Chapter Text
It’s early November, and for Hyogo, unusually cold.
The sun peeks over the horizon and inches higher every time Atsumu’s sneakered foot touches base with the pavement. He’s pumping his fists to maintain heat and blood flow, but his fingers remain cold, and his breath comes out in heavy clouds of pale white air. The tan that typically paints Atsumu’s shoulders begins to fade, an omen to the upcoming winter and the volleyball games that follow, as natural as the changing seasons themselves.
He blinks his eyes; sharp, and cold, and presses on, the presence of his brother pulling him forward and in the direction of Inarizaki. Atsumu winces. Hair bleach had entered his blisters the night prior, and the cold wind tears at the sting. His hands are as fragile as still water. As fragile as a tsunami. It's these hands that shape Atsumu’s entire life and have for years. He flexes his fingers and picks up his pace, surpassing Osamu with nothing but the rolling hills to lead him now.
The sun comes to be fully visible, along with the school, and Atsumu slows his pace to a walk, approaching the volleyball team club room. He pauses at the door, fishing through his pockets, only to find a gum wrapper and some lint and not the key he was so graciously offered by his upperclassmen. Beside him, Osamu scoffs, pulling out his key and silently unlocking the door for the both of them.
Atsumu takes a tentative step inside the empty room, pausing to turn his head left to right, and raises his eyebrows slightly towards his brother.
“I guess we’re first,” he comments, sliding his backpack off his shoulders and letting it fall to the floor. Osamu checks his watch and shrugs lazily. They move to get changed, beginning with their winter jackets which had recently been taken out from the attic.
“Hey, guys, mornin’,” Aran Ojiro, the team’s second-year ace, greets from the door frame within which he had just appeared. He scans the club room to find that the first years are the only players present. “Oh, sorry for havin’ you two here alone,” Aran offers, apology tinged with confusion. Osamu shrugs again, to himself, this time, and turns away. Atsumu smiles towards Aran and scratches the back of his head, sheepishly.
“I guess we were feelin’ a little eager to get here,” he supplies, excusing both his and his brother’s early arrival. Two weeks prior, Inarizaki had secured their spot in the Tokyo Spring Tournament. This meant higher intensity practices and highly focused players, all in a dedicated trance far beyond typical high school level sports. This was something uniquely Inarizaki, and in many ways, uniquely Atsumu. Despite the school’s long-time position as a Hyogo powerhouse, there was a certain type of energy Atsumu had brought to the team during his first year that had not previously existed. His ego settled across the team like a fog, urging them to perceive the sport in an entirely new way.
“It’s like a puzzle,” Atsumu had explained one day. “It’s not supposed to be fun to play, it’s supposed to be fun to beat.”
Regardless of the fact that this comment was unanimously disagreed with, it was clear that Atsumu had meant it, and that mere fact left the analogy sitting low in the pits of the teams’ stomachs, creating a deviously motivating concoction of passion and vigor.
“All good,” Aran replied, and shortly after the rest of the team arrived, all perfectly on time.
—
It’s 8 A.M., and Atsumu is exhausted. They’ve spent the past hour on defensive drills, digging and deflecting balls that Atsumu didn’t set up and making him wonder why they’re wasting their time on a backup setter when Atsumu is right there and perfectly capable of receiving a ball and -
“He’ll probably make it to the top five by next year, I bet,” Ren Omimi, a second-year middle blocker, comments over fellow first-year Rintarou Suna’s shoulder. They’re taking a water break, and Suna is idly watching one of the final Tokyo Prefecture spring tournament qualifying matches from the day before. His phone whistles and shouts, the sounds of volleyball floating melodiously from his speaker as if it were an orchestral symphony. The game is close to over and both teams are fervently working towards a single common, yet distinctly separate, goal.
“Sure,” Suna agrees unenthusiastically, and Atsumu jogs over, fiendishly eager to catch the tantalizing final moments of a losing team and to determine the worth of the supposed ‘future top five’. He peers over Suna’s other shoulder and begins to ask which player his teammate is referring to. His words pause in his open mouth when he sees a tall, pale outside hitter launching himself into the air and slamming a volleyball through the hands of the opposing middle blockers. It ricochets off the court, flying across the gym and to, as far as the hitter is concerned, infinity. The tips of Atsumu’s fingers burn just watching this guy spike the ball. His hand, delicate, twitches, slightly, almost unnoticeably. The player on Suna’s screen begins to fall from his spike- gracefully, somehow- and lands, and Atsumu is shocked to see that he has just scored the winning point, given his lack of enthusiasm or excitement as compared to the rest of his team, who then comes barreling towards him, a tsunami of hideously bright yellow jerseys.
“Who’s that?” Atsumu asks, relinquishing his awe for the sake of his curiosity.
“A problem,” Shinsuke Kita calls from across the gym, and Aran laughs, and the team laughs, but Atsumu doesn’t, and he doesn’t for the rest of morning practice because all he can think is I need to watch that game.
—
His name, Atsumu learns from the announcer of the qualifying match from earlier, is Sakusa Kiyoomi.
“I don’t think I’ve heard of him,” Osamu outwardly ponders, listening to Atsumu’s YouTube video from where he's slouched against his shoe locker. “The whole surgical mask thing is a little try-hard.”
“He’s a first-year at Itachiyama Institute” Suna explains, arms crossed and leaning against the doorframe of Inarizaki’s first-year hall. “Where’ve you two been?”
Atsumu shrugs, holding his phone in one hand and pulling on his shoe with the other.
Where’s he been? Atsumu wonders. Sakusa moves like a machine, using the balls of his feet to support his jumps. Setting his body up for yet another leap and spike, Atsumu notices that Sakusa doesn’t necessarily get record-setting air time. It’s his consistency, his disgusting uniformity, the equilibrium that his form reaches that sets him apart from players Atsumu has set for in the past. There’s only so much technique a wing spiker should be able to sense, he inwardly enthuses. Especially with the inexperience of being a first-year. But this guy…
Sakusa’s standards for himself must reach heaven, and the effort shows, as well as the expectations.
“It’s like he’s-” Atsumu starts before shutting his mouth. It’s challenging to put into words, and he’s not sure Suna or his brother would even understand what he means. Scared? he tries, but No, there’s no fear. His fingers twitch, stretch, ever so slightly. “-intimidated by himself, I guess.”
Suna and Osamu both turn their heads towards Atsumu, a matching quirk to their eyebrows that feels almost unsettling. They turn to each other and back to the blond.
“How perceptive ,” Osamu comments after a beat of silence, smirking. Atsumu takes a step in his twin’s direction, a step past him, and then turns to smack him in the back of the head. Osamu stumbles slightly forward and Suna snickers as they follow Atsumu to their next class. Sakusa remains paused on Atsumu’s screen, nestled in his front pocket.
-
Later, Atsumu lays across the couch in his living room, one leg falling towards the floor and the other propped up on the armrest. He has his left arm supporting the back of his head and his right holding his phone inches away from his face.
Osamu leans over the couch towards Atsumu. “How many times do you plan on watching that game?” he asks, plucking his brother’s phone from his hand.
“It’s not the same game,” Atsumu barks, snapping up and snatching his phone back. He’s lying, and Osamu knows that, but he says nothing about it. Atsumu practically throws himself off the couch towards his room, cheeks flushing with embarrassment. He’d watched the first set during lunch earlier in the day and finished the game during his free period, only to start the recording over on the walk home from afternoon practice. His hands burned with the cold air, turning raw and red where they clutched his screen, but Atsumu made no move to house them in his warm pockets. His eyes avoided his brother’s questioning gaze.
Atsumu closes his bedroom door, locking himself in darkness and forcing himself to change with the light off. The blood that rushed to his cheeks forces him to question what it is about the Itachiyama preliminary match that gives him such guilty pleasure. Both teams are good, he understands, without question, but Atsumu feels confident that he’s seen better plays in his own school’s gym. It’s reasonable, he justifies, to be observing his opponents. It’s not unlikely that Inarizaki will be playing against Itachiyama during the Tokyo Nationals. Atsumu scrubs his hands against his face after pulling his pajama pants up to his waist. He crawls into bed, wrapping himself in the plaid quilt that was delicately crafted by his grandmother on her countryside porch just before the twins were born.
Atsumu considers the opposing team’s setter; his obvious rival. He’s slim and immature, he decides, but holds frustratingly clear determination, almost adding to his youthful demeanor. Atsumu recalls the way he launches the ball towards his spikers, as if it were hot to the touch, just barely lighting up the tips of his fingers before fireworking against the hands of the team’s hitters. His mind shifts to a wide, clean palm snapping against that flaming volleyball, causing the ball to spin wildly and ruining the reception of the defensive team. He imagines what a waking nightmare a spinning spike like that would be, what a haunting moment it must be for the team on the receiving end of something so viciously powerful and yet wickedly impressive. He imagines dark eyes and thick eyebrows, curly hair and moles, on the other end of this ambiguous player’s arm. Atsumu balls his fists in frustration, attempting to keep his fingertips from quivering. His phone lights up and his eyes jerk towards where it sits on his desk.
After half an hour of attempted sleep, Atsumu swipes his phone from his desk, flinching as if the act was painful . He hides himself deeper under his bedsheets and opens up his most recent tab, watching as the view count ticks up by one digit. Running a hand up his forehead into his hair, Atsumu drags a finger across his screen towards the beginning of the game recording, where he once again faces a team entering the court in unforgettably bright jerseys and first-year starter removing a white mask on the sidelines.