Chapter Text
Motoya lectured Kiyoomi again last week.
There’s always something that he needs to comment on, like if he doesn’t find something to criticize, he’ll erupt. Kiyoomi knows it’s good-natured, knows that it’s really more of a habit that his cousin has at this point — the crushing desire to make sure Kiyoomi is accepted by all of his peers. He picked up the worry when they were seven, and fifteen years later, it still takes up prominent space in his brain.
This time, it was about ‘making an effort’ and 'reaching out to your new teammates’, something that Kiyoomi knew he had to do but wasn’t particularly keen on.
His high-school team was easy — Motoya did all of the work. Collegiate had a little more of a learning curve, but Kiyoomi was lucky enough to have an easygoing team of mostly introverts. Nobody demanded too much of him, and they worked together like a well-oiled machine.
He joined the MSBY Black Jackals last month and the jury is still out on whether or not it was the dumbest decision of his life.
Moyota thinks it’s a great thing — so great, in fact, that he scolded Kiyoomi for twenty minutes on how he wasn’t taking full advantage of all of its greatness. The MSBY Black Jackals were a family, Motoya insisted — they were one of the closest-knit teams in the league, and Kiyoomi absolutely has to make them like him.
At least, According to Motoya.
Well, it’s not as if Kiyoomi wants his new team to think he’s an aloof asshole. Kiyoomi’s mantra is to maintain his life as a constant stream of peace, and the Black Jackals shatter that like a baseball bat to a glass window, but Kiyoomi can...try, at least, to fit in with them.
So at their next practice, Kiyoomi doesn’t power walk to the locker rooms before Coach Foster has even stopped blowing the whistle. Instead, he positions himself a little ways away from the cluster of his teammates and listens in on their conversation while he stretches.
“You’re lying!”
It’s Inunaki who’s shouting this time. One of them is always shouting — usually Bokuto, though almost just as often Hinata. Miya doesn’t shout, but he whines, and Meian is always yelling at them all to shut up.
Barnes and Tomas are quiet. They’re Kiyoomi’s favorites.
“I’m not lyin’,” Miya insists. Kiyoomi likes everyone on his team well-enough, even Miya Atsumu. He didn’t like him in high-school, but he didn’t really like anybody outside of his team back then. He was going through a really angsty phase — one that Motoya will probably never let him live down. Miya was just too...in his face when they were younger. It stressed him out. He preferred to watch him from afar, making sure no admiration for the way he played showed in his expression.
Miya’s older now. He’s even better at volleyball, and significantly less in Kiyoomi’s face, which he appreciates. He’s no less of a train-wreck, though, and ninety-percent of what comes out of his mouth is certified bullshit. Their team has started grouping them together since Kiyoomi joined because they’re both their own brand of intolerable at times. At their first away game last week, they were thrown into a room together and Miya didn’t once complain about Kiyoomi’s need for cleanliness and a strict sleep routine. He just stuck to his side of the room, and other than some teasing, left Kiyoomi to his own devices.
Kiyoomi doesn’t mind Miya anymore.
“I don’t believe it!” Bokuto booms. Kiyoomi is still trying to figure out Bokuto Koutaro. He beat Kiyoomi out for the ‘top ace’ spot every year, but he appears to be a basket-case. In one-week, Kiyoomi has witnessed him cry tears of joy, sob tears of despair, voluntarily take six laps around the gym to burn off his manic energy, and slink into the bleachers, claiming he has no will to play volleyball anymore. It’s an emotional rollercoaster.
“Someone like you — you’re way too handsome, Tsum-Tsum!”
Kiyoomi’s ears perk up at the conversation. Usually, he can figure out what obscene topic the team chooses for their post-practice stretching talk pretty quickly, but he’s stumped on what they could be teasing Miya about. Everybody teases Miya about everything, but this seems to be a different subject than the usual.
Miya huffs. “Ya think I would purposefully lie to ya about my virginity?”
Kiyoomi fully turns his head now. This is interesting.
In nearly thirty days, Kiyoomi has learned more about his teammate’s sex lives than he could ever want to know. He’s held against his will while they brag about their exploits, and goad everyone around them to do the same. They’re like six-foot twelve-year-old boys, giggling and poking and prodding each other. Kiyoomi doesn’t participate, and since he’s still the new recruit, he gets a pass. He also glares whenever anyone even thinks of asking him, so that helps. Miya has also been avoiding the topic like the plague, but now it seems he’s at the end of his rope. He flushes a light pink, like he does when he’s coming out of the gym, or after a long play.
“Ya think I want ya’ll to clown me? I’m only tellin’ ya so ya won’t bug me about it anymore. I’m serious. Never got around to it.”
Miya drops his head to his knee, appearing to have nothing more to say on the subject.
Hinata isn’t having it though — Kiyoomi has never met a man with such intensity. Hinata is a ball of infinitely burning energy, never faltering for even a moment. Kiyoomi has seen him play through blood gushing out of his nose, only stopping when Meian dragged him off, grumbling about, ‘it’s only practice, calm down!’
“What about other stuff?” Hinata demands to know now. He’s as relentless off the court as he is on it. “You have to have done other stuff.”
Miya shrugs. “Nah, never had time. I told ya, I’m busy.”
Kiyoomi sees Inunaki open his mouth — back on the attack. Inunaki is a libero, that’s for sure. Kiyoomi thinks there must be something about liberos, like they all attend a class on how to be as exhaustive as humanly possible. He’s never met a normal one in his life. “You cannot be that busy. What, do you go home and train more? I mean, even Shoyo has time, and he practically lives in the gym.”
Kiyoomi can see Hinata’s blush from across the room. Miya sniffs indignantly.
“Well, sure, I had opportunities in the past,” he grumbles. “But my brother’s first time was the love of his life and I wasn’t willin’ to lose to Samu in anythin’.”
There’s silence for a moment while everyone tries to process that, Kiyoomi included. It’s weird, but pretty on-brand from what he knows about the Miya twins. Kiyoomi played against them once in their third year, and they bickered through every set but also played like they shared one brain. Inarizaki destroyed them in that game and Kiyoomi still caught a glimpse of the two of them fighting afterward. When he walked by, he heard snippets of the conversation and inferred that they were violently arguing about who had the better serves.
“Isn’t that a little extreme?” Meian hadn’t joined in so far. He tries to stay neutral, as their captain and the self-proclaimed ‘most mature of them all’ (Kiyoomi would argue it’s Barnes, who is married with a child and leaves practice to go do actual adult things, unlike the rest of them), but even he seems to need to comment.
Miya blinks. “Why would it be?”
Nobody seems to know how to answer that.
“I think it’s romantic,” says Tomas, fond. “It’s sweet to save your firsts for somebody you care about.”
“I’m not really savin’ it or anythin’ anymore,” Miya admits, a little sheepish in the way his hand goes to the back of his head to nervously play with his hair. “It was a competitive thing at first, but then I just...forgot about it. I dunno. I just don’t wanna lose it to a stranger. Seems like it wouldn’t be good that way.”
“I still think he’s messing with us,” Inunaki accuses. “We’ve had meetings over your face getting plastered in the tabloids with random women.”
Kiyoomi missed those meetings, but he didn’t miss the tabloids. During his first year as a pro, Kiyoomi remembers at least three scandals involving Miya and various nameless, faceless men and women. He can only imagine the meetings. He met their Public Relations manager on his second day of practice, and she’s terrifying, even to Kiyoomi.
“All the articles call you a playboy!” Inunaki insists.
“It’s all an appearance.” Miya winks, exaggerated, and Inunaki scoffs at him. “I flirt, but I don’t take it any further than that. It’s all in good fun.”
“It’s not fun.” Meian frowns. “We get lectured every time.”
Miya apologizes, but he’s smirking, so it’s not sincere.
“You want me to hook you up with someone, Tsum-Tsum?” offers Bokuto. “Akaashi has a lot of cousins! They’re all pretty like him!”
“Nah, like I said. Don’t got time.”
They badger him for a bit longer, but Miya just waves them away, pretending like he can’t hear them over his stretching. Eventually, they let it go, and the conversation fizzles off. Kiyoomi is left with an overarching curiosity that refuses to fade away. Miya Atsumu — the same Miya Atsumu who went viral for tying a cherry stem with his tongue during an interview last year — is a virgin.
Not only that — Miya hasn’t even been kissed before. Someone like that, who always has his tongue hanging out of his mouth, who always seems to find a way to make any picture obscene, who has very plush, soft-looking lips...has never used them.
Kiyoomi can’t make sense of it. He’s also not quite sure why he cares. He and Miya talk approximately the same amount as he and everyone else on the team do. They’ve shown promise together in their first month, and will almost certainly make a good duo, but Kiyoomi hasn’t really paid him more attention than most.
Maybe he’s so thrown off by the thought because he knows Miya from a different lifetime. The Miya he first met flirted like a menace, spewing off sweet things to anyone in his general vicinity, words that seemed like they would be backed up by action.
Kiyoomi never tested the theory when they were younger. He scowled when Miya turned his charms towards him.
He’s seen it now, too, in the way that Miya draws out his syllables, fluttering his eyelashes with the words, and how he’s touchy in a way that’s just slightly above casual. He doesn’t touch Kiyoomi, but everybody knows better than that.
He’s never exclusively told them how he feels about touch either way — they just assume, and Kiyoomi isn’t exactly going to tell them they have permission to.
He kind of wonders, though, what it’s like to be on the receiving end of one of Miya’s flirty caresses, especially now that he knows they don’t mean anything — they’re just for fun.
They could mean something — Miya is just waiting for the right person.
Kiyoomi thinks about who that could be for the remainder of the night, even right before bed. He doesn’t understand the fascination.
Well, that’s not true — he does. Kiyoomi is fascinated because he’s never cared one bit about the concept of ‘firsts’. His first kiss was a girl at Itachiyama who confessed to him while he was trying to eat alone on the rooftop. She was nice, and Kiyoomi wanted to try and get himself used to things like kissing and holding hands, so he could one day be a well-adjusted adult with functional relationships. It was fine — it was a kiss. He hasn’t thought of it since.
Kiyoomi lost his virginity to a boy in his biology lab his freshman year of college. It was sweaty and awkward and ended simultaneously too soon and not soon enough. He barely remembers his name.
Kiyoomi doesn’t have many firsts left to give, and he’s never cared. There isn’t anything grand or romantic about losing your virginity — it’s a construct. He’s not a relationship person by any means, but if he does eventually get into one, he’s sure he won’t be the other person’s ‘first’ either. They’re adults.
There’s just something...interesting about the fact that Miya has all of his firsts to give, and is willing to give them to somebody who isn’t a stranger.
It almost worries him, the thought of Miya, with high expectations of kissing and sex, getting disappointed by somebody who doesn’t know what they’re doing. It’s ridiculous — why would he care about how Miya feels about something like this?
They’re teammates. That’s a good enough reason. Miya is also like Bokuto, to a lesser extreme — he’s emotional, and it comes out in his game-play. If he were to have a bad experience or get his feelings hurt, then it would affect all of them on the team, and even had the potential to cost them a game.
He goes to bed with the thought resting heavily on his mind, and he dreams about touching Miya Atsumu.
-x-
Kiyoomi has experience with brain worms. He’s a driven person — somebody who needs to finish what he starts, no matter what, and against his will, this thought process has ignited something in him that is going to nag at him until he does something about it. He just...doesn’t know what to do about it.
He doesn’t have any friends he can offer to set Miya up with — actually, he has no idea what type of person Miya is even into. That seems like it would be a good place to start, but how would he find that out? He can’t just outright ask. They aren’t even close to that level of friendship, and if he asks one of the other guys on the team, he’ll be forced to quit volleyball and go into hiding due to the neverending taunting that would result.
He comes up with his idea after practice the next day. He gets home, showers, sinks into his couch and calls Motoya.
“Kiyo! You never call me first!”
There’s a reason for that, but Kiyoomi isn't cruel and he doesn’t want to ruin his cousin’s mood for no reason.
“I wanted to change things up,” he says instead, and he can practically hear Motoya beaming so hard it’s going to hurt his teeth.
“What’s up? How was practice? Are you making friends?”
Motoya talks to him like his mother — actually, Motoya is worse than his mother. Kiyoomi is just like her — straight to the point, not one for unnecessary affection, whereas Motoya was definitely a puppy in his previous life.
“Practice was fine, and yes, everybody is kind, as I’ve told you the last six times you’ve asked.” Kiyoomi hates beating around the bush, but if he just outright asks Motoya what he called to ask, then he’s going to be met with suspicion. “Bokuto, Hinata and Miya live up to their reputations more every day. They’re monsters. Everybody else is extremely competent as well.”
“I can’t wait to play you for the first time,” Motoya sings. “It’s going to be so weird being on the other side of the net! Don’t worry, Kiyo, I’ll go easy on you.”
Kiyoomi snorts. He’s not promising the same — he’s going to crush Motoya, just to make up for endless years of his critiques and nitpicks. This is a good transition, though, and he latches onto it. “You’re on a team with Suna Rintaro, yes?”
“Yeah! Rin is the best!” Motoya cries. “He’s hilarious, and Kiyo, he knows everything about pop culture. He’s like a walking gossip magazine.”
An image of the dead-eyed, slouching man comes into Kiyoomi’s head and he can’t reconcile the description, but he doesn’t comment. “He was on Inarizaki. Do you know if he was close to Miya Atsumu?”
Motoya doesn’t answer at first, and when he does, it’s sly. “Why are you asking about Atsumu?”
“I’m trying to get to know my teammates,” Kiyoomi answers, dry. “Answer my question.”
“Alright, alright,” Motoya huffs. “You’re no fun at all. Yeah, Rin is best friends with the Miya twins. He has the funniest stories about them. Oh, one time, Atsumu —”
“I don’t need to hear the story,” Kiyoomi insists. He’s heard plenty of stories about Miya already and he’s sure he’s in store for many, many more. “I’m wondering — and don’t read into this wrong —”
“Oh, I’m going to.”
“I know you’re going to,” he sighs. “Does he know what type of person Miya may be...interested in?”
Motoya is silent and Kiyoomi is considering hanging up, because the longer Motoya stays quiet, the louder he is bound to be when he finally gathers his thoughts. He needs to charge before he screeches into Kiyoomi’s ear.
“Are you trying to ask Miya Atsumu out?”
“No,” Kiyoomi hisses. “Don’t be ridiculous. I just — there was a conversation.”
“Kiyo, I can’t believe you have a crush on Miya Atsumu, of all people! He’s not your type!”
“He’s not,” Kiyoomi agrees through gritted teeth. “Which is why I’m telling you I’m not asking for me. He was telling the team the other day about how he’s never — been with anybody, and I just thought I could help him by setting him up with somebody. That’s all.”
“That’s suspicious,” Motoya comments lightly.
“I’m only doing what you asked me to do — cultivating friendships with my teammates. Friends set each other up, do they not?”
“I’ve tried to set you up at least fifteen times in the past five years and you’ve never once agreed.”
“We’re family.”
Motoya laughs. “Well, I’m sure Rin knows the type of person Atsumu’s into. I’ll ask him right now.”
“Don’t tell him why you’re asking,” Kiyoomi blurts.
“Oops,” Motoya answers. “I already sent the text. There’s nothing wrong with doing something nice for your friends, he won’t think it’s weird!”
Kiyoomi shouldn’t have even considered going to Motoya for help. He’s a menace.
“Oh, he responded!”
Kiyoomi squints at his phone. “It’s been thirty seconds.”
“Yeah, that’s Rin,” he chuckles. “He’s on his phone a lot. He said that Atsumu likes…‘pretty boys with nice nails and women that could beat his ass’. That’s a direct quote.”
Kiyoomi absently looks down at his manicured nails and then blinks, trying to comprehend why his brain thought he should check if he matched what Miya liked.
“Interesting,” Kiyoomi answers. “That doesn’t tell me much.”
“I dunno who you’re gonna hook him up with anyway,” Motoya muses. “You don’t exactly have a group of eligible bachelor or bachelorette friends.”
“I have friends from college,” Kiyoomi protests, but it’s a weak argument. His very small group of friends from his university are all in committed relationships, and even if they weren’t, they would laugh in his face if he suggested Miya Atsumu to them.
“Not that I’m encouraging this,” Motoya begins.
“There’s literally nothing to encourage.”
“— but maybe you two might end up liking each other!”
“I told you, this has nothing to do with me. I have no interest in Miya.”
“I don’t think you’d be asking me this if you had no interest at all. You definitely have a little.”
“Not even the slightest bit.”
“He’s cute for sure,” Motoya continues like Kiyoomi hasn’t spoken. He does that — steamrolls over him because he knows he can get away with it. Kiyoomi can only sigh and buckle in for the conversation. “And, I said he’s not your type, but I’m rethinking it now. I think you two would really balance each other out. You’re both insanely intense in different ways, so maybe together you’d make a normal person.”
“Are you done?” Kiyoomi asks, clipped.
“No, not yet. Also, dating your teammate may seem dangerous in practice — ha, kind of a pun there, anyway — it’s probably more convenient than anything. You two live near each other, you spend all of your time together, and you have to be able to tolerate each other for the benefit of teamwork. It’s kind of a perfect idea.” He pauses to breathe and contemplate, no doubt imagining some sort of nonsensical scenario.
“It can’t be a perfect idea because I am not dating Miya.” Kiyoomi wonders if he phrases it differently, will Motoya understand?
“I guess you don’t have to be super serious about it. You could just hook up.” He says it so offhandedly, like he’s telling Kiyoomi about a new restaurant he should try, or discussing gameplays. “What’s with the judgemental silence? Everybody hooks up, Kiyoomi.”
“Obviously, I know that,” Kiyoomi snaps. “I’m not the virgin in this scenario.”
“Well, how would I know? You never share anything with me, and you know — it hurts.”
Motoya could be teasing, or he could be genuinely hurt. He’s dramatic enough to be. “Look, I’m not going to hook up with my teammate. There is not even a little bit of interest there. I regret telling you that I wanted to help him at all.”
“Aw, don’t be like that. Grumpy Kiyo is no fun,” Motoya mocks him in a baby voice. Kiyoomi pouts, glad he’s on the phone and not face-to-face because that would only egg him on more. “I’ll tell Suna to keep an eye out for potential suitors for your teammate, since you’re so worried about him.”
“Thanks,” Kiyoomi says, as scathing as humanly possible. “Goodbye now.”
“Wait! I haven’t told you every detail of my day yet!”
Kiyoomi hangs up on him. Motoya is entirely too ridiculous to be related to him. They must’ve gotten the infants switched at the hospital, or he’s an alien plant. Something. He must be, to suggest something as ludicrous as Kiyoomi hooking up with Miya.
It’s completely unreasonable, totally insane to even think about it.
And yet.
Kiyoomi hasn’t had time to hook up with anybody recently, and it’s not like that fact bothers him — he’s satisfied with his life as is, busy and solitary, but…
Miya is objectively attractive. It’s not something Kiyoomi thinks about, but he has eyes. He could say the same thing about Bokuto or Hinata, or really anyone on their team — professional athletes have to keep up a regime of self-care that makes it hard for them not to be pleasing on the eye, but Miya...Miya has been handsome since high school.
Kiyoomi shoves a pillow over his face, unsure of why he’s even entertaining the thought at all. Even if he was interested in — taking Miya’s firsts, he has no idea how he would even approach it. In the past, all of his hook-up situations have started because somebody approached him. Kiyoomi isn’t sure he has the social skills to actively solicit someone for sex, especially when the reason is so the other person doesn’t have to lose their virginity to a stranger.
The obvious answer is to table the idea altogether. Miya’s sex life is none of his business and should be of absolutely no interest to him. He won’t bring it up again.
-x-
Kiyoomi brings it up.
For his whole life, Kiyoomi has excelled in self-control. He’s the obedient son, the stellar student, the determined and disciplined volleyball player. His routines are important to him; they make him who he is, and he very rarely ventures away from them. He doesn’t do impulsive things, like linger in the locker room three days after the conversation, once everyone from his team has gone home — everyone but one Miya Atsumu, who takes so long getting himself ready to leave that he may as well sleep in the gym.
Miya notices him right away. “Oh, Omi-kun! You aren’t usually here so late.”
“I wanted to talk to you.” Stalling has never been Kiyoomi’s style, and for someone like Miya, he’s sure that can be jarring. His eyes widen a bit in surprise, but he leans against the locker, trying to appear relaxed.
“Alright, shoot.”
“It’s about what you said earlier in the week. About...first times.”
Miya’s eyebrows practically shoot up into his hair. “What about that?”
Kiyoomi spent the majority of the last three nights thinking about how he was going to phrase this. He lost sleep over it, and he’s still not one-hundred percent sure of how he’s supposed to proceed. He can’t turn back now, though. “You said you didn’t really care about the sentimentality of it all, but that you didn’t want to lose it to a stranger.”
“I was there, Omi, I remember what I said.” Miya peels himself away from the lockers, assessing Kiyoomi with a curious stare. “What’s yer point?”
“My point is, if you just wanted to get it over with, I’m not necessarily a stranger.”
Miya’s eyes light up like a sunrise, and he grins. “Are ya askin’ me out, or?”
“No, nothing like that,” Kiyoomi corrects him quickly. “Just an arrangement of sorts, something beneficial to you, so you could accomplish eliminating all of your firsts.”
“Beneficial to me?” he repeats. “What d’ya get out of it?”
Kiyoomi shrugs. “The peace of mind that comes from knowing you won’t go hook up with some idiotic stranger who is going to affect your emotions and therefore, your gameplay.”
“Is that it?” Miya prods.
“It’s simply a way to ensure the harmony of the team.”
“All of yer fancy wordin’ doesn’t change the fact that ya wanna kiss me,” Miya sings, gleeful now, and Kiyoomi is beginning to regret this plan and his entire existence. He forgot that Miya is Miya, but he carries on before Kiyoomi can backtrack. “Ya know, I really am sick of gettin’ teased by everyone. It’s all they ever talk about. I mean I get it, I’m human, but sometimes, I think they like sex more than volleyball.”
Kiyoomi hums, noncommittal. Miya continues, “I can’t pretend like I’m not interested in findin’ out, but relationships seem like more trouble than they’re worth when I’ve already got so much goin’ on.” He pauses. “But an arrangement. We could make that work, couldn’t we?”
“Yes,” Kiyoomi answers, and if his voice comes out the slightest bit strained, it’s not because Miya has taken a step closer to him. “It’s just...helping a teammate out.”
“Who knew you were so selfless, Omi,” Miya teases, and he takes another step. They’re closer than they’ve ever stood and Kiyoomi can see the slight freckles on Miya’s nose, the dimple in his left cheek, the smallest bit of peach fuzz on his chin. “So sweet of ya, to worry about me.”
“Mhm,” Kiyoomi murmurs because his eyes have now fallen to Miya’s lips. It really is a shame that they haven’t been kissed more. They’re so inviting. “What do you think, then?”
“I think ya know my answer, don’t ya?”
Kiyoomi does, and he’s already done enough overthinking about this. It’ll just be a simple peck — a kiss among colleagues. Kiyoomi doesn’t kiss his friends, and he’s not sure if he could even classify Miya as more than an acquaintance, but people do that. He’s seen Hinata do it with his old teammate, Kageyama.
Instinct is easier than trying to rationalize for too long, so he turns off his brain for the time being and presses his lips to Miya’s.
It’s quick. Kiyoomi doesn’t think anything of it, other than the fact that Miya does have very soft lips, just like he assumed. It’s over before he can truly consider that, and when he pulls away, Miya is smiling at him — dopey and a little star-struck.
Kiyoomi wonders if it’s too late to change his mind.