Chapter Text
“Classic breakfast, with hashbrowns?”
Keiji’s eyes flit from his laptop screen up to the woman holding his dinner. He closes his laptop with a snap, shoving it away unceremoniously to make room for the steaming plate of breakfast she places in front of him.
“Two over easy eggs, sourdough toast, hash browns-” she pulls a bottle of hot sauce from one of her apron pockets and sets it on the table next to his empty cup. “-looks good to me. Need more coffee, honey.” She eyes his empty cup but Keiji just shakes his head mournfully, mouth opening to reply before she cuts him off with a pointed look to the table in front of Keiji. “Water then. Be right back!”
He’d probably find her energy unnerving if he had any to begin with, but as it stands, Keiji only has the awareness to cuff his sleeves and stab the corner of his toast into the egg yolk in front of him.
Fuck, I’m tired… Keiji thinks as he brings the soaked edge to his mouth, savoring the salty, buttery taste on his tongue. He’d been here for a few hours, and had only just now gotten enough work done to feel productive enough to order dinner.
He doesn’t usually visit the diner in the evenings, preferring to have breakfast at the proper time and spend his evenings studying in the library, but tonight was a special case. He’d woken up on Kenma’s couch with a hangover the likes of which he hadn’t experienced in ages, and had spent a majority of the day laying in that exact same spot, watching cartoons with Kenma bemoaning his existence while Kuroo brought him water and saltines every hour or so.
He’d finally had the strength to shower around three, and by four-thirty he was dragging himself out of Kenma’s hair to the local diner for some much needed grease and carbs.
He glares down at the empty coffee cup next to his plate, willing it to refill like it would stop his pounding headache instead of making it worse like the first two cups had. He closes his eyes instead, chewing and listening to the ambient sounds of the diner around him, trying to relax.
A face flashes through Keiji’s mind’s eye. It’s the same amalgamation of features that’s been flitting through it all day: droopy eyes, a sharp nose, but more importantly, the fresh scent of lime and basil, and a warm, full bottom lip between Keiji’s teeth.
The toast turns to cardboard in his mouth and he grimaces, setting it back on the plate and swallowing thickly. Another unfortunate side effect of the evening was this face, this feeling that keeps flitting through Keiji’s consciousness every time he closes his eyes.
Kenma and Kuroo had given him a brief rundown of his actions the previous night, or at least what they were around for since apparently Keiji’d run off after his second lemon drop. The most important action being that, apparently, Keiji’d found a hot stranger to make out with for the better part of the evening. He can’t for the life of him remember a face, let alone a name, and neither Kenma nor Kuroo had been present for the aforementioned makeout to verify either.
It’s embarrassing, he’s not nineteen anymore, way past the acceptable age to make out with hot strangers without even getting their names. Keiji feels heat creep up the back of his neck at the memory of strong hands tugging him close and the salty taste of tequila on the stranger's tongue.
He digs the heels of his palms into his eyes, exhaling sharply as the embarrassment simmers underneath his skin. He knows it’s not that big of a deal, people hook up and have one-night stands all the time. But the idea that someone is walking around campus, someone who’d had Keiji’s tongue in his mouth, and Keiji not knowing who they were, is horrifying.
A sharp peal of laughter from in front of him snaps him out of his daze, and he drops his hands from his face to pick up his fork with a trembling hand.
Whatever, he thinks as he slices through his egg with the side of the fork. He doesn’t have to be embarrassed if he doesn’t remember. The other guy was probably drunk too, he’ll understand if Keiji looks like he’s pretending not to know him. That’s how these things work, right?
He brings the fork to his lips just as the girl in the booth in front of him hops from her seat, exposing Keiji to her seatmate for the first time since they’d sat down an hour before. He’s peering down at something on the table, with droopy eyes and a strong nose and dark hair and-
Gravity disappears around Keiji, the only evidence that it was there in the first place in the bit of egg that sides off his fork to land among his barely-touched food.
This couldn’t be possible, it was impossible.
A cold feeling settles in his gut, spreading to the tips of his fingers as he gapes at the man in front of him. His eyes fly across the stranger’s face, features slotting together to complete the picture that his mind’s eye has been trying to put together all day.
The first intelligent thought he has is that he’s gorgeous. The second is that he absolutely cannot be discovered staring.
It’s at that moment, of course, that the mystery man chooses to raise his eyes to Keiji’s. They meet for a fraction of a second, and oh- he really is gorgeous. Heat zings through the ice in Keiji’s veins like lightning before he drops his flustered gaze back to his food. He can feel heat creeping up the back of his neck, palms sweating slightly as he adjusts the grip on his fork so he can take another bite.
Fuck- He piles the rogue piece of egg onto his toast. He hopes he’s imagining the weight of eyes on him, too nervous to check and potentially reveal himself. He stares down at the yolk seeping through his toast instead, picking up the salt and pepper shakers with shaky hands as he considers what the fuck to do.
He can’t believe how unlucky he is; the moment he decides to move on from a situation, the more data that surfaces. His brain whirrs despite his best efforts, pulling open drawers and smashing through windows, searching for the name of this handsome stranger-not-stranger now that he has a real face to latch onto.
Luckily, a whoosh of floral smelling air blows past Keiji, attached to a blonde girl who plops down in the spot that had just been vacated. It shields the object of his anxiety from view, and Keiji exhales a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding in.
He glances at the clock on the wall to his left, at the swaying ponytail in front of him, and back down to his food. It was too early to leave; he’d just started eating, and running away immediately after that eye contact would be overly conspicuous.
The toast in his hand weighs a hundred pounds as he brings it to his mouth. Judging by the time his last...guest left, he figures he has about an hour at best to wrap up and high-tail it out of here without drawing more attention to himself.
He chews thoughtfully, swallowing the toast down before moving in for another bite. Technically, nothing’s really changed; they didn’t have any sort of real exchange, so who’s to say Keiji’s been recognized at all. According to the laws of the universe, he’s still completely anonymous, just another face in a crowded diner full of equally tired and hungover college students.
It’s almost enough to calm him down, even when the girl leaves thirty whole minutes before Keiji is prepared for and he has to pop his headphones in for the unapproachable look.
There’s still one thing bothering Keiji about the whole experience, and that’s how he still can’t for the life of him remember the man’s name. He’s almost positive that he’d gotten it last night, especially since more and more memories are resurfacing now that they have a face to latch onto.
The problem is that he has the beginning of one in his head, but he knows it’s wrong. He tests it on his tongue, silently mouthing an Ah-ts before snapping his teeth closed around the single syllable.
Heat flashes through his cheeks again as he grinds his teeth together. It’s all wrong-- why can’t he remember? He’s so engrossed in his self-loathing that he hardly registers a body sliding in and out of his peripheral vision until the owner of said body barks out a greeting to the object of Keiji’s anxiety.
He glances towards him and--oh. That’s Miya Atsumu. Keiji reads the name printed in red block letters across his upper back, watches in mild horror as he falls into the booth across from whom Keiji realizes must be his twin.
Everyone knows Atsumu, he’s almost impossible to avoid since he’s the MVP of their D1 Volleyball team. His face is plastered all over campus, Keiji finds it frankly shocking that he didn’t put two and two together sooner to realize that he’d sucked face with his twin.
His twin. Fuck.
The reality of the situation sinks in slower this time, less like a slap in the face and a bit more like being thrown into a lake with cinder blocks tied to his legs. Keiji had hooked up with Miya Osamu.
Safe from Osamu’s gaze, Keiji drops his head into his hands, screaming internally as the noises from the diner flit in and out of his ears despite his mental breakdown. Of all the people he could have hooked up with, this had to be one of the most embarrassing.
Miya Osamu, he’s a certified hoe- He can hear Kuroo’s stupid voice in the back of his head, drawling on and on about the absolute piece he’d struck up a friendship with over the past few semesters of classes together.
Keiji wracks his brain for more information: Osamu had to be studying business, since he was in classes with Kuroo, but he can’t for the life of him remember any specifics beyond that. He knows he has a twin, that much is obvious, and he’d heard that the two of them played volleyball together in high school before splitting off towards their respective career paths.
He also knows that, well, he’s a certified hoe, whatever the fuck that means. If he looks back, he supposes he’s heard of him before; fellow classmates, talking about their exploits with the so-called better twin; flashing purple and red lights in some gross basement with Bokuto and Kuroo, the former dipping away run damage control for Atsumu in the face of the revelation that Osamu had already fucked the girl he’d apparently been working on for the past week.
"I don’t want yer sloppy seconds, why the fuck did you do that for?!"
Keiji can hear the exclamation ringing in his ears, can remember scoffing and turning away to refill his drink and not bothering to get a good look at Atsumu or his twin. He regrets it now, maybe he could have remembered that moment when it counted, before he’d had Osamu’s tongue in his mouth and a hand down his jeans.
Before he’d be considered sloppy seconds.
The term brings heat to Keiji’s chest, though this time it’s born from a simmering rage and not embarrassment. Honestly, fuck Miya Osamu. Keiji didn’t need to be embarrassed that he’d hooked up with someone like that. Osamu probably won’t bring it up, and wouldn't want to bother with the awkwardness of interacting with a previous hookup, so Keiji shouldn’t bother either.
He swallows the sudden tightness in his throat down quickly, tugging his earbuds out and coiling them swiftly between his fingers. A quick glance at the clock reads 6:47 pm, he’d spent more than enough time suffering here and being perceived, it was time he payed for his meal and got the fuck back to his apartment.
“Woah, Keiji? Hi!”
He’s elbow deep in his backpack when the sudden exclamation makes him start, whirling around to see Shoyo Hinata of all people leaning against his table. He’s grinning, a huge, unguarded thing that makes a surprised smile creep up on Keiji’s own lips.
“Shoyo,” he releases the hand currently shoving a laptop into the depths of his bag and turns to regard him fully, smile turning from an involuntary twitch to something more deliberate. “It’s been a while, how are you?”
Shoyo beams down at him. “Great! I never got to tell you, but I managed a C on the lit final!” He yells it like it’s an achievement, and well, for Shoyo it probably was. “You were super helpful.” He drops his head closer, voice taking on a hysterically serious note as he continues. “You’re literally the only reason I didn’t have to quit volleyball. I owe you my life.”
The praise draws an unexpected laugh out of Keiji, and he brings his hand up to his mouth to cover the outburst. “I’m sure that’s not true.” It is, if Keiji is being honest. Shoyo is gifted in many things, but English Lit comprehension is sadly not one of them. “You just needed someone to help you study.”
Shoyo nods sagely, eyes closing as he straightens up again.“I’m just glad it’s over,” he crosses his arms over his chest and his eyes snap open again. “Glad I got to meet you though! Hey, why don’t you join us for dinner!”
He blinks down at Keiji’s almost empty plate, and then to his half-full backpack. His smile turns bashful, arm flying to scratch the back of his neck as he catches onto Keiji’s interrupted escape. “Next time then!” He gestures at the table in front of Keiji, “we’re here every Sunday after practice. Come by sometime!”
The warmth that Keiji felt under Shoyo’s gaze freezes over as he follows his gesture forward to see Miya Atsumu regarding him with a blank expression, his twin staring steadfastly down at something on the table. He locks eyes with Atsumu for a fraction of a second, vision jumping immediately to the much safer gaze of Shoyo as he plasters on a placating smile.
Right. Shoyo was on the volleyball team. The same one Miya Atsumu was on, twin to the lesser known but equally infamous Miya Osamu. Keiji cannot believe his bad luck.
“Sure, Shoyo. Maybe next weekend?” His blood surges in his veins, fight or flight kicking in underneath the mask of neutrality. He has to get the fuck out of here before he embarrasses himself with actual actions.
Shoyo, bless his heart, pays no mind to Keiji’s mental breakdown. “Yeah! We’re usually here around 6:45, when Osamu finishes with his tutoring!” Keiji feels his eyes twitch; hearing Miya Osamu’s name is like a punch in the gut, made worse by the fact that his blurry form stirs in Keiji’s peripheral vision. “We have practice ‘till 6:15 but it’s just around the corner. Shoot me a text if you feel up to it!”
“I will, thank you.” Keiji replies, resolutely not looking towards the table Shoyo gestures at in favor of zipping his backpack up and grabbing his keys. “It was good to see you,” he adds as he shimmies out of the booth and pats Shoyo on the shoulder.
“You too!” Shoyo’s hoodie is soft under Keiji’s palm, and he squeezes it slightly before releasing him and turning towards the exit. His stride is careful and even, not too fast or slow as he makes his way to stand behind the small queue at the register.
He doesn’t turn to look back at the table; he doesn’t watch Osamu’s face process whatever Shoyo must be telling him about Keiji, too busy cursing whatever higher power is watching him make a fool out of himself.
It had to be Miya Osamu, and it had to be Shoyo.
He fumbles in his pocket, pulling out his wallet and fishing for a few crumpled bills. He shouldn’t blame Shoyo, if anything, he should thank him. He had valuable intel now, intel that he could keep in the budding excel spreadsheet of his mind pertaining to Miya Osamu: avoid the diner on Sunday nights.
“I know, aren’t they so cute!” The girls in front of him giggle behind their hands, turning towards the direction Keiji’s just come from. “I love when they’re out together.”
Keiji takes a deep breath through his nose, straightening up and rolling his shoulders back before exhaling. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out who they might be talking about.
“Oh my god, he’s looking this way!” One of them hisses, grabbing the other’s arm while the bored looking hostess holds out their change. Keiji ignores that upsetting comment in favor of staring holes in the little fish tank on the counter.
Whatever, he thinks after the girls leave and he’s handed his bill. Who cares if Shoyo threw a little wrench in his plans, he still hadn’t acknowledged Miya Osamu, nor had been acknowledged by him in return. Nothing had changed, he could go about his day and forget any of this even happened.
He’ll go out again next weekend, but Bokuto will be there this time, so Keiji wouldn’t have to worry about getting shitfaced and making another bad decision. With any luck, he’d avoid Osamu altogether, and they could simply be a blip in each other’s lives, an unimportant hookup in the roster of college lovers.
He isn’t sure why the thought is disappointing.
.
Osamu stares at the boy’s side profile (what had Shoyo called him, again?), ignoring Atsumu’s usual bitching about being fuckin’ starving in favor of working his memory over again for any information he may have missed about him.
From what he remembers, he’s a literature student at the college they both go to, but everything else turns hazy when his brain focuses on the way his gaze had bored into Osamu’s before tugging him close by the collar of his shirt, and the smudged eyeliner underneath his bottom lashes.
He’d smelled like Dove soap; tasted like lemonade and vodka.
Fuck.
Osamu swallows thickly, barely registering Shoyo yelling out bathroom bathroom~ as he bolts away from the table and past the boy at the register. He certainly looks the part of a literature student, Osamu still feels the tightness in his chest from when he’d met the gaze of those same eyes from the party, this time framed by thick dark glasses.
He lets his eyes trail down the light brown cardigan adorning his body, to the loose, dark jeans that cuff at the ankle haphazardly. He doesn’t remember him being this cute.
“Hey! Are ya even listening to me?”
“No,” Osamu replies immediately, because it’s true. Shoyo’s out of the bathroom now, and Osamu watches him stop short of the boy and slide an arm around the narrow slope of his shoulders. He’s grinning around his words, the boy smiling back just as genuinely with a nod and a reply that Osamu can’t pick up from this far away.
His lip twitches slightly at the sight.
Atsumu picks up on it, because of fucking course he does, eyebrows raising to comic heights before he whirls around in the booth to face the direction of Osamu’s gaze. Osamu watches him take in Shoyo and the boy, and Shoyo’s arm wrapped around the boy’s shoulders, before he turns back to regard Osamu.
He knows that glint in Atsumu’s eyes a little too well.
Don’t you dare ask.
The corner of Atsumu’s mouth pitches upwards. Behind him, Osamu can see Shoyo making his way back to the table.
I’m gonna.
DON’T-
“Sho, who’s ‘yer friend?”
“Oh! That’s Keiji Akaashi!” Atsumu scoots over a bit to give Shoyo more room on the bench, but Shoyo presses his thighs into Atsumu anyway. “He was my English TA freshman year, and he tutored me for that lit class I had to take last semester!” He pauses when the waitress materializes next to their table and sets down two fresh glasses of water in front of him and Atsumu.
“He’s really nice!” He adds on after she leaves, curling both hands around the glass and bringing it to his lips. “Why do you ask?”
“Samu wanted to know.” Atsumu replies immediately. He’s leaning forward on both elbows now, eyes flitting from Shoyo’s to Osamu’s and back again with the same shit-eating glint as before.
Unfortunately, Shoyo is either too dumb to catch on or he’s just used to it by now, and he turns his upturned gaze to Osamu with an expectant: “Why?”
And, well, there isn’t any way that Osamu is gonna be able to explain himself without sounding like a total fuckboy. He glances from Shoyo to Atsumu, and tries to fight the weird feeling of self-consciousness that’s budding in his chest enough to respond.
He supposes that it’s because he’s one of Shoyo’s friends. If it were some nameless guy, they wouldn’t even feel the need to have this conversation.
They both know Osamu’s tendencies by now, it’s not out of the ordinary for him to partake in casual hookups. But since Shoyo is basically everything good in the world incarnate, Osamu feels a little slimy having to admit the truth that he'd remembered his friend’s major before his name.
“Jus’ wonderin’.” He settles on the casual approach, leaning back in the booth and crossing his arms before Atsumu can sniff out more insecurity in his tone. “We hooked up last night and I forgot his name. We were pretty drunk though.”
“Harsh, ‘Samu!” Atsumu barks out a laugh and leans back, posture mirroring Osamu’s own while Shoyo’s eyes widen to comic lengths.
“Really?” He looks genuinely shocked, but not upset. Just surprised, and he’s about to say more when the waitress returns to their table, pen pad in hand.
They have to pause while she takes their orders, and Osamu watches with poorly concealed satisfaction as Atsumu panic-swipes through the menu on his phone for what he wants while Shoyo recites the entire list of add-on’s under the build-your-own omelette section.
Keiji is still at the forefront of his mind by the time the waitress leaves, and Osamu is no more prepared for Shoyo to jump back into the topic with a devastating, “as I was saying, that’s really unlike him.” There’s a sly glint in his eye now, but at least he’s not angry with Osamu for hooking up with his friend. “You must have pulled out all stops.”
Osamu thinks back to the night before, when they’d first spotted each other across the room. Keiji’s smokey eyes looking him up and down, the hint of a smirk tugging his lips behind a red solo cup. He’d had Osamu wrapped around his finger with a single look, if anything, Keiji was the one pulling him.
“Ah, shit.” Shoyo suddenly presses his hands palm-down on the table, leaning into Osamu’s space with a sheepish expression. “Should I have not invited him to the party this weekend?”
Osamu sucks the inside of his cheek in between his teeth, trying to ignore Atsumu’s vicious laughter in favor of identifying how exactly he felt about that.
It might be a little awkward, he supposes. But if Keiji’s display of aloofness today was anything to go by, he didn’t and wouldn’t expect any sort of acknowledgment from Osamu. That would free him up to take the night in stride, without worrying about offending Keiji or suffering through small talk or something.
Plus, it’s not like it’s his first rodeo, he should be able to navigate this without too much embarrassment. If all else fails, he can just avoid Keiji.
Shoyo stutters on. “It’s just, I haven’t seen him in forever, and, uh, he’s really good friends with Bokuto so he might have been coming already!”
“No shit, really?” Atsumu turns his upper body towards Shoyo, leaning an elbow on the table while Osamu frantically shoves this information into the back of his mind to examine later. “How the hell haven’t we seen him before?”
How the hell indeed. Bokuto is on the team with Shoyo and Atsumu, surely Keiji’s been at some of their games if he’s such good friends with him. Plus, Bokuto is one of the loudest, most expressive people Osamu knows, he must have mentioned Keiji before, or even just brought him around...
Shoyo plops his chin in his palm thoughtfully, eyes moving from Osamu’s to sweep over Atsumu’s face before he replies. “I know he’s been to a few games, but I guess he hasn’t been at many of the afterparties? At least not any that I’ve been at. Maybe he’s not into partying.”
“Explains why he’d fuck ‘Samu of all people,” Atsumu grouses, settling back into the booth and picking up his glass of water with a grin. “Ya must’ve gotten him drunk or somethi-shit, rude, ‘Samu!”
“First of all, we didn’t actually fuck,” Osamu snaps, jerking his leg back from where it’d kicked Atsumu under the table. “Second, fuck you. You think I’m that kinda guy?”
“Well, he did avoid you like the plague while you were sittin’ twelve feet away from each other.” Atsumu wipes the water trailing down his face with the sleeve of his track jacket before giving up and grabbing a napkin from the canister at the end of the table. “He must have regretted it.”
“Bein’ embarrassed about a hookup ain’t the same as that shit.” Osamu snaps back. The idea that Keiji’d felt coerced into something was gross, even if Osamu is confident that it hadn’t been the case.
“So ‘yer admitting that ‘yer an embarrassing lay.”
“To answer ‘yer question,” Osamu pointedly stares at Shoyo, jerking his head to the side when Atsumu lurches forward to try and catch his gaze again. “I don’t care if you invited him, ‘s long as they bring their own shit I don’t care who comes.”
Shoyo’s answering grin is infectious. “That’s the spirit!” He presses closer to Atsumu, and Osamu barely conceals a snort as Atsumu jolts upright like a puppet on a string. “I doubt he’ll act weird or anything! I remember him being really intentional about, like, boundaries and stuff!”
“Bokuto’ll be there too,” Atsumu adds through a tight smile. “If anything he’ll ignore you like he did here, and talk to the people he’s actually comfortable being around.” Osamu doesn’t bother kicking him again, taking enough pleasure in the startled flush on Atsumu’s face when Shoyo shoves him good-naturedly into the corner.
It’ll be fine, he thinks as Atsumu abruptly changes the subject away from Osamu’s “boring sex life” to something stupid he and Bokuto pulled off at practice that evening.
He tunes them out, leaning back in the vinyl booth and crossing his arms over his chest as thoughts of Keiji continue to flit through his mind. By the time Shoyo and Atsumu’s food arrives, he’s come to the realization that he wouldn’t actually mind seeing him again.
He doesn’t usually fixate on his hookups like this, but there’s a first time for everything, he supposes.
He chalks it up to all their mutual friends and connections, which somehow create more questions than answers in Osamu’s mind. Plus, he’d been hot as hell, and smelled so fucking good. It’s only natural that his brain keeps flashing back to how hot his skin had been under his tongue and the sound of him gasping in Osamu’s ear when he’d trailed his hands lower.
He’s intrigued, that’s all. And if his brain wants to add this new, more casual Keiji into the daydream rotation, well. Osamu can’t say he’d be annoyed.
The steaming plate of fries in between the Shoyo and Atsumu calls out to him, so he swipes three in between his fingers and stabs them into the unbroken yolk on Atsumu’s plate. Atsumu’s resulting scream of rage is almost enough to push thoughts of Keiji’s voice from his mind.