Archive of Our Own

Present Day

Flight 2847 to Seoul, Korea. Departure: 23:45. Status: CANCELLED.

“Attention all passengers: Due to the approaching storm, all flight operations have been suspended. Passengers should contact their airline for rebooking assistance. Limited hotel information is available at the information counters. We appreciate your patience and understanding during this time.”

Oikawa stares at his phone until the letters blur.

He’s exhausted, his ass is numb, and a headache is beginning to form right above his temples. He’s been here for eight hours, gone through three flight delays, and now this. Nevermind the seven hour flight he took to even get into this situation. He’s been awake for over twenty four hours and is running on coffee and will power.

Oikawa lifts his head from staring at the wall of bad news on his phone to see airport passengers scattered in different groups—the ones that are panicking, the ones accepting their fate, and the ones who made accommodations before everyone else because they’re the type to bring an umbrella on a hot sunny day. 

A man is aggressively hollering into his phone and switching languages the angrier he gets. Someone else is collapsed at the airline counter and pleading with the gate agent, the way Oikawa was twenty minutes ago. A mother of five sits with her kids and their luggage as they all try to fight tears and fail—a family vacation stopped dead in its tracks.

Oikawa can’t blame them, he wants to cry, too. He’s tired, and grumpy, and feels like a blithering idiot, because all of this is his fault. He made a bet with the universe that he could have his way. 

The universe gave him a typhoon in response. And because he’s stubborn and held out hope that his flight wouldn’t cancel—flights hardly cancel, he told himself—he didn’t book a hotel. 

He groans as he sinks his face into his hands. He booked this flight to Japan on impulse and pathetically lost all his nerve on the way to baggage claim. One look at that No Reentry sign and he turned right back around and booked the first flight out to anywhere he could pretend this lapse of judgment never happened. He opted for Seoul. He’s been to Seoul a few times. And it was the shortest flight he could find.

So much for that plan.

Oikawa lets his head fall back against the window. Outside, rain lashes against the glass in sheets. According to the departures board, nothing's flying out until at least tomorrow afternoon. Maybe longer than that.

He closes his eyes. This is the seventh circle of hell. He’s certain of it.

Two days ago, Hanamaki called Oikawa to catch up on life while he was out of town, strolling the streets of Singapore and enjoying warm sunshine.

“He didn’t ask about you.”

Oikawa should have reacted like any person would, with grace that shows both support and indifference.

He almost hit a bike in the street and dropped his ice cream. Something in his chest cracked open and flooded him with panic. He stood in the middle of the crossroad staring at his lost scoop of ice cream melting into the asphalt. A car horn sent him stumbling to the opposite end of the pavement where he clutched the street light to keep himself upright.

“Tooru?! Tooru are you—”

“I’m alright,” Oikawa lied, his mouth going dry. He recovered enough to apologize for scaring the wits out of his best friend and ran home. Then he went looking. He surfed through social media, mutual friends, photos, stories, anything to find a crumb of evidence. He knew it would crush him, but he had to see it for himself. 

Had he moved on?

Had he found someone?

Then he saw it. An old post from a few weeks ago with an arm around a stranger. The arm that used to fit around Oikawa. He was smiling in a way that Oikawa worried might be too close for comfort. It could have meant nothing, but it could have meant everything. The worst part was Oikawa couldn’t tell.

His legs moved on their own. He sprinted towards his computer and began searching for flights. Not even a day later he had packed his bags and was headed to the airport with only one thing on his mind.

He hoped he wasn’t too late.

Five years ago

It goes like this.

Hanamaki really likes music. So much that he does it for a living. He also really likes concerts, enough to go alone, much as Oikawa thinks that’s a crazy thing to do. One night, he bumped into a tall, dark, and handsome stranger and they’ve been inseparable since. 

Matsukawa Issei, or as Oikawa calls him, Moneybags Mattsun.

He’s devilishly handsome, sharp, and witty. And he’s obscenely rich.

Like rent-an-entire-island-for-fun-rich.

“An entire island?!”

“Well, I was going to see if you—”

Oikawa said yes before Hanamaki finished asking. 

“Issei says you’ll fit right in,” Makki told him. 

Whatever that meant. 

Oikawa wasn’t about to pass up this opportunity. First class tickets, a driver, and an entire island to themselves with no one around? He was packed weeks before they flew out. 

Five nights and four days in the French Polynesia on a private island resort, a fully stocked villa with a view pulled right out of a postcard, and nothing to do but lay about under sun and sand.

“Are we dreaming?” Oikawa asked when they walked through the doors of their villa. 

“We are wide awake, babe,” Hanamaki said in equal disbelief.

Oikawa didn’t think it could get any better than this.

“Iwaizumi Hajime. Nice to meet you.”

He had never been more wrong.

Hot doesn't begin to cover it.

He’s broad, muscular, and bronzed—the kind of tan that can’t be achieved from a bottle. His shorts are hanging low on his hips and drawing way too much attention to the v-shaped lines on his stomach. His teeth are pearly white, Oikawa notices, as his lips pull back into a smile, and those hazel green eyes are staring right back at him.

Oikawa can’t bring himself to look away.

The man is lethally attractive. And he happens to be Matsukawa’s best friend.

“Oikawa,” Iwaizumi says his name like he’s practicing.

“Iwaizumi,” Oikawa replies, his stomach flipping when their hands slide together.

“You two can get familiar a little later. There are more introductions to be made,” Matsukawa says it through a smirk as he claps Iwaizumi on his shoulder.

Iwaizumi is slow to let go of Oikawa’s hand as he turns toward the beach. “I’ll hold you to it.”

Oikawa smiles. “Please do.” 

After Matsukawa promised later, Oikawa began counting. He counted all the people he met—Matsukawa’s siblings, business partners, friends he’d known for years. He counted the minutes that dragged between each conversation. And almost every chance he could, he looked for Iwaizumi. 

Sometimes they’d make eye contact, sometimes they wouldn’t. Each time Oikawa felt a thrill surge through him.

All night they circled each other.

And finally, after several rounds of polite conversation and an extensive dinner, Oikawa got his chance.

“I’m going to be stolen away from you now,” Oikawa says to Hanamaki when he spots Iwaizumi headed right for him from across the beach. They’ve all reconvened down by the bar, this time with chairs circled around a few bonfires, and plenty of ingredients to make s’mores. There’s even an ice cream bar next to all the alcohol.

“Stolen? You’re practically running,” Hanamaki drawls with a laugh. 

Oikawa squeezes his hand and leans into his ear. “Be safe, have fun, answer me when I text you, please.”

“Be safe, have fun, answer me when I text you,” Hanamaki parrots, smiling. “Love you.”

“Hate you,” Oikawa replies.

He stands up and weaves through the crowd towards Iwaizumi, meeting him in front of the ice cream bar. Iwaizumi peeks at him while reaching for a sugar cone topped with coconut ice cream. “Want one?”

“Sure,” Oikawa smiles and wraps his fingers around the cone. Electricity twitches as they brush fingers. “Were you that determined to find me tonight?”

“Is it bad if I was?”

“Not at all,” Oikawa grins. 

Iwaizumi grabs his cone and swivels, gesturing toward a few unoccupied seats toward the bonfire at the edge. Oikawa sits first, watching Iwaizumi slowly sink into the seat next to him. He drags his tongue experimentally over his ice cream and watches Iwaizumi take his movements in slow.

“You’re not very subtle,” Iwaizumi notes.

“No,” Oikawa shrugs, “should I be?”

“Not at all,” Iwaizumi shakes his head, “I know I haven’t been.”

“You like what you see. So do I.” Oikawa swipes his tongue along his bottom lip to catch the creamy sweet, smirking when Iwaizumi stares at his mouth for a beat.

“Mattsun says you work together?” Oikawa begins. A little conversation can’t hurt what’s already brewing between the two of them. 

Iwaizumi clears his throat and adjusts in his seat. “Yeah. Different departments, but we cross paths regularly. Hanamaki mentioned you travel quite a bit?”

Oikawa nods. “I work remotely, so I can be anywhere I want to be. It’s perfect.”

“No home base?”

“Wherever my sister is. Or Makki. Staying in one place makes me restless.”

Iwaizumi’s expression shifts slightly. “Fair enough. Sister?”

“Older. She spoils me,” Oikawa winks. “You?”

“Only child. And, I don’t doubt that,” Iwaizumi smirks over a bite. 

Their conversation drifts into their backgrounds, how long they’ve known their mutual friends, what got them into the line of work they do today. Iwaizumi tells Oikawa how he almost didn’t make this trip because of a last minute cancellation of his cat sitter—Oikawa laughed for a good two minutes. He tells Iwaizumi about his travels, places he’s been, places he wants to go.

Conversation comes easy between them, as does laughter.

At some point during the night they drift closer, and closer still, until Oikawa can smell the sunscreen and salt water warm on Iwaizumi’s skin. 

“Is this your first time on a private island?” Oikawa asks, eyes running along Iwaizumi’s frame. He experimentally taps a finger on Iwaizumi’s knuckle and follows a line, tracing a light vein slow through his forearm. It’s meant to be exploratory more than it is flirtatious, but when Iwaizumi’s hair stands on end, those green eyes darken with something feral that makes Oikawa’s hips twitch.

“No,” Iwaizumi answers softly. “First time on this one, though.” He shifts in his seat and responds by resting a hand on Oikawa’s thigh. 

“What’s different about this one?”

“Nicer views,” Iwaizumi’s follows a trail along Oikawa’s body from bottom to top until their eyes meet. “Better company.”

Oikawa gives him a knowing look. They’ve done the introduction, the small talk, and the banter. They’re isolated from the stragglers on the beach who, if aware, aren’t paying any mind to their proximity. 

Only thing left is the question.

Do you want to go somewhere quieter?

Oikawa isn’t afraid to ask, but Iwaizumi looks as though he’s mulling something over. He gives him a minute to decide, hopefully in Oikawa’s favor.

Iwaizumi’s head does a swivel to look around at the beach, and then back to Oikawa, his jaw tightening with decision.

“Come with me,” he says, moving to stand.

Well, that wasn’t a question, but Oikawa isn’t complaining. “Where are we going?” He takes his hand anyway.

“To see those views,” Iwaizumi grunts and heads for the walkway.

On their way out, both Matsukawa and Hanamaki send them knowing smiles. Oikawa offers them a wave as Iwaizumi tugs them off the beach and along the trail toward the villas. The pulsing music and low hum of chatter fade into the background as he guides Oikawa along a trail uphill. He tugs Oikawa to the side to allow a few passersby through, a couple of drunken guests making their way down toward the beach. They exchange glances and laugh when they hear one of them start chanting for s’mores in slurred speech.

They turn a corner by a patch of dense foliage just before a villa—Iwaizumi’s villa. The moon is bright enough to see by, breaking through the giant leaves overhead and reflecting in silver streaks along the water below.

“So,” Oikawa begins, “is this the view you were talking about?”

Iwaizumi stops just before the entry gate to the villa and turns around. He looks down at their linked hands, before lifting his eyes to meet Oikawa’s. “It’s better from the balcony.”

The air is warm, even warmer between them in the silence. The chemistry that’s been brewing between them all night has finally reached a boiling point.

Oikawa has a rule. He doesn’t kiss his flings. It’s nothing personal, it’s just easier to cut ties afterward.

He’s been envisioning all night how this will go between them. An invite to the villa, maybe a cocktail, and slowly they’ll start peeling out of their clothes and screw each other’s brains out.

But Iwaizumi is staring at his lips and drawing a hand around his waist, and Oikawa can’t really find it in him to set the boundary.

It’s not tentative. Iwaizumi kisses him like he’s been thinking about it all night—all day maybe, like he knew this moment was meant to happen. Oikawa responds in kind, curling a hand gently into Iwaizumi’s shirt. He tastes like coconut and something warmer, sweeter, that Oikawa wants to drown in.

Iwaizumi kisses him deep and steady, prying his mouth open and gliding tongues together in a heat that makes Oikawa sigh. He pushes Iwaizumi backward to suck on his tongue and hears the thud of the front door. Iwaizumi easily turns the latch as they tumble inside. As soon as the lock snaps, Iwaizumi’s hands begin to wander.

They start low on Oikawa’s hips and press along his waist, his stomach, his chest. Oikawa whines when the warmth of Iwaizumi’s palms glide along his throat and tilt him backwards against the door frame.

He can’t remember the last time he kissed someone like this. Oikawa whimpers and digs into Iwaizumi’s shoulder, his other hand wringing into his shirt. Iwaizumi smiles against his mouth and sucks on his bottom lip.

“Fuck,” Oikawa rasps, a deep grown falling from his chest when their hips rock together. He’s lightheaded and blinks the spots from his vision as he tries to catch his breath. Iwaizumi waits patiently, thumb rubbing slow circles into his hip and green eyes hungry with something that gives Oikawa butterflies.

That was some kiss. 

This isn’t the first time he’s been charmed by someone he’s about to sleep with, but this is certainly the first time he’s been so enamored that it makes him want to forget all of his rules.

“I should probably say this now,” Oikawa whispers, leaning on the last of his sanity.

Iwaizumi traces his thumb along his jaw. “Yeah?”

“I don’t do relationships,” Oikawa confesses. “They’re messy and complicated. So…”

Iwaizumi’s expression doesn’t change. “Okay.”

“I just—I wanted to be clear,” Oikawa gulps. He feels awkward saying the line he always says when things get heavy. He normally has no issue drawing this line, ensuring that the other party is well aware that he’s not going to hold their hand after.

“We’ve got four days,” Iwaizumi smirks, "I'm not asking for more than that.”

Oikawa searches Iwaizumi’s face for disappointment, for hurt, for something that tells him that he wanted more than this. Then he asks himself why he cares at all if Iwaizumi wants something more or not. Either way, Iwaizumi remains unfazed as he waits for Oikawa to decide.

“Four days,” Oikawa confirms. He can work with that. 

Four days to enjoy paradise, to exist in this bubble, to get this itch out of their system. 

“Come on,” Iwaizumi says, taking his hand. “Balcony is upstairs.”

Oikawa lets his brain turn off as he follows him.

It definitely can’t get any better than this.

Present Day

“Makki, you have to help me.”

“Tooru, I am quite literally across the ocean.”

Oikawa pinches his fingers against his temples and glares at the floor. He doesn’t want the kids next to him to see his scary expression. Especially the youngest, who has been eyeing him repeatedly for the last ten minutes. She looks like she wants to say something, and though Oikawa isn’t exactly feeling chatty, the last thing he wants to do is frighten the young child of a stressed mother.

“Have you tried booking a hotel?” Hanamaki asks.

“No, I just thought I’d sleep on the airport floor—of course I have! Everything is booked! Or it’s way out of my price range…”

Oikawa’s wallet did a small wail when he heard that only a few luxury suites were available at a nearby hotel that cost more than three months worth of his salary a night. He makes good money now, great money, even. But not that much.

“How far out of your price range?

“Y’know, since you started dating a man made of money you have the worst questions,” Oikawa growls and tilts his head back, still covering his face. “Why did you have to go to San Francisco? Why did you leave me here?”

“Babe, the drama.”

“Makki! Be serious!”

“I am serious, Tooru,” Hanamaki hisses into the receiver, “the sun isn’t even up here yet. I’m supposed to be asleep.”

Oikawa twists his mouth. Hanamaki loves his sleep, and he’s also rather jet lagged, so it’s only fair he’s a tad cranky. 

“Did you seriously not book a hotel before you flew all the way out there?”

“Please, don’t.” Guilt replaces anger. “I can’t… Makki I don’t—” Oikawa tries finding the words to explain, but all that comes up is fear, and he can’t admit that out loud. Even if it is painfully obvious. “I just need a shower, and a place that doesn’t smell like airport. Please.”

Hanamaki is silent for a long while. He then says something unintelligible to Matsukawa in the background.

“If it weren’t for the fact that you’re my person… ugh. Okay. We are gonna save your ass,” Hanamaki decides, much to Oikawa’s relief.

“Oh thank god,” Oikawa gasps. “I adore you. Both of you. Thank you,” Oikawa spews his praises. He can see the light at the end of the tunnel, the way out of this hellhole. 

“When your phone rings, answer,” Hanamaki insists. “Tooru, if you don’t answer that phone, you’re stuck in that airport. Do you hear me?”

“I promise,” Oikawa buzzes with excitement. “Makki, Mattsun, thank you.”

“We’re going back to sleep now. Please give me an update when you’re safe and sound?”

“I will,” Oikawa grins, “love you.”

“Hate you,” Hanamaki sneers teasingly into the phone. Oikawa hears his smile before the line goes dead.

He makes a mental note to shop for thank you gifts as soon as he's had a chance to rest and recover from this day’s worth of stress and shame. 

Oikawa sits back and smiles to himself. He’s getting out of here. He’ll have a place to lay his head. Maybe Matsukawa got him a nice stay in a presidential suite somewhere. Soon there will be some driver in a penguin suit, waiting in baggage claim, holding a sign that reads Oikawa’s name. He’s going to take the longest shower and order room service. Maybe then he can spend some time wallowing.

His phone rings.

“Fast,” Oikawa mumbles. Here it comes, his savior, his best friend’s lifeline. Probably some assistant of Mattsun's calling to arrange a driver. Oh how sweet it is to have friends in high places.

Oikawa adjusts his phone in hand to answer and sees the caller ID. The bustling noise of the airport comes to a screeching halt. 

His stomach drops and his throat tightens on reflex as he reads the name across the screen. 

Iwaizumi.

This can’t be happening. How does he know—no. This was his saving grace? Out of all the contacts those two have at their disposal, knowing Oikawa embarrassingly dragged himself to Japan only to turn tail, they called the one person he was trying to avoid?

Oikawa swallows once, twice when the first try gets stuck. The buzzing in his palm is almost painful.

There’s no way this is a coincidence. And the longer Oikawa thinks about it, the more it makes sense. Iwaizumi is the closest out of everyone he can think of. He’s one of the only people that has a car, and he’d be the most willing to peel himself from his bed at almost midnight to drive halfway across the city. 

And by all accounts, Iwaizumi and Oikawa are still technically friends.

The phone rings and rings. Oikawa’s thumb hovers over the screen, hesitating, and then Hanamaki is in his ear. 

If you don’t answer that phone, you’re stuck in that airport. 

Damn it. That’s what he gets for being desperate. 

With no one to blame but himself, he pockets a mouth full of air and answers.

“Iwa-chan,” he breathes, his voice small.

“Stranded, huh?”

Oikawa’s chest blooms with a sensation so strong he presses a hand over his shirt. It’s been so long since Iwaizumi’s voice has been this close to him. His voice is warm like honey, the way Oikawa remembers.

“Uh, yeah,” Oikawa turns to the glass to see the darkened sky and steadily worsening rain. “Bit of an overreaction on the airline's part, if you ask me.”

Iwaizumi chuckles softly, barely audible through the phone. “Right. Well, let’s get you out of there anyway. I can be there in less than forty. What terminal are you at?”

“It’s uhm…” Oikawa forces another swallow. His throat could use some bravery, but he left that behind in Singapore. “It’s a typhoon.”

“I know what it is, Oikawa.”

“It’s the middle of the night.”

“I know that, too.”

Oikawa’s stomach knots almost as bad as his shoulder blades when he hears Iwaizumi's keys jingling and a door latching shut. No talking him out of it now. Oikawa digs the heel of his palm against his forehead to try and push the headache from his skull, but there’s no use. His stress levels are critical. He doesn’t want to stay in this airport. But his only way out right now is either credit card debt, or facing his karma.

“I’ll text you the info. Hey, Iwa-ahem.”

Oikawa said it on reflex when he first answered, but he isn’t sure it’s appropriate to call him by such an affectionate nickname anymore. “Drive safe, will you?”

“I will. Don’t go anywhere.”

“Hah,” Oikawa snorts.

The line goes dead.

Oikawa stares at his screen for a long minute. He debates sending a flurry of messages to Hanamaki, to yell at him for adding onto the worst day of his life. He can’t find the energy to do it, so he texts Iwaizumi the flight info instead.

Then he drops his head into his hands and sighs.

Just when he thought this day couldn’t get any worse. This has to be punishment for wasting money on not one, but two impulse flights. And for thinking that he could reopen a door that they’d closed so long ago.

It was always supposed to be like this. Oikawa convinced himself long ago that he didn’t do love. It was messy, and complicated, and often required sacrifice or compromise, and those were things Oikawa wasn’t willing to commit to. He liked his freedom, and he liked the ability to detach from anything and everything when needed. He could do what he wanted, whenever he wanted it.

He rolled his eyes when people told him “maybe you haven’t met the right person” or “maybe it’s not the right time”.

And then he met Iwaizumi.

Five Years Ago

How naïve Oikawa was, to think that four days was enough.

The balcony view was, in fact, breathtaking.

As was the night he spent in Iwaizumi’s villa. Oikawa can’t remember the last time he’d been handled like that. Or if he’d ever been. Usually he was the one in control, seeking out his release through a face and body that appealed to his senses. Last night, Iwaizumi dragged it out of him. Repeatedly.

The next morning, Oikawa woke up to open windows letting in warm salty air, the sound of beach waves, and Iwaizumi’s head between his legs.

“Good morning,” Iwaizumi hummed against his thighs.

“Good morning,” Oikawa smiled and feathered fingers through Iwaizumi’s hair that soon became a vice grip as he sucked his soul out through his cockhead.

“Are you hungry? I think they’re doing breakfast soon.”

Oikawa could barely give a response as Iwaizumi kissed, licked, nipped against his skin and reduced him to a puddle. Then he flipped him over and let him feel the deep stretch of his cock as he sank into him slow.

“They’ll wonder where we are,” Oikawa whined against him. There was no getting used to that girth.

“Want me to stop?”

Iwaizumi turned his head to slot their mouths together as he rolled his hips torturously.

“No,” Oikawa panted, wriggling backwards into him. “God no.”

If this was paradise, Oikawa didn’t want to leave it.

They showed up to breakfast late, sex drunk and smiling, and covered in each other’s lust.

The rest of the second day they failed to act like they weren’t gravitating towards each other at every moment. They played beach volleyball, both as teammates and opponents. Oikawa and Hanamaki won three out of five.

“Sexy and athletic,” Oikawa said as he clapped his hands into Hanamaki’s and flashed a peace sign to the losing team.

“Just my type,” Iwaizumi responded through a cocky grin.

In the early afternoon, a group decided to go cliff jumping. A large rock stuck out on a jagged edge with a clear and safe drop below. Oikawa peeked out over the edge and felt his knees weaken. He wasn’t exactly the best with heights. 

“That’s quite a drop,” Oikawa said nervously when he looked over the edge.

Iwaizumi squeezed his hand. “Do you trust me?”

For some reason, Oikawa said yes. 

Iwaizumi kissed him hard as they tipped over the ledge into a free fall.

They ogled each other at dinner and snuck away early to Oikawa’s villa. Iwaizumi unraveled him slowly, learning how he liked to be touched all over again. He took him to the bed, the kitchen, the pool. Oikawa’s favorite was the edge of the balcony. Iwaizumi rested him against a nest of pillows and melted their hips together, where they could hear the sounds of life at the resort close enough to feel like they might get caught.

The third day they stopped pretending they weren’t obsessed with each other. They sat together at breakfast, where Iwaizumi draped an arm across the back of Oikawa's chair and sucked maple sugar off the pad of his finger.

During the group hike, Iwaizumi pulled Oikawa to an adjacent trail and ducked into an inlet behind a waterfall. “C’mere." He jerked his head toward the small cavern and tugged them quickly through a cold plunge.

Then he hoisted Oikawa against the wall and kissed him dizzy.

“Here?” Oikawa gasped as Iwaizumi worked his shorts off his hips and gripped tight against his thighs.

“No one will hear us,” Iwaizumi crooned in his ear.

Oikawa had never considered sex behind a waterfall, but Iwaizumi’s shaft pressed against his thigh and mouth on his throat convinced him the idea was genius. And he was right. The sound of water roaring around them concealed all their moans and groans.

“You feel so fucking good,” Iwaizumi growled in his ear. “Like that?”

“Just like that,” Oikawa whined. They fucked until they were sticky and spent, and used their sound barrier to rinse off before rejoining the others. 

“You’re looking radiant,” Hanamaki said when they returned from disappearing. Neither of them could lie about it, both with wet hair and damp clothes and grinning from ear to ear.

“I could say the same to you,” Oikawa shot back with a sneer, looking at Hanamaki’s shirt covering Matsukawa’s handiwork.

“He got you there,” Matsukawa clucked his tongue and threw an arm over Hanamaki’s shoulder.

They spent the rest of the day lazing about in the ocean. Oikawa sprawled out across an inner tube and fed Iwaizumi grapes through his teeth as he swam by.

During dinner they sat together again. This time they talked endlessly about any and everything—food, movies, sports. It didn’t matter what. Time slowed to a crawl in this island getaway and they were making the most of it.

The fourth day, Matsukawa took them all on a boat ride around the island. Oikawa sat tucked against Iwaizumi’s chest towards the back of the boat and pointed out anything interesting in the water or shoreline.

“Iwa-chan, look!” Oikawa pointed out a few donkeys strolling along the beach front.

“Iwa-chan?” Matsukawa raised a brow. Neither of them acknowledged it. They didn’t feel a need to.

The fourth night is when it all came to a head. The realization came with the setting sun that this paradise was almost at its end. Oikawa dreaded having to think about it, and he guessed Iwaizumi sensed it, because his touches were softer, kisses gentler.

“Hey,” Iwaizumi says, gesturing to the steeping mug on the bistro table. He was kind enough to make some tea. Spearmint—Oikawa told him it was one of his favorites. He even warmed one of those delicious apple turnovers. 

“Hey,” Oikawa smiles, settling into the seat next to him.

They’re both quiet for a while. The air is heavy knowing that in a few hours, all of this is over.

Oikawa chews his lip. He puts the entire weekend on replay, knowing that he should be satisfied with what’s transpired and leave it at that. They have an abundance of photos and videos to remember this amazing vacation.

But not enough to remember this. These quieter moments with Iwaizumi that simmer with a warmth Oikawa wants to hold onto.

Ecstasy is still working its way through his bloodstream and he’s afraid of the crash that follows. Oikawa doesn’t hold onto things. It’s in his core principles to live and let live. But letting Iwaizumi become a stranger after all this feels wrong.

“We should stay in touch, after this,” Oikawa finally says, peeking at Iwaizumi over his cup. “As friends, I mean.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Iwaizumi shifts his chair closer to Oikawa wordlessly, but the gesture is enough to send him wheeling. “I mean—I understand if that’s weird, given that we—”

“Oikawa, it’s fine,” Iwaizumi laughs gently, “we’re friends.”

The way he says it makes Oikawa’s chest tight, but he smiles anyway. “I guess this is the part where I get your number, right?”

They exchange numbers and debate which of their many photos they want to use for their contact. Iwaizumi settles on a photo of Oikawa looking back over his shoulder with a playful wrinkle in his nose. Oikawa opts for one of Iwaizumi grinning ear to ear in the sunlight, covered in sand and holding a volleyball.

“What time is your flight?” Oikawa asks.

Iwaizumi’s smile falls slightly. “Ten. Yours?”

“One.”

Iwaizumi looks at Oikawa like he wants to say something. Then he leans forward and kisses him. Oikawa melts into his touch and forgets all about his pastry as he crawls into Iwaizumi’s lap.

“If it’s all the same to you, I think I want our friendship to start when the sun comes up,” Iwaizumi whispers, fingertips already working Oikawa out of the clothes he just put on.

“I like that idea,” Oikawa whispers back.

Iwaizumi carries him to bed and works him open with an urgency he didn’t possess the other days. He etches himself deep into Oikawa and slow, to make him remember all of these moments crystal clear. He doesn’t need to say the words out loud for Oikawa to understand. He’ll miss this.

Oikawa responds in kind, staring into those green eyes as their hips meet against the duvet. As many bites and bruises as Iwaizumi leaves, Oikawa mirrors. He drinks it all in—the way Iwaizumi’s eyes glaze over as he comes undone, the fervent and desperate kisses, the moans that tangle in his throat as he gets close. Oikawa sucks on his tongue and begs him to be closer, to touch him more, to pour everything they have into each other.

The next morning Oikawa wakes up alone, the only trace of Iwaizumi being the shirt on his back.

He makes his way into the kitchen, where a timer has been set to brew coffee. A member of the resort staff pops by with a breakfast tray and a fresh carafe of orange juice.

Oikawa moves to sit down at the kitchen counter and finds a folded note tucked under the catchall tray.

I’m sorry I had to leave you first thing.

Couldn’t bring myself to wake you so I ordered breakfast instead. Coffee should be on by the time you’re up.

You can keep the shirt. Friends keep clothes, right?

Text me when you’re awake.

- Hajime

Oikawa is still staring at the note when he hears the door.

“You better be decent—!” Hanamaki stops dead in the doorway. “Oh my god,” he whispers, mouth agape, taking one long look at Oikawa—swollen mouth, bleary eyes, tousled hair, covered in bites and bruises from his neck to his ankles. Then Hanamaki sees the shirt that isn’t his, the array of breakfast that he didn’t make, and the handwritten note he clearly didn’t write.

Oikawa instinctively folds the note and shoves it into his pocket. “What?” He shrugs and shifts his weight, jamming a bite of eggs into his cheek.

“Have you seen yourself?” Hanamaki points as he heads for the coffee pot.

“I don’t know what you mean,” Oikawa deflects.

“Don’t play dumb with me, Tooru,” Hanamaki snorts and reaches for two mugs, pouring coffee for both of them. Oikawa’s heart squeezes when he watches Hanamaki add sugar and cream to his cup the way he knows Oikawa likes. He’s known Hanamaki for eight years running. Of course he knows how to make his coffee.

He’s only just realized that Iwaizumi asked him once on this trip how to make it, and has been doing so perfectly since.

“You, the king of flings, are wearing another man’s shirt. A man who you spent the last four days with, attached at the hip.” Hanamaki bumps his hip against the counter for emphasis.

Oikawa forces another bite of eggs. “We’re just friends.”

“Friends who leave each other breakfast and love notes.”

Oikawa throws a grape at him, which he catches and pops into his cheek. “It isn’t a love note. It’s just—he had an early flight, is all. He was being polite.” His cheeks are red as he swipes his hand across his pocket, feeling the edges of the note under the fabric. 

“Oh real polite. That’s definitely the word I’d use for what’s goin’ on under here.” Hanamaki tugs at Oikawa’s shirt playfully, pretending to reveal the rest of Iwaizumi’s goodbye all over Oikawa’s chest and stomach.

“Stop it,” Oikawa hisses. “We agreed to four days. Now we’re just friends,” he says it firmly, with conviction, like he needs to remind himself that this is all it will ever be.

Hanamaki lets go of his shirt and looks at him for a long moment, something softer moving into his expression. That something makes Oikawa’s chest ache, though he isn’t sure why. He tells himself he’s still on the come down of an amazing weekend. It’s normal to get the blues when a vacation comes to an end.

“I’ll tell you about my weekend if you tell me about yours,” Hanamaki offers, settling into the seat next to him.

Oikawa looks down at the tray and then to his lap, where the edges of Iwaizumi’s shirt have pooled at the top of his thighs. The note weighs heavy in his pocket. 

He opens his mouth and his throat goes tight. Which is ridiculous, because there’s no reason for it. Post vacation blues never made him this bent out of shape. It was a good weekend—great sex, good conversation, beautiful scenery. Oikawa would gloat about a weekend like this.

If he doesn’t talk about it, that means it meant something. Clamming up is admitting that there’s something to hide and there isn’t. It was four perfect, meaningless days.

Oikawa grabs a pastry and begins to pick away at the flaky dough.

“Deal.”

Present Day

“Do you want one?”

Oikawa picks his head up from looking at the floor to see the youngest of the five children holding out a juice box. Her eyes and her cheeks are red from crying. Surprisingly, she’s been taking this bad news the best out of all the kids. Oikawa doesn’t get a chance to politely protest before she sets the juice into his hand. Her tiny fingers push to close his fist. 

“You look like you need it more than Jiji,” she mumbles and points to her brother, currently playing his handheld and sulking.

“Thank you,” Oikawa smiles. He gives the box a little shake.

The kid stares at him without moving, and Oikawa realizes she’s waiting for him to drink it. He rips open the straw, plunges it into the box, and takes a long sip.

She visibly relaxes, smiles triumphantly and scoots to sit next to him, pulling her stuffed bear into her lap. “I’m Mira! What’s your name?”

The girl’s mother shoots Oikawa an apologetic look from three seats away. She scrambles to set down her lap full of papers and notebooks to reach her kid. This probably isn’t the first time her kid has wandered towards a stranger. 

“Tooru.” Oikawa sends the mother a kind glance to keep her from worrying. He has plenty of patience with children. He did help raise his nephew after all. And the distraction is welcomed, seeing as he’s headed for his own personal hell soon.

The mother sits back with an appreciative smile. She’s exhausted, poor thing. Oikawa couldn’t help but overhear the break in her voice when she begged the gate attendants not to cancel the flight.

“Are you on vacation? You don’t look like it,” Mira asks, looking at Oikawa’s lack of vacation clothes. Slacks and a button up don’t exactly scream off-the-clock.

“Sort of,” Oikawa answers. “It was work, too.”

“What do ya do for work?” She opens her own juice box, emphasizing her ability to rip the wrapper off by herself. Must have been a recent accomplishment.

“Uhm…” Oikawa searches for a way to simplify product marketing to a six year old. “I help people understand why something is really cool.”

“That’s a real job?”

“It is,” Oikawa grins.

The girl swings her legs, too short to reach the ground. “My dad travels for work too. We were gonna meet him on a trip, but then our flight got cancelled.”

Something in Oikawa’s chest tightens. He opens his mouth to say something comforting, especially when he sees her mother fight the worsening look on her face, but nothing comes. He’s met plenty of people in his line of work with families. Each of them masking their exhaustion at cocktail parties and late night dinners when all they really want to do is be home with their littles and their spouses.

“You miss him quite a bit, huh?” Oikawa asks gently, looking up at the ceiling, as if to glare at the powers that be for rubbing salt in the wound that he’s to blame for this little girl missing her father.

“Yeah.” She doesn’t hold onto her frustration. Her frown smooths out, replaced with renewed curiosity as she lifts her head to look at him. “Were you going to meet someone, mister?”

“Sort of,” Oikawa repeats slowly. He settles back into his seat and takes another sip of his juice box. Fruit punch hits his tongue sweet, and for some reason it makes him pull out his phone to check the time. Twenty minutes until Iwaizumi arrives.

Oikawa stares at Iwaizumi’s contact name, and then his photo. Then he opens his photos app and begins typing in the password for a locked photo album. Any picture that remotely had Iwaizumi in it went into this album. He couldn’t bring himself to throw it all away, but he promised himself not to open it.

He’s opened this album almost three times a day in the last few months, but that’s besides the point.

He scrolls to one photo in particular. A picture of Iwaizumi smiling with his signature dimpled grin. Just looking at the photo makes his heart flutter. How will he face the real thing?

“Is he your friend?” Mira leans over against Oikawa’s arm the best she can, her tiny hand pointing at Iwaizumi.

“Sort of.”

“You say sort of a lot. Dad says it’s a…” she pauses and turns to her brother, Jiji.

“Cop out.” Jiji pops his gum without lifting his eyes.

“Jiji!” The mother squeaks, her cheeks pink and brow furrowed. “Mira, that’s enough. I’m so sorry.”

Oikawa can’t help but laugh. Being called out by two children is actually a highlight to this day gone wrong. He assures the mom that he’s enjoying the conversation. “It’s been a long time since we’ve seen each other,” Oikawa continues.

“And that’s why you’re meeting him?” 

“Yes.” Oikawa’s tongue feels heavy as he says it. He’s always relied on “sort of”. It’s noncommittal, the way he is. “Sort of” friends. “Sort of” casual. “Sort of” fine with the way things are. Never really defining what is, because labels require commitment.

And look where it got him. 

“I wish you luck, mister,” Mira says with a cluck of her tongue. “Here, I’ll share my snacks with you.” She empties her pocket and places a tiny bag of crackers into his lap. “Snacks are brain food. Mom says I eat a lot of brain food.”

“Ah, that’s why you’re so smart,” Oikawa compliments. Mira nods, flashing the gap in her smile where she’s lost her first tooth. She then sinks into her seat and pulls out a coloring book.

Oikawa checks the time again. Fifteen minutes now. He should probably get going. “Well, my uhm… friend is almost here. Thanks again for the brain food,” he winks and moves to stand up.

“Good luck,” the mother whispers kindly with a gentle touch to his arm. Her knowing smile makes Oikawa tighten his grip against his suitcase. She knows exactly what he’s walking into.

“Thank you. You too,” Oikawa offers in kind.

“See ya never, mister!” Mira calls through a mouthful of cheesy crackers. 

Oikawa waves them goodbye and makes his way toward the airport arrivals. He takes Mira’s advice and tears open his snack, plopping a cheesy cracker onto his tongue. As he walks through the airport, he pulls out that photo of Iwaizumi again.

He might as well try to shake off the jitters as best he can, seeing as the man is going to pull up to the curb here soon.

The photo happens to be one of Oikawa’s favorites. He took it himself at a group dinner with friends. He remembers that night well.

He also remembers why he locked this photo away.

Three years ago

Oikawa took it too far.

He knows he did, but he maintains that this isn’t entirely his fault.

He’s currently standing in front of a handsome stranger—a fine thing with dark hair and tight muscles—listening to him talk about his knack for picking up languages. Oikawa really couldn’t care less that this man is a polyglot. The only reason he struck a conversation with this handsome face is because he knows one thing.

He works for Iwaizumi.

Oikawa saw him once when he popped by Iwaizumi’s job for a lunch visit. The man flustered at the sight of Oikawa, which made him easy pickings.

Oikawa shouldn’t be engaging with him, not only because he doesn’t have a genuine interest, but because he’s violated the rule of his entanglement.

Really, he can’t be blamed. 

Iwaizumi broke the rules first.

After the island getaway, Iwaizumi and Oikawa moved like magnets suspended just out of reach. They made an effort at simple friendship, if that included incessant texting and calling and visiting each other in their free time. 

Surprisingly, it went rather well for about a year (eight months, but who’s counting?).

Their attempt to stay within the boundaries of friendship slipped one day. Honestly, they probably slipped well before that. Maybe it was the late night phone calls where Oikawa would close his eyes and listen to Iwaizumi’s sleepy voice tell him that he wanted to see him. It could have been all the flirty text messages, too. Or all the times they’d dance around each other in public settings with friends.

During a stint in Lisbon, Oikawa realized that his sexual partners weren’t satisfying. He hated to admit it, but Iwaizumi’s name slipped into a pillow once or twice. It slammed into him one night when he subconsciously found a body that had hands like Iwaizumi’s. He closed his eyes and let his imagination roam to the island and found the memories he needed to get him over the edge.

He tried to chase away the need for his release to be tied to Iwaizumi’s name, but every time he tried, he found it sitting on his tongue and begging to be materialized.

It pissed him off that he couldn’t shake one stupid fling, enough that when Iwaizumi called him one night, he didn’t answer, and instead went out to find a body to press his against. He ended up posting something to his socials, an offhand shot of him sandwiched against the random he used for the night.

It wasn’t intentional really, just a stupid post under stupid inebriation and frustration that the man he really wanted was a few thousand miles away. He didn’t think much of it until he called Iwaizumi the next day out of habit.

“Calling me right after? He must have been a bad time,” Iwaizumi teased.

Oikawa sat with that for a moment. His initial reaction was to be defensive. Then he noticed the tightness in Iwaizumi’s jaw through the screen, and something sinister formed behind his teeth. 

“What, you think you could do better? I wasn’t aware that was an option,” he purred slyly. 

Iwaizumi’s eyes darkened with challenge. “Come home and I’ll show you.”

Okay, so it was manipulative and petty. But it worked.

Oikawa showed up at his doorstep two weeks later dressed in something easy to take off. Iwaizumi held the last of his restraint as he watched Oikawa slide out of his shirt. “I’m only going to ask you this once,” he cleared his throat as they stood inside his bedroom. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

The question hung in the air with a weight that made Oikawa consider. He’d never gone back to someone for sex before. It was against his code.

But Oikawa had lost the minute he got on the plane. He wanted Iwaizumi so bad he was finding lookalikes everywhere he went.

“One more time won’t kill us.”

That was all Iwaizumi needed. He shoved Oikawa backwards onto the mattress and fucked him like he had something to prove. Or maybe claim, is the better word.

Oikawa thought that could be the end of it. One last ride to get Iwaizumi out of his system.

That is, until he spotted Iwaizumi at a bar one night with his arm around a stranger’s waist. His eyes didn’t leave Oikawa’s as he leaned into their ear and whispered something that made their cheeks pink. Then he smirked.

The message was clear as crystal: two can play this game.

Oikawa’s skin burned hot. He didn’t like to be one upped. But more than that, he’d never really considered that Iwaizumi had probably seen other people, and slept with other people. The thought hit him so hard he followed after Iwaizumi into the bathroom and shoved him hard into one of the stalls.

“You think they can tell?” He hummed as he slid a hand into Iwaizumi's jeans. "That it’s me you think about when you fuck them?”

“God you’re arrogant.” Iwaizumi’s eyes glowed with an intensity that rattled against the metal walls.

“Tell me I’m wrong,” Oikawa hissed against his ear. He sucked on his earlobe and rutted them together, smiling when Iwaizumi groaned skyward. 

Iwaizumi shamelessly dragged Oikawa out of the bar and into a cab. They tumbled into his apartment where Oikawa shoved him into the couch and wrapped his lips around his cock until Iwaizumi was begging to touch him. “Not until you say it,” Oikawa whirled his tongue around his cockhead and slurped with a pop so lewd it had him folding his knees together in spite of himself.

“I think about you,” Iwaizumi admitted. “Every time.”

He stripped him bare and fucked him senseless into the couch. “It’s hot when you’re jealous for me,” he growled between thrusts with a hand wrapped tight around Oikawa’s throat. “Worried I might fuck someone else like this?”

Oikawa couldn’t stop smiling for days after.

That’s how the game started. They’d each trade off finding some poor unfortunate soul to use as bait until they couldn’t take it any longer. Then they’d find a way back to each other and let those deadly sins explode into pleasure. The more jealous Iwaizumi was, the more Oikawa reached for him. The more possessive Oikawa acted, the harder Iwaizumi fucked him.

They came up with a few rules to this game. One, tell no one. They didn’t need to explain to anyone around them that they got off to making each other jealous. Two, end it if things got complicated. No need for unnecessary drama. And three, no playing this game with people they knew, or around friends.

They were simple rules to follow.

So one can imagine Oikawa’s surprise when he showed up to a friend’s party and Iwaizumi walked in with a pretty little thing at his side. She was tiny, with a little waist and long, wavy hair like starlight. Her eyes sparkled and she oozed wealth, and she really liked grabbing Iwaizumi’s arm.

Envy burned like acid in Oikawa’s throat. But more than that, he could taste betrayal on his tongue. It tasted like metal underneath the sugar rim of his drink. Would Iwaizumi really have brought a date without telling him?

He didn’t know what to do with the feeling that twisted a knife in his gut. He stared at Iwaizumi from across the room, hoping for some kind of explanation. Iwaizumi told him once that he wasn’t really a one-night stand kind of guy. But since he and Oikawa had lost count of how many days and nights they’d had, Oikawa felt he had the right to think this was different.

Iwaizumi spent the better part of the gathering ignoring him. Maybe he was supposed to take the not so subtle hint.

“Are you two fighting?” Hanamaki whispered in Oikawa’s ear at one point.

“No,” Oikawa bit back. And then, softer, “there’s nothing to fight about.”

And then, just as Oikawa was about to make for a smooth exit, Iwaizumi’s eyes found his. He held Oikawa’s gaze and dared him to make a scene as he let the woman touch his cheek. 

Oikawa’s nostrils flared over his cosmopolitan and all the sinful rage he’d promised to lock away hit him like a tidal wave.

Iwaizumi knowingly broke their rule.

Obviously, Oikawa had to get even.

He knew how to hit Iwaizumi where it hurt. He’d told him once how much he liked his neck. Iwaizumi also told him not to show it to anyone else. Sure, he said it in the heat of sex with his hand wrapped around his windpipe, and it was probably an in-the-moment thing, but it was hot, and Oikawa wanted to make Iwaizumi suffer.

Oikawa bats his lashes at the handsome stranger when he says something that warrants a laugh and tilts his head back with his signature smile.

When he returns to normal, he slides his eyes toward Iwaizumi and sees him standing with his eyes wide and teeth clenched hard enough to crack. 

“You mentioned you were in London recently?” Handsome guy asks over the music. He leans into Oikawa’s ear with a politeness that makes Oikawa giggle. He’s sweet. Probably the type that’s a little shy in the bedroom.

And he’s blatantly unaware of the tension across the courtyard drilling through his shoulder.

Oikawa doesn’t get a chance to tell him about his trip. A hand lands on the small of his back as a weight presses against his arm.

Iwaizumi, right on time.

“Takeda,” he says curtly. “Can I borrow this guy?”

That’s what his name was.

Iwaizumi reaches for Oikawa’s wrist and digs his possessiveness into his joint. Oikawa bites the inside of his cheek. Maybe the plan worked a little too well. He’s buzzing, thinking about how hard Iwaizumi is going to fuck him against his headboard.

Takeda startles, looking between them. “Oh, uh—Iwaizumi-san! I didn’t realize you two were—”

“Yes,” Iwaizumi says his voice tight. “We need to talk.” Iwaizumi’s eyes cut to Oikawa dangerously.

“Iwa-chan,” Oikawa feigns a pout, “We’re in the middle of a conversation—”

“Now.”

Takeda shifts uncomfortably. It’s obvious he’s the third party here.

Oikawa should feel guilty seeing Takeda terrified of his boss, especially since he used him as bait to piss off said boss, but Iwaizumi’s fingers are pressing a bruise into Oikawa’s wrist and all he can think about is the way he’s going to grab his jaw later and kiss filthy things into his mouth.

“Right. Uhm, yeah. He’s all yours,” Takeda throws his hands up in defeat.

Iwaizumi says nothing else as he pivots on his heel and tugs hard on Oikawa’s wrist.

Oikawa glances back at Takeda apologetically as Iwaizumi drags him to the other end of the venue. Poor thing. He probably feels like an idiot, and honestly, Oikawa can imagine that he might not show up to work on Monday. He’ll tell Iwaizumi to go easy on him.

Still though, no guilt to be found. He suppresses his urge to smile as Iwaizumi shoves him out onto a balcony. Oikawa might have preferred a bed but this is probably the least conspicuous place—opposite end of the venue, not a person in sight, only trees and warm lighting.

His insides squirm and fidget, waiting for Iwaizumi to lunge at him and work his pants off his hips, calling him his filthy slut who just can’t get enough. The thrill of it works its way south as he turns around.

He jolts when Iwaizumi slams the door shut and cranes to look over his shoulder. Oikawa doesn’t see lust-soaked agitation. Iwaizumi looks murderous.

“What the fuck was that?” Iwaizumi seethes.

Oikawa stumbles against the railing. “Wait—what do you mean?”

“Don’t act like you don’t know Takeda works for me.” Iwaizumi jabs an accusatory finger. “What the fuck is wrong with you?!”

Oikawa can’t believe it. Iwaizumi is actually angry, as if he has the right to be.

“I think you’re slightly overrea—”

“Fuck off, you crossed a goddamn line!” Iwaizumi yells. They’ve gotten into plenty of petty spats, but not with this kind of intensity.

Oikawa’s skin grows hot against the cool air. “You think you can say that to me when you’ve been taunting me with that barbie doll on your arm?!”

Iwaizumi stiffens from the callout. He looks around as he processes tonight’s chain of events. Then his shoulders deflate. “She’s…not my date,” he admits, eyes shifting to the floor. “She’s a donor for our lab. We arrived together, I was…”

Oikawa isn’t sure what’s worse. That Iwaizumi played into the lie, or that Oikawa fell for it hook, line, and sinker. “And I’m the one that crossed a line?” His throat is tight around the words.

“I—” Iwaizumi clenches his jaw and swipes a frustrated hand over his face. “I wasn’t—I didn’t—I wanted to see what you’d do. I didn’t think—fuck. It’s different,” Iwaizumi insists, shaking his head.

“Oh that’s rich, Iwa-chan, really.”

Iwaizumi’s voice breaks. “You went for someone I know,” he snaps angrily.

“You wanted to see what I’d do? There’s your answer. I’d go as low as you. Lower, maybe, seeing as I almost gave your coworker sloppy seconds—!”

Iwaizumi knocks Oikawa’s words loose as he grips his arms and shoves him hard against the railing. His eyes are glowing with fury as he digs hard into Oikawa’s biceps.

“Don’t say it,” Iwaizumi snarls. “If he so much as touched you I—” He swallows the words, but as the rage seeps into Oikawa’s skin, his restraint crumbles, his brow knits together and he squeezes his eyes shut.

“I’d kill him,” Iwaizumi whispers in defeat, “I’d fucking kill him.”

Oikawa’s breath sticks in his throat, trapped by the knots in his stomach. There’s a victory in here somewhere in a sick and twisted way. But the only emotion he registers is the guilt he should have felt when he left Takeda behind.

“I wanted to hurt you,” Oikawa confesses quietly. “I thought… when I thought she was really your date I—”

He doesn’t know how to continue that sentence. It’s not like they owe each other their loyalty. But the idea of Iwaizumi with someone else makes his blood boil, and tonight, they were both willing to do something extreme just to see how much it would tear each other apart. That wasn’t loyalty. That was possession in its ugliest form.

“This is fucked up,” Oikawa whispers finally. “What we’re doing is so fucked up.”

They started this game to get each other’s attention. This whole time they’ve had nothing but, and still, they’ve been using others to validate what they already know.

When did they become so cruel?

“We can’t keep doing this,” Oikawa whines as Iwaizumi brings his face into his hands.

“I know,” Iwaizumi breathes. He wears the same guilt, etched deep into his furrowed brow. 

Oikawa hates when he makes that face. It makes his knees weak.

“We said we’d stop if things got messy—”

“I know that, too,” Iwaizumi repeats with an edge. He swipes a slow, deliberate thumb across Oikawa’s bottom lip, gently prying his mouth open. 

“Tell me to leave and I will.”

Oikawa doesn’t move. He knows he should say it. To prove he can stop. That there really is nothing going on underneath it all. But Iwaizumi’s eyes are searching his face, daring, begging his answer to ignore logic. And despite everything—the toxicity, the cruelty, the jealousy—Oikawa craves him.

Worse.

“I can’t,” Oikawa whispers around the lump in his throat, “I need you.”

That’s all it takes.

Iwaizumi tilts forward and kisses him, all of those ugly feelings burning under his fingertips pressed into the back of Oikawa’s skull. The kiss is searing, dizzying, and makes Oikawa’s knees buckle enough that he wraps his arms around Iwaizumi’s neck to keep himself upright.

“Take me home,” he gasps into his mouth.

Iwaizumi obliges without a word. They work their way out of the party and back to Iwaizumi’s place. Between the cab ride home and the elevator climb to Iwaizumi’s apartment, Oikawa searches for the part of himself that doesn’t feel anything.

He can’t find it. Rather, he doesn’t want to.

The sex is different. There isn’t any anger, or performance or point to prove. Iwaizumi takes him apart slow and intentional. They’ve done this so many times before, but this time there’s something raw and exposed sitting between them that Oikawa is scared to touch. Iwaizumi’s careful and certain hands are all over it, all over Oikawa. He’s never been shy about sex, but tonight he can’t help hiding his face as Iwaizumi stares at him, like he’s committing all of him to memory.

Like they did on the island.

Oikawa is used to being wanted. He’s never known what it means to be seen.

They lie there in the afterglow, bodies tangled together and still in the dark. Iwaizumi’s thumb brushes across his knuckles slow.

For the first time all night, Oikawa’s chest is quiet. 

“Tell me what you’re thinking,” Iwaizumi whispers. There’s a rustle of fabric as he shifts. His lips nip and ghost kisses along Oikawa’s shoulder.

Oikawa doesn’t know how to say the words. He misses when he could avoid the weight of reality. He misses when craving Iwaizumi didn’t come with feelings. 

He looks down at the sheets pulled over his waist. “I miss the island,” Oikawa murmurs finally.

Iwaizumi pulls Oikawa closer. He brings one of his hands to his cheek and presses his lips flat to his palm with understanding.

They both crossed the line tonight. Their agreement was to end it all if things ever got that far.

But Oikawa can’t fathom the idea of Iwaizumi being anywhere else. Or with anyone else.

He isn’t ready to face that truth. Or the consequences that might come with it.

Present day

Oikawa crinkles the empty bag of crackers in his palm as he watches the SUV pull up to the curb. He would recognize that car anywhere. It’s still the same as he remembers it—the color of midnight, mud splattered from the rain, dent in the rear bumper.

Iwaizumi swears that dent is lucky to anyone who asks why he hasn’t removed it yet. When he first got the car, he had nothing but issues with it. Then one night, he backed into a pole while they were frantically trying to avoid getting caught having sex in a parking lot. After that, the car purred like a kitten.

Oikawa sucks in a breath tight into his lungs and holds it as he sees Iwaizumi’s silhouette throw the car into park.

Iwaizumi sees him through the window, and for a moment, the world comes to a standstill.

Two years they’ve been apart. Two years they’ve gone with barely a greeting.

Oikawa wishes he had more brain food, because Iwaizumi is stepping out of the car, and he’s going to have to speak actual words to the man he’s been avoiding up to now.

Oikawa is fresh out of bravery, so he leans on his vanity to will his legs to move. He’ll be damned if he stands here looking like he’s seen a ghost. He grips hard into his suitcase handle and puts one foot in front of the other.

This is it. He can’t run away anymore.

Iwaizumi steps onto the curb as he pops the trunk. He looks good, the way he always does, dressed in jeans and a raincoat. Oikawa counts his steps as he draws closer, biting his cheek when Iwaizumi sends him a polite half smile. 

“Need a lift?” He teases, extending a hand out to gesture for his suitcase.

Oikawa’s throat constricts around the lump lodged just above his words. 

“Thanks,” he squeezes out, “for coming to get me. I know it’s late.”

Iwaizumi’s smile softens as he sets Oikawa’s suitcase in the back. “Hop in,” he juts his chin toward the passenger door, “I want to get back to my place before the rain gets worse.”

“Right,” Oikawa nods. He moves toward the passenger side door and slides in, fumbling with the seat belt to latch it in place. He jolts at the sound of the trunk shutting and quickly forces an inhale exhale to fix his composure. If he gets through the rest of this evening without going into cardiac arrest, it will be a miracle.

Iwaizumi slips into the driver’s side and latches his own seatbelt. He turns the key in the ignition and smooths his hand across the steering wheel as his car roars to life. Then he pauses and turns to Oikawa.

“Hey,” he murmurs, smile soft.

"Hey," Oikawa breathes back.

Neither of them says anything after that.

Oikawa sits still under Iwaizumi’s gaze, hands folded in his lap as he puts restraint on every thread of his being, praying he doesn’t do something stupid like blurt out the truth of why he’s here, or break down into tears because he’s so exhausted. Iwaizumi sits quietly, as though he can feel Oikawa’s nerves bouncing off the walls of the car.

The reality of two years apart hangs in the air between them. Twelve inches of center console and what feels like a lifetime of things left unsaid.

Iwaizumi blinks first. He clears his throat, checks his mirror, and shifts the car into gear. "I heard from Hiro that you’ve been stuck here all day?” He pulls off from the curb. 

Oikawa sees a faint dusting of crimson across Iwaizumi’s ears. He didn’t realize until now how much he missed seeing those cute ears blush. It tugs hard in his chest as Iwaizumi frowns at the road, waiting to merge into a lane.

“Yes. It’s been… a very long day,” Oikawa sighs. Despite his nerves, he’s grateful to be out of the airport.

“No luck with hotels, huh?”

Oikawa opens his mouth to answer, but he’s cut off by the sound of rain slamming into the car as they leave the tunnel. The wiper blades are basically useless as they ascend the hill. 

“Uhm, I stupidly clung to hope that this would clear up—you drove in this?” 

From his seat inside the airport it didn’t look that bad, but this is dangerous. The roads are thick with water, light is distorted, and the rain is falling so hard it sounds like it might break through the roof of the car.

Iwaizumi sits back and drums his fingers along the steering wheel like there isn’t a raging storm outside. “It clears up some when we hit the expressway,” he says simply.

Translation: Yes I did. It wasn’t bad. Don’t worry about it.

The car goes quiet as Iwaizumi pulls into a tunnel that leads out to the expressway. He’s right. After about five minutes of hearing rain crash into metal, it dies enough that the downpour no longer feels torrential.

“Told you,” Iwaizumi says, shifting in his seat.

“Still, I can’t thank you enough.” Oikawa looks down at his twiddling thumbs, and then to Iwaizumi. “I was dreading having to stay in that airport overnight.”

“I don’t blame you. And I don’t mind,” Iwaizumi shrugs, the way he always does when he shows his kindness. That’s the kind of guy Iwaizumi is. He doesn’t make a big deal about being a good person. He just is.

Oikawa turns to look out the window at the dark sky and heavy rain. He glances at Iwaizumi’s reflection in the glass. Both hands are on the wheel, his jaw relaxed, eyes forward. Iwaizumi has always driven carefully and calmly, sometimes so much that Oikawa would complain.

“You drive like a grandpa,” Oikawa would tease him.

“And you can walk,” Iwaizumi would say.

Then Oikawa would sink further into the passenger seat and let Iwaizumi drive him anywhere. Everywhere. 

Oikawa turns his head to look around the car. He’s been in this thing more times than he can count. He wonders if Iwaizumi ever got that stain out of the trunk from the time they went camping, when he’d drunkenly dropped a gooey marshmallow and melted chocolate right into the fabric. Iwaizumi forgave him for it after he got the dent. 

Most of it is how he remembers. The little monkey plush tucked in the corner of the dashboard that Matsukawa gave him when he first bought the car. Said they had the same ears. Hanamaki laughed for thirty minutes.

He still uses that ugly phone cradle Oikawa cringed at when he first bought it, but came in handy once Oikawa finally let Iwaizumi teach him how to drive. The same, clean-cotton air freshener dangles in the rearview. It’s the only one Iwaizumi gets.

The water bottle in the center console is new. Oikawa looks down at a sticker that looks like it belongs to a band he doesn’t recognize. 

He hates that his mind is so quick to assume that little changes might belong to a person Iwaizumi now holds dear, when they’re probably just things Iwaizumi has accumulated across the two years they’ve had apart. He hates that he has to feel uncertain about it to begin with, when there was a time he wouldn’t have had to think about it. 

There are so many memories they share in this car alone it makes Oikawa nervous for what he might remember when he gets to the apartment.

“Have you eaten?” Iwaizumi doesn’t take his eyes off the road when he asks.

“Uhm… crackers,” Oikawa feels the crinkle of the wrapper in his pocket. “And a juice box. And coffee.”

“Healthy.”

He’s teasing.

Oikawa can see the half twitch in his lip as his eyes drop to his side mirror to change lanes. He opens his mouth to retort. To tell Iwaizumi that crackers and a juice box are actually sophisticated meal by six year old standards. 

He almost does it. The muscle memory of their banter is still there. Iwaizumi would roll his eyes and laugh and ask him about his chat with Mira and Oikawa would tell him, and how the rest of his day went too.

He closes his mouth and silently turns to the window, watching the softening rain as they make their way into the city.

Banter isn’t their thing anymore. Oikawa can’t come back and act like nothing has changed, because everything has changed.

There was a time they had all that and more.

“Instant ramen okay with you?”

Oikawa damn near snaps his neck turning around. “What?”

“You haven’t eaten.”

“You really don’t have to do that.”

“I’m aware.”

Oikawa forces a swallow and digs the tip of his thumb into the back of his hand. He can’t tell if Iwaizumi being relaxed makes him feel better or worse. Oikawa has maintained that this would feel so much easier if Iwaizumi was angry with him. He kind of hoped he might be when he dragged himself out of his apartment late at night to scoop his ex-situationship from the airport.

But as always, Iwaizumi is calm. Even through his gruff responses or grumblings, he’s patient.

The words Oikawa wants to say sit heavy in his lungs. He’s been practicing since he booked his flight to Singapore, hoping that by the time he saw Iwaizumi he would have it figured out.

“I’m in love with you.” 

Oikawa practiced saying it under his breath. He worked his mouth around the words slowly until he could manage them out loud.

But sitting here next to Iwaizumi, the words are once again smothered by anxiety and regret. 

“I—well, if you’re eating too, then… that’s fine,” Oikawa manages.

Iwaizumi spares him a sideways glance. Then he looks back at the road. “Okay,” he says evenly.

Oikawa turns to the window once more.

He wishes he hadn’t taken so long to tell him. He should have said it when he had the chance.

He had so many chances.

Three years ago

The air is warm on Oikawa's skin as he walks through the night market. Lanterns string between stalls in uneven rows, covering the market in a warm, amber glow. He smells something sweet with a hint of garlic that makes his mouth water. A musician sits on a chair posted on the corner, the sound of his guitar bleeding into the crowd. The market is bustling with bodies, but no one seems to be in a hurry.

Oikawa's head swims slightly as he looks around. His belly is full of warm food and good liquor from their candlelit dinner earlier.

Currently he's in Bali, on behalf of Matsukawa and Hanamaki.

The reason? Newlyweds.

Hanamaki flashed his ring on video call with a wide grin, buzzing with energy from being freshly eloped. They’d just gotten back from a month-long honeymoon.

While they didn’t tell anyone the details of when or where, Oikawa knew it was coming. Matsukawa had asked for his blessing months prior, and Oikawa was only too eager to give Hanamaki away to the person who had become one of his closest friends. He had strong opinions about not being able to walk Hanamaki down an aisle or be his man of honor, but Matsukawa promised they had plans for an amazing reception instead.

To say he delivered on his promise was an understatement. 

Private, luxury compound of villas in Ubud for two weeks. 

They had a loose itinerary for food and entertainment, but the rest of it was whatever they felt like doing.

"Oikawa!”

Oikawa turns to the sound of his name. Iwaizumi is a few stalls back, waving him over with the tilt of his head. 

He retraces his steps, weaving through a cluster of tourists to greet Iwaizumi in front of a crafts display. His hands are in his pockets as he smiles, jutting his chin toward the table filled with handwoven things, shells, stones, and jewelry.

“Almost got away from me,” Iwaizumi says without looking up.

“I wanted the coconut sorbet up ahead.” Oikawa steps next to him and glances over the array of trinkets.

“We’ll go there next. I know you wanted a souvenir. Figured you might like this stand.”

Oikawa glances sidIways as Iwaizumi greets the vendor. He smiles his dimpled grin, hands resting in his pockets. He’s wearing his hat backwards with his favorite linen short, the light one with the sleeves rolled.

Oikawa softens as Iwaizumi scans over the table.

Lately, they’ve moved around each other differently. Since that night on the balcony, the air between them has been thick with something that Oikawa can’t quite name. Their glances hold and their touches linger. They’ve stopped with the secrecy and the jealousy. Almost the jealousy, anyway.

Earlier on this trip Oikawa couldn’t help himself when one of the resort staff was ogling Iwaizumi a little too long. He reached for Iwaizumi’s jaw and slotted their mouths together to prove a point that he could. Even better, Iwaizumi slipped an arm around his waist and followed those kisses in a trail down his neck.

Needless to say they kept their head down after.

Oikawa has made a home base in Japan longer than he’s been anywhere else lately. So long that he opted for an apartment, even though he spends most of his time at Iwaizumi’s. He likes the lazy mornings, the hands that find him half asleep, the smell of breakfast already going by the time he’s bothered to wake up.

It’s not a routine so much as it is just a rhythm. Oikawa isn’t sure what to call it, really. He just likes it.

When they arrived at the villas, Matsukawa didn’t even bother giving them separate living spaces. He pressed their keys into Iwaizumi’s palm with a smile.

“I assumed one villa would suffice,” he said, eyes shifting between them.

They exchanged glances, waiting for the other to voice an objection. When neither of them said anything, Iwaizumi smiled and closed his fist around the key. Oikawa ducked under the lid of his hat to hide his blushing cheeks.

They unpacked their suitcases into their respective drawers and familiarized themselves with their temporary home. Iwaizumi made a joke about how it felt domestic. Oikawa laughed. Then he climbed on top of Iwaizumi and let himself be carried into their bedroom.

“See anything you like?”

Oikawa pulls from his memory and leans in, letting his shoulder touch Iwaizumi’s as he surveys the table. When he said he wanted a souvenir, he hadn’t given much thought to what he would take back. He’s predominantly lived his life out of suitcases for so long that he’s maintained few possessions.

His heart flutters when he realizes that this entire table is full of things that don’t need to be set in one place. Oikawa catches a bracelet out of the corner of his eye—a silver rope with an intricate design and a sole, blue topaz set in the middle. He lingers on it for a long moment, admiring the piece before moving on.

Iwaizumi reaches smoothly past him and points to the trinket. The vendor gestures consent and lifts the bracelet off the display, gently setting it in Iwaizumi’s hand.

Iwaizumi takes Oikawa’s wrist and gently turns it over, clasping the bracelet together. Oikawa’s heart begins to race in his chest. He tenses, knowing that if Iwaizumi holds onto his pulse point any longer, he just might notice.

He doesn’t, or at least he doesn’t show it. He rotates the bracelet into place and tilts it back and forth, humming in thought. “What do you think?”

Oikawa can’t find any words to say, so he just nods.

Iwaizumi smiles. Then he turns to the vendor.

“How much?”

Oikawa’s jaw drops open, a reflex to protest, but it doesn’t come.

The vendor smiles from ear to ear. He’s a kind old man with a crinkled smile and weathered hands. He names a price, and without hesitation, Iwaizumi smoothly slides his wallet from his pocket and hands over payment in cash.

He thanks the vendor and continues a friendly chat, attempting his broken Indonesian that he’d tried studying before their flight. The vendor laughs, excitedly trying to converse with him in his native tongue. Oikawa hears something about praise for trying.

He looks down at the bracelet and turns his wrist over and back, admiring the silver against his skin. Just like that, he now has a souvenir that he can keep with him. A little piece of their vacation. A little piece of Iwaizumi.

It’s strange, this feeling in his chest. The bracelet on his wrist is such a simple thing. Iwaizumi will tell him it’s no big deal, it’s something friends do, it’s just a bracelet.

And all of those things are true. It’s not some remarkable effort.

But that’s the thing. There’s nothing remarkable about any of it. Iwaizumi saw something, thought of him, and acted without deliberation, like it was such an obvious thing to anticipate Oikawa’s wants. He didn’t do it with any intention other than kindness.

In the four years Oikawa has known Iwaizumi, that’s all he’s ever done. Lead with kindness. He’s warm, even through his rough words. He cares, even when he’s angry. With Iwaizumi, Oikawa doesn’t feel restless or unsettled. He doesn’t feel starved of life the way he usually does when he’s been in one place for too long.

Iwaizumi tilts his head and flashes that signature, dimpled smile. Oikawa feels a breeze gently float through the market, and with it, a clarity that slows time to a crawl.

The feeling sits nestled just around his heart and tentatively squeezes, as if Oikawa has known it’s been there all along and chosen to ignore it until now. 

This is what love feels like.

Oikawa always thought love would crash into him like a breaking wave. Instead, love glides across his skin and cradles him gently. Love takes his time with him, like it knows he’s been lying about believing love isn’t for him. Like it knows he’s terrified of the feeling.

But right now he isn’t scared.

Oikawa can feel the warmth climbing his face. Usually he’d retreat, hide away and mask how pink his cheeks get when he’s flustered. But his usual reach to control and compose isn’t there. All that sits between himself and the moment is patience, something he never thought love would be.

He takes a small step forward, threads his fingers through Iwaizumi’s and squeezes gently. It’s a small thing in the silence as he closes the gap between them, cheeks warm and eyes steady on Iwaizumi’s.

Iwaizumi goes still, turning away from the vendor to look at their hands, and then at Oikawa’s expression. There’s a moment where those green eyes search his face for understanding. Then they soften with recognition.

The old vendor folds his hands behind his back and smiles. “Ah, you two are a couple?” He asks warmly in his broken speech.

They’ve always denied this question. Through laughter, mock repulsion, or just plain refusal.

Oikawa can’t find the words to explain what this is. This is all uncharted territory for him. He just knows he doesn’t want to say no.

Iwaizumi’s mouth curves into a small smile. He glances at the vendor, then back to Oikawa.

“Sort of.”

Sort of, Oikawa silently echoes. It isn’t a deflection. It isn’t a no. It’s the most honest thing they can give, and right now, it’s more than enough.

Iwaizumi gives his hand a gentle squeeze as he bids the vendor a good night. Oikawa turns his wrist so the stone catches the light as Iwaizumi tugs him onward through the market.

So this is what it’s like, Oikawa thinks as he watches Iwaizumi’s back. The buzzy feeling people have told him about. The way butterflies hover gently in his middle and everything feels a bit softer, warmer.

Iwaizumi squeezes his hand, as if he can feel his thoughts passing through their fingertips.

Oikawa doesn’t have to miss the island anymore. Really, he never had to. What he wanted was in front of him the whole time.

“Iwa-chan,” Oikawa tugs on his wrist to turn him around.

The world narrows to them standing in the middle of the market, the noise of music and bodies bustling around them muffled.

The words bubble in Oikawa’s chest, climbing towards his throat. He feels the tingle on his lips, the want to say the words to him flooding his tongue.

Iwaizumi looks at him patiently, gently pulling Oikawa closer. 

The words settle back in Oikawa’s chest with a flutter. He doesn’t want to say them yet. He wants to keep them tucked away for a little longer while he revels in this newfound feeling.

Instead, he leans forward and kisses him gently under the lanterns. “Thank you.”

Iwaizumi clears his throat as scarlet rouge stretches across his face. “Of course,” he mumbles. He knows the gratitude isn’t just for the bracelet. But that’s what Oikawa loves about Iwaizumi.

Sometimes they don’t even need the words.

Present Day

The apartment is almost exactly as he remembers it.

It smells the same, like Iwaizumi—clean and warm with a hint of cedarwood. The same couch, the one Oikawa said to get rid of. The bookshelf filled with science fiction and sports medicine titles alike. There’s even the vintage Godzilla poster he’d framed years ago. A lot of Iwaizumi’s small knick knacks are littered about, mementos from his past. Oikawa remembers the stories for each one.

He also notices the differences, too. Iwaizumi owns a plant now, a pothos sitting healthy next to a picture frame of him and Matsukawa holding an award. Work related, Oikawa guesses. He lingers on the half burned candle on the coffee table. Iwaizumi has never been big on candles.

“You can put your things in the bedroom,” Iwaizumi says from behind him, already moving toward the kitchen.

Oikawa spies the wooding cutting board Iwaizumi has always treated as his pride and joy. A custom piece he’d ordered from some well known carpenter. The spice rack is new. Upgraded. Oikawa vaguely remembers hearing from Matsukawa that Iwaizumi spent more time in the kitchen as of recent.

Then he sees two bowls on the drying rack by the sink along with a few pieces of silverware. Which could mean absolutely nothing.

Oikawa turns as he hears a soft chirp from the bedroom. He spies Iwaizumi’s cat standing at the edge of the hallway, her green eyes large and fixed on Oikawa’s face.

Suzu.

They had become good friends over the years. Oikawa always looked forward to Suzu’s bright chirps as he walked through the door. He hadn't known that the last time he kissed her forehead goodbye would actually be the last. Leaving her behind tore a hole in him he stitched shut the only way he knew how—by avoiding anything to do with cats altogether.

She stares at him cautiously, silent paws slowly making their way toward him. The sutures holding his heart together shred when her pupils dilate with recognition.

He kneels down, sinuses aching as she bunts into his hand, chirping and trilling I missed you’s and welcome back’s as she paws at his knee.

“Hi, Suzu-chan,” Oikawa murmurs warmly, feeling her purr against his palm. “It’s good to see you too.”

This kind of moment used to be ordinary, coming home to Suzu, to this apartment, to the quiet comfort of Iwaizumi. Oikawa has missed this more than he can explain.

Oikawa can feel Iwaizumi’s eyes on him from the kitchen. He straightens his back and turns, but by then Iwaizumi is facing away from him and looking at the counter.

“Shower while I’ll get started on food,” Iwaizumi tosses over his shoulder as he reaches for a pot. Then he straightens his back and whips around. “I mean, I can show you—”

“I remember.” Oikawa holds up a polite hand.

Iwaizumi gives him a slow nod and turns back to the stove.

Oikawa thinks about telling Iwaizumi he doesn’t have to worry about making food, but he knows he’d already made up his mind in the car. And honestly, he’s starving. How he went a whole day on an iced coffee, a juice box, and crackers is beyond him.

He picks up his bag and moves it to the bedroom.

It’s mostly the same in here, too. Large windows facing the city, the bed made with one corner folded back. A stack of current reads sits neat on the night stand. There’s a chair in the corner that holds a small pile of clothes. Oikawa hovers on the catchall tray in the dresser—a lighter, a few coins, a receipt, and a bracelet.

His stomach turns with unease.

Iwaizumi doesn’t smoke. Nor does he really wear jewelry, save for the occasional chain around his neck.

Oikawa forces himself to look away, gather his things and head for the bathroom. He tenses as he steps inside. It’s the same as he remembers it. Glass shower, deep green walls, the linen closet by the window.

There’s a new plant in here too, a fern hanging just to the left of the closet.

He sets his things down and moves around to start the water and peel out of his clothes. Then he reaches for a towel from the linen closet. It smells like him, too. Oikawa presses the fabric to his nose as he looks around for any concrete evidence. So far he’s only seen inklings, things that could mean everything, and nothing.

No second toothbrush or doppler bag, or even a remnant of clothing.

The soaps and shampoos in the shower are the same. Oikawa spots one bottle of conditioner that doesn’t belong, and a second razor. His throat tightens as he turns on the shower. None of these things are enough to know, and the longer the water rains the more his eyes blur, so he stops thinking about it.

He steps under the warm shower spray and lets the steam and heat soothe his muscles and wash away the airport grime. For about five minutes his mind goes blank, letting everything go to appreciate the very essence of a hot shower.

The tranquility doesn’t linger. Eventually he comes back to reality. 

He’s in Iwaizumi’s shower. He’s in Iwaizumi’s home. He’s eventually going to have to step out of here and eat a meal with the man, and attempt to carry on some polite conversation. Or be brave enough to do what he came to do in the first place.

Maybe brave isn’t the right word.

Oikawa scrubs at his skin and scalp to fight the ache in his chest.

He’s not sure there is a right word for what it takes to stand in the home of someone he loves, someone he hurt, and accept their kindness when he knows you don’t deserve it. Gratitude doesn’t cover it. Guilt doesn’t fit. All he knows is the universe handed him the perfect storm and instead of feeling like a sign it feels like a consequence.

The question he can’t shake from his mind isn’t whether Iwaizumi will forgive him.

It’s whether he deserves to ask.

As he walked through the airport, determined to find Iwaizumi, the reality settled in that he hadn’t considered Iwaizumi’s feelings in his choice. Which is exactly what got them to this point in the first place. He let Iwaizumi think he had finally figured himself out, that maybe he could be the relationship type, and then he ran.

How can someone like that come back and ask to be forgiven, and what’s more, loved?

He doesn’t know.

Oikawa turns off the water and stands in the steam for a moment, then he reaches for the towel.

He’s still here. He answered the phone. He got in the car. He’s standing in Iwaizumi’s shower and he hasn’t bolted, which by his own historical standards is unbelievable.

Maybe that’s not enough, but it’s all he’s got.

Two years ago

Oikawa hears it in the way Iwaizumi shuffles about in the kitchen.

It’s been that way since dinner. They held hands on the walk there and back, they talked about any and everything like they always do, but Iwaizumi’s mind had been elsewhere.

He’s been that way for a while now.

Oikawa can feel it all over him—the tension in his shoulders, the clench in his jaw, the sighs he tries to suppress when he averts his gaze.

Iwaizumi stares at a painting on the living room wall while he sips from his cup. There’s a crinkle in his nose that isn’t solely from the steam.

They’re in Oikawa’s apartment for a change. Unlike Iwaizumi’s place, Oikawa’s is flooded with wall art and mood lighting. Iwaizumi hasn’t explicitly said he doesn’t like being in Oikawa’s apartment, but he always moves with a discomfort when he’s here, and whenever he looks at the painting, disdain creeps into his expression.

“Iwa-chan,” Oikawa sighs, “you can say you hate the painting.” His tone is light, playful as he sets his mug on a coaster.

“I don’t hate it.” Iwaizumi turns away from the painting to look at the floor. 

His eyes shift across the patterns in the carpet as he looks for words. “Oikawa, when is your lease up?”

Oikawa looks up. He doesn’t know why guilt is the first thing that finds its way to him. “It’s a month to month agreement.” 

He swears he told Iwaizumi this before, does it really bear repeating? 

“Why do you ask?”

“Just asking.”

“Iwa-chan.”

Iwaizumi takes another slow slip. Oikawa doesn’t like the silence that sits between them, so he does too. Clearly, Iwaizumi is annoyed, but Oikawa can’t fathom a reason why. If anything, things have been great between them. He can only guess based on Iwaizumi’s dislike of the wall art that this conversation isn’t about wall art.

“Do you want me to cancel my lease?”

“And then what would you do?” Iwaizumi asks, sitting upright. There’s a curiosity in his eyes that is almost wanton.

Oikawa leans back and shrugs. “Guess I hadn’t thought about it. I’ve been comfortable.”

“Comfortable,” Iwaizumi repeats the word, soaked in disbelief. “You don’t own anything in here.”

The accusation has Oikawa sitting upright and setting his mug on the coaster with a hard thud. “That’s not true,” he defends.

“A tea kettle doesn’t count, Oikawa. The furniture, the paintings, the decor, none of it belongs to you.”

Oikawa twitches. He wrote off Iwaizumi’s teasing when he partnered with an interior designer and furniture rental company, thinking it was just playful banter at the time.

“And that bothers you because?” Oikawa asks testily.

Iwaizumi sets his mug down and slides his hands across his thighs, pushing his frustration away from his middle. He looks like he’s trying to suppress what he really wants to say. Oikawa almost tells him to spit it out.

Then, all at once, Iwaizumi’s frustration subsides into something softer that makes Oikawa tense.

“You live like you’re halfway out the door,” Iwaizumi says, quiet.

Oikawa shifts uncomfortably. That isn’t fair. He’s always lived like this. Renting is convenient. He doesn’t know where he plans to end up in a few years, but he knows he’s happy with Iwaizumi. Eventually they’ll make a step toward something more concrete, but what’s the rush?

“Iwa-chan, I’ve been here.”

“With your bags half packed?”

“I’m not packed. Iwa-chan I don’t understand why you’re angry—”

“I’m not angry, Oikawa, I just—” Iwaizumi stops. He steps away to wash his mug in the kitchen sink, staring at the water fall for a beat before he starts scrubbing.

Oikawa follows after him, sliding himself into one of the barstools at the counter. He isn’t sure why himself, but having the quartz slab between them feels safer.

“We’ve been doing this for the better part of a year now. We’ve never really talked about what’s next,” Iwaizumi continues slowly, not looking up from the water.

“And you want to talk about that right now?”

“Is there a better time?”

“This just doesn’t seem like the mood.”

“It never seems like the mood. You dodge this anytime it remotely comes up. It’s not exactly a vote of confidence,” Iwaizumi shrugs as he sets the rinsed mug onto the drying rack.

Oikawa blinks. Until right now, he wasn’t aware that there was a timeline. After Bali, they shifted further into the “sort of” territory. They were more public with their affection and spent most of their time together. They stopped denying the rumors when people asked if they were an item. “Sort of,” became their inside joke.

Oikawa thought that was enough. Anxiety presses against Oikawa’s ribcage as hurt soaks his tongue.

“You think I’m going to run away?”

“I don’t know what you’re going to do.”

There’s a resignation in his voice that sends Oikawa over the edge. “What do you want from me, exactly? What, you want me to buy a couch? Sign a longer lease? Give you a drawer?”

“Stop it,” Iwaizumi sighs. He dries his hands and turns. “I’m not trying to fight with you. Oikawa, I’m not angry,” he repeats softly. “I’m telling you what I see.”

Oikawa wishes that he was. It would be so much easier to fight with him about this, get it all out in the open and tumble into the bedroom where they’d kiss and makeup. But Iwaizumi looks like he’s deciding before Oikawa has had a chance to defend himself, and he’s not even sure what he’s defending.

“I just like the flexibility,” Oikawa says, his voice small, “I’m here, I’m staying.”

Iwaizumi rounds the counter to step in front of him. Oikawa flinches on reflex. He wants to fight, because fighting means that there’s still a chance.

“The thing is, I don’t think you want to. I know all of this is new for you. And I’ve taken it slow, because I don’t want to scare you off. But I can’t keep pretending not to notice. It isn’t fair to either of us.”

“What are you—I want this,” Oikawa squeaks, “I want you.”

“I know. I know that,” Iwaizumi shakes his head, “but you’re not ready for more.” He gestures vaguely to them, to the apartment around them. “And I can’t keep waiting around for you to be. I think—I think this is where we stop.”

Oikawa panics. Nausea pits in his stomach and his skin grows hot. This can’t be happening. The one time he takes a leap of faith, the foundation that was supposed to catch him is crumbling to dust right before his eyes.

“I’m trying, isn’t that enough?” The words leave him sharper than intended. He doesn’t mean it like an accusation, but it may as well be one.

Iwaizumi still doesn’t fight. A wrinkle forms in his brow and for a moment there’s a window of indecision. 

Oikawa reaches for it like a lifeline. “You still haven’t told me what you want.”

Iwaizumi reaches for his wrist and turns it over, thumb sweeping across the bracelet before he gives his wrist a gentle squeeze. The warmth of his skin burns away at Oikawa’s want to be angry. Those green eyes find his, searching, deciding, contemplating what to say. He’s hesitating. Good, Oikawa tells himself. The more he hesitates the more he can stall until he finds the words to fix this. 

“Tell me,” Oikawa pleads through a whisper, reaching for Iwaizumi’s middle. “Tell me what you want.”

“I want to be with you.”

“You are with—”

“No, Oikawa.” His voice is steady and devastatingly gentle. “I want to be with you. I want to tell the world you’re mine. I want you to come home to me, to our place, and make love to you in our bed.” Iwaizumi’s thumb presses down on this pulse point. “I want to grow old with you.”

Oikawa’s throat turns bone dry. 

A part of him wants to say it back. To tell Iwaizumi what he means to him, that falling asleep and waking up next to him is better than being anywhere else. That the love that’s cradled him so tenderly for the last year has made him soft in ways he didn’t know he could be. That he’s never once felt as safe as he does with Iwaizumi.

The other half wants to run from the very same feeling. 

Iwaizumi reaches for his cheek to catch a tear Oikawa didn’t know had fallen. 

“See? I tell you that, and I can feel it all over you,” Iwaizumi whispers. He smiles with a knowing laced with grief, yet still, he’s calm and careful, still considering Oikawa’s fears.

It makes Oikawa furious. He’s intentionally kept himself at arm’s length to keep from anyone thinking he’s predictable. And here Iwaizumi is reading him like an open book.

“It’s like trying to grab hold of the wind,” Iwaizumi murmurs. “The moment I think I can tell you that I’m—” 

He stops and presses his mouth together. 

Whatever was going to follow, he swallows somewhere Oikawa can’t reach.

“Iwa-chan I—“ Oikawa’s attempt to say something, anything, dies when those green eyes find his again. The ache in his chest tugs on his vocal cords, begging him to tell him the truth.

But the words don’t come. They sit locked deep in his chest in a labyrinth Oikawa can’t even begin to navigate. Love drops out from underneath him and suspends him between consequence, and when Iwaizumi’s face smooths with final resignation, Oikawa’s chest snaps wet with heart break.

“It’s okay,” Iwaizumi hums. “You don’t have to say anything.”

He leans forward and presses a kiss to Oikawa’s cheek that holds the piece of him that hates doing this. Oikawa can feel it in the way Iwaizumi’s fingertips dig into the base of his skull. It’s too painful to hold on, but just as well, it’s killing him to let go.

The moment closes like water over a stone. The decision has already been made somewhere below conscious thought, the destruction dressed as logic. This was always going to happen. This is why he never signed the full lease. This is why he never bothered to buy furniture.

Paradise always has to come to an end.

Iwaizumi steps back and gives Oikawa’s hand one last squeeze. “This doesn’t have to be ugly. And you don’t have to disappear. I don’t want that.”

Oikawa watches him and says nothing. Everything he wants to say is gridlocked as his blood runs cold.

Iwaizumi moves about the apartment to gather what little he has—wallet, keys, jacket, and a backpack with barely the things he needed to stay over. Oikawa’s mouth turns sour. Iwaizumi is right. He barely let him into a space that barely belongs to him.

What right does he have to ask him to turn around and fight with him?

Oikawa stares at his back as he taps into his shoes. He’s desperate for him to get angry. He can’t bear his kindness and understanding. It might kill him if Iwaizumi walks through that door.

As if he can hear his thoughts, Iwaizumi turns around.

Oikawa wishes he could make his legs work, to cross the room and slam the door shut to keep him from leaving. And for a fraction of a second, it looks like Iwaizumi wants him to do it.

Oikawa doesn’t move.

So Iwaizumi does. “Lock up after me,” he mumbles.

The door clicks shut behind him soft.

Oikawa sits on the barstool in the quiet of his apartment for a long time, staring at the bracelet on his wrist, savoring the warmth of Iwaizumi’s skin on his own. He chokes back a sob, and looks around the room.

Then he finds his laptop and emails his landlord.

It’s the right thing to do. Iwaizumi was right. He isn’t ready. And it doesn’t have to be ugly. But he can’t stay here. The apartment he thought he’d decorated so nicely now repulses him. He can’t be here any longer or he’ll suffocate under the rubble of his own making. 

He just needs to get away.

That’s what always fixes him in the end.

Present Day

The air is thick and heavy with silence as they eat.

When Oikawa emerged from the shower, Iwaizumi set down a steaming bowl of ramen, jazzed up with a few leftover ingredients. Oikawa thanked him, told him he didn’t have to do that much, but his stomach growled loud enough to betray his words. He gave up trying to play it cool. Then he couldn’t come up with anything to say.

Iwaizumi’s polite composure from the car ride has shifted into neutral silence. Oikawa tries to tell himself it’s because it’s almost two in the morning, but the longer the silence drones on, the more uncomfortable he gets.

He blurts the first tangible thought he has. “You look good.”

Iwaizumi pauses over his meal and glances upward. “I am good,” he says evenly, raising a brow.

Oikawa glances down to his meal and back. “Right. No, of course. I just meant…”

It’s good to see you. I missed you.

“How’s work?”

Iwaizumi shrugs as he swallows a bite. “Mostly the same. Got promoted. I’m a vice president now.” His mouth curves slightly. He’s proud of it, as he should be.

“That doesn’t surprise me any. Congratulations,” Oikawa offers a polite smile.

“I appreciate your bias,” Iwaizumi laughs once, controlling the rest through a quick cough, but it’s all Oikawa needed to hear. He’s missed that laugh, hearty and warm and highly contagious.

“And you? Anything new?” Iwaizumi looks out to the window to watch the rain. It’s picking up now, having followed them home from the airport. Oikawa can’t help feeling like the rapidly approaching storm is a countdown.

“No. Not really,” he murmurs and looks down at his bowl, surprised at himself for having inhaled the entire thing. His stomach settles, and with it, some of his nerves.

Suzu’s paws land against his thigh, trilling for permission. She angles her head towards his hand and looks at his lap. Oikawa leans back and lets her up, scratching behind her ears and smoothing over her glossy, russet fur.

Iwaizumi looks at Suzu with fondness tipped with melancholy that drives something sharp through Oikawa’s chest.

“Singapore,” Oikawa says suddenly. “Singapore was new. Been there the last few months.”

“That’s right,” Iwaizumi’s eyes flicker up with curiosity. “Did you like it?”

“Loved it,” Oikawa briefly smiles. “Shame I couldn’t stay longer.”

“Where were you headed next?” Iwaizumi asks evenly.

“Seoul,” Oikawa answers naturally, having forgotten for a split second that he was planning to come up with some other location around the world that would make sense, seeing as he told Iwaizumi the flight was a layover.

His hand stills on Suzu’s head for a second too long. He drops his eyes to the table and swallows his urge to wrinkle his nose.

“Seoul,” Iwaizumi repeats, tipping his glass to his lips. “Really?”

Oikawa clears his throat. “Yes.”

“A layover for a flight in the opposite direction.” Not a question.

“Yes,” Oikawa repeats, slowly.

“There are direct flights. Plenty,” Iwaizumi replies without edge, despite the twitch of irritation in his lip as he takes a sip of water.

He doesn’t believe it. Of course he doesn’t. No one would, knowing basic geography.

“I realize that. The flight was a last minute decision.”

“Which flight?”

“Iwaizumi, please,” Oikawa exasperates. He doesn't mean to be dismissive. He's tired, his teeth are on edge, and his heart is thundering against his ribcage the longer he sits near Iwaizumi's intensity. Those green eyes always see right through Oikawa and leave him feeling raw and vulnerable. To Oikawa, that’s the equivalent of being cornered.

Tension crackles like static between them. Suzu takes that as her cue to make herself scarce.

Iwaizumi tucks his tongue in the back corner of his mouth over the lack of nickname and sits back in his chair, pushing his empty bowl away from him. He looks at Oikawa for a long moment. Oikawa recognizes that look. It’s the one Iwaizumi makes whenever he’s deciding not what to say, but how to say it.

He raps his fingers against the table and sucks his teeth with decision.

“You gonna tell me why you’re really here?”

Oikawa stills. He told himself in the shower that he wouldn’t run away again, that he would give Iwaizumi the truth, whether or not it mattered. But facing Iwaizumi makes it so hard to sift through all the words packed tight in his lungs.

He looks down at the empty dinner bowls, and then to the ones on the drying rack past Iwaizumi’s head. What if those are from someone else? Someone who stayed the night and burned that candle on the coffee table. Someone who smokes and wears jewelry.

Someone who very clearly isn’t Oikawa.

Something loosens in his chest that he immediately wishes he could put back. The sliver of hope that all the evidence is fabricated from his own anxiety pushes hard between his ribs.

It doesn’t matter. He just needs to tell Iwaizumi the truth. He owes him that much, at least.

“I wasn’t going to Seoul,” Oikawa admits quietly.

Iwaizumi doesn’t move. “I’m aware.”

Oikawa clenches his fists in his lap, digging nails into his palms.

“I almost called you,” he says in a small voice, “there were so many times I wanted to.”

He stops and exhales shakily. “I uhm—” He clears his throat hard and wrings his hands into his lap.

When he looks up, Iwaizumi is watching him with that same expression he always used to, the one that waits patiently for Oikawa to find his words. Oikawa hates how much he loves that look, because it means Iwaizumi is waiting for him.

Something he never thought he’d do again.

Oikawa’s feelings turn volcanic, molten hot against his chest. He isn’t sure he can stop the words as they begin to tumble from his mouth.

“I talked myself out of it each time. Told myself you were better off. That I was doing you a kindness by leaving you alone.”

He laughs once, quiet and humorless. “Another excuse. I know.” His hands find each other under the table, pressing the pads of his thumbs together. “I thought you moved on. And before I knew it I was on a flight here. I didn’t really think past that. I didn’t get a hotel because I didn’t think I’d make it this far. Then the storm happened and… well, now I’m here.”

Though Iwaizumi doesn’t say anything, the slight shift in his posture is enough to tell Oikawa that he had all this figured out already. Knowing him, he probably put it all together as soon as he got the phone call that Oikawa was stranded.

“I didn’t ask Makki or Mattsun to do this, I swear. When you called me I almost didn’t answer. But…” Oikawa presses his hands into his lap, sinuses aching as he fights tears. “I don’t think I deserve to sit here and say all this, but I’m not gonna waste this chance.”

Oikawa looks at him with glassiness in his eyes and Iwaizumi softens, unclenching his hand balled tight against the table and breathing in, the way one does when their own emotions surprise them.

“I’m sorry I ran away from you. From us. You deserved more than that and I was too selfish to see it. That’s what I came here to say.”

The room is very quiet.

Iwaizumi doesn’t speak for a long time.

Then, slowly, his brow crinkles right in the center with the same grief he had the night he left.

“What do you want me to do with that, Oikawa?”

It isn't cruel. It isn't angry. It lands exactly like a door left open that Oikawa has never known how to walk through.

The rest of what Oikawa might have said scurries back down and presses against the walls of his stomach. He meekly shrugs his shoulders and looks out the window to the opposite building, staring at the reflection of car headlights from the street below.

“I don’t know,” he whispers. It’s all he can come up with.

Iwaizumi’s brow knits tighter for a moment, his throat working around something. Then he smooths his expression and gently shakes his head. He exhales slow and sits forward.

“A perfect storm, huh?” His voice is kind.

Oikawa’s mouth turns metallic when he bites into his cheek hard enough to draw blood. Iwaizumi’s unwavering stability hurts even more in moments like these. “Something like that,” he murmurs.

Iwaizumi slides his chair back and stands up. “It’s late,” he says softly, “we should sleep.”

Oikawa moves to do the same, reaching out to grab his bowl and help bring it to the kitchen. As he does, his hand bumps into Iwaizumi’s who is also reaching for the dish. The skin to skin contact strikes like lightning through Oikawa’s hand. He ricochets backwards, eyes wide and cheeks pink, apologies falling from his lips. “S-sorry I—”

“It’s fine,” Iwaizumi’s composure breaks with a grimace. He grabs the bowls and glasses and makes for the sink.

Oikawa folds his hand into the other and smooths his thumb across the spot where he bumped Iwaizumi, still burning from his warm skin. Three years worth of memories race through his mind like a film reel. An ache quakes in his chest so hard he can’t fight the scrunch in his nose. It was one thing to miss Iwaizumi from a distance. Another to miss him up close. Touching him was a different kind of torture.

The water shuts off and dishes clink into the drying rack.

“You take the bed,” Iwaizumi says, drying his hands with a towel. His movements are rigid. Oikawa can’t tell if that rigidity is coming from the conversation or the contact.

“Sorry?” He says absently, unsure if he heard him correctly.

“You hate my couch.”

It’s true. Oikawa complained each and every time he sat on it—too low of a backrest, cushions that feel like cardboard, and fabric that makes your skin crawl.

He waves his hands to turn Iwaizumi down. “You’ve been kind enough to me already. You don’t have to go that far.”

“We’re not discussing this,” Iwaizumi insists with a shake of his head, “Just shut up and take the—”

“Then we’ll share it.”

Oikawa has to commend himself for his leaps of bravery tonight, but he admits he could learn to pick better times to use it.

Iwaizumi stares at him with his mouth open, rendered speechless.

Oikawa doesn’t wait for him to find words. He digs his palm against his forehead as a heat crawls up his neck. “Look, I don’t want to make this weird. I just don’t want to owe you more than I already do.”

Iwaizumi folds the towel neatly and sets it over the edge of the sink, staring into the stainless steel bin and turning over whether or not sleeping next to Oikawa after all this time is barely acceptable or completely unfathomable.

“I… that was impulsive. I’m sorry. Just let me take the—”

“No. We’ll—we can share,” Iwaizumi finally says through a tired sigh. He swipes a hand over his face and looks toward the bedroom. “I need to shower.”

“I—okay. Can I brush my teeth?”

Iwaizumi glares at him and throws his hand in the direction of the bedroom, a sign to make it quick before he changes his mind.

Oikawa is gone and back in under three minutes. When he returns, he hovers by the bookshelf near the window, the spot furthest from Iwaizumi’s path. Iwaizumi moves around stiffly, grumbling unintelligibly under his breath with a deeper crease in his brow. He stops at the doorway and whips around, mouth opening, then closing, then opening again.

“Ten minutes,” he says, like he owes it to Oikawa to be quick.

“Take your time.” Oikawa holds up his hands.

Iwaizumi searches his face for a few seconds. Then he retreats into the bedroom and shuts the door with a stiff click.

The shower turns on behind the closed door.

Oikawa shuffles about the living room while he waits, eyes floating about the trinkets along the windowsill—the wooden, hand carved doll Iwaizumi bought in Bali, a small vase, and a cicada perfectly preserved in glass. He picks up the tattered baseball sitting in its cradle and rolls the worn leather in his palm. Iwaizumi’s childhood ball that he somehow never lost. He told Oikawa how he wrestled the neighbor's dog for it once.

He sets the ball down and turns, seeing Suzu twirling on the couch as an invitation to sit. Oikawa settles into the cushions and frowns. Just as he remembers. This couch sucks, and sleeping on it would put a kink in his back that would take days to work out.

He leans his head back and stares at the ceiling, idling in the quiet of the room. As time drones on, the noises around him trickle into his ears—the rain pattering against the glass, the hum of the refrigerator, the creak of the building as it settles.

Suzu purrs happily in his lap, nuzzling into his hand as he scratches under her chin.

“I missed you too,” Oikawa hums to her. He melts further into the couch. For as uncomfortable as it is, he could probably fall asleep anyway.

He’s so tired. The kind of tired that lives in the bones and saps the strength from your muscles. A huge weight has been lifted off his chest, even if the wounds linger. He probably should be more afraid of what the morning might bring, of what their conversation will look like in daylight after they’ve rested. He should be freaking out more that his plan to run away has turned into him going to bed next to Iwaizumi.

But those fears feel far away. Right now, most things do.

His eyes are heavy by the time the shower cuts off.

Suzu protests with a series of chirps as he shifts his weight. He presses a kiss to the top of her head in apology. She abandons his lap when the bedroom door opens.

Iwaizumi stands in the doorframe dressed in a black t-shirt and shorts. Uncertainty passes over his face when he looks at Oikawa, like he might be reconsidering this whole idea and conceding to let Oikawa take the couch after all. Then he silently turns around, leaving the door open for Oikawa to follow.

Suzu parks herself on the top of the couch by the window, large green eyes wide on Oikawa’s face like she knows better than to follow them. Oikawa takes her slow blink as her wishing him luck.

When he enters the room, Iwaizumi is already on his side, tucked under sheets and facing the window.

Oikawa pads quietly to the opposite side. He quickly wriggles out of his sweats and ducks under the covers, folding himself into a tight ball. He settles his cheek against the cool pillow, slides his eyes shut and breathes slow.

The comfort of being in a bed soothes his muscles, drowsiness pulling on his eyelids. It’s so nice to be showered clean, fed, and tucked in to sleep, especially after a day like today.

He has Iwaizumi to thank for all of it.

Even after Oikawa ran away. Even after two years of radio silence. Even with all the possible evidence of a life that kept moving on without him.

Oikawa can’t help but wonder—can there really be someone else if he’s lying here?

His mouth turns bitter at the thought. If there is, they’re lucky. Lucky that they’ll get to have everything he lost.

His hand still tingles with traces of Iwaizumi’s touch. He misses when that touch belonged to him. When he could reach for it and lean into it without thought. He shifts, and as the mattress dips, he becomes suddenly and completely aware of the space between them.

Iwaizumi’s breathing is slow and even at his back. Oikawa knows that rhythm well. He used to lay on the opposite end of this pillow and watch Iwaizumi’s chest rise and fall as he drifted to sleep. Oikawa would reach out and draw a line from his temple to his chin and wish he could tell Iwaizumi what he meant to him.

What do you want me to do with that, Oikawa?

Oikawa’s eyes roll open to stare at the wall. He weighs the question in his mind, turning it over in a way he couldn’t at the table when Iwaizumi’s eyes were on him with a kindness he didn’t deserve and a pressure that he couldn’t handle. He said he didn’t know because he was tired and afraid, because he feels like he doesn’t deserve to ask Iwaizumi for anything, and because saying he wants to be loved out loud feels like handing over a weapon.

He’s always treated love as though he had to survive it. Being with Iwaizumi taught him it wasn’t something to fear.

The realization crashes into him the way he thought love would.

Back then, Iwaizumi told Oikawa plainly what he wanted, knowing Oikawa would run away, but hoping that he might stay, and choose him, despite everything inside of him telling him not to.

Tonight, Iwaizumi sat across from Oikawa with two years of grief written in the crease of his brow and asked him what he wanted.

Oikawa bites his lip. A tremor works its way through his bones as adrenaline roars through his blood and drums loud between his ears. Acting on impulse hasn’t really worked in his favor in recent years. But he’s tired of waiting, and wondering, and wanting.

“Iwa-chan.”

His whisper is loud in the quiet of the room. Iwaizumi breathes evenly across from him, too gentle to be asleep.

“You asked me what I wanted earlier.” He fights the sounds sticking against the back of his throat. “I do know. I want this life with you, and the next, and every one after that.”

The words come easier than expected. He rolls over to look at Iwaizumi’s back in the dark of the room, heart aching as courage nestles itself between the chambers.

“I didn’t come here to apologize,” Oikawa breathes. “I came here to tell you that I...” He gulps. He’s scared out of his wits and his heart feels like it might burst out of his chest, but for the first time, the words don’t feel heavy.

“I’m in love with you.”

Thunder rumbles soft in the distance, the rain falling harder against the glass.

Iwaizumi stops breathing.

“You don’t have to say anything. I’m not asking you to do anything with that, either. At the very least, I wanted to give you a real answer."

In spite of being years too late and making so many mistakes along the way, he did it. All the work he did to stitch his heart back together comes undone. It might just turn to glass and shatter into pieces, but if that means he can stop running away from Iwaizumi, he’ll spend the rest of his life gluing the shards back together.

Oikawa blinks tears from his lash line. He wants to sob so hard his ribs will beg him to breathe to keep from cracking, but just as well, he can’t stop smiling, letting go of two years worth of anxiety constricting the steady thrum of his heartbeat.

The same fatigue that settled over him on the couch works its way into his joints, loosening his vice grip on the duvet. He can’t expect Iwaizumi to say anything now. He can only hope that something amicable comes from this when the sun rises.

He blinks the last of the tears from his eyes and shifts to roll over.

“When did you figure that out?” Iwaizumi’s voice is rough and low in a way it hasn’t been all evening.

Oikawa exhales the shiver from his spine. “Bali. Though I—I think it was before that. Maybe…” His mind flashes to the night they agreed to stop their toxic back and forth. “The night of the gala.”

“The night I left…is that what you thought I wanted you to say?” There’s a break in Iwaizumi’s voice at the end, like what he’d been holding in all night finally snaps.

“No,” Oikawa whispers. “I wanted to say it then, and before that. So many times, but I was scared.”

“Of what?” Iwaizumi’s voice is tighter now, expectant, without the patience that he had at the dinner table.

“Of everything. Of you, myself, of not knowing what comes next. But I’m not running away anymore. No matter what happens next.”

Lightning flashes from the top corner of the windows.

“Are you scared right now?” Iwaizumi’s question dangles in the dark of the room like a dagger suspended over Oikawa’s heart.

“Terrified,” Oikawa whispers back.

The wall between them shatters as thunder crashes in the distance. The mattress shifts and Iwaizumi’s hands fly out to grab Oikawa and pull, dragging them together and closing the gap. A hand wraps around the back of Oikawa’s neck and tilts him into a searing kiss. All at once, Oikawa feels the weight of two years of silence, but more than that, five years of yearning.

There have been many times over the last half decade where Oikawa has understood Iwaizumi without words. They had learned to communicate through soft glances and gentle touches, and at some point, they’d reached something like telepathy. Oikawa couldn’t understand why it never worked when it came to figuring out his feelings, but now he understands he’d been closing himself off to it, afraid that Iwaizumi would see into the deepest and ugliest parts of himself.

Oikawa was too slow to realize Iwaizumi already had, and despite all his shortcomings, had accepted him wholly and irrevocably.

Iwaizumi’s thumbs sweep across Oikawa’s jaw as he kisses him, and the link that Oikawa had been suppressing breaks open. He can feel it, and hear it, and taste it—how desperately Iwaizumi has wanted him. No, needed him. How much it killed him that night to bury his feelings deep into his heart and set Oikawa free, thinking it might save them from falling apart.

Of course it didn’t work. They both spent each day after that getting by on convincing themselves that they’d always been doomed from the start.

“I missed you. I missed you so much it almost fucking killed me,” Iwaizumi babbles. “I need you. Right now I—”

Oikawa usually melts into Iwaizumi’s kisses, but right now, Iwaizumi’s mouth on his has his nerves screaming as they remind him just how much he missed him. All of it slams into him like a meteor and has his hands reaching for Iwaizumi to grip onto any part of him, desperate to fuse them together.

He thought he might have forgotten the feel and taste of Iwaizumi after all this time, but as Iwaizumi rolls on top of him he’s certain of it—he could never forget. Somewhere within their time together Iwaizumi had marked himself deep inside of Oikawa. Whether that was out of possession or love, Oikawa doesn’t know, nor does he care. He wants Iwaizumi to touch all those spots again and bring them to life.

Without needing to ask, Iwaizumi breaks their kiss and leans back, reaching behind his head and pulling his shirt off in one tug. He tosses it carelessly to the side and reaches to do the same for Oikawa, hands sliding along his waist and hiking his shirt off, letting it pool at the top of the pillows.

He bows forward and kisses him again, prying his jaw open with his lips and pressing their tongues together, sinking over him slow and letting skin meet skin. The brief touch of their hands at the dinner table was enough to shock Oikawa’s nerves. Having Iwaizumi’s weight and warmth over him is almost too much.

Oikawa folds his arms around his neck and teases the hair at the nape of his neck, a thrill running through him when Iwaizumi shudders and ruts their hips together. The beginnings of pleasure have started to trickle their way from Oikawa’s brain down into his groin, his briefs straining as he swells against Iwaizumi.

“Fuck,” Iwaizumi hisses, arms flexing as he cradles Oikawa beneath him. He rocks them together again and Oikawa feels him hard against his inner thigh. “I can’t hold back.”

“Don’t,” Oikawa begs. If Iwaizumi stopped now he isn’t sure what he would do with himself.

Iwaizumi doesn’t argue. His hands rake through Oikawa’s hair and press on the back of his skull before following a line down his neck and chest. His kisses leave Oikawa’s mouth and follow a trail along his jaw and down his throat. He stops at Oikawa’s chest, mouth hot and wet over a pink nipple, finding an angle that ruts them together so good he moans.

“It’s sensitive, Iwa-chan,” Oikawa whines, shivering as the tip of Iwaizumi’s tongue flicks against his stiff peak.

Iwaizumi only hums in response. His hands find the seam of Oikawa’s briefs and slips underneath the elastic, working it off his hips enough to let his cock breathe. The head is swollen and pink, a pearl of precome sitting perfectly in the center and waiting to be smeared.

Iwaizumi lets go of his chest and leans back far enough to tug on Oikawa’s briefs, not missing the chance to smooth his hands along his legs. He stops at Oikawa’s knees and spreads him open, a tangled whimper leaving him as his hands smooth along the inside of Oikawa’s thighs. His hands slide to a stop just at Oikawa’s hips and he presses his still-clothed erection flat against him, pitching his hips forward slowly as if to remember how he used to take him.

Those dark green eyes move slow along Oikawa’s frame from where their hips meet, finally landing on his face and glowing with a lust that’s been starved for far too long.

Oikawa can’t remember the last time he was this naked and exposed beneath someone, but those times never held the vigor that Iwaizumi’s gaze does. “Stop staring,” he hisses, hands moving to cover himself.

Iwaizumi catches his wrists and holds them apart with a vice grip. “Don’t hide from me.” His voice is soft but his eyes are tight with warning. “Not this time.” He takes one of Oikawa’s hands and guides it to rest against his chest.

His heart is beating fast and hard, threatening to crack through his chest plate.

Oikawa stares at his hand, then looking up at Iwaizumi, who is nuzzling a kiss against Oikawa’s free hand and idling their hips together. Though it’s too dark to see clearly, Oikawa can feel it under his fingertips sitting gently against Iwaizumi’s cheek. His face is warm, blushing scarlet from the tips of his ears down to his chest.

Across their three years together, they’d had sex more times than they could count. Oikawa has known what it is to be shy while under Iwaizumi just once, but he’s never known Iwaizumi to be nervous until now. Had he always been this nervous? How could Oikawa not notice after all this time?

There’s nothing to be done about all the would have’s and should have’s that sit in the back of his mind. All he knows is right now, both of them want to make up for time that should have never been spent apart.

Oikawa sweeps his thumb across Iwaizumi’s bottom lip and nods slowly in both understanding and permission.

Something unlocks between them when the next flash of lightning beams through the windows. What Oikawa thought was a lack of restraint before was barely the start as Iwaizumi leans over him again. His hands don’t wander, they search, hunting for all the spots that make Oikawa tick.

The urgent kisses grow desperate. Iwaizumi marks love bites and bruises that bloom from Oikawa’s neck down to his thighs. He’s relentless, ignoring Oikawa’s pleas and gasps. Or maybe he’s encouraging them, seeing as he moans every time Oikawa tugs at his hair like his life depends on it.

At some point during this barrage of affection and attention, Iwaizumi rummages through his nightstand to grab a bottle. Oikawa switches between gripping into pillows and the top of Iwaizumi’s head as he works him open with spit and lube. The view of watching Iwaizumi’s head bob greedily between his legs, feeling him moan around his cock and wriggle his wrist back and forth with three fingers to the knuckle is threatening to send him over the edge faster than he can keep up.

Though he’s being thorough, he isn’t taking his time.

This version of Iwaizumi aims to devour Oikawa body and soul before they’re done.

“Mmh, fuck, Iwa-chan, if you keep going I’ll come,” Oikawa whines. He doesn’t want to finish like this. He wants to feel ecstasy with the sound of Iwaizumi losing control in his ear.

Iwaizumi pulls off with a wet slurp and removes his hand, leaving Oikawa empty and hovering at the edge of his own release. His chest rises and falls rapidly, heat burning scarlet across his face and neck. He peeks at Iwaizumi from under his arm. Even through the dim light of the room, Oikawa can see Iwaizumi’s eyes glazed over with desire, his blush dark crimson and lips swollen.

The last time he saw this look in his eyes was in Bali. When they got back to their villa after the night market, Iwaizumi spread Oikawa back against the bed and poured all his unspoken wants into him. Back then, Oikawa thought they were just in the heat of the moment. He understands now what he was trying to tell him.

Iwaizumi wipes his mouth clean with the back of his hand and tugs at the elastic of his waistband, dropping them low enough to let his cock spring free.

“I’ll make you remember the shape of me,” Iwaizumi promises, the film over his eyes growing thicker as he kisses Oikawa’s hole with the tip of his cock.

Oikawa’s stomach leaps into his throat as Iwaizumi sinks into him with a push. He grabs Iwaizumi’s arms and digs into flesh as Iwaizumi stretches him full. It’s always the same with Iwaizumi, in the sense that Oikawa will never get used to the way he seats himself inside and turns any pain into pleasure.

Iwaizumi stops halfway and drops his head forward.  “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he snarls in a string, reaching for the pillow beside Oikawa’s head and gripping hard into the fabric. Oikawa releases the grip on Iwaizumi’s arms and gently traces along his collarbones and down to his chest.

“Stop, don’t,” Iwaizumi begs. He lowers himself to rest his forehead against Oikawa’s chest.

Oikawa obeys, holding still as Iwaizumi tenses and flexes his hips. After a few moments, he presses open mouthed kisses to Oikawa’s chest upward to his throat, and with them, moves his hips further. Oikawa chokes on a moan as Iwaizumi finally bottoms out, hips meeting the back of his thighs.

“You feel so good,” Iwaizumi shudders into the hollow of his ear. “Too good, I might not last, dammit.”

“Iwa-chan, you don’t have to rush—”

“I’m not rushing,” Iwaizumi bites without edge. “I just…I’ll die of embarrassment if I don’t fuck you right the first time. I’ve dreamt about this so many times,” Iwaizumi babbles as he starts to move his hips. “How I’d take you when you finally came home.”

The last three words punch the air from Oikawa’s lungs.

Iwaizumi lifts up just enough to grab onto Oikawa’s hips, now having found a sweet spot to increase his rhythm. Oikawa watches Iwaizumi look down at the way his cock disappears inside, whimpering and groaning as wet squelching and skin slapping fill the room.

It’s so filthy and lewd and makes all of Oikawa’s bites and bruises tingle. Iwaizumi is out of his mind, drunk on love and sex and doing everything to make sure Oikawa finds his release before he does. But he’s also letting go of waiting, and wanting, and wishing, the same way Oikawa had been.

Iwaizumi fucks him hard and deep, breaking open all the places Oikawa had locked away.

“Fuck, baby. Tooru, so good.” Iwaizumi places a hand over Oikawa’s belly to feel himself through his stomach. He thrusts brutally against the spot that makes Oikawa’s bones turn to jelly and bows forward to slide their mouths together.

Oikawa blushes to the sound of his name being called in Iwaizumi’s raspy, broken pleads and wraps his arms around Iwaizumi’s neck, raking blunt nails across his back and shoulders. He missed this—the way Iwaizumi craved him, the way they moved like two halves of a whole, the way Iwaizumi wrapped himself around Oikawa’s soul with a warmth that burned under his skin.

“I love you,” Iwaizumi swoons.

It slips out of him mid thrust. He catches it too late, registering the surprise on Oikawa’s face, but they’re too far gone to stop, so he slides his eyes shut and moves faster.

All at once, the remnants of agony that had been ripping holes in Oikawa’s heart all this time is consumed by something else. Maybe it’s the relief that Oikawa is finally home, like Iwaizumi said. Maybe it’s knowing that all the little trinkets littered around Iwaizumi’s place don’t belong to someone that fit into the spaces of Iwaizumi’s heart.

Oikawa realizes too late that he’s crying. “Iwa-chan,” He whines through a broken sob, “Iwa-chan—!”

"I know," Iwaizumi grows, voice wavering.

Iwaizumi bottoms out and moans into Oikawa's ear. The sensory overload rips through Oikawa hard and snaps taught, turning his vision white. 

He comes with a sharp cry, spilling white hot against his stomach and chest, and seizes, nails scraping wounds into Iwaizumi’s skin.

It’s enough to send Iwaizumi reeling after him, tensing and clinging to Oikawa like a lifeline. He spews curses through tangled moans as he comes, hips stuttering and jerking to a slow stop.

They collapse into a spent heap, both gasping for air and letting their senses reorient as they float through euphoria.

No one moves for a while as they sync and slow their breathing, listening to the sound of the rain and the rumble of thunder outside.

When Oikawa feels like he can move again, he goes to say something, anything to break the silence. As Iwaizumi lifts his weight off of him, he’s reminded of how sensitive all of him is in the moment.

“Sorry,” Iwaizumi grunts in response to Oikawa’s overstimulated whimper. “Hang on.” Iwaizumi slides out and hurriedly dashes for a wet towel, coming back to clean them both off.

“You okay?” Iwaizumi asks quietly, looking over the bruises and bites along Oikawa’s skin.

“Mhm,” Oikawa hums, still buzzing with the energy of the afterglow. “Cold.”

“Shoulda worn a co—”

“No,” Oikawa inserts quickly.

Iwaizumi smiles and clears his throat. He tosses the towel into the laundry bin by the bathroom and climbs into bed, butterflying kisses across Oikawa’s shoulder and his neck, hands touching gently along all the marks he left.

“You said you love me,” Oikawa murmurs into the dark after a while.

Iwaizumi responds slowly. “Yeah. I do.”

“When did you know?”

Iwaizumi stares at him for a long moment. Then his face softens as he looks down. “The island,” he confesses.

“What?” Oikawa gasps. “That long?”

“You said you didn’t do relationships, so I tried to make those four days count,” Iwaizumi shrugs. “I knew what I signed up for.”

“But you never told me—”

“When I told you I wanted to grow old with you, you ran away, Oikawa,” Iwaizumi reminds him gently. “Besides. You said you knew you loved me back in Bali. No, before that. Why didn’t you say anything?”

“I’m the one with commitment issues,” Oikawa argues.

“Exactly,” Iwaizumi chuckles and laces their fingers together. He presses a kiss to Oikawa’s forehead and drops back onto the pillow.

Oikawa watches Iwaizumi idly link and unlink their hands, feeling their ankles shift together under the sheets. “You were scared,” he whispers.

“Terrified,” Iwaizumi answers with a smile.

Oikawa turns to look at him in the dark.

All this time, Iwaizumi has been satisfied with a sort of, waiting for a maybe, hoping for a definitely.

It took Oikawa five years too long to figure out what Iwaizumi already knew. It makes him angry that he took so long to find the words that were so easy to say, if only Oikawa had trusted himself to say them.

“Iwa-chan,” Oikawa breathes, “I don’t want you to wait anymore.”

Iwaizumi looks back at him and squeezes their hands together. “Oikawa, I’m not asking for—”

“I know. I’m asking,” Oikawa insists. “I want all the things you said. Our place, our bed, growing old. But… I know I don’t exactly have the best track record. So… take your time. But when you decide you want to, or if you want to, I’ll be right here.”

Iwaizumi is quiet for a moment. The rain fills the silence between them, muffled through the glass as Oikawa waits. He doesn’t move, taking his time and letting Iwaizumi come to him. He breathes slow and steady, dipping his head to press a kiss to Iwaizumi’s shoulder.

Oikawa spent so long believing that wanting someone this much was the most dangerous thing a person could do. That love was a liability, and handing over your heart meant inevitably they’d rip it apart.

He’d been so sure that self preservation was the answer to his happiness. But fear isn’t the same as wisdom. At the end of it all, it costs the same.

Iwaizumi pulls Oikawa forward and kisses him slow and unhurried, like they have all the time in the world. “Careful,” He murmurs against his mouth, “If you go down this road with me there’s no turning back. If you run away from me again I will actually hunt you down.”

Laughter bubbles from Oikawa’s chest and past his lips, soft and a little undone. He feels light, now that he’d set down all the unnecessary baggage he’d been carrying.

“I wish you had last time.”

Iwaizumi pulls back enough to look at him. “Last time you weren’t mine.”

Oikawa rolls on top of him. For the first time in a long time, the impulse to calculate his exit feels far away. There’s no voice in his head telling him to run. There’s just this room, and the rain, and Iwaizumi looking up at him, waiting to see what he says.

Maybe he already knows.

“That’s just it.” Oikawa’s voice comes out softer than he intends, wobbly around the edges in a way he doesn’t bother to hide. “Iwa-chan, I think I’ve always been yours.”

Eight Months Later

“Hajime built this?”

Oikawa folds his arms across his chest triumphantly as Hanamaki runs his fingers along the mesh wiring of Suzu’s catio enclosure. “Sure did,” he boasts with a smug grin, “it’s even got a—”

Hanamaki is already tugging the latch of the door and stepping inside, looking around in amazement—cat-safe foliage, places to lounge, spots for shade. It’s a pocket of paradise for a cat, like something straight out of a magazine.

Oikawa and Iwaizumi spared no expense when they agreed they wanted somewhere for Suzu to be able to stretch and feel the outside air.

When they embarked on the journey of getting a place together, they decided to go big. Oikawa said he wanted a place they could grow into. Iwaizumi didn’t complain, so long as they found a place with open areas and a big kitchen. It took some trial and error, but eventually they found it—spacious kitchen and living room, three bedrooms, two and a half sizable bathrooms and a giant balcony.

They signed a lease within days. 

“This thing is enormous,” Hanamaki says, leaning up to let Suzu gently press her nose to his in greeting. She’s perched on a ledge above his head, her favorite spot to sit while outside. She likes that she can see the table from this spot and keep her eyes on her parents and any of their guests. “Honestly, this whole place is enormous.”

“Coming from the sugar baby, I’m flattered,” Oikawa folds his hands over his chest. Hanamaki smiles from ear to ear and flips him the bird.

“Hey sugar baby, get out of the cage and come help me set the table,” Matsukawa calls from behind.

“Sorry, Suzu-chan,” Hanamaki scratches behind her ears once more. “Daddy’s calling.” He steps out from the cage and heads for the table. Oikawa does a quick scan of their balcony and looks up at Suzu, who is trilling from her perch up top. He then makes his way to help the others with finishing touches for lunch but is stopped by hands that find his middle.

“Cold?” Iwaizumi’s voice is warm in his ear, warm lips pressing a smiling kiss against his neck.

“A little,” Oikawa responds softly. It’s not a lie, though his skin raising is mostly due to Iwaizumi’s arms folding tighter around him. He flurries kisses along Oikawa’s skin, giving his hip a squeeze before letting him go.

“I’ll get you a blanket. Did we put them in the office?”

“Mhm,” Oikawa hums. His chest does that thing it’s been doing ever since they moved in—the warm, slightly startled thing it does whenever Iwaizumi references their things in their apartment.

Iwaizumi swivels him around and kisses him once, twice, and a third that holds for a beat like the first two weren’t enough. He leaves a chaste fourth on the corner of Oikawa’s lip before heading inside. Oikawa looks after him with a dreamy sigh. He’ll never get tired of those kisses.

“You coming, lover boy?” Hanamaki calls.

“Yes yes,” Oikawa answers.

They finish setting the table and work on bringing the food from the kitchen, chatting away about any and everything. Hanamaki asks Oikawa all about the moving process. Oikawa tells him how easy it was, considering they did more shopping than they did packing. Oikawa was only too eager to replace Iwaizumi’s god-awful couch with something prettier, and comfier. Iwaizumi didn’t take any offense, especially after he sat on the new couch and fell asleep within fifteen minutes.

Moving came with its fair share of squabbles too—Oikawa was a tad neurotic about the millimeters of unevenness on a painting they hung in the office. Iwaizumi would not give up his ratty, ugly, metal lamp that he’d had since college. It was an eye sore on the office desk, but Oikawa chose to appreciate its sentimentality to spare his itch to throw it away.

Iwaizumi promptly put his foot down when Oikawa kept ordering pillows.

“They’re accent pieces—”

“Baby, we don’t need fourteen of them.”

They were all petty spats that usually ended with laughter. Sometimes more.

“We’re thinking of Jordan for our next vacation,” Matsukawa says, settling into his seat at the table. His eyes linger on the tray full of piping hot ribs, tender to the bone.

“Petra?” Oikawa asks thoughtfully.

“Yes. And Wadi Rum,” Matsukawa replies, laying an arm around the back of Hanamaki’s chair as he looks around. “It’s been a while since I’ve gone, and you two have never been, so.”

“Speaking of, did he get lost looking for that blanket?” Hanamaki asks.

“Maybe distracted. I’ll go get him,” Oikawa sighs and stands, heading through the sliding glass and down the hallway. “Iwa-chan?” He calls out into the open.

“Yeah, I’m in here.”

Oikawa rounds the corner to find Iwaizumi standing in the office. His back is to the door and he’s looking down at something in his hands. A box sits open on the desk in front of him. Oikawa recognizes that box instantly—he never kept many trinkets, but the things he did keep were usually stashed away either at Hanamaki’s place, or his sister’s. Now that he has a place of his own, he thought it appropriate to collect those things and bring them here.

He only had a handful of boxes’ worth, and truthfully, he doesn’t really remember all of what is in them. He planned to go through them at some point, but in all the shuffle, he kind of forgot and tucked them into the corner in the office.

“We’re waiting for you, Iwa-chan. What are you looking at?”

Iwaizumi half turns and reveals the photograph folded in his hand.

It’s Oikawa, maybe eight years old, with a toothy grin and a volleyball pressed between his palms. He’s smiling from ear to ear with a little wrinkle in his nose from sunshine. He’s covered in leaves and dirt and his shirt is torn, but the only thing on his face is pure, concentrated joy.

“You were so small,” Iwaizumi says.

“I was eight.”

“Still small,” Iwaizumi repeats warmly. He smiles, dimples poking into his cheeks and thick lashes heavy over his eyes as he scans the photo, smoothing his thumb over tiny Tooru’s smiling face.

Oikawa crosses the room to stand next to him, letting their shoulders touch as he peeks into the box. “Have you been snooping through my things?”

“Snooping is strong,” Iwaizumi casually slides an arm around his waist. “I just like getting to know the you before me.”

“The me before you was a mess,” Oikawa rolls his eyes as he lifts a glass sphere from the box and rolls it in his palm, smoothing away the dust.

“What’s that?”

“Constellations,” Oikawa mumbles, “I was kind of obsessed with stars. And space. And… aliens,” his cheeks turn pink when he says it aloud. He sets the sphere in Iwaizumi’s palm.

Iwaizumi holds it up to the light and turns it back and forth, looking at the embedded engravings of stars within the glass. “Nerd.”

“Hey!”

Iwaizumi kisses his cheek before he can protest and sets the sphere back into Oikawa’s hands.

Oikawa rolls it back and forth with a small smile.  “The stars are the reason I became so obsessed with traveling, y’know. Thought maybe if I searched enough, I’d find my favorite sky to look at and call that place home.”

He sets the sphere back into the box with a gentle tap. “Stopped looking up at them years ago, though.”

Iwaizumi is quiet for a moment. “That’s because you already found it.”

Oikawa turns to look at him, but Iwaizumi is already looking back with that usual, unhurried gaze, the one Oikawa falls harder for every time their eyes meet. “I guess I did,” Oikawa smiles softly.

Iwaizumi sets the photo neatly back into the box and reaches for the blanket set on the desk. He unfolds and gently wraps it around Oikawa’s shoulders, kissing him gently at first. Oikawa feels his kisses grow urgent and hands begin to wander in ways that will have them both forgetting all about lunch.

He brings his hands up to push at Iwaizumi’s shoulders with a soft laugh. “Iwa-chan, we have to go eat!”

“They can eat without us,” Iwaizumi hums against the base of Oikawa’s throat.

“Stop it, we’d be bad hosts.”

Iwaizumi groans in defeat. He buries his nose into the hollow of Oikawa’s neck and breathes in deep before he steps back and pulls him upright. “Fine… I’m sure Hiro has already started eating.”

Oikawa suppresses a smile, watching Iwaizumi fight the urge to sulk as he holds Oikawa’s hand and pulls him from the office.

The afternoon light is warm as they step back out to the balcony.

Hanamaki looks up from his plate, having cleaned off a single rib to the bone and is sucking the pad of his thumb with zero remorse. “Finally,” he sighs, “do we need to get you two a map?”

“It was five minutes, Makki,” Oikawa rolls his eyes. Iwaizumi pushes in his chair and takes his seat next to him.

“Five minutes too long. My stomach is touching my back,” Hanamaki whines.

“Babe, the drama,” Oikawa sneers and waves his hands, giving everyone permission to begin eating.

The food is laid out between them, warm and fragrant, and conversation picks back up easily. Hanamaki is stacking his plate, Matsukawa is pouring drinks, and the afternoon settles around them, the sun helping take the small chill out of the air.

Oikawa reaches across the spread without thinking, plucking the pieces he knows Iwaizumi won’t reach for himself and setting them on his plate. The crisper bits, the end cuts. The things Oikawa has learned over time through the years of sharing tables with him. And in turn, Iwaizumi does the same, topping off Oikawa’s glass because he likes the way the ice rattles, refilling his plate corner of fruit with honeydew melon—one of his favorites.

They both do it without thinking, and neither of them really notice until they look up to find Matsukawa and Hanamaki staring at them with a profound, delighted smugness.

“What?” They ask in unison.

Matsukawa smiles with a certainty over the rim of his glass. “You two act like you’ve been together for a lifetime,” he says calmly, like he’s known all along it was going to play out this way. As though his friendly introduction on the island wasn’t just coincidence, but his sharp intuition.

Oikawa opens his mouth. Then he closes it. He isn’t sure what to say to that, only that he can’t disagree.

“We fast tracked a few of the basics, I think,” Iwaizumi offers humorously.

“Does this mean I’ll get to be Tooru’s man of honor soon?” Hanamaki teases.

Iwaizumi goes very still. He turns to look at Oikawa on reflex. Oikawa sees it written in his face, the old instinct, five years worn into muscle memory. He’s checking for a flinch, a scramble. To see if a comment like that would make the light in his eyes shutter because it’s all too far, too fast, too much.

Oikawa looks back at him. His stomach is doing somersaults, but there isn’t an ounce of flight in him. He likes the idea of it—Makki at his right side, Matsukawa at Iwaizumi’s left. Oikawa would cry first but Iwaizumi would cry harder. The image is clear and tangible and it makes his heart squeeze and his smile stretch from ear to ear.

He leans into his hand, and without looking away from Iwaizumi, says, “ask us again in a year or two.”

The tips of Iwaizumi’s ears turn pink. His eyes grow a fraction wider, and then his face shifts the way it normally does when he thinks no one is paying attention. He goes completely, quietly soft, forgetting all about Matsukawa and Hanamaki sitting across from them. Or maybe he doesn’t care.

Iwaizumi reaches under the table at the exact moment Oikawa turns his hand over.

They lace their fingers together and squeeze both a question and a promise between their palms.

The words unspoken are warm, and certain, and Oikawa thinks—not for the first time, or the last—that this is exactly where he’s supposed to be.