Work Text:
There are about three trillion different species of microbial bacteria on earth, and ninety-nine percent of them have yet to be discovered. Even with the degree of uncertainty present, household cleaning products can kill up to ninety-nine percent of the bacterium.
Scientifically speaking, the margin of error and unknown is so small it is nearly negligible.
Kiyoomi applied that logic to everything in his life. While there was no guarantee that the food he ate wouldn’t transmit germs that wouldn’t be thwarted by his immune system, the likelihood that he would fall ill when taking appropriate precautions like preparing his own meals and using sterile packaging was so small it might as well have been a sworn promise that he’d be fit as a fiddle for the rest of his known life.
The logical brain let Kiyoomi live a normal life around eighty percent of the time. Years of therapy had taught him that when used correctly, rationalization of fear was a weapon that shouldn’t be undermined. Crowds, while anxiety-inducing, could be dealt with for controlled periods. Being somewhere without a mask was something he could stand to do as long as he could rationalize that he was safe and secure where he was even without it.
Of course, that was only eighty percent of the time. The uncontrolled variables that composed the other twenty percent were the bane of his existence. It was the other twenty percent that contributed to his painfully dry hands in the winter as a result of over-washing, and the reason for his general aversion to touch from those he couldn’t rationalize with his logical, left-brain as safe, trustworthy individuals.
(Kiyoomi had once overheard Komori telling one of their teammates in high school that his aversion to touch was some sort of ‘rancid vibes’ detector, which had been promptly disproven on the basis that Komori didn’t bother him despite having ‘the nastiest vibes in all of Japan’.
The aversion to touch and to others, in general, was a selective thing without much rhyme or reason, but up until that point he’d chosen to humour his cousin.)
There are around seven billion people on earth, and ninety-nine percent of them were people Kiyoomi never wanted anywhere inside his personal bubble of existence. Even with the uncertainty that inherently came with other people, keeping others at an arm's length was an effective solution that had a success rate of around ninety-nine percent.
As such, it’s probably fairly obvious why Atsumu Miya somehow worming his way into the one percent of people Kiyoomi wouldn’t mind inside his personal bubble was the greatest tragedy of the century.
Atsumu, by all accounts, should’ve been someone who was about as far from having the ‘Sakusa Touch Pass’ as a garbage man was. Everything that should’ve been setting off the red alerts in Kiyoomi’s brain to keep the setter at least six feet away at all times was doing the exact opposite and it was driving him mad.
With Atsumu came an uncertainty that didn’t have all the reassurances that scientific experiments could usually provide. There was no control of the uncontrolled variable, no expected outcome each day when he woke up ready for another practice with him and no conclusive results that came back when the day was over.
There was no convenient glossary of complex scientific jargon that would make Kiyoomi feel like Atsumu was something he could understand, something he could put into a bubble other than his own personal one and shape in a way that made him manageable, like cutting up a sirloin steak into smaller, chewable chunks. Atsumu wasn’t clay to be moulded though, not like Bokuto or Hinata had been. He was like fine marble, and only the skilled hands of a sculptor would ever be able to know him inside and out like Kiyoomi desired to - a desire which was both driven by heart and mind.
Kiyoomi had never been good at art and creating something out of nothing, and frankly, that had to have been the second greatest tragedy of them all.
Somehow, though, despite all the things he couldn’t foresee when it came to Atsumu, he didn’t find that he minded all that much. The unknown was invigorating and exciting, a foreign feeling to Kiyoomi; something both enticing and terrifying.
That didn’t change the fact that the nights he’d spend painstakingly trying to brush away thoughts of the setter had him losing sleep, nor the fact that his frivolous attempts failed each time. More often than not he’d wake from dreams of soft blond hair and smooth tan skin with his heart racing a million miles a minute.
If he hadn’t spent the better part of the last few years in near-constant company of the man, he would’ve been able to justify his feelings for Atsumu as idealizations of who Kiyoomi wanted him to be. When the Atsumu of his dreams was just as messy and annoying as the real one was, it was clear as day that wasn’t the case.
Kiyoomi dreamt of tantalizing glances and longing touches bathed in early-morning sunlight. Perhaps it was the safety that came with traversing the unfamiliar ground that made it such an appealing scenario for his mind to paint.
There was nothing familiar about the way he’d touch Atsumu, where the tan expanse of his back or his chest would burn the tips of his fingers like wax against an open flame. Nothing but uncharted territory made up the landscape of his dream world where images that would follow him to practice the following morning would still be etched into his eyelids.
Images of Atsumu; of his hands, his mouth, his legs and his torso. Images of gold, of chocolate, and of foxes. Images of a life Kiyoomi wanted so desperately to know as his own, but a life he knew was so far out of reach even the gods hadn’t heard an utterance of it.
-
Kiyoomi liked to consider himself someone with a firm grasp on his own reality, but at seven in the morning and stuffed into the corner of the locker room getting ready for practice with Atsumu only a foot away, his perception walked a dangerously thin line between what was real and what was fake.
He’d watch Atsumu as the other seemed to have something that he wanted to say on the tip of his tongue but no way to get the words out. He’d catch him sending quick, almost unnoticeable glances his way. Sometimes he wondered if the blonde could read minds and knew all the fine and gritty details of Kiyoomi’s thoughts and feelings.
If his knowledge of these minuscule acts hadn’t been acquired due to his own staring and watching, he would’ve been sure to call him out on it.
“Omi-san, are you alright?” a head of orange hair peered at him from the opposite bench in the locker room, the short spiker dusting his shoes as their teammates began filing out and into the gym.
“Now that you mention it, Sakkun does look kinda pale,” Bokuto chimed in from beside the redhead, an uncharacteristic look of concern etched onto his face,
Atsumu tossed his sneakers onto the ground with a slap, “Omi-kun’s always pale. I’m startin’ to think he might be a vampire,” he snorted.
“Paler than usual, I mean. Like the kind of pale you get when you’re sick,” Bokuto clarified, though his brows knit together as he considered the setter’s words, “now that you mention it, he does kinda give off a vampire vibe,"
“I’m fine,” Kiyoomi grunted, tugging his kneepads on and pointedly ignoring the unwanted vampire comments as Hinata continued to watch him. He knew he wasn’t sick - it wasn’t flu season and he’d been extra diligent with his hand-washing and mask-wearing over the previous few weeks. The implication that all his care and attention that he’d put into staying in peak condition hadn’t been effective was something he ought to have felt more offended about.
“You sure you’re not sick? I’ve-”
“I’m certain, alright?” He snapped, narrowing his eyes at the two across the room. “I said I’m fine. I’m just tired. I haven’t been sleeping well for the last few days.”
Atsumu made a displeased noise beside him, his attention moving from his bag and its contents to Kiyoomi, “Ya ain’t sleepin’? You havin’ nightmares or ‘sum?”
“Yeah, something like that,” Kiyoomi muttered, annoyance seeping into the words. While not exactly nightmares of the traditional kind, considering how much sleep he lost to the unfortunate longing-fuelled dreams he’d been having and how often they stuck with him after he woke up, they might as well have been.
“Have ya tried takin’ somethin’ to knock ya out for the night?”
“You know, when I came to practice this morning I didn’t think I’d be getting interrogated while I got ready,” He trained his piercing gaze on Hinata and Bokuto, both of whom shot him a sheepish smile in response and promptly got to their feet, quietly (or as much as those two could manage) shuffling their way out the swinging door.
He leaned back where he sat, closing his eyes and tilting his head until he could feel the rough metal of his locker behind him. Beside him, Atsumu returned to his rummaging.
He supposed, if his situation had been different, he would’ve been grateful that the proximity of their lockers nearly guaranteed excess daily interaction between himself and the setter. There were many instances where Kiyoomi wished he was anyone but himself, but it was a fact that was never more noticeable when he stood beside Atsumu.
The blond deserved things in life that Kiyoomi couldn’t provide, things like stability and normalcy that weren’t the type of thing that usually described people like him.
Sometimes he considered requesting a locker change as if a few extra feet between them would stop him from wanting to reach out and slide his hands over Atsumu’s defined biceps when he was fresh out of a shower. It was a desperate, last-ditch effort to rid his clothes of the smell of Atsumu’s cologne that he’d spray himself and everyone around them with each day at the end of practice. A way to scrub himself clean of a man that had embedded himself in the bends and folds of his soul.
“I used to ‘ave a shitty time tryin’ to sleep growin’ up,” Atsumu began. Kiyoomi opened his eyes ever so slightly, watching the blond beside him carefully, “‘Samu did too, so when we were like, fifteen our parents bought us this white noise machine. On the first night we used it I slept like a baby. I don’t think I’d ever slept that great in my life,"
He met Kiyoomi’s gaze lazily. Gracing his lips was a rare, warm smile. He was willfully allowing Kiyoomi to see a genuine part of him. He didn’t feel deserving of it.
“Anyways, the point is I took the machine with me when I moved out. If ya keep havin’ trouble with yer sleep, I’d be more than happy to lend it to ya,”
Kiyoomi’s heart felt like it was going to race right out of his chest. He knew it wasn’t fair to blame his attraction to Atsumu on proximity when he could have been halfway across the world and hearing the blond say those same words would have elicited an identical reaction.
It was genuine. It was honest. It was caring. It was everything Atsumu was while contradicting him entirely.
“What’s the catch?”
Atsumu rolled his eyes, and as quickly as it came the warm smile melted into a playful, teasing one, “There ain’t no catch. Not unless ya count givin’ yer all when yer spikin’ my tosses one.”
He wouldn’t admit it out loud - Atsumu’s ego was far too large already - but there hadn’t been a time in their life where he hadn’t given the setter one-hundred and ten percent. There was no way he’d be stopping that streak now.
-
There was a certain grace with which Atsumu played volleyball. He put his heart and soul into it. Every set was sent with a promise; a promise to be perfect, a promise that he was earning his keep on the court, a promise that as long as he was there, success was practically in the palm of their hands.
With each connection between palm and ball, Kiyoomi made sure to send his silent promises as well.
He’d asked Atsumu once, one lonely night in the fall, if he had a favourite spiker to set to. He didn’t know what he’d expected as an answer, really, but it certainly hadn’t been the response he had gotten. Atsumu’s favourite sets were to those who spiked them with vigour and passion. The sets that made him feel on top of the world were the ones sent to those who hit every ball like it was the last one they ever would.
The man liked to be matched foot for foot. When he ran, he demanded those around him run faster, if only to prove they deserved to be where they were now. Even as those words had barely filled the air between them on that autumn night, Kiyoomi had already made a silent promise to himself to give and give and give until Atsumu had nothing left to take.
He wasn’t an artist. He couldn’t sculpt Atsumu or the world they both lived in into one that made him anything but wilting yellow carnations in a flower shop window. He would never be what the blond wanted - what he needed - but that didn’t mean he couldn’t try.
While he loved nothing more than being a starter for their team - standing proudly beside Atsumu and commanding respect on the court - there was something to be said about watching from the sidelines. When a second-string player would be subbed in during practice matches, Kiyoomi got to admire from afar.
(For the longest time he’d convinced himself that he focused on Atsumu because understanding his setter was important when it came to improving his game. He’d given up on the lie when he’d found himself much more preoccupied with the lean muscle of the blond’s thighs than his form when he set.)
“Tsum-Tsum, send me another!” Bokuto bellowed, grinning wildly as he raised two powerful fists in the air.
The setter was beautiful, in the way he knew his teammates and garnered their respect. He was beautiful in body and in mind, even if such a proclamation was something he’d never admit to another living soul for as long as he lived.
Atsumu was both sun and sunflower; he glowed vibrantly and blindingly, all while following a path he made for himself. That was the biggest mistake those who didn’t know him tended to make. They coined Hinata as the smouldering flame in the dark of night, when really it was Atsumu who’d set the kindling ablaze.
-
Interviews were a necessary evil in the realm of professional sports. Hours wasted sitting around in environments with less than stellar grounds for what was deemed acceptably clean that could have been put to use practicing serves, receives, or blocks.
His more extroverted teammates thrived in the environment, relishing in the attention and praise from strangers whose names they wouldn’t be able to remember afterwards, and who probably hadn’t known much about them before they even stepped foot into the studio that day. To him, it was at best impersonal and at worst invasive. To the others, it was one more chance to secure love and adoration from the masses.
They were sat in two rows on a staged interview set, lights and microphones trained on them as cameras watched from a multitude of angles. Kiyoomi pitied the underpaid editors that would surely be pouring over the same dull footage for the next week.
The woman conducting the interview was speaking directly to Meian in the front row, asking some run-of-the-mill question about his feelings about their current starting lineup and what to expect for the coming season. Kiyoomi wasn’t paying much attention, only vaguely registering names being thrown around and the familiar voices of Adriah and Inunaki chiming in alongside their captain.
He’d been out of his element since he’d woken up that morning; on edge from the moment he’d slipped out of bed and jumping at even the slightest of touches or sounds. The unhealthy amount of sleep he’d been getting was catching up with him.
His right leg bounced persistently, and he made no move to stop it. His therapist would be disappointed, probably, if she were to ever watch this particular interview. It was recorded proof that his hold on his compulsive behaviours was wavering.
At that moment, Kiyoomi didn’t care much. If it made him feel better, his body was already attempting to unconsciously do it. He pressed on his right thumb's nail once, then the left one once. Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. Always equal.
A flick of his head to the side, and a shake of his left leg to kick off a jittery, invisible feeling.
The interviewer clapped, startling him. She was seemingly satisfied with what she’d gotten out of the interview thus far, “Perfect! We’ll just take a quick break now and then we’ll finish up with some fun questions!”
The low mumble of his teammate's voices around him as the cameras stopped rolling was a protective shield from the watchful gazes of those working the set.
“Oi, Barnes, ya’ think you could swap seats with me?” Atsumu’s voice floated above them all, like a stray ember flittering off burning charcoal.
Seventy-fifth press on the right thumb, seventy-fifth press on the left.
“Uh, sure man. Why, though?” Barnes replied, sliding from his place beside Kiyoomi and shuffling over to where Atsumu was doing the same in the front row.
“I’m burnin’ up under the lights, and I ain’t gonna let myself get all sweaty when my adorin’ fans expect me to be lookin’ my best,” he explained, a charismatic press-ready smile plastered on his face.
Kiyoomi didn’t see it happen, but he was sure the high-pitched yelp that followed came from Atsumu. He didn’t think Barnes could even create noises like that. He pressed the pads of his fingers against his thighs, equally distributing the weight on both sides.
The blond slid into the seat beside him and didn’t waste a second before turning his attention to him, “What’s goin’ on with ya’?”
“What do you mean?” He responded tightly, leg resuming its bouncing as he removed his hands from his thighs. He rubbed the backs of his fingers once up and down along the inside of his forearms, following the grooves in his turtleneck's fabric as he did so.
Atsumu raised his eyebrow pointedly, looking down once at Kiyoomi’s leg then back up to meet his gaze, “I don’t expect ya’ to tell me what’s wrong, but all yer fidgetin’ is makin’ me wanna fidget, so I’m ‘ere to help ya’ out.”
“And how do you propose you’re going to do that?” Kiyoomi scowled.
“By holdin’ yer hand,” He responded cooly, a shit-eating grin on his face.
While it was faint, Atsumu had a tiny sprinkle of freckles across his nose that painted the skin up until the corners of his eyes crinkled ever-so-slightly as his mouth tugged upwards. It was something you’d only ever see if you really looked - if you paid attention to all the little things that made Atsumu who he was.
Hidden freckles, Hershey’s Kiss eyes, and roundabout ways to show he cared without ever outwardly saying so; they were all things that made up the essential components of a man Kiyoomi had let into his life so readily it had left him reeling.
“How’d you even catch me fidgeting? You were sitting in the front row,” He narrowed his eyes at the blond, “Were you watching me?”
Atsumu didn’t falter, “‘Course I was, Omi-kun! You should know by now that a setter is always watchin’,” he sent him a wink, “Always gotta keep tabs on yer hitters.”
Inunaki twisted around from where he sat in front of them, “you’re sounding kinda stalker-ish there, Atsumu,” He teased, poking and prodding at the setter’s buttons.
“Oh, shut yer trap, I don’t mean it like that, ya’ scrub,” He leaned forward to take a swing at their libero, “Quit eavesdroppin’ too, or I’m gonna tell everyone about ‘you-know-what’, got that?”
Kiyoomi watched the exchange with mild amusement, before staring down at his own hand, then at Atsumu’s, which had settled palm-up on the setter’s thigh. His leg bounced in time with his heart, racing at the speed of light.
The thought of holding Atsumu’s hand scared him for a hundred different reasons, but none of them had to do with dirt, germs, or overall concerns of cleanliness. The lack of this fear made up about fifty of his current concerns.
Carefully, through the sounds of his two teammates bickering back and forth, and as though he were approaching a new-born doe in the forest, he reached for the open, welcoming hand. It was a dive into the deep, bottomless ocean. Immersion into the unknown.
Kiyoomi was not an artist, but perhaps Atsumu was one.
The woman conducting the interview excitedly slid back into her place on her chair, and Kiyoomi’s hand slid carefully into Atsumu’s, resting hesitantly atop it as though one of them would break with anymore contact.
(Kiyoomi was scared of a lot of things, but he supposed that at that moment, the most terrifying thing was the thought that he’d be the one to fall into a billion pieces on the ground and have nobody to pick him back up)
“Alright, so we’ve got a few fan-submitted questions here to ask you all,” she began, pasting a large, over-exaggerated smile on her face.
He watched Atsumu carefully from the corner of his eyes, the beginnings of a smile tugging at the edges of the blond’s lips as he leaned in closer to Kiyoomi, eyes still trained on the interviewer, “Yer actin’ like a cold fish, Omi,” he mumbled under his breath, “hold my hand like ya’ mean it! I moved all the way over here for ya’ and everythin’.”
“Shut up,” Kiyoomi hissed back as pink dusted the tops of his cheeks. Nonetheless, he allowed his fingers to thread between Atsumu’s, the warm pressure of the other man’s hand reassuring.
He focused his efforts on memorizing the ridges and dips of the calloused hand, a hand that had touched a world Kiyoomi was far too afraid to face; a hand that belonged to that very same world. He pressed his fingers between Atsumu's with equal pressure, and he was met with the same back.
“Bokuto-san, if you could swap hairstyles with any of your teammates, who would you swap with?” The woman asked, glancing up from her queued notes and towards the spiker.
Kiyoomi watched as Bokuto considered the question carefully, practically able to see the gears turning inside his head, “You know, I was gonna say Tsum-Tsum but I don’t think blond is my kind of colour,” He began, earning a chorus of nods from the team - Atsumu included, because he was a vain bastard who took pride in the fact that his hair had improved from the dehydrated-piss coloured mess it had been when he’d first met the setter in high school.
“I think I’d probably swap with Sakusa,” he concluded.
Kiyoomi gaped, “First off, I absolutely do not want your hair. Secondly, you couldn’t take care of curls if you had a ten-step plan written out for you and taped on the mirror,”
“Aw, come on Omi-san, I for one think the two-tone look would suit you!” Hinata chimed in in-between giggles.
“You’d finally have a hairstyle to match yer prickly personality,” Atsumu cackled, clearly enjoying the imagery of Kiyoomi with owl-horn hair far too much. He gave him a rough kick with his foot, cutting him off before he could open his mouth and spew any more jokes.
The interviewer let out a practiced laugh, glancing back down at her pages, “Miya-san, this one is for you! ‘If it was the end of the world, how would you spend your last day?’”
Atsumu’s thumb rhythmically ran itself back and forth over Kiyoomi’s hand, hidden from view of the camera’s and their teammates. If he hadn’t known any better, he would’ve said it was an unconscious action.
“Yer all probably expectin’ me to say I’d play volleyball, eh?” He asked to no one in particular, letting the question hang in the air for only a few heartbeats before continuing, “well, if it’s an entire day we’re talking’ about here, at some point I probably would.”
“What would you do if there was only, say, ten minutes, then?” The interviewer prodded, leaning forward in her seat.
A warm hand gently squeezed his own. “I think,” Atsumu began, shooting a charismatic smile towards the cameras, “that I’d want to spend my final moments appreciating the world before it ends with someone I love.”
Kiyoomi could practically see Atsumu’s name trending on Twitter already. He knew exactly what he was doing with that smile and his carefully chosen words. Sentimentality and Atsumu were a lethal PR combo, and fans of the league and strangers alike never failed to swoon.
(Despite what was a calculated move on Atsumu’s part, and probably far from his true feelings on the matter, Kiyoomi couldn’t help but leave the studio set that evening imagining that if were the end of the world, Atsumu would probably be the one he’d want to spend it with.
Hand in hand, heart to heart, soul to soul. The sunflower and the golden carnation, basking in the glow of a red super-sun ready to consume everything they ever knew.)
-
Kiyoomi carefully walked through the halls of his old high school. Itachiyama’s familiar walls were bathed in an eerie green glow, and the white tile beneath his feet sparkled as light reflected in the mysterious glass shards scattered over the ground.
He could hear the faint thrum of unidentifiable voices, but their source was nowhere to be seen. The hallway he was making his way down was abnormally empty, except for a figure sat calmly at the end of it, back turned to Kiyoomi as he stared out a large window.
He toed broken glass out of his way as he walked to meet the man, his approach both agonizingly slow and shockingly fast. The mile-long stretch of classrooms was behind him in moments.
“Where is everyone?” He found the words leaving him before he’d even thought of saying them, as though they were ripped straight from him.
“Everywhere,” The man replied cryptically, gaze still trained on the vast distance outside. “Below us, beside us, always watchin’ but never quite gone.”
“I don’t think I understand,” Kiyoomi’s eyebrows pressed together in confusion.
The man pointed towards the window, “Come see,” he said, voice thick with an accent he knew but couldn’t put a name to.
Cautiously, he approached the window. Outside, the sky glowed a magnificent shade of red and orange, painting the sky crimson as though it were a god's request for sacrifices and blood. On the grass and pavement below it, students dressed in Itachiyama’s uniform scurried around in panic at the state of the sky.
Kiyoomi watched as a faceless girl ran towards another. With each step she took it was like he was watching her dissolve until both girls were nothing more than a pile of tiny particles on the ground.
“Oh,” Kiyoomi said simply.
“They’re everywhere,” The man repeated, turning away from the window to look at Kiyoomi, then down at the broken glass shards beneath his feet. “They’re fallin’ apart and turnin’ to glass. The end is near, and if yer not careful, you will too,”
Atsumu sat in front of him on the floor, leaning lazily against the glass window. He gestured to the spot on the ground beside him, and Kiyoomi took the offering like it was bread at the last supper.
“Ya’ don’t need to be scared. It was always going to happen,” The blond reassured. Despite the school being bathed in green light, the area in front of the window supplied them with warm red hues that chased the envious darkness away.
He much preferred the crimson warmth to the lonely, empty hallways.
“I’m not scared,” Atsumu continued, tilting his head and fixating a gaze full of so much fondness on Kiyoomi that he didn’t think fear was an emotion he could possibly process. The world was ending around him, and he was safe.
“Will we still break?” He asked softly.
“Yes,” Atsumu hummed, “everyone does eventually, even you and me, Omi-kun,”
“Oh,”
“Breakin’ ain’t always a bad thing, though. Right now it’s the end of the world. Breakin’ ain’t even the worst part.”
-
Kiyoomi startled awake, sticky with sweat as he sat up in bed. His heart was pounding in his ears and against his chest, deafening and rhythmic like drums. He ran a hand through his hair, pushing through mused, loose coils as he shoved his blankets off of him and swung his legs over the edge of his mattress.
“Jesus,” he breathed, trying to blink away images of Atsumu and glass shards and breaking apart at the gentlest, most minuscule touches; the graze of an arm, the chilling embrace of a voice.
He glanced at the clock beside his bed, suppressing the urge to yell out of frustration as ‘3:12 AM’ blinked back at him in bright yellow from his nightstand.
While it was their day off, and losing a bit of sleep wouldn’t have him walking around like a corpse at practice, this was the final straw. Weeks of terrible sleep and restlessness, haunted by Atsumu every moment of every day. It was about time he put an end to it.
He pushed himself to his feet, shuffling the few meters between his bed and his desk, and sliding carefully into the chair. He flicked the lamplight on and grabbed an empty sheet of paper from the drawer.
There were about a million different ways to confess to someone, and Kiyoomi had both never confessed, nor had he been confessed to. He supposed word about his cold attitude got around fast back in high school, and nobody had ever tried to push their luck. It was a blessing and a curse, and the unfortunate side-effect of repelling people his entire life was coming back to bite him.
He hadn’t particularly thought through his plan to explain his unfortunate feelings to Atsumu, either. It was a split-second decision made on a whim in a flimsy, last-ditch effort to finally finish the endless cycle of blond hair and sultry smiles that followed him like a shadow.
It was probably the bad decision making of his drowsy late-night mind that pushed him to confess, but nonetheless, Kiyoomi was determined.
He supposed that was one plus to not being a teenager anymore. He could express his feelings, get them out there, and never address them again. He would do it respectfully, and in turn, Atsumu would acknowledge their existence and that would be that.
(And maybe mid-interview handholding had been like a shot of courage through his veins, almost addicting in a way. Maybe, the situation wasn’t as dire or as incomprehensible as he’d once imagined.
Perhaps, in the end, yellow carnations were never yellow carnations at all. The flowerbed that made up Kiyoomi’s heart and soul was one lined with golden marigolds.)
He set down the pen he’d been writing with and examined the page. It was simple and to the point. Surely it couldn’t be interpreted in any other way than how he intended it to be understood. Carefully he folded the paper in half and wrote Atsumu’s name on the front with his own name below it.
After all was said and done, a confession was a means to an end. He valued his sleep and health more than he feared rejection.
He carefully slid a pair of his slippers on and stepped out into the quiet, empty hallways of their dorm complex. He headed to the right, where Atsumu’s room sat in silence two doors down.
The memory of his dream was still fresh in his mind. He almost half expected the dim lights of the hallways to turn green, or to hear Atsumu’s welcoming voice from behind the door, reminding him that he had both nothing and everything to be afraid of. Hypocritical words from a man who’d been tearing him apart piece by piece since they were sixteen.
Stopping in front of the dark wooden door, he took a deep breath, taking one last look at the letter before sliding it through the small opening at the bottom. As fast as his courage came, it was gone, and he was rushing back to his own dorm as his heart hung heavily with regret.
‘Breakin’ ain’t always a bad thing,’ dream Atsumu had said. Frankly, the Atsumu of that haunting end-of-the-world dream was more of a nightmare than anything else. A figment of his imagination meant to feed him lies and falsities.
Breaking was always a bad thing, and Kiyoomi was more scared of falling apart than he was of contamination and the outside world.
-
The loud, obnoxious knock on his door the next morning was the first thing he registered. The second was the growing pit in his stomach after the fleeting milliseconds of willful ignorance passed, reminding him of his impulsive mistake from the night prior.
The person at his door knocked again after a minute without a response, and Kiyoomi dragged himself from his bed, calling out a disgruntled “I’m coming,”
“You better have a good reason for being here this early,” he began, before the words halted on the tip of his tongue at the sight of his visitor.
A head of silky, refined gold; cheeks dusted with faint freckles; caramel-coloured eyes; these were all things Kiyoomi did not want to be seeing, especially accompanied by a rectangle of folded paper and a sly, cheeky grin.
He was hoping it’d just been Bokuto or Hinata, anyone else, really, would’ve been more welcome. Instead, he was met with the walking nightmare himself; the sunflower deity of Hyogo, ready to rip him to shreds for his worship.
“Wow, Omi-kun, I wake up to such a, uh, unique letter from ya’, and that’s what I get for a greetin’? Whatever happened to ‘good mornin’, huh?” Atsumu raised an eyebrow at Kiyoomi, leaning his back against the wall adjacent to where the spiker stood motionless.
“Just-“ Kiyoomi choked on his own words, face undoubtedly turning a brilliant shade of red. He could feel the heat crawling up the back of his neck and burning up his ears, “Just forget about it, alright? I shouldn’t have even told you.”
Atsumu ignored him, slowly opening up the folded letter and glancing between it and Kiyoomi, “Yer shit at confessions, I hope ya’ know,”
“If you’re here to mock me, just get it over with and leave. I don’t feel like being humiliated any more than I already am.”
“I ain’t mockin’ ya, just criticizing yer technique. If I’m gettin’ confessed to, I want somethin’ better than, well, this, ” He looked at Kiyoomi incredulously. “Ya’ can’t possibly tell me that ya think writin’ ‘I think about kissing you a lot and I don’t absolutely hate it’ is a good way to tell me ya’ like me,”
“You understood what I was trying to say, didn’t you? I don’t see why you’re complaining,” Kiyoomi huffed, taking a step back as Atsumu inched closer. “I didn’t think about what I was saying, alright? Just drop it.”
“Well, clearly you were thinkin’ about somethin', my lips in particular, actually,” the blond leaned in until his face was inches from Kiyoomi’s, warm brown eyes soaking up his entire being as a lazy, charismatic smirk tugged the corner of his lips upward. “By any chance are ya’ still willin’ to consider thinkin’ about kissin’ me?” The words sounded far more attractive than they were in actuality.
“What?” Kiyoomi choked, eyes widening. This felt like a horribly elaborate, excessively cruel prank that he was the unfortunate victim of.
Atsumu backed up a step, letting out a noise of exasperation as he dragged his hands down his face, “Yer kiddin’ me right? Are ya’ really that dense?”
Kiyoomi just stared blankly at him, and Atsumu let out another strangled noise in frustration before surging forward. Feet became inches, and inches became an infinity as soft lips met his own. Gentle and brief; barely-there for more than a few seconds, but long enough for the feeling of Atsumu's touch to linger.
“Oh,” was all that he could force out as Atsumu stepped back. The part of him that dared push his luck willed for him to come closer, it wanted to memorize the feeling of the smooth tan skin he’d longed for beneath the breadth of his fingertips.
“Yeah, oh ,” The blond rolled his eyes.
Kiyoomi met his sturdy gaze, feeling small under its critical watch. “I’m uh, definitely still willing to consider kissing you. If that’s what you want.”
“There’ll be plenty more where that came from, don’t ya’ worry Omi-Omi,” Atsumu teased, twisting around to head back to his room. He was around a quarter of the way there, Kiyoomi still watching him go, when he turned to peer over his shoulder, “Let me take ya’ to dinner first, though. Yer choice, but I'll warn ya', I have an obligation as a twin to recommend Onigiri Miya.”
“I’ll think about it,” He couldn’t help but let the hint of a smile peek through as he spoke.
“You better. Yer payin’ too, as compensation for many undeserved years of you callin’ me stupid.”
“Don’t push your luck, Miya.”
-
There are around seven billion people on earth, and ninety-nine percent of them were people Kiyoomi never wanted anywhere inside his personal bubble of existence. Even with the uncertainty that inherently came with other people, keeping others at arm's length was an effective solution that had a success rate of around ninety-nine percent.
As such, it’s probably fairly obvious why Atsumu Miya worming his way underneath Kiyoomi’s skin and warming him from the inside out as he built trust through care and attention had to have been the greatest feat of the century.
It was a blind man’s opinion to see anything Atsumu did for Kiyoomi as a tragedy.
Kiyoomi’s dreams of tantalizing glances and longing touches bathed in early-morning sunlight were far from figments of his imagination. Written in the stars, their reality was assured and celebrated with each passing day.
Perhaps, in the end, margins of error and the uncertainty of science were not things to be applied to living, breathing works of art. Masterpieces like Atsumu, and places where foxes ran through fields of marigolds and sunflowers and where fresh linen hung to dry.