Bled Gold

The hotel room smelled like antiseptic and old beer—the sour kind that seeps into carpet and stays. Sakusa had showered three times, but he still felt it, the ghost of the night before clinging to his skin. The win, the press of bodies in the hallway, the way Atsumu Miya had looked at him across the locker room. Sharp. Hungry. Like he knew something.

Kiyoomi didn’t get drunk. That was the rule. But Aran wasn’t here.

Atsumu was.

And now Atsumu was propped against the cheap headboard, legs spread, grinning like he’d just scored the final point.

“Always knew ya had it in ya, Omi-kun,” he said. Voice rough, like sandpaper on silk. “Comin’ for me like that.”

“Shut up.” Sakusa’s hands were already at Atsumu’s shorts, working the buckle. He didn’t want to hear his own name come out of that mouth.

The room blurred. Kiyoomi was drunk—genuinely, nauseatingly drunk—and he noticed it, filed it away, pushed it aside. What he couldn’t push aside was the warmth of Atsumu’s skin under his palm, or the way Atsumu’s breath hitched when his fingers found the wrong shape below his waist.

Atsumu caught his wrist. The grin flickered. “Don’t.”

Sakusa didn’t stop. He saw it, understood, and said, “I don’t care.” And that was the awful truth—he didn’t. Not about the anatomy, not about the implications, not about anything except the heat and the pressure and the need to stop thinking.

“No condom,” Kiyoomi said.

Atsumu’s breath stuttered. “Ya sure?”

“I said I don’t care.”

---

Months later, in a café with white walls and bad lighting, Atsumu sat across from him, hands wrapped around a tea he wasn’t drinking. He looked hollowed out. Terrified.

“I’m pregnant,” he said.

Sakusa didn’t drop his coffee. He set it down slow, the ceramic click loud in the quiet. “What do you want me to do about it?”

He knew it was the wrong thing to say the second it left his mouth. But he was eighteen. Terrified. And he had a future carved out of years of blood and sweat and discipline. He couldn’t—he wouldn’t—

“Child support,” he said. “I’ll pay. But I can’t—this isn’t—”

Atsumu looked up. His eyes were wet, and Sakusa saw something in them he didn’t want to name.

“Get out,” Atsumu said. Steady. Too steady. “Get out, Sakusa.”

He left.

He told himself it was the right call. That Atsumu would get an abortion, or someone else would step in, or the universe would just fix it. He had nationals in two weeks. Olympic dreams. A future that didn’t include a baby he’d never wanted and a man he’d used to forget a loss he’d never let himself feel.

Then Osamu texted him from an unknown number: Atsumu quit volleyball.

And five months later: She’s due in two weeks.

Kiyoomi didn’t reply. He was in Germany by then, signing with MSBY Black Jackals. First step on a ladder to the Olympics. He didn’t have room for this. He didn’t have room for the image of Atsumu alone in a delivery room, or the way his own hands shook when he touched his apartment door.

But the image stayed. During training. During sleep. On the court, when the crowd roared and didn’t know what he’d left behind.

---

The delivery room was white. So white it hurt. Atsumu had been here sixteen hours, and the only color came from the blood on the sheets and the sweat blurring his vision.

He was alone.

His mother offered to come. He said no. Pride, maybe. Or maybe he couldn’t bear to see her face when she realized what her son had become. So he called Osamu and Suna, told them to stay nearby, told them don’t come in no matter what you hear.

What they heard was screaming.

Atsumu fainted twice. First time, the nurse slapped him. Second time, they hooked him to an IV and said if he couldn’t push, they’d have to cut her out. The thought of a scar on top of everything made something hot and angry rise in his chest, and he pushed.

He screamed until his throat bled.

He screamed until he thought he might die.

Then a cry. Small. Furious. Alive.

The nurse placed her on his chest, and Atsumu looked down. Red and wrinkled and slimy. The most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. Her fingers curled around his thumb, and he sobbed—great, heaving sobs—because she was here, and she was his, and no one was kissing his forehead.

No one was holding his hand.

No one was telling him he did good.

He held her alone, in that white room, and the silence where Sakusa’s name should’ve been was so loud it drowned out everything.

---

Four hours later, the door opened.

Atsumu looked up from the bassinet. The baby was sleeping, swaddled in a blanket his mother knitted, her tiny face peaceful. He’d been watching her breathe for an hour, counting each rise and fall.

Sakusa Kiyoomi stood in the doorway. Hair still damp. Clean jacket over a t-shirt that said MSBY Black Jackals. He looked rested. Composed. Like he’d stepped off a plane after a good night’s sleep, and something in Atsumu’s chest cracked open.

“You’re late,” Atsumu said, voice a rasp.

Sakusa didn’t step forward. His face was unreadable, but his hands were in his pockets, jaw tight. “I showered. The flight was long.”

“I screamed.” The words came out flat. Dead. “I screamed so loud the nurses had to sedate me. And you showered.”

Sakusa flinched. Barely visible—a flicker at the corner of his mouth—but Atsumu saw it. Filed it away next to the memory of him saying I don’t care.

“I’m here now,” Sakusa said.

“Four hours late.”

“I didn’t know when it would happen.”

“You could’ve been here, you coward.” The baby stirred, and Atsumu lowered his voice, but the venom stayed. “You could’ve been here the whole time. When I found out I was pregnant. When I had to tell my coach I was dropping out. When I couldn’t afford rent and Osamu had to lend me money. You could’ve been here, Sakusa. But you weren’t. And now you’re standing there, all showered, like that makes it better.”

Sakusa pulled his hands out of his pockets. Looked at the bassinet, then away. “What’s her name?”

“Why do you want to know?”

“I’m asking.”

“You don’t get to ask.” Atsumu’s voice broke on the last word. He reached into the bassinet and lifted her, cradling her against his chest. She smelled like soap and milk and new skin. He breathed her in, felt the tears coming again. “You don’t get to show up after everything and ask her name like you’re some uncle on holiday. You made your choice, Sakusa. You made it when you walked out of that café. So take your clean jacket and your Olympic dreams and your four-hour-late arrival, and leave.”

Sakusa didn’t leave.

He stood there in the doorway. The clock ticked. The baby breathed. A nurse passed in the hallway and gave them both a curious look.

“I’m sorry,” Sakusa said. Quiet. So quiet Atsumu almost missed it.

He didn’t answer. He looked down at his daughter, at the fan of her eyelashes against her round cheeks, and thought about everything he’d given up for her. How he’d never play volleyball again. How he’d never stand on a national court. How his name would never be in the history books like Sakusa’s would.

“It doesn’t matter,” Atsumu said. And he meant it. “It doesn’t matter if you’re sorry. She’s mine. I carried her. I screamed for her. I held her when no one else did. You don’t get to call yourself her dad just ’cause you feel guilty.”

Sakusa’s throat moved. He looked at the baby, and something passed over his face—longing, maybe. Regret. Grief.

“Can I—” He stopped. Started again. “Can I stay? Just tonight. In the chair. I won’t touch her.”

Atsumu wanted to say no. Wanted to throw something. Wanted to scream until his voice broke, until Sakusa finally felt a fraction of the pain he’d caused.

But he was tired. So tired.

“Fine,” he said. “But don’t talk to me.”

Sakusa sat in the plastic chair by the window. He didn’t sleep. He watched the sunrise bleed pink and orange across the skyline, and he watched Atsumu hold their daughter, and he didn’t say a word.

In the distance, a train rumbled toward the stadium where the next match would be played.