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i.
“Tooru!” Oikawa’s mother appears round the doorway to her son’s bedroom early one Saturday morning. The sky is grey outside and the window is still wet. “Hajime is at the door. It’s time to go!”
Oikawa is sat on the floor trying to pull his socks up his legs without twisting them or crinkling them. He has one shoe on, his shirt hanging around his neck like a scarf and revealing the ridges of his ribs and his spine as he bends between his knees to flick his shoelaces out of the way. His mother sighs and puts her hands on her hips before going to help him get dressed. “Tooru, Tooru,” she chides him in her gentle voice. “You’re going to be late.”
The night had been shrouded in thick sheets of rain that had soaked the soil right through and sent water cascading down the gutters in the street; it’s the kind of rain Oikawa would go out in and splash in puddles, or set paper boats down the streams on the road. It’s a lazy kind of rain, not heavy or violent; it just hangs there, right above their heads scraping the roofs of their houses, raining and raining and raining. His father had stood at the window the evening before with his tie loose around his neck and a glass of wine in his hand, gazing out at the rain as it shimmered in the light of the streetlamp on the corner. He shook his head as though he was sad, and Oikawa couldn’t understand it.
His mother prods him along, handing him his bag and a bottle of water. “Be good!” she calls from the doorway as her son skips down the steps and over the puddles to where the Iwaizumis’ car is waiting parked on the curb, rain glancing off his raincoat with a tinny rattle. Oikawa can see Iwaizumi in his car with his nose pressed to the glass and his breath fogging the pane. He waves; Iwaizumi grins and waves back, teeth a crooked jumble. They’re both eleven, with strong, wiry bodies and bright eyes and missing teeth. Their entire existence is skewed and awkward, but they don’t mind because the puddles are still deep and the trees are still tall as skyscrapers and their biggest worry is whether or not there are monsters beneath their beds.
They had agreed to join the soccer club together because Iwaizumi thought it would be a good idea. Oikawa’s heart lay in volleyball, and Iwaizumi knows this, but he still thought that it would be good to sign both of them up. Iwaizumi, Oikawa had quickly realised, is the kind of person who likes to reach out and feel around for something that piques their interest rather than applying themselves to one single thing. Oikawa isn’t necessarily excited or motivated, but if it’s Iwaizumi, then it’s okay.
The ground is cold and wet when they pull up at the field, hopping down from the car and splashing their new shoes with mud and sodden grass. Oikawa is dismayed that his new shoes have been dirtied so quickly and is only distracted from it when Iwaizumi reaches out and grabs his arm to pull him along to the pavilion filled with parents and coffee and children with grass stains on their clothes. It’s still raining a little, but only slightly, and certainly not enough to put Iwaizumi off. He’s standing on the threshold of the pavilion, looking back over his shoulder at Oikawa as the rain lightens and stops altogether. “Are you coming?” he asks, and Oikawa goes.
Iwaizumi is good. He’s always good. He’s good at most things that require physical exertion, and even as a kid he’s strong and flexible and built stoutly, with power in his legs and his arms. He’s strong where Oikawa is fast, and the latter’s speed does little to help his lack of skill and spatial awareness. Iwaizumi roars with laughter each time Oikawa tumbles like a bowling ball over his own long, gangly limbs, skidding in the mud and getting water in his shoes. He helps Oikawa up, though, and grins at him, and the day seems to open up each time he does even though the clouds still haven’t cleared away and the sunlight is weak as water.
“Tooru, here!” Oikawa hates this; it’s pointless, kicking a ball like this. Why can’t they just hit it with their hands? It’s so much more fun that way, so much easier. His shoes are slippery and the ball is slippery and it’s like trying to catch air in his fist. Oikawa’s red vest billows up around his chin as he skids over the field, white shoes brown and his legs freckled with mud and grass, his wet socks squelching between his toes. “Pass it here!”
He tries, but suddenly Iwaizumi is in front of him with a blue vest over his shoulders and a decisive brightness in his eyes; Oikawa doesn’t have time to stop before the weight of his friend hits him like a freight train and they spin to the ground in a tangle of limbs and churned earth. The wind is knocked out of his lungs, and the impact was enough to make Iwaizumi wheeze. It’s almost like swimming, the way they wrestle around on the ground in the mud trying to right themselves again; Iwaizumi is pushing away, wiping at a cut on his knee and averting his eyes. His lip is split but he can’t feel the sting; he can taste the blood and it’s bitter in his throat so he spits it onto the ground. He doesn’t help Oikawa up, his friend lying prone on the ground and looking up at the overcast sky with his own blood leaking into the cracks between his teeth. His teammates gather round him. “Are you okay?” “You’re bleeding!” “Let me help you up.”
Oikawa gets to his feet on his own and feels nausea rock his stomach. The world spins and Iwaizumi is nowhere and he can’t for the life of him explain why his face is hot and his hands are shaking. He feels weak at the knees, just a little bit, and he can’t figure out why. Standing in the middle of the field Oikawa frowns deeply and replays everything over in his head: they had fallen, together, tripping and slipping in the sludge underfoot. Falling, and Oikawa remembers seeing Iwaizumi’s eyes so close and so clearly he swore could see the very veins in his retinas. Then his head had tipped forward, nose knocking against Iwaizumi’s and their lips had -
He brings a hand to his throat and grimaces, heat rising in his chest. He can feel his fingers trembling the same way his friends described when talking to a girl - but Iwaizumi isn’t a girl, he’s a boy. It made him happy - his friends talked about feeling happy kissing girls, didn’t they? Other people they liked? Oikawa looks round for his friend but can’t see him until he’s hit on the back and Iwaizumi is beside him, too gruff and too serious for an eleven-year-old. “Iwa-chan -,”
“Nothing,” Iwaizumi interrupts. “Nothing happened, right? It’s gross. Boys don’t… boys can’t do that with other boys. It’s wrong and it’s gross.”
Oikawa smiles widely and feels mud on his tongue. “Right.” It isn’t right, his own body feeling lesser than the dirt under his feet as Iwaizumi scrubs at his lips as though Oikawa was some kind of disease, and Oikawa feels his heart drop through his stomach like an anvil in the ocean and he looks away, trying to hide the tears that had sprung suddenly to his eyes.
ii.
At first, Oikawa doesn’t believe it’s a crush.
It isn’t something that has occurred to him before; he’s never really thought about anything like that, about dating anybody or even liking anybody, not in that sense. He’d never thought about Iwaizumi that way, either, and even though Iwaizumi had seemed repulsed to the point of anger, the idea really wasn’t so bad to Oikawa. They were friends, so in essence, he liked him already, didn’t he? The cut on his lip had taken a long time to heal because he was constantly picking at it, remembering the crash of Iwaizumi’s teeth against his lips.
Was it a real kiss? he thought absently to himself as he picked at his lip; this was a question that kept his mind occupied for days. Days turned into weeks and weeks into months, and on his twelfth birthday he was told to make a wish when he blew out his candles he did, but he didn’t wish for a new telescope of for glow-in-the-dark ceiling stickers of the solar system. Please make Iwa-chan like me! He’d locked himself in his room after that, abhorred by his wish and hiding under his covers until his gut had eased up a little bit and his mother had come to ask what was wrong. “It’s such a shame Tooru had to get sick on his birthday,” his mother sighed to his father with her cheek in her hand and her fork lying beside an unfinished slice of birthday cake.
He’d opened Iwaizumi’s gift - a shirt adorned with a cross-stitched alien on the breast pocket - and had pulled it on immediately, grinning from ear to ear, and Iwaizumi grinned back because it was so obvious Oikawa liked it. It smelled like the shop he’d bought it in but the more Oikawa wore it the less it smelled like plastic and the more it smelled like him, the more it smelled like Iwaizumi, and it quickly became his favourite shirt, one that he’d wear everywhere until the seams came loose and the entire thing unthreaded. It’s on his thirteenth birthday he realises.
“If you touch the bottom of the cake with the knife you have to kiss the nearest girl!”
Oikawa makes a face. “No way.”
His friends holler at him and the girls giggle, visions in pale colours and with skin brown as berries, their dark hair glimmering in the sun and all wearing the fashionable straw hats with ribbons tied in bows. Of course he touches the bottom and of course the boys scream and the girls laugh and pluck nervously at their skirts. Iwaizumi is to his immediate left, a girl to his immediate right, and for a moment he thinks of turning around and kissing Iwaizumi and blaming it on an accident - but Iwaizumi would get angry at him and hit him, or worse, decide that they couldn’t be friends anymore. So Oikawa turns to his right and pecks the girl on the cheek, feeling her bright smile and wishing it was Iwaizumi instead.
“I’m gross,” Oikawa tells himself in the evening when he’s sitting wearing the shirt Iwaizumi had bought him and glaring teary-eyed at his reflection in the mirror. Don’t cry, his father would have said to him. Man up. Boys don’t cry.
He didn’t understand; when people had a crush on someone it was all roses and happiness, wasn’t it? That’s what it’s like in the movies. That’s what he hears at school when people talk about someone they are ‘in love’ with. It isn’t the same for Oikawa. He’s gripped with self-loathing that rolls over him in waves so strong it makes him feel sick. He can’t think about Iwaizumi without wanting to pluck out his own eyes, to scrape out pieces of his own brain. It’s gross, two boys can’t do that, it’s gross. It’s wrong. It’s gross. He’d lie awake gnashing his teeth and remember what Iwaizumi had told him, how revolting he’d found it, how angry he’d been. Oikawa didn’t want to repeat that, he didn’t want to see that disgusted glare again, not ever.
It’s high summer and Oikawa has managed to effectively smooth out his anxieties concerning Iwaizumi, more or less. He’s all calm waters and spring rain, the wildfires doused and the waves no longer crashing against the inside of his skull. It really is too hot to get worked up, anyway; Oikawa’s mother doesn’t take kindly to her son lolling about inside all day in front of the television, so she ousts him into the shimmering heat and tells him to go occupy himself till the afternoon, handing him a bottle of water and a piece of fruit. He sits under the tree in his front yard tossing stones at the fence, at first, seeing if he can land one through the slats. Knock, knock, knock. The sound of the stones bouncing off the wood is like the knocking on a door, he thinks, and inevitably draws attention. Oikawa stops throwing rocks when Iwaizumi’s head pops over the fence.
“What are you doing?”
“Nothing.”
“Come over.”
Oikawa blinks. “Okay.” He scrambles to his feet, dropping his handful of stones to the ground and going out to follow Iwaizumi a little down the road. Iwaizumi has a net over his shoulder and a clear plastic container under his arm, inside which there are half a dozen little blue beetles scurrying between a couple of stick and leaves and chunks of soil. “What were you doing, Iwa-chan?”
“I was catching bugs.”
“You don’t have very many.”
“I know. I want to catch a cicada today. Do you want to help me look for some?”
Oikawa brightens and practically skips along. “Yes, I’d love to! I’ll help you, promise. We’ll catch hundreds of cicadas!” Iwaizumi hands him the net and Oikawa holds it above his head as he runs.
Iwaizumi’s grandmother greets them when they arrive at his house; Iwaizumi leads him through the house to the back garden. Their house is similar to Oikawa’s, but older, with a grey tiled roof and high walls running around the property. It’s more private, and seems bigger even though Oikawa and Iwaizumi had walked from one end of the house to the other and counted their paces, and found it to be the same as Oikawa’s house. It smelled old, too, and had an altar with incense and wall scrolls that Oikawa’s house did not have. Decorated urns and pots that held bamboo stalks made the rooms smell sweet and old, like the dried flowers between the pages of a book. And then there’s their garden.
Oikawa’s love for the Iwaizumis’ back garden runs deep within his veins. It’s a box of emeralds, he thinks, large and square with thin, high trees and bamboo planted around the perimeter. The eaves of the house’s verandas are deep, the foliage casting a green light that’s more magical than eerie over the entire yard. It reminds him of the shrine on the hill near their school, the same deep shade and tinkling of bells from his grandmother’s finch cages hanging from the second-story balcony. There’s a pond, too, with scores of glimmering fish that crowd to the surface whenever Oikawa is allowed to feed them crumbs. The trilling of the cicadas is soft but close, and they hunt through the bamboo and the undergrowth, the most avid of explorers, Iwaizumi’s knees plastered with band-aids already and Oikawa’s fingernails caked with dirt.
Of all the hundreds of cicadas Oikawa had promised, they only caught three, but for Iwaizumi it was two more than he’d hoped for. He kept two of them and handed the other to Oikawa in a little jar with a leaf inside. “You can have this.”
“I don’t want it,” Oikawa replies, shaking the jar a bit to see the cicada flit about. “I won’t do anything with it.”
He’d always been a little unnerved by the serenity of Iwaizumi’s gaze. “Then let it go.”
Oikawa unscrews the lid of the jar, crouching on the hot stepping stones leading across the grass, and tips it upside-down. The cicada, quite happy to be finally free, takes flight and buzzes away out of sight. Oikawa and Iwaizumi watch it go and are silent for a little while, side by side in the sun until Iwaizumi’s grandmother comes out onto the veranda with a tray of tea. “Come and have a drink!” she calls to them, the yellow of her yukata bright even in the shade. She turns to Iwaizumi and clicks her tongue. “Look at you, sunburned again! You’re lucky you have such hardy skin, just like your mother. Tooru, dear, you must take better care of your skin than Hajime does; your skin is so pretty and pale.”
“I think Hajime’s skin is nicer.”
Iwaizumi hands Oikawa the fuller cup and they sit together on the edge of the veranda with their legs over the side, swinging in the cool shade and dipping their toes in the koi pond so the fish bubble near them thinking it’s food. They don’t talk, they just sit, and they’re both content in the company of the other. It’s warm and humid, a sleepy temperature, and it doesn’t take long for Iwaizumi to lie back with his hands behind his head and his eyes drawn shut, his tea half-finished and sitting abandoned by his hip, the sun in his lap.
“If you don’t finish it I’ll steal it,” Oikawa jokes. Iwaizumi doesn’t reply. Oikawa waves his hand over Iwaizumi’s face, but he still doesn’t so much as flinch. Oikawa tilts his head to the side; this is an angle of Iwaizumi he hasn’t seen before. His face is so relaxed, almost peaceful, lips parted slightly and his brown smooth and uncrinkled save for a little crease between his eyebrows. Oikawa presses his thumb to it and it disappears, but he falls in a little deeper and the ache in his throat returns, just as it had when he’d kissed that girl on his birthday. “Iwa-chan?”
No response.
It is ephemeral. Oikawa can’t breathe, not when Iwaizumi is so perfect in the pale jade light, not when his skin glows golden from sun and sweat, not when his breathing is deep and even, hair dark against the boards of the veranda. He feels as though he’d melt like ice in the sun or glass in a furnace just looking at him. He wonders how anybody could possibly be so important, so connected to the earth. Why it is that it’s like hands are twisting in his intestines whenever he looks at him? It’s gross. Oikawa leans over Iwaizumi, looking down into his face, at the delicate eyelashes splayed over Iwaizumi’s brown cheek, at his chapped lips and scraped nose peeling from sunburn. He leans in closer till he can see each pore, each hair, till he can feel each of Iwaizumi’s breaths against his own lips, closer, until he kisses him.
His heart dissolves into his blood and roars around his body in a rapid torrent. It would blind him, for sure, and Oikawa has to draw back in case Iwaizumi is woken by his shaking. Oikawa can taste sweat and dirt and barley tea, he can taste Iwaizumi, and it’s so much better than wearing a shirt given to him as a gift. He reaches up to touch his own lips, dragging the tips of his fingers over them and trying not to grin in nervous fear. Nausea, again, takes hold of him and the world spins. He remembers Iwaizumi scrubbing at his lips with a muddy hand and that nausea turns to cold dread deep in the marrow of his bones. It’s worse than the feeling he gets when he’s lost in a supermarket, or when his mother forgets to pick him up from school sometimes. Frightened, he staggers to his feet, knocking over Iwaizumi’s unfinished drink so it soaks into his trouser leg and rouses him from his slumber.
“…’kawa?” he asks groggily, shielding his eyes from the sun refracting off the pond.
Oikawa turns and flees without replying, sprinting on long legs past Iwaizumi’s grandmother and out into the sunlight, leaping over the gate and out onto the dusty road. Adrenaline to nausea, he feels like he’s going to faint. He hammers on his own front door until his mother lets him inside because Iwaizumi can’t find him, he can’t face him, not like this.
“Tooru?” his mother asks, alarmed, as her son’s skinny knees begin to knock together. Oikawa lurches inside a few steps, braces his arm against the wall, and promptly vomits all over the carpet.
iii.
“Iwaizumi! We’re having a party this weekend, you should come!”
“A party?” Iwaizumi asks the girl, leaning froward on his elbows, intrigued. “What kind of party?”
“It’s Mayu’s birthday and we’re having a surprise party for her. She really likes you, so it’d be really nice if you were there.” She turns to Oikawa, who’s sitting back in his seat with his arms folded across his chest and his legs splayed over his friend’s lap. “You should come too, Oikawa!”
They’re in their last year of middle school and Oikawa has proven a hit with the girls. He’s grown into a pretty teenager with lucky skin and hands too big for his body, but he’s as strong as he’s ever been, and has invoked Iwaizumi’s wrath ever since he’d outgrown him.
“I wouldn’t want to intrude,” he replies a little stiffly, but he grins widely anyway to reveal a mouthful of even teeth. “After all, I don’t want to steal the limelight.” He winks at Iwaizumi who rolls his eyes and jabs him in the arm with the butt of his pencil. Mayu - Oikawa isn’t really sure who that is, exactly, but that doesn’t matter - likes Iwaizumi? How sweet. It makes Oikawa want to grimace but he bites his distaste back and continues to smile. Iwaizumi… he glances at him from the corner of his eye and lets his gaze travel the bowed length of Iwaizumi’s body, watching his shoulders shift as he gestures with his hands and watching as his legs shift beneath the desk, under Oikawa’s ankles. He’d began to fill out recently, growing broader as well as taller (but not as tall as Oikawa, who never lets him forget it), constantly having to roll up his sleeves and show the girls and the boys which muscles he’d developed, lifting up his shirt to let the girls fawn over his abdominals or bracing himself to see if anyone could punch him hard enough to wind him. Iwaizumi is a game, and nobody has beaten him yet. The broadness of his hands and his fingers, too, isn’t customarily pubescent; they’re the fingers of a man, not a boy, rough and blunt and thick and Oikawa had heard people sighing over the veins on the back of his hands and wondering how talented those fingers really were.
Soon enough Oikawa had begun to think about the same things. He began to think about those fingers and those arms and when summer came he would go with Iwaizumi to the pool or to the beach and watch him, watch the muscles in his back and his sides as he moved, watch the way as he grinned and flicked salty hair out of his eyes. His skin was golden and smooth and he had coarse hair on his arms and his legs and was already getting chest hair, while Oikawa was not. Oikawa would lie awake at night thinking how warm Iwaizumi’s skin was and how heavy his body was when he’d been tackled down to the ground. How that weight would feel under different circumstances. He began to wonder what the rest of him would look like, if he was as muscled all over, if the rumours about Iwaizumi being good with his hands were true. How those hands would feel on him, how Iwaizumi would sound gasping in his ear. Oikawa had watched porn before, of course, but it was all so distastefully fake that he hadn’t thought much of it. The thought of Iwaizumi naked and flushed was enough to make him hard in his pants - much to his horror - and he’d wake up some mornings after dreaming about Iwaizumi to find the front of his boxers damp and his spine sticky with sweat.
But it’s not just that, is it? his mind asks him, and he shakes his head dejectedly. It’s something else. Something deeper. It hits him hard and fast like a brick being thrown into the back of his head. You love him. There’s something awful about it.
“Oikawa, hurry up!” Iwaizumi barks from the driveway on the night of the party, hauling a stone up towards Oikawa’s window. “We’re going to be late!” The stone rattles against the wall beside the glass and falls back to the ground by Iwaizumi’s feet.
They walk together to the train station, Oikawa with his hands in his pockets trying not to look too long at Iwaizumi who’s dressed nicely and smells even nicer. He’s obviously nervous about it, considering how often he scratches the nape of his neck, which Oikawa knows well enough is a basic nervous tick of his; Iwaizumi looks at Oikawa, but Oikawa doesn’t see when he does. The train is full and they stand abreast by the carriage door, swaying together, their arms rubbing against each other with each hitch over the railway line, Oikawa’s breath hitching with it. You love him. Oikawa leans over and puts his head on Iwaizumi’s shoulder.
“What are you doing? You can’t be tired already.”
“I’m not.” Just let me stay like this for a little longer.
They arrive at the party later than expected after a delay at one of their stops. Something about someone on the train lines. There are people at the door and on the street outside laughing and drinking and Oikawa knows immediately that the party is unchaperoned. Music pumps through the ground and Iwaizumi’s hand is tight round his wrist as they sidle through the throng of people crowded round the door, seeking out the girl who’d invited them. Their classmates are there, the girls drawn to Oikawa like moths to a flame and Iwaizumi slips away unnoticed by everyone except Oikawa. He doesn’t follow him. He doesn’t look for him. This is Iwaizumi’s party, not his; he knows he was only invited out of courtesy.
He doesn’t go upstairs with any of the girls, and he stays by them to make sure they’re okay. He knows there’s a couple of point assholes at this party and he figures that if he’s there he might as well act as some kind of damage control. He befriends a group of clever girls who point out things to him, people he never noticed, and he likes them, because they’re interesting. Things aren’t so bad.
Suddenly there’s a roar of voices and laughter from the general direction of the living room; Oikawa peers round the doorway and his stomach drops like lead. Iwaizumi is sat on the sofa with a girl who Oikawa assumes to be this Mayu person - judging by the ‘16’ badge pinned to the front of her dress and the tinsel slung around her shoulders - with his hands on her waist and her arms around his neck. They’re kissing, closely, bodies tucked tightly together, noses pushed against cheeks. Iwaizumi’s fingers move from her waist to her back and his eyes are closed and Oikawa’s brain grows turgid with insane jealousy that he can’t hide, not this time. He sneers into his hand, which is shaking uncontrollably against his mouth, feeling as bile rises in his throat and floods his mouth. He’s gripped by the worst sensation he could possibly imagine; it makes his head spin and the room press in around him, the voices growing louder and louder until he can’t take it, and he flees, elbowing his way through the crowd of people craning for a look until he reaches the front door and stumbles out into the night air. He doesn’t know how many hours it’s been since they arrived, but it’s dark now, and there’s a group of people sitting in a half-circle on the grass outside Mayu’s house just outside the light cast from the bay window. They call to him.
“Oikawa! Come sit with us. Want a drink?” One of the boys holds up a tall, clear bottle and laughs, his words slurred together, sounding like tangled thread, rough and hewn. Oikawa licks his lips.
“Yeah.” He strides over and folds his long body to sit on the ground, reaching for the bottle that’s passed to him with shaking fingers. He doesn’t know what it is or what it’ll do. He doesn’t really care. He knows he’ll get drunk and he wants to get drunk. He wants to forget what he saw. He wants to cry and he wants to tear his hair out but he doesn’t, he just drinks and drinks and ignores the fire tearing down his oesophagus and filling his lungs. He ignores the boys hooting and chanting ‘Tooru! Tooru! Tooru!’ as he drinks because the only thing he wants is to pass out and forget everything. His capillaries feel as though they’re exploding.
The teenagers keep yelling at him, encouraging to fill his veins with alcohol, chanting his name in voices that slur together and become indistinguishable to Oikawa’s ears. He laughs, bitterly, drawing in a stinging breath before drowning himself in a new bottle of… something. Whiskey, maybe, or vodka. Time slows down and speeds up all at the same time, Oikawa’s head whirling, the ground tipping under him with each swallow. He turns to the girl sitting next to him and kisses her desperately, sloppily, between swallows, and she kisses him back, just as drunk and nonsensical. Perhaps she’s pining after someone unattainable as well. He pulls her into his lap.
“Oikawa!” Well, that voice is different to the others and certainly isn’t cheering for him. It’s rage, pure and simple, as distilled as the alcohol gurgling in his sinuses and the bottle is knocked from his hand and onto the grass where it spills and Oikawa’s company scrabbles to save it before it’s all drained. The girl in his lap tumbles backwards as Oikawa is manhandled to his feet and lugged like a sack of potatoes until he can’t walk anymore and falls to the ground, laughing stupidly. It’s only when he feels tears on his face that he realises he’s crying.
“Oikawa,” Iwaizumi is furious, standing with balled fists and a face scrunched tight. “You asshole. You think this is funny, getting shit-faced drunk with a bunch of strangers? What is wrong with you?” Oikawa reaches for him and levers himself to his feet by Iwaizumi’s shoulders, breathing stale alcohol in his face. Iwaizumi shoves him out the gate, his mind far away from any kind of gentleness. Oikawa staggers into the street, head tipped back, stars spinning in dizzying circles above him. Iwaizumi stands stoic, like a stack of bricks, only lurching forward when Oikawa begins to teeter down the middle of the road. “Where are you going?” he yells.
“Dunno,” Oikawa replies. He laughs, ignoring the tears. He feels sick, an unholy cocktail of liquor sloshing around in his gut. Iwaizumi watches as Oikawa laughs again and vomits on his shoes. He’s lucky Iwaizumi manages to catch him before he falls and smashes his head on the asphalt.
“You fucking idiot!” Iwaizumi yells at him, shaking him till his teeth rattle and his head stops spinning. The party ambience seems worlds away now, both of them cast into half-darkness. Oikawa hiccups, the urge to laugh fully replaced by the irrevocable need to cry.
“’m sorry,” he slurs as he presses the heels of his hands to his eyes and sobs. “I didn’t mean to.”
“The fuck do you mean?”
“It’s ’cause I saw you kissing that girl.”
“Eh?”
“Made me wanna f’cking drown myself.” He lurches forward, grabbing Iwaizumi by the shoulder and putting their faces close together so he can smell Mayu’s fruity lipgloss and the cologne Iwaizumi had so painstaking applied earlier in the evening. He presses their lips together, and he knows all he tastes like is vomit and liquor but it doesn’t faze him, because Iwaizumi matters too much. The kiss feels like wet bread. It’s disgusting. He’s drunk and probably half-dead anyway so it doesn’t matter if Iwaizumi kills him. “I love you.”
Iwaizumi slaps him.
“Snap out of it, Oikawa.”
“I’m not in it!” he yells shakily, voice choked with emotion he’d rather not be there. “Don’t you get it? Don’t you understand? You w’re in there locked lips with that girl and you n’ver kissed me like that, why won’t you kiss… kiss me like that, ’wa-chan?” he wants to vomit again. “I’m fuck’ng in love with you. I’ve been in lo… in love with you since… since forever. I’m so - I’m sorry.” He covers his eyes with his arm to try and hide the tears.
Iwaizumi’s eyes are dark and vigilant. He takes a moment, swallowing the taste of bile and sweetened vodka that spreads like fire through his mouth. He takes a moment to watch Oikawa standing there crying like a baby with one side of his face glaring red. “How bout you tell me that when you’re not plastered,” he suggests dryly and hooks one of Oikawa’s arms over his shoulder to help him to the station. The train is empty, and Iwaizumi lets Oikawa fall asleep against his shoulder.
iv.
The night of the party is something Oikawa has never forgotten. It’s one of those moments that haunts you for years and years, one of the moments that come back to you when you’re on the verge of sleep and make you groan in embarrassment. It was terrible.
It had been a Friday night when Iwaizumi had carried Oikawa like a child into his house and up to his room, smuggling him past his mother and helping him brush his teeth and vomit silently into the toilet. He put him in the bath and scrubbed away the smell of alcohol and cigarette smoke, and put him to bed, as though Oikawa was his own son and not his dipshit friend.
I love you. I’ve been in love with you since forever.
Those words were cold. They were like tattoos on Iwaizumi’s skin and no matter which way he turned they were there, bright and fresh in his head as though Oikawa had only just told him.
The next day was a Saturday and Oikawa didn’t wake up until noon and even then he stayed in bed for another few hours. He was glad his mother had the discretion to leave him to his own devices, giving him ample room to loll about in his own self-pity and to cry a bit more because his face still hurt where Iwaizumi had slapped him. Iwaizumi, sitting next to the incense sticks in his own house, refused to admit he was keeping an eye out for Oikawa. Maybe the smoke was making him delirious.
The next time they meet it’s on Monday when they’re both standing outside their gates with their uniforms stiff against their necks. They usually walk to school together, kicking rocks and soda cans down the road, but this time it’s different. Just for a second.
“You coming?” Oikawa asks, jabbing his thumb in the direction of the hill. Iwaizumi looks at him.
“Yeah.”
Oikawa is nervous, fidgety, though he keeps his hands in his pockets where Iwaizumi doesn’t notice him clenching and unclenching his fingers. He bites his lips till they’re chapped and often considers faking sickness just to get out of seeing Iwaizumi at school. Luckily nobody had seen him vomiting all over the place, and those teenagers he’d been with weren’t actually part of the party. Iwaizumi smiles at Mayu and Mayu smiles back and Oikawa gets up and leaves the room under the guise of needing the bathroom where he sits with his head between his knees trying not to be sick all over again. He hopes he’ll forget what happened, and considers smashing his head against the wall a few times to try and wipe his memory clean. He hopes he forgets it soon. It’s a needle in his shoe he needs to get rid of if he can ever hope to find peace again.
After a few months without Iwaizumi confronting him he eases up a little; his presence is still stiff and he’s still wary of Iwaizumi looking at him, in case he asks him about it. Oikawa still dreams of his hands and his shoulders and how they’d looked hunched over him in the dark, and he still wakes up with sticky fingers sometimes. Oikawa discovers that Iwaizumi is the most efficient and effective way of masturbating; it’s easy to think of him licking his lips or grinning with glinting teeth in that predatory way he does in volleyball tournaments. It’s easy and it’s quick and it gives Oikawa some of the best orgasms of his life. It also makes him feel empty, but he learns to swallow it down soon enough. As long as Iwaizumi is happy Oikawa doesn’t care how he feels - he’d never bring Iwaizumi down just to make himself feel better. Whenever Iwaizumi grins in that crass way of his it’s like a sunrise in Oikawa’s belly.
The summer passes in a golden haze of trilling cicadas and the rustle of dry leaves. Oikawa yearns for the cool haven of Iwaizumi’s garden but he’s scared, scared that if he goes there and Iwaizumi falls asleep in the sun he’ll kiss him again, and that Iwaizumi would wake up and be even more disgusted with him. He pretends he doesn’t remember what happened in the street that night - he pretends he doesn’t remember kissing Iwaizumi and telling him the things he did. He pretends, and Iwaizumi believes him, and doesn’t bring it up again. Sometimes Oikawa thinks he catches him glaring but he can’t really be sure.
School starts again and it’s their first year at Aoba Johsai and Oikawa is nervous as if he’s walking on thin ice. But Iwaizumi is there with him with his strong hand at his elbow, helping him along. They join the volleyball club and Oikawa is able to bask in the glory of being a highly skilled player, especially with Iwaizumi there. But the glory is as weak as water. Sunlight on a cloudy day. Diluted. Useless.
It’s stress. He’s stressed because he’s sure Iwaizumi hates his guts for what he’s done and is only sticking around because Oikawa doesn’t have any other friends. Exams are hard and all Oikawa can concentrate on is how Iwaizumi chews on the end of his pencil. He’s obsessed, and it’s bad, but he can’t help it. The surer and surer he is that Iwaizumi hates him, the more and more he’s in love with him. It hurts; it makes him want to tear out his heart with his own to hands and fling it into the sea. He wants to bleed out.
“What’s wrong with you lately?” Iwaizumi asks as they sit on the outdoor landing of the admin building with their legs hanging through the metal bars of the railing. They’re sucking on juice boxes and watching the doves that live in the vents flying to and fro; Oikawa has chewed up his straw.
“Nothing.”
That was a lie. A few of Oikawa’s classmates had been discussing one of their friends from middle school. They’d spoken in harsh, horrified whispers. ‘Did you hear?’ ‘Yeah, nah, I heard it was robbery.’ ‘No way. He was always so quiet.’ ‘Apparently he’s gay. That’s even worse, right?’ ‘Yeah, absolutely. Being gay is disgusting. It’s gross.’ Oikawa’s palms had been sweaty and he’d put down his pencil and placed his shaking hands in his lap. Gross. It’s wrong, you’re despicable.
“You sure? You seem kind of… out of it, lately.”
“I’m fine!” Oikawa laughs, almost punching Iwaizumi’s arm. He doesn’t. He just continued to chew on his straw, grinding it between his teeth.
Iwaizumi leaves him be.
They have practice that afternoon and Iwaizumi notices that Oikawa is late. Oikawa is rarely late, so he’s worried, naturally. But he turns up, apologising and pointing to a torn bag strap.
Oikawa’s tosses are sloppy and unmeasured. He hits them too high, too hard, too fast. He hits the balls way out of the range of the spikers, and when he’s yelled at he grinds his teeth some more and shouts an apology. He’d try harder, he says. He’s sweating from every pore of his body, growing more and more aggravated until Iwaizumi is afraid he’ll burst into tears. It’s when Oikawa turns around and yells at Iwaizumi that the spiker snaps like a twig.
“Come with me, I need to talk to you.” He grabs Oikawa by the arm and drags him outside the gym, into the afternoon sun. Their teammates look after them, dumbfounded, but let them go before tentatively resuming training.
Iwaizumi drags Oikawa right to the end of the building and shoves him up against the wall. “The fuck is wrong with you?” he shouts, his face again twisted into a tortured, angry expression. “What the hell are you doing? You’ve been like this for months. Months. You haven’t been yourself, you’ve been cooped up in your room and you’ve been crying, I can tell when you’ve been crying because your eyes are raw and you sniffle. You shake all the time. You think I don’t see it? I do. I always have. You’d better tell me what the fuck is going on, Oikawa, or I swear to God I’ll beat it out of you.”
“Iwa-chan, stop it,” Oikawa begs in a dangerously weak voice. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I don’t mean to.” His face puckers and Iwaizumi, nostrils flaring but anger fading at the look on his face, lets him down. Oikawa wipes at his nose and draws in a nervous breath, looking everywhere except at Iwaizumi.
“You’ve been sick. What’s making you sick? Is it stress? Is it being at the bottom of the food chain again? I need to know. You can’t just keep me in the dark like this.”
“I don’t want to burden you,” Oikawa tells him. He tells him this so shyly Iwaizumi is shocked. “I don’t want to be a dead weight.”
“A dead weight? A burden?” Iwaizumi’s lips are numb. “Seriously? Oikawa, that’s insane. That’s why I’m here, right? For you to tell me your problems. That’s what friends are for, for God’s sake! I care about you, okay?”
“I can’t just tell you!”
“You have to!”
“You don’t understand at all.” Oikawa’s lip is trembling and his hands are balled into fists. He’s on the defence, eyes bright as suns.
“Then explain it to me! I don’t care if it takes all fucking day, I will sit down and you will tell me what’s wrong so I can help you, because I hate seeing you like this, smiling so perfectly when there’s something this deeply wrong, and I hate not being able to figure it out - to figure you out - even though I should be able to because I love you and I don’t want you to be hurt like this ever and - ,” he stops abruptly. The tears in Oikawa’s eyes cling to his lashes as he blinks.
“You what?”
Iwaizumi swallows and swears, kicking at the gym wall. He can see Oikawa’s hands shaking. “Fuck. I didn’t - this isn’t how I thought things would go, all right? I’m just really mad. I’m so mad. I could punch you, y’know? But I could also kiss you till you can’t breathe. I don’t fucking know, damn it! I don’t know at all. I’ve never known because all my life I’ve been told that everything I feel for you isn’t valid and that it’s wrong and disgusting and goes against nature, and I thought they were right and that there was something wrong with me, but there isn’t! There’s nothing wrong with me.” He laughs, his voice crooked. “What a mess. Shit.”
Oikawa notices that Iwaizumi’s nose is peeling from sunburn again. “Iwa-chan… you - you love me?”
Iwaizumi folds his arms restlessly and shuffles his feet like a preschooler. “Mmh. Yeah. I guess so. Dumb, right?” He laughs again, breathlessly, abashedly.
“No,” Oikawa blurts out. He presses his quivering fingers to his own cheeks. “No. No. It’s not dumb. Oh, God,” he tries to knock away the tears swelling down his cheeks, but Iwaizumi is there holding his hands away from his face and kissing him clumsily, as though he’d never kissed anyone ever before. The tears on Oikawa’s lips aren’t his own, and when he draws back from Iwaizumi he sees his friend’s eyes as wet as his own and that happy, hopeless, apologetic expression that makes him endeavour to kiss every inch of Iwaizumi’s face. Their kisses are clumsy and awkward, noses poking each other and teeth pressing uncomfortably.
“I told you to tell me you loved me when you weren’t drunk,” Iwaizumi mumbles into the corner of his mouth. “But you didn’t. I was kinda disappointed.”
Oikawa giggles, high and nervous and gleeful. “I love you. I’m not drunk and I’m telling you I love you. Right here, right now.”
Iwaizumi hums, pressing more little kisses to Oikawa’s mouth and he’s so close, Oikawa able to feel the heat of his body and the hard ridges of the muscles he’d only ever dreamed of touching like this. “You taste a whole lot better this time, too.”
v.
There’s a thing people do when they’re in love with someone. There are many things people do with people they love, in many different ways. Oikawa felt so giddy with happiness and fear that it was a dream that his stomach was in knots. Iwaizumi held tightly onto his hand as Oikawa rubbed his eyes and sniffed, unable to quite comprehend the weight that had been lifted from his shoulders. Seeing Iwaizumi cry - over him - was astounding. It made his pulse race in every pore of his body and when Iwaizumi grinned at him he couldn’t help but to burst out laughing and leap into his arms. Iwaizumi caught him and didn’t let him go until someone went searching for them to make sure they hadn’t drowned in the water fountain.
“You didn’t get into a fight, did you?” the captain asked suspiciously when he noticed that they’d both been crying, eyes red and noses running.
“No,” they answered in unison, then laughed and began to cry again, much to their teammates’ confusion.
Oikawa’s improvement was incredible. He went from inaccurate tosses and incorrect serves to playing some of the best volleyball Iwaizumi had ever seen him play, and if their team suspected anything they kept their mouths shut.
Iwaizumi and Oikawa said farewell to their team at the gates to the school before going their own way; there was a change in atmosphere, the cold hostile air between them opening up like the summer sky after a storm. They opted for the backstreets where there were no houses or shops, only trees and power lines, where they could slip their hands together and walk with linked fingers. Where Iwaizumi could wind his arm round Oikawa’s waist and where Oikawa could thread his fingers through Iwaizumi’s hair. It was all so foreign, so exotic, unfamiliar sensations shooting past them and through them and punching them in the gut, winding them completely. It was horrific and frightening and wonderful.
“My parents aren’t home for a while,” Iwaizumi suggested nervously and Oikawa’s body tensed up in response. “They’re taking grandma to the theatre. Do you wanna come over and catch some cicadas?”
“Yeah.” Oikawa couldn’t hold back his grin.
They were really to big to go crawling through the bamboo. The garden seemed smaller now that Oikawa was bigger, the cicadas harder to catch. Iwaizumi barked out in triumph at one point, depositing a disoriented insect into a little glass jar. “Lucky,” Oikawa said with a sigh, though soon after he managed to catch another three. They released all of them and watched them buzz into the sky while warming their legs in the sun. They both knew nothing much would change between them, and they were happy. It was just a subtle shift, like a metronome swinging from left to right. Instead of them lying on the veranda with space between them they lay together on their sides, shifting their awkward, gangly bodies every which way to try and get comfortable, elbowing each other and kneeing each other and sometimes tumbling down onto the grass. Iwaizumi’s hands were in Oikawa’s and Oikawa’s hands were in his and they couldn’t stop kissing each other’s faces. They were making up for years and years of lost time, after all, and they wanted to catch up one everything they’d missed. Each growth spurt, each new muscle, each strand of hair and stretch of bone. Oikawa trailed his hands over Iwaizumi’s form and found that it was much different to what he’d imagined it to be in all those dreams he’d had.
They were young and impressionable and excited with too much energy and too much time. Some people might think it was a dangerous thing, but the two of them were so utterly harmless that they couldn’t do any damage if they tried. All they wanted to do was be with each other, to breathe easy again, to realise themselves as who they wanted to be. They didn’t have to hide themselves anymore.
It’s their first date and Oikawa is feeling sick to his stomach as he picks out his flaws in the bathroom mirror. He and Iwaizumi agreed to keep the news of their dating on the down-low, so his mother couldn’t understand why Oikawa was so nervous.
“You’ve been places with Hajime before, Tooru,” she tells him as she watches him critically inspect two shirts. He can’t exactly say ‘yeah, about that, Hajime and I are dating now so I’m shit-faced nervous and I’m going to sweat out all of my body fat’.
“There’s gonna be some girls there.”
“Oh, I see!” she leans to the left a little. “Chose the blue one.”
“Thanks, mom.”
He remembers how Iwaizumi had applied cologne so carefully on the night of Mayu’s party. He’s doing the same thing right now, though he’s not putting on cologne, no way. He’d figured out long ago that women’s perfume was much nicer than cologne, so he used that instead, daubing it against his skin and rubbing it into the membrane with his wrists, not his fingers. He always thought assigning genders to fragrances was ridiculous, anyway.
“Tooru!” he hears his mother call from downstairs. “Hajime is here!”
“Coming!” Oikawa almost trips over himself in his rush to get to the door, leaping down the stairs four at a time. He strides out to meet Iwaizumi by the gate and clears his throat. “Y-you look nice. I mean. That’s a really… the colour is nice.”
Iwaizumi snorts with laughter and plucks at his shirt. “It better be - you got it for my birthday, didn’t you?”
Oikawa blinks, then grins. “Yeah.” He feels Iwaizumi’s fingers on his wrist but they jerk away when they hear Oikawa’s mother call out to them.
They take the train and Iwaizumi doesn’t tell Oikawa where they’re going. Oikawa trusts him, so he’s willing to follow, amused and intrigued as to where Iwaizumi could have in mind. The train is busy on a Saturday morning so they’re crowded together, and where they might have struggled to put space between them before they allow themselves to sway together, touching, their bodies closing naturally. Iwaizumi rests his head against Oikawa’s shoulder and the latter’s brain buzzes with glee as he rests his cheek on the top of Iwaizumi’s head.
“You’ll love it, I promise,” Iwaizumi had told him. “Just trust me, okay?”
They get off the train and before exiting the station Iwaizumi has Oikawa close his eyes and promise not to open them. Iwaizumi takes hold of his arm and leads him firmly, letting him know when there’s stairs and when there’s not, when he needs to step up or down or move out of the way or swerve around a pole. Soon the concrete beneath his feet is replaced by carpet, the cool air of industrial air conditioning blowing down his neck. Iwaizumi makes him wait with his eyes closed as he leaves to go and ‘get something’, and then returns, and leads him on further.
The lights behind his eyes give Oikawa a good enough idea as to whether or not they’re inside. His vision goes completely black, his skin still warm from the sun, and Iwaizumi leads him down what appears to be a row of seats. Are they in a cinema? “Here, sit down.” Iwaizumi directs him down into a seat. It’s almost like a cinema seat, but it feels different. There’s a click, and Oikawa is tipping backwards so he’s half-lying. “All right, you can open your eyes now.”
He does.
Above him are galaxies and galaxies of stars - thousands of them, bright and glittering and impossibly bright. Oikawa’s breath gets caught in his throat and he chokes audibly, pressing his hand to his hammering heart. “Shit,” he breathes, picking out the constellations, watching as the stars twinkled and winked at him as though they were grinning and laughing. He looks across at Iwaizumi who is watching him carefully, appraising his reaction. “Iwa-chan, this is just…” he looks back at the stars again, and he can’t finish, because his breath is gone.
The last time he’d been to the planetarium was when he was about five. He hasn’t been since then, not till now, and it’s more wonderful than he could possibly imagine. He feels Iwaizumi slip his fingers into Oikawa’s, and nothing could be more perfect than it is now. Oikawa tips his head back and watches the display, Iwaizumi beside him and holding his hand in the dark. The door to the theatre opens and there’s the telltale voices of high school students - undoubtedly - as they mill down the aisle and Oikawa tries to take his hand away in case they’re seen but Iwaizumi doesn’t let him. There’s an elderly couple sitting like birds a few rows in front of them. I want to grow old with him like that. Oikawa bites his tongue.
The show is dark with swirling lights; it’s incredible, so much more so than Oikawa could have ever imagined. It’s the stuff of dreams, and sometimes he looks over and sees Iwaizumi’s face lit by the ruddy blue glow of the projections with the reflection of stars against his skin and his fingers tighten, Oikawa thinking I am so incredibly lucky. I never want this to end, ever. But he’s scared, because in the movies it always ends. He doesn’t want it to.
At some point he closes his eyes against the stars and runs the pad of his thumb over the ridge of Iwaizumi’s hand. It’s all he really needs; he doesn’t need the stars or the planets, because Iwaizumi is filled with stardust and Oikawa can taste it whenever they kiss and feels it whenever they touch. He smiles, softly.
When the show is over they leave together with their hands in their pockets. There are other people there on dates, girls and boy who are holding hands and giggling, spinning and kissing, but Oikawa knows he and Iwaizumi can’t do that. So they stand beside each other, walk beside each other, in absolute silence. They ride on the train with their bodies touching and nobody notices because the afternoon is sleepy and they’re all still too blinded after the pitch-black of the planetarium theatre. Oikawa inhales the scent of Iwaizumi’s hair and kisses his ear when nobody is looking, and Iwaizumi pushes him away with a nervous chuckle and looks around to make sure nobody saw them. Oikawa is injured, but he knows it’s justified.
By the time they get home the sky is red and the world is plunged into golden, warm light. There are streaks of red across the horizon, the clouds pink and the sun hot and weak as it drops, further and further, behind the hills. Iwaizumi walks Oikawa to his door and coughs into the back of his hand, clearing his throat and looking down at their shoes. “Thanks for coming with me. It was nice.”
“I really enjoyed it.” Oikawa is nervous, but he can’t figure out why. What’s so different? They used to go places like this all the time and it was never this stiff, never this awkward. What had changed? Is it the fact that they’re dating, now? Isn’t it just like being friends, but a step up, because there’s hand-holding and kissing. But why did that change things? Why is their relationship any different? They’re still the same, they just touch each other in different ways, say different things. It’s the first time for the both of them, and they’re both thinking exactly the same thing. They laugh shortly, together, and shuffle their feet.
They’re standing beneath the tree in Oikawa’s front garden and it’s in full bloom, little purple flowers glowing red in the sunset. Some of them have fallen to the ground and lie on the grass, not mushy like those on the roads and the avenues. Speckled shade is cast over Oikawa’s face and Iwaizumi can’t tear his eyes away. It’s like he’d been living in the dark of the planetarium theatre his entire life.
A gentle breeze sweeps past them and washes through the tree, laughing, and a few flowers dislodge from their perches and flutter to the ground like tiny fairies gliding on the wings of the wind. One falls over Oikawa’s head and lands in his hair and Iwaizumi reaches up to pluck it out, Oikawa’s eyes following the path of his hand curiously. He hands the little flower to Oikawa, who looks down at it in his curled fingers as Iwaizumi leans in and places a gentle kiss to the side of his nose. Oikawa tilts his face and kisses his lips and it’s their first successful kiss, where their noses haven’t bumped or anything like that. It’s nice. Warm. Oikawa wants to stay wrapped in that kiss forever.
“I’d better go,” Iwaizumi murmurs. Oikawa hums and sighs, wanting to kiss him more, to taste the sun on his skin and to feel him laughing. “Hey, Tooru?”
“Mhm?”
“I love you.”
Oikawa smiles and cups Iwaizumi’s face in his hands and kisses him again. “I love you too.”
vi.
After Iwaizumi had left him standing beneath the tree and had returned to his own home, Oikawa went inside in a yellow daze, still somewhat convinced it had all been a dream. Iwaizumi was no different, except instead of his skin feeling numb where Oikawa touched him his skin was on fire, trails of brimstone wherever Oikawa’s fingers had been. His lips, too, were aflame. His father, on his way to the kitchen with an empty mug in his hand and his shirt untucked from his trousers was looking at his son amused, as Iwaizumi stood there frowning at the ground trying to grasp exactly what it was that he was feeling. “You okay, son?”
Iwaizumi glanced up. “Huh? Oh, yeah. Fine.”
“Did something happen with Tooru?”
Iwaizumi broke out in a giddy grin as he kicked off his shoes and ducked past his father. “It’s cool.” He took the stairs two at a time and got to his room and jumped into the air, slapping his hands against his thighs and silently whooping because he was so incredibly happy, happy unlike he’d ever been before. The fear was gone, the need to hold himself away from Oikawa was gone, and now that beautiful face with the even smile and bright eyes and tousled, lazy hair was his. They were his and Oikawa was his and he never had to worry about Oikawa loving somebody else because he knew Oikawa was in love with him. He had burst into tears outside the school gym and when Iwaizumi had yelled him that he’d loved him Oikawa had cried and they’d kissed and Iwaizumi knew he would never forget it, not ever. He dived into his bed and pressed his face into his pillow and laughed. You love him, you’ve always loved him, and it’s okay. It’s okay. He wondered if Oikawa was sitting on his bed or jumping around his room or sitting against the wall and grinning at nothing in particular, giddy, laughing. They were sixteen and in love and they felt as though they’d be able to remain in that rose-coloured haze for the rest of their lives.
Oikawa and Iwaizumi continued to grow, to learn, to become taller and wider and more athletically able. They learned and went from their second year of high school to their third year and on Iwaizumi’s seventeenth birthday Oikawa gave him a new shirt to replace the old one he’d gotten him a few years ago. The planetarium date had reminded Oikawa of the shirt, worn threadbare and the colour washed out of it but for some reason Iwaizumi wore it all the time anyway, just as Oikawa had done with he alien t-shirt. The shirt Oikawa gave Iwaizumi had short sleeves and was a deep maroon that made the colour of Iwaizumi’s skin look divine. And it fit perfectly, something Oikawa found out in the best way possible.
Oikawa had helped him into it after the party, after all the guests had left at one in the morning and Iwaizumi was showered in kisses from girls. When Iwaizumi had turned them away and they’d asked him why, and he said he already had someone he loved, and inevitably his company squealed and pressed inevitable questions. Who is she? Is she a student? Do they know her? Iwaizumi looked up and said very sullenly, “They’re the most perfect person I know. That’s all you need to know, right?” and everybody had laughed while Oikawa had the breath knocked straight from his lungs. Iwaizumi had stood in the doorway waving at the last of his friends as they left, then turned to Oikawa and took his arm, his gift still wrapped int he other hand, and lead him inside.
“You haven’t opened mine yet,” Oikawa teased and Iwaizumi just pulls him along and up the stairs and Oikawa’s heart leapt into his throat when he realised Iwaizumi was taking him up to his room. Oikawa stood before the closed door inside Iwaizumi’s bedroom twiddling his thumbs nervously, eyes drawn to the lamp lit beside Iwaizumi’s unmade bed. He saw Iwaizumi shimmering out of his shirt in his peripheral vision, light glancing off the skin of his shoulders. Oikawa’s throat swelled shut as his eyes slid up the muscles of Iwaizumi’s back and up to his neck; Iwaizumi shook the creases from the shirt and looked over his shoulder. “You helping me or what?”
Oikawa couldn’t help but wonder why Iwaizumi needed help putting on a t-shirt, but he didn’t care at all, not in the slightest. All those butterfly kisses weighed heavy in his abdomen as he sidled up behind Iwaizumi and helped him slide the material up over his arms. Oikawa could touch him, running hands over Iwaizumi’s biceps and the muscles in his shoulders, down his back. Slowly. It was an awkward kind of sensual, and as Iwaizumi shuddered when Oikawa slid his hands up his sides Oikawa thought he’d die from the blood rush to his head. Iwaizumi turned around and kissed him in the warm glow of that single lamp, hands on his hips, fingers in his pockets. Fingers in his waistband, Iwaizumi’s shirt suddenly on the floor and Oikawa’s lips on his neck. Iwaizumi’s broad, adult hands running up Oikawa’s stomach. He couldn’t believe that hands he’d dreamed about were actually touching him - like this, with obvious ulterior motives that were more of an accident than anything Iwaizumi had planned. Iwaizumi hummed in his ear and his hands were around Oikawa’s waist just as they’d been around Mayu’s but this was different, because somehow their backs had hit the floor and their tongues were in each other’s mouths. It was the first time they’d kissed like that, so deeply, so infinitely. Iwaizumi gasped in Oikawa’s ear and Oikawa’s dreams were realised and then there was a knock at the door and Iwaizumi’s grandmother asked if they’d like something to eat before Oikawa goes home. Iwaizumi took his fingers out of Oikawa’s waistband and sat up, embarrassed.
They don’t get into a situation like that again.
They’re seventeen and in their third year of high school and Oikawa had become the captain of the volleyball team and had inherited the impossible zest of the previous captain. Nobody knows about them except their parents who had accidentally walked in on them when their tongues were in each other’s mouths and their hands under each other’s shirts when they were supposed to be studying. That had been awkward, and they’d had some explaining to do. It was Iwaizumi’s grandmother who had broken the storm and had explained to Oikawa’s aggrieved mother that perhaps things weren’t so bad. Oikawa had been frightened of his parents’ disappointment, and while they were still a bit itchy about it all, they had no doubts about Iwaizumi.
Oikawa isn’t gay. That’s what he thinks, anyway. He doesn’t know what his sexuality is. He’d always considered himself to be straight, by default, but somehow Iwaizumi had never made him question that. He isn’t sure what he is in that respect; he still sees the beauty, both aesthetic and sexual, in women. He still likes women, he can still like them in the same way he likes Iwaizumi. He just doesn’t, because he loves Iwaizumi instead. He can probably love boys, too, but he doesn’t, because he doesn’t need to.
“There’s a school camp on Monday till Wednesday,” Oikawa’s mother says on a Saturday morning as she and her son sit at the kitchen table with plates of rice and eggs. Oikawa’s mouth is full and he looks up and tries to speak through it.
“Yeah, they said I could get the permission slip on the day. Can you sign it?”
“Sure.” She reaches behind her to snatch up a pen and scribbles against the surface of the paper. “Don’t lose it, okay?”
“I won’t,” Oikawa takes it from her hand and she laughs, finishing her cup of tea because he’s grown into such a fine young man, romance aside. She’s proud of him.
Monday comes quickly and Iwaizumi knocks on the Oikawas’ front door with a duffel bag slung over his shoulder and his hair skewed from slumber. The camp is for three days and two nights, and they catch the train together, bags on their laps and talking to their friends who are riding with them, groaning about what they might have to do.
The camp, Iwaizumi is dismayed to find out, is based on the development of leadership skills. Their school camps in middle school had been influenced heavily by the need for physical activity, which the boys loved because they had an excuse to get sweaty and dirty and to throw mud at the girls. Now, however, is different; now they’re almost adults and the school has taken it upon themselves to teach them skills applicable in the ‘real world’ (Iwaizumi scoffs at this) whether they like it or not. It’s awful and they laugh about how ridiculous it is and how they haven’t changed at all from when they were in the 3rd grade sitting at the back of the classroom trading cards instead of listening to their teachers.
And they do. Oikawa and Iwaizumi sit at the back of the room during the seminars with their friends and whisper until they get yelled at, and even then they continue to chatter in hushed tones and to poke and prod and tease. When they have their meals they steal bites from each other’s plates and shove rice down each other’s collars and they get kicked out and chastised but they don’t care because they’re all in the same room on futons packed like sardines and they lie awake laughing and screwing around until one of the teachers comes and hammers on their door to make them switch off their flashlights. In the early hours of the morning they all drop off to sleep, putting an end to the first day.
There are twenty to a room, two rows of ten futons, and Oikawa and iwaizumi end up beside one another through no fault of their own. They’re both awake at one in the morning and know that the other is certainly not sleeping, breathing erratic and hitched. Oikawa nudges a cold foot underneath Iwaizumi’s blanket and prods his ankle, and Iwaizumi shifts away from those cold toes, but levers his body a little closer to Oikawa’s all the same. He leans in a little bit so Oikawa can press his lips to his ear and whisper to him.
“Did you hear? Some of the girls went and put cling film over the teachers’ toilets.”
“They’re going to get really pissed. Do you know who it was?”
“Nah. Hey, Iwa-chan, do you remember that time we put caterpillars on my sister’s pillow? She was really mad.” They pull the covers up over their heads and soon the air between them is hot and muggy and smelling of toothpaste.
Snorts and gurgles of muffled laughter and the constant shuffling of sheets rises from their bunched-up forms like smoke from a woodfire and when they hear a teacher pass by the window they still and become silent until the crunch of footsteps on the gravel fades away again, a receding wave. Then they begin to chat silently once more.
At one point Iwaizumi accidentally knocks his knee against Oikawa’s thighs and is surprised at how smooth they are. Oikawa laughs at the feeling of the wiry hairs of Iwaizumi’s legs as they scrape against his skin and his laughter turns to a choked sound of surprise as that knee is replaced by the rough plane of Iwaizumi’s palm, high on the inside of his leg. He looks at Iwaizumi and Iwaizumi looks at him and they just begin to laugh again because here they are, lying in a room full of people with Iwaizumi’s hand between Oikawa’s legs and it’s ridiculous, just ridiculous. Somebody shushes them from across the room.
Iwaizumi moves his hand away and Oikawa kisses him. Iwaizumi jerks back. “What are you doing? Someone could see us.”
Oikawa is used enough to this to be able to smile and whisper, “Nobody will see us.”
“Someone might hear us.” He shoves Oikawa away when he tries to kiss him again. “Stop!”
Oikawa doesn’t try to kiss him again. “Are you that scared?” he whispers, watching as Iwaizumi’s eyes flick restlessly over the ceiling. “Or are you just scared of being seen with me?”
“Don’t pull that shit with me, Asskawa. You know I’m not ashamed of you. But you heard, right? About those guys who had their house set on fire ’cause they were living together. They were like us, and now they’re dead, and if you died I wouldn’t be able to handle it.”
Oikawa is silent, though they’ve shuffled closer together and now lie close enough for Oikawa to be able to pat down the collar of Iwaizumi’s shirt. Iwaizumi’s fingers are at his elbows and he presses a chaste kiss to the tip of his nose. “Sorry.”
“You’re really… special. To me. I’d never be ashamed of you.” Iwaizumi’s hands wrap round him and he pulls their bodies together so their legs are tangled and he can feel the soft skin of Oikawa’s thighs again, though this time there’s something spinning in Iwaizumi’s stomach and it’s really nothing to laugh about. He kisses Oikawa, overcome by some kind of trance, almost, and presses his tongue against his lower lip so Oikawa gasps into his mouth and they’re kissing so deeply neither of them have room to breathe. Iwaizumi’s impossibly strong arms are around Oikawa’s shoulders, holding him close and crushing their bodies to each other; the way Iwaizumi is tilting his head makes their embrace deeper, and Oikawa vaguely thinks how much better Iwaizumi has gotten at kissing him. Oikawa runs his tongue along Iwaizumi’s teeth and his head spins into a buzzing fog; he’s acutely aware of Iwaizumi’s muscled thigh between his legs, inching higher and higher till it fits into the curve of his groin. His body is on fire, each fibre vibrating and keening like the pornstars he’d watched when he was a kid. Iwaizumi moans, then, deep and quiet into Oikawa’s mouth, and it’s phenomenal - no amount of porn could have ever prepared him for that. Oikawa’s eyes close and he presses his hips down against Iwaizumi’s thigh and grinds, the pleasure so sudden and overwhelming that his teeth snap shut and he bites down on Iwaizumi’s tongue hard enough to make him yell and kill his boner stone dead.
Someone turns on the lights after Iwaizumi yells out and the room is roused and met with the sight of Iwaizumi bent double with his hand over his mouth and Oikawa bundled tightly in his futon unsure whether or not to laugh or be terrified. After everyone figures out it’s not an emergency they turn the light out and probably would have beaten Iwaizumi with their pillows had they not been so scared of angering him.
“I’m sorry,” Oikawa squeaks when it’s dark again.
“Go to sleep, Oikawa,” Iwaizumi ruffles his hair and turns onto his back, though he can’t stop his mind from filling with the memory of Oikawa’s thighs and how nice they’d feel around his ears.
The next morning Oikawa wakes up to find Iwaizumi’s futon empty. When he asks after him he’s informed that he had volunteered to go set up for breakfast.
It takes a few hours for Oikawa to suspect Iwaizumi might be avoiding him. He can’t figure out why, though the reason is blindingly obvious - he’s probably mad at him for last night, he reasons eventually. No big deal, though - he’d get over it soon enough.
Iwaizumi, on the other hand, is frustrated to the max. The weather is growing hotter and Oikawa seems to have packed nothing more than thin shirts and his volleyball shorts from the year before - the ones he could risk wearing casually - the ones that are a size too small and hug his hips and the curves of his thighs. Every time Iwaizumi looks at him his head is wiped blank. Even the night before he couldn’t calm his erection down because he couldn’t stop thinking about Oikawa - even though he was snoring obnoxiously on the futon beside him and murmuring things about government conspiracies - and he’d had no choice but to duck to the toilet block to lock himself in a stall. He’d sat down with spread legs and he’d gripped his cock in his hands and worked at it, growing more and more frustrated until he imagined his fingers as Oikawa’s lips and he’d orgasmed more violently than he ever had before. He’d never really touched himself to Oikawa before - Iwaizumi didn’t often masturbate at all - but he had a feeling this was going to be the beginning of a trend.
He runs into Oikawa at a group activity. They sit beside each other, Iwaizumi watching Oikawa twiddle his thumbs in his lap and eyeing that slender gap between his legs from developed muscle. Oikawa had never had much body hair, and the hairs on his legs are very fine and very pale, just like his mother’s. Iwaizumi looks down at the dark hair on his own arms and thinks about how nice it would look pushed up against Oikawa’s body. He arrests the thought immediately when he feels the beginnings of arousal pick at his insides; he couldn’t pop a boner, not in the middle of a group activity.
Oikawa doesn’t ask questions. He knows that Iwaizumi needs time to himself and that it would be both redundant and insensitive if Oikawa insisted on being with him at all times. It doesn’t bother him - sure, he hates when he’s away from Iwaizumi, but he knows Iwaizumi is still entitled to his own privacy and he tries his best to respect it. So he doesn’t ask questions.
It takes Iwaizumi the most part of the day to get used to Oikawa’s presence. He keeps noticing little things about Oikawa, like how his skin glows white in the sun and the sheen of his hair when he scratches his head or rubs his neck. He notices how Oikawa taps his chin and twiddles his thumbs and how he fidgets with the hem of his shirt like a child, and it’s cute. He also notices how Oikawa rarely bends at the knees and usually bends at the waist. He’s dangerous.
Oikawa, too, notices Iwaizumi’s predatory gaze following him when he thinks he’s not looking. There’s a difference between having dreams about someone and being able to actually be with them - in that way - the only difference being Oikawa has never had sex before, let alone with a guy, and it’s never been something he’s desperately wanted until now. He’d been content touching himself to Iwaizumi’s image and the thousands and thousands of minutes of his voice catalogued in the back of Oikawa’s head. Iwaizumi, too, had never really thought about sex, let alone with Oikawa. Until now.
They eat dinner without saying much and trek to the baths to wash and clean their teeth before the lights shut off. They walk together back to their room with towels over their heads and sighs on their lips - who knew that this could be so exhausting?
There’s less frivolity in their room tonight, their peers dropping off to sleep before midnight instead of after it. It’s the same, though, with Oikawa and Iwaizumi lying abreast and rigid as boards, aware of only each other and what had happened the night before. Oikawa’s mind is filled with Iwaizumi’s hands and Iwaizumi’s mind is filled with Oikawa’s thighs. Oikawa rolls onto his side, swallowing thickly, and whispers, “I’m going to go to the teachers’ bathroom block. When you hear the door close count to one hundred and twenty and then meet me there. Okay?”
Iwaizumi nods slightly.
Oikawa gets to his feet and shuffles to the door, closing it gently but still loud enough for Iwaizumi to be able to hear it. He begins to count immediately. One… two… three…
Those one hundred and twenty seconds are the longest in his life. What’s Oikawa planning? What’s he doing? Iwaizumi’s body grows hotter and hotter and more restless by the second, hands itching and insides gurgling. After one hundred and twenty seconds Iwaizumi gets to his feet, stumbling a little, and steps over the futons to get to the door.
The toilet blocks are apart from the student sleeping area and so he has to pass over a short stretch of grass to get there. The sky is clear and a deep blue, punctuated by flecks of galaxies and points of light, tiny stars, all glimmering down at him. He vaguely knows where he’s going, and follows the path eastwards until he sees Oikawa standing against the back wall of the toilet compound. He goes up to him and says nothing.
“I was talking to one of the girls,” Oikawa begins, not giving her name. “She said… she said there’s an empty utility closet used for storing spare bedding.”
“That’s handy. Why do we care?”
“It locks from the inside.”
Iwaizumi swallows. Oh. “Oikawa, are you… this is a bad idea. Do you know what would happen if we got caught? It’d be catastrophic.”
Oikawa fidgets and averts his gaze to where Iwaizumi’s hand rests on the wall beside his head. “I did… think of that. I just wanted to let you know and I - I know you’re scared and I’m scared too so I brought you out here, just in case.”
Iwaizumi frowns deeply, thinking. On one hand, he really really wants to do this. He wants to go through with it because there’s no doubt in his mind that it’ll be amazing - but there are doubts. There are always doubts. Oikawa is right: he’s scared. He’s scared because he doesn’t know what to do and he isn’t sure if he’ll hurt Oikawa, which is the last thing he wants. He doesn’t want to ruin what they have even though he knows it’s all part of a relationship. It’s just like kissing - they were bad and awkward and gross at first, but they developed and evolved and now Iwaizumi doesn’t want to do anything except kiss Oikawa. And they had no resources. Iwaizumi leans in so his face is close enough to Oikawa’s to cast him into deep shadow.
“Tooru, listen to me. I want this. I know you want this, too. I really, really want this. But we can’t do it, not here, not now. We don’t have anything, no lube, no c-condoms…” it’s awkward, but he hasn’t got a choice. “I’m not going to have sex with you in a utility closet. Not for the first time.”
Oikawa hides his face in his hands and laughs. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I’ve just - after last night you’ve been on my mind all day and I really… I really want you.”
Iwaizumi grabs his waist and kisses him hard on the mouth, unsure how long he’d be able to hold out. Oikawa groans and wraps his limber arms around Iwaizumi’s neck and Iwaizumi lifts him up against the wall and - God - their hips press together and they can feel how hard they’re getting. Iwaizumi gasps against Oikawa’s mouth and sucks at his bottom lip until it’s almost purple and swollen with blood. This is worse than the night before because there’s nobody around and Oikawa is careful not to bite his tongue again. He presses his teeth to Iwaizumi’s neck and sucks at the skin, his actions automatic, his gut contracting in excitement each time Iwaizumi rocks against his hips. The turgid line of his cock is pressed against the cleft of Oikawa’s ass, rubbing, his thick hands delving up the legs of Oikawa’s tiny shorts and squeezing the flesh. It’s just as smooth and supple as he imagined it to be; somehow it’s even better.
“I love you,” Oikawa moans into his neck and he can’t last much longer, not like this, caught breathless between the wall and Iwaizumi’s body, the latter’s hand moving round to press against the front of his shorts and palm him through the material. “This is okay, right?”
Iwaizumi grunts in assent and shifts his weight so he can fit his hand between them and tug their shorts down a little bit. As soon as his fingers touch Oikawa’s boiling skin Oikawa climaxes and muffles his yelp by sinking his teeth into Iwaizumi’s shoulder. Iwaizumi hisses, fingers slick against his own cock as he rubs it against Oikawa’s thigh and then he’s climaxing too, catching what he can in his hand.
They sit against the wall catching their breath and wiping their hands on the grass, laughing nervously because they’d just jacked off together behind a toilet block were anyone could have seen them.
“That was phenomenal.” Oikawa is the one to speak first. Iwaizumi looks across at him and leans over to press a kiss against his mouth.
“Yeah. But when we get home we’ll do it properly, okay?”
Oikawa kisses him back. “Yeah, we will.”
vii.
The anticipation just about killed them.
Both of them were nervous, though for entirely different reasons, and Iwaizumi ended up suffering motion sickness on the bus back from camp. Oikawa assured him that they didn’t have to do anything, but Iwaizumi was adamant.
They were young and impatient and horny, teenagers in the very essence of the word, but they tried their best to exercise some degree of self control. They sat down with each other in front of Iwaizumi’s laptops and googled positions and materials they needed, but the more and more they read the hornier and hornier they became and those sessions always ended up with tongues in mouths and hands under shirts. As usual.
It was a period of time where they were open to exploration. They explored the physical aspect of their relationship, pushing the emotional boundaries. They circumnavigated each other’s bodies, put their mouths on places they hadn’t ever touched before. Oikawa marvelled at Iwaizumi’s tan lines and Iwaizumi discovered the rich colour of Oikawa’s skin when the blood was sucked to the surface. They got to know each other better, which places made them pitch back in pleasure and shudder, which places not to touch, what to say, how to rile each other up to the point where they would have fucked like animals had they not been so scared and so stressed about waiting ‘until the time was right’. What they hadn’t realised was that all those times they’d fallen into each other and had been seconds away from sex - that had been their opportunity, time and time again, yet they’d never taken it.
Oikawa realised this first.
“Sit down,” he told Iwaizumi one afternoon in late summer after they’d graduated high school. Iwaizumi stood in the middle of Oikawa’s messy room in a singlet and khaki’s, but when Oikawa gestured to his bed he sat down, Oikawa dropping down beside him. “Give me your hands.”
Iwaizumi put his hands in Oikawa’s palms.
Oikawa brought Iwaizumi’s fingers to his lips and kissed them, one by one. Then he kissed the veins in the backs of his hands. Then his wrists, then the muscles of his forearm. The crease of his elbows, his upper arms, his collarbones, his neck, his lips. Iwaizumi drew him in close even though it was deliriously hot and the cicadas outside were shrieking at a deafening volume. Oikawa slid into Iwaizumi’s lap and kissed him even deeper, mouths opening, tongues running over teeth in a dance that was as familiar to them as volleyball was. Oikawa’s lean hand slid down between them, pulling Iwaizumi’s shirt up over his head. They somehow wrestled each other out of their clothes; it wasn’t as if they hadn’t seen each other naked before, but this was different, because they knew that this wasn’t a joke. They weren’t messing around. In a way they couldn’t breathe because they knew this was it, even if they didn’t quite believe it. They were so used to pulling out, bailing, that it was expected.
“Tooru -,” Iwaizumi groaned low in his throat as Oikawa slid down his body and slipped his pants from his legs. That mouth - the one Iwaizumi had dreamed of - was pressed against his boxers and his rapidly swelling cock. He tipped his head back and sighed appreciatively as Oikawa yanked off his boxers and ran the pad of his hot, wet tongue up Iwaizumi’s length.
It was sex. It was sex in summer and the heat was unbearable and that was the first time they’d done it fully. Oikawa had crawled on top of Iwaizumi and had produced a plastic bag from the pharmacy down the road and had pulled out a bottle of lube and a pack of condoms. “No going back,” he tried to say, but he couldn’t. He’d been practicing on his own, with his fingers, so he had less trouble than he otherwise might have after rolling the condom onto Iwaizumi’s cock and sinking down onto it.
It was incredible.
Iwaizumi’s fingers were insistent on his thighs, kneading them, feeling them, bruising them, and Oikawa’s dream became real as he realised that all the things he’d hoped those hands would one day do were happening - that the things he’d dreamed of as a clumsy thirteen-year-old were really happening. It was real. They orgasmed once, gasping and writhing like wet fish, bodies dripping with sweat and saliva, and then Iwaizumi rasped, “Me,” and Oikawa had reached with shaking fingers for the lubricant and a new condom. “I want to try, too.”
Iwaizumi was considerably harder to work open, seeing as he hadn’t taken the liberties Oikawa had. It took time, but it was possible, and Oikawa was inside him just as he’d had Iwaizumi inside his own body. Iwaizumi’s muscles writhed like turbulent rivers beneath his skin, paint dripping from a canvas and Oikawa had never seen anything so beautiful before. Sweat glistened and fell in rivulets between the dip of his abdomen, skin dark and glimmering. His hands grappled to bring Oikawa closer, closer, until their heads grew light for want of air and they couldn’t breathe. They didn’t care. The heat pressed around them and the cicadas screamed and there wasn’t a single lick of wind. Then they lay there, prone and exhausted and strangely absent from themselves.
“I love you,” they said in unison, then they laughed, because it was devastatingly true.
After the summer break they go to different colleges in different prefectures and when they part at the airport Oikawa isn’t able to hold back the tears, and Iwaizumi can’t either. They hold onto each other until they’re forced apart and the last thing Iwaizumi hears Oikawa yell is “I’ll call you!”
Iwaizumi stays in Miyagi after being accepted into a comfortable, local university. Oikawa is off to Tokyo to pursue the volleyball career that had been cut short by the dynamic team from Karasuno; they’d discussed it, and neither Oikawa nor Iwaizumi could find it in their hearts to be mad about it.
The first few months are the hardest and the busiest; there’s logistics and settling in and the transition is a surprisingly painful one. It’s a new environment and it’s the first time they have to deal with something this big without each other. It’s extremely difficult for both of them. Every night they get on the phone and talk until one of them drops off to sleep, but they still feel empty.
Maybe it’s for the best, Oikawa thinks as he tosses a volleyball up into the air over his head, lying in the narrow bed of his dorm room. The room is so small and the view from the window is nothing special - all he can see is the back wall of an engineering building. He’s homesick and missing Iwaizumi and even though he manages to make friends within the first few weeks he still feels lonely. Maybe it’ll be good to get some space.
I miss him, Iwaizumi thinks constantly, dejectedly, resting his chin in his hands and gazing unseeing at the front of the lecture theatre. It’s not the same without him. He rubs his hand over his mouth and sighs.
The highlight of his day is when he gets home and picks up the phone to hear Oikawa’s voice whispering down the line. It’s light, chirpy, and they tell each other about their day and what they did, who Oikawa managed to piss off and which girl had a crush on Iwaizumi this time. The sun would set and Iwaizumi would eat alone so he didn’t have to put down the phone. Some nights Oikawa would mumble, or Iwaizumi would groan in a particularly suggestive way, and their chatter would turn to husky whispers and moans and their hands would dive into their pants but it isn’t the same, it’s never the same.
Soon the telephone is replaced by online calls (primarily after Iwaizumi’s mother gets the phone bill and almost drowns her son in the koi pond). The video option is used regularly, Iwaizumi able to see Oikawa as he lies with his face in a pillow grinning and laughing over something. Or when Oikawa’s flushed lips are dropped open in a moan. They’re still so needy for each other, still in the throes of a passion that hasn’t ended, but they’re apart, and they can’t cool down.
“It’s only two months until the semester ends,” Iwaizumi’s grandmother tells him as he lies on the tatami mats next to the altar with his face to the floor. She’s sitting with her knobbly legs folded beneath her and her face is so wrinkled her eyes look permanently shut. “Come, dear, have some tea. There’s some mackerel and red bean ice-cream if you want it, too.”
In the end he picks himself up and goes to sit at the low table, picking from the array of small, decorated bowls. She laughs gently. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you so heartbroken before, Hajime.”
Iwaizumi sighs and prods at the mackerel with a chopstick. “Sorry. I can’t help it. It’s just different, you know? Like Oikawa pissed me off so much that now he’s not here I don’t know what to do with myself.”
“But you weren’t always annoyed with him, were you?” his grandmother smiles serenely and takes a sip of her tea. “My, my, Hajime, old women see everything. I saw you out there with my finches, when you were kissing Tooru’s nose. Your mother and father used to do the very same thing, you know, when they were younger. And look how long they’ve lasted. I hope you and Tooru last, Hajime. He’s very good for you.” She smiles at him. “You know, Hajime, I’ve been without my husband for many years. It was hard at first - I thought I couldn’t live without him, that my days would be grey and meaningless because the one I loved most in the world was gone. And I did think that way for a while, but after a time I came to realise that there’s pieces of him everywhere, memories, legacies, and that he lives on in everything he ever touched or taught, and that he’s never truly gone. He’s always around, whether it’s that pond he dug when we first bought this house or those finch cages he bought for me on out tenth wedding anniversary. You might just find that it’s the same for you and Tooru. There’s pieces of him everywhere, you just have to look for him.”
Iwaizumi lays his head on the table and gazes at the old woman, so carefree and selectively deaf and wizened. He reaches out and takes her soft, withered hand and gives it a squeeze.
Later in the day he wanders out the front gate of his house and down the road, kicking stones into the gutter and looking out at the white haze that hangs over the horizon. He strolls with his hands in his pockets to the Oikawa household; the car is gone and he remembers Oikawa’s parents waving at him before leaving to go to town earlier in the day. He strides over and hops over the side fence.
He walks around the big tree in their front garden, its shadow cast over him from every angle. It’s big and old and has been there for as long as Iwaizumi can remember; it was the tree he’d used to sneak into Oikawa’s bedroom when they were still young, the tree they’d sat under as children and when they were still in diapers. The tree he’d kissed Oikawa under after that perfect purple flower had gotten caught in his hair. The tree is in bloom, now, and Iwaizumi realises that it’s almost three years to the day since they’d gone on that first date to the planetarium. He looks down at his feet and sees a little cluster of mauve petals nudging at his toe.
He bends down, picking it up. It’s the same as the one he’d picked from behind Oikawa’s ear, and the more he looks at it the more he realises that his grandmother had been right. There are pieces of him everywhere.
Oikawa is in the flowers and the soil and he’s in the way Iwaizumi’s bedroom curtains flutter when the window is open. He’s in the cicadas trilling from the bamboo undergrowth and how the fish cluster and crowd to the surface of the water when Iwaizumi dips in his toes. He’s in the boards of the veranda and the sound of children running down the road with beetles rattling in plastic containers.
It’s three weeks until Oikawa is due to fly back to Miyagi and Iwaizumi is far less restless than he thought he’d be. He sits smiling into his coffee thinking of what they’ll do and his father laughs at his lovestruck expression. “You’re like a middle schooler all over again!” he says and roars with laughter.
“Don’t be mean to him,” his wife says, swatting him with a magazine. “Hajime, don’t listen to him.”
“I won’t.”
It’s five days until Oikawa’s arrival and Iwaizumi had already marked it on his calendar and is finishing up the last of his exams. Oikawa’s presence is far removed from his conscious what with nights spent studying on doses of caffeine, but he takes his grandmother’s advice and looks for pieces of Oikawa scattered around his desk. That ridiculous alien pen that he ends up taking to each of his exams for good luck. It’s dumb, he knows, but it feels right.
It’s one day until Oikawa comes home and Iwaizumi doesn’t get to sleep until two o’clock in the morning.
“Hajime! Are you going to pick Tooru up from the airport?” His mother is knocking at his bedroom door and the sun is streaming in and Iwaizumi realises that he’s drastically overslept and consequently falls out of his bed onto the floor.
“Yes! I’m coming! Give me a second.” He fumbles around for clothes, pulling them on blindly and grabbing the keys to his second-hand car before staggering out into the daylight.
“Come home quickly! I can’t wait to see him again!” His mother laughs and waves and his father stands inside the door with a cup of coffee and a lazy smile.
Iwaizumi’s fingers tap blissfully against the steering wheel as he drives to the airport. Oikawa always said how much he loved Iwaizumi’s fingers, though Iwaizumi had never figured out why. The airport carpark is already busy so he parks on the curb (illegally, probably) and tries his hardest not to hurry. He’s early enough as it is, and no matter how fast he sprints to the arrivals terminal he can’t speed up the plane.
There’s families and children with hand-drawn signs adorned with glitter, husbands and wives and boyfriends and girlfriends and siblings and parents waiting for their loved ones to come into sight. Iwaizumi feels in good company, though he can’t see past the crowd, no matter how much he cranes his neck. The arrivals board says Oikawa’s plane has landed and Iwaizumi’s stomach does somersaults.
“Iwa-chan!” There’s that infuriatingly nasal voice again, and Iwaizumi turns around to see Oikawa grinning at him. It’s as though they’ve met for the first time, and despite them both being somewhat unfamiliar to each other they’re honestly each other’s second half, and when their bodies come together in a bone-crushing hug Iwaizumi hears Oikawa coo into his shoulder and he feels complete for the first time in months. “I’m so glad to see you again.”
Iwaizumi sobs into his shoulder because for all the alien pens and purple flowers and glimmering fish, they could never measure up to Oikawa himself. Oikawa laughs giddily and kisses him square on the mouth, right in the middle of the airport. Everyone looks, everyone sees, and Iwaizumi knows they do but he doesn’t shove Oikawa away. He pulls him closer and kisses him back with tears in his eyes and a quivering smile on his lips. “Come on, Iwa-chan, let’s go home.”
Their fingers are wound together on Iwaizumi’s thigh as they drive and the windows are rolled down so Oikawa’s messy hair is rumpled by the wind. He’s like a happy dog leaning out the window and Iwaizumi can’t stop looking at him, at the long line of his neck and the broad ridge of his shoulder. They get home to find Oikawa’s parents’ car in their driveway and Iwaizumi helps Oikawa with his suitcase, walking with him along the pavement. They stop outside Oikawa’s gate and Iwaizumi pulls him against him, kissing the corner of his mouth, his forehead, until Oikawa is giggling and butting him with his elbow. Slowly their kisses become longer, Oikawa’s arms slipping around Iwaizumi’s neck. “I missed you,” Oikawa whispers to him.
“Hey, you two!” They break apart as Oikawa’s mother leans out of the window to yell at them, brandishing a pillow case in her hand. “Enough canoodling in the street! Come inside, at least, don’t just stand out there!”
The wheels of the suitcase scrape against the threshold and Oikawa’s mother hugs him tightly. “Tooru, it’s so good to have you back.”
“I’m glad to be back!”
“How was Tokyo?”
Oikawa pauses. “Small.”
“My baby, all grown up and going to university!” Oikawa’s mother sighs and puts her cheek into her hand. She glances at Iwaizumi and smiles coyly. “Oh, dear. Come on, both of you - I’ll make some tea, sit down. I want to show you something.”
Iwaizumi and Oikawa glance at one another, befuddled but amused. They go into the living room and sit down on the sofa, side by side, knees touching. They don’t hold hands - it’s weird to do that in front of their parents - and soon enough Oikawa’s mother returns with a tray of tea and a large book. She sits down between them places the book in her lap.
When she opens it they see it’s a photo album, and Oikawa groans loudly as his mother coos. “Hajime, look at tiny Tooru!” She brushes her finger over a faded photograph of Oikawa as a baby, probably taken when he was six months old or so. “He was so fat, wasn’t he? The sign of a healthy baby. He was always smiling and laughing, but my God, wasn’t he a crier! He’s got a set of lungs on him, that one.”
Iwaizumi nods. “He sure does.”
Oikawa glares at him, horrified.
She turns the page and Iwaizumi cringes at a photo of himself in a bright red diaper. “This was back when we used fabric nappies instead of those disposable plastic ones - they were so bad on your skin. Oh, Hajime, look at you and Tooru. You were so cute - you’re still cute!” she sighs again, wistfully, and Iwaizumi knows she’s been looking for an opportunity to reminisce. “Now, you boys, don’t you go thinking that you never kissed before you were teenagers. You were naughty babies too, you know, always crawling off and bawling whenever we tried to part you - see here.” She flipped open to a page that featured a photograph of Oikawa and Iwaizumi sitting in a bath, chubby arms round each other and their lips puckered. “You’d always kiss each other, right on the mouth, and we’d laugh and laugh because you’d cry and throw a tantrum whenever we tried to put you apart, even when you were a few years old.” She stops and frowns and strokes the photograph on the next page of Oikawa and Iwaizumi’s first day of kindergarten. In the photo they stand abreast with their front teeth missing and bandaids on their knees. “I’m sorry,” she says quietly. “To both of you. I’ve been so uncooperative; I thought it wouldn’t work, I thought it was something you kids wanted to try out for the hell of it, like alcohol or drugs. I thought it would ruin you because I’d seen valuable relationships fall apart because of dating like this. But now I think about it - you’ve always been together, haven’t you? You’ve always loved each other, though the type of love between you has grown and changed and matured along with you both. I’m so sorry.” She laughs and there are tears in her eyes. “Can you forgive me?”
Oikawa grits his teeth. “Mom, you don’t have to apologise for anything.”
She lets out a wail and yanks both of the boys into her arms and hugs them as if they weren’t almost a foot taller than her and twice as broad. “My boys! I love you two, don’t you ever leave me.”
Oikawa and Iwaizumi smile at each other and kiss behind her back and say, “We won’t.”
viii.
Iwaizumi’s grandmother had died that summer and nothing was ever really the same in the Iwaizumis’ house afterwards. The fish didn’t bite when Iwaizumi hung his toes into the pond and the cicadas had vacated the bamboo. Oikawa had been there during the mourning period and Iwaizumi had collapsed into his arms, exhausted, tears on his face, and they’d fallen asleep together in the shade of the veranda still bound in their starched shirts and suits.
Her death made Iwaizumi think of many things: the stories she’d told him and the lessons she’d taught him, but mostly it made him think about his grandfather.
His grandfather had died when he was ten years old, and he didn’t remember him that well. All he remembered about the old man was that he had been in the army and had lost his leg and three fingers from his left hand, including the finger he wore his wedding ring on. He wore the ring around his neck instead, on a long chain that hung beside his heart. He built things after that, spending hours with his hammer and chisel cutting dovetails and ornate patterns into the cedar planks he kept stored in the outhouse. Iwaizumi remembered what his grandmother had said to him when Oikawa had gone away to Tokyo; they’d grown accustomed to the distance, little by little, until it wasn’t so painful. They were adults, now, full grown and responsible for themselves. When they kissed each other it wasn’t the violent crash of teeth in a muddy soccer field, it wasn’t kisses tasting of vodka and vomit, it wasn’t the sticky sweet mess of childhood. They were adults, and how they chose to live weighed heavily on their shoulders.
Oikawa had returned from Tokyo for the summer break and a call had come through at ten o’clock on a Saturday morning. Oikawa stood at the sink with the phone to his ear. Iwaizumi was woken up by the sound of Oikawa’s mother screaming.
He’d raced over to see if everything was okay and burst into the kitchen through the side-entrance to find Oikawa standing with his mother’s arms around his neck. She was crying, and he was grinning so widely it was like his face was going to split clean in two.
“I stood on your azaleas,” Iwaizumi apologised.
“Tooru’s going to be on the national team!”
Iwaizumi’s mouth dropped open and Oikawa grinned wider. Iwaizumi pulled him into a hug, then, kissing him on the side of his face. “Congratulations, asshole.”
They were twenty-three and still young and passionate and Oikawa’s volleyball career was far from over. Iwaizumi is the one who is offered a job coaching at their old high school, and he attends Oikawa’s matches dutifully and enthusiastically. It’s all worth it when Oikawa turns in the middle of the court and holds up five fingers in Iwaizumi’s direction, balls his hand into a fist and thumps it against his chest, over his heart.
They’re twenty-seven and Iwaizumi has moved to Tokyo after a job transfer. He was sad to leave Aoba Johsai, at first, but he knew that the opportunities would be too great to pass up, and Oikawa is based in Tokyo now, so it was a logical thing to do. They’re twenty-seven and they’re living together in an apartment with a wide balcony and plants lining the railings and hanging just outside the door so that if they go outside too early in the morning while still half-asleep they’ll knock their heads and get dirt in their eyes. Iwaizumi’s grandmother’s old finch cages hang from the eaves, though there aren't any birds in them. It’s a different place, new and foreign, but it doesn’t take long for Oikawa and Iwaizumi to make it their own. Oikawa is truly a task to live with, Iwaizumi discovers.
It’s a lazy Sunday morning in late spring; it’s warm enough to leave the windows open, curtains fluttering in the breeze, the distant roar of traffic like the gentle hum of the sea, reminiscent of the trilling of Miyagi cicadas. Iwaizumi comes to dizzily, the ceiling spinning above him. He still can’t believe he let Oikawa stick those juvenile glow-in-the-dark stars to the roof. What a kid.
Oikawa stirs beside him, head cushioned on Iwaizumi’s bicep, and he yawns and reminds Iwaizumi what an ugly sleeper his is. He sneezes loudly, rubbing his eyes. “Oh. Good morning.” He smiles against the warm skin of Iwaizumi’s shoulder. “You’re up early.”
Oikawa sits up and leans over him and kisses him; morning kisses are always gross, what with morning breath and heavy bodies still weighed down with sleep. But it’s okay with Oikawa.
“Hey, asshole,” Iwaizumi mumbles against Oikawa’s lips.
“Mhm?”
“You know that time you came over when we were kids, to catch cicadas? When your mother kicked you out?”
Oikawa tilts his head like a little bird. “Yeah. I kissed you when you were sleeping, y’know.”
Iwaizumi sits up and whacks him with a pillow. “I was awake the whole time, dumbass!”
Oikawa laughs, and it’s an adult laugh, deep and rich, not the crackling off-tune laugh of an adolescent. “Hey, Tooru, let’s get married.”
“Eh?”
“Let’s get married.”
Oikawa looks at him, speechless. “Iwa-chan, if you’re going to propose, at least to do it properly.”
Pissed, Iwaizumi climbs out of bed and, wearing nothing but his boxers, sinks down onto one knee. “Oikawa Tooru, the biggest asshole I know, would you do me the honour of validating my utter insanity and becoming my husband?”
Oikawa peers at him from over his knees, all doe-eyes and smiles and Iwaizumi just thinks he’s being coy before he realises Oikawa is crying. “Fine, since you asked so nicely.” Iwaizumi crows with laughter and throws himself back into bed, right on top of Oikawa, and they press their lips together in the most perfect kiss of their lives.
Sitting back, Iwaizumi blinks the sleep out of his eyes and is reminded how much he really does love Oikawa Tooru, and how much Oikawa Tooru loves him.