Archive of Our Own

He foolishly thought it would be someone who understands him. But there Miya is with his hands carelessly holding onto someone else, kissing someone else. Tainting the hands meant to love Kiyoomi.

Kiyoomi makes it to the hallway in a blind daze still covered only by his towel, wet slippers slapping loudly against linoleum floors. The need to escape is visceral and inexplicable, as though any distance might lessen the blow.

Kiyoomi feels winded with how badly his heart is racing, his chest squeezed unforgivingly around it and his vision blurring.

He somehow makes it to his room unseen, everyone none the wiser to the grief blooming behind his ribs, and by then his hands are close to shaking.

He’s thankful Motoya is not there to witness him cuss out inanimate objects as he struggles to put on his clothes while still dripping wet.

He stands in the middle of the room still under the threat of trembling as he looks around aimlessly. It might be the wetness of his hair or the full blast of the AC (most likely, it’s the image now burned in his memory of watching his soul mark on the body of someone who doesn’t care) but Kiyoomi suddenly feels so cold.

Like any other teenage boy, he’s naïvely fantasised about the day he’ll meet his soulmate. Many had grand visions ranging from bold gestures to sharing intimate moments.

Kiyoomi, forever caught at the edge of isolation, one step away from being completely misunderstood by the world, has only ever wanted to see if he’ll finally find a sense of belonging. His grand vision was about mutual understanding and acceptance.

A reassurance that he is worth loving.

It’s so laughably the bare minimum, even Kiyoomi hadn’t expected for it to be a bar too high to reach.

It takes him a while to understand why he’s grappling so hard with this, breaths choppy and ragged.

Kiyoomi is experiencing his first heartbreak.

He doesn’t bring it up to anyone.

He doesn’t talk about or acknowledge having a soul mark, choosing to hide it behind layers of clothes and noncommittal shrugs.

Kiyoomi turns his focus solely to volleyball, his true soulmate, and plays his best. He pushes himself to his breaking point, and makes volleyball his own, until his name is associated with winning and he’s one of the top high school aces in the country.

He doesn’t care much for Miya Atsumu anyway. It’s not as if they even know each other, and it’s not like he owes Miya anything. For all he knows, Miya might be out there hopelessly searching for him, having missed his chance.

Miya absolutely only has himself to blame.

Kiyoomi knows he’s taking it too personally, after all a lot of people go out on dates or make out in showers—Kiyoomi grits his teeth at the memory—before they’re ever assigned a soulmate. It’s apparently part of the teenage experience.

Kiyoomi just can’t forget the betrayal and dread he felt standing there to witness it in what was supposed to be one of the best moments in his life.

So Kiyoomi forgets, he tries his best to.

Life goes on.

He graduates high school, he goes to college. He even kisses a few boys to see what the fuss is about and decides it’s overhyped and a little too messy for his taste.

The anger wanes and so does the hurt, until eventually, Kiyoomi feels close to normal about it.

That, and he won’t allow Miya Atsumu to decide his future.

The Jackals are a great team, one of the best in the league, right on bar with the Adlers. He needs to make a mature, educated decision unguided by prejudices or personal feelings.

… Kiyoomi sighs and flips a coin.

Heads, the Adlers; Tails, the Jackals.

The coin flips three times and lands in under two seconds. The whole ordeal is a little anticlimactic.

He crouches to peer at it cautiously—and sucks in a sharp breath.

Tails.

Tails.

The universe points towards Miya Atsumu again.

Well, goddamn it. Kiyoomi is nothing if stubborn.

He signs the contract with the Jackals the next day.

His new teammates are a rowdy bunch. Bokuto might as well be a five-year-old stuck in an adult’s body. Hinata is impossible to dislike or deny, radiant like a happy sunflower and in love with everyone on his team, including Kiyoomi.

His captain is both mature and composed, with a wild streak off the court. Adriah and Oliver, despite giving him his space, are quick to roast their teammates in good fun.

Inunaki is a bit of a wildcard, but he seems to keep his more mischievous nature in check around Kiyoomi.

Then there’s Miya.

Kiyoomi isn’t sure what he expected, but it certainly wasn’t this. The Miya he remembers from the All Japan youth camp was loud and exuberant, ruffling feathers left and right.

He called Kageyama Tobio a goody two shoes to his face for crying out loud.

This Miya looks more mature in a rugged way. He’s more withdrawn, but warm to his teammates when they address him. He joins the occasional night out but is always the first to leave.

Kiyoomi, maybe not so unexpectedly, doesn’t mind his presence.

Miya is even more polite to him than he is to everyone else. When they’re paired to stretch together, he always offers Kiyoomi a small smile and a “let me know if ya need help, Omi-kun.”

The nickname had been slightly unexpected, but he’s since learned that everyone on the team has one, like a right of passage.

Bokuto is Bo-kun and Hinata is Sho-kun, and even Meian is affectionately addressed as ‘cap’ or cheekily as ‘oh captain, my captain!’

No, what’s most unexpected is that Kiyoomi doesn’t hate him at all. He searches for that elusive anger and comes up short. Instead, he finds the stirrings of regrets, deeply rooted but ever-present.

It’s hard to hate someone whose eyes can look so sad when no one is looking. It’s even harder to hate someone who still finds the capacity to smile even from the depths of their own wretched misery and Kiyoomi… well. He has complicated feelings about it.

It takes him three months with the Jackals to decide it’s unbearable.

Miya’s sadness makes itself known in strange ways; in his occasionally self-deprecating words, in the way he gets lost staring into space and in the way he speaks so softly about his daily phone calls with his brother.

Despite everything, despite having caused the secret, one-sided rift between them, Kiyoomi’s eyes follow him curiously. As far as he’s concerned it’s because Miya is an unsolved puzzle.

If he occasionally feels the pull to do something about it… well. It’s not like Kiyoomi is heartless.

He might have been angry once upon a time that Miya turned out to be his soulmate, but they’re teammates now. It's impossible not to form a bond together.

“Hey, let me drive you home,” he offers on a whim one day because Atsumu’s sullen, unfocused expression is nothing short of worrying. “You’re on my way.”

“Oh.” Atsumu says. “Are ya sure, Omi-kun? I don’t want to impose.”

Kiyoomi almost laughs because who the hell is this man and what happened to the Miya Atsumu who never apologised for anything?

He wants so viciously to know what occurred, he feels ready to dissect Atsumu to his core, to peel away his layers like an onion through determined, stinging eyes.

Atsumu is silent in the car, offering soft non-verbal noises to all of Kiyoomi’s prodding questions.

And once he’s home, he has the gall to give Kiyoomi a warm smile. “Thanks, Omi-kun. Yer a good friend. I’m glad ya joined MSBY.”

No, Kiyoomi thinks, anguished.

This isn’t right.

Why does it hurt?

He doesn’t care about Miya Atsumu. He swears he doesn’t, not in the way he’s meant to, anyway.

Kiyoomi tries to keep his distance a little more afterwards, afraid of the way his heart warbles guiltily at the sight of Miya.

He sticks with his decision for a week.

Then his resolve comes crashing down irreparably.

It happens in the locker room (and hasn’t this become a horrible trend?).

Miya is usually the last one to take his shower for unknown reasons, waiting even for Kiyoomi to be done and gone.

But today Kiyoomi is running late after having had the physician inspect where a dull ache persisted in his knee.

Kiyoomi enters the shower limping just as Miya exits his, and that’s when he sees it.

That’s when the world screeches to a deafening halt.

The soul mark on Atsumu’s shoulder is no longer yellow and white; it’s now a dull, un-lively grey.

Shocked, and caught off guard, Kiyoomi freezes and stares.

Miya says nothing and beyond the stiffening in his shoulders, he gives no indication that anything is amiss, shrugging on his shirt and leaving Kiyoomi with a silent nod.

Kiyoomi about rips his own clothes off in his haste to make sure his soul mark doesn’t mirror Miya’s flat grey. But he finds it the same lively and vibrant yellow it’s always been.

He doesn’t dare ask Miya what it means.

So he does the next best thing, curiosity driving him to corner Hinata the next day.

He’s running on barely any sleep and an inordinate amount of coffee, so he’s not exactly tactful about it.

“Hey,” he says anxiously, ignoring the caffeine-induced jitters in his fingers.

“Omi-kun! What’s up?” Hinata bounces in his spot, smiling sweetly up at Kiyoomi. Kiyoomi often feels like he doesn’t deserve his constant, unfailing kindness.

He decides to bite. “Uh. I was wondering and… Miya’s soul mark…”

Hinata’s face goes impressively blank.

Kiyoomi holds his breath.

After a moment of deliberation, and a slow look around the empty locker room, Hinata sighs and looks at Kiyoomi with pity. “You saw it?”

Kiyoomi nods, his heart now racing. “It was… grey?”

“Yeah,” Hinata nods.

“What does it mean?” Kiyoomi whispers, matching his sombre tone.

“It means Atsumu-san’s soulmate didn’t want him,” Hinata divulges sadly and looks down at his feet like it personally pains him to admit it.

Kiyoomi is glad Hinata’s attention shifts away from him because he’s not sure what his expression betrays right then. His lips struggle to form words, and his heart ricochets against his ribcage. “W-what?”

“Yeah, I read about it,” Hinata goes on, blind to Kiyoomi’s unrest. “If you hurt your soulmate in a way that your soulmate considers unforgivable, your soul mark goes grey. For some people, it stays that way forever. For others, if they can be forgiven by their soulmate, they get their colours back.”

“Oh,” Kiyoomi says faintly.

“It’s really sad,” Hinata carries on. “Because Atsumu-san thinks the unforgivable thing he’s done to his soulmate is just being himself. He said his soulmate probably already knows him—that they took one look at him and couldn’t accept ending up together. Since then Atsumu-san has done everything he could to change the way he is.”

No.

This isn’t right.

Kiyoomi feels it like a blow to the face, feels it like a kick to the gut. He hadn’t even considered that being a possibility…

When he sees Atsumu again that day, he can hardly look at him when the knowledge he gleaned is buzzing in his head like a tornado intent on destroying everything.

Can he even fix this?

Where does Kiyoomi begin, when he isn’t certain what exactly he did in the first place to steal the colours from Miya’s soul?

He might’ve been bitter and hurt, but it’s been 6 years and at no point had he wanted to hurt Miya back.

He thinks: I forgive you. He thinks it really hard, unsure if this is the way it works.

His eyes follow Miya’s shadow around the court and he allows himself to think: I was too harsh, I’m sorry.

He lets his eyes linger on the contours of Miya’s face, studying his withdrawn expression in the dying evening sun and thinks: You deserved a chance and I didn’t give you one, it’s my fault, I’m sorry.

He can see now, with months of quasi-friendship under his belt, that Miya didn’t deserve Kiyoomi’s bitterness, not the way he’d justified it. Miya had been sixteen and hadn’t had a soul mark yet. After all, Kiyoomi had been there to witness Miya get it with his own eyes.

Miya couldn’t have known.

Battling with guilt, Kiyoomi gives up distance again.

“Why’re ya being so nice to me, Omi?” Miya asks him when for the third day in a row, Kiyoomi brings him coffee.

“It’s just coffee,” Kiyoomi mutters in embarrassment. It’s such a tragically trivial gesture in the face of the damage he unwittingly caused.

He never noticed it before but Atsumu has the warmest pair of honey eyes he’s ever seen. It aches in an obscure place in his chest thinking no one’s ever told him so before.

“I like your eyes,” he blurts, watching Miya try to take a sip of his coffee and then nearly choke.

Miya flushes, covering his mouth as he coughs. “What?”

Flustered at his own honesty, Kiyoomi looks away. “Um. I just think you have pretty eyes.”

“Oh,” Miya says, stunned. “Th-thanks, Omi-kun. Don’t think anyone’s ever told me that before.”

It’s not Kiyoomi’s place to feel sad about it. Not when he caused this. Not when the universe gave him the task of appreciating and loving this man and he squandered it.

It should have been him telling Miya these things all along.

Instead, he cast him aside.

His stomach churns, and his mouth opens again of its own volition. “You’re really pretty,” he says weakly, watching Miya’s—no, Atsumu’s—cheeks colour. “I like your hair, too.”

“Omi-omi, what are ya doing?” Atsumu says quietly, finally meeting his eyes. He looks reserved as always, cautious even. “Don’t ya um. Don’t ya have a soulmate?”

At Kiyoomi’s silence, Atsumu presses. “Ya shouldn’t, Omi. It’ll hurt them if ya give yer attention to someone else. Y’know… sometimes I think that’s how I lost mine.”

The air punches from his lungs. His eyes widen.

Atsumu nods. “Yeah. I think they found out I was messing around and they didn’t like it. And I can’t even tell ‘em how sorry I am because I never had the chance ta find out who they are.”

No, Kiyoomi thinks again, chest in pieces. This is wrong. “I’m so sorry.”

“I am too,” Atsumu agrees, smiling faintly, all sadness and no humour. “That’s why ya gotta be patient, Omi! Y’know… I think yer really beautiful. A lot nicer than ya let on. They’ll be so lucky to have ya.”

“Atsumu,” Kiyoomi interrupts because this is excruciating and Kiyoomi can’t keep this to himself anymore. “I fucked up.”

Atsumu blinks, surprised. “Huh? What d’ya mean? Did ya… did yer soulmate also…?”

Kiyoomi sucks in a shaky breath that feels like fire. “No, I… I fucked up. I passed judgement too soon. I thought… well, actually, I felt betrayed when I had no right to. And my soulmate doesn’t know, and I didn’t mean to but it snowballed and years passed and—and—hey Atsumu, would you hate me?”

Confusion wrinkles Atsumu’s brows, but his expression morphs into gentle sympathy. “What? If I were yer soulmate, ya mean? I don’t think so, Omi-kun. I think I’d just be glad to have ya, at the end of the day.”

Oh, you poor bastard Kiyoomi thinks. He aches as he takes a step closer, grabs Atsumu’s face, and kisses him.

“Mmph—!” Atsumu emits a shocked noise and Kiyoomi releases him to study his bewildered expression. “O-omi? What are ya—?”

“I’m sorry,” Kiyoomi says again sincerely. “I want you back, please. I want to give us a proper try. I want to get to know you, the real you. I want so many things I thought I was okay with not having.”

Atsumu’s eyes are too wide, his lips wobbling. “What are ya—what…”

“I don’t know how else to fix this,” Kiyoomi says, close to tears. “But I have to tell you.”

So Kiyoomi tells him everything from the start. All about what Kiyoomi witnessed and his misplaced anger, and everything he now knows he regrets.

Meanwhile, Atsumu’s face grows paler and paler; shifts from shocked, to horrified, to anguished and finally, to tearful.

“Oh,” he croaks, touching his own shoulder where his mark is. “Ya mean…”

Kiyoomi nods, tearing up too, now. “You’re supposed to be mine.”

Atsumu fists his hand in his shirt. “How could…” he stops, breaths shaking. “I was so sad, and so scared and so…”

“I’m so sorry,” Kiyoomi says again, cradling Atsumu’s blanched fist between his hands as tears dripped down his cheeks. “I didn’t know. Let me make it up to you.”

“Omi—what? No. I’m not—this isn’t your fault,” Atsumu sniffs. “I fucked up first. How can ya still want me?”

“No, no, no,” Kiyoomi denies vehemently. “You didn’t know. I let my emotions control me.”

Kiyoomi pulls Atsumu closer, and places his hand on Kiyoomi’s hip where his soul mark is. Where it always has been; constant and vibrant. “You were hurting so much and you still wanted me,” he whispers shakily. “It never went grey.”

“’Course I did, Omi,” Atsumu’s feeble whisper, paired with his tearful eyes, is the most beautifully haunting sight Kiyoomi has ever seen.

He kisses him again. “I’m sorry.”

“No. No, I’m sorry,” Atsumu says back, shaking his head rapidly.

Later, when they head for the showers, when Atsumu chucks off his shirt, his soul mark has regained its colours, and Kiyoomi gets to watch him sit down on a bench and bawl so hard his entire body shakes with it.

Kiyoomi can only take him in his arms and hold him as tightly as he can as he wills away all the hurt he unknowingly caused.

“I’ll fix it,” Kiyoomi promises again and again. “I swear I will, I’ll love you twice as hard.”

Which makes Atsumu cry more, but also cling to him harder.

Kiyoomi knows it won’t be easy to undo the years of pain Atsumu lived through, but he’s determined to try. The universe handed him this human, flawed yes, but also so beautiful, and so deserving of love, and Kiyoomi is going to start doing right by him even if it’s the last thing he does.