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Without volleyball practice until tomorrow, it felt as if today would never end. The humid summer afternoon came in shamelessly through the open window, and left the four of them sweating hard through their soaked clothes. The buzz of cicadas filled their heads and barely left room for coherent thought. When Hanamaki fanned himself with his shirt, it released a wave of teenage boy body odor that might have incapacitated the rest of them, if only they had the energy to care.
“Gross,” said Matsukawa, lifting his own shirt up and gasping slightly at the sudden cool respite, a gift of the next few seconds. The sticky feeling was relentless and returned almost immediately. He sighed and said nothing about his own sweaty body stinking up the room, and no one else pointed it out.
Oikawa rubbed at his eyes, lying on his back, staring up at the slowly spinning ceiling fan. He made weak grasping motions at the pull cord, but it was hopeless. “Just a little closer...just a little more,” he said, stretching a little more, and then letting his arm fall to his side.
“You’re too lazy,” said Iwaizumi. He laid two arm’s lengths away from Oikawa, lying on his back too. He made no effort to look Oikawa’s way and yet he reprimanded him all the same. “You’ll never get the fan to turn faster.”
Oikawa narrowed his eyes. “Watch me.”
He sprang up to his feet with new energy, on his tiptoes reaching for the ceiling fan cord. He made a little jump in the air and his fingertips must have caught onto the cord. The fan began to speed up with a mechanical whirr, bringing new and refreshing air circulation to the room.
“Ha!” He turned, grinning, to Iwaizumi. “See, Iwa-chan, you were wrong.”
Matsukawa began to snicker, and Hanamaki joined him. The two of them shared a look that made Oikawa pout, crossing his arms over his chest. His body shone with sweat, damp dark hair matted on his forehead.
“What’s so funny?” he asked, demandingly, his voice rising sharply and his pout intensifying when Matsukawa and Hanamaki burst out into hyena-like laughter.
“Nothing, nothing,” Hanamaki dismissed the matter with a wave of his hand, and then slipping it under the band of his shorts. The elastic stretched and snapped when he let go of it. “Nothing at all.”
He and Matsukawa exchanged another look, speaking without words. Oikawa peered more sharply at them. He shifted his weight to the other foot as the cicadas outside continued to cry with the new and sudden breeze coming in, making him shiver.
“Oikawa, have you ever heard of Seven Minutes in Heaven?”
From his position, looking down at the two of them, Oikawa forced his shoulders broad. His gaze remained neutral. Off to the side, Iwaizumi seemed to have begun dozing off. “Maybe,” said Oikawa. “What’s it matter to you?”
“No, see, we just thought,” said Matsukawa, “we thought it would be fun to play.”
Oikawa nodded slowly. The endless heat made his eyes glaze over, his mind not quite here nor there. “Okay...how do you play?”
“It’s really easy.” Hanamaki said with a grin. “You go into a closet with another person for seven minutes. Door closed, lights off. Seven minutes just for the two of you.”
It was quiet between them when he stopped speaking. The cicadas outside were still going at it with reckless abandon, in some measure of new desperation.
“Wait a sec,” Oikawa said very quickly, “Seven minutes with someone else in a closet??!? But - who - ”
“Who d’you think?” said Matsukawa, malice glittering in his eyes, the implications of his and Hanamaki’s intentions all too clear. Both of them had already begun to shoot multiple pointed looks at Iwaizumi, as if Oikawa needed to have it spelled out for him.
“It’ll be a fun time!” And with that, Hanamaki and Matsukawa high-fived.
“Hold on a sec,” Oikawa interuppted their high-fiving, which had evolved into some kind of secret handshake he had not previously been privy to - and it really didn’t matter at this point, there were greater concerns on his mind now - “You can’t - that’s - !”
He was sputtering at this point. Coherence had all but left him in one fell swoop, his eyes nervous and darting all over the room - to Hanamaki and Matsukawa, and then settling on Iwaizumi, who seemed to not have heard anything. He slept on in his dreamland and his bliss.
“Hey, Iwaizumi!” Matsukawa yelled, his hands cupped around his mouth and the sound shook the air, waking Iwaizumi with a start. He glared over at them.
“What d’you want?” he asked, brow furrowed and looking dazed. He couldn’t have been out for more than a few minutes but his glassy eyes could barely focus, looking over the rest of them through the humid haze.
Matsukawa clapped his hands together, fingers interlocking, his enthusiasm spreading to his face in one big grin. “You. Oikawa. Seven Minutes in Heaven.”
“Right now?”
“Iwa-chan, you know what it is?!?” squawked Oikawa.
Iwaizumi cocked his head to the side. His nonchalant attitude felt like cause for concern, although Oikawa could not quite pin down how or why. “You didn’t know?”
“Right,” said Hanamaki, sharing another look with Matsukawa - one that made their shared vision sparkle - “C’mon now.”
And with the strength of countless pushups, endless flying falls - drawing from the strength that volleyball had given them, they hoisted Oikawa and Iwaizumi up, half dragging them over to the closet in Iwaizumi’s room. There was just barely enough room for them among the shelves and Iwaizumi’s good clothes. They would all become wrinkled with how the two of them jostled about in that small space - and when Hanamaki closed the door on them with one decisive, pneumatic motion, Oikawa jolted at the sudden darkness. He groped about blindly and hit Iwaizumi in the face.
“Ow,” said Iwaizumi, and slapped Oikawa blindly. But it must not have been blind enough because it was a bulls-eye, connecting clean with Oikawa’s cheek and making him yelp out.
“Oh, so that’s how you wanna do it?”
He fair pounced onto Iwaizumi, knocking him to the ground, pinning him to the carpet. Their legs had already become a tangle of limbs in their confined space and Oikawa could feel his thighs beginning to cramp. He shifted his position, rutting up against Iwaizumi.
“Oikawa, you - “ Iwaizumi started to say, but his voice cut off sharply and his arms went flying again, grabbing onto Oikawa and pushing hard. There was nowhere else for him to go and yet he pushed anyways, until they were right back where they had started. In this small space that trapped heat so easily, the space under the door nothing more than a sliver of light, there was not much in the way of ventilation and so Oikawa could feel heat radiating from Iwaizumi in heavy waves, amplified by his heaving shoulders and gasping breath that seemed louder in the dark. Sleep still lingered at the edges of his body. It showed in how his sluggish limbs moved in half time and his dark eyes blinking, still in a dream.
Oikawa’s eyes had begun to adjust a little, enough to see the faint outlines of hanging clothes and boxes in the corners. He could see how Iwaizumi shifted minutely, his shadow a deeper dark than he would have thought, in contrast with the bit of light that came from under the door’s edge.
He reached out again, not quite so blindly this time, but that did nothing to stop him from inadvertantly touching Iwaizumi’s warm cheek. Oikawa reached out with his other hand and begun to knead the skin of Iwaizumi’s face, shamelessly touching his chin and nose and forehead, testing the surface with his palms like a blind man.
“What the hell, Oikawa.”
Oikawa didn’t say anything. He wouldn’t have known what to say, how to defend himself. His breath hitched in his rattling throat and he had no breath for words when he let his hands slide down, tracing the cords in Iwaizumi’s neck for a brief moment. His fingertips brushed Iwaizumi’s collarbones and travelled along the curve of his shoulders, and then moving on to his upper arms. He couldn’t help but linger there, leaning forward and pressing his body up against iwaizumi, arms wrapping around him in one tight hug that softened when Iwaizumi returned it without warning.
“You’re weird,” said Iwaizumi. “You’re so weird.”
But he didn’t push Oikawa away, not even when the embrace lost strength and gave way to brave hands going up his shirt, hands he might have had half a mind to slap away if it weren’t for the heat and how it screwed with his head. This was not normal. Not by his standards. He was quickly returning to full consciousness and it only made the heat between them that much more worse. The two of them were so close in this confined space - with the heavy weight of clothing all around them, and how Oikawa’s breathing came loud and needful. A new angle of desperation overtook his actions. The clock ticked on outside and if Iwaizumi strained his ears, he could hear Hanamaki and Matsukawa talking quietly, just outside the closet door. Or maybe it just seemed that way. His hearing had gone numb along with his vision and about all he could handle right now was Oikawa up against him, pushing and pressing him to the closet wall until he, too, had lost his breath.
And he gasped into Oikawa’s mouth up against his own, eyes closing like a natural thing because there was nothing he could see that he needed to, not now and maybe not ever. Sweat trickled freely down his warm skin, his body shuddering in shockwaves and then he was reaching out for something - coming up with nothing but needing to find it anyways.
Even through the black darkness there seemed to be a gray glimmer in the edges of Iwaizumi’s vision, shining magnificent to him and then he could make out the vision of his very own emperor in all the world, such a fragile thing slipping through slick fingers and swimming away in streaky silver curves. Beautiful though it was and how fleeting, nothing he could hold onto and not meant to be tamed. Skin and bone turned to dreams impossible to remember beyond that dim consciousness before dawn and when the waking world is an uncertainty in and of itself.
The tables seemed to have turned in something strange and unexpected. Oikawa’s whispers were barely audible but maybe they were not meant to be heard, not by outsiders and still their soft hush and that flurry of speech made Iwaizumi warm all over.
His heart pounded in unsteady rhythm, on and on, threatening to fall completely to the wayside - suddenly and keenly aware of this mounting danger. And then what would become of him? He would have no heartbeat and no flowing blood - already pooling in the pit of his belly and rising to the surface of his skin in prickling heat. Leaving his body through the air and never his to reclaim. At this point he didn’t even want it back either, it was already tainted and it was better this way.
Shaky words rose up through his throat and he could not find sounds for them. When Oikawa pulled him closer, fingertips searing hot, he could not think of what to say or do and that was a gift, too, something he could hope to treasure for the rest of his days and never take for granted.
There was nothing he could ever hope to have forever, this was a truth he had come to know through life and loss and the closet door beginning to open in sudden brightness. In the next second, Hanamaki and Matsukawa’s dark shadows would cast down upon them in deep contrast to the iridescent rays of sunlight bending around them and making Oikawa glow. But Iwaizumi could swear he didn’t need sunlight for that - he was radiant as is - shining bright and glittering with gray in the background. Carrying with him a subtle kind of hurt that didn’t feel real now and might not sink in until weeks, months, years later, by the time this summer afternoon would become nothing more than a sublime memory.