Archive of Our Own

Enough with the game tape, Sakusa had declared, citing that at this point there’s nothing that griping about Kageyama or Ushijima or anyone else is going to do for them that hasn’t already been achieved. Atsumu drums his fingers against the hard smooth plastic of the meeting room table in the ensuing silence. Sakusa might be right, but Atsumu sure as hell won’t be caught agreeing with him. Sakusa’s lethal pointed glance means he knows exactly what’s going on in Atsumu’s head, and it rankles much more than it has any right to.

“Tobio-kun deserves some payback for the last two seasons,” Atsumu muses, just to keep the air from going totally dead. They’re all far too worked up to even consider going home to rest yet. Even Sakusa. “You better give it to him with interest, Shōyō.”

“It’ll be good to see him again,” Hinata says, brightly, a little absently, “it’s been a few years,” and then– and then. Then he flushes a bright, gentle pink, and Atsumu understands, for the first time in his life where something that isn’t Osamu is concerned, what the phrase blood in the water means.

“A few years?” Bokuto asks, lurching forward from his casual backward lean to rest his forearms against the table with a set of rhythmic thumps: chair to floor, arms to table. “But we played the Adlers after you joined.”

“Just because you weren’t part of the roster doesn’t mean you couldn’t have…” Atsumu trails off, then frowns. Sure, the ink was still drying on the contract and Hinata had watched the games from the press area, but— “Huh. You didn’t talk to anyone except for us during that game, did you?”

“Kageyama and I decided–” Hinata’s flush deepens. His eyes skitter across all of them; Atsumu watches with a strange sort of fascination as he keeps getting redder and redder. Hinata mutters, “Not till we play an official match.”

Silence – as silent as silence can get amid the hum of the aircon, the spacious thrum of the gym – spreads across the table like spilled sauce.

Down the table, Sakusa snorts. Bokuto lets out something close to a giggle. But Atsumu finds himself pinned by the weight of Hinata’s skittish stare, focused on him with courtside intent. You get it, right? those eyes say. You understand what I mean.

He does. He does. The geography of everything he knows about Hinata and Kageyama and the frenzied whirlwind of their presence on the Spring Inter-High court has just shifted but he understands. Suddenly, Atsumu feels embarrassed; this is not knowledge he should be allowed to keep. He has glimpsed the radiant intimacy of something he could never hold cupped in his hands.

Sakusa’s voice picks at the edge of this fledgling kenning; Atsumu wills all this pilfered realization to flee him while he’s distracted.

“Why wait?” Sakusa is asking. It’s some form of miracle that he’s even stooping to partake in this conversation. Atsumu nearly writes him off as being dickish as usual, but then makes the mistake of looking at his eyes, set dark above the crisp peak of his mask. He’s just as intent as Hinata. Another tectonic shift. Titanic. “If you want something,” Sakusa says, his voice low and carrying anyways, “chase it.”

Hinata’s gaze – skittish, skittish – flits birdlike down to his hands, and settles somewhere in the neutral zone of the table between them all.

“Sometimes,” Hinata says to the table, fingers curling in towards his palms, “it’s worth the wait.”

The funny thing about plate tectonics is that it is difficult to really feel what has been happening until one steps back and beholds a building constructed at right angles that has instead given way to the warp of aseismic creep, that subtle shift of foundation that is impossible to stop and impossible to ignore once perceived. Atsumu thinks, once again, that it’s not his to be perceived. Nor anyone else’s.

“Ah, I get it,” he cuts in loftily, “it was pretty hard to focus on anything with the vibes Omi-kun was sending out towards,” He leans his elbow on the table, leans his chin in his hand, and turns to look at Sakusa as he pitches his voice low. “Wakatoshi-kun.”

“Shut up,” Sakusa says. His voice is free of all the intensity it can carry, back to flat boredom in reproach. Familiar ground.

But with that Atsumu has successfully redirected all of that energy away from Hinata; the weight is lifted from the table, and life returns to normal after a tectonic shift as Bokuto squawks something about Ushijima’s serves. There’s an odd relief in the quick glance Hinata spares Atsumu, and Atsumu doesn’t react to it. The only thought left whirling in his head is Sakusa’s voice: chase it. chase it. chase it.

The MSBY Black Jackals win against the Schweiden Adlers in the first match of the 2018-2019 V.League Division 1 Men’s tournament. When Hinata and Kageyama shake hands under the net, Atsumu has to look away.

First leg of the season. Week 2. Too early to call a seasonal lead with any real certainty. Jackals, Adlers, and Falcons currently in the top three spots.

Atsumu is aware of the coaches, assistants, interviewers, stadium staff slowly spilling onto the court, but the air has not yet settled in the wake of the game. He tips his face up to the ceiling and breathes. They won. Green Rockets lost. Things slowly start to crawl back into his awareness. Bokuto shouting as he describes… something. A near-inaudible rebuttal from Sakusa. Aran’s distant laugh; all the other teams playing in this stadium today must be heading onto the court to mingle, too. Ushijima’s voice. Hoshiumi, unmistakeable. A distinct absence of Hinata’s bright energy close by.

When Atsumu opens his eyes, the court has been swarmed with so many bodies it feels near-unrecognizable. Staff clutching mops are venomously eyeballing everyone stomping across the sweaty floor, tracking perspiration everywhere. Team jackets and jerseys in every combination are huddled together, milling around with thunderous footsteps amplified a thousandfold. And Hinata’s bright hair—

Atsumu watches through the warm haze of victory as Hinata drifts towards Kageyama, no longer bound by the net and the neat white lines on the floor, sweat still staining his face, his hair, the floor around them both. Atsumu is much too far away to eavesdrop, but it’s clear that Hinata’s boundless energy hushes in Kageyama’s presence; it blooms a familiar shade of reverent, enshrined, as if Kageyama’s composure is settling warm and heavy around his shoulders. Despite the win, Hinata is somber; despite the Adlers’ earlier loss to the Falcons, Kageyama is smiling. The reversal feels monumental. They inch closer amid the din, restless, playing an endless volley of tipped heads to be heard over the undulled roar of the crowd, and Atsumu feels like an unwilling voyeur again, again, again.

“Don’t stare,” Sakusa says from behind his shoulder. “It’s rude.”

Atsumu doesn’t look away. Kageyama has lifted his hand to gently cup Hinata by the back of the elbow as they talk. It doesn’t even look like either of them are aware of the motion or the contact. It’s far too late to bite something back by the time Atsumu realizes he hasn’t answered.

“Right,” Atsumu tries, and has to clear his throat. He looks at Sakusa; he is, of course, hypocritically watching Hinata and Kageyama, the black and white smudge at the edge of Atsumu’s peripheral vision. Sakusa has wiped his face with the towel that rests neatly around his shoulders, but his hairline glitters with sweat. His face is flushed. He looks free. “You were on fire today, Omi,” Atsumu says. “Good game.”

He lifts his hand. The motion is telegraphed, well within Sakusa’s peripheral vision even as he continues to watch their teammate and their rival. There is no reaction. Atsumu rests his hand on Sakusa’s back, where the spine finishes its inward curve and pushes back out again, where his ribs begin their outward bloom. Gravity has pulled his uniform against his skin and steeped it in sweat that has barely begun to cool. Sakusa’s body radiates heat against Atsumu’s overheated palm; he risks being scalded to feel the shift and expansion of one deep inward breath.

Sakusa looks over at him. Atsumu meets his eyes briefly before turning and heading for the bench, parched and exhausted and filled with frantic endless energy, and he wonders if Hinata thinks he’s chasing what he wants.

(It's like — it's like the floodgates have opened. It will be several weeks yet before he realizes.)

“What’s Hinata’s deal with Kageyama?” Sakusa asks, and the pot of the rice cooker slips from Atsumu’s fingers and thunks against the countertop. He rights it hastily.

“What do you mean, his deal?”

(Hinata doesn’t talk much about Kageyama. The absence is gaping. He talks about Brazil and about high school and about his friends; about this match and that training and spits out strings of so many names that Atsumu feels lost most of the time. It’s only a handful of times that Kageyama makes it past his lips. Hinata makes the name reverent. Hinata makes hearing it feel like Atsumu is trespassing. Hinata makes it clear that this is not his shrine at which to bow.)

Sakusa rinses off the bowl he’s holding and passes it over; Atsumu takes it with an inelegant collision of their fingers, wipes off the excess water, sets it on the rack, and waits another handful of seconds before he gets a response.

“You know what I’m asking,” Sakusa says, and cuts him a sharp, lingering look.

“If that’s what you’re asking,” Atsumu replies slowly, “then I think you know the answer.”

Sakusa goes back to the last handful of dishes waiting to be washed. His silence is contemplative. Atsumu waits for each clean dish to be delivered into his hands with a feeling not unlike the pre-match jitters he hasn’t felt for years.

In spite of how long it’s been going on, it still feels tentative, this thing where Sakusa comes over and Atsumu cooks dinner or vice versa (during off-season, anyways; they’ll have every crumb of every meal planned again soon), and they eat and watch game tape and talk sometimes, sitting nearly shoulder to shoulder or avoiding bumped knees at a table. Mostly, Atsumu thinks, it’s nice to have someone else in his apartment. Strict proof of the fact that he exists beyond the bounds of the game he happily dedicates his life to. By this point he figures that it’s something close to the same for Sakusa, too. If this is friendship, then he’ll take it.

And besides – not that he’ll ever admit this to Osamu – cooking a meal for someone is a lot like setting a ball. The work is done in your hands by your own muscles. It is the sum of hundreds of thousands of repetitions and adjustments, the integral calculus of constant experience. You toss to someone else— you cook for someone else— and you know your efforts have been received. That they have been converted into energy or expenditure thereof and all the minute calculations of your lifetime have culminated in some purpose, however small or big.

“Let me ask something different, then,” Sakusa continues once the water has been shut off for good and he’s running the hand towel meticulously between each of his fingers – a familiar routine, half-absent, clearly driven by muscle memory – before he hangs it back up where it had been, on a shitty little ¥150 hook Atsumu had gotten two years ago with the intent to replace it. “Hinata knows what he feels. Why isn’t he doing something about it?”

Atsumu stares at him. The pre-match jitters have dissipated; in their place is something that Atsumu doesn’t really know how to name.

“It’s not my place to say,” he replies, “but I think he is, Omi.” He runs a knuckle down the handle of a flaking souvenir mug from Huis Ten Bosch he had to fight Osamu over and ended up stealing from him anyways, still warm from the residual heat of the water. "Figures you'd be assertive about this kinda thing."

Atsumu looks up at the suggestion of motion at the corner of his eye; Sakusa crosses his arms and leans his hip against the counter.

“What kinda thing?” Sakusa asks. His face is expressionless; his eyes are dark, both immovable object and unstoppable force. Atsumu bites back a scowl in return but doesn’t look away.

He wants it spelled out? Fine. They don’t talk about what it is they do here on a weekly-or-more basis. They don’t talk about how Atsumu sees Sakusa outside of practice and games more often than he sees Osamu, to say nothing of how often either of them see their other teammates outside of practice. They don’t talk about the space between them – what little there is – but they’ll talk about this, is what Sakusa is trying to say. Whether or not Atsumu takes it as something roundabout or straightforward will inevitably be his own problem.

“Feelings,” Atsumu replies, mirroring him against the counter, “for other people.”

Sakusa shrugs and refuses to break eye contact. Atsumu is familiar with this particular look that Sakusa’s wearing, but he’s more used to seeing it from eighteen meters away, a net between them.

“Feelings are feelings,” Sakusa says. “You either feel something or you don’t. You either know what you feel or you don’t.”

“It isn’t that simple for everyone.”

“I never said it was simple for me.” Sakusa uncrosses his arms and lets his hands slide heavily into his pockets. “If you feel something and you don’t know what,” he says, and he blinks, slowly, his eyelids shuttering closed for slightly longer than they should, “then it’s the furthest thing from simple.” He inhales and exhales in what could almost be called a sigh. The game is up; Sakusa has already broken eye contact, so Atsumu watches as the sweat-wicking poly/spandex blend shifts over Sakusa's chest, watches the subtle shift of muscle at the base of his throat. “But I think it’s simple for Hinata. And I think he’s making it more difficult than it has to be.”

“It’s plenty difficult as it is,” Atsumu says. There’s no need to qualify the statement. The public eye is brutal even (perhaps especially) to its darlings. “And Kageyama’s already said he’s going overseas next year.”

“So? Hinata’s been overseas already.”

Atsumu sighs – an actual sigh, in counterpoint to Sakusa’s poised facsimile – and leans harder against the counter, poor posture tugging at the stalwart muscles in his back that fight so hard to keep him upright.

“Are you arguing in favor of him or against him?” he asks.

“I think they need to get their shit together,” Sakusa says, finally, finally, with an air of snappiness, “because I’ve played with Hinata for barely more than half a year and I’m already sick of whatever courtship ritual we’re being forced to witness.”

Atsumu feels a smile tug at the edges of his mouth.

“Careful, Omi-kun,” he says. “One day, someone might say the same about you.”

“I’d rather drop dead than get multiple teams in Japan’s professional volleyball league involved in my personal business,” Sakusa snaps, and pointedly pops open the lid of the kettle.

It really isn’t that simple, Atsumu thinks later, half-listening to Sakusa ripping viciously into some now-retired blocker for fucking up Iizuna’s set in a match from two years ago, but he thinks he can feel a hungry set of jaws lurking deep in his chest, keening for attention. (Chase it, Sakusa’s voice echoes from weeks prior. Chase it.)

The dinner thing.

The dinner thing had started awkwardly but decisively, as most things tend to happen with Sakusa; partway through last season, he’d stiffly responded to Atsumu’s morning-commute gripes with an offer to spend the night before their upcoming travel day. The offer had made sense, in its own backwards way, because it’s always been clear that Sakusa abhors wastefulness and somehow the offer fit into that framework, so Atsumu had shrugged and thanked him in acceptance and made dinner in exchange, scraped together some kitsune udon in Sakusa’s kitchen that even Osamu would have had no choice but to praise. Sakusa had chewed contemplatively while staring down at the bowl, and then he’d upended everything Atsumu had thought he’d known about Sakusa (distant, solitary, unwilling) and said, “This is good. We should have dinner again like this some time.”

Atsumu had agreed, a little dumbstruck, and the concept had crawled to life between them, making its slumbering presence known.

The first leg of the season is over. The Adlers are on top, but only barely. The Jackals have never nipped at their heels quite like this. Neither has any other team in the last three years.

"Shōyō-kun," Atsumu calls, pawing at the sweat on his hairline, "up for serve-receives?"

Hinata lowers his water bottle and stares mournfully over at him from the other corner of the court.

"Sorry, Atsumu-san," he says, looking genuinely dejected, "I just promised Bokuto-san I'd practice with him once he's done talking to Coach Foster."

"All good," Atsumu starts to reply, waving his hand, when Sakusa says, "I'll pick up your serves."

Atsumu's jaw clenches of its own accord.

"Love to see you try, Omi-kun." On one level, he understands that this immediate sense of challenge is ridiculous. On another, he understands that practice is practice and getting fired up about it is great. On yet another, he understands that there is something specifically about Sakusa's unruffled, unflinching gaze that makes his blood boil with something that is decidedly not rage, but close enough in temperature that he can pretend otherwise. "Court three?"

"Wait," Hinata says. His voice is bright with the kind of excitement that makes him sound a little ravenous.

"Yeah?"

"Let's play two-on-two."

Atsumu tips his head and asks, “Beach-style?”

“Yes!” Hinata actually bounces in place; it should not be anywhere near as endearing as it is on a twenty-two-year-old adult. “We’ve got four people, so why not?” His gaze bounces between Atsumu and Sakusa, and he amends, “And you can practice more serves afterwards?”

Hinata’s enthusiasm proves to be, as ever, absolutely unstoppable. Five minutes later the four of them are standing on the furthest court from center and arguing about fairness: Hinata insists that he’s got the inherent advantage because he’s actually played beach extensively, but that’s quickly countered by the three of them reminding him that they’re all professional volleyball players; Sakusa and Bokuto are vetoed because together have the greatest average height and hitting power, Atsumu and Hinata would put the actual first-string setter with the best emergency setter, Sakusa and Hinata would put the two best non-libero receivers together, and finally Sakusa settles it when he scowls, ducks under the net, and says, “Original teams.”

Hinata continues to chatter on as they get into position; Atsumu tries to shake out his thoughts and adjust as he settles into his spot on the court. It feels cavernous with just one other person on his side. Sakusa shifts behind him and adjusts closer to center. Either Bokuto’s sheer power as a hitter or Hinata’s skill as a receiver. No third person to put pressure on. It’s funny; Atsumu had never realized just how absent two-on-two drills are from their practices until right now.

The ball goes up. Hinata’s palm makes contact. Fuck, Atsumu thinks vehemently two seconds later, when he’s on his one knee and the ball he’s just shanked is rolling sedately off the court. Hinata grins at him.

“That was a freebie,” Atsumu calls. Sakusa walks over to him and turns his back to the net before nailing him with a sidelong look that makes Atsumu think he’s just as peeved.

“Next one’s mine,” Sakusa says, quiet enough that the others can’t overhear. Atsumu looks at him oddly; there’s nothing snide to his voice, no trace of that tone he’d used to say I’ll pick up your serves like he’s got any right to think he’s good enough. (Objectively: he is. But Atsumu’s blood is still simmering.)

“If Hinata digs it, I’d rather deal with his hits than Bokuto’s,” Atsumu replies, and Sakusa nods.

Hinata is still grinning when Atsumu gets in position again.

“Ready?” he calls, all cheekiness, and Atsumu snorts.

This time, Sakusa does lift it cleanly; he sends it to where Atsumu has given in to the gravity well of the setter’s position, and Atsumu dedicates a sliver of his energy to watching the precise, lethal grace of Sakusa’s approach as the ball falls towards his fingertips. He sets, Sakusa spikes, and that should be that, but of course Hinata slips underneath it like a shadow in a sweaty t-shirt and lifts it; not perfectly cleanly, Atsumu notes with a rush of satisfaction, but cleanly enough that Bokuto has no problem giving it an easy bump for Hinata to hit—

—directly into the vacant spot between Sakusa’s block and Atsumu’s reach, and Atsumu curses under his breath again.

The third and fourth points go in much the same order. Hinata feels monstrous, present in every square centimeter of the court, silent and invisible, like the entire court is the domain of his will and Bokuto is just there as a warm body. Atsumu’s sweat starts to feel a little too cold.

Atsumu finally steps back to serve when Sakusa manages to score a nasty point off of Bokuto. The court doesn’t seem any more vacant with four people missing. Not when Hinata’s sharp eyes are everywhere. Atsumu serves; he scores; he serves twice more and scores twice more as Bokuto swears colorfully at him, and then Hinata scores and it’s back to receiving.

The ball goes up; before Bokuto’s palm even makes contact, Atsumu sees a shift in his peripheral vision and Sakusa murmurs, “Mine.”

With a prickle, the hair on Atsumu’s arms lifts. This game entails an entirely different awareness of the court. The realization is electric. He’s played three-on-three games intermittently for so many years and somehow, doubling the amount of work has always felt like an even multiplication of efforts. Tripling it here feels exponential. He is hyperaware of all the gaps between his reach and Sakusa’s, and with a ripple of lightning down his spine, he realizes: this is why Hinata spent years playing beach. This is why he’s so good at what he does. Because when there’s only two of you, you’re the defense and the offense and the connection. You are everything and your partner is everything and together you have to be everything and more. Flexibility in infinite configurations.

He sets a little higher than he usually would, even when playing three-on-three. Sakusa has enough approach distance again this time, but that’s not going to be guaranteed every time. Better to let him conserve his energy rather than let him tear forward to hit every time. Sakusa leaps – beautiful – and the ball slams against Bokuto’s hands before spiraling off perfectly to the right, past Hinata’s reach. When Sakusa walks back to serve, there’s a faint smirk on his face that makes the blood boil just one degree hotter under Atsumu’s skin.

Hinata’s and Bokuto’s early lead wavers with each rally. Atsumu can feel himself settle into the familiar, welcome tunnel vision of a match. Nothing but his breath and his muscles and the court. Just him and Sakusa. Atsumu loses himself in this unfamiliar ebb and flow: in the use of old skills for something new, in a different kind of sideways thinking. He’s fairly certain none of them are counting points anymore.

Atsumu wonders, idly, distantly, how this would have played out with different people. If Sakusa had been with Bokuto; if their serves and spikes would have been enough. If Hinata had been with him and if their hits would have been enough. If he’d played with Osamu. If Hinata had played with Kageyama. If Kageyama would have any trouble adjusting to someone he spent three formative years with, who left and came back so utterly different.

Across the net, Hinata shifts with something close to apprehension as Sakusa moves into position to serve. Good. Sakusa has been on fucking fire with his serves today. The thump of Sakusa’s approach is still reverberating in Atsumu’s chest as Hinata digs it and as Atsumu darts up to block Bokuto – gets one hand on it – backs up for approach distance, looks at Sakusa, sees his body lower into position for the receive, feels a jolt of surprise as he sets it overhand, totally passably – makes his approach, leaps, blows through Hinata’s block, rattles the floorboards, lands, shouts, and turns to look at Sakusa.

Sakusa holds his hand out towards him, palm up, without looking; Atsumu brings his down to meet it without thinking, and then Sakusa moves into position for his next serve. Next time Atsumu is up to serve, he’s going to try aiming at the seam again, he thinks, because–

The court erupts into raucous cacophony. Immediately, the thread holding together his tunnel vision snaps. Atsumu blinks; he’s suddenly aware of the sweat on his face, the shift and expansion of his shirt as he breathes, the feel of his feet in his socks in his shoes, the heat worked into his palms and fingertips.

“Omi-san!” Hinata yelps again, pointing. “Omi-san!”

Atsumu stares at him blankly, then turns to look at Sakusa; Sakusa is staring just as blankly back at Hinata.

“You high-fived!” Bokuto squawks, and with a rush Atsumu’s palm stings with the impact, overheated and tender. He’s pointedly aware of every single part of his entire body.

“Not like you’ve never high-fived anyone,” Atsumu says, and wipes at his face with his forearm. They’ve been at this for longer than he’d realized. It’s also been tremendously valuable. Valuable enough that Atsumu thinks he’s going to set aside time to do this regularly, with Hinata in particular, as opposed to the threes they usually play. “I think I’m gonna call it here. Gotta save some energy for serves.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Sakusa shoot him a look before he straightens up and tucks the ball under his elbow. Hinata, at least, has the grace to look a little sheepish.

“Sure!” Bokuto replies brightly, changing tack immediately and without fuss. “I’ll get us water.”

“You guys make a great team,” Hinata says, joining their side of the net, and he folds himself down onto the floor to stretch. “We should do this more often. I wish we could have been on a real beach, though.” His smile turns mischievous. “It’s different.”

Atsumu joins him on the floor and leans back on his hands, letting his legs sprawl out. It’s different, Atsumu thinks. It’s good.

“We should do this more often,” Sakusa agrees. His face is flushed; like Atsumu, he looks like he’s lost a few degrees of the focus they all fall into during a match. “It was interesting. I wouldn’t mind playing two-on-two again.”

“Yeah!” Bokuto calls as he jogs back, four hastily-filled bottles dripping over his forearm, dotting the floor with moisture. “Man, we never do these anymore. It was like–” He pauses, thoughtful; Atsumu reaches up to tug two bottles out from where they’re tucked between his arm and his chest, and hands one over to Sakusa. “Like the court felt bigger, you know? But in a good way!”

Hinata laughs, catches the bottle that Bokuto tosses him, and chugs about half of it. “I met a friend on the beach,” he says, grinning, “literally on the beach, pretty soon after I got to Brazil.” He pauses to drain the other half of his water bottle. “Bokuto-san, maybe you knew him? He was captain same year as you at Aoba Jōsai, in Miyagi. They were good.”

“Aoba Jōsai,” Bokuto repeats, frowning, and then shakes his head. Sakusa sits down between him and Atsumu, sets down the bottle, and crosses his arms atop his knees. “Don’t think we ever played them.”

“Probably not,” Hinata says, and his eyes fall for just a split second, something contemplative happening between his gaze and the floor.

“You ran into a random Japanese guy on the beach in Brazil,” Atsumu says, “from the same prefecture as you who played the same sport as you? Damn, Shōyō-kun. That’s some luck.”

“He plays in the Argentinian league,” Hinata adds brightly, as if that context adds anything to lessen the astronomical odds, and drops his gaze again to smile down at his hands, curled around his crossed ankles. “It was really nice to see him. Like getting a piece of home back.” Atsumu’s eyebrows rise. When Hinata meets his eyes again, he turns a bright shade of pink and plows on. “We played a bit of beach volleyball – he’s a setter,” he explains, “a really good one, and it was really fun to see him eat sand.” Hinata grins. Atsumu would be willing to put money down that the aforementioned Really Good Setter also forgave Hinata for getting him to eat sand after seeing that smile. “It’d be fun to play with you guys on the beach for real.”

“No,” Sakusa says flatly. “Ask someone else on a beach date.” Time stills. Sakusa is rarely careless with his words. The bright flush crawling up Hinata’s cheeks is testament to the intentionality of what he chose to say. Atsumu wonders– Atsumu wonders. He wonders. And then Sakusa cuts a sharp, sly look over at him and says, “Your coincidental setter ate sand, but maybe the top setter in Japan would be able to keep up with you.” He looks back over at Hinata. “So ask Kageyama, not anyone here.”

“Fuck off,” Atsumu mutters under his breath, and knows Sakusa is smirking without even having to look.

“I’d go with you,” Bokuto says earnestly, “and I know Kageyama would, too. You’re a hard guy to say no to, Hinata.”

At his side, Sakusa shifts forward into a squat, rests his hands on his knees, and then lightly nudges Atsumu’s arm before standing and looking down at him. From the ground, Sakusa looks untouchable.

“I still want to practice serve-receives,” he says.

“Sure,” Atsumu replies, a bit dry-mouthed, because what else is there to say when Sakusa’s expression offers no path to dissent? And he heaves himself up to his feet and waves vaguely at Bokuto and Hinata as Hinata starts to chatter away about the first game they’ve got scheduled next week and what they’re expecting from VC Hiroshima.

They practice until Atsumu’s body sinks back into the numb tunnel vision of constant movement and then slinks right back into hyperconscious awareness of every muscle pushed to carefully attained limits, and the broad golden swaths of late-fall sunlight stop burning through the windows set high up against the ceiling. When Atsumu holds out his palm, Sakusa slaps it without hesitation. His fingers draw a hot line across Atsumu’s palm as momentum drags their hands apart.

“–so next time,” Bokuto continues, shoving deodorant haphazardly under one arm and then the other, shirt not quite falling free from where it’s rucked up, “we’re probably gonna go try out the other place even though that one was really good. It’s all about variety,” he says, quite seriously.

“Sure,” Atsumu replies, “but now you’re just making me even hungrier.”

Bokuto lets out a laugh that echoes around the dressing room, and Atsumu can’t help but to grin back. He’s infectious; loud and energetic and just shy of being too much, but infectiously cheerful all the same.

“What’s for dinner?” Bokuto asks, and finally straightens out his shirt. “Myaa-sam’s food?”

“I cook too,” Atsumu reminds him with raised eyebrows, and shrugs on his jacket as he glances towards the door. “Dunno yet. I’ll figure it out,” he says instead of we’ll figure it out because he is fundamentally selfish, and being free of the sibling he split his childhood with means that he gets to keep things all to himself. He doesn’t have to divvy up his friendship with Sakusa into something any less private than it is.

Bokuto looks at him and blinks, and his gaze drifts towards the door before coming back with focus. Courtside eyes. Atsumu hates being around perceptive people, sometimes.

“You know,” Bokuto says, “I think it’s really cool that you and Omi-Omi get along so well.” His face falls into a pout that does not belong on anyone over the age of eight. “Wish he gave me high-fives.”

“Jealous?” Atsumu asks, raising his eyebrows, feeling the reverse side of that envy like smooth velvet: heated victory and something else whose name he does not want to invoke.

“Well, yeah.” Bokuto yanks on one sleeve of his jacket, frowns, then pulls the sleeve so that the jacket isn’t inside out. “But I kinda get it. You guys are friends, like, for real.” Bokuto laughs again, and a wondrous little smile – much smaller than his usual grins, and all the more powerful for it – spreads across his face. “You’re the only one he messes around with, man. We’re all kinda jealous of it every time he high-fives you and stuff.”

And stuff.

Atsumu blinks. And stuff. He rapidly backtracks his way through the last four weeks of his life. Thinks. Thinks again. Gives Bokuto a goodbye that he hopes comes off as normal, not like his whole world has shifted. Nods at Sakusa waiting in his usual lurking spot outside the gym doors and falls into step beside him. Boards the train while listening to Sakusa bitch about the travel schedule for the second leg of the season.

Bokuto’s right, Atsumu realizes, staring blankly down at his phone as close-to-midwinter dusk shines gray through the skyline. Sakusa does touch him. Sakusa touches him more than he touches anyone else. Sakusa doesn’t touch anyone else. It’s just him.

The fucked-up thing about plate tectonics is that it’s so easy to forget how much power and motion is present under the calm surface of the entire goddamn planet, the entirety of everything you know and touch and see, until something cataclysmic or near to it happens to remind you. By the time you feel it, it's already happened. Fait accompli. (The floodgates have long been open.)

Atsumu pays meticulous attention in the transient space between leaving the gym and arriving at Sakusa’s apartment, and he silently tallies every touch. The conclusion he comes to is incredibly mundane: Sakusa doesn't touch Atsumu like he's asking for more. The touches are neither subtle nor coy nor lingering, neither constant nor sporadic. The way Sakusa touches him is overwhelmingly normal.

Anyone with half a brain cell can tell that Sakusa has a thing about being touched. It's the other missing half that keeps people like Bokuto and Hinata coming back to try again. Sakusa is straightforward to a fault and as inevitable as a fault line. If he wanted more he would ask for it. There would be no guesswork involved; just an earthquake and the aftermath. If someone wanted more and Sakusa didn’t, the result would be the same. No guesswork. An aftermath.

So Atsumu does the same thing here that he does on the court: he looks at Sakusa's limits and he pushes. He nudges Sakusa aside in the doorway so he can take his shoes off. He reaches around Sakusa's back to grab a cutting board and lets the inside of his forearm press against Sakusa's waist. He stretches a leg out as they eat at Sakusa’s brutally functional little IKEA table and argue about dashi or no dashi in gyudon, and he rests his shin against Sakusa’s ankle even though Sakusa is wrong.

Sakusa does not move away. He does not hesitate or react with trepidation. Now that Atsumu has realized, he knows that it’s all he’ll be able to notice. It’s one hell of an ego trip. He has watched Sakusa dip reflexively out of range of Bokuto’s exuberant friendly touches and Hinata’s ever-cheerful offerings of high-fives for months, for years, and now he will get drunk on his own power and on the way that Sakusa had nudged him to nod towards their oncoming train. He has already learned to devour every second of warm contact when Sakusa’s lanky, powerful legs stretch out on the couch next to him and their thighs brush together thoughtlessly.

The game Sakusa picks to rip into is Warriors vs. Adlers from the start of the 2015-2016 season. Atsumu remembers this one: the Warriors had been courting Sakusa at that point, too, and he’d joined the Jackals and Raijin in spectating the match, hot off the heels of their own.

On-screen Kageyama still looks fresh-faced in a way that Atsumu distinctly remembers him lacking by the time they were in Rio. Distant memory itches at him: Kageyama’s eyes drifting to his phone far too often after each grueling match, fighting both adrenaline and jet lag. The ease with which Portuguese flows off Hinata’s tongue. And then more recent memory catches up, and Atsumu thinks about the way Sakusa’s hand bumps carelessly now into Atsumu’s arm as he pulls on a sweatshirt, and he thinks about a post-game dinner two weeks ago where Suna and Aran had crowded around him at the table, warm and familiar against his sides, hands and knees bumping, and across the table, Hinata had kept a careful, fidgety inch of space between him and Kageyama.

Some things are worth the wait, Hinata had said. Fuck that, Atsumu thinks, and puts a little more intent behind the press of his knee into Sakusa’s thigh. He’s built for the chase.

Second leg of the season. Week 2. End of set 3. The end of this match spells a yawning gap of one month between matches for the new year. Atsumu dreads it every year.

“I’m gonna strangle your cousin,” Atsumu pants, then drains his water.

“Not if I get to him first,” Sakusa replies. The venom in his voice is familiar. The kind only family can inspire. Atsumu understands. He thinks about family and volleyball and a singular, particular type of fury. And then he thinks– huh.

“Hey.” He lowers his voice and leans over. Sakusa smells like heat and exertion and, faintly, deodorant. His knee presses gently against Atsumu’s thigh, compression pads cool with sweat. “Your overhand sets aren’t bad. I usually hit Hinata’s when push comes to shove”—I used to hit Osamu’s when push came to shove—“and Raijin know that. They’re expecting his emergency sets. I don’t think they’ve seen yours.”

“Why would that be a viable strategy?” Sakusa asks, but he meets Atsumu’s volume and doesn’t lean away. “We’ve never seriously done it in practice with the whole team.” He pauses; his eyes narrow lethally. “You know, everyone called you hopelessly impulsive on the high school circuit. I figured you’d have kicked that by now.”

“The word you’re looking for is innovative,” Atsumu says, mildly affronted, “and it’s an advantage, Omi-kun. If you know you can do something cool," and déjà vu creeps up his neck as he shrugs, "why not just do it?"

Sakusa stares across the court; Atsumu watches his eyes track one of the flying cameras as it makes a circuit around the court that probably looks very impressive and sweeping on live television. Sakusa shakes his water bottle – empty – then stands and says, "We'll see."

A smile crawls across Atsumu’s face as Sakusa walks away for more water. That’s as good as a yes, he thinks. It’s not a no. That’s what’s important.

His satisfaction is interrupted when another body thumps onto the bench in Sakusa’s seat almost as soon as he vacates it. (A few inches away. No knee pressing into his thigh anymore.)

Meian leans his elbows on his knees, looks at Atsumu with a pleasant smile, and says, “You wanna tell me what that was about?”

“Nothing,” Atsumu replies breezily. “Just checking in with a teammate."

Meian raises his eyebrows.

"Yeah, and so am I," he says. “Look, you’ve got good game sense, and you know I trust you. Both of you.” He tips his head towards where Sakusa is carefully maneuvering a water bottle out of Bokuto’s overenthusiastic hand, keeping their fingers from brushing. “But sometimes you guys scare me, you know?”

“I won’t jeopardize a game,” Atsumu says quickly. He won’t. Not anymore. It’s not that he’s learned his lesson; he never quite has. It’s just that he’s gotten good. Better. Way better. There’s much more calculation now in the place of spontaneity. He might try new things on the court when the season’s on the line, sure, but he’ll try things because of their chance of success rather than their chance of being sick as hell. There are other, better places for that. (Maybe, he thinks, maybe Kita would be proud. Maybe he should ask.) “It’s just that sometimes you get the chance to do something really cool, right?”

“Right,” Meian echoes, looking only halfway convinced, and then he sighs. “Whatever it is, don’t fuck it up. And bring it to practice, okay?”

“Yes, Captain,” Atsumu says, grinning maybe a bit too widely to be entirely trustworthy, and then Coach Foster is shouting for the team, and then the buzzer drowns out the rest of the world, and then it’s Hinata’s turn to serve, and then Atsumu’s world narrows back down to two boxes, nine meters square, and the net between them.

The thing about Raijin is that they’re good. They’re disgustingly good. They’re the kind of team that’s built to give a team like the Jackals utter hell. Atsumu had always thought of Suna in high school as a nightmare of a hitter who also blocks, but he’s grown into a true nightmare of a blocker in his own right, too, and in combination with the rest of their unconventional wall and Sakusa’s goddamn cousin and his goddamn speed and his goddamn immunity to Sakusa’s spin—

It happens almost perfectly. It starts with a near miss. Atsumu watches in slow-motion as Suna twists midair around Meian and neatly out of Hinata’s way to hit the same lethal cross he’s been nailing since Atsumu’s known him, and Atsumu lunges for the receive – manages to get it without taking a knee, but only barely, and he shouts Omi! on reflex more than anything as the ball arcs messily over to the right.

The inevitable perfect algebra of this game solves for its variable. Sakusa’s eyes flash over to Atsumu. Atsumu is already moving forwards, demanding momentum from the muscles in his legs. The team flows around them easily. Hinata’s eyes are wide and hungry; he knows the algebra has accounted for him, too, and he wraps the court’s attention around his fingers and moves to leap alongside Atsumu. From the corner of his eye, Atsumu sees Sakusa position himself under the ball with absolutely zero hesitation.

For just a split second, he’s in a different gym with autumn sunlight sliding lethargically down the far wall. Just him and Sakusa on this side of the court. Offense and defense and connection and everything in between.

Suna’s out of position. Komori’s been subbed out. He’ll be contending with one blocker at most. Atsumu trusts his muscles because there is nothing else to trust save for the fact that the ball will not complete its beautiful parabolic arc before Atsumu interrupts it to forge a different path.

He leaps. His hand meets the ball. The ball meets two fingers on a blocker’s hand – Atsumu doesn’t even know who jumped or when – and then the ball meets the floor.

The howling in his ears is muted. The edges of the court are blurred out of focus. Sakusa’s eyes are sharp with triumph. Atsumu shouts – victorious – and it’s cut off halfway as Hinata barrels into his side with a slap to his back, and then Meian is trying to shout back through his own grin, but Sakusa is the only thing he can see over the mess of sweaty hair in his vision: Sakusa and the slow, satisfied smile spreading across his face, and the way it breaks a little too early to turn into something far too genuine, a flash of teeth that gets bitten back more quickly than Atsumu would have liked.

He breaks free of Hinata and Meian before the refs can get on their asses, walks over to Sakusa, and holds up both hands without a word. Sakusa’s smile is a little quieter – not quite leashed, just quieter – when he brings his palms, sweaty, heated, familiar, forward to meet Atsumu’s with a sharp crack, Atsumu lets the touch linger.

But the algebra is only one part of the larger picture; there is still integration and derivation to be done, and a match to be won, and meetings and food and rest, and Atsumu settles back into his spot alongside five – eleven – other people, and he plays volleyball.

Sakusa frowns thunderously down at his phone as it continues to rattle against the counter with an incoming call for the third ring, the fourth, the fifth.

“You gonna get that?” Atsumu asks, nonplussed. Few things annoy him more than a loud phone going unanswered, and Osamu’s general presence has already worn much of Atsumu’s lacking patience thin. (The familiarity of it is so ungraciously welcome. He knows Osamu feels the same. There’s no need to say any of it out loud.)

Sakusa angles the frown at Atsumu for a brief, cutting moment before flipping it over to see who’s calling him, and then the frown melts entirely into confusion.

“Excuse me,” he says, and strides away to the opposite side of the restaurant. The low light makes him look just a bit ethereal, skating down the sides of his running tights and making the strips of high-vis fabric on his winter jacket skitter and dance.

“Let me wash up these plates,” Kita says, and reaches over before Atsumu can even react in protest. Atsumu was raised with manners, sure, it’s just that Osamu absorbed more of them.

“You don’t have to,” Osamu cuts in. (There it is. At least Osamu isn’t terminally out of practice when it comes to this specific strain of politeness.)

“But I’d like to,” Kita replies, firmly, kindly, politely, and Osamu–

Atsumu expects his mouth to snap shut at the inherent authority of his tone, like it would have in high school, and for Osamu to maybe try another protest if only on principle, but Osamu’s mouth instead curves up in a slight smile, and he says, “Okay. Thanks.”

Atsumu waits for the kitchen door to swing shut behind Kita before he rounds on Osamu and hisses, “You wanna tell me what that's about?"

"You wanna tell me what that's about?" Osamu hisses back, cutting his eyes pointedly to the side, and Atsumu's gaze snaps unbidden over his shoulder to Sakusa's silhouette near the kitchen door.

"You first," Atsumu challenges.

He expects Osamu to puff up and needle him back, to dance the routine they’ve danced their whole lives, but Osamu just– lets out a tense breath, doesn't meet his eyes, and says, "I dunno, Tsumu. We're friends. It's nice."

"Don't be an idiot about this, Samu," he whispers loudly, and words déjà dit, déjà vu, déjà entendu crawl up his throat. "If you know what you want–"

“I don’t,” Osamu snaps back, “okay? I don’t.”

It’s quiet. Atsumu can hear the water running in the kitchen; Sakusa hasn’t said more than a handful of quiet words over the phone. Osamu’s jaw is tense. He doesn’t quite meet Atsumu’s eyes.

“Okay,” Atsumu finally says, and nods slowly. He feels lost and he doesn’t know why.

“It’s–” Osamu runs a hand down his face, then back up into his hair, knocking his hat askew so it sits perched on top of his head. “We do business, we talk, we’re friends, and it’s nice. And, I mean–” He shrugs helplessly and glances over at the kitchen. “It’s Kita. You know?”

Today has already defied plenty of expectations. Atsumu had asked Sakusa if he’d want to go beggar dinner off of Osamu after-hours mostly on a whim, expecting a quiet no and an evening of scraping something together with Sakusa as per what counts as “usual” for them, but Sakusa had just shrugged and pulled up the train tables on his phone to check where they’d have to change lines. (He’d leaned into the arm Atsumu had braced on a pole in the train car, fitting his back against the bend of Atsumu’s elbow, and in turn Atsumu had leaned into the cold-winter-air smell lingering between them both.) Now Atsumu is standing in the permanent storefront that Osamu owns (owns) and watching a blotchy flush color his brother’s ears, mouth still alight with the taste of his onigiri, Kita gently thumping dishes around in the sink, Sakusa lurking like a shadow in a corner by the door.

“I know, you loser,” Atsumu replies instead of saying anything else, and smacks the brim of his hat back down over his forehead. “So don’t fuck it up. Whether it's friends or something else. He doesn’t deser—”

"Yes," Sakusa says, his voice a deafening rush as he speaks into a room that’s usually packed to the brim with people, and Atsumu is so shocked that he jumps. Osamu whips around.

Atsumu has never heard Sakusa raise his voice like this. Ever. Even on the court, he manages to make his voice carry without raising it. Now, he stands frozen awkwardly under a bit of dim recessed lighting that lights up his eyebrows, the tip of his nose, the very tops of his cheeks, the edge of his phone where he’s got it rammed tight against his ear. Atsumu stares at him in shock.

"Yes," Sakusa repeats, quieter, and his face is pale but there's a flush growing that Atsumu doesn't know what to think of. His eyes are locked on Atsumu, but the fire in them is unsteady. "I– of course. Yes, I will. Thank you."

He stares across the quiet, dark restaurant, phone screen glowing in his hand. The near-silence rings. (Kita in the back. The hum of air and water in the pipes.) Atsumu waits. Next to him, Osamu inhales – probably to ask if everything is okay – but Sakusa beats him to the punch.

"The national team," Sakusa says.

Atsumu has never seen Sakusa so completely discomposed. Disheveled and sweaty after a match, half-asleep after a long bus trip, full of self-directed ire after a preventable mistake: sure. But this is shock so thorough it almost looks like panic, a side of Sakusa he’s never seen before, like someone has picked up the box in Atsumu’s brain that houses everything he’s cataloged so carefully about Sakusa, rotated it a handful of degrees, and shown him that the silhouette casts an entirely different shadow. Something more complete.

“Damn, Sakusa, congrats,” Osamu says, utterly irreverent in the face of Atsumu’s world shifting under his feet. (And Sakusa’s too. Damn.) “Call people, go cry, do whatever you need.” Osamu grins; Atsumu’s stomach sinks in automatic anticipation. “When Tsumu got the call, he got so worked up he cried and gave himself a migraine.”

“You,” Atsumu snarls thunderously, “fucking liar—”

“I’m not lying, you shut the fuck up,” Osamu snaps back coolly, and then turns to Sakusa, who looks like he’s processed exactly nothing that Osamu has said. Atsumu’s face is hot with anger. “I’m gonna head into the kitchen”—He pulls his apron back up over his neck and nudges open the door—“let me make you something to take home, Sakusa. Hey, Shinsuke,” Osamu calls, and Atsumu thinks oh, Shinsuke, “hold up a sec in there, can you–” and the door shuffles closed, muffling the rest of Osamu’s sentence.

Sakusa is still standing shell-shocked by the wall, staring at the phone still in his hand.

“Omi,” Atsumu says, and Sakusa’s eyes snap to his, wide and a little hazy, endearing, and Atsumu has a split second for uh-oh to register at the wriggle in his chest before he continues, “congratulations.”

“National team,” Sakusa repeats blankly, and then the words seem to hit him. He blinks; the tinder in his eyes catches fire, and the expression of joy and pure pride that spreads across his face is so wondrous that Atsumu doesn’t know what to do with himself or with the wriggle in his chest that he suspects might be the sensation of roots crawling through the cavity of his ribcage.

“No getting rid of me now,” Atsumu tells him, and steps very slowly towards where Sakusa still has not budged from his spot. The motion seems to provoke the right response; Sakusa shoves his phone back into his pocket – probably only temporarily – and sways forward in two uneven steps, three, and very distantly, Atsumu can hear two quiet voices, and then the dull rumble of the range hood turning on, the kitchen coming back to life.

Sakusa takes another step closer. Atsumu holds his hands out in the universal hug-query gesture, a little awkwardly, and Sakusa stares at him for a moment too long before squaring up his shoulders in return and crooking his elbows outward in acceptance. Atsumu can’t help but laugh as he pulls Sakusa in for the weirdest fucking hug he’s ever had to offer, one he fully intends to make casually brief, but then — then Sakusa doesn’t hug him back like any normal human being would, just slumps forward to make it something full-contact, and Atsumu burns.

Sakusa lets out a breathless, shuddering sort of laugh – joyful, disbelieving, satisfied; Atsumu understands – against his shoulder. His chest is warm against Atsumu’s. He smells very faintly like cologne or aftershave, like the jacket he’s wearing has quietly absorbed the scent over time and made it Sakusa’s own. You guys are friends, rings Bokuto’s voice through Atsumu’s memory, and Atsumu thinks, fuck that. They can be something else, too. He shifts his weight back so that Sakusa’s boneless slump pulls them even closer together, and he turns his face into the crook of Sakusa’s neck. Atsumu realizes that there aren’t any new roots burrowing into his chest; there’s already something alive in there, snarling and hungry, the same species of thing he feeds with volleyball, and it closes its jaws around the tender flesh of the sensation of this familiar body pressed against his own.

Sakusa leans away abruptly. Atsumu nearly bites his tongue at the motion – Sakusa practically shoves them apart – but Sakusa’s hand dives into his pocket for his phone and he jams it back against his ear before Atsumu even has time to wonder what he’s doing. Sakusa doesn’t step away, Atsumu refuses to cede ground, and the dial tone hums quietly between them before connecting.

“Motoya,” Sakusa says, “I’m on the national team.” Komori’s response is so loud that even Atsumu winces. Sakusa makes a face and says, wryly, “Thanks,” and then, “yeah– not yet, I’m about to.”

Atsumu nudges Sakusa’s leg with his knee and tips his head towards the kitchen; Sakusa nods back and keeps listening to Komori’s excited voice on the line, still at a bright and deafening volume. He elbows the door open and shoulders his way in, washes his hands in the nearby sink plastered with bright, laminated health ordinance reminders, and then violates every one of those ordinances when he leans against the wall and shoves his hands in his pockets to watch as Osamu and Kita stand before the hulking range, shoulder to shoulder, blue gaslight flickering under a dark pan. Kita watches Osamu carefully as he explains something that Atsumu can’t hear over the roar of the range hood, and his face is attentive in a familiar way, bright in a way he’s never seen before. (Maybe Osamu has. Probably Osamu has.)

Atsumu looks at two bodies whose muscles were meant only for volleyball, once, and he watches two pairs of deft hands exchange chopped vegetables and oil and cutting boards, and he thinks. And he thinks. And he thinks about all the love and care that Osamu has poured into his work as he flicks his wrist absently to send gleaming onions up and over themselves in a sauteed wave back into the skillet, and he thinks about the way Kita leans around Osamu for a lid to go over the steamer basket in the nearby pan, and he smiles to himself and decides that they probably don’t need any help.

(Osamu sends them both home with katsudon and curry so good that Atsumu calls him immediately after he inhales it for lunch the next day to ask what the fuck he put in the sauce, and gets fuck you, come back next time as an answer, which is acceptable. He also gets a text from Sakusa that reads Osamu’s again some time? and finds that pretty damn acceptable, too.)

Atsumu rolls onto his back and blinks up at the ceiling, one arm crooked over his head. He can feel his shirt riding up over his hip. His phone continues to rattle against the nightstand, ringing out its weird little alarm tone. The approximately human-shaped knot in the sheets next to him doesn’t budge.

This is how a Friday morning like today’s has played out several times before: Atsumu will hit snooze, just once, because Sakusa is somehow a slow starter in the mornings. Sakusa’s alarm will go off in the time between snoozes. They’ll brush their teeth and shower and eat and grab their bags. This is an arrangement of convenience: it’s easier to take the train out to Sakusa’s apartment before a travel day so that he can drive them both to the gym.

This is how today’s Friday morning plays out: Atsumu pushes himself up onto one arm, laments the cold air that kisses his skin, and reaches over Sakusa to pick up his phone and silence it. He stares down at the mess of hair poking over the comforter hitched up to Sakusa’s ears and figures his own bedhead is probably just as bad. The frown pinching Sakusa’s brows means he’s conscious and trying not to be. Atsumu sinks back under the warmth of his own comforter, wraps his fist into one edge, rolls onto his side, and presses himself against Sakusa’s back with the comforter slung over both of them, keeping body heat trapped in layers and layers of fabric. Sakusa lets out a quiet breath and leans back. When Sakusa’s alarm goes off, Atsumu snoozes it for him, hunkers back down under the covers, and presses his forehead to the nape of Sakusa’s neck.

This is what Atsumu knows: this week’s matches, the penultimate set of the regular season before quarterfinals, are being held at the Okinawa City Gymnasium this weekend. Call for today’s flight is in approximately two hours. Sakusa’s body is warm underneath however many layers he’s swaddled himself in, his breaths even underneath Atsumu’s hand.

There is a realization lodged just under Atsumu’s skin that he can’t quite yank free to inspect, and he tries. He tries. He circles his fingers around Sakusa’s wrist as they switch off places to shower; he leans into Sakusa’s side and watches him make coffee with the weird pour-over thing he uses; he flicks Sakusa’s hair out of his eyes when it’s mussed by the sweatshirt he pulls on as they get ready to leave, and finally, the sliver in his palm dislodges: Sakusa’s fingers brush briefly, very intentionally, against Atsumu’s as he lowers his hand, and a faint warmth tempers his eyes as he shuffles into a pair of sneakers.

“Huh,” Atsumu says.

“What?” It takes Sakusa a few seconds to stop kicking the sneakers properly onto his feet and realize that Atsumu isn’t moving. There’s an edge of impatience to his voice when he repeats, “What?”

Atsumu feels a distinct sense of wonder that of all the other people out there who love volleyball and share the court with him and spike his sets so beautifully, Sakusa happens to be the type of person who refuses to give way and makes it neither an act of saintly patience nor some saccharine attempt at domestication. That of all the other people out there, Sakusa is the one who lets Atsumu into his apartment, his bed, against his skin. Sakusa is the one who touches him like it's the most normal thing in the world.

“You like me,” Atsumu says.

A blink. A devastating rupture of pressure under calm ground. Another blink.

“What?” Sakusa repeats for the third time.

“You like me,” Atsumu says. There is no edge of a question to his tone. “As a person.”

Sakusa stares at him, unblinking now, and does not reply. Atsumu kicks the toe of his shoe and uses it as an excuse to lean in closer. Sakusa has spent weeks touching him, months sharing food and space with him. It’s Atsumu who’s being given allowance here. It’s Atsumu who has been allowed into Sakusa’s apartment, his bed, his carefully maintained personal space. It’s Atsumu who gets to feel Sakusa’s hands and nudging elbow like it’s the most normal thing in the world. Suddenly Atsumu understands, bone-deep, that look on Hinata’s face, that reverence shining in his eyes when he talks to Kageyama.

(And here Atsumu thought he’d been the one to push the line up until now. Being wrong feels good for possibly the first time in his life.)

The impassive front to Sakusa’s face shifts. His chin lifts by just a degree. He is suddenly half a meter taller than Atsumu, his shoulders broader than Ushijima’s. His eyes darken. It all adds up to be nothing less than tacit admission, as blatant as Atsumu will ever get it. A familiar prickling heat rushes viciously under Atsumu’s skin; Sakusa’s gaze falls from his eyes to his lips and down to the sliver of air between them and then back up.

“So what,” Sakusa says, very quietly, “are you going to do about it?”

What Atsumu is going to do about it is, quite precisely, nothing much. He’s going to play volleyball. He’s going to finish out this season. He’s going to obliterate the Falcons in the semifinals and the Adlers in the finals. He’s going to let Sakusa keep touching him however he wants. There’s no point in resisting when he very much wants the same thing, so he doesn’t resist, but the stubborn, contrary beast gnawing at his ribcage keeps him from doing anything in return. Let Sakusa come to him. He’s run his chase, and now he lies in wait.

(No — that’s not quite it. Sakusa has run his chase, thorough and inevitable, and Atsumu finds himself willingly cornered.)

The longer that the game is afoot, the more difficult it becomes to not cave, and a distant oft-ignored part of his mind whispers that maybe it’s time to give it up when he’s got his eyes screwed shut and his dick in hand, thinking about Sakusa’s fingers in his hair and in his mouth and he turns over to press his face into the pillow as he comes into a hand he wishes wasn’t his own. This is a problem entirely of his own making, but it’s Sakusa’s problem too, and Atsumu refuses to cave in any regard. No matter how much Sakusa’s fingertips grazing his skin (a palm curling around the inside of his thigh, knuckles brushing down his forearm) has started to drive him out of his mind. No matter how much hungrier it’s made him to be getting a taste of what he already knows he wants.

The one time Sakusa’s impatience almost wins out is the one time Atsumu’s stubbornness nearly doesn’t, when Sakusa yanks him close by the wrist after a grueling, rewarding early practice session two weeks before finals, early-morning air flushing in through the windows they’d cracked open and doing nothing to bring them down from the body-high of a workout. They’re so close that Atsumu can feel the heat radiating from Sakusa’s skin, and no doubt Sakusa can feel the same.

Their breaths are even and deep, thunderous. Sakusa’s fingers loosen around Atsumu’s wrist; his thumb strokes upwards, and then his knuckles brush against Atsumu’s stomach.

“Omi,” Atsumu tries, quietly, unable to bite back a smug flash of teeth, and he murmurs again, “Kiyoomi.”

The irritation – anger, annoyance, want – that flashes across Sakusa’s face is close to lethal at this range. Sakusa knows exactly what Atsumu has been doing, and Atsumu knows that Sakusa knows, and the knot they’re weaving pulls continuously tighter. Thread can only take so much before it snaps. (There is only so much pressure that can build before a catastrophic rupture.)

Sakusa’s fingertips dip under the edge of his loose shirt, sliding upwards along the waistband of his shorts, inching closer to bare skin, and right as Atsumu decides that this counts as Sakusa giving in, the door slams open on the far side of the gym with a bang and life comes rushing back to Atsumu’s awareness.

Sakusa leans back to put a modest amount of distance between them; even from across the gym, Bokuto’s voice echoes as it drowns out whatever is being said in response.

“I win,” Atsumu says, and it feels like a loss almost immediately to admit that there’s even a game to be played.

“You’re insufferable,” Sakusa replies matter-of-factly.

Atsumu tips his chin up in defiance of the scant five centimeters of height between them, smiles, and counters, “And yet.”

And yet, Sakusa doesn’t reply, just rolls his eyes and leans down to pick up the water they’ve left scattered on the floor (and leaves the towels to Atsumu as usual), but Atsumu knows all too well by now that his silences are always damning.

The MSBY Black Jackals lose to the Schweiden Adlers in the final match of the 2018-2019 V.League Division 1 tournament. The game goes to five sets. The loss is narrow. The Adlers retain their number-one spot in the league, but they lose their mantle of invulnerability. Blood has been drawn. Their continued wins are no longer a given.

Bokuto stumbles into him to deliver a back-breaking hug that feels almost celebratory. Atsumu leans into it with all his weight and rubs his back as Bokuto sways into the hug, uncaring of the commingling sweat that will be utterly disgusting in about ten minutes. Bokuto slaps him on the shoulder before leaping away towards Hinata, but then he falters, then stops, then turns away almost sheepishly and heads for Inunaki and Meian instead.

Atsumu swallows dryly as he watches Hinata. His face is radiant. He has eyes only for Kageyama. (Again. As always.) He looks like he’s just won the title for the Jackals. Kageyama looks devastated. Kageyama looks enraptured. Kageyama looks at Hinata like he’s the only thing that exists. Atsumu thinks he understands. Hinata ducks under the net and steps slowly towards Kageyama; his mouth is moving, but Atsumu never hears anything after a match except the dull roar of the crowd. Kageyama leans forward, his eyes lowered, the backs of his fingers brushing up Hinata’s flushed forearms, and—

Atsumu turns his back to them both. He finds Sakusa drifting slowly towards him; there’s a contemplative look on his face, and then his eyes meet Atsumu’s unflinchingly, bright with a heady combination of far too many things for Atsumu to pick out which is at the forefront. Maybe fire; that’s what Atsumu is most used to seeing in the forefront. Maybe disappointment. Maybe the tiredness of a game gone to five sets and then deuces.

“Good game, Omi-kun,” Atsumu manages tiredly, and steps forward to pass on what Bokuto had given him: a reminder that they did this together, that all the years of work they put into their bodies culminated in this, that this is not the end of anything, and Atsumu drops his forehead into the sweaty curve of Sakusa’s neck as he wraps one arm around Sakusa’s waist, and then the other. Sakusa’s hands move first to his shoulders and then slide properly around his back in return, leaving sweat-cold fabric still clinging against Atsumu’s skin in their wake. The touch lacks the edge of impatience that has started to accumulate on every brush of their shoulders on the train, on the brief pressure of Sakusa’s fingertips against Atsumu’s arm, on every touch in between. Instead, this is simple.

“At Kurowashiki,” Sakusa murmurs against his ear, “we’re going to destroy them.”

Atsumu smiles.

Sakusa walks in, takes his shoes off, shrugs out of his jacket, pulls something out of his bag, and shoves it into Atsumu’s hands before walking off to the kitchen to wash his hands.

“Hi, good to see you too, hope you had a nice trip over,” Atsumu calls after him, and then lets the glossy magazine pages unfurl from the neat roll that Sakusa had foisted upon him. “You know I get Volleyball Monthly too, right? You know all of us got that free subscription”—He sits down on the couch and tucks one foot underneath himself—“right?”

“And I know,” Sakusa replies, “for a fact that you don’t read it.”

Atsumu tips his head back to frown over at him. Sakusa tips his chin up at the magazine, his hands wringing themselves out in the towel that hangs from the still-persevering cat-shaped ¥150 hook over the cabinet door. Atsumu looks back down at the magazine, scowls at the cover, and then notices the sticky note standing at attention from midway through the issue.

“Why am I supposed to read it?” Atsumu mutters. “I’m not the one howling after Mister Perfect-Setter-Flawless-Server Tobio and whatever Italian villa he’s moving to.”

“Turin’s apparently not that nice of a city,” Sakusa says. He reaches for the banged-up tin of cream (third of approximately five that Atsumu has stashed in several places currently, including one in Sakusa’s bag that Sakusa conveniently forgets about every time he asks), pops the lid, and works the thick cream into his hands. “Read the article. I even highlighted the relevant paragraph to save you the tremendous time it would take you to read two whole sentences.”

Atsumu scowls at him, then scowls again at the action shot of Kageyama mid-air for a serve that graces the cover – cropped from a photo that was definitely taken during the finals – and then again at the horrible grimace that Kageyama calls a smile sitting at the top of the sticky-noted page, a clean studio headshot framed with a nice, splashy graphic in the colors of the Italian flag.

He skims the article – fuck you, Sakusa, the reason he doesn’t bother reading VM is because the gossip he gets from everyone else renders the act of reading the original material utterly pointless – reaches the neat, translucent arrow stuck on at the head of a paragraph, and he only barely resists throwing the magazine right back in Sakusa’s smirking face.

“Congratulations,” Sakusa says, “on becoming V.League’s #1 ranked setter, now that Kageyama’s transfer is official.”

Atsumu feels white-hot rage, and then several things in quick succession.

First: there are very, very few people who inspire this particular kind of fury in him. It’s mostly Osamu. Almost entirely him, actually.

Second: Sakusa is the kind of friend he’s never really had before because Osamu had always filled that space by default. Sakusa’s mere goddamn existence makes Atsumu want to sprint straight for the gym and show him that being the number-one setter and server, thank you very much, in all of Japan has less to do with that goddamn nightmare of a player leaving and more with Atsumu’s own skill.

Sakusa’s eyes are first to give as they crinkle up, and then his mouth gives and curls into a smile, and a short, genuine laugh leaves him as he turns his head away in a truly vain attempt to hide it.

Third: Sakusa’s face is warm when Atsumu wrenches him back around by the chin. His eyes are the depth and warm shade of black coffee today, wide with surprise. His mouth is soft where Atsumu doesn’t completely miss it with his own. Atsumu might, in fact, still be trembling with rage.

“I was ranked #1 at the end of the season before he left,” Atsumu snarls directly into Sakusa’s face, “so don’t gimme that bullsh–mmph—”

Sakusa kisses him back squarely, and irritation flares in Atsumu’s chest at the finesse that Sakusa manages even as he catches Atsumu mid-word, and the irritation is both eased and fueled as Sakusa’s fingers find their way into Atsumu’s hair.

“Shut up,” Sakusa replies, or at least, that’s what Atsumu assumes he’s trying to say, because the words get caught somewhere between his own teeth instead of leaving Sakusa’s mouth.

Sakusa gives him no quarter. He kisses without compromise. He pulls Atsumu in and steals his breath without remorse. It’s an argument and a competition; a claim staked and refuted all in the span of one heavy breath giving way to another. Sakusa’s hands relinquish Atsumu’s hair to instead slide down his chest, towards his hips, and in one fluid motion Atsumu finds himself on his back against the armrest of the couch, staring up.

“I cannot believe,” Sakusa says quietly, “that this is what it took.” Sakusa slides his hand down the outside of Atsumu’s thigh, hooks it under his knee, and pulls Atsumu’s leg up over his hip. Atsumu sighs at the press of his weight. “Your ego is unimaginable.”

Atsumu can feel an angry sort of flush still crawling up his neck. Sakusa’s hair is soft and fine when he reaches up to bury his hands in it; the prickle of his undercut feels so different compared to his own, long enough to catch between his fingers. His body aches with want; hunger half-sated with satisfaction, sharpened on the whetstone of knowing what comes next. He replies, “Seems like you like it just fine.”

Sakusa rolls his eyes. No rebuttal. A damning silence. The usual. Atsumu smirks, and Sakusa does not resist when Atsumu pulls him down. Satiation comes when Atsumu does, but it’s short-lived and only breeds more hunger in its wake. When Sakusa blinks the haze out of his own eyes, Atsumu knows for a fact it’s the same for him.

Later, long past a dinner eaten with their shins pressed together under the table, when Sakusa is in borrowed sweatpants and cocooned in the spare summer comforter (Just because you’ve finally screwed your head on straight doesn’t mean I want you to steal the covers, he’d said, and Atsumu had replied that his head’s always been screwed on straight, thanks, but I can screw you, if you want, and had gotten a brusque laugh but a conciliatory touch in return) and lying curled into Atsumu’s side, Atsumu wriggles a trapped hand out from between them and asks, “So what’s our deal?”

“Really?” Sakusa mutters.

Atsumu crooks his elbow up on the pillow over Sakusa’s head and pats his hair twice successfully, the third time unsuccessful as Sakusa unearths one of his own hands to swat him away.

“Really.”

“You already know.”

Atsumu tries again, this time just gently pushing his fingertips along Sakusa’s scalp, and he finds the motion allowed. He replies, “Maybe I want to hear you say it.”

“No you don’t,” Sakusa says. His freed hand drifts down under Atsumu’s comforter, under the threadbare shirt he’s wearing to sleep (oversized rough cotton worn down to softness, the now-outdated Tachibana sponsorship logo halfway flaked off; a “gift” from Aran that Atsumu had “stolen” his last year of high school), and Sakusa slowly brushes his fingers up across Atsumu’s hip, goosebumps rippling in their wake.

“Fine.” Atsumu smiles up at his darkened ceiling, fighting back ticklishness. “Just want the record to state, then, that I’m not scared to tell you that I’m pretty into you.”

Sakusa’s fingers still. When Atsumu looks over, he finds Sakusa has raised his head off the pillow, his eyes narrowed. I win, Atsumu thinks, letting a nasty grin take over his smile. I win, I win. Sakusa shifts first onto his side, then unwinds his limbs to rest on an elbow, and Atsumu finds himself promptly caged in by a set of arms and broad shoulders.

“Seems to me like you were pretty scared this whole past month or so,” Sakusa says. “I was pretty clear about it.”

“Not clear enough,” Atsumu hums thoughtfully, and reaches up to take Sakusa by the chin. “Go over it again with me.”

And Sakusa does: in tongue and teeth, in fingertips pushing their delicate cloudburst echo into fragile patches of skin, in the heavy press of two bodies together.

Several weeks pass by the time it occurs to Atsumu to ask. The faint shadow of a bruise peeks out from the collar of Sakusa’s shirt, askew, next to the peeking edge of a tag; Atsumu tucks the tag in, pulls the collar down just a sliver more, and kisses the mark. Sakusa hums quietly over the sound of running water and continues doing the dishes without shaking Atsumu off, so Atsumu presses closer against his back.

“Kiyoomi,” Atsumu asks in between kisses against the nape of Sakusa’s neck, “did you start off our whole dinner thing last year ‘cause you had the hots for me?”

The faucet continues to run; Sakusa’s back shifts against Atsumu’s chest as he rinses soap out of a bowl, and he says, “No.”

“But…?”

“I might’ve had ulterior motives later.”

The only thing that’s been tempered – slightly – so far is the amount of annoyance Atsumu feels at having to stretch a few centimeters upwards to hook his chin over Sakusa’s shoulder, and even then, the thing that tempers it is in itself the fact that Sakusa is taller, broader, still a relative novelty even living in a world where 183 centimeters is short. Sakusa’s idea of compromise is to slouch forward just enough to let Atsumu kiss below his ear, at the edge of his jaw, against his pulse.

“How much later?” Atsumu asks, and slips his hands underneath Sakusa’s shirt. There’s a small damp patch where Sakusa must have leaned against the counter, still warm from the heat of the water.

“Let me finish this,” Sakusa says, impatient, and swats at Atsumu’s arm with a wet hand. “Is your ego trip that pressing?”

“I’m just curious,” Atsumu protests, but he slides away from Sakusa to rearrange the drying rack so there’ll be enough room for the cutting board and the small saucepan still waiting to be scrubbed.

“Does it matter?” Sakusa hands him the cutting board. “Took you long enough to notice.”

“What were you going to do if I hadn’t noticed?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” Sakusa replies, cutting the hint of a smirk over at him, and Atsumu is filled with a horrible mix of affection and irritation. The look falls into something more thoughtful as Sakusa rinses out the saucepan, hands it to Atsumu, and shuts off the water with a flick of his hand, and he says, “I probably would have said something if you hadn’t started being so blatant halfway through the season.”

“Yeah?” Atsumu asks, watching Sakusa dry off his hands in that meticulous, particular way of his. “Like what?”

“I like being your teammate,” Sakusa says, watching his hand as it reaches out to brush down Atsumu’s forearm, “and your friend. Anything else has just been–” He shrugs, his eyes still on his fingers, blinking slowly as Atsumu turns his hand to catch Sakusa’s in his own. “–a welcome bonus. If I fucked you once and we went back to normal then that would have been fine, too. It doesn’t really matter.”

“Gee, thanks,” Atsumu replies, but he’s smiling as he leans in to kiss Sakusa anyways, and he knows that they’re in mutual understanding.

Sakusa still pisses him off when he gets a no-touch ace in a match before Atsumu does, and Atsumu still likes one-on-one practice with Sakusa more than anyone else. They still have dinner together and eat at Osamu’s place and share space on the train. It doesn’t really matter because there’s no sense in dwelling on what never happened and never will. There’s no need to be dogged by what brought them here. All that matters is where they’ll go tomorrow.

(AVC. World Grand Champions Cup. Nations League.)

(Olympic Gold.)

“I just wanted to say,” Hinata starts off with a particularly sharp glint to his eyes that Atsumu doesn’t like, not one bit, “that I’m really glad you and Omi-san get along so well.”

“We’re teammates,” Atsumu replies with a shrug, because there’s no sense lying about anything when the truth is pretty simple. “What, are you worried he doesn’t like you?”

“No, no.” Hinata rests a hand on Atsumu’s forearm and peers up at him intently; Atsumu immediately misses the shape and weight of Sakusa’s in comparison, and he thinks, well, that’s something to examine later. Hinata smiles and says, “I’m glad he likes you.”

Atsumu frowns.

“And why’s that?” he asks.

“Well,” Hinata says, “you’re kind of a prickly person, Atsumu-san. No offense,” he rushes to say, “I mean, Tobio’s like that too”—Tobio—Atsumu bites back a victorious grin as Hinata waves his hands—“and I think it’s kind of a thing for setters, you know? I know it’s kinda–” Hinata screws his face up adorably as he pauses to think. “It’s hard to be the setter sometimes, I think? People hate you or lean on you too much or… you get a reputation,” he says, “you know?”

“Yeah,” Atsumu replies, “I know. So what? What’s this got to do with Omi?”

“He likes you,” Hinata says. He doesn’t say it brightly, the way Atsumu would have expected; it’s intent, like Hinata is impressing critical knowledge onto him, like Atsumu needs to understand this in order to go on. “And you like him. And–” He looks away, pink gathering in his cheeks. “I dunno. I thought Tobio was the worst guy in the universe when we met, and now we’re… friends. And stuff.” Uh huh, Atsumu thinks, and chews on his lip to keep from laughing. “So I get it. And I think it’s nice that Omi-san likes you so much.”

“Shōyō-kun,” Atsumu says carefully, “are you sure you’re not just jealous?”

He can hear voices in the hall; there likely won’t be much more to this conversation if Hinata decided it needed to be had when it's still just the two of them in the changing room. Atsumu still isn’t quite sure what he’s getting at, other than—

“Maybe,” Hinata replies hotly, face growing a deeper pink as he shoves Atsumu’s arm, “because Omi-san is cool and I want high-fives and hugs from him too, who wouldn’t, but I’m trying to say that I’m glad that you guys are close because it’s hard when you don’t get along with someone and you guys are kinda–” He winces. “Kinda not always easy to get along with.”

“I don’t have to be best friends with everyone I play with,” Atsumu says, feeling like this conversation has now spiraled right out of his hands. Osamu spent half of junior high and most of high school harping on this very subject, and Atsumu finds his patience worn thin with uncharacteristic speed at the insistence of Hinata, of all people, starting this conversation just to harp on it too. “You’re a total people magnet, Shōyō-kun, but not everyone has to be.”

“I know,” Hinata insists, wrapping a hand around his wrist again and leaning forward as the door swings open behind them to a mix of voices: Thomas, Barnes, Bokuto. His eyes are deeply intense. Unsettling. Atsumu blinks. “So I’m saying that I’m really glad you and Omi-san get along even when you don’t have to. Okay?”

And with that he springs up off the bench, leaving Atsumu to frown down at his socked feet. A string of texts from Osamu and their parents distracts him almost immediately halfway through wiggling his feet into his shoes as the rest of the team mills around, Hinata’s bright voice dominating with his excitement over finally playing at Kurowashiki, and he’s bending down to finally lace up his shoes when Sakusa drops down onto the bench next to him, knee pads and shoes in hand.

“Shōyō-kun’s jealous of me,” Atsumu reports immediately, “for being the only one special enough to get the coveted high-five from you.”

“Well,” Sakusa replies, leaning over to tug on one of his compression sleeves, dark nylon-spandex weave gleaming as he bunches it up, “there’s not much else to be jealous of.”

Someone – Inunaki? – barks out a loud ha! behind them, accompanied by a round of smothered laughter. At the corner of his eye, he can see the embarrassed flush fading from Hinata’s face as he tries not to laugh instead. Atsumu grins and leans back on his hands.

“Honey,” he says, “you’re so sweet it makes my teeth hurt.”

Sakusa turns his head to give him a look so withering it should make Atsumu’s hair curl. Behind him, someone snorts so deeply it sounds like they’re choking. Past the curve of Sakusa’s back, Hinata’s bright, bright eyes are focused on Atsumu, unrelenting.

“Well, I’m jealous too,” Bokuto announces earnestly, and plants his hands on Atsumu’s shoulders from behind, “and I also think there’s plenty about you to be jealous of, Tsum-Tsum.”

“Keep that up and you’ll make me want to play favorites,” Atsumu tells him, and now it’s Sakusa’s turn to let out a disbelieving snort.

“That’s an empty threat,” Sakusa says, and his knuckles drag along the outside of Atsumu’s calf as he pulls the other sleeve up over his knee. “You’re fundamentally incapable of that kind of self-sabotage.”

“And that’s a quality worth being jealous of,” Atsumu concludes. Sakusa straightens up to fix him with another withering look. Atsumu almost wants to kiss him.

“Okay,” Meian says wearily, “that’s more than enough. Everybody out. Warm up or you don’t play.”

Bokuto claps his hands down on Atsumu’s shoulders one more time, stinging even through his jersey, and bounds out the door immediately with Hinata hot on his heels, the rest of the team following at a more sedate, human pace. Sakusa leans over again to tug his shoes on; Atsumu matches him to re-lace his other shoe, and by the time he straightens up again, the changing room is empty save for Sakusa waiting next to him.

“Hey.” Atsumu circles his fingers around Sakusa’s wrist; not tight enough to feel his pulse, but enough to feel the strength when Sakusa shifts his hand. Atsumu raises his eyebrows and smiles his winningest. “For luck?”

Sakusa scoffs and pulls his hand back, but only far enough for Atsumu’s fingers to curl around his palm instead. “You don’t need luck,” he says. There’s a slight upward tilt to his mouth.

“Nah,” Atsumu agrees. He doesn’t. All he needs is everything he’s built.

“Then,” Sakusa says, sliding his hand up to Atsumu’s wrist, “for the hell of it.”

He leans over and presses a kiss into the hollow of Atsumu’s cheek, lingering. Atsumu turns and chases him for a proper kiss, chaste and short but full of promise.

He doesn’t need luck. He has his muscles and he has his teammates. That’s all he’s ever needed.

They thrash the Adlers.