Work Text:
my hands wanted to touch your hands
because we had hands.
~Frank Bidart, In the Western Night
The list of reasons why you should not let Miya Atsumu inside your apartment has the potential to be a veritable cornucopia of entries but, because Kiyoomi is a minimalist at heart and likes to exercise restraint, so far, it boasts only five. Without further ado, it is a truth universally acknowledged that if you let a Miya Atsumu into your apartment, he will:
- track mud inside whether there is any mud to be tracked in your neighborhood or not
- comment on the lack of personal belongings inside
- exist in it
- breathe in it
- be in it.
Kiyoomi knows all this because there is currently a Miya Atsumu in his apartment and the apartment is being muddied, commented on, existed, breathed, and be’d in. It’s the middle of monsoon season, the sky precipitating cats, dogs, and other animals of choice upon the little outdoors that is Higashiosaka, and Miya Atsumu, not only soaked to the bone but resolved to make it Kiyoomi’s problem, is ruining Kiyoomi’s floorboards one raindrop at a time as he cradles a dilapidated succulent in his visibly cold, going on frostbite hands.
*
“No fridge magnets whatsoever,” Atsumu says as he pokes his head inside the kitchen.
“No stuffed animals ta speak of,” as he glances inside Kiyoomi’s bedroom on his way past.
“No, what’s it called, brick-a-brick? croc-a-crack?” as he trails water into the living room.
When he finally deigns to become stationary, he elects to do so on Kiyoomi’s no-longer-pristine couch, but better a wet piece of furniture than an apartment turned bathhouse, so, for the moment, Kiyoomi decides to turn a blind eye to his antics.
“Miya,” he sighs, tossing Atsumu a towel. Atsumu, whose hands are still otherwise engaged, clutching a potted cactus like a lifeline, catches it with his face. “To what do I owe the displeasure.”
The towel slides off Atsumu’s face and lands in his lap. It reveals things that Kiyoomi previously missed, busy trying not to Mount Unzen wrath all over the place as he was. Now that Atsumu has given up his pilgrimage through Kiyoomi’s apartment in favor of a more localized dripping, Kiyoomi’s brain is hard at it, noticing with abandon, as though to make up for lost time.
“Offer me tea first,” Atsumu says with a sniffle as his grip on the pot tightens. “What kind of a host are ya?”
“You don’t like tea,” Kiyoomi points out. He knows this about Atsumu, but he wishes he didn’t. Atsumu doesn’t deserve to have things like how he takes his tea, which is not at all, known about him. He deserves being offered tea brewed in a dusty cup by someone who doesn’t take no for an answer, refill after refill, until he keels over and dies of alkaloid overdose.
He deserves no one showing up to his funeral after death by alkaloid overdose, and Kiyoomi would like to stop noticing things now.
“You’re supposed ta offer all the same,” Atsumu sniffles. As befits a respectable residence, Kiyoomi keeps his apartment at room temperature, but the rain must have done its job because Atsumu, the portable space heater no one asked for, is shaking like a china cabinet during a 6.0 magnitude earthquake. The chattering of his teeth is as excessive as it is uncalled for, and Kiyoomi is already wondering which cleaning product he’ll have to use to get the stains out of the upholstery if Atsumu decides to have the gall to bite off his tongue and bleed out right there on Kiyoomi’s couch.
Best get rid of the couch altogether. Motoya’s birthday is coming up: the perfect occasion for Kiyoomi to buy himself a new one. Make it stain-resistant this time.
Stain-resistant. Water-resistant. Atsumu-resistant and Kiyoomi would really like to stop noticing things now.
“Miya,” he capitulates, more or less resigned to all the noticing. “Why are your eyes wet.”
“It’s raining outside, Omi,” Atsumu says evenly, trying to play it off. “All of me is wet.”
“Yes, I’ve noticed,” Kiyoomi scoffs, glaring at the trail of water Atsumu has left in his wake. “And why are they red.”
Atsumu blinks at him. He does so with his eyes, which are redder than they are wet and more noticeable than they are red—his eyes, which are so noticeable that they became acknowledgeable until they simply had to be acknowledged. Atsumu’s very soul seems to stoop there, wet also, like a poorly wrung rag, peering out at Kiyoomi from the confines of Atsumu’s irises.
Kiyoomi does not ask Atsumu if he doesn’t own an umbrella, a raincoat, or a brain. He does not yell at him for giving Kiyoomi’s setter frostbite, either. Instead, he does what he does best: stares.
“I’m allergic ta the rain,” Atsumu sighs once he’s been stared into answering.
“You’re allergic to the rain,” Kiyoomi repeats slowly.
“Runs in the family,” Atsumu shrugs. “Don’t get yer panties in a twist, it ain’t contagious.”
Atsumu is a bad liar. It’s an oddly good look on him, wet-rat hair notwithstanding. Honesty does to his face what toner does to his hair what spring does to—
No.
“Offer me tea, Omi,” Atsumu insists again. “This is hard enough fer me as it is.”
“What is,” Kiyoomi sighs.
“I have ta give Marie Ant Toilette here up for adoption,” Atsumu sniffles as his hands, which are yet to fall off due to frostbite, tighten on the flowerpot again. “Congratulations, Omi,” he perks up briefly after a pause. “Yer goin’ ta be a daddy.”
*
It is perhaps of some relevance that there also exists a list of Places You Should Not Interact with Miya Atsumu In. Back in the day, it comprised such locations as:
- the street
- the inside of an airplane (and yes, there is a story)
- the grocery store (ditto)
- the pet store (ditto, ditto, ditto)
- Onigiri Miya (a thousand times ditto)
- Kiyoomi’s apartment (case in point).
Because the list began to run a little on the long side with the addition of entries such as public libraries, public parks, public food stands, and all manner of other equally public locations, Kiyoomi, who, as you might remember, is a minimalist at heart and likes to exercise restraint, ended up narrowing it down to:
- the multiverse.
*
Among the wreckage of Kiyoomi’s quiet night in:
“Can you put that away and dry your hair, for fuck’s sake.”
“She has a name, Omi,” Atsumu sniffles.
“Fine,” Kiyoomi says through his teeth. “Can you put”—oh Jesus, he can’t do this— “Marie”—God fucking dammit— “Antoilette”—there we go— “away and dry your hair instead of dripping all over my couch, for fuck’s sake.”
Atsumu turns his wet, red, noticeable, acknowledgeable, acknowledged, soulful eyes upon Kiyoomi and executes the most dramatic pout Kiyoomi has ever had the misfortune of witnessing, lower lip pushed out with almost Olympic zeal, chin wobbling away like there’s no tomorrow.
“What,” Kiyoomi snaps.
“It’s Marie Ant Toilette, Omi,” Atsumu says miserably, clutching the flowerpot in a vice grip, his hair still dripping water like a dying showerhead.
Kiyoomi sighs and snatches the towel off Atsumu’s lap.
“What are ya—”
“Don’t move or I’ll kill you,” Kiyoomi hisses. “I’ll kill you, do you hear me.”
*
Miya Atsumu is vermin is pest is plague is plight is blight is scourge. This is something Kiyoomi knows because he decided that it must be so. Atsumu is much like a vampire, except he does not burn when in contact with direct sunlight, he won’t be banished with garlic, and he will enter your apartment without waiting for an invitation, so, okay, maybe he is not like a vampire after all.
He comes in early June, bringing the rain with him, and Kiyoomi does not invite him inside, no, but, after peering out the peephole and taking in the sorry, fountain state of him, for some reason, he opens the door anyway.
Really now, goes the bolt, are you sure about this, goes the lock, no take-backsies, goes the door handle, and Kiyoomi opens it wide.
*
“Spike Spiegel was the first to go,” Atsumu sighs as Kiyoomi vigorously rubs his hair with the towel. “I’d water it every day, ya see.”
“Miya,” Kiyoomi says, pausing his ministrations. “Was Spike Spiegel also a cactus.”
“That he was, Omi,” Atsumu nods. “Gods rest his soul. Also, ow.”
“Do it yourself if you have objections,” Kiyoomi snaps, grabbing a fistful of hair through the towel and giving it a yank in retaliation. “Why on Earth would you water a cactus.”
“Well, don’t they grow in the desert?” Atsumu shrugs, ducking his head. He is still at risk of de-tonguing himself in the middle of Kiyoomi’s living room, but Kiyoomi would rather clean blood off his couch or dispose of it altogether than offer Atsumu the blanket currently draped over its back. “I figured they must need all the water they can get ta survive out there.”
“Miya,” Kiyoomi says, unsure where to start. “We live in Japan.”
“Anyway,” Atsumu says, ducking his head again. “I thought somethin’ must have been wrong with my water, so after Spike died, I switched to sparklin’.”
“You only drink sparkling water,” Kiyoomi asks with growing disbelief, barely suppressing a shudder of disgust. He’s never had much respect for people partial to carbonated beverages, and, all things considered, it’s a relief that he never respected Atsumu that much to begin with (not off-court anyway) because he’d hate going through the ordeal of losing respect for him while already mentally browsing online furniture catalogues on a quest to find that Holy Grail of a stain, water, and Atsumu-resistant couch and drying Atsumu’s hair for him. Collegiate MVP or not, there’s only so much multitasking a person can do.
“No, not me, Omi,” Atsumu huffs. “Come on, keep up.” He shifts, pulling his legs up and crossing them at the ankle, wiggling his hips until he has his back to Kiyoomi, like he wants to give him better access. “I kept drinkin’ it outta the tap! Saved the good stuff fer Saeko.”
“So let me get this straight,” Kiyoomi sighs, trying to refrain from taking out too much of his frustration on Atsumu’s hair. After being subjected to nigh a decade of subpar bleach and dye (more like bleach and die, in Kiyoomi’s humble opinion), it might well be radioactive, and Kiyoomi would rather not pull it out by the roots and have the nuclear waste litter his living room, thank you very fucking much. “After overwatering your first cactus to death, you decided to slaughter another by the same means.”
“S-Slaughter?!” Atsumu sputters.
“Once is poor judgment,” Kiyoomi says. “Twice is murder.”
“Thrice,” Atsumu mumbles, shifting again, this time to pull his knees to his chin. “Marie here, I didn’t water at all.”
Kiyoomi pauses, the towel suspended above Atsumu’s head. “At all.”
“Mhm,” Atsumu confirms with another dejected sniffle.
“How long—”
“TEN MONTHS, OKAY!” Atsumu explodes, curling in upon himself. “I’VE HAD ‘ER FER TEN MONTHS.”
Atsumu’s shoulders are shaking. He still won’t stop sniffling. There are wet footsteps marking where he’s been existing, breathing, and being in Kiyoomi’s apartment. Kiyoomi, who’s not fond of touching people, has yet to touch him because it’s really the towel that has been doing all the touching.
Kiyoomi wants to strangle the towel, and strangle Atsumu, and strangle Atsumu with the towel, and then strangle himself with a fresh towel.
Marie Ant Toilette needs no strangling, but Atsumu does not know this yet. As Kiyoomi considers Atsumu’s curled back, which has something of a funeral parlor’s inevitability to it, he entertains the thought that perhaps he should not be made aware of the fact at all.
Then again, Kiyoomi is familiar with the concept of ‘sparing somebody’s feelings’ only in theory, and the perspective of putting it into practice disgusts him on an almost physical level.
“So ya gotta take over, okay?” Atsumu sniffles again. “Because I can’t have another cactus on my conscience.”
Boy, does Kiyoomi have news for him. He opens his mouth to deliver it, seeing as Atsumu is in no state to be killing any messengers, but his tongue seems to trip over itself like a prepubescent schoolboy when Kiyoomi takes in the state of Atsumu’s hands over the other’s slumped shoulder. They are shaking, they are pale, they are courting frostbite. There is a Sailor Moon Band-Aid wrapped clumsily around Atsumu’s middle finger, peeling away for all the rainwater. Marie Ant Toilette is adorned with a matching Band-Aid—to what purpose, Kiyoomi does not know and dreads to find out.
They are love-shaped, Atsumu’s hands, which Kiyoomi couldn’t unknow if he tried (and he has tried, make no mistake), not after seeing them go out of their way to meet a volleyball halfway, all the way, every way. If they fell off due to frostbite, Kiyoomi would have to postpone getting the bloodstains out of his couch or disposing of it altogether in favor of trying to reattach them. If he failed to reattach them, he would have no choice but to keep them.
Thus, as he waits for his personality to reassert dominance, Kiyoomi remains quiet and focuses on the task of toweling Miya Atsumu’s radioactive hair dry. Only once he’s regained trust in the capabilities of his vocal cords does he speak. “And why, pray tell, would I want to ‘take over’.”
The towel is trembling in his grip even if Kiyoomi’s voice comes out steady. Towels don’t tremble of their own accord, but this one must be an exception.
“Do ya really have ta ask,” Atsumu snorts, tilting his head back, back, back, so he can blink up at Kiyoomi and towels do tremble of their own accord in this household. His apartment, his rules.
Atsumu’s eyes slide sideways. Kiyoomi doesn’t have to follow his gaze to know that he’s got a point.
“I mean, Jesus,” Atsumu sighs. “It’s a whole freakin’ plantarium you’ve got here, Omi.”
*
Over the years, Kiyoomi has heard other people refer to him as a: plant hoarder, plant dad, plant mom, plant freak, plant owner, plant keeper, and, on one memorable occasion, a ‘KEEP YOUR FERNS OFF MY BALCONY, YOU USURPER YOU!’.
Kiyoomi took offense at and vocally objected to all of the above. He is, at most, a plant enthusiast: he does not hoard, father, mother, freak, own, or keep them. As for the usurper accusations, the ferns are not his, and besides, everyone with half a functional braincell should know that, no matter how concrete your jungle, when it comes to flora, it’s all free real estate.
Just because Kiyoomi spends a not insignificant share of his not insignificant income on the purchase of various plants does not make them his plants. Rather than hoard, father, mother, freak, own, or keep them, he coexists with them: they are his lesser brothers, his brethren, his confrères. They live, and they thrive, and they are: all without shedding fur, demanding that you take them on a walk, or peeing under themselves when you refuse to take them on said walk the way pets and Miya Atsumus have been known to do.
(Alright, fine. The way pets have been known to do.)
Let St. Francis have the animals, Kiyoomi remembers thinking back when he got lost and found in a botanical market at a tender age of nine. He would be the patron not-saint of plants.
And so, it’s only logical that, what with the consecutive arrival of his not inconsiderable paychecks, Kiyoomi should have accumulated what is, in the grand scheme of things, a perfectly reasonable number of plants in the course of his Osaka sojourn.
(And it is a sojourn, contract notwithstanding.)
“Plantarium, get it?” Atsumu says, albeit without much zest. It’s a terrible pun even for him and, if the bird’s-nest fern that Kiyoomi, for lack of space, keeps on the very couch Atsumu has been flooding had ears, Kiyoomi would cover them to spare it.
If the bird’s-nest fern had ears and if Kiyoomi’s hands weren’t otherwise occupied, that is.
*
The towel trembles in Kiyoomi’s grip. Towels aren’t in the habit of trembling, but this one is because Kiyoomi said so.
The towel is touching Miya Atsumu’s radioactive hair. This has to be true since Kiyoomi wouldn’t touch Miya Atsumu’s radioactive hair if they paid him, threatened him, or threatened his cousin, and yet it cannot be true because, for Kiyoomi, touch has always been something that can be either kind or not, welcome or not. Towels are not in the habit of being kind and even Kiyoomi would be hard-pressed to refer to something that has to be fetched to get anywhere near you as ‘welcome’. Inanimate objects can no more offer touch than they can withhold it.
And yet, Kiyoomi decides stubbornly, it is the towel that collects tufts of Atsumu’s radioactive hair, slips behind the shell of his ear, and cowlicks the strands plastered to Atsumu’s forehead one impatient ruffle at a time.
It is the towel that gentles once it has demonstrated that it will not be gentle.
It is Miya Atsumu who shudders when the towel softly skirts his temple, recoiling as though, after all the vocal complaints that followed the towel’s scratching, pulling, and yanking, it is only the gentleness he’s too much of a baby to accept.
Kiyoomi wants to strangle the towel, and strangle Atsumu, and strangle Atsumu with the towel, and then strangle himself with a fresh towel, but not before setting the spoiled one on fire.
Kiyoomi doesn’t know how the dictionary defines touch. He never cared to look.
*
“What do ya mean, Marie is d—d— no longer with us?”
“I mean,” Kiyoomi, who broke the news about as gently as a thorny branch breaks a fall, says, “it is dead.”
“She,” Atsumu corrects automatically. “And she isn’t.”
“Is too.”
“Is not.”
“Miya.”
“Prove it.”
Kiyoomi sighs and pulls out his phone.
“Not the Internet, Omi!” Atsumu the country bumpkin cries with outrage as his eyes widen in horror. “People lie on there!”
“I know they do,” Kiyoomi sighs. “Whatever website advised you to water your cacti clearly did.”
“I didn’t consult no websites!” Atsumu protests, indignant.
“Don’t tell me you actually opened a book for once.”
“I relied on my wisdom.”
“You don’t have any wisdom to rely on, Miya.”
“Do, too,” Atsumu insists. “I inherited it from my elders.”
“So what you’re saying is,” Kiyoomi says slowly, pinching the bridge of his nose, “you came up with feeding your cactus sparkling water all by your brilliant self.”
“Hey, it was a good guess!” Atsumu says, hunching his shoulders defensively. “The blow-dryin’, too.”
“The what now.”
“Well, see,” Atsumu huffs. “I know we’re in Japan, okay? I’m not stupid. So once I figured out that water was lethal to cactuses—”
“Cacti, and it isn’t.”
“—I realized that they probably thrive on bein’ overheated and dehydrated! And I thought, well, gee, it’s such a human move ta pull, takin’ them outta their natural habitat and bringin’ them here where it’s too cold and too wet fer them and where they have ta put up a brave face as they die in hand-painted flowerpots on some lady or other’s windowsill,” Atsumu spits out, all in one breath. “So I figured if I couldn’t return my cactus to its homeland, I’d make sure ta keep it alive and took ta blow-dryin’ it twice a day.”
Kiyoomi stares at him.
“Integration over assimilation,” Atsumu adds.
Kiyoomi sighs, wraps the towel around Atsumu’s head, tucks the corner under the hem to secure it in place, and hides his face in his hands.
“Well,” Atsumu says awkwardly as he cranes his neck to look at Kiyoomi like some towel-hat-donning Girl with a Pearl Earring reenactment (albeit sans girl or earring), which Kiyoomi observes through the his fingers. “I’m guessin’ that wasn’t the right thing ta do.”
“The right thing to do,” Kiyoomi repeats numbly. “That wasn’t even the wrong thing to do, Miya.”
“It wasn’t?” Atsumu perks up.
Girl with a Peabrain, maybe.
“No,” Kiyoomi sighs. “It was the worst possible thing to do.”
“Ah,” Atsumu deflates. “No need ta be so rude about it, Omi. At least I didn’t throw it off my balcony.”
This, from a guy who has a reputation for setting high standards for himself.
“You don’t have a balcony,” Kiyoomi reminds him.
“Oh, I see how it is,” Atsumu huffs. “So now it’s about who has the better apartment.”
“What.”
“I get it, Omi,” Atsumu says, shifting away on the couch and almost squishing Kiyoomi’s bird’s-nest fern in the process. “Yer loaded, I’m not. No need ta rub it in.”
Kiyoomi sighs, gives himself a speed eyeball massage, and clicks on a How To Tell if a Cactus Is Dead (11 Signs of Concern) article before offering Atsumu his phone.
“Don’t drool, sneeze, or cough on it,” he instructs as he hands it over.
“‘Kay,” Atsumu sniffles, giving him a sidelong glance. “Can I bite it?”
Kiyoomi glares. Atsumu brings his hands up in a pacifying gesture and gets to reading. Kiyoomi has a pretty good view of his face, what with the towel keeping Atsumu’s radioactive hair off his probably radioactive forehead, and so he sees all the gaze-flicking, eye-watering, and squinting that is taking place mere inches away. With each voyage from the article to Atsumu’s shriveled casualty of a houseplant, Atsumu’s eyes get dimmer and dimmer, until whatever light was still loitering inside there vacates the premises altogether.
“Oh,” Atsumu says. It is the most miserable ‘oh’ Kiyoomi has heard to date, and he was there when Motoya overfed his goldfish. It’s the kind of oh that a person deserves to be kicked out over but, much to Kiyoomi’s surprise, instead of kicking Atsumu out, he finds himself getting up from the couch and fetching him not only an extra towel, but a change of clothes, too.
“Get ahold of yourself,” he says as he drops it all on the couch next to Atsumu and pries the pot out of his hands, which, while not yet in need of reattachment, could probably use some warming.
Kiyoomi resolutely does not reach for them to warm them.
Atsumu looks away and peels off his socks. Kiyoomi patiently stands by as Atsumu wrings them over the newspaper spread on the coffee table (“Sorry, were ya readin’ that?”), fashioning a brand-new puddle there, and then tolerates it when Atsumu rolls down the cuffs of his jeans, decanting rainwater all over Kiyoomi’s floor.
Kiyoomi, tired of tolerating it, opens his mouth to say something, but Atsumu beats him to it, bursting into tears.
Damn you, Kiyoomi thinks, outraged. Damn you to hell.
“Marie was my favorite,” Atsumu sobs, his nose already oozing enough watery snot to lend The Book of Genesis some credence. Kiyoomi has enough tissues to last him through two pandemics, but he’s a little short on arks.
“I really wanted ta do right by her, ya know,” Atsumu adds, like an afterthought.
Kiyoomi sighs. “I’ll put the kettle on.”
*
It is a truth universally acknowledged that if you let a Miya Atsumu into your apartment, he will:
- comment on the lack of personal belongings inside.
On a rainy evening in June, Miya Atsumu steps inside Kiyoomi’s apartment. He does not fold the umbrella he didn’t bring with him, and neither does he hang up the coat he’s not wearing.
“No fridge magnets whatsoever,” he says instead as he pokes his head inside the kitchen, where Kiyoomi keeps a few ferns and the odd succulent.
“No stuffed animals ta speak of,” as he glances inside Kiyoomi’s bedroom, where Kiyoomi keeps only two potted flowers, on his way past.
“No, what’s it called, brick-a-brick? croc-a-crack?” as he trails water into the living room where it would be easier to name all the absent plants than the ones in attendance. He has to step over pots of various shapes and sizes and duck under leaves spilling over trellises on his way to the couch, leaving a wet trail in his wake.
When he finally deigns to become stationary, he elects to do so on Kiyoomi’s no-longer-pristine couch, but because plants are Kiyoomi’s brethren and not his belongings, for the moment, Kiyoomi turns a blind eye to it.
*
Kiyoomi does not put strychnine in Atsumu’s tea. There are exactly two reasons for this:
- he’s out of strychnine
- Atsumu doesn’t drink tea.
In fact, Kiyoomi doesn’t even get as far as putting the promised kettle on. Instead, he takes a gamble and heats up some milk, ransacking the kitchen cabinets in search of that unopened can of hot chocolate he can vaguely recall someone clueless about his beverage preferences (i.e., his mother) getting him as a housewarming (ha) gift.
As he rummages in the kitchen drawers, Kiyoomi is painfully aware of the cache of handwarmers residing in one of them, but he pointedly ignores them. A mugful of hot chocolate is gesture enough. Conveniently, a mugful of hot chocolate also happens to be handwarmer enough.
Inside Kiyoomi’s living room, glucose production has come to a standstill on account of the evening downpour but, judging by the poorly concealed sniffling noses, mucus is still being manufactured at breakneck speed.
Judging by the unconcealed noises of rustling fabric, clothes are being taken off, but Kiyoomi can’t hear that anymore over the hissing of the milk and where the fuck did he put that—?
He retrieves the hot chocolate just in time to take the milk off the stove before it can boil over the side of the pot.
Kiyoomi wonders if Atsumu likes milk skin. When Atsumu sneezes, he barely bites back a ‘bless you’.
“Bless me,” says Atsumu one room over and fuck that, he’s just going to have to put up with milk skin whether he likes it or not.
*
“Is that fer me?” Atsumu asks, peering over Kiyoomi’s shoulder as Kiyoomi stirs the hot chocolate with a vengeance. He didn’t exactly sneak up on Kiyoomi, but Kiyoomi feels distinctly snuck up on even though Atsumu’s shuffling footsteps heralded his arrival. Like this, Atsumu’s chin is inches shy of resting on Kiyoomi’s shoulder and, annoyingly, the awareness of it makes Kiyoomi’s skin light up like an airport runway before touchdown.
“No,” Kiyoomi says defensively, and fuck.
“Oh?” Atsumu says, amused. “Is it fer yerself, then?”
“No.”
Fuck.
“Thanks, Omi,” Atsumu sighs. “Hot chocolate is my favorite.”
Kiyoomi knows, even if he wishes he didn’t.
“Do ya think it’ll stop rainin’ anytime soon?”
Kiyoomi snorts, jerking his head in the direction of the window, where the weather is still hard at it, driving the rain into concrete like nails.
“Yeah,” Atsumu sighs with resignation. “Guess we’ll have ta postpone buryin’ Marie fer tomorrow.”
“Burying,” Kiyoomi repeats, holding the spoon over the hot chocolate as he waits for the milk to drip off it. “Wait, we?”
“I’m not buryin’ her alone,” Atsumu huffs. “Anyway, can I stay the night?”
“Absolutely not.”
“But it’s rainin’.”
“You’re a big boy,” Kiyoomi sighs. “You’ll survive it.”
“But it’s sleetin’.”
“I’ll lend you an umbrella, and it’s not sleeting. Sleet is when there’s ice or snow mixed with the rain.”
“So?”
“So, it’s June,” Kiyoomi groans. “Here.”
Their hands don’t brush when Atsumu takes the cup from him. “I’ll sleep on the floor,” he says, puppy-eyeing all over the place.
“There’s no space on the floor,” Kiyoomi reminds him.
“I’ll sleep in the shower.”
“Like I’d trust you with my shower,” Kiyoomi scoffs. “Go sit and drink this while it’s still warm.”
Atsumu is warm. Kiyoomi can tell—that’s how close they’re standing—and how funny that someone should tremble from cold even as they’re generating enough heat for someone else to leech off it, however inadvertently.
“‘Kay,” Atsumu says as he cradles the mug in his shaking hands, and maybe it’s not the cold anymore, making him tremble so. “I’ll go hang with Oscar.”
“Oscar.”
“Yer fern,” Atsumu smiles. “He’s very cute! Really rockin’ the perm.”
“Don’t name my plants,” Kiyoomi hisses through his teeth, outraged.
“Huh?” Atsumu says, cocking his head. “If no one names ‘em, how are they gonna feel at home, Omi?”
*
Kiyoomi didn’t name his first plant because he thought if he did, he’d jinx it and it’d die on him.
He still remembers it lilting to the side, prematurely succumbing to gravity instead of straining towards whatever sunlight it could get on his windowsill despite his best efforts.
He used to say ‘good morning’ and ‘goodnight’ to it. When it died, he felt too silly to consider throwing the occasional ‘how do you do’ into the mix with his next plant, instead opting for restricting the chitchat to a minimum.
*
“I mean, should we cremate it?”
“Miya,” Kiyoomi sighs as he leans on the living room doorframe. “Dead plants go in the trash.”
Atsumu has the audacity to not only gasp like a sitcom extra, but spill some of the hot chocolate too. Kiyoomi stares at the stain it forms on the floorboards. Atsumu smiles sheepishly and mops it up.
With his sleeve. Which, at the moment, happens to be Kiyoomi’s sleeve.
“All clean now,” Atsumu announces proudly once he’s done. Kiyoomi checks his watch, glances out the window where the rain seems to be letting up if he squints real hard and chooses to believe it, and decides that he’ll kick Atsumu out in ten minutes.
There is a milk moustache above Atsumu’s lips. He looks ridiculous.
“Hey,” Kiyoomi finds himself saying. “Why would you get a cactus in the first place.”
Atsumu, who’s gone back to bringing about the ruination of Kiyoomi’s couch, blinks at him slowly and then gives the bird’s-nest fern a sidelong glance.
“Out with it,” Kiyoomi sighs.
Atsumu mumbles something.
“Come again.”
“Co—”
“Cockroach?” Kiyoomi gasps, already scanning the floor. “Where?”
“Company,” Atsumu chokes out, plonking his mug on the coffee table to drag his knees to his chin circle his legs with his arms. “I was lonely, all right?”
Kiyoomi blinks at him in surprise, taken aback by the unexpected earnestness.
“Not that I’m like! Chronically lonely,” Atsumu clarifies, looking everywhere but at Kiyoomi as a blush creeps up his neck. “I have plenty of friends! Like Shou-kun, and Bokkun, and… and Shou-kun… and Bokkun… And it’s just that everyone’s got their own—And I’m not used to—And life just—Sometimes, it’s just so quiet in the apartment, with no one else but me breathin’ inside it.”
Kiyoomi watches Atsumu pick at this sleeve, mesmerized.
“And plants breathe, don’t they?” Atsumu mumbles, burying his face in his knees. “So I got one. And then another one. And another one. And now I’m a serial cactus killer.”
“Why—” Kiyoomi breaks off, still processing the fact that Miya Atsumu gets lonely, of all things. “Why not get a pet,” he concludes finally because surely if it’s company Atsumu is after, a cat, a dog, or even a hamster would do nicely?
Something prone to bestowing affection alongside receiving it.
“A pet?” Atsumu repeats, raising his head to blink at Kiyoomi owlishly. “Nah, I couldn’t.”
“Why not,” Kiyoomi says, more and more confused by the minute. “Are you allergic.”
“No, but, like,” Atsumu sighs, brushing a hand through his hair. “A pet would get lonely, too, wouldn’t it? If I got one… I mean, I’m at practice till late nearly every day, ain’t I? If I was, I dunno, a dog, I wouldn’t want to have to wait till late afternoon fer my human to come home to me. Plants, though. Plants, I thought I could do.” He sniffles and gives a small smile, half wry and half sweet, before he carries on. “They don’t really need people, do they? Water, sure—even if I learned that one the hard way, ha ha—and sunlight, yeah, but not people. So maybe I needed someone—something—no, someone—but I don’t think it’d have been very fair of me ta be needed back, yanno?”
Atsumu is looking at Kiyoomi now. His radioactive hair has dried without rhyme or reason, oddly avian as it feuds with gravity tuft after tuft, and the milk moustache is still there, waiting to be licked off.
“No,” Kiyoomi chokes out truthfully. “I don’t know.”
Atsumu blinks at him in surprise as his blush intensifies, and then curls up on his side with his back to Kiyoomi. “Forget it, then,” he mumbles, the mortification easily identifiable by the pitch of his voice alone.
It’s funny how much oversharing gets to Atsumu. You’d think he’d be used to it now, given that his whole shtick is overdoing everything.
Kiyoomi sighs and leaves him be to clean the pot he used for heating up the milk, the cacophony of sniffles temporarily drowned out by the stream of water. When Kiyoomi returns to the living room to check on the progress of Atsumu’s sulking, which, much like a sine wave, tends to hit a few dramatic highs before it runs out of steam and flatlines, he’s welcomed by a snore.
“Really, now,” Kiyoomi hisses, noting that in his short absence Atsumu has not only fallen asleep, but wrapped his arms around the bird’s-nest fern pot, too. “The nerve of you.”
Atsumu mumbles sleepily, his grip on the pot tightening. From his vantage point, Kiyoomi can’t tell if he’s still shaking, so he leaves the relative safety of the doorway to approach the couch, mindful of the wet spots on the floor. The last thing he needs is to slip, cause a plantmageddon here, and wake Atsumu up.
(Of course, it goes without saying that waking Atsumu up would be an unwanted development only insofar as it’d mean he’d start talking again.)
Like this, Atsumu displays a striking minimalism Kiyoomi would never have suspected him of: all 188 centimeters of him seem to have been vacuum-packed to conserve space, and, economically embryonic on his side as he is, he resembles a de-armored armadillo. He does seem to be trembling with cold even now, half-finished hot chocolate or not, but, at this point, it may well be Kiyoomi’s mind playing tricks on him. Seeing as Kiyoomi would rather mop up the wet stains Atsumu has left all over the room with his tongue than feel Atsumu’s forehead, he decides to play it safe. It might be the off-season, but the inflammation-cremation pipeline can be more direct than Kiyoomi would like and they will have a game to win eventually, so Kiyoomi takes mercy upon Atsumu’s shivering form and knocks the blanket off the top of the couch so that it’ll land on the other.
“Oops,” Kiyoomi says loudly, for the benefit of the Schrödinger’s burglars that may or may not be hiding in his closets. The last thing he needs is his burglars thinking he cares, or something ridiculous like that.
Atsumu mumbles sleepily again and utterly fails to cooperate, snuggling closer to the fern and making nothing of the lump of blanket he has just been entrusted with. Kiyoomi pinches the bridge of his nose and reaches over to snatch the blanket and spread it over Atsumu.
Unbelievable. He has to do everything by himself in this house.
Once the deed is done, Kiyoomi treats himself to a session of dusting off his hands, but he doesn’t get to savor his sense of accomplishment for long. Atsumu, contrary even in sleep, mumbles something again and de-armadilloes himself one leg after the other, rolling over onto his back so that only one arm, bent above his head, remains curled around the flowerpot. Kiyoomi sighs and moves the fern to the coffee table for its own safety. Before Atsumu’s arm can follow—and it is following, like some disembodied frankenpendage with a will of its own—Kiyoomi snatches a cushion off the other end of the couch and shoves it there, into the delta formed by Atsumu’s elbow, thus sentencing it to death by being drooled on, and after years of service loyal beyond compare, too. The loss, while necessary, will be mourned, especially seeing as the cushion survived many a calamity before its sacrificial death upon the altar of Atsumu’s circadian rhythm.
One crisis averted, Kiyoomi has no choice but to decide what to do about the next disaster-in-the-making, namely: Atsumu’s feet.
The thing is, as much as Kiyoomi is loath to admit it, toes are as conducive to volleyball victories as fingers, on top of more prosaic triumphs such as successfully leaving your teammates’ apartments after overstaying your welcome without having to be pushed off the stairs to accomplish the feat. The blanket, the extremities of which managed to hold ground somewhere at the level of Atsumu’s knees, lies conquered and limp, and, since Kiyoomi considered lending Atsumu a pair of socks one step too far, Atsumu’s toes remain bare and vulnerable to the consequences of walking through the city in squelching shoes.
Kiyoomi pulls the blanket over Atsumu’s feet only for Atsumu to wrench it back up, rucked up around his middle and stripped of even more ground.
Resigned, Kiyoomi pulls out his phone and googles: can you lose your toes due to frostbite if water got in your shoes in June (Osaka).
The internet, after a lot of tweaking with his original query, reassures Kiyoomi that it is very unlikely to lose your toes due to frostbite if water got in your shoes in June, in Osaka, but people lie on there, so Kiyoomi decides to err on the side of caution and fetches a pair of socks—black and inconspicuous, in the hopes that Atsumu won’t note their presence once he wakes. Long-sufferingly, Kiyoomi cradles Atsumu’s left ankle—cold to the touch—to start pulling the right sock on, resolving to search the room for planted cameras later, just in case. Atsumu kicks him, mumbles something that sounds suspiciously like ‘tickles’, and then goes blissfully still long enough for Kiyoomi to ensure the dumbass-in-distress won’t lose his toes.
Kiyoomi sighs, adjusts the elastic around Atsumu’s ankles, and realizes that there’s no way in hell Atsumu won’t note the presence of the socks once he wakes up. Hopefully, he’ll at least have enough decency not to mention—Oh but he won’t, this is Atsumu, and fuck him, fuck him so much, but not literally, not for the world, not ever, not even through a towel.
The rain still at it outside, Kiyoomi checks the time and swears.
If Atsumu is staying the night, then it only follows that he’ll be staying for dinner, too.
*
The thing about the puttanesca sauce is that you can very much spell it without repentance, and yet, ironically, a great deal of repenting is involved in its preparation. It’s a little too elaborate for Kiyoomi’s liking, as much as he likes the taste of it, the anchovies demanding his attention even as he’s still mincing garlic, and where did he put the capers again? Not to mention the parsley that still needs chopping and the olives that still need slicing.
Miya Osamu, who Kiyoomi has had the dubious pleasure of interacting with a handful of times (see: 5. Onigiri Miya (a thousand times ditto)), insists that when you’re a beginner in the fine art of feeding yourself, you ought to do all the prep before you so much as think of putting something on the stove, but Kiyoomi, who likes to be time-efficient, or, in Motoya’s words, is ‘a stubborn bitch’, prefers to do things his own way.
Well. Here’s to hoping Atsumu likes his anchovies crispy.
*
“Food,” Atsumu mouths sleepily, wobbling over in a blanket cocoon during the last leg of Kiyoomi’s cooking to peer into the pot of bubbling sauce. “Ohhh,” he hums with interest, reaching over to sink his finger in it. Kiyoomi intercepts his hand inches away from the boiling hot puttanesca and opens his mouth to remind Atsumu that his livelihood literally depends on the state of his hands, but Atsumu gives him a sheepish smile and beats him to it. “Wash hands first,” he yawns, nodding sloppily. “Gotcha.”
“Just go away,” Kiyoomi sighs long-sufferingly.
“I wanna watch,” Atsumu pouts. “I’ll be good, promise.”
“Don’t touch,” Kiyoomi instructs, slapping Atsumu’s maverick hand away from the pasta. “Don’t talk,” he goes on as Atsumu opens his mouth. “Be still,” he adds, shoving Atsumu away when he starts lilting, about to crash into Kiyoomi. “If you’re this sleepy, why would you get up?”
“I could smell dinner,” Atsumu shrugs, lilting again. This time, when Kiyoomi shoves him away, he underestimates his strength and sends Atsumu careening in the opposite direction, but he manages to reach out and grab a fistful of Atsumu’s hoodie—Kiyoomi’s hoodie—and pull him back up before the other, whose muscles clearly haven’t got the memo that bedtime’s over, can fall over.
“If you don’t wake up,” Kiyoomi threatens. “I’ll slap you.”
Atsumu hums. “What if I want to be slapped?”
“What.”
“What?” Atsumu mumbles, peering into the pot full of spaghetti. “This looks ready.”
“Don’t touch.”
“D’ya think it’s ready?”
“Don’t touch.”
“I’ll check if it’s ready.”
Kiyoomi slaps his hand away with a spatula just in time. “What,” he says innocently when Atsumu pouts at him, cradling his hand. “You said you wanted to be slapped.”
“I just think it’s ready,” Atsumu insists, leaning over the pot and inhaling deeply. “Are we havin’ it dented?”
Kiyoomi pointedly does not think about the risk of steam burning Atsumu’s stupid nostrils. “Are we what now.”
“Dented,” Atsumu repeats, leaning forward. Kiyoomi jerks him back by the hood before he can face-plant in a pot of boiling pasta. “The pasta.”
“Yes,” Kiyoomi sighs. “We’re having it al dente.”
“I’ll just check how dente it is,” Atsumu says again, trying to smuggle his finger past Kiyoomi and into the pot again.
Kiyoomi, long past his limits, reaches for a pot lid and bonks Atsumu on the head with it.
Silence.
“Oi,” Kiyoomi sighs, waving a hand in front of a visibly-stunned Atsumu’s face.
“Well, I’m awake now,” Atsumu says after a pause, rolling up his sleeves. “D’ya have a colander, Omi-Omi?”
*
At the kitchen table, with a profuse fern where you’d usually find the seasoning, the moron who came in from the cold tucks into his spaghetti puttanesca and lets out the most pornographic moan Kiyoomi has ever had the displeasure of hearing.
“Omi,” Atsumu sighs once he has swallowed the first mouthful. “Marry me.”
“No,” Kiyoomi says with disgust.
“Please,” Atsumu tries, batting his eyelashes at Kiyoomi without shame.
“We’d literally kill each other,” Kiyoomi sighs, spearing his own spaghetti with a fork.
“Maybe so, but this,” Atsumu says, pointing at his plate, “is to die for.”
Kiyoomi considers the humble servings of spaghetti that he didn’t make enough of, unused to cooking for two as he is.
Don’t die, he keeps himself from saying. Hang around and maybe, next time, I won’t burn it.
It has stopped raining by now, but Kiyoomi won’t be the first to mention it.
*
Screw minimalism.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that if you let a Miya Atsumu into your apartment, he will:
- track mud inside whether there is any mud to be tracked in your neighborhood or not
- comment on the lack of personal belongings inside
- exist in it
- breathe in it
- be in it
- admit to loneliness
- start naming your plants
- eat your spaghetti puttanesca
- praise your spaghetti puttanesca
- lick his plate clean
- offer to wash the dishes
- bristle when you imply that he won’t do it properly
- do it properly
- sprawl on your couch like it’s a king-sized bed
- snore
- avoid finger and/or toe amputation by frostbite
- mumble the name of his dead cactus in his sleep
- be safe in it.
At night, Kiyoomi lies awake in his bed and contemplates Miya Atsumu, who dripped, but did not trample, who disturbed, but did not ruin.
Who put a Band-Aid on his cactus and brought it here the way you’d bring a hurt family member to the ER.
Atsumu, brainless, roommateless, cactiless.
Kiyoomi falls asleep, but not before pardoning his intrusion.
*
In the morning, Kiyoomi has no qualms about ripping the blanket off Atsumu.
“Wha…?” is the intelligent response.
“Breakfast,” Kiyoomi announces as Atsumu blinks at him in sleepy indignation. “Then, shopping.”
“Shoppin’?”
Kiyoomi grins and drops a stack of plant care books on the coffee table.
“Omi?!” Atsumu squeaks, eyeing the hardbacks with trepidation.
“Congratulations, Miya,” Kiyoomi says with a smirk. “You’re going to be a daddy.”