Chapter Text
Kiyoomi had himself mostly put back together when he heard his front door open. He didn’t move from where he laid curled like a miserable snail under his comforter, idly rubbing the velvety patch of fur above Karai’s nose with his index finger. He still felt a little congested from his crying jag but the worst of it had been washed away in the shower. Scrubbed clean of the outside air, it didn’t feel like the anger was trying to rip him apart anymore.
Hitoka appeared in the doorway of his bedroom a few minutes later with a little nervous twist to her mouth and fidgety thumbs. Kiyoomi fought the urge to mirror it right back to her.
He’d never been mad at her in any real way and the new territory felt rickety under his wobbly knees, splintery and promising to give way to the deep blue underneath.
“Do you want me to go home?” She asked, voice small and young.
“Of course not,” he answered softly because that was true, adjusting his hand to pet the back of Karai’s ears. It was still strange to see the tiny animal in front of him dry and healthy, greedily soaking in any attention he was willing to give her. The writer in him wanted to look for a metaphor in it but the very tired, very sore body he was in decided it wouldn’t hurt to just let something be. For once.
“I’m going to wash my face,” Hitoka said, voice still unsure but her shoulders less tense.
He watched her retreat back into the hallway, chest still heavy with the same unwelcome discomfort.
He could, and had, argued that Hitoka was the one person who knew him on a level no one else had or probably ever could. She was his best friend, first and foremost, but she was also the person who absorbed and combed through the parts of his mind he spread across pages. She waded with him through the splotchy typewriter ink, the neatly printed lines of raw words, the sometimes-frantic scribblings.
She knew his mind in a way even he did not, able to chip away to find the root, the aching heart, of his words and musings.
And Kiyoomi knew he knew her too. She was pretty expressive anyways, prone to rambling and over explaining because of her ever-present fear of stepping on toes but Kiyoomi knew her other tells as well as his own- what she wanted to say if she twisted her mouth a certain way, what it meant if her fingers found her hair, if she needed help untangling her brain based only upon noticing if she was twisting or twirling the strands.
He was, frankly, fucking terrified. Hitoka guilty was not a Hitoka he was sure he even knew how to read.
The worry loosened, little by little, when she returned in pale purple pajamas, her cheeks scrubbed a soft pink and shiny with whatever serum she'd pilfered from Kiyoomi’s medicine cabinet. She looked at him with heavy eyes and Kiyoomi knew he’d blown the fear out of proportion when he could easily read the questions running through her mind, when he knew exactly which ones were skipping and twisting like a ribbon in a cassette tape that had been handled too roughly.
“I’m okay,” he said softly, keeping his eyes trained on Karai’s sleepy, slow blinks and the way her fuzzy chest rose and fell as she purred her way into a nap.
“I don’t even know what happened,” Hitoka nearly whispered, eyes already filling. “I thought…I thought you just needed a breather but you never came back. Atsumu seemed worried but I didn’t want to ask him in front of everyone.”
“I,” Kiyoomi started. He cleared his throat. Hitoka laid down on her side of the bed and looked over, ready to listen. He wished he had a map, some reliable, predetermined way to know exactly how to navigate something that made him feel so listless and lost. “It was okay until it wasn’t. I think I made a mistake by going.”
Hitoka shook her head furiously, brow furrowing. “I disagree. I could see you getting nervous but I don’t think anyone else did. And you did fine. Keiji talked about just us hanging out with him and Kou. Shouyou said he wanted to see you again. They liked you and you were doing fine.”
Kiyoomi felt his mouth quirk. “I wasn’t. I was weird and quiet.”
“Kiyoomi,” Hitoka soothed, reaching over to run her hand down the back of Karai’s head. She let out a little mrrph in surprise, but continued purring just a second later. “You don’t have to become a new person. I didn’t expect you to magically transform into a social butterfly. You’ve always been quiet and observant. It’s not a bad thing and it’s not even an uncommon…way to be. Plenty of people like to listen more than they like to speak. Keiji and Tobio are like that too.”
He let the words wash over him, letting that idea settle and poking around its edges until he decided it was rational enough. Hitoka’s insistence even almost let him believe it was acceptable.
“I didn’t know what to say,” he said, squeezing his eyes shut. “I felt…out of place.”
“Well, don’t forget they’re also new people, to you. You’re holding yourself to a too-high standard again, Kiyo. Of course, you were a bit reserved. You only just met them.”
Hitoka let the quiet exist for a few minutes and Kiyoomi loved her for it. Nothing she said seemed wrong, exactly. Even at his best, it had always taken him a while to adjust and warm up to new people. First days of classes and being sorted into study groups or group projects had always been daunting tasks that seemed much larger to him than the people around him.
“We’re not so different about that, you know?” Hitoka murmured beside him, gently easing into the bubble of hush over them instead of just bursting it.
He looked over at her, watching her pick at a loose thread in her lilac pajama pants. He thought of her in the izakaya, cheeks flushed with beer and smiles given out as easily as candy on Halloween. He’d watched as she floated in and out of conversations, spreading the joy and love she radiated like she was put on the earth to do so.
It was a little difficult not to scoff at the incorrectness of her claim.
“I mean it,” she insisted, clearly picking up on his disbelief. “I never know what to say, either. I’m always worried I’ve crossed some invisible boundary. I just panic outwardly to soften the imagined blow. It’s never until I’m back at home that I realize that I never dealt any blows to begin with. I get tangled up in my thoughts in social settings too, I just push it outwards and you pull it in.”
He considered it.
“And, Kiyoomi, I think everyone is like that, to some degree. Maybe not Koutarou but he’s an enigma who makes friends everywhere he goes. Not everyone is like that and it’s okay. I think it’s perfectly normal to feel out of your depth when speaking to another person. Coming on too strong, accidentally offending someone, worrying that you’re being boring or weird…they're normal things to be nervous about. We’re all just…people. But when you find the right people, it’s easier to trust that any slips are as easily forgiven as they are made.”
Kiyoomi didn’t think he could speak if he wanted to. It was, he realized, a little self-centered to assume he was the only one grappling with confusion about social etiquette. Somewhere along the night, he’d decided he was the only one struggling with such baggage and that hadn’t been fair. Maybe it had come from a place of thinking too little of himself but he’d still decided things for the people around him with no regard to how they actually felt. Even when, in the case of Atsumu, they’d directly told him otherwise.
Thinking of Atsumu brought back a, mercifully diluted, wave of the molten pit that had filled him in the damp night air outside the izakaya. He couldn't shake the way the embarrassment and fury had pulsed all the way to the tips of his fingers, the way he'd spiraled until he’d felt like a stranger in his own body, stuck in the bones and emotions of someone he didn’t know. It was a terrible feeling and it still was, even in just the weak leftover heat of it.
“I got mad at him,” Kiyoomi admitted. “And I…I got mad at you.”
Hitoka nodded, the corners of her mouth turning down but she didn’t panic like he’d worried. She didn’t become unreadable. That, at least, was a relief. Kiyoomi swallowed hard and let the relief of it hold his hand into the unknown territory for their friendship. A rift was the last thing he wanted. He didn’t know if he would be able to even survive such a thing.
“I’m sorry,” Hitoka said honestly. “I really am. Can we talk about it so I can…try to fix it or…or work through it?”
“I just,” Kiyoomi started, wincing preemptively. He knew anger was a secondary emotion and he tried to uncover the primary one before he could let the words fall thoughtlessly out of his mouth again. He thought back to the conversation-turned-spat on the bench and tried to peel away the horrible layers of bad he’d been wrapped in during it.
Underneath the anger, under the sharp sting of what he’d thought was betrayal, Kiyoomi realized the answer was simpler than he’d assumed.
“I was hurt,” he said, finally.
Hitoka reached for his hand, trembling fingers backing away almost at once like she was worried she’d made a mistake. He reached back, letting their joined hands fall on the blankets, just under the tiny sleeping lump of Karai, his thumb still nestled against her pale ginger fur.
“I told Atsumu I didn’t leave my house often…like, an attempt at downplaying it, obviously.” He had a lump in his throat, one that felt impossible to swallow or even breathe around. “And he said he didn’t know the whole story but that you’d told him something. I kind of…I cut him off.”
Hitoka watched, blinking owlishly at him as if she was trying to place what he was telling her to another conversational pin elsewhere in her mind. She didn’t speak so Kiyoomi tried to keep going, tried to let the flimsy bravery the realization that she was always just who she was regardless of any stressors around them had given him to get it all out.
“I was…it hurt my feelings that you would tell him anything about…this. About me and the agoraphobia and the…the bullshit because you’ve always been the one person who kept me connected to the outside in any capacity while still being a…a safe place to land. To be. I was scared that I would lose that because I know you know how…ashamed and embarrassed I am to be living this way. And I was scared because I don’t think I’ve ever been mad at you before.”
His throat felt a little dry at the end but he could feel his muscles loosen and the tendrils of panic wrapped around his lungs give way once he’d spoken his peace with minimal stammering.
Hitoka seemed thoughtful and maybe a little sad. “Kiyoomi,” she said softly. “I…I didn’t tell him anything about this.”
Kiyoomi’s brain short-circuited.
“Huh? But…he,” Kiyoomi felt his brow furrow.
“He asked about you,” she confirmed, smiling softly in a way that always made Kiyoomi feel safer. “But he didn’t ask about anything like that. And I didn’t tell him. I would never do that to you and it’s not my story to tell anyways.”
“But…” Kiyoomi still felt frazzled even under the relief and the sharp flare of guilt rising in him for believing that Hitoka even would in the first place. She was a careful person, from choosing produce to handling Kiyoomi’s humiliatingly fragile heart. He knew that.
“Kiyoomi,” she said, squeezing his hand and huffing out a laugh that sounded like it was something she was trying to keep inside. “He asked me if you were single and what you were like. That’s all.”
He blinked, mouth hanging open but brain fully devoid of any words to form.
“I told him you were smart and kept to yourself and that you were single. That was the extent of the conversation.” She sounded amused and Kiyoomi considered looking up the likelihood of spontaneous human combustion and maybe if there was any method he could use to tip the odds in his favor so he could become a pile of ash on the comforter who didn’t have to think anymore.
“But why…why would he ask something like that?”
Hitoka laughed again, a louder and freer sound. Her eyes had gotten all twinkly, a sight Kiyoomi usually enjoyed but at the moment made him want to hide under his bed the way he had at five years old when he heard any little creak or bump in the night.
“Because he thinks you’re hot, dummy.”
Kiyoomi closed his eyes and pretended he wasn’t blushing furiously. It didn’t work and he covered his face with his free hand.
“I have to die,” he declared, frowning at the full belly-laugh Hitoka released in response.
“I’m sorry,” she said in a frantic rush. He could hear the smile around the words though. “I’m sorry. I know you were upset but- oh my god. You have to admit it’s funny.”
“It’s not,” he insisted, still safely hidden by his hand. “It is very much very not funny. I have to join the witness protection program.”
“Oh, stop,” she chastised, trying to tug his hand away from his eyes. “Atsumu couldn’t hold a grudge if someone paid him to. Just tell him you misunderstood what meant.”
“No,” he crowed. “Then I would have to explain what I thought he meant. I can never look at him again. I have to find a new vet. I have to move away. New town, new me. No, new country. New planet.”
“Kiyoomi,” Hitoka laughed. “It’s really okay. He’s a very understanding person.”
“Then he will understand why I can never show my face around him again.”
Hitoka laughed but let Kiyoomi have his tantrum. He waited until the tire screeching in his mind lowered to a dull roar between his ears and the blush that burned from the tip of his scalp to the back of his neck lightened to just a bit of warmth on his cheeks before emerging from his hand.
“I’m sorry,” he finally said. "I should have known better. I shouldn't have assumed you would do something like that."
“I’m not upset with you,” Hitoka said, pulling the covers up over her shoulder, tucking them under her chin. She was still too cheery for his taste, borderline delighted, smile and eyes much too knowing about something he didn’t want to try to even guess at. "I'm not going to be offended because you assumed the worst. It's kind of...how anxiety works."
“I ruined the night for nothing,” Kiyoomi said, looking down at their hands and the chipped light green nail polish Hitoka had on. It was too much. He was more exhausted than he could remember being in the last two years at least.
“You didn’t ruin anything, silly. And I’m so super proud of you.”
“Don’t be proud of me for fucking up,” he whined, burying his face in his pillow.
“Oh my god, drama queen. You didn't fuck up. It was a small blunder at the end of an overwhelming night. A night filled with lots of first-in-a-long-times. And you did great and my friends like you. Don’t think it to death, Kiyoomi. It was-"
“I will actually set myself on fire if you say the word progress,” he warned.
“Progress,” she finished cheekily, grinning wide before reaching over to turn the lamp on her side off.
He rolled his eyes before reaching to turn his own lamp off, the dark spreading over the worst of his humiliation. It was just another form of hiding, he thought. It had always been his go-to strategy, tucking himself under his bed or between the clothes in his closet as a child, keeping the lights off and buying blackout curtains in college, locking himself in his house like a hermit once he reached adulthood.
Maybe surprisingly, Kiyoomi realized, even under the lingering nerves, even in the face of humiliating himself, he still felt that flicker of claustrophobia, that new urge to stop hiding. It was terrifying to leave the safety of the cage he’d made of his home, to roll out from the dusty safety of space under his mattress, to turn the light on.
It felt like exposure, like an exercise in something that felt just a little too honest. He tried to stop likening it to laying himself down on a chopping block; that wasn’t quite right. But, still, it felt vulnerable in a way that made his throat itch. It frightened him beyond words to abandon the safety of his self-declared borders, to cry uncle and tell the world and the people in it, "I’m here now; you can see me and judge me and know me."
He still didn’t feel quite like himself, his routine disrupted to an extent that even the usually-familiar thrum of his pulse under his skin felt like it was beating to a different rhythm, the time signature changed without him realizing.
Hitoka’s breathing evened out beside him and Kiyoomi wondered if it was necessarily a bad thing. It was his nature, whether it came naturally or if it was a learned behavior, to assume newness was the same as a threat. But he could admit to himself, hidden in the dark with Hitoka beside him, that there was undeniably a thrill under the fear.
Parts of the night, under the murky blanket of nerves and the…blunder, had been nice. It had been fun to become reacquainted with a side of Hitoka he hadn’t seen in such a long time, the version of her when she was surrounded by a group, a Hitoka filled with a joy so bright and palpable that Kiyoomi felt like he could reach out and touch it if he tried hard enough.
It hadn’t been a wholly terrible experience to sit in the izakaya and watch a part of her he’d resigned him to losing, to listen to the still-water calm of Akaashi Keiji’s voice as he talked about work schedules, to watch Hinata and Bokuto hype each other up to toddler-like levels of excitement over the most mundane of things while Kageyama looked on with fond exasperation, silently nudging water and appetizers towards his husband’s hand.
It hadn’t been thoroughly terrible to watch Atsumu grin and tease from the corner of his eye or even to be overcome with a type of nervousness Kiyoomi thought he’d left behind in high school, fluttery with a distinct over-awareness of the person next to him.
It had been very new and, to Kiyoomi’s brain, that meant it had also been very threatening. It still felt worlds too difficult to let himself feel the sort of pride Hitoka so earnestly felt for him on his behalf. But glimmers of it were there, despite himself. There enough, at least, for Kiyoomi to wish he had it in him to be kind enough to allow himself to bask in it, even if for just a moment or two.
The bundle of bad was still there, softer than before but still enough to irritate the hornet’s nest in his middle. It was easier than usual, he found, to order them to retreat.
The wound he carried with him, the one he’d carried for so long it felt more like an innate part of himself rather than a result of something that had happened, had been scraped open a little, throbbing and sore enough to remind Kiyoomi it existed as something separate from himself.
And, as sleep settled itself over his brain and pulled him in, he couldn’t find it in himself to think that was such a bad thing. Maybe healing was never meant to be a linear, painless process in the same way that friendship was never meant to come with maps and instruction booklets. Maybe scraping the scab and debris away from the hurt was the only way it could ever close in a way that could leave enough room for him to…live again.
Kiyoomi sighed, turning over and laying his hand on Hitoka’s, letting her presence tether him to the comfort and safety of existing with her as sleep finally dragged him under.
He didn’t fight it.
Kiyoomi woke to an empty bed and the smell of breakfast filling the air. He wondered, vaguely, if the cat was begging for scraps at Hitoka’s feet like she seemed to do any time Kiyoomi dared to eat as his brain slowly chugged itself to awareness. He hauled himself up to fish his left slipper from the place under his bed it always seemed to end up in. He stretched for a while before leaving his bedroom to stumble into the bathroom.
He felt a bit more human with brushed teeth and a clean face and joined Hitoka in the kitchen. She was still in her pajamas, poking at the eggs in the pan with a look of concentration on her face so severe it would have been more befitting for the dismantling of a live bomb rather than the making of an omelet.
Kiyoomi pulled a fresh bottle of barley tea out of the fridge and cracked the seal before peeking into the pan as he reached into the cabinet for a glass.
“Omurice giving you trouble?” He asked.
Hitoka shook her head, eyebrows still scrunched up. “Nope,” she lied, nudging the edges with a pair of cooking chopsticks Kiyoomi had honestly totally forgotten he even owned. “I’m almost done.”
Kiyoomi nodded, returning the jug of tea to its designated shelf in the fridge before leaning against the counter. He watched her cook, confirming that the kitten was, indeed, weaving between Hitoka’s ankles in hopes of catching a stray grain of rice or piece of egg.
He took a long sip of his tea, trying not to laugh at the blatant disgust on Hitoka’s face when she noticed.
“How do you drink that without any sweetener at all?” She asked, turning the heat down on the stove.
Kiyoomi shrugged. Hitoka scoffed and reached for her mug, a heavy pink one she always used when she stayed over. She took a sip of what Kiyoomi immediately knew was yuzu tea with a single overflowing spoonful of honey stirred in.
Kiyoomi looked out the window and watched the wind weave through the last of the leaves that had managed to cling to the wax myrtle in his yard despite the chill. He thought of Hitoka and her tea and little routines as he watched a couple of leaves lose their hold in the breeze, tumbling slowly to join the rest of them scattered at the base of the tree and it occurred to him how much he enjoyed knowing someone to that extent.
“Okay, done!” Hitoka announced, voice high with relief as she turned the knob on the stove to off. She pulled two plates towards herself and dug a serving spoon out of the drawer.
Karai meowed at their feet and Kiyoomi turned away from the window and the tree to pull down the bag of kitten food, scooping some into her bowl. She sprinted at it, her attempt at foraging for scraps off the kitchen floor abandoned in favor of her kibble. She collided with Kiyoomi’s leg, her head bumping into his shin and he laughed.
Hitoka smiled over where she was plating their breakfast in response. “The cat was such a good idea.”
“I think so too,” Kiyoomi said, crouching to scratch behind Karai’s ears for a few seconds before sitting in his usual chair at the table.
Hitoka placed a plate down in front of him, turning immediately to grab her own before sitting down. She had her little notebook ready to go, flipping it open to go over what was presumably her schedule for the day. Kiyoomi tried to feel ridiculous about preemptively missing her before she’d even had a chance to leave, failing miserably when he looked to his plate and took in the ketchup message on his omurice. 大親友 !
He took a bite, struggling just a little to get it past the knot in his throat, and watched her pen something in before closing the notebook and stuffing it into the purse that hung off the back of her chair. She smiled at him and took a big bite of her own food.
“Thank you,” he said. “For breakfast.” And for everything else, too, but it felt a little too early in the morning to unleash such an uncharacteristic bout of sentimentality on her.
“Of course. It was to curry favor,” she said cheerfully.
Kiyoomi sighed, taking another sip of tea to prepare himself. “And why would you need to curry favor with me?”
“Because I need the next chapter a day earlier than I originally needed it.”
Such a thing was neither uncommon nor upsetting, just as it hadn’t been any other time she’d made deadline changes. She was careful with her schedule and always gave him plenty of notice which he knew they both knew. It wasn’t like he had much else to do anyways.
“And?” He prompted.
Hitoka sighed into her tea. “And,” she said around the lip of her mug. “I am, once again, giving you the number of a therapist.”
Kiyoomi’s mouth went sour and he took another bite of rice to chase the taste away. “You know I don’t want to do that,” he said once he’d swallowed.
“I do,” she confirmed with a nod, her hair bouncing around her ears.
“But?”
“But you’re actively trying to get better this time,” she said, voice so kind it made Kiyoomi feel a bit like a bug.
“I suppose I am,” he said to the wood grain of the table.
“Just think about it,” she smiled, patting the back of his free hand softly.
Karai jumped onto his thigh, barreling her tiny head towards his plate with the all of the grace and determination of an airstrike missile. He promptly put her back on the ground, using his slipper-clad foot to gently push her away.
“Glutton,” he scolded her.
Hitoka giggled, a sound that curried favor with him far more than a plate of food ever would.
“Promise you will? Think about it at least, that is.”
Kiyoomi nodded, figuring he owed her that much at minimum. She was right, at least, about the fact that he was actively trying so maybe she could be right about therapy. He’d gone a few times and hadn’t liked it at all. He’d hated the harsh clinical lighting and the stiff armchair that had felt too awkward for his height. He’d left the meager handful of sessions he’d attended feeling heavier than when he’d gone in, given nothing but a business card and a tentative diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder.
Stress disorder. Also, water was wet and the sun was ninety-one million miles away. The news had felt about as breaking and world-altering as the news that apples grew on trees had.
“Stop thinking so hard,” Hitoka ordered. Her smile turned cheeky, accompanied by a devious glint in her eye, one Kiyoomi had already grown wary of seeing. “Think instead of how I happened to notice you had a missed call from Miya Atsumu when I silenced your horrible alarm this morning.”
Kiyoomi groaned loud enough to make the cat startle and run for the living room. He just barely managed to fight off the urge to bang his head on the table.
“That is exactly last on the list of things I want to think about,” he said firmly, holding his head in hands.
“What if it’s about Karai?” Hitoka said with a laugh too devious for him to believe she genuinely thought that was the case.
He glared at her from the space between his fingers. “It’s not about that and you know it.”
“I know nothing,” Hitoka said.
“You know I am never speaking to that man again,” he countered.
“Well,” she smiled. “I guess we’ll see about that, won’t we?”