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Kiyoomi is fucked. Absolutely fucked.
He’s never failed a class in his life, but this one is actually going to be the death of him. He took it because his advisor said he needed a class outside of his STEM classes, and this one had sounded interesting. He knew it was going to be hard, but Kiyoomi had never had trouble with academics before, not really. But English Seminar 331: Shakespeare In Context is going to be the literal death of him. He’s going to fail this class and then he’s going to have to drop out and then he’s never going to be able to get a job and then—
“Have you considered going to the writing center?” Motoya asks, slurping loudly as he eats his ramen. “Or meeting up with one of their tutors outside of that?”
“No,” Kiyoomi says immediately, glaring at his own noodles. The restaurant that Motoya had suggested for their monthly dinner together is not nearly as good as he had advertised it to be, and he makes a mental note to never let Motoya choose the venue again. “I’m handling it.”
Motoya raises his eyebrows. “You’re clearly not handling it, though. You’re failing.”
He says it with way too much amusement, and Kiyoomi looks up to focus his glare on him. “I went to the professor and he said that I could do some extra credit work.”
“Sure,” Motoya says, using his chopsticks to push the egg under the brother and then let it bob up again. “But two points extra credit isn’t going to help if you fail your next essay.”
“Fuck.” Kiyoomi had forgotten about their next essay— there are two more essays for the semester, each with prompts that Kiyoomi doesn’t even know where to start with.
Motoya sighs, setting his chopsticks down to look at Kiyoomi as if he’s seeing straight through him. Kiyoomi shifts uncomfortably. “Just go to the writing center and set up a meeting with a tutor. It’s really not that hard, Kiyoomi.”
“You don’t understand,” Kiyoomi mutters, even though Motoya definitely understands, because his academics have always been just slightly worse than Kiyoomi’s— not enough to matter, but enough for him to get a math tutor in their second year at Itachiyama. “I can’t just… do that.”
“You can,” Motoya says, rolling his eyes. “Or would you rather fail the class?”
Kiyoomi groans, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his palms. “No.”
“Then go to the writing center,” Motoya tells him. It’s a command if Kiyoomi has ever heard one. “It’s really not as big of a deal as you think it is.”
Kiyoomi wants to argue that, actually, this is the end of the world and everything is terrible. But he swallows the words and stays silent.
He’s always been a prideful person, someone who would rather suffer in silence than admit that he needs help, and he’s always prided himself on his intelligence. He’s always thought of himself as a smart and capable student, whatever the subject. He did fine in his English classes at Itachiyama, and he’s in the first ten ranked students now that he’s at university. He’s perfectly smart. He has the top grades in all of his astronomy classes— the ones that actually matter to his studies— and he’s just shy of a 98% in his biology class. It’s just that Shakespeare is the worst.
Despite his pride, though, he finds himself standing in front of the glass door of the writing center, staring at it and trying to build up the confidence to step inside. It’s just a door, a door to a writing center for people who need help with writing. Which, much to his dismay, does accurately describe Kiyoomi’s situation right now.
He pulls the sleeves of his jacket over his palm and pushes the door open, taking a deep breath. Then, exhaling, he steps over the threshold. It’s not humiliating, he tells himself. Almost everyone ends up here at some point. Almost everyone.
“Can I help you?”
Kiyoomi looks over to the nearest table, where Atsumu Miya is sitting at a table, reading a book that looks like it’s been read a hundred times and annotated to death. Atsumu Miya, the setter on Kiyoomi’s volleyball team and the person most likely to make fun of him for absolutely anything, is sitting in the writing center during what is possibly the most embarrassing moment of his university career so far, possibly of his life.
He’s about to turn right around and walk out. He’ll go to practice the next day and pretend that it had been, like, an evil, stupider twin who came today. No, he had not seen Miya over the weekend, definitely not. But then Miya smirks at him, and Kiyoomi knows that there’s no getting out of this now.
“Wouldn’t have expected you to be here,” he says, a slow drawl that makes Kiyoomi want to shrivel up and die. “What can I do for you?”
“Do you work here?” Kiyoomi asks, struggling to keep his voice flat. He can feel his face burning under the mask he wears, and he wonders if Miya can tell how tightly his fists are clenched at his sides or how tight the muscles in his arms feel. He wonders how bad the teasing from his teammates is going to get at their next practice.
Miya laughs. “No need to sound so surprised, Omi.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Whatever.” Miya folds down the corner of the page of the book he had been reading, and Kiyoomi tries not to wince. He can see the crinkles and ripped parts of the page, and his fingers itch to smooth them out. “What do you need?”
“I need…” Kiyoomi can barely choke out the words. “Help. With an essay.”
“Okay,” Miya says, seemingly not noticing the five stages of grief that Kiyoomi is going through during this conversation. Or maybe he does notice, Kiyoomi thinks, and he’s just trying to draw the mourning of Kiyoomi’s pride out for as long as possible. “Then sit down. What’s the essay about?”
Kiyoomi exhales, long and hard and trying to get rid of all the wound up stress in his muscles. This is fine. Plenty of people ask for help every day— and sure, he’s not one of them, but people do it. He can recognize at least three other students in the center, all scattered around different tables, hovering over books and laptops.
“Shakespeare,” Kiyoomi says, sitting down across from Miya.
“My favorite.” Miya grins at him, and Kiyoomi hates it. It’s like Miya is seeing straight through him, like he knows that Kiyoomi is failing the class and that his life is subsequently going to fall apart as soon as their final grades are released. “What’s the essay topic?”
“I wish I knew,” Kiyoomi mutters under his breath. Miya chuckles lightly, and Kiyoomi ignores him. Louder, he says, “It’s an analysis of the tragic elements in Twelfth Night.”
Miya leans forward, putting his elbows on the table and resting his chin in one palm. “Sounds interesting. What’ve you got so far?”
“Pretty much nothing,” Kiyoomi admits.
“Well, you have a topic decided on,” Miya says. “That’s a start. That’s always the hardest part, I think.”
Kiyoomi grits his teeth, trying to ignore the condescending tilt to Miya’s voice, trying to shut down that churning of embarrassment in his stomach. Kiyoomi, having put his backpack on the chair next to him, digs through it to take out his laptop. He opens it to the document he had been working on late last night, hoping that it makes more sense now than it did at 2:00am.
He used to have a carefully regulated sleep schedule and an even more specific homework schedule, but it all fell apart in his first year at university. There’s just so much to do all of the time— between classes, homework, volleyball practice, and homework again, Kiyoomi doesn’t have a single moment free to get actual, restful sleep.
“Lemme read what you’ve got already,” Miya says.
“Can I read it out loud instead?” Kiyoomi asks. He knows the exact number of germs that can live on a touchpad, and he doesn’t want Miya’s dirty fingers adding to that number. He’s seen Miya’s hand washing routine after volleyball practice, and it is decidedly not up to Kiyoomi’s standards.
Miya shrugs. “If that makes you feel better.”
It does make him feel better, so, with the most nondescript voice that he can muster up, he reads what he’s written so far. It totals up to about half of a paragraph, with three quotes at the bottom of the document that he had pulled out before his head started spinning with English words he doesn’t know the definitions of.
When he finishes, Miya sits back in his chair, crossing his arms and studying Kiyoomi. He has the same intense look on his face that he gets when he’s setting a ball, like he’s taking apart everything that Kiyoomi is and then coming up with the best way to deal with it.
“It’s a start,” he finally says.
Kiyoomi closes his eyes. Maybe that’ll make it less embarrassing to hear Atsumu Miya, of all people, tell him that his essay is bad. “Is it really that awful?”
“It’s not awful!” Miya says quickly. Too quickly, Kiyoomi thinks, opening his eyes to look at him skeptically. “Really, it’s not, Omi. It just needs some fine tuning. And maybe a thesis. That would probably help.”
“You’re a terrible tutor,” Kiyoomi says. This conversation is rapidly spinning out of his control, and he doesn’t know how to take it back. All he knows, when talking to Miya, is biting comments about volleyball and making fun of his hair.
Miya laughs at that. He knows that Kiyoomi is just grasping at straws, looking for some kind of power. He leans over to his own bag, where he takes out a notebook and pen. “Let’s start with a thesis, yeah? Then we can get an outline going.”
Kiyoomi nods, if only because he actually really needs to get this essay done, and as much as he doesn’t want to admit it, Miya is his best bet at getting a good grade on this. Miya doesn’t need to know any details other than that Kiyoomi needs help on this one essay. This is a one time thing. It’s just because it’s Shakespeare, and Kiyoomi is never taking another Shakespeare class ever again, because this one is probably the worst thing that has ever happened to him.
But working on the essay with Miya turns out to be not terrible. That’s the best word that Kiyoomi can think of to describe sitting in the writing center with him, listening to Miya talk about the best ways to format an essay. It’s bearable, and it will probably turn out with the best grade that Kiyoomi has gotten in this class all semester. Kiyoomi will die before he admits it, but Miya is genuinely good at this. He’s good with Shakespeare and it’s awful for Kiyoomi’s perception of him.
Because, to Kiyoomi, Miya is the setter of the volleyball team and nothing else. He’s the confident, smooth-talking, antagonizing, bastard setter of the volleyball team. Kiyoomi bears with him only because he’s a good player, because he makes the team better. He makes them play with more confidence, he makes them work harder, he makes every player stronger. He makes Kiyoomi stronger.
And, apparently, he makes Shakespeare understandable.
It makes Kiyoomi irrationally angry. It’s not fair that Miya is both a volleyball player that every spiker dreams of playing with and a tutor that actually makes people feel smart about their worst subjects. It’s not fair that Miya is both one of the best setters Kiyoomi has ever played with and he’s suddenly one of the smartest people he knows. It’s not fair that Miya is the most infuriating person Kiyoomi has ever met, and that he’s suddenly the subject of every thought Kiyoomi has that night.
The first volleyball practice after seeing Miya at the writing center has Kiyoomi spiraling. Or, more accurately, the potential of volleyball practice has Kiyoomi spiraling. He walks into the locker room, keeping his head down and his eyes on the tiled floor beneath his shoes. At his locker, he hears Atsumu coming into the room with the loud laugh he always gets when he’s around their other teammates.
Kiyoomi thinks about seeing him at the writing center, admitting that he’s not doing perfectly in every class, and a wave of embarrassment floods through his chest. He presses his forehead against the locker door, squeezing his eyes shut. He’s ready for Miya’s teasing: perfect Omi needed help with an essay this weekend, isn’t that funny? Top-of-his-class-confident Sakusa isn’t so smart after all, did you hear?
But Miya comes into the locker room laughing at something that isn’t Kiyoomi, and he gets changed without saying anything degrading. Kiyoomi keeps an eye on him throughout the entire process of getting ready, and Miya says nothing. He greets Kiyoomi with one of those smiles that says, I know something you don’t, and then the team heads into the gym without incident.
Kiyoomi is on edge for the entire practice— his form is off and he knows it. His spikes aren’t hitting as hard as they normally do, and he misses the ball more than once when he gets too in his head about the way Miya is looking at him. Right now, Miya has a power over him that hurts and terrifies and makes Kiyoomi feel vulnerable in a way he hasn’t in a long time. Miya, though, doesn’t make fun of him at all, and Kiyoomi doesn’t know what to do with that, especially considering all of the teasing he gets when he misses one of Atsumu’s sets.
“Even a child could’ve hit that one,” Miya says, raising his eyebrows at Kiyoomi. “I almost thought you were better than that, having been one of the best aces in the country and everything.”
“The set was off,” Kiyoomi says blandly, though he knows it wasn’t. It was a perfect set, right to where Kiyoomi always likes it. Kiyoomi had been the one to completely misjudge the distance between his hand and the ball, his fingers barely grasping at it until it made it to the other side of the net. “Your fault, Miya.”
Miya snorts. “Bullshit.”
He continues to needle Kiyoomi about the missed spike throughout the entirety of practice, but he doesn’t once mention Shakespeare. He doesn’t once mention the fact that Kiyoomi’s grades are falling to pieces and he’s not nearly as smart as he used to think he was.
It’s a conundrum of the worst proportions, Kiyoomi thinks, which is why he absolutely cannot go back to the writing center for more help on his next essay. He absolutely cannot do that.
But two weeks later, he finds himself standing outside of that stupid glass door again anyways. He finds himself entering the building anyways. He feels like he’s watching himself from outside of his body— just an onlooker, watching as he slides into the chair across from Atsumu Miya, pulls out his laptop, reads off the two paragraphs he’s managed to write about The Tempest, and puts together an outline in Atsumu’s crumpled up spiral notebook. He watches from the outside as Atsumu draws out the parts of the play that are actually interesting— of which there are very few— and he listens to himself actually getting interested in what he’s saying.
Atsumu Miya has this frustrating gravity of a personality, drawing everything and everyone around him into his orbit. He pulls at Kiyoomi until he’s listening, until everything that Atsumu says actually makes sense. He has this way of making the world seem brighter than it already is— he’s the kind of fire that makes Kiyoomi want to put his hand into flame just to feel the burn. Kiyoomi thinks that maybe he would learn all the secrets of the universe, should their orbits touch. It’s frustrating and exciting and all the kinds of contradictions that Kiyoomi hates.
“Admit it,” Atsumu says, watching Kiyoomi type out the most surface-level analysis of the play that his professor will ever read, “Shakespeare is fun.”
“Shakespeare is literally the worst thing to ever happen to me,” Kiyoomi grumbles. “I’m studying astronomy. Shakespeare was a horrible choice for a class.”
Atsumu smirks at him— the aggravating smile that he gets when he makes Kiyoomi spike the ball just a little harder than normal. “Then why’d you take it?”
“I wanted to diversify my schedule,” Kiyoomi says, immediately reciting the explanation he had given everyone he’s talked to since class registration, “and I did fine with it in high school.”
“I’m sure Itachiyama had a great Shakespeare program,” Atsumu says.
Kiyoomi can’t tell if it’s sarcastic or not. “We did, actually. Our teacher had professionally translated several of his works, and he knew what he was talking about.”
“See, that’s your problem,” Atsumu tells him. “You read it in translation, and now you’re doing it in English. It’s harder.”
Kiyoomi glares. “Are you calling my English bad?”
“No,” Atsumu says, unaffected by the sneer in Kiyoomi’s words. “I’m just saying that reading Renaissance English is harder than your native language. Most English speakers struggle with Shakespeare, you know. You’re not—”
“Don’t say stupid,” Kiyoomi snaps. “Stop trying to comfort me. It’s not working.”
Atsumu shrugs, his face carefully neutral. “Whatever you want, Omi. Let’s just get this essay done.”
Kiyoomi sighs, squinting at his copy of the Shakespeare anthology they’re using as he tries to find the right quotes for his argument. Atsumu has his own PDF pulled up on his computer, and he comments every now and then with scenes that Kiyoomi can look at. Every scene that he mentions somehow seems to be the perfect one, and Kiyoomi hates it. He hates Shakespeare and he hates Atsumu.
That being said, between their first volleyball practice and his Shakespeare essay, Miya had somehow become Atsumu. The setter Kiyoomi has always respected has become someone that Kiyoomi respects academically, too. He doesn’t know why he had always assumed that Atsumu wasn’t academically talented, always figuring that he got into their university on a sports scholarship and never quite figuring out that he deserves to be there as much as Kiyoomi does.
Now he knows differently— Atsumu understands things that Kiyoomi struggles with, and it makes a kind of shame burn in his chest like an inferno. He’s never needed help with academics before, he’s never needed to ask for it. But here he is, listening to Atsumu rant about The Tempest, as if Kiyoomi had understood any of it.
After two hours of studying, Atsumu yawns, and Kiyoomi glares at him. “You don’t get to be tired until this essay is done.”
Atsumu very conspicuously checks the clock. He doesn’t bother covering his mouth when he yawns again. “My shift here is over. I’ve got shit to do.”
“Fuck,” Kiyoomi mutters. In spite of their location and his own dread in coming, he had almost forgotten that Atsumu is only here because it’s his job. He’s not helping Kiyoomi out of good will, he’s getting paid for this. “Fine. I’ll see you at practice on Monday.”
“Sure thing,” Atsumu says. He rips out the page in his notebook that they had been working on, passing it over to Kiyoomi. “It’ll probably help if you keep this. Have a good weekend, Omi.”
Kiyoomi stares at the paper, at Atsumu’s messy but readable scrawl, at the quotes he had pulled out that are actually helpful. It’s not until Atsumu has gotten his bag and left the writing center that he notices it. Atsumu has left his phone number in neat little numbers at the top of the page: if you want to talk.
Kiyoomi crumples up the paper in his fist, stuffing it in his bag as he packs up his things. He’s absolutely not going to call Atsumu if they’re not in the writing center’s open hours. He doesn’t need any extra help— more than he’s already gotten anyways— and he specifically doesn’t need Atsumu. He doesn’t need someone who talks down to him in the form of a phone number and a single sentence explanation. Atsumu and his condescending smile that makes Kiyoomi’s chest burn can all fuck off.
The embarrassment is again turning over in his stomach with a burn that he hasn’t been able to escape since he learned that Atsumu is actually good at Shakespeare and English, everything that Kiyoomi can’t do. Fuck, it makes him feel so stupid and Kiyoomi hates it.
When he sits in his dorm room later that night, though, he stares at the phone number written on the paper and tells himself, again and again, that he’s not going to call. But every time he thinks about it, he gets a little closer to doing it.
Atsumu, despite Kiyoomi’s grumbling, isn’t actually condescending. He’s just smart, and he knows it. In the same way as Atsumu’s confidence in his volleyball skills, Kiyoomi has to admit that it’s deserved. It’s not that Atsumu is condescending, it’s just that Kiyoomi wants so badly to blame someone else for his own insecurities.
He can’t blame Atsumu, though. Atsumu is the one saving his English grade, after all. But he’s all that Kiyoomi can think about, sometimes. The drawl to his voice, the quirk of his smile, the calluses on his palms. Atsumu is the kind of obsession that Kiyoomi has only ever felt for the stars, but are the two really so different?
Kiyoomi isn’t sure when he got so self-aware, but he hates it.
He turns in the essay on a Monday, at 1:58pm, just before open hours at the gym open up. He’s cutting it way too close to the deadline for his own comfort, but at least it’s over.
When he gets to the gym, Atsumu is already there. He’s alone— most of their teammates prefer to do their self-scheduled practice later in the day— and he’s doing serve after serve after serve, a stormy expression etched into the grimace when he misses a service. He looks more like he’s spiking the ball with as much anger as possible rather than trying to get it to the other side. One of his serves hits the net and he swears loudly, the curse echoing around the empty gym.
“Are you trying to destroy the ball?” Kiyoomi asks, walking over to Atsumu. “It’s possible to serve without committing murder, you know.”
Atsumu rolls his eyes. He grabs another ball out of the bin and tosses it up. This time, though, he doesn’t even try to hit it— the ball just falls to the ground, an angry and lonely bounce, just a dull sound that refracts around the room, looking for an answer.
Kiyoomi is about to ask what the hell that was, probably in those words exactly, when Atsumu turns to him. The anger on his face is gone; now, there’s only a kind of guarded neutrality. “You didn’t call.”
They stare at each other for a long moment, the words hanging between them on a string that sways back and forth, back and forth, never quite reaching its target. Kiyoomi shrugs, then, and turns away. “I didn’t need to. I finished the essay without your help.”
“That’s not why I gave you my number,” Atsumu says quietly.
“Then why?” Atsumu ignores him and grabs another ball. This time he actually hits it, a jump serve that Kiyoomi isn’t sure he could receive. “Now if only you could serve like that all the time.”
Atsumu doesn’t take the bait. He just serves again, the ball crashing just out of bounds. There’s a frustration in his eyes that Kiyoomi doesn’t know what to do with, doesn’t know how to understand. Then, “You’re one to talk. If you could actually serve, then—”
“I can serve perfectly well—”
“Prove it.”
“Make me.”
Atsumu glares at him, then shoves a ball straight at Kiyoomi’s chest. He takes it, stumbling back slightly as he does. Atsumu had definitely done that with more force than he needed to. Kiyoomi, not for the first time, wishes desperately that he understood what Atsumu was thinking. He’s never been good at reading people, never been good at figuring out social cues in the way that everyone else seems to be able to, but reading Atsumu is even worse than with others.
He’s an astrophysics problem without a solution in sight, and Kiyoomi hates it. Hates that he doesn’t understand anything Atsumu does, hates that they still manage to have such chemistry on the court, hates that Atsumu speaks every word as if they each carry a different secret, hates that Atsumu is so impossible to talk to without Kiyoomi’s heart rate stuttering and then speeding up.
Kiyoomi looks towards the net, spinning the ball in his hands. He bounces it once, and then tosses it up, hitting it with the strength and precision that he does every time. Never faltering, always hard to receive. There’s a spin to it that Kiyoomi knows Atsumu has a hard time with, and Kiyoomi turns to smirk at him.
“There,” he says. “I proved it.”
Atsumu rolls his eyes again. There’s no bite in his voice when he says, “You suck.”
“Clearly,” Kiyoomi says, “I don't.”
“Whatever,” Atsumu mutters.
He grabs another ball, tossing it up to serve. Kiyoomi resists the childish urge to yell out, “Miss!” and make Atsumu fuck up. Atsumu always brings something out in him that Kiyoomi doesn’t know how to handle— it’s something childish and careless, sometimes; it’s something bold and brash, other times; it’s always something impossible to fight against and always something that gets lost and held in the gravity of Atsumu’s sarcastic comments and bleeding heart.
The serve lands just out of bounds, and Kiyoomi realizes that there’s something off about him. Something that Atsumu clearly doesn’t want to talk about, but that his tongue itches to say. It curls up in the back of Kiyoomi’s throat, begging the question be asked.
“Why did you give me your number?” Kiyoomi asks, watching as the ball rolls away from the court.
Atsumu stares at it too, watching as it crashes into the wall. “I think I’m one that loved not wisely but too well.”
“Is that Shakespeare?” Kiyoomi hisses. “Fuck off, Miya, you know that I don’t—”
“It’s from Othello,” Atsumu says, cutting him off. “And really, it’s one of Shakespeare’s best monologues, you’ll probably study it when you do Othello in your class, but— I thought it was appropriate.”
Kiyoomi feels his heart sink, feels his chest fill up with that embarrassment again. “Why? Because I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about?”
“No,” Atsumu snaps. “Because the quote itself is relevant.”
“How could it possibly answer the question?” Kiyoomi asks, throwing his hands up. He walks past Atsumu, his shoulder shoving into him. Atsumu doesn’t flinch, just stares at the place where Kiyoomi had been. “I asked why you gave me your number. I didn’t ask you to make fun of the fact that I’m—”
Atsumu spins around, making to grab his wrist before he can pick up a volleyball. But he drops his hand at the last second, like he’s just remembered that Kiyoomi hates to be touched. Kiyoomi almost wants him to reach out, even if just so that he has something to be angry about. Atsumu is so damn frustrating, and Kiyoomi wants to shut him up. He’s being stupidly considerate by not touching him, especially when Kiyoomi knows that he himself is the one being mean right now.
“You’re not stupid,” Atsumu growls. “It’s just— Shakespeare is hard, and you’re not stupid because of it. I’m— I’m using the fuckin’ quote to say that I like you and probably liking you is the worst decision I ever made in my life.”
Kiyoomi stares at him. Blinks once. Twice. His heart drops out of his chest and into the center of the molten earth, where it melts. “What?”
“I know you heard me, Sakusa,” Atsumu mutters. He turns away. “Just serve the ball so I can make fun of you again and you can hate me and everything can go back to normal.”
Kiyoomi hasn’t been Sakusa in a long time now, and the name feels almost foreign coming from Atsumu’s lips. He almost misses the ridiculous nickname. He wants to see the way that Atsumu’s eyes glitter when he says it. He’s never hated Atsumu, not really.
“Don’t call me that,” Kiyoomi says. “It sounds weird coming from you.”
Atsumu glances at him out of the corner of his eye, and Kiyoomi meets his gaze, daring him to say something. Daring him to push this moment past every careful line they’ve set up between them.
“Omi.” Atsumu turns to him, biting his lip. Kiyoomi’s gaze follows the bite, the shine of his mouth, the obscene look in his eyes, like Atsumu is hungry for him. “Kiyoomi.”
“Atsumu,” Kiyoomi whispers. Then, louder, “Why did you give me your number? And if you give me another Shakespeare quote, I’m walking out right now.”
Atsumu smirks, a facade of confidence up again, and there’s that grin that Kiyoomi hates so much. He wants to kiss it.
“Because you’re smart and witty and have a truly awful disposition that I want to be around all of the time and I want to take you on a date where we’re not studying,” Atsumu says. “Where maybe we can talk about something you actually like and I can promise I’ll listen. We can talk about astronomy, if you want. I know fuck all about that.”
“Finally, I could be the smart one,” Kiyoomi says, a smile tricked onto his lips
Atsumu gives him a barely perceptible nod, and then turns away again. “Now that we established that I like you and it’s stupid, are you serving the ball or not?”
Kiyoomi watches him for a moment, watches as his breaths come a little too fast and a little too hard. He watches as Atsumu glares at the net, as if the net has done something to personally offend him. He watches Atsumu’s hand twitch at his side, like he’s searching for a ball to set towards Kiyoomi, towards his ace.
“No,” he says finally. “You’re taking me on a date, and then we’ll come back, and I’ll serve the ball and you won’t be able to receive it.”
Atsumu, still not looking at him, grins. “I would not wish any companion in the world but you.”
“One more Shakespeare quote, and I’m breaking up with you.”
“Does that mean we’re dating?” Atsumu asks, finally turning to look at him.
Kiyoomi freezes, a volleyball spinning in between his hands, the meaning of his own words sinking in. Atsumu has a way of pulling confessions out of him that he doesn’t know he’s given until Atsumu is already holding them in his hands. Until Atsumu has seen the best and worst parts of him, and chosen to love him anyways. Until Atsumu has seen his shame in Shakespeare and his glory on the court, and all of the moments in between. Until Kiyoomi has fallen for him without even noticing.
“If this date goes well,” Kiyoomi says carefully, “I’ll consider it.”
Atsumu laughs, his eyes lighting up at Kiyoomi’s response. “I have the perfect Shakespeare quote for that, but I’ll save it for another day.”
“Asshole,” Kiyoomi mutters. Then he raises an eyebrow at Atsumu, tossing the ball back into the bin. “I believe you promised I can talk about astronomy now.”
“Fuck,” Atsumu mutters. “I have a great quote for that, too. You’re doing this on purpose, aren’t you?”
Kiyoomi just smiles.