I'm done actin' like I don't care what we are
Pairing: Miya Atsumu x reader
Based on the song we never dated by sombr
Warnings: a little bit of angst; friends to lovers; situtationship; angry confessions;
You never called him your boyfriend. Not once. Not even as a joke.
But somehow he had a toothbrush in your bathroom, and somehow he knew you took your coffee with too much sugar, and somehow every Friday night ended with his hoodie draped over your shoulders and his bike helmet dangling off your doorknob like it lived there.
"Hey," he'd say, sprawled sideways across your couch like he owned it, feet in your lap, phone held above his face. "You're staring."
"I'm not staring, I'm judging your posture."
"Same thing" he said with a cocky smile.
You'd throw a pillow at him. He'd catch it without looking, because of course he would, hands like that don't miss, not on the court and not with you. And the two of you would sit there in the loud quiet of your room, and it would feel like something. It would feel like everything, actually, if you let yourself think about it too long.
You didn't let yourself think about it too long.
Because there were rules, unspoken ones, the kind that exist specifically so two people can stand at the edge of something and pretend they're just standing near each other. No labels. No definitions. Just Atsumu showing up after every practice smelling like sweat and citrus deodorant.
"Y'know," he said once, late at night in your apartment "if anyone asked me what we are, I wouldn't know what to tell 'em."
"Tell them we're friends."
"Friends." He said it like it tasted wrong. Like it was a word borrowed from a language he didn't quite speak. "Right. Friends who—" He stopped himself. Laughed, short and a little bitter, and looked at the ceiling instead of you. "Never mind."
You didn't ask him to finish that sentence. That was another rule. If you asked, it would become real, and if it became real, it could also become over, and somewhere along the way you'd decided that a thing without a name couldn't be broken.
He showed up at your door on a Tuesday, which was wrong in every way — Atsumu didn't do Tuesdays, Atsumu did Fridays, planned and lazy — and the second you opened the door you knew something had shifted.
"I'm done pretendin'." He said it before you'd even stepped back to let him in, said it like he'd been holding it behind his teeth the whole drive over. "I've been done for a while, actually. I just kept tellin' myself it was fine. That whatever this was, was enough."
"Come inside, at least. The neighbors—"
"I don't care about the neighbors." But he came inside anyway, because some habits don't break, and he stood in your living room with his jacket still zipped, hands shoved in his pockets like he didn't trust them not to reach for you.
"I watched you on Saturday," he said. "At Suna's party. Some guy was talkin' to you, and you laughed at somethin' he said, and I wanted to—" He exhaled, sharp, through his nose. "I wanted to go over there. Put my arm around you. Say somethin' stupid like she's mine even though I got no right to say that. Because we never made it a thing. How come we never even dated but i...." he interrupted himself looking at the floor.
"I'm in love with you." He said it flat, looking back at your direction, almost angry. "I don't know when it happened. Maybe it was always happening. But I'm done actin' like I don't care what we are, 'cause I do. I care so much it's stupid. I care so much I can't sit with our friends and watch a movie and pretend my hand landin' on yours is an accident anymore."
The room went quiet. Outside, a car passed, headlights sweeping gold across the ceiling and gone again.
"You never said any of this before," you said, finally, quiet.
"'Cause I was scared." He looked at you now, really looked, none of his usual cocky ease anywhere in it. "Scared that if I said it out loud and you didn't feel the same, I'd lose you. At least when we never talked about it, I got to keep pretendin' there was a version where it worked out. But I don't wanna keep pretendin'. I want the real thing, or I want to know it's never gonna happen, 'cause I can't keep doin' this in between."
"What do you want me to say?"
"I want ya to tell me what this is." He took a step closer. Just one. Close enough that you could see he meant every word, close enough that his voice dropped lower, rougher. "Are you my girlfriend? Are we somethin' real, or am I just a guy who leaves his hoodie at your place and calls it complicated 'cause it's easier than callin' it what it actually is?"
You didn't answer right away. You didn't trust your own voice to hold steady if you tried.
"Say somethin'," he said, and for the first time all night, he sounded less like Atsumu Miya, cocky and untouchable, and more like a boy standing in the middle of a room with his whole chest wide open, waiting to find out if it was going to get handed back to him in pieces.
"I don't want you to be some guy who leaves his hoodie here," you said finally. "I want you to be the guy who doesn't have to leave at all."
Something in his face broke open — relief, disbelief, both at once — and he crossed the last of the distance between you like he'd been waiting his whole life for permission.
"Say it plain," he murmured, forehead nearly touching yours. "I need to hear you say it plain."
"I want to be yours, Atsumu. For real. No pretending."
He huffed out something that was half laugh, half breath he'd been holding for months, and pulled you in like he was afraid you'd take it back if he let go.
"Finally," he said against your hair. "Finally."