Chapter Text
If you look closely enough at the eyes, you can see a person's story. It takes a lot of time and effort to perfect, but once you learn how to do it, it becomes effortless. Like breathing. Like reading a book you've already fallen in love with. Atsumu would know he's been reading people for years.
He used to read Osamu’s eyes better than his own. Now he doesn't even know what colour they are in memory anymore. That's the thing about being a twin. Once they leave, they take a whole chapter with them. No screw that they take half the book, including the cover page and everything else you've worked so hard to build.
The parts he thought he'd never lose. Osamu. His twin. The other half of him ripped away three years ago.
Atsumu blinked against the harsh floodlights, the noise of the crowd crashing over him like a wave. Faces blurred into a sea of strangers, but their eyes those sharp, honest windows, never stopped telling stories. It was the only thing he was still good at reading.
The roar of the fans should have felt like fuel, but tonight, it only reminded him how hollow the stands felt when his family didn’t show up. When the people who were supposed to be there chose sides instead of being there for both.
The game ended with the Jackals winning 3-1 their absolutely fabulous defence dragging out every rally. Still giddy about the win, the whole team decided to go out to dinner. Honestly, Atsumu would rather go home and just collapse into bed. Today has been an emotionally damaging day like most days lately, but who was he to refuse Bokuto's kind offer.
The restaurant was loud in the way Bokuto liked, full of clinking glasses and overlapped conversations. The Jackals had taken up two whole tables near the back, crowding into the booth seats like they hadn't just played five brutal sets an hour ago.
Atsumu was buged in between Shoyo and Meian, both touchy drunks. Great. He tries to look at the positive side of things they just did just win a game after all, and at least he's not sat next to Bokuto, who's very unpredictable when drunk. Even Omi decided to join them for once, which only happens once every blue moon. He figures he should enjoy himself, but that was easier said than done.
He wasn't even listening to the conversation. Surely it wasn't anything intelligent. Bokuto was making crazy hand gestures, and Shoyo seemed to be heavily invested, so yeah, it definitely wasn't anything intelligent. “Atsumu I'm surprised your folks didn't come show up,” said Meian, desperately trying to make conversation.
He knew somebody would bring it up a few of the other guys' family or whoever else showed up to support them his didn't never had. “Nah seems like Osamu’s da favourite twin this month,” he said it came out sounding like a joke it but it wasn't. The tablet burst out with laughter. None of them saw through him, but Sakusa’s gaze lingered on him for a bit too long.
Sakusa was difficult to read. Atsumu would look into his eyes and see nothing, just a dark, endless pool of nothingness. What was with him he was just so mysterious he didn't often interact with the rest of the Jackals, including Atsumu. No matter how hard he tried to get a reaction, it seemed pointless. He found himself wondering. Who was Sakusa Kiyoomi, otherwise known as Omi-kun, there outside hitter?
He didn’t know...
Three years ago.
“I didn’t fucking know Atsumu. Drop it,” Osamu snapped.
He did know he had to have known...