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They say you never truly get over your first love. If that's true, then Atsumu is happy over here: far away from immense promises like love and commitment. If that's true, then Atsumu is terrified because it feels like he can't even get past his first high school crush. It makes him feel pathetically lost, like many things do in the realm of emotions.
See, it goes like this: Atsumu is a man's man, as his father would tell him.
Even though Osamu was just as uproarious and chaotic as he was, there were moments of calm that settled his twin. Things that he could focus on, that stilled the air and let him catch his breath, like cooking or watching reality television with their mother. Atsumu hated it; wasn't Osamu supposed to be his carbon copy? What good was a twin brother if they didn't agree on everything, if Atsumu couldn't treat him like a man's best friend and tell him to fetch every time he set the ball to Osamu in the school courtyard?
Atsumu didn't get it when Osamu would tell him he was tired that day or he was hungry or I can't play today because Yuma-kun invited me over. These were things Atsumu didn't get. But it's okay, because his father didn't either. His father watched silently as he took all his young, fragile emotions and threw them in a box until they shattered against each other. His father was proud of him, though. His father liked it when he joined the volleyball team and even more so when Osamu joined. Two strong, manly, prideful twin boys; what more could a countryside man want for his family?
Love was one of those shards too. One that managed to poke its way out, ragged and ugly and sharp enough to bleed a pig dry. 爱, the way the lines and radicals stacked on top of each other: A claw, a cover, a heart, a friend, your own hands and feet—stuck on you since birth.
What made up love wasn't so textbook, but Atsumu never bothered to look down when he heard the box's irregular jingle. He pictures taking the character in his callused, young hands and tearing the strokes off one by one like bug legs. He didn't need love, he was different, he would go far because what drove him to the court was different than what drove Osamu to the kitchen.
But the box was always just a cardboard sort of thing: wet from weather and the dampness that lingered behind the sliding door of his small closet. The more time passed, the weaker it got. His father got more interested in his work once he realized the foundation of his family was sturdy enough for him to take that promotion, do that project, whisk their mother away to mainland Asia for some long-planned getaway.
Love. Its sharp edges made his mouth bleed sour, even when he’d see it between his own mother and father. How could his father spend time away from work when the next generation was entering the workforce, closing in like wolves on his modest office job? Did his father not get intimidated by matters of job security or self worth? In what ways was he happy? Was risking all that to show his wife love, like the day they married, worth it? Would Atsumu reach that?
Most days Atsumu didn’t even like people. Atsumu was raised with enough manners to thank the waiter and hold the door open for a pregnant lady, but it didn’t go much further than that. It came much easier to treat people off the court as steps towards the end product: the people at the factory made his clothes, the delivery people shipped them to him, the cashier sold them to him, he got the clothes and he was satisfied.
Over here, though. Atsumu said he's happy "over here." Where is over here? Is it over here, in the gym where he stares at Kita Shinsuke, paralyzed with awe? Is it over here, in a tutoring session where Kita explains to him why his essay is all marked up in red, angry scratches like that of a feral cat—where he is calm and patient as Atsumu drops his head to the table in frustration.
Is it over here, where he watches from on top of the small cobblestone pedestrian bridge, watches as Kita slips his small hand into Aran's and pulls him back into the gym, flashing a spare key (here, where he wonders if the nausea he feels is a product of bigotry). Is it here, where he stands across from the third years and listens to them speak, poses for their photos, and watches way too long at the way two of his seniors hug like they'll die the second the final bell rings. Is it here, where he realizes that strong men like Kita can hug and compliment and settle for second, third, fourth best without throwing a fit over it?
Atsumu doesn't know when Kita became a godly figure in his life. Kita is a head shorter than him but Atsumu feels like he's always looking up, letting the rays of his honest living shine down on him. Sometimes he prays to Kita in the shower, where he tries to think of anything other than the way that the third year once came to practice with a crooked tie and his lips a little rosy. Then it's…
Kita, Kita, Kita.
▪️▪️▪️
Kita stays in Hyogo and Atsumu goes away. He goes away multiple times: to the big city, to China, to America, to Russia, to South Korea, and back. He plays until his muscles are bigger than he knows what to do with them and feels irrationally stupid at how sad he feels when his Inarizaki sweater doesn’t fit him as well anymore. Atsumu sees a world that is the furthest thing from godly figures. He looks down at someone kneeling in front of him in a club bathroom and doesn't think for a second about another person or how it's akin to getting down at the altar.
He doesn't.
He doesn't think about the way Aran would smack him straight to the burning pits of Hell if he knew the things he thought about his sweet little fox. Aran was his friend, probably one of his best friends, probably a platonic soulmate if there ever was one, but Atsumu didn't have the time or feelings for whimsical ideas of soulmates and twin flames and true love. That's for people like his teammate Bokuto Koutarou, who thinks love is just the darndest thing. Marriage and love to people like Bokuto is what the kitchen is to Osamu, like a relaxing night at home to Kiyoomi, like the hot sun against the sand to Shoyou.
He hates the kitchen; he can't cook.
He hates the quiet; he can't think.
He hates the sand; it's coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere.
He does like a good sci-fi flick, though.
Would Kita like sci-fi? Or does he watch documentaries? Does he snuggle up to Aran and watch a movie every Sunday to relax before another hard day of work in the fields?
Atsumu doesn't even know if they’re still together. Once again, Aran: someone who he should treat better and catch up with.
Another thing about the Miya family; they're a selfish bunch.
Nevermind the way his father molded him from the ground up so he could have at least one child to brag about to his drinking buddies. Nevermind the way his mother emptied out his and Osamu's room once they moved out so she could have a home gym.
No, it mostly comes from that living parasite, walking amongst the rest of the do-good humans with a print-out of Atsumu's face stapled onto its head.
Osamu is, objectively, not a good person. Anyone in their circles could tell you that. Atsumu thinks it's kinda funny, kinda likes being there for backup when Osamu tosses something out there that’s just plain mean in his thicker Kansai-ben.
Osamu flirts with Akaashi right in front of Bokuto. Shamelessly. He’s not even sure Osamu likes men.
Osamu laughs at the way Kiyoomi’s mask stays up the whole night and asks him why d'ja even come if you're not gonna eat with your team? Surely not to benefit them with your presence twenty minutes into knowing him.
Osamu flips off the restaurant owner across the street when the delivery truck can't get in because the old coot didn't shovel the snow properly.
Atsumu would be surprised if Osamu hadn't spit in someone's lunch special before.
It almost gives him enough strength to think, hey, maybe I'm not so bad. Long gone were the days Kiyoomi's soul would float away when they accidentally brushed each other in the locker room. He cleans the gym equipment he uses, and doesn't jack off in shower like some of his teammates. Bokuto and him are closer to being friends than ever, and he helps Barnes with his Japanese basically every time he’s asked.
Kita would be proud'a me.
No. Shut up. Stupid.
Well…
He might be.
Very good, Atsumu. Do you want your treat?
It’s also been two months since he's gotten laid, Jesus in Heaven, Atsumu realizes as he finishes getting changed after practice. Once the season starts to get closer to the finals, he never finds the time to go out. He slings his bag over his shoulder and steps into the blistering, stand-still cold. The heavy changing room door bangs shut behind him.
Kita, Kita, Kita.
A distant prayer bounces back to him, echoing like it does in the grand church halls his aunt tried to drag their family to a few times when they were younger. Ain’t it counterproductive to think of the object of his bisexual awakening as something associated with holiness?
▪️▪️▪️
“I’d like it if you came to visit, Atsumu. Thought to wait for the off-season."
Atsumu's throat feels drier than the crusty towel he found under a gym bench at practice yesterday. Kita sounds like silver trumpets through the phone, like home the way his accent braids his careful words. Careful, always careful. If Kita ever said anything, it was with planning and care and assurance—every word was meant to be there.
"Wh-when?" Nice.
"I'm looking at the train prices right now. If you get over here for Monday I'll have you home by Friday night so you don't miss any outings."
Huh. That almost sounded like a joke, if Kita was capable of those. But he ain’t, so Atsumu decides it probably wasn't and if he laughs along it'll come out weird. So he stays uncharacteristically quiet.
"You're not obligated to come, Atsumu. Ain’t a problem."
"No! No, sorry, just thinking 'bout my schedule. Yeah," Atsumu confirms, breathy tone making him feel like a weak man, "that works, I'll tell you when I get my ticket, 'kay?"
Kita hums happily and tells him to take care.
Wait.
Who else was coming?
atsumu 10:34
should i relay all this to osamu?
cap'n Kita 10:35
No.
I'd like it if it was just us. I've seen Osamu enough at Onigiri Miya over the past few months.
10:37
Granny is staying with her sister down the way.
atsumu 10:40
sounds good, kita-san. see you then :)
▪️▪️▪️
Why does he shake? Why does Atsumu, with his strong will, thick build, and suffocating masculinity, shake? It makes him heat up with anger looking down at the train ticket that wobbles in his hands. Shaking is for the rabbit who hides from the fox. Atsumu should be—Atsumu is the fox. Atsumu is not the rabbit, he is a brainless predator: teeth first, think later.
The scenery passes by at what feels like the speed of sound. He's on his way to the rice fields of Hyogo, past the familiar nodes and landmarks of Amagasaki, all the way out to where you can see the sun melt on top of the horizon.
▪️▪️▪️
A hurricane lasts on land for at least twelve hours, on average. The train ride from his station to Kita’s is four hours. The speed of a hurricane tops out at 252 kilometers per hour, but the Shinkansen cuts through space at an insane 320 kilometers per hour. The power of a storm is immovable, the speed of the train is futuristic, but the push that it takes to get him to leave his seat and step on to the platform is incomprehensible.
And there he is. Atsumu really has to stop this whole line of thinking, but he swears the heavens open up and shine a light on the smaller man standing in the middle of the platform with his arms by his sides—not leaning against a wall or waiting in his car. Kita, gorgeous Kita, waits there for Atsumu in the middle of the crowd.
All at once it's like no time has passed and Atsumu is back to pretending to cry because of something Suna said so he can get Kita to pull his head down against his chest and pat his bleach-fried hair. The feeling is at once nostalgic and humiliating.
"Atsumu, hi."
"Hey, Kita-san. Didn't keep you waiting, did I?"
"Not at all," Kita takes his luggage from him once they get to the small, silver, box shaped car so he can place it in the trunk, "I hope your trip kept you comfortable enough for a week in the fields."
Maybe Kita could tell jokes. Or maybe he just liked to tease. Regardless, his expectations of a grown Kita Shinsuke are abandoned at the train station when the radio station immediately turns on to the sound of Japanese idol pop.
"Wow, Kita-kun. Practicing to give up farm life?" Atsumu pokes, as he tends to. Kita hits his shoulder lightly, rolling his eyes. Kita feels so different but Atsumu welcomes the change. He talks the older man's ear off to burn away the leftover trip anxiety. He notices Kita drives like he wants to keep everyone safe. Atsumu drives like a bat out of Hell. Kita holds the steering wheel with both hands and tells Atsumu he can change the station, the air, the seat, whatever you want.
Hearing Kita say those three words is already enough to make his head feel cloudy with lust. He's imagined words like those being whispered to him from just about every angle, enough to develop a fuckin' animal response to it. (Remember: it's been a long two months and Atsumu is still very much crushing like a bitch over soft skin and soft hair.)
He considers the Kita of his daydreams and lays him against the real Kita. He considers the fantasies and expectations and whisperings and whimperings and the little oases of his former captain that he finds in his day-to-day thoughts. He considers the week ahead of him and for the first time he really realizes the magnitude of coming to Kita's farm. Alone, under the heavy weight of holiness and rice and questioning if Kita and him were really even friends in the first place.
For the last hour of the drive, Atsumu closes his eyes and tries to see himself in this new life Kita built for himself. Hard work. Dedication. Atsumu knows these things inside out. Atsumu does them with selfish drive and adoration for the game, but he suspects it’s different for the older man. A farm takes patience and cultivation and guidance, things Atsumu was never afforded or taught. (Maybe a part of why he is who he is today; addicted to the instant gratification of a good set and a game won. Addicted to bringing himself over the edge to the thought of a certain someone for a quick high.)
Why did he even come to a farm, one that belongs to a person like Kita, where the expectation rests in a week of work, where the fruits of his labor won’t be seen till the season is over. Volleyball season has just ended, lining up with the start of a rice season in Japan. He can bring the muscles and stamina and hopefully cut through a decent section of the work. Prove to Kita that he can be useful here. Atsumu is strong, he can carry things… Yeah, he decides, Kita could appreciate him as hired muscle, at the very least.
Atsumu is strong. Atsumu is a man’s man and can easily provide for the country and shuck some corn or whatever it was he was about to do. Atsumu is strong, so why did he have to go telling himself twice?
▪️▪️▪️
They’re sitting on the couch. It’s a busted, traditional style thing, probably bought long ago by Yumie, and Kita likes old things, finds them charming in his old soul way. The whole house feels disquietingly old because, for the life of him, Atsumu can’t find a single sign that Kita lives in the twenty-first century with the rest of them, except for in the kitchen.
When he grew up, his home was a mix of tradition and modernity, like most of his classmates. Aran had the nicest house and the Miya twins would go over there sometimes, just to gape at the latest fridge model, like they were raised in a barn. Kita was basically raised in a real barn, but he never treated Aran any differently for their disparities, because he was true and good and kind.
Atsumu is only one year younger, but Kita feels ever more sacred: gods come to earth in the old tales—they mix and mingle with humans, but they never stay. Maybe that’s why Kita is all the way out here, far away from folks like the Miyas, who are so human they become sin.
He’s not all good and clean though, because here they are on that couch and Kita is already halfway through his own glass of the home-brewed rice beer. Atsumu sits with his feet on the ground, head back and looking up at the ceiling. He just realized how bad his muscles ache. They lost their last game of the season, and the hurt is always worse after that. Kita sits with his legs tucked under him, facing Atsumu, head resting on his arm that’s propped against the back cushion. Somewhere between unpacking his luggage into a smaller dresser and sitting down in the main room, an unnamed tension between them had started to build and thicken. He can feel fox eyes on the side of his face, but he’s scared to look. He only brings his head down to finish the drink: it’s unexpectedly strong. Not like he’d admit that, though, because Atsumu can hold his alcohol.
“Mh. Pretty good, ain’t it, Kita-san?”
“I’d know, I made it.”
Atsumu is silent again.
“But it sure is nice to hear. Ever made something like this, ’Tsumu?”
“Nah,” he scoffs, bringing his head back down again to look into the glass. He still can’t look at Kita, and now he’s bowing his head. So pathetic. “I stay far away from the kitchen. No offense or nothing, ain’t something someone like me is into.”
Atsumu is mean and provocative, but he nonetheless shoots up a prayer that he didn’t offend his senior.
“What constitutes someone like you?” Kita almost sounds like he’s smiling. He reaches over to place his empty drink on the table in front of them before returning to his original position. Some part of Atsumu wishes he wouldn’t and would just fucking look away. Don’t look at me, don’t make me think about myself right now. Let's talk about you. How does the man upstairs keep giving you more beauty every time I see you?
His gaze bores heavier into his glass. What's the saying about truths and the bottom of a bottle? “Ah, I don’t know, Kita-san. Probably would knock shit over. All that delicate stuff, can’t do it. Can mix electrolytes into my water and microwave a meal, but that’s about it. Get someone else to do it and deliver it.”
“Y’know cooking tastes better when you appreciate the person who made it.”
“Oh? You offering? Mighty kind of you, senpai.”
Kita makes a tch sound and scoots closer. “Can I ask you something, Atsumu?”
Fu—ck. Anything, baby. C’mere, ask me right in my ear.
Instead he makes a noise which the other man interprets as yes. They’re whispering, and Atsumu soars past the buzz and straight to hungover without even letting the drinks settle.
“Describe the delivery person in one word.”
“Jeez. Uh, convenient, I guess?
Kita only has to let out a little hum and Atsumu realizes he must be predictable. Were the Inari ever known for mind reading? Maybe Kita is just better than the rest of them. Atsumu hates being predictable, but he accepted a long time ago that it’s written all over his face. Maybe that’s why he plays up the—no. Still too sober for that line of thinking.
“Do you find many people to be convenient in your life?”
It would be convenient if you filled my cup again before you go down this path, Shin-chan.
“Sure,” there’s no right answer here. Kita already knows the outcome. “Off the court, many things about this life are convenient. ‘S convenient for the country to be able to look at me play instead of some ugly mug.”
Of course there’s no laugh. He was toeing the line of being mean and Kita is the only Inarizaki club member who doesn’t put up with that. How he and Osamu are business partners is beyond him. The gap between them feels like the waves against a boat, pulling in and receding.
“People are not meant to be convenient, Atsumu.” Ah, so he’s one of the nicer gods. “Aran taught me this a long time ago, and it’d do you good to remember: people bring love, companionship. People may be built of their own multitudes, but what they put out into the world is so much bigger than how we value such little things.” Kita gets even closer and the room starts to spin. “I used to think that my rituals were what grounded me to this life and brought me closer to understanding my feelings. Please, Atsumu, if you’re going to treat people like that, then at least use them for guidance.”
They’re close enough that Atsumu only has to find enough bravery to turn his head to the side and look up, head still slightly bowed. Oh, he’s about to say something stupid. Kita’s eyes glow in the dark and his pupils are blown to see better and Atsumu is thinking about how they’d look like that in bed. There’s something there, between them, but Kita is nothing if not a hard person to read. The air is heavy, though, heavy heavy heavy.
“Guide me then, Kita-san.”
▪️▪️▪️
It was to be as simple as three steps:
- First, Atsumu was to spend a day learning the ropes from Kita. He would be guided through the processes and was not to interrupt or assume he knew what the task was.
- He was to perform most of the manual labor for the week. This meant carrying things, operating machinery, and the likes. Kita had already prepared for the visit to put him behind schedule, so it didn’t matter if the process was slow in the beginning (Atsumu was never slow).
- He was not to complain about said labor. Patience was above all. If something was not completed to Kita’s liking, they would do it until it was done right.
They wake up early Tuesday morning on separate tatami beds. It’s different from his memory foam bed, but Atsumu feels surprisingly less stiff than he thought he would. He looks over in Kita's direction, sees him sitting up, cross-legged and hunched over a piece of paper. It’s the list of rules, something Kita thought to put in writing so Atsumu couldn't weasel his way out of the rules. God, Kita knows him so well it feels like an insult.
Last night, Kita had delicately placed his pointer finger under Atsumu's chin and lifted it up. You don't have to bow your head to me, Atsumu, he had said. At the time, it felt like his face had just been branded by both the thumb pressed on his chin and by the stare boring into him. Looking, seeing, understanding. Kita probably knew exactly how Atsumu felt, and liked to watch him squirm. They were all foxes, and they all liked to play with their food.
But with the slow sunrise, that burning tension faded and everything felt light again, like in the car ride over. The only thing different now was that he was staring at the list of commandments as he brushed his teeth, eyebrows furrowed. Did Kita think this would be hard for him? Did Kita think it was funny, like he thought Atsumu was going to pick up a pack of rice and fall flat over? Atsumu flipped tires in the gym as part of a workout, he would be just fine, thank you very much.
He almost feels angry now. A flicker of familiarity, a scene that's been copy and pasted so many times in Atsumu's life that it's not even a specific instance anymore:
Why didn't anyone believe he could do it? He just said he could do it, it won't be hard to prove them wrong.
"Fuck off, I know what I'm doing."
The other person backs off, hands raised in mocking surrender. He hears the chuckle in their voice when they walk away, "Alright. Whatever you say, jerk."
Atsumu wishes that it was always whatever he says, goes. A life of beckoning and ordering. Atsumu grumbles and finishes the task. He dusts his hands and spits on the grass beside him.
Was Kita like that? No. The first half of the day on the farm was set aside purely for teaching. Though Atsumu sometimes felt the urge to take the reins and teach Kita how to do something, it feels like something in his chest is chipped away when he figures out that asking questions won't make Kita look at him stupid. He lets Kita’s steady rhythm of Kansai-ben wash over him and gets rewarded with a pat on the head when he plows a tester plot of land exactly like he was told. It makes him feel sick with emotions and he looks over his shoulder to make sure no one’s watching. Not a soul ‘cept a lone crow.
They are, as Kita explained, preparing the land for the next season; he had just allowed the farm a fallow period of three weeks so the soil can regenerate and recover. Now that it's the right weather and timing to plant again, they have to flood and loosen the land that’s grown static. Atsumu figures it’s simple enough; it’s a rule that his life follows very often. MSBY takes their breaks after a long season so they don’t run their bodies into the ground, but they have to start training again slowly but surely before their games start up in October so as not to injure themselves.
If only he had Kita’s hands to massage him awake every morning.
No, he’s not jealous of the ground, even though it gets to have Kita walk all over it.
▪️▪️▪️
By the end of the first day, as in when the sky only just begins to get dimmer, they’ve plowed through a sizable chunk of the farm. Kita’s land is quite vast, but he only wants Atsumu to do one of the three fields. It's not enough to warrant using huge farming equipment like an undercutter, but enough that there’s normally hired help to split the work.
It’ll probably take Atsumu a few more hours to meet his original goal of a third of the field. He’s just about to pick the tool up again where it’s resting in the shallow swamp, when he feels a touch on his elbow. He didn’t even hear Kita come up behind him, but he feels a hand on the small of his back. It doesn’t burn, but it makes his blood jump.
“You work any harder and I'm gonna have to pull you through the mud. Granny wouldn’t like it if you dirty the floors.”
Atsumu laughs but turns back to the hand tractor in front of him, “Nah, it’s all good, Kita-san. Wanna meet my goal for today. You can bring me a glass of water if you want.”
He can’t keep trudging through, because Kita won’t let go.
“Atsumu.”
It’s not only a warning; it’s a test to see if he can follow the rules.
Atsumu hates rules. He hated them when his dad told him he couldn’t play with Osamu’s figurines, when his coach told him he couldn’t be the only setter on the team, when Kiyoomi told him the only way they’d be getting along together on the team is if Atsumu followed some rules. Men should not be chained down by rules and they should do what their heart desires, his dad had told him, the freedom that life provides is not worth giving up for a ball and chain like that. Kita could be one heavy bastard when he wanted to be.
So he takes one more step, just because he fucking hates rules.
“Drop it.”
But he sure knows a command when he hears one. He’s like a damn dog with the way he obeys a stern tone.
And then they’re outside the house, taking off their boots. Kita wordlessly directs him to the shower to wash off while he turns and goes the opposite direction. Maybe there’s another shower somewhere else. Atsumu doesn’t know—he feels foggy, like he’s moving on instinct. He’s processing the look of Kita’s face while he lets hot, hot water stream over him and decompress his muscles. He washes himself until he’s sure there’s no more dirt on him. Kita would be upset, probably, if he couldn’t even do this right.
When he slides the curtain to the side, he sees a fresh set of clothes waiting for him. Huh, he didn’t even hear the door open. How stupid, he should always be on guard. Don’t go trustin’ every kind face you meet, Atsumu-kun. Ain’t a single person out there who couldn’t do you wrong.
As he goes through the process of getting ready for bed, in this small and somewhat modern bathroom, Atsumu considers the ways in which his father’s advice about trust translated onto him. He was very social, but he didn’t tend to let people actually get close. He could act familiar with anyone, but they never knew anything concrete about him. Except Osamu.
“That’s ‘cause no one wants to know anything going through that rotten skull of yours, ’Tsumu. I'm forced to know ‘cause you never stop blabbering at the dinner table.” Osamu said, hiding a smirk behind a bite of his lunch.
“Ouch, mean as ever, Osamu-kun!” Aran laughed, clutching a hand to his chest in faux-shock. Aran only participated in their jibes when he was sure fists weren’t going to be thrown. Atsumu didn’t know if Aran tried so hard to keep them in line because he was older, or because he was frustrated he didn’t get their sense of humor. It was a personal accomplishment for the Miyas when they got Aran to laugh.
Hearing Aran laugh made Atsumu jealous, competitive. But, they’re sitting in the clubroom for lunch, and there’s no one around to witness Atsumu being the less funny twin.
At least, not until Kita walks in, looking sharp as ever in his school uniform. Sharp like a rose, he sweetens up a bit when he notices Aran. Atsumu knows that expression and he wonders if Aran does. He wonders if his friend could picture a photo album of Kita-expressions behind his eyelids.
“Aran-kun, I was looking for you. I need to talk to you about something.” Kita pauses and registers the twins behind Aran. “Alone, if that’s possible.”
If Atsumu thinks back, he realizes that might’ve been the day the two got together.
When the two seniors leave, Osamu finishes his food and crumples the bag it was in. He looks over at Atsumu who’s still watching the door, “Dumbass. Better give that up before you get too attached.”
▪️▪️▪️
When he walks out into the main room, Kita is sitting at the kotatsu, looking at the piece of paper from the morning. There’s two glasses of water and two plates of food along with the list. Kita’s hair is wet, which confirms there must be another shower in the house.
“Sit.”
Atsumu sits.
“Read this.” He points at the second sentence of the third point.
“Patience is above all.” Atsumu feels the skin of his neck and ears burn with embarrassment. He bounces his leg under the blanket to keep himself under control. He doesn’t wanna talk back to Kita again and end up getting kicked off the farm. If he had to take that train again within the span of twenty-four hours, he’d probably pass away.
“Were you patient today, Atsumu?” he asks, but before Atsumu can reply, he keeps going, “No, because you believe that you know best, no matter the circumstance. If it feels good in the moment, then why stop, right?”
Atsumu feels like they’re talking about a hundred different things, so he nods, just to be sure.
“You were the same way in high school. Remember in your second year, when you got so darn caught up in the good feeling from yours and Osamu’s plays that you didn’t realize how tight the game was?” Kita pushes the plate of food closer to him so he knows he’s not under interrogation. It’s a safe conversation. The flavor of the dish is even better with the countryside air coming in through the window, and he feels a little more steady.
“Yeah. I couldn’t help it.” It takes a lot to swallow his pride like that in front of Kita, let alone anyone else, so his voice comes out broken and quiet.
A similar look is back on Kita’s face and he feels their legs bump underneath the tabletop, “Explain it to me. I want to know.”
So he does; Atsumu tries his best to explain something totally uncool in his cool-guy way, but he knows Kita sees through the façade. He only gets as far as making some sense of his competitive streak before he starts to feel a quiet sense of discomfort building in his chest. It picks up speed, as fast as the train. Atsumu starts to fiddle more, and can feel his breath become erratic. He feels itchy all over and suddenly it’s suffocating, like he’s drowning in the mud of the rice paddy.
“K-Kita, I can’t— Kita,” he tries. He feels like he’s going to fall over, but then, Kita is right beside him. Small, but strong and capable hands grounding him. A sweet and melodic voice guiding him to breathe, and telling him that he’s right there with him. He feels so helplessly pathetic, but the harder he tries to pretend like it’s not happening, the further he drifts away.
After a few minutes where Atsumu is convinced he’s going to die there on the tatami flooring, Kita asks him, “Do you wanna go outside, ’Tsumu?”
He realizes, then, how much it feels like the walls have compressed, but he’s scared of what it might feel like, seeing the vast openness of Hyogo. He nods anyway, and Kita brings them out to a patio around the back of the farmhouse. He sits down on the steps, and Kita sits behind him, providing a makeshift wall for support. Kita’s thighs are much smaller than his, and it makes him laugh a little.
His laugh is even weaker than his voice was earlier. It’s kind of raspy, and not at all what he usually sounds like. Atsumu is meant to be loud and reverberant, he is meant to be heard, even though he is not always listened to. He's meant to be the life of the party and a mood maker of the team. Whatever he and Kita are doing here, in the middle of nowhere, Japan, feels like the furthest thing from a party.
He feels frustrated again, but it only lasts a few moments.
▪️▪️▪️
The sun feels different in the countryside. Atsumu remembers waking up at dawn to practice volleyball with Osamu before getting ready for school. The sun felt natural and comforting and familiar—sometimes too hot in the summer, but always welcome.
In the big city, in a lifestyle Atsumu is still adapting to, the sun can either be overbearing and undesirable, or needed but short-lived. The sun in the cities feels less natural than the overhead lights in the gym. Here, where he’s closer to back home than he’s been in awhile, the sun streams through the window, and he wakes up so relaxed. Just like the previous morning, Kita is already up and sitting cross-legged on his bed. This time, his eyes are closed and his chest is rising and falling deeply.
Before he even decides on something to say, Kita shushes him gently, “Try it, ’Tsumu.”
“I don’t know how.”
“You know I keep my promises.”
Atsumu knows what he means: Kita will guide him.
▪️▪️▪️
“I need to go into town today after we finish a bit of work in the field. I have a few things I need to pick up, and I was wondering if you wanted to come with? Ain’t much to do today, so I was thinking we could cook something together tonight.”
Kita and Atsumu are back in the bedroom again, a few hours after breakfast, and this time Kita is folding a pile of clean clothes from the laundry. Atsumu watches from where he lays and wonders if the light will always be drawn to Kita like this; the way he seems to glow wherever they go, a streak of gold here and a blinding white there. If Kita is godly and Heaven shines through the clouds, Atsumu wonders if it means he’s being called back up. He wants to ask Kita if he’s on the right track here, but he remembers the myth: if you find an Inari wandering around your farm, do not mention its fox-like features or its inhuman self, for if you refrain, you will be rewarded handsomely.
This building tension they have going on is so fragile, he takes the tale for what it is and keeps his mouth shut. Atsumu realizes he does more thinking when he’s around Kita than any place else. Down time for Atsumu is usually marked by video games and practice and finding someone to go clubbing with. So far, at Kita’s farm, he’s done none of those things, trying to be a model version of himself for the older man.
He wants to impress; that’s really what it comes down to. They haven’t really seen each other much since Kita graduated, and even less since Atsumu went pro. He continued to feel roiling jealousy when Osamu brought Kita up, but never felt secure enough in their friendship to reach out. That brings him back to his original problem: Kita was his first high school crush, and one he has yet to get over.
It's only his second day there, but he’s falling harder and harder just watching Kita’s tongue poke out as he tries to get a thin pair of pants on a hanger properly. The Kita that exists in Atsumu’s apartment is one of spirituality and sensuality, one that had more of a likeness to Kita than a memory. He watches Kita finish his task, get up from the floor, and dust off the knees of his pants, and decides that he’s still happy over here: feeding himself with domestic images and converting them into sustenance.
Maybe Kita can feel the air shift along with Atsumu’s thoughts and desires, but his face does not betray knowledge. Instead, Kita tells him to get dressed and meet him in the kitchen.
▪️▪️▪️
The farmer’s market is small and half indoors, and Atsumu thinks he recognizes it. It’s really not too far from Amagasaki, they’d probably only have to drive another twenty minutes, but it feels wrong to go there without the team. After they park down the street, Kita lets them walk side by side, an arm over his shoulders. There’s still some leftover chill in the air from the winter, and Kita’s ears are cold and red, so Atsumu can excuse himself as being a good kouhai and using his body heat to warm the other.
They need a few fruits and vegetables, things that Kita doesn’t have time to cultivate on his farm, and pork. Atsumu doesn’t know the first thing about recipes or ingredients, but he knows the meat that Kita is bartering for right now looks good enough to make his stomach growl. Loudly.
Kita turns around with a playful smile on his face, “Patience, ’Tsumu.”
Neither of them are expecting it when the middle-aged lady at the stand brightens up and claps her hands. Kita’s head whips around and Atsumu guesses it’s the fastest he has moved since their time on the court together.
“Kita-kun! Why didn’t you mention?”
Atsumu is genuinely confused. If they were so close, why couldn’t they have settled the price ages ago? He watches them with a polite smile on his face and his hands shoved into his MSBY tracksuit jacket.
“Mention what, Nakayama-san?” Kita and her are exchanging bills, and suddenly the two men are in possession of the supposedly highly sought-after meat.
“This is that handsome volleyball player, ain’t he? Oh, Manabu will just bark up a storm when I tell him!” The woman takes off her nitrile gloves to pat her hair and cheeks in a priming manner, “come closer, dear.”
Kita watches the situation stoically, and Atsumu distantly realizes that it’s a face he hasn’t seen in a while. He steps closer and bends a little so the top of the stand doesn’t obscure his face.
“You take care of this young man, you hear me? Poor thing overworks himself on that farm. He's only mentioned you a few times, but if you know Kita-kun, then you know that’s plenty. I best be seeing you out here more often.”
And with that, she smiles and bows her head one more time, before turning around to the smaller freezer to replace the display case meat that Kita had just bought. Atsumu feels like he just had his first meet-the-family experience.
They walk back to the car in silence, and he briefly wonders what his teammates are up to. He still hasn’t had the chance to talk to anyone about Shoyou leaving for Brazil, and how it cut him deep, but maybe Kita would be willing to listen. Those are emotions worth bringing up, right?
As Atsumu crowds himself into the small Kei car, groceries on his lap, he looks over at Kita and is once again amused by their size difference. The older man fits perfectly into the box shaped vehicle, and his knees don’t hit the dash or wheel. Atsumu has thought about their difference in size enough for it to be a hair-trigger: holding Kita, tossing Kita, flipping Kita, his mass on top of smaller bones and leaner muscles.
Out of courtesy’s sake—and a little bit of fear of Kita’s omnipresence—he hasn’t touched himself at the farm, but there’s a heat bubbling inside him. It flares when Kita brushes his arm or pats his head or grabs his hands to reposition them on some farm equipment.
It's been two days of touching Kita in these small ways after years of imagining so much more; he feels feverish, so he rolls down the window as they drive.
▪️▪️▪️
Atsumu is slowly learning to follow Kita wherever he beckons him, and right now that place is the kitchen.
It was only two days ago when he admitted that he didn’t know how to make noodles, let alone figure out whatever Kita was planning that involved produce and meat. That was, until they washed their hands and prepared the kitchen counter, and Kita reached into the fridge and pulled out gyoza wrappers. They’re in a Tupperware.
The two of them stand side by side. Atsumu hasn’t really had a reason to go to the kitchen since he got here, except for water. At least the tools they’ll be using look familiar. He doesn’t know what he would’ve done if Kita had whipped out some ancient frying pot.
“Ever made these, Atsumu?”
Atsumu shakes his head. A vague memory of his mother and Osamu making them years ago comes to mind; his father, watching skeptically.
“Nah. But I can watch?”
Kita looks at him with that hidden amusement of his, and tells him to grab two pairs of gloves for both of them from the drawer. They will both participate. It's quiet and easy cooking: Kita chops the garlic and grates the ginger, while Atsumu handles the easier task of cutting the cabbage and chives.
“I'll show you how to grind the pork. Normally I'd just buy it grounded, but I wanted to make it more special for you tonight.”
It’s always easy for Kita to say such blunt things. Things that make Atsumu’s neck blush and the tips of his ears heat up. He wonders if Kita would appreciate it if he was more straightforward, too, if he said some of the things he’s been itching to talk about since he got here.
“I got a really good one in Osaka, actually,” says Kita, sliding the metal contraption closer to where they stand. He unwraps the pork and, with a very sharp knife, hacks it into medium-sized chunks, “it’ll still have to go through twice, but the grind is very thin, so it shortens the process.”
Watching Kita work so confidently, throwing the meat into the grinder, then tossing spices into the bowl of pork, it’s all confusing to Atsumu. He always figured making things required gentleness. He didn’t have much reference to go by, but Kita treats cooking like he does cleaning: diligently and without pause.
“You’re good at this, Kita-san.”
“Oh? How do you know? Haven’t even tried nothin’ yet.”
A playful Kita is a good Kita. A Kita that Atsumu can find equal footing with. Still, he keeps his eyes on the way Kita mixes all the ingredients, rather than looking up and risking eye contact.
“Just the way y’move. Guess you’re like that with everything, though, ain'tcha? Always know exactly how to approach something.”
“Hmm,” Kita makes a sound that Atsumu wasn’t expecting. “Not everything. Some things require more patience, or… more testing, before you can approach ‘em confidently. Wouldn’t you agree?”
High schooler Atsumu most certainly would not agree. But now, with some years under his belt, and an international stage that doesn’t afford messing up, he hopes he sounds sincere when he agrees with Kita.
“Yeah. But also, some things only work out if you run into ‘em. If you spend the whole time humming and hawing, then someone else’ll take your spot. Especially in volleyball.”
Kita is quiet. He doesn’t respond, other than with a contemplative pout to his lips. He snaps off the lid of the Tupperware to reveal the paper-thin gyoza wrappers. They look chilled, but soon they’ll be placed into bubbling hot oil and fried with the ingredients in the bowl.
The window behind Atsumu is open, but he doesn’t think it’s the cold April air that sends a shiver up his spine. No, this is heated and in-time with the way Kita looks up at him through his eyelashes.
Kita could say anything to him right now.
“Grab one, ’Tsumu. I got you a small spatula for the filling.”
So anticlimactic, but still leaps and bounds from the emotionless gaze of high school Kita Shinsuke. There’s a dancing flame in the older man’s eyes that’s been waving at Atsumu for two days. Proving, in a sense, that Kita is real and here and human and less distant than he was when they were younger.
Atsumu slides his socked feet apart on the tile floor so he doesn’t have to loom over the counter. It’s easy to follow the first two steps of picking up the dough and scooping filling into it. Then, all of a sudden, Kita is intricately pleating the wrapper like it’s the most self-explanatory thing in the world. The uncooked dumpling is placed on a plate covered with flour, off to the side.
“Wh—” Atsumu starts, trying to be subtle in the way he looks over Kita’s shoulder at the finished product.
Kita’s face is a mask. “Somethin’ the matter, ’Tsumu?”
“Uh… nothin’ I guess.”
He looks back down at the food in his hand. Well. He can start by folding it together, probably.
That turns out to be harder than it looks. Kita is working on his second, but Atsumu still feels like he’s being watched.
“Ah. Um, Kita-san?”
“Yes?”
“Can— How… exactly did you make that one? It’s not like— I just— I wanna make ‘em taste as good as yours, I don’t want—”
There's no rush for Atsumu to finish what he means to say, but he decidedly doesn’t want to say any more. He lets the sentence trail off and looks at Kita, eyebrows conveying a c’mon, help me out.
Kita watches him for a second before he looks back down at the dumpling in his hand, this time in the shape of a rosebud. He places it gingerly off to the side and dusts more floor on his fingertips, “If y’got something to say, you can use your words.”
Atsumu considers the option of just trying to fold the damn dough again, but he ignores it. The sound of his throat clicking as he swallows down a mean retort is probably loud enough to be heard from Osamu’s restaurant.
“Can you teach me how to do… that?” he asks, and then adds, as a second thought, “please.”
It earns him an honest-to-god smile from Kita. He loathes the plastic gloves they’re wearing because he would’ve likely gotten a pat on the head, too. Kita is gorgeous, so damn gorgeous. His eyes crinkle at the corners and Atsumu is so taken by him.
“See? Wasn’t so hard.”
And so they cook. Kita guides his hands to make shaky crescent moons and pinched braids, little rose bud shapes and twisted ropes. The smell and sound of the dumplings hissing in oil is enough to pull another growl out of Atsumu’s gut.
“Would you like to eat here or at the table?” asks Kita, cleaning up the supplies and leftover ingredients. Atsumu is in charge of making sure the food doesn’t go up in flames. He moves the dumplings aimlessly in the pan with a set of chopsticks.
“Here’s fine. Standing up an’ eating is what I normally do.” he watches as Kita pulls up a single stool to the counter and sits on it, spine straight. It’s endearing. Atsumu wonders if Kita would hate being called adorable as much as he does.
After some time, Kita leans over and adds water to the pan and covers it with a lid. In some distant part of Atsumu’s mind, he’s committing this to memory. He can feel the ghost imprint of what it’s like to fold the gyoza, and kind of wants to do it again.
It’s not until they finish cooking that they start talking again. Atsumu starts with how delicious the food is, complimenting Kita in between bites and groans. He has to shut himself up by stuffing his face because he can feel himself getting carried away. Kita’s face shows a ghost of a smile, though, so he feels good.
Food is good. Food fuels him the same way it drives nations and wars and pets and trees alike. Food was Osamu’s language, but he’s starting to decipher it in the way Kita gives him the bigger dumplings and always makes sure his glass of sake is topped off. They’re inching closer and closer to that loose-lipped liminal space that they occupied on the first night.
Kita puts their dishes away and pulls out a small plate of mochi covered in saran wrap from the freezer. Atsumu laughs.
“You’d be a good wife, y’know? If not for the whole being a man thing y’got goin’ on.”
Kita slips back onto the stool and uncovers the dish, grabbing a light pink one for himself. He takes a bite and swallows it before acknowledging what Atsumu had said.
“Wife?”
“Yeah. Hell, even if you didn’t cook so nice y’still got the cleaning downpat. The shower’s so sparklin’ it’s probably even up to even Omi-kun’s standards.”
“Why’d you assume that can’t be the job of someone who isn’t a woman? Don’t have fit some ideal to know how to feed myself.”
Sometimes Atsumu wishes Kita would just drop this whole questioning thing and ignore him when he says something stupid instead. It was easier in high school, when he had Osamu and the other second and first years to laugh along with him. Then, he didn’t have to bear the weight of Kita’s judgment alone.
He says nothing, savoring the vanilla mochi on his tongue.
“Y’know, I taught Aran how to cook during his freshman year of university.”
Atsumu wishes he had said literally anything that could’ve derailed this conversation from happening. Kita’s voice already sounds far away, pausing occasionally to take another bite of his treat. The older man rests his chin on his hand, propped up by his elbow on the counter.
“Was a cute sight, seein’ him try to do somethin’ so detailed. We tried to make enough bento boxes to last him his first week.”
Aran always seemed to Atsumu like someone who had his shit together enough to know how to cook. He remembers Aran’s mom bringing them snacks while they played outside, under the warm Hyogo sun almost every day during summer. Aran always made an effort to eat stuff properly, even though he was just as messy as the other boys his age. He couldn’t hide the holes in his socks from the twins.
Suddenly, it’s too much. He blurts out:
“Why did you break up?”
Kita pauses again, but Atsumu doesn’t feel bad. He wants to know, so he’ll keep asking ’til he knows why it’s him sitting here, eating Kita’s mochi, and not Aran.
“Well. Remember what I told you on the first night? Aran taught me many things, lots of advice that I didn’t take to heart till much later. He…” Kita pauses again, formulating his thoughts. Atsumu wonders how he does it, how he doesn’t just spout a constant conscious stream every time he opens his mouth. “Aran is a better person than me.”
It looks like that’s the end of it. Atsumu groans and walks closer, “Come on, Kita. That can’t be it. If I gotta trust you then you gotta trust me too, right?”
Kita looks up at him, little cracks showing in the shield that is his face. Please don’t cry, Atsumu begs internally, I'd do bad things if you cried.
“Aran feels a lot, y’see. I'm sure you know this. But before, I’d always been a li’l stunted in that department. He loves a lot, too. I want to say that we were a good match, but I never really listened to the advice he gave me, ‘cause I always thought the controlled and calculated route was right for me.
We just started butting heads about everything. Wasn’t like anything I ever experienced. Looking back, was probably ‘cause I repressed so much of what I felt around him. We were sorta different in that way. Aran started to slow down around me and I couldn’t take it. He was changing in a bad way, tryin’ to act calm and quiet around me because he thought it was his fault.”
Kita tilts his head in consideration, as if debating whether or not he’s done with his story.
“Well. We were fresh out of high school. Nothing really lasts when you’re that young, and we’re still friends, which is all I could ask for.”
Atsumu doesn’t even let himself process it all until he asks, “So you wouldn’t get back together with him?” He feels like he’s dangling off the edge of a cliff somewhere far away from Kita’s quiet kitchen. He can hear rustling and chirping outside. The sun has given way to rural darkness, but the moon shines through the window and highlights Kita’s face.
He laughs lightly, smiles fondly, “No.”
It feels like an opening, more than anything he’s gotten so far from him. He doesn’t really notice that he’s walking forward, coming closer to where Kita sits. The stool seat spins so Kita is facing him. Looking up at him.
Here, in the farmhouse kitchen, miles and miles away from his apartment and team and life, he considers giving it all up. He wants to look at Kita in every light, at every angle, during every hour. All he can do now is let his eyes rove over Kita’s face and try to take in as much of that simple beauty as possible.
“Kita.”
Kita is silent. Testing. Atsumu just wants to do, he doesn’t like asking or waiting or answering.
The atmosphere is charged and, like a magnet, Atsumu bends down to meet soft lips.
Except he doesn’t get there. There’s a hand on his chest.
“I wish you woulda asked, Atsumu.”
“Kita…”
Kita pushes Atsumu’s chest a little more firmly, but the muscle won’t give. Atsumu stays where he is, looming over Kita, jaw set. They maintain eye contact while something sharp and electric passes between them, looking like it hurts them both.
Kita pushes him again and he relents. Atsumu stands ramrod straight. The way he’s being stared down right now makes him think of a time when Kita confronted him about sneaking into the gym in the morning to practice. Atsumu had twisted an ankle because he didn’t take time to warm up in the pursuit of a quick round of serves. He showed up to their afternoon practice pretending he wasn’t limping, but nothing got past Kita.
For the first time in a while, he hears the clink of broken glass sliding together, chipping away dust on their ragged edges. Muffled by a box, by a closet. He doesn’t know what Kita is going to say but he feels so many things.
“Why’d you do that, Atsumu?”
Atsumu raises his eyebrows at him, wondering if this is going to be another line of questioning or he’s about to be rejected for the first time in his life.
“I'm pretty sure it was obvious I wanna kiss you, what else could that have been?”
Kita’s face is back to being robotic, giving him no clues to what the right answer to that question should’ve been.
“Are you in the habit of taking?”
Atsumu looks away and rubs his eyes, hands dragging down his face. He doesn’t know how to have these conversations with Kita. He feels the weight of the day on his shoulders and leans against the counter.
“Sure. But I don’t know why we have to talk about this now.”
The barstool squeaks as Kita gets up; he gestures for Atsumu to take it instead. When he sits down, Kita and him are at eye level.
“When I asked you on Monday if people were convenient for you and you said yes without a hint of guilt, it made me wonder why you ended up coming here. I'm not going to be a convenience for you, Atsumu. And I'm certainly not going to let you try things on me without asking first. Shouldn’t that be the rule for anyone you interact with?”
There is something stressful in Kita’s tone and it strokes the flame of Atsumu’s shame, “Christ. It’s not like that, Kita-san,” he keeps his head down, “it’s really not. You and your old world traditions…”
Smack!
Kita swats the top of his head.
“I don’t care where you live, who you’re with, or what you think, Atsumu. You’ll do good to remember you don’t go kissing anyone without asking. You asked me to teach you how to be patient.”
He knows Kita could treat him better than this, but he knows he is the reason why they keep falling into these philosophical discussions every time Atsumu tries to veer into flirtation.
“So you’re saying you don’t trust me?” Atsumu asks, completely avoiding Kita’s questions, “You think I can’t control myself or something?”
Kita’s arms cross in front of him, “You know that’s not true. Don’t be stupid, Atsumu.”
The crickets chirp outside. Atsumu’s palms feel cold and clammy.
“Kita. Please. Lemme kiss you.”
Kita, for the first time, looks disappointed.
▪️▪️▪️
Waking up on the farm has somewhat of a Groundhog Day effect on Atsumu. Every morning he turns away from the blinding light coming through the window and instead opens his eyes to the sight of Kita.
Thursday morning, Kita is in the process of fastening a watch on his wrist, already fully dressed and looking much too proper for a day in the fields. The tension didn’t fade from last night. Instead, it stagnates in a cloying fashion. Atsumu’s chest feels heavy with the weight of divine judgement.
“I have to meet a client. I trust you’ll finish the farm before I get back?”
Atsumu grunts in assent. He doesn’t want to do anything right now while Kita is watching, but he knows manual labor will be good for him, and can help him burn steam. His muscles ain’t as tense as they usually are, and somehow, that’s bothering him.
▪️▪️▪️
If it was an average day, Atsumu would stretch a little, eat half a bagel, and burst out the door for his morning jog. Maybe run into a teammate in the lobby of the athletics housing complex, maybe run with them for a bit. Today isn’t normal, though; just another day on the farm where he’s sure if he tried to “run around the block” he’d end up collapsed in a ditch somewhere.
So, instead, he gets up, stretches a little, eats from a plate that Kita labelled as his breakfast, gets ready, and drags himself back to the fields. The air is chilly and the sky is still waking up. He takes a deep breath and lets it flood his system. His teeth are cold, chattering, so he runs his tongue over them. The mountains in the distance stand green and still, make it feel like that’s the end of the world, like all there is to the Earth is the farm.
He’s got a quarter of the field left to do. So far, Kita has approved what he’s done. The morning before they went to the farmer’s market, Atsumu had done a couple other preparative tasks that Kita had asked him to. He wasn’t able to get as much of the field done as he wanted, but at least now, when Kita’s employees come for the new season, it’ll be a clean transition.
So, he works.
And he thinks.
Making Kita happy is the result that Atsumu has been striving towards. To make this field yield more rice than the man ever thought possible. There’s no sense in investing himself into anything else about this farm. He won’t ever feel the satisfaction of looking out at the watery landscape, wiping the sweat off his brow like Kita does.
He will feel satisfaction when Kita smiles at him, though. Tells him he’s done a great job, he’s a fast learner, that Kita wishes he was around more often for free labor.
He wants Kita happy and stress-free. In high school, he wanted Kita riled up; he would have done anything for a twitch to crack through that armor-plating of his. First proper crush; all he could’ve dreamed of was getting some attention. But, now that he’s seen what it looks like when Kita is disappointed? Frustrated? He’d do anything to avoid it.
In high school, Atsumu threw some shards of his empathy into the box and kicked it back into the dark corner of the closet. It would only slow him down if he was stuck thinking about how sad the other team would be if they lost. If he hadn’t let go of that, he wouldn’t be able to push his spikers to their limits. Atsumu knows that his talent as a setter lies in being able to harness passion and pick out details.
If a teammate comes in sad or distracted, he knows how to lift that veil and set them something easy to blast through so they forget their outside worries.
It’s not on purpose if Atsumu indirectly makes them feel better, and he’d be lying if he said it was. Many people make the mistake of thinking Atsumu is truly good. They think that if they try hard enough they’ll get him to cuddle after sex and he’ll remember their birthday and he won’t pretend he has a family emergency so he has to miss their date, all because he decided he wants to hang out with Osamu instead.
Despite that, he does like to see, if he really thinks about it, people close to him in their best form. Atsumu likes to see Shoyou bounce off the walls and be unconditionally happy. Meian is best when practice is calm and he doesn’t have to be distracted trying to wrangle the team. He bickers a ton with his family during reunions, but he knows his little cousin Daiki smiles the most when Atsumu takes him for ice cream while the adults are drinking. Osamu is at home in the kitchen, but Atsumu knows, deep down, he’d soften up even more with someone to love on.
Kita.
Kita in high school would look most satisfied after cleaning, so Atsumu made sure to leave a mess in the clubroom. Kita seemed to always know what to say, so Atsumu gave him more reason to say things after practice. Kita liked to look after people, so when Atsumu finally got that care package in high school, he felt like he had fulfilled some deep seated purpose in himself.
Of course, that was Kita from a distance. Young Kita.
Kita now exudes even more confidence than he did before. He is settled, curled up after a warm meal with his white fox tail curved around him. He is the Inari, giving patience and maturity to Atsumu, turning Atsumu into the physical representation of his message.
Kita is cosmic. When Atsumu went to the Olympics for the first time, he felt like he could touch both ends of the globe. Unbeknownst to him, Kita was already resting his immortal bones and setting up shop in this deserted corner of Japan.
Kita smiles more now; he must feel more free than he did in school. He gets to look out at this field every morning and know he’ll be safe here to live out his days. He smiles a lot at Atsumu, touches him, lets him get close enough to kiss.
He feels a little guilty about the kiss; that’s another vulnerable emotion he’ll let himself feel today. He knows now, with a clear head, that what he did went against all his lessons. He knows Kita wouldn’t have ever wanted it like that, even without the list of rules. Understanding how to fix this escapes him, though.
Luckily, he doesn’t have to think much longer when he realizes he’s hit the fence and the field is done. It’s really done. Fuck, he’s exhausted. The field around him is still murky, but he can envision greens and beiges and whites and browns in the warmer months. He sees full crops under the moonlight. Crops that will feed Japan.
The hand tractor gets hosed down, and he retreats to the shower.
▪️▪️▪️
Kita comes back a little after five in the afternoon. He is neutral, giving no hints as to whether or not his business meeting went well. Atsumu props his head up on his hand, elbow digging into the soft flooring. He remains lying down but the kotatsu, unsure how to reach out.
“All good?” He asks, extending an olive branch.
Kita smiles softly, and it makes his eyes crinkle, “Yes, Atsumu. Give me a moment to shower and I'll be right out.”
Atsumu lies back down and closes his eyes, massaging one of his shoulders, stretching his legs. Kita signals his arrival back to the living room with the sound of his slippers sliding against the floor. He sits down on that small couch from the first night. When Atsumu looks up, he sees a bag in Kita’s lap.
“Come. Sit here, ’Tsumu.”
He complies, pulling himself up and plopping down next to Kita. The plastic of the bag rustles as Kita pulls out a large pack of Salonpas.
“Take off your shirt and tell me where it hurts.”
Atsumu stares at him for a moment, trying to muster an expression that says Do you know what hearing you say that does to me? He’s pretty sure he nailed it, but he’s ignored all the same. He reaches behind him and yanks the white tee-shirt off and lets it fall into a heap on the ground.
Kita works silently, following where Atsumu points to different sections of his shoulders and back. It's a problem he’s had since high school. He builds muscle easily in his legs, but his upper body is stubborn to follow along. It’s not so bad now that he’s gone pro and has a trainer up his ass, telling him how to exercise properly, but it means he’s still catching up with the damage he inflicted beforehand.
When they finish, Kita runs his hands up Atsumu’s back to flatten the patches, from his waistband to his shoulders, leaving an electric current of goosebumps in his wake.
“I'm gonna make tea. You still like black tea and sugar, right?”
He does.
“Mhm. I don’t even know how you remember that.”
Kita says nothing because there’s no real answer to that. The tea is brewed and handed over to him in a mug, another part of the house that he knows Yumie picked out. Speckles of her personality are dusted all over the farmhouse. He briefly wonders what she’s been up to.
They drink in silence, looking out the window as the sun sets. It seems that, for whatever reason, the two of them share their heaviest moments together while Japan settles into bed.
He doesn’t notice his mug is empty until Kita gently takes it from his hand and places it on the side table along with his own. Atsumu feels himself coaxed to lay down, head resting on Kita’s thighs. They look at each other, light tension passes through the eye contact. The feeling is still a little strained, so he shifts to lay down properly, legs half hanging over the armrest of the couch.
“Saw the fine work you did on the field. You’ve done really well this week, Atsumu. Didn’t cut any corners.”
It’s said in a factual tone, as if what Kita says is the genuine truth and not just something to make him feel funny inside. Atsumu smiles regardless, a lazy lift to his grin, “Y’really had me sweating out there in the middle of April, Kita-san. Feel like giving me a reward?”
He’s already gotten tea and pain relief patches, but he slips into a space even more comfortable when Kita’s hands begin to weave through his hair, still slightly damp from the shower.
“Oh, Hell yeah.”
Kita snorts, snorts at Atsumu as his magic hands perform miracles on his scalp and around his ears. He wasn’t expecting anything at all, really was only testing the waters after last night, but this is so much better. If Kita doesn’t start talking again, he’s going to fall asleep.
This is closer than they’ve ever been, even when Kita’s lips were only inches away from his. Here, he begins to think up scenarios he never considered before. Domesticity. Relationships. Something more than whatever he was approaching Kita with before.
“You got everything ready to leave tomorrow?”
The daydreams leave as fast as they came. He’s used to entertaining thoughts about Kita for hours at a time, so it feels unfamiliar to be pulled out of his thoughts so quickly. He doesn’t have the time to pout, though, because the question feels like a punch to the gut.
“To be honest, I forgot I wasn’t supposed to stay.”
Kita’s hands don’t pause, and he shows no signs of reacting to what Atsumu said. Atsumu closes his eyes in desperate hope to make himself harder to read, as well. This vulnerability that Kita keeps thrusting on him, whether on purpose or by accident, is difficult to deal with. If it were anyone else, he’d have snapped the first time they ignored him.
But, Kita isn’t ignoring him, and he isn’t anyone else. Atsumu opens his eyes after some time and sees fondness taking over Kita’s face. His eyebrows are raised in the middle, making his eyes look big and starry. His smile is small, but it looks like he’s holding back something bigger. A hand in his hair sweeps his bangs to the side, as if trying to see as much of Atsumu’s face as possible.
“You’re very cute, Atsumu.”
Oh no.
“Ah, Kita-san. Flattery,” he brushes it off, feeling uncharacteristically self-conscious and stupidly tongue-tied. It's those fox eyes and the way they gaze down at him. He turns his head, but Kita’s palm pushes him back into place; Kita is confident.
“Atsumu. I want to know you. I feel like I have the pieces in front of me, but I don’t know where they go,” Kita says, tone even and sure, “Every time I try to guess, you shut down. I don’t want you to get scared if I push harder for answers.”
It does scare Atsumu, that honesty. Atsumu is someone who lies easily, but can only say things like this under duress. He feels like a teenager again, like he hasn’t grown at all, like he’s praying in church and Kita’s face won’t stop popping up in his mind. Kita is so far away, and the distance only grows every time Atsumu tries to figure out what’s going on.
He’s already preparing to push him away. He doesn’t want people to know him, does he? Does he want the sickly, scratchy comfort of being known and perceived? Does he want Kita to know that he has adored him for what feels like his whole life?
That he’s still jealous of Aran?
That he’s afraid of more mature love?
That he doesn’t think he could give anything new to Kita?
That he’ll go home tomorrow, alone, and repeat the process of sleeping and waking and seeing Kita everywhere?
That he’s afraid Kita will disappear if he tries to reach out again?
Whatever they’re doing together, it’s on unequal footing. Kita can’t possibly know how hard he’s been pined for. It is unlikely that Kita knows the extent of what a jerk-face asshole Atsumu is, and probably doesn’t know how difficult it’ll be to get him to change. Whatever they’re moving into, Atsumu will be starting with devotion leveled up to the high Heavens, while Kita probably just wants to connect with his kouhai. Atsumu keeps his arms where they are, crossed over his chest.
“It’s… not that easy, Kita-san. And— and! I don’t know where you get off thinking I'm just gonna spill all my secrets to you like some kinda confessional. I don’t even— I don’t even know what my secrets are. Don’t know how to get you to know me.”
He's tensing up and Kita is taking another long pause. He feels anger, but, for the first time in his life, his mind is empty of threats of imminent physical retaliation. He doesn’t want to assert something to Kita. Instead, he broods over the ways that people wanted to get to know Osamu growing up, but stayed far away from him.
His father would say that the only feelings a man oughta have were anger, self-worth, and drive. The rest could come later with a woman’s touch, like love and accomplishment.
Atsumu wants to feel more. it would be nice, he thinks, to just open himself to what Kita is asking. He'd like to take Kita to his childhood bedroom and hand him the fragile cardboard that rots in his closet. He knows, at this moment, that the shards are beginning to poke through. Things like happiness, intimacy, and other gentle things. There are worse things, he decides, than being able to put a finger on whatever he’s feeling right now. He doesn’t want to be overwhelmed by an urge to punch something to regain a sense of normality. He decides that, then and there, and it feels like he just unlocked some core part of him. The first of many layers.
“Kita,” he breathes, all the fight leaving him at once. His muscles unclench and he sinks into the couch and Kita’s thighs, and there are tears welling up in his eyes. He doesn’t sob, but lets them flow soundlessly, completely out of his control. Kita’s fingers dance delicately along his face, not trying to settle him, but give him something to focus on.
He should feel ashamed for having Kita take care of him for the second time in four days, but he feels safe. He rolls over and shoves his face into Kita’s lower stomach, nuzzling the softness he finds there. Still, it’s easier to cry when someone isn’t watching every emotion that passes along his face.
“It’s okay, Atsumu,” Kita says, rubbing his newly exposed back, “It’s a process. I'm not asking for everything today.”
And, okay, that’s reassuring. But…
“I'm leaving tomorrow and I don’t think I know how to keep this up without you, Kita, I really don’t. Patience and all that shit, it’s not that easy. Y’been pushing me out of what I know all week.”
Atsumu feels a hand on his shoulder. “Can you sit up for a second?”
Sitting up makes him dizzy, head already a bit stuffy and slow from crying. He's sort of looming over Kita, trying to face him and still sit upright.
Something is coming, so he wants to pay attention.
“You can stay here as long as you want.”
Well, that sure is something. Something that he wants real bad, from the tips of his fingers to the muscle of his tongue to the skin on his elbows and knees. He wants to stay with Kita so bad it consumes him.
“Yes.” The answer is quick, out there before he has time to think logistics or implications. “Yes— Kita, I would love that, you know I would.”
Kita laughs, patting Atsumu on the chest. He didn’t realize how close he had gotten. “Hold your horses, you’ve still got another night to think about it.”
Atsumu doesn’t want to think about it. He wants it now; he wants this arrangement written in stone and known by the whole world. He thinks about his problem with wanting too much, though, and thinks about last night again. It’s haunting him.
“Kita,” he says, quieter than before, poking his tongue out to wet his lips, “If I stay, can I kiss you?”
Kita’s pupils are wide. This time, Atsumu wagers a bet that it isn’t only because of the darkness of the living room. Maybe Kita wants, too. How human of him.
“When you wake up in the morning, tell me what you want to do. You can be patient one more night, right?”
He can. If Atsumu has learned anything from this trip, it’s that he’s gonna be the most goddamn patient person in the world once Kita is done with him.
All he has to do is manage to get some rest.
▪️▪️▪️
His sleep is dreamless. It feels like, one minute his head hit the pillow, and the next, his eyes were open, greeted by a dark room and a view out the window that only suggests the sun is coming up soon. He feels as restless as he did the night before.
Atsumu picks up his phone from the floor where it's charging, clicking the power button and wincing at the white brightness. He fumbles with the settings until it’s bearable.
Four-thirty in the morning.
This wasn’t that early for him. Some days, his workouts would be starting within the next ten minutes. He’s been waking up with the sun these last few days, but it’s a privilege he isn’t afforded in his apartment back in the city. Bokuto’s unit got a view of the sunrise, and Atsumu got a view of the sunset.
Kita normally wakes up before the sunrise, though. He’s always up and doing something when Atsumu starts to feel his face warm up under the brilliant beams of the countryside. He likes it, the familiarity of knowing that, when he wakes, someone will already be up and taking care of things.
Still, maybe it’s too early. He rolls over to check anyway.
Oh.
Kita.
Four-thirty in the morning looks so good on Kita. Atsumu’s stomach folds and flips in nauseating clarity, butterflies painting words on the lining of his stomach, feelings he knew all along but didn’t have the words for.
Kita is beautiful and Atsumu wants him terribly. Entirely. There’s no going back now. Kita asked him to wait one more night, told him to ask for what he wanted in the morning. Atsumu didn’t know if it was a reward, or it was the end goal, or if Kita couldn’t wait any longer himself.
Wait for what, he’s not entirely sure. He doesn’t know if he’ll get what exactly he wants. He’s never yearned for the unknown like this before.
Kita is waking, evident in the way his nose scrunches a bit and his feet poke out from under the cover as he stretches. Even in his half-sleeping state he is elegant. Purposeful and elegant. Atsumu can’t take his eyes off him. He's adjusted to the darkness and he can see Kita in full now.
His wrist twitches with the stunted motion of wanting to brush the grey and black hair. Against better hopes for himself, Atsumu feels hot in his waiting. He wants to make good on last night right now. He wants to see which fantasy would come alive.
“’Tsumu,” rapsy, morning goodness. It tingles up and down, “Y’stare harder than dog waitin’ for grub.”
Atsumu would normally laugh, but every last ounce of his energy is being used to will himself to not pounce at Kita right now. Kita still lays there, eyes closed, hand pillowing his cheek and squishing his face up. He sleeps on his side with his back hunched. Atsumu tries to be as honest as his thoughts and feelings.
“You ain’t wrong.”
“Mhm?” Kita opens his eyes finally. The brown soaks up the cold moonlight in the air and reflects it back to Atsumu as tiny pin pricks all over his body.
“Yeah. Just wanna eat you up.”
There they are: thin black pupils dilate until they cover the irises. Kita’s expressive with his eyes, if you know how to look for it. Neither of them move, though; Atsumu knows he has to stay still. He shakes for it, he needs it so badly.
Kita, Kita, Kita. His prayers are heard.
Kita slides off the low mat, crossing the short distance on his knees. He stops right before the bed and leans over it. Atsumu doesn’t move a muscle, but he lets his eyes rove over the smaller body in front of him. White sleep shirt and black shorts, both making his tan skin look good enough to bite into.
“Tell me, Atsumu. Communication. Tell me what we can give each other, not what you want to take.”
His jaw clenches, biting back instinctive words that try to escape him. They haven’t looked away from each other, and Atsumu manages to keep the electricity flowing. He starts and it feels like going to confession.
“I want— want you, Kita.” He’s like a kettle, like a pot boiling and threatening the lid, “Kita— so long, s’been so long, can never—” he swallows, “never get you out of my head. You’re always there. Just— fuck, I don’t know, Kita.”
Kita doesn’t laugh or smirk at his stumbling admission. He doesn’t poke at Atsumu’s red cheeks or lack of vocabulary. He gets closer. The sun is rising, he distantly realizes. The tan of Kita’s skin glows, the browns of his eyes turn to caramel and his teeth are as white as the clouds that will soon be visible, too. Atsumu swallows harder this time, trying to push past something bad and be better.
“You should ask me one more time, Atsumu.”
It punches the air out of him.
“Kiss me. Please, Kita-san.”
“So polite.”
The spell he was under, one that kept his arms down and his body under the covers, breaks, and he comes alive with the pressure of Kita’s lips against his. The tension doesn’t melt. It builds steeply, a slope that makes his head feel fuzzy and numb. Kita’s lips are warm and his face is soft when Atsumu brings his hands up to cup it. The action pulls Kita even closer, both of them exhaling sharply through their noses.
Atsumu wouldn’t want to be patient in a situation like this. Normally, he’s a fuck fast, leave faster kind of guy. He doesn’t bother with foreplay or teasing or kissing. Kita is kissing him, though, and it alone feels better than anything he’s had in a while. Despite this, Atsumu pulls away. He knows how this should go. His hands fall against the pillow, one on either side of his head.
Kita smiles proudly, “Bein’ so good, Atsumu. Bein’ so patient for me, makin’ my heart sing.”
He wonders if he should feel like less of a man right now. He wonders if he should be fighting to get on top, shoving in, and not reacting so easily to simple words and praise. Instead, he is whining, chin canting up, kicking the blanket off his legs. Kita finally gets up off the floor and climbs into the low bed, straddling Atsumu’s thick thighs. He doesn’t know what Kita is doing to him, but it feels fucking fantastic, and he can’t stop shaking with need when hands smooth over his shirt once and then duck underneath. Rough palms on solid muscle, soothing.
This isn’t how he imagined it at all. Kita isn’t food or prey or a plaything. Atsumu looks up at him dazedly. His new lover, bathed in Hyogo sunshine. Kita is something to be worshipped and treated with care. Atsumu’s hips jolt when Kita’s fingers run over his chest, teasing the sensitive skin there. They’re both smiling, but Atsumu knows his is stupider. Giddy.
“Tell me more, Atsumu. What else d’you wanna give me?”
“Wanna,” his hips buck again from touch, jostling the man on his lap, “Wanna put it in you, Kita. Wanna feel you everywhere. I’ve been waitin’ so damn long. Please.”
Kita raises an eyebrow, almost imperceptibly, but asks if he can take Atsumu’s tee-shirt off. Atsumu nods. It’s left on the floor, just like last night. Atsumu can see hunger in Kita’s eyes and it makes him want to crack open his ribs and let the fox feast. As if reading his mind, Kita lowers his head and licks at the exposed skin, delicate presses of lips to pectoral muscles. The birds chirp quietly beyond the window, considerate of the quiet intimacy the two men are sharing. Eventually, Kita explains:
“Wasn’t expecting that. Full of surprises.”
“M-maybe next time? Just been thinking about it like that for so long. I gotta give it to you.”
It must be endearing, how eager he is to please. Atsumu is frustrated with how out of character he finds himself, but he can feel Kita transforming him into something kinder through the tips of his fingers and the wet of his tongue.
The ministrations stop briefly and he whines again, humiliatingly loud. Kita only leaves long enough to grab lube and condoms from the drawer against the wall. He stands beside the tatami mat to where Atsumu can see him and strips. It’s lewd from someone as straight-edged as Kita, as lines of his normally tense body curve and dip with how he undresses himself. Atsumu gets to see tan lines and softer skin and a biteable, thin layer of fat on Kita’s stomach, thighs, and above his hips.
He starts to feel greedy again, hand sliding down his own body to clear the blurry lust blanketing his mind. He's interrupted by Kita leaning over and pinning his wrists to the bed, sitting back into his original position on Atsumu’s lap.
“Can I take the rest of your clothes off, Atsumu?”
Atsumu nods, “Yes, please.” His brows crinkle in the middle when he feels the cotton of his briefs drag over his cock, pulling down until they release it and it hits the plane of his abdomen. He throws an arm over his eyes because, otherwise, he thinks he’ll come just by looking at Kita’s reaction. He knows he has a nice dick, but Kita could look at him in disgust, and even that would make him moan loud enough to scare off the morning sparrows.
“Don’t hide, ’Tsumu. Need to see you to know how you’re feeling. Don’t wanna give you anything you don’t want.”
That's crazy enough of a thought that it makes him toss the arm back onto the pillow and look up in shock, “I swear to you, Kita, I want anything you wanna give me.”
Kita cocks his head and sighs. “Don’t say that. This is part of treating people better, y’know? No assumptions.” Atsumu thinks that keeping tabs the entire time sounds unsexy, and it must show on his face. Or, Kita is reading his mind again.
“I can make askin’ sexy, if that’s what you’re worried about. Just lay there and talk to me.”
Well, goddamn. Atsumu settles further into the soft mat, and he pants while watching Kita feel him up. Smaller hands massage his shoulders and upper arms, touches turning lighter as he drags them down forearms and meets palms. Their hands dance together with barely-there touches, making both of them that much more sensitive to every breath and nudge.
Kita grabs his hands by the wrists and guides them up to his own shoulders, asking Atsumu to do the same to him in a sweet, lilting tone. So he does—these hands pay his rent, they better be able to make Kita feel exactly as on edge as Atsumu feels right now.
“Can I go lower, Kita-san? Can I touch your middle?”
He gets an enthusiastic hum and nod in return, fox eyes still burning down at him and branding his face.
“Can I— can I squeeze you a little?”
“Yes,” Kita assents, putting his hands over Atsumu’s where they rest above his hip bones, and encouraging the grip to get stronger. Atsumu digs his fingers into the softness there and groans. He wants to grab and twist and bite, but instead his hands fall to his sides.
Kita tilts his head in question.
“’m gonna go crazy if I keep at that.” This pulls a quiet laugh out of Kita, one that moves him just enough for their lengths to brush each other. They both moan, different cadences between them. He's about to reach for the lube, but he pauses, looking up at Kita with those masterfully shiny puppy eyes of his.
Instead, Kita opens his mouth, “I’ve been thinking about these hands, ’Tsumu. Y’know? Been thinking about how capable they are,” Kita drags one up to his mouth and kitten licks at the middle finger, corners of his mouth turning upwards, “Would you put them inside me? Would you make me feel good?”
Atsumu stares at him, slack-jawed, unable to say anything.
Kita rolls his hips, a practiced motion.
“Yes, God, yes, yes, any— yes, Kita. Do you wanna lay down?”
Kita nods and flops down on the bed beside Atsumu, turning his head to look him in the eye. With that, he spreads his legs.
In Atsumu’s mind, they’re so far from Earth right now. In this small, traditional-style room, Kita is guiding him through what feels like a psychedelic trip. If he looks away from Kita, he’s distantly afraid the walls will melt away and reveal that they are at the end of the universe. He's never been so turned on in his life.
He rolls over onto his side, propping himself up on his elbow so he can look down at Kita, other hand rubbing over Kita’s stomach briefly, “Can I go lower?”
“Lube first.”
Of course. He's getting ahead of himself.
The slick liquid is cold but warms quickly. He is generous in his application, and starts off by wrapping a hand around Kita’s cock. It makes him squirm and heat up, but they don’t stop looking at each other.
“This okay?”
“Absolutely.”
Atsumu stays there for a little while, slow and simple strokes up and down, twisting near the head because it gets Kita to make pretty noises. He wants to hear more, he wants to hear them get thrust out of him. That's enough to cut through his steady rhythm and he pulls away, feeling Kita twitch with the loss. He replaces it with a still-lubed finger at the entrance. Adds a little more lube, just to be safe, and patiently circles his finger until Kita nods at him to enter.
One, he checks in.
Two, he presses light kisses to Kita’s face until he hears a quiet “Another.”
Three, and the small sounds are overwhelming. Kita rocks down on the intrusion, humming in pleasure, bottom lip captured between teeth. He moves and stretches the hole until Kita is telling him to pull out.
And then, third time’s the charm, Kita is sitting on top of him again. This time with the small bottle and a wrapped condom in his hand. Atsumu is so hopelessly charmed, and he knows it translates into fondness dusting his features. He asks Kita to put the condom on him, and Kita smiles proudly. Briefly, only briefly, because damn he feels too good to be thinking, he entertains waking up like this every morning. He hasn’t even gotten inside Kita, but he already knows this morning is going to be etched into his monkey brain for the rest of his life.
Atsumu has never been associated with words like kind, gentle, homey, caring, or patient. However, Kita has guided him through the week to this spot on the mat, where he genuinely thinks he could be these things for someone. If they suddenly decided to stop, he doesn’t think he’d even be mad. Despite what Kita told him, he really does want to do anything Kita suggests.
With the condom on and smeared with lube, Kita is kneeling above him, hands balanced on Atsumu’s chest, “Can you put it in for me, ’Tsumu?”
Jesus.
“Yeah,” his voice cracks halfway through. Atsumu holds himself with one hand and pulls one of Kita’s cheeks to the side with the other. He watches in awe as his cock disappears into the warm body. Kita may be flesh and blood like him, but there must be something else to him. He's too good. He feels too good.
“So good,” Kita breathes, only honesty, no ego petting. “So big, ’Tsumu. Are you gonna behave and go easy on me?”
There’s something about that tone. He never expected Kita to be such a tease. It spins his brain like cotton candy and he only has the power to whine an “Uh huh,” before resting his hands on Kita’s knees where they dig into the bed. For a while, Kita just sits there, slowly rocking back and forth, little puffs of breath as he gets comfortable.
Then, he leans a hand back and holds on to the top of Atsumu’s thigh and starts to fuck himself on the feeling. It makes Atsumu shiver and shake even harder, holding back the urge to flip them and drive him into the blankets until Kita scratches bloody lines across his back and they’re both moaning into each other’s ears. Maybe next time.
For now, he lets his eyes worship the sight in front of him: Kita throws his head back, exposing himself to Atsumu from his thin neck to his bobbing length. Atsumu thinks he’s drooling, but then, Kita’s voice interrupts him.
“You can move. Can you move your hips, baby? Slowly?”
They fall into a deliciously languid rhythm, sex as connection rather than the slap slap slap that Atsumu is used to. Here, the two of them are punctuating the trip with love, simple as that. When the word hits him, it makes him whimper and thrust harder, rewarded with a surprised moan from Kita. Despite original intentions, they move faster after that, and Kita leans forward to bracket Atsumu’s head on the pillow.
“Close, Kita, ‘m close. Please, please, please—”
“Me too. Y’can take what y’want, ’Tsumu. Can you go harder?”
It seems even Kita isn’t immune to a lack of patience, in some circumstances. He’s proud he found one of them.
“Oh!” Kita groans when Atsumu pulls Kita down flush against him and bites the bronze skin of his shoulder. He bends his legs at the knee and plants his feet on the mat for a better angle, wrapping his arms around Kita’s torso and holding him close.
Kita has enough clarity to mouth at Atsumu’s ear while they move against each other, and the wet sounds is a deluge of heat in his head, driving Atsumu even closer to the edge. The last few minutes leave him tongue-tied, but still obedient, so, just as he’s mere centimeters away from climax, he asks Kita where he should finish.
The way he flops through the question makes Kita gasp and then he’s being told to just keep going instead, that he’s such a good boy, that he’s going to make them feel so good. Atsumu is good to someone for the first time in his life, just by letting Kita see him. They come one after another, time slowing to a mushy concept in Atsumu’s head. He doesn’t know how long they lay there, but when they pull apart, it’s been long enough for their stomachs to stick together with Kita’s release. They both wince, and then laugh.
After a quick clean up, they’re laying on the other mat, warmed by the sunlight that shines high in the sky. The sheets tangle around their legs and they fall back asleep.
Atsumu begins to realize that who he is is not a permanent thing; he is made and remade endlessly. Atsumu is at once exactly who he was at age six, at age fifteen, at age twenty-five, at an age he hasn’t met yet. Atsumu is simultaneously none of those things, and only lives in the space between the bed and Kita’s heated skin.
▪️▪️▪️
It’s like this: Atsumu has grown a lot over the past week. It’s enough for it to leave him confused and uneasy, despite the fulfilling conclusion it helped him reach. But, Atsumu is an adult, and he needs space to grow. Even though the plains and hills of Hyogo feel like the perfect place to reconnect with who he is, it’s not enough. The place where his healing can begin is at Atsumu’s shared apartment, with the people he sees daily, with the family he hasn’t visited in some time.
Kita has sorted through the old box of emotions and laid the pieces out, glued some back together, labelled them, and given them back to him with gentle hands. Wisdom and guidance pushed Atsumu to take the first step to acknowledge the shards, but he has to build the bigger picture alone. A flicker of pride lights in his chest; he is happy with himself and his decision. He feels more adult than he ever has.
It isn’t goodbye when they make out slowly in the kitchen, nor is it a vague see you around when Kita drops him off at the train station. He'll be back, maybe sooner than he expects. They’re grown up now, and Atsumu doesn’t feel so bad as the train pulls away and Kita blows a kiss at him through the window.
His first love, and it makes him feel alright. They’ll be okay.