#or more bodyguard! osamu? i’ll do my best to give you the things you want bc that’s what we deserve always!

[haikyuuhoo]

Contemporaneous - Chapter 1

Pairing: Atsumu x F!Reader

Summary: In which you are so incredibly lucky to exist at the same time as Atsumu Miya. Or, perhaps, it’s the exact opposite…

Words: 2.6k

Warnings: Swearing, inconsistent chronology (sorry I just liked it better that way), that’s about it so far

A/N: Okay, here’s ch. 1 finally! Mostly background, setting the stage, all that. Things will probably move quicker in upcoming chapters because I’m busy and have a hard time thinking of filler plot lol. Enjoy, please let me know what you think!

Prologue | Chapter 2

All of your best memories were with the twins.

Not like that was a hard thing to accomplish—pretty much all of your memories were with the twins.

The good memories, the bad memories, and all the ones in between. They were the biggest constant in your life and you felt so lucky to have them.

Sometimes you got emotional about it, and they teased you for it, but you wouldn’t have it any other way.

“H-Hey, why are ya crying?” Atsumu had asked one time at fifteen when the three of you sat outside of the 24-hour convenience store near your house at 2 in the morning, each of you holding your own popsicles you’d snuck out to get.

“I just love you guys so much,” you said with a sniffle, wiping your nose on the cuff of your sleeve.

Osamu grimaced, looking down at you. “Y-Ya don’t have to get all emotional about it. We’re kind of stuck with ya.”

You frowned, giving him a light punch in the shoulder. “Just say you love me too, dummy,” you huffed.

His eyebrows knitted together. “We love you,” he sighed before wrapping an arm around you to give you a side-hug.

Atsumu wrapped his arm around you as well and gave you a grin. “Yeah, but please don’t cry anymore. It’s kinda embarrassing,” he laughed.

“Oh, shut up,” you whined, though you felt comfort flood through you at the feeling of being sandwiched between your two best friends. “You know I get sentimental when I’m tired.”

“Doesn’t make it any less embarrassing,” Osamu mumbled, but a smile played on his lips.

You hummed and closed your eyes for a moment. “Well get used to it, you’re not getting rid of me.”

The twins were like your personal bodyguards. If someone messed with you, they messed with the Miya twins—and no one wanted to mess with the Miya twins. You first learned that when you were nine years old.

The air left your lungs, palms and knees scraping against the ground as you were pushed from the swing you’d been sitting on.

“You’re so lame!” one kid teased from behind you, shrill voice barely making its way to your ears as tears began to prick in your eyes.

“Yeah, where are your dumb friends? They must not like you if they aren’t even playing with you!” another said as the three kids who were picking on you moved to stand in front of where you still remained on your hands and knees, head hung in an attempt to hide the way you were crying.

Atsumu and Osamu had been punished for fighting during in class and the teacher made them stay inside for the first ten minutes of recess. You told them you’d wait for them by the swings; you didn’t really hang out with anyone else anyway. This group of kids didn’t like that though, telling you that the swings were their hangout spot during recess. You told them you’d leave after a couple minutes—you didn’t really want to just stand around and wait for the twins. What was the harm in swinging for a bit?

The harm was too great for the kids currently bullying you, apparently, and they decided to shove you off of the swings.

Your hands and knees burned from the scrapes you’d gotten, and you pushed your palms against your legs to try to make it stop stinging.

“Aww, are you crying?” the third kid laughed, and you looked up at them, face wet with tears.

“Oh my god, she is crying!”

A chorus of laughter sounded in front of you, making you cry even harder. Your face grew hot with embarrassment, tears leaving silvery streaks on your skin. And then suddenly, the figures of the three kids in front of you were shadowed as someone approached them from behind.

Two someones, in fact.

“Leave her alone,” Atsumu said, his voice causing a terror to run through the bullies in a way you didn’t think was possible for a nine-year-old.

The twins had a few bandages decorating their arms and faces, evidence of all the spats they got into with each other. But even after being kept in from recess they were already willing to fight again—just not with each other this time.

“You’re really pathetic,” Osamu continued, arms crossed over his chest as he gave the terrified kids an apathetic look.

“Yeah, get lost before I punch yer stupid face.” Atsumu stuck his tongue out, and somehow, the intimidation worked.

The bullies scurried off and Osamu helped pull you to your feet. “I’ll take ya to the nurse,” he offered, looking at the scrapes on your hands.

“And I’ll go beat them up,” Atsumu said, eyes still angry as he watched the kids run to the other side of the playground.

“No, it’s okay,” you sniffled, reaching up to wipe your eyes.

“Yeah, you’ll just get in trouble again, dummy,” Osamu reasoned with his twin.

Atsumu sighed and turned to you, shoulders slumping when he really took a good look at you. “’M sorry we weren’t here,” he said as the two of them started walking you back to the building so you could get your cuts cleaned up.

“‘S okay,” you said again.

“No it’s not! They’re dumb for picking on ya,” Atsumu argued. He let out an annoyed grunt when the three of you got inside. “Wish they’d get kept in from recess for being idiots…”

Being a family friend also meant that you got along with the twins’ parents too—especially their mom. She treated you as if you were her own daughter, and sometimes she joked that she wished you were because the twins were so hard to handle.

You were so close with them that sometimes you would go over to their house even when you knew the twins were at volleyball practice.

When you were twelve, she’d decided you were probably old enough to watch one of the shows she enjoyed, and so you started going over to their house after school to watch TV dramas with their mom while you waited for them to come home from practice.

“Y/N,” Atsumu whined one day as soon as he saw the two of you. He hadn’t even taken his shoes off and he was already complaining. This was the fourth day in a row they came home to find you watching television with their mom. “What’re ya doing? Yer supposed to be our friend!”

“Shut up,” Osamu mumbled, taking his shoes off and removing his jacket. “You’re so embarrassing.”

Atsumu frowned, eyes going wide as if he was pleading with you to come hang out with them instead.

“‘Tsumu, you just got home. We’re almost done with this episode, and then I’ll come hang out!” you reasoned with him.

He huffed, finally reaching down to take off his shoes. “Sometimes I feel like ya like her more than me,” he grumbled, earning him a smack on the back of his head from his brother.

“Keep up the attitude and she will start liking Mom more,” Osamu hissed.

You were always at their games. And when I say always, I mean always. You were the loudest member of the cheering section, and there were countless times when you didn’t even have the voice left to congratulate them on their victories.

One thing you never did, though, was boo them. They were your best friends—and you were close with the rest of the team too—so you never had the heart to boo them when they messed up.

Atsumu confronted you about it once when you were seventeen—they hadn’t even lost—after he’d had a tough game.

“Y/N,” he said, face stuck in a frown as he approached you.

You gave him a grin, wrapping your arms around him as you pulled him into a hug. “Congrats, ‘Tsumu!”

“Don’t congratulate me,” he hissed, stiffening in your hold.

You frowned and pulled away from him. “Why not? You won.”

“Because I sucked. You should have booed me.”

You rolled your eyes, waving a hand dismissively. “You’re so dramatic. Everyone messes up, ‘Tsumu. It’s not that big of a deal.”

“It was close! I could have cost us the match!” he argued.

Now it was your turn to frown at him. “So you botched a few serves, it’s not a big deal. Your sets were great. Besides, I’m not gonna boo my own team, Atsumu—” He grimaced at the sound of his full name. “—and I’m most certainly not going to boo you.”

“Losers don’t need applause.”

You scoffed. “You aren’t a loser! I swear sometimes you’re so hard on yourself for no reason. People have bad games. I’m not going to ridicule you for it.”

“You should!”

Your jaw clenched. You hated when he did this to himself.

“I deserve ta be booed, ta be yelled at, ta be told what a piece of trash I am because I almost screwed this up for us!”

“It’s not going to make you better, you dumbass!” you finally shouted, shoving his chest.

Atsumu stumbled backwards a few steps, heartrate increasing. He couldn’t tell whether it was from the adrenaline of the game, his disappointment in himself, or your actions. You’d never pushed him like that. Sure, you bickered and things of that nature, but this time you seemed genuinely angry.

“You’re one of the hardest working people I know and seeing you put yourself down like that when all you had was one bad set makes me want to punch you in the face!” Your heart was pounding, the sound deafening you as your hands clenched into fists at your sides. “I don’t give a shit about those people in the stands, they don’t really care about you. I’m your best friend! I’m not supposed to beat you down, I’m supposed to pick you back up!”

His mouth opened and closed a few times, words getting caught in his throat as he tried to gather his thoughts.

You pushed past him with a scowl. “I’m gonna go congratulate ‘Samu. Don’t talk to me until you’ve got your shit together.”

Osamu had been standing with Aran, Suna, and Kita by the entrance to the gym. They’d been chatting, but it had gotten cut short in favor of watching your interaction with the setter.

Osamu was in shock. He’d never seen you like that, which was saying something considering how long he’d known you, and it was kind of refreshing to see his brother get put in his place like that.

“That was kinda hot,” Suna said absentmindedly, eyebrows raised in amusement.

The gray-haired twin turned to glare at his friend. “Say that again and I’ll punch you.”

“Osamu,” Kita scolded.

“Sorry, Kita-san.”

Of course, with years and years of memories and friendship with the twins, you couldn’t help but think it was more than luck that brought you together. And even though you believed the three of you were fated to be together, as you got older something just felt different.

The summer before you started high school you had started to think that maybe you were fated to be more than just friends with Atsumu when feelings for him started to blossom. You tried to ignore them, far too shy and inexperienced in the ‘liking boys’ department to know how to deal with this new sensation.

You tried not to let it change your friendship with him, but there were times when you’d feel your face grow hot or your stomach flutter when you were around him.

At first, you didn’t like this feeling at all.

The twins had always been your comfort—your safe space. And now you were nervous to even be around Atsumu. But at the same time, all you wanted to do was be around him.

You hated it.

You hated the way you immediately perked up at the sound of them coming home when you should have been watching TV with their mom, now too distracted to even pay attention to the end of the show.

You hated the way you wanted to comfort Atsumu in a way that was so much more than friendly when he was beating himself up.

And you loathed the way you felt jealousy bubble in your veins at the thought of Atsumu liking someone else.

So you did your best to push the feelings away when you were around them.

But when you were alone, they all tumbled out, and you decided to take up journaling as an attempt to deal with the feelings. You felt embarrassed, as a teenage girl does, to have a journal filled with all of these thoughts, so whenever you were finished writing you hid it in your sock drawer lest one of the twins find it and tease you about it for weeks.

When you started high school and the twins joined the volleyball team, they were instant phenoms. And in turn, they garnered a lot of attention—especially from girls.

It upset you, if you were going to be honest with yourself. Not only because you couldn’t really hang out with your friends in the halls or during lunch without being interrupted by their gang of fan girls, but also because you despised the girls who flung themselves at Atsumu. It killed you to see them batting their long eyelashes and talking to your best friends with their cute voices, all while you sat to the side like some kind of unwanted piece of stale bread. And it especially killed you when Atsumu started returning their affections.

It scared you. It all scared you. The feelings, the girls, high school—you were terrified. You didn’t want to ruin things between the two—three—of you with your feelings, but the girls made you so insecure. So instead, you wrote in your journal.

You wrote down all of your feelings for three years.

You didn’t speak a word of them to anyone, no less the twins.

And there was a page you came back to almost every day, even though you had written it during your first year:

 The odds of existing are slim,

so the odds of you and I existing at the same time

must be next to impossible,

and I think that’s beautiful.

 Maybe the universe does work in my favor after all

because I got the chance to get to know you.

 You stared at the page, not even realizing tears were forming in your eyes until one fell and landed on your hand that pressed down on the page. It was a habit to hold it open, but it wasn’t even necessary anymore—you’d opened your journal to this page enough that it stayed open on its own.

When you’d written it, it was a happy thought. But now, three years later, it didn’t feel so happy. Atsumu was getting busier and busier with volleyball, and that meant he only got better, and when he got better his fanbase grew.

You were starting to feel like a second choice.

Scratch that, you were starting to feel like a tenth, twentieth, fiftieth choice.

You craved the attention he gave those girls. You wanted him to grin at you like that. You wanted to be more than just his best friend.

But you felt like you were running out of time.

It was ironic, considering you believed the universe brought the three of you together with the intention of you being side by side forever.

Maybe, after all this time believing it, you were finally starting to realize that you were wrong.