Iwaizumi Hajime / Oikawa Tooru.
Rating: General Audiences
Characters: Oikawa Tooru, Iwaizumi Hajime
Tags: First Kiss, Misunderstandings, Miscommunication, Love Confessions, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Dorks in Love, Fluff, Friends to Lovers
Chapters: 1/1 (complete)
Words: 3,057
Summary:
Hajime stares at him. “Let me get this as crystal clear as possible. You thin you don’t – correct me if I’m wrong, seriously – you think you don’t deserve to be kissed?”
“It sounds stupid if you put it like that.”
“I don’t understand,” frowned the child that had been listening to the storyteller all night. “My dad always said that you shouldn’t say things that make people cry, because you’ll make them sad.”
The storyteller smiled. “Yes. Your words shouldn’t be spoken or written with the intention to hurt someone. If the words of a story make the reader cry, it should be because they hurt for the world that you have created, because they sob their soul out for the pain of growth and change that your characters suffer through.
Do not hurt them – let them love together with your creation, and let them laugh and cry and live with it. Let them feel your story.”
Kenma’s eyes are gone. Dark, hollow caves swallow the light where they used to be. His contours are shifting, bones cracking in his body. Kuroo can’t run. His leg is broken where Kenma’s claws have rammed into it, and the pain is so intense that his mouth tastes white and searing and his vision is smoky.
“Three questions,” Kenma sing-songs. His mouth is tiny and red. He’s licked some of Kuroo’s blood from his claws. The gym is empty. Kuroo is against a wall, crying, silent and pathetic because he can’t wrap his mind around this.
“Wh…” Blood is in his mouth. Kuroo chokes, whimpers. “Why?”
Kenma takes a step. “A person has to eat.”
“You’re not a person.”
Kenma smiles, soft, almost fond. “I was, for you, for the years I was weak and grew in this body. But no, I’m not. I’ll count that as a question, so you have one more left.”
The gym is quiet. Nobody knows he’s here. He wants to know many things. Kenma takes a step. His naked toes touch Kuroo’s, trace his sneakers.
He can’t close his eyes, not even when Kenma’s jaw makes a terrible crack, when it unhinges and reveals a maw that’s so red and wet it’s almost pretty.
Kuroo lets his head fall against the wall. The thump is a dull echo in his skull.
“Was Kenma ever in there, or was it only just you?”
The hollow caves of Kenma’s, no, the thing’s eyes seem to grow. Black envisions Kuroo. Something wet touches his skin, and he feels numbness spread throughout his – oh. Poison. He can’t feel anymore, then.
A whisper reaches his ears.
“Help me.”
A slow grin spreads on Kuroo’s lips. “Hey there, kitten.” He rips his eyes open, fingers shooting forward, and before the thing can so much as snarl, Kuroo’s hands go up in flames, shoving down its throat with a burst of sparks.
The thing roars. Black goo spurts from its tongue, spills over Kuroo’s arms, but he just grins, grins, fingers twisting and the tips pressing deep into the thing’s esophagus.
“You know,” Kuroo says, tilting his head as his fire takes the monster apart, its agonizing screams almost drowning out Kuroo’s voice, “that’s the thing with you monsters. First off, you think you know humans, but you don’t. We lie, and some of us are pretty good actors. We also know when someone’s lying, just like you did before about all those years. Bullshit. And second, we really don’t appreciate it when you engulf the gorgeous boys that we’re bonded to into your disgusting bodies, and especially not when it’s on their anniversary. So.” He takes a deep breath, plants both feet on the ground, and his smile vanishes.
“Either you give me back my boyfriend, or I fry you from the inside like a goddamn chicken nugget. Or – oh well. Too late. Guess my magic reached him.”
Kuroo takes a step back and pulls his hands out of the thing’s throat. It’s a trembling lump of black goo now, all the outer shell of Kenma’s imitation melted away. The gym is silent for a few seconds. Then, an angry hum fills the air.
“Too bad. You could have had this quick, mostly pain-free, but you pissed him off.” Kuroo sits down, crosses his legs, waiting with a smile. The thing makes a hurt noise somewhere in its body, and then the entire gym begins to shake.
“’s not really a good idea to mess with a mage and their dragon.”
“What do you mean, you don’t want to celebrate your birthday?”
Hajime shrugs. He’s curled up in the grass, chin on his knees, and Tooru thinks it’s really cool that he doesn’t even flinch when his mom puts salve on his scraped shin. She doesn’t say anything, just looks worried, so Tooru keeps talking. “Well my birthday is next month, and then I get presents and mom makes my favourite food and my friends come over!”
“I can’t celebrate. I have to help my dad,” Hajime says quietly. He turns his head, puts his cheek on his knee. Tooru frowns for a bit. “What do you mean?”
Tooru’s mother starts wrapping a bandage around Hajime’s leg. “Say, Hajime, when did you last eat? You look,” Tooru thinks she’s going to say skinny, because he is, Hajime’s kind of tiny for being five years old just like Hajime, but she says, “very hungry.”
There’s a beat of silence. Hajime keeps still until his leg is all wrapped in white. Then, he stands up. “Sometimes,” he shuffles his feet, looks down. “Dad is sad, I think. Since mom d- went away. Sometimes he doesn’t go to work. Sometimes he doesn’t cook. He cries a lot and stays in bed. I – I don’t know what to…”
Tooru whips around to his mother. “Mom. Mom.”
“It’s okay, honey.” Her smile is gentle when she takes Hajime’s hands, crouches before him. “How about we go to your dad and talk a bit, and maybe we can help? I can bring you some food here and there. And I think I know a person that he could talk to that could help him. What do you say? And then we celebrate your birthday. Okay?”
Hajime looks at her, then at Tooru. He bites his lip. “Is he going to be okay again?”
Tooru hugs him before his mom can say: “I don’t know that. You never know, and sometimes not everything is like it was before. But he can try and we can help him, and you’re already helping him. Let’s go, okay, Hajime?”
—
“Look, dad sent me a snap.”
“You taught him how to use snapchat?”
“He’s doing his best, okay.” Hajime snuggles up against Tooru’s side on the couch, stretching himself out extra-wide and obnoxious. “Here, he’s having a third portion of Akemi’s curry rice.”
Tooru hums, sliding a bit closer so he can bury his nose in Hajime’s hair and still glance at the screen. “They’re having anniversary soon, huh? We should send them a gift or something.”
“Yeah, five years. Shit, gifts, that reminds me, we gotta get going! I don’t know why you always insist on celebrating like I’m the king of something, it’s just a-”
“Your birthday,” Tooru whispers. His arms are tight around Hajime’s waist, refusing to let him escape. Hajime falls back against him with a little not-serious growl. “You’re impossible. Also, your mom asked me again when I’ll get you a ring.”
“Well, your dad asked me that when we were seventeen, relax. It’s not like you could find better than me.”
“Confident much?” Hajime grins and surge in for a kiss, nips at Tooru’s soft bottom lip until he’s breathless, all pliant and sighing Hajime’s name. “Yeah well,” Tooru manages then, swallows heavily. “I just know that I love you more than anyone, so I kinda hope that’s enough. Also, happy birthday, dearest.”
Hajime can’t help but groan. He hears Tooru’s laughter above him when he buries his face in the pillow, slamming his boyfriend in the face with it seconds later, before the situation ends in lover’s tickling quarrel and a panicked search for shoes and coat when the doorbell finally rings.
Before they open up, Tooru kisses him again, and smiles.
“Let’s go. I want to celebrate you.”
A human sat down at night and raised their face to the moon.
“Tell me,” they asked, voice heavy from the dark in it, “is there hope?”
The moon was silent for a long time. It let a cloud pass by, let new stars come and watched old ones dim out. Then, it said:
“Dear human, what are you?”
The human hung their head. “Nothing. I am nothing but alive, not anything.”
And because the moon could not smile, it went full and round and silver instead, and shone down. “That, brave one, is your answer. There is hope, my child, because you are still here.”
“I need to get out.” Tooru says one night. They’re on their backs in Hajime’s garden, a cigarette passing between their fingers. Hajime came over as soon as Tooru’s parents left for some trip. He’s been here ever since.
“Okay,” he says. “Okay.”
Tooru turns his head to him. There are drops of dew in his hair, because it’s summer but the night is above their heads still, sending shivers of cold into the grass and wetness of silver through the garden. Hajime’s mouth tastes like smoke and the too-sweet lemonade Tooru made himself because what’s a summer night without lemonade, Hajime, and who’s going to mind if we put a bit of rum into it? It had tasted awful. They shared it.
“My uncle has a car,” Tooru whispers. His lips are close, sugar-glinting and apart in softness. “We can take it and drive. We can go somewhere. I don’t wanna be here anymore.”
“Okay,” Hajime says. He wraps his fingers around Tooru’s chin, slides the other hand into his neck. “Where do you want to go?”
Tooru makes a tiny noise, deep in his throat, and Hajime loves him, loves him, could spend years just kissing the longing out of the crinkled edge of his gleaming eyes. “I don’t know,” Tooru says against his mouth. “You’re gonna come with me, right? I wanna go, but not without you. Come with me. Will you?”
“You’re stupid,” Hajime tells the sweaty skin below Tooru’s lower lip, and kisses his chin, his jaw, tracing warm breath up to his temple, “if you think you have to even ask.” There’s not much time before two different colleges will take their wrists and pull them apart.
“Hajime.” Tooru grabs his shirt, their foreheads knocking together, and Hajime rolls on top of him just in time for Tooru to catch his mouth in a gasp of kiss.
It’ll have to be enough.
Nobody really remembers how, but some mythology professor ended up bringing the topic to a conference concerning the matter of Atlantis.
Fairy rings. The professor had been laughed at, in the beginning at least, until he’d began speaking. A circular formation of mushrooms, substance of legends and myths all over the world. The circle and the sphere held important meaning in magic as well as science, and some scientist couldn’t help but wonder, again and again, how a simple arrangement of plants could produce such stories…
Maybe we’re missing something, humanity told itself. Maybe our science hasn’t come far enough yet to detect what we call magic, to measure the form of energy it exudes.
Ancient cities that have vanished appear in stories and tales from almost any culture. Any story was inspired by something, a grain of truth at its core.
How come they couldn’t find Atlantis if there were so many myths about it, humanity wondered. What could possibly hide an entire city with thousands of people from the glance of the world across centuries? How could a whole city change place?
And so they thought, consulted, imagined – and found. A fairy ring, a circular formation below the ocean to thrum with energy we cannot yet measure. A pulse of something close to electricity, to teleportation, that is powerful enough to send buildings and people unharmed from one place to another. A formation in a round shape, grown naturally.
A portal on the bottom of the ocean, just like the so-called fairy rings on land –
Maybe the children of Atlantis love to play in the city’s beautiful coral reefs that surround the outer borders, where an unnamed energy vibrates in thousands of colours as the city shivers between worlds, dimensions, space and time.
Moami 