Archive of Our Own ^beta

"Di'n't know you were this much of a lamo," he mutters. "Only lil' kids can't sleep before a big trip."

Sitting at the edge of their porch, Atsumu wads his face into a small, bloodshot scowl up at him.

"Shut up," he grumbles, shoving his foot into one shoe before picking up his other. "I'll snatch yer bento when y'ain't lookin'."

"Oh, yeah?" Already half-out the door, Osamu raises a brow. "I'll tell Kita on you."

"Wh— Ya wouldn't—" He flares with bunched cheeks. "Shut up."

"Y'know, if ya get sick, he might even take care o' ya." It lilts like a question and sounds like a promise. When Atsumu clams up, Osamu's brows bounce with his infuriating, dead-eyed grin. "Better warn 'im 'bout how clingy ya get when yer sick 'n' miserable."

Atsumu's shoulder burns with the lob of his shoe, the sole thudding against the door Osamu ducks behind in a snort. Hopping to pick up the shoe, swearing under his breath, he rubs the heel of his palm against his smarting eyes.

Can't get sick. I can get sick later, he thinks in incantations, stealing sleep on the bus and joking with Aran and bothering Suna and biting back barbs to Osamu's smirks and reassuring Kita he isn't tired and counting the days and holding his breath. Just not yet.

In the Inarizaki auditorium, the wide pocket away from the world, Atsumu stares till his eyes run dry, that not-yet-spring sun filtering through the dust motes and air and sea of nobodies and somebodies and people-to-be, when Kita Shinsuke—his name bouncing off the walls—stands to take his diploma.

In a matter of days, Atsumu will see him, Aran, and the others. They'll each blunder their way to the bus stops, waiting for the 54 or 14 or was it 34 and arguing over which number it was supposed to be till they take the AD1, then grapple with bags and window seats on the Kounotori train line, playing cards and snacking through the off-season and overkill but delicious frozen mikan, before stepping off into Kinosaki—streets lined with quiet, proud gabled roofs, buttresses rich and wooden topped with green gold, low stone bridges and tresses of leaves from trees bent for a peek into a long river—and trekking to Morizuya Inn.

Because Hyogo's trees, like the rest of Japan's, shed their wintry pallor by March.

Their branches fill up from their bare emaciation, engorge on the trickling spring sun cutting through the remnant chill in translucent slices, complexion glowing with fresh, moist leaves. The birds begin trilling their praises; tourism booms with seeds riding on rejuvenated wind. Verdant spots of watercolour on a sky still in two minds; one austere white, another pearly blue, a compromise of cottony clouds and milky mesh of both seeping between the gaps.

But the daylight grows voracious in a different flavour to the sunlight sapped to drought in winter; like with the famine of hue off which gutless greys and bloodless blues dominate, the main act to the winter months, spring's cohort stumbles into dress rehearsal all a teething stage. Because a certain devouring comes with spring's full-fat arrival, its over-saturation of vivid, stinging colour: the technicolour debut of pool blue skies, glaring green and gold fields, candy pink cherry blossoms with steeped fuchsia centres, watercolours spilled with greedy flecks in a skipping stone pursuit guzzling for more.

So March, transitory, the warm-up act made literal, doubles as the chemistry read: the breeding grounds for ideation, palettes, mood boards, costume design. The air still nips pettishly, fussy and standoffish at performing without a set list; the lighting team still needs adjusting, shy with how hot the warmer bulbs run. Winter's ambience, their pale and poised cast, stands by a watchful understudy, slipping in when the show must go on.

In a matter of hours, Atsumu will see him, Aran, and the others outside the auditorium so they can have lunch and nail down the whole plan for their getaway to Toyooka's hot spring town and duck free of the expansive, fleeting cold.

Ahh, not yet, Atsumu thinks through pursed lips, resigned and quiet but harried and frantic, as Kita's hand takes hold of his diploma and his other seals into a handshake. Not yet.

The scent of cypress rides the steam of spring water. Traditional, if a little fancy, Morizuya Inn lays nestled in the heart of greening trees, the hot springs steadily pumping heat through the ventricles and atria of the small forest, the warm-lit and polished-wood and straw-floored corridors snaking through the inn.

Three rooms for two each, the two captains, former and yet-to-be, are allocated one.

Atsumu collapses into bed for a cat-nap and unsticks his eyes wheezing.

"M'sorry," mumbles Atsumu, sat up as Kita settles next to him with a wooden tray and bowl of congee. "Y'oughta be relaxin' with the team. Not takin' care o' me."

"It's more relaxin' fer me to know yer bein' cared for."

He gulps around a ball blocking his throat, the pain dizzying.

"Kita," he whines, the sound lost and sheepish. "I..." He's so febrile that he twitches. "You can leave the food fer me." With a hoarse breath, an upturned brow, the tendons in his neck fire ablaze as he turns. "I can feed myself."

Kita studies him. Atsumu's eyes, too white-hot to dart, stay on the ground.

"That so?" Without moving from his kneel, a posture-perfect seiza, Kita nods to the congee in his hands. "Take the bowl, then."

With a squint, Atsumu gives a glance. The congee glistens in steamy, malty glops in a china bowl, chunks of chicken and nuggets of vegetables dotting it with colour. The rich, savoury smell glides mellow off his plugged sinuses, his brain too cooked to have his mouth water.

Lead lines the muscles in his arms, more scalding and heavy than the bite of lactic acid after their drills, and Atsumu loses the fight against his wince.

With no more than a blink, Kita picks up the ceramic spoon from the tray beside him.

"Can't leave you on yer own when yer sick, Atsumu. Just wouldn't be proper."

Atsumu's gaze lays long on Kita—dressed in his blue-grey yukata, colours more suited for winter—before it falls to the spoon he holds up to him, bowl hovering beneath.

"Don't worry," Kita adds, a tinge of humour to his lip, sending his heart thumping harder. "I won't be tellin' the others."

The thought races through the last of Atsumu's neurons not managing the inflammation of his body, in another, throbbing swallow he takes, one glimpse of the future given to his bleary, fast dampening eyes through a fog as so:

You won't have to. I'll blab all 'bout this to Samu, an' he'll tell the others. The whole team'll never lemme live it down an' I'll get mad at Samu fer tellin' an' you'll be off workin' a paddy field in Kobe while I get us assholes ready ta sweep up all o' Nationals an' make Samu wish he'd stay playin' an' you so dang proud o' me.

Winning isn't everything. Results aren't everything. The process matters. 'Who needs the memories?' isn't a rhetorical question as Atsumu leans in to take a sip of the first food he can stomach all day, Kita helping to scoop the spillage at his lip he's too exhausted to lick up himself, and the lessons Kita taught him flash in a reel through his head.

Don't make me think about all that yet, Atsumu pleads, his antibodies fighting the flush consuming him and his heart and soul leaning into piping congee and Kita's cold spoon. I ain't built for it.

In the third week of March: Inarizaki High, like the rest of the nation's schools, pats shut a book-end to another full year; spring lighting and winter swatches play tug-of-war.

The diplomas that each graduate holds tease an itinerary, a constellation chart, encoded in the brush-black and hanko-red and photocopy-grey inks of names and signatures and guarantees furled up in hard, dark tubes, pulsing under clutches of varying convictions a map-in-a-bottle allegory. The hot-and-cold, stuck-in-place afternoon has to decide sometime before sunset: what temperature to stain the water that stays clear for the scant time being, the precious now, before it spills onto the day that bleeds into the eve, creeps onto the back of the following sunrise.

Meanwhile, dry eyes are in the house for the volleyball team when they gather after the ceremony. They are boys becoming men and seasoned at sweeping with sniffs and kicking the wet under the carpet.

To the shifting season's vagaries, many adapt. Aran, like his comforting, flesh-and-blood self, does so with warm browns and bright grins and baffled drawls, drawing his diploma like a blade to reinforce his guard. Atsumu is on him with the rest of the team like they're scrabbling to revive autumn, a wild smattering of mild browns and darker reds of not leaves but men-to-be, men-not-yet, catching the crest of a fleeting breeze.

Kita, on even the most sentimental, high-strung, outstanding of days, takes the word extraordinary and neatly sections it for better sorting purposes: extra and ordinary. The season's plans and growing pains make no mark on him, their dyes sliding off his skin, his ever-winter self, port to a chill whichever way he roams. He is the silver-grey of cleanly bent rake claws that sweep them into a discreet, discrete heap, grip firm on the handle, on his diploma. Of silver snow topped on matte grey roof tiles and asphalt, gaze a pair of gold split pins—inoffensively round on top, broad and thin and piercing just beneath—that hook him and the seasons and perhaps the world that enters through them in a clear locus, rendering all outbursts of things like vagaries and quirks and whims mousey in the corners they retreat to.

But if snow is made of water and water counts as thawed even when cold, then—against the wavering warmth of spring's unsure, dipping toes—Kita's short-curved smile provides bracing relief as if it were a baking summer.

"Erryone," Atsumu blurts, possessed, watching Kita glance split-pin gold at him. "We oughta grab ice cream."

Osamu noogies him. Suna pulls a face. Aran gestures at the whole wide, crisp spring sky, his squawking retort and Atsumu's artless stomp crunching the snickers out of the rest of the leaf pile team. Kita warns him coolly, so coolly, of needing to stay warm.

As Atsumu nods at him in a dithering March, a pastel, gangling, not-quite spring, later full from hot udon that Kita will take his time with chewing, his teeth ache for a full-bodied, shivering cold.

Atsumu shouldn't be so glad to spy red camellias on the train to Toyooka.

Camellias are a bright, ill-favoured thing. Their fat, voluptuous bodies, once free of the stem, take to the ground in a nasty plunge, life ending in a dull, sad plop. The cherry blossom, in contrast, drifts atop the wind in arresting twirls, pirouettes to the ground as intact as it detached—heralding new beginnings, beautiful in its transience.

At least camellias made themselves clear and quick, like a spike landing home.

At least in winter, even as the cold threatens to dry his hands, all of that stays sleeping under the snow.

Kita is never warm. But, as he sinks into his seat on the train, breaths even and quiet from sleep, Atsumu wants to lean into him. Have Kita lying on his shoulder. Stay close and cool, one way or another.

"I'll give you 1000 yen to draw on his face, O captain."

Stiffening, Atsumu whips around to Suna kneeling up on his seat, phone in one hand and marker in the other, smiling sly at him with the whisper. No wonder he kept glancing over after Aran left for the toilets.

"Sit'cher ass down, Suna," Osamu grunts with a hard edge. "Y'ain't flakin' outta this round."

Beside him, Osamu yanks him down by the shoulder, pulling a yelping Suna back into a card game that he apparently was taking hard losses in against Ginjima.

Just as Atsumu thinks he can relax, he starts to Osamu looking back once at him then Kita. He brings up a finger and draws an upward arrow at them. Which, then, Atsumu realises to be an umbrella.

"Shut up...!"

Atsumu hisses through grit teeth and taut lips. Osamu just dances his brow twice at him with his smarmy, flat-eyed smile before turning back around.

Then, with the smallest sigh, Kita shuffles in his seat. Atsumu's neck almost twinges, looking to him in a spasm. But he stays asleep, and Atsumu, with the bags under his eyes, lets go of the breath he didn't know he held.

Maybe a year ago, even half of one, Atsumu would've taken the money and marker.

But now it's March, and Atsumu falls asleep next to him, hoping one of them ends up clumsy and tips loose. Drifting like a cherry blossom. Nosediving like a camellia. Meeting something final and solid, one way or another.

Come what may, Atsumu can take a guess at how he's already fallen.

A stream-slide of paper doors. Socks padding on snug-weave straw. Clinks of metal, thunks of PET, settling with a rustle in a bag.

A hoarse, voiceless cough. Another. Both raze the lands of Atsumu's throat, tender and ragged. His lips, cracked beds to a sun-scorched river, part to no vapour, outlet a burned sigh.

His eyelids, sore and fluttering, stay sagged shut. The darkness tinges warmer, browner, with the weighted damp lifting off his forehead. The moisture there cooks like droplets skipping in place over sizzling cast iron.

Then—the dark sinking back like a quilt—a brisk, rousing cold. Rests cottony over his head, dipping his shivers into a long lake of relief, his tingling settling, his throat unclenching, wringing out a splintering sound.

"Don't talk, Atsumu." Kita's voice rings cool and clarion; that lake of relief ripples. "You need to rest yer throat."

Atsumu—with his creak-rough joints, on a thick, pained swallow—ekes out a nod. Kita's answering hum threads through the muggy haze, sewing the edges of his consciousness together with tighter seams.

Then his breath hitches. Kita's slim fingers, Kita's cool callouses, Kita's knobbed knuckles, press gentle into the piping crevice under his jaw, the sluggish thump of his arteries startled to working speed.

"Still burnin' up."

Atsumu's searing throat bobs, no spit for him to swallow. The ball of his head, chained to the rest of his body, lolls along, seeking out Kita's cold, his whimper halved and gurgled, craving for it to linger. Just a while longer.

"So you do get clingy when yer ill."

Amusement tempers the observation. Atsumu's parched lips crush thin. He can't have the room to heat up further.

"S'all right." Kita's chilled, refreshing hand drifts, petting him across the shoulder, the chest, over the covers. "You focus on gettin' better. Make this trip one worth rememberin', hm?"

Kita pets out a soft, soothing beat with his palm. A rhythm carries past his sealed lips, the hum a guiding, pied piper tune.

But Atsumu forages for whatever morsels his greedy fingers can reach. Camellias, cherry blossoms, chicken congee, and frozen mikan and sleeping faces. He can only hold a hand-warmer and cover up with gloves for so long, because no winter can last forever. Spring always steps into its role, the opening act for all that is to come. And maybe fast and slow, whenever a flower falls, no matter how abrupt or solemn or sweet or longing its coda feels, seeds and echoes and scents and something or other of it always comes back in some form, some way.

And later—when he recovers enough to: dodge Osamu's punches and Suna's photos by ducking behind Aran and Ginjima; offers to wash Kita's back through a laugh and quiets down when he assents; saves Osamu from falling asleep in the hot springs and carries him back with Kita; walks through the town at night wrapped up warm and well though the temperature does climb just a touch, listening to Kita talk about his plans training in Kobe before, under the warm lights and blue-black night and the palest buds of cherry blossoms, Atsumu blurts that he has something to tell him before he leaves—Atsumu will take whatever this trip gives him and shape it with his own hands.

Besides: the knowledge knocks hard at Atsumu's skull, the feverish sting bundling a pile of needles in the baskets of his eye sockets; if he were hale and hearty and well, his eyes would smart just the same.

So, inside, Atsumu promises. Chants and swears in the cage of his head, the bars red-hot, clamouring for the chill, following Kita's song and later basking misty-eyed in his broadest, warmest, most spring-time smile yet—none of it the last by the longest shot.

It already is.