trust and prejudices

[chasing_medea]

 Titolo: trust and prejudices
Fandom: Haikyuu
Missione: M5 - Il pregiudizio è una prigione, il giudizio è la condanna. Dio benedica gli incompresi.
Parole: 1178
Rating: safe

Kyoomi turns the key in the lock and opens the door. Inside, the house is dark and silent. All the blinders are closed, and there’s no music wafting from the living room’s stereo. It is exactly how Kyoomi left it when he left to visit his parents. 

He is burdened with the weight of the absence. It settles on his chest, making it difficult to breathe. 

Kyoomi didn’t think he’d find Atsumu home, not after the fight they’d had, but the silence makes that tiny, cramped apartment feel huge and terrifying, like the house of horror of the luna park near the holiday house where he spent his summers as a child. 

He knows better than trying to call him again. Atsumu doesn’t react well to this kind of pressure. He needs his time to come to terms with things - Kyoomi has come to know at the price of uncountable other fights they’d had in the course of the year they spent together. Kyoomi can only hope that the audio message he sent manages to express well enough what he had wanted to say.  

In the two days since Atsumu left the house, he listened to it at least six times per day and every time it felt a bit less right. He could have said it better, he should have said more and was it clear enough he didn’t want to break up with him over such a thing? 

His parents, on the two days he spent with them, lamented he was absent, that he wasn’t really there with them. Kyoomi couldn’t bring himself to tell them what was wrong. He hadn’t even told them he was seeing someone, let alone he was living with them.

It had all started with an “are you ashamed of me?” No Omi, no playful grin. Just eyes fixed on Kyoomi’s own and an unruly bang of hair covering the inner corner of Atsumu’s left eye. “Is it because I don’t have a degree? Because I’m just some bloke who plays volleyball for a living?”

Kyoomi sits on the couch in that darkness. He doesn’t bother turning on the lights. He wonders what would have happened if he brought Atsumu home with him. Would it have been really as bad as he thought? He tries to imagine the dinner that could have been, his parents unwavering, piercing eyes on Atsumu, rigidily seated beside him as he answered their never ending question: What would he do after quitting volleyball? What was his plan for the future? What kind of education did he have? 

They would weigh him, like chemists on the scale, trying to think what others would have thought of them if they accepted him into the family. 

It was what they had done with all of his sister’s boyfriends. They had all run away. She had been desperate, until she found someone she liked well enough between the sons of their parent’s friend's families. She compromises, and Kyoomi always wondered if she had found some happiness with him or just put on the facade whenever they would meet for a family dinner. 

Kyoomi doesn’t want Atsumu to run away. He doesn’t want him to know what he grew up with.

He’s not ashamed of Atsumu. He’s ashamed of his own parents. 

Maybe that was the thing he should have said to him when he asked that question, instead he had just stammered, unsure of what to answer. Saying that would be denying his own parents, and, in spite of everything, Kyoomi still loved them. 

Kyoomi hears the key turning in the lock and jerks upwards. He recognizes the sounds Atsumu makes when he comes back home, removes his shoes and starts walking in the apartament. The house suddenly feels warmer. 

Kyoomi calls for him, and Atsumu comes to an alt and almost screams. “Omi! What are you doing here in the dark?” He hurries to open the blinders, the orange light of the early winter sunsets enters the room. 

“I wasn’t sure you’d be coming back,” Kyoomi falls heavily on the couch. He just now notices that all of Atsumu’s stuff is still scattered around the living room. He had been too afraid to check. 

“I went to find Ma and Samu, needed a bit of time,” Atsumu says, coming to sit on the opposite side of the couch.

Kyoomi feels the urge to reach for him, just to be sure he’s really there, but he doesn’t. “My parents,” he starts saying instead. “They— They’re not good people. They are not bad people either. Not intentionally, at least.”

Atsumu remains silent. Kyoomi knows he’s listening, but doesn’t dare raise his eyes to him, feeling his courage already starting to waver. “They’re… Judgemental. Full of prejudices. Obsessed by what others think of them. Whether they like you or not— it only depends on that. They won’t try to get to know you. They’re not like your mother. And I don’t want you to hate them, or me, or run away or— “

Kyoomi knows he’s spiralling, but knows that Atsumu is there for him. 

“Why would I?” he asks, stopping him.

“I don’t know,” Kyoomi admits. “It’s just… Is what I grew up with. People judge you from who you frequent and decide to cut all ties with you. It happened before and I… I don’t want it to happen with you too. Did you ever wonder why Motoya was the only person I was close with in high school? I was terrified that my parents would stop wanting me if I wasn’t up to their standards… If my friends weren’t up to their standards. It took me years of therapy to get out of that mindset… and look at me. I’m not out of it. And I don’t want you to leave me.”

Kyoomi feels tears sting in the corner of his eyes, but refuses to let them fall. Atsumu comes closer to him on the couch, holds him close and kisses him on the head.

“Thank you for telling me,” he says with a calm voice. “And I’m pretty sure I’m not up to their standards. It could be fun.”

Kyoomi feels a laugh bubbling in his chest. “Fun?”

“Yeah. Fun. Trust me.”

And Kyoomi knows he’s asking him to trust him on more than just that. Atsumu is asking him to trust him with this, with their relationship. To trust that he won’t leave. And Kyoomi is still scared, but if it’s Atsumu… He trusts him. And he knows he’s somehow lucky. He’s blessed with Atsumu, and will never stop being thankful to whatever entity brought him in his life. But he won’t tell him, not now at least.

“Yeah. Fun.” he says, holding Atsumu a bit closer.