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Oikawa sits in the corner of his room, on a navy duvet and snowy sheets, mountains of linen, crisp and harsh and freezing. Specks of fluff dotting his bed like constellations, his lit-up phone like a miniature sun on the dark blanket as it buzzes with notifications.
Ding. Ding. Ding.
It continues to light up
Shut up. Shut up. Shut. Up.
He throws his phone, infuriated, tired and sick, and the continuous sound stops in rejection.
The curtains are closed to create the pseudo space around him, and the only source of light in the room is the soft bluish glow of the night lamp on his bedside table, casting navy like an ocean floor, dark, dreamy, murking with sleep, creatures and monsters lurking, hissing, slimy tentacles waiting tenderly to drag him down and drown him, ice in his lungs. His breath shivers. Oikawa looks up at his ceiling and sees the constellations and the planets drawn out across what once used to be a boring white.
Plaster flakes off and flutters to the floor like a heartbeat. The cobalt blue peels off to reveal white, and it just adds to the ground ivory dauntingly crowding above him. Towering above him. He can’t see.
He can’t even begin to look up.
He breathes in hurriedly, hoping to smell fresh paint like when they first coloured the ceiling together, made brush strokes and shook spray paint cans together, when their hands were both covered with the paints and dusty lids, when they were fulfilled, when they grinned sheepishly as they gazed up. He hopes for the smell of the other boy, a clean, fresh smell, like unpolluted air, like the bitter wind in a dark green forest, or sometimes, Oikawa could even smell the ocean from the boy. He smells the sea. Salt. Bubbles. Water. Oikawa loved taking the other to the beach. He could kiss the brunet, land peppery nips across the skin as backs pressed against golden grains, warmth coating them in a sunlit cocoon, as they engraved deeper into each other’s minds, he could and would kiss the boy, if only he had the chance. He smells of the sunbeams on weekend mornings, lazily teasing and sweet. Oikawa wants to nuzzle his head against Futakuchi’s nape again to take in the wonderful scent of home, of the divine scent of serenity, of the euphoria he feels.
Instead, the whole room reeks of alcohol.
He sighs and trudges out of bed, body heavy, and fumbles with the beer can before aiming it at the bin. He throws. It wobbles midair, unsure of where to go, no autopilot, and yet the pilot himself can’t control the rocket in space.
He misses. It sails past.
Oikawa watches dejectedly as the metal can clangs against the side of the plastic bin and clunks down on the floor. He holds down a groan and falls back on the bed, mattress lifting his body once, twice, he becomes an astronaut for a second, a little second before he fell still. Gravity forces him down. Chains him down. Heavy. Heavy.
He stares at the stark white moon on the left-hand corner of the ceiling.
The pale moon looks lonely up there, alone and separated from the rest of the stars, its curved crescent like a sad little smile of resignation. Oikawa has his own depressing smile on his face, too. It was a default expression nowadays.
He turns on his side to face another wall, this one with stickers holding up photos and mementos of his friends and family, especially a certain brunet who dominated almost every photo on that wall with his amazing beaming face, a shadow cast across his eyes like a veil. Oikawa looks at the planet poster on the yellowed wall, and he watches a sticker slowly fall, the mark of it leaving a shape like a fallen star. He continues to watch as another sticker peels off from the edge of the sheet, then it rips the paper, separating Pluto from the other planets.
It reminds him of distance.
Oikawa feels the creak of the gears within himself. Crevices in his heart. A dip of lowly despondence.
Just like that, his thoughts float back to the other boy, he feels the unbearable attraction he has in his chest, north to south, south to north. Like an astronaut stranded in space, alone, Oikawa was lost in his senses, lost in his thoughts of a certain brunet who meant more to him than the rest of the universe combined.
The universe didn’t matter much anyway.
It didn't matter at all.
His heart hurts, but there was something bittersweet and disgustingly familiar about it, because he knew they were never meant to be, that they were never meant to work. That didn’t change the fact that Oikawa wanted them.
Wanted him.
There’s the fabled pull inside, the gravity pulling him towards the other boy helplessly, his limbs controlled, mind fuzzed with the smell, the laugh, everything about the other boy. Those memories, small, almost unnoticeable, meant everything to him and he wanted it back, because he knew he was the only one who could fully appreciate the brunet’s undying beauty, frozen, suspended in time.
Oikawa feels his ear, he feels the closed piercing hole which he remembers opening with Futakuchi, and it's painful. He feels gravity grounding him to this one person, tying him up and attracting him. He can't forget. There's a simple force pushing him towards the boy, making him dance futile steps and long for the figure lost in the galaxy, lost from Oikawa.
But Futakuchi runs. Futakuchi floats away, on purpose or not.
Whichever it was, Oikawa can't have him.
A piercing sits on the bedside table. Lit by the blue lamp which was still threatening to take Oikawa by his legs to be submerged. Saturn. A sphere with swirls. A circle, a ring around the small marble. It glitters alone. One of them is lost, probably under the bed somewhere, he doesn’t know where it is, but the one remaining looked solitary, like it was missing a piece of itself, exactly like how Oikawa felt.
He could never throw it away. No mater how dull it was, no matter how many times he cleaned it and failed to see past the grime, he couldn't throw it away.
It could've been anything with Kenji.
Oikawa sighs, and switches off the bedside lamp, light being cut off, enveloping in darkness, letting him close his eyes. He welcomes the water gurgling in his lungs. Cut them out, he doesn’t care.
He dreams.
He dreams of stars. Of the supernatural. He dreams of astronauts, aliens, planets, moons, suns.
Sparks pop. He feels light. He breathes. He’s floating in space, he can’t breathe like this.
But he takes in Futakuchi’s own breaths, owns his lungs, steals everything from that kind corpse, from the sickeningly devoted sacrifice. He can't breathe otherwise. He drinks in the memories like the luscious luxury of wine.
He dreams of him.
---
He wakes up again.
Disappointing.