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A single lavender petal glares up at Oikawa, its gaze burning into him, setting everything on fire; lavender colored seems such a soft shade until someone strikes a match and it’s in flames, and one can see, clearer than ever, that lavender has always been an abomination in disguise, and it has been waiting. For the fire to burn it up, to show its true colors, for a man so vulnerable to come along, fall in love with the way it looks and the way it smells, overwhelmingly gentle petals, overwhelmingly gentle fragrances.
Waiting for the moment when it can all blow up in his face, and leave him standing there with nothing but the knowledge of his own naïveté, shell shocked, broken, betrayed.
Iwa-chan’s suit is lilac, the trademark color of the lavender. He holds a bouquet of lavenders in one hand, and uses the other to dance with her, and Oikawa can feel the fire spread until it has taken root inside him, and mocks him ruthlessly — he’s holding her and not you, it says, voice cruel. He’s holding the flowers and not you, the flowers you used to love so much because you associated them with him, but how does it feel to associate them with her instead? Oikawa swallows as he looks at her properly for the first time. She is...intimidatingly beautiful. She looks powerful and scary. Oikawa knows he’s beautiful too, but not in the way she is. He’s the endearing, pretty-boy with the fluffy hair and the fakes smiles. Her smiles reflect exactly who she is, though, they reflect the confidence and the mischief, the talent and the flaws that are so miniscule, they hardly exist, yet she wears them like a crown anyway. As if it was ever a competition, when Iwa-chan spent his childhood headbutting Oikawa for not being confident enough in himself. Oikawa sees the way he stares adoringly at her now, features sharp and kind and handsome and all the painful things in between, and Oikawa is overcome with emotion because he wants to touch and feel, he wants to throw the lavenders to the ashes and Iwa-chan’s lover to the fire, he wants to run, run, run, far away, somewhere where he thinks no one will find him, but then he’ll arrive and he’ll realise that Iwa-chan was behind him the whole time. Behind him like he promised always to be. Behind him like the promise he broke.
Oikawa sips his champagne, but it tastes like tears that he was too sad to shed. He pours it onto the grass instead, where ants quickly gather to devour the evidence of his heart ache.
Sometimes, when he gets really drunk and sits in the balcony of his two bedroom apartment, he stares out of the window and remembers what it was like, kissing Iwa-chan. It always did seem to reek of tragedy — Iwa-chan, after all, kissed him softly, as though he was terrified of breaking Oikawa. Oikawa tried so hard to be passionate, strong, yet Iwa-chan treated him as though he was fragile, and it was such a beautiful trait of Iwa-chan’s, yet undoubtedly one that contributed to breaking — whatever the two of them shared.
His lips had tasted of lavender, of agedashi tofu, of misaimed cologne. Oikawa could have devoured them for hours and hours once he began kissing Iwa-chan, inhaling petals and exhaling pent-up adoration. He told Iwa-chan once, that he was such a treasure and so were his scented lips, but Iwa-chan didn’t seem to know how to reply, opening his mouth, then closing it. Then kissing Oikawa again, kissing him with gentle lavender lips.
He talks to her like he’s just discovered true happiness for the first time. They’re laughing, bent over in exaltation as couples dance around them, a symphony of relationships doomed to end over blown-up fights and flower petals. Amongst the dancing couples putting on performances for self-absorbed crowds, she and Iwa-chan are so genuine, so built for success, such a perfect, perfect little couple — Oikawa refills the glass with champagne, but both of his hands are shaking and he wants to forget — he wants to erase — he wants Iwa-chan —
Iwa-chan and his fiancee finally stand upright again, and as she takes his hands, a gesture of shall we dance?, Iwa-chan kisses her, and he kisses her like it’s the last time he ever will, like the stars are dying, and the universe is breaking, and the only memory he craves to keep with him as he enters the post-life inevitability of pure oblivion is the way her lips press against his and their mouths move in obsessive harmony; there is nothing gentle about it, nothing that screams that he thinks she’s too fragile — they were made to love each other.
This time, Oikawa doesn’t pour out his champagne. He lets his champagne glass fall to the ground, and it shatters as he, both alone and so fucking lonely, stands on the concrete pavement and watches them kiss on the grass.
When he first met Iwa-chan, he hated him. Iwa-chan was always doing things like shoving bugs into Oikawa’s hair, which made Oikawa cry a lot. They only became friends when Oikawa became the target of a group of mean elementary school kids who’s sole talent seemed to be the art of making others hate themselves. Oikawa was crying at Recess once, having been forced to call himself “an ugly, gay, stupid baby who needs his diapers changed,” when Iwa-chan came up to him, and asked in a harsh, brute-like voice whether he was okay.
“I’m fine,” Oikawa had sniffed, but eventually Iwa-chan coaxed the story out of him, then went to beat up those kids.
He was always doing stupidly heroic things like that for Oikawa. In elementary, he trampled into a huge puddle of muddy water to rescue “Momo,” Oikawa’s stuffed alien. In middle school, he stopped Oikawa from hurting Kageyama, knowing Oikawa would live to regret it.
And in high school, Oikawa had kissed him, and he did the most stupidly heroic thing of all: he kissed back.
In present day though, Oikawa’s become a coward who can’t bring his feet to move. He feels trapped, doomed to a lifetime of watching the two of them kiss and conquer the universe as he watches from the shadows because he was never made for the spotlight. He was never made to be loved by Iwa-chan. He was made to watch his best friend fall in love with a girl with two healthy knees, and an aura of unfaltering confidence — he was made to feel sorry for himself as they never stopped dancing, never stopped to consider him for a single moment, he was made to stand in Iwa-chan’s bedroom awkwardly waiting for his lover to speak before hearing the words “I love you, but I’ve met this girl, and I think me and you are better as friends,” why, why, why, or more importantly, how could a mass of flesh and bone and brain be so readily capable of breaking another human heart?
“Can I kiss you one more time?” Oikawa had asked helplessly, loathing himself even as he said it, loathing himself even more as he received the exact response he predicted, the effortless shake of the head.
Oikawa read something somewhere once, that said something like “the human brain can only interpret something a few milliseconds after it happens,” and he doesn’t know what happened to mess up his brain, but it took him far longer than a few milliseconds to interpret a fact as simple as “the only person you’ve ever been in love with just broke up with you.”
Iwa-chan had smelled like lavender at the time, and the smell of lavender never seems to leave Oikawa. Neither does the taste. Even after he flushes his petal shaped vomit down the toilet, he still tastes the lavender, and it tastes distinctly of unrequited worship.
Iwa-chan says something to his beautiful, confident, perfect girlfriend, and she nods, every movement she makes delicate, flawlessly elegant. Oikawa leans against a tree as he watches. Their hands leave each other’s for a moment, but shortly return, this time not in a dancing position, but in a “we’re going home hand in hand to love each other in private” position. Her head fits so perfectly into his shoulder, and she smiles up sleepily while he gazes down, wide awake, stars in his eyes and lightning in his smile, and Oikawa’s heart twists, an echo of broken remains screaming in unmatched agony.
They’re walking towards the exit, towards him, and the only reason they look away from each other and at him at all is because he has to move to let them pass. They both glance up, and then they realise who is it.
“Hey, Oikawa,” Iwa-chan says, his voice strange. A mix of leftover exhilaration and newly crafted confusion. Oikawa ignores her as she echoes Iwa-chan’s “hey, Oikawa,” because he hates her, he hates her more than he’s ever hated anyone because it’s not fair that she’s effortlessly better than him.
“Hi, Iwaizumi,” Oikawa says, and he has to work to keep his voice from cracking. He’s lucky it’s dark because he doesn’t want Iwa-chan to see his blurry eyes. He doesn’t want Iwa-chan to see how sad Oikawa is, doesn’t want him to realise that Oikawa can only faintly make out Iwa-chan’s lavender suit, her lavender dress, his lavender eyes, her lavender confidence, unparalleled lavender confidence.
“We should catch up sometime,” Iwa-chan says, cocking his head awkwardly, and the world seems to move in a dull, grey slow motion.
“Yeah,” Oikawa barely manages.
(They won’t.)
“Nice seeing you,” Iwa-chan finishes, stumbling over his reluctant words, and Oikawa nods. Iwaizumi doesn’t see it, though. He’s already walking away, and Oikawa can hear them in the background as they laugh together. They’re soulmates, he thinks, in a world cruel enough to deprive humans of soulmates. They’re the special humans.
After all, the only thing most humans get is the sound of retching as lavenders fall into the toilet bowl, petals to petals, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.