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“Oi, Oikawa.”
“Hm?” Oikawa tilted his chin towards Iwaizumi, but kept his eyes glued on his phone.
“How…” Iwaizumi coughed. “How did you know you liked guys?”
There was a pause, then Oikawa turned the screen off and looked at Iwaizumi with a sparkle in his eye that he didn’t like. “Ah, and why do you ask that, Iwa-chan?”
His face heated. “Well, I was just wondering. I mean I was thinking. Like, I mean—”
“You having any thoughts?” The corner of his mouth quirked up. “Any cute guys catch your eye?”
Oikawa had always had a magnetism to him that he wielded unfairly. It was a combination of his charm and his passion for everything and his actual, genuine competence—it was why he’d become captain of the volleyball team, why every single obasan in a ten mile radius fell in love with him and doted on him, why he had a fan club of girls swarming him like he was the male lead in a J-drama. Iwaizumi wasn’t immune to it, he’d just lived mostly at the outskirts of Oikawa’s influence, like a bug treading along the shade of a tree, barely ever poking a foot into direct sunlight.
Except for now. Oikawa: turning the full force of his gaze onto him with that gentle, teasing smile he used to charm his way out of trouble. The sun burned bright through the window of Oikawa’s bedroom, haloing his head with light.
“No!” Iwaizumi burst. “I don’t— no. I was just…thinking. And, uh, wondering. Because you came out in middle school, so I didn’t know how you knew. Like if there was something you did. To, um, know you were sure.”
“Something I did?” Oikawa tapped his chin thoughtfully. “No, I can’t say I did something to be sure.”
“Oh.” He didn’t mean to sound so disappointed, but he nearly up and ran out of the room when Oikawa glanced at him. “Then…then how do you figure out if you like guys?”
“Well.” Oikawa’s smile broadened dangerously—a slash of white in the shadow of the room, a streak of stardust against the night. He learned close, voice conspiratorially low. “Do you wanna figure it out right now?”
Iwaizumi wouldn’t say that he’d never thought about it before.
The thought of maybe possibly sort of liking guys always came fleetingly, and faintly enough that he thought he’d made it up himself. And so, he always dismissed it because he’d always known that he liked girls, so it didn’t seem like an urgent issue to figure out if he felt the same for guys.
But then Oikawa came out at the end of middle school.
Oikawa, being Oikawa, had gathered everyone in the locker room at the end of practice and then climbed atop a bench like he was about to make an important address. He stood above them all with a grim sort of look that had everyone shuffle into place because Oikawa only ever looked like that when he wanted to say something serious.
“I have to tell you guys something,” he said.
“Oh?” Matsukawa raised an eyebrow. “Are you pregnant?”
Oikawa glared. “No, Mattsun. I’m being serious. I’m trying to bear my heart to you.”
“Ah, so I can leave, then?”
“Mattsun.”
There was a bit of murmuring among the gathering of volleyball members, all of them glancing at each other with concern over whether or not they should stay or go. Iwaizumi sighed and brought his fingers to his mouth.
He whistled sharply, cutting through the sound. Silence fell over the crowd as a dozen pairs of eyes turned to look at him.
“Oi,” he muttered. “Listen.”
Oikawa shot him a dazzling grin. “Thank you, Iwa-chan.”
He rolled his eyes.
The smile fell away and Oikawa sighed, turning serious again. He glanced around the locker room, darting over every face in the crowd, and Iwaizumi could imagine the inner monologue running through his head, trying to muster up the courage to speak.
Iwaizumi uncrossed his arms. He almost broke and went up to the bench but then Oikawa sucked in a breath and said:
“I’m bi.”
Iwaizumi exhaled.
There was a beat of silence.
“What does that mean?” Some first-year whispered.
“It means I like guys,” answered Oikawa.
“Shocker,” muttered Hanamaki.
“Who could have ever seen that coming?” Matsukawa said flatly.
Oikawa glared at them.
“But doesn’t that make you gay?” The first-year asked.
“No,” Oikawa said calmly. “Because I like girls also.”
“Oh.” The first-year’s face twisted like he was staring at a particularly hard math problem. And maybe it was too much for some thirteen year-old to fathom a new sexuality other than “gay,” but at least he’d just been confused and hadn’t done anything stupid.
There was another pause, mostly silent except for Matsukawa and Hanamaki quietly snickering to each other in the corner. All in all, Iwaizumi knew Oikawa would consider the response underwhelming, but at least no one had said anything negative.
Finally, Oikawa clapped his hands together. “Anyway, I just wanted to let you all know about this new development in my life. And that it won’t be weird—I won’t hit on you or anything.” Suddenly, he grinned. “Because you’re all too ugly for my tastes anyway!”
A chorus of grumbles erupted as Oikawa jumped off the bench and made his way towards Iwaizumi.
“You did it,” said Iwaizumi.
“I did.” Oikawa smiled again—less of a grin from the bench and more genuine.
“Congratulations,” he said. Then, quieter, “I’m proud of you.”
“Aww, Iwa-chan.” The apples of his cheeks turned a light pink, framing the edges of his smile. “Thank you.”
Iwaizumi rolled his eyes, shoving his hands in his pockets. “Whatever.”
“You know, you could have just texted the group chat about that.” Matsukawa appeared behind them with Hanamaki following shortly after. “I really thought you were about to say you were having a kid or something.”
“Text the group chat?” Oikawa narrowed his eyes. “Mattsun, are you serious? You want me to reveal an important and pivotal part of my life through text?”
“I mean yeah.” Matsukawa picked at a hangnail. “I kinda already knew anyway.”
“You did?”
“It was pretty obvious,” added Hanamaki.
“It was not!”
“It was.” Matsukawa turned to Iwaizumi with a wicked glint in his eye. “Right, Iwa-chan?”
Iwaizumi frowned. “The fuck’s up with that look? And also, I can’t answer that because I already knew.”
“You did?”
“Yeah, Oikawa told me a few days ago.”
Matsukawa’s eyebrows climbed all the way up behind his fringe. “He did?”
“Why are you so surprised?” Oikawa screeched.
“Did you tell him anything else?” Hanamaki asked, incredulous.
“Like what?” Iwaizumi raised an eyebrow.
“What exactly happened?”
“I just told, Iwa-chan,” said Oikawa. “No big deal.”
Iwaizumi gave him a flat look. “You showed up at my room at nine in the fucking morning and cried. That’s what happened.”
“Ah, don’t tell them that,” Oikawa whined.
But that was what happened. And a little more. Iwaizumi had known first because Oikawa—the dumb fuck—was his best friend and Iwaizumi ended up bearing the brunt of Oikawa’s thoughts first before anyone else. So why wouldn’t he know this part either? Both the fear in his eyes and all that followed?
But now that he’d told the team, now that the words had come out and crystallized into something solid, the secret grew beyond the seed into something real for the world beyond just the two of them. And Iwaizumi, selfishly, felt a sense of loss at that.
He tried not to think about it.
“...figure it out how?” Iwaizumi frowned.
“You could kiss me.” The corner of Oikawa’s mouth tipped up.
His face flamed. “Why the fuck would I do that?”
“You don’t want to kiss me, Iwa-chan?” Oikawa pressed a hand to his chest. “I’m heartbroken. You could have let me down easier than that.”
Iwaizumi kicked out a leg at Oikawa’s shins. “Shut up, Shittykawa.”
Oikawa rolled away, laughing. “Okay, okay, but hear me out: I think this is a great course of action for you. If you kiss me and you feel something, then you like men. If you don’t, then you don’t. Easy.”
“Or I could just not be attracted to you,” he said flatly.
Oikawa smiled. “Impossible.”
“I don’t know what the fuck goes on in your head that that was the first thing you thought of.” Iwaizumi rubbed the space between his eyes. “God, get out of here, you’re giving me a headache.”
“Aww, don’t be like that, Iwa-chan.”
The mattress shifted. He snapped his head up to find Oikawa had leaned over.
“Get away from me!” He jumped, heart slamming against his ribcage. Oikawa’s eyes were entirely too close, wide enough that he could see into the depths of his pupils. “What are you doing?”
Oikawa’s hand landed in the space between them, fingers splayed and almost touching his pinky. “Nothing you don’t want me to do. But it’s worth a shot, isn’t it?”
What the fuck do you say to that? How do you respond when someone’s staring you straight in the face, leaning close enough that your magnetic fields collide? Iwaizumi’s throat felt full of cotton still with the seeds tangled in, like he couldn’t speak without the words scraping against his throat.
“It doesn’t have to be long,” said Oikawa. “Just tell me yes or no, Iwa-chan.”
Yes or no? Were there no other options? What if he just ran away?
Oikawa watched him, eyes flickering down then back up. After a long moment, he let out a sigh and started to lean back and something close to panic grabbed Iwaizum’s left lung as Oikawa turned away, the skin of his neck revealing itself as he looked down. Iwaizumi sat up and swung his leg underneath his body, pushing forward on a knee as air raced down his throat again and punched out a, “Wait.”
Oikawa froze. Then, he looked up with a strange sparkle in his eye.
“Yes, Iwa-chan?”
Iwaizumi had kissed one person before: a girl. Hiromi had asked him on a date in their first year of high school and he remembered Oikawa, Matsukawa, and Hanamaki all chanting in a circle to say, “Yes, yes, yes Hiromi-chan, I’ll go on a date with you. I’ll go on a date with you so neither of us will die virgins.” (Oikawa had said the former, Matsukawa and Hanamaki had said the latter.)
They’d done the standard awkward first teenage date of getting dinner where they barely looked at each other and then sitting in an empty movie theater in the back row where they kept their hands dutifully and frightfully to themselves. But it was sweet and entertaining enough, and when they emerged, they managed to hold hands on the walk home without combusting on the way. When they reached her house, Hiromi had looked up at him expectantly.
Iwaizumi had been told—multiple times—that he could be dense, but even he knew it was his cue to do something. So, he leaned down and kissed her.
He remembered thinking she smelled nice and her lips were soft, but that was about it. It just felt like skin on skin and even the pressure was underwhelming.
When they pulled apart, she’d given him a gentle smile that would have tugged at his heart had there not been something already blocking it. It was a fine date. And Hiromi was really, really cute, but not quite what he was looking for. And so he bid her goodnight and that was that. They passed each other in the hall the next day and she gave him a friendly wave, but neither of them made a move to talk to each other again.
He remembered Hanamaki and Matsukawa pouncing on him the moment they saw each other in practice. They hounded him with stupid questions like if his breath smelled bad or if he broke her nose when they kissed and Iwaizumi just shoved them away and threatened to spike a volleyball at their heads when he saw Oikawa tentatively peering at him around a locker door.
“What the fuck do you want?” barked Iwaizumi.
Surprisingly, Oikawa didn’t bite back. He just asked, softly, “How was your date, Iwa-chan?”
“Fine,” he said, a bit gruffer than he intended.
“Did you kiss her?”
He suddenly felt shy, though he wasn’t sure why. “...yeah.”
“Ah.” A pause. “Are you going to see her again?”
Iwaizumi shrugged. “Probably not.”
“Oh? Why not?” Oikawa shut the locker door. “Bad kisser? Didn’t like her?”
“No she wasn’t. I mean—nah, she was nice, just…” He tried to replay the night, the awkward dinner and the movie, the curve of her palm against his, the smell of her perfume when he leaned in, and how objectively nice she was, but she was just—“Not what I was looking for, I think.”
“I see.” Oikawa hummed. “Interesting.”
Iwaizumi frowned at him. “Why is that interesting?”
Oikawa suddenly grinned and threw an arm over his shoulder. “I just think it’s funny…” He tugged Iwaizumi close enough until he could smell the musk of the locker room and his deodorant on him. He had the startling thought that it wasn’t nearly as gross as it should have been, and he couldn’t pull his face away from the curve of Oikawa’s neck before Oikawa leaned in and whispered, “...that you’ll die a virgin after all!”
Iwaizumi shoved him off. “You are dead, Shittykawa!”
Oikawa laughed so hard he nearly tripped over a bench. He threw a glance back before he erupted with laughter again and stumbled over his feet trying to get out of the locker room. Iwaizumi chased him all the way into the gym where he scooped a volleyball off the ground and pelted him until Irihata found them and yelled at them to start setting up for practice.
“I’m waiting, Iwa-chan.” The corner of Oikawa’s mouth tipped up.
Ah. Okay, alright. “Actually—I think—” Iwaizumi’s face flamed because Jesus fucking Christ how did anyone ever say this with a straight face. “Can I actually kiss you? To, uh, figure out if I—um.”
“Figure out what” His eyes sparkled, teasing.
Iwaizumi pressed on. “Can I?”
Oikawa’s face softened. “Of course, anything for you, Iwa-chan.”
Iwaizumi looked down at the space between them, their hands lay inches away from each other and stark against the dark blue of the sheets. He shifted, pinky twitching forward, then he tipped his head back to find Oikawa watching him with wide eyes just a breath away. The slow momentum that had been carrying him forward halted, freezing him in place.
“Aw, are you feeling shy?”
The feeling evaporated. “Fuck off,” Iwaizumi said, then he kissed him.
This was what he remembered about kissing from the singular one he’d had: the pressure of mouths against mouths, how he was supposed to do something with his hands, that he should tilt his head.
He focused on none of these things now except the pressure, the way their lips pressed together, unmoving, and how soft Oikawa’s mouth was.
And then Oikawa moved, pushing forward a fraction of a centimeter but the movement made Iwaizumi’s nerves crackle like a dying firework. He laid his hand on top of Oikawa’s on the sheets before he realized he had even moved, and he thought that the back of Oikawa’s hand was a little rough—but he knew this already because Oikawa had had dry hands for as long as they’d known each other. Every sound, every movement, every feeling made him twitch like he was tinder ready to catch fire.
This was certainly different from kissing Hiromi, the way the hunger gripped him like a thief, how he wanted to devour all the smells in the air and all the scents Oikawa could give—his hair, his shirt, his laundry detergent, the light sheen of summer on his skin, the salt of humidity on his lower lip.
It wasn’t a long kiss, though. And before Iwaizumi took his third breath, Oikawa was already pulling away. A strong, hollow sense of disappointment smacked the back of his head at the loss of contact, and—ah, maybe he should unpack that.
“So?” asked Oikawa.
So? So? Iwaizumi’s mouth was still frozen and he hadn’t moved his head out of place. But the instant he looked Oikawa in the eye, he felt shy—to his great mortification and dismay.
“I certainly felt…something.”
“And what would that ‘something’ be?” Oikawa asked lightly.
“I’m…” He felt the sense that he needed to pick the correct answer or he’d lose something. But all he could manage was, “Not sure.”
Oikawa narrowed his eyes. Then, he smiled—the one he used on the court when he stared at a new team on the other side. It was the kind of smile that was born from the sureness that he knew something that the other side didn’t.
“Then,” said Oikawa. “Should we give it another go?”
Oikawa came out to him a few days before he told the team. He’d broken into Iwaizumi’s room on a Saturday morning and climbed over his sheets to whisper, “Iwa-chan, Iwa-chan I have to tell you something.”
Iwaizumi had still been breaking through the crust of sleep when he opened his eyes to find Oikawa above him, knuckles white, jaw clenched, and tears sparkling under the rims of his eyes. He’d shot up, thinking that Oikawa was dying, when Oikawa said, “I’m bi. Like bisexual.”
Iwaizumi stared at him for a long moment before he finally fell back onto the bed and pulled a pillow over his face, grunting, “Get out.”
There was a beat of silence. Then, “...do you hate me?”
He’d heard the uncertainty in Oikawa’s voice, how it was quieter than it should have been. He heaved a long sigh then pulled the pillow off his face to look at him. “No, I don’t hate you. But why the fuck did you need to tell me at nine a.m. on a Saturday?”
His eyes cleared instantly. “It was important!” Oikawa cried indignantly. “I wanted you to know.”
“Well, now I know,” said Iwazumi. “So get out.”
Oikawa did not, in fact, get out. Instead, he sucked his lower lip between his teeth and chewed.
“I think I should tell the team,” said Oikawa.
“Sure, if you want.”
“Iwa-chan!”
“God, what?” Iwaizumi rubbed his ear.
“You’re not being very enthusiastic about this very pivotal moment in my life.”
“Let me remind you again: it’s nine a.m.”
“Am I not good enough for you in the mornings?”
“No.” And then he kicked Oikawa off the bed and rolled back into his sheets.
“Ah, what if the team makes me change outside the locker room?” Oikawa murmured softly from his new spot on the floor. “Do you—do you think they’ll hate me for being attracted to guys?”
Iwaizumi’s heart squeezed. “If any of them do, I’ll kick their ass.”
He expected Oikawa to coo or tease him about violence, but maybe this whole morning was softer than normal, because he just said, “Thank you. I appreciate it.”
Iwaizumi suddenly found that he couldn’t fall asleep anymore. There was a long stretch of silence as he stared at his own fingertips curling into the pillow.
“Are you sure you don’t hate me?”
Iwaizumi kicked back, heel grazing the back of Oikawa’s head. “Yes, I’m sure, Stupidkawa. It’s not a big deal.”
“...it’s a big deal to me.”
He could hear the pout in his voice and rushed to clarify. “I mean, like, you’re still my best friend whoever you date. So it doesn’t change anything. For me.”
A pause. Then, “Aw, Iwa-chan. That’s so sweet. You’re giving me butterflies.” And there, that sounded more normal, so Iwaizumi let himself relax a little further.
“Either way, I’ll feel bad for whatever poor fuck ends up dating you.”
“Hey!”
And just like that, the air snapped back to normal. Oikawa climbed back onto the bed to grab at Iwaizumi while Iwaizumi kicked out to try and knock him off the bed again.
Iwaizumi had said that it didn’t change anything for him, but that wasn’t it exactly. Not with the way every graze of contact with Oikawa felt like a spark as they wrestled through the sheets, but maybe he was just feeling a little oversensitive that morning. To know this now, to have this new fact burrow under his skin—something stirred from deep below his ribs.
He’d said he would pity whoever ended up dating Oikawa, but the more repressed part of him whispered that he could now be considered in that pool of poor fucks—if Oikawa ever wanted.
But Iwaizumi clamped down on that thought and shoved it away, focusing instead on throwing himself on top of Oikawa and smothering him with a pillow.
This time Oikawa leaned in. And when their mouths touched, he kissed Iwaizumi like he had something to prove.
Their hands had stayed mostly to themselves the first time, but now Iwaizumi felt a hand brushing against his knee. He nearly jumped, but the hand clamped down and held him in place, and what else could he do except stay?
Iwaizumi didn’t know the mechanics of kissing, having only done it once before, but he let instinct drive him forward because he figured that with enough fumbling he was sure he’d do something right. He poked his tongue out—which he didn’t do with Hiromi—and let out an almost violent shiver when Oikawa’s tongue met him back. He licked at the bottom lip, then the top lip, then pressed in, absolutely out of his mind with the sudden frenzy of his rapidly beating heart and a chorus of what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck clamoring through his head.
His hand moved before his mind caught up, and suddenly there was a fistful of Oikawa’s shirt in there. If you looked at the hand and the shirt alone, it’d look how many of their fights in the gym started.
Great way to end one quickly, he thought before Oikawa bit his lower lip and all of his thoughts turned to static again.
Iwaizumi had expected the fire, the way the pit of his stomach started burning as their legs shifted closer together on the bed, but he didn’t expect the drowning and how overwhelming it all was. For all Oikawa called him a blockhead, even he was sure that he wouldn’t feel something like this if he did not like men. But was it men overall? Or just Oikawa?
But maybe he knew the answer to that. Maybe he’d known all along. He just didn’t realize that it could mean something.
His lungs started to ache, but nothing except death itself could make him want to pull away at that moment. He held on as long as he could—gripping Oikawa’s shoulders, his shirt, inhaling the smell of him like he could swallow him whole with a breath—before he finally pulled back, gasping for air. He couldn’t tell if the pounding in his heart was from the lack of oxygen or whatever the fuck Oikawa learned to do with the tilt of his chin.
Iwaizumi let go of his shirt slowly, unfurling one finger at a time until his hand dropped to the space between them.
Oikawa tilted his head.
Iwaizumi’s heart fluttered and oh, oh, oh, this was certainly clarifying a lot of things.
Iwaizumi wouldn’t say that he’d known he’d known for years. That’d be inaccurate, because why else would he still be questioning today? But there were hints and signs that would make so much sense in hindsight—like how kissing Hiromi didn’t feel right, not because she was a girl, but because she was Hiromi and not someone else; like how Oikawa had revealed that he liked men and Iwaizumi had to check himself for the next week to make sure he was acting normal ; like how sometimes Oikawa would smile and he’d find himself staring for as long as he wouldn’t be caught, just thinking over and over that Oikawa had nice teeth, that his eyes crinkled like a waxing moon, that the lines at the corners of his mouth almost looked like dimples and that was the most fascinating image in the world—but he hadn’t reached hindsight yet. He only knew that the feelings were small enough that he could pretend they were tricks of light.
But maybe he’d always been looking at his best friend for a little too long. When their friendship started at the age of five, both of them still sticky and gross and enamored with every new and shiny thing in the world, he accepted that he’d always be staring at Oikawa as a fact of life.
New things you learn at five years old: your parents can give you money to buy your own snacks, you have the wrist strength to open the door by yourself, your best friend’s gap-toothed smile is the most magnetic thing in the world and you can’t look at it directly or you’d go blind.
But again, that was just a fact of life, something so normal that he forgot to wonder if it meant anything at all.
“So,” Oikawa said, breathless. “What’s the verdict?”
Iwaizumi, kissed stupid, said, “Huh?”
“Do you think you like guys?”
God, did he fucking like guys? “I—I mean—” He resisted the urge to bury his face in his hands. “Fucking— obviously.”
Oikawa lit up. “ ‘Obviously?’ I didn’t know you were a flatterer, Iwa-chan.”
Iwaizumi whipped a pillow at his head.
“What the fuck?” Oikawa dodged. “What did you do that for?”
He couldn’t articulate how embarrassed he felt, so he turned away and sat there clenching and unclenching his fists. Oikawa ducked down to try and look at him, but he knew that if they made eye contact, he’d combust on the spot.
“Use your words, Iwa-chan. I know that can be hard for you sometimes,” said Oikawa wryly.
“I don’t…know what you want me to say.” His jaw started to hurt from clenching so tight.
“Hmm, maybe start talking about how much you liked kissing me?”
Iwaizumi reached for another pillow and Oikawa raised his hands yelling, “Wait, wait, wait!”
He put the pillow back down.
“I’m just teasing you, Iwa-chan,” said Oikawa. “Please, have mercy on me. I’ll tell you how much I liked kissing you!”
Somehow that made it worse. Iwaizumi groaned and folded forward until he was burying his face in the pillow he’d abandoned.
“No, no, don’t get shy on me now. Come on.” Oikawa grabbed him by the shoulders and hauled him back up until they were honest to god looking each other in the face, his eyes bright and deep and so dark Iwaizumi could drown in them. “You can kiss me again instead of hiding your face. Just say the word.”
God, god, god, what the fuck do you say to that? His chest twisted painfully to the right, like his lungs were folding over themselves and the only way he could breathe again was if he put his mouth on Oikawa’s mouth right now.
Instead, he said, “You never answered my question.”
Oikawa faltered. “Huh?”
“About…about how you knew you liked guys.”
“Well.” Oikawa smiled again, and this one was shyer. “I knew because I always wanted to kiss you.”
“Oh.” He blinked. “Well, I always wanted to kiss you, too, but I didn’t realize it meant anything.” He frowned. “Shit, maybe I am a blockhead.”
Oikawa pecked him on the forehead and Iwaizumi startled at the casualness of it. “Duh.”
“Hey!”
“Well, I’m so glad you figured that out.” Oikawa reached over and grabbed Iwaizumi’s hand, lacing their fingers together. “Now let’s go on a proper date because you’ve kept me waiting long enough.”