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The first time they kissed without pretense, it was in the bathroom on the second floor of Hinata’s shitty frat with the lights switched off and the muffled sound of laughter and bad party music blaring beyond the door like it was a world behind the one they’d constructed in the silhouettes of their figures warped and molded into one on the reflection of the mirror Kunimi was pressed against. It tasted like the artificial lollipops that never seemed to leave Kunimi like the smell of petrichor never left Tobio, and it felt like sacrilege and finding God all at once.
Tell me you feel the same, Kunimi had said, the seam of his mouth against Tobio’s, close enough to touch but not quite, close enough for the words to taste like the electric blue of the lollipop he’d abandoned when he’d kissed Tobio but not close enough to taste of the desperation in them, so close, and yet so far, don’t go. Kiss me again, please.
At the time, it had been the easiest thing in the world. In the dim lighting of the cramped bathroom, Kunimi’s eyes spoke all the words he didn’t, dark and hollow and pitch black, and his face was so delicate that it almost looked like he’d been carved by careful hands and preserved for a long time. He’d always been beautiful like that, beautiful and unattainable and untouchable and yet impossible to resist, and he still is. He still is. Tobio had felt his heart lurch in his chest like a cold, dead hand was grabbing it and twisting until the nails were digging into the flesh, had felt everything in him crumble and break like an overflowing dam, and he’d said, I want this. I want you.
Oh, how naive he’d been then, wrenching his heart from between his ribs with his own hands, the sound of its strings snapping resonating in his head like the sharp syncopation at the beginning of a full song as he handed it to Kunimi. Still bloody, still beating, still alive, still every bit of the boy who had loved and wanted to be loved. He gave it to Kunimi without reservations and questions and let his blood seep into the creases of Kunimi’s palm like a fucked up pact that would bind them for good.
And now, he’s alone. He’s alone and he’s the same, shitty bathroom on the second floor of Hinata’s shitty frat with the lights out, sitting on the sink, pressed against the mirror like Kunimi was the first time they kissed without pretense even though he’s on his own now, his phone in his hand with the number of Kunimi’s work punched in and ready to dial even though it’s a bad idea and the space where his heart used to be aches when he thinks of hearing Kunimi’s voice again.
Oh, how naive he’d been then, and how naive he continues to be now.
He calls the number.
“Hi, there,” Kunimi says. His phone sex operator persona is just about as real as the rest of him is, which isn’t a lot, and yet, there’s something familiar about to sultry lilt to his voice, something about the low-tone of his voice that makes Tobio feel like the mirror he’s leaning against is rippling like the surface of a lake and he’s falling in, falling under into a new world. He hates how it makes a shiver run up his spine the way it used to when Kunimi said his name, the way it used to when he’d run his nails against the curve of Tobio’s spine like one would run the tips of their fingers against the keys of a piano. He hates how it makes him ache like he’s missing a limb. “What’s your name, darling?”
“Akira,” Tobio says, and he doesn’t need to see the way it all comes to a standstill -- the sound of Kunimi’s nails against the countertop he’s leaning against, the hitch of air in his throat when he inhales sharply, the huff of air as he exhales like he’s struggling to breathe. A sick, fucked up part of Tobio that never recovered from the way Kunimi had snarled at him the night they broke up feels glad that if there’s someone who can throw him off, it’s still him. “It’s me.”
Akira, he wants to say, it’s me. You conditioned me to sleeping on one side of the bed instead of the middle. Kissed me like we were the last people on earth and tugged the ground from under my feet. You used to run your thumb over my knuckles when we held hands and tell me that I was beautiful. I still remember the songs you would sing in the shower, off-tune but wonderful. You like white chocolate mocha lattes with no whipped cream and lollipops from the corner store because you’re trying to quit smoking.
Akira, it’s me. The boy you never loved but the boy who loves you like you are his heart in human form. You remember, don’t you?
“I told you not to call me again,” Kunimi says. There’s no waver in his voice, no uncertainty, but Tobio knows better. He always talks like he’s dissociated from himself when he’s defensive or afraid, and he’s got plenty to be defensive and afraid of now. The tapping resumes. “I’m working, and I don’t want to talk to you right now.”
“You never want to talk,” Tobio says. In the silence of the shitty bathroom on the second floor of Hinata’s frat, his own voice sounds bitter, and on the underside of his tongue, it tastes like everything broken and everything turned inside out, tastes like exhaustion and tiredness and the feeling of wanting to hate but being unable to. He tilts his head against the mirror and closes his eyes. Listens to the sound of Kunimi breathing steadily on the other end of the line, thinks about how it sounds better when it’s in person, hates himself even more than he did before he dialed the number. “It’s like you’d rather do anything else. All you do is run from me. Do I scare you that much?”
“I’m not afraid of you,” Kunimi grits out. That’s another thing he hates, being accused of being the coward he always has been. “What do you want, hm? So bored and lonely on a Sunday evening that you’d call your ex on his phone sex line for conversation? A quick fuck?”
“Maybe I just wanted to hear your voice,” Tobio says. Kunimi’s breath hitches again, and for the first time since they broke up, Tobio smiles at the thought of his pretty lips parting in shock. Kunimi was always beautiful when he was taken by surprise, his pupils dilated and his lips parted by an inch, his hands going limp and his whole body going still like he’s been frozen into ice. “Is it so hard to believe that I’m having a hard time without you?”
“Shut up,” Kunimi says, sharp and stinging like fingers pressing onto an open wound. “Just shut up, would you?”
“I miss you.” Tobio ignores him. Closes his eyes and listens to the way it makes Kunimi silent, listens to the click of his jaw and the rhythmic tapping of his fingernails against the counter he’s probably leaning against. Leans back into the mirror and wonders why it feels like there’s an ocean in his head. “Do you miss me, too?”
“I don’t.” Kunimi says. It’s a lie, and they both know it. “Why do you keep insisting on making this difficult for both of us, Tobio? I told you not to call me again.”
“I’m not the difficult one here and you know it,” Tobio says. He’s drunk and he should really hang up. Stumble through the party with the horrible song in his veins until he finds Tsukishima and Hinata, maybe, and press Hinata against a wall and kiss him open mouthed and hungry while Tsukishima slips his hands under Tobio’s shirt and traces the line of his body with his palms. Pretend that the warmth of their touch and the bruises their hands leave are from Kunimi, even if they aren’t. Live a lie, like he always does when Kunimi breaks him into pieces and leaves him.
“What can I say? You bring out the worst in me.” Kunimi is bordering on sardonic, and despite the phantom ache in his chest, it makes him smile again. “Put your phone down, Kageyama. You’re better than this. Go home and sleep this off.”
You’re right, Tobio should say. You broke my heart and I want to hate you so badly but I can’t. I’ve never hated before but you make me want to learn, he should say. Fuck you for what you did to me, fuck you for being okay when I’m not, fuck you for being cruel like this when all I did was love you like you were an extension of my own soul, he should say. You’re so, so cruel, it’s unfair, he should say.
“I still love you,” he says, instead, and the words burn in his throat and scald him until his flesh sears and hisses, “tell me you feel the same too. Don’t go.”
Kiss me again, please, the phantom seam of Kunimi’s mouth says against Tobio’s, close enough to touch but not quite. In the dim bathroom, the ghost of the desperation in his eyes follows Tobio and it feels like it’s real again.
“I don’t love you,” Kunimi says, and the ghost disappears, “I don’t love you anymore, and I don’t think I ever did. Hang up, Tobio.” An audible pause, a flickering moment in time when the only sound in his ears is the sound of the muffled song from outside the bathroom and the sound of Tobio cracking and fracturing into pieces, and then Kunimi adds, “Don’t call me again.”
Oh, how naive he was, how naive he continues to be when it comes to the boy he loves, to the boy who doesn’t love him anymore, to the boy who doesn’t think he ever did.
He hangs up.
And like the space in his chest where his heart used to be, empty save for the heartstrings that are torn apart, dried, covered in aged blood and left for dead, everything is hollow and cold and burns like it’s Hell at its worst. In the silence that follows, Tobio learns, truly, what it means to be in love alone.