Chapter Text
Don’t get it twisted, Atsumu has heard the rumors. He’s seen the articles and tweets. He just doesn’t feel like giving into the novelty of addressing the rumors when he should be focusing on volleyball. If the article isn’t praising or critiquing his form as a professional athlete for an award-winning team, he doesn’t want to read it. He could care less about some doppleganger trying to upstage him.
“C’mon, Atsumu-san, you’ve gotta at least be a little interested!”
“I said I’m not,”
“But you have the last name!”
“’Miya’ isn’t exactly an uncommon name in Japan.”
“He does have a point, Bokuto-san.” Ever the voice of reason, though usually against Atsumu’s antics rather than with him on something, his hero in this discussion is Sakusa. Shirt still halfway on, arms though the sleeves but not quite making it over his head, Atsumu turns to him.
“Thank you, Omi-Omi! I don’t get why yer all so into the idea of a long lost twin.”
“But if could be!” Hinata all but whines, a wrinkle in his forehead a tell that he’s getting frustrated that no one’s listening. He’d been the one to originally bring the topic up in the locker room after practice in the first place. It had been an innocent enough beginning to the conversation, Hinata asking why Atsumu had hidden the fact that he had a twin, but it had just dissolved into bickering once Atsumu regurgitated the same answer he’s been spitting to reporters ever since Miya Osamu popped onto the radar: “I don’t have a twin, but I do have to admit the similarities are uncanny. He’s a handsome fella, but I’ve never met ‘im.”
“I kind of see their point, though...Have you seen that picture of you two side by side going around on twitter?”
“You traitor, Omi, I thought ya were on my side! Wait, you have a twitter?”
“It’s for recon, mostly, but I do see tweets about the Black Jackals on my timeline regularly since I follow volleyball-related accounts. Quite a few of them have retweeted those pictures just this week.”
Atsumu grumbles, pulling his shirt on and turning away from them and to the mirror in his locker to try and fix his hair. “Whatever, I’m ignoring y’guys now. I do not have a twin.”
“Maybe we shouldn’t push it, guys. If he says he doesn’t have a twin, then I suppose we can’t know that for sure without looking at his birth records...” Inunaki murmurs, trying to keep the peace.
“Oh! Oh! Can we do that?!”
“No,” Comes the immediate reply from all bodies present in the locker room. Bokuto slumps, pouting.
“It was just an idea...”
“I still think it’s a little odd that a Miya of the same age got famous at the same time as our Miya, though...” Oliver hums to himself. Atsumu, not missing a beat and not looking away from styling his hair, is quick to reply:
“I was the one on the cover of Volleyball monthly, actually, he just popped up out of nowhere two weeks ago. So...”
“Aw, is someone feeling jealous? Maybe you’re the evil twin, ‘Tsum-Tsum!”
“I am not, because we aren’t twins. This isn’t some ‘Parent Trap’ shit. Both of my parents are still alive and together, I’m sure they’d tell me if I had a twin. At most, the guy might be a distant cousin I’ve never seen.”
His teammates don’t look all that convinced, but they drop the subject, Hinata murmuring one last, “If you say so...” as conversation in the locker room drifts to something else.
-
...His parents, clearly, have something to tell him.
Atsumu is pretty close to his parents. Close enough to warrant regular visits from them now that he lives away from home. Every other weekend, give or take depending on if he has a game, they meet up for dinner or lunch. There’s never a dull moment, his parents letting Atsumu dominate the conversation when they run out of things to talk about; and dominate the conversation Atsumu does. He feels proud of himself when he talks about his work, sure, but the look on his parent’s face when he talks about his teammates like friends makes him even prouder; he knows his parents still worry about him making friends, even though his teen years when he struggled to do just that are far in the past.
Still. The look on their faces as he rambles on about the conspiracy theories his teammates came up with about Miya Osamu and him being twins are...concerning. His mother looks as though she’s seen a ghost, his father with an uncomfortable lump in his throat. Atsumu pauses.
“...What’s wrong? Y’guys got really quiet...”
“Ah, it’s- It’s nothing, Tsumu dear.”
“You sure?”
“Well...”
“No, it’s nothing. You keep talking.” His father gives a reassuring smile. So Atsumu does. He talks about how his teammates and reporters keep insisting he’s related to the up and coming star in Japanese professional volleyball, and how absolutely insane it is; he’s an only child, after all. He even pulls up the photo Omi had mentioned, showing it to his parents; this turns out to be a mistake, however, because his mother bursts out in tears.
“Oh, I can’t do this anymore!” She sobs, turning away from the phone like the sight of the photo burns her. Atsumu reels, his eyes widening, as his father wraps an arm around his mother. “Atsumu, the reason people are thinking he’s your twin is because he is.”
There’s a moment of silence as Atsumu processes his mother’s words. He snorts. “...Yeah, okay, sure. Like I believe that!”
“Atsumu,” His father says, his voice as calm and quiet as normal. The look on his face is slightly pained as he holds tighter to his mother. “We...Should probably talk. I’ll pay the check and we’ll go home to have a chat, huh?”
“What the hell’re ya talking about? This isn’t funny.”
“I would hope you don’t think it’s a joke, Atsumu, we’re telling the truth.”
His mouth hangs open, phone dangling from his hand, as his father waves the waitress over. What the hell?..
His mother’s sobs die down as they leave the restaurant and get into a cab. His father gives directions to Atsumu’s apartment, since Atsumu still hasn’t been able to process the whirlwind of what was supposed to be a pretty boring lunch leading the way it did. This has got to be a joke. One of his teammates must’ve gotten ahold of his parents somehow- and Atsumu has the sneaking suspicion they got his parent’s contact information from Suna Rintarou. The jerk had whittled his way into some Black Jackals Only meme group chats somehow after making friends with his teammates after coming to watch a practice, and has been the bane of Atsumu’s existence since. Of all the people for his teammates to love, they had to choose Suna?
Atsumu doesn’t even realize they’re at his apartment until he’s staring at the front door, mechanically reaching into his front pocket to pull his keys out.
He’s always hated bringing people over to his apartment, not even his parents being an exception. They’ve only seen the place once or twice, and last time they were over, Bokuto was his part-time roommate while he figured out a different place to stay. It’s not exactly messy, but Atsumu’s never liked living alone and so his apartment is scattered with half-finished projects or forgotten fidgets that kept him busy for all of ten minutes before he decided to just scroll through social media instead. Besides the forgotten items cluttering his shelves and countertops, however, bringing people inside his apartment reminds Atsumu just how lifeless his apartment was.
When Bokuto was rooming with him, even just for a brief moment, his apartment had personality. Atsumu’s always shined with a partner in crime, and in the short two months Bokuto was there he got many ‘a noise complaints. There were parties, team get togethers, and hookups (carefully planned, since it was just a one bedroom and Bokuto was sleeping on a futon in the living room). Atsumu felt alive, abuzz with energy. The moment he was alone again, the LED lights he has strung around the living room seemed dimmer; the microwavable meals and leftover curry from mom and dad’s last visit tasted duller.
Now, in the midst of a wild competitive season, it’s easy to see how little Atsumu actually cares about the state of his home when there’s no one there to see it’s state. Atsumu feels white-hot shame crawl up his spine knowing his mother never liked messes, and he’s not quite sure if it’s welcome or not- after all, at least if he’s embarrassed he’s not hyper-focused on the bomb that’s about to be dropped on him.
“D’ya want some- some tea?..”
“I didn’t know you had a kettle, Atsumu,” His mother says, and. Right. You need a tea kettle to make tea.
“I don’t. Nevermind. Coffee, then?”
“No, I think we should just get straight to what we need to talk about. Right, dear?” His father suggests, and his mother looks up at him, confused a moment, before nodding.
“Right. I...Atsumu, let’s sit down, dear. We’ve got a lot of explaining to do.”
So they sit. Atsumu feels like he’s ten years old and being scolded for sneaking snacks before dinner, with his parents sitting opposite him on his couch, looking at him with such intense faces. His mother is, surprisingly, the first to speak.
“Atsumu, I’m so sorry we didn’t tell you earlier, we just- we couldn’t find a way....You have a twin. It’s just- when- when you were three, you were diagnosed with cancer...” She murmurs, which-
Not the bomb he thought would be dropping. He thought he was going to be told that his parents sold his twin to a family friend who couldn’t have kids and forgot to tell him, or something. Not that his parents are big fat fucking liars and apparently have been his whole life.
Atsumu thinks he might pass out. What the actual fuck.
“I had what?”
“Cancer. Leukemia. Back then, the prognosis didn’t look well. We were told that, even with extensive treatment, you weren’t meant to live past your fifth birthday.” His father says. Atsumu’s eyes are locked on the two of them, the guilty, pained looks on their faces as they confess a lie nearly twenty years in the making, apparently. “We didn’t want to separate you and ‘Samu--” Atsumu refuses to react to the fact that their parents have a nickname for the kid they abandoned, the kid they gave up because- because he- “--but the doctors said that your treatment was going to be painful and hard to go through not only physically but emotionally. They said it would hurt you to see your identical twin looking just fine while you slowly died, and said it would hurt Osamu to see himself slowly dying a painful death. So we made the hard decision to let him stay with a family friend, just while you were going through your treatment.”
“You were young enough where, if you did die Osamu wouldn’t have been too badly affected and wouldn’t remember you; or, if you didn’t die, we could reunite you two no problem...except it didn’t work out that way.” Admits his mother shamefully.
“We wanted so bad for you boys to go back to how it was before the cancer. You were inseparable before then. Tearing you apart was the worst thing in the world, but we had thought that if you got better everything would go back to normal. But you didn’t go into remission until you were six, and by then ‘Samu had gotten so attached to Hanaka, he called her mom.”
“We tried it for two months or so. I’m not sure if you remember it. You stayed pretty out of it until you were seven or eight, after the chemo. We tried it, but Osamu had such bad night terrors and didn’t understand who we were or who you were. It did more harm than good, keeping him with us. So we...left him with Hanako. She didn’t have a family of her own, so she was happy to take care of him, let us visit whenever we pleased. And we just decided it was better that neither of you knew until you were ready. Until we knew neither of you would blame yourselves for something that was our decision completely.”
But it was my fault, Atsumu thinks to himself. I’m the one that got cancer. If it weren’t for me, this Osamu guy wouldn’t have been misplaced and abandoned by his own damn parents.
“This isn’t your fault, Atsumu,” His mother says, as if she’s read his mind. “Please, don’t feel bad at all over this.”
“I’m....I’m twenty-four...” Murmurs Atsumu. His mother makes an inquisitive noise, confused. “I’m twenty-four, and I’ve never met my own damn twin brother. And you expect me not to feel bad? I’m pissed!”
“Now, Atsumu--”
“No, no, he’s right to feel upset. We should’ve told him sooner.”
“You know we couldn’t have done that when he was in high school, you saw how he behaved back then. He would’ve done something stupid and fly off the handle. He wasn’t even ready now-”
“I don’t think anyone’s ready t’ find out their parents are liars. Just kinda happens, doesn’t it?”
“Now that’s just not fair, Atsumu-”
“We don’t even get to talk about ‘fair’ right now, ma! Does he know?”
A pause. “H- Huh?”
“Does Osamu,” He spits the name like venom, his face scrunching into a sneer, “Know about me? Does he even know about you?”
“Of course he knows about us, Atsumu. We’re his parents.”
“Well, apparently family doesn’t mean much, so ‘m sorry for asking!”
“Atsumu,”
Atsumu raises his hands in surrender, before crossing them petulantly across his chest like he’s in high school once again.
“Osamu knows he’s staying with a family friend of his parent’s. He doesn’t know why, just that they send him money and birthday gifts. We visit him regularly. He doesn’t feel like we’ve abandoned him, or at least he hasn’t expressed that thought to any of us.”
Atsumu doesn’t know why his mother’s telling him that stuff like he cares. He doesn’t.
“But you didn’t tell him about me. I get it.” Atsumu sighs. Osamu probably wouldn’t want to get to know him even if he did know; Atsumu’s always been rather unlikeable. At least, that’s what his middle school and even some of his high school teammates think- he’s worked hard to reach the untouchable, cool persona he has now, no thanks to any twin.
“Atsumu, we’re sorry we didn’t tell you sooner. We are.”
“Yeah, whatever. I don’t even care. I think you guys should go home, now.”
“But-”
“Please.” Atsumu’s voice most decidedly does not crack when he says this. His mother’s face softens, and she looks to her husband for help but his father has nothing else to add. He just stands, head hung low and defeated.
“Don’t do anything stupid, Tsumu. I know this is hard to process, but- just- please.”
With those final words from his mother, his parents take their leave and Atsumu is once again alone in his apartment.
The walls are suffocating. Atsumu can’t breathe. He pulls up twitter again, the photo comparing him and Miya Osamu already on the top of his feed. He locks his phone and resists the urge to hurl it against the wall, choosing instead to thunk it hard against the coffee table before turning and screaming into the collar of his shirt.
A twin. He has a twin. All those years of middle and high school, spent alone and spiraling, and there could have been someone there the whole time.
Fuck, he thought life would get a lot easier after college. Boy was he wrong.