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Bundled up within an inch of his life, face numb and way too tired for this, Atobe trudged out to the back paddocks where his and Tezuka’s larger pokemon were currently housed. The sprawling property that was Tezuka’s parents’ (his future in-laws, begrudgingly) was covered in a foot of snow, and the soft light of sunrise slipping between the peaks of the nearby mountains cast everything in a near-ethereal golden glow.
It would have been a gorgeous sight to behold - the kind that artists paint and writers describe with the purplest of prose - if Atobe weren’t forced to be out in the middle of it. Slogging his way through heavy, wet snow that stuck to him in icy clumps, as the bitter winter wind tried every way possible to infiltrate his armor of coats, scarves, and Tezuka’s old snow pants that were much too small for him.
To summarize, it was not how Atobe wanted to spend his Sunday morning. But Tezuka had woken with a sore throat and congestion, and wanting to be a good partner, he had so graciously volunteered to do the morning chores. Damn chivalry… Atobe cursed under his breath as he approached the feed shed.
The first thing he noticed was the distured snow around the roll-up door. Uncovered soil was turned over in deep gouges, and large divots covered the area around the shed. As Atobe followed the crude path, his brow furrowed further. Once obscured by the deep snow, he could see now that the door was slightly ajar at the bottom, and that there were watermelon-sized dents in the lower half of the corrugated metal. Dents that had definitely not been there the day before.
What the hell…?
Atobe weighed his options. On one hand, he could simply turn around and go back inside. Unfortunately, that would make him look rather pathetic in front of Tezuka’s grandfather, who already thought he was a spoiled city-boy. On the other hand, he could open the door and deal with whatever inevitable mess awaited him within the feed shed.
It was a choice, but really, it wasn’t. With a sigh, Atobe gasped the thin, slightly warped handle at the base of the door and pulled, bracing himself for whatever was inside.
He was greeted by a pair of big black eyes, peering out at him from between a mountain of hay bales.
“What the fuck!”
Atobe raked his hands through his hair in disbelief as he stood face to face with Tori, Tezuka’s Mudsdale, who had apparently managed to not only break into the shed at some point during the night, but somehow lodge herself in between the once-carefully stacked bales.
Tori, for her part, looked utterly unphased by her current predicament, and munched on a mouthful of hay as she watched Atobe, ears flicking placidly.
“I can’t believe this…” Atobe muttered, taking stock of the hay bales that had been shoved out of place and onto the floor by the large pokemon that had been hell-bent on burying herself in the middle of the ceiling-high pile. The pokemon that he was going to have to un-bury. By himself. In the cold.
He pulled himself up onto the hay as Tori continued to help herself, swearing at her the whole way. “How the fuck did you even manage this…? You absolute menace , I am so telling your father! And Arceus! And every other god in this region because this is a crime ! You are a criminal!” He grabbed the hay rake and with the butt-end, poked at Tori’s wide flank in a poor attempt to get her to vacate the shed.
“I suppose you’re pleased with yourself, aren’t you?” Tori turned an ear back toward him and snorted, completely unbothered by Atobe’s rake brandishing. Just as he was about to start pulling the bales away from Tori’s sides by hand, he heard the crunch of snow and turned around just in time to see Lucian, his galarian Rapidash, and Rowan, Tezuka’s Sawsbuck, meander up the open door, clearly curious about all the activity and swearing.
No sooner had Lucian stepped forward to partake in the feast did Atobe turn the rake on him to prod him hard in the shoulder. “Lucy, no! You are not helping!” The Rapidash retreated a step, but only for a second before he deemed Atobe’s anger unthreatening enough to try for another mouthful.
Rowan began to paw at a bag of grain leaning against the wall in an attempt to drag it out of the shed.
“I will sell all of you to the safari zone,” Atobe hissed, thoroughly fed up. Besides the chill seeping quickly through his clothing, he now had hay inside it, stabbing and pricking and itching and increasing his aggravation by the second. “Get out!” He rattled the rake against the roof of the shed, and the noise was enough to spook the two interlopers and send them dashing away into the snowy pasture they’d come from.
Tori, however, remained staunchly unmoved. Atobe was left with no choice but to uncover her and clear a path himself. “I hate Pokemon…!” Growling, he pulled the bales down from their carefully stacked rows, past the point of being organized about it. This morning, of all mornings, to pull a stunt like this…! Had it been Tezuka that discovered her, Tori would have extricated herself from the hay in moments, but no, because it was him that had discovered her…
What felt like eons later, Atobe tugged the last bale aside with frozen fingers and an aching back, fully revealing Tori’s broad chest and thick legs. “The kitchen is fucking closed!” He gestured to the pasture, glaring at the Mudsdale.
Tori heaved a sigh, but after a moment carefully picked her way out from between the haphazardly scattered hay, and out into the pasture. As if Atobe was the villain for daring to interrupt her breakfast. Atobe threw up his hands in resignation as she plowed through the snow towards her friends, who waited a few hundred feet away. He was beyond caring anymore. At the moment, all he wanted was to go back inside.
Atobe petulantly kicked a few bales out into the tramped snow just outside the shed as morning forage, and pulled the door down behind him. The mess inside was a problem for another day, he decided. He’d dealt with more than enough trouble, all before the sun was even half-risen. Fuck it, he was going home.
****
True to form, when Atobe returned to the main house, Tezuka had not moved from bed, still dozing under a swath of blankets. Atobe quickly and quietly showered, just enough to wash the hay dust from his skin and heat his icy fingers and toes, before rejoining his boyfriend. As he wrapped himself around Tezuka like a defeated limpet, the other man stirred.
“Mmh… Keigo…? Everything go okay?”
Atobe wasn’t quite yet ready to recount the last hour’s events. Right now, all he wanted was to sink back into sleep.
“Everyone got fed,” he murmured into the warm, soft skin of Tezuka’s neck, eyelids already feeling heavy.
Satisfied with his answer, Tezuka snuggled back into Atobe’s embrace. “Told you it’d be easy…”