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I.
In Atsumu’s third year of middle school, he realizes he’s living the terrible cliche of falling for his older brother’s best friend.
It’s not like Atsumu pays special attention to ‘Shoyo-nii’ or anything. (Hinata insists on being called Shoyo, despite the age gap— Atsumu eventually landed on ‘Shoyo-nii,’ since he hangs out with ‘Samu-nii’ all the time.) It’s just that they grew up together, sort of. Osamu and Hinata had been best friends ever since Hinata moved to Hyogo in grade school, and, being three years younger, Atsumu had tailed them everywhere like a stray puppy, much to Osamu’s annoyance. It’s just that it’s impossible to ignore a shock of orange hair and a boisterously friendly presence constantly at his big brother’s side. And it’s just impossible to look away from the unique way he commands the court, in a sport Atsumu always thought was about height and power and smarts— the way Hinata manages to destroy all those other tall, powerful boys towering over him, acting solely on some innate instinct that is sometimes stupid but usually unexpectedly, breathtakingly incredible.
It’s just that, to a fifteen-year-old starry-eyed kid, Hinata had kind of become the ideal man.
The realization couldn’t have come at a worse time, either. It happens at the final game of Nationals. The opponents don’t see it coming, because Osamu usually spikes. But Atsumu, who’s watched countless volleyball games between the two of them, pinpoints the second it happens, the minute Osamu’s feet plant on the ground and he decides to set, tossing the ball to Hinata in a lightning-fast, perfect arc that Atsumu is impossibly jealous of. And the split second in which the ball comes into contact with Hinata’s hand, high up in the air, higher than Atsumu thought a human being of that size could ever soar, as if Osamu has given him wings.
The ball slams onto the other side of the court. Dead silence. And then— the sound of uproarious cheering, Inarizaki’s team slamming each other into full-bodied hugs, the adrenaline rushing through Atsumu’s own veins at seeing the world of possibility that high school volleyball had in store for him, tinged with the sadness that he couldn’t have played with Hinata Shoyo on this court at this moment in time. That Atsumu’s time at Inarizaki would only begin after Hinata Shoyo had departed from not just the school, but the country.
As the players line up to thank the other team, the crowd dies down. Hinata catches his eye, and beams something kind and joyous and bright, and something catches in Atsumu’s throat as his chest unfurls with warmth. And Atsumu, thinking it’s now or never, stands up from his seat in the audience, points to Hinata and shouts, like a bumbling idiot— “One day, I’ll set for you.”
Everyone stares at him. His mother drags him back down onto his seat by the sleeve. Hinata looks at him, brow furrowed with confusion, jaw gaping, before he breaks out into a laugh. A laugh. Atsumu’s stomach drops like a stone, and he looks down at his shoes, listening to his mother chew him out about etiquette and wanting to crawl into a hole.
And that, foolishly, is the last thing that Miya Atsumu says to Hinata Shoyo for the next three years.
II.
Distance doesn’t dull the Hinata Shoyo effect. Not the way Atsumu thought it would, after three years abroad. He had video called with Osamu a few times, but Atsumu had always ducked away without talking to him, managing to wrestle out of Osamu’s headlocks, because being captain of the high school volleyball team has helped him gain more muscle than the traitorous older brother who decided to go into food service of all careers.
So when Atsumu, fresh out of high school and newly signed to the MSBY Jackals, sees Hinata Shoyo in the locker room, he nearly bowls over with shock.
Brazil does him a world of good— tanned skin, windswept hair, the faint smell of sand and sunshine around him. He’s gotten buffer, too, defined muscles of his biceps beckoning to be touched.
Atsumu moves to wave, but instead slams his right arm into the locker next to him, earning a sneer from Sakusa.
And of course, because Atsumu’s life is a joke, that’s the moment when Hinata sees him.
“Atsumu!”
“S-Shoyo,” he says. “Hey. Hi. What are you doing here?”
“What, not Shoyo-nii?” Hinata says, but he’s beaming as he gives Atsumu a tight hug. “I’m back from Brazil! I signed on with the Jackals.”
“No, I mean. You’re here early.” Because of course Atsumu knew. Asides from being the best of the teams that had scouted him, he knew that Hinata was coming back. He just thought it’d be next week. Osamu didn’t tell him Hinata had landed early, that bastard. Atsumu still needed to re-dye his hair because his roots were showing, and he hadn’t gotten his eyebrows done in a while either, and he’d really hoped this dramatic reunion would go a lot smoother than it was currently going.
“Yeah, I got invited to a wedding, so I bumped my flight up. And I was bored sitting around not playing volleyball, so here I am! What about you? I heard all the schools were clamoring for you, huh? What made you pick the Jackals?”
“They’re the only first division team in the V-League that offered, and you know me,” Atsumu boasts. “I’m not settling for anything less than the best.”
What Atsumu really wanted to say, though, was I did it because of you. He might’ve learned to behave in a slightly more socially acceptable manner than he did at fifteen, but he’s never once regretted the sentiment behind those words. No matter how embarrassed he’d been by that incident, he never stopped believing that somehow, someday, he would set for Hinata. Watching how high Hinata could soar on the court only made Atsumu want to work that much harder to be the one to lift him up there.
“Yeah?” The glint of interest in Hinata’s eyes is all Atsumu needs to get fired up. “Then let’s see what you’ve got.”
It’s a dream come true, really. It’s nothing more than a friendly practice match against EJP, but considering that it’s the first time he and Hinata have ever played together, officially— not counting the amateur games with a makeshift net in his and Osamu’s backyard, all those years ago— it goes incredibly well.
It’s easy to catch onto Hinata’s rhythm. After all, Atsumu’s been watching all of his games, sometimes staying up late due to the time difference. And if Atsumu didn’t know better, he’d dare to say that Hinata had been paying attention to him, too. After only several experimental tosses in the beginning, they began to sync up so perfectly that Hinata barely had to look to hit Atsumu’s sets, like they were instinctually intertwined.
It’s trust, and mutual respect, and the kind of chemistry that even professional players sometimes lack. Even their opponents on the other side of the net are impressed— Suna, from the other side of the net, gives him a look of undisguised interest. Atsumu can feel his heart racing with adrenaline, but three extra years of the sport have made him confident, steady. After all the time he’s spent building himself up, he can finally say he’s the kind of setter that Hinata Shoyo deserves, and it feels, well. It feels damn great.
Until it doesn’t anymore.
“So,” says Atsumu, catching Hinata’s eye after the game. “What’d ya think? I told ya I’d set for ya.”
Hinata finishes gulping down his water, and Atsumu forces himself to look away from the unfairly erotic way his lips wrap around the spout. He wipes the back of his hand across his mouth, and laughs. Right. The first time, Hinata had laughed too.
“I think you’re a great setter, Atsumu.” There they are, those guileless brown eyes that make Atsumu feel all soft and queasy inside.
“Yeah?” Atsumu grins. He sucks in a breath, licks his lip, and just goes for it. “So, ya want to go out for dinner? Food’s on me.”
“Yeah, that sounds great! We can talk about strategy for our first official game together. Hey, Bokuto!” Hinata waves him over excitedly. “We’re going out to dinner, and Atsumu’s paying!”
“Sweeeeeet!! Hey, Sakusa? Sakusa, c’mere, we’re all going to dinner, Atsumu’s paying.”
It takes every ounce of self-control Atsumu has to not slam his head into the locker and bleed out, because that would be a lot less painful than this.
III.
He finds himself sulking at the counter of Onigiri Miya, idly scratching at a knot in the wooden surface as Osamu closes up shop.
“I thought he’d get it,” Atsumu whines. “I told him I’d set for him and I did. I dedicated my whole life to makin’ that promise come true. But now I’m just back to bein’ a joke, it seems. Why doesn’t he get it? Doesn’t he know what I feel for him?”
Osamu snorts, wringing his cloth dry in the sink and setting it down. He swivels around to plant his elbows on the counter and glare directly at Atsumu. “Didja talk to him about it?”
“About what?”
“Pff. If all ya did was show him how good ya are at volleyball, how’s he supposed to know that ya got romantic feelings for him?”
“Volleyball is my life, ‘Samu. It’s his too. Isn’t settin’ for someone the most romantic thing you could do for ‘em?”
Osamu snorts, louder this time, and Atsumu feels his face heat up.
“This is my fault, isn’t it. I let ya get away with bein’ a brat one too many times. Spoiled ya too hard. Now yer all grown up and ya got no idea how to have normal interactions with people.” Osamu sighs and shakes his head. He pours Atsumu’s cup of tea and slides it across the table, smiling wryly.
“Remember when we were kids, how Mom and Dad would always go off on those business trips, and we’d be alone in the house. And how I started makin’ ya onigiri ‘cause it was the easiest thing to make?”
Atsumu nods.
“That was when I started enjoyin’ it. Makin’ food, seein’ the happy look on yer dumb face.”
“My face isn’t dumb—”
“That’s why I went into this line of work, ya know. Makin’ the people I care about happy with the food I make. What I’m sayin’ is, it took some growin’ up to realize volleyball wasn’t the only way to express love.”
Osamu nudges Atsumu lightly with his elbow. As brothers, they’d never been open about this kind of thing, the kind of affection they felt for each other underneath all the banter and fighting. Atsumu blinks away the moisture prickling at the edges of his eyes.
“So yer sayin’ I should open a restaurant for Shoyo-nii?”
“No, dumbass,” Osamu groans. “What I’m sayin’ is, ya gotta think outside the confines of volleyball. Yer brains are one and the same, ya idiots. If ya don’t tell him with non-volleyball words, show him with some kinda non-volleyball gesture, he’ll never get it.”
“Can’t ya just tell him for me?”
“What are ya, a high schooler? Oh, right. Ya are, ya little baby.”
“Shut up!”
Osamu has a point, though.
“What if I made him onigiri?” Atsumu suggests. “That’s not volleyball. And like you said, makin’ food for somebody kinda… conveys… y’know.” His heart pounds in his chest. “The feeling that I wanna convey.”
“Sure, I could teach ya,” says Osamu, rolling up his sleeves. “I have to warn ya though, I’m a hardass in the kitchen.”
“Yer always a hardass.”
“Do ya wanna learn or not?”
Several painstaking hours later, he’s successfully made a non-misshapen onigiri that smells like it tastes good. It’s too beautiful to taste. Imagine giving someone as perfect as Hinata Shoyo a half-eaten onigiri. But Osamu gives him an approving thumbs-up, so Atsumu will just have to trust in his judgment.
Inside of the onigiri, Atsumu has implanted his deadly secret weapon. Written in black ink on a piece of folded paper, in the neatest handwriting he could possibly summon: I like you. Will you go out with me?
And that, Atsumu figures, is as clear as he can possibly get.
In the locker room after their next practice, Hinata glows when Atsumu hands him the bento box of onigiri. It’s got to be unhealthy for someone to smile so often. It’s definitely unhealthy for Atsumu’s poor heart.
“Thanks, Atsumu! I really missed onigiri while I was abroad. You know, I haven’t even tried Osamu’s onigiri yet, since I flew back not so long ago.”
“Mine’s better,” says Atsumu, puffing his chest out. “Try it. You’ll see.”
Hinata takes a bite, and the way his eyes light up makes Atsumu feel warm and fuzzy. “Mm, this is good!”
“Really?”
“Yeah. In Brazil, I didn’t just play beach volleyball. I also learned a lot about how to keep my body in perfect condition. Remember that time when Osamu and I were in second year, and I had to tap out of the quarterfinals because of my fever?”
Atsumu sure does. Mostly because Hinata had stayed over at their house, and Atsumu had tried to kiss him on the forehead to take his temperature, only to be shoved aside by Osamu— what, that’s what Mom does for us all the time, and learn yer boundaries, ‘Tsumu, jeez.
“So I know a lot about what kinds of nutrients athletes need, and this? This has got the perfect ratio of proteins to—”
The conversation is cut short when a pale-faced Sakusa taps Atsumu on the shoulder to ask if he’s seen his water bottle. Knowing how much Sakusa hates having others touch his stuff, Atsumu excuses himself briefly to help him look for it.
When he turns back, Hinata has wolfed down the entire onigiri. Yeah. The entire thing.
“No,” Atsumu cries out, burying his hands in his hair. “My labor of love!”
“What?”
“Nothing! I love— I love makin’ onigiri. So much. That’s all. Did you happen to chew on anythin’... papery, by any chance?”
“Papery? I don’t think so,” says Hinata. “I was hungry, and it was really good, so I just kind of gobbled it all up!”
Yep, this is it. This is how Miya Atsumu dies, at the age of eightteen, never having experienced an iota of romance in his life because fate has decided to embarrass him not once, not twice, but three times. He sinks down onto the bench, back slumped against the lockers, mumbling why am I alive and earning a disgusted stare from Sakusa.
“Why would you put paper in onigiri? That’s so unsanitary. Actually, onigiri in itself is unsanitary. If someone were to confess to me I’d rather they do it over chazuke, it’s the superior food.”
“Shut up, Sakusa. I don’t need this right now.”
Sakusa jerks his chin at Hinata. “You want to know why this team works as well as it does? Why you two have such good chemistry on the court?”
“Because I’m the best damn setter in all of Japan?”
“No.” Okay, but Sakusa didn’t need to shoot him down that fast. “It’s because you don’t think. You just do. Stop overthinking it with your grand plans and gestures and just do something, plain and simple.”
Sakusa walks away before Atsumu can elaborate. Atsumu turns up his nose. Well, whatever. Atsumu’s not taking love advice from anybody who doesn’t believe he’s the best setter in Japan, or that onigiri love confessions are inherently romantic.
IV.
He’s pretty much given up already when a few days later, he runs into Hinata on his morning run. Literally. He’s jogging around the block, rising sun painting the streets a pleasant shade of orange, when he turns a corner and slams right into Hinata.
Great. Just the person he wanted to see. He meant that sarcastically, but it’s also true, because there isn’t a moment of his day where he doesn’t want to see Hinata’s sunny smile. Only Hinata isn’t smiling right now, his eyes wide as saucers and his mouth in the shape of an O, because Atsumu has walked right into him and spilled the water bottle in his hand all over himself.
Atsumu looks down to assess his damage, and oh. Wet shirt. Nope, nope, Atsumu is not going to look. He covers his eyes and looks away to protect Hinata’s innocence.
“Sorry about that! Just wait here, wait— my apartment’s right over there, I’ll grab you a new shirt— ow—”
With his eyes still covered, he’s managed to walk into a wall. So much for being the best setter in Japan. All his coordination has left his body at the very threat of seeing Hinata in a wet t-shirt.
“Atsumu! Are you okay? You know what, I’d better come with you. Th-that is, if you don’t mind.”
“No, that’s fine. Just… you and me. Comin’ over to my place. As friends. No funny business at all.”
Atsumu manages to lead Hinata to his apartment without running into any more walls. He lets Hinata in, suddenly self-conscious about the mess. Hinata takes a seat on the couch, while Atsumu heads to his room and rummages around for something that’d fit Hinata.
He emerges with a t-shirt and hoodie, an extra layer that’ll hopefully keep Hinata warm, since he knows it’s bad to get cold right after sweating. He hands it to Hinata and looks pointedly away while Hinata changes into it.
“You don’t have to be so shy around me, Atsumu,” Hinata laughs. “It’s just me, we’ve known each other for a long time. I don’t care if you see me naked.”
Oh, Hinata would definitely care if he knew how badly Atsumu really wanted to see him naked. Atsumu clears his throat and turns around. Oh. No, screw seeing him naked, because seeing Hinata in his clothing is somehow even worse. He looks all small and adorable in Atsumu’s hoodie that reaches to the tips of his fingers, cheeks rosy from exertion and hair mussed in the best way, and Atsumu just wants to hold him in his arms, and kiss the top of his head and smell his hair, which smells like citrus shampoo, and he knows that because he’s gotten more than one whiff of it in the locker room—
“Atsumu? Atsumu, earth to Atsumu.”
Hinata’s waving a hand in his face now, and Atsumu snaps out of his thoughts, and sighs.
Maybe Sakusa’s right. He’s been overthinking this. It’s simple to him right now, in the early morning light of his apartment, a comfortable and cozy place made only more like home by Hinata’s presence in it. Hinata’s always been in his life, the guiding sun Atsumu knows he’ll never be able to look away from, even if it blinds him.
He takes Hinata’s hand, still adorably wrapped up in his hoodie sleeve with only the fingers peeking out, and squeezes it tight. With his other hand, he holds Hinata’s hip gently, pulls Hinata in, and kisses him. Soft, warm, and slow. Putting every ounce of feeling he can into it.
When he pulls away, Hinata’s lips are pink, and so are his cheeks. He laughs, breathless and bewildered.
“Did that just happen?” says Hinata. “Did you just kiss me?”
“Well, yeah, I’ve been tryin’ to tell ya for ages now, but it never got through.”
“Are you kidding? I’ve been wanting you to do that for ages, but you were always so nervous around me, I was never sure how you felt.”
“No way, no freakin’ way Shoyo, I’ve been obsessed with you since forever. Don’t you remember when I promised I’d set for you?”
“That?” Hinata laughs, a good-natured twinkle in his eyes. “That was a confession?”
“What, you don’t think it’s romantic to dedicate your entire volleyball career to someone?”
“You were in middle school!”
“Alright, touche, but then when I asked ya out to dinner—”
“Everyone has dinner with everyone, we’re a team!”
“And the onigiri— I literally wrote it on the paper—”
“I didn’t know! You have to tell me things like that beforehand, okay—”
And suddenly they’re both babbling at once, overwhelmed with feeling, talking over each other until Hinata shakes his head with an affectionate smile and pulls him in for another kiss. And then, all Atsumu can think of is finally, and why did this take so damn long, and then Hinata does something with his tongue that makes him cease to think at all.
Well, all’s well that ends well. Maybe later, after he’s done making out with Hinata, he’ll make Osamu and Sakusa some onigiri— and chazuke— as thanks.