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“yo,” atsumu says around a mouthful of orange. “you want?”
“i’m okay, thanks,” you say. you’re staring thoughtfully across the pond, your gaze seeming to pass right through the cattail reeds. it’s the last day of summer for a little more than the twentieth time in your life and the fireflies are coming out early for the occasion. it’s too bright out still, the air warm, the season’s lingering kiss leaving a soft red mark on your skin, so you have to tilt your head and squint to know what you’re looking at. while you do this, atsumu mimics you, narrowing his eyes until he can see the light coming clear through your skin.
“so you hate me,” he grouses, flopping onto his back. the grass is itchy under his bare skin, probably leaving green streaking across it, his own memento of the day. his legs are freckled with red, too, love bites from all the bugs who think his type o-negative blood is irresistable. osamu and your other friends are back at the campsite already, arguing over how to turn on kita’s ancient propane grill and trying to ward suna away from eating the hot dogs cold.
“yuh-huh,” you say. “you dunked me, so now i don’t want your orange slices. actions have—” you shriek and dodge as he blindly reaches out to squeeze your side, a tickling sensation that gets under your skin and has since you were children. “have consequences!”
“it was only three times,” he gives up and throws an arm over his face, trying to remember. “nine times.”
“i’m gonna smother you in your sleep,” you say, flopping back and rolling over so his body is half-covered by yours. your skin is warm against him, unusually so. he’ll enjoy lording your sunburn over you, always arguing that you can’t burn, running away when he tries to spray you down with sunscreen. “gimme that.”
you pop a slice of orange into your mouth anyway, the juice bursting more than you’d expected and leaving your lips sticky. you’ll need another dunk in the water to get clean again, and another hundred days of summer to bake yourself dry in the sun and repeat.
atsumu watches while you help yourself, your cheeks bulging out, your eyes happy, lazy half-crescents. you’re still all over him, your denim shorts chafing against him uncomfortably, one leg slotted between both of his. orange juice drips down your hand onto his chest; you dip your head down and kitten lick it straight off of him.
he sighs, a despondent, horny sigh, emptied out from the day at the lake and years of practice. you’re his best friend—he had a big, big, giant, massive crush on you in high school. everyone used to tease him for it, the way he’d turn bright red and walk into walls whenever you were around, two horrible years after he’d hit puberty and realized that there were more things to want then volleyball. he made you hate him, loud, vain miya atsumu, who threw balls at your head and stole pieces of your lunch and couldn’t live without trying to make you look at him but didn’t know anything about how to. his good fortune or bad luck, then, that you wanted to be suna’s friend more than you hated him and started sitting at lunch with them and never noticed all the sneaky glances and muttered jokes at atsumu’s expense until he got over it.
that was a million years ago and he loves you now: he loves you like a pinky promise, friendly and innocent and childish, and sometimes he can forget that he loves you like a man does.
“it’s cold,” you say with surprise, “how did you do that? bokuto was so upset when the cooler didn’t work and all his ice cream bars melted.”
“stuck the bag between some rocks in the creek,” he grunts, mostly immune to the wonder in your eyes and the way you grope for the rest of the fruit he peeled immediately. “stop that, stop that, lemme just get it.”
you do, and he crams three orange slices in your mouth at a time until you can barely close your teeth.
you try to cuss at him, but your words are trapped behind a citric wall and he laughs at you openly, jostling both of your bodies with it until you are no longer shaking with rage or him with guffaws until you’re actually wrestling. you chew furiously while you push at his shoulders and he almost chokes on his mirth while he tries to hold you off from his throat.
you roll over the grass together, both of you covered in blades of grass and chlorophyll blotches, shouting obscenities.
“get off me, witch,” he grasps at one of your wrists while you fist a hand in his hair, snapping his teeth at you. “geroff. i fuckin’ hate you. i’m gonna tell—i’m gonna—AUGH!”
he finally rolls you over, pinning all your limbs under you. you still have a hand in his hair, a fistful of blond strands that are softer than they look, forcing his neck to bend at an awkward angle.
“i win,” you say smugly.
“you’re literally about to pass out,” he huffs. “you’re so annoyin’. just give up.”
“never,” you say, the word hissing from between your teeth. you’re pulling his hair again, forcing him to hiss and let go of one of your wrists, and your face is coming closer. he panics—he’s going to land right on top of you, mouth-to-mouth if he doesn’t do something.
the air is molasses, a little bitter from the evaporated pondwater lingering in his nostrils. your lips are soft and it’s not until you start moving them, opening your mouth to him to taste the remnants of orange juice on your tongue, that he realizes that you’re kissing him on purpose.
you kiss like you wrestled. you wrestled because you wanted to kiss him and didn’t know how to do it. you kiss for a long time, there in the grass, the crickets’ song rising as the sun sets.
“i always liked you,” he says, lips against your pulse point. he has so many years of kissing to get done right away.
“i see it now,” you say, thinking for a moment that the fireflies are stars until you try to blink them away.