Archive of Our Own

You sigh. The ceiling looked as if it were to crush down on your body at any moment. You let out a chuckle and roll over on your bed looking out at the cityscape of Tokyo from your high floor apartment windows. You live well off with a sustainable job and overworked constantly, today like none other. 16 hours of work and it was now 3 AM, you had gotten home at 11 PM and drank a bit as you mindlessly stared out the window. It was pretty. The redlights and glaring stop signs against the darkness of each building.

You sit up and dress up a bit, black jeans and a jacket sufficed as you walked through your room to the kitchen and grabbed your keys. Another night is another drive. You were no way drunk, a little tipsy but it never stopped you from the cold wind that would hit your face with your late night drives and the soberness that came over you soon after.

You turned the ignition and drove, where? Somewhere that gave you warmth and somewhere that you yearned for, only for it to be dusted in the archives of your memories.

“ I got my driver's license last week. Just like we always talked about.”

The song blaring through your ears with the wind whipping through your face.

“ y/n-chan!”

The voice of your boyfriend coming to you as you walked from the school gates. His arm slings around you.

“You better get your license soon, y/n. I can’t take you everywhere you know.

“I know I know Tooru.”

He smiles down at you and makes you stop.

“Wh- What is it? Is there something on my face?”

He leans down and kisses you on the cheek.

“No. I am just excited for you to get your licenses!”

“Awww- OW!”

You yelp at the pinching on your cheek.

“EXCITED SO THAT I DO NOT HAVE TO DRIVE YOUR LAZY ASS!”

“HEY!”

You scream at Oikawa’s running figure ahead of you as you sprint off after him. Iwaizumi was tired of his two friend’s bullshit. But, glad that his best friend’s girlfriend was another person he could call to get him away from Oikawa as soon as possible.

Oikawa was a sweet boy and passionate about volleyball, and you loved his burning passion. You walked by him in middle school and well into highschool before you started to date him in both of your guys’ third years. For graduation, you drove yourself and the 2 boys to the beach and splashed in the ocean in your traditional clothing well into the sunset. Your mind comes back as you make a turn at the redlight and you smile a bit. How happy it was 5 years long ago.

“ And you're probably with that blonde girl. Who always made me doubt. She's so much older than me.”

“Who is she?” You asked.

“Ah! My friend from a training camp! She was a manager but recently transferred here! I wanted her to meet my lovely girlfriend so that she would have another lovely friend here too!”

“You mean my first lovely friend,” she speaks out with a smirk.

“Hey!” Oikawa glares back.

You giggle at your childish boyfriend as the girl sticks her hand out. Skin, pale and smooth as her hands were delicate and small, nothing compared to your tanner skin tone. Her eyes were a hazel brown and yours, a neutral brown. Her blonde hair flowed all the way down to her hip in perfection which made your hair look untameable. Her smile at you as you shook hands gave off 1000 smiles and you smiled your weaker smile back, glancing to side at Oikawa who smiled at her as well. She was not much older than you, but from this encounter, it seemed she had years and years on you. You felt small against her as you excused yourself to go to the restroom and threw up at your own thoughts.

Later, Oikawa found out and hugged and reassured you and kissed your forehead over and over again.

“Hey, no need to worry princess,” He whispers as he takes your chin between his fingers to raise your head, “I love you so much, no one looks as perfect as you do.”

He finished off with another forehead kiss and a smile.

You scoff silently. That smile of his dragging your heart into millions and millions of directions of love and happiness, warmth and comfort. You turn a few more times before going into some neighborhoods. You pass upon a park. The park you scraped your knee at in middle school and triggered your run-ins and eventual friendship with Oikawa. You park the car and walk out. You sit yourself on a swing for a bit and rock back and forth, imagining the scenes on the playground.

“You are it!”

“No I am not,” Oikawa retorted, crossing his arms.

“Hey, you are no fun,” you say.

A smack comes onto Oikawa’s head and you gasp in fear at it. Iwa emerges behind Oikawa.

“Stop being a loser and play tag correctly.”

You smirk and stick you tongue out at him.

“y/n, you are going to get it for that.”

You giggle before he sprints after you and you sprint off in hopes of mercy as you juke him and what not.
-

“Hey.”

“Hey,” you say at the Oikawa swinging in the seat next to you.

It was your 2nd year of highschool, you recall at the imaginations playing out.

Your second year self sat in the swing you currently occupied.

"What’s with you?”

“ Nothing.”

“Nothing? Did not seem like nothing, you keep avoiding Iwa and I, especially me. What’s wrong?”

His grip tightened on the chains holding the swing as he looked at you with fear then. You jumped off and walked to him and held his face in your hands.

“Hey, tell me what’s wrong.”

“You,” Oikawa started, “You would not leave me right?”

“No,” you chuckle out confused.

“I like you.”

“Hm,” you question trying to make words out of his mumbling.

He suddenly stood up and pressed his lips onto yours, making you melt. He pulled back and started to ramble.
“Oh, I’m so sorry, y/-”

You pull him back for another sweet kiss and smile against his lips.

“Why did it take you so long?”

That day you two walked out of the park happily with intertwined hands. Another time, 2 years after, it was Oikawa running and dragging you to his car feverishly to attack you in his car, making you pass out after that first session in the passenger seat as he went to drive around. You woke up that day to the cold wind hitting the bruising on your collarbone.

“What a bastard,” you whisper to yourself as you pull into a small lane of houses.

“Guess you didn't mean what you wrote in that song about me.”

Oikawa finished singing for your 20th birthday, about 2 almost 3 years ago. Your hands flew up to your face with hot tears brimming your eyes. You had told him he had a nice voice when you caught him singing to you as you slept. You nagged him to sing again for you but he refused, now here he smiled at you as he sang you a sweet song he wrote for you, about you, for your 20th birthday.

Your smile seemed a little hurt with that thought, you haven’t gotten a proper happy birthday this year because you cut yourself away from any friends. You did not hold contact with Iwaizumi or your college friends. Once you graduated a semester early from college, you threw yourself into work that same year because of this.

You drive as the last lines of the song resonates in your head. The street lights dimmed out after a few years, or maybe it was the tipsiness you had that would soon be pushed away. You pull slowly through the lane and fall upon his house. Your car pulls to a stop and you look at the house.

“Cause you said forever, now I drive alone past your street.”

You felt water on your arm. You look down and see tears, slowly but surely dropping.

Why? We were called off almost a year ago. Why? I should not even be here. I end up here almost every day now at ungodly hours for what? To seek the comfort I used to own, used to go home to, used to wake with? Is it so that he can take me back? So that I remind myself it was my fault when it was not? Why. Why y/n. What is wrong with you going back to your ex as if he wanted you like that again?

The home that you looked at threw your alcohol intoxicated self away and brought you memories. Memories of warmth and happiness, where you cooked with and for Oikawa.Where you hugged him, cuddled with him, kissed him, made love to him. The place you called home for 2 years as you had been disowned after being with Oikawa in highschool. The warmth of the blanket you had wrapped around you and Oikawa. Your legs tangled every morning as the sun shone onto his perfect face. His morning kisses, his burnt pancakes and crazy volleyball schedule. That house held so much and you wanted it to be your forever home.

You quickly wipe your tears as you roll up the window and place your hands at 10 and 2 and step on the gas. You drive looking straight forward as you pass by someone. Someone you wish you had not seen, Oikawa. He was drunk and had that girl, that girl from years back wrapped under his arms. You pull to a conspicuous stop and listen to their conversation.

“Tooru.”

“Hm?”

“You are so heavy.”

“I am not heavy, you are.”

“What the heck, you are so mean.”

“It was a joke. Why can’t you take a joke like y/n did?”

You straightened at your name off of his tongue. You felt your insides tingle with the yearn of that warmth his voice gave you and your name. Your fists clench against the rubber of the wheel.

“I am not y/n, Tooru. I am your girlfriend after y/n.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, come on, and.” she inspects his finger as you turn your head and get a closer look at his hand.

A ring.

“Stop wearing this,” she slips it off and shoves it in her pocket, “This was last year. I am sick of this. But, I love you so, come on.”

She continues to carry the dead weight of intoxicated Oikawa as your face turns into a broken smile. Your grip whitening on the steering wheel of your car. You look at the same spot of your finger, empty. You look at the necklace hanging onto your rear view mirror, glistening.
The ring glistened in the light, and showed you a light of happiness that you once held to, happiness that made you keep going. Your tears slipping out at a superb speed as you placed your forehead between your hands on the wheel and a sob ripped out of your heart. The song looped and the lyrics were the only thing you could hear as you quietly sobbed with the continuous blink of the emergency lights on your car.

“ How you could be so okay now that I'm gone. I guess you didn't mean what you wrote in that song about me.”

Your tears fall unforgivingly as you jolted up and ripped the beaded necklace that Oikawa made which held your engagement ring. The beads scattering everywhere in the front seats as you clamp a hand over your face to keep you from screaming out at 4 AM in the morning. You squeeze your eyes shut and open them to see the glistening of your ring, gone. Maybe it was the tears, but it was not. The glistening and glow of happiness this ring showed you a few minutes prior disappeared, in thin air. Your trembling hand held the ring as you nervously rolled down your window. 

You stared at the ring and the window. You held the ring between two fingers outside the window.Wanting to let go, but not being able to. You stared at it.

That day gave you so much happiness to be married to your best friend and lover. You smile at it once more remembering that day that you hugged and cried with tears of happiness to him in the comfort of your home. Your tears spilling at the thoughts of the past tear your chest in and out because of the stretch of your thoughts and feelings.

The wind picked up for the fall season which fell upon Japan. Your trembling hand did nothing to aid the jewelry in your weak fingers, causing it to fall and roll off on to the street. You retract your hand. You place your hands back onto the wheel and look at the slight tanline of the ring it had left. Your tears never stopped as you turned on your car again, starting to drive down the quiet street and back to your cold apartment, and the last of the song picked up yet again.

“ Yeah, you said forever, now I drive alone past your street.”