Chapter Text
The shop is too quiet today.
Atsumu said he’d drop by with Hikaru for lunch, so Osamu is reorganizing his shelves. Hikaru can now reach the spices shelf, so Osamu always makes sure to hide an assortment of snacks behind the jars. Today, it’s egg boro and matcha cake rolls – Hikaru should be too young to like matcha this much, so it must be Kiyoomi’s fault for always filling the house with the smell of matcha, sencha, gyokuro and another cupboard’s worth of green teas.
Rintarou’s been watching him wordlessly for at least three minutes now, lazily leaning against the doorframe for anyone unfamiliar with how a restless Rintarou Miya looks. Osamu, however, is bordering on fifteen years of first-hand experience, so he notices the way Rintarou is fiddling with his thumbs, sees the line in his shoulders, knows that Rintarou hasn’t had his hair cut in over four months now, and wonders when would be the right time to call him out on it.
When he can’t keep pretending to swap the same two jars for the third time, Osamu looks up and says, “Late morning?”
“Mhm.” Rintarou’s smile is tired, but not unreal. He pushes off the doorframe to wrap his arms around Osamu’s waist and presses his forehead against the nape of his neck. “I’m hungry.”
“Yer such a scrub when ya don’t have a schedule,” Osamu huffs, but he doesn’t push Rintarou off. For all he cares, Rintarou could glue himself to his back like a koala if that made his wrinkles disappear. Rintarou is twenty nine and has played in the Olympics. His face stares at Osamu at train stations all over the country. He’s a favourite repeat guest on talk shows and has a much too popular youtube channel for someone who’s supposed to be a full-time athlete, so really, he’s not supposed to be frowning so deeply that he gets wrinkled. Not the boy that would polish volleyballs with Osamu after practice and laugh about the latest gossip.
“So now I’m a scrub for wanting to laze around with my husband?”
Osamu feels his grin pressed against the skin of his neck. “Yer husband is working.”
“In an empty restaurant? Babe, are we gonna go broke?”
“Most people are at work at eleven on a Tuesday. And whatcha mean, broke? I thought I was married to an olympic medalist.”
“Used the prize money to buy that house in Nagano, remember?”
The playful smile is still there, but so is the frown, and Osamu presses a finger against it. “What’s it yer thinkin’ about?”
Rintarou’s quiet as Osamu plates two onigiri balls. His breath comes out hot against Osamu’s skin, and the AC broke yesterday, in the middle of the hottest July Osamu has ever lived through, but he still doesn’t peel Rintarou off. “I’m thinking of retiring,” Rintarou eventually says.
The words settle quietly into the empty chairs of Onigiri Miya’s Osaka branch. To anyone unfamiliar to Rintarou, this would come out of left field, but Osamu has seen it coming from two and a half miles away, so he hums and pours water in two glasses.
“You already knew,” Rintarou says, equally unsurprised.
“We’ve been married for five years.”
“We have,” Rintarou says around a small, genuine smile. The frown is still there, but it no longer threatens to poke a hole through Rintarou’s forehead. “Thank you.”
“What for?”
“Dunno,” Rintarou shrugs, loosening his grip around Osamu’s waist. “Not asking, I guess.”
Osamu grew up with a twin who was loud about his problems and even louder about making them Osamu’s problems, but Rintarou took weirdly little adjusting to. He’s never hidden anything that mattered from Osamu, but he’s also never made a spectacle out of telling him. Where Atsumu whines all over the pristine counters of Onigiri Miya, mudding them with his sullen mood and too much affection for a body identical to Osamu’s, Rintarou confessed something along the lines of his undying love when they were taking out the garbage.
Osamu has never needed to ask, only to wait. It took a couple of years to realize that the longer he had to wait, the more important the things Rintarou had to tell him were. The current record holder is Rintarou’s calendar of soft deadlines – in hindsight, Osamu realizes it must have been brewing for years, culminating in Atsumu having to drive all the way to Kyoto in the middle of the night and Osamu using his connections to make sushi at 1am.
The cause for Rintarou’s premature wrinkles must be the same calendar. They’ve talked about it, when they started looking into the adoption process – or well, when Osamu did; Rintarou had a folder on his laptop with everything they could possibly need since the last year of high school. Osamu knows, so he doesn’t ask.
Instead, he says, “Should we move back here?”
Rintarou hums. “Right. We don’t even have family in Nagano. Sorry.” Osamu waits. “For dragging you all the way to Nagano.”
For the past month, Osamu has been wondering if Rintarou is too lazy, too depressed, or too calculating to cut his hair. He turns around, and even like this, barely inches away from his face, he cannot see Rintarou’s eyes well enough to read them. “What are ya gonna apologize for next? Making me want to marry ya?”
“We both know your life has always been here.”
Osamu brushes the hair out of Rintarou’s eyes – they look sad with a quiet type of pain that Rintarou should never have to live with, not when Osamu will always listen, always wait. Osamu kisses him, just so Rintarou knows he’s serious when he says, “My life is not away from ya. We tried that and we were both miserable. It’s easier not seein’ Atsumu than not seein’ ya everyday.”
“Liar,” Rintarou says. His eyes look more fond than sad.
“‘M not lyin’. I miss ya, y’know?”
“I’m here.”
“Sure,” Osamu shrugs, “but yer not really here, are ya?”
It took them two years to get the first call from their adoption social worker, only for the mother to decide to keep the baby, after all. The next one came three months later, but the aunt changed her mind about taking in the child at the last moment. Then they chose another couple, then the father suddenly stepped in to proclaim he was against the adoption, then the phone went silent and the chat with their social worker got buried under a pile of other messages.
Osamu knows – Rintarou’s calendar of soft deadlines anticipates retirement around the time he turns thirty, but it also anticipates kids around twenty-eight. They’re one year of deafening silence late, and Rintarou’s body has caught up to the schedule, but his heart hasn’t.
“It’s not easy,” Rintarou offers. “I just – it’s too quiet around here. It’ll be even quieter once I’m home all the time. I’ve never imagined not using our free room at this age.”
Osamu can pinpoint exactly on which word Rintarou’s voice breaks, so when the full weight of an about to be former professional athlete slumps against him, Osamu catches him easily. “Yeah,” he says, because there’s nothing else to say. His heart felt heavier than a human heart probably should be when it dropped all the way down to his stomach after that last call from their social worker – he can’t imagine what it must’ve felt like for Rintarou, whose heart was probably twice as heavy and fell all the way to his toes.
“Rin.” He looks so tired. Osamu holds him tighter. “We’re family, no matter what.”
Rintarou smiles – weak, but real. “I love you, too.”
“I know,” Osamu grins, and presses a kiss to his forehead.
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“Egg boro!”
Hikaru looks like Christmas has come. Atsumu sighs and levels Osamu with a look. “Ya gotta stop spoilin’ him like this.”
“Kiyoomi’s not around to lecture me today,” Osamu shrugs, winking at Hikaru. He looks like a beaver with his cheeks puffed with sweets, and Osamu would catch him in his arms and bite his nose if he wasn’t holding a knife and wearing gloves.
“Ya shouldn’t spoil his appetite whether Omi-kun’s here or not,” Atsumu says, like he has a leg to stand on when it comes to spoiling Hikaru rotten.
“Pa, it’s okay, eggs are healthy.”
Atsumu bites back a laugh and ruffles Hikaru’s hair, impossibly fond. “Beans are also healthy, but red bean paste isn’t, turtle.”
Something in Osamu aches – the spot that was meanth for his heart, probably – when he sees Rintarou, once again leaning against the doorframe restlessly. Osamu knows how fiercely Rintarou loves Hikaru – how the day he was born, a whole week earlier than planned, Rintarou missed practice to come down to Osaka and spent six hours in the hospital, talking Atsumu out of a spiral. Still, Osamu sometimes wonders if Rintarou finds it unfair, how Atsumu became a father by accident, when he’s been ready to be one ever since he could legally drink. It’s not jealousy, but a sense of powerlessness that weighs down on Osamu, makes him sluggish and unsure of what to say when Rintarou looks so empty.
Hikaru must see Rintarou lingering, too, because he jogs up to him, holding an egg boro like it’s a peace offerring. “Uncle Rin!”
Immediately, Rintarou melts. Hikaru is too tall for Rintarou to crouch, but he does, anyway. “Yes, Karu?”
“Ya’ve got wrinkles! Are ya gettin’ old?”
What used to be Osamu’s heart, before it got stuck somewhere in his stomach, wrangles itself like a wet piece of cloth. Rintarou laughs in surprise and ruffles his hair. “Who told you that?”
“Pa says it to Dad aaaaall the time.”
Behind him, Atsumu cackles. Osamu sends a mental prayer to Kiyoomi and promises to set aside some umeboshi onigiri for him later.
“Well, yer Pa is rude,” Osamu says, ignoring Atsumu’s offended claims that he is being disrespected despite being the original Miya. “Say, Karu, wanna help me in the kitchen?”
“Yes,” Hikaru all but yelps, bouncing a little as he steps on the stool Osamu holds under the sink just for him.
Osamu hands him the rice bowl and pointedly ignores the fact that there is an empty shelf under Hikaru’s shelf, for which he has a smaller step stool hidden next to the broom and dustpan.
🍙🍙🍙
Osamu’s aimlessly switching channels when Rintarou comes out of the shower with a towel wrapped around his neck. His hair is long enough to warrant a blow dryer, but Rintarou is too lazy/depressed/calculating to use that, too. Osamu pats the spot on the couch between his legs and flicks his wrist; Rintarou comes easily, and manages to pack himself against Osamu’s chest despite being a collection of impressively long limbs.
It’s July sticky, even in their apartment where the AC works, and the water instantly seeps into Osamu’s shirt. He runs his fingers through Rintarou’s hair, breathes in his shampoo, and feels the tension of the day finally leave him.
“Rin.”
It’s obvious that Rintarou has just as much experience with Osamu, that he knows him just as well. “Is this an intervention?”
“Yes,” Osamu admits. They’re in Osaka already – there’s nowhere left to run. “Karu could tell yer exhausted, and he’s seven. ”
“Karu’s very smart for his age.”
Osamu snorts, and squeezes Rintarou’s cheeks in his hand. “We’re burnt out, Rin.”
Rintarou sighs. Osamu knows he doesn’t want to admit it out loud, but can recognize it to be true. “I don’t want to give up,” he whispers, small.
“Me neither, but maybe we can take a break.” The room goes impossibly silent – even the AC goes quiet – and Osamu can hear Rintarou’s breath catch. “I know we want kids, and we’ve been doin’ our best, and every time, something goes wrong. Every time, we get our hopes up. And I don’t know how much more of this we can take, Rin. The last time we were this tired, ya were livin’ in Nagano while I was here, and it was fuckin’ miserable. It hurts so much to wake up next to ya every mornin’ only for it to feel like yer not even here. I miss ya so much even though we live in the same house.”
While Osamu was talking, Rintarou’s hand has pried Osamu’s from his face to lace their fingers together and squeeze. “I don’t mean to blame ya,” Osamu chokes out, his throat impossibly narrow, “‘cause I know how important this is to ya. And it is to me, too. I want nothin’ more than to have kids with ya. But I’m afraid I’m losin’ ya, Rin. Yer my family, too. I can’t lose ya.”
Rintarou presses a kiss to the back of his hand and brings his other hand to wipe Osamu’s face. Osamu doesn’t let himself cry often, because he can’t stop once he’s started. He can count on one hand the number of times he’s seen Rintarou cry, and on none of those occasions did Osamu cry with him. Fifteen years into their relationship, they can apparently still find firsts.
“Should we take a break, then?” Rintarou says in a tired, flat voice that Osamu can’t read. It scares him, to hear Rintarou this soulless, and it’s why he’s waited this long to bring it up. It’s why he wanted to do it with Rintarou in his lap, where he can press his ear to Osamu’s chest and hear that his heart is actually beating from his stomach.
“Are ya sure?”
Rintarou presses his lips to the corner of Osamu’s mouth, because he probably heard the hole in his chest caving in. “I can’t remember the last time we went on a date.”
“But ya don’t want to take a break, do ya?”
“I don’t want to lose you more than I don’t want to take a break.” Osamu frowns; Rintarou presses his thumb against his nose, like he can turn off his thoughts that easily. “I don’t think this is a situation where we can not compromise, so stop overthinking.
“If I was a greater man–”
“You’re a great man,” Rintarou cuts him off. “You’re the man I married.”
“I don’t want ya to stop wantin’ a family for us.”
“I know,” Rintarou smiles sadly.
“And I know a break doesn’t mean we’ll suddenly be happy again.”
“Yeah.”
“But is it wrong of me to wanna focus on us ? ‘Cause it feels like I’m losin’ ya, Rin.”
Rintarou curls even more in his lap, like he’s made of tangled wool. “It feel like I’m losin’ myself, too. I just – I don’t get what we’re doing wrong, Osamu. We did everything right, just like Kita-san used to tell us. If results are nothing but a byproduct, is this what we deserve?”
“No,” Osamu blurts, too loudly for how quiet the room is. He holds Rintarou tighter and rubs his nose in his wet hair. “No. It’s just like with volleyball – sometimes, ya gotta wait for the right timin’.”
“I don’t know how much waiting I can do.” And here it is – Rintarou finally untangling. “I am tired. I don’t even really want to retire, but half of me wonders if giving so much of myself to volleyball is the reason we never got picked – I mean, who wants to pick a parent who’s only home half the time?”
“I do. I don’t want anyone else to coparent a brat with but ya.”
Rintarou smiles, the first smile he broke all week to show his teeth, and runs his fingers over Osamu’s wedding ring. “I mean, you kinda have to, babe. In sickness and in health.”
“So we’re good?”
“We’re good,” Rintarou says, still smiling. “Do you think I should burn the soft deadlines calendar?”
“No,” Osamu says, bringing their linked hands to kiss Rintarou’s wedding band. “I think we should just not look at it for a few months. Yer stuck with me forever, so we can take our time.”
Osamu knows Rintarou’s eyebags won’t have vanished tomorrow, and that his wrinkles will stay for good, but when he finally sags against Osamu’s chest and breathes out, “I like how forever sounds,” Osamu feels like he exhales for the first time in months.
They talk about Nagano and decide to stay in Osaka until the end of the off season; Rintarou agrees to put off the retirement decision for a few more weeks and suggests going on a trip; Osamu agrees to laze around with Rintarou for a few days and let his managers handle the Onigiri Miya.
He falls asleep still blanketed by the melancholy of losing something they never had, but with Rintarou in his arms, it feels a bit more bearable.
When he wakes up, Osamu finds Rintarou in the kitchen, sitting at the table in front of a mountain of crepes, three jars of jam, and two cups of coffee. His eyebags haven’t gone anywhere, but he looks like his heart climbed back into his chest. He gets up and circles the table to press a kiss to Osamu’s cheek. “Hi. I’m back.”
Osamu pulls him into a hug, breathes in the smell of their laundry softener which has rubbed off the fresh sheets and into Rintarou’s skin, and smiles. “I’ve missed ya.”
🍙🍙🍙
“How do we feel about Korea?”
“Can we stuff ourselves with Korean barbecue?”
“Obviously.”
“Then I’m game.”
“Do you only think about food?” Rintarou laughs, and turns the laptop around so Osamu can see which hotels he was looking at.
It feels a bit weird, to be lounging around in bed on a Thursday afternoon instead of holding a knife and talking to the old ladies who visit his shop every week, without fail, for their mahjong session at the table in the back. It doesn’t feel right when Rintarou can’t work, when his eyebags are still there, when he’s one website away from spiraling again.
Osamu can tell he’s really been trying to reset. Rintarou’s been making an effort to wake up early to join Kiyoomi on his jog. When Osamu has to work, Atsumu comes over and they catch up on Bridgerton. He wrote to his manager to finally schedule the modeling shoots he’s been putting off for so long. He joins Osamu in the kitchen in the evenings, and they chop the vegetables together, bickering back and forth in a way that patches up the caving hole in Osamu’s chest just enough to make it beat again.
It’s not like the fairy godmother came fluttering her wand to make them all better. Yesterday, Rintarou laid his head in Osamu’s lap while they were watching an easy chick flick, a romcom that didn’t even border on good – the type Rintarou sees the first five minutes of and can already predict the whole movie. Osamu felt when Rintarou teared up at the climax, and ran his fingers through his fringe without saying anything.
Talking feels like trying to break out of the melancholy their entire apartment is stewing in, like a grey filter has settled over the window and filters all the joy out of the summer sun shining through. It’s still July-sticky everywhere, but if they’re in the same room, Rintarou’s always touching him – a hand at his hip; cuddled aginst his chest; his chin on Osamu’s knee; pinkies hooked around each other. Osamu knows that even when he’s all Rintarou’s, he’s not enough to fill the hole left by four rejection calls.
Rintarou wanting a big family is not a whim – it’s the best planned thing in his life, more so than even volleyball. Rintarou has known he wanted to be a parent before he met Osamu, while Osamu only really soaked in the fact that he’d be a parent the moment he realized Rintarou was a lifelong it for him. Rintarou’s parents were barely ever there, and when they were, they either fought or tried to have a fix it baby to avoid fighting. When they succeeded at the latter, it was already too late – aged nine, Rintarou was faced with the choice to live with an always abroad mother or an always at the office father, and instead chose to live with his aunt and help raise his sister.
If Himari and Rintarou had been twins, Osamu thinks they’d be closer than him and Atsumu. They text every day and have an one-hour facetime at least twice a week. They do their nails together. When Rintarou sees a funny meme, Himari is the first person he sends it to. Himari only played volleyball for half a year before realizing she was much less into the scraped knees of a sport that requires you to become very well acquianted with the gym’s floor and much more into the pointy toes of ballet, but she knows all the drama in the JNV League and is invited at the year-end parties. Rintarou goes to all of her recitals, even now that they live in different cities. Nagano might have been more painful for him than it was for Osamu, because being away from Atsumu is nothing like Rintarou being away from Himari.
When Rintarou was nine, he held his baby sister, and the world’s axis might have shifted. Osamu has never asked, but he’s sure Rintarou cleared out a shelf for Himari, too – probably a bigger, sturdier one, something made from cherry lumber, because Rintarou knows more about shelves than Osamu does. He knows more about step stools, too – at a glance, Rintarou can gauge how tall they should be and where to best hide them; Osamu only learnt that when Hikaru was born, and a shelf was shoved into his arms to fit all of the overflowing feelings his chest was too small for.
So when Rintarou asks about Korea, Osamu says yes, just so they can leave this apartment with all its shelves and hidden step stools and an empty bedroom turned nursery which Rintarou cleans once every two weeks, just in case.
“Have you been to Busan before?” Rintarou asks, pressing himself against Osamu so he can rest the laptop on both of their thighs.
“No, only Seoul.”
“Apparently, the shellfish barbecue is to die for.”
“Ya really know how to make a convicing point,” Osamu smiles, resting his head atop of Rintarou’s. “We can book a hotel near the beach.”
“Only if you’ll watch the sunrise with me.”
“Sure,” Osamu laughs, because that’s a small price to pay to see Rintarou smile at him like he is now – like the eyebags are gone. Like there are no shelves. Like Osamu doesn’t have to worry about losing him anymore. “When did ya become a hopeless romantic?”
“When I married you?” Rintarou’s mischievous smile is back. Osamu can’t help but kiss it off his face, and feel the snapped threads in his chest tie into a bubbly knot when Rintarou laughs into his mouth.
“Got the wrong twin,” Osamu says eventually, because even once they pull apart, Rintarou’s still smiling at him like that. “Tsumu’s the hopeless romantic who watches all those Netflix series with ya.”
“I’m pretty sure I got the right one,” Rintarou says around a full smile – the type he wore at their wedding, when he was listening to Osamu’s vows. “Got the right one since the very first day of high school.”
Sap , Osamu doesn’t say. Instead, he kisses Rintarou again, just so he won’t be able to see how happy Rintarou looks right now. If he did, he’s sure he’d cry.
🍙🍙🍙
“So,” Atsumu says, like that’s a proper conversation starter. “Why am I here?”
“To mooch off my food for free.”
“Don’t give me that crap,” Atsumu waves a hand in the air like he’s trying to chase away Osamu’s pretense of being here by accident. “Ya only pull out the beers when ya wanna have a heart to heart, ‘cause ya can’t stand doing it sober. So,” he repeats, with a finality that befits winning an argument – this wasn’t an argument in the first place, but Osamu still feels like he’s losing – “what’s this about?”
It’s easier to say it fast, like ripping the bandaid off. “Rin and I decided to take a break from trying to adopt.”
“Oh.”
“For a few months.”
“Mhm.”
“‘Cause it felt like I was losin’ him.”
“Is that why we’ve binged all of Bridgerton recently?”
“Yes. He has lotsa opinions ‘bout season three, by the way.”
“ Omi has opinions ‘bout season three, and he ain’t even seen it yet. Don’t change the subject.”
Osamu sighs and runs a finger over the rim of his glass. Rintarou is visiting Himari, and his phone buzzes every twenty minutes with pictures of their nails and hairstyles and face masks from both Rintarou and Himari. Himari has texted him thx for hiding the scissors samu-nii ur the best he looks SO GOOD with long hair to which Osamu didn’t know how to reply with anything more but happy to be of service without giving away that Rintarou’s long hair has nothing to do with him and everything to do with being lazy/depressed/calculating.
“It’s just – Rin’s my best friend–”
“What does that make me , ya asshole?!”
“Yer like a built-in extension! Ya don’t count!”
“I come to ya with all my problems, scrub.”
“I do, too, so fuckin’ listen. I don’t know how to talk to Rin when the problem is us , ‘cause it almost never is.”
“Annoyin’ love birds,” Atsumu snorts, reaching for a second can of beer. “But ya did talk to him, right?”
“I did,” Osamu sighs. “Ya saw him too, Tsumu. Karu saw him – he didn’t look like himself.”
“He still doesn’t fully,” Atsumu points out, like Osamu isn’t entirely too aware that their couch is a spotless crying place for two adults watching B-grade romcoms instead of stained with spilled milk and crayons. “But he’s been goin’ joggin’ with Omi and he had that modelling shoot yesterday, didn’t he? So he’s obviously working on it for ya.”
“I know, which is why I can’t break down in front of him.”
“Samu?”
“But I’m tired too, Tsumu. The truth is, I’m so fucking tired. What if after this break, it’s just back to more raised hopes and disappointments? What then?”
“Samu, hey – ya can’t know that.”
“And ya can’t know we’ll get picked, and that the parents won’t change their mind.” Osamu runs a hand over his face and presses its heel in the socket of his eyes, hard. “Fuckin’ hell, Tsumu, we both know Rin’s been a dad since way before he joined the Raijins.”
“We also both know Miyarin’s been in love with ya since way before he joined the Raijins,” Atsumu points out, like the fact that he can see Osamu’s wedding ring catching the light makes him extremely wise. “It’s not like it’s yer fault that the adoption process is shit.”
“We signed up for foster care two years ago, after the second rejection, and we have the certificates and everythin’, but it’s been dead silent. Do ya think maybe I should contact our social worker again?”
“I mean, nothin’ bad can come outta it.”
“I just wanna give him a kid so badly, Tsumu, and it kills me that I can’t.” He looks up, at the shop where it all started, at this place that used to feel like his child, and realizes how naive his twenty year old self was. “I’m ready to love someone enough to let all of this go.”
Something in his voice must be a dead give-away – or maybe it’s the fact that Atsumu and Osamu started as a single cell, so his pain will always echo in whatever bits of Atsumu his body forgot to reclaim –, but Atsumu circles the table to sit next to him, like he knows Osamu needs someone to catch his weight. “Ya can’t do anythin’ more than yer best, so don’t self-distruct on me, Samu.”
“I know. That’s what sucks so much about this situation. Rin wasn’t really into the whole surrogate mother idea, said there’s already enough kids who need parents, but maybe we should put it back on the table.” Atsumu nods, and passes him another beer. Osamu takes it, and drops his head on Atsumu’s shoulder. “Can’t believe I’m sayin’ this, but I’m fuckin’ glad ya met Riko and were stupid enough to get Karu.”
He doesn’t need to turn his head to know that Atsumu’s smiling. “Yeah. No clue what she’s up ta, but I hope she’s doin’ well.”
“I don’t. Still hate her guts for everythin’ else.”
Atsumu laughs, and Osamu feels his jaw vibrate where it’s pressed against Atsumu’s shoulder. Atsumu’s laughed like this – with his whole body, like it starts in his toes and travels to the ends of his hairs – ever since Hikaru circled his tiny fist around his forefinger and claimed everything in the Miya household as his birthright, especially Atsumu.
Osamu hopes to one day have something that will make him laugh like that.
“Tsumu,” Osamu mumbles much later, with Atsumu’s head propped against his knees like Osamu is the worst pillow known to man, but it’s the one Atsumu wants.
“Yeah?”
“What if this doesn’t have a happy ending?”
“It will,” Atsumu says with conviction only someone who drank two too many beers can muster. “It’s ya and Miyarin.”
Osamu lets his head fall on the backrest of his milk stain-less couch with a deaf thud . “What if I lose him? What if it’s just… me?”
“Then I’ve got ya,” Atsumu says with no hesitation.
“‘Course ya do,” Osamu smiles to himself, and shoves Atsumu off him. “Scrub.”
“Wha’s that for?!:
“Love ya.”
“Buttface,” Atsumu sticks out his tongue, because his mental age is five, even though his son is seven. “Love ya too.”
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The beach smells differently in Busan than it does in Amagasaki.
Rintarou swings their locked hands between them. His hair’s in a ponytail now, but he asked his sister to cut his fringe just enough to reveal his eyes, so Osamu thinks this hairstyle is much more calculating than it is lazy or depressed. He’s wearing one of the Uniqlo new summer button downs he got for free after his modelling gig; Osamu’s wearing the matching blue one that Rintarou smuggled out of shoot for him – by smuggled , he means he asked Osamu to bake his manager’s favourite cookies, which always guaranteed he’d return home with an empty tupperware and a bunch of freebies.
“It’s eerily quiet,” Rintarou says.
“It’s ass o’clock.”
“But sunrises on the beach are a must,” Rintarou gasps, mock-hurt. “Look!” He points their joined hands towards the horizon, starting to bleed purple. “Isn’t it pretty?”
“Yeah,” Osamu hums, dropping his head on Rintarou’s shoulder. It is pretty – the purple bleeds into reds and pinks, then yellows and oranges, and then the entire sky starts lighting up like a domino effect. He squeezes Rintarou’s hand and rubs his thumb over his wedding band. “Thank ya for plannin’ this.”
“I told you, didn’t I? I missed you too.”
The air is fresh and goes straight to Osamu’s lungs here. Being in a room that’s only meant for two instead of a house missing a third person makes it easier to breathe for Rintarou, too. There’s still things he dreads in the future, but if he and Rintarou can have this, Osamu thinks they can make it.
They watch the sunrise at the beach. They do all of the tourist-y stuff there is to do in Busan. They pig out at the hotel’s all-you-can-eat breakfast. They walk through the city until they get lost and eventually circle back to where they started. Rintarou takes pictures of everything , and sends the best ones to the Miya4 groupchat – to make Atsumu jealous, he informs Osamu – and the goofiest ones to Himari – also to make her jealous, allegedly. They stuff themselves with seashell and Korean barbecue.
“Should I take it personally that ya eat more here than at home?”
“I’m a growin’ boy,” Rintarou says, his mouth full of pork belly.
“If ya grow anymore, ya won’t fit in our bed.”
“It’s okay, I’m bendy. Don’t you know, darling?”
“Eugh,” Osamu elbows him. Rintarou holds a bulgogi wrap for him as a peace offering, and Osamu readily opens his mouth for it. “Why haven’t we done this before?”
“Dunno,” Rintarou shrugs. “We should do this at least once a year – I saw some people looking at your abs with jealousy, so maybe we should terrorize other Korean beaches with the results of all your rice hauling, too.”
“Is that what yer doin’ when we’re on vacation? Watchin’ other people check me out?”
“It gives me joy when they finally see the wedding ring and realize I bagged the hottest man in Busan.”
Osamu pinches his thigh and steals a seashell that Rintarou left on his plate to cool down. It feels so normal, this back and forth, Rintarou digging his teeth in Osamu’s shoulder when they’re back at the hotel and getting tangled up in each other, lathering shampoo in Rintarou’s hair and shaping it into tiny horns. It all feels so utterly normal that Osamu is almost terrified of going back to Osaka and finding their windows stil grey-tainted, their kitchen still too full of empty shells waiting for their owners.
On the second to last day of their stay, Osamu ends up staring at the label on Rintarou’s favourite lollipops and wondering if asking to stay in Busan longer would be running away. Coming here was running away in the first place, anyway, and if he makes a joke about this roleplaying a heist movie, it wouldn’t even take much to convince Rintarou to waste another day in the hotel room. He adds a box of condoms to his basket to make his case more convincing, and only when he’s standing in front of the cashier does he realize that he must look like a pervert, buying three protein bars, lollipops and condoms at 2am with his broken Korean.
He just wants to get this over with – which is precisely why the universe fucks him over, and Osamu realizes he left his phone in the hotel room. Rintarou is probably taking a shitton of silly selfies and setting them as contact pictures for Osamu’s entire agenda – the last time he did that, it took Osamu five months to realize he had to change them, and that was only because he didn’t bother to read the caller ID and ended up telling Kiyoomi to not get the banana-flavoured condoms this time, ya bastard, that’s an insult to bananas and it’s not funny.
Kiyoomi hung up and never mentioned it to another soul, not even to Atsumu – otherwise Osamu would’ve heard that annoying, cackling laughter, he’s sure. Kiyoomi probably only did it to spare himself the second-hand embarrassment – Osamu does not care for the reason. As it stands, Kiyoomi is the best brother-in-law Osamu could ever have asked for.
After he spends what feels like an eternity – but is probably only ten seconds – looking for his phone, Osamu finds his wallet – small mercies – and digs out the only bill he has, praying to everything holy that it’s enough.
The cashier gives him a look , but she also hands him back his change, so Osamu sighs in relief, grabs his bag, and hurries back to the hotel.
By the time he makes it to their floor, he’s not blushing anymore. He even has a compelling argument bubbling at the tip of his tongue as he swipes the card to their room, but it dies on his tongue when he steps inside and sees the way Rintarou looks at him – eyebags, raised hopes, twiddling thumbs.
Osamu drops the bag by the door and closes the distance between him and Rintarou without even taking his shoes off. “Rin.” He’s trembling when his hands cup his cheeks. “What happened?”
“Your phone rang while you were out.”
“Who was it?”
“Our foster care social worker.”
Osamu feels his chest creak like old floorboards. She never replied to his email, so he couldn’t tell Rintarou about this yet another failed attempt, not when he was just relearning how to smile. “What did she–”
“I know we talked about a break,” Rintarou rushes out, “but she said she has two kids who need emergency placement.”
“Two?” Osamu repeats, numbly.
“Twins.”
Twins.
“Osamu.”
Osamu’s name has never sounded like a prayer before, so it’s almost foreign to his own ears. “When’s the next flight?” he asks, and his own voice sounds foreign, too, drawn out by the sound of creaking.
“In two hours. We could make it.”
“Twins,” Osamu mouths.
Rintarou grabs his hand and squeezes. Their luggage is already packed and neatly alligned by the door. Twins.
“Osamu?”
“We could make it,” Osamu says, and lets Rintarou drag him out the door and into the first taxi they see.