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Five years with Shouyou meant five years of keeping pace. With his restless energy, his sudden, inexplicable fascinations, his hunger for newness. And also his love for language.
When Atsumu first met him, he spoke four—Japanese, English, Portuguese, and a bit of Spanish, something picked up along the way. And yet, he never stopped. Seems like every year, a new one. He studied in the quiet, scribbled notes into margins, whispered strange syllables under his breath. A year or two later, he would be speaking it as if it had always been inside him, merely waiting to be unearthed.
It still startled Atsumu when Shouyou admitted—so casually, so matter-of-factly —that he had once been terrible at English. That in high school, he had needed Hitoka, ever patient, ever precise, to guide him through its maze of rules and irregularities of the language.
“I was really that bad,” he had said once, almost absently, his fingers tracing idle shapes along Atsumu’s forearm. “But Kageyama was worse, so I didn’t really care.”
Atsumu had laughed, shifting to look at him, amused by the ease with which he revealed these things. “So you got better just to beat him?”
Shouyou had frowned at that, that little crease between his brows, the one that surfaced when he was thinking too hard about something. Atsumu had the urge to smooth it away with his thumb.
“I’m just competitive,” he said after a beat.
Of course he was. Atsumu had always known.
Five years of dating, three of living together—by now, there were no real surprises. Atsumu could see them before they happened, tracing the small rituals that wove their days together. He knew Shouyou was planning his birthday breakfast the moment he came home with flour, because Shouyou only ever bought it for one of two things: bagels or birthday cake, and both always appeared on the same day. And Shouyou, in turn, saw right through Atsumu’s feeble attempts at hiding a cake in the fridge—because Atsumu couldn’t bake, wouldn’t even attempt to.
So it didn’t take much to notice the signs.
The way Shouyou lingered on his phone, his thumb flicking rapidly over the screen. The way a new notebook appeared on their desk, pages filled with notes and half-formed sentences. The way he whispered unfamiliar words when he thought no one was listening, as if trying them on for size.
Atsumu watched him one evening, nestled into the crook of his arm, eyes half-lidded with sleep. Shouyou was scrolling, focused, answering some sort of quiz. Atsumu pressed his face against the warmth of his shoulder.
“New language, again?” he murmured, voice thick with drowsiness.
Shouyou hummed in response, eyes still fixed on the screen.
Atsumu sighed dramatically, pushing closer, pressing lazy kisses to the soft curve of his jaw. “Don’t ignore me, baby.”
Shouyou, as if only now remembering he wasn’t alone, blinked, then turned to him, smiling, his hand finding the back of Atsumu’s neck. “One second,” he murmured, brushing his fingers over his skin, his touch as absentminded as it was affectionate. “Almost done.” And then, not even a minute later, he shifted, all warmth and light, and turned fully toward him. “I’m learning German,” he announced, as if it were something ordinary.
Atsumu exhaled, watching the way his face glowed with quiet satisfaction. “Why German?”
Shouyou tilted his head, considering, and for a moment, there was something distant in his expression, something unreadable. “No reason,” he said finally, soft, careful. “Just because.”
And so Atsumu just smiles at him.
After that, it becomes routine. A quiet, familiar thing that weaves itself into the fabric of their days. Shouyou, hunched over a notebook, murmuring syllables under his breath. The low hum of a German podcast playing while he cooks, words rolling off his tongue, half-formed but determined.
Atsumu doesn’t think much of it at first. But then, slowly, his own world begins to shift. One evening, he’s scrolling through his phone, and his algorithm—traitorous, all-knowing—begins feeding him videos in German. At first, he ignores them, flicking past without a second thought.
But then, there’s one that catches his eye—some content creator living in Switzerland, speaking in that sharp, clipped rhythm, so different from anything Atsumu is used to. He doesn’t understand a word, but he keeps watching anyway. It’s ridiculous, really. He has no interest in learning German. And yet, somehow, he finds himself watching another video. And another. Until one day, he’s absentmindedly mouthing along to a phrase, something he’s heard in the background of their apartment a dozen times before.
There’s always something new to learn every day. Little by little, one by one. And with it comes a quiet, persistent hunger—one that Atsumu has only recently begun to understand.
Twenty-one-year-old Atsumu would rather die than speak English. He remembers the sheer embarrassment of trying, the way words twisted awkwardly in his mouth, how his teammates laughed when he got things wrong. But twenty-five-year-old Atsumu got over it, speaking in broken, heavily accented English, rough around the edges but enough to get by. And now, at thirty-one, he decides that speaking just two languages isn’t enough.
So he spends more time with Shouyou. He flips through Shouyou’s notebooks, borrows his dictionaries, and lingers a little longer whenever Shouyou plays language podcasts in the background. He keeps watching that content creator too, though at some point, he stops pretending it’s just because of the algorithm.
Even if he’s learning German, it’s Switzerland that keeps him fascinated.
It’s little things at first. The way he casually learns there are four national languages, spoken depending on which part of the country you live in—German in the North, French in the West, Italian in the South, and a touch of Romansh hidden away in pockets of the East.
Then there are the everyday quirks, like how living expenses are so high that people cross the border just to buy groceries, driving to Germany for a day, stepping into a Kaufland where prices are nearly half as expensive, and calling it Einkaufstourismus —shopping tourism. It’s fascinating. All of it. The quiet complexities, the small absurdities, the beauty of a place he has never been but suddenly wants to know. And maybe that’s the strangest thing of all—this feeling, this want.
He wants to live there.
He’s thirty-two now, and he plans to retire before thirty-five. He knows his limits—always has. His body has given him everything, and he wants to return the favor, to still walk properly when he’s old, to carry the weight of his own life without feeling it crack through his joints. He pictures himself at forty, a little quieter, a little softer, somewhere in the shadow of the Alps.
He wants to live in a small city, somewhere near the border, where crossing into another country is as easy as a morning drive. He wants to be an Einkaufstourist.
He wants a home where a lake is never more than a short walk away, where the air is crisp and smells like pine and damp earth. A place without 24-hour convenience stores, where the streets empty by seven, and the night belongs to silence.
But more than anything, he wants to be somewhere quiet, somewhere peaceful, where he can love Shouyou without restraint. A love that no longer aches with hunger but softens into something deeper—something certain, something lasting. A love that is both devotion and belonging.
He wants to live in a place where he can be entirely Shouyou’s, and Shouyou can be his. Not just in whispers exchanged under the covers, not just in private vows spoken between them but in the way the world sees them. In the way the law recognizes them—this is love, and it is real.
He wants to marry him.
He wants to marry Shouyou.
And so, when he wakes up that morning—late autumn, the third of October, his birthday—he already knows.
The scent of freshly baked bagels drifts in from the kitchen, warm and familiar, filling the quiet of their home. The air outside must be crisp by now, the leaves at the peak of their color, but inside, everything is soft. Gentle. He stays in bed a little longer than usual, letting the weight of the morning settle over him, letting himself feel it.
When he finally rises, he moves slowly, his breath steady but deliberate, as if crossing the threshold of the bedroom will change something. And maybe it will.
He finds Shouyou in the kitchen, his back turned, sleeves rolled up, dusted with flour. He’s wearing one of Atsumu’s old white t-shirts—too big, slipping just slightly off one shoulder. The sight of him like this, framed in the quiet glow of morning, is enough to make Atsumu’s chest tighten.
Shouyou feels it—feels him—before he even turns around. He looks over his shoulder, smiling, bright as ever, warm in a way that makes Atsumu feel like he’s standing in sunlight.
“Tsumu,” he says, voice light, carrying so easily across the space between them. “Happy birthday.”
Atsumu’s heart stumbles, stutters, then picks up again, racing now, running toward something inevitable. He smiles, though it feels like too much, like he might overflow.
"Marry me, Shouyou."