𝐩𝐭. 𝐯𝐢

𝐧𝐞𝐰𝐭𝐨𝐧'𝐬 𝐟𝐢𝐫𝐬𝐭 𝐥𝐚𝐰 𝐨𝐟 𝐦𝐨𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧

NO MATTER HOW many times you moved, unpacking never got easier.

You stand in a sea of cardboard boxes, the edges battered and tape peeling from the long journey. Somehow those boxes looked exactly how you felt. Toeing one out of your way and stretching your arms overhead, your body trembles as your cramped muscles protest the movement. With a sigh, you drop your arms back down to your sides and cast a loathing look at the mess in your living room.

It's tempting to leave the chaos for another day, but you didn't have that luxury.

You'd moved back on Wednesday and spent yesterday half-heartedly organizing your room, hindered by your jet-lagged mind and exhausted body. Now it was Friday, and while you technically had the weekend to work on things, you'd agreed to meet up with Osamu and Atsumu. Knowing those two, you'd end up being out all day, which would leave you with Sunday to rush through everything and prepare for your job which started Monday.

A headache begins forming just at the thought.

It's not that you weren't excited to see the twins; you'd kept in close contact with Osamu and there was always a part of you that longed to see Atsumu's name lighting up your phone screen. But it was precisely because of the static silence between you and the golden haired twin that made nerves coil in your stomach.

As you open your phone to turn on music, you find yourself staring down at your text messages, thumb hovering over the familiar contact. You hadn't changed Atsumu's contact picture since junior year of college and a faint smile appears as you stare down at the picture of him asleep, head tilted back and arm thrown over his eyes, Nugget curled in the crook of his neck. You click on the messages, and even though you knew it was there, it still surprised you.

[ nugget's co-parent: I'm proud of you. ]

A tiny spring of warmth bubbles inside of you at the sight. The text had come out of nowhere, and you'd woken up to it the day after you'd told them about moving. It had been the first time he'd talked to you outside of the group chat you had with him and Osamu.

It was... nice. Nice because he'd been the first to reach out; nice because you'd had enough time to heal the open wounds that night had left on you; nice because you finally felt comfortable in your own skin, in your own abilities, in yourself. There was still a tinge of hurt that lingered, but mostly, you think you craved an ending of sorts. You wanted to move on, but not necessarily without him.

You wanted to move on from the past and into a future where you could walk side by side with Atsumu, instead of hiding in his shadow.

(( #987 — Get closure. ))

Nugget watches you from where he lays on top of the fridge, tail flicking from side to side as you begin hauling boxes around. The sound of tearing open cardboard is drowned out by the music pulsing through your headphones as you work methodically. At some point your apartment becomes stifling and you crack open the windows, inhaling deeply as crisp air slithers inside.

As dusk nears, your stomach growls and you gaze into your pitifully empty refrigerator, hoping something may appear. Nothing does.

Grabbing a jacket and your wallet, you bid Nugget goodbye, deciding to run to a nearby konibi to get dinner and a few snacks. The sky overhead is cocooned in various shades of grey, the scent of petrichor beginning to build in the spring air. A chill curls down your spine as you pass beneath a towering building, its stretching shadow a few degrees colder than the rest of the city.

Cars cruise by as you take a left, hands stuffed into your pockets to shield them from the chill. You'd found an apartment that rested on the cusp of the suburbs and the true city, resulting in an ebb and flow of traffic ebb depending on the time of day, as though the heart of Tokyo was the ocean and the surrounding areas the beach, people moving with the invisible tide as time wears on. You'd have to take public transport to work instead of walking, but you figured that was a small sacrifice to make for the lower prices.

Grabbing a few different flavors of ippudo ramen from the shelves, you nab a package of chocolate before paying and leaving. You stop by the vending machine resting against the chipped store wall and insert a handful of change, selecting a can of coffee, knowing the caffeine would help you finish unpacking.

Two cans fall and you blink, surprised by your luck, tucking them both into your bag.

(( #135 — Good things come in twos. ))

Rain begins to fall lazily from the sky as you take the stairs two at a time up to your apartment. Putting the extra ramen and can of coffee away, you sit by the window as you wait for it to heat up. White curtains flutter gently as a breeze flits through your apartment. Despite the rapidly decreasing temperature, you keep your windows open, tilting your head back against the wall to listen to the rhythm of the rain as it descends.

(( #48 — Listen to the rain with the windows open. ))

As it increases its tempo, it sounds a bit like the rain is knocking against every wall of your apartment, and it takes you a moment to realize that the sound you were hearing might actually be a knock.

Getting up, you pad over to your door, cold seeping through the thin fabric of your socks. Peering through the peephole, you don't see anyone, and opening the door to an empty hallway only makes you think it had been the rain. With your apartment at the end of the hall, you can see over the metal railing that leads to the parking lot, and you freeze before hurriedly pulling on your shoes and shutting your door behind you.

Rain has slicked the outdoor stairs and you hold onto the railing, chilled metal biting into your hand as you hurry down.

A young man is standing in the small space at the bottom of the stairwell, one hand raised to shield his eyes from the splattering of rain as it hits the pavement near him. He's gazing out into the parking lot, mouth twisted at the sheets of rain casting the world into a mirage of blurred colors, all dampened by a sheen of gray. It's easy to see where the rain had touched him, droplets sinking into the muted gold fabric of his jacket, the MSBY logo displayed proudly on the back.

"Atsumu?"

He turns.

Miya Atsumu stares at you. You stare back.

"...hi." He breathes out.

"Hi." You reply, struggling to wrap your head around the sight before you.

His hair is wilted from the rain, a few strands clinging to his forehead, and the rest of it mussed from the wind. A single gold hoop rests near the top of his left ear, and you vaguely realize it's the same earring you'd given him a few years ago. His eyes burn into you and you meet his gaze, the rain roaring around you, lightning crackling overhead and splitting the sky apart in a blinding flash.

(( #834 — Move on. Don't move on. Just do something. ))

"Yer gonna catch a cold." He finally comments, eyes flickering over you.

You cast an unimpressed look at him, first at his wet jacket and then his hair. "Like you're one to talk."

A wry smile appears on his face. Silence wraps around you two, accompanied by a heavier feeling of awkwardness.

Gesturing back to the stairwell, you clear your throat. "Do you want to wait inside until the rain lets up?"

His head turns to the side as he stares up at the sky, the thick droplets falling without any sign of spotting. Thunder growls, shaking the air, lightning fast on its heels, spider webbing across the sky.

For a split second, you think he may say no.

He looks back and you at grins. "That'd be great."

Atsumu follows you back up the stairs and takes off his shoes, placing them neatly next to yours before shrugging off his jacket, hanging it up. He's wearing a plain black t-shirt beneath that's stretched across his broad shoulders, which matches the black athleisure pants he's wearing. His eyes roam over your apartment as he walks in, taking in the half empty boxes and sparsely furnitured area.

He visibly brightens when he catches sight of Nugget, who was currently curled in his bed near the sliding doors that lead to your balcony. It's an amusing sight to see the 6'2" man beeline over to the cat, crouching down and cooing a gentle hello.

You shake your head slightly when you realize you were staring and you go into the bathroom, finding a towel and offering it to him to draw his hair. "Do you want another jacket? It's a bit cold in here. I can close the windows too." You're already moving despite the question, stretching up on your tiptoes to shut the windows, rain beading against the glass panes before sliding down.

Astumu glances up, having laid down on your floor, Nugget stretched out on his chest. "Do ya even have a jacket that could fit me, pipsqueak?"

The resurrection of the old nickname makes you freeze and you glance back at him. He's still petting Nugget but he glances over at you, and you're thrown off kilter when you see the shadow of doubt that flickers in his eyes.

You roll your eyes, "I'm sure I'll find something, you tree."

Atsumu smiles.

By the time you find what you're looking for, Atsumu has moved into a seated position, one hand absentmindedly stroking along Nugget's back who's taken up residency in his lap. In his other hand is his phone, his thumb flicking across the screen slowly. He flinches when you toss the hoodie at him, the fabric hitting him on the side of the face.

He raises an eyebrow as he looks down at the hoodie. "Is this... mine?"

You busy yourself with making instant ramen, warmth blossoming on your cheeks. "Yeah. You said I could borrow it when we lived together. I never thought to give it back, sorry."

(You had, but you didn't want to. It's strange how much a worn piece of clothing can mean to someone.)

(( #917 — Let go. ))

Atsumu hums softly. "It's okay. I didn't notice it was gone anyways."

(He had.)

(( #918 — Don't let go. ))

You bring over the two cups of ramen, sitting down cross legged. You settle into the corner next to the sliding doors and Atsumu turns, mimicking your position as you push his cup towards him. He laughs softly and you tilt your head in a silent question, blowing on the steaming noodles.

He waves a hand around your apartment. "This uh, it makes me think of college. Like how we didn't have a table for six months and always ate on the floor."

You smile down at your ramen, steam kissing your nose. "I still think I have back pain from my shitty posture."

"Well if ya'd just used a pillow like I told ya too..."

You roll your eyes playfully. "Oh hush."

Just like that, the stiffness in your limbs fades and you feel your shoulders relax as the conversation begins to flow. There was a lingering sense of unease as the two of you talked, as though you're testing the new waters, seeing how much the other had changed.

Two years isn't much, but suddenly it felt like a lifetime.

As Atsumu talks, you find yourself staring at him. He's different, in a sense. At his core, he's still the Atsumu you remember; he still talks with his hands, still laughs at his own jokes before he can finish them, still goes on tangents before circling back around to his original point, but at the same time he's... not.

You slurp down more noodles as you think.

He seemed a little more; a little more mature, a little more controlled, a little more more comfortable with himself.

Not that he wasn't before. But Atsumu had been a special kind of wild, as though his personality had been constructed from shattered glass and it pressed against his skin, cutting any who got too close without warning. Now, it seemed calmer, filed down, still sharp but only in the places where it was meant to be.

Now, instead of cutting others, he only seemed to cut himself.

He was your Atsumu still, just a little stranger.

(Were you a stranger to him too?)

After it lapses into silence, rain filling in the space left behind by your conversation, cups empty and pushed to the side, you ask him the question that has been nagging you since you first caught a glimpse of him below the railing.

"Not that I don't mind the surprise visit," you begin softly, "but what are you doing here?"

Atsumu looks at you for a moment before reaching into his pocket. A flash of embarrassment crosses his features as he leans forward, taking his hand out of his pocket. "I, uh, made this for you."

You lean forward as well, holding your hand out. He places something in your palm before leaning back against the wall. One of his legs is straight while the other is propped up, Nugget curled in the slight hollow of his stomach created by the way he'd suck down against the wall.

He rubs the back of his neck, a nervous habit you notice hasn't changed despite the years. "It's not the best, I know."

You settle back, knees pulled up to your chest, looking down at the item in your hand. It's a paper crane... or at least you think it is. It's made out of notebook paper and one of the wings is crumpled, the other slightly too big. The head has a small tear and there's little doodled flowers on it, some of the ink smudged. Gently running one finger over the paper crane, you try to imagine Atsumu folding it. A slight smile pulls at your lips at the thought.

(( #342 — Teach Atsumu to fold origami. ))

"This is for me?"

"Mmhmm."

You look up at him, indiscernible emotions swirling inside of you. "Any particular reason?"

Atsumu takes a deep breath, shoulders expanding and contracting with the movement. "I saw your exhibit."

Your stomach drops.

(( #539 — Take Atsumu to an exhibit without telling him it was yours. ))

"Look," he rushes on, "ya don't havta tell me anything about it or even talk about it if ya don't want, but I uh... shit. You know I'm not good with this sorta thing, but like, I'm tryna rebuild our sandcastle."

Confusion takes over the emotional storm brewing inside you. "Our... sandcastle?" You repeat slowly.

"Yeah! Ya know, the," He gestures back and forth between the two of you, eyebrows pinched together, "fuck, I don't know. Ya told me about it once! Like with the cranes, how if ya fold a thousand, ya get a wish, but I didn't realize just how hard it was to fold the damn things so I only got one. But one is good enough for a little wish, dontcha think?"

You stare at him as he continues to ramble, frozen.

When your father had gotten sick, you'd started making the cranes, certain that you would reach one thousand and he'd get better. He'd died before you reached twenty, but that didn't stop you from making them, only instead of folding them for a singular purpose, you started writing wishes and reminders alike on the plain part of the origami paper before folding them. Eventually, folding them became a habit over anything else, but still you placed your desires inside, labeling them only with a number.

(( #25 — Learn to stand up for myself. #27 — Move back to Tokyo. #41 — Move back to Hyogo. #42 — See the twins again. #458 — Teach the twins the meaning of personal space. ))

"Atsumu?"

He pauses mid-sentence. "Huh?"

"Breathe."

He grabs his cup of tea, gnawing at his lower lip for a moment before taking a sip, his foot tapping against the ground softly. He's staring out your glass doors at the city beyond, the dark sky melting into the torrential downpour, creating a world of wavering silhouettes.

"Don't worry about making this sound fancier than it needs to be, just tell me what this," you hold up the crane, "holds. Because it's not a wish, it's a want. So tell me what you want."

His knuckles blanch white. "Okay, okay. I can do that. Right." He tears his gaze away from the rain and looks into your eyes. Your heart stutters in your chest at the raw emotions carved onto his face; hope, fear, desperation. "Stay."

Your breath catches in your throat, but you manage to get out, "What do you mean?"

"Stay in my life. Please." As though a floodgate had opened, he barrels on. "Look, I don't know what exactly this is or what it could be, might be, may never be, but what I do know is that I like my life a lot better with you in it. I know I can't take back what I said that night, but I can ask ya to let me make it up to you. I want this: I want sittin' with you and talkin', I want to be able to send ya stupid jokes and know yer laughing when you receive it, I want to people watch at a cafe again, I want it to be me and you and the world is just an afterthought. I know we've both changed, but this still fits somehow, hell, I think it fits better. Ya asked what I want and I—"

Thunder rumbles overhead, and your heart echoes it as he pauses. He licks his lips and looks at you, really looks at you, and you feel seen. There is nothing between the two of you, not like before. He knew the worst of you and you know the worst of him, and yet here you both still sat.

"You. I want you."

(( #713 — Atsumu. ))

"...me too."

He leans forward, lips parting slightly.

"I want that too." You continue, voice hushed despite it only being you two in the apartment. "But we have to... we have to figure out a way to make what we had better, I don't want..."

You trail off but the implication is there and Atsumu straightens.

You didn't want the fight to happen again.

"I agree." He pauses then smiles sheepishly. "How do we do that."

Mulling over your thoughts, you think about the past few years; about your art, about Italy, about tearing yourself down and building yourself back up, about the silence between you two, about the need you felt to keep a secret because if it wasn't a secret, then people could only ever see you when they saw your art.

But that secret was no longer there.

"I guess we catch up, and if something is bothering us, we talk it over?"

"Okay, cool, yeah. So uh—"

Despite knowing he knew, you still brace yourself for a question about the exhibit, nerves coiling on your stomach.

"—tell me about Italy?"

You smile so broadly, your cheeks ache.

Time melds together as you lose yourself in the conversation, gushing to him about the cafes you were able to visit, the scenery, how you felt like everything belonged in a movie. That leads into you admitting you'd gotten homesick a handful of times, and talking about the one time you impulse bought a plane ticket home only to get a refund the next morning when you had time to think things over.

In return, he loops you in on his new teammates, on the rigorous training of being a professional volleyball player; of how the lack of privacy sometimes bother him, of how the games made him feel wholeheartedly alive, of the shenanigans he'd pulled alongside two of his teammates, usually targeting the third of their friend group.

At some point you'd gotten the coffee from your fridge, but the now empty cans lay in between your feet. The rain had let up some time during his story about Hinata jumping so high, he accidentally hit his head against the ceiling and got a mild concussion.

Before either of you realized it, you were sitting on your balcony side by side, backs pressed against the doors, watching as the sun rises in the distance.

(( #908 — Watch the sunrise with someone. ))

The air is heavy with the aftermath of the thunderstorm, the fresh scent of damp earth overpowering anything else. Puffy white clouds have migrated across the cotton candy sky, the storm long passed. It's quiet, but not silent; you can hear the faint echoes of the inner city reaching your ears, Atsumu's steady breaths, the rustling of leaves from the trees lining the sidewalk below.

Shoulder to shoulder, Atsumu was a familiar and comforting presence at your side.

Slowly, you lean your head against his shoulder. He shifts slightly and wraps his arm around your shoulders. A juxtaposition rises within you; you've never felt more grounded, and yet you've never felt lighter at the same time.

But one thing is certain, for the first time in a long while, you feel like you're where you belong. There's no itch beneath your skin to leave, no wanderlust filled dreams, no fear spurred decisions; nothing except for the sense of melancholy lingering beneath the peacefulness that has wrapped around you.

Newton's First Law of Motion dictates that an object will remain in its natural state— whether it's at rest or moving —unless acted upon by an outside force.

You'd been running all your life, both figuratively and literally. You'd been running from the death of your father, from the city to city, from the poisonous emotions that festered within you, from the fear of never being enough, from the fear of being a failure, from the fear of people knowing your innermost thoughts and desires and wants.

Placing artificial expiration dates had become a terrible hobby; you placed them on people, objects, and places alike. Why would you need to root yourself deeply in one place, when you would be gone in the next year? What use was opening yourself up to others, when your friendship wouldn't last past graduation? Permanence was a foreign concept; a terrifying concept. Yet, when you looked back, there had been a few that had slipped through the cracks.

Perhaps that's why you'd been so quick to run when it came to Atsumu. Atsumu was Atsumu; bold and brash and unyielding, planting himself firmly in your path and refusing to let you barrel past. Something about him had always drawn you in, and you'd nearly gotten sucked in one too many times by the sheer gravitational pull he had.

His fingers trace shapes on your shoulder blade and you glance up at him, seeing his eyes fixated on the horizon.

(( #908 — Watch a sunrise with Atsumu. ))

The thought of coming to a screeching halt, of stopping when all you'd ever done was moving, petrified you to no end. It had just never occurred to you that you had the same pull on him that he did on you, and perhaps that's why it had crashed and burned; neither of you had been willing to come to a stop for the other.

But, the thing is, neither of you had to stop. Both of you could keep moving, keep pushing each other forward and tugging them back if needed, could keep the same path you'd always been walking... but this time with company.

"Atsumu?" You murmur. He hums lightly in response. "Thank you."

He looks down at you quizzically before saying. "Well, that's not a proper thanks."

"Huh?"

He grins and shifts, pulling you onto his lap without warning and wrapping his arms tightly around you. His head dips down and rests in the crook of your neck, every soft exhale from his lips raising goosebumps on your skin. Hugging him back, you bury your face into his shoulder, your knees slotted on either side of his hips, his heartbeat resonating in your ears.

Atsumu thinks of the paper crane you gave him, still on his windowsill, faded from sunexpore and worn from numerous moves.

(He's never been more thankful that he didn't throw it away.)

You think of the stack of photos in the box beneath your bed, of the sketches resting underneath, of the singular note from Atsumu on the top reminding you to take care of yourself.

(You'd never been more thankful you had a habit of clinging to memorabilia of the past.)

Despite the uncertainty of the future, of the paths you may take, of the work it would take to settle in this life you'd created, of the push and pull that you'd fought so reverently against and were now accepting; you felt... good. Really good.

And you were content to remain in orbit with Atsumu, wherever that would take the two of you.

(You had a feeling that the two of you would go far.)

(( #611 — Stop fearing endings, for more often than not, they're simply beginnings in disguise. ))

the end :)

thank you all so much for reading! I will be posting a closing chapter with a proper thank you + some notes, so if you have any questions (about the story, writing process, inspiration, really whatever) please comment them here and I'll include them as part of a Q&A section. much love xx