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He sees you first, lamplight glancing off your skin in wavering bursts of flame, hands on your hips and stance squared. You look like a knight, he thinks, the apron tied around your waist your armor, the rings flashing on your fingers the legacy of chain mail.
He sees you first, and he has to press his hand to his chest to keep his once-hollow heart from beating its way out of the cavity to join yours, and then he sees the way he is looking at you.
He looks at you like you’re a princess, a reflection of full skirts and silver-set gemstones in his eyes, and so he makes his choice then and there.
“Iwa-chan,” he starts, his voice strong and warm, leaning towards his oldest and greatest friend. “She’s cute, isn’t she?” And gods, isn’t it a task to make his attraction to you (he thinks he can only get away with so much) look shallow instead of fathoms deep.
“Shut up,” Iwaizumi says, looking away from him and inadvertently towards you again, and Oikawa sees the way his gaze snags on you. He feels that he understands the ace more than ever now, a kinship borne of an intimacy Iwaizumi can never know about.
“Go talk to her,” he says, and a startled blush burns up over Iwaizumi’s neck. “C’mon, go do it, she’s pretty, and she was looking at you.” It’s not a complete fabrication. You were looking at their table, earlier, and you could have been looking at Iwaizumi. You could have been looking at me, Oikawa’s traitorous mind whispers, and he shoos it away as he shoos so many other thoughts away.
“Go do it,” jeers Hanamaki, and then joins Matsukawa, all of them egging Iwaizumi on, though he only sinks further into his seat, the tips of his ears red.
“If you won’t, I will,” declares Oikawa. “For you, I mean.” When Iwaizumi doesn’t stop him, he’s relieved to be able to pretend it’s not selfish.
The loud boys from your section keep looking at you, and you can’t help looking back, their gazes burning into you like four lances, piercing through your flesh in four separate places.
“I hate Seijoh boys,” you grumble to your coworker, and it’s only partly to be ornery about the fact that she’s been shamelessly checking out the tallest of them, his half-lidded smirk rebellious and dark.
“That sucks,” she says, and you turn to ask her why, and that’s when he ambushes you. “‘Cause one of them is coming over here.”
“Hi, miss,” he says, which you don’t think is a very good first offensive move. He’s tall, looming over you with an air of grandiosity you despise, his artfully rumpled brown hair shining gold. For only a moment, you see echoes of a boy king, many lives ago, in his youthful face.
“Hi,” you say, stretching your lips into an aggressive smile. “Can I help you?”
“I don’t know, can you?” He asks, and silence hangs between you two for a moment. His cheeks turn faintly pink. Your smile becomes a little more real.
“No,” you say, but you don’t turn away.
“Hear me out,” he says, and the command comes so naturally to him you barely find it in yourself to fault him for it. “My friend over there—”
“Which one?” You interrupt. “Tall, skinny, or hot?”
“Hot,” he says, and there’s a bite to the way he says it you don’t understand. “If you mean Iwa-chan. He thinks you’re cute, and he’s a brute to me, but he’s too scared of you to make a move. If you think he’s hot, that’s a good sign, so please do me a favor and come and talk to him?”
You’ve been staring at this Iwa-chan while he talks, and while the tall one is handsome and dark and smirking and the skinny one looks smiley and sharp at the edges and smirking, the hot one is startlingly reaching well over your standards. You gather from his attitude and glowing skin that the one standing in front of you garners more attention, but you find yourself unwillingly fascinated by the bulkier, well-muscled Iwa-chan, his dark eyes looking up at you through his lashes as he slouches in his seat.
You like him despite his friends, you decide, but you’re not sure how much this newfound like is worth hanging around them.
Especially the boy king standing in front of you in false supplication, his posture relaxed but upright, ruler of the whole world and your restaurant.
“Will the rest of you be there?” You ask, sliding your eyes over his face just to see him work out a snappy, silvertongued response.
“It’s crowded,” he tells you, and the way he has to raise his voice to be heard only reinforces the truth of the statement. “We can’t exactly get another table to leave you alone while you flirt with our boy.”
The implication that you’re the aggressor, somehow, that you’re the one lucky to be given the chance to chase after one of the four, no matter how golden he is, rubs you the wrong way.
“I’m at work,” you sniff, and turn away. “This is my job, which I do for money, to feed my family.” Well, you do it to help out, anyway, and this small business offers the best understanding of your situation as a teenager and student.
He catches your shoulder, and his hands are strong and his fingers slender, and you reach up to tear it off. You touch him only with your fingertips, dropping it back at his side like it’s something disgusting even though his skin is smooth and warm even only on the rough pads of your pointer and thumb.
He’s succeeded in half turning you, though, and your eyes catch on his, and his expression is indecipherable and it turns your stomach, butterflies fluttering up from the pit as you stare at him. His lips are parted slightly, something awed shining in the depths of his glazed-over eyes. You assume it’s because no one’s ever brushed him off this way (you couldn’t be more wrong). For a moment, you forget entirely that it’s his friend he wants you to flirt with, that there’s a boy whose vibes you like much more across the room. For a moment, he finds his overworked, always buzzing brain shuts up for a second. The room is loud— celebratory glasses clinking, hungry people eating, people speaking to each other of love and mundanity and greatness— but it was quiet when you touched Oikawa for barely a moment, barely a touch.
Then he recovers, shuttering down his expression into a shitty, entitled smirk, and the moment shatters like glass on the floor you swept two hours ago.
“How much do you make in an hour? I can take care of it.”
“Take care of it?” You echo, still feeling faintly befuddled by the whiplash of the last five seconds.
“I’ll talk to your manager if you come sit with us— if you talk to Iwa-chan— for a little bit.”
It takes a little bit of time to process his words. You gape at him. He looks supremely casual, and suddenly, you hate him for it.
“What the fuck?”
“What?” He leans back on his heels, a confused crease between his perfectly shaped brows, the corners of his stupidly perfect mouth still upturned.
“Do you think— do you want to pay me for flirting with your friend? Do you think I’m some kind of paid companion? Did you mean to imply that I’m a prostitute?”
Then his expression clears into shocked understanding.
“Oh, that was not how I meant it. That is not what I said.”
“That is what you said. Holy shit, what? I’m sure Iwa-chan appreciates that you think he can’t get girls without your fiscal interference!” You glance over at the table and you’re sure his friend saw you mouth his name, or maybe even heard it, your indignant squawk loud and indelicate and clear. He’s wincing, hunching over the table with one hand shading his face while the others whoop with laughter. Skinny attempts to pat him on the back, but he catches his wrist with lightning speed. You admire the veins standing out in his hand and the apparent strength in his white-knuckled grip for a moment before returning your attention to the grand king, who appears to have resorted to pure defensiveness.
“I was just trying to be considerate!” He tells you, and movement in the corner of your eye tells you that his tall friend is miming an explosion. Wheeeeeee-BOOM. You agree silently.
“It wasn’t considerate, it was condescending and offensive! Fuck, dude, I am begging you to never wingman for anyone ever again.”
“I’m sorry,” he says simply after opening and closing his mouth a few times. “I am. It was poorly worded. I’m really sorry.”
“…Fine,” you say tightly, and then reach into your pockets for your notepad. “Here’s your check. Pay and get out, all of you.”
“But—”
“And here,” you say, scribbling furiously on the corner of another sheet, tearing it off roughly and shoving it into his hands, studiously not looking at him. “Is my number. Give it to your friend. Tell him if he wants a real shot I don’t want to see you until we’ve made it to five dates at least.”
The way he looks at you confuses and upsets you. You think for a second he’ll pocket the paper; wouldn’t that be ridiculous? He listens to you, though, mute and tragic, and when you go home that night you fall asleep thinking of spiky hair and corded muscle.
You dream of boy kings and loopy signatures that read Oikawa Tooru.