Chapter Text
Since you were a snotty kid with mush for brains, the notion of moving from Miyagi to Tokyo didn’t exactly sit right with you. For reasons unknown, obviously. You couldn’t fully comprehend why you felt so upset—so much so that hot, angry tears welled up in your eyes as the car journey hit a whopping 2 hours. All you knew was that you were leaving your cradle best friend; Kou-chan. The two of you were born within a day of the other, and even as a child you knew he was going to be your friend for life.
That is, until your mother decided to haul you all the way across the country.
As your tears ran down your cheeks, your mother turned to you with a sad emotion that you couldn’t quite understand yet, soothing you with poor reasoning that fell on your stubborn ears. You picked up a few words, “Father”, “Promotion”, “No choice”, but you didn’t know what to make of it—you quite literally couldn’t.
Your childish sadness all but evaporated as your eyes drooped close, only able to hear the affectionate hum of your mother’s voice, “How adorable,” She said, as you fell asleep to the whir of your father’s car.
You dreamt of your mother, Kimura Akari, whose personality was as blinding as her name. You loved her to death, although she’d tell you to never speak about dying. You dreamt of the time you cut your finger on a piece of paper and she walked in on you bawling your eyes out. She had scolded you incessantly, all while pressing a paper tissue to your paper cut.
She left a plate of sliced oranges on your desk that evening.
Your father wafted into your mind, Kimura Minato, a soft man with a tough exterior. You’ve never known him as the hard-headed lawyer that his business friends tell you he is, only as the god awfully silly father that calls you his dearest monkey.
You were never one who went through life changing traumas, and you already knew you were lucky for the life you had. You never openly expressed it though, imagine a barely 6-year-old child telling her parents, “I’m grateful for your presence in my life,” Yikes.
The sun was beginning to set as your father woke you up gently with a smile on his face. You were confused, why smile if you’d just moved away from where you lived your whole life? And then as he carried you out of the car in his arms, you saw your new home, shining in all its glory with the sun behind it, illuminating its beauty.
Like many other things, you didn’t fully understand how glorious your house was, but you understood well enough that it was expensive—you were upper middle-class now, with your dad’s promotion; you just didn’t know it yet.
A moving truck rolled to a stop just in front of you, the loud beeping noise calling for your attention. A crew of movers began rolling large crates of what you presumed to be your belongings into the house, all while you looked on dumbly. One of the workers yelled your father’s name—“Minato-san!” He called—and your father abandoned you on the sidewalk.
How dare he.
The movers were transporting a small box into the living room of your new house, labelled Y/n. Hey, that’s you! Seeing this, you ran with the little speed you had as a child and decidedly sat yourself on the box. The movers merely laughed at you, picking you and the box up without much difficulty. You were set down near the couch that faced a television still encased in its cardboard box. No one really paid any attention to you so you took it upon yourself to explore.
The living room was simple enough, cream walls with cherrywood flooring that suddenly stopped and morphed into marble tiles of the open kitchen of your home. The kitchen was facing the back of your sofa, where the small box of what you owned had been left. The living room was illuminated by the orange light of the sunset, whereas the overhead light in the kitchen bathed it in a white light. In the middle of the marbled kitchen stood an island with a marble countertop, its base ebony wood. The cupboards and the cabinets were made of the same material, with two sinks side by side for whatever reason—you didn’t care for it.
You left the kitchen with a bemused frown on your face, seriously, who needs two sinks?
Up the stairs and to your right was a door with a post it on it: Master Bedroom. You opened the door and were greeted with a massive bedroom with a king sized bed and a dresser at the far end near the window. A door on your left was ajar, so of course you’d go inside (really, you’d go in even if it had been closed). A horrendously large bathroom with two showers, one bath, and two washbasins; what the actual ever loving f—
You didn’t know any curse words.
With that, you left the bathroom with a small pout. This was definitely not your room.
On the far end of the corridor was a door labelled: Y/n. Guess you now knew which one was yours. Inside, you looked around at a room about half the size of the Master’s with a queen sized bed to your immediate right from the door facing the windows that looked out to a garden that seemed to be shared with the next door neighbours. On the right side of your bed was a door that led to a (thank the gods) normal sized bathroom with one sink and one shower. On the left was a bedside table, and on the far left of your room was a walk-in closet with more space than you needed.
Walking out of your new room, you saw another door just slightly closer to your room than the Master’s. Curious.
Never mind. It was just a common bathroom.
But a girl could dream of secret hideouts and private libraries tucked away in the walls, couldn’t she?
Lame.
You walked down the stairs and realised there was nothing much to your house, except for the glaringly unnecessary display of wealth that you didn’t know you had until just now. So you walked right out the door.
And no one stopped you.
You turned to the right to inspect your neighbour’s house, the one with whom you shared a garden. It was almost dark now, and you leapt out of your own body and your soul nearly floated up to the afterlife. A mini…something…in a neon yellow hazmat suit stood at the stairs to its house with green disinfectant in its right hand and a white towel in the other.
It didn’t notice you until you let a choked sound rip from your throat—a kind of garbled noise that made no sense to you; or the hazmat for that matter.
It looked up at you, and through the little transparent area where one’s eyes would be was a mop of black hair. Then, it pulled the head of the suit down and out popped the small head of a young boy with ebony eyes and two moles above his eyebrow. You were getting uncomfortable with his silent staring, fidgeting on the spot.
“Who are you?” You finally blurted, hands crossed over your chest as you tried—and failed—to be intimidating.
A scowl crossed over his face. “Who are you?” He countered.
“I just moved in next door,” You sheepishly answered. In the future you would indignantly realise that you’d asked first, but what could you do about that now.
The boy made a nasty sound that sounded inhumane and put the head of the suit back on, opening the door to his house and slamming it shut behind him.
Rude.
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“Y/n,” Your mother called a few days after you’d gotten comfortable in your new home, “We’re having dinner with our neighbours tonight, come down now.”
Hazmat boy briefly flashed through your mind but disappeared as quickly as he arrived. It couldn’t be him. You lived on a street with many houses; you had many neighbours. It just couldn’t be him.
Ha.
What a joke.
At least this time he wasn’t decked out in cleaner uniform. He still had his trademark scowl on, though. You were beginning to think it was imprinted on his face.
You scowled back.
His eyebrows only knit together even further.
“Kiyoomi, be nice,” The woman who seemed to be his mother scolded in his direction. His scowl loosened, but only barely.
Your mother introduced herself and the rest of your family. You learned your neighbours were the Sakusas; Sakusa Rina, Sakusa Hayato, Sakusa Yui, Sakusa Katsu, and the golden boy himself—Sakusa Kiyoomi.
The dinner was nice, civil. In other words, it was boring.
You ate the katsudon sloppily, as a kid does, and paid no mind to the deepening grimace on Hazmat boy’s face. Only when his much older sister—Yui, she’d told you to call her—bent down and told you he had a phobia of germs did you slow and eat less messily.
Safe to say your first dinner with the Hazmat boy went about as well as your first impression—not good.
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By the time your second dinner with the Sakusas came around, all the boxes in your not-so-new home were chucked into some faraway landfill, and you were set to begin the first year of Elementary School in a few weeks.
You had taken precautions to increase your likability points with Hazmat boy, bringing sanitiser with you and consciously making a choice to eat cleaner.
Before he could raise an arm to sanitise the utensils beside his plate, you grabbed them and sanitised them yourself with your gloved hands. Your action did not go unnoticed by the surrounding witnesses, but neither you nor Hazmat boy paid any mind. He looked at you with a half-pained half-curious look on his face and you simply smiled with teeth and placed them on his plate.
He didn’t scowl, so perhaps you’d done a good job.
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Four days after and suddenly he was at your doorstep, his older brother (Katsu) behind him with a small smile on his lips.
“Hi, Y/n-chan,” He cooed, “All of us are out this weekend, do you think you can keep Kiyo-chan company? Thanks a bunch, Y/n-chan! I owe you!” And with that, he practically shoved Hazmat boy into your house and closed the door himself.
If you could feel pity for the boy, you would. But you only felt mute amusement. Maybe a little pity, but not enough after his lasting impression on you.
“Kiyo-chan,” You mused out loud, causing his already there scowl to deepen frighteningly.
“Don’t call me that,” He snapped, eyes narrowing, “Where’s your bathroom.”
Not even a question; a demand. You pointed him to your common bathroom which no one had ever used since you moved in (you told him this and he seemed content with it, don’t let anyone use it unless it’s me, okay? he said. okay, you replied softly).
You waited quietly on your couch for him to come out. He never did.
So, you walked up to the door, knocked twice, and asked, “Hazmat boy,” That same nasty noise from their first meeting, “Are you hiding in there until you’re allowed to leave?”
A beat of silence. Two beats. Three.
“So what if I am?”
Another three beats of silence.
“Hello?”
You didn’t hear him the second time. You’d already walked back down to the sofa and were eating a banana.
He came down a few moments later, an angry pout on his lips. “Why did you go away?”
You ignored him to say, “I thought you were staying in there until you could leave.”
“You’re annoying for a 6-year-old.”
“Am I a mirror?” You snarked.
His trademark nasty noise. “You were supposed to ask me to come out.”
“Come out, Hazmat boy,” You replied drily.
“Ugh,” He plopped down on the other end of the couch. “Why do you keep calling me that?”
“You’re asking me that like you didn’t wear a hazmat suit the first time I saw you.”
Three beats of silence.
“Thank you for sanitising my utensils that other time.” Your jaw fell slack with shock. You guessed he was offering some sort of truce, but you were 6, and you hated peace.
“Do something nice for me in return.”
“Like what?”
“Lick my shoes,” You cackled, and he threw a pillow at your face.
The smile was wiped clean off of your face. You threw it back. “Asshole.”
“That’s a bad word.”
“You’re a bad person.”
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Sakusa didn’t like how you always had to one up him. He didn’t like how you were nice about his phobia one second, and a raging mean lady the next. He didn’t like how you called him ‘Hazmat boy’ like that was his only defining feature.
Sakusa decided he didn’t like you much at all.
But he disliked how much nicer you were to Komori than you were to him so so so much more.
It was your third dinner together as two families now, only this time Komori was over for the weekend.
Komori had opted to sit next to you—where Sakusa normally sat, which was grating in its own way, that was his seat even before you came over—but you were smiling at him like Komori bought you the moon and Sakusa wondered why you never smiled at him that way.
Not that he cared.
Just a thought.
But he also thought to himself that you weren’t really that bad after all as dinner was brought out and you reached across the table—with gloves on—to hand him sanitised utensils again.
Wow, he—
And you were talking to Komori again.
Sakusa slouched in his seat with a huff, with nothing to do but to eavesdrop on your conversation with his cousin.
“Y/n-kun,” Why was he calling your first name so familiarly already? “What do you like to do?”
“Hm, I like volleyball if that’s what you’re asking, Motoya-kun,” He ignored your familiar reference of his cousin’s first name to perk up at the mention of his favourite sport.
“You like volleyball too?” Sakusa spoke before he could think.
You turned to face him and he was slightly (only very slightly) worried that you’d answer with another snappy remark like you always did, but on your face was a smile brighter than his future. “I love volleyball! We should play sometime, Sakusa-san! What position do you play?”
“Wing spiker,” He mumbled, dazed from the brightness of your smile.
“Cool! I play middle blocker!” He chose not to comment that you’d be too short to be a MB, but decided against it as he was shorter than you right now. Maybe in the future if you were still around.
“I play libero, Y/n-kun,” Komori offered, and you went back to talking to his cousin animatedly.
The rest of the dinner went by quickly, and he didn’t speak up again.
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Many weekends had passed since then, and now the three of you were 7. It was difficult getting used to getting driven to school by Sakusa’s chauffeur, but his mother had urged you to stick by his side (you were older now, and you understood fully—she was telling you that you were his only friend, the poor boy).
Sakusa was usually silent on the way to school. Silent in homeroom too, even as Komori chatted his ear off. Silent during lunch.
Silent all the time, really. He was so quiet.
He only ever talked after school on your way to volleyball practice, which was where you were going to now.
“Do you think coach will let us scrimmage today?” You wondered out loud.
“I sure hope so!” Komori grinned, “I’d love to receive Kiyoomi’s spikes or yours, Y/n-kun!”
“Mm,” Sakusa offered. Insightful. Truly.
“Hazmat.” You chided. “Can’t you say something to your cousin?”
“You sound like my mom, Kimura,” But he did it anyway. “Komori, we’re going home together tonight. Kaa-san wants you over for hayashi rice night.”
Komori looked like he could explode with joy. “Okay!” With his smile that shone like a hundred stars.
If Sakusa turned into a wet rat at that very moment, you wouldn’t be surprised at all. He already looked the part, anyway. You never understood why Sakusa acted as if he hated Komori’s guts—he obviously loved the boy more than he loved his own family.
When the three of you arrived at the entrance of the sports hall, the familiar sound of volleyballs against the smooth court flooring brought all of you to comfortable silence. You loved playing the sport, loved the sting of the ball against your forearms and the electrifying pride that consumed you when you scored a point for your team; spike or block. The hairs on your arms raised in excited tension.
Unfortunately for both you and Komori, today’s drills were split into boys and girls. Whatever, though, because Coach had said these were trials for the team, so of course you completely left your friends in the dust and ran to the other side of the hall to grab a ball and start peppering with another girl.
Who needs boys when you have volleyball?
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Sakusa, Komori, and Y/n got out the car after practice, sweaty and glowing with victory of all making their respective teams. Y/n made a beeline for her house, but Sakusa called out uncharacteristically: “Be here by 7, Kimura.”
You stopped as if frozen and half-turned towards him with a impish smirk on your face. “Only if you really want me there, Hazmat,” You cackled and it left a burning sensation in his stomach.
“Whatever, weirdo,” He grumbled, opening his own door and walking in without holding the door for his cousin.
He lay on his bed after a meticulous shower as if he was preparing to be mummified. Sakusa wondered why he even told you to come over for dinner, your parents weren’t coming, so there was no reason for you to either.
But…he supposed he was used to you being wherever he was now. You two were made for each other in the strangest way.
What?
Made for him?
He guessed one could say you lived for him.
Sakusa knew if you were here with him you’d throw the nearest thing at his “stupidly perfect nose”, you’d called it. He actually liked his nose very much, so he would never say that to your face.
That night, you didn’t show up at his front door.