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A fun fact about the Miya twins is that they aren’t identical, they’re actually fraternal.
A less fun fact, depending on who you’re asking, is that they look the exact same anyways.
What’s the point, Atsumu often asks himself, of having your own individual egg if God’s just going to copy and paste your entire likeness once over onto someone else? Osamu spends the better part of nine months in the womb kangaroo-kicking his brother in the forehead and he still hasn’t paid his penance for it. Atsumu thinks he should have at least come out a tiny bit uglier, you know, as compensation for Atsumu’s troubles.
An even less fun fact is that identical twins sometimes get switched around when they’re babies, and their parents are none the wiser. Atsumu assumes that the same goes for fraternal twins that look alike, which means that at some point Atsumu was probably Osamu and Osamu was probably Atsumu and their mother in her weary, sleep-deprived, new-parent state had probably switched them up once and never switched them back. There was nary a birthmark nor a freckle that could distinguish them when they were that little; it keeps him up at night wondering if he might be the one true Miya Osamu.
When they’re ten, the twins watch The Parent Trap during a sleepover at Suna’s house, and Atsumu has a full-scale identity crisis. The argument that ensues over which red-headed Lindsay Lohan twin is who nearly brings Atsumu and Osamu to blows if not for the fact that their mother raised them better than to fight in other people’s houses. Suna has at least half of it on camera, hidden on a hard drive among all of Atsumu’s other most shining moments, he’s sure.
He’s thirteen years old and about halfway through a particular episode of Ouran High School Host Club when Miya Atsumu self-soothes his twin complex with a cheap box of hair dye and a few hours unattended. He comes out on the other side blessedly unharmed, and a tad bit blonder. He doesn’t think the color looks half bad until his brother takes one good look at him over his cereal bowl the next morning and sends milk shooting directly out of his nose. It’s as gross as it is mortifying, and Atsumu shows his disdain with a vow of silence that lasts approximately six hours. A new personal record.
Regardless, Osamu enlists the help of a one Sunarin and dyes his own the following week. It turns out a soft, pigeon-grey, while Atsumu’s first dye job is lovingly piss-toned in comparison.
He pulled it off, he swears by that even years later when he has discovered toner and deep conditioner and the merits of paying a little extra for the help of a professional. It’s just a hill he’s willing to dye on.
As a grown adult, Atsumu can proudly say that his identical twin complex hardly rubs him the wrong way like it used to. Time heals all wounds, yadda yadda, and the hair dye definitely helps, as does the fact that they pursued totally different career paths. What once seemed like the end of the world was a blessing in disguise. If one were to travel to the Hyogo prefecture and inquire about those damn Miya twins, there would be a clear distinction between the ‘volleyball one’ and the ‘one with the restaurant’.
These days, Miya Atsumu is the owner of two types of gold, the V. League Champion sort and the one on his head. He’s a far cry from his dark-haired younger brother. You know? The one with the onigiri shop?
He’s happy, he’s healthy, he’s thriving in the tepid water of individuality, and nothing could possibly ruin it except for-
“Oh wow,” Hinata leans over the bench for a closer look at Bokuto’s phone, “Yeah, this is tough.” His shirt is only halfway onto his body with one arm through the sleeve hole and his head shoved through the neckline. He’s squinting like he’s thinking real hard.
Atsumu smells something burning.
Unfortunately, he has a good guess as to what his teammates are so puzzled over.
It started with his sweet mother, and a particularly vicious bout of empty nest syndrome; the type that preys on parents as the holidays creep closer.
Look, it wasn’t his fault that the volleyball season chewed up and spit out the summer and the winter months. Four hours round trip to go and visit with his mother was a hard ask amidst his professional career and the general woes of being Miya Atsumu.
And as hard-pressed as he was to admit it, Osamu was just as busy, what with running an entire business and planning a mushy, disgusting wedding to the, soon to be, Miya Rin.
“Ya hardly call yer old mom anymore.” She had sighed over the phone, “The both of ya, sorry sacks. Have two sons an’ get ignored twice as much, that’s what happens.”
Later that night, after thirty minutes' worth of groveling and one promise to come visit soon, Miya Asumi uploads a picture to her scarcely used social media for the sake of retaliation. It’s a photo of her twin boys at the tender age of seven, both donned in identical denim overalls with the familiar grey waves of Takenohama Beach in the background. Both boys are missing the same left front tooth, but their smiles are big and bright, gaps and all. The caption says simply, “Miya boys” with two little yellow, emoji hearts next to it.
Atsumu feels a pang of nostalgia, and in a fit of soft-hearted, thoughtless sentiment, he sends the picture to his brother and Suna, as well as the MSBY unofficial group chat where Hinata and Bokuto do a fair share of the heavy lifting and Sakusa tries to leave at least once a week.
Hinata messages back immediately with a string of emojis that have almost nothing to do with each other. Barnes reacts with a single thumbs up.
Atsumu watches the little text box at the bottom.
Omi is typing…
Omi is typing…
Omi is typing…
The textbox disappears along with any interest that Atsumu had in the conversation. He plugs in his phone and hits the hay, resting easy knowing that there are no consequences for his actions and absolutely nothing monumental will come from sending his own baby pictures to his teammates.
Now, here in the present moment, watching Hinata chew the inside of his lip and put some serious thoughts into his next words, Atsumu feels the beginnings of a headache and wonders why he couldn’t have just left well enough alone.
“Okay, uh…” Hinata speaks up again, “My final answer: left is Tsumu-san, and right is Osamu-san.”
Bokuto is nodding along, Tomas has come to peer over Hinata’s shoulder, and Inunaki looks like he’s gearing up to try his hand next. Sakusa, meanwhile, is nowhere to be found. He’s probably giving himself a low-grade heat stroke in the shower stalls to avoid this nonsense and Atsumu finds that he wishes he were there as well.
Not because of Kiyoomi.
Nothing like that.
He can continue to shower by himself in the stall. Atsumu won’t spend any more time than necessary thinking about it-
“What’s your reasoning?” Tomas asks.
Hinata shrugs, “I just figured I had a fifty-fifty chance of getting it right.”
“It’s not fair. This one’s so hard, they’re even missing the same tooth.” Bokuto whines and Atsumu feels himself die inside ever so slightly.
If the true test for Atsumu’s good graces was telling Baby A and Baby B apart, his teammate relations would have crumbled to dust.
Atsumu feels the tendrils of an age-old irritation and he tamps down the reflex to do something rash and stupid to set himself apart. They’re just baby pictures. It’s not a big deal. He’s the volleyball-Miya, the Olympian, it would be stupid to still feel a little insecure about whether or not he’s really an individual. He is both Hikaru and Kaoru. He is at least one of the Lohan twins, though the jury is still out on which one.
He decides it’s time to make a break for it when someone rolls in a whiteboard in the name of keeping score and he realizes that no amount of hair dye can erase the near indistinguishable photos of him and his twin ages zero to 12.9.
The last thing he hears as he scoots on out of the locker rooms are Bokuto’s next words, loud and self-assured, “My guess is that the one on the right is Tsumu. And now I have a fifty percent chance of beating Shoyou-kun.” Followed by the tell-tale squeak of a dry-erase marker.
In his hurry to flee the scene, he nearly (definitely) runs headlong into all 189 centimeters of Sakusa Kiyoomi, who, in Atsumu’s defense, is stopped dead in the center of the hallway staring down at his phone.
“Omi! If you’re here then who’s in the-“ Atsumu points his thumb back, towards the general direction of the locker room showers where he was sure that his spiker was simmering at a low boil. He trails off as Sakusa’s eyebrow climbs up into a delicate curve, almost disappearing under the slightly damp line of his fringe.
“I thought you were…” He tries again. The eyebrow climbs higher, “Forget it. Thought ya could leave without me huh? Pull the wool over my eyes?”
“One can only hope.” Sakusa sighs, that snarky bitch, and tucks his phone back into the pocket of his gym bag, where he usually keeps it instead of just putting it into his pants pockets like a regular person, “Yet here you are.”
“Here I am,” Atsumu grins, “And here ya are with no choice but to keep me company.”
It’s become a tradition of sorts. Atsumu spends the entire walk back to the apartment complex running his mouth and Sakusa looms silently next to him like a tall, stoic shadow. He interrupts every now and again but for the most part, he’s a surprisingly good listener, especially considering how vocal he is about his distaste for Atsumu’s antics on any given day.
Atsumu has a running theory that if two people cultivate equally shitty personalities, then the universe pushes them together to lessen the damage to the rest of the world. The reason that Sakusa seems to tolerate Atsumu better than anyone else is the same reason that Osamu put a ring on Sunarin’s finger: insufferable assholes need each other like fish need water and like Hinata needs shoe inserts for group photos.
Atsumu finds solace in Sakusa’s snark, to the point that he completely forgets about his teammate’s stupid game until the very next day when he’s getting ready to head out only to come face to face with that monstrosity of a whiteboard once again.
Someone has taken the liberty of printing out multiple pictures of the twins, pre-hair dye. Some he hadn't seen in years and others that he knows for certain are their mom’s favorites.
“Where’d ya even get these?” Atsumu asks them weakly.
“I friended your mom on Facebook! She accepted it right away.”
Atsumu imagines big, beefy Bokuto chatting up his mother and loses another ten years off his lifespan. At this rate, he’ll die in his fifties.
A good majority of the team is crowded around the board now, discussing their strategies and keeping tabs on their guesses. Inunaki fixes another printed photo to the board with a little volleyball magnet and the onlookers coo in unison, like a gaggle of grown-men shaped pigeons.
It’s the youngest picture yet, they can’t be any older than four, and Atsumu and Osamu are wearing matching froggy raincoats in front of the greyish backdrop of a summer storm. Atsumu takes a seat on the bench and buries his face in his hands. He can’t even look as he hears a mumble of approval from everyone else.
“What the fuck is this?”
Sakusa Kiyoomi is a lot of things, but he’s definitely not loud. He believes that if someone isn’t listening enough to hear him speaking at a regular volume then they don’t deserve to hear him at all. Which is why it’s so surprising when his voice booms through the locker room. Atsumu whips around so fast that he feels a crick in his neck.
Sakusa is approaching fast, gym bag hooked over his shoulder and hair slightly rumpled. He reaches up to yank down his mask and his eyes flicker over his teammate's notes on the whiteboard.
“Are you joking?” He asks Hinata, frozen into place with the marker hovering inches above the surface.
“Uh…”
“Omi-“ Atsumu starts, which earns him a quick hand to the face and a sharp ‘shh’. He would protest if Sakusa wasn’t immediately rounding on the rest of the team. The look on his face nearly melts the gel straight from Bokuto’s hair, Atsumu can feel his own balls shrivel up and retreat in panic as Sakusa snatches a towel from the bench beside him and proceeds to wipe everyone’s guesses off the board, leaving only an embarrassing array of Miya twin content.
Sakusa jams his finger at the first picture, the one at the beach that started it all, his finger hovering over the child on the right, “This is Atsumu. Obviously.”
“It’s not obvious!” Hinata defends himself bravely even as he cranes his neck up to meet Sakusa’s eyes, “They look the same!”
Sakusa seethes, “No. They do not. Use your eyes.” He moves his attention to the next picture, and picks out the twin on the left, “Atsumu’s got a cowlick, his hair goes to the right.”
Atsumu distractedly reaches a hand up to the top of his head, where his hair swirls just so, swooping off to the…
“And!” Sakusa continues, pointing to the next picture, “Atsumu has freckles, Osamu-san does not.”
Atsumu himself is starting to feel a little faint. He’s not sure he’s ever heard Sakusa use his first name this many times in a row.
“You can hardly tell!” Hinata pleads.
“Bullshit.”
“Omi-omi you’re pretty fired up about this-“ Bokuto interjects carefully.
Sakusa scowls at them, like a group of large, hairy children, “You’re wasting time on a silly game and you’re obviously making Miya uncomfortable.”
“It’s really okay-“
Sakusa, once again, shushes him with a hand in his face.
“Omi-“ He laughs, a little mortified and a little endeared by the way that his most apathetic teammate is surprisingly willing to go to bat for him.
Sakusa, meanwhile, uses all his height to his advantage, still managing to look down his nose at a room full of professional volleyball players.
He’s got a talent for scorn, the type of facial range that specializes in making his victims feel about two feet tall. More often than not, Atsumu is on the receiving end of it, but increased exposure has made him far less likely to actually cower from him. Instead, when Kiyoomi gets heated like this, Atsumu knows that he’s also incredibly quick to be flustered. It’s like if he lessens his guard enough to be angry, he makes himself susceptible to all of Atsumu’s charms that ordinarily seem to just ping right off his armor. It’s a glorious phenomenon, really. Impenetrable Sakusa Kiyoomi: reduced to sputtering insults and a full, honest-to-god pout.
But the rest of the Black Jackals don’t know that. The others, instead, have the sense to look a little frightened. Probably because they don’t know that Kiyoomi’s favorite movie is About Time and he has a Pinterest board of baby animals in case of an emergency. He’s about as likely to start a physical fight as he is to let them all sneeze directly in his face, one by one.
“It’s not okay. Respect people’s boundaries.” He snaps. To his credit, the rest of the team looks well and truly admonished, “And besides, hardly any of you ever guessed right, and if you did it was just by chance.” As he berates them, he takes great care by picking each picture from the board. He piles them neatly in his hands, holds them almost reverently, and aligns the corners. Hinata is still frozen stiff with a pen in his hand and nobody protests as he confiscates every photo.
With a sniff, he leaves as fast as he came, pictures and all, straight out the door. For all the shit that they give Atsumu about being theatric, Kiyoomi is really just as likely to make a dramatic exit.
In his wake, he leaves behind one blank whiteboard, several shocked teammates, and a delightfully flushed Atsumu, who can’t quite put his finger on why his heart is pounding in his chest.
All he really does know is that his partner for the walk home just left and he better get a move on if he wants to catch up.
He stands, tossing his bag over his shoulder and nearly tripping over his own feet on his way out the door, “Hey, Omi wait for me-“
They’re almost halfway home when Atsumu feels like they need to talk about it, “That was real nice what ya did back there, Omi Omi. Didn’t know you were such a softie.” Which is a lie. Atsumu is well aware.
Sakusa rolls his eyes, “Don’t mention it. Really. Let’s never talk about it again.”
Atsumu coos as a faint pink colors the skin above his mask, “Nah, I think we should talk about it. How did ya learn to tell us apart like that?”
Atsumu isn’t sure what he expects, he mostly asks out of morbid curiosity. He doesn’t expect Sakusa to scoff like he had been offended, “Obviously I can tell which one is you. You’re my best friend.”
The world as he knows it tilts on its very axis, and the stars align, Atsumu feels a rush from his toes to the top of his head and it’s enough to stop him dead in his tracks.
“I’m yer best friend?” Atsumu croaks, and it’s embarrassing how small he sounds.
Sakusa stops and turns around slowly, “Aren’t you?” He asks, and his voice takes on a note of apprehension.
“Yeah.” Atsumu breathes out a laugh, standing like an idiot as if they’re the only people on the sidewalk, “Yeah, I’m yer best friend. We’re best friends.”
“Right, so…” Sakusa gestures for Atsumu to catch up and he does.
They walk like they always do, with Atsumu’s chatter and Sakusa’s quiet, undivided attention.
In the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t really matter which Lohan twin he is, or how bad his dye job used to be, or if he’s still ranked second best to Kageyama Tobio. It doesn’t even matter if Osamu and Atsumu were switched at birth two, three, or even four times over. He knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Sakusa Kiyoomi doesn’t spend his time around just anyone, and he thinks that might make him pretty damn special, in a league of his very own.