Archive of Our Own ^beta

In the grand scheme of time, space, and his ongoing tenure with the MSBY Black Jackals, Kiyoomi Sakusa had been rooming with Atsumu Miya for all of five seconds. Or, in other words, more than enough time to discover he wanted nothing more than to hit him with a chair.

Irritation glued itself to Atsumu’s presence in spades, highlights including but not limited to rousing him three days on the trot to the ruthless butchering of early 2000s pop in the shower. He was loud. So, so loud. Obnoxious in a way that would’ve been genuinely impressive had it been a skill he’d actually practiced and not just another shitty personality trait he’d been clinging to since adolescence.

It wouldn’t have been an unfair stretch to have classed him as absolutely insufferable to the vast majority of people. It would’ve been a compliment, actually, given there was no nicer way to put it. The man was absolutely riddled with audacity. The kind that waltzed into a room a few seconds before he did and announced that his presence instantly superseded that of everybody else in a hundred-meter radius.

For fuck’s sake, he had the balls to give Sakusa a nickname. He also had the stupidity to continue to use said nickname in an act of sheer defiance that left Sakusa constantly resisting the urge to smack him upside the head.

Worse still, he possessed both the skill and technical utility to make himself near indispensable in any volleyball-related pinch. In that way, Sakusa supposed, he was well within his rights to be a cocky asshole who gave people nicknames and remain so far up his own ass he could lick his small intestine.

And yet, there existed something else about him that was worse. So much worse. It was incredible, really, just how much worse this little, oh-so inconsequential thing happened to be. Something best kept at arm’s length. Or, better yet, shipped off to a different country altogether, or pulverised to a fine dust and mixed into the grinds in his coffee pot as he slid it onto the electric stovetop.

He did wonder, generally through no will of his own, how a single factor could make every other transgression seem like blithe distractions in comparison. Shockingly, he was still yet to come up with a conclusive answer.

“G’mornin’, Omi!”

A slew of syllables melted from the kitchen entryway, tone drooping a little with sleep, word edges scraggly with a deep and husky smoothness as though rolled in the swell of a bubble. Sakusa’s throat stung in the taxing reflex of throwing a responsive grunt over his shoulder, eyes involuntarily flickering backwards with the sound. And so, as per routine, the first thing they landed on was a nauseatingly yellow head of hair.

To be fair, he’d learnt to tone it after leaving high school. Allegedly under the tutelage of Bokuto, who was so genuinely good at the whole thing Sakusa couldn’t even pit it against him. The colour was lighter these days, more realistic, and paired well with the swirling, melting cocoa of hooded eyes and dark brows. The lively tan of his skin, the perpetually white and self-assured smirk that so often danced on a swinging pendulum above a sharp jaw.

As well as, while Atsumu’s mouth morphed into a lazy grin and he started rummaging through his cupboard, an incredibly toned torso, impossibly strong thighs. Concealed behind a pair of baggy black joggers tied loosely with a drawstring at the hips, falling low enough to expose the branded white band of his boxers.

Yeah.

That was the worst thing about Atsumu Miya that Sakusa had logged to date. Even against the list of offending factors he’d been drafting since day one, nothing else came close, and he utterly loathed it. There was no way it was normal for one person’s faults to occupy his mind so goddamn much, and for so goddamn long, too. Surely not.

Whatever the case, after much deliberation, Sakusa had landed on this.

Atsumu Miya was tragically, objectively, extremely attractive.

“Why are you not wearing a shirt?”

Just a couple meters away, Atsumu spent several seconds fussing over how to neatly open a new box of cereal before giving up the attempt and tearing off the top instead. The rain-frescoed window set his silhouette alight in white and wispy breaths, sunrisen gold, pinks and oranges melting between damp flicks of hair. Feathered traces of blue ebbed into the darkened corners of his skin, cut free and spilling dew against the grey walls of their apartment. The creases in his joggers and the disgruntled scrunch at the corners of each eye.

“I’m hot.” Atsumu shrugged, lazy pout jutting his lower lip. A weird flutter burst like a broken drum in Sakusa’s stomach, “I only just got outta the shower. It’s humid in there.”

On the stovetop, the coffee pot whistled atop its reddened perch, fog billowing plumes from a metallic beak. “I think we’re outta hand soap, by the way.”

Sakusa clicked off the stove to strategically back into one of the stools surrounding the kitchen island, mug full and steaming between his palms. “I thought we decided I was showering first.”

In the meantime, Atsumu appeared to have successfully transferred a mountain of cereal into a bowl, stripey and chipped from an incident where he’d gotten jump-scared reaching for a tortilla chip. His weight flopped against the radiator just below the open window. “Yeah, ya were still asleep though!” A tall glass of water sat on the sill’s pearly face. The glint of sunlight it caught bounced from Atsumu’s skin and directly into Sakusa’s eyes. “Time’s-a-wastin’, Omi! Besides, if I tried ta wake ya up, yer’d bite my head off.”

He dug his spoon into the bowl with a hearty flick of his wrist, chewing with a level of exaggeration that would’ve made any self-respecting five-year-old look like the epitome of table manners. Sakusa did not bother resisting the urge to wrinkle his nose. “It’s not like I’m in there forever, anyway. Ya take so long I feel like I’m eighty by the time you get out!”

“You’re the one who insisted on a place with one bathroom. Against my wishes.”

“It’s got a kitchen island, a fancy marble-swirly kinda one, and those tall chairs! And a bigass sofa!”

“The sofa didn’t come with the apartment.”

“Yeah, I know, but there’s a real nice balcony! That reduces yer stress, y’know, it’s a fact! Look it up!”

“So do most places.”

“Okay,” Atsumu scarfed down another defensive mouthful of cereal, indignantly thrusting his spoon into the air and probably spraying every available surface with crumbs, “but the rooms are huge! Yer wanted a big space for yerself so badly, so don’t sit there all complainin’ at me! If ya didn’t wanna live here that bad, ya wouldn’t’a signed the contract!”

“Only because you wouldn’t stop nagging me about it during practice and it was annoying.” Not one to be outdone, he knocked back an equally indignant sip of coffee. It wasn’t like Atsumu was wrong, but at the same time…

Well.

To tell the truth, Sakusa couldn’t have named what’d come over him. They’d booked a viewing for the place before training one day, the estate agent a smart young woman who seemed remarkably unphased by Atsumu’s relentless gushing from the second he’d rammed his foot through the door. He’d been so unapologetically enthusiastic about it all, as he was with most things, eyes molten and glimmering like trapped stardust under low light. It'd managed to leave the word ‘no’ lodged so stiffly in the middle of Sakusa’s throat he could still taste it.

“Whatever. The amount of time you take to get ready in the morning is so short it’s frightening. I bet you’re covered in suspicious germs.”

It was times like these that Sakusa was immensely thankful for Atsumu’s near godlike reaction speed, because otherwise they would’ve both been late to practice scrubbing milky cereal off the floor, “Oi! I ain’t got any germs! Yer just a health freak!”

“It’s called being hygienic. Unlike you, I won’t keel over from a viral infection by my thirties.” Sakusa took a long, unwarrantedly smug sip of his coffee, eyes skimming over the charcoal rim as Atsumu rolled his eyes with a weighty slump of his shoulders. A part of him distantly wondered how he still managed to look good even then, and he squashed the thought in the same breath, “I’d be surprised if you knew what an actual skincare routine was.”

Pushing himself off the stool, Sakusa thoughtlessly shifted to linger at the windows beside him. The only reason Atsumu favoured this spot was because the radiator was always especially warm in the mornings, and he was one of those people who clung to heat like an oversized limpet, legs welded on a strange tilt as he tried to cover as much of the surface as possible without burning himself.

From this angle, early day now a softer melody through the glass, Atsumu’s most annoying feature seemed even sharper. Shadow carved his face into small, sooty slices, tracing along the line of his nose and its small ridge like sketched ink, wet and purplish blue. Thinning ropes of sunlight slid down the whispers of his cheekbones, its syrupy slow lava flooding the pits of his irises and darkening their outlines to a honey eclipse. That same radiance dripped down the curve of his jaw and lips. Liquified autumn, spare, slicked with a glossy softness like falling in-

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay, here was the thing.

Sakusa was not exactly a stupid man. Granted, he was no Einstein, but he most certainly wasn’t daft. But, above all else, there were two things he knew without the slightest doubt.

1. A) Atsumu’s most irritating feature was the fact he was unfairly good-looking.
2. B) Sakusa’s most irritating feature was the fact that said attraction may not have been as objective as he’d originally thought, and anything implying the contrary would likely be enough to send him into cardiac arrest.

Or, put simply, Atsumu’s worst trait was his stupid face, and Sakusa’s was that he was revoltingly into it.

Had he been clued into this when agreeing to move in with Atsumu under a fluctuating amount of duress? No. Had it taken long to come to light in the couple of weeks that’d followed? Also no.

Did anyone else know about what he was hesitating to call a crush, considering he wasn’t fifteen anymore or even sure this attraction extended anywhere beyond physically? No, and he intended to keep it that way.

But… yeah. That was fun. Feelings like this were such bullshit, but he guessed, however bitterly, that one can’t have everything. This was probably the universe’s way of reasoning with how, that aside, his life was essentially everything he’d ever wanted: a real career in the only passion he’d truly known, playing for a good team with decent pay and parents that’d bent over backwards to support him.

Still, though. Fuck you, universe. Of all people, why’d it have to be Atsumu? It wasn’t even love, but God, would it have killed for him to be even the slightest bit rougher on the eye? Thinking someone was hot was one thing, but if fate even dared to make him fall for his shitshow of a personality, he’d be on the news.

Speaking of which, Atsumu had been quiet a suspiciously long time. He was still dutifully munching away at his cereal, studying the oddly perfect triangle chip in the rim of his bowl like it was the most interesting thing in the world. The corner of his mouth twitched under the pressure of a scathing once-over. His spoon battered clumsily against the bitten insides of his cheeks.

Sakusa took another sip of coffee and narrowed his eyes, “Do you not know what a skincare routine is.”

Despite the phrasing, it was by no means a question. Judging how Atsumu had now frozen entirely, mid-chew, he must’ve hit the nail on the head.

“Okay, look, I-”

“How have you managed to live this long without knowing how to do basic skincare?” That was a question, but of the decidedly rhetorical sort as Sakusa drained the remainder of his coffee and launched his mug into the sink.

All things considered, Atsumu’s skin wasn’t atrocious. Imperfect in smatterings, like the small trail of bumps on his right cheek only visible under harsh lamplight, but certainly not the worst he’d seen. And yet, “Is this why you only spend five minutes in the bathroom each morning? Two for brushing your teeth, three for a shower?”

“I know what a damn skincare routine is!” Atsumu instinctively attempted to defend himself by means of waving his spoon around again, an action only quelled at the very last second by whatever expression Sakusa could assume invaded his face. He threw back another heap of cereal that he didn’t bother chewing instead, “I just don’t have one!”

“What do you mean you ‘don’t have one’? And don’t talk with your mouth full, it’s gross.” It took everything in Sakusa’s power to not leave the room right then and there, “Do you not wash your face? You filthy cretin.”

By some miracle, Atsumu at last gained the sense to set his bowl on the windowsill to make way for a wild series of hand gestures, “Hey, I wash my face! Jus’ gotta splash some water on it and yer good to go! None ‘a that fancy-shamancy stuff fer me!”

“What is wrong with you?” Sakusa felt his spine recoil so far backwards it nearly snapped in half, “Why are you so averse to hygiene?”

“Oi! I’ll have you know I’m very hygienic! When’s the last time ya caught me with greasy hair, huh?”

Alright, fine, sure. In his defence, Atsumu took great pains to keep his fluorescent mop in tip-top shape, so he opted to concede that point and not bring it up again for the sake of his own ego. He could hardly remember the last time he’d caught roots poking through the crown of his head, and Sakusa relished the height advantage he had over him simply because it was the easiest thing to lord.

On days Atsumu decided to be his usual, bastard-adjacent self (which, granted, was most of them) and worm into his personal space, he had to tilt his head back to look at him properly. The first time it’d happened, the scrunch of his nose and strange roundness of his face at such an angle had almost been enough to choke a laugh out of him.

Well, that, and, from his place half a mile in the sky, Atumu’s eyes seemed huge and circular and endlessly more glittery than usual, a snow globe shaken and locked in slow motion, his mouth a pink bud flowering beneath his nose and his chin a perfect V. But, again, besides the point. That was all down to Atsumu’s inescapable ability to be grating, and it was his stupid fault for looking like that and therefore everything about it was his fault, actually, the insufferable prick.

Regardless of that, however much attention Atsumu put into his appearance on a daily basis, yes, Sakusa did remember the last time he’d caught him with greasy hair. Sweaty hair, more precisely, which was unwelcome in his household regardless of the circumstances. Even if those circumstances were volleyball.

He remembered because it’d occurred the day after the single most infuriating night of his life, during which he’d tossed and turned for hours unable to shake whatever it was keeping him up. Slipped into wondering like it’d have granted some reprieve, only to be greeted with a train of thought that’d ended with: ‘Huh. Looking at Atsumu doesn’t want to make me tear my eyes out all that much.’    

Then ‘He’s really not that awful to look at.’

Then ‘He’s pretty good-looking, actually.’

Then, it’d only spiralled from there. It should’ve gone without saying that sleep took even longer to find him after that.

Instead of dwelling on that nightmare for a second longer and risk Atsumu inviting himself to ask about it, Sakusa merely folded his arms across his chest and levelled him with a glare. “You’re missing the point. I don’t care what you do with your hair. I care about you bringing a million foreign viruses home all because you can’t be bothered to use cleanser.”

“Ugh.” Atsumu polished off the rest of his cereal and chucked the bowl besides the sink, smacking his head on the cabinet he’d forgotten to close in a brilliant moment of karma, “If ya care that much about it, then show me what I’m s’posed ta be doing instead a just rattlin’ on at me! Or, I dunno, ya can just lay off!”

Instinctively, Sakusa huffed. If he didn’t want to proverbially lose whatever this conversation had become, he had to choose one of two options.

On one hand, he could grab Atsumu’s unhygienic self by the just as unhygienic wrist, haul him to the bathroom, and drag him step by step through his morning routine (sans the shower, for obvious reasons). That definitely would have been the most effective way to get his point across.

Unfortunately, the bathroom light made Atsumu look nothing less than the perfection of mankind, which was wildly inconvenient. That, and they’d be in excruciatingly close proximity. And Atsumu, knowing him, would want a direct demonstration. Meaning he'd probably ask Sakusa to dot the moisturizer all over his face with his fingers. Or something.

As in, Sakusa would be touching Atsumu’s stupid face which was probably comparable in cleanliness to a teenager’s iPhone. If getting ill was inevitable, it was not going to be because his hands were already gripping the sides of said face and pulling it closer before he realized what he was doing.

Of course, he could also opt to completely ignore him and leave with nothing more to say. This would doubtlessly lead to a good five seconds of Atsumu whining down the hallway after him with that put-on, gratingly high-pitched intonation he nevertheless thought Sakusa was immune to by now.

Sakusa was not, by the way, though not in the relenting, ‘oh-I-give-up’ kind of manner Atsumu was probably intending to hit and more one that made his cheeks feel oddly warm.

However, that was irrelevant. For some reason, Sakusa found himself not really wanting Atsumu’s face to twist into an upset scrunch. Probably because it was annoying how attractive he still managed to look even when resembling an old vegetable someone dug up from the back of the sofa.

Again, for reasons even he wasn’t sure of, he sighed. No time like the present, apparently, “Come with me.”

Really, regardless of how scary he was on court, Atsumu was more like a large and otherwise fairly intelligent beagle. A beagle that liked to drape his limbs across as much of the sofa as possible whilst still giving Sakusa enough room to stretch his legs, pretend he was only winding up his opponents through the net by accident, took strange care to be scarce with his use of the TV volume. He knew Sakusa couldn’t stand any loud noises that weren’t the cheering of a crowd.

“Thanks, Omi!” A clear smile lilted the words behind him as they slipped into the bathroom, “Ta be honest, this stuff really doesn’t make a whole lotta sense. Most I got is when ‘Samu and I would see Ma doin’ those little dots of moisturizer on her face before rubbin’ ‘em in.”

Okay, so he knew about the dotty moisturizer thing. Thank God. Sakusa’s sanity was saved. For now.

Thumbing open the cabinet doors, Sakusa pointed a sharp finger to the meticulously arranged bottles on his shelves. “Cleanser. Exfoliator. Toner. Serum.”

In the corner of his periphery, one of Atsumu’s brows was steadily sliding up his forehead, the other crunched low to the hood of his left eye and the mellow bathroom lighting shimmering dawn at his cheeks, “Serum?”

“Moisturiser.” Sakusa jabbed the same finger at the next tub in the row pushed up next to the small silver box that made up his nailcare kit, decked out with clippers, cuticle trimmers, files, and those tiny scissors his sister insisted on throwing in for some reason, “Oil. Sunblock.”

Silence. Atsumu apparently didn’t have it within him to interrupt with one of those confused wailing noises of his, which didn’t bode well. Through some desire to leave no stone unturned, Sakusa waved a hand in the direction of an impressive collection of packets stacked on the third shelf, “Face masks, to use once a week. It’s not difficult.”

“Wha- Not difficult my ass!” Ah, there he was, “Whatddya mean ya go through this outta choice every day!”

The tone suggested it was more of an insult than anything else, but Sakusa couldn’t have cared less if he tried, “Twice a day.” He corrected, “Morning and evening. And not all of it. That’d be just as bad.”

“Twice?” Atsumu’s expression suggested that Sakusa had just announced he was joining the circus, “Yer pullin’ my leg. There’s no way yer puttin’ on sunscreen when it’s still cold out.”

“It’s Spring.”

“And? It’s still damn cold!”

“Well, don’t come crying to me when you start aging faster and develop skin cancer.” Sakusa shrugged, pointedly ignoring whatever mutterings about someone or other being dramatic, “If you’re that desperate to get sick because you insist on being so grubby, be my guest.”

Atsumu had progressed to staring at him as though, not only was Sakusa joining the circus, he was doing so as a fire eater, “It’s not like yer gonna die from a lack ‘a wastin’ twenty good minutes loading this crap on every day. It’s just yer face! I was expectin’ maybe like, I dunno, some cream or whatever, not all this! Must’a cost ya a small fortune.”

“It’s good for you, and it’s not worth the risk.” Sakusa said flatly, because it wasn’t. Despite how much aforementioned bullshit the world did contain, he had zero desire to up and vanish off the face of it for daring to forget the skin was the body’s largest organ, “I thought you’d have more self-preservation. They won’t let you play volleyball if you end up getting ill every five minutes, you know.”

That had Atsumu pausing for a second, as if to catch his breath. At least, that was obviously the impression he was going for, but the shoddy attempt at the lie fell humiliatingly short as a pinch tightened on his forehead. Bingo. “That would suck. If they take me off the squad, I dun- Wait, hang on! They wouldn’t take me off a whole season if I got a lil’ bug! And even then, I can handle it!” Despite the puffed chest, Sakusa would’ve wagered he was quite aware he was convincing nobody, “A stomachache is nothing. It weren’t in high school, and it ain’t now!”

One of Sakusa’s eyebrows steeped. Atsumu had never been a particularly sickly individual, but still, “Oh, please. Like your second-year captain would’ve let you play with a fever.” Sakusa flipped the bathroom cabinets shut, the mirror lights dimming blank. “Besides, you know you’ll just make yourself worse. Then you’ll be out even longer.”

“Jeez, I know, I know, quit naggin’ me!” Atsumu huffed, one hand carding through a now-ruffled broom of blond hair that Sakusa most certainly didn’t find sexy, shut up, “Since when do ya care so much?”

“Since I realised you not only have never seen a bottle of toner before but also use three-in-one shampoo!” Atsumu had the grace to wince but not the lack of gall to not mutter something under his breath in the process, “It’s a miracle you’re still alive.”

The snort that smacked his face in return sounded like the air being punched out of a whoopie-cushion, “What d’ya want me ta do about it? Overhaul everything I got goin’ on just ‘cause ya said so?”

“Yes.” Sakusa said. He’d left himself with only one course of action now, he realised, lest he be forced to rescind everything he’d just spent the past ten minutes harping on about, “We’re going out on Sunday to buy you some supplies whether you like it or not. You will not continue to live under my roof in this state.”

“Don’t’cha mean our roof?”

“I’ll write out a shopping list tonight.” Sakusa drummed his fingers on the side of the cabinet as to not smudge the mirrors, “What’s your skin type?”

“My what?”

“The makeup of your skin.”

“I don’t wear makeup? Look, Omi, I get I’m good-lookin’ and all, but-”

“Don’t flatter yourself. You look like someone dropped mustard on a rat.”

“Hey!”

“Stand still.”

Lips pressed into a firm line, Sakusa grabbed the hand towel folded over the radiator, bunched it across his fingers, and scrunched the neck of Atsumu’s shirt to pull him in. Only slightly, ever so slightly. To get a better look at him under the mirror’s whitish glow and the warm, golden gleam overhead bathing the bathroom’s tiles in a brightly desert-like mist. He’d thought he’d had more self-control than that, but he could be embarrassed by it later.

For whatever it was worth, though, Atsumu seemed just as surprised as he was. Eyes blown large and round like supernovas and pupils trembling in their melting spheres as they flickered wide scrutiny across his face. His lips were parted, unchapped, marked with a rose-hued flush that never passed through the net way back when. Skin mostly smooth and almost pillowy, a thin gloss polishing the surface.

Sakusa allowed himself the subtle reprieve of nibbling his lower lip as if it would’ve helped his own composure. God, he wanted to kiss him so badly, so deeply he was all he’d be able to taste on his tongue for a week. If for nothing else but to see that impossibly pretty, loathsomely cocky and self-assured expression crumble and flush in bouquets. To make that perfectly chiselled body tremble and writhe and-

Ugh. Atsumu was fucking infuriating.

“Oily.” Sakusa said as if the past five seconds had never happened.

Atsumu somehow summoned the nerve to look affronted. “Oily? What d’ya mean oily! How dare ya!”

“Zip it.” Rolling his eyes, Sakusa briefly glanced at the open door, pale rays on the corridor carpet creeping like vines up the walls, “It’s not an insult, you idiotic child, it’s a skin type. Lots of people have it.”

“Do they? So, yer sayin’ it’s normal.”

“No. Normal is a different skin type.”

“What?”

“I’m not explaining it now.” Sakusa tugged the handle under his fingers as Atsumu glanced between it and him with a quizzical blankness to his face, “I need to shower or we’ll be late.”

“Wait, wait, wait, hang on! All yer stuff is so complicated! I really don’t think-”

“You’ll get it eventually.” Sakusa stiffly whipped himself around to turn on the shower, the airy pattering of droplets pulsing into ripples on the stainless cabinet glass as Atsumu reluctantly shuffled into the thin expanse of the corridor, “I’ll explain on the way to training.”

The wavering panic present in Atsumu’s voice increased tenfold. “But Omi-”

Sakusa slammed the door in his face.

“Oh my god.” Breathed Atsumu several days later, hand unconsciously clenching around the creased coffin of an exceedingly milky takeaway coffee. His face was a tapestry stitched in awe, swathed in a violet maelstrom of gently pulsing light, “There’s so many.”

“Mm.” Sakusa briskly snatched the paper flask from Atsumu’s hand and made swift work of depositing it in the nearest bin, adjusting the white fabric of his mask to settle more evenly over his nose, “Who could’ve guessed?”

The ‘many’ in question referred to a several-meter-long wall comprised in its entirety of skincare products that would’ve looked near petrifying to the uninitiated. Of course, Sakusa could’ve pinpointed precisely where each of his favourites sat on the neverending purple rows and made a swift exit from the building in no more than four minutes flat, but they weren’t here for him. His products wouldn’t have done much of a job on Atsumu’s skin, anyway.

“Shaddup!” Atsumu bit, though there was so little genuine snark to it Sakusa momentarily wondered if he was being addressed at all. It didn’t help that he sounded a touch too featherlight to give it any gravity, the soft blanket of lighting eroding his features’ sharpness and making him seem… more gentle. Almost cute.

Sakusa didn’t bother stifling a disgruntled frown behind his mask. So, he was one of those people who managed to be both hot and cute, simultaneously? Of course he was, the insufferable creature. Go figure.

Vaugley, Atsumu turned to flap his arms at the glorious wall of cosmetics. “I don’t even know where ta start!”

Sakusa huffed and wandered to the leftmost side of the shelf. They’d be here all day if he let Atsumu make what would probably be a valiant but ultimately ineffective attempt at navigation, and Sakusa was moderately confident he wouldn’t have the willpower to stick that out until the end, “Follow me. I’ll show you. If you don’t pay attention, I’ll throw your cereal out of the window.”

“Ya wouldn’t!” Atsumu’s pitch was now reaching volumes Sakusa was beginning to deem more than a bit outsized for a social setting. It wasn’t that Atsumu himself was unaware of this. Had he been dealing with, say, Hinata, that might have been a different story. He probably just didn’t care.

Sakusa spent another moment absorbing the infinitely beautiful rows of cleanser (truly, a sight for sore eyes) before meeting him with a practicably challenging stare, “Try me.”

“Oh yeah?” Leering towards him, a testing smirk wriggled onto Atsumu’s face, lopsided and crooked, one corner curled inwards like a serpentine spine, “Ya don’t know I wouldn’t throw those ancient pictures ‘a you and Komori out the window too if ya did that.”

“You wouldn’t because you’re a sap.” Sakusa elected to keep his attention on the various labels they passed by in search for those appropriate for oilier skin, because ignorance to Atsumu’s stupid face was bliss, “Half your room is photos of you and your brother. You’d probably start crying if one of the frames got dirty. Assuming you had the foresight to think about that level of tidiness, which I bet you don’t.”

“Who, me? Havin’ to live with ‘Samu’s cleaning regiment for eighteen years? Ya don’t know shit!” Atsumu tipped his head up, neck exposed in echo of some trashy vampire novel and Adam’s apple illuminated in deepening shades of indigo, “Cookin’ with him was a nightmare! He’s such a narc ‘bout it. Gave me free food though, so I’m not complainin’. It’s real good onigiri.”

Despite all the pieces of that sentence Sakusa could’ve cherrypicked, his focus flickered instead to a particular bottle, Atsumu’s face, then back to the bottle as he threw it into the shopping basket with no more clarification than the word ‘cleanser’, “Not once have I seen you clean the kitchen.”

With all the grace of a baby elephant falling down the stairs, Atsumu snatched the bottle and skimmed the text plastered across its matte surface. Seemingly satisfied with whatever he’d been looking for, he then slipped it back into the basket, tucked into the corner just the way Sakusa liked it, “Yer usually asleep, and I know ya like yer beauty sleep and all. I do it on weekends a lot when I wake up super early and can’t get back ta sleep. Means my music doesn’t wake you up.”

Sakusa felt his thoughts slow like padded wheels, the shopping basket swinging from the crook of his elbow bumping softly against his thigh. He tried to make it seem like he’d just stopped to look for a decent exfoliator, eyes reflecting the mirrored sheen of words but not reading any of them, dulled under the starry wash of beaming lavender.

That was. Hm. Oddly thoughtful of him, truthfully. It explained why the kitchen was generally in satisfactory enough order, save for when they were both too tired to wash up were left with the Leaning Tower of Assorted Crockery looming over the sink to deal with the next day.

Quite frankly, he didn’t feel in any way, shape, or form equipped to handle whatever strange and sort of un-Atsumu-like implications that brought fluttering to his mind. And so, Sakusa elected not to dignify it with a response. As long as he failed to completely acknowledge it, Atsumu would probably let it die and go charging into the next topic of conversation like a runaway pony. Assuming he didn’t feel like being a scamp at that precise moment in time, of course. Had he decided to interrogate him about it, Sakusa honestly wasn’t sure how well his paper-flat masquerade would hold up.

“So, uh,” Atsumu’s stare singed soot into Sakusa’s cheeks as he slipped a couple more products into their basket, focusing his entirety on ignoring their superficial burn, “how is it not easier to just, like, lemme sample some of your stuff so if I decide-”

“Absolutely not.”

“I’m not a walking trashbag, y’know! I shower!”

“Barely.”

Amazingly, Atsumu still lacked the social clarity to not raise his voice to a pitch only audible to specific breeds of fruit bat, nevertheless taking a moment to give a jerky nod of approval to a moisturiser bottle thrust in his direction, “Oh, come on! Ya either shower or ya don’t shower. Ya can’t half-shower! That ain’t a thing!”

“Congratulations on becoming an inventor, then. I can’t wait for that to be added to your Wikipedia.”

“Yer such a jerk, y’know! You and yer stupid-pedia, shuddup.” Completely ignoring Sakusa’s indistinct grunt of protest, Atsumu snatched the moisturiser from the basket and flipped the cap open with such intensity it was a shock it didn’t go flying across the store, “I’m not gonna forget about that. I’ll have you know I’m definitely cleaner than ‘Samu and you would definitely have told me if I stunk or something, but like…” He stopped a second, inhale paused and poised above the open cap as though choosing his words carefully, “I dunno about this smell.”

Sakusa spun around just as he was lifting a small, dully packaged tub of sun lotion into the basket, “There’s nothing wrong with it.”

Truth be told, he’d been attempting to not put too much thought into scents while selecting his products as of late. A task made infinitely more difficult by Atsumu’s recent inability to be anywhere other than roughly an inch from the end of his nose at any given opportunity. Today being no exception, and with the added bonus of Sakusa grappling with the temptation to daze him with a smack before planting one on his irritating, plump, beautifully pigmented lips so he wouldn’t have had to justify himself.

That idea had not shaped up quite as well as planned, the large and shiny bottle still loitering under Atsumu’s nose accidentally produced with more thought than he knew he should’ve afforded it. A sketchy, white depiction of an orchid sat beneath a few small rows of text, serif lowercase, in English. It certainly wasn’t cheap.

“I mean, yeah, obviously ya’d think that.” Nonchalantly, Atsumu flipped the bottle a few times in one hand, warranting a shop assistant who’d been loitering nearby to drift a little closer like a minimum-wage poltergeist, “This is yer stuff, right?”

On the next throw, Sakusa snatched the bottle out the air before it had the chance to become acquainted with the nearest hard surface, “Best on the market and it's not even close. They’ve got a range for every skin type.”

Atsumu tried and failed to grab the bottle back, nearly colliding with a pyramid of lipstick, “It’s not that, it’s the smell.”

“Again, there’s nothing wrong with the smell. You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Nah, it’s not bad, I’m not saying it’s bad! But this is the same stuff you use!” Reversing to the glorious array of moisturiser, Atsumu kneeled to the bottom row and glared over the range with a concentrated pout deeply shadowed by the purple glow, running his hand over some of the bottles as though it’d make the choice any easier. Once again, Sakusa’s teeth clamped onto his bottom lip to prevent his face from betraying him, “Don’t get me wrong, ya smell real good and all, but, I dunno, I feel like black vanilla doesn’t suit me. I dun wanna smell like… all sweet.”

Okay, fine. Thing is, when it came to vanilla, Sakusa wasn’t exactly an unbiased source. His mother had always liked sweet scents, and in that regard, the apple really hadn’t fallen too far from the tree, “Vanilla is the best scent to have in this case. You wear Axe deodorant. Therefore, your opinion doesn’t count.”

“Hey, if Axe was that bad, there wouldn’t be so many people usin’ it, huh? Didn’t think so!”

“I’m the one helping you, so you’re listening to me. Otherwise, I’m going home and I’ll leave you in the middle of Osaka to die of skin disease.”

“Oh, c’mon, I’m not that dense. Ya can’t just magically get skin disease and die of it in the same day! And bold of ya to assume I can be taken down so easy!”

“Uh, sorry, when did we decide you had even the foggiest idea what you were talking about?”

“When ya explained it to me the other day, you asshole! I did a bit ‘a research and all!” Below him, Atsumu huffed a thick breath through his cheeks that scratched at the back of his throat. It was somehow audible as his bottom lip jutted even further from his face, and Sakusa took that as his cue to finish leafing through a selection of undoubtedly overpriced face masks and begrudgingly return his beloved moisturiser to the shelf.

He'd picked more colourful ones than he would’ve typically gone with. Pink clay, passion fruit, avocado, coloured so brightly it were as though they were exclusively visible in technicolour. Atsumu would’ve had more fun with the whole process with those, and therefore he’d be more likely to actually stick to it. He would’ve found the black or grey ones boring, then grilled him about why he ‘hated joy’ or something.

Sakusa, for the record, did not ‘hate joy’. He just liked what he knew, and he’d been using those charcoal masks since basically the stone age.

Swiftly, he glanced down to Atsumu. Watched the steady crease of his brow as he flicked open another bottle cap with a touch more care this time around and breathed it in, nose scrunching and lips pinching like wrappings in a manner oddly comical as he tried to figure out whether he liked it or not.

There was something transfixing about the sight, be it the artificial purple ocean slipping along the lines of his figure or the brightness aligning with the slope of his nose, or the way the lights reflected off the tinny rectangular mirrors tacked in strips to the wall, dusty constellations on their sheen. If he’d been drunk, he might’ve imagined a pair of stained, glassy wings sprouting like flowers from his sturdy shoulders, blooming outwards in fractal petals frayed at the edges.

Yet another of Atsumu’s most egregious and unforgivable transgressions. He couldn’t seem to help making the mundane appear fantastical with beauty. Sakusa’s tongue instinctively darted to wet his lips, and he didn’t think he’d ever been more thankful for the fact he was wearing a mask in his life.

It was after he snipped that train of thought as cleanly in the bud as possible that he became aware of the bottle now held outstretched in his direction. “This one okay?”

It was the same brand, just like he’d instructed. The correct skin type for its target, too, which warranted an impressed huff considering he really hadn’t been expecting Atsumu to care enough to retain the information himself. Something probably pretentious written in English, in font small enough to make the use of a magnifying glass seem entirely reasonable in the 21^st century, and another sketchy white drawing near the bottom.

Passion fruit. Huh. Interesting. Sakusa had been absolutely spot-on. For some reason, his chest warmed with more accomplishment than it probably should’ve done, as though coated with ignited cinders.

For lack of anything reasonable to do, he nodded in faux nonchalance, “Just make sure you use it and we won’t have a problem.”

Below him, Atsumu’s face melted in a combination of relief and glee, tossing the moisturizer into the basket and somehow making a shot that knocked over half of Sakusa’s meticulous arrangement, “Yessir.”

Sakusa took care to make his grimace triply as obvious behind the face mask, “Ew. Stop that or I’m making you pay.”

“Wait, what? Hang on.” Atsumu’s infuriating face twisted again, no longer under the weirdly interdimensional light of the skincare isle but unfortunately just as handsome, “I dunno if yer feelin’ nice today or what, but ya don’t have ta do that. I don’t need yer charity.”

“I’m not being nice,” Sakusa’s mouth spat, only a half lie. Internally, he wasn’t sure why he found himself so unwilling to accept argument, too lazy to question its inconvenience, “I’m not nice. I just know the price will put you off and then you’re going to back out and end up with nothing, and then in a few weeks you will have brought home some unheard-of new illness you’ll find a way to pass onto me and neither of us will see this Christmas.”

If Atsumu had been an inflatable mascot outside a highway-side restaurant, he would’ve toppled directly into incoming traffic and caused at least one major incident, “Nah, I knew it was hardly gonna be cheap, but I dun’ like the thought of you payin’ it all yerself. Can we at least split the cost?”

Sakusa, never one to look a gift horse in the mouth on account of the fact it likely had terrible dental hygiene, shrugged and drifted into the nearest self-checkout the moment the woman using it grabbed her receipt, “Whatever. If you insist.”

“Okay, cool. Can we get coffee after this?”

“Why? We just got coffee.”

“There’s that new café round the corner from here, remember?” With an unceremonious crinkle of plastic, Atsumu began piling the items into a shopping bag that Sakusa absolutely paid for, “Ya said ya wanted to try it a couple weeks ago, and it’s open now. Opened last week, I think. Not like we don’t have time.”

Sakusa paused, the bottle in his hand hovering over the barcode scanner, “Why should I?”

“There’s private booths?”

“Deal.”

“I think I’m actually going to die.”

“Mm.”

“Dibs shower.”

“No chance. You can stew for all I care.”

From his place face-down on the living room carpet, Atsumu made what might have been a screechy yell of indignation through a mouthful of black tassled fabric, “Yer such an ass!”

“That’s not my problem.”

With a sigh almost heavy enough to pull his body into buckling, Sakusa tugged the bathroom door shut behind him and clicked the dial on the shower. Half-lidded eyes watching as the water began to dribble from the showerhead, steam slowly fogged the silhouette of his reflection in the cabinet mirror. He hardly recognised the moment he stepped into the cubicle, unsightly kit crumpled on the glistening tiles as the water dripped through the sweaty mess his hair had become and the long curve of his spine.

It felt far better than it should’ve had any legal right to. Sakusa had never really been one for physical contact, what with the habitual stress of germs and all, and this water was downright caressing him. He pondered in his post-gym delirium if this kind of prosecution would’ve held up in a court of law. Somehow, he didn’t think so.

A part of him wished he had the ability to enjoy people simply existing in his close vicinity. The Jackals were very much the touchy-feely sort, a trait he reckoned probably came with their general lack of self-awareness. That, or complete inability to care for what others seemed to think of them on a personal level.

While he certainly didn’t envy the daily roulette of sweaty high-fives, and they largely respected his instructions to keep a wide berth until they were wearing enough deodorant to set off a fire alarm, he occasionally found himself wondering if he’d always instinctively push people out of his space. The internal battle of it all ached constant as tides, perhaps exhausting through the years if it weren’t for the moon’s constant warbling tug. Inescapable, sweet shampoo between fingers, only ever his own. Bubbling drip slipping around his eyes’ blackened hollows, and as he scrunched his brow into knots, a head of blondish hair and all that came with it once more drifted to the front of his mind.

He hated touch, yet kept finding himself having to proverbially tie his ankles together just to prevent accidentally dissolving his inhibitions and doing something ridiculous. The idea of someone placing a hand on his shoulder usually shuddered him like hypothermia, and yet that of taking a finger to Atsumu’s protruding collarbones and trailing it down the chiselled marble of his abdomen had electric sparking between his vertebrae in symphonies of static.

Involuntarily, watching near anything at all, he’d find his nose scrunching at the sight of affections that seemed steadily veering into territory much heavier. And yet, last night, his mind had spun itself awake into sunrise’s oblivion, entirely unable to chip the intrusive fantasy of Atsumu’s lips on his from his head.

As generally loathsome as that was, not unlike the bubble of shampoo that’d found its way into his mouth when washing the second lot out of his hair, Sakusa had reached a point where he could at least accept it. There was no ignoring his unfortunate attraction to Atsumu’s dumb, stupid, handsome face and his irritating, buff, perfectly statuesque body. No amount of denial was going to suddenly change that.

If it were possible, he liked to think he would’ve figured it out already. As it turned out, attraction was a pretty troublesome ailment to tolerate when the object of them was completely unavoidable unless he locked himself on the balcony forever. Which, in turn, would’ve only raised more questions, given Atsumu would never let something like that go because he adored being an unequivocal pain in that kind of way, and thus the cycle would repeat until the eventual heat death of the universe.

What didn’t make sense were the other desires. The ones he couldn’t quite excuse as plain ol’ horniness, and therefore weren’t as easy to tidy away to the back of his mind and pretend they didn’t exist beneath the dust. They came without any warning, the concentration of want they brought on only increasing with their frequency, hiked far above the legal limit. Hell, they weren’t even exclusive to Atsumu actually being in the room.

He scooped a glob of exfoliator onto his fingers and rubbed it along his shoulders, thick sigh falling soft from his mouth as another concept crawled into his consciousness. How Sakusa didn’t do physical contact, but the thought of Atsumu gently easing through his back after a particularly unforgiving training session was so delightfully pleasant in a way entirely detached from the remainder of his fantasies. Splaying his fingers across his scalp, twirling conditioner through the ends of his hair, shortly clipped nails scratching at his skin just barely rough enough to make him shudder.

Honestly, the only reminder that these fantasies were just that, shut eyes and steam preserving the wanton illusion just a moment longer, was how gentle this spectral Atsumu could be. Atsumu was not exactly a delicate creature. Not on the surface.

Issue being that, to the layman, he seemed a very surface level person, in that he either had buried the rest of himself so deeply it only existed in recollections or that he truly had nothing to hide. Surface level, except that surface was so vast and starry with trinkets it was impossible to tell how high they’d been stacked above the ground.

And yet, superficially, Sakusa’s mind had decided there had to have been a softness somewhere. Just on the off chance he’d ever let those thoughtless desires overcome discomfort’s familiar embrace, to let calloused fingers tangle and soothe between his curls.

Sakusa would never have referred to himself as a particularly curious being. But if that were true, he knew, it wouldn’t have made sense to crave knowing Atsumu beyond that surface he’d inadvertently become so entangled with. He’d never wanted to know something like that before.

Thoughts like that had very little to do with Atsumu’s appearance at all. If anything, they disregarded it entirely.

Troublesome, to put it lightly. Letting his hair mask swirl down his back and smoothing through a small dollop of conditioner, Sakusa shelved both the concept and every implication it might’ve brought with it. Like he should’ve done ten minutes ago, like he already had in every other instance. Incredible how Atsumu managed to still be a source of irritation when he wasn’t even present. Or, more likely, unconscious face-down on the living room carpet.

Barely audible above the artificial rainfall, in a ghost of his own voice, Sakusa reminded himself that he didn’t like touch. In case his brain had forgotten whilst he wasn’t looking, that the shower steam and exhaustion had muddied the truth in his tired distraction. Sakusa did not like physical contact. Never had, probably never would, and that was fine. Why would Atsumu be any different?

His mind stuttered its way back to presence like the puffy breaths of an old steam train as he reached for his bodywash. Black vanilla, of course. Exactly the same brand as the moisturiser he’d began his mission with yesterday. Once again, the steaming water was a gentle press of feathers along his warmed skin, softened and pliant and overwhelmingly dreamish as it held his thoughts floating in a misty limbo where no world existed beyond the white-fogged glass lining the tiles.

He could’ve fallen asleep if he’d gotten any more lost in it, but also didn’t feel like capping the day off so abruptly, head shattered in three separate pieces on the bathmat. He still had a skincare routine to do.

After any stretch of time between half an hour and the better part of a decade, Sakusa’s legs finally gave up on him as he stepped from the booth and was unwittingly forced to rely on the sturdy presence of the nearest wall to avoid disintegrating his tailbone. In his haste, he’d forgotten to bring a change of clothes, and desperate times called for desperate, tried, and true measures. Only the most dignified, of course. With as little thought about it as possible, ideally.

Sakusa grabbed a towel, wrapped it around his body with very little care for the aesthetics, and sprinted down the corridor as fast as he could without either A) his safety net falling to ribbons in the breeze, or B) dying. He slammed his bedroom door, shouted down the hall some garbled words about the shower, and collapsed backwards onto his bed with a huff somewhere between relief and lethargy.

Whatever the case, it seemed to have done the trick, if the tinkling sound of the running shower only moments later was a reliable indication. Yay for small mercies.

Slapping his hand about on his bedside table, Sakusa hazily squinted at the facial recognition on his phone clicking him through to his messages. Somehow, Atsumu happened to be his most recent text, a feat given they lived in the same house and consequentially had next to no reason for that to be the case. Worse still, his profile picture, while warped into an expression that truly was a choice, was still photogenic. Disgusting.

To: Atsumu Miya (MSBY)

not cooking- do you want me to get the leftovers out the fridge

See, the trick was that Atsumu took his phone everywhere with him, which included the bathroom despite the fact it certainly wasn’t waterproof. He also almost always had a pair of headphones in, be that his own, another set from who-knows-where, or, if he felt particularly dangerous that day, Sakusa’s.

Thus, texting him on a regular basis had become a necessary evil, and if Snapchat hadn’t continued to insist they were best friends, he wouldn’t have thought twice about it.

Atsumu Miya (MSBY) is typing…

From: Atsumu Miya (MSBY)

wot is it

NOT CHICKEN AND RICE AGAIN

I’LL CRY

To: Atsumu Miya (MSBY)

i have terrible news for you

That was just another thing, though. Because beforehand, Sakusa, as strange as it may have sounded by this year of his life, hadn’t really had a best friend before. The closest he’d ever got was Komori, which might not have even counted considering the familial relation. Be that a result of what was apparently considered a bad attitude or his tendency to cut a somewhat intimidating figure, he wasn’t sure, but somewhere along the line, it must’ve given off the impression he was completely unapproachable. Which was kind of his own fault, he supposed, but whatever. Touché.

And now, once accidentally again, he’d managed to warp Atsumu into something he wasn’t. A best friend. A sex symbol. A huge distraction when lifting one’s bodyweight and then some, nearly culminating in several broken toes and a string of expletives.

Atsumu Miya (MSBY) is typing…

From: Atsumu Miya (MSBY)

cryin nd its ur fault

To: Atsumu Miya (MSBY)

k

From: Atsumu Miya (MSBY)

ur gonna at least heat it up right

To: Atsumu Miya (MSBY)

no atsumu we’re going to eat freezing cold chicken and rice

i’ll put it in the oven

Atsumu Miya (MSBY) is typing…

Atsumu Miya (MSBY) is typing…

Sakusa sighed, thinking better than tossing his phone off into the nearby abyss of mismatched socks piled up in his laundry basket and placating himself by watching Atsumu’s creepy little avatar think to itself in the corner of the screen.

To: Atsumu Miya (MSBY)

and ill put that seasoning thing you like on yours

He resigned to weakly dumping his phone onto the floor, sighing nevertheless as it landed on a bizarre angle and leaning across the duvet to grab the pile of clothes folded next to the bedside table. His hair, still damp, tossed tiny droplets of water onto the fabric of the grey top stretched tense between his shoulders, sinking into his collarbones like jewels swallowed into the concaved pit of a dune.

Then, Sakusa’s phone buzzed, and Sakusa himself proceeded to gracefully trip on the leg of his jogging bottoms and nearly knock himself out on the wardrobe.

From: Atsumu Miya (MSBY)

omg

has anyone ever told u ur the perfect man

Sakusa stared at the message for what he knew was probably a little too long. As though the message contained Atsumu’s stupid, beautiful face, and not just the equally perplexing words that spewed out of it and threatened to give him more pause than he was emotionally prepared for.

The knowledge that Atsumu’s tiny icon had disappeared meant he was finally in the shower, and Sakusa could only and unintentionally guess what that might’ve looked like. Which certainly wasn’t helping.

To: Atsumu Miya (MSBY)

hurry up or it’ll be cold again

He typed the words so fast it was more misspelled than coherent, but there was no part of him he could bring to care. With the way the thought abrasively pressed at the insides of his skull like the cloying pulse of a migraine in the marrow, it would’ve been best not to think about it altogether.

While Atsumu hummed some distantly familiar tune beneath the clamour, both lost in thought and elbow-deep in a mountain of soap unnecessary even by his standards, Sakusa sauntered back into the living room with a couple of the brightly decorated facemasks they’d bought a few days ago.

This particular pair were matching, the last of their kind left in stock. Various triangular patterns lay emblazoned on the dampened front in vaulting oranges and pinks, fanned at the edges to resemble small and tufted ears. Apparently, the wearer would be given a foxlike appearance during usage. How charming. Sakusa wasn’t convinced.

Still. He’d wagered the inherent novelty of them would’ve piqued Atsumu’s boundless intrigue, hopefully ad infinitum. If putting up with one evening of potentially subpar face masks that made him look like he’d just escaped a children’s birthday party was enough to convince Atsumu that taking care of himself was fun, then so be it.

“Hey,” Sakusa opted to hover by the doorframe on approach, immensely grateful for it as Atsumu’s still-humming profile sprayed droplets from slicked forearms onto the floor like flickers of interplanar, diamond rain. Something in Sakusa’s chest threaded along his pulse that wasn’t amusement, “We’re doing facemasks.”

An expression not unlike a deer caught in headlights flippered around to find his, “Huh? Sneak up on me like that again an’ I’ll throw somethin’ at’cha!”

“Pay attention to your surroundings, then.”

“Nah. I’m tired.” As if to demonstrate, Atsumu stretched one arm above his shoulder and scratched his back with it, “If someone breaks in or somethin’, I’m leavin’ it to you.”

“Why?”

“Eh, I dunno, like. Yer real tall and all. Scare ‘em off.” Sakusa twitched at the intensity of the stare tingling his face, raising an eyebrow in false reflex instead of acknowledging any of the real reflexes that’d just taken place. His subconscious lapped at the way Atsumu’s voice trailed a desire path through the air’s mist, and some cottony feeling weaved like river stones through his blood.

“Actually, I’m sayin’ that,” Though his hands remained oddly still, soapy and warmed by the basin, a sort of grappling scrambled into his voice, “but yer real soft lookin’ when it’s light out. Yer face, I mean. Like a prince or some other… good guy. I dunno. If I saw ya in a dark alley, I’d fight ya. Whatever. Y’know.”

At last, Sakusa allowed himself the daft indulgence of glancing more steadily at Atsumu’s face. He labelled the warmness under his skin as annoyance as he bit back a blunt remark for lack of anything better to say, silhouetted by the open window’s silky beginnings of moonlight.

It was not often that Atsumu was difficult to read. Rather, he presented himself as the world’s most open book with the world’s most obnoxious font. But now, there was a serif to the way he held his face. Something pointed and strange.

For a second, Sakusa felt himself want to jolt back. Or to ask Atsumu if he was feeling alright, in a snarky way so the words wouldn’t taste like sugared floss dissolving on his tongue. There swam a weird temptation in the idea, curious and almost immature, but that wasn’t a thought for now. The important thought was Atsumu, as it tended to be these days. This Atsumu did not feel like Atsumu.

Just as Sakusa’s mouth flopped open, that uncannily unreadable face melted back to its default, casual and uncreased and almost homely as the leafy hush of outside, and the moment passed with the same quickness it’d appeared. Sakusa wanted to question it, another oddity piled atop it all. Sakusa didn’t typically catch himself noting such subtle changes as that. For one, he rarely paid enough attention to other people to even figure out what their ordinary was.

The thought promptly died as Atsumu carelessly wiped his hands down his joggers, grinning as though he knew it’d bug him, “Anyway, ya said something about facemasks?”

“Yeah,” Sakusa said, brandishing the packets between his fingers like cards, “Come to the bathroom and I’ll show you how to put them on properly. It’s not rocket science.”

Sakusa felt like it would become as much anyway. Something about necessary evils, he reckoned.

“Wait, wait, wait!”

“What?”

“I watched a video, right?” Atsumu blurted. He’d been doing a lot of ‘watching videos’, apparently. Sakusa wasn’t sure what to make of it, “And I think it’ll be nice and all if we make an evenin’ of it. Y’know, we can put on a movie and-” An uninvited bellow of a yawn slipped through his lips, brazenly ignoring Sakusa’s raised eyebrow, “just chill, kinda?”

Same eyebrow hiking higher just in case Atsumu didn’t catch it the first time, Sakusa folded his arms, “We have training tomorrow. Early.”

“I never said we had ta be up late or whatever. Just thought it’d be fun and… nice, I guess, y’know?”

Sakusa’s eyes swivelled to the ceiling. The idea itself certainly didn’t sound awful, and to his credit, Atsumu tended to be pretty quiet when it came to their spontaneous movie nights. Not so much so that his presence would be forgotten, of course, because such quietness prodded like knives in this spacey apartment for two. And this was still Atsumu, after all, and he could only ever be so silent.

Sometimes, on those nights, Sakusa would find himself coaxing that voice out with a jab or jive if the lull had stretched too long, filtered between the monochrome dialogue trickling from their screen. Atsumu’s voice wet the barren air’s desert like oases, and Sakusa was long selfish enough to let it quench him every time.

“What did you have in mind?”

Atsumu’s demeanour perked, puppy-like, “Ah, well, I found this movie while I was washin’ the dishes…”

He floated to the TV and clicked the remote, screen alighting with a ferocious ba-dum. Sakusa tried to ignore the bald-faced lie, though it wasn’t like Atsumu would think he’d genuinely have believed it (or, at least, he hoped not). He’d been out of the room all of two minutes- that was nowhere near enough time for someone so horribly indecisive.

Sakusa’s neck craned to the screen like a long beak, finding words in English he could only parse about four letters of. A woman with cropped hair gazed at nothing in particular, face partially obscured by that of a man with an oddly smug expression on his face. A little cartoon letterbox blinked over his cheeks. Bright red, an endearing quality in its rustic simplicity.

Sakusa had seen this film before, which could’ve been said about most of their movie-night offerings. They had a rotation of sorts. When it was Atsumu’s turn, it would either be something so obscure finding it on the seventh page of Google would’ve been a challenge, or a pick from the five-film cycle he maintained on loop.

It checked out bizarrely well that Atsumu watched so many foreign movies, though the ‘why’ itself still managed to evade him. He was weirdly apt at keeping up with subtitles. Sakusa, on the other hand, generally couldn’t be bothered, allowing the strings of unfamiliar sounds to wash through his ears as yellowish text blurred against the backdrop.

“…so yeah,” Atsumu shrugged, and that misfitting softness that’d infected his expression before faded back into view, an indistinguishable furrow buried in his cadence. At the centre of his lips, a pinch, throwing the remote between a pair of plush cushions, “Whaddya think?”

“Sounds good.” Sakusa’s words escaped before he had the chance to consider them, yet they tasted like nothing rotten on his lips. As if to compensate, he lifted his hand and shook the packets in Atsumu’s direction, “Now: facemasks.”

“Yeah, coming!”

It took a monumental effort to avoid staring at the reflection of Atsumu’s face in the bathroom mirror as he copied how Sakusa spread the sheet across his skin, fingertips not quite clumsy but far less refined as he attempted to smooth it out. The mask seemed a little small for his face, a ring of exposed skin muddled at his jaw and forehead and besides his ears, wrinkling at the edges of each eye. Not helped every time he stretched his expression as though that’d make it fit better.

Still, concentration was a good look on him. That was perfectly fine to acknowledge because Sakusa already knew that, so there was no need to stare too hard, thank God. He already knew that appearance plenty well by now.

Unfortunately, because Atsumu always managed to be full of completely unsurprising surprises, he also managed to look shockingly normal with an absurd facemask plastered to his skin. The foxish pattern, in all its cheap glory, somehow flattering in a manner that seemed to suit him exclusively, reddened markings in their metallic shine skimming cheerful phosphorescence along his perfectly sloped jaw. Reverse teardrops in scarlet sliced down his cheekbones against the white, embellished with orange lines that curled like tails along his lashes.

Sakusa gingerly glanced at his reflection in the mirror, the same mask stitching puckered hems blind atop his features. He looked ridiculous, to the point he’d probably laugh if his pride was any less swollen.

Yet Atsumu, once again, glowed something brilliant. Even under the invasive golden fullness of the bathroom light, even with his inverted face in the crystal mirror, his hair unmade and back slouched and a fox-patterned mask slathered in the tired shadows of his face. Beautiful, once again, and for some reason it made Sakusa want to scream.

Instead, he all but stormed from the room, dumping the empty packets in the bin and waiting for the indignant symphony of thumping footsteps to come crashing through the corridor behind him. Atsumu was oh-so predictable in a comforting kind of way, and even with the face-mask faux-pas and general lack of self-awareness regarding it, this, he could cope with.

Sakusa unceremoniously crumbled back into the sofa’s split mountain of pillows, lamely fumbling for the remote and its myriad buttons until the TV screen flickered back to life. He launched it without sight at Atsumu as he flopped down by his side, absorbing the startled squawk he earned for his troubles in recompense.

“What’s gotcha in such a hurry?” Atsumu huffed as he nestled into the sofa’s fluffy arm. He lazily smacked the space between them, releasing a pleased little ‘ah-ha!’ upon finding the remote that didn’t sound hot but had Sakusa enthralled anyway.

As usual, Sakusa turned his face away and feigned complete and total disinterest, a skill he’d mastered over the years, “Nothing.” he said, like the fantastic liar he was, “Stop stalling and turn it on already.”

It was incredible how the suspiciousness on Atsumu’s face was practically audible, “Ya coulda just done it yerself, yer majesty.”

“You chose it. Wouldn’t it make more sense you’d want to watch the whole thing?”

Atsumu made a noise that was not even abstractly decipherable. Much more akin to a blubber of vocabulary, scrambled and scattering over the living room carpet, “What didja last servant die of?”

“Backchat.”

“Who coulda guessed?”

The thud of the remote was mostly drowned out by the mutter of Atsumu shimmying about besides him as the screen brightened. A cursory glance saw his cheek pressed against what could have been either his own sleeve or a pillow, carefully angled to not disrupt the mask. It was especially round from this angle, yet not ugly on Atsumu’s chiselled face. It suited the relaxed pout that’d taken itself up on his lips, large eyes half lidded and glistening kaleidoscopic with picturesque reflections.

Tearing his eyes to the screen was a struggle, but somehow, Sakusa managed it. He wasn’t sure why it was so difficult right now, of all times. The Atsumu burnt to the front of his memory was hardly hot. It was probably impossible for anyone to look hot in a cheap fox facemask with their hair pushed up into cartoonish spikes by a headband, the actual shape of his body completely indiscernible amongst the ruffles and folds of clothing. And Atsumu, thank fuck, was no exception.

And yet, Sakusa wanted to look, for just a moment longer. Sakusa never wanted to look at people. He categorically, as a rule, didn’t like people.

So why did he want to look at Atsumu? It’d happened earlier, too, with those strange and foreign ideas that’d floated to him half-delirious and drunk on shower steam, the humidity of condensation against his glassy muscles lulling him into a plastic security.

Even before then, too, invading his mind beyond training or the bounds of reason. When he’d catch a glimpse of a tanned v-line poorly sneaking from the bathroom, drenched and skittish and unapologetically gorgeous. More concerning, yet, were those times Atsumu did not look pulled from the front page of a magazine, Sakusa trading in the tingle of attraction for pain as blood beaded on his lip. Invasive, like an insect, and completely unable to purge.

Like walking home from work, a little damp, clean, hair fluffy as he belligerently insisted on picking up his favourite juice along the way. Like at restaurants, after Atsumu would invest painstaking amounts of research into finding one he could halfway tolerate, casual yet neat and lit from the halo down with overpriced bulb lights glinting in the brickwork’s cracks like teeth. Like now, where he was warm and soft and sleepy barely two meters away, and painfully edged out of Sakusa’s acceptable field of vision.

Sakusa did not like people. He had no desire to look at people. He did not like to spend his time with people. He did not walk home with people; he did not go to restaurants with people. He did not spend idle evenings watching movies with people.

When was it, then, that Atsumu had stopped being people?

On the screen, the short-haired woman twirled around the bookshop, a cosy and rustic cavern with shelves the same welcoming brown as Atsumu’s eyes. Her smile brightened in the glow, and it was sharp and oddly wild like Atsumu’s. She wore a skirt, unlike Atsumu, but the colour was certainly one he would have liked. Of course he would have. They’d watched this film more times than Sakusa could count on one hand. He hadn’t meant to be keeping track. Ordinarily, he wouldn’t have thought nights like these to be memories worth retaining.

Perhaps it was Atsumu’s own penchant for obscure and thoroughly useless knowledge rubbing off on him, more jumbled things Sakusa had lately become hesitant to push from his head. Bananas are radioactive, he learnt over breakfast once, coffee pot whistling on the stove so loud it could’ve shattered the windows. If you got sucked into a black hole, you’d turn into spaghetti, he’d heard while filling their bottles at training, under the clinical glare of cool white light.

Garfield phones kept turning up on a random French beach for thirty-five years. It would take forty-two minutes to fall to the centre of the Earth. Penguins propose by giving each other the best rocks they can find.

An afternoon on a park bench somewhere Sakusa would likely never go again, nibbling at a subpar lunch he was only half hungry for and wilfully ignoring the sploshed smoothie droplets soaking into his coat. A night, late after some party, still buzzing from the lingering effects of champagne, hair splayed on the window of a black taxi trundling along towards home and a jacket that was not his stretched along his shoulders. A lazy day in, joggers and yet another old film mumbling words in a language Sakusa didn’t speak, heavy rainfall pattering outside like hundreds of tiny footsteps.

If Atsumu had more facts to share, Sakusa wanted to hear them, and keep them somewhere safe in his mind. He didn’t need them, not much, but he would make the room.

Uselessly, he felt himself swallow. Something felt strange, like the air had been replaced by cloisters of pine needle and twine, invisible reels of wool coating the walls like that of a padded cell. Warm, and safe, even, but unfamiliar and prickly in the eyes and lashes and lids. Behind his ribcage, his heart twitched.

He glanced at his phone, glare taking a second to adjust to the blinding influx of colour. The numbers had changed, and Sakusa became acutely aware once more of the wet mask soaking itself into his face. Right, shit, he had to go take that off.

Pushing himself to the edge of the sofa, he trailed a hand along the back of his neck and rolled his head on a pendulum, a satisfying crack shivering along his spine, “Pause the movie. You have to remove the mask or you'll break out.”

Nothing but silence in return, air blankly swollen with the consistent rumble of onscreen dialogue. The pillows crinkled like foil as he pushed his hands between them, fingers sinking into loose woven fabric as he stood, nails embedded with wiry tapestries of grey that snaked like smoke around his cuticles.

Initially, he felt inclined to just soldier on alone, waiting for a peeved mutter and the disjointed melody of footfalls to rattle in his wake. A pause stuttering into his feet before he could think better of it.

He waited, just a moment. Face still dutifully trained on the screen, as though anything beyond its borders was barred from his perception. The blonde woman handed a book to the man across the counter, brown paper bag creasing in her hands, and the daylight spilling down the walls and windowpanes made the room smell distantly of autumn and passionfruit and black vanilla.

A few more seconds passed, Sakusa still void of motion or response. Its heaviness bled curse-like, the spell of this silence, eyes blurring as the screen’s grainy pictures waxed and waned in ancient skies. His face strained with discomfort as the mask folded against what must’ve been the beginnings of an atrophied tension Sakusa didn’t want to pinpoint the reason of. He felt wired, electricity jolting upright the hairs on his arms, lucid and abstract like impressionism.

More seconds, a minute, and finally, he gave in. Threw his stare across his shoulder, tipping back along with it and falling inward in a rich, oceanic collapse. Like another indulgent thing.

In his chest, he felt it the instant the warmth changed, vines thorned and prickled curling around his scaffolded chest, the bloom of oval flowers at his stomach, nectar spilling iambic like honey across his heartbeat.

In his head, it took a few seconds to catch up.

Curled in a jumble of limbs against the arm of the sofa, Atsumu had fallen asleep, it seemed, thick hoodie folding origami at his neck. The hood clung to his ears, crushed soft against the back of his head. His breathing light, nigh on inaudible, eyes gently pressed shut like plump fruit, lashes flickering ever so slightly as though in a dream. So unlike Atsumu it should’ve felt downright perverse to see him like this. Yet, Sakusa felt no discomfort, and that scared him more.

In part, he wasn’t sure he could bring himself to wake him. The idea stung like disrupting a painting, crawling inside it to muddy the acrylic with the motion of placing a hand on Atsumu’s rounded shoulder to rouse him. The phantasmal lamp glow softening the room’s corners threaded silk into the staticky blare of the TV screen, eroding his face’s lean edges in kind hues even behind the facemask. His hair shiny and fluffy and soft in the tamed sunrise, curling and bowed like pointe ribbons, Sakusa wanted to run his hands through it, to scratch square nails along the indents of his crown. His lips a little pink and plump, jaw softened from the strange angle it was at.

And that was it, and it was ludicrous. Because Atsumu wasn’t hot right now, nor sexy, nor even particularly attractive. His face was wrinkled behind a foxish second skin and his limbs indistinguishable from one another and the fabric of a ratty high school sweater, sleeves and arms in clove hitches battered by the sea.

Instead, he was oddly beautiful.

In truth, there was nothing ‘odd’ about it. He just simply was.

Perhaps cute might have been the more accurate term. The stuffy pout on Atsumu’s lips tightened, and once more, Sakusa couldn’t tear his attention away. Atsumu was cute, and the heat in Sakusa’s chest swelled with affection so outsized it might burst him, leaving him a collapsed and bloody cavity on the living room floor. With anger, most certainly, and relief and indulgence and the acidic stripping of any sense he’d thought he’d built up before now.

With a trench-deep horror, unfamiliarity, and cluelessness, yes, but Sakusa wasn’t stupid. Despite everything he wanted to believe, even instinctively, he knew exactly what this was.

In the haze of craving the breath of each habit, Sakusa could no longer imagine living so alone as he had once before. He wanted to his mind to swell and ache with the saccharine weight of futile knowledge and slam set after set as age bit at his heels, glazing over media he wouldn’t remember and grouching at the superficial ails of skincare. He, selfishly, wanted to know Atsumu better than he knew himself.

There was some bitterly delectable irony in how it’d managed to sneak up on him so easily. He’d not realised its impact even in its aftermath, toying with the concept in imaginary words as though they were too rich a tenant to be housed on his copper tongue. He couldn’t, because speaking them into existence would’ve threatened his current reality, the gobo of his thoughts warping outsized into an illuminated creature that was no longer himself.

Be it a natural result of cohabitation or not, there was nothing he’d been intending to happen less than this. Dealing with the attraction itself was manageable. Falling into territory so unmapped was not.

Because that’s what had happened, wasn’t it? Sakusa had gone and done the one thing he’d really, really been trying to avoid. Just his luck.

For a moment, he’d wished he’d maintained the urge to forever deem Atsumu just as unpalatable as when they’d first met. Keeping even the chance of new tides ankle level, nonthreatening and resembling normalcy just enough for him to let any unfamiliar undercurrents pass him by.

But that fate would’ve been far too easy. The universe had had it out for him since the start, just as he’d suspected. Typical.

Now, Sakusa was stuck, and confronting that admission screamed nothing short of facing down a triple block comprised of muscle-bound giants. The tingling intoxication tapped on his skin, heart trilled with the masochistic gnaw of excitement, and he couldn’t tell if he loved or loathed it.

Impulsively, he cut all thought from his mind and briskly shook Atsumu awake. Half chewing the sounds of his sleepy protests as he trudged along behind him to the bathroom, paying as little attention as the ache stretching his ribs would allow him, so wide they nearly burst from the skin under each arm. Then, a coward, or just as thoughtless as before, he stumbled back to the living room, switched off the TV, and retreated with few words to bed. Because that was infinitely easier to deal with.

Sakusa was in love with Atsumu.

Sakusa was in love. With Atsumu.

Atsumu was the person Sakusa was in love with.

No matter how many times he rehashed the thought, it never managed to sound as unnatural as he wished it would. In the few days since this whole nightmare had come clattering like a crowbar to the back of the head, the fact had also not become any less viscerally uncomfortable.

If anything, the seamless blending of those thoughts between all the others had grown ten times worse, unsavoury and intruding every time he arced yet another perfect set across the court. As grossly easy to let inhabit him as his drive to play volleyball, or the need to eat or sleep, or to know as of yesterday that the scientific term for the average colour of the universe was ‘cosmic latte’.

As bad as that was, it’d nevertheless managed to get worse. Now, the plague of Atsumu bleaching his head was one he couldn’t seem to purge at all. At least before, he could smother those ideas by dwelling instead on something completely unrelated to afford a precious few moments of focus. But now, that was completely impossible. Which was ludicrous, and morally reprehensible, and a real pain in the ass, just like the initial perception of Atsumu he’d built before it’d been dismantled from the base. Naturally.

For instance, yesterday evening, they’d exfoliated per Sakusa’s exact instructions, vaguely peach scented and pink as it’d spread across his fingers. It was supposed to be relaxing, left smooth as puff of cloud, and it usually was. In reality, Sakusa had spent the entire time suffering. Not because he had no idea how to exfoliate, God forbid, but because Atsumu was rubbing the stuff into his face with such a disgustingly endearing degree of enthusiasm it had left him blue-screened for a solid minute.

That morning, Atsumu had burned his tongue on his coffee (for all his talents, patience had never been one of them). Somehow, with his tongue stuck out and hopping about as though he’d stubbed his toe, the only impulses that’d come to Sakusa’s mind were a truly revolting degree of teasing, softened chuckles, and the very routine urge to make out with him.

And so, many, many hours later, those instances were still leeching off his focus and then some, right in the middle of practice. Not a particularly well-advised move, he would admit, given he’d been nailed in the head a good few times already. One more slip-up and Atsumu would’ve began to suspect something was up, which would’ve undoubtedly made the situation go from bad to-

Well, still bad, because Atsumu fussing over him wasn’t something he would’ve necessarily complained about, but anyway. Matters were not helped by the fact the captain had clearly caught wind of something or other and was now unable to glance in his direction without snorting.

Not that he wasn’t too prideful for it to even remotely be a possibility, but a part of him wondered if he should’ve just asked someone what he was supposed to do at this point. He knew well enough that the obvious answer would be to just tell him, the sooner the better. Indulge the middleman before one had the chance to shoehorn itself into the situation and get it over and done with. Testily and probably not in direct speech because they were still technically colleagues, and it would’ve been an absolute disaster if Atsumu didn’t feel the same way. Sakusa might have just crawled into a hole and let himself die.

Even with that considered, though, it probably would’ve been the best course of action rather than simmering forever in the stew of his own feelings. As it stood right now, Sakusa couldn’t focus for shit, and getting the offending man off his mind and into his arms would’ve done wonders for his mental health.

Then again, knowing his teammates’ general abilities in providing life advice, he trusted them about as far as he could throw them. Simply Googling a solution probably would’ve been redundant, too, since it’d undoubtedly be all about playing the long game, and Sakusa did not have the restraint or willingness to plan for that. Really, he was just as bad as Atsumu.

Sakusa pondered on that for a second longer and involuntarily wrinkled his nose. Yikes. They really were perfect for each other.

“Omi!”

Ah, fuck.

Back pressed against the wall, Sakusa tipped his head to find an expectedly sweaty Atsumu strolling towards him, infuriatingly casual for how the shoddy gleam of the gym lights captured his intricacies like the hands of a painter. He rattled an empty water bottle at him with an over-extended arm, carabiner clashing against the branded plastic, “What?”

Atsumu gestured over his shoulder to the double doors leading out of the court, “Come fill up my bottle with me.”

“Are you a toddler?” Sakusa didn’t allow himself to think too much about anything lest he have a heart attack and stood anyway, “I’m not surprised you need a chaperone.”

“Shaddup! It’s just boring to go by myself!” He shoved the bottle against Sakusa’s chest with an almost insulting lack of force, court shoes squeaking like loud mice, “Yer comin’ with me, anyway, so why bother resistin’ it?”

“That's a lot of words you're using to tell me I was right first time.”

“Says who?”

“Says me.” Sakusa dangled his own bottle from his pinkie, an inch or so from the tip of Atsumu’s perfect nose, “Fill mine up while you’re busy too, why don’t you?”

“Yer the actual worst.”

“That doesn't mean much coming from you, Miya.”

“Oh, don’t’cha ‘Miya’ me!” The doors battered against their hinges behind them, the harshness of the gym’s strip lighting blinking away to the much softer bulbs lining the ceiling of the lobby. Sakusa made a conscious effort to steer his eyes away from Atsumu’s face as the razor angles cut into his sweat softened like feathers beneath snow, a morning’s worth of redness painting his cheeks and blending in sunny gradients with his tanned skin. He ended up staring at the water-dispenser instead. It’d probably been there since the stone age, dented in several places and the printed-on labels now sporadic adhesive freckles.

As it turned out, the water dispenser was metal and therefore reflected Atsumu’s face anyway. Doomed from the start.

Flicking the cold tap, Atsumu wordlessly uncapped his bottle and placed it on the grate, waving it around under the sensor until it finally registered his presence. Sakusa felt an attentive twitch tighten over his face, prickly against his skin until he returned it with a raised eyebrow.

In return, Atsumu merely smiled. Nowhere near blinding, not expectable, but weirdly neat, cocky and perfectly contented as though he were a beloved hobby through which the minutes danced. Sakusa felt like he’d been eased into a petri dish, held still and pliant under the deliberately thoughtless stare of a wonder he was beginning to understand less and less.

“Do I have something on my face?” Keen to avoid shooting himself in the foot so early, Sakusa shoved his water bottle on top of the grate, just barely slow enough to give Atsumu time to move his own out the way. A fortune, too, because their hands had nearly touched, and Sakusa had apparently since regressed to an adolescent who still freaked out about that kind of thing.

Too quickly, Atsumu twisted the cap onto his bottle and nudged Sakusa’s more securely under the tap, “Yeah, ya got a spot.”

“I do not.”

“Soundin’ awful confident for a guy who can’t see his own face.” As if it didn’t defeat the purpose of coming out here to begin with, Atsumu knocked back a good quarter of his water in one fell swoop, the bottle spraying a retaliatory gust of it over his jaw. The water rounded out his cheeks as though carved. He looked a bit like a chipmunk, “Oh yeah, can ya show me how those pore strip thingies work later? I saw ‘em in the cupboard this morning.”

“We’ll do them over the weekend.”

“I’ll handle dinner if ya say yes?”

Sakusa hoped the expression on his face looked thoroughly unimpressed, “You were handling dinner anyway. It’s your turn.” He rolled his shoulders back, a bow in his chest tugging with a relent he hated the pleasure of, “Don’t fall asleep again and I might consider it.”

“Oh, come on! That was the first-”

“Third.”

“-time! I missed the movie and everything.” Atsumu whined. Sakusa dug his nails into his arms, self-control eroding to a blinking thinness, “We gotta watch it again now.”

“What are you even complaining for? You’ve seen it so many times I’m surprised you can’t recite it.”

In truth, he’d watch anything with Atsumu if he asked. Even if it was verifiably the worst piece of cinema ever put to film, just to admire his every reaction and how it decorated his face. In gold leaf, or copper, or paint, striped with the curves of his laughter or fear or scrunched so sweetly, broken by the brightening amusement of his voice.

But Atsumu didn’t need to know that, and Sakusa wasn’t planning on letting him. Partially because the idea sounded sickeningly soppy, and partially because he enjoyed the thought far too much for him to have realistically passed it off as casual conversation

“What, ya sayin’ I can’t?”

“I didn’t say anything. If anyone’s implying it, it’s you.” Once again, Sakusa shrugged. He was beginning to suspect being within a five-metre radius of this infuriating man was enough to make his brain totally void of how to do anything else. The idea of being reduced to as much nearly made him unjustifiably angry. The absolute state of him, these days, “You’re welcome to prove it if you like, I don’t care.” He said, caring very much.

In the nebulous flame of its undertones, something in Atsumu’s face shifted, quickly filled in with a self-assuredness he knew how to better express, “So yer gonna show me how to do ‘em, then?”

“Fine.” Nudging open the door with his heel, Sakusa wondered if he’d need an extra contingency or two to deal with how much less attention from here onwards he’d be able to devote to anything that wasn’t Atsumu’s face. Or how good it’d look slathered in pricy aloe vera, or with the slight button of the end of his nose accentuated by the bandage of a pore strip. Or in his hoodie, fresh faced with borrowed chapstick on his lips. Or maybe he should stop standing in the closing doorway like a weirdo and follow him through to the court. Yeah. That was a shout.

Whatever. It was fine. Probably nothing he couldn’t handle.

As it turned out, Sakusa was a moron for ever assuming the feelings gradually unravelling his life would’ve gotten any more manageable with time. No, if anything, the task was growing more herculean by the day, to the point he was almost considering letting the cat out of the bag just to save himself the trouble. They seemed to clutter the space around his lungs in a perpetual blizzard of affection, earthquakes trilling up his larynx in tremors that ruptured his throat in tectonics. That, or he’d developed arrythmia.

It'd been over a week now, and not a thought had passed through Sakusa’s head sans Atsumu’s outsized presence in triple that time. Pieces of him seemed to have stuck themselves all at once to every aspect peppering his life, the flicks of his hair in the clouds and eyeshine in the soap as it slipped along his hands and down a hooded drain. He’d start seeing him in his own moles if he wasn’t careful, or maybe if he squinted at his own reflection too hard it’d warp into yellow hair.

It wasn’t all awful, he supposed. The only place he truly suffered for it was training. Which would’ve been completely fine if it wasn’t his very real job that he was in no position to be replacing anytime soon. Especially for something this objectively stupid.

“We’re doin’ facemasks, right?” Atsumu’s rocky voice chirped from the doorway, expectancy gleaming in the creases where he hovered between the handle and frame. Evening had begun to sleep atop the skyline, still-blank bulbs of lamplight fragmenting the darkened kitchen into cloudy silhouettes rippled against the tiles. A pool of light had collected by his feet, golden yellow branching to leaves at his jaw and the edges of his irises, dripping down one side of his lip like nectar.

At the sink, Sakusa rolled the final plate into the drying rack and tugged off his rubber gloves with a grimace. They clung to his fingers far too tightly, and he wondered momentarily if necessary evils really needed to insist on being that evil, “We do facemasks on Mondays,” He flicked his chin to the calendar on the wall that had been virtually untouched since purchase, “It’s Wednesday.”

“Yeah, but we missed Monday.” A muted thump rang out as Atsumu crossed his legs over to lean against the wall, and though Sakusa wasn’t looking, the goading tone of it was more than enough to know his own will would likely give out far before Atsumu’s, “And we gotta do ‘em once a week, right?”

“Mhm.” A tiny part of him was tempted to lie. Just say he did one yesterday, dodge the question, hey presto, he’d live another day yet. Any more near misses in their frankly too-small bathroom would’ve utterly disintegrated the remainder of his sense. Not that he had much of it left to lose at this point.

Even so, its theory ached like a sweet tooth, and Sakusa was a selfish, indulgent kind of man, “If you want. I don’t care.” He said, teeth clamped against the inside of his cheek as Atsumu’s dark eyes once again bored holes through his tongue, “Do we have to watch that movie again?”

“I mean, if ya wanna. ‘Cause we actually got time today. Yer pickin’, though, if we ain't, ‘cause I did last time.” If Atsumu was attempting to hide his enthusiasm, he was doing a poor job of it, landing on some kind of facial expression that read belligerently half-assed. He punctuated it with a shrug of his shoulders, glancing sidelong into the corridor. Sakusa was probably just kidding himself in thinking it looked like he was making a deliberate effort not to meet his eyes, “Ya are doing one with me, right?”

In a moment of weakness, Sakusa broke his gaze from the towel he was vigorously drying his hands with and snapped it towards Atsumu’s face, watching as he cracked his neck. The sunlight previously dormant at the base of each eye bloomed a wavering tapestry in rose buds across his face, and Sakusa had to remind himself to not let his knees buckle.

“You’re not doing one by yourself,” He hoped the words didn’t come out as choked as they felt, “You’ll leave it on all night because you’ll lose track of time and then you’ll break out.”

Hooded eyes crinkled at the corners with mirth, mouth shaping into an indignant ‘O’, “God, have a ‘lil faith in me, would ya?”

Sakusa shook his hands out, turning to close the window to hide the twitch threatening his lips, “No.”

An obnoxious laugh rang from the doorway as Sakusa caught the ghost of his own expression lingering in the window, a relaxation he hadn’t caught on himself in years sanding his craggily imperfections, and his heart stuttered like the rain dripping down the glass outside. Atsumu’s huffing reflection peeled off the paint’s textured walls and vanished into the calculated shadow of the doorframe. His voice oscillated in waves, rumbling his image like heat, and Sakusa felt himself fall like the breath being punched from his lungs.

“Yeah, whatever, I know what I’m talkin’ about, I’ll show ya! Pick a movie or somethin’!”

He vanished for all of a second before his fingertips reappeared and his head came swinging back around the doorframe, face uncreased and hair floppy as it batted under his eyes, “Which ones are we using?” His voice fluttered out in a sing-song melody, skipping through the phrase’s curling octaves, and Sakusa felt himself love like a moon pulling the ocean’s tides, “Which facemasks, I mean.”

“Whichever you want.”

“M’kay, but what would you pick?”

“The pink ones.”

“Gotcha!”

Then, Atsumu’s shape faded into the grey light of the corridor, his footsteps and voice and the sunlit crosshatch staining his face trailing in the blue shadow of his heels, and Sakusa felt himself fall in love like leaving.

He wanted to kiss him breathless. He wanted to stitch his presence into his bones, wrapping his arms around his waist and breathing in his musky cologne with his nose against his neck. He wanted to trail his fingers along his jaw and steal his words from his tongue, swallowing each thought between gasps. He wanted to be as selfish as he truly was, enough that he would disgust himself with the weight of his own desires until they corroded him entirely. And stood in a lake of red dusk in the kitchen, cowardice and indecision and a sting he couldn’t name rooting his legs to the spot, he wanted Atsumu to be just as selfish as him.

Sakusa didn’t want to fall in love with Atsumu. But he did, because anything else would’ve been too easy a life. There was only so much advantage he could take from his silver platter, but when it came to Atsumu, he wanted it earned. He wanted to steal every ounce of Atsumu’s attention, over and over and over until he ran out of focus to lend.  

Instead of doing any of that, Sakusa unpicked his feet from the floor and drifted to the living room, the spring of sunlight bubbling beneath him ending an inch from the threshold and leaving nothing but the dim glare of the TV screen. It flickered back to life as he toggled the remote, abrasive white involuntarily squinting his eyes and blinking until his sight halfway adjusted. The remote felt heavier than it should’ve done in his hands, weighted with the grim abstraction of twitching battery acid.

The rounded rectangle of the Youtube logo burst into frame before fading into the recommendation screen, and a glance was all it took to confirm that this was Atsumu’s profile. Firstly, because Sakusa had never actually logged onto the TV. Secondly, because the account was helpfully labelled ‘Atsumu Miya’, which was shockingly not Sakusa’s name. Go figure.

Assorted clips of pro volleyball, a non-zero number of them being specifically of the MSBY Black Jackals because Atsumu would sooner die than not monitor his own performance. A video titled ‘Top Ten Scariest Japanese Urban Legends’ in the top right corner, something about squids. An essay in the quadruple digits about a game Atsumu had probably never played, and a clip from a daytime show he could vaguely recall his mother putting on in the mornings. Another with Osamu in the thumbnail, Onigiri Miya cap and all.

In the bottom left, a video with a young woman in the thumbnail holding a takeaway cup, painted in a charmingly crude mimicry of some Van Gogh painting Sakusa had a bookmark of. White cursive on the screen, all lowercase, the same text dotted around the woman’s assortment of hairclips, punctuated by a pink bow emoji and several million views. The red watch bar stretched about three quarters of the way along the bottom, as if it had been watched more than once.

That alone would have been bizarre, eclectic even for the spanning array of videos that could’ve suggested any great number of things about Atsumu’s personality. Honestly, under any other circumstance, Sakusa would’ve probably ignored it entirely and switched straight over to Netflix, no questions asked.

It was the title that caught his eye. Somehow, it was still in cursive, even on the web player: ‘cute date ideas to do with your crush’.

Sakusa felt his body halt in its every movement, cells floating ambient in his skin. There was no way that was right. It had to have been a glitch or something, maybe a misattribution, if nothing else because the target audience for this kind of video was probably teenage girls and Atsumu, by all accounts, was most certainly not one of those. What the hell was this doing on Atsumu’s home page? And watched, nevertheless.

A foreboding sort of sense prickled at the back of his neck, and it pissed him off. As if there was something he was missing in a sudden fit of stupidity.

Now that it’d gained his attention, it seemed so out of place, even amongst the strange plethora of his affections. In the gloom, the woman’s smile in the thumbnail seemed almost mocking his bafflement, like she’d remembered something funny at a funeral and was trying not to make it obvious.

In spite of himself, Sakusa clicked.

“So, idea number five, guys,” the woman’s chipper voice picked up after Sakusa rewound a little to find which supposed idea Atsumu had left off on. Her hair was tied up in a long, black braid she twirled as she spoke, the ribbons of a pricey-looking bow flicking out on either side of her ears, “is really fun and easy! I remember when… like, before I got together with my boyfriend, we did this all the time, and it’s just a really cute thing you can do together!”

Sakusa felt himself lean forwards, head cocking on an angle.

On the video, the young woman clapped her hands, nails bright blue and specked with daisies, “Just have an evening in! I know it sounds simple, guys, but trust me! Do a facemask, watch a movie, maybe get some snacks if you’re, like, planning to stay up all night or something. It’s pretty cheap too, so if he’s,” she paused, splaying her fingers next to her mouth with a slightly pained expression, “you know, kinda broke, this’ll have the both of you covered. My girlies on a budget don’t have to worry!”

If Sakusa had been the smallest fraction less aware of himself, he likely would’ve stumbled backwards until his calves collided into the kitchen entrance. A strain bugged at his eyes, grip on the remote slackening and tightening in mnemonic sequence as it threatened to go clattering to the fluffed carpet.

No way. This had to be a coincidence. He had to be overthinking this, surely. Sakusa was not this lucky. Luck, in and of itself, was ridiculous, which he’d admit to being an ironic way of thinking for a guy with so many rituals. Perhaps that was why it’d never really been on his side.

Against his better judgement, he clicked off of the video and onto the search bar, waiting as the list of past queries unfurled itself on the backdrop like a scroll. The remote finally slipped from between his fingers and nestled between the pillows’ cream fibres, his heart battering like timpanis on tremolo against his chest, impulse zipping through every vein in his body until his nails threatened to lift off their beds.

Earliest result: ‘skincare for dummies’.

The results before that: ‘how to ask somebody out’, ‘how to make a boy like you back’, ‘how to figure out if your crush likes you back’. Then, even closer to the top: ‘things to do with your crush’, ‘date ideas’, ‘do both people need to know it’s a date for it to be a date?’

The most recent result: ‘how to make someone fall in love with you’.

Sakusa’s first thought was that Atsumu was the worst, most irritating, most terrible-at-scheming person he had ever met. The second materialised as a string of unintelligible mumbles, the sensation of his face cracking into a crunched porcelain mask as his limbs heated as though fire had been set in the tension between each muscle. Every restraint he’d built up screeched into dust like horns to the walls of a labyrinth, something caged and unrestrained rumbling in its depths, warm and cold and misted like liminality.

And the third, once more, did not come until later.

Sakusa’s feet muttered against the carpet, then tiles, hand numb as his fingers splayed on the bathroom door, the handle’s dense thud against the wall only reaching his ears minutes down the line. Two pastel packets in his hands, Atsumu spun around, face as open as a novel with surprise grafting the spine of his mouth, stare skimming every inch of his face and not a thought looming behind it.

In his mind, Sakusa didn’t know what he might’ve looked like right now. And honestly, he didn’t care.

“Omi? Have ya-”

Sakusa planted his hands onto Atsumu’s shoulders, pushed him back into the wall, and kissed him.

Not hard, or at least not hard enough to frighten him once he remembered himself, experimentally moving his lips slow in the seconds it took Atsumu’s shocked squeak to dissipate into the tiles. He slipped into relaxed murmurs against him, mouth twirling upwards at the corners and lashes flickering his cheeks. Thoughtlessly, Sakusa trailed his hands as gently as he could think to Atsumu’s hips and felt nails tapping up his back, fingers clenched like claws carving through his shoulder blades.

He tried to quell the intoxicating impulse that’d drawn him here from overtaking him entirely, at first, control launched thoroughly out the window as a pleased little noise slipped sweetly into his mouth. The packets slid down his back, and somewhere far away he could make out the sound of their contents splattering all over the floor, a mess of ruby specked blue and green. For the first time in his life, he couldn’t have cared less.

How Sakusa hadn’t gone completely insane before was a mystery to him now. How he wasn’t going insane at this very moment in time was too.

In hindsight, it seemed like nothing at all now, a weak cluster of impulse that’d only held such tipsy influence over his mind because he’d let them. Thoughts shattering at the conception in tiny supernovas, bursting swollen at the syllables, and the sensation stung uncontrollable and delicious and insidious as it clamped around his mind.

He flicked his tongue along Atsumu’s bottom lip, slipping it into his mouth the second he was allowed and digging his nails harder into his hips, rewarded with another sound that soared to his foggy head like wine. A similar warmth nicked against the roof of his mouth and he forced himself to presence just long enough to ensure his legs didn’t buckle like they should’ve, hands loosening to trail back up Atsumu’s shoulders, thumbs hot and pressed into the muscle.

His mouth softened in a hazed moment of weakness, spine arched backwards like hypnotism as Atsumu deepened the kiss even further and slipped hands to the small of Sakusa’s back, fingertips scraping at his skin so rough enamel trembled in the aftershocks. A noise fell from his throat, unbidden and no longer within his power to restrain as dwindling thoughts stuttered between rescinding control or lapping it back into his mouth.

He felt alight in the best possible way, sweet flame licking around sugar and turning his bones to a simmering cane, caramelized mind melted and kissed by the sun as the back of his head collided with the wall and clung there. Briefly, Atsumu’s fingers dipped into his hair, and he pushed their lips closer as Atsumu at last pulled away.

Eyes opening in shutters, Atsumu stared as though the feel of his own body was now unfamiliar, eyes wide and flattened in their glossiness and largely glazed over and words throaty and breathless, “Wha’ was that?” He shifted as Sakusa, thoughtless, grabbed him softly by the chin, leaning into his chest as though to dive between his ribs, “Explain yerself.”

“Be my boyfriend.” The words slurred from Sakusa’s mouth, lungs heavy as they struggled to fill themselves with anything other than helpless, buzzing delirium, “Don’t you dare tell me I misread this, or so help me I’m moving out.”

“What.” Atsumu repeated, a mindless attempt to blink himself back into awareness Sakusa couldn’t help but find adorable, “There weren’t nothin’ to misread. Yer- Ya kissed me.”

“No, really?” It came out a little harsher than Sakusa had meant it, but any kinder and he might have combusted amidst the terror of hitting the point of no return, “I kissed you.”

“Ya kissed me.” He sounded a touch more like himself now, “Oh my god, ya kissed me.”

“Atsumu,” It took a conscious effort for Sakusa to level his own breathing, staring him down as though his heart wasn’t threatening to leap out of his throat and right into Atsumu’s flabbergasted face, “Answer the question.”

“What question?”

Thoughtless, Atsumu leaned in, and Sakusa kissed him again. A brief press he let linger, savouring the taste of Atsumu’s strawberry balm. He licked quick along Atsumu’s bottom lip, trying not to revel in it too much as he shivered beneath his palms, “Be my boyfriend.”

“That’s not a question?”

“Atsumu.”

Unsubtly, Atsumu swallowed, tipping his head forwards to stare up through his lashes. His breathing spotted around Sakusa’s face, unsteady and heady and grinning like whiskey, “Only if it means you’ll do that again.”

“Do what?”

“Ya know what.” A rigid pout had returned to his face, shapeless around his own words even as they flounced from his mouth, and Sakusa’s heart clenched like a chew toy, “That’s my condition.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Omi-”

“Can I get a demonstration?”

Atsumu paused, eyes lighting with humour as they scrolled to his face. His mouth opened as though to speak, then paused, briefly falling to the splodge of pinkish blue on the bathroom tiles, expression sheepish and drawn like a sketch, “I think we’re gonna need new facemasks.”

A grumble zipped out of Sakusa’s throat, unintentionally, “I have spares.”

“Yer amazing.”

“I know. Take one.”

Gingerly, Atsumu settled his hands back on Sakusa’s hips, carefully trailing up to his waist as though not hearing a word, “Can I kiss ya?”

“Not until you’ve washed your face.”

Sakusa glanced to the twitching expression on Atsumu’s face, and his body no longer felt so alien, hands painted up the lines of his spine and chest in vibrant strokes of clay. Pearl white sparked in his smile, caught on a canine and chalk between the teeth, and once again, Sakusa knew himself to be fighting a losing battle, “C’mon, Omi, please?”

“No.”

“Yer so boring. Ya know that?”

“I don’t know. You tell me.”

“I mean, if ya want me to.” Atsumu said, sporting a truly terrible attempt at a wink. He glanced again to the heinous muddle of colours on the bathroom floor, “I dunno. Depends how long ya can stand to put off yer skincare, though.”

Involuntarily, again, Sakusa snorted, rolling the thought around in his mind like a marble on a halfpipe and resisting the ache as Atsumu’s hands left his skin. He was so selfish, like this, to put his own needs in front of someone else’s imminent health, shifting like a phantom to soothe the lack of pressure on his lips. And that was something Atsumu knew, and he knew that Sakusa was a man more easily persuaded than anyone who didn’t know him any better may assume.

“Sometime this week. If ya’d be so kind.”

And closer, again, Sakusa moved in, lips wet and smooth under the warm hush of the bathroom light as Atsumu’s eyes glinted, sparkling in a victory self-assured he’d seen over and over again, nevertheless as beautiful as the first time he’d caught it. And sexy, of course, but perhaps an attempt at romanticism might make the strangeness of gesture slip into his limbs a little easier. A work in progress, if Atsumu would let him. They could teach each other, perhaps, one clueless individual leading another.

Monday was only a week away, after all. Perhaps the facemasks could wait.