Ace of Hearts - Haikyuu || Short Stories || One Shots || Creative Rambles

🌀Category 5 || Miya Atsumu

[⚠ A wordy short story with a lot of foul language.⚠]

Miya Atsumu is kind of a cocky piece of shit and he knows it.

There are just some undeniable truths in his life that make that overwhelming, and frankly narcissistic, pride swell within him until it's pouring out of every crevice of his over-inflated being. He's good at what he does — and he knows it. He's got a killer body with thighs that leave people drooling and smile that could drop panties faster than gravity itself if he wanted to — and he knows it. His life is pretty fucking awesome — and he knows it.

But if there is any one undeniable truth that hovers around him and refuses to let go, it's that Miya Atsumu is pretty much insufferable and overexposure is practically imminent. It wasn't something he was particularly proud of but it was just another fact of life — "if you can't handle me at my worst" and all that jazz, he'd think.

He'd been more than happy to saunter through life that way. At the end of the day, he had redeeming qualities and only those who mattered needed to see them. It didn't matter if he was hard to get along with if there were still people who accepted him for who he was.

Kita Shinsuke was one of those few who saw through all his bullshit and knew that behind all the bravado was a guy in over his head with a fan base that didn't know when to quit. It was grounding in ways that Atsumu couldn't even begin to describe and while Kita hardly went out of his way to humble the budding athletic superstar, he was incredibly good at doing it. And he also knew when Atsumu needed to be reminded of his roots.

It was during a particularly tumultuous time in Miya's career when he had answered a call from his old captain, asking him to come back to their alma mater. It's not like things had exactly gone to shit, but he would say the situation he was in was ... unfavorable?

Practices with his team (the MSBY Black Jackals) had become particularly tense in the past month after he had one of his "I'm not the problem, my tosses are perfect" explosions on his monster hitters and they'd rightfully started teasing the ever-living fuck out of him. His girlfriend had just broken up with him — with the tearful excuse that she had it "on good authority" (her favorite gossip rag) that he was cheating. And to top it all off, his insufferable twin had just gotten engaged. (He was happy for him, somewhere deep, deep, deeeeeeep down, but man. C'mon Osamu — timing bro!)

The definition of what he was feeling was far beyond his grasps but he might have described it as being lost in an emotional fog... if he could think clearly.

Maybe Kita had taken advantage of that and knew exactly when to ask Atsumu to come back to Inarizaki, so he could exploit their friendship to make Kita look better in his first year as the school's new coach. Or maybe he knew that Atsumu needed to return home for some emotional grounding and personal rediscovery. Maybe it was both. (It was definitely both.)

Neither one of them knew that he would be late, but it had been one of those perfect lazy summer Fridays. Where the sun was out but it was just the right temperature — the kind of days that just lull you to sleep with how warm and peaceful they are — and he was back in his parents' home for the first time since he'd graduated high school, in his childhood bed and he and his brother were together for the first time in months.

In all that muddled perfection, something had to go awry.

So, he had been reduced to running down the school halls, feeling some semblance of nostalgic fear at keeping his former captain waiting in the gym. (He could hardly say he was aiming to be fashionably late to such a serious and dedicated man and, honestly, who wants to admit to thinking about how they'd appear to some high school brats.)