurt out every thought I have.”

“Oh, really? Could’ve fooled me,” Suna replies as he shrugs his sweaty practice shirt over his head, and when he looks up at Atsumu, he’s studying Suna intently again. It’s uncomfortable, really.

“What, do I have something on my face?” he asks snidely.

“You have really pretty eyes.”

Suna blinks. It takes him a solid moment to process the words, and by that time he notices Atsumu looking just as surprised as Suna feels, though he quickly turns away, fishing in his bag for more clothes, red blooming on his cheeks. Suna looks away himself. What the actual fuck?

The seconds feel too long as they pile up between both of them staring at their feet and the awkwardness building unbearably between them.

“...People usually tell me they’re kinda creepy,” he ends up mumbling out eventually.

Atsumu chuckles. “Aren’t all beautiful things in life a little creepy?”

“Wow, thanks. Really makes a guy feel appreciated.” Suna rolls his eyes.

“C’mon, y'know what I mean!” Atsumu exclaims, and Suna can’t help but admit that to some extent, he thinks he does. At the very least Atsumu is an unsettling person all by himself, so he probably has just as unsettling tastes too.

Suna’s not sure what to think about the fact that he might fall into that, too.

“Why did you say that anyway?” he asks instead of dealing with that particular line of thought, trying to shake off the turmoil he starts to feel settling over his chest.

“Huh? I mean, I just noticed it, is all,” Atsumu hastily replies, shrugging on his club jacket and for some reason, Suna feels the uncomfortable weirdness falling over them all over again.

“...Thanks, I guess,” he replies way too awkwardly, just to fill in the silence. He wonders if the redness on Atsumu’s face is still from practice or something else entirely.

He doesn’t get to contemplate the question further as Atsumu switches the topic to something school-related and they keep their chatter light and casual as they walk home together, parting in a perfectly normal way when their paths diverge.

Suna tries to go to sleep earlier that night, hoping that exhaustion and the hot bath would take him out quickly, but even as he’s lying in the darkness his mind keeps going back to that moment in the locker room, the way Atsumu complimented him so honestly, the way his eyes crinkled at the corners when he smiled at Suna with such rare, pure sincerity.

It’s weird and confusing and Suna hates the way the thoughts make his head swim, since he still can’t figure out why Atsumu would say something like that in the first place; after all, he’s the one with much prettier eyes.

Suna generally likes going to the arcade, especially with his friends, but the problem of going with his friends is that Atsumu and Osamu are, unfortunately, part of that group.

“I saw it first!”

“Uh, no? And even if ya did, I got here first!”

“No, ya didn’t!”

Ginjima looks up warily from his seat in front of the racing game since he was the first to call dibs out of all of them. “I can just let ya two play first—”

“No!” they shout in unison, not tearing their eyes away from each other.

“It’s a matter of principle now!” Atsumu adds as if it actually justifies their childishness.

“Rock, paper, scissors?” Osamu asks.

“You’re on!”

“What are you guys, twelve?” Suna drawls from his position, leaning on the free seat that the twins are arguing over. He could just be bold enough to sit down and take the place for himself, but he doesn’t particularly like racing games, and well—it’s always more fun to watch the twins bicker uselessly anyways.

“Yeah, on a scale of one to ten,” Atsumu replies with a cheeky wink. Suna rolls his eyes while Osamu replies, “More like on a scale from one to a million.”

“Well, you’re a twelve on a scale from one to a billion!”

Suna decides that he got an unambiguous yes to his answer, while Gin, bless his soul, already gets up from his seat.

“C’mon guys there’s no need to fight—”

“No!” They both shout again, still dead to the world and leaning into each other provocatively.

“Rock, paper, scissors, go!”

The shout is immediately followed up by a yelp from Atsumu, who instantly demands, “Best of three!”

“Hell nah, I won that.”

“What, you’re scared you’re gonna lose then?”

Osamu, still childish at heart, takes the bait and they play two more rounds, after which he is the one to proclaim, “Best of five.”

“Huh? Nah, I won that!”

“I agreed to best of three too! Are you scared of losin’ now?”

By the time they get to the best of nine, even Suna is a little tired of their antics, so he pulls a coin out of his pocket and pushes it between their faces.

“Heads or tails?” he sighs.

“Heads!” “Tails!” They say at the same time—it’s a little scary, how even with their constant arguing, they never end up taking the same side in a coin toss. It’s not even consistent who picks what.

Suna throws the coin, and when he turns it over on the back of his hand, it’s heads.

“Ha!” Osamu sticks his tongue out at Atsumu and promptly sits down in the racer’s seat next to Gin, while Atsumu petulantly crosses his arms and pouts with blown-up cheeks.

“Fine!” He raises his arms in defeat. “I didn’t want to play that badly anyway!”

“Sure, ya didn’t,” Osamu replies without even looking up from his seat, which makes Atsumu pout even more.

“Whatever, me an’ Rin are gonna go play somethin’ way more fun!”

That does make Osamu look up with a frown but before Suna can say anything for himself, Atsumu already drags him away by the arm, muttering old curses at his supposedly stupid brother.

“Who says I want to hang out with you?” he interrupts Atsumu, who turns around but doesn’t let go of Suna’s arm in the slightest.

“Huh? Why wouldn’t you, I’m great fun!”

Suna only looks at him with the most deadpan look he can manage. Atsumu only rolls his eyes and continues dragging Suna through the arcade.

“Oh, let’s play DDR!” He tugs on Suna, not even asking for his opinion, and the only reason Suna doesn’t protest is that he doesn’t mind the game that much. That still doesn’t mean he has to participate, even though Atsumu is still holding his arm as he climbs onto the platform and attempts to pull Suna up with him.

“C’mon it’s no fun just by myself!”

“I think it’s plenty fun.”

“Please?”

“No.”

Atsumu then pulls even harder on Suna’s arm, making him almost stumble.

“C’mon!”

Suna contemplates trying to pull away but he imagines Atsumu might be even more annoying in return—so instead he sighs, and says, “Just one round.”

Atsumu immediately drops his hand to pump his fist in the air, “Yay, let’s go!” he already pushes in the necessary coins into the machine and the cutesy voices ring out from both of their sides as Suna undoes his uniform jacket and hangs it over the bar behind him, and then rolls up the sleeves of his shirt.

“Yo, let’s do the challenge difficulty!”

“Huh? No way.”

“Why not? Scared you’re gonna lose?” Atsumu grins at him.

“I know I’ll win, I just don’t feel like getting tired.”

Suna realizes his mistake immediately when he sees the competitive glint light up in Atsumu once again. “Okay, now you have to play! You gotta prove yourself!”

“I don’t have to prove anything.”

“So you are scared of losing? Didn’t expect that of ya.”

Suna convinces himself that he’s doing it solely to get Atsumu off his back, not because he places some amount of pride into his DDR skill. Not at all.

“Fine, but don’t come crying to me later.”

Atsumu cackles a little uglily, and Suna even gives him the option of choosing the song—he knows pretty much all of them anyway.

Roughly two and a half minutes later, Atsumu is staring in disbelief at the ‘LOSE’ on his own screen, before looking over to Suna’s, shining with the stars and crowns of victory and a score almost four times that of Atsumu’s own.

“What the hell!? Since when are ya so good!?”

Suna shrugs, not bothering to hide the gloating grin from his face. “I told you I would win.”

“I want a rematch!”

“I said just one round.”

“Well if you’re so good you can do one round more! Or was that just a fluke?”

Suna has sworn to himself many times that he should absolutely not get involved with any of the twins’ antics, together or as individuals, so he should, by all accounts, say no. Instead, he smirks down at Atsumu.

“Sure, whatever. Maybe you’ll actually get to half of my points next time.”

“Oh, you’re on!”

Atsumu brings up a valiant effort, to his credit, copying Suna whenever he can with how he holds onto the bar for balance, but three rounds later and Suna is still ahead in scores by a good third, but more importantly he’s already uncomfortably sweaty in his uniform.

“I’m done, let’s go.”

“What?” Atsumu looks up from digging around for more coins in his pocket. “No, I need to get my rematch!”

“I’m tired, and you can practice in your own time.” It’s not even a lie, but mostly he just knows that he should cut off Atsumu as early as possible, otherwise he would continue until the point he actually caught up to Suna, and neither his legs nor his pride want that to happen anytime soon.

“Besides, other people are waiting in line,” he tries to appeal to the little social sense that Atsumu has while trying to wipe down the sweat from his face with the collar of his shirt. As he looks up, he notices Atsumu watching him, eyes wide, and face obviously red, even in the dim arcade lighting. Was it that exhausting for him?

“You alright?” he asks, and Atsumu suddenly blinks several times, as if thrown out of a trance.

“Uhm, yeah, you’re just pretty… good! Pretty good at this. Do you practice or somethin’?” The words come out in rushed breaths, followed by an awkward half-laugh at the end, but Suna figures it is probably just Atsumu being out of breath after several rounds of the hardest difficulty.

“I just play with my sister at home sometimes.” Sometimes being at least twice a week, and his sister being ranked competitively in official DDR tournaments, but Atsumu doesn’t need to know that.

“Oh, I see—”

“Yo, guys!” Gin’s voice breaks out to them as he walks towards them with Osamu in tow.“We were looking all over for ya—” He’s followed closely by Osamu, but when Suna looks at him, his eyes are firmly on Atsumu—he’s frowning, not in annoyance for once, but something more like confusion, or suspicion. Suna wants to look back at Atsumu to figure out what’s going on there, but the other twin just quickly pushes past him and towards Ginjima.

“A-ah, Gin, wanna play that racer with me now?”

“Eh, it wasn’t all that good—”

“Oh, well, let’s find something else!” He exclaims and then quickly drags Gin off like he did with Suna earlier, perhaps with more nervous energy to him now.

Osamu watches them go with the same suspicion, turning to Suna, eyeing him up and down before quickly turning back towards where the other two went off, even if they’re long out of sight.

“Did somethin’ happen between you two?”

“I mean I just wiped the floor with him in DDR, but that’s about it.”

Osamu only hums in reply and looks off thoughtfully into the distance again. Something about his eyes, not-quite-sad but definitely not pleased, doesn’t sit right with Suna.

On Monday after their day at the arcade, Osamu sits down next to Suna in the locker room and tells him that he’s not eating lunch with Atsumu.

“Huh,” Suna replies as he put on his practice shirt, “What did he do this time? Eat your pudding again?”

Osamu doesn’t answer. When Suna looks down at him, his scowl is firmly planted on the floor of the locker room, his lips tight in subdued aggravation.

It’s that moment that Atsumu enters the locker room, chatting loudly with Riseki, but his voice abruptly cuts off when his eyes fall upon his brother. Suna can hear Osamu scoff, and Atsumu turns his nose up and looks away demonstratively, sitting down at his locker without so much as an acknowledgment.

“Atsumu-san…?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah, I was sayin’—”

Must have been a pretty serious argument, this time.

“Alright, I’ll join you,” Suna tells Osamu, even if he doesn’t need to—it’s part of their routine already, that if it’s not the four of them, it’s usually Suna and Osamu by themselves. Osamu never expects it of him; he only ever announces that he won’t spend time with Atsumu, while Suna is free to do whatever—but he’s not nearly heartless enough to leave Osamu by himself, and again—it’s just routine at this point, even if there hasn’t been a bigger argument between the twins in a while.

As expected, they don’t talk to each other for the entire duration of morning practice—not really, anyway, besides the expected calls for hits and tosses, but even then it’s clear that they’re only going through the motions, and the coach separates them into different practice groups with another heavy sigh.

Osamu himself doesn’t mention anything by the time lunch rolls around, and Suna knows better than to press him for it—sometimes people just need to not talk to each other until circumstances force them to, so they can go back to normal again. That tends to be the case with the twins more often than not.

Still, Suna doesn’t particularly like those moments, because the atmosphere feels impenetrable, heavy and murky because he’s bad at talking on the best of days—now he needs to actually be considerate and, god forbid, a nice distraction for his friend. Outrageous, truly.

It’s Osamu who decides to break the silence, in the end.

“Have ya handed in your career survey yet?”

Suna wishes he’d kept his mouth shut after all.

“Ugh, don’t remind me,” he groans. “Seriously, why’s everyone so obsessed with this stuff?”

“It’s almost like we’re graduatin’ soon and need to know what to do with our lives or somethin’.”

“Smartass,” Suna kicks him lightly under the table. “I know I’m gonna go to college, but the teacher actually wants me to put down a subject or career this time.”

“D’you really not have an idea?” Osamu asks.

“The only reason I’m going anyway is because I don’t know what else to do with my life. Better to just stay in education for a couple more years and figure it out later,” he sighs.

“Y’know, sometimes I forget how much of a nerd you actually are.”

“Shut up, you’re gonna go study too, right?”

“Yeah, but not ‘cause I wanna study. If I could open a restaurant tomorrow and know everything I need to do, I’d go for it right away.”

Suna leans his head on his arm and looks out of the window. The autumn leaves shine a bright red against the grey of their concrete courtyard and overcast sky.

“Must be nice, having a dream like that.”

Osamu stays quiet at that, though Suna can see him drinking his milk from his periphery.

“... Is there really nothing you want to do?”

Suna huffs out a bitter laugh. “Not really. I’ll probably just go through college and get a basic office job after that. Maybe if I still want to play I’ll try for a team, that might be a decent living for a couple of years.”

“And become coach after that?”

“Hell no, I don’t want to teach anyone. Maybe I’ll get to use that degree after my sports career is over,” he sighs. “Or maybe I’ll just end up regretting everything and wishing I did something else entire—Ow!”

Osamu quickly retracts the hand he used to flick Suna square on the forehead.

“What was that for!?”

“You were being dumb.”

“Sheesh, thanks,” Suna replies, still rubbing the sore spot just above his eyebrow. “You really know how to cheer a sad guy up.”

“You’re not sad, you’re just thinkin’ too much,” Osamu tells him, reaching forward again, though Suna slaps his hand quickly enough this time.

“I’m thinking about my future like everyone wants me to—”

“Yeah, but not about the next ten years, dumbass,” he says while pointing his chopsticks at him. “Why bother thinkin’ about somethin’ ya can’t possibly predict? You don’t know what you don’t know, right? So even if that happens, you’re doing the best you can with what you have now. Nothin’ wrong with that.”

“That’s—” Suna wants to argue, desperately, to prove that in some ways his fears are legitimate—but nothing comes to mind. Of course Osamu is right, that all of these thoughts are stupid. He clamps down instead—the whirlwind of his doubts knowing it’s in the wrong, but still having nowhere to escape to.

“We don’t need things like memories, remember?” Osamu says, quieter. “Why would ya think about things ya did or didn’t do in high school in like ten years? Even if ya don’t like where you end up, it’s not like ya have to be stuck there forever. You’re smarter than that.”

He looks up at the last sentence, while Osamu staunchly doesn’t—maybe there’s a slight flush on his face too, though it’s hard to tell as he deliberately stuffs his face with his lunch instead of acknowledging what he said any further. They’re both pretty bad at these kinds of talks, Suna realizes anew.

He sighs in defeat. The hurricane is still there, but it might have shrunk a category or two. “...I guess you’re right. Still,” he lays down his head on his arms. “Must be nice to have everything out already,” he mumbles.

“I don’t really have anything figured out yet,” Osamu says around a mouthful of rice. “I just try to get where I want to end up.”

“Well, I don’t even know where I want to end up!” Suna mumbles angrily, though it’s more for the dramatics than any genuine aggravation. “And Atsumu is pretty much set for life. Bastard,” he mutters into his sleeve.

He is a bastard, in every derogatory sense of the word, for being so dramatic, and petty, and rude, while at the same time being so unbearably blessed—so ambitious, so driven, so talented and skilled, and surprisingly considerate when it counts. Maybe most aggravatingly, it’s the positives that start to stand out the more you know Atsumu, because his innate motivation is as overwhelming as it is an art piece, open to the world to be appraised and remembered, leaving a lasting imprint even if you’ve long left its vicinity. The source of all envy is one way or another admiration, after all.

“Yeah. He’s a bastard,” Osamu confirms after a long moment, sounding more bitter than Suna expected him to. He watches Osamu continue to scowl, simply shoving his food further into his mouth, inconsiderate of the undoubtedly delicious taste.

“You okay?”

“I’m fine.”

He probably shouldn’t have brought up Atsumu, Suna realizes. Their argument must have been really bad this time.

Suna resigns himself to the fact that he’ll probably never figure out what to do with his life, so he does the next best thing he can do instead; that is, ignoring his existential dread, hanging out with friends and continuing to play volleyball while he still somewhat doesn’t hate it.

Well, he can admit to himself that that’s not quite true—he likes volleyball. He likes being good at volleyball specifically, and he’s been successful enough breezing by on his above-average height and small talent so far to not feel completely overwhelmed by Inarizaki’s rigorous practice schedule and clear dedication to becoming national champions, rather than being just for fun. Most people that enter the club have either been scouted or joined the school specifically because of volleyball, and Suna knows he’s lucky enough to be part of the former—it’s telling, how few of the amateurs that join the club at the beginning of the year stick around until then end.

Then he looks again at people like Atsumu and becomes aware of his human mediocrity all over again.

It’s not just about Atsumu’s skill, though that too is amazing in an of itself—the more Suna spends time practicing with him the more he realizes that there’s just something different about him, and about his drive to pursue his goals to the utmost extent he can. Suna was lucky enough never to face the twins while he was in middle school, but he saw one of their matches live and even then he knew that they’d make it far in life—even outside of volleyball, Suna knows that Osamu will succeed in whatever kind of restaurant he opens, and he knows that Atsumu is nowhere near to reaching his peak yet. Where there’s a will, there’s a way—and if there’s no way, Atsumu will carve one out with his bare hands if he needs to.

“Hey, what’re ya spacing out for?”

Atsumu’s voice cuts through his thoughts like a dagger, and Suna finds himself staring at his aching fingers just like he did when he first came down from his last spike.

“My hands hurt,” he states bluntly. It’s not a new revelation, especially not when at today’s afternoon practice Ginjima spiked past Suna’s block too strongly for his comfort, but now it’s gotten to a point where he should probably not ignore it rather than risk making it worse.

“What? Why didn’t you say so earlier!” Atsumu cries out and immediately steps up to shamelessly inspect his hands for any signs of visible injury.

“It’s fine, it’s not too bad. I’ll just tape them up and see how it goes tomorrow.”

“Alright, let’s go,” his captain says and starts pulling at Suna’s wrist in the direction of the locker rooms, to Suna’s utter confusion.

“You don’t need to come along,” Suna resists quietly. “I can tape them myself.”

“Nope!” Atsumu replies. “If both of ‘em hurt, I should do the responsible thing an’ make sure you don’t hurt yourself even more!”

“You? Responsible?” Suna laughs in disbelief, “Since when?”

“Hey, I can be responsible!”

“Remember when you showed up sick to practice and Kita-san had to force you to go home?”

Atsumu freezes immediately and then proceeds to roll his eyes. “That was l last year, okay? I’m a good responsible captain now!”

Suna doesn’t bother hiding his snort of laughter. “Sure you are.”

“Besides,” Atsumu continues casually, set on ignoring the slight on his honour, “I can’t practice without you.”

That’s a lie, Suna thinks. Atsumu’s never had a problem with finding ways to practice with all by himself, but he doesn’t protest when Atsumu leads him back to the locker rooms anyways, fingers still firmly enough around Suna’s wrist. He lets go to let Suna pull out his tape with minimal wincing, but as they sit across each other on the bench, Atsumu’s hand envelopes his yet again and he gets to work with quiet focus.

It’s unnecessary, Suna thinks when Atsumu starts wrapping every single one of his fingers individually. You’re better off doing something better with your time.

He doesn’t say anything and neither does Atsumu, dedicating himself to the task with the determination of anything else he sets his mind to, handling it with the same care as any good set—his fingertips barely even brushing over Suna’s skin where they touch, but each movement confident and precise, fine-tuned to respond to the situation around him. Suna would barely even feel it, just like he’s long stopped questioning the inhuman precision of Atsumu’s sets if it wasn’t for those warm, single points of contact searing into his very brain.

He tears his gaze away from their intertwined hands, but the only other thing to look at in the room is Atsumu himself. The tip of his tongue hangs a little out of his mouth, in the silly way it tends to when Atsumu is really absorbed in something—it should look silly, it does look silly, and Suna suppresses a smile at the sight, but mostly it’s just endearing at his point.

Their faces are closer than he thought, Suna suddenly realizes. It shouldn’t surprise him, when they’re sitting almost knee to knee and Atsumu leaning into his space to have a good view of his hands, but he finds himself enraptured by the realization anyways.

Atsumu’s hair is a little sweaty from practice, with some strands clinging to his forehead, but overall it’s in the same messy-but-stylish configuration it always is, helped by some hair gel and Atsumu carding his hands through it multiple times a day. Suna still isn’t sure how much of it is on purpose and how much it’s just another thing Atsumu has just gotten lucky with.

His skin is smooth and looks soft to the touch, and only upon closer inspection can Suna make out little red spots and dents around his forehead and on his cheeks, suddenly reminded of the acne-ridden first-year he’d first seen so long ago. His eyebrows, too, seem maybe a little odd at a closer inspection, strong and dark in a way that betrays Atsumu’s natural hair colour, but somehow they fit on his face in an odd sort of contrast-harmony that makes up Atsumu’s being as a whole. He could count Atsumu’s long dark lashes that frame the dark gold of his eyes, or the fading freckles on the bridge of his nose, if he wanted to.

He’s beautiful, Suna thinks. I want to kiss him.

For a second, he indulges the thought. He imagines leaning in, half-fixed tape around his digits be damned, and kissing Atsumu right here, right now on his wide, full lips, and enjoying it. He imagines Atsumu kissing him back, liking him back, and it makes his chest feel both light and tight, warmth blooming throughout him with the comfort of a romantic fantasy.

Then, Atsumu opens his mouth.

“Alright,” he says almost more to himself as he lets go of Suna’s left hand, bandaged up properly. Suna thinks he might be going through the early symptoms of a heart attack with how the warmth suddenly spikes into anxious heat creeping up his neck remembering just exactly what he was just thinking about.

“You good?” he asks, and Suna can barely swallow down the lump in his throat and reply with a curt “Yeah”, hoping that it doesn’t sound as choked off as he feels from the sudden weight of his doubts and insecurities coming crashing down on top of him. It’s fine, he tells himself. He didn’t notice, or at least it doesn’t show on Atsumu, as he simply takes on Suna’s other hand and starts wrapping it up just as he did before. A certain type of fidgeting uncertainty still lingers, squirming restlessly through Suna’s mind.

It feels like going outside, already tasting the rain the air, and being too lazy to get back inside to get an umbrella—instead, you gamble on whether or not you’ll be able to make it back home before the storm hits, whether you’ll get to enjoy the spectacle from the safety of a home, or end drenched right in the middle of it. (He knows by now that Atsumu often gets headaches on those days. It’s not that obvious, because Atsumu always puts out his 100% no matter what, but he’s crankier than usual, and more stubborn too—Suna has to be more insistent that Atsumu shouldn’t overwork himself and has to all but drag him out of the gym, but Atsumu always quietly walks back to the station with him, in the end.)

It’s listening to a melodic track with soft piano notes and high synths, but getting more and more hints of a harsh beat lying underneath, working up to a drop in the chorus that you know is coming, that will change the entire direction of the song, but you don’t know yet if it’s for better or worse.

The fear grips Suna in his place again and he’s also reminded of the times where he lies awake in his bed and wonders if tomorrow will be just a normal day—or if it’ll be one of those days where the sheer exhaustion seeps from his bones into every fiber of his being, and he can’t get out of bed until a bodily need or a family member forces him to. (He usually texts Osamu on those days, so he can tell the coach and everyone else that he’ll be absent. Atsumu didn’t comment on it at all until they started hanging out more, and then he asked nosy questions that Suna was either too tired or too ashamed to answer—but lately that’s stopped too. Now Atsumu simply sends him random pictures and tells him about his day with thinly veiled well-wishes to get better soon. Even when Suna can only bring himself to react to those messages with a smiley, Atsumu sends him a smiling emoji back, and Suna’s body feels a little lighter.)

It’s that fear, that uncertainty, that makes him sit completely still, even as his mind runs through a hundred memories a minute, while Atsumu finishes taping his hand with a last, gentle pat of his fingers on Suna’s.

“There we go,” he mumbles quietly, his grip softening but not quite letting go—his thumb rests idly on the base of Suna’s pinky, stroking small circles over the border between his skin and the bandages.

Suna looks down to his other hand, taped up just as neatly, and flexes it—the strain is tight in just the right way, stabilizing, providing support, but not at all painful or restrictive.

He looks at Atsumu then, the same dread, the same anticipation floods him with the promise of something new, reality-altering, right in front of him but just out of reach—Atsumu looks up at him too and Suna thinks he can see the same thing reflected in his eyes, sienna burning through his very soul. Is this it? Are they coming closer, or is it just his mind projecting its desires onto Atsumu? Does he—

A sudden noise rings out throughout the locker room, and after a moment Suna recognizes it as the intro to a bubbly k-pop song. Atsumu drops Suna’s hands like hot coal and picks up his phone before the vocals can start.

“What, Samu?” His voice sounds strained and Suna can pick up something along the lines of ‘going home’ and ‘dinner’ but mostly he can only think of what just happened—if it even did in the way he remembers. His still-racing heart certainly thinks so, but his mind is mockingly calling itself an idiot for even considering the possibility of that awkward, embarrassing silence being any more than that.

Atsumu let go of his hand pretty much the moment the ringtone went off, and already way too many for seconds have passed for him to still be feeling any lingering touch on his hand. In fact, Suna shouldn’t have felt anything at all through the tape, no smooth fingertips and no warmth, but the ghost of the memory continues to haunt him for the rest of the evening anyway.

The realization that he likes Atsumu is possibly the worst thing that’s ever happened in Suna’s life, but overall, it turns out to not be that bad.

Sure, it’s pretty disorienting at the beginning—the first few times he had to interact with Atsumu after that fateful evening probably brought him a decade closer to death by cardiac arrest than before, but at the end of the day, it’s still just Atsumu; shining, admirable and dedicated, but also petty, childish and on the whole, familiar.

They still hang out during lunch most days with everyone else, still give each other the customary encouraging touches and exclamations during volleyball, still just banter as friends—it doesn’t even feel that different than it did before, surprisingly.

Suna simply feels like a hazy filter has been lifted from his eyes—or maybe on the contrary, a sparkly one was put on them, making every interaction just a tad sharper, a tad more colourful and memorable than it used to be, and Suna becomes aware of his own reactions more than ever before. He shoves at Atsumu when Atsumu claps him on the back, and laughs at him when he’s being embarrassing as he always does, but now he’s leaning against him just for half a second longer than usual before retreating again, and the smile tends to remain on his face even after he’s done laughing, and he can himself grow softer every time Atsumu’s indignant pout shifts into a simple genuine smile in return.

He savours those moments, seeks them out when he thinks he can get away with it, but he also tucks them away close to his heart and doesn’t utter a word about it to anyone else, not even himself—like a small hidden treasure, a secret just for him, to be indulged in for short occasional bursts but absolutely nothing more than that. He’s under no delusion that he could ever successfully come forward with his feelings, so instead he guards them with his life like a dragon guards the fair maiden in the tower, valiantly, but with the knowledge that sooner or later he won’t be needed anymore—or perhaps he’s even the evil wizard who put her there in the first place, for whatever selfish reason. Whether the story ends with the princess being saved, or dying all alone of old age because no one came to rescue her—he’ll just have to see.

At least Atsumu himself makes it easy for Suna to continue as normal, since he’s currently more focused on himself and volleyball than anyone around him. The closer the Spring High gets, the more he spends his time shouting out directions, making sure he’s bringing out the best in every single one of them, or practicing his serves and sets with the whole lineup nearly every day after regular practice has ended, so there’s truly only so many moments where Suna has to actively engage with Atsumu, and as a consequence, his thoughts about Atsumu.

Not that his captain still doesn’t make it difficult sometimes in the most innocuous of ways—just when Suna sometimes thinks that he has this unimportant high school crush under control, Atsumu will tell him that he did well today with a genuine grin, or offer Suna the water bottle that he just drank from, which he’s done dozens of times before, but now Suna his own brain betrays him by thinking the words indirect kiss like he’s some lovestruck shoujo manga heroine even as he usually accepts the gesture with a short ‘thanks’. He’s usually red from practice anyways, so Atsumu can’t tell the difference. Probably.

He thinks about talking to Osamu about it, sometimes, but usually decides against it; it feels weird bringing it up, especially when they still don’t really talk about many serious things in the first place.

More importantly, Suna gets the feeling that Osamu might throttle him personally if he ever brought up Atsumu in a romantic context at all.

One part is their inherent animosity towards each other, sure, but at the same time he gets the feeling that there’s been a shift in their relationship as a whole—he can’t pinpoint exactly when it started, but even Gin once mentioned that he feels like the twins are somehow both on better and worse terms at the same time, and once Suna noticed it, he couldn’t unsee it: it’s a web of trip wires so thin they’re barely noticeable, but the moment you see them, it feels like a whole room has been infested with them. There’s no obvious mechanism connecting any of it, no rhyme or reason as to why Atsumu and Osamu don’t have as many of their petty arguments, but why they also just don’t talk to each other for hours on end, even when in the same space together.

The same anxious feelings grips Suna whenever he considers bringing up his crush with Osamu—there’s no rhyme or reason to it, he knows that Osamu would probably lend him an open ear regardless, but that uncertainty, that floaty, nebulous feeling of off-ness stops him every single time.

And so, as autumn leaves fall and grass shimmering with frozen dew starts to take their place, Suna spends the last months of the year mostly the same as he always did: practicing volleyball, having lunch with friends, ignoring his feelings and slowly starting to study for both his finals and his college entrance exams.

“Rintarou, you’re a smart boy,” his father once tells him, “You could get into a good university if you focus more on your studies than on volleyball—it’s not like you want to play it professionally, right?”

Suna can’t refute any of these claims, but he can’t exactly confirm them either—he still doesn’t know what to do with his life, and the more his friends and family ask him about his plans for the future, the more he starts to hate the concept of future in and off itself.

He replies something reasonable-sounding like ‘It might get me scouted’ or ‘It’s nice to have a hobby even as I’m busy’, and it’s good enough to get most of these concerns off his back, for the time being.

At the very least, he isn’t lying. He still doesn’t love volleyball with every fiber of his being like Atsumu does, and he probably never will—and that’s okay. Maybe his true passion is still somewhere out there waiting for him, or maybe he’s simply not built for things like love and passion and dedication, but either way, the only thing he can do with it is to accept it, if he can’t do anything about it.

‘You’re doing the best you can with what you have now’, Osamu’s words echo inside him, and he tries to remember them at least, as much as he still isn’t able to fully internalize them. He has many regrets, and will probably continue to amass them for the rest of his life—but he’s trying to think things through, and if he can rationalize his decisions to himself now, he can hopefully justify them years down the line, too.

He likes playing volleyball. He likes playing with his friends, he likes seeing himself improve, he likes scoring points and he likes winning, and for now, he’s still good enough to be able to do those things, so there’s no reason for him to stop. He knows it won’t last forever, be it two, four, ten years down the line, that he cannot possibly continue with it for most of his life, but he doesn’t want to expend non-existent energy on fixing something that isn’t broken—It will break one day, certainly, but that is a problem for his future self to fix.

...That being said, his near-future self might have dug himself a grave, agreeing to come to the end-of-December training camp with the rest of the team, which will undoubtedly make him pull more studying all-nighters down the line. He can’t even be angry at his parents for being more than hesitant about letting him participate, considering that the college entrance exam is less than a month away, barely a week after the Spring High, which feels both too far and way too close at the same time. He could convince them with his usual platitudes about still having good grades throughout the year, with a healthy dose of guilt-tripping about this probably being the last chance he’ll get to hang out with his team in his last year of high school.

His true motivation is much more simple, and more selfish than that: he doesn’t want this all to end. College will probably be an overall improvement to his quality of life, he doesn’t particularly care for half of his teachers or classmates, and he’s dreamed of moving out for the better part of his teenage years, but right now, he simply wants to cling to all the last ounces of the life he’s known, of making stupid jokes and pulling pranks on his friends and teammates as they get ready to take their best shot at another tournament—even if this one is their very last chance to do so.

“Rinrin, wake up!” Atsumu’s annoying twang rips him out of his half-slumber, half-existential crisis thoughts as the rest of the team gets ready for the day ahead, though Suna likes to stay under his covers for just a little longer.

“Sunariiin,” Atsumu whines again and gives him a light kick with his bare foot in the back. Suna whines in return and pulls his futon up more to protect himself from the cold air in the classroom they’re sleeping in, despite the heating being on.

“C’mon, get uuup,” he singsongs somewhere above Suna.

“Five minutes,” Suna mumbles in turn and buries himself further under the blanket, hiding his head from the light threatening to fully wake him up just those couple of minutes earlier than he wants to.

“Let him be, gonna be his fault for missing breakfast,” he hears Osamu yawn above him, even though he knows full well that Suna doesn’t eat breakfast most days anyways.

“C’mon, you don’t wanna miss breakfast, do ya?” Atsumu asks him in a way where Suna can tell he has that shit-eating grin on his face again, the one that spreads against his whole face that Suna kind of hates because it’s Atsumu at the most annoying, and because it’s somehow still terribly attractive.

He whines into his pillow again, mostly out of comedic pettiness.

“Hey, this ain’t one of your bad days, is it?” Atsumu asks, almost accusingly, and that gets Suna to turn around and blink up at Atsumu with tired eyes. He’s not sure what to think about Atsumu addressing it so directly, because Atsumu’s concern is always an odd mixture of genuine care and open judgement, and Suna doesnt know which one would make him feel worse right now. He looks up at Atsumu leaning over him with hands on his hips, looking over him with curiosity more than anything. Suna sighs.

“No,” he replies steadily. “I just couldn’t sleep well because of your snoring,” he comes up with on the spot with surprising grace, and that gets the desired effect of Atsumu sputtering indignantly.

“What!? I don’t snore!”

“Yeah, ya do,” Osamu replies immediately, even though he also knows that it’s a lie.

“No I don’t and ya know it! You snore way more than me! Right, Rin?”

“I don’t know, sounds fake to me,” Suna says as he slowly raises his head to rest on his arm, looking up mockingly at Atsumu.

“You’re all so mean!” Atsumu exclaims. “Kosaku is the only I can trust on this team!”

“Eh, I don’t know,” the mentioned wing spiker replies from the other corner of the room, “I think I did hear someone snorin’ in the night.”

Atsumu’s eyes widen comically and he whines high in his throat.

“The disrespect in this team! I should tell coach not to let any of y’all play!”

“You don’t have that authority,” Suna says lightly. “And did you forget that volleyball is a team sport, captain?”

“Or what, you wanna play against everyone on court just by yourself?” Osamu continues.

“I could!” Atsumu replies with the confidence of a guy who knows he’s full of shit but is not afraid to say it anyway.

“Oh really? Let’s see it, you against the rest of the team.”

“You’re on!” Atsumu replies, finger pointing at his twin brother, before he immediately decides to hit his foot against Suna’s side again.

“C’mon, you get up, too!”

He doesn't really have a choice now, does he?

The twins and the rest of his teammates force him to eat breakfast even though he doesn't have much of an appetite and then they head to the gym a good half hour before practice is even supposed to start. The nets are still set up from yesterday, so all they do is some basic stretches before they take their places, six of them on one side, Atsumu on the other. It goes about as expected from the likes of Atsumu: that is to say, surprisingly well.

Of course, there’s only so much Atsumu can do all by himself against six of their regulars having to bump and set and attack by himself, but it’s Atsumu after all, so he puts up a valiant effort: his serves are still as annoying as always, and he sets to himself and prepares his runup with the precision he would do for any one of them, grinning up at Suna mockingly when he actually manages to get past his block with a meanly timed feint, of all things.

Suna, not to be outdone, has no problem returning the favour himself, and after a great setup by Osamu who’s filling in as team setter, Suna spikes the ball into the far corner of the opposite court, leaving Atsumu helplessly diving after it in vain.

“Nice toss,” Suna says with a high-five to Osamu, who returns his grin and they both look towards Atsumu on the opposite end, pouting up at them with barely concealed disdain.

“Maybe you should be the team’s setter after all, huh,” Suna calls out loudly in fake casualness with a sneer towards Atsumu, and Osamu joins him in.

“Huh, maybe I should, maybe then we’ll actually win the Spring High this time!”

“You guys know I’m better than Samu in every way, right?” Atsumu calls out in turn.

“No, everyone knows that I’m way better than ya in everything except maybe setting.”

“Uhm, who was invited to the national youth training camp again?”

“As I said, they only invite mentally unstable people over there,” Osamu replies casually. “I’m pretty much just as good as you.”

“Well then, let’s just play against each other, see who’s better then!”

Suna can see Osamu’s eyes twitch a little, before he replies, “Alright, ya asked for it!”

He decides to film the ensuing one-on-one for posterity’s sake, and it does turn out to be quite fascinating actually—Atsumu may be a bit more of a monster but Osamu has no less of his talent and an ego to match, so they keep exchanging serves and attacks at an even pace without anyone pulling ahead quite clearly, and as the other team members slowly trickle into the gym they’re all transfixed on watching the twins duke it out with the desperation of true volleyball idiots.

He thinks it’s 15 to 14 in Atsumu’s favour, but Osamu is able to cleanly receive Atsumu’s next jump serve, which goes into a clear serve high towards the ceiling, carefully placed so it will surely fall right in front of the net.

Suna thinks he might be imagining the look Osamu throws his way just before he starts the runup, but it feels significant, somehow—he watches Osamu with his own eyes, rather than looking at his his recording, the determination clear on his face, and from his periphery he can see Atsumu getting ready to receive with equal resolve. Osamu jumps, possibly higher and faster than he did in any of his previous attacks, his form picture perfect in midair as the ball falls right on in front of his palm—

The shrill tone of a whistle rings through the court, and Suna whips his head around to see Coach Kurosu standing at the gym entrance, dissatisfied arms crossed over. Then, the unnaturally loud smack of a volleyball against their court floor makes everyone look back to the match between the twins, Atsumu lying on his stomach just in the far right corner, watching as the ball bounces back down, still enough force in it to fly a good three meters into the air.

“What is the meaning of—“ the coach starts, but Atsumu immediately gets up and points his finger at Osamu.

“It was out!” He yells. “I win!”

“What? No, it wasn’t,” Osamu frowns at him. “It was on the line, that was mine.”

“Nope, it was definitely out, I saw it! Right, everyone?” He turns back to them sitting at the sidelines of the court, but they all look away awkwardly and don't say a thing. Atsumu’s eyes bore into Suna’s specifically, with an uncomfortable type of expectation.

“I dont know— “

“Atsumu, Osamu, nice on you for warming up,” the coach tells them sarcastically as he steps to them, staring down at them still sitting on the floor in a perfect show of teenage boy laziness. “The rest of you should already have been warming up as well.”

“Eeeh, coach, we played earlier—” Ginjima starts to interject, but is interrupted by Coach Kurosu’s stern stare.

“Five laps for everyone but the twins, come on boys.”

They all sigh with a long, drawn out “yeees” and get up, and Suna takes a moment too look

at the twins still standing back on the court. Atsumu turns away to go pick up the ball Osamu left behind, while his twin sighs quietly and starts doing proper stretches all by himself. He looks up at Suna when he just starts to get into his jog—his eyes are as neutral as always, but the corners of his mouth are turned downward more than usual. Suna wants to ask him if he’s alright, but then Osamu wordlessly turns away to lean down towards the tips of his feet. It feels cold.

“I mean, I totally won that one earlier,” Atsumu still insists when they’re done with practice for the day and are hanging out in their room just before bed.

“Nope, I did,” Osamu replies, not looking up from his phone. “The ball hit the line.”

“I was out,” Atsumu drawls probably for the tenth time that day. “‘Sides, even if it was in, it would’ve been a tie! So there’s no way you won!”

“Nah, it was a tie before so whoever got the point won that.”

“Uh, no—”

“You guys are still on about that?” Suna asks them. The twins both turn to him with confusion, then look at each other with some wordless understanding, and then back at Suna.

“It’s a matter of principle,” Osamu tells him as if it’s a proper explanation, and Suna rolls his eyes before looking down at his own game again.

“Fucking weirdos.” Monsters, he thinks.

“Even if I did miss,” Osamu continues immediately, “It was only ‘cause Coach interrupted, so it doesn't count”

“Oh, but if ya did land it, it counts?”

“Obviously.”

“You’re full of shit:”

“Looks who’s talking—”

“Wasn’t the score even anyway?” Gin suddenly asks next to them “So we don't know who won either way.”

“I was winning by one point,” Atsumu interjects.

“No, you weren’t,” Osamu replies with furrowed eyebrows. “It was even.”

“No, it wasn’t? It was like, 15 to 14 for me or somethin’.”

“Now you’re just makin’ shit up.”

“You’re the one makin’ shit up just so you don’t lose!”

“I don’t need to make shit up to win against you.”

“Hey, Suna, didn’tcha record the whole thing?” Ginjima turns to him. “Maybe we can check the score that way?”

“You did that!?” Atsumu exclaims and then immediately crawls up to Suna and looks up at him with sheer unadulterated greed. “Show us!”

“Ew, no.” He pushes Atsumu’s face away from himself roughly, mostly because he can’t handle Atsumu invading his personal space with such pure excitement. “That took like 20 minutes, I’m not rewatching all that.”

Atsumu pouts. “Why even record it if you ain’t gonna watch it?”

“For posterity. As in, in like ten years so I can laugh at you losers on our class reunion.”

“Can you at least show us the last point?” Osamu asks, also scooting over next to him.

Suna rolls his eyes, but pulls up the picture app on his phone anyway. “Ugh, fine,“ he groans, and so the twins sit themselves at either of his sides, while Gin leans over to look at the screen from behind him.

He scrolls past the 22 minutes of video to about the last minute of the match—the screen shows Atsumu’s walk of his usual six steps behind the line, delivering one of his obnoxiously strong jump serves, and Suna could barely move the camera fast enough to watch Osamu receive it with an ease rivalling even the best of liberos, and then setting the ball in a perfect high arc—rivalling even Atsumu.

“Damn, that was sick,” Gin whistles appreciatively.

“I know right?” Osamu gloats, while Atsumu releases an annoyed huff. Suna can feel the breath hit his shoulder, and it almost makes him miss the next couple of seconds of Osamu going for the attack, jumping up in front of the net—

The sound of the whistle blows, and then the camera tilts sideways, only Osamu’s calves really in the shot. The coach’s voice rings out simultaneously with the smack of the ball, both of them off-screen.

“Ugh, Riiin,” Atsumu whines and then proceeds to shake at Suna’s arm childishly. “Couldn’t ya have recorded that any better!?”

“Yeah, that sucked,” Osamu agrees with his brother probably for the first time today.

“I’m not your personal fansite,” Suna quips at Atsumu and tries to wrangle his arm out of his hold. “Just say it was a tie and be done with it.”

“No.”

They all turn to the unnaturally strong declaration from Osamu. He’s still frowning down at the end of the video in something that seems more than just another petty competition.

Suna feels Atsumu’s hands drop from his arm.

“... What’s your damn problem?”

Osamu stares back at Atsumu with a carefully measured gaze.

“I don’t have a problem.”

“Yeah, you do.” Atsumu’s voice drips with ice cold poison.

Osamu stands from his space and walks back to his own futon, back turned to them. “I dunno what you’re talking about.”

“You’re lyin’ and you know it!” Atsumu exclaims, to the point that the other guys in the room turn around to them too.

Osamu looks down at this twin with a rare type of disdain, one that’s visceral in it’s pure sincerity, especially on a person that rarely gets swayed by his own emotions. Suna feels like he’s missing something there. He looks up to Gin who looks just as confused and uncertain as he feels.

“Oh, and how the fuck do you want to prove that?” Osamu all but spits out. “Or is your ego too fucking fragile to handle that I can win for once?”

Atsumu gets up too, and they stare at each other across the room with a terrifying type of tension—it’s one thing for them to fight and hurl meaningless insults at each other. It’s a whole other matter when the anger rolls off of them so much that it chokes them into silence.

In the end, Atsumu is the first one to give in. “This isn’t about winning or losing—”

“Isn’t it always with you?” Osamu scoffs with the most bitter type of smile, and sits down back in his own futon, pulling out his phone and headphones, turning his back to them entirely.

Suna watches Atsumu closely in that moment—his face contorted into anger, jaw set harshly—it goes through several shifts, to defiance, to disappointment, to something awfully akin to sadness—before he bares his teeth in anger once again, and stomps out of the room.

Osamu twitches at the sound of the door slamming shut, but otherwise makes no move to acknowledge that any of this happened, continuing to scroll through something on his phone even as his jaw is set just as tensely as Atsumu’s.

The rest of the team looks with uncertainty amongst each other, the silence growing louder and more awkward with each passing second—and really, what the fuck was anyone supposed to do about this?

In the end, most of the eyes shift to Suna himself, who frankly doesn’t want to have anything to do with this situation. He doesn’t know how to solve this as much as anyone else in the room, but Gin still pats his shoulder with a pleading-insisting look toward Osamu. Suna shakes his head and frowns in a way hopefully conveys ‘I have no fucking clue’ as much as possible. Ginjima pushes his shoulder even more towards Osamu, with everyone watching him with hopeful expectation, so Suna reluctantly gets up in the motionless discomfort of the room, and crouches down next to his friend.

“Hey, Osa—”

Osamu slaps away the hand Suna tried to put on his shoulder. It might as well have been a slap in the face.

He turns his head around to Suna immediately, the wide-eyed shock even clearer on his face than the fury before it. His gaze turns downwards. “Sorry,” he mumbles.

Suna hesitates for a moment before trying again, carefully placing his palm on Osamu’s nape.

“I don’t really know what that was about,” he starts, and Osamu twitches away from the words. His gaze is turned down again, lip bit in shame.

“...But you look like you already know that you acted like a dick.”

“He did too,” Osamu says quietly.

“Yeah, he did,” Suna replies. He doesn’t mention that he feels like Osamu was the one overstepping a line, just this once.

He watches Osamu closely, and he too has an interesting way of mixing emotions on his face, but in the end sighs and leans his head onto the back of Suna’s hand before he slowly opens his eyes towards Suna.

“I’m not apologizing,” he says.

“I’m not asking you to,” Suna replies with a smile. At least Osamu knows that he might have something to apologize for. He should be fine by himself, then.

Suna gives Osamu a last pat on his shoulder and stands up with a crack of his knees.

“I’ll go look for Astumu,” he announces to no one in particular and leaves the room to do just that.

The school hallways are perhaps a little creepier than usual, so quiet and empty in the dead of night, but it’s a bright enough night that he doesn’t really feel scared—he doesn’t even have to look for Atsumu for that long, as he sits by one of their usual spots, next to a row of vending machines in a hallway, head resting on arms that are resting on his drawn knees, the moonlight from outside illuminating him softly.

Atsumu looks up at his arrival but immediately turns his head back to the scenery outside agan. Suna sighs quietly and slips down next to Atsumu.

“What was that all about?” He decides to ask in lieu of a greeting.

“... Nothing,” Atsumu mumbles in the sleeve of his shirt.

“You sure?”

Silence.

Suna suppresses another sigh, because that would be just mean—but he would like to understand Atsumu at some level. He knows that he probably will never fully comprehend Atsumu with just how different they are at their cores but the small, hopeful, feeling part of him wants to try anyway.

“... Do you know what the score was?” Atsumu asks.

“Is it really that important?” Suna asks in turn.

“Just—please.” It’s the first time Atsumu looks at him properly, with pleading, honest eyes that make Suna’s heart squeeze up painfully.

“...I think you were leading by a point. I can’t say for sure though.” Who knows if it’s just a subconscious part of him having some sort of preferentialism?

Atsumu leans his head back against the wall with a quiet exhale. He doesn't say anything beyond that, looking out into the night sky beyond the windows again. Suna can’t even tell if he’s thinking about this new information or just just accepting it as is.

“I really don’t get you guys,” he mutters.

“Huh?” Atsumu seems to snap out of something, turning to look at Suna. “What d’ya mean?”

“You know, what this whole thing between you is,” he replies with a vague circular hand gesture at Atsumu. “Especially the last couple of weeks. Is it really that bad if you guys don’t play with each other anymore?”

“It’s—It’s not—” He bites his lip before sighing. “It’s not just that.” Atsumu looks like it pains him to say those words, and Suna starts to feel like there truly is something much bigger going on than he’d previously assumed.

“Do you want to talk about it?” He asks.

Atsumu looks away to the side again. “I don’t think I can.”

“Okay.” He still doesn’t know what the fuck that’s supposed to mean. Does Atsumu not know himself? Is he just not ready? Is he not allowed to? Suna came out here to check up on him, but the Atsumu that usually likes to talk about himself more than anything else seems to have stayed back in the classroom, and the one in front of him isn’t quite a stranger—but he’s even harder to figure out.

“I guess I’ll just never understand you,” Suna sighs, half to himself.

“C’mon, how long have we known each other for?” Atsumu drawls as he nudges their knees against each other. “Y’know me an’ Samu. We argue over dumb stuff that no one else gets and then we move on with it. It… It’ll be fine.” He sounds hesitant around the last sentence, but at least some of his usual determination has come back to his eyes. Of course Atsumu wouldn’t give up on Osamu that easily either.

Suna hums. “I guess that’s good. Though I still don’t really get you.”

“Aw, am I too mysterious for you?” Atsumu teases. Suna meets him with a levelled stare.

“Honestly? Kind of.”

“H-huh?”

“You get into dumb fights for no reason all the time. You always do way more than necessary no matter what you do. You love volleyball more than any normal person honestly should,” Suna lists. And stares out into the clear winter night sky himself. “You’re kind of a monster,” he chuckles, though he doesn't really feel like laughing.

“Hey, now that’s mean,“ Atsumu whines at him with another brush against his shoulder, and Suna sees him pout when he turns his head back at him. “I mean, sure, maybe I go a little overboard sometimes, but everyone’s got somethin’ they’re passionate about, right?”

“I don’t.”

Atsumu’s jaw snaps shut, and Suna immediately feels bad for sounding so harshly—no matter how true it is to his feelings. A tense silence falls over them, and Suna averts his eyes under Atsumu’s own watchful ones.

“I don’t really have anything. I mean, I don’t hate volleyball but I know it’s not the thing for me. And I don’t really have anything else like that either. I…” He bites the words off, knows how pitiful it sounds, but something pulls them out of his throat anyway. “There’s nothing special about me—”

“Don’t say that!”

Suna suddenly feels his shoulders being grabbed and he’s forcefully pulled sideways to face Atsumu’s angry eyes head on.

“Don’t say that!” he repeats, “You’re plenty special!”

“How?” Suna laughs out bitterly. “I don’t have some extraordinary talent, or a passion, or a dream or any of that—”

“So what! You’re still special! You—” Atsumu’s grip around his shoulders tightens and he bites down down his lip once, before sighing, and continuing with a more measured voice. “You’re on the best high school volleyball team in all of Japan, and—and you’re our best middle blocker, so that makes you one of—no, the best middle blocker in the country—”

“That’s not how this works,” Suna says helplessly as his mind chants lies, lies, lies.

”Well, you’re still one of the best, ya can’t deny that! And you’re so—You’re smart, really smart, right? And you can always keep such a cool head, and you’re flexible, which is also real cool and you act like you’re an ass but you actually look out for everyone even if they don’t notice it, and you’re so pretty and—”

Atsumu’s jaw snaps shut and Suna’s train of thought with it.

Did he just—Suna had plenty of rebuttals for all of Atsumu’s points, that plenty of people are smarter of him, that taking care of his team is just basic human decency, that he’s not pretty, but he looks at at Atsumu’s face, mouth slightly open, eyes wary, blush on his face visible in the dim moonlight around them, and those thoughts disappear in a poof of smoke from his brain.

Atsumu’s mouth closes again, and one of the hands on his shoulders travels up further to cup Suna’s cheek.

“I like you, Rin. I like you a lot, so—so don’t say that,” he whispers into the space between them, and leans in.

Suna is still processing the kiss by the time Atsumu moves back just with the barest glimpse at his eyes, but he suddenly misses the warmth on his lips more than he’s ever missed anything in his life, so he grabs Atsumu by his shirt and pulls him back in again, desperately, moving frantically, and after a moment Atsumu returns the sentiment in kind.

Both of his hands find their way to Suna’s jaw, and he pulls Atsumu even closer by putting putting his hands around his neck, chasing more and more contact despite his own inexperience and the occasional bumping of their noses, the words I like you, I like you a lot echoing in his mind—

Their teeth clack and Atsumu huffs out a laugh and Suna follows with a giddy giggle because—because Atsumu likes him, and he likes Atsumu too and—

Suna retracts himself and feels another wave of giddiness at the way Atsumu makes a small noise in his throat at the loss, but he makes sure that he is looking him right in the eyes when he says his next words.

“I like you too. Just so you know.”

Atsumu’s eyes widen for a moment before they soften with a soft chuckle. “Damn, thanks for clarifyig’, I thought you were doing this ‘cause ya hated my guts,” he says, though Suna doesn't miss the way he glances down at Suna’s lips once again.

“Hey, better safe than sorry with you,” Suna teases, glancing back at Atsumu’s shining lips himself. ”Who knows what goes in that brain of yours?”

“This,” Atsumu says and promptly reconnects their lips again, and Suna accepts this with everything he shas, his mind euphoric and his heart racing when Atsumu deepens their kiss, tongues slowly sliding against each other. He thinks he might just short circuit when Atsumu shifts and promptly throws one of his thighs around Suna’s own, placing himself firmly in Suna’s lap in a way that makes him suppress a groan in the back of his throat—though he feels Atsumu smirk against his lips anyway, so Suna decides to indulge himself and place one of his hands on Atsumu’s thighs and pull him closer with the other one on his waist, needy for any and all touch between them.

He is slowly becoming aware of something building between them, hot and heavy, when he suddenly hears the deep click-clack of footsteps on the linoleum floors, and he immediately pushes at Atsumu’s chest to get him off of him.

“What— “

Suna shushes him and then pulls him up into a standing position too, just in time for Coach Kurosu to round the corner and look up at them with clear disapproval.

“Rintarou, Atsumu—what are you doing out here?”

“Atsumu and Osamu fought again, so I went to pick up Atsumu,” Suna replies swiftly and with surprisingly even breath considering he had Atsumu’s mouth pull all of the air out of him not half a minute earlier. “We’ll be heading back now.”

The coach removes his glasses and rubs the bridge of his nose with a deep sigh before he fixes Atsumu with a stern look.

“Could you at least try not argue with Osamu just before bedtime? I can’t have you guys running around the school willy nilly.”

“Sorry,Coach,” Atsumu says with a quick bow, and Suna follows him silently.

“Go, move on, now,” he shoos them into the direction of their room with a low smile. “Get your rest.”

“Yes, Coach,” they reply and make their way past him, stopping for a moment to look back at the coach rounding the corner again—and then they futilely stifle their giggles.

“Didja really have to make me look bad?” Atsumu whines comically through the smile on his face.

“I wasn’t even lying,” Suna replies. “The other stuff was just extra.”

“Just extra, huh?” Atsumu leans into his face again. “I’m terribly hurt, y’know?”

“It’s a nice extra, if that helps,” Suna smiles and leans down to leave a quick peck on Atsumu’s lips again. “But we should really head back, I still want to sleep.”

“Yes, yes,” Atsumu sighs insincerely, but he childishly skips up and takes Suna’s hand into his. Suna doesn’t quite dare look down at them, but he gives the fingers a short squeeze. He gets a squeeze back.

They arrive back at their room much too quickly for his liking, and Atsumu kisses Suna once more, close-mouthed but firmly, before he detangles their hands and slides the classroom door open with a loud “Hey guys! Didja miss me?”

“No,” comes the resounding answer from a good half of their team, while Ginjima turns around from the card game he was playing with Osamu and shushes him. “Dude, Riseki’s already sleepin’”

“Whoops, sorry,” Atsumu singsongs in a whisper, and Suna slowly follows behind him as he slides the door closed. He meets Osamu’s eyes staring him up and down, then drifting to Atsumu, and then back to him.

“Took you guys long enough,” he comments casually, and Suna feels incredibly called out, even if Osamu should have no way of knowing what just happened.

Atsumu moves to show Kosaku something on his phone while Suna sits by Osamu and Gin and idly watches their game, and they don’t acknowledge each other at all—but when he looks over, Atsumu’s smile looks easy and genuine, his lips perhaps a shade redder than usual, and Suna feels a happy flutter in his chest.

They switch off the lights and turn to their futons soon enough, but Suna stays up on his phone for longer, because he’s himself and doesnt have that much time to check out his social media throughout the day, but as he scrolls through twitter idly he receives a notification—it only reads ‘Good night’ followed by three heart emojis, sent from the dumber twin.

He turns around to look at where Atsumu’s futon is—his back is turned to Suna, but he can see the light of a phone screen around him.

oh no, are you actually the sappy type, he texts Atsumu back immediately.

Aw, do you not like that? Atsumu replies followed by several dozen different interchanging pink heart emojis.

keep this up and i’ll break up with you, he feels his fingers shake as he types the words, and his heart skips a beat when he actually sends it off.

He thinks he can feel a choked off noise from the direction of Atsumu’s futon, but the reply follows swiftly after.

Rin-chaaan you can’t do that, you gotta wait for at least 24 hours!!! :(

says who?

Me

all the more reason to break up then

Is that any way to treat yer boyfriend??? :((((

Ah, there it is.

so we are together then?

It takes minutes for Atsumu to reply, the three dots appearing and disappearing constantly feeling like worst torture device the twenty-first century could have come up with.

I’d like us to be

Suna exhales quietly but deeply, pressing the phone to his chest, the warmth spreading all the way from his fingertips up to his ears.

I’d like that too.

Atsumu replies with three smiling emojis, the adorable ones surrounded by hearts.

Then, he sends Good night, don’t stay up too late followed by another heart emoji.

look who’s talking :P, Suna texts back and after a moment of deliberation, also sends back good night with a single black heart. He needs a couple of minutes to smother his smile in his pillow afterwards.

“So, you and Tsumu, huh?” Osamu asks the next morning when they’re washing their faces by a bathroom sink, side by side.

Suna huffs out a quiet laugh—he wasn’t expecting this, but he shouldn’t have been surprised, really. “... Is it that obvious?”

“Not really, but you just confirmed it.”

Suna frowns at Osamu’s satisfied tone, and elbows him lightly. “Asshole.”

“Look who’s talking.”

Suna moves on to brushing his teeth, while Osamu does the same next to him, and it’s only when Osamu is done rinsing out his mouth that he asks his next question.

“Do you love him or somethin’?”

Suna raises his eyebrow, toothbrush still in his mouth.

“Look, he’s my brother. And I need to make fun of your bad taste if ya do,” Osamu teases and Suna rolls his eyes in response and leans over to spit out the toothpaste. He thinks his answer over as he finishes washing out his mouth.

“I mean, I’m not crazy in love with him or anything,” he replies carefully. He still doesn’t think he’s a love type of person as a whole, but… “But I like him. I’m happy with him, I think.”

Osamu hums in acknowledgement.

“I guess that’s good,” he replies after a while, and a smirk comes over his face. “But really? Tsumu? I’d have hoped you have better taste than that.”

“I’m surprised myself, honestly,” Suna laughs. “But I can’t really help it, so I guess I’m stuck with him for now.”

“Well, you’re both assholes, so maybe it’s better for everyone else that you’re taken.”

“Hey,” Suna shoves at him again, and Osamu shoves back with a mean grin.

“What, am I wrong?”

“Fuck you.” They both end up cackling at each other for a good minute, before Osamu continues, a little quieter.

“But, seriously…” He sighs. “You’re not too bad for each other.”

Suna isn’t sure what to make of Osamu’s forlorn look into the distance.

“... What do you mean?”

Osamu hums thoughtfully. “I think… Tsumu is more considerate when you’re around. And you start to give more of a shit when he’s around,” he says the last part with a fond smile at Suna, and he doesn’t feel as bad about the indirect callout as he probably should be.

“You’re probably—”

The door to the bathroom slams open and Suna turns around to see Atsumu looking out of breath.

“There you guys are!” he exclaims. “Coach is holding a strategy meetin’ at breakfast, we’ve been waitin’ for ya!”

“Oh shit,” Osamu notes and both of them hastily pick up their things from the sink again.

“For real, what’ve you guys been doin’ in here?” Atsumu asks with comical suspicion.

“Gossipping about you, mostly,” Suna notes casually.

“Wah—” Atsumu is about to squawk out, but Osamu places a hand on his shoulder, and the words seem to die out in his throat. The look Osamu gives him feels strangely loaded.

“Congratulations,” he says as he glances back at Suna. “Really.”

Atsumu’s eyes widen.

“S—”

Osamu interrupts him with another clap on the shoulder, and then quietly moves past him and out of the bathroom, Atsumu left to watch him go with something too close to pain on his face.

Why pain?

“...Atsumu?”

The captain turns to Suna with a start, and he’s about to ask him what’s wrong, but Atsumu simply takes him by the hand and drags him out of the bathroom too. “Let’s go.”

Suna doesn’t know how to place his tone, or the carefully neutral look on his face, or the tense grip of his hand, and he wants to understand—but he can recognize when it’s perhaps not his place to understand these two after all.

Osamu and Atsumu don’t mention anything about it to Suna anyways, so he deicdes to put it out of his mind, especially since by that same afternoon the two are virtually back to normal again—in fact, its the most normal they’ve been in the last couple of months, acting like the same usual dumb twins that they are, playfighting but ultimately also watching each other’s backs.

Suna acts like he usually would with them too, because that was what he set out to do here in the first place—to to keep a sense of normalcy, to capture this last training camp in the glass bottle in his heart and cling onto to it for as long as he can, to at least be able to pretend for a few short days that this part of his life isn’t coming to an end.

It’s working for the most part, feeling the same routine just like he did in the past three years with this team, but with the notable addition of Atsumu—of his boyfriend. Boyfriend, boyfriend, boyfriend. It sounds absolutely silly and childish and honeymoon-y in all the ways Suna has never thought of himself as, but he conveniently forgets all about it when he’s with Atsumu—when Atsumu drags him behind a corner whenever they have a moment of free time and kisses him around giggles, when they steal casual brushes of hands, when Atsumu leans over him and pulls at him whenever he’s pettily whining about something, but those touches lingering just a few seconds longer than they used to—or to simply have small, but infinitely fond smiles being directed his way and feeling his own face mirror that.

One night, just before they’re bound to leave for home again, Atsumu drags him up to their school’s rooftop only in their slippers and pajamas and Suna immediately wants to turn back inside because it’s cold you, fucking idiot, but Atsumu childishly points at the clear sky above him with the constellations twinkling brighter than ever, and Suna almost forgives him for it. Then, Atsumu says something cheesy about his eyes rivalling the very stars above him and Suna cannot forgive him for that so he shuts him up with a kiss himself—they still head back inside a minute later because they’re not at all dressed appropriately for the cold gusts of wind at the end of December, but Suna presses Atsumu against the wall of the staircase and proceeds to kiss him silly then and there.

He loathes the moment Atsumu separates from him and tells him they should probably go back soon, but he makes sure to hold Atsumu’s hand on the entire way back and kiss him once more, for good measure, before they slide back into the familiarity of their team dynamic, not quite pretending—but perhaps lying by omission.

Suna really shouldn’t have bothered being careful about this in the end, when the next morning comes and they’re all set to leave for their homes by themselves and Atsumu plants a goodbye kiss on him in front of their entire team in what is possibly the most mortifying moment of Suna’s life.

“Why— you—“ he scrambles to put together the words even as his face heats up from something other than the cold air around them, while everyone else is either whooping or saying ‘I told ya so’ to each other, and Suna might even see money changing hands but he doesn't care as he pulls Atsumu back in by his scarf and bites his lip as a sort of revenge, even if some others, Osamu first and foremost, are making exaggerated gagging sounds behind them.

Otherwise, Suna really thinks that he isn’t all that obvious about the giddy honeymoon phase flutter in his chest at all times, but almost as soon as crosses the threshold to his home, his sister takes one look at him and asks what he’s all smiley about, did he get a boyfriend or something?

All hell breaks loose when Suna replies with a nod and a small ‘Yeah’, his sister starved for gossip, his mom expressing excited congratulations, his father worrying whether it’s wise to get into a relationship so close before his exams—but he assures him that it’s fine, and that Atsumu would also prioritize his future over Suna, and he’s perfectly fine with that—they’re both more selfish than they are selfless, in their own ways, and that might just be the best way to go about things.

And so, New Years’ passes as he ignites fireworks with his family, sends out congratulation text messages to everyone he knows, calling Atsumu instead, and to days later preparing to visit Ikuta Shrine in Kobe with his group of friends.

That is, until Ginjima remorsefully texts the group chat that his grandma is ill and he’s the only one who can take care of her today, and upon the prospect of it being just Suna and the twins, Osamu proclaims with a throwing up emoji and that he refuses to go with them for fear of getting eye cancer. Suna sends a middle finger back while Atsumu says that it’s all the better for him, too.

They meet up well into the late morning at the station in Kobe, already swarming with lots of people waiting to visit the shrine to ask for blessings in the new year, and while Suna doesn’t like crowds, the reality of being pressed up against Atsumu and holding their hands together so as to not get separated might not be all that bad.

Atsumu drags him through the crowds almost recklessly, if not with outright disrespect as he drags them forcefully towards the front of the shrine.

“What are you, a child?” Suna asks with exasperation.

“Technically you’re still the only child here”

“And who’s the one running around like a headless chicken?”

“Still older than you!” Atsumu sticks his tongue out at him, and Suna rolls his eyes, but when he spots an opening in the crowds, he pulls Atsumu along with him, too.

They reach the front of the shrine and do the customary ringing of the bell, putting coins in the offertory box, followed by two bows and two claps. Suna has long thought about what he should pray for: victory at the nationals? Health and safety of his loved ones? For everything to stay the same, just as he selfishly wants it to?

But as he was riding on the train there, he thought about Atsumu and wondered whether he would pray for victory, or his loved ones, or his future and aspirations—and Suna could only come up with a blank. Atsumu isn’t one for hopes or prayers, he’s one for defying the gods and coming out victorious against all odds anyway. He doesn’t need any extra luck or fate at his side, he makes his own future with his own two hands, much as if he were a god himself.

Suna, as a mortal, doesn’t think that he can be that selfish yet—but he can take inspiration from him, at least.

I don’t need miracles, he thinks towards the gods, should they exist, just let everything turn out okay, in the end.

Still, when Suna bows one last time, he sees Atsumu praying with his eyes closed, following with his final bow only a couple of moments later. They move out of the way for the next people in line, and Suna asks curiously, “What did you pray for?”

“For victory, obviously?”

Well. Maybe Suna was wrong after all.

“Oh?” He asks with a raised eyebrow. “Think we can’t win without the help of the gods?”

“Of course not,” Atsumu retorts, “But it’s never bad to have a lil’ extra good luck on our side, right?”

“Wanna draw some actual fortunes then? For some extra extra good luck.”

Atsumu grins up at him and laces their fingers together and they go buy themselves some fortunes.

A couple minutes later Suna thinks maybe they shouldn’t have gone after all.

The characters ‘Great Curse’ stare up at Atsumu from his paper with almost a mocking bluntness, and even Suna can’t keep in his snorting laughter.

“Hey, this isn’t funny!” Atsumu pouts at him.

“Oh, it’s hilarious. Guess I’m the only one getting that extra good luck, huh?”

His own fortune is a simple small blessing, which is perfectly average, and Suna thinks he might be alright with that.

“Hey, do you think if we put our fortunes together that it might just become an average curse?” Atsumu asks curiously.

“What, so we’ll both have bad luck instead of just you? No thanks.”

“Wow, thanks, Rin-kun. I really feel the love here.”

Suna snickers as he pockets his own fortune, but he brushes his arm against Atsumu’s affectionately.

“But you said it yourself, didn’t you? We don’t really need the luck.”

“Hmm, guess you’re right!” Atsumu says with renewed enthusiasm. “Even if the whole team has the worst luck ever, I feel like we can really win this time!”

“Oh? So you thought we would lose the past three years?”

“What, no— I’m just extra extra confident this time!”

They both chuckle lowly as they make their way back around the edges of the crowds, away from the shrine.

“It really would be nice,” Suna muses out loud, looking to the slightly overcast sky, “to win a tournament at least once in my life.”

“Huh? But you’ll have plenty of chances to win in college too, right?”

Suna looks back to Atsumu, at the of course-ness of these words, and he finds his own throat closing up with the black bile of his insecurities again.

“Wait,” Atsumu stops in his tracks. “You’re not quitting volleyball, are you!?”

“No,” Suna replies immediately to push against the utter betrayal of Atsumu’s voice, but he hesitates in his next words. “... Not yet, at least.”

“What, you’re planning on quitting volleyball?” “I’m not planning on anything, I’m just saying anything could happen,” he explains. “Maybe I won’t have time to play while keeping up with my studies, or maybe I’ll just randomly stop liking it, or something.”

“So you don’t wanna join a V.League team?”

“I mean, I wouldn’t say no now, but again, who knows if that’ll be the case in four years.”

Atsumu hums non-commitaly as a reply, looking off into the air as if carefully considering these words, like the prospect of not wanting to play volleyball never even crossed his mind—which, in fairness, it probably didn’t.

“...Do you like volleyball?” He suddenly asks again, shaking Suna out of his own thoughts.

“I guess it’s fun enough, but it’s not something I’ll probably feel like doing for the rest of my life, you know?”

“That’s fair,” Atsumu hums again, “No one’s makin’ you play, so if you feel like you wanna stop, then you should probably just stop.”

Suna whips his head around.

“Are you telling me to stop playing volleyball? Who are you, and what did you do to Miya Atsumu?”

“I said if ya feel like it!” Atsumu exclaims. “I don’t actually want ya to stop or anythin’. Like, I’m still bummed out about Samu, I’ll probably always be—but there’s no point in forcin’ someone to play if they don’t want it. Playing against people who just give up and don’t wanna be on the field is always the worst, too.”

“Oh? You don’t want me on your future team then?” Suna teases at the implication because, well—he’s not really sure how to respond to something like that emotionally, or even just honestly.

“Eh, we might end up on the same team at some point, but you’re a nasty opponent, so that might be a lot of fun,” Atsumu replies with that certain competitive glint in his eyes, one he usually reserves for his opponents. Suna doesn’t know if he’s ever had it directed at himself and it makes his heart speed up rapidly, like it tends to around Atsumu.

“I’m not sure if to take that as a compliment,” Suna says with a shake of his head.

“Hey, it was!” Atsumu whines, but he ends up returning Suna’s smile.

“Hey, Rin?”

“Hm?”

“You said volleyball is still fun right?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Alright, then,” Atsumu claps his hands once, “Then I’m gonna make sure that the Spring High is not just gonna be kinda fun, but really fun for you! We’re gonna win the whole thing and it’s gonna so much fun for ya that you’re gonna feel really stupid for wanting to just stop playin’ after that!”

Suna laughs incredulously at the proclamation and Atsumu suddenly pointing a finger at him in broad daylight. “Didn’t you say that you shouldn’t force people to play if they don’t want to?”

“Yeah, but I’m gonna make ya want to play!” Atsumu exclaims. “I still want ya to continue playing, so I’m gonna do my damndest to make it fun for you, too.”

“That’s…” Ridiculous, he should say, stupid, and childish and all kinds of improbable, even a little bit entitled—but that’s just how Atsumu is, isn’t he?

“… Sweet. In a really weird way.”

Atsumu grins up at him, and then promptly stands on his tiptoes to give Suna a quick peck.

“I promise,” he adds, for good measure, and Suna feels the heat creep up his cheeks despite the cold winter around them, Atsumu’s genuine, warm eyes sparkling up at him with unbearable sincerity.

“Let’s just go,” he mumbles into his scarf, taking Atsumu by the hand and leading him back down the stairs.

“Aw, are you embarrassed? Rin-kun, are you embarrassed? Aw, that’s so adorable—“

“Shut up, you’re embarrassing,” Suna throws back at him but he finds that his grins mirrors Atsumu’s own.

And a couple of days after that, the Spring High is already upon them, though they take the first day purely to scout out their opponents.

Itachiyama is as solid as ever, and Atsumu makes no show to hide his disain to Sakusa’s even faster spikes and steadier plays and nastier spins, but their entire team has always been at a consistently high level, and they’ve only gotten better since the Interhigh, clearly.

Karasuno is also back this year to Atsumu’s purest delight, ‘ooh’-ing and ‘aah’-ing at Shouyou-kun’s new place as a spiker with even worse attacks and much more solid defenses to the point that Suna almost gets jealous, but even he can admit that the videos of their prefectural finals match against Datekou doesn't do the team the justice it deserves, having built themselves anew with new players taking center stage und unexpectedly competent ways.

Fukuroudani, Kamomedai, last year’s winners Ichibayashi—

“We’re gonna win against all of them,” Atsumu mutters quietly between Suna and Osamu. They look at Atsumu, then at each other with mirroring looks of uncertainty, and then back to the courts with determination.

“Yeah,” they both agree. They will win this, once and for all.

Their first match on the second day goes by without much of a problem, and to one’s surprise, it is Karasuno that they have to face in the third round yet again.

It’s a tiring three sets—their new captain fills in the role of their old one admirably, the freckled pinch server actually makes for a decent middle blocker, the blond robot is even more annoying after going through a growth sprout, and worst of all, Hinata as a wing spiker is only even more effective as an attacker, but performs admirably on the defense as well.

Their final rally goes on for for a good couple minutes, which on the volleyball court feel like millenia of back and forth and back and forth, but in the end it’s a sharp cross-court spike from Gin that saves them the day—though he’s sure that that for the little giant, it feels like his own fault that the ball bounced off backwards into the stands behind him.

It was a good match. He sees some of Karasuno, mainly their first-years, hold back tears, but they shake hands and exchange encouraging and respectful, perhaps a few teasing words, Atsumu promising to Kageyama to steal his spiker away from him some day, and the when they step off the court, they focus on the their next opponent, Fukuroudani, right away.

They don't need things like memories, after all.

They defeat Fukuroudani too, watching their calm and collected captain get tears in his eyes, and they forget. They see Hoshiumi yell loudly after his loss in the semifinals too, the captain laughing easily next to him, and they forget.

They’ve never forgotten Itachiyama.

Atsumu is especially vicious as he shakes hands with Sakusa for definitely longer than the other wants to, and then throws salt in the wound by telling him jokingly that he spit in his hand just before. Sakusa recoils in disgust and Atsumu cackles at him, and Suna, if a bit meanly, laughs at the exchange too.

“Wasn’t that a bit much?” he breaks out between giggles, and Atsumu only smirks back at him.

“You gotta use everything you have right?” he recipes easily, like it wasn’t borderline psychological warfare. “‘Sides he’s not gonna get thrown outta whack just from that. I probably just pissed him off all the more.”

“You and your big mouth,” Suna shakes his head.

“You love it,” Atsumu says with a wink and Suna rolls his eyes in return and they go and take up their positions on the field—Suna has never felt more confident that they could, no, would win today.

That doesn’t mean it’s not hard though—Sakusa turns out to be particularly pissed off in the first set without sacrificing any of his careful accuracy, and it narrowly costs them the first set. The next two go in their favour, with Osamu and Gin and Suna all doing their damndest to attack from all sides, with moves perhaps stolen a bit out of Karasuno’s book, but it’s just the kind of strategy they need to defeat established, steady powerhouses like Itachiyama.

Suna really hoped that they could already get their third win in the fourth set, but whatever happened in the break in-between seems to have fired them up even more and they lose that point through one of Sakusa’s spikes whipping past Osamu with dizzying speed that he barely has time to react to—it leaves a bitter aftertaste to Osamu no doubt, but he makes for it by getting several consecutive service aces in the fifth set, though Itachiyama catches up to them quickly enough, too. It yet again becomes them exchanging points one after the other without anyone pulling ahead, soon moving into the twenties with all their timeouts used up, each desperate to score a point twice in a row more than the other.

Inarizaki is currently a point behind, just managing to even the score before Itachiyami pulls ahead again, scrambling to both defend and attack but Komori is fucking annoying and keeps being just exactly where no one wants him to be, while Sakusa keeps scoring off of them just as obnoxiously. They too, are terrible, terrible monsters, probably.

Atsumu sets and plays with his same usual razor-sharp focus as always, though Suna can tell from experience that it’s starting to wear on him, too—it’s the case for all of them, after such a long match, and especially in another long rally that again goes on for what seems to be millenia, but Atsumu their bedrock—he clearly refuses to give out and calls out names and sides and keeps crouching down into the most difficult positions just to give them the best chance to attack, and it’d be disgraceful if they didn’t meet him with just as much effort in turn.

So once the ball is back on their side again, Suna makes a break for the other side of the court for the upteenth time to matter how much his legs and his lungs hate him for it, and he jumps with everything he has and assessing the situation on the opposite field at a glance— the ball comes towards him from his left, but at a glance he can also tell that something is off—

It’s short, he realizes suddenly. It won’t make it. He won’t be able to hit it, flying towards the right as he’s doing.

Suna only really processes that he hit it with with his left hand when it’s already connected to the ball—it flies off at an angle he didn’t really plan for, but unless his eyes are playing tricks on him, it lands just in front of the court line—

He falls back on his feet and hears the stadium erupt into so much noise—renewed shouting from the audience, their cheer squad shouting his first name, and first and foremost, his teammates suddenly accosting him from all sides with hands ruffling through his hair and clapping him on his back, though Atsumu quickly steps up to him and bows shortly with his hands clasped together.

“Sorry, that was short!” he says with his fullest remorse.

“Yeah, you better be glad that Suna saved our ass after that lousy set,” Osamu mocks from behind them.

“Shut up,” Atsumu retorts instinctively but he turns to Suna with a lazy smile. “But really, that was amazing.” He looks up genuinely, and Suna would probably blush if his head wasn’t already pumped full with blood from exertion.

“Just don’t go expecting that again,” he replies and moves back to his position with a clap on Atsumu’s back.

He glances at the scoreboard once, and stops—25 to 24, for Inarizaki. This was a break point for them—Suna got that break point for them, and when he looks to the other side of the court, Itachiyama’s players are tensely expecting their next serve, set in position— they’re the ones behind now, Suna realizes. He grins.

“Hey, Tsumu?”

“Hm?” Atsumu blinks up at him from wiping the sweat away with the hem of his shirt.

“I’m having fun right now.”

Atsumu’s eyes widen at him momentarily, before he breathes out a laugh.

“I toldja I’d do it, didn’t I?” He stretches out his fist towards Suna, and Suna bumps his own against it.

“We’ll win this.”

Atsumu grins again.

“Ya heard, everyone? We’re gonna win this!” he calls out to the entire team, and they shout their affirmative with all the confidence of the strongest challengers.

It was just a point, Suna knows. One point more, not even a winning one, but after that he can feel the momentum shift decidedly in their favour, and it’s only five rallies later than he think he can feel it—a shift in the air, maybe, or his wishful thinking taking over, or maybe a blessing from the gods after all—he jumps in the air again, but he knows Osamu is already in position on the other side, and of course it’s to him that Atsumu sets with all the speed and deadly precision that no one else has ever managed to match.

The ball flies straight past a blocker at an impressive angle, landing on the floor just before a spiker’s feet, bouncing off into god knows where.

Noise swells throughout the stadium even louder than before but Suna doesn’t hear any of it over the ecstatic screaming of his teammates, and after a moment he realizes that his own is mixed in with that too—they all run up immediately towards the twins, their number one and two, the ones who got them their final point, though they already have their arms wrapped around each other tightly, heads burrowed in shaking shoulders.

The whole team, Coach included, runs up to them in an objectively disgusting pile of bodies, sweat and tears mixing in-between exclamations of finally and we did it and simple laughter and crying with delirious joy. Suna finds his own head resting against Atsumu’s back, one arm reaching out to Osamu and Ginjima on his other side definitely sobbing the hardest out of all of them, though Suna can only find it in himself to pant around his wide grin.

The pile dissolves into more individual congratulations of high fives and hugs, though the twins are the last ones to retract themselves from each other, their eyes red-rimmed and faces blotchy, equally bittersweet smiles on their faces.

Suna moves in and hugs Osamu first, arms wrapped around his shoulders with a firm pat that Osamu reciproates, and he grins down at the absolute MVP of this day.

“So much for your last game, huh?”

Osamu smiles back at him. “Gotta go out with a bang, y’know?”

“Uhm, are we forgetting who put up that amazing quick set?” Atsumu chimes in still with a nasally voice that he pulls up immediately.

“Yeah, but I’m the one doing the attack, Osamu says with a shove at him. “That’s my point any way ya slice it.”

“I know, but ya gotta give me at least some credit there.”

“You’re already too full of yourself, ya don’t need any more credit for your ego.”

“Hey— “

“We couldn’t have done it without both of you anyway,” Suna interrupts them. “You were both so... Amazing. “ He feels awkward saying those things out loud but when should he do it, if not now? “Really.”

“Sheesh,” Osamu rubs the back of his neck, but Atsumu stares at him for just a moment longer before suddenly throwing his arms around Suna too, pressing close in a way that’s meant to stay close.

“We couldn’t have done it without ya either, yeah?” He murmurs a into his shoulder, and Suna hums lowly into the top of Atsumu’s hair.

The slow moment gets interrupted by Gin jumping straight onto Atsumu’s back, which of course sends all three of them tumbling down to the wet hard floor immediately, Osamu cackling meanly down at them, and all their other teammates soon joining the pile once more.

They get ushered by Coach Kurosu quickly enough to shake hands with the other team, though he too is blowing his nose and wiping tears away from below his glasses. Atsumu admits to Sakusa during their handshake that he lied about the spit, and Sakusa replies that he would’ve disinfected his hand right afterwards either way— Astumu squawks and they all laugh at him, but genuine congratulations are exchanged with promises between the second and first years to take revenge and defend their title, respectively.

They then get a couple of minutes to get gather their bearings, being already accosted by various stations for quick comments on the match, particularly Coach and Atsumu, but even Suna gets a microphone and camera shoved in his face once, though he’s really not sure what he says other than a basic being glad for their victory and that Itachiyama was a strong opponent, as always.

It’s only really at the awards ceremony, when he sees Atsumu receive the trophy into his arms, that it really hits him—they won. They won. They’re the best of the best in all of Japan, the ones standing tall at the top from the hundreds and thousands of players that started out only five short days ago, and the realization that they’re here, that they’ve made it, that he’s part of that makes him tear up even more than the initial euphoria of their win, and he’s trying to very casually wipe at his eyes as some old guy talks about some boring bullshit or other, and Osamu and Gin ending up snickering at either side of him.

“Oh my god, Rin, you’re so lame” Atsumu exclaims with the trophy still in hand as soon as they’re able to talk freely again, and everyone else ends up laughing at him too.

“Shut up, you cried way more when we won,” Suna throws back at him, though he’s aware that his glare is probably ineffective with how the remnants of crying are still visible on his face.

“Yeah, but this is the ceremony, everyone probably saw you cry like that,” Atsumu teases.

“So? The whole match was broadcast, everyone saw you and Osamu cry like babies too.”

“Wh—Me and Samu didn’t cry over each other!”

“Yea, I dunno what you're talkin’ about.”

The twins deny with obvious lies on their faces, and Suna laughs again, too—they may be national champions now, but nothing has really changed, has it?

They take their official winner’s picture right after that, with little stumbling about positions—the twins in the middle, obviously, Atsumu’s either arm slung around Osamu and Suna’s necks, while Osamu holds the trophy in one hand with Gin on his other side, the rest of the team standing around them, everyone with the widest smiles on their faces .

As soon as that’s done, the most difficult challenge of the day befalls them just yet: surviving the onslaught of interviewers and recruiters jumping onto all of them.

It’s lucky perhaps that Atsumu gets most of the attention thrown his way, probably over a dozen people standing around him with papers and business cards with various Division 1 teams’ logos on them, and almost just as many people with cameras and microphones asking him the same question all over again. That said, even Osamu gets his fair share of attention too, though it’s quickly shot down by Osamu telling everyone that he’s not planning on continuing to play volleyball, but they should keep their eyes out for Onigiri Miya in the near future—cheeky asshole. Suna has never been prouder.

Suna doesn’t have much time to look at the others though when he too, is approached by several people—most of them from Division 2 and 3 teams, but he’s surprised at the amount of times he hears the words starting position from them, even as he’s polite enough in telling him that he’ll go to university, first.

One of the last men in that group Suna feels a vague inkling of recognition about, and as soon as he sees the white-blue logo with yellow thunderbolts, he feels his breath choke up in his throat.

“Good day, Suna-san,” the man bows curtly to him. “I am Kiyose, coach of— “

“EJP Raijin,” Suna mumbles in disbelief, and the man looks up at him with surprise.

“Ah, I’m sorry,” he bows hastily. “I’m—a fan, actually,” he admits bashfully.

The man chuckles with the good humour of a middle-aged man. “Well, that does make me happy! I’m sure you guessed what I’m here for,“ he says and presses his business card into Suna’s hand. “We have tryouts going on fairly soon. You probably wouldn’t be a starting player right away, but your skills are something I hope you would choose to hone, specifically with us.”

Suna swallows, the word skill branding itself in his mind, and bows down again. “I— thank you, but I would like to focus on university,” he replies just like he did with everyone else, and he doesn’t exactly have doubts about it—he’s known long that it’s the best path for him—but somehow, the romantic fantasy of playing professionally right after a high school like so many of the best players did, and like Atsumu will do too, is still somewhat appealing, as a pure fantasy.

“Ah, understandable, of course,” the man replies, with the same ease and upbeat demeanor. “It’s important to get your education. Still, I see great things in your future, so please don’t hesitate to try out for us, if you ever feel like it.”

“Yes, I— Thank you,” Suna bows to him again, and then he’s approached by Osamu, who seems to have shaken off all of his demand already.

“Who was that—Wait, is that the Raijin?” Osamu gapes at the logo plastered on the business card and Suna can only nod, still in disbelief, and soon other members approach him as well, congratulating him profusely, and even Coach Kurosu sounding impressed by it—which might be a bit of an insult, how surprised everyone is, but Suna is humbled more than anything.

“What’s all this commotion about?” Atsumu approaches them a couple minutes later, bundles of papers in hand and undoubtedly dozens of business cards heavier, finally able to break away from his newfound celebrity status in the volleyball world.

“Suna got invited to the Raijin!” Gin exclaims excitedly, and even though Suna is about to correct him that he only got invited to the tryouts, Atsumu crosses the distance to him immediately and grabs him by the shoulders.

“Wait, really!?” He looks down at the business card still in his hand and rips it away in one fell swoop to spin around with it. “Holy shit—Ya really did it! I mean, I got one too, but still, holy shit—”

“That last part was unnecessary,” Osamu quips around a mouthful of his own onigiri—Suna is surprised he hasn’t eaten them all up yet.

“Yeah, we get it, you’re great, but leave some fame for some us normal people, alright?” Suna steals the business card back, and it’s probably a little gross how everyone has probably already touched it, but much like the good fortune he got— it’s his, and he wants to keep it, if only symbolically.

“Cmon, I’m genuinely happy!” Atsumu pouts out, though he immediately perks up to switch the topic, “Speaking of, you guys will never guess who also invited me—”

“Captain, that’s kinda rude,” Riseki calls out in a rare bout of cheekiness.

“Hasn’t every other team under the sun talked to you?” Kosaku asks casually.

“Almost!” Atsumu replies shamelessly, and digs around around his pockets for many of the cards though he picks one out, quickly picking out on, hiding it close to his chest.

“D’you wanna know? D’you really wanna know—”

“No,” Osamu calls out decidedly, though Atsumu does a showy pirouette and presents it anyway.

“That’s—”

“The Black Jackals!?”

Another round of appraisals goes throughout them, because that’s a real feat, even if they all knew that Atsumu would make it far.

“You’re gonna pick the Jackals, right?” Suna asks.

Atsumu puts on a fake veneer of thought, “I mean, there’s so many options to consider—”

“Nah, he’s definitely taking the Jackals,” Osamu replies.

“Huh!? How would you know?”

“They’re the coolest, obviously.”

Atsumu shuts up and pretends to still be annoyed at his brother but his face quickly morphs into just the giddiest, most childlike smile, his purest form of excitement.

“I mean they just are, they have Barnes, Meian and Bokuto now, how could I not—”

“Ooh, that does sound quite impressive.”

They all turn around to the new voice joining their ranks, and erupt into even more cheers and exclamations of “Kita-san!”, followed by Aran and Oomimi that have also come to watch them, and Suna feels comfortable just listening to Atsumu brag some more, to have everyone quip back at him, to acknowledge his own recruitment with minimum fanfare, since that’s not really what he’ll be going for anyway, and if he tears up at Kita telling them that he really could brag about his team until the end now—well, so does everyone else.

It feels entirely surreal to say their goodbyes to the third-years eventually and have to settle back into their usual post-tournament routine of checks and double checks and then slowly filing back into the team bus—well, for the most part. Even after their hard-earned win, the twins still have enough energy in them to race to the window seat at the very back again, settling in the same position as they always do after a tournament.

The drive back home is usually fairly morose in their first few hours, with everyone processing their loss quietly, but now it’s loud and and exciting in the way it’s never been before and Suna gets swept up into joining the back rows with his fellow third-years—they recount all their exciting plays all over again, with talks turning to the teams that recruited them, and then just to the league and their futures as a whole, but for once, he feels comfortable in the discussion, getting infected with Atsumu’s ecstatic imaginations of playing for the Black Jackals and being able to defeat Sakusa’s dumb face over and over again, though Osamu mentions that he probably got invited to the Jackals too, which makes all of them laugh at Atsumu’s deeply affronted gasp of despair.

But that too, peters out, and by the time the late afternoon starts bathing them in the muted warm light of the setting sun, most of the team has settled in their seats and is simply sleeping the drive off—Suna included.

At least he dozes off for a couple of hours in his second-to last row seat, but at some point he becomes slightly more conscious again, and notices that the playlist he put on has stopped playing—but with eyes closed and his body still comfortably aching he simply decides not to move and try to fall back asleep again just by himself.

“Hey, Samu.” He suddenly hears Atsumu speak up right behind him.

“What, Tsumu.”

Their voices are quiet, subdued, but he can still hear them clearly from the proximity.

“Thanks, y’know. For sticking with me ‘till now.”

“Idiot,” Osamu replies, there’s a bit of a shuffle, probably something like Osamu trying to flick Atsumu on the head. “I didn’t do it for you. I liked playing too, y’know.”

“But ya don’t wanna keep doing it,” Atsumu’s voice comes out slightly muffled.

“Not like you do,” Osamu confirms.

“I still don’t really get it,” Atsumu replies. “I’m not mad, but it still feels like it came outta nowhere, ‘cause we were always a team.”

“Well, you’ve always been simple-minded.”

“Hey—”

“Y’know we couldn’t have played together forever, right?” Osamu continues. “At latest, you were gonna make the Olympic team at some point, while I wouldn’t.”

“You could if ya tried.”

“Maybe. But then I thought about it and I realized that I didn’t wanna just keep chasing ya forever, y’know.” There’s a small, somewhat awkward pause, before Osamu continues.

“And well, makin’ food makes me happy. It’s fun even if I mess up, and I don’t wanna stop until I get somethin’ juuust right, and even then I just wanna keep goin’ and see what more I can do. Y’know what that’s like.”

Atsumu only hums in reply, and there’s another pause for a couple of seconds.

“I want free food whenever I’m at your place,” Atsumu mumbles out.

“Only if ya get me free tickets for all your matches.”

“Deal.”

There’s more sounds of shuffling, maybe the sound of a handshake with their rustling jackets, and the bus falls quiet again—though not for long.

“Hey, Samu.”

“What, Tsumu.”

“I’m sorry.”

A pause. “What, about being a shit brother?”

“Shut up, you’re just as bad,” Atsumu retorts. “I’m sorry about... y’know,” he drifts off with another pause, but Osamu seems to get the message, whatever it is.

“I told ya, it’s fine,“ he sighs. “I’m basically over him anyway.”

“No, you’re not,” Atsumu replies, leaving nothing but quiet certainty.

“...Fine, maybe not yet, but I will be, so stop feelin’ bad for no reason. Just don’t be an ass to him or I’ll break your legs.”

“Shouldn’t you be sayin’ that to him? You ain’t gonna go after him if he breaks your poor brother’s heart?”

Suna goes stock still.

“You’d probably deserve it.”

“Hey,” Atsumu whines.

Sharp pain shoots through Suna’s sternum and something like guilt rises up in his throat, when the truly processes the implication of those words—memories of odd looks and tensions between the twins falling into place like puzzle pieces, and the picture may not fully be about Suna, but he definitely contributed to it, one way or another—

“It’s okay little brother, it’s only natural that I’d get a boyfriend before you!”

“Shut up, you’re not even older.”

“Yes, I am!”

“No, you’re not—besides, I had that girlfriend in middle school, so I was first.”

“Ya didn’t even like her—”

Suna knows that he really should stop listening in, that he shouldn’t even have listened in the first place, and quickly restarts his playlist with the volume turned three stages up, which he hopes is enough to drown out the conversation—God, that was intrusive. He feels the shame and guilt make him close to sick in his stomach.

What is he even supposed to do with that information? Bringing it up himself is out of the question, with either of them, because it wasn’t his place to know in the first place, but now that he does, it feels like the heaviest, slimiest burden to carry with him—

He exhales slowly through his nose. He can live with carrying it—he doubts he can just forget about it, but he will try his damndest to pretend it’s not there, most of all because Osamu wouldn’t want any amount of pity or meaningless sympathy, and Suna doesn’t want to be as cruel as to rub salt in a wound that should be left to heal just by itself. Osamu said himself that he’ll be over it—and Suna, as his friend, chooses to believe in that.

Osamu will be fine. They will be fine, he’s sure of that.

The moment Suna Rintarou, Spring High winner, gets back home and sleeps off the exhaustion of the tournament, he has no real time to breathe before he turns into Suna Rintarou, the struggling high school student about to take the hardest exam in his damn life.

He’s fairly smart and can still get into most of his choices, probably, but for once in his life, he wants to work towards a specific goal—small as it may be, but he knows he can obtain it, and for once, he’s willing to put the work into getting it, too.

It’s truly amazing, how quickly an exam that will define his life for at least the next couple of years passes by so quickly and with so little fanfare compared to the weeks upon weeks of studying he’s done up to this point, but there’s nothing he can do about it after the fact anyway—he forgets, and moves on, and the fruit of his labour will show itself to him eventually.

It’s lucky that his birthday is fairly soon after that too, and after spending a nice evening with his family celebrating his 18th birthday, they leave for the weekend with cheeky winks and promises not to destroy the house, and he’s free to invite his friends to a sleepover—so they can distract their minds from the mortifying ordeal of becoming adults just a little longer.

They eat another cake, made by Osamu himself, have a couple of drinks that Ginjima got from his older brother and which Suna doesn’t even like that much, but they play games and and gossip and have fun, and even with the looming threat of graduation and everything else that Suna knows hanging over him, he can still be himself—he can talk with friends, and be stupid with them, and there’s no reason to believe that it will all disappear right after, either.

Atsumu reminds him of that more than anything, because he already has a an appointment scheduled with the Black Jackals, moving far ahead of them, faster than anybody else, but still staying close by their side, but Suna knows that it’s possible—that he can still keep the pieces he tucked away in his heart, that a part of them will always stay with him, and that it will morph into something bigger and better for all of them at the same time.

Atsumu is still a near-perfect Orpheus, moving ever forward, watching ever ahead, but he also holds out his hand—pulls Suna along with him, making it indisputably clear that he wants him there, too. He shows Suna how much he wants him, the next day when everyone else has already left, which is perhaps the most precious gift Suna ever could have asked for—and he gets to keep it. He gets to keep Atsumu.

A couple of weeks after that, the one letter his whole family has been waiting for arrives. They all wait for his mother to come home from work late in the evening, the anxiety eating Suna up from the inside for the last couple of hours—he got accepted into pretty much every other university he applied to, but this one, this is his main goal—and his fingers tremble uncharacteristically when he opens the letter with his own hands, before quietly sliding the paper to the his mother she can read it out loud for him.

His eyes stay stubbornly closed, even as he hears her quiet gasp.

“Congratula—”

His sister shrieks almost in his ear, his father shouts in unusual volume, and pure relief washes over Suna as his mother continues reading with tears in her eyes, and another round of congratulations comes towards him—it feels definitely unreal, even as Suna reads the letter again with his own, teary eyes, and he soon excuses himself to his own room and calls up the number at the top of his recents list.

The few uncertain beeps at the other end of the line might be almost as anxiety-inducing as opening the letter was, before he hears a distinct shift of the static noise, and Atsumu’s sleepy voice clips through.

“‘Ello?”

“I got into Osaka.”

“What—wait—Holy shit—You got into Osaka!?”

Suna swallows. “Yeah.”

“What the hell, that’s amazing, Rin! Their team was third in the last college championships!”

“...You do know that I got in based on my test scores, right?”

Atsumu sounds flustered, “Yeah, of course, but both of those are pretty amazing, right? Right?”

“Yeah,” Suna chokes out again, “I… honestly didn’t expect it, I can barely believe it but—“

“Hey, don’t say that!” Atsumu interjects, “You worked your ass off for this, you really deserve it!”

Suna swallows down the instinctual denial of all that, a mental punch of not now, I deserve this.

“You’re right—I’m just, so happy, I don’t know what to do with myself,” he replies with every ounce of honesty he can.

“Y’know Suna, us normal people have these things called feelings—/”

“Oh shut up,” Suna laughs, and he can hear Atsumu chuckle on the other end of the line as well.

“But damn.. Osaka, huh?” Atsumu comments idly, and Suna can imagine him leaning back when he says it. “It’s a really nice place, so that’s even better.”

“Yep,” Suna confirms, biting his lip from letting the butterflies in his stomach flutter out of him in some embarrassing sound, steeling his voice as much as he can “And, you know… Osaka and Hirakata are pretty close.”

He can only hear the vague rustling of static for a couple of seconds before Atsumu speaks up again.

“Wait, wait—Oh my god, holy shit, you’re right, holy shit—”

“Did you only realize that now?” Suna laughs.

“I mean I knew it but now that you said it, it’s—” He trails off again, and Suna understands—they discussed it a bit, in-between quiet breaths and each other’s arms, but not really in detail, neither of them the types to make promises without something tangible to back it up, but having the reassurance, the knowledge of a simple 32-minute train ride—

“I really wanna kiss you.”

Atsumu’s bluntness is annoying when he tells you his unprovoked criticisms, but Suna finds that he almost hates Atsumu honest sappiness even more, because it makes him want to either die or kill Atsumu himself, while at the same time wishing he could take Atsumu’s whole being into that same space in his heart, and never let him go.

“That’s gay,” he manages to choke out as a valid reply.

“Uhm, you’re gay.”

“And what about it?”

They devolve into soft laughter yet again before it peters out, softly and comfortably like the last rays of sunlight below the horizon, leaving the comfort of the night and her silence to envelop them in her caring embrace.

“That’s really great news,” Atsumu repeats again, a little uselessly, perhaps. Suna hums an affirmative anyway.

“Yeah. I’m gonna tell the team tomorrow, but—I wanted you to know first.”

“Now who’s the one being gay?”

“It’s all your terrible influence.”

“Fine, I’ll take the credit—“ Atsumu says but it quickly turns into an audible yawn from him.

“Sorry, I was actually sleepin’ before.”

“You’re asleep so early?”

“Hey, I’mgonna a professional athlete now—I gotta have like, a proper sleeping and eating rhythm now.”

“I saw you have a quarter of a cake for breakfast last week.”

“Well, I’m starting now, okay!” Atsumu whines, and Suna cackles at him again.

“Well then, I won’t keep you, you good, responsible athlete. Good night.”

“G’night, sleep weeell~” Atsumu chirps out, and then the line cuts out completely.

Suna sighs into his pillow, phone still open on the conversation he has with Atsumu, which quickly lights up with a Good night<3 message. Suna sends back his own ‘good night’ with three black heart emojis. He lies back on his bed, and even though he feels calm overall, he still can’t really believe that it’s all really happening.

He won nationals with his best friends and teammates. He got into a good university with a decent volleyball team, and he has a boyfriend he might almost love, and who feels the same way about him too. Isn’t that so much more than just a small blessing?

A part of him still wants to freeze this moment in time, out of fear and uncertainty for what’s to come, but a bigger part of him has accepted that he can’t truly accomplish that—the best thing he can do is to let go of things that are meant to pass, continue to hold onto what he can keep, and to reach out to something new and better when the opportunity presents itself to him.

He might stop playing volleyball, be it out of stress or sudden disinterest. He might drop out of school, he might finally find his one true calling in life, he might not, or he might break up with Atsumu, as much he much as he doesn’t want to. He knows how many things could still possibly go wrong in his life, that at some point things will go wrong with his life, but that doesn’t mean that he can’t try his damndest to make sure that things go right, either. He can’t control everything, but what he can, he will try to make the best out of, just like every living being, be it a monster or a human, is trying to make the best of what they have.

Either way, he’ll be alright.