Work Text:
There was heavy air in his apartment. Kiyoomi trying--and failing--to innocuously glare at Atsumu’s back, as the latter was busy chopping vegetables. “‘Yer mad at me.” He said bluntly, punctuated by the repetitive chopping sound his knife made as it hit the cutting board.
Kiyoomi swallowed. “You deserve more than me.”
Atsumu swung the knife too hard into the cutting board, and it got lodged in the wood. He turned towards his boyfriend. “You don’t get to decide that. That isn’t yer fucking decision, Omi.”
“But I’m right, and-”
Atsumu interrupted him. “We have this argument all the time, and my answer never fucking changes. I’m staying with ‘ya.”
“But at the cost of what, ‘Tsumu!?” Kiyoomi shouted, exploding, like the gases that had been slowly building under his skin for weeks, months, years evn, had finally exploded in a fanatical of anger and pain. “We can’t go to the places you like because of my,” he choked out the next part, “my fear-”
“It’s a medical condition and I don’t care where we are as long as I’m with ‘ya.”
“-and you have to spend all your time dotting on me, and worrying about me.” He stuttered slightly, throat clogged with emotion, eyes gleaming with unshed tears. “Your life has become just me, ‘Tsumu. You hate it, I can see it. And it’s-it’s not going to change until I get better.” He finished, hands pathetically falling at his sides.
Atsumu hands gripped his hips, his body looming over Kiyoomi like a very angry predator.“And that’s when, ‘Omi? When can ‘ya fucking say we’ll get better?”
Kiyoomi swallowed. “Maybe tomorrow,” his voice hitched, “maybe in another life.”
Atsumu’s hands tightened over his. “I don’t think I can wait that long,” he whispered hoarsely.
“Well,” Kiyoomi let his hands fall into his lap, “I guess it just works out like that sometimes.”
“Well maybe I don’t want it to!” Atsumu roared, rabid as one of the stray dogs Kiyoomi had once seen in the back alley next to his house as a teen scrapping for food. His eyes were seething with more than rage, but with hurt, and--if Kiyoomi looked close enough--he thought he could see the strings of Atsumu’s love for him, quivering, strengthening, and eroding, cycling through the three over and over again, flaring with his longing and receding with his anger. “Maybe I don’t want to see how it fucking ‘works out.’” He screamed, hoarsely, passionately, with everything of him yet none of it at all. Atsumu was a swirling storm, erratic and chaotic and beautiful, a damning gift straight from mother nature’s icy hands.
Maybe Kiyoomi was wrong, maybe Atsumu wasn’t the hurricane in this relationship; maybe it was Kiyoomi. He felt the winds beneath his skin, he felt uncertainty pulsate against his bones, he felt fear infiltrate his bloodstream everyday. He felt paralyzed by it, like he was fighting against a hazy drowsiness that turned the air into molasses.
“Omi,” Atsumu whispered, “I am nothing without ‘ya.”
“No.” He rebutted softly, gently grasping the other boy’s face in his hands. “You are everything. You are the trees in autumn. You are the butterflies hatching out of their cocoons. You are the birds chirping around atop of the streetlights.” He might’ve been crying. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t care. “You are everything beautiful about this world; everything beautiful to me.”
“Then why,” Atsumu’s voice hitched, “do I have to leave?”
“Because I’m not that for you.”
Atsumu ripped his face from his hands. “‘Ya don’t get to say that. It’s not ‘yer place to fucking decide that.”
Kiyoomi narrowed his eyes. “Bullshit. You’re tied down because of me, because of my fears.” He let his face slacken, his features ease into something warm, maybe, or hopeful, he doesn’t know what his face looked like. In that moment he couldn’t feel his body, felt as if he was morphing, formless, until all that remained were his eyes, so he could gaze upon the silent beauty of Miya Atsumu. “This isn’t anyone's fault,” he whispered, finally, weakly.
“Then make it someone’s,” Atsumu sobbed, falling into his chest.. “Make it mine, so I can fix it. So I can change for you, for us.”
“No,” Kiyoomi hissed. “Changing for someone isn’t love, Atsumu. Love isn’t compromise-”
“-it’s collaboration.” Atsumu finished, tears rolling down his face.
“You said that to me, at the very beginning of us.”
“Well,” Atsumu huffed. “Well, fuck what I said! When I said that I wasn’t about to lose the love with my life, Kiyoomi.”
“If you changed for me, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself.” Kiyoomi murmured. “I’d hate myself until I died.”
“But we’d be together now.”
Kiyoomi cast a glare at him. “That’s selfish, ‘Tsumu.”
“Says ‘ ya,” Atsumu sniffed. “‘Yer the guy trying to break up with me.”
He bit back his tears, bit back the lurching agony rising in his chest, into his throat, blocking his airways, edging slowly through his body and hacking away at his emotions. “It’s necessary,” he said, “for you to be happy.”
“‘Yer making that decision for me, ‘Omi. ‘Ya don’t get to tell me what makes me happy or not, and right now, what makes me happiest is ‘ya.”
They sat in heavy silence, introspective, oppressive, until Atsumu’s hand snuck into Kiyoomi’s. “‘Ya said I was everything beautiful about the world. I don’t think ‘ya understand, ‘yer everything beautiful about me, ‘Omi.”
“You’ll find new things to make you beautiful, ‘Tsumu.” Kiyoomi whispered. “You always do.”
Atsumu sighed. “I don’t want to. I want to live in this moment forever. Careless, free, with nothing but each other, and all the beautiful things.”
“Life doesn’t work like that.” Kiyoomi looked up at the ceiling, if only in a failed attempt to hide the mist in his eyes from Atsumu. “It speeds on, ready or not.”
“I think I hate that the most.”
“Me too, ‘Tsumu,” Kiyoomi hummed. “Me too.”
“So, this is it. Us.”
“Yeah,” Kiyoomi agreed quietly, “I guess it is. And this doesn’t have forever. I’m gonna work to get under control, to get better. I’m not gonna let my condition control.”
Atsumu carefully dislodged himself from Kiyoomi, and slowly began to walk to the door. “I’m gonna-I’m gonna go stay with ‘Samu for a couple days. I’ll come back for my stuff soon.” Just as he was slipping on his shoes, he turned to Kiyoomi. “And, ‘Omi? Call me when you get better. Maybe we can try again soon.” There was a small, saddened smile gracing his face. “Be it tomorrow, be it another life, I’ll wait for us.”
Just as Kiyoomi started nodding, the door clicked shut behind Atsumu, leaving Kiyoomi sitting on the couch in the apartment. Alone.