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There is pleasure in the pathless woods, there is rapture on the lonely shore.
- Lord Byron
Kiyoomi has ruined his relationship the way you peel into an orange—too roughly, until the skin splits and everything underneath is exposed and the juice spills and it’s vulnerable and scratchy, and oh god, screw the metaphorical orange, Kiyoomi might’ve just ruined his relationship with the only man he’s ever loved.
Imagine this: Sakusa Kiyoomi, slumped on the concrete steps of a nearby 7-Eleven, seriously deliberating whether the Adlers are going to be recruiting next season. He exhales, long and thin, jarred.
He is, apparently, sleeping here tonight.
He has driven himself out of his apartment. He has chased away the man he has envisioned dozens of futures with—
He finds himself dialing a familiar number, moving as if on autopilot. It rings for a bit.
“Hey, Komori.”
*
To say that Sakusa Kiyoomi acts as an enigmatic, goal-oriented puppet would be the understatement of the century. To everybody else, Kiyoomi’s aware of how he comes off as. He’d be the old witch far from the protagonist’s story arc, crawling around his old haunts, waiting for some poor soul bedridden with misfortune to come across him. Well, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, Komori—no, Komori, it really is. Honestly, a bit offensive, no?
And who is Sakusa Kiyoomi? Kiyoomi knows not of love, measures worth of life within prestige, and his bucket list sits woefully unticked. What makes Sakusa Kiyoomi tick? Miya Atsumu. Atsumu knows of boastful grandeur, measures worth of life within the love you receive and give, and Kiyoomi can only imagine what on Miya’s bucket list hasn’t been ticked off.
Komori and Kiyoomi often discuss Miya Atsumu over wine, well, Kiyoomi discusses Miya Atsumu over wine with Komori present. It’s an archaic, even boring archetype when you oppose Kiyoomi and Atsumu together. It’s the fated tale of star-crossed not-quite-yet-but-still lovers, opposite ends of the spectral state of the universe. Kiyoomi is boring, he’s passive, and nothing has yet to come to challenge this belief–nothing but Atsumu.
Because, here is how Kiyoomi understands their arrangement.
He knows fleeting trysts. He knows the intimacy of waking to an imprinted pillow, the vague disappointment of missing its perpetrator. He knows the love they sell you on television—the kind that makes you envy how easy it is for Hugh Grant to love, or if you resent their fairytale ending, because why wouldn’t you stay in Britain indefinitely for Hugh Grant?
Kiyoomi has never trusted that sort of love.
Call him self-centred, but Kiyoomi believes he’s never been privy to empathy in a relationship. He has told Atsumu this, repeatedly, as if his confession might function as absolution. His parents wed of convenience, and their two older children–Kiyoomi’s siblings, are off in noble professions, noble enough for them to separate, and for Kiyoomi to pack up his life to trek between Northern Tokyo and Southern Tokyo every few weeks. His father remained–remains a man of few words, and between father and son, communication serves as the can of worms that Kiyoomi sees not fit to open. The sins of the father have a way of reaching the son, he thinks wryly.
And all of this, to say what? Kiyoomi is long past the bouts of anxiety where love was an unsolvable puzzle—and unconditional love, an even greater enigma. He’s moved beyond his collegiate crises, accepted that some things are simply how the cookie crumbles. The sky is blue. The grass is green. Sakusa Kiyoomi holds deeply, intricately flawed perceptions of love.
So flawed, in fact, that he has chosen to date Miya Atsumu.
His partner of—what—three years now?
And so, here is how Kiyoomi understands their arrangement.
Atsumu loves, loves like a man starved. He brought Kiyoomi to Mount. Fuji for a grueling day hike, when Kiyoomi had mentioned offhandly that he’d been putting it off for a long time. He has two bikes stored away in the reserved bike locker within his apartment. One of them is not his; he bought it because Kiyoomi could not bring himself to lug a bike home from the store, and Atsumu had decided that this was an unacceptable barrier to joy.
Atsumu gives.
He gives with the careless generosity of someone who has never learned to ration affection. He gives so much to Kiyoomi that Kiyoomi doesn’t know what to do with the blush heating his face and overwhelming feeling in his gut. Love, it turns out, is an awkward, complicated physical sensation when it has been delivered with such intent.
Their first date, Atsumu brings lilies—just because, Omi-kun! What? Have ya never gotten just-because flowers?—and Kiyoomi feels his stomach lurch.
Their third date, Atsumu brings an ikebana arrangement. Yeah, yeah, yuk it up all ya want, I dabble in the arts. I’m an artist! Again, Kiyoomi’s stomach twists.
This pattern had led Kiyoomi, logically, to the conclusion that he was suffering from some kind of chronic indigestion.
And Kiyoomi can only take. Take? Maybe that’s a peculiar term. Kiyoomi takes whatever Atsumu can give him, and he won’t admit it, but there lies no semblance of self-control when it comes to Atsumu. Kiyoomi is burdened to understand how their relationship leads, how maybe he himself is the burden, how—god—could Atsumu live with him, and how does this end? There’s an end. There always is, Kiyoomi has learned. His understanding.
He had voiced this understanding of his once, on a late Saturday night, a late two years into their relationship, after a bottle of wine had been half-consumed and the room smelled faintly of Atsumu’s cologne.
Atsumu had only tilted his head, grin teasing at the corners of his mouth, and said, “So… ya don’t trust me to stick around?”
“No,” Kiyoomi said carefully, “but there’s always an end. Whether it’s you getting tired of me—”
“Tired?” Atsumu cut in sharply. “Omi-kun. Tell me—why do ya think yer a charity case?”
Kiyoomi stiffened. “I’m just saying—you’re going to get sick of this. Of me. We’re going to fight, because how are you not tired, Atsumu? You keep giving, and giving, and I can’t even take you to meet my mom when I’ve met your entire family.”
Atsumu had only stared at him for a long moment, something incredulous flickering across his face.
“Omi,” he said slowly, almost gently, “I love ya—so take no offense when I ask this—but how can you be so dense?”
Kiyoomi bristled at the comment.
“I don’t care that I haven’t met yer family,” Atsumu continued. “And if I never do, so be it. Do y’know why?”
Kiyoomi didn’t answer.
“Because I love ya,” Atsumu said, simply. “Not yer parents. Not yer future. You. And everything I do, it only matters because I do it with ya.”
Kiyoomi swallowed this confession, this mystifying, unshielded bomb of a statement. His chest felt tight, and his stomach had lurched again.
“But don’t you see my point?” Kiyoomi pressed on, he never really knew when to back down. “I could die tomorrow. You’d be sad, and love would have been the chore you wish you never took on.”
Atsumu’s expression changed then. Not angry, really—something closer to hurt, threaded with immense disbelief.
“Love ain’t a chore, Omi,” Atsumu said. “Ain’t a contract, it’s nothin’ of the kind.”
He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, honey-brown eyes bright and unyielding.
“Open yer heart,” Atsumu said. “Open it to the world the way you’ve opened it to me. You’ll find that we love despite the inevitable.”
He smiled then, small.
“We’re human. This is the human condition. We love anyway.”
*
Komori pushes the door open and lets Kiyoomi in. The familiar click of the lock feels alien, Kiyoomi thinks. The apartment smells faintly of reheated rice and something sharp—metal, detergent, something lived in.
Suna perches on the edge of the couch, phone in hand, thumbs moving without looking. His gaze lifts, a slight nod of the head, just enough to acknowledge Kiyoomi but not to invite anything else. Of course, why would he?
An EJP Raijin duffel bag leans against the door, half-unpacked. Bold letters across the side read KOMORI MOTOYA. Kiyoomi registers it, though he doesn’t need to: Komori’s here for the weekend, Suna and Osamu had offered their apartment, and somehow the normalcy of it all makes Kiyoomi feel even more unmoored.
A gentle pressure on his back shifts him toward the couch. “Osamu and Atsumu are out getting dinner,” Komori says, hand still resting lightly. “Right, Rin?”
Suna lets out an affirmative hum.
“Right. Atsumu’ll be back in an hour or so,” Komori adds as they settle opposite Suna. “You’re in the clear for now.”
Kiyoomi can only nod. What do you even do here? He glances at Suna, whose eyes don’t waver from his. How do you talk to your boyfriend-maybe-fiance-not’s twin brother’s partner when you’ve just torn the other man’s heart in two?
He leans back, stiff, and lets the room close around him. For a fraction of a moment, Kiyoomi thinks: maybe this is mercy.
*
Love, Kiyoomi learns, is not like the quiet, dutiful arrangements he watched at home. His parents—partners by convenience, occupants of the same space rather than each other’s lives—had taught him that love is neat, measured, and transactional. That it is something you perform because it is expected. That devotion is a ledger, not a warmth. His siblings had left the nest with that same conviction, leaving him with habits of distance.
He doesn’t know when this narrative of his turns upside down, so far off its axis. Maybe it’s when he meets Miya Atsumu. Maybe it’s when Atsumu keeps coming back, braving two years of long-distance because, according to Miya Atsumu, we love anyway. Maybe it’s at his graduation, when Kiyoomi catches Komori and Atsumu sitting side by side, gossiping about the V.League, no doubt, and realizes—unexpectedly—that he is okay with these two sides of his harrowed world touching.
There is an implicit message embedded within their relationship, one Atsumu speaks every single day, even when he isn’t saying it outright, but Kiyoomi can read between the lines. Atsumu articulates his love—his devotion—with the fervor Kiyoomi imagines in devout worship: I love ya’s, I’ll miss ya’s, I have a game, will ya be there’s? And Kiyoomi can read between the lines: I say this because I believe in it. I want you. I believe in us.
And within their routine Kiyoomi will respond, I have a game in Osaka. See u after?
*
Kiyoomi exhales sharply. Of all the places to be, he’s on Osamu’s couch, retelling his disaster night to the two people most connected to his aforementioned disaster night.
Komori doesn’t interrupt. He leans back slightly, letting Kiyoomi’s words find their way out. Then, gently, he pries, “Okay. I know the gist, but what actually happened?”
“I… I just—he just proposed,” he blurts, voice low and rushed. “And I ran. I didn’t know what to do–why would I?”
Komori nods, patient. “I figured as much,” he says, and there’s no judgment in his voice, only a quiet calm Kiyoomi envies. “But you’re here now. We’ll figure it out, yeah?”
Kiyoomi takes initiative to curl in on himself, knees drawn close. Suna, still perched on the edge of the couch, places a glass of water in front of him. A peace offering, it seems. Kiyoomi can barely mumble out a thanks, mind racing with the prospect of an Atsumu-less future.
Without Atsumu, nobody will do the taxes—yes, Omi, I can do taxes. I’m not a dimwit. Without Atsumu, there’ll be no more weekly ikebana arrangements, no more gentle touches as Kiyoomi walks past, no small gestures to anchor himself. Without Atsumu, he won’t bother to ride his bike, and Atsumu’s next partner—brave, fearless, the kind who won’t run from an open proposal—will take his place in Atsumu’s bike locker.
Komori’s hand rubs slow, steady circles into Kiyoomi’s back, the cousins together, just like they’d been after a bad loss, a drunken misadventure, a fight too long ago to recall.
Kiyoomi should feel comforted. He should. But then the door clicks open.
And Kiyoomi turns to face eyes, honey-brown eyes, bewildered, hurt, all the emotions in between looking back at him.
Atsumu opens his mouth, like he’s about to ask the question that has haunted Kiyoomi for hours. Just like he had earlier—God, why did he do that?
Kiyoomi doesn’t wait. He lunges past Atsumu, past Osamu, past the sticky weight of everything he’s just been through. As he passes Osamu, his eyes catch the bulging ring box in Atsumu’s trousers—an absurd, terrible distraction—and he nearly stumbles, heart hammering too fast to think straight.
*
Kiyoomi once took a philosophy course at Waseda. Midway through the first semester, the professor—a gentle woman who reminded him too much of Atsumu’s mother—posed a question about monogamy.
“What’s the point of monogamy?” she asked. “Why do we, humans, the most intelligent species on the planet—choose to devote ourselves to one singular person, when biologically, it would make sense to deviate?”
Kiyoomi remembered being preoccupied with afternoon lifting immediately after this class—a requirement to graduate with his intended major. He hadn’t cared much for discussing monogamy at the time; he hadn’t even taken Atsumu seriously yet. He assumed, privately, that Atsumu—a jacked, built, professional-athlete-in-his-prime Atsumu—would lose interest the moment he tasted Kiyoomi’s true colors.
“Ah, we’re all stumped? No matter,” the professor continued. “Because I’ll give you an answer. Let’s disregard society, strip us down to pure brain matter and morality. Monogamy is a choice, and ultimately, love is a choice. My co-worker—Dr. Suzuki, for those of you in sociology—once told me that her wedding vows are innate, woven into her core values and beliefs. We, as humans with deep emotions, want the comfort of balance, the reverence of having someone to come home to. When there is an imbalance of this veneration, relationships crumble. Though, it’s important to note there is no universal characterization of humans in romance. Our cognitive capacities surpass those of animals, and our individuality allows us to formulate countless ways to seek happiness—our own ways.”
She’d continued onward, eventually tying in something about Nietzsche, but Kiyoomi had stopped listening at that point.
He was human, and he’d made a choice, made a choice about love.
He found the reverence of opening his dorm door to find Atsumu there: bright, bubbly Atsumu, flowers in hand. They’d kiss, and Atsumu would make himself immediately at home. Kiyoomi felt love. He felt admiration. And, more terrifyingly, he felt a deep, aching yearn to keep Atsumu with him forever. He wanted to see Atsumu in every form, to watch him clutch his fists through his gaudy service routines, to trace the spattering of freckles across his sun-kissed skin. Sun-kissed skin, against Kiyoomi’s sunscreened hide. Atsumu’d been delighted to find that they had matching moles, servicing both their right pinkies.
“Hey! Hah, look, we have the same moles,” Atsumu grinned. “Ain’t that cool?”
Kiyoomi nodded, stricken frozen as Atsumu raised Kiyoomi’s hand to kiss said mole. Nobody had ever held his hand so intimately, so engrossed in the knowledge of knowing Kiyoomi, inside and out.
He felt bewitched, bewitched by whatever Atsumu had done to him. What had taken hold so completely, running so deep, that he felt nothing but reverence for this man? Self-proclaimed man-hater Kiyoomi—cynical, skeptical, a nonbeliever in love—had been uncoiled at the hands of one Miya Atsumu.
*
The moment Kiyoomi hits the street, the night air slaps him awake, and he’s running before he knows it. His thoughts tumble in tandem as he recounts the night: he’d run from Atsumu’s proposal. He’d forced Atsumu’s twin brother’s partner and his cousin to shelter him, and eventually ran from Atsumu then, too.
The city is quiet, almost complicit, as he zigzags between streets. His mind replays the night in cruel loops. It was supposed to be a casual dinner, said Atsumu, dressed to the nines. Come to my apartment at nine, said Atsumu, brandishing a blinding smile. How about we get some fresh air, the balcony sounds real nice, huh, said Atsumu, already carving out the taste of newlywed life.
And Kiyoomi had run out the apartment like a madman, Atsumu left spluttering in his wake. It wasn’t like Kiyoomi didn’t want to marry Atsumu, but their whole relationship had flashed before his eyes and he’d felt nothing but terror. Terror that he left the love of his life behind, terror that he wasn’t brave enough to shoulder it, and terror that he wouldn’t have a chance to walk back.
Behind him, a familiar rhythm follows—footsteps, unmistakably Atsumu. Kiyoomi’s chest tightens. He doesn’t look back.
“Oi! Omi-kun, wait!” Atsumu’s voice calls through the quiet streets. No anger, only the tethered concern that always, still makes Kiyoomi’s knees weak.
Kiyoomi rounds a corner, turns another, heart hammering.
Kiyoomi knows the distance between them is finite, knows that Atsumu is also a professional athlete, alongside Kiyoomi. But he follows his head, follows his instinct to run from a potential future.
*
Love doesn’t make sense to Kiyoomi. It never will. He finds no logic in Atsumu’s banal gestures—the insistence on paying for him, opening the door, massaging his shoulder after a brutal practice, even though Atsumu works just as hard.
Maybe, maybe it’s not platitude. Maybe Atsumu does it because he loves him. Because even though Kiyoomi believes there’s always an end—because endings are inevitable—Atsumu chooses anyway. Over, and over. Again, and again. He’s proven to Kiyoomi, time and time over again, that he chooses love, despite everything.
*
Atsumu’s doing a phenomenal job of keeping up with Kiyoomi, Kiyoomi thinks. Atsumu hates cardio, but endures it anyway, and guilt settles in Kiyoomi’s gut, knowing Atsumu is doing something he hates just to follow him.
“Kiyoomi, please, let’s talk!” Atsumu yells, out of breath.
Kiyoomi pauses at the use of his full name, wow, Atsumu must be tired.
And in that pause, Atsumu is suddenly there, arms wrapping around Kiyoomi from behind, pressing him close. Kiyoomi feels himself enveloped, heart thudding against Atsumu’s chest, caught between resistance and the instinct to melt into the only person who’s ever made him feel seen.
“Omi, I dunno what I did, I’m willing to make it up, whatever it takes,” Atsumu says, unable to see Kiyoomi narrow his brows together. “I just don’t want to lose you.”
“You didn’t do anything," Kiyoomi mutters, voice low, almost swallowed by the night air. “I… I just panicked.”
Atsumu steps away, holding out to keep Kiyoomi’s hand in his as they face each other. Kiyoomi can see Atsumu fully now, his frame outlined in front of Osaka in all its modernized glory, fog softening the edges of everything.
Atsumu smiles, “Are ya in love with me?”
“Yes. Yes,” Kiyoomi needs no hesitation to answer this question. “I love you so much, Atsumu, and it frightens me, and I don’t know what to do when you offer me forever.”
“Then tell me,” Atsumu says quietly. “What scares ya about it?”
Kiyoomi swallows. The words stick, heavy and reluctant. “I don’t know how to be loved,” he admits finally, and it sounds ugly and bare in the open air. “I don’t know if I’ll ever be enough, because Atsumu, you will find me annoying. And then we’ll crack, and I’ll lose you.”
Kiyoomi pointedly looks away, terrified of what Atsumu will say, what he’ll do now.
Atsumu steps closer, close enough that Kiyoomi can feel his breath, warm and uneven. “Omi,” he says again, firmer this time. “Look at me.”
Kiyoomi does.
“I’ve known you were difficult from the start,” Atsumu says, lips twitching. “Yer closed-off, ya overthink, and ya run when things get scary. You’re stubborn as hell. And I still wake up every day thinkin’, yeah. That’s my guy.”
Kiyoomi’s chest tightens.
Atsumu continues on, “Are ya frightened of our future, Omi?”
“Yes.”
“Then that's why ya gotta chase it,” Atsumu smiles. “That’s why we gotta chase it, Omi.”
Silence stretches between them, thick but not yet uncomfortable.
“And forever,” Atsumu adds, softer now, “ain’t me askin’ ya to promise you’ll never be scared. It’s me askin’ if you’ll stay when you are.”
Kiyoomi’s breath stutters. He thinks of his father’s distance, of love measured in expectation. He thinks of his professor’s voice: love is a choice. He thinks of Atsumu, running through streets he hates, chasing someone who doubts his own worth.
Something breaks, then. Kiyoomi leans forward, pressing his forehead into Atsumu’s shoulder, breath shaking. For once, he doesn’t pull away when Atsumu wraps his arms fully around him.
“I don’t know if I’ll ever stop being afraid. I’m sorry,” Kiyoomi admits into the fabric of Atsumu’s jacket.
“Ya don’t gotta apologize,” Atsumu murmurs into his hair. “I ain’t goin’ anywhere.”
Kiyoomi lifts his head. His eyes burn, but his voice is steady when he says it.
“Okay,” he says. “Then, forever.”
Atsumu’s breath catches, “Yeah?”
And it’s so anticlimactic—his own rom-com moment where all his woes are resolved through this heart-to-heart—but Kiyoomi feels the culmination of every loved experience in that moment. He wants to choose love. Over, and over. Again, and again.
“We love anyway,” Kiyoomi smiles.