Chapter Text
Here's the thing: Atsumu Miya doesn't know how he got here.
Driving down a one-way road paved through a patchwork countryside, the sky is fire and soft mellow peaches, drinking pink sugar lemonade all blending and burning overhead. Clouds fleck here and there like curls of something more, something apart, the start and fall of new skin.
Reeds and Gorse eat into the sky on the roadsides, tickling Atsumu's car in unwieldy ticks and tacks that grinds his molars against his cheek. The paint job he'll have to get soon is one of the many unsolicited visitors making its way to the backwater waiting room in his mind. A tree blurs past like a thumb now and then, the rice paddies remaining unseen. Then the Beetle rolls out over the husk of a hill and the gorse crumbles away. The country lane dips down like a gray cataract and the countryside fans out into a sea of rich life he's seen in a half dream. Mountains hiding in dusk veils lie heavy like sleeping elephants in the distant. The turf dances with the wind, uncut, untampered, rolling in and out while a lone paddy field sits deftly at the far right beside a curling tree shaded barely by its head of tapered fingers.
He's scared to look lest the man sitting only an elbow away dissipates into haze, revealing himself as a false memory, a figment of his imagination -- this would be doubtful though, Atsumu isn't very imaginable. He does so anyway, or at least indirectly so as to blunt the blow if the man not an elbow away curls apart between his fingers like the tendons of too-soft mango flesh or a tiny fish he can't scoop out.
Atsumu has seen this scene for the better part of his childhood, the Japanese countryside that's pressed a welt into his dialect; he's marked the way the colours are thin and the sky shimmers like salmon scales —changing here and there — in his mind. The earth, cakey and crumbled, bedding his soles. The smell of sap and patchouli soaking into his skin.
It's been a long time since the sun's gilded his backside contours bronze. He reels, remembering the way dried mud cracked with every cackle on his cheek, grass pulp staining the cuts on his knees. Over the warm leather wheel he feels the blisters that've turned his palms calloused, ingrained with memories of sore muscles working rich soil alongside his dad and brother. It's unbuttoned his spine and Atsumu's let it in. Mud and pulp swims brackish in his blood and when he traces the blue worms under the skin of his hand, he traces a country lane, a river brook and the fence he holds scars from volting it with Osamu.
But he wants to see the way a history folded into the width of a coin, pressing rust into the base of his nape, shows itself on the man not an elbow away; the way it'll freckle white sunless skin. How the sweet husks shiver into lungs that cup a script of subway lines and concrete mazes. He glances at his reflection for just the second they're there. How do I look worn by you?
The man not an elbow away is caught, for just that second they're there, unguarded. He's not used to his mouth exposed without his mask and there's that tell its grown a little astray from the careful maneuvers of his expressions. It hangs a little, slack. There's a sheen on his cupids bow flirting with the last gasps of daylight, wet from incessant nibbling he hasn't been entirely aware of. He's still testing this mouth like a new installment, gaze flitting into any reflection when he speaks to watch the way it creates foreign shapes. When it's not pressed flat, his lips are small but plump, sitting like a fat, pink heart on a porcelain jaw.
The country doesn't unpick him apart like a well-used seam the way it does Atsumu. It tests the waters of this man, narrow and filtered by the city, dipping its toes into the cream of his skin, relinquishing a slight jump of his brow, riding up the twin moles clung to the upper ridge of his right one. It's subtle, and Atsumu can only tell this slight impression from the way the moles shy into a dark curl. The countryside glimmers like something fickle, in and out, a ripple in his marble eyes. They're so dark his pupils get lost in the Iris which helps this caged nature he's grown into. It's difficult to read something that has no shape. When his eyes rest on Atsumu it is never something solid. It's a gaze, a resting on a freckle or a scar on his face. There's no sunlight soaking Atsumu in. A pair of marbles, whole without something to be a part of that occasionally falls and lifts. Atsumu's gazes linger like sapling, a bud thumbing on for reincorporation.
Atsumu's mother said he could never speak again and all it would take is one look from him for his voice to be the loudest in the room again. This man not an elbow away surrounds him like a wraith caught in a breeze. Carried by something else. Tangling him. The impact stings his face. Stealing every possession inside his chest.
But when the country falls again he thaws into flesh and blood and against the quiet mumbles of the radio, Atsumu can hear his heart stuttering alive. The two marble eyes touch the landscape and his chest expands in suspension.
Atsumu finds himself smiling, finds the man feel the air turn a palm and his sights, shy, shiver onto him like cherry blossoms tumbling, dislodged by a whisper. Atsumu catches the quick succession in which he gathers himself. Sets his lips together, thick lashes touching his cheek as he narrows his eyes into flint, finding resolve in the side window. There's a spasm on his jaw and the moles reveal themselves with confidence. Atsumu follows the ebb of his Adam's apple, how it purls over, silvery like a bulb passed down a stream of milk. Atsumu finds himself staring a bit too long. At the scatter of moles that drip from a tendon into the dips of his collar. He wants to graze them, pluck them apart and feel them between his fingertips and touch his hot tongue to the alabaster gooseflesh shining along his throat.
"You 'right?" He asks instead, thumbing the firm curve of the wheel instead. His gaze pauses on the road for a moment before glancing back to the rearview.
The man mumbles a 'yeah', watching the new grass turn yellow along the bleeding, sticky sun. "It's beautiful out here." The words feel fragile on his lips and Atsumu can see him monitoring himself in the reflection on the window.
Even so, Atsumu smiles. It's a boyish and lopsided smile but he feels so full and satiated it has to break out somehow.
"You really haven't been round a countryside?"
"Never had the time." He admits. There's no regret or grievance in his tone. "It was either Tokyo or some other city."
"Yeah but like, ya don't ever look out a window on them journeys to another city?"
He considers this, expression blank and held. Then he turns forward and there's perhaps some sort of realization he's only just pulled together. "Yeah, I guess. It's different, though."
"How so?"
"I usually read, sleep or there was something on my mind that stopped me from paying attention."
"What gets on Omi's mind?" Atsumu's tries to hinder the smirk but when his gaze fixes onto his through reflections, heavy-lidded and pained, Atsumu can only bite his lip as the corners of his eyes reveal his smile instead.
"Game strategies. Work. How disgusting minibuses packed with sweaty kids are."
"B ooooring !" Atsumu balks. "We had karaoke on our buses. Coach said if volleyball never worked out I shoulda considered becoming an idol instead."
"Well he had to keep your ego growing somehow." Omi mutters and Atsumu pretends to be hurt by that.
"Don't believe me? I'll show ya." Atsumu fiddles with the tuner and finds the first CD that's queued to replace the local station buzzing static into the cramped space they're crammed in.
Omi shakes his head at the side window, his reflection betraying something akin to humor in his half-pulled grimace. "Start singing Miya and this'll be our last date."
And even though this isn't their first date, they're still easing into it. Atsumu's heart still jumps at the word as though its calling its name. It's a hand grabbing the alcove behind his ribs, squeezing him inside out, and in this momentary stammer he is peeled and watered, his chest rising with floods. It's a childish delight, this hand on his heart, these unraveling knotted roots floundering apart like sparrow wings inside his gut.
But his cheeks hurt from smiling and Enrique Iglesias clicks alive and electric between the small space they're crammed in. A hundred dates from now and Atsumu won't stop feeling like he's rediscovered breathing for the first time.
Bailando plays, he turns the volume up, winds the windows down to tame the sun rising inside him. Omi squints against the buffets, Atsumu mouth gapes open, catching its cool buckets of wood scent and tang inside, under his tongue, rolling it cold and slick along his teeth. The guitar strings rise over the whistles, strumming the tides inside the car like silk and velvet felts, a Spanish cadence purring threads, weaving them in with the sunset and earthy gusts.
Atsumu clutches the wheel and belts out at the tops of his lungs, eyes watering, throat rasping. He grins at Omi's eyes that have become wide and blurry behind writhing curls.
"You speak Spanish?" He shouts over the music and wind.
"Nah," Atsumu laughs, "I've just listened to these lyrics enough to sound like I do! I have no idea what they're saying!"
And at this, Omi laughs. It bursts out of him like an involuntary reaction, a collision his hand jumps up to hide. But his eyes are crinkled, his head falling back into the headrest, cheeks round with a smile he's refusing to let on. It's this tug of war he has with himself that Atsumu finds so dizzyingly fascinating; a wildcat eating it's own unsheathed paw.
The sound of his snorts is delightful. Omi laughing is rare. Omi, this way, slightly dazed and tossed around by gales and buzzing music shaking the seats is an aberration that Atsumu's caught and slipped into his pocket, treasuring it.
Omi settles back into his seat, stifling himself. He's staring ahead with glossy pink eyes, but his lips are still stubborn, quirking into a small demure smile. The heart on his jaw strays for that last slice of light the same way Atsumu's gaze reaches out like plant stems praying to the sun. Omi grazes him like the daylight, sinking deep. Atsumu's grin splits his face and he carries on singing, singing for all the uncurling buds flowering his stomach.
The thing is, Atsumu doesn't know how they got here. Doesn't know how long this chipping away and discovering will last. It's fragile and small, pressing into his palms like the warm, shallow rising flanks of a barely-alive thing. He cups it and molds it and holds it against his chest, planting it in the soft soil behind his sternum.
He doesn't know what in love is supposed to feel like, not yet. But he does know what love is, and it goes a little bit like this:
It starts with Hinata and Atsumu. The space between them is eaten away by entwined hands, fingers sticky from dango tangled like pink worms. They're looking at the same shop window of an electronics shop. The advertised Panasonics, as flat as okonomiyaki, flower and burst with different sceneries blurred behind the double-glazed glass that hasn't seen a wet sponge in moons. The nature documentary about the life cycle of butterflies is clearer against Hinata's wide eyes. He grips Atsumu's hand tighter with every new stimulation.
He's remarking something about volleyball again; eleven years old, saw the little giant on a screen, much smaller than this and kinda pixelated but still. I'd seen volleyball before, but not like that. It was one jump 'n it changed my life!
Atsumu considers that one jump he never saw. That one jump he feels as though he's shifting on the edge of a seat he's stuck in for. Wonders when a crest will break the heavy grey wool lining Osaka monotony. He watches them, Hinata and him, washed out in the reflection. Watches the same stark height difference he's had with most of his past girlfriends, the one he finds so endearing, the strange way their silhouettes take space and wonders if there's a shape the universe is waiting for two bodies to make.
There's something off about them . He can't quite put a finger on it. Atsumu's content, after all Hinata's palm is warm in the stinging Winter, albeit a little too small and greasy. But he's happy and it's selfish to become laboured by something that rarely curls itself around the dip in his cheek.
They've arrived to a conclusion, a cutting point to a game within a game within a game and so trailing time through packed crowds, holding onto relief by the skittish pink palm clutched in his all feels like some sort of aftermath rather than the hundred tiny breakthroughs it had been before.
See, there'd been a time Atsumu explored Hinata through separation. Piecing together freckles like sunset through canopies marked between pores in the net. It was a calculative discovery from being from different teams resulting in something entirely unfathomable.
It led to obsession, a need to catch up to an orange muss mid leap, blurred hips, dipping left and right. Atsumu clenched through his shirt hems at frantic plucks egging him on to predict what it was that construed Hinata . And when he could no longer convince himself that this magnetic pull Hinata had on his peripheral was something borne out of competitive hunger, they began to discover each other in breathless hitches and awkward shirt tugs shared in stadium corridors between games; teasing this separation. Atsumu was hungry for hot lemon breath on his lobes and friction between skin, not rivalry or camaraderie.
But Hinata had Kageyama back then to feed him what Atsumu ached for. He flushed and slurred his words from post-game lethargy, not
Atsumu's cheeky, shy grin.
But Kageyama's left and years later they can explore one another without a wall. And now Atsumu holds him close but feels something else, stiff and cold, a shell around something blinding and warm. Here they stand, Hinata in an army green anorak, hair matted down with a sheen while Atsumu is rigid, soaked to the bone in his cable-knit jumper. He's had enough cheek and tongues stuck out in I told you so 's for him to bite down any complaints.
They took an hour's refuge in a cafe away from the rain, stuffing deserts they could barely afford into pale mouths before the bread and sugar sloshed like heavy swamps inside stretched stomachs with every fidget they made. Atsumu broke a piece of melon pa and held it up, squinting as he measured it to Hinata's head. Hinata took one of Atsumu's knuckles and sucked off the glazing sugar residue it donned. Atsumu wanted to kiss him there and then but remembered that shell and flushed with frustration.
He now turns to Hinata, to see this boy he found as elusive as the shivers in the sun for years on end, only to now have him, melted like golden treacle, pliable in his grasp. He turns, hoping for Hinata with his toothy grin and boyish mischief to kick up that motor he was so sure was lost to dust and rubble between his joints, the way that grin usually does.
Instead Hinata is looking straight back at him. Smiling, but it's almost a little sad, having caught the smooth way his words have slid off Atsumu like they've worn him out, never truly catching a grip around his deep sockets and stiff edges. Atsumu feels terrible but can't pull on anything more sincere than a small, guilty tug of lips. He's tired, the sky drips milky through skyscraper spokes, and it seems Hinata only gathers more momentum as the day passes it's tide.
They walk to the station after that, passing a billboard for a thriller that has them considering spontaneously buying movie tickets but the last of their weekly budgets have been littered on deserts. They stop at some toilets and Atsumu rifles for their train tickets as he waits outside.
"Sorry this date kinda sucked." Atsumu sniffs, delving through his wallet as Hinata settles beside him, leaning on the wall.
Hinata yawns but it's impeded by his spreading lips. The corners of his eyes crinkle kindly. His hair has dried and it sticks out in every direction wildly and fluffy while Atsumu's has remained flat and rigid like a helmet.
"The date didn't suck."
"We spent ten minutes at that festival before it started chucking. And then they freakin' closed! Who closes 'cuz of a bit of rain?"
"I know right. They really should've checked the forecasting, Y'know, like someone else I know."
Atsumu groans, head bumped back against the wall to show the pinkening tubes of sky his thirst for vengeance.
Hinata only laughs and Atsumu finds his arms around his waist, hips to hips, which seamlessly makes him feel better. Hinata’s amazing at hugs despite the shortness of his arms. He makes sure to dish them out incessantly, whether it be a natural need to comfort himself or others, or perhaps just a barefaced desire to hold someone. But there's something different in the way he holds on this time. He's pressing his face into the centre of Atsumu's chest, fingertips searching the crevices under his shoulder blades through the shirt, circling a thumb over a hidden birthmark. Atsumu can fit his chin over Hinata's wreathe of hair perfectly, and he does, the fit sinking together and if it were possible Atsumu would let their bones join.
"I really enjoyed today, thank you." Hinata mumbles, eyes shut with his cheek crushed against Atsumu's heart that isn't changing paces. His voice is small.
Atsumu wraps himself tightly around him as though they're saying goodbye despite needing to board the same train in 15 minutes.
“Don’t thank me, there’s no need ta thank me. Enjoying a day’s the bare minimum of my duty as yer date.”
“Why’re you so cynical? Let me enjoy a day and let me make that enjoyment a totally valid accomplishment.”
“That’s a sad accomplishment, Shou.”
“And you’re a sad guy. Anybody told you that, Tsumu-kun?”
He buries his nose into Hinata's hair, smelling citrus shampoo and rain water clotted together. It's a comfort he's unwilling to let go of but can't peel back either. He's stuck between intimacies and wants to remain this way, wishes time could flake away and leave them at a standstill in this windowless station. But Hinata was a comet born into motion, every part never-stopping, more plasma than blood. The one to hold him isn't meant to be the perfect mould to keep him in place, but the star that matches his pace.
Atsumu wants to say, well you deserve a better date but words lie flat on his tongue. He thinks the message translates somehow. They hold on a little longer.
"We would've never discovered that cafe if it weren't for the turn of events." Hinata points out.
"Touché."
"And who knows, maybe on our next date you'll bring a waterproof and we can re-enact that scene from the notebook."
Atsumu smiles and feels Hinata smile against him because neither of them have seen the notebook and they both know there won't be a next date. The unspoken mutuality seems to make the air less sultry.
"I like that plan."
And then Hinata pulls back slightly without letting go, leaning back enough to meet Atsumu's eyes. The small of his back is holstered by Atsumu. Atsumu's almost ready to let go, only hesitating under the way Hinata's eyes trail down to his lips. There's that beating in his chest swelling up, hoping perhaps they are good together. That he can hold Hinata like this for ages to come, wake up to a small warm frame, the smell of citrus tangled in sheets and a name to this relationship that pokes and twines between the nets.
Hinata rises on his toes and Atsumu cranes his neck. The kiss is soft like the soft press of a peach. It tastes like sugar and tea. It's not the first time they've kissed; that was on their third date, against a bus stop, how it was clumsy and sweet and they laughed at how Hinata almost chipped a tooth from hopping into it, too excited for drawn out tensions.
When they separate, Atsumu chases him a little, rests his forehead against Hinata's, feels his grin behind closed eyes.
Hinata warms his heart, makes it flower, makes him tender the way a baker paws at dough. Atsumu loves him, truly, wants to give him everything of his own, his entire self, and feels sick that he can't. Hates himself that he can't love more , love wholly selflessly like he's sure Hinata deserves. In a way though, he's a little relieved. Hinata will always deserve better. Point blank. Perhaps it's bad timing; perhaps this is as good as it gets. He doesn't mind it in the end, though, because they're friends before lovers and Hinata sticks around in a different shade.