Chapter Text
It was just one of those nights.
Kiyoomi's favorite type, where the night hangs low and thick, and the silence falls into step with your thoughts. The kind where any word said aloud is one too many, and the most important conclusions come from the shadows of his own thoughts. Tonight, though, the clockwork machinery of his night is thrown off, a rusty metal wheel shoved into the well-oiled gears of his mind, throwing him off in an imperceptibly uncomfortable way. Atsumu's heavy-footed gait pummels down on the concrete beside Kiyoomi, the simple vastness of him overtaking any oxygen Kiyoomi could've hoped to breathe. It isn't his physical mass that causes this, though, just simply him. His voice, that coats everyone listening in the liquid sunshine that he spouts, and his eyes, that light up upon you like floodlights, so bright you can't help but stare. He is simply too much, in a way that Kiyoomi both hates and finds himself inexplicably drawn to.
Kiyoomi blames it on his masochistic tendencies, fostered into him from a young age. He has the unimaginable urge to grab Atsumu now, to throw and pummel him and rip him into shreds, if only so that he could be the one to put him back together.
Atsumu's grip burns on his arm like a brand as the blonde grabs him. "You alright there, 'Omi?" Atsumu's head tilts, and an odd swell of nausea floods Kiyoomi's body when he comes to the realization that his eyes have been firmly fixed on Atsumu. "I'm fine." He shrugs the blonde's hand off, biting his tongue to avoid the irregular thudding of his heart from flying out of his mouth in a verbal form. Atsumu puts up with this, as he always does. He falls back into step beside Kiyoomi, and, just like always, it feels like too much, but never enough.
The door to Atsumu's dorm is wide open, and Kiyoomi can hear everything going on inside. Suna, Atsumu's roommate, convinced Atsumu to let him host what he called a "small get-together" in their shared dorm.
This party was neither small, nor a get-together, seeing as there was no possible way Suna Rintaro knows all those people personally.
Kiyoomi feels sick once again when Atsumu turns to him with that stomach-churning smile.
"Thanks for walking me home, 'Omi." He pauses, and Kiyoomi can feel it in his gut.
The silence is threatening, now— electrically charged with forthcoming.
He knows what Atsumu's going to say, and he can't handle it. Not here. Maybe not anywhere, ever. He's aware that he's shaking, and he has a sharp lump in his throat that makes his eyes prickle with tears. He starts to shake his head.
He can practically taste the words in the air, the ever-impeding fall of his doom. A metaphorical guillotine.
"Don't say that, Atsumu. Not to me." Atsumu's eyes are wide and beginning to shine with tears just the same as his. He hates himself for this, and he can't help but think about how Atsumu always says that Kiyoomi hates himself just for sport.
If hating himself was a sport, he'd have a gold medal. No, this is something more. In this moment, he finds himself viciously disgusting. Atsumu starts again, that stubborn tick in his jaw that always makes Kiyoomi think of a mountain. Tall, and unmovable. Ironclad.
"Fuck you, Sakusa Kiyoomi." He says it with such vehemence, and the rage makes the tears burn all the more when they finally fall. "You don't get to say that, to control what I say and don't. Fuck you, because it isn't my problem that you can't stand yourself." He's right, he always is.
"I love you, Kiyoomi. Fuck everything you think about yourself, because I love you. And I know you feel something too." And Kiyoomi knows that he's right, that he means it. Knows that no matter what, Atsumu would never lie.
His world cracks, piece by piece, but he refuses to fall, not here. Now that it's said, he can't unhear it, and Atsumu can't unsay it. There's no saving it, and Kiyoomi just wants him to take it back, so that things can go back to how they were moments ago. He wants to beg for Atsumu to say it was all a joke, and that nothing about this has to change. But Atsumu doesn't, won't, and it makes Kiyoomi hate him all the more. He looks into Atsumu's eyes and sees everything he despises about himself reflected in them, like perfect, enraging mirrors shattering his very livelihood, and he detests them both. He can't stand the air that he breathes and the stars that watch them and Atsumu, who looks just as angry as he is. He feels sick with it, with everything. So he does the only thing he ever knew how.
"What am I supposed to say to that, Atsumu? That I'm... what, gay?" He spits the words, like venom as he tries to pierce Atsumu's heart. He doesn't want to be the first one to break. "You know I detest everything you are. God, I can't stand you." And he doesn't mean it, but he does. What was he supposed to say? He can't think, not here. Not ever.
"I thought we could be friends, without you forcing yourself on me. Without you shoving your homosexual bullshit down my throat."
Atsumu's eyes are desperate, but there's a resigned shine to them that makes his whole body feel inside out. "I don't think you hate me because I'm gay, Kiyoomi. I think you hate me because I'm right."
And he looks so unreal, like that, with the tears tracing down his cheeks, that Kiyoomi almost gives in, almost lets himself fall into Atsumu and get lost in him. But he knows it would never last, and he wants so desperately to prove Atsumu wrong. To look him in the eyes and say, "I told you so."
And Kiyoomi is nothing if not petty.
So he lets himself break on the way to his dorm, after he turns heel and runs without another word to Atsumu. Because there is nothing more he can do without facing the truth. Because he knows, deep down, that this is just the grave he's dug for himself.
And now, all he needs to do is be buried in it.