#blue cup

ay mijo of course, coming right up~

[domesticity, post-timeskip, sensory overload (autistic kageyama)]

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untouchable

Beat.

Beat.

Beat.

Thundering footfalls. Rain hammers the roof. Cheers are like shockwaves.

Beat. Beat. Beat.

Out of breath. Sweat on skin. Lights that flash.

Beat-beat-beat.

Squeak. Smirk. Squish.

Beatbeatbeat.

Run.

He runs to his dorm,

patience thin like bed linen, 

each breath is a curse. 

Push through paparazzi, through beaded doorways, clench teeth because it stops the urge to scream. Tobio feels his tongue in his mouth and the gymnasium lights and the stench of sweat and the roars of crowds - panting and talking and loud and bright and harsh and it's all so much, too much, standing over him and pushing him to the floor.

He slumps to the ground. His dorm lights punched off, his teeth grinding together, his clothes removed and thrown on the floor just so he doesn't have to feel them anymore.

It's not the first time this has happened - when every sensation becomes his enemy, his perceptiveness his downfall - it used to happen a lot in Kitagawa, when Oikawa's voice got scratchy and the loneliness began to burn. He knows this overstimulation like the veins in his hands, remembers this overload like it's fated. He only wishes he could stop it.

There are light sounds behind him, ginger footsteps, someone who cares too much to be brash.

Oh, Shoyo…

Something lands in Tobio's hand - hard, smooth plastic, designed to be twisted and pulled into something resembling relief. It's grey, a colour dull enough to soothe him, and it tangles into snakes and pretzel knots.

"Thank you," he'd say, if he knew how to speak; his tongue refuses to move, uncomfortable in his mouth. His wordlessness sizzles him. Shoyo knows what he means to say.

How long he sits there, easing himself out of his overwhelmed state, out of his environmental thunderstorm, is unknown. But, loyal as a dog, faithful as religion, Shoyo stays.

He doesn't press - he doesn't talk, does not malleate, does not push his lover further into his state. He simply waits - this, as all things, will pass, and Tobio will want gentle hands in his hair when it does.

Loving Tobio is poetry, a haiku, iambic pentameter; always there will be a rhyme that doesn't fit or a jarring syllable, but Shoyo loves Tobio because of it.

Joseph Rodefer DeCamp (1858-1923, American) ~ The Blue Cup, 1909

im so glad you are!!! Here are two bits I really like from Abraham's Journey Up the Mountain to help build that anticipation 👀👀

Here's a bit from when Callum first develops his obsession as a kid:

He watched it on a TV show, one he would become obsessed with as time went on. A scared little boy was about to be hurt, torn apart bit by bit. (Callum has experienced that kind of hurt before, Callum had been hurt many times.) Close was the end, but a mighty dog leapt in, placing himself between a dangerous man and a little boy, growling and hissing and barking and making all the sounds Callum never got to hear anyone say for him. Yes, the dog would protect the character on the TV, and the boy would sink his head into the dog's fur and breathe in, fingers twisting and shoulders relaxed. The boy always looked happy. Safe. And the dog would give a tiny little bark, a little whimper to let the boy know that everything was okay, that the beer bottles on the floor when he came back from school didn't mean anything, that there would always be someone there for him when his older brother left for work.

--

And here's where his dad took down all the dog pictures on his wall and made him replace them with pictures of girls and sports cars:

The wall flickered in sunlight, glittery and full of the sacrifices that made a healthy man, ones to be proud of. A young teenager glanced at the crumpled up pictures of man’s best friend and then turned his eyes towards a boy’s favorite dream; maturity, reality was painted into bikinis and women with eyes of lambs and sheep. Here, boy, is the future to believe in, and the future that shapes every man. He was a man, wasn’t he, women with plump lips sneered. Callum traced the pictures into constellations to tell his future, and determined that he was. The wall demanded it of him, all powerful and all knowing, and Callum was afraid.