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Everyone’s favourite question in middle school is Sooo *wink wink nudge nudge* who do you have a crush on? The wink wink nudge nudge is the best case scenario, Osamu comes to learn within two months of being a third year in middle school – much more frequent is the elbowing, or the poking, or, Osamu’s personal least-favourite, the eyebrow gymnastics .
“No one,” Osamu says the very first time he’s asked the question – it’s also the last time he says that, because he learns that honesty is his worst enemy.
No one is the answer that gets the boys to overanalyze any interaction Osamu may have with a girl – bumping into one in the hallway. Having class duty together. Calling her name becaus the teacher asked him to give everyone their notebooks. No one is the answer that gets Osamu eye rolls, like of course you have a crush on someone, stop lyin’.
“Tsumu,” Osamu says as they’re waiting for the bus, kicking at a pebbel. “Do ya got a crush on anyone at school?”
Atsumu looks like Osamu just told him he isn’t hungry, which means he looks a minute away from calling their Ma to tell her that Osamu’s dying, or half a minute away from calling the ambulance. “Ew,” he says, with feeling.
“The boys in class were asking,” Osamu offers, because he, too, thinks this is ew , and talking about it with Atsumu is especially ew.
“Useless babble from useless scrubs,” Atsumu shrugs, but looks infinitely relieved that it’s not Osamu asking. He kicks the same pebble that Osamu did earlier, and it hits the wheel right as the bus pulls into the station.
Osamu might be even more relieved than Atsumu, and wonders if it shows on his face – if Atsumu doesn’t feel like anyone’s cute or hot or attractive either, then there’s nothing wrong with him.
Osamu learns all the right answers to the questions anyways, because, unlike Atsumu, he doesn’t want people badmouthing him behind his own back – it felt like shit when they were doing it to Atsumu. Osamu’s pretty sure that self-restraint didn’t transmit to them through mitosis, because if Atsumu were to hear people badmouthing Osamu, he’d do something that’d get him suspended.
So Osamu learns who the popular girl that no one will get is. The right answer is always the girl that no one will tease him for liking, because everyone secretly does. Always the girl he doesn’t talk to. Always the girl he doesn’t stand a chance with.
The game is simple once you know how to play it.
🍚
By the time he joins high school, Osamu’s a pro at this game. He looks around during the first week, figures out the right answers, and isn’t at all surprised when, no later than in their second week of practice, Ginjima asks, “So do you guys have eyes on anyone already?”
Osamu likes the Inarizaki volleyball team. He likes how they don’t look at Atsumu like he’s someone to be feared – maybe because they realized he’s actually a dumbass, or because the second-year named Kita has earned the respect of third and first years alike and he makes sure to treat everyone the same. Maybe it’s because Atsumu respects Kita, too. Maybe it’s just because they don’t really know each other yet.
“We had this surprise quiz in the very first week,” Ginjima’s saying, “and the girl sitting next to me lent me a pencil, and I wanted to ask her to marry me.”
Huh , Osamu thinks to himself. He’s used to boys raving over the popular girls, the ones with well defined proportions, the ones Osamu never chooses as his answer because it feels gross and disrespectful to talk about any human being like they’re reduced to their bra size. Ginjima, with the tips of his ears crimson red and his lips pulling into a genuine – and kind of stupid – smile, is surprisingly wholesome.
The locker next to Ginjima belongs to this really lanky middle blocker named Suna with fox-like eyes and his phone always close enough to film whatever mayhem’s going on – more likely than not, it’s something involving Atsumu. Atsumu never takes offense to that, and Osamu thinks his brother’s stupidity deserves being recorded for posterity, so he kind of likes Suna. he’d probably talk to him more if his poker face didn’t look like one of those summer festival masks, glued to his real face.
By virtue of physical proximity, Suna gets tackled first, Ginjima’s ears no less red but his eyebrows wiggling suggestively.
With the exact same poker face, Suna says, “I don’t like anyone.”
Osamu winces. He feels a little sorry for the guy, really – experience has taught him that this is the number one wrong answer. It’s the answer that gets you heckled, and that gets your classmates overanalyzing any exchange he had with every girl, ever . It’s the answer Osamu has been avoiding for the past three years.
“Oh,” Ginjima says, and Osamu braces for it – the heckling, his turn, Suna’s poker face crumbling, whatever new thing the universe will turn the it into. And then Ginjima breaks into a good-natured smile, and Osamu draws a blank. “Well, it’s only been a week. Just make sure to tell me when you do find someone!”
He bumps Suna’s shoulder like they’ve been friends forever, like Suna looks even remotely like the type of guy who’d tell Ginjima – or anyone else, for that matter – about his crush.
“This is so stupid,” Atsumu grumbles, shutting his own locker. Louder, he says, “We’re here ta play volleyball.”
“Sure we are,” Ginjima laughs, and throws an arm over Atsumu’s shoulders. “But we’re also friends, right? I mean, we’re together every day after classes!”
“If you just wanted an excuse to brag about your meetcute,” Suna deadpans, following them out into the gym, “just say so.”
Osamu stares at their backs for a second, grabs the water bottle Atsumu forgo on the bench, and follows them out. Gin’s a good guy , he thinks, and then he thinks about having to unlearn habits, and laughs a little to himself. At himself, maybe.
🍱
Osamu gets through maths because there’s two hours to lunch, and he gets through history because there’s volleyball in three.
Atsumu usually counts down with him. Before lunch, he wonders what their Ma packed for their lunches, and whether her cafeteria food is just as good as the bentos she wakes up before sunrise to pack for them. After lunch, he talks Osamu’s ear off about his serves and the newest Volleyball Monthly articles and how Osamu should get better at emergency sets.
Not sharing a class with Atsumu means enjoying quiet breaks, and then always looking for him during lunchtime anyway. It makes Osamu realize that he doesn’t know how to eat a meal without Atsumu, without trying to steal his food and trading mushrooms for bean sprouts – apparently genetics and nature versus nurture is a lie, and twins will still end up liking different things.
Every day throughout their first week at Inarizaki, without fail, Atsumu finds his way to Osamu’s classroom for the lunch break, and Osamu wonders if that means his classmates don’t like him here, either. If Atsumu still doesn’t care about being liked at all. If this is another one of those things that makes them indiviuals rather than half of the twin package.
Then Osamu’s fourth period ends earlier on a fateful Tuesday, and he heads to Atsumu’s class instead.
Atsumu has always sat in the first row by the window, mostly because he’s a showoff that likes getting the teacher’s attention and answering all the trick questions, and maybe also a little because Osamu always wanted to sit in the second row by the window, so he could space out during class while still looking like he pays attention. When he walks into Atsumu’s class, Osamu’s eyes instinctively search the first desk by the window, and find Atsumu leaning against it, talking to a girl.
It’s a weird sight, Atsumu sitting at his usual desk, but seeing a boy who is not Osamu sitting behind him. It’s an even weirded sight, Atsumu talking to a girl , and her smiling as she hands him a notebook – Atsumu’s notebook, Osamu realizes. Because only Atsumu is obnoxious enough to have a Vabo-chan sticker on his maths notebook, and a tiny volleyball one on his Japanese textbook. The weirdest sight, though, is that Atsumu doesn’t shoo her away – he smiles back, only half-forced, and something in Osamu squeezes.
Osamu isn’t good at statistics – if he could live his life without having anything to do with maths, he would’ve chosen to part ways with all numbers but those on the volleyball boards –, but he’s like ninety percent sure that twins cannot physically be in the same room without noticing each other. There’s a magnetic pull there – the moment he puts one foot over the treshold, Atsumu’s eyes snap to his, and he waves widely. “Oi, Samu!”
“Oh!” the not-Osamu guy sitting behind Atsumu says, “is this the rumored twin?”
Osamu blinks. He wasn’t aware he was rumored – that’s more Atsumu’s alley.
“Why would I lie about havin’ a twin?” Atsumu huffs, shooing the guy. “Go eat with yer football friends, Samu’s gonna sit here.”
“Really feeling the love, Atsumu-kun,” the guy laughs, but it’s good natured.
High school’s weird , Osamu thinks. The guy introduces himself before giving Osamu his seat – Osamu forgets his name after two seconds flat.
“Good job, scrub,” he says as he sits down in what should be his seat, anyways, and starts unpacking his bento. “This batch doesn’t hate yer guts.”
Atsumu chortles, pushing his desk against Osamu’s and unwrapping his bento like he’s been thinking about lunch since maths, too. “It’s ‘cause I saved their butts from a quizz first week,” he says, his mouth already full.
His twin’s still a neanderthal – Osamu finds odd comfort in that nugget of knowledge. It means that some truths are still unshakable: the Miya twins will always have lunch together, in the first and second desks by the window. Atsumu’s table manners will never be fixed. Osamu will always put the mushrooms in Atsumu’s bento, and he’ll always give Osamu the bean sprouts, and their Ma will never stop putting both in their bentos because she thinks they’ll grow out of being picky eaters.
“Well, ya better keep yer mouth shut outside of class, or they’ll figure out just how big of an asshole ya really are.”
“Says the buttface who switched our bentos this mornin’,” Atsumu says, and loads Osamu’s bento full of bean sprouts.
🍜
Osamu deserves to be paid for waking Atsumu up every morning and risking a kick in the stomach in the process – it’s a full-time job, and the working hours are ungodly. Then again, the world might be better off without Atsumu for another hour or two, so maybe Osamu should never tell anyone that he’s the reason why a grumpy, sleep-heavy Atsumu is unleashed onto the world as early as 6am every morning.
He always dozes off on the bus, where Osamu has considered abandoning him countless times. The onyl reason he doesn’t do it is that he wouldn’t be there to see Atsumu’s confused face when the driver yells at him to wake up, and that half the fun of the prank, really. So every day at 7:20, without fail, Osamu wakes him up again, and it’s an artform – today a poke in the stomach, tomorrow the spot under Atsumu’s right knee where he’s ticklish, the day after, inspiration will strike.
If, by the time they walk into the school, Atsumu’s still grumbling, then Osamu considers his job successfully completed. This morning, Atsumu’s pretty loud about Osamu hitting his belly button head-on – it might be a top three method, Osamu notes to himself.
“Atsumu-kun!” a girl says, right as Osamu’s basking in the sweetness of a job well done.
When he turns around, he recognizes her as the girl from Atsumu’s class, the one who borrowed his stupid maths notebook. She looks between them, slightly confused, until Atsumu nods and says, “Yuka-chan.”
Atsumu’s too cheerful, given how he was complaining just a moment ago. The aftertaste in Osamu’s mouth turns sour – he’s seen this play out in middle school. He’s learned this pattern. He doesn’t like the way it makes everything in him squeeze, the way it settles in his stomach, the way it ferments like sour dough until lunch.
“Who’s she?” he asks during lunch. They’re back in Osamu’s class, where the second desk by the window belongs to him, where people don’t smile at Atsumu, but nod friendily at Osamu – it’s not that they can tell them apart, but that only Atsumu would loudly announce his arrival into the classroom by yellin, “I’m famished!”
“Who?” Atsumu asks, mouth full. Neanderthal.
“The girl who borrowed yer maths notebook.”
“Ah, Yuka-chan,” Atsumu says. Osamu doesn’t like the consistency of her name, the way it wraps around Atsumu’s tongue like good food does. “She’s cute, right?”
I couldn’t tell, Osamu thinks. “I guess,” he says, shrugging. “Why, ya like her?”
“Dunno,” Atsumu hums, shurgging back. “Wouldn’t skip volleyball practice fer her.”
“To absolutely no one’s surprise,” Osamu sighs, like Atsumu didn’t just unsqueeze his entire digestive system, “yer an idiot.”
“Hey,” Atsumu protests, and steals another mushroom from Osamu’s bento, liek they’re not there for him anyway. Like Osamu could ever eat lunch alone. Like Osamu would ever play volleyball if Atsumu didn’t.
🍛
If Ginjima didn’t already know how much of a competitive asshole Atsumu already was, he would’ve thrown him out of his house after Atsumu tried to cheat at Monopoly. Twice. Osamu’s never bailing Atsumu’s ass out of jail, Monopoly-based or real.
“You’re just as bad, you know?”
Osamu snaps his head at Suna and says, “I’m Osamu.”
“I know,” Suna grins, fox-sneaky. “You’re on my property – pay up, Osamu .”
“Just wait till ya roll a three,” Osamu mumbles, slapping the bill in Suna’s outstretched hand. “I’m not a cheater, like Tsumu.”
“I meant competitive,” Suna says, throwing the dice.
It rolls, hits Ginjima’s foot, and lands on a fateful three. Osamu grins. “See?” Suna says, grinning back, like he didn’t just lose 300 bucks to Osamu. “You’re a Miya alright.”
Osamu raises an eyebrow and takes back his money. “Is that supposed ta be an insult?”
“Just an observation,” Suna shrugs with his poker-face back on.
Osamu squints like Suna’s unreadable face isn’t a problem of interpretation, but one which prescription glasses could solve. “Ya say that like ya didn’t just buy Park Place to spite me.”
“Did I?” Suna says, and Osamu’s sight can’t be that far off from 20/20 if he manages to read the mirth in his eyes.
“You knew Osamu wanted to buy it, didn’t you?” Ginjima says, and winces at his dice land on a five and he pays Suna 240 bucks. “If you weren’t playing volleyball, I wouldn’t be surprised if you told me you were in the economy club, buying and selling actions.”
“Pretty sure that’s illegal if you’re underage,” Suna says calmly.
“I’ll call ya when I wanna buy a house,” Atsumu says, finally out of jail and praying for a six so he can pass by the starting point again and save his broke ass. “I’m sure the loan sharks got nothin’ on ya.”
“Or maybe you just have no common sense when it comes to playing Monopoly,” Suna shrugs. “You only have two properties, and they’re both brown.”
“Seriously, Tsumu, how can ya suck so bad?”
“Aren’t you supposed to be the smarty-pants of our team?”
“Why are yall gangin’ up on me? I swear I was better off in prison,” he mumbles, paying Suna half of the money he got at the starting point.
“Famous last words,” Suna muses. His stack of money is as thick as Ginjima, Osamu and Atsumu’s together. “If you ever landed in prison, what do you think it’d be for?”
“Tsumu? Lyin’ outta his ass to sound cool and then gettin’ in trouble for it,” Osamu says without any second thought.
“Hey!” Atsumu protests, but has nothing to actually counter with. “Well ya’d follow the smell of food and eat in a super expensive restaurant and then realize ya can’t pay, like a dumbass.”
“Ginjima would get stupidly drunk and strip in public,” Suna says sagely.
“Probably,” Ginjima sighs, even though he’s undeage and has never even sniffed sake. “What about Suna?”
“Blackmail,” Osamu says at the same time as Atsumu.
Suna grins, fox-sharp. Osamu is starting to get a read on the guy. A few months of seeing the same people daily does that to you. “I’m too good to get caught,” Suna’s saying, but Osamu thinks, I caught ya already.
He doesn’t think anyone has photo folders named after every teammate and chooses different emojis for their contact names if they don't give a damn. He doesn’t think Suna’s all that good at poker, either.
🍲
On the court, everything is enhanced – those eight seconds before serving, the crowd’s cheers, Osamu’s hearing, the way his arms spring into action. Everything is so much clearer, so much more fun, that Osamu almost forgets how mundane the daily life is.
Inarizaki ranks fourth at Nationals, and the Miya twins get a reputation for it – the first year starters from Hyogo, the volleyball twins. Atsumu still doesn’t care for it – he cares about being on the court for longer, and then longer still. Osamu cares about getting those eight seconds after the whistle blows next time, too. He cares about playing with Atsumu. The rest – the heat and the sweat and the way Kita’s gaze sends shivers down their spines when they start getting comfortable – they’re just necessary evils.
Inarizaki ranks fourth at Nationals, and Osamu walks off the court only to see the team’s banner and realize that none of it matters, because the match is already behind them. “Next year,” Atsumu wheezes next to him, “next year we’re gettin’ gold.”
“We don’t need the memories,” Osamu mumbles to himself, like a mantra, engraving it in his muscles.
Inarizaki ranks fourth at Nationals, and no one at school cares – it’s the only explanation for why, ten days after Osamu left it all out on the court, he needs to face the horror known as exam week. The rest of the world doesn’t know jackshit about the thrill of the court, and how it feels to be hungry after you’ve just eaten, to have an entire stadium feeding from your hunger.
“I hate Japanese,” Suna complains on the busride back to Hyogo.
“Sadly, that’s the only language you speak,” Atsumu says, almost too gleeful to poke his head. It’s like he chose to sit behind Suna for the sole purpose of heckling him – which is how Osamu knows that Atsumu actually considers Suna a proper friend, because his brother is a neanderthal not only when it comes to table manners. “Do ya want me to tutor ya?” he asks, a shit-eating grin splitting his face in two.
Suna looks like Atsumu just stuck a lemon slice in his mouth.
Osamu’s budding laugh dies in his throat when Atsumu says, “I can help ya and Samu at the same time,” and sounds serious about it.
“Japanese is fine, but math’s gonna kill me ,” Osamu wails, slumping aginst his seat.
“Yer a baby,” Atsumu says, like he’s not only nine minutes older. He’s already dug out his phone, “I’m fonna ask Ma if it’s okay to have a study session at ours.”
“Did I hear study session at Miya’s?” Ginjima yells from two rows over.
Suna looks at him like Ginjima’s his sleep paralysis demon. “How’s his hearing that good?” he mutters, and Osamu silently shakes his head.
🥟
“Is it too salty?”
“It’s fuckin’ delicious,” Atsumu says in between bites, “stop pissin’ yer pants. Cookin’s the only thing other than volleyball that yer never a scrub at.”
“And yer a glutton who eats anything edible,” Osamu huffs, turning off the stove right as the doorbell rings. “Fuck,” he mumbles under his breath.
“Stop actin’ like a loser and get the food out inta the livin’ room,” Atsumu says as he makes for the door. Osamu can tell he’s rolling his eyes and doesn’t care – in any other situation, he’d try to deck Atsumu. It’s telling that all he wants to do now is stare at every muscle on Suna and Ginjima’s faces as they try his food.
“Smells good,” Ginjima says instead of Hello the moment he walks in.
“We brought dessert,” Suna says, because he might take blackmail photos of his friends for fun, but he pulls his weight when it matters. Like when he got subbed into their last match at nationals, and Osamu tossed him an emergency set, and he made it into an untouchable spike. Like when he told the third year setter who had started making snide remarks at Atsumu for being a regular, “I don’t think I’ve ever comfortably hit one of your sets, Tsuda-san.” Like now, when he dangles the plastic bag in front of Atsumu’s face and sends Osamu a smile. “It does smell good. Do you need help setting the table?”
“Nah, we’re good,” Atsumu says, waving them inside. “I woulda introduced ya to the miaws, but they’re sleepin’ in the garden.”
“Believe me, ya don’t wanna disturb Queen when she’s sleepin’,” Osamu says, stepping into the living room with two of his mother’s best bowls. “Tsumu.”
“Yeah, yeah, on it. Ya only nag me like this when it’s ‘bout food, I swear.” He complains, but still steps out to get the other two bowls and the chopsticks.
“Ooh, Morioka ramen!” Ginjima claps his hands, mutters a quick, “Itadakimasu,” and digs in as soon as Atsumu sits down.
Atsumu looks at Ginjima like Osamu should look at him every time he speaks with his mouth full. “Wow, Gin, did ya starve yerself the whole day?”
“This is so fucking good,” Ginjima says in between bites, and Osamu feels like a baloon someone just pumped air into. “Seriously, Osamu, what did you put into the broth?”
“Wouldn’t be any fun if I told ya,” Osamu says, and smiles at the disappointed look on Ginjima’s face and Atsumu elbowing him with a showoff complaint. His eyes settle on Suna, who’s been awfully quiet ever since the bowl got placed under his nose, and he feels the air blow out of him. “Does it taste wrong?” he asks, and tries his hardest not to let his voice crack.
“What?” Suna asks, like Osamu’s speaking a foreign language. When he looks up, Osamu realizes he’s never seen Suna’s eyes blown out like this – he’s never seen so much on Suna’s face at all. It’s like he finally put down the mask, and this Suna looks so fragile that Osamu is scared to even speak his way. “This is the best thing I’ve eaten all year,” he says, and Osamu believes him. He’d believe anything Suna told him right now. “I didn’t realize I missed home-cooked meals this much,” he adds, quieter, and stuffs more noodles in his mouth.
It dawns on Osamu, then, that he knows next to nothing about Suna, but what he’s just said is the sadest thing he’s heard all year.
It doesn’t seem to shake anything in Atsumu and Ginjima in the same way – maybe because they both transform into pre-homo sapiens species when food is put in front of them, or because they aren’t sitting close enough to Suna to see the wistful pull of his face, or because Osamu is a competitive bastard who has taken it upon himself to be able to read Suna’s poker face, so any crack has meaning to him.
It’s why they can go on with the planned studying session. Atsumu proves to be an actually half-decent teacher, and Osamu feels like maybe he won’t fail maths by the end of it. By the time the sun sets, the cats slither back inside, and Suna takes approximatively thirty pictures of them.
“Tsumu?” Osamu asks much later, once they’ve cleared the box of dango and Ginjima and Suna have left them with a bunch of dishes to do.
“Yeah?” Atsumu hufs, taking another bowl from Osamu to dry.
“Maybe we should have lunch with Suna tomorrow.”
Atsumu puts the dried bowl back on the counter. “We should tell Ma to prepare more food,” he says. And then, because Atsumu’s a setter before he’s a neanderthal, “Suna looked kinda sad, didn’t he?”
Osamu smiles a little and turns off the tap. “Do ya think he’d like onigiri?”
🍢
“Melon pan ain’t food.”
Suna startles, and looks up from his phone like he’s been caught online bidding. He’s watching cat videos, Osamu realizes before Suna slams his phone upside down on his desk and tilts his head. “What are you two doing here?”
“Makin’ sure ya eat real food,” Atsumu says, snatching the melon pan from Suna’s hand. “This ain’t even the good brand.”
“That settles it,” Osamu decides as he places two bento boxes on the table. “I’m cookin’ for ya tomorrow.”
“Wha–”
“And yer gonna eat it and say Osamu, yer the best and I’ll say I know and ya’ll help me bake cookies for Christmas instead.”
Suna looks at him for a long moment before he settles on, “Christmas is in four months.”
“Samu experiments with recipes,” Atsumu says as he drags a chair at Suna’s desk. “And I ain’t settin’ to scrubs who can’t even eat a proper meal.”
“Of course you don’t,” Suna echoes, but he’s grinning.
Osamu pushes a spicy tuna onigiri his way. “Yer gonna hate bakin’ with me,” he grins.
Suna complains about Osamu being anal about the shape of the cookies, the amount of cinnamon, the temperature of the milk they pair them with, how much weight he’s gonna gain from these baking sessions – but he shows up at the Miya’s every week, without fail. He tells Atsumu he’s disgusting to eat with, but has lunch with the twins every day.
Ginjima finds out and sulks about it for an entire afternoon. He shows up in Suna’s classroom the very next day with ice cream.
🦪
Inarizaki places second at the Spring Interhigh. “Second ain’t first,” Atsumu mumbles when the silver medals are hung around their necks.
Osamu wonders what it’s like to have volleyball make you that hungry, and something inside him squeezes dully.
🥮
“Gin’s gonna freak if he sees yer nails.”
Suna glances down at his hand, almost like he forgot it was there, and shrugs. “Went home during the weekend. My little sister did them.”
“She’s good,” Osamu says, like he knows anything about nail polish.
“For a seven year old, sure,” Suna says mildly.
“She’s a lot younger than ya, huh? Can’t imagine what that’s like.” Sometimes, Osamu does wonder what it’d be like to be an only child – then he remember he can’t eat alone, and thinks that if Atsumu weren’t his twin, he’d want him to be his older brother, just so he never has to wonder what it’s like to sleep alone for a few years.
Suna hums, low enough that Osamu almost doesn’t hear it over the sizzling of the hot pot. “I don’t think my parents ever really wanted a second kid, but she was the fix-it baby. Then they divorced less than a year after she was born.” He says it like that’s supposed to be the punchline.
Atsumu kept telling Osamu how he’d be fine all alone in a different classroom because he got the bulk of the “people fall for my puppy eyes” genes in the womb, and he wants to scream, “Ya were wrong!” in his face now, because Osamu doesn’t know how to deal with tragic backstories.
“Uhm,” he manages.
“You don’t have to react,” Suna shrugs. “I’d rather live with my aunt then have to play referee in their screaming matches every other day.”
“That’s shitty.”
“You tell me.” Suna smirks, but it feels void.
Osamu has never wanted to deck strangers as much as he does now. He doesn’t want to dwell on it, because he’s holding a knife. Because if he does, Suna taking photographic evidence of everything can suddenly veer left from quirky into sinister. Because if he does, Suna might see everything that’s wrong with him and decide he doesn’t want the warm meals after all.
“How’s yer aunt?” he asks instead, and tries to swallow back everything else. It tastes like bile.
“Best of the bunch,” Suna says. “She works overhours a lot, but whenever she’s home, she plays with my sister and used to help with my homework.”
“Good,” Osamu sighs. He doesn’t think he could’ve reigned it in if Suna had said anything else. “Does yer lil sister ever visit ya?”
“Every second week or so,” Suna says, impossibly fond – Osamu’s getting better at reading him. “She’s a little rascal. Drew all over my dorm’s walls while I showered once. I’m gonna have to repaint them at the end of the year.”
“Sounds like a delight,” Osamu laughs. “Ya should never let her meet Tsumu.” Mischief dances in Suna’s eyes. “I said no, ” Osamu gasps, shoving him.
“I didn’t say anything,” Suna hums, in that voice that Osamu knows spells trouble.
“I’m nover gonna show interest in yer personal life again.”
Suna laughs, so clear that Osamu can’t even keep up the act pretending to be mad at him. “That’s why I told you in the first place.”
🍫
Valentine’s day is the bane of Osamu’s existence. The week leading up to it has everyone asking about crushes enough to fulfill his quota for the entire year, and it’s the only celebration that makes him dread cooking.
He makes enough brownies for everyone in the volleyball club, preens under Kita’s praise, and gets an entire bagful of chocolates by the end of the day – and two confessions. He turns them both down, and they make the chocolate sour somewhere in his guts.
“Got two confessions today,” Atsumu tells him once they’re in their room, and he’s sprawled himself all over Osamu’s bunk bed.
“Me too,” Osamu says, wondering if this is a twin thing, too. “Turned them both down.”
“Why?” Atsumu turns to look at him.
The squeezing thing inside Osamu tightens up. “Cause I didn’t like ‘em back.”
“Hmm,” Atsumu hums, and then, “I said yes ta Yuka-chan. I mean, she’s cute.”
Osamu feels like one of those damned Valentine’s ribbons got wrapped around his windpipe. “And that’s enough for ya to go out with her?”
“I do like her, y’know,” Atsumu says. He sounds a little pissed, like Osamu’s making him out to be some sort of monster – if the damned pink ribbon wasn’t cutting off his airflow, Osamu would breathe out fire, like the real monster he is.
“How’s that feel?” Osamu asks instead.
“Dunno,” Atsumu hums. “Like ya wanna hold their hand, I guess? And watch ‘em eat good shit? But ya also wanna kiss ‘em and everythin’ else.”
It’s funny how they were born from the same cell and raised under the same roof, and yet Atsumu likes cute girls and Osamu thinks the everthin’ else is scary and sort of disgusting and doesn’t want to get himself involved with anyone who expects that from him. Maybe there’s something wrong with him – maybe it started with Atsumu liking mushrooms and Osamu loathing them. Maybe it started with Atsumu declaring, with starry eyes in the middle of the day, that he wants to be a setter, and Osamu feeling sagging relief, even though he had been playing setter until then. Maybe it started when he shrugged that off to spikers being cooler.
Atsumu shrugs, like Osamu should get it.
The ribbon chokes Osamu. “Ya can have my chocolate,” he says, and then walks out of their room to lock himself in the bathroom and let the hot water run over him and clean away all of the things that made him unlike Atsumu.
🥢
Help me with cookies turned into Saturday dinner with Suna somewhere along the way, without Osamu paying attention.
“Where’s Atsumu?”
“Date,” Osamu says, and the word is sharp in his mouth, almost cuts his tongue when it tumbles out.
Suna grimaces, and it makes Osamu chuckle, even as he’s playing with his rice. Suna looks at his chopsticks pointedly, like he’s doing a mental countdown, and finally sighs, “What’s up?”
“I don’t get the whole liking someone thing,” Osamu says, because Suna looks like he doesn’t care enough about anything people tell him to spread the news about it. Because he’s bursting at the seems to tell someone, anyone , and not have them laugh at him. Because it’s March but the damn Valentine’s ribbon is still securely wrapped around his windpipe.
“A lot of people don’t,” Suna says. Osamu rolls his eyes at him. “I mean, I don’t either.”
“You don’t?” Osamu asks, like Suna’s lying to get the extra fatty beef cut.
“Not really,” Suna shrugs. “I like people just fine, but I don’t find them attractive or anything. The thought of someone sticking my dick in their mouth feels kinda disgusting. The reverse is even worse.”
“Oh,” Osamu says. It’s like Suna reached in his throat and cut the ribbon – like it even is that simple. “Same. I never got what people mean when they say they find someone hot .”
Suna nods, in that lazy way of his, and Osamu finally finishes his rice.
Later that night, Suna sends him the wikipedia page to asexuality , and Osamu stays up until 2am, dimming the brightness of the laptop screen so Atsumu won’t wake up and peek.
🍘
Osamu doesn’t feel any different as a second year high school student, even though his Ma makes an entire fuss about how he’s growing out of his uniform, and how her twins are now taller than her, and how good it is that Suna and Osamu are now in the same class, because Suna is still way too thin for a boy his age and Osamu eats too much anyways, he might as well share, and how Suna’s sister should visit them again because it makes her feel younger.
He doesn’t see Atsumu in the lunch breaks until the second week of April.
“Oh?” Suna whistles when Atsumu pushes the first desk by the window into Osamu’s. “Did you decide we’re worth your presence today? Or did precious Yuka-chan ditch you?”
“Broke up with her,” Atsumu says as he sits down and steals the mushrooms from both Osamu and Suna’s bentos. “She didn’t get why I had to cancel our last date for practice, and I don’t wanna spend time with someone who doesn’t get volleyball.”
“Scrub,” Osamu says, and hates himself for the relief that floods into his bloodstream.
He hates himself for everything that comes afterwards, too – Suna getting Atsumu into Pretty Little Liars now that Saturday dinners with the entire trio are back on, the fashion magazines, Atsumu doing Suna’s eyeliner, the way they always like the same character in the show they’re watching and that is never the character Osamu roots for. He hates how all of this should be the spring of my youth material, and instead it’s a winter wake-up call for how different Osamu is from everyone else – from his twin, which should be biologically impossible. From the only other person he knows that read the wikipedia asexuality page. He hates that Suna gets Atsumu in so many of the ways he doesn’t, because it spells out how this is Osamu’s problem and his alone. How Osamu might just be the problem.
Maybe it’s why Osamu looks around the empty gym one day after practice, tests how his voice echoes against the high ceiling, and tells Suna, “Ya should bleach my hair.”
Suna blinks. “Finally had enough of being mistaken for Atsumu?”
Osamu thought the dumb ribbon got cut months ago. “Something like that,” he says, even though he’s not sure why he wants a constant reminder that he’s nothing like Atsumu when that’s the whole reason he can’t breathe in the first place.
Suna deserves a best friend medal – a mental sorry goes Aran’s way – because he doesn’t ask anything else. He pulls out his phone, googles hottest summer 2013 hair colors and shoves the first Buzzfeed article under Osamu’s nose.
Grey is listed at number two. Grey is pretty non-descript, Osamu thinks. It doesn’t call for attention, doesn’t make a statement, doesn’t feel like a color Atsumu would pick. It doesn’t really feel like a color Osamu would pick, either, but he’s used to growing into answers and positions, so why wouldn’t he get used to growing into a color?
Bleaching, Osamu finds out, is a bitch. The smell gets everywhere, into his nose and lungs and a t-shirt he stole from Atsumu when Suna told him to “wear something he can stain.” It gets into the shirt that Suna stole from him, too. Osamu thinks it’s one of those scents he’ll never forget – something to mark the spring of his youth, or something.
Of course, the smell is also the first thing Atsumu notices when he comes home. Then, it’s his shirt missing. Then, Osamu.
“What. The. FUCK. ”
Looking at Atsumu is like looking at a before image of himself, except Osamu knows all the ways in which him and Atsumu aren’t alike – how Atsumu’s mouth always opens more when he speaks, how his eyes always crinkle so much that he’s going to get crow’s feet five years before Osamu’s will even start to show. How Osamu’s hair is now grey.
“Felt like changin’ somethin’,” Osamu shrugs.
“That looks so cool ,” Atsumu says, and his eyes are sparkling because he’s a kid like that. Because he’s going to get wrinkles earlier. Because Atsumu lives fully, and Osamu is not like him at all. “Do ya have any left?”
“No dye,” Suna says, “but I got bleach so–”
“Bleach it, then,” Atsumu says.
“Don’t ya wanna die it?”
“Bleach it,” Atsumu says, and it’s final. Osamu bets he’s going to get too lazy to die it, after all.
Suna snorts, but bleaches it anyway. The smell is never getting out of their bathroom walls, Osamu thinks. It’s going to be a permanent reminder of the day the Miya twins became Atsumu and Osamu.
Atsumu gets too lazy to die his hair, so he’s left with this piss-blond color that he thinks looks cool . The next day at practice, Aran looks at Atsumu like he’s not sure where he failed as his best friend.
🍣
“Do ya like Suna?”
July is the hottest month in Amagasaki, and the AC on the bus is jammed, so at first, Osamu thinks he halucinated the question and Atsumu’s lips moving. It would be reasonable to assume heatstroke in this situation, he thinks. It would be even more reasonable to throw Atsumu out the window, just to make sure.
“I mean, like more than a friend?” Atsumu pushes, slapping his thigh.
Not a hallucination, then. “No?” Osamu says, because Atsumu’s said a lot of absurd things, but this must take the cake.
“Really?” Atsumu muses, and he looks liek he can’t believe he read a setup wrongly. “But ya know it’s fine ta like whoever ya want, right?”
Osamu would truly throw Atsumu out the window if he didn’t have to pay the damages for breaking the window afterwards. “Are ya sayin’ this ‘cause of yer crush on Kita-san?”
“Wha–” Atsumu flaps his mouth like a fish. Maybe the piss-blond hair was a good idea – after all, it puts a unique finishing touch on the whole dumbass look that Atsumu’s rocking. “I don’t know what yer talkin’ ‘bout,” he tries.
Osamu gives him the do not even try look, because he’s too tired and it’s too hot for his bullshit. And then, because it doesn’t really look like Atsumu’s going to drop it, and because it’s too hot to breathe anyways, “I just – I don’t really find people attractive, Tsumu.” He says it low enough that Atsumu might not even hear him over the sound of the engine. Actually, that might be better.
“Like, ever?” Atsumu asks, because of course he hears him anyway. It doesn’t sound judgy.
“Like, ever.”
“Huh,” Atsumu hums, like Osamu’s world didn’t stop turning when he realized that. Like saying it didn’t take his voice away. Like they’re not in a hot bus on the way home after grueling practice. Like that doesn’t make him just Osamu . “I know there’s also people who only feel like they wanna bang friends, but never strangers. Isn’t it like, a spectrum?”
Osamu stares at him. He doesn’t think he blinks. He doesn’t think he breathes, either.
Atsumu’s ears grow pink. “I did some research, okay?” he says, like he’s the one trying to defend himself here. “When I realized I swing both ways. Anyways,” he coughs, “where are ya on the sex is ew spectrum?”
And Osamu can’t help it – his brother is an idiot. Some people get born with a good voice or a music rhythm – Osamu’s glad he was born with Atsumu and his sex is ew metaphor for whatever it is that’s been tormenting him for the past three years.
“I don’t know,” he laughs. He doesn’t remember when he last laughed like this – like being Miya Osamu was the best thing to have ever happened to him. Osamu’s going to burn all Valentine’s ribbons before they can choke him again this year, because all the pipes and chords and guts untangle themselves inside him in one fell swoop.
🍙
Christmas Cookies with Osamu, season 2, Suna dubs their second term hangouts.
Realizing I have big fat feelings for my ace best friend, Osamu secretly adds a subtitle. He’s sure his would sell better, anyways.
It’s not his fault that he notices – if anything, it’s Atsumu’s. If Atsumu hadn’t been so damn observant and so damn loud about it, Osamu could have lived blissfully unaware of the fact that Suna had a growth spurt and can now reach cupboards he couldn’t last year, or of how, when he’s not wearing his uniform, the slim fit jeans are really flattering, or of how his collarbones stick out, as do his knuckles.
Maybe Osamu wants to run his fingers over all those bony parts of Suna. Maybe he wants to hold his hand and watch him eat good shit, but then also kiss him and everything else. Maybe he googles sexual attraction until 2am and then rereads the asexuality wikipedia page until 3am. Maybe he eats Atsumu’s mushrooms out of spite, then quickly realizes he still does not like them.
Maybe he’s liked Suna since forever and a day. If liking someone doesn’t directly equate sexual attraction, as the internet seems to believe – with some quite compelling arguments, to Osamu’s absolute despair –, then what Osamu is left with is how comfortable he’s always felt around Suna. How he always felt like he could let go. How touching Suna never made him burn.
Maybe Osamu’s fucked. It would be funny if he didn’t feel like screaming about it.
Being in the same class as Suna in their third year might be the universe’s big fat joke on him, all things considered. As if in love with my ace best friend is the sort of earth-shattering realization that one reconciles within a night, he has a second earth-stopping moment not even a week later.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone happier to eat or cook than ya,” Aran tells him one March afternoon, before he leaves Hyogo to go join the big guys in the big leagues, where Osamu should be next year, with Atsumu.
He tells him this, and it leaves Osamu wondering what would happen if he didn’t go join the big guys in the big leagues. If instead of being one of the volleyball Miya twins, he was one Miya Osamu, always hungry, just as crazy about food as Atsumu is about volleyball.
Osamu knows hunger – he knows what it’s like to have it satisfied on the court and what it’s like to have the court feeding into it. He knows what it’s like to read hunger in the eyes across the net. He knows what it’s like to look at Atsumu and see something immeasurable, and then look in the window and see the same thing when he’s wearing an apron.
Osamu’s a liar – he’s known this for much, much longer than a week. But knowing things and giving things a name is not the same, and being true to yourself involves a shitton of names.
🍮
Being on the court feels different when Osamu knows there’s an expiry date to it. It’s like, now that he knows this sport will slip between his fingers, the weight of what it has meant for him for more than half of his life crashes into him – the tournaments, fighting Atsumu, chasing each other on the morning run, being out of breath, the way food tastes better after a match, the whistle blow, the adrenaline rush, the adrenaline crush.
Osamu feels it all at once, and it almost makes him change his mind. He wants more time on the court. He wants more time with this team. He wants more time with the ball, even if it’s just polishing it after practice. Even if it’s just taking down the net.
“What’s up with you these days?” Suna asks, unhooking the net from the right pole.
They’re the last two in the gym, because Osamu wanted to practice setting – even the irony is bittersweet – and Suna said he wanted to hit some more tosses.
In retrospect, he was probably just biding his time to ask this.
Osamu is bursting at the seams to talk about it – scream about it –, but it’s like his lips are sewn shut. He wanted to tell his mom, but she’d tell Atsumu, because the Miyas don’t know how to shut up. He wanted to tell Kita and was scared of being on the receiving end of his disappointed dad look, because Osamu’s not doing things properly – there’s no way abandoning volleyball can be proper. He wanted to tell Aran, but after spending all of middle school telling him he wanted to be on the same team, how could Osamu suddenly tell him he’s turning down an offer from Aran’s first division team?
He’s been wanting to tell Atsumu, but then he’d have to tell him that he spent the past two years terrified of being different, and that now he’s ready, and doesn’t that hurt? How can he say I’ve been terrified of not being you, but now I’m going to force you to not be me ? How can Osamu even begin to explain that he’s not abandoning Atsumu when everything – dyeing his hair, quitting volleyball, having evolved from a Neanderthal when it comes to table manners, being on the sex is ew spectrum – everything points to the contrary?
He wants to tell Suna, right now. It’s probably why he does, even if Suna is the other half of his existential crisis.
“I’m gonna open a restaurant.”
Suna looks away from the pole, straight at him. Maybe through him.
It’s killing Osamu. “I’m not goin’ pro ‘cause imma open a restaurant.”
“Okay,” Suna says, like there’s nothing wrong with Osamu – with not going pro and not finding people hot and being half of the Miya twins, which makes him everything like Atsumu, but nothing like him in all the ways that matter.
“And I think I like ya,” Osamu adds, and that’s why he didn’t want to tell Suna in the first place – once he’s open, he gushes out until he’s empty. “In a I wouldn’t mind kissin’ ya way,” he adds, because Osamu’s only second to Atsumu at digging his own grave. “Which I know is not somethin’ yer into–”
“Who said that?” Suna says, suddenly less than a step away from Osamu. It’s those damn giraffe legs of his – the ones that look killer in slim fit jeans.
Osamu gulps. “I mean – we talked ‘bout how–”
“Why can’t I be into you when you’re into me?”
Suna’s not making any sense, Osamu thinks. It makes sense for him to like Suna – he has the proportions of a model, and he’s so much fun to be around, and Osamu loves trying to push him off rainbow road and have Suna win anyway, and he loves shitting on movies with him, and complaining about maths, and Suna’s kissing him.
Suna’s kissing him. Like that makes any sense. Like they even know what they’re doing, like any of them has ever done this, like Osamu didn’t use to think he didn’t want anything to do with feelings, like he didn’t lose sleep over telling Suna everything, like, like, like .
“I like you too,” Suna grins, like that makes all the sense.
Osamu kisses him again – they’ve gotta get this right eventually.