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a sakuatsu concept: osamu flat-out refuses to accept their relationship. he has fought too fucking hard his whole damn life to make atsumu fit for human consumption, and he was SO SURE that going their own ways after high school would atsumu to hone some basic social skills.
he maybe thought: that shortie will be back from abroad eventually and knowing my idiot brother he’ll be so smitten with him that it’ll fix whatever the fuck is wrong with him and then finally, finally atsumu will be less of a fucking nightmare to be around. osamu was SO! SURE!
what happens instead is like something straight out of his nightmares: sakusa kiyoomi—who is maybe the only person on earth capable of killing a good vibe faster than atsumu—starts playing for the black jackals a measley six!! months!! before hinata gets back from brazil.
six months is all it takes to ruin osamu’s entire life plan because in six months atsumu starts to say shit like, “omi-kun says—“ and “i didn’t think omi-kun could—“ and “sorry, omi-kun and i—“ and it’s a fucking travesty. it’s the WORST possible thing that could happen to osamu.
because atsumu tries—he really is trying, okay, osamu can see it—to be a functioning human being out in the world on his own. but sakusa looks every one of those fledgling impulses in the eye and says stuff like, “ew,” and “what the fuck are you doing?” and atsumu just. reverts.
it’s shouting, cussing, flailing arms and legs, glaring like he’s trying to set shit on fire with nothing but his thoughts—all the bullshit osamu has spent twenty-three years of his life trying to manage and mitigate. all his hard work. gone with just a word from sakusa kiyoomi.
hinata comes back and makes the team but it’s too late, the damage is done. atsumu’s calling sakusa “omi-omi” and trying to act like it’s “just to get under his skin” like sakusa gives a damn what atsumu calls him as long as his tosses stay golden (which they always are, dammit).
osamu loses entire nights of sleep over this, over the ruin of his life’s work, over the way atsumu calls him one night drunk and says something about sakusa’s wrists that osamu’s never, ever going to be able to forget. worse: the way atsumu slurs, “miss you omi-omi,” just after.
he tries to make a peace offering to sakusa exactly once. he lovingly packages three rice balls in a box with a note that says “please stop enabling all of my brother’s shittiest personality traits.” sakusa looks at the box like it might bite him and says, “i don’t like onigiri.”
which is a lie, of course, because what sort of batshit crazy person doesn’t like onigiri? it is in the top 1% of least offensive foods. osamu’s run the focus groups, okay. so sakusa’s a jerk AND a liar just like atsumu and thinking about that makes osamu want to break things.
he goes to every black jackals game he can. too many, maybe. he makes delicious food for the fans while imagining atsumu has a piece of him out on the court with him, that it’s right there to mock him every time he screws up, that it keeps him in line at least a little bit.
that means hearing “omi-kun!” again and again, even when the toss is so obvious no one needs to call it. it means he sees the way atsumu, always a brat, keeps pushing at sakusa’s boundaries, trying to sneak in a touch or a clap or a high five. it means seeing sakusa twitch away.
it means he’s there the night sakusa stops twitching away. and the night he starts leaning into the touches. and the night when, after a victory against the adlers, sakusa allows himself to be swept into a hug presses his sweaty forehead to atsumu’s temple and says /something/.
whatever it is, it makes atsumu pitch a fit that’s only resolved when bokuto wraps him in the friendliest headlock ever and meian physically drags them both off court. osamu is left once again feeling embarrassed to share a face with that disaster. sakusa looks smug. whadda jerk.
atsumu’s apartment is always, always a wreck whenever osamu drops by take back all the shit that’s been stolen from him since the last time he came, but one time it’s—not. it’s abso-fuckin-lutely pristine, and atsumu’s nowhere to be found. osamu parks his ass there and waits.
but atsumu doesn’t come home for hours and, being a piece of trash with no consideration for others, he doesn’t answer any of osamu’s attempts to contact him. osamu calls hinata, who asks in a sleepy voice—shit, it’s after 10 already?—“didja call sakusa?” no. of course he didn’t.
he takes sakusa’s number & calls, but—surprise!—he’s also shit at picking up! osamu goes home and stews. imagines a lifetime of “omi-kun”. of his brother throwing tantrums & not answering calls. of, horribly, having a brother in law who lies about not liking onigiri. ugh. UGH.
there’s a part of atsumu that’s unfamiliar to osamu now. this was inevitable from the moment he decided to let himself follow his own dream instead of chasing atsumu’s, but it’s still strange and uncomfortable. so he’s not sure what to make of the way atsumu looks at sakusa.
he doesn’t know what to do with the way atsumu always fiddles with his phone when they go back home to granny’s. he doesn’t recognize the tone of his voice when it finally rings and atsumu says, “heya, omi-kun. d’ya miss me already?” none of it makes sense but it can’t be good.
it stresses him out so much he almost loses his appetite, and that’s when it hits him: that this is atsumu’s way of winning their bet. when they’re old and gray, atsumu will get to boast, “omi-kun helped me drive you crazy these last sixty years,” and osamu will have lost.
osamu will lose because atsumu will have a lifetime of looking like that—color high in his cheeks, smile soft—and being allowed to hug someone no one else can touch, who is just as mean and just as much of a liar as he is and therefore can’t judge atsumu for being the Worst.
he’ll have an impossibly clean apartment & someone who will hit his tosses, someone who will put a beautiful, devastating spin on those tosses & ruin the other team’s day with them just the way atsumu always likes & that thing sakusa does with his wrists that now haunts osamu.
it’s too terrible for osamu to think about. he’s always been a sore loser, after all—it’s an ugliness he actually shares with atsumu. but there’s no helping it, he figures. his brother just had to go & fall in love with the only person weird enough to love him back just as he is.
ok i’m done thank you for enduring this MASSIVE thread !
