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Iwaizumi wakes up to sunlight drifting over him in hazy, honeyed bars. It’s a quiet morning. He hasn’t felt so well-rested since the semester began. The sheets on the other side of the bed are rumpled and empty, cool to the touch. As he pushes himself out of bed, scouring the sleep from his eyes with the heel of a palm, he notices the lavender and jasmine petals strewn across the pillows, still faintly fragrant. He snorts, shakes his head.
By the lounge window, Oikawa is curled up on the sofa in a long wedge of amber light. He glances up, notices Iwaizumi, and breaks into a delighted smile that settles warmly into Iwaizumi’s chest.
“You’re up early,” Iwaizumi says, stifling a yawn as he walks into the kitchenette. “Photosynthesising or something?”
It’s an old joke, particularly since Hanamaki has no compunction about slipping in at least three references to increasingly obscure points of plant biology per visit. Oikawa rolls his eyes, but sprouts a little sunflower from the back of his hand anyway. It bobs its head genially in Iwaizumi’s direction.
Iwaizumi fills the kettle and puts it to boil. “You had breakfast yet?”
If sunflowers could be said to look reproachful, then the one on Oikawa’s hand certainly does. Yes, yes, most important meal of the day, no need to lecture, I can do it myself, he signs. I finished the leftover oyakodon from last night.
Iwaizumi, who’d been reaching towards the fridge door, repurposes the movement to aim for the cupboard door instead. “Multiple complete sentences in a row from Oikawa Tooru, is the world ending,” he mumbles. He grabs a slice of toast, ignores the indignant scent of freesia emanating from Oikawa’s direction.
Sometimes Oikawa signs, but mostly he uses a slapdash lexicon of flower language and gleefully terrible visual puns to communicate, since nothing is ever easy when it comes to Oikawa Tooru. In the earliest days, Oikawa would forget and open his mouth to say something, only for disembodied petals to spill out instead. He’d shed calyces, leaves, stamens wherever he went; startled, sheepish parts of a whole. Like all things, it hadn’t taken him too long to wrestle under control, and soon he was coaxing perfect roses out of his hands to give to teachers, shopkeepers, old neighbours; the same careful delicacy he afforded to a set.
But one of those first nights, Iwaizumi had walked into the gym to find Oikawa standing in the middle of a miniature garden on the court, staring at a point on the other side of the net with such intensity that he seemed unaware of the primroses and tulips tumbling over one another in confused fractals around his feet, curling around his ankles, his left knee. A tumult of blue and white blanketed his arms from the elbow forward, the ball in his hands wreathed in a delicate lattice of green. As Iwaizumi drew nearer, he realised that the vines coiled along his arms were thorned.
“Oikawa,” he said.
Oikawa turned his head and for a moment his eyes were ancient, unsettling, infinitely deep. Then he blinked. The flowers folded in on themselves, retreated into his skin.
“You’re bleeding,” Iwaizumi said, unable to think of anything else.
A few red petals trickled from Oikawa’s fingertips, derisive, but he allowed himself to be led into the locker room. He took the first-aid kit from Iwaizumi, dabbing antiseptic onto the grazes on his arms with a businesslike precision. Already, the broken skin was closing up just as the flowers had; it seemed that Oikawa’s gift was unwilling to harm its own host. Iwaizumi handed Oikawa a bottle of water. They sat in careful silence, the darkness pressing over them like gauze. After a while, Oikawa touched Iwaizumi’s arm: thank you.
It was the last time he saw the ability overwhelm Oikawa. Iwaizumi didn’t know how many thankless, gruelling hours spent poring over botanical encyclopaedias and cajoling blossom after blossom out of his own skin that translated into, and Oikawa wasn’t in the habit of divulging imperfections. But either way it was simple: Oikawa knew his own boundaries best, and if he teetered too far over the precipice while navigating them, then Iwaizumi would be there to steady him.
“Matsukawa and Hanamaki are coming over this afternoon, don’t forget,” Iwaizumi says.
Oikawa presses a hand to his chest, draws out a bundle of ambrosia and white roses.
“So, are we gonna try and cook again or just order takeout? I’m pretty sure you burned the soup last time.”
Wow, mean! A dahlia unfolds from the soft skin on the inside of his wrist; Oikawa shreds it forlornly between his fingers. Everyone else appreciates my efforts, you don’t hear them complaining.
“Hanamaki complained. Loudly.”
Oikawa makes a rude gesture that conveys exactly what he thinks of Hanamaki’s opinions on his culinary skill, but it’s belied by the soft pink roses budding in his hair.
“And what’s Matsukawa gonna do with all those pinecones you keep giving him?” Iwaizumi fixes Oikawa with his best disapproving stare, softened as it is by the years of fondness. “He’s got to have a small mountain of them by now.”
Whenever he visits, Oikawa always presents Matsukawa with a single pinecone as though bestowing the grandest of fortunes upon him, and Matsukawa always accepts it with the same solemn gravitas. They both find this hilarious, since they’re also both five years old, maybe even four.
He’s a creative person, I’m sure he’ll think of something tasteful, like—a giant sculpture of my face. Since he’s tragically deprived of seeing me in real life, nowadays.
“The sculpture’ll probably be less annoying than the real thing,” Iwaizumi mutters. He bats away the tiny pinecone that comes sailing towards his right ear.
Oikawa likes his tea strong, so Iwaizumi lets it steep for a little longer, before tipping it out into a pair of chipped mugs. Steam billows forth, dissipates. He carries the mugs over to the couch. As soon as he sits down, Oikawa pitches forward against him, limbs sprawled out akimbo, to pillow his cheek on Iwaizumi’s thigh.
“Holy—this is hot water, dumbass, some of us don’t have magic regeneration powers,” Iwaizumi splutters, but he’s already shifting to accommodate the added weight.
That’s why I waited for you to put the cups down first, Oikawa signs, grinning up at him.
“Sure,” Iwaizumi says. His hand drops to Oikawa’s hair. There are always stray petals caught in the strands, since Oikawa refuses to do reasonable things like not manifest literal flower crowns. Iwaizumi sighs and picks a few petals out, letting them flutter to the ground. After a couple of minutes he gives up and starts carding his fingers through Oikawa’s hair instead. “Are you doing this on purpose,” he says, flatly.
Oikawa pouts. A white lily blooms at his throat.
“Very convincing,” Iwaizumi says. “And… thanks for earlier, too. The, um. The lavender.”
You haven’t been sleeping well, thought I’d try and help. Oikawa lifts a shoulder and lets it fall. By unspoken assent they stay like that for a while, siphoning up the clean, luxuriant sunshine, the quiet morning, Iwaizumi’s hand running across Oikawa’s hair. Then Oikawa taps on Iwaizumi’s elbow.
“What?”
Oikawa lifts his hand to his mouth, covering his smile. When he moves his hand away, perched atop his palm is a camellia, a bright gash of deep, ostentatious red. He reaches up to tuck it behind Iwaizumi’s ear, lingers at the soft divot just beneath his jaw. Tilts his head in wordless question.
“Yeah,” Iwaizumi says, soft, the truth of it unfurling behind his breastbone as though it, too, could burst forth in riotous petally colour for the world to see. “Love you too.”