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Atsumu's knees protest when he stands up.
They've been doing that a lot more these days; the joints crack and pop like they're finally getting payback for the years he demanded so much— too much —from them. Because there was once a time when he was twenty and young and in-shape, whatever that means, and now there's a time when he's none of those things at all.
Atsumu's knees protest when he stands up, and then one buckles slightly, just enough, and he's not fast enough to catch himself on the low table taking up most of his apartment floor. He had been drinking the second half of the warm beer he'd failed to finish the night before, but now he isn't because the contents of the glass have managed to escape their prison in his accidental stumble.
The tatami gulps his beer like it'd been waiting for this to happen. Maybe it had.
He's out of beer.
He's also out of paper towels.
The 7/11 is still open, even at this time of night. Maybe it's even more open than usual. The light from the sign illuminates the street and the fluorescents inside make him squint when he enters.
He grabs a roll of paper towels and throws it in his basket. His basket. He came to the convenience store for one thing but he grabbed a basket.
Samu loved convenience stores, back when they were twiggy kids fighting to hold the money their granny had passed to them. She'd wiggle it in their faces like she could hypnotize them into behaving. And she could. They would shut up for a couple hundred yen.
Then their prices went up. Then they were gangly teenagers with oily faces and oilier hair, and Samu still loved convenience stores, even if he was no longer satisfied with just one small bag of something salty.
Atsumu wonders if Samu ever feels like this, under the harsh artificial light. He wonders if he ever spends so long staring at paper towels that he forgets its evening outside, not just dusk, and forgets that there's no Aran or Suna or Gin waiting out on the curb for the twins to shut up and buy their post-practice snacks already. He wonders if Samu ever turns to talk to him before he remembers he isn't there.
It's not like he doesn't work shifts at his brother's restaurant, though they don't overlap since Samu's rarely at the Tokyo branch, and it's not like Samu can get rid of Atsumu any more than Atsumu can get rid of Samu. But he's feeling nostalgic (and maybe a bit lonely) so he grabs two chocolate bars because it's what he's used to. It's muscle memory: fingers snagging everything in pairs because that was how his life went until he was twenty, and that's what he remembers most vividly, even if it's been almost twenty-five years since then.
It's strange what things the body remembers. Some mornings Atsumu feels like his has forgotten how to roll out of bed or cook a meal or take out the trash. Things he needs to do to survive. But if a volleyball came flying at his stomach right now—here, in the 24-hour 7/11 a couple blocks from his tiny and overpriced apartment—he would rock back on his heels and sink low enough to launch it with a perfect ten-fingered set.
He'd set it right into those goddamn lights that sear into his retinas and pound in his temples. He'd set it through the rafters and the roof, into the restaurant that lives upstairs, and he'd do it without dropping his basket or tipping a display cart.
He probably looks manic right now. His face must be doing the thing it's always done when he thinks about volleyball. He knows he's wearing the expression he used to have before a serve; the one where his pupils dilate and intensify and where his tongue darts out to moisten his lips.
But then it falls. It slips away again, into storage, like his kneepads (never worn) or his Olympic medal (lightly worn). Because the front door shifts open again, admitting another exhausted person desperate for late-night supplies.
"Omi," Atsumu says, like it hasn't been forever.
There's too long of a pause before: "Miya."
A tinge of hurt. Embarrassment? Atsumu counters it with words. "Obviously. But which one? You've got a 50/50 chance."
(Samu's never used the name "Omi'' a day in his life. And the twin schtick doesn't work so well for them these days, what with Samu's healthy glow and round, smiling cheeks.)
"The annoying one," says Sakusa— Sakusa, because he isn't really the Omi that Atsumu used to know.
"Doesn't narrow it down any."
Atsumu's stuck. He's trapped. He can't tear his eyes away from those same two moles, from the streaks of gray that have evolved from the stray strands he'd already had in his twenties, from the way his hair curls low on his neck and kisses his shoulders, like Sakusa thinks wearing it long will detract from the uptight, stuffy atmosphere he always gives off.
"Why're you out so late?" Atsumu asks, partly to fill the uncomfortable silence and partly because he genuinely wonders, genuinely kinda cares.
"I ran out of flour," Sakusa replies, because he doesn't make sense, has never made sense, and probably won't ever make sense to anyone but himself. "And matches."
"I've got flour. And I've got matches." A trap, masterfully laid. He adds: "They're free." Because he may not know Sakusa, but he knows Omi, and Omi was frugal to a fault—a borderline cheapskate.
"Well, if you're offering." Sakusa turns, fiddles with a home and garden magazine on a shelf by the door. "I'll wait."
It's a two-second jog to the counter to pay, but it feels like stepping onto the court before a match. Adrenaline pumping. Palms sweaty. And Omi waiting on the sidelines.
He gives the sleepy cashier the exact change and doesn't think about the black mask tucked under Sakusa's chin or the way he feels more compact now despite the insane span of his shoulders or the fact that there are wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and Atsumu will never know if he's at least partially responsible for them.
They walk back in relative silence, but it's only relative because Atsumu's mind is sprinting half a block ahead of them, wondering what Sakusa's been doing in the thirteen or so years since they last spoke. He was supposed to text—they both were actually—but Atsumu's still never made a habit of checking his phone regularly and Sakusa's never been very verbose in messages anyway, so maybe it doesn't matter. Maybe they're both thinking the same thing. They used to do that, on the court.
As he unlocks his front door, he asks, "Are you still playin'?" because everything has always been volleyball with them. It was the most important thing. Never to be compromised.
"I retired a year before you," Sakusa clarifies, and Atsumu almost snaps I know, but they weren't on the same team by that point, so Sakusa probably assumes he hadn't kept tabs on him.
(Except that he had, and judging by the fact that Sakusa remembers the year Atsumu retired, it might have been mutual.)
Atsumu kicks his slip-ons into the cupboard and hurries to mop up his beer spill, doesn't have to look to know Sakusa sets his own inside in a careful stack with laces pressed to laces.
To try and salvage his already frayed tatami, Atsumu had thrown a shirt onto the puddle. So now he grabs it and rushes it to his room, hides it under half the laundry pile, takes a second to spray a quick blast of air freshener. Pauses. Sprays another blast and steps through it himself.
(He feels seventeen again, getting ready for his first Real Date, trying to argue with Samu who is peering over his shoulder and reminding him to use more deodorant and even dab on some cologne before he goes.)
(He feels nineteen again, hopping off the bus at the MSBY gymnasium and trying to hang up his phone when his fingers are shaking, because he needs to get into the right headspace for tryouts and even Samu's rare offering of honest encouragement isn't helping right now.)
(He feels twenty-one again, crumpled on the counter of Onigiri Miya, dead-certain that he'll master his new serve but not-so-secretly terrified that he won't, at least, not in time, and trying to express his fear around a mouthful of fresh onigiri.)
He feels twenty-two again, walking out and seeing all 192 centimeters—or maybe fewer now—of Sakusa Kiyoomi after years apart; seeing him hunched over, scowling for no reason, and scrubbing at a stain only he can see.
But they aren't in a gym this time. There's no squeak of rubber on laminated wood. And there are no volleyballs, no matter how desperately Atsumu yearns for one.
One what? One anything. One more toss, one more spike, one more match, one more season.
Forty-four-year-old Sakusa looks like he's got it all figured out. He can clean wet tatami without shredding it, and he can look handsome and imposing and exactly like he's long since learned the answer to the question Atsumu's never stopped asking himself: What comes next?
Atsumu stayed a year longer than Sakusa had, though according to his critics he really shouldn't have. He's lucky, one article said. He's lucky he can still say he retired on his own terms and that an injury didn't take him out first.
"You didn't hafta do that. I was gonna get it," Atsumu says to break the silence.
Omi would have said, "Since when would I trust you to clean something properly?" with no bite to his tone, just mild amusement.
But Sakusa stands up with knees that pop like Atsumu's but louder and shrugs listlessly. "I don't mind."
"Hope I'm not keepin' you past your bedtime." He moves to grab his flour and his matches, in case Sakusa needs an out. "Got anyone waitin' up for you at home?"
Sakusa snorts in a way that could be construed as something resembling a laugh, and it's so painfully familiar that Atsumu nearly closes a cabinet on his fingers. "Very subtle, Miya." His voice muffles slightly as he pulls up his mask. "I'm just in the city to visit Motoya. So, no, my empty hotel room can wait."
"You moved away then."
A nod. "I thought I'd like the fresher air. Fewer people."
"Do you?"
Sakusa stares at him for a long moment, like he's trying to say something but the words won't come out right. He never had to do that before. He'd say whatever was on his mind, rude or rambling or risqué, and Atsumu would figure it out.
"You stayed in the city," Sakusa says instead.
Atsumu rolls his eyes. "Subtle. And yeah. Thought it'd keep me from gettin' too lonely."
"And did it?"
No one brings out his competitive side quite like Samu and Sakusa do. Atsumu meticulously picks at a piece of dried food on the edge of his sink and says, "I saw you in 7/11 and practically smuggled you to my apartment at midnight. What do you think."
For want of something to do, he starts making tea. He grabs two cups, easy as breathing. Two tea bags. Autopilot.
Once he looks up again, Sakusa is staring at him, really staring, like he's trying to figure out if he actually knows the man who lives in this apartment or if he's been tricked into entering the house of an untrustworthy stranger.
When it becomes clear that Sakusa won't stop looking just because he's been caught, Atsumu finally drawls, "Whaddaya want?"
"Whatever you're having," says Sakusa, like he thinks Atsumu's referring to the tea.
Atsumu rolls his eyes again.
Sakusa hums. "You still do that."
"Do what."
By way of answering, he rolls his eyes back.
"Not really. It's your fault. I kicked that habit a while ago."
"When?" Sakusa asks with clear disbelief.
"When I stopped bein' pretty enough to get away with it." It's sarcastic, really. He doesn't mean it; it's just the first thing out of his mouth, and he hasn't really been socializing with people who aren't Samu or his doctor or his physical therapist, so he's a bit out of practice with the comebacks.
Doesn't explain why Sakusa's brow wrinkles, further etching creases into the skin there. "You stopped bleaching your hair."
"Course." Atsumu lays the flat of his palm against his forehead. "Tryin' to protect what's left of it."
"It's shorter too."
"Uh. Yeah. I guess," he says, feeling oddly scrutinized even though he's been doing the same thing to Sakusa since they first made eye-contact. (Not just tonight. A while ago, in Samu and Atsumu's oily convenience store years, when they stood across from an even oilier Sakusa with only a net to try and block out the shine from three sweaty faces.)
Sakusa's eyes dart from the boiling water to the sack of flour to the front door like he's debating whether or not to just leave. Atsumu lets him. He waits. He stays leaning against the counter and tries not to make any rude comments in return.
Something like conviction flashes across Sakusa's face, and there. He can still do it. It doesn't matter how long it's been, Atsumu can still read the microscopic innuendos Sakusa's hidden in plain sight, because he knows where to look.
"You used to smile more," Sakusa finally says. Atsumu visibly stiffens, so he quickly amends: "It was usually a smirk but..."
When he pulls his mask down, he's still Sakusa, but when he takes it off altogether, peels off his old-man cardigan, and moves to the kitchen to help pour the tea—
—that's all Omi.
Miya Atsumu stands at his kitchen counter and watches Omi navigate the space like he lives there. He watches him wash his hands (still til the count of sixty), pull crackers from the cupboard (the very first door he tries), and pop two in his mouth at once (he doesn't look away).
Atsumu's body forgets how to blink, how to breathe.
"Do you remember," Omi asks through a mouthful of crackers, "the time in Sendai when we went out for drinks with the Jackals and the Adlers?"
He takes a moment to consider before carefully saying, " We were the Jackals, Omi."
"Mm."
"And yeah, nothing specific, but I guess I kinda do."
Omi reaches back in the box. "I don't."
"But you just brought it up. Why wouldja mention it if—" Omi shuts him up by forcing a cracker into his mouth.
"I remember the match though."
Atsumu stares at him. He gets ready to speak again, but Omi's shoving in another cracker before he can.
"It was always about volleyball back then."
Because it was. Because their careers were the most important thing to both of them, and because neither of them had fully grasped the fact that all good things come to an end, no matter what Omi liked to prattle on about in the locker rooms. He might have finished his career feeling satisfied with his efforts, but Atsumu's been left with an itch he can't scratch.
He can't find fulfillment in his own brother's restaurant or in his personal vacations spent doing absolutely nothing like he'd always thought he'd enjoy. The community team didn't feel the same, and he remembers catching himself before old, ugly habits could rear their heads; before he could snap at someone slacking off or not jumping high enough or just plain sucking at the sport.
He remembers six months after his retirement, sitting in the newly renovated dining area of Onigiri Miya's Hyogo branch as Samu testily said, "If you aren't careful, I'll end up beatin' you after all," in reference to their old high school argument—the Bad One—where Atsumu swore he'd live the happier life just so he could could rub it in Samu's stupid face. And when Atsumu had snorted and ignored the attempt to rile him up, the only thing he'd known about Samu's face was that it was twisted with actual concern.
Because all Atsumu's ever had has been Samu and volleyball. And no matter how dramatic his twin-cum-boss's-boss says he's being, he lost one of those in high school. And then he lost the other about a decade and a half later.
"Shouldn't it've been? Wait. What'm I sayin'. You went to university. You're probably in your second career by now." Atsumu watches Omi pour the water over the tea bags with careful precision. "What's it all about now? Engineering? Literature? Astrology?"
" Astronomy, " Omi hisses, and there it is, some of his old bite. Atsumu's wondered where it had gone, what had filed down Omi's secret rough edges. Probably the same thing that had turned Atsumu's smiles and smirks into precious commodities.
"Star shit," Atsumu acquiesces, quoting himself from their MSBY days.
"You're insufferable," Omi says back. But it also sounds like it used to, with affection bubbling just under the surface, deep enough to deny if confronted but obvious enough not to doubt.
Atsumu takes his mug and the crackers back to his low table on the floor, and Omi follows with his own drink. It's so easy, so natural, and Atsumu can't tell if that's because he doesn't care about the coy art of flirting anymore or because they really do fit so well.
"Didn't wipe off the table," he mumbles into his tea. Shit, he's sleepy. A warm drink makes him all too aware of his drowsiness.
"It's fine, Atsumu." Omi doesn't touch it or set his cup on it, but he also doesn't stand up and clean it himself. In fact, he hasn't done any cleaning in Atsumu's apartment, besides the obvious beer spill and washing his own hands before touching food. That's what tells Atsumu, in the end.
That's what tells him that Omi still sees Atsumu as clean and safe, a tide-over from when they were roommates maybe, and that's what tells Atsumu that Omi's in just as deep as he is.
The crackers sit untouched, and Atsumu sits cross-legged on the floor of his apartment, simultaneously wired and exhausted, watching Omi glance at him over the rim of his mug and make a decision. He lowers his tea and leans toward Atsumu, just the slightest bit: a question, a request.
"Yeah," Atsumu breathes as he sets his own drink down. "But don't—"
Omi stops his approach immediately. "'Don't' what?"
He isn't sure. He doesn't know. Can't articulate it. So he says whatever's on his mind, without care for how rude or rambling or risqué it might be, and trusts Omi to understand. "Don't do it like before."
The tilt of an eyebrow asks a lot. It asks don't you think I've gotten better? and it asks you think I remember how I used to do this? and it asks how can you be picky about a kiss right now? or maybe it just asks him to shut the fuck up.
Kissing Sakusa Kiyoomi again is like being every iteration of Atsumu's past at once. He's himself as a jealous teenager and a horny young adult, and he's himself as a heartbroken adult and a depressed ex-athlete.
But he's mostly present-day Atsumu, who has decided the contact of two lips isn't enough when he can get all ten fingertips to press into Omi's long two-tone hair, weaving through curls so wiry they border on sharp, until his hands mold around Omi's head and cradle it gently, and he can admit he's been so lonely lonely lonely lonely lonely
It's not a record-breaking kiss, but it tastes like chamomile tea and salty crackers and those memories his high school motto seemed certain he didn't need.
"I'll walk you to your hotel in the morning," Atsumu whispers in the small space between their faces.
"Not a chance. I'm heading back tonight."
"I swear," says Atsumu. "We just sleep. That's it. You can trust me."
Omi looks at him with tired but amused eyes. "I know. But I don't know if I can trust myself." He pulls away. "Look at you, Atsumu."
And for once it's not derisive. Atsumu feels his ears heat at the implications.
"I'm visiting Motoya again in three weeks."
"Three weeks?"
"I'll send you the dates."
Atsumu glances at the clock on his coffee maker. "How far's your hotel?"
"A short walk from the 7/11... in the opposite direction." Omi's face takes on a hint of a sheepish expression.
"Don't forget the flour and matches." Atsumu pauses, then figures he loses nothing by asking more. "Why'd you need those in the middle of the night in the first place?"
Omi stands—hip cracking this time—and carefully picks his cardigan back up. "If you must know, I spilled wine on the carpet."
"Flour's not gonna do you a lot of good by now."
A resigned shrug. "I know. I suppose I'll pay for the cleaning service," sighs Omi, still cheap as ever.
Atsumu walks him all four steps to the door and watches as he carefully unstacks and ties his shoes. "But why the matches?" he presses.
There's only silence as Omi opens the door; then he turns just enough to show off the wrinkles by his eyes as he shoots Atsumu his own mysterious smirk. "Three weeks, 'Tsumu."
"Three weeks," he repeats.
Omi walks off without looking back, and Atsumu shuts his door before he's fully out of sight, but when he picks up the mask that was left behind and sees his reflection in his tv screen, Atsumu notices the quirk of his lips and a hint of an exposed canine looking back it him.
(He calls Samu.)