Someone once said that there are sun people, and there are moon people.
Sun people burst forth into life radiating exuberance and shining brightly all their own and letting the warmth of their own loud and open affection wash over those around them. Moon people are more reserved and inward-facing, only shining when the light of the sun reaches them and then with a graceful and quiet beauty that draws others with its hidden depths.
He is the sun to her.
There is nothing graceful about Sorata Arisugawa, she feels. He fills every room he enters awkwardly, like the too-big for himself teenager who hasn't quite worked out what to do with all the extra length to his limbs and torso just yet that he is.
Tan arms flail around the kitchen, spatula waving wildly, leaving splatters of cake batter on the walls and ceiling and table and every other surface it happens to hit. She silently picks up a cloth and wipes away the ones she can reach as he takes no notice of the sticky sweet goo Jackson-pollocking the room, too caught up in belting out the words of some pop song whose every other lyric he changes to turn a sappy love story into something about a romance between a man and a can of mackerel. As he reaches into the refrigerator for more eggs, realizing that he has clumsily miscounted the number he's added so far, she decides to give up on the small cloth in her hand that has already been coated with batter and leaves the room to get a larger towel.
Outside of the kitchen it's colder, a chill creeping into her slowly starting with fingers and toes, as she makes her way to the laundry room and she thinks it's because there is no oven heating up to fifty more degrees than the recipe calls for, but somewhere just below the things she's willing to acknowledge she knows that isn't why. The rest of the house is silent and dark, lit only by wane winter light half-heartedly casting gray shadows. She feels more at home here, amid the shadows, more in her place.
But then she walks back into the kitchen and even though it's so bright she has to blink several times before she can see again, even though the heat of the oven is somewhat stifling, even though the scent of sugar is overpowering, and even though his off-key singing drowns out the radio, ringing in her ears, she doesn't want to leave.
Sorata is now enthusiastically mixing the batter in an enormous bowl, and despite the alarming amount that seems to be sloshing out of it in every direction, she wonders just how many cupcakes he plans on making anyway. Then she realizes he is probably going to give them away to every person he knows and probably some he doesn't, sweetening the day of whomever he should run into tomorrow. As he peers at the recipe book and mutters something about forgetting the vanilla she vaguely wonders if the final product will be worth eating anyway but shrugs the thought away, knowing that his food always inexplicably turns out well.
She likes his food. It has taken her weeks to admit that to herself, but now that she has she turns the idea over in her mind somewhat absently as she wipes away a blob of batter dripping down the wall like a slug, clinging to the tulip-patterned wallpaper. She never liked food before. She ate because it sustained her and was necessary but she never really enjoyed a meal. Then he had made them all miso soup and the first sip had slid happily over her tongue, coaxing taste buds to life before sliding excitedly down her throat, warming her inch by inch from the inside in the exact same way his smile slowly melted away the invisible layer of ice coating her skin. Even the time he had made homemade ice cream, there was a warmth to it that she savored. She supposed his food was an extension of himself and over time had begun to take pleasure in that knowledge with every meal he prepared.
Boisterous. She thinks as another song begins, more upbeat than the last, and Sorata begins clanging around the cupboards, recklessly throwing doors open left and right, searching for the cupcake pan. She pauses in her cleaning a spot on the back of a chair to watch as a cascade of pots and pans fall out of one of them, crashing into his head and the floor with a chorus of hollow, metallic thuds. He laughs at himself, a clear, genuine laugh that invites others to join in, and gathers them up into a messy pile, shoving them back into the cupboard in a disarray that is sure to repeat the incident the next time he opens it. Then he retrieves the red baseball cap that has been knocked off in the avalanche of cookware and returns it to its backward perch on his head, messy chunks of chocolate brown hair poking out from beneath it.
She shakes her head and resumes wiping away batter as he at last finds the pan and begins emptying the mixing bowl's contents into it. A splat of batter lands on her hand as she does so and she looks up to see another blob dripping from the ceiling. She pulls out the chair she's been cleaning off and hesitantly climbs onto it, reaching upward as far as she can, the edge of the towel just centimeters below the offending splatter. She raises herself up on tiptoes, arm straining when suddenly the oven door slams shut and the loud clatter catches her off guard. She jumps and loses balance on the chair, eyes widening as she suddenly feels nothing but air beneath her and her heart races, waiting for the crash of limbs against cool, hard linoleum. Instead she is surprised to feel something warm and relatively soft and she looks up to see Sorata's smiling face near her own.
"Are you alright Onee-chan?" he inquires brightly.
She nods silently and can feel a hot blush spreading over her cheek, wondering just how it is that he manages to draw heat from her as well.