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(0) Day(s) Since The Coffee Table Incident
Osamu, upon hearing the sound of shattering glass, contemplates briefly, in no particular order: The Bahamas. A life with no association to Miya Atsumu. The potential consequences of passport forgery.
The front door swings open and he is pulled out of his thoughts by a bright glare. The bright glare has scruffy orange hair and a megawatt smile.
Hinata Shouyou is mass of energy and nuclear fusion comparable to the sun, except more intense. Though the sun may have a gravitational pull capable of holding the solar system together, Hinata Shouyou has a gravitational pull capable of holding the MSBY Black Jackals household together. In Osamu's opinion, one is a greater feat than the other.
"Osamu-san! You're here!" Shouyou beams. For a moment, Osamu's sense of sight is incapacitated by his megawatt smile. His sense of hearing, however, is not. Osamu hears yelling. Specifically, he hears Atsumu yelling.
Osamu may be twenty-three, but a fight-or-flight reflex developed in the womb is not something easily unlearnt. He forces himself to unclench his jaw and relax his shoulders.
He crosses over the threshold of the Miya-Sakusa-Bokuto-Hinata residence like a metaphorical bear steps into a metaphorical bear trap. Sharp spikes of glass litter the genkan, and the door slams shut behind him. The bear trap metaphor suddenly feels a little less metaphorical now.
Osamu follows the glass like a twisted breadcrumb trail and ends up in the living room. Here, he finds even larger shards of glass, along with four toppled wooden legs that might've, once upon a time, formed the base of a table. A pile of books lay beside the mangled mess.
Speaking of, the mahogany coffee table that Osamu had given Atsumu (and, by extension, the rest of the inhabitants of the Miya-Sakusa-Bokuto-Hinata residence as well) months ago has mysteriously gone missing. Osamu wonders if the two are related.
Osamu looks up from the furniture carcass to find V.League Division 1 Professional Volleyball Players Bokuto Koutarou, Miya Atsumu, and Sakusa Kiyoomi, stood to the side.
"I know it was you, Bokuto." Sakusa says, calmly. Unnervingly calmly. Goosebumps rise from the back of Osamu's neck.
"Me?" Bokuto yells. And repeats. Several times. With varying degrees of outrage, in ascending order. "When 'Tsumu was the one caught at the scene of the crime?"
"No—'s not what happened—I found it at the same time as Shouyou!" Atsumu's sentences are less like sentences and more like jumbled up puzzle pieces of Kansai-ben that Osamu can only fit together into something coherent due to decades of exposure.
For a brief moment, there is silence. Osamu does not find it a respite. Quite the opposite, in fact, because the quiet often allows the processing of thoughts, and Osamu would very much not like to do that.
He fixes his attention on the Philips television by the window. It's on channel five, as it was yesterday, and the day before, and the week before, and the millennia before. A nature documentary on Californian sea lions is being aired. This suggests one of two things: one, the Black Jackals have taken a newfound interest in American marine biology, or two, Bokuto has misplaced the remote yet again.
Underneath the flatscreen is a wooden console. On the console are four custom furbies—a crow, an owl, a fox, and a weasel. Osamu would be creeped out if he weren't already used to Atsumu's furby hoarding problem.
At this point, the silence is broken. Osamu, for once in his life, is thankful that Atsumu opens his mouth.
"Who's ta' say it wasn't Omi? He's wanted this ugly-ass table gone since the day we got it," he says, and Osamu, for the nth time in his life, wants Atsumu to shut the fuck up.
Shouyou chooses this very moment to manifest behind Osamu with a mini broom and dustpan. He treads over the scene of the crime, careful not to get glass bits on his fluffy Snorlax slippers, and begins the clean-up. Guilty preschoolers Bokuto Koutarou, Miya Atsumu, and Sakusa Kiyoomi are stood to the side, watching in silence.
"It's fine," Hinata Shouyou, mother of three, assures them, "we can always get a new one."
Osamu takes one look at Shouyou, at the preschoolers, and contemplates once again, in no particular order: The Bahamas. A life with no association to Miya Atsumu. The potential consequences of passport forgery.
=
(0) Day(s) Since the Establishment of the Miya-Sakusa-Bokuto-Hinata Household
The Miya-Sakusa-Bokuto-Hinata household first came into existence on a fine Sunday afternoon. Except nothing about this particular Sunday should have been fine. The collision of four supergiant stars, both literal and metaphorical, should have enabled a mass extinction on a level never-before-seen in human history. Instead, it culminated in a semi-broken door hinge and an empty living room—save for Osamu's old coffee table, graciously donated after he realised that his bastard of a brother and his new roommates were professional volleyball players, not professional adults. Ergo, they had yet to discover the joys of purchasing any and all essential furniture.
Sakusa stares in disdain at the coffee table that Osamu has just set down in the middle of their living room. Atsumu stares in disdain at Sakusa. Bokuto stares in disdain at the semi-broken door hinge that had been in perfect condition a mere few hours ago, and then at his own bruised elbow, which had also, coincidentally, been in perfect condition a mere few hours ago. (There is, apparently, no correlation between the two. According to trusted sources. See: Bokuto.) Osamu stares in disdain at the general state of things. Shouyou smiles.
"What is that." Sakusa points to the coffee table and makes A Face. He is immediately added to Osamu's mental list of People He Would Like To Punch But Won't Because He Can't Invest In An Onigiri Miya Tokyo Branch If He Loses His Life Savings Due To Charges Of Assault.
And so, Osamu answers calmly, simply, "A coffee table."
Sakusa's still making that face and continues to climb higher and higher on Osamu's list until he reaches second place, right below Atsumu, because Osamu still has standards.
Bokuto squats down and nudges the table with his good arm. It wobbles like a poorly-made onigiri. Shouyou, upon seeing this, lights up and begins digging through a box in the corner of the room, bending so far down that half his body disappears into a blackhole of cardboard. He emerges with a stack of books. They're all in Portuguese, but judging by the collage of health foods printed on the front, Osamu can guess that they're nutrition books.
Shouyou shoves a few underneath the uneven table leg and grins satisfactorily when it remains stable in the face of several slight pushes.
Atsumu takes one look at the colour clash between the greens of Shouyou's books and the browns of the mahogany wood and takes this as a personal offense, because Atsumu, official real estate co-owner of approximately eighteen hours and possessor of zero pieces of furniture, has decided to make interior design his number one priority. Osamu thinks that Atsumu has more pressing things to worry about, such as the fact that his memory is deteriorating at the age of twenty-two.
(Two hours ago, Osamu had been in the midst of checking the day's inventory. His phone had been going off non-stop for the past half an hour. This, in and of itself, was not unusual.
Atsumu had always been a chronic oversharer. Osamu, cursed to share a household with him, had always been an unwilling recipient of said oversharing. He'd thought that once he moved in with Rin, he'd no longer be subject to the mental torture of listening to Atsumu recount, in detail, how he'd accidentally drank expired milk directly out of the carton, and the consequent repercussions of said action.
Unfortunately, Osamu had failed to consider the existence of high speed digital messaging and his brother's inability to leave him the fuck alone. He had, on many occasions, considered the block button, but Atsumu knew his phone password and where he lived, and Osamu was not desperate enough to risk a break-in.
The phone stopped buzzing. Osamu continued taking stock of the bags of rice under the counter, numbers a neat scrawl on the mini-clipboard he purchased not out of necessity but because he thought it'd make him look more professional. Then, the phone started ringing . Osamu dropped his clipboard. Atsumu was either drunk or dead or both, because Atsumu never called.
"What did ya do to him?"
"I did what ta who?" someone who was undeniably Atsumu had said. He did not sound drunk or dead.
Osamu had squinted his eyes in suspicion. "Since when do ya call?"
"I wouldn't have had'ta if you'd read my texts. Where the fuck are ya?"
"It's 8am on a Tuesday, where the fuck else would I be?"
"Yer—" at this, Atsumu had paused. This, in and of itself, was unusual, because when talking to Osamu, a brain-to-mouth filter was something Atsumu had never owned nor used. There had been a faint string of curses from the other end of the line. And then, "So, I may have forgotten to tell you."
A few minutes later, Osamu had handed his mini-clipboard off to Misaki with instructions to manage the store for a few hours, because his idiot brother, for the past month and a half, had forgotten to break the news to him that he was moving into a new apartment.)
Atsumu does not comment out loud on the colour clashing coffee table set-up. He takes a step back, does a dramatic once over of the entire apartment, as if taking it all in for the first time, and looks to Osamu.
"So, whaddya think?" he asks.
Osamu replies, "Looks like shit. Least it matches yer personality," and dodges Atsumu's subsequent headlock attempt.
=
(2) Day(s) Since the Coffee Table Incident
Instead of investing in a new coffee table, the Miya-Sakusa-Bokuto-Hinata household invests in a magnetic fridge whiteboard and a pack of dry erase markers.
Sakusa steps up to the board with his pink dry erase marker and separates it into four neat sections. He slaps a fridge magnet onto each section, each one carrying a chibi design of them in their Black Jackal jerseys. Bokuto had bought them at the Kansai Airport during his trip to Ho Chi Minh a couple months back.
Atsumu leans against the fridge and rests his hand on top of it because he's tall and he can. Upon touching the dust covered surface, Atsumu retracts his hand and wipes it on his pyjama shorts as discreetly as possible. As discreetly as one can get.
"Here's what we know so far," Sakusa starts, as Atsumu diffuses dust particles into the kitchen air, "December 14th, 10am. Miya and Hinata walk into the crime scene." He boops Atsumu and Shouyou's chibi fridge magnet noses with the tip of his marker.
"Miya," Sakusa continues, "lets out an ear-piercing scream, waking Bokuto and me." He bullet points drama queen in Atsumu's section of the board.
"I stepped on a piece of glass!"
"You stepped on a loose cable and thought it was glass."
Atsumu snatches Sakusa's pink marker even though he has his own purple one, just to be dramatic, and writes mean as hell, would not feel remorse or guilt for coffee table murder in Sakusa's section of the whiteboard.
Osamu, who is only semi-invested in this whole fiasco, wets his hands in a bowl of water and instructs Bokuto to do the same. Bokuto shakes the excess moisture off of his hands and decorates Osamu's apron with water splatters resembling the modern, abstract art Sakusa has chosen to decorate the hallways with.
Bokuto has a boyfriend. Osamu does not know who, what, when, where, or why. He is convinced that Bokuto himself does not know either. Then again, Osamu also has a boyfriend, and is equally as clueless as to how it happened, so he supposes it takes one to know one.
Bokuto loves his boyfriend. Bokuto's boyfriend loves onigiri. Osamu also loves onigiri, and happens to know quite a bit about making them, if he does say so himself. So here he is, stuck in the Miya-Sakusa-Bokuto-Hinata kitchen, teacher of onigiri techniques and accidental witness of the collapse of the MSBY Black Jackals household, all over a coffee table that, in hindsight, he shouldn't have brought over in the first place.
Sakusa stares at the pink marker that has made contact with Atsumu's dust-covered hands in disdain. Atsumu stares at Sakusa's general state of existence in—disdain? Or something close to it, Osamu thinks. For once, he isn't sure. He wonders if it's a new emotion on Atsumu entirely, or if he's just not able to read Atsumu as well as he used to. Osamu chooses to believe the former option. He takes the latter option, stuffs it into the loose ball of rice in his hands, and reminds himself to save this specific onigiri for Atsumu.
Shouyou tip-toes like a metaphorical bear into a metaphorical bear trap, green whiteboard marker in hand, between Sakusa and Atsumu. Osamu is surprised that the tuft of orange bed hair that sticks up at the top of Shouyou's head is not immediately razed off by the lazer sharp intensity of whatever fucked up staring contest Sakusa and Atsumu are currently engaged in.
"Atsumu-san probably wouldn't have screamed that loudly upon finding the table if he really was the one who broke it," Shouyou reasons, drawing a cross next to chibi Atsumu. Atsumu sticks his tongue out at Sakusa when he thinks Shouyou isn't looking. Shouyou sees it through the reflection of the fridge handle.
"And," Shouyou rubs his chin thoughtfully, "I don't think Sakusa-san would've been able to sleep peacefully knowing that there was a mess outside." Sakusa does not stick his tongue out at Atsumu—not because he is above doing so, but because he knows that the reflective fridge handle is a thing that exists. He will save sticking his tongue out at Atsumu for a more opportune moment. No one says anything about the fact that Shouyou's thumb has smudged marker ink onto his chin and that he now looks like a dollar store version of the Alder's Hirugami Fukuro.
Osamu half-listens to the ongoing investigation as he demonstrates to Bokuto how to properly shape the onigiri. The coffee table was, after all, his and Rin's before it belonged to the Miya-Sakusa-Bokuto-Hinata household, and even though they've since gotten a new table, there's still some sentimental value in the first piece of furniture they'd ever bought together.
Osamu turns the onigiri over in his hands, moulding it with care and in the same way he would handle a newborn baby. Except Osamu doesn't think it's advisable to be shaping newborns into onigiri.
Bokuto does not handle his onigiri with care. He handles it like a newborn would handle a squeaky rubber duck. The rice is squashed and broken and re-squashed. The sides are uneven. Rice grains stick to the divots between his knuckles and the back of his fingers and underneath his fingernails. He hopes Bokuto's boyfriend will commend him for trying.
"Well, if it's not any of us," Sakusa gestures to the three of them. A metaphorical lightbulb flashes over their heads. Eerily, their heads turn to Bokuto at the same time. It sends chills up Osamu's spine. And they said twins were supposed to be telepathic.
"Bokuto," Atsumu tries. Bokuto is having the time of his life squeezing his onigiri rubber duck, and does not hear him. Atsumu looks to Sakusa, to Shouyou, and proceeds to have an in-depth conversation with the both of them in five seconds of frantic eye contact.
Osamu shoulders past them to get to the fridge, where he deposits the leftover spicy tuna filling. He wedges the container beside a half-opened packet of dried mango, also from Bokuto's trip to Ho Chi Minh. Osamu knows the broken cupboard above the rice cooker is stashed with at least five kilogrammes of the stuff. Bokuto had needed to buy extra luggage space to transport all of it back to Osaka.
As he closes the fridge, Shouyou, Atsumu and Sakusa seem to have come to a conclusion. Satisfied with their discussion, they part ways. The magnetic whiteboard is all that remains. Chibi Bokuto is stuck to the middle of the board, circled with pink, purple and green.
=
(17) Day(s) Since the Establishment of the Miya-Sakusa-Bokuto-Hinata Household
Osamu is a good brother. This is why, weeks after the Miya-Sakusa-Bokuto-Hinata household is officially established, he comes over, at Atsumu's request, to help decorate. Atsumu did not invite Osamu out of a desire for brotherly bonding but instead a desire for Osamu's toolbox—something that the residents of the household, who were formal adults of merely seventeen days and counting, did not yet have. It contained essentials such as a screwdriver and a hammer and an Osamu. An Osamu who knew the basics of assembling IKEA furniture. (One time. He did it one time. With Rin. Rin did all the work. Osamu sat next to him and ate salted caramel ice cream.)
Osamu is a good brother. This is why he does not tear out his brother's piss poor excuse for hair. He refrains from tearing out his own hair, too. In fact, no one's hair is torn out, even as Osamu is forced to listen to Atsumu and Sakusa argue over the optimal placement of the money plant. Just as they did with the television. Just as they did with the furbies.
It has only been seventeen days, but—as always—Atsumu has already managed to make himself a bad influence. See: Sakusa.
The Sakusa of seventeen days ago would have been too busy reorganising his hand sanitiser collection in brand name alphabetical order, or thinking of new ways to inch higher up on Osamu's list of People He Would Like To Punch.
They say the enemy of your enemy is your friend, but Osamu thinks his annoying brother slash enemy and his near equally annoying roommate slash enemy are exceptions to this rule. They are all enemies here. Civility is evidently not a prerequisite to living in the Miya-Sakusa-Bokuto-Hinata household. Osamu commends Shouyou for upholding some semblance of it anyways.
The Sakusa of today is a changed man. The Sakusa of today is cultured. The Sakusa of today came back with six canvas paintings from an upscale art gallery in Minamihorie, 3M Command Strips, and a mission. All of this from seventeen days of exposure to Atsumu's newfound knack for interior design.
Sakusa had put up what Osamu liked to call The Coffee Stain Painting at a prime spot in the living room, right above the left armrest of their floral print sofa. A splatter of brown paint over a blank canvas that the artist claimed was supposed to represent the elusive desire of purity in the modern era, and that Osamu thinks looks like someone spat coffee onto a wall that no one could be assed to clean.
The Coffee Stain Painting had obviously led to an argument fueled by Sakusa and Atsumu's belief in their own superior sense for modern home design. Just as the Vegetable Peeler Painting had. Just as the Loch Ness Monster Painting had.
Osamu sticks a pinky finger into the ear closest to the source of noise. With his other hand, he keeps a rod steady as Shouyou slides curtain rings onto it.
"Thanks again, Osamu-san," Shouyou says. At this point, he has not just solidified himself as Osamu's favourite member of the household—he's taken a shovel to the foundation of Osamu's affection, planted himself in the rubble, and then re-cemented the entire ground.
Osamu gives as polite of a smile as he can manage. The finger shoved up his ear canal ruins the effect.
Once the curtain rings have all been loaded on, Osamu, rod balanced carefully on his shoulder and feet balanced carefully on a stepstool, maneuvers it onto the brackets.
Behind him, he hears Sakusa question Atsumu's gardening expertise. Atsumu questions Sakusa's asshole expertise. Osamu is a good brother. This is why, even with eight kilogrammes worth of woven polyester weighing him down, he shouts, "'Tsumu would know a thing 'er two about assholes, in more ways than one."
The money plant argument is promptly forgotten by Atsumu in lieu of attempting to strangle Osamu with their blackout curtains.
=
(3) Day(s) Since the Coffee Table Incident
In his hurry to leave the chaos that was three-quarters of the Miya-Sakusa-Bokuto-Hinata household ganging up on the remaining quarter, Osamu accidentally leaves his water bottle on the counter space next to the rice cooker.
He comes back the next day and steps over a face-down Bokuto to grab his Nalgene bottle.
Bokuto makes a noise somewhere between a whine and a rubber duck. Osamu spares him a glance. Bokuto's cheek rests against the back of his hand and his eyes are trained on the rubble beside him. The ground is littered with black scraps that are barely a few centimetres in size. Bokuto runs his fingers over the sharp edges of the broken plastic, as if petting an injured crow. His phone rests amid the mess. Osamu only catches a brief glimpse of his lockscreen—two blurry figures, prismatic fireworks against the backdrop of a night sky—before it dims.
Against his better judgement, Osamu asks, "Did your boyfriend like the onigiri?"
The words snap Bokuto out of his trance. His hand pauses, and with great effort, he peels off his sweaty cheek to peer up at Osamu.
Soft is not a word that Osamu of the past—or anyone outside the Black Jackals residence but inside a thirty-seven kilometre radius—would have used to describe Bokuto. That is, until Atsumu made the only adult decision of his life so far to move out of the shitty Black Jackals dormitories and in with three of his fellow teammates, and Osamu had the unfortunate pleasure of learning more about him through sheer proximity.
Bokuto has Himalayan amounts of reckless and raging affection to snowstorm onto anyone and everyone he comes across. This, of course, includes his boyfriend. But there's another quieter fondness that Bokuto saves for him too, when there's less of a crowd and it's more of Bokuto burying his head into the couch cushions after seeing his boyfriend's name in fine print on the first official manga he'd ever worked on. He'd thought Bokuto was overreacting, at first. Then he'd remembered watching Rin play his first ever official EJP match. He'd offered Bokuto a pat on the back. Bokuto had smiled at him, eyes soft.
The frown on Bokuto's face disappears, replaced by that same stupid, soft look. Atsumu's grating voice barges into his head, unbidden. That's what'ya look like with Sunarin, it says.
Fuck off, Osamu replies.
"He loved it," Bokuto yells, even though Osamu is a metre away from him and does not suffer from hearing issues. "D'ya think you could teach me to make other fillings too?"
The corner of Osamu's mouth quirks up. "I'd run outta business if I shared all my trade secrets like that." Bokuto pouts like a kicked puppy. "But maybe," Osamu amends, "if ya stopped by Onigiri Miya some time."
Bokuto beams. He plants a hand on the ground in an attempt to push himself up and accidentally slams it into a shard of plastic. He falls back onto the floor.
"What're those, anyway?" he points to the offending shard that has lodged itself into Bokuto's palm. It didn't sink deep enough to draw blood, so Osamu supposes he'll be fine.
Bokuto pries the plastic out and soothes the wound as he would an injured owl. "I snuck a hidden camera into my mango cupboard because they keep getting stolen. Then I accidently deleted the footage and dropped the camera so now I can't get it back."
Osamu is glad Bokuto is facedown on the floor. Had he seen the look on Osamu's face, it probably would've given him away. (Some time between high school and now, Bokuto had acquired the skill of perception.)
To be fair, he'd learnt about the mango stash from Atsumu. Who'd learnt about it from Shouyou. Who'd learnt about it from Sakusa. Who'd learnt about it during one of his weekly kitchen cleaning sprees. It wasn't well-hidden, really. The cupboard hinge was broken—as all hinges in close contact with Bokuto tend to be—and the door was constantly left ajar.
Besides, Osamu had only stolen from it thrice. Compared to Atsumu's tally of nine and Sakusa's of six—Atsumu had bragged that he was beating Sakusa, Osamu had shaken his head in disapproval and then promptly wondered when the fuck he'd turned into their mom—Osamu was a saint. (Shouyou had stolen from the stash once and felt so bad about it that he vowed to never again.)
"Hm," he says, as if he isn't mentally thanking the gods for letting him escape unscathed, "that's unfortunate."
Bokuto responds with a noise somewhere between a whine and a rubber duck.
=
(53) Day(s) Since the Establishment of the Miya-Sakusa-Bokuto-Hinata Household
The Miya-Suna residence first came into existence on a fine Saturday afternoon. Except nothing about this particular Saturday should have been fine. Osamu had not been given a set of instructions, nor any wikihow articles, on how to grow up and out of his parents' house and into an apartment of his own. Neither did Rin. Osamu thinks his mother had attempted to advise him on the matter at some point, but eventually gave up competing with the Xbox 360 for his attention.
Out of desperation, he had texted Atsumu. Osamu does not consider it his finest moment.
It was 3am, but Atsumu, with the fucked up circadian rhythm of a corsac fox, had been awake anyways. Two minutes later, Osamu was forwarded a screenshot of an article titled How To: Passive Aggressively Convince Your Twin Brother that Quitting Volleyball To Pursue an Onigiri-Adjacent Passion and Leaving You Behind in the Cruel, Harsh World of Professional V.League Sports Was A Bad Idea. Osamu wondered when, between volleyball and more volleyball, Atsumu had picked up photoshop skills.
Atsumu was, of course, being a dramatic bitch. The trip from the Black Jackals dormitory to the Miya-Suna residence was only half an hour by Metro; the distance between the dorm and Onigiri Miya being even less. Atsumu would continue to visit on the weekends and whenever he failed to meet his bi-weekly target of being a certified nuisance, usually under the guise of bringing over takeout for dinner whenever Osamu was too exhausted to cook. Except half the food would be gone by the time the reusable Tupperware reached the Miya-Suna residence, and strangely enough, there would be rice grains stuck to the collar of Atsumu's Godzilla graphic tee. After what remained of the takeout had been emptied into his and Rin's stomachs, the lunch box would be added to Osamu's ever-growing kitchen sink pile, which he swore would grow sentient by the end of the year.
Then, two months ago, Atsumu had decided that he'd had enough of the crusty, sweat-stained walls of his cramped Black Jackals dorm, with its leaky ceilings and lack of air circulation.
Sakusa had put up with the perpetually wet communal bathroom floors for two months, and was currently losing his battle with the washing machine on the third floor. It apparently had a vendetta against Sakusa specifically, as evidenced by every single one of his cable knit sweaters being unraveled by its relentless spin cycle.
Shouyou had joined after returning from Brazil because Atsumu had asked nicely and his mother had said it would be better for him to move in with teammates that could take care of him, even though he had spent years in Brazil and had the greatest repertoire of adult skills out of all of them. These skills included being capable of hand-washing cable knit sweaters and cooking food other than instant ramen.
Bokuto had complained to management about the shitty dorm wifi on fifty-seven different occasions to no avail, and was sick of relying on his data plan to video call his boyfriend every night.
And so the four of them scribbled their signatures onto a lease and traded their paychecks for an apartment in downtown Osaka. An apartment that was even closer to the Miya-Suna residence than the dorm had been, and had made visits between the two apartments a near daily occurrence.
Osamu opens the door. He is greeted with a bag of dried mango to the face. Osamu has an untimely realisation that he and Rin should have picked an apartment further away from the city—one that was preferably inaccessible through any modes of transportation available to Atsumu.
The dried mango pack slides to the ground unceremoniously. Osamu would have rather it stayed on his face as a permanent fixture, just so he wouldn't have to look at Atsumu's face.
It's your face, idiot, Rin's voice echoes in his head. Recently the voices of the people closest to him have decided to settle down in Osamu's head. They've made a home for themselves. Osamu wonders when he'd resigned himself to being their unwilling landlord.
"Asshat," is what his asshat brother says in lieu of a greeting. Atsumu the Asshat shoulders past him and faceplants directly onto the sofa.
"I should have eaten ya in the womb," Osamu tells him, because fighting fire with fire is the only way he's survived this long.
He bends down to pick up the fallen pack of mangoes. Atsumu the Asshat is now spread eagle on the couch.
"This is really comfy." Atsumu buries his face deeper into Osamu's stuffed Oshawott.
Rin walks out of the shower with a maroon sweatshirt on and a towel over his hair. He sees Atsumu. He turns on his heel and walks back into the shower.
Before he disappears behind the safety of frosted glass, Osamu grabs his wrist. Rin peeks out of his war trench of a bathroom door and gives Osamu a look that he deciphers as if you make me deal with it, I will break up with you . They proceed to have an in-depth conversation in five seconds of frantic eye contact—again, who came up with the idea that twins were the telepathic ones—before Osamu drags him out into the living room.
Rin sighs, walks up to Atsumu, and digs his heel into the small of his exposed back.
"Ow, ow, ow, ow, what the fuck, Sunarin!" Atsumu, Professional Preschool League Division 1 Volleyball Player, yelps. He puts eighty kilogrammes of muscle, built over years of training, into use as he whacks Rin's ankles. Rin does not seem the least bit shaken.
Eventually, Atsumu goes limp.
"Is he dead? Thank the gods." Osamu crashes onto the empty space beside Atsumu.
"Asshat," Atsumu mumbles into the sofa, barely comprehensible.
Osamu assesses the damage. Atsumu's vocabulary has condensed into that of an angsty eleven year old tween. He's either heartbroken, or he's lost another custom furby eBay bidding. Instead of his usual Dri Fit and sweatpants, Atsumu is wearing his one and only button-up shirt—the one without pomegranate juice stains on it. Osamu doesn't think it's the latter.
Rin relents his attack on Atsumu's spinal cord. Atsunu flops over to better study the intricacies of Osamu and Rin's popcorn ceiling.
"I bought you mango."
Osamu tears open the packet and takes a bite of sour-sweet heaven.
"Ya stole it from Bokuto."
"And?" Atsumu follows the motion of their ceiling fan like it'll hypnotise him to forget about his problems.
"And this wasn't meant for me, it was meant for yer date." Osamu hovers a mango slice over Atsumu's face. Atsumu shoots up and steals a bite. The mango is left with incisor marks that are reminiscent of the JAWS poster in his and Rin's bedroom—a byproduct of Rin's uncanny obsession with terrible thrillers.
Rin wedges himself between the two of them, Osamu his headrest and Atsumu his footstool.
Osamu feeds a mango to Rin. For a moment, there's silence, and Osamu prays that the ceiling fan has finally taken its course and wiped Atsumu out for good.
Then, "Nothin' went wrong, really. It was nice. She was nice."
But?
"But." Another beat of uncharacteristic silence. "Jus' didn't feel right, y'know? Like I had to be this version of me that wasn't me."
There's something lodged in the base of Osamu's throat. He washes it down with more mango.
"It's okay," Rin tells him, for lack of anything better to say, "some things just don't work out." Atsumu grunts in acknowledgement and defeat.
Osamu leans into Rin's neck. It's an awkward angle but he doesn't care.
"Stop acting like it's the end of the world," Osamu says, "it'll take time for you to find someone who'll put up with all yer bullshit. Be patient for once in yer life, 'Tsumu."
Atsumu hurls the stuffed Oshawatt at Osamu as best he can with an arm still trapped under Rin's thigh.
Rin, as consolation, drops a mango slice into Atsumu's open mouth. Atsumu chokes.
=
(11) Day(s) Since the Coffee Table Incident
"Atsumu, shut the fuck up." Rin peels a rice grain off his onigiri and flicks it towards Atsumu. It lands square on his cheek. Atsumu's mouth does a rendition of a trapeze artist routine, contorting itself into a myriad of different shapes, before settling on affront.
He maintains what Osamu thinks is supposed to be intimidating eye contact with Rin as he swipes the grain off his cheek with the back of his hand. It lands in Sakusa's hair.
Sakusa looks as if he is about to spike an onigiri at Atsumu or Rin or perhaps Osamu. The former two he could possibly understand—though he's not very thrilled at the idea of his boyfriend taking that powerful of a spike to the face. The same spike that had driven the ball clean into EJP's court a few hours ago, taking the final set and declaring the Black Jackals victorious.
What he doesn't get, however, is why Sakusa would want to inflict this brand of bodily harm onto Osamu. He does not think Sakusa knows of the existence of Osamu's mental list of People He Would Like To Punch. Osamu has kept it a very well-guarded secret from everyone except Atsumu—who he in fact does the opposite with, taking every opportunity to remind him of his number one spot.
Osamu figures it's because he is cursed to share a face with Atsumu, and Sakusa is in need of multiple outlets for his resentment.
Osamu is about to suggest an activity that does not involve desecrating his carefully made onigiri with powerful volleyball attacks—activities such as anger management counselling, for example—when Komori laughs at Sakusa's current mental state and chokes on his pork tamago onigiri. Shouyou whacks him on the back. Osamu hears Komori's spine fracture. The rice ball dislodges itself from Komori's windpipe out of respect for Shouyou's display of immense strength.
The table is cluttered with trays of onigiri and various side dishes. Across from him, Bokuto's boyfriend—Akaashi—is on his fifth plate of agedashi tofu. This is a fact that Osamu is still processing.
(Bokuto's boyfriend is indeed real. Theoretically, Osamu had known this.
What he did not know, however, was that Bokuto's Akaashi was the same person as daily-emptier-of-their-spicy-tuna-stock Akaashi. Has-a-penchant-for-agedashi-tofu Akaashi. Loyal-customer-of-Onigiri-Miya Akaashi.
Once Osamu had stopped reeling over the fact that the person who had walked into the store with Bokuto, arms linked, was indeed the same customer he had seen walk in so many times before, he'd blurted out the only thing that came to mind—"Bokuto, I can't fucking believe you've been stealing my business.")
Osamu gives up processing the sight before him. He looks past Akaashi. A woman is sat at the store's main counter. Misaki slides her a plate of onigiri, fresh from the kitchen. The woman gives her a megawatt smile akin to Shouyou's, and Misaki blushes.
Osamu makes a mental note to tease her about it later. He's in the midst of assembling a blackmail material folder to use for future nefarious purposes, such as convincing her to head the Tokyo branch that's been in the works for a while now.
Osamu zooms back into the spectacle occurring at their table of seven.
Atsumu looks ready to fight Rin. Sakusa looks ready to fight Atsumu. Rin has that smug look on his face that he gets whenever he shuts down a nasty spike. Osamu has half a mind to reach into the kitchen and grab a knife to cut the tension with.
Bokuto seems to have a different plan in mind. He takes a hammer to the tension, says, "Komori, you were so cool back there!"
Shouyou nods furiously with a mouth full of karaage. Osamu is concerned. If Shouyou chokes, Osamu doesn't think he could hit his own back hard enough to convince the fried chicken to respectfully dislodge itself from his windpipe.
"Yeah! You'd be at one side of the court, and then bam! You'd be on the ground and the ball would be up!" Shouyou says. For a brief moment, he seems sixteen again. He's got nothing but the stars and the sun and volleyball in his eyes. He's stepping onto court, about to kick Inarizaki's ass.
In reality, Shouyou's twenty-two. He's seen the stars and the sun. There's nothing but volleyball in his eyes now. Today, he stepped onto court and kicked EJP's ass. Osamu thinks he'll kick all of Japan's ass, someday.
Osamu wishes that Shouyou would kick his brother's ass in particular, though. The one who's dropped the intimidation gimmick with Rin and has turned his attention to meticulously picking a single stubborn rice grain from Sakusa's curls.
"Sleep with one eye open tonight." Sakusa attempts a glare. The awkward angle at which his head is currently positioned nullifies the intended effect.
"Stop moving, ya prick. You're shoving it deeper into yer hair."
Sakusa sighs and relents, letting Atsumu manoeuvre him like he's the rat from Ratatouille.
Eventually, Atsumu gets a hold of the offending rice grain. Instead of pulling it out, however, Atsumu pauses. His gaze shifts from the rice grain to Sakusa. Sakusa stares back.
Atsumu's eyes do a rendition of a trapeze artist routine, abandoning all eye contact with Sakusa and instead somersaulting onto the two moles above his eyebrow. Backflipping onto the Black Jackals logo embroidered on the front of Sakusa's track jacket, and then onto the chipped wooden edge of the table. Split-leaping onto Osamu. Atsumu looks like he's just been caught drinking straight out of the milk carton. Osamu connects the dots.
"Miya, if you tell me you fucking lost the rice."
Atsumu is forcibly hauled into a plane of reality in which Sakusa exists.
"I got it, Omi-kun, I got it." He fishes the rice out and yanks on a couple strands for good measure.
Later, after their plates are polished clean and Akaashi has single-handedly finished six servings of agedashi tofu and too many plates of onigiri to count, Osamu and Rin wave them all goodbye at the door of Onigiri Miya. Before Atsumu steps out, Osamu catches him by the shoulder and gives him a look. They proceed to have an in-depth conversation in five seconds of frantic eye contact. Maybe they were right about the twin telepathy thing.
Osamu evaluates his list of People He Would Like To Punch, and wonders what gods are out there cackling. Miya Atsumu, with his birth-given right and life-long commitment to the top spot on Osamu's list, has managed to fall for its recently-proclaimed number two, Sakusa Kiyoomi.
=
(69) Day(s) Since the Establishment of the Miya-Sakusa-Bokuto-Hinata Household
Osamu and his toolbox are back at the Miya-Sakusa-Bokuto-Hinata household, his toolbox's presence more essential than his own. Bokuto has broken another door hinge. This time, it's the bathroom door that has fallen victim to his hazardous elbows. No one in the household has deigned to purchase a thousand yen drill from IKEA.
"Miya, press the fucking button."
"Okay, you know what, I don't have to take this. I work so hard for this fucking family."
"Atsumu-san." Shouyou inches closer, both hands raised in a display of non-aggression.
"Shouyou-kun is the only one in this household that appreciates me." Atsumu punctuates his sentence with a whip of the large 7.2 volt drill in his hand. A reciprocation of Shouyou's display of non-aggression. Starfished out on the floor right next to Atsumu, Osamu does not flinch. Through facetime, Rin sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. Rin is emotionally invested in the door hinge situation. Osamu is not.
"Tsum-tsum, if you want, I can take over," Bokuto offers. On a regular day, the Miya-Sakusa-Bokuto-Hinata household would be worse off having Bokuto handle a power tool of any kind. However, today is not a regular day. Today, Atsumu had woken up and chosen the path of violence, as he occasionally does—once or twice a month, usually every other Saturday. On account of this, Bokuto is a much safer bet. Atsumu, however, will not go down without a fight. Or two. Or twenty.
"Don't you fucking dare."
"Atsumu-san." Shouyou's hands are still raised. His eyes are calm but his jaw is clenched. He has discovered the fight-or-flight reflex that Osamu was forced to learn in the womb.
"Shouyou, I love ya, but I won't hesitate." Hesitate to do what, Osamu thinks.
Bokuto lies down next to Osamu, a sizable distance between him and Osamu's drill-wielding brother. Drill-wielding is generous, though—it's been half an hour and Atsumu has yet to yank out the guts necessary to activate it.
"Got another one of those screwdriver things?" Bokuto asks.
With great effort, Osamu looks away from his boyfriend's pretty—yet pixelated—face. He turns to Bokuto.
"If you're planning on fighting 'Tsumu, give me a heads up. I wanna record it."
Bokuto laughs. It's loud and full of the boisterous energy that he must have inherited from the gods upon birth.
"Not that, I just wanted to fix one of the kitchen cupbo—" Bokuto cuts himself off. The boisterous energy fizzles out like a cosmic brown dwarf.
Osamu does not have the energy to push it. Instead, he flops over onto his back and shifts his phone to give Rin a better view of the action. Because he's a good boyfriend like that. Also because Rin is screen recording and Osamu thinks he could make some good money uploading first-hand footage of the Black Jackals' Miya Atsumu single-handedly knocking out half the team's starting line-up—including himself—with an IKEA FIXA drill.
Sakusa's looking at Atsumu like he's a dirty sponge. Shouyou is a metaphorical bear and the still-unactivated drill in Atsumu's hand is the less-metaphorical bear trap. Atsumu, much like the bathroom door he is attempting to fix, is unhinged.
Shouyou tries one final time. "Atsumu-san."
"What?"
Slowly, so as to avoid causing alarm, Shouyou lowers a hand and points at the wall socket. "It's unplugged."
Atsumu looks down at his own lap, where the drill plug sits. He then turns his head slowly to the left, until the empty power socket is just barely within his peripheral vision. Wordlessly, he sets the drill down and places the unscrewed door hinge neatly next to it. He lowers himself onto the floor. A weight settles on Osamu's ankle as Atsumu rests his head on it.
"You can take over, Shouyou."
"That was anticlimactic. I wanted bloodshed." Rin frowns. Osamu hangs up and chucks his phone at Atsumu's head. Atsumu stays stock still.
Osamu presses two fingers into Atsumu's pulse. "I think you broke him," he says.
"Fucking finally," Sakusa mutters, before retreating into his bedroom to arrange his hand sanitiser collection in brand name alphabetical order.
=
(14) Day(s) Since the Coffee Table Incident
The living room has been cleared. The floral print sofa has been cast aside; the television screen has been obscured with a cleverly draped bedsheet. A Planet Earth episode about sea urchins is being aired. The Miya-Sakusa-Bokuto-Hinata household has yet to find their misplaced TV remote.
In the newly cleared space is Sakusa's old study chair, Shouyou's two kiddy frog chairs, and a half-metre-tall grey step stool. The various mix of furniture is arranged in a circular formation around an empty spot where—two weeks ago—the mahogany coffee table stood.
Atsumu takes a seat on the frog stool. Sakusa sits on the study chair. Bokuto lowers himself onto the fifty-centimetre step stool, knees coming up to his chin. Shouyou takes the remaining frog stool.
"'Samu, get the lights."
Osamu, who only came to steal Atsumu's Häagen-Dazs, rolls his eyes.
"Why would I do that. Get it yourself."
"Ugh." The frog stool grates against the wood flooring of the apartment as Atsumu rises to get the light switch. "You're killing my bad cop vibe," he mutters, shoulder checking Osamu as he kills the lights.
On his way back, Atsumu drags a warm fluorescent lamp to their interrogation set-up and switches it on to illuminate Bokuto's face. Osamu squints for a second as his eyes become accustomed to the new lighting. He offers the tub of salted caramel ice cream to Rin, who's sat cross legged on the kitchen counter.
"We didn't want for it to have to come to this," Sakusa says. Shouyou bites his lip and directs his attention to an ant on the floor.
At this moment, Bokuto, eighty-seven kilogrammes of Professional V.league Athlete, looks oddly reminiscent of a turtle. Like the ones that Osamu used to feed after school in the Inarizaki gardens.
Bokuto blinks. "What?"
Rin violently stabs a spoon into the ice cream tub and scrapes out a spoonful.
"Bokkun." Atsumu leans forward like the bastard cop in a Hong Kong crime drama. Except there's no table for him to slam his fists against in an attempt to look menacing. He tries it nonetheless, slapping his own knees. The fabric of his jeans muffles the sound. He leans too far forward. Instead of being at eye level with Bokuto, Atsumu's now peering up at him. His attempt at menace digs a hole down to the centre of the earth and stays there.
"We know it was you. It's alright. We're not mad. We just want to know what happened." Atsumu has given up on the role of bastard cop and has chosen to adopt Shouyou's role of mother of three.
"Guys. I told you. It wasn't me." Bokuto pouts. He's reverted back to guilty preschooler mode.
Sakusa sighs. "I didn't want it to have to come to this, but you leave us no choice."
"Shouyou. The mango."
Shouyou takes a deep, steadying breath. He stands, walks over to the corner of the living room, and grabs a cardboard box from behind their couch. He sets it in the middle of the pseudo cult-circle they've got going.
" No , no. No no n—" Bokuto makes a dive for the box. Sakusa kicks five kilogrammes worth of dried mango to the side with the heel of his Psyduck house slipper. Osamu thinks he's doing a much better job at this whole bad cop thing than Atsumu is. Osamu shoves another spoonful of salted caramel into his mouth.
"It's time. We've given you weeks to come clean."
"I knew you guys were stealing my mango! You know, I really didn't want to believe that my teammates, my best buddies—"
"Stop changin' the subject, man. Just say ya broke the table so we can call it a day."
Bokuto buries his head in his hands and makes a noise. The one between a whine and a rubber duck. "If I hadn't deleted that goddamn footage," he mumbles to his palm lines.
The ice cream is getting difficult to scoop now that Osamu's nearing the middle of the tub. He puts into use biceps sculpted from years of volleyball and kitchen work and persists.
"Bokuto—" the sound of Shouyou's voice is the last coherent word Osamu grasps before the conversation dissolves into chaos.
Osamu pushes himself up onto the counter with one hand, Häagen-Dazs tub in the other and spoon dangling from his mouth. There's a rice cooker to his right. He rests his head against Rin's shoulder and turns his head to study the cooker intently. As intently as he can with the only light source in the room being the floor lamp that Atsumu is currently blinding Bokuto with.
The mango cupboard is above the rice cooker. Its hinge has yet to be repaired. There's a darker spot at the edge of the door where the paint has flaked off to reveal the scratchy oak underneath. It must have been where Bokuto's camera was taped on.
"Shouyou, you've gotta believe me."
"Oh, don't drag Sho-kun into this."
Osamu's gaze moves from the flaked paint to the cult-circle. The flaked paint where the camera would have been. The constant surveillance camera. The cult-circle where the coffee table would have been.
When did Bokuto put this camera up again?
He turns to Rin. "Hey. Didn't yer dad use to have a security cam. Those tiny ones."
Rin's eyes narrow in the dim of the room. "Yeah?"
Osamu looks at the broken cupboard. At the four Professional V.League Division 1 Volleyball Players currently losing their minds over a broken coffee table and five kilogrammes worth of Vietnamese dried mango. "Think ya'd know how to recover lost footage?"
-
It takes Rin twenty minutes to comb through all of Bokuto's files. In which he finds 90% of the storage space dedicated to photos of Akaashi and the remaining 10% dedicated to Akaashi's tabby cat.
As Rin works, Sakusa nags like he's the one who's assumed the role of mother of three now. In the process, he reinforces his number two spot on Osamu's list of People He Would Like To Punch.
The video finishes loading. Rin sets the phone on the floor and all six of them huddle around the tiny screen like kindergarteners observing a particularly interesting rock.
There's an occupied living room. A yet-to-be-broken coffee table. The residents of the Miya-Sakusa-Bokuto-Hinata household are sprawled out in various positions on their tasteful floral print sofa. Sakusa is curled up at one end of the couch, chin propped up with a sleeve-covered palm, elbow propped up on the left armrest. Bokuto and Shouyou take up most of the real estate, cross-legged and leaning into one another. There's a box of tissues wedged between Bokuto's legs. Atsumu is at the other end of the couch, dozing off in a position reminiscent of a garden snake with broken vertebrae.
His legs dangle over the backrest. His head hangs off the edge of the couch, mouth open and spilling drool onto the wooden floorboard. Osamu isn't surprised. Atsumu sits on sofas like he'd been instructed on proper couch-sitting etiquette solely to defy said customs.
Their attention (sans Atsumu, whose attention is probably out in Tokyo playing in the Japan 2020 Olympics) is on an iPad set up on their late coffee table. Through the tinny speakers, a K-Drama OST plays.
(Osamu thinks he's heard this one before, through the thin plaster of their apartment walls. Rin had kicked Osamu out of their shared bedroom to binge dramas with Atsumu. Five years into their relationship, Rin had decided that Osamu's presence was easily replaceable with his eleven hundred yen Netflix subscription and his eleven hundred yen bootleg version of Osamu.
Later, Rin had walked out of the room and snaked his arms around Osamu's waist as he cooked dinner.
"Oh, so now you come running back to me," Osamu had joked.
Rin sniffled. "They didn't end up together. Love is a hoax."
Osamu killed the heat and set the pan aside. His nape was wet. He turned and pressed a kiss into Rin's temple.
A gag noise. "Seeing y'all all lovey dovey's enough ta suck the romantic outta me."
Osamu carded through Rin's tangled hair with one hand and flipped Atsumu off with the other.)
"Why don't they just tell each other how they feel?" Shouyou dabs his eyes with a damp tissue. Instead of a megawatt smile there are now megawatt tears.
"It's about the pining, the yearning!" Bokuto waves his hands around as if trying to catch the physical embodiment of said pining and yearning in the palm of his hand.
Rin skips ahead in the video feed.
Shouyou and Bokuto are gone now. Shouyou's probably retired to bed and Bokuto's probably retired to a two hour video call with Akaashi. Sakusa’s still watching the drama out of some senseless need to finish what he’d started. Atsumu’s still upside down on the couch. His piss hair—Osamu doesn't care how many bottles of toner Atsumu buys; piss is piss—has soaked into a puddle of his own spit. This isn't what Osamu meant when he told Atsumu to moisturise.
The OST plays yet again. Sakusa stands, rubbing his eyes. He stares at Atsumu in disdain, looking fully ready to leave him in this position for the rest of the night.
Sakusa does not in fact leave Atsumu in this position. Instead, he grabs a couch cushion, gingerly lifts Atsumu's limp head, and shoves the cushion beneath it.
He's making a face and Osamu isn't sure if it's because of the contact between his fingers and Atsumu's sweaty nape or because he'd rather move out and back into the Black Jackals dormitory, with its sentient washing machines and all, than be caught doing something sweet for Miya Atsumu, of all fucking people.
Now Sakusa's staring at him again. Except this time Osamu realises it's less in disdain and instead in something else that Osamu would rather choke on onigiri than put a name to. The point is, Sakusa's looking at Atsumu like he's tolerable. More than tolerable, maybe. Osamu does not know what cleaning supplies Sakusa has ingested, but he is determined to find out.
Sakusa pulls his hand out from underneath the cushion and retreats into the hallway, presumably to his own room. Osamu chances a glance at Atsumu. Atsumu's attention remains fixed on the screen. Osamu thinks he's either in shock or denial or some combination of the two.
Osamu is proven wrong. It is neither shock nor denial that holds Atsumu's attention, but the fact that Sakusa comes back. He steps back into the living room, reaches toward the console to grab the nearest furby—the weasel—and chucks it at Atsumu's head.
"What the fuck?" Atsumu says. The tips of his hair are wet with his own drool.
Sakusa walks back into the hallway. "We can't afford a setter with a broken neck in the middle of the season." Atsumu yells fuck you before checking the furby for any signs of damage.
Osamu looks away from the video feed. Atsumu's mouth is doing that stupid trapeeze routine again. If volleyball doesn't work out, Osamu's sure he could join a circus of some sort.
Sakusa is not looking at Atsumu. Sakusa is not looking at anything, in fact. Sakusa is staring two inches to the left of Bokuto's phone and at an ant on the ground that is carrying some dried mango. He looks as if he is contemplating ways to deal with the sentient washing machine back at the Black Jackals dormitory, which is where he will be moving and forever staying after being caught showing affection to one Miya Atsumu. Said Miya Atsumu is staring at Sakusa—not in disdain, as Osamu has come to realise—but with affection. It's this twisted sort of affection specific to Sakusa. Osamu would like to know what cleaning supplies Atsumu has ingested as well.
Atsumu is now burning a hole through Sakusa's skull with the raw power of ingested cleaning supplies and his own retinas. Sakusa avoids all eye contact with Atsumu with the raw power of the mango-carrying ant on the floor and ingested cleaning supplies as well. They are on the brink of a revelation. Osamu leaves that for the two of them to figure out, and focuses back on the video.
It seems that Rin has fast forwarded the feed again. The living room is now dark, the only light coming from their perpetually-stuck-on-channel-five television. Shouyou emerges from the hallway, yawning. Eyes closed, he navigates his way around the house in a mess of outstretched limbs and stubbed toes.
Eventually, he reaches the kitchen. He grabs the jug right next to the rice cooker and pours water directly onto the kitchen counter. If Sakusa wasn't currently engaged in a fucked up courtship ritual with Atsumu, Osamu's sure he would grimace.
By some miracle, half of the spilled water backflips off of the marble counter and into Shouyou's glass, trapeze artist style. Shouyou grabs the glass and mummy-walks through the living room in much the same tangle of outstretched limbs and stubbed toes.
Except, one particular stubbed toe dislodges a nutrition book from its place under the foot of the coffee table. The edge of the book hangs on for dear life and barely keeps the table steady as Shouyou slips into the hallway. A door opens and closes. One, two seconds later, the book slips out and the wooden leg of Osamu's once-loved coffee table comes crashing down like one of Bokuto's poorly made onigiri. The glass shatters.
All eyes turn to Shouyou. Shouyou looks as though he has just inhaled a glass shard through the screen.
No one says a word. Shouyou is zoned out, eyes on one of his frog stools and mind somewhere in Rio, Brazil. Atsumu checks for signs of life with a frantic wave of his hand. Shouyou's consciousness books an express flight back to Osaka, Japan. He blinks twice, realising where the situation had been left off.
Shouyou's mouth opens and Osamu prepares for dramatic gasps of Sho-kun, how could you, and Hinata, I am very disappointed in you, and of course, Atsumu-san, Bokuto-san, Sakusa-san, Osamu-san, Suna-san, I am so, so sorry, please kick me out, and other such variants.
Before Shouyou can gather the breath to spout apologies for the next hour and a half, Sakusa takes a deep breath and says, "It's fine. We can always get a new one."
In Osamu's mind, Sakusa moves a little bit lower on his list of People He Would Like To Punch.
Shouyou keeps his mouth open and lets out a noise akin to an albatross mating call. At the end of the noise, there is a rising intonation; a questioning tone.
"Yeah," Atsumu says, even though he looks like he's still processing the events of the past five minutes and doesn't really know what he's agreeing with, "'s not that big a deal!"
Bokuto looks like he doesn't know how to feel. On one hand: The multitude of unlawful accusations that have been piled onto him up till this very point. The very real threat that Sakusa could have strangled him in his sleep anytime within the past two weeks because of a crime that he did not commit. On the other hand: Shouyou's puppy dog eyes.
It takes all of three seconds for Bokuto to make his decision. "Don't be so hard on yourself, Shouyou! It was an accident. You wouldn't have known."
All of them have dropped two weeks worth of hostility with one snap of Shouyou's volleyball-spiking fingers. Osamu attempts to locate the shock that he should theoretically be feeling, but he can't. That megawatt smile. That goddamn megawatt smile. After unintentionally tearing the Miya-Sakusa-Bokuto-Hinata household apart, Osamu thinks it's fitting that Shouyou's the one who's pulled it back together.
=
(1) Day(s) Since the Coffee Table Incident Case Closure
Osamu is wrong. Shouyou does not spend the next hour and a half apologising. He spends two. At the one hour mark, Shouyou pauses, and Osamu thinks that perhaps the gods looking down upon them are feeling particularly merciful today.
They are not. Shouyou ends his hour-long spiel of apologies in order to rampage on another hour-long spiel in which he insists on paying for a new coffee table with his own savings, no matter how expensive—any coffee table, Atsumu-san. No, seriously. I will empty my bank account—
The next day, all residents of the Miya-Sakusa-Bokuto-Hinata household, official and non-official—the ones that play professional volleyball, and Osamu—pile into Osamu's Honda Civic and book it to IKEA in search of a new table.
On the way there, Bokuto blasts sappy Chinese love songs. Sakusa rolls his eyes and looks out the passenger window with a hand on the grab handle like he's the angst-filled protagonist of a coming-of-age drama. Shouyou stops running himself dry with apologies to sing along like he's a lovable goofy side character in said coming-of-age drama. Atsumu grabs Osamu's Nalgene water bottle and belts out an off-key rendition of Jay Chou's Love Confession, all while making intense eye contact with Sakusa like the suave love interest in the same coming-of-age drama. None of them speak a word of Chinese.
In the nineteen hours between yesterday's events and today's trip to IKEA, Atsumu and Sakusa seem to have put their volleyball-dedicated neurons to another use—sorting through whatever fucked up courtship ritual they've been performing for the past few months. Osamu knows it was a success because Atsumu had called— called, not texted—him at 2am, bearing details of the romantic sense that, frankly, made Osamu want to throw his phone into expired milk.
They walk into IKEA with a mission. A mission that is promptly rendered futile, as most IKEA-centric missions tend to be, by the hypnotising glow of fluorescent lights and the novelty of Swedish stuffed animals.
Osamu picks up a BLÅHAJ that reminds him of the JAWS poster at home and therefore of Rin. He throws it into the cart.
Atsumu grabs a DJUNGELSKOG and Sakusa wrinkles his nose at him. Do you know how many people have touched that, Sakusa says. Or at least that's what Osamu thinks he would've said, if Atsumu hadn't lunged for him, metre-tall stuffed bear in his arms and that stupid fox-grin on his stupid face.
Again, it's your face, the Rin-esque voice in his head tells him. Osamu thinks he might have to visit an exorcist soon.
Osamu closes his eyes and leans his forehead against the cool metal of the cart handle as Sakusa and Atsumu play ring around the rosie around a dump bin full of plush dinosaurs. Shouyou and Bokuto have ventured off into the kitchen cabinet and appliance section in search of a new door hinge. They have yet to find an IKEA FIXA drill of their own and Osamu doesn't think they ever will. They walked past the power tool section half an hour ago.
The only items in their cart are the blue shark that Osamu has just thrown in, and the one hundred by seventy centimetre IKEA canvas art that Atsumu and Sakusa had argued over for forty minutes. Atsumu had stuck out his tongue at Sakusa. Sakusa, who had finally found his opportune moment, had stuck his right back. Right into Atsumu's mouth. Sakusa Kiyoomi had stuck his tongue into the garbage dump known as Atsumu's mouth. For a few blissful seconds, there had been silence. Osamu's ears had detached themselves from the sides of his head and ascended to an other-worldly plane.
Osamu's eyes, on the other hand, had abandoned their sockets and dived straight to hell. He had been hit with the realisation that this was how Atsumu had felt whenever he did the same with Rin. "Get a room," Osamu had shouted, acutely aware of his own hypocrisy.
Atsumu and Sakusa are still engaged in their twisted game of tag, in which there are no winners. Bokuto and Shouyou are probably busy in the next section, pretending to know the difference between a BESTÅ and a KOMPLEMENT. Osamu's forehead remains against the cool metal of their shopping cart.
His quads begin to ache. He opens his eyes and estimates how long it'll take for his kindergartener brother and his kindergartener boyfriend to tire themselves out. He then remembers the kindergarteners are also Professional V.League Athletes with monster stamina. He should have slept in with Rin.
"I'm breaking up with you," Sakusa says. To that, Atsumu sticks out his tongue yet again. The image of Sakusa shoving his tongue into his brother's garbage dump mouth flashes before him and his fight-or-flight reflex kicks in.
Logically, the germ-ridden brown bear in Atsumu's arms should have served as an adequate deterrent to Sakusa. Then again, Atsumu's entire personality should also have been an adequate deterrent. And yet. Here they were. Osamu was not taking any chances.
Eyes closed, he pushes himself up and walks in Atsumu's general direction, reminiscent of how Shouyou had carelessly navigated their once coffee-table-occupied space. He eventually gets a hold of Atsumu's nose and uses it as a reference point to pinch his earlobe, just like their mother used to whenever she caught Atsumu drinking expired milk straight out of the carton. He drags Atsumu to the next section. Sakusa sighs and follows along with the cart.
-
"'Tsumu, I'm gonna fuckin' kill ya for this one."
Osamu has been thrown into a shopping cart. Osamu is in the warehouse section of IKEA, with its vaulted ceilings and endless shelves of unassembled furniture parts, and he has been thrown into a shopping cart. He has been thrown into a shopping cart, and he is probably going to be thrown into the afterlife soon as well. His fingers grip the metal wire of the cart, knuckles white. Atsumu laughs in a manner that others might term endearing but that Osamu would term demonic. He prepares for a trip to hell.
By some great force of nature and or stunt involving ingested cleaning supplies, Sakusa has been successfully manoeuvred into the cart next to Osamu. There's a fresh bruise on Bokuto's perpetually bruised elbow because Sakusa hadn't gone down without a fight. Shouyou's hair is mussed from where Sakusa had attempted to crush his skull—gently, of course; it's Shouyou, after all.
"On your marks! Get set!" Shouyou shouts. A stray warehouse worker slips his phone out of his pocket and begins filming. Black Jackals' Miya Atsumu and Onigiri Miya founder Miya Osamu wreck local IKEA. He wonders how many views that would garner.
Osamu catches a glimpse of a beaten up coffee table in the discount section of the warehouse. He is belatedly reminded of the one mission that they had walked into IKEA with. For the second time that day, said mission is promptly forgotten, replaced by the infinitely more interesting prospect of desecrating an IKEA.
They'll find the coffee table later. They've still got time.
For now, Osamu presses his sneakers against the front of the cart, steadying himself. A competitive nature developed in the womb isn't easily unlearnt either.
"Losers lug the coffee table to the car!" Bokuto shouts, as Shouyou counts down.
Osamu hears a "Three, two," and then they're off. His head nearly snaps off with the sudden acceleration. Behind them, Sakusa shouts, "Miya, you fucking cheater!"
The cart is noisy and so is Atsumu. The finish line—a corner full of discarded cardboard—takes up more and more of Osamu's field of vision at an alarming rate.
Osamu looks back to see Shouyou and Bokuto and a cart full of Sakusa. They do not seem to control the cart as much as the cart controls them. Atsumu looks eighteen. Osamu blinks and suddenly he's twenty-three. It doesn't really matter, though—eighteen or twenty-three, it's always been the same dead-set determination in his eyes.
At eighteen, Atsumu had been dead-set on kicking the ass of every single high school volleyball team in Japan. At twenty-three, Atsumu is dead set on launching an IKEA shopping cart and its contents—Osamu—into five feet of cardboard. Seasons change, people don't. Or however the saying goes.
In what he thinks are going to be his last moments alive, Osamu contemplates, in no particular order: The Miya-Sakusa-Bokuto-Hinata household. A life with association to Miya Atsumu. The potential consequences of figuring out adulthood, apart and together, as you go along.