#rdy

a break in the dawn where the colors in the sky breathe instead of flicker. then instead of trying to hold it, to capture what’s majesty within your palms made of flesh, scars, and history—you lay still and let what’s there intertwine with you.

you find that because it burns, the heavens give the skies a break and blankets the world in the night with the flickering starlight and constellations. but really, though there’s a part of you that wants to put a meaning to the metaphor written behind the stars, truly, it’s always been within the glow of the sun where you found your most vulnerable truth.

that because daylight is golden, you’re reminded of how gentle even the burning sun can be.

-

miya atsumu learns to love hello, because he finds that beginnings have always been beautiful with you. beside the sea that urges the flow of the waves to stay calm so it could reflect the sky, and in a makeshift standstill within the world that’s a blur in constant motion. 

it’s nice, because you’ve always had a way with saying your hellos as if goodbye is never even part of the plan.  

as if being in a constant state of hi, hello, how are you, and i’ll say hi again later—he smiles, even as you wave and turn for the exit, because he knows that it’s really just a door. you’ll walk through it, drive to wherever home ends up being for the meantime, and answer the call with your voice a little muffled.

it’s redefining what it means to be present, because even if your hand isn’t held in his, or your face close enough for him to make out the lines on your face that crinkle when you’re flustered—he feels you there. (here.)

there’s a silence in the room that doesn’t feel much like silence at all because every day, when 5:45 brings gold, the redefinition of you—of love—explodes, where in the fragments it scatters lays the puzzle pieces of clarity. an echoing truth that the colors of new are painted in gold and a burning scarlet. every shade of your most beautiful kind of sunset shown like a masterpiece against a canvas of hazel.

atsumu hears hello when his phone rings, or when he scrolls through the pictures of two shadows shoulder to shoulder, walking hand in hand against the sand.

hellos within the memory of your beginning, and the hello from yesterday when he finally saw you under the skies of home.

truth is, it’s really just a word. he says hello in greeting, during interviews when he has to be polite to the rest of the world. hello, like nodding his head to his brother when he walks in the shop and their eyes meet in the middle across the room. words that were crafted holding the sole purpose to be said in passing, meant start and end something before it stretches the moment too far for idle talk.

but because he thinks he’s a lot more sentimental than he gives himself credit for, atsumu grins, knowing that hello is really just a word for the rest of the world. it’s when he’s made it home, and is seated in the middle of the living room with a box of takeout meant just for one placed in the middle of the coffee table where he realizes it doesn’t have to be.

there’s a photo of you, taken candidly that you don’t exactly know about tucked into the third card slot in his wallet on the left side that redefines the sentiment behind hello. your lips are pursed into a pout, your chin propped up with the palm of your hand, and you look exasperated over something he doesn’t even remember at this point. there’s a line furrowed in between your eyebrows he only knows is there because he’s been close enough to see it himself.

it’s not as much as saying that he settles within the silence because the symphony that daylight brings never really gives the world a moment to pause. then atsumu chuckles. first, at his phone ringing, then second, at the contact picture of you with your eyes half open blaring on the screen.

he’s come a long way since hellos and margaritas, he thinks. a long way since hellos just meant beginnings meant to be understood as just part of conversation in passing.

almost as if his hello was meant to be just the temporary flicker of the stars found freckled across the blank of the midnight sky.

there’s still a couple suitcases unpacked in the corner of his room, and half his furniture still hasn’t arrived yet. he’s sat on the floor, with takeout for one in front of him, while only one shelf in the fridge is filled with half a carton of whole milk, and a box of leftover pizza from last night. a house for one, that doesn’t feel lonely even though only the sound of a clock ticking on the wall is the noise that’s constant from sunrise to sunset, and every twilight that flickers in the in-between.

so while hello is just a hello for the rest of the world, when he picks up the phone he’s smiling before he even opens his mouth to greet you. it’s your voice that pushes past the halfway mark and reaches him first, your hello kind of like a burst of something he thinks falls in line with all the sentiment that mirrors forever.

perhaps it’s love, but because the hello shared still tells a story that’s in chapter one, he knows that for now all he can do is allow for what took root to break past the soil and blossom.

and it’s you, across the city, smiling against the screen of your phone when his voice breaks through the static of the phone and greets you with a hello that doesn’t feel like all its meant is to signify a start towards a flickering presence.

a clock’s ticking, and there’s an early dinner for one still in the plastic container in front of him as he’s sat on the floor. the traffic below is muffled by the closed windows, but the telltale glow of gold spills into the room, breaking past the barrier of the curtains he didn’t bother closing.

“tsumu,” he hears you say, before a hello. it’s followed by two gentle beats of silence that doesn’t feel like loneliness at all, before you break the silence you let settle, saying, “hi.”

he steadies his sight on the way scarlet begins to swirl outside. through the curtains, and past the windowpanes, he sees more than just your hello embedded within a memory intertwined with gold. without as much as a second thought, atsumu catches himself smiling, recalling how much brighter the world seemed to look as a reflection against your eyes.

another pause, then he’s smiling wider. “if it isn’t my favorite girl.”  

he hears you laugh, and just like that your hello redefines your presence into the kind that’s here, meaning to stay. “bold of you to assume that i’m your girl.”

“are you not?”

you laugh again, leaning back and pressing the phone closer to your ear. you found that in the moments that counted the most, even though atsumu’s voice was more quiet every time the sun began to set, his presence rooted itself to the point where even his silence began to speak for him.

(like a hello that’s said only to echo, everything he says—everything about him—rings.)

“i only said hello, tsumu,” you smile.

he shrugs, propping one knee up so he could lean forward and rest his arm against it. blinking towards the sky, he immortalizes the memory of the scarlet painted sky in his archives, before smiling towards the ceiling. he wants to cover it in glow in the dark stars, he thinks. there’s an unfounded lesson meant to be taken from the constellations, and because it only comes in a flicker, perhaps he can try to stretch the in-between to last a little longer within his walls.

“i only said hello,” you said, and he nods, because it’s true.

you say hello when you pick up the phone, and hello when he’s pulling up to your parking lot and waving at your window he knows is closest to the tallest branch of that old oak tree. five letters to the one word that’s redefined his idea of beginnings, and the flickering nature of presence.

they say when a moment feels like it’s déjà vu, it’s really just an affirmation from the universe that everything is in place—so once more, he reminds himself of that as he settles in a house that’s slowly turning into his home, all the while you voice speaks over the phone.

you talk about your day, because he asks, then ask him about his, when you finish.

(he could really get used to this.) (he could find familiarity in this.)

atsumu’s quiet, when you talk, then after the silence stretches, it’s you, saying “hello?” that centers him back to the present.

like the vague face of home, looking like a blur because there’s still too many empty spaces around his walls to consider this space well loved. but what grounds him, he realizes, is the fact that it’s his slippers waiting everyday by the genkan and his favorite kind of milk in the fridge, the carton already half empty.

all the while, it’s your voice over the phone that makes him find peace in hello, because in a way it sounds like you mean to say welcome home. you’re a couple blocks from here, but you’re under the same sky, looking at the same swirls of scarlet that probably tell more than just a story that’s got to do with sunsets in the summer.

“yeah,” you eventually hear him mumble even though the conversation dwindles.

you’re staring at the sky, from your own corner of the world, two blocks from him, through the window that faces the west. it’s beautiful, you think, to live life with you own stories plastered against your own walls, but still be able to look at the skies and remember that you’re living a part of you with someone too.

“my favorite girl,” his voice mumbles again, and though he sounds a little absent minded, you suppose that atsumu’s always had a way of never making the silence feel lonely.

so you sit still and listen, finding comfort in the story you share with your serendipity written across the swirls of the skies.

kind of like what he does, as atsumu thinks of how golden the word ‘hello’ turned out to be. come sunsets etched against hazel; come beginnings that start with the purpose to last; come you who redefined what it means to find more than just a flicker in hello.

then he’s blinking once, and he’s thinking of you. twice, and it’s still you. and because he likes to think that you’re fate, when he blinks for a third time, he’s smiling--because against the backdrop of gold, all he sees is always, always you.