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kurodai weekend, day 1.

 kurodai weekend, day 1: spirits (shinigami AU | yokai and exorcist AU)

pairing: kuroo tetsurou & sawamura daichi

preview: Ripples track behind him like pixies waiting for the right time to cast a curse. Daichi does not feel like he is being followed, but rather he's following something. With the misplaced encouragement of a ripple and a waning drop of sweat, Daichi pushes on beneath the indecisive patterns of the sky. Alternatively: Two dead men, a laundered-clothes sky, and their own two kinds of loneliness.

my late entry for the very first day of kurodai weekend (which is all found under the cut) only one-fourth of day 2′s fic is finished and day 3′s fic is completely untouched rip

The space was as small as the horizons were wide, tinged smoky grey like the warnings of a storm banished to nothing more threatening than the fleeting attention of a sideward glance. It is lonely, quiet, devoid of any beast and other eyesores of the sort; and yet it is unbearable.

This place is not born through beacons of celestial fires nor a god's raging tide washing filth anew. This place was not made to be part of the elastic web of legends and myths housewives like to pick at and draw from and see what they can share next to their fellow housewives. This place is made from the broken bones of forgotten history and the defects of humanity. It is washed in grey and black and colors darker, everything that only the odd few that observe the revolving world in the same grimness, can learn to admire.

There is nothing at the sky to point at, to be awed by. It is bleak and without a sun nor moon to illuminate; it looks as if it is always about to rain; a concise doom to those that dislike getting wet, who would probably spend their time here with their hands tented over their low-ducked heads. It is fitting. This is not a place the sun would shine in.

The only light is the one placed for by the most delirious heads. Squint until the dip of your lashes touch your face, and maybe the horizon appears as something more than the walls of gurgling shadows. This place was not made for the graceful being of beauty, but humans are stubborn- and try they will.

There is black water that devours your feet until the ankles, but leaves everything else just to let you discover for yourself how much you're going to detest this place. There is no reflection in it, nor is there a reflection in the vases of the sky. Some have screamed, but that is only going to be gobbled by the horizon before it goes back to its gurgling; some have kicked at the water, as if it isn't going to return to you colder, and in lazy tendrils.

The water is going to leave black marks when your legs slide out of them. The world is just as disgusted by you; the world is disgusted by all that is living, for living is something the world is not, and will not ever be. It exists to desist.

The black water stretches everywhere, from as far as where you squint to see the fabled "light" to as deeply you gaze the sky hoping that the patchwork of grey are clouds where they are different colors, hoping that the ripples of the water have tricked your eyes with their unearthly darkness. The black water and the wall of faraway dismay seem to join at a point, but nobody cares to venture out to that point (the mystery is one that will remain until the end of time.)

That is the mistake of most, for they think far too much of mother Earth and whatever glories they have that this world is starving for. Being fervent is admirable; continue to be fervent, in a place like this, is foolish.

There is nothing to guide you.

The black water will not part to make a drier path, and the skies are too busy changing their moods to worry about a lost heartbeat. The wall of yawning dark has no direction but to where their envy guides them: to the living, but there will always be something that keeps it behind. They will always fray at the top like the hairs of the rapidly aging, grounded but yearning to reach to the peak of the sky and surround everything.

(Some humans are like that, too.)

Surprised? The trials of life do not end when life does. The victims of knives have all the time of their funeral masses to collect their loved ones' tears on the creases of their palms and pick the one to bring with them when they decide where to go next.

The man, young and with a head two snips of a barely-there fringe from the perfect painting of model youth, was another visitor both welcomed and un-welcomed by a muted splash and the feeling of his feet sinking into something that isn't his lover's bed: a girl, pale like rice; sweet as corn, he'd met on wrong-stop-destinations just like this one.

He had been buried in clothes he does not remember ever once wearing, not caring either when the black water makes it heavier and darker. He pops a button undone, how he's always been, how he's always been scolded and corrected by the hands of his aged mother and her disagreeing, side-to-side shaking head.

He has enough grace left to remember his name: Sawamura Daichi, but not how his parents have chosen his name from a list extending longer than the breaths of the galaxy itself. He remembers, too, the reason of his death: the lethal mixture of alcohol and broken speed limits, and Daichi was wide, innocent eyes and the car horn doing all the screeching for him. It ended how it was supposed to: private breaths and jaywalkers' alarm and a failing heartbeat; until the leaking gasoline falls more often between the two.

(He has watched them mourn. Even the obscure figures of his ex-teammates in a volleyball team that ended in blazing glory and newbies that carried affixed reputations and hope. The thump of a volleyball is familiar, almost nostalgic sometimes, but the sound he parts with are the sobs of his mother and father on their knees asking for something better. It hurts him, of course, but their tears do nothing more than water the sod or the striped handkerchief where they are dabbed under dark shades; if he tried to console them now, the best he could do is make them shiver and frightened. It is not of much worth, and his heart is frozen in some hospital waiting to be given to a stranger with, unfairly, better probabilities at life than he had ever seen.)

He notices his feet do not sink further, only that it becomes colder, and his skin prickles where it is far from the water and nearer to the sky without oxygen. Oxygen has a taste and it is also tasteless, Daichi finds himself missing with a breath he's not even sure he's taking or not.

Daichi experiments with a step. Lift your right foot up; good; and bring it back down, expect the sensation of the water, shudder if you want to; just like you remember (as if somebody forgets to walk.) Daichi continues his slow-and-steady cycle of lifting his feet and waiting until the water, looking like its stolen the color of his own clothes, finish falling back down to its home from under the uneven surface of his shoe, and then bringing it back down and causing another disturbance.

He wades through it with as much grace as he would imagine a thirty ton herbivorous dinosaur would when the earth floods and the swift, bulky raptors were swept in a tide of their own misfortunes. Ripples track behind him like pixies waiting for the right time to cast a curse. Daichi does not feel like he is being followed, but rather he's following something.

With the misplaced encouragement of a ripple and a waning drop of sweat, Daichi pushes on beneath the indecisive patterns of the sky.

The wall of black seems much more excitable, making movement when Daichi does, like dogs wagging their tails and perking their ears when their owner swings a pot of food back and forth.

There seems to be something close enough he's sure that the things he's seeing are as real as the water underneath is blacker than the twilight he adores. Whatever is not opaque liquid is pale sky that is sown into itself enough times it looks too different from the blue he takes pictures of. This sky is the color of the forlorn moon, on the nights the light is dim and his eyes are dimmer and he can't help but sympathize for the nomadic creature that softly stands all alone.

Daichi had decided some time earlier, when a ripple bounces back to startle him at the lower end of his right calf, that he did not like this place. This place, an impenetrable fortress of all the things mankind has rejected: ugliness, plainness and things they did not understand.

The sky howls softly, telling the story of its own tragedies, and Daichi does not listen. He listens to the ripples, and how each step is just as heavy as the last. Around him, the weirdly-twisted structure of this world seems drawn to the man and also repelled by him. Daichi keeps his head low, his aspirations lower.

Daichi never dares to reach and feel where he thinks his toes are, to see just how the water feels so firm underneath him.

It is when he sees white, whiter than the worn sky; whiter than any moon he has ever pitied; whiter than any teeth he's ever smiled back to, that he allows hope to run him through.

The structure ahead of him is nothing close to an architectural wonder. Daichi feels like he's looking at a piece of history in all it's scrapped flesh. It looks like the skull of an ancient beast that only a god would have the almighty courage to domesticate. It is large, spindly where horn-like points break off and spiral upwards- Daichi looks at those cautiously. There are holes big enough for burrowing animals to squeak into as they raise a family. There are no eyes, nothing reminding of decay, but it bores into Daichi's well-kept soul nonetheless.

Daichi approaches it like he approaches like he approaches a household appliance beginning to grumble and growl like a golden-ringed bull. Slowly; slowly; look behind you even if nothing is there; look above you even if the sky is only going to lament; look ahead of you even if the walls only reshape themselves according to their evil.

His first step is a short success, but it is sweet and delightful. He defeats the gravity of this place and he smiles. It is a small smile, seen by everyone but only truly understood by a few. The ground feels slick where the water weeps as it slides down the rounded edges of the white surface. It leaves traces like the watercolor of mistakes, and Daichi steps on it without remorse. He climbs the structure, wary without a surface to put his hands upon, and chilly where his feet aren't accommodated by water anymore.

Wherever it leads him, whether it be to a panoramic view of his sentence of doom or to a staircase of treasures and guarded minions, Daichi thinks, is better than wandering for literal, poetical eternities like the wistful-faced damned.

Waiting for him on the top, is a person. Dark, like the scene, well-blended like abstract mirrors. He has a disinterested look and hair that he hides behind just as skilfully. His arms are tucked to himself, legs folded and looking like a daydream how his fingers wave and pick at the sky like garlands of orchids, or perhaps weaving another pattern to interlock in the web.

His eyes are golden, and they are so much brighter when they slant quickly to face Daichi, still half-rising from a bump in the white surface. It felt like marble, looked like poverty. His hand does not stop pushing patterns into the sky, and the person's shoulder moves in awkward motions.

"Well. Hello," the person says.

"Hello," Daichi responds, unsure. "Do you know where I am? Where we are?"

The person snorts, eyes thinning and not amused. This is the face of a man that wears doom. His other hand moves and curls, spinning something out of the nothingness in the air.

"I don't know either," the person says, looking sort of apologetic. Daichi can't really tell anymore. "It's been so fuckin' boring, I can't even remember my name, how old I am. Normal human things."

Normal human things, like he wasn’t one himself.

The person has sort of an accent, foreign but mixed in with the roots that Daichi's known all his life. The person waves his hand; the water ripples; the sky stills like it's about to roar.

"I'll start with mine then," because all his life Daichi has only known good manners and loosely-screwed friends, "I'm Sawamura Daichi."

Daichi guesses that he isn't supposed to bring out his hand for a handshake, the look the person gives it seems otherwise. It makes Daichi look at his hand, too, and realize how powdery it feels from where the water left behind.

"I really don't know my own name, that’s embarrassing," the person's smile is sad, and Daichi pities him. This world is far too plain for a person like him, colorful but yet raised to act colorless. He takes a step forward, the person's eyes stretch a bit too wide.

"You, you kind of look like somebody that I used to know," Daichi says thoughtfully. Dark hair, golden eyes draped low, ready to kill and flourish. Mouth caught diagonal and lies told out of fondness. Hands trapped in warmth and interests confided in close friends; Daichi was honored to have been one of them.

"His name was," Daichi pauses, tying a knot somewhere around the last two syllables of the first name: always has been too long, shortened to ridiculous, endearing things instead.

"It was Kuroo Tetsurou."

There is silence, and Daichi remembers some things.

"I like it," Kuroo announces, "tell me, was he handsome?"

Daichi sort of sparks into laughter which dies after the first two rounds before he grimaces, unsure of what to tell the wide-eyed Kuroo in front of him. Daichi shrugs, head tilted to the left, and Kuroo laughs. Kuroo doesn't really understand, but he laughs.

(Kuroo has been alone for as long as he can forget, and Daichi keeps him elated. They point at things, not really knowing what they're pointing at, and talk in matter-of-factly voices, as if they were the dictators of the universe and they had the stars singing anthems under their belts.)

[saturatethe-written-whitewa-blog]

HEY HEY HEYYYY!

Get HYPE! Applications are a GO!!!! The application period will be from August 12, 2017 and will close September 1, 2017!

WRITER APPLICATION

ARTIST APPLICATION

[saturatethe-written-whitewa-blog]

sherlock fandom appreciation day!

here is a link to the original post! a little late, yes :P

i’d gotten introduced to sherlock bbc long before i actually began watching it, for time constraint reasons. i love the show, for how clever and intelligent it paints sherlock to be and how sherlock isn’t the do-good heroic protagonist i expected him to be, but rather this flawed, brainy bastard (”I’m a high-functioning sociopath.”) the change in things is lovely and the show was so god damn interesting and i just love it and sherlock but don’t we all 

enough talking, have around 1000 words of fanfic, hope you enjoy :)

pairing: sherlock holmes & irene adler

alternate universe wherein sherlock isn't the brainy bastard that he is, and irene enjoys nighttime mellows more than bringing people to their knees. (sherlock works at a meek diner, and irene's is a face he's sure to remember.)

The night was cold, as far as the woman in black was concerned (Which was not very far, for she welcomed the polyester embrace of her coat and she looked at the sidewalk as if carcasses danced on broken times, turned-up nose and eyes batted all taken-aback like.)

Perhaps there really were twirling carcasses, slack-jawed and empty-minded and the woman in black had simply passed them by, breathing through her painted lips and trying to burrow, unsuccessfully, into her coat.

Her coat was dark. The night was darker, clouds pulled together in a sky the woman in black dared not to peer up at, afraid of the first rain to shoot at one of her eyes, leaving her groaning and cursing and looking one-and-three-fourths mad as she tapped her heels in the darkness.

She had been released from her work early, maybe because the traffic had whimpered and waned to the darkening sky, seeing clouds tumble over each other outside a clear glass window as early as two hours after her lunch, spent mostly laughing and suspending forks and other things in the air (With her fellow male employees, she liked to fill in the gaps, playfully, and imagine an intimacy between them that was more than ‘Good morning’ and ‘What's that you've got there?’ Ultimately, they're still fantasies, and she plans to keep them where they're safeguarded in her head.)

She worked at an office, computers and websites and prodding the age of technology into further evolution (Often, she felt isolated when she walks past and sees children laughing at something on a screen she can’t see. She was once a child. She spent her days, through spring, summer, autumn, fall, watching the sun change the colors of the sky. Like magic,) tucked away in a building she often looked up at when she clambers out of the cab, squinted from harsh sunlight more often. The area she worked in was plaid white: white walls, white glass, white lights, white lies; water dispensers and windows that only make her yearn for the outside where the potted plants weren’t fake and the leaves felt more than plastic and ornamental distress.

(If people could not even remember to breathe sometimes, how would she have expected them to remember to water a plant with arches for leaves? Of course they were fake, all eight of them.)

Her workplace was the natural habitat of suits and dress shirts and the damned crucible where things go wrong. Fluorescent shined, guided no matter where the sun positioned itself: whether it reflected from the right side of the screen or behind her, which felt exploitative sometimes. The smell of caffeine is ever-present, like the ghost of yesterday’s past, like it’s what people wear to work instead (Tired smiles are her second favorite thing, because her own mixes and matches with a pinch of empathy and a quart of sympathy and her heads nods something a little like: It'll be alright, buddy.) Her next favorite things are the sounds of keys pressed into themselves, the lost feeling of her fingers moving all over own, talkative printers spitting paper, and the sound of somebody -there’s always going to be somebody- trying to talk above it all.

The woman in black leads herself to a familiar diner before she even knows it. She smiles, tired but still a weak luster of genuineness; she feels herself relax. She enters it without much more effort. The wind sweeps low, picks up the weak: leaves, plastic wrappers smeared with ketchup, forgotten dreams, lost dreams. The wind seems a little bit supernatural, the woman in black was not there to see it, already tied into the warmth of the diner that tickles even the innermost tensions of her bones.

The woman’s name is Irene. Her surname was not of importance, after all, her name-tag had no space for it.

(She looks into her pocket; her dreams are still there, not forgotten, not lost, although they are injured and not the same, they are still there. Irene cherishes them; she pats them gingerly, chooses a seat among dozens.)

A waitress gives her a menu not long after she sits. A semi-regular, she was, but she was not the type to claim a table and a chair for herself and glower at whoever passes by, like it was her own pile of forbidden treasure and everyone else was a pirate with a sinister smile and a missing limb.

Irene doesn’t look at it very long before she decides what she wants to order. Face-down, the menu returns to the table that faintly reeked of whatever soap they’d used to scrub it clean. She crosses her embellished nails over it, five strawberry-ice-cream-colored nails over five others (Ironically, she stuck out her tongue whenever the flavor was offered to her as a child, always asking for the popular chocolate chip instead.)

Briefly, Irene owes a thought to the waitress that gives her a menu before dashing off to do God-knows-what. She remembers hair the color of a duckling, young and unknowing of everything, wiggly-tailed and boisterous-quack, tied into a ponytail that began on her nape; her eyes were bright, frantic, looking at tables everywhere that weren’t Irene’s. Irene did not mind. The young lady deposits a single menu and spins around, fluttering her apron and murmuring unintelligible murmurs. Irene recognizes the gloss of a name-tag, something that began with ‘E’ (Elizabeth? Ella? Ethel?), something she definitely wasn't going to select if somebody appears at her window and asks what she would change her name to if given the luxury. (Irene goes into much deeper thought about that instead, fond of Veronica, or anything that left the tongue spicy and exotic and wanting.)

Irene is interrupted by a gentle clear of the throat; she blinks, nonplussed, climbing her gaze up until she meets the serious, professional look of a man her age. Powdered, embarrassed blush decorates her cheeks, all up to the rise of her cheekbones, the ones she's always been told were to die for. He was much more different than new Elizabeth (Whatever her name was,) who looked unsettled about a great deal of things in her life in the few moments she saw her.

His hair is a mess of curls atop his head, fluffed by a baker, looking intentional, kept clean from odd contemporaries. His lips were caught on soundless words, chapped and pink, making Irene look at her nails. She reads the name tag, a simple yet bemusing: ‘Sherlock’, without surname and without anything more than boring font and a capital ‘S’.

“What would you like to order?”

Irene smiles, charming. It's the kind that knocks men off of their heels. Sherlock looks at her the same way a dog watches its favorite toy held, dangled in front of it, a hop, skip, and a jump out of reach; all helpless and what-do-I-do?

Irene’s smile grows, one of her strawberry-ice-cream nails roam close to her mouth, little and shy against the hot red that looked perfect, untouched on her pert lips.

[saturatethe-written-whitewa-blog]

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?)

[saturatethe-written-whitewa-blog]

oikawa week 2017, day 7.

oikawa week 2017, day 7: pride/humility

pairing: oikawa tooru & iwaizumi hajime

both prompts were used for the very last day of oikawa week (aah this was a blast!) because i'm decidedly indecisive :P also this was just an excuse for me to write about demon king oikawa because i've always wanted to

❝Welcome to the end of eras, Ice has melted back to life, Done my time and served my sentence, Dress me up and watch me die.❞ —Emperor's New Clothes, Panic! At the Disco.

Oikawa Tooru has cultivated his patience, as endless as the somber dark that never fails to not catch his eye. He waits only for the things that entertain him, like a face that dare challenges him, or a succubus that leave their wings behind them and their advantages by a pillar somewhere, for it was Oikawa who could reduce them to their knees with a simple 'pop' of his lips.

After all, existing- existing, not living, for a time long enough the advances of humankind have no term for the times he's curled and flavored, allowed him practice that he could sit and lose himself in his own head for days at a time until an air that brings only crispy heat reminds him he's got no better things to do. Humans were particular with the things they involve themselves in, and finely-aged things of wither and nonexistence were shoved away rather harshly, like the time Oikawa came to existence from nothing but soot and the first dirt; he had driven the earth to its first falling, its first division, seeded the first concepts of anger and spite so deeply into the creation of God that no caress of His holy hand could dare uproot something that has grown into viciousness.

Oikawa decides he's proud of the things he's ruined.

He has seen the first bloodshed that began and ended from creatures that aren't the haughty gods that make an empire out of the sky and beat the heavenly stars so cruelly the earth is only left remnants of its true brilliance. Now, Oikawa is in a place where he can neither see the stars or the products of human imperfections, but he can imagine that the stars blink, still as weakly as he had first seen them when he tries mortal living. He can imagine that there is still blood that paints in poetic lines and vivid horrors, though he never yearns for the day he sees the invading light of the surface ever again.

What Oikawa can see are faces. Faces of people that would have been the crème de la crème if the seed of spite had really been a vulnerable seed left nothing but a shell and soft, wet dirt. He would have harvested them, pulled out another universe of purposes, of possibilities from where the sleeve of his robes fall under his wrist. Their ages change, their clothes change, but the way they turn their lips at the slightest tip of a rock is all the same: a brash scowl- the heaviest guilt left out only for the criminals that do not follow the golden rule, 'Do not do unto others as you would not have them do unto you.'

Oikawa thinks he would have liked these people, if he had met them alive. Alas, they are in Oikawa's own special place in the Underworld, where mercy is brought to extinction and the dead run rampant and even the most unrecognizable: headless, heartless, mindless, have the common sense to thieve what they don't have themselves. A crueler duplication of themselves, without the penetrable skin, the multicolored vision and poetic mouths never put to better use but to lock and tighten and utter falseness under pressures of zeniths.

Oikawa Tooru counts his days, they are plenty, and often, he does not know what to do with them. The times he remembers actually enjoying himself are sparse enough he could keep them awkward and unfolded and still fit them into the pockets at his sides.

Oikawa Tooru does not count the faces that come to pass, for he forgets them rather easily; the faces that do matter smile as infrequently as Oikawa does, and he only gets to remember them in the mythical event that Oikawa can see moonlight between the foul decay and the haze cast upon haze by the sin.

Oikawa does not recall the last time a human has ever come to see him in person, for the ones who did have gone insane from denial or far too wrongly attached to the materials left so curtly behind to ever possibly let go. They are far too silent entering his kingdom to ever match his gaze in a battle of condescending judgment and Oikawa lassos a thought that maybe he's far too alike the monarchs up above that he would have been assumed as one if not for the strange way he dresses, the even stranger tongue he speaks in, and the animalistic brown of horns that curl forth the same direction as the ends of his hair.

The humans never shriek, never falter, never stutter at the sight of Oikawa's majesty, nor at the sound of his robes fluttering somewhere behind him, less dignified and less noticed, as if the smoke of death grounded them to the same level as a bashful seedling. There truly is nothing that measures up to death everyone is granted; Oikawa agrees, but does not sympathize.

This one is a man with a face as if he's seen all the worst the world can birth, as expressionless as the dead that blend so well Oikawa only spots them if they twitch a limb or curse their eternities. He has his hands behind his back, Oikawa holds his head high; one of the leaders of death, unkillable. Any imagination with blood gushing like heaven was incorrect, as impossible as a moon tinted blue. The man looks like he doesn't know whether to bow his head or take a knee, Oikawa's next breath is one that exudes amusement.

Oikawa stands prouder, taller, and all the grimness of the Underworld gather behind him in patterns that resemble embroidery; Oikawa liked a show, something fitting for him. The man recognizes he's the lesser in the windowless throne room.

The man doesn't speak even when Oikawa urges him to with a change of expression that reverses when he realizes he isn't even looking at him, only at the floor Oikawa doesn't have to imagine to know that the grey wobble that peers back at you reminds you of where you are; the only beauty in the Underworld was the kind only the truly sinister could admire, the kind of sinister Oikawa kept as friends or pets.

Oikawa picks himself back up with a breath the man doesn't hear. He's made himself known, and the man's demeanor: hiding behind a shell he doesn't realize isn't there gives Oikawa one more reason to fill his empty grin with smugness.

"You seem rather put-together, more intact," Oikawa says, and his voice echoes in the emptiness of the chamber, all plain pillars that glorify nothing but the heights they can grasp at their highest and an unrefined floor that reflects nothing but the colorlessness that Oikawa's hours feel like; "do you know your purpose?"

Oikawa sweeps the ends of his robe behind him as he turns around, looking as if he'd just fluttered. He takes his footsteps to get to his throne, that echo too, feeling more unusual now that he isn't alone. The very throne looked like petrified plants and sharp points Oikawa likes to poke and imagine what pain would feel like, stone and yet so ironically fragile, that all of a hellhound's reckless charge could drive the often-spoke-about throne apart and scattered for Oikawa to suddenly feel more disinterested about. The Underworld was a melting pot of all the things the gods decided they didn't like, Oikawa called it home, never in his eternity felt any sticky fondness for it, but he stares at the rock formations outside his palace and realize he'd rather stare at this, the groaning dead, the officials torpid whether the hellblazes trumpet or slumber, rather than evergreens and pinkish skies.

"Yes," the man- Oikawa's checked enough times, it's a man and not a banshee that's lived many nights tearing out hair in its lament- standing far away enough that if Oikawa wanted to intimidate him now, he'd have to maintain his stare for four seconds, four seconds too plenty.

Oikawa rests his chin on his palm. The man was unafraid of him, even when the passing event of his curly smile peeks a glimpse of his tongue, with something unreadable branded on it. Oikawa himself doesn't know what it says. Convulated? Probably. Derogatory? Definitely. He was unwilling to thrash his body about and dirty his robes just to read it, his tongue could only stretch so far, enough to arouse a she-demon and disgust Kuroo Tetsurou with an unscripted flick.

"Name it," Oikawa demands. Oikawa hopes his eyes remain the brown of tamarinds, that they do not flare nor color in the excitement he believed he'd forgotten in the evolving ages.

"I'd like to make a deal with you, arrange something, Demon King, if you may allow me to address you that way," the man says, dipping his head humbly, voice low enough that it does not echo in the vacancy of the room.

"Yes, yes," Oikawa murmurs to himself, "I would like for you to continue addressing me as such. Tell me your name, and how exactly you've managed to sneak right past the three unsurpassed noses of my Cerberus."

"My name is Iwaizumi Hajime," he says with a flat tone and a flat line drawn across his lips, "and if there was a Cerberus I was supposed to meet, then I am certain I have not encountered it."

The man does not lie, does not appear that he has ever told a lie in his life unless there was a blade to his throat and a promise death to his bones. A hellhound bellows in the distance, neither of them turn to the noise, but the man flinches at the hideous sound. Oikawa's chosen to snicker at him.

Oikawa's mouth twitches at the right end of it, and Iwaizumi notices, winces fearfully, as if he'd been bitten.

"I really do need to reevaluate the usefulness of that lazy hound," Oikawa continues to say to himself, before adding: "perhaps that was why that sly Kuroo seemed so eager to gift me his pet."

"Anyway," Oikawa amends, voice booming, Hajime startling himself on a tiny crack on the floor. "Put forth your demands, Iwaizumi, and I shall mine."

Iwaizumi seems to recognize that the kindness of the Demon King is something supposed to be well-spent. It shows in the way his eyes open a fragment wider, like the words clamber through his throat and stop in the middle of it for a second.

"I would like to serve you, for the remainder of eternity, even, o Demon King." And Iwaizumi says no more, bowing his head once again, as if honored to be receiving the judging, contemplative glance Oikawa rests on the back of his hair. (Iwaizumi truly is honored, for any other member of the dead would have been sent away with a burst of flame and a clap of Oikawa's hands. A singular demonstration of the bite force of a starving hellhound, if Oikawa was impatient and the dead were rude and stubborn.)

"I will consider your offer, Iwaizumi," Oikawa says without much thought, because the years are growing boring and yawning to himself was not how he would have liked to choose to spend the rest of eternity doing. "If," he adds, boldly, "sincerely, you will decide, at this very moment, to solemnly pledge yourself to servicing me- to risk your life, lay it down, sacrifice it, all of this done willingly, for the sake of my well-being. Do so, and become my valiant knight."

And so, without much thought either, Iwaizumi does.

(Perhaps this fairytale should end in the mentions of a happily ever after, although that would birth a great irony for the fact remains that their eternities are embedded deep in the Underworld. Though, Iwaizumi does well to make merry the slow moving of their days, and Oikawa could not have dreamed of a more fitting companion. Gently, carefully, gradually, the Underworld becomes more bearable, even if only to the pompous king and his meek knight, who forever bows his head like the humble creature he often denies to be- which, too, is done out of a modesty that Oikawa sometimes thinks earns not a spot in the Underworld, and by the side of the Demon King himself, no less.)

[saturatethe-written-whitewa-blog]

oikawa week 2017, day 6.

oikawa week 2017, day 6: envy/kindness

pairing: oikawa tooru & iwaizumi hajime

❝What if, What if we're hard to find, What if, What if we lost our minds, What if, We let them fall behind, and they're never found.❞

—Youth, Troye Sivan.

"Aren't you scared?" Oikawa has always asked him.

"After you do this for a while, you've really no reason to be," Iwaizumi replies, as if he's not a delicate mistake away from being between the jaws of a manticore snorting away flies.

They're like dogs, Iwaizumi had explained the first time and if Oikawa tries to remember it now he can only find himself fragments and phrases because there was one lying right next to Iwaizumi with eyes of amber. ("Dogs that could bite your head off if they so wanted," Oikawa reminded Iwaizumi. Iwaizumi replied with a clever: "Regular dogs could do the same, too, you know, it's just that we evolved all of the violence out of them and filled it with obedience instead." and Oikawa's got no reply to that besides a sideways movement of his nose and a proud 'hmph'.)

The second time Iwaizumi tries to explain to Oikawa, he tries to leave the manticore to tilt its head at the dirt collected between its heavy paws somewhere far enough Oikawa can't obviously stare at it in horror as if he was the one in attacking range. Oikawa still refuses to go anywhere flowering the creature's large pawprints that make both of them look at their own hands in a sort of disappointment and a sort of respect for the creatures turned lazy when they weren't living up to their reputations of toothy ferocity. (Fear, on Oikawa's part, that Iwaizumi has to make him forget about.)

Often, it's remembered with Iwaizumi sighing and sitting under trees with their shirts lied across their laps like frail sinners.

More often, their conversations falter when Oikawa looks far too long at something behind Iwaizumi's shoulder and Iwaizumi had once told him, 'I just saw it eating, it's not going to come for you immediately, wait two- maybe three days,' and Iwaizumi only learns the silent foreboding in his words when he's left lonely on that dreadful third day.

Now, Iwaizumi tells Oikawa it's sleeping, for this summer was a hot one and Iwaizumi would have taken off his gloves and fallen to the side of his bed with a grace he didn't care about.

At the very least, Oikawa makes Iwaizumi realize that he turns his back to the creatures far too often. He glances at them a lot more, and they never meet his eye; when they do, it's with this lazy, drowsy look that Oikawa bore at the peaks of afternoons when he wasn't being overfed with fear.

Oikawa learns to tolerate them, resting his shoulders more easy. Finally, he's walking right beside Iwaizumi again, and their elbows touch whenever they move their limbs and it isn't to walk forward. Oikawa becomes noisier, talking when he wasn't walking and even when he was.

Iwaizumi only realizes how much he's beginning to slack when he hears the scrape of the dull red scorpion pincer against even duller stone. A manticore's tail was heavy, they couldn't wag it like a pet, or swing it like a herbivore with offspring or an underbelly to protect; for whatever it was worth, as ugly as the tail looked being dragged behind the rugged elegance of the lion's body, it gave a ferocious snap that was second to none but the mighty roar of a manticore that sent the valiance of men off to those who could only be stupider.

Iwaizumi lives the next few days a bit more careful with the footsteps he leaves on the dirt. Oikawa is the sprite that whispers merriment into his ear and removes the creases on Iwaizumi's forehead with his magical touch and his magical laughter that can touch only Iwaizumi's heart ("It sounds as ugly as a muddy hog looks.") but he keeps Oikawa around anyway. He only has his doubts when the manticore keep looking at him like they want something.

There are only a few manticore that escape from the darkest tangles of the forest to laze where Iwaizumi can watch them, and the man is not as passionate nor sentimental enough to tell the creatures apart from the fraying of hair behind their ears or to name them after flowers and gemstones.

(Oikawa joked about naming one after him once upon an afternoon, and Iwaizumi promises himself to reserve it for a manticore he'll discover to be just like Oikawa, with a head held high and a nose that seemed only to be there to snort condescend at others' faces. He hasn't told Oikawa, nor has he found the lucky manticore no matter how much he laughs to himself about it.)

The manticore are large, with front limbs thicker than Iwaizumi's thigh and always hang their heads low so their shoulders poke from underneath the skin. Iwaizumi has never seen any young manticore- just big ones, and even bigger ones. He's always wanted to pet them, feel the short fur underneath his hand as he looks into their eyes like he's made an immediate connection; he wonders what fur feels like. Maybe it's like his own hair, hard like its got a mind of his own, leaving one side of Iwaizumi's mouth tipping downwards as the mirror reflects the strange face he's making as he pats his hair; maybe it's like Oikawa's hair, that felt like leaves if they were more silken than plant, curled like the hand of a blushing darling as she tries to charm someone with her bashfulness.

Iwaizumi likes looking at them, he could for hours at a time, and when Oikawa's too occupied to join him, he grunts back when they do (and he sure does flinch when they snap their heads at him.)

A manticore yawns from where its crossed its paws in front of it like it was watching over its own little town with its own little fearful worshipers. It lied nearby a bush, panting with its tongue just barely out of its mouth, all sagging black lips and teeth Iwaizumi befuddles himself trying to imagine how they all fit when locked together.

Iwaizumi always find them lying down a lot (If he was a lumbering animal with nothing better to do, he'd definitely lie down quite a lot, too, ) and when they walk they lag with that burden of a tail dragged behind them. A burial supported by none other than the grieving family itself- the manticore had that look as they let the pincer collect dirt at the tip and leave scratches in the dirt that the monsoon takes great care to demolish.

After the creature yawns it snaps its teeth quickly at what Iwaizumi imagined to be a fly, mane jolting from the sudden movement. He allows a second to hope the creatures manages to snag the pest somewhere in the teeth Iwaizumi never counted, for unfinished revenge is always sour. It makes Iwaizumi remember a conversation he had with Oikawa back when Oikawa was too afraid to look at anything but chipped rocks and Iwaizumi's face trying to reassure him to calmness.

"Aren't they going to kill you? Iwaizumi they could actually kill you!" Iwaizumi doesn't remember the last time Oikawa's called him by his last name, bleached too adapted to the nickname that tickles him grouchy, and it probably only worried Oikawa more when Iwaizumi's face blanked for all of two blinks and a despairing wail from Oikawa.

"Oikawa, you're just panicking-"

"-and all for very good reason!" he replies quickly, rebuilding his pride with shaky hands and a foundation of a poorly-executed facial expression.

"I just have to trust them not to kill me," Iwaizumi says, and Oikawa looks at him as if he's lost his mind.

"People have trusted other people with more dangerous things," Iwaizumi continues, leaving Oikawa thoughtful and contemplative long enough that Iwaizumi gets to see the manticore yawn another time before it lays its head between the valley of its paws.

Another time Oikawa is absent and the afternoon is quieter than what Iwaizumi's been used to, he remembers more of their conversations, a mess of a map he's drawn in his head full of the ones he remembers and others just phrases too nonsensical he can't connect their ends and he leaves them alone like islands hard and abundantly black rock, nameless and valueless.

"They can sense your fear, y'know," Iwaizumi tells Oikawa without looking at him. Oikawa sputters a laugh, hearty enough that he has a hand over where he guesses his stomach is.

"Iwa-chan, that's ridiculous."

"Your own father knows when you're even the slightest of uncomfortable, Oikawa," Iwaizumi points, "I mean, yeah animals aren't as smart as we are but have a little more faith in them. They're not completely brainless."

Oikawa shuts up. It's another victory for Iwaizumi, one that he takes with the fingers he has knotted together.

When Iwaizumi's finished with smiling at Oikawa's rare defeat, he waits another hour, enough time for the sunlight to paint rings of where the greenest plants get the most sunlight and the bent ones continue to wilt where nobody ever spares a glance at them. The manticore are absent too, and Iwaizumi spends quite a while wondering why he's stayed.

Iwaizumi doesn't think he's done anything besides sitting with his elbows on his knees and his hands clasped together between his legs, retorting to Oikawa if necessary and chuckling at him when he wanted to. Still, the creature begins dashing towards Iwaizumi with a speed he doesn't know is possible, with all of its limbs stretched as far and as synchronized as they could appear in the seconds Iwaizumi had before the fear drenched him like a disease; the scorpion tail was wrecking glory, swinging wildly and its mouth was open, without a roar but with all the fear Iwaizumi needed to stumble back as horribly as he could.

Iwaizumi couldn't feel the dirt underneath him, but he could feel the determination as the creature dashes closer, closer, closer and Iwaizumi doesn't know what the hell he's supposed to do. He can hear Oikawa shouting at the speed music was made in. Lithe, swift, the manticore moves closer, close enough Iwaizumi begins imagining just how gruesomely he could die, and he lives his life in the brief flashes before his eyes (Old men told him these tales and Iwaizumi chose not to heed them because of the drinks they had in their hands and the golden rings they had on the other.)

Then, the manticore stops. Doesn't even breathe, and Iwaizumi doesn't either.

He doesn't hear anything but the drum of his heartbeat and the fire of blood that sets itself under the constrict of Iwaizumi's skin and he utters a prayer that at least, Oikawa's somewhere safe. Probably crying, sniveling like a brat, but okay. Iwaizumi feels a little more peaceful after the thought, thanks the gods for saving Oikawa and for the brief time he's had.

The manticore is close enough he could reach a dirty paw and snag his pant leg and be done with him and in the long seconds they stare, Iwaizumi curses himself for not doing anything.

Then, the manticore walks away.

It takes a leaf into its mouth and faces its giant tail to Iwaizumi and picks it apart quickly. That could have been him, Iwaizumi realizes with a breathless whisper and unresponsive limbs.

Nearby, a yellow flower quivers, maybe from what it's seen, maybe from the wind that feels colder on Iwaizumi's skin than it should have.

When Iwaizumi finds Oikawa again, the other man is still in tears. Another day, another circumstance, Iwaizumi would have guffawed and made fun of him until Oikawa was too crossed to keep crying. Iwaizumi settles for a hand on Oikawa's shoulder; pathetic, he knows.

"Oikawa, uh-"

"Go to Hell, Iwaizumi!" Oikawa shouts, and Iwaizumi's forcibly repelled back a step, "I- I can't believe you! Go to Hell and don't come back until you've taken a page from Satan!"

"But wouldn't that-"

"Just shut up!" And Iwaizumi does.

It takes apologies, of course, and Oikawa hits Iwaizumi in the chest enough times and Iwaizumi knows he deserves it. The spot is sore when he rubs it afterward. Oikawa gets a cold two days later, red-nosed and miserable and still mostly upset and he tells Iwaizumi that he wants him to catch an even worse cold.

(Iwaizumi sort of shakes his head; yeah, he deserved that, too.)

spoiler: iwaizumi doesn’t catch oikawa’s cold.

[saturatethe-written-whitewa-blog]

oikawa week 2017, day 5.

oikawa week 2017, day 5: wrath/patience

pairing: oikawa tooru & bokuto koutarou

❝So won't you smile for me, And I'll take your picture, Make it last a lifetime, Replay it in my eyes.❞ —Smile, The Vamps.

Once upon a time, in an existence that isn't yours, beloved reader, a universe was birthed from where it was tucked underneath great, old feathers of time. A universe supplied with a thing that fabled young children yearn for (maybe, it's crossed your mind, too,) : magic, the skill to control it, and all the endeavors in between.

Take a seat, beloved reader, if I've gotten your interest. Take a seat, if you've the time for a story; a story of two boys in the years of their youth. One with golden eyes and a heart just as righteous and pure, one with the eyes of only the sweetest chocolate.

It was summertime, with all its joyful, painted colors and all the selections and whims that define you as a person. The sky was cloudless, the sun blaring at those who dared to peer at its majesty. The children were set free to skip stones with ones who had the time, who had symmetric smiles to spare. Tooru could hear nothing behind him when he sat at pointed grass blades but he can imagine the laughter, because he's so used to it he doesn't know what to do without it except to look for a word, a funny narrative to start a conversation before he thinks Koutarou is going to fall asleep looking at the earthly tones between his soft calves.

Koutarou hasn't smiled for a long time. That's the day Tooru counts (the days Tooru gets to spend with him,) and all the days in between.

"Hey, Tooru," Koutarou says, softly enough that Tooru has to lean in closer, awkwardly, "I saw a couple of kids on the way here and they were doing some really cool magic. You know magic, Tooru?"

Tooru sticks his lower lip out when he thinks. A habit. "A little," Tooru admits, "my dad showed me, but it's not 'really cool'." But it's amazing enough that Koutarou's eyebrows rise up and a sound leaves him, something like an excited chirp. It's the closest thing to a smile, and Tooru receives it with his own humble grin.

It's hot, yet Tooru can taste humidity in the breaths he takes. In the limited shade of the tree they claimed for themselves, it's only so long before the shade dances somewhere else and with his exposed knees folded into his chest, Tooru tries to guess what Koutarou's going to say next.

"Hey, Tooru, could you teach it to me?" Koutarou's eyes stretch wide, eager and determined and so, so difficult to say 'no' to.

"Sure," is his reply, and Koutarou cheers with his arms raised at his sides, how he's always been when he's lost in excitement.

"My dad taught me how to make a rainbow appear," Tooru says, fresh with the memory, "and he says to, um, manipulate the light, yeah. 'Cause rainbows are like something made out of light- he was talking really fancy-smart I didn't really understand him anymore at that point."

"Anyway," Tooru recovers quickly, getting to his feet easily. Koutarou takes a few seconds longer to follow, "my dad said that the most important part about magic is to concentrate really hard and think about making a rainbow. Dad went fancy-smart about that part too but I guess it's your magic and the light and then it just happens."

"D'you get me?" Tooru asks, a bashful hand going behind his head. Koutarou was still giving him the same starry-eyed expression, like he was an emperor, but Tooru was still too young to know how to act around it.

"I think so?" the twang of question doesn't comfort Tooru, but when Koutarou looked hopeful, Tooru felt hopeful, too. "Dang, I wanna try it out now!"

Koutarou looks ahead but doesn't do anything. "Um, so do I have do something with my hands?"

"No, no. Just focus really hard." And Koutarou does. Nothing happens, except the hum of a fly Tooru swats away with a sour face and a gust that carries away Koutarou's steel determination.

Koutarou flops back on the grass and groans his frustrations, "Tooru, how do you make it work?"

Tooru sits back down, feels the prickle of grass on his butt, and explains it to Koutarou again.

When Koutarou finally does it, it's four days after, after they sneak up to Koutarou's room on their tiptoes before Koutarou's mom can pull Tooru away to chat. Koutarou's room was all unused backpacks and ambitious posters of people Tooru knew, too. They're both swinging their legs to nothing, sitting on the ends of Koutarou's bed; Tooru takes seconds to blink away the harsh sunlight while Koutarou is squinting like a protagonist in an action movie.

They're awfully quiet, anticipating, and Tooru startles himself when Koutarou's mother raps on the closed door to ask if they're still there. Koutarou's the one who answers, voice uneven, and his mom leaves with a contented noise at the back of her mouth.

The rainbow Koutarou made was no larger than their smooth palms, blinking, only five colors out of seven, living a dull four seconds before it fizzes out- appropriate for the first milestone. It's only after it disappears does Koutarou act; shouts and disbelieving sputters and "Tooru, did you see that?!"s. Tooru certainly had, and even the faintest of the hues were living enough that Tooru felt like he was seeing beauty for the first time.

They yell, as if they were at the top of the world, and I suppose to Koutarou, they really were. They bounce up and down, much like a nursery rhyme drafted in another universe they hadn't the time to care more about.

Koutarou looks at his own hands as if he'd captured the squirmy stripes in them. Finally, finally, Koutarou's smiling again, and his grin is radiant enough it makes up for the all the days Tooru's counted and all the days he hadn't. Koutarou nearly trips over his disorganized sheets as he scoots off of his bed, and it makes Tooru burst into unexpected laughter; Koutarou blushes, but he starts laughing, too, and he never does shut up about his first rainbow for a while, even after the summertime quiets for the arrival of another season, another pair of clothes, another meal.

(Koutarou's mom had come up to their door a second time, demanded what the ruckus was about, that "I could hear you boys from the kitchen!" but with a disguised fondness. The two of them quiet long enough that Koutarou's mom figures she isn't going to get an answer and she walks back to the kitchen. They giggle, all carefree and mischievous, after she leaves, basking in their five-color-secret the way tightly-knit children did.)

People do not often receive gifts of bliss, for they flitter past right under noses poisoned by nonliteral morphine, even remarkably less often received without an undercurrent of strife that may come before or after. To Koutarou and Tooru, simple children, the gift of Koutarou's rainbow was made the sweet belle of their summer; they had laughed then as if they'd never laughed before.

Now, in a time that is your own, beloved reader, rainbows are more than just droplets and light and a spectrum that some innocents believe to be the realest magic; more than just a pretty sign of better times after the howling chaos of a sky-seizing storm. Perhaps rainbows are the work of Bokuto Koutarou, grown old and gifted, beaming with great joy at the view of Oikawa Tooru- whom he owes his grateful thanks- designing a mighty rainbow over their heads with a lack of control Koutarou's secretly flustered about.

Rainbows are Koutarou's and Tooru's to share, for in their seven brilliant colors do they contain a meaning that only the two may ever understand. Maybe they decide, with linked laughter, to share the rainbow for others to cherish, to absorb and let their souls blaze with color.

Maybe it's why you may catch a rainbow, so distinct in a single-colored sky, even when water doesn't fall before it.

Maybe it's why you hear stories of double rainbows, sentences woven so they sound fantastical, because some days, Tooru points his fingers to the sky and makes his own rainbow so close to Koutarou's.

These are only the thoughts of a simple writer that delights at simple things; these words of mine have no merit, no element of any truth to it. I can only hope that I've charmed you, beloved reader, with my bizarre story.

Why, in this world of ours, mundane without magic, where materials of many colors and many admirers exist in its place, like artists who inspire with their creative spilling or their unheard voices alike, like sunsets and sunrises, like our special rainbow held in dearness. We need only to think, to imagine of things farther than what our hands can reach, and I can only pray that magic might feel that little bit closer to realness.

We need only to believe. Like Oikawa Tooru had in his friend, like Bokuto Koutarou had in himself.

[saturatethe-written-whitewa-blog]

oikawa week 2017, day 4.

oikawa week 2017, day 4: sloth/diligence

pairing: oikawa tooru & iwaizumi hajime

❝He's so bossy, He makes me dance, Tryna sit in the back of his whip, And just cancel my plans, Sweet like candy, But he's such a man.❞ —Moonlight, Ariana Grande.

A knock at the door is enough to lead Tooru away from a daydream without any images; they exchange the obliged information: name, purpose and Tooru's verbal affirmation is lazy and sounding like he's been drained of all vigor. The prince of the blue castle grew rather torpid when he wasn't in the company of others and as much as he'd like to nod and be done with it, in his sealed, lonely room, he'd only look as if he's just seen a fly fall soundlessly to its demise.

The door opens as far as the oiled hinges can bring themselves to, moving a little back onto the man passing through them like some kind of whiplash. Tooru would have flinched, told the person at the doors to handle them with a little more care had Tooru not expected the unnecessary loudness.

The man had knocked the door fiercely, enough that Tooru already had an inkling of who it was even before he sings his questions. He was one of the bodyguards of Oikawa Tooru, picked by Oikawa Tooru ("It's an honor!" Tooru had told him, and he didn't believe it,) and a fighter, possessing the low-sweeping eyes of one. He practiced his craft seven days out of seven, long enough he no longer needed to roll up the sleeves of his tunic to catch the sight of a younger girl red-faced and ready to swoon; long enough Tooru would look down at his own biceps, maybe flex them if he was feeling audacious, and shrink a little at his own pathetic biceps while Iwaizumi Hajime's own upper arms reminded Tooru quite frighteningly about a pod of peas ripe enough to burst.

"It's already well into three o'clock, you imbecile, you were supposed to meet me fifteen minutes ago and you've been trained well enough that you know never to be tardy," Hajime barks at him.

"Ah, it must have slipped my mind!"

"Right." Hajime raises an accusing brow at him, "Listen, Oikawa, if for some reason your whim to suddenly learn how to ride a griffin doesn't sound as appealing to you anymore then tell me. I'll have the griffin returned back to Semi and tell him you've changed your mind, he'll understand."

"I still want to," Tooru says, adds a few vague gestures he expects Hajime to be able to interpret, "imagine how awe-inspiring it would be for the great Oikawa Tooru to wave at the adoring masses at the back of a proud griffon." Tooru sighs dreamily, his shoulders shaking from a delight Hajime doesn't quite understand.

"Get a dragon instead, then. I've heard they're quite popular among little children nowadays," Hajime suggests flippantly.

"Dragons are too wild and scary, Iwa-chan! I don't want to make any babies cry."

"I'm certain you can accomplish that even without a dragon."

"Mean, Iwa-chan!"

"Iwa-chan, all I'm saying is, what if something happens and I fall off and die?"

"I would get down on my knees and yell 'Hallelujah'," Hajime raises his voice at the word, leaving Tooru startled and wrongfully offended. Hajime's yell echoes somewhere around them, sure to turn the head of a bashful servant.

"Iwa-chan, I'm being serious," Tooru presses. From where they're walking, in between pillars of shadow and three o'clock afternoon light, Tooru turns to face Hajime with a mask so serious it merits a little bit of thoughtful silence from the other man.

"Oikawa, are you scared?" Hajime finally asks, bringing Oikawa to speechlessness because it's not the loving, caring words he'd expected to fall out of Hajime's lips and because he can't conceive a laughed lie quickly enough.

They pass through a pillar's shadow turned diagonal from the sun's position, taking their sweet time, and Oikawa turns up to the intricate pathways of joined wood laid across the ceiling for some form of guidance. Hajime, however, widens his eyes, realizing.

"You're scared to fly a griffon," Hajime reiterates, for posterity, or maybe because it sounds so much more hilarious when said out loud. Tooru doesn't look down from the ceiling, tries to whistle but fails. "That's what this is about."

Hajime's shoulders begin to shake in anticipation as a rare smiles plays on his lips. Oikawa's laughter was shrill, like what old men imagine banshees to sound like, often condescending and when it was genuine nobody influential was ever around to hear it, while Hajime's laughter was a strange entity, loud and unexpected, like a thunderstorm and it shakes you to the very roots of the vessels of your blood- at least, is what Tooru thinks about it.

When Hajime does laugh, it's short and forgiving but enough that Tooru frowns sulkily even after Hajime wipes his mouth and pulls of the laughter from his face while he was at it.

"Be quiet, Iwa-chan," Tooru grumbles, walking in a faster pace that takes Hajime a few footsteps and no apologies to catch up to.

"You are literally the noisiest, most irritating man I have ever had- ever will have, the displeasure to work for, do not tell me to be quiet," Hajime fires back, too quickly, like he's been waiting for the right turn of a conversation to tell Tooru this.

"I'll show you, then, Iwa-chan, I'll become the most impressive griffin rider ever and the masses are going to love me even more and you're going to want to suck up to me but you'll have wasted your chance!" Tooru cackles to himself, and again, Hajime doesn't quite understand the odd human he's decided to stick to for most of his staying years in the blue castle.

Tooru skips ahead, a determination that, too, is a mystery to Hajime, sticking out strangely in the glorious sunlight for all of two beats of his foot against stone. Hajime finds himself perplexed, breathing a little louder, as he follows the young, immature prince Oikawa Tooru to wherever his foolishness leads him to.

Iwaizumi Hajime was a guard who practiced his craft seven days out of seven, and Tooru quizzed him with his idiosyncrasies both day and night but he was a dear, irreplaceable friend-

-yet, that doesn't make Hajime stop cackling, not at all, upon hearing Tooru's shriek-and-stumble when the griffon snaps its jaws at the prince's direction.

("Iwa-chan, I almost died!" But Tooru gets no pity whatsoever, just another round of laughter and a click in the back of the beast's throat that makes Tooru want to throw a branch at it.)

("It was meant to be playful, you dunce; it wants to play with you."

"Well, it's an obvious 'no'! Tell it to piss off!"

"Do I look like I can fucking communicate with it?"

Tooru wants to sneer a challenging 'maybe,' at Hajime's face but one look at his arms is enough to silence the unchangeable prince; one prickly remark from Tooru and he might just be thrown at the griffin instead.)

[saturatethe-written-whitewa-blog]

oikawa week 2017, day 3.

oikawa week 2017, day 3: greed/charity

pairing: oikawa tooru & kageyama tobio

a prequel to this fic.

❝'Cause I'm sick of losing soulmates, so where do we begin, I can finally see, you're as fucked up as me, So how do we win?❞ —Sick Of Losing Soulmates, dodie.

"You're. . .going?"

"I thought Iwaizumi already told you? I did, too," Oikawa says absentmindedly. There were things weighing on his palms, things weighing on his mind and he only had time for one-and-a-half.

"I visited the campus with my dad two weeks ago and the program they have for the dragon riders is," Oikawa selected his words carefully, like how a detainee selected his death in heavy platters, "different, unique- they know. The riders there are interesting, too, they're not afraid to laugh at their failures."

Oikawa wishes he could say the same for himself, for the younger boy who was beginning to look more and more like an old pane of glass made pretty with the new prints of a cat, one Oikawa had stepped on halfway through an adventure lit by moonlight and undiscovered desires.

"Oikawa-san-"

"Don't think I'll change my mind," maybe it's too roughly-edged but the only time Oikawa has to regret is when he's lost his thought and left to imagine what rotting would feel like. "They're still going to be talking about me even after I've transferred, I bet."

"Will you be staying even after you've completed all the programs they have here?" Oikawa asks, deciding it would be kind enough to look him in the eyes and learn what breakage looks like when you don't hear any sickening cracks. "The equipment here is very limited, if you're going to become more serious about this, then it'd be in your best interest to transfer after you've impressed everyone."

"It's too early to decide that. . .but, thank you for the advice," Oikawa remembers thinking something like that, too, when he used to look up at the riders older, taller with names and tongues he could recognize two conversations away.

He's never been this undecided, Oikawa thinks, always far too eager with a face that didn't look it. Oikawa's introduction had been muttered that day, hand extended out of custom and not friendliness, while his was bursting like a dam built on sticks and false hope, as if two minutes were not enough to tell the stories he wanted to be remembered.

"I've really got so many things to do still," Oikawa says after a silence long enough he's had the luxury to decide that was he uncomfortable. He looks the other boy in the eye again and the first thing he sees are his shoulders; stiff, raised high like the climax of a coronation. Oikawa's seen him so many times, from afar, trying to keep pace by his side, from under the stretched muscles of a young dragon's wing membrane, until they're slowly tugged down to their most relaxed.

Oikawa doesn't like their idle afternoons, nor does he dislike them. He doesn't know if he'll remember it when he's no longer in his everyday company, doesn't want to think about it, really. Now, the day falls closer to evening, and in Oikawa's room- a true tangle of finished things and unfinished things, some sort of intervention decides to add in one more.

His eyes widen. His eyes, a shade of blue Oikawa begins to want after Iwaizumi tells him he hates the color brown because an Oikawa Tooru-shaped sample greets him everyday. He sputters, as if he's just remembered to do something. Oikawa wonders if it's genuine, or if he's become skilled at spinning his emotions to a fabric that shines different colors in different lights.

"Ah, of course, Oikawa-san," he bows, maybe respectfully, and Oikawa wonders the necessity of such formalities, "goodnight, Oikawa-san, and best of luck to you."

"Goodnight, Tobio-chan." Oikawa supposes formalities are there, like scalding ointment, to save something from further damage.

Things are always more beautiful when hugged by light, celestial or a poor replication by humans that believe far too deeply what their eyes feed them, but when Kageyama turns and walks with an amble that yearns to be a run he looks more like an alien; uncut edges, head absorbing the worn floor for a reason that isn't praying with quaking, coldness among beings that reach wholesomely to the sky to try and catch the last tickles of warmth before the long night.

Oikawa feels like he's disappointed him, he probably has.

Oikawa opens the door and the creak is a lonely sound, and he is a lonely human. Kageyama's left nothing but Oikawa's chest burning as if he's still talking, still deciding which words are going to hurt him and which ones cover the wounds. The sunlight's already taking his place, rolling somewhere else, dodging the darkness that tries to capture it.

Oikawa talks to the strange shadows on the walls that move when he does, talks to them about the things he's wondered about, the things he wonders about. They make for peculiar company.

[saturatethe-written-whitewa-blog]

oikawa week 2017, day 2.

oikawa week 2017, day 2: gluttony/temperance

pairing: oikawa tooru & kuroo tetsurou

a self-indulgent fic about dragon riding, kuroo and “the strain of his burly, tanned forearms,” dragons, hungry dragons and really just an excuse to write about dragons.

❝Won't you please, Slow it down? I'm tryna talk to you, darlin', Tryna walk with you, darlin'.❞ —Heatstroke, Calvin Harris.

"Come on, girl, let's try not to mess up too badly this time, yeah?" Kuroo doesn't expect words, for they're fragile and the wind abducts them right from his ears. The creature nods, keeps its eyes ahead to where poles formed lines, with a gap wide enough for a dragon to zigzag through if they were trained well enough. There's nothing more to be said. Kuroo tips his head forward, allows the wind to wrong him like a tide of strangers.

The time was late enough that the younger riders have left to run their hands through their hair, bathe, and nurse their scrapes with red fingertips. Above is a direction Kuroo fears to look yet recklessly aims for, thinking he might lose himself in the harsh whistles of resistance and in questions he's kept since his childhood.

This is the last attempt, Kuroo told himself and his dragon, although determination was a fine fire, hardier than the lamps that blink as they arise at the same times, startling any sleepy-eyed dragons that stretch their heads high enough. He can no longer impress the audience with the strain of his burly, tanned forearms, a gift of rich afternoons, when his mistakes leave the stink of forest and long-lived sweat on his clothes and the sour taste of dissatisfaction when he puts his hands behind his head and sighs into a pillow that's collected enough of his frustrations it could balloon and tap a ceiling too dull to hope to replicate the stars in even its best display years.

Nobody told Kuroo it was impossible, to maneuver through six poles when the dragon's already begun to accelerate, a word Kuroo loathes being told in a place that wasn't on the back of his dragon, but older men, who share tales that aren't their own, have told him riders have left their endeavors with more than just broken dignities.

Kuroo's okay with scalding water, with Kenma's scalding words told as impassively as a question of how well his day had gone. Kuroo Tetsurou was not discouraged easily, and he quite liked things that whisked danger into their craft. Kenma would only question Kuroo when they were simply friends that chatted when it was permitted, when their closeness was an idea Kuroo chuckled at until he found himself more and more occupied with the elusive kid; now, Kenma only looks at Kuroo's most recent bruise with a shake of his head and a long blink, as if he would forget the sight of purple that Kuroo likes pretending isn't there, isn't painful.

Kuroo breathes the smell of the earth, mingled with the smell of the forest that's been shooed away for the area far away enough that a dragon rolling through dirt only startles a raccoon with braided whiskers and something in between its dirty paws.

He rubs a spot behind the dragon's front legs, a tender spot more muscle than tough scale, and she closes her eyes a little, satisfied. Her tail swings a little higher behind her. Kuroo's only heard her purr once, when he walked her back to her stable and another rider, with cropped hair and a tongue piercing Kuroo only discovers when the other guy hollers a greeting at what he could only assume to be a close friend; the guy's dragon was male, a rarity, colored the yellow of sand that pooled warmth. The two dragons had walked close enough that their tails knocked against each other when they swayed, and the next time Kuroo turns to make sure she isn't plucking sparrows out of the sky, he finds his dragon purring, blinking more rapidly than he's sure she's capable of. Kuroo was mortified, had to tug a little harder to pry her away from the male dragon, probably blushing when he sent an apologetic laugh to its rider; he'd never caught his name.

Kuroo laughs at the memory, and his dragon looks at him without turning her head. Kuroo wonders if she'll ever purr again. "Let's go?" Kuroo asks her.

She spreads her wings in a quick motion, and in the moment he's allowed, he wonders what it feels to bear a pair of wings, but she takes off going fast enough the wind stings Kuroo's eyes and he curses, heard by nobody.

She nears the poles, branded through each ring of age with every failure Kuroo's sensed through the knobs of his spine and the jut of his cheekbone, scaring him a little. She moves even faster, moving to the side of the pole as she approaches it. Through the rush of wind against his teeth and his hair, more troublesome than usual ("Why don't you do something about your hair?", "No matter what I do, I'm going to look retarded!", "Whatever you say, Kuro.") Kuroo really does appreciate the art behind flying.

Dragon riding felt like volleyball to Kuroo in more ways than one, when the appreciation for the jump of a heartbeat was hit or miss: either, the moment passes as if you've closed your eyes through the whole thing and you're only left with a cheap imagination of the thrill, or time fixates on something it wants you to notice, and you notice it, feeling a little otherworldly after.

Her sharp trill is something that startles Kuroo because he isn't bracing the rough blows of flat, sun-baked earth yet. She looks angry, hellbent on success, an inspirational look if worn on any other human face, baring the most vicious of her teeth as if she would ram into the pole and never let go until she's torn and twisted it from the clasps of the maiden earth. She would have been fiery, passionate, a Scorpio, like Kuroo, if she were a woman, but maybe Kuroo liked her better a dragon that headbutted all of his back when he wasn't paying attention.

She crosses through the first pole perfectly, the pole that's blessed with most of their successes, the first trial. She crosses through the second pole perfectly, too, and the third; Kuroo's beginning to wonder if their dumb luck is going to come with the ugliest bruise of them all, one that Kenma might laugh at instead of tutting. Kuroo grips the reins, and she pulls against them.

The end of her tail knocks against the fourth pole, and he can feel the tremors of it even when she's already beginning to bank to cross the fifth one. Kuroo leans forward, wishes for the best, asks for a miracle from a god with a jeweled ear to lend.

The fifth one impacts her hind leg and her tail, and Kuroo pulls on the reins hard enough she has to pull her head back as well. He commands her to stop, his voice sounding a bit too pinched from worrying. She huffs a loud noise, looks back at the two unconquered poles with spite that felt all too eerily human the way they reflected on the thin slits of her pupils.

Her wingbeats reverberate like horror, and Kuroo finally heeds the thundering of his heart. She lands two movements later, leaving Kuroo a little dizzy when he hops off of her, he almost stumbles over his own feet. Her hind leg, that rung the fifth pole, was stretched behind her as she shook the curling talons until the presumed ache goes away. When she steps towards Kuroo, he doesn't see a limp, pouring relief into the breaths of oxygen that rattles him like rain in the monsoons.

"Good job," he tells her, reaching to a spot to the side of her chin. Kuroo remembers learning about the parts of a dragon that felt satisfying to rub, equivalent to the butterfly kisses described only in the most intimate of partings. He'd learned about it from older dragon riders, girls unafraid to track their thighs with mud as they worked through rainy days, hair pulled back in suffocating ponytails and dressed in short shorts; from older men that always held their hands behind their backs, talked to Kuroo like he was about to do wrong. It's hard to think of a time he was afraid of her, and she was of him, when now, he stands close enough she could use all her methods to run his blood on the dirt and devour him for a sating supper.

"We'll get it soon," he offers. She grunts like a stubborn friend, like one of Kuroo's stubborn friends that he's sure he has (maybe he was the stubborn friend?) "You hungry?"

Her eyes widen with delight and it makes Kuroo chuckle. He places his hands on her jaw, an example of the most intimate of touches communicated primarily by humankind, pulling off her bridle as she bows her head and closes her eyes. It grows darker around them, providing only the circles of reaching light from lamps hung on trees, built upon naked earth, yet her scales, the color of swamp water, still shine as if the morning light played childhood games on them.

Kuroo tucks the saddle, the reins and the bridle under his armpit and he walks ahead without ever turning back, knowing she isn't going to fly away to roar mournfully at the moon. They leave the lamps in loneliness, the stirring insects to chase each other until their deaths, the supernatural to make an appearance, maybe frighten a lost rookie for Kuroo to eavesdrop on the next day as he laughs into his lunch.

They talk a walk to the feeding troughs and Kuroo stops at the invisible line where the smell of butchered meat is strong enough he gags more than he breathes. His dragon on the other hand, walks right ahead, joining another one, the color of dark stones by the flow of a humming stream.

There's another rider with Kuroo, leaning against nothing, arms crossed on his chest, free of the riding tack, making the ones Kuroo's holding feel so much heavier. Kuroo recognizes the rider instantly, hair miraculously well-kept despite the aggravated winds, as if the element worshiped him; eyes the color of the purest chocolate and skin so fair for somebody who flies as stupidly often as Kuroo does.

"Oikawa Tooru," Kuroo says before he can even think. It certainly grabs his attention, because he has Oikawa Tooru arching an eyebrow at him as if he's got a million things better to do.

"You're Kuroo Tetsurou, the one the girls always gush about in the hallways like they think nobody can hear. And I," Oikawa pauses, looking Kuroo up and down and blinking, as if deleting his action, "I can understand why."

Kuroo doesn't know what Oikawa could have possibly meant by the last bit of his sentence, and he doesn't want to ask why. "Uh, thanks?"

"Don't mention it."

In the silence, Kuroo watches as his dragon rears her head, swallowing a bit of meat he doesn't even want to think which animal comes from. Her lips were red, and he'll be looking at the faded hues at the tips of her teeth in the next morning. She dips her head, as if vacuumed by the meat, and he flexes his fingers for every time he hears the sound of bones crunching.

There was a growl, a hiss, a low roar. Kuroo drops the tack, cares no more for it as he runs to his dragon, who has her head retracted, hissing at Oikawa's bigger, more powerful one. Oikawa runs to his dragon, too. Hands on their muzzles, they push the aggravated dragons away from each other, one deeply-set footprint in the loose earth at a time.

Kuroo knows she's going to obey him, hushing her gently until she's calm enough to raise her head again. Neither of them return to their food troughs and when Kuroo looks, the last pieces of meat cling to the wood are in portions too tiny to feel satisfying. His dragon licks her lips a few times, doesn't look at Oikawa's dragon.

"I'm sorry about that," Kuroo calls out.

"I am too," Oikawa responds, "he lashes out when unfamiliar things come too close, it's the worst when he's eating."

"S'why you came here so late?" Oikawa simply nods, Kuroo understands.

Kuroo sees Oikawa the next day, and they both smile pleasantly. Kuroo remembers to put the tack away first. Oikawa's dragon doesn't lash at Kuroo's, perhaps because Kuroo's dragon has learned not to reach too far.

"Perhaps I'll see you a third time tomorrow, Tetsu-chan," Oikawa tells him that night when he was four footsteps away from leaving. Kuroo hears Oikawa's dragon huff into the air, swishing his tail as they exit, a charm she doesn't purr at, and Kuroo laughs silently to himself, shoulders shaking as he realizes she was about as womanly as a dragon could ever come to be.

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oikawa week 2017, day 1.

oikawa week 2017, day 1: lust/chastity

pairing: oikawa tooru & terushima yuuji

for a reason none other than my unnecessary particularity/thoroughness about things, i’ve decided to set all of the fics for oikawa week in a fantasy AU although none of these fics are connected unless stated so; this is the only fic that’s obviously non gen but the rest of the fics are unspecific enough that they’re open for interpretation and really i’m talking too much

❝I been doing stupid things, Wilder than I've ever been, You've become my favorite sin.❞ —Bad Decisions, Ariana Grande.

The day slows down, just for the busy, tired ones, so the minutes feel longer than they really are, and Tooru notices with aching clearness just how many pass between sips of oxygen. Tooru sits idly on a chair, as vacant and influential as the winds that pass from an open window, looking at the mess of his room until something thrills him with a scream or until he tucks back a strand of hair that tickles his lashes in a playfulness he can't appreciate.

His thoughts leak slowly, frustratingly, almost nothing. Tooru thinks they too are resting with empty glasses in a space of familiarity like he was, but he finds himself expending his bored sighs often enough he'll have nothing left for the weekdays.

Tooru leans back on his chair, wastes another sigh thoughtlessly and peels the collar of his shirt off of his chest. He reaches for his phone, fingers a pencil instead. He flicks that back on the desk disapprovingly, finding his phone where he left it; face-down and silent.

He dials Yuuji's number, glad his fingers don't trip over themselves as he mutters it like malicious malediction. Yuuji answers two rings too late, and Tooru can already imagine the dead ladybugs he would always find outside Yuuji's window; Tooru had always thought their colors would bleed in a funeral of washed rainwater, for Tooru had been taught that dead things were ugly shells of a brilliance that ceased to exist. Tooru only learns that their legs fall off at the prod of a stick, and they make the most hideous crunching noise whenever he steps on it with his sandal.

Yuuji grunts, the sound of men who've had Tooru's strange schemes darted quickly, painfully in their minds like sedation you can still feel hours later.

"Say, Yuu-chan, what would you say to an opportunity to spend time with me?" was what Tooru had told him, and Yuuji chortles two rings too pleasant too Tooru's ears.

"Doesn't this lake have wild hippocampi?" Yuuji asks cautiously. Tooru doesn't answer for a few seconds, kicking off his shoes and dipping his feet into the water.

The water was cool, not the kind that made Tooru shiver; not a lot of things made Tooru shiver, only dead spiders by his doorway, spilled ice cubes and a lover's touches. It was so sickeningly cliche, an excerpt from a year-long writer, a painting only discovered by those passionate enough. Of a lake undiscovered, sung to by songbirds perched on trees that listen with the carefully-constructed hum of their leaves, with its edges shallow and sparkly enough that Tooru could coax Yuuji into the water and laugh at their childishness.

"A family, I think," Tooru says, "don't worry too much about it, Yuu-chan! As long as you don't kill a baby then you have nothing to worry about!"

Tooru turns around and sees Yuuji, muttering curses at the blades of grass that tickle his skin as he bends them under the weight of his wriggling butt. Behind him, Tooru sees entire lifetimes of a forest told by the single hour Tooru's borrowed from it, the unshakable trunks they cross while Tooru crosses his eyes trying to discern cricket from decomposing leaf.

"Yuu-chan are you- are you scared?" Tooru's face goes alight with the idea, and he's never seen Yuuji turn so quick to correct one of his sentences.

"Who wouldn't be scared? They're literal seahorses but that's not the point, they could kill me or you- why aren't you more scared by this?" Yuuji looks at him accusingly, and Tooru smiles carelessly.

"Like I said, Yuu-chan, as long as you don't kill a baby then you have nothing to worry about! Just like people, really," Tooru's satisfied with his answer, and he continues playing ripples with the water. Yuuji stares at the lake with its water spread innocently for Tooru, who's finger deep in it, and in ten minutes he could draw a diagram with Tooru's blood about how hippocampi are worlds different from human beings right after a large, angry one emerges out of the center of the lake and crushes Tooru with its powerful jaws as they make whatever noises hippocampi make.

It's a disturbing image, and Yuuji is the last person to want to see crystal blue washed red when he only wanted Tooru to brighten his day with his dumb charm. He considers reaching for Tooru's fingers, finger, even, even if they're wet until the knuckle and blissfully unaware of danger.

Yuuji's content and malcontent on his pit of dirt and grass, linking his own fingers together behind his back as clouds swirl above him and Tooru, who's just screamed when he splashes water onto himself. Yuuji snickers, tells Tooru he got what was coming.

In the eyes of a young rose, beautiful and yawning to its mother earth, with its thorns untrimmed and virgin, the two lovers that sat at a length that they would begin to miss the other's fingerprints were bittersweet. Brightness and vivid color in their eyes, inside a place that lived and died in the earthly tones they were close. It would watch, with dewdrops caught in its eyes, until sunset comes and the lovers leave, and its petal close over its eyes like a whispered lullaby, like death.

Tooru fawns over a seashell that peeks out of the sand shyly, striped and grooved in a fashion that both of them could admire. Tooru puts in his pocket, keeps it in his memory.

Nothing exciting happens after, a few minutes of Tooru digging through the sand until he gets too scared he'd break a nail and Yuuji looking at Tooru's back, at the looseness of a shirt he's seen Tooru wear from a time even before they became lovers, imagining the expressions of Tooru's face.

The skies darken above him, a massive being that Yuuji learns not to mind. Yuuji has his hands folded over his knee, his heart beating in patterns that mess when Tooru calls his name. Tooru's the only thing that reels his eyes, the only thing that ever will, for Yuuji found himself often looking at his side, disappointed when Tooru wasn't there, smiled when Tooru was.

"Oh my God, Yuu-chan, look!" Tooru shouts, loud enough that Yuuji's definitely shocked. "It's a baby hippocampi!"

"If you kill it I'm going to kill you before the parent hippocampi come to kill you."

"And then we can die together! Aww, how romantic of you, Yuu-chan!" Tooru swoons dramatically, and Yuuji shakes his head.

"Come on, Yuu-chan, it's cute!" Tooru says. He points to the shallower ends of the lake, deep enough Tooru doesn't dare venture into because his shorts couldn't roll back any further than he had them (and the sight of Tooru’s thighs, pale as cleaned fossil, were only a marvel when Yuuji was kissing them undone.)

The baby hippocampi swam in waters of its own enjoyment, wide-eyed and thick-necked. The color of its skin reminded Yuuji of the plumage of a peacock, neck arched and head held high, or of a dragonfly that zips over water. It was an awkward little thing, like all baby animals were, with limbs too long and minds too new to be able to do anything with either. It clicked when Tooru beckoned it over, moving in awkward, unfinished hops that Yuuji almost laughed at.

"Tooru, I swear, don't kill it," Yuuji warned.

"Oh please, Yuu-chan, the only killing I'm going to do is stopping its heart!"

"Oikawa, what the actual fuck."

"I meant stopping its heart because of how god damn charming I am!" Tooru argues, holding his arms out wide for the baby that hopped aggressively.

Yuuji can only shake his head, smiling in anticipation when he notices a clump of dirt that gathers after it's been splashed on.

Ten minutes later, Tooru was soaked enough that Yuuji's had a good laugh about it ("Boo hoo, Yuu-chan, I got to play with a baby hippocampi!") and when another hippocampi peeks its head from a deeper portion of the lake, Tooru's the first one to run away, at the distressed cries of the confused baby. Yuuji has a good laugh about that, too.

"I mean, at least we didn't die, right?" they had told each other, agreeing pleasantly. Yuuji held Tooru's hand then, told him that he could smell the lake on him. They agree to stop at Yuuji's room to get a change of clothes and a drink a squeeze of summer shirts and four packed puffs of relief later.

They forget the drinks, but remember to take off Tooru's clothes. They kiss, not knowing why, roll against Yuuji's walls, knowing they wanted something.

Tooru traces his fingers up Yuuji's side, bumping over a hipbone that slanted beautifully. Tooru's reminded of ancient Greek sculptures that bend their marble bodies in vague scenery, swooned at now by young, starry-eyed, contemporary artists. Tooru's touch was light, as if not really there, as if cleaning the folds of a shirt that Tooru took great care to remove in their earlier frenzy. It makes Yuuji shiver, makes the hairs of his body prick the air where they want to be handled by the warmth Tooru cradles in his palms.

Tooru utters a promise, one that makes Terushima nod his head back. The way they fall onto the bed is delicate, gentle like the way Tooru holds Yuuji's face in his hands as he kisses him; but it's also loud, tangled and bursting, like the drizzle that raps its beginnings onto a curtained window.

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KURODAI WEEKEND 2017

Hello everyone! We’re back at it again with an event and this time, it’s KuroDai Weekend 2017 and it will be taking place from August 25th - August 27th.

For this weekend event, we wanted to try something different and something that hasn’t been explored when it comes to KuroDai. With the help from fellow avid shippers, the prompts we came up with for each day will have a unifying theme/genre that comes with two specific AU’s.

Here they are: 

Day 1 | August 25: Spirits ( Shinigami AU | Yokai and Exorcist AU )

Day 2 | August 26: Action ( Mafia AU | Undercover Agents AU )

Day 3 | August 27: Family ( Established Family AU | Single Parent AU )

Once again, these prompts are to be used as your guide, and can be freely interpreted however you wish. We will be tracking #kurodaiweekend, so kindly include it within the first five tags. All forms of original work are welcome!

For more information, you may visit the blog and click on the ‘message’ link for the general FAQs and the ‘about’ link for the general guidelines. If you still have questions or clarifications, please don’t hesitate to message us. :)

We hope you can join us again and we are looking forward to your participation!

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When he thought about it, love was not about the kisses that thieved one's breath, it was about how she sang in the shower, if she sang at all. It was if she'd laugh at herself when her voice cracks or if the shower would quiet until she leaves it with an impassive face. It was about choosing to laugh with her, or deciding with certainty, that you would enjoy hearing her sing for herself again.

excerpts from a book i’ll never write

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Hello everyone! Oikawa Week 2017 will take place July 14 - 20. This years prompts are the seven deadly sins & seven heavenly virtues. Feel free to interpret them as literally or loosely as you like!

PROMPTS:

Day 1 (July 14): Lust // Chastity

Day 2 (July 15): Gluttony // Temperance

Day 3 (July 16): Greed // Charity

Day 4 (July 17): Sloth // Diligence

Day 5 (July 18): Wrath // Patience

Day 6 (July 19): Envy // Kindness

Day 7 (July 20): Pride // Humility

We are tracking #Oikawa Week 2017. Please check out our RULES & FAQ and feel free to ASK us any questions!

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Oikawa Rarepair Week 2k17

The first Oikawa Rarepair Week is taking place the week of his birthday, from July 20th to July 26th, 2017! 

I figured it was about time the Great King had his own rarepair week (seeing as he’s now the most used character on ao3.) Let’s celebrate some of the lesser known pairings & dynamics, romantic or otherwise. 

All fan content is welcome! Fanarts, fanfics, headcanons etc., the more the better!  Just submit directly to us or tag your post #oikawararepairweek2k17 in the first 5 tags, and we’ll reblog it. 

PROMPTS (which can be interpreted as loosely as you want): July 20th birthdays //  height  // soulmate July 21st captaincy  // energy // post-canon July 22nd winning // time // apocalypse July 23rd same team // electric // crossover July 24th rivalry // hot & cold // outer space July 25th goodbyes // light // superhero  July 26th ~free day~

If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to drop an ask in our inbox. Please reblog and spread the word! Good luck~

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Darling, So It Goes | Happy Birthday, Suga.

a fic for mama suga’s birthday! contains: daisuga and implied nsfw, so look away if you’re not into that —kit, back at it again with being 1 day late

Koushi knew he was tired when he felt like he was stumbling into Daichi's car, the thrills of karaoke buzzing in his ears still. He remembered drinking iced tea, remembering that he left his half-empty third glass to melt out its coldness. When the pretty, timid waitress returned, the one with a ponytail so loosely done that a few stray hairs whipped around whenever she paced herself too quickly, she delivered another round of drinks, both sweetened and alcoholic ones; Tanaka winked and smirked his way until she blushed while Koushi politely refused the slippery glass with a gesture of his hand.

Koushi doesn't know how much time they spent, he remembers entering the restaurant when the sun was beginning to set and leaving with a giggling Daichi long after the night had settled in. The natural twinkle of the stars, as opposed to the steady fluorescent lights, brought about Daichi's seriousness, though upon another mention of Nishinoya traumatizing attempt at a whistle note, Daichi cracked into laughter loud enough to ride over the hum of the radio.

When Koushi glances at his boyfriend, tilts his head up a little to notice Daichi's eyes focused intensely on the stretch headlight-lit road ahead of them, Koushi smiles again. Maybe, if they had taken the liberating risk of drinking something stronger than lemon-flavored iced tea, they would have giggled and swayed into the car park until the backseat became the inevitable resting place of all their clothes as sweat mixed with sweat as the alcohol succeeded as an impostor of an excuse for lovemaking.

Though, Koushi's glad, with Daichi's cold hand hovering over his, claiming their place on the elbow rest between their seats.

"You know, Asahi could be a drag queen with all that hair he's sporting."

"Oh my God." Koushi guffaws, becoming breathless much too quick, but he can't afford to stop laughing. There's still laughter inside of him that only escapes his mouth in loud gasps. Daichi laughs along with him, heartily, and with the way Koushi's sucking oxygen like a parasite, Daichi knows he has something to add.

"Maybe we can buy him butt pads for his birthday, impress his lover."

"Oh my God."

Suga's impressed he's even finished his quip, because's he's guffawing again, resting his head against the glove compartment for support. Daichi knows it won't be long before he starts smacking the dashboard and maybe they're gonna laugh too loud they're going to run over a family of animals in the dark, lonely road or die mid-laughter, but Daichi laughs anyway.

They both know they're never going to see Asahi the same way again.

Later, when the familiarity of the neighborhood lights relieve Daichi's eyes, Koushi's wiggled deep into his seat, eyes crinkled as he giggled to himself in bouts; gasping out something about meaty butt pads before he disappears into giggles again. Daichi shakes his head, lowers the volume of the radio a little.

Koushi finds that, when they enter their apartment, Koushi is barely allowed to shed his coat before Daichi attacks him with an embrace that holds Koushi so tightly there's no space between them. It's not long before they begin kissing, Koushi's legs wrapped around Daichi's waist and Koushi's ears burning to warmth as they toe their ways to the bedroom. Daichi's hands peel off clothing, and his voice sings a melody about falling in love; falling, falling, falling until there's nothing to fall into.

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Rule the Court (With Me) | Happy Birthday, Iwa-chan.

enjoy this mess of a fic i brewed up for our favorite bara arm’s special day! contains slight iwaoi but hey whenever is iwaoi a bad thing? read: i really did try to post this on time oh well —kit

Hajime had received many greetings already, and although there wasn't a volatile, polka-dotted party hat strapped over his hair, there were a few who were gracious enough to remember and gracious enough to part from their own closely-knit circle of friends to greet Hajime when he had arrived that morning. There were a few presents, wrapped cheaply but bought thoughtfully, leaving his bag the least bit more full and upright. It would be a miracle if the wrapping would remain undamaged by the time Hajime has the time to look at them properly, and that's usually after evening practice when he's changed into a cleaner shirt (By then, Hajime's sure, the wrapping would have surrendered to the restless shuffle of his bag or Tooru's nosy rummaging.)

Hajime had received greetings from close friends and people who'd been informed from idle gossip alike. No matter if it's Yahaba, who's stiff approaching falls a bit too contrived, or a partner whom Hajime had never spoken to outside of their joint project, Hajime responds with the same smile that appears slanted and a bit too awkward no matter how many times he's practiced the night before, in front of his bathroom's mirror.

Even one of his teachers utter a small greeting, soft and intended for the celebrant's ears only, when they stride past his desk. Hajime lifts his head a little, because any of his gruff words would disrupt the focused quiet of the exam.

There are a few timid girls who Hajime only knew so intimately by their names, but their words are nearly lost between their stuttering and the rose color that spills over their cheeks. Hajime can count the times they actually look him in eye with only one of his callous hands, and even then, they quickly bring their heads back down.

Hajime silently commends them for trying, but the girls receive nothing more than his same awkward, defective smile that's been received by countless others. It's impolite to stare, Hajime's firmly believed that since first grade, but he still watches a few seconds longer as the girl retreats to their waiting friends, comforting himself with the sight of delicate hands wrung together and comforting smiles being smiled.

(It's silly, but Hajime feels like a parent who's unaware and concerned about whether they appear too doting or not. It's always been Tooru who's more graceful at receiving these kinds of things, Hajime only knows his own aggressive sort of affection, impaired but somehow functioning, and Tooru's graceful at receiving that, too.)

Thankfully, Hajime's spared from anymore hallway confrontations after the morning comes to pass, spending a long and boisterous lunchtime with Tooru. Tooru hasn't greeted Hajime yet, and Hajime wonders if Tooru's completely forgotten in his idiocy, or scheming something more elaborate (It's tantalizing how both are likely.)

As Tooru gripes about something Hajime's only half-listening to, Hajime decides it's alright if Tooru forgets, the absence of those dreadful grey circles under Tooru's eyes are charity enough.

"Iwa-chan, are you even listening?"

"Honestly? No," Tooru's mouth drops in great offense, and Hajime snorts through a mouthful of his lunch. "I'm just saying, Shittykawa, you make freedom of speech look like a mistake."

"Mean, Iwa-chan!" The ring of familiarity is sweet and Tooru's scoff as he turns his nose up at Hajime in a fond disgust is amusing. Hajime swallows the food in his mouth, leaving Tooru considerably quieter.

As morning changes to a cool afternoon, it's begun to feel normal, like another bland day to cross off the great three hundred and sixty-five of the nineteenth year of Hajime's existence. It's more favorable like this.

Much later, the same people who'd clapped him on the shoulder or on the back and wished him the best on his special day passed by an Iwaizumi Hajime carelessly talking to their own friends, sparing the man nothing more than courteous elbow room as Hajime leans his head into his locker. Hajime shrugs it off like he would a gush of hot air, because he had his own friends, too, and their 'Happy birthday!'s were the ones that Hajime would remember one year from now.

The locker, with its old rust painted over every summer break, sounds noisily, but the locker beside Hajime's would squeak, too, and neither of them would care as they lift their things to their next class. Hajime meets Tooru, and they walk together; their conversation terribly brief when Tooru has to turn to the entrance of his next class while Hajime still has a few uncompleted footsteps ahead of him.

It's a relief to change out of the school uniform. It fit Hajme's wrists well, and the necktie feels more like the loose hug of a lover than the grip of a rugged noose; its one shortcoming is the sweat that collects around Hajime's collarbone in the hotter afternoon, and trapped in his desk, it makes Hajime a little uncomfortable.

Hajime loves the school uniform, he really does. He's loved it since he was a first year with vocal cords that were only beginning to adjust to the deepness that it was now and a mind turned paranoid from the exaggerated horrors of highschool- Hajime will keep the dark secret to himself until he's dead and mourned over and buried, but the sight of Tooru excitedly bouncing through the spring-scented corridors of Aoba Johsai was brought a feeling of irrational comfort that Hajime indulged in time and time again.

But, far from the light of the fluorescent bulb and near a poster that glistens with irrelevance, with the last of the school uniform folded on top of each other, Hajime finds another sense of comfort pulling an old shirt over his head, that smells faintly of a cologne Hajime hasn't used since junior high.

Tooru's with him again, already changed, waiting with his things draped over one arm, halfway out the door. Tooru's asked Hajime twice to hurry up; Hajime had ignored him the first time. Tooru almost decides on a third time when Hajime grunts.

"Why don't you just go ahead?" Hajime asks. Tooru doesn't give him an answer.

The coach spares a second to hover his eyes down at Hajime from where he's standing next to Tooru, blurting a brief 'Happy birthday,' that shocks Hajime more than it humbles him. Quickly, the sentiment is already being buried under the coach's plans for the evening's practice, and Hajime can already feel his blood boiling in anticipation.

It was a good day today, Hajime thinks to himself as he jogs to a stray volleyball that rolled away from him still. Maybe it was a small gift from the gods, something they would have thought would have passed Hajime by unnoticed, but Hajime still says his prayer of thanks as he hits another ball perfectly, satisfying the ace as he gives Tooru a high-five.

The coach calls a break far sooner than Hajime would have liked, but he appreciates the coolness of the water as he takes it in greedy gulps. Mattsun, with a sly raise to his brows, approaches Hajime, and Makki follows not too far behind. Their bodies sway as the two of them move closer, and Hajime feels like a blissfully unaware prey item stalked by a greater, hungry predator the way the two are eyeing him.

When Makki and Mattsun hug Hajime on either side just tight enough to make him gasp, they laugh heartily, and the mingling laughter bounces off of Hajime as a fondness built over the years as they cheer their 'Happy birthday!'s. The newer members that only spoke to members as new and fresh-eyed as they were took their turns, forming an uneven line, speaking awkward greetings, as if anything else would betray a bond of friendship they hadn't quite formed yet.

"You looked like you were about to hit them, Iwa-chan," Tooru comments the next time they're given a break. Hajime looks at him in disbelief, then down at his own hands at fearful deliberation.

"What the fuck, I wouldn't do that," Hajime's quick to say.

"Your face tells a completely different story, Iwa-chan," Tooru says it like a preacher giving insightful advice to the congregation. Hajime thinks about it more than he'd like to.

When it's late enough in the evening that the stars are already decorating the dark of the sky and practice had been concluded, Tooru invites Hajime to walk home with him, which was something they'd usually reserved for when there weren't practicing volleyball. Hajime agrees nonetheless, it's an easy decision on his part.

They stop right beneath a streetlamp, and when Hajime looks around, he can't fathom any reason why Tooru would suddenly halt.

"Something the matter, Shittykawa?"

The poor light of the streetlamp makes Tooru's skin appear shades different from his actual complexion, and it casts dark shadows on his face.

"This is uh, really overdue but happy birthday, Iwa-chan," Tooru grumbles, "you've heard this from so many other people, you don't have to hear it from me, too. But I'll never forget your birthday even when everybody inevitably hates you, Iwa-chan."

"Gee. Thanks, Oikawa."

"Always happy to bring good to this world!" Tooru chirps, and Hajime can't put to words just how fucking silly he looks posing like a costumed superhero from a children's comic under the blinking light of a streetlamp that's beginning to draw little insects. Hajime ends up snorting, and it's one that Tooru hears.

"Come here."

Hajime extends an arm and he tugs Tooru closer and out of the artificial light. Tooru's eyes, the bright, comforting warm of brewing hot chocolate, more spectacular than deep blue or light green, Tooru's eyes sparkle with alarmed suspicion. Hajime pulls Tooru closer still, and Hajime's skin prickles when it feels Tooru's.

A car rumbled past, and although Tooru was not brave enough to kiss Hajime in the moment their breaths first mingled, he breathed the skin of Hajime's neck as he pulled the setter in for an embrace that left searing touches that  were a bit more than just friendly.