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He was never meant to see him again; it was such a stupid idea.
It was stupid of him to want to go back to Japan, it was stupid for him to want to go back to Miyagi, it was stupid for him to take a walk, and it was stupid for him to go back to the place where he and Futakuchi met in high school; a park bench, two vending machines nearby, one blue, one red, a set of bins where they used to aim their empty bottles and cans and watch them sail into the trashcans and never miss.
Looking back, the brunet never wore the same clothes. Oikawa always came in a tracksuit, straight after a run, but Futakuchi was always neatly dressed, with variety each time; silk shirts, gold necklaces, plastic hair clips, cotton trousers, denim jackets, leather boots, lace collars, wooly hats, velvet tops, and silver rings. He could pull anything off; he was that attractive.
It was unfair.
It was wrong of him to long to see Futakuchi again.
Didn’t he leave that all behind?
But the boy never left, dragging along across the floor while clutching Oikawa’s ankle, crawling his hands up his legs, then his torso, then to his face until Oikawa could do nothing but gaze into the pretty face he hated so much. Until he could only watch lips curve into a snide smirk tipped with a twitch of his tongue and a teasing taunt, could only watch Futakuchi caress his fragile look, spidery fingers and willowed hair veiling over the face like they were in some sort of cruel wedding ceremony.
He was like some living ghost, voice a chatter in his brain, clutter taking up space, annoyingly vibrant and perfect and irreplaceable. His veil made it impossible to see, and in order to gaze upon what divinity or what hellish being which lay behind the clouded folds, Oikawa would have to pull the veil up himself, hasten their vows and give the boy a soft kiss.
Why was that so hard?
Of course, he knew why.
So Oikawa couldn’t argue against the begging in his mind, and he trudged in the sludge of the autumn afternoon, trekking through the torn leaves, twigs thickening into branches as the trees greeted their hundredth birthday or so. He needed no maps, only following his mind, using the crisp wind as a lever to his walk and a jolt to his speed.
He only needed to turn a corner, and then he’d be back. Back to do what, he didn’t know, but he would be back, and everything would be the same - apart from the fact that the most important thing was missing-
Crunch.
His boots halted.
The wind stopped.
It guided Oikawa off the pumpkin carriage, and the footmen hurriedly cleared after the mess of fallen branches he made.
He stopped.
His breath stopped.
Nothing could be heard.
Nothing, apart from the boy on the bench, the boy slouching on the bench, the boy’s boots tapping the floor, and long unfamiliar hazel hair fluttering like a lovesick letter from a lovesick moron and Oikawa couldn’t stop looking.
Had the boy noticed him yet?
It looks like he hadn’t. The boy was too indulged in seemingly clutching on his can of black coffee and reading between the rug of leaves at the smouldered ground, counting the myriad of lines and the bits of rock in between.
Only a few more steps.
Just three, maybe four more.
But then, there was an electric shock, and Oikawa gave out some strangled noise, indescribable relief and hunger and dissatisfaction.
“You have to be more subtle than that.”
Futakuchi was looking at him.
Oikawa’s mind fully comprehended.
Futauchi Kenji was looking at him.
They were within a meter’s radius of each other. They were close. They were touching.
They were holding hands. Or rather, Futakuchi was pinching the fabric of the hem of Oikawa’s sleeve to edge closer. A silver puff escaped their lips, and Futakuchi cracked out his tongue to flicker at papery lips, and it terrified Oikawa when he noticed himself staring for the expanse of seconds of that singular action;
How could the boy affect him this much?
“Why are you here?”
The boy smiled curtly and it looked so fashionable, garnet lips against garnet scarf, and garnet scarf against chestnut hair.
His chest hurt.
“I live here. Next question?”
Oikawa swallowed. How did the boy know that he wanted to ask more? To devour information and the boy himself like some starved man hidden in an attic to save everyone from his murderous intent?
“How do you know I wanted to ask more?”
“Because I live in your heart. Don’t I? And rent-free, too?”
How did you know?
“Your hair’s grown out.”
The giggle which followed almost fooled Oikawa, but he collected himself and painfully watched Futakuchi drag a stray strand of hair behind his ear, slowly and carefully like he knew that Oikawa was mesmerized.
“I look pretty, right?”
“...Right.”
Futakuchi laughed again, and Oikawa couldn't take it.
He grabbed Futakuchi and they collapsed on the back of the bench, sudden movement making their breaths thunder, and their bodies, their faces, their eyes giving their all. Oikawa grasped Futakuchi’s hair, and he almost shivered at the difference from years and years ago, because Futakuchi was suddenly this different person. Before with a captivating gaze and with his tantalising cheeky smile peering through a falling fringe, amorous: now the confidence suddenly deflating and shrinking as Oikawa feasted his eyes upon the other, gaze lost and puzzled.
And that’s what it was always meant to be like.
“Kenji,”
Futakuchi couldn’t joke anymore, now that Oikawa had called him that, when Oikawa had dug up that name in that tone and that voice.
So he trembled in his arms and listened.
“Yes?”
Oikawa buried his head into Futakuchi’s hair, and breathed in the scent of shampoo and the smell of autumn and some underlying scent Oikawa didn’t recognise, and all of his instincts, whether beastly or humanoid, all of them growled and snarled like they had an invader in their field, in their property.
“May I?”
He didn’t even need to ask what. Futakuchi knew.
With a rash touch, he took Oikawa’s hand, and Oikawa pulled him up, and they were holding hands again, and they were breathing again, and they were making a mistake again.
—-
Oikawa felt like a conductor, the king of the orchestra, the leader, guiding Futakuchi with his hands, inducing the airy breaths and trembling lips, listening to the drumming and thudding of the pulsing organ he could hear when he pressed a flushed ear to a flushed chest. He could feel the uttermost salvation and pride when the younger produced such melodious sounds that only he was capable of, tempo rushed and words slurred, a thrill, voice pitched high like a flute, a trill, and when Futakuchi’s saturated gaze followed his movement, Oikawa could only swear that indeed, Futakuchi was a masterpiece, an unfinished symphony only completed when Oikawa was there, an art.
Why had he not noticed before?
Or rather, why did he choose to ignore?
Futakuchi’s hair rained down, draped like a web, shadowing over a pristine face, sticking to skin embedded with sweat. Oikawa allowed himself to indulge in the image of a butterfly being devoured by beastly predators, spiders, moths, wings torn off and fluttering; Futakuchi’s eyelashes looked like butterflies, Oikawa noted.
He looked weak.
It was disgusting, for him, probably.
It was delightful.
He traced the torso, tapping the area along with a stammering heartbeat, and then drew a singular line down the centre of his chest, and he fitted and whispered in reverence,
“You shouldn’t do that.”
And when Futakuchi cocked his head to the side while dangerously shifting forward on Oikawa’s stomach to meet his gaze, he repeated,
“You shouldn’t look like that.”
One blink, then two. Futakuchi bent down and his fringe could almost touch Oikawa’s cheek, and his smile looked gently troubled as he asked,
“Like what?”
And then, Oikawa had no reason to hide. He was lured out of the vines, and his curled body hissed in venom, and he was gone and insane. After a brief pause of pants and breaths, he traced the warm chest again.
“Beautiful.”
Futakuchi shook; the palette of reds and purples across his neck and skin trembled with him. Oikawa placed a kiss, and a nip, and then a bite on Futakuchi’s blushing left wrist. Flowers and buds across skin, painting across a canvas shaped in the figure of some lowly human who gained wings because the heavens thought that a mortal with eyes like that would make a sculpture of a beautiful angel like the messy deities they are.
“I feel like I’m going to tear you apart.”
His nail was pointed, like a knife. Dreadfully, dreadfully sharp.
“I might even kill you like this.”
Futakuchi didn’t hesitate. He didn’t even have to think. It was just a natural conscience, his words following Oikawa’s voice, his eyes reading Oikawa’s lips, his heart being clenched and pummeled to pieces.
After all, he was merely a slave, a boy in the corner, a man in the corner, huddled and wishing for warmth, offering kisses like they were cigarettes, cursed eyes and cursed noises and cursed everything, needing to beg for a kind person to build walls to crawl around his heart, cried for a something he couldn't almost begin to even identify.
Why couldn't he wait? Why couldn't he stop and think for even a second before lending himself again? Was he that simple?
Oikawa must think that he is. Oikawa is a coward.
If only he wasn't so god-like in demeanor. If only his eyes didn't reflect the stars. If only he could be blinded by the sunlight he was used to absorbing.
If Oikawa didn't burn so badly.
Futakuchi took that hand on his chest, and dragged it up, up, right up to his throat, finger almost brushing against his Adam’s apple, and with the most alluring desperate voice, he whimpered out a plead,
“Kill me…”
And as Futakuchi’s strands cloaked both of their faces as they kiss, Oikawa couldn’t help but wish that Futakuchi would never cut his hair short again. He wished that Futakuchi could be his trapped Rapunzel in an inescapable tower, and that Oikawa could push away any hopeful heroes off the rose-covered walls and keep the boy to himself.
It was selfish.
It was selfish, because the boy wasn’t even his.
Selfish, because this may have been the only time.
Selfish.
His hair fell across Oikawa’s face again, and Oikawa brushed the strands away.
This wasn’t just a simple question with two possible answers. It was a horrid maze, a twisted one at that; they longed for touch which wasn’t possible to own without scratching each other. They had to take a side; burn off the tips of their fingers and nails just for a single scalding touch, free of all the pain but still filled with a fiery fiend which cackled as it grazed their hearts. Or they could have no touch at all, or accept all of the bleeding out and drag their pointed teeth of shaking arms and lounge their hands over and across their legs so fine and hope for the best.
But there wasn’t enough time to think, to distance each other across a table and some coffee cups, there wasn’t enough space between them. It was too little. They had to be at opposite ends of the universe to think, but they were stuck on a measly planet which could be crossed by a plane or two, and then a drive down a motorway. If only they were pulled apart from clingy marionette strings, if only they were drawn apart, if only the dwells of wedding bells could place them away from each other, if only they were at opposite ends of the galaxy so that by the time they reached each other again, they were both dead and stuck in hell.
If they were both in hell, they would gladly watch each other burn.
To wish for all of that though, Oikawa needed an agreement. A promise. A pact. A vow. A vow for them lit in church-light, rings to choke their voices, seals to intertwine their casualties, veils to hide their expressions, and wine to get drunk in front of a feast with their hearts poked and burned like steak.
So Oikawa called out to Futakuchi, ran the base of his thumb across a teary cheek, kissing away the salt and aquamarine.
“Kenji.”
“Please.”
“May I?”
And Futakuchi nodded, and they tumbled and stumbled again, and they had another failure on their lists again, and they had done something insistently wrong again.