Archive of Our Own

Kiyoomi sees the world around him in a tint of greens and greys. He hears it in a way akin to the cracking of knuckles, especially the bone chilling crack of Miya Atsumu’s knuckles.

“Will you stop that already?” Atsumu is sitting at the kitchen counter behind him, stretching and flexing each of the joints in their hands, as Kiyoomi tries to watch a movie in peace.

“C’mon Omi, you know I need to have healthy hands in order to set to ya right?”

Kiyoomi scoffs and adjusts himself in his seat. “Isn’t cracking your knuckles the opposite of taking care of your hands? Doesn’t that cause arthritis or something?”

“Nah, that was debunked a long time ago. Keep up.” Their voice is a million boulders falling off a cliff into the sea of Kiyoomi’s ears.

With one last pop of what he assumes is to be Atsumu’s right pinkie finger, they hop off the barstool and make their way to Kiyoomi’s pantry.

There’s the squeak of his pantry door and a pause before, “You’re out of Toppo,” they say as they grab a bag of dried apples — that Kiyoomi dried himself — off a shelf and promptly rips it open.

Kiyoomi whips his head around to glare at the blond, “And who’s fault is that?”

Atsumu slowly shoves an apple slice into their mouth while making direct eye contact with him. They savor the flavor for a moment before swallowing it down, “...not mine?”

There’s a turn at the corner of their lips; Atsumu knows what they’re doing. Kiyoomi scoffs and pulls up a shopping tab on his phone, turning the screen away so that Atsumu can’t see it — they’ll find out eventually anyways.

Romantic attraction, to Kiyoomi, is like an inside joke. When you’re out of the loop, or weren’t there for the main event, it’s extremely confusing and makes no sense. But with inside jokes, once you get the context, it makes sense. You’re able to laugh about it with your friends and understand it, even feel the ease that comes with the words slipping out of your mouth when you make your own references to the joke at hand.

With romantic feelings though, even if it’s explained to him over and over again, he still doesn’t understand it — can’t feel it. No matter how hard he tries, there will always be a wall of invisible fog standing right in front of him. It’s so close that he could reach out and brush his fingers through it if he tried, yet if he attempts to see it — sense it — he can’t.

There’s a vent that rests just above Kiyoomi’s locker and when he steps under it he cringes from the feeling of residual water cooling onto his skin. As he starts pulling out his things, the rest of the team slowly collects into the room and discussions of their plans tonight rise.

Hinata talks about how he’s seeing his partner, Tobio — a notorious monster generation setter for the Schweiden Adlers, another Division 1 team — for the first time in weeks. It must be hard, Kiyoomi presumes, to have a long distance relationship when you were together everyday for the bulk of your highschool career.

He thinks about Motoya, and how they’ve stuck together for the majority of their lives. How in highschool, Motoya would always pester him even after volleyball practice, swinging by his classes and sitting with him at lunch. How sometimes Kiyoomi will text him just to quell the wistful feeling that starts bubbling in his stomach late at night.

The mention of romantic partners causes a chain reaction and Bokuto has a grin on his face as he talks about calling his lover throughout his afternoon just to hear the other’s ‘dreamy’ voice, and how they’re due for a date night soon.

Meian announces that he’s going on a date with someone new and Atsumu jumps in to talk about their most recent match on Tinder. Apparently, after their date ate her food, she proceeded to start eating off of Atsumu’s plate wordlessly while making direct eye contact with them.

The room erupts into laughter, even Kiyoomi chuckles a bit. Bokuto turns to face him, tugging at the bottom of his shirt to get it settled over his body. “How about you Omi-Kun? Gone on any dates lately?”

His fingers twitch slightly beside his waist, knocking themselves against the cold metal of the locker. He clears his throat before turning back to his locker and grabbing out his shoes. “I don’t see anyone that way.” His tone is indifferent, as if he’s talking about that dish he ate a couple days ago — which was, to be frank, bland as hell — but if you listen closely, you can hear just a hint of insecurity laced delicately into the wave of his voice.

“Oh,” Hinata’s voice warms the tips of his fingers, dethawing them just enough so that they don’t burn as they rub against the leather of his shoes. “That must suck.”

He means well, Kiyoomi knows. It’s probably just as hard for alloromantic people to imagine not feeling romantic attraction as it is for him to imagine feeling it. So the pinprick of annoyance that coats his back is pushed away and he tugs a shoe on.

“No, it really doesn’t.”

Sakusa Kiyoomi is fifteen years old when he meets Miya Atsumu, a nuisance upon the court.

“Omi-kun!” Atsumu’s voice is that of a siren, bursting his eardrums yet slowing him down just enough that Atsumu can catch up.

It’s a practice game — nothing more, nothing less. And yet, Kiyoomi’s team still won, so he allows himself a proud smirk as he stares down at the blonde who’s currently trying to catch a breath.

It’s a nice feeling, the ache in his legs — proof of accomplishment. It’s a victory thrumming through his veins, endurance practice in preparation of winning nationals. He shoves a hand in his pocket as Atsumu begins to stand back up.

“Damn yer long legs, what the hell are ya eating?” Atsumu’s kansai-ben dialect digs at his cartilage, piercing through his earlobes with a shot of gold.

Kiyoomi opens his mouth to quip a short, “apparently something better than whatever you eat,” before a familiar voice echoes through the halls — Miya Osamu, he presumes. “‘Tsumu’s not bothering ya, are they?”

Kiyoomi sighs and shakes his head, “He’s—”

“They’re.” Atsumu interrupts, tense and gnawing on his lip as if he didn’t mean for that to slip out.

Ah, okay.

“Sorry,” he apologizes to Atsumu before turning back to their twin, “They’re fine, I’ll admit — reluctantly.” He doesn’t mention that, as much as the blonde makes his eyes sore, he’s intrigued by them.

“Alright,” Osamu says, handing a water bottle to Atsumu. “The bus leaves in ten minutes. Don’t be late or we’re leavin’ without ya.”

“I’ll be there in a second, tell Kita-san to save me a seat next to him.” Atsumu says, completely seriously. Osamu snorts and Kiyoomi almost wants to laugh too, almost.

“Like hell.” Osamu scoffs and walks away.

Atsumu yells a curse at him before turning back to Kiyoomi, “Just wanted ta say we’ll beat ya next time.”

Kiyoomi looks them over, maroon jacket stretching over their shoulders and cheeks still flushed from exertion, and he smiles. Not a sneer, not a grin, just a small, blithe smile. “Maybe,” he starts while adjusting the bag driving itself into his shoulder, “If you’re good enough.”

Atsumu huffs, “I am.”

Kiyoomi stays silent, the air full of a cold doubt invading both their lungs and seemingly freezing time between them for just a moment. Truth be told, Atsumu is good. Kiyoomi’s not blind, he saw the way Atsumu’s fingers flexed themselves under the ball. He witnessed the calculating look on their face and how their tongue pressed at the edge of their cheeks in focus after each set.

Atsumu is skilled, and Kiyoomi wants to play against them again, so he stays silent — because they will be good. Kiyoomi doesn’t doubt it, they’re only fifteen — both of them will get better. Who knows what will happen then?

It’s Atsumu who speaks again, breaking the quiet. “I will be.” Insistence drips into the air — fighting off the doubt within an instant — and they tighten their grip on the strap of their bag.

Kiyoomi takes a step back, turning to leave. “Then show me.”

—

It’s later that night, when Kiyoomi is laying in bed and too restless to sleep, that he looks up they/them pronouns out of curiosity.

It’s no secret that people use different pronouns than just him and her to Kiyoomi. Some of Motoya’s friends from his collectibles group online use pronouns that vary from what is considered normal.

He’s used to using them, and knows enough to be able to hold a conversation with others and more — but it wouldn’t hurt to educate himself further on the topic, he thinks as closes the tab and starts to type non-binary into the search bar.

Kiyoomi likes to analyze players within the court — learning what makes them tick, but every so often that carries to off the court as well. Bokuto Koutarou, a current second year at Fukurōdani Academy, is a good example of this.

Bokuto, a high-energy threat on the court, is one akin to an owl; an aerial threat swooping in on its chance to victory. To receive the meal of what was once its prey laid at the bottom of its feet — and enjoy it as the surrounding creatures cheer in praise — or maybe it’s fear.

Either way, Bokuto is an elegant yet brutal animal on the court — and Kiyoomi was curious to discover more about him. What made him into the player he is, and will be.

He later learned the player has not one but two older sisters, a taste for Yakiniku, and the inability to spell oddly specific words. All gathered from nights of research when Kiyoomi was too awake to sleep but too tired to do anything but lay in bed and scroll on his phone.

Atsumu is different though. Kiyoomi’s not very curious as to learn about who they are as much as he desires to know how he can respect them. It’s a strange feeling — a practice game of sorts. Watching your soon to be rival sprint around the court as you collect data and learn more about them as a player.

Or maybe he just wants to know more about a potential friend — possibly, but he won’t admit it. He won’t plan something that doesn’t have a root thick enough to guarantee stability — not yet.

It’s a general curiosity, that is all.

Kiyoomi finds that it’s a rabbit hole of sorts. He learns about umbrellas that protect labels from the rainstorms that pass by every so often. He learns about pieces of paper that give meaningless rules on how one should act, and how some people like to tear them up and burn them.

He finds articles about those who identify with two genders, or more — and those who identify with none. There are spectrums of blue and pink — others black and white — and yet there are circles and squares and triangles spread across pages with word counts in the thousands.

Kiyoomi thinks it’s peculiar, how even when you’re trying to describe how you fit outside of society's standards, you still use boxes to contain yourself in an ideal. Thinking outside of the box, some sites say, but just because you turn it into a venn diagram doesn’t get rid of the cardboard stuck to your skin.

After an hour and a half he’s successfully fallen down a rabbit hole, and as cold as his fingers are, he keeps falling — down, down, down.

Eventually, Kiyoomi falls through the bottom of the hole and ends up on the other side — stuck in a wiki page of orientations.

He learns about concepts vaguely similar to gender — but instead of it focusing around your sole being, it’s centered around how others play a factor into the knowledge of yourself.

What were once just words thrown around his locker room with no real regard to those who identify under that label — “He’s so gay.” “I’m straight, obviously.” “You never know, maybe she’s a little bi-curious.” — turn into real stories of people and their lives around the world.

Meaningless labels begin to represent something other than offhand comments and newspaper articles on the latest celebrity to “come out.”

He finds out that there are more than three ways to describe how people know who to flirt with — and that it’s not always as easy as slapping on a label and calling it a day.

That some people don’t even want labels — and others can’t figure it out. Kiyoomi thinks he understands that, if even a little bit.

He has put a lot of thought into the concept of love and crushes, trying to understand who he’s attracted to and what gender he will end up with one day. But, every time he thinks about it he finds that there’s an invisible volleyball net standing in front of him — preventing him from figuring it out.

Maybe he’ll unweave it one day. Maybe he won’t.

And then he comes across the word asexual.

“Asexual (often shortened to ace) refers to someone who experiences little or no sexual attraction.

Asexuality exists on a spectrum, and contains multiple identities including, but not limited to: demisexual, greysexual, aceflux, etc.

See also: aromantic.”

Kiyoomi thinks about agender, a label he read about earlier that night, and how those who are agender experience a lack of gender. He wonders if they’re similar, something akin to cousins possibly. Both lacking something so normalized within society that a lot of people can’t stand the thought of it not being prevalent everywhere.

Before he can think too much about it though, his eyes wander to the last word of the paragraph — aromantic — and he clicks on it. The page takes exactly nineteen seconds to load, before a flag pops up.

“Aromantic (often shortened to aro) is a term that’s typically used to describe someone who experiences little to no romantic attraction.

Aromanticism exists on a spectrum, including identities such as demiromantic and greyromantic, and individual experiences vary from person to person.

See also: asexual.”

In the end, it becomes a word that lies in the back of his mind, stored in a database of labels yet never dusted off — because why would he need to?

It’s simply an obligatory acknowledgement of a label that could never fit him. Crushes are all around him, everyone gets them, and Kiyoomi does too. He should, at least, and he will. He definitely will, he just has to try harder, but it will come.

As he goes to sleep that night, Kiyoomi ponders the possibility of someone identifying with that label — aromantic. He mouths the word and it feels weird on his tongue. It can’t be too common, right? He doesn’t think about it too much before his eyes feel heavy and he falls asleep.

This isn’t working, Kiyoomi decides ten minutes into the date his friends set up for him on an otherwise lovely Sunday afternoon.

It’s a beautiful establishment, and he can attest to its upkeep of the general cleanliness standards. Kiyoomi’s been a regular here for a while — proven by how close he’s become with the owners' young children, who occasionally rest in the front while doing their homework when it’s not too busy.

If he has to go on a date, of course he’s going to pick his comfort spot.

[ 14:00 ] Motoya > Cheer up, it’s just first date jitters!!

He sighs and pushes his phone into his back pocket. Maybe he can ‘accidentally’ spill his drink on his shirt and excuse himself to leave — but then his date could try to help him in the bathroom, and he’s wearing a fairly nice outfit today.

Fuck.

“So,” the girl in front of him perks up in an attempt to spark a conversation. His skin prickles in something more than anxiety, an uncomfortable ache settling in his stomach. “What are you majoring in?”

It’s an easy conversation starter, and if he were just having a casual conversation with the girl it would be different. She seems nice enough, like a friend he would go out with once every two months to grab a coffee and catch up.

But that's the difference here, the setting isn’t just a casual hangout between two new friends. It’s a test to see if there’s something more, one conducted by someone with hope flooding her eyes and the other participating with dread rooted in the flesh of his skin.

“Sports Science, you?”

“Oh, that’s interesting!” She drums her fingers on the edge of the table for a moment before speaking, “Literature.”

Of course. It’s an interesting subject, actually — one that Kiyoomi has expressed interest in multiple times. It’s probably why his friends paired him up with her in the first place.

Honestly, he wanted to say no — and he would have, if there wasn’t a part of him whispering in the back of his mind, yelling at him that this may be the one — maybe he isn’t broken. Maybe she can fix him.

He hums, “And what’s that like?”

She shrugs, “It’s fine— You play volleyball right?” He nods in confirmation while taking a bite of his food.

That was his downfall, really. He should have never joined the university team, if he hadn’t then his teammates wouldn’t have suggested this. They had good intentions, really. They want Kiyoomi to have a happy life, and he appreciates that.

If only they knew that you don’t have to have a romantic partner to enjoy life. That, if anything, the idea of dating makes him more miserable than being single.

“That’s really cool.” Her voice is repulsively saccharine, playing up her personality under a mask of exaggerated appeal.

“It is,” he swallows down his food before continuing. “Do you uh, do anything?”

Obviously she does stuff, idiot.

Luckily, she doesn’t seem to mind, or maybe she just hadn’t noticed. Either way, she starts off on a tangent about how she’s on the speech and debate team at their university and—

Something distressing settles in his stomach as this starts to feel more real. Kiyoomi pulls out his phone.

[ 14:35 ] Sakusa < your grandma’s sick.

He doesn’t give them time to respond before he’s dialing the phone number and excusing himself to ‘answer’ the call.

“The fuck?” Atsumu’s voice blares through the speaker and Kiyoomi shivers.

“Chill, I need you to come pick me up.”

They scoff, “Still doesn’t explain yer text.”

“Shock value,” a car passes by, “and my cover story. You have ten minutes.”

“I hate ya, you know that?”

“Of course, see you soon.”

He hangs up the call before they can get another word in and texts them the address of the restaurant before heading back inside.

—

“Ya owe me one,” Atsumu says later, while driving him back to his dorm.

Kiyoomi glances at them, “And what do I owe you?”

They shrug, “We’ll see. Yer lucky my practice had already ended.”

They would’ve come to get him anyway, but Kiyoomi decides not to point that out. Instead, he opens his bag and pulls out some snacks to try and quell the ache still present in his stomach.

As Kiyoomi grabs a tangerine and begins to dig his fingers into its skin — cuticles dyeing themselves a disgusting orange — he remembers a time when Motoya came over to Kiyoomi’s house after school in their first year of junior high.

The sunlight flowing through Kiyoomi’s window is dust-filled and orange as it shines down on his arm. Motoya is sitting on his bed rambling around their most recent test in class and Kiyoomi is only half listening as he stares at the houses outside.

“– and then Sasaki let me use his pencil and it was the greatest thing in the world! Kimura told me I have a crush on him and I told her that I didn’t but if I’m being honest– are you even listening?”

The window sill is dusty, Kiyoomi notes as he swipes a finger across it before turning to look back at his cousin. “Yeah.”

Motoya looks at him with a mischievous grin growing on his face and Kiyoomi knows he has no other choice than to succumb to the predator as he leans closer to him. “So,” he starts in a fake whisper, “do you like anyone?”

Kiyoomi thinks about it, he thinks about this a lot actually. The momentary pause in conversation isn’t the first time he’s scrunched up his nose in focus and thought about crushes and romance, and it won’t be the last.

The word like is a weird word to describe feelings. Kiyoomi does like people. He likes a lot of people, actually. He likes the obaasan next door that always smiles at him as she waters her flowers. He likes the other kids in his class, especially the girl that sits next to him and always gives him a piece of chocolate candy in the morning.

The candy is good, Kiyoomi likes how it’s wrapped in orange plastic and melts in his mouth like fondue dripping from a fountain — distracting him from the noise surrounding him until the teacher finally starts class and the crowd quiets down.

There’s a boy that sits next to him during lunch. Neither of them talk much, but sometimes Kiyoomi will pick an orange slice out of his lunch and hand it to the other. Kiyoomi thinks he likes him too.

But he doesn’t like anyone in the way Komori talks about liking someone. There’s a certain tilt in his cousin’s voice that says it all, the emotion attached to it that he doesn’t understand.

He contemplates it as he wipes the dust off his fingers and onto his shorts — his mom is going to be mad at him for that, whatever.

Kiyoomi thinks about yesterday, and how he sat and talked with Kiyoshi — the boy who lives next door to him — and Sumiye, the girl who always says goodbye to him after school — while peeling an orange and throwing the bitten slices onto the sidewalk.

He likes being friends with them, but he doesn’t feel his stomach turn while talking to them, or anyone, like how the kids in his class always rant about when talking to someone they like.

He doesn’t have an unnatural affinity towards anyone, nor does he feel a pull at his heart when someone walks by.

He thinks about it and eventually looks back at Motoya. “Not really.”

His cousin huffs a smile, as though he’s hiding a secret feeling unknown to Kiyoomi, before sitting back on his heels. “Well, maybe you will soon. Speaking of, have you seen how Hideki looks at—”

In Kiyoomi’s second year, Iizuna Tsukasa is assigned the role of team captain for Itachiyama Institute — and in turn Kiyoomi pays more attention to him than he did his first year.

Iizuna is a skilled setter, really. Kiyoomi had seen him back when he was in middle school, when Iizuna had held the title of best setter in the Junior Olympic Cup. He’s careful with his sets but carries a ferocity that can only be compared to an untended wildfire once he gets started — and Kiyoomi takes note of this, storing the detail between sticks in a matchbox.

Don’t light the flame unless absolutely needed, some may say.

But ah, Kiyoomi has a history of bringing out a torch when unneeded — and he doesn’t think he’ll stop now.

Iizuna isn’t only a good setter though — he’s a surprisingly good captain. Carrying the team with a gentleness that burrows a feeling of guilt in your stomach when you know you haven’t been working as hard as you could — haven’t been pushing yourself to the cliff of success. And what a deadly trait this can be, especially when matched with his keen eyes and inhuman observational skills.

In Kiyoomi’s first year, he injured his shoulder. Nothing too severe, but it hurt enough that whenever he went to hit a spike or serve, his rotator cuff would retaliate back at him — sending flares of throbbing pain to the tip of his shoulder out of irritation.

It was painful, yes, but not enough to make Kiyoomi immediately concerned for his health. If it isn’t a career threatening injury, he’d rather not leave that day’s practice half complete.

And so, he vowed to ignore the flame licking his skin (the best he could, at the very least) and continue practicing as normal. There was only an hour and a half left of practice, anyways.

In the end, he didn’t make it to the end of practice.

After a particularly strong serve, Kiyoomi winced slightly from the recoil hitting his shoulder — and apparently that wasn’t the first time he’d let the mask slip that day, because Iizuna had apparently taken note of his condition.

Iizuna Tsukasa, a man oddly resembling a chameleon in his adaptability, pulled Kiyoomi aside during a water break and told him to take the day off and rest — and if Kiyoomi refused, he would tell their coach to make him.

It was strange, Kiyoomi wasn’t expecting Iizuna of all people to notice. Usually, Motoya was the one who picked up on things like these, so seeing his teammate notice such an internal detail about him was oddly chilling.

(He chalked it down to Iizuna’s wish of winning nationals — and how he must’ve been concerned that if Kiyoomi overexerted himself, the team would lose a player, at least temporarily.)

(Later in his life, Kiyoomi realized that may not have been the case.)

In the end, Kiyoomi didn’t want to lose his grip on the sense of control he was grasping at his side, and made the coach aware of his situation — opting to sit out for the rest of that day's practice.

An hour later, Iizuna had run up to him with an ice pack and ibuprofen in hand — waving it off with an explanation that he always carries them in his backpack in case someone gets hurt — and telling Kiyoomi to get some rest that night.

It was oddly nice, really, and Kiyoomi had walked out of the gym with a smile on his face and Motoya poking at the ice pack — berating him for not speaking up sooner.

Kiyoomi can only imagine what would happen now that Iizuna is captain.

After knowing him as long as he has, Kiyoomi knows that Iizuna is a hot topic when it comes to heated whispers and hesitant approaches.

Kiyoomi isn’t oblivious, either — much to the doubt of Motoya. He knows that Iizuna is diligent, conscientious, and admittedly fairly attractive.

Iizuna is the object of affection for half of the population of Itachiyama, even including some of the ‘straight’ guys on their team.

Because of this, it’s well known that getting at least a puppy-crush on the man is inevitable — he hears his teammates talking about it constantly.

Not to mention the fact that he has a kind smile, and makes an effort to be considerate and accommodating to Kiyoomi’s oddities. That should make him feel something different than simple admiration, right?

If Kiyoomi were to have a crush on anyone, it would be Iizuna. So why doesn’t he?

Why hasn’t he had a crush on anyone for that matter? He’s seventeen years old, he should’ve had one by now. Maybe he’s late, maybe it takes time, maybe he’ll eventually meet someone. It’s what he’s desperately told himself for so long.

Kiyoomi thinks about Atsumu. Atsumu who is abrupt and rude and the complete opposite of him. Atsumu who, if the romantic saying was true, would be the embodiment of the phrase opposites attract.

And in a way, they are — just not in the form expected.

Atsumu is loud in the way that it makes Kiyoomi happy to listen as they go off in a tangent about their brothers' endless pining for their friend.

They’re rude in regards to the way that Kiyoomi silently apologizes to everyone Atsumu has met before laughing under his breath.

Atsumu is abrupt because they text him at 4:17 in the morning with ‘how many chickens would it take to kill an elephant?’ and Kiyoomi has to take a minute to gain his composure.

In any other universe, his feelings might be that of a crush. But in this one, he likes being Atsumu’s friend; and imagining anything romantic with them is hard and doesn’t feel right. Trying to picture it makes his stomach drop and face scrunch up in uneasiness.

It’s not a stubbornness against his feelings, it’s not a prelude to future relationships — there will never be a romantic relationship between them.

He likes it that way.

Is there something wrong with him, then?

Sakusa Kiyoomi is eighteen, freshly moved into college, and sitting in his parents living room while visiting for the weekend when the T.V clicks off and the room is silent.

It’s silent when it hits him. There isn’t the echo of a volleyball slamming onto a floor, there isn’t even a small whimper that escapes his mouth. It’s a quiet death; there aren’t screams or shouts or even tears — only shallow, sleep ridden breaths dissipating into the air as though they had never been there to begin with.

And in a way, they weren’t.

He chuckles thickly, the death of an ideation that felt so possible to him occurs at six in the afternoon. On a day that’s just a tad too hot under the protection of his blankets.

The realization that he will never have what he’s been set up to feel since childhood sears his lungs and he has to take a deep breath — in, in, in; never out — in order to not fall apart then and there.

A sense of shame sinks into his stomach, it weighs him down at the bottom of his abdomen and makes him nauseous. Grief is strange like that; it’s not always an expected five steps — not always as simple as crying for something you don’t have anymore. Sometimes it’s mourning the loss of an intangible thing — releasing the thread of hope you clutched so tightly to your body.

It’s an unusual feeling, an impending doom looming over yourself constantly before you finally stop trying to fight it, giving up and letting it crash down on you. Letting it take over yourself, acceptance an inch away yet not quite there yet.

Kiyoomi closes his eyes and breathes in. It’s an eerie atmosphere in his mind right now, too calm and too at peace. He sinks into the depths of a silent ocean flooded by his thoughts.

He will never feel the way his friends do when they talk about their significant others. He will never bring home someone and declare that he has romantic feelings for them to his parents. He will never experience the way a hand feels on his own in those rose-tinted glasses books always talk about.

He won’t love, not in the way expected of him at least.

It’s complex in the same way that it's simple:

A light ‘oh, this is never going to happen’ reforms Kiyoomi’s world — changes the entirety of the future he has planned out in his mind. Because in the grand scheme of things, romance is a minimal part of life, but for him it was the only thing missing.

The highest goal in life — to fall in love; a thing discussed constantly by everyone about how pleasant and feasible it is — isn’t so achievable anymore. It’s now the only thing Kiyoomi can’t get, no matter how hard he tries.

And because he just kept waiting and waiting for it to happen, it hurts more. The longer he waited for the alien feelings to become familiar, the more attached he got to the idea of it. The idea of finally feeling normal.

His string of hope is cut sickeningly, frayed edges stick out from the two ends and hopelessly stubborn threads still try to hang on.

Kiyoomi doesn’t let things stop halfway. He’s not a quitter; he never gives up. He doesn’t let things fall out of his reach — he always hits the ball perfectly, never letting it drop. But, he supposes, this time he has to.

It is with great disgust that I inform you; on a Thursday afternoon, at 2:45pm, Sakusa Kiyoomi succumbs to his fate — he gives up and gives in.

In The Symposium, written by Plato, it is said that humans were once embodied in pairs of two. That three genders — male, female, and androgynous — were attributed with two heads, four hands, four legs, and more.

Of those genders, those who were androgynous descended from the moon, males crashed from the sun, and females from the earth.

Three vigorous genders threatened the gods, and yet they didn’t destroy the humans. Instead, Zeus split them in two, creating oddities from evenness.

A punishment of solitude — for some, quite possibly worse than immediate extinction.

And thus, after being torn apart, humans were fated to a life of longing. For the body that compliments theirs, for the heart that beats just as their own.

For their soulmate, some may say.

And when we find them, we are expected to be met with ecstasy. To be filled with affection and love so big that when we wrap our arms around them, we feel complete — not wanting anything else but to stay together.

Kiyoomi can’t help but wonder, is he too powerful for love? Is he a demi-god among humans for a reason, or was he just forgotten by Zeus in the process?

Was he left abandoned to be nothing but a ghost, fading through life with no real purpose? No scars on his chest to mark the spot for another, no longing to return to his original state?

“Love is simply the name for the desire and pursuit of the whole.” — Aristophanes, pg. 29/line 192e

If he doesn’t desire love, does that mean he will never be whole?

If, he starts, I’m unable to love the way I should, am I bound to be unloveable too?

He starts to resent it a bit.

Sometimes — not always, but often enough that it holds significance — he gets annoyed by it.

He wants to yell at everyone to just shut up, stop it, why am I the only one who doesn’t get your stupid little joke?

Sakusa Kiyoomi doesn’t like missing out on things, this included. He almost feels left behind, watching everyone progress in their lives normally.

Why do they get to live their fulfilling stories, wonder-struck narratives of romances both good and bad, while he’s stuck here watching as a couple holding hands walks by and all he feels is numb?

Why does everyone else get to long for a touch they might never feel, while he actively wants to run away from it?

Is craving something you won’t get for a while better than not wanting it at all? Is longing for a soulmate less painful than acknowledging that you don’t want one?

His older brother, Satoshi, texts him on occasion — teasing him about when he’ll finally settle down with someone.

It’s okay, Kiyoomi wants to think, he doesn’t know.

He only wants you to be happy.

But why does romance have to be the average key to happiness, the normal one? Why does he have to tell people he doesn’t want something for them to stop trying to get him to consume it?

Why, even if he tries to tell someone, won’t they believe him?

Is he that untrustworthy as to not know the lack of attraction that floods the pit of his own stomach when he should be developing romantic feelings?

I think, Kiyoomi adjusts in his seat — tuning out the gossip of those around him, I know myself better than anyone else.

The memory of the girl with the kind smile that kept Kiyoomi company and gave him chocolates rots over time.

It’s a stupid feeling, the sink of his stomach and ache in his muscles as someone walks up to him while he’s walking out of practice.

It would be fine, normally. He likes talking to fans, he thinks that the people who sit in the stands during university games and cheer them on are nice.

It would be fine, if this person didn’t have a letter in their hand and a skip in their step, a glint in their eyes of both anxiety and something else when they spot Kiyoomi.

It’s a routine, by now. The guilt crashes at his skull as he repeats the words that are now so common to him that they feel fused to his lips. Small It’s not you’s and I’m sorries cut his lips as he gnaws on them. Tears fall onto cement and he can’t tell if they’re from his eyes or the person who’s confessing to him.

The person, Koharu he learns — because they couldn’t hear his mind screaming no, no, no please don’t say it please don’t I don’t want to hear it, it hurts more — nods gently, it stings.

They say it’s okay — but is it really? — and ask him to still keep the letter with beautiful black ink forming an exhibit of his name on the surface of the envelope. I don’t want to, he thinks.

He takes it anyway.

Before they leave, they hand him three of the same candies that kept him peace in middle school. Candies that quelled the loneliness in the back of his throat and eased the buzz in his mind when everything else was so loud.

As he watches them walk away, he unwraps one. The crinkle of the wrapper almost crushes the film over his eyes — the wall of the dam. Kiyoomi places one on his tongue and closes his mouth just as they turn the corner.

The candy that once melted in Kiyoomi’s mouth and over his tongue — wrapping his flesh protectively with a sweet barrier — now tastes bitter.

He almost spits it out — but doesn’t in memoir to both an old friend and a heartbroken stranger.

“You know,” Hinata starts after biting off the side of his orange ice pop, “is there such a thing as it being too hot for ice cream?”

Kiyoomi nods solemnly. The two of them left after practice to grab a snack from the conbini down the street and decided to get the one thing that would melt like crazy in this heat to cool them down.

Now, he’s staring at the coconut ice cream dripping down his hand and dreading the sticky feeling bound to come. “Definitely.”

“We didn’t really think this through did we?” Hinata sighs as he watches the bottom of his ice cream drip onto cement and cringes when some of it soaks into his shoe.

“Nope.”

He doesn’t know when this started — this routine of theirs. It may have started on one of the days that Hinata was even more energetic than normal — Kiyoomi had taken that as a sign that the redhead was clearly not okay and invited him to grab a drink from the vending machine outside of their gym.

Or, it could have begun when Kiyoomi was feeling under the weather and had to skip practice for a day. Hinata had shown up at his doorstep one hour and thirty minutes after their practice ended with a mask on his face and a care package in his hands — vowing to make sure Kiyoomi got better so that he could continue playing as soon as possible.

Either way, Kiyoomi and Hinata have become somewhat friends. They have a strange balance between not going out of their way to force a conversation — yet reaching out when they’re needed. Occasionally though, after a long day, they will silently agree to drift off the course of their normal exit paths from the gym, and instead venture somewhere else together.

A wooden popsicle stick falls on the sidewalk next to Kiyoomi and he jumps — realizing they both had finished their snacks and that Hinata was now on his phone. He peeks over the boy's shoulder discreetly and notices the contact name has a heart next to it — multiple, actually.

What’s it like? Kiyoomi wants to ask, but stays silent as his ankle bumps into Hinata’s. There’s sweat dripping down the side of his leg and he watches as it blends into the threads of his sock — clouding them with a damp transparency.

“How’s it going?” He chooses to ask instead.

“How’s what going?” Hinata looks up from his phone while locking it and Kiyoomi watches the picture of two old crows fade.

“Your thing with Kageyama.”

“Thing,” he chuckles. “It’s good.”

Kiyoomi scrapes at the sidewalk with the heel of his shoe. “That’s nice.”

“It is,” Hinata nods, tilting his head. “What do you really want to ask though?”

He sinks his shoulders inward — there are few people who can read Kiyoomi like a newspaper, predictions and facts flying around him in a ring as they choose which to pick out for the day, and proceed to persistently bother him about until they get a response.

Hinata is near the top of that list.

“I was wondering, how do you feel about him?” How are my feelings any different than yours?

He smiles, “Well, I’m pretty sure I’m in love with him.”

“Mh, was that not obvious?”

Everyone who knows Hinata knows he’s in love with his former setter — to the point that it’s become a sort of inside joke among Hinata’s friends. Apparently, Kiyoomi has picked up on this habit too.

“Shut it.”

Kiyoomi laughs while crushing up the wrapper of his ice cream and tucking it into his pocket. It’s quiet for a moment, his body doing the standard routine of keeping him alive. Inhale, exhale, breathe, breathe, breathe–

“…How do you know, though?” What a broad question — it’s as confusing as the topic he’s asking about in the first place.

“Know what?”

“That you’re in love, I guess. That you love him specifically.”

How do you know what you feel. It’s contradictory, how he’s asking someone else to confirm their feelings just as others ask him. Maybe here he can understand, just a little, about the curiousness others have when prying into his thoughts — because he’s doing the same, isn’t he?

This realization didn’t stop him from asking, though.

Hinata looks like he’s lost in thought for a second, but then he pulls out his phone and stares at the lock screen of him and Kageyama again. “I don’t know, not really at least.”

Kiyoomi sighs. “But what makes you know that it’s love, and not just like?”

It’s a difference he learned a while ago — words went from like and cooties, to love and crush, to hate and toxic and separate as they’ve grown older.

“It just feels different, I guess.”

“Okay.”

Because there’s nothing else to say; nothing else to ask of Hinata in these lines of pointless questions where he will never get an answer that he understands — because he can’t, not fully, and maybe that’s okay. Maybe this is another thing he should give up.

Hinata taps at the concrete next to him — gaining his attention while not physically touching him. It’s nice — how Hinata takes his limits in stride, and finds ways to work around them. It makes him feel normal — accepted.

“It’s getting dark,” so it is, “We should get going.”

Kiyoomi nods, and they stand.

There are days where Kiyoomi will be hit with an indefinite wave of hopelessness. Where he sinks into a river with no choice but to accept the freezing water numbing his nerves. Normally, he walks on rocks above the rushing water, excess coolness from the minerals shocking the soles of his feet. But there are times where he slips on a patch of moss and falls face first into the stream.

It’s times like these where Kiyoomi grabs his grey blanket and lays down on his couch, wrapping it around himself while pretending someone is holding him. The warmth of his body is trapped in the blanket but he still feels so cold, so hopeless.

He’s not lonely, not at all. He has his team, his family, his friends, but sometimes he feels rather insignificant. There’s a relationship hierarchy that has been ingrained into him, and everyone else, since he was little — even before he was born, his parents talked about how much of a ladies man he would be.

It’s an unconscious separation between platonic relationships and romantic ones, an unintentional message that romantic relationships are more significant than friendships.

That a romantic partner is more deserving of love and time compared to anyone else. It’s a common denominator in almost all of the movies; a friend gets the spotlight at the beginning and by the end they’re nothing but a side character you forgot about in favor of the kiss.

It’s featured in books too, discussions between the main character and their best friend, a counseling figure, turn into conversations between the protagonist and love interest, with the friend only being featured once every fifty pages.

And so sometimes, sometimes Kiyoomi feels insignificant within his friends’ lives. Sometimes he loses hope that he will eventually be the person someone wants to talk to over anyone else. It’s only time before even his single friends get romantic partners, and then it’ll be another cycle completed.

It would be nice, he thinks as a door opens quietly in the distance, to be someone’s priority.

Sakusa Kiyoomi doesn’t leave anything half finished — but sometimes he wishes he did.

—

Someone sets a mug down in front of Kiyoomi. It’s hot chocolate — he can smell it from here. Whipped cream sits at the top of it and he unconsciously licks his lips while staring at the drink. When Atsumu crouches in front of him, he pulls the blanket closer to his body. “It’s not hot.”

Kiyoomi rolls his eyes. “You never make it hot.”

“Not for ya, I don’t.” As much as Kiyoomi hates it, he smiles a bit at that. Atsumu nudges his leg with their hand and he scoots over just a bit to make room for them.

He doesn’t question how the blonde got in, not anymore. They come and go as they please in his apartment and it’s simply a part of their routine at this point.

They always seem to know when he needs them. Even if he doesn’t explicitly say it, even if he hasn’t talked to them in days — they still somehow appear, it’s as if they have some sort of track on him; he wants to laugh.

“Wanna tell me what this,” Atsumu gestures lazily to Kiyoomi, “is about?”

The answer to that question is threaded into a sigh as Kiyoomi grabs the mug off the table and raises it to his lips. The hot chocolate is perfectly sweet and sticky, just how he likes it, and he takes a minute to savor the feeling of it running down his throat while he sets the cup between his thighs.

“No,” he licks leftover whipped cream off the top of his lips, “will you stay here though?”

“‘Course,” they pause for a moment, pulling out their phone. “Have I shown ya the dog I saw on my way home yesterday yet?”

Kiyoomi shuffles closer to Atsumu in interest, peering over at the screen with his head resting on their shoulder. “You haven’t, show me.”

Atsumu laughs and pulls up a photo of a fluffy brown Shiba Inu, who looks vaguely like a teddy bear, on the sidewalk next to their apartment — and Kiyoomi thinks he might feel important.

Kiyoomi, twenty years old and wandering among souls in a secluded park, looks around and eyes a bird pushing against the breeze — fighting to fly as high as it can. It reminds him of someone, but he doesn’t remember who.

Parks are the definition of quiet chaos — peacefully silent minds clash with children screaming in feigned terror. Kiyoomi wonders if the man sitting at the bench across from him is lonely for a moment, before clasping his hands and returning his gaze to his shoes.

Bleached white with a blue stripe streaming down the sides of them, Kiyoomi ponders the likelihood of a spec of dirt drowning in the river painted line. It’s a dark blue, cold enough to hide depth and enrapture a smudge of mud leaving it to sink.

His thumb digs hard into the side of his palm — not enough to break skin but he jumps out of his thoughts nonetheless.

For a moment it’s loud, winds screaming jumbled nonsense at him — the secrets to the universe are only heard clearly by someone unwilling to listen.

Then, he sees a grey shirt blur in the corner of his eye and feels the bench accommodate another body.

He doesn’t move, not right away at least. It’s silent now, too silent — with the birds chirping whispers that give a false sense of peace to his nerves. The calm before the storm, but the storm may rain tears this time.

He focuses on the trunk of a tree — willing it to uproot and fall and make some noise, please, please break the silence.

The tree doesn’t fall, the roots don’t break, and yet the birds are drowned out anyways by a voice. It’s calm — quiet and hoarse, the storm may have already passed for them.

They look over at the tree he’s staring at, and point to a bird resting in it.

“That’s a Japanese White-eye, you know?”

Maybe he did, or maybe he didn’t. Whether Kiyoomi knew or not isn’t the real question though, it’s an insignificant prompt at the end of the sentence to give him an opening to reply. To force him to choose, laying the responsibility of continuity on his shoulders.

Kiyoomi answers, in the end.

“Yeah,” he swallows and the sound is audible enough that it makes his jaw ache.

She nods in acknowledgment, both feather-like and heavy as though her head and neck are at war with each other. One easing the paving path and the other overwhelming and crushing it.

“It’s the third smallest bird in Japan, it kind of looks like you, right?” She gestures to his jacket — a neon green similar to the ones he wore in highschool, yet different in the way that it falls over his shoulders and drapes down his side. His old ones don’t fit anymore.

Kiyoomi gives her an incredulous look. “I’m not small.”

She heaves out a hearty laugh at the confusion written on his face. “Yeah, physically you’re not — but your demeanor is.”

He blinks at her for a moment before returning his gaze to the bird who has hopped over to a higher branch.

“Look,” she leans over him to point at the white ring around its eyes, “it matches the one on your hand.”

She only looks three or four years older than him, but her voice reminds him of his mother; Kiyoomi wants to cry. Instead, he looks down at his left hand and back up at the bird — she’s right.

“That’s not the point though,” she doesn’t give him a chance to respond, “have you noticed how this is the only one in the tree?”

He nods. It’s a big park, there probably are others around here, yet none are with the white-eye. “It’s small and heard by everyone, but no one pays attention to it except to stare at its colors, like how we’re doing now.”

Kiyoomi thinks he should feel guilty, that he should pity the bird — but he doesn’t. Pity is useless, he’s learned from years of pitying himself with nothing to show for it.

“Okay,” is all he says.

“It’s not lonely or frustrated though, it looks content.”

“It is.” Kiyoomi blurts out before he has time to stop himself. He can see it in the lines of it’s feathers, it’s a look that he hopes to wear someday too. “It is content.”

She pats his shoulder, it’s rough enough to rock his body yet soft enough that it makes him ache for a hug. “Good. You’re even more like the bird than you realize, you know?”

This time, Kiyoomi doesn’t answer.

She leaves a few minutes later with a simple, “Goodbye, bird boy.”

Kiyoomi is nineteen years old, a first year in university, and sitting in front of his cousin in his childhood bedroom — scared. Scared of rejection, scared of whispered are you sure’s, and most importantly — terrified of acceptance.

Because if he’s accepted, then it’s real. He doesn’t get an out, he doesn’t get to try to convince himself otherwise anymore.

Someone will know and worse, they’ll be okay with it — something that’s unimaginable to him, because he’s spent all those nights doom scrolling on forums and medical websites telling him there’s something wrong with him. That he’s selfish and manipulative and and inhumane, for not loving in the same way they do.

As much as Kiyoomi’s accepted himself, the option of retraction constantly aches in his bones, always offering him an escape. If someone outside the exterior of his mind knows, it’s not as easy to withdraw at the slightest hint of anxiousness.

Sakusa Kiyoomi stands at a conundrum of desire — a yearning to be loved for himself and a want to crawl away and hide this forever.

Logically, he doesn’t need to tell anyone. He’s not required to, he knows that. He could keep on living without anyone knowing, an elegant ghost with the skin of a revolting human hiding among the crowds for centuries, and that’s what makes him want to tell Motoya the most.

He doesn’t want to have to push that part of himself away, to leave it as a hushed secret that only the tips of his torn fingernails know of.

Kiyoomi doesn’t like to leave things unfinished, and he doesn’t want this to be one of the rare exceptions. So, he watches Motoya scroll through TikTok and lays back onto his bed — staring at the ceiling.

Motoya turns to show him a video of a cow eating strawberries and shoves the phone in front of Kiyoomi’s face. He blinks for a moment, adjusting to the new light intruding in his eyes, and then chuckles.

It’s light and airy, and sits up to grab Motoya’s phone out of his hand — ignoring the yelp the brunette lets out — and looks up more videos.

There’s a video with a tan cow running around someone's front yard and Kiyoomi turns it to show Motoya while laughing. “That one looks like you.”

“I don’t know whether I should be taking that as a compliment or insult.”

Kiyoomi shrugs his shoulders and Motoya snatches the phone from him and pulls up another video, turning the screen to show him. “Well this one looks like you.”

“It does not, what the hell?”

Motoya’s grin is tauntingly wide. “Look at it’s hair, it’s yours.”

“It’s hair is literally just dark and curly.”

“Yeah, you.”

Kiyoomi kicks at Motoya’s thigh and tugs at his arm, prying the phone out of his grip and finding a photo of a pig. “This one's eyebrows look like yours.”

“This is slander—”

They continue passing Motoya’s phone back and forth, comparing each other to various animals and snickering at the others reaction, before Kiyoomi finally shoves the phone away and they both fall back onto his bed.

“Hey, ‘Toya?” Kiyoomi is out of breath from laughing — chest falling up and down rapidly trying to catch up with his thoughts — and he smiles as he stares at the marker stain left on his wall from when he was ten.

“Hm?”

“You know how you like guys?”

Motoya props himself up on his shoulders to look at him, Kiyoomi doesn’t look back. “I like guys? Wow, thanks for letting me know.” It’s laced with sarcasm and Kiyoomi huffs out a laugh.

“That’s not what I meant.” Kiyoomi starts to throw the anchor off the ship that is his being, and it feels as though he’s sinking into the mattress. It’s a descent into the wall of fog that will always be there, taunting him, but maybe now he can reach out to a hand from the other side. A hand that will blindly hold his own through the chill of the mist.

“You like guys, you fall in love with guys,” Kiyoomi looks down at his hands that are clasped together, and allows them to fall to his side. “I don’t like anyone, not in the way you do.”

Kiyoomi sucks in a breath, he can hear Motoya shifting around next to him but he still doesn’t look — instead he closes his eyes and allows the world to go blank for just a moment.

A soft solitude of nothing but the fan whirring in the background coats Kiyoomi’s mind and he thinks that if this was the end then he wouldn’t be at peace, he wouldn’t die happily in the unknowing suspense and he — if anything — feels worse in this momentary limbo.

He starts planning out how he could retract it, because yes it’s out in the air now but it’s such a simple phrase that he could cover it up with a simple ‘not right now, at least, do you think you could set me up with one of your friends?’ or some other bullshit that would be just as convincing.

But he can’t — and he knows he can’t. Because that would hurt him just as much as Motoya patting him on the back and saying ‘you still have the rest of your life, don’t lose hope yet, dude’ would, if not more.

He doesn’t think he’s even capable of getting anymore words out of his throat at this point, anyways. The fog is seeping into his throat and choking him from the inside out, it seems.

It takes one more anxiety ridden beat before Motoya falls over him and wraps him in a warm hug. It burns his skin, and for a moment it’s so overwhelming that he has to open his eyes.

Motoya’s head lies under his chin and Kiyoomi lifts his head up a bit, tucking it into the brunette’s hair and wrapping his arms around his cousin's back.

His hair is colder than his arms — it’s a comforting chill, easing the flame of anxiety coating his stomach. “That’s okay, ‘Kiyo.” Motoya squeezes him just a little tighter. “You know that's okay right?”

Sakusa Kiyoomi sees the world around him in a tint of greens and greys. He feels it in the itch that is Motoya’s hair under his nose as he hugs him — the prick of acceptance stinging his skin over and over again, until he thinks that maybe, maybe it’ll all be okay.