Work Text:
Their friendship starts slow. It blooms like rose buds at the first signs of spring, petals as soft as silk. They grow up, like all people do. They grow taller, wiser, closecloseclose. Oikawa has other friends, of course. But somehow, there’s something different about the way Iwaizumi says his name. There’s something special in the way his eyes look when the sun hits them just right, glittering like gemstones.
It takes time for Oikawa to realize that he might be staring at the pillow plush of Iwaizumi's lips far too often to be considered “friendly.” He stares at Iwaizumi’s arms, strong and sure, imagines the way they'd tangle and wind around his waist. Oikawa doesn’t know when this longing, this ache first comes around, but it does. Iwaizumi stops looking like the 4 year old boy inside the sandbox, marveling at the ants marching off towards their hill. He stops looking like chocolate chip cookies and the ladybug bandaids that he begged and pleaded for on hand and knee when they were kids. Of course, Iwaizumi’s mother had caved, unable to deny her son of anything he desired.
Oikawa can see the way she looks at him now, grown up and grown into his life, with sad eyes as she watches her son’s best friend pine from afar. Love is not something you can buy in the cornerstore. Money cannot buy you the affections of your best friend or honest confidence.
They're not “together,” and Oikawa knows this. He tries to remind himself of this fact whenever they get too close too fast on his rooftop, watching stars or pretending to. The air is always thick nowadays, thick like the black coal lashes that cast shadows on Iwaizumi's cheeks. The air is thick like mud and gravel, like the sand lodged in Oikawa's throat.
When you kiss your best friend, there's no going back. So, when he feels his hand reaching out for Iwaizumi's jaw, he stops himself. Oikawa feels the sand in his throat thicken, heavy on his tongue and teeth and everywhere.
"What is it, Tooru?" Iwaizumi questions.
Oikawa merely shakes his head in reply, swallowing thick. Soon, everything is sand and dirt and debris. He's being buried in the silence he creates.
"Nothing. Nothing at all."
**
As it turns out, Oikawa doesn't remember a lot of things. He doesn't remember the exact moment where smiling begins to feel like a chore, the exact moment he becomes enraged by the mirror.
He detests the reflection staring back at him with too brown, too tired eyes. He hates the fragile curve of his lips and his milky skin. His body is nothing like Iwaizumi's, all warm and solid and real.
Oikawa starts to cover his mirror. It starts with a t-shirt, thrown haphazardly over the glass, before he banishes it to his bedroom closet. He averts his eyes in the bathroom when he passes by naked, burns holes into the sink when he brushes his teeth.
Oikawa puts his uniform on blindly in the morning and relies on his mother to point out any flaws. He wonders, bitterly, why she never does. They are written all over him in angry lines of red like spilled ink, littering his chest and his upper thighs. They cover every place no one has gotten close enough to touch.
When he starts to change inside of a bathroom stall after practice instead of the locker room, his friends cast him worried glances. Oikawa doesn't acknowledge this of course, smiles at them with pearly teeth. fakefakefake. He shies away from the scowl Iwaizumi begins to sport. No matter how far he strays, Iwaizumi still knows him better than anyone. He starts to hate it.
**
"What is the matter with you?" Iwaizumi asks him one day after practice. His voice is even but Oikawa can hear the panic underneath, seeping in like water through a towel. Like the love for this idiot boy seeping out of Oikawa's body, pouring from his heart and soul, filling his lungs and eyes and ears and everywhere from his head to his toes.
He wonders when he became so full of the need to kiss and touch and hold the boy yelling at him. He wonders how he didn't notice. He doesn't notice a lot of things, anymore.
"What are you talking about, Iwa-chan?" He asks, a laugh even fake to his own ears snaking its way out from his throat.
Iwaizumi groans in disbelief, dragging a hand across his face, and Oikawa can see him counting to 10 inside of his head, can see the gears whirring and clashing, just the way Hanamaki and Matsukawa had taught him jokingly at the beginning of the year.
('Not so harsh on ‘Kawa, Iwa-chan!' Hanamaki shouts, a sly smile on his lips.
Matsukawa barks out a laugh, the sound booming and sharp like thunder in a storm.
'Yeah, Iwa-chan, don't you know anything about keeping cool? Just count to 10.')
He remembers that day clear like water, how Iwaizumi had lulled on it before realizing that it was an honest, effective way of "keeping cool," as they put it. He would never tell them out loud, but when the pair had gotten into a disagreement, he admitted it to Oikawa on the roof of his home under stars and moonshine. When Oikawa asked him why he listened, Iwaizumi's answer was, "you don't deserve to be screamed at."
It works, even now. Even when he feels he deserves every ounce of the yelling.
"Don't give me any of that, Oikawa," he spits, and he sees redredred, no more calm and cool shades of blue. "You haven't been eating, you've been ignoring my calls, you don't sit with me on the bus anymore, you're changing in a goddamn bathroom stall," he all but shouts, missing the way Oikawa's body trembles.
"You aren't you anymore." He says, and Oikawa opens his mouth to protest, to yell, to plead the fifth, but no sound comes out and he doesn't force it. Can't force it.
He finds his voice eventually, but it’s weak and wet and tired.
"I'm fine.." He says, but he doesn't believe himself anymore, and Iwaizumi never did.
"Tooru," Iwaizumi whispers, pleading and honest in the way that makes Oikawa regret ever meeting him, regret declaring their friendship in a sandbox over cookies and ants and bandaids, regret ever meeting his eyes because he can't be "just friends" anymore, can't take not kissing him hard and real, lips on lips and tongue against tongue.
The tears come fast even though he wills them away, and he wonders why his whole entire being is out to get him. His brain, his heart, and his body all at once.
Iwaizumi's arms come around him quicker, before the first tears ever fall, before the first apology rips itself from his lips.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry..." He sobs, tears soaking the shoulder of Iwaizumi's uniform.
The boy tightens the grip of his arms around Oikawa's waist, and Oikawa thinks that if this were a movie, those arms would feel less like drowning and more like salvation.
"No, I'm sorry.." He whispers, and Oikawa tries not to dwell on the crack of his words. "I should've known sooner."
"Known what?" Oikawa mumbles into the damp fabric. He tries not to focus on the way his heartbeat picks up, the way his stomach drops like he knows what is coming, like he knows he could've never hid it, never tried to hide.
"You're hurting yourself, aren't you?" Iwaizumi asks, pulling back to look at him.
Oikawa sputters out excuses, tries to be shocked and surprised at the accusations, but his eyes give him away as they always will and always have. He tries not to flinch under the disappointed gaze Iwaizumi gives him, but he does and it's visible and he can't do anything right, can't keep himself grounded or under control and Iwaizumi probably hates him, probably hates everything about him–
"Tooru, stop." He demands.
Oikawa can't see him clear through his blurry vision but he knows that he looks angry, sounds angry, and the tears fall hot on his face when rough hands are gripping at his wrists, pulling and ripping him forwards, and it hurts more than metal against skin. So much more than anything else.
"Stop torturing yourself like that. I don't hate you, I'm not mad at you, I don't want to leave you. I can't leave you, I would never, I love you and I'm here and my heart is beating. But you need to let me help you and you need to show me what you've done because your heart needs to keep beating, too, or so help me God, Tooru.." He grits out, eyes red and wet.
Oikawa can't hear anything else, but Iloveyouiloveyouiloveyou echoing in his ears, and before he can snap out of his trance his shirt is being tugged up and off, and he is left with nothing to protect himself.
The look on Iwaizumi's face could haunt him to the grave. The way those beautiful green eyes turn dark and stormy like a cloud before a hurricane. The way they stay soaking in every angry line, slash, word written into milk white skin, and he knows that he's disgusting, knows it like he knows anything else, but he knows that the look on the boy's face is not disgust but something of hurt and an emotion he does not know the name of until he is yanked into a hug, calloused fingers rubbing up and down the smooth of his back.
('I love you, Tooru....')
"Don't you dare, Tooru, don't you do this ever again," he sobs, and the sound is like the sound of heaven falling. He never wants to hear it again.
"I won't," he mumbles, mind coated in surprise and something strange, like remembering what it feels like to know that your best friend loves you, that your best friend has always loved you even though you have never loved you, that your best friend would move a mountain and hit you to make you realize that you're something made of "enough."
"Don't hurt yourself, don't hurt yourself, I love you. Tooru, please. Don't do this, okay? Tell me where else.." He demands, and Oikawa gasps through his sobs, because it is so much at once and he can feel ice melting inside of his chest, can feel bridges being built and walls crumbling in ruins.
"It's okay, Tooru, I'm sorry. Baby steps, okay? I didn't mean to make you cry, I'm so so-"
"Don't apologize, Hajime, I love you!" He yells, voice horse and weepy. When Haijime's eyes give off their lantern glow moments later, his heart stutters in the best way and he doesn't regret a thing about meeting Hajime.
They're kissing and his lips aren't as soft as they look, chapped in some spots and smooth in others, and he tastes like salt from his tears and peppermint gum. It is nothing he imagined but everything he wants, and he finds his hands tugging at Hajime's own shirt like he's only imagined 5000 times through and through before.
When they make love in Oikawa's bedroom later that night, Iwaizumi pressed deep and hot inside of Oikawa, Iwaizumi sucks marks into his milky skin that look a lot less like pain and a lot more like love. Oikawa moans and calls Iwaizumi's name into the air like a mantra, loving the sound of his own for a long while, groaned into his waiting ears by Iwaizumi himself, and it is the first step towards the surface he has taken in a long time.
**
"I love you..." Oikawa whispers, glancing over to his bedroom mirror (Iwaizumi had rid of the garbage bags quickly, pressed kisses to the corners of Oikawa's eyes the whole way, shedding the pale boy of his clothing piece by piece) at the image of them laying in bed together, naked and exposed. He looks good inside of Iwaizumi's arms, he decides, feels good and safe and important and beautiful.
"And I love you, Tooru.." He responds, easy and honest as if being asked for the time.
"Always?" He questions, eyes meeting the glowing orbs that his boyfriend has been gifted with.
Iwaizumi smiles at him and it looks something like melted caramel and happy dreams.
He can feel heat bloom in his chest like a flower in spring, can feel the entire sun shining over his body, heat sprouting inside of his chest and he wonders how he is not glowing from the inside out with love for this boy.
"I love you every time, Tooru. Always and every time."