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saturatethe-written-whitewa-blog · 7 years ago

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oikawa rarepair week 2017, day 1.

oikawa rarepair week, day 1: height / birthdays / soulmate

pairing: oikawa tooru & kuroo tetsurou

Everyone was once a child, though they do not remember much of a time so pristine, except for a broken line of memories (featuring blinks of things they hope are memories and not settling concrete to fill in abysmal gaps,) and the most embarrassing of stories that are unforgettable, sometimes twisted a little bit from what originally was, the kind that's passed around when you come with faces you've seen before until everybody's too distracted by the frozen display in their minds and the trapped laughter set free.

When Oikawa Tooru was a child, he did not know, did not want to know, what soulmates were (Now, a long enough time later, he knows- maybe a little too much,) far too busy adventuring through the mapped territories of fields as golden as the sunset he still needs to squint to see, skipping past the bobbing headpieces of plants he didn't know the name of until his legs would become itchy and he'd grumble as he scratched them painful. Between then and Oikawa's sixth birthday, Iwaizumi Hajime was added to the newness of Oikawa's ever-awake span of sight through an event too everyday to make its own landmark in the lost city of Oikawa's childhood, an example of dull concrete to add distinctiveness to the landmarks pointed to heavens, that would scratch the soles of Oikawa's bare feet if he ever took a trip and went back stinging with nostalgia.

Nothing particular happened when Oikawa turned six, it was just the earliest birthday party he remembers. The cake was a flavor he decided, on his next birthday no less, that he didn't like, iced with vanilla and eaten with plastic forks because Oikawa's stumpy fingers are yet to become the ferocious setter's fingers that they are now, the friends he had invited, found at their own pockets of the small fraction of Miyagi, he doesn't have now, with the exception of Iwaizumi, who only greeted Oikawa a happy birthday because his mother told him to through a pinched smile and a poke of an elbow enough that Iwaizumi frowns and blushes.

(The parent Oikawas were scared that Tooru would have stabbed a child's eye out, it's ridiculous, they know, and they still breathed with relief two hours after the last of the guests parted with one last wish of wellness for good measure; the last of the parents' tasks were to pick up the plastic utensils on the floor, including the ones that'd been stepped on and snapped with a frightening sound. They put Tooru to bed without so much as a fuss, wiped icing from his mouth with the same shirt that's rubbed against lots of presents wrapped in colors from baby blue to lemony yellow only hours ago.)

Now, if you look below instead of ahead at the outline that appears much larger when you're no farther than fifteen footprints from it, there's some more concrete that goes unnoticed. Weeks have passed, weeks are forgotten. Oikawa learns about soulmates then, in a suddenness that doesn't surprise him; children belong to the same species, tried and tested, though they really do seem strange, entirely different. He was with Iwaizumi, doing something typical of the summertime high, when words start falling onto his wrist with the speed of whipping winds, and they stay there no matter how frantically Oikawa scrubs at his wrist, no matter how many tears he lets darken the ink. Iwaizumi had no idea what to do when Oikawa cried, now, Iwaizumi's got a hold of the tip of an inkling- which is better than nothing, he supposes.

The words are something everyone receives at their own times (and some don't ask for it, similarly to a mid-life crisis, or any sort of crisis- unless you were the flowering kind of strange masochist that liked flavoring days with the feeling of suffocation.) Whether they want it or not is not up to them (but choosing to obey it or covering it up with pretty cherry blossoms or the forlorn look of a deer was a choice they were offered.)

The words are the first thing your soulmate says to you, or so the old wives' tale goes. The connection doesn't come at the swift blow of an instance. It was vague and unexpected with an impact still all that groundbreaking, a cruel touch of the gods that tied strangers together with a thread so fine only their eyes can catch it in the rough world of misguided youths and minds lost to business.

(Iwaizumi gets his before his eighth birthday, in a show not as spectacular as Oikawa's waterworks display. The words on the wrists of Oikawa's parents were a gentle "I'm sorry, were you going to borrow this book?" and "No, no, we can share it- I'm, um, Oikawa..."

Iwaizumi had taken Oikawa back to his parents, a journey of careful steps and gentle telling of Oikawa to stop crying (Oikawa doesn't stop crying, Iwaizumi understands,) as if Oikawa had been bitten by a wild animal, though the scared look that pours over Oikawa's eyes like poison dismays Iwaizumi all the same. Oikawa learns he's awful at looking like he isn't crying, and he's having a hard time keeping up with the sturdy pace Iwaizumi walked in. Iwaizumi only keeps looking ahead, and he still does nineteen years later.

The Iwaizumi of six years recognizes the half-open door of Oikawa's house before Oikawa does. Modest, welcoming everything from early sunlight to a neighbor asking for one of the spare tires they keep in a garage too dark for Oikawa and Iwaizumi to want to play in; what was not welcome, however, were animals from the street: dogs, cats, anything else on four legs and a brain turned so famished that it loses all rational thought. An exterior and interior painted just as how they had first purchased it when they were but young and inexperienced and twinkling from the honeymoon. Breaking and entering, all that, was a caution softly reassured by the iron will of Oikawa's dad, who still remembers a few things from the days when he was a teenager that only sought liberation from academical expectations.

Iwaizumi takes to the inside of the house, door unlocked and warm enough not to protest when its slammed curtly as Iwaizumi exclaims too many things all at once. Oikawa's parents are stirred from the stuffy lull of television and iced water, and they would have responded to Iwaizumi with slurred words if they were so careless as to miss the rare, panicked look that possesses Iwaizumi's usually unshakable countenance.

(Iwaizumi was never scared, even when faced with the moist, curious frogs that wandered after the rains and always made Oikawa cry if he'd ever touch one or if ever one touched him.)

Oikawa's parents swarm the newly-turned six year old as they investigate his free skin for any cuts, grazes, scrapes, blink openly a few times when they discover none. Oikawa's words were nothing more than blurbs, unhelpful; his eyes were still teary, the swell of his cheeks pushing down the drops, and his hands were busy crumpling appall onto the hem of his shirt.

Oikawa's parents made their conclusions quickly- the words on his wrist were bold, washed in tears, hard to miss.

Oikawa tells them about the words on wrist when his speech gains some kind of coherency, most of them he had trouble reading, and his parents only take on pitiful faces and take Tooru by his hands and lead him inside with a promise of an explanation. Oikawa's mother smiles at Iwaizumi and tells him to come inside, too. Iwaizumi is given a cold drink, one he doesn't recognize, but it sets his tastes buds ablaze with the sharpness of tropical fruit; Iwaizumi furrows his brows and wonders whether he likes it or not.

Not beside Iwaizumi, Tooru and his father sat, and the middle-aged man tried the best of his jests until Oikawa smiles in between his sniffles. Oikawa drinks the mysterious drink, too, and he doesn't go 'blegh!' in disgust like Iwaizumi expects him to, instead finishing everything fast enough the ice cubes clink against its comrades in shock. Oikawa asks for seconds, finishes only a quarter of the new glass and his dad laughs and finished it for him.

Meanwhile, Iwaizumi only realizes how hot the outside had been when he can feel the sweat on his skin like clothes he wasn't actually wearing when he braves the mightiest of the what the taller electric fan blows at him. Oikawa's stopped crying, sat between his parents who wonder how to begin their talk, and Oikawa's lips shine because of the drink that fills him enough he pats his stomach ("Like in the TV!" Oikawa pronounced 'TV' in a way that makes his dad crack up again, and his mother hides a snort well behind the back of her hand,) and not because of the tears caught and occupied on his trembling lips earlier.

Oikawa doesn't remember exactly about what his mom explained to him, but it was something about soulmates and love and promise and all the other things Oikawa was only supposed to care about later. Oikawa tries not to think about it too much, but it'll always be there, when he reaches for a bar of soap his parents know but forget that he can't reach, when he peeks through his fingers and four times out of ten Iwaizumi barks at him not to cheat, but Oikawa does it anyway, until Iwaizumi's temper is turned rotten and Oikawa has to make a promise as thoughtlessly as a businessman has to write a check.

He was six years old, for God's sake, and Iwaizumi was, too; they were supposed to remember things like the inedible rock-looking objects they'd put into their mouths regardless or the insects they'd try to give names to, and keep in cups to look at until they learn nothing interesting is going to happen. He was six years old, for God's sake, he used 'badder' instead of 'worse' had gotten corrected in second grade quite loudly by a teacher just after Oikawa had, just as loudly, argued that "No way! Iwa-chan's badder than me at cards!" and it takes him a while, but he does start using the word. They were kids hardwired to want a good time, no matter what nook or cranny they find themselves in.

Oikawa doesn't know what to make of soulmates, for not even his closest of friends know about it, not even the ones that are years older and heads taller than Oikawa and Iwaizumi are, not even the neighborhood girls who talk about foreign things like stickers and braids. Without anything to define it by, the talk about soulmate withers quickly, gets forgotten for most of Oikawa's childhood, gets lost in a sea of things that will never have light shed on it.

The next event Oikawa can remember in his timeline of broken lines and gaps recklessly replaced, sort of like a constellation but without the intricate prettiness, is in a year he can't put a name to, but it's when he first picks up a volleyball, rough and strange in his hands, tilting his heads with the weight of the questions he can't wait to ask Iwaizumi, so unaware.

(Oikawa doesn't know how much of his years are going to be consumed by the sport until he picks up another volleyball a second time that week, and then a third.)

Nineteen years later, Oikawa wishes he could be as careless as he was in his childhood, could wake up at not paralyze his brain cells with worry, could play with Iwaizumi for as long as the sun blazes. Nowadays, he feels like he's made of more parts preservatives and ramen than he is circulated oxygen and capillaries.

Oikawa's thankful for the busy life, because he forgets all the things he doesn't want to think about, like soulmates- especially soulmates. Oikawa knows better than to fuss about unimportant things, like the words that define something of a person's dreams is unimportant (which, to Oikawa, is, or so he likes to convince himself.) Two out of five of his friends (and that's a simplified fraction, because Oikawa has far too many contacts than he knows what to do with besides group projects and contrived smiley faces and besides the people that really mattered were at the top, labelled with witty sarcasm,) have already fled with their soulmates, e.g: Matsukawa and Hanamaki, and the notorious two were even happier turning Oikawa's daily life into a bittersweet species of eternal torment.

(Oikawa realizes then that's he's the kind of fellow that didn't ask for the words to flow on his wrist that one summer afternoon.)

It's not exactly a trouble to wake up with it, though some days he feels stupid when he's got a literal joke on his wrist and the person beside him has something polite and adorable like: "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to!" or "Isn't that a little bit too much coffee?" or "This your seat? Oh, you too, buddy?"; Oikawa's forever favorite is Iwaizumi's, a funny little thing about sardines that he laughs at just thinking about, definitely in a sad attempt to nurse his own feelings back to a sense of stability.

If he could put a name to the feeling, it was something like a cursed black sheep (he's proud that he stills remember that English idiom from once upon a school day in third grade,) among a pictureesque meadow of cloud-like whites that sing baa-baa, meh-meh, or was that a goat?

Oikawa can still remember, clear as ink, when Iwaizumi was old enough to understand how the less happy parts of the world worked, he had laughed long and loud enough Oikawa's face turned a pretty red and he'd spent the rest of the day pulling his sleeves as far as they would go. Iwaizumi, however, thoroughly wore himself out cackling at the oddity on the wrist of an oddity itself; Iwaizumi's face had kept the color of red pepper a little longer, and the breaths he took were more remnants of laughter unreleased than sips of oxygen.

Oikawa's distracted from his reminiscing, blessedly, for the pit of shame was a treacherous one, by the ringtone he'd chosen from his ultimate days in Aoba Johsai, caught surprised by Makki's contact photo: a picture he'd taken a fair summer day, with sunglasses ridden on the top of his head and his beverage spilling gloriously on his shirt for everyone to laugh at.

(Makki had asked Oikawa to take a picture of his OOTD, because Mattsun would always laugh and it would make Makki laugh, the picture losing the essence of its solemn moment. And Iwaizumi's fingers, unlike the rest of his body, were shaky and trembled for no reason at all, like when he'd brought over the iced drinks or when he'd held a camera phone for the first time. A fly had buzzed a language into Makki's ear, startling him and his drink, sloshing out of the cup and onto his shirt. Oikawa took the picture anyways. When Makki, quite flustered, asked him to delete it, Oikawa sneers and sticks his tongue out; Makki's tissue, thin as Iwaizumi's patience with Oikawa, does some sticking of its own: onto his shirt, a cause for more of the group's laughter.)

Oikawa views the new message involuntarily. Any distraction was as valuable as gold to him. He'd books to read and ink to waste and more than enough nighttime to regret it all.

hanatikimook1 sent a photo

hanatikimook1: look at us free and not doing any last minute school work because we know how to do shit on time oikawa t-hoe-ru: ffs oikawa t-hoe-ru: i have better things to do than look at you and mattsun making bad kissy faces oikawa t-hoe-ru: btw oikawa t-hoe-ru: i make better kissy faces (◕ε ◕｡ )

oikawa t-hoe-ru sent a photo

hanatikimook1: hahahahaha in what universe? oikawa t-hoe-ru: this one

Oikawa sets his phone down where he vaguely remembers putting it the last time, ignoring it when it hums another few times. He focuses on the unfinished things in front of him for a record-breaking two minutes without any stretched, exasperated groans. Oikawa had made the mistake of resisting a cup of coffee that makes his fingers feel like he's pulling some beast out of Hell, but it did good to feed him the illusion of wakefulness, without it, he feels as disoriented as a newborn calf and he's surprised his handwriting hasn't crossed each other yet in an underwhelming explosion.

Oikawa's phone makes another noise, and what the hell, he hasn't even continued his work yet, but he picks it up anyway for another bite of the distraction. He sees his reflection in the screen unlit, all tired and heavy with the unfulfilled urge to yawn and all wrapped up in bags (no, not the ones decorating the underside of his eyes,) ready to be thrown away the next morning. Oikawa had another personality in the campus, a whim to be set apart from the zombie-made college students that donned clothes as dark as their moods.

Oikawa blinks, feels more awake at the sudden self-awareness and he turns on his phone again hoping that the feeling is more long-lasting than until he finishes reading Makki's ridiculous text messages.

Oikawa's work, an essay fueled by a total of two hours, on and off, of sighs, self-indulgent breaks and invisible tears sits to collect Oikawa's neglect. Oikawa knows it's a bad thing to leave it for his phone, and the Oikawa Tooru several minutes more regretful in the future is going to feel it settle into him like a disease.

(With all these late nights made early mornings and just as many lectures on proper health from friends, family, Iwaizumi and a starving lack of opportunities to actually put the plan into motion, Oikawa thinks something's bound to happen to one of the organs he's got in him. He would have Googled it if the voice of reason in his head reminded him of the essay he'd covered with purposeful ignorance, so he texts Makki a quick "srsly i have to finish this shit" and he receives a "sure lmao sux to be u" that Oikawa rolls his eyes at.)

(He spots the words on his wrist again, grunts, and it makes him roll his eyes, too.)

Oikawa groans another groan, but it doesn't change his circumstances. He would have liked to spin in his chair if he was not so weak as to get dizzy after the first one, or do something, anything, that felt freeing if he was not shelled up in the darkness. Oikawa despises the essay the further he constructs it with each odd syllable he can think of. The man-made lights are his only companion, because he's sure even Hanamaki and Matsukawa have already tangled themselves in appendages and giggled and poked noses until they fell asleep for this was the ungodliest of hours. Oikawa yawns again, feeling complacent when it takes him more than a few flicks of the touchpad to scroll to the top of the document, where the bold text feel like screams at Oikawa's eyes.

It takes all Oikawa has to skim through what he's made, relying far too heavily on the spellcheck he knew the laptop had. He decides that it's enough, reassures himself that little bit more that nobody really gives a shit anymore, that even the smartest one in class (and Oikawa, resigned to the bitter spot of second place,) probably sat in front of a screen as begrudgingly as he did, probably groaned into the closed windows as much.

Oikawa sighs as he gets up, Alright, he tells himself, with this much cleared away I should treat myself.

And that was how he tried his best to keep the door as quiet as possible as he sneaked out into the protesting night gusts and slow, chilly, anticipating, he makes his way to the convenience store, frequented enough that one of the cashiers that worked a ten hour shift had become fast, good friends with Oikawa. Obviously, he wasn't there when Oikawa enters the convenience store- the cashier was probably somewhere, happily sleeping, and Oikawa was scornfully kept awake by the pressures of the older society.

The cashier working there doesn't greet him, good, because Oikawa doesn't want to greet him either.

The cashier looks like he's seen better nights of sleep, and as Oikawa, probably the only customer-and-meathead stupid enough not to tuck (or be tucked,) into sheets at this hour passes past the cashier that chooses to remain in silence, they both swear a voiceless oath to the night, and all its terrible beauties.

Oikawa gives the man in the refrigerator's glass door his best zombie look (that's his reflection, by the way, for all yous just as without sleep as our dear Oikawa Tooru is,) wicked enough to make blood curdle, turn milk sour, and make babies cry.

The temperature of the refrigerator's insides make him lose the feeling in his fingers, and the cheese slices he began craving out of nowhere are far away enough he has to tiptoe despite the six-feet-and-something he's put between himself and the soap-white tiles of the floor.

The dairy products section of the local outlet of college students' everything-you're-ever going-to-need, or so one of Oikawa's friends liked to call it (a guy that knew how to make just about anybody laugh, and distinctive hair the color of a yellow flower Oikawa can't name for lack of sharpness of his thinking,) was not a fraction of the quaint store that Oikawa visited a lot, only when he was hosting a friend that liked to milk in their coffee, or cheese on their toast. Oikawa's territory was the section with all the kinds of instant ramen, ranging from extra spicy to seafood that smelled exactly like seafood.

This foreign land, marked by a sign with light blues and whites and a beaming cow with a bell around its neck, introduced itself coldly; Oikawa wishes he were examining the racks of instant ramen instead, secure and organized, his lifeblood, practically; wishes he entered the store sometime other than the first hours of post-midnight, like perhaps the embracing warmth of the endings of an afternoon. Here is all pale colors and brand names Oikawa puzzles himself trying to wonder how they'd come to conceptualization (the ramen packets had unusual names, too, but bias was a force just as powerful as the sorts like centripetal works and inertia.)

Oikawa takes his cheese slices and doesn't stay for longer than he has to. The refrigerator resumes its closed position with a last condensed breath.

Kuroo has no more reason being outside than that Kenma had wanted something unhealthy to eat, and Kuroo, out of kindness, and because he'd already been rudely awoken anyway, volunteers to buy it for him.

Kuroo leaves behind his sleeping clothes for something more decent, although there was nobody around to critique him, and he enters the store with a handful more of sleep than our Oikawa Tooru, stricken open-mouthed by a yawn.

Kuroo, by the purest of coincidence or the decisions of a god made ages ago finally falling into rightness, walks past where Oikawa has a hand buried deep in a coldness Kuroo's already shivering from just imagining. He buries his own hands deeper into whatever he can bury them into, coddling the coat he's glad he's put on. He's got earbuds on, a gift from Bokuto when their friendship was still a new, shy thing.

The song flooding his senses into a state that makes him feel that least bit more alive was what kept Kuroo from counting his footsteps and tipping over afterwards.

He passes Oikawa without even a first glance, unimpressed by his backside, and to a superficial eye, the god's structure of a plan would have crumbled into ridicule. But look on some more.

"Stupid hoes is my enemy, stupid hoes is so whack. Stupid hoe shoulda befriended me, then she coulda probably came back."

Oikawa, he. He had no words. Just all the profanities he'd taken under his wing all molten and acidic and clawing to escape from his mouth. His mouth opened and closed, so cross his head would have burst in red color and empty steam if it were a cartoon, and the offender, in a big coat and a carefree gait, continued to walk past.

Those were the exact words on Oikawa's wrist, the same kind that ravaged him, annoyed him, and they seemed to glow in sick joy. All Oikawa has in his left hand is the packet of cheese slices with liquefying frost, and in his right is a fist.

He doesn't know why, but he throws the cheese slices at the passerby, hits him right in the back of overgrown horrors he called hair.

The cheese slices make a pathetic thunk on the tiled floor and are nearly stepped on as the stranger turns around with an offended face.

"What the fuck?" he asks, in a voice so eloquent (charming, even, if Oikawa's mind wasn't on imaginary caffeine and painfully real willpower,) despite the accent of early morning tiredness.

"Don't 'what the fuck' me, you're the one with the hideous taste in music!"

The stranger pauses, or maybe it's a malfunction in time, and his eyes go wide as if Oikawa's just split his head on the display case standing next to them.

"It's you!"

Oikawa flicks his hair. "Oikawa Tooru, at your service."

There was no handshake, no kind greeting. Just silence as the two regarded each other differently. The stranger's eyes were the kind of gold he could get addicted to, injure himself on a jagged stone for.

(No, not stranger, Oikawa corrects himself, but soulmate.)

"Wanna go somewhere? Get to know each other more, develop something stupid and typical and a little bit too far into the wild side?"

"Well, since you asked, Tetsu-chan, take me to the Tokyo tower?"

Oikawa tells Iwaizumi all about the story of how he finally met his soulmate, of course he has to tell Iwaizumi. Oikawa tells Iwaizumi everything. At the end of it, Oikawa was expecting a congratulations, maybe lavished with it and a platter of praise, but all Oikawa receives is a deadpan and a "Why the fuck did you throw a pack of cheese slices at the person you're supposed to spend the rest of your life with?"

(After some very deep thought and reflection, Oikawa comes to the realization that, yeah, why the fuck did he throw a pack of cheese slices at the person he was supposed to spend the rest of his life with?)

#oikawararepairweek2k17 #oikawararepairweek2017 #oikawararepairweek #haikyuu!!#haikyuu

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