Work Text:
Maybe it’s true that distance makes the heart grow fonder, because that’s one of a million things Isagi blames for her inability to shut the door on Kaiser, even though she promised that she would.
Michaela just feels too familiar to be treated with hostility. You won’t kick out someone who cried in their sleep in your arms, someone you called a goddess on the field in front of everyone and someone you would occasionally eat out on your couch. They had a terrible fight, broke up, went no contact, talked shit about each other to their common friends, got back together and then repeated the cycle, but in the end of the day that’s what they would always do — that’s pretty normal for their dynamic. Doesn’t mean it’s not emotionally exhausting to go through such a rollercoaster without being able to get off the ride. The dread and anxiety left in between Isagi’s chest and stomach after every “this is the last time we got back together” was threatening to break her ribs and it made her feel so sucked dry that she almost understood the feeling of intense hunger that Michaella once described to her in the context of her childhood. Made Isagi want to starve herself to see if the feelings were actually similar.
It was always a love-hate game, walking on a tight rope above the boondocks of loathing, Isagi unknowingly signed an agreement to engage in this lifelong mess when she signed a contract with Bastard Munchen, playing in which meant being entirely owned, body and soul, by the unofficial owner of the team — Michaela. At first Isagi thought that devouring before getting devoured was a great strategy, but that only sped up the inevitable catastrophe of their acquaintanceship.
By the first week of playing together Isagi decided that she’ll kill Kaiser at some point and by the second they were making out on the field because both got overly excited about the goal they don’t even remember who scored. They must’ve been soccer soulmates because there’s no other explanation to why shy and always respectful of personal space Isagi was jumping at the girl who’s guts she hated, wanting to devour her mouth instead of her play style as it was with all the other girls she met through football. Even when Isagi was more infatuated with Rin and Kaiser still had that seemingly one sided humiliationship with Ness going on, even then deep in their hearts they knew that no love interest could recreate the tension between them two even if it was rivalish and not romantic, they were always just drawn into each other in a too twisted way to be held back.
And they found escape in their shared creativity: starting from the strategies for the upcoming matches to attempting to write a poem together because it turned out they had common taste in literature — something so simple yet thought provoking mostly. Reading the same literature was different from writing it through the language barrier as Isagi still hasn’t mastered german by that time — they still had to use those Mikage corp micro-interpreters and it was still buzzing Isagi the wrong way when she looked at Michaela talking as her lip movements and the translation in her ears weren’t in sync. And while writing their first poem they had their first thoughtful, slow, deliberate kiss — not like those on the field that were all about passion and excitement. Slower movements, shaky breathes, it was different. The only thing that all of their make out sessions shared was the stimulus — admiration. Touching lips and shoving tongues into each other’s mouths was never a loving gesture. When you see a contortionist perfectly executing their performance you want to stand up and applaud and them kissing was an equivalent for applause. Scored an impressive goal while being held back by two defenders? Deserved a kiss. Used a big word in latin to describe the most everyday thing ever? Deserved a kiss. To show affection at that point of their “affair” they usually used to do a barely noticeable nod or a thumb up.
During the break up phases, the accumulated affection was redirected towards overthinking or chewing on the inside of the cheek.
“How did we come here?”
“How did we come here?”
False memories became such a common occurrence for Isagi that she felt like she’s going insane. She found an explanation in recalling them too often as it apparently made her brain reconstruct the way she remembered things. At some point it got so bad she almost convinced herself they were officially together.
And they were not, which was probably the worst part of it all.
She recalled them planning their wedding instead of agreeing on how the greatest loves of all times were never fastened together by marriage, recalled them longing for a child instead of how they came to conclusion that maybe it’s not that necessary to leave something after you in life just because, as they were just dust particles in the universe, tiny beetles to the stars, so it didn’t really matter if there will be something they will be remembered by, Isagi recalled Michaela being the softest soul possible instead of her being a piece of coal made into a diamond under pressure of being exposed to the evil world.
But then she remembered.
Remembered that coal can actually not be made into a diamond, that the world was evil only in Michaela’s head and that she refused to believe in the concept of soul.
So Michaela was just a piece of coal then.
In that case Isagi could be a white cloth that was painted with the black little thingy which was also kind of hard to wash out: you try to remove a little smudge, but you only end up smearing it. And the coal, the more you use it, the smaller it gets, it grinds. Self-destruction might have really been unavoidable then — an unusable stained white cloth and an unusable, size of a nail piece of a mineral.
Kicking the pebbles on the sidewalk, Isagi exhales. Her mind was really wandering to some bizarre places in the silence of a lonely walk.
Lonesome.
Isagi showed Michaela the town she grew up in, and though it’s not a popular tourist destination and it doesn’t have much fancy stuff like Brandenburg Gate or East Side Gallery that the latter grew up around, sharing her dear hometown in Saitama was something important and to some extent even intimate for Isagi. Bringing someone to her parents’ house to stay for a week or two, sleeping in the same bed during the visit, sharing silly childhood pictures and going on long and not as lonesome walks as her teenage self often had, it all felt like letting Michaela to know her on some deeper level than just a friend or a foe or whatever they were before the trip.
Embarrassing was the feeling when Kaiser stopped in front of a manga store for good ten minutes just to call all the customers perverts or weirdos thinking that manga necessarily meant something bawdry, having hentai images in mind, and dismissive was her attitude when she realised how wrong she was but didn’t want to admit it. Hurried was Michaela’s pace whenever she was eating the bakery Isagi’s mom offered almost every evening and reluctant was her confession to why she always eats like that’s her last meal.
Numb were Isagi’s tongue and probably her brain whenever her parents asked if Michaela is visiting again anytime soon, mostly because she wanted it so bad herself.
Hurt were her feelings.
Was their relationship ever romantic or did they just enjoy having a part-time soulmate and a full time listener in one person? No, at some point it did get romantic. Was it when Kaiser asked Isagi to move in with her or was it when they both pretended to be asleep while laying together on a couch that late summer evening so they could sleep together the whole night without making it weird for the other one? No, it was probably when Isagi called their night together “making love” instead of “fucking” like Michaela would usually put it and something in the latter melted. Making love, woah. Her? She was making love? She was making love.
Love? What is that, really? Both of them were past teenage maximalism and their philosopher at 16 eras, but then why were they still thinking about love? Aren’t these thoughts supposed to stay in your adolescence as beautiful memories? Isn’t adulthood made to work your life away and see doctors when your knees start to hurt more than usual? Adulthood is not about believing in rainbows and “forever”, it’s about grey and “maybe in the next life”, though Michaela made grey very attractive of a colour by showing Isagi her grey hair that she could avoid having at nineteen “in the next life” where the circumstances didn’t force her to grow up and grow old before she even got her period. Was adulthood about Michaela, perhaps?
Maybe everything really was about Michaela at the end of the day: every rose in every flower shop, every bread crust in every bread basket, every crack in Isagi’s heart.
Why is it such a big deal anyway? They never dated, so why mourn the end of something that has never begun? Why does it hurt this badly? Isagi did have to go through break ups before and she felt naturally sad during those times, but this insurmountable hollowness that Michaela left after herself wasn’t fair, not at all, that was such an unnatural amount of sadness. Maybe that’s what she was trying to describe when talking about her mother leaving. After all, that’s all Michaela knew how to do: to leave like her mother, to run drills like water. What a nonsense, ugh.
Isagi was also running drills to forget. Running drills, reading, contemplating lobotomy. Just to let Michaela in anyway.
The distance makes the heart grow fonder for sure, because now they are not screaming and punching like they did last time they saw each other, they are peacefully sitting at the table with a cup of coffee each, talking about weather, Eagles and getting into an actual relationship.