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The end of the world is coming, and Oikawa Tooru has a hangnail.
It’s not his unmanicured fingers that are the problem, per se – it’s that everything he’s ever known and loved and cared about is, quite literally, crumbling around him. And yet the only thing he can focus on is his fucking fingernail, that persistent, obnoxious pain. Like his brain is so scrambled and unraveling so quickly that he has to hook onto anything that reminds him he’s still here. He’s still alive.
It’s hard to feel real, like this.
Oikawa is camping, of all things, when it happens. A flash of light and heat so bright the sky goes milky white – and then color coming in waves, mottling across the sky like a week-old bruise. The same way Oikawa used to watch the tender spots on his skin bloom from overtraining, color and change: purple, green, yellow – no, not yellow. Golden. The sky is golden and bright as the Olympic medal Oikawa never did and never will hang around his neck. It’s twice as heavy as he imagined in his dreams.
Then, nothing. Nothing but the ringing in Oikawa’s ears, the buzzing in his lungs. He throws up, he passes out, he comes to and drags himself to his tent, that flimsy slip of protection. His phone isn’t working so he turns to the shitty radio he keeps in his emergency pack. Panicked, staticky voices give him scraps of information – solar flare… communications… radiation… planes down… stay… don’t go… take shelter…
Oikawa thinks he hears someone outside wailing, a sickening, frightening sound. The kind of scream that tears your throat, steals your breath. It’s so loud and all Oikawa wants – so desperately wants – is to sleep, to fall into nothingness and let the world sort itself out. What an unfamiliar sensation. Oikawa Tooru, star of the show – wanting only quiet.
It’s only when Oikawa finally sinks into sleep that he realizes he had been the one screaming.
+
The end of the world is coming. And if it isn’t, it’s certainly getting fucking weird around here. Not much else could explain that friendly, familiar face breaking through the dense tree line; broad, square hands pushing branches out of the way as Daichi Sawamura of all people steps into Oikawa’s campsite, looking at him like he’s just encountered an alien species.
Daichi meets Oikawa at the end of the world and what he says is, “Didn’t know you were back in town.”
And Oikawa laughs – a wheezy thing, his lungs still tempura-fried and sore from whatever the fuck that solar flare did to him. Eventually, Daichi joins in, and it must be something human and frightened in the pit of Oikawa’s gut that has him reaching out, pulling the other man in until they’re clinging to each other like leaves shaking in a storm. They’re laughing, and maybe crying, and Oikawa is feeling a little lightheaded.
“Seriously,” he pulls back. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
“I volunteered to—” Daichi’s face twists into a grimace. “A lot of people went missing after the flare. I wanted to do something useful, so I joined a search party.”
“Find anyone?”
“You,” Daichi answers quickly. “And a lot of—”
“Bodies.”
“Yeah.”
Oikawa won’t pretend he didn’t think about it, about that promised nothingness and the tempting way he could drag it closer. He’s always had a piss-poor self-preservation instinct. But somehow, Oikawa looks up at that clouded, alabaster sky and thinks – survive.
Maybe not live. But survive, all the same.
“So,” Oikawa flops down next to the half-assed fire he has going. It seems superfluous now. The late-autumn chill has been replaced with a something soft and hazy, like their planet’s been dropped in a glass of lukewarm water. “What’s your plan for the apocalypse?”
Daichi takes a swig of his canteen, then passes it to Oikawa. And, after a thoughtful pause, finally says, “I’ll have to learn how to hunt, probably.”
It’s a long, long moment before Oikawa opens his mouth again. Long enough that he thinks the whole world might crumble and break apart before he can build the nerve to ask, “Stay?”
Daichi, as ever, doesn’t hesitate. “Wouldn’t dream of leaving.”
+
“You in town long?”
Oikawa meets Daichi once between high school and the end of the world. Under the low lights of a seedy izakaya, they engage in some familiar banter and some not-so-familiar flirting. Oikawa, three drinks deep, bats his eyelashes like his life depends on it and leans in so close that his lips brush against Daichi’s cheek when he says, “Just the weekend.”
So impermanent – that’s what Oikawa had thought, crawling into Daichi’s bed, sucking him down like his life depended on it. But everything about Daichi is so solid, so immovable. Above him, all around him like a blanket of muscle with some emerging softness in his belly, driving into Oikawa with swift, rough thrusts. He drags two orgasms out of Oikawa and then one more; rough, calloused hands moving across his body with such measured, sure movements. This can’t be the same Daichi Sawamura he used to know – but Oikawa knows it is, can recognize that same steadfast smile.
“You were talking in your sleep,” Daichi says before they part ways. He looks a little charmed. It’s probably only half of how charmed Oikawa feels.
If Oikawa is the one with his head in the clouds, Daichi is the one with his feet squarely on the ground. And when Daichi drags him down, Oikawa thinks—maybe the placements of Heaven and Earth got mixed up somewhere along the way.
+
Scavenging for food isn’t too hard. They don’t have to hunt, despite Daichi’s prediction. Most animals are slowed and sick from whatever radiation the flare spread, so they leave them be and stick to fruit and berries. These are probably contaminated, too, Daichi points out, but Oikawa waves him off. They can’t survive off of Daichi’s supply of power bars forever.
Although – they won’t have to.
There’s a lot to talk about that they simply don’t: any notion of survivors, whatever is left behind, whatever they’ve left behind. Daichi mentions that his parents had been visiting friends in Yokohama. But the trains are down, all cell data and internet and radio are gone. Oikawa’s family is scattered across the globe. Everyone stranded on their own small island, like the world’s ended for everyone but them.
Daichi did hear one thing, from the other volunteers who took to the woods to look for survivors: there’s another flare coming soon. A massive one. A world-ending one.
“How soon?” Oikawa asks around a bite of something purple he thinks is a plum.
“Soon enough,” Daichi answers, reaching out to wipe his thumb across the corner of Oikawa’s mouth, a bit of juice that’s dripped there. “Soon enough that I’d rather stay put.”
“Don’t want to die alone?” Oikawa doesn’t mean for it to come out accusatory. They both know it’s the truth, for both of them. It’s so ridiculous, so one-in-a-million that they ended up in the same space at the same time, that years-old familiarity that Oikawa clings to like a life raft.
Daichi smiles, cocks his head to the side in that handsome, infuriating way. “More like I don’t want you to die alone.”
The threadbare tent is quickly abandoned, and Daichi scouts out a small cave further into the forest they can camp out in, and it’s so close to an undisturbed stream of fresh water that Oikawa is sure it must be some kind of divine intervention. Oikawa’s skin is puckering and boiling from such close exposure to the flare, so he shucks off his scratchy, irritating clothes and dips into the water, naked as the day his was born.
“Maybe I should be naked when I die, too.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Think about it,” Oikawa dunks himself underwater and then emerges, feeling the dead skin slough off his back, shivering despite the heat. “We’re naked when we’re born, so why not be naked when we die?”
Daichi sits at the edge of the water, dipping his feet it. “One night and you’re already propositioning me again. I am actually flattered.”
“Dai-chan!” Oikawa slaps a scandalized hand to his chest. “You became so lewd while I was away. Can’t a man suggest some tasteful, life-cycle-completing nudity without your mind sinking to the gutter?”
Daichi just rolls his eyes. Here’s a man used to shrugging off all the nonsense around him – he’s perfectly calibrated to deal with the way Oikawa titters and laughs as he flicks water at him. The water droplets, as they dry on Daichi’s shirt, leave a small, yellowed ring. The water, too, is contaminated. Of course it is. Another small reminder: nothing and no one will make it out of this alive.
So, Daichi shucks of his shirt, and his pants, and his face goes neon red when Oikawa wolf whistles at his thighs, the soft curve of his cock swinging against them. He doesn’t bother acclimating: he cannonballs into the stream, just deep enough for him to sink into.
The moment after you dive in – suspended in the water, weightless, completely alone, cut off from the world. That’s what it feels like now, even as Daichi kicks his feet against the silt of the riverbed, breaks through the surface with a gasp. They’ve just been thrown in and they’re still sinking—
“Dai-chan,” Oikawa’s voice is uncharacteristically soft. “You look like you’re losing it.”
“I think that’s… more than fair,” Daichi concedes, but he still reaches out in a sneak attack, dunking Oikawa’s head under the water, dodging out of the way as Oikawa tries to muscle him under as well.
“You—You’re not gonna lose it on me, are you?” Oikawa pants out through a grin. He’s dripping wet, and his skin looks squeaky clean and pink, a freshly-peeled sunburn.
“’Course I am,” Daichi says. “But only a little. I think that’s fair, end of the world and all.”
They dry off and Daichi manages to convince Oikawa to let him care for his wounds, the fresh, sore skin from where his sun blisters have fallen off. I’m not sure you’re qualified, Oikawa sniffs as Daichi tends to him carefully.
“You’re free to find someone else,” Daichi hums, mixing together pine sap with some water. It’s a trick his grandfather had taught him, back when he was a kid and would get all manner of bumps and bruises and cuts when set loose in a wooded area. He’s not sure how medicinal is actually is – but he applies the mixtures carefully to Oikawa’s back, his chest, the tops of his shoulders. By the time they’re done, Oikawa is sticky and sensitive, but sighing at the relief.
“You don’t happen to have a nail clipper on you, do you?”
“What for?”
Oikawa displays his hand. “Got a hangnail. It’s driving me crazy.”
Daichi does, indeed, have a nail clipper. He pulls out his army knife and uses the attached clipper to snip Oikawa’s hangnail off.
“I take it back,” Oikawa sighs like the weight of the world’s just been lifted from his shoulders, and tips his head against Daichi’s shoulder. “You’d make a wonderful nurse.”
+
Time melts together into one endless summer day. Night never comes, just that permanent milk tea haze. Oikawa sometimes hears the sounds of helicopters overhead, but he never looks up.
Daichi builds a makeshift door for the cave out of the old tent, something to keep at least some of the sun out as they lounge inside, take turns sleeping on Oikawa’s one bedroll. Oikawa decides that Daichi makes a suitable couch, himself, and takes to depositing himself in his lap and falling asleep just like that, back to front. Daichi doesn’t complain.
Even among the comfortable approximation of domesticity, the threat of the next sun flare looms large. What was Oikawa even doing a week ago, a month ago, a year ago? Back when the entire world could be shrunk down to a volleyball court, to the next plan of action, to the very next step. It all seems so very far away, now. Like watching someone else’s life in a highlight reel behind his eyelids as he tries to sleep.
They take a short hike and find an abandoned shrine. How long ago it was actually abandoned is hard to tell. But still they wash their hands, their mouths, and bow, bodies stiff from lack of use. Oikawa says a short prayer, wonders if anyone is listening.
Fruit gets harder to find. They resort to fishing, ignoring the unnatural color of the meat, the way it settles heavy like lead in their stomachs. Parts of the landscape start to change around them – trees withering like flowers left on the windowsill a day too long, landscape roiling under acid rainfall they have to take shelter from; the river starts to glow, something unnatural and beautiful.
“Do you believe in fate?”
It might be nighttime. It’s impossible to tell, really, but sometimes the light wanes just a bit. Enough that Oikawa can get some sleep without having to drape something across his face – I feel unmoored without my sleeping mask, you know, he tells Daichi, who can’t stop snickering.
Oikawa’s always been told he’s a chatterbox, but Daichi is the one who can’t seem to let a quiet moment sit lately. Always opening his mouth, that same steady, unshaking voice that used to calm and command his teammates so well. He reaches out, like he’s scared to be alone.
“No,” Oikawa answers without opening his eyes. Why would he ever believe in fate? Fate would have him sitting on the sidelines; fate would have him at Shiratorizawa; fate would twist him into something unrecognizable. Everything Oikawa has, he’s grasped with his own hands.
As for everything he doesn’t have—
“I might,” Daichi’s rolled over to his side, and he brushes a lock of hair out of Oikawa’s eyes absentmindedly. “Believe in fate, I mean.”
“And why’s that?”
“Look at it this way. If I had the chance to start my life over, from the beginning, would I really do anything differently? Unless I had all the knowledge I had right now, you know – I’d probably make the same decisions. Just doing what I can with what I have. Isn’t that kind of like fate?”
“You’re forgetting entropy.”
“Hah,” Daichi huffs out a laugh. “Maybe I am. Is that how I ended up finding you?”
“No.” Oikawa Tooru, contrarian at heart. “That was probably fate.”
+
It’s Oikawa, after all, who breaks first.
“We should at least see! What if someone is down there, what if there’s something we can do?!”
They’ve been arguing for at least an hour, ever since Daichi work up to see Oikawa frantically packing up their things, their sad facsimile of a home made out of this dank cave over what must be a week or more now. His eyes are darting around, whole body shivering as Daichi holds him by the arms. And Oikawa Tooru, world-class athlete, fights with all his might and still can’t escape from that iron-clad grip.
“Please, Daichi.” Oikawa’s voice cracks, and I’m so pathetic, he thinks, so fucking pathetic. “I can’t do this. I can’t—I’m not—”
“I know,” Daichi’s rubbing up and down his biceps, pulling him in against his chest. “I get it, I really do but—”
He’s not ready for the way Oikawa pulls back violently, squirming like a cat to get out of its owner’s grip. And he’s not ready for the way Oikawa reels back, and cracks his fist squarely across Daichi’s jaw, sending him back against the cave wall where his head hits with a dull thud!
“The fuck, Tooru—” Daichi’s eyes flash red, and it’s instinct more than anything that drives him to give Oikawa a good right hook, knocking the other man flat on his back. He tumbles against the dusty floor of the cave, getting up quick as a flash, those finely-honed reflexes pushing up, scrambling toward Daichi, until they’re both rolling around the cave floor, grabbing and punching at each other like animals. Daichi headbutts him, and Oikawa curses, spitting out blood from his newly-split lip.
“I’m saying—” Oikawa grunts, pinning Daichi between his thighs, holding his shoulders down against the ground. “We should at least—” Oikawa’s train of thought comes to a screeching halt when something drips down his face, falling against Daichi’s cheek. Not blood. Not sweat. God am I crying am I really crying?
“Hey, hey—” Daichi must see him starting to crumple, because he gathers Oikawa up like clay, molding him back into shape, keeping his face held firm between those massive, warm hands. Were they always so warm? Is that just the solar flare working through him?
They’re kissing – it takes Oikawa a second to feel it, to feel that heat against his lips and recognize as something other than the deadly heat of the sun. A good heat. A heat to ground him – and Oikawa whimpers into Daichi’s mouth, kissing him open-mouthed and messy. It’s a poor approximation of a kiss, really. Just two people breathing heavy into each other’s mouths. Just a reminder they’re both still alive.
“I do get it,” Daichi says, soft. “I want to think there’s other people out there. But we’re barely getting by as it is, and—” he trails off for a second. Oikawa can imagine what he means, what he must be imagining. The world can be ugly enough on a good day; what would an apocalypse do?
“We’ll have to repopulate the planet,” Oikawa says, faux-serious.
Daichi nods, smile creeping across his face. “D’you think our kids will have superpowers? From all the radiation and stuff?”
“Oh, for sure.”
“Cool. I always wanted to be a superhero.”
Oikawa snorts, bringing his arm up to cover his face. “God, of course you did.”
Daichi prods at Oikawa’s sides, until he starts to curl up, holding his face to hide his laugh. “What’s that supposed to mean, huh?”
“Nothing, nothing!” Oikawa giggles – God he’d be embarrassed if there was any time left in the world to be embarrassed. “It just feels right. Sawamura Daichi, swooping in to save the day. I’d be a villain, of course.”
“Why’s that?”
“No reason,” Oikawa slides to the floor, laying on his side, propping himself up on his elbow. There’s already a bruise forming under his right eye. He pulls it off, somehow. “Just think you need a good rival.”
Daichi turns to face him. “How about a sidekick.”
“Absolutely not.”
“A friend?”
Maybe, Oikawa thinks. Had they ever been friends, before all of this? A high school rivalry and a one-night stand – what did that amount to? What did that mean, now that they were each other’s only anchor in a dead world? Was there even a word for what they had become?
Oikawa grins, something soft even as his cut lips swells. “Something else. Something new.”
“Something new,” Daichi smiles back, twin bruises blooming on his face. “I like that.”
+
Daichi gets an idea.
“This is… so corny.”
“Don’t be like that,” Daichi frowns, but the corners of his mouth are twitching, like he’s holding back a smile. Oh, he thinks he’s so very clever. “I believe I owe you a first date.”
Daichi’s laid their one sleeping bag out flat, so they can lay on it together. And this must be a special, romantic occasion, because he’s dug into the emergency pack deep in Oikawa’s backpack to get a candle, which now flickers in the shade of the cave. There are two granola bars laid out – the last of their rations.
“A gourmet meal,” Oikawa deadpans.
“Shut up,” Daichi tugs him down, and despite his grumbling, Oikawa is beaming, and snuggles easily against Daichi’s side.
He looks up and— ”Oh.”
“Right?” Daichi’s grinning, jutting his chin up toward the ceiling of the cave. He’s used the bioluminescent algae that’s started to grow in the river, dotting the gray slate with neon blue. Constellations dancing in Oikawa’s eyes. Their own personal starscape.
“Since it never gets dark anymore,” Daichi sighs, leaning against Oikawa’s temple, pressing a kiss there unconsciously. “I miss stargazing.”
Thank you – that’s what Oikawa should say. Thank you for doing something so stupid and corny, for carving out what little joy we can in a literal shell of a world. What comes out of Oikawa’s mouth, though, even as he buries his face in Daichi’s collarbone to hide his grin, is “I’ve had better first dates.”
Daichi laughs, so hard his body shakes with it, and Oikawa is laughing too, and kissing Daichi’s open mouth desperately, just small kisses at the corner of his mouth, on his cheek, his nose, down his neck – kissing like it’s air, laughing like it’s water.
Two idiots at the end of the world, making their own starlight.
+
Oikawa Tooru doesn’t think about death. He never did, too focused on the exact thing in front of him, tackling each obstacle with singular focus. Death was wasn’t something feared or ruminated upon. Death wasn’t the end, even – it was just a side-effect of living, as far as he was concerned.
Right now, Oikawa thinks dying feels a lot like living.
The morning it happens, Daichi and Oikawa wake up at almost the same time. Like they can sense it in the air – that too-bright morning, the way the sky goes orange, the way the air tastes like salt and metal. The end of the world isn’t coming; it’s here.
They take a short hike and climb up a nearby cliff that juts up above the tree line to get a better view. The sky looks like alcohol ink, colors dropping and dispersing like fireworks melting across the sky, dripping until they sink under the horizon. There’s so much noise it’s almost noiseless, the cacophony merging together into one staticky haze.
Oikawa looks at the end of the world and decides he’d rather look at Daichi instead.
But Daichi is already looking at him. And when he catches Oikawa’s eye, the line of his mouth slopes into a smile. “Fancy meeting you here.”
He’s probably laughed more in the past week than he has in his entire life – of that, Oikawa is almost positive. Because now he’s laughing so hard, he’s almost crying, hiccupping through it as Daichi joins in, just two more points of sound in that endless, all-encompassing noise.
Shards of what look like starlight are raining down on them, casting small, geometric shadows that throw the planes of Oikawa’s face into sharper relief. Daichi reaches out to stroke a thumb across his cheekbone, marveling at him like a priceless painting; like someone irreplaceable and strange; like the entire world shrunk down to one point.
“It was a good life, wasn’t it?”
Yes. Yes, Oikawa thinks – good in all the ways a life is supposed to be. Good because they lived it. Good because it happened. Giddiness bubbles in his chest because of course it was good – good even when it was bad, when Oikawa was ready to call it all off, good even when the skin peeled from his knuckles and even when his own heart failed him. Good even with the regrets – because he was alive to regret it, and to think, with eyes turned inexorably toward the future, next time.
Next time, next time, next time.
Maybe he’s been babbling this all out loud, or maybe somehow Daichi is thinking the same thing, because he’s grinning, so wide his eyes are crinkling, so wide and bright that he could rival even the devastating sun itself right now.
“I think this is my favorite part.” Oikawa is half-screaming to be heard over the noise, that screaming whistle of white noise that surrounds them.
Daichi just nods. Nods and holds him and what a tableau they must make, two bodies tangled and gold-drenched, backlit against a world-ending shock of sunlight. And it feels so much less like they’re being swallowed than the light is pouring from them, seeping out of every pore, air around them brightening and shaking and shimmering with every laugh. Like the gold was inside them both all along.
Just imagine that.