kisoap: ([ccs] no such thing as coincidence)
taffy ♡ ([personal profile] kisoap) wrote in [community profile] catchtens2020-08-01 11:16 pm

懸日

懸日
756w; g (tzuyu, shuhua, yangyang)
in the summer, taiwan really has so many fruits. [cousins au]
a/n: happy birthday to my favorite shimedian!! ♡


"Hey! You're hogging the cool air!"

"It doesn't get this humid in Germany okay, take some pity on me!"

Tzuyu cuts in right before Shuhua's fan-distorted voice can form a rebuttal. "I'm back," she sighs, struggling to drag three bags of groceries to their grandmother's refrigerator.

"Tzuyu!" Shuhua shoves past Yangyang in the living room – to his indignant hey! that she flippantly ignores – to flit around Tzuyu in the kitchen, but makes no move to help. "Ah-ma cut some wax apples, we saved some for you on the table... Wow, why did you buy so much?"

Tzuyu pulls out an all-used-except-for-one egg carton, balancing the egg next to the jug of soy milk before placing the empty box in Shuhua's hands. "Because we eat like locusts," and she starts tetris-ing the fridge contents, "And I don't want Ah-ma to have to carry all this food back herself."

"Well maybe her dutiful grandson who eats the most should take care of it next time," replies Shuhua, intentionally loud. "You know it hasn't even gotten that hot yet, but while you were out, he said that he'd send her money to install an air conditioner!" She rolls her eyes and puts the carton in the wrong trash pile. "Don't you think that's ridiculous!"

Tzuyu hears Yangyang's bare feet approaching before she sees his toes from the slice of space beneath the refrigerator door. "I heard that," he frowns at Shuhua, pointedly dismissing her you were supposed to! to ask Tzuyu, "Did you buy anything cold to eat? It's seriously way too hot here in the summer."

She looks into the grocery bag she was working on unpacking. "Tofu," she offers with a shrug, holding it up before finding a place for it on the shelf and pulling out the next item. "Bean curd?"

Shuhua snorts, absentmindedly scratching at the bug bite on her elbow. Their grandmother had told her the day she'd come down to Tainan from Taipei, resolute: Ah-ma's house doesn't have mosquitoes. So much for that. "You can use it as an ice pack."

"You guys are mean," Yangyang frowns, crossing his arms and leaning against the door frame. It reminds Tzuyu of when they were still in elementary school, and she and Shuhua had left for the park without him while he was using the bathroom, and one of their older cousins had to walk over with him instead because he didn't know the way. They made fun of him for it for years, the story growing more exaggerated with each iteration and testimony they told. "I can't believe I have to spend my entire summer with you two."

"Well I can't believe you flew here all the way from Germany to ruin mine!"

Tzuyu places the watermelon on the tiny kitchen counter with a bit more force than necessary. "I can't believe no one bothered to help me with the groceries," she grits out. "I was going to share these popsicles, but I guess I'll have to eat them all by myself."

"No!" Shuhua cries out, digging through the other groceries that haven't been put away. "And you got the peanut flavor too? I'll help, okay!"

Yangyang nudges her with his shoulder. "Wait, me too! I can unpack everything way faster than Shuhua can!"

Tzuyu tries to hide the smile that's tugging on her lips. "We'll see," she tells her cousins, cryptically, as she moves the dishes from their lunch back into the cupboard.

After waking their grandmother up from her nap over a pointless debate about where to put the produce, the four of them gather the kitchen chairs and sit in front of the oscillating living room fan, far enough away that their popsicles won't melt too quickly. The humidity sticks to their skin like the saccharine sweet of its aftertaste, and the old t-shirt with a fading Doraemon printed on the front that Tzuyu found folded on the bed her grandmother made for her smells freshly of detergent. When the conversation lulled and Yangyang collected all their wrappers and their grandmother turned on some mid-day outdated drama that the three of them weren't particularly interested in, Shuhua nodded off into sleep, her long dark hair covering her face like a ghost before she found Tzuyu's shoulder to rest on.

The sun set slowly, shading them in gold, shadows stretching longer and longer across the tiled floor, and Tzuyu tasted the feeling on her tongue, sweet like brown sugar. Sometimes, moments like these were better shared than seen separately, after all.




 

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