Drop your Mask (Atsumu X reader)

1- Meetings

Atsumu’s angry stomps of his feet come to a drastic halt upon his stupid realization that he is not, in fact, in his way to the canteen. Rather, he’s in the middle of nowhere. He whips his head left and right because, well, Samu’s an asshole, and when Samu acts like an asshole he makes him angry. Realization  dawns on him, and his eyes widen. He’s not really as deserted as he thought himself to be. He’s just in the acute corner of the school yard, where no human being dawdle in. There’s a large tree the school had planted to hide the ugly graffiti sign a delinquent had repainted over and over again. He growls out loud and whips around — again — to leave when he catches a lone figure staring at the tree.

A girl. She’s of medium height and from where he’s standing, which is close enough to glimpse her face, she’s of mediocre beauty as well. But something still pauses his erratic thoughts and his fuming anger. He doesn’t know what, though. Maybe the way her brown hair is flapping to the exact same tune of the trees? Or the serene look in her dull eyes that somehow manages to make everything stoic in her face soften? Atsumu squints his eyes: she’s familiar. Where had he seen her before?

“Um, what are you doing?” He doesn’t realize he’s already standing near her and asking her such a question until he actually hears his own voice. He winces and takes a large step back as if he’s automatically preparing for the effects of a slap. His interruption and his rude tone, surprisingly, do not warrant a slap at all.

The girl doesn’t twist her head to acknowledge him, but she does look at him from her peripheral vision. She doesn’t ask his name, or why he’s here, or why the fuck he’s sweating so hard (he just came from practice. Yes, at lunchtime). She simply returns to her active yet creepy tree-watching. “I’m watching the tree. Don’t you think it’s fascinating how she’s swishing around like a little baby whale?”

“Riiiight, little baby whales,” he frowns, “That’s cute.”

She nods sorrowfully, as if the entire idea of cute yet large fish makes her sad yet delighted at the same time. Atsumu has a big WTF face on, but he clears his expression not to be rude.

“You know that she’s moving because of the wind, right?” He asks confusedly because, honestly, he doesn’t know what the fuck is going on.

She finally, finally, turns her head so she can grace his pretty face with her eyes. They’re twinkling massively, like she’s taunting him, and Atsumu wonders if she wants to burst into laughter just by seeing him. “I don’t understand your point? I usually try my best to preempt whys but somehow, they always come at me.” She continues to nod sorrowfully.

“I’m sorry?”

She shakes her head dismissively. “Ignore me. I’m just weird.”

“Is that what people generally do? Ignore you?” He asks confusedly.

She looks a bit surprised, for whatever reason, but then her lips curl into a smug smile. Now, she turns her entire body so she can look him up and down. Atsumu has had endless attention from girls and volleyball fanatics who’d look at him like a piece of delicious cheesecake. He’d usually eat up all that attention because he’s a little attention seeker, but her attention, on the other hand, unnerved him. He squirms uncomfortably, and he swears she’s smirking. “Tsumu, I didn’t exactly foresee you like this.”

Atsumu blinks his eyes in surprise, “How do you know my name?”

She puts a finger up her chin and wonders out loud, totally ignoring his inquiry, “See, at your games, whenever school forces us to attend, I speculated that you’re at least of average intelligence to play the way you do, but outside court, I considered you rather absent minded,” Atsumu’s jaws hang, slowly, “Hmm, the way you phrased your question right now, to a stranger nevertheless, makes me question my own competence. Have I misread you? I did consider other factors to speculate you correctly. Like, I don’t know you intimately, and I did put in advance the notion that what must be seen is not what must be real, so I made sure to put alterations to your personality, although I gotta admit, in none of the universes I created have I ever understood you’re capable of being observant.”