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It’s too warm to take a nap, but he really needs one; it’s been a long week. He’s been tossing and turning for a while now, thinking it’ll tire his already exhausted body out more, but it isn’t working so far. When he tosses himself to the other side of the bed, his elbow catches onto the fabric of Kita’s shirt, and he feels the softness against his elbow.
“Come on,” Kita says, as he sits up.
Kita gets off the bed and extends a hand out for him. Wordlessly, Atsumu takes it as he slips off the bed as well. As they get out of their bed, their plans for a nap in the evening fade away the moment they’re out of the bedroom.
Atsumu follows Kita into the beginning of their kitchen, but then Kita slowly lets go of his hand and motions for him to sit on a barstool at the kitchen island. Kita walks over to the refrigerator, opens it, and grabs something that Atsumu is too tired to pay attention to.
The surface of the kitchen island is cold against Atsumu’s arms as he folds one on top of the other. Next, he presses his cheek into them. His face is toward the opening that leads into their living room. It’s nice, refreshing against his warm skin. I could fall asleep here, he thinks as his eyelids flutter.
“You’re going to fall off,” Kita says over the sound of the water from the sink. It isn’t said rudely, but a soft and raspy way of when you’ve been woken up by the love of your life’s elbow and yes, you said that out loud and it’s endearing kind of way, but that’s what Kita sounds all the time to Atsumu.
“But you’d pick me up,” he replies, as he gets up from the stool, and slowly pads around the island, and steps behind Kita. His arms loop underneath Kita’s bent arms, and he leans his chin into Kita’s shoulder. Kita leans back into his chest and adjusts his arms a little so they don’t bump against Atsumu’s sides.
Kita says nothing; he doesn’t have to. Atsumu already knows the answer is yes.
And the thing Kita grabbed from the refrigerator a couple of minutes ago is a mango. He sees a flash of tanned skin in the pale yellow light of their kitchen, as Kita reaches for the cutting board. Once it’s in his hands, he sets it down in front of him, and the mango goes on top.
A minute later, he picks up the knife to his left; it winks underneath the light of their kitchen as Kita holds the mango up with one hand while the other cuts it down in the middle quickly with a quiet clack. That alone makes him awake and wide-eyed.
Then, Kita picks up the piece of mango from the left side of the cutting board and runs the tip of the knife down vertically. The lines are symmetrical, but then again, his Kita is wonderful at everything he does. He may be biased, but it’s the truth.
He repeats the same motion but this time horizontally: the tip of the knife meets the yellow-sun mango, then it goes down, and then up. Kita tilts his head a little more. “I want to kiss you here,” Atsumu says, gently pressing his nose into the side of his neck.
“You can. Go ahead,” Kita replies.
Atsumu tilts his head and presses a kiss to the side of Kita’s neck, then underneath his ear, and with a little leaning in, the tender skin of his jaw’s underside. Kita is warm underneath his lips. It makes his heart fuzz in his chest like the fizzing sound a soda can do when it is opened for the first time. He buries his face into the side of his neck and inhales. He smells of citrus, a ghost of cologne that was gifted to him during the holidays, and the new laundry detergent they’ve been trying since the old one stopped being manufactured—the smell of home.
With a peek through his peripheral vision, he sees Kita has already moved onto the second part of the mango.
It’s nice, this moment between the two of them. From the outside looking in, it probably just looks like a couple cutting fruit on a Saturday evening, all tired from the long week, and quietly enjoying each other’s company, but in reality, this is the first Saturday evening they spent together in almost a month. He curls his fingers into the material of the too worn and loved shirt, and he presses himself a little further into Kita’s back.
“You alright?” says Kita, voice still soft that’s reserved for Atsumu.
“I’m good,” he reassures, as he presses another kiss on his neck, but this time to the mole on it. “Are you alright?”
“I’m good, thank you.” Atsumu watches as, one by one, Kita presses his fingertips into the peels of the mango, and cubes of mango pop up.
Kita picks up a cubed mango and holds it out over his shoulder. A wordless here, you can have the first one . “Thank you,” Atsumu whispers, before he leans in with his mouth open and takes the mango into his mouth.
“How is it?” Kita asks as he sets the knife down on the cutting board.
After he swallows, he says, “sweet.”
Kita grabs the bowl in front of him and carefully dumps the cubed mango into it. “Help me clean,” he says, with a squeeze to Atsumu’s hand. “Please,” he says with a gentle nudge of an elbow.
Atsumu slowly untangles himself from behind and decides he’ll clean the cutting board while Kita washes the knife. They don’t talk while they do this but bump elbows once every few moments. Kita doesn’t pull away, not even a centimeter, so Atsumu stays rooted to the spot.
***
Kita sits on the stool beside Atsumu’s stool; their knees bump into each other every so often, but no one moves. It’s just brief, but it makes a warmth fill the crooks and corners of his body that the sun will never reach. The bowl of mango sits on the marble between the two of them.
He reaches for a diced mango and lifts it up for Kita. They have been doing this every few moments: one picks one up, holds it up, and the other eats it. It’s intimate, and it makes Atsumu’s heart soften. Kita leans in and takes the fruit in one bite, and sits up as he chews.
“There’s one more left. Do ya want it or have you had your fill of ‘em?” Kita says with his side profile in Atsumu’s line of sight. He looks like a vision that Atsumu will see behind his eyelids for the rest of his life: there’s a shadow of light-sunset pink on the apples of his cheeks, on his hair, on his white t-shirt, and on the soft, straight line of his mouth. It feels like the sunset was just spilled over him, and Atsumu is getting it on him too: it’s there on his cheek, on the side of his neck, in his hair and making it look lighter because the sun always does that.
“Let’s finish it.”
A thing Atsumu has also noticed is that he enjoys feeling the tips of Kita’s fingers on his bottom lip. It’s brief, but he feels sticky inside because of it. It leaves him sticky with love, with a want for more.
“Atsumu.” He’ll never be tired of the way Kita says his name, and the effect it has on him.
“Hm?”
“You’re staring.”
And he has been watching Kita’s fingers as he wipes them clean from the bright yellow juice from the mango. “Sorry,” he says, a warmth spreading across his cheeks.
“Ya don’t have to apologize,” Kita says, as he hands him the rag. “But I’ve noticed for a while that ya look at me a certain way when my fingers are by your mouth.”
“I do not!” Atsumu says, like a liar.
“I like it,” Kita says, a couple of seconds later as he looks at Atsumu. “Your mouth on my fingers, I mean. And the way ya look at me, too.”
“Oh,” Atsumu breathes out while warmth pools in the pit of his stomach. His heart is swimming around in his body. Right now, it’s in his ribs and about to dive into the pit of his stomach. "I like it, too. All of it."
“You want something,” Kita says, and there isn’t any teasing in his voice, only genuine curiosity. “I can tell. You got that pensive look in your eyes.”
Atsumu blinks, “I do not.”
Kita raises a perfectly-straight eyebrow, and Atsumu wants to kiss the skin above it. “Yes, you do. It’s cute.”
His heart makes a motion in his heart; it better win a medal for this, and it better be gold. “But seriously, what do ya want?” Kita asks, and Atsumu feels the ghost of fingertips on the top of his hand.
Atsumu clears his throat, once, then twice for good measure before he speaks: “Right now, I want to kiss ya; can I?”
“Yes,” Kita says.
Kita curls his fingers into the hair on the back of his head and guides him to his lips, and then Atsumu closes the small gap between the two of them. At some point, they break away briefly to stand up, and Kita ends up backed up against the island, and he lets out a content sigh into his mouth.
The hand that isn’t in his hair is on his waist, then it’s somewhere on his lower back, and then he can feel it warm on his torso. “I can’t believe ya have a thing for fingers, Shin,” Atsumu mumbles on his bottom lip.
Kita laughs into the kiss, and he pulls away to glance up at him. His smile is bright and wide, his cheeks are warm, and he’s sweet on Atsumu’s mouth. “Well, I didn’t know I had it until now with ya.”
“Aw, I’m flattered, Shin.”
Kita rolls his eyes, but it’s playful, and then he’s looking up at Atsumu lovingly. It’s the only way Kita looks at him. “Come here,” he says, as he gently pulls at the collar of Atsumu’s shirt.
Atsumu leans in and kisses him again, like the man in love he is. He continues kissing him like this as they stumble around the kitchen for another space for the two of them, and then as they’re out of the kitchen and in the hallway, and in their bedroom until they both fall back onto the bed.