TW: illness/mention of death

The room was small, with grey walls and a grey carpet, and the air inside seemed to echo softly with longing. In the corner, wires snaked down from a ventilator that was currently switched off. Next to it, an IV drip loomed like a tall, crooked shadow. It was a cold spot in the room. Where the dead watched and waited.

Tooru Oikawa was sitting on the edge of the bed, staring at his mother's sleeping face. She looked different to when Oikawa last saw her, only yesterday. The skin around her cheeks had sunken and appeared sallow, like a melting candle, and there was something thin and lacking about her. Like bits of her were falling away, crumbling, one piece of skin and hair at a time.

She looked like she was dying.

She was dying.

He parted his lips, but not a sound came out. His mouth moved around nothing but empty echoes, carving the air into the shape of his longing. Longing for the past. For when things were normal, when things were okay. When his mother wasn't ill and falling to pieces right in front of him.

He could smell her. Smell her decay, like something rotting deep in the earth. He could smell the skin that sunk into the crevice of her cheekbones, and the hair that withered away like flowers in winter, and the bruises that bloomed over her skin like ink stains on clumsy fingers. He could smell her dying. Something dark and cruel.

Oikawa stood up and went to the window. His mother hadn't opened her eyes since he'd arrived, but he didn't want to disturb her. So he waited. It was always the same. He would wait while she slept, while the smell of her decay sickened him, while he watched the skin sink further and further into her cheeks, and her hair wither away at her temples. His beautiful mother, rotting away in her bed.

He focused on the glass, on the boy staring back at him. A handsome boy, his mother would have said. But those sharp, handsome lines of his face had started to blur and soften into something sad. His smiles had grown too watery around the edges and his eyes were always looking down instead of up.

Was he falling apart too? Did he smell of withering leaves and old earth like his mother?

A breath, loud and shuddering, made him turn.

His mother was sitting up, staring at him. She looked like a corpse, come back from the dead, with her hair spilling over her shoulders in knotted clumps and her eyes glazed and unseeing.

Oikawa smiled, but it felt crooked.

"Morning, sleepy-head," he said, even though it was past noon. The sky was thick with woollen clouds, and the room was dark. He moved towards the bed, his feet silent against the wood floor. "How are you feeling today?" He pressed the back of his hand to her forehead, feeling the skin damp with perspiration.

She blinked at him, silent, detached, as if she was looking at a stranger. Then she laid back down, pulling away from his hand, leaving a patch of cold air between his fingers.

"Tired," she said quietly. One thing that had stayed the same was her voice. She spoke quieter and less often now, but at least she still sounded like his mother. "Thirsty."

"I'll get you some water," he said quickly, moving across to the table by her bed. A jug of water sat on the side, next to a vase of flowers. They had wilted overnight, become grey and brittle,

like my mother

and some of the petals had fallen onto the floor. Oikawa wondered if it was worth replacing them. His mother had always liked flowers, but now he wasn't sure she even noticed them anymore.

He helped her sit up and pressed the glass to her lips. Her throat moved quickly as she drank, as if something was crawling up from her body and trying to force its way out.

"Mnm," she mumbled against the glass, and he took it away, put it back on the side. His mother sighed, closing her eyes again. Oikawa watched as the shadows on her face seemed to grow thicker, eating away the laughter lines and freckles that he had grown so used to seeing.

Tooru Oikawa loved his mother.

He didn't want her to die. He didn't want her to leave

they always leave

him all alone. She was all he had left in this world, and without her what would he do? Who would he be?

Yes, he thought, watching her sleep once more, I'll buy her some more flowers.

A/N: Like I said in the intro, this style of writing is quite different for me, and it's also a lot darker, so I hope you like it! The chapters will likely be quite short, but I suppose it makes it easier to update. And yeah, I know how OOC Oikawa seems compared to canon material but, y'know, he's going through some rough times (so pls forgive me).

I'll try my best to put trigger warnings at the beginning of chapters, even if it is just something minor, because I don't want anyone being caught out by anything that might upset them. Although I imagine that since you're here, you're expecting some darker topics...