Work Text:
There is a saying, back in Atsumu’s hometown, that everything that orbits in the path of a star burns away in a thousand years.
Logically, he knows that it would take longer than that, but figuratively he knows that such a saying is technically true. He knows that it’s just a flowery way of saying that nothing lasts forever, but he's always hated the turn of phrase.
This is him, after all, who will assume plausible deniability for as long as he can possibly hold onto such hope. This is the him that had denied that Osamu wasn’t always going to be attached to his hip until well into adulthood, the him that had held onto his childhood dream of becoming part of the Imperial airfleet until his city-state had made it almost impossible.
This is him now, twenty-one and sitting beneath a sunleth sky, the desert stretching between his palms, a pencil tucked behind his ear. His starship, a class G private liner by the name of Hypnos, perched atop of a small mountain of space dust behind them. This is Atsumu, on the longest interstellar sabbatical of a lifetime, complete with his mysterious and dashing romantic interest.
“You know, I’m wondering whether all of this is just all a thinly veiled excuse to go out and sightsee,” he calls, hearing the sand shift behind him.
There’s the barest of a tailwind, and the town in question is only a few kilometres away, but they’ve docked here for the night to detract attention. The binary sunset— streaked shades of gold and pink and the palest of green— is just an added bonus.
“What makes you think that?” Shouyou laughs, hands him a mug of drinking chocolate identical to his own. “Do I give off that impression?”
“Only a little,” Atsumu replies, poking the dimple in Shouyou's cheek. Shouyou’s eyes are sparkling as he wraps his shawl tighter around himself, khakis rolled up to his knees. His mouth curves into a far-off smile, and Atsumu wonders what kind of thoughts had brought it on.
“So what are you looking for now?” Atsumu asks.
He asks him this question every single place they go to— it’s become somewhat of a running joke, because Shouyou will find a different way to skirt the truth every time.
“A pair of nice socks,” he says, grinning up at Atsumu. “I want them to have some kind of print on them. Like little pink droids, or something. They have to be colourful enough to be conversation starters.”
Atsumu grins back in return.
“Really?” he says, amused. “And what will you look for after the socks?”
“A pair for you too, I think,” Shouyou replies, giggling, “But they can’t be found here on Antaeus. We gotta find some other sock origin story for them. Somewhere far away— it’ll be a romance for the ages.”
“Alright then,” Atsumu laughs, draining the last of his chocolate. He looks up at Shouyou, trying to discern little scraps of the secrets that he keeps tucked away. And as always, his smile reveals nothing, speaks no words of its own.
“How do you feel about the sea?”
*
(Atsumu has seen that far-off smile plenty of times before. He’s seen it in a dimly-lit cantina playing shitty technopop hits; hiding in a tent from night patrol over on the Ariadne system; blue-lit in an aquarium containing all known marine life in the universe.
He’s seen that particular Shouyou Smile time and time again, and he still has no idea what it means.
He’d seen it for the first time on his home planet of Asphodel, where the rains had flooded their family’s farm, where their crops had been buried six inches deep in mud. He’d found Shouyou at the base of a cliff during the monsoon season, barely breathing, skin gone cold— had raced him back home, to their mother’s care.
He’d run a fever so high that they’d thought that he wouldn’t make it out alive.
And then, with him at his bedside, Shouyou had awoken— and having been staring off distantly at the clock on the wall, Atsumu was able to pinpoint down to the exact second that he had fallen in love.
Sort of. He had really fallen in love somewhere in between working the fields with Shouyou in his gumboots, dirt smeared on his cheek, in between co-piloting Hypnos for the first time around the Artemis belt.
He had fallen in love with him when his heart was at home and had fallen in love with him on dirty backwater planets, in barren fields of waste, amongst the luminous feeling of hyperspace. But those things were semantics, in the scheme of things; in the scheme of Shouyou.)
*
After Antaeus, three hyper-space jumps takes them to Nereus, a planet that is ninety-seven percent ocean and three percent aggressive sea snake. Atsumu's never been more thankful for the new thrusters that he had installed during their last stopover at home, because the Hypnos wouldn't have been able to survive otherwise, would be currently sitting at the bottom of said ocean.
It takes them a solid twenty minutes, and an excellent manoeuvre involving a trench and a very well-timed blaster shot to outpace the serpent.
Best fucking pilot in all of the galaxy.
Atsumu thanks his lucky stars, because he would have looked like an absolute fool for having suggested this place if his ship had gone under for some fucking socks.
Or not. Maybe the socks were purely figurative, he’s not even really sure.
Shouyou hi-fives him after he returns from manning the rear cannons, elated and shaky, his pulse rattling a thousand miles a minute. He’s gorgeous, cheeks sweat-slick and his jacket tied around his waist, singlet baring the cut of his shoulders— Atsumu wants to map out every inch of skin with his fingers, wants to run them through his hair.
"Love your work," Atsumu says, full of affection, full of adrenaline. And Shouyou’s eyes are rife with hunger— he leans in and presses his mouth to Atsumu’s own, hot and wanting, ragged and free. They part for air, but as Shouyou pulls away, Atsumu is left with the feeling that he needs more of his touch to breathe.
"Couldn't have done it without you," Shouyou grins, sitting at his spot on the co-pilot’s chair. He helps Atsumu prepare for landing.
The whole exchange makes Atsumu grin with a fierce joy— he’d been flying since he’d known how to tie his laces, after all, and it was these kinds of moments that made him aware of his love for the craft. That made him aware of his own skill, the satisfaction of pulling off crazy stunts. He thinks that he was born for this.
He’d been to Nereus before, had visited when their grandmother was still around to show them the ropes. As neutral territory, Nereus looks almost exactly the same as Atsumu remembers: a sprawling underwater city cast under a dome of air, horizon an eerie blue-green. Skyscrapers with art-deco architectural notes, massive, looming sculptures in spiral patterns. Lilac petals strewn about from thousands of wisteria trees in full bloom. He’d been blown away when he had seen it the first time, had roamed the streets full of vaguely humanoid creatures in dark cloaks, had eaten at bakeries with loaves of bread softer and sweeter than anything he’d tasted before.
And Shouyou’s eyes say it all; Atsumu sees the kind of wonder he had felt then reflect back at him, takes pleasure in his restless enthusiasm, his unabashed joy.
Atsumu takes him to a lovely little garden paved in the middle of the city with blooms made of crystals, tosses a few coins to a street performer that Shouyou stops to watch. He links their hands together on a gondola ride down the main canal, writes poetry in his skin while they watch fireworks bloom on the grassy bank of the river. He buys him a lovely silk scarf the colour of the ocean-sky, woven with fine threads of gold.
It’s enough for him to want this to last forever, the never-ending array of places, of people, of sights to see and things to explore. It’s enough for him to see Shouyou’s face light up every time. It’s enough for these visits to feel like a precise bout of magic, a lucid dream— he doesn’t want to wake. He never wants to wake.
When they return to the Hypnos, Atsumu sees a notice plastered upon the main bulk of her hull, and he frowns.
“Did you— is that a parking ticket?” Shouyou laughs, almost in tears. “They awarded your star ship a parking ticket?”
Atsumu rips the notice off, clamouring to reach it from the ramp-deck, and promptly proceeds to tear it into shreds.
“Well, fuck that,” Atsumu says, curtly.
And then, scathing: “We fend off their evil serpent, and this is the thanks we get?”
“Oh, woe is me,” Shouyou says, dramatically, obscuring part of his face with his new scarf in some far-off impersonation of an opera heroine, “My lover, a criminal. What am I to do?”
Atsumu jabs him in the side, where he knows Shouyou is ticklish, and they are beside themselves with giggles until Atsumu brings the Hypnos into hyperdrive.
*
They have a close call on Sirius Minor involving supposed trespassing on kingdom grounds, because how the hell was Atsumu supposed to know that the city had been captured just last week? He’d just suggested it because he had heard that the view from the bridge up on Mt. Vega was lovely, wanted to show Shouyou the sight of the mountain city at night awash with fog.
Instead they are here, running for their lives in some hangar, dodging blaster bolts in various shades of red and green. There are a handful of troops that flank their exit, all of them dressed in Tartarean red.
“Got any bright ideas, Shouyou?” Atsumu whispers, panting. There’s laser burn from where a bolt had narrowly missed his arm, cutting a hole into the sleeve of his favourite faux-leather jacket.
“Why don’t we just make a run for it?” He grins.
Atsumu looks at him as if he’s insane.
“I meant it when I said bright ideas, y’know! Not completely insane ones!”
Shouyou winks, and tugs Atsumu’s arm forward, and in all his years, he hasn’t seen anything like it: Shouyou moves fluidly through the air, his aim precise, perfect as he shoots down the three imperial troops in their way, delivering a roundhouse kick and a perfectly choreographed body throw to a man twice his height.
The moment of reprieve is enough for them to make their escape, as they hobble back onto the ramp, onto the ship, as Atsumu slams Hypnos’ barriers on. Blaster beams begin to ricochet off its hull, and the hangar doors begin to swing closed— but at that point it is entirely too late, as they are already thousands of kilometres into deep space.
“Shouyou— where the hell d’you learn to do that?” Atsumu grins up at him once they are safely cruising, the auto-pilot system engaged. Shouyou fights as if he was born for it, fights like the way that Atsumu knows himself around a starship. His stance, his aim, his form is practiced enough that he knows that Shouyou has had a teacher at some point— and a damned good one at that. Atsumu’d known from early on that Shouyou wasn’t quite the street rat that they had initially anticipated him to be, his speech too formal, his accent from the capitol; it comes as further proof, unravels more of the mystery of his person.
“Got lucky, I guess,” Shouyou lies, with a smile. At Atsumu’s pout, he giggles, reaching out to tap the expanse of skin in front of his ear in a fond gesture. “I’m kidding. I’ll tell you.
“My grandfather was an excellent fighter. I’m not as good as he is— I refused to be, actually, for the majority of my childhood— but I picked up something from his lessons, at least.” He’s looking at his hands, as if examining some tactile memory from the past, as if remembering the weight of a weapon clutched between his fingers.
This isn’t the first that Atsumu’s heard about Shouyou’s family before, nor is it the last. He knows that his parents aren’t around any more, knows that said grandfather had a penchant for sweets only found on the Ambrosia system. But this is the kind of balance that he doesn’t like to tip— he knows that Shouyou doesn’t like talking about his past in great detail for a reason. Atsumu doesn’t ever want to make him feel like he’s forcing him to open up.
“And thank god you did,” he says instead, leaning over to press a quick kiss to Shouyou’s temple, accepting the tiny morsel of truth.
*
On Aigle, Atsumu takes them to the universe’s most dazzling light show, and they watch mages send off lanterns to the gods from a spot nestled high in its thousands of ancient trees. On Arethusa, Shouyou somehow manages to lose his shoe to a siren-like creature, and her voice is so dangerously alluring that they do not go back for it. On Hesperia, a planet affixed with a permanent sky the colours of blood, they walk through sprawling technological complexes, cities with floors made of glass, and eat questionable ice cream from a street vendor that tastes of strawberries and dish soap.
For Shouyou’s birthday, Atsumu takes him to the beautiful lake-country of Hecate, known for its temperate climate, its glittering canals, the golden tulips that bloom in the hundreds of thousands at the peak of the summer. The skies are flushed a light pink, reflecting architectural anomalies made of marble and sandstone, reflecting the city’s many archways, the expansive plazas, the buildings with ivy trailing down the sides.
Together they walk through the romantic beauty of the cityscape, Atsumu taking his hand in his. They stumble upon a large farmer’s market, and Shouyou’s dazzling smile affords them free samples of soft local cheeses, of technicolor fruits that have the sweetness of candy, of artisanal liquor in honey-coloured bottles.
They walk past stalls of beautiful brocades lined up in brightly coloured rolls, of apocatheries with glass jars filled with morbid-looking entrails. Atsumu almost gets conned into buying a new upgraded blaster model, until Shouyou points out that it doesn’t even have a safety latch.
Atsumu gets engrossed in looking at an array of ship stabilisers when he notices that he’s lost Shouyou.
He couldn’t have gone too far, he reasons— he makes some lukewarm promise to the cloaked store clerk that he’ll return with some money, and scans his eyes for the mop of Shouyou’s hair. When he finds him, he finds him perched over a fortune-teller’s stall, hands taken by a stranger in a layered vermillion cloak. And as he gets closer, as he takes in the stature of the figure, his sharp cheekbones, honey-brown hair, something in Atsumu’s jaw tightens.
He drapes himself over Shouyou’s waiting form, an arm around the leather jacket on his shoulders, and trades in his most menacing smile.
“There you are, Shouyou, I’ve been lookin’ all over for you,” he croons, making eye contact with the hooded man.
“Ah— Tsumu!” Shouyou smiles, “This is Oikawa, he’s telling me my fortune!”
Oikawa offers him a grim smile, and Atsumu squints, because there’s something fundamentally off about his demeanour, the way he carries himself. But Atsumu lets him carry on.
“Alright, continue, then,” Atsumu replies, voice full of challenge.
“As I was saying, Shouyou, green is a particularly auspicious colour for you. You will come across an unexpected windfall in the coming months. Make sure that you be cautious of bleached-blonde men with mountains for eyebrows—“
“Okay, okay, now I definitely know that you’re full of shit—“
“— Because bad luck will follow wherever he goes.” Oikawa has the audacity to look him in the eye and smile. It is then that he gets the barest hint of what’s going on, and he places a wary hand at Shouyou’s side, into his satchel, where he knows that he keeps his wallet— and finds nothing there but air.
“Tsumu, what are you…” Shouyou turns to him confused, but Atsumu simply reaches into his holster for his blaster— only to find that gone, too.
“The hell you trying to pull?” Atsumu demands, bracing himself for a fight. Shouyou, too, has caught on, taking back his hand as if it has been burned, checking his bag for any other spoils.
“Damn, guess you found me out,” Oikawa says with a wink, pushing back the hood off his head, his body language unfazed in the slightest.
He reaches into the infinite reaches of his pockets, bringing out their missing items. Atsumu snatches them away with indignation.
“I consider it as prepayment,” Oikawa says, as if that means anything to them.
“For what?” Shouyou asks, his eyes narrowed. He looks disappointed, Atsumu notes, his hands clutched around the handle of his own blaster.
Oikawa places his hands together, bright blue tendrils of light beginning to twirl around his hands. They coalesce and form a sphere that floats around him, glittering brightly like the pull of the moon, hundreds of enchanted stars moving in its wake. It’s an astroglobe. An honest-to-god astroglobe, which means that Oikawa isn’t just some simple con artist, he’s—
“I’ve changed my mind. On the house, just for the young master,” Oikawa intones, smile sharper than crescent moons. “Shall I tell you your real future, Shouyou?”
*
“What are you lookin’ for this time?” Atsumu asks, thirty minutes deep into hyperspace.
Shouyou’s currently sprawled out on a console table adjacent to the cockpit, head resting on outstretched arms, changed into comfortable cottons. Atsumu hasn’t seen him like this before, hasn’t seen him this exhausted or contemplative since he had first taken shelter on Asphodel. It’s another small part of him that he feels privileged enough to be able to see, to feel privileged to bear witness.
And Atsumu knows a great deal of things about Shouyou, for the most part— he knows Shouyou has a little sister, knows that his birthplace is somewhere on Elysium, knows that he was raised on money with a housekeeper and a large fluffy white dog. He knows that Shouyou knows all of the great texts from the capitol back to front, knows that he can identify classical pieces by their melodies, knows that he’s damned good at any sport having to do with a ball. He knows that he prefers his eggs with their yolks as runny as possible, knows that he steals all of the blankets when he gets cold, knows that he will refuse to sleep with damp hair. He knows what Shouyou looks like when abruptly woken at 4am, knows what he looks at 3pm, knows what he looks like before bed, and in between.
And he knows that it’s impossible to know every little atom of what makes up a soul, but when it comes to Shouyou, he wants to know everything. For the first time, Atsumu wants to know everything about someone— and the thought unlocks something fundamental in him, clutches him at the core of who he is.
He watches as Shouyou winks an eye open, as his mouth upturns into another smile.
“I don’t know,” he replies, finally. “I don’t know.”
*
On Demeter, they fish for golden trout the size of lambs, and spend a futile few hours instead baiting tiny little anchovies that couldn’t even make up half a meal. It’s fine, Atsumu reasons. There’s a perfectly good fishmonger on the island; they can cheat for efficiency’s sake. The weather is too good not to enjoy it, after all.
They get their feet wet in the cool stretch of sea before being unable to resist the pull of the water, stripping to their underclothes and jumping in. They spend moments splashing each other, before Shouyou has the devilish idea to catch him unawares by grabbing his legs from underneath. His laugh is boyish as the both of them come back for air, the sound clear and wonderful.
“‘m sorry, I’m sorry, go easy on me—“ Shouyou says, through peals of laughter.
“Oh, now you’ve done it, Shouyou, you’ve incurred my wrath,” Atsumu replies, grinning, as he brings his arms around his neck to lock him in place, pushing downwards to submerge them both underwater.
For a moment, for a split second, he thinks that Shouyou looks ethereal like this, light casting soft gold onto his cheeks, gold threading through hair, the laughter still golden on his face. Atsumu quickly captures his lips, before their lungs cannot contain them any longer, their legs struggling for purchase as much as their mouths. And amidst the cool temperature of the water, both of them run warm, so warm. He can feel his chest begin to burn for air, can feel the tingling in his fingertips, but like this, Atsumu can’t help but feel invincible, can’t help but think that these are the kind of moments that he lives for.
And the spell doesn’t break as both of them relent to the surface. He doesn’t think about Shouyou’s far-off smile, doesn’t think about his haughty dismissal of a past that he keeps running from, doesn’t think about the way that he’d refused Oikawa’s offer to divine his future. They are in a liminal space, have been to hundreds of them, outpacing things like responsibilities, things like time. Here, they can just be.
Atsumu traces the shell of his ear with his fingertip, commits the shape of his jaw, the slant of his brows, the curve of his mouth again to his memory. He’s beautiful, and he’s his. All golden, all Shouyou.
*
“What’re you looking for?” Atsumu asks, half-awake, having been woken by Shouyou tossing around in his sleep.
They’ve decided to stay somewhere overnight, the bed big enough for both of them to steal as much sheet cover as they would like. He can hear Shouyou quiet, for a moment, his eyes still closed.
Shouyou doesn't reply, tucking himself into Atsumu’s negative space instead.
*
Funnily enough, being caught on the cusp of an intergalactic war does mean that their sightseeing options are somewhat limited. This becomes increasingly apparent, as their next few destinations get crossed off the list for fear of capture— the Tartarean Kingship is ruthless, it seems, and with the Elysian Empire without a current figurehead, they are moving in quickly, taking advantage of an opportune situation.
And they still find themselves amidst beautiful places, amongst beautiful things— they sing amongst themselves on a sprawling oak littered with sparrows, dance in pavilions surrounded by hundreds of waterlilies the colour of dusk, but Atsumu knows that the timbre of Shouyou’s heart has somewhat changed. Replaced by a kind of underlying anxiety for wherever home may be for him, whatever has been on his mind since day one. And Atsumu wants to reach out, wants to bridge the kind of gap in understanding between them, but he knows that he cannot just blitz through and demand answers like he can with his brother, knows that Shouyou is full of truths that he cannot tell.
God. People are fucking complicated.
Atsumu pinches the bridge of his nose as they touch down to a port bathed in Tartarean red. Helice is a planet that had been untouched even in the last great war— it had stayed a neutral bastion until the very end, refusing to abide by any rule except its own. And there’s good precedence for such a decree: the matriarchal society was born to the most powerful of mages in the entirety of the universe, strong enough to turn tides in battle. For Tartarus to hold sway over them meant something drastic had happened, and when he turns to Shouyou, he knows that he’s realised it too.
“We don’t— we can probably just leave, Atsumu,” he says, as the engine stills. “I know I said I wanted to see the lights, but we really don’t have to.”
“If we’re careful, we can slip in and out unnoticed,” he grins, holding up three fingers— one for each hour. “We’ll be in and out before midnight.”
“Alright.” Shouyou smiles. “But if this goes south…”
“Then we’ll leave,” he confirms. “You said it yourself, right? Once every ten years. The next time the lights come around, our bones’ll be too brittle and arthritic to sit out in the cold. So we gotta do it now or never.”
Shouyou laughs and gently swats him on the arm as they set out in the ten degree chill, their exhales patterning condensation in the air. And the lights are, in fact, beautiful— wisps of teal and blush stretching across a dark night sky, accompanied by thousands of falling stars. It feels otherworldly, almost, the kind of whimsical it is, and as Shouyou takes his hand in his, Atsumu almost forgets where they are.
They huddle under blankets, take out carefully wrapped sweets that they had purchased on their last stop to Ambrosia, take out tangerines and brightly coloured dragonfruit that they had picked themselves on a farm in Demeter’s orbiting planet, Iacchus. There’s a bottle of wine from there, too, but it goes untouched in their satchel— both of them know that they cannot afford at present to have it in their systems.
And thank fuck for that, thank fuck for their foresight, because as the last meteor rains fall to the ground, the explosions start.
At first, Atsumu thinks that this is part of the whole procession, but Shouyou is the one who leaps to his feet out of a hyperacute awareness, who tugs on his hand and pulls him along through the smoke, through the rubble. He sees parts of the city catch fire— although instead of the usual ember, the light emitted has a bright blue glow, has all the telltale signs of an enchanted flame, and Atsumu knows that they are in trouble when he realises that the Hypnos is docked on the other side of a wall of fire.
“We can still make it— there’s another path—“ Atsumu yells through the roar of smoke, through the sirens, and both of them run through the back-streets of the city with their blasters clutched in hand. And when he dares to glance at him, he notices: Shouyou’s expression is steely, determined— fearless. There’s a sort of hunger in his eyes, a sort of look that defies all of the odds; he knows that his brain is working on overdrive to try and get them out of this situation. His calculations come in handy as they swerve past the path of flames, take short-cuts through the city as if Shouyou knows its layout like the back of his hand.
There’s another explosion nearby, and Atsumu’s ears are ringing as he’s running on pure adrenaline, lungs heavy, mouth full of ash, and he hears another slow encompassing fire begin to inch their way. There are others in the square, too— a pair of teenagers, scaling the side of a building, a couple in their forties, a young woman in a uniform. There are others here, and this is what terrifies Atsumu the most, the responsibility. They move to turn back and realise that they are flanked with fire on either side, a mountain of rubble on the other.
Panicked, Atsumu rips out a cry for help, attracting attention from the nearby citizens as he begins to attempt to clear out the rubble, to forge another way.
It works— others join them, steadily helping to remove the debris, and Atsumu can almost see the light at the end of the tunnel— when he feels a tap on his shoulder.
“Stand back,” a calm, feminine voice rings.
The figure behind them is imposing, beautiful, a woman of lithe frame and black hair, dressed in elaborate ceremonial robes. Her hair is artfully held in a chignon at the base of her neck by a long, silver pin. They part way for her, and from her hands she releases a golden burst of energy, clearing the rest of the path.
“Go,” she intones, and Atsumu nods. She must be someone important, he thinks, judging by her dress, judging by her sheer force of will— she’s the type of person that commands attention.
Which makes it all the more concerning, when he watches her eyes widen as they fall on Shouyou’s face.
His name tumbles from her lips in shock, and Atsumu suddenly becomes aware of every minute detail— the sweat on his palms, the ringing in his ears.
“Kiyoko,” Shouyou replies. He is equally as shocked, but after a moment, his face splits into a smile. She moves quickly to hug him, eyes slamming shut, and Atsumu thinks that he can perhaps see tears shining from their corners.
“I won’t ask,” Kiyoko says, when they separate. “But I’m so glad you’re alright.”
“Me too— I’m glad you’re okay too,” Shouyou grins. “Is everyone okay? Ryuu? Tadashi? …Tobio?”
“They’re fine, they’re well. They’re waiting for you,” she smiles. “But you’d better get a move on. Go, go, before the flames get higher.”
And he doesn’t process such things now, but after the friends part with another quick hug, after they run through the remainder of the city to the port where the Hypnos is docked, Atsumu will realise that he remembers everything in startling clarity. The way that Shouyou had spoken such unfamiliar names, the way that the both of them had talked to each other as if close. Kiyoko, who had commanded the air as if she ruled it, in and amongst her people, in and amongst fate.
Atsumu continues to hear his heart in his ears for hours after they are back into deep space.
After they are cruising, Shouyou is out like a light. He falls in and out of sleep for a good twenty minutes while still in the co-pilot chair, and Atsumu carries him all the way to their bed. He can see a line of drool from the corner of his mouth, and his hair is rumpled to no tomorrow, but Shouyou looks peaceful like this— unlike the look of concentration that had crossed his face when the explosions began, unlike the expression that had crossed his lips upon uttering the name Tobio.
And Atsumu decides that he doesn’t need answers, not just yet. He doesn’t need to know, because the way that Shouyou had looked at him against the starfall lights had been enough, had been similar to his expression now. He’d been at peace, unburdened, just like every other place that they had crossed together, from peaks high enough to swim amongst clouds to trenches hidden at the core of a planet. Just a traveller and his pilot.
Just a traveller, and his pilot.
Usually, during these moments, he would probably turn tail and run straight to his brother. And Atsumu has half a mind to do it now, because he’s a weak motherfucker in need of constant reassurance from Osamu. It had been hard, when Samu had left. Feelings are hard. And complicated, and messy, and all of that.
But if there’s anything that he can figure out on his own, Atsumu knows that he deserves to know Shouyou’s One Big Truth. He thinks that Shouyou knows this more than anyone. But if it means that he can have him for a little bit longer, if it means that one extra kiss, that one extra night, one extra night with the stretch of starspace above them— he thinks that he can compromise.
At the risk of sounding fatalistic, at the risk of sounding destructive, he thinks back to an old wives’ tale in the height of summer, about tracing the path of a star. Thinks about Shouyou, and with all the impassioned bravado of a first and last love, he thinks about where he fits into this story. Into Shouyou’s story.
This is Atsumu, in orbit.
*
There’s a calming hand on his back, as Atsumu wakes. He thinks that he can hear mumbling, but as he comes to, Shouyou doesn’t say a word. He just presses his lips to Atsumu’s temple, to his cheek, to the corner of his jaw. At the nape of his neck, at the top of his spine, toward the curve of his back. And the tenderness of it all moves him to tears, grips him with a brand of fear that he has never quite felt before, because he knows that these kisses sing a path to goodbye.
And he can’t quite bring himself to meet Shouyou’s eyes as they sit on an archway out to a twilight sea; as they run through fields of lavender amidst a purple sky; as they sit amongst the grounds of an apple orchard, wearing fine silks. He can’t bring himself to meet Shouyou’s eyes as they find traces of the war on every single planet that they land on, docks bathed in either shades of Tartarean red or Elysian gold, as the Holo-net talks of nothing but destruction.
He can’t bring himself to meet his eyes as Shouyou requests to go back to the Miya home in Asphodel, because he knows that this is their last stop.
Amongst the familiar wheatgrasses of their family’s farm, eternally grey, eternally cloudy, Shouyou cracks his usual smile.
“I know that you’re mad at me,” Shouyou says, hands plucking through the sheaves of wheat, inspecting their quality. “But for what it’s worth, I am sorry.”
“I’m not— mad at you,” Atsumu replies. “I’m not mad. I don’t think I have it in me to be mad at you for very long, anyway.”
“Except for the time where I stole your pudding when you were in the bathroom, right?” Shouyou mentions, and Atsumu laughs.
“Oh, I was furious at that”—he grins—“but at that point I was also— I was also so whipped that I decided I’d forgive you straight away.”
Atsumu can feel his face heat up. He curses.
“But no. Right now, I’m not angry— I just…” He makes a gesturing motion with his hands, as if he hopes that his feelings could just manifest into perfect explanations right on the spot. Atsumu doesn’t think he’s particularly good at talking— he’s just good at ranting. It’s always been that way, with him saying paragraphs, and Samu saying the same thing condensed into a few words.
“Didn’t want to properly face things head on, maybe? Like I realised after we were on Helice that things were going to be different. That everywhere we’d go, we’d have to think about war alliances and our safety and all of that messy shit. That both of us have some kind of fucked up responsibility to go home and do whatever the hell we were meant to do. But I didn’t want to be over. I didn’t want us to be over.” He straightens up a particular bundle of wheat, re-ties the knots by hand. “I don’t want us to be over.”
Shouyou is silent for a moment, neither of them meeting each other’s gaze. Bodies turned in opposite directions, with some illusion of doing something to occupy their restlessness. It’s quiet. Atsumu thinks that Asphodel’s eternally grey skies may open up to rain.
“Y’know, Tsumu, I really really like the person that I am when I’m around you. Like— I’m not saying I’m some kind of awful person or whatever, and I’m probably speaking from some place of privilege, but I think that’s some of the reason why I didn’t want to go home,” he says. “Of course, that doesn’t make up for me sort of— deceiving you, I guess, but I just really didn’t want that to change.
“I’m so scared of change,” Shouyou repeats. “Especially when I’m not the sole person in charge of my own future, my own path. I can depend on myself, I can depend on my friends, but everything else…”
“Aren’t you, though? In charge of your own future, I mean,” Atsumu remarks. “It’s not as if there’s some other personality in your head that can determine your path for you— wait. There isn’t, right? You’re not possessed by some demon or something, that’s not your big secret, right?” He turns around in horror, but Shouyou just laughs. From this angle, Atsumu can see him handling a few strands of packing thread between his fingers.
“No, no demons here,” he chuckles, winking back at him. “Just sunshine and sunflowers, apparently.”
“Good, otherwise I’d have to go into the whole— my lover, a demon, woe is me— spiel,” Atsumu quips back. “And I’d like my soul intact, thank you very much.“
Shouyou laughs at him softly. They lapse into silence, and Atsumu thinks about the weight of his words, Shouyou’s apology, the vulnerabilities that he has entrusted him with, to keep safe from the cold. And god, they are coming up on what, eighteen months, now? Eighteen months of travel, hundreds of journeys, some hundreds of thousands of miles. Eighteen months, for this.
“Ah! It’s done!” Shouyou exclaims, all of a sudden, and Atsumu turns around again in confusion. He opens up his palm, and there are two, golden braided bracelets in his palm, made from the packing twine. He takes one and closes it around the skin of Atsumu’s wrist. “These aren’t friendship bracelets, by the way.”
“Thank fuck, because I was just about to ask,” he grins. Shouyou laughs.
“I’m not really one for things like this, but— I wanted something solid and real, y’know? Okay, in hindsight, maybe something as flimsy as this isn’t the way to go, but the meaning is still the same,” Shouyou says, fiddling with his own bracelet. All things considered, it’s still nicely made, woven from seven or eight strands— and he’s more than aware that this particular type of twine can take a major beating before it snaps. “Is this silly? Sorry. I feel like a kid with his first crush.”
“Have you seen me, Shouyou? Samu would argue that I’m still a kid with his first crush, probably,” Atsumu says, with a rueful smile. He can feel a blush spread on his cheeks, can feel his heart in his mouth. Damn his fucking feelings to hell.
“You’re right, by the way. It’s taken me this whole time to own up to it, and I’m probably still just a little bit in denial— but,”—Shouyou looks at him, their gazes finally colliding—“I think we’ve both known for a while that it’s— it’s about time for me to go.”
And Atsumu had been dreading those words for so long now, had thought about them on late-night midnight snack runs, had thought of them in bed and in his pilot’s chair and watching sunrises in foreign lands with their feet hanging off a pier. He’d been dreading them for so long, and yet when he hears them for the first time, his heart is strangely light. There’s a relief there, as if the machinations of time have started to turn again.
And Atsumu wouldn’t trade their time together for the world— for the entire goddamn galaxy— would have fallen for him again and again, but he knows that their journey is at its end. He wants Shouyou to tread lightly into the future, wants him to face it head-on.
Atsumu thinks that he wants to face his own future, too.
“And y’know? I think if I hadn’t— If I hadn’t met you, Atsumu, I think that maybe I’d still be stuck here, paralysed by my fear,” Shouyou says.
He smiles, and places his wrist against Atsumu’s, their bracelets touching.
“But this is to say… When this is all over, when all of the worlds are back in relative peace again, someone will ask me what I’m looking for. Who I’m looking for,” Shouyou says slowly, shyly. “And it’ll be you. I’ll be looking for you.”
*
one year later.
Osamu knocks on his door one morning. The sun is barely out, the harvest season over, but his relentless tapping rips Atsumu from sleep.
They’re really in the thick of it now, the both of them knee-deep in the Imperial ranks; co-pilots, corporals. Pieces in the intergalactic all-out war, et cetera, et cetera. It isn’t a hard transition for either of them— they’ve been flying all this time, after all. And this is what Atsumu had always wanted, to be on the side of justice, to help curb the all-encompassing threat of Tartarus, to turn the tide.
And he gets a fucking amazing starfighter jet, which is a big plus. Osamu names it Thanatos, after the Hypnos. Twins— death and sleep.
He knows that this is a temporary thing, for Samu with his heart set out for more entrepreneurial pursuits, but he’s glad to have him here anyway, if anything just for the moment.
...Alright, maybe not right this moment.
“If you don’t open this door right now, Tsumu, I’m going to break it down and you’ll be sorry when you’ll have to explain to the general why the hinges have been blown off.”
He groans audibly, exaggerated, as he paces to the door still in nothing but sweats, and Osamu raises an eyebrow in disgust as he’s greeted with his brother’s face on the other side of the door.
“Get dressed. We’ve been called to the capitol,” Osamu says, and his expression is strange, as if he’s purposefully not telling the entire truth.
“Wha? Why the hell have we been— Samu? Samu? Get back here, you acorn, I swear to god—“
“There’s been a change of power overnight. We’re pledging allegiance,” he explains, with a mild wave. Atsumu throws his slipper at him, and it bounces pathetically backward. “We’re already late, by the way.”
Atsumu knows that this is a good thing, this change in power. He knows that this is a step up from the disorganisation that had contributed to this whole mess in the first place, the corruption which had resulted in the disappearance of the heir to the throne, had resulted in the facilitation of the fall of Helice.
And everyone through their ranks had noted the change over the past few months— they’d started to actually win their battles after all, having claimed back Asphodel and all of the territory on the Styx system in a matter of weeks. Careful planning and tactics meant that they’d recently eliminated several key Tartarean threats, including three gargantuan star-destroyers; meant that they were on the brink of finding a way to deactivate their newest weapon, a star base the size of a moon.
He suspects whatever this change of power is— it hasn’t happened overnight. It’s been happening for the past few months, behind the scenes, hands changed slowly, roles falling into more capable figureheads. This is merely a formality, whatever it is.
It does not, however, change the fact that he is not a morning person.
Atsumu curses, notes that his usual alarm did not wake him up, gets ready in the fastest fucking time humanly possible. He’s speedrun the fresher, his usual hair styling, his ten step skincare routine, and when he makes it just on time out in the grand pavilion, he gives himself a massive goddamn pat on the back.
Osamu acknowledges his presence with a strange smile— Took you long enough, Tsumu, he says, and Atsumu has half a mind to slap the smile off his face then and there, in front of Sunarin and Aran and General Kita. But then the usual fanfare procession starts, with the violins and the goddamn horns, and the open-air plaza hushes in anticipation.
And it is beautiful here, Atsumu notes. It is beautiful, above the horizon line, the white marble of the pavilion catching colours from the dawn. The palace square sits atop a cliff, the highest point of the city proper— from here, he can see the colourful roofs of thousands of classical houses, the Odyssean ocean expanding infinitely. He knows if he were to run down several flights of stairs, he would find a garden spanning decades of careful work, would find hundreds of orange blossoms in full bloom.
From here, he can taste the sea. And part of him does what he always does now, when he finds a spot of solace— he thinks of Shouyou, thinks about their timeless corner of the universe; thinks of Shouyou, inexplicable, golden, his.
He hears the occupants of the plaza take a collective intake of breath when a figure emerges from the palace, dressed in a different cut of their standard issue gold, elaborate cape trailing some two, three metres behind. From the palace to the plaza stretches a flight of stairs some fifty steps wide, marble like the rest of the architecture surrounding it, a running carpet draped from top to bottom embroidered with gossamer. It is as beautiful as it is fine, without being overly extravagant; he knows that this is all for a show of power, all to be televised on millions of screens and holo-projections across millions of planets in the galaxy. He is watching a part of history with his own eyes— he is part of the history.
Atsumu listens to the whispers around him, listens to dozens of different variations of he’s here, he’s finally home. He listens to the awe, to the gasps around him, to the naval officer in front of him quietly beginning to sob. He listens to his chest hammering around in his ears, to the adrenaline coursing through his veins, listens to his heart rattle in anticipation to a yearning kind of truth spanning three long years. Blood of the Emperor, the first-born of the sun, heir to the throne.
And amongst the thousands of others here called to serve, he bows, he takes a knee. Swathes of soldiers in gilded coats move seamlessly in a sea of unified colour, and he is one of them. Atsumu is one of them, just a brightly shining cog in a doomed and hopeful machine. But he’s also the only one, the only person in this entire pavilion, the only person in this entire goddamn universe at this moment of time; his mind unfolds everything else away until there’s just him and the figure at the foot of the palace, and Atsumu is kneeling at his feet.
Just an emperor, and his soldier.
Just a traveller, and his pilot.
He thinks that all of it was worth it, just for this. And as Atsumu raises his head, his eyes catch sight of something familiar on the figure’s wrist, contrasting against the white of his glove, braided with seven threads of twine, woven, worn.
On the thirty-ninth day of spring, two-hundred and ten years after the Battle of Poseidon, Hinata Shouyou is crowned the rightful twenty-first emperor of the Elysian state.
Three months after his ascension, the war ends, to both silence and thunderous applause.
*
Shouyou finds him in the palace gardens, on the eve of summer.
He’s tucked himself away in the corner behind the topiaries, next to the fountain, sitting on the edge of a flower bed past the point of bloom. The fireflies are out, the heat clinging to the back of his neck, to the unpleasant brocade collar on the celebratory uniform he’s been forced to wear. If he tries hard enough, he can discern the faint smell of oranges from the orchard a little ways north, their fruit currently on display, juicy and sweet.
And Atsumu isn’t ready for Shouyou to come running— sprinting, rather— down the steps leading from the hall, still in his fine boots, still in his gold-embroidered jacket, styled hair beginning to fall out of place. He watches him almost trip on the last step in his haste, before he actually does trip— intentionally, this time, into Atsumu’s arms.
Shouyou buries his face deep into the crook of his neck, and Atsumu remembers everything. Remembers the curve of his cheeks, the dimple next to his mouth, the sun-spots on his shoulders. He remembers his care, his relentless enthusiasm, his want for life, his late-night and early-morning vulnerabilities, remembers all of the little pieces of Shouyou’s heart that he had been entrusted with, remembers the parts of him that he had given in return.
And somewhere along the line, Atsumu will deal with the reckoning that he is no longer in orbit, will deal with the reckoning of his own trajectory— Shouyou, the both of them together, walking parallel.
“What are you looking for?” Atsumu asks, one last time.
“Nothing,” Shouyou replies. Atsumu can hear his smile. “Everything I want is here.”