Archive of Our Own ^beta

You always hurt the ones you love,
The one you shouldn’t hurt at all
You always take the sweetest rose
And crush it until the petals fall
—You Always Hurt The One You Love

✿✿✿

Miya Osamu doesn’t cut corners when it comes to anything. 

“Suna,” he says. “I like you.”

They’re tucked in the back of their classroom, lunches packed away. Atsumu, Kosaku, and Gin have already left, and there’s only five minutes left before lunch period officially ends. The floor is dirty and slightly damp from the droplets of rain that made their way through the window, opened halfway through the break. They pitter-patter against the rooftops noisily, almost drowning out the chatter milling about from the students in their classroom. 

Suna can’t help but think there hasn’t been a scenario as un-romantic as this in history. 

Both their backs are pressed against the wall. It’s in dire need of a new and better quality paint job. Suna has a feeling that for their year-end project, their class representative, Nakamura, is going to propose for them to do the job themselves. Suna and Osamu have only occupied a corner of the back of the classroom, but it seems like everyone else is far away from them, on the opposite end of the world. 

The silence stretches on for a few more seconds. It’s not because Suna is surprised or because he has a hard time processing the words. He’s just distracted. He shouldn’t have let Atsumu steal most of his lunch because they have training later and Suna will definitely go hungry by the last period. He’s still waiting for Kosaku to barge into the classroom any second now to angrily reclaim the missing pages in his notebook that have answers to Rein-sensei’s graded participation despite the fact that Kosaku just left without noticing a thing. They need to mop the damp floor. There had been a weather forecast that morning about a downpour coming along at a time point within the day, but the sky had been bright and clear and blue and they didn’t care about the prediction even though they hadn’t necessarily forgotten about it, like they had the power to change fate just by simply believing in their own reality. 

A crackle of thunder echoes in the distance. The girls nearby—they still feel so far—yelp in fear. Osamu just told Suna he liked him. Gin once made him sit through three excruciating hours of rom-coms to help him woo his no-girlfriend that Suna has a faint idea as to how these things are supposed to go. 

Except (1) life is not a rom-com, (2) Suna doesn’t really waste his time thinking about stuff like that, and (3) this is still the most un-romantic way to confess to someone. 

Suna says, “Why are you telling me this?”

“Hm.” Osamu sounds amused but guarded. It’s the same tone he takes when an honor student complains about how classmates getting obnoxiously low scores just aren’t working hard enough even though Osamu is one of those classmates. He’s not disagreeing, but it doesn’t mean he likes what he’s hearing. “Because I do.”

Suna doesn’t look at him. Under one of the desks is a pencil case that looks eerily like his. From his periphery, he sees Osamu’s eyes trained at his own desk a few meters away. It’s not because he’s afraid to hear Suna’s answer. Suna is no Atsumu, but he’s known Osamu long enough to be able to read certain emotions and tells from his actions. 

And he knows Osamu knows him too.  

“Osamu,” Suna says. “You know I don’t.”

“Hm,” Osamu says again. He shuffles and pulls his knees closer to his chest so there’s somewhere to rest his chin. Suna finally looks at him, and then to his desk, because Osamu is still staring at it. 

There’s a bunch of flower petals overflowing on Osamu’s desk. It’s the normal amount Suna is used to seeing for the other during Valentine's week, but it’s November, and this is all just from today. 

Suna looks and thinks, huh. 

✿✿✿

The rain has cleared up by the time training ends, and the air around them when they step out of the gym is moist and makes Suna frown in distaste. They’re in no rush to leave, and the ground is wet from the weather, but the third-years have already gone ahead, not even waiting for the underclassmen even though they promised to treat them all out to hot coffee buns. 

Suna can feel his mouth salivating at the idea of eating, but he takes his time and briefly stops to toe the insides of shoes to adjust their fit properly. Just then, he hears familiar yelling coming from behind him, and Atsumu and Osamu zoom past him in a flash to try and catch up with their third-years. 

“First one to get there gets the biggest bun!” Atsumu exclaims, even though Kita had never said something like that. 

“Fuck your stupid ass!” Osamu yells back, and they jostle one another in their impromptu race before Atsumu gains the upper hand and manages to push his brother a bit back. 

Atsumu moves ahead, skipping past the puddles with ease even without looking. Osamu is not so lucky. He puts more force into his step than Atsumu’s dance-like movement to try and catch up to the setter, but he falters at a certain step and skids across the damp ground. Gravity pulls him down and it doesn’t happen in a slow enough motion for him to regain his footing or catch himself. Ungracefully, he lands on his ass and groans in pain. They can hear Atsumu’s snickering loudly from a distance, having witnessed the entire thing, but he doesn’t go back and instead rushes to Kita’s side. Kosaku and Gin sigh before walking past Osamu. Suna doesn’t follow them; he turns to Osamu, who is rubbing at his side painfully. 

“Jerk,” Osamu says. 

“Who exactly are you complaining to?” Suna asks. 

“‘Tsumu. Everyone. You.” Suna raises an eyebrow. “You totally could’ve caught me.” 

Probably. Suna thinks. “Probably,” he allows. “Are you planning on getting up anytime soon, or are your soaked pants dragging you down?”

“Help me up, you bastard,” Osamu demands. 

“You have hands for a reason.”

Osamu scowls. “I don’t want ‘em to touch all that wet dirt on the ground. That’s gross.” 

“Not my problem,” Suna says, already turning. “Atsumu’s probably going to hog all the food at the rate you’re going.”

“Is this how you treat someone who confessed to you?” Osamu whines, but Suna is already starting to walk away. 

A few seconds later, Osamu falls into step with him. “Asshole,” he says, harshly bumping Suna’s shoulder. If Suna were someone more childish, he’d do it back, but he’s not. 

“Whatever,” he dismisses. “I’ll take half of your coffee bun if you run again.”

“Screw off. I learned my lesson, alright?” Osamu scowls, and then he coughs a little. Suna looks away. “This weather sucks ass.”

They both know it’s not because of the rain. 

“How’d you get up?” Suna asks mildly. 

“With my hands,” Osamu grunts. He raises his right hand and it’s wet and dirty from what looks like mud. “Your fault.”

He makes a move to wipe his hand on Suna’s uniform, but he takes a step to the side wide enough to manage to dodge it. “That’s fucking disgusting." 

“I know.”

“Wipe it down your own pants.” 

“It’ll look like I shit myself.”

Suna smirks. “Didn’t you?”

“Aw, fuck you, man,” Osamu says, and then removes his varsity jacket to wipe it there instead. He bundles it into a ball and then stuffs it in his bag. “You're a real jerk, y’know that? Super. You never do anythin’ for me.”

“It’s not my job to,” Suna says, as Osamu reaches over to the hand sanitizer tied to the strap of Suna’s sports bag. Osamu rolls his eyes but doesn’t put up much of a fuss because Osamu needs clean hands if he’s going to eat.

“Jerk.”

“You need to expand your vocabulary.”

Osamu doesn’t comment on the fact that Suna has slowed down his pace for him to keep up right after he fell and he’s the only one who waited for him. Suna doesn’t comment on the fact that there’s a flower petal still in Osamu’s grip. When he opens his fist to spray the sanitizer to his palms, the wind blows and the petal goes with it. Osamu doesn’t spare it a glance. 

Suna watches it fly away until it disappears from his sight. He doesn’t comment on that either. 

✿✿✿

Atsumu and Osamu are busy badgering Ojiro about something by the net instead of taking it down like they’ve been instructed to by Kita, something about whoever can hit more of Ojiro’s sets between them will get the bunk of their choice even though Ojiro is a spiker and from the look on his face, there’s more he wants to do than clean up and go home. 

Idly, Suna watches the twins squabble over who gets to hit Ojiro’s set first, and then Atsumu turns to Suna’s direction and says, “Suna! Help us out here!”

“Why?” Suna asks, walking towards them. “Kita-san is going to get mad if he gets back here and you haven’t done what he asked.”

Atsumu waves a hand. “He can’t get mad when we’re doin' a little bit more extra trainin'.” A lie, but Suna lets Atsumu continue. “We stirred things up a bit. Whoever hits more of Aran-kun’s sets and gets past your blockin’ gets top bunk.”

“So if I agree, you’ll both be sleeping by the bottom?” Suna wonders. “Sure. I have nothing against wiping the floor with you two.”

Ojiro can set decently enough, but he’s nowhere near Atsumu’s level or even Osamu’s. It makes blocking easier than usual, regardless of the fact that he’s the only one on the other side of the net. Osamu only barely manages to get past Suna by hitting it above the tips of his fingers, but judging from the frustrated look on the spiker’s face, it hadn’t been what he was aiming for. 

They spend the next few minutes doing just that—continuous setting, spiking, and blocking. Suna distantly wonders when Kita is going to get back from his meeting with the Coach. He’s starting to sweat all over again and he can feel his right calf starts to ache because he nearly pulled it at the start of training. 

The next ball Ojiro sets is the most shaky one he’s ever given, a sign that the exhaustion is starting to get to him and he can’t keep up with the twins’ almost bottomless energy the same way Suna can’t either. Atsumu sprints without a single damper on his step and hits it regardless, making a cut shot with enough force and skilled angling that Suna hadn’t even managed to graze the ball even when he tried lowering his arms to touch it. 

For a while, the entire court is silent. Even the rest of the members who hung around and watched everything from the sidelines stare at Atsumu in shock, not having expected the move. 

“Shit, man,” Ojiro breathes out. “I didn’t think you were capable of that.”

“Yeah,” Suna agrees, staring at the ball, still in the process of trying to reel in his amazement. “Nice kill, Atsumu.”

He lifts his head to look at the setter, but it’s Osamu he sees first. The spiker is looking at him blankly as Atsumu gloats beside him, almost as if he can’t hear him. Suna doesn’t get why Osamu is looking at him. It takes Suna a second before he recognizes the expression on Osamu’s face as hardened, like he’s trying to keep something bottled in, even if he doesn’t seem to realize it. Suna wants to ask what’s up with it. 

“What’s goin' on?” Kita’s voice suddenly filters in, and the words die in Suna’s mouth just as Atsumu’s boasting is cut short. 

It happens in an instant. Before Kita can take a step further and Atsumu and Ojiro can take one back out of fear for their lives, Osamu retches out a bunch of yellow flower petals, spilling on the floor and all over their feet. Suna instinctively takes a step back. Atsumu doesn’t even waste a second; he immediately rushes to his brother’s side and starts patting him harshly on the back to help him hack up the rest of the flowers that want to come out, swearing almost nonsensically. 

Kita ends up not scolding them. As he sends the twins home and puts Ojiro and Suna in charge of taking the net down instead, he gives Suna a knowing look before turning his heel and exiting the court. 

“How’d I get saddled into this?” Suna grumbles to Ojiro, as they’re the only two left inside. 

Ojiro shrugs. “This is really the twins’ fault.”

Even as he says that though, the smile he gives Suna looks like he doesn’t really believe his words, like he’s stopping himself from saying something else. It’s the same as the look Kita had been giving him earlier. 

Suna looks away. If they won’t verbally acknowledge it, then neither will he. 

✿✿✿

The first time Osamu coughs up flowers, Suna is the one with him.

There isn’t any practice, so Osamu and Suna end up walking home together because they had to stay behind to clean up the classroom. Atsumu, predictably, ditched his brother to go on a date with this month’s girlfriend. The second-years have an ongoing bet as to how long it’d last, and though Suna never puts down anything, he always agrees with whatever Osamu’s sentiment is. This time, it's that it'll take two weeks before she realizes how much of a jerk Atsumu is before she dumps him and walks away. 

Under the November wind, Suna peels off his blazer and tosses it over his shoulder. He can feel Osamu eyeing him strangely as he loosens his tie and undoes the first two buttons of his white button down. 

“I don’t get it,” Osamu admits. “Shouldn’t you be doin’ the opposite?”

Suna shrugs. “Wind like this doesn’t come every day.” Winter has always been too cold for him and summer too hot, and the wind during the end of fall always gives him the feeling of constant motion, of boundless freedom and energy he doesn’t actually possess. It reminds him of volleyball, in that sense, and it’s why he likes the sport so much. Sitting still isn’t an option; if there’s something you want, you move and seize it. “Might as well make the most out of it.”

“Huh,” Osamu says. “Gonna roll up your pants too while you're at it into shorts like a good little boy?”

“Shut it. At least I don’t have the mentality of one.”

“You're callin’ me good then? Guess I’ll take it.”

Osamu grins at him and Suna lets out an exasperated huff. Walks between them have always been a mix of comfortable silence and easy banter. Atsumu once commented (read: complained, because that guy complained about everything) that he hated walking with them because he felt excluded half the time. 

“You know,” Suna begins. “Atsumu could keep a girl around longer if he treated her like an actual human being.”

At the sound of his brother’s name, Osamu grimaces. “Where the fuck is this comin’ from,” he grunts. “I can't believe you still hang ‘round that guy outside of volleyball.”

It’s a rhetorical comment, one that Osamu already knows the reply to because all the second-years eat lunch together. “Sadly.” 

“I don’t think he’s all that interested in formin’ meaningful relationships like that though. Ain’t his style. ‘Tsumu’s a real bastard.”

“I know,” Suna agrees. “I doubt you’re the same though.”

“The fact that you're even considerin’ the possibility is insultin’, Suna,” Osamu responds, mock-hurt. “But even if I wanted to do the entire playboy charade, I can’t. ‘S not me.”

Suna tugs at his already loosened tie, trying to figure out why he suddenly feels so suffocated. “Remind me to tell you that after you break some poor girl’s heart when she confesses.”

“At least I ain’t gettin’ her hopes up like what ‘Tsumu does.”

Suna realizes what it is quickly enough when he unbuttons one of his sleeves. He starts clumsily folding it up until it reaches his elbow, and when the cool air hits his skin, he instantly feels a lot better before doing it with the other arm. “Stop pretending to be such a saint. We’re in high school. You’ve never dated seriously before, right?”

“Mhm.”

“I never did get why you never said yes to any of those confessions of yours. Aren’t you bound to at least like one?”

“Mhm.”

Being disinterested isn’t exactly out of the ordinary, but it makes more sense for people like Suna, who don’t receive that many confessions in the first place and whose only dating history involves a three-month girlfriend back in his last year of middle school. Osamu is different; he has almost as many admirers as Atsumu, but his reaction has always been just as bland as Suna’s. “At the rate you're going, Atsumu is probably going to go through half of the female population of Inarizaki before you even start.”

“Mhm.” 

Suna stops when he realizes that Osamu (1) hasn’t been walking with him for the past few seconds, and (2) has been answering distractedly, like there’s something he’s more preoccupied with. Suna turns around. Osamu is two meters away and staring at him with a pinched expression on his face, almost like he’s trying to hold something in. “Osamu?”

“I’m fine," Osamu says, but it comes out a few seconds late and it sounds weird, like there’s something that’s stopping him from talking. “It’s just—your arms—”

Suna doesn’t get it at first, but the dumbfounded, choked way Osamu sounds feels like too much of a good opportunity to simply let pass. Suna smirks. “Why, you interested?” he teases. He jokingly flexes his biceps. “I’ve been hitting the gym with Gin and Ojiro-san for the past few weeks when we don’t have practice. Who knows, maybe I’ll be the one stealing all the girls from you and Atsumu.” 

Suna expects an eye roll or some sort of defensive, snide remark. Instead, Osamu abruptly clamps a hand over his mouth and hacks up an unexpected cough that sounds so dry that it doesn’t make sense when Osamu had been chugging down every drink he came across for the whole day. 

Now frowning, Suna walks over to him. “Are you—”

Osamu lowers his hand. Suna stares. In Osamu’s open palm is a red flower petal.  

“Fuck,” says Osamu. 

“Osamu,” Suna starts, dread creeping up on him. “That’s—”

“Fuck, fuck, fuck.” Osamu swears, letting out a frustrated growl as he clenches his fist and crushes the petal. “You’ve gotta be kiddin’ me.”

Hanahaki, Suna thinks. It’s the first time he’s ever seen it happen right in front of him. Dumbly, he asks, “This isn’t you trying to mess with me, right?”

Osamu looks at him like he lost in mind. Suna instantly feels bad, but the question is justified given that a week ago Osamu and Atsumu dared each other to swallow a bunch of flowers that they ended up coughing it out throughout the day. It freaked everyone in the volleyball team out during practice, thinking the twins had Hanahaki until Kita saw through their ruse and got Atsumu to confess that it wasn’t real. 

“No,” he grimaces. “I wish.”

There’s a crease between Osamu’s brows, a scowl on his face. As much as Suna hates to admit it, Osamu has always been good-looking, even when making such a terrible expression. “I can’t believe you have Hanahaki.”

His little brother used to tell him that he could work on phrasing things a little more delicately, but Suna never saw the need to actually do it when he was surrounded by insensitive assholes like him all day. Now though, he’s beginning to wish that he took Ren a bit more seriously. 

Osamu just rolls his eyes though. “That makes two of us,” he says, sounding resigned, and then his expression hardens when he unfurls his fist and stares at the flower petal like it already singlehandedly ruined his life. “Fuck this.”

Suna has never seen Osamu this worked up over something in his entire life that doesn’t involve Atsumu in some sort of way. It’s probably a bit sick of him to feel so wrongly amused by the situation—the kind where he knows he should feel bad but doesn’t, because the situation is so hard to believe that it’s just flat out ridiculous, because Osamu is Osamu and Suna has never known him as the type of guy to apparently love something so much he’d cough up flowers for it. “Angry at the fact that they don’t love you back?”

Osamu pauses, as if trying to digest Suna’s words, before he shoves the petal angrily into his pocket. “More for the fact that I like 'em in the first place,” he grimaces. “Let’s go. I’m freezin'.”

“Weak shit,” Suna calls out, and Osamu flips him off, still in a pissy mood but not to the point where he might suffer through an actual meltdown. Osamu doesn’t seem as freaked out as Suna expected him to be, actually, and Suna didn’t know whether that’s a good thing or not. “Are they that much of a shitty person?” he asks, catching up to Osamu. 

Osamu doesn’t look at him, but he’s quiet for a few seconds, like he’s thinking about it. He gives Suna a side glance before saying, “Somethin' like that.”

There’s a certain weight in his words and in his eyes that tells Suna he should be realizing something. “Who are they?” 

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” Osamu remarks dryly. 

Suna rolls his eyes. “Screw you.”

Osamu smirks at him. “Don’t worry ‘bout it, Suna. I’m not gonna let this eat me up. I ain’t stupid.”

“Somehow, I doubt that.”

For that, Osamu elbows him hard. Suna ends up stumbling but he's laughing, and Osamu grins in return. The rest of the walk is spent in a light-hearted atmosphere, almost like the incident with the flower petal hadn’t happened at all. Suna almost forgets about it, but then before they reach the intersection where they part ways, he catches Osamu giving him a long look that Suna realizes isn’t for him to actually see, and the pieces fall into place. 

✿✿✿

A week later, Osamu tells Suna, I like you, and even though Suna isn’t surprised in the slightest, it doesn’t stop him from thinking, later on, this is going to be a disaster.

✿✿✿

When Suna wakes up from his nap to the sound of the lunch bell ringing, Osamu is not in his chair, nor is he anywhere in the classroom. Normally, Suna wouldn’t care, but Osamu also owes him money for his lunch since Suna forgot to pack food today, and there’s no way he’s going to suffer through the break starving. 

Osamu is probably in Atsumu’s classroom, so Suna slips out of the room and makes his way down the corridor. He side-steps the students sitting against the wall and having their lunch there and avoids bumping into those going in the opposite direction, searching for the familiar sign of Atsumu’s classroom. Kosaku is probably with him as well, but Gin might be on his usual vending-machine runs because he still hasn’t given up on winning the heart of his class representative and she apparently really likes the yogurt they have. 

He stops when he catches something familiar from the corner of his eye and turns his head towards the hallway’s open window. Down below, on the garden in front of their building where lots of the students horse around and play tag, is Osamu. Osamu, who is standing in front of a girl, painting the scene of a confession. 

“Is that Osamu?” says a familiar voice, and Suna briefly turns to see Gin, also glancing down. He’s chewing on the straw of a carton of coffee, the one Suna recognizes from the vending machine. 

“Yeah.” Around them, the students mind their own business eating, talking, walking like nothing amiss unravels in their midst. Even in the garden, where Osamu is at, no one bats an eye at the fact that a confession is happening at this very moment, too busy with their own activities and lives to really care. 

Suna knows he should do the same; it really isn’t his business, and he’s never liked watching any of his friends receive confessions because it’s annoying and he doesn’t like knowing about their personal lives anymore than he has to, but for some reason, he can’t tear his eyes away from the two. 

“You recognize her?” Suna asks Gin, who seems just as engrossed in the scene as he is. 

Gin gives him a dry look. “Look, just ‘cause she’s a girl and you don’t give two shits ‘bout that and I do doesn’t mean I automatically know who she is,” he replies. “But that’s Suzuki Haruka. Our year.”

“You answered the question anyway.”

Gin ignores him and turns back to the window. “She’s from Atsumu’s class, actually. Can you make out what they’re sayin’?” They’re only a floor away from the ground, but it’s hard to hear them when they aren’t talking that loud and there’s noise circulating around them because it’s lunch break. “Suna, can you lip read?”

“No. That’s a stupid skill to have.”

“Hey, it can come in handy someday. Like now.” Gin leans his arms on the window’s ledge, as if that’ll help him hear the conversation any better. “Even though they’re in the same class, I don’t think she’s confessed to Atsumu.”

Suna gives him a funny look. “You spy on every confession Atsumu’s ever had?”

“No, but he’s subjected me to never-endin' stories 'bout how each of 'em went even though it’s the same shit over and over,” Gin says, toying with the straw. Suna has the sudden urge to pluck it out of Gin’s hands and throw it down to see if it’ll successfully hit Osamu right in the head. “I’m still surprised girls confess to Atsumu when he's got such a shitty datin’ rep. I bet it’s those looks. He’s an asshole, but he’s hot and he knows it, and y’know, sometimes it’s all girls need to overlook everythin’ else. I bet that’s why Suzuki-san is confessin’ to Osamu. They have the same face but he’s nicer. It’s the best of both worlds.”

Suna snorts. “If you really think that, then maybe you should be next in line confessing to him.”

“Jealous that I might actually succeed in stealin’ your man?” Gin wiggles his fingers at Suna.  

“As if.” Gin hums, sounding like he doubts him, but Suna turns back to looking at Osamu and Suzuki instead. “You think he’ll say yes?”

“That’s a stupid question.”

Suna is about to ask what that means, but then Suzuki takes a step back and bows waist-level at Osamu before turning around and leaving. Despite the angle Suna’s at, he catches the crumpled look and the tears evident on her face. There’s something white that looks like an envelope lying on the grass, where Suzuki had been previously standing. The world continues to spin without a care in the world, indifferent to the event that just transpired between the two and blew up in the girl’s face. Gin and Suna watch as Osamu heaves a deep sigh before bending down to pick up the letter. Before he leaves, he coughs and something floats down into the grass, but he doesn’t even blink twice. He doesn’t seem to have noticed his two friends watching him the entire time. 

“Well,” Gin starts. “That didn’t end the way she expected it to.”

“That’s nothing new.” 

“Whose fault do you think that is?” Suna’s head snaps towards Gin. Gin doesn’t look nor sound accusing though, just thoughtful. “Y’know, I don’t get why you rejected him. Osamu, I mean.”

Suna pauses. “I never told you about that. Did—”

“Osamu didn’t. ‘Course he wouldn’t. Don’tcha know that guy? Nothin’ like Atsumu. Never spills anythin’,” Gin interrupts. “But, Suna, it’s kinda obvious who he’s got Hanahaki for. I think everyone in the club knows.”

Suna looks away. If that’s really the case, then it’s a surprise that Kita hasn’t yet pulled him aside to do something about it, or why Atsumu hasn’t tried cornering him and beating him senseless for making Osamu sick. “How’d you figure out?”

Gin shrugs. “The way you two look at each other sometimes.” Suna tenses, bracing for some kind of sappy statement that reveals more than either he or Osamu are willing to acknowledge. But what Gin says is, “I dunno. It’s like there’s somethin' goin' on and only you two know ‘bout it.”

“Oh.”

“Look,” says Gin. “Not that I’m gangin’ up on you or anythin’ ‘cause I dunno the details, but I don’t get why you didn’t at least try and consider it.”

“Consider what?”

“Osamu in a romantic sense. Like a boyfriend or whatever. ‘S not like anyone’s gonna care ‘bout that sorta thing. This is the first time in history Inarizaki has ever had a female student council president, and she has a girlfriend too.”

“It’s not like that,” Suna argues, even though a part of it kind of is, because he’s never looked at a boy and thought, this is someone I could date. “I just don’t like him that way. I’ve never seen him as something like that.”

“Maybe it’s 'cause you never tried.”

A flash of irritation surges in Suna at the implication behind Gin’s words, like Suna is being purposely stubborn and insensitive, like the idea of being considerate is beyond him. And Suna does stick to what he believes in, he is insensitive, and he doesn’t like wasting his time on most things even if others care a whole lot about them, but this is different. This is about Osamu, who is his friend, and even if Suna didn’t want to care, there’s no way he just can’t. 

“Fuck you.” Suna snaps. “It’s not as if I haven’t tried.”

He’s supposed to sound defensive, but words come out small and vulnerable. His shoulders hunch, because thinking about it all the more is enough to drain all the fight out of him. Gin must notice, since there’s a shift in his posture evident from the corner of Suna’s eye. 

“Suna—”

He doesn’t like Gin’s tone. “It’s not like I can just fall for the guy in a single snap. It’s not like he’s really making an effort to get me to be—I don’t know, fucking attracted to him or something,” Suna says, half-turning. “Plus, we don’t really talk about it. Osamu doesn’t even acknowledge it.”

Sometimes, Suna thinks he can pretend like it never even happened. But then Osamu will retch out flower petals in the most random of times they’re together and pushing the images away doesn’t mean forgetting about them entirely; all it means is that they’ll come spilling out when it becomes too much. 

“And you don’t either.” It’s not a question. 

Suna just shrugs. “It’s not my feelings.”

Gin stares at him, like he’s trying to read between the lines behind Suna’s words even if there’s nothing really meaningful behind them. Suna stares back until Gin eventually looks away and sighs. 

“You're right,” he says. Then, “It’s kind of ironic.”

“Which is?”

“That you turned him down the same way he does it to all those girls who like him.”

The day is sunny and Suna thinks of the teary-eyed expression on Suzuki’s face as she walked away from Osamu, obvious enough that she’d been hoping to hear a yes. She wrote him a letter and didn’t care that they were at risk of being seen, talking in broad daylight in a garden right in front of their building. He recalls the rainy afternoon when Osamu quietly told him he liked him, the distracted look on his face that didn’t hold any sort of expectation for a requited kind of love. The lackadaisical way he said it seemed like he was talking about the weather or their homework, words to fill in the gaps of silence or trying to remember the sound of one’s own voice. The scene was so plain and ordinary that Suna almost didn’t believe him. 

(Until now, Suna doesn’t really believe him.) 

“Suna?” Gin says. 

“It’s different,” he replies. 

“How?”

Osamu hadn’t looked at him once, more focused on the flowers on his desk. Suzuki Haruka walked away crying not because she was rejected, but because when she looked into Osamu’s eyes as she told him she loved him, his eyes didn’t say the same thing. 

Suna wonders, if Osamu did look at him, what his eyes would’ve said. 

“She told him because she wanted to,” Suna says. 

Gin raises an eyebrow. “And Osamu didn’t?”

Suna doesn’t know. All he knows is, “He told me because he’s sick.”

Osamu doesn’t cut corners when it comes to anything, after all. 

✿✿✿

Akagi gets a nasty cut on his arm while setting up the net and it turns out their first-aid kit is empty of supplies. As Kita and Aran drag him off to the infirmary, Kita postpones practice so Omimi can drag the rest of the members to the local drugstore to stock up and buy what they lack. Bringing all of them is unnecessary, but Suna has a feeling that Omimi took everyone with him instead of just a couple so that he can watch over the twins. Leaving them behind on the court isn’t an option, even if the extent of all the stupidity they’d pull will just involve volleyball. 

There are two printed copies containing the supplies they need to purchase for the kit; Gin gets one of the copies and drags Riseki and Kosaku with him as they disappear into the aisles, while Omimi is left with Atsumu, Osamu, and Suna. Much to Omimi’s chagrin though, Osamu is gone from their side the moment they step inside the store and Suna takes advantage of the third-year being preoccupied with Atsumu’s nagging to slip away and wander around. 

Suna has been to this drugstore before and knows they sell reasonably priced hi-chew, but he doesn’t remember the shelf where it’s placed. He makes his way to the opposite end of the store in case it’s there, hidden from plain sight because selling candy probably contradicts the entire point of drugstores, which are supposed to sell things that improve one’s health. He stops when he sees Osamu by one of the aisles. His arms are crossed and he’s scanning the contents of the shelf right in front of him with so much scrutiny that he doesn’t seem to notice Suna sidling up to him until he points out, “That’s a shitty brand.”

Osamu nearly jumps and Suna barely manages to suppress a laugh. “You—”

Suna doesn’t let him finish. “Do you use tampons or napkins?”

Osamu stares at him. Suna drums his fingers against his side patiently until the older eventually says, “I’ve been thinkin’ of tryin’ tampons.”

Suna hums, looking at the shelf in front of them for a second before reaching out to get a purple-colored packet. It never ceases to amaze him how soft they always are. “This is a good brand if you’ve never tried using them before. Five pieces inside with two free napkin pads. They also have good napkins too, if you want a change from whatever you’re typically buying.” 

“Thanks,” Osamu says reluctantly. He gives Suna a weird look. “How d’you know?”

“That you need? I don’t know a single person who stares at this kind of thing for no good reason at all.”

“No, stupid.” Osamu rolls his eyes. “That I’m...”

He doesn't finish. “I didn’t,” Suna answers. Osamu raises an eyebrow. “Not until now. But it makes sense why you never change with us.”

“Oh,” Osamu says, like he doesn’t know what else to say. He looks like he expects Suna to say something else, but Suna has no idea what that is. “Since when d'you become so informed with that sorta thing, knowin’ which brand’s shit or not?”

“I have a brother,” Suna says. The few times he’s been asked about it, the reply has always been met with more confusion, but Osamu understands. “He always tells me that this is the best brand of tampons to get, though he doesn’t really like using them in the first place.”

“I don’t either. They say you sometimes forget they’re even in.” 

Suna makes a face. “Then why do you want to try them out?”

“Napkins look like diapers. I’m sick of ‘Tsumu teasin’ me ‘bout lookin’ like a baby while I’m playin’ volleyball.”

Suna thinks of pointing out that it’s not actually obvious, but then that might be implying that Suna is actually looking at Osamu’s ass, and he’s not. He doesn’t even want to think about it. “That’s just calling the kettle black.”

“Fuck off,” Osamu retorts, trying to jab Suna at the side with his elbow. Suna blocks it easily with his palm and grins. “Can’t believe you just left Omimi-kun with ‘Tsumu.”

“I should be saying the same thing to you.” As if on cue, Atsumu’s loud voice echoes around the drugstore, something about how he didn’t expect there to be so many options of— “Is he yelling about condoms?”

“I don’t know him.”

“You have the same last name and face.”

Osamu groans. “Don’t remind me, Suna.”

The drugstore smells of antiseptic, but with Osamu right beside him, there’s another scent wafting in the air, something that Suna recognizes as the sharp fragrance of flowers. Immediately, Suna recoils. Luckily, Osamu doesn’t seem to notice. “I hear they sell some cheap hi-chew here,” he says mildly. 

“Yeah,” Suna breathes out, feeling momentarily winded. “It should be near here, I think.”

They find the hi-chew at the bottom shelf in the aisle right beside them, but there’s a bunch of pill bottles and plastic packets just next to it that Suna has never seen or noticed before. There’s an image of flowers in all of them, and he feels ill when he realizes why. 

Suna turns to Osamu, just to make sure that the other hadn’t noticed it, hopefully more engrossed in choosing which hi-chew flavor to pick, but he catches Osamu pulling his eyes away from the sight the same way Suna had, and they make eye contact. His face is carefully blank, almost like the medicine and supplements don’t mean a single thing to him. 

“You can tell me, y’know,” says Osamu blankly. “‘S not like I bite or anythin’.” It’s kind of grating, Suna thinks, that he’s the one who feels like he has to be cautious around the topic when Osamu himself doesn’t even seem to give a shit about it. Osamu grins loftily at him. “No need to be so scared, Suna.”

Suna scoffs. “Forget it,” he says. “If you can make leering comments like that, then you’re fine.”

“Worried ‘bout me?” Osamu inquires playfully, before turning his head away. “‘S not a big deal. Hanahaki ain’t as toxic as people say it is. Not when I’m still in high school. It won’t kill me. It’ll just suck. Like gettin’ a fever or something.”

Osamu has a point. They’re just in high school. Hanahaki is caused by love, but teenagers like them don’t know anything about what love is in the first place, so it shouldn’t be too bad. It's never been a disease known as a life-or-death situation anyway; only in the rarest of cases. And it’s already been around a month since the first time Osamu hacked up flowers, but his condition hasn’t faltered in the slightest. At most, it seems like he has the usual cold that circles around the campus every year during the season. It’s not fatal. Thinking about it is pointless. 

“Are you wonderin’ ‘cause of the confession?” Suna’s eyes widen, and Osamu scoffs. “C’mon, I ain’t stupid. I saw you and Gin by the window watchin’ me,” he explains. “So?”

Suna doesn’t reply because he doesn’t know the answer. He looks at the pill bottles and supplements tucked in neat rows in front of him. He wonders if they actually help. Is love something that can be cured?

“You don’t hav’ta be jealous, Suna,” Osamu interjects, and Suna looks back at him. “I don’t think I’ll be catchin’ feelings for anyone anytime soon.”

There’s a tilting smirk on his face, full of mirth and mockery. Suna’s throat feels like sandpaper. 

“If that’s supposed to reassure me, then you’re doing a really piss-poor job at it,” Suna manages to say. 

The grin sharpens. All the beauty in the world can’t make up for the look on Osamu’s face that Suna finds ugly, because it doesn’t manage to cover the misery in his eyes. Something heavy weighs down on Suna’s chest. 

Instead of replying, Osamu pats him briefly on the shoulder before walking past him. Their shoulders brush, only barely, and for that very second, Suna finds it impossible to breathe. When he hears a cough from behind him, a loud, gravelly reverberation that everyone inside undoubtedly catches, he’s reminded that it must be ten times worse for Osamu. 

✿✿✿

They’re outside in the back of the court by the sinks when Akagi finally says it. 

“Osamu shouldn’t participate in this year’s Spring High Nationals.”

Gin and Kosaku stop messing around with the water hose. Riseki, who has been spending the past few minutes refilling his water jug by the drinking fountain, says, “Akagi-san, you shouldn’t joke 'bout somethin’ like that.”

“I ain't jokin’.” Akagi’s face is grim. “He’s been coughin’ in every practice for the past week and he doesn’t look like he’s been sleepin’. He has to go to the bathroom just to get 'em all out ‘cause pickin’ 'em up from the floor is already a hassle since there’s too much flowers comin’ outta him.” 

The twins had been here earlier, joining in on the fun with the other second-years in the water fight, but they eventually left because they claimed they didn’t want to stay soaked for long in case they got sick, especially with the cold weather. None of them acknowledged that it was really because Osamu started coughing and Atsumu actually got worried.

Suna doesn’t remove his head from under the faucet, letting the water run down and wash his hair and face. The rest don’t seem to notice, absorbed by Akagi’s words. It works for Suna because he doesn’t want to be part of this discussion. 

“He can still play though,” Riseki points out. “None of the coughin’ has affected the way he plays.”

“But for how long?” Akagi challenges. “This isn’t some typical disease where your body gets used to the illness and your condition improves. It’s the opposite. Osamu’s only gonna get worse from here. Who's to say he won’t haveta run outta the court mid-match ‘cause he needs to cough, or even worse, just vomit it all out on the floor?” 

“That’s a bit far-fetched,” Gin protests, but he doesn’t really sound like he believes his own words. 

“Hanahaki is a lung disease,” explains Akagi. “He’s okay during practice, but practice is different from actual tournaments. Nationals is in nine days. It’s more heated and tiring. He’ll be exertin’ more energy, needin’ more oxygen. He can’t handle it. If somethin’ happens, Osamu will get benched, Atsumu will freak out, and our rhythm will suffer.”

None of them are able to argue with Akagi’s points. “What did Kita-san say 'bout all of this?” Kosaku asks. 

“He’s the one who brought it up, actually. Gathered all the third-years to talk ‘bout Osamu.” Akagi rubs the back of his neck. “As much as he agrees with the idea of benchin' him, he can’t do it without Osamu’s permission.”

“But he’s sick. If someone’s sufferin’ through a fever, they’re not allowed on the court no matter what. Same thing goes for someone injured. How’s this any different?” 

“‘Cause it’s Hanahaki.” Suna has never felt so sick of hearing a single reason for everything over and over again in his entire life until now. Judging from Akagi’s sigh, he’s sick of using it too. “I did research on this along with the rest of the third-years. It’s not a fatal disease at this age, so it’s not really enough to put you on bench unless you get a really bad attack or somethin’. It’s like trippin’ down the stairs or hittin’ your head. It’s not a big deal on the surface and doesn’t matter ‘cause these things happen often enough unless somethin’ else happens as a result of it. Osamu’s gotta be the one to say that he's unfit and needs to sit out.”

Everyone falls silent.  

“He’s never gonna say it,” Riseki says. 

"Nope."

“Not unless we can get someone to convince him to.”

“And who’ll that be, huh?” Gin demands. “Atsumu?”

Kosaku lets out a sharp exhale. “Atsumu would kill you if you’d make him do somethin’ like that.”

Akagi rolls his eyes. “I know they hate each other, but even Atsumu can overlook his selfishness for once in his life just for the sake of his brother.”

The scary thing is that Akagi is right. The scarier thing is that if Atsumu actually does it, then it means that even he thinks Osamu’s situation is dire, even if it’s just by a bit, and that doesn’t sit well with any of them. For all his overreactions, the setter has always been good at undermining the truly important things, so if he’s actually reacting the right way for this, then it means that Osamu is worse off than they all thought. 

“No,” Gin abruptly says. “Atsumu can’t do it. If Osamu realizes that Atsumu is actually concerned, all the more he’ll refuse. He’ll think Atsumu thinks he’s weak. They’re Miyas. They’re shitty and they’re proud and they’re hard-headed.”

“So not Atsumu.” Riseki sighs. “And even if Kita-san pulls the captain card, Osamu probably still won’t cave.”

“Kita-san’s guiltrippin’ has always been more effective on Atsumu rather than Osamu,” Kosaku says. “Which leaves—”

The conversation dies out once again. Suna waits for someone to pick it back up until he realizes that they’re all looking at him. “What?” he says. 

“Suna,” Kosaku starts. “You gotta be the one to do it.”

Suna twists the knob to shut the water off and pulls his head out of the faucet. He’s been under the cold water for so long that he thinks his lips are a bit blue. When a soft breeze passes by, it feels like his sweat glands have frozen over. 

“No,” he says firmly, using the towel slung over his shoulder to dry his hair and wipe his face. “Why me?”

“Have you not been listenin’ to a thing we’ve been sayin'?”

“I have,” Suna replies. “I still don’t see why it has to be me.”

Kosaku’s expression darkens, and before any of them can even react, he storms up to Suna and grabs him by the collar threateningly. The fact that Suna is taller than him doesn’t deter the pure wrath in his eyes and the seething way he points out, “You're the reason he has Hanahaki.” 

It’s the elephant in the room, what everyone else has been remaining oblivious to this entire time, ever since the day Osamu fucked up by literally coughing up his secret, and the bomb has been dropped by Kosaku, of all people. Gin had been an exception, but back then, it was just the two of them talking. An audience changes things, because it means there’s no way they can avoid the other, important aspect to Osamu’s predicament: Suna himself. 

“I know,” Suna says evenly. 

“Do you?” Kosaku growls, shaking him. Akagi takes a step forward, as if to stop the fight that’s gradually brewing, but Kosaku isn’t done talking. “Then take some responsibility, asshole! You're his friend. His best friend. Don’t you feel even the slightest bit of guilt that there are fuckin’ flowers growin’ in his lungs just ‘cause of his stupid love for you?”

Something in Suna snaps, and he pushes Kosaku off him. “Fuck you. Why should I? It’s his feelings, not mine! It’s not like I wanted this to happen! I’m not the one who fucking asked for him to fall in love with me!” 

Everyone gapes at him. Kosaku starts to tremble. “You don’t mean that.” 

Immediately, Suna realizes the error in his outburst. He instinctively lowers his head, abashed. The word sorry is on the tip of his tongue, but he’s never been good at apologies, prideful in his own right even when he knows he’s in the wrong. “It’s not that easy, okay,” he says instead, sounding more tired than he thought. “He’s not going to suddenly get better if I just say yes for the sake of saying yes.”

Someone lets out a deep sigh before footsteps start to approach him. Suna looks up when there’s a hand that rests on his shoulder. Akagi’s face is sympathetic. “You shouldn’t have said what you said,” he admonishes, not unkindly, sounding just like Kita. “But it doesn’t make it any less true, and we—it’d be wrong of us to force you, ‘cause you both don’t deserve that and it doesn’t work like that.”

Suna swallows, the shame crawling up on him. Akagi continues. “But you haveta do it. You gotta convince him.”

Suna shakes his head. “You don’t get it. Loving someone doesn’t mean doing what they want.”

“Maybe not.” Akagi pulls his hand back. “But lovin’ someone means listenin’, at the very least.”

Akagi turns to the rest. “Let’s go back, guys. Suna, finish dryin’ your hair, will you? And talk to Osamu when you can.”

Suna doesn’t look at them as they go, even if he can feel their gazes on him until they’re finally gone. He knows he should apologize later, but it’s not like he’d been lying when he said what he said, and he knows they’ll be able to tell that he won’t mean it. Doing what they want is probably all he needs to make it up to them. He regrets the words, even if it doesn’t change the fact that they’re true. He shouldn’t have said it, because it’s like he’s making this entire situation about him, and it isn’t about him. 

A minute or so later, almost as if it’s fate, Osamu comes into view, rounding the corner to the back of the building. “There you are,” he says. He’s changed into a new shirt. “Akagi-san told me you stayed behind and that I better keep you company so you won’t keel over from the cold.”

They’re alone. It’s the perfect time for Suna to bring it up. Akagi probably expects him to do it, because that’s the only other reason Suna can think of for why he told Osamu to fetch him. 

I didn’t ask for this. Suna can't help but think, like he’s sulking to those gods Kita’s grandma always talked about. It’s an inconsiderate and heartless thought given the circumstances, so he quickly shoves it away. He's learned his lesson the first time, and the sad truth of the situation is this: he's not the one struggling. It’s Osamu. 

But even though Suna knows it, it doesn’t change the fact that the thought still feels wrong. He's never let himself dwell on how hard it is for Osamu because that would mean recognizing that the reason it’s hard is because of Suna himself. It would mean feeling guilty for being the cause, and it would mean feeling pity for Osamu for letting it happen in the first place. 

And pity and Osamu have never belonged in the same sentence. Osamu is many things, but pitiable has never been one of them. 

"What's with that face you're makin'?" Osamu questions. "You look constipated, like you're thinkin' too hard.” He walks over to Suna and places his hands on top of the towel draped over his head. “Gimme. You're takin’ too long.”

Suna lowers his hands and lets Osamu dry his hair. He stares at Osamu, but even though his eyes are on Suna, Osamu doesn’t seem to be really looking. The moment feels awfully intimate. Suna wonders why he just agreed like that, but the expression Osamu is making doesn’t look too bad. It’s almost enough for him to forget what he’s supposed to do. 

But he doesn’t. After a beat, Suna says, “Don’t play in the Nationals.”

Osamu stops moving. He pulls his hand away. Suna lifts his head to see the other’s vacant expression. “What’cha talkin’ about?”

There’s no easy way to go around this. Suna lets out a deep breath. “Maybe you should sit this year’s Nationals out. I don’t think it’s a good idea to do it with your... condition.”

“Condition,” Osamu repeats tersely. “Hanahaki, you mean.” Suna just bites his lip. “Yeah, I don’t think so.”

“Osamu—”

“What?” Osamu retorts. Suna almost shrinks away, caught off guard. Osamu must notice it, because he tries sounding less harsh and lightly smacks the side of Suna’s head. “You're shit at this, y’know. The Suna I know would never say somethin’ that delicately. If you really didn’t want me to go, you would’ve told me upfront. Demanded it. Fists up and all, ready for a fight.”

Suna gives him an unimpressed look. “Asshole, I’m not violent.” 

“Yeah, yeah.” Osamu waves a hand. He leans on the edge of the sink and crosses his arms. “So? Who put you up to it?”

Suna hesitates for a few seconds before saying, “Half the team?”

Osamu’s face darkens, but he doesn’t look that surprised. “I’m surprised ‘Tsumu hasn’t come stormin’ up to me just yet.”

“Atsumu’s selfish,” Suna says, almost like a reminder. “He wants you to play, even if it’ll hurt you.”

“Stop bein’ so damn dramatic.” Osamu rolls his eyes. “‘S not like you're wrong, but this isn’t a big deal. I know how to pace myself.”

Akagi’s rather detailed descriptions come to mind, but Suna decides not to mention it. “If only you could say the same thing when it comes to your eating habits.”

“Shaddap,” Osamu says, kicking Suna’s shin. Suna evades just in time. There’s a faint smile on Osamu’s face. “I ain’t gonna collapse or cough up any flowers during the matches. Promise.”

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep.”

“Oh ye of little faith,” remarks Osamu. Suna just huffs. “You're pretty selfish too.”

Suna twists his damp towel, as if he can actually squeeze out the water absorbed in the cloth. “Yeah?”

“Uh-huh,” Osamu hums. “If you really didn’t want me to go, you would’ve tried harder convincin’ me.”

If this were about anything else, Suna would’ve been pissed at the call out. “Probably,” he allows, almost smiling. “Who else can I gloat with when we finally kick Itachiyama’s ass?”

“Oh my god, now you sound like ‘Tsumu,” Osamu bemoans. “Itachiyama this, Itachiyama that. I don’t need two ‘Tsumu’s.”

Suna can’t help it; he laughs. Osamu doesn’t seem to expect it, but then he grins widely like he did something worth being proud of, like pulling off an unexpectedly solid spike or making Kita amused with an actually decent joke. “Too bad. We already have two Atsumu’s.”

Osamu narrows his eyes at him. “Take that back.” 

Suna pretends to mull over it. “No.”

Osamu tries to charge at Suna to tackle him to the ground. Suna avoids just in time and pulls the back of the other’s shirt to stop him from recklessly running into the tree, even if there’s a part of him that would’ve liked to see Osamu hit his head. To make up for it, he lightly hits Osamu with the wet towel. 

“Gross,” Osamu complains. 

“It’s literally just water, you baby.”

“You used it to dry your hair. I bet you got some dandruff stuck there,” Osamu bites back, before lying down on the ground. Suna looks down at him. 

“I think you’re a season too early,” Suna tells him. “There’s no snow yet. You’re lying down on dirt.”

“The snow’s a month late,” Osamu says. “But it’ll come.”

“I can afford to wait.” Suna sits down beside him. “I hate winter.”

“I thought foxes like winter.”

“You should really stop with that crap. I’m not a fox,” Suna huffs. “And they don’t necessarily like winter. They just don’t hibernate during the season like other animals do.”

“For someone who says they ain’t a fox, you sure know a lot ‘bout them.”

Suna leans back, letting his arms support most of his weight. He closes his eyes. “That’s stupid logic.”

“Maybe.” Osamu considers. He coughs a bit, but it’s light and Suna chooses to ignore it, somewhat unsure if it’s more for Osamu’s sake or his own. A few moments later, he can feel Osamu’s eyes on him, but he doesn’t pay it any mind. Suna could probably fall asleep like this, the wind kind and the moment quiet, and he can feel himself drifting off until Osamu suddenly says, “Can you hold my hand?”

Suna opens his eyes. For a moment, he thinks he dreamt up the words, but when he turns to Osamu, he’s looking at him, expecting an answer. “What?”

“I know you heard me,” Osamu points out. “I just wanna know if it’ll ease up the flowers. Or somethin’. We don’t haveta if you don’t wanna,” he adds, but he’s averting his eyes, suddenly looking so meek. It looks wrong on Osamu’s face, and the expression kind of ticks Suna off. 

“Fine,” Suna says. “Let’s do it.”

He expects Osamu to at least look satisfied, but instead he just gives Suna a disapproving look. “This ain’t a dare or somethin’,” Osamu tells him, and then he uses his finger to flick the space between Suna’s eyebrows. Suna flinches. “You’ll grow old faster if you keep makin’ faces like that. No one will ever like you.”

Suna stares at him pointedly. Osamu smiles and shrugs innocently as he pulls away, but when he puts down his hand, it’s on top of Suna’s. It’s a gentle touch, like he’s giving Suna an out if he doesn’t want to do this. 

He doesn’t get why Osamu is acting so timidly. It’s just holding hands; it’s not that deep. As if in response, Suna turns over his palm and slides his fingers in between Osamu’s. They have more or less the same size of hands, but Osamu’s are much slimmer and rougher than his own. It feels strange, but Suna doesn’t know if it’s because he’s never held a guy’s hand before or because it’s been so long since he’s done it in the first place. 

This is the hand that knows its way around a kitchen. This is the hand that occasionally catches girls who accidentally trip on stairwells or slippery hallways. This is the hand that has picked up and held love letters, that steals his friends’ foods if he’s still hungry, that punches his brother when he’s being especially obnoxious. This is the hand that hits deadly spikes and throws surprisingly decent tosses. This is the hand Suna fist-bumps with. This is Osamu’s hand, and Suna is holding it, and it’s not bad, but it’s still weird, like he’s expecting something more to happen but there’s nothing. 

Osamu suddenly coughs, bringing Suna back to reality. Osamu half-turns and presses his fist close to his mouth and Suna is about to pull away partially so the other can cough properly and partially because it’s obvious that holding his hand hasn’t done anything to pacify the disease, but he stops when he feels Osamu tighten his hold on him. Judging from the way the older looks, it doesn’t seem to have been intentional, but it’s enough for Suna to not push through with his decision. 

White petals spill from Osamu’s lips, slick with his saliva, but he bats them away and leaves them lying right beside him. He faces the sky once more with a sigh and closes his eyes like nothing just happened. Suna resists the urge to use his free hand to rub his face from exasperation. He wonders if this is what Kita feels, having to deal with their stupidity at a near constant rate with patience. 

The minutes tick by. The possibility of trying to sleep once more, with a gentle breeze and not even the slightest of sounds surrounding them besides light breathing, eludes him. Osamu doesn’t twitch the slightest bit, but Suna knows even without looking that Osamu isn’t actually knocked out because the Miya twins are notorious snorers. Suna thinks about how long they’ve been here and how long they have until the rest of the team notice their prolonged absence and go searching for them. He thinks of the flower petals and if they mean anything and what he’d ever do with that information is the answer happens to be yes. Osamu’s hand is a heavy weight against his own, and Suna’s earlier thoughts echo in his head, remaining unchanged. He has the sudden thought of his palms becoming sweaty, and a growing sense of embarrassment and disgust blooms in his gut. 

When he turns to tell Osamu that they should get going, to maybe even stop this, the words die on his lips when he catches his expression. Closed eyes, he isn’t asleep, but his face is relaxed and the expression on his face is worry-free, as if there aren’t any thoughts plaguing him at the moment, as if he’s almost happy. 

He’s content. Suna’s mind supplies. Osamu’s content, even if his theory didn’t work and he still coughed out flowers. When was the last time he looked like this? Suna doesn’t remember, but something undoubtedly softens as he stares at his friend. 

Maybe it’s wrong to expect something in the first place. As long as he can get Osamu to look like this, then he doesn’t necessarily mind holding his hand for a little longer. 

✿✿✿

Once, Kita told them, you can’t change fate just by believing hard enough in your own reality. Just because you delude yourself into thinking that what you wanted to happen actually happened, it doesn’t change the fact that it didn’t.

They lose their first match in Nationals. 

Atsumu spends a significantly long time in denial about it. Suna would know, because he always catches the setter in the indoor court, doing never-ending serves. Maybe the fact that Suna actively goes to school even though they’re on break says something about his own reaction to their loss, but it’s not like anyone’s there to judge him for it. Osamu is suspiciously absent from the scene, but maybe it’s simply because Suna doesn’t stay long and doesn’t really want to look. If he does, he might reveal himself and actually join Atsumu in the pity-party, and he wants to think he has more dignity than that. 

School resumes without much fanfare until Suna’s birthday, stationed on a weekend wherein they don’t have practice. The second-years are all intent on celebrating it, even though they all know it’s less for the celebrant and more for the inevitable acknowledgement of the future they’ll have to confront of them becoming third-years, as well as for the solidarity of what transpired during Nationals; even if Kita and the rest have more or less moved on from it, they haven’t. 

They meet up after lunch in front of the gates to Inarizaki and proceed downtown a quote-on-quote “night to remember”, even if Suna knows the day will go the exact same way it did last year. 

All things considered, it’s not terrible. They spend at least three hours in the arcade, another hour in a goods’ shop to compete on who can give Suna the most useless birthday gift in history, and spend half an hour debating on where to eat before settling in some nearby fast food joint because they don’t have enough cash to afford something a bit nicer. The food is greasy and cheap and they get seconds because they’re all hungry and it tastes ridiculously delicious. They talk about how they’re going to be decent, mature upperclassmen, what a nightmare Atsumu is going to be as captain next year, whether Osamu and Suna will have to fight for the vice captaincy position before it’s pointed out that no one wants to do Atsumu’s dirty work, and if Kita will still let them come over even though he’s not a student of Inarizaki any longer. 

As much as Suna likes the lively chatter, the bright expressions on his friends’ faces, the easygoing atmosphere they all share that says, losing isn’t the end; we’re just getting started, the conversation inevitably flits past him. As he takes another one of Atsumu’s fries, the only thing he can think of is how Osamu’s face has been buried into his scarf the entire time, and how he’d been coughing wetly when Suna first saw him in front of the campus gate. 

Kosaku drags them away from all the glory of the main street to supposedly take them to this fortune-telling shop that he swears is legitimate and will bring Suna good luck for his birthday, despite the fact that the day is almost over and they’ve mostly been using the occasion as an excuse to do stupid shit. Suna recognizes this hole-in-the-wall area though, so while they take a short detour from where Kosaku wanted to go because Gin gets captivated by this jewelry shop he swears his crush will definitely like, Suna slips away from the rest of them and slides the door to a familiar inconspicuous store with nothing but a tiny name printed on the glass frame, discolored and on the verge of fading from old age. 

As much as he’s come to appreciate birthdays because of the company of his friends, he thinks he could use a bit of silence and time to himself for a just a while. It’s out of habit, used to spending so much of days alone when he isn’t busy with school or volleyball; casual hangouts like this throw him off. His parents and brother live in Tokyo, and they aren’t able to come to Hyogo to visit for his birthday or at least buy him tickets to let him come over to them because they’re too swamped in their own lives, and it’s okay, because he is too. Still, he appreciated the call he got this morning. His brother had been as cheeky and brilliant as he’d always been. His mom still remembered all their inside jokes. His dad was updated with his extracurricular activities. 

Suna doesn’t know how long he stays in the store, mind idly wandering elsewhere, until there’s a sudden tap on his shoulder. 

“Hey,” Osamu says, when Suna tucks one of the headphone cushions behind his ear even though he can still hear the other through it—he’s never turned up the volume too loud. Osamu briefly looks around before pulling himself a seat. “Should I be surprised that you're here, of all places?”

“How’d you find me?”

"Senility has a scent, y'know? Grows stronger with every birhday."

The record store has always been empty, with just a customer or two besides Suna himself. He doesn’t personally know the employees and they don’t personally know him either, but they’re familiar to one another by face and the workers always know that he’s only here for listening stations. Sometimes Suna still marvels at the fact that this place is still standing when he thought this kind of practice was going out of style. 

“Never knew you knew such a big word,” Suna marvels. Osamu punches him on the shoulder. “Where are the rest?”

“Kosaku’s sketchy fortune teller shop. ‘Tsumu wants to know how poorly he’s gonna do as a captain.”

“You don’t need a fortune teller for that.”

Osamu hums. “Was this really how you wanted to spend your birthday? You're weird.”

“Shut up. It’s my birthday. Let me be,” Suna says. “I wasn’t planning on coming here anyway. It just happened.”

He glances at the turntable he’s been listening from. It spins in hypnotizing fashion, the song gently streaming through the cord and into the headphones. Suna wants to slip the cushion back in and continue listening. He doesn’t know how long he’s been here, mechanically moving the needle to rewind the song over and over, but he doesn’t feel satisfied enough to leave. 

“What’cha listenin’ to?” Osamu asks. “An artist I know?”

“It’s foreign. I don’t think your vocabulary is capable of comprehending it,” Suna tells him gravely. “This thing can only play this record anyway. I don’t know why, but it’s always been like that.”

Osamu raises an eyebrow. “Are the rest of the turntables like that?”

“No. Just this one.”

“You're weird.”

Suna rolls his eyes. “I heard you the first time.” 

"I take it that you’ve been here an awful lot.”

“And?”

“When was the first time you discovered this place?”

“Second week of November,” Suna replies, not really thinking about the answer until the words leave his lips. Second week of November, the week Osamu told him he liked him. Suna doesn’t know if Osamu has made the connection yet, that Suna found this place the day Osamu told him he liked him and Suna told him the feelings weren’t returned. He doesn’t really remember much vivid details about that day in general; he doesn’t remember what compelled him to go walking downtown and getting lost, stumbling into this old record store and listening to this song that’s never really fit his style of music but kept on coming back to listen. 

“If this plays just one song, then you’ve been putting the damn thing on loop for almost half an hour,” Osamu points out. Suna just blinks at him. Osamu scoots closer to him. “Gimme. I wanna hear.”

Suna hands him his own headphone set and lets him plug it in. The song has already ended, so he plays it again. He’s suddenly hyper-aware of how Osamu’s body practically presses against him, but it’s easy to push aside the fact when he focuses instead on the track. It’s not a bad feeling anyway, like the heat Osamu is radiating is enough to off-set Suna’s own temperature. 

They spend the entire duration of the song in silence. When it ends, it’s Osamu, this time, who touches the needle to rewind back to the beginning. As it starts to replay, he says, “This is a sad song, right? It’s weirdly upbeat.”

There’s an absentminded smile on Osamu’s face, and his fingers are mindlessly tapping against his thigh even though it doesn’t match the beat of the tune. His eyes look out of focus. Suna thinks, out of nowhere, this guy is a mess.

What he ends up saying is, “Why do you like me?”

“‘Cause you got shitty taste in music,” Osamu deadpans. He doesn’t look affected by the abruptness of Suna’s question in the slightest. “I don’t have a reason,” he eventually admits. “Didn’t I tell you before? I just do.”

Osamu’s hand hangs limply between the two of them. Suna moves his chair closer to the turntable and he rests his hand on his lap. Their fingers brush. A beat later, their pinkies entwine. It’s a slow process—pinkie, then ring, then middle, until all their fingers are loosely tangled together, a touch so light that Suna almost thinks they aren’t actually doing it. 

The song is still playing. Suna tries not to ponder on the lyrics, but it’s hard when he’s realizing now that it’s three minutes worth of the same lines on repeat. 

“If you liked someone else,” Suna begins carefully. “Would be easier, or would it just be the same?”

Osamu doesn’t say anything, and Suna almost thinks that the other hadn’t heard his question. He doesn’t think of repeating it. Maybe Osamu hearing it would mean pulling away. Maybe Suna is better off not knowing. 

“Easier,” Osamu answers quietly, and he doesn’t explain. 

Despite his words, his fingers curl into Suna’s, and Suna pretends like he doesn’t notice. 

✿✿✿

We clutch our bellies and roll on the floor...
When I say this, it should mean laughter, 
Not poison.
—A Litany In Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out, Richard Siken

✿✿✿

When Kosaku, Gin, Atsumu, Osamu, and Suna step inside the latter’s apartment to spend the night, the first thing they do is smash a cake right at Suna’s face. 

“Happy birthday, bastard,” All of them chorus at Suna, and he responds by kicking them out of his apartment for ten minutes just so that he can wash his face and tidy things up for their impromptu sleepover. 

He clears out the living room so they have space to set down their sleeping bags and makes sure to put the mini TV and coffee table far away so Atsumu won’t accidentally smash it or smash his head against it. Somewhere along the way to Suna’s place, Gin withdrew money and managed to buy them alcohol. Atsumu buys Suna a pack of chuupet as a birthday present, except he starts eating it the moment Kosaku passes around the beer cans. Osamu spends a long time in the showers. Suna only manages to drink half of a can of beer before Osamu leaves the bathroom and steals his because he isn’t in the mood to get tipsy. Gin convinces them to spend two grueling hours on a romantic drama they watch from Suna’s laptop before Atsumu pushes him aside to put up some who-done-it film. Kosaku almost spills his drink on the sleeping bags and the futons they’ve laid out and been sitting on. Suna doesn’t really watch, more engrossed with texting Ren, who had sent him a picture of a mini cake he made in honor of his older brother, until he eventually falls asleep. 

When he comes to, all the lights are out. He can hear Atsumu snoring by his side and the dark figures of the others rolling around in their sleep. The position Suna’s in is comfortable, even if it’s sandwiched in the middle of his friends, but he’s awake because of how awfully cold it’s gotten. Turning his head, he realizes it’s because the balcony is still open. He fumbles in trying to look for someone’s phone to check the time—almost three in the morning. He can’t believe he’s awake. 

Suna uses one of their phones to maneuver his way out. When he shines the light at Atsumu’s slack face so he knows not to step on him—as tempting as the offer could be—there’s a drawing of a smiley face and a dick on his forehead. Suna can’t help but grin a little as he continues making his way to the balcony. 

The curtain is half-drawn and the sliding door is only partially open even though Suna doesn’t remember it being in this state hours ago. He realizes why when he squints and his eyes adjust to the illuminating moon trying to sneak in light into the dark room. It’s bright enough to completely wake him up. 

“Osamu,” Suna says. Osamu doesn’t seem to hear him, so Suna steps past the threshold to get closer. The snow looks different under the moon and the air is chilly. Suna is bundled up in the blanket he took with him, while Osamu is wearing a thick coat that Suna recognizes to be his own. 

“Dude,” Suna says louder. “Did you snoop through my closet?”

Osamu turns to him. “Suna,” he says, voice clear enough for Suna to know he’s either been awake for a while or hadn’t slept at all. “I didn’t know you got good tastes in clothing.”

Suna’s never worn that coat because yellow isn’t his thing, but he supposes that it works on Osamu because he has the same face as Atsumu and the latter doesn’t look hideous in the color. A slight fog hangs around the air and wraps itself around Osamu that doesn’t look like it’s from the climate and Suna catches something long and thin wedged in between Osamu’s knuckles, hand resting on the railing. “I didn’t know you smoked.”

Osamu lifts his hand. It’s not a cigarette that he puts in between his lips. “Not the legit one anyway. We can’t all be hardcore.” Suna walks over towards him, leaning on the railings as he opens his hand. Osamu gives him the vape pen with a raised eyebrow, but then he lets out an amused huff. “I thought you said you quit, but I shouldn’t be surprised, given the zombie look you still got half the time.”

Suna did quit. It’s been more than six months since he’s had nicotine in his lungs. “I’m cheating today,” he replies, and then makes a face when he inhales and tastes something bitter. “What flavor is this?” 

“Tobacco.”

Suna returns the device to Osamu. “You might as well just get the actual thing.”

“Not worth gettin’ caught,” says Osamu. 

Suna eyes Osamu and the languid way he inhales the nicotine and exhales it through his nose. For Suna, it’s always been a sort of open secret, but Osamu— “You used to bitch about the smell all the time last year. Since when have you been doing it?”

Osamu shrugs. “You ain’t the only one who knows a bunch of sketchy guys. ‘Tsumu’s got his fair share too.” Obviously, considering that Suna’s supposedly “sketchy guys” come from Atsumu’s class. After taking another puff, Osamu says, “I heard that the nicotine should kill the flowers in my lungs.”

Suna gives him a long, considering look. “You’re an idiot,” he tells him. 

“Takes one to know one,” Osamu responds. “By the way, that was your brother, right? The one you were talkin’ to the entire time earlier.” 

“Yeah,” says Suna. “He's in second year middle school, but he’s already trying to study for high school entrance exams. Tokyo’s competitive.”

When his eyes drift down, he sees five flowers—not just petals, but entire flower bases—scattered on the ground. He doesn’t own any plants, so there’s only one other source to them. Suna doesn’t really get why Osamu doesn’t throw it in the trash or toilet whenever he’s with him when it happens, why he’d rather just leave it alone and hope the wind takes it or some other sorry bastard decides to clean it up instead. 

“If you have Hanahaki,” Suna says. “Do they ever tell you that you have it because you have a big heart or something?”

Osamu scoffs. “It’s not that romantic. Or deep.” Suna stares at the flowers. The petals are brown, this time around, like they’ve withered. Osamu seems to notice what Suna is looking at and follows his gaze. “They were yellow last time,” he supplies. 

“Flowers have meanings, right? Even the colors?”

“Mhm.” He talks with the vape hanging from his mouth. “Dunno what any of them are though.” 

Suna isn’t exactly surprised by the reply. Just because the petals and flowers are changing doesn’t mean Osamu is going to automatically know their significance, and it doesn’t mean he cares enough to find out. Flowers and the meanings of them—to Suna, they’re all the same, simply differing in aesthetic, and he doesn’t doubt that it’s the same for Osamu. Besides, it doesn’t change the fact that he has them because of an unrequited love, and new flowers doesn’t mean a new person to fall for. 

The flowers were probably once yellow before morphing into that color. Osamu takes a purposeful deep inhale of the vape pen this time around. “Do you really believe that’ll kill the flowers?”  

“Obviously not,” Osamu says. “But it’s what I told my mom when she found out, so she let it slide.”

Suna snorts. “Forget being an idiot. You’re just a piece of shit, lying to her like that.”

Osamu simply shrugs, lips curled upwards. He doesn’t disagree. When he passes Suna the device again, there’s something dark brewing in his eyes that the younger recognizes as desire, the kind of look that Suna knows means, I want to kiss you. 

In the split second they share where they reach out to both hold the vape pen, trading who holds it, Suna thinks about it. In that split second, it would make sense to close the distance between them and press their mouths together, right under the starless sky but bright moon and surrounded by the quietness of the world that isn’t watching them. It would be a romantic scene to picture, too good to be real. Suna doesn’t remember the last time he kissed someone, nor does he remember the last time he’s wanted to. 

But the moment passes and romantic thoughts are romantic thoughts. They’re half a foot away from one another and Suna just takes another inhale. His thoughts suddenly don’t feel like his own thoughts, and he has an inkling as to what exactly is happening, the memory of the look in Osamu’s eyes still fresh in his mind and what it told Suna. Kita said, you can’t change fate just by believing hard enough in your own reality. 

Almost as if he’s thinking the same thing, Osamu quietly looks away.

✿✿✿

On Valentine’s Day, Suna arrives at his classroom to see Osamu attempting to strangle Atsumu. Suna normally doesn’t think it’s anything out of the ordinary until he reaches his desk and sees that under the usual obligatory chocolates from his classmates and friends is a single rose, dry at the edges and neatly wrapped in plastic covering. Store-bought, not coughed out from someone’s mouth. 

“Am I a fuckin’ joke to you?” He hears Osamu demand Atsumu all the way from the back of the room, which is all Suna needs to know that the flower is most likely from Atsumu. It’s the same kind of anger Osamu has whenever he finds out Atsumu ate a snack of his that he’d been saving up though, so he’s not actually pissed about the prank. Atsumu claims that Osamu is barking up the wrong tree because he hasn’t done anything, but the setter generally sucks at being believable, so his brother isn’t buying it. 

Suna acts like he doesn’t notice or hear them and eyes Osamu’s desk a few rows ahead of his. Naturally, his table is littered with love letters and his chair is overflowing with gifts, chocolates and flowers alike. All the boys in their class have gotten over the jealousy regarding Osamu’s popularity, but it doesn’t mean they can’t look at his area with disdain clear on their faces. 

It’s a normal Valentine’s, by all accounts. Suna unwraps one of the chocolates to pop it in his mouth. When the bell rings and Atsumu leaves, Suna and Osamu accidentally eye contact as the latter makes his way to his seat. He doesn’t look at the flower, but Suna fights down the urge to throw it out anyway and instead sticks it in his bag. 

During Homeroom, Sato-sensei whisks them away from their classroom, explaining that one of the teachers is returning to Inarizaki this week, having finally recovered from pneumonia. Nakamura suggests a joint effort of the class to make the returning teacher something, and that turns out to be a full-course meal. Sato-sensei segregates them into groups, each in charge with a specific kind of dish, and sends them off to take over one of the mini kitchens present in the room. There are four, and Suna ends up in the back with Adachi Makoto and Nakamura herself, in charge of making dessert. They’re handed the ingredients and recipe for making cookies. 

Halfway, Nakamura leaves them to talk to Sato-sensei and doesn’t come back, which isn’t that big of a deal because Suna doesn’t think baking will be that hard to do. Because the kitchen is so small, Makoto ends up repeatedly bumping shoulders with him or catching his attention through tapping his arm. She never stops blushing every time she realizes she’s touched his bicep. The reaction makes Suna feel vaguely amused because it’s kind of silly. They’re not exactly friends, but Suna is acquainted with her because he’s friends with her brother, Atsumu’s classmate and where Suna used to get his cigarettes and pot. She probably walked in on them smoking in her brother’s room once or twice back in the first year. 

“Suna-san,” Makoto starts, as they’re doing their separate duties. Suna is trying to chop the chocolate bars into smaller bits while Makoto is mixing in both the dry and wet ingredients together. It’s a bit hard for her to do it since they don’t have an electric mixer and she has to do it by hand, but she claims she’s strong and would prefer this task than using the knife. It’s not like Suna doesn’t understand; he's queasy about knives too, but he has better skill with it because he’s physically stronger, so he doesn’t really have a choice. 

“You can drop the formalities,” Suna tells her casually. 

Makoto flushes again. Suna tries his best not to feel flattered that he’s the one causing her reaction, even if it doesn’t mean anything. “Uh, Suna-kun,” she amends. “I kind of want to tell you something.”

Suna hums as he finishes mincing the chocolate bars into little bits. He lifts the chopping board and slides them off with the knife into the small bowl. The sound of the blade pressing against the plastic isn’t really a pleasant sound, but at least it ends soon enough. “What is it?” he asks. “Here, by the way. If you’re ready, let’s mix that in so we can start baking it.”

“Oh.” Makoto reluctantly takes the bowl. “After this, then.”

Spreading the chocolate chunks all over the batter doesn’t take long, and by the time Makoto finishes, Suna’s already laid out the wax papers on the trays they’ll be using to bake the cookies. As they each get an ice cream scooper and a spoon to start laying out the batter in smaller pieces, Makoto says, “Did you receive anything from a special someone of yours today?”

“You’d have to have a special someone for that to happen,” Suna replies offhandedly, realizing how hard it is to shape the cookie in the typical, circular shape he wants it to look. His hands are awkward with the utensils and he can’t seem to place them in neat rows to maximize the space. Makoto also seems to have that same problem with her batch, but she doesn’t look as troubled. “So no.”

“Not looking for any, or?”

The first five are abnormally tinier, but with the sixth one, it’s twice its size. When Suna tries splitting it in half and moving it away to be its own cookie, it leaves a mark in its trail and some of the batter even sticks to the scooper. He doesn’t know if it’s a testament to the general texture or how bad he is at doing it, but he feels the frustration slowly bubbling over regardless. “I don’t really think about it. If it happens, it happens,” he says. 

“Ah. That’s not the worst response, I guess.”

He doesn’t know how, but some of the batter manages to stick to his fingertips. He doesn’t know why he feels so disgusted when it’s just food, but maybe because the wet, sticky texture isn’t exactly a nice feeling. He nods to her words absentmindedly, and then he processes the weight behind them. “Why?”

“I, uh—I know you saw it since it’s in your bag, but the flower was from me.” Makoto stutters. “I like you.”

The first thing Suna thinks is, so Atsumu was actually being honest. The first thing he says is, “Oh.”

“Yeah.” From the corner of his eye, he sees her tuck a stray strand of hair behind her ear. Somehow, her dainty fingers don’t have a smear of cookie dough on them. Then again, she seems to have given up on doing work in order to muster the courage to confess to him. “Sorry if I kind of sprung it up on you. I don’t think it was that noticeable.”

It wasn’t, but at least it explains her flustered state every time she touches him, even if it’s meant to be harmless. He figured she was, at the very least, attracted to him, but not to a deeper level as to like. 

Suna’s mind feels sluggish. It’s taking him a while to soak everything in. The confessions he receives are few and far between, but it’s infrequency has never made him feel any specific kind of attachment or special appreciation for them. 

It’s Valentine’s Day. He just received a confession. He looks to the bowl of cookie batter in between them. Half a foot away, his mind supplies, and the space between them feels familiar. “Is that why Nakamura isn’t coming back?”

“Oh, god no.” Makoto giggles at that, and it’s a pleasant sound. She’s pretty, as Suna actually takes a good look at her. Wavy hair cropped to a bob length, a fair complexion and bright eyes. Her cheekbones are the same as her brother’s, and they have the same dimple when they smile. Her brother once said that she'd be a lot more popular if she just stopped getting worked up over everything and socialized a bit more. “It just—I don’t know. It just happened. I was supposed to leave a love letter in your shoe locker asking you to meet me outside, but I know you have practice after class and I can’t stay long. Sorry. This isn’t very romantic, is it?”

It’s not, but it’s not exactly like Suna has experienced enough romance in his life to draw comparisons. “It’s okay.” He shrugs. The window of the room shows a clear sky. “I think you should just do whatever feels right.”

“Is it strange if I say I didn’t expect you to say that, but I’m glad you did?” she wonders. 

“No,” Suna answers honestly. “Adachi—”

Makoto shakes her head. “You don’t need to answer me. I can tell from your eyes what you’re thinking.”

Suna doesn’t think he has a specific type. They aren’t close, but he knows enough about her to know that she’s kind, that she could probably handle his blunt attitude and bad habits, that they can keep an easygoing honest conversation even though there are a few hesitations. He knows that he could be charmed by her mannerisms and they could click and he could have a normal high school romance with a pretty girl in his class. He doesn’t think he has a specific type, but if he did, she probably fits it. But behind her trails the shadow of her brother and Suna doesn’t want to only see someone by who they remind him of, because that’s not really real. And types don’t matter, in the larger scheme of things; they’re just ideals people make to create something concrete, not necessarily accurate. 

Besides, as much as he doesn’t mind—maybe even appreciates—simple, straightforward confessions, this doesn’t feel like one he can accept.  

“I’m thinking about how we still need to finish baking these cookies,” he says instead. 

Makoto looks slightly surprised by his words, but then she smiles. “You’re right,” she agrees. And then, “I don’t wanna make things awkward, so I won’t bring it up anymore after this, but I really like that about you.”

“Which?”

Makoto shrugs. “The fact that you’re you, I guess.”

Suna doesn’t know what that means. But he doesn’t ask, because Makoto said she wouldn’t talk about it anymore and because he wants to empty out the bowl already so they can clean up while the cookies bake. 

By the time only half the batter is left, Suna feels worn out. His fingers have accumulated more of the dough, and the raw cookies laid out on his tray aren’t consistent at all. He’s made more progress than Makoto though, who is only slower because she’s putting in more effort to shape them properly, but he can tell she’s getting fed up too. 

“I give up,” he declares, setting the utensils down and flopping down on the plastic chair situated at the corner. “What if we put the rest in one of those brownie trays and call it a day? It’s basically one big cookie, but square.”

Makoto hums thoughtfully. “Wouldn’t they be brookies then?”

“Aren’t you two s’pposed to be makin’ cookies?” someone’s voice filters in, and Suna and Makoto both turn to see Osamu making his way towards them. He glances at their trays, then at the bowl, then at Makoto. “Need some help?”

“Just with scooping them out,” Makoto explains. “The rest of the batter is for my tray since Suna-kun’s is already full, but I don’t think I want mine to look like his.”

Suna narrows his eyes. “Hey.”

“Ah, ‘cause the sizing’s all over the place, right?” Osamu muses. “Don’t use utensils. If you want ‘em to look really nice, you gotta use your hands.”

He quickly washes his hands before opening one of the cupboards, pulling out a box that contains plastic gloves. He hands it to Makoto as he slips on a pair “Here. I’ll show you how it’s done.” 

Suna watches Osamu demonstrate to the both of them how he tears off a small portion of the batter and rolls it with his palms like he’s playing with clay before setting it neatly down on the tray, even though his body is mostly angled to Makoto and it kind of seems like he’s ignoring Suna. 

“What happened to your own group?” he asks. 

Osamu doesn’t even glance back at him. “We’re done.” 

“What did you make?”

“Sushi. Nosaki says he’s gonna be a doctor, so he’s adjustin’ everythin’ all over again ‘cause he wants to practice bein’ meticulous.” He sounds grumpy about it, but Suna can easily tell it’s a lie, because Osamu tends to dominate the kitchen no matter who he’s with. He probably handled the majority of it before leaving his groupmates to pick up the scraps or do some minor changes to what was mostly his work. 

“Miya-san, you don’t have to do all this,” Makoto tells him. “At the rate you’re going, you’ll end up doing most of my work.”

“Can’t have that, can we?” Osamu jokes. “It’s fine. I don’t mind.”

After letting the initial shock at the offer wear off, Makoto’s face softens. “Thanks for helping me. That’s very thoughtful of you. Kind, even.”

Suna almost snorts. He knows Osamu has never spoken to Adachi Makoto before in his life, probably doesn’t even know her name, and he’s definitely not helping her out of the kindness of his heart. Osamu is doing this because he likes cooking and he likes making cookies. 

From the way Osamu purposely doesn’t even spare a glance at Suna, it also seems like he’s partly here to annoy the shit out of him. It’s nothing as sincere as what Makoto is thinking. 

For a brief moment, Suna considers calling him out on it. But he’s not as annoyed with Makoto’s false view of Osamu or Osamu’s general lack of sincere intention, because that’s just who Osamu is. 

(“I really like that about you.”

“Which?”

“The fact that you’re you, I guess.”)

“Suna-kun,” Makoto chirps. Suna wonders if he imagined the slight tension in Osamu’s posture because of how Makoto called him. “Are you going to help or not?”

Suna actually wants to say no, but he stands up anyway. “Sure,” he agrees. When he stands beside them, Osamu doesn’t look at him, more invested in his task of rolling the batter into tiny little balls, but he briefly stops to push the glove box to Suna anyway. 

As Suna takes it, Makoto’s words echo again in his head. 

✿✿✿

Suna’s entire knowledge of love consists of his one semi-serious relationship in his last year of middle school with one Arima Hinami, a three-hour movie marathon of rom-coms that Gin made him endure plus that additional time on his birthday, and all of Atsumu’s failed relationships. None of them are really good landmarks for love in general and in real life, so in essence, he has no concrete concept as to what love exactly is. 

He knows sparse and uneventful confessions. He knows a thing or two about crushes. They’re nice things to experience, the same way finding a new and fun game being released and put on discount is like and the same way celebrating an occasion with barbecue and snuck-in beer feels. But confessions and crushes have never equated to the abstract aspect known as love and he’s never actually been in love, never saw the hype of it when he was much more invested in other things. 

If there’s anything Suna does know, it’s that love is the kind of thing that gnaws at you, and he has never seen the appeal of getting utterly consumed by one thing alone. Even with volleyball, his own thoughts tend to drift at some point. 

The end of February has everyone starting to feel nostalgic, though they’re still grasping onto the bits of normality they can before the school year officially ends and a new one begins. With winter slowly ending, Suna looks forward to the upcoming spring season because the weather reminds him of fall, but he opts to stay in the clubroom with Osamu as the latter waits for his brother to finish meeting up with his second girlfriend of the year. 

“He’s taking a long time,” Suna comments. “Think they’re making out?” 

“God no,” Osamu replies. “She’s probably dumpin’ his sorry ass. I’d video it happenin’ myself, but I don’t wanna risk the chances of them doing some breakup make out. ‘Tsumu’s dramatic like that.”

“You didn’t have to tell me that.”

“But you asked.”

Suna doesn’t actually know why he’s here. The room is slowly growing less stuffy and crowded with the third-years taking out their things one-by-one. The window is open halfway so they won’t feel suffocated. They’re both sitting on the floor, with Suna doing some extra stretches to further cool down from practice today and Osamu mindlessly scrolling through his phone beside him. Even though he pretends to not look, Suna knows Osamu is making faces at the way the middle blocker twists his torso to almost impossible degrees just to see if they’ll hurt. 

Suna glances at the sky through the opened window. Earlier, Kita had pulled him aside asking if he wanted to be Atsumu’s vice-captain. In response, Suna looked up at the heavens as if the gods really were watching them before asking Kita, “Do I look like the kind of person to pick up after Atsumu’s crap?”

Kita said, smiling wryly, “You're right. Maybe you should focus on sortin' your own issues before doin' anythin' else.”

So terribly blunt. Suna is really, really going to miss him. 

A guttural sound erupts from Osamu’s mouth, and he starts to cough harshly. Suna turns his head and starts to crawl towards him until Osamu holds up a hand to tell him to stop. Suna does, and ends up wasting nearly a minute watching Osamu wheeze. The sound is thick and painful. 

Osamu’s head is ducked down to let the flowers spill on the ground, but he lifts it when Suna rests a hand awkwardly on his head. He’s supposed to cup his cheek, but the idea feels too intimate and daunting for Suna to actually push through with. “I’m fine,” Osamu croaks out. 

“Never said you weren’t.” Suna rolls his eyes. Osamu’s hair is damp under his touch even though he washed up by the sinks almost an hour ago because of the cold weather. Suna finds himself absentmindedly running a hand through the locks. The flowers are whole again, not just petals, and this time they’re purple. The color is so striking he almost thinks they’re fake. “I know Hanahaki isn’t a disease that kills,” he finds himself saying. “But imagine if you were allergic to flowers.”

“That’s like shootin’ up five doses of heroin all in one go.”

“What’s with that analogy?”

Osamu lets out a shaky breath. This time, Suna thinks, fuck the weirdness, and slips his hand down to cup Osamu’s cheek. It feels like the right thing to do, because Osamu ends up leaning into his touch. Suna thinks of brushing his fingers against the skin, but it’s not like the other is some kind of dog that needs to be petted. The other arm that has been holding Suna’s weight the entire time so he could reach over to Osamu is starting to cramp, and he wonders how long this will last. 

Not long, apparently, because Osamu murmurs, “Can we hold hands?”

Suna pulls back to get into a more comfortable position and grasps Osamu’s hand. There aren’t any second thoughts lingering at the back of his mind. “Sure.”

It doesn’t feel as weird this time around. Osamu’s hands are cold, but it’s okay because the room’s getting a bit too hot for him anyway. The calluses on the other’s skin don’t bother him anymore, even if Suna himself doesn’t get them enough to be used to the feeling despite being a middle blocker. There’s a small white scar mark that lines Osamu’s ring finger from an event Suna doens’t remember the other telling him about. 

“Do you really not feel anythin’ when we do this?” Osamu asks him idly. 

Suna thinks of Kita’s words. You can’t change fate just by believing hard enough in your own reality. Suna looks at their conjoined hands and knows Osamu is trying to do just that, but he isn’t as put off by the thought of Osamu defying the truth of his circumstances by insisting on things happening on his own terms as he thought he’d be. 

It’s still just a hand. But it’s warm and it’s distinct and it’s Osamu and these—these are just simple facts cataloged to ease Suna’s mind. He still doesn’t know if it means anything. Words are just words. Touch is just touch. Suna doesn’t know a thing about love.

“It just feels like holding hands,” he says plainly. Osamu leans closer to him, as if he can’t hear him that clearly. “Yours are really cold.”

“Well, I feel warm,” he replies, almost smugly, before his tone turns soft. “My chest too.”  It only hits Suna now, the proximity between them. With Osamu’s head slightly tilted downwards, Suna can easily count his eyelashes. It wouldn’t take much to get their foreheads to touch. 

“Y’know,” Osamu continues in a low voice. “I once read a study that it only takes four minutes for someone to fall in love.” The look in Osamu’s eyes are glassy and distant, like he’s not really talking to Suna but more to himself. It’s like Osamu has forgotten that Suna’s still here in the first place. “Yet this ain’t as simple. Easy.” 

The way Osamu pointedly doesn’t look at him makes Suna realize that no, Osamu hadn’t been speaking as if he forgot Suna was in the room unintentionally. It was to gather the courage to reveal all of this. Suna doesn’t know what to do with this unexpected moment of vulnerability. It’s not the kind of thing he can hold, like hands, not the kind of thing he can easily dismiss, like lapses of distance between them. He tries not to turn back to the window. It’s still going to be a clear blue anyway. 

He lets out a measured exhale through his nose and wonders if he can surrender himself to his emotions that easily. It’s not as if honesty has ever been out of character for them—it’s just never been in this kind of way, with such a fragile atmosphere hanging between them. Some of the purple flowers lie on Osamu’s lap. Suna imagines the sight of dark red tinted at its edges. He thinks of Kita's words again. They have never been the type to sit still and let fate take its course. 

Suna asks, “What’s falling in love even like?”

Osamu opens his mouth to answer, but then the clubroom door bursts open and Atsumu’s voice booms, “She just fuckin’ dumped me!”

In a flash, they pull away. Osamu brushes the flowers off his lap and hides them under his legs. Suna turns and pretends he’s stretching his leg. Cracking his knuckles lazily, as if nothing had been going on, Osamu tells Suna, “Called it.”

Without even looking, Suna flips him off while he reaches for his phone. Atsumu collapses right in front of his brother and clings to him as he starts sobbing about how the separation made no sense; Osamu tries pushing him away and Suna acts like he's none the wiser. They never bring up what happened ever again, and Suna doesn’t let himself mull over his question, doesn’t let the answer he never got become the kind of thing that eats at him. 

✿✿✿

His family surprise-visits him over the weekend. There’s no warning call or any hints dropped in their past phone calls and text messages. When Suna opens the door to take out the trash for the week, he’s greeted with the sight of his parents, takeout in hand and a predictable grocery bag full of essentials they know Suna hasn’t spared any time to buy. Dinner is a lively affair and their company is a heart-warming surprise because their intended, scheduled visit isn’t supposed to be for another month. 

They have to tuck in early because Suna still has school the next day and his family is going to leave for Tokyo early morning. His parents take his bedroom and Suna and Ren use the pullout sofa in the living room. The siblings end up staying late watching a bunch of action movies Ren had been saving up to watch because he wanted to see them with his brother, and before they fall asleep by the stroke of midnight because Suna doesn’t want Ren to follow after him in terms of bad sleeping habits, Ren says, “I wish we had more moments like this.”

Suna does too. But Tokyo is kinder to Ren and has more to offer than anything Hyogo does, and it’s not like Suna never had the choice to move with his family to the main capital—he just didn’t want to, sights set on Inarizaki long ago. 

“Just a few moments ago you were saying you wish you never met me,” Suna points out instead. 

“That’s because you spoiled the ending of the movie!” Ren complains. Suna smiles, and he’s grateful that the darkness doesn’t let his little brother see his beam. “But you’re happy, right? Your life is good here, right?”

Suna doesn’t really think much of the question. “Yeah,” he answers. His life here is good. He has a good family, he has good friends. He can play volleyball and he isn’t really going through anything. He isn’t sick, so his life is good, but then his mind suddenly flashes to Osamu, and thinks that maybe being good isn’t necessarily a good thing. “I’m lucky.”

“Lucky?” Ren hums thoughtfully. “Hopefully I’m also the same.”

“Why?”

“There’s this girl I like.”

“Aren’t you nine?” Suna teases, and lets Ren punch him in the shoulder for that. Then, in a more serious tone, “How do you even know you like her?”

“I don’t know. I just do.” They’re familiar words; Suna remembers them resting on someone else’s tongue. It had been raining then, raindrops loud and drumming against the rooftops. Now, the night is quiet. “I care about her. That’s how I know.”

Suna stares at the curtains that block the balcony. His tongue tastes like something bitter. He’s always liked their team motto—we don’t need things like memories, yet he keeps on coming back to them, even if they’re unintentional. “You can care about anyone. It doesn’t mean you love them.”

“How would you know?”

“I don’t.” Suna swallows. “But that’s how it is.”

Ren is quiet for a few moments. Suna thinks it means that the conversation is over, or Ren fell asleep. He’d been yawning a lot earlier, so he was probably making idle conversation to help him drift off. But then his little brother says, “You can't be that sure. You’re not god.” 

Suna rolls his eyes. “I’m not saying I am.”

“Could’ve fooled me,” Ren says. “Aniki, I may be younger than you, but even I say for sure that love isn’t as complicated as you think. You’re just being stubborn about how you see it—you’re overthinking it. Which is weird, since I know you don’t even think half the time.”

“Since when did you become such a smartass?” Ren just laughs. Suna sighs. “Go to sleep already, kiddo. We both have to be up early.”

“Fine,” Ren huffs. “But I’m right, you know.”

“Whatever helps you sleep faster.”

Suna ends up arriving at school the next day with his eyes half-opened and his mind half-awake. The morning classes happen in a blur and he’s passed out on his desk during every second of break time. Suna is too drowsy to think. Vaguely, he contemplates if he can get away with going to the clinic, feigning illness, and napping by the beds. 

“Where’s Osamu?” he can hear Gin ask, when he, Atsumu, and Kosaku arrive at Suna’s classroom. 

Suna’s head is pressed on the desk, eyes closed, but he raises a finger and points to the direction of where Osamu’s desk is. 

“What’s that s’pposed to mean, Suna?” Kosaku says. “His desk is empty.”

“It’s ‘cause he’s absent,” Atsumu answers. 

Suna’s head snaps up. “What?”

Atsumu shoots him a funny look. “Suna, he’s your classmate. How come you didn’t know this?”

“It’s ‘cause he’s been playing Sleeping Beauty for the entire day,” one of his classmates inputs, passing by. 

“Why is he absent?” Suna asks. 

“‘Cause he’s sick.” Atsumu is still looking at him strangely. Sick. Suna feels his blood go cold. “What’s got you so worked up?”

“Nothing,” Suna immediately defends. Then he sighs, running a hand through his hair. “I’m just hungry.”

Suna finds himself fully awake for the remainder of the day and finds out that Atsumu has to stay behind after classes end to talk to Kita and Coach Oomi. That fact isn’t really important, and he doesn’t really think about it until he reaches the intersection that separates his place and the Miya’s. The first time Osamu coughed up flowers, they were walking home together, and it felt wrong to part ways that day even though they had to. 

Suna tries recalling Osamu’s face that windy afternoon, but it comes out foggy and the thought makes him feel sick. Why doesn’t he remember? It was just a few months ago. 

Before he knows it, he’s sprinting to the opposite direction of his street. When Osamu opens the door to the sight of a panting Suna by the front porch step, it’s like all the air has returned to Suna’s lungs, greeted with the sight of someone he realized he hadn’t seen at all for the whole day. 

“Suna?” Osamu asks, eyes wide and caught off guard by his sudden appearance. “What the hell are you doin’ here?”

Suna stares at Osamu. Everything he’d been meaning to say has vanished from his mind. “Atsumu said you were sick,” is all he ends up blurting out. 

“Yeah,” Osamu says, shifting slightly. His hair is askew. He’s swaddled by a large blanket that’s keeping him warm. He’s just in an old baggy shirt and shorts. “From a normal cold.”

“Oh.” Suna doesn’t really get why he’s surprised until it hits him—the sudden spike of uneasiness he couldn’t brush off, the single-minded determination to see Osamu without regard for anything else just because he needed to, that gripping fear that something must have happened to him and Suna didn’t see it sooner. He feels foolish now, assuming that Osamu was sick because of Hanahaki when Osamu himself  said it wasn’t serious in the first place. 

Of course it’s just a cold. Atsumu didn’t even seem that concerned about it, and he’s Osamu’s own brother. “Okay.”

Osamu looks at him quizzically before understanding washes over his eyes. “You thought it was the flowers,” he says. 

“No.”

“Stop lyin’,” Osamu almost snaps at him. “You're shit at it.”

“I’m not lying.” Suna straightens himself. 

Osamu looks doubtful. “Then why d’you come runnin’ all the way here like I got the Olympian medal in my hands?”

“I—”

“Suna,” Osamu interrupts, sounding exhausted. “You need to stop actin’ like you don’t care when you do.”

Suna narrows his eyes. “I’ve never not cared.”

“No,” Osamu agrees. “But not in the way you really do.”

Ren’s words resonate in Suna’s head. How do you know you like her? Suna asked. Ren said, I care about her. That’s how I know. 

But you can care about someone without loving them. Suna knows that, because he cares for Osamu, but he doesn’t love him. He doesn’t, because Suna doesn’t know what love is in the first place, because he can’t figure it out, and because it isn’t simple. 

It’s not as complicated as you think, Ren told him. You’re just being stubborn. You’re overthinking it.

Suna sucks in the air through his teeth. “Forget it. I’m leaving.”

Osamu looks taken aback. “Suna, wait—”

“I’m not having this conversation,” Suna says sternly. In the corner of his eye, he catches a row of blue flowers blooming by the front yard of the Miya’s, dark red at its edges, and it all comes rushing back to him— Gin’s words, Kosaku’s, Akagi’s, Kita’s, Ren’s. 

Suna knows he’s lucky. He doesn’t have it hard. He doesn’t know how many times the people in his life have reminded him of that, especially compared to Osamu, who is sick, and sick because of him. But it doesn’t change the fact that he’s still frustrated, that he’s so, so tired. 

“Look,” he says. “I don’t expect you—any of you to get it. And that’s fine. It’s never really been about me. But I don’t want to talk about it, because I’m so tired of getting worked up over it.” He turns around, about to leave and then hesitates. “I hope you get better soon, Osamu.”

Osamu doesn’t reply, but he doesn’t close the door either. Suna walks away, and then he starts running just because he can. He passes by a music store that blares jazz music from its speakers. It’s a local song, but it reminds Suna of the record store and that one song he always plays on loop. 

He needs to figure himself out. Everyone’s words continue to ring in his head, but what emerges from all the chaos is a sudden, single thought, one that resonates with him the strongest. I never wanted to hurt him. 

It’s a start. 

✿✿✿

On the third day of not seeing Osamu, of avoiding his friends and skipping practice, of trying to sort his thoughts and feelings out because suddenly the things he thought he had control over were starting to consume him, Suna goes to the record store after school ends. The sky is overcast, but he isn’t worried about the fact that he didn’t bring an umbrella. He’s probably going to be in the shop for a while anyway. 

He steps inside. The employee by the counter has earphones on and she doesn’t even spare him a glance. Suna makes his way past the shelves until he gets to the back of the store where the listening stations are at. He stops when he sees the familiar back of someone using the player Suna has always unconsciously branded as his. 

He takes a step back, tempted to leave, but then changes his mind. Quietly, he pulls a chair and sits next to Osamu. 

“You're right, y’know,” Osamu tells him, even though he’s wearing headphones and the record spins, playing the song. “I don’t understand you at all.” 

Suna stares at Osamu. He looks better than the last time Suna saw him. He probably just got well today, which is why he still didn’t go to school, so he shouldn’t be here. The thought of telling him this doesn’t enter Suna’s mind. Despite how their last conversation went and everything that has been going on with Suna, the fact that his company is none other than Osamu isn’t as bad as he thought it would be. 

“‘Cause this song you like so much is really so damn depressin’,” Osamu adds, putting the headphones around his neck. “Is it a jazz thing? I never saw the appeal of jazz.”

Neither does Suna. This is the only jazz song he’s ever liked. He doesn’t tell Osamu though, because the older seems content to single-handedly carry the conversation. Osamu’s leg is bouncing. There are trembles around his body so faint that Suna only notices because he’s right beside him. He’s bursting with rambles and a never-ending stream of thoughts as if it’ll distract the both of them from the fact that he’s all over the place. 

“I wonder if all jazz is like this,” he wonders, babbling. “Nice riffs and happy tunes and sad lyrics. Did you like this song’ cause of that last bit? The lyrics? Felt relatable or somethin’?”

Suna kisses him. 

When he pulls away, there’s a wide-eyed look on Osamu’s face, obvious that he didn’t expect it. Suna deludes himself, for a brief moment, into thinking that things have been solved, when Osamu’s face twists and he hunches over, heaving out flowers. Blue. No red tinges. 

“Fuck,” Suna says. Osamu lets out a dry laugh.  

"Kissin' someone doesn't actually mean anythin', Suna. It doesn't change anythin' like people actually think it does. This ain't a movie."

Osamu is annoying. Suna thinks. Annoying and frustrating because he's right. Kissing is just contact between two bodies. It's a smack between lips, mouths making a brief connection. The act alone means nothing, carries the same weight as the slap on the back or a jostle of the shoulder or the bump of knuckles. Like a handshake. Like holding hands. Bodies are just bodies; the act in itself doesn’t mean anything. It's the intention. 

“Shut up,” Suna says, and his voice is starting to sound wet. “I know.”

“You're real stupid, y’know?” Osamu says. “That’s why I like you.”

Osamu doesn’t explain himself. Suna can feel something bubble over in his chest. It’s warm and it aches and it’s overwhelming. He wants to cherish the feeling forever. 

“Osamu,” he starts. “Osamu, fuck, I don’t know a thing about love. I don’t know anything, but I’ll swear I'll fall in love with you.” Osamu startles. I never wanted to hurt you. “I promise, shit—I swear I’ll try. I mean it. I really do. So stop, please. Stop fucking giving me that look. Stop looking so sad and pitiful. The Osamu I know would never wear an expression like that.”

Osamu stares at him with glassy eyes. Then he gingerly lifts his hands. Suna thinks he’s going to cup his face, except he pinches Suna’s cheeks instead. 

“Ow.”

“Says the guy lookin’ so damn desperate,” Osamu chides gently. “And first off, fuck you, I don’t look pitiful. This is my normal face, and you don’t need to be such a dick ‘bout it. And I ain’t fuckin’ sad.” Osamu pinches him a little more. Suna winces. “I’m okay.”

Suna pulls away when Osamu lets him go. Osamu's touch lingers on Suna's cheeks. “No, you’re not.”

Osamu exhales sharply through his nose. “I will be,” he says. “‘Cause there’s nothin’ else to do, y’know? Don’t you get it? I don’t expect anythin’ from you. I ain’t waitin’ for anythin’. I’m takin’ my feelings and what I do with it into my own hands, but I’m not gonna do the same for yours, because they’re yours, not mine.”

You can’t change fate just by believing hard enough in your own reality. The things you want won’t happen just from sheer will and desire. But if you work hard enough, then maybe another path will open, another possibility. You can’t change fate, but it’s not like fate has ever been set in stone from the beginning.

“Suna," Osamu tells him. "It’s okay if you’ll never love me in that way, ‘cause it’s more than enough for me to know that you just love me. And I know you do, ‘cause you care. ‘Cause you're here, still.”

Suna looks into Osamu’s eyes and Osamu easily meets his gaze. The weighted look is familiar, something Suna has seen in Osamu before. It hits him, just then, that it’s love. Unbridled and clear cut. Nothing so complicated. Nothing that would gnaw at you and eat you up. Nothing that asks for anything back. Osamu told him he liked him that afternoon because he did. Osamu likes him just because. It's simple. 

I could fall in love with him, Suna suddenly thinks, and the thought isn’t daunting. 

“Fuck,” is all Suna can muster. Osamu laughs at his reaction and the sound is thick, but he doesn’t sound heartbroken. It’s such a lovely sound. “Fuck, I hate you. Osamu, I really fucking hate you.”

Osamu pulls him into a hug. Suna lets him. “I’m sorry, y’know. For everything,” he apologizes. “I really am.”

Suna knows that’s not what Osamu meant to say. He knows Osamu meant to tell him that he loved him, because that's what this is all about. But Suna doesn’t need the words to know. He doesn’t need the flowers. He doesn’t need the apology. He doesn’t even need the look. 

He just needs Osamu to be himself, unapologetically. 

“Osamu,” Suna says, still buried in Osamu’s chest. “I know what you said. But can you—can you wait for me? If I asked, can you? Will you? Because I’ll get there. I know I will.” 

He feels Osamu stiffen for just a second before his posture loosens and he lets Suna pull back a bit. When Suna glances at him, there’s a small smile dangling on Osamu’s lips. He lifts a finger, and then flicks the space between Suna’s eyebrows. Suna immediately recoils, the sentimental moment completely ruined, and Osamu starts to cackle. 

“I take it all back,” Suna declares. “I hope someone sets your hair on fire.”

But his glare is already wearing off and he feels fond as he watches Osamu clutch onto his stomach, trying to control his uncontrollable laughter. “Suna,” Osamu eventually says, once he’s managed to calm down. “You really need to work on your insults.” Suna bristles, but then Osamu continues, in a gentler, firmer tone, “But I’ll wait. I’ll wait as long as you want me to.” 

Suna softens, and he nods. “Okay.”

Osamu sighs and wipes his eyes. “Man, you're kinda bad for my heart. I don’t want my gravestone to say that I died from Suna Rintarou’s stupidity.”

“I could strangle you with this headphone cord.” Osamu gives him the finger. Just like that, they’re slipping back into their usual dynamic, the dramatics and sentimentality washing away even if they won’t be forgotten. Reality changes, bit by bit. “Do you want to continue listening?”

“I really dunno how you can stand listenin’ to the same thing over and over,” Osamu tells him, but he’s slipping the headphones back in anyway. Suna can’t help but grin smugly at the sight before he gets his own set. 

The turntable spins as the track begins to play. They inch closer to one another. Their hands touch. They don’t look at each other. The flowers lie by their feet. Despite everything, Suna thinks they’re going to be okay. 

✿✿✿

You always break the kindest heart
And with a hasty word you can’t recall
And if I broke your heart last night
It’s because I love you most of all.
—You Always Hurt The One You Love, The Mills Brothers