Did I make you up?

Suga tried desperately to still his beating heart as he walked through the glass sliding doors of the hospital. What if he was wrong? What if he was so utterly wrong that whatever he came here to hear would irrevocably change the world he was so content to live in?

His feet hit linoleum floors, the smell of disinfectant thick in the air. He had to be sure.

The nurse at the front desk looked at him expectantly. “Can I help you?”

“Um,” Suga’s words dried up in his mouth, “I, well, ah, you see…”

Anxiety made his hands shake and his tongue numb. In his defence, it’s an appropriate response. How on earth do you approach a situation where you must ask whether or not a certain patient was lying comatose in the hospital? Especially when your answer to “are you family” would be: “No, but I did meet his ghost and we’ve been hanging out together for two months until his ghost disappeared, and I think he might not have been dead, only near death, so can you please check your records and tell me if you’ve had a patient that was in a coma but released about a month ago? Oh, you’re taking me to see a therapist? Right.”

Light tapping on the desk brought Suga out of his spiral. He blinked twice, the face of the nurse swimming into focus.

“Sir, are you here for an appointment, or to see someone?”

There was no time for deliberation about logistics.

“Do you have a patient here named Oikawa Tooru?”

—

The night was dark and warm, with no moon to light the skies, the only illumination coming from the starry glow of the cityscape below them. In the space between them settled a strange kind of silence. Not the kind of silence that was strange enough to be called uncomfortable, but the kind of silence that wrapped all around you, heavy with words waiting to be spoken.

“Tooru—” Suga called out to Oikawa, and wished his voice didn’t waver quite as much as it did.

“What is it, Kou?”

There was no waver in Oikawa’s voice. It was soft, gentle. Suga had called out with a question, but he knew that Oikawa probably already had the answer. After all, it was impossible that he had not seen the answer reflected back in Suga’s eyes before.

Suga turned from where he was laying on his back onto his side.

“Is this…is this easy for you?” He pulled his knees up to his chest, wishing he could just curl up and disappear.

A few moments passed. If it were anyone else, Suga might have been scared of the reply, scared that he had angered them. But this was not anyone else, it was Oikawa. His Tooru. So, he waited.

“Is what easy for me?”

An evasive answer. Typical. There was no doubt in Suga’s mind that Oikawa knew what he was referring to, the question a thinly-veiled trick to coax Suga into speaking plainly, without dodging around the reality of it all.

“Ru,” the endearment came out with more exasperation than Suga would have liked.

Oikawa’s smile was almost audible.

“I’m sorry Kou,” he eventually replied.

The silence between them returned, not heavier than before, but more strained. The words unsaid hung between them, like so many silk-thin strands, waiting to be snapped.

“Are you really going to make me say it?” Suga asked, trying his best not to sound desperate, or pained, or anything other than completely in control.

He never let his mind dwell on the difficult things when he was with Oikawa. It was easy, at the start, to be friends with a ghost. It was something that belonged to him, and him alone. But excitement and time spent together compounded in a way that Suga had not foreseen, and when the foreign feeling within him started to grow, the space between them that, at first, seemed insignificant, now stretched into a chasm. Oikawa, the person nearest to him, was so far away that sometimes Suga could barely breathe. So far, and yet —

If he were to reach over, only the slightest of centimetres, he would find Oikawa’s hand.

Maybe he was overthinking it. Maybe it was normal, natural, and Suga’s reaction to all this was just confusion, the inability to deal with otherness. Surely… Surely? No, he wasn’t sure at all.

“Don’t make me say it, Tooru,” Suga said again.

“Why not?” came the instantaneous reply.

“Because. You always get to be the untouchable one. The one who stands above it all. The one who smiles and waves and flirts and looks at the world with a cool disconnect.” The words came rushing out before Suga could stop them. They had sounded much less harsh in his head, but the moment he spoke them out loud he realised what they meant. He flinched internally, knowing he meant them. Gods, he meant every word.

“Suga, that’s not fair.” With an even voice, Oikawa turned his body to face Suga, and despite the impossible, Suga could have sworn he felt a physical presence to that spectral hand reaching to lie closer to his own.

A pause. The silk threads between them pulled taut.

“I know,” Suga said finally, “I know…”

He knew Oikawa better than that. Knew that even though Oikawa maintained a distance from the outside, he felt everything so very viscerally whenever the eyes turned away from him. His eyes. The eyes of his past. In their months together, Oikawa had told Suga many things about when he was alive. Had told him about his dreams, about his insecurities, how hard he had fought to become who he was. How he would never have those things again.

It haunted him that he could not remember. Plagued him that he didn’t have anywhere to go.

Oikawa was untethered, drifting, no rest in sight. When they had first met, Oikawa frequently talked about being able to rest in peace, but as the months passed, he mentioned it less and less. Suga was no fool. He saw the way Oikawa looked at him. His own eyes betrayed him. Though Suga had promised Oikawa he would help him move into the afterlife, a far greater part of him wished that Oikawa would never leave. Never rest. The worst part was that Suga knew his feelings were returned. That throwaway line Oikawa muttered one late Sunday afternoon.

“What if I don’t want to rest in peace?”

Maybe that’s why it hurt.

Because their silk strings of silence were spun by spiders in their rib cages, connecting bone to bone, and the pulling felt like yanking at the innermost parts of themselves. There was distance in the not-talking, but talking could lead to more distance, and then it wouldn’t be the silk that snapped, but bone. Shattering in their chests, splintering in their flesh. Unbearable pain.

Or perhaps it wasn’t that deep. Perhaps Oikawa’s sparkling eyes that kept so much hidden behind them were just that. Nothing more, nothing less. Their hands simply rested centimetres from each other. Oikawa was just laughing when he walked Suga through the Obon festival, opening his eyes to the way in which the Spirit World bled through to the Mortal World. Every time Suga swore, swore, Oikawa looked almost alive.

Mere isolations in time. Moments never to be spoken about outside of the confines of their happening. Moments that existed, but could not exist simultaneously alongside their lived reality.

Oikawa’s hand rested near Suga’s, their fingertips nearly touching. If Suga wanted to, he could reach over. He could try. He wanted to. Gods, it was all he wanted to do. Was Suga’s hand ever real during the moments that it wasn’t near Oikawa’s hand? Was his smile ever true if he wasn’t smiling at Oikawa? What was joy, if he couldn’t tell Oikawa about the euphoria that tore through his being? There was so much of Oikawa everywhere, in his heart, in his head, and Suga would rather go through temporary pain than have his head full of so much noise.

“Kou, why are you crying?”

Oikawa’s voice pulled Suga from his spiral of never-ending thoughts, an anchor to his shipwreck.

“Huh? I’m not—” Suga lifted a hand to his face, capturing moisture there. Traitorous, traitorous tears. “—Ah.”

Oikawa sat up, and everything about his posture betrayed the desperate wish the ghost had to wrap his arms around Suga. Suga knew that if he could, he would cling to Oikawa, tightly, holding together so much more than just their bodies.

“I’m sorry, Kou. I am so, so sorry.”

Oikawa’s voice cracked on the last syllable, and though he needed no air, Suga could see the deep inhale he took to keep himself from crying. Oh, how he wished Oikawa would just allow himself to cry. But he couldn’t, not even if his body would allow him to. There was too much guilt that swirled in his mind, just as confusion swirled in Suga’s.

Unable to do anything else, Suga sat up and wrapped his arms around himself, holding the both of them tightly in his mind.

“If we had just been normal people, we could have—”

“—If we were just normal people, Kou,” Oikawa interrupted, “I would have never met you. And my life wouldn’t have become so much brighter. Or well, death I suppose.”

They had finally faced each other and sat cross-legged in the dark, knees almost touching, fingers ghosting over hands, their own little attempt at nearness.

“Oh, real funny, Tooru,” Suga tried to lighten his voice.

“Hilarious, actually,” Oikawa retorted, his cocky countenance rapidly returning, “you know, you can say that you’re ‘living your life’, but I can’t say I’m ‘dying my death’. Or living my death, I guess.”

Though his voice kept the nonchalant lilt he seemed to maintain with such ease, the words he spoke strained heavy under the circumstances.

The spider-silk still stretched between them. Not painful anymore, but still there, still taut. Suga thought of them. The way Oikawa had taken him in the early morning to watch the wisteria flowers bloom. His cocky grin when he asked Suga whether he had ever imagined him wearing anything else than the ever-present hospital gown on his body. How he whispered promises of dancing through a storm when the rainy season started. It was all too much, and Suga was tired.

“I love you, Tooru.”

Snap.

Oikawa looked at him, surprise written all over his features.

“I,” he hesitated, out of shock more than anything else, “I love you too, Kou.”

“No, you don’t understand,” Suga clenched his hands into fists, steeling himself.

“Suga.”

“Oikawa Tooru, I love you. In the ‘I-want-to-be-yours’ way. In the way that tells me how you look at me, your fingers always reaching for my hand, you taking me places and showing me such beautiful sights, means something. ”

Snap.

“Kou—” Oikawa tried to speak, but Suga was done trying to hide behind what he should and should not do.

“I know that it’s impossible, utterly selfish, and completely irrational, but doesn’t it also sometimes feel like it was inevitable? Tooru, I can see you. But, I want to hold you, to wake up next to you, to share meals with you. I want you to be able to bring me the flowers you take me to look at. I… I know it’s wrong but I don’t want you to go. You can’t go.”

Snap. Snap. Snap.

All of the silk threads between them were snapping, and Suga felt himself falling forward into all the things he had always longed to say.

“I know I’m a terrible person for saying these things, but gods, Tooru. I can see it in your eyes, too. Don’t you want to scream? Isn’t there something that you desire? This thing between us,” no time for wavering, no time for second guessing, “do you seriously expect me to believe that it all means nothing? You’re not exactly innocent either. ‘I don’t know if I want to rest in peace’ — Tooru, how could you say something like that to me? Say something like that and—”

“Kou.”

“—and not expect me to—”

Suga’s words were cut off abruptly as two hands came forward and cupped his face between them. He couldn’t feel them, not the way he would the hands of a physical body, but he still sensed their presence. So recognisably Tooru.

Suga stilled his body, knowing that the slightest movement would shatter the illusion that he was being held.

“Sugawara Koushi, will you give me a chance to speak?”

When Suga didn’t say anything, Oikawa took a deep breath and continued.

“Alright. I suppose I have to start with an apology. It seems—” Oikawa chuckled softly, “—like I have taken too many liberties. Ignored the consequences of my actions for too long.”

Fear folded like a vice around Suga’s throat, and he clenched his fists even tighter.

“You know, Kou, I’m supposed to be the rational one,” Oikawa explained, “since I am the one with the least to lose, I should know better. But it seems that even I am able to make mistakes.”

His hands dropped from the sides of Suga’s face to find those tightly balled fists. Though he could not touch them, he hovered his hands over them as he spoke, as if he wished to unclench them by mere presence alone.

“I thought I could love you in secret, and that only I would need carry the burden. I thought I could allow myself this selfishness, to be near someone as bright as you, even if it would only last for a moment. But,” he sighed, “I forget people are affected by me,” a wry smile flit across his face, “it’s bound to happen when you’re a ghost.”

“Tooru,” Suga tried to interject.

“Hm. Shush.” Oikawa let his thumb ghost in swirls over the back of Suga’s hand as he collected his thoughts.

“I knew you loved me. How could I not, with the way you are. So open, so unashamed. And to not love you right back? Impossible. But in the same breath… How could I love you? When every day I cannot touch you, I am reminded of the reality of this life. This world. We can never have each other in that way. You know this.”

Oikawa’s words were everything that Suga ever wanted to hear, and everything he always wished he never did.

The very things that had brought them together also held them apart. The strings lay snapped between them, but nothing had changed. Nothing. Maybe it was because Oikawa was the first person Suga had ever loved, but at that moment it was too much to bear. Suga felt so utterly powerless.

“Tooru, I,” words got stuck in his throat. But what could he even say? That he wanted it to be different? That would be a lie, an unproductive wish.

“Tooru,” he tried again, “I just want to love you.”

With that, whatever was keeping him together broke down. Suga’s nose started to run and his eyes puffed up as his chest heaved with sobs. He wished he could stop crying. He felt like an idiot. Only an idiot would have flung their hopes so high. Suga wiped furiously at his eyes, willing the tears to stop, willing the breath to return to his lungs, but to no avail.

Suga’s sobs eventually became sniffs, and when he summoned the courage to look at Oikawa, the man looked back at him with heartbreak spelled out in every corner of his eyes.

“…Koushi, I have something to tell you.”

Suga rubbed his eyes and straightened his posture. There was something determined about Oikawa’s face, even in his pain.

“I am sure, well, I… hm,” Oikawa trailed off, and his eyes averted from Suga’s gaze.

“What is it?”

Oikawa frowned, pursed his lips, and after a moment returned his eyes to meet Suga’s.

“All this time that I’ve been trapped here as a ghost, there is this constant feeling. It’s what makes being a ghost so… unbearable. It’s like I’m underwater, and there is this light above me. I know it’s the surface, and so I try desperately to swim towards it. But no matter how hard I try, I can never break through.” Oikawa shifted, clasping his hands in front of him, as if trying to gather strength somehow. “But recently, I— I can. I can feel it. If I try, I will be able to swim up. I can break the surface.”

The implication of Oikawa’s words crashed over Suga like a tidal wave.

“You can move on,” he whispered.

“I,” Oikawa opened his mouth, and then closed it again. He couldn’t even bare to utter the words.

However, Suga knew Oikawa wanted to explain, wanted to talk away whatever it was that inhabited his mind, but he couldn’t. What would he say back? What platitudes could be spoken when his own heart was in turmoil?

“I mean,” he tried again, “I could also just not—”

“No,” Suga cut him off before Oikawa could even propose the obviously absurd idea, “you have to. You have to do it.”

“But Koushi—”

“But nothing, Tooru.” Suga felt the sting of tears behind his eyes once more, but fiercely blinked them away. He would not make this harder for Oikawa. What they had, what had grown between them, it was never going to last forever. He always knew that. It was time to let go.

For a while, neither of them spoke. The city lights glimmered in the distance. The sparse stars shone above them. It was enough to just sit alongside each other. In the space between them settled a silence. Not a strange kind of silence, but the kind that weighs heavy with words spoken to the open air, everything laid bare and vulnerable. It was melancholic, but it was theirs.

“Tooru,” Suga softly called the name, savouring the way it sounded on his lips, knowing it might well be one of the last times he used it.

“Hm?”

Suga took a deep inhale, steeling himself. It was time.

“Before you leave—”

“Koushi no,” Oikawa tried to interject.

“Tooru, keep quiet. Listen to me. Before you leave… I want you to know. You must know that you are beloved.”

Oikawa sat completely and utterly still.

“Will you remember me?” he finally asked.

Suga nodded. “Are you afraid?”

“Ha,” Oikawa let out a strained laugh, “However could I not be?”

Moments of silence passed between them. Everything had been said, nothing had been said. All the time in the world would not be enough.

“Kou?”

“Yes?”

“Will you stay with me tonight?”

“Forever.”

Suga didn’t know at what time he fell asleep, but when he woke up, his body stiff from a night on the ground in a park, Oikawa was gone.

—

The glass doors of the hospital slid closed behind him with a thump, but Suga didn’t even register it.

He was right. Oh gods, he had been right. He knew something was off when Oikawa had no memories of his own death, even though he said that was the reason most ghosts stuck around to seek vengeance. Knew it by the way his body was always clad in a hospital gown. He was right, he just didn’t ever allow himself to believe. Oikawa was alive, Oikawa was—

Suga sank down to the ground in the middle of the sidewalk. Passersby looked at him indignantly, muttering insults under their breath, but it was all just noise to Suga.

Oikawa was alive.

When he eventually picked himself off the pavement, Suga walked through the city like he was in a daze. It had been a month since Oikawa stopped appearing. He wasn’t in the hospital anymore, which meant he had been released. The possibilities of Oikawa’s whereabouts, whether or not he would even remember Suga — how he would ever find the other man in the giant city of Tokyo — rushed through Suga’s mind like a never ending stream of possibilities that made him reel and feel off kilter. It was going to be impossible, there would be no way—

“Koushi?”

Gods must have the most twisted sense of humour.

The voice that called for him from behind was so painfully familiar, but so incredibly improbable that Suga did not dare to turn around. He haltingly took a step forward, his feet stuck to the pavement.

“Koushi!”

Fuck it all.

Suga turned around, and in front of him stood the most impossible man he had ever met. Oikawa was the brightest shade of sunlight when Suga saw him standing there. Dressed in a blue t-shirt that had been washed too many times, brown hair sticking up everywhere, a plastic bag in hand with the door of the pharmacy swinging shut behind him. He was impossible, and he was beautiful.

They ran, and then they weren’t running anymore. Hands and fingers and legs and oh dear gods Oikawa was touching him. Oikawa was touching him and the feeling of him was more real than anything that Suga had experienced in a long time. Oikawa was alive, he is alive because they’re laughing and crying, and oh… Oikawa’s hands on his face, real and physical, calloused and gentle, pulling him closer.

Their noses bumped together, and Oikawa whispered, “It’s you.”

The kiss was clumsy, and tasted like salt and coffee, mouths hastily trying to find each other after so, so long. And it was wonderful. Everything Suga ever wanted.

“I’m sorry I’m late,” Oikawa said, breaking the kiss.

“No, no,” he shook his head, “you’re perfectly on time.”

Suga kissed him, and kissed him and kissed him. Stars burst behind his eyelids and the feeling travelled down into the very soles of his feet. When they finally could bear to break apart again, Suga could see Oikawa’s face moist with tears.

“Tooru, Tooru why are you crying?” He laughed, wiping tears away.

“What are you talking about?” Oikawa asked through his tearful smile, pressing his lips to Suga’s once more. “What a bad day for rain, don’t you think?”

“Yeah,” Suga laughed, “simply awful.”