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He doesn’t have a complicated palette when it comes to music. All he really needs is a beat he can run to and a catchy hook. If the lyrics aren't horse shit, that’s just a bonus. (He avoids pop like the plague, but no one is perfect.)
He’s having a spectacularly bad day when a dark green 4x4 pulls up alongside his Chevy in the early afternoon. The stifling heat has everyone’s windows down and it’s like the cherry on top of a shit sundae when he hears the man driving the car begin to sing his heart out to some foreign multimember girl group.
He snorts when it actually becomes something horrific. There's no way God exists. The man is clearly tone deaf. But Iwaizumi feels his face lift in a broad smile. The world seems a little less bleak at the thought of this man singing his ever-loving heart out. The red light they’re stuck at is notoriously long and Iwaizumi prepares to hunker down for the long haul, being lulled into a doze by the dulcet tones of his next car neighbor. The man hits a particularly unforgiving note. Flocks of nearby pigeons take flight.
Iwaizumi can’t help the laugh that escapes his chest. It catches him by surprise. He was so sure the rest of his day was gone to shit, but right now he can’t remember what was upsetting him in the first place.
The singing voice falters. Iwaizumi looks to his right. The singing man is no longer singing. His hands grip his steering wheel as he glares, looking directly at him. Iwaizumi snorts and laughs harder.
“Oi.”
The cadence of his speaking voice reaches into Iwaizumi’s ears like water over parched desert earth. Oh, Iwaizumi snickers to a stop, only to really look back at the man. His face is kind of weirdly small, but he’s attractive in a vaguely Abercrombie & Fitch way. Iwaizumi holds up his hands in defense.
“Sorry, sorry, you…” He doesn’t know what to say. He closes his eyes as he smiles. He can’t in good faith say he wasn’t being an asshole.
“You scared the birds,” he says, opening his eyes. He meets the man’s gaze for a moment longer before he realizes cars are moving and the light has changed. Then he’s being honked at and he has to turn away from the dark green car. He watches from his rearview mirror as the car speeds away, the savior of his day zooming off in the opposite direction. He smiles, shakes his head and drives on.
Iwaizumi gets home quickly after that and is three steps into his apartment when his phone starts going off. He kicks out of his shoes and drags his thumb across the screen.
“Matsukawa,” he says, a go ahead for his friend to respond. But the line is quiet save for a couple of distant, muffled voices. Iwaizumi grumbles and has no problem putting the phone on speaker, forcing Matsu to use up even more of his precious minutes. Why the man didn’t have unlimited everything never made sense to Iwaizumi. But he figured he wouldn’t be a friend if he didn’t cause the man financial pain every once in a while.
He sets his phone down on the kitchen counter and takes off his shirt and belt.
He catches every sixth word or so and ignores the call as he changes into work out clothes. Clingy sweats and a sleeveless shirt are more than enough for him as he stretches and tries to remember where his iPod is.
“-this jackass next to me-” holy shit, the voices are suddenly clear. And it’s a joke, because Iwaizumi is not mistaken when he recognizes the singing man’s speaking voice ringing like a bell, drowning out all other sound. He forgets he is moving and trips over his couch, face planting into his carpeted living room floor.
“-what kind of asshole just-” Iwaizumi doesn’t scramble for his phone. He takes a breath and rights himself so he’s sitting, leaning against the arm of his couch. Matsukawa says something else Iwaizumi can’t make out. The singing man starts to respond when Matsu must finally realize he’s in a phone call.
“What the- Iwaizumi? Are you there?”
“For the past five minutes, yes,” Iwaizumi clips. He rolls on to his feet and picks up the phone. “Stop butt dialing me,” he says, taking the call off of speakerphone.
“In your dreams, loser.” Iwaizumi scrunches his nose and decides to go for broke.
“Yo, who are you with right now?”
Matsukawa laughs, “Why do you ask?”
“Just wondering. His voice sounded familiar,” Iwaizumi rationalizes this as telling the truth.
“A friend from school.” Iwaizumi isn’t going to get a straight answer from the man now. “Fine, keep your secrets. I have to go anyways.” And Iwaizumi hangs up just like that.
He finds his iPod after a quick search through his bedroom and is relieved it’s got enough of a charge to last for an hour or so run. He finishes stretching and plugs in. His first choice of route is obstructed by summer construction; he keeps things novel by deciding his route as he goes. He’s still relatively new to the neighborhood, but he doesn’t find getting lost terrifying. His internal compass isn’t the worst, he figures. And he has his phone and iPod should things head south for whatever reason.
He doesn’t think about it too closely and is on his way in minutes.
There’s this wall that he’s come up to in his life right now. He wishes it were as easy to push through as the walls that pop up during training or workouts. When things get hard, you work through it, simply by continuing the same things. You don’t realize you get your second wind until after the race is done and you’re not in shambles, blubbering on the side of the road. You lose yourself into the rhythms of physicality. It’s rote and it’s something Iwaizumi understands.
It’s the mental part he’s struggling with.
He’s a junior in college and nothing adds up. So he runs.
His music today is loud and righteous and it’s just what he needs, remembering the day’s earlier events sharply.
His mile is around five minutes and fifteen seconds. He figures he can break five if he really puts his body to it. It’s going on the third mile when he realizes his phone is buzzing again. He slows to a jog and then to a stop, just past the entrance of a local park. It’s Matsukawa again.
Not one to ignore a friend’s call, Iwaizumi answers and doesn’t bother to hide the fact that he’s breathing a little hard.
“Matsukawa, is it an emergency?” he asks, right to the point. His friend laughs. Iwaizumi lifts his shirt up to wipe the sweat off of his forehead.
“Of a sort. Just wanted to confirm something.”
“What?”
“That you’re the- augh, Oikawa, don’t you, stop I-” There’s a struggle and Iwaizumi is both concerned and annoyed. But the latter is threatening to win majority.
“Matsu, I’m in the middle of-”
“I’ll have you know I have a beautiful singing voice,” says not-Matsukawa.
Iwaizumi stands there in the middle of the sidewalk only a little floored. He can’t help but to laugh. When he does finally get enough breath between the wheezes, he replies, “Tell that to all of the birds you single handedly displaced.”
The laughing man was hot like burning. Like his bitchy face just did everything for Oikawa. The bastard probably had a good personality too. And all for naught.
Oikawa slumps on top of Matsukawa and is unapologetically dramatic.
“So this jackass next me has the gall to laugh! I’m pretty sure I saw a tear in his eye, Matsu,” he drawls, annoyed and (for all his bravado) embarrassed.
“Oikawa, I don’t know how to tell you this,” Matsukawa looks up from his slushie. “Your voice could raise the dead. And not like in a, ‘thank you for reviving us, we’re all totally chill and have our organs and skin and brains again,’ but in a, ‘yes Overlord, what do you wish for us, your legion of the undead, to feast upon this damned eve?’” Oikawa frowns.
“You’re supposed to be my friend, Matsu.”
“And friends don’t lie to one another.”
Oikawa feels ruffled. “I mean, what kind of asshole just does that?” he asks, putting all of his energy into fueling his rage against the burning, terrible, hot as the sun stranger. Matsu is about to respond when he grabs his phone and is pulling it to his ear.
“What the- Iwaizumi? Are you there?” Oikawa grumbles, frustrated at being ignored, and leans against the park bench they’re sat on.
“In your dreams, loser.” Oikawa sips his tea and stretches his legs out, watching people pass by.
“Why do you ask?” He turns to look at Matsu and is a little surprised to find him looking back at him. “A friend from school,” he says, and now Oikawa knew the butthead was talking about him. Before he has a chance to ask him who’s on the phone, Matsukawa is laughing and tapping away at his phone, the conversation ended.
“Who was that?”
“Friend from high school. Just moved into this neighborhood.”
“They were asking about me?” Matsu rolls his eyes. “He said you sounded familiar.” They relax into the hazy summer afternoon, the heat annoyingly cloying. They sit opposite the park entrance and bitch at each other and it’s the best afternoon he’s had in a long time.
As he watches people pass, a man comes running down the sidewalk across the way. He almost has to do a double take. Maybe thirty feet away is none other than hotter than hell, jackass Chevrolet, laughing man. Oikawa grabs Matsukawa’s shoulder.
“Matsu, that’s him.” Matsu follows where he’s pointing and he blinks. Then he’s laughing. Really loudly.
“Shut up, you asshat, what if he hears?”
“Oh my god, hold on.” Matsu pulls his cellphone back out and brings it up to his ear. Oikawa has no idea what the fuck he’s doing, until the running, burning, laughing man slows to a stop and is pulling out his phone.
“No fucking way,” Oikawa mutters, just as Matsu starts talking.
“Of a sort. Just wanted to confirm something.” He’s looking at Oikawa with a raised eyebrow and a coy smile, and Oikawa has moments to do something before Matsukawa embarrasses the living daylights out of him.
“That you’re the-” Oikawa pounces. He has an elbow to Matsu’s throat and just manages to wrench the phone away from him.
“Matsu, I’m in the middle of-” Jesus Christ. Oikawa grasped at what little self-preservation instincts he had left and interrupts with, “I’ll have you know I have a beautiful singing voice.”
It’s quiet for a beat as Oikawa watches the man and continues holding Matsu at an arm’s length away. He watches as the man bends over, his laugh still as intoxicating over the static of the phone.
“Tell that to all of the birds you single handedly displaced,” he wheezes out between chuckles.
Oikawa chucks the phone and storms off.