Laureate || OiSuga

1

Having a way with words is a cruel gift.

On one hand, you have an escape route, something to do when everything feels too much. On the other hand, however, writing down your innermost thoughts forces you to acknowledge them. Seeing them in front of you makes you feel them tenfold, and that is a pain like none other.

Oikawa Tōru has such a way with words. His words have set him free at times and trapped him others. The poetry he comes up with is to be shared but not with anyone who might discover who he is.

It's because he has a way with words that he is writing now, though a poem is not enough to capture the pain he feels in this very moment.

So he writes to his lifetime love, the man he lives with, the man he once called his forever. He writes and he sobs and he feels and it's all too much. It's all too much but Tōru can't stop feeling, he can't, he has to bleed out all of the words before he falls into a cardiac arrest of the soul, unable to allow himself the air he needs to breathe.

He hurts, he hurts so intensely, and watching Hajime with that girl stings him like no other wound. Seeing them cuddle the same way he and Hajime had countless times before on that very same couch, watching the same movies under the same blanket eating popcorn from the same bowl, seeing Hajime fall in love the same way he had fallen in love with Hajime, that all burned in a fashion unlike anything he had ever experienced before.

Hajime's fingers are delicate as he brushes her hair behind her ear, his gaze soft and adoring, the same look Tōru gave Hajime.

Hajime was Tōru's life source, the very water he needed to survive, and so much more. He was the stardust that made up his being, he was the food and shelter he needed, he was the warmth after running home in the rain in the dead of December.

Tōru found his home in Hajime, but Hajime found his home in the girl sitting in his lap on the couch.

Words sting, but nothing pains Tōru like watching the love of his life fall in love with someone else.