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“Does he know more than me?”
Atsumu’s in his bed because he’s too lazy to climb to the top bunk.
“ ‘course not, idiot. You’ve known me forever.”
“I know that,” Atsumu huffs. “But does he know things I don’t know then? About ya?”
“He knows how much I hate ya.” Osamu smirks. “And I don’t know if I’ve made it clear enough to ya that I actually hate yer guts.”
Atsumu rolls his eyes. “But I assume he knows some things I don’t know since he’s yer boyfriend,” he insists, growing serious.
“Rin’s not my boyfriend ‘cause we kissed that one time,” Osamu says but his cheeks feel warm and he knows he’s smiling on the last part. He knows ‘cause he doesn’t like doing it often. Feels weird to get giddy about a legit person.
Atsumu looks at him crazy.
“What?” Osamu snaps. “He’s not. He never said so. Why d’ya think that?”
Atsumu sighs like it’s the end of the world. “Yer gonna be all about him now, I know ya, I know yer gonna be all about him all the time. It’s so annoying. Ya didn’t even wait for me to get a proper girlfriend.”
“You’ve had so many girlfriends! Every month you’ve a new one. I never said shit to ya about it.”
“But they’re not fer real. Rin’s fer real and he’s a boy!”
“So?” Osamu says, sitting back on his knees with his arms crossed. “Are we gonna fight ‘bout this again ‘cause I’ll beat yer ass.”
When Osamu first tells him, Atsumu cries big fat baby tears. Osamu thinks he has lost his goddamn mind. They’re in the bathroom, brushing their teeth side by side like always, wearing the same pajamas like always.
Everything’s normal so Osamu says it.
The tears stream down Atsumu’s face and mix with the foam in his mouth. He’s ridiculous.
“I don’t have rabies, dude, I’m just gay,” Osamu jokes.
But Atsumu is inconsolable. “I don’t want ya to be gay, I’m not gay!”
“Ya don’t have to be gay fer me to be gay, doofus,” Osamu explains to him like he’s explaining stuff to a very small child when they’re exactly the same age and grade, and both know about this at least on some level.
It’s not a school topic per say, nor a friendship one beyond a joke here and there about how it’s gay to care about shit unless it’s volleyball. But they know gay people exist and Osamu has always known he’s one of them.
“It’s not a big deal,” Osamu tries to calm him. “It’s the same. Just fer boys fer me. Stop crying.”
“This sucks,” Atsumu says, and doesn’t want to talk about it ever again.
They’re raised to be different. As babies, wear separate colored onesies, are gifted different toys. Treated as two people. To this day, Osamu isn’t certain it wasn’t so their parents could tell them apart. But mom says she always knew who’s who. That even as kids, Osamu was the calm one, and good to his brother. Osamu doesn’t tell her he distinctly remembers times when he’d hit toys against Atsumu’s big head just for the fun of it.
On paper, Atsumu is his older brother. Osamu thinks the doctors messed that up because knowing them in real life and around others, you’d realize Osamu is the oldest of the two.
It’s Atsumu, who starts it. His terrible twos are nothing but complaints. Needing the same exact things. What Osamu has, he wants. He wants it just the same. Same clothes down to the socks. Same hairstyle. Same stuff to play with.
“You can share,” their parents try. “If we buy two different toys and you share, you’ll have two.”
But when they go to the store, Atsumu struts behind him and picks what he picks.
Osamu doesn’t care. He doesn’t mind looking similar. It’s funny if anything. They can trick other people into being confused. And it’s easy. He copies what Atsumu does. Atsumu copies him. Between the two of them, they have all the answers.
Atsumu likes sameness. It’s as if he can’t see himself if he can’t see Osamu doing it first. Osamu is his trial run. Atsumu has hunger and drive enough for them both, but his starts are laced with fear.
He needs to be good at things. When he’s good, he’s amazing. Osamu can try something and fail. For Atsumu, failing is not worth his time.
“It’s not that I’m not ok with gays,” Atsumu mumbles, “But like, why you gotta be gay?”
Osamu tackles him to the bed and holds his arms against the mattress so he doesn’t wriggle. He leans down and thinks of head-butting him but that would hurt them both, which might be worth it. There’s a bandaid on Atsumu’s nose, from when Osamu slammed the door on him yesterday as a joke.
“One day, I’ll get so over ya saying shit like that and ya’ll never see me again. I’ll break all ties with ya because yer toxic family,” Osamu threatens.
“Take that back,” Atsumu yells, shoving him with no success. Atsumu’s like a kitten, if you hold him just right he goes limp and helpless. Osamu has plenty of practice knowing his weak spots.
“Take that back or I’ll kick yer ass,” Atsumu fights.
“No, I’ll kick yer ass.”
“I’m not toxic family. Yer a toxic brother, and not ‘cause yer gay. Cause all ya do is bully me.”
Osamu releases him. “I didn’t mean it so don’t start crying.”
“I wasn’t gonna cry, stupid,” Atsumu mumbles but he so was gonna cry and Osamu knows because all Atsumu does when he’s frustrated is cry and tell mom. “And I’m not gonna tell mom. I’m fifteen. I know how to kick yer ass.”
“Whatever,” Osamu says.
He lays down with his back towards Atsumu and his eyes on his phone. Texts Suna that he’s cute because he knows Atsumu’s looking over his shoulder and reading along. Suna replies with a puking emoji.
“Where would ya go anyway?” Atsumu asks.
“I won’t tell ya so ya can’t find me and I’ll get a restraining order against ya.”
He doesn’t know why he keeps doing that. Atsumu’s past the age of falling for this kind of shitty lying. He has long stopped worrying about being adopted and: “Mom told me she only has enough money for one of us to live with her so one of us has to be left at the orphanage, Chumu. It has to be ya, ok? Come hug me goodbye.”
“Why?” Atsumu whines. “What’d I do to ya? I said ya can be gay if ya want, I said that from the beginning.”
He doesn’t start out liking Suna. Suna and him are good friends and classmates, and Osamu is gay before Suna becomes anything else in his eyes. Suna’s lazy and boring and mean, especially to Atsumu, who Osamu is protective over, who Suna loves to mess with just to piss them both off.
Suna does to Tsumu in school what Osamu does to him at home and it’s distressing to witness; it makes Osamu’s ears burn. Nothing infuriates him like someone putting his hands on his brother. He’d only kill two people in this world, his twin and anyone and everyone who ever hurts him.
Osamu’s ideas of boyfriends are those of cool guys, bad boys. Men he thought he wanted to be and can now think to have. He’ll date a college boy because boys in college seem so confident and college is where you can be gay freely.
He’s gonna go to Tokyo, where all the college boys are, and then after Nationals, which they’ll win, he’ll find himself a college boyfriend ‘cause he looks older than his age and he’s really good at volleyball.
Never mind that he has never met a college boy and never flirted with one either. He talks to boys all the time but doesn’t know how to talk to a boy like that, like he likes ‘em. He gets nervous at the thought.
Atsumu flirts with girls easy. He had a girlfriend at twelve. He could teach him if he got over himself but he’s being selfish.
“Why? You like who?” he presses when Osamu asks how he should tell someone they’re hot or whatever.
“So?” Atsumu waits, hands on either side of the spread, worn with use, pages sweaty and fading.
He’s showing Osamu a naughty magazine he swiped from one of his classmates years ago and cherishes like a sole possession. It’s of a girl. They have flipped through it many times, laying on their stomachs with the zine on the floor before them.
“This means nothing to ya?” Atsumu asks.
“Not really no. Mean anything to ya?”
“Not anymore,” Atsumu mopes. He rolls the magazine and tosses it in the trash.
“Mom’ll find that,” Osamu says.
Atsumu stomps his feet to pick it up, tucks it underneath his mattress. “Ya gonna tell mom?”
“Eventually.” Osamu shrugs.
Atsumu hops on the top bunk. “Ya shouldn’t tell anyone.”
“Why not? Ya tell everyone yer kissing girls. I can’t kiss anyone according to ya?”
“It’s different.”
Different, of course, is bad.
So maybe it’s spite or loneliness that drives him—wanting to share this with someone that’s not gonna be sad about it, not that Atsumu bullies him but he makes it difficult to have it be about Osamu.
Even still, he feels odd telling someone else. He’s spilling a shared secret that’s Atsumu’s as much as it is his. Atsumu’s the only one who knows.
“I wanna kiss guys,” he tells Suna one night when they’re walking home, expecting a reaction similar to Atsumu’s because Suna laughs when the team makes gay jokes and he teases Atsumu for being soft like a girl.
Suna blinks at him slowly in that lazy way of his. “So like me then?” he asks.
Osamu cocks his head. “Uhhh, guys, in general.”
Suna shrugs. “You can kiss me. I’ve kissed guys.”
“I’ve kissed no one,” Osamu blurts, staring at Suna’s lips for probably the first time ever.
“So how do you know you wanna kiss guys?” Suna smiles, a little impish. He steps close to flaunt his height. “I bet you can’t even kiss.”
“Yer only saying that so I kiss ya and ya do nothing like always.”
Suna grins. “I thought you were confessing to me.”
“I’m not. Why don’t ya confess to me if yer so about it?”
“I don’t like boys that can’t confess to me,” Suna says, planting a kiss on his cheek and pulling away with a soft smile that’s suddenly so pretty.
Atsumu sniffs it out before second period because Suna won’t stop staring at Osamu in a way that makes Osamu want to stare back and they’ve never been like this before. Osamu’s actually giggling—it’s unfair.
Atsumu regresses to his elementary school self, where everyone is the enemy and it’s the two of them against the world. He sits close enough to Osamu that it’s embarrassing at this age. Suna mocks him for it and they get into a glaring battle, both sucking on their respective milk boxes.
“Ya told him, didn’t ya?” Atsumu accuses, as they set up the net for practice. Osamu glances at the door every so often because Suna has yet to arrive and it’d be nice if they flirted a little before everyone gets here. “Why’d ya tell him?”
“Why not?”
“I’m gonna tell Kita-san,” Atsumu says.
Osamu grabs him by his shirt. “No, you can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s not yer secret to tell. I can tell whoever I wanna tell. It’s mine.” Osamu shoves him. “I wish I never told ya.”
Atsumu frowns deeper. “What am I supposed to do then?”
“Nothing. Why would ya do anything? It ain’t about ya.”
“What’s his deal?” Suna asks in between kissing him.
Osamu’s lip hurts because Atsumu punched him and it split and he bled. But Suna says he wants do it anyway. He says it’s kind of hot.
They go to back of the school in their very own secret spot. Suna lied about having kissed so many people. He only knows how to lick at Osamu’s lips and sometimes chin.
They don’t know what they’re doing, but they do it all the time. Suna’s always pulling his hand and mumbling, “I’m bored, let’s go kiss.”
“Nothing. Leave him alone,” Osamu mutters.
Suna frowns and gets off him.
When they do it, Suna corners him to the wall with arms on either side. Osamu touches his cheeks and goes on his tippy-toes to meet him halfway. They kiss like that until Suna’s tired, and sometimes sit on the ground and kiss some more.
“He doesn’t get it,” Osamu follows him down the hill.
“What’s there to get? Everyone’s kissing everyone.”
“Atsumu doesn’t work like that, ok? Things are hard for him.”
“Yeah, ‘cause he’s ridiculous,” Suna scoffs. Osamu grabs the back of his shirt and yanks him. “What? You’re gonna fight me? Just ‘cause I’m your boyfriend doesn’t mean I’ll be nice to him.”
“Then I’m gonna fight ya,” Osamu huffs.
“Ok, fight me,” Suna smirks, before his eyebrows shoot up into his stupid curtain fringe. “You’re so like him!” he taunts, laughing. “When you get mad, you go red just like him and say all stupid shit. Relax. He doesn’t need you to fight his battles.”
“I’ll do it anyway, just to beat yer face.”
“You say stuff about him,” Suna shoots back.
“Yeah, ‘cause he’s my stupid brother.”
“Girls are different,” Atsumu lectures him on the walk home. Osamu’s mouth hurts from the punch and all the kissing.
“I know.”
“When we talk about girls we both know what they’re like,” Atsumu elaborates. “They’re girls.”
“Shouldn’t it be easier for ya to talk about guys then since yer a guy and ya know exactly what they’re like? Ya should be helping me out.”
“I don’t know what it’s like being gay.”
“I never asked ya to know. I asked ya to be supportive and say you’ll love me still.”
“I’ll love ya still, are ya dumb? We’re twins. If ya wanna be gay—”
“I don’t wanna shit, Tsum. I’m gay. It’s what I am—there is no want. Yer the one with wants because ya don’t want me to be gay even though it doesn’t affect ya at all.”
“I said ya can be gay, or ya are, or whatever, yer gay, fine, ya and Suna are gonna go and be gay together.”
“So?” Osamu challenges. “What’s so bad about that?”
“When I get a girlfriend,” Atsumu changes tactics.
“I’d let ya,” Osamu interjects. “When ya get a girlfriend, I’ll be fine with it if yer happy. I’ll even be nice to her.”
“But she won’t be a guy!” Atsumu argues. “So I’ll still want to hang out with ya and you’d still be my best friend, and we’d still have shit to talk about that I can’t talk about with her, all the guy stuff. But ya and Suna are both guys. Ya and Suna have everything in common, yer the same person now. Whatever,” he grumbles. “Go be gay with him all the time.”
“Ya don’t make no sense. I don’t have to be gay all the time. I mean I’m gay all the time, yeah, but I don’t have to be with Suna all the time. I can be with ya too.”
Atsumu sighs. “If ya had to pick one guy who had to die, who’d ya pick to live, me or Suna?”
“Why would I need to ever do that? What actual situation in the real world would ask that?”
“Imaginary one.”
“So ya want me to pick ya?”
“Oh, so ya don’t wanna pick me?”
“I’d die myself,” Osamu announces smugly, crossing his arms.
“That’s not one of the options ‘cause I’d never let ya.”
“Who said so? It’s imaginary. I can do whatever so I’m gonna die.”
Atsumu rolls his eyes and speed walks ahead, sulking, because he lost and he’s a sore loser. Osamu’s a sore winner so it works out perfectly.
“You’d cry for me soooo much, huh?” Osamu taunts, catching up to him and shaking him by the shoulders. Atsumu shoves him off. Osamu latches onto him harder, arm around his neck. “You’d be such a crybaby for yer baby brother.”
“Suna wouldn’t even cry a single tear!” Atsumu snaps angrily but he can’t keep a straight face all the way through, breaks into a smile before he can finish.
“For sure not. He’s not that kind of gay. Yer that kind of gay even though yer not gay, ya freaking crybaby.” Osamu pinches his cheek. Atsumu tries to bite him, snapping his teeth.
Osamu hugs him closer, smushing their cheeks together. Atsumu hates this normally but this time he must be really anxious because he lets him, doesn’t push him away. “That’s what I have ya for, Tsum. So ya can cry for me.”
“I’d always cry for ya probably,” Atsumu mutters under his breath, looking away. It’s basically ‘I love you’ in crybaby.
“I know that. Gotta keep ya around for the dramatics so my funeral doesn’t get boring.”
Atsumu punches him in the stomach. “Stop talking like that, idiot. What’s that gotta do with ya being gay?”
“Nothing. Same way being gay has nothing to do with how we’re twins.”
Atsumu’s quiet for a bit before he unleashes the longest sigh of them all.
“Rin’s not even hot enough for ya. I thought gays were supposed to have good taste. He’s a ferret!”