High school wasn't easy, it was hard, and stressful. And you didn't know if it was because you had changed school this year, or just because it is.
But your bet was on the former.
It was raining the first day.
Everyone was under an umbrella with their friends, laughing and joking around. Perhaps the weather was mocking you.
Your umbrella was over you, you weren't getting drenched but somehow, it felt like you were drowning.
The walk to the school hallway wasn't long, but it felt like a mile, watching everyone else be happy in the grey weather.
"AKAASHIIII!" The loud voice comes as soon as it goes, a quieter voice just calmly replies, and perhaps that was where it all went wrong.
It had been a week by now, and nothing much had happened.
You had gone to class, done the homework assigned, and been quiet while doing so. Well as quiet as you could.
But it still hadn't stopped your eyes from wandering at times.
The guy who sat in front of you, Akaashi, you had heard during attendence, was something you couldn't fully understand.
He was gorgeous, that much you could see, and quiet, good at studying too, plus he was an athlete, he was a crazy combo that was almost every high schoolers hallway crush.
So how come he wasn't everyones hallway crush? You couldn't really fathom it, but each to their own.
So yeah, the first week had been okay.
It had been a month by now, and how you had survived Akaashi Keiji's friendly nature was a mystery to yourself.
It had started the first week. He was observant and polite to you, but not more than needed. But then he remembered the drink you normally brought from the vending machines. He had given you a polite smile before giving you the drink.
You hadn't really known what to make of it, you had thanked him, of course, but it was weird.
Then the breaks in between classes came, and he began to talk to you? Quietly at first, but then he began to get more confident with time, and now it was just a routine.
Then after school came, where he offered to walk you home, when you tagged along to volleyball practice. What you didn't know was that he lived in the opposite direction...
And somewhere along the way, you had fallen. Hard. Like down bad crying at the gym, kinda hard.
But instead of trying to get him to like you too, you just went along with the ride. Not like a blushing mess, but just as someone who didn't think about it, before Akaashi had to leave to go home himself.
But then it all came back to you, the way you liked him and the warm feeling was there now taking over your whole body.
And yet, Akaashi didn't stop. He just began to do more, in a more warm way. In a way that made you flustered the whole time, instead of just at the end.
Like, when he began to buy you an onigiri everyday, just to make sure you always ate something.
Or when he began to hold your hand when he walked you home.
“I’ve been thinking,” says Atsumu, propping one leg up on the bench you’re sitting on. You don’t even glance up at him from the sandwich you’re eating, cheeks puffed out like a squirrel. Aw. You’re so cute. He stops to pat your face twice before continuing with his genius plan. “I didn’t like the idea at first. I’m way too good looking for you to look at other guys. But you’re pretty, too. And you definitely deserve more than one boyfriend. So I think I can take weekdays and every other Saturday—maybe Sunday morning if you’re feeling peckish—and it’s cool if you want to see someone else in the meantime.”
You take a few more seconds to chew, glaring daggers at him the whole time. He closes his eyes to bask in his own smartitude, and to avoid seeing you trying to kill him with your eyes.
“We’re not dating,” you say after finally swallowing. “You are not my boyfriend. And I will see whoever I want, whenever I want.”
“No, the agreement is every other Saturday and most Sundays,” he says, your words going whistling through the empty space between his ears.
“I didn’t agree at all,” you say, getting up and throwing away your sandwich bag. He follows you like a lost puppy, which only makes you feel like putting a leash on him and clipping it to a lamppost so he can’t keep bothering you. “You decided something insane like you always do.”
“Wow, so we agree!” He claps his hands together. “Just like when you decided we were broken up without any input from me—”
“It’s not a two-person decision!” You whirl on him, hands on your hips. “We’re done, ‘Tsumu. Get that through your thick skull!”
His pretty brown eyes are shiny. You grit your teeth and try not to let it sway you. His lip trembles and you almost smack him in the face just in the hopes that hitting the appliance will make it stop malfunctioning. You settle for whacking your chest violently, as if trying to rid yourself of a cough.
“No,” he shakes his head finally. “Nope. Not how it works.”
“It literally is,” you hiss.
"Do I get visitation?" He begs. "What about our plushies? They need to see their dad?"
"They are inanimate."
"Don't say that!" Atsumu says. "Don't say hurtful things you don't mean."
"Fine," you relent. "You're right. This is the first time it's ever happened."
"Thank you," he sighs deeply, tipping his chin up into the air. The way the sunlight limns his features is unfair, a cruel and unusual biological weapon. He puts his hands together in prayer like it'll sway your opinion. "Anyway, this is a compromise, baby. This is me trying to compromise."
"You can't compromise a breakup," you say. "Are you dumb? Do you know that you're actually dumb?"
"We basically did," he squeezes his eyes shut in case it'll make the prayer work faster. "We didn't stop hanging out, anyway."
"All my stuff is at yours," you argue. "What, am I gonna do my homework at my own house? Without my lucky pencils?"
"Yes," he says. "Well—no! But you could move it out! If you actually wanted to stop seeing me. So instead this is me compromising."
"That would be insane and inconvenient," you say. "Two boyfriends is way too many."
He cracks one eye open from his extremely devout and holy pose. You have a funny look on your face, like you're about to spit out something unpleasant tasting. He hopes there was nothing bad in your sandwich; he's going to kiss you later and he's almost out of gum.
"One is good, probably," you sigh, putting one hand over your face like you're extremely burdened and weighed down by Atsumu's endless and all-consuming love for you. But you also put your other hand out like a princess waiting for her fingers to be kissed. Atsumu takes it and kisses all the way up your arm, even over your sleeves. "But you're sleeping in the cage."
"The cage is in the bedroom! I still get to be in the bedroom!" Atsumu's joy is ridiculous, infectious—he knows he's sacrificing all his dignity to be with you but he doesn't care. Call it a compromise.
you have a good hold on your mouth when you’re drunk. you learned early and hard not to let things slip, even when you’re bent over a toilet, even when you’re in an unfamiliar bed.
you don’t even have to be drunk to want to tell iwaizumi everything.
he just has this vibe that attracts gossips. you know it well, all the people who go to strong, solid iwaizumi to confess. you can count on one hand the things you haven’t told him on purpose.
you know, even now, slumped in his lap before the new year turns golden and fireworks shower around you, your feet over the arm of the courch and your eyes full of stars, not to tell him how pretty his mouth looks, stained with red wine, how bitable his throat, how thick his shoulders.
but you’re bubbling over, a champagne fountain, so you let yourself have this:
“not fair,” you say.
“isn’t it,” he says, indulgent. hard, strict iwaizumi, indulgent with you because you are soft in his lap. you let yourself pretend for a moment.
“mmh,” you say, trying to look pathetic. your hair is probably flopping into your eyes in a bad way. no one has ever believed your crocodile tears. “sad. sad, sad day.”
“why is that?” he rubs a thumb back and forth over your cheek, cool against your warm flesh.
“everyone else knows,” you pout. “but you wouldn’t get it. everyone else thinks—thinks i’m pretty, the prettiest. you must be blind or stupid.”
he doesn’t respond, just makes a shape with his mouth you can’t read.
“see?” you shake your head. your hair grits between your skull and the fabric of his pants. “so tonight i’m not pretty.”
“don’t say that,” he covers your mouth loosely with the palm of his hand. you nose toward the heel, seeking the salt leftover from the shots you’d taken together earlier. “you know not to talk like that.”
“but i’m drunk,” you say into his palm, spreading your hands wide like a lawyer on a tv show. you feel loose, ungrounded—you accidentally knock into his chest. he takes the warm weight of his hand away to fold your hand carefully in his before you can do more damage. like you could break that brick wall. “i can say whatever i want. who cares?”
“someone’s gonna hear you,” hajime says. “someone you care about more than me. they’re gonna get the wrong idea.”
“who’s that?” what a stupid statement. stupid iwaizumi, who doesn’t know that you’ve lived and breathed for his good opinion since you were a kid.
“i don’t know,” he says. “you tell me. which one of them were you hoping to be your new year’s kiss?”
you squint up at him, blocking out his features through your drunken haze. his caramel skin, the dark hollows of his eyes, the scar at the corner of his mouth that matches the starburst on his shoulder, souvenirs from trying to teach you to ride his too-big bike down the big hill behind kitagawa daiichi.
“how much did you drink?” you accuse.
“only what you told me to,” he laughs. “and i can hold my liquor a lot better than you, little one.”
you choke on your inhale, caught between a snort of laughter and a flustered gasp.
“i could drink you under the table any day,” you retort. “who’re you gonna kiss?”
he pauses. “nobody.”
“i don’t believe you.”
“don’t disrespect your elders like that,” he says. “i’d never lie to you.“
you want to believe him, but you’ve been coming to his family parties for years, watched every time he’d brought a girlfriend back and the one time he kissed mattsun because neither of them had one that year. you’d sent a video to oikawa out of spite, knowing he’d take the revenge you couldn’t.
around you, the beginnings of a countdown chant start.
“shit, it’s later than i thought. you gonna go find your kiss?” iwaizumi asks.
“uh-huh,” you say, wiggling up a little so he’s pinned further by your weight.
“thirty!” shout the people around you. he waves a hand in your face, wiggling his fingers.
you grab at him and suck a finger into your mouth.
“twenty!” the chorus around you sing-songs. he stares down at you, jaw slack, keeping his hand carefully still as you lick between his digits.
you pull away with a pop! that echoes in his head like firecrackers. you’ve always had a good hold on your mouth when drunk.
he hauls you up into a sitting position, a look on his face so fierce you half-sober up, an apology climbing up your throat.
i’m sorry, i’m sorry, i know i’m not the one you want.
iwaizumi kisses you and you only faintly hear the cheers around you, not for you but they feel like they could be. he wasn’t yours but he feels like he could be. his right hand presses into the small of your back like he can’t take you close enough, his mouth less yielding than you’d imagined, just on the verge of hurting so you know this is real. his left thumb strokes your face; when you pull away for breath, he ducks to press kisses into your neck and you think you hear something like not pretty, my ass, always the prettiest, idiot.
“not nice,” you whisper into his hair and feel him smile as he kisses you again.
“i’ll be nicer to you from now on,” he vows right into your mouth. iwaizumi, who’s always been indulgent with you, who feeds you with his own chopsticks, who bears the scars of his determination to teach you, makes you a promise.
Rintarō stands in the hallway till his feet tingle, pins and needles, until he has to sit down. That's how you find him, spread out among his notebooks, half-finished calculations and doodles in the margins on display.
"Hey," he says, clambering to his feet before you can collect yourself and walk away. "Wait up."
"Were you here my entire class?" You say, sounding angrier than you should for someone whose boyfriend was waiting for them.
"Yeah," he shrugs. "I got here at the usual time 'cause I wasn't sure if it ran later on exam days."
"It does," you say slowly. That's obvious. He checks his watch. It's three and you're usually home with him by one-fifty. "You didn't have to. You shouldn't have."
"I know," he says, crouching to shove his stuff into his backpack without care for what he's crumpling. "I got your letter."
"I'm sorry," you say, hiding your face from him, turning away. He puts a hand on the back of your neck, guides it back to him. He can see it, the crushed expression in your eyes, the sad turn of your mouth. "You can't—I'm sorry, okay?"
"It was bullshit," he says. You stumble over your feet, the hard mask you'd put over your features breaking momentarily. Even when it reforms, he feels victorious, knowing that you still want him—need him, even when you try to run from it. "So I'm ignoring it."
"What?" Your eyes are round, your jaw slack. Helpfully, he nudges it closed with a knuckle.
"You don't get to do that," he says. "Break up with me. Not unless it was for a good reason. Believe me, babe, I read that thing up and down and there wasn't one good reason on there, so we're not breaking up."
"Please don't do this," you say as the two of you walk out of the hall into the light, your face crumpling into something so sad despite the sunny day it almost makes him want to cry. "It's for the best. I know that's hard to believe now, but you have to look at the bigger picture—"
"Nope," he interrupts you. "I know you're a little know-it-all—how'd your exam go, by the way—and you think you know what's best for everyone all the time, but that letter was honestly really badly reasoned. Wouldn't hold up in any mock trial. So you're getting a zero and a second chance for a re-grade."
"It was fine," you say automatically. "Wait, take this seriously, please. I care about you and I don't want anyone to get hurt."
"This is the most serious thing I've ever done," he says, motioning between the two of you. "But I refuse to entertain some fucking note where you just lie—"
"I didn't lie!" You cry out. "I wrote my feelings, you asshole, which are the basis of a relationship—"
"Your feelings are wrong—"
"This is exactly what I meant!" You shout at him, garnering a few looks from the scant people walking around the secluded section of campus you're in. You lower your voice self-consciously, but your words still land like punches to his chest. "I'm broken, Rintarō, everything we do is going to end up poisoned. I don't want—" You gesture to yourself, to the tears slipping down your face. "This to happen to you. Can't you just let me go and remember only the good parts?"
"Stop it, stop it," he stops walking to pull you into his chest, sighing with relief when you press your face into his black hoodie. "That's not gonna happen. Don't say that shit about yourself, fuck, I don't care what you are as long as you're my person. Breathe, baby."
"Stop saying the right things," you say miserably. "I was so determined to not let you see this."
He pokes your cheek gently. "Sucks."
"So..." You pull away from him and he lets go reluctantly, pulling down the sleeve of his hoodie to dab at your cheeks. "We're not broken up?"
He gives you an unimpressed look and you start laughing despite yourself, something strange happening inside your chest, weird and unburdened and maybe stitching itself shut.
summary: Iwaizumi x F!Reader. two people run past each other, blind. or you and hajime have a rare fight and almost don't know how to deal with it.
wc: 1k
cw: angst to fluff (happy ending!), established relationship, arguing, hajime has a tendency to raise his voice, reader has an ? attachment style
a/n: i genuinely can't see a thing i write about hajime clearly i hope you enjoy anyway :)
Oikawa’s in town and I have no idea when I’ll see him again. I promise I’ll make it up to you another night, your phone reads. You huff loudly (closer to an angry sob than anything else) and toss the device across the room, sending it skidding across your bedspread and to the floor.
A moment later, you dive after it, wiping off the screen on your pants before you slip the device into your back pocket. You tug on your shoes, a haze over your vision, and walk out the door. You suppose you’ll try to find somewhere new to eat dinner on your own tonight—you hate cooking for one.
It’s not Hajime’s fault, really. You know that deep down. He’s been working extra hours in the first year of his private practice opening its doors and you’re beyond proud of him.
But… for that year, you’ve been pushed aside again and again. Your boyfriend’s presence in your home dwindles to that of a ghost for weeks at a time as he sleeps, eats, and breathes work. Even his social life has been reduced to team-building or networking, events that don’t actually relax him at all. You understand. You have a job, a life; you could never begrudge him the culmination of his ambition, the flame that drew you to him so brightly. But a year is a long time to go without Iwaizumi Hajime, athletic trainer.
Tonight had been one of his first truly off nights in a long time. Things have calmed down enough he wasn’t going to spend the entire night keyed up and half-present; you’d dreamed up a little night out on the town together.
Carving out this time in your shared schedules had taken a month’s lead time. Oikawa had probably let him know this morning that he was going to be in town.
You love Oikawa, too. It’s impossible to be in Hajime’s life without being compatible at a friend level with his friends; the first time you’d met, you’d asked Hajime “why aren’t you dating this fine young man instead?”
It doesn’t feel so funny anymore. It’s not Oikawa that you’re insecure about, it’s just that you feel so replaceable in Hajime’s life. He manages to squeeze everything else he has to in, but you need so little the sliver of time you get with him seems smaller and smaller. He hadn't even apologized when he cancelled.
He seems okay with it, too, less and less insistent on spending time with you, more flippant about blowing you off. Maybe he doesn’t want to spend time with you, you’re just always there. Maybe he’s soft-launching a breakup.
You try to slow your panicked breathing as you get on the train, avoiding eye contact with the passengers sparsely populating the seats. You don’t want to think about him at all. You just want to get in line at the new restaurant in downtown you keep seeing on your social feeds and eat so much raw salmon you turn into a fish and can escape into the ocean.
It’s not a good dinner.
The food is fine—better than, actually, but you keep having to stop and take breaths to stop yourself from crying into the broth. Once you have a full stomach, it’s a lot harder to feel so bleak about the state of the world and your relationship, but your phone still feels like a weight in your pocket.
Trying to forget, you wander through the mall, peering at your reflection in the closed shop windows and feeling your heart drop every time something makes you think “Oh, Haji would like that.”
You open the lockscreen when you get on the returning train, blanching at the quantity of messages, and then shove it back in your pocket. It’s too much to think about everything now. Hajime is probably still out at dinner and, knowing how things go when Oikawa visits, he won’t come home until late at night. You won’t have to say anything until next morning.
Maybe even the evening, if he leaves for work early enough, a snide voice in your head whispers. You bare your teeth, sure you look insane walking home from the station in the early winter wind, and round the corner to your apartment building.
Your nose is chapped red by the time you get home, glad you can blame the silver lining your eyes on the cold when you pass by your neighbors in the lobby.
“Oh, there you are!” Says the elderly woman who lives two doors down as you hold the stairwell door open for her. “Your husband was just asking around if any of us had seen you. You shouldn’t worry him like that, you know.”
There’s a group chat of all the tenants on your floor; that must be the source of all the notifications. The sick little hope in your stomach that Hajime was as sick as you were at the course of the night dies.
“He’s not my husband,” you say shortly, knowing that you sound how you feel: drawn tight and angry and more scared than you’d like to admit. You can’t look her in the face anymore, so you duck your head and unlock your door as quickly as you can.
“—you’re sure she hasn’t—” Hajime’s standing in your living room, hair askew like he’s been running his hands through it, speaking so rapidly to the other line on the phone you almost can’t understand him. “Holy—she just walked in. She’s here. Okay. Bye.”
“Who was that?” You ask.
“Where the fuck have you been?” He asks, his voice a boom. You shrink away and puff up all at the same time; where does he get off talking to you like that?
“Out,” you say, tossing your keys on the table. “What crawled up your ass?”
“Are you fucking kidding?” He says. “You go missing—you turn your phone off so I don’t even know if you’re safe—don’t fucking give me attitude right now, what crawled up your ass?”
“I was fine,” you snap, “I didn’t go missing. I got dinner since you were out. I didn’t know I was supposed to wait at home for you to come and tell me all about the outside world.”
“Don’t do that,” he crosses his arms and you note briefly that he’s still in his work clothes. “You didn’t have to walk out like that.”
“I didn’t walk out on anything!” Your voice is high-pitched and nasal, embarrassing. It breaks on the next syllable. “I—you cancelled tonight! Can I not go to dinner?”
“You were obviously pissed,” you turn on your heel as he talks, walking to the bedroom so you can do something with your body which is suddenly carrying a hugely oversized voltage. “And then you turn your phone off and then you disappear for hours—”
“I was gone for like—” you check your phone. “Oh, shit.”
You’d been out for almost six hours that had felt like two.
“Yeah.” Hajime arches an eyebrow, an expression on his face that screams condescension. “Do you have anything you wanna say to me?”
“Not really? Look, I’m sorry I worried you. I don’t know why you’d care—”
“Of course I care!” He shouts. You jump slightly and he adjusts his volume. “Do you think I’m some shithead boyfriend?”
“God, no, I just don’t think you like being around me all that much. You never are.”
“I said sorry,” he grits his teeth. “Something you still haven’t.”
“Why are you allowed to go out on a whim and I’m not?”
“I fucking texted you and I didn’t turn my phone off so you would at least know! I’m not trying to be controlling, I wanted you to be safe.” He over-enunciates each word, making you roll your eyes reflexively.
“I didn’t turn it off to hide from you! I just,” you wave a hand in the air. “It was a lot. Sorry.”
“Why do I have trouble believing that?”
“Well, I don’t know where you want to go with that,” you purse your lips. “Not a whole lot to do in a relationship if you can’t believe what the other person says.”
“Yeah, fuck no,” he scoffs. “We’re not doing this.”
“You did this!” You snap.
“No, I didn’t!”
You both stand in front of each other for a moment, almost chest-to-chest, breathing heavily. Tears are running down your cheeks freely without your permission; his face is red, his eyebrows still pulled up in that worried expression. You want to kiss away the lines of his forehead.
“We’re not getting anywhere with this,” you say finally. “I wasn’t fucking running away.”
“Fine,” he says on an angry exhale. “Just don’t do it again. You scared me. I thought you—look, you can do anything. I’ll—I don’t know what I’d do if you left, but don’t ever put yourself in danger because you’re angry with me. Nobody knew where you were. I know ‘cause I asked fuckin’ everyone. I left dinner early, I was so worried.”
“I didn’t put myself in danger to punish you,” you snip. “I was downtown. There were a million people.”
“Exactly,” he says.
“We’re not getting anywhere with this,” you say again. “I’m sorry I ruined your night with Oikawa. I’ll apologize to him, too.”
“I don’t care about dinner,” he can’t stop poking the bear. “Why can’t you understand why I’m upset?”
“Angry,” you correct.
“Upset,” he levels his gaze with yours. “What’s going on up there?”
“Don’t try to psychoanalyze me right now,” you sigh, turning away. You hope you move fast enough that he won’t see how your face crumples, how badly you do want him to look into your mind and still want to be here. “Can we just talk in the morning please? I’m tired, I didn’t realize how long I was walking in circles.”
“Okay, baby,” he says, his sudden softness spearing your heart. “If that’s what you want. I just want to fix things. I’m sorry I came in so strong. I was really worried because I love you.”
Are things broken?
“I love you, too,” you say distantly, worrying a stitch on your shorts, missing the way his shoulders relax when you say so.
“Okay, good. I’m gonna shower really quick, I’m kind of gross from all the,” he gestures to himself, “bullshit.” You nod, wincing. He touches your shoulder lightly before he goes, prompting a questioning look. He puckers his lips briefly and points to his face.
“Only if you want.”
“Oh,” you breathe, “yeah, of course.” You lean up and kiss him, a quick, light peck, a band-aid sealed with love. His touch is tentative but as fierce as Hajime ever is.
When the bathroom door closes, the memory of it makes you stumble back to the bed with a sob caught in your throat, hand pressed to your mouth, a harsher substitute and a harder companion than the man you love.
When he emerges, shaking out wet hair, you’ve gathered a pillow, a folded-up blanket, and a glass of water.
“Whoa, hey, what’s,” he clears his throat, “what’s happening here?”
“I,” you stare at him. “Um. I thought maybe it would be better—”
“What the fuck,” he says to himself, scrubbing a hand over his face. “Seriously? We’re still doing this? Okay, give me the blanket. I’ll sleep on the couch.”
“No!” You snatch it away as he reaches out, heat flooding your cheeks as you realize how childish you sound. “No, I already, I can do it. You should stay in the bed.”
“Why are you being stubborn about this too?” Hajime keeps his arm out, palm up.
“Stop it,” you cry, tears welling up again. You don’t have a free hand to wipe them away. “Just stop, please, I don’t understand why you’re doing this.”
“Just let me sleep on the damn couch,” he snaps. “You want to be away from me that bad?”
“No, that’s not it! You just—if you sleep on the couch your back will hurt and it’s our bed and you won’t be in it and I never want you to hurt because I love—I love you so fucking much. And I don’t want it to be not our bed!” The words come rushing out of you in an incoherent flood, shame welling up inside of you at the expression of all the confusing, dramatic, overwhelming emotions you’ve been suppressing for the last year that have all been pinned on this one stupid night.
“Oh,” Hajime breathes, and he’s on you so fast you can’t even blink, taking the bedding away from your now-limp grasp, cradling your body to his as you cry openly. “Shit, baby, I didn’t mean to make you feel like this. I love you, I love you, no one’s going anywhere, I love you. Shh, oh, no.”
“I’m sorry, love,” you bawl into his chest. “Fuck, I’m so sorry. I didn’t want to fight with you. I just felt so, I don’t know, you’re gone so much and I thought maybe you didn’t want to be around me.”
He holds you tight, the secure weight of his arms soothing to you, suddenly feeling wrung empty.
“I always want to be around you,” he promises. “I took you for granted. I’m sorry. I’m sorry."
"It's okay," you say, but you feel his chin bump your cheek as he shakes his head.
"It's not. I just—fuck, I always thought you’d be there, you know? So you kept getting pushed to the back burner because I thought other things needed me more. But I wanted to be with you, always, I want to be with you. And then I got home and you weren’t here and I was so fucking scared. Don’t ever scare me like that again, okay?”
“Okay,” you sniff. “I promise.”
“You don’t have to tell me where you are,” he keeps going. “But tell someone. Just so I can know you didn’t get taken off the street because you were pissed that I’m a shitty boyfriend.”
“You’re not a shitty boyfriend,” you lean back, frowning. Your eyes are red and your lashes clumped together with tears. He squeezes you a little tighter until your lips part with a rush of air. “Don’t say that. Life is crazy. We hit a limit tonight. I was bad about it. I’m sorry.”
“Okay, okay,” he agrees, pulling you back in, tracing loose, light circles on the back of your head with his fingertips. “Whatever you say, I believe you.”
“Good,” you say, words muffled by his shirt. "I love you forever and I'm sorry I freaked out. Believe that."
"Yes, ma'am. You really tried to sleep on the couch because you were worried about my back?"
"I hate the idea of putting you out there," you say. "I mean, I hate fighting at all, but if it happens, I'd rather you be comfortable and in our space. I wouldn't be able to sleep at all if I knew you were banished to the couch."
"You think I would?" He rocks you back and forth, your muscles unknotting slowly. Tears keep coming forth, but they feel good in a bizarre way, a release of something you hadn't realized you were overflowing with. "You gotta work on this. I don't want you to hurt as much as you don't want me to hurt."
“Hmm," you say. "I'll try. We can sleep together, right?”
“You were the one trying to run away,” he says, a laugh warming the back of his throat. You giggle when you feel it in his chest, a weak noise, but one that loosens the knot in his stomach the rest of the way.
“Not on purpose,” you say as he lies back, taking you with him, the both of you wiggling until you’re in a normal position in the bed. You’re still on top of him and you have the suspicion he’s going to clasp you to him through the night. “Are you sure this is comfortable for you?”
“If you move even a millimeter away from me I’m going to wake up and freak out,” he says, his deep, even breathing contrasting his words. His lashes brush the tops of his cheekbones. You lick your thumbs and swipe it under his eyes, trying to wipe away the evidence of tears. “I love you, okay? I’m not going anywhere. I don’t have enough subtlety to send you secret messages about breaking up.”
“Right,” you snort. “I love you. So much. So, so much. Do you think Oikawa will want a makeup dinner directly with me or do you have to be there too?”
“He’ll probably let himself in in the morning,” Hajime yawns. “Then we can yell at him and everything will go back to how it should be.”
“Better,” you say, nestling down so that your head is tucked into the space between his neck and shoulder. “I’ll do better.”
“Me too. Sleep now, okay? Things will be better in the morning.”
rintarō's in the locker room, fresh from the shower, towel wrapped around his neck, when one of his teammates knocks his shoulder as he walks past.
"your girl's cute, man," he says, "lucky guy."
"...i know," rintarō says. he flashes back briefly to atsumu asking, in his friendliest, brotherliest tone if he would be open to a threesome.
the moment is over without further implication, though, so he puts it out of his mind. his girl is cute. why get upset over fact?
on the train home, he holds onto the rail with one hand and tries not to make eye contact with anyone. he's not accosted often enough to avoid public transportation altogether, but he's made a habit of trying to avoid notice.
instead of looking at the people passing in and out through the doors, he zeroes in on his phone. he opens instagram, clicking mindlessly through recently posted stories.
onigiri miya is having an all-you-can-eat raw marinated crab day. rintarō hits like. aran has posted photos of his wife across a dinner table, a rose between the two of them. rintarō hits like. atsumu has posted seven shirtless photos flexing in a row. rintarō does not hit like.
the next photo is on your story. at first, he only thinks, wow, cute. the photo is framed to show your shoulders, a sliver of skin between the band of fabric and the bottom of the screen indicating that you're only wearing a bra, your hair tossed in a careless styled-unstyled kind of way, your face screwed up in a funny little smile. you make that expression when you're laughing at yourself, your eyes still dancing in this still photo.
tucked into your bra is a glossy photo of rintarō, jaw standing out and eyes burning fiercely as he strains midair toward the net, his form perfect as he takes advantage of a rare spiking opportunity.
my only bias is a middle blocker, says the caption. he can't stop himself from grinning, sure that he looks like an idiot as he smiles at his phone.
the crowds of people on the train thin out as he gets closer to the neighborhood where you live together, enabling him to pull out his phone and wallet, hooking a finger into the side of his mask and pulling it under his chin. he flips open his wallet to the polaroid he carries with him always, part of a set you'd gifted him for your second anniversary.
next to his face, you stare out from the laminated pocket, spread out over your bed, reaching out towards the photographer—toward him. you're wearing a black bra, not much more skin showing than the photo you'd posted, but there's a particular shine to the color of your mouth, red marks decorating your throat, your eyes hazy but your mouth caught in a permanent laugh. in the corner of the frame, you can see his hand, so big compared to the delicate wrist it's holding down.
only fan who gets to touch, he types, and hits post.
cw: extremely inaccurate depiction of japanese high school
“Atsumu,” you say. “Did you put that up there?”
You’re getting ready to walk home after practice, perpetually waiting for the twins to stop trying to strangle each other with their jerseys in the locker room. Somehow, moving in next door to them at five years old had resulted in being roped into managing the team after Atsumu had been named captain and going home together every day.
“C’mon,” he’d whined your name so annoyingly you knew immediately you were going to acquiesce so that he never hit that pitch again. “We’ve been walkin’ home together for ten years—”
“Eleven,” Osamu said, breaking his facade of cool disinterest. They had done this since they were young, playing yin and yang, Atsumu begging you to join whatever brainless activity had struck his fancy and Osamu pretending he didn’t care to make you want to do it more.
It had been twelve years, but that seemed like it might remind them that you had agreed to tutor them in math and had subsequently been dodging them during study period every day to avoid doing so.
“Whaddeven years,” Atsumu agreed, turning puppy-dog eyes on you. “You can’t break tradition. Stick around so we can all walk together.”
The past two years, you had been accelerated after-school courses that timed coincidentally with their practices, but you had been granted early admission to a university in Osaka and no longer needed to grind quite so hard. You had to admit that you were a sucker for routine and it felt strange not to spend the journey home bickering with your friends, so you said yes, sure, I guess.
This, in turn, had resulted in spending at least five minutes of your day standing in front of the school notice board.
The notice board was intended for students to put up flyers offering tutoring services, language circles, advertising sports clubs, and the like. Obviously, it essentially served as a gossip board instead.
Today’s news included:
- Taka (year 2) has something to say to an athletic ace. #14, meet her behind the gym tomorrow before class to hear it.
- Kenzo (year 3) and Aki (year 3) are only pretending to date to make his ex jealous… overheard at Songbird Café.
- Ikue (year 3) is requested to break up with her partner. The grass is greener on the other side - put a note in Locker 43 for more information.
The one that had caught your interest, though, had your name scrawled across the top in handwriting painstakingly made out to be as straight and unrecognizable as possible.
The message itself read, simply:
- HANDS OFF
Atsumu, who had escaped his brother’s clutches first (but not without scattering all of ‘Samu’s belongings across the floor, delaying his imminent strangulation by about three minutes), sputters.
“W-what? Why would I say that? That’s like, weird, who even uses this stupid thing? I would never—I would never say that, or do that, or tell anyone not to touch or date or look at you. That would be not okay. At all. What would you, uh, think if it had been me, though?”
This convincing monologue is accompanied by flaming red cheeks that stand out further because of his summer tan and light hair.
You tap a finger against your lips.
“I would probably feel kind of mad at whoever did it,” you say. Atsumu’s bag must suddenly be ten times heavier, the way he slumps over. “Like, isn’t it cowardly to put it up without even asking me?”
“What if the person who put it up has been trying to ask you out forever but you’re fuckin’ stupid and don’t notice,” says Atsumu in one long, grumbling rush, so fast you don’t parse it.
“What?”
“Nothin’. I don’t think it’s cowardly. That’s not even a real word.”
“Yes, it is,” you say. “I think whoever it is should have just walked right up to me in the hall and kissed me.”
Atsumu squawks.
“What?! You’d just let any old dingbat come up and-and—do that to you? Like anyone? Anyone in the world?”
“Wow,” you frown at him, poking his chest. “Are you slut-shamin’ me, Atsumu?”
“N-no,” his stutter returns. You don’t remember it happening this often even as a child. “I was just—you—what—why are you doin’ this to me?”
You meet this despondent cry with a mischievous smile, curling your fingers into the front of his shirt and yanking him off-balance. His hands clamp down on your hips, which seems to worsen his blush but you don’t mind so much.
“If you didn’t write that message, you’d better get your hands off me,” you say, a hair’s breadth away from his lips, “and you’re definitely a coward if you don’t—”
This is how Osamu finds the two of you, your back pressed up against the notice board, Atsumu’s right hand slapped right over the HANDS OFF paper.
“GROSS,” he shouts at you and stomps away before you can gather your bearings, both of you blinking at each other like you’d exited a movie theater and found night had descended upon the world.
The next day, he elects to walk ahead of you. You stop, hand-in-hand with Atsumu, in front of the notice board, which has a detective-style squiggly drawing of what you assume is meant to be your and Atsumu’s combined heads.
SCENE OF THE CRIME, says the accompanying note. It’s a borderline incomprehensible cartoon, so you add a helpful caption with your own pen.
summary: Atsumu x Reader. you've gone camping with your friends every summer for years. some things change, some stay the same.
wc: 1k
cw: nada
a/n: wow this is longer than i wanted it to be lmaooo it unexpectedly gave me trouble because i was struggling to balance the goofy and tender tones i wanted it to have. lmk if i struck the right chord
"yo," atsumu says around a mouthful of orange. "you want?"
"i'm okay, thanks," you say. you're staring thoughtfully across the pond, your gaze seeming to pass right through the cattail reeds. it's the last day of summer for a little more than the twentieth time in your life and the fireflies are coming out early for the occasion. it's too bright out still, the air warm, the season's lingering kiss leaving a soft red mark on your skin, so you have to tilt your head and squint to know what you're looking at. while you do this, atsumu mimics you, narrowing his eyes until he can see the light coming clear through your skin.
"so you hate me," he grouses, flopping onto his back. the grass is itchy under his bare skin, probably leaving green streaking across it, his own memento of the day. his legs are freckled with red, too, love bites from all the bugs who think his type o-negative blood is irresistable. osamu and your other friends are back at the campsite already, arguing over how to turn on kita's ancient propane grill and trying to ward suna away from eating the hot dogs cold.
"yuh-huh," you say. "you dunked me, so now i don't want your orange slices. actions have—" you shriek and dodge as he blindly reaches out to squeeze your side, a tickling sensation that gets under your skin and has since you were children. "have consequences!"
"it was only three times," he gives up and throws an arm over his face, trying to remember. "nine times."
"i'm gonna smother you in your sleep," you say, flopping back and rolling over so his body is half-covered by yours. your skin is warm against him, unusually so. he'll enjoy lording your sunburn over you, always arguing that you can't burn, running away when he tries to spray you down with sunscreen. "gimme that."
you pop a slice of orange into your mouth anyway, the juice bursting more than you'd expected and leaving your lips sticky. you'll need another dunk in the water to get clean again, and another hundred days of summer to bake yourself dry in the sun and repeat.
atsumu watches while you help yourself, your cheeks bulging out, your eyes happy, lazy half-crescents. you're still all over him, your denim shorts chafing against him uncomfortably, one leg slotted between both of his. orange juice drips down your hand onto his chest; you dip your head down and kitten lick it straight off of him.
he sighs, a despondent, horny sigh, emptied out from the day at the lake and years of practice. you're his best friend—he had a big, big, giant, massive crush on you in high school. everyone used to tease him for it, the way he'd turn bright red and walk into walls whenever you were around, two horrible years after he'd hit puberty and realized that there were more things to want then volleyball. he made you hate him, loud, vain miya atsumu, who threw balls at your head and stole pieces of your lunch and couldn't live without trying to make you look at him but didn't know anything about how to. his good fortune or bad luck, then, that you wanted to be suna's friend more than you hated him and started sitting at lunch with them and never noticed all the sneaky glances and muttered jokes at atsumu's expense until he got over it.
that was a million years ago and he loves you now: he loves you like a pinky promise, friendly and innocent and childish, and sometimes he can forget that he loves you like a man does.
"it's cold," you say with surprise, "how did you do that? bokuto was so upset when the cooler didn't work and all his ice cream bars melted."
"stuck the bag between some rocks in the creek," he grunts, mostly immune to the wonder in your eyes and the way you grope for the rest of the fruit he peeled immediately. "stop that, stop that, lemme just get it."
you do, and he crams three orange slices in your mouth at a time until you can barely close your teeth.
you try to cuss at him, but your words are trapped behind a citric wall and he laughs at you openly, jostling both of your bodies with it until you are no longer shaking with rage or him with guffaws until you're actually wrestling. you chew furiously while you push at his shoulders and he almost chokes on his mirth while he tries to hold you off from his throat.
you roll over the grass together, both of you covered in blades of grass and chlorophyll blotches, shouting obscenities.
"get off me, witch," he grasps at one of your wrists while you fist a hand in his hair, snapping his teeth at you. "geroff. i fuckin' hate you. i'm gonna tell—i'm gonna—AUGH!"
he finally rolls you over, pinning all your limbs under you. you still have a hand in his hair, a fistful of blond strands that are softer than they look, forcing his neck to bend at an awkward angle.
"i win," you say smugly.
"you're literally about to pass out," he huffs. "you're so annoyin'. just give up."
"never," you say, the word hissing from between your teeth. you're pulling his hair again, forcing him to hiss and let go of one of your wrists, and your face is coming closer. he panics—he's going to land right on top of you, mouth-to-mouth if he doesn't do something.
the air is molasses, a little bitter from the evaporated pondwater lingering in his nostrils. your lips are soft and it's not until you start moving them, opening your mouth to him to taste the remnants of orange juice on your tongue, that he realizes that you're kissing him on purpose.
you kiss like you wrestled. you wrestled because you wanted to kiss him and didn't know how to do it. you kiss for a long time, there in the grass, the crickets' song rising as the sun sets.
"i always liked you," he says, lips against your pulse point. he has so many years of kissing to get done right away.
"i see it now," you say, thinking for a moment that the fireflies are stars until you try to blink them away.
