Archive of Our Own

Blood.

The air is thick with the scent of blood, and fear, and it’s suffocating.

Kiyoomi isn’t sure if he’s ever picked up on any kind of fear radiating from Miya, much less this much, and he knows beyond a shadow of a doubt he can’t possibly just do nothing. His brain seems to be moving too slowly for the situation at hand, but his body is quicker to react.

The facts, as far as he’s concerned, are these:

First, Miya has been hit by a car. The driver was going too fast, and didn’t slow down. They’re long gone.

Second, Miya won’t make it to a hospital. He can’t be completely sure of this, but something in his gut tells him it’s the truth. If Kiyoomi does nothing, Miya will die.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, Kiyoomi can do something about it.

It’s not something that Kiyoomi has ever done before, and generally speaking, he probably ought to simply not do it. There are risks involved, and there’s politics around this sort of thing, and issues of consent, but all of those are issues for later. For right now, Miya Atsumu is bleeding out, and it’s making Kiyoomi’s gut churn, and he has to act.

Before he can think too much about it, or try and talk himself out of it, he’s on the ground next to Miya. Miya’s breathing is erratic. His eyes are open, but Kiyoomi can’t in good conscience actually say that he seems cognizant.

“This might sting,” he says nonetheless, apologetic though he thinks this is likely better than whatever happens if he doesn’t do anything or tries to call an ambulance. He takes hold of Miya’s arm and takes in a deep breath - just managing to not gag as it once again fills his nose with the sharp scent of blood - before leaning down, sinking his teeth into his flesh.

Miya’s body jolts, and Kiyoomi stares down at him for a long second. Nothing seems to happen. Did it work? He has no idea. He’s never done this before, and he always assumed he’d never even try, so there was no real utility in learning about how this would all look. He curses himself for it now - it’s always, always better to be over prepared than underprepared, and he knows this.

He’s starting to think that Miya might just die anyway, when a groan escapes him, and he curls into himself.

“Hey. Don’t move,” Kiyoomi tries to tell him, a hand placed on Miya’s shoulder; he doesn’t know where is safe to touch or where might cause him more pain.

At the sound of his voice, Miya looks up, and immediately, Kiyoomi knows it’s worked. His eyes flash, just for a second, but it’s enough.

There’s no sound for a moment, aside from both of them breathing. Miya’s is still ragged, unsure, but it seems less questionable as to whether or not the next breath will come each time.

“Omi?” he manages to get out after a long moment, though his voice is still faint, shaking a little like he’s still mostly somewhere else. But it’s an improvement.

Now, though, the urgency has alleviated somewhat, but Kiyoomi still needs to act. Somehow, that almost makes it feel like it’s more difficult to think.

Swallowing thickly and accepting that he cannot handle this on his own, he fishes his phone from his pocket. He stares at it for a second, eyeing the blurry letters and trying to think about who he could potentially call - Meian? No. He’s not going to face the music for this one so quickly.

Before he could properly think it through, his phone was to his ear and a feminine voice was answering.

“Hello?”

Hitoka always sounded a little concerned when she answered the phone. Later, he’d feel bad for giving her another reason to be anxious about phone calls.

“Hey, I - it’s - fuck,” he let out.

“Kiyo?” she asked, the alarm in her voice shooting up. “What’s wrong?”

“Can you come meet me? I’m at - ” he pauses, squinting up at the street signs to read them out to her. “There was an accident, and -” He cuts himself off, doesn’t even know what to say. Of all people, he thinks, Hitoka will understand, but he can barely unravel the events of the last several minutes in his head, much less explain them to someone else.

“Okay,” she says, and he can hear her take in a deep breath and let it back out, steeling herself. There’s a rustling sound, and he’s relieved to know that must mean she’s already on the move. “I’ll be there soon. Looks like that’s… a fifteen minute walk from here. I’ll be there sooner. I have to hang up, but - breathe, okay? Whatever happened, we’ll figure it out!”

She doesn’t sound especially confident in that, but he takes her words to heart nonetheless. He can’t let anything less be the truth - this all needs to be okay.

“Omi,” Miya says again, eyes unfocused and clearly wanting so badly to fall closed again.

“Stay awake,” he tells him.

“Mhm,” is all the answer he gets, but Miya does at least look like he’s attempting to maintain consciousness.

He doesn’t know how much time has passed - time has lost meaning, but he’s fairly confident that it’s less than fifteen minutes, closer to five, even if it feels like an eternity - when he hears steps approaching him. And then, suddenly, he and Miya aren’t alone.

Next to Kiyoomi is a dusty-colored wolf; smaller than average, but still towering over where he’s crouched on the ground. A whimper escapes her throat as she takes in the situation. At the same time, Miya’s eyes go wide, staring up at what, to him, must look like a wild animal.

“It’s fine,” he says to both of them, even though it very, very much is not, none of this could ever be called fine by any stretch of the imagination.

Hitoka’s paws shuffle anxiously, and after a moment she’s shifted back, a nervous wreck of a human next to Kiyoomi instead. Her hair is a mess - he wants to run a brush through it, which should be so far down on the list of priorities that it’s not even funny. “Kiyo, what happened?” she asks, “I - when you said accident, I didn’t think - well, I don’t know what I thought. But not this.”

“I know,” he says, because he does. None of this feels within the realm of possibility. “I bit him, so he’s - I guess you could say he’s stable, but…”

With the knowledge that Kiyoomi has turned someone, Hitoka’s eyes grow even wider. She collects herself decently quickly, saying, “But he still needs somewhere safe, and to be checked over.”

“Yes,” he says, nodding. “Exactly that.”

Hitoka takes a deep breath in. This, theoretically, is her wheelhouse. She’s not a doctor, but she’s the next best thing. The clinic her wife runs moonlights as an urgent care for their pack, and Hitoka is often the one looking after everyone; nervous though she may be, she is knowledgeable and always has a surprisingly steady hand. “Okay. Where are we taking him?”

She’s asking out of courtesy. Sure, he could insist on bringing Miya to the aforementioned clinic. It’s out of the way, and while there aren’t a lot of people out, it’s still better to not have to travel further than they have to, both for the sake of not being seen and also because of the state Miya’s in. Besides, he’s going to need someone around to keep an eye on him.

And they’re only a few blocks from Kiyoomi’s apartment.

He sighs, shaking his head to himself as if he can’t believe they’re in this situation even if it is one that is partially of his own creation, before saying, “We’ll take him to mine. If you can help get him on my back and make sure he stays steady there, I’ll just carry him.”

Hitoka nods, turning her head down to give him some privacy, instead casting her gaze on Miya. “Hi,” she says, offering him a small smile. “I’m Yachi Hitoka. And you’re Miya Atsumu.”

Miya lets out a soft sound to acknowledge her words, a little belated like maybe he had to think about whether or not he was, indeed, Miya Atsumu.

“This might be a little uncomfortable,” she tells him. “But you’ll be okay, and I’m sure that Kiyo will be as careful as possible with you.”

Kiyoomi is grateful that she’s distracting Miya, even if he can hear just how pointed those words are. He doesn’t need Miya to get scared off by watching him shift. There’s no avoiding the way his bones sound like they’re breaking as his human body gives way to that of a wolf, broader and longer, but at least Miya has Hitoka leaned over him, gently but firmly keeping him from turning his head.

“Don’t strain yourself,” Hitoka goes on, letting her fingers gently caress his hair. She’s getting a little bit of blood on her fingers, and the sight makes Kiyoomi a little bit nauseated.

Hitoka’s head turns to look back at Kiyoomi, having to tilt her head up to meet his face. He towers over her, a large wolf with fur black as night, and he’s been told in the past that he cuts a frightening figure. He can only hope that Miya, dazed as he is, doesn’t overreact to the sight of him.

“Okay, I’m going to help you up now,” Hitoka says once she’s gotten a nod from Kiyoomi, looking back to Miya on the ground. He groans as she starts to lift him, as carefully as possible, and Kiyoomi can see that he’s essentially a dead weight. There’s always something kind of humorous in seeing a woman as dainty as she is lift a weight that seems unreasonable compared to her size.

Kiyoomi lowers himself to the ground to allow Hitoka to settle Miya on his back, and he’s grateful that he’s decently broad to make this somewhat comfortable; of course, he’s no ambulance nor is he a stretcher made specifically for this purpose, but they’ll make do.

“Omi?” he hears Miya ask.

Hitoka hums as she pats Kiyoomi’s side to let him know he can stand again. “Kiyoomi’s with us,” she says. “We’re going back to his apartment, so you’ll see him there. Hey, hold on here, okay? We don’t want you slipping.”

“Omi never lets anybody inside his place,” Miya responds. Everything he says sounds groggy, like he’s in a dream. Maybe he even thinks all of this is a dream; that would certainly be easier to accept than the reality of it all.

Kiyoomi doesn’t waste any more time before taking off; he moves more slowly than he’d like to, but he knows that Hitoka was right that he needs to be somewhat delicate with Miya.

Hitoka walks beside him, almost as if she’s just someone out for a nighttime walk with her oversized dog, if only she had a leash in hand (not that Kiyoomi would ever allow such an indignity). She’s chattering, though, betraying the somewhat calm exterior she’s put on.

It’s better than silence, anyway. Kiyoomi’s on edge, and the last thing he needs is to be left with his thoughts.

It’s a relief to all of them when they get to Kiyoomi’s apartment. Hitoka’s hand shakes as she locates his hidden key and goes to undo the lock, but soon enough they’re inside. She’s careful as she gets Miya back off of Kiyoomi’s back and lays him out on the floor; it’s not an ideal place, but she needs room to work and he’s bloody enough still that he’s certainly not getting on any of the furniture.

(She lays a blanket down for him, at least, because she’s kinder and gentler than Kiyoomi could ever be.)

A part of Kiyoomi is tempted to stay in his fur. There’s something comforting about that, to shed his humanity for a little bit and stay curled up in this body, but he also knows that Hitoka might need a hand. Reluctantly, he steps out of view so that he can have privacy to shift - not that it’s mattered to this point this evening, but it feels like the right thing nonetheless - and returns once he’s back on two feet.

Hitoka has already given Miya a once-over, and she’s quietly cataloging aloud the injuries he’s got, what she needs to set to rights to make sure he doesn’t heal improperly. On the plus side, she notes, his body is already doing what they’d hoped for; the more superficial wounds are already fading like week-old cuts.

He hears bone grind against bone as she carefully manipulates Miya’s body, and it makes Kiyoomi’s stomach churn all over again. He doesn’t know what to do, feels entirely out of his element here, but he feels like he needs to do something. He leans over Hitoka’s shoulder, watching her, ready to leap in at any moment if she asks.

Soon enough, she turns her head back to look over at him. “Kiyo, you’re hovering, and it’s making me nervous,” she says. She pauses for a moment, her gaze softening. “Just… How about you go clean up, okay? You did your part. I’ve got this. Go take a shower.”

He wants to argue. This isn’t her problem to take care of, much less on her own. But, then again, she’s right - not only is he probably not going to be of any help to her, he’s probably outright making things worse by putting her on edge. And he can still feel the grit and dirt from the side of the road clinging to him, the way Miya’s blood has dried against his skin, and nothing appeals more than a shower right about now.

“Okay,” he says. “But don’t hesitate to come get me if you need me.”

Hitoka just hums to acknowledge him before he goes.

He takes longer than he should in the shower. Both because he feels like he needs an especially thorough shower and because, well, now that he has walked away from the situation with Miya, he dreads going back in and it once again becoming real.

He can’t stop playing all of it back in his head. As he tries to unravel all of it in his mind, he can’t figure out any place where he should have - or could have - changed course. He’s not an impulsive person and he’s usually pretty good under pressure, and generally speaking he can’t imagine that he would have jumped straight to giving someone the bite if he didn’t need to. But this? He can’t help but wonder if he hadn’t jumped the gun. But what else could he have done? He can still smell Miya’s blood, even now that he’s washed himself so thoroughly his skin stings. What would he have said to everyone if Miya had died? He knows how fiercely Miya loves his family, his brother - how would he have ever faced Osamu?

Eventually, though, he has to turn the water off. His skin is pruny and bright red in places where he feels like he’s scrubbed the skin raw, and staying in any longer will only make matters worse. He dresses himself in soft loungewear, lingering in his bedroom like the coward he is, until finally he forces his feet to move.

In the living room, the scene is calmer than it had been when he’d left to shower. Hitoka is sitting on the floor, eyes trained on Miya on the couch, but her hands are folded in her lap. Her work is done and Miya is asleep, relocated to be more comfortable.

“He’ll be okay,” Hitoka says, turning her head when she hears him walking in. “He just needs to rest up.”

Kiyoomi nods. He moves to sit down next to her, wishing that he had the words to convey how grateful he is to her. “I’ll keep an eye on him,” he says. “He’s my responsibility, after all.”

She nods, a sigh escaping from her lips. “It’ll be hard on him,” she says, looking back at Miya’s sleeping form. He looks so peaceful now, no longer in pain and quietly slumbering, and it’s almost hard to reconcile this version with him with the one from earlier this evening, or the Miya that talks his ear off at every practice.

“I know,” he says.

“I don’t think either of us know, really,” she says, not unkindly. “It’s… hard, for us, to know what it’s like. This is in our blood, we figured out shifting before we could even form memories of it. It’s different when you’re turned. It’s harder.”

She’s witnessed this firsthand, he’s pretty certain. Kiyoomi doesn’t know the details, but he knows that when he first met Kageyama Tobio in high school, he had been a human, but when they’d met again a couple of years later, he had been a wolf. He doesn’t think Hitoka was directly involved, but she no doubt would’ve been around to support him through it.

“I’ll be here for him,” he reiterates, because that’s really all he can do.

She nods, offering him a small smile. “I know you will be,” she says. “Just be patient with him.”

That’s probably the bigger ask, really, and he suspects that she knows this as well. “You should go home,” he tells her. “I’ve asked enough of you already, I don’t want to keep you even longer.”

Hitoka hums, taking a moment before she gets to her feet. “You know you’re not asking too much of me,” she says. “Pack helps pack.” Eyes sliding to Miya, she adds, “And that includes him now, too.”

So it does.

“Still. I’m grateful,” he says. “Goodnight, Hitoka.”

She gives him a brief bow, smiling at him as she straightens up again. “Goodnight, Kiyo.”

He listens to her retreating footsteps, the sound of her opening and closing the door behind her. And then it’s just him and Miya.

Kiyoomi can’t bring himself to walk away from Miya right now. He wouldn’t be able to sleep either way, and he’s irrationally afraid of something happening, to where Atsumu still dies. So he watches him, as the night stretches on and on until light starts to filter in again through the window blinds.

Miya gets restless a few times over the course of the night, turning over or groaning a little, his facial features getting a little pinched here and there, but for the most part he sleeps like a log.

For his part, Kiyoomi tries to keep his mind as blank as possible. But he’s a worrier by nature, and he can’t help the pit of anxiety that eats at him through the night; even though Miya is almost certainly out of the woods at this point, they still have to deal with the transition. It’s a process that Kiyoomi knows next to nothing about; he probably shouldn’t have been trusted with the care of a fledgling werewolf, but there’s no getting around it now.

When the hour on the clock has grown to where he feels like he can actually call it morning, Kiyoomi gives in to his own restlessness and goes to the kitchen. If nothing else, he needs coffee - though the night would’ve been sleepless even if he’d been in his bed, his mind drags and needs a little pick-me-up. And since he’s in the kitchen anyway, he might as well make breakfast.

He keeps his kitchen stocked with enough to get by in case of emergency, and while it won’t be an impressive breakfast, it will be enough. He moves quietly through the kitchen as he prepares food for them both, conscious of not making too much noise lest he wake Miya up; he knows it’ll be sooner rather than later at this point, but he’s not sure he’s ready for the conversation they’re going to have.

It’s perhaps because he’s so focused on his own thoughts and his intent to keep quiet that he doesn’t notice when there are footsteps coming up behind him.

It startles him when he hears Miya’s voice; it’s embarrassing, really, he’s an apex predator and yet he’s still so easily startled.

“What the hell happened last night? I feel like I got hit by a truck,” Miya says. He pauses, his brows furrowing for a moment. “Which I did, huh. But this isn’t - ” He pauses, gesturing to his body. “This is like… like a flu, or after a nightmare workout. Not… broken bones and everything.”

“It was a car, not a truck,” Kiyoomi corrects. It’s easier to say that than to address the elephant in the room.

Miya just stares at him, which, fair. “Car, truck, whatever it is,” he says. “I’m pretty sure I should be… dead? Or at least injured. Probably in the hospital?”

“Isn’t it better that you’re not?”

“Well, yeah, sure,” he says, nodding. “But I know something happened last night, Omi, and I don’t like how you’re bein’ cagey about it.”

Kiyoomi lets out a long breath, looking down for a moment before nodding. He knows he has to tell him, and putting it off isn’t doing either of them any favors. “Go sit, I’ll tell you over breakfast.”

A few seconds pass where Miya doesn’t move, still regarding him skeptically, but eventually he does obediently go over to sit at the dining table.

It takes a few more minutes before their breakfast is ready and on the table, and Kiyoomi cherishes these last few moments, blissfully ignorant of how Miya will react to this. Once they both sit down, he chews his food slowly, feeling Miya’s eyes boring into him.

“You almost died,” he makes himself say eventually. Somehow, he thinks that starting with this will make the whole thing better. “So I couldn’t just do nothing.”

“And what is it that ya did?”

Kiyoomi takes a deep breath in and lets it out slowly. “I’m a werewolf, Miya,” he says. “And now… So are you, more or less.”

“A what?” he asks, in a tone that makes it clear he doesn’t believe it.

“That’s what’s happening to you,” he barrels on nonetheless. If he doesn’t get it out now, then he probably never will. “It’s probably going to get a bit worse. You’ll hurt, you might feel like you’re getting sick, but. In the end, you’ll be fine. You’ll be stronger, even, so really - ”

“I don’t understand,” he says. “How did you - why did you…?”

“I told you, you almost died. Werewolves heal far faster than humans do. Have you ever seen me with an injury?” Kiyoomi asks, raising an eyebrow. Not that there ever would have been much occasion for Miya to see such a thing regardless. “Any bones you broke are probably already as good as new.”

He knows how it sounds. It sounds insane. It sounds like some kind of impossible miracle. But he doesn’t know any other way to tell him - it’s all the truth, after all. As the saying goes, sometimes that’s stranger than fiction.

“That…” Miya pauses, seeming to try to piece together some evidence that Kiyoomi is lying. “Okay, but how? I - werewolves aren’t real.”

“We are,” he says. Gesturing, he adds, “Look at your arm.”

Miya does as he is told (has being turned made him suddenly become a better listener?), eyebrows raising when he catches sight of the bite mark still there. “Thought ya said I’d heal,” he says.

“And look - it’s healed,” he says. The skin is pink and a little shiny, like a months-old scar, instead of angry and red like a fresh wound ought to be. “That scar won’t go away, but it’s… That’s evidence, isn’t it?”

“Evidence that ya bit me, sure,” he says. “Like a damn crazy person.”

For a couple of seconds, all Kiyoomi can do is stare. “I - what? In what world would I see you, bleeding out on the ground, and think biting you would be a good course of action if there wasn’t a reason?”

“Dunno,” Miya says. “You’re weird, maybe ya wanted to take a little… chomp.”

“I did not want a chomp,” he says, burying his face in his hands. After a few more seconds of thinking about it, he knows there’s really no better proof than to just show him. He rises from the table and moves over towards a privacy screen he’s got set up in his living room. “Stay.”

“‘S that some kinda dog joke?” he asks.

Kiyoomi doesn’t respond, instead just proceeding to go through the motions once he’s obscured behind the screen: he takes his clothes off and folds them, does a couple quick stretches, then shifts into his wolf.

He doesn’t especially love being in his fur indoors - he feels too big for it, a bull in a china shop - but what must be done must be done. He pads back out into the dining area, sitting down next to the table and watching Miya.

Miya looks like he’s thinking about running, but he remains seated for the time being. “Uh - Omi?” he asks. “Is that you?”

He dips his head in a nod.

“Oh,” he says. “Oh. Huh. That’s - this is all some kinda weird magic trick, right? And you’ve been hiding your… uh, dog, your wolfdog, all this time.” Even as Miya says it, Kiyoomi can tell he doesn’t believe his own words; Kiyoomi can’t quite blame him for trying to make sense of something that should be impossible.

They can’t very well continue their conversation like this, so he returns behind the screen and repeats the process in reverse. “Definitely not a dog,” he calls out as he gets dressed. “And I definitely don’t have a pet either. Animals shed too much.”

“But wouldn’t ya still…?” Miya asks, then clears his throat, mumbling something to himself that Kiyoomi can make out to be chiding himself for getting off the topic. “I… I thought I must’ve dreamed the wolf. But that was… you.”

“It was,” he says as he moves back to join him at the table once more.

“You’re a wolf.”

“I am,” he affirms with a small nod. “Eat your breakfast.”

Miya huffs, giving him a hard look before, ultimately, simply doing as he is told. He’s got to be hungry; the change makes anyone ravenous, and he knows Miya has a big appetite to begin with. He’s still watching Kiyoomi intently, waiting for him to go on.

“I can’t perfectly relate to the position you’re in,” he tells Miya. Now that they’ve started talking, he finds the silence is even more uncomfortable and he needs to fill it. “I’ve been a werewolf since I was born.”

“Huh,” Miya says, just staring at him for a moment like he can’t quite figure out what he ought to say now. Which is fair.

“Ideally, you could’ve already slept through the worst of it,” he goes on, though in all honesty he isn’t that hopeful that that’s the case, but anything is possible. “We’ll just have to wait and see when your actual… wolf form shows up.”

“How’s that gonna work, by the way?”

“Again, I don’t have firsthand knowledge of this, but… At first, you’re not going to have much control over it,” he says, giving him an apologetic look; he does actually feel bad about that part, even though it wasn’t really as though he had much way around it. And while he’s telling Miya things he probably won’t want to hear, he might as well go on, “Which is why you shouldn’t be on your own for a little bit.”

“‘Shouldn’t be on my own for a little bit’?” he echoes. “What does that mean? For how long?”

“Not especially long. But you should probably stay here with me, at least until you’ve shifted at least a couple of times. To know what it feels like, at least. So you can hopefully get some amount of control over it,” he says.

Miya doesn’t say anything for a moment, seeming to consider his words. “Are ya being vague because ya don’t wanna say, or because you don’t actually know?”

“I don’t know,” he admits. Neither option is especially flattering, but he should at least go into this with honesty. “I… Never thought I’d be in this position.”

An honest to god laugh falls from Miya’s lips then. “Yeah? Well, that makes two of us, doesn’t it?”

While Kiyoomi knows he doesn’t mean for it to, the words start to carve out a little hole in his chest - there are a lot of questions to be asked about consent in turning someone, and even though it could have been life or death and he certainly hadn’t had time to explain everything so that Miya could make an informed decision, guilt still settles over his shoulders. It’s guilt that will not be so easily shed, but he isn’t going to let himself express it. He’s done Miya a favor; he has to believe that.

“It’ll be fine,” Kiyoomi says eventually, rolling his shoulders as if to physically shake off those thoughts. “It’s not just me, anyway. You won’t be alone in this.”

“Yeah, there was that other girl last night,” he responds, nodding. “She’s a wolf too, right?”

“Mhm. And some other more… familiar faces,” he says. He feels a little strange about how he’s about to list off some names, like he’s outing them, but Hitoka’s voice in the back of his mind reminds him that pack means Miya too now. He’s allowed to be in on the secret. “There’s actually a number of wolves in the volley world.”

Miya furrows his brow. “Wait, wait, do ya get some kinda performance advantage?”

“Debatable,” he says. He’s not going to say it aloud, but if there really is an advantage, it just makes Miya getting to the top of the game all the more impressive. “A lot of the perks we get don’t necessarily help on the court.”

(His heightened sense of smell, for example, is outright a disadvantage, as far as Kiyoomi is concerned.)

“So, who? You said familiar faces. Anyone I know?”

Kiyoomi nods. “Meian, for one,” he says. He stuffs the anxiety that comes with thinking about Meian down for the time being; modern packs are a lot less organized so there is less of a formal hierarchy to be dealt with, but Meian is still looked to as a sort of authority, and he’s going to be, at the least, disappointed in Kiyoomi’s impulsiveness. Another thought occurs to him, and he groans. “Oh god, Hinata’s going to be unbearable about you being a wolf now.”

Miya’s eyebrows shoot up. “Shou’s a werewolf?”

“No,” he says. “But he’s as good as part of the pack.”

“How’s that work?”

Taking in a deep breath and letting it back out slowly, Kiyoomi says, “Kageyama.”

“Elaborate.”

Kiyoomi kind of wants to decline, doesn’t want to get into anything that would involve him saying the word mate to Miya, but he knows, ultimately, it’s his duty to him to at least give him a baseline understanding. “Kageyama is a werewolf, and since he and Hinata are…” he pauses, unsure exactly how to approach this.

“Oh, everyone knows they’re a thing,” Miya fills in the blanks for him.

To call being mates ‘a thing’ feels like it’s putting it lightly, but it’s good enough for now. “It’s a thing,” he affirms. “A pretty serious thing, to the point where nobody could have asked Kageyama to keep something that big from him. It helps that Hinata has… the effect on people that he does.”

“Ya mean the way he’s never met anybody he couldn’t make a friend outta?”

Kiyoomi hums in affirmation. For being a human, Hinata is something of a darling among the pack. And maybe as of late, Kiyoomi himself has formed a quiet sort of softness for him as well. “So, nobody minds him being considered pack,” he concludes.

“Huh,” Miya says. He leans forward, elbows resting on the table as he squints across it at Kiyoomi. “So, all this has been happenin’ right under my nose? Can’t believe I didn’t notice anything weird.”

“Well, that’s intentional,” he says with a shrug. After all, while individual people like Miya might not pose a threat, generally speaking, keeping a low profile is important.

Miya looks like there’s more he wants to say, but Kiyoomi has already had enough of this conversation for now, so he decides the best thing he can do here would be to get the attention off of himself by dropping a bomb: “You went to high school with Suna Rintarou, didn’t you? And he’s dating your brother now?”

Already, that’s done the trick: Miya is confused, and fascinated. “I… Yeah?” he says. “What about him?”

“He’s also a wolf,” he says. “Really shows how much can slip past you.”

There’s a brief silence, and then Miya wails. “What? Sunarin? Sunarin, of all people?” He quickly excuses himself before getting up from the table, citing that he needs to do some yelling.

It’s to the sound of Miya chiding first Suna and then Osamu over the phone that Kiyoomi cleans up after their breakfast, and he suspects this is the closest he will get to having peace until Miya leaves his apartment.

The next day and a half pass by about as well as anyone could have hoped for them to. Miya is an endless stream of questions, and here and there Kiyoomi puts himself into the role of nurse to check on how Miya is doing and if he feels anything out of the ordinary.

They make a trip over to Miya’s apartment to pack his necessities for a few days, and stop to pick up some groceries on the way back, but for the most part, it is just the two of them in Kiyoomi’s apartment. Miya spends a lot of the time just resting or complaining, but when he’s not, they’re going over what he starts to call ‘Werewolf 101’.

He feels like Miya has a pretty good baseline understanding of what all of this means (yes, you can change back and forth at will; no, the phase of the moon doesn’t make as big a difference as movies act like; yes, you’ll still be yourself, but you might also have a part of yourself that feels less you), but there are some topics he’s skirted around. It’s fine. He simply isn’t going to be doing werewolf sex ed, he’s just not.

And then, the next evening, Miya walks up to Kiyoomi looking like a child about to tell their parent that they’ve been sick.

“Not gonna lie to you, Omi, I don’t feel so hot,” he says.

Nothing spikes Kiyoomi’s anxiety like the threat that someone might be ill near him, and as much as he knows that this is probably what he’s been waiting for - Miya has been restless all day, and he’s loudly complained about how various parts of his body ache - he can’t help the way his heart starts to race. “What kind of ‘don’t feel so hot’?” he asks him, already moving to grab a trash can, just in case.

“I don’t think I’m gonna hurl, relax, I just - ”

Whatever Miya’s next words were going to be are cut off by a groan as he doubles over, and just a second later there’s the sickening crack! of bone preparing for a shift. He makes another sound that probably wanted to be words, but falls short.

He falls to the ground, and after a little bit of writhing - he’s fighting the pull, fighting his own body - there’s a red wolf in front of Kiyoomi.

“There you go,” Kiyoomi says as he looks down at him. “You did it.”

Miya wiggles on the floor, uncoordinated as he gets himself standing on four paws, looking down at himself. He looks awkward, like he doesn’t know what to do with himself and can’t get his stance right, and when he looks up at Kiyoomi, the look in his eyes is strangely helpless.

“Just try and walk around, you’ll get the hang of it,” he tells him, because that’s got to be true. It hits Kiyoomi again just how unprepared he was to be the one helping a fledgling wolf, when he can’t remember ever not having his feet underneath him.

Stubbornly, or maybe just too confused and overwhelmed to move (it could really go either way with Miya), the wolf doesn’t budge.

“Miya,” he says. “I don’t think pretending nothing is happening will help you any here.”

Miya stares up at him for a moment longer before, finally, starting to move. He walks in clumsy circles around the living room, unsure on his legs. It’s clear he has no concept of how much space he takes up in this body; he bumps into furniture and his tail sways and knocks things off of the coffee table. But it’s a start.

Soon enough, however, he has plopped himself back down in front of Kiyoomi, staring up at him expectantly.

“What?” he asks. “What do you want?”

Miya just keeps watching him for a moment, then moves, lifting his front paws up and rearing back like he’s trying to mime standing up. What he actually accomplishes is flailing about for a moment before falling over, but Kiyoomi gets the gist.

“Are you trying to ask me how to turn back?”

Miya opens his mouth and a bark comes out, a sound that he looks surprised at.

“It’s… Alright. I don’t know how to describe it,” he says. It’s a feeling more than anything else, one that he doesn’t know how to put into words. “Just… Think about what it feels like to be in your human skin, what parts are different. The shift is a fluid feeling, it’s… it’s movement, it’s power. Think about how the shift felt, but just… in reverse.”

It’s probably not especially helpful advice, certainly not reminding him of the shift itself. By now, Kiyoomi isn’t bothered by it, but he knows it’s… not a pleasant sensation, to say the least.

Miya at least seems to be listening, however, because he is visibly focusing, his eyes squinted a little bit. He leans forward on his paws, as if he can physically just go ahead and step into his human form again.

Neither of them quite know what to do here, and Kiyoomi can only stumble his way through giving him the same advice over again. Miya looks entirely unamused.

It takes most of half an hour for him to successfully shift back into his human form. It’s extremely undignified and Kiyoomi has to look away while he scrambles to cover himself, but at least it’s one controlled transformation down.

“I think I hated that,” Miya mumbles before he goes to lay down, and he sleeps for the rest of the day.

The next day, after a good sleep and a big breakfast, Miya asks about whether his successful transformation means that he can be left unattended again.

“Probably,” Kiyoomi admits, and he’s not sure whether that’s more because he simply wants to have his private space to himself again or if he genuinely thinks that Miya has graduated beyond the need for constant supervision. After all, really, the time he’s spent here has been almost entirely uneventful. All of this is guesswork. “It’ll probably be good to get one more shift in, just to be sure that you’ve got a handle on it.”

“Dunno why,” he disputes, shaking his head. “I don’t think I’ll be doing it often.”

A long sigh escapes Kiyoomi. “Sure, you don’t have to,” he says. In all honesty, Kiyoomi doesn’t shift especially often either, and he’s entirely used to it, so he understands. “But you need to be able to control it. To know how it feels. Because the wolf will want to come out, and you need to have a say in the matter.”

“Y’know, Omi, you’re not doing a great job of making it sound especially pleasant.”

“It’s all about connecting with that part of yourself, rather than fighting against it,” he says. “The wolf is you, and you are the wolf. But it gets restless if it’s cooped up inside you all the time.”

Miya pauses for a moment to consider this, and ultimately nods. “I guess,” he says. “So, all I gotta do is prove that I know how it’s done, and I graduate from werewolf school?”

Kiyoomi nods. “Sure. If that’s how you want to look at it,” he says.

Of course, nothing is that simple.

They move the living room furniture out of the way so that there’s plenty of room, and they sit in the middle of the floor to make an attempt at Miya’s first intentional shift.

While Miya assures him that he is trying very, very hard to shift, nothing happens.

“What are you thinking about?” Kiyoomi asks, at a loss for how to troubleshoot this kind of thing. He’s hardly good at handling people to begin with, much less providing this kind of guidance.

“I’m thinkin’ about being a wolf, what else would I be thinkin’ about?” Miya huffs in response, which, fair.

“Well, think harder,” he says. “Or think less.”

“I dunno how to not think.”

The whole thing feels a little hopeless. If it had been difficult to get Miya to turn back from his first transformation, this is even worse, and Kiyoomi feels like he’s just staring Atsumu down as he’s making faces like he’s constipated.

He catches a brief flicker in Miya’s eyes here and there that tell him that, yes, he is at least trying, albeit unsuccessfully.

But another thought occurs to Kiyoomi: he doesn’t know why he’s shouldering this burden all by himself.

Well, he somewhat does. At this point, other than Kiyoomi, only three people know that Atsumu has been turned: Hitoka, Osamu, and Suna. Kiyoomi has already asked enough of Hitoka in this whole situation, Osamu would be just as clueless, and since Suna is a born wolf as well he probably wouldn’t be much more help (and even if he would be, he’s so far away and Kiyoomi barely knows him to reach out for help). Beyond that, he’s still not exactly sure how to explain this one, so he hasn’t felt like he can ask anyone else.

But before he can think any better of it, he says, “I think I’m going to call Hinata.”

Miya blinks. “Huh? Why?”

“He might be able to help us sort this one out,” he says. “I don’t have anyone to call with firsthand knowledge, but since his boyfriend was turned like you were…”

He lets his words trail off, but Miya understands anyway, nodding. “Huh. Well, look at you go, Omi,” he says. “Worth a shot anyway.”

So it is against his better judgment that he pulls out his phone and calls Hinata Shouyou, hoping that he can pull out a miracle breakthrough - in fairness, if anyone can, it’s probably him.

Kiyoomi’s confidence is shaken a little bit when Hinata’s suggestion leads them to waiting until nightfall and going out to a park - he suggests that being outside in nature could help, but doing so in broad daylight might draw too much attention. The whole thing feels like they’re just throwing ideas at a wall and seeing what sticks, though, so he agrees to it.

When they arrive, Hinata is already there, and he practically screams when he catches sight of Miya, flinging himself at him.

“Welcome to the club!” he says to him as he wraps Miya up in a tight hug, with absolutely no regard for just how noisy he’s being. When he pulls back again, he grins as he says, “It’s gonna be so nice not having to hide this from you anymore!”

Miya laughs softly and reaches out to ruffle Hinata’s hair. “Thanks, Shou,” he says. “Y’know, ya could’ve told me long before now if ya wanted to.”

“I wanted to! But that’s not my call to make,” he says. Looking over towards Kiyoomi, he grins, saying, “I didn’t think that it was Sakusa-san’s call to make, either.”

Their phone call earlier had been brief, and Kiyoomi hadn’t shared especially many details about how all of this had come to pass. Miya catches his eye now, and he knows that they’ve come to a silent agreement to not tell Hinata right now the circumstances leading to his being turned. He’s surely going to find out sooner or later, but in the meantime, they don’t need to have a ‘Miya nearly died’ conversation.

“It was an… impulse decision,” he says. “I hadn’t planned on it.” Nor consulted anyone before doing it.

Hinata blinks a couple of times, looking between the two of them, before there’s some light of recognition in his eyes that Kiyoomi doesn’t want to analyze. “Ah!” he says. “Well! It’s good. I think that it’ll suit you.”

Hinata herds them to sit down on the ground in a triangle, and with how he takes hold of the situation, Kiyoomi almost thinks that maybe his hope in him wasn’t so misplaced. “I talked to Tobio about this earlier,” he says, rushing to clarify, “I told him it was just out of… curiosity. You can tell him about all this whenever you want to!”

“Don’t make it sound like I’m… comin’ out, or something,” Miya says with a little laugh, shaking his head.

“Well, it kind of is like that! But just instead of being gay or anything, you’re a wolf!” he says. “It’s still a big and personal thing, right, Sakusa-san?”

Kiyoomi rubs a hand over his face. “Let’s just… What did Kageyama tell you?”

Hinata hums and lets himself be shepherded back on topic. He turns back to Miya and asks what it felt like when he had shifted the first time.

“Dunno how to explain it,” Miya answers. “It all happened so damn fast, I couldn’t think about it.”

“That’s okay!” he assures him. “Do you have any emotions attached to that?”

After a moment’s consideration, he admits, “It was scary.”

“Okay. Okay, we can work with that,” Hinata says. “Kageyama says that really thinking about his emotions helps with the transformation, especially when he was just starting. Maybe with time you can anchor it to a better feeling than fear, but it’s a start. You can tap into that.”

“I don’t know if I want to rely on fear for this,” he says.

“You don’t have to,” he allows. “But it might help. Or, if you can think of anything else you felt? I mean - you were clearly able to make the shift happen in reverse, too, so…”

“Well, I dunno how I did it then, either,” he says. “That’s the whole problem.”

Hinata leans back, thinking about it. “Well… What about while you were all wolfy? How did that feel?”

“It was… fine, I guess,” Miya allows. “I don’t think I had any particularly strong feelings about it.”

“But nothing bad then, right? It was okay?”

“I guess so,” he says. “I was… I dunno, I guess in the moment there was a kind of peace that came with it.”

That comes as a surprise to Kiyoomi, given how Miya had seemed displeased with the whole thing after shifting for the first time, but he keeps his mouth shut. It’s probably no surprise that Miya is being more honest and open with Hinata.

“Okay, good,” he says. “So where do you think that peace came from?”

“Well…” Miya pauses, looking down at the ground in front of him. It’s dark out, and Kiyoomi can’t be sure, but it looks like he might actually be blushing. It’s rare to see him flustered, or maybe even embarrassed. “I didn’t need to be scared waitin’ for it anymore, and… And… I knew Omi was there, and he knew what was happening”

Hinata’s eyes light up. “Then that’s your answer!”

Both Miya and Kiyoomi speak in sync: “What?”

“You trusted him to see you through it! You let him bite you, and you knew he’d be there to take care of you through the shift,” he says. “Lean into that trust, let that be your anchor.”

What Hinata is suggesting isn’t completely out of left field, as much as Kiyoomi doesn’t want it to be the case; he doesn’t fully understand it, being that the transformation is as natural to him as breathing, but he knows that some weres, especially turned wolves, have to find ways to link certain feelings or thoughts to the shift. He’s heard of that being a connection to a person, but he hadn’t considered for a second that Miya would use him, even if he can begrudgingly admit to seeing the merit in the idea.

“I’m not sure I get what you’re saying,” Miya says, and Kiyoomi almost wants to cut in, to suggest that Hinata isn’t onto anything.

“It might not work,” Hinata clarifies, shrugging. “It’s tough to say, y’know? But since you were bit by Omi-san, and he was there the first time you shifted, it’s worth a shot. He’s the common factor.”

“But how would I use that?”

That stumps Hinata for a moment, his hands hovering in the air, turning over as if he’s trying to mold something between them. “Well… That’s harder. Tobio’s kind of talked about it, but…” he trails off, making a slightly frustrated sound. It goes without saying that Kageyama Tobio is not especially good at explaining things that are felt rather than relying on technical knowledge. Hinata suddenly looks up, his eyes landing on Kiyoomi. “Why don’t you shift?”

“What?”

“Maybe your wolf being out will help his wolf kind of… feel less shy?”

Kiyoomi raises an eyebrow. “I don’t think anything about Miya could possibly be considered shy, I’m not sure that’s the issue here,” he says.

Waving off his words, Hinata barrels on, “Okay, sure, sure. But it could still help, right? Maybe?”

As much as he doubts it, Kiyoomi isn’t really in a place to shut it down entirely, and he did ask Hinata for his help, so he feels like he has to indulge the idea. “Fine,” he says after a moment of internal deliberation, standing up and moving behind a tree for some privacy.

When he comes back out, Miya and Hinata are right where he left them, with Hinata staring at him with that same wide-eyed awe that he feels like probably should have died out by now.

He settles himself in front of them where he’d been sitting before, looking between them as if to ask, what now?

“Okay, do you feel anything?” Hinata asks as he looks back at Miya who, unsurprisingly, shrugs.

“Dunno,” he says. He looks up at Kiyoomi, something unreadable in his expression.

“That’s okay. We can keep trying.”

They keep going around in circles like this for what feels like an eternity - but is probably actually only a few more minutes - before there’s a breakthrough. There’s some kind of change in Miya, one that Kiyoomi can’t put into words - he’s determined, he seems like he has direction - and he takes in a deep breath before -

He shifts, and this time he’s actually almost a little graceful about it. At any rate, he doesn’t trip all over his own paws. Instead, he seems excited, letting out a little bark and launching himself at Kiyoomi.

Kiyoomi is larger than Miya, and if he’d been properly prepared, he probably would have been able to stand his ground, but since this was so unexpected, he instead ends up properly bowled over. He barks back at him in protest, rolling away from him.

Next to them, Hinata sounds like he’s having the time of his life, a bright grin on his face as he laughs over them. “You did it! You really did it!”

When Kiyoomi has righted himself, Miya bounces in front of him, stretching his front legs as he bows in the universal signal of I want to play. Kiyoomi cannot believe this is his life. In his wolf form, he’s a lot more open to physical touch - getting a bit dirty is inevitable, after all, and even if he’s just gone out on his own, he always feels the need for a long shower after the fact regardless.

He leans forward, nipping at Miya - not hard enough to hurt - who barks again and takes off running. In spite of himself, Kiyoomi gives chase. No matter how absurd this feels, he reminds himself that this is good; Miya is getting his legs underneath him, and if he wants to take control over the wolf, making peace with it is a vital part of that.

The park isn’t large or secluded enough for them to really feel like they’re letting loose, but it’s enough. Kiyoomi gets to feel the cool night air through his fur, the way the dirt gives out underneath his paws, and it’s good. It doesn’t take long for him to catch up to Miya - though he’s surprisingly fast - and when he does, Miya turns around and tries to wrestle with him. It feels like they’re just little pups, and maybe, just maybe, it makes Kiyoomi’s heart feel the lightest that it has in days.

Miya snaps his jaws at him and it’s all in play, except that the second time it happens, his mouth has landed at Kiyoomi’s neck.

Before he can even think about what he’s doing, Kiyoomi is rolling over for him.

The thing is, Miya doesn’t know what he’s doing. He has no idea the significance of biting at another person - an omega’s - throat. And that’s Kiyoomi’s own fault, so he can’t exactly hold it against him; he’s just trying to play, and maybe something in his mind is pushing him to act in ways that are… not especially appropriate.

But Kiyoomi isn’t going to let on that anything has happened that is out of the ordinary; it’s a lot easier to have a poker face in his fur, which is something of a blessing. He nips back at Miya before kicking out with his back leg to nudge Miya back so that he can get up and run again.

He ends up back where they started, back in front of Hinata, who stares at them both with such joy in his features that Kiyoomi can’t help himself but to feel it as well. After briefly ducking behind a tree again for privacy to shift back and right his clothing, he steps out and looks back at Miya expectantly.

For a long moment, Miya just stares at him, tongue lolling out of his mouth. He moves closer to Hinata, who brings his hands up to start rubbing over his fur.

“He’s not a dog,” Kiyoomi points out. “And he’s had his fun, so now it’s time to demonstrate that he can shift back.”

“He’s soft like a dog, and look, he likes it,” Hinata says, scratching behind one of Miya’s ears.

“You’re embarrassing yourself, Miya.” Not that he ever was under the impression that Miya was especially concerned about his dignity in anything off the court.

Miya turns his head to look back at Kiyoomi, mouth opening in a couple of sharp barks that quickly die off when he seemingly remembers that he doesn’t currently possess a tongue capable of human speech. He lets out a frustrated sound but settles back on his haunches, closing his eyes to become the very image of concentration.

It still takes a moment, but it doesn’t take nearly as long for Miya to turn back this time, which Kiyoomi is going to count as an absolute win at this point. Once Miya is properly dressed again, he looks up at Kiyoomi with a grin, asking, “So, do I pass, Omi?” By now, it seems whatever surely witty retort he’d had prepared for Kiyoomi has vanished from his mind, it seems.

“Yes, you do,” he says, because even now he can’t deny him that; this is exactly the progress that he had been looking for. He turns to Hinata to give him a small appreciative smile and a brief bow. “Thank you for your assistance with this,” he says. Turning back to Miya, he says, “Come on, let’s get your shit out of my apartment.”

Miya follows after him after saying his own farewell to Hinata, laughing and poking fun at Kiyoomi all the way, triumphant.

It doesn’t take long for them to get together Miya’s things - he hadn’t brought too much over to begin with, after all, and he’d started to pull his things together before they’d met up with Hinata - and they get back into Kiyoomi’s car to drive back to Miya’s apartment. The sun has fully set by then and the air is cool, not unlike the night this all started. It feels like a lifetime now, though Kiyoomi knows it’s only been a handful of days.

“Say, Omi,” Miya asks to break the silence along the way, because of course the man has no idea how to handle things being quiet for too long. “There’s something I still don’t understand.”

Kiyoomi glances over at him out of the corner of his eye. “And what’s that?”

“I don’t really get why ya bit me to begin with.”

“I told you,” he says. “I knew that turning you would give you your best shot at recovering, and recovering quickly.”

“Yeah, but ya didn’t have to do that,” Miya points out. “Any human in your shoes woulda just called an ambulance and hoped for the best.”

“Well, I didn’t have to rely on hoping for the best,” he responds, though technically speaking he knows that’s not quite true. There was still a very real chance that Miya’s body would have rejected the bite, and he would’ve died regardless. Which - “And, need I remind you, you would have died if I hadn’t.”

“Would I have, though?”

Kiyoomi pauses for a moment. “Of course you would have,” he said. “You - maybe you don’t remember, since there was so much going on, but there was just… so much blood. You looked mangled. No human could survive that, even if there’d been doctors on the scene.”

“Maybe, yeah, ya might be right,” he says. “It’s just… Well, I dunno. Just feels like a lot to do for someone that ya act like ya hate half the time. ‘Specially everything that’s come after.”

“Are you complaining?” he asks. It’s easier to deflect than to address the fact that he doesn’t hate Miya, he really doesn’t, and he isn’t sure he ever did.

“No,” Miya admits. “I’m not. I think I’m… glad? Still gotta wrap my head around it, really.”

“Well, good,” he says. “Because we’re here now. It’s done. No real use in questioning it at this point, right?”

When he chances another glance over at Miya, the man doesn’t look especially satisfied with that answer, but he doesn’t push it.

The rest of the drive is quiet. Kiyoomi walks Miya up to his door, even though he feels silly for it, and turns to leave once he sees that he’s safely gotten inside.

“Hey,” Miya says, catching Kiyoomi’s wrist and gently tugging him to turn back around. When Kiyoomi meets his gaze and raises an eyebrow at him, he clears his throat, saying, “I, ah… Thanks.”

“Thanks?”

“I’m tryin’ to tell ya I’m grateful,” he says. “For all of this. Saving me, and looking after me, and all that. Ya didn’t have to do that.”

“I did, though.”

Miya shakes his head, a small smile on his lips. “You could’ve just dumped me off on Sunarin, or somebody else.”

Something in Kiyoomi falters. After all, it’s true that he could have just made sure someone else in the pack would look after Miya and called it that. That may have even been better; maybe they would have had an easier time getting Miya to connect with his wolf, something even now Kiyoomi isn’t fully sure he’s accomplished. “Well, I had to take responsibility,” he says, wrapping the excuse around himself like a protective cloak. “I was the one that turned you, after all.”

Miya nods, looking for a moment like he wants to say more, before ultimately shaking his head to himself and apparently deciding against it. “Anyway, that’s all I really wanted to say,” he says. He finally releases his hold on Kiyoomi’s wrist after giving it a brief squeeze. “Thanks for puttin’ up with me.”

“It was a hardship.”

“Oh, I know it,” he responds, letting out a laugh. “G’night, Omi.”

“Goodnight, Atsumu.”

When Kiyoomi returns to his apartment, he forgets for a moment what it’s like being alone.

It’s a strange feeling, really. For as social as werewolves are as a rule, Kiyoomi has always tended to be more of a solitary creature; he likes knowing that he has the pack to fall back on, of course, but on a day to day basis, he prefers to spend more of his time on his own.

But he’d grown used to Miya’s presence much quicker than he thought he would; quicker than he should have.

He takes his time cleaning the apartment; not only has he not had the time or space to properly clean it with Miya around, but everything smells a bit like him. He has to wash all the blankets because of the way that his scent clings to the blankets; it’s an awkward scent, the way his body had been sorting out going from normal human to a werewolf and an alpha.

He doesn’t think about the way that Miya’s scent speaks to him; disregarding biology, that scent has absolutely no appeal to him. If some part of him protests the thought of scrubbing the scent out of his home, well, that’s probably some weird leftover feeling tied to having turned Miya and being concerned for his well-being after the fact.

Settling down on the couch after all is said and done, in a home that is perfectly clean and all his own again, fills him with a quiet peace. That’s all.

As probably could have been expected, Miya doesn’t leave Kiyoomi alone.

It takes a couple of days, during which he assumes they are both contently back in their usual routines and Miya is sorting out his new normal, but then his phone starts to go off with texts with questions at least once or twice a day. Some questions are more reasonable than others.

> Do you ever have to bathe as a wolf, or does bathing as a human kinda transfer over?

> Does the sensitivity to smells go away? Some people’s scents are legitimately making me lose it???

> Sunarin just told me about how sometimes he gets BLOODLUST??? He’s fucking with me, right?

> Am I less likely to get food poisoning now? Not that that happens often, but just good to know.

Kiyoomi doesn’t always choose to respond.

(He does beseech Miya to not eat suspect food just because he is, in fact, less likely to get food poisoning now.)

Occasionally the questions aren’t even about anything werewolf-related; he just, apparently, wants to get Kiyoomi’s take on things.

It’s almost reminiscent of when he first came to MSBY - at that point, too, Miya had bombarded him with messages, invitations to hang out, that kind of thing. At the time, Kiyoomi had ignored almost all of them that he could while still remaining professional; he’d had absolutely no interest in socializing with someone like Miya.

Nowadays, he doesn’t think he even has a clear picture of what the phrase ‘someone like Miya’ even means, but they’re… friendly. That’s what matters.

However, in the middle of his texts with Miya, there’s something else hanging over Kiyoomi’s head: he has to talk to Meian about this.

The timing of Miya’s accident was probably as good as they could have hoped for: it’s the off-season, and while there have been occasional get-togethers and meetings in the meantime, there haven’t been any games or official practices and he hasn’t had to come up with any excuses as to why he’s been hiding Miya away in his apartment. It’s almost pure luck that Kiyoomi was there to witness Miya get struck - they happened to be the last two to leave an impromptu team dinner. Kiyoomi doesn’t know if he believes in this kind of thing, but it feels like the stars may have aligned.

When they return to practice, however, all it will take is one glance at him, one sniff in his general vicinity, and he’ll know Miya’s a wolf; he has to tell him before then.

He confers with Hitoka over this briefly, but she doesn’t have any great wisdom for him. Her messages are dotted with kaomoji to convey the idea that she is rooting for him, but also that she would be far too anxious to even imagine herself in his shoes.

Motoya is of even less help.

In the end, he knows that he just has to toughen up and do it. After all, the longer he goes on without telling Meian, then the more chance there is for someone else to let it slip for him. And besides, the fact of the matter is that there realistically won’t and can’t be any consequences; there’s no rule saying that wolves can’t turn humans. Sure, ordinarily there’s plenty of discussion both with the pack and with the human, ensuring that everyone is in agreement and fully consenting, but, well, the circumstances were what they were.

He sits down to lunch with Meian at a cafe where they’re seated in a quiet corner at the back of the store. It feels like the least intimidating way to go about this.

Once again, Kiyoomi reminds himself that Meian, technically speaking, does not have any real authority over him in this; volleyball and pack don’t necessarily intersect in that way, and he isn’t pack leader. There’s really no such thing at this point. In all honesty, more than anything else this is to let him know that it could, potentially, affect Miya’s sport and/or the team dynamics.

But if there is anything that Kiyoomi has always been good at, it’s being good. He’s never been trouble. This feels like it’s trouble, and it makes a heavy weight settle in his stomach.

He’s also been a firm believer in getting straight to the point, so once they’re both settled in their seats, he says without preamble, “I turned Miya.”

For a moment, Meian didn’t say anything, just staring at him and furrowing his brow. “Miya Atsumu?” he asks, like the very thought is so absurd that he’s thinking he’s misunderstanding something.

“The very same,” he says with a small nod. He doesn’t know if it would be more or less reasonable if it had been the other Miya twin. “It… He got into an accident. He got hit by a car, and I was right there, and I couldn’t just do nothing.”

“I see,” he says with a slow nod. “So you turned him.”

“A wolf is going to survive something like that much easier than any human could,” Kiyoomi says. He feels like a broken record, but it’s true; biting Miya was the best way to hive him a fighting chance.

“He could have also died in the process.”

“If we was going to die either way, then I’d choose this over letting him die of his injuries,” he says.

Meian pauses. “Was he? Going to die either way, that is.”

Images flash in Kiyoomi’s mind of blood on his hands, on the ground around Miya. “It’s not a chance I wanted to take,” he says.

There’s another long pause, which Kiyoomi supposes is understandable, as Meian takes it all in, but it also serves to put him on edge. He feels like he’s been caught with his hand in the proverbial cookie jar, even though he knows, knows to his very core, that he’s done nothing wrong.

“You know, if there was a…” Meian starts and then stops himself, shaking his head. “Never mind. How is he doing?”

“He’s doing good, actually,” Kiyoomi says. He’s willing to take the out, because whatever Meian was thinking about saying, he’s sure he wouldn’t have liked it. “I kept a close eye on him for the first little bit, but I think he’s okay on his own now. Everything healed up fast.”

“And he’s taking it all well?”

Kiyoomi nods again. “I think he’s still getting used to it, but I think he’s okay with the whole wolf thing,” he says. “After all, he has other weres he can also go to for things. I think in the long run, he’ll be happier for having been brought in on the secret.” Maybe that didn’t necessarily have to have required him to end up becoming a werewolf himself, but Miya has never been one to do things halfway, has he?

“That’s good,” he says.

“And I gave him a good rundown of what to expect here forward,” he says. “So he should be pretty much covered.”

Meian gives him a look that makes him almost pinned to the spot, like maybe he somehow knows that there’s still gaps that Kiyoomi had left in Miya’s knowledge. It’s fine; Kiyoomi was never going to be able to teach him everything that might come up. “Good,” he says. “And did you tell him he can come to me as well if he has any issues?”

“Not in so many words,” he admits, shaking his head. “He knows you’re important within the pack, at any rate. But that’s also a conversation you can have with him yourself.”

Seemingly satisfied, Meian nods, leaning back in his seat. Now that the hardest part of the conversation is over, the atmosphere feels lighter. He even laughs a little as he says, “I really wouldn’t have expected this out of you, of all people.”

“What, turning someone?”

“That too,” he says, nodding. “But Atsumu, specifically. Never would have guessed that would become a thing.”

One of Kiyoomi’s fatal flaws is how easy it is to ruffle him; this is probably why Miya had such a field day with him from the start. “We’re getting along better these days,” he hurries to point out. “And it’s not like I planned on it, anyway.”

“Never said you weren’t,” Meian says. “Though, I guess that’s another thing. When you first joined the team, I really worried you’d end up destroying each other, one way or another.”

“Not for not trying,” he says, shaking his head. “But it’s fine. And maybe him being a wolf will… I don’t know. It could help more, couldn’t it?”

“It could,” he allows. “That might depend on the two of you.”

“I think he trusts me more now,” he says, glancing towards where his phone sits on the table. “He’s been coming to me more since… everything.”

“That’s good, so long as he doesn’t become too much for you.”

“Well. I’m hoping that he doesn’t, either,” he says. “If I have to smack him down, I’ll do so.”

Meian smirks. “Of course you will,” he says. “Go easy on him, will you?”

“No promises,” he says through a smirk of his own.

“You don’t want to have to work with a different setter right now, so you’re not allowed to break him. For your own sake.”

Without it being said outright, Kiyoomi knows that this is Meian letting him off the hook. No real damage has been done here, after all.

It comes as more of a relief than it should, when he knows, had known from the very start, that there was effectively nothing that Meian could get to do to ‘punish’ him for this even if he wanted to. Still, it’s one barrier he has overcome.

Two days later, Kiyoomi’s phone rings. It’s Miya.

That’s nothing too out of the ordinary, really. Along with the texts come phone calls; sometimes Miya’s mind works faster than his fingers can text, so it’s easier for him to just call Kiyoomi instead.

So he is expecting some kind of stream of consciousness rant about whatever is on Miya’s mind when he answers the phone. Instead, he can barely get out a ‘hello?’ before he hears him saying, “Hey. Wanna meet me somewhere? That park, maybe?”

“For what?”

“I’ve been doing a bunch of practicing. I’m getting really good, I think,” Atsumu says. “I wanna show ya.”

“Practicing?” he echoes.

“Transformin’,” Miya clarifies. “It’s easier now.”

Kiyoomi isn’t really sure that this is the kind of thing that he should need to practice that much at or that he should be that proud to show off, but he reminds himself he needs to be supportive. It might make more sense for him to call up someone else to show off to, though maybe he’s been getting guidance from Suna or Akaashi or even Meian, and that’s why he doesn’t feel like he needs to show them.

And, admittedly, he doesn’t really have much planned. Or, more specifically, he had planned to not do much today, which is a loss, but this probably won’t take all too long. Ideally, anyway.

“Sure,” he says eventually. “When would you like to meet up, then?”

“Whenever? Nowish, actually, if that works for you?”

That works for Kiyoomi - that way, he can get this out of the way and have the rest of the day free. “Okay,” he says. “I’ll meet you there.”

When he arrives at the park, at first he doesn’t see any sign of Atsumu, so he assumes he must have beaten him here. He walks for a little bit, headed into the part of the park that’s thicker with trees - that’s probably where they’ll want to be for this anyway - when suddenly he finds his path blocked.

Miya, already in his fur, has pounced out in front of him, staring up at him with round eyes, tail wagging behind him.

“Hi,” he says. “You know, if you were trying to impress me with how good you are at shifting now, you probably should have waited until I got here.”

Miya huffs at his words, then takes a few steps backwards, barking at him.

“I don’t know what you’re trying to tell me now,” he says.

Another bark.

“Alright, sure,” he says. “How about you show off for me by shifting back, so that you can use your words?”

Before Miya can respond - either by shifting back or by barking at him again - they’re both distracted by the sound of something moving behind them. It’s small enough that it’s probably just a squirrel or something, but Kiyoomi is nothing if not cautious; he can probably spin a good enough yarn for a kid that’s wandered upon them if that’s what’s happened.

When he turns, he instead sees that a rabbit has wandered out of the bushes behind him.

What happens next goes by in a flash. Miya must have caught sight of the animal at about the same time, because he lets out a quiet growl, which catches the rabbit’s attention and sends it running in terror. And just like that, Miya is off like a rocket chasing after it. Kiyoomi can only watch it happen.

After a little bit of growling and rustling in the leaves, a strange silence falls, and Kiyoomi can’t help but be a little bit nervous.

“Miya?” he calls out, moving in the direction that he had disappeared to.

When he catches sight of him, Miya is standing stock still. He startles when Kiyoomi repeats his name again, turning around quickly to face him. There’s blood around his mouth, and a now-dead rabbit dangling in his hold. When he sees Kiyoomi standing in front of him, something seems to glimmer in his eyes for a moment, and he takes a step closer to him, dropping the rabbit at his feet.

Just as quickly, though, he shakes himself, something like horror filling his eyes as he looks down at the rabbit now on the ground between them.

It is, actually, a testament to how much Miya actually apparently has been working at this, because after pacing in a couple of anxious circles, he does shift back seemingly pretty easily. Though maybe it’s the circumstances; people can do all kinds of things they’re ordinarily incapable of when the situation calls for it.

The first words out of Miya’s mouth once he’s standing on two feet are, “Oh my god, Sunarin was right.”

Kiyoomi blinks. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“The bloodlust!” he says. “I just - one second I was all normal. I mean, ya saw me. And then I saw the rabbit, and I just couldn’t help myself.”

Admittedly, he does make a hell of a sight right now. There’s blood on his face and hands, coupled with the dirt that naturally finds its way underneath one’s nails after a run. He’s worked up, there’s a look in his eyes that’s somewhere between crazed and panicked. By the second, his eyes are growing redder - not in any supernatural way, but from the tears that quickly start to fall.

“That’s… Miya, that’s not bloodlust,” he says, shaking his head. “It’s a natural predator instinct, sure. That’s a prey animal. I mean, it ran and you chased it. It’s not that much different from when we played chase the first time we came here.”

Miya’s expression turns all the more watery. “But I didn’t kill ya then!” he says. “I did go for your throat, didn’t I? Oh my god.”

Kiyoomi chokes on his own saliva. “You were never going to kill me,” he says, easily skirting past the reminder of how he’d let Miya at his neck so readily. “It’s - okay, you’re missing the point here. The point is, that you’re not… You’re not some monster, and for the love of god, you don’t have bloodlust.”

“You don’t know that, Omi,” he protests. He moves down onto his knees, scooping the rabbit up in his hands. “I hurt this bunny and I coulda hurt you.”

“Atsumu,” he says, his voice a little more firm. “Deep breaths.”

Miya lifts his head to look at him again at the sound of his given name. “How can you be so…?” He doesn’t finish his question, but Kiyoomi thinks he gets the gist.

“It’s practically a rite of passage,” he says, shrugging. “Like I told you, it’ll get easier to control all of this in due time.” And because he can’t help himself, he goes on: “Most wolves do it when they’re little kids, but you get a pass since, in terms of being a werewolf, you basically are a little kid.” 

This does not seem to reassure Miya at all, but he knew it wouldn’t. “I took a life,” he says. “A very cute little life. Look at that nose.”

“I’d really rather not,” he says, holding his hands up in front of him as, again, Miya holds up the rabbit, angling it so that Kiyoomi could, theoretically, look at its cute nose.

“Fine, fine, ya don’t hafta look,” Miya says, turning his head back down; it seems like he’s doing plenty of looking at the rabbit for both of them. “But, let’s - I need some help with something.”

“What’s that?”

“I gotta bury him,” Miya says, then corrects himself, “Or her. Them. I don’t know.”

He practices his deep breathing again for a moment before going on, “Miya, I don’t - this is disgusting, and I’m not touching that thing.”

“C’mon, ya gotta help me out,” Miya protests, looking back up at him. “You’re here already, and I bet anybody else would make fun of me.”

“And what makes you think I’m not going to make fun of you?”

“You just said this is normal.”

“Yeah, but you’re a grown man crying over a dead rabbit. So.”

Miya huffs as he looks back up at him. “It’s not just a dead rabbit, Omi, it’s a dead rabbit that I killed,” he says. “I have a body count now.”

There’s a joke to be made there, but Kiyoomi bites his tongue. “I’m not helping you bury it,” he says. “We don’t have shovels or anything, I have no idea how you planned to do this.”

“With our hands maybe?” he says. “Which, okay, ya’d be the worst person to ask to do that, but still… I dunno, we could’ve done something.”

“Well, we’re not doing that,” he says, grateful that Miya recognizes the absurdity of potentially asking Sakusa Kiyoomi to get on the ground and start digging with his bare hands to create a grave for a random dead rabbit. “Look, we can… Let’s just make it a little memorial, or something. Lay some leaves over it.”

Miya ponders over this suggestion for a long moment before finally deciding that that will suffice. “Alright,” he says. “Well, this… This seems as good a place as any, right?”

Kiyoomi wonders when, exactly, his life had come to this as he helps Miya find some pleasant-looking leaves and flowers. He maintains a distance from the dead rabbit as Miya settles the tiny body in the shade under a bush, and arranges a tasteful-as-can-be memorial to put beside it. Hopefully they’ll laugh about this later; Kiyoomi already kind of wants to laugh, mostly because he can’t believe that this is actually happening to him.

Miya’s hands, still marked with blood and dirt, settle in his lap. They’re shaking a little bit, and his fingers curl in on themselves, maybe in an attempt to keep them steady.

For a long moment, neither of them says anything. When he looks over at Miya, Kiyoomi realizes that his cheeks are wet again. It’s not the big crocodile tears from before; no, it’s something subtler, a quieter sadness that’s settled over Miya. Part of him thinks that it would be best to say absolutely nothing, but apparently he’s been robbed of his filter, so he asks, “Are you crying?” His voice is surprisingly gentle, even to his own ears.

“Who, me?” Miya asks, bringing a hand up to rub at his face not quite surreptitiously enough. “Nah.”

“Just got something in your eye?”

“Yeah.”

Kiyoomi doesn’t say anything for a moment, because he never knows what to say to something like this. He knows he could just say nothing, and let the moment pass, and neither of them would be bothered, but he finds that he can’t bring himself to stay silent.

“It’s okay, you know,” he hears himself say.

“Huh?”

“If you’re upset. With yourself, or over what happened, or whatever,” he says. “That’s okay. I think that’s… well, it’s human.”

“Which neither of us technically are.”

Kiyoomi shrugs. “If that’s how you want to look at it, sure. I don’t know if it’s good to other yourself like that, though,” he says. “You’re just as human as you were a few weeks ago. Now you’re just… something more.”

“None of this makes you any worse of a person, or less human, or whatever you’re telling yourself in your head right now,” he continues. “You’re not a danger. Not to me, or yourself, or anyone else around you. You caught a rabbit. That’s okay.”

Miya doesn’t respond aloud, but he nods, and he can only hope that that’s enough.

The next time Miya calls Kiyoomi out of the blue, the conversation is no less harrowing.

“So, Omi, quick question for ya,” he starts.

“Fire away,” he says. He puts him on speakerphone and sets the phone on the counter so that he can continue to work on washing his dishes (he cleans them before they go in the dishwasher - he knows that this is a redundant process, but he cannot bring himself to do anything less).

“I think I’m pickin’ up most of the werewolf stuff pretty well,” he says, which seems true as far as Kiyoomi has seen; there have been no further incidents that he’s heard about, and he seems to be getting plenty of information from other members of the pack just as well. “But there’s something I’m still not gettin’.” Kiyoomi is about to tell him to cut to the chase already when he goes on: “What the hell is an omega?”

It’s a question that was probably inevitable, but Kiyoomi had hoped that it would just get answered by someone else somewhere along the way. He certainly didn’t expect it to come up like this, question dropped in his lap so casually; for a moment, the only response Miya gets is the sound of the plate Kiyoomi had been scrubbing clattering into the sink basin.

“Omi? Ya there?”

“Yeah, I’m here. Sorry, just dropped something,” he says. Rolling his shoulders back and picking the plate back up, he focuses on a stubborn stain as he says, “Omegas are… Okay. Let’s start with the basics. Technically speaking, all humans have the capacity to… present, as an alpha, a beta, or an omega. It’s in everyone’s DNA.”

“Okay…”

“But for humans, it just sits there, unused. A vestigial part of biology, that you’d have gone on your whole life without knowing anything about,” he says. “For werewolves, that part of our biology is awake.”

“And what does that mean?”

“It means that we have some… differences,” he says, clearing his throat. “I’m an omega. Functionally, in the day to day, it doesn’t… make a huge difference. It means that I have slightly different instincts than you might, since - okay. You’re an alpha, do you know that much?”

“Mhm,” he hums. “Sunarin said, but he wouldn’t tell me more.”

He mentally curses Suna for blessing Miya with this knowledge and then not following through. “Okay,” he says. “So, yes. You’re an alpha. Which means that your instincts and mine might be slightly different at times. Scents might affect you differently than they would affect me, and you’ll smell different as an alpha than I do as an omega.”

“Is that why ya smell so good?” Miya asks, like he’s trying to make Kiyoomi break all of his dishes. “I figured it was just ‘cause of how you’re so particular about your hygiene.”

Kiyoomi stares down at his sink for a moment, trying to pull all of his thoughts back in line; Miya is a baby alpha, of course he’s going to just say things like that like it doesn’t mean anything. “It’s probably a bit of both,” he says eventually. “Alphas are naturally… inclined to like an omega’s scent. But I do also keep a strict routine and I use high-end soaps, which certainly helps.”

He can only hope that they absolutely do not return to this topic once practice starts up again, because he can’t use the soap excuse when he’s drenched in sweat.

Miya laughs, accepting that answer easily enough. “Alright, sure, sure. I know that’s true, I couldn’t even pronounce some of the names of the stuff you’ve got in your shower.”

“You looked at my things?”

“I was in your shower anyway, what was I s’posed to do, not look?” he says. “It was a rare opportunity to snoop a li’l and get some insight on your life.”

“I don’t know if what soap I use would really be that insightful,” he points out.

“Well, ya never know,” he says. “I mean, it looked… French, maybe? Lotsa little squiggles on the letters. Maybe ya got it from France. Maybe ya’ve got a secret past where ya used to go to France.”

“I’ve never been to France.”

“Well, see? Now that’s one more thing I know about ya that I didn’t,” he says.

In spite of himself, Kiyoomi laughs. “Going to start keeping a list of countries I’ve never been to, Miya?”

“Nah, I think maybe I’ll just get a big long list of countries ya may have been to, and cross ‘em off as I find out,” he says.

“That’s stupid,” he says. “Why would you want to do that?”

“Something to do,” Miya says brightly. “Makes it feel more like a game that way.”

Kiyoomi’s lips evidently are working on their own, because to his own ears it almost sounds… flirty? when he says, “Am I a game to you?” He’s not flirting; if he is, it’s just to continue to change the subject so that he doesn’t have to explain any other particulars of what it means that he’s an omega.

“Nah,” he says. “I’m nothing but serious when it comes to you, Omi.”

And that’s not exactly unflirty, either, frankly. But it’s also coming from Miya Atsumu of all people, who Kiyoomi knows perfectly well that he can’t take seriously when he says things like that.

“Sure you are,” he says, shaking his head to himself.

“Ya don’t believe me, do ya? I’m hurt, Omi-kun, truly,” he says.

“I believe that even less,” he tells him.

Miya laughs, and it seems like the flow of conversation has safely carried Kiyoomi downriver so he doesn’t have to explain things like knots to him. The rest of the conversation is fully in easier territory, and before he knows it, all of Kiyoomi’s dishes are clean and neatly placed in the dishwasher.

He doesn’t rush Miya to hang up, and ends up laying on his back on the couch still on the phone with him. When his eyes close, it feels like Miya might be right there with him.

Miya is in Kiyoomi’s apartment again.

He’s not really sure how this keeps happening, but it does. He’s also not sure why he doesn’t mind it, when his home is supposed to be his sanctuary, a respite from the rest of the world.

Practice has started up again, and ordinarily, Kiyoomi would think that it would be more important than ever that he have that alone time. Instead, he’s letting Miya talk his ear off in the locker room, and then continue to do so all the way back to his apartment. It’s surprisingly smooth.

“So, how come Bokkun doesn’t know?” he asks as he goes into the kitchen; one convenient thing about spending this much time around Miya is that the man has internalized things like how he likes to take his tea, and is more than willing to prepare it for him.

“Bokuto doesn’t know what?” Kiyoomi asks.

“About the wolf stuff,” he says, glancing back over his shoulder at him after he’s retrieved the tea leaves from the cabinet. “I mean, I get that he’s human, but so’s Shouyou, right? Hell, ‘Samu knew too, so.”

“Shouyou is a special case,” he says, shrugging. He pulls up a seat at his counter and watches Miya move around his kitchen. “And to my understanding, Osamu found out by accident.”

“Okay, okay, yeah, fine. ‘Samu doesn’t count. And Shouyou gets a pass ‘cause he’s dating Tobio, sure, sure. But Bokuto’s also dating a wolf, so…”

Kiyoomi shakes his head. “It’s not just because Hinata and Kageyama are dating, though yes, that helps,” he says. “It’s also a matter of their personalities. Bokuto is too…”

“Go on,” he presses when Kiyoomi pauses, a little grin on his face. “Bokkun’s a little what?”

“He’s a loudmouth,” he finishes. “He would blow every single one of us’ cover in no time.”

Miya seems to consider this for a moment before accepting it with a small nod. “Alright, ya got me there,” he says. “Just seems a little unfair, now that he’s practically surrounded by us.”

“His fault he can’t be trusted,” he says lightly, shrugging. “And that he’s unobservant enough to not realize there’s anything strange going on.”

“Dunno if I buy that one, Omi,” he says with a little huff. “ I didn’t notice anything, so…”

“Yes, well, there you have it.”

“So mean to me,” he pouts. “I’m plenty observant.”

“In the right circumstances, yes,” he allows, granting him a small smile. “It’s a shame that those circumstances are mostly limited to volleyball.”

Kiyoomi isn’t being fair, though this is of course all in good fun; Miya has plenty of moments where he’s more insightful than Kiyoomi would have ever expected out of him, and he can’t deny that. Right now is a great example of that - without being directly told, he seems to have passively learned Kiyoomi’s kitchen and his preferences.

“Y’know what, maybe I’ll take that,” Miya says, shaking his head. “That’s basically a compliment.”

“That feels like a stretch,” he tells him.

Miya shrugs. He moves over to where Kiyoomi is sitting, placing a mug - his favorite mug - in front of him. “I can read between the lines,” he says. “‘Cause I’m so observant.”

In spite of himself, Kiyoomi laughs. “Okay, okay, fine. If you want to win so badly, you win.”

“I already won, asshole, you’re just pretending to be magnanimous about it.”

“That’s a big word. Don’t hurt yourself,” he tells him.

Miya smiles, leaning forward on his elbows on the counter. “You know something, Omi?”

“What?”

“I can tell ya like me,” he says. “Once upon a time, you might’ve actually meant it when ya said mean things like that to me.”

“Who says I don’t still?”

(He doesn’t. It’s easy for people to look at Miya and make assumptions about his intelligence, to think that he’d be a typical dumb jock, but Kiyoomi has come to realize that that really couldn’t be farther from the truth.)

“You don’t,” he says, sounding especially confident of himself in a way that Kiyoomi can’t find it in himself to even pretend to argue against. “It’s different now.”

“It is,” he says. “I mean… Especially lately, we’ve been spending more time together. I… Surely, that would help.”

“Or it could’ve hurt,” Miya points out, because that surely would have been his expectation at one point - Kiyoomi would have sworn he’d have a threshold for just how much of this man he can stand. He’s certain they’ve leapt over that hurdle by now.

“And yet, it didn’t,” he says.

Something flickers across Miya’s face then, and he asks, “Ya promise?”

“What?”

“I mean… obviously things are good between us, but I’m not… I’m not annoying ya?” he asks. “With all my questions, and how often I’m takin’ up your time? It’s just… a lot, y’know, and it’s easier to have ya to lean on, but if I’m being too much for ya…”

The thing is this: Kiyoomi and Miya have never been especially close. It’s nothing personal, though once upon a time it may have been - Miya does not make a good first impression - but merely a matter of him not being close with most people. Miya, to his credit, had put in the effort, had invited him out to various social outings, but Kiyoomi was pretty uninterested in getting to know him for a while. Now, circumstance has brought him to spend all that time with Miya that he’d once pushed away.

“No, you’re not annoying me,” he says, and that’s probably the most miraculous thing of all. Even with his favorite people - already a short list - Kiyoomi can only stand spending so much time with them before he needs time away. It seems like Miya isn’t depleting that battery, and he isn’t sure how or why that is, but he’s decided not to examine that question too closely. Because it chafes at him to feel so strangely sentimental about it, he goes on, “And even if I did, I mean, it’s my duty to make sure you’re looked after, since I turned you.”

Miya’s eyes narrow a little bit at that, but he nods. “Alright, guess that’s true,” he says. His grin returns as he goes on, “Or you can just admit that ya like me.”

“More than I used to,” he allows. “I like you more than I used to.”

He brings his tea up to his lips, using the mug to shield the way he can feel his face warming up at the sight of how Miya’s smile grows impossibly brighter.

It’s about another two weeks before they spend time alone together, which might actually be the longest that they’ve gone since Miya was turned. But that’s probably for the best, Kiyoomi tells himself.

It means he can actually settle back into his routines, and it’s not like he’s not seeing him at all; he sees him plenty at practice, so he doesn’t have to worry that he’s not doing okay in the interim.

But the next time that Miya comes to see him, there’s a cloud hanging over his head that Kiyoomi doesn’t know what to do with.

He orders them dinner, and Miya thanks him for going to the trouble. Kiyoomi can hear in his mind the way he should be making some comment about how it’s only right that Kiyoomi would pay, being a rich kid and all; no such comment comes.

“What’s wrong with you today?” he asks him.

To his credit, Miya laughs when he lifts his head to look at him, seemingly thrown off by the bluntness of the question. “Nothing, I’m okay, Omi, really,” he says.

“Yeah, well, your face is telling me that that’s not true,” he tells him. “And I don’t want to keep pulling teeth here, so…”

“Nah, I promise, it’s nothing,” Miya says, lifting his hand to rub at the back of his neck, silently telling on himself - Kiyoomi knows nerves when he sees them. “I’m just… tired.”

“Not sleeping well?”

“Well, no, not that. I feel like I might even be sleeping better than ever,” he says.

“So what’s the problem?”

“I just…” he pauses, letting out a quiet laugh before he looks back up to meet Kiyoomi’s gaze. “It’ll probably sound silly to you, since this is all just… second nature for ya.”

“Try me.”

Miya rubs a hand over his face, takes in a deep breath. “This is all just so much,” he says. “Not just the way my senses are so much stronger than before, just… Everything.”

“What do you mean?”

“It feels like there’s this part of myself that I hardly know now, you know?” he says. “Like, I’m workin’ at it. I’m accepting this, but it feels like every day there’s still some new little thing that I’ve never felt before, or I’ll catch myself doin’ something weird? It’s like I’m living with a new weird roommate, but that roommate’s me, too.”

For a moment, Miya doesn’t go on, but then he takes in a deep breath and barrels on. Kiyoomi remains quiet, to give him room to let out whatever he needs to.

“And it’s not just me, y’know? Like… I get why ya don’t wanna tell just anybody about all this, but it feels weird, not telling my ma,” he says. “I know I could tell her, and that probably wouldn’t be the end of the world or anything, but what if that would make it worse? I don’t want her to be scared of me or anything, but… She could be, you know? She might not understand. I know, it’s not a big deal in the long run, I’ve kept secrets from her before, but…” He shakes his head, and this time it does feel like he’s done, a little bit deflated as he sits back against the cushions.

Kiyoomi nods slowly. “Ah,” he says slowly. “It’s not silly.”

“Huh?”

“You said it would sound silly to me,” he says. “It doesn’t.”

“Nah? I mean, you probably - ”

“I felt that way too, when I was younger,” he says before he can chicken out about it. “For a while, when I was a kid, I didn’t want to be a werewolf. I didn’t want everything that came along with it.”

“I… can I ask why?” he asks. “I mean, if you were born one, and everybody in your family is, too…”

Kiyoomi shrugs. “It was overwhelming, like you said. It felt like it was going to make my life too complicated,” he says. “It’d always be this barrier between me and the human kids around me, and it made me so much more sensitive to things that none of them would ever even notice. But even within my family, it felt like being a wolf was already going to lead to so many… expectations.”

“What’d ya do to get over that?”

“I don’t know if I ever really did anything in particular,” he says. “I was terrified of disappointing my family, so I never felt like I could say anything to them about it.”

Miya watches him, a small frown on his lips. “Do you still feel like that?”

“Sometimes, I guess,” he says. “I don’t know. It’s different now. But what I can tell you is what I figured out that worked for me.”

“Hm?”

“I realized that just as much as the werewolf side of me was this great big, scary thing I couldn’t help, it was also something I could use as a shield,” he said. “When everything got to be too much, I could just… hide away in my fur. The rest of the world, all of my fears and worries, I just put them on the shelf for a minute.”

“And that made you feel better?”

“It did. I don’t know if it’ll do anything for you, but… yeah,” he says. “I remember curling myself up in ridiculous places, like under my sister’s desk, wherever I felt safe. Everything felt… quieter.”

Miya doesn’t say anything for a moment, but Kiyoomi doesn’t really quite expect him to. The suggestion probably won’t work the same for him - while Kiyoomi likes a quiet environment, it seems like Miya has always felt a little more at ease with an element of chaos around him.

But then Miya surprises him. “Think I could give it a try?” he asks.

“What?”

“I mean… Now. If I could just kinda sit with you, and…” he trails off, eyes falling to the floor.

Part of Kiyoomi wants to point out that he thinks that maybe Miya has misunderstood some part of this; after all, the entire purpose for Kiyoomi had been to find somewhere he felt especially safe and to block out everything that had been overwhelming or even scaring him. Arguably, Kiyoomi is the root cause of everything that is currently ailing Miya. But if Miya thinks that this will make him feel better, well, it doesn’t feel like it’s Kiyoomi’s place to stop him.

“Sure, if you want to,” he says after a moment.

Miya sits up a little straighter, giving him a smile before getting up and going over behind Kiyoomi’s privacy screen to shift (he’s not sure whether doing so is meant to be for his benefit or Miya’s, but he thinks it’s nice nonetheless).

When Miya returns a moment later, claws clicking against the laminate flooring, Kiyoomi isn’t quite sure where to expect him to go. Maybe he’ll want to curl up at his feet? The rug is actually pretty comfortable, all things considered.

One tentative paw lifts and hovers a few centimeters away from touching the couch cushion, a question.

“You want up here? With your dirty paws?”

Miya stares at him; it seems he’s mastered puppy dog eyes.

Well… His paws probably aren’t actually that dirty, anyway.

“Alright, fine,” he says, gesturing for Miya to get up on the couch with him. In his wolf form, Miya seems out of place on the couch, but maybe that’s just because Kiyoomi’s never had a pet to let up on the furniture. After all, in this form, especially looking the way he is now, Miya is practically just a big dog.

It doesn’t take long for Miya to fully make himself at home, though, and apparently that involves getting fully in Kiyoomi’s personal space. His front legs drape across Kiyoomi’s thighs, curling himself seemingly with the goal of making sure as much of him is pressed against Kiyoomi as possible. He’s a solid weight keeping Kiyoomi pressed into the couch, but somehow it doesn’t feel too cumbersome or restricting.

“Comfortable?” he asks him, though he doesn’t expect much by way of an answer. Miya’s ears twitch, and that’s enough.

Miya lays his head down on his lap as well, the side of his face pressed against Kiyoomi’s stomach. He takes in a deep breath and lets it back out as a deep sigh, and Kiyoomi imagines that all he can smell right now is Kiyoomi. He wonders if that is a plus here.

He doesn’t say much after that, because Miya has always been the one to fill the silences between them, but it doesn’t seem like the wolf curled up with him minds it.

Kiyoomi’s hands find their way to run through Miya’s fur. It’s surprisingly soft; Kiyoomi has always found his own fur to be a little too coarse, not that he’s ever spent much time snuggled up against anyone for it to be an issue.

When he feels Kiyoomi’s hand stroking down along his spine, Miya stretches and seems to melt further into his lap.

Kiyoomi thinks about the way that Miya seems like he’s always touching someone. He thrives on it, seems to gain his strength from little things like high fives and arms slung around shoulders. With this in mind, he lets himself continue to pet him, his arm remaining a gentle anchor on his back.

He looks down at Miya. From the angle he’s at, he can’t quite see his face, but he can take in the steady in and out of his breathing, the way it’s slow and even as he relaxes more and more.

Genuinely, he hadn’t expected this to work for him, especially not this well. Miya always seems like he can’t quite sit still even in the best of circumstances, after all, and even as it’s happening, Kiyoomi can’t reconcile the thought of anyone coming to him for comfort.

It makes him feel strangely warmed.

“Feeling better, Atsumu?” he asks him softly, but there’s no indication that he heard.

Careful as he can be so as not to jostle him, Kiyoomi leans to try and catch a glance of his face. His eyes are closed, and just then he lets out a quiet snore. He’s fully fallen asleep.

Bringing his hand back up Atsumu’s body, he rubs the spot on the top of his head between his ears. In response, he curls up tighter against Kiyoomi. As a general rule, werewolves have higher body temperatures, but Kiyoomi has always been an exception, always running cool. Sharing Atsumu’s body heat like this is enough to make him start to get drowsy as well, and Kiyoomi can’t find it in himself to fight it for long.

He leans his head back, letting his eyes fall closed. He drifts off to sleep there on his couch with Atsumu as a blanket, his fingers buried in his fur.

Time passes, as it always does.

For all of his fears on the matter, Atsumu is, genuinely, doing really well.

Kiyoomi doesn’t have much to compare against, of course, but Atsumu really is settling in nicely. It just feels like it makes sense that he’s a werewolf now, like maybe he’d always been meant to be one; not that Kiyoomi really believes in that kind of thing.

Initially, Osamu keeping as big a secret as the existence of werewolves (and his boyfriend being one) had opened up a wound between the brothers that Kiyoomi has been too much of a coward to ask about, but Atsumu being a werewolf and getting to share his experiences with Osamu has seemingly mended that hurt.

Meian says that between Atsumu and Shouyou, their so-called pack might start to feel like more of an actual, cohesive unit. It’s in the way they love, he says. It pulls people together, like a pack ought to be.

Shouyou is over the moon to be able to talk about this kind of thing with Atsumu. And just as much as that, he’s excited to have someone handy who is willing to indulge his ideas like incorporating a wolf into his workout routine (Kiyoomi knows no further details and thinks it best to keep it that way).

Apparently, he even reached out to Hitoka to thank her for the role she played on the night he was turned, and they hit it off. He’s surprisingly insightful, she says, and they’ve met up for lunch at least once or twice.

Atsumu is a darling, is the simplest way of putting it.

And Kiyoomi? Well. As much as he might like to, he can’t pretend that he isn’t getting some joy from all of this. From Atsumu.

That is new and entirely unexpected.

Of course, Kiyoomi has known for a while now that Atsumu isn’t nearly as bad as his first impressions had been, but now he’s gone a step or two beyond not that bad into I can’t believe I’m feeling this much affection towards him. 

It doesn’t help that Atsumu seems like he’s going out of his way to be extra nice to Kiyoomi.

He’s starting carrying around hand sanitizer and wipes, and he always has an extra water bottle or food on hand that he seems all too ready to offer up to Kiyoomi. And they’re not just snacks, they’re Kiyoomi’s preferred snacks, from his preferred brands no less, the kind of thing that once upon a time Atsumu would’ve ribbed him for buying the ‘fancy stuff’ over, so it’s not just some kind of coincidence.

Kiyoomi doesn’t know what to make of it. He’s grateful, of course he is, but it feels meaningful in a way that he’s pretty sure that Atsumu hadn’t intended for.

For the most part, though, it’s mostly things that are small enough for him to simply ignore. Atsumu isn’t going too far out of his way, or spending too much of his money - and in any case, Kiyoomi will figure out a way to pay him back so that the playing field is a little more even.

Until he gets home one afternoon to find that his kitchen has been fully restocked while he was out to lunch with Motoya. There’s a note stuck on his fridge; it’s short and sweet, more of a calling card than anything else, simply making sure Kiyoomi knows he wasn’t victim of a reverse robbery.

And this… This is a little less easy to ignore.

First things first, he pulls out his phone to text Atsumu (well, maybe after he’s helped himself to one of the bottled teas that Atsumu has put in his fridge for him):

> When I gave you my apartment key, I don’t know if this is what I had in mind.

Within a minute, his phone is ringing. He doesn’t need to check the display to know exactly who it is.

“Hello?”

“Listen, the thing is, the state of your kitchen upsets me,” Atsumu says in lieu of a proper greeting.

“Why is that?”

“What do you eat?” he says, sounding appalled that he even has to ask.

“There’s plenty of things to cook. I mean, I cook simple meals, after all, so I don’t need that many ingredients on hand.”

“And when ya don’t feel like cooking?”

Kiyoomi blinks. “Well, then I guess I order takeout or something.”

“That’s stupid expensive, Omi,” he says. “And not worth the trouble if you’re just lookin’ for a quick and easy snack. Ya need snacks.”

“I don’t know if I need snacks that badly,” he says. But now that he’s looking, yes, a not insignificant amount of what Atsumu had gotten him were snacks and some instant meals.

“Well, I think ya do,” he says. “And now that I’ve gotten ya on the snack lifestyle, you’ll see how ya like it.”

“Snack lifestyle, Atsumu? Not sure that that’s a thing.”

“We’re makin’ it a thing,” he says. Humming, he seems to think for a moment before going on, “I’m pretty sure it’s already a thing anyway, though. We always had snacks around as kids. Can’t do anything if you’re too hungry to think.”

“I think you also just grew up differently than I did,” he points out.

Atsumu huffs. “Maybe so. But kids are kids, right? They gotta eat when they’re hungry, so they can grow big and strong and all that,” he says.

“Oh, just like you did? Big and tall?”

“Fuck off, Omi,” he says, but he’s laughing all the while. Kiyoomi can picture the smile on his face. “You’re not that much taller than me.”

“But I am taller than you, without subscribing to a… snack lifestyle.”

“Well, you’re gonna learn to love snacks. ‘Sides, maybe it’s more for my benefit than yours, y’know? Can’t have me wastin’ away when I visit ya just because neither of us feels like cooking.”

Never mind the fact that what Atsumu has bought is, still, to Kiyoomi’s tastes and not Atsumu’s, it should feel like a presumptuous statement. He shouldn’t just assume that he’ll be continuing to spend more time here; however, Kiyoomi realizes that maybe it’s too late, the precedent has been set. He doesn’t know if that bothers him.

Instead of ribbing Atsumu for how it is presumptuous regardless of how Kiyoomi feels about it, he tells him, “If you’re hungry when you’re over at my place, then I’ll cook for you.”

“That’s - ” Atsumu starts, seemingly quickly losing whatever words he had wanted to say. “Well, ya definitely don’t have to do that.”

“I think that falls under being a good host.”

“Nah, I dunno about that,” he says. “Besides, Omi… No disrespect here, but your cooking’s a little bland.”

Kiyoomi can’t help but to sputter. He knows he’s not much of a cook - he mostly does it out of sheer necessity rather than any particular love for the act - but he thought it wasn’t bad enough to comment on. “Is it?”

“It’s not that it’s bad or anything!” Atsumu rushes to correct himself, letting out a laugh that’s a little nervous. “I just feel like, you know - honestly, it’s probably mostly a matter of different tastes. And it’s not like I’m some great chef either.”

“No, that’s your brother,” he says with a small nod.

Atsumu sputters for a moment. “Okay, y’know something? I learned to cook before ‘Samu did! I was Ma’s little helper,” he says. “And he stole my thunder, and ran with it.”

Something about the image his mind conjures up of a young Atsumu playing helper in the kitchen attempts to do Kiyoomi in. He doesn’t even know why, he’s not a kid person; it’s just too sweet of an image for him to bear. “Poor thing,” he says. “I can’t say that I can imagine that becoming your long term passion, though.”

“It could’ve been,” he says. “Who knows what could’ve happened?”

“Yeah, maybe you could’ve ended up starting Osamu’s restaurant alongside him,” he says, though he thinks that maybe the phrase ‘ too many cooks in the kitchen’ wouldn’t be enough to cover what that might’ve been like if they’d tried; both Miya twins have such strong personalities. “I doubt we would’ve met, though.”

For a moment, there’s silence on the other end of the line, and Kiyoomi thinks the call may have dropped. But then, finally, Atsumu says. “Guess not. That’s… you’d count that as a negative, right?”

In all honesty, the words had slipped from Kiyoomi’s lips before he had even had the chance to think about them. But he finds that he still doesn’t have to think very hard on it to find his answer: “Yeah. Yeah, I think that would be a negative, as far as I’m concerned.”

Atsumu is quiet again for a moment, and then he lets out a laugh that sounds just a little unnatural to Kiyoomi’s ears; he wonders if he may have gone a step too far by saying that, but he doesn’t know how that could be. “It’d be a negative for me, too, Omi-kun,” he says eventually.

“Not just because you’d have given up volleyball?”

“Nah. I’d’ve made my choice, so I wouldn’t have known to miss it, right?” he says. “And it’s not just a bad thing for ya because you’d miss playing with me?”

“There are other setters,” he says, because genuinely it’s not about volleyball. But because he knows how tender Atsumu’s ego is, he adds, “Though I think I’d miss that, too.”

“Good,” Atsumu responds, his voice soft and warm like a sweater straight out of the dryer. “‘S the same for me.”

They hang up not long after that, but the warmth remains settled over Kiyoomi for the rest of the night.

Resolutely, he does not think about the way this surprise smacks of courting gift, or how his older brother had always insisted that the first step to winning an omega’s heart is to know their stomach.

It rains on the next full moon.

Full moons are not quite so dramatic for werewolves as the movies make them out to be, but nonetheless, they are still a nuisance. The clouds help dampen it, so he’s not feeling it as much as he would on a clear sky night, but Kiyoomi still feels unsettled.

It makes him restless, and maybe heightens his nerves, especially when he doesn’t have an outlet for it. It’s the kind of situation where he might ordinarily go for a run - in his fur or his skin, either way works, though maybe it’s a little better to let the wolf out to play - or, given the right circumstances and a willing partner, find other creative ways to work off that excess energy.

Beyond that, though, it’s not terrible, but still, he doesn’t like feeling cooped up like this. And he knows that he handles it better since he’s been through this cycle countless times over his lifetime, so he can only imagine that Atsumu is feeling it more than he is, so he’d texted him to see if he might want to go to the gym together.

He hasn’t gotten a response back, which is fine. He might be a bit worried about it if it weren’t for the fact that Atsumu had mentioned that he was planning to go see his brother; he would be perfectly fine in Osamu and Suna’s hands. He’s spent the other full moons since he turned with them, after all.

So Kiyoomi’s content to have a quiet night in; he’s got Hitoka on video call as he prepares himself a late dinner, and that’s good enough for him. She gets more anxious than usual on the full moons, and while most of the time Kiyoko is around to soothe her, she’s been caught up late at the clinic tonight. Kiyoomi knows better than anyone the value of a distraction.

So he lets her talk about whatever she wants to, in this case the latest book she’s read. “I picked it up because everyone was talking about how insane it was, right, and I honestly had no clue what was going on most of the way through the story,” she’s saying. On her end, she’s folding laundry, another full moon favorite for Kiyoomi; nights like this are also made for productivity.

“Sounds like the kind of book I’d hate,” he comments.

“Probably!” she says with a little laugh, shaking her head to herself as she smooths out a crease on one of her wife’s shirts. “I mean, I think it all made sense in the end?”

“I don’t know if I like how you sound unsure,” he says. “Either it did or it didn’t, right?”

“It kind of did. It’s a thinker,” she says. “Like, I had to kind of piece together some of what the author had been implying along the way. Like… I don’t know how much of the story actually literally happened or if it was symbolic.”

“Right,” he says. He uses the back of his knife to slide the veggies he’s been cutting into a pan to saute. He thinks about how Atsumu had commented on his cooking; he’s going to do his best, in spite of himself. “Sounds frustrating.”

“A bit, but I think it was still a really good book,” she says with a little laugh. “Like, once I started it, I couldn’t put it down, and that feels like a good sign, right?”

He’s about to respond when he hears something outside his door. It’s clumsy-sounding footsteps at first, then like something is rubbing and bumping against the walls. “Hold on,” he says, stopping what he’s doing. He turns down the heat on the stove before moving over towards the peephole to see if he can’t figure out what’s going on.

He doesn’t immediately see anything, though he’s startled by what is definitely the sound of claws against his front door.

“What’s going on?” Hitoka says, sounding distinctly frightened.

Kiyoomi would be, too, if it weren’t for the fact that two distinct smells waft into his home from under the door: wet dog, and Atsumu.

“Sorry, I think I have to go,” he tells her as he comes back over to his laptop. “Atsumu’s here.”

“Atsumu?” she asks. “Is he okay?”

“He’s fine, I think? Unless something happened to him tonight. I’ll let you know.”

The last thing he hears out of her is a sound of concern, half-formed words full of worry, but he closes the laptop before hurrying back over to the door when he hears Atsumu scratching again. He doesn’t want to risk him damaging anything.

When he opens the door, he is met with the sight of Atsumu, sure enough in his wolf form and absolutely soaked from the rain.

“Miya, what the hell?”

Atsumu’s fur is so wet he’s dripping with it, trailing rainwater in with him and leaving muddy pawprints in his wake. As he looks up at Kiyoomi and barks, his eyes are bright.

“Yeah, no, absolutely not,” he tells him. He stops him short of getting close to Kiyoomi’s nice living room rug - he does not want to have to pay to get that cleaned. “No wet paws on anything I can’t mop.”

Atsumu sits down then, staring up at Kiyoomi, utterly unrepentant.

“You’re filthy,” he goes on. His entire apartment is going to smell like dirt and wet dog for weeks. Maybe he should make Atsumu clean up; that would only be fair, though he isn’t quite sure he trusts him to get down to the finer details the way that Kiyoomi would. “You - you soggy beast.”

Atsumu seems to find that hilarious, his tail wagging, sending more water droplets flying around him.

“Enough,” he says. “What are you doing here?”

Atsumu does not answer, but takes a step in closer and before he can think to brace himself or stop what’s happening, Kiyoomi finds himself knocked to the ground with a sopping wet Atsumu towering over him. Cold water hits formerly clean clothes and makes them stick to his skin unpleasantly, and it chills him enough that it almost - almost - comes as a comfort when a broad, warm tongue laps at his skin.

He brings both of his hands up to Atsumu’s chest to push him back. “Miya, shift back,” he tells him. “You’re making a mess and you’re going to get sick if you don’t warm up.”

The wolf in front of him seems to consider this for a long moment before leaning forward and trying to lick him again.

“No,” he says, like he’s dealing with an actual dog or maybe a child instead of his intelligent, adult coworker who very much can hear and understand every word he’s saying. “Shift back and go shower.”

After a long moment where he seems to consider this, Atsumu pulls away and stalks his way off to the bathroom. A few moments later, Kiyoomi hears the clattering of bottles in the shower hitting the floor, heralding his arrival in the bathroom.

“Don’t worry Omi, I’m not dead,” a voice comes calling a moment later, comforting him to know that at the very least, Atsumu has finally decided to shift back. “I’ll put everything back where it belongs.”

(Kiyoomi had his doubts.)

After getting Atsumu a clean towel and a fresh set of clothes, Kiyoomi goes into the kitchen to pack up what he’d started to prep - with Atsumu here, it’ll be better to just order in - and sets up some water heating up for tea. It still leaves plenty of time for him to get settled back in on the couch before Atsumu resurfaces; once upon a time, Atsumu had been the type to take an absurdly quick shower, but as of late he’s gotten better about it. It feels like an overstatement to say that Kiyoomi is proud of him, but… Well, he’s pleased at the very least.

When Atsumu pads down the hall, he’s dressed in Kiyoomi’s clothes and has messy hair, towel still draped around his neck. He smells significantly less like wet dog and more like… well, Kiyoomi. Which Kiyoomi absolutely does not feel any particular way about.

“Do I pass your standards now, Omi?” he asks.

“This is better,” he tells him. “The absolute nerve of you, showing up here stinking and dripping everywhere.” He returns to the kitchen and returns a few moments later with a steaming mug that he presses into Atsumu’s hands.

Atsumu takes it willingly, looking down at the tea in his hands for a moment before taking a sip. “Thanks.”

“Don’t thank me, I’m just trying to make sure that you don’t catch something from running around in the cold and wet,” he tells him, shaking his head. “What were you even doing?”

“Ya sound like my mother,” he tells him with a little grin. “Cute.”

“Shut up.”

“Anyway, I was just… I dunno, out and about. Couldn’t get settled, and it feels better to let the wolf out, even if I don’t go anywhere,” he says.

Kiyoomi raises an eyebrow as he sits back down on the couch, legs tucked underneath him. “But you did go somewhere.”

“Well, sure,” he says, laughing. “Like I said, couldn’t get settled. Felt like I had somewhere I needed to be. I wasn’t sure where I was going, but I sure was going, y’know? And I ended up here.”

Kiyoomi pushes himself past the implications of Atsumu ‘feeling like he had somewhere he needed to be’ and ending up at Kiyoomi’s door, because he needs to reprimand him. “Atsumu, that’s dangerous,” he says. “Anyone could’ve seen you. You could’ve gotten animal control called on you.”

“In this rain, nobody’s out and about,” he points out. “And it’s dark enough, ‘specially with the rain, that there’s… plausible deniability. People’re gonna think they’re just seeing things.”

“That’s…” he says slowly, rubbing his hands over his face. “I still can’t condone you just wandering the streets in wolf form like that. Especially if you didn’t have a destination in mind.”

“I told ya I had a destination, I just didn’t realize where it was when I started walking,” Atsumu says.

“You’re exhausting,” he tells him, rather than letting any of his other feelings burst out of his chest. “I’m getting you microchipped.”

“Is that a thing?”

“I’ll make it one,” he says. “I’ll get Kiyoko-san to do it.”

Atsumu grins at him, saying, “And you’ll register your information to it? Like you’re taking responsibility for me?”

“Someone has to,” he says.

“From what I’ve heard, seems like that oughta be Meian’s job.”

“Meian wouldn’t spring your sorry fluffy ass from the pound.”

“And you would?”

“I’d think about it,” he says.

That seems like confirmation enough for Atsumu, who is positively beaming at him now. Kiyoomi can’t quite help himself but to stare, which is how he ends up catching sight of the string of expressions that flit across Atsumu’s face: the happiness melts into Atsumu opening his mouth, but just as quickly he closes it, and something like nervousness flickers across his features, followed by the calm resolve he usually associates with seeing Atsumu on the court.

So it doesn’t quite come as a surprise when Atsumu says, “Question for ya, Omi.”

“Go ahead,” he says.

As Atsumu looks back at him, that hesitance reemerges for just a moment before he speaks, “Why haven’t I seen your wolf much?”

Kiyoomi isn’t quite sure what he had expected him to ask, but the feeling in his chest tells him that this wasn’t quite it. “I don’t know,” he says with a small shrug. “Why?”

“Well, I mean, ya talk a good game about how important it is to let the wolf out, right?” he says. “To help yourself keep control, and all.”

“That’s true.”

“So I feel like I’ve hardly ever seen you let it out.”

“First, I’ve never had any issues with control, so that’s never really been a necessity. I accepted that half of myself before I can even remember,” he points out. “But, beyond that…” He comes up short for any particular reasons that he wasn’t shifted around Atsumu much.

“So it sounds like maybe ya should.”

Kiyoomi blinks. “I mean, I guess. Why?”

“It’s the full moon, it’s the right thing to do, right?” he says. “And I’m no longer a - what’d you call me? A soggy beast?”

“You were a soggy, disgusting beast.”

“I take offense to the disgusting part.”

“I’m sure you do,” he says. “But what does you being or not being gross and wet have to do with anything?”

“Well… I was figuring maybe we could do a puppy pile?”

Kiyoomi knows by now to not form too concrete expectations for what Miya might say or do at any given moment, but still, he’s a little surprised by the suggestion. “A puppy pile?”

“I mean, I guess it wouldn’t be too much of a pile if there’s only two of us,” he admits. “But it sounds nice, right? Snuggle up a bit, ‘specially with how it’s kinda cold out? ‘S what me, ‘Samu, and Sunarin did last month; we put ‘Samu in a wolfy sandwich. Till they kicked me out, anyway. Not that that’s the point. I mean, I figure… Ya don’t really get too close with many other people, do ya, Omi? And you seem at least kind of willing to get close to me, so…”

Atsumu doesn’t mean anything by this suggestion. Given his experience, he probably sees cuddling up the way he’s suggesting as a familial thing, and in fairness, it’s not like it isn’t that. Kiyoomi remembers when he was younger, taking naps in a veritable puppy pile (not that he’d have ever used such a term) with his siblings and cousins. But once they were all older and presented, it felt like something more significant to willingly get that close with someone else.

Point is, there’s nothing wrong with the suggestion. The only reason Kiyoomi would need to say no is if he simply doesn’t want to.

He thinks he wants to.

“Help me move the coffee table,” he says, rising to his feet.

“Huh?”

“Help me move the coffee table,” he repeats. “If we’re doing this, here in the living room will be the most comfortable place, but I want to make space.”

Atsumu doesn’t move for a moment, wide-eyed, looking a little like he hadn’t actually expected Kiyoomi to agree. But then he’s up on his feet in a flash, moving over to grab one end of the coffee table.

Once it’s out of the way, Kiyoomi grabs a few blankets and pillows and arranges them on the floor for them - he is not making a nest for him and Atsumu to share, absolutely not. But even with the rug there, it could use a little more to make it more comfortable. That’s all he’s doing. Atsumu, mercifully, stays out of the way and doesn’t comment on what he’s doing, just watching him from a respectful distance.

Once he’s satisfied with how the living room is set up for them, Kiyoomi disappears behind his privacy screen to shift. He can feel the wolf waking up under his skin, can feel the way it’s genuinely excited to get to see Atsumu.

He ignores that sensation as he walks back out into the living room, tail swaying behind himself; admittedly, it does feel good to let the wolf out under the full moon, so maybe he should be grateful to Atsumu for the suggestion. That’s probably what the excitement is all about, actually.

When he returns, he finds that Atsumu has also taken the opportunity to shift, sitting up straight on the edge of the rug and looking in Kiyoomi’s direction with a lazy smile on his lips; it should be embarrassing, the way Atsumu’s tongue is ready to loll out like he’s a dog, but it suits him. It makes sense, with how infrequently he ever takes himself seriously.

Atsumu sits and watches as Kiyoomi moves to settle down on the blankets; if it were a nest, then he’d be demonstrating pretty good etiquette: an alpha has to first be invited into an omega’s nest. Not that he knows that.

Kiyoomi settles himself down relatively quickly, landing so that he has a pillow convenient to place his head down on. Once he’s comfortably laying down, he looks back at Atsumu, beckoning him over with his head.

Atsumu doesn’t hesitate to come closer, standing over him for a moment as if trying to decide the best way to curl up to him. He circles a couple of times, carefully keeping his paws from disturbing how Kiyoomi had placed the blankets or catching on the fabric, before finally he settles down, their sides pressing together.

For a moment, that’s all that happens, but soon enough Atsumu is moving again; initially, Kiyoomi thinks that it’s about him just being the antsy, restless soul he knows him to be, particularly given the phase of the moon, but then Atsumu starts pointedly nosing at him. He nuzzles against Kiyoomi, eyes closed as he presses closer, nosing at him. His movements grow a little more purposeful until it reaches a point where Kiyoomi has to call it what it is - Atsumu is scenting him.

He has no idea what to do with that, but he remains still and allows it to happen, hoping that Atsumu won’t pick up on the way his heart has started to race. Mixed in are a couple of licks here and there, though Kiyoomi suspects that, for his part, Atsumu doesn’t want him to notice.

Once Atsumu is seemingly satisfied, he curls his body around Kiyoomi’s as best he can, and he rests his head on top of his neck.

From anyone else, the gesture would feel like a power move, probably just some alpha posturing. But that’s not the vibe he’s gotten from Atsumu through any of this; if anything, Atsumu would be quick to defer to Kiyoomi, especially in the arena of anything werewolf-related. No, this move feels… protective. Like he’s using his body as a shield for Kiyoomi’s.

They’re alone in his apartment, so there aren’t any conceivable threats around, but it still feels nice.

This is another thing that Kiyoomi wouldn’t welcome so readily from anyone but Atsumu.

He turns his head to press his nose into Atsumu’s shoulder. His fur tickles his nose, but like this he’s practically blocking out everything outside of Atsumu; his scent has taken over his senses, and it makes Kiyoomi’s mind pleasantly fuzzy the longer he sits like this.

Slowly, Atsumu’s breathing evens out, suggesting that he’s fallen asleep, the steady press of his body against Kiyoomi’s feeling like a weighted blanket, and it doesn’t take Kiyoomi long to decide that he should follow suit.

A couple weeks later, Atsumu approaches him in the locker room to ask if he’s busy on Thursday evening.

Kiyoomi pauses as he puts his things into his bag. “Why?”

“Well, I was thinkin’,” Atsumu starts, “I’m always over at your place, y’know? Which is fine, I don’t mind it if you don’t mind it.” He stops himself for just a moment, possibly to give Kiyoomi the chance to say that he does mind (he doesn’t say anything, because it would be a lie). “But I figure maybe I could have ya over instead? And I could make ya dinner?”

He sounds… nervous. Genuinely nervous, like he thinks Kiyoomi is going to shut him down, like he hasn’t gotten the memo that Kiyoomi has seemingly forgotten entirely how to shut him down.

Kiyoomi probably should shut him down, actually. Inviting him over and making him dinner is just another tally in the count of things that Atsumu is probably doing totally well-meaningly but are starting to tug at Kiyoomi’s heart. He knows, he knows that Atsumu still feels like he owes Kiyoomi something for him having saved his life, and this is just another show of gratitude. Atsumu doesn’t know about courting.

“Just us?” he asks. Maybe he’s reading the whole thing wrong to begin with; maybe what Atsumu’s saying is that he’s having a whole dinner party kind of deal. Maybe he’s inviting someone Kiyoomi can’t stand, and that would be a good reason to bow out of the whole thing.

“Yeah. Just us, if that’s okay,” Atsumu affirms.

Which is how Kiyoomi finds himself here:

He’s standing in the doorway of Atsumu’s kitchen, taking in the apartment around him as Atsumu sets the table. He’s been here before, just once, but he hadn’t really observed his surroundings then; he had been there out of a feeling of social obligation shortly after joining MSBY, and he’d been practically staring down the clock until the hour he’d promised was up.

Everything is tidier than he’d expected it to be, although in fairness, he remembered that having been the case before. He also suspects that Atsumu did an extra deep clean before Kiyoomi had come over.

Whereas Kiyoomi prefers to keep his home somewhat minimalist, Atsumu has taken the opposite approach. There are little signs of a life well-lived scattered throughout the apartment - no wall goes without pictures hung up, but they’re all nicely framed and hung up straight. Most flat surfaces have a tchotchke or a few residing there, but they’re lined up relatively neatly. Nothing crosses the line into feeling like clutter; everything was placed with purpose. Atsumu’s home feels like Atsumu - love poured into everywhere it can possibly fit.

There’s even a picture of the two of them together. It’s probably the only picture of them that had been taken with purpose; being that they’re teammates, of course there are plenty of pictures of them together, out on the court or doing press, but he can vaguely recall this picture being taken by Bokuto, not long after he had joined the team. Atsumu is beaming up at the camera, and next to him Kiyoomi is… grimacing might be the best word.

The picture is hanging up on the wall near the front door; Atsumu has to pass by it every single day.

Atsumu’s voice pulls him out of his thoughts, asking, “Whaddya wanna drink?”

Shaking himself out of it and stopping staring the photo down, he turns to look at Atsumu again. “What do you have?”

“A little of everything,” he says as he moves over to the fridge and opening it. “I know you’re not a soda person, but… Mm, I’ve got some of that fizzy water stuff ya do like, or sports drinks, or juice. Just plain water, obviously. I’ve even got some beer?” When he looks back at Kiyoomi, he holds up a bottle with a raised brow.

“Why not,” he hears himself say, “Let’s go for the beer.”

“Dunno if I’ve ever seen ya drink before, Omi,” he comments with a soft chuckle.

Kiyoomi shrugs. “I tend not to, but I don’t have any objections to it,” he says. “And we don’t have anywhere to be tomorrow. Or, I don’t, anyway.”

“Nah, me neither,” he says, smiling. He opens a bottle for each of them and sets them on the table, where their plates are waiting for them. “Alright, dinner’s up.”

Atsumu calls the dish by a name Kiyoomi doesn’t recognize - it’s in a foreign language, and he can’t quite parse it - but it was clearly a labor of love. He doesn’t touch his own plate at first, watching as Kiyoomi takes his first bite, leaning against the table to wait for the verdict.

It’s good. It’s fantastic, even.

“Maybe I was wrong, Atsumu,” he says.

“Hm?”

“What you said a while back about not becoming a chef,” he says. “If I didn’t see you cooking it just now, I would’ve been convinced you’d just bought it from the store.”

“Oh,” Atsumu responds, his eyes lighting up as he laughs, shaking his head to himself. “‘S not that impressive. Anybody can follow a recipe.”

“I can’t,” he says.

“Ya can, ya just haven’t tried hard enough,” he says, shaking his head.

“Well, maybe I don’t need to, if not cooking for myself means I get to have this instead,” he says. “I mean - not that I expect you to always cook for me.”

“I would,” he says. “I’d cook for ya any day. Every day.”

“That’s a big offer, Atsumu,” he says, keeping his tone as light as he can.

Atsumu just lets out a soft hum. “Oh, I know it,” he says. “But I mean every bit of it.”

The thing is, it’s getting a little harder to deny that he wants everything that Atsumu is implying with his words and actions. It’s making him go a little bit crazy.

But he still can’t quite allow himself to voice any of that, lest he make a fool of himself, so he shakes his head and tries to reroute the conversation. “I’ll have to help you with the dishes after we finish,” he says.

“What? Nah, you’re the guest,” he says.

“As if I never put you to work when you’re a guest at my place,” he points out. “And it’s only fair, you put a lot of work into this dinner.”

“Well, sure, but I did that ‘cause I wanted to impress ya,” he says, and then immediately looks as though he has been slapped in the face by hearing his own words in his ears.

Neither of them say anything for a moment, and then Atsumu barrels on: “Point is, I don’t need ya to help me with the dishes, it’s fine, seriously, Omi.”

“I know you don’t need me to, but I’m offering,” he says. He feels merciful - and a little confused and flustered on his own end - so he doesn’t comment on how Atsumu’s ears have turned a little pink. “Besides, either they sit in the sink and get crusty, or you take care of them right after dinner. It’ll be done faster if I help you, and then I’m not just standing by waiting.”

“Well… I guess,” he says. “Since I know ya won’t be able to relax while knowing there’s something dirty within a hundred feet of ya.”

“Now you’re getting it,” Kiyoomi says with a soft chuckle. Once upon a time, he would’ve bristled at Atsumu saying such a thing, but the fact is that it’s essentially true; he doesn’t like leaving chores unfinished, even in someone else’s home. “I’d just have to leave.”

“And you’re not gonna get away that quickly,” he says, grinning across the table at him.

It’s not even like they have plans for after dinner. As far as Kiyoomi knows, there’s nothing on the docket, but they both also know that they don’t want to part ways so quickly after dinner.

Through the rest of dinner, it’s a mixture of companionable silence and talking about recent goings on; it’s funny to think, really, that once upon a time something like this with Atsumu would’ve sounded like torture to him. He never would’ve thought that Atsumu would be capable of a pleasant, quiet dinner.

Once their plates are both empty, Atsumu takes them over to the sink, Kiyoomi following close behind him.

“When we were kids,” Atsumu says as he sets their dishes in the sink and turns on the water, “‘Samu was always on washing duty and I was on drying duty. Granny couldn’t stand the water spots when he did it.”

“Oh? I would’ve thought he’d have pretty good attention to detail.”

“You’d’ve thought,” he echoes.

“But I guess I don’t know Osamu that well,” he says. “Especially not as a child. He just seems more… the type.”

“I feel like you’re talkin’ bad about me in a real backhanded way,” Atsumu teases.

“I would never,” he says. They both know he would, and has in the past. “Alright, then, time for you to show off your drying skills. I’ll wash, you’ll dry.”

“Ya sure? Ya don’t have your fancy dishwashing gloves over here, and I wouldn’t want ya to get all pruny,” he says.

Kiyoomi shakes his head, turning on the water. “You need to get some gloves. They’re not even that fancy. Or expensive, for that matter,” he says. He thinks that maybe that’s something he can do himself, actually; maybe, little by little, he can pay Atsumu back for everything he’s been giving him by doing little things for him in return, like providing him rubber gloves.

“Or, I just keep going like I have been, and I let my hands get a li’l pruny,” he says.

“I suppose I can only help you if you want to help yourself.”

“You are so dramatic,” Atsumu says, and Kiyoomi has to laugh.

“Hello pot, meet the kettle,” he comments.

So they wash and dry the dishes like that, side by side and lightheartedly ribbing each other. The thing is, it’s nothing that Kiyoomi has ever thought much about before, but he realizes that this is important: they work well together. Of course, he’s known this on the court for a while, but it’s another thing to see it in something as domestic as this.

Kiyoomi doesn’t let himself feel any kind of way about it, especially not when he turns to hand Atsumu a plate and their fingers brush. It’s cliche, is what it is, and it’s just as cliche when Atsumu catches hold of his hand.

Their eyes meet as the touch lingers and more than ever, Kiyoomi wishes he had any idea of what was going on in Atsumu’s head.

But he’s not going to be the one to pull back from this game of chicken, or whatever it is; he has no idea what they’re playing, but he’s not going to lose or run away from it.

Kiyoomi can’t bring himself to look away, but out of the corner of his eye, he catches Atsumu’s other hand lifting, coming up towards his face.

“Omi…” he says slowly, eyes flickering downwards for just a moment - is he looking at Kiyoomi’s lips? Is Kiyoomi imagining that? - before his hand meets Kiyoomi’s cheek, his touch so light it’s almost agonizing.

He has got to be looking at Kiyoomi’s lips, because this is happening. Kiyoomi’s pulse starts to race; when is the last time he’s kissed anyone?

Atsumu’s thumb swipes across Kiyoomi’s cheekbone, and then -

And then he pulls away, letting out a little laugh. “Ya had some suds on your face,” he says.

Kiyoomi didn’t. He knows he didn’t. But he can’t find it in himself to call Atsumu out. “Oh,” he says instead. “Right. Well, thank you for getting that.”

“No problem, Omi,” he says. His ears are pink.

Neither of them say much after that through the dishwashing process, which is fine enough for Kiyoomi, whose mind has suddenly gotten incredibly loud again.

He knows that Atsumu doesn’t mean to, knows that Atsumu hasn’t meant to be doing most of what he’s been doing to cause Kiyoomi’s inner turmoil, but he’s going to make Kiyoomi go insane.

He has to know what he’s doing, to some extent; even if Atsumu doesn’t realize what some of the bigger implications are when he’s an alpha acting this way towards an omega, he’s still a human being who understands the concepts of dating and flirting.

But if he isn’t going to act on any of it, well, Kiyoomi can do his best to ignore it.

(When Kiyoomi leaves that night, Atsumu has decided it’s too cold for him to go without a jacket, so he lends him one of his own. It smells like Atsumu.

Kiyoomi generally doesn’t nest except around his heats, but the jacket finds its way into his bed nonetheless. He tucks it under his pillowcase and tells himself he’s not being a freak about it.)

The Atsumu situation (or perhaps the mere existence of an Atsumu situation) becomes harder to ignore on a Tuesday afternoon at practice.

Atsumu has started lingering around Kiyoomi a little bit more, but, well, that’s not entirely out of the ordinary. After all, even before any of this, he’d liked to chatter to Kiyoomi, and even further back, he’d acted like it was his personal mission to pull Kiyoomi out of his shell.

So it’s fine, if Atsumu has his eyes on him, and if he stands at a distance that would be too close if it were anyone else. It works out, really, because he’s good at helping Kiyoomi with his stretches.

(He doesn’t think much about Atsumu’s hands on him, much the same as he doesn’t think about whatever happened the other night.)

Largely, practice is a section of their lives left unchanged in the wake of everything that has happened in the last few months, other than Atsumu’s lurking. It helps that most of the team has absolutely no idea anything about werewolves. They can go through all of the motions like normal, and they don’t talk about anything that’s been changing between them.

When Bokuto appears out of the blue behind Kiyoomi, he jumps a little bit, startled in spite of the fact that Bokuto is probably the least stealthy person on the planet.

“Whoa, didn’t mean to scare ya, Omi-Omi!” he says, honestly looking at least a little bit pleased with himself for having been able to do so; in fairness, Kiyoomi is usually aware enough of his surroundings that it’s pretty hard to sneak up on him.

“It’s fine,” he says, waving off the apology. “What did you - ”

His words trail off as Atsumu materializes by his side, glaring at where Bokuto’s hand has come up to pat Kiyoomi’s shoulder. Before anyone can say anything else, Atsumu’s lips pull back and he… growls, of all things, at Bokuto, of all people.

The chatter around them dies out as some of their teammates notice that something has happened. Inunaki looks between Atsumu and Kiyoomi like he’s trying to decide if he’s got a new piece of gossip. Meian steps forward, ready to break this up if he ends up needing to (which he won’t need to - even if Atsumu were to end up getting violent, which Kiyoomi doubts, Kiyoomi can take care of him himself).

Kiyoomi, Bokuto, and Atsumu all stare at each other for a long moment, none of them quite sure what to do now. Now that the moment has passed - and Bokuto’s hand is a respectful distance away from Kiyoomi again - Atsumu seems both surprised by his own actions and, frankly, a little bit dismayed.

Never one to let an awkward silence dwell, Bokuto lets out a laugh. “Wow, that was impressive, Tsum-Tsum,” he says, and his voice only sounds a little bewildered.

Atsumu blinks and his mouth moves for just a moment but stops just as quickly, like he can’t quite trust himself to speak.

But, Kiyoomi reminds himself, this part of Atsumu is his responsibility, so he has to step in and save him if he can’t save himself. “We watched a nature documentary the other day and it’s given him ideas about a Black Jackal war cry,” he says; by no means is it the best excuse he could have come up with, but given that his brain is still buzzing over Atsumu growling over him, it will have to do.

Luckily, Bokuto latches right onto the concept. “Oh! Oh, wow, neat,” he says. Eyebrows furrowing a moment later, he says, “I don’t know if I could sound that realistic. And I feel like it might scare kids if I did.”

By now, it seems like Atsumu has recovered enough to laugh and nod. “Yeah, that’s a good point, Bokkun,” he says, “back to the drawing board, huh?”

“I’ll help you work on it, though!” he announces brightly, and just like that he whisks Atsumu away.

For the rest of the day, though, Kiyoomi can feel Atsumu’s gaze, weighing heavy on him. In the locker room, Atsumu approaches him once he’s alone, looking nervous, and he thinks maybe he’s going to apologize; maybe they’re going to talk about it.

Instead, he reaches out for him wordlessly, wrist rubbing along the gland on his neck, scenting him.

Before Kiyoomi’s brain catches up to what had just happened, Atsumu has made a hasty retreat.

The thing about being generally not very good at handling any complicated interpersonal situations is that, over time, Kiyoomi has figured out exactly who he can go to when he’s having a crisis.

Okay, Kiyoomi wouldn’t necessarily say that he’s having a crisis, but he’s definitely having a situation.

Which is how he finds himself at a cafe on the Thursday afternoon following the Atsumu growling incident with Motoya and Hitoka. He’s had over twenty-four hours to panic about it in solitude, but now he needs some guidance. He needs to think about action.

(While Hitoka has come out of her own volition and the kindness of her heart, Motoya needed to be bribed with the promise that whatever fancy drinks he orders for himself will be covered by Kiyoomi. It’s a small price to pay, but he still informs Motoya that Hitoka is his favorite.)

“I don’t see what the big deal is,” Motoya says once Kiyoomi has laid out all of the details of the situation, leaning back in his seat. “You’re pining. You’re both pining, and one of you just needs to actually own up to it.”

Kiyoomi blinks, gaping at Motoya. He can’t help himself. “That’s… not the conclusion you were supposed to come to there,” he says eventually.

“And why not?”

“Because it’s not true?” he says, raising an eyebrow. He looks over at Hitoka for support, and finds that she is instead focused firmly on the teacup she’s brought to her lips. “I’m not… pining. Do I feel something for him? Sure. But it’s not that deep.”

“Sure, sure,” Motoya says. “Which is why you called an emergency meeting of your council of gays.”

“Don’t call it that,” he says, though it’s too late for that; it isn’t the first time this nickname has come up. “And it’s not an emergency, just…”

“You’re splitting hairs, Kiyo.”

Hitoka clears her throat, looking between them. “What he’s trying to say, I think, is that maybe you need to examine your own feelings a little deeper?” she suggests.

“I have been,” he says. “And I can’t reach anything conclusive. For all I know, I’m reacting instinctively to what some part of me is perceiving as courting efforts.”

“Nerd,” Motoya says, the word coming out like a reflex. “No, c’mon, be serious with yourself. You’re not back in college, you’re not writing a lab report, there’s no right or wrong answers - ”

“There’s kind of a right answer,” Hitoka, ever helpful, chimes in.

“There is a right answer, but you’re not getting graded on it,” he amends. “You just have to fess up, to yourself, how you’ve been feeling. How you’ve always felt.”

“What?” Kiyoomi asks.

“This is a safe space,” he says, his voice turning faux-serious. “We can all be honest with each other here.”

Kiyoomi stares.

“Honestly, we’re really proud of you for how you seem to be way less in denial about all of it than you used to be.”

“None of what you’re saying makes any sense,” he tells him.

“Only you can know for sure if this is the truth or not,” Hitoka says, in that gentle, cautious way of hers, “but it just seems like things have been a little… different, for you, when it comes to Atsumu.”

“Different how?”

Motoya huffs. “How about in middle school, when you first met him, for like half a second, once, and you wouldn’t shut up about him?”

“Because he was annoying and I hated him,” Kiyoomi answers easily.

“No, that doesn’t add up, you iced out anybody you thought was annoying,” he says. “And you would’ve forgotten about him.”

“Atsumu was persistent.”

“ You sought him out, asshole,” Motoya presses. “At least once we got to high school. You’d ‘accidentally’ run into him at tournaments, and then complain about him all night. Nobody else ever got that treatment.”

Kiyoomi doesn’t know how to defend himself here. Not because he thinks that Motoya is right, but because of how firmly he knows Motoya thinks Motoya is right. “Accidentally,” he repeats. “Genuine accidents.”

“Or maybe you just think that it was accidental, when you subconsciously were drawn towards him, or his scent, or what have you.”

“I’m more self-aware than to do something like that,” he says.

“Now, sure. But when you were a teenager?”

Kiyoomi shakes his head. “His scent isn’t anything that special,” he says. “And I wouldn’t have been drawn to him for his personality.”

“Are you sure about that?” Motoya asks.

“Pretty sure,” he says.

“Hitoka?”

Prompted to speak, Hitoka leans a little in towards him, like she’s about to tell him a secret. “Every time I’ve seen you the past couple of months, his scent has been on you. Not subtly, either,” she tells him. After a brief glance down, she adds, “Your scents complement each other’s perfectly.”

She’s an omega like he is; she’s more sensitive to that kind of thing than Motoya is as a beta. It feels strange to think that Motoya and Hitoka have been discussing this kind of thing on their own time without him, but even stranger to think about what it is they might be implying.

“That happens sometimes,” he says. “Sometimes people’s scents just happen to go well together.”

“Don’t downplay it,” she says. “Again, it’s up to you to decide how you feel about any of it, but… It probably means something if his scent appeals to you that much, if you’re that compatible…”

She’s tiptoeing around it, but what she’s trying to imply is pretty plain.

While some people will try and argue otherwise, true mates aren’t a thing. There’s high compatibility, sure, but there’s no such thing as having a perfect match. And even if there was, Kiyoomi isn’t deluding himself into thinking that Atsumu is his. Yes, he’d been decently confident that Atsumu would be an alpha if he were to be turned, but that didn’t mean anything; he could guess at just about any human’s potential secondary gender with decent accuracy if he tried. Atsumu’s scent has always been a little louder to him, sure, but that was just baseline compatibility; he’s not denying that they are compatible, at least on some level.

“All it means is that I’ve always had a good warning system to know when he’s approaching,” he says. “That’s helpful for different reasons now than it used to be.”

Hitoka lets out a sigh, but nods. “You seem happier too, these days, you know that?” she asked. “Since he was turned, and you’ve been with him more. Your scent is brighter.”

That much, at least, he can’t really deny - he is happier, and he knows that a part of that is because of how much time he has been spending around Atsumu.

“Atsumu does make me happy, that’s true,” he says with a nod. No use in arguing over the obvious. “It doesn’t have to mean anything deeper than that.”

“It doesn’t have to, but it could, couldn’t it?” Motoya says. “I mean, you turned him and everything. That’s kind of a big deal.”

“I had to,” he protests. “Just because, in a life or death scenario, I chose not to let the guy die doesn’t mean that I feel any certain way towards him.”

Motoya shrugs. “All I’m saying is, here’s basically what happened: you saw someone who was awfully close to being your ideal mate, except he wasn’t a wolf, and was only theoretically an alpha, and then when the opportunity struck, you turned him. It’s kind of funny, when you think about it that way.”

To put it like that is also a step too far, which he probably already knows, though Hitoka quietly chastises him nonetheless.

“You make it sound like I went out of my way to turn him just because I wanted to fuck him,” Kiyoomi says flatly. “Which I very much did not.”

“I’m not saying you did,” he said, “but what I am saying is that it’s worked out pretty well for you, all in all.”

“It has,” he says. “But that’s an obvious statement.”

“Especially because he’s actively courting you.”

Kiyoomi groans, rubbing his hand over his face. “He’s not, because courting requires intention,” he says. “Atsumu has no idea what he’s doing.”

“What makes you say that?” Hitoka asks. “With everything you’ve described, I don’t really see why it couldn’t be intentional.”

“This is Atsumu we’re talking about here, I don’t think that he would go this far without making sure he was making himself clear.”

“And if he already does think he’s made himself clear?” she asks, raising an eyebrow.

“Well, he’s not being clear enough,” he says. Enormous flirt Miya Atsumu can’t simply be taken at face value when he says things. “He needs to say, in words, that he’s courting me, and until then, he’s maybe flirting.”

“He’s cooking for you, you spend more of your free time together than not, he’s giving you gifts, he’s picking fights over you, what do you call that if not courting? Dating. Something,” Motoya says, looking as exasperated over the whole thing as Kiyoomi can quietly admit to being.

“First, he didn’t pick a fight. Bokuto would never fight him,” he says. He can’t be sure about never, but Bokuto’s got a thick enough skin that it’s not exactly a concern, especially since he’s not a wolf to understand the very real threat there, and he’s not interested in Kiyoomi. “Second, we can’t call it dating if he’s not calling it dating too.”

“Kiyo, this is exhausting,” he says. “Why can’t you just ask him, instead of talking to us about it?”

“Because, it’s not as cut and dry as it might otherwise be,” he says. “It’s just as possible - maybe even more possible - that all of this is just happening because he feels like he owes me something for saving his life. And what happens if I tell him that I’m interested in him and he feels… obligated?”

“He’s too willful for that, isn’t he?” Hitoka points out. “I really don’t think that he’d date you just out of feeling like he has to.”

Meanwhile, Motoya looks a little like he’s the cat that got the canary. “You admitted it,” he said. “You admitted, out loud, that you’re interested in him.”

Kiyoomi pauses, playing back his own words in his head. “I meant that as a hypothetical,” he says. It sounds like a weak defense even to his own ears.

“Or maybe, you like him, you actually really like him, and you’re imploding about it.”

“That’s putting it needlessly dramatically,” he says.

Taking in a deep breath and letting it back out, Motoya says, “Whether you like him or not, fine, whatever. But you have to talk to him about it. Clear the air, Kiyo.”

“I’ll think about it,” he says, which is the most he can promise them, and it does a good enough job at putting the issue to rest for the moment at least.

“I’m gonna pick you up at six,” Atsumu tells him on the phone a few days later, “dress code’s… casual? Nice casual.”

He refused to give any more details than that, which was an act of cruelty Kiyoomi cursed him for. The only clarification he would give was that yes, jeans and a sweater would work just fine as “casual”.

(Actually, he’d gone one small step further and suggested that Kiyoomi wear ‘that one dark green one’, but that provided absolutely no information on what they would be doing or where they would be going.)

The setup felt date-like, but once again, Kiyoomi wasn’t going to let himself get carried away. Sure, it might have been easier for them to meet wherever Atsumu’s plans were, but doing so would probably ruin the intended surprise. And maybe it being a surprise felt like it could be romantic, but that was also just a very Atsumu kind of thing, never mind the fact that Kiyoomi generally was far from being a fan of surprises.

Atsumu knocked on Kiyoomi’s door at about five minutes until six; if nothing else, he could give him credit for being punctual.

“Hi, Omi,” he says when he’s let in, giving him a grin. His eyes light up when he sees that Kiyoomi is, indeed, wearing the sweater that he’d recommended. “Ya look good.”

“Of course I do,” he says, even though he can feel warmth on his cheeks from being complimented. “You look fine, too.”

Atsumu sputters, and looks down at himself. He’s wearing dark jeans and a button-up shirt, and while it’s far from a formal look, it’s more put-together than he sees him on average, and it’s going to do things to Kiyoomi, who is absolutely not about to admit to that. “I look great, Omi, what’re ya talkin’ about?” he huffs.

“I said you look fine, didn’t I? That’s a compliment,” he says. “Are you going to tell me now where we’re going yet?”

“Nope,” he says with a grin. “I mean, maybe I woulda, if you’d been nicer to me just now, but look at ya, throwin’ away your chance.”

Kiyoomi rolls his eyes. “Something tells me you wouldn’t have told me either way,” he says. “I regret nothing.”

“Never have I met anybody as mean as ya,” he says, but there’s a smile on his lips. “C’mon. You’ll find out sooner the sooner we get going.”

Kiyoomi steps out and locks up his apartment behind him, and they make their way down to the street together, walking side by side.

“It’s not gonna be a long walk, but we are walkin’,” Atsumu tells him. “Figured you’d like that better than getting packed in the sardine can train. And it’s a nice night out.”

“It is. Fresh air is good,” he agrees, nodding along with his words as they fall into step beside each other. Looking over at Atsumu, he asks, “How’s your day been so far?”

They had the day off of practice, which for Kiyoomi these days usually means he’ll either spend it with Atsumu or he’ll be mostly at home, recharging his social battery. Atsumu needs no such thing, seemingly incapable of going nonstop, so he’s almost definitely been up to one thing or another today.

Atsumu laughs before answering. “This is gonna sound goofy,” he says. “But I went to a cat cafe.”

He’s right, as it turns out; that does sound goofy. “By yourself?”

“Yep,” he says.

“Why did you go to a cat cafe?”

“I wanted to see if the cats would like me,” he says, like that explains everything. Unfortunately, it kind of does.

“Did cats like you before?”

“‘Course they did, I’m a friend to all creatures,” Atsumu says, stepping a little closer to Kiyoomi and bumping him with his shoulder.

“Bullshit,” he says as he bumps him in return. “So, how did it go? You don’t look like you’re covered in scratches.” Though, he’s wearing a long sleeved shirt, so it’s hard to say for sure. Assuming the cats even let him close enough for that to be an issue.

Atsumu grins. “Turns out I was worried for nothin’,” he says. “The cats loved me just the same as ever. Maybe even more.”

“Did you have cat treats in your pocket? Any cat will like you if you smell like cat treats,” he says.

(False, for the record. Kiyoomi has met multiple cats who will not tolerate bribes.)

“I did not have cat treats, I didn’t need to cheat,” he says with a laugh. “I mean, did I give ‘em the cat treats the staff offered me? Sure, but they were already all over me.”

“Sure, sure,” Kiyoomi says. “I believe you.”

“You’re sayin’ that like ya don’t believe me,” he says. “Hurtful.”

“Well, I have no proof, and you did just admit to having used cat treats.”

Atsumu laughs. “Makes it sound like I was usin’ a performance enhancing drug.”

“You’re a professional athlete, you wouldn’t dare.”

“So you’re agreeing with me.”

“You backed me into a corner,” he says, shaking his head. “Doesn’t count.”

“Doesn’t it?”

They go back and forth like this until they reach their destination, at which point Atsumu gently takes hold of Kiyoomi’s wrist and tugs him inside.

It’s a restaurant; Kiyoomi passes by it regularly, and has idly been curious about it, but he’s never gone inside. It’s only been around for about half a year or so, after all, and it’s just nice enough that he feels like he needs an occasion to go in. He remembers mentioning it in passing to Atsumu once, at least a month ago now.

But Kiyoomi knows by now just how much this man’s mind is like a steel trap.

If that’s not enough, he hears Atsumu give the hostess his name, saying that he has a reservation. Granted, Kiyoomi doesn’t know how busy this restaurant is; it’s possible that Atsumu had just done his due diligence and called ahead this afternoon to make sure they’d be able to get in.

It’s just enough to make something in Kiyoomi’s head buzz as they are led over to their table. They’re seated in a far corner, where fewer people will be passing by them, exactly Kiyoomi’s preference if he’s going to be dining in at a restaurant. It’s probably nothing but a happy coincidence.

Still, the atmosphere feels different from any time they’ve sat down to eat together.

Usually, if they eat out, it’s part of a group outing, in fairness, and when they’re alone it’s usually in one of their respective apartments. He’s pretty sure that being in each other’s homes should feel more intimate, more personal, but there’s something about being seated at a table, facing each other in a room full of strangers, that feels like it’s more.

Maybe it’s the warm lighting. Maybe it’s the eye contact Atsumu makes when he looks up from the menu to smile at Kiyoomi and ask him about what he was thinking about ordering.

(Kiyoomi couldn’t tell you what he said. If later asked, he wouldn’t remember anything about what he ate that night, but Atsumu would be able to rattle off every detail.)

The thing is, it feels like a date. Everything up to this point has felt like it’s been building to something. And Kiyoomi has been trying to be good about it, to be patient and not make assumptions, even as he found himself more and more wanting it to all mean something, but it’s driving him a little bit insane.

It’s about the time that their appetizers are brought out that Kiyoomi breaks.

“What’s going on here?” he asks. “What is this?”

Atsumu pauses, his hand hovering over where he was dipping a dumpling in sauce. “Huh?”

“What is this?” he repeats, gesturing between them.

For a second, he almost expects an evasive, joke non-answer. It’s a table, Omi, he can practically hear him saying. Instead, Atsumu’s mouth opens and closes, a smile pulling at the corners of his lips. “Us, you mean?” he says. After a pause, he says with a sigh, “Y’know, I had kind of a whole plan here.”

“Plan?”

“Yeah. Figure I’ve been testing the waters for a while now,” he says. He rubs at the back of his neck, eyes flickering down to look at the table for a moment.

“Testing the waters?” Kiyoomi echoes. Atsumu hasn’t even said much, but he already feels like there’s too much for his brain to properly process and respond to.

Atsumu nods. “I mean, I’d call it a little more than that, but I’ve been a little too chickenshit to say it out loud yet, so…” he trails off, shrugging. “Anyway. I’ve been tryin’ to test and see if you might be receptive to, y’know, being with me.”

“Oh,” he lets out, proving to himself that he is, in fact, capable of doing more than just echoing Atsumu’s words back at him. “That’s… that’s what you’ve been doing?”

“Mhm,” he hums in affirmation, “I didn’t wanna scare you off comin’ on too strong, but with how much time we’ve been spending together, it felt like I couldn’t not at least give it a shot. Timing’s important, right, and it felt like maybe now was the right time.”

“What do you mean?” he asks. He feels like Atsumu’s implying that he’s wanted something between them for a while now, but that can’t be.

“I mean,” Atsumu starts, letting out a little strangled sound. “It means I’ve been flirting with ya for years now, but only recently did I think ya might actually want it.”

It’s a complicated timeline, but Atsumu is probably right; some part of Kiyoomi has been interested in Atsumu for years, that much he definitely can’t deny now, but he probably wouldn’t have allowed himself to acknowledge that much less act on it until very recently.

“I want it,” he says after a too long pause, because he can see Atsumu starting to sweat across the table from him.

“Yeah?” he asks, hopeful. There’s something unbearably endearing about this man, who usually acts so self-assured, letting the facade drop and looking so unsure, so nervous. “‘Samu said I was gettin’ too in my head about it, y’know, but I wanted to be sure. I didn’t wanna mess this up.”

Kiyoomi almost wants to laugh; have they really been playing some messed up game of chicken all this time? “You didn’t. You couldn’t have,” he says.

Atsumu’s smile grows a little bit wider as he hears that, a little laugh escaping him. “I’m pretty sure I could’ve,” he says. “If my gifts hadn’t hit the mark, y’know…”

“So you did intend what you were giving me as… gifts?”

“Weird question, Omi, but I… think I get what you’re gettin’ at,” he says. Which is good, because Kiyoomi doesn’t know how to rephrase the question without showing his hand; though, admittedly, maybe at this point it would be good to get all the cards on the table either way. “I was kinda… soft-launching courting ya.”

“Oh,” he says, and it feels like almost too much of a relief to actually hear the word ‘courting’ on Atsumu’s lips. “I thought…”

“Ya thought ya did a sorry-ass job explaining everything to me? Yeah, ‘cause ya did,” he says, but there’s enough amusement in his voice that they both know he’s not upset about it. “Lucky thing I’ve got more than just you to rely on there. Sunarin filled in some blanks for me eventually. First helpful thing he’s ever done.”

Kiyoomi nods slowly. This, at least, does make sense; he’d assumed that Suna wouldn’t explain any further to Atsumu simply because it was funny to watch him flounder, but ultimately, they were friends, and Suna was Osamu’s mate, or as good as. Be it either out of the care that existed deep down between them, or simply because there was no way the particulars hadn’t come up, he was still probably the best person to explain all of this to Atsumu.

“I gotta say, I think werewolves do it with way more style than humans do,” Atsumu goes on when Kiyoomi doesn’t say anything. “Mating bites? Bonding for life? Way cooler than marriage and wedding rings.”

“Most still get married and have rings,” he points out. Even in the face of this actual, real conversation truly happening, he’s not yet going to bridge the gap between the possibility of their relationship and the concepts of mating and marriage.

“Sure,” he says. “But I like the thought of it a whole lot more, making it a little bit of both. Bringin’ instincts into the equation more than just… dating the regular way.”

Kiyoomi nods then, because that much he can definitely get. “I don’t… I don’t really know how I’d function, dating without my nose to guide me.” Which sounds ridiculous, but is true nonetheless - he’s always liked Atsumu’s scent, even when he didn’t particularly like Atsumu’s personality, and that had been enough to get Atsumu’s foot in the door to begin with.

Atsumu grins. “And you’re interested in dating me? Your nose told ya so?”

“Don’t say it like that,” he says, “but yes. I like you, Atsumu, very much.”

“Oh, I’m gonna say it like that. My nose told me I’m into ya. Very much.”

“You weren’t interested before?” he asks. He knows he shouldn’t, but he can’t help himself; he’s never learned not to pick at his scabs.

Atsumu laughs again, but he at least looks like he knows that’s not an appropriate reaction. “Aw, Omi, you’re so cute,” he says. “No. I mean, yes. Yes, I was interested before. It just got worse when I got more instincts to work with. Made it a little hard to think around you sometimes.”

And that does it, settling Kiyoomi’s nerves back down. He can feel his wolf inside of him, clawing at the inside of his ribcage and begging to throw itself down at Atsumu’s feet.

“Sorry,” he says anyway, since that’s technically his fault on multiple levels, though he isn’t sorry. He doesn’t think either of them are sorry.

“Hey, Omi, can you make me a promise?”

“Of course,” he says, without any hesitation; he thinks it’s the wolf again, pushing him to make whatever vows Atsumu wants him to.

“Never, ever feel bad for any of this,” he tells him. “‘Cause I know ya do. And I don’t want that. I’m glad all of this happened. I’m glad I get to be a wolf, and I’m glad I get to get you on a deeper level.”

“Oh,” he says, but nods a moment later. “I… Okay. Yeah. I can agree to that.”

“Good,” he says. “Then I’m gonna make ya a promise of my own.”

“What?” he asks, watching as Atsumu pulls out a small, long box.

“I figured I should do this right? Like,” he says, looking down at the box that he’s now set in the middle of the table between them. “Rin said that a lot of the time, a proper courting gift’ll be somethin’ you can have on your person. I’m sure that’s an old-fashioned kinda thing for showin’ you’re off the market, but… I like it as kind of a way to make sure ya have me with ya when we’re not together?”

Kiyoomi blinks, staring down at the box as well. He wants to lift the lid so, so badly, but he waits for Atsumu to go on. “Oh.”

“I wanted something like that, to show ya how much ya mean to me, y’know? And how I’m always gonna be here for ya, so long as I can help it. But it’s kinda hard to think about things that ya’d actually wanna wear around,” he says with a soft chuckle. “You’re not a jewelry guy, after all. But I saw this, and… I dunno, I liked it. I hope you do too.”

He finally gestures for Kiyoomi to go ahead, and he doesn’t waste any time in reaching out to open it.

Inside the box is a bracelet. It’s simple, dark braided leather, but he likes simple. Atsumu is right, he wouldn’t want anything that’s too flashy, but this? This, he can actually see himself wearing.

When he looks back up at Atsumu’s face, his eyes are a little nervous, like he’s waiting for Kiyoomi to tell him he hates it.

Kiyoomi grabs the bracelet and hands it to Atsumu, then holds out his wrist expectantly. “Put it on.”

“Oh,” he says, scrambling to do so. Kiyoomi wonders if he’s imagining the slight shake in his fingers as he secures the leather around Kiyoomi’s wrist. “So, ya like it?”

“Of course I do,” he says, pulling his arm back once the bracelet is on, turning his wrist over and again to look at it. It stands out nicely against his skin. “They’ve all been proper courting gifts, though.”

“Well… If you say so,” he says.

“There’s no right or wrong,” he says. “And isn’t courting all about showing you care, and proving yourself as a potential partner to me?” Potential mate, even, but he’s not going to say that out loud just yet.

“Well, yeah, I guess so,” he says after considering it for a moment. Smile growing, he says, “But it’s official now. Right?”

“Right,” he says. “It’s official.”

“We’re courting. Dating,” he says, like he’s eager to test out the feel of it on his tongue. “Boyfriends, maybe, in human terms.”

“Boyfriends,” he affirms. Looking back down at the bracelet on his arm, Kiyoomi goes on, “It goes both ways. I’m going to court you in return.”

“Oh,” Atsumu lets out; his cheeks must hurt from how much he’s smiling. “Be my guest, Omi.”

As they walk down the sidewalk on their way back after they finish dinner, a thought occurs to Kiyoomi. He tugs on Atsumu’s sleeve, asking,  “You have your phone, right?”

“Sure,” he says with a small nod, already reaching into his pocket to retrieve it. “Why?”

“We need…” he pauses, feeling a little embarrassed for the suggestion he’s about to make, but not embarrassed enough to stop himself. “We need to take a picture. To commemorate. And, ah. To replace that picture on your wall of us. I look too sour-faced in it.”

Atsumu’s eyes light up. “Oh, good idea, Omi,” he says. “Though, I’m not sure if I’ll replace the one I’ve got hung up. Might just supplement it. I like grump Omi.”

“That’s not how I want you to see me,” he protests.

“Don’tcha worry, I don’t,” he tells him. “I see ya as way more than that.”

“Promise?”

“Promise,” Atsumu says. “I see ya as a whole lot. Pretty sure you’re my best friend. Definitely in my top three favorite people. I might even love ya.”

After dropping that, he lifts his phone to take a selfie, giving Kiyoomi just enough warning that he manages to look up in time before he hears the electronic shutter click.

“Show me,” Kiyoomi demands, because there’s no way it’s a good picture.

When Atsumu angles his phone to show him, he’s actually kind of surprised by what he sees. Kiyoomi’s eyes are wide in it, like he’s a deer caught in the headlights, and his cheeks are a little pink, but he looks happy. And right beside him, Atsumu looks just as happy, practically over the moon as he looks not at the camera but at Kiyoomi.

“Alright. I guess we don’t need a retake,” he admits.

“I’m sendin’ this out to a group text,” Atsumu says as he pokes away at his phone, saying aloud as he types, “Help me… figure… this… out. Was this… our… first… date… or… have we been… dating for months?”

Kiyoomi scoffs. “We can’t have been dating for months, neither of us knew the other was interested,” he points out. “But - you also can’t say you love me on the first date.”

“Well, it’s gotta be one or the other, Omi,” he says. “What’re you gonna do about it?”

Kiyoomi pauses for a moment, considering it. He looks back at Atsumu, the eager expression on his face. “I guess I’ll just have to love you right back.”

Eyes widening, Atsumu takes in a little gasp, then wastes no more time before pulling Kiyoomi in closer, bringing their lips together in a kiss.

I love you, he repeats without words. I love you, thank you for all of this, I love you.