#sakuatsu soulmates au (song) // nasty language ahead

In a world where everyone receives a unique melody on their eighteenth birthday, Atsumu wakes up on October 5, 2013 to a truly atrocious song blasting in his head. +

"What the hell?" Atsumu presses his palms to his ears as he shoots up in bed, nearly smacking his head on the ceiling, but it does little to drown out the song in his ears. If anything, the song gets louder.

In the bunk below, Osamu is stirring, too, the frown +

on his face telling Atsumu that he, too, is hearing something, although his reaction is much less visceral than Atsumu's.

"Make it stop," Atsumu whispers, aghast. In his ear, a female voice snarls something about money. Atsumu is starting to wish he paid more attention in +

English class instead of sleeping or doodling new team strategies. Although, in his defence, the club he'd already been scouted for- the MSBY Black Jackals- was unlikely to give two hoots about his grades. Still, some knowledge of English would be helpful in deciphering this. +

Finally, after almost four long, torturous minutes, the song stops, and Atsumu flops back down onto his bed, heaving a sigh of relief. "Oh my god," he says. "I got a /terrible/ song. In English. I've never heard this song in my life." +

"Me too," Osamu says. "I know my song, though."

"Twinsies!"

"Ya know I hate it when ya say that word," Osamu says, and Atsumu feels him kick the bottom of his bunk and the bed jolts violently. +

"Don't do that," Atsumu hisses, clinging onto the side of the bed for dear life. He thanks the heavens that Osamu can't see his expression, because his twin doesn't need to add "scared of heights" to his arsenal of insults. "Aren't ya gonna tell me yer song?" +

"I think it's by the Backstreet Boys," Osamu says.

"Never heard of 'em. Yer a lucky bastard, though, knowin' yer song."

"Why don't ya try to sing it?" Osamu suggests. "Maybe I know it." +

"Alright," Atsumu frowns, and then clears his throat. "THERE'S HOES IN THIS HOUSE THERE'S HOES IN THIS HOUSE THERE'S-"

Now, Atsumu has been told, many times before, that he has a less than stellar voice. One (Osamu) might even go as far to say that his singing is awful. +

However, Atsumu was truly unprepared for Osamu to practically leap off his bed and scramble to the top bunk, violently tackle Atsumu and slam a hand over his mouth.

Naturally, Atsumu's survival instincts kick in and he bites down on Osamu's fingers automatically. +

"Ow!" Osamu exclaims. "The heck didja do that for?"

"Well," Atsumu sits up gingerly, rubbing his head. "Why didja have to pounce on me like that?"

"Ma watches American movies. Do ya want her to wash yer mouth out with soap?" +

Atsumu stares at him, uncomprehending. "What?"

Osamu sighs. "Ya just cursed in English. Don't act dumb, 'Tsumu." He sits up and climbs down from the top bunk, which is already creaking dangerously under their combined weight. +

"I ain't acting dumb," Atsumu protests.

Osamu shoots him a dirty look, his hand on the doorknob. "I know. Ya were born that way. Find the song yerself, dumbass." Then he slams the door shut behind him. +

Without Osamu's English knowledge, Atsumu tried to figure out the song on his own. However, none of his closer friends were that good at English, and when he'd sent a voice recording to Kita-san, the only reply he'd gotten was +

'Atsumu, April Fools' Day is still a few months away'.

He'd tried recording himself singing the song and reverse searching on Google, but no results had appeared. Atsumu doesn't know if it's because it hasn't been created yet, or if his voice is just terribly off-key. +

After joining MSBY, Atsumu finds himself with long stretches of free time post-practice, when he still isn't quite comfortable with seeking out the company of his new teammates, and resolves to learn English to try and figure his song out. +

It takes almost two painstaking years for Atsumu to fully decipher the meaning of the song and then a few more months for him to perfect his pronunciation, but by the end of it he's following Osamu around the kitchen of his newly established restaurant yelling the lyrics at him.+

"God," Osamu looks skyward. "I miss the days when ya hated that song."

Atsumu did, at first, the jarring beat a total contrast from the slower, softer songs he usually preferred. But as he hummed it over and over while trying to learn the song, he realised it was pretty catchy.+

Atsumu grins. "What can I say? It's grown on me."

Sakusa Kiyoomi joins the MSBY Black Jackals in 2018, after a dazzling display at the tryouts that left even Coach Foster slightly starstruck. Off the court, however, he slinks off as soon as practice is over, and largely +

refuses to join in most team bonding activities.

To each their own, Atsumu figures. While he and Sakusa synced fine on the court, Sakusa's personality is all prickly and uncooperative. Totally not Atsumu's type, unlike Shouyou, who is all sunshine and rainbows. +

Atsumu had been devastated to find out that Shouyou had found his soulmate years ago with some Japanese nursery song. With Kageyama Tobio, of all people.

The topic of soulmates is mostly put out of his head with the arrival of the new season, until Inunaki brings it up one day.+

"Sakusa-kun," someone asks, inevitably. "What's your soulmate song?"

Sakusa, who'd clearly just been about to make his usual hasty exit from the locker room, freezes on the spot, looking like a deer caught in the headlights.+

"It's not a song you would know. And no, I don't want to sing it," he mutters, eventually.

Bokuto cocks his head to one side. "Why not? It doesn't matter if your singing is bad, or anything! I mean, we listen to Tsum-Tsum sing in the shower everyday!" +

"What's that supposed to mean?" Atsumu demands as Barnes snickers behind his hand.

"Yes," Sakusa says, looking desperately towards the door. This is, intriguingly, the most amount of emotion Atsumu has ever seen on his face off the court. "I have terrible vocal chords. +

And I need to go. My, uh, turtle needs feeding."

With that, Sakusa legs it out of the room, leaving the team staring after him, mystified. "I didn't know we were allowed to keep pets in the dormitories," Shouyou muses. +

"Or maybe he's like Tsum-Tsum!" Bokuto pipes up. "'Tsumu wants to save the first time he sings the song for his someone special, right?"

It absolutely is not like that. By this point, almost the entire Inarizaki has heard Atsumu's warbling rendition of his soulmate song. +

But Atsumu laughs nervously and nods anyway. "Something like that."

A few weeks later, Coach Foster is putting the team through some truly horrific circuit training, in preparation for their upcoming match against the Adlers. +

Atsumu has flopped to the ground after what is probably his one-thousandth star jump, and Coach Foster is striding over immediately, his sharp eyes never missing out on anything. "Come on, Atsumu!" he calls. "Start from the top!" +

Atsumu grumbles, but shakily rises to his feet. He's about to begin another round of punishing reps when he hears a mumble behind him, barely audible over the grunts of their team. "From the top, make it drop."

Atsumu whips his head around immediately. +

"Who said that?" he demands.

Behind him, Inunaki, Tomas, and Sakusa look up at him with identically annoyed expressions. "Said what?" Inunaki asked. +

"Ya know!" Atsumu is aware that he's waving his hands around like a madman, but can't bring himself to care. "From the top, make it drop!"

The expressions of his three teammates behind him remain unchanged. Atsumu groans in frustration and wants to interrogate them further, +

but then Coach Foster is fixing his stare on Atsumu once more, and Atsumu hastily begins another set of reps before he's made to do extra practice.

Atsumu puts the incident mostly down to his imagination. After all, "make it drop" isn't the most uncommon phrase in the world. +

That is, until one day after practice, when the team is in the locker room packing up. There is a yelp, and Atsumu turns around to see Shouyou standing over a spilled bottle of protein shake. "Sorry!" he exclaims.

"It's fine," Meian says. "Atsumu, grab a mop." +

Atsumu nods, and mutters to himself under his breath, "Get a bucket and a mop, that's some wet-"

Sakusa coughs violently from where he's been quietly packing his bag, and everyone turns to him, Atsumu included. "Ya okay, Omi-kun?" +

Normally, Sakusa would snap at him for the use of the nickname he coined. But now, Sakusa only gapes at him with utter shock on his face.

"... Yes," Sakusa says, after an eternity. He still looks like someone pulled a rug from under his feet, but shakily tears his eyes away. +

"You better not be getting sick," Meian fusses. "I would not expect that from you of all people, Sakusa-kun. Better get some rest."

"Right," Sakusa says stiffly, and then zips his bag up, casts one last horrified look at Atsumu, before, once again, sprinting from the room. +

"You did it, Tsum-Tsum," Bokuto says gravely. "You finally broke Omi-kun."

"I didn't even do anything," Atsumu protests.

"Did you say a curse word?" Tomas inquires. "You know how much Sakusa hates people cursing." +

Later, as Atsumu lies awake in bed at night, a thought suddenly comes to his mind. /I didn't even get to the cursing part/, he thinks. So why did Sakusa seem so perturbed by the song? Unless... +

Atsumu sets out to test his theory. On the bus to the Adlers game, he sits down beside Sakusa, who promptly looks wary, raising his eyebrows and tightening his shoulders. But he doesn't get up to leave immediately, which Atsumu counts as a win.

"Hey, Omi!" he says cheerily. +

"You have thirty seconds to talk," Sakusa says. "Then I'm going to sleep."

"Alright! Uh," Atsumu raises his hand up, showing him a little keyring dangling from his pinky. "Lemme tell ya how I got this ring." +

To the untrained eye, Sakusa looks unfazed. But Atsumu has spent months watching and observing him (for setter-hitter reasons, he justifies), and catches the way his eyes widen just a little, before his features settle back into his usual bored expression. +

"No, I don't want to know how you got that ring," Sakusa says quickly, and snaps an eye mask on. "Goodnight, Miya."

Atsumu sighs, but is undeterred nonetheless. In any case, Sakusa saying "goodnight" instead of "piss off" is a marked improvement from his early days +

on MSBY, and Atsumu takes that as an invitation to stay put in his seat instead of scramming.

Atsumu falls asleep, too, and wakes up to a gentle weight on his shoulder and a mouthful of curly hair. Atsumu blanches, but then realises that the curly hair is attached +

to the head of his prickly, cold outside hitter. The same outside hitter, who is currently nestled on his shoulder like a giant baby, a bundle of warmth pressing up against Atsumu's side.

Which is- wow. Atsumu doesn't even know what to think. He's more than aware of the +

concept of platonic soulmates, and figures that Sakusa might or might not be just that for him, given Sakusa's general... Sakusa-ness. But he can't help the swell rising in his chest, staring down at Sakusa's fluttering eyelids, and realising, for the umpteenth time, +

that his teammate is extremely attractive.

/Life is unfair/, Atsumu thinks, with feeling. Not only might his potential soulmate be a platonic one, he is developing /feelings/ for said soulmate. Ugh.

Then the bus jerks, and Sakusa bolts up hastily. +

He looks at Atsumu's shoulder, and Atsumu opens his mouth to say something, only for Sakusa to glare at him, too intensely for someone who has just woken up.

"Don't say a word," Sakusa threatens, and then turns resolutely away. +

Atsumu thinks that even if he'd wanted to say something, he wouldn't have known /how/ to put it. So he looks away quietly, and focuses instead on the game ahead. +

The game is brilliant, and the Jackals manage to eke out a win over the Adlers. It's the best game of volleyball Atsumu has played in a while, and there's blood thrumming loudly in his ears even after they leave the gymnasium and head into a tiny Italian restaurant to celebrate.+

"May I take your orders?" a waitress inquires.

"What do you recommend?" Meian asks.

"Well, we have our truffle pizza, and also baked macaroni-" +

Atsumu gathers his courage, and turns to Sakusa, who is sitting beside him. "Macaroni in a pot, huh?"

Sakusa gets that same expression he had when Inunaki asked him about his soulmate song all those months ago, and that's when Atsumu knows, without a doubt. +

He stands up, nearly knocking his chair back. "Omi-kun, can I see you outside for a minute?"

Sakusa looks like he wants to run again, but under the curious eyes of the team, he can hardly refuse. He reluctantly follows Atsumu outside the restaurant. +

"So," Atsumu says, leaning against the brick wall in the alley beside the restaurant. "Ya knew we were soulmates." The word tastes foreign in his mouth. "Why didn't ya tell me?"

Sakusa sighs, and folds his arms over his chest. Atsumu tries his best not to look at how +

his thin white shirt stretches obscenely over his shoulders.

"Ya don't have to date me, or anything," Atsumu says, after Sakusa doesn't reply immediately. "I promise I ain't gonna be offended. I just wanna know why." +

Sakusa looks away, and Atsumu sees the top of his ears turn pink. "... the entire song," Sakusa mumbles under his breath.

Atsumu squints at him. "Wha'?" +

"I said," Sakusa says, loudly, fully blushing now. "How was I supposed to come up to you and sing the entire song?"

Ah. Atsumu has been an idiot. Of course, with a song as vulgar as theirs, even Atsumu doesn't want to go up to a complete stranger and start rapping about+

handcuffs and leashes and whatnot. Plus, he's pretty sure his atrocious singing would drive away even his most devoted fans.

"Right," Atsumu says awkwardly. "Well, guess I don't have to worry about ya hating the idea of bein' soulmates with me. Yay! Platonic soulmates." +

Sakusa glares at him again, and impossibly, turns even redder. "... just platonic soulmates," he mutters.

Atsumu leans forward, narrowing his eyes at Sakusa. "Huh? Ya gotta speak up, Omi-kun, I can't hear yer mumble jumble." +

"I don't want to be just platonic soulmates," Sakusa says, and the words come out of his mouth in a rush. Atsumu gapes at him.

"Um," Atsumu begins, but Sakusa is already turning away. "Forget it," he says. "Never mind." +

"No," Atsumu says hastily, grabbing onto the sleeve of Sakusa's shirt. "Wait."

Sakusa turns around to face him, backlit by the street lamps so Atsumu can barely make out his expression. "What?" +

"I," Atsumu fumbles for the right words. "I don't know what exactly I feel for ya, but I wanna do it. Try somethin' with ya, I mean. If ya want to."

Sakusa nods stiffly, the movement of his head more of an awkward jerking motion. +

"I do," Sakusa says. "And I also. Feel something for you."

Atsumu grins, and is surprised at how it's as natural as breathing. "Oh? Something?"

"Yes. But I'm not going to tell you what yet," Sakusa says, stubbornly. +

Atsumu rolls his eyes, but smiles fondly as he lets go of Sakusa's shirt and Sakusa stays, right in front of him.

"That's alright, Omi-kun," he says. "I have all the time in the world to wait." +

[2020]

Shouyou rushes into the locker room of the practice gym for the Japan National Team. "My friend from Brazil sent me this viral music video! He says it's huge in the States now! Does anyone want to watch it with me?" +

The Japan National Team pauses in the various stages of their pre-practice rituals, and crowd over Shouyou's phone as one.

The video opens up to an obscenely rich mansion and an even more obscene statue of two women. +

"Boke," Kageyama says. "You know most of this team is gay, right?"

Shouyou shushes him. "Komori-san and Bokuto-san are bi," he says. "And Ushijima-san is asexual! But that's not the point, boke. Just watch the video!" +

The Japan National Team reacts in various expressions of shock as the video plays on, but what no one expected was for Atsumu to slap a hand over his heart, and sigh fondly.

"Omi-kun!" he turns to his boyfriend of nearly two years. "It's our song!" +

The entire team turns to Atsumu and Kiyoomi. "This montrosity," Komori begins. "This is the soulmate song Kiyoomi has been refusing to talk about all these years?" +

"Hey, it's actually pretty catchy," Atsumu says, at the same as Kiyoomi drones, to the tune of the song, "I'm talkin' WAP, WAP, WAP."

"Oh my god," Shouyou says. He still has his hands over Kageyama's eyes. "Why?" +

"Don't ask us," Atsumu says.

"Well, it suits the two of you," Aran says. He and Suna only look thoroughly amused, having been subjected to years of Atsumu yelling the song at top volume. "A strange song for a strange couple." +

Later that night, another thought occurs to Atsumu. He flops around in bed to face Kiyoomi, and pokes him awake. "Hey, Omi," he says.

"What," Kiyoomi croaks irritably. "This better be important." +

"It is," Atsumu promises. "Ya know how people say the soulmate song reflects your relationship?"

"Mmm."

"Well, what does it say about /our/ relationship?"

Kiyoomi lets out a groan. "Oh god. I don't even want to think about it."

- end -

UH YEAH THIS WAS LONG. AND IM SUPPOSED TO BE STUDYING. but guess which clown went onto twitter web to type this instead? *laughs nervously*

okay accountability tweet I will Not go onto twitter tomorrow goodbye

(also ik that the original lyrics are there are some wh*res in this house but atsumu doesn't know that and also i tried my very best to keep this family friendly (lmao). toodles!)