Work Text:
It started because Atsumu was a majestically narcissistic dumbass convinced the world revolved around him. Atsumu fancied himself the linchpin of the prefecture, a gift to all genders. When the volleyball team went to his favorite restaurant for last year’s end-of-season celebration, Atsumu considered it tribute. He was convinced the hero of the new sports anime airing Fridays was based on his illustrious high school volleyball career.
Atsumu didn’t even know what illustrious meant. Osamu didn’t either, but he at least had the good sense to look it up before using it to embellish his fantasies.
Atsumu’s delusions were frustrating on a good day, infuriating most others, and tended to manifest such spectacles as walking into traffic with the vague expectation that—well, Osamu wasn’t sure what Atsumu thought would happen. In his thick skull, perhaps the traffic would simply stop for him.
Osamu was an excellent brother, so when he noticed Atsumu step off the sidewalk in front of the arcade, directly into the path of a motor vehicle, he heroically grabbed his assigned idiot by the shirt collar and yanked him out of harm’s way. Atsumu—who sucked—shrieked an obnoxious tirade inaudible to the human ear, whirled around with a raised fist intended for whoever was manhandling him, and would have decked Osamu in the face if Osamu didn’t lunge out of the way, trip, and promptly introduce his face to a wayward utility pole.
It was as if the world stopped. The cacophony of downtown bled together: the rumbling car engines, kids screaming to the tune of the arcade’s bells and whistles, a hoard of pedestrians across the street all frozen mid-step. It all melted under the summer heat into a viscous, slow-moving sludge boxing Osamu’s ears and flickering in and out of focus.
Then, Osamu’s surroundings roared to life again.
“Left!”
Left? Two summers working front of house at the diner hurled Osamu right. Gravity shifted as something big and fast rammed into his side and then he was falling. ‘Oh, this is it, huh?’ Osamu thought as the world tilted sideways. It figured. It just figured Atsumu’s stupid ass would be what killed him.
And that was as far as Osamu got before a bloom of white-hot pain exploded in his shoulder as he hit the concrete and his sunny Thursday afternoon went a bit dark and fuzzy around the edges for somewhere in the realm of four loops of that Mariah Carey song Atsumu used as an alarm clock from age twelve to fifteen. Osamu could put up with it for three loops before taking matters into his own hands. Four was cruel.
“Oh my god, I can’t take you anywhere!” Atsumu shouted. “I swear to god, Samu, if you just fucked our shot at the Interhigh I’m gonna lose it.”
Osamu blinked. He was sitting on the sidewalk—when did that happen? The sun was still too bright, coating a molten layer over the woozy scenery and burning holes in Osamu’s congested thoughts. His tongue felt sluggish. The last time Osamu felt anything like this was when he got his wisdom teeth out. One second he was counting down and the next he was waking up, only everything had gone on for a while without him.
Osamu blinked again. A horrible throbbing dominated the right half of his face, temple to chin. Atsumu was still bitching.
“Shut up,” Osamu meant to say, but it came out garbled like it had to fight past a mouthful of pancakes. Another blink. “M’fuckin’ shoulder hurts.”
“Oh? You’re with us, again, huh?” Atsumu snarked. “Quick, Samu, what was your freshman year gym locker combination?”
What?
“Amnesia,” Atsumu said. “Knew it.”
Osamu did not, in fact, have amnesia. Not really, not properly. He barely even had a concussion, Atsumu was such an asshole.
What Osamu did have was a massive headache and tender face, a dislocated shoulder that hurt like hell popping back into place, a hot and itchy sling to contend with, and an all-consuming, blistering need to seize—he wasn’t sure what. After smacking into that utility pole, the world around Osamu had stopped and when it came back to life, all the cogs in Osamu’s head had been shaken loose and they’d been roaming free ever since.
Osamu never had to deal with so much going on in his head before. Did walking into that pole make him smarter? Was this how smart people thought? Instead of relishing a relatively relaxed and slow-paced mental process, Osamu was now stuck with every little thought piling together into monstrous, overwhelming ordeals. One errant notion crashed into another and the next thing Osamu knew “I’m gonna tell Rin I like him,” tumbled out of his mouth.
And oh, oh that sounded perfect.
Jerking to a halt right in the middle of the sidewalk, Atsumu shot Osamu the same outraged sneer he employed whenever Osamu said something he found particularly abhorrent. Prime examples to date: I’m not going pro; I like pickles on hot dogs; overseas romcoms are overrated. Add Osamu intending to confess his longstanding crush to the list, apparently. Atsumu grabbed Osamu’s free arm and took three steps the way they came. “I’m taking you back to the doctor.”
“Why?” Osamu snarled, shaking Atsumu’s grip off and jostling an ache from his bad shoulder. The developing bruise along the right side of Osamu’s face throbbed.
“Because you don’t just admit you like Sunarin. You pine after him from afar with that dopey fuckin’ look on your face—yeah, that one, right there”—Atsumu jabbed a finger at Osamu’s face and twirled it around in a loose circle—“Every time you see him fiddling with that ugly ass Domo-kun keychain you bought him, you go so starry-eyed I wait for you start breathing glitter.”
“I didn’t buy it for him, I just happened to pick it up when I bought one for me.”
“Because they came in a set.”
Leave it to Atsumu to remember the most infuriating details. Osamu kept walking toward the dorms and refused to entertain the line of conversation any longer.
Atsumu hurried to catch up and walk alongside Osamu, dipping his head for a better look at Osamu’s face. “Why’re you suddenly talking about confessing to Sunarin anyway?”
Osamu didn’t know how to describe it. It was as if he’d been blessed with a revelation in that inky void between smacking into the telephone pole and fending off Atsumu’s amnesia claims en route to Inarizaki’s clinic. “You know that feeling like you’ve got too much crap in your head?”
"No, do you?” Atsumu asked.
“Shut up, I’m serious.”
Atsumu arched a skeptical eyebrow. “Like—what? You suddenly knocked some smarts into that head of yours?”
“Not really, it’s just—” Just that Osamu didn’t want to be left with nothing but an aching purple splotch painted down the side of his face, an immobilized arm, and a six-week sentence to the bench. He wanted to get something out of this. If it was an opportunity, if he was meant to do something with this intense focus and bevy of free time— Wasn’t that better?
“Well, good for whatever got your head out of your ass.” Atsumu shoved his hands in his pockets. “Maybe Gin will stop sobbing after practice from all the tension. People are suffering because of you two idiots, you know.”
It was one thing to call Osamu a moron—he enjoyed fighting back—but Osamu wasn’t about to tolerate such slander against his best friend-slash-secret crush. “Rin’s not an idiot, you dick.”
Atsumu blew a raspberry and fell back into step with Osamu as they climbed the steps to their dorm. He laughed under his breath when Osamu went for the door with his bad arm and let out a frustrated growl. “Just don’t choke!”
Osamu’s dorm room was on the ground floor, ostensibly shared with an unfriendly oboe first chair but Sato-kun had earned an opportunity to study overseas and Osamu was, for all intents and purposes, living in a single for the rest of the year. It was a pleasant arrangement and one Osamu considered karmic payment for a lifetime enduring a twin.
In an even greater twist of divine favor, Atsumu was stuck with an overachieving medical student hopeful who enforced study hours and wake-up calls better than their resident adviser. Atsumu didn’t always have a stickler-for-the-rules roommate. He just got caught sneaking out one too many times, first year.
Osamu rounded the corner to his hall only to find Suna sitting next to his door, legs carelessly sprawled in front of him. He was reading a volleyball magazine—looked like an issue from a couple of months back from the cover—and mindlessly gnawed on the end of a Red Vine.
“Is that mine?” Atsumu asked.
The tail of Suna’s candy smacked his chin when he jerked his head up. Instead of answering, Suna rolled up the magazine and used it to point between Osamu’s face and shoulder as he ripped a bite off his Red Vine. A concerned frown twisted Suna’s mouth as he chewed. “I only heard you had to see the doctor. You get in a fight?”
White-hot mortification flashed in Osamu’s vision. “It’s a long story.”
“It is not,” Atsumu snapped, “you walked into a pole and then lost a fight against a whole ass biker. That’s it, that’s the whole story.”
Eyes on the sling, Suna climbed to his feet and said, “Guess there goes our shot at the Interhigh, eh?”
“Don’t fuckin’ remind me.” Atsumu groaned. “Six weeks! This moron is benched for six weeks.”
“Damn.” Suna tucked his magazine into his back pocket. “How’d you walk into a pole?”
“Who even knows?” Atsumu answered before Osamu had a chance to throw him under the bus.
In a fair world, Atsumu would not be pulling this shit where he pretended it wasn’t his own damn fault and ignored that his ‘sympathy’ for Osamu’s injury was the biggest giveaway for his guilt. But, well, Osamu lived in this world. “Will you shut up for two seconds, please? It was your fault! You wandered right into the street.”
Atsumu glared. “Thought you didn’t remember what happened?”
“For the last time, I don’t have amnesia!” Could Osamu wring Atsumu’s neck with one hand? Surely it couldn’t hurt to try. “Shit’s just fuzzy, it’ll clear up!”
“Sounds an awful lot like amnesia to me,” Atsumu sang.
What a dumbass.
Suna followed the argument like a tennis match with both arms folded over his chest. “What’d coach say?”
“You remember what coach said?” Atsumu parroted to Osamu in an obnoxious, bratty tone.
Osamu did not, but he also spent seventeen years with this asshole and knew how he operated. “Fuck off, Coach wasn’t there.”
Atsumu shrugged and took a step back. Bingo.
“Now, I’ll be back in a couple of hours to check on you,” Atsumu said, trying to mask his laughter behind an overly serious tone. “I know you don’t got many brains in that head of yours but we can’t have everything scrambled. I still need you for Spring Nationals.”
“Go away.” Osamu reached out with his left fist and knocked Atsumu in the shoulder before he got too far. “I’m fine.”
“You’re full of shit is what you are,” Atsumu said, but he took a few more steps down the hall before throwing out a wave and rounding the corner.
“You really okay?” Suna’s gaze flicked up from Osamu’s sling. Tentatively, he reached out like he wanted to trace something on Osamu’s face but paused, his hand hovering between them for a drawn-out moment before he pressed forward and brushed the hair back from Osamu’s forehead to get a better look. “Looks pretty gross. It hurt?”
“Yeah, a bit.” If Osamu leaned into Suna’s touch on his face, he certainly wasn’t going to admit it with a head injury.
Suna dropped his hand and pointed at the strap of Osamu’s sling. “And this? This why you’re benched?”
“Dislocated it when I fell.” Or maybe Atsumu did it yanking Osamu around afterward. That part was still blurry. Osamu opened his door for them both to file through. “You stop by for something? Or were you just worried about me?”
“Heard you walked into a pole and almost knocked yourself out—thought Samu, concussed? Gotta see that.”
“It really was Tsumu’s fault, you know.” It was important to get that part out. Atsumu’d probably already told floors one through three his version, Osamu needed someone in his corner. It was coming back a little clearer, now. Not just Atsumu wandering off into traffic, but the pole and Osamu falling—
“Sounds about right.” Suna shifted his weight near Osamu’s door and stuck the end of his Red Vine back in his mouth for another bite. “You okay? Need anything?”
Osamu could do it now. He could tell Suna about the gooey feelings he’d been nurturing since first year, it was as good a time as any—but Suna had a worried groove carved between his eyebrows and the wind was falling out of Osamu’s sails by the second. “I’m alright. Just really tired all of a sudden.”
“Samu, we’re friends,” Suna said with mock sternness. “Just tell me to go the fuck away so you can sleep.”
“Then go away.” Laughing stretched Osamu’s face in a way it hadn’t since bludgeoning himself with that two-for-one utility pole-bike combo. A wave of dizziness washed over him; like his head was stuck in his chest and his chest was laying forgotten on the sidewalk down by the arcade.
Maybe Atsumu was right and Osamu’s brains really were scrambled.
Suna gave Osamu a two-fingered salute and pulled the door open. “Yessir. Lemme know if you need anything. I can’t promise I’ll be a good nurse, but I can guarantee I’ll be better than Tsumu.”
A vision of Suna in scrubs feeding him soup while Atsumu wept apologies from the corner bloomed to life. Oh. Osamu would enjoy that.
“I’m just gonna go.” Suna laughed, one hand on the door frame. “Rest up.”
“Yeah, see ya,” Osamu said, staring at the closed door long after Suna left.
Osamu spent most of his morning wondering why anyone dared to tell him off for his poor penmanship when he had to learn history from Fujiwara-san, whose scrawl was more a suggestion than actual words. The swish of Naru-chan’s ponytail as she thrust her hand in the air to answer questions took up a bit of his math lesson. The birds fluttering in the sun outside took up the rest.
Afternoon classes were slightly less boring. Osamu spent most of them twirling his pen, trying to figure out how to flip it around like a baton without being too obvious. He kept going too fast and getting caught at the end. How was anyone’s thumb supposed to bend that way? Twice, he managed a clumsy twirl that sent his pen flying and got told off for not paying attention. Osamu didn’t care much. He’d never been a good student, anyway.
Not a full minute after the last bell, Atsumu and Ginjima strolled into Osamu’s classroom. Ginjima had his backpack hitched high and a tired expression. Atsumu bounced on his heels and sang “checks!” with the enthusiasm of an overly chipper health aide.
Cocking a hip against the vacant desk behind Ginjima and to Osamu’s right, Atsumu wagged his phone at Osamu and in a low, spooky voice said, “Follow this with your eyes.”
“Cut it out.” Osamu swatted Atsumu away.
“No way, you got that dopey ass look on your face again,” Atsumu said. “Gotta know if it’s you being you or you having a”—he glanced at his phone—“traumatic brain injury. Or is this you daydreaming about following through on your whole confession thing?”
“Who’s confessing?” Ginjima asked.
“Samu, to Sunarin,” Atsumu said like he couldn’t believe the absurdity falling out of his mouth.
“Finally!” Ginjima groaned. “You two have been driving me crazy and it’s not like Suna’s ever gonna say anything.”
Wouldn’t that be something, though? For one glorious moment, all the chaos in Osamu’s head molded into a sweeping panorama of Suna, holding both of Osamu’s hands in his, emotion welling in his eyes, mouth curving around various four-letter words.
It ignited in Osamu’s chest all over again, just like on the walk home yesterday. “I am gonna.”
This was fate. It was a sign. Osamu was meant to confess. Why else would he have spent all night enduring fitful dreams of climbing mountainous utility poles trying to reach Suna perched at the top, sun beating down overhead, with his phone in the air like he had poor signal? Over and over Osamu’s right arm went paralyzed as he climbed. Twice, he jerked awake with the sensation he was falling clenched in his stomach and his stupid dislocated shoulder protesting the weird position he’d contorted into while he dreamed.
Atsumu fell into Osamu’s classmate’s desk, kicked his legs, and laughed. “Nuh-uh, no way. If you were gonna do something, you’d’ve done it that night I caught you two sitting on top of that picnic table down by the 7-eleven after Kita’s graduation party.”
Osamu and Suna had a lot of moments sitting on that picnic table, but that one had fizzed with possibilities and nostalgia. Osamu vividly remembered the chill, Suna’s mussed hair from three rounds of getting passed between Kita, Aran, and Akagi for vigorous hugging, and the warmth blooming in his chest watching Kita and his Grandma Yumi make happy plans for a future enriched by but not revolving around high school sports. The future was simple and Osamu’s feelings for Suna were crystal clear. And Osamu absolutely, one-hundred-percent would have told Suna so, if Atsumu hadn’t barged onto the scene like a bleached-blond gorilla and ruined everything.
Atsumu’s fingers snapped a centimeter from the bridge of Osamu’s nose. “Unbelievable. You see what I have to deal with? Walkin’ into poles, crashing bikers, ruining our chances at the Interhigh—”
“For the last time, that was your fault.” Osamu would be happier as an only child. He would.
“Oh yeah? Go ahead, tell us what happened. Just stop skipping the part where you thought you saw Suna across the street and completely zoned out.”
The memory rushed back with mortifying clarity: Osamu’s leaping heart when he thought he spied Suna across the street; how distracted he’d been when he grabbed the back of Atsumu’s shirt; the way that lamp post came out of nowhere and he’s still not sure how that bike even hit him. But still— “You’re the one who walked out into traffic!”
Atsumu stared back, unblinkingly, then grinned like he’d been waiting for this moment his whole life. “Yeah, I did. Because the light was green.”
Fuck. Was Osamu the one acting like an oblivious moron?
In three lilting bursts, Atsumu crooned, “Am-ne-sia,” at the exact moment the classroom door behind him slid open to reveal Suna.
Osamu kicked Atsumu in the shin and hissed, “Shut up.”
Suna twisted his way between the desks and expertly dodged a half-hearted jab from Atsumu before snagging the desk in front of Osamu. He sat backwards, straddling the chair. “What’re you still doing here? Thought you were gonna go look for frogs by the river.”
“We are.” Ginjima smacked Atsumu in the shoulder twice then grabbed his arm. “We’re going right now, actually.”
Atsumu rolled his eyes but let Ginjima manhandle him out of his borrowed desk. “I’d ask if you wanna come along but Samu had something he wanted to talk to you about.”
Shut up, shut up, shut up. Maybe Osamu could explode Atsumu’s head with all this newfound brainpower. That was a twin thing, right?
Ginjima snickered and hitched his backpack higher. “Good luck, Samu. I believe in you. And for the love of god please, please put us out of our misery.”
Osamu threw a middle finger at the both of them but only got snarky waves and kissy noises back. They lingered in the hall, perfectly in sight and obviously watching. Osamu flipped them off again, this time under his desk where Suna couldn’t see.
“Oh my god, what is this?” Suna asked as he picked up Osamu’s notebook. He flipped it upside-down and held it as far away as he could, scratching his chin with his free hand. “You studying Greek now?”
“Shut up.” Osamu grabbed his worthless notes back. “You try writing boring shit about math with the wrong hand.”
“No worries. I majored in ‘incomprehensible Miya scrawl.’ Left-handed? This is like the ultimate challenge.” Suna slipped Osamu’s notebook out of his grip and snagged the pen laying on his desk.
“What’re you doing?” Osamu asked around a nervous frog in his throat.
“Fixing your notes.” Suna glanced up through his lashes with a lop-sided smile and started to untangle Osamu’s notes. His writing was twice as neat as Osamu had ever seen it. Osamu’s heart felt warm just watching.
“I—” Osamu didn’t know what to say, so he settled on, “Thanks.”
“Sure.” Suna snorted. “What do the rest look like?”
“I can read ‘em.” A lie; there were no other notes.
“So, somewhere between nonexistent and illegible?” Suna shot an amused grin Osamu’s way. Osamu desperately tried to think of anything other than his fluffy hair and soft-looking lips but every thought in his head had suddenly teamed up to tempt him. “Guess I’ll have to help you sort those out, too.”
“The horror,” Osamu said, dry and sarcastic around the lump in his throat.
Suna’s smile only widened. “Guess you’ll owe me one, huh?”
“Consider yourself added to the lunch routine.” This could work out in his favor. Suna had a garbage diet but was weirdly reluctant to let Osamu pack his lunches unless there was a reason for it.
“Have I mentioned you’re my favorite?” Suna asked.
And Osamu couldn’t say why, but the obvious next step was to say, “I love you,” so that’s what he did. Then those cogs rattling around in his head tumbled into a weird alignment and before he knew it, Osamu’s tongue slapped “man” on the end in a fit of blind, instantaneous panic.
Out in the hall, Ginjima wailed, “NO!” long and drawn out, like he’d just had the new Spider-Man spoiled all over again.
Suna—ignoring Ginjima’s dramatics and apparently most of what came out of Osamu’s mouth, too—let loose a quiet chuckle. “Love you, too, man.”
Osamu endured a soul-deep longing to throw himself on the floor next to Ginjima and weep.
Okay, take two.
Osamu was ready this time. He was wearing his lucky hat, he had cash in his wallet, and he had expertly escaped Atsumu’s ‘supervision’ by telling him the drama club was working on a mystery production and wanted to know how he got his hair that lovely shade of yellow. By the time Osamu’s phone buzzed with two lines of middle fingers, he was long gone. Some guilt lingered for using Atsumu’s vanity as a weapon but only because a few minutes later Atsumu added ‘he’ll say it back so just fuckin say it’ in a rare bout of empathy that stewed the whole way downtown.
The only thing Osamu didn’t have was a plan but he had to be overthinking it. This was the universe’s will, after all. It was fate. The right words would come to him.
Being back at the arcade felt like returning to the scene of the crime. The pole was still there and Osamu could imagine that tuft of too-light-brown hair across the street with brutal clarity. Some déjà vu churned in Osamu’s head along with the churning wariness of alarm bells going off two minutes too late.
Suna was right where they agreed to meet by the air hockey tables.
And so was Aran, who Osamu didn’t even realize was in town. The cruelty of the universe seemed to know no bounds.
Osamu would have turned right around and gone back to his dorm, but the cruelty of the universe had other ideas.
“Osamu!” Aran shouted loud enough for the entire prefecture to hear. “I heard you brutally maimed yourself and destroyed all of your saintly brother’s chances for national—no, wait—international glory at the Interhigh!”
Fleeing would only validate Atsumu’s ridiculous, exaggerated stories. “That fuckwad still won’t admit he’s the one who just walked out into the street.”
On a green light, the traitorous hoard in Osamu’s head reminded him. Osamu brutally disregarded it. All the overthinking did was cause problems. Look at him, now: poised to confess to Suna and here Aran was, back in town for the first time in months screwing it all up. The universe was out to get him. Osamu was being punished for that time with the slingshot and water balloons.
“I’m not really motivated to get in the middle of whatever pissing match you two are in the middle of,” Aran said.
A fair stance if Osamu wanted to be honest. Too bad he didn’t.
“What brings you to town?” Suna asked, neatly angling the conversation in a less contentious direction.
“Here to surprise my brother for his birthday,” Aran said. “He has no idea, so it should be pretty fun. You guys wanna come?”
“Sure,” Suna said.
Osamu plastered a smile on his face and agreed, silently cursing Aran and his terrible timing.
Osamu met Suna two days before first-year classes started at Inarizaki High at the park across the street from the only convenience store in town that stocked Osamu’s favorite flavor of Pocky. The sun perched high overhead, beating down the sort of early spring yellow that made the grass look greener and put thoughts of the beach and sunglasses in mind. One toe out the door and the illusion of warmth was shattered. Osamu always spent March debating whether or not to run back inside for a hoodie.
Fresh off a run, Pocky in hand, Osamu stepped out of the convenience store and was immediately besieged by the sight of a lanky brunette standing atop the picnic table across the street. He looked about Osamu’s age, dressed in a pair of torn-up jeans and a snug-fitting Domo-kun t-shirt. The guy stared at his phone with a perplexed frown as he turned in a slow circle, glancing up now and then to check his surroundings.
Two years later, Osamu still couldn’t imagine a better introduction to Suna.
Pedestrians gave Suna suspicious looks but no one stopped to ask what he was doing. Osamu probably wouldn’t have, either, but that picnic table was where he sat the whole past week while he enjoyed his Pocky before turning around to run back to the Inarizaki dorms and Osamu was nothing if not a creature of habit. And a secret enjoyer of Domo-kun.
Striking up a conversation with Suna was easy. Osamu waxed poetic about his chocolate banana cream Pocky and Suna seethed over how proper streets should be laid out in a grid. They popped back into the convenience store because Osamu was more willing to buy a second pack of Pocky than sacrifice any of his, and the rest was history. That picnic table became theirs and Osamu had company on his morning runs ever since. Whenever it was that cold sort of sunny out, Suna would remind Osamu to grab a hoodie, and even if Suna carefully wound his way through every snack option in the convenience store, Osamu always walked out the door with a pack of chocolate banana cream Pocky.
Osamu thought about confessing on a run. Or from between the aisles of the convenience store while Suna held different brands of crackers in each hand and debated the merits of each only to buy neither. He thought about standing on the picnic table like Suna was the day they met and shouting it up to the heavens. Somewhere around his third frantic run-through of how that would go down, Osamu started feeling caged in by the quiet of his room and chaos spiraling in his head.
A whim fluttered in Osamu’s calves and fingers. He’d skipped practice. No running until he wanted to fall over, no serve drills until he thought his arm would fall off—how was Osamu supposed to deal with this every day? Getting benched for six weeks was a lot more real with a whole practice’s worth of energy vibrating in his legs. Osamu stared out his first-floor window at the burnt orange sunset smothering the lawn behind the dorms. It wasn’t curfew yet. Maybe what Osamu needed was another run.
Osamu’s routine hadn’t changed much since first year. Run east until he hit the 7-eleven. Grab a box of Pocky and stare at the brunette atop the picnic table across the street.
This time, Suna was sitting with both feet planted on the bench, legs spread without worry. He hunched over, both forearms resting on his thighs and something shiny dangling between his fingers. A few steps closer and Osamu recognized it as the Domo-kun keychain he’d given Suna back at the beginning of second year.
As a joke. Because they came as a set. Because Osamu saw it and couldn’t stop thinking about how much Suna would like it and why not? Osamu liked Domo-kun, too.
They’d had a lot of moments here. From talking court strategy to telling the stories of their first kisses to sharing hopes for futures they didn’t feel ready for everyone to know about. Suna was the first person Osamu told about his restaurant dream. Atsumu knew, but in the way Atsumu knew things about Osamu without being explicitly told. Osamu brought it up twice and ever since, Atsumu kept careful watch, right up until a day a little later, in May, when Osamu felt courageous enough to start filling out applications.
It always felt like Suna was the first, though, sitting on the picnic table on the night of Kita’s graduation party.
Osamu ran his thumb over the edges of the matching keychain in his pocket and decided he liked the idea of this being the right time—of his little incident with the utility pole meaning something and having a greater purpose than just to serve as a mortifying ordeal Atsumu could bring up for the rest of their lives.
“Shouldn’t even be surprised,” Osamu said once he was close enough he didn’t need to shout.
Suna startled, but when he whirled around to face Osamu, he had a broad smile on his face.
“Oh, hey,” Suna said, sounding pleasantly surprised. He scooted toward one end of the table to make room for Osamu to sit, too, and tucked his keys back in his pocket. “Escape your keeper? Such a bad boy.”
“I’m brutally injured, too. Ran all the way here against Doctor’s orders. Have it on good authority that might be downright reckless.”
Suna sat facing Osamu better, one leg resting on the table between them as he leaned back on a palm. “Ah, well happy to protect you from big, bad Atsumu. Unless you just want to hang out here for a bit. Or we could run away together. Really kick up your rebellious streak.”
“Yeah? Where would we go?”
Head tilted toward the starry expanse above, Suna said, “Not sure. Where would you want to go?”
One of those thoughts banging around in Osamu’s head slipped out. “I wanna see where you grew up.”
“Nagoya?” Suna asked. “How come?”
Osamu felt settled. A calm certainty curled in from beyond the streetlights. Maybe Osamu was thinking too hard about this after all. Wouldn’t that just figure—he went from totally empty-headed to having his brain crammed so full he felt like he’d burst and neither extreme did him any good. Nothing was ever so complicated with Suna. Never had been.
“Because I’m kind of in love with you.”
Suna stared for a moment before a pleased smile curled over his mouth. “Oh? I guess I can sort of see the appeal. I mostly like Hyogo because of how I’m kind of in love with you.” A smirk. “Man.”
“Oh, god.” Osamu shoved Suna’s shoulder only for Suna to grab hold of his wrist like he knew it was coming and tug. “If you really loved me, you’d forget that ever happened.”
And then Suna’s lips brush Osamu’s and warmth shot to the depths of Osamu’s stomach. It was, somehow, every bit as amazing as Osamu had imagined. Suna tasted sweet and bold. He moved with confidence, settling his hand on Osamu’s good shoulder and inviting him closer with the careful drag of his mouth. It was so marvelous being allowed to touch, to finally have fantasies rushing free under his fingertips and cascading over his lips.
“Don’t worry about it.” Suna’s murmur was warm ghosting over Osamu’s mouth and cheeks. His hand laid heavy on the back of Osamu’s neck. “I think I’ve been kind of in love with you ever since that day we met and you refused to share your Pocky with me. I’ve been trying to figure out how to say something but—well, you know.”
“Since we met?” Osamu’s voice came out thick. They could have been kissing all this time? From day one?
“Don’t give me that look,” Suna said. “You didn’t say anything, either.”
“Never felt like the right time.” Or maybe Osamu just needed all his clutter knocked loose and shaken about before it was clear there was no such thing.
Suna’s hands came to rest on top of Osamu’s tracing idle patterns along the ridges in Suna’s jeans. Quietly, Suna asked, “And now’s the right time? What changed?”
“Hit my head and decided to go for it. Look, we can talk about it all we want later, but I’m really tired of thinking so much. It’s exhausting.”
“Maybe we should hit you in the head again.” Suna snickered. “Quiet things back down.”
Osamu genuinely thought about it for around half a second before Suna’s lips crashed back into his and did a much better job of chasing away every distracting thought Osamu had been battling for days. Suna’s lips were every bit as soft the second time around. His jeans still felt incredible under Osamu’s fingers.
“This works, instead,” Osamu muttered. “This is better.”
Suna hummed a quiet little assent. “Meant to be.”