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Iwaizumi is used to Oikawa receiving confessions from girls. Lots of them. They tend to form little gangs and lie in wait for Oikawa outside his classroom, the boys’ toilets, the volleyball gym, sometimes even on his route home, often jumping out of crevices and shadows to declare their undying affection for him in a way that is half-amusing, half-sad. Iwaizumi highly doubts that any of them would still be declaring their love after a week spent with him – they only know the person Oikawa presents to the world, the deceptively charming smile, the amicable waves, the falsely modest pretence he puts on. They don’t know him like Iwaizumi knows him – the kid who used to cry whenever he fell over and scraped his knee, who tried not to cry when he suffered his first serious sports injury and was told there was a chance he might not be able to play volleyball anymore, but who couldn’t keep the tears spurting from his eyes as he clung to Iwaizumi like Iwaizumi was the only thing keeping him from being sucked into some invisible void of despair. They don’t know that Oikawa is selfish and impatient, that he spends at least an hour on his hair every morning, that he refused to take part in a water fight one summer festival for fear that it would get mussed up; they don’t know that Oikawa hates mess and tries (usually without success) to tidy Iwaizumi’s room whenever he comes over, that he still watches his favourite alien movies from when he was a kid (and actually enjoys them), that he goes to bed too late and gets worked up when he can’t do something right first time and pushes himself too hard so that Iwaizumi routinely has to come and remind him that he needs sleep like a regular human being and promise him that they’ll try again tomorrow. These girls will never know Oikawa like Iwaizumi does, and so no matter how many heartfelt confessions he hears fall rushed from their lips, he never really gets jealous. He never has to, because Oikawa turns them all down, always.
Iwaizumi has long held suspicions about Oikawa’s lack of interest in girls. He’s told Iwaizumi time and again that he doesn’t really care for any of the girls at school. (Iwaizumi's told him time and again that he should stop leading them on then. Oikawa always pretends not to know what he means.) The one girlfriend he’s had dumped him after a week because he was “too interested in volleyball” (a fair point, Iwaizumi has to admit), but he also knows, because Oikawa confessed this to him under an oath of secrecy, that he was never really sure he was all that into her in the first place either. He liked her, he told Iwaizumi, because she was cooler than all the others, much calmer – she confessed to him, but not in that self-deprecating way the first and second year girls seemed to have adopted, and she had an air of assurance that was different and yet kind of familiar too. He’d liked that, but the minute they actually got together he lost interest almost immediately. It was almost as if the whole thing were an experiment that hadn’t quite worked out.
There are other things too – the way Oikawa looks at the players in his volleyball magazines with something that seems like more than mere admiration, the way he rolls his eyes and sighs – so subtly that only Iwaizumi ever notices – whenever Matsukawa or Hanamaki pull out their swimsuit magazines or talk about the models or singers or actresses they’d most like to sleep with. The way, when they ask Oikawa his first choice, he grins and rattles off a name with just a little too much conviction.
Ordinarily, Iwaizumi wouldn’t care – he likes girls for sure, but he’s also found himself looking at a few too many boys that way for it to be a fluke – but when he thinks about telling Oikawa something swells in his chest, something like anxiety, and he knows deep down why he’s scared of his reaction. He isn’t afraid that Oikawa won’t want to be his friend anymore, because neither of them are like that and besides, he’s fairly sure by now that Oikawa likes boys too – it’s the fear that nothing will change. He might tell Oikawa that he thinks he’s not a hundred per cent straight, Oikawa might tell him the same, and they might continue to stay best friends forever, and Iwaizumi isn’t so sure that’s all he wants anymore. Because he’s pretty certain that it’s not just boys he’s into – it’s Oikawa.
And then it happens.
He never gets jealous over girls, because Oikawa doesn’t seem to care about girls, not in the romantic sense. But then Oikawa gets a confession from a boy.
It’s the first time this has ever happened, which, with hindsight, should surprise Iwaizumi. They can’t be the only boys-who-like-boys in the school, and nearly everyone aside from the people who actually know him has a crush on Oikawa Tooru. But it’s a shock, because it’s something Iwaizumi never expected to happen, and it disturbs the little equilibrium they’ve built for themselves, the sense of security he's had for who knows how long.
He doesn’t like it.
It happens at lunch one day – he and Oikawa are in their classroom, eating and discussing their upcoming practice match against Datekou, when a boy Iwaizumi vaguely recognises as a second year appears in the doorway and makes his way nervously over to them. He bows his head and asks “Oikawa-san” if he could have a word with him. Oikawa smiles politely and says yes, of course, and saunters out of the classroom. The boy follows him, and the flush on his cheeks, and the way his fingers tremble as he plays nervously with the charm on his bag, and his refusal to look at Oikawa as he leaves are things Iwaizumi has seen before, and they are all things that he knows come before a confession. The only thing that is different about this one is that it is coming from a boy. The only thing different is that this time, Oikawa might actually be interested.
He shakes himself out of it, tells himself he’s being ridiculous, he’s never heard Oikawa express interest in anyone, let alone this – this kid before, and if he was interested surely he would have said something to Iwaizumi? But then again, Iwaizumi remembers that Oikawa’s never actually told him he likes boys, and maybe he thinks Iwaizumi doesn’t know, and maybe he really is interested. The boy isn’t bad-looking, after all, although he’s nothing compared to Oikawa, and he’s probably sweet and shy and patient and will let him talk about volleyball for hours on end, and perhaps Oikawa will start dating him and he’ll be around all the time and eventually Iwaizumi will become second best and –
Shut up, he tells himself, snap out of it. Oikawa doesn’t like sweet, shy, nervous types. Does he? Iwaizumi’s always figured that’s part of the reason he always turns the girls down – although maybe it’s simply because he doesn’t like girls. Maybe sweet, shy, nervous boys are exactly his type.
Iwaizumi can’t think – he needs a place to clear his head, so he stands up and strides out of the classroom and before he really knows where he’s going he’s stumbled across a secluded stairwell, well out of the way of any couples confessing to one another. He sits, out of sight, trying to think about anything and everything that isn’t Oikawa.
It’s not easy. His brain keeps replaying the scene, over and over – Oikawa’s steady smile, the nervous twitch of the second year’s hands, the softness of his voice, the way his dark blond hair was swept neatly across his forehead. The hopeful expression in his eyes.
Usually Iwaizumi feels a slight pang of guilt when he sees that expression on the faces of the girls Oikawa turns down, even though he’s not the one rejecting them. But now he just feels sick, a twisting in his gut that has nothing to do with sympathy and everything to do with jealousy. He’s jealous. He doesn’t want Oikawa to date this guy, he doesn’t want Oikawa to get a boyfriend at all, not unless – and he groans because it sounds pathetic even in his head – not unless it’s him.
And he knows, then, that he’s a goner. He’s managed to fall hopelessly in love with his stupid, annoying, childish, ridiculous, incredible best friend. He’s done for.
He sits in the stairwell until well past the second bell, and when he finally hauls himself back to the classroom (offering his teacher a humble, “Sorry, Sensei,” but no excuse for his tardiness) he spends the rest of the afternoon avoiding Oikawa’s gaze. He doesn’t want to know, doesn’t want to see his smug expression, how happy Oikawa looks with someone, someone who is not him. He doesn’t want to realise how perfectly they fit together, how good Oikawa looks holding someone else’s hand, kissing someone else’s lips. Tracing someone else’s skin with his fingertips, clutching at someone else’s sheets, coming with someone else’s name on his lips, and it’s wrong, it’s wrong to even imagine your best friend, on whom you have a huge and inappropriate crush, like that, but it’s even worse to imagine them like that with somebody else. Touching somebody else. Holding somebody else, kissing somebody else. It drives Iwaizumi crazy, and when the lesson finally ends he daren’t even open his mouth around Oikawa in case he says something awful, so he spends almost all of practice with the first years, helping out Kindaichi with his blocking technique and his spiking, telling Kunimi off for slacking.
They walk home together like they always do, Oikawa unusually quiet, and Iwaizumi wonders if perhaps it wasn’t a confession after all, perhaps they were both mistaken – but then, that doesn’t change the fact that Oikawa likes somebody else, that Oikawa will never see Iwaizumi as anything more than a friend. How could he? Oikawa is tall and pale and beautiful, and Iwaizumi is short (shorter), short-tempered, and not at all dainty or delicate or attractive, and besides, how could Oikawa like someone who spends half his time telling him off for being childish and the other half telling him off for working so hard that he injures himself? Iwaizumi’s astounded that he’s made it this far, to be honest.
“Hey, Iwa-chan.” Oikawa’s voice startles him out of his thoughts, and he looks up to see him gazing at him with a thoughtful expression. Iwaizumi glances away, as though Oikawa is too bright to look at directly, and sometimes that isn’t so far from the truth. “Do you wanna come back to mine? I need some help with that English homework.”
Iwaizumi knows it’s a ploy, he knows Oikawa has next to no trouble with English, but he also knows he’s given too much away – Oikawa knows something’s up, and making some shitty excuse now would practically be an admission of guilt. He nods numbly.
“Sure.”
Oikawa gives him a small smile that makes his heart stutter – why are they both so anxious? They’re best friends, Iwaizumi should be able to handle this, he’s mature enough to deal with an unrequited crush, isn’t he? He’s not a goddamn shoujo manga heroine, after all. If Oikawa has a boyfriend, then... Oikawa has a boyfriend. That’s his business. It’s not the end of the world, right?
Right. Who is he kidding?
Neither of them speak until they’re in Oikawa’s bedroom, Oikawa fidgeting with his hands as he sits on his bed, Iwaizumi hovering awkwardly by the door, all pretence of homework forgotten by them both. He wants to get this over with, wants to get it out in the open, he wants to hear it out loud so he won’t continue to have every variation of the statement buzzing around his head like a swarm of wasps. Just tell me, he thinks, glaring at the carpet, just fucking tell me. Get it over with.
As if in answer, Oikawa’s voice filters through the air, breaking the silence. “Iwa-chan,” he says. His tone is hesitant; it reminds Iwaizumi the time when they were eight and Oikawa broke the light fixture in the living room tossing a volleyball with a little too much enthusiasm and had to own up to his mother. He pauses, and Iwaizumi looks up to see him staring at his hands, folded in his lap, his brow furrowed in concentration. Iwaizumi is growing more anxious by the second, so he walks over to the bed sits down heavily, ignoring the small noise of surprise that leaves Oikawa’s lips.
“Just tell me,” he says, a little impatient, because the silence is making him incredibly uncomfortable, and he just wants to get the whole thing out of the way so he can start trying to get over it. “For the love of God, Shittykawa, I’m on tenterhooks here.”
Oikawa laughs softly, but after a moment the smile drops from his lips and he brings a hand up to the back of his neck and stares at his socks. He’s nervous, Iwaizumi can tell. They both are.
“Iwa-chan...” he says again, but it’s followed by yet another uncomfortable silence and Iwaizumi can’t wait any longer.
“It’s about that guy, right?” he mutters, shifting and looking away.
After another long pause, Oikawa says, “Yes.” And then he says, “Well, no. Sort of.”
Iwaizumi’s gaze snaps up to meet Oikawa’s. “What do you mean, ‘sort of’?” he asks impatiently. “He confessed to you, didn’t he?”
“Well, yes –” Oikawa starts, but Iwaizumi cuts him off without thinking.
“And what, he’s your boyfriend now?” He says it before he can stop himself, too sharp and too angry, he knows, too angry even for his best friend he has a stupid crush on, especially for his best friend he has a stupid crush on, but he can’t think, can’t reason. Oikawa is staring at his hands again, fingers twisting and winding together, interlocking the way they used to interlock with Iwaizumi’s when they were kids, before words like confession and boyfriend and crush became part of their vocabulary, before everything became a mess of emotions – jealousy and bitterness and like. Before whatever this is. He takes a deep breath – several, in fact – to calm himself, swallows, turns to the boy on the bed who looks so small and afraid all of a sudden.
“I’m sorry,” he says finally, as breathless as if he’d just run a marathon. “That was – inappropriate.”
“Iwa-chan,” Oikawa murmurs; his voice is small and sad and scared, and Iwaizumi wants to kick himself for making that happen. “Are you mad at me?”
“What? Why would I be mad at you?” Iwaizumi blurts, shocked, before remembering that he’s just near-enough yelled at Oikawa for dating someone. Oh, right. Nice one, Iwaizumi, you major fuck up. “Shit – I mean – I didn’t mean to – fly off the handle or whatever, I –” He sighs. Get a grip, dumbass, he tells himself. “Of course I’m not mad at you.”
“It’s just,” Oikawa continues; Iwaizumi can tell he’s not really listening, can tell there’s something bigger pressing on his mind. It’s reminiscent of the time he won the Best Setter award in middle school – he’d seemed genuinely thrilled throughout the whole day, until he got home and lay on his bed and stared at the ceiling and Iwaizumi had to pry out of him the worry that Kageyama really would surpass him someday, that it didn’t matter how hard he worked – as long as there was a genius in the wings, waiting to take his place, he’d never get further than second best. Iwaizumi remembers desperately wanting to comfort him, but he didn’t know how.
He still doesn’t know.
“It’s not exactly... normal, is it?” Oikawa is saying, picking at the skin around his nails and chewing his lip in a way that could pass for thoughtful, but is probably more like sheer panic disguised as pensiveness.
Iwaizumi frowns. “What isn’t?”
“You know...” Oikawa waves a hand euphemistically, but Iwaizumi doesn’t know. Oikawa sighs. “Liking boys.”
“Who says it isn’t normal?” Iwaizumi counters.
“Well, it’s not, is it?” Oikawa says. “You never see it on TV or in movies or anything like that, do you? It’s – Nobody ever talks about it.” He falters, becomes quieter, looks back down at the floor – or maybe his hands, or maybe both. Iwaizumi can’t tell. “So it’s – I would... understand if you –” He stops and chews his lip again, clearly struggling for the right words.
“If I what?” Iwaizumi prompts gently.
“If you didn’t – if you weren’t comfortable being –” he exhales heavily, shakily – “being around me anymore.”
There’s another really, really long silence. Iwaizumi stares at Oikawa (who stares at the floor), keeps opening his mouth and closing it again like a fish; he desperately wants to say something, to comfort Oikawa, but his brain isn’t supplying the words he needs. Finally he manages to speak, although the best he can do is, “You thought I was mad at you because you like boys?”
Oikawa nods. He looks so small and fragile, and Iwaizumi wants to wrap his arms around him, pull him into a rib-crushing hug, reassure him that everything is alright, but he can’t, because Oikawa was scared, scared of him, scared that he wouldn’t want to be his friend anymore because of something like that – something they even have in common, although Oikawa doesn’t know that yet. Part of Iwaizumi wants to tell him, make sure that he knows he’s not alone – because making sure Oikawa knows he’s not alone is vitally important – but he doesn’t want to risk making this about him, and besides, he’s scared too, because he doesn’t really have a word for what he is yet, doesn’t even know if liking boys and liking girls is even something he’s allowed to do. So he just holds out his hand and slips it into one of Oikawa’s – he’s clammy, both their palms are sweaty from the fear of rejection and ridicule – and squeezes, and tells him he’d never be mad about something like that, and Jesus, Shittykawa, warn me next time you’re about to have a meltdown, I thought someone had died. Oikawa looks up at him then, smiles and gives a shaky laugh.
“You know, all those girls are going to be heartbroken,” Iwaizumi tells him, mock-sincere. Oikawa snorts at his crap attempt at a joke – but then there are tears rolling down his cheeks and his laughs turn into sobs; he grips Iwaizumi’s hand so tight his knuckles turn white, and he’s shaking, sobbing and shaking, and Iwaizumi’s never seen anything so pathetic in his life. He reaches out and pulls him close, feeling the soft fabric of Oikawa’s t shirt beneath his fingers, the damp stickiness of his tears as he buries his face in Iwaizumi’s shoulder. A thought flits across Iwaizumi’s mind, the thought that he wishes he could hold Oikawa like this in a different context, a situation in which neither of them are crying, in which Oikawa isn’t dating some simpering second year, in which Iwaizumi’s feelings are accepted and returned. It sickens him.
“I love you, Hajime,” Oikawa says through his tears. “You’re the best friend ever.”
I love you, Hajime. It shouldn’t hurt like it does.
“You weren’t there when I came back at lunch, and you wouldn’t talk to me all afternoon,” Oikawa mumbles into his neck. “You wouldn’t even look at me at practice. I thought you hated me.”
Iwaizumi wants to kick himself. Worse, even, for winding Oikawa up like this, sending him into spirals of doubt, being so wrapped up in his own thoughts that he made Oikawa think he didn’t want him anymore. He can’t bear to think what he must have put him through.
He pulls away, wipes the tears from Oikawa’s face with his thumbs. There are teardrops beaded on his eyelashes like jewels of dew on spiders’ webs, and Iwaizumi thinks they might look beautiful if they hadn’t come from a place so sad. He swallows and looks Oikawa in his red-rimmed eyes.
“I wasn’t mad,” he says, much more calmly than he feels. “I was never mad, Tooru, I was – jealous.”
Oikawa gazes at him, half-formed wonder etched on his beautiful face, and suddenly Iwaizumi can’t look at him. He confesses to the floor instead, because he reasons that if he’s going to lose his dignity and his best friend at the same time, he’s allowed at least a fraction of self-preservation, however flimsy.
“When he confessed to you,” Iwaizumi continues, “I couldn’t stand it. I couldn’t stand the thought of seeing you happy with – with someone else. That’s why I ran away. I’m sorry.”
“Iwa-chan...”
“I’m sorry,” he says again. “It was immature and selfish of me, and I’m happy for you, I really am –”
“I turned him down.”
Iwaizumi’s head shoots up so fast he feels a twinge in his neck, and he winces briefly at the pain.
“What?”
Oikawa smiles. “I told him he was very sweet and I was flattered, but I happened to be in love with my idiot best friend who is probably straight and would never return my feelings, so I was sorry, but I couldn’t go to Sendai with him on Sunday.”
To Iwaizumi, it feels as though the world has stopped. The ticking of the clock and the quiet chirping of the first cicadas are irrelevant – for a moment, the world does not exist. There is only him, and Oikawa smiling steadily at him, and the quiet, settling like dust, or snow, or cherry blossom petals, over his confession.
Iwaizumi tries to ask, You’re in love with me? but it seems his brain is refusing to obey orders today, and instead what comes out of his mouth is, “I’m not straight.”
“I figured,” Oikawa teases. All the same, the breathy laugh he lets out sounds suspiciously relieved.
“I mean, I like girls,” Iwaizumi clarifies. “But I like boys too. So – we’ll be weird together.”
Oikawa grins. “As long as you like me, Iwa-chan,” he says, and Iwaizumi can’t help but return his smile.
“I really like you,” he tells Oikawa.
“Iwa-chan,” Oikawa says gravely, “I’m going to kiss you now.”
Iwaizumi grins. “Okay.”
Oikawa leans in, slow and deliberate, but his expression betrays hesitancy rather than the smug satisfaction Iwaizumi was honestly expecting, and he guesses Oikawa is probably as nervous as he is. That thought is oddly comforting.
He brings a hand up to rest on the back of Oikawa’s neck, to calm him. “Are you okay?”
Oikawa huffs out a breath that ruffles his fringe and makes Iwaizumi chuckle. “I’ve been waiting to do this since middle school,” he confesses. “I’m a little bit terrified.”
Iwaizumi’s eyes widen. “Middle school?” He laughs again, torn between bitterness and amusement when he thinks about the hours they wasted craving what they thought they couldn’t have, the days they might have spent together had they only known. “Why didn’t you?”
Oikawa swats his arm. “You could have kissed me,” he retorts. "Why didn't you?"
True, Iwaizumi reasons, he could have. But then, some part of him (the hopeless romantic part, probably – he can’t deny that part exists) thinks it wouldn’t have been as good without the anticipation, the build-up – without the two of them sitting here, cross-legged on Oikawa’s bed, giggling at how ridiculous and obtuse they’ve been all these years.
“I will,” Iwaizumi tells him. “Now I will.”
And he does. It's not perfect, but it's pretty close.