Archive of Our Own ^beta

sometimes being offered tenderness
feels like the very proof
that you have been ruined
—on earth we are briefly gorgeous, ocean vuong

Oikawa orchestrates his own tragedy when he suggests to Iwaizumi that they move in together for university.

“Let’s move in together!” the idea comes out of Oikawa before his mind-to-mouth filter kicks in.

The streets are quiet at this time of the day, settling in the transient hours between the close of a workday and the approaching whisper of the night. They’re walking home from school, bags slung over their shoulders and sneakers tapping on the sidewalk, their nondescript figures framed against the lilac-marigold ombre of sunset. The sun dips, the breeze sighs, and it’s an unlikely ordinary day for setting something big into motion.

Iwaizumi throws his partner a sidelong glance, an eyebrow raised questioningly, then returns to his usual countenance. Oikawa is prone to sudden declarations like this, and it’s nothing the world stops spinning for.

“Don’t just decide that on a whim,” he tells him coolly, and bites down on a stick of almond crush Pocky that comes with Oikawa’s strawberry-flavoured one in a 2-for-1 promotion at the conbini.

“It’s not on a whim!” Oikawa starts, the rest of his protest dying on his tongue because okay—maybe it is.

It stems from a conversation earlier this afternoon with Matsukawa and Hanamaki, who broached the impending reality of attending separate universities, which naturally led to talking about the unavoidable terminus of their high school days.

Their choices would take them to different places, with the captain and his vice moving to the bustling capital of Tokyo while Hanamaki and Matsukawa remained in Miyagi, none of them having enrolled into the same school.

The pair lamented their parting like it was the end of a glorious epoch. In a way, it feels like it was, when they’re huddled around two worn-down desks pushed together, empty bentos before them, and staring out at the courtyard where Seijoh’s flag billowed in the wind—no longer an everyday sight.

Iwaizumi had scoffed at their antics and pointed out that they were only going to different schools, but Hanamaki said that was nothing short of a pivotal moment for the two childhood friends, because they had always done everything together and in the blink of an eye, it would be a thing of the past.

The mere notion of it offended Oikawa, who was called out for his lack of input on the matter, and he waved it away with a false sense of nonchalance.

He had done a stellar job at ignoring the unpalatable topic for the rest of the day, but as they make their way back home in the quiet hum of the earth, it creeps past his thoughts and wedges a spot in his mind. Imagining it now immediately steeps him in dread, so his first reaction is to keep that reality at bay, hence the suggestion.

“But it’s a good idea, isn’t it?” Oikawa adds, trying to convince himself as much as he is convincing Iwaizumi. “We’re moving to Tokyo and we’ll have to rent a place anyway so why not just stay together? The rent will be cheaper and we can take care of each other like we always do.”

It’s a viable idea and makes perfect sense but the economics of it is secondary. The primary intention is to preserve his unready heart, and this is the part where Oikawa admits, for the umpteenth time, that he is in love with Iwaizumi Hajime.

It came quietly, like the springtime bloom of pale pink cherry blossoms, or the ebb and flow of frothy waves over the summer shore. It came surely, like the gradations of vermillion and ochre of fallen leaves, or the fall of first snow in the wintry air. There was no earth-stopping epiphany, no spiralling entropy. It happened, like the seasons did, like it continues to do.

And because Oikawa devotes his entire being to what he loves, loving Iwaizumi is something he does with his soul. Everything is tenfold, from what he gives to what he gets out of it. It can be the most exhilarating thing, or the most excruciating. Regardless, he feels it in his marrow.

So it’s no wrong of his to regard the idea of separation with trepidation. Hanamaki was right. They had done everything together. Oikawa does not have a memory where Iwaizumi isn’t there to celebrate their successes or overcome challenges together. How could the fates pull them apart as if they had not woven their days with intricacy? Tear him in two and it would probably feel the same.

“I thought you’d be tired of me by now,” is Iwaizumi’s offhanded answer to Oikawa’s line of argument.

“I would never!” Oikawa fires back, a theatrical cadence in his voice because the possibility is simply too outrageous. Settling, he narrows his eyes at Iwaizumi and questions, “Are you getting tired of me?”

There’s a beat, before Iwaizumi says in all seriousness, “Yeah.”

Oikawa scrutinizes his friend’s face, purposefully blasé, and darts out a hand to steal two Pocky sticks from Iwaizumi’s box.

“That’s for being a liar,” he huffs, chomping on his stolen snack and Iwaizumi lets him.

Of course it was a lie. Despite the handful that Oikawa can be, Iwaizumi thinks he can never grow weary of him. There’s a lot he would do for Oikawa, including but not limited to going along with his spontaneity. Even so, moving in together is not a small matter, and Iwaizumi wants Oikawa to consider the implications at least.

“Are you sure though? We’re going to separate universities after all,” he points out, and doesn’t elaborate. With him attending Nittaidai and Oikawa in Chuo, it will take at least forty minutes by public transport, and that’s if they find a place in the middle.

“I mean, the commute may be longer but it’s better than having to find our own apartments and I don’t know, what if we end up with some weird roommates?” Oikawa reasons, grimacing when he imagines rooming with strange characters or people he can never get along with. It’s not to say he doesn’t have his idiosyncrasies or can be hard to live with sometimes, but Iwaizumi knows all his bad habits, the worst parts of him even, and he’s still here. “I just think that with being in a new city and all, it’ll be good to have some kind of familiarity.”

Oikawa glances at Iwaizumi expectantly and asks, voice a little unsure, “So what do you say? Wanna move in together?”

A thoughtful look settles on Iwaizumi’s face and when he eventually says, “Yeah. Okay,” Oikawa releases a breath and smiles.

Whether this is an effort of self-preservation or self-destruction, Oikawa’s carelessness only minds the former. He loves Iwaizumi in the most intimate ways, but because he can never quite define what it means when Iwaizumi loves him back, he exists in a hazy in-between, unaware of the ambiguity he perpetuates and the affliction that comes with it.

All he knows is that he’s not ready to be apart, doesn’t think he’ll ever be ready, but he needs more time. He knows that Iwaizumi will one day carve out his own future and that their paths will diverge. But until then, he hopes the fates will let him have his one pitiable attempt at delaying the inevitable.

—you’re not here only at your doing, because it takes two to end up in a state like this.

It turns out living together is harder than he thought, and it’s not the act of sharing an abode together. It’s the liminal spaces that become an even more undeniable part of his days.

The thing about Iwaizumi is that he loves with his actions and living together puts Oikawa at the receiving end of it a whole lot more frequently than before. It doesn’t help that they’ve taken a different tone—less brusque, more…domestic, as if moving to a new city has mellowed him out. Oikawa doesn’t question them, doesn’t call out the fact that Iwaizumi’s tender-hearted actions skirt along blurred lines, doesn’t confront him for definitions. So they let sleeping dogs lie and exist in grey areas that almost take up every inch of their house.

And it’s a lovely house—not perfect, but decent enough for two university students whose only requirements are for it to be affordable, functional, and midway between Nittaidai and Chuo. Their place is nestled in Tama, a 2LDK on the fifth storey of an apartment complex with small rooms but a clean, minimalistic design that Oikawa had taken an immediate liking to. It’s rather new, according to their landlord, an affable middle-aged lady who runs an online business, dabbling in what they have yet to find out.

The entranceway leads to their living-slash-dining room, which extends towards a balcony that faces the Tama River. An open kitchen sits on the other side of the room, opposite the balcony. There’s a narrow hallway when they turn right from the entrance, where the rooms are, one on the left and a bigger one at the end. On the hallway’s right is the bathroom, which is shared, so they only had to play janken to decide who the bigger room goes to. Oikawa is the lucky one, but Iwaizumi would’ve let him have it if he insisted anyway.

Notwithstanding the little imperfections of their humble abode, like the patch of uneven flooring in a corner of their living room, or the washing machine that gets a little wonky after a heavy-duty cycle, or the storeroom door that doesn’t close unless you shove at it, they like it. It’s easy to build their lives in this small flat and it’s easy to make it into a home.

They fill this house with their belongings and the simple ways they care for each other, so it’s no surprise that the house holds their liminal spaces, where actions seem to hint at something more.

Like how Iwaizumi insists they shouldn’t skip breakfast, a belief he carries since high school, so on days when he leaves for school earlier than Oikawa, the setter would find breakfast sitting on the kitchen counter or a sticky note to tell him that it’s in the fridge or something.

There’s nothing fancy about it, onigiri or bread from the nearby bakery. It’s the sticky notes with Iwaizumi’s scratchy handwriting that makes Oikawa remember you can take care of someone in the quietest ways. He can imagine Iwaizumi telling him through the notes, ‘I bought an extra sandwich from FamiMa yesterday. It’s in the fridge,’ or ‘There are leftovers from dinner. I put it in the microwave. Just heat it up for 30 seconds,’ or simply ‘Eat,’ when it’s something Iwaizumi knows he doesn’t quite like.

It’s in these moments where Oikawa realizes the fatal domesticity of sticky notes, and maybe if he tricks himself, he can call them love notes in the kitchen.

Other times, Oikawa can make a passing remark about running out of athletic tape and he’ll find a brand-new roll on his desk the next day. He can come home after an awful practice and escape to watching mindless YouTube videos in his comfiest, oversized sweatshirt on the couch and Iwaizumi will see him tip his head against the back of the couch, eyes closed, and ask, “rough day?” When he opens his tired eyes, he’ll be greeted by an upside-down image of Iwaizumi’s face, the ends of his hair damp from his shower, words lodged in his throat as Iwaizumi sweeps his bangs out of his forehead in understanding. He will take Oikawa’s silence as it is, not needing him to say anything else, and fix them both a hot lemon drink.

Iwaizumi cares for him like this—quiet and sure, and Oikawa endlessly grateful, but care is not love. Not quite. Iwaizumi continues as he is, and they spend their days in this tiny apartment that’s full of love it makes Oikawa’s heart ache so bad.

It’s hard to navigate these in-betweens because he can’t seem to find his footing when the world puts him so close to Iwaizumi and it still feels helplessly far.

Does he know how much he moors him and yet sets him adrift?

Oikawa should’ve known better when he uttered that suggestion those few months ago. Even so, he can live with this. He can take his burning heart and shush it into a quiet warmth. He’s nursed it for years, why should living together render him any less capable?

But unbeknownst to him, these figurative grey areas extend to actual, physical spaces where Oikawa cannot see how Iwaizumi stands as his keeper.

These are moments where Iwaizumi is rolling a lint-roller over Oikawa’s clothes because he left tissue in his pockets before throwing them in the wash, the creases in his forehead not as harsh under the afternoon sunlight streaming through the balcony doors—or when Iwaizumi plucks Oikawa’s glasses off his face as he dozes off on crossed arms atop his opened textbook, his curled figure shrouded in darkness save for the hazy circle of light from his desk lamp—or how Iwaizumi rests Oikawa’s head on his shoulder after he keeps lolling off at the movie despite being the one to insist that they watch it in the first place, the scenes from their TV casting dancing shadows on their faces.

Iwaizumi lets himself do these—nothing more, nothing less—and Oikawa, despite his tendency to push limits, doesn’t push this one. By some inescapability, they find themselves ensnared in liminal spaces, like a gateway to another reality that neither of them crosses.

—when you think you can’t fall further, the ground splits open and swallows you whole.

“Oikawa, did you put the washing machine on the heavy-duty cycle?” comes Iwaizumi’s voice from the setter’s opened room door.

There’s an interrogative edge to it, which makes Oikawa abandon the article he was reading on his laptop to regard Iwaizumi cautiously and admit with a wary tone, “Yes…?”

Iwaizumi’s eyes sharpen in an instant and he says chidingly, “You know it starts acting up when you use that setting.”

“I know! I just wanted to get the laundry done in one load and I was washing our sheets then,” Oikawa explains hastily, turning on his swivel chair to face him fully. “It’s been working fine so far so I thought it won’t be a problem. Why, what’s wrong with it now?”

“It was making a lot of weird noises when I turned it on, like someone put a spanner in it, so I turned it off and now it won’t come back on,” Iwaizumi tells him, frowning as he recalls the questionable sounds coming from their washer-dryer, which threw a real tantrum because he adds, “And it’s leaking.”

So much for bringing convenience into their lives. It’s achieving the exact opposite by dying at the worst possible time.

“Shit. We can tell Mie-san tomorrow since it’s late now,” Oikawa says, referring to their landlord, who he’s managed to be on a nickname-basis with for some reason. It’s past eleven, which is surprising now that Oikawa thinks about it, because Iwaizumi rarely stays up late, especially to do chores. In any case, Mie-san won’t be able to miraculously solve their problem if they bring this up to her now, so he suggests, “Why don’t you do your laundry another day?”

Iwaizumi throws him a flat look, “Oikawa, I’ve run out of clothes to wear.”

For two seconds, there’s nothing but silence as they stare at each other in blandness and disbelief.

“Are you serious?” Oikawa asks with a noticeable grimace, sounding a little judgemental that Iwaizumi’s wardrobe is so limited he would encounter such a predicament.

“I didn’t have time to do my laundry!” he says hotly. “And how was I supposed to know the washing machine would fail me now because someone decided to set it on the heavy-duty cycle when our landlord explicitly said not to?”

“I didn’t know it would die on us right after!” Oikawa counters, although he does feel a twinge of guilt because he distinctly remembers Mie-san giving them that advice with an apologetic smile. “Can’t you hand-wash your clothes and let them dry overnight or something?”

“They’re not going to be dry by tomorrow,” Iwaizumi points out. “I need them for the training camp.”

The training camp.

It totally slipped Oikawa’s mind that Iwaizumi will be attending the overnight training camp that Nittaidai organizes for the volleyball team every year, including the first-years.

“Oh.”

The word, accompanied by a look of belated realization on Oikawa’s face, earns him a pointed glare.

“Yeah. Oh.”

“Okay, well—” Oikawa flounders, because this has become somewhat of an emergency and it’s partly his fault, even if he doesn’t want to admit it out loud. “We can go to the coin laundry, there’s one nearby right?”

“Guess I don’t have much of a choice now, do I?” Iwaizumi grouses.

“I can go with you!” he offers, springing up from his seat.

“It’s fine. I can handle it.”

“No, I want to go with you!” Oikawa insists, already preparing to change into some pants. After ignoring their landlord’s advice and putting the washing machine at risk, the least he could do is to not let Iwaizumi make a troublesome trip to the coin laundry by himself.

“Oikawa—” Iwaizumi starts, but he’s having none of it.

“Give me three minutes!”

*

And that’s how they find themselves in the empty laundromat a ten-minute walk from their apartment at an ungodly hour. Fine, it’s only a little after eleven, but it’s way too late to be stuck doing your laundry outside by Iwaizumi’s standards. If his night is unfortunately spent in an old linoleum-tiled coin laundry that sits by the dimly-lit street with only the steady whir of the machines and his best friend’s regretful rambling as his company, then Iwaizumi will resign himself to it.

“I really do feel bad Iwa-chan, I had no idea that would kill the washing machine for good,” Oikawa says as he pulls out Iwaizumi’s clothes from the laundry bag and hands them to him, doleful eyes trained on Iwaizumi’s side profile. He would be more conscious if there were strangers around, but the entire place is empty besides the two hapless university students, so he isn’t.

“Oikawa, I said it’s fine,” he answers plainly, taking his clothes from him to check the pockets and turn them inside-out before throwing them into the washing machine. Oikawa already apologized on the walk here and Iwaizumi told him to keep it down because his plaintive declarations were distinct when the streets were so silent at this time of the night.

This trip is a huge waste of time sure, but Iwaizumi isn’t that bothered anymore. He’s bound to run into some inconveniences and there’s no reason to cry over spilt milk. At least there’s an alternative in the form of a 24-hour coin laundry.

“So you’re not mad?” Oikawa asks carefully, studying Iwaizumi’s expression.

“No,” Iwaizumi tells him with finality, then pins him with a stern look, though it is not angry, “But you’re responsible for telling our landlord about getting a new washer.”

“Leave it to me!” Oikawa chirps as Iwaizumi tosses the last of his clothes into the drum, his mood markedly improved that easily. As he watches Iwaizumi scan through the sticker of instructions and attempt to make sense of the various buttons and dials, Oikawa points out curiously, “Still, it’s not like you to leave the chores to the last minute.”

It’s a valid observation and Iwaizumi doesn’t look at him when he says, “I’ve been busy.”

“I can tell. You’re so serious about your studies,” Oikawa remarks in amusement. He turns on his heel to lean against an unused washing machine, shoes squeaking against the linoleum floor, and regards Iwaizumi who seems pre-occupied fiddling with the washer’s settings and with his thoughts.

While he’s on Nittaidai’s volleyball team and does have the aim of making it to the strings to face Oikawa as promised rivals in the tournaments, it’s true that he devotes more effort to his studies. Iwaizumi knows his place will not always be on the court, at least not within the white lines of the hardwood floor. Ever since he understood how much could weigh on an athlete’s body, so unforgivingly fragile it can be, and something shifted into place, he knew he wanted to help them be their best, because no one should be punished for loving so ardently.

It’s not an easy endeavour, especially when Iwaizumi’s aiming higher than merely passing, so naturally he’d be more studious.

“I mean, that’s good and all, but at this rate, you’ll be spending your whole university life in singlehood,” Oikawa continues offhandedly.

“Like you’re any better,” Iwaizumi retorts without thinking, because Oikawa hasn’t gotten into a relationship since that short-lived one in high school and it doesn’t seem like he’s interested in anyone lately, so what’s up with that? Besides, if one of them would be doomed to singlehood, wouldn’t it be Oikawa, who has utterly given himself to volleyball?

Oikawa sputters and scrapes together an indignant reply, “Just because I’m not with anyone doesn’t mean I can’t get someone.”

“Yeah? Well, me too,” Iwaizumi counters.

“So why haven’t you?”

“Why haven’t you?”

The challenging glint vanishes from Oikawa’s eyes the instant Iwaizumi turns the question on him, but Iwaizumi holds his gaze stubbornly, secretly curious for the reason Oikawa doesn’t find himself a partner because it can’t just be volleyball, can it?

That’s a conversation Oikawa’s not ready to have, so he averts his gaze and huffs in feigned annoyance, “Never mind. Hurry up Iwa-chan.”

“The one who ruined our washer doesn’t get to rush me,” Iwaizumi says, narrowing his eyes at Oikawa. He gestures at the washing machine which has begun to make sloshing noises as it starts the cycle and adds, “And it’s running. What do you want me to do, tell it to hurry up?”

*

They kill time by scrolling through their SNS on the off-white plastic seats while the machine hums away, knees bumping when Oikawa leans over to show Iwaizumi a funny meme. The almost-finished can of melon drink that Iwaizumi bought from the vending machine outside sits on the floor, a ring of water pooling around its base.

If a passer-by looks through the glass windows, all they would see is two friends exchanging soft voices in front of a row of washers, one of the fluorescent lights in the far corner flickering sporadically—nothing remarkable about the sight but at the same time, strangely intimate. Perhaps it’s the lateness of the night, or the way their heads are tipped towards each other as they look at something in their phone, shoulder-to-shoulder, that makes peering at the scene almost intrusive.

The washing machine beeps when half an hour is up, and Iwaizumi gets up to prepare his wet clothes for the dryer. Oikawa pockets his phone and follows him, prepared to lend a hand, but when Iwaizumi opens the door and tugs out the first article of clothing, something is amiss.

He frowns as he pulls out the shirt, flapping it so that it isn’t all twisted, and holds it up. Clearly, it doesn’t look right, and their flabbergasted expressions are proof of it.

“Is it…” Iwaizumi starts, eyes trained on the oddly-shaped shirt in his hands and eyebrows drawn together in a deeper frown, “supposed to be this small?”

They look up at the same time, gazes meeting, Iwaizumi’s in bewilderment and Oikawa’s in shock.

“Oh my god, Iwa-chan. It shrank,” he whispers, eyes wide.

Without a doubt, the shirt has shrunk to about half its size and hangs miserably between them. The rest of the load has probably met the same fate. Oikawa glances at Iwaizumi nervously, who is still boring holes into his kid-sized shirt, dumbfounded. He’s waiting for Iwaizumi to finish processing his shock, anxious for the moment it explodes into anger.

A light flickers behind him.

He’s expecting it any time now. Their washing machine at home dies in the untimeliest way and their impromptu trip to the coin laundry is a wasted one. Iwaizumi has ended up with no clothes for the training camp and it has everything to do with Oikawa.

But it doesn’t come.

Iwaizumi doesn’t fly into a rage, doesn’t even glower at him. Instead—and Oikawa thinks it’s the most bizarre thing to happen tonight—a small sound escapes from his parted lips, like disbelief and amusement melded into a single breath, and he laughs.

The sound is clear and light, and a bit husky from Iwaizumi’s voice. His eyes crinkle at the corners, cheeks dusted with mirth and lips curled into a smile of resignation.

For a few surreal moments, this is all that fills Oikawa’s sight—the portrait of Iwaizumi laughing against the backdrop of an old laundromat, his laughter ringing through his ears—and Oikawa is struck with a timeless reminder.

‘I’m in love with him.’

His world is thrown a little off-kilter then, not because it’s an epiphany no—it’s not a new discovery, just an old fact—but because he hadn’t known the understanding could feel more visceral than it already is. Everything about now seems dissociated into its own existence. From the picture of Iwaizumi’s blitheness to the sound of his laughter despite his ill-fated circumstances, all of it is seared into Oikawa’s mind, and it burns within him something fierce.

Iwaizumi is beautiful, in many ways so.

‘I am so in love with him.’

He can feel himself falling, and he thought he’d be used to it by now, but this is the sudden kind where the earth beneath his feet splits asunder and he is pulled into the chasm with nowhere else to go but deeper.

“I can’t believe this. Look at this,” Iwaizumi says, his sentences interspersed with dissolving laughter as he pulls out more clothes from the washer. “They’re all—oh my god.”

They’re a lost cause, all of them comically shrunk, and it’s so ridiculous it’s funny. He must have been distracted by the conversation just now and set the washer to the wrong setting or something. Who would have thought that what was supposed to prevent a predicament threw him into a disaster instead? Iwaizumi chuckles at the irony, soft and sweet.

“You’re not…angry?” Oikawa asks when he finds his voice.

“Trust me, I’m surprised too,” Iwaizumi returns. He thought having his clothes ruined by the washer when he needs them for a training camp the very next day would infuriate him, but the absurdity completely overshadows that. There’s no point being mad anyway, it won’t help matters and he can’t blame Oikawa for how the night unfolded—it’s just his luck.

Something about being in a coin laundry close to midnight, with a load of mini-clothes in the washer and his best friend’s uncertain hazel eyes searching his that makes him more forbearing.

Iwaizumi wants to tell Oikawa that there’s nothing to be uneasy about, not knowing that his eyes hold more than just nervousness. He glances at him and says, tone firm but gaze gentle, “You’re going to have to lend me your clothes.”

It’s the only solution he has left.

“Okay,” Oikawa agrees, and tries not to think about Iwaizumi wearing his clothes or how it will smell like him after. He refuses to meet his eyes, and Iwaizumi finds his evasiveness rather odd. Oikawa attempts to cover up his embarrassment with a half-hearted jab, “The sweatpants might be too long for you though.”

“Shut up,” Iwaizumi scoffs. “I don’t need your sweatpants.”

They unload the washing machine, snickering about the unsalvageable clothes before deciding how to get rid of them. Underneath the low lights, Oikawa steals glances at Iwaizumi and preserves the unremarkable happenings in a laundromat as a rare memory.

He loves him ordinarily, and it’s the biggest feeling in the world.

—labels are too elusive a subject to be bothered with.

Oikawa’s never given serious thought about what they are, despite the tiny voice in the back of his head whispering that it’s more than what’s considered normal among friends. They lived childhood and adolescence together, and the way they are with each other were things that simply fell into place, so Oikawa did not see a compelling reason to assign titles to undefinable concepts.

Sometimes though, because of extrinsic forces, Oikawa is prompted to mull over the matter, like today, when Chuo has a practice match against Nittaidai at the latter’s gymnasium.

It doesn’t happen often, but ever since Chuo’s got a new assistant coach who’s more resourceful and apparently long-time friends with Nittaidai’s coach, they’ve had more chances to practise with the other universities. Oikawa is always thrilled over the opportunity, especially when it’s the sport science university. It’s not exactly fulfilling their promise of facing each other on opposite sides of the court (not yet), but the experience nonetheless gives him a rush of exhilaration as long as he sees Iwaizumi through the squares of the net.

It was a game well-fought. Chuo has performed better than Nittaidai in recent years, but the sport science university could be one of their greatest contenders at the intercollegiate championship. The very prospect never fails to excite Oikawa, who interrupts a post-game conversation with two of his first-year teammates to wave to an approaching Iwaizumi.

“Iwa-chan!”

Iwaizumi walks over from where his team continues with their warm-downs, nodding at Oikawa and his teammates, an opposite hitter and middle blocker he knows as Egami and Takano. He’s met them when they were spectating games before, and they were a couple of easy-going guys who became quick acquaintances.

“Hey Iwaizumi,” Takano greets.

“Hey. Good game,” Iwaizumi says, catching Egami’s smirk.

“Yeah, your line shots really gave us a hard time today,” the opposite hitter says because they did lose a few critical points to Iwaizumi’s spikes. They had been rather clever that Egami was left feeling more impressed than disgruntled.

“Been practicing that one haven’t you?” Oikawa chimes, allowing a sense of pride to tint his voice. He’d be lying if he claimed that it doesn’t bug him to see someone else tossing to Iwaizumi, but putting that aside, watching him make the best out of the sets sent his way will always be a satisfaction and a motivation.

Iwaizumi shrugs, “Wouldn’t want to fall behind.”

“Hardly,” Egami pipes up. “In fact, I kinda want to learn a few tricks from you.”

“Sure, if you teach me how you did that fake spike,” Iwaizumi returns.

Egami grins, “It’s a deal.”

Turning towards Oikawa, Iwaizumi regards him with an appraising look, “Oikawa, you okay? I saw you minding your knee,” and it dawns on the other two why Iwaizumi had approached them in the first place.

“I’m fine Iwa-chan,” the setter answers, caught off-guard by the sudden attention but not surprised that Iwaizumi had been watchful enough to make that observation. He shifts his weight onto the other leg, adding, “It’s just my knee support. I think it’s getting loose.”

The frown that settles on his features is instant, “Where’s your spare one?”

“I may have left it back home,” Oikawa answers hesitantly, dragging out the sentence and studying Iwaizumi’s reaction.

Iwaizumi knows ‘back home’ means Sendai and tells Oikawa with a voice that doesn’t leave much room for argument because it’s not to be taken lightly for Oikawa to be using a knee support that’s losing its effectiveness, “Go get a new one.”

“I will,” he promises, glancing away as if he’s been reprimanded.

“This weekend.”

“Will you go with me?” Oikawa asks, expression turning hopeful.

“Can I say no?” Iwaizumi tries (in vain, because rejecting Oikawa is a trick he never quite learned).

(Oikawa knows this too.)

“Sure you can,” he says coyly and all three of them can sense the internal struggle that ensues in Iwaizumi’s head.

Eventually, the Nittaidai student relents, but not without a warning, “If you can’t get out of bed, I’m making my own plans.”

“The malls open at ten,” Oikawa points out flippantly. “I think I can manage that.”

“Seems like you got your hands full,” Takano remarks, quirking a brow at Iwaizumi, and Oikawa throws him a look.

“Nothing new,” Iwaizumi says, and for someone who has dealt with the whims and fancies of Oikawa Tooru on a regular basis, he doesn’t sound exasperated, only endeared if they dared say so themselves.

Their conversation is cut short when one of Nittaidai’s players calls out Iwaizumi’s name from the other side of the court. He whirls around, noticing his teammate beckoning for him, and raises a hand to signal that he’ll be with them in a bit. Before leaving, he turns back to Oikawa again and asks, “Are you going home after this?”

“No, the bus is taking us back to campus.”

“Okay, I’ll get us take-out for dinner then,” Iwaizumi suggests and Oikawa nods appreciatively.

“Yes please!”

“I’ll text you,” he replies, jogging away and waving bye to Egami and Takano.

“Okay!” Oikawa answers and the minute Iwaizumi is out of earshot, Takano makes a passing remark about something he couldn’t help but notice from their short exchange.

“Man, wish I had someone like that looking out for me too.”

“Hey, get your own Iwa-chan!” Oikawa protests, albeit jokingly. He knows Iwaizumi looks out for him—it’s hard to miss, even if it’s not loud, and anyone would be lucky to have a version of Iwaizumi in their lives but this one specifically—this version of what he has with Iwaizumi—he wants to be able to call his. It’s not a territorial thing, but more of an inherent need to be special, because he needs to know that out of all the things he cannot have with Iwaizumi, he can have this at least.

“Relax, no one’s going to steal him from you,” Takano retorts.

“I bet he’s only like that with you anyway,” Egami adds impishly.

Oikawa responds without thinking too much, “Of course. We’re best friends,” and creates the opportunity for his friends to wind the cogwheels in his mind.

“Just best friends?” Egami probes, a teasing cadence in his voice.

Coupled with the knowing glint in his eyes, it forces Oikawa to answer evasively, “What do you mean, we grew up together and we’ve always been this way.”

Some part of him knows that whatever way it is between them is not typical of friends of the platonic kind, if his observations while growing up are anything to go by, but he takes it as it is. It might be strange, but it was just them, and it worked—why question it? But now that his teammates have opened this can of worms, Oikawa fears his mind won’t give it a rest.

“I’m just saying, he acts like you’re his exception,” Egami comments with a shrug.

“What?” Oikawa lets out incredulously, not because it isn’t true, but because it is, and when he puts it like that, it makes Oikawa wish it means more than what reality allows.

“And you get all caught up in the moment when it has something to do with him,” Takano chips in, simply stating what he’s seen, which Oikawa would argue is an exaggeration, but Takano carries on, “Don’t even get me started on what you’re like when we have practice matches against Nittaidai.”

Oikawa’s protest fizzles out when he remembers the frisson of excitement from hearing the news about the practice match and getting all pumped up throughout the rest of their training. Meeting Iwaizumi on the court as a rival after ever knowing him as a partner gives him butterflies in his stomach and lights a fire in his veins at the same time.

“We’re—close,” he reasons, his voice going a little high-pitched at the end.

“Sure. Best friends right?” Takano humours him, well-aware that nothing he says will get into the setter’s stubborn head, but not without a final playful remark.

Egami nudges Takano in the side with an elbow, adding with a smirk, “They’re roommates.”

They both snicker like it’s an inside joke, but Oikawa’s already sinking into the murky depths that is the nature of his and Iwaizumi’s relationship to pay it any heed.

The captain calls everyone over for a huddle before they depart and Oikawa drifts in and out of focus during the debrief. When the coach raises something about Nittaidai’s attacks as a learning point, Oikawa glances over at the team in question, his gaze falling on Iwaizumi, who hikes a sleeve over his shoulder as he converses with his teammates, something Oikawa knows he does out of habit.

Oikawa has never been fond of the million-dollar question—what are they? They’re best friends, but no—that’s not quite right, is it? They have always been more than that. They have always wandered beyond the boundary of what counts as platonic, flirting with the ambiguous and leaving the space as hazy as they had entered it. And they’re partners sure, but that doesn’t lend as much clarity as he would like. He doesn’t dare to go as far as to call themselves soulmates, no matter how much it feels like Iwaizumi is meant for him, and they’re definitely not lovers, no matter how close they inch towards it, no matter how much Oikawa wants them to be.

It’s not an exact science and any evidence turns up inconclusive. They are neither here nor there, and it is both comforting and excruciating, both a blessing and a curse. It’s hard to describe what they have, as amorphous as it is, and dwelling on it never gives him the answers he seeks, and always leads him to the same grey areas.

Eventually, Oikawa lets the matter rest, as he had done before, and when he arrives home that evening, there is take-out yakisoba waiting for him, which he enjoys with Iwaizumi as he recounts the day to him at their dinner table, omitting the conversation with his teammates on purpose.

In the end, he decides not to fret over it, because when all is said and done, they are just Iwaizumi and Oikawa, Hajime and Tooru, the beginning and the end.

—envy becomes a familiar friend.

As it happens, Oikawa oversleeps into the late morning, but Iwaizumi doesn’t make his own plans despite his prior words. By the time he’s ready to start the day proper, it’s a little after noon so Oikawa suggests they grab lunch outside before running their (his) errands in Ikebukuro. Buying a new knee support is a short affair since Oikawa has a budget and will only consider selected brands. They take their time to do a bit of window shopping, and Iwaizumi tries on a few running shoes, but figures the one at home still serves him well.

When they’re done, Oikawa insists it’s too early to head back, and pulls Iwaizumi along to get some crepes from the store by the street. Iwaizumi isn’t as eager, he doesn’t find the appeal in such sweet, overpriced treats, but allows himself to be tugged to the front of the pastel pink store and browses through the display of immaculately arranged crepes.

He goes behind Iwaizumi to take his wallet out of his backpack (because why carry his own when he can leave his belongings in Iwaizumi’s), and spots a recognizable face, or faces, some metres away where a bubble tea store sits. Oikawa raises his eyebrows in mild surprise, handing his wallet to Iwaizumi absentmindedly.

His attention stays on the familiar pair—only because the dark-haired one (Akaashi, if he remembers correctly) takes a sip of his drink and holds it up to his taller companion, who covers Akaashi’s hand around the cup for a taste—and doesn’t catch Iwaizumi asking him what flavour crepe he wants. He doesn’t answer, and Iwaizumi goes ahead to order for the both of them while Oikawa watches Bokuto nod his approval animatedly, tugging up the cup for another long sip, his fingers closed around Akaashi’s slender ones. Akaashi smiles at him in soft amusement, and if Oikawa’s eyes are not deceiving him, he’d say it’s almost loving.

“What are you looking at?” Iwaizumi asks, leading him out of the queue.

Oikawa looks at him for a second before twisting back to say, “Isn’t that Bokuto and Akaashi from Fukurodani?”

Iwaizumi follows his gaze and makes a sound of agreement.

“Seems so,” he says. He doesn’t observe them as closely as Oikawa, more surprised that they’d come across the Tokyo pair here and remarks instead, “Bokuto went pro straight after graduating right?”

“Yeah,” Oikawa answers distractedly. It’s rather heart-warming to see that they’re still hanging out even after Bokuto’s graduation, with Akaashi being a year younger. “They must be close,” Oikawa comments belatedly.

There are easy smiles on their faces as they chat, but the Seijoh alumni are too far away to hear what they’re saying. Akaashi shakes the plastic cup and pokes the straw around to capture one of those chewy tapioca balls, offering it to Bokuto. He makes a remark about its taste probably, judging from the bemused frown he throws at the pearls, and Akaashi reaches up to smooth a thumb over his eyebrow in response.

“It looks like they’re on a date,” Oikawa posits. It’s easy to tell when you’re looking from the outside.

“Maybe they’re just hanging out,” Iwaizumi says, considerably less interested in the Fukurodani pair. ‘Like us?’ Oikawa wants to ask, because that’s all they ever do isn’t it, as if it’ll burn them to admit anything more. Oikawa manages to hold his tongue, and Iwaizumi adds when he remembers something, “I saw Bokuto at the exhibition match. I didn’t see the setter. But I think the former Nekoma captain was there? The one with the rooster hair, I can’t remember his name.”

“Kuroo,” Oikawa offers.

“Yeah, him.”

Iwaizumi doesn’t follow up with anything, because their crepes are ready, but Oikawa doesn’t realize, preoccupied with the retreating figures of Bokuto and Akaashi, who slips a hand discreetly into his partner’s jacket pocket. The action doesn’t escape Bokuto’s notice, and he takes Akaashi’s hand out of his pocket to link their fingers instead just because he can, returning his blush with a carefree grin like there’s nothing to worry about.

For some reason, witnessing a clearly romantic gesture between the two doesn’t surprise Oikawa. They saunter away in the other direction, backs towards him and arms brushing, and Oikawa can’t seem to look away.

He wonders if Iwaizumi will let him—if he sneaks a hand into his pocket and argues that it’s cold. Iwaizumi will probably give him an odd look and point out that he’s got his own pockets, but he’ll relent because he’s all bark and no bite. And because it’s just the way Oikawa is, tactile and familiar.

But Oikawa is only like this when it comes to him. He knows he’s got leeway and it can be tempting to see how far he can push it. Yet, the furthest he’ll ever get is nowhere near where he wants to be, and the world has a habit of reminding him of it. He thinks of holding hands with Iwaizumi as Bokuto’s and Akaashi’s figures become smaller in the distance, and he thinks of all the times he sees couples on their lovely dates, with their arms around waists and sharing chaste kisses, and dreams of the same thing with Iwaizumi. It seems to be a frequent occurrence, wanting what other people have.

The funny thing is that they’re kinda on a date already, shopping for essentials and buying crepes and Oikawa may even suggest that they go for a movie later, so he wonders what more he has to do to have what has always felt so unattainable, despite it being at his fingertips.

It’s not like he’s never been a lover, he just never had the experience with Iwaizumi, and Oikawa believes it will feel like the missing piece he’s been longing for. He wants to hold hands larger than his, wants to feel a muscled weight pressed against him, wants Iwaizumi to call him ‘Tooru’ with ardour in his voice. And that’s all he does—wants.

Oikawa is familiar with the taste of envy—sour when it hits you, with a bitter aftertaste.

If he’s dreaming an impossible dream, Oikawa wishes Iwaizumi will tell him as such, so that he can start to get over it. But that’s the thing, he doesn’t think he can ever get over it when it sounds like an impossibility in itself. How can you lose half of yourself and not feel like something’s missing?

“Oi. Stop staring at them,” Iwaizumi says, breaking his thoughts. When Oikawa faces him, he is presented with two crepes and Iwaizumi asks, “Which one do you want?”

There is choco-banana in one hand and strawberry and caramel in the other. Oikawa’s fine with either, but he knows Iwaizumi prefers the choco-banana one because it’s not as sweet. Purely out of his own warped need to prove that he’s barely where he wants to be, because there is some relief in knowing he never had the chance than having his desires in the palm of his hand but realizing he cannot close his fingers over them, Oikawa points to the choco-banana one.

“This one.”

He hopes Iwaizumi will not acquiesce or at least chide him for not choosing a flavour when he was asked, but he (unsurprisingly) lets him have it without a fuss. Oikawa takes it with a quick smile, and they both bite into their crepes noiselessly. Iwaizumi scrunches his nose when the caramel coats his tongue and Oikawa catches it but does not linger. He returns to his, the chocolate syrup melting over his tastebuds, and he thinks, envy tastes a little sweeter today.

—it’s the hardest place to get out of, and it’s not for the lack of trying.

Sometimes, Oikawa decides, this is it.

He’s tired of existing behind a veil, of the pining and the pretending. It’s about time he gets it together and puts a stop to his quiet torture.

So he joins a mixer.

Admittedly, it had been an impulsive agreement when a couple of friends from his course invited him to the gathering. It’s not often that people ask him to such events, probably because they think guys of his type don’t need any help in making friends or finding a relationship, and there’s also the concern that a good-looking bachelor like him will steal all the limelight, but they had asked him genuinely after teasing him about being single, and Oikawa didn’t see why he should let that opportunity go to waste. He tells himself he’ll never escape his predicament if he doesn’t take that first step.

It turns out to be the most underwhelming two hours of his life.

It isn’t boring per se. The organizers booked out a large private room in an okonomiyaki restaurant, with four square low tables where they can choose their ingredients and prepare their own pancakes around a grill. It makes for easy chatting and the vibe is light-hearted enough for the university students to flit to other tables whenever they wanted. Most of them are from Chuo, with a handful from various universities who were invited by mutual friends of mutual friends.

Oikawa’s seated with Chuo peers he’s not familiar with and a couple of Tsukuba students and he tries, hand to heart he tries to be interested in the conversations and the people, but it goes downhill when he starts looking for things that aren’t there.

The first person he talks to is a fellow first-year from the arts faculty. She’s pleasant and well-spoken but her hair is too long. He chats with another girl with a short bob framing her round face, and Oikawa notices a cutesy lilt in her voice which makes her sound a little meek. Other people may find it endearing, but Oikawa prefers someone who sounds assured, not to the point of being proud but someone who imbues confidence in others.

He talks to the guys, but it’s not it too. They’re too loud, too facetious. They’re too tall, too thin. One of them has beautiful brown eyes, but they don’t seem to share the same wavelength when they chat. It’s only when he meets someone with the darkest set of green eyes and thinks how they’re of the wrong shade that he comes to realize he’s not going to find what he’s looking for.

That doesn’t mean he can’t still enjoy himself, so he turns to the only way he can. He drinks.

It’s the seniors who order the alcohol and pass it around because nobody really cares about who’s legal to drink or not. Oikawa flits from table to table to strike conversations with everyone, making toasts for random reasons and refills his glass of umeshu until he’s lost count. No one tries to hit him up after it becomes clear that he has no intention of getting together with anyone but he’s charming and witty even when he’s tipsy, so they go along with his happy-go-lucky attitude and blithe jokes.

He’s not a pro at holding his liquor, which explains his intoxicated state by the time everyone calls it a day, and his friends have to pry an address out of him before sharing a taxi to drop him off at his apartment. It’s not how he imagined his evening to unfold, but he supposes that’s what happens when he’s seeking answers in the wrong places.

His friends manage to contact Iwaizumi to pick him up at the building entrance after questioning his ability to make it up to his unit by himself and Oikawa mumbling a “call Iwa-chan…”

He’s aware of the arm around his waist as he’s being helped into their apartment but doesn’t register the words coming out of Iwaizumi’s mouth, likely a scolding for getting himself drunk and troubling others. Iwaizumi helps him out of his shoes at the entranceway and deposits him on the couch before fetching a glass of water.

He returns from the kitchen to see that Oikawa has somehow found his way onto the floor, his body slumped between the couch and the coffee table.

“What the hell,” Iwaizumi lets out, and sets the glass down to drag Oikawa’s limp body off the ground. “Get up Shittykawa.”

Oikawa groans but doesn’t resist. He leans against the foot of the couch as Iwaizumi offers the glass and firmly says, “Drink.”

“But Iwa-chan, I need to pee,” Oikawa protests.

“You can pee after you drink,” Iwaizumi tells him and watches him take gulps of water before taking the almost empty glass from him.

“My head hurts,” Oikawa complains, making no move to get off the floor even though he knows he should change out of his clothes and get ready for bed, as well as the headache that will come knocking against his skull in the morning.

“No shit,” Iwaizumi snorts, settling beside Oikawa until he’s ready to be lugged to bed. “Why’d you drink so much anyway? Aren’t you supposed to be sober enough to actually talk to people and get their numbers or something?”

Oikawa dismisses it with a shrug and the lacklustre reaction piques Iwaizumi’s curiosity.

“What? You didn’t have a good time?”

Oikawa lifts his gaze towards Iwaizumi and despite his drunken stupor, notices the genuine inquisitiveness in olive green eyes, finally the right shade. Iwaizumi is blissfully oblivious to what he does to Oikawa, and he can’t even be angry about it. He was unfazed when Oikawa told him that he’s joining a mixer and truthfully, it disappointed him (and might have reinforced his decision to attend it—what a blunder that turned out to be).

Oikawa shakes his head gently and says, “I don’t think…I’ll join another mixer again.”

He thought he could make a valiant effort to put an end to his pitiful state—nip it in the bud or some shit like that, except he’s far too late and the roots have made a home in his heart, its vines entwined in the spaces between his bones, so even if he cuts off where it festers it’s going to hurt everywhere anyway. It was a futile attempt, but at least he can sleep knowing that he’s tried.

“That bad?” Iwaizumi asks.

“It’s not that. It was fine, but everyone was—” he hesitates, and finishes with a non-answer, “I don’t know.”

“What’s wrong with them?”

The way the question comes out is far too tender, and Oikawa becomes hyperaware of the heat in his cheeks when he meets Iwaizumi’s waiting gaze. If he thinks the brown flecks in pools of green are like galaxy dust in his eyes, it’s entirely the alcohol’s doing.

“They’re all just…” he starts, voice hardly above a whisper.

‘Not you,’ he doesn’t say, because even his drunken bravery leaves him a coward, because despite the ambiguity, it is safe, and like keeping a ball inbounds, he keeps to safe spaces, afraid that if he pushes it to the edge, it will plummet and not soar. Out there, it’s black and white and sometimes, he’d rather exist in grey.

Oikawa sighs and drops his head, his forehead meeting Iwaizumi’s shoulder. Weariness takes him and he carries his afflictions into a restless slumber.

For what it’s worth, he’s tried, but no matter where he strays, he finds himself returning to a place of familiarity, to the person who provides it. Iwaizumi is his true north, and all the roads lead him back to him. Sometimes he finds himself on a foreign highway, but he is not lost—there are just a lot of ways back home.

It may not always feel like the comfort it’s supposed to be, and at times it’s almost like a catastrophe with storms that rage on and fallouts he’s never known how to bear. He wonders how much more his bruised heart can weather, surely not much more, when he loves wholly and yet it leaves him in shambles.

Perhaps calling it ground zero would be apt, because Iwaizumi has ruined anyone that could ever follow.

—it’s not all bad, if you think about the loopholes.

When the lines are blurred, Oikawa gets away with a lot of things.

Iwaizumi and Oikawa have movie nights where they put on a film or documentary and get comfy on the couch with store-bought snacks and drinks. It’s a routine they carry over from their high school days and they’ve tried to make it regular, but that proves to be difficult with their busy and conflicting schedules. It can be as frequent as weekly or they can go a month without a single movie night, but it’s a routine nonetheless.

They take turns choosing what to watch and more often than not, Oikawa becomes invested in what plays out on the screen, commenting on the absurdity of the story or the portrayal of the characters. Iwaizumi is the more passive audience. He pays attention, but sometimes he has to split that with listening to what Oikawa’s rattling about and trying to focus on the movie while his best friend is shaking him by the elbow in a particularly heated rant.

But there are peaceful moments too. These are lucky times when they pick a decent movie and are both engrossed in its storytelling and compelling characterizations or purely the arresting action scenes. Here, the only sounds that fill the room are those that come from the speakers. Or—these are not-so-lucky moments when they land with a substandard movie they’re too lazy to change by the time they realize they’re not going to get much out of it.

On a night that they make do with a B-movie about organized crime and gratuitous violence, Oikawa’s attention span starts to dwindle while Iwaizumi appears to be more interested in the many flavours he can pull out from his snack. They’re settled into a comfy position, a sliver of space between them as Iwaizumi’s sleeved arm brushes against Oikawa’s, a thin blanket draped around the setter’s frame.

At some indefinite point during the movie, Oikawa is no longer leaning into the couch, but finds himself reclining across the length of it, head pillowed against Iwaizumi’s lap and socked feet poking out from the edge of the blanket.

He must have been bored into a sleepy state because he doesn’t remember what happens towards the end of the movie. He does, however, remember how pleasant it was to have his cheek pressed against the curve of Iwaizumi’s thigh and it was easy to doze off when he feels as light as a feather.

Oikawa wakes when the credits roll and there is a ghost of a touch in his hair as his eyes flutter open, like there are fingers leaving his hair. He’s still drowsy from the accidental nap, so he could be mistaken.

“Wake up,” he hears Iwaizumi say and receives a shake of his shoulder. The realization that he had fallen asleep on Iwaizumi’s lap is not new but sheepish. Oikawa sits up slowly, blinking blearily as the blanket slips off his shoulder. He asks, “What happened in the end?”

“The rivals were in cahoots the entire time, so they stole the money and took off,” Iwaizumi answers, acting as if he didn’t have his fingers in Oikawa’s hair moments ago, blunt nails scraping his scalp in soothing motions. He gets up from the couch to clean up, adding, “It was really obvious. You would have predicted it.”

Oikawa hums shortly. He can’t say he saw it coming. Perhaps he wasn’t paying attention. Even now, he relegates the film to a corner in his mind and watches Iwaizumi’s back as he goes about packing up.

He hadn’t pushed him off. Oikawa wonders if his legs ached from the heaviness in his lap.

*

Once, Oikawa convinces Iwaizumi to let him cut his hair.

It was getting long, he wasn’t going to have time during the weekdays to visit the hairdresser, and it was raining. Oikawa had offered, “why don’t you just let me cut it for you?” and that was that.

In their bathroom, Iwaizumi sits on a high stool in front of their mirror with a towel secured around his shoulders. The reflection of Oikawa holding a silver pair of scissors, wearing an almost eager expression on his face as he looks over Iwaizumi’s hair, prompts him to ask, “Have you done this before?”

Oikawa looks up and meets Iwaizumi’s eyes through the mirror, “I’ve never cut someone else’s hair, but I’ve cut my own and have you ever seen me with a bad hair day?”

Iwaizumi scoffs. He has actually, but he doesn’t argue.

He sits there compliantly, and lets Oikawa work his magic. It’s less dramatic than it sounds.

Oikawa surveys what he’ll be working with, carding his fingers through Iwaizumi’s hair, and finally angles his head to start. He tilts a comb into his hair and begins snipping away at the tips. He’s gentle, Iwaizumi notes, and he supposes someone with a monster serve like him can be quite the opposite too. Oikawa’s fingers skim over the shell of his ear and sweep at his nape. If it’s unnecessary, he covers it well.

“Ever thought of growing your hair out?” he asks out of the blue.

Iwaizumi lets out a short laugh, “No. You?”

“Nope,” he replies and smiles when Iwaizumi raises an eyebrow sceptically, “Why? Think I can pull it off?”

“Probably,” he says after a beat, half-honest.

They lapse into a comfortable silence again as Oikawa concentrates on his task. The tips of Iwaizumi’s hair fall onto the towel around his shoulders as the Sunday rain patters on outside. It’s a terribly domestic moment, if either of them looked close enough or dared to admit it.

The haircut is decent, and Iwaizumi offers to clean up the bathroom. He thanks Oikawa but doesn’t say anything else about it because there’s nothing to say. There’s nothing strange about a friend helping a friend after all.

It happened only once because the day after, Iwaizumi’s course mates pointed out an uneven patch in his hair and laughed about it, so he never let Oikawa bring a pair of scissors near his head again.

*

The laundry gets sorted wrongly sometimes. They have a grey sweatshirt each, similar in colour and fabric but Iwaizumi’s one has a logo stitched above the right side of its hem and neither really notice it when they’re putting away the clothes. It has a habit of appearing in Oikawa’s wardrobe and by the time he realizes it’s not his, it’s already snugly on him.

He never changes out of it, not out of laziness (maybe a little bit) but because it’s more comfortable than his. The cotton is soft, the sleeves are at the perfect length (just over his wrists), and they use the same laundry detergent, but for some reason Iwaizumi’s sweatshirt smells nicer. Warmth is a constant companion when he accidentally puts it on.

Oikawa goes about his day as usual and sometimes he goes an entire day without Iwaizumi finding out. When he does though, it happens in the most unsuspecting moments and catches Oikawa off-guard. He will be clearing his mug to the kitchen and Iwaizumi will ask as he passes by, “Is that my sweatshirt?”

“Yes?” he answers cautiously and holds his elbows as if Iwaizumi will bodily remove it from him.

After the first time, Oikawa drops his guard and starts returning Iwaizumi’s questions with a cheeky remark or an impish smile. If Iwaizumi didn’t stop him the first time, he reckons he won’t stop him at all. Even when he’s wearing one of Iwaizumi’s other t-shirts, the Nittaidai student merely asks, “Is that—” and then shakes his head and says, “Never mind.”

Oikawa takes that liberty and runs with it.

Despite the undertones of wearing your roommate’s clothes, Iwaizumi doesn’t tell him to stop, so it mustn’t be weird, and it doesn’t matter.

*

University makes a lot of things seem larger than life, even the nightmares.

They’re not new, he’s had them since middle school, and they’ve followed him because self-doubt and paranoia are like breadcrumbs for the demons in his mind. They take many forms but are always about the same thing—not being enough.

He’d run but realize he hasn’t moved an inch, he’d chase but never get far, he’d reach the top but find out that he’s the last one there.

Tonight, Iwaizumi is there. The nightmares turn him into everything he isn’t—unforgiving and distant. They’re side-by-side at first, but Iwaizumi starts to drift, and Oikawa follows but every time he stretches out his hand, he misses his back. When he finally does catch up to him, it’s because Iwaizumi stops and it’s only to say, “it’s too late.”

The dreamscape shakes, Oikawa looks down and sees that the ground has disappeared. He opens his mouth in a soundless scream as he falls through the abyss and jerks awake in cold sweat, breathing heavily.

It takes him a few moments to calm himself and lay back down, but he doesn’t fall asleep, afraid that the shadows will find him again. Iwaizumi isn’t like that. They’ve been together long enough for him to be sure of it. He’s on the other side of this wall, unwaveringly, and he’ll be there the next morning.

As if he needs to confirm it with his own eyes, Oikawa slips out of bed and pads his way to Iwaizumi’s room.

The door creaks when he opens it. As a light sleeper, Iwaizumi shifts under his covers and turns to face the door at the sound of a timorous “Iwa-chan?”

Iwaizumi props himself up on an elbow and cracks his eyes open at the figure at his door.

“Oikawa?” he asks, voice rough with sleep.

“I had a bad dream,” Oikawa says uncertainly, not sure what kind of response Iwaizumi will give him for disrupting his sleep.

There’s nothing to worry about, for Iwaizumi simply scoots further into his bed and holds up the covers, rubbing his eyes that have not yet adjusted to the dark.

“Come on,” he says sleepily, and Oikawa’s feet take him forward.

The bed is not big, so Iwaizumi makes space as Oikawa slides underneath the covers with him, and they settle with their bodies curved towards each other, a careful space between their faces. Iwaizumi rubs his cheek into his pillow to get comfortable, pulls up the covers over their shoulders and murmurs, “S’just a bad dream.”

Oikawa watches him drift back to sleep and keeps to his side of the bed, arms tucked against his chest. He returns to his slumber so easily, as if sharing a bed with your best friend is normalcy. It kind of is, since Oikawa has stayed over at Iwaizumi’s place back in Miyagi and would leave his futon to climb into his bed when it’s one of those nights.

But they’re not kids anymore, and this shouldn’t be as simple as sharing physical space. Oikawa wonders why Iwaizumi lets him get away with this and even offers it to him with no questions asked, as if he thinks nothing much of it (therein lies his answer).

It’s not nothing to Oikawa.

Iwaizumi leads him to solace, challenges what his nightmares show him, and Oikawa finds what he’s looking for. His chest is brimming from the affection so easily offered, and from the closeness of their bodies. He loves him, and sometimes he wants to scream it into the world, other times he wants to whisper it into the inches between them. But it always seems too terrible to utter aloud.

It would feel like a trespass, but if Oikawa dares to reach out, he could skim his thumb over the arch of Iwaizumi’s eyebrow or trace a finger across the curve of his cheekbone. He’s close enough to manage that, to wonder where did personal space go?

Ah that’s right, it slipped into the canyon of hesitation between them.

They’ve created a quiet mess for themselves, and Oikawa supposes there is no escaping the vicissitudes of harbouring a lifelong crush on your childhood best friend.

He can fall asleep on Iwaizumi’s lap and it doesn’t have to mean anything. He can cut his hair and wear his clothes and climb into bed beside him and it doesn’t have to mean a single fucking thing.

—you begin to wonder if the universe is mocking you.

Oikawa’s grip on the handle tightens when the train jerks, too run-of-the-mill to jolt him out of his thoughts as he commutes home on the usual Namba line. It’s dark out after practice which wrapped up later than usual and a team dinner at a sukiyaki restaurant to celebrate the birthdays this month. The sukiyaki and boisterous company leave him sated, and his mind wanders as he stares out at the passing cityscape freckled with lights.

As his thoughts drift, he is caught in a recollection from two days ago, when he found a huge spider in their kitchen, and he didn’t even scream because the sheer size of that thing shocked him into speechlessness. Horrified eyes never leaving the arachnid, Oikawa proceeded to call Iwaizumi on his mobile phone and demanded him to “come to the kitchen right now Iwa-chan, there is a huge fucking spider in the sink!”

What ensued was a haphazard two-person strategy to capture the spider without harming it or themselves because while Oikawa wanted to get rid of it immediately, Iwaizumi predictably wanted to do it kindly. After what seemed like a long-drawn struggle with an otherwise nonchalant spider, they finally let it out on the balcony.

The roommates looked at each other the second it crawled away, and Iwaizumi flicked him in the forehead for fussing over a single spider, although Oikawa would emphasise (read: exaggerate) how humongous it was. Frankly, he could have taken care of it himself if it came down to it, but certain things are simply easier when you have someone with you, like dyeing your hair or tying the back of your apron, and of course, getting rid of creepy crawlies.

Oikawa ducks his head to hide a smile at the memory and catches a surprising—and familiar—sight.

Through the carriage door’s glass window, Oikawa spots Iwaizumi in the next compartment, and his eyes widen at the coincidence.

His hand instantly reaches for his phone, and a small smile stays on his lips as he pulls up his conversation with Iwaizumi and quickly types, ‘Look left. Through the door.’ Oikawa keeps his eyes trained on Iwaizumi, who has his earpiece plugged in and is scrolling through his phone, and waits eagerly for him to see his text, which he does a second later, tapping the top of the screen where the notification slides.

Iwaizumi frowns the moment he reads the cryptic message and looks up and left, his expression immediately softening into one of surprise when he makes eye contact with Oikawa. Oikawa gives him a tiny wave, his smile reaching his eyes. He makes a move to join Iwaizumi in his carriage, but Iwaizumi gestures discreetly to him, as if to say ‘You stay. I’ll go over.’

Oikawa remains in his spot and watches Iwaizumi make his way towards him, manoeuvring through the commuters with quiet “excuse me”s until he’s standing beside Oikawa.

“Hey.”

“Hi,” he greets back, hazel eyes glinting in amusement, and falls into an easy conversation. “How did your dinner go?”

“It was good,” Iwaizumi replies, and recounts the evening with his friends, which he had mentioned to Oikawa a couple days ago. “They have the best gyoza, we should go there sometime. And apparently Kakeru can sing.”

“Kakeru? The guy who drives to school?” Oikawa recalls.

“Yeah, we were watching a Vine clip that went viral and he started belting out the song from the video.”

“So he’s rich and he can sing,” Oikawa remarks and wonders curiously, “You didn’t ask him for a lift?”

“The others live in the other direction so he gave them a lift instead.”

“Shame.”

Iwaizumi gives him a one-arm shrug, “It’s fine, I don’t mind the travel.”

It’s a passing comment but Oikawa takes it to mean something more, as he is prone to do when their exchanges touch on the subject of travelling. Their schedules are busy enough as they are, and they don’t need unnecessarily long commutes to add to their inconveniences. Oikawa feels somewhat responsible, given that he’s the one to moot the idea of living together for less noble reasons. He knows Iwaizumi doesn’t blame him, but there’s a persistent uneasiness over the chance that Iwaizumi has been silently harbouring grievances about their slightly unfavourable circumstances.

“You don’t?” he asks, concern evident in his voice.

“Most of the time,” Iwaizumi clarifies.

“But you mind it sometimes?” Oikawa probes, staring at Iwaizumi searchingly, which earns him a weird look. “I mean—you never say anything about it! I don’t know if you think it’s been troublesome or tedious…”

He lets the sentence hang, since it becomes obvious what he’s implying. Iwaizumi studies him carefully, part-relieved that Oikawa isn’t putting up pretences in front of him, but part-bothered that he seems genuinely troubled about this. He’s overthinking it—Iwaizumi briefly considers if he’d done anything to give Oikawa the wrong impression and nothing in particular surfaces—and answers truthfully, “It can be tiring, but the travelling is the least of my worries.”

“Oh,” Oikawa murmurs. It appears to have distracted him from the subject, but he veers to a similar one, “What are you worried about?”

Iwaizumi digs his heel into the floor for balance when the train lurches and says coolly, “Whether you’d ever start pulling your weight in the kitchen.”

As intended, it provokes an indignant protest from Oikawa, who counters, “I help out! With the dishes.” Iwaizumi takes care of most of the cooking and grocery shopping and sure, those are essential kitchen duties, but dishwashing is not to be taken lightly! Aware that Iwaizumi was merely getting a rise out of him, Oikawa suggests deviously, “Are you saying you’d rather have me cook our meals?”

He had one bad experience where ‘bad’ was actually ‘disastrous’ and it almost got them evicted but barring any such accidents, Iwaizumi thinks Oikawa could be a decent chef.

“I’d take the risk,” he banters.

Oikawa grins, “I’ll hold you up to that.”

“Sure. Just warn me yeah?” Iwaizumi jokes and Oikawa’s grin stretches wider.

“Now where’s the fun in that?”

It elicits a scoff and they both leave it at that. The train announcement warns passengers to stay clear of the closing doors, but seconds before they slide shut, a high school boy in his uniform bolts through and barely avoids being caught by the doors. He heaves a sigh of relief and heads to the end of the carriage.

The train rolls ahead again and Iwaizumi revisits their conversation.

“Hey,” he calls, and Oikawa turns to him curiously. He picks up from where they left off, before the distraction, “It’s not a big deal, so don’t worry about unnecessary things. If I weren’t okay with something, I’d tell you.”

He would. Iwaizumi is not an inhibited person by nature unless of course, you’re talking about the biggest, riskiest secret he’s kept about one Oikawa Tooru, which is so all-encompassing he doesn’t think he has room for more.

“Okay Iwa-chan,” Oikawa softly says. He appreciates the honesty (ironically)—in fact, he appreciates him, period. “You’re a really good roommate you know. I’m glad you agreed to room with me.”

The sentimental statement catches Iwaizumi a little off-guard and he averts his gaze, saying, “Yeah well, not all your ideas are bad.”

Oikawa knows this is as much as he’ll get out of him, so he settles and they spend the rest of their journey in companionable silence.

The train rattles as it speeds across the tracks, a man stifles a yawn and grips the metal pole for support, a briefcase clicks shut—everyday sounds of a quotidian life, the same space where Oikawa tries to hide a peculiar love for his best friend that climbs to exponential heights when he least expects it. Oikawa doesn’t think he’s ever made enough space for what he feels for Iwaizumi. Everything’s always overflowing, words from his mouth and mirth from his eyes and love from his chest.

He sneaks a glance at Iwaizumi, who has returned to his phone though he’s no longer listening to music, and pushes away the thought that his friend has grown into a fine-looking man with a handsome side profile as proof of it (because he knows this already, he doesn’t need to meet him in adjoining train carriages to be reminded).

Oikawa is glad to be allowed simple moments like this, but the wandering is most acute here. He’s moving, not progressing per se, but merely in limbo—sometimes in circles, sometimes he takes one step forward and three steps back—tiresomely in transit to unknown territory. He feels like a victim of a cruel joke.

Iwaizumi stands beside him, within reach but utterly unattainable.

How can the world offer him so much, and only this much?

Oikawa thinks about him and there he is, like fate quietly moves its strings, but he is here and he is not his.

—don’t cry, no one could ever come close to what you share.

Oikawa never imagined it to happen this soon—Iwaizumi bringing home a girl.

He meets her in surprise, just as he’s on his way to his room after coming home from practice and Iwaizumi’s door suddenly opens to reveal a girl he doesn’t recognize.

“Oh,” she says, clearly not expecting anyone to be on the other side of the door and Oikawa can only look down at her with wide eyes and parted lips.

“Oikawa, you’re back,” he hears Iwaizumi say from behind her and meets his gaze over her head.

“Yeah,” he says, still trying to wrap his mind over the fact that Iwaizumi brought a girl into his room, which is a first, and they had been behind closed doors. They don’t do that here, unless one of them is studying and the other is playing video games or the like, or they’re sleeping. Oikawa isn’t eager to think about what they’d need the privacy for.

Before his ideas start running wild, the young lady chimes in between them, “You’re the roommate!”

There’s a shine of recognition in her dark brown eyes although Oikawa can’t imagine how she would know who he is before this moment. Remembering his manners, he rids himself of the initial shock and plasters on a smile.

“That’s me. I’m Oikawa Tooru.”

“I’m Yoshida Ayano,” she introduces. She has dark, slightly wavy hair that reaches above her shoulders, round eyes and a sharp chin. An easy smile hangs on her tinted lips and her shoulders are relaxed, like the rest of her. At first glance, she strikes Oikawa as someone who could be comfortable in any situation, not exactly a social chameleon, but a person who knows how to handle herself.

“Iwa-chan didn’t mention that we were having visitors,” he says, making eye contact with Iwaizumi for a brief second. He barely masks the inquisitiveness in his voice and if Iwaizumi notices the tone he uses when he’s hiding a question behind a statement, he doesn’t show it.

“We’re in the same class,” he answers, moving to stand beside Yoshida. “We paired up for an assignment and I invited her over to work on it.”

“We just finished, so I’m heading back,” she adds.

“There’s no hurry,” Oikawa says pleasantly, assuming the responsibility of a good host, even though he’d rather she leave so that he can get to the bottom of this never-happened-before occurrence. There’s no way he’ll let it go without prying something out of Iwaizumi—it’s too atypical to let it be, and he never learned how to quit while he’s ahead.

“No, it’s getting late, I should get going,” Yoshida insists. “It was nice to meet you though.”

“Same here,” Oikawa returns in obligation and moves aside to let them through. He doesn’t know why he lies, but he says, “Maybe I’ll see you around.”

(He doesn’t want to see her around, not if he’s being honest.)

“I’ll walk you to the station,” Iwaizumi offers as he leads Yoshida to the front door, and she nods her appreciation.

It’s pretty late, so it’s only right for Iwaizumi to extend that kind of gesture. He’s a gentleman, it’s no surprise. Still, Oikawa watches Iwaizumi swipe his keys from the top of the shoe cabinet and wishes the sight of his back next to a smaller one isn’t so vivid in his mind.

*

When Oikawa hears the front door unlock, he’s three-quarters through the yoghurt cup at their dining table. He makes a highly redundant effort of scooping a precise amount of yoghurt onto his spoon, eyes darting up and meeting Iwaizumi’s as he walks into the kitchen. He can see him from where he’s seated, since it’s an open kitchen, and the dining room sits between that and the living room.

“You didn’t say anything about bringing someone over today,” Oikawa starts, more curious than accusatory. They never set any house rules—they merely settled into agreeable arrangements and made compromises when the situation called for it, but things like giving your roommate a heads-up when you’re going to invite someone over is common courtesy right?

“Yeah sorry, it was kind of spontaneous,” Iwaizumi answers as he fixes himself a cup of warm oolong tea. “We needed a reference book which I’ve borrowed from the library, but I left it here, so I asked her to come over. I didn’t think we’d take very long.”

“I see,” Oikawa says, tone neutral. It still doesn’t explain the closed doors. He figures he’ll need a direct question if he wants a direct answer, and Iwaizumi can probably tell if he’s beating around the bush, so he goes for broke and asks, “Are you two…”

“We’re just friends,” Iwaizumi answers quickly, and it’s obvious he knows what Oikawa’s getting at. In fact, he could have already known what Oikawa’s been wondering since he met her in front of his room, and his next question confirms it.

“But do you like her?”

“Someone’s nosey,” Iwaizumi says. “But no, it’s really not like that.”

He sounds genuine, a bit firm but not defensive. Oikawa’s shoulders relax, and he hadn’t even realized that he’d been tense. It doesn’t mean he has a chance, but it means he doesn’t have to share yet, and Oikawa is quite adept at ignoring the unsavoury details when he sets his mind to it.

“You don’t talk about these things a lot so forgive me if I’m little curious,” he retorts, falling back into his usual disposition. He scoops up a bigger portion of yoghurt and sticks the spoon into his mouth.

Frankly, Oikawa’s not sure if he actually wants to have regular conversations like that, but if they had talked about it more often, maybe it wouldn’t be such a heart-stopping affair every time something similar happens.

“You’re not exactly chatty about it either,” Iwaizumi counters. He puts away his cup in the sink and starts moving around the kitchen to prepare breakfast for tomorrow so that they can save time in the morning. He takes some eggs from the fridge, adding, “Ever since our third year, I don’t think I’ve heard you say anything about liking someone or getting a confession every other week. I’m making egg-mayo sandwiches for tomorrow, I’ll do your share?”

Oikawa nods and replies, “There’s nothing much to talk about. University is different from high school.”

If they’re going to broach the subject, he supposes Iwaizumi won’t spare him too. He may be evasive, but he’s not lying. There truly is nothing much to say when his love life is as barren as a desert, a stark contrast to his prolific history in high school, where circles were smaller and you were automatically granted a space on the list of most swoon-worthy boys if you were a tad handsome and played a sport. But university is much bigger than high school in more ways than one.

“I wonder where all that popularity went?” Iwaizumi jokes.

“Who says I’m not popular?” Oikawa protests. He’s very much well-known and likeable in his cohort. “I just don’t have time for a relationship.”

Rather, once the denial left, he simply stopped playing silly games with himself and wasted no time in relationships disguised as escapism.

“And I’m busy!” he adds hastily, digging into his yoghurt but notices that it’s all finished.

“So am I.” Iwaizumi echoes.

This conversation sounds vaguely familiar but Oikawa can’t remember, for the life of him, how their past exchanges end. It’s probably because there were no conclusions, and their words hung in the air, overused and orphaned. They’re close to mimicking it this time but for once, Oikawa feels brave enough to solider on.

“You know we can’t be busy forever,” he points out with a rueful smile.

“I know,” Iwaizumi admits, the knife in his hand stilling over the sandwich for a beat before he cleanly slices it in two. He’s pensive as he says, “I’m not…in a rush to get into a relationship.”

“Not right now or not ever?”

“Not right now, I think.”

Oikawa nods slowly, and lets the words settle. He stares into his empty yoghurt cup as he dwells on the eventuality of Iwaizumi becoming someone another person gets to call theirs. It feels like a flower burgeoning in his chest, but it festers rather than blooms, and it’s hardly a pretty sight the way it chokes up his ribcage. He admits that this is to be expected, because his whole attempt to keep Iwaizumi for himself has always been temporary anyway and no matter how much he yearns for him it’s never going to happen.

Hope is funny thing. They say it’s supposed to be inspiring, but as Oikawa discovers, there is a fine line between hope and desperation. Does it turn into desperation when it starts to hurt?

Oikawa looks up at Iwaizumi’s figure in the kitchen and decides that if it’s going to hurt either way, he’d rather Iwaizumi be the judge, jury and executioner.

“You’ll tell me right? When you find someone.”

“Yeah,” Iwaizumi agrees and lies, because he has found someone, and he’s never said a single word about it.

When Oikawa goes to bed that night, the unrelenting thoughts crawl in with him. They don’t seem to bode well, but he tells himself not to cry, because whatever Iwaizumi will share with another person, it will never be what they have. What exists between them—every shared second and every unspoken understanding—is theirs and theirs alone. No one can have their experiences or work the way they do. Some can try, but they’ll never come close. No one knows Iwaizumi the way Oikawa does, although perhaps one day they will, including all his strengths and his foibles, and he is sure they will come to love those parts of him too.

For now, at least, Oikawa tells himself he has this, and recites it like a mantra in his mind, but among the words he sees it for what it is—a consolation prize for second place.

—cry, you know how it feels to hold back your love, why should you do the same to your grief?

Oikawa doesn’t even look towards the sound of the front door when it clicks open, cold eyes trained on the laptop balanced on a couch cushion in his lap. He scrolls irritably through the website, not registering the words or pictures at all.

The culprit behind his ire is none other than Iwaizumi, who never showed up for their movie night, which is their first time in a long time because they never seemed to be able to line up their schedules, and made Oikawa wait hours until he gave up and started browsing random shopping websites in their living room. Having his messages unread only served to fuel his annoyance, because it’s like being ignored twice.

The moment Iwaizumi walks into sight, Oikawa speaks up, and he can’t help the irritation that laces his voice, “Look who finally decided to show up.”

“What?” Iwaizumi asks, bewildered and clearly not appreciating the sarcasm that Oikawa throws his way the minute he steps into the house. He had a long day and it’d be nice to come back home without getting jumped right off the bat over god-knows-what.

Oikawa puts away his laptop and says curtly, “You’re late.”

He hopes his apparent displeasure will be enough of a reminder, but Iwaizumi only grows more perplexed at the accusation.

“For what?”

“For what—” Oikawa stutters in disbelief, standing to face Iwaizumi. “For movie night!”

The realization dawns on Iwaizumi and despite the remorse that instantly floods his face, Oikawa is too put off by how clueless he was to grant him any leniency.

“Shit,” Iwaizumi swears, and sighs tiredly. “Sorry, I forgot.”

Oikawa’s reply is unsympathetic, “I figured.”

He is met with another sigh, this time with an undertone of exasperation which doesn’t go unnoticed by Oikawa, who might have taken it the wrong way.

“A friend needed some help with his film elective. He said he lost the original footage and needed to reshoot a lot of scenes,” Iwaizumi explains, dropping his shoulder to set his backpack on the dining room chair. “It seemed urgent, so I agreed. I didn’t know it would take this long, and I didn’t expect to get so caught up in it.”

Oikawa hears him—understands that Iwaizumi is simply someone who wouldn’t turn away a person in need—but tonight was promised after weeks of missing each other because of their differing schedules, surely Iwaizumi must have looked forward to it as much as Oikawa had?

“I couldn’t even reach you,” he points out, clipped.

“My phone died.”

In normal circumstances, Oikawa would tease his best friend about his willingness to help others, but if it comes at his expense, unintentional or not, it becomes a different story altogether. It’s not like Iwaizumi chose someone else over him because it sounds as if he sincerely forgot, but the escalating irrationality blinds him, especially when it hints at the idea that he could be easily forgotten.

“You never forget about movie night,” Oikawa says, and it’s supposed to be harsh, but it’s undermined by the wounded tone that slips through.

“We’ll just do it another day,” Iwaizumi suggests, and the way he makes it sound so easy sparks Oikawa’s temper.

“Yeah? Shall I make an appointment with you?” he snaps sarcastically.

“Don’t get snarky,” Iwaizumi snaps back, his patience beginning to fray. Oikawa’s attitude is needlessly caustic for an innocent mistake.

“We haven’t had movie night in weeks and the one time our schedules work out you forget,” he points out scathingly, and his accusation is met with Iwaizumi’s raised voice.

“It’s not like I meant to!”

“It’s not like you thought this was important either!”

“I said I was sorry, what more do you want?!” Iwaizumi demands in exasperation.

Oikawa shakes his head once, and his russet eyes are cold and withering but the barest sign of weariness seeps into his voice, “Don’t make it sound like I’m asking so much of you.”

“It’s just a movie, why are you so hung up about it?” Iwaizumi bites out, and the second the words leave his lips, it’s almost instantaneous the way Oikawa flinches, like he’s been stung, and Iwaizumi can only watch how the damage unfolds on his face.

His jaw is slackened, and the tension in his eyes is completely stolen by Iwaizumi’s careless words. In its place is a look of hurt that leaves a stone of guilt in the centre of Iwaizumi’s chest.

“You’re right,” Oikawa admits softly. “It’s just a movie.”

“Oikawa—”

He doesn’t stay for an apology. He strides to his room and locks the door behind him and releases the breath he had been holding. It hitches pathetically and he pushes himself away from the door so Iwaizumi won’t catch it in case his vulnerability can be heard. Oikawa wants to hold on to his anger, but it melts into a lingering soreness, and it’s the fact that he can’t stay angry that pitches him into frustration.

He throws himself onto the bed and buries his face into his pillow until he’s forced to come up for air. The whole thing feels unbearably foolish—falling out because of a missed night sounds much too juvenile to be distressed over but it’s never that simple, is it? At its core, it’s a matter of importance, because if it’s just a movie, then it could be just a night, and he could be just a friend.

And Oikawa, with his perpetual need to be—despite how silly it sounds—special, doesn’t want to become a trivial existence in Iwaizumi’s life, doesn’t want to become a choice he doesn’t pick.

Against his will, his eyes start to sting, and Oikawa presses the heel of his palm against his eyes. It’s a futile effort because soon enough, he feels a wetness against his skin and furiously wipes at it. Stupid Iwa-chan doesn’t deserve his tears.

He lets them fall anyway, because the tears carry with them an odd sense of catharsis. Oikawa figures there’s no reason to stifle himself. He’s done that often enough, surely some respite is deserving. Here, there is only him and his foolish heart—a little bruised after all that it’s been through.

So what if it burns?

You don’t need to be lovers for it to hurt.

*

Later that night, after the frustrations have faded into a dull ache, Oikawa’s phone buzzes with a succession of messages. He expected this, since he refuses to leave his room and Iwaizumi is probably aware that Oikawa would not want to see him yet. Despite being merely one room apart, the distance between them feels mammoth, and as the messages fill the screen, the perky emoji next to Iwa-chan’s contact name seems almost mocking.

[23:24] hey
[23:24] i’m sorry about forgetting movie night
[23:24] and i shouldn’t have yelled at you
[23:25] i know you’re still mad and i won’t tell you not to be
[23:28] anyway, i left something at your door
[23:28] it’s fine if you don’t want it, but i wanted you to know that it’s not just a movie to me too

Oikawa reads them all from the notifications screen, and resolutely does not tap into their chat, let alone reply. He’s still sore from the quarrel and every time Iwaizumi’s thoughtless words echo in his mind, he’s pricked by a flash of hurt. What happened tonight was far from their usual bickering, so Iwaizumi’s apology does little to ease the wound. Even so, Oikawa is curious about what he could have left outside his door—after all, what could he possibly offer to undo the damage—and that curiosity is what compels him to tread noiselessly towards the door.

To his relief, he doesn’t come face-to-face with Iwaizumi on the other side. There’s no one there, and Iwaizumi’s room remains closed. It’s when he looks down that he notices a small item sitting forlornly on the ground. Oikawa bends his knees, eyebrows rising at the sight of the peculiar thing.

It’s a cup of pudding, the one you find at the convenience store, yellow custard topped with a layer of caramel jelly in a petal-shaped plastic cup. There are many kinds like it, but this is Oikawa’s favourite brand. He doesn’t remember stocking this in their fridge, and he didn’t realize that Iwaizumi had made a trip to the nearby store.

On the lid is a square post-it note with a single word written in Iwaizumi’s handwriting, ‘sorry’.

It’s simple and earnest, like Oikawa knows him to be.

Iwaizumi doesn’t undo the damage—because he knows he can’t—but he finds the most disarming ways to somehow make it easier. The peace offering sits there innocently, and Oikawa feels a searing in his jaw. The gesture is simple, and yet it overwhelms him, because Iwaizumi is wholehearted—not infallible—but he tries, and some days that’s enough.

It makes Oikawa think it’s not fair. How can he hold on to his stubbornness when Iwaizumi gives him room to settle, then coaxes him out of his blues? He already wants him so much, why must he still be reminded of his damning feelings even when he’s trying to be angry? It’s as if the world has dangled a carrot on a stick in front of him, and not only does it deny him of the carrot, it beats him with the stick.

Oikawa sighs, defeated.

He picks up the pudding cup, the plastic still damp, and feels a tugging in his chest. The note gazes back at him, a quiet ask for forgiveness—and Oikawa yields.

*

They don’t see each other the next day. Iwaizumi leaves before Oikawa is out of his room and Oikawa is already home and can’t be found in the common areas by the time Iwaizumi comes back from school. At this rate, he’s beginning to doubt that they’d catch each other, and he’s rather disappointed (a little vexed too for Oikawa deliberately avoiding him), because he’d hate for them to act like strangers.

He’s sporting a persistent frown as he prepares their clothes for the wash (it’s his turn this week), standing distractedly in front of their washing machine (a new one that can handle heavy cycles) and turning their clothes inside out. He toys with the idea of looking Oikawa up in this room but as soon as the thought enters his mind, the boy in question walks right in, stopping short when he realizes that Iwaizumi’s already there.

They stare at each other in silence, clearly surprised, until Oikawa quickly averts his eyes and holds up the pair of jeans in his hands.

“I forgot to put this in the laundry,” he explains under his breath, and walks up to deposit the article of clothing into the hamper before turning away to leave.

The sight of Oikawa’s back snaps Iwaizumi into action.

“Oikawa,” he calls out, not jarring but it halts him in his tracks. A hint of uncertainty underlies his voice, “Are you still mad?”

Oikawa’s shoulders heave with a long exhale.

“No Iwa-chan,” he turns back to say, “I’m not mad.”

Their eyes meet, but Iwaizumi finds an inscrutable expression on Oikawa’s face. His eyebrows are drawn together, mouth set in a thin line, but there’s something that looks like resignation in his eyes and Iwaizumi doesn’t know what to make of that.

“Kinda feels like you are,” he says tentatively.

“I’m—” Oikawa starts, trying to find the right words. He moves forward to help with the clothes just to occupy his hands, and settles with saying, “I’m upset.”

He may have forgiven him, but they’ve yet to confront the issue, so it’s far from resolved.

“I’m sorry—” Iwaizumi says, because he doesn’t know what else he can say, but Oikawa cuts him off.

“I know. You don’t have to keep apologizing,” Oikawa returns, and it sounds more annoyed than he meant it to be. He turns out the jeans pocket to check that they’re empty and adds softly, “I ate the pudding.”

The statement alone is enough to relieve some of that weight on Iwaizumi’s chest, because he knows it to mean that Oikawa has accepted his apology. He’s just being begrudging about it.

“I promise I won’t forget next time,” Iwaizumi declares, hoping Oikawa can hear the urgency in his voice.

But Oikawa merely says, humouring, “Sure Iwa-chan,” because he can’t work up the energy to argue any further. Besides, it’s easier to take his word for it than hold him up to it when expectations are simply a prelude to disappointments.

“I’m serious,” Iwaizumi insists. “Oikawa, you’re—”

He stops himself there, not afraid of being too careless, but too honest. He’s learned that it can be as damaging, if not more. Eventually, he admits, “You’re important. And I hate that I made you think you were not.”

Oikawa casts his eyes downwards.

“You’re important too,” he says, an almost-confession, like every not-quite-there that exists between them. Iwaizumi is genuinely trying to set things right, and Oikawa wants to go back to the way they are. He supposes he should offer his own apology too, for the way he had spoken, so he murmurs, “I’m sorry about the fight.”

Iwaizumi makes a sound of understanding, and like that, the hatchet is buried. They bide their time going through the pile of clothes and dropping them into the washing machine in silence, loud with all the other things they do not say, until Iwaizumi speaks up.

“Are you still up for movie night then?”

“When?”

“Tonight, if you want,” Iwaizumi replies then adds as an afterthought, “I’ll let you choose the movie.”

“Okay,” Oikawa agrees, and wonders how accommodating Iwaizumi will be. “Can we watch Here Comes the Alien Bride 2?”

The first instalment was a train wreck, given that it’s one of those self-indulgent films riddled with plot holes and bad CGI, and Iwaizumi can’t believe Oikawa wants to watch the sequel (actually, no, he can). In spite of that, he acquiesces, “…Fine.”

“Can we order pizza?”

“Okay.”

“You’ll pay?”

“Okay.”

“Can you give me a foot massage while we watch the movie?”

Iwaizumi’s eyebrow twitches as he glares at Oikawa, “Are you trying to annoy me on purpose?”

‘Not really,’ Oikawa thinks. ‘I just want to see how far you’ll let me go.’ Instead, he shrugs and answers nonchalantly, “Worth a shot.”

He throws in a couple of shirts into the washing machine the same time Iwaizumi grumbles, “Fine. I’ll give you a massage.” Even though he sounds reluctant about it, the idea sparks another thought and Iwaizumi offers, “Come to think of it, we’re covering rehab techniques in class, I can try something for your knee if you’re up for it.”

The suggestion catches Oikawa off-guard, because Iwaizumi can be so attentive it’s unbearable, and he doesn’t even realize it.

“Okay,” Oikawa accepts. It’s hard to give up the opportunity to be on the receiving end of Iwaizumi’s tenderness when it comes by so rarely. Iwaizumi lets him go so far, yet they never reach where he wants them to be. It’s frustrating to say the least.

He chances a glance at Iwaizumi, who goes about his task diligently, ignorant of how he’s the source of Oikawa’s joy and troubles. His veneer of composure cracks, and a trace of indignation bleeds through the fissure. He tosses a pair of pants with a little more force than necessary and says, “You’re so unfair Hajime. Don’t ask me how, you just are.”

He refuses to look at Iwaizumi, lest he gives himself away, but the silence stretches and it’s odd enough to force Oikawa to face him curiously, only to be met with a look of mild surprise.

“What?” he asks, self-conscious. Did he do something weird?

“You called me Hajime,” Iwaizumi says matter-of-factly, and there could even be a tinge of wonderment in his voice. Oikawa ducks his head, embarrassed for letting the name slip from his lips. Iwaizumi points out quizzically, “You only do that when you’re trying to con me into doing something or when you’re feeling sentimental.”

(But that’s not all, Oikawa says it too when he longs—when saying ‘I love you’ is too much and ‘Iwa-chan’ is barely enough.)

“Are you feeling sentimental right now?” Iwaizumi asks, looking at Oikawa expectantly.

The question borders on a tease, and Oikawa counters it with a retort to disguise his floundering with some semblance of normalcy.

“Just thinking about how you’re the best and worst roommate ever,” he huffs out.

“I have no idea what that means,” Iwaizumi answers and doesn’t pursue the topic. He chalks it up to one of Oikawa’s melodramatic notions and closes the lid of their washing machine to start the cycle.

Oikawa exhales softly.

It means he’s suffering, but at least his damnation has a name.

—it’s the salve of aloe vera on sun-seeped skin, cool against the skin but beneath…beneath it burns.

Iwaizumi steps into Chuo’s empty gymnasium, well—except for a certain setter who’s sitting against the wall, knees bent and head obscured by a sports towel, with a few Mikasa balls strewn around him and several scattered on the other side of the court. The moment he hears the doors open, he pulls away the towel and sees Iwaizumi ambling towards him. He kind of expected his arrival, so there’s no surprise on his face. Iwaizumi too, doesn’t act like it’s anything extraordinary to find him in this state.

Oikawa’s knee pad is loose around his ankle, so Iwaizumi knows he’s done for the day. He quickly surveys his state and notes that he isn’t breathing hard, his face isn’t flushed or in pain, and his hands are in his lap instead of gripping his knee in discomfort and concludes that today fortunately isn’t one of those times.

It’s still a setback, and Iwaizumi figured it out when he read Oikawa’s succinct text about going home late tonight. That’s not an anomaly on its own, but Oikawa had said that the coaches were making an announcement regarding the upcoming games today and late practices after such news are not the most optimistic sign. He could almost feel the dejection from his text.

Iwaizumi slides his backpack off his shoulders and takes a seat beside Oikawa without a word, crossing his legs and facing the full length of the familiar court.

There’s a spell of silence that Iwaizumi chooses not to break as he waits for Oikawa to be ready—whether he’s ready to talk or ready to leave, Iwaizumi stays.

Not long after, Oikawa finally speaks, and it’s a simple statement, “They’re not putting me on the line-up.”

He’s neutral when he says it, but Iwaizumi senses that it’s not all.

“Mm,” he acknowledges.

“I really thought I had a chance,” Oikawa confesses, the first crack in his façade.

“Then show ‘em next time,” Iwaizumi says easily and faces Oikawa to add with insistence, “There will be a next time.”

Oikawa has to stifle a rueful chuckle at that. He stretches out his legs and says with a shake of his head, “Sometimes, I don’t know how you can sound so sure.”

“If you see yourself the way I see you, you’d be sure too.”

It surprises him—enough to turn his head towards Iwaizumi, round eyes glinting with subtle amazement, but he’s forced to avert his gaze when he’s met with a wordless conviction in olive green eyes that seem to see right through him.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Oikawa asks softly, curious but nervous. Iwaizumi clearly sees something in Oikawa that gives him faith, and if he can see that, then what else can he see?

Neither of them expected that the question would compel Iwaizumi to go into an honest rambling, his unfiltered words matching the assurance in his voice.

“I know you. You’re good, and you’re made for so much more. You’re meant for it, I know it. You’re tenacious, you’re proud and you love volleyball like it’s your reason for being and I know those are exactly the things that will take you far so don’t sell yourself short. It isn’t over,” he says, like these are words from providence itself. “You’ve barely begun.”

“You…” Oikawa begins, trying to act as if his spiel didn’t make his heart flutter although he of all people should understand the disarming effects of Iwaizumi’s honesty, “said so many nice things without a single insult.”

Iwaizumi scoffs.

“Don’t get used to it.”

Oikawa waves away the retort and takes a corner of his towel between his fingers absentmindedly.

“Thank you, Iwa-chan. For being here,” he says, keeping his tone mild while his heart is swelling with appreciation. At times, when it feels like there’s too much, Iwaizumi comes quietly and takes some of the heat away. “Speaking of which, were you in the area?”

“Sort of,” Iwaizumi answers ambiguously. “When I saw your text reply, I figured I’m not yet released from the burden of hauling your ass out of the gym even in university.”

“Look who’s the dramatic one now,” Oikawa smirks.

They appear to have regained their usual tenor, especially when Iwaizumi glances at Oikawa’s knee support, the litter of balls in his periphery, and promptly asks, “Did you push yourself?”

“With you around? I wouldn’t dare.”

Iwaizumi frowns, “Even if I’m not around, you shouldn’t push yourself.”

He’s chiding again, a habit tangent to the aggressive concern he reserves for Oikawa Tooru only, and he half-expects to be teased, but the setter asks instead, almost guilelessly, “Who’s going to look out for me then?”

“Look out for yourself,” Iwaizumi retorts.

“But you do it better than I do,” Oikawa returns with no hidden meaning, just a plain and simple fact.

Iwaizumi knows this already, but it’s speaking what has perpetually been an unspoken truth that throws him off-balance.

“Dumbass,” he murmurs, the word falling short of an insult when it’s uttered with a touch of shyness. He can scold Oikawa about taking better care of himself all he wants, but at the end of the day, it’s a responsibility that has fallen on his shoulders the instant their pinkies were linked and it’s a responsibility he holds with utmost resolve. He’s always going to be there for him whether he needs him or not. Wiping his hands on his jeans, Iwaizumi says, “Come on, let’s clean up and get out of here. I bought you milk bread so you can stuff your face later.”

“You did?” Oikawa asks in disbelief.

“Yeah. From that bakery you like,” Iwaizumi replies and takes out a plastic bag from the side that Oikawa must not have noticed him carrying.

True enough, the bright green bag bears the name of the bakery that in Oikawa’s opinion sells the best milk bread in Tokyo after months of exploring, and he can tell from the shape of its contents, that a fluffy loaf of sweet milk bread will be his to enjoy soon. He may not have had the best day, but what more can he ask for than the promise of his favourite food from his favourite person?

Oikawa stares at the bag in Iwaizumi’s hand (mundane), then up at his face (unfairly innocent), and wonders how one person can be so many things to him at once—his solace, his sanctuary, his soulmate—his is sure of it. Yet, despite all the surety in his heart of hearts, he finds himself drifting in a state of limbo, and Oikawa is jaded with the understanding that there is perhaps nothing more excruciating than being denied your heart’s longing.

“Oikawa?” Iwaizumi calls, peering at him curiously like he hasn’t just sent his heart twisting.

The words are elusive—after all, how do you communicate something you only feel in your bones? Oikawa doesn’t provide any explanation, and his voice is small when he says, shy of a plea, “You can’t do this.”

“Do what?” Iwaizumi asks, eyebrows drawn together, his molten gaze never leaving Oikawa’s.

‘Be everything I want but cannot have.’

Oikawa forces the thought not to reach his tongue, catching his bottom lip between his teeth. Abruptly, he throws his towel to the side and stands up, brushing his shorts and heading towards the nearest ball before he raises Iwaizumi’s suspicions any further.

“You’re spoiling me,” he remarks, putting on an air of flippancy. “It feels like the world is going to end.”

“I’ll be sure to stop then,” Iwaizumi says back wittily, getting up to lend a hand.

In a light-hearted retaliation, Oikawa picks up a ball and throws it at Iwaizumi, but he catches it easily.

*

An unusual sight greets them when they step out into the open. It’s the height of winter and the Tokyo sky is graced with a flurry of snow. It’s light, but perceptible against their darkened surroundings, the gossamer flakes falling around them like a whisper.

“It’s snowing,” Oikawa lets out in quiet fascination, head tilted up to gaze at the phenomenon.

“Yeah. That’s rare,” Iwaizumi remarks, watching the snowfall as well, until his sight settles on Oikawa. He reckons the setter is more nostalgic than amazed, since snow forms blankets in Miyagi and Tokyo snow can hardly compare to the whiteness in their home city.

Oikawa exhales, mouth partly opened, and releases a puff of cold air into the night. The lightest pigment of red colours his cheeks and Iwaizumi is hit with the knowledge that he loves him. Like tonight’s snowfall, it is gentle—having lived within him quietly, and occasionally rising to the surface, as if saying in the stillness of everything, here lies the truth.

“Did you bring your scarf?” he asks like the thought hadn’t entered his mind at all, because accepting it is par for the course with him, reaching into his bag to pull out his own scarf.

Oikawa shakes his head and receives none of the sighing or scolding that would be typical of this. Instead, Iwaizumi smooths out his scarf and wraps it around Oikawa’s neck in no real fashion, simply winding it in a loose circle and adjusting the shape so that it rests snugly.

He drops his gaze the moment Iwaizumi looks back up and ducks his chin into the fabric, his nose skimming the top of it. It smells like Iwa-chan. Oikawa’s already feeling warmer, and it has little to do with the scarf.

“What about you?” he asks.

“I’m not cold.”

“I’m not cold too.”

There’s a pause as Iwaizumi regards him sceptically before he finally points out, “But your cheeks are red.”

‘Now who’s fault is that?’ Oikawa feels like retorting. They may be rosy, but he’ll bet it’s not the cold’s doing.

“They’re warm though,” he counters for the sake of argument. He doesn’t expect Iwaizumi to take his word for it, but he certainly doesn’t expect him to reach out and slide his palms against his skin, pressing cold hands against his warm, warm cheeks.

“They are,” Iwaizumi confirms, pulling away, and Oikawa has to force himself not to chase after his touch. Brows raised, he questions, “So you want the scarf or not?”

“I’ll take it,” Oikawa says quickly, stepping back defensively as he curls his fingers around one end of the scarf.

Iwaizumi scoffs in gentle exasperation. Oikawa’s seen this expression on him before, so it really shouldn’t feel as profound as it does, but it’s Iwaizumi—the only one who makes him burn in winter, and he is filled with a soul-shaking ache.

“Let’s go home,” Iwaizumi says, and Oikawa nods.

(He already is.)

—it’s like the edge of the rain, it has to end somewhere.

“It worked! Iwa-chan, we made ice-cream!” Oikawa exclaims delightfully and eagerly sticks a spoon into the Ziploc bag of homemade vanilla ice-cream for a taste. The sweetness melts across his tongue and his eyes gleam as he makes a sound of pleasure. “It’s good.”

“Let me have a taste,” Iwaizumi says from beside him, anticipation evident in the way he angles his body towards Oikawa, one hand sliding across the kitchen countertop towards the bag. His eyes follow Oikawa’s movement as he scoops up more ice-cream, mouth opening expectantly when he spoon-feeds him. Iwaizumi nods in approval as he savours the treat and passes his verdict, “Mm, not bad.”

Oikawa raises an eyebrow and smiles satisfactorily, like saying ‘right?’ Excited to dig into their first attempt at making homemade dessert, he takes an ice-cream spoon and starts scraping it into two portions.

“Go get the bowls,” he tells Iwaizumi. “And take out the mini marshmallows, would you? Oh and cut the banana.”

“Bossy,” Iwaizumi remarks with a smirk, but goes to fetch the bowls that Oikawa suggested they leave in the fridge to keep them cold and their ingredients.

“Please, Iwa-chan?” Oikawa adds saccharinely, tilting his head to regard Iwaizumi with big, brown eyes and an impish smile.

“Yeah yeah,” Iwaizumi drawls, waving away Oikawa’s patronizing response. He takes out the bowls from the fridge and a half-finished bag of mini marshmallows from the shelf.

Feeling playful, he tosses the marshmallows onto the counter but slinks behind Oikawa to press the cold porcelain bowl against the back of his neck. It earns him a gratifying yelp and he sets the bowls down with a clatter before hopping out of smacking range. Oikawa shoots him a warning glare that’s more humorous than threatening, his shoulders tense from the sudden sensation, with a traitorous smile pulling at the corner of his lips.

His hands are occupied but he doesn’t let it go without some sort of retaliation, so he reaches into an opened packet of M&Ms which they’re supposed to add as a topping to their ice-cream and throws a red one at Iwaizumi. In a show of agility, Iwaizumi ducks in time to catch it with his mouth, swirling his tongue around the chocolate as he smiles smugly.

Oikawa scoffs in amusement but admits, “Nice catch.”

They finish preparing their ice-creams, laying out banana slices around the mounds and sprinkling M&Ms and mini marshmallows on top. Oikawa hands Iwaizumi a spoon and they stick to each side of their small kitchen, Iwaizumi leaning against the counter and facing Oikawa as they tuck in happily.

“I’m surprised it turned out fine,” Oikawa remarks, and catches both an M&M and marshmallow in his next scoop.

“It’s a simple recipe, I’d be disappointed if we couldn’t at least manage that,” Iwaizumi says. It’s partly why he wasn’t opposed to the idea when Oikawa came up to him one day after watching an Instagram video about making homemade ice-cream under ten minutes and insisting that they try it too.

“But food stuff can be such a mystery,” Oikawa counters. He would know, after multiple attempts of cooking and realizing that a simple recipe does not necessarily result in a tasty dish.

“Lucky for us today then.”

Oikawa grins at Iwaizumi’s light-hearted comment, noting how he’d been in a good mood since they started, and urges, “Admit it Iwa-chan, this was a good idea right?”

“It’s one of your less disastrous ideas,” Iwaizumi replies pointedly, and Oikawa takes mock offence to that.

“Name one disastrous idea I had,” he argues, but as soon as the words leave him, the confidence is replaced by a sober awareness. “No, wait, don’t answer that.”

Iwaizumi snorts. He was all ready to list off a few of his roommate’s not-so-flattering moments.

“You’ve had some pretty bad ideas.”

“That you go along with anyway,” Oikawa states, tipping his sticky spoon at Iwaizumi, who shrugs.

“You bring a little entertainment into my life.”

“So I’m just entertainment now?” Oikawa questions cheekily, knowing that this is Iwaizumi’s gambit to keep his inflated ego in check. Iwaizumi hardly ever gives Oikawa a serious ‘no’ and he’s too tsundere to admit it at times.

“Pretty much.”

Oikawa doesn’t buy it obviously.

“You’d miss me if I were gone,” he says, returning his attention to his ice-cream.

“I would,” Iwaizumi returns easily, but no more of the playfulness that accompanied their banter. He says it like a statement, like how someone would say that the earth is round or the sun rises in the east and sets in the west.

Oikawa blinks in surprise at the admission, seemingly out of the blue because they were only teasing. He expected another retort and didn’t think Iwaizumi would answer with such unabashed certainty. Did he say he was a tsundere? Maybe it’s time for a re-evaluation.

“That’s honest,” Oikawa says, voice dropping low. He cuts a banana slice into two with the edge of his spoon even though it’s already so small.

Iwaizumi cocks a brow, “Would you rather I lie?”

“Of course not,” Oikawa answers. Honesty isn’t a bad thing, it’s just that he can deal with teasing remarks and harmless insults, but when honesty comes in its barest form—unwrapped from layers of aggressive affection and double meanings—from someone who uses his actions more than his words, Oikawa loses his footing a little bit. He tries not to let it show, and says, “Sometimes you say the most unexpected things is all.”

“I don’t think it’s unexpected for me to miss you if you were gone,” Iwaizumi states ordinarily, and Oikawa wants to tell him that the element of surprise doesn’t merely lie in what you say, but how you say it.

“Yeah, I guess not,” Oikawa agrees, because there’s nothing else he can say to make Iwaizumi understand that they’re not on the same wavelength on this, despite the telepathic connection they’re lauded to have.

He knows Iwaizumi will miss him, that much is clear, but he also knows Iwaizumi will miss him like he’d miss a dear friend, because they’ve done almost everything together since they were children, but for Oikawa, if Iwaizumi were gone, it would take more than what he can give, because Iwaizumi is his hearth and his home.

Oikawa realizes that the tightness in his chest is because they hold different definitions of each other, and that’s the sad irony of it—that someone could see a road and only see asphalt, but another would know it as the way back home.

“This is really good,” Oikawa comments about the ice-cream, shifting the conversation to a less piteous one.

“You know, since this is successful, we should try making other flavours,” Iwaizumi suggests, no inkling of how it takes him very little to make Oikawa feel so much. “Matcha maybe? Cookies and cream? Or maybe we should go with something safer.”

Oikawa smiles at his apparent excitement and remarks, “Aren’t you like a child on Christmas.”

Iwaizumi shoots him a pointed look, eyes darting to a corner of his mouth, and fires back, “Says the person who eats like one.”

He reaches out with an outstretched arm, the pad of his thumb catching the edge of Oikawa’s lips and the crook of his finger against his chin, and swipes away the smidge of ice-cream in a single quick motion. The action itself is enough to stun Oikawa into silence, but it’s the ordinary way Iwaizumi pulls back, sucking the leftover ice-cream from his thumb with a small, wet sound that hurls him into a riptide.

Contrary to Oikawa’s speechlessness, Iwaizumi swipes his phone off the counter to search up more recipes, thinking aloud as he scrolls, “A lot of these recipes are for plain vanilla. The ones for the flavoured kinds say we have to freeze it overnight. I just think it’d be cool if we served homemade ice-cream when people come over.”

He seems to have noticed the lack of response after a long moment and looks up at Oikawa in puzzlement.

“Oikawa? What do you think?”

He feels like his chest is twisting in on itself. Iwaizumi gazes at him in ignorance, acting like he didn’t just do what lovers usually do, like it didn’t mean anything out of the norm when to Oikawa, it reminds him of everything he doesn’t have. It’s intimacy in the wrong shade of colour, and Oikawa is tired of everything amounting to nothing.

He’s held on for so long—all those careful steps and it takes two in the kitchen and Iwaizumi’s thumb against the corner of his mouth for his house of cards to come crumbling down. He thinks it’s not a broken heart that will kill him, but the sweet taste of domesticity that exists in liminal spaces—he wants it so badly it hurts, which forces the next words out of his lips because there’s only so much you can take until you’re whittled raw.

“I think I should move out,” he says in a breath.

Iwaizumi’s head jerks back in sudden confusion, a deep frown settling on his features.

“What? Did you just say move out?”

The words catch up to Oikawa in a rush and his mind spins trying to come up with an explanation.

“Yeah, it’s…it’s probably for the better,” he says, nodding hastily because he’s trying to convince himself as much as Iwaizumi, but it only bewilders him further.

“What’s with that all of a sudden?” he demands, searching Oikawa’s face for answers but coming up short because this is all too bizarre.

Oikawa’s words tumble out of his mouth faster than his mind can process them.

“I’ve just been thinking—we’ve been together almost all our lives, but we don’t always have to do everything together right?” he laughs nervously and hopes to god he can play this off as a wise decision instead of a miserable breakdown. “This co-dependency thing is…it’s not exactly the healthiest.”

Iwaizumi stares at him as if he’s grown horns.

“You were the one who suggested moving in together in the first place,” he says incredulously.

“I know! And it’s been great, really, but—maybe it’ll be good to have our own space too,” Oikawa reasons. He thought he should keep Iwaizumi close but maybe the distance would have been good for them, because he’s learned that proximity can be a lethal weapon. He presses on and makes a futile effort to hide the tension in his voice, “Don’t you want your own space? I mean, I’ve always been pestering you to do stuff with me and dragging you along with my whims.”

At this point, Iwaizumi has no doubt that he’s merely putting on a front. Oikawa never feels guilty about getting him involved.

Iwaizumi shakes his head, “That’s not—” but Oikawa cuts him off.

“It’s a good change,” he murmurs, turning away so he doesn’t have to see it all fall apart in front of his eyes. “It’ll be fine.”

Iwaizumi thinks he’s not making a lick of sense.

“Oikawa—”

He doesn’t let him finish, dropping his bowl into the sink with a noisy clatter, and leaves the kitchen in a hurry. Oikawa doesn’t think about how he’s fucked everything up, it’s probably been a mess for a long time, and now he finds himself on the knife’s edge—whichever way he falls from, he’s going to be cut, so he might as well make it quick.

It doesn’t mean it’s any less heart-rending. Denial is such a cruel thing when it keeps you from what you most long for. He’s felt too much, still feels too much, and this small apartment can only take so much.

Oikawa supposes that all kinds of suffering ends somewhere, and this is his. This is where the boundary lies, and he should feel braver for meeting it at all, but bravery means little when it heralds defeat.

Avoiding someone who lives in the same house is easier than Oikawa thought when he puts his mind to it. It’s been two days, two very long days when you’re listless and desperately trying to evade somebody. Oikawa knows this can’t go on forever, eventually his attempts at leaving before Iwaizumi wakes up and returning before he does will run out of luck.

Iwaizumi’s texted him once, asking, ‘can we talk?’ but Oikawa was afraid that if they did, he wouldn’t know how to lie anymore. He’s already made things unbearably awkward between them; he wouldn’t know what to do if they got to an irreparable point, and it would have been all his fault. He’s at least relieved that Iwaizumi doesn’t come knocking at his door wanting to talk when they’re both at home. He doesn’t think he’s ready for that yet. He’s always had an issue with looking his problems in the eye, and now that Iwaizumi’s one of them, it’s even more confusing. Everything spiralled out of control too quickly.

Before the inevitable happens, he reckons he should solidify his reason for acting so strange. Knowing Iwaizumi, he wouldn’t have bought Oikawa’s story about being better if he moved out. He needs to salvage their friendship at least, because if he loses that too, then he supposes he’ll get to experience a new brand of grief.

But then luck runs out, and he’s like a deer caught in the headlights when he comes out of his bedroom the same time Iwaizumi is about to walk into his, the pair of them rooted in their hallway and staring at each other in wordless surprise. Oikawa hadn’t even heard him come home.

Seeing Iwaizumi in this instance triggers his flight or fight response, and before he knows it, his feet are moving forward, towards the kitchen because he thought it had been safe enough to get a drink.

“We need to talk,” Iwaizumi says first, recognizing Oikawa’s attempt to elude him again, and frankly, he’s tired of playing hide-and-seek any longer.

“I’m busy,” Oikawa claims. He just needs to get away.

“No you’re not,” Iwaizumi states. Oikawa won’t even look at him, like he’s hiding something so devastating he had to lie to him about it, and Iwaizumi begins to feel the uneasiness and worry that has amassed for the past two days threaten to spill over.

“I am. I have stuff to do—”

Iwaizumi cracks. His hand shoots out and grasps Oikawa’s wrist, urgency lacing his voice, “Stop running away when I’m trying to talk to you!”

He’s hurt, because Oikawa is acting like they’re strangers, but above all, he’s afraid—that his sudden behaviour that day meant more than he let on, and from the way Oikawa is avoiding him like the plague, it can’t be anything good. For Oikawa to have blurted out being apart, had it been Iwaizumi’s fault in the end? Had he been too careless with the liberty and gone too far? He needs answers, even if they’re going to be painful.

His small outburst had forced Oikawa to look at him, and Iwaizumi realizes he still has his fingers closed around his wrist. He lets go, and gathers himself to say, “I’ve given you time, but you can’t keep avoiding me you know. What’s going on?”

With nowhere else to go, Oikawa answers tentatively, “I’ve said it already. I think it’s better if I move out.”

“Why?” Iwaizumi demands. “And don’t give me that crap about letting me have my own space. We both know that’s not what this is about.”

Oikawa hesitates, because the truth still feels so dangerous.

“Come on Oikawa. Don’t do this to me,” Iwaizumi pleads. He needs to know if he had been too obvious and messed up their delicate balance with his reckless hands in the kitchen that day. He asks, something straining in his voice, “If I’ve crossed a line, if—if I’m too much, tell me.”

He sounds terribly unsure. It’s so unlike him.

For a moment, the words escape Oikawa. All this while, Iwaizumi had been worried about making Oikawa uncomfortable with his actions when in fact, he couldn’t be further from the truth—when what he thinks is a mistake is all Oikawa ever wanted.

The irony makes him weary, makes him honest.

“That’s not it at all,” Oikawa says softly.

Iwaizumi looks at him searchingly.

“Then what?”

The chaos that follows is the quiet kind.

Oikawa feels the energy leave him. He doesn’t want to run, doesn’t want to lie. Perhaps the truth will not be easier to bear, but it means he’s had the mettle to carry it, and to not be mired in another tiresome place, and that should be a consolation in itself.

“You…You leave me notes to tell me to take care of myself,” he starts, and the words he’s buried don’t stop once they’ve found an outlet, merely an overture to what’s to come, “you make an exception for me on so many accounts, you let me steal your clothes, you let me sleep in your bed.”

Oikawa lists them off like they’re supposed to mean something, but Iwaizumi doesn’t reach the same conclusion yet.

“It’s always been like that,” he says carefully.

“You can’t let me do all that, and not expect me to want more,” Oikawa tells him with the voice of someone who’s fought a losing battle, white flag in his hands, and Iwaizumi’s heart stutters. “We’re in this weird limbo where we’re more than friends. Surely you must see that too. It’s not enough, and I’m tired of pretending it is.”

Even someone like him has limits, and he’s reached the end of his.

Iwaizumi stands rooted to the spot, his body feeling heavy and light all at once. Oikawa is almost—almost—saying something that up till this point has only existed in his dreams, and until he hears it for himself, he holds his breath, gaze boring into Oikawa’s naked one.

“Tell me what you’re saying,” Iwaizumi asks of him.

This moment feels like a definition, such fatal terrains narrowing to this point of singularity.

Oikawa’s face crumbles. He tries to smile but it comes out sad, because he no longer has anything to hide, but he hasn’t made room for the truth.

“I’m in love with you, can’t you see?” he confesses, stripped, and the world seems to halt on its axis. “You make it so easy to love you, and it’s the hardest thing to do when you don’t love me back.”

After all the forced silence, his heart rebels against him and demands to be heard. Well, it’s said now, and for some inexplicable reason, it’s like standing in the eye of a storm. Is catharsis supposed to be this hushed? Are crescendos always this quiet?

Neither of them speak for a while, and Oikawa averts his eyes so he doesn’t have to see the apology before he hears it, but there’s no awkward ‘sorry’, only Iwaizumi’s strangely assertive voice, as if he knows something Oikawa doesn’t.

“Who says I don’t love you back?” he questions.

It’s certainly not what Oikawa expects, and when he lifts his gaze, he’s a little startled to meet the fierceness in Iwaizumi’s eyes. Despite that, he remembers love comes in different forms, and what he wants from Iwaizumi is not what he can give him.

“Not in the way that I want,” he says.

“Who says I don’t love you back in the way that you want?” Iwaizumi asks again.

Oikawa sighs in quiet exasperation.

“I don’t know Iwa-chan, things between us are so hard to explain.”

“Then I’ll make it easy for you,” Iwaizumi declares, sounding like he’s marching into the world without armour, but it won’t matter because he can finally say this, “I love you. In whatever way you think it’s supposed to be, that’s how I feel about you.”

His words are so impossible to Oikawa they are undreamed of, and he is silenced by the intensity of his gaze, honest and raw.

“You’re right,” Iwaizumi continues. At this point, if he’s being truthful, he’s going to be truthful all the way. “We act like we’re more than friends, I do see it. I just didn’t think it could be anything more than that.”

Oikawa’s lips are parted, but no sound comes out. This is quintessentially a confession, and he’s got it from the sole person he wants it from. It is surreal, to finally have, and when he finds his voice, it’s a breath of disbelief.

“Why would you think that?”

Iwaizumi shrugs.

“Felt like the universe thought this was as far as I could get,” he admits, and loves that he is wrong. He studies Oikawa’s face, a lovely portrait of surprise, and for the first time tonight, asks with clarity, “Aren’t you the same too? If you’re only saying all of this now.”

“That’s because you’ve never acted like you wanted anything more!” Oikawa exclaims, eyes wide and cheeks pink. He’s beginning to grasp the reality of this moment, and the rush of emotions sets the unbridled truth on his tongue.

“What do you mean, I leave you notes to tell you to take care of yourself, I make so many exceptions for you, I let you steal my clothes, I let you sleep in my bed!” Iwaizumi repeats Oikawa’s earlier speech in a frenzy. “Do you think I’d do all of that if I weren’t at least a little bit in love with you?”

But that’s the peculiarity of doubt—for all its uncertainty, it’s a formidable method of persuasion, only not in the right direction.

“I thought that’s just the way you care, all—all earnest and irritatingly tender, and that it didn’t mean anything special,” Oikawa says in a bit of a fluster. “I know you have a soft spot for me, but I thought it was because we grew up together and you’ve seen me at my worst.”

They were friends before anything else and Oikawa assumed everything Iwaizumi did was rooted in that. It was a friendship forged by the keenest hearts and steadiest hands and over time, while the lines between what was platonic and what was romantic melded, Oikawa had been so convinced they must be destined for the former that he never considered it would be anything but.

He offers a sheepish glance to Iwaizumi and adds, “And despite the way we can be with each other, it never led to anything.”

It kept his hopes up every time it felt like there was something simmering underneath whatever they dared to show, but for all that to culminate in dust can be maddeningly disheartening, so Oikawa didn’t dare to hope—afraid of reading between the lines and finding blank space.

A shadow of guilt rests on Iwaizumi’s features as he says, “I didn’t want to ruin a perfectly good friendship for something I thought was impossible, and I learned to be okay with just being by your side.” Oikawa can’t blame him when he holds the same sentiment, although he can’t say he agrees with the second half of it. Iwaizumi exhales slowly, “The thing is Oikawa, I’m always going to be there for you, however I’m allowed. If it’s only as a friend, then I was ready to make my peace with it.”

Oikawa lets out a rueful chuckle, “I’m not as noble as you. It hurt to think about being apart, so I wanted to keep you close. That’s why I suggested moving in together. But that hurt even more, and I figured it was time to stop.”

Iwaizumi’s fingers curl into his palm.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” he asks, a prick of remorse in his voice, realizing that what he thought was helping was hurting all along.

“Why didn’t you?” Oikawa asks back, not blameful, just consistent.

But they both know it’s useless to dwell on this. It exists in their shared history, not entirely as a mistake, and where they are now, they’ve gone way past the need for reasons.

“I’m sorry,” Iwaizumi murmurs. “I didn’t know I’d been hurting you.”

“It’s okay. We both didn’t know something that was right in front of our faces this whole time, and I think…” Oikawa trails off, and there’s a hopeful shine in his eyes as he holds Iwaizumi’s gaze, “there are still a lot of things we don’t know about each other.”

‘As lovers,’ is the unspoken part. They’ve kept to liminal spaces for so long, and now it’s time to venture to new terrains and truly discover what has always been theirs. It feels like meeting on the same page after missing each other in different sheets.

“We can learn,” Iwaizumi suggests in the same hopeful way. “If you want to, we can.”

“I want to,” Oikawa says and smiles, heart alight. It turns out when your dreams take form, it takes you off the ground. “All this while, I can’t believe I thought you only wanted us to be friends.”

Iwaizumi laughs, “It hasn’t been that way for a while. I was just really good at holding myself back.”

“Well, don’t,” Oikawa chides, a bit miffed. They found themselves in such an odd place because of that, and Oikawa is yearning to uncover the great unknown when they don’t hold themselves back at all. His hazel eyes are ablaze with resolve as he tells Iwaizumi, “No more halfways.”

Iwaizumi nods.

“No more halfways.”

With the golden hues of the late afternoon sun seeping into the room, two boys stir between wakefulness and slumber on a bed not exactly made for two. It’s the transient spell where the sun starts to dip and passes its torch to the thousand city lights, but within the walls of a small apartment in Tama, Hajime and Tooru are just rousing from a nap.

Tooru shifts a little, stretching out his muscles, and Hajime makes a languid groan at the back of his throat. He keeps his eyes closed, still too tired to face the world, but Tooru already has his opened, having rubbed the sleep out of them and staring at the scene that greets him—the handsome profile of his boyfriend whose skin is bare against the sheets.

They have nothing to rush for, and quiet mirth settles in Tooru’s veins. Feeling rather affectionate in this sequestered moment, he shuffles closer to Hajime, one arm draped lazily across his naked torso, and presses a kiss to his jaw, and his cheek, then behind his ear. He finds a spot to nip, and it tickles Hajime awake.

Hajime makes a sound and turns his head, hiding his neck from hungry lips, and cracks his eyes open to take in the sight of Tooru, beautiful brown eyes glinting at him, pretty lips tugged into a smile and hair tousled in a delightful mess.

“Hi,” Tooru greets, no louder than a whisper.

“Hey,” Hajime says back in a sleepy daze.

A small smile hangs on the edge of his lips as he skims his fingers up Tooru’s bare arm to draw slow circles on the curve of his shoulder. If he was told that he would one day wake up next to Oikawa Tooru in his bed, the both of them unclothed beneath the sheets, he would have laughed in sheer disbelief and waved it away as the stuff of dreams. But there is no laughter, only a smile that reaches his eyes, and this is as real as it can get.

Sometimes it still feels surreal that they share the same space when they sleep, that they can kiss each other in the entranceway and slow dance in the living room to Frank Sinatra’s Fly Me to the Moon.

To have reached this point—doing everything that lovers do—can be strange but no longer surprising. Convergences take time, and in their paths they’ve always had their own space to grow and to learn before they meet each other in uncharted territories. After all, it was merely nineteen years in the making. It was only natural to come together like this, because with them, it has never been about dependability, but devotion.

Tooru’s smile widens as he scrambles up to lay half-on top of Hajime, warm skin flushed against each other’s, and Hajime instinctively wraps an arm around his waist. Tooru holds his weight with an elbow and gazes at him, endearment tucked in the corners of his eyes.

“What should we do for dinner?” he wonders.

Hajime hums thoughtfully, the sound rumbling behind closed lips, and suggests, “That ramen place our upstairs-neighbour told us about?”

Tooru considers, but eventually says, “I don’t really feel like going out though.”

It’s cozy here. The comfort of their apartment is too enticing, and with his hand slipped into Hajime’s hair, fingers carding through the strands, gravity fills his limbs with lazy contentment and grounds him to this tender moment.

“Pasta then,” Hajime says after a while. “We have some left.”

“What kind of pasta?”

“I don’t know, we’ll see what ingredients we have.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Tooru says agreeably. His hand travels to the shell of Hajime’s ear where he knows he is sensitive, fingertip grazing the curve of it, and it sends a shiver down Hajime’s spine.

“Hey, that tickles,” Hajime tells him breathily, hand reaching up to close over Tooru’s wrist in a loose hold.

Tooru grins and goes to kiss him on the mouth, coming away for the briefest second before seaming soft lips to parted ones again and again, and Hajime tilts his head to meet him better. It still makes him giddy sometimes, to feel as if they’re meant to fit together in all the ways a person can fit with another—with their palms pressed together and fingers laced, with his face in his neck where the slope of his nose kisses the curve of his neck, with his hands on cheeks and lips against lips and legs tangled together.

Tooru had never imagined he could be intimate with Hajime like this, but it’s simply a natural progression, where innocence turns into familiarity turns into intimacy.

Give a pair of lovers time and their words will become sweeter, their touches bolder. For Hajime and Tooru, it was somewhere they were bound to reach, explored in its entirely when they make love, and sex with Hajime is everything Tooru has imagined it to be (yes, he imagined—you don’t harbour a perennial ache for your best friend without your thoughts straying).

The first time they had sex, Hajime was so nervous because it was everything he wanted, and Tooru was calm because it was everything he wanted, and he had waited a long time for it. Tooru had been viscerally reminded of how innocence had made way for intimacy—they had tumbled over each other in the fields with playful laughter and now Hajime was on top of him, hushed and heavy, leaving bruises that were far less innocent than the ones in childhood and setting tears prickling at the corners of his eyes for a different kind of pain.

But even if they reach the furthest ends of intimacy, it is hardly an end, but a work in progress. Tooru thinks it’s the most exciting part.

Pushing himself away, he keeps his eyes locked with Hajime’s and asks cheekily, “Are we gonna get out of bed anytime soon?”

“Five more minutes?” Hajime says, and Tooru catches the flash of a smirk before Hajime flips them over in one swift motion, the sheets twisting between their tangled legs. He savours the short-lived surprise on Tooru’s face with a hungry gleam in his eyes but looking like he wants to take his time.

Tooru arches an eyebrow at him, “Are you sure five more minutes?”

“No, but who’s counting?” Hajime says and seals their lips.

Tooru smiles into the kiss, heart brimming with a cardinal need for Hajime whose whispered words and burning touches are like building blocks of the world—maybe not the world, just his.

In this moment he feels inimitably at home, and Tooru realizes belatedly—but not too late—that this is the inevitable.