Work Text:
I can feel you in my chest.
You’re suffocating every breath
and I can’t scream and shout anymore.
It was the second year Interhigh tournament when he last practiced his confession speech, which he sought to deliver in a few moments' time. With Tendou and Semi's pep talks, he stood by the door diligently and waited until Aoba Johsai exits the other court.
“Oikawa,” he called, effective against the man that did nothing but spite him since they met.
The captain turned around, the sunlit shadows created on his face showcasing the smooth of his milky skin. It did the curve of his cheeks and jaw justice. It also didn't choose favorites; it shone an ethereal halo against Oikawa's brown hair that made it seem like he had a glowing crown.
At the sight, Ushijima almost forgot the words he practiced, just at the revelation that God must have took his time creating the masterpiece that was Oikawa Tooru.
“What?” Oikawa's voice quiet despite being three meters away from him. In an empty hallway, breathing through the sting that Oikawa’s passive voice gave him, Ushijima took a deep breath and closes the gap between them slowly and surely until the man he loves is just a few feet away. Oikawa raised a suspicious brow, but didn't step back.
Ushijima breathes deeply. He is here, and he is here nowーjust in arm's reach and the closest they had ever been. If he doesn't say it now...
“I love you.”
...he might die.
Oikawa blinked for a few seconds, as if searching for an explanation in his eyes that served none. Then, by some god forbidden twist of fateーthe total opposite of what Semi told him in his motivational pep talkーOikawa avoids glances and looks down.
“I know, please get away from me.”
The nearest bathroom was locked by the gymnasium staff that day. The official report said some flowers clogged the sinks. The same words were written on the plumber request form on Ushijima Wakatoshi's dormroom a few days after, then another week before that. On the third week, the requests stopped and the reason can be read on Ushijima’s message log.
Oikawa ☆ || Ushijima, let's talk. :)
“I like you so much,” Oikawa breathed against his skin, making him blush. The lips that spouted lies more than it did truth kissed his neck down to the space right where his heart was. He gambles on the assumption that Oikawa isn't bluffing; he would rarely mumble something like that on a jest anyway.
“I like you more,” he awkwardly replied, unsure of the sudden affection. Oikawa stopped his feathery kisses and instead came to drape his body onto Ushijima's naked chest, pushing him down to his bed. Now that he laid down, Ushijima just noticed the glow-in-the-dark stars plastered on the ceiling. He buried his head on Oikawa's soft hair and let him relish on his warmth.
In moments like that, he wondered what Oikawa was thinking. With his hopeful thinking aside, was this all a ploy or was this genuine? Was this a paid act where the angels told Oikawa to go love him so he would just die and get his heaven gate pass already?
That night, he stared at Oikawa's mirror one last time. The one who was staring back is someone who told him love is kind.
Ushijima can still remember the day he got convinced he had a chance at life.
Every time he’s on a hospital bed and the nurse asked him to think of something happy to ease the anxiety, he closed his eyes and dreamt of that night with his friends in an empty field—one of the best memories he’d ever had. They all got firecrackers in their hands, courtesy of Kawanishi and wherever he got them from. They ran around laughing at the colorful smoke bombs and sparks. With Oikawa awkwardly standing beside him, out of place in a team that was his rival, they instead lock eyes and kiss each other deeply.
He tasted like bliss, and of chocolate cake. When Oikawa’s hands went from his waist to his hair, he can’t help but have the urge that if he just had a ring, he might as well propose to Oikawa right then and there. Their lips soon parted but their foreheads still touched. As Oikawa caresses his cheek like he was the most fragile thing on the world, he didn’t stop the free flowing tears and held him closer. They spent the rest of that night watching the rest of Shiratorizawa run around and light up the night.
It’s the frailty of the human brain that makes nostalgia such a powerful but also a problematic emotion. The happier it is, the sadder it leaves him. In depths of his honesty, he’s somehow okay with that. At least that past existed, that’s all that matters.
Please don't let this be a dream.
Oikawa's body was warm leaning against his.
One day, he got blood on Oikawa's sheets.
Barefoot in the empty Oikawa household's laundry room, he stood by the doorway in confusion and guilt as he watched him douse the bedsheet in a biggest bucket they had. The tiles of the room was cold under his bare feet. The fact that his heart was pounding didn’t help the thorns he can feel inside his lungs.
“I...I can wash it, you can go back to sleep.”
It wasn't the first time he offered, nor the first time he actually did so.
“Christ, Ushijima! What do you want from me?”
“What do you mean?” he asked, surprised at the sudden hostility.
“What on Earth do you want me to say to that? Yes?” Oikawa stood up and kicked the bucket in frustration. The bucket resisted on its weight and Ushijima can see the pain that flashed on Oikawa's face.
“I...don't get it.” Ushijima suddenly found it hard to breathe, this time not just of petals but also of guilt.
“Fuck!” Oikawa groaned, turning away and pulling his hair in frustration.
“Oikawa, don't pull your hair out...!” Ushijima swallowed nervously and reached up with unsure hands to untangle Oikawa's hands from his hair. His hand was hastefully slapped away, and he stood helpless.
“Why are you like this?!” Oikawa sniffed, eyes angry and teary as he went back to work. He grabbed the nearest detergent pack and sprinkled a good estimate onto the bucket. With his back to him, Ushijima swallowed back the bitter petals that teased the back of his throat.
“I'm doing this, okay? You get back to sleep! If I don't do this, I'm not doing enough.”
“Are you mad at me?”
Oikawa flinched, almost missing the trash can when he threw the empty detergent packet away. Clearly, the answer was yes.
“Ushijima, just, please...justー!” He finally turned around on his heels and in seconds, grabbed Ushijima's collar and shook him in desperation. “I'm not making you better! What do I need to do to make you okay?! You're so freaking hard to take care of!”
The flower's bud is on his tongue now, and he can feel something hard and prickly following. Knowing and panicking inside realizing the flowers had grown stems, Ushijima stepped away and so Oikawa's hands slipped from his shirt. He turned away slowly and walked slow and steady back upstairs.
“Ushijima! Wait, I'm sorry!” Oikawa followed, voice shaking. “I didn't mean it!”
He flashed a thumbs up before disappearing up the dark staircase. He focused on trying not to collapse; if he did, Oikawa may get hurt trying to carry him up.
As if it was better, he passed out on the bathtub. The next day, he woke up on the futon and before Oikawa's alarm. He left while the morning's still quiet, but not without kissing Oikawa's forehead and scrubbing the bedsheet out of the bucket.
Another IV met him the day after that. What does that make? Fifth?
Some days, he wonders what would happen in two, three, maybe even five years if he's feeling particularly daring. On other days, he stops daydreaming and just asks the stars if he can even make it that far.
There were also times where he would wonder what Oikawa ate for breakfast, or if he ate at all.
They met sparingly after that bedsheet incident, and he never stepped foot in the his boyfriend’s house ever again. Alas, he can't give Oikawa the same handicapーthere was the one time he took him to his mother's home instead.
“So you're the boy responsible for the flowers?”
After the formalities and the dinner, they sat in front of the TV motionless and silent. They didn't move, didn't bat an eye nor respond to anything beyond the room. Ushijima lets Oikawa bury his head into his shoulder the first time he moved, and they shared a few minutes on the same difficulty level of breathing.
He was just as broken, he thought.
There was a look in those eyes that were just tired, and the way he moves like he's dragging his feet didn't miss Ushijima's mindful stares.
“God, I hate you.”
His chest didn't ache, nor was there a flower on his throat. “If you hate me, why are you saving my life?”
“Am I really?” Oikawa asked, quiet as if the walls had ears. “I guess finding someone else to hate is too bothersome.”
Then the flower was suddenly there.
The once a week appointment became a text, until it became the norm. He stopped bothering Oikawa when he got admitted again. It's not like he ever visits anyways.
“Let me guess, he didn't come today either?”
“Stop reminding me, Tendou.” Ushijima kept on eating his hospital ration.
“I've had enough. We, your entire team, had enough. It is time.”
“Time for what?” He raised a brow.
“The talk.” Tendou grabbed the nearest chair and dragged it next to his bed. “I made a presentation on the reasons why you should get the surgery but eh, the laptop's too heavy. So, listen.”
At the end of the day, Ushijima learned that they were was right. Ushijima finally got the answer to his late-night wonders.
Alas, there are people in life who shouldn't be trusted just because they kiss you under the moonlight, just because they hold your hand tightly or just because they take you to awesome dates. After all, those people use that fondness to destroy others in the prettiest way possible.
In his dreams, Ushijima waded in the heavenly waters among other broken half-alive souls. Seated beside him on the shore was his younger self, different with him in everything but his face. He can feel his younger self judging everything he did to justify the pain Oikawa inflicted. Even them, he still thought that someone like Oikawa Tooru deserves everything from flowers to honesty to kindness every morning.
Why is my older self so weak? his child-self asked him sternly. He closed his eyes, already hearing his alarm in the real world. Every time he dreamt of them at that shore, his child-self asked that question and he answered the same everytime.
What's so weak about enduring pain for love?
So he woke up. That day, the reports he saw on his mom's desk said he's worse than before.
Healing definitely isn't linear.
And guess whose fault that is? his child-self's voice whispered for the first time, while he's very much not dreaming.
Oikawa ☆ || Let's try one more time
Ushijima pulled his head out of the toilet seat to type a reply.
Ushijima || Your choice, really.
Then he spent thirty more minutes emptying the jungle of his flowery lungs. The next day, he counted, was the seventh time he got admitted in the hospital.
“Get surgery, it might be too late,” they all insisted. Tendou, Semi, Matsukawa and Hanamakiーalmost everyone who knew. However, he kept his eyes on the latest text from Oikawa, staring at it like it was the last lifeline he had. As seen on the red that stained his toilet and his sink, it was becoming clear that surgery wasn't a choice anymore.
But Oikawa's trying again, and heaven knows he had an infinite stock of second chances at the back of his head. He looked at the text one more time.
“Actually, please do,” he typed as a reply before eventually deleting it. “I don't know what to do if you don't try again.”
They sat across the table, and for the first time in a short while, Ushijima accepts that they ran out of things to say. At least then, Oikawa kept his mouth shut and thanks to that Ushijima can breathe.
“Welcome back to the team, son,” Coach Washio greeted him one week later and alas he’s back into the paradise—the only place untouched by Oikawa.
“It’s not easy!” Oikawa whined, draping himself over a park bench as a break from their uphill jogging. He grabbed his water battle and drank.
“You said you loved him,” Hanamaki replied, wiping his sweat. “It wasn’t supposed to be difficult or easy. You just do, right?”
“Shittykawa, you’re smart but fuck you,” Iwaizumi exclaimed, finally catching up to the three. “Think about what you’re doing for once.”
“What do you mean, Iwa-chan?”
“There’s no bigger scar than being unwanted, moron—“
“Iwa, just spare us the game—Oikawa, do you love Ushijima?” Matsukawa’s question drove the quartet into a tense silence. Within that silence, Ushijima stood by a street corner, trying to ignore the snake that was about to bite him. In every second that passes, it hisses and hisses until it went in to bite.
And when it bit, it bit hard.
“...I love him just enough to go on dates! I love him just enough to eat whatever he made me,” Oikawa finally answered. “Sometimes I actually feel not annoyed when I see him. Just that amount!”
Just enough, Ushijima swallowed upcoming tears and ran in the separate direction, still hidden by the street corner he hid himself on. As he focused on getting back to school and making sure he’s breathing, he made a mental note to change Shiratorizawa’s jogging track to never to run into Aoba Johsai ever again.
Is that what it really is? Just enough? He found himself dwelling on the thought not just at home but also everywhere he went.
“Ushijima, what the hell?” Tendou and Semi buried their heads in their hands, finding themselves back on the hospital. It was a different room, but the same chairs nonetheless.
“I'm sorry,” he whispered. “Just go home, ignore me. I’ll be fine.”
“No! Please just get the surgery.”
“But I can't love Oikawa again.”
“Maybe that's the point, Wakatoshi.” Tendou sighed, almost just as tired as he was.
“You suffered enough, captain.” Semi stared at the walls in hopelessness. “Why die twice?”
Ushijima lets out an unsettling smile. “Maybe that's the point.”
“...God fucking damn it , Wakatoshi.”
The castle upon the hill stands high and mighty. Different than Shiratorizawa but a castle nonetheless. Here he was—at the one and only Aoba Johsai High.
And there Oikawa was, meeting his eyes past the gate he felt like he had no right to cross. When Iwaizumi went close and slid a hand by his waist, unaware of his presence, Ushijima only waved and went back to his jogging track.
He cannot cross inside Oikawa's little kingdom. He isn't his king, nor was he a welcome citizen at all. It demands someone else other than him. Why does he keep pretending he used to wear the crown when it didn't touch his head in the first place?
What a king you really are, Oikawa.
Ushijima || Let's talk.
Oikawa ☆|| K, let's meet somewhere.
He almost spat out an entire bouquet on the alley home.
Almost.
Afternoon rain is faulty, coming down past thin clouds layering the city from the sunny sunset it hides. The steady pitter-patter of the raindrops on his umbrella made therapeutic rhythms with his pace. Past the purple umbrella he held with his right, he met eyes with the distressed captain. An attempt to a food date became a shouting match before they knew it.
“If you just find a good man—“
“Don’t you get it?” Ushijima snapped, inciting a gasp of surprise and bitterness from the other captain. “I can’t love someone else!”
Oikawa turned harshly on his heels, blue umbrella laid on his collar and meeting Ushijima’s pained expression.
“Well, is that my fault?”
As Oikawa stopped himself at the realization of the words he clearly didn’t think through, tears slip from Ushijima’s eyes and he collapsed to kneel on the wet sidewalk.
“Oikawa Tooru, for the love of God, I can’t love someone else.”
“Ushijima...I...” Oikawa wiped his own tears and held him up by his arms. He replied by wrapping his thin frame in a desperate hug. “Get up. I’m sorry.”
“I need you,” he whispered as he dug his face into Oikawa’s neck.
“I’m right here.” Oikawa held onto the wall for support, his hands cooled by the wet bricks. “I’m calling your mom.”
“I love you so much...”
Oikawa didn’t reply and Ushijima laughed while hanging on his consciousness idly. If he's just going to hurt him by this mediocrity, then it's just as bad as not calling for help.
Still, he held onto Oikawa's shirt, even if he knew the man would be frowning while ironing it the next time. At least this time, Oikawa didn't tell him. It was already something he took as a positive; Oikawa is still trying and that's more than enough. Really, what's more abstract than the idea of a moment that hasn't happened yet?
Then it happened. He most probably jinxed it, or perhaps the angels got too impatient with his due date and wanted him up there ASAP.
Oikawa spat angrily from the floor of Ushijima’s dorm room, as he held what remained of the walls he put up. With the most honest lips and his trembling hands, he looked at Ushijima with teary-eyes in hatred of both him and himself.
“I can't love you! I don't know how!”
Red drops drip on the floor past Ushijima's hands. He hacked and coughed, wanting nothing more than to stop not because it hurts but because he got blood on Oikawa's favorite jeans.
Ushijima managed to convince himself that he had prepared himself for the eventual confessionーhe really did. Oikawa can barely support his weight when he collapsed.
“I don't love me either,” he chanted to his screaming subconscious. “That's one more thing we had in common, at least...?”
Then, blackness. He didn’t get to see what face Oikawa made, but surely it had to be beautiful as it always was.
Now that it was said (or rather, spat) to his face, the days the follow was bizarre. Monochromatic and smelling like alcohol and sanitation—greyscale, even. Even his own body started to look like it is trying to camouflage with the insides of a casket; the doctors said the flowers affected his paleness, too.
“Did you ever expect me to succeed with this?”
“No, not really,” Shirabu sighed, the first one to arrive from the rest of the team. “Please live, captain.”
On the first day back into the room he called his new home, they realized there was a large window on his new hospital ward. Semi raised the blinds out of his fidgeting and revealed the skyline visible from their floor. The buildings and the street poles extended and littered the view with pretty little lights that shone like stars on Earth.
It was the eighth time he got a needle on his arm, ninth if he counted hospital admission. He’s going, he knew it, but he still hoped the nightsky is beautiful where Oikawa might be.
By the ninth needle, Tendou picked up a habit or a new routine where he reads to the bedridden captain to help him sleep.
During those nights with his friends, Ushijima found himself in a clearer state of mind. It was clear and rational enough to let himself accept that whatever Oikawa felt was not love but lust, and that he must have felt lust more than love too. However, lust did not have those extra gushy feelings. Lust was a sin that gives desires and he was smart enough to know that love was much more complex than that. Lust is simple and clean. God knows that whatever they felt for each other was nowhere near simple nor clean.
A few more empty IV bags later, Ushijima focuses on Tendou and Reon's stories or Goshiki's rants about Shirabu instead. He wanted to hear about something else rather than imagining Oikawa's kisses and affection, or rather how it is made for someone else that isn’t him.
Then, at night when the team comes home to rest, he found himself awake and alone, staring at the skyline and the stars Oikawa was so obsessed about. Those sparkly milk drops suspended on the sky were dead burning balls of chemicals millions of miles away. He can’t really understand how it works yet, but something tells him he’s about to understand that way of living soon.
Burning.
Shining.
Adored.
...Dead.
He sniffed, hugging himself past the cold. He's actually going to die now, isn't he? He cried.
“Oh, haven’t you heard?”
“Please keep your voice down. Let’s talk outside.”
Ushijima stirred in his sleep.
“Ah, fine. Just check Iwaizumi’s Instagram.”
“Oh wow, the audacity.”
Nurses were called because Patient 143 choked in his own blood that night. His parents and his friends cried at the news that Ushijima was unconscious while it happened; it’s too late for reciprocation.
Nobody dared tell Ushijima why he had no memory of August 3rd, Monday.
As for the man himself, the days that followed were freeing. As time went on, he began to understand in terrifying accuracy why there are people who sacrificed their teeth for nicotine, why there are people who smoke their lungs black, and why there are people who go on edges of buildings and let themselves fall into the abyss. It’s not even a matter of getting older; people grow to practice self-hatred around puberty, he got to be honest. It’s a matter of slowly getting accustomed to the thought. It’s a matter of waking up one day and thinking, “Maybe dying isn’t so bad.”
Sometimes it terrifies him. Sometimes it soothes him to sleep. Maybe dying isn’t really so bad.
He prayed for the first time in months and accepted the death. If he’s dying, he’ll go. He just had to see him one more time.
Ushijima || Please come visit me.
Not a few minutes later, he added an afterthought.
Ushijima || It’s a favor I’m asking you.
Any pain Oikawa had given him, he will cherish. Even when their anger cannot support words any longer, he will continue to love. That’s the only thing he knew how to do, didn’t he?
“Ushijima, I love you.”
There's no point of denying it. Perhaps it was just because he haven't seen the man in a long time, or because the medication is actually working, but he said no on the total commitment to giving up. No matter what he did, he will always be fond of those kind almond eyes, that rough palm, that handsome face. Oikawa may have only said it once, but it’s strong enough to keep him here.
There’s nothing to fear in death except meeting it without seeing Oikawa one last time.
In his dreams, he saw his angels and denied the gate pass they gave him. Not today, please. I promise I will meet you soon.
But every afternoon, no exceptions, his team comes over and uses his ward as their new afterschool hangout, still no Oikawa in sight. He only sees Goshiki and Shirabu literally two seconds away from scratching each other's faces off, he sees Tendou having half a heart breaking them off and cheering them on, he sees Semi breaking off Kawanishi and Yamagata's dirty jokes and rethinks back his promise to the angels.
Okay, so maybe not heaven.
“Oh suck my dick, Goshiki!” Shirabu growled as Reon restrained him. “One more miracle bullshit and I'll slap your ass with glitter and hang you upside down naked!”
No, definitely not heaven. Ushijima smiled in newfound peace. None of his friends will be there.
“Stubborn as ever,” his mom whispered.
“You raised me to pursue the things I want.”
“Pursue death, darling? No.” His mom drove the both of them home quietly for the rest of the ride.
He was Ushijima Wakatoshi. On the eleventh hour of the year’s bleakest month, one week into leaving the hospital he called home, he rushed himself to the bathroom in the middle of the night, vomiting out bloody red flowers that almost choked him in sleep, and then fell unconscious. It was as if the angels weren't pleased that he chose hell.
No messages from Oikawa or anything from his social media, just as if they don't exist to each other.
So he followed the angels up the bright light. With a deep feeling of nothing, under the light of everything he came through, he laid on the hospital bed for the ninth time waiting for the angels to give him wings to finally fly free.
Except they didn’t. They stared deep in his soul and took back the wings they were about to give him. The glowing ethereal beings shook their heads and kissed his crown. Ushijima haven’t felt more alive by then.
“Someone came to see you,” the angels said. So he went back, in the same white walls that contained his fragile and pale being, and saw the man he loved kneeling on his bedside.
“Just live through this and get your surgery. I promise I wouldn’t hate you when you leave.”
It was the words he heard while he’s banned from wakefulness. The voice itself gave him comfort; he wished nothing more than to hear it again. Ushijima leaned and wrapped Oikawa in an embrace, shedding the tears he grew to love, wishing that Oikawa can at least feel that he's okay.
He's here, he came.
That’s all that matters.
“Oikawa, I’m here.” He answered back, though he simply watched his body lay unconscious as they gather around his body crying. “I'm so glad you came.”
He chose Oikawa over himself in the last two years, and that won’t change until he’s six feet under.
I’ll say it over and over until you strangle me yourself—I love you, Oikawa. I pray you never fade.
Love ethereal and forevermore,
Ushijima Wakatoshi.
In his visions, he held Oikawa and the man held him back. Love ethereal and forevermore indeed.
“U-Ushijima?!” Matsukawa exclaimed, waking up the miserable foursome that remained by his bedside. “Makki! Iwa! Call the nurse!”
“Wha...what?” Oikawa stared at the face in a daze, not believing the sight. Those olive green eyes peeked past heavy lids: very much real and awake and alive.
“Oh hi,” the patient tried his hardest to smile.
“Ushijima...?” Oikawa called, knees giving up and sitting back down in shock. “Oh God, Ushijima.”
He smiled. Even if he can’t move his hands, he can smile. “I heard you.”
“Ushi...!” Oikawa cried, wiping his tears hastefully as the nurses rushed in.
“I lived through.”
Fin.
—
Though it cuts my soul,
Loving you is the only thing I’ve ever known.