tabiito

[tabiito]

wsp chat i'm going to college

[tabiito]

logging back on to say

#GOATOSHI now he must reject the offer and come to barcha like the brat he is (vardrid anti cope)

[tabiito]

PRESCIENCE — OLIVER AIKU part one: INEVITABILITY

You're not one to get nervous before classes, but this presentation of your paper has you pacing up and down the cramped hall of your apartment. Your way of dealing with particularly scrutinising conferences was running through your slides, reciting them to someone you know to ward off the nervousness, but tonight you're a wreck all by yourself. Shuffling through papers desperately trying to gather your thoughts, you spend a minute wallowing in pity, cursing the hundreds of expectant faces who'll be staring up at you tomorrow.

It's been two years since Geneva, and as you've aged and your career has expanded, your apartment has not. You bump into the corner of the low-lying table and hiss softly in pain.

Breaking you out of your haze, your phone rings, Oliver's number flashing. Ideally, he'd be your guinea pig (who'd fall asleep after you make it past your introductory remarks), but he did say he'd be out tonight.

"You better be on your way here. I'm freaking the fuck out."

The voice that greets you isn't his. It's, instead, a soft murmur that can just barely be heard after an initial few seconds of silence.

"So you're the side piece, huh?"

You pause, contemplating your next course of action. You can't even fathom who, what or how you've been dialled, though you have an inkling of an idea.

"You have the wrong number," you sigh, hanging up. You didn't have the mental capacity to engage with whoever was on the other side of the phone tonight, being more than swamped by your own shit. Still, the phone rings again, and this time you toss it on your couch with more force than necessary, grateful it doesn't crash onto the floor as you sigh.

To make full use of your available force, though, you throw the marker in your pocket against the whiteboard for good measure. It squeaks miserably, making a curve and falls to the ground.

You're in that animated state of flow of talking when Oliver enters the large room. He's about 15 minutes late, and he blames the cab driver that stopped him for a selfie. Your hands are moving rapidly as you explain (what he assumes are hieroglyphs) behind you, making a joke about something called the Kuiper Belt that has everyone laughing. He supposes that it must be a very expensive belt. As he settles into an empty chair at the back of the hall, he tips the cap he's wearing a little lower, and pushes his facemask a bit higher. Selfishly, and subconsciously, he hopes that his motion distracts you for even a mere nanosecond, to recognise his presence, but he's imperceptible in the crowd of people furiously taking notes or nodding in agreement.

"...And though I don't claim to be prescient like those on Arrakis, but the similarity I have found with Dune is fact that the temperatures in Kolhar, just like...."

Oliver's doing the thing again. He catches himself before his train of thought leaves the room entirely.

He's never claimed to understand your work. He stopped trying after you tried to explain calculus to him in high school, but inadvertently overcomplicated the whole endeavour by quoting some axioms you were learning about in your dual enrolment course. Needless to say, though your teaching had become much better, Oliver would still find himself zoning out when you slipped into the jargon-y, super-science-nerd-y side of yourself. His mind would latch onto the words he would understand from the litany of complicated terms you'd use and play around with them instead.

Prescience.

He always thought that time travelling and the ability to look into the future led to an overcomplicated, never-ending loop of things. (He's watched enough in Avengers: Infinity War to realise that only a fool would want to look into the future). What good would warning your future self be when you had to come back and warn your younger self and so on and so forth. It hurt his head to think about this, and considering Avengers was one of the milder watches on your LSD-trip-esque watchlist of scientific nonsense, he's had to think about this quite a lot.

As you drone on about planets whose names, frankly, seem made up, Oliver takes a peek into his own future, dabbling in a bit of prescience himself. He's approaching his peak, his golden age, according to the pundits. A season more and he could be the most valuable defender in the world according to his agent. He'd be captaining the Japanese team for the fifth year straight, hopefully to Worlds once again. Finances were no issue for him. His agent was going to get a sneaker line customised after him from Nike, maybe a sports water he didn't necessarily believe in (he'd find a fine whiskey or vodka collaboration more tasteful), probably buy his mother her second summer home in the Swedish countryside for 55th birthday.

Though he knows about the call you'd got yesterday, a stupid slip-up by him, leaving his phone unattended and unlocked as he'd gone to fetch Yoko (one of his longer indulgences), he can still see you in his future.

You'd be there at Worlds, cheering for him from the friends and family box seats. You'd be the first person to make fun of his fraudulent brand deals. You'd advise him on the location of the summer house. Whether he was in Spain or Italy, you'd take the time out to make your stops on your increasingly frequent research-driven travels, and he would collect trinkets from the cities each away game was hosted in that would remind him of you.

He, never, of course imagines a future where you're not there. His mother might protest about the unnecessary luxury that is a second house, Nike might drop the deal given his sordid PR record, Sae Itoshi could finally ascend to captaincy — and Oliver would let him do so gracefully, because there was nothing more satisfying than a story coming full circle, and a new blossom of talent in a bleak landscape. He was just that kind of guy — but you were there, through it all, in your graphic printed longsleeves, low rise jeans and scuffed trainers.

Though he questioned the legitimacy of prescience, it was clear: all paths led to you. You'd forced him to sit through Dune 2, which ended up being less torturous than he'd expected, enough for him to ask you what happens next as he reversed out of the cinema's parking lot, and you'd propped a leg under your thigh, and turned to him with a moony sort of expression you reserved for very few things in your life.

You'd mentioned the Golden Path that Paul saw, a prescient interpretation for the universe that could lead it to salvation, even if it came at the cost of great difficulty, and Oliver now smirks into his mask as you wrap up your presentation with a polite "thank you."

Your energy has now simmered, leaving in its place a more nervous, hesitant force. He knew just how bad he fucked up yesterday by letting Yoko call you, because he knew how anxious you'd get before big events. In ordinary circumstances, it'd be him who'd be the guinea pig for your public speaking ministrations. You were not as charming as him, not as easy and comfortable under pressure in front of a large group, and he remembers you initially struggled to take your everyday classes, a burden that's eased with time. The words that you'd painstakingly chosen, the equations you'd solved with intentionality would turn to cardboard in your mouth when presented with the option of actually articulating your findings in a lucid manner.

Still, you manage tight-lipped, but genuine smiles at the students who file out and thank you for your insights, as well as your peers who'd occupied the front rows.

You've got your back to him when the midsized lecture hall has emptied itself out, and are busying yourself with packing up your laptop when he pads down towards you.

"That joke about the Kewpie Belt was hilarious," he drawls, and he expects to see you fall into familiar ways; your half-smile, a light punch to his shoulder, and a hopeless shake of your head. Then, you'd let him carry your bag and take you out to lunch.

You do no such thing. You stiffen, and turn around with a grimace. He knows your ashen face when he sees the circles under your eyes, a rare sight despite your friendship of nearly a decade.

You were hungover and pissed. Clearly, in no mood to entertain him.

All the more reason for him to press on, then. You beat him to it.

"Fuck off," you groan, and you sling your bag before he can protest. Apologies and grovelling are a part of his Circadian rhythmn at this point: he excels when he's on his knees.

"At least hear me out, I'm sorry," he says pointedly, taking an easy, loping stride to keep up with you where you have to make the effort of walking faster. You can't help the physical feeling of disgust that crawls up your spine, that makes you want to burrow inwards at the way the word rolls off his tongue so smoothly, as if it were completely weightless.

"It was a mistake! I broke up with her as soon as I figured it out. And your presentation was great, right? No harm, no foul," he blabbers, throwing his hands in the air sheepishly when you dignify him with a withering look. Oliver is a mediocre liar and a decent gambler at best, but what keeps him on the tables despite his losses is not just the cash he has to blow, but the excitement he attracts. Excitement is short-lived, however, and if anyone bothered staying past the party that was Oliver's lifestyle ended, they'd figure out his trade secrets.

Oliver's tells were as clear as day. You just had to want to look.

The exaggerated lilt in his voice, the cloying sweetness in his words as if he were explaining himself to his mother rather than a friend, the way his eyes flashed when he exclaims. This is a practiced routine, and you congratulate him on adding another feather to his cap: footballer, womaniser and actor.

"No harm, no foul?", you mimic, scoffing. Now he was just being obtuse. He knows you like the back of his hand, he knows you'd been up drinking to stave off the humiliation that had burnt through you from the call, coupled with your nerves about the presentation. (What he doesn't know is that you'd slept through three alarms and woke up drooling on the floor by your RA, who'd swung by to pick you up. Hot with embarrassment, you did not acknowledge the empty bottle of Merlot that had gotten you through the night. You'd barely made it in time for your lecture, and were a wreck for the first five minutes. You refuse to, however, divulge this information to him, lest he gains verbal confirmation to what he already knew in his gut: he had you hopelessly besotted.)

"All's well that ends well?", he counters mildly, breaking out his Sunday best smile. You treat him contemptuously, but he can hear the exhaustion in your tone.

"I'm tired, Oliver. Leave me alone," you said quietly, stepping out of the room.

You're staring at your miso soup petulantly, like a child peering into a mirror displeased by their reflection. Oliver prods it towards you gently. The soup is a metaphor for your heart's betrayal towards your head, a heady concoction that weaves together your weaknesses for this man in a salty, broth-y mixture. How you were persuaded to lunch was beyond you (You lie, you gave into his pathetic demands too easily), and as he fans himself with a laminated menu at this sidewalk cafe, you finally find it in you to glare at him rather than the poor hangover cure.

"How'd she figure out who I was?", you ask, glacially calm, though your expression betrays you.

"You and ma are the only two women on my call log. Most frequented, too," he says. It's simple. It's the truth.

"Did she go through our texts?"

"Nah. Face ID lock on the app."

You place your palms on the plastic tablecloth, a gaudy red with flowers. Your hands are sweaty. They stick. You're considering his words carefully, and he savours the way you look when the cogs in your brain are at work, doing what they do best.

"Dumped her, in case I didn't make it clear," he adds. He thinks he's being helpful.

You inhale sharply, and take a drink of the ice-cold water in front of you.

"Oliver," you begin, your voice controlled. "You do realise that Yoko wasn't in the wrong here? Objectively," you speak.

You love that word. Objectively. Factually. Logically. Empirically. Any part of the English language that gave you the illusion of control in this moment over the whirling shitstorm that Oliver is, the maelstrom of your life.

"If I were her, I'd also be pissed that my boyfriend was spending more time talking to some lab rat than me," you intone, and you hate the way your brain fires all synapses when you say the word boyfriend.

"I'm not her boyfriend. And you know I'm not good at this shit," he shrugs, and you feel the visceral, primal urge to reach over and strangle him.

Circles. That was how each one of these interactions went. You knew your place in Oliver's life, but many of his passing attractions did not. Some revered you, others envied you, while others still viewed you as a threat to eliminate. All perceptions were thoroughly embarrassing, since how could a lowly, unsexy, unfunny late-teen equivalent of a childhood best friend live up to the perfection of each woman that came tottering her way into Oliver's life?

Of all perceptions, though, you hated the last one because you felt that it was true. The word "side piece" is reductive, but the truth is at its finest when it is bare. You're no better than the any other person who's got their eyes set on Oliver, debauched and eligible bachelor Oliver, with his scruff and baritone and deep pockets and even deeper, more generous heart.

For someone who'd have a body count in the double digits, you find it baffling how all these years later, he hasn't developed some tact, some response other than "I'm not good at this shit."

"That's a fucked up response and you know it."

He shrugs.

"Would you rather have me lie and say that I'll cut you off every time I start a new fling? 'Cause you know you'll be getting whiplash every two business days."

You sigh, clenching the tablecloth again.

"That's not what I meant, Oliver," you seethe. For all his looks, his expensive taste and rationality, he behaved like the seventeen year old at the club more often than one would expect.

"You're an adult now. I'm an adult. Do you seriously still think you're going to be going into your thirties with this shithousery?", you say exasperatedly. "The calls, the lies, the embarrassment for everyone but you, your inability to be accountable and slide everything off with this stupid 'no harm no foul' attitude," you say, and before you can realise it your voice is gaining in pitch, in frustration.

"You can't fix me," is the only response Oliver deigns you worthy of, and you half expect him to leave.

"Get your head out of your ass. You don't need fixing, least of all from me. You need to," and you once again, grab at thin air for the words from every language that you knew, "treat yourself better," you sigh at the end, and the corner of his lips quiver up into a tentative smile.

"Look at you, telling me to treat myself better," he says, tilting back his chair smugly. You burn at his words, painfully reminded of your college days, punctuated with him forcing you out of your stuffy dorms to take a walk, grab takeout, do something other than kill yourself over differential equations.

"Ugh. This would be so much easier if I were a sentient superior species with mind control that could take over your brain and just force you to do what I tell you."

"Are we talking Ratatouille or Attack of the Brainsucker here?", he asks, and you roll your eyes in response.

Circles, squares, everything eventually came back to its beginnings with you. But in a distant yet near future he was inching closer to, Oliver could see the golden threads of fate winding in funny ways, taking him on his prescient path. He was sure of it.

"Brainsuckers. Duh."

[tabiito]

i say this but in reality its the lack of interaction thats nto worth the whole keeping up a blog thingy idddkkkkk if i just move to ao3 if yall want i can just drop my personal sb

thinking of moving to ao3

[tabiito]

PRESCIENCE — OLIVER AIKU part one: INEVITABILITY

You're not one to get nervous before classes, but this presentation of your paper has you pacing up and down the cramped hall of your apartment. Your way of dealing with particularly scrutinising conferences was running through your slides, reciting them to someone you know to ward off the nervousness, but tonight you're a wreck all by yourself. Shuffling through papers desperately trying to gather your thoughts, you spend a minute wallowing in pity, cursing the hundreds of expectant faces who'll be staring up at you tomorrow.

It's been two years since Geneva, and as you've aged and your career has expanded, your apartment has not. You bump into the corner of the low-lying table and hiss softly in pain.

Breaking you out of your haze, your phone rings, Oliver's number flashing. Ideally, he'd be your guinea pig (who'd fall asleep after you make it past your introductory remarks), but he did say he'd be out tonight.

"You better be on your way here. I'm freaking the fuck out."

The voice that greets you isn't his. It's, instead, a soft murmur that can just barely be heard after an initial few seconds of silence.

"So you're the side piece, huh?"

You pause, contemplating your next course of action. You can't even fathom who, what or how you've been dialled, though you have an inkling of an idea.

"You have the wrong number," you sigh, hanging up. You didn't have the mental capacity to engage with whoever was on the other side of the phone tonight, being more than swamped by your own shit. Still, the phone rings again, and this time you toss it on your couch with more force than necessary, grateful it doesn't crash onto the floor as you sigh.

To make full use of your available force, though, you throw the marker in your pocket against the whiteboard for good measure. It squeaks miserably, making a curve and falls to the ground.

You're in that animated state of flow of talking when Oliver enters the large room. He's about 15 minutes late, and he blames the cab driver that stopped him for a selfie. Your hands are moving rapidly as you explain (what he assumes are hieroglyphs) behind you, making a joke about something called the Kuiper Belt that has everyone laughing. He supposes that it must be a very expensive belt. As he settles into an empty chair at the back of the hall, he tips the cap he's wearing a little lower, and pushes his facemask a bit higher. Selfishly, and subconsciously, he hopes that his motion distracts you for even a mere nanosecond, to recognise his presence, but he's imperceptible in the crowd of people furiously taking notes or nodding in agreement.

"...And though I don't claim to be prescient like those on Arrakis, but the similarity I have found with Dune is fact that the temperatures in Kolhar, just like...."

Oliver's doing the thing again. He catches himself before his train of thought leaves the room entirely.

He's never claimed to understand your work. He stopped trying after you tried to explain calculus to him in high school, but inadvertently overcomplicated the whole endeavour by quoting some axioms you were learning about in your dual enrolment course. Needless to say, though your teaching had become much better, Oliver would still find himself zoning out when you slipped into the jargon-y, super-science-nerd-y side of yourself. His mind would latch onto the words he would understand from the litany of complicated terms you'd use and play around with them instead.

Prescience.

He always thought that time travelling and the ability to look into the future led to an overcomplicated, never-ending loop of things. (He's watched enough in Avengers: Infinity War to realise that only a fool would want to look into the future). What good would warning your future self be when you had to come back and warn your younger self and so on and so forth. It hurt his head to think about this, and considering Avengers was one of the milder watches on your LSD-trip-esque watchlist of scientific nonsense, he's had to think about this quite a lot.

As you drone on about planets whose names, frankly, seem made up, Oliver takes a peek into his own future, dabbling in a bit of prescience himself. He's approaching his peak, his golden age, according to the pundits. A season more and he could be the most valuable defender in the world according to his agent. He'd be captaining the Japanese team for the fifth year straight, hopefully to Worlds once again. Finances were no issue for him. His agent was going to get a sneaker line customised after him from Nike, maybe a sports water he didn't necessarily believe in (he'd find a fine whiskey or vodka collaboration more tasteful), probably buy his mother her second summer home in the Swedish countryside for 55th birthday.

Though he knows about the call you'd got yesterday, a stupid slip-up by him, leaving his phone unattended and unlocked as he'd gone to fetch Yoko (one of his longer indulgences), he can still see you in his future.

You'd be there at Worlds, cheering for him from the friends and family box seats. You'd be the first person to make fun of his fraudulent brand deals. You'd advise him on the location of the summer house. Whether he was in Spain or Italy, you'd take the time out to make your stops on your increasingly frequent research-driven travels, and he would collect trinkets from the cities each away game was hosted in that would remind him of you.

He, never, of course imagines a future where you're not there. His mother might protest about the unnecessary luxury that is a second house, Nike might drop the deal given his sordid PR record, Sae Itoshi could finally ascend to captaincy — and Oliver would let him do so gracefully, because there was nothing more satisfying than a story coming full circle, and a new blossom of talent in a bleak landscape. He was just that kind of guy — but you were there, through it all, in your graphic printed longsleeves, low rise jeans and scuffed trainers.

Though he questioned the legitimacy of prescience, it was clear: all paths led to you. You'd forced him to sit through Dune 2, which ended up being less torturous than he'd expected, enough for him to ask you what happens next as he reversed out of the cinema's parking lot, and you'd propped a leg under your thigh, and turned to him with a moony sort of expression you reserved for very few things in your life.

You'd mentioned the Golden Path that Paul saw, a prescient interpretation for the universe that could lead it to salvation, even if it came at the cost of great difficulty, and Oliver now smirks into his mask as you wrap up your presentation with a polite "thank you."

Your energy has now simmered, leaving in its place a more nervous, hesitant force. He knew just how bad he fucked up yesterday by letting Yoko call you, because he knew how anxious you'd get before big events. In ordinary circumstances, it'd be him who'd be the guinea pig for your public speaking ministrations. You were not as charming as him, not as easy and comfortable under pressure in front of a large group, and he remembers you initially struggled to take your everyday classes, a burden that's eased with time. The words that you'd painstakingly chosen, the equations you'd solved with intentionality would turn to cardboard in your mouth when presented with the option of actually articulating your findings in a lucid manner.

Still, you manage tight-lipped, but genuine smiles at the students who file out and thank you for your insights, as well as your peers who'd occupied the front rows.

You've got your back to him when the midsized lecture hall has emptied itself out, and are busying yourself with packing up your laptop when he pads down towards you.

"That joke about the Kewpie Belt was hilarious," he drawls, and he expects to see you fall into familiar ways; your half-smile, a light punch to his shoulder, and a hopeless shake of your head. Then, you'd let him carry your bag and take you out to lunch.

You do no such thing. You stiffen, and turn around with a grimace. He knows your ashen face when he sees the circles under your eyes, a rare sight despite your friendship of nearly a decade.

You were hungover and pissed. Clearly, in no mood to entertain him.

All the more reason for him to press on, then. You beat him to it.

"Fuck off," you groan, and you sling your bag before he can protest. Apologies and grovelling are a part of his Circadian rhythmn at this point: he excels when he's on his knees.

"At least hear me out, I'm sorry," he says pointedly, taking an easy, loping stride to keep up with you where you have to make the effort of walking faster. You can't help the physical feeling of disgust that crawls up your spine, that makes you want to burrow inwards at the way the word rolls off his tongue so smoothly, as if it were completely weightless.

"It was a mistake! I broke up with her as soon as I figured it out. And your presentation was great, right? No harm, no foul," he blabbers, throwing his hands in the air sheepishly when you dignify him with a withering look. Oliver is a mediocre liar and a decent gambler at best, but what keeps him on the tables despite his losses is not just the cash he has to blow, but the excitement he attracts. Excitement is short-lived, however, and if anyone bothered staying past the party that was Oliver's lifestyle ended, they'd figure out his trade secrets.

Oliver's tells were as clear as day. You just had to want to look.

The exaggerated lilt in his voice, the cloying sweetness in his words as if he were explaining himself to his mother rather than a friend, the way his eyes flashed when he exclaims. This is a practiced routine, and you congratulate him on adding another feather to his cap: footballer, womaniser and actor.

"No harm, no foul?", you mimic, scoffing. Now he was just being obtuse. He knows you like the back of his hand, he knows you'd been up drinking to stave off the humiliation that had burnt through you from the call, coupled with your nerves about the presentation. (What he doesn't know is that you'd slept through three alarms and woke up drooling on the floor by your RA, who'd swung by to pick you up. Hot with embarrassment, you did not acknowledge the empty bottle of Merlot that had gotten you through the night. You'd barely made it in time for your lecture, and were a wreck for the first five minutes. You refuse to, however, divulge this information to him, lest he gains verbal confirmation to what he already knew in his gut: he had you hopelessly besotted.)

"All's well that ends well?", he counters mildly, breaking out his Sunday best smile. You treat him contemptuously, but he can hear the exhaustion in your tone.

"I'm tired, Oliver. Leave me alone," you said quietly, stepping out of the room.

You're staring at your miso soup petulantly, like a child peering into a mirror displeased by their reflection. Oliver prods it towards you gently. The soup is a metaphor for your heart's betrayal towards your head, a heady concoction that weaves together your weaknesses for this man in a salty, broth-y mixture. How you were persuaded to lunch was beyond you (You lie, you gave into his pathetic demands too easily), and as he fans himself with a laminated menu at this sidewalk cafe, you finally find it in you to glare at him rather than the poor hangover cure.

"How'd she figure out who I was?", you ask, glacially calm, though your expression betrays you.

"You and ma are the only two women on my call log. Most frequented, too," he says. It's simple. It's the truth.

"Did she go through our texts?"

"Nah. Face ID lock on the app."

You place your palms on the plastic tablecloth, a gaudy red with flowers. Your hands are sweaty. They stick. You're considering his words carefully, and he savours the way you look when the cogs in your brain are at work, doing what they do best.

"Dumped her, in case I didn't make it clear," he adds. He thinks he's being helpful.

You inhale sharply, and take a drink of the ice-cold water in front of you.

"Oliver," you begin, your voice controlled. "You do realise that Yoko wasn't in the wrong here? Objectively," you speak.

You love that word. Objectively. Factually. Logically. Empirically. Any part of the English language that gave you the illusion of control in this moment over the whirling shitstorm that Oliver is, the maelstrom of your life.

"If I were her, I'd also be pissed that my boyfriend was spending more time talking to some lab rat than me," you intone, and you hate the way your brain fires all synapses when you say the word boyfriend.

"I'm not her boyfriend. And you know I'm not good at this shit," he shrugs, and you feel the visceral, primal urge to reach over and strangle him.

Circles. That was how each one of these interactions went. You knew your place in Oliver's life, but many of his passing attractions did not. Some revered you, others envied you, while others still viewed you as a threat to eliminate. All perceptions were thoroughly embarrassing, since how could a lowly, unsexy, unfunny late-teen equivalent of a childhood best friend live up to the perfection of each woman that came tottering her way into Oliver's life?

Of all perceptions, though, you hated the last one because you felt that it was true. The word "side piece" is reductive, but the truth is at its finest when it is bare. You're no better than the any other person who's got their eyes set on Oliver, debauched and eligible bachelor Oliver, with his scruff and baritone and deep pockets and even deeper, more generous heart.

For someone who'd have a body count in the double digits, you find it baffling how all these years later, he hasn't developed some tact, some response other than "I'm not good at this shit."

"That's a fucked up response and you know it."

He shrugs.

"Would you rather have me lie and say that I'll cut you off every time I start a new fling? 'Cause you know you'll be getting whiplash every two business days."

You sigh, clenching the tablecloth again.

"That's not what I meant, Oliver," you seethe. For all his looks, his expensive taste and rationality, he behaved like the seventeen year old at the club more often than one would expect.

"You're an adult now. I'm an adult. Do you seriously still think you're going to be going into your thirties with this shithousery?", you say exasperatedly. "The calls, the lies, the embarrassment for everyone but you, your inability to be accountable and slide everything off with this stupid 'no harm no foul' attitude," you say, and before you can realise it your voice is gaining in pitch, in frustration.

"You can't fix me," is the only response Oliver deigns you worthy of, and you half expect him to leave.

"Get your head out of your ass. You don't need fixing, least of all from me. You need to," and you once again, grab at thin air for the words from every language that you knew, "treat yourself better," you sigh at the end, and the corner of his lips quiver up into a tentative smile.

"Look at you, telling me to treat myself better," he says, tilting back his chair smugly. You burn at his words, painfully reminded of your college days, punctuated with him forcing you out of your stuffy dorms to take a walk, grab takeout, do something other than kill yourself over differential equations.

"Ugh. This would be so much easier if I were a sentient superior species with mind control that could take over your brain and just force you to do what I tell you."

"Are we talking Ratatouille or Attack of the Brainsucker here?", he asks, and you roll your eyes in response.

Circles, squares, everything eventually came back to its beginnings with you. But in a distant yet near future he was inching closer to, Oliver could see the golden threads of fate winding in funny ways, taking him on his prescient path. He was sure of it.

"Brainsuckers. Duh."

[tabiito]

addicted to making zines about shidou

[tabiito]

Final Match Up! Sae vs Rin

Blue lock S2E14

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if sza were to kidnap and torture me i'd be right where i belong #GiveMeAChance

[tabiito]

thinking of moving to ao3

[tabiito]

close enough welcome back shoei barou

[tabiito]

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“I’ll carry that sin with you.”

[tabiito]

posted!

silly little idea, but i really loved your hard launch with the bllk boys fic, and i saw that you wanted to do isagi for pt.2, and i just thought it would be fun to see isagi hard launching noel noas daughter, like, he’s dating noel noas daughter 🤭🤭🤭🤭

ofc if you have anything else planned, pls go ahead with that! anything you write will be fun nonetheless 💋💋

ohh that's such a cute idea LOL i can just imagine the twt comments haha i'll definitely include it in the next bit and thank you!!

[tabiito]

DEBÍ TIRAR MÁS FOTOS II — hard launching with the blue lock boys after a rumour includes: isagi, barou and nagi read part 1 note: chat it's actually oliver who's the close source for barou

Shouei Barou, who's offended that he's linked with anyone other than you

You can hear Barou's disgruntled "The fuck?", as you're towelling yourself dry in the bathroom. Since there are a million things on God's green Earth that could elicit such a reaction from your neurotic boyfriend (including the state of the bathroom right now, with your various cosmetic products strewn about the place), you don't pay him much mind and go about your merry business.

That is, until you barely have half a second to cover yourself when he dramatically throws the door open and shoves his phone in your face. Shrieking, you attempt to push him out, but thanks to him being built like a brick wall, he doesn't budge.

"Have you seen this drivel?", he seethes, as you sigh, grabbing his phone and scanning the headline that was beginning to catch the eyes of the internet. Your lips curl upward, amused at how you'd and the entire team had been conveniently cropped out of the photo, focusing only on Barou and the lovely girl you'd met while picking him up from work.

"And?", you prompt, taking this less seriously than he is. "How could they even think of launching me with someone other than you?", he rages, feeling personally wronged as though they'd posted him with Isagi rather than a model was very clearly taken. You do a double-take at his words, feeling a soft smile creep up your face at his words, contrasting it with his furious expression.

The decision to keep your relationship private hadn't been one you had consciously taken; the nature of your public oriented careers had made the both of you discreet individuals when it came to your private lives. Perhaps you had done too good of a job sneaking around, since Barou, who solely alternates between training, matches, and his apartment caught a rumour in the rare time he'd been dragged along for a quick breakfast by the staff.

Barou fumes on about how you were the only person worth his "royal time" and other schizophrenic ramblings about the monarchy you'd wish he leaves on the pitch sometimes. The paws of his grubby agent are all over this; the man was constantly begging Barou to develop a more "family friendly" and "relatable" image in the name of PR. Glancing at your softened expression, Barou can't help the wicked smirk that crosses his face as he fishes his phone out of your hands.

If his agent wanted PR, he'll give it to him.

Yoichi Isagi, who can't help but exhibit strategic brilliance both on and off the field

Isagi's contract negotiations with BM were a little tense this time around. Sure, he was indebted to the club that had cultivated him since he was a young prodigy fresh out of Blue Lock, but in his prime, the German squad, now with Noel just as a coach couldn't quite match his style of play to the level he liked. So naturally, when the superstars of Madrid, where football legends are born, came calling, everyone expected him to instantly terminate his commitment and take the first flight to Spain.

Or so they thought. What they did not expect though, is for Isagi to hesitate, even slightly. Ever improving, adapting, constantly in search of more opportunities Isagi, for the first time, exhibited reluctance in his footballing career.

You thought it was absurd, though you certainly couldn't tell the man who was not his usual slur-shouting self, and instead emulating a rather tame house cat as he propped his laptop on his knees, head in your lap reviewing footage from his last match.

You tsk, pointing at the clear moment where he'd allowed Barcha to break through their defence.

"That should've been a clear red. Too bad the ref's been tapped since, like, forever," you shrugged, clicking your tongue. Isagi's eyes light up as you speak nodding along excitedly.

"Right? And I thought I was the only one! This new UEFA rule is so fuckin' stupid though, I swear that jackass was about to book me for arguing," he grouses, and you can't help the giggle that escapes your lips at the litany of profanity that seems to lace itself into Isagi's vocabulary whenever he talks about football.

"They completely narrowed the centre of the field for you guys. Forced you to pass wide and Schneider didn't even attempt to move forward. He could've completely shifted the midfield around," you add, and you notice Isagi furiously typing your words down.

As the child of a footballing icon, the sport's been in your blood since the very start. Though it wasn't in your fate to pursue it, you've always had a keen eye and an opinion that wasn't hampered by the yes-man group psychosis that inhabited a locker room, so it was only natural that Isagi would seek you out the first time you critiqued his trivela during training.

"Why are you typing all of this down?", you groan, tugging at his hair ever so slightly so he hisses in pain. "You won't need this for the next season," you grumble, and he snaps the laptop shut, flipping over so that he's looking at you with those stupidly large blue eyes of his.

You squint back down at him, sighing. "You need to sign that Madrid contract already. This is what you've been preparing for all your life," you say softly, as his fingers find yours, interlinking.

He grimaces, and you can see him internally tussling with his thoughts. His face has always had subtitles. "Yeah, but there's my whole life in Münich: you, the guys — "

You can't help but roll your eyes at his words, but also appreciate the sentiment nonetheless. "Please. You didn't bat an eyelid running into a mental facility for an unspecified amount of time without telling your parents to improve your game in Japan. I'm sure a two-hour flight distance is nothing for you."

He opens his mouth, but you interrupt him quickly.

"And don't tell me all of a sudden that you've developed an emotional attachment to Kaiser."

He slowly shuts it and you smirk in response.

"I'm going to be there with you every step of the way," you promise, and he simply flops back into your lap, inhaling your familiar fabric softener. "You've outgrown us now. You're meant for bigger things, Yoichi," you prod, and when he looks back up at you, you can see that he's made his decision.

Fast forward to the Champion's League final. You've put aside your petty irritation at the fake news an Instagram model decided to spread a day prior to the match by jumping on the clout bandwagon to finally make an actual appearance at one of Isagi's matches, much to the annoyance of your father.

You're seated on the opposite ends of where you usually sit, proudly sporting white and purple that clashes with the red and black that sneers at you from the BM stands, screaming Isagi's name til you go hoarse. You'd gotten some weird looks from those who knew of you, but you completely lost track as Madrid cooked Münich in a thrilling 90 minute rollercoaster. With Isagi proudly sporting the heavy champion's gold medal around his neck, you can't help yourself as he motions to you to join him on the field. Skipping over the barriers, he catches you in his arms, laughing ecstatically for thousands to see as confetti showers from above.

He wouldn't have made this move if it wasn't without your go-ahead, so he rightfully slides the medal of his neck, sliding it on you as you gape at him in awe. Snapping a quick picture, he posts his true appreciation for you much later into the night, when the music and crowd dies down and it's just him and his thoughts, laying any useless rumours to rest.

Nagi Seishiro, who's down a little too bad

Nagi's baffled at how you can sound so chirpy despite a 9-hour time difference over FaceTime. Along with the mechanics of Azir, your affinity for early mornings remains one of the great mysteries of the universe for Nagi.

As you ramble on about your day, along with your first professional game that you played as a part of Worlds qualifiers, Nagi finds himself being slowly lulled off to sleep. You couldn't possibly blame him, right? His bed was so inviting, and it was 1AM in London after all.

"Hey! You better be listening to me!", you protest, and Nagi's eyes flutter open, losing the warm embrace of sleep he was so desperately chasing.

"Huh? Oh. Yeah, hmm I was," he sighs, rolling over in his bed. Somehow it was taking him much longer to fall asleep in an empty room.

"Really? What was the last thing I said?"

"Er. Something about trying a matcha latte," he mumbles, knowing he's skipped larger portions of the conversation. You, however, seem to have a worse short-term memory than him as you proceed to repeat the entire incident back to him. He doesn't particularly mind, considering the calming influence your voice has on him.

Once again, he's just about to fall into dreamland when you snap him back to reality.

"Your manager called me by the way. I haven't returned her call. Do you have any idea why?", you ask, and he hums. He does remember something she was ranting to him about during today's PR briefings.

"Uhh, I think it was about me being shipped with someone," he says, trying to recall the name. You blanche on camera, your eyes widening as he names some generically popular streamer who everyone in the world watches, but apparently Nagi watched with a special interest.

"What the fuck? How come they confused one of my lives with somebody else's?", you groan, as you scrolled through the hashtag that had already begun shipping Nagi and the other streamer together.

"Does it bother you?", Nagi asks simply, propping the camera up since he realises that he's not going to be in for much sleep tonight when you start reading out the comments that have flooded gossip pages across the net.

You pause mid-rant, choosing a minute to think. The first time you and Nagi had started talking, it was clear that this was going to be a private relationship. You were already an overworked E-sports player, and Nagi, a global footballing phenomenon, had initially taken to your streams to figure out some decent plays. The last thing you needed was the internet on your ass.

But this rumour in particular though, hit a little too close to home. You'd made it two years in without an inkling of suspicion for the both of you (even though you chose him in FIFA a little too much, and he'd accidentally made a half-body cameo in one of your streams when he walked in and picked up your cat), and at this point you'd rather have him linked to you than some streamer, who was, in reality in a very loving relationship.

"I guess. It's not like we can do anything without PR's approval, though," you say exasperatedly, and Nagi doesn't like the way your chirpy tone drops to a more flat and dull one.

"Ah, this is such a hassle. Hold on."

a/n tbh I'm not happy with how any of these turned out but something's better than nothing 😜😜😜

[tabiito]

Thinking of making this a physics based series

INEVITABILITY — OLIVER AIKU note: no warnings other than underage alcohol consumption n brief harassment, they are idiots in love and KNOW IT but just don't do anything. i needed to get this man OUT OF MY BRAIN so i can study don't @ me for getting the physics stuff wrong i've been rewatching big bang theory. can be read as a precursor to his part in dtmf

You weren't supposed to meet Oliver Aiku at seventeen.

You weren't supposed to meet him ever, really.

It was a hot summer night of your junior year, and you'd just been strong-armed into sneaking off to a seedy club with the friend whose house you'd been sleeping over at. Not only were you woefully underage, you were sure you'd alerted her dog as you scaled the gate and nearly broken the heel of the boots she'd lent you on landing.

It had been an out-of-character day for you, in retrospect. Firstly, you'd agreed to the sleepover, which you usually wouldn't, given your schoolwork, and secondly, you'd let her bitching and moaning about how you "never did anything fun and memorable" get to your head.

So there you were, three hours, two thousand yen notes slipped to the bouncer, four turned down drinks later, crawling your way to the door as she'd abandoned you in favour of a much older, sleazy looking man. (Someone had to accept the drinks, she'd argued. Otherwise it looked rude.)

Truth be told, you were shitting bricks. Unfortunately, people couldn't tell your polite taps on the shoulder apart from the more intimate contact that occurs on the dance floor, or hear your soft "excuse me's", that were instantly drowned out by the bass. So the crowd didn't move an inch, and you were attempting your best worm impression as you tried to squeeze through the sea of bodies you'd read horror stories about — in this swarm, newspapers posited there were hungry loan sharks, ready to corner desperate drunks, over-enthusiastic salarymen preying on their next one night stand and gang members scanning the vicinity for vulnerable youngsters.

You were slowly, but surely, getting to the door, and miraculously not falling over and flipping up the miniskirt (once again, lent to you) that you'd been pulling down all evening. The bouncer looked akin to an angel, and the door, the gates of Heaven as you finally made off the dance floor.

Alas, making it to Heaven wasn't in your fate. A large body blocked your view, filling up your eyeliner with a rumpled suit and breath that reeked of the cheap whiskey that they'd been serving at the bar. He slurred his words, grabbing your wrist, mumbling something or the other about one dance. Your brain was screaming at you to move, but the bead of sweat that rolled down your forehead was the only motion your body could produce as you remained glued to the floor.

His hold on your hand tightened, more insistent, as your throat ran dry, unable to comprehend what to do in this scenario. You couldn't take him in a fight, nor did you think anyone would hear you crying for help over the stupid EDM blasting.

You were sure you were toast. The next third-page column title in day after's newspaper, until you felt a warm hand snake around your waist, gently pulling you close to a body, breaking out of the other man's hold with ease.

"They're with me," a raspy baritone states firmly, and you look to your side to see a pair of mismatched eyes calmly surveying the fellow.

"Isn't that right?", he adds, and you can only manage a hasty nod as he squares his shoulders back, sizing up the drunk and giving him a once-over. Back then, though he'd hit six feet, and was in the process of filling out nicely, his hair were a swathe of well kept black and there wasn't the stubble he normally kept, so it took the salaryman a few more seconds than it would take him in the present day to decide to fuck off.

Unfortunately, Oliver's presence did less to alleviate your fears. In fact, you figured you were between a rock and a hard place, and chose to agree with him since he didn't have the foul smell liquor radiating off him. Perhaps you'd be able to reason with a sober person better.

He instantly let goes of you, and you get a better look at him, in his cheap white polyester suit (that he's still got tucked away in some part of his cupboard and you make fun of) and leopard-print shirt. Young Oliver did not have the well-honed partying panache that older Oliver had, and you were biting back a laugh at his Yakuza X Great Gatsby look. "Thank you," you'd managed to stutter, and he flashes you his trademarked charming smile that you still succumbed to, all those years later.

"You could be, by the way," he'd responded, and you'd looked at him quizzically. The line still keeps him up at night, as he cringes internally at the way his attempt at flirting never even had a chance with you.

"Be with me tonight. If you want," he'd pressed on, unabashedly giving you a once over in the outfit you later had nightmares about. The laugh you'd been holding escaped your lips, comfortably disarmed by his non-invasive, but persistent nature.

"Thank you, no," you replied, and he'd been taken aback then by the phrase you used. Of course, he later learnt that it was the more polite and apparently, correct way of declining an offer.

He'd shrugged in response, internally consoling himself with something along the lines of "missing all the shots he doesn't take." Normally, this would've been the end of his ministrations, but he doesn't miss the unsure way you eye the door, or how you eye the time.

"Let me call you a cab," he offers, and you smile appreciatively. In retrospect, you should not have trusted him, because you'd read up about cab-calling scammers too, but there was something idiotically, inherently trusting that Oliver made you feel, in his awfully put together outfit and voice that didn't quite match his face yet.

Braving the cold outside while waiting for a cab and draping his jacket that stank of overpoweringly inexpensive cologne made you throw him a bone and give him your number, veiling it with an excuse of possessing some means to reach him when you'd return his dry cleaned jacket back to him.

You were sure the jacket would never go back to him. It wasn't practically possible. You chalked up your encounter with him to a moment of good karma for you, and left it at that. You'd get his jacket to the cleaners and ask for his address, never actually going there, of course.

He was the kind of guy who felt perfectly at home in a club. You were a student who wouldn't leave the house if you had a choice. There was no way your paths would cross out of the 14,000,000 people who live in Tokyo.

Three years later, your number is his emergency contact.

You're sure it's his persistence that's kept your relationship alive. His first text didn't come until three days later, sending you some corny pick up line when he was going through a dry spell in flings. You promptly responded with a clear "No LOL", and that became your dynamic.

At first, he'd try his luck with you when he was bored, and strike out every time. Maybe that's what spurred him to keep texting you, and you were sure there was something deeply wrong with you that enabled you to keep texting him back, finding his repetitiveness endearing rather than annoying.

Fast forward a few months, you managed to piece together pictures of each other as you traded parts of your life in between banter.

Unlike your previous conception of him, he wasn't some club veteran who'd spend his days partying away. In fact, in that club, he was just as underage as you were, with his debauched lifestyle not suiting an aspiring professional footballer. Initially, you were sure he'd fail. He took great joy in proving you wrong.

His conception of you, though, was spot on. You were perpetually busy, a trend that's continued to the present, but he seemed mysteriously motivated to carve out a place for himself in your life, even if it wasn't in a romantic capacity. He chalks it up to pity, at first, assuming that your stressed homebody lifestyle needed a person to vent to, to be occasionally flattered and entertained.

Though he was right about needing someone who you could be a distraction, he's now sure it's not pity that's keeping him in your life.

His clarity is stolen from an article in a quantum theory magazine you'd raged on about in your first year of university.

In most occasions, when you'd go off on your theoretical tangents relating to your major, most of it would fly right over his head. That time, though, when you'd called him to help you move in (with "helping" mostly being you yammering away to glory and him hoisting your boxes up and down the stairs without complaint), he remembers what you said vividly, even going so far as to dispute you.

"The laws of physics are not inevitable," you'd snorted derisively, jabbing at the headline. "What a piece of nonsense," you'd added, brandishing the magazine in his face. He'd lazily skimmed through the article, ignoring most jargon-y parts and instead focused on the essence of it.

A domino needs a full turn to get back to the same place. A two of clubs needs only a half turn. And the hour hand on a clock must spin around twice before it tells the same time again.

Inevitability.

Oliver doesn't believe that he can be friends with his exes. Oliver has chased, and slept with (to put it crudely), every woman who's attempted to friendzone him, til he's no longer interested in them. He's, ironically, a dwarf compared to you in the real world, not coming anywhere close to your intellect, occasional neuroticism or humour. You've blossomed beautifully from seventeen into your twenties, no longer needing him to distract you from the stresses of academia. You have a full, stable life, complete with a doctorate and other honorary credentials that he's sure most people in their mid-twenties aren't supposed to have.

Oliver, on the other hand, is crashing and burning his way through life. You like to call him a controlled flame off the pitch, and have regularly tried to diagnose him with something on your late night FaceTimes since he exhibits both hedonism and self-sacrificing behaviour, but more often than not you have to settle for the fact that he's a scientific anomaly and call it plain idiocy.

Inevitability's made your relationship come full circle. From you ranting about college applications and dead-end research work to him, he now crawls back to you with his frustrations about Japanese football, his constantly busy schedule, each and every failed fling and situationship with that same telling grin on his face.

He's now convinced inevitability is what's keeping him in your life. You have no need for him, and he can just book a therapist with the stupid amounts of money he's earning, but Oliver can read your face as plain as day when he's rambling on about Suki or Mara, tinged with longing. He's caught his expression in the mirror far too many times when you slap on under-eye patches on him in your small bathroom to recognise it as lovesickness staring back at him to not understand that the two of you are dancing around an unspoken pact, one where his heart is already spoken for every time he steps foot into the clubs you pick him up drunk from.

It's not like he hasn't tried to speed up the process, but with you it's an immovable object vs. an unstoppable force sort of situation. Every time his lips have almost caught yours, every time you've contemplated taking him up on the offer of sleeping on his bed rather than letting him take the couch, it just feels like the wrong time with the right person.

It's unhealthy, and he knows it. You go on dates with boring, serious men that make you feel much older than you actually are, and he chases after the thrill of youth, found in cramped bathroom stalls, gambling dens and back-alleys.

Despite this, it's baffling to you how much of a contradiction he is. In all other situations, you can only attribute this self-destructing behaviour to people with no clear purpose in life, forced to engage in this lifestyle. What do you say to someone who's captaining a Serie A team?

It's one of those nights again in the offseason, where he'd already shot off a message to you that he's going to sleep over, and you'd already prepared his spot on the couch along with ordering hotpot for his hangover the next morning.

"You're so fucking stupid," you sigh, handing him a icepack for where he'd tripped on your stairs in a slightly tipsy stupor. He only cheeses lazily in response, the small bruise on his cheek lifting, as if to tease you by saying: and yet, you indulge in my stupidity.

He takes his seat on the ouch as you prop up your legs in his lap. His hands ghost over your ankle, calloused and large, but just as warm as the first time they settled on your waist.

"What time's your flight tomorrow?", you ask, pulling out your phone so you can request the academic coordinator to post a message rescheduling your classes so you can drive him.

"Ten thirty. You don't need to, ah, drive," he says, wincing at the way you reach over and press the pack harder into his cheek. You respond by making a sour face, and he recognises the futility of his words: you never need to drive, and yet you do anyways.

"Are you still going to stop in Milan sometime?", he asks, tipping his head back over the edge of the worn sofa. He needs a haircut, you note.

"If I get a decent connection while on the way to Geneva, yeah," you mumble. The question's so infuriating that you've gotten used to it. You've followed him everywhere: Rome, Milan, and, if transfermarkt.co.in has it right, maybe even Spain soon. It's a given by now — if you were on your way to a conference or visiting faculty, you'd make a stop for a week wherever he was, no matter what the time of season. It's the same way he's considering no longer paying the rent for his Tokyo apartment since his toothbrush and bathrobe are perpetually parked in your toilet.

He clicks his tongue in irritation.

"C'mon, don't make it a connection. Just fly in and let me worry about how you get to Switzerland."

"I'm going to CERN, not a holiday," you grouse, and he waves you off.

"Yeah, yeah, whatever. Spend some time in the Sun before the Swiss suck your brain juice for what it's worth," he says dismissively. "The guys have been asking about you," he tacks on, and you roll your eyes.

"Ah yes, a team of professional footballers is interested in my measly string theory research," you intone, and Oliver cracks an eye open at you.

"Hey, don't say that. When I told Sendou you might be nominated for a Nobel on your deathbed he seemed very interested," he speaks, and you make a gagging sort of noise.

"Really? I should go from someone who got a fields medal to Sendou?", you say exasperatedly. Oliver shrugs.

"Hey, at least he'll pay for your meal instead of calculating up to the fourth decimal for how much you should split," he counters. "I've taught him well."

"Oh, so that means he'll ghost me a day later, too?", you laugh, and Oliver grins sheepishly. He's pulled you closer by your calves, you realise, since you can't feel the softness of your souvenir Ubers cushion behind you that he got for you and you keep as a tacky joke.

"Only a fool would ghost you," he says, and you mentally add this to the Wikipedia page of "things-Oliver-Aiku-has-said-sound-romantic but-because-he's-Oliver-are-actually-not"

"I guess I'm living in a noodledom then," you say matter-of-factly, and Oliver adds the word to his list of "things-you-say-that-he-has-no-idea-about-but-religiously-Googles-later-to-sound-smart-in-conversation."

"Ahh, my mother's going to send me one of her "why are you single voicemails again", you groan, flopping flat on your back onto the leather.

He chuckles. "At least you're not getting child support threats every two days."

"That's a choice you make. I'm single involuntarily," you snicker, sitting back up and noticing the way your shoulders bump given the proximity.

"Do you think we'll still be like this?", he asks, setting the icepack onto the table in front of him. "Bitching and moaning our way into our middle age?", he asks, and you make a face. Your answer, though, surprises him.

"God, I hope so. There's no way I'm staying sane if I can't complain to you about all the marriages that are coming up."

"Ha. You're assuming you're not going to drag me there with you as your plus one."

"You wound me. I never assume. I already know that's a fact," you say, dramatically laying a hand on your chest and resting your head against his shoulder. He scoots just a bit closer, and you can smell the vodka on him ever so slightly. Thankfully, he's opted for a less nasally invasive cologne.

"You're saying it's inevitable?", he questions, and you hum, nodding.

"It's just a matter of time, my dear sir," you answer, and you nestle imperceptibly closer to him. As sleep washes over you, Oliver doesn't move an inch, even though he's up for the next two hours, plagued by his own mind.

Oliver knows that on the basis of inevitability, it's just a matter of time when everything falls into place, til it becomes the right time with the right person.

You drop him off to the airport and hug him a little tighter than the last time when you say bye. He picks you up three months later and doesn't miss the way you began playing to the music he recommended. You pretend to be cordial with the Instagram model he goes out to dinner with and gets back home. He pretends to be happy for you when you show him the not-so-friendly sweet messages your coworker's sending you. You don't know how he breaks up with the girl the day after he makes his little road trip by dropping you to Geneva. He doesn't know that you say "I have a boyfriend", when you're asked out on a date by the same colleague.

You don't believe the laws of physics being inevitable, but you also didn't believe that you could know someone who's both selfless and selfish at the same time. Oliver's a contradiction, and you're scared. Time, though, is one of the few physical forces that's on his side, from seventeen to twenty three. So he doesn't mind wiling it away, and neither do you, even if it means twisting the knives in your heart just a little deeper.

You'll come around someday. And he'll be waiting.

[tabiito]

Happy valentines 🤍

INEVITABILITY — OLIVER AIKU note: no warnings other than underage alcohol consumption n brief harassment, they are idiots in love and KNOW IT but just don't do anything. i needed to get this man OUT OF MY BRAIN so i can study don't @ me for getting the physics stuff wrong i've been rewatching big bang theory. can be read as a precursor to his part in dtmf

You weren't supposed to meet Oliver Aiku at seventeen.

You weren't supposed to meet him ever, really.

It was a hot summer night of your junior year, and you'd just been strong-armed into sneaking off to a seedy club with the friend whose house you'd been sleeping over at. Not only were you woefully underage, you were sure you'd alerted her dog as you scaled the gate and nearly broken the heel of the boots she'd lent you on landing.

It had been an out-of-character day for you, in retrospect. Firstly, you'd agreed to the sleepover, which you usually wouldn't, given your schoolwork, and secondly, you'd let her bitching and moaning about how you "never did anything fun and memorable" get to your head.

So there you were, three hours, two thousand yen notes slipped to the bouncer, four turned down drinks later, crawling your way to the door as she'd abandoned you in favour of a much older, sleazy looking man. (Someone had to accept the drinks, she'd argued. Otherwise it looked rude.)

Truth be told, you were shitting bricks. Unfortunately, people couldn't tell your polite taps on the shoulder apart from the more intimate contact that occurs on the dance floor, or hear your soft "excuse me's", that were instantly drowned out by the bass. So the crowd didn't move an inch, and you were attempting your best worm impression as you tried to squeeze through the sea of bodies you'd read horror stories about — in this swarm, newspapers posited there were hungry loan sharks, ready to corner desperate drunks, over-enthusiastic salarymen preying on their next one night stand and gang members scanning the vicinity for vulnerable youngsters.

You were slowly, but surely, getting to the door, and miraculously not falling over and flipping up the miniskirt (once again, lent to you) that you'd been pulling down all evening. The bouncer looked akin to an angel, and the door, the gates of Heaven as you finally made off the dance floor.

Alas, making it to Heaven wasn't in your fate. A large body blocked your view, filling up your eyeliner with a rumpled suit and breath that reeked of the cheap whiskey that they'd been serving at the bar. He slurred his words, grabbing your wrist, mumbling something or the other about one dance. Your brain was screaming at you to move, but the bead of sweat that rolled down your forehead was the only motion your body could produce as you remained glued to the floor.

His hold on your hand tightened, more insistent, as your throat ran dry, unable to comprehend what to do in this scenario. You couldn't take him in a fight, nor did you think anyone would hear you crying for help over the stupid EDM blasting.

You were sure you were toast. The next third-page column title in day after's newspaper, until you felt a warm hand snake around your waist, gently pulling you close to a body, breaking out of the other man's hold with ease.

"They're with me," a raspy baritone states firmly, and you look to your side to see a pair of mismatched eyes calmly surveying the fellow.

"Isn't that right?", he adds, and you can only manage a hasty nod as he squares his shoulders back, sizing up the drunk and giving him a once-over. Back then, though he'd hit six feet, and was in the process of filling out nicely, his hair were a swathe of well kept black and there wasn't the stubble he normally kept, so it took the salaryman a few more seconds than it would take him in the present day to decide to fuck off.

Unfortunately, Oliver's presence did less to alleviate your fears. In fact, you figured you were between a rock and a hard place, and chose to agree with him since he didn't have the foul smell liquor radiating off him. Perhaps you'd be able to reason with a sober person better.

He instantly let goes of you, and you get a better look at him, in his cheap white polyester suit (that he's still got tucked away in some part of his cupboard and you make fun of) and leopard-print shirt. Young Oliver did not have the well-honed partying panache that older Oliver had, and you were biting back a laugh at his Yakuza X Great Gatsby look. "Thank you," you'd managed to stutter, and he flashes you his trademarked charming smile that you still succumbed to, all those years later.

"You could be, by the way," he'd responded, and you'd looked at him quizzically. The line still keeps him up at night, as he cringes internally at the way his attempt at flirting never even had a chance with you.

"Be with me tonight. If you want," he'd pressed on, unabashedly giving you a once over in the outfit you later had nightmares about. The laugh you'd been holding escaped your lips, comfortably disarmed by his non-invasive, but persistent nature.

"Thank you, no," you replied, and he'd been taken aback then by the phrase you used. Of course, he later learnt that it was the more polite and apparently, correct way of declining an offer.

He'd shrugged in response, internally consoling himself with something along the lines of "missing all the shots he doesn't take." Normally, this would've been the end of his ministrations, but he doesn't miss the unsure way you eye the door, or how you eye the time.

"Let me call you a cab," he offers, and you smile appreciatively. In retrospect, you should not have trusted him, because you'd read up about cab-calling scammers too, but there was something idiotically, inherently trusting that Oliver made you feel, in his awfully put together outfit and voice that didn't quite match his face yet.

Braving the cold outside while waiting for a cab and draping his jacket that stank of overpoweringly inexpensive cologne made you throw him a bone and give him your number, veiling it with an excuse of possessing some means to reach him when you'd return his dry cleaned jacket back to him.

You were sure the jacket would never go back to him. It wasn't practically possible. You chalked up your encounter with him to a moment of good karma for you, and left it at that. You'd get his jacket to the cleaners and ask for his address, never actually going there, of course.

He was the kind of guy who felt perfectly at home in a club. You were a student who wouldn't leave the house if you had a choice. There was no way your paths would cross out of the 14,000,000 people who live in Tokyo.

Three years later, your number is his emergency contact.

You're sure it's his persistence that's kept your relationship alive. His first text didn't come until three days later, sending you some corny pick up line when he was going through a dry spell in flings. You promptly responded with a clear "No LOL", and that became your dynamic.

At first, he'd try his luck with you when he was bored, and strike out every time. Maybe that's what spurred him to keep texting you, and you were sure there was something deeply wrong with you that enabled you to keep texting him back, finding his repetitiveness endearing rather than annoying.

Fast forward a few months, you managed to piece together pictures of each other as you traded parts of your life in between banter.

Unlike your previous conception of him, he wasn't some club veteran who'd spend his days partying away. In fact, in that club, he was just as underage as you were, with his debauched lifestyle not suiting an aspiring professional footballer. Initially, you were sure he'd fail. He took great joy in proving you wrong.

His conception of you, though, was spot on. You were perpetually busy, a trend that's continued to the present, but he seemed mysteriously motivated to carve out a place for himself in your life, even if it wasn't in a romantic capacity. He chalks it up to pity, at first, assuming that your stressed homebody lifestyle needed a person to vent to, to be occasionally flattered and entertained.

Though he was right about needing someone who you could be a distraction, he's now sure it's not pity that's keeping him in your life.

His clarity is stolen from an article in a quantum theory magazine you'd raged on about in your first year of university.

In most occasions, when you'd go off on your theoretical tangents relating to your major, most of it would fly right over his head. That time, though, when you'd called him to help you move in (with "helping" mostly being you yammering away to glory and him hoisting your boxes up and down the stairs without complaint), he remembers what you said vividly, even going so far as to dispute you.

"The laws of physics are not inevitable," you'd snorted derisively, jabbing at the headline. "What a piece of nonsense," you'd added, brandishing the magazine in his face. He'd lazily skimmed through the article, ignoring most jargon-y parts and instead focused on the essence of it.

A domino needs a full turn to get back to the same place. A two of clubs needs only a half turn. And the hour hand on a clock must spin around twice before it tells the same time again.

Inevitability.

Oliver doesn't believe that he can be friends with his exes. Oliver has chased, and slept with (to put it crudely), every woman who's attempted to friendzone him, til he's no longer interested in them. He's, ironically, a dwarf compared to you in the real world, not coming anywhere close to your intellect, occasional neuroticism or humour. You've blossomed beautifully from seventeen into your twenties, no longer needing him to distract you from the stresses of academia. You have a full, stable life, complete with a doctorate and other honorary credentials that he's sure most people in their mid-twenties aren't supposed to have.

Oliver, on the other hand, is crashing and burning his way through life. You like to call him a controlled flame off the pitch, and have regularly tried to diagnose him with something on your late night FaceTimes since he exhibits both hedonism and self-sacrificing behaviour, but more often than not you have to settle for the fact that he's a scientific anomaly and call it plain idiocy.

Inevitability's made your relationship come full circle. From you ranting about college applications and dead-end research work to him, he now crawls back to you with his frustrations about Japanese football, his constantly busy schedule, each and every failed fling and situationship with that same telling grin on his face.

He's now convinced inevitability is what's keeping him in your life. You have no need for him, and he can just book a therapist with the stupid amounts of money he's earning, but Oliver can read your face as plain as day when he's rambling on about Suki or Mara, tinged with longing. He's caught his expression in the mirror far too many times when you slap on under-eye patches on him in your small bathroom to recognise it as lovesickness staring back at him to not understand that the two of you are dancing around an unspoken pact, one where his heart is already spoken for every time he steps foot into the clubs you pick him up drunk from.

It's not like he hasn't tried to speed up the process, but with you it's an immovable object vs. an unstoppable force sort of situation. Every time his lips have almost caught yours, every time you've contemplated taking him up on the offer of sleeping on his bed rather than letting him take the couch, it just feels like the wrong time with the right person.

It's unhealthy, and he knows it. You go on dates with boring, serious men that make you feel much older than you actually are, and he chases after the thrill of youth, found in cramped bathroom stalls, gambling dens and back-alleys.

Despite this, it's baffling to you how much of a contradiction he is. In all other situations, you can only attribute this self-destructing behaviour to people with no clear purpose in life, forced to engage in this lifestyle. What do you say to someone who's captaining a Serie A team?

It's one of those nights again in the offseason, where he'd already shot off a message to you that he's going to sleep over, and you'd already prepared his spot on the couch along with ordering hotpot for his hangover the next morning.

"You're so fucking stupid," you sigh, handing him a icepack for where he'd tripped on your stairs in a slightly tipsy stupor. He only cheeses lazily in response, the small bruise on his cheek lifting, as if to tease you by saying: and yet, you indulge in my stupidity.

He takes his seat on the ouch as you prop up your legs in his lap. His hands ghost over your ankle, calloused and large, but just as warm as the first time they settled on your waist.

"What time's your flight tomorrow?", you ask, pulling out your phone so you can request the academic coordinator to post a message rescheduling your classes so you can drive him.

"Ten thirty. You don't need to, ah, drive," he says, wincing at the way you reach over and press the pack harder into his cheek. You respond by making a sour face, and he recognises the futility of his words: you never need to drive, and yet you do anyways.

"Are you still going to stop in Milan sometime?", he asks, tipping his head back over the edge of the worn sofa. He needs a haircut, you note.

"If I get a decent connection while on the way to Geneva, yeah," you mumble. The question's so infuriating that you've gotten used to it. You've followed him everywhere: Rome, Milan, and, if transfermarkt.co.in has it right, maybe even Spain soon. It's a given by now — if you were on your way to a conference or visiting faculty, you'd make a stop for a week wherever he was, no matter what the time of season. It's the same way he's considering no longer paying the rent for his Tokyo apartment since his toothbrush and bathrobe are perpetually parked in your toilet.

He clicks his tongue in irritation.

"C'mon, don't make it a connection. Just fly in and let me worry about how you get to Switzerland."

"I'm going to CERN, not a holiday," you grouse, and he waves you off.

"Yeah, yeah, whatever. Spend some time in the Sun before the Swiss suck your brain juice for what it's worth," he says dismissively. "The guys have been asking about you," he tacks on, and you roll your eyes.

"Ah yes, a team of professional footballers is interested in my measly string theory research," you intone, and Oliver cracks an eye open at you.

"Hey, don't say that. When I told Sendou you might be nominated for a Nobel on your deathbed he seemed very interested," he speaks, and you make a gagging sort of noise.

"Really? I should go from someone who got a fields medal to Sendou?", you say exasperatedly. Oliver shrugs.

"Hey, at least he'll pay for your meal instead of calculating up to the fourth decimal for how much you should split," he counters. "I've taught him well."

"Oh, so that means he'll ghost me a day later, too?", you laugh, and Oliver grins sheepishly. He's pulled you closer by your calves, you realise, since you can't feel the softness of your souvenir Ubers cushion behind you that he got for you and you keep as a tacky joke.

"Only a fool would ghost you," he says, and you mentally add this to the Wikipedia page of "things-Oliver-Aiku-has-said-sound-romantic but-because-he's-Oliver-are-actually-not"

"I guess I'm living in a noodledom then," you say matter-of-factly, and Oliver adds the word to his list of "things-you-say-that-he-has-no-idea-about-but-religiously-Googles-later-to-sound-smart-in-conversation."

"Ahh, my mother's going to send me one of her "why are you single voicemails again", you groan, flopping flat on your back onto the leather.

He chuckles. "At least you're not getting child support threats every two days."

"That's a choice you make. I'm single involuntarily," you snicker, sitting back up and noticing the way your shoulders bump given the proximity.

"Do you think we'll still be like this?", he asks, setting the icepack onto the table in front of him. "Bitching and moaning our way into our middle age?", he asks, and you make a face. Your answer, though, surprises him.

"God, I hope so. There's no way I'm staying sane if I can't complain to you about all the marriages that are coming up."

"Ha. You're assuming you're not going to drag me there with you as your plus one."

"You wound me. I never assume. I already know that's a fact," you say, dramatically laying a hand on your chest and resting your head against his shoulder. He scoots just a bit closer, and you can smell the vodka on him ever so slightly. Thankfully, he's opted for a less nasally invasive cologne.

"You're saying it's inevitable?", he questions, and you hum, nodding.

"It's just a matter of time, my dear sir," you answer, and you nestle imperceptibly closer to him. As sleep washes over you, Oliver doesn't move an inch, even though he's up for the next two hours, plagued by his own mind.

Oliver knows that on the basis of inevitability, it's just a matter of time when everything falls into place, til it becomes the right time with the right person.

You drop him off to the airport and hug him a little tighter than the last time when you say bye. He picks you up three months later and doesn't miss the way you began playing to the music he recommended. You pretend to be cordial with the Instagram model he goes out to dinner with and gets back home. He pretends to be happy for you when you show him the not-so-friendly sweet messages your coworker's sending you. You don't know how he breaks up with the girl the day after he makes his little road trip by dropping you to Geneva. He doesn't know that you say "I have a boyfriend", when you're asked out on a date by the same colleague.

You don't believe the laws of physics being inevitable, but you also didn't believe that you could know someone who's both selfless and selfish at the same time. Oliver's a contradiction, and you're scared. Time, though, is one of the few physical forces that's on his side, from seventeen to twenty three. So he doesn't mind wiling it away, and neither do you, even if it means twisting the knives in your heart just a little deeper.

You'll come around someday. And he'll be waiting.