I don’t even like Pumpkin
For the #spookyrarepair prompt “pumpkin”
Pairing: Tsukishima Kei x Kageyama Tobio
Summary: Tsukishima and Kageyama spend the evening messing around with pumpkins
An aggressive thud on the table caused Kei to jump up from his notebook, he looked at the bulky bag sitting in front of him and then up at Kageyama who looked like he wanted to say something but was having difficulty.
Kageyama furrowed his eyebrows, trying to formulate a sentence, “T..to carve them out.”
“I thought it would be nice.”
“What would be nice is if you actually did some studying; I thought you invited me over to help you with your homework, not play around with vegetables.”
Kageyama’s half offended scowl slightly angered Kei. The two had formed a sort of secret tutor-student relationship overtime. Kageyama had asked for additional tutoring so many times that their meet ups became more-or-less a weekly thing, sometimes twice or three times a week they would get together to study. So of course Kei was irritated that Kageyama seemed to be abusing their time together to do other things. This wasn’t the first time that Kageyama wanted to do something else under the guise that he thought it would be nice; just the day before they visited an antique café and the week prior they went for an evening stroll in the park. Not to mention the few times they’d gone to the cinema or the times when they ordered takeout and watched a DVD.
“I looked on the internet on how to carve a pumpkin,” Kageyama said slowly, unpacking three large pumpkins from the bag and effectively ignoring Kei’s comment, “It isn’t as hard as it looks.”
“Go on then, show me,” Kei jeered, only half interested. He rested his chin on his fist, “I bet you money you still can’t do it after fully researching it.”
“Do you really think I’m that useless?” Kageyama growled through gritted teeth, pulling out a knife from the bag also.
“Shut up,” Kageyama stabbed the knife into the top of the pumpkin, “I’m about to prove you wrong.”
“Are you now?” Kei yawned, observing how violently Kageyama was hacking at the poor thing, “I beg to differ.”
It took a solid ten minutes for Kageyama to hollow out the pumpkin. Kei added a few words of discouragement here and there while trying not to laugh too loudly at how disgusted Kageyama looked as he cautiously picked out bits of pumpkin from the inside. Kageyama was beginning to get particularly frustrated, not only with how he disliked the feel of “pumpkin guts” between his fingers, but how Kei was being quite mean-spirited – though he knew he shouldn’t be surprised. After a while Kageyama took the knife and forced it into the side.
“What does it look like?”
Kei raised an eyebrow, “What are you supposed to be carving out exactly? Shouldn’t you have drawn the outline first? Or were you planning on carving it free-hand?”
Kageyama, realising his mistake, turned bright red, “You’re getting incredibly involved with this.”
Kei narrowed his eyes, “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
Kageyama turned away to find a pen, trying to shield the embarrassment on his face. Of course he would like that.
When Kageyama had finished ruining his school pen on the coarse pumpkin, he dug his knife back into it and attempted to carve it. Kei bit his tongue as he wheezed, watching Kageyama basically stab the stiff pumpkin into submission. But in his manic state he was beginning to lose track of where he was putting his fingers and Kei couldn’t keep his eyes off it.
“Oi, you’re gonna cut yourself like that,” he muttered for the fourth time.
Kageyama squinted as he edged his blade across the pumpkin’s surface into what was supposed to be the second eye but was looking more like a lopsided aubergine, “I’m fine.”
“Where is your hand now?”
Kageyama tutted and moved his free hand slightly, “Shut up, it’s fine.”
Kei pursed his lips, he knew what Kageyama was like; when he really set his mind to something he would become very focused, but in this case his blatant refusal to pay proper attention to his own wellbeing was becoming a problem. Kei stood up, getting really annoyed now, “You’re going to cut yourself like that.”
Kageyama saw Kei’s sudden movement in the corner of his eye and let go of the knife, clenching his fists in frustration but still carefully stepping back as he knew what might happen next, “What do you want me to do, then?”
With an exasperated sigh Kei rolled up his sleeves and took over, “Just stay over there,” if I leave him to it, this idiot is gonna slice his hand in half.
Fortunately, Kei was a lot more graceful in how he carved the pumpkin and it made Kageyama kind of jealous. By the end of it, even though it had two uneven, angular eyes, it had a purposefully crooked but consistent grin.
“See?” Kei said with a satisfied chuckle, “It even looks like you now.”
“Shut up,” yet Kageyama’s eyes didn’t leave the pumpkin.
Kei knew Kageyama was impressed, “Aren’t you going to say something?”
Kageyama inhaled sharply, “Why does it matter to you if I hurt myself anyway?”
“Because it’s bothersome to clean up blood,” Kei hummed smugly, leaving the room to wash his hands, “In any case, you’re lucky I didn’t bet real money on your incompetence.”
Kei tutted to himself, he was well aware that he could be quite ruthless with his comments at times, but half hoped that spending so much time with him had hardened Kageyama a bit, or at least made him understand that he didn’t mean it most of the time. He was momentarily surprised when he returned from the bathroom to see Kageyama back at it again with another pumpkin, this time drawing the face first.
“Oh give it a rest, will you?”
“It would be a waste if I left these here for no reason.”
“Carving out perfectly good pumpkins and leaving them as decoration for the sake of one day at the end of the month is waste enough already!” Kei spat, peering over Kageyama’s shoulder, “You shouldn’t have bothered getting them, carving pumpkins is a waste of food, money and time.”
Kageyama scrunched up his nose as he started carving out the top, “Just shut up.”
“Why do you want to do this so badly anyway?”
Kageyama paused and fiddled with the knife between his fingers before barely whispering, “You don’t complain about all the other random things we do.”
“Are you an idiot? I always complain, I complain about everything we do, that’s kind of my thing you see.”
Kageyama gave him a malicious side glance, “But you still do it with me.”
Kei took a moment to examine Kageyama, the way he hunched his shoulders when he was upset, the way he looked Kei straight in the eye, he knew the stubborn boy well enough to know that he had something more to say, “Only because you keep coming back with more dumb ideas. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you just can’t get enough of me.”
Kageyama’s cheeks screamed red, “W-w-well you clearly don’t know any better! Dumbass!”
“Oh?” Kei smirked, towering over Kageyama with his hands on his hips, “I’m a dumbass am I? Well I must be doing something right.”
“Since I apparently don’t know any better, I’ll say that you actually want any excuse to spend time with me.”
Kei chuckled before stepping aside to take a better look at the pumpkins, “Alright, why don’t we do something less wasteful and make something with it instead?”
Kageyama tilted his head to the idea, “Like what? Pumpkin pie?”
“That’ll take too long,” Kei picked up the last pumpkin, “My brother taught me how to make soup with it last year, it took under an hour…and it was really nice”
Kageyama nodded supportively, “Let’s do that then.”
It took about forty minutes for the two to make the soup, between their usual little arguments and the pair throwing pumpkin seeds at each other from across the kitchen. While their dinner boiled, Kageyama, somewhat shyly, presented the idea of putting a candle inside their pumpkin, like the ones he’d seen online.
Kei chuckled, “Don’t you even think about it.”
“Kageyama, you will set this house alight and it’ll be a bother to call the fire brigade.”
Kageyama opened his mouth to shout in protest but decided against it; calmly he said, “It’s weird hearing you say my name – you don’t say it a lot.”
Kei quickly leaned close to Kageyama’s face, trapping him against the kitchen wall, and whispered in a soft, husky voice, “Kageyama-kun.”
Kageyama’s bright pink face and flustered state was enough to leave Kei in complete hysterics. Kageyama slammed a fist into the taller boy’s chest, “Y-you’re too flirty for your own good!”
It wasn’t long before their soup was ready and they were sitting in front of the TV to enjoy it. Kei was merciful enough to allow Kageyama to light a yankee candle – a pumpkin spice scented one of course – giving the room a cosy, amber glow. The carved pumpkin sat ominously beside them yet the pair couldn’t feel any more relaxed in this atmosphere if they wanted to. In fact, it was so relaxed that, when they had finished their soups, Kei barely noticed that Kageyama had basically slipped his hand beneath Kei’s on the couch.
“That soup was nicer than I thought it would be,” Kageyama mumbled, “We should do that again sometime since we still have one pumpkin left.”
“You already started drawing on that one, remember?” Kei retorted half-heartedly, “Getting ink poisoning would be bothersome.”
“What isn’t bothersome to you?”
Kei shot him a smug side glance before clenching Kageyama’s hand and sensually massaging his palm with his fingers, “This.”
Kageyama’s entire face faded into a bright crimson colour; he was often shy about holding hands with Kei so explicitly. Though this set up shouldn’t have made him feel embarrassed because this was how their nights together always ended.
End Note: These two are basically dating.
