Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

before

i.

afternoon eclipse

The quiet whispers of the grass betray the stranger. They coo conspiratorially beneath the shuffling of steady feet—alerting Rin to another body encroaching on his hideaway at the fringe of Inarizaki’s outdoor courtyard. Each of the stranger’s steps sounds deliberate. Careful. Each crushed blade sounds like a warning. Someone’s coming. Closer. Closer. Closer. With two small, scandalized gasps, the veld beneath Rin’s back hisses that the stranger now kneels beside his head. 

They’ve found you.

So, they have.

“It’s rude to stare,” Rin muses without fanfare or fluttered glance. He knows the stranger looks at him. Eyes are heavy and Rin is well acquainted with their weight. 

“So, yer not dead,” the stranger remarks—voice deep and dark like the ocean. “And who said I was starin’?” But light as a brush of air. 

“I did,” Rin supplies easily and clamps down on the rogue tug of his lips. “Like what you see?” A laugh rumbles within the depths of the stranger’s chest, though fails to escape the confines of his mouth. Rin wonders if it did, would it shake the ground beneath his spine? 

“Well, I thought ya might be a corpse, so ya wanna venture a guess as to how I think ya look?”

“Other-worldly?”

“Fuckin’ shitty dude.”

With a snort, Rin flicks his lids open. Staring back at him are guileless gunmetal gray eyes that fire the softest shot through his chest. What a fucking way to meet. What a fucking way to die. “I’m flattered,” Rin coos coolly and quite clearly not. “Be still my beating heart.”

“Tryin’ my best to avoid that actually,” the stranger drawls with a gentle poke to Rin’s loosened tie. 

“Dramatic,” Rin snips back and swipes at the stranger’s hand. Warm. Soft.

“Sorry,” the stranger replies, thumbing thoughtlessly at his faux wound, “runs in the family.” 

With a roll of his eyes, Rin says, “I pity your mother.” 

Scrunching his pixie sloped nose, the stranger deadpans, “pity me.”  His unabashed honesty twists the arm Rin wrapped around his smile. He folds and his mouth splits into a grin. 

“Suna Rintarou,” he introduces himself and juts out a pale fingered hand. “Consider yourself properly pitied.” The stranger smiles, plump pink lips curling like the petals of a rose. 

“Miya Osamu, consider yerself sufficiently studied,” he quips in return, and he laces their hands together properly this time. His tanned skin swallows the afternoon sun whole, yet Rin feels no burn. Only very warm. Only very soft.

“So, you admit it,” Rin teases. “The staring.” Releasing his delicate hold on Rin’s palm, Miya threads his fingers through his wind mussed chestnut curls. 

“I admit to studyin’.”

“Seems like a more condemning thing to admit to than just staring.”

“Are ya tryin’ to condemn me, Suna Rintarou?”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe?”

“I’m taking that secret to my grave.”

“Is this it?” Miya gestures to Rin’s sprawled out form on the grass. 

“Yes,” Rin answers smugly. “You disturbed my final resting place.”

Laughing, Miya glances up at the cloudless spring sky before stripping off his tawny uniform jacket and dropping it unceremoniously onto Rin’s face. “Best to let the dead be,” he singsongs. The coat smells of clean linen, sandalwood, and burnt sugar. Home, earth, and saccharine. Rin’s own jacket, pillowed beneath his skull, smells only of sweat. Anxiety. “For now,” Miya adds and Rin listens to him rifle through his lunch bag. “I will have to wake ya up once lunch is over.” His careful fingers brush lightly against Rin’s stomach as an object is placed just above his belt.

“Actually, five minutes before,” Miya garbles goofily through a mouth full of food and Rin smiles more openly at the sound beneath the jacket’s cover. 

“Why?”

“I’m makin’ ya eat my extra sandwich,” Miya announces and gives a punctuative pat to the weight—sandwich—resting on Rin’s belly. 

“Extra,” Rin questions, as he lifts the coat across his face to steal a peek at Miya. He notes the smorgasbord of snacks Miya has arranged on the sward in front of his crossed legs. The hem of his black slacks rides up and exposes his pair of very not dress-code appropriate socks adorned with the phases of the moon. A small act of rebellion. A quiet love for the night.

“I always bring snacks to eat before practice,” Miya elaborates and takes a loud slurp from his water bottle. “I’ll just steal some from my brother ‘Tsumu today, instead.” 

“Practice,” Rin echoes.

“Yeah, my brother and I are on the volleyball team here,” Miya explains.

“So, am I. Inarizaki recruited from me Aichi.” 

“So, that’s why a guy like ya is in a place like this.”

“What’s a place like this?”

“Nowhere near good enough to die,” Miya drones and Rin laughs. “But not bad for playin’ volleyball,” he concedes after a moment—running his gossamer gaze over Rin’s face like fingers threading through hair. Rin finds himself longing to lean into a touch that isn’t there. For the first time in many, many years, he feels sleepy rather than tired. He ignores it

“We’ll see about that,” Rin lilts lamely through a swallowed yawn. 

“Sleep first,” Miya orders with such fierce kindness. He pulls his coat back over Rin’s face, as if tucking him into bed. “Even dead scrubs like ya need it.” Miya lightly taps the jacket over Rin’s eyes, like he could close them through the fabric. 

“Who says I need it,” Rin contends because petulance is a hard habit to break. 

“Ya do,” Miya asserts back with no force, but also no room to argue. “Now, take yer nap. I won’t even draw a dick on yer face.” 

Without removing the jacket, Rin blindly holds his pinky up in the air. “Promise,” he asks, mostly to be cheeky, secretly to see. 

Miya’s breath catches, but he still tightly curls his finger around Rin’s and quietly pledges, “promise.” He pulls away and Rin lets his hand fall on his stomach to trace the cracks of the sandwich’s saran wrap. 

“How did you know I haven’t eaten anything,” he wonders into polyester and sandalwood.

“I told ya,” Miya says, smiling, because Rin’s already learning the sound of his pen stroke grin. Fine tipped, gray ink, and artfully crooked. “Studied, not stared.”

Oh.

“Wake me ten minutes before.”

“Okay.”

Rin doesn’t ask for a promise this time, but knows it’s been made. Surrendering to slumber, he finally drifts away by the gentle push of Miya Osamu, with the cloak of his coat, slow swoop of his sighs, and guard of his gray gaze. Rin finds rest through Miya Osamu. A stranger with storm eyes and sun skin. He finds a friend. 

Miya keeps his word and rouses Rin with a tender touch to his shoulder and sweet breathed, “Suna. Time to eat.” As Rin slowly rises, Miya’s brow twitches and his teeth toy with his plush lip, as if to ask, okay to talk? Rin blinks back at him with sleep blurry eyes that say, yes. So, he does. Rin eats and Miya chatters aimlessly about everything under, over, and even beyond the sun. (“I just think the inevitable heat death of the universe is a pretty fuckin’ misleadin’ name.” “Well, what would you call it?” “I like the Big Chill.”) His words wander, though they never feel lost. They walk idly down the well-paved path carved out by his thorough tongue and certain mind. 

Rin wonders if he should tell Miya that normally he never sleeps, let alone peacefully. He wonders what that means. He wonders if the grass beneath them knows. But all the grass says is, take his hand. Rin looks up at the extended palm placed in front him. “Bell’s about to ring,” Miya chimes. “I’ll walk with ya to yer next class.” 

His body blocks out the sun and Rin sits in his shadow. He is the shade—blunting solar spears with whipped water and wispy air. He is the moon—borrowing light and regifting it without the burn. He is the gray—strong as steel and soft as smoke. 

He will never be the sun.

“Suna?”

But what spares us from it.

“Ya comin’?”

Take his hand. Take it.

Rin does.

ii.

apollo

Those who confuse Miya Atsumu with Miya Osamu succeed in the impressive act of both announcing and affirming their stupidity in one breath. That is, at least, what Rin believes. Entering from the locker room, Rin strolls into Inarizaki’s expansive gymnasium in search of his new friend. Students sit scattered across the wooden floors and prepare for practice with varying levels of diligence. Some stretch in focused silence, some lament their syllabi in barely held poses, some don’t warm up at all. Rin finds Miya in the final group. Conversing on the bleachers with another towering player who largely obscures him from Rin’s sight, Rin identifies Miya by the mop of his dark curls and curious cant of his head. Rin walks towards them.

Miya’s broad backed conversation partner talks with a voice smooth like well-worn leather and gestures with the grace of a churning river. Strong and contained. As Miya chirps out an indiscernible response, exasperated fondness stitches together the deep brown complexion of his companion’s brow. The pleasantly piqued pinch seems instinctual to Miya’s companion—as if integral to his facial architecture. Marble carved to crack and let light in. Rin wonders what it’s like to know a person like that. To have someone leave a lasting mark on you. Shape you body and soul.

Crossing the threshold into their conversational space, Rin begins to pick up pieces of the combination lecture and story the companion imparts to Miya. The subject of which is a boy he lovingly hails “Shin.” The name clearly strikes fear into Miya, who nervously gnashes at his mouth and bunches up his brow into an expression that’s frowny and unfamiliar. The look pricks at Rin’s skin.

It’s wrong.

But is it? Rin bears no marks of Miya’s friendship. He bears no marks of any friendships at all. 

Miya huffs out a breath fast and rough.

It’s definitely wrong. 

Rin shifts his focus back to the companion. The discussion of “Shin,” buffs out the divot of his glabella, while dimples kiss his grin split cheeks and crinkles fluff the skin surrounding his umber eyes. “Shin ain’t that scary ya big baby,” the companion extols—reveling a tad too obviously in Miya’s poorly concealed fright. “Just don’t push yerself too hard,” he suggests in a softer voice and plops a large hand on Miya’s shoulder. Scowl getting uglier by the second, Miya sharply turns up his nose. 

Wrong, wrong, wrong—

“Or do,” the companion amends indifferently. “The donburi he gave me when I got the flu damn near made me see God it was so good.” Miya, unimpressed and increasingly irritated, shoves off his companion’s words and palm with another stilted sigh.

What the fuck?

“Don’t be like that,” the companion chastises. That same stitch of exasperated fondness returns. “Ya know, I bet I could get Shin to give the recipe to O—”

Squeak.

The scuff of Rin’s sneakers against the floor announces his presence to Miya and his companion before he can properly introduce himself. The latter immediately forgoes his recollection of Shin’s divine rice bowl to exclaim, “oh hey! Yer Suna Rintarou!” 

Though surprised the companion knows him, Rin manages to keep his expression schooled into its signature neutrality, as he responds dryly, “guilty.” The companion chuckles loudly at that. It shakes his muscled shoulders and turns his crinkled coffee eyes into closed crescents. What a wonderful way to laugh.

“Coach mentioned ya,” the companion provides, as Miya stares intently at Rin’s averted profile. He feels the heat of Miya’s wide-eyed wonder slowly sear his skin, as it burns into a glare.

WRONG

“Said yer from Aichi,” the companion explains. “And that yer one of the nastiest middle blockers he’s ever seen.”

“Thanks,” Rin replies a little too crisply to the praise, then adding a little too eagerly to change the subject, “what’s your name?”

“Ojiro Aran, but ya can just call me Aran,” the companion supplies and Rin resists the sudden urge to smack his own forehead. “I’m a second year and play as an outside hitter usually,” Aran delineates unnecessarily humble. Outside hitter . As if that particular piece of information needs to be said. He’s one of the top five aces of Japan. Rin is the idiot who struggled to connect the very famous name to the very recognizable face.

Still, Rin clings to insipidity, as he always does, and says, “cool.” Aran beams and Rin nearly flinches beneath his luster. Hoping to seek solace in Miya’s soft shadow stare, Rin decides to overlook the discrepancies in his observed behavior and address him formally for the first time since entering the gym. “What about you, Miya,” he asks and pivots towards him. 

“What posi—you’re not Miya.” 

He’s not. 

Rin realizes that now as he stares at him dead on. 

Ah. 

Those looks weren’t wrong. They just weren’t Miya’s.  

That much is abundantly clear. Though the boy shares the same face as Rin’s Miya, the lines of his expression are drawn with careless ferocity—blister bright and electrically animated. Fire in a bottle. Everlasting lightning. The sun on earth. He is something else entirely.

It’s almost embarrassing Rin didn’t realize it sooner.

“The fuck ya mean I’m not Miya,” Not-Miya squawks indignantly. 

“Exactly what I said,” Rin retorts unphased. “Do you need me to say it again, but slower?” 

“No, ya asshole I don’t I—,” Not-Miya’s rant dies an abrupt death in his throat, as tired understanding quickly skips across the caramelized pools of his eyes. That’s unique to him too, Rin thinks. But as they slant into scrutinizing slits that sit heavy on Rin’s chest, he realizes they’re still a little like everyone else’s. 

“Look I am fuckin’ Miya,” Not-Miya grouses and folds his well-corded arms across his puffed-up chest. “But I’m Miya Atsumu . I’m guessin’ ya met my shit-for-brains little brother ‘Samu earlier.” Rin nods in confirmation and Atsumu scowls again before quizzicality quirks his lips into something different. “Wait, ya could tell I wasn’t ‘Samu,” he states carefully. 

“Well, yeah,” Rin says. 

“Did he tell ya he had a twin,” he presses with a firm set of his jaw. You’re loud, Rin notes. In every way. In voice, in body, in presence, in— “did he,” Atsumu asks again with unbridled impatience. 

Shrugging, Rin confesses, “he said he had a brother. Didn’t specify twin or identical. You owe him a sandwich, by the way.” 

Aran stares at Rin unabashedly slack jawed and bug eyed, while Atsumu appears as if he’s spontaneously evolved into a venomous species. 

“That piece of shit said that, huh? Well, he owes me about fifteen fuckin’ years’ worth of—” 

He’s cut off by Aran sputtering out, “y-ya can tell ‘em apart?” 

Rin regards him with an arched brow, as he says, “I guess?” 

The admission unmoors Aran. Rin struggles to understand why. “Goddamn,” Aran whistles and cranes his head towards the heavens—seemingly torn between begging for guidance or a well-aimed smiting. “It’s just…” As Aran’s voice fades, it’s replaced by the familiar furrow of his brow yet again, though when aimed at Rin it feels more existential than fond. “Sorry,” he grunts with a shake of his head. “It’s just I’ve known the twins since they were ten.” He spares a squinted look at Atsumu. “And I still get ‘em confused sometimes.” 

“It’s okay Aran, we forgive ya.”

Aran seemingly selects smiting as his heavenly request and offers up his vision in exchange through a truly theatrical eye roll. “However,” he begins flatly, “usually as soon as one of ‘em starts talkin’, it’s pretty clear.” Atsumu takes misplaced pride in that sentiment, given what Rin’s gathered about him in the course of two minutes. “But ya,” Aran examines Rin with dual awe and scrutiny, “could tell before Atsumu spoke.” His stare pulls on Rin—dragging down his face, tugging at his hair, twisting his insouciance. It’s heavy, as all looks are.

“How?” 

As if summoned by the question, Rin spies his Miya— Osamu —emerge from the locker rooms. He slips between the figures peppering the floor like water in hopelessly cupped hands. Grace without pretension. Motion without friction. The fluorescent lights hollow the angles of his face, but he looks neither haggard, nor harry beneath them. Sharp with no intent to wound. He is a well-made blade that could cut bone but chooses to break bread instead. His soft half-lidded gaze eventually snags on Rin’s. It’s light. Right. 

Mine. What?

As Osamu walks towards them with his slow measured steps, Rin’s heart knocks against his ribs. The sound echoes throughout his whole body.

How?

Rin is fifteen. 

He can’t articulate much beyond guessed answers to half-heard algebra questions or deadpan snark to anyone who annoys him. He doesn’t quite know how to say yet that Osamu is finely tempered glass, while Atsumu is red hot iron. An invisible current // A white-water wave. A sheet of rain // A shower of sunlight. A candle in the attic // A firework at night. Timeless monochrome // Fleeting technicolor. Mercy // Ambition

How? 

Rin is fifteen. He answers the best he can. 

“It’s in the eyes.”

iii.

moon runner

“Lemme walk ya home,” Osamu breathlessly offers to Rin during their stumble trudge towards the changing rooms. “Since yer new,” he adds, and they trade squeaks against laminate for scrapes over tile. Given that they’re now several weeks into the school year, Rin’s path home has become well-trodden. 

“Sure,” he accepts without further thought. 

“Ya live off Wisteria Street, right,” Osamu checks, as he stops in front of his locker. 

“I do,” Rin replies and begins fiddling with his own padlock. 

“That’s near the woods,” Osamu recalls and his eyes flare with rare mischief. Lilac lightning sparking against gale gray. “Great, that means there are some locals only shortcuts I can show ya.” 

“Name one movie where taking a shortcut turned out well, ‘Samu.”

“We can star in the first, Sunarin.”

“We’ll die in the opening credits.”

“Nah, that’ll be ‘Tsumu’s annoyin’ ass.”

On instinct, Osamu immediately ducks as Atsumu chucks a stench-stained gym sock at him, with a sneered, “shut up! Who’d wanna watch a movie with yer ugly mug?” 

Snatching up the makeshift stink bomb, Osamu throws it back, with the much expected, “we have the same face, ya dickhead!” Except, they don’t. Not to Rin. Never to Rin. 

“Suna would probably be the killer anyway,” Atsumu spits and rips his shorts off with a huff. An action that undermines, rather than bolsters, his stuffy offense. 

With a sly smirk, Rin lilts, “If I’m the killer, Atsumu, you’re not dying in the opening scene.” Atsumu preens beneath the admission. Osamu knows better. 

“You’d definitely be the star.”

“HA!”

“No, no I’m still killing you.”

“Huh?”

“The whole film will be about them finding your body. Pieces of it. For months. And you wouldn’t be dead until the very last day.”

“WAH?”

With his shirt removed, Osamu smooths out the taut lines of his stomach with a deep bellied laugh. It soaks the room with its honey sound—pouring down the canal of Rin’s tightening throat and pooling within the swoop of his tensed gut. It’s warm. Atsumu, remarkably less flattered now, leaps atop the bench and screeches out an undignified retort that Rin loses amongst the sizzling scorch of his cheeks. Rin hides it behind the shield of his own shirt, as he tugs it over his head. Any thoughts as to why his blood burns his skin, Rin let's fall to the floor with the clothes he pulls off his body. 

“Please get down from there.”

The firm voice of Kita Shinsuke cuts through the room and pierces Atsumu’s bluster like a well-aimed arrow. Both his resolve and posture immediately crumble. “Sorry,” Atsumu grunts beneath Kita’s authoritative amber glare. 

“Atsumu,” Kita sighs, flanked by a grinning Aran as he strolls fully into the room. “Ya have to be more careful.” Of a shorter though still sturdy build, Kita extends a guiding arm to Atsumu to needlessly assist his descent from his perch. “Interhigh is in a month,” Kita reminds him and sweat plasters the black fringes of his white hair against his fondly furrowed forehead. “We can’t have ya injuring yerself doin’ somethin’ stupid.”

As Atsumu squawks, a still shirtless Osamu snickers. 

Rin doesn’t look at him again, until they’ve left the locker room.

Swaddled in the wet air of newborn summer, Osamu and Rin walk home together side by side—falling into steps untaken and old rhythms unmade. How strange. To be so sure, so comfortable, so familiar with a moment that has yet to even pass, let alone be repeated.

They pass silhouettes of identikit homesteads and law protected thicket, while swapping stories and eyerolls. Several yards ahead, Atsumu yammers incessantly between Aran and Kita, who listen good-naturedly and interject with the occasional joke or chastising, “ Atsumu .” Above them, the glitter black of night spills into twilight wine. Rin drinks it in. As they reach the fork within the suburban wood, Osamu follows Rin towards his house, as Atsumu and co. stroll towards theirs. They only live a handful of minutes apart, but Rin cups them with quiet reverence in his palms.

“Ya moved around a lot before ya came to Hyogo.” Osamu doesn’t ask it as a question because it isn’t one.

“Yeah,” Rin answers, anyway. A lifetime of chasing vocational whims—first his parents, now his—with impermanence as the only constant and loneliness an occupational hazard.

“Must’ve memorized a lotta different walks home,” Osamu muses. 

“Sometimes, after I’d just moved, I’d take a wrong turn,” Rin confesses. “Going on autopilot to a house in a different city.” 

Cocking his head to study him, Osamu questions, “ya have a favorite?” Even in the dark, Osamu can read the lines of Rin’s confused expression. “Favorite walk home, I mean,” he explains hurriedly. His eyes are sterling. Living starlight. 

“I don’t know,” Rin tells him honestly. “I haven’t really thought about it.”

“I useta hate the one ‘Tsumu and I took during middle school,” Osamu whines and memory fogs up the panes of his silver stare. “Walked by like a million bakeries and grills we never had the allowance to stop in.” Rin half expects him to halt their pace so he can stomp his foot in righteous indignation. “And just when I thought my mouth couldn’t fill with any more spit, we’d pass by the fuckin’ dump .” Osamu, rarely one for theatrics, declares this with the incredulity and disgust of a scorned Shakespeare lead. “Ain’t nothing worse than salivatin’ like a fuckin’ dog, only to get a nose full of shit. I got bait and switched every afternoon!” 

Rin laughs. 

“Oh, I weep. I mourn. I lament your suffering.”

“Save yer tears for the stand, Sunarin. I’m suin’ for emotional damages. Ya can be my star witness.”

“Oh, we’re going to court now, are we ‘Samu?”

“Oh yeah. I’m tellin’ the mayor that the stink fried ‘Tsumu’s brain. He’s already fuckin’ stupid, but they ain’t gotta know that.”

With a chuckle, Rin nods in entertained agreement and they walk a little further in silence. Rin knows time affords no one any charity, so he tries to steal some for himself and slows his pace. 

“Hey, Rin,” Osamu calls. 

“Mmm?” 

Coming to a complete stop, Osamu’s tanned skin looks a cool, cool blue beneath the moon. But as his fingers wrap loosely around Rin’s wrist, he learns they still hold the gentle heat of the evening sun. “I wanna make this walk home yer favorite one,” Osamu proclaims with a hooked grin. 

“Can I?”

Silence.

“Yes.”

Suddenly, Osamu yanks Rin into a run. It happens so quickly he leaves his breath behind and barely remembers to grab his feet. But even as Rin wobbles and wanes, Osamu keeps him steady in his vice grip. Soon, they’re side by side once more. “C’mon,” Osamu huffs with another pull so they cross the street. The ground beneath their slapping feet softens into damp earth. They no longer run by the blurs of incandescent street lamps or cookie cutter houses, but by tall trees and ankle biting underbrush. Osamu drags Rin through the woods corralled to the fringes of their bedroom community. An oasis of chaos. It’s definitely not a shortcut.

“Do you even know where you’re going,” Rin heaves out in between a giggle and gasp.

“Don’t ya trust me,” Osamu teases, as he motions for Rin to duck out of reach of a gnarled fingered limb.

“Doesn’t mean you know where you’re going,” Rin counters and leaps over a grabby root with him. 

“We’ll get there,” Osamu assures. Grin wicked, but eyes wide and true. “Ain’t that what matters?” 

Is it?

Rin looks at the streaks of ivy and strokes of leaves flying past him. He looks at the alabaster moon with its half-formed, yet all-knowing smirk. He looks at the face of Miya Osamu. Maybe. In the end, yes. But all that matters to Rin now is how their laughter floats away with their man-made wind. How Osamu hasn’t let go of his wrist. How Rin trusts him to take him home on faith alone. This is what matters. They wheeze and trip and cackle and shout and run and run and run. Racing without a rush. What an odd thing to do. Something one could only find with Miya Osamu. 

Time, in a moment of scarce sympathy, slows. 

When they finally burst out of the bramble back onto the street, they both double over onto their knees and reclaim their forsaken breaths. With a wilted finger, Rin gestures weakly to a two-story townhouse a couple hundred feet down the road. “That’s my place,” he croaks. 

“Told ya we’d make it,” Osamu gloats. “How’s that for a walk home?” 

Rin levels him with a field flat green glare, before rasping out, “I hate you.” Amused rather than deterred by Rin’s attitude, Osamu laughs and Rin wonders what the planes of his stomach look like now. He chooses to stare at his muddied space socks instead. They’re just of the stars today.

“Yeah,” Osamu sighs, as he saunters over. “Can I walk ya home tomorrow.” 

Osamu doesn’t ask it as a question because it isn’t one. Rin answers, anyway.

“Yes.”

They walk—read: run—home together every day after that.

iv.

bad minds

Rin bears no marks of friendship. No sweet stitches from second nature scowls or love letters from laughter lines. He is seemingly clear, clean—unblemished by a companion’s cut, untouched by intimacy’s incisions, unloved by anyone not sharing his last name. 

But there are other ways for life to shape you.

During a sleepy stumble to his parents’ room for comfort, he earned a stripe slashed across his right foot from tripping over a glass table that was in the right place for their new Tokyo apartment but in the wrong place for their old Kyoto duplex. In Nagoya, his little sister Rui’s left out ice skates stole a bite from his low back when he rolled out of bed and out of reach of a nightmare chasing him awake. Just above the knuckles of his middle, ring, and pinky fingers of his left hand are teeth carved trenches from a time in Hiroshima when he shoved his fist in his mouth so as not to disturb the other kids at the sleepover.

Rin has never lingered any place long enough for a hug to bruise, but no matter where he goes the skin beneath his eyes is contused by cruel dreams. 

So, at 3:17AM, when he bursts from the dark depths of sleep with his jaw innately clenched and sheets familiarly fisted, Rin feels horribly at home. Above him, his sporadically stained ceiling stares back. This is the first thing Rin memorizes after each move. Not the route home, not his classmates’ names, not even his address, but the spots speckling his roof. An unhelpful Rorschach test that offers no insight or aid. Only a reminder of Rin’s own relentless restlessness.

Fuck off.

Rolling over onto his side, Rin snatches his phone off his bedside table and lazily scrolls through his messages with Osamu, who lies sprawled out on a futon in Rin’s downstairs living room. One could assume he sleeps down there because it’s his first time over. But he would’ve been there if it was his fiftieth. No matter where they live, Rin always attempts to ensure guests stay in a particular place—the room furthest from Rin’s own. The one least likely to hear, to see, to know. Rin traces his thumb over the final texts he exchanged with Osamu before succumbing to first feigned then fitful sleep. 

12:47AM

‘samu superior miya

wtf i just heard a loud ass creaking noise 

please tell me that was u doing some of ur weird ass goblin shit and not a murderer

fuck there it is again

rin?

is that u up there?

am i gonna die?

12:52AM

me

yes

tell me if hell is nice

‘samu superior miya

no

i am going to haunt u forever

even if u move

i’ll possess rui and follow u

me

plz do, that would make her much more pleasant to be around

also those noises were the water pipes

they’re stupid loud. lemme know if u need ear plugs

‘samu superior miya

is that why u have trouble sleeping?

rin?

1:12AM

‘samu superior miya

i’m gonna assume u knocked out or the killer got u. either way deserved 

srsly tho sleep well 

wake me if u need anything

The sentiment sweetens the sour taste terrors typically leave on Rin’s tongue. He mouths Osamu’s words idly to himself, as if they could rinse out the rest of the night. Eventually, he abandons his phone and hauls himself out of bed to wander into his kitchen. Descending the stairs, Rin runs his fingers over the tiny crooks and cracks within the walls and wonders what families before his made them and how. He wonders if his will leave any behind. Rui will, if the three most recent security deposits are any indicator of the matter.

Slinking with dual stealth and speed through the living room, Rin enters the connecting kitchen and immediately snags an energy drink from the fridge before rifling through a neighboring cabinet for some of his favorite gummies. With several packs of chuppets in one hand and the soda in the other, Rin turns towards the granite island sectioning off the two areas of the house and nearly leaps out of his skin.

“Neither of those look like warm milk,” Osamu drawls from his perch at the countertop. He rests his sleep slack face in both hands and his curls stick up from his scalp as if he stuck an entire cutlery set in an electrical socket. At the sight, the aluminum can in Rin’s hand cracks traitorously in his suddenly cinched grip.

Gesturing with the still loyal gummy filled palm at Osamu’s hair, Rin snarks, “you look like the victim of a wind tunnel incident.”

Without missing a beat, Osamu replies, “and ya look like the victim of a rough night.”  

Rin’s entire body freezes over. “What do you mean,” he enunciates carefully, though his plastic snack packs squeak faithlessly in his trembling hold. 

Osamu cocks his head within its cradle and stares—no—studies Rin and his crudely concealed crisis for a long moment. Rin resists the urge to twitch beneath his gaze’s light touch, as it thumbs at the condemning circles around his eyes and threads through the tousled tufts of his hair. 

“Permission to use the kitchen,” Osamu asks, eyes unwavering but voice warbly and uncharacteristically shy. 

Why?  

In the two months of knowing him, Rin has never mistaken Osamu’s quietude for reticence, as their classmates often do. Perhaps, such is the crux of constant comparison to Atsumu. Differences become forced dichotomies. He’s unashamed, therefore this one must be. Ridiculous. Osamu’s not shy, except he is. Now. The shock of it knocks the truth out of Rin without prompt or preamble.

“I have bad dreams.”

Well, shit.

Rin braces himself for a barked out laugh or fumbled follow-up question, but he receives neither. Instead, Osamu smiles, simple, sincere, soft, and says, “I have bad thoughts.” Memories flicker across the silver screen of his eyes like black and white reruns. They look sad.

“Is that why you’re awake,” Rin wonders and sets his drink and chuppets on the counter.

“Nah I just got hungry and heard ya walk in here,” Osamu admits with a wry grin, as he lifts his head from the stoop of his hands. “But sometimes they keep me up.” 

“What do you do when that happens,” Rin questions.

“Want me to show ya?” 

Rin nods and Osamu’s gaze meanders over to Rin’s half opened pantry. “Do ya like hot chocolate?"

At Rin’s voiceless confirmation, Osamu rises from his seat and clambers around the kitchen to collect ingredients. First, he pillages Rin’s disorganized pantry, partnering each selected item with a quiet joke at the expense of his family’s unparalleled assortment of prepackaged meals. (“No wonder yer such a salty bastard, look what ya eat most of the damn time.”) Next, he examines Rin’s not abysmal spice/sauce drawer with grumbled acknowledgements of its surprising adequacy. (“At least I don’t have to teach ya what fuckin’ shichimi is. Do ya like shichimi?” “Yeah, especially in Udon.”) Finally, he snatches the last few things from Rin’s overstocked fridge and shames him for his “intervention worthy collection of energy drinks.”

“I can’t sleep most nights,” Rin counters with a defensive shrug. “Shit gets me through the day when that happens.”

Osamu’s bottom lip quirks like when he wants to argue, but he tampers the impulse by strategically biting it. Instead, he says, “what’s yer favorite flavor?”

“Strawberry.”

“Okay.”

Osamu digs out and places a sauce pan on a stove burner. As it slowly heats up, he throws in milk, cocoa powder, and sugar, which he whisks together. Once hot, he sprinkles in a slew of chocolate chips into the mix, before adding dashes of cinnamon and vanilla extract. While he stirs the concoction, Rin grabs two of his favorite mugs and watches as Osamu pours his creation into them. He tops everything off with finely crushed chocolate bars and two plump marshmallows. 

Rin makes grabby hands for a cup—a gesture he belatedly realizes he’s picked up from the twins—but Osamu holds both out of reach and crosses towards the staircase that leads to the bedrooms. “What are you doing,” Rin calls, as he scampers to climb up behind him. 

“Yer room is that one,” Osamu remarks once they reach the landing, motioning with one of the mugs to the door at the end of the hall. 

“Yeah,” Rin huffs and the word floats out into the empty space left behind by Osamu’s body, as he treks determinedly towards Rin’s room. Once there, he waits dutifully for Rin by it. Rin refuses to move. Osamu raises both cups and brows expectantly, chirping, “both of my hands are full.”

“Your futon is still in the living room.”

“I would hope so.”

“What?”

“Be kinda weird if it moved—”

“’Samu—”

“Like if it grew legs or some shit. What would be the ethics of that? Would that make it conscious or—”

“You’re not sleeping in my room.”

“I know.” Osamu takes a contemplative sip from one of the mugs and signs his handiwork with his pen stroke smile. “I just wanna make sure ya do.” 

The words wind Rin and he drops his head to search for his lost breath. “I’ll leave as soon as yer out,” Osamu promises. “But not a single second before.” Rin’s eyes find Osamu’s space socks. This time they’re of the Milky Way. “I know yer embarrassed by this nightmare business,” Osamu continues and shifts his feet into a more confident stance. Grounded by gravity and galaxies. “Worried I’ll see somethin’ that’ll scare me away.” His voice pulls Rin’s gaze up.

“But I’m here to tell ya that I’m as much yer friend as I’m not a fuckin’ coward. So, open this damn door for me before these drinks go cold.” 

Osamu’s eyes hold the moon. Bright and burnless and brave. They make Rin a little less afraid of the night, but ten times more of something else.

He opens the door.

Once inside, they rebuild the ruins of Rin’s bedsheets and nestle beneath them. (“If you keep shivering, you’ll spill the hot coco ‘Samu. Just dip once I’m out.”) Osamu finally offers Rin his mug and suddenly becomes fascinated by the callouses on his fingers, as Rin takes his first sip. “What the fuck,” Rin exclaims and Osamu flinches—an apology already collecting on his lips like Rin’s seen rainwater do. He immediately swipes it away, remarking truthfully, “’Samu, this is the best hot chocolate I’ve ever had. What did you put in here? Cocaine?”

“Ya literally saw me make it and coke would have the opposite of my intended effect.”

“A technicality. Now, drink yours or I will. That is a threat.”

One he doesn’t get to follow through on. Rin practically guzzles his hot chocolate, but Osamu’s not far behind. Eventually, their mugs find their way onto Rin’s bedside table, and they find their way onto their backs. Eyes heavenward, Osamu turns stains into stars and creates constellations out of the splotches on Rin’s ceiling. As Rin rattles off accompanying legends, he feels his body begin to betray him a little differently tonight.

His ribs swell too pleasantly.

(“See that smudge in the upper right-hand corner, Rin? That one is a fox goin’ into anaphylactic shock.” “Ah yes, the Guardian of Inarizaki. Story goes it died after swallowing an army of attacking bees.”)

His lungs heave laughs too loudly.

(“That one by yer window kinda looks like Kita if ya turn yer head to the right and cross yer eyes and really fuckin’ believe.” “Kita is actually a shapeshifting deity who watches over all volleyball players via ceiling stains.” “So that’s why ‘Tsumu wanted the bottom bunk.”) 

His legs thread together with another’s too tightly.

(“Those four little dots right above ya head kinda look like an actual constellation called The Lynx. It reminds me of ya.” “Why?” “Cuz they always know more than ya want them to.”)

Rin is a mess of bone and breath and body. But Osamu is too. Together, they’re a tangle too hopeful and too hopeless to untwine. Rin wouldn’t want to, anyway.

“Ya lookin’ kinda sleepy, Rin,” Osamu teases. “Should I go?”

Drops of dawn’s early light begin to pool at the base of Rin’s bed. “No,” he whispers—longing for black. “No.”

Osamu cocks his head in question into Rin’s pillow, as he asks, “no, as in ‘not yet,’ or no as in ‘stay?’” 

Rin’s body knows, but his mind still needs a little more time. So, he stalls for some, wondering, “do you talk to Atsumu like this when your bad thoughts won’t let you sleep?”

Osamu lets him. “We talk,” he agrees, before amending, “but not like this.”

“What do you talk about?”

“Whatever the other one is fixatin’ on in the moment,” Osamu explains, as he shifts further into Rin’s bed. The slip of skin and sheet sounds like a lullaby. “‘Tsumu gets bad thoughts too. If I’m buggin’, I get him talkin’ volleyball or music or whatever gossip’s goin’ around. If he’s buggin’, he’ll get me on volleyball or cookin’ or space.” Osamu smiles, a little for Rin, a little for Atsumu. “We just needta hear someone’s thoughts that aren’t our own.” 

“What do you guys do during away games?”

“It’s not usually a problem all that often,” Osamu admits, with a shrug. “What are ya gonna do when we start havin’ away games?”

Rin’s old scars ache. “If it’s a bad night?” Osamu nods and Rin laughs humorlessly. “Chug every caffeinated drink within sight and suffer.”

Osamu thumbs at the three cicatrices on his left hand, as if he knows. “What about good nights?”

Rin thinks he does. “I don’t really have those.”

“But durin’ lunch,” Osamu counters, wide-eyed curiosity fighting futilely against heavy-lidded fatigue. “Ya knock out as soon as we finish eatin’ and sleep fine.”

“That’s different.” 

“It’s cuz I’m there.” Osamu dresses the truth up as a joke.

“I think it is.” Rin lets it lie bare. “It is.”  Slowly, he ties off the twist of their legs. Binding. Deciding. Trusting.

“Stay,” he breathes. 

“Ya sure,” Osamu breathes back.

“Yes.”

“Okay.” Osamu doubles knots their bodies—arms warm and chest soft. “Okay.” 

They’re both asleep within minutes and don’t wake until the Sunday sun pinches their cheeks red with its noon sharpened fingers. Osamu slaps its hands away by closing the curtains, and they rest for another two hours. It’s the best of Rin’s entire life. Osamu stays the night again without question or protest.

After leaving early Monday to return to his own home, Rin finds Osamu again during their lunch period—lounging in their favorite courtyard spot with a shichimi seasoned udon, strawberry flavored health juice, and uniform jacket laying by his side. He also finds unspeakable gratitude, followed by a full belly and sound sleep almost immediately after. Osamu dozes next to him too—both of their heads pillowed on Rin’s coat while shrouded from the sun with Osamu’s. 

It’s in this state, snuggled up and alarm forgotten, that a huffing and puffing Atsumu discovers them moments before their classes resume. Had he not so rudely roused them (“wakey WAKEY eggs and BAKEY before yer arms I fuckin’ BREAKY!”), they likely would’ve slept through the day until practice. Rin secretly thinks it would’ve been worth it.

Just before Rin can stroll into the algebra class he shares with Osamu, Atsumu loosely grabs Rin’s wrist and yanks him close. He feels Atsumu’s heavy eyes clumsily search his face, while Osamu’s linger lightly on Rin’s back. “The fuck ya doin’ ‘Tsumu,” Osamu sighs, as he leans against the doorway of their classroom.

“Thinkin’.”

“Careful, that’s a fire hazard.”

“Fuck off, Suna.” Atsumu releases Rin and careens backwards to take him in further, eyes huge and mouth futzing with a smile. “Huh,” he chirps. “It’s been botherin’ me all day, but I finally put my finger on it.”

“What ya scrub?”

“Why Suna seemed off to me,” Atsumu reveals. “It’s cuz ya look way less like the fuckin’ walkin’ corpse ya normally do, Sunarin.”

Rin burns all over.

“Great, ya met yer hourly quota for bein’ an asshat,” Osamu drones, though there’s a slight serrated edge to his typical dull deadpan. It cuts anything else Atsumu has to say short. “Now, go to yer own damn class.” 

Atsumu does, but not without exchanging stuck out tongues and middle fingers with Osamu until a passing teacher snaps at them to stop. As Rin trails a duck headed Osamu into their classroom, he catches a glimpse of himself in the door’s window and realizes why Atsumu gawked. Staring back at him is his own reflection—cheeks punch-drunk pink and eyes devoid of the wine welts that no amount of sleep could ever seem to scrub out. 

Wiped white as the moon by two nights with Miya Osamu.

A mark of friendship. 

v.

a thousand words

The Miya family household is built on a foundation of duct tape and enthusiasm. With its off-center picture frames, half-drank variety mugs, and curiously stained carpets, the home teems with loving insults and scowled praises that fill in the cracks of old floorboards and tears in well-worn couch cushions. Rin loves it. He’s reminded of how much, as he lies on his back on the living room floor—focus on the ruckus Osamu makes in the kitchen, rather than the discarded notebook his fingers idly drum against. “How much longer,” Rin whines just because he can. 

“More now that yer bitchin’,” Osamu retorts loftily, though the slam of the oven tells Rin that he’s close. He hears the shrill pricking of the electric timer being set and the soft thwaps of Osamu’s mitts dropping onto the granite. In the ten months of knowing him, Rin’s heard enough of Osamu’s thwaps to know that this is a “damn proud of the food I just made but I won’t say it” thwap versus a “please no one acknowledge that I even looked at the stove today” thwap . Confirming his theory is the smile Osamu wears, as he walks into the living room to join Rin on the ground. He makes no moves to crack open his smooth spined biology book and Rin makes no moves to remind him. 

“Thirty minutes,” Osamu mutters, as he stretches out the muscles he bunched up, while bent over their perpetually cluttered kitchen counter. 

“Was it twenty before,” Rin teases and pokes the exposed skin of Osamu’s side, as his shirt rides up. The glare he receives for his efforts is sore at best. Tender at worst. 

“I’d do a lotta for ya things,” Osamu confesses with a wry smirk. “But deliberately burnin’ my dinner won’t ever be one of ‘em.”

Scoffing in faux offense, Rin lays a hand across his sternum. “You wound me,” he laments with thick sarcasm. 

“Damn, only wound,” Osamu banters back with a raise of his strong brow. “Looks like I’ve gone soft on ya, Sunarin.”

Lulling his head to the side, Rin looks at Osamu’s profile. The gentle jut of his jaw, the feather curve of his cheekbone, the slope of his elvan nose. “I think you’ve always been soft ‘Samu,” Rin replies with a smile. 

To me, he doesn’t say. 

For me, he doesn’t let himself think. 

“I’ll have ya know there was once a period where I was even louder and ruder than ‘Tsumu,” Osamu asserts haughtily, though the glister grays of his eyes pop his put-on pomp. “Bet even ya would’ve mixed us up then.” It’s a challenge. One Rin intends to meet. 

“Prove it,” Rin declares. Propping himself up on his elbow, he examines the photo lined living room walls. “Your parents have plenty of pictures up of you guys.” He flops his head on his shoulder to look at Osamu, as he deadpans, “seriously, it looks like they’re either trying to solve your murder or commit it.” Osamu snorts at that, and it crinkles the faint freckles dusting the bridge of his nose. 

“Surely, some of them have to be from that time.”

“There are.”

“Show me and I’ll tell you which one is you.”

“Is that a bet?”

“A promise.”

Lifting one his arms, Rin extends his pinky out for Osamu to take. Instead of accepting, Osamu eyes it warily, as he states, “I’m a twin. We take pinky promises pretty seriously.” Rin recalls that first day beneath the afternoon sun, with insomnia addled bones and polyester protection placed across eyes.

“I know,” Rin replies and pokes Osamu’s shoulder with his finger and holds it there. Tentatively, Osamu wraps his pinky around his—threading honey sun with sugar moon. They stand together and keep their fingers crossed, as Osamu guides Rin over towards the first test of his vow. With his free hand, Osamu gestures loosely to a snapshot of twin adolescent grins that cut white against mud smeared faces.

“Who’s who?”

“You’re on the left,” Rin proclaims with no delay or hesitation. He presses his index finger determinedly into the smudged glass for good measure.

“Lucky guess,” Osamu grumbles. 

“Not luck,” Rin corrects. “Gimme another.” 

Glancing between the off-kilter frames, Osamu selects a picture of the kindergarten aged twins with their arms thrown around each other’s summer kissed shoulders, as they lean against an ancient red pickup that still takes up residence in their driveway.

Momentarily distracted, Rin asks, “exactly how old is that truck?”

Rather than answering, Osamu grins, crooked and bright, and says, “did ya know there’s a star scientists theorized to be older than the known universe?”

“Really?”

“Yeah. So, probably two years older than that.”

With a snort, Rin lightly raps his knuckle on young Osamu’s face. “Right side,” he tells him with the same immediacy, the same certainty. 

“Fuck,” Osamu breathes and his hold on Rin’s pinky tightens. 

“I told you.”

“Don’t get smug. It doesn’t flatter ya.”

“But being right has always been my color.”

“Yer tacky is what ya are, ya bastard. What about this one?” 

Osamu extends an accusatory point towards a photo of the twins as toddlers, sleeping flopped over one another on a picnic blanket against a sky of mulberry and marigold. The sweet taste of victory pulls at the edges of Osamu’s lips, as he snips, “good luck.” 

Rin taps his finger on the squishy cheeked child resting on top and says, “you.” He savors the salt of Osamu’s defeat. 

“How the shit…” Osamu looks at Rin wide eyed and open mouthed. “Only reason I even know is cuz I asked our ma to prove to ‘Tsumu that he’s always been a drooler.” 

At Rin’s smirk and snide, “you both drool like morons,” Osamu’s reverence quickly dies—cut down by competitive spirit.

“And yer a fuckin’ kicker. Oi, don’t smack me! Help me dig out these photo albums.”

That’s how they pass the thirty minutes waiting for Osamu’s casserole to cook. Sprawled on the couch and flipping through parchment pages, Osamu quizzes Rin on pictures from his past. He doesn’t miss a single one. Eventually, Osamu relinquishes his quest to prove Rin wrong and begins sharing the stories behind the photos. (“This is from the campin’ trip where I got ‘Tsumu to eat a worm.” “I broke my arm in three places after this was taken. Always hurts right before it rains.” “I’ll tell ya a secret. This beach has the best spot to stargaze.”)

As they reach the end of the scrapbook, Osamu lifts their pinky tied hands up from between their thighs and breathes, “promise kept.” His hand quivers a little so Rin further cinches his hold. 

“Told you,” Rin lilts, striving for sass, falling into fond. 

Lowering their hands back into their hideaway, Osamu asks in the quietest voice, “how can ya tell?” He shakes his head, as he whispers, “I mean, I even get mixed up sometimes. Same with our parents.” He looks at Rin with that thunder soft stare that spares him from the sun. 

“How?” 

Rin is sixteen. 

He can articulate a little more beyond the anatomy of cells and teasing he uses to pull friends out of emotional stupors. He can say that Osamu walks as if the world waits, while Atsumu runs as if it’s left him behind. A hand to the back // A kick to the ass. A whisper in the night // A shout at daybreak. A cobblestone path // An airport runway. A silk rope // A burst of confetti. Doodles in the margins // Graffiti on a wall. I think I might like you // Never in that way. Rin can say more now, but not quite enough yet. 

How?

Rin is sixteen. He answers a bit better this time.

“You have light eyes.” 

vi.

split

The strident scent of hair dye developer sears the insides of Rin’s nose and bites at his squinted eyes. “Aw, now, don’t get all weepy on me, Rin,” Osamu coos, as he tilts his head back to look at him. 

“Shut up,” Rin mutters and pushes Osamu’s face forward again with his gloved hand. “I’m just pre-grieving,” he adds. 

“Wuh,” Osamu asks in all his usual eloquence and a mouth full of salt and vinegar chips. “Grievin’ what?” 

Rin knows Osamu studies him in the bathroom mirror because he watches his face pallor at Rin’s smirk. “How ugly you’re gonna look when this is done,” he teases and immediately fists a chunk of Osamu’s dyed soaked curls to stave off his retaliative efforts. He recognizes how futile this preemptive measure is. Osamu possesses well over a decade’s worth of experience pulverizing Atsumu and a prime position perched on the edge of the bathtub. Without even a bat of his curly brown lashes, Osamu simply elbows Rin in the gut. 

“Ah fuck.”

“Please, not while I'm here.”

“Shut up, ‘Tsumu.”

“Yeah, shut up, Atsumu.”

Across from Rin and Osamu’s awkward arrangement in the bathtub, Atsumu sits comfortably on the corner of the sink with Aran standing to his side, as he slathers on blonde dye. Rin glances down at his own charcoal paint that coats his bristled brush and tints half of Osamu’s sectioned off hair.

“Araaaaaaan,” Atsumu mewls far too loudly for the tiny Miya family bathroom. “They’re bullyin’ me.” 

Momentarily breaking his laser focus away from Atsumu’s bleached locks, Aran says completely serious, “good.” Osamu laughs his full body laugh and Rin pretends he grips his hair again to hold his head still, rather than to steel himself against the dulcet sound.

“Traitor,” Atsumu grumbles and makes grabby hands for Osamu’s mostly emptied bag of chips. 

“All is fair in love and war,” Aran remarks cheerfully, as he resumes covering Atsumu’s hair. At the nudge of Rin’s knee to his spine, Osamu begrudgingly tosses his snack to his brother. The crackle of plastic as Atsumu catches it within his broad palm sounds like glass breaking. 

“Ya ever fall in love,” Atsumu idly inquires with a pop of a chip in his mouth. Aran’s strokes stutter before returning to their steady pace. 

“Yeah,” he admits carefully. 

Atsumu must know by his tone that Aran wishes not to share more. He grants him mercy without further question. “Cool,” he garbles out in between bites. Rin watches Aran’s taut muscles unspool like frayed thread. Cocking his head to the side, Atsumu wonders, “I dunno if I ever will.” Osamu’s back stiffens against Rin’s lingering leg. 

“Why ya say that,” he interrogates and Rin needs no bathroom mirror to know he furrows his brow and gnaws at his bottom lip. 

“Just don’t know if I got any room,” Atsumu supplies easily and continues to eat.

“Room where,” Osamu presses. 

Atsumu stabs a salt speckled and spit slicked finger into his chest. “Here. I mean I already got ya, and ma, and pa, and Aran, and hell I guess Suna and Kita too, and definitely volleyball. Lots of volleyball.”

“What about what’s her face in yer lit class?”

“Reiko? Oh. I mean she’s pretty hot. Funny too. But I definitely don’t, like, love her. I’d know if I did.”

“Would he?” Osamu directs the question to Aran. 

“Why are ya buggin’ him,” Atsumu snaps. His eyes are burnt amber and whip crack conviction. 

“He’s the expert,” Osamu defends. His are frosted metal and whisper certain. “’Sides, ya can be kinda stupid about this shit, ‘Tsumu.” 

Choking on a chip, Atsumu’s screech catches on a hiccup, then a cough, before finally escaping as an extravagant squawk. 

“He’d figure it out,” Aran interjects before they witness Atsumu’s death at the hands of Osamu or his stolen saltines. “Eventually.” He smiles as he says it, but not for them, not for now. His thoughts maroon his mind in memory. 

“How did you know,” Rin asks. He pretends he can’t see the lines drawn in sand and secret. Aran, to his surprise, lets him cross without protest. 

“I didn’t at first,” he answers freely, though still so far away. “My ma useta say fallin’ in love’s a lot like a gas leak.” He drifts further with each word. “Sometimes, ya catch it early.” Pulled and pulled and pulled by a love into an erstwhile era. “Smell the fumes, hear the hiss, see the numbers. It’s a slow kinda knowin’.” Aran teeters on a cliff of quiet remembrance. “That’s how it was for her and my pa.” And steps back. 

“What about for you?” Rin pushes. “What made you get it?” 

Aran stops, brush held mid-swipe and back partly turned to the past. Wryly, he says, “I lit a match,” and tumbles away all the way down.

Atsumu laughs at that. He fills the room with its resonant sound and Rin silently thanks him. For surely without it everyone would feel he and Aran’s quiet absence. And Atsumu continues to practice mercy, as he launches into a tangent ridden tale about the time, “me and ‘Samu nearly fried our eyebrows off with the outdoor grill! Do ya think we could make the alien look work, Aran?” Osamu repeats the same grabby gesture Atsumu performed before and brings the blindly hurled bag close to his chest. Looking over his shoulder, Rin watches him dig to the bottom to pull out the largest chip and hold it up to him. Rin takes it within his mouth without a word.

Once Rin and Aran finish properly painting Osamu and Atsumu in silver and gold respectively, they snap shower caps on their heads and stroll into the living room with a timer in tow. Atsumu parks himself far too close to the television that plays a recording of a recent Division 1 volleyball match. Eyes big and mouth never quite closing. Aran resigns himself to any retina and eardrum damage he may possibly incur and plops down next to him. 

Rin and Osamu settle onto the couch and into each other. Briefly, they entertain the apps on Rin’s phone, but exhaustion tugs at the sleeves of his eyes and beckons him to sleep. While he initially tries to resist, Osamu’s hand knocks his head onto his toweled shoulder. “Sleep,” he commands in an all too familiar tone. “Ya need it.” 

A fool for a sense of home after a life of never staying still, Rin snips back, “says who?” Osamu smiles. Rin knows. He can hear it in how it’s scrawled against the pages of his lips. 

“I do,” Osamu asserts. “I studied up on yer tells a long time ago, Rin. Yer tired.” The ink bleeds and his grin softens. “And we both know ya always sleep better when I’m around. Ain’t no point in arguin’.”

Nuzzling his head further into Osamu’s neck, Rin complains, “but it’s fun.”

Osamu chuckles into his scalp. “How about this,” he proposes softly. “I’ll wake ya up ten minutes before it’s time to wash the dye out and we can bicker to yer heart’s content.” 

“Mmm. Twenty and we make fun of Atsumu instead?”

“Fifteen.”

“You drive a hard bargain, Miya Osamu.”

“Go the fuck to sleep, Suna Rintarou.”

Rin does. Perhaps, with the goofiest grin he’s ever made on his face. The sleep he finds with Osamu is plush and plain as always. No dreams, no nightmares. Familiar, relieving. Osamu wakes him as he said he would, and Rin rises without trouble or tether. They need not look long for reasons to tease Atsumu, who managed to knock over both an entire bowl of freshly made popcorn and a liter of coke with a fervent outburst at a play he witnessed from the kitchen. They also immediately go to clean it up for him so he can continue to watch the very pauseable game uninterrupted.

At the sharp titter of the timer, they all retreat to the bathroom, where, as the winner of the coin toss, Aran rinses Atsumu’s hair in the sink, while Rin, the loser, finagles Osamu’s head beneath the bath faucet and washes him clean. When they’re done, Atsumu is a gold feathered lark and Osamu is a silver-streaked nightingale. “Not bad,” Aran drawls, as they admire their still damp handiwork. “Now, it won’t just be Suna who can tell ya guys apart on sight.” 

At the mention of Rin’s name, Osamu glances up at him from his seat on the porcelain tub. His fingers toy with his soot soiled towel and anxiety whips the winds of his ashen stare. “So,” he starts awkwardly. “Did the pre-grievin’ pay off?” 

Brushing his hands through the tangles of Osamu's hair, Rin confesses, “no.” The single syllable word strikes Osamu across the face and his cheeks redden as if slapped. 

“Oh,” he offers as his pitiful response. 

“Because it looks great,” Rin asserts honestly and shifts his curls over into their usual part. “You know I’d tell you if it didn’t.” 

With a threadbare laugh, Osamu leans into Rin’s touch, as he says, “I do. I thought ya just did there for a second.” Rin’s hands stray from their styling and simply slip soothingly through the slate strands in wordless apology.

“I like it,” Rin declares again. Removing his fidgeting fingers from the towel, Osamu finds Rin’s hand in his hair and laces their pinkies together.

Promise?

Promise.

After cleaning up the bathroom, Aran leaves under the pretense of studying with Kita. (“But Araaaaan classes just started.” “Not everyone is content being stupid like you, Atsumu.” “Eat a dick, Suna.”) Rin loiters for a little while longer, given that his payment for his assistance is a home cooked meal from Osamu and jump-serve lessons from Atsumu. (“But ‘Samu, he didn’t even dye my hair.” “Just help him ya scrub, or I’m spittin’ in yer soup.”) 

Hours later, with a heavy belly, stinging palms, and an Osamu by his side, Rin walks back to his home. They brush knuckles and stall time, until they inevitably reach Rin’s front door. As they hug goodbye, Rin wonders if he failed to wash out all the dye from Osamu’s hair. Because he does not breathe in the familiar scents of clean linen or sandalwood or burnt sugar.

No.

He smells only gasoline.

vii.

lonely planet

Her lips taste of blood and cherry schnapps. She’d bitten them raw, as they braved the moonlit maze of liminal space—guided only by shared desire and cheap booze. When they reached the tunnel’s end, Rin cupped her petal cheeks and asked, can I kiss you? She answered with squeezed shut eyes, stretched tippy toes, and a breathless, yes.  

Time passed in swallowed gasps and beading sweat bringing them here. Here. Where chastity slips off the knots of silken morality and runs freely into rough sin. Behind them the writhing beat of a summer soiree throbs in time with their hearts that fall into their bellies before sinking down, down, down between their legs. 

Beneath their feet, the grass whispers, are you sure? With a smack of spit salved bitten lips, Rin responds, of what? The wind ruffles the hair she doesn’t grip, as it questions, that this is what you want it? He pulls away to tongue the lust burned flesh of her thin neck. He takes the flutter thrum of her pulse in his mouth and it cantillates, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. But the blood rushing within Rin’s skull only sighs, slips, it’s enough for now. Trailing his hands up the ridges of her arching spine, he returns his mouth to hers and moans a wordless, let me have now.

They stay stitched together at the seams of their hungry hips and raw lips for what seems like hours. Uncertain fingers float beneath shirt hems and underwear bands, but they never find the courage to plunge in completely. They don’t have to. Eventually, discordant whoops and mood killing wolf-whistles cut the strings of skin and spit, until Rin finally breaks away from her. Tucking a piece of brown hair behind her red tipped ears, she sheepishly huffs, “I’ve wanted to do that since first year.” 

Civility orders him to tell her the same, but honesty shushes the notion, so he says instead, “I’m glad we did. I liked it.” At her expectant expression, Rin ignores the hissed protests of crushed grass and asks, “would you like to catch a movie with me sometime?”

She cocks her head at him—gray eyes narrowing and swollen lips sloping into a defeated frown. “Ya meant the first two parts,” she decides, before conceding, “but not the last.” A distant shout captures her attention. Recognition flares within the coals of her stare and she smiles so sweetly at him while chiming, “don’t worry about it, Suna. I’ll see ya in pre-calc.” 

The hands Rin raises to clasp her with coil around empty August air and she disappears within the night. His unsaid question of, “did I do something wrong,” hangs before him with the loose threads of their embrace. 

After a moment, he returns to the party. 

The desecrated living room reeks of stolen liquor and over-the-clothes sex. Music blasts so loudly Rin can’t discern the lyrics, only that they shake the walls with their thunder. Bodies magnetized by alcohol and freedom can be found connecting from the innocent points of knocking knees to the salacious cradles of blood heavy laps. Rin finds Atsumu amongst the latter group, melting into the beer-stained upholstery and kissing a raven-haired Reiko as if he could fuse their forms into one. Rin thinks if they intend to do that, they should find a more private room. Or at least a patch of the front yard as he had. 

After snapping a quick video to tease Atsumu with later, Rin wanders into the bathroom to clean himself of cherry lust, but quickly abandons the endeavor when he discovers Aran and Kita rubbing the back of a third-year girl heaving into the toilet. “There’s another bathroom upstairs,” Aran offers apologetically. 

The girl sputters out something that sounds like, “sorry,” and Rin brushes her off. 

“I just wanted to wash my face,” he assures them. “I can grab you some water from the kitchen,” he suggests, as the girl spasms her way through another wretch. “Or uh a doctor?” 

Kita shakes his head, “it’s not that bad, but thank ya Suna and we already got some.” Hovering within the doorway, Rin resists the urge to curse Kita for his refusal, since at least then he would’ve had something to do. 

“Burnin’ out on the party,” Aran jokes, as the girl manages to finally pull her face away from the bowl. 

“That obvious, huh,” Rin drawls in return. 

“Osamu’s on the back porch,” Kita volunteers and places a water filled solo cup in the girl’s quivering hands. 

“I think I just wanna go home,” Rin admits. 

“I know,” Kita responds coolly, as he continues to draw soothing circles on the girl’s collapsed back. “Take him with you.” 

Arching a brow, Rin replies, “is he that bad?”

Aran and Kita share knowing stares. “No worse than you,” Kita supplies vaguely. Rin senses he’s not referring to drunkenness. 

“Okay,” he manages to say. “I will. Can I trust you guys with getting Atsumu home?”

Each word takes a decade off Aran’s life. Kita laughs and nudges him gently with a shoulder. “Yes, we can. Isn’t that right, Aran?” 

At the touch and mention of his name, Aran regains his youth and begrudgingly agrees, “yeah, yeah. But if he starts cryin’ like last year’s Christmas party, I’m tappin’ out.”

“‘Samu and I were the ones who had to deal with that.”

“The first twenty minutes of it. Ya pawned him off onto me and my couch after that. Longest night of my life.”

“And ya’d do it again in a heartbeat if Atsumu needed ya,” Kita chastises warmly. The flash of fondness that flits across Aran’s features tells Rin he’s right. “Back porch,” Kita reiterates once more, and Rin bares them farewell with a lazy salute. 

Sifting his way through the throngs of stumbling and stuttering partyers, Rin dodges calls of his name and invitations to drink alike. When he finally emerges outside, he wonders if he should thank the stars above his head for escaping unscathed.

“Lyin’ in the yard,” Gin slurs from his slumped over seat in a lawn chair. 

“What,” Rin asks. 

“Yer lookin’ for Osamu?” Rin nods. “He’s over there,” Gin provides with a floppy point to a body lounging in the grass. “Tell the bastard I know he cheated in beer pong, even if I don’t know how yet.” 

“I’m sure he did.”

“Shut up, he did, ya fuckface.”

With a cackle, Rin strolls over to a familiar silhouette sprawled out amongst summer dew and bladed green. Stopping once he reaches Osamu’s head, Rin falls to his knees and blames his staring on a long since dying buzz. 

Osamu’s silver hair tangles with the verdant veld forming a halo woven from the clouds of heaven and the blankets of earth. Bliss and a bottle of abandoned merlot smooth out the lines of his moon-soaked skin. Stars cut their fingers on the bones of his face and leave freckled constellations in their wake. He is beloved by earth, moon, and star—a universe of his own making. An angel stealing sleep beneath God’s upturned nose. 

“Someone once told me it’s rude to stare,” Osamu lilts without opening his eyes. What Rin would give to see them. 

“So, you’re not dead,” Rin retorts, echoing that one fateful afternoon, as he shifts onto his back. They lie side by side. “And who said I was staring?” 

“Were ya” Osamu questions, opting to craft new memories rather than run his hands over old ones. 

“Yes,” Rin replies truthfully, indulgently. 

“Like what ya see,” Osamu wonders and his lips curve into a lopsided smile. 

“Always,” Rin breathes once, then twice. “Always.” 

Red wine spills from the cups of Osamu’s raised cheeks. “That the liquor talkin’ or ya,” he asks. 

“Just me,” Rin confesses, and oh does it feel like a confession.

“Careful,” Osamu warns, though to whom Rin can’t say. “I’ll start thinkin’ I’m special.”

“And if you are?”

“I might do somethin’ stupid.”

“Can’t have that, can we?”

“Nah. Not yet.”

Their pinkies tangle together within the soil’s sheets. Rin knows not what they’re promising, only that he means it with his soul. A silence soon follows and falls over them, but it isn’t heavy. It’s freshly washed cotton that smells of clean linen and gasoline. Home and the precipice of knowing.

“Tell me about the sky, ‘Samu.”

He does. Osamu’s voice becomes Rin’s waking lullaby. 

Soft like music.

(“Did ya know the moon used to be part of the earth? A kamikazein’ planet ripped ‘em apart.) 

Warm like skin.

(“Our sun burns green, Rin. Green like yer eyes.”) 

Familiar like memory.

(“I hope the universe is the never-endin’ kind. Startin’ and endin’ and startin’ again.”) 

Rin’s body finds rest, as it always does with Miya Osamu, but his mind. His mind finally begins to wake, to understand, to accept.

(“I’ll meet you on the flip side if it is, Osamu.”) 

“Wanna head back,” Osamu asks eventually, never once having opened his wonder-closed eyes. 

“Not yet,” Rin replies. 

“Lemme know me when yer ready,” Osamu instructs and nestles further into the bed of the earth. Amongst his tossing and turning, Rin hears the grass whisper, are you sure? Rin answers with the shuttering of his lids. I am. The wind pulls cool covers over them, as it says, is this what you want? Rin tightens their bound hands. It is . Osamu lets out a breath low and deep, sighing, is it enough? Rin reciprocates with one of his own that pledges, more than enough.

Perhaps, more than what I am ready for.

But Rin lights his match and burns for Miya Osamu anyway.

viii.

suffocate

Amongst the quiet deaths of crushed autumnal leaves and swift scuffs of sneakers against concrete, Rin hears a distant voice call his name. The shouts stretch thin along the outdoor corridor of Inarizaki, tickling against Rin’s headphone plugged ears like tattered thread. He ignores them, in favor of performing futile tasseography on a bad bowl of shichimi udon. He sifts through the splinters of too dry pork and swirls of slimy noodles in search for an answer that’s both obvious and allusive.

Why does this taste so bad?

Rin initially believed Atsumu made it, given his propensity towards kitchen fires and the fact that he handed it to him instead of Osamu, who remained absent throughout all of lunch, due a physics exam retake. However, once Atsumu tore into his own portion and blanched in equal parts surprise and disgust at its foul contents, Rin realized Osamu did indeed prepare this abysmal meal. 

So, what the fuck?

This brings Rin here, careening against the wall in the intermittent period after class and before volleyball practice, trying to divine the reason for Osamu’s mistakes through the methodic drag of his chopsticks. Unlike Atsumu, he couldn’t bring himself to throw the meal away. Instead, he managed to scarf down about half and saved the rest for, what, prophetization?

“Suna!”

Decidedly closer and considerably more frayed, the braying bellow of what appears to be Aran rips Rin’s focus away from his food. Aran is running. His club jacket hangs haphazardly off him and scrapes of dirt seep into the concerned cracks of his expression. They let in no light this time. “I need ya to come with me right now,” he huffs, as he staggers to halt in front of a straightening Rin.

“Why,” Rin presses, though he’s already shoving his earbuds and resealed bowl of udon back into his school bag. “What’s going on?”

With a guiding palm placed between Rin’s shoulder blades, Aran ushers him in the direction of the outdoor courtyard and heaves out, “the twins are fightin’.”

“Okay? They fight all the time?” Rin possesses countless pieces of videographic evidence of this fact on his phone, with clips ranging from mild scuffles to full body brawls. Bystanders don’t intervene in Miya fights, since any efforts to dissuade them would be as futile as they are reckless. However, the twins never minded a witness or the placing of an occasional bet. Such is the reason for Rin lilting, “I got 10,000 yen on Osamu.” 

“Suna ,” Aran cautions—his taut tightrope tone threatening to crack. “This ain’t like normal.” His pace quickens and were it not for his fingers now fisting the back of Rin’s coat, he would’ve been left behind. “It’s bad. There’s a crowd.” Rounding the corner, the first swells of scandalized murmurs lap at their racing feet. “Shin’s off with Akagi and Omimi tryin’ to stall any and every teacher on their way, so they don’t get fuckin’ suspended.” The hand in Rin’s jacket quakes. “I ain’t ever seen Osamu like this.” A sudden upheaval of exclamation crashes into them—hot with incendiaries and voyeuristic bloodlust. Something else, sizzling and benzene sweet, flares within Rin’s chest.

“Like what,” he snaps. Osamu, condemned by misplaced public opinion, exists as an eternal counterweight. The reason within chaos, the rescue from fire, the pull back of a push. Let him be. Let him go. Let him hurt. Too bitterly, Rin leers, “Pissed?”

“No,” Aran corrects softly. “Scared.” 

Emerging from the alfresco hall, Rin spies a billow of bodies congregating at the center of the quad, where they almost pulsate, leaning in and out in time to the commotion they conceal. Aran curses beneath his breath. “There’s even more people here now.” As they stalk across the sward, Rin notes with quiet gratitude that no teachers are among them. 

Yet.

Drawing closer to the mob’s outer fringe, the first tides of the twins’ tirade slip beneath the flood of frothing gossip and pull Rin under with convoluted shouts and too sharp, too fleshy thuds. “That the best ya got,” Atsumu sneers. A caustic challenge followed by the sound of a heavy punch. Gasps percolate amongst the throngs of spectators. Aran’s hand slips away from Rin’s back with his discarded bag, as Rin’s determined walk devolves into a run. Leaves crunch beneath his feet like bone.

With a cackle cruel and wild, Atsumu screeches, “shit, I changed my mind!” A body falls. The slam rings in Rin’s ears. Sudden and unforgiving. “Ya ain’t a fuckin’ loser!” Shoving his way through the bands of onlookers, the crowd’s collective recoil sends Rin stumbling backwards. As he attempts to right himself, an agonized wheeze unmoors him once more.

“Cuz at least losers fuckin’ try,” Atsumu spits. “Ya don’t even do that!” Rin throws himself back into the horde, blindly wielding the spear tips of his elbows to cut down anyone in his way. “Ya don’t fuckin’ try!” Amid the blur of tawny jackets and scarlet ties, a cry, strangled and wet, pours over Rin like gasoline. He burns and burns and burns. “So, yer NOTHIN’,” Atsumu roars. 

PUNCH.  

“Shut up!” Osamu’s voice is an open wound. 

“NOTHIN’!” Atsumu’s is a rusted knife. 

PUNCH.

“SHUT UP!” Blood rushing.

“FUCKIN’ TRY!” Blade twisting.

PUNCH.

“SHUT UP!” Aching.

“TRY!” Attacking.

“Enough.” Rin bursts through the final barrier of bodies and tumbles out into the battlefield. There, he finds pinned to the ground with mulberry bruises and scarlet scrapes blooming on his dirt-stained skin, Atsumu staring up at Osamu’s blood blackened fist. Atsumu’s sharp grin looks like a laceration. Though it’s not himself that it hurts.

Far fewer contusions kiss Osamu’s grime burnished skin. Fingernail lines carve paths along his face and neck, but they’re faint, staggered, and short. Earth and blood that’s not his own coagulates within his gray hair, twisting the pieces into tarnished screws. Despite being the clear victor, his expression is desolate. Disconnected. At least, that’s what Rin believes until Osamu’s eyes find his own. His eyes. His eyes , where the black of his pupils eat the silver of his irises raw, leaving in their wake only a void. Gaping, empty, afraid. 

So afraid. 

Fist still suspended in the air, Osamu breathes, “Rin?” A wound. “What are ya doin’ here?” Open. “Rin?” Oozing.

Capitalizing on Osamu’s broken focus, Atsumu bucks him off. With his hands already raised, he attempts to clamber on top of him, but Aran seizes him by the waist and drags him away. “Fuckin’ let go of me,” Atsumu snarls, as he thrashes vainly within Aran’s impossibly tight hold. “Not again,” Aran hisses once, then gentler, “not again.”

Rin crosses the remaining distance between him and Osamu. Sprawled out on his back, Osamu wilts inward, his face red and crumpled as the leaves crushed by Rin’s each step. This time they crack like shrapnel. Kneeling beside him, Rin bends down and whispers, perhaps naively, definitely stupidly, “you okay?”

“No.” Osamu’s eyes are wide and still so dark. A night with no stars, no moon. “Can we go?” Nodding, Rin helps Osamu to his unsteady feet, placing Osamu’s arm around his shoulders and threading his own around Osamu’s waist. As they slowly stumble away, Osamu’s body congeals against the curvature of Rin’s—warm and heavy like clotting blood.

“Where the fuck do ya think yer goin’,” Atsumu demands. Rin has his back to him—his sight set determinedly on retrieving both he and Osamu’s abandoned bags—so he has no way to know that Atsumu is crying. There are no signs in his voice, no telltale fracture or damningly sticky breath. But Rin knows. And by the steel set of Osamu’s jaw, Rin knows he knows too.

But before either of them can say anything, Aran declares to all those still lingering, “where everyone else should be goin’. Away from here!” When the crowd’s cascade of murmurs isn’t immediately preceded by the shuffle of their feet, Aran barks out, “that wasn’t a suggestion! Move! Now!” The group deliquesces, drifting away from the courtyard in head-hung ripples. The undulations nudge at Rin’s spine and push him back into motion. With two bags gripped too tightly in his free hand, Rin walks determinedly towards a nearby single stall bathroom. They’re almost too far away to hear it. Almost.

“Aran, I ain’t ever gonna forgive him if he quits.”

Ah.

Fuck you.

Adding to his too tight grip is the too strong kick Rin uses to open the door to the bathroom. Though neither compare to Osamu’s too dark eyes. “Sit here,” Rin instructs, as he carefully deposits Osamu onto the edge of the sink and their bags onto the floor. Wordlessly obliging, Osamu watches Rin quickly flip the lock on the door and attempt to pull out paper towels from an apparently empty dispenser. “Hold on,” Rin huffs out and begins rifling through his backpack for the wipes his mother forced him to start carrying at some point during first year. 

“I have a proper first aid kit at my house,” Rin explains with a desultory toss of several Chuppet packets and his overstuffed pencil case into the sink. “But we should probably try to clean some of the shit out of your cuts now.” He drops three heavily tabbed textbooks onto the pile and along with his half-eaten udon container. “Somewhere in here I have,” Rin yanks out a broken neck phone charger he’d been looking for months and almost comments such, until his other hand wraps around the object of his inquiry. “There it is,” he declares with a lazy display of a smashed Wet Ones packet. Osamu says nothing. In his lap, he cradles Rin’s black tupperware.

Thumbing idly at the lip of the wipes’ packaging, Rin whispers, “tell me if it hurts.” Osamu nods. It looks like a tremble. It becomes one as Rin gently cups his war-torn face. But he doesn’t pull away, rather he presses into it, as if he can feel Rin’s fleeting certainty in his feather touch and replaces it with his own. With his thumb resting on the apex of the battered bone of his cheek and fingers hooked beneath his jaw, Rin carefully tilts Osamu’s head and dabs at his skin.

Each swipe strips Osamu of his armor. In a silent bathroom, without the rumblings of hungry eyed spectators or glory of muddied dirt and crusted blood, all that remain are the wounds. Polemics penned by fists and fingernails that only time will expunge. Rin tries, anyway. He cleans Osamu’s cheeks, then his clenched jaw and bunched forehead, before running a fresh wipe down the column of his neck. All the while, neither of them talk. Though at a downward quirk of Osamu’s mouth or the inquisitive tick of Rin’s brow, the other will adjust without word.

However, just as Rin lifts one of Osamu’s palms and removes another wipe from the precariously balanced pack, Osamu speaks. “Ya shoulda thrown this out.” Rin finds the meaning for his words through his downcast stare at the black bowl still resting between his legs.

“No.” Rin runs the wipe over Osamu’s blood blackened hand. “You made it.” 

“Ya say that as if it’s special.”

“It is.”

“It isn’t.”

Under the veneer of ichor and earth, jagged mouth maroon contusions gnaw at white of Osamu’s knuckles with their gnarled black teeth and gangrene tongues. Curdled indigos and bubbling browns slough out of their cracked lips and pool within the red chasms splitting open the skin of his fingers. Nothing is broken, but everything is.

Roughly, Rin seizes his other hand and finds the same ugliness. “It is," he hisses and scrubs at Osamu’s injuries, as if beneath them he’ll find justification for such foolish temerity. He doesn’t. So, he opens his mouth to ask for it, but what comes out is this:

“That fact doesn’t change because of your groundless self-doubt or your brother’s misplaced vitriol and it certainly won’t change because the pork was a bit tough, and the noodles weren’t simmered to perfection. No.” Rin snatches the container away from Osamu and shoves it blindly within his bag. “It is special. It is special to me. Because it was made by you. That gives it inherent value, intrinsic meaning that you do not get to take away from me.”

 “Rin—” 

“And if you ever, ever fucking fight Atsumu like that again—”

Distantly, he thinks, this is fury.

“I’m sorry—”

A little closer, he thinks, this is love.

“Use your goddamn legs more.” Rin slaps his thighs for good measure and Osamu jolts, more from surprise than any real sting. “We don’t run laps in practice for fucking nothing. Put them to work because you do not, I repeat do not , unless absolutely necessary, use these.” Rin wraps his fingers around Osamu’s wrists and cradles his hands within his own as if they’re holy. “These, you protect.” He squeezes them. “Or Christ help you, it is not Atsumu’s rage you should be afraid of but mine. ”

“Why?” Osamu’s eyes are silver and scared.

“Because, Osamu, you cook with these hands.” Rin’s are green and sure.

“I also play with ‘em.”

“Only if you want to.”

“And if I don’t?”

“Then you don’t.”

Silence.

Osamu’s storm soft stare is wet and thunderstruck. His lips part and words pour, filling the room with pain and petrichor. “I overslept and overcooked lunch because I passed out at the kitchen counter makin’ it this mornin’. I overslept because I stayed up late studyin’ for a retake of my physics test. I didn’t study until late because ‘Tsumu guilted into me workin’ on my receives. I needed to work on my receives because I can’t focus durin’ practice. I can’t focus durin’ practice because I can’t think. And I can’t think because all the thoughts are bad. They’re bad and I can’t get ‘em to stop. Stop please I—” Osamu grips the edge of the sink, as he collapses over. His chest rising, as if reaching; his chest falling, as if praying, for breath, for breath, for breath—

“'Samu,” Rin places his hand over Osamu’s heaving heart. Cupped and empty, but there. Here, nonetheless. 

“Rin,” Osamu whispers his name, as if it’s a Hail Mary. “I can’t breathe.” He places his hand over Rin’s. 

“You are breathing,” Rin assures, as the crest of Osamu’s gasp fills in the bow of his palm. “You will be okay.” He says it as a promise because it is one. Osamu buries his face into Rin’s shoulder. His pants strike against Rin’s skin, but there’s no burn. Only the cool flow of tears. Rin threads the fingers of his other hand through the knots of Osamu’s hair and anchors him in his place. 

He lets him be. He lets him go. He lets him hurt.

Eventually, Osamu’s breaths become full, swelling steadily beneath Rin’s touch. Enough so that Rin rides the lift on his inspire to push away, but Osamu’s clasp tethers it back down. Stay , says the quiver of Osamu’s mouth. Okay , Rin replies with the press of his palm. Okay.

Turning so his temple rests on Rin’s shoulder, Osamu confesses, “all I said was that I was gonna take a few days off.” His lips brush against Rin’s pulse point. “That I’m tired.” They’re split from a punch. “I am. I’m so fuckin’ tired.” But still soft. “It’s like he knew what that meant. What it means.”

“Does it have to mean something?”

Osamu’s sigh sweeps over Rin’s carotid before sneaking beneath the soaked collar of his shirt and floating up to the hinge of his jaw. “Yeah,” he says quietly. “It does.”  Nestling further into the bony bed of Rin’s shoulder, Osamu reveals, “it does cuz it’s got me questionin’ who I am, Rin, and no matter how hard I try I don’t like the answer.”

“Do you really not like it,” Rin begins carefully, thinking of 3:00AM hot chocolate, oven mitt thwaps , and bad, bad udon, “or are you just afraid that somebody else won’t?”

“Does it matter?”

“Yes.”

 After the slow raise of his head, Osamu places his free hand between them, curling and unfurling his fingers in a slow stuttered rhythm. “This is what happens when I say I need to rest.” Open. “What happens if I say I wanna stop?” Close.

“Do you?” Open.

“One day.” Close

Unstitching his hold of Osamu’s hair, Rin delicately unfolds Osamu’s fingers.

Open.

“Then go for his fucking legs.”

And laces them together with his own.

Close.

ix.

love only in private

A borrowed scarf and healed hand help Rin endure the brusque December gusts that claw at his face and twist the skin of his ungloved fingers. Shivers lick up his spine and chills try to rattle his teeth, but Rin clamps down on their chattering with aid of iron jawed spite. Peeking over the fraying fabric of Osamu’s sacrificed shawl, Rin watches him wage a similar war with the furious furrow of his brow and determined bent of his hatless head. Atsumu owes them his life for this favor. If his forgotten history textbook isn’t in his locker as his typo riddled texts relayed, Rin plans to collect in full.

Rounding the final corner on their impromptu return walk to Inarizaki, Osamu tightens his already white-knuckle and white-warm grip on Rin’s hand. “I swear if Kita’s already locked up, I’m gonna find a way to put ‘Tsumu on life support just so I can personally unplug it, the scrub.” 

A ghost of a laugh escapes Rin’s clenched jaw and haunts the air in front of their frozen faces. “I’ll join you,” he ekes out in between shudders. Osamu chuckles and his phantom breath finds Rin’s.

Rotating his untethered shoulder, he groans, “shit, it’s probably gonna rain on our way back.” Even though Rin remembers, Osamu explains, “I can tell by the achin’ in my bones.” 

Rin lilts with a wind-whipped smile, “guess, we’re killing Atsumu in the next life too.” 

As they reach the gymnasium entrance, Osamu declares with a wink, “Sunarin, I’ll take any excuse I can get to murder my brother with ya.” He kicks the door open, “in every and all lives after this one,” and they seek sanctuary inside. 

The door quickly slams and seals shut—sparing them from any cold trying to slither in unnoticed. “Did Atsumu text you his locker combination,” Rin asks and prepares himself for Osamu to release his hold. After all, friends need not share the meager heat of hands once they’re surrounded by it. Friends need not share at all. However, Osamu carefully cradles both of Rin’s palms between his own and rubs them warm all the same. 

“Yeah,” he replies with his pen stroke smile. “It’s 10-04-11, the fuckin’ sap.” 

Rin, trying not to lose his tongue to the gentle brush of palms or mind to the scrawl of scarlet lips, retorts back in all his intellectual glory, “yeah, lame.” 

“What was that,” Osamu questions—grin gone and scrunched nose curiosity in its place. “That noise?” 

Cocking his head, Rin hears only the heater’s quiet hum and he and Osamu’s breaths. “I don’t—,” until distant murmurs faintly ring in his ears. “Oh,” Rin chirps with a frown. “I guess someone’s still here. Makes sense since the door was unlocked. Maybe Kita and coach?” 

Osamu seems unsatisfied by this explanation and goes to argue when a muffled moan seeps through the cracks of the changing room door. “Oh shit ,” he hisses thoroughly scandalized. “That sounds like—”

“Sexy time.”

“Our cue to fuckin’ leave.

“Atsumu will fail his test if we don’t get him his book.”

“Sucks for him—”

“The longer we wait, the closer they’re gonna get to getting it on.”

“Rin— "

“C’mon. I’ll knock and give them a second to cover up before going in.”

Rin crosses over to the locker rooms, with a reluctant Osamu still in hand. Pounding his unoccupied fist as loudly as possible on the metal so as to permeate the swirling sea of lurid sounds, he shouts, “coming in whores,” before waiting a few seconds to shoulder the door open. 

Marching determinedly in, Osamu blindly trails behind Rin with a finger hooked around his back belt loop and other palm splayed over his eyes. “Sorry about this, we just need to grab ‘Tsumu’s—oof.” Osamu’s hurried apology finds an abrupt end, as he collides with Rin’s stiffened back.

“Rin, why did ya— oh .”

With his lust mussed hair and kiss flamed lips, Kita speared stare disarms Rin’s smarm and threatens to slice the soft skin beneath. One wrong move, one wrong word, and he shall puncture, shall kill. Behind him sits Aran’s passion rumpled form—head bowed into hands that offer no mercy or recompense. Together, they are fury and shame. Love and its consequence. Rin and Osamu don’t even dare to breathe.

“Ya will not speak a single word of this.” Kita says it not as an instruction, but as a threat. Rin’s cheeks prick with freshly drawn blood. Violently gesturing towards Atsumu’s locker, Kita orders, “get what ya need and go. Now.” However, his hand slightly shakes and his bladed gaze quivers, as he struggles to carry out such cruelty. One quick glance at Aran’s futile supplication, and his resolve hardens. Brutal and battle ready.

“Why didn’t ya tell us,” Osamu asks, with eyes that should be steeled, but are still so, so soft. 

“Grab yer things and leave, Osamu,” Kita seethes. “I will not ask again.” Each syllable sizzles with a barely bated blaze. Osamu simply shakes his head, undeterred, and Rin’s reminded of who he is.  

Not the sun, but what spares us from its burn. 

“Are ya together,” Osamu wonders. “If ya are, I’m happy for ya and—”

“That is no one’s business but ours,” Kita snarls, though hurt hollows his words.

“I respect that,” Osamu placates. “I just think ‘Tsumu would be happy for ya too since he and I—” 

Kita storms forward and seizes Osamu by the front of his coat, as he roars, “under no circumstance will ya tell Atsumu about this.” Guilt guts him alive, but terror’s sutures are strong. They keep Kita together as he throttles Osamu, shouting, “understood?” 

Osamu quietly responds, “understood.” Another shake. “I won’t tell.” And another. “Not even ‘Tsumu.” 

Kita turns and clumsily cuts Rin with his wobbly wielded glare, as he snaps, “the same goes for ya, Suna Rintarou. Not a soul. Am I clear?” 

Rin nods rickety and slow. “I won’t.” 

Kita’s chest heaves and his hold on Osamu’s jacket tightens. “Good,” he grits out and screws his eyes shut to lock away the pain beginning to pool. “Thank ya.” Tremors sink their talons into Kita. “I’m sorry. I know ya don’t keep secrets from yer brother.” His body begins to quake. So afraid. So ashamed. “And I-I’m sorry for y-yellin’,” Kita stutters and clings to Osamu now to remain upright. Slowly, Aran rises from the ashes of his obloquy.

“It’s alright,” Osamu assures. 

“It’s not,” Kita asserts. “But I need ya to understand something.” He unfurls his fist and rests his open palm on Osamu’s chest. “That while ya or Atsumu or the team might not care,” Kita concedes with a sniff. It hurts Rin more than any of his shouts. “The reps that are gonna be at nationals will.” Kita retracts his hand and Aran stands. “And I had one rule before we started this,” Kita warbles. Aran walks towards them. “And that was that he c-couldn’t let this affect his career.” Aran’s arms envelop Kita as his voice begins to crack. “It comes before this; he comes before us and I…” Aran catches the pieces as they begin to fall.

“Shin,” he breathes into Kita’s hair with a voice like lace rather than leather. “That rule is wrong.” Kita scrounges up dwindling strength to argue. Aran doesn’t let him, insisting, “and I refuse to let it hurt ya any longer.” The words are a gentle push paired with an even gentler pull of Kita into Aran’s chest, who finally lets himself cry. 

“We’re together,” Aran announces with such tender pride. “Been so for a while.” His hands begin to trace patterns on Kita’s back. Loves notes written in touch. Promises branded into skin. “Kept it lowkey for a bunch of reasons, but the big ones were parents and futures,” Aran admits. Glancing at Osamu, he says, “I’m okay with ya tellin’ ‘Tsumu, if Shin is.” Kita makes a wet noise of affirmation into Aran’s shirt. “But we’re not ready for the rest of the team to know yet.”

Osamu immediately swears, “we won’t ever say a thing,” and Rin nods in voiceless agreement. 

Smiling, Aran says, “I said yet. One day we’ll tell ‘em.”

“Of course.”

Aran rocks Kita slowly within his arms to lull his breaths back into their steady pace. Rin has never been held like that, so he doesn’t know if it works that way, but Kita calms all the same. “What are ya guys even doin’ here,” Kita questions, as he turns back to face them. Aran rests his chin on his head. Rin is reminded suddenly of puzzle pieces.

“‘Tsumu can’t go to the national trainin’ camp if he doesn’t pass his history test tomorrow and left his book here,” Osamu grumbles. Eyes falling to the floor, he adds, “and he’s real stressed and ran all the way home to study before he realized.” 

Kita and Aran’s looks melt into warm honey. “So, ya went back for him,” Aran asks.

“Maybe,” Osamu grunts strictly to be difficult. 

“’Samu, we’re literally here,” Rin deadpans. “I think it’s pretty fucking safe to say the answer is yes.”

“Shut yer trap,” Osamu barks with no bite, as he shuffles over to fiddle with Atsumu’s locker. “Maybe I forgot something too!” Rin grins back. Foolishly open and stupidly fond. 

“Why are ya here, Suna,” Kita inquires. He studies Rin with a red rimmed stare that wonders, that recognizes. 

“We always walk home together,” Rin supplies. Your eyes are so heavy. “Today, we just took a detour.” Please look away . 

“Alright,” Kita chimes carefully. “We should probably head out,” he says to Aran, who responds, “I’ll grab our bags.” 

As they gather their things, Rin cowardly whispers to their turned backs, “I lit my match,” and knows by the lines of their spines that they hear him. Mercifully, they say nothing, only sparing him a fleeting look. Red and knowing.

Outside, rain begins to pour. Inside, fire continues to burn.

After the exchange of goodbyes, Kita and Aran disappear with umbrellas in palms and hands in the other, leaving Osamu and Rin alone in the locker room. “Think there’s an extra umbrella in the lost and found,” Osamu wonders with misplaced hope. 

Rin returns it to its rightful spot, with a flat, “no.” 

They look anyway. They fail as expected. Sliding down to sit on the cool floor, Osamu glances up at Rin and asks, “ya okay waitin’ out the storm with me?” 

Rin answers with the graceless plop of his body beside him and a sighed, “do I have a choice?” 

Smilingly wryly, Osamu replies, “ya always have a choice, Sunarin.” 

Not with this. Not with you.

“I’ll stay.”

And they do. The thoughts they would’ve traded on treaded concrete, they swap now on idle tile. 

Some are easy. 

(“I think I’ve finally perfected my new spicy tuna fillin’. Can I make it for ya at yer house?” // “Rui brought home her new boyfriend yesterday. His haircut is so fucking stupid, lemme show you.)

Some are hard. 

(“‘Tsumu keeps tryin’ to tell me it’s okay that I didn’t get an invite to the camp. I don’t know how to tell him that I don’t care.” // “My nightmares are getting worse and worse. I’m scared to go to sleep.”) 

Some are for each other. 

(“I’m gonna stay with ya tonight, Rin. Shut up. I want to. Ya always sleep better when I’m there.” // “You love something else ‘Samu. More than volleyball. Loving something will never be bad.”) 

All are reasons to stay. Well into the night. Well after the storm ends. 

So, as Osamu promises that he’ll keep awake however late Rin’s needs, Rin stares back with a look he knows he should let go with the gone rain but doesn’t. Instead, he lets it linger, long, and when he’s not too careful, love a little too. It’s dangerous. Rin’s well aware. With each stolen second, he chances Osamu unearthing his deeply buried truth with his downpour gaze. But what does it matter when the water feels so warm, so soft, so goddamn good? Rin risks his secret and his heart too here on the locker room floor. All for a boy who holds him tenderly tight with his eyes of a hurricane.

x.

at lunar’s length

That night, after their loss to Karasuno, Rin’s fist finds his mouth like metal meeting a magnet. Teeth digging into old trenches and fingers trembling anew, he blocks the flood of wet horror pooling within his lungs before it can spill over the chapped walls of his lips. He clamps his other palm over his hand too—reinforcing his balled-up barricade with more white-knuckle bone and freshly budding blood. You cannot be heard; Rin pleads with himself. 

Hold it in, hold it back, hold, hold, hold, hold—

“Rin? Did ya have a bad dream?” 

Oh to be held, held, held, held—

“C’mere, it’s okay.” 

Osamu abandons his neighboring futon to coil his arms around Rin’s terror tensed back. “It’s not real, Rin. Whatever it was, it’s not real,” Osamu whispers into his ear. Breath hot and sweet and threatening to melt the muscles of Rin’s man-made weir.

“It can’t hurt ya anymore, Rin. I ain’t gon’ let it. I promise. Ya know what our promises mean, right? Do ya know?” 

Each word prods, pushes, punctures, until Rin knows his dam is moments away from crumbling down. His staved off tears already drip through the shutters of his screwed shut eyes and sound, traitorous sound, begins slipping through the cracks of his leveed jaw. With them, Rin sends out a strained, “'Samu.” 

Osamu tightens his embrace. “Yeah,” he breathes back. 

“Get me the fuck out of here.” 

Locking his arms around Rin’s waist, Osamu drags him out of his mess of strewn sheets and into a standing position. He shifts his hands onto Rin’s shoulders and swiftly guides him into the hall of their hotel, where all the competing schools reside. With his vision still tucked behind his lids, Rin measures how far they journey by thuds of their bare feet against wooly carpet and the muttered names from Osamu’s tongue. 

“Fukurodani…Itachiyama…Nekoma…Mujinazaka…Kamomedai…Karasuno…okay…okay…we’re clear.”

Their hurried pace slows and Osamu steers Rin into a wide curve before gently placing him onto a cool stone bench—careful not to dislodge the gag still wedged between his teeth. “We’re past all the team rooms,” Osamu reveals, as he resettles Rin within his arms. Into his hair, he murmurs, “ain’t nobody around but us.” One of his hands rests lightly on top of Rin’s wrists, but his fingers never tighten or tug. They just wait. “Are ya able to take yer hand out of yer mouth, Rin?” At the fervent shake of Rin’s head, Osamu says, “okay, whenever ya are, I’ll be here.” Watery thanks leak through the slits of Rin’s crushed fingers. Quiet rivulets preluding a loud, loud rush.

You are held. Hold no more.

Let go.

Let go.

Let—

Prying off his splayed palm, Rin’s other fist falls almost immediately after. His cries sift through grit teeth, until those fail too, and he wails open mouthed and ugly. It wracks his body and a little of his soul too. Desperately, Rin tries bottling it all back inside, but the water continues to pour—polluting the corridor with his dream sharpened memories and filth steeped fears. Rin waits for Osamu to be washed away, but he keeps Rin close to his chest without wavering or a word. He stays. He holds. For a moment, he’s all Rin knows.

Time, in a moment of true sadism, stands still. 

Eventually, Rin finishes emptying himself of all he warded away. Without the pull of panic strung sinews, he collapses completely into Osamu and slowly relearns how to breathe. In and out. Deep and slow. Free and dry. 

When he’s certain his voice won’t break beneath him, he says, “sorry.” 

Osamu flinches. “No.” The word is steel strong and smoke soft. Gray. Wonderfully and horribly gray. “No apologizin’.”

They sit in silence for a long while after that. Osamu doesn’t rock Rin, as Aran did for Kita. He remains steadfast. Steadying. Staying. It’s enough to make Rin cry again. It’s the reason he doesn’t. Fluttering his eyes open, he looks out the window at the kindly smiling crescent moon and its coat of winter fluffed clouds. Fresh snow flurries float down to the ground, as if bewitched by the fall. Languidly and a little in love. When they finally land, they kiss the earth. 

“When ya said the dreams were gettin’ bad,” Osamu begins carefully. “Ya didn’t say this bad.” It’s not an accusation, per se, but a question wrapped in an observation. 

Why didn’t you get me sooner?  

“I haven’t had one like that since I was probably seven,” Rin supplies in an almost answer. “Haven’t cried like that since I was probably even younger.” Osamu hums thoughtfully and accepts the admission embedded into the avoidance.

I thought I was better than this.

“What were they about?”

Rin recalls fear warped un-rung phones and empty seats; out of reach hands and averted eyes; broken small talk and heavy silences. He wonders how much of his dreams were his past and how much will be his future? Pulling his legs in, Rin confesses into his knees, “losing, being left.” It’s a testament to Osamu how much he instantly understands hours’ worth of night terrors from five syllables, three words, one breath. 

“Nobody’s leavin’ Sunarin.”

Rin looks back at the January night. “Everyone leaves, ‘Samu,” he replies, as the wind whisks the snow away. “I just got used to being the one who did it first.” With a wry laugh, he adds, “this is the longest I’ve ever been at any school.”

They’re quiet for a moment and Rin knows why. They both think of the Tokyo apartment listings hidden in Aran’s school binder, of the MSBY card taped up in Atsumu’s locker, of the agriculture books shoved in Kita’s bag. None of them are train tickets, but their black prints all name the same destination: 

Not here.  

Osamu nestles his head onto Rin’s shoulder. “Then maybe they aren’t leavin’,” he proposes quietly. “Maybe, yer just stickin’ around.” 

Rin looks at the moon, which waxes and wanes, but never withdraws. “Are you gonna leave ‘Samu,” he asks. 

“Depends,” Osamu replies. He watches the ever-changing, yet ever-constant earth. 

“On what,” Rin wonders. 

“On what you’re askin’,” Osamu explains. “Because yeah, I’ll leave Hyogo come graduation and volleyball too. But…” Pulling back to pull in, Osamu twists Rin within his arms so they’re eye to eye. Terra green and lunar silver. Distantly, Rin thinks of gravity. 

“But ya, Rin. If you’re askin’ me if I’ll leave ya, then no. I ain’t leavin’ ya unless ya make me.” 

Osamu holds his pinky in the small gap between their chests. Nebulous words actualized by a finger taped from fleeting passion, crooked from a past punch, tanned from the sun’s bite, and oh so, steady from love’s certainty. Somewhere between a breath and prayer, Osamu whispers, “please don’t make me.” 

Rin threads Osamu’s pinky with his own, scarred from terror’s teeth, calloused from quiet dedication, pale from the moon’s call, and oh so, trembling from love’s power. “Never,” he pledges and tightens his hold. “I’m taking you with my secrets—all the way to the grave.” 

“Is that a threat, Rin?” 

“A promise. And I know what our promises mean.” 

Everything. Oh god, everything to me.

For a while, they linger together, bound by pinkies and the refusal to return to bed. Even though they traded their takes on their game against Karasuno with their team over dinner, Rin and Osamu packaged their words in feigned indifference and flat detachment. They strip back those veils now and let the moonlight expose their wounded prides.

(“I’m scared when I tell ‘Tsumu I’m quittin’ he’ll think I threw this game. But I love playin’ volleyball, even more so now that my time’s limited.” // “I don’t have height like Tsukishima or energy like Hinata. I don’t know if I have anything special.”)

And stitch them whole again. 

(“Rin, yer the only who didn’t get stuffed by them. And no one else has yer range. No one else has yer mind.” // “You give your all to everything, whether the recipient deserves it or not. Anyone who questions that, Atsumu included, cannot claim to know you.”) 

They eventually return to Inarizaki’s sleeping quarters. As they slip back inside, Rin wordlessly points to Atsumu’s empty futon and questions his absence with an arch of his brow. Osamu responds with a heavy sigh and swipe over his tired expression—providing the answer Rin already guessed. Atsumu plans to atone for their loss with asceticism disguised as practice. Rin assumes he likely snuck off just after everyone fell asleep and won’t return until right before they wake.

Digging through his bag, Rin begrudgingly sets aside one of his prepacked energy drinks for Atsumu, if only to spare the rest of the team from his exhaustion induced wrath. He still snags a strawberry one for himself and sprawls onto his back with it and his phone in hand. Before he can crack the can open, Osamu plucks it from his grip. “I ain’t letting ya drink any of that damn poison while I’m around,” he hisses, though he safely tucks said poison back into Rin’s bag.

“There’s enough caffeine in this to kill a horse.”

“Neigh, there’s not.”

“Ya ain’t punnin’ yer way out of this one.”

“I’m scared to go back to sleep, ‘Samu.”

“I know.”

The sheets rustle. He’s close. The pillow sighs. Closer than anyone ever before. Rin feels a familiar warm arm drape over his stomach, and another press his head into a chest. “What are you doing,” Rin asks to the ceiling—half memorized—and dares not to look Osamu in the eyes. 

“Ya always sleep better when we’re together,” Osamu supplies easily and rearranges Rin’s trepidation tangled blankets to cover them completely. 

“Yeah,” Rin concedes, as his heart begins pounding against his ribs, begging to be let out, begging to speak. Is it time to say? Rin wills it to be quiet. “But that’s at our houses, when the team isn’t around,” he counters carefully. “Aran and Kita aren’t even sharing.”

“Sure, but they’ve got somethin’ to hide. We don’t.”

Oh.

“I was plannin’ on leavin’ before wake-up time, anyway. Gotta catch ‘Tsumu sneakin’ back in and bitch him out proper.”

Oh.

“So, is it okay if I stay, Rin?”

Oh.

Shifting onto his side, Rin looks at Osamu’s lineless expression. Smooth and simple, without a wrinkle of dishonesty or a blemish of malice. Eyes sterling sweet. Let me remain, Osamu asked of him. Rin wonders if what he meant was, let me love you wrongly. 

“Okay,” Rin says with a cowardly roll of his eyes, “but if you drool on me, Atsumu will officially get my endorsement as the superior twin.” 

Snorting a laugh that crinkles the constellations on his nose, Osamu replies, “look at me directly and say that again.”

I can’t, because while you have nothing to hide, I do.

“Shut up,” Rin snarks, as he buries his face into Osamu’s chest. 

Yours keeps love, mine keeps secrets.  

“That’s what I thought,” Osamu snips, as he nuzzles the crown of Rin’s head.

I just wished they kept each other.

“Wake me with you when you think Atsumu’s coming back,” Rin requests. “I wanna film it if you start beating his ass.” The wind of Osamu’s chuckles brushes against Rin’s forehead, as he fiddles with an alarm on his phone. If Rin closes his eyes, he could almost pretend it’s a kiss. He doesn’t. 

“Oh, I certainty will,” Osamu jokes. “Ya want courtside seats?”

"I’ll take my usual press pass, thank you.”

“Alright, alright. Goodnight, Rin.”

“Goodnight, ‘Samu.”

Enveloped in Osamu’s embrace, Rin drifts to sleep thinking of the earth and moon. Green and Gray. Rin and Osamu. They’re cut from the same stone, treading parallel paths. Catastrophe cracked them into two, but gravity keeps them eternally close. So close. Yet forever out of reach. Tethered without touching. Loving without lusting. Holding without having.

Rin can’t decide if it's tragedy or grace that he finds that night, as he always does, rest by Miya Osamu.

xi.

hello to farewell

The spring sun slowly tucks itself beneath the blanket of the sprawling horizon, leaving behind an empty ether in its wake. Petal pinks and burnt berries and fine wines take up its charge, but they’re only interim figures. Ghosts of the day’s light that watch over the world, until they’re relieved by night. It strikes Rin as oddly ceremonial—this prolonged changing of the sky’s guard. Sunset ought to be a quick affair, a rapid switch of blue for black. But no, this universe champions the importance of interludes and in-betweens in the face of inevitably. As Rin stares outside his bedroom window, he decides that the purpose of dusk is not to facilitate change, but to honor the goodbyes that come with it.

Jeez when did ya become a fancy smancy philosopher, Sunarin? Rin practically hears Osamu tease. Followed by, lemme tell ya about the REAL reasons we have such pretty lookin’ sunsets, ya big hippie. Due to the impact of atmospheric pressure on the diffusion of light molecules…

A text ping interrupts Rin’s thoughts, and he snatches up his phone from where it charges on his bedside table to see a message from Osamu, detailing—rather serendipitously to Rin—the long overdue career conversation he just had with Atsumu. Glancing back at the watchful twilight, Rin wonders if his moody musings aren’t all that misplaced in the end. The rock that pelts the side of his house almost immediately after confirms they aren’t. 

Strolling over to his window, Rin unlatches the hook and swings it open with the expectation of finding Osamu below, but instead he’s greeted by the bruised and brooding face of Atsumu, who, given the timing of Osamu’s text and the freshly flowing blood from his nose, likely came straight here following the fight. “Did he go for your legs?” Rin mocks, as he examines Atsumu’s stance. He’s definitely favoring his right side. “Looks like he did.” 

“I ain’t got time for yer shit, Suna,” Atsumu grouses and gestures wildly for Rin to climb down. 

“Pity,” Rin counters, as he lounges against the window frame and begins devising his response back to Osamu. “Find some.” 

“Quit it,” Atsumu demands. “I need to talk to ya.” In place of his usual petulance is genuine pleading. It’s enough to give Rin pause.

“About what,” he inquires, as he pockets his phone.

“About ‘Samu,” Atsumu asserts, as if Rin knows. He does, but he evades the subject, anyway.

“What about him?” 

“Did ya know,” Atsumu snaps, scalding Rin with his hot honey hurt, before quieting, weakening, surrendering. “About quittin’?” The words are whispered and betrayal biting. Both pierce Rin’s resolve.

“Yeah,” he admits to the ground beneath Atsumu’s shifting feet. “I did.” A silence, heavy with shared sweat and synthetic leather, hangs between them. It pulls on Rin’s drooped head and downcast eyes, as a child would tug on a mother’s dress. 

“How long,” Atsumu asks, cracked lip puffed and puffed chest caved.

“December?” Rin hedges. “He’d been talking about it for a while, but he didn’t really decide until then.” Atsumu offers no response to that. The lines of his expression look like slashes in silk. Ragged and ruined beyond repair. 

“The truck’s parked down by the woods,” he reveals, as his eyes drift towards the amber bathed forest. “Ya got five minutes to get yer ass out there or I’m tellin’ yer parents about how ya cheated on yer pre-calc final.”

“You did the same thing.”

“Three minutes,” Atsumu amends with an anemic version of his typical scowl, “and they ain’t my fuckin’ parents.” With that, he pivots sharply on his left heel and stalks wobbly legged off towards a car he’s too young to drive, but too angry for anyone to stop. Rin knows Atsumu means his threat, but it’s the unspoken one to their friendship that has him dressing to leave in record time.

After barking out a half-formed and half-heard excuse to his sister and parents, Rin jogs up to a familiar ancient red ford parked by the same clearing Rin and Osamu emerged from one fateful evening a lifetime ago. Scarlet stains swiped away by a balled-up practice t-shirt resting in his lap, Atsumu sits sprawled out in the cargo bed with his back pressed against the rear panel and the tailgate dropped. Rin fires off a quick series of texts as he approaches, then stores his phone, as he climbs up wordlessly and drops down beside Atsumu. 

After a moment, Atsumu lazily pokes Rin’s jean’s pocket. “That ‘Samu?” 

His finger lingers and it isn’t removed until Rin answers with a casually feigned, “mmhmm.” In place of his hand, Rin receives Atsumu’s stare. Exhaustion cools the caramel pools of his usual molten magnetism, leaving behind eyes that are flat and heavy. So, so heavy. Rin bears their weight, anyway. 

“I’m gonna assume he told ya what happened,” Atsumu remarks wryly.

“Yeah,” Rin concedes, not offering an apology, but not his usual snark either. 

“Text him that he’s stayin’ at yers tonight,” Atsumu grumbles—drawing his legs in and hugging them close to his chest. As Rin does as he’s asked, the distinction between childish and childlike hits him deep within his belly, for it never seemed starker, sadder than now in Atsumu.

Though for all Rin’s sympathy, he’s never one to resist curiosity. “Why,” he questions with a gentle nudge of Atsumu’s shoulder after repocketing his phone. 

“Because I’m too pissed to look at his dumb fuckin’ face,” Atsumu huffs into his knees, somehow completely meaning it and not at all. 

“Better cover all the mirrors then,” Rin ribs in a vain attempt at normalcy.

The words strike together like coals and familiar fire flares within Atsumu’s eyes. “Ya and I both know that ya’ve never thought we had the same face,” he chimes. 

“You don’t,” Rin says simply, though not easily. Such is the fickle nature of truths.

“It’s funny,” Atsumu remarks and his lips toys with a smile like it’s dangerous. “I’ve only ever met one other person who believes that.” 

“Who,” Rin exclaims. Surprise allows the question to escape his mouth breathless and bare before he can dress it up in his usual velvety monotone. Genuine curiosity prevents Rin from even caring.

“Sakusa Kiyoomi.” Atsumu whispers the name as if it’s a secret, a wish, a dare. 

With a surprised laugh, Rin clarifies, “freaky wrist dude?” He vaguely recalls onyx eyes and hyacinth curls; stiffened muscles and even stiffer words; whirlwind spins and withering defeat.

“The one and only,” Atsumu confirms, and his skin burns as if kissed. “Came up to me after our semi finals loss durin’ the first Interhigh and immediately started roastin’ my game play without mercy or introduction.” At the memory, Atsumu’s smile skips coy and risks a smirk so unabashed, so unafraid, and so undoubtedly for someone else. Rin wonders if he realizes. “I could tell by his descriptions that he knew I was Atsumu,” Atsumu explains and rests his reminiscent reddened cheek on his knee. “But my hair wasn’t dyed yet and I didn’t have my jersey on and ‘Samu wasn’t even around to make me seem more…” His brow furrows and the smirk slants into a scowl. “…like whatever people know me as.” A laundry list of descriptors that Rin finds as inaccurate as they are unkind.

“You ever find out what his trick was,” Rin wonders. 

With a snort, Atsumu says, “he told me only a fool forgets the face of their enemy.” 

“Jesus Christ.” 

“I know,” Atsumu groans and releases his legs. Against the metal floor, they scrape sharp like his tongue. “The bastard scares the absolute fuck out of me.” It’s a truth and a lie; compliment and condemnation; black and white. Never, ever gray. Rin offers him a sympathetic reassurance, though for what, he can’t quite say. Atsumu angles his head heavenward. Fresh drops of moonlight splash against his tanned skin and wash it a cool, cool blue. 

Curious, Rin pokes a teasing finger into his cheek. It’s unbearably hot. “Why does he scare you,” he asks and digs the digit in further. “Not like you get freaked out by a bitchy city boy.”

Swatting his hand away, Atsumu argues, “yer bitchy. He’s a bitch. There’s a difference.”

“And that factors into him scaring the fuck out of you how?”

With a sigh, Atsumu concedes, “I probably should say it’s cuz of his germ thing.” That same daredevil smirk skews his admittance from reticent into rivalrous. “Or mean ass fuckin’ mouth or wicked spikes.” 

“But…” Rin prompts awkwardly—anxiety budding within his chest, as Atsumu traipses down his rose-lined road of memory.

“But,” Atsumu echoes, drawling low and wry, “it’s cuz of what he told me later at the national trainin’ camp.” Fondness and fear flicker within the flames of his gold, gold eyes. “I had asked him about it again,” Atsumu explains. “How he can tell me apart from ‘Samu.”

He pauses and waits for Rin to ask a wholly unnecessary question so he may continue his tale. A need for attention and audience participation masked as conversational balance. Rin wants to withhold it, since learning about Sakusa’s trick feels unnervingly close to exposing his own. However, he looks back at Atsumu—eyes averted and mouth lost in memory—and swallows his dread to spit out his question

“What did he say?”

“That he doesn’t see me as ‘Samu’s copy or his opposite,” Atsumu reveals. “He just sees me.” He breathes it once, then twice, as if to convince himself. “Me.” 

“Is that so,” Rin singsongs with an arch of his brow. 

Atsumu grins woefully, as he drones, “in all my glory and all on my own, Sunarin. Which is not only terrifyin’, but also weird as all hell.”

Without thinking, Rin immediately counters, “I don’t know. I think I understand what he means.”

“Of course, ya would,” Atsumu exclaims with a flamboyant flourish of his hands. Rin half expects it to turn into a point that says got you! “It’s how yer with ‘Samu.” Well, close enough. “Ya know the first real thing ya ever said to me was ‘yer not Miya?’” Atsumu gripes rather than mourns this fact, but cold guilt still slots its fingers in between Rin’s ribs. “And in that moment, I wasn’t,” Atsumu murmurs. “Not to ya. Not when Miya meant ‘Samu.” His voice breaks—brays almost and unveils timid hurt beneath. 

“I was somethin’ else. Somethin’ new. Somethin’ separate.”

“I thought that’s how you guys wanted to be seen,” Rin replies truthfully. 

“Sunarin, I want to be seen differently from ‘Samu, not separate from him.” 

Atsumu sighs, emptying himself of held back breaths and words. They collect at their feet, not unlike blood, not unlike tears. Rin tries his best to cup them as they spill.

“As much as I hate the comparin’ and contrastin’, I don’t know who I am outside of it either. ‘Samu’s always been there, whether by my side or in someone’s mind eye. But—” Atsumu’s voice catches. Rin nudges him. A pull woven into a push. An arm around the shoulders. Atsumu lets the rest flow.

“But not with Omi. Not with ya. Not with anyone soon. In a year, I’ll be the volleyball player and he’ll be the chef. No longer each other’s mimic, counter, or other half, but our own independent wholes. And all fuckin’ alone. I—I don’t wanna be alone, Suna. It’s hard enough feelin’ that way in a shared room, but to actually be alone. Alone, I…” 

Atsumu buries his face into calloused hands that look much like Rin’s, but soon will no longer resemble Osamu’s.

“You’ll never be alone, Atsumu,” Rin asserts with soft certainty. “Just as you’ve never been anything less than complete.”

“To ya,” Atsumu amends into his palms.

“To everyone,” Rin corrects. Snaking a fist into Atsumu’s hair, he lifts his head and forces him to look Rin in the eyes as he proclaims, “now, it’s just easier to see.”

“Ya’ve always been able to see,” Atsumu remarks, as if this notion is grand and his to solve. 

Rin files the blade of his tongue, hoping to cut the conversation short. “Sakusa isn’t the only one with a trick,” he provides curtly and roughly releases Atsumu’s scalp. 

Hair mussed and eyes hooked into the skin of Rin’s scorched cheeks, Atsumu dodges Rin’s pointed dismissal with ease. “What’s yers,” he inquires—lilt all too leading and gaze all too knowing. 

“I don’t know,” Rin replies with a calculated shrug. Stop looking at me.

“Bullshit,” Atsumu screeches and Rin recoils at both the magnitude and volume of the accusation. “I used to think ya were a real good liar, Suna,” he admits with obnoxious wiggle of his brow. “Until ‘Samu pointed out some of yer tells to me durin’ a practice match,” traitor, “now yer easy. So, fess up.”

Rin’s swallowed dread begins to churn within his quivering stomach. All the fleeting touches,  bitten back words, and wandering looks roil together and heave up his narrowing throat. Refusing to let them spill out, they stew within Rin’s mouth—tasting of burnt sugar and gasoline. “Drop it, Atsumu,” Rin snaps. It’s meant to be a demand. It comes out as a beg.

“Omi claims his is with me, says he hates me more,” Atsumu chirps completely unaffected. “Can tell who’s who by the spike of his blood pressure.” Next time Rin encounters Sakusa, he ought to give him a lecture on the damning overlap between love and hate. “Yers is with ‘Samu, isn’t it?” Rin’s heart bangs a swansong into the bones of his chest. “It’s that ya like him more.” 

“I like him differently,” Rin qualifies, almost unable to hear the lie over the cracking chorus of his ribs. 

Careening into Rin’s space, Atsumu’s eyes sharpen into keen slits that scrape over his crumbling cast of indifference. Rin feels skinned alive. “That’s just a nice way of sayin’ more,” he accuses.

“No,” Rin insists. The word falls clunky out of his mouth. A confession chewed up into pieces and he only spits out the safest part. It’s the furthest from reality. 

“Then what is it then?” Atsumu sheaths his sword stare and softens his voice. “What is it?”

Rin rests his head against the rear panel. Above his head lies the whole night sky, yet his eyes immediately and inevitably find the sweetly smiling moon. Too toothy for a crescent, too demure for a quarter, the moon’s grin is liminal and lopsided. Sinfully cool and goofily warm. Rin aches all over. “Just a cowardly to say the truth,” he settles on.

Silence. 

“Say it bravely, then.” 

Rin lulls his head to look at Atsumu, who’s already looking back. His dynamic features, which have never known rest, still into an expression of knowing. Waiting. Expecting. “What,” Rin huffs back.

“The truth.”

“I-I can’t,” Rin sputters in a rare stumble of his tongue and fumble of his façade.

Atsumu whistles, wispy and long, as he tuts, “never knew ya to be a coward, Sunarin.” 

“Maybe, you don’t know me then.” 

“I do,” Atsumu argues gently. “Maybe not like ‘Samu, but I do.” The delicacy of his declaration feels like a slap. The sting burns blissfully. But Atsumu, as he’s wont to do, ruins the intimate moment with an exasperated eye roll, as he snarks, “and even if I didn’t, ya kept my brother’s secret.” Jutting out his palm, he announces, “I’m takin’ yers as payment.”

“That’s not a fair trade,” Rin hisses and slaps his hand away. 

“True,” Atsumu acknowledges, though entirely undeterred. “But all’s fair in love and war.” He gestures referentially to his wounds with a smirk stupidly cocky and unfairly wise. “And the fightin’s all finished so there’s only one thing left to do.”

Rin thinks there’s more than a million. Big and small. Trivial and vital. Easy and hard. Rin could busy himself with an infinite number of things before ever admitting to this one out loud. But he’s so tired of holding his breath.

“I love him.”

“No, Sunarin,” Atsumu coos with a small shake of his head. “Bravely. I said say it bravely.” 

Oh, damn you for knowing the difference.

“I’m in love with him.”

“Yeah, ya are.” Atsumu thumps his arm proudly and it knocks Rin’s heart around the emptied caverns of his chest. This time, as it beats against his sternum, it hardly hurts. 

Still, with his head hung and fingers fidgeting in his lap, Rin can’t help muttering, “it doesn’t bother you?”

Something pops in Atsumu’s neck as he whips his head to look at Rin incredulously. “Fuck no,” he squawks. “Why would it bother me?” The confounded question pricks fondly at the back of Rin’s eyes. Atsumu accepted Kita and Aran without issue or hesitation, but Rin never thought he would extend him the same courtesy, especially given the subject of his affections. Clearly, Atsumu’s offense indicates otherwise. “Of all people, it definitely wouldn’t bother me,” he mumbles, as he turns away from Rin. “And it shouldn’t bother anyone else either.” 

Atsumu stares determinedly out into Rin’s neck of the suburban wood, but his eyes are vacant of his mind. His thoughts wander down a path far, far away from here—perhaps racing by cloud bitten skyscrapers and cherry blossoms trees in pursuit of ebony ringlets and a mean ass fuckin’ mouth. 

Of all people, huh?

“It bothers me, ” Rin jokes. Wryly laughing, he adds, “it fucking sucks.”

With a nod, Atsumu smiles, so unabashed, so unafraid, and so undoubtedly for someone else. Rin thinks they both know exactly why and for who. “Yeah,” Atsumu sighs. “It does.” Something flickers across his face—calling him away from his chase of spindly hands and all-seeing eyes to return to Rin. “Ya know,” Atsumu starts, not quite looking at him, “after the fight, ‘Samu and I both made a promise.” 

Rin’s pinky dances on its own. “Is that so?”

“Yup,” Atsumu confirms. “And I know ya know what Miya promises mean.”

I do.

“What was the promise,” Rin asks.

“To live a life happier than the other,” Atsumu replies. His grin is blister bright and eyes bottled fire. “It’ll be the first and only promise one of us ever breaks.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.” Atsumu says. “Why don’t ya give him a hand with his?”

xii.

earth and moon

The seething of the sand betrays the attacker. It hisses hotly beneath the thudding of bare feet—alerting Rin to a creeping figure that threatens his vulnerably turned back. Each of the attacker’s strides sounds imprudent. Careless. Each shift of earth sounds like a proclamation. Someone’s coming. Closer. Closer. Closer. With two haggard huffs, the beach beneath Rin’s seat incriminates the attacker’s striking stance directly behind him.

He thinks he’s got you.

He hasn’t.

“If you jump on my back, Atsumu,” Rin warns without a wobble of his voice or waver of his gaze from the campfire, “I’ll snap yours like a fucking glowstick.” 

“Damnit,” Atsumu grumbles, as the rest of the Inarizaki volleyball club erupts into giggles. He crosses into Rin’s view and lazily drops his bushel of branches onto the withering embers he and Osamu were tasked with salvaging. The coals crackle and caterwaul as they collide with the collection of broken boughs. An explosion of new life.

“Feels like there might be a metaphor in there somewhere,” Atsumu muses—swim trunks swishing loudly, as he struts across their haphazard campfire circle towards his log nestled between Omimi’s and the one Aran and Kita share. “Like how I shine brightest when people try to break me.” The loud groans that emerge from the entire group are equal parts exaggerated, as they are warranted. Rin hears only the soft steps of Osamu drawing near.

“Please break him,” Osamu drones, empty hand brushing against Rin’s back, as the other assiduously delivers his half of their fire’s fuel. The wood whispers as it curls into charcoal’s side atop their burning bed. A sigh of sweet nothings.

“Shut up ‘Samu,” Atsumu snarks. The shadows of the moon make a mockery of his petulant pout. He snatches a stick skewering an uncooked marshmallow from Aran, whose snickers into Kita’s wind whipped hair morph into a yawn so wide Rin fears he’s in danger of being eaten. Kita, markedly less concerned, simply chuckles, as he rubs circles into Aran’s back. 

A haptic lullaby. A touch without shame. A secret kept no longer. 

Pride lodges itself between Rin’s swelling ribs. Right next to envy.

“How’d ya know it was me, anyway,” Atsumu inquires—as he blindly thrusts his rod into the flames—snack soon to be sable and scorched.

Rin is seventeen.

Not quite truthfully—at least not in the way that matters—Rin remarks, “you have the stealth of a gorilla,” and presses an opened chocolate bar, graham cracker, and pole puncturing a freshly caramelized marshmallow into Osamu’s palms. Accepting it all with reverence and parted lips, Osamu treasures his disassembled treat close to his chest, as he squeezes himself onto Rin’s stump. His body fits against Rin’s like warm water filling a bath. Rin blames the burn of his cheeks on the reborn blaze. 

“Fuck ya,” Atsumu whines, before screeching at his now actively on fire marshmallow.

“Ew,” Rin retorts—cleverness melting with the chocolate slicking Osamu’s careful fingers. 

“Are we just gonna ignore the fact that Suna can identify the twins by their literal footsteps,” Omimi interjects—his signature flat delivery garbled by a mouth full of a double stuffed smore. His question perks the interest of the neighboring Akagi and Gin, who attempt to build a house out of discarded graham crackers and flayed open fluff. Atsumu too joins the fray and momentarily ceases swinging his sugar torch to look Rin directly in the eye and mouth one word. 

“Trick.”

Osamu reads Atsumu’s lips, just as Rin reads his confusion in the stilling of his sticky hands. 

Oh fuck.

But rather than commenting on Atsumu’s silent sneer, Osamu deadpans instead, “are we gonna ignore the fact that ‘Tsumu set his fuckin’ marshmallow on fire again?” Relief washes over Rin cool as the spring sea. Atsumu squawks and resumes his fruitless thrashing once more.

With a smug tug of his lips, Osamu continues his smore ministrations, while Rin levels Atsumu with a field flat look, lilting, “you know, if you do that fast enough, you can almost write your name.”

Wheezing, Atsumu snaps, “if I’m writin’ anythin’ it’s that ‘Samu and Suna are fuckin’ bastards.”

“And proud of it too,” Osamu pipes up, before showing his finished smore to Rin and whispering, “wanna split it?”

Undeterred by Rin and Osamu’s smarm and lost focus, Atsumu still tries to swish out his slander, but his frenetic flailing soon sends his searing marshmallow sloughing off and into the sand. Staring down at its still sizzling remains, he whimpers at its loss.

“Aw. Darn.”

The group bursts into such bright laughter that they turn night into day. Osamu howls violently and knocks both himself and Rin off their shared seat. Tangled in the sheets of sand and each other’s limbs, Osamu manages to save his smore and hold it above their heads in a quickly jellying grip. Without thinking, Rin coils his hand around Osamu’s to reinforce his clutch. It proves futile, as Atsumu marches over, rips it from their quivering fingers, and shoves the perfectly gooey creation into his mouth.

Night returns—darker than ever before.

“Yer dead,” Osamu says, simple as fact, savage as fire.

“Gotta stop cuddlin’ Sunarin to kill me though,” Atsumu jeers and oh that was the wrong fucking thing to say. Osamu’s expression shifts from fierce to feral and he’s off Rin and after Atsumu like a shot—ready to bury his fists then his brother into the ground. Atsumu, above nothing except the sand beneath his feet, sprints for safety behind a groaning Kita and Aran.

Sighing, as Atsumu cowers behind their drowsy drooping backs, Kita chastises, “no murderin’ on our last night together as a team—”

“HA! Take that ‘Samu.”

“—while I’m still awake.”

“Huh?”

“After that, it’s free reign,” Kita warns and Osamu’s sanguinary scowl splits into a celebratory smirk. It churns the heat pooling in Rin’s stomach. A deep reaching current dredging up a long-buried truth. It sits sweet and temperate in his mouth. Five words because three wouldn’t quite do the trick.

Trick.

Aran yawns again and Kita wraps an arm around his sagging waist. Heaving them both to their feet, he announces to the group, “let’s set up for bed.” 

Earlier in the day, they played a game of four vs four beach volleyball. An unofficial passing of the mantle, Atsumu captained one team made up of Kita, Omimi, and Gin, while Osamu led the other consisting of Rin, Akagi, and Aran. They played five sets off and on throughout the afternoon, alternating in wins, until Osamu’s team clinched the final one. Per their agreement at the top of the morning, the losing team must pitch the four tents to be shared between the eight players.

Atsumu seems keener on pitching a fit instead.

A little love drunk and a lot tired, Aran sways and slurs, “yeah, go on losers.” However, his eyes immediately widen, as if struck dumb by his own words, and he presses an apologetic kiss into Kita’s forehead. “Not ya though, Shin,” he mumbles. “Yer not a loser. I’ll set up our tent.”

“I changed my mind,” Atsumu groans in between his mimed gags. “Ya can kill me now, ‘Samu.”

“No can-do loser,” Osamu teases. “Yer settin’ up my tent, then yer dying. Such is the natural order of things.”

Atsumu glowers, looking as if he’s debating the consequences of murdering two of his peers—read: Rin and Osamu—to absolve himself from his part of the bargain. “I should’ve eaten ya in the womb,” he grumbles and stalks over to a familiar red truck still stockpiled with their bags. Omimi and Gin trail behind him at an understandable—read: incredibly large—distance. 

Watching them go, Osamu laughs his full-bodied laugh. It rocks the earth beneath Rin’s back like an ocean’s wave, a child’s cradle, a lover’s arms. It could lull Rin to sleep. 

Rather than that, he watches the shifting of shadows, where the slow shared silhouette of Aran and Kita joins up with the spasmodic shapes of Atsumu, Gin, and Omimi. (“Christ Gin, we’re goin’ to the beach, not fuckin’ war. What’s IN this?” “Shut up, Atsumu.”) Phone held to his ear, Akagi’s form fades from view—washed out by the moonlight as he wanders parallel to and just out of reach of the rolling tide. Body drifting aimlessly with his mind.

Rin lies in the shade of the final shadow. A strong lined shroud stretched and softened by flames’ fingers into a delicate veil—sparing Rin from the fire’s burn. “Wanna go for a swim,” Osamu asks, standing just by his head. “It’s gonna take ‘Tsumu forever to put up both his tent with Gin and ours.” Smoke runs its hands over him like Rin longs too. “Plus, I wanna show ya somethin’.” Osamu extends his palm, still sticky and speckled from the sand. 

Waves sigh. A fire hisses. The wind whispers. They all say the same thing.

Take his hand. Take it.

Rin does.

“Sure,” Rin chimes with expertly fashioned faux indifference. Pulled to his feet, he adds, “I’m curious what this thing is.” 

“Ya’ll have to wait and see,” Osamu taunts, but it’s too timid, too true. Rin waits for him to let go of his hand.

Osamu does.

But only to peel off his t-shirt and toss it onto their abandoned seat. Moonlight slips down the slope of his throat, collecting within the hollows of his collarbones. The overflow spills down his front, sliding down the channels of his carved chest and abdomen to converge together in the v-shaped pool just above the waistband of his swim shorts. 

A picture of cool blue sin.

One that leaves God’s name hot on Rin’s tongue for all the wrong reasons. He swallows it, tasting sea salt and sweat as it goes down. 

Five sweet words still remain. 

“Fine,” Rin grouses, removing his shirt with one swift yank and discarding it with calculated nonchalance on top of Osamu’s. Before the March air can settle into the divots of his exposed skin, a hand—warm and soft—laces together with his own. Fingers brushing over three scars that feel as if they could finally heal.

“How fast would ya say ya are,” Osamu wonders. 

“Faster than you,” Rin jabs back with a grin. 

“Oh-ho, think ya can outrun the cold, then,” Osamu teases with a forlorn glance at the swirling spring sea. 

“Nope,” Rin huffs back, equal parts conspiratorial and giddy.

“Wanna try?”

Silence.

“Yes.”

They launch into a run. Bare feet upturning the earth, they leave behind puffs of sand and huffs of laughter in their wake. The mouth of the approaching ocean sinks its white-water teeth into the shore, scraping love marks into smooth soaked sand. Soon, Rin and Osamu will let it gobble them whole. Towering rock formations crack the obsidian sea glass and reach vainly for the sterling stars overhead. The moon gapes, full and open, at their endearing efforts.

“Gotta be faster than that, Sunarin,” Osamu calls—tightening his grip and picking up his pace. “I might get ya before the cold does.”

You already have.

Rin arms himself with a barb, but the sharp bite of the water rips the snark from his lips—breathless and unformed. “Jesus fuckin’ Christ,” Osamu yelps, ever the eloquent. “This IS fuckin’ frigid.” Rin laughs, the sound tumbling with his stuttering muscles. But they continue to run.

Run.

Wave slams into their knees, climbing up their thighs and even grabbing for their stomachs, though they never get to sink in their fangs. They wade in deeper, clumsily running just out of pain’s reach. “This was a horrible idea,” Rin declares, as a swell tries to cut against his ribs. He leaves the hurt behind.

Still, he can’t help grumbling, “fuck, it’s so cold I might die.”

“Better here than anywhere else, right?”

Rin looks at Osamu, whose vice grip keeps Rin on his stumble numb feet. At Osamu, who runs a little harder, so his body bears the brunt of the waves. At Osamu, who has Rin’s whole heart, and if asked, could have the rest of him too. 

“No place I’d rather be,” Rin says.

Droplets streak down Osamu’s face, smudging his pen stroke smile into something even crookeder and softer. “C’mon,” he urges and pulls Rin towards a nearby stout sea stack. “My somethin’ is over here.”

Switching their course to the side, they alternate between half falling and half swimming towards their destination. Perhaps, it would be easier if they just let go of each other. They don’t.

Chests heaving and limbs shaking, they both clamp their free hands onto the jut out lip of the sea stack—edges rounded, and surface smoothed by continuous embraces from the ocean and wind. Osamu releases his hold on Rin to hoist himself onto the makeshift seat. Rin suffers the collateral damage of his propelling legs. “Sorry,” Osamu murmurs and offers his hand once more to help lift Rin up. With grit teeth grunts and the abject protests of the clinging sea, Osamu manages to heave Rin onto the spot next to him. Their hands twine together again.

Leaning back against the stone, Osamu says, “remember what I said about the best spot to stargaze?” Rin nods. “This is it. Look up.” Rin does and knows immediately that Osamu is right. Here, the universe paints night not quite black, but gunmetal gray. A graphite base where each overlaying brush mark contains a kaleidoscope of cosmic color. Wispy whites and sparkling silvers mottle infinitely overtop strokes of navy and splashes of violet. 

Dark bursting with light.

For once Rin, infallibly laconic, wishes he had more words. He settles for a pathetic, “wow,” and hopes his gaze holds the poetry his mouth cannot. 

Osamu reads it all and grins. “I know.” Absentmindedly shifting his legs through the lapping waves, he says, “one afternoon durin’ a campin’ trip with our family, I went swimmin’ after arguin’ with Tsumu.” Rin watches the memory play out on the silver screen of his stare, as vibrant as the night.

“I got tired and took a rest here.” Osamu gives a punctuative kick on the final word—splashing Rin, who nudges his arm in return. As Rin pulls away, Osamu traverses the gap and leans into him. Touching shoulder to fingertips. The warmest place in the sea.

“I ended up hangin’ out to watch the sunset,” Osamu continues and angles his head skyward. “Then the stars too. Only time I’ve ever willingly missed my dinner.”

“Must be a special place,” Rin replies, half teasing, half dying. 

A bright blush blooms on Osamu’s cheeks. “It’s my favorite place in the whole world,” he reveals. “I thought about showin’ it to Tsumu every time we came back, but I never did. I…” The wind kisses his pink petal skin. A salve for the loveliest wound. Rin squeezes his hand. “I kinda wanted it to be mine,” Osamu admits. “My special place.” 

“Why did you show me?” Five words. Not the right ones, but oh they’re close. They’re so close.

Turning to him, Osamu whispers, “’cuz yer special.” Their noses brush. “Yer my favorite.” The tides tug at their legs. A perennial pull. Rin realizes this is how the moon reaches the earth. “And I think I’m ready to do somethin’ stupid.”

It is time the earth finally reaches back. 

“Ask me,” Rin breathes, raising his other hand—trembling, scarred, and sure—to cradle Osamu’s face. Warm. As he always is. “Ask me how.”

Rin is seventeen.

Barely above a whisper and just shy of a confession, Osamu says, “how do ya know?” His lips graze Rin’s palm. God’s name returns to Rin’s tongue. “How do ya know me?”

How?

Rin is seventeen. 

He can talk endlessly about the life cycles of stars and his affections for his friends. He can say that Osamu’s touch feels like a promise, while Atsumu’s strikes like a dare. A bottle of wine // A champagne flute. An afternoon lullaby // A midnight battle cry. A crack spined book // A handmade roadmap. A wander // A chase. Moon // Sun. I’m in love with you // Thanks for everything.

Rin can say so much more now, but the answer is simple.

“I know your step—quiet and certain.” He threads their legs together.

“I know your smell—clean linen and burnt sugar.” He cups Osamu’s jaw.

“I know your touch—warm and soft.” He crosses their pinkies

“I know your voice—steady and deep.” He traces the lines of his throat.

“I know your smile—lopsided and sincere.” He thumbs at the peaks of his lips.

“I know your eyes—kind and light.” He feels his own sting.

“I know you. And I…”

How?

Rin is seventeen. He tells the truth this time.

“I’m in love with you.”

That is how.

Osamu stares at him, with his lids that perpetually hang at half-mast flying high and wide. His silver eyes crack cataclysmically and their bottled moonlight overflows to wet Rin’s hands. Rin’s hands, which caress Osamu’s honey sun skin. Rin’s hands, which finally know a burn by Miya Osamu. Rin’s hands, which Osamu presses the lightest kiss into.

“Rin,” Osamu breathes, somewhere between a gasp and vow, “I’ve been in love with ya for so, so long .” Wrapping his fingers around Rin’s wrists, Osamu grips them as if they keep him from drowning. Sea stacks forged from flesh and blood that shelter him from the ocean swelling in his chest. His favorite place. “God,” Osamu exclaims—stealing the last piece that lingered on Rin’s tongue. “Can I…” He inhales deeply, digging out the right words from his lungs.

“Can I kiss you?”

Distant voices from the beach prick at Rin’s ears. Lazy banter and fond shouts. They float lightly over the waves, but the eyes that accompany them threaten to drag Rin all the way down to the bottom of the sea. They wouldn’t care, Rin pleads with himself. They don’t care, he corrects.

“Rin?”

“What if people see?” 

Rin flinches at his own question, while Osamu’s hold slackens and the lunar light within his gaze dims. No. Softens. “Oh, Rin,” he coos, somehow sad and smiling. “I don’t care.” He guides Rin’s hands to rest at the junction of his neck and shoulders. Osamu’s pulse—his heart—beats in time with Rin’s own.

“I don’t have anythin’ I wanna hide.”

Oh.

“Not when it comes to ya.”

Oh. 

“Never when it comes to ya.”

Oh. 

“But if ya’d feel more comfortable waitin’—”

Rin kisses him. He kisses him and kisses him and kisses him and Osamu kisses him back. He kisses him with his mouth that is plush and wet and reverent, moving against Rin’s as if it’s worship. One of his hands runs up the path of Rin’s spine—sure and breathless like their walks home, while the other tangles itself helplessly in his hair as their bodies in bed do. 

This is poetry Rin can touch, a confession in motion, an oath reborn.

Or maybe it’s just love.

Osamu’s teeth toy with Rin’s lip, as if to ask, is this okay? Rin answers by licking at the seam of Osamu’s own, saying yes. They kiss open and free—slipping every word they’ve ever swallowed into the other’s mouth with each pass of their tongues. An unconventional love letter to say the least, but one Rin can keep and carry within his body no matter where he goes. The address is simple. One word.

Home.

The notion punches what little remaining sense Rin has left out of him. Gasping, he clambers clumsily into Osamu’s lap and sends them both careening over the sea stack’s edge and into the water. It should be mortifying. It isn’t. They breach through the surface, with giggle riddled limbs that desperately clutch at each other to stay afloat but only drown more together in the process. 

What a fucking way to love. What a fucking way to die.

Slowly, they make their way back to the sleeping beach and seek solace by the dying fire. Rin curls in Osamu’s lap and watches with quiet awe as Osamu warms his palms between his. The meager heat of hands. Rin smiles. Goofy and true. Osamu tells him as such in the whisper he presses into his lips.

“Christ almighty, get a room,” Atsumu groans, but his grin betrays him. “I literally pitched one for ya.” He extends an accusatory finger towards the surprisingly structurally sound tent at the farthest fringe of their campsite. The placement feels embarrassingly intentional.

“Shut up ‘Tsumu,” Osamu snaps, but any heat it could have already seeps into Rin’s skin. “Please don’t tell me ya waited up for us.”

Snorting, Atsumu reveals, “ya think I was just gonna let ya drag Sunarin out to yer special spot—yes I fuckin’ know about it ya stupidly obvious fuck—and not stay up to see what happened?” Atsumu shakes his head in faux woe, tutting, “and Suna dares to call me the dumber twin. Bullshit.”

“Watch it,” Rin threatens, though his smile knocks it so off-kilter that it sounds like a surrender. “That’s my boyfriend you’re talking about.” Slack jawed and bug eyed, Osamu and Atsumu both seem as if they could die at that, albeit for entirely different reasons.

“I’m gonna walk into the fuckin’ ocean,” Atsumu declares.

“Do it,” Osamu replies, wrapping his arms around Rin. “Sleepin’ with the fishes oughta do ya some good.”

With an upturned nose, Atsumu scoffs, “shut yer trap, ‘Samu,” before adding a tad softer, a tad sweeter, “or I’ll eat all the smores I made ya.”

Osamu stills in his embrace of Rin, the lilt of his voice swinging up with the wonder of a wild-eyed child. “Ya made me smores?”

Digging his heels in both literally and figuratively, Atsumu grunts, “yeah, they’re in yer fuckin’ love shack that I apparently made too.” A scowl has never struck Rin as so fond. 

“I’m ignorin’ that,” Osamu announces and rises rickety to his feet. “In favor of thankin’ ya.” He strolls over towards Atsumu, hugging him close and fierce, as he murmurs into his shoulder once, “thank ya,” then twice, quieter, “thank ya.”

“Yeah, whatever dipshit,” Atsumu mumbles, though he doesn’t shove off Osamu’s words or his affection. Instead, he hugs him back, arms and eyes squeezing unbearably tight, as he barely ekes out, “just be happy.”

Osamu’s corresponding sigh sounds suspiciously wet, carrying a small, though not insignificant, “I will. I am.” Atsumu smiles at him a little differently. In place of his hooked high noon grin is something as delicate as dawn’s first light. So fragile that if dropped, it wouldn’t break, but dissolve, slipping between undeserving fingers like sand. Osamu holds it with care. It stays intact. 

After several claps on the back, Atsumu lovingly shoves Osamu in the direction of their tent. The look he shoots Rin keeps him from following. Osamu must snag the tail end of it because he doesn’t question his unwillingness to accompany him. Rather, he reaches the tent and hollers, beaming, “oi!” Rin and Atsumu cock their brows at him in a silent, what? “I think I’m winnin’, ya scrub!”

To Osamu, the only response he receives is Atsumu’s middle finger. To Rin, he hears Atsumu’s hushed confession, meant only for himself and the sea with, “yeah. I think ya are too.” Preceded by a distant hissed zip, Osamu’s night blurry silhouette disappears, leaving Rin alone with Atsumu and his wry grin. “Hey, Sunarin,” he calls—expression hardened, though not harsh.

“Mmm,” Rin hums, coiling his arms around himself to compensate for Osamu’s departure.

“Just so we’re clear about this, if ya break my brother’s heart, I’ll fuckin’ kill ya.” It’s meant to be a warning, but it strikes Rin as something else. A little left of an omen. A little closer to an oath. He replies without mitigation or hesitation.

“I expect nothing less. I’d deserve nothing more.”

Atsumu huffs, swift and merciless, before demanding, “can it with yer fuckin’ valor and shit for a second. I ain’t finished.” Shuffling over until he looms over him, Rin braces himself for the full power of Atsumu’s sun stare but receives only embers. Incandescent, yet intimate. Warm in every sense. “Cuz ya should also know,” Atsumu starts with a cross of his arms, “that if he breaks yer heart,” here it comes , “I’ll fuckin’ kill him too.”

Oh.

Rin’s mouth slips into a second-nature smirk. The grooves well dug and well loved. A mark carved by Atsumu. His friend. “That doesn’t leave us with a lot of options,” he teases, though meaning every word.

“No, it doesn’t.” It’s technically a concession, but the set of Atsumu’s jaw is a challenge. For tonight, for the rest of Rin’s life. I’ll take it. Pivoting crisply on the balls of his bare feet, Atsumu walks determinedly towards his tent with salute in his hand and goodbye in his mouth. Rin plucks both from his grip with a quiet call of his name.

“Hey, Atsumu.”

A groan. “What.” It’s kind.

“Thank you.” I love you.

Atsumu swivels slightly, gifting Rin with a flash of that same smile. Soft as sunrise. Sincere as certitude. “Yer welcome, Sunarin.” I love ya too. Atsumu takes back his salute, tossing it into the air, lazy and proud, and resumes his walk. Just as he reaches the threshold of his tent housing an undoubtedly asleep Gin, he barks out impossibly loud, “now go the fuck to sleep, ya goddamn gremlin!”

Laughing, Rin, for once, does as he’s told without protest. Slipping inside the tent, Rin nearly trips over Osamu’s exploded night bag and goes to curse him for it too, but his snark slides off his tongue in an incoherent giggle at the sight of a furiously blushing Osamu, who sits too straight spined upon the only sleeping bag in sight. Fingers fidgeting with his pajama shirt and a pout to rival all pouts, he whines, “don’t laugh at me, Riiiiiiiin . Tsumu did this shit all on his own.” 

With a graceless fall to his knees that causes Osamu to flinch, Rin crawls over, taking his hands within his own, cooing, “we share all the time.” But Osamu’s shoulders still hang from his ears, so Rin continues, a little gentler, “it’s okay, or I’m okay with it if you are.”

“W-well yeah,” Osamu splutters incredulously. He drops his head, and his silver sea mussed hair curtains his anxious ashen stare. “But I don’t want ya to think I was assumin’ anythin’ or…” The apples of his cheeks are so pink Rin almost wants to take a bite. He settles for an equally satisfying, albeit disgustingly sappy, kiss instead.

“I didn’t,” Rin assures him. “The only thing I thought was how I always sleep better with you.” The tension bunching up Osamu’s expression unfurls, dropping his jaw into a silk soft oh. Blood fills the cups of Rin’s own cheeks, as he adds, both begrudging and eager, “although one night, I wouldn’t mind you assuming.”

“One night,” Osamu echoes and his lips turn over a smile, as if it’s something precious.

It is. 

“One night,” Rin affirms. He stands awkwardly and almost topples over, though Osamu immediately and instinctually braces him with a grip around his hips. Distantly, a kettle whistles in the back of Rin’s brain. As Osamu mindlessly thumbs at the bones, Rin huffs out, “I’m gonna put on my pajamas.” Nodding, Osamu releases his hold and clamps his palms over his eyes in an act of needless—is it though—chivalry that nearly has Rin keeling over.

He stumbles over to his bag and digs out a pair of sweatpants and a dye-stained t-shirt. As he fumbles into them, he glances over at Osamu’s spewing backpack. Amongst the collection of stolen pullovers and chuppets is a pair of space socks. Completely black except for a simple stitching of the earth and moon. “Can I borrow these,” Rin asks, holding out the bundle to Osamu, whose hands still shutter his stare.

“Ya decent?”

“Never.”

“Sunarin—”

“Yes.”

Osamu’s hands fall away and he studies the socks Rin extends towards him. Without a second thought, he shrugs, saying, “sure, ya feet cold or somethin’?”

Plopping down beside Osamu, Rin parrots, “or something,” and slips them on. At the silly wiggle of Rin’s toes, Osamu snorts and pulls the covers over them. They slowly make their way through the small plate of smores Atsumu cooked. Osamu, as expected, disguises his gratitude in criticism.

(“The ratio of chocolate to marshmallow is all wrong, Rin.” “I dunno ‘Samu, I think it looks pretty similar to the one I made you.” “That’s different.” “How?” “Shut up.” “Make me.”) 

Eventually, they bid each other goodnight through breaths and brushes of lips. As Rin settles into the familiar bed of Osamu’s arms, he doesn’t even bother to check the ceiling. Happy, so incredibly happy, to let it remain a mystery. “Sleep,” Osamu whispers and one of his palms lies across Rin’s chest, cupping his heart. 

A voice that Rin realizes may have always been his own says, 

Take his hand. Take it.

“Okay, Rin breathes, lacing their fingers together in a way that their pinkies clasp. A pledge to never let go. To stay. Osamu squeezes Rin’s finger back.

Promise?

Promise.