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Kiyoomi Sakusa finds four key issues when considering the topic of drunk confessions.
One: the obvious fact that inebriation takes you out of a right state of mind makes Kiyoomi uneasy just to think about. And worse, the idea of saying something as important and life-altering as a confession of love while you can barely even control your own brain sounds worse than impaling himself on a thousand thumbtacks. Who knows what you could say or do? Not to mention that, depending on how drunk you actually are, you might not even remember you did it.
Two: the romanticizing of it all makes zero sense. There's nothing romantic about unplanned word-vomit (or real vomit if you're wasted enough), unscripted nonsense where you just spit out whatever the hell it is you're feeling without any preparation beforehand. How would you even know if you're saying what you mean if you can barely even process the words coming out of your mouth?
Three: it's completely unprofessional, which, doesn't seem like a big deal when confessing feelings considering there's nothing professional at all about feelings. But even worse, you're trying to discuss something nuanced and complicated and abstract (all words Kiyoomi finds disgusting and horribly annoying) through a haze of alcohol. You look like a total idiot.
Four: getting drunk is the absolute grossest feeling in the entire fucking world, and anyone who says different doesn't know what they're talking about. The difference between Kiyoomi and normal people is that normal people can push past the burning of their throat combatting with the watering of their eyes, the dizziness that sways the ground rather than the body, to the somewhat pleasant numbness it lends them. Kiyoomi can't. The contradictions make him nauseous.
So Kiyoomi hates getting drunk, and he hates feelings, and the combination of the two is something horrendous that should be erased from existence if at all possible.
But when Atsumu sits on his couch like this, head tipped back and exposing the graceful line of his throat, Kiyoomi has to lick his rapidly drying lips to keep his own mind at bay. Flushed cheeks and sparkly hazel eyes paint the picture of an angel on earth, an out of place piece of perfection in this world made up of horrible things and mediocre people.
Drunk Atsumu is painted in broad, honey-tinted brush strokes, artfully lazy as he splays across Kiyoomi's couch, muscular limbs draped over every possible inch of furniture they can reach, as if he's decided this is his space now - truly, every space Atsumu enters is his from the moment the first pair of eyes land on him. His presence is sweet and all-consuming. Kiyoomi could suffocate in it and consider such a thing a merciful death.
"Mmm...y'think too highly of me."
They lost. It wasn't Atsumu's fault. It was a little bit, but it wasn't in a much broader sense.
If you look at the individual actions taken, yes, Atsumu could be considered to blame. But people fail to see the bigger picture when it suits their needs. And the bigger picture this time is that it's too much to expect one person to carry the game, that it's not fair to put the responsibility of a win on one person, that their loss was the consequence of what happens when you give up on teamwork.
You can hardly blame Atsumu for failing to win the entire game for them after the entire team had given up on supporting him - Kiyoomi's guilty of that as much as Meian or Bokuto or Barnes. In fact, Hinata and Atsumu were the only ones even really playing toward the end. Frustration has a way of dismantling you even when you know better. It's passive-aggressive like that.
"I didn't say anything," Kiyoomi doesn't like to drink, but even a gross sensation is better than replaying the events of the night over and over in his head like his brain would insist on doing sober. He allows himself to fall into pleasant numbness just for the moment, even if the dry-mouth and wet eyes are disgusting and horrible.
"Yeah but yer givin' me that look."
"What look?"
"The pity-look where yer tryin' ta tell me it wasn't my fault with yer eyes. But it was my fault," hazel eyes close, unreasonably long eyelashes flutter softly. Kiyoomi wants to place soft kisses to his eyelids, soothe the strain he knows Atsumu is feeling. "It was my fault an' ya don't needa step around it."
Guilt burns a hole in his sternum - it's not fair to hand someone the world and tell them to hold it up, then chastize them for their weakness the one time it crushes them.
"Shut up," you can't really blame Kiyoomi here. How is he supposed to know what to say when molding feelings into words was never a skill taught to him? His parents didn't apply the same treatment - not to him, not to each other. Kiyoomi's learned that not-communicating results in not-arguing, he's grown up learning that.
"But it's true," eye's still closed, long lashes stick together, the prologue to tears. Kiyoomi wants to swipe his thumb across those pretty lashes, gather the salty droplets on the pad of his finger just to coax beautiful eyes open, more for his own benefit than Atsumu's. He knows he's selfish. "OmiOmi, I'm a fuck up. At everythin'. Why d'ya think I can't remember people's birthdays or have a relationship."
Kiyoomi would point out that those are two vastly different things, but he's listening right now, partially entranced by the movement of Atsumu's lips that look way softer than they should. Kiyoomi wants to kiss him - to be fair, he always wants to kiss Atsumu because Atsumu is...
Whatever it feels like when you want to spend forever with someone.
"'Cause I'm totally fucked up. An' it makes it hard fer people ta love me," crying. He's crying for real now, gentle tears leaving the memory of their presence in trails down flushed cheeks. His breathing follows a different pattern now - a few short stuttering breathes, then a long one, an attempt to regain the oxygen he'd lost. "Someone could love me Omi. I like ta think someone could."
But Kiyoomi's more focused on Atsumu's chest - how can he get any really oxygen like that? With a gentle touch, Kiyoomi flattens his palm over Atsumu's sternum as if that will somehow push his breathing back to a normal rhythm.
Instead, it serves to push Atsumu onto his back, tears now wetting his temples at the change in angle. He sets his drink on the table as he clambers atop Atsumu to straddle him, keeping the setter beneath him in place with two hands on his chest - just to get him to stop talking, his alcohol dumbed brain justifies to no one.
Atsumu looks pretty like this, he decides, and paints the picture into his permanent memory. The image of Atsumu, splayed out underneath him with high cheekbones flushed the prettiest shade of pink, full lips parted ever-so-slightly as if he's on the verge of saying something, hazel eyes wide and sparkly with tears. Yes, he's very pretty, but Kiyoomi thinks he'd look prettier if he wasn't crying.
He should say something. But he's a little drunk, so all that comes out is the truth.
This is why drunk confessions are the worst kind.
"Everyone loves you. I love you..." the feeling is damn near euphoric. The air around him after reveling in the truth feels fresh and clear, he could get high off of breathing in this moment. And then it comes crashing down like all things do- the fall is so much worse than he could've imagined. The realization that words that should've stayed locked away most-permanently have just spilled from his lips as easily as breathing.
There's no way to backtrack from 'I love you' is there? Kiyoomi should've thought this through beforehand. But he can't think. Atsumu makes him dumb. His thoughts are sickly sweet, amorphous nothings that all lead back to his setter - when did Atsumu become his setter?
Doesn't matter, his body decides for him, before his brain can make a half-assed attempt at acting as the voice of reason.
Because then he's kissing Atsumu, hard and hot and heavy, with his tongue parting soft lips, exploring Atsumu's mouth. And Atsumu isn't pushing him away. Instead, he's tangling setter fingers in dark curls and pulling Kiyoomi impossibly closer by the hips, crashing them together like two storms colliding violently.
It's aggressive and warm and sweet, it's so sweet but not in the soft way. In the needy way where Atsumu is whining into his mouth and Kiyoomi kind of feels like his entire body is on fire. And when Atsumu whispers,
"Bedroom," against his lips, Kiyoomi is all but powerless to resist.
He's going to burn in hell for this. It's probably worth it.
---
Kiyoomi wakes that morning naked, with a warm weight on his chest, the rise and fall of a chest that doesn't belong to him. His first feeling is of total sedation, a satedness that's too rounded-out to describe in words. It's so soft and pleasant that, if he were anyone else, he might allow himself to bask in the dream-like glow. But that's before he realizes that this isn't his memory to have, not his moment to hold. And then there's panic because-
"Oh god, we had sex," he mutters it more to himself than the man sprawled across him lazily as though Kiyoomi's a human pillow. The morning air becomes suffocatingly unbreathable in a matter of seconds as a million ramifications for this particularly ill-advised action play like a highlight reel in his head.
Is it worth losing the best part of your life for the possibility of something better than you have? Is it worth breaking down the damn for water and risking a flood?
Any thinking person would say no, but Atsumu is warm, the press of soft skin against his own crossing the wires in his brain like an expert electrician. And feeling his steady breathes, the beat of his heart, feels numbing, an injection of molten gold into his veins. Thus, Kiyoomi is not thinking. He is feeling, and what he's feeling is something he wishes he had the power to make eternal.
"Mhm," Atsumu drops him back to the present with a quiet affirmation, accent honey thick with gold-rimmed drowsiness. "Was pretty good too."
Kiyoomi sucks in a breath, fooling himself into thinking that mere oxygen has the expertise required to heal his fractured will power.
"Okay...okay we should get up now," he decides with a shakier voice than he would've liked - his body, much like everything else at the moment, refuses to obey him. It stays completely stationary, letting itself fall to Atsumu Miya, attempting to drag his brain with it.
"Why?" it's not really a question but a lamentation at a sleepy whisper as Atsumu traces the divots of Kiyoomi's abs with a callused thumb. The sensation is ticklish and sparkling, like someone sprinkling stardust along his skin. Atsumu sighs out, musical, "I want nap time."
No, if Kiyoomi indulges Atsumu in this, he knows that this will become the standard that no one else will live up to. And he'll spend the rest of his life chasing a moment as perfectly crafted as this one only to be sorely disappointed at every turn.
"Because sleeping together is for people who are together," the words hurt just to say. Just because he knows that they'll eventually have to leave this dream-filtered version of reality and go back to the one where they're teammates, where Kiyoomi can't love or hold or kiss. Where Atsumu is a work of art to be admired and not touched. "We should get up."
"Or we could not do that. An' y'could be my boyfriend," Kiyoomi's not one to lose his cool. Currently, he feels like he wants to scream or cry or laugh or smile, or more likely, some combination of all of the above. Atsumu makes him such a loser.
"Yeah...yeah, I want that... I like that idea," is what he gets out in actual words.
So that's what they do, they sleep - or Atsumu does. Kiyoomi rubs gentle circles into his boyfriend's back and smiles at the ceiling. The unfamiliar action pulls up the corners of his mouth, makes his facial muscles sore, but for the first time in his life, it feels so natural, like the discomfort is a side-effect of euphoria.
He melts into the feeling of Atusmu breathing out softly against his bare chest, soft lips tickling his sternum as he mutters nonsense in his sleep. He lets himself free-float in the warmth, the simplicity of the moment, enjoy the feeling of smooth, tanned skin under his fingertips as he strokes languid works of art against Atsumu's spine.
Together. It's them, together, boyfriends. There is nothing quite as exhilarating as realizing someone if yours, that you're the one who gets to hold them and kiss them, who gets to delight in their smile and hold their hand and laugh at them when they try to do something sexy that makes them look like an adorable dork. Kiyoomi's never had that before.
But he has Atsumu now, which is about as good as it gets.
---
"I love ya too, y'know. Y'said it last night, but y'didn't gimme a chance ta say it back," is what Atsumu says some hours later when their nap has concluded and Kiyoomi wanders into his kitchen, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. The blond is making coffee, something that makes Kiyoomi want to cry with the affection welling in his chest - the domesticity melts him down to his basic parts. He feels stupid for almost breaking into tears when Atsumu wasn't beside him.
"Sorry about that," is what he manages.
"Yeah, y'should be," Atsumu turns around with two cups of coffee in his hands and plants a soft kiss to Kiyoomi's cheek before moving past him to sit at the dining table. It's such a simple interaction, Atsumu pulls it off smoothly, without a hitch - a small-scale con of enormous consequence that has Kiyoomi's head spinning and heart beating insistently against his ribcage.
There's never been a more perfect picture - Atsumu in nothing but his underwear and Kiyoomi's jersey (it's loose around the shoulders, hangs longer than his own), sipping coffee at Kiyoomi's dining table, bathed in soft mid-morning sunlight - Kiyoomi's convinced of it. And the best part is that his picture is his to hold and cherish, one that no one else is privy to.
Atsumu flicks hazel eyes to him, eyebrow raised sarcastically despite the fondness written in the soft curve of his lips.
"Ya gonna stand there starin' all day?"
Kiyoomi sighs out sleepy euphoria.
"Yeah."
"Sap."