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At 4 years old, the Miya twins establish a system. Whenever one of them needs it—whatever the reason may be—all they have to do is ask, “May I have a hug, please?” and the other twin drops everything; food, water, toys, the hand of whichever grown-up is taking them somewhere in this big wide world, to wrap their tiny little arms around their brother and squeeze them until their eyes bug out and their lungs are emptied of air.
The ‘please’ gets dropped about two months in, but it’s a good system. It works when they’re fighting over a toy and they suddenly realize things have gotten out of hand and they both need to let go of it at the same time. It makes their Ma tear up with heart-felt pride when Osamu scrapes a knee and instinctively turns to Atsumu while she patches him up. And it’s useful when they win their first volleyball game in elementary and Atsumu really doesn’t want others to see the tears of joy in his eyes.
*
As they get older, the words are a lot harder to say out loud. It’s cringey and totally not cool to do in front of Aran or the other kids in their middle school classes. So the system undergoes its first modification; the words are exchanged for signals.
The request is tapped and swiped out in Morse code on the wooden frame of the bunk bed on their first night at training camp—their first night away from home and not having Ma in the next room. It’s tugged on the hem of Osamu’s shirt while a teacher crossly berates them for switching places and confusing the grading of all their work. And it goes completely unspoken yet translates loud and clear on both of their faces one night when Tsumu’s in the middle of doing both of their Math homework and blurts out, “I think I’m gay,” and Osamu immediately replies, “I think I’m gay, too.”
*
The system undergoes another change when they hit high school and the Twins get their first cell phones. Kaomoji’s are all the rage in that period of time and their requests for hugs now have highly specific expressions and can be covertly sent in between classes or practice and later deleted to save face when Sunarin breaks into their phones for incriminating blackmail material.
Tsumu makes good use of his Kaomoji repertoire, like sending (っಠ‿ಠ)っwhen mortification ejects his soul from his body and he needs a second for it to return to his mortal form. ( ~*-*)~ is for when Osamu really impresses him with something he’s said or done for Aran and he’s hoping that smoothness will rub off on him so he can apply it to his own (nonexistent) love-life.
On the other hand, Osamu uses (づ◡_◡)づ to mean a variety of things from “I can’t believe I just told Aran I love him,” to “the smell of bleach and the texture of extreme damage in your hair is actually kind of comforting because it’s worse than mine and makes me feel like maybe I do have my shit together.”
*
At that rate, it seems only natural for the frequency of hug requests to decrease as they age and enter the emotionally repressive stages of adulthood, but the way it actually happens is not gradual and easy to get used to—at all. It’s abrupt and it throws everything out of place and off-balance. It’s the after-effect of a carefully-thought-out decision and the not-so-carefully-thought-out reaction (read: violent outburst) that follows. And it takes a very long time—much longer than Osamu thinks he can handle—for things to sort themselves out.
*
He’s staring alternately down at his phone—now a touch screen with the kaomoji keyboard replaced by emojis—and up at the empty room in front of him, wondering if Atsumu’s thinking the same thing in a very different room that can’t be as silent when it’s being shared amongst rowdy professional volleyball players. He wonders if Atsumu would even read the message or if he’s been blocked after “tossin’ away everythin’ they dreamed of accomplishin’ together.”
Heat pricks at his eyelids as his throat closes up and the room seems to shrink and expand at the same time. How can it be so big and empty and so small and restricting at the same time? Did Osamu make a mistake? Should he turn the fuck around, cancel all the checks and plans and go crawling back to what’s safe and easy? Even if it feels like he’ll never be as happy as Tsumu, at least he’ll never be this terrified and out of his mind of all this that’s new and unfamiliar because there’s no one by his side.
His thumb hovers over the screen as it blurs in and out of his vision, the last conversation—despite being perfectly mundane—a dreadful, bittersweet reminder of when everything went wrong what feels like ages and ages ago.
[Samu]
At the gym. Gotta talk to ya before practice.
[Tsumu]
:thumbs-up:
we got snacks
*a selfie of Atsumu and Gin with a convenience store paper bag*
Osamu taps the hug emoji and lets it sit in the reply box for a second or two before erasing it. He looks up at the room again, at all his unpacked bags of clothes and boxes of books and the mirror through the open door of the bathroom. His finger drops onto the screen without him even realizing it and when he glances back down there’s a huge block of hug emojis waiting to be sent. It takes a minute to process and another minute to furiously delete them all until the box is as blank as the walls in the room and his own forcefully-wiped brain.
It’s not that easy to make things right. It could never be that easy with a big-headed, arrogant, shit excuse of a twin for a brother who can’t accept that not everyone is as obsessed with volleyball as he is.
A world-weary sigh breaks out from Osamu’s chest and he tosses his phone on the coffee table as he flops onto the couch. He knew moving into his college dorm would be hard. That’s why he told Sunarin and Gin he could handle it himself and why he was actually relieved when Aran said he’d have practice. No one should have to witness this pathetic little breakdown. Not even himself. He presses the heels of his hands to his eyelids to keep the heat behind them at bay and falls asleep right there until a dull banging on his door wakes him up.
He’s up off the couch and opening the door and catches a glimpse of his own reflection before his brain registers that his face is buried in the shoulder of a sports jacket and… there are arms around him and a crazily comforting atmosphere has descended on the once cold and empty room.
“Aran-kun told me yer new address.” Tsumu’s voice comes out muffled in Osamu’s hoodie, but he isn’t fooled. It’s muffled and thick with emotion. “I took a guess after yer stupid typin’ bubble showed up and disappeared like a billion times.”
That does it. The shock leaves Osamu’s system and he gets his arms around his brother and squeezes until the force crushing his lungs together grows to equal how it felt not five minutes ago when they were angry and ignoring each other. Parallel feelings on opposite sides of the emotional spectrum. When the pressure matches, the anger and the bitterness evaporate and there’s nothing left but two stupid boys holding onto each other for dear life because it’s true; neither of them can have a life worth living without the other.
And apparently, neither of them can bring themselves to make a verbal apology. Words are hard for jerks who normally speak in violent punches and tossed volleyballs and homemade food. Even with no one else around to perceive them, it’s a hell of a lot easier to cough to the side and discreetly swipe a sleeve over the face before turning to shut the door or frown at the room and complain about how shitty it looks.
From then on, the system is reestablished and—against the projected trend—frequently employed by Tsumu for the most trivial occasions, both fortunate and unfortunate; getting tickets to their favorite artist’s concert, finding out that there’s going to be a live-action Percy Jackson TV series, losing his phone and getting left behind at a game venue. There are very few events that call for the special kind of unasked-for-but-definitely-needed hugs; store openings, jersey reveals, long-awaited first dates, and heartbreaks.
The system circumvents all of Osamu’s assumptions about how long it would last and how it would evolve. But then, he never considered that he and Tsumu would transcend verbal, pictographic, and most normal means of communication. As he stands in front of the TV in his shop, red-clad chest swelling with pride, cheeks stretching in a smile identical to the one on his screen, he thinks, it must be a Twin thing.