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They’re not drunk. They’re not completely sober either. Currently, they lie in an intermediate state of drunkenness, in which exaltation, mindlessness, euphoria, and a hint of omnipotence are amalgamated. If the world around them suddenly came crashing down, they would float and laugh suspended in midair, watching skyscrapers as they crumble - and then they would fly even higher, and teach the inhabitants of the moon how to play volleyball.
"I'm hungry," Atsumu says out of the blue, looking at Shouyou. "Let’s eat."
Shouyou asks him what time it is. His voice is friable, not quite anchored to reality - perhaps part of Shouyou is already on the moon. He sounds happy, though, and that's all that matters.
"Check on your phone?"
"Oh, right," Shouyou says, then takes the phone out of his pocket.
It’s 1:30. Atsumu knows him well enough by now to understand what is swirling in his head: 1:30 a.m. is not an appropriate hour to eat. Shouyou takes meals at extremely regular times, because regularity means preserving his own body, and thus volleyball, and thus his reason for living.
"Oh, c’mon," Atsumu urges him. "It's just a plate of rice. It’s not gonna kill you."
Shouyou ponders, weighs the consequences of agreeing or refusing. Atsumu sees the scales of pros and cons swing above his head, leaning first to one side, then to the other. Finally, perhaps because he likes Atsumu, or perhaps because he’s hungry too, Shouyou nods.
Atsumu smiles radiantly and prepares to reheat the leftover rice from dinner. There is calm. A comfortable calm, a shimmering soap bubble, cadenced by the sound of cars gliding on the street below.
They eat sinking onto the couch while watching One Piece. Bokuto and Sakusa aren’t home that weekend. They could laugh out loud or start dancing the tango, if only they wanted to.
But they don't. Atsumu feels happy like this, with that gentle quietness hovering in the air like a caress on the back of the neck. The taste of beer is almost gone by now, but the feeling of lightness still lingers. Atsumu sinks into it and lets the floor continue to wobble, tilt, twist, wedge, hatch, while he is perfectly stable, elevated on the couch - a couch that could turn into a flying couch, through which they’d fly out the window, like Aladdin and Jasmine on their flying carpet, but with an unlimited number of wishes.
(And he wishes it were true. He wished it wasn't just happening in his head. He wishes they could actually fly somewhere far away among the stars dripping light.)
Shouyou rests his head on his shoulder. Atsumu returns to the present reality - stay, he thinks. He hears Zoro's voice and the shape of Shouyou's cheekbone pressed against the fabric of his shirt, his hair tickling his neck - stay, stay, stay, please stay.
Shouyou positions himself better on his forearm. A few minutes later he falls asleep, his breathing becomes heavy and regular.
Atsumu lets him sleep on him. He would let Shouyou do anything. He trusts him blindly, but it's not just a matter of trust. It's more something like devotion, like when you jump into the middle of the sea. Sea is immense and salty, and you know it’s infinitely more powerful than you when you swim into it. You know it could undo you at any moment, kill you, swallow your life and your name and all that you are, and were. Yet, you run into it anyway, and let the waves hit you in the face.
The sea, Shouyou, the ocean. Atsumu should definitely drink less.
Still, though, imagining is good. What if they were really the only two people left in the world? What if everyone else disappeared? What if that couch could really fly like a magic carpet, what if there really were aliens on the moon?
Shouyou blows, like an angry cat. Atsumu turns to look at him and sees his eyelids twitch, his pupils swirling agitatedly under thin skin. He places a kiss on his head, Shouyou moans something, calms down, and Atsumu goes back to watching television.
He doesn't know why he did it (he does, he just doesn't question it, pretends it's all normal).
They don't talk about it, the day after.
*
Atsumu is definitely drunk. Shouyou and Bokuto not as much, Inumaki not at all because he is driving.
It rains. The drops of water shatter on the windowpane and then trickle down, following the watery trails previously traced. Atsumu counts and follows them with his eyes one by one, drawing their path with his finger, squiggles made of transparent ink.
Everything swirls, furiously. Around him, inside him, beneath him. There’s a gray and blue spiral inside which occasionally flashes some dragon made of lightning - Atsumu surrenders to it and everything become so beautiful, he feels alive and fluid like the wind, although he has to throw up.
Atsumu keeps staring at the drops on the window. There are many, many of them, shining, rushing down and-
"FUCK!” he screams. “THEY ARE SHOOTING STARS!" he continues, transfixed with wonder.
Inumaki bursts out laughing. "It's just rain, Miya."
"No," Atsumu retorts firmly, wide-eyed, looking out. " No. They’re shooting stars. They sparkle, I’m tellin’ ya. Look! See how they sparkle?"
"It's just the reflection of the light from the cars."
Atsumu shakes his head and growls, frustrated by such blindness. How can they not distinguish rain from shooting stars? How can they not comprehend the immensity of the moment they are experiencing? That is literally a meteor shower. It is an event never seen before. It will be talked about for decades.
Atsumu turns toward Shouyou, who is sitting next to him. "You do see them, right?”
Shouyou nods. "Of course I see them. They’re absolutely shooting stars."
Atsumu stares diffidently into his eyes. Shouyou has the unbearably lucid look of someone who has decided to stay sober, and Atsumu senses a derisory hint in that 'absolutely'.
"Shouyou-kun," Atsumu tells him. "I won’t accept this from you."
Shouyou laughs. "You won't accept what?"
"The not-being-believed thing. They are shooting stars. It's obvious, they shimmer, they look exactly like you."
Atsumu rambles on, blowing off disconnected words jammed together. But what he feels is so indecipherable. Words are not a sufficient vehicle for ordering that pulsing tangle he feels inside his chest.
"The sea," he continues, trying to list key concepts. "The ocean. The light. You. Got it?"
Shouyou stares at him without answering. His eyes are wide, a little lost. He doesn't seem to understand.
But he must understand, Atsumu thinks. He must. He has to listen to me.
He feels like crying. Why is talking so difficult?
He turns his head again and rests his forehead on the frozen window.
"It's not rain," he insists in a whisper. "It's shooting stars. They are shooting stars. You have to trust me."
"You're right," Bokuto says softly, sitting ahead of him. "They are shooting stars."
Atsumu nods at the window, then closes his eyes. The tangle of emotions flaps madly in his chest like a pinball.
"Shouyou-kun," Atsumu whispers, to the frosty glass. "I'm sorry."
"About what?"
"About everything," Atsumu continues. About not being able to tell you all this. "I'm sorry."
Fade the seasonal rain, fade the rain of dripping stars. A heavy, depressing silence materializes. Atsumu feels so sad all of a sudden, cold and withered as if someone had dried him out under salt. He would like to disappear into thin air, forever. He has to throw up.
Something warm grabs his fingers. Atsumu opens his eyes wide, plunging back into reality.
He takes a few moments to decipher that sensation. It is skin. Skin and fingertips tightened around his clenched fist. Shouyou's fingers spread Atsumu's and slip between them. Then Shouyou tightens his grip.
So, Atsumu thinks. I'm in the car. Completely drunk. It's raining meteors outside and Shouyou just took my hand. I'm not imagining it, right?
Atsumu would like to turn around and look at their intertwined hands, at Shouyou's face, look for something in his eyes, the concrete manifestation of what he feels. Atsumu wants to sort out all that ocean, all that golden light.
"Stop the car," he mumbles instead to Inunaki. "I have to throw up."
Inunaki pulls over, and Atsumu vomits on the sidewalk in the soaking rain as Bokuto holds him by the arm. It wasn't shooting stars after all. It was really just water. Disillusionment makes him feel pathetic.
"Bokkun," he groans. "I'm in love with Shouyou-kun."
Bokuto offers him a consoling pat on his shoulder. "I know."
They don't talk about it, the day after.
*
Oddly enough, Atsumu is sober. Shouyou is not.
Sakusa has just fixed his shoes at the corner of the entrance when Shouyou looks at Atsumu and exclaims, "I'm hungry!"
Atsumu stares at Sakusa, who arches an eyebrow.
"Why are you looking at me?"
"Because Shouyou-kun is hungry," Atsumu replies, as if it were obvious. "Just cook somethin’."
"Why the fuck should I do it? You take care of him. I'm going to sleep."
Shouyou chirps 'Good night, Omi-san!" and Kiyoomi disappears into the common hallway.
Then he returns to stare ravenously at Atsumu: "I'm hungry," he repeats. He looks like a baby bird spreading its beak wide to claim food.
Atsumu raises his arms in a gesture of surrender. "All right, all right. I'll make something,"
There are no leftovers. However, there is instant ramen. Atsumu puts the water on to boil. Shouyou rarely eats prepackaged food, but for that night he will have to be content with that since there’s nothing else.
Shouyou sits on the kitchen countertop near the sink and begins swinging his feet, suspended from the floor.
When Shouyou is particularly drunk, he becomes quiet. He doesn’t create a heavy or mournful or weary silence between them, but rather a silence laden with expectation, a silence-presage that prompts Atsumu to think: my life is about to change. Nothing will be the same as before. The world will become a desert or be swallowed by the tide, there will be an apocalypse, the sun will explode and we will explode with it. Nothing will be left other than butterflies, grasshoppers, and a guy with a guitar playing Wonderwall on a hilltop.
But there is a quiet silence, and maybe the world is just sleeping. Maybe it won't end yet, or at least not that night. Maybe the catastrophe will happen inside, in that kitchen. Shouyou continues to swing his legs. With the tip of his foot, he brushes his leg. Atsumu says nothing.
The water boils. Atsumu pours it into the instant ramen packet.
"Three minutes," he says.
Shouyou nods, jumps down from the countertop and moves behind his back. Then he hugs him.
Atsumu holds his breath.
Shouyou wraps his arms around his ribs. Atsumu feels his heart pounding against his forearm. Shouyou nuzzles his face between his shoulder blades.
"Shouyou-kun?"
"Your smell," Shouyou says. "It's good. I like it."
Atsumu has definitely underestimated how drunk Shouyou is.
Fuck, he thinks. Now what? Should I stay still? Should I do something? And what the fuck am I supposed to do?
They stay still. Then Shouyou leaves a quick kiss on his shoulder. It is so light that Atsumu wonders if he didn't just imagine the fleeting pressure of Shouyou's lips on the fabric of his shirt.
"Atsumu-san," Shouyou tells him, before Atsumu can process what happened. "Can I ask you a question?"
Atsumu nods, chills on his arms, Shouyou's lips a breath away from his neck.
"Are you dating someone?"
Atsumu bursts out laughing.
"No," he replies, more relaxed. "Why?"
"I was just curious," Shouyou explains.
Then he lets Atsumu go.
"Three minutes," Shouyou comments, pointing to the ramen. "They've passed."
"Oh," Atsumu says. "Right."
He pours the ramen into the bowls.
They don't talk about any of that, the day after.
*
Atsumu is a little tipsy. He sips the drink the bartender has just prepared for him. Every once in a while, someone recognizes him and in the din of the club asks him shouting for a picture together.
Atsumu says yes every time. He loves to catalyze attention. He loves praise, worship. But he detests intrusiveness.
The guy who sits next to him and strikes up a conversation clearly belongs to the category of intrusive people. Atsumu's first instinct, after listening to him talk for twelve seconds, is to punch him in the face and smash his nose. Unfortunately, it is a desire destined to remain unfulfilled, because Atsumu has a public image to preserve.
So he remains motionless sipping his drink, responding with icy coldness to the guy's slimy attempt to flirt, mentally rattling off one death threat after another.
Something touches his neck. Atsumu turns his face and finds Shouyou, who has materialized at his side.
"Hi," he tells him, with a smile.
Atsumu smiles back. Gone is the chaos, the club, the people, the intrusiveness. There is only an orange and golden soap bubble.
"I wanna drink something," Shouyou continues, and orders a drink at the counter.
Atsumu stares at him. Shouyou glows under the club lights - to be fair, Shouyou glows under any light, even when it's just dark.
The guy next to him draws his attention by touching him on the arm. Atsumu glares and moves away.
"Oh, come on," chuckles the guy, trying to put his arm behind his back. "I know that-
Shouyou growls. And it's no figure of speech: Shouyou leans over the counter and literally bares his teeth, making a guttural, threatening sound.
The guy freezes, dumbfounded. Even Atsumu turns to look at Shouyou surprised.
But Shouyou pays no attention to him. He stares stormily at the guy until, obviously intimidated, he mutters something between his teeth and walks away.
Shouyou returns to normal breathing, and his eyes return to sparkling.
Atsumu continues to stare at him stunned.
"What?" Shouyou asks, defensively.
"You just growled," Atsumu replies, beginning to laugh. "You literally growled at a person. Like, I don’t know, an angry Chihuahua or somethin’."
"There are dozens of animals able to growl. Why did you specifically choose a Chihuahua? Couldn't I have been, I don't know, a wolf-dog?" Shouyou asks him, saddened.
Atsumu laughs louder. "You can be anything you want to be. And you certainly don't need me to tell you that."
Shouyou brings his drink to his lips, half-smiling. He blows bubbles into the glass, before taking a sip.
"Sorry. For interfering, I mean. I know you didn't need help, it's just- I don't know. It was instinctive."
Atsumu is smiling so much that his cheeks hurt. "Yeah, I can see that. I mean, since you literally growled at him…"
Shouyou blushes furiously. Atsumu laughs again. Then he moves closer to his ear, so close that his lips brush against his skin.
"Are you jealous, Shouyou?"
His whisper overpowers the surrounding chaos. Shouyou's eyes widen, confused, lost.
A rush of adrenaline and delirium of omnipotence inflames his veins. Atsumu is elated: it is so rare to catch Shouyou like this, in a moment of uncertainty, as if his compass had suddenly broken. And it is so gratifying, knowing that it’s all because of him.
Then Shouyou turns to look at him. His eyes are so close.
"Yes," Shouyou replies. "I am."
Now Atsumu is the one slipping, losing his balance. The confidence fades from his gaze. Shit. Now what? Should he kiss him? There, in front of all those people? Or should he ask him to go outside that club, and kiss him in a hidden street, away from the streetlamps? Should he? Or should he not? What if Shouyou doesn't want to?
Why can't they just become invisible, fly to another planet, to the moon, curl up in some crater and stay there, under a meteor shower - a true one, this time?
It is Inunaki who brings the magic to an end. He greets them by howling something, asks the bartender for a drink, and sits down next to them. Then he notices their embarrassed expressions.
"What happened?" he asks worriedly.
Atsumu mumbles something about an annoying guy. Shouyou remains silent.
They don't talk about it, the day after.
*
"It's not like it's the first time you've fallen in love with someone," his brother tells him from across the counter, drinking some beer from the bottle and then handing it to him.
The restaurant is closed. It's just the two of them, and those are Atsumu's favorite nights.
"True," he replies. "But this time is different."
It is different because now Atsumu is able to physically experience the intensity of what he feels. His body is heavier. Elephants are sleeping curled up between his ribs. It is something tangible. Real. Colorful as an endless field of sunflowers. Noisy as the lapping of waves. Salty. Sweet. It is the inexorable end of the world that will spare no one, other than butterflies, grasshoppers, and a guy who will play the guitar until the sun cools, the ice age arrives, and everything goes back to stardust.
"Gross," Osamu says. "Just looking at you makes me sick."
"Then don't do it," Atsumu retorts "Give me more tuna."
Osamu shakes his head and sighs, but prepares more food for him, and opens another bottle of beer. Atsumu gorges himself as if the exquisite taste of what he is ingesting can fix him. And surprisingly, it works. It always works. It is Osamu's superpower, cooking food so full of love that it is capable of fixing people’s hearts.
Atsumu recharges his energy, under the golden, cathartic light of the restaurant, while his brother picks up the fragments of his shadow and stitches them back. Osamu traces his faded outlines with a bright marker, his silhouette in the world, and Atsumu becomes a little more Atsumu again, a little more concrete.
Osamu comes closer, places his index finger on his forehead and presses hard. Atsumu lets him.
"Why don't you just tell him?"
"I'm afraid," Atsumu replies sincerely.
"Of what? I swear, sometimes I don't understand you, even if you’re my brother. It’s obvious that Shouyou-kun feels the same about you."
"What do you mean?"
Osamu sighs. "It's just that Shouyou-kun glows when he looks at you or talks to you. He seems so happy, he admires you so much. It's true when they say love is blind."
Atsumu hisses an insult. Osamu shrugs it off.
"Just do it, 'Tsumu. What's the worst that could happen?"
Everything, he thinks. Everything. The apocalypse would be nothing in comparison.
Osamu sighs. "You said you would be the happiest. But it just seems to me that you're letting me win."
That is a very cheap shot.
"You're wrong," Atsumu exclaims, angrily. " I will be the happiest."
Osamu smiles. "Show me, then."
*
They are drunk, but only a little.
It is night. A night that Atsumu needs to believe is magical, although there is nothing magical about it at all. Atsumu needs to believe that whatever happens during that night will have a chance to exist, to shine like a firework, to happen. That night has to be one of those nights in which anything becomes possible - time can stop running, raindrops can turn into shooting stars, there can be aliens playing volleyball on the moon, and the apocalypse can be near, imminent.
Therefore, he leaves his room. He walks through the dark corridor like a thief, not wanting to be heard by either Sakusa or Bokuto, or even himself. He fears that something inside him - the cowardly, frightened part of him - may stop him, pushing him to turn back.
Atsumu doesn’t want to turn back. Atsumu feels a familiar tremor in his palms, as when he longs for something. So he has to grab it. Or at least try to. So no, he cannot turn back.
Shouyou's room is only a few steps away when the doorknob slowly moves and Shouyou himself emerges from his room with his hair tousled and his pajama sleeves wrinkled and too long.
Shouyou freezes as soon as he sees him, and Atsumu paralyzes like a fox illuminated by the blinding headlights of a car.
"Atsumu-san," Shouyou says under his breath, surprised. "What are you doing?"
"I could ask you the same question," Atsumu replies in a hurried, defensive whisper.
He crosses his arms in front of his chest - his body tries to mediate for him, placing a kind of barrier between them, a railing to cling to, a cautious and annoying decision.
Atsumu forces his arms to loosen and fall back along his hips. Now it’s as if there is emptiness in front of him, as if he’s looking out over a precipice and below there’s nothing but the sea, the ocean, the vast and breathtaking ocean, capable of swallowing his body, his shadow, his name.
"I was looking for you," Shouyou replies sincerely, brave - braver than him.
He reaches Atsumu with two small steps, so quiet that Atsumu wonders if Shouyou is real, if he is really there, standing in front of him. It is puzzling how someone so overloaded with energy and noise like Shouyou can become so silent and invisible - the light in his eyes, however, remains, even though it is dark.
They look at each other.
Atsumu lifts a hand and softly brushes his cheek. There’s the gentleness of sand in his touch. The velvet. And fragility, so much fragility, fragility and uncertainty in his fingertips that tremble when he moves Shouyou’s hair behind his ear.
Shouyou remains still. He does not look away as Atsumu hesitantly lets his fingers slide along his jawline. He holds his breath.
They kiss standing, against the wall, against the doors of the night that in the end turns out to be truly magical, though it is only a night like so many others - yet time stands still, yet on the moon people are playing volleyball, yet the world is ending, although they do not notice.
They fade away. They are not there for anybody.
*
Shouyou has always enjoyed the process of learning. Learning to spike, learning to receive, learning to play a new video game, learning to play volleyball, learning to play beach volleyball. Learning a new language, learning a new recipe. Learning Atsumu, in his entirety.
They don't talk about it: neither about their first kiss, nor about the ones that come later, but they stop waiting for the night to come or for them to be drunk. They glide toward each other naturally, like daisies blooming in the sun, soaked in light.
Shouyou is learning: he learns Atsumu's body when he touches it, tracing with fingers the reliefs and dimples of Atsumu’s bones - his collarbones, his hips, the shape of his back, shoulders, hands, a symphony of curves, descents and climbs, a musical score to be studied, a melody that the whole world sings, and sings, and sings, over and over and over, beaming with joy.
Shouyou is learning: Atsumu, his habits, his nightmares, what he likes, what he dislikes, what he is afraid of. He discovers new details day by day, bricks of an enchanted castle, peculiarities like moles wedged in his hips - Shouyou tries to remember everything, guards every birthmark in Atsumu’s skin, every secret, like a precious treasure. How powerful and fragile and mesmerizing intimacy is.
It’s morning. A ray of sunlight filters through the shutter and traces a geometric line down Atsumu's throat.
Atsumu sleeps, his back turned. Shouyou has his forehead nestled between his shoulder blades, and he smiles as he touches Atsumu’s spine. Shouyou counts his vertebrae - stay, stay, stay, he thinks. He gives him a soft kiss on the back of his neck - please, stay.
It is disarming, the intensity of what he feels. He feels like crying. It is beautiful and terrifying.
Atsumu mutters something, then turns toward him. He yawns, opens his eyes, stares at him, then spreads his arms wide and hugs him tightly - sometimes, Shouyou thinks it is too good to be true. Nonetheless, it is true. It is real. It is happening.
Shouyou inhales deeply of his scent. He can hear Atsumu’s heartbeat. The apocalypse is hidden there.
Bombs made of blinding light. Inside him, everything crumbles like a house of cards.
What a sweet and marvelous catastrophe.