Archive of Our Own

“You’ll never be able to blow anyone with chapped lips like that,” Motoya says, and Kiyoomi inhales very, very slowly.

They’re at their usual book cafe for their monthly meetup in Tokyo. It’s a peaceful little place. One of the owner’s dogs is sleeping beside his foot, while the other snores below his bag hanging on his chair. Flourishing houseplants line the windowsill by their table. The air smells warm, like fresh pastries and caramel and espresso. For the holiday season, the owner has decided to decorate the mahogany bookshelves with fairy lights and glowing strings of tinsel.

It’d been Motoya’s idea to hop on the train every Sunday morning to see each other in person. The cafe might have been a long way from the MSBY dorms in Osaka, but no one made hōjicha lattes quite like the owner, and Motoya made a point of dragging Kiyoomi to every disappointing cafe in Osaka just to ensure Kiyoomi knew it.

Not to mention the added presence of Motoya himself. Texts and phone calls were fine, but there was no better way to gauge Kiyoomi’s mood than feeling his vibes in person. Or so Motoya had claimed.

“And what if you get homesick?” Motoya had pressed, while Kiyoomi signed the last line on his pending MSBY contract. He peered at the document over Kiyoomi’s shoulder, whistling at the starting salary. “Okay, shit, maybe you won’t get homesick.”

“Motoya.”

“You could probably build your own Tokyo with that much money, Kiyo-chan, jeez. Is this short people discrimination?”

“Is there a point to this?”

Motoya made an impatient noise. “Homesickness, Kiyo-chan! Meeting up will nip it in the bud. You’re a city boy through and through. Osaka’s going to rot you from the inside out if you stay too long.”

“You realize Osaka is the third most populated city in Japan.”

“Details. It’s Kansai. You have to come!”

So Kiyoomi agreed—if only to spare him the irritation of Motoya’s endless nagging—and the meetups had begun.

Now, though, Kiyoomi’s starting to sense a pattern. Namely: the nagging, Kiyoomi’s tendency to agree to just about anything to escape said nagging, and—

“What if you tried to swallow and then your lips ended up cracking and then you bled all over someone’s dick? Instant boner killer. No one likes a mouth bleeder.”

It’s official. Kiyoomi has to kill him.

“Please stop talking,” he says instead.

If you want to kill someone, give them the opportunity to silence themselves first, Kiyoomi, his mother had told him long ago. If they continue to talk after that, that’s no one’s fault but theirs. Remember, no one likes a whistleblower. Full consequences must be exacted for your actions. Retribution is key, but only as much as the law and bribery will allow. Keep that in mind.

In hindsight, it was a strange lesson to teach your six-year old kid. Memorable, nonetheless.

“It’s just lip balm! C’mon, I’m looking out for your best interests, Kiyo-chan.”

“Please,” Kiyoomi repeats, “stop talking.”

Three years have passed since he’s moved to Osaka, and a part of him is still ill-adjusted to the changes in weather. Living in Tokyo was fine. Minimal snow, minimal cold, and a heater at home at full blast and at all hours of the day in the deepest form of indulgent hedonism.

Living in Osaka? Different beast. The heater in Kiyoomi’s apartment works, but the insulation is terrible, and he hasn’t properly felt his toes in weeks.

To make matters worse, Kiyoomi seems to be the only member on his team who despises the winter season. Hinata, he understands—having lived in the thick summers of Brazil for that many months, of course Hinata would welcome the opportunity to bundle up. Meian had a wife to spoon or whatever. Inunaki had… dogs. Something alive. Kiyoomi isn’t sure and frankly doesn’t care. Adriah had his space heaters and a kotatsu, and Bokuto appeared to skip through life’s difficulties with the relentless power of optimism and his six layers of stupidity as extra cushioning.

As for Miya? The son of a bitch had been born and bred in the snowier regions of Hyōgo. The other day, he had the gall to complain about not getting more snow, and Kiyoomi had almost reached across the net to strangle him, the upcoming match be damned.

Regardless. Winter. It’s the worst. His extremities are numb at all times, the dryness makes his skin itch, and even with the added humidity from inside his mask, he can’t make it a whole day without his lips cracking and bleeding.

Enter stage left, Motoya.

Kiyoomi glowers at the little panda-shaped lip balm lying in the center of their table. It’s offensively cute. The cap has a tiny, smiling panda face with the faintest blush on its squishy cheeks. Round ears poke out of its head at the top, and two squishy black paws have been painted on the stick itself.

The kicker? It’s grape-flavored. He fucking loves grape.

“I’m not using it,” Kiyoomi says to its imploring gaze, scowling. “Especially when it looks like—like that. I’m not five, Motoya.”

“It’s cute!”

“And that’s the problem.”

“You don’t have to be shy,” Motoya sings, and Kiyoomi crinkles his nose. Him? Shy? “I know you like it. I picked it out just for you! There was a penguin option, but obviously I didn’t pick that one.”

Instinctive irritation flares up in him. “Because penguins are—”

“—an insult to their species when they’re birds that can’t fly, yes, I know. So that’s why I picked the panda! You don’t have anything against pandas, do you?”

“I have many things against pandas.”

“Like what?”

Damn him for calling Kiyoomi’s bluff. Objectively speaking, there’s no shortage of flaws in pandas. They’re lazy, huge for no reason, and they do nothing but eat all day. In terms of evolution, they’re a failure. Their endangered status is, for the most part, self-imposed.

So all Kiyoomi has to do is—pick one. Just pick one trait.

“They’re inefficient,” he says finally. “Their digestive systems can’t efficiently break down energy from plants because they still have the gastrointestinal tract of carnivores.”

Motoya’s eyes are gleaming. “And you dislike that?”

Fuck.

“No,” Kiyoomi admits, sullen. “It’s absurd. And cute.”

“That’s what I thought. Take the panda, Kiyo-chan.”

“I’m not going to. Put it away.”

“I’m going to leave it here, actually. And you know I have that… er, thing later today, you know, that thing that I definitely have, which means I’ll be leaving first.”

Horror rises in him. “You’re going to litter?” Kiyoomi demands. “Have you no conscience?”

“Well, it won’t be littering if you take it, y’know.”

“You…” Kiyoomi pauses. What’s an appropriate word to describe Motoya’s utter depravity? “You disgust me.”

“Why, thanks. I hope Panda-kun helps you on your blowjob journey.”

“Don’t call him that.” Panda-kun. What a ridiculously uninspired name. Also: “I’m not going to be blowing anyone, Motoya. What the hell.”

“That’s what you think. Didn’t you have your thing with Miya a few years back? How’s that going, anyway?”

Someone visits your apartment a dozen times during university, and suddenly everyone’s pushing you to get married. For fuck’s sake. He and Miya barely talk outside of practice, if that—the only times they interact are really during practice, their weekly Friday night dinners, Saturday morning movies, and Sunday afternoon lunches.

Him and Miya—it’s not a thing. It hasn’t ever been a thing.

He relays all this to Motoya, who nods with too much frequency for him to actually be listening.

“The point is,” Kiyoomi finishes, poking at the bottom of his iced latte, “I’m not on kissing terms with anyone, much less… blowing terms. So you can take this back.”

Motoya leans back in his seat, takes an obnoxious sip of espresso like an overbearing mother-in-law from those Korean dramas he watches too often. The slurp is long and loud. Kiyoomi glowers; double-damn Motoya, for timing his slurps when he knows that Kiyoomi’s drink is empty.

“Who knows?” Motoya says after he’s finished his power play. “Maybe you’ll be kissing someone like Miya with the help of Panda—”

“Find a different name.”

“—monium-san.”

Kiyoomi turns this over in his head. Barely acceptable.

Motoya beams. “Pandamonium-san will be your good luck charm, I swear. Your romance charm, even. Just watch.”

God only knows why Kiyoomi continues to meet up with Motoya when he acts this way. Perhaps Kiyoomi should make another friend beside his flesh-and-blood cousin.

“You’re crazy,” Kiyoomi says. “Who’d kiss me, anyway?”

Two days later, Miya Atsumu kisses him in the locker room after practice.

Kiyoomi only noticed Miya in the stands during the third match of Kurowashiki because of his hair.

Waseda’s colors were maroon and white, but in terms of team support, fans tended to go all-in on the maroon. It was unfortunate timing that Miya chose to slip into the stands while they were up against Sakai, whose colors notably happened to include indigo and the same eye-watering shade of yellow that Miya sported on his head.

“Fucking traitor in our stands,” his libero Natsukawa muttered, thirty seconds into their time-out. He jerked his head up, and obediently Kiyoomi looked over.

He had to squint to make out the figure. Late nights studying weren’t doing his myopic ass any favors, and he didn’t have the time to go to an optometrist to get his contacts updated. But the cheap box-dye blond stuck out, and there was that obnoxious waving, and the—

“SAKUSA!” Miya’s voice bellowed. “THOUGHT YOU WERE GETTING BETTER AFTER HIGH SCHOOL, NOT WORSE!”

“Kill me now,” Kiyoomi muttered. He took a quick swig from his bottle and briefly wondered if the contents were enough to drown him. The answer was a depressing no.

“That your friend?”

“‘Friend’ is stretching it.”

The last he’d seen of Miya had been three years back at their semifinal match during their final year of high school. It had been the last match for Inarizaki—not so much Itachiyama, but Miya had been on his A-game then. If it hadn’t been for Karasuno wearing them down in the previous match, it would’ve been difficult to snag a win from them.

When the ball dropped, neither of the Miya twins seemed particularly upset, least of all Miya Atsumu. Instead, Miya had stared at him from across the net. His eyes had roamed over Kiyoomi from head to toe, lingering on his wrists, his thighs, his feet—then finally, back up to his face.

“I’m going pro after high school,” Miya had said. “And you are too.”

“Aren’t you presumptuous,” Kiyoomi had responded, letting his hand drop. Clearly Miya wasn’t going to shake it, because sportsmanship was dead.

But Miya grabbed it, and yanked Kiyoomi closer until they were inches apart, only separated by the net. Distantly, he heard Miya’s twin shouting, but Kiyoomi’s gaze narrowed down on Miya’s face: intent, serious, seeing something that Kiyoomi couldn’t.

“You’re going pro, Sakusa,” Miya had said, voice low. “Don’t you dare keep me waiting.”

“And if I tell you I’m going to university?”

“Then you play during university, and you go pro after. You’re not allowed to slack off.”

“Don’t tell me what to do,” Kiyoomi said, abruptly furious, and shook off Miya’s hand. They barely talked outside of matches and a few conversations during training camp. Who did this asshole think he was? “You don’t know me. You lose and you think you have the right to tell me what to do?”

“Sure do,” Miya said.

Kiyoomi‘s temper flared. “You egotistical—”

“I got every right to tell my future hitter what to do to improve, don’t you think?”

Before Kiyoomi could think of a reply to the sheer audacity of that comment, Miya had turned around and walked off the court. All Kiyoomi could do was stare after him, stunned.

Now, three years later, Miya was here. In the gymnasium for Kurowashiki. Heckling him.

“This could be heckling,” his captain said, reading his mind.

“He’s not. Just—ignore him.”

“You want him to stay?”

Kiyoomi hesitated. “He’s… someone I know.”

“So, a friend,” Natsukawa concluded. Kiyoomi shot him a venomous glance, and Natsukawa laughed. “What? That’s Sakusa talk for ‘friend’ if I’ve ever heard one. Never seen you bring one of those around.”

I didn’t bring him, Kiyoomi wanted to say, but then he thought about the strange conversation they had in their last match-up together during high school, the way Miya said my future hitter, and the certainty with which he knew Kiyoomi would play in university.

God. All of this was giving him a headache, and they still had a set to take back.

“He’s no one,” Kiyoomi bit out. “Let’s focus on the match.”

“You sure are a funny guy, Sakusa,” Natsukawa said.

After, when they had crushed the opposing team, no thanks to Miya’s strange jeering-and-praising encouragement, Kiyoomi found him waiting near the entrance of the locker rooms. His hands were shoved into his jean pockets, oversized jersey rolled up to his shoulders like an obnoxious gym nut. He looked… good. Like he belonged on a cover of An An instead of the V.League’s D1 roster.

Spotting him, Miya grinned and turned around to show him the back: SAKUSA #7.

“Ugh,” Kiyoomi said, even as his pulse did a strange jump at the sight. “Tell me you didn’t get that from the shop.”

“Paid four-thousand yen for it, fair and square. Gotta support the local teams, right?”

“You realize this is Tokyo? You’re not supposed to be here.” On second thought, forget Tokyo; Miya wasn’t supposed to be near the locker rooms, period. “What are you doing? The locker rooms are for players only.”

“Well, I am a player.”

Kiyoomi let out an impatient breath. “Miya.”

“I’m just kidding. Turns out, being a pro has a lot of weight in where you’re allowed to go. Plus, I have this—” Miya fished out a little badge hanging at the end of a lanyard, and spun it around his finger before catching it in a stupidly showy move. Kiyoomi scowled; as if in answer, Miya smiled. “Scout pass,” he said.

“You’re not a scout.”

“No, but I begged my coach to let me come with one, so that’s practically the same.”

“You stole that pass?”

“‘Stole’ is a strong word, don’t you think?” Then, ever the expert in hogging every millimeter of space in a conversation: “You going anywhere after this?”

Five fucking sets, the last played to 32 points. Where did Miya think Kiyoomi was going, besides straight home into his shower and bed?

The irritation must’ve translated in his expression, because Miya cooed, like the psychopath he was.

“Oh, poor baby. Want me to pay for dinner? My treat.”

“Fuck off,” Kiyoomi snapped.

“Not an option,” Miya said cheerily. “For the menu, we got ramen, pad thai, pasta. Your choice.”

“Nothing but noodles. Seriously?”

“Need to get some carbs into you. After that match? You’d die of calorie deficiency before you made it home.”

Cue a minor epiphany. “You’re impressed,” Kiyoomi blurted.

He wasn’t sure why he said it; maybe something in him wanted to be certain that Miya still held interest after all this time and distance.

“Watching you?” Miya said. “Hard not to be.”

Fucking Miya Atsumu. It’d be easier to despise him if he didn’t say things like that to Kiyoomi, like it was easy. Like there was some quality inherent to Kiyoomi that he couldn’t help but enjoy.

Who the hell else thought of him the way Miya did, and after three years?

“You’re a lech,” Kiyoomi said.

Miya grinned. “You just say the sweetest things, Sakusa.”

Oh, Pandamonium-san might actually be a good luck charm after all, is Kiyoomi’s first thought, while Atsumu’s mouth works on his. Then: Motoya can never find out about this. Then: Why am I thinking of Motoya? Gross. Then: Oh fuck, since when was Miya Atsumu this good at kissing? Is this even fair?

And then he stops thinking for a while, because the terrible truth is, Atsumu really is too good at kissing. He’s got Kiyoomi pinned up against the lockers; one hand warm on his waist, the other gentle yet firm on his jaw. He’s kissing Kiyoomi like he’s being paid to do it and that it pays better than a lifelong career of professional fucking volleyball. Heat is radiating from his body. It’s too hot in the locker room, suddenly. Or that could be the leftover steam from the showers, or Kiyoomi being set on fucking fire? He can’t tell.

Time cracks apart. He gets lost in the rhythm of Atsumu’s insistent mouth, the sweep of his tongue over Kiyoomi’s bottom lip. Kiyoomi can’t help the tiny whine he lets out at that. Why is Atsumu so fucking good at this? He tugs Atsumu closer, winding his arms around Atsumu’s neck. Atsumu’s hand wanders down to Kiyoomi’s thigh and hitches it up to his hip. The shift in angle works: Atsumu’s kissing him deeper, harder, just fucking better. God. Is this allowed?

Eventually it slows, because Kiyoomi’s internal organs might unravel if they went on for longer. Atsumu must sense that, somehow, and pulls away. He’s breathing hard, like he’s just finished a set of death sprints around the gym. His pupils are blown to hell and back. His mouth is so fucking red.

It takes four unsteady inhales before Kiyoomi finds the voice to speak. “Miya,” is the only thing he can think to say, voice hoarse.

Atsumu doesn’t respond. He’s still holding Kiyoomi’s thigh up, and Kiyoomi shifts. He’s flexible, sure. But the lockers are uncomfortable, and even this is growing to be an unpleasant position.

“Miya,” he says again. “My leg.”

Atsumu startles. “Shit,” he says, letting Kiyoomi go. The thunk of Kiyoomi’s foot dropping to the floor seems too loud in the silence, and Atsumu winces. “My bad. Didn’t mean to—manhandle you like that or whatever.”

“It’s fine.”

Atsumu mouths fine to himself, almost in wonder, before he falls silent again.

In the meantime, Kiyoomi attempts to scramble his synapses into functionality. It doesn’t work. He tries to stick to the facts. Fact: he hasn’t finished packing his bag to go home yet. Fact: his hair is still damp at the ends. Fact: “You kissed me,” he says.

“Ah,” Atsumu says. A pause as he also seems to reflect over the events of the past few minutes. “I… did do that, yeah. It was just… uh…”

More silence.

“Just?” Kiyoomi prompts.

Atsumu’s eyes flicker back down to Kiyoomi’s mouth again, and then he sways a little in place, rocks towards him as if he wants to kiss him again. Kiyoomi almost lets him, but—no. He needs answers.

He places a hand on Atsumu’s chest and stops him in his tracks.

“Answers first,” he says firmly.

He’s not some hussy, after all. He’s not going to kiss anyone a second time—even if it’s Miya Atsumu—unless he knows their intentions and reasoning.

Also, what if Kiyoomi is a bad kisser? This was his third one, including a drunken one in university that he barely remembers and another at graduation when a random stranger had gone around kissing everyone square on the mouth before bouncing off. Kiyoomi had left immediately to try and scrub the germs from his lips, but it’d been too late, and he’d come down with a fever for the following three days.

“I just,” Atsumu repeats. Another pause, longer this time. It appears as if his synapses aren’t firing either. “Your lip balm,” he says eventually.

Kiyoomi blinks. “Pandamonium-san?”

“Wha—who the hell is Pandamoomin-san?”

Fuck. Fuck Motoya for naming the lip balm in such a memorable manner. “It’s… it’s nothing,” Kiyoomi says, trying to will away the growing heat in his ears. “Ignore that. Motoya gave me lip balm and named it after—whatever, it doesn’t matter. What does my lip balm have to do with this?”

“You named your lip balm Pandamoomin-san?” Atsumu asks.

“I just told you I didn’t name it, Motoya did!” Fucking setters. Always so one-track minded. “That’s not the point. You kissed me. Why?”

“Well, I—you know—you—” Atsumu gestures at Kiyoomi’s face, then an aborted gesture at his mask hanging loosely off his finger. Kiyoomi had forgotten he’d been holding it when Atsumu ambushed him. “You keep putting on lip balm nowadays, you and your Princess Peach lips—”

“My what?”

“Fucking kill me,” Atsumu mutters to himself, before he says to Kiyoomi, “Look, you’ve played Mario Kart, I’ve seen you run over everyone on Rainbow Road, don’t lie. I know you know what Princess Peach looks like.”

“What does that have to do with this?”

“I’m saying, if you look at her, right? She’s got these luscious lips. Super pouty, super pink, super kissable. Like if Princess Peach was a celebrity in the world of Mario, she’d be doing commercials for lip gloss and shit—” Seeing that he’s losing Kiyoomi, Atsumu backtracks. “Okay, whatever, this isn’t the point! The point is, I’m just saying that’s you, your fucking Princess Peach lips, and it’s gotten a million times worse since you started putting on your lip balm shit!”

Now it’s Kiyoomi’s turn to be bewildered. “So?”

“You don’t ever put on lip balm normally,” Atsumu says, faster now. “Even though you have like, sixteen other skincare products, like that essence and serum and, I dunno, those fucking wipes and shit. And that’s not even counting your dozen bottles of sunscreen, ‘cause you don’t think just one has good enough IOU coverage or whatever—”

“It’s SPF, Miya, and you should be wearing it too—”

“—and you always take like forty hours in the bathroom to reapply after practice—”

“It’s barely twenty minutes, don’t be ridiculous—”

“—and now you’re putting on lip balm!” Atsumu yells. “And not even after practice! You’re doing it during! And you keep pulling down your mask to do it!” 

“What, do you want me to apply it through my mask?” Kiyoomi asks, incredulous.

“Of course not!”

“But unmasking is a problem?”

Atsumu makes a strangled noise. At that, something clicks. He’s noticed Atsumu staring at him more often than not these past few days and assumed Atsumu had an isolated case of facial blindness or something that would pass soon.

But this? No wonder.

Kiyoomi pushes himself off the lockers, rears up to his full height, and shoves Atsumu back, but Atsumu doesn’t budge. “Who are you to demand things about my lip balm usage anyway, huh?” Kiyoomi snaps. “Whether I’m putting on lip balm nowadays or not, what’s that have to do with you?”

Atsumu tears Kiyoomi’s poking finger off his chest. “It’s an issue because it’s distracting me!”

“Why?”

“Because you—” Another jerky motion at Kiyoomi’s face.

Rage spikes in him. This son of a bitch. “You have a problem with my face? Fuck you! I’m on the team, and—”

“I like your face just fine, motherfucker!”

“Then what?!”

“I was just—just massaging the lip balm into your mouth!”

“What?” Kiyoomi shouts.

“So you wouldn’t have to keep reapplying all the damn time!” Atsumu yells. A frenzied nod to himself, as if assuring himself of his own argument. “Yeah, that’s it! It’s distracting to have to see your face all the time when you keep it all covered up and shit, and I’m helping the team by—by reducing the amount of times you distract them when you unmask! By massaging the lip balm into your mouth! To make it last longer! And—and um.” Kiyoomi can almost see the hamster wheel turning. “I’m helping you too, y’know. Since unmasking so often is bad for germs and shit. So.” Rabid inhale. “Yeah. Team player. Miya Atsumu. That’s me.”

Kiyoomi stares.

And stares.

And stares.

With every passing second, Atsumu wilts into himself, until finally he’s crouched on the floor, face buried in his hands.

Kiyoomi opens his mouth. Then he closes it. Then he says, “Miya.”

“I know,” Atsumu moans. “Don’t say it. It sounds stupid to even me.”

At least his sense of self-awareness hasn’t gone out the window along with his brain cells. Lip balm? Honestly. He must have some intense oral fixation or an obsession with the taste of Pandamonium-san in particular. Grape is one of the best flavors, after all.

Kiyoomi sighs and crosses his arms.

“So is it true?” he asks.

“What?”

“The lip balm. You kissed me for that?”

Atsumu’s throat releases a noise not unlike the death tolls of a prey animal. “I. Will you kill me less if I say yes?”

Kiyoomi rolls his eyes. What a fucking drama queen. Goddamn setters. “I’m not going to kill you.”

“Right,” Atsumu says. “Then we can forget that this whole thing happened, yeah? And you won’t kill me. I think that’s a fantastic idea, Omi, don’t you? I enjoy being alive, you enjoy—whatever it is you enjoy, and that’s it, we call it a day, go home, come to practice tomorrow with no other problems. How’s that sound?”

It isn’t a bad plan, save for one issue: “I’m still going to apply my lip balm,” Kiyoomi points out.

A strange half-whimper. “I know.”

“And I’m going to be unmasking to do it.”

Something that sounds suspiciously like a miserable sniffle. “I know.”

“So if you want to keep…” The humiliation is going to eat him alive, but Kiyoomi shoves through it to say, “If you want to keep massaging my mouth. With. Your mouth. I would be. Amenable. To the idea.”

Atsumu’s sniffling stops, along with any rise and fall of his breaths. In slow motion, his head cranes up to look at Kiyoomi. “What?” he asks.

“You heard me,” Kiyoomi says stiffly. “If you want to keep doing that. It’s fine.”

“You’re serious. You won’t kill me.”

“It’s for the good of the team. You said that.”

“I…” Atsumu blinks. “I did, yeah. You’re serious—like dead serious, Omi?”

“No tongue unless you brushed your teeth beforehand,” Kiyoomi says, because he’s not totally depraved and morally decrepit. “And you aren’t allowed to kiss me at all if you haven’t gotten the latest flu shot. And—”

“I know who you are, Omi,” Atsumu says, grinning now.

“Well,” Kiyoomi huffs.

Atsumu picks himself up from the floor and reaches for Kiyoomi’s hand, the one holding his mask. He pries it loose from Kiyoomi’s fist and fiddles with the strings, holding it up to Kiyoomi’s face. “You’d really let me do that,” Atsumu says.

“I don’t know what you’re getting out of it, though,” Kiyoomi admits.

As if he’s handling delicate porcelain, Atsumu fits one string of the mask over Kiyoomi’s ears, then the other. He smooths out any wrinkles at the top of his mask against Kiyoomi’s cheek.

“Maybe I like it,” Atsumu says, voice low.

“The lip balm?” Kiyoomi asks; it’s all he can think of.

Atsumu’s grin widens. His eyes crinkle with it, is the thing. He always smiles with his whole face, like he doesn’t know how to exude joy in halves.

“Yeah, sure,” Atsumu says. “Tastes good, whatever you put on.”

“It’s grape.”

Atsumu kisses his ear, then does this strange little nuzzle against Kiyoomi’s cheek that makes his heart jump to his throat.

“Heard there’s lots of other flavors,” Atsumu says. “How about we try them?”

“All of them?”

“If you’re up for it.”

If, he says, like there’s any chance Kiyoomi would say no. Going pro, joining MSBY, seeing Atsumu again. He’s up for it. He has been, for a while now.

“I’m game,” Kiyoomi says, then tears off his mask so he can kiss Atsumu again. What can he say? Kiyoomi’s an opportunist, and he already has the keys to lock up the gym when they’re done, anyway. Might as well make use of it.

The second time Miya visited him in Waseda, he’d come armed with a dozen grocery bags.

Kiyoomi squinted at him. An early morning hallucination, he decided.

“I am dreaming,” he mumbled to himself, reaching for the doorknob so he could wander back to his room. “I am dreaming and I am going back to bed.”

A foot lodged itself in his doorway before he could shut it. “Hey, hey, I’m right here!” Miya cried, and Kiyoomi sighed and tried not to bang his head against the wall. Real, then. Ugh. “Thought we were better friends than this, Omi, lemme in!”

“What the hell is an Omi?”

“You, duh. It’s a cute nickname, ain’t it? I brought vegetables. Lemme in, my arms are gonna give out any second.”

“Some professional athlete you are,” Kiyoomi muttered, widening the door so Miya could scurry inside with his haul of likely misbegotten goods.

He watched Miya pad into the apartment and shuffle around his kitchen. The sight of it was odd. Miya, with that god-awful dye job, clanging pans and digging in his spice drawers and sniffing at the carcass of his basil plant on the windowsill. The blond hair was out of place in Kiyoomi’s monochrome IKEA catalog apartment, like a housewarming gift he didn’t know how to get rid of yet.

It was around that time that Kiyoomi realized he should probably ask what Miya was doing in his apartment at fuck o’clock on Sunday morning.

“Why are you here?”

In answer, Miya raised an impatient hand, still full of groceries. “Why do you think?”

“So you can start a secret stash of food and use my apartment as a hideout for when you inevitably get an arrest warrant?”

“Ha ha. You should be a comedian.” Miya continued to pad around in his kitchen, opened his fridge, and frowned when he found its contents bare, save for some Fiji water and an apple so old that Kiyoomi was pretty sure it was made of styrofoam. “I knew it was gonna be bad when you said you got takeout everyday, but I didn’t expect it to be this bad, Omi,” he muttered. “Christ.”

The mention of his eating habits startled him out of the remnants of his sleepy daze. “You remember that?” Kiyoomi asked.

An irritated noise, not unlike the creak of his bathroom door. “It was last week, of course I remember. You think I could stand to hear how much butter you’re consuming and leave it alone?”

“I don’t eat that much butter.”

“Oh god, you don’t even know, do you? Listen—the only reason why shit tastes so good in restaurants is because they dump a crazy ton of butter into it. Butter makes shit taste good, yeah? And they’re not obligated to release the ingredient list or cook it in front of you or whatever, so while you’ve been eating takeout day after day, you’ve also been consuming a metric fuckton of butter and enough cholesterol to drive you into an early grave at the rate you’re going.”

It was a lot of words for Kiyoomi to process at ass o’clock. Really, he heard butter, metric ton, and grave, and that was about the extent of his processing skills. He frowned. Yawned. Sat on the floor and curled up right there on the hardwood. “I’ll just ask them to take it out the next time I order then,” he said, drifting back to that tenuous space between awake and sleepy hallucination.

“Oh my god,” Miya said. “That’s not—can you get up? What are you doing? Aren’t you a clean freak? Get off the floor!”

“My floor is clean,” Kiyoomi mumbled. “It’s everyone else who’s dirty. Fry me some eggs while you’re here. I know you brought them.”

“You are such a baby. How did I not know this before?”

“You’re not gonna make eggs?”

“Why don’t you sit your ass down on the couch like an actual human being and we’ll see.”

But Miya did make him eggs, and they were surprisingly delicious. Nothing rubbery, dry, or stale. It wasn’t even burnt. In fact, it was well-seasoned, and the yolk was perfectly runny, and it was—it was offensive, was what it was. It was plain fucking rude how Miya thought he could bribe his way into Kiyoomi’s apartment by way of good eggs, and worse yet was how his ploy worked.

“If this is some scheme of yours,” Kiyoomi said through an angry bite of eggs and miso, “I will have you know you have no decency.”

“But it’s working, yeah?”

“Fuck off.”

“The fastest way to a man’s heart,” Miya quoted.

After, Miya stayed to do the dishes while Kiyoomi dozed off on the couch in his post-breakfast-at-1-PM-food-coma. He organized the groceries in Kiyoomi’s fridge, scribbled down haphazard recipes in illegible writing about easy recipes that surely Kiyoomi couldn’t fuck up, and then Miya left with a jaunty wave and a, “‘Kay, I’ll be back soon, don’t die until I see you again!”

“Don’t come back,” Kiyoomi said.

“It’s hilarious how you think you have a choice in the matter. See ya, Omi!”

For the next hour, Kiyoomi sat on the floor and tried to process the whirlwind that swept through his apartment: his full fridge, the unfamiliar citrus scent of a deodorant he didn’t use, a second plate freshly washed and drying on his dish rack.

And that should’ve been the end of it. Kiyoomi had thought Miya had gotten his fill of annoying him or proving his superiority or whatever the hell Miya thought he was doing by invading Kiyoomi’s apartment, but to Kiyoomi’s surprise, he stayed true to his word and came back a mere three weeks later.

“Had to check if you were still alive,” Miya said, with another handful of groceries.

“I’m not going to pay you for those,” Kiyoomi said.

“Just think of it as an investment,” Miya said, and bullied past him to step inside. “You can pay me back when you join my team after you graduate.”

“You’re delusional,” Kiyoomi said, but still followed him into the kitchen.

Then: it became a routine. Somehow. If Motoya asked—and he did, often, because the thought of another human being unrelated to Kiyoomi entering his apartment belonged in the same category as crop circles or deep sea creatures—Kiyoomi would deny it.

I don’t know why Miya keeps coming, he’d say. He just won’t leave. I don’t think he knows what ‘no’ means as a word. Of course I’m not encouraging him, don’t be fucking ridiculous.

Miya would come to his apartment whenever he had free time during the off-season; he’d heckle Kiyoomi during his matches; he’d cook and hum and leave Kiyoomi’s kitchen littered with spices and dry rice grains and tiny kombu flakes. Groceries turned to movies turned to late nights until one day, Miya heaved himself up from the couch at near midnight to leave, and Kiyoomi found himself saying, “Just stay for the night.”

Miya froze.

“Or don’t,” Kiyoomi said quickly. “Leave now. The door is right there. The trains won’t be running and you deserve the taxi fare for imposing so long—”

“Omi,” Miya said. Kiyoomi stared down hard at his legs, tangled in the blanket that he and Miya had been sharing just a few moments ago. “You mean it?”

Kiyoomi swallowed. You think I’d let you into my place this many times if I didn’t? he wanted to say, but that’d be too obvious. “You’re taking the couch,” he said instead. “I don’t have a toothbrush for you, so you’re going to have to get one from the convenience store down the block.”

“You want me to get a toothbrush?”

“Do you even know how important dental hygiene is?”

“I’m asking if you want me to get a toothbrush to keep here,” Miya said.

Kiyoomi’s fingers tightened on the blanket. The warmth from Miya’s body still lingered on the fabric.

“Do whatever you want,” Kiyoomi said eventually. “It’s not like you listen to me anyway.”

“Aren’t you cute, Omi,” Miya said, smiling.

It was something he’d said a million times before, but something about it sounded different that time. Quieter. Gentler. Like something sincere and precious.

When Kiyoomi was a child, his mother instilled a strong sense of punctuality and the passage of time into him. The first sign of maturity is the ability to respect other people’s time, she’d said. The one thing you will never get back is time, Kiyoomi. You have to treasure it and know how to use it well. Never waste it.

Now, at twenty-four, he has a keen awareness of the hours and a set schedule for his day-to-day life. If that schedule happens to deviate, he knows it well.

So Kiyoomi isn’t keeping track or anything—but according to his internal timer, it has been twenty-seven hours since Atsumu kissed him in the locker room. A full rotation of the Earth on its axis, plus spare change.

“I’m just saying,” the source of his irritation says, while a drunken Bokuto tries to paw at his mouth in the seat across, “that lips are the best feature on a person’s face.”

“No, no, no, I’m telling you, it’s gotta be boobs!”

“But Inunaki-san, boobs aren’t a part of—”

“Shh,” Bokuto says, a little too loud. “He can enjoy whatever he wants, Shouyou!”

“Thank you.”

Team dinners, as always, are an ordeal that Kiyoomi finds unpleasant most weeks. They’re always held at an izakaya with all the yakitori and edamame seven men crammed into a booth can eat.

This week, the izakaya that Hinata has chosen is surprisingly clean. The tables aren’t sticky, and the chairs don’t creak when he shifts in his seat. The grills are new. Working lights, deep maroon walls untainted with cigarette smoke, and a brand of umeshu that Kiyoomi finds himself actually enjoying. As far as team dinners go, it’s a good one.

However. It has been twenty-seven fucking hours since Atsumu last kissed him.

Scowling, Kiyoomi drains his umeshu and pours himself another glass.

“My vote goes for noses, by the way! Akaashi has the best nose!” Bokuto says. He won’t stop fumbling at Atsumu’s face with that paw he calls a hand, so clearly he has no loyalty to that Fukurodani setter of his. “Tsum-Tsum, has your face always been this soft?”

“Bokuto, my guy, I think you’re drunk.”

So remove his hand, Kiyoomi thinks. Atsumu does nothing of the sort, because he, like Bokuto and all the other harlots in the world, also has no fucking loyalty and sense of propriety.

“I’m just the right amount of drunk,” Bokuto says.

“What does that even mean, dude?”

“I personally choose smiles,” Meian offers. A collective groan goes around the table, and a distinctly offended expression sweeps over Meian’s face. “What? It’s a good feature! Faces are defined by smiles, you know!”

Bokuto has his fingers in Atsumu’s mouth now. Okay, that’s it.

“Do you have any intention of telling him to stop?” Kiyoomi says to Atsumu, while the rest of the table descends into the usual Ridicule Meian For Being A Dad routine.

Through Bokuto’s thumb and forefinger, Atsumu manages to say, “Why would I?”

“Do you know where his fingers have been?”

Atsumu considers this.

“Last week he tried to dunk his hand into the fish tanks at the supermarket,” Kiyoomi says, sipping on his umeshu. “And you know his place recently got a roach infestation.”

“What’s that gotta do with his hands?”

“Apparently the infestation was because he was feeding them. He thought if he kicked them out, they’d starve, and that would be cruel to do during winter.”

The blood drains from Atsumu’s face. Out come Bokuto’s fingers, and thus begins the downward spiral of Bokuto’s emotions, compounded by the fact that he’s drunk out of his mind. It takes eight minutes and thirty seconds, with reassurances from Atsumu every minute that Bokuto was “still my friend, I just got personal space and shit, y’know?”

Kiyoomi waits until Bokuto has properly rejoined the conversation at the table before he says to Atsumu, “Come to think of it, though, that was an old story. The recent roach infestation was just bad luck.”

“Oh my god,” Atsumu says, aghast. “You made me do that for nothing?”

“Did you enjoy having his fingers in your mouth?”

“That’s just Bokuto.” He leers. “But I’d take your fingers in my mouth anyday, Omi.”

“You’re a sleaze.”

“A sleaze you wanna kiss tonight,” Atsumu says, and Kiyoomi’s cheeks heat. Atsumu leans back in his seat, smirking. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. Still got that grape lip balm?”

“Fuck you,” Kiyoomi hisses. When it only makes Atsumu’s smirk grow wider, a vengeful switch flips in Kiyoomi’s mind. If Atsumu wants to play dirty, fine. Kiyoomi can give it back twofold.

He digs in his pocket for Pandamonium-san and removes his mask. The smirk begins to slip from Atsumu’s face, but it’s not enough. Kiyoomi unscrews the cap, smears the balm on the tip of his finger, and dabs it onto his lips. He’s careful to take his time with it. Best to be thorough, after all. Every good thing in life takes time.

Once he has the balm applied, he pops his lips, making eye contact with Atsumu as he does. He wipes the remnants of the balm on the edge of his napkin and fishes out his bottle of pocket hand sanitizer to clean off the excess. Slow and methodical is key—it hasn’t escaped his notice that Atsumu’s been staring at his hands more often as well. The sanitizer gets rubbed into the crevices of his fingers, his fingertips, and down to his wrist where the bone juts out above the hem of his sleeve.

There. All done.

By the time the sanitizer dries, Kiyoomi has his mask back on, and Atsumu’s mouth is hanging open, his eyes wide and disbelieving.

Excellent. Kiyoomi puts the panda back in his pocket. Pandamonium-san strikes again, it seems.

“What were you saying?” he asks Atsumu, who’s trying to shake himself out of his daze, with little success. “About me wanting to kiss you, I mean.”

That snaps Atsumu’s attention back to Earth. “Oh, you’re fucking evil, Omi,” he growls, and it’s Kiyoomi’s turn to smirk under his mask.

Dinner passes by fast after that. Kiyoomi gets lost in the debate over how boring Meian is—a smile can light up a person’s whole face, okay, how is that boring?—and finds himself roped into too many shots of sake than is wise. But even six bottles of sake is enough for the rabid group of animals that MSBY call themselves, and not two hours later, Kiyoomi nods goodbye to his staggering teammates making their own ways home.

Sans one, of course.

“Hey, come here often?”

The eye roll is happening before Kiyoomi realizes it: it’s an instinctive response around Atsumu at this point. “You have got to be kidding,” Kiyoomi says, turning to discover Atsumu leaning against the brick wall behind the restaurant, already grinning.

“Good line?”

“Terrible,” Kiyoomi says. “You should kiss me before I have to listen to you say anything else.”

“I haven’t brushed my teeth,” Atsumu points out.

“You didn’t even bring a toothbrush to the restaurant?”

“Who the hell brings a toothbrush to a restaurant, you lunatic piece of hot ass? Come here.”

Considering their conversation at the restaurant, the kiss is surprisingly gentle and slow. Atsumu draws out the tension from Kiyoomi one kiss at a time, until they’re wound together, so close that Kiyoomi can’t tell where he starts and Atsumu ends. Atsumu’s hand is hot on his back, but his thumb strokes in soft circles on his cheek, his mouth coaxing Kiyoomi’s open. Open up for me, just like that. Look at you. Aren’t you a natural. Let’s take it easy.

When they pull apart, neither of them say a word for a while. Kiyoomi leans his forehead against Atsumu’s, basking in the shivering sensation of Atsumu’s warm hands cupped around his cheeks.

“You broke my rule,” Kiyoomi says, opening his eyes. Atsumu’s ears are pink from the cold, and his scarf has fallen loose, slung over just one shoulder. Kiyoomi sets it right and loops the ends around Atsumu’s neck, frowning. “I said no tongue unless you brushed your teeth.”

Atsumu’s hand slides past his cheek and cups the side of his head, his thumb swiping over the tips of his cold ears. “Ah,” he murmurs. “My bad. Forgot about that.”

The touch is distracting and entirely intentional—Kiyoomi’s sure of it. It doesn’t stop him from leaning into Atsumu’s palm anyway.

“You need a penalty for this,” he says.

“Well, if you say so. Got any ideas?”

Atsumu’s mouth is red and shiny. His lip balm must’ve transferred. If he kisses him again, will Atsumu taste like grape too?

“I can think of a few,” Kiyoomi says.

This time, Atsumu meets him halfway. Then again, and again, and again.

The thought occurred to Kiyoomi more than once that everything Miya was doing was a little too much for someone who claimed they were only looking out for their future hitter. Surely Miya would have more than one hitter to look out for. That shortie from Karasuno who got a fever and got benched, for example. Or the loudmouth from Fukurodani, or maybe Ushijima Wakatoshi himself.

Did that mean he was doing this for all of his other potential future hitters? How many were there, anyway? Was he trying to build up a whole team of his ideal making, by way of absurdly good food and low-grade horror movies and impromptu sleepovers?

“You sound like your boyfriend is cheating on you,” Motoya said, hunched over a bag of peanuts on the floor of the Komori household.

The peanut bag had come courtesy of Motoya’s mother, who operated under the belief that there was no problem in the world that couldn’t be solved with legumes. Kiyoomi wasn’t under duress, but Motoya’s mother had taken one look at him, said, “Oh, Kiyoomi,” and handed Motoya a bag of peanuts.

Motoya had a newspaper spread out on the hardwood, with a growing pile of peanut skin and shell pieces over a headline about industry-wide embezzlement or a comic section, Kiyoomi wasn’t sure. Motoya flicked apart a peanut shell and stripped it of its skin before raising his head to squint at him.

“Wait, you aren’t boyfriends, are you?” he asked.

“Of course not,” Kiyoomi snapped. “If he was—”

Motoya picked up another peanut. “Mhm.”

“He’d kiss me—not that I want him to. Obviously.”

“Right.”

“And you know what, if he was my boyfriend, maybe he’d fuck me on one of the many nights he sleeps over—”

“Sure.”

“And he wouldn’t fucking—run away from me when we wake up in the morning together—on the couch, of course, because I’m not some common floozy—”

“Yup.”

“And whatever, that’s not the point. The point is, it’s almost cheating, isn’t it?” Motoya gave a placid nod. Kiyoomi snatched the peanuts Motoya had just peeled, and chewed them up furiously. A forlorn expression crossed Motoya’s face, but Kiyoomi didn't pay any mind and went on, “If he’s talking about me being ‘his future hitter’ and he goes around like some—some tramp to seduce others into his team, the way he does to me? That’s practically cheating. In fact, that’s professional cheating. And in that case, he should be banned from all sports for eternity.”

“Eternity,” Motoya said, unimpressed.

“Eternity,” Kiyoomi emphasized.

“You know, Kiyo-chan,” Motoya said, “every year I think you can’t get more interesting. And every year I’m proven wrong.”

Just for that, Kiyoomi reached across the floor and took more of Motoya’s peanuts. Not that it had any effect. Instead, Motoya peeled some more and placed them directly in Kiyoomi’s vicinity, like it was a peace offering to an adorable streetcat.

How irritating.

“You could just talk to him about it and ask,” Motoya said, smiling at him.

“Ask him if he’s cheating on me with other volleyball players, you mean.”

“Sure.”

“Do you realize how ridiculous you sound?” Kiyoomi asked, incredulous.

At that, Motoya laughed long and hard. Him laughing at Kiyoomi was nothing new, but in this instance it pissed Kiyoomi off so bad that he snatched the rest of Motoya’s peanuts and walked thirty minutes to track down Motoya’s mother in the fish section of the supermarket.

“Your son has none of your sense of decorum, Auntie,” he told her.

“Oh, dear,” she said. “You won’t be staying for dinner?”

“Maybe when you’ve disowned him like he deserves,” Kiyoomi seethed.

“Oh, dear,” she said again. “I’ll let your uncle know you’ll see him next week, then. He missed you while you were away, you know.”

Well.

“Tell Uncle I wish him good health,” Kiyoomi said stiffly, before he marched straight home.

Then he called Miya, because someone had to peel these peanuts, and it wasn’t going to be him.

“I make a living off my hands, you know,” Miya said twenty minutes and a text later, but obediently reached into the bag and started peeling.

“It’s not like I forced you to come.”

“Your ‘I need you’ text said otherwise, Omi. Oh, and by the way? If you text someone things like that, people are gonna get the wrong idea.”

Kiyoomi frowned. “The wrong idea about what? It’s just peanuts.”

“You don’t know how adorable you are, do you,” Miya said, with too much affection, and something in Kiyoomi just cracked.

“How many other people are you saying that to?” Kiyoomi blurted.

Miya’s face shuttered with surprise, but he couldn’t pay it much mind. He kept thinking about what Motoya said, when he asked, You aren’t boyfriends, are you? and it was stupid. He knew it was stupid; Motoya had been single since life and he would likely continue to be so until he learned manners like a proper citizen, so what would he know about people dating? What would he know about Kiyoomi and Miya? Those times Miya touched him, held his hand, called him cute, looked at him the way no one had ever looked at Kiyoomi before? What would Motoya know about all of that?

Kiyoomi said, “There are six players on a volleyball team, Miya. I’m one of six in your future lineup, according to you. That leaves four more. But hypothetically speaking, you’d need flexible rotations for your team depending on your opponent, which means the number of hitters you’re talking to would only be limited by your interest in their abilities, their skill level, the—the purpose they’d serve for you. Like me. Which means you’re—” Breathe in, out. So what if he wasn’t special to Miya? What did it matter in the end? “You’re doing this to other people too.”

Miya had stopped peeling the peanuts to look at him. His fingers were covered in peanut dust and little flakes of red peanut skin, and for a brief moment Kiyoomi saw that they twitched towards him.

That was another thing about Miya. His hands were always so expressive.

“Omi,” he said, something strange in his voice. “I’m not doing this with anyone else.”

The world tilted sideways. Or perhaps that was the couch behind him disintegrating without his knowledge. “You’re not,” Kiyoomi said.

“It’s just you.”

“Just me?”

“Just you.”

“Oh,” Kiyoomi said. “Well.”

Again, Miya’s hands moved towards him, but he stopped halfway and clenched his fist instead. Then he stood up.

“I’m gonna wash my hands,” Miya announced, like he was making a game plan. Serve, score three aces, set to #16, fake out the MB at the front, wash his hands, tell Kiyoomi that he wasn’t doing this with anyone else. “You’re going to stay right there.”

“Don’t tell me what to do,” Kiyoomi said, on reflex.

“No, you are. Wanna know why?”

“Not particularly.”

Undeterred, Miya continued, “Because I’m gonna hold your hand after this. And we’re gonna put on a movie. I’m gonna feed you your stupid peanuts, and we’re gonna cuddle on the couch, and we’re—” He faltered; apparently he hadn’t thought that far ahead.

Kiyoomi, as always, picked up the slack for him. “We’re going to my bed after we finish the movie,” he said quietly.

Miya choked.

“Bed to sleep. Don’t get presumptuous, Miya.”

“All I ever do is get presumptuous,” Miya managed, before he sprinted off to wash his hands.

In the wake of his absence, Kiyoomi settled into the couch and reached for a peanut. If Atsumu was this invested in him alone, then the least Kiyoomi could do was give him a few peanuts in return.

“You packed for the winter retreat?”

“That’s something I should be asking you,” Kiyoomi says to Atsumu, cross.

They’re two days away from the famed MSBY winter retreat in Hokkaido. Three days, all expenses paid—the joys of training in a heated gymnasium with the brutal cold of the snowy mountains nearby. This year, the organizers had gone all out with the facilities. They’d been delighted to announce the inclusion of an outdoor onsen, where athletes were encouraged to partake in to loosen their muscles after practice.

It’s the only reason why Kiyoomi is remotely excited for this year. He finishes the last bites of his ramen and slides his bowl towards the edge of the counter, delicately wiping his mouth with a napkin.

“If I know you,” he says, folding his napkin and tucking it under his plate, “you still haven’t packed. You probably don’t even know where your extra charger is.”

“Why would I bring an extra charger?”

Several reasons—but the most prominent is that last year, Kiyoomi had talked about bringing a spare battery, and Atsumu had snorted at him and said, “That’s dumb. What’s a charger gonna do, explode?” only for Atsumu’s charger to do exactly that, thirty minutes into the train ride.

He’d spent most of the eleven hours to Sapporo begging for just one hour of use of Kiyoomi’s charger—not that Kiyoomi had given it to him. Due consequences for being unprepared, in his opinion.

Before Kiyoomi can remind him of this, Atsumu pushes himself up from his chair and says, “Never mind that. We’re sitting together on the train, yeah? And put your wallet away, I’m paying.”

Kiyoomi ignores him to slide the cashier his own card. When Atsumu tries to push him out of the way to pay, Kiyoomi murmurs, “If you pay, I’m sitting with Adriah.”

“You’re a filthy cheat, Omi.”

Payment all done, Kiyoomi takes his card, and they exit the restaurant, Atsumu still grumbling by his side. It’s a windy night in Osaka. Sunset has long since passed, despite it only being 7 PM, and the chill sets into his bones quickly. He tries to bury his shivers by shoving his hands into his pockets and folding into himself as much as he can, while also attempting to maintain his dignity, but with no luck. There’s a strange quality to the Osakan breeze that cuts through every thread of fabric to slice the warmth out of him, no matter how many layers he wears.

“Sitting with Adriah, my ass. Look at you.”

Soft fabric brushes against his cheeks, and Kiyoomi startles.

“What—”

The scent of woodsy warmth and the leftover aroma from the ramen place hits him. Kiyoomi blinks. Atsumu’s scarf?

“You’re like a little pillbug,” Atsumu tells him. Kiyoomi doesn’t move as Atsumu finishes winding the scarf around his neck—he can’t. All he can do is stand there while Atsumu ties the ends into a little bow, tucks the remaining fabric inside the gaps between Kiyoomi’s buttoned-up peacoat, and pulls the scarf up to his cheeks.

The weather is too cold. The wind has frozen his bones, numbed his body. Atsumu steps back, satisfied.

“There you go,” he says.

Kiyoomi needs to—to turn away. Start walking again. Do anything besides stand there and look horribly fucking in love with Miya Atsumu.

“The tongue rule,” Kiyoomi finds himself saying instead, and Atsumu blinks. “I’ll scrap it. For now.”

The words take a few moments to process. Then: the disbelief. No fucking way. Is he serious? Shit, he is. Now the wonder.

“Right now?” Atsumu breathes.

“Right now,” Kiyoomi says, trying for aloof and hitting somewhere around a pathetic fucking kiss me right now before I strangle you for doing that romantic shit to me. “I haven’t applied my lip balm yet, though.”

“I’ll scrap that for now too, then,” Atsumu says, grinning. “C’mere.”

Before Atsumu kissed him in the locker room, Kiyoomi had been under the impression that there were really only two types of kisses: the frantic face-devouring kind that preceded sex, or the second-long peck for appearances in high society between a couple that was about two weeks away from a brutal divorce. Kiyoomi’s coming to the realization, though, that that’s not right.

Atsumu nuzzles at his mouth, first. Okay, Kiyoomi thinks. Slow wind-up. But Atsumu keeps it lazy and unhurried, and Kiyoomi doesn’t know if this can even qualify as a kiss; it’s more of a nudge of their mouths. But he likes it. He likes the way Atsumu cradles his face, grazes his lips against Kiyoomi’s, wanders over to his cheeks, the tip of his nose, his forehead, like he’s trying to map out the details of Kiyoomi’s face with his lips.

Kiyoomi sighs into Atsumu’s mouth, and he can feel the answering smile when he does. “Needy,” Atsumu murmurs, and Kiyoomi nips at his lip, pulls away to scowl.

“I’m not needy,” Kiyoomi says. “You’re just—” A good kisser, he almost says, before he remembers himself and snaps his mouth shut.

Atsumu hums, amused. “Whatever you say, Omi. You gonna let me do that at the retreat?”

Kiyoomi has the strangest urge to kiss the smile off his face. It must be the city lights or the euphoria of the ramen oil. The cold is making him delusional.

“Hey, Omi.”

“Hmm,” Kiyoomi says, distracted.

“My eyes are up here, y’know?”

Kiyoomi’s gaze snaps up. Atsumu’s eyes are crinkling with his smile. Heat floods Kiyoomi’s ears.

“You are insufferable,” he bites out, slapping at Atsumu’s hands trying to worm their way into his pockets. Warm as they are, he still has some self-respect. The scarf-move alone is enough for the night. “You—don’t make fun of me.”

“I’d never. I’m a man of honor, I promise.”

“A liar without morals is what you are.”

Another thing about Atsumu: when he laughs, he really fucking goes at it, like some fucking hyena on helium discovering comedy for the first time. God. Why does Kiyoomi even like him? What stage of Stockholm Syndrome is this?

“You’re so loud,” Kiyoomi says. “It’s not that funny.”

“You’re hilarious, and you don’t even know it. But seriously, how’s that retreat looking for me?”

On one hand: kissing Atsumu. On the other hand: kissing Atsumu, and surrounded by a whole team of busybodies who don’t have any understanding of the concept of personal space and boundaries. “We’ll see,” Kiyoomi says eventually.

“Yeah?” Atsumu asks.

“Depends on your behavior,” Kiyoomi says, and starts walking ahead before he can be tempted to kiss Atsumu again. On the streets, good lord—they might as well be fucking on the riverside, at this rate.

In the meantime, Atsumu continues to steal kisses and tastes of his lip balm. On Kiyoomi’s end, he buys new flavors for Atsumu to try; he has to respect their deal, after all.

Pandamonium-san is joined by his unnamed brothers of honey, olive and lemon, milk vanilla, matcha, vanilla-macadamia—and even orange wreath, in honor of the holiday spirit.

Orange wreath, apparently, is not Atsumu’s favorite.

“Mm,” he says, when Kiyoomi pulls back.

It’s a different noise. The usual noises range from mmh (neutral), mmnh (pleasant), nnuagh (very fucking pleasant), and a noise that Kiyoomi tries not to remember simply out of fear of popping a hard-on. They’re curled up on the floor of the gymnasium, and even though the rest of the team has left for the day, it’s about the principle of the thing. He needs some semblance of modesty and decorum.

The orange wreath, though. An mm? Kiyoomi frowns and leans back in Atsumu’s lap. Milk vanilla had given him the development of sitting on Atsumu’s lap, making out in the locker room, on the couch, and Kiyoomi’s bed, along with the aforementioned redacted noise that he’s only managed to hear on that one day.

In comparison, this orange wreath is deeply disappointing.

“You don’t like it,” Kiyoomi says, mouth twisting.

“Wuh?”

“The lip balm.”

“Huh?”

“You don’t like the taste of my lip balm. You made a noise.” Kiyoomi tries tasting it himself. It’s citrusy. He thought that Atsumu would like that, considering his preferred scent of cologne and deodorant, but it seems Kiyoomi’s assumptions are wrong. Or: “Is it too waxy? Is that the issue?”

At long last, the lights in Atsumu’s eyes blink on again. “Wait, what?” he says. “The kiss? No, it was great, tastes great, feels great, just great, but there’s—did you know there’s a nail in the wall? Digging into my back.”

Atsumu shifts to demonstrate. Sure enough, there’s the rounded end of a nail, crusted with paint and rust, right where Atsumu’s back had been.

“Oh,” Kiyoomi says. “So the orange wreath is fine?”

“Orange wr—” Atsumu licks his lips. Realization dawns. “Ohhh. That’s what this flavor is?”

“You don’t like it?”

“I like it just fine, Omi. I like anything you put on.”

Filthy liar. The milk vanilla had clearly been his favorite.

“I’ll leave it out for the winter retreat,” Kiyoomi decides. “Gives me room to bring the other flavors I bought the other day.”

“You’re real cute, you know that?” Atsumu says, and Kiyoomi huffs and leans in to kiss him—if Atsumu doesn’t like the orange wreath, then Kiyoomi’s gonna make him taste the fuck out of it for daring to say that to him.

By the time their departure date for the winter retreat rolls around, Kiyoomi has his final line-up of lip balms settled. Milk vanilla first, as the top contender. Pandamonium-san, for good luck. Finally, the new contestants of matcha and vanilla-macadamia—the former for Atsumu’s enjoyment of matcha lattes at the café they frequent on Sundays, and the latter for the close flavor profile of the current top contestant.

There’s also a plum balm inside a jar with a bunny mochi design that Kiyoomi hesitates to bring—Atsumu always talks about how the only time he’ll eat umeboshi is in the onigiri his brother makes. He can’t even stand umeshu, always wrinkling his nose at it like a picky five-year-old. But counterpoint: it’s cute, the flavor isn’t particularly plum-y, and it’s managed to moisturize Kiyoomi’s lips longer than any other lip balm he has.

The bunny eyes dig into his soul. Goddammit.

In an uncharacteristically brash decision, Kiyoomi shoves it into the bottom of his bag and zips it up before he can think twice.

Just because he brings it doesn’t mean he has to use it, after all. And if he keeps it buried at the bottom of his bag, it’s not like anyone will find it. It can just be… a good luck charm, like Pandamonium-san.

Yeah. It should be fine.

Thirty-six hours later, Kiyoomi comes to the conclusion that it is not fine.

First came the eleven-hour train ride, where seats had apparently gotten shuffled without Kiyoomi’s knowledge. He and Atsumu were placed on opposite ends of the train, and while Adriah—what a fucking coincidence that was—had been more than willing to trade, Bokuto had complained about wanting to arm wrestle Atsumu and play Goldfish with him and a whole list of other things he’d actually written down, too excited at the thought of sharing a train car with him.

So Kiyoomi hadn’t gotten to sit with Atsumu. Which was fine. It wasn’t like he needed to sit with Atsumu, and it wasn’t like they were going to kiss for eleven fucking hours even if he had, anyway. Eleven hours was nothing.

Or so Kiyoomi thought. Then came the even more delightful surprise that he wouldn’t be rooming with Atsumu the way they had been doing for the past two years, because fuck Meian, that was why.

“We should try something new for the retreat,” Meian had said, once he retrieved the keys from the receptionist.

“What?” Kiyoomi said, startled.

“Yeah. Keep things fresh and exciting, you know? So you’ll be rooming with me, Sakusa.”

Beside him, Atsumu shot Meian with a look of unadulterated horror.

“I’ve stocked up on cleaning products and made extra sure to sanitize my things beforehand, so you have nothing to worry about. If there’s anything else I can do to make you comfortable, though, just let me know. I understand it’ll be a new experience to room with me instead of Miya, but I think we can manage to work it out!”

Meian beamed. What a wretchedly considerate son of a bitch.

“Thanks,” Kiyoomi had hissed, and sped to his room before he could make certain on his plans to strangle Meian and his horrible fucking timing later.

Then: seven hours of grueling practice from morning to afternoon. Scheduled onsen times after practice, with Kiyoomi first, and Atsumu last, since Hinata ‘I wanna polish up my quick with Atsumu-san and when I asked him a month ago, he said he wouldn’t mind doing it at the retreat, wasn’t that nice of him?’ Shouyou exists to be the newfound bane of his existence.

How is it possible that Inunaki is the decent one on the team? How have his standards dropped that fucking low?

“You’d think they were doing it on purpose,” Atsumu mutters.

One good thing about the retreat is that their schedule is open for a good chunk of the afternoon and night. They’re free to explore the resort, hit the onsen again, get in more practice, or ski and snowboard on one of the many routes on the mountain.

So here’s Kiyoomi. Out in the cold. Shivering in the ski lift. Movement hindered by two sticks strapped to his feet. He can’t even kiss Atsumu in the warmth of the resort, with Meian taking up his room and Bokuto’s sixth sense for terrible timing in Atsumu’s.

To make matters worse, he doesn’t have his milk vanilla lip balm anymore. It’s been lost to the never-ending gulf of snow on the mountain because he’d dropped it like an idiot when he tried to reapply it after one ski trip down, and his fingers had been too numb to properly grip it. Knowing his luck, it won’t resurface until the explosion of the sun.

Life is fantastic.

“If my feet detach from my body, I doubt I’d notice,” Kiyoomi mutters, suppressing a violent shiver. He buries himself in Atsumu’s scarf, but it’s little use here. Snow has somehow soaked into the inner folds, and there’s even more snow slipping down his back. He feels like a drowned cat, just waiting for the sweet release of death.

“We can go inside,” Atsumu says. Fuck him, he sounds concerned. “There’s hot chocolate and shit at the resort, you know, we can—”

“No.”

It’s his last coat of milk vanilla, and he’s determined to snatch at least one kiss from Atsumu before he calls it quits and heads inside for the heat to evaporate the flavor off his mouth.

Kiyoomi didn’t become a professional athlete by giving up when things got hard. Resilience is the key to success. Plus natural-born athleticism. And wealth. And ready access to good facilities.

“Alright,” Atsumu says after a pause. “You wanna go for a few more?”

“By ‘a few more,’ you mean a few more trips down this horrible mountain to risk frostbite on our faces until the flesh falls off our muscles.”

“That’s what I mean, yeah.”

“Okay,” Kiyoomi says, glum. He shuffles to the edge of his seat, preparing himself for another miserable glide down the mountain.

“You know,” Atsumu says suddenly, “we don’t have to keep skiing. We could stay on the lift.”

“That’s against the rules.”

“Yeah, but I figure we can stay for about two trips around the mountain before we get caught.”

“And what,” Kiyoomi says, his misery fast fading, “would we do on this ski lift?”

“I was thinking of a game of I Spy,” Atsumu responds.

Kiyoomi stares at him in mute horror. Atsumu’s face is entirely earnest.

A dawning epiphany of apocalyptic proportions: this son of a bitch is serious. Oh god. Kiyoomi tries to imagine it for a second, an alternate universe in which he would deign to play such a mind-numbing game. It’d be like, I spy something white, is it snow, yeah it’s snow, okay my turn, I spy something white, is it snow, yeah it’s snow, Jesus fucking Christ. He’d rather listen to his uncle preach about the health benefits of ginseng for two hours.

That settles it. Kiyoomi has no choice but to hurl himself off the mountainside and hope it kills him in one blow. He’s going to die unkissed, and cold, and toeless, and—

“Waitwaitwait, I was kidding!” Atsumu cries, stopping him from opening the door. “We’re still way too high up, where are you going? I was kidding, Omi, honest!”

“I am going to kill you,” Kiyoomi says, numb fingers clenched around the door handle.

Strange thing about rage, when your body has succumbed to frostbite—it gives you the illusion of warmth for a second, just by the sheer potency of the emotion alone.

“And then,” he continues, “I will spit on your grave. I will drizzle honey over your headstone to create an ant infestation. And then I will send someone to fetch your ant-eaten body so I can burn it to hell and scatter the ashes in my compost.”

“So that’s a no to making out?”

“You disgust me,” Kiyoomi says, before he crawls into Atsumu’s lap and kisses the ever living shit out of him. Taste that, fucker? Milk vanilla.

Around the end of Kiyoomi’s third year in university, he took Atsumu to a full-fledged Waseda party. He wasn’t sure why he went: maybe final exams had driven him insane, or perhaps he wanted to partake in an unhealthy amount of alcohol and forget what year it was for free, or—

“You want to slut it up,” Motoya said over Facetime, delighted. “Oh my goodness, Kiyo-chan. Is that mesh?”

“Be silent before I silence you,” Kiyoomi said. “Stop making it a thing.”

“It’s totally a thing. Are you gonna—” A vaguely vulgar gesture that Kiyoomi generously chose to interpret in the most PG way he could, which was are you gonna show him your tits that you don’t have?

The answer to which, of course, was yes.

“I don’t see how that’s your business,” Kiyoomi said instead.

Motoya fake-sniffed. “My babyslut,” he cried. “Oh, they grow up so fast! Where’s my handkerchief? I should wave it at you, hold a goodbye ceremony to your modesty.”

“Do you realize how creepy you sound, or are you actually that dumb?” Kiyoomi asked. “Stop making it a big deal.”

Twenty minutes later, it became a big deal, mostly because Atsumu came over with tight jeans that showed off exactly how much muscle tone he had in his legs. And it was—it was a lot of muscle tone, putting it short. On top, he’d worn a sleazy leather jacket and a plain black T-shirt underneath it that hugged his biceps and wide shoulders. When he stretched, the hem lifted to show a peek of the tanned skin below, and it was fucking awful, how much that one slip of skin made Kiyoomi want to hurl Atsumu into the wall or get fucked by him.

“I’m surprised Calvin Klein still haven’t contacted you for modeling,” Kiyoomi’s stupidly honest mouth said, since he’d already taken two shots of vodka.

If Atsumu teased him about it, that’d be one thing. But he’d been acting off since seeing Kiyoomi at the door, and now he was stumbling in the street over nothing and making high-pitched noises.

“Whaaat?” Atsumu squeaked. “You think what? What did you just say to me?”

“Stop being embarrassing,” Kiyoomi muttered, face hot. He grabbed Atsumu’s hand—the idiot wouldn’t stop stumbling, for fuck’s sake—and marched them to the izakaya, where his end-of-year Botanical Club party would be held. “Let’s go.”

The party was a mistake from the get-go. There were too many people in too tight a space, and all of them were too excited to meet Atsumu. Is this your Miya? No, he’s not my—back away. Oh my god, Sakkun, that’s your boy? He’s not my boy. Guys, meet Sacchan’s boy!

“Sacchan?” Atsumu said, amused.

Kiyoomi pinched his thigh through those stupidly tight jeans. “Shut it.”

“Omi, not the leg, Omi, owowowow, Omi please—”

The issue of overbearing club members aside, none of the cups had been sanitized. There were strange gray streaks on the beer mugs, and the handles were sticky to the touch. The shot glasses weren’t much better, but sake was certainly more potent than beer. The faster Kiyoomi drank, the sooner he could go home—and better yet, take Atsumu with him.

“You should drink more water,” Atsumu said, sometime during the evening. “Unless you’re the freaky type that doesn’t get hangovers?”

“I’m not freaky,” Kiyoomi said, frowning into his cup. It blurred in front of him, and he set it down on the table carefully. It wouldn’t do if he spilled it on himself. That would be embarrassing.

“Of course you’re not. Wanna drink some water for me?”

Atsumu held a cup to his mouth, but Kiyoomi pushed it away. Those fucking gray streak cups. Ugh.

“I don’t want to drink from those cups,” he mumbled. “They’re gross. What if the water is contaminated?”

“Contaminated by what, baby?”

Baby. The word rang through his head.

It sounded important. He should be paying attention to that and why it was important, but Kiyoomi couldn’t focus on much. He slumped into Atsumu’s shoulder instead. The fabric of his shirt was soft and worn, and it smelled like smoked meat.

“I don’t know. Germs. If I drink from these cups I might die. And then you won’t get to hold my hand during movies anymore.”

“I won’t get to, huh?” Atsumu said softly. “Tough deal.”

“Yeah. So no water.”

Atsumu said something else then, but the noise in the room reached a fever pitch. Everyone in the room was too drunk, rowdy. And it wasn’t just their room, either. The noise was leaking in from the other private rooms occupied by equally smashed university students riding the high of freedom from exams, and Kiyoomi closed his eyes, letting himself drift.

When he opened his eyes, someone was kissing him, and Atsumu was nowhere to be seen.

The next time he woke up, he was in his own apartment, and it was early morning. Atsumu wasn’t in Kiyoomi’s apartment; his overnight bag vanished along with the rest of him, and his shoes were no longer at the genkan. It was humiliating to have to ask his club members what happened to Atsumu—you mean your boy?—but none of them knew too well, either. Apparently Atsumu had disappeared in the middle of the night, leaving Kiyoomi to his own devices—and worse—to get kissed by someone who wasn’t him.

Atsumu didn’t visit again. Two weeks after that, he stopped talking to Kiyoomi altogether.

“Some fucking investment I was,” Kiyoomi said, furious. He wasn’t upset by the ghosting; that’d be preposterous. It was the fact that he hadn’t expected it. He hadn’t thought Atsumu capable of disappearing that quickly, of being such a fucking coward. If he lost interest, the least that Kiyoomi had expected was a goodbye text, a note, something.

But there was nothing. Atsumu was there, and then he wasn’t.

It pissed Kiyoomi off. “He thinks he can do all of that for me and then vanish?”

“Maybe you need to do more things for him,” Motoya said. When Kiyoomi shot him a betrayed look, Motoya just shrugged and flopped upside down on his bed. “Listen. You keep telling me about all the things he did for you—which is great, and you deserve that, Kiyo-chan, you do—but what did you do for him?”

“I let him stay over,” Kiyoomi said.

“After he hopped on a train for two and a half hours,” Motoya pointed out.

“And he has a toothbrush at my place. And slippers. And his favorite pans.”

“Yet you’ve never seen his apartment.”

“I watched his favorite movies.”

“Didn’t he suggest them first, though?”

“He slept in my bed,” Kiyoomi said, hurt.

At that, Motoya’s face softened. He crawled down from the bed to sit by Kiyoomi on the floor, and Kiyoomi curled into his knees, refusing to look at Motoya.

“I’m not telling you that it wasn’t a dick move, what Miya did,” Motoya said gently. “But this doesn’t need to be the end. He made you happy. Maybe this was a misunderstanding.”

“I’m not going to chase him to demand answers,” Kiyoomi snapped. “I have—things to do, Motoya. I have my research over the summer, and school to finish, my team—”

“So chase him after,” Motoya said. He nudged Kiyoomi with his shoulder, knocked their heads together.

God, Motoya had such a compact skull. Kiyoomi scowled.

“You have one year left, right? You reconnected after three years. What’s that, next to just twelve months and then some?”

“What if I don’t want to? What if I’ve lost interest?”

“But you haven’t,” Motoya said.

He despised it when Motoya was right. Fuck. Motoya never rubbed it in his face. He simply told Kiyoomi the facts, and left Kiyoomi to do whatever he wanted with the knowledge.

It was the freedom of choice that grated him. He could hold a grudge and say ‘fuck you’ to Atsumu for leaving him and ghosting and not even giving so much as a ‘sorry you just aren’t my type after all,’ or—he could figure this shit out like an adult. He could catch up to Atsumu after graduating, and pay off Atsumu’s investment properly, and demand answers.

He could leave things as they were, or he could, with some effort, have Atsumu sometime in the near future.

Really, it was annoyingly simple.

One year later, Kiyoomi signed the contract with MSBY.

Day two of the retreat is more of the same routine: practice, lunch, more practice, onsen, and an unholy amount of time spent on the ski lifts with Atsumu—more out of necessity than their mutual desire to fulfill their lip balm tasting mission.

Apparently, a full twenty-four hours at the resort is more than enough time for the sense of distance to sink in for the rest of the team.

Meian? Spending too much time in their room pining for his wife like a soldier stationed overseas. Hinata and Inunaki? Bouncing off the walls, possibly chewing drywall when Kiyoomi isn’t looking. Bokuto—equal amounts of time lifeless on the floor before being seized with a demonic amount of energy. As for Adriah, he’s frighteningly normal. Kiyoomi is about eighty percent sure that it’s a sign that he’s going to commit mass murder or convert to Buddhism. Perhaps both, in succession.

“God, we need to find another place to do that,” Atsumu says when they hop off the ski lift for the day, and Kiyoomi can only manage a tiny nod of agreement.

They’d spent the better part of the afternoon riding the lift around the mountain, and suffice to say, they’re in dire need of another location ASAP. Being on the lift for so many hours has left Kiyoomi’s butt numb from the steel seats, and he’s not even sure he has his extremities anymore.

Judging by Atsumu’s pleased sigh the moment the resort’s heating blasts into them, he’s in a similar state.

“Bathrooms,” Atsumu says. When Kiyoomi makes a curious noise, he elaborates, “Bathroom hookups can be classic, right?”

However terrible the ski lift may be, it’s not like a bathroom is a step up. “You’re disgusting,” Kiyoomi says.

Atsumu doesn’t falter. “Stairwell?”

“There are cameras. I’d rather not be caught in a scandal with you.”

“Fuck, you’re right. How about, god, I dunno, storage closets?”

“I imagine they’d be locked.”

Atsumu groans and flops onto a couch near the reception desk to begin pulling his skis off, along with his snow pants, padding, and boots. The whole pile gets tossed into a miserable wet lump by the coffee table. “You’re killing me here, you know that?” he whines.

Kiyoomi lowers himself into an armchair with much more grace and doesn’t disrobe in the lobby, because he’s not an exhibitionist like Atsumu. “We’re here for one more day,” he points out. “You could just not kiss me for the rest of our stay here.”

Atsumu’s only response is an expression that’s so betrayed and offended that Kiyoomi sighs.

“Right,” he says. “What was I thinking? Let’s continue to make out like horny teenagers on the ski lift and freeze our genitals off in the name of—” Vague hand wave. Whatever it is they’re doing. Lip balm tastings in the name of science and fair compromise.

“That’s the spirit,” Atsumu says, beaming.

Luck is on their side, though—on the last day, Meian lets them know they’ve been freed from the ski lift purgatory. He delivers the news with all the benevolence of a billionaire CEO giving his workers an unpaid day off: afternoon practice canceled, dinner on him, the rest of the day free for whatever chaos they want to inflict upon the great city of Sapporo.

“Just stay within the city limits!” Meian shouts after Inunaki, who’s sprinting towards freedom. The rest of the team watches as Inunaki stops at the end of the street, turns, and glowers furiously. Meian doesn’t relent and crosses his arms. “You heard me,” he calls. “Inside the city! No clubs! Thirty minutes from the resort is the furthest I’m letting you go!”

“This is why no one tells you anything about memes,” Inunaki yells back, and then he’s gone before Meian can force him into setting practice for the backtalk.

Life is about the little joys. Kiyoomi watches as Meian visibly withers.

“It’s not my fault,” he mutters. “They just don’t make sense… I just don’t… How am I supposed to understand…”

“Meian-san,” Kiyoomi says. Meian looks at him with something like hope—will Kiyoomi be the one to explain memes to him today? Of course not. Kiyoomi’s sure to crush that hope underfoot. “Are you going skiing today?” he says.

“Oh. I mean, I was planning on it, but—Sakusa-kun, do you happen to know anything about m—”

Kiyoomi ignores him. “Does that mean you’re out of the room for today?”

“I—yes, but—Sakusa-kun, about the mem—”

“Thank you for your consideration,” Kiyoomi says, overriding him. Now, for the finishing blow: “By the way, my joints are aching from staying outside for these past few days. I know you miss your wife, but it would be greatly appreciated if I could have the room to myself for this last day.”

In his periphery, Atsumu’s jaw has dropped. Asshole thinks he knows about convenient hookup spots with his talk of bathrooms and storage closets? How juvenile. He just needs to learn how to gaslight better.

“Oh,” Meian says, uncomfortable. “That’s, um. Yes, of course. That would be no issue. Do you mean for the whole day or…?”

“Preferably the whole day. I like to relax in darkness and quiet.”

“Like a bat!” Hinata chimes in from behind him.

Normally, Hinata’s additions to the conversation are intrusive and strange at best. For this specific situation, though, Kiyoomi welcomes it.

“Yes,” he says. “Exactly like that. On that note, I’d like to request a message of notice three minutes beforehand, if you happen to need something from the room.”

“A message of notice,” Meian repeats.

“Yes. Is that an issue?”

Meian’s gaze bores into him. No more depressed wilting father upset at the generation gap; it’s all Captain Meian now.

Kiyoomi meets his eyes, unwavering: you want to interrogate me about how I relax? When I let you have the room for two days to talk to your wife? When I’m not Inunaki and I am your best-behaved member and Bokuto probably has plans to release exotic fish into the nearest riverside? When my joints are in terrible condition, no thanks to you and your selfishness? Is this the fight you want to pick, Meian?

Meian is the first to break eye contact. Jackpot.

“Alright. A message of notice,” Meian agrees. “Room to yourself. Don’t get too crazy and throw a party, Sakusa. Ha ha.”

With that half-hearted joke, he trudges off in the direction of the rental skis, looking every ounce the picture of a defeated man. Hinata and Bokuto bound after him, and then it’s just Kiyoomi and Atsumu in the hallway.

“Omi,” Atsumu says, after a long pause.

“Hmm.”

“Do you know that whatever you did to Meian was the hottest fucking thing I’ve seen in my life.”

“Is that so?”

“Don’t you go acting all oblivious,” Atsumu groans. He lunges for Kiyoomi’s mask in a fit of feral lust, and Kiyoomi lets him have it with a tiny smile, which just drives Atsumu even more insane, because he hurls it to the ground and claws his hands down his face. “You—you sneak, you know what you’re doing, you did that on purpose, being all—all sneaky and, and sneaky and—”

“By all means, keep demonstrating your brilliant vocabulary,” Kiyoomi says. Atsumu makes another choked noise, this time of lustful rage, and Kiyoomi goes on, “Or.”

“Or what?”

“Or we could relocate and have this conversation in the room I so helpfully emptied for the next eight hours.”

Atsumu’s face flickers. It’s clear he’s torn over wanting to strangle Kiyoomi, kiss him, or haul him over his shoulder and speed to the empty room.

Once again, it’s up to Kiyoomi to sweeten the deal.

“The room has a bed, by the way.”

The last thread of Atsumu’s patience snaps. He lets out a wordless snarl and hauls all eighty kilos of Kiyoomi over his shoulder, zooming through the halls with speed he’s hardly ever shown in practice. Kiyoomi settles himself on Atsumu’s shoulder, satisfied.

Game, set, match.

Between the furious makeouts that are closer to devouring each other’s faces off, and new lip balm tastings—including a pleasant discovery regarding Atsumu’s deep enjoyment of the matcha—room service is a given.

“Not bad,” Atsumu remarks after a bite of poached eggs. Cue the leer at Kiyoomi. “Not as good as that bunny lip balm, though.”

“Will you stop—it was on sale,” Kiyoomi says, exasperated.

“It’s too cute. You’ll have to kill me to make me forget it.”

“That can be arranged.”

“Nah,” Atsumu says, grinning. “You like kissing me too much. Speaking of which, you wanna get back to that?”

Kiyoomi should remember the sacred tongue rule. They even have easy access to a bathroom with a toothbrush and toothpaste. But something about the warmth in the room and Atsumu’s knees brushing against his own under the tiny table and that smile—

Kiyoomi tosses his fork on his plate. “Back up,” he orders.

Raising an eyebrow, Atsumu does, scooching back from the table a few inches.

“More.”

Obedient scooching. Kiyoomi eyes the space between him and the table. Not enough.

“More?” Atsumu asks.

“Yes.”

“Now?”

Kiyoomi gauges the distance, then nods. “Okay,” he says, before he stands up from his seat to climb into Atsumu’s lap.

Reflexively, Atsumu’s hands settle on both sides of Kiyoomi’s hips. “Starting to think this is your favorite place to be,” he says.

“It is not.”

“You sure? I see you here pretty often.”

Because he’d rather die than admit it’s true, and also because it might kill him to be this close and still not be kissing Atsumu, Kiyoomi says, “Oh, will you shut up,” and seals his mouth over Atsumu’s.

After that: kissing, more bites of their now-cold room service, kissing again. At some point Kiyoomi migrates from the table to the bed and wiggles under the covers, but Atsumu hesitates before he climbs in beside Kiyoomi.

Atsumu says, “You want me to leave?”

Admittedly, going on five hours when Meian should be returning soon is risking it. But Kiyoomi still finds himself shaking his head. He wants to treasure this for longer. He wants the warmth of Atsumu’s body pressed against his, the slow kisses, the way Atsumu laughs into his mouth when Kiyoomi gets too impatient or rolls them over to switch positions. Just Atsumu, here and present.

“No,” he says. “I like this. Stay.”

Atsumu smiles at him, leans down to kiss his ear, and says, “Alright.”

Time passes too fast. One moment it’s barely past 1 PM, with Atsumu smiling up at him and with his head on his thigh, and the next, Kiyoomi pulls away from Atsumu’s mouth to realize the room has fallen into darkness. They’re sixteen floors up, so the only light that shines into their room is a sliver of moonlight. It brushes against the highs of Atsumu’s cheeks, the slope of his nose, the edge of his jaw.

Kiyoomi traces the curves of his face with a light touch, tracing the details into his memory. These short eyelashes, the nick of an old scar at the corner of his left brow. So many things that one could only know by feeling them directly.

Atsumu doesn’t move. He has his eyes closed, leaning into Kiyoomi’s palm.

“We should probably turn on the lights,” Atsumu murmurs after a small eternity.

There’s a quality to the darkness that has managed to close the distance between them even more. Atsumu’s pulse throbs under Kiyoomi’s thumb when he passes the curve of his cheek down to his neck. It’s slow, unhurried, strong.

Whatever this is, whatever they have—Kiyoomi doesn’t want to let it go.

But he has to face reality.

“Meian’s going to come back soon,” Kiyoomi agrees, pulling away. Atsumu’s eyes open and lock onto his, but there’s something so intense about his gaze that Kiyoomi averts his eyes. “I should kick you out before he does.”

“Mm. Or we could both leave.”

“I’m not doing the ski lift again.”

At that, Atsumu laughs, and Kiyoomi looks at him. God. An ache settles deep within him. It’s a familiar one, the same ache he’s had since maybe the first time Atsumu walked into his apartment years ago and refused to take no for an answer.

“No, ‘course not,” Atsumu says. “We can just… take a walk. Heard they’re doing a bonfire outside. We can warm up there after our walk if you want. Shouldn’t be too many people there, granted that we take our time.”

“How much time?” Kiyoomi asks, even though it doesn’t really matter.

“However long you want,” Atsumu says.

Forever, he thinks. Stay with me. Don’t go. Let me keep you this time.

“Okay,” Kiyoomi says instead.

The walk is, as expected, cold. It takes about thirty seconds of their slow trudge into the wilderness before any sense of goodwill Atsumu had fostered through six hours of making out and cuddling vanishes.

What does it matter if he’s in love with Atsumu? Surely they could’ve fulfilled whatever purpose Atsumu wants to achieve just as well inside. With heating. And immediate access to hot chocolate. And flat terrain.

“Anyone ever tell you that you’re like some sorta grumpy reptile cat during winter?” Atsumu asks. There’s a distinct look to him that lets Kiyoomi know he’s trying not to laugh at Kiyoomi for tripping on a hidden tree root for the third time.

Kiyoomi kicks snow at him, but it only makes Atsumu more delighted, the psychopath. “This was your idea,” Kiyoomi snaps. “Have you considered the fact that you wouldn’t have to deal with a grumpy reptile cat if we stayed inside? Like reasonable people?”

“Mhm.”

“Why are we out here anyway?”

“Figured it was a good excuse for me to hold your hand,” Atsumu says, casual as anything.

Kiyoomi freezes.

As if he was waiting for it, Atsumu picks up his hand. He curls his fingers between Kiyoomi’s and squeezes once, before tucking their intertwined hands into his pocket.

Oh.

“Like that,” Atsumu says. “See how easy that was?”

Breathe, Kiyoomi. His exhale emerges as a shaky fog into the night air. “Okay,” he says, trying to keep his voice level. “Is that all?”

“Nah. I got a few more things.”

Kiyoomi waits: what other landmines is Atsumu going to detonate? But he doesn’t go on.

“What is it?” Kiyoomi asks, when the silence stretches.

In answer, Atsumu tugs Kiyoomi forward to continue their walk. Alright. In the silence, Kiyoomi’s head spins. Wherever they’re going, it’s decidedly not in their deal. Kissing, yes. Cuddling, yes, as a byproduct of the kissing and the remaining vestiges of their old movie nights during his university days. Falling asleep together, even, yes; accidents could happen, and plausible denial is the name of the game.

But this thing that Atsumu is working up towards—it’s uncharted territory. Kiyoomi would have to be an idiot not to know what it is.

“Are you making a move on me?” Kiyoomi asks quietly.

Atsumu’s hand tightens. His inhale is loud. It sounds as unsteady as Kiyoomi’s.

“Omi,” Atsumu says. It’s not an answer.

Well, it’s okay. The night is quiet. The stars are brilliant. Kiyoomi’s in love, and has been for years now. The words come out of him easily, like weights tumbling off his tongue.

He says, “You never do things properly, Atsumu.”

Atsumu blinks. It’s clear it’s not what he expected. “What?” he says.

“This whole thing,” Kiyoomi clarifies. “If you’re making a move, you should be honest. If you’re not, then you should tell me. And if you lose interest—again—then you should tell me that, too.”

“Omi,” Atsumu says, stunned.

“I’m saying this now because you didn’t do it the first time. I have my pride. I’m not doing it a third time. Either you’re in love with me back—”

Atsumu freezes.

“Or you leave,” Kiyoomi says. “And when I say ‘love me back,’ I don’t mean for two weeks and that’s it. I’m in love with you for the long term, and I don’t want you to just love me back, I want you to love me back for as long as I will. The long term.” He looks down from the night sky to Atsumu, and he says, “That’s my investment.”

Atsumu is silent for the longest time. Then he says, “Omi, anyone ever tell you you’re an idiot, too?”

A strange knot forms in Kiyoomi’s throat. Rejection.

Okay.

He tucks his hands back into his own pockets—a foolish part of him already missing the warmth—and raises his eyes to lock on the sky. Don’t look down. Don’t look down—if he does, he’ll see Atsumu, and this time, he’ll really fall.

In, out. Don’t look down. “You don’t have to be cruel,” Kiyoomi says, quiet.

“Hey,” Atsumu says, achingly gentle. Oh, this is worse. This feigned kindness. But Atsumu hasn’t ever been merciful, and he’s not about to start now, because he continues, “Listen to me. You’re talking crazy. What are you talking about, two weeks?”

“That’s how long it was the first time,” Kiyoomi says. “When you visited me in university. You were in love with me for two weeks, maybe. And then you left.”

“God, you really are an idiot. I’ve been in love with you since the end of high school, Omi.”

Kiyoomi’s heart stops.

Slowly, he drops his gaze from the stars to Atsumu. Under the streetlight, his ears are cold-bitten. His neck is bare without his muffler that he gave to Kiyoomi so many months back. He’s got his loudmouth grin cracking his face in two.

“I don’t know where you got the idea that I lost interest,” Atsumu says. “But I never have. Gave you some space ‘cause that was what you wanted. You wanna talk to me about ‘long term?’” He laughs, and it’s that hyena laugh again; the kind when he’s delighted, well and truly. “Baby, I fucking invented long-term between the two of us. You come talk to me when you’ve loved me for half as long as I’ve loved you.”

“But—” Kiyoomi’s mouth feels numb. “You left before. And you said it was about the lip balm, the investment. Your future hitter.”

“It’s about you,” Atsumu says, before he catches Kiyoomi around the waist and pulls him in for a kiss.

One more type of kiss that Kiyoomi’s never known before: a kiss with Miya Atsumu up against a pine tree in the thick of winter, snow up to his calves, night sky shining with solstice stars. The enthusiastic, face-devouring, puppy lick kind of kiss, messy and awful and too much teeth. The kind with chapped lips—without lip balm, Kiyoomi fumbling for the rabbit jar in his pocket—and Atsumu mumbling a half-warning into his mouth, something that sounds like, “Baby, if you stop kissing me—okay, mmh—”

All things considered, it’s the best kiss Kiyoomi’s ever had.

“Okay,” Atsumu says. “Bonfire time. My dick is gonna freeze off if we stay out here any longer.”

Kiyoomi glances down and gives it a considering look. He’s already in snow pants. Kneeling in the snow wouldn’t be that much worse than standing in it. If he’s efficient about it, then he’d only need to be kneeling for maybe ten minutes, max. Minimal wind chill. Not many people outside, either.

He opens his mouth. “What if—”

“You are not sucking my dick out here,” Atsumu says firmly. Kiyoomi scowls, and Atsumu nuzzles his cheek, laughing. “You’re insane, you know that? We can do all sorts of stuff when we’re back in reasonable weather, Omi.”

“You wear shorts in winter,” Kiyoomi says, cross.

Born and raised in the coldest regions of Hyōgo, and for what? Not for exhibitionism, apparently. How boring.

“My fashion choices have nothing to do with your wack ideas of mountainside blowjobs, I hope you know that.” When Kiyoomi’s scowl doesn’t relent, Atsumu grins and kisses his cheek. “Okay. How about this—we can hit up a gift shop, buy one of those picnic blankets that Bokkun and Shouyou-kun keep talking about, and then we can stargaze like those old people celebrating their eightieth anniversary, ‘cause let’s be honest, we should prolly be celebrating some type of anniversary, considering how long we’ve been dancing around this whole thing.”

“How is this a compromise?”

“It’s not,” Atsumu admits, shameless. “But it isn’t a bad idea, is it?”

“I can’t believe you,” Kiyoomi hisses, spinning on his heel so he can walk ahead. “You’re a sap. You disgust me.”

There goes that barking hyena laugh again. “Omi, my god—where are you going?”

“To buy your stupid fucking blanket, you saddle-goose!”

“What does that even mean,” Atsumu says, cackling, before he catches up with Kiyoomi and snags his hand.

The gift shop picnic blankets, as predicted, are stupidly expensive. They lug it to the bonfire in the courtyard of the resort and spread it out on the concrete, not too far from the fire. At this late hour, there’s only a dozen people or so scattered about the place, and Atsumu throws himself on the blanket with a content sigh. “Aw yeah, that’s it. Atmosphere.” He strips off his coat and snow pants, then pats the space next to him, eyebrows wiggling. “C’mon, baby, cuddle time.”

“I need you to never open your mouth again,” Kiyoomi says, but he sits down beside Atsumu, their shoulders and thighs brushing.

It’s not close enough for Atsumu—he scoots behind Kiyoomi, peels him out of his outer layers, and worms his arms around Kiyoomi’s middle, plopping his chin over Kiyoomi’s shoulder. Finally, one last nuzzle his cheek. “Better,” Atsumu says, all but preening.

“You’re an oversized dog,” Kiyoomi says, and leans back into him.

The fire makes quick work of melting the cold from their bodies. Kiyoomi becomes aware that he’s in desperate need of a long shower—his hair is soaked with snow, ugh—but Atsumu seems too happy, curled beside the fire, so Kiyoomi doesn’t say anything. He can enjoy this for another hour, at least; foster some goodwill for the public blowjob he’s going to collect later.

“Hey, Omi,” Atsumu says, after some time. Kiyoomi hums. “Why’d you say that earlier? About me leaving you and shit.”

Kiyoomi frowns. Not the conversation he was expecting for tonight. “Because you did,” he says eventually.

“When?”

“When I was in university. You ghosted me for a year, asshole.”

Now Atsumu’s frowning at him too. “You mean when we weren’t talking until you joined MSBY? I wasn’t ghosting you. I was giving you space. I thought that’s what you wanted.”

“Why would I want space from you?” Kiyoomi asks, in disbelief.

“You said so!”

“When?”

“Whaddya mean, when? After that party you brought me to! You called me at 5 AM and cursed me out for like, fifteen minutes!” Kiyoomi twists around to call the BS, but there’s not a hint of dishonesty in Atsumu’s face—just pure bewilderment. Atsumu stares at him. “You don’t remember this? You told me to fuck off, so I fucked off!”

Just to clarify that their understanding of the timeline hasn't been split in two, Kiyoomi says, “The party that I brought you to.” Nod. “The Botanical Club party. In December.” Another furious nod. “The one where you abandoned me and I got my first kiss taken by a random weirdo? That party?”

Atsumu’s mouth opens, then closes. Then, weakly: “Where I… where you… a random… what?”

“Where you abandoned me,” Kiyoomi repeats, “and I got kissed by a random stranger.”

“Say that again.”

“I’m not—look, if it’s about the kiss, I woke up to being kissed, and we weren’t a thing, so I wasn’t cheating on you. And you still ghosted me after.”

“No, I don’t care about that, I just—” Atsumu inhales, rabid. “Can you. Tell me about that. The being kissed bit.”

“I don’t remember it well.” When Atsumu digs his forehead into Kiyoomi’s skull for answers, Kiyoomi rolls his eyes. “It’s not a big deal,” he says, before telling Atsumu the boring story: the Botany club party, Atsumu vanishing, waking up in the back of a taxi seat to someone kissing him, soft and slow. All things considered, it wasn’t a bad first kiss. It was just bad by virtue of a) being fucking drunk b) inside a taxi c) kissed by a stranger, and of course, d) in the wake of Atsumu abandoning him at the party.

The fact that Kiyoomi partially defines that kiss as the start of the toppling dominos isn’t too relevant, in the grand scheme of things.

Atsumu says nothing when Kiyoomi finishes. He’s staring at the starry sky in a sort of horrified silence, and that’s when it occurs to Kiyoomi that having a kiss stolen while drunk isn’t a great story to tell your boyfriend.

“I’m not mad about it,” Kiyoomi says. “My second kiss was worse. She gave me the flu at graduation, and I almost made Motoya take me to the ER.”

“Oh my god,” Atsumu whispers.

“What,” Kiyoomi says defensively. “It’s not ideal, but it doesn’t matter. If you’re going to act like you deflowered a virgin just because you were the third person to kiss me, then you have another th—”

“Oh my god,” Atsumu says again, sounding more horrified by the minute. “Omi. Tell me that wasn’t your first kiss. Tell me, please—that wasn’t your first.”

Now Kiyoomi’s beginning to get annoyed. So maybe he isn’t the most experienced, while Atsumu had fan sites entirely devoted to pictures of his butt, but: “It’s not a big deal. Just because not everyone’s first kiss aligns with your textbook romance fantasies or your fantastic fucking first kiss doesn’t mean—”

“No,” Atsumu moans, flopping over to bury his face back in Kiyoomi’s thigh, “no, no, no, nonononono.” More mumbling into Kiyoomi’s leg that he can’t make out, before Atsumu shoves himself up and says, almost crazed, “You have to be lying.”

“How many times do I have to tell you I’m not? It was, and it’s not a big deal, and if you don’t get over it—”

“That was your first?”

“What is the matter with you?”

“That asshole was me!” Atsumu shouts, before he buries his face into his hands.

Kiyoomi stares. That…

“What?” he says eventually.

“Oh my god,” Atsumu says, half-insane now. “You don’t even remember. I’ve been carrying around the weight and trauma of this for a year and you’re telling me you don’t even—it didn’t even—you don’t even remember—”

“What are you talking about?”

“I came to visit you at that party. You remember that, right? Tell me you remember that at least. I wore my best jeans and I begged Samu for like two weeks to help me find good clothes, tell me you remember.”

“Yes,” Kiyoomi says, and then, because none of this story is matching up to what he knows, he adds, “You left me there.”

“What?” Atsumu says. “No. Oh my god. I left to get you water. You don’t remember this?” Kiyoomi shakes his head. Atsumu lets out another quiet oh my god before he says, “Listen. You kept whining to me about how much you didn’t want to drink from the cups at the restaurant ‘cause they were dirty, and how the water itself was prolly contaminated, right? Then I was like, ‘No, baby, if the water was contaminated, then that’d mean the groundwater itself or whatever would be contaminated, and then this whole fucking city would be done for, and that’d be all over the news,’ and you were all—” A high-pitched voice that sounds nothing like Kiyoomi: “‘Wow, Atsumu, you’re so hot and cool—’”

“I did not say that,” Kiyoomi says. There’s a high possibility that he blacked out for most of the club party, but he’s certain about that, at least.

“Okay, I may be exaggerating,” Atsumu admits. “But! You were all super cute and shit, so I was like, fuck it, it might be cold as balls out there, but I’ll hit up the convenience store, get Omi some proper bottled water, right? Like that rich shit you always keep in your fridge, the Fiji stuff.”

“They don’t sell that at the university convenience stores,” Kiyoomi says, confused.

“Yeah, I figured that out after. So in the meantime I spent like half an hour hitting up all the stores nearby, ‘cause I was like, man, I can’t get peasant water for Omi, he’ll think it’s just contaminated again—”

Peasant water. Kiyoomi fights the urge to bury his face in his hands, too.

“—and anyway, couldn’t find it, got back after half an hour, found you fucking going off on top of a table, just ranting about me to anyone you knew.”

Kiyoomi closes his eyes. Okay. He’s ready for death now.

But three years of Kiyoomi not remembering means Atsumu is holding a grudge—he continues, “You were just unreal, you know that? You were all wailing and shit, like some jilted maiden left at the altar, like, ‘He fucking left me and I was gonna give him everything, I wore this stupid shirt for him, how fucking dare he leave me without a word—’”

“Stop talking.”

“It was impressive, don’t get me wrong. But you were convinced I abandoned you, and I was like, oh man he’s too cute—”

Kiyoomi’s head snaps up. “Cute?” he demands, mortified. He wants to hurl himself into the flames of the bonfire listening to this and Atsumu thought it was cute?

“Yeah, cute. So I got you off the table, bundled you up, gave you some water, and grabbed a taxi for us to go back.”

“And then you kissed me,” Kiyoomi says.

“Yeah,” Atsumu says. A short, delicate pause.

“Just say it,” Kiyoomi says, resigned.

“Well, you, uh.” Atsumu clears his throat. “You threw up on my shoes.”

“No.”

“Yeah, you did, but luckily you threw up outside of the taxi, so no extra cab fare, which was nice.” Kiyoomi buries his face into his hands. Okay. After this, he’ll write his will, take a shower, and do his skincare before unceremoniously throwing himself into the bonfire. Atsumu goes on, “But that was it, I swear. Nothing else. I put you to bed, called another cab to the train station since I had an early match the next day. I tried calling you to talk in the morning, but you were pissed about me kissing you.”

“I don’t even remember this phone call! And I wasn’t pissed about you kissing me, I was pissed about you leaving me at the party!” Kiyoomi yells.

“I walked home in vomit shoes,” Atsumu says, incredulous. “What on Earth makes you think I’d leave you at a party! Be fucking serious!”

Okay. When Atsumu puts it that way. Perhaps Kiyoomi was a bit dramatic. Three years they spent apart, for no reason. He can’t ever tell Motoya about any of this; Motoya will burst a lung laughing at him, then continue laughing during his stay at the ER, and then, once he dies from the hysterics, Kiyoomi won’t ever be invited to the Komori household again to indulge in their assorted bags of legumes—and that would be a real tragedy.

Therefore: “How about,” Kiyoomi says, “we forget this.”

Atsumu starts laughing. “Right.”

“And I won’t have to kill you.”

“Great.”

“And tomorrow, when we’re out of this godforsaken purgatory, I’ll let you kiss me more.”

“You’ll let me, huh,” Atsumu says, grinning.

“If you behave,” Kiyoomi says with a sniff.

Atsumu kisses him, sweet and gentle, and then he says, “What about if you behave, huh?”

“Then maybe Pandamonium-san will make a reappearance, and I’ll give you a blowjob in the unexciting privacy of your bedroom.”

“Yeah, alright,” Atsumu says. “Sounds like a deal.”