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“We’re gonna be late, Miya.”
From Kiyoomi’s bathroom, Atsumu yells, “Ya can’t rush perfection, Omi-kun.”
“Good, then I can rush you .”
Atsumu swings the door open to give Kiyoomi a glare, but the force of it is mellowed out by the fact that he only has one of his eyes lined in black. Still, Atsumu wields the eyepencil in what should probably be a threatening manner to tell Kiyoomi, “If the light in yer bathroom wasn’t this good, I’d storm right outta here, but I don’t want my eyeliner to be uneven so ya should kick yerself out instead.”
That’s perfect Atsumu logic, Kiyoomi thinks. “No,” he says, and has half a mind to turn off the light in his bathroom. Atsumu makes him want to act childish like that.
Sometimes, Kiyoomi questions his own sanity for having Atsumu as one of his best friends. He couldn’t even admit it to himself until Wakatoshi remarked how well they get along, at which point Kiyoomi hissed, shit , downed his wine and failed to push back the mental image of Motoya and his gremlin grin going, “You and Miya-kun have gotten rather chummy, haven’t you?”
“Ya know what, Omi-kun, suit yerself,” Atsumu rambles on as he returns to staring at the mirror and carefully swiping the eyeliner along his other eyelid. “Yer gonna walk in there with someone looking hot and at the end of the night, ya still always go home with me.”
“Don’t put it like that,” Kiyoomi sighs, because Atsumu and him will always walk out of the party together, but they’ll never make it back to Kiyoomi’s bed, as all too many people seem to assume. Instead, they crash on his couch, where they fight over cushions and over which random Friends episode to put on. “I’m calling dibs on the alpaca plushie today,” Kiyoomi smirks.
“Oh man,” Atsumu sighs, his empty hand curling into a fist around thin air. “Knew I shoulda’ve called my dibs as soon as I walked in. Fine, but I’m havin’ the cloud plushie.”
“Deal,” Kiyoomi says.
Atsumu caps his pencil and sticks it back in his makeup pouch, swirling on his heels and raising an eyebrow as he asks, “So?”
“So?” Kiyoomi repeats, deadpan.
Atsumu rolls his eyes, but it’s a practiced back and forth. “How do I look, Omi-kun?”
“Decent,” Kiyoomi shrugs. Atsumu sighs, exasperated. “Why the leather pants?”
“Cuz they make my ass look great,” Atsumu says, like that’s obvious. Kiyoomi just gives him an unimpressed look. “It’s okay Omi-kun, I know yer not big on art.”
“You do know that I own art books. There’s a Picasso one on my nightstand.”
“ Ya clean up nicely, Miya. Thanks, Omi-kun, same, ” Atsumu mocks, “Is that so hard to say?”
“Ah, so you think I clean up nicely,” Kiyoomi smirks, adjusting his button-up.
Atsumu grabs his makeup pouch off the shelf and storms into the hallway, grabbing his shoes off the rack like they’ve offended him even more than Kiyoomi just has. “Ya know what, let’s just go. We’re gonna run late.”
“I wonder why,” Kiyoomi mutters, but follows Atsumu into the hallway anyway. As Atsumu’s shrugging into his coat, Kiyoomi takes in his whole outfit – the dress shoes. The dramatic white blouse with bell sleeves, tucked into his leather pants in that way that looks intentionally careless. (Kiyoomi knows Atsumu always spends an extra five minutes after flushing to arrange the creases just so). The way Atsumu combed back his hair. The subtle eyeliner that Sakusa thought only Suna modelling for Dior could pull off.
“Hey,” he says. Atsumu looks up at him with an arched eyebrow, then at Kiyoomi’s shoes, still resting on their shelf in the rack – the equivalent of clicking his tongue and complaining about missing his dramatically timed entrance. Kiyoomi notices that he even took the time to touch the ends of his brows. “You clean up nicely, Miya.”
Atsumu looks back up at him slowly. Nothing in his face betrays surprise. Because Atsumu’s never been able to hide how he feels, though, a lazy smirk spreads over his face as he says, “Thanks, Omi-kun.” And then, after a meaningful pause, “Same.”
Kiyoomi has the unsettling feeling that Atsumu knows what that means. He feels like he’s on the cusp of tasting it, too, but then the entrance door opens to let in a gust of cold wind and Atsumu says, “Shall we?”
Kiyoomi follows him into the January night.
🥃🥃🥃
Bars are loud.
“Of course they are, Omi-kun,” Atsumu chuckles, nudging him inside with a hand on his lower back. “Kuroo rented the place out today tho, so it’s just us. Shouldn’t be any louder than practice.”
Kiyoomi can feel himself frown as he unhooks his mask. He can already see someone in the corner of his eye, waving at them with so little restraint that he’s probably endangering everyone’s drinks within arm’s reach. The rules of entropy dictate that it’s Motoya. The same scientists that saw chaos and decided to give it a pretty name like entropy also decided that like attracts like , so of course Atsumu waves right back and pushes Kiyoomi towards that table.
Motoya is baring his wolfish, toothy grin. Atsumu’s hand is still burning into Kiyoomi’s lower back. The more he tries to act like he can’t feel it, the wider Motoya grins. “How many beers in are you?” he bites out.
“Kiyo, I got here literally five minutes ago,” Motoya whines. Then, turning to Atsumu, “We’ll beat you guys next time.”
Atsumu’s eyes sparkle around Motoya the same way they do around Hinata. “I’d like to see you try,” he smirks. The place where his hand leaves Kiyoomi’s back feels ice cold.
“I need a drink,” Kiyoomi mumbles.
Bars are loud, but Atsumu hears him anyway. It’s annoying in the same way that Atsumu knowing the lyrics to all of Kiyoomi’s favourite songs and singing them perfectly on beat on their way to the gym is. It reminds Kiyoomi of getting out of bed and smelling fried eggs and coffee and knowing there will be a cup of sencha waiting for him on the dining table without even walking into the kitchen.
It’s why, when Atsumu slides him a whiskey on the rocks and then bounces over to bother Ojiro, Kiyoomi only nods minutely and proceeds to take a ridiculously big gulp.
Suna slides into the seat opposite Kiyoomi and arches an eyebrow. “You lost the service ace contest against Atsumu or what?” he says, tapping his glass. “You look downright pissy, Sakusa.”
“This is my normal face,” Kiyoomi stresses.
“Nah, Suna’s right,” Motoya says, like the traitor that wants to be taken out of the family will that he is. Kiyoomi considers messaging his mother and asking for a meeting with their family’s lawyer so he can hash out said will and force Motoya to inherit his fanny bag collection, especially the neon yellow one that Motoya absolutely despises. “You look more sour than your usual I hate the universe mood.”
Kiyoomi doesn’t hate the universe – he specifically only hates Atsumu, whose eyes are once again sparkling as he latches onto Ojiro’s arm and throws his head back laughing. He hates the way his shirt rides up his back with every stretch. He hates the ice clinking around in his own tumbler, taunting Kiyoomi about drinking too fast, too soon, too early into this party that he has to attend before he can crash onto his couch and pretend to be bothered by how loudly Atsumu laughs at Joey, Chandler and their birds.
He hates the knowing look Motoya gives him, too.
“I don’t want to be here,” Kiyoomi grumbles.
“Because you could be home with Atsumu?” Suna teases, swirling his glass around.
“Because I barely tolerate any of you,” Kiyoomi snaps.
“You know,” Suna drawls out, still spinning the wine glass in one hand, “most of us can see through you.” When Suna’s eyes aren’t casually lazy, they’re uncomfortably piercing. “How have you managed to convince yourself that Atsumu can’t?”
Kiyoomi takes another sip of his drink, and the ice cubes roll alongside the wall of the tumbler and bump into his upper lip. Because he can still feel Suna’s stare on him, he flags down the bartender and orders another bourbon whiskey.
Because Suna is one of most of us , he pushes on, “Just because Osamu and Atsumu are twins, it doesn’t mean they’re the same, but Osamu doesn’t like fancy dates. We usually stay in and watch a shitty movie, and then we meme the hell out of it. Sometimes we play video games. Sometimes Osamu just cooks and tells me funny stories from the shop.”
There’s no subtlety there, and Kiyoomi appreciates that Suna doesn’t pretend to veil his words, either. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I’d like to be able to unblock Atsumu’s number. He’s occasionally entertaining,” Suna says, and gets up before Kiyoomi can wrap his head around it.
“Well,” Motoya says, mouth curled around his straw.
The bartender sets another tumbler in front of Kiyoomi. The ice cubes have barely changed their size by the time Kiyoomi empties the glass and gets up.
🥃🥃🥃
The rules of entropy were established in seventh grade, when Kiyoomi’s chemistry teacher introduces the concept to them, and Kiyoomi finds himself starstruck by the word. Imagine giving chaos such a pretty name , Kiyoomi thinks.
According to his chemistry teacher, as well as all the books Kiyoomi could find on the subject, nature loves entropy. Any system will try to maximize its degree of chaos and randomness, Kiyoomi reads. He closes the book and thinks, I must be an anomaly. Then he starts looking around.
When Kiyoomi isn’t alone, he is usually with Motoya, who is chaos reincarnated. Motoya is so loud and free with the movements he makes, so eager to learn flying laps and run around the court that Kiyoomi thinks the universe forgot they’d be born only a few months apart and poured all of its degrees of freedom into Motoya.
And nature loves Motoya – he gets along with everyone. Adults love him; classmates find him funny and relatable; their coach tells him he should be a libero because he excels at chasing the ball. He forgets his umbrella home and walks alongside Kiyoomi in the rain, because he says the water feels nice on his skin – he never catches a cold. He feeds the vending machine five of his coins and closes his eyes before randomly pressing a button – he somehow always gets the sweetest drinks.
The rules of entropy state that Motoya will always be chaotic enough to spare Kiyoomi the needless brownian movement, so they stick close. With Kiyoomi, Motoya is a bit more settled – he actually looks at the ramen shop menu before ordering, and he puts on a scarf in winter. With Motoya, Kiyoomi tries out new drinks, and then decides that they all still suck. It works for them, this calculated chaos that comes with sharing a bloodline.
Then in his first year of high school, Kiyoomi meets Miya Atsumu, and finds himself once again thinking, Imagine giving chaos such a pretty name.
It only goes downhill from there.
🥃🥃🥃
Bokuto sits down in front of Kiyoomi with a can of beer in his hand and the first three buttons of his shirt undone. “You having fun, Omi-Omi?” he says, too loud, too big, and just enough for Kiyoomi to know that Bokuto has barely drank at all.
“Do I look like I’m having fun?” Kiyoomi replies, tilting his head to the side. Two tables over, Atsumu’s prodding Kuroo for something – knowing Atsumu, it’s either an autograph from Kenma or dibs on a rematch with Oikawa. Maybe both.
Bokuto, who’s good at concealing his perceptive nature behind his loud voice, is not good at concealing the way he follows Kiyoomi’s stare. Kiyoomi’s been unpacking the collection of earnestly laid-out truths that Bokuto is for the past two years – Bokuto’s had slippers at his place for the past year – so he knows there’s more to it when his friend casually shrugs. “Dunno, you look like you’d be having more fun if you were with Tsum-Tsum.”
Kiyoomi raises his hand, but Bokuto orders before he can even open his mouth, “He’ll have a glass of water and a serving of gyoza. And I want a cocktail.”
“Which cocktail?” the bartender asks.
“Any cocktail,” Bokuto says, with his megawatt smile. “Oh, or maybe all the cocktails into one?! That sounds cool, right Omi?” The bartender looks like he’s about ready to bring Bokuto an entire bottle of water.
Bokuto, Kiyoomi knows, is nowhere near being drunk.
Kiyoomi reaches for his bag and draws out a tiny flip bag with the logo of Onigiri Miya on it – a Christmas present from Osamu. The chopsticks inside are a gift from Atsumu. The grin Bokuto gives him is so lacking in malice that Kiyoomi can’t do anything but let his head fall against the table and groan. “This is pathetic,” he says.
“Nah,” Bokuto says. “Feelings are fun.”
What part of this is fun, Kiyoomi wants to say, but those words teeter on the verge of a confession. Even as the food arrives and Kiyoomi stuffs a gyoza in his mouth with the chopsticks Atsumu chose for him (they’re made of bamboo wood and have tiny sakura flowers carved along the edges), the churning in his stomach doesn’t settle.
“ Fun doesn’t mean easy .”
“Hm?”
“My first coach used to say that. ‘ Think about what’s fun, not about what’s easy.’ Getting blocked isn’t fun, so you can’t get lazy about spiking if you wanna have a blast on the court. Feelings aren’t easy, but they can be fun if you face them head-on,” Bokuto shrugs, like he hasn’t just ordered Kiyoomi food and made him tilt his head to the other side. “What?”
“It’s just – I don’t half-ass things.”
“I know,” Bokuto says around the rim of his newly found blue cocktail. Kiyoomi does not want to know what’s in that.
“I don’t do things in half-measures,” Kiyoomi repeats, “so I won’t be able to hold back once I say something out loud, and that might–” Kiyoomi catches himself and stuffs another gyoza in his mouth. “And it’s embarrassing,” he mutters.
Of course Bokuto still hears him, laughing so hard that the table shakes with him, and with it, Kiyoomi and his Miya-trademarked chopsticks. When he calms down somewhat, he manages to wheeze out, “You know Tsum-Tsum, probably better than any of us. Do you really think anything would change?”
Kiyoomi groans.
Bokuto laughs again. This time, Kiyoomi picks the chopsticks off the plate to make sure they don’t fall onto the table. “Yknow, Akaashi likes complicating these things, too. Did you know it took six months after I asked him to go on a date with me until he said yes?” This is news to Kiyoomi, and it must show. “Yeah,” Bokuto nods, looking awfully fond, “said he wasn’t sure if he liked me in the same way I liked him, and didn’t want to hurt me.”
Kiyoomi presses the pads of his fingers into the carved sakura flowers and closes his eyes. “And how did he… know?”
“He didn’t,” Bokuto smiles. “Wow, Omi, I should take a picture of the face you’re making now.”
“What do you mean he didn’t?!” Kiyoomi seethes. In his mind, Bokuto and Akaashi are more of a married couple than his own parents, even though they’re not yet wearing the matching rings. They do groceries together, though, and Bokuto opens the jars while Akaashi opens the fizzy drinks, and they wake up to each other, unkempt hair and eyebags and crumpled pajamas. Kiyoomi thinks that’s it , at the end of the line.
“I mean,” Bokuto says around his blue straw with his blue alcoholic drink that may or may not be all the cocktails , “this isn’t science. He just came up to me one day and said that if wanting to treat me well and thinking about what I’m doing so often isn’t love, then he shouldn’t study literature. And I told him he should, because he’s really good at metaphors, and then we held hands.”
“You,” Kiyoomi grits out, “are so infuriating, Bokuto-san.”
“So just tell Tsum-Tsum,” Bokuto marches on, unphased. “If you’re agonizing over it this much, then the embarrassing thing you don’t want to say is probably the truth.”
Kiyoomi flags down the bartender again, because this is simply too much. He might need one of Bokuto’s blue drinks if people keep getting up in his business tonight.
“Just so you know,” Bokuto says, pinching one of the gyoza in between his fingers and beaming when Kiyoomi offers a defeated nod. “There’s nothing embarrassing about being human,” he says in between bites.
🥃🥃🥃
Two-and-a-half-drinks Kiyoomi is a fucking emotionally intelligent genius.
As he finally allows the ice cubes to do their job and melt , Kiyoomi considers feelings ( ew ), because, despite popular belief, Sakusa Kiyoomi doesn’t necessarily like being alone. It’s just that sometimes the clutter in his mind is so loud that being around others is unbearable, especially if they think they can fix the clutter.
The longer he is alone, the easier it is to see himself as the outsider – this person who can recognize an inside joke, but not what it means, who has said no to so many outings that the invites now by-pass him completely. The more he feels like an outsider, the louder the clutter gets, and the easier it is to be alone. It’s a vicious circle woven with stubbornness and tied together with anxiety at the seams.
Atsumu is good at untying everything: Kiyoomi’s Oxford shoes, which he tied three times over because he bought them when his joints were throbbing, so he asked for a bigger size to allow his swollen feet some breathing room. The pretty bow his grandmother tied on the Sencha tea package, which Kiyoomi has been purposefully avoiding, because he could never master the art of tying a bow as prettily as she did. The knot in Kiyoomi’s back after a particularly rough practice, which not even the hot steam of the shower can soothe.
The string of anxiety tying up all of his pent-up feelings.
Miya Atsumu rushes into Kiyoomi’s life in the winter of his fourteenth year and unties everything around and inside him over the next ten years.
🥃🥃🥃
Atsumu checks in on him towards the end of Kiyoomi’s third drink, just as he’s idly chatting with Ojiro about the latest reality show that they’re both caught up on – Ojiro courtesy of the Miya twins, Kiyoomi because of his sister.
“What’s with all the drinkin’ tonight, Omi-kun?”
“It’s not like I’m driving,” Kiyoomi says, sipping at his whiskey to prove a point. And then, because three glasses of whiskey do muddle the clutter a little, “Were you counting my drinks?”
“Aren’t I the best setter? Always on the lookout for my spikers,” Atsumu declares, a hand placed dramatically over his heart.
“You’ve spent too much time with Kuroo-san.”
Kiyoomi cracks a smile at the offended look on Atsumu’s face, and actually giggles when it melts into shock and then something almost fond . It’s weird, because Atsumu’s face is pulled into a cocky grin on all billboards and volleyball magazines, but Kiyoomi knows this look very well – the “you’ve just cracked a horrible joke but that’s awfully endearing” look. The “I want to reach out and hold your hand” look. The “I want to ruin you” look.
Sometimes, it doesn’t feel like he’s projecting, but then Atsumu plasters on the fake smile he has perfected to avoid intrusive interview questions and takes a step back, and Kiyoomi snaps out of it.
Three-drinks-in Kiyoomi can admit that they’re somewhat of what people would call best friends. If that means he gets Atsumu in his life forever, then he’ll take it.
🥃🥃🥃
A list of irredeemable truths, which Kiyoomi redeems four drinks in:
Regardless of how much he bitches that he got stuck with the piss-yellow round cushion ( why didya buy it in the first place, then? ) and that they’re rewatching The One Where Everyone Finds Out for what must be the eleventh time, Atsumu will still push his toes under Kiyoomi’s thigh, and Kiyoomi will still let him. Kiyoomi will let Atsumu not-at-all-subtly switch their cushions, and he will pretend not to notice it because Atsumu also pretends not to notice him sniffing the material with a buried smile into the velvet cover. They’ll eat Atsumu’s favourite shitty chips, and Kiyoomi will make ume tea with it to placebo himself into thinking they’re not eating actual junk. He’ll curl himself up under a throw blanket and his joints won’t hurt.
Kiyoomi hates winter.
Atsumu actually looks hot with eyeliner on, and the leather jeans do make his ass look good, and Kiyoomi kind of wants to pull off Atsumu’s carefully creased shirt and mark him all over. He also just kind of wants to dress Atsumu in one of his hoodies and cuddle him the whole day. He wants to stop thinking about it, but whenever Atsumu laughs, Kiyoomi wants to swallow up the sound, see if it’s just as filling as it sounds.
Kiyoomi hates winter, but Atsumu will always lend him a scarf, even though Kiyoomi has a whole drawer full of them.
Sometimes, Kiyoomi wishes Atsumu gushed over him the same way he does over Hinata or Ojiro. It’s an ugly feeling, so he shoves it deep down in the box of unwanted emotions and tries dusting it off as rarely as possible. Sometimes he wishes Atsumu wouldn’t talk to anyone but him – those are the days he barely talks to Atsumu at all.
Kiyoomi hates winter, because the cold hurts his joints, so Atsumu always waits in front of his door with pocket warmers and stuffs them into Kiyoomi’s hands and into the hood of his jacket. Because he’s a human furnace, Atsumu hovers around him in the parking lot, or pretends to read something on Kiyoomi’s phone over his shoulder just so that he can press against his back.
Kiyoomi might just be in love with Miya Atsumu and tipsy enough to not care about the consequences.
“Your hair is stupid,” he says, because four-and-two-thirds-drinks Kiyoomi apparently has no filter and has lost the eloquence of four-drinks Kiyoomi.
Atsumu arches an amused eyebrow. “What?”
He has that fond look on his face again, the one that makes Kiyoomi think he won’t lose his best friend if he were to be embarrassingly human right now.
Maybe that’s why he repeats, “Your hair is stupid.” Atsumu looks like he’s about to laugh. “Your teeth too, when you smile like so . Makes me want to make you laugh.”
“Omi,” Atsumu says, smiling like so.
“Your laugh is stupid,” Kiyoomi stresses, because he can’t have Atsumu misunderstand this. He’s not going to half-ass it.
“Omi,” Atsumu repeats, but now there’s something else there, something that sober-Kiyoomi would also see in the mirror. “This sounds almost romantic,” Atsumu settles for, but it sounds strained. It sounds like two-drinks Kiyoomi.
“Is that what romance is?” Kiyoomi muses. He feels like he understands Akaashi a little, now. “Then I’m probably in love with you.”
Atsumu’s mouth does this thing where his lower lip starts trembling, and then Atsumu catches it between his teeth and pulls it into a tight smile. “Probably?”
Kiyoomi nods. He only understands Akaashi a little because he still thinks that everything can be explained by science. Miya Atsumu is just another pretty name for entropy , after all. “84 percent probable.”
“Where’s the rest 16 percent?” Atsumu asks, lower lip still pulled taut.
“Well, you’re not holding my hand.”
At this, a small puff of laughter escapes Atsumu, and the tension in the line of his shoulders eases up. He presses his hand to Kiyoomi’s, as if this is a trick question, and the corners of his lips tug upwards when Kiyoomi shifts his hand to slot their fingers together. “How about now?” he whispers.
“92 percent.” Atsumu arches an eyebrow. “You’re not kissing me.”
“Yer wasted,” Atsumu says, like he’s trying to convince himself of that.
“I’m tipsy at best,” Kiyoomi says, standing up to prove a point. Atsumu’s arms instantly shoot around his waist to steady him. “Oh. Maybe slightly dizzy. 96 percent.”
Atsumu laughs, full bellied and warm, and it gets Kiyoomi all the way to drunk off the sound alone. “Well, that’s unfortunate, Omi-kun, cuz I’m 100 percent in love with ya. Maybe even 102 percent. Unquestionably, unreasonably in love with ya.”
“Oh,” Kiyoomi breathes again, fingers fisting into the collar of Atsumu’s carefully creased shirt and pulling him up. He doesn’t keep track of how exactly what happens next comes to be, but his hands are cupping Atsumu’s face one minute and the thing he imagined more times than he cares to admit happens the next minute. “Oh,” he mutters into Atsumu’s mouth, and it’s devastating. “100 percent.”
Under his lips, he can taste Atsumu’s grin – plum-flavoured soju. It’s just as filling as he imagined.
🦙🦙🦙
When Kiyoomi walks into the kitchen the next morning, there is a cup of steaming sencha waiting for him. Atsumu smiles at him, and lets go of the pan to curl his fingers in Kiyoomi’s baggy sleeve and pull him close enough to press a kiss to his moles. Kiyoomi looks at him like he was dropped on his head as a child – Atsumu told him he used to sleep in the top bunk, so he probably was.
“Omi-kun,” Atsumu hisses, and it sounds like he’s about to scratch him. “If ya tell me ya don’t remember last night–”
Kiyoomi shakes his head. He doesn’t even have a hangover – he remembers that Atsumu made it into his bed, this time around, and that he fell asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow. “I remember, it’s just – I haven’t even brushed my hair.”
Atsumu looks at him like Kiyoomi was the one dropped in the head between the two of them. Kiyoomi knows he inherits his thoroughness from his mother, so that’s simply not an option. “Omi-Omi, yer really cute,” Atsumu says, like that means something else entirely. Like Kiyoomi knows what it means, too.
“Me too,” he mumbles, pulling Atsumu in to bury his head in the crook of his neck.
Atsumu laughs like it’s punched out of him, and hugs Kiyoomi right back. He can feel Atsumu’s grin against his skin. He can feel the strings inside him being untied and wonders if this is what entropy feels like – filling, smelling like coffee and the morning sun caught in his hair.
More than anything, though, he can feel Atsumu press words into his skin. “I’m callin’ dibs on the alpaca plushie today.”