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Shouyou learns Atsumu in sticky notes with small doodles around the edges, learns him in the way that his nose crinkles before he laughs, and he learns him in the way he takes special care to massage and stretches his fingers because “what kind of setter would I be if I didn’t, Shouyou-kun?”
Atsumu learns Shouyou in sticky notes with heavy writing that always bleeds through the paper, learns him in the way that his eyes glow from the kindness that burns through his veins, and he learns him in the way that he spins in the air with glitter that catches the light like wings unfurling in the open air.
Of course, Atsumu has heard of Hinata Shouyou. By virtue of being a professional athlete in Japan, he’s heard of Hinata Shouyou. But that doesn’t take away from the sheer amount of people who have become obsessed with Hinata, the up-and-coming gymnast with hair just as vibrant as his sunny smile.
Atsumu initially didn’t understand the hype. Privately, he thinks the man is only so well known because of the unusual color of his hair. Why does Hinata Shouyou matter? Well, Atsumu’s mom is obsessed with gymnastics, and always has been. She watches what she can live on TV, and she treats herself to tickets for meets whenever she can find time to go to them in person. Atsumu and Osamu buy her tickets for the Olympic Team Trials and she begs them to accompany her.
They go, and Atsumu sees orange hair burning under fluorescent lights as Hinata Shouyou steps onto the mat with his teammates. They go, and Atsumu watches Hinata Shouyou push off his hands into a soaring jump, the lights catching on the glitter of his uniform, and Atsumu thinks he can see wings.
It’s over too soon, so, can you really blame Atsumu for what happens next?
Does Atsumu linger longer than he should on Hinata’s Instagram posts afterward? Maybe. Does he take the time to watch Hinata Shouyou’s interviews when he has trouble sleeping? Of course not. Does he think about Hinata Shouyou way too much after the trials? Uh. Sort of.
Then, the Olympics happens. He had definitely been told that teams are usually split amongst themselves for the dorms in Olympic Village. Or at least that’s what Atsumu tells himself when he opens the door to the room he’s been assigned and he’s greeted by the sight of legs spread out across the floor in a split that almost seems physically impossible.
Orange hair flutters as the man stretched across his dorm floor turns to him, and Atsumu’s vision is flooded with brown, brown eyes that warm into something gooey and soft when their gazes meet.
“Hi! I’m Hinata Shouyou!”
Now, Hinata Shouyou knows he has heard the name Miya before through his Gran and his mother. His mother moved back out to her hometown of Toyooka after Natsu started staying in the dorms at Niiyama. With the move comes weekly calls where his mother’s accent thickens back up as she tells him about Gran’s weekly tea time while Gran makes sure to add shouted commentary in the background.
“Kita-san says her son is pulling in a wonderful harvest this year, says that her grandson sells his rice as far out as Osaka.” His mother hums into the phone, and Shouyou hears Gran’s voice like she’s at the shoulder of his mother, straining to listen to Shouyou.
“She says her boy got professional athlete friends too, Sho-chan! You know ‘em?” Her Kansai-ben is as thick as ever, and Shouyou gives in to the urge to smile because his grandmother thinks Shouyou knows every athlete in Japan and this conversation has happened more times than he can count. “Something Miya? Kita-san says he does something with balls.”
Her cackling laugh cracks and breaks in the air the way it always does when she’s truly amused, and Shouyou laughs with her, missing his Gran with the salty scent of the sea clinging to her and the rough way she pats his head when she’s proud of him.
“Kaa-san!” His mother reprimands him even as her own amusement leaks out in small chuckles. The conversation moves on, and the name Miya pops up in even smaller moments, moments when his Gran talks about some Onigiri shop that’s popping up in Hyogo ‘that uses Kita-san’s rice, Sho-chan!’ or when Natsu gives him a call to talk about volleyball.
“There are two setters on the Japan National team this year, Nii-san. Kageyama is going to be so cool.” She draws out the ‘so’, long and loud, but he still hears a locker slam shut on her end and he realizes that she called him after practice.
“Natsu, did you cool down properly? I told you not to rush to speak to me, I was going to call or text after practice today.” Shouyou frets from the other side of the world, and Natsu ignores him completely.
“The other one, Miya, is from Hyogo. Do you think he’s related to Onigiri Miya? Gran keeps talking about something with their rice, I think.”
So in the vaguest sense, through word of mouth, Hinata Shouyou has heard the name Miya before. When he meets Atsumu Miya, standing in the doorway of his Olympic dorm room with his wide smirking mouth, with his lidded eyes brown eyes, his low Kansai-ben, Hinata Shouyou kind of wishes he was a little more prepared.
After their first night in their shared room, a night where he tosses and turns in the way he always does in a new place, Shouyou wakes up to a sticky note sitting innocently on his bedside table and his roommate gone from the room.
Shouyou stares at it, sluggish with sleep and muddled confusion. Shouyou is an early riser, always has been, and he’s surprised that he didn’t wake when Atsumu left the room so, so early in the morning. He’s even more surprised that he didn’t wake when Atsumu apparently left this note so near to his head.
Shouyou reaches out and immediately notices it’s a white note with the Olympic logo stamped on the corner along with a small hand-drawn small doodle of a sun that makes his heart thud heavy in his chest. Atsumu suddenly changes from hot to cute, and Shouyou knows being cute is much more dangerous.
Shouyou-kun, the penmanship is steady and sharp, similar to the way Atsumu's gaze dragged across Shouyou from his place at the doorway yesterday.
Good luck today! I’ll see if I can stop by and watch.
Face red with something he refuses to acknowledge, Shouyou turns into his pillows and screams.
The first thing that Atsumu notices when he comes into their room is that Shouyou isn’t there, his gym bag missing and the bed is made up neatly. The second thing Atsumu notices is the note sitting innocently on Atsumu’s bed pillow.
Breath stalling in his throat, Atsumu rushes to pick up the note. The tacky stickiness on the back of the paper clings to his fingers as he pulls it close to his face. It’s the same piece of paper he wrote on that same morning when he had woken up, greeted with the sight of a sleeping Shouyou across the room.
He remembers seeing the bit of drool sluggishly falling from the corner of Shouyou’s open mouth, forming a tiny puddle on his pillow. He remembers thinking it was cute, as he wondered about Shouyou's dreams and wished he was in them. Atsumu wanted to be the first thing Shouyou thinks about that morning, so...he wrote him a note.
With a tight grip and a thudding drum in his chest, Atsumu clutches Shouyou's reply.
Atsumu-san, the note starts with a heavy hand. The strokes on the thin piece of paper are strong and flighty like Shouyou was rushing to do the next thing and consequently wrote with a heavy hand. Despite that, Atsumu can tell the words are free-flowing but thoughtful, the kanji nearly flowing into each other.
I hope you kick assed at practice, but not too much! You guys have your prelims game on Saturday, right? I’ll make sure to cheer you on!
His gym bag drops with a thump, and Atsumu presses the note to his chest like it’ll sink in to flutter around his thumping heart.
There’s another note, only this time Shouyou is the first one awake and Atsumu is still slumbering away, face smashed so deeply into his pillows that Shouyou is vaguely worried he’ll suffocate. Shouyou realizes Atsumu must have placed the note last night, and he briefly imagines the way Atsumu must have tried to be quiet as he came in, placing the note on Shouyou’s side table. He thinks about it all and Shouyou's face gets hot, so hot it feels like it’s burning.
Your floor looked really good out there today, Shouyou. 14.7 is a good score, right? Not surprised at all.
The notes continue even as they begin to spend time together, even when they begin to have moments where eyes linger and skin touch. This particular moment Shouyou will keep inside of him until it rides the tides to form a new wave of Atsumu that lives inside his mind. They are chatting at one of the small gatherings between all the athletes, and Shouyou sees Atsumu laugh for the first time. It’s because of something Shouyou has said, and Shouyou realizes while watching the way that Atsumu knocks his head back, watching the way the skin around his eyes crinkles as his lidded gaze folds into crescents, that he wants to brand this version of Atsumu into his memory to replay over and over again.
Watching Atsumu laugh was like watching a firefly pass before your eyes. So bright and flickering, you want to catch it in your hands until you can let it back out in the open air again.
WAAAA 3 - 1! Congrats, Atsumu-san! Your setting in the second game was incredible.
Silver! Congrats, Shouyou-kun! You and your team looked INCREDIBLE out there.
“I’ve been meaning to ask you something,” Shouyou murmurs, and Atsumu is helpless to the way he leans in, crowding Shouyou closer to the wall just as a cheer rises up as someone knocks down the Jenga blocks in the middle of the room. They’re at another gathering in another room having another moment where Atsumu is paying attention to no one else but Hinata Shouyou.
“Ask me anything,” Atsumu rasps out and he has the pleasure of watching Shouyou’s eyes gleam under the fluorescent lights.
“Are you related to the Onigiri Miya? Gran keeps pestering me to ask since I told them about you.” Shouyou laughs, an almost embarrassed look about him. Atsumu can barely appreciate the way a shy Shouyou looks because…Shouyou is...asking about Osamu. His brother. Who makes onigiri famous enough that Hinata Shouyou asks about him instead of his more handsome professional athlete brother.
He can’t even revel in the knowledge that Shouyou talks about Atsumu to his family, because Atsumu has been…
“I’ve been betrayed,” Atsumu croaks, voice wooden, “Betrayed by the one who comes from the same womb.”
“A-ah! Atsumu-san, are you okay?!”
Go out there and get that gold today!! You’re incredible, Shouyou-kun, so I know it’s already yours.
Don’t mind, don’t mind. Your next prelim is on the 3rd, right? You got this, Atsumu-san!!
Over the course of sixteen days, the notes come, and they’re kept between pamphlets, in the pockets of gym bags, in the sleeve of badges, crinkled from handling but pressed in neat folds with care. They keep the pattern of writing on the same piece of paper until that one becomes two and then three.
The notes are short and sweet like kisses on foreheads or a shoulder bumping against your own. Shouyou wishes they would never end, the tiny pieces of paper meant for only them. Atsumu yearns for them to transcend into something more tangible, something more for him to have and to hold.
So, on the sixteenth day, when adrenaline no longer rides through their veins and Shouyou’s neck is heavy with three medals, Atsumu is the one who leaps into the open air waiting for his feet to hit the ground in a solid dismount.
“Uh,” Atsumu hesitates, words stuttering out of his throat as he watches Shouyou close their dorm room for the last time. Shouyou turns to him, fiddling with the strap of his duffle bag.
Shouyou is going to go home, he told Atsumu in a whisper one night. Shouyou is going to go home and see his Gran, see their chickens, see their boats leave harbors, and taste the salt in the air. Atsumu wants to go with him.
He wants to catch fish off the piers with Shouyou, he wants to listen to Shouyou’s little sister talk about her own setting, and he wants to hear the way his Gran's laugh cracks in the air. Atsumu wants and wants and wants until it stings like a rubber band snapping against his skin.
It’s only been sixteen days, and all Atsumu can think about is this man who can fly without wings should be in the next ones to come.
“Uh,” Shouyou turns and Atsumu’s gaze is a pit of emotion, a yearning that pulls him in. He’s saying something, mouth moving over words, but Shouyou doesn’t need to hear the words that are already resonating between them. He sees them already in Atsumu’s eyes. Shouyou sees the words, the like, the want.
Shouyou reaches out, fingers releasing the strap of his bag to pull Atsumu in by the lapels of his white jacket, and Atsumu is already sliding in to fill the rest of the space, hands gripping Shouyou as if he’ll never let him go.
Over the years, the notes stop and instead they become texts, phone calls, and video calls, until one morning when the sun breaks through windows blinds to greet Shouyou in its revolving around the world. Shouyou throws a hand out, hoping to reach skin even though he knows his boyfriend should be making his way to practice. His hand touches something that crinkles and something hard but small.
Untangling himself from his sheets, Shouyou pulls his findings close to his face. Paper crinkles in his tight grip as he registers what he’s seeing, what he’s holding.
Marry me?