Leave The Light On - Miya Osamu/f!reader (haikyuu!) Part 10 In The Bff!osamu Series Tags: Childhood Friends

leave the light on - miya osamu/f!reader (haikyuu!) part 10 in the bff!osamu series tags: childhood friends to lovers, tw instant coffee mention, miscommunication, confessions, ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!

Onigiri Miya closes early on Sunday nights.

It’s not for lack of business—the shop would certainly take in enough revenue to justify staying open regular hours an extra day per week, especially on a weekend. But in the early days of Onigiri Miya, when it was just a one-man show, Osamu needed at least one night that he could count on having off. The workweek business—office workers and students going through their routine hustle and bustle—kept him going, enough so that Sunday nights weren’t a make or break for him, and he was able to start shuttering in the early afternoon once per week.

He remembers those early days. Sweet talking vendors to bring down the cost of produce and haggling with the grubby, bleary eyed men at fish market stalls at the crack of dawn for a deal on the catch of the day. Promising suppliers that he’d be able to get them their money in a couple of weeks if they’d just give him some more time. Standing on the road, because Onigiri Miya was just a street stall back then, trying to coax people in and try his food. To convince them to take a chance on him. He remembers burns on his hands and cuts on his fingers and an ache in his bones that ran so marrow-deep he forgot what it felt like to not be so sore. Sunday nights were the only night he had to relax. The only night he had to sit down, to take off his hat, and to have a beer—or, even more frequently, pass out on his couch in his uniform at 8pm and sleep right through to his alarm the next morning.

Closing early on Sundays had been your idea, way back when— suggested to him gently while he rested with his head in your lap in your tiny student apartment after another 16 hour workday. He still remembers the worry in your eyes as you brushed his hair back from his tired face.

Nowadays things aren’t so hectic. Osamu’s got a good team of people around him to help Onigiri Miya run smoothly—a team who he trusts and values. It doesn’t all fall onto his shoulders in the same way that it used to: he doesn’t have to be there for every open and every close, his bills are paid, he’s not fighting to lure people in off the street just in the hope that he can scrape by for another week.

Now when he closes early on Sunday, it’s more for the sake of his staff than anything else. Occasionally Osamu will take the night off, too; he’ll go home and catch up on housework, run an errand or two, or even grab dinner—usually with you, though evidently not so much lately. But most Sundays he stays behind after his last employee heads out for the night; locking up behind them, switching off the sign in the window to tell the world the shop is closed, and then holing himself up in his office to do some admin. He’ll grab a plate of whatever’s leftover from the day’s service and a cold can of beer from the fridge, put on a rerun of Atsumu’s game from the night before, and get to work shuffling through the paperwork that he’s left to pile up over the past seven days.

Osamu hates paperwork.

It’s not that it’s particularly challenging work—the really hard stuff is left to his bookkeeper after all. It’s just tedious, a mindless task in many ways, and he always finds his thoughts drifting as he sorts through invoices and inventory registers: catching himself being inattentive halfway through a spreadsheet, and having to force himself to go back to the beginning just to make sure he hasn’t missed anything in his carelessness. 

You used to help him with this kind of work, or at least keep him company while he got through it—sitting on the lumpy couch crammed into one corner of his little office and pretending like you weren’t asleep each time Osamu caught you with your eyes closed. More often than not, he’d throw his jacket over you to keep you warm while you napped and then rush through the last of his work so that he could wake you up and get you home. But just having you there on those late nights was enough for him; your presence was the thing that helped.

Coffee is his only saving grace, these days.

Samu shuffles out to the front of the shop on one such Sunday evening, taking off his baseball cap and ruffling the hair underneath tiredly. He’d finally gotten a trim, and he’s glad that things feel a bit more normal again as he rakes his fingers through it—his mother had been right when she remarked that it was getting too long the week before. He tosses his hat down on the front counter of Onigiri Miya, rounding the end to grab a sachet of instant coffee from behind the bar where he keeps his emergency stash.

The overhead lights in the shop are off, but there’s enough brightness filtering out from the still-lit kitchen that he doesn’t need to struggle to see as he prepares himself some hot water to add to the mug in front of him. He tips the granulated contents of his instant coffee sachet into the bottom after ripping it open with his teeth, tapping the empty plastic packaging against the edge of the cup to make sure it all comes out. The kettle behind him hums quietly as it heats to boiling, and Osamu sighs, leaning back against the counter with his arms crossed over his chest.

He stares out at the restaurant—his restaurant, as hard as he still finds it to believe some days—his gaze sweeping over the tables with their corresponding chairs resting atop them. One of the staff had mopped the floors at the end of the night, which left them still slightly wet and glistening. There’s light filtering in through the front windows from the streetlights and the other shops that line the Osaka street outside, and their glow catches in the water that hasn’t yet dried from the tile.

Osamu’s eyes suddenly snap up to the glass that lines the front of the restaurant.

There’s a silhouetted figure—so familiar he could trace it even with his eyes closed, from memory alone—standing on the other side of the door.

Osamu blinks, thinking that the paperwork must have finally gotten the best of him, or maybe that the beer he’d had earlier is inexplicably hitting him too hard. But no matter how many times he squeezes his eyes shut, the familiar shape stays where it is on the other side of the glass each time he opens them again.

His heartbeat thumps, loud and wet, in his ears.

Like the shot of a gun, the man stumbles gracelessly into action: loping around the end of the bar and slipping slightly on the wet tile as he heads towards the door. He fiddles with the lock as he struggles to unlatch it, accidentally trying to force it the wrong way in his haste before eventually getting it right. When he finally throws open the door, a gust of cool night air flooding into the restaurant along with it, he takes in a deep, gasping breath.

“Hey.”

His voice is shaky when he greets you—mostly air and very little shape to the word.

You stare at him from a few paces away, your arms crossed firmly over your chest and a frown tugging down the corners of your mouth. Osamu thinks you look pretty when you’re mad. He always has. But it’s worse now because he knows all too well that he shouldn’t—because he knows you’re mad at him. 

You seem to have something to say, he can tell as much from the almost spiteful glint in your eyes, but you stay tightlipped as you simply stare at him.

“D’ya… wanna come in?” Osamu asks, still holding the door open. He nods his head back into the shop. “Still got some stuff prepped, I could make ya—“

“You’re a jerk.”

Osamu blinks, taken aback.

“Yeah,” he agrees plainly after a moment, thinking it’s only fair of you to say given then circumstances. 

His concurrence only seems to upset you more.

“Like, you’re a real asshole, y’know that?” You’re nearly spitting you’re so angry, your features twisted up in contempt. Your arms uncross and drop down to your sides, and Osamu watches as your hands ball into fists. He’s the one who taught you how to throw a punch, years and years ago now, and he’s wondering if he’s about to experience a practical demonstration of his teaching abilities firsthand.

“I don’t necessarily disagree.” He nods, agreeing with you once more, though this time his response is slower, more hesitant—not because he doesn’t mean it, but because he’s not sure that it’s what you want to hear.

“Ugh!” Your following exclamation is loud, and palpably frustrated, all but confirming his suspicions. “You…!”

Your tone is climbing with every passing second, and Osamu looks furtively up and down the road around the two of you. It’s late in the evening but there are still a few people out, and he sees heads turning in your direction at the commotion.

“Hey,” he says, his own voice dropping in volume but still pleading all the same. “My name’s on the door and we’re gettin’ some weird looks. I wanna hear everythin’ you have to say, but could you please just say it to me inside?”

You look at him blankly, your lips puckering into a petulant, unhappy pout. You seem like you want to say no, to keep causing a scene, and for a second Osamu really thinks you’re about to round in on him again. Instead you trudge forward, stomping past him over the threshold of Onigiri Miya.

Osamu hesitates for a moment after you pass, half in shock and half in relief, and then he lets the door swing closed and locks it behind him for good measure—he’s not sure he wants any unsuspecting people coming in search of onigiri and stumbling upon a brawl.

It’s dim in the restaurant when he turns to face you, but he can still see your fury burning in the dark.

Neither of you say anything.

“You can keep goin’ if you want,” Osamu is eventually the first to speak, and he means what he says. This is the least of the punishment he deserves, after all. And hearing you yell at him is markedly better than the silence.

“Martyrdom doesn’t suit you at all,” you mutter sullenly.

Osamu sighs, scrubbing his hand over his face. “I just wantcha to say whatcha came here to say.”

You begin to pace as you work through your thoughts, slowly walking back and forth in front of the counter, picking at your cuticles. You’d put a fair amount of distance between the two of you, and he’s sure it was intentional. Osamu keeps himself confined to the entryway near the door, while you walk a path back and forth along the length of the service counter. His eyes follow every step you take, like a captivated child watching fish at the aquarium.

“I had a terrible dream last night,—” you finally force the words out, your feet stilling against the shiny tile as your pacing comes to a sudden halt.

Osamu decides to just do the right thing and shut the hell up for once, giving you the floor.

“—I was going to buy 30 kilos of rice from Kita-san’s farm—”

That’s a lot of rice, Osamu wants to note, but his lips part to let the words through and then he decides better of it.

“—and I was there, at the farm, and then Kita-san started telling me that you got married and had a baby. A baby, Samu! Kita-san standing there telling me all these terrible things with that big bag of rice in my hands, and I couldn’t even get mad at him because he’s Kita! So I just had to listen to him go on and on and on about the venue and the flowers and the baby name that you picked out. And the more he’d tell me the worse it was, and the bag of rice just kept getting heavier.” Your teeth bite down so hard into your lip as you suck in a breath that Osamu's amazed he doesn’t see blood. “I was hearing all of these things—terrible things—and all I could think was that I should have been there to see all of that for myself. I shouldn’t have been hearing about it from someone else. And I realized that you were living a whole life apart from me, a life that I didn’t know about or get to be a part of, and it just kept getting worse and worse and I woke up and I felt like I was going to scream.”

You’re out of breath by the time you finish your rambling thought, your chest heaving and your eyes wild and your mouth faintly wet. You look to him, and Osamu doesn’t see that same indignation in your eyes anymore, only hurt. He watches as the expression hardens again, whets itself like a blade—sharpened not in anger, but rather in resolve. In resignation.

“That day. I looked for you first.”

Osamu feels lost now. Are you still talking about that dream?

You understand without him saying it, and explain yourself further. “In high school. The day that I kissed Suna.”

Osamu’s stomach drops, all of the blood rushing to his head so quickly that the shop begins to spin a little around him. He can hear his pulse in his ears. He can feel it in his throat. He can’t help the twist of jealousy in the pit of his stomach, writhing and ugly though it may be, at the mere mention of his friend’s name. He doesn’t have the right to feel the way he feels, but it happens all the same.

“I looked for you,” you keep going, like you’ve broken a seal and have to let it all out. Osamu doesn’t dare try to stop you. He couldn’t even if he wanted to. He watches on like it’s a conversation that’s happening not with him but rather to him. “You were eating lunch with Tsumu in your classroom. I realized he would have had a fit if he knew that I was asking you and not him. I thought about asking him but…”

Osamu can’t feel his fingers from how tightly his hands are balled into fists at his side. His lungs burn in his chest—the breath he’s holding having long since lost the oxygen his body needs, though he can’t seem to draw in another.

“If it wasn’t you, I didn’t care who it was. So I asked Suna.”

The young man processes your words slowly. Incompletely. Like only every third word seems to register.

“Ya wanted me to be yer first kiss?” It’s not the question he ought to ask you but it’s the one his brain chooses to spit out.

Your reply is frustrated, but with an unmistakably melancholic rasp running through it. “Yeah. I did.”

Somewhere distantly, Osamu recognizes a sharp, stinging pain. An ache as part of him realizes that it could have been him. All along. All this time. Him. But the pain is muted, because part of him—most of him—still doesn’t quite understand.

“I think that was the first time I realized it.” 

Osamu watches your face, maps the achingly familiar lines and dips and curves of your features as he tries to read meaning in the space between your words. But he still finds nothing.

“I liked you, Samu. More than I should have. Differently than I liked Tsumu, or Suna, or any other guy.” You laugh, but it’s a hollow, watery sound. “I realized it and it was awful.”

You’re waiting for him to say something, but Osamu is at a loss for words. No, that’s not quite it either. It’s not that he has nothing to say, but that he has everything he wants to say to you. To ask you. But he doesn’t know where to start, or how to sort through them, or even how to will his lips, teeth, and tongue to shape any of them.

“You… Y’know ya don’t have to say this,” his voice is tight, like a rope drawn to secure a knot not unlike the one in his throat, when he finally manages to speak. “Ya don’t have to pretend or convince yourself that you… felt the same as me. I care about ya too much to ever ask that.”

You laugh—a single, sharp, distinctly mirthless ha!—as you throw your hands up in exasperation. “There you go again not letting me have any say, Samu!” You punctuate your exclamation with a frustrated little sound. “Stop deciding things all on your own and just listen to me.”

That shuts him up again.

“I thought I was over it,”—you begin to pace once more, your steps slow and measured—“I really did. I told myself it would never happen and moved on because I never ever wanted to fuck things up between us. Between any of us.

“You told me that you’ve loved me your whole life, but you don’t know if or when something changed. I do. I had a singular moment that I could point to where I realized that if I did or said the wrong thing after that, I could fuck up something that meant more to me than anything else in the world. Even if you felt the same way I did, there’s no guarantee that something like that would work out. But if we tried and it didn’t work, we wouldn’t be able to just go back to how things were. So I told myself that no matter what I wouldn’t. No matter how hard it was or how awful it felt. I could get over it if it meant I never had to lose you. And it was fine. For years it was fine. We were fine. Everything was fine. And then I lost you anyway.”

You suddenly stop pacing and crouch down, your arms winding themselves around your knees as if to comfort yourself. 

“That night, when you…” You swallow, and risk a glance up at him. “I don’t think I’m over it.”

Osamu feels like he might die. Maybe he did already. Maybe this is his life passing before his eyes, because it’s always been you anyway.

“But it’s scary, Samu,” your voice is so small, so vulnerable, when you speak to him again. You’re trembling as you hold yourself. “Aren’t you scared?”

Osamu is suddenly reminded of that fall day in the woods, so many years ago now. Reminded of two kids who didn’t know what they were doing. Who didn’t know anything. But who knew each other.

Slowly, Osamu crouches too—his joints cracking in protestation as he drops his body down to your level. Your eyes never leave his.

“Yeah,” he says, after a moment. Soft but sure. “‘Course I am.”

You let out a soggy, incredulous laugh, but it somehow doesn’t feel out of place. He watches as you reach up and scrub at your eyes.

“I love you,” Osamu says, because it’s true. Because there’s no other words he can possibly think to say in this situation. Because it’s the only thing that he has in his mind.

You look over at him, sniffling a little, wiping at your running nose with the back of your hand in a way that Osamu absolutely should not find as endearing as he does. “How can you just say it like that? Like it’s so easy?”

Osamu wants to laugh too, like you did earlier, but he worries that the sound might come off as almost hysterical thanks to the misplaced hope he can feel simmering in the pit of his stomach. “Sayin’ it’s the hard part, that’s why it took me so long. But I’ve spent forever lovin’ ya. S’always been the easiest bit.”

You choke back a sob, your head hanging defeatedly as your body slackens. You’re a ghost of the angry little thing that was outside of his door only a few minutes earlier, but more yourself now than Osamu has seen you in weeks.

“What about you?” he poses the question so quietly he might worry you didn’t hear him if not for how silent the dark shop is around you both.

“What do you mean?” You know what he means. He knows you know what he means. You’re stalling, trying to buy yourself time that’s run out now.

“Do you love me?” he asks, praying to anyone who’s listening that he’s been a good enough man up until this point to deserve the answer that he wants to hear more than anything else in the world.

“Of course I do,” you say evasively, refusing to meet his gaze. But it’s not the same. It’s not enough.

“But are you in love with me?” Osamu finally dares to ask.

There’s a stretch of the most painful, profound silence that either of you have ever experienced. It goes on for an eternity, though the clock hands in the corner say differently.

You still refuse to look at him, your gaze fixed instead to a point on the wall on the other side of the restaurant. Osamu watches how the light from the windows catches in the tears that cling to your bottom lashes.

“Yeah, I am,” you say, barely a whisper. You speak the confession like it’s the most terrifying thing imaginable. Like it's wretched.

And it is maybe, but Osamu’s never felt happier to hear anything in all his life—he feels a rush of something so visceral and elated flowing through him, he thinks he might pass out.

“Can I touch ya?” he asks hesitantly, his voice thick and unlike its normal tone. He hardly recognizes it as his own.

You peek over at him for the first time, and Osamu revels in the feeling of having your eyes on him. Delights in watching you watch him and knowing that behind the gaze is the same feeling as the one he holds inside of himself. You consider it for a moment, and he doesn’t dare rush you, but eventually—mercifully—you nod. 

Osamu inches forward slowly and wraps you in his arms. Your body relaxes into his hold instantly, and he pulls you into his lap on the tiled floor. He holds you so tightly that he’s scared he might break you, but he still can’t find it in himself to be more delicate. You cling to him anyway.

It’s the first time he’s touched you in months, but every inch of you is still known to him. Still familiar in every way that matters. You smell the same. You feel the same. You’re soft and warm just like always. Osamu buries his face into the crook of your neck, and your fingers eventually lift to play with the hair at his nape. He holds you, and holds you, and holds you more—sating a thirst that’s been building for longer than the time the two of you have been apart.

And you let him.

You hold him too, in the same way.

“If I kiss ya, you gonna cry again?” Osamu asks you quietly after a while, his lips brushing against your throat as he murmurs the words.

You snort, your fingers twisting into the material of his t-shirt at his shoulders. Osamu peels himself away from you and looks up, and finds that your faces are so close. Too close, in any other circumstance.

His palm lifts, cupping your cheek in his hand, running his thumb against the smooth skin underneath.

“Shut up, Samu,” you say, a little smile twisting up the corner of your mouth.

And Osamu happily obliges by pressing his lips to yours.