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You already know that you’re not meant to have much faith in a high school sweetheart, but you couldn’t help it. Tooru’s the kind of guy you just fall for. Endlessly.
Hopelessly.
“Do you have a girlfriend yet, Tooru-kun?” a girl whined, leaning in far too closely to be polite. You can smell the overly sweet perfume she’s dumped onto herself from the rafters. He smiled, and the way he shakes his head so calmly breaks your heart every.
Damn.
Time.
It’d made sense in the beginning. A budding relationship kept illicit; after all, Seijoh’s King was practically an idol, and you didn’t want to get caught up in maelstroms of envy or scrutiny. You’re an honour student and he’s the pretty boy. Even you had never really expected this to unfold the way it had, and yet his cheesy grin and stupid one-liners he probably found on the internet had won you over anyways.
So, for now, it’d do to share subtle, secretive looks across the way. You’d changed your phone to have a different vibration pattern for his texts so that you’d know it was him right away. At home, you practically leapt onto every text you got from him, no matter how cool you tried to play it off. In the case that the two of you happened to volunteer at the same time to do a classroom task together, it was perfectly fine to be his dirty little secret, just as long as he kept you happy as he pressed you up against the wall. Besides, your parents weren’t the type to allow for you to be dating anyways, always pushing your academics before your social life. This was a win-win situation.
But then… then you just had to go and fall in love.
tooru: Good luck on your MUN thing nerd! ( ˘ ³˘)♥
you: you’re the nerd. stinky!!
tooru: Can’t I just wish a pretty girl good luck?! Σ(T□T)
He had no right to get your heart racing like you’d ran a lap to the moon and back. He had no right to make you melt like putty every time he spoke your name. He had no right to kiss you behind your ear, the smirk branded into your skin, and then pretend that you didn’t exist.
What could you even say about it, though? Hey, let’s become official! Okay—then what? You’d probably have girls kick your door down the second he went live with it. Would you be able to handle all the vicious, nasty whispering that’d take place behind your back? Besides, what would you even get out of it? A sense of… self-satisfaction? Validation? Surely, that couldn’t be worth it. You’re a rational kind of person, so these things make sense. Unfortunately, just because it makes sense doesn’t mean you’re willing to listen.
You want to be his girl so badly. You want to be able to walk with your hand in his in the street without worrying about who can see you. You want to be able to go up to him at lunch and sneak a kiss, the lunch break just your pre-date for when you saw each other later. You want, so desperately it’s kind of shameful, to be known as ‘Oikawa’s Girlfriend’. To be shown off. Instead of him coyly flirting with all these other people who aren’t you, you want him to say your name. Sorry, girls, but I love my girlfriend too much. You want other people to hear the kind of sweet nothings he purrs to you, chestnut eyes warm like Christmas memories. And you want to keep the rest to yourself.
But what if he says no?
It’s the kind of thought that’s heart stopping and makes you sick to just think about. You don’t even want to imagine it, worried that if you do, it’ll manifest somehow. Right now, you’re being used, and you know it. But isn’t it better to be used and neglected by the one you love than to be forgotten entirely?
It’s these types of useless thoughts that keep you up at night the day before your chemistry final, and it’s when you know that you hate men with every fibre of your being. Especially him. You hate him for making himself so damn lovable.
He finds you when you’re putting away the pylons after gym class. Toeing the storage room’s door closed, he’s on you before you can say his name, his lips slanting over yours as strong arms curl around your wait. You’re powerless to resist him and struggle on your tip-toes to get closer—but he’s the one that pulls away first, balancing you back on your feet.
“Hey, Babygirl.”
The pet-names; they roll off his tongue like butter melting into honey. It just about throws you off your game and you completely forget your resolve. But the fact that the two of you are stuffed into a humid, rubber-fume filled closet, and this is the only place he bothers to even acknowledge you—you inhaled shakily and looked away.
“You know, Tooru, what am I worth to you?”
It’s the age-old cliché, but how much longer are you going to be this dreadful secret he sneaks around with? How much longer can you take being stuffed behind him, always hidden away? It’s for your own good, he says, but isn’t he just ashamed of you? But here, you’re offering it up on a silver platter: a chance to prove you wrong for once, telling you no. You mean everything to me, just like I mean everything to you.
But his expression begins to falter and you know, with trepidation, that you’ve said something he hoped not to hear. It hurts you to hurt him, but it’s not like you can take this back anymore.
“[Name]…” He says your name so softly you almost can’t hear it. The guilt, though, echoes and pounds in your ears. Your worst fear… fine. You swallow past the lump in your throat and kick aside the box you’d been putting away.
“I’m gonna go back to class.”
You walked past him, slowing a step when you stood by his side. You wanted him to turn and grab your wrist. Call your name. Anything at all. Hell, even a sneeze. But he just watched you go.
Worst break-up from your almost-boyfriend.
Ever.
You kept your ringer on all night, just in case he had the nerve to come crawling back. You’d tell him to screw off, of course, but you weren’t going to lose your pride and text first. At midnight you begun to stalk his statuses, wondering if he was purposely giving you the cold shoulder to see who would cave first. When you checked again at the ripe hour of 5:30 AM, unable to sleep all night, you cursed him out and cried into your pillows, begging the world to give you a sign. Nothing.
Maybe that was the sign that you were better off without him. Apparently, you don’t deserve to be doted on by the tall, handsome volleyball player who gets excited over stupid things and whines when you don’t say “I think you’re cute” back to him. Silly you for falling for him. A happy ever after had just been too much to ask, hadn’t it?
Toor—Oikawa had a practice match today. Seijoh was hosting a home game. You were supposed to go watch and support him before this whole thing blew up. The sign you’d made was now stuffed at the bottom of your closet. (You hadn’t torn it up—mostly because you’re a hopeless romantic, but also because you spent a lot of work on it and it’d be a waste of supplies). You weren’t going to go. You shouldn’t. But because you were so out of your own thoughts, your feet had begun to take you to the gymnasium after school without you even realizing it, and when you came to you were already peering down the railing of the upper floor into the gym. There he was; your eyes found him out immediately, drawn to his back even without your own effort. He stood near the doors, and the irritatingly large crowd of fangirls hovered outside. You couldn’t really make out their faces from here on the opposite side. Scowling, you turned around to leave before somebody bumped into you. Their bag swung you off balance and you stumbled back.
“Sorry,” you muttered even though it wasn’t your fault. The girl peered at your face before her brows shot up to the sky.
“Aren’t you [Surname]-san from 2-1?” she asked, though it sounded more like an accusation.
“Uh,” you stammered, trying to remember if you’d seen this girl before. “Yeah…?”
“No way—you’re Tooru-kun’s girlfriend?!”
Your heart leapt into your throat. His what? His what?! You’d wanted to hear these words for so long that your brain shut down entirely and you had to wonder if this was either a dream or a cruel joke. Maybe both.
“He just had this big speech about you,” the girl gushed. “It was really romantic. I’m so jealous of you.”
“What speech?” you pressed urgently, your head spinning. This was getting wilder the more you listened. She scowled and pointed over to the gym.
“All he did was talk about how great you are.”
The hostile tone rolled off of you as you dazedly looked back over the railing. Somebody whistled when you showed your face, and he looked up. As if somebody had whispered into his ear, he turned around and made direct eye contact with you. His face split into the smile he had whenever he was trying to force it down. He raised a hand, giving you a peace sign. The pose he always did whenever he took a selfie with you.
“Hey, Babygirl!” he shouted up. You inhaled sharply, sucking the breath down to your toes. No way—he wouldn’t…? You had everybody’s eyes on you, their gaze heavy and oppressive, but you only saw him. He blew a kiss and you practically felt it on your forehead. You grinned to yourself.
That’s my man.