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Sakusa’s morning routine feels more like preparing for battle than anything else. He didn’t used to think of it that way, but his cousin Komori once jokingly said that Sakusa looked like he was putting on armor when he got ready to face the world.
Sakusa had quite liked that, so that’s how he thinks of it now.
When he applies copious amounts of hand sanitizer, he imagines he’s putting on war paint. His rubber gloves feel more like gauntlets, with the power to fend off his enemies, and his disinfectant spray is his weapon of choice, ready to be drawn at a moment’s notice. His mask is his most vital piece of armor. There are more than 1,800 kinds of bacteria living in the air people breathe every day, and his mask is his final line of defense against biological warfare.
There are other things his mask protects him from, too. The eyes of enemy spies. When Sakusa is wearing his mask, he’s unseeable. Unknowable. Hidden from sight, so that no one can ever get too close.
Or so he thought.
~*~
The ball hits the court with a sickening, damning kind of finality. The sound of it seems to echo off of the gym’s high rafters, bouncing around the chamber of Sakusa’s mind like a haunting melody.
The whistle blows.
Final score: Sunbirds - 32; Black Jackals - 30
Three sets to two, the Black Jackals lost.
The sour mood hangs over the team like a heavy cloud promising an impending storm. As they bow rigidly, heads held in shame, to show their appreciation to the fans, as they shake the hands of their defeaters, as they solemnly make their way to the locker room.
The moment Sakusa has his bag within reach, he grabs his mask and slips it over his face, before he’s even changed out of his uniform. Tucked safely beneath the cloth, his mouth twists into a bitter scowl. He hadn’t been good enough today. Strong enough. He hadn’t scored as many points as he should have, and it was too late now to change the match’s outcome.
Something slams into the locker next to his with a metallic clang that rings out jarringly in the heavy silence. Sakusa jumps, only slightly, and shuts his locker door halfway so he can glare over at his locker neighbor.
Atsumu doesn’t even seem to notice Sakusa’s eyes burning a hole into him. His fists are still pressed tightly to the metal, knuckles marbled pink and white from the pressure.
“Miya. Quiet.”
Atsumu’s eyes cut over to him, a dangerous glint in his eyes, the color of burnt caramel mixed with bitter pride.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Atsumu’s voice is biting like broken glass. “Did ya want me to lay back and take it silently like a bitch, the way you did from the Sunbirds’ middle blocker?”
Someone — Bokuto, perhaps — inhales sharply, and Hinata nervously shifts at his locker across from them, peering over his shoulder in what he probably thinks is an inconspicuous way. Sakusa bites down on his bottom lip until he tastes blood.
“I played to the best of my abilities, but he was too —”
“Too what?” Atsumu slams Sakusa’s locker shut, so there’s no barrier between them now. Except for Sakusa’s mask, of course. “You were better than him, Omi. You were better than him in every way, but you let him want it more than you.”
Sakusa feels his anger rising in him like a hot spring, a geyser of shame and rage. He wants to explode all over Atsumu, melt him down to a puddle of boxed blonde hair dye.
“I couldn’t have played any better than I did!” He snaps, voice cracking as it rises.
“Yes, you could have! I know you could, but you just didn’t want to, and you let the whole team down!”
He feels it, the moment his lip pierces through his lip. It hurts like hell, but the sting is nothing compared to Atsumu’s words. Not that he’d ever let Atsumu know that.
Still, Atsumu must realize himself how harsh his words were, because the moment they leave his mouth, the second the blow lands, he looks shocked. He stares at Sakusa, eyes going wide, and Sakusa makes sure to continue to meet his gaze evenly. Not giving a single thing away.
Atsumu mutters something under his breath and buries his head in his own locker. Sakusa takes a deep breath and releases it slowly. His hands are curled into fists now, which he didn’t remember doing, but he carefully uncurls them so he can finish changing out of his uniform. They don’t speak again, and slowly players start to trickle out of the locker room with their belongings slung over their shoulders and half-hearted ‘good games’ and ‘goodbyes’.
Sakusa is sitting on one of the benches, finishing up tying his shoe, when a hand comes down heavily on his shoulder. He instinctively jerks away from the touch, but when he looks up, it’s Atsumu standing over him. He feels his pulse thrum hotly, anticipating another fight.
Atsumu chews the inside of his cheek thoughtfully, looking down at Sakusa with an unusual expression.
“What?” Sakusa asks when the silence stretches on for too long. Atsumu blinks like he just remembered Sakusa was there.
“We’ll —” He starts haltingly, before nodding decisively to himself. “We’ll get them next time, won’t we?”
Sakusa blinks up at him in surprise, though he knows he shouldn’t be. Atsumu had barely just survived one battle, and he was already anticipating the next. It’s just the way he is. His flesh and bone itself are his only armor, and he was born for war.
“Yes,” Sakusa agrees quietly. “We will.”
“You’re better than him,” Atsumu says again, though it doesn’t sound as much like a criticism this time. He punctuates the statement with another clap on Sakusa’s shoulder that makes him flinch, and then Atsumu is gone.
Sakusa scoffs, though there’s no one else around to hear it. He rolls his shoulders back, and finds that they feel a little lighter now. He stares at the empty space Atsumu had just occupied and wonders, Did he know?
But no, there’s no way Atsumu could have. Sakusa’s armor is impenetrable from outside forces.
~*~
Sakusa swirls the champagne around his glass, looking down at the bubbly liquid with vague disinterest. He’s been holding the same drink for almost two hours now, but he’d have to take his mask off to take a sip. So he just looks at it.
Events like this are, to put it lightly, the bane of Sakusa’s existence.
The annual pro league gala is nothing more than a thinly veiled excuse for coaches to schmooze donors, and players to flex their current standings to the press. Sakusa despises having to attend, but the team publicist requires ‘One, Sakusa-san, please just one,’ public appearance from him per year, so he sucks it up. Puts on his nice navy suit with the gold tie his mother got him for his birthday last year, and makes the barest effort of an appearance.
He usually uses his teammates as social buffers at these events. He'd be perfectly content standing in the corner by himself all night, not talking to anyone, but apparently that’s not a great look for him when the photos from the event are released. So he stands at the outskirts of big groups, usually following Bokuto and Hinata around like a shadow cast by their own bright personalities.
But Hinata is over at the buffet, competing with Kageyama to see who can stuff the most mini quiches in their mouth at once, and he had seen Bokuto chatting with Tsukishima Kei from the Sendai Frogs and that league promoter with the terrible bedhead — Kuroo something? — a little while ago, but the three of them were nowhere to be found now.
Which left Sakusa with his absolute last resort.
He spots Atsumu across the room, the center of a group of people, like he usually is. Sakusa can admit that Atsumu is actually quite useful for this specific purpose — he soaked up attention like a sponge in the ocean, and Sakusa had yet to meet a person who wouldn’t happily be a drop of water in Atsumu’s sea. For this reason, he was actually even easier than Bokuto and Hinata to hide behind without being noticed.
Nobody will expect Sakusa to say much when they’re all too busy hanging off Atsumu’s every word, so he starts to make his way over.
As he approaches, he starts to recognize most of the guys that Atsumu is talking to from other league teams. No press or donors, just players, which lessens Sakusa’s dread marginally. They won’t be expecting quotes or predictions of how well he’s going to play this season, at least.
The closer he gets, the more he notices something…off about Atsumu. He’s smiling, but it looks tight and painful, and his eyes are anything but happy. No one else seems to notice, but Sakusa must have just spent enough time with Atsumu at this point that he can’t help but notice when his happiness is so obviously lacking its usual luster.
The group’s conversation gets louder, more boisterous to be heard over each other’s laughter, and Sakusa can make out the words “frigid” and “prude” rolling mockingly off their liquor-loose tongues. Sakusa is no gossip, but he can’t help but wonder who it is they’re talking about. Especially when it has Atsumu looking so obviously uncomfortable like that.
When Atsumu looks up and sees Sakusa walking towards them his eyes go wide and he quickly excuses himself, grabbing Sakusa by the elbow and none-too-gently towing him away. The group’s laughter trails after them, growing fainter the further Atsumu drags him.
“Watch it,” Sakusa snatches his arm out of Atsumu’s grasp with a frown. “You’ll wrinkle my suit, what is wrong with you?”
“Me? Nothing’s wrong with me,” Atsumu insists, voice pitched just a tad too high.
“Then why are we leaving? You’re acting like you’re running from a crime scene, for Christs’s sake.”
“Those guys were jerks, I was about to leave anyways.” Atsumu averts his gaze guiltily, and an ice cold feeling creeps down Sakusa’s spine.
Oh. They were talking about him.
The realization hits a little harder than he expected it to. It’s not that he cares what a group of strangers think about him, or that he’s even surprised. He knows what some people say about him behind his back, knows that he’s not exactly the warmest or friendliest guy around. That most people tolerate him because he’s a damn good volleyball player.
But it’s one thing to be aware that people talk about him behind his back, and another thing entirely to hear it.
It’s embarrassing, is what it is. And of course Miya Atsumu of all people just had to have a front row seat.
There’s a hot pressure prickling at the backs of Sakusa’s eyes, but he quickly blinks it away. His lower lip trembles, but it’s hidden beneath his mask, so he doesn’t bother stopping it.
“Omi?” Atsumu’s quiet voice reminds him that he isn’t alone.
“Hm?” Sakusa hums noncommittally.
“Those guys don’t know a damn thing, you know?”
Sakusa sniffs. “I couldn’t care less what they think they do or don’t know.”
Atsumu frowns, tilting his head to the side and studying Sakusa’s face for a moment, before gently prying Sakusa’s champagne flute out of the viselike grip he’s holding it in, setting it on a nearby table.
“Let’s just get out of here, huh? I think they’ve got plenty of pictures of us by now and I know you hate this things.”
At just the mention of escape, Sakusa exhales, shoulders relaxing slightly in relief. Atsumu grins at him and gallantly offers his elbow, which Sakusa swats away, but follows him out of the ballroom nonetheless.
His chest doesn’t feel quite so tight anymore, once they’re standing out in the crisp, fresh air of the night. Sakusa attributes it to the loosening of his tie, and nothing else.
~*~
Sakusa has never much cared for having other people in his space.
He got lucky for the majority of his life. His two siblings were much older than him, practically already moved out by the time he started grade school, so he never had to share a room. Joining the volleyball team in high school provided its challenges, but Sakusa could always just wait until he got home to use the shower, and at away games the coaches let him be the first one to wash off at the end of the day. Even in college, Sakusa procured a single suite, a reward for being such a coveted scholarship athlete.
The Black Jackals provided Sakusa with no such luxuries. Here, he’s a talented player, sure, but nothing special compared to his teammates. Sakusa tried it, once. Getting his own hotel room at one of their away games.
Their manager’s pitying smile was answer enough.
Through trial and error, Sakusa cycled through the entire Black Jackals team. Bokuto snored louder than an eighteen-wheeler. Hinata talked in his sleep. Adriah ate snacks in bed. Shion invited people back to their room without consulting Sakusa first (not that Sakusa would have said yes). Even Meian, the responsible and dependable captain of their team, left his used toothbrush on the edge of the sink, foamy toothpaste still coating its bristles.
Sakusa dry heaved when he saw it, and that was the moment he knew. He couldn’t room with any of these people.
As seemed to be a sort of pattern in his life, he was backed into a corner with no other option.
It had to be goddamned Miya Atsumu.
Atsumu had looked rightfully surprised, and annoyingly enough, a bit smug, when Sakusa wordlessly handed him the hotel key card matching his own. They walked to their room — their room — together, Sakusa silently filling with dread like a hot air balloon, and Atsumu prattling on about how he was ‘not Sakusa’s sloppy sixths, thank you very much’ and he’s ‘only doing this as a favor, to put you out of yer misery, Omi, like putting down a hurt animal because ya just can’t stand to see it suffer anymore’.
Not an away game went by after that night that Sakusa and Atsumu didn’t room together.
Because Atsumu, much to Sakusa’s reluctantly pleasant surprise, keeps his space almost as pristine as Sakusa keeps his own. It’s a byproduct of having Kita as a captain, Atsumu explained to him on that first night.
“It’s like he ingrained that shit into my brain, ya know? Any time I even think about leaving my towel on the floor, or kicking my shoes off without untying them first, I can just hear his voice in my head.” Atsumu shuddered, but there was clear reverence in his tone. “Kita-san was all about following routine, doing a bunch of little things every day that add up to living a good life, or some shit like that.”
Sakusa isn’t exactly sure what that means, but what he does know is that Atsumu folds his dirty clothes after taking them off instead of leaving them strewn across the room, and he wipes down the bathroom counter after washing his face every time, and the only person he’s ever brought to their room without Sakusa’s permission has been his brother, Osamu, and honestly, Sakusa prefers Osamu’s countenance anyways, so it wasn’t a huge detriment.
It’s not lost on Sakusa, the irony of the fact that Atsumu is the one person these days that he willingly lets into his space.
This weekend, they’ve travelled to Aichi for a game against the Stings. It was a tight game, a margin of only one point separating them for almost the entire last set. But once they hit the twenty-four point mark, it was Atsumu’s turn to serve. The ball touched Atsumu’s palms and the rest of the game was practically written in stone before it even happened.
Sakusa hung around out front of the hotel for a little while after the rest of the team went in, calling up his mom to tell her how the game went. After chatting for a little while, he heads to his and Atsumu’s shared room.
He doesn’t knock, because it’s his room as much as it is Atsumu’s, and he has a key, and Atsumu knows that this is also Sakusa’s room and he will be back eventually. So Sakusa doesn’t knock.
Oh, how Sakusa wishes against all logic that just this once, he had knocked.
The moment after he swipes his keycard and steps foot into their room, the bathroom door swings open. A billow of steam follows, as well as Atsumu, with his damp hair pushed back from his forehead, his bare chest shiny with lingering water droplets, and nothing but a small, hotel-grade white towel wrapped low around his hips.
He stops when he sees Sakusa. Sakusa stops as well, the hand that had been reaching up to unhook his mask from his face leaving it firmly in place.
Sakusa swallows hard, but his mouth is suddenly far too dry. He thinks his jaw may have slightly fallen open from the shock alone.
“Oh, hey Omi.” Atsumu finally speaks, casual. Like he isn’t half-naked less than a foot away from Sakusa. “Wasn’t sure when ya’d be back, so I took the first shower. Hope ya don’t mind.” He runs a hand through his hair, straw-like and stiff from all the bleaching, and a few strands fall into his eyes.
“You knew I would be back eventually,” Sakusa grits out.
“Well, yeah, but there’s still plenty of hot water left, so you don’t gotta —”
“If you knew I’d be back, why didn’t you bring your clothes into the bathroom with you?” Sakusa snaps when Atsumu clearly misinterprets his annoyance.
Yes, Sakusa and Atsumu have shared their hotel room shower many times by now, but every time, they bring their clothes into the bathroom with them and get dressed before walking out like some kind of flagrant exhibitionist.
Atsumu blinks a few times, absent-mindedly scratching at his lower abdomen, where a dark trail belying the true color of his hair disappears below the towel. Sakusa feels something strange rolling in his stomach and worries for a moment that he might be sick.
“That’s what’s got ya all hot ’n’ bothered?” Atsumu asks slowly, a crooked grin quirking at his lips. “Am I offending yer delicate senses, dear Omi?”
“I am not — That’s not —” Atsumu slips one finger beneath the towel and Sakusa promptly chokes on his own saliva. The nerve. The absolute shameless, inconsiderate, nerve. “You are so —”
“So what?” Atsumu cocks his head to the side and a stray drop of water slides down the column of his neck. Sakusa watches it and he hates that he watches it. Atsumu’s eyes are burning brighter than Sakusa has ever seen them and he feels his own narrow to dangerous slits.
“Vile.”
“Vile?” Atsumu repeats curiously. “What’s vile about me, huh?”
There are a hundred — a million — responses that run through Sakusa’s brain in response to that question and he’s prepared to open his mouth and unleash them all on Atsumu, gladly. But then — Then Atsumu takes a step closer to him. It doesn’t even bring him that close, still nearly a foot between them. But when he walks, his muscles work and his hips shift and his pectorals bounce just ever so slightly and Sakusa —
Runs. He mutters some half-assed insult while blindly reaching for the doorknob behind him, nearly tears the door off its hinges, and runs.
He doesn’t stop running until he’s passed through the lobby and out the back door to the hotel’s pool. He drops to his knees at the water’s edge, tucking his mask below his chin to take a few deep gulps of fresh air. He can see the moon reflected in the water’s dark surface, and when he leans over a little further, he can see himself, too.
“You’re vile,” Sakusa mutters, watching himself say it. “I hate you, and you’re vile.”
It doesn't look the slightest bit believable.
~*~
There’s nothing else in the world quite like it, the heady rush of victory pulsing through your veins, making your blood feel more like ichor than iron. Sakusa has never been high before, never felt the need to experiment with the drugs some of his peers dabbled in when they were in college, but he thinks the feeling might be similar to this.
If so, then it’s probably for the best that he never tried drugs, because he could easily get addicted to this.
He feels weightless, like his feet aren’t even touching the ground, as he follows behind his rowdy pack of teammates into the bar. They’ve just won their qualifier match for the league finals in a month — the first time the Black Jackals have played in the finals in five years — and they’re all still riding the wave of adrenaline down the street for a few celebratory drinks.
It’s not that out of the ordinary, there’s usually at least a handful of players that go out for drinks after all of their games. This is the first time Sakusa has agreed to join them.
So now they’re at a bar, which in itself is usually enough to put Sakusa’s nerves on edge. And maybe it’s the round of shots that Meian bought for the team, or the beer that Bokuto slammed down on the table in front of him so hard some of it sloshed onto his sleeve, or the cloud of immortality still hanging over all their heads, but whatever it is, Sakusa is actually enjoying himself.
“No, no that’s not how he says it!” Hinata is laughing, and Sakusa hasn’t been following his and Bokuto’s conversation, but watches with vague curiosity as the redhead takes the pair of makeshift glasses they’ve made out of drink straws and toothpicks from Bokuto and places them on his own face. He flattens out his expression, mouth pursed and eyes bored, before saying in a monotone drawl that is clearly meant to be an impression of someone else, “Who cares about extra practice anyways? This is just a stupid club.”
Bokuto laughs so hard, a little bit of beer comes out of his nose and he throws an arm around Sakusa’s shoulders to steady himself. Sakusa tries to recoil, but Bokuto’s biceps are roughly the size of tree trunks and he gets clingy when he’s drunk. He pinches a napkin between two fingers and dangles it in front of Bokuto’s face, trying to get the other man’s attention so he can wipe the beer dripping down his face before any of it gets anywhere near Sakusa’s person.
“No, thanks!” Bokuto says cheerfully, batting Sakusa’s hand aside and wiping his face with the back of his arm.
Sakusa is repulsed. He’s just about to plan his escape, just about had his fill for the night, when over all the din of his teammates voices and raucous conversation, his ears hone in on one sound. Sticky and thick like molasses, deep and rumbling like a summer thunderstorm rolling in from the distance.
Atsumu is laughing.
To be more precise, Atsumu is laughing at him — neither of which is a very rare occurrence in the least. On any other occasion, Sakusa would merely roll his eyes, and maybe give Atsumu’s shins a swift kick underneath the table.
Tonight, however (maybe it’s the shot maybe it’s the beer maybe it’s the cloud of immortality), he stares.
The lighting in this bar is awful, it gives Atsumu’s skin a pallid tinge of yellow, and he didn’t style his hair after showering in the locker room, so it’s dried half-straight-half-curly and sticks out from behind his ears like tufts of dandelion fuzz. His head thrown back to the ceiling, grabbing his stomach as though his own laughter pains him.
He’s ridiculous and wonderful and the most —
“Oh, Omi.” Atsumu wipes a tear from the corner of his eye, face still crinkled up in mirth. “You shoulda — shoulda seen yer face! That was, holy shit, that was the funniest thing I’ve ever seen. You really gotta come out with us more often.” He stops, tilts his head to the side like a curious golden retriever puppy. “What is it? I got somethin’ on my face?”
“Huh?” Sakusa blinks uncomprehendingly across the table at him. Atsumu smiles at him in a way that if Sakusa didn’t know any better, he might call fond.
“Yer lookin’ at me all weird.”
“No I’m not.”
“You are!”
“You do have something on your face.”
“Wait, really?”
“No.”
Atsumu laughs again, and it’s so full of unrestrained joy and wonder, Sakusa can’t help but crack a smile of his own.
“Oh,” Atsumu says quietly, no longer laughing at all. Just staring at Sakusa.
Do I have something on my face? Sakusa wants to ask, but the way Atsumu is looking at him is making it incredibly difficult to breathe let alone speak right now. Sakusa has seen a look this full of reverence on Atsumu’s face only a handful of times before, and every time it’s been on the volleyball court.
“Hey, would you look at that!” Bokuto suddenly shouts, pointing a finger right in Sakusa’s face. “Atsumu got Sakusa to smile!”
“What? No he —” Sakusa instinctively reaches a hand to his own face, but instead of meeting the familiar, safe feeling of the fabric of his mask, his fingers only touch skin.
No. No no no no. He took his mask off to drink and he — he forgot to put it back on, he forgot — and Atsumu saw — and now everyone is looking at him and he’s — he’s bare, vulnerable.
He has no armor.
He’s completely defenseless.
Atsumu is still looking at him.
“Omi, hey, wait, don’t —” Atsumu goes to grab Sakusa by the wrist, but he’s too slow, and Sakusa has already shoved his chair away from the table and abruptly gotten to his feet. His knees are trembling slightly, and he hopes it doesn’t show when he bows stiffly to the table, mumbles a weak excuse, and practically sprints out of the building.
His heart is still racing like he just did a hundred penalty drills when he ducks around the corner of the restaurant into a small alley. He drops into a crouch, leaning against the wall behind him for stability. It says a lot about the state of his mind that he doesn’t even think about the millions of germs probably clinging to the cold brick and attaching themselves onto his jacket. He puts his head in his hands and suddenly remembers that he still hasn’t put his mask back on.
With shaky fingers, he fumbles to pull it out of his pocket.
“Shoulda known you’d go an’ run away again.”
Sakusa closes his fingers around the cloth of his mask.
“Again?”
Instead of clarifying, Atsumu sighs and crouches down in front of him. “Why’d you leave like that, huh? Bokuto feels real awful and Captain’s worried about you now.”
Instead of answering, Sakusa unclenches his fingers and holds out his mask in his open palm for Atsumu to see. He’s not sure why he still hasn’t put it back on.
“Seriously? That thing?” Atsumu huffs. “It wouldn’t’ve made a difference even if you were wearing it, y’know.”
Sakusa frowns. “It would have,” he insists. Someone like Atsumu would never be able to understand the kind of armor that someone like Sakusa has to wear to protect himself from the world every day.
Atsumu’s flesh and bone itself are his only armor, and he was born for war.
“No,” Atsumu shakes his head, closing his fingers around Sakusa’s and the mask. “It never does. Not in the way ya think it does, at least. I’m sure it makes a difference when it comes to like, bugs ’n’ dirt ’n’ stuff.”
“It’s not for bugs and —” Sakusa starts to protest, but breaks off when Atsumu’s words register. “What do you mean it never does?”
With a small, almost apologetic smile, Atsumu taps the side of Sakusa’s face with his fingertips. It feels like being zapped by an exposed electrical wire.
“When ya smile, yer eyes crinkle up at the corners here. Didja know that, Omi?” His finger trails lower, to the hinge of Sakusa’s jaw. “And when yer mad at me — like, real real mad at me — yer jaw clenches up here.” He frowns, finger going even lower, until it’s just under Sakusa’s chin. “When yer hurtin’, yer chin gets all wobbly down here. And when —” He sucks in a quiet breath, this time using two fingers to tuck a few of Sakusa’s longer curls behind his ear. “When yer, uh, well, like that night at the hotel? You blush here, at the tips of yer ears. Fuckin’ adorable, really.” His eyes soften with a chuckle. “So even when yer wearing the mask, Omi, yer still like an open book to me. Always.”
Sakusa inhales sharply, feels his face growing hot with embarrassment. He wants nothing more in this moment than to slap his mask back into place and bluff his way out of this whole mess, but Atsumu’s hand is still holding his with the mask closed between both of their hands, and Sakusa would have to break his grasp to get to it, and then Atsumu wouldn’t be touching him anymore and — and Sakusa doesn’t want Atsumu to stop touching him.
“So you…” Sakusa starts quietly, struggling with the words. “You know?”
Atsumu’s cheeks go slightly pink. He nods. “Yeah, Omi, I - I know.”
“How long?”
“Few months, maybe? That’s when I finally figured it out, at least.”
Sakusa’s heart clenches painfully. A few months Atsumu has known how he felt about him and never once done a thing about it. There’s only one logical conclusion to draw from that. “So you don’t —?”
“No!” Atsumu says quickly, releasing Sakusa’s hand and shuffling closer so he can put both hands on Sakusa’s cheeks. “No, I — I do, I was just, I was waitin’ for you to tell me yerself, right? So I didn’t freak ya out or anythin’.” His thumb traces the high arch of Sakusa’s cheekbone and Sakusa’s stomach swoops. “Ya got this terrible habit of runnin’ away on me, Omi.”
“Sorry,” Sakusa mumbles, fingers tightening around his mask. “I just — Sometimes, I just —”
“I know,” Atsumu whispers.
For the first time in his life, Sakusa is glad that there’s no mask between them when Atsumu leans forward on the balls of his feet and presses his lips to Sakusa’s with an aching sweetness that shatters any defenses he had left in place.
Not that they ever did anything to protect him from Atsumu anyways. But he realizes now, maybe they weren’t meant to. Atsumu isn’t an invading enemy force, he’s an ally.
And a really good kisser.
Atsumu traces the seam of Sakusa’s lips with his tongue and Sakusa makes the most horrible, involuntary whining sound. Atsumu laughs and breaks the kiss, resting their foreheads together, and Sakusa doesn’t even mind Atsumu’s whiskey-sour breath right in his face.
“Let’s get outta here, yeah? I know dirty alleyways aren’t really yer style.”
“Yeah,” Sakusa takes the hand Atsumu offers to help pull him to his feet with a little smile. “You know.”
The war is over.