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Atsumu grew up in Amagasaki, where it doesn't snow. Kiyoomi grew up in Tokyo, where it barely ever does.
Of course Atsumu would love the snow.
"Omi!" Atsumu calls, joy and wonder and other, equally taxing emotions arcing his cry. "Omi-Omi—!" He almost trips, socks slipping on the floor Kiyoomi recently expertly polished, and he can't scold Atsumu because Kiyoomi's eyelids are already fluttering with exhaustion, knowing what's to come, because—"It's snowin'! Real snow! Sweetheart, we gotta go outside...!"
Kiyoomi, sensibly, believes that if the sky's still shedding its dandruff in March—in Osaka—the end times are nigh.
Of course Atsumu wouldn't care about the state of the planet.
"It never snowed in Amagasaki, y'know! Still don't, ta this day! I hear Tokyo's got the snow day, here or there, but we ain't ever got ta enjoy any sorta snow days! Now lookit what we got—right on our doorstep...!"
The cadence to Atsumu's dialect rings even more expressive, the peaks higher and troughs sharper, when he's unapologetically excited. Then, looking up, Kiyoomi prepares himself for the theatrics looming large in Atsumu's sniff, looking out the window.
"Y'know, Omi? Sometimes, life jus' calls out t'ya." He shakes his head slow, turning around with an introspective smile that's as deep as Atsumu is a natural blonde. "An' all you gotta do," he clenches a fist, faces the ceiling lights while Kiyoomi deadpans at him, "is answer the call."
"Hang up."
"Aw, Mopey-Omi!" Atsumu barks his laugh. "Yer a funny one, you are!"
Kiyoomi can only sigh—of course he would act like a puppy who's never seen snow. All he would need is a leash to make sure doesn't get lost in a snow dune.
It's the middle of the day and Kiyoomi's heart already aches for his comforter. The cloud cover and sprinkling snow braid greyscale into the light shafts that whisper into their flat. All the lamps and diffuser sticks Kiyoomi's broken out flicker and wilt sadly, he knows, wondering if all their efforts will be in vain, if they'll go out till the snow vanishes like Atsumu certainly wants to do.
And, deities that Kiyoomi doesn't even believe in above, does Atsumu want. Kiyoomi's barely even got to enjoy the job well done he's finished with cleaning the kitchen and Atsumu's already hopping around into winter trousers, diving into sweatshirts, twirling out scarves to use like gymnastic ribbons while babbling to himself about all the snow things he'll do.
But, with the one look he casts to his partner, Kiyoomi's heart thaws despite the winter. Atsumu's eyes clutch an unstoppable gleam. His top lip is a clothesline, the dimples to his cheeks pegs to the drapes of his smile—one so big it can only hang in an ample crescent, its shape blown about by the wind of Atsumu's own words.
"I can go grab yer scarf, too?" Atsumu asks, only missing a tail to beat the dust off the unblemished floorboards.
Kiyoomi hums; non-committal, to buy himself time.
"You really wanna sit this one out, Omi?" Atsumu asks, sincerity tempering his liveliness, and the note twists sour in Kiyoomi's gut. "I can keep my phone on me an' jus' go out by myse—"
"No." Kiyoomi beelines for their room. "I'll go get dressed."
"Omi..." Atsumu clasps his fists by his head. "Ya do love me!"
He might be mock swooning, but Kiyoomi can feel the real glee in his croon. He only folds further in a huff to himself.
"Don't state the obvious."
Atsumu clasps his cheeks now, upping the obnoxiousness, 'omigosh, Omi, yer so cool, so suave...!' and Kiyoomi rolls his eyes to himself. Even if the slant to his lip could hold a smile.
He may have better sense than to rush out explicitly when it's cold enough to freeze precipitation. But he has sense enough to watch out for Atsumu.
Snowfall, powdering the trees, trickle down in a hush. Kiyoomi and Atsumu are alone in the park.
With Atsumu hugging his knees in a squat. And Kiyoomi looking down at him.
"...Atsumu."
Silence. Beanie looking like it slinks deeper into his coat, Atsumu only hugs his knees tighter.
Kiyoomi, sighing, takes a step closer. "Didn't you want to play in the snow?"
"...Play?" Atsumu grumbles. "Who's playin'?" Huffy. Sniffly. "Playin's fer kids." His heels jerk along the snowy grass, shuffling himself away. "So's laughin', too. What's so good 'bout the snow?" He grows even more ball-shaped. "White powder ain't no good fer anybody anyway."
Sigh carried on a cloud, Kiyoomi looks up heavenward. Watercolour white-grey answers him.
Atsumu, in all his excitement, dashed straight for the park. Then slipped and ate snow before Kiyoomi could warn him to watch his step. Then, sitting up with icy water sluicing down his face, slipping trickles down his neck, a small child with a loving couple laughed out loud at him. The couple at least covered their faces when they also did.
Kiyoomi, judiciously, chose not to say anything. Then Atsumu receded in his chrysalis of shame, in a ball on the ground. Kiyoomi, now at a loss, kept not saying anything.
Never mind that if either of them saw a stranger falling face-first into snow, they'd be the first to laugh about it.
By the time he spoke up, a dusting of snow had gathered on the statue Atsumu made of himself. A warm well-dressed ball. Snow quivers the cream-coloured puff topping Atsumu's beanie.
Another, quiet breath leaves Kiyoomi in a puff. His steps crunch on the fresh snow. Next to Atsumu, now, he can spy his profile. Snowflakes tickle his ruddy cheeks. The tip of his nose is the most flushed. His brows still stay scrunched. His hair, platinum blond, looks close to sparkling with snow sprinkled over it.
Pursing his lips, Kiyoomi looks around. By a tree, a bush, he spots some dark leaves. Little sticks. Littler stones.
It was a ski trip their families took together, Kiyoomi recalls as he makes his way over—when he and Motoya were kids.
They're super easy to make! Motoya told him. Kiyoomi, who was so grumpy he holed himself up and wouldn't speak, blinked at the little creatures Motoya held out in his tiny palms, his voice reedy and grin gap-toothed. Aren't they cute? Why don't we make some together?
It's present day, an abnormal cold in Osaka, by the time Kiyoomi comes back. Atsumu, with his sullen eyes and pouty lips, catches him. A bigger, longer cloud leaves his nose, the unhappy dragon in his cave.
Kiyoomi takes a knee in the snow in front of Atsumu. Quietly, he gets to work. His finger joints might creak, prickling numb even with his gloves. Atsumu's eyes flick over his hands. His face. Silent, yet rapt.
Sometimes, Kiyoomi indulges himself to imagination the same way a river indulges rocks and ripples. In the middle of a neverending flow forward, he imagines a younger him. A younger Atsumu. Kiyoomi gives shape to the snow in his palms. Them meeting earlier than they did. Loving each other earlier than they did. He plants little leaves near the top of the snowball. Atsumu would have had his untoned hair, the same brown eyes. Kiyoomi would have his matted curls, the same old slouch. He picks up some seeds, planting them gently into the body of the snowball. And maybe Atsumu would have taken the time to comfort him on a cold day. Or Kiyoomi would have acted years beyond his age, to go out of his way for him.
Here, and now, he puts the last little pebble into the snowball laying modest in his palm. Little leaves for ears. Seeds and stones for eyes and a nose.
"What do you think?"
He holds out the snow bunny to Atsumu. The notches between his brow had gone from two to one. A glowing grey day, and the glossiness to his stare glimmers gentler.
"...Should do a ferret next."
Still holding out the bunny, Kiyoomi keeps staring at Atsumu. His lashes, a dark brown, almost go dewy, highlighted by flakes of snow just caught at the tips, falling off when he blinks. Another sniff. His nose twitches like a critter's with it.
Kiyoomi places the snow bunny in front of him.
"You make that." Kiyoomi makes his way beside Atsumu. Squats next to him. "I'll make a fox."
The snowfall grows sparse. They stay crouched next to each other, a candle in the cold. Kiyoomi fashions his fox head in an upside-down, triangular shape. Slowly, Atsumu follows. A long snowball, a kind of snow-sausage, starts taking shape in his mittens. Kiyoomi pushes a leaf in his till the pointy tip comes out triangular again. Atsumu roots around the bundle of nature Kiyoomi collected for a rounder leaf.
Soon, on the ground, next to the snow bunny lies a snow fox head and a snow ferret. And they watch them while squatting.
"...They're uglier than I expected," Kiyoomi mutters.
Atsumu, finally, snorts. "You got zero sense o' romance."
"It's the thought that counts."
"An' yet here you are," Atsumu snickers, grin pinching his cheeks, "insultin' our snow zoo like that."
Kiyoomi has to frown at the accusation. But, with the little laughs shaking the snow off of Atsumu, the groove between his brow all gone, relief swoops warm like hot chocolate in Kiyoomi. By the time Atsumu looks back at him, eyes all folded up like warm, laundered sheets with his smile, Kiyoomi forgets their misshapen, snowy audience.
"This is better." He catches Atsumu's little glance, the minute widening of his chocolate eyes. "You're no good when you're sad."
His white breath holds more volume than his whisper. If Atsumu's cheeks are spattered rosy, his lips that flushed dark even when thinned, then Kiyoomi's own, paler complexion can't stand a chance.
They stay crouched, next to one another, in a wintry white park.
"...Omi."
His dark, snow-kissed lashes go lidded. His breath, clean and holding the barest notes of the lunch they had at home, warms Kiyoomi's cheeks. The tips of their noses sting with the cold, teasing each other, when they lean in, those lashes of Atsumu's shivering free of snow, his breath piping, now.
Snowflakes keep nuzzling their clothes. Their lips lock in a silent seal. Cold and quickly warming, like the red wax melted to make it. Kiyoomi, taken to whatever heat he can find in the cold, sinks into Atsumu's natural warmth. Rests a hand on his shoulder. Gently draws him closer. Sparks of cold dance despite the heat, and Kiyoomi grows enthralled with the impossible, wonderful contrast.
Atsumu gets a mittened palm near the back of Kiyoomi's neck. The shock of cold spills a gasp from him into Atsumu's mouth.
"Sorry," Atsumu whispers, rushed. His soft swallow is deafening, up this close. "Sorry, Omi."
"S'okay," Kiyoomi barely shakes his head. The curls escaping his hat tickle his forehead, Atsumu's brow. "You're okay."
In the littlest nod, the barest whisper, Atsumu sighs. "Okay."
Atsumu kisses him again. The slightest twinge tickles Kiyoomi's thighs, staying squatted, but he's too calm, too content to care right then. The quietest smack of their mouths, as faint as snowfall, the peace of their sighs louder than when they kiss anew, warmth wreathing its way through Kiyoomi's face, drizzling honey through him, kissing Atsumu back.
Another kiss later, Atsumu smiles. Stretched like a clothesline again—too much for them to kiss properly.
"Atsumu," Kiyoomi says, the chide tucked into the creases of the syllables.
Softly, Atsumu only chuckles. "Ya do love me."
He strokes over Kiyoomi's shoulder as he says that. His gaze flicks between there and Kiyoomi's eyes, his smile gentle, his lips a touch swollen from their touch.
Kiyoomi has to frown at that. He just does. "Stop stating the obvious."
Indulgent, Atsumu hums. "I love ya, too."
More curtly, Kiyoomi hums back. "Hm."
"Aw," Atsumu's face crinkles with a grin, "yer so cute." He chuckles louder. Kiyoomi can only glower back. "Snowy-Omi." He winks with how much he smiles. "Ab-Omi-nable Sn-Omi."
"That was terrible."
"Means I'll use it forever, now." Bumping foreheads with Kiyoomi, Atsumu nuzzles him with his ruddy grin. "Forever an' eeeever after."
Kiyoomi wrinkles his nose. "Spare me."
"No dice, Snomi," Atsumu sing-songs. "Hell's gonna freeze over before I do."
"Or Osaka, maybe."
Atsumu laughs louder. Nuzzles Kiyoomi again, blooming more heat in him. Kiyoomi bumps his head back, only to be met with even more of his laughter. One that seeps through his teeth the way sunbeams do, weaving through clean sheets hung to dry.
"You're such a pain," Kiyoomi mumbles, just to say it. And, even as he smiles mutely, because it's true.
"Guess ya better saddle up, then," Atsumu nudges his head back before, at last, making to stand. "'Cause I'm yer pain ta deal with."
Another truth. Miya Atsumu is his, and never mind if there were a cold day in hell, Osaka, or anywhere else—Kiyoomi wouldn't let anyone else have the pleasure or pain of him.
On his feet, Atsumu puts a hand out. Kiyoomi doesn't waste a moment taking it. Rising up, his legs thankful, his back even more so, so that he can be close to the only warmth out in the cold day again. Close to Atsumu: snowy lashes, red-tipped nose, coffee milk eyes and all.
"Better be in yer ass, too," Atsumu adds, winking tackily at him. "'Cause lord knows how often I'm—"
"I will fucking push you."
The threat sizzles through Kiyoomi's teeth, heats up his face. Atsumu has the audacity to just laugh even louder, before apologising in raining kisses on his cheeks, little smacks and pecks that render the snowfall obsolete, and Kiyoomi has to push his head away from his because they are in a public space, never mind they were alone and what they did earlier.
He speed-walks away from the menace of Atsumu's love. Atsumu jogs after him, albeit very cautiously, while beaming bright and making kissy-faces throughout. Behind them, the first hint of sun breaking through the quilt of cloud cover over the park, their snow bunny, ferret, and fox shine in a neat little line, huddled together in the cold.