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It’s snowing again. And raining. Can’t people decide on the weather? Can’t it at least not snow? Or rain? Stop being indecisive. It’s rude.
Oikawa pulls his scarf tighter around his neck and watches ice creep over a puddle on the sidewalk.
The snow is unforgivingly beautiful as it freezes the town in bleak white, repainting the dull grey of concrete he usually sees. A harsh sun highlights the top of the tall buildings, making the morning city glitter in ivory, frost laughing as it threatens to bite Oikawa's fingers off. Oikawa shivers; as beautiful as it is, he really wanted the normal spring weather back.
He can remember that before, three years ago, it was much warmer and better than now.
Why is it so cold this year? Isn’t it March already? Or is he just ahead of time and is it actually January?
Oikawa scoffs to himself.
Well, it may feel so cold because Oikawa is alone this year, and he just wants some human warmth and touch.
He remembers a vague smile of a certain brown-eyed boy flash in the back of his mind and his face falls in a grimace.
They’re far apart from each other, they can’t bring themselves to see each other again. It hurts in the way someone would stab you with a knife and watch you as you bleed, as you writhe in pain. It hurts because he longed for even a brush of their shoulders or a touch of their fingertips again. It hurts because he knows that the other wouldn’t feel the same as he does right now.
Three years. Bit too long to stay pining over one person, right? Especially when you were the one who left? Oikawa thinks as he clutches the packet of the sweets the younger brunet loved so much.
He doesn’t want to open the packet to take one out and eat it because they were sure to remind him of the taste of the other boy’s lips.
Then why do you have the packet in the first place? A voice whispers in the back of his mind and Oikawa swats it away.
He kicks at a stone on the pavement and watches it roll away and skid to a stop a few meters away. His vision looks foggy from the way his breaths are puffs of white, and he shivers at the cold. His hands are red and numb, and Oikawa decides that he should go somewhere to be warm.
He sighs and walks into the nearest shop, a bakery, the wonderful smell of milk bread enveloping his senses like a hug, and he plasters a smile on his freezing face as he greets the lady at the counter.
He looks around.
---
Futakuchi stumbles. He’s tired. He needs caffeine. He needs sleep. His body screams at him.
He doesn’t comply.
Caffeine? His brain complains.
No. He says back.
Please? It huffs.
Futakuchi rolls his eyes. No.
His brain resorts to mumbled complaints. Futakuchi nearly laughs.
Instead he brings out the sour gummies in his bag and throws it in his mouth.
“This will ruin my teeth,” he mumbles as he chews. The sour taste engulfs his mouth and it makes his lips tingle slightly, like electricity was running through his veins, sparks zapping and popping in his system. He licks the sugar off his lower lip.
He is tempted to smoke, and he brings out a cigarette from his pocket and a lighter from another, and he’s about to light it when he sees a bakery. And he remembers one of his dire needs.
Coffee.
Without a second thought, he runs into the shop, and immediately regrets it.
He smells milk bread.
He’s hit by the nostalgic pain.
He’s hit by the sweetness of sugar and the fresh smell of baked goods. He’s hit with the overwhelming smell of deliciously sweet pastries and the warmth and the coziness. He’s hit with something inside him building up and threatening to explode, making him feel sick, because he’s remembering, he doesn’t want to and he wants to tear his mind apart just to cleanse it all.
He’s about to quickly go to the counter to buy his coffee, when the door opens with a tinkle.
He automatically turns and he stops.
He stares.
Oikawa stares back at him.
---
Futakuchi is staring at him.
Their gazes are intertwined like their twisted fate, they can’t look away, it’s like they’re stuck in place, it’s like they’ve been glazed over with freezing ice, they're the North and South, helplessly attracted to each other with an automatic attraction but separated between continents and continents of land and ice.
It melts once a customer awkwardly tries to shuffle past Oikawa, and time snaps back into reality when Oikawa moves out of the way.
Before Oikawa can reach out, the brunet’s running past him, and he turns to see the door slam shut, and he feels something, something like resolve, something like the hard wall he thought he managed to build up over the years, crumble and fall.
It would be best if he left it there.
But his feet are running, running through the shop, running through the snow, running through the cold town as he chases that back he missed.
The wind slaps him angrily.
“Hey… wait!”
He manages to grab a gloved hand and he yanks the boy towards him, twisting his arm a little and making the younger brunet wince. Oikawa is almost tempted to let go.
Almost.
“Let me go!”
“I’m sorry.”
“If you feel sorry, then let me go!”
“I can’t.”
“Why?”
“We need to talk.”
Futakuchi turns to face him completely and Oikawa is taken aback by his expression. Glaring. Horrifyingly beautiful, despite looking like he wants to kill Oikawa.
“About what? You were the one who left me three years ago.”
Oikawa winces and Futakuchi stares back defiantly, fist trembling, lips quivering angrily. The look in Futakuchi’s eyes is just sorrowful. Bitter, like coffee.
“I know.”
“You know? Really? Do you really know? Do you know how hurt I was? You disappearing without a word? Leaving me all alone?”
Fiery. Spicy. Hot. Flaming and flaring.
“I’m sorry.” He sounds feeble, and Futakuchi can tell.
“Sorry doesn’t even begin to cut it. I-” He shudders and tears start freely falling down his cheeks, ice trying to freeze it but body temperature melting the ice before the tears could frost over.
Hot, burning, and Oikawa wanted to touch.
“I hate you, bastard.”
“I know. I hate me too.” Futakuchi’s breath catches in his throat.
“I hate you so much, you have no idea how much I hate you right now. Three years, don’t bother trying to do anything now, because I hate-”
“But I love you.”
Those words hurt.
He can remember Oikawa saying goodbye each time they left each other. Along with a simple “I love you”.
Oikawa’s “I love you”’s were toxic. Futakuchi wanted to drown in the honeyed tone. Wanted his lungs to be filled with sweetness. But that wasn't right.
He needed to swallow down the sour gummies to keep the saccharine taste in check.
The tears were salty, so why was he falling under the bewitchment of sugar? The chocolate brown of Oikawa’s eyes?
“I love you.”
Listening to him saying those words made all the ice thaw like magic in his heart, like a dreadful curse being lifted, it made his heart beat for Oikawa, fluttering with feelings he wished were kept silent. He wanted to lock these butterflies up, chop off their wings, pull off their antennas, but right now, he was cradling them, letting them land on his fingertips. The taste of release from the spell was kind yet bitter, because Oikawa was the one who cursed him in the first place.
“Stop. I can’t hear you.”
Tell me you love me more. Reassure me. Hold me.
“No.”
“Stop, stop, stop, go away, I don’t want to see you, I don’t like you, please, just let me go…”
Hold me tightly. Break me. Kiss me.
“No.”
“You’re hurting, please, go away,”
Don’t leave again.
“I can’t.”
“You had no problem letting me go a few years ago.”
I didn’t mean that. Love me harder.
“I’m sorry.”
“You can’t just expect me to forgive you like that, asshole.”
I’ll forgive you a million times, don’t leave me.
“Not asking for it.”
“Then what do you want?”
“You.”
The air is knocked out of Futakuchi’s lungs and before his mind can register the words, Futakuchi is turning, and running again. He’s scared of those words. Can he even begin to trust them? Where was the line between lies and the truth?
He’s scared of himself. He wants love again, he’s glad for the touch, heat spirals from Oikawa’s fingertips on his arms, sending shock in his veins, sparks illuminating his eyes. But why does he still want it? Didn’t you tell yourself you won’t think about him years ago?
He’s scared of love, he’s scared to let their distance close, he’s scared of the milk bread on Oikawa’s lips.
But strong hands are ready this time, and a pair of arms grabs him from behind, coiling around him, trapping him, tightening. He smells shampoo. He smells pine. He smells books. But most of all, he smells milk bread.
He wants to struggle, but his body won’t cooperate. His arms dangle by his side, not even fighting the hold around them.
He could feel the heavy breathing of the man behind him and it makes him crazy, the touch and the closeness and the proximity they were in was making him drunk over and over again. He missed this, and he hated himself for being this way, the way he was so affected, so tipsy.
“Walk with me.”
Futakuchi can’t refuse.
---
They walk in silence, unsure whether they were forgiven enough yet to step in a little closer. The bakery is a speck behind them now, the smell of milk bread was gone, yet Futakuchi was still uneasy because Oikawa next to him reeked of it. He reeked of sugar and pastries. He reeks of sweetness, when Futakuchi knows firsthand that Oikawa is anything but that stuff.
Oikawa is the first to speak up.
“Here.”
He passes the sour gummy packet in his bag and Futakuchi stares back and forth, at the packet, and then back at Oikawa.
“Why…?”
“I have them on my person.” Futakuchi looks dissatisfied with the answer, but he still opens up the packet and shoves his hands inside to chew on the small sweets. His face falls into a smile despite himself.
“I thought you didn’t like these?”
“I hate sour things. And when we were,” Oikawa gestured hesitantly to the space between them, “When we were not together, I just hated them, because they reminded me of you.”
A crestfallen look fashions its way onto Futakuchi’s face and Oikawa feels the gap between them expand, and he hurriedly goes to reel it back in.
“...Well, do you still hate them now?”
The question makes Oikawa stop, and he turns over to Futakuchi. He has a worried, anxious look on his face, shoulders squared, jaw clenched.
Oikawa pauses in his steps and thinks. For one, he hates sour things. He loves milk bread, not sour gummies. But still…
The silence is agonising enough for Futakuchi to feel something hot beneath his eyelids again, when Oikawa leans over to take a piece of sour gummies.
Futakuchi stares at him in shock, Oikawa stares down at the piece like he’s bracing for something, then he shoves the sweet in his mouth.
His face contorts into disgust and Futakuchi feels hope withering inside him.
“How… is it?”
He glares down at the floor, forcing his eyes shut to keep the burning inside him, to bottle them up so that he drowns inside. There’s no answer yet, and Futakuchi can’t bear to see.
A tap on his shoulder alerts him and he looks up, vision tinted with green, and sees Oikawa with a weak smile on his face.
“It was…”
Oikawa’s tongue darts out to swipe off the sugar off his lips, and he grimaces again because he really hates that tangy taste.
But does he hate the boy in front of him?
Oikawa waits a few more seconds, choosing his words carefully.
“It was,”
Futakuchi looks at him expectantly, fiddling with the buttons of his coat unconsciously as he waits.
“It was okay.”