Archive of Our Own ^beta

“Hey,” comes Mattsun’s voice. “Found them.”

The lights in this half of the house are dimmed, the TV a mute blue beacon. Iwaizumi watches whatever game show’s on, breathing softly, rubbing her hand up and down Oikawa’s back. The fabric of Oikawa’s graduation dress shifts softly with every pass of Iwaizumi’s palm, and the sound makes a quiet kind of rhythm. Oikawa’s breath is warm against Iwaizumi’s neck.

“She asleep?” asks Mattsun as she peers over the armchair. Iwaizumi doesn’t bother craning her neck to catch Mattsun’s heavy-eyed look.

“The grand queen dreams of greater worlds to conquer,” says Makki, perching on an armrest.

“If you wake her, I’ll kill you,” says Iwaizumi. Her palm passes over Oikawa’s spine again, makes her dress shift like scales nearing shed.

“Oh, no danger of that,” Mattsun replies, though she keeps the laughter in her voice soft. A man on TV bites into a door handle made entirely of chocolate.

“There’s an empty bottle of gin in the kitchen with homegirl’s name all over it,” says Makki. “She’s out. You may never get her off your lap.”

“Mmm,” says Iwaizumi. She’s not really listening to the double act. She’s heard it before. Oikawa is massive and overwarm, her legs spilling over the armrest Makki isn’t sitting on, her hair, fragrant like an orchard, pooling across her shoulders and between their bodies. Iwaizumi lost feeling in her legs a long time ago, but the night is stretching and Iwaizumi’s thoughts are slow and simple. She won’t be awake herself much longer.

“Oh, my,” says Makki’s voice. Two fingers, a little cold, tap at Iwaizumi’s neck. Iwaizumi waves them off lazily. “Bottle’s not the only thing with homegirl’s name on it, eh?”

Mattsun’s referring to the hickies stippling Iwaizumi’s throat. Iwaizumi slings her arm back over Oikawa’s hip as Oikawa shifts minutely, sighs.

“Leave it alone, guys,” Iwaizumi says. Another man on TV has just bitten into a table leg that is very much not made out of chocolate. The silence from Makki and Mattsun is heavy and deliberate.

“So she didn’t tell you tonight,” Mattsun finally says as the game show goes to commercial and Oikawa’s breath hitches, just for a second, against Iwaizumi’s shoulder.

“No,” says Iwaizumi.

“You really thought she was gonna?” says Makki.

“Hey, so did we,” says Mattsun, a little scolding.

Iwaizumi doesn’t say anything. Shff, shff goes her hand over Oikawa’s back.

“You’re running out of time,” says Makki. She sounds apologetic about it.

Iwaizumi watches the end of a trippy-ass Verizon commercial, and then she sighs. Her other arm is pinned between Oikawa’s shoulder and the armrest and no amount of surreptitious shifting on her part is going to save it.

“I know,” she says to Makki and Mattsun. “We’ll figure it out.”

Mattsun’s hand lands companionably on her shoulder. Makki’s appears a moment later, two fingers drawn affectionately through Oikawa’s long hair, sectioning the tendrils that splay fan-like across her shoulders.

“She’s so fucking stupid,” Makki says, voice warm, and Iwaizumi, with six foot of setter in her arms and no feeling in her thighs, laughs.

“Oh my god, how rich is this neighborhood?”

“Do they know we make less than seven figures a year? Can they smell the Miyagi on us?”

“Will you two get your shit together,” Iwaizumi hisses as she and Oikawa and Hanamaki and Matsukawa walk up the path through the front garden, meandering carefully around the water features. “It’s just a house.”

“Iwaizumi, they’ve got a front yard in Tokyo,” Hanamaki hisses back, looking appalled.

“When Bokuto said the place was in Denenchofu, I honestly thought she was kidding,” says Matsukawa.

Hanamaki waves a hand at the ostentatiously-foreign olive tree branching over the path. “This is like a fucking six-story castle back home!”

“Okay, Iwa-chan’s right, put a lid on it,” Oikawa cuts in as they land at the front door. She’s running her hands over her hips, flattening the lines of her tank top. Iwaizumi watches the fabric stretch over her ass. Matsukawa’s elbow jams into her ribs. “We’re here to look beautiful and accomplished,” Oikawa says, “stop shouting about what hicks we are.”

“Hey, I’m a genteel lesbian farmer,” Hanamaki says, “don’t lump me in with you uncultured fuckos.”

“Are you incapable of speaking a language other than bullshit?” Iwaizumi asks as Oikawa adjusts her bra, shorts, calf-length socks and meticulously sideswept bangs before reaching for the doorbell.

“Don’t insult my farmer wife,” Matsukawa says, and Oikawa puts on her most glamorous smile.

“Boku-chan!” she trills when the door opens and Bokuto Kotaro, her eyeliner perfect and her hair going Up, greets them all with a booming “Aoba Josai! You made it!”

“Who did the big lug’s makeup?” Hanamaki mutters as Oikawa says, “Of course we did, Boku-chan, we weren’t about to miss the last and greatest high school circuit party ever!” and Akaashi appears beside Bokuto with an inch of messy black liner winging off each eye and a shade of lipstick that just screams “slutty clown nips.”

It's stunning.

“Good to see you, Akaashi,” Iwaizumi says, joining Oikawa at the doorway, trying to sound serious, failing to hide her grin.

“Bokuto suggested we do each other’s makeup this evening,” Akaashi responds, seemingly at peace with her face and what’s been done to it. She steps to the side as Oikawa and Hanamaki and Matsukawa push past them into the house, dragging Iwaizumi along by sheer friction, and closes the door when Bokuto forgets to. “She won’t be hurt so long as I wait another forty-five minutes or so to wash it off.”

Matsukawa kicks her chucks into the growing pile by the door as Hanamaki gawps at what they can see of the house between the soon-to-be-university students packing the hall. “Right, got it down to a science,” Iwaizumi laughs, casting a sideways glance at Oikawa, making a show now of complimenting Bokuto’s shoulders in that henley, and Akaashi’s smile is warm with fellow feeling.

“As you say,” she replies, her voice a bit louder over the music and laughter pouring from the body of the house. “And your train in was alright?”

“Yup, didn’t even get lost at the transfers. And is this your place, then? It’s huge.”

“My parents’, yes,” Akaashi replies. Hanamaki is pointing at one of the paintings hanging on the wall and hissing something about ‘original print’ and ‘I don’t even know the value in yen’ to an unfazed Matsukawa. “They’re in Greece for the week. They were fine with me hosting the party this year so long as nothing got broken.”

“Which is why all the pricey stuff is in the attic!” Bokuto says, slinging an arm around Akaashi’s shoulders and rubbing a cheek against her temple. “I helped,” she adds, and Akaashi pats her forearm.

“You helped so much,” Akaashi replies, sounding disgustingly affirmational, and then she turns to Oikawa.

Oikawa is at Iwaizumi’s shoulder, peering curiously at the length of Bokuto’s body pressed to Akaashi’s side, and Iwaizumi knows what Akaashi is going to say. She does. She knows because the thing Akaahi’s going to talk about is the only thing any of them can talk about, three weeks out from their first university classes and past all the exams and ceremonies that once distracted them. It’s an inevitability. It’s all they can think about. Iwaizumi really wishes they could think about anything else.

“So I know Iwaizumi will be at Tohoku, but where are you attending university, Oikawa?” Akaashi asks, and Iwaizumi would fucking kill a man for a do-over.

“Hello, Akaashi,” Iwaizumi would say when Bokuto opened the door in this do-over. “Look at me right now, Akaashi,” she would say. “Whatever you do, do not fucking ask Oikawa about her college plans.”

This is what she’d say.

Oikawa, right now, in the real world, is starting to freeze.

“Don’t fucking ask Oikawa about college,” Iwaizumi would say to affable do-over Akaashi, with her understanding raccoon eyes and her kind cherry-smeared lips. “Because you see, Akaashi, we’re doing this weird and idiotic thing right now where Oikawa knows that she’s in love with me, and she knows that she’s going to college in Tokyo while I stay in Sendai, but she won’t admit the first and she can’t reconcile it with the second.”

Oikawa’s smile is starting to fix. She’s pinning it neatly at the corners, like a butterfly under glass.

“Because she does love me,” Iwaizumi would say to hypothetical Akaashi, placing an arm around Akashi's hypothetical shoulders, maybe guiding them around the dark and stately garden (hypothetical.) “I know this because she keeps making out with me at parties then running for the hills as soon as anyone makes a move towards putting hands down pants. It’s become a sort of running joke among fucking anyone who puts eyes on us for even a second, we’re so goddamn obvious. She loves me, and she won’t say it. And she’s moving away, and we’re running out of time.”

Oikawa’s lips, full and smiling, pink as roses, are shaping sounds. Shallow sounds, lying sounds. She’s about to run.

Hypothetical do-over Akaashi, solemn and wise, would gesture for Iwaizumi to go on. She would also take note of Iwaizumi’s smart haircut and well-fitting bra. Her appreciation would be conveyed in her graceful nod.

“So I have to talk to her at this party,” Iwaizumi would say, voice steady and reasonable. “I really fucking have to. And no one can ask her about college before I make her admit she loves me, because she’s really so stupid, and as soon as someone talks about college she’s going to do this—”

“Oh, I think I see Kuroo flashing Sawamura down at the end of the hall!” Oikawa says, in the real world, in real time. looking suddenly alight with charm and wit. “I’ll be right back!”

And then she disappears.

“Pardon me?” says Akaashi, blinking.

“Fucking god motherfucking damnit,” says Iwaizumi, jolting forward. Oikawa’s already gone, though, vanished into the crowd of nice legs and solo cups packing the first floor, and Iwaizumi knows she’s lost her. Oikawa’s slippery when she wants to be. Like the drowning kind of mermaid.

“Kuroo’s got her tits out?” Bokuto asks, peering bright-eyed down the hall, and Iwaizumi rounds on Hanamaki and Matsukawa as Akaashi starts explaining the concept of misdirection.

Except, it’s only Matsukawa standing with an eyebrow raised at the edge of the genkan. Hanamaki’s vanished.

“Where the fuck has she— have they gone,” Iwaizumi says.

Matsukawa’s eyebrow holds the line. There’s a very uninterested angle to her elbow as she folds her arms across her chest.

“Well, Takahiro’s gone to find Terushima and Terushima’s weed,” she says, with a clear tone of I know where mine is.

“We have to find them,” Iwaizumi says.

“Yeah, we don’t have to do jack shit,” Matsukawa replies, with a one-armed shrug. “Terushima’s got that new lotus-flavored stuff, I’m outtie in like thirty seconds here.”

“So you’re not going to help at all?” Iwaizumi demands, casting a hand at the house behind them. The music is pounding, the feet of fifty-plus athletes and their friends and their dates making the walls rattle and the floors bounce. Iwaizumi could spend twenty years looking for Oikawa in all this and never find her.

“This one’s your odyssey, girlfriend,” Matsukawa says, finally putting a hand to Iwaizumi’s shoulder. She looks weirdly solemn, and it makes Iwaizumi pause.

“What the fuck?”

“It’s all you tonight, o great tactician,” says Matsukawa. She’s staring at Iwaizumi, intent and grey-eyed. “Learn the minds of distant men. Weather the bitter night. Bring your shipmate home.”

Iwaizumi stares right on back. “Are you high already? When did you even have the time?”

There’s another breath of a pause, Matsukawa’s hand heavy on Iwaizumi’s shoulder, and then it snaps. Matsukawa smiles. There’s more sincerity in it than Iwaizumi has really come to expect.

“Yeah, just fucking with you, dude,” she grins. “Good luck, though!”

And then she drops her hand and ducks down the hall. Her messy black head is visible for just a second among the crowd, and then she too is gone, and Iwaizumi is left with Akaashi and Bokuto and fifty pairs of partygoer shoes in the entrance hall.

“So, no one’s got their tits out?” Bokuto asks. Akaashi, still penned in by Bokuto’s arm, addresses Iwaizumi.

“I don’t know what that was,” Akaashi says, “but try not to wreck the house.”

Iwaizumi growls and sets off.

Twenty years of searching seems almost generous once Iwaizumi forces her way into the bulk of the party. The house is packed to the gills, players Iwaizumi knows and players she hardly even recognizes pouring from every doorway and stairwell, an unending tide of bodies that threatens to smash Iwaizumi against the proverbial rocks at every turn.

What she learns, from her first laborious lap of the house, is this: first floor, second floor, a goddamn basement, wide deck, and a backyard. A massive dining room, a wall-mounted TV, a surfeit of bedrooms. Players from Nohebi and Nekoma and Fukurodani, of course, a host of other people Iwaizumi vaguely recognizes from Tokyo tournaments and previous parties, and more than she expected like her and Oikawa and the fuckos not to be named, hauling in from outside of Kanto. She spots Karasuno’s now-former captain in the kitchen, Ms. Refreshing on the countertop beside her, and Terushima with her tongue stud and her weird weed on the back deck. There’s a lot of Miyagi players around, actually, but it’s not until Iwaizumi squeezes past three jägerbombing setters in the hall and realizes the third is Semi Eita that the sense of grim foreboding hits.

“Good evening, Iwaizumi-san,” says a very deep voice behind her.

Iwaizumi swears lavishly.

Ushijima is tall, tall enough that Oikawa still recounts in breathless tones the time she watched her walk directly into a ceiling fan in a tournament locker room, and this means that when Iwaizumi turns to face Ushijima here, at a party in Denenchofu, Iwaizumi turns and faces Ushijima’s boobs. Resolutely unimpressed, Iwaizumi keeps looking up.

The party started, generously, an hour ago, and Ushijima is already very drunk. Someone’s lipstick, bright blue, is on her collarbones, and hair’s been pulled from her ponytail in thick loops. As Iwaizumi watches, Ushijima goes to run her fingers through it yet again, and pulls another hank free to dangle behind her ears. Her other hand is covering her left eye. Binocular vision appears to be beyond her.

“How— excuse me,” Ushijima starts, slurring with extreme care, “how are you, Iwaizumi-san?”

“Sober,” Iwaizumi growls. “You?”

“I am—” Ushijima hiccups, “—doing very well, thank you for asking. And how is Oikawa-san?”

Ushijima is built like several mountains glued firmly together and forced into a blouse, and Iwaizumi’s back is to the corridor wall. Physically, escape will be tricky.

“Wouldn’t I like to know,” Iwaizumi replies, debating the wisdom of punching Ushijima in the throat and letting the chips fall where they may. “What’s it to you?”

“Well, sometimes I think about touching her hair, which looks very soft,” Ushijima says, her one eye blinking placidly. Iwaizumi stares. “And of course she is very good at volleyball, despite her circumstances. I hope she continues to excel in university.”

Ushijima sways gently, like a palm tree in a warm island breeze. “You are mediocre at volleyball,” she tells Iwaizumi earnestly, “but I think you’re probably a very hard worker, and Oikawa considers you a source of comfort, which is important. Tendou said she looked nervous in the kitchen, and also like she’d contoured her cleavage. Do you think that’s true?”

There are many things for Iwaizumi to process in Ushijima’s little monologue, and she hates all of them.

“It’s body glitter, first off,” Iwaizumi snaps, “and what the fuck are you talking about, Tendou saw her in the kitchen? What has Oikawa got to be nervous about?”

Ushijima opens her mouth, like she’d genuinely like to answer this, and Iwaizumi suddenly laughs, short and sharp.

“No, don’t start, this is fucking ridiculous,” she says, finally just putting two hands on Ushijima’s waist and wheeling her around. Ushijima blinks (winks?) as her back hits the wall, still peering down at Iwaizumi one-eyed and a little confused. “I don’t even know why we’re talking about this, Oikawa hates you and you think I’m nobody—”

“No, never nobody,” Ushijima cuts in, suddenly serious. Her voice is low, resolute, and very hard to hear amid the cacophony. “You are Iwaizumi. You are Iwaizumi….”

Did she repeat herself for emphasis? Has she fallen asleep eyes-open and mid-sentence? Or, perhaps—?

“You don’t know the rest of my fucking name, do you?” Iwaizumi asks, grinning despite herself as Ushijima nods and then stops nodding then nods once more to be certain. “And you got so close to real human interaction, drunk titan. If I leave you propped against this wall are you gonna stay upright, or are the villagers in danger of being crushed?”

Ushijima plants her feet and looks determined. Or so Iwaizumi assumes. Maybe that’s just her face.

“Okay,” Iwaizumi says, removing her hands slowly in case of sudden collapse. “I think we’re good. If I see Tendou I’ll tell her you’re here holding up the wall. And you can still get fucked, to be clear.”

“Understood,” Ushijima rumbles, already starting to list, and that’s good enough for Iwaizumi. She ducks around two doe-eyed girls in wooly sweaters and thence to freedom.

Relative freedom.

Ushijima said that Tendou said that Oikawa was looking nervous and glittery in the kitchen, which doesn’t do Iwaizumi much good because Oikawa has never spent more than thirty seconds in any kitchen at any party in her life, her espoused belief being that kitchens are where engaging and sexy conversationalists go to die. And any eyewitness account that includes Oikawa looking nervous must also be accepted with great skepticism anyways, because Oikawa is nervous around infants and Iwaizumi’s mom and not much fucking else.

Maybe she was looking avoidant. That one’s always possible.

Iwaizumi marches through a round of King’s Cup, a beer pong tournament, and at least three pairs of sloppy drunk girls debating who between them is the most beautiful and kind (no, it’s you, girl) and then she’s in the kitchen. Sure enough, no one is wearing body glitter and dropping unsubtle hints about their ability to tie a knot in a cherry stem with their tongue at all.

“Hey! Iwaizumi!”

Sawamura is still leaning against the countertop, chatting pleasantly with the other Karasuno girls. She waves Iwaizumi over, smiling broadly, and Iwaizumi feels that feeling she frequently feels when near Sawamura, which is: hey, you wanna like, grab a granola bar and spot me while I deadlift sometime?

“Sawamura,” Iwaizumi says, stopping reluctantly. Oikawa isn’t here, and despite her usual appreciation for Sawamura’s calm demeanor and balanced muscle tone, she itches with the need to find her.

“Looking for your femme-ier half, Iwaizumi-chan?” Sugawara asks. She’s sitting on the countertop at Sawamura’s side, cheek resting heavily on the crown of Sawamura’s head, and her.. sultry? purr is muffled by the tufts of Sawamura’s hair she’s got in her mouth.

“Don’t be a dick, Suga,” Sawamura says, patting her setter’s thigh lovingly. Sugawara rolls her eyes at this injustice as the big Karasuno ace, Iwaizumi never remembers her name, she’s got the ponytail and the little headband and always seems about 60% ready to detach her decoy limb and escape under a rock, chuckles. The ace is wearing makeup she looks uncomfortable in and has a small, unconscious, child propped on her hip.

Iwaizumi squints. “Is that your libero?” she asks.

Sugawara laughs and buries her cheek in Sawamura’s hair. The ace— god, what is her name, smiles a bit sheepishly.

“She’s kind of a lightweight,” the ace says.

Sugawara grins. “We weren’t going to bring her, but Asahi—” Ha! A name! “— is a real pushover when it comes to Noya. Can’t ever seem to say no.”

Asahi blushes like lit neon, mumbling incomprehensibly and hitching the little libero higher on her hip as Sawamura grins and claps her on the shoulder. The four of them, Sugawara and Sawamura and Asahi and the smallest libero in Miyagi, apparently Noya, paint a very pleasant picture of camaraderie and good cheer. Like something out of a lesbian scout’s guide to healthy, affirming friendship.

So, Iwaizumi’s gonna go now.

“No, wait, Iwaizumi, come on,” Sawamura laughs when Iwaizumi turns to leave. “You can leave her alone for like five minutes, I promise.” Well that’s dangerously untrue. “Hanamaki said you’re going to Tohokudai?”

Iwaizumi’s eyes narrow immediately. “Wait, Hanamaki—”

“She did not have Oikawa with her,” Sawamura says. “To be clear. Tohokudai?”

“Uh, yeah,” Iwaizumi replies, trying not to shift her weight. She knows how impatient it makes her look, and even though she is impatient, she… probably shouldn’t be? Small talk. Politeness. The Karasuno third-years are always weirdly nice, she can give them a hot 45 seconds or something. “For civil engineering. Oikawa’s doing communications at Tokai.”

“Oh, wow, good for her! They’ve topped the Intercollegiate for years now!” Asahi says, which makes that little germ of pride in Iwaizumi’s chest flare hot and strong, because of course Oikawa got scouted by one of the best college women’s teams in the country, she’s never deserved anything less—

“But we’re not talking about Oikawa! For once!” Sugawara cuts in, leaning forward. Unobscured by Sawamura’s hair, Iwaizumi can suddenly see the sequins she’s got stuck to her cheek in a haphazard approximation of the anarchist symbol. A few strays shine happily from Sawamura’s cowlick. “We’re talking about you. Tohokudai is a very good school, Iwaizumi-chan.”

“Uh,” says Iwaizumi, wrong-footed. Tohoku University is a very good school, yes. Iwaizumi still can’t 100% believe she actually got in. Sugawara is looking at her really intently.

“One of the best in the world, I’ve heard,” Sugawara says. She has to hook her arm around Sawamura’s neck to keep from tipping off the counter. A sequin flutters to the ground.

The last time Iwaizumi felt physically intimidated she was about nine years old and facing down at least ten enraged classmates, all of them without milk bread, all of them with their eyes fixed on Oikawa, who was crouched behind Iwaizumi and throwing up the peace sign as she finished off the milk bread.

It means Iwaizumi doesn’t immediately recognize the sensation of fear when it comes for her, now, as Ms. Refreshing’s wide, bright eyes bore into hers.

“...Uh?” she says again.

“She got in too, and she’s fishing for compliments,” Sawamura interrupts, smiling. “She’s studying poli sci and looks forward to seeing you on campus. Just to wrap this up.”

“Ugh, spoilsport!” Sugawara cries as Sawamura pats her thigh again, consoling, and Asahi laughs and the little libero keeps on snoring and Iwaizumi remembers how to breathe. “No fishing for compliments, no jokes about Iwaizumi-chan’s gender presentation, no bringing the special wine coolers—”

“Special wine coolers?” Iwaizumi mutters to Asahi, as Sugawara keeps going.

“She spiked them,” Asahi mutters back, looking passively mortified.

Iwaizumi stares. “With what?” she asks, hissing a little. Maybe Karasuno isn’t weirdly nice. Maybe Karasuno has fucking mastered the art of deception.

Asahi shrugs helplessly. The motion hooks the libero’s belt loop on a drawer knob.

“I’m bereft,” Sugawara cries, one arm transcribing the great sweep of her loss, and flops back on top of Sawamura.

“Okay,” Iwaizumi says, and then, when she is not immediately turned into a pig or some shit, tries taking it a step further: “Okay, I’m, uh, gonna go.... Oikawa.”

What a wreck of a sentence. Sawamura and Asahi still nod. Asahi is trying to surreptitiously unhook her libero from the cabinetry.

“Say hi to her for us when you find her,” Sawamura says. “She didn’t really stop to chat when she came through. And sorry about Suga.”

“Never apologize for me,” Sugawara says, putting a gentle, drunken hand over Sawamura’s mouth.

“I’ll hit you up next time I’m in Sendai. We should work out!” Sawamura says cheerfully. Her voice is only slightly muffled.

“Your hair looks really cute!” says Asahi, a last gasp of simple Karasuno niceness that Iwaizumi can never fully trust again, and then Iwaizumi nods and ducks back into the crowds.

If the press in the kitchen is bad, beyond Karasuno’s little bubble, then the rest of the house is worse. Maybe more people have arrived— that would explain the crush in the living room, a wall of too-close bodies rippling like a waveform to music Iwaizumi can barely hear. She doesn’t remember this from twenty minutes ago. She stands at the edges of it and clenches her teeth.

Unable to see a way around it she decides on the way through, and thus experiences regret. Having forced her way into the crowd, her world is suddenly dark and sweaty, everyone is taller than her, and within seconds someone has elbowed her directly in the tit. She throws her own elbow back, indiscriminate. Nobody yelps, but she doesn’t know that she could hear it if they did.

Oikawa isn’t anywhere. She’ll pay for that, at some point.

It’s like being lost in a forest, like being adrift at sea. A hand grabs hers.

For an idiot, hopeful moment Iwaizumi imagines that Oikawa has changed her mind, and gotten over her bullshit, and come and found her, but then she turns and it’s only Sugawara.

“—here!” Sugawara says. Iwaizumi can’t catch the rest of it. Someone slams into her back, and Iwaizumi barely wrestles down the impulse to turn around and start some shit. Sugawara is smiling at her.

Iwaizumi shouts a question. Neither of them hear it. Sugawara tugs at her hand again, and, with the glitter shining across her rosy cheeks, winks one big grey eye.

She— she, uh...

Iwaizumi, her mouth a little dry, follows Sugawara out of the crowd.

The press lightens quickly— Iwaizumi apparently managed to fight her way to about dead center of the impromptu dance floor, and Sugawara navigates them expertly to the far side of the room, where the couches and chairs have been hastily pushed back. A few girls lounge on them, breathless and pink from dancing. Sugawara deposits Iwaizumi against the back of one and leans in.

Iwaizumi faces the great glass doors that lead onto the deck, and Sugawara stands before her. It means she’s lit from behind, all in gold. “You just missed her!” Sugawara says.

“I what?” Iwaizumi says. Sugawara has braids in her hair. A pair of them, a little messy, curving down from her part and tucking behind her ears. Iwaizumi hadn’t noticed that in the kitchen.

“Oikawa!” Sugwara laughs. “She came back through almost as soon as you’d left, but the second we mentioned you she was gone again.”

Oh.

“Oh,” Iwaizumi growls.

“She’s gone, she’s gone, settle down!” Sugawara laughs again when Iwaizumi makes to step forward. She’s got one hand on the couch beside Iwaizumi’s hip. “Seems like she’s really working to avoid you, hm?”

“I—” Iwaizumi says, swallowing. “Yeah.” She doesn’t really understand what’s happening. Sugawara was drunk in the kitchen, absolutely plastered, but… that doesn’t seem to be the case anymore. She’s watching Iwaizumi with clear eyes. The sequins on her cheek have almost entirely fallen away.

“How long have you two known each other?” Sugawara asks.

Since daycare. Since diapers. Since just about the first moment Iwaizumi knew the difference between her own hand and another’s. “A while,” she says.

“Are you together?” Sugawara asks.

Iwaizumi swallows again. “No,” she says, because it’s the truth.

Sugawara is close. Her thighs are touching Iwaizumi’s, her body leaning in.

“She’s dumb,” Sugawara says, “classmate,” and then she presses their lips together.

For a moment, Iwaizumi is stupid with shock. Sugawara either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care. Her lips are soft against Iwaizumi’s, and she’s warm, all of her is warm, she’s running her hands up Iwaizumi’s arms, which is— which is really, really nice, and Iwaizumi may be an idiot, but she isn’t dead. Her hands land on Sugawara’s hips. Her lips part.

And then she gasps, and jerks backs, and pushes Sugawara away.

“Sugawara,” she manages. Her voice is choked.

“Call me Koushi.” There’s a hand sliding up Iwaizumi’s neck, fingers shifting through her hair.

“Sugawara,” Iwaizumi says again. She feels out of breath, like she’s been held under water. “I— I can’t—”

She can’t what? Sugawara could ask. Iwaizumi would have to answer her. She feels suddenly frantic at the thought, her heartbeat wild, even though neither of them have moved.

Sugawara doesn’t ask her. She’s gazing at Iwaizumi, the hand at Iwaizumi’s nape fallen away. She says, “Wasn’t that kind of no, huh?”

Iwaizumi stares at her. She can’t think of what to say.

“Okay, so I never stood a chance,” Sugawara says, with a smile that’s kind. “It’s already forgotten. Go find your girl, hero.”

Her hand is on Iwaizumi’s cheek, just for a moment, then she steps back. Like she’s releasing her.

Iwaizumi bolts.

She has to find Oikawa. She has to, she really has to, because Oikawa loves her and Oikawa needs to say it so that Iwaizumi can— hear it, know it was said, figure out what she’s supposed to do next, something. But she can’t focus as she shoves her way through the party, her thoughts lurching unsteadily from one memory to another. She ducks past Nohebi’s captain, struggling with a vape pen, and thinks about Sugawara’s mouth, and Oikawa’s mouth, and each of their hands in her hair.

Oikawa has kissed her six times. She could count them off, with times and dates.

At some point she realizes she’s near the front of the house again, beside the stairs going up and the basement door leading down. She’s already checked upstairs, but she could check again. There’s a lot of people up there, and laughter, and Akaashi valiantly attempting to keep said people from making out on her parents’ bed. Oikawa could so plausibly be up there.

Or Iwaizumi could check downstairs, in the basement. Even though it’s quiet. And there aren’t many people at all.

She should really go upstairs. She should.

Somehow she ends up next to the water heater in the basement down the stairs, sliding down the chilly stone wall, closing her eyes and swallowing hard as she puts her forehead to her knees.

After a time, she realizes her butt hurts. It’s because she’s sitting on her phone. Probably stretching the pocket, too— Oikawa likes to scold her about that one.

She takes the phone out and sets it aside. The plastic clacks quietly against the cement.

Her thoughts for the past— whatever stretch of time it’s been, keeping track won’t start helping her now, have been a bit recursive. I kissed Sugawara, she’ll say to herself. Yeah, I sure did, will come the response. Hey, she was hot as hell!! her monkey brain will chime in, helping no one.

Why couldn’t I keep kissing her? she’ll wonder. Because you couldn’t, which is definitive.

But I’m not dating Oikawa. Oikawa isn’t dating me. Why can’t I kiss a hot girl and put my hands on her hips and maybe go upstairs with her? How could it be wrong if she’s never even said she’s into me? What the fuck is stopping me?

And then she’ll get a glimpse, the first flash of the headlamp before the train comes barreling around the turn, and she’ll throw herself off the tracks and into the metaphorical bushes before she has to try and actually answer any of her own questions.

And then her monkey brain will remind her exactly how scorching fucking hot Sugawara was, and the whole shitty thing starts over again.

The wall’s cold against her back. It was cool earlier, when she first sat down, even kind of nice. Now it’s just cold.

… It took her a while to tell Oikawa where she’d gotten accepted for uni. Oikawa knew early on that she was going to Tokai, the scouts had been talking to her even before Interhighs, but Iwaizumi let the letters pile and pile before she ever said anything more than “I dunno, I’m still deciding, fuck off.”

Iwaizumi hadn’t gotten into Tokai, was the thing. Which was fine, she hadn’t really expected to. She wasn’t brilliant like Oikawa was, and she certainly wasn’t good enough at volleyball to get scouted, however much Oikawa wailed the few times Iwaizumi said this shit aloud. It didn’t bother Iwaizumi. She’d applied to a bunch of schools in Tokyo. At some point she’d pick the best engineering program of the bunch, tell Oikawa, be gruff at her until she stopped sobbing, and then they’d pick out an apartment together. No problem.

But then she’d gotten the letter from Tohoku. Just— out of nowhere. One of the best schools in the country picking her, the dumbass half the programs in Tokyo had turned down?

She couldn’t say no. She didn’t. And two nights after she sent in her paperwork and the same night she finally admitted it, Oikawa kissed her, with her eyes screwed shut and her hands buried hard in Iwaizumi’s hair.

Iwaizumi sighs, the back of her head thunking against the brick. Voices wend through the still air, carried from any one of the little rooms tucked away in the cluttered folds of Akaashi’s parent’s basement. She thinks she saw a game room, on her way down. And a laundry room, and a second laundry room, and maybe a small theater, and definitely some priceless original artwork hanging beside the ski gear.

Distantly, there’s the sound of Mario Kart.

She picks up her phone before she’s thought about it, and has thumbed it open and pulled up her favorites and let it ring once before she even notices she’s calling her mom. She hangs up immediately when it hits her, with her back tense and cheeks burning in the dim. She feels like shit and kinda wants her mom to tell her— something, anything, anything Iwaizumi hasn’t already tried to tell herself, but it’s 11:30 pm. It’s no kind of time to be calling one’s mother. And she's not a kid.

She checks Twitter and Line instead. There’s some good pictures of birds with arms. She avoids Hanamaki’s Snap story, because Oikawa might be on it, but checks Matsuhana’s, because it’s probably all weed jokes. She’s staring dull-eyed at Mastuhana and Terushima’s third consecutive recreation of the ‘wow’ vine when she jumps, like an absolute coward, because her mom is calling her back.

“Uh,” Iwaizumi says, gingerly, phone held close but not quite touching her ear. “Mom?”

“Honey!” says her mom, weirdly breathless. There’s this huge, thudding noise behind her, nearly drowning her out. “Sorry, took me ages to duck out, couldn’t get reception."

"I— You’re not at home?” Iwaizumi asks.

"Of course not, dear, it’s Saturday, I’m out with the girls at the club,” replies her mom, like this is chill and normal that Iwaizumi’s mom is cooler than her. “What’s up?”

"It's nothing," Iwaizumi manages, feeling once more, if at a slightly lower decibel, that her world is rapidly being scrapped for parts. Then, quickly: "Butt dial, don't worry about it. You know how it is at parties." Apparently.

"Are you sure? I'm happy to talk whenever, you know that."

"Yeah, I'm sure, Mom," Iwaizumi says. Her voice drops weirdly at the end, though. Like she can’t hold the note.

She knows what her next line is. Go back to your friends, Mom, I’ll call you later. Something like that. She doesn’t say it though. Her eyes keep catching on this long, inelegant crack running through the wall beside the water heater, tracking it down and up with little conscious input. She can’t seem to say it.

Her mom's no fool, of course. But she’s a good mom, and patient, so she waits it out as this big, glittery, lifetime of a problem Iwaizumi’s having right now comes slopping up her throat.

"Oikawa's just... being weird," Iwaizumi says.

"Ah," says her mom. "Oikawa."

“She just— she ditched me hours ago,” Iwaizumi says, not enjoying how whiny she sounds, but, somehow, committed to this anyways, “her and Matsukawa and Hanamaki, I haven’t seen any of them since we got here, and it sucks because this party is huge and I barely know anyone here except for some like, people we played once or twice in tournaments, and I can’t find her!” Her hand is curling into her other bicep, her toes curling in her shoes. “And the whole stupid thing, like, why she ran off is because Akaashi was asking her— no, sorry, Mom, that’s the host, yeah, I know there’s a lot of us, but the reason she ran off is because Akaashi was asking us about university and she just— she fucking lost it! She just booked it out of there and left me to explain, which I can, because she always does this, even when it’s just me and her, like the other week when I was trying to talk to her about all those prereq classes I have to take—”

Iwaizumi notices, kinda distantly, that this isn’t how she normally acts when she gets mad. Normally when she’s mad she’s standing and pacing around and snarling and threatening to deck at least one person, normally Oikawa, but that isn’t what she’s doing right now. Right now she’s curled tense against a wall, knuckles white around the phone. It’s like how Oikawa gets mad, she thinks. Tightly, pointed inwards.

“—And she’d barely even look at me, she just kept staring at her phone, even though I’ve seen her do some of that math before, the stuff I’m gonna have to do, and I thought she could like, help, but I don’t know, I…”

She trails off, not sure what goes next. She feels like she got off track somewhere. “I don’t know,” she says again.

“I’m sorry, honey,” says her mom. “That sucks, not having your friend there for you when you need her.”

Iwaizumi’s thumb rubs over the edge of her sleeve, feeling the stitches along the hem. “Yeah,” she says. “Guess so.”

She’s quiet for a moment. The chill of the wall is starting to seep through her shirt, numbing her shoulder blades. Probably she should go upstairs soon.

“I guess I just don’t…” Iwaizumi starts, “I don’t really get what she’s doing. Why she’s doing all this.”

Now it’s her mom’s turn to be quiet. Noise stil filters down the line, the club and the people and the entire evening that hasn’t actually stopped for her mother, just paused.

“She’s scared,” says her mom, gently, and maybe it’s the gentleness that makes Iwaizumi suddenly laugh a little, voice rough, and say, “Oh. She isn’t the only one, huh.”

Why couldn’t she see it? Oikawa’s scared. Of course she is. The knowledge doesn’t satisfy her but it does— fill something in. One last stupid, wiggly, color-by-the-numbers shape. They’re both scared.

“No, dear,” her mom is saying. “But that’s okay.”

“Is it?” She sounds small.

“Yes,” says her mom, unhesitant. “Because life is scary. But no matter what happens to you, even if all your fears come true, you’ll still be okay. You know I failed my first year of uni, right? And had to drop out?”

“I—” Iwaizumi blinks. “I thought you transferred.”

“Nope, dropped out,” her mom replies cheerfully. “And my life didn’t end. You are going to do great this year, because you are a hard-working, courageous young woman who never takes no for an answer. And if you don’t do great, you’ll still be hard-working and courageous and all those wonderful things.”

Iwaizumi thinks she knows what comes next. “And I’ll still have all my friends?” she asks, or says, or both.

“Of course,” her mom says. “Really, I think you’re stuck with her.”

Iwaizumi has her mouth pressed to her forearm so that even though she’s alone, in a basement surrounded by plumbing, no one can see her smile.

“Thanks, Mom,” she says. Her legs ache a little when she stretches them out, but it feels good anyways. “I should go find her, before she does something really stupid.”

“I have complete faith in you, dear,” her mom says, which makes Iwaizumi laugh. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Text me if you’re going to be late, I’ll set aside some dinner for you.”

“Yeah. Love you, Mom.”

“Love you, too.”

She passes the game room on her way out of the basement. A few girls are draped across the couch inside, idly negging each other as they all attempt Rainbow Road for what sounds like not the first time. The air stinks of weed. One of the girls, long-limbed enough to look more like a Pixar blooper than a human, notices Iwaizumi standing in the door. Iwaizumi notices her too, recognizes her as Karasuno’s bitchy middle blocker.

“Want some?” The middle blocker, Tsukishima, says, holding out the bowl.

There’s a single, siren moment of temptation, but that’s about it. Weed is good, Mario Kart is fun, but Iwaizumi has places to be. Plus, she’s never really understood the appeal of Tsukishima.

“I’m good,” she replies, and Tsukishima shrugs.

“Suit yourself,” she says, as Iwaizumi turns and, with idiot purpose in her stupid heart, climbs up the stairs.

The night’s approaching a conclusion. There’s still music, but it’s quieter, and a lot of the guests have gone home. Those left have flung themselves across the chairs and couches that were so rashly pushed aside to make room for dancing earlier, and sit now chatting and checking their phones and falling asleep on each others’ boobs. Iwaizumi tracks her way through the house, checking upstairs and downstairs, every bedroom and out on the deck. It’s with a certain sense of inevitability that she ends up back in the living room, standing between a pair of couches with her fists on her hips, saying, “Okay, where is she.”

“Good evening, Iwaizumi!” says Bokuto, whose eyeliner has devolved into smudgy racoon-marks around her eyes.

“ ‘S morning, Kotaro” Akaashi says, heaving herself awake. It doesn’t really work. She and Bokuto are wrapped in a blanket almost the exact color of their couch, giving the impression of a two-headed lesbian monstrosity in severe need of a nap.

“Only technically, my sweet angel!”

“That’s what I said,” Akaashi mumbles, cheek already drifting back down to the drool spot on Bokuto’s shoulder.

“She gets hyper-correct when she’s sleepy,” Kuroo offers, from the opposite couch. It’s the first time Iwaizumi’s seen her all night. She’s the image of an evening professionally-partied, pleasantly buzzed and coiff intact. She’s got her little setter with her bad dye job tucked under one arm, spread like a branch over the back of the couch, and Tsukishima under the other. The setter is asleep and Tsukishima, who must have followed upstairs at some point, is incredibly high.

“ ‘M not sleepy,” Akaashi mumbles with her eyes closed, sleepily, and Bokuto— coos? Kuroo laughs indulgently. Tiny Setter makes some precious little snuggling noise as Tsukishima stares with dulled horror into the abyss. Iwaizumi presses the heel of her hand hard between her eyes.

“It has been,” she says, “such a long fucking night, guys. Whatever they’ve put you up to, can we skip it?”

“Man, you’re so out there, Iwaizumi!” Bokuto laughs. “I don’t even know Hanamaki!”

“Kuroo,” she says, turning her back on this betrayal. “As a, uh— friend.” Sure. “You need to help me out here.”

“So, we saw you and Sugawara earlier,” Kuroo says, with a horrible toothy grin. “You two were looking pretty, uh—”

Iwaizumi’s hands are making frustrated little clawing motions in front of her body. “Kuroo, I will pay you money.”

“—en deshabille,” Kuroo finishes with a leer that can only, unfortunately, be described as saucy. “What’s going on with that whole nastiness?”

“Arggghhhh,” Iwaizumi replies, as Bokuto mouths ‘on deez habayays?’ at Kuroo.

“Oh, girl, it's like Spanish for ‘fucky’—”

“It wasn’t like that” Iwaizumi snaps, the desire to clock someone coiling powerfully in her biceps. “She was just there, and she had this glittery stuff on her cheeks, and— you know what, listen, okay, are any of you straight enough to turn her down?”

“Oh, hell no,” Kuroo says.

“No,” Akaashi mumbles from Bokuto’s shoulder. Bokuto gasps.

“So, this is weird for me,” Tsukishima says, listing onto Kuroo’s shoulder.

“Akaashi, I want to kiss Suga, too!”

There's a scuffling noise behind Kuroo’s couch and then two hands shoot up, one grabbing frantically at the other. “Oh, hmm, yes I definitely put my tongue down Sugawara’s throat, yes, indeed,” says a voice pitched an octave below its normal register, “even though I made my girlfriend promise she wouldn't because it would ‘compromise the integrity of the masterplan’ but obviously I am a big ol’ sack of horseshit, and—”

“Stand the fuck up right now,” Iwaizumi says.

It comes out… exactly as furious as she intends it. The room goes quiet.

Makki and Mattsun clamber up from behind the couch. Makki has Mattsun’s fingernail scratches down her forearm, and a look of smug victory. Mattsun looks like placid, like she always does, but with bitemarks on her neck and wearing another girl’s shirt. It says ‘Shortstops Make Do.’ She meets Iwaizumi’s glare.

“What is this and why is it happening,” Iwaizumi says. She’s angry, but it’s tempered by exhaustion and the foundational need to be doing something else right now. A really specific something else.

“Well, we’re not cowards,” Mattsun says with a lazy shrug. “It's not like we’re just gonna give up on a theme because we can't find any like, sun cows or ocean gods or some—”

“Okay, before she gets further into this, Iwaizumi,” Makki says, throwing her hip into Mattsun’s, “I want to be clear that there was no master plan and she is completely full of shit, we were as surprised as you when the Cyclops thing happened—”

“The what thing?”

“Fuck you, I love you, but fuck you,” Mattsun says to Makki.

“—And this is entirely because she smoked too much weed before doing that supplementary Euro Lit exam last month,” Makki continues, one arm up to protect her head as Mattsun starts trying to smack her, “and someone thought she could spice up her hot idea of ‘leaving you alone and being as unhelpful as possible until you figured your shit out’, but then—”

Kuroo coughs, unsubtly, like she’s trying to hork up a tortilla chip. Makki pauses.

Iwaizumi is staring at them both, her arms crossed loosely over her chest. They stare back. Mattsun, slowly, lets go of Makki’s ear.

“So this was a shitty way to spend an evening,” Iwaizumi says to them, tone steady. “You know that, right?”

The house is quiet with half-drunk chatter, warm with drowsing bodies. She feels angry, but not lit up with it, not consumed by it. It’s a little more resigned than that. These are her friends, and they do stupid shit. They’ll probably do stupider.

Mattsun, with Makki glaring at her side, relents.

“Yeah,” Mattsun says, with an abashed smile. It’s an unusual flash of feeling, making her lips twist and her cheeks bunch like a kid caught out in a lie. “Sorry. We didn’t really know what else to do.”

“I feel like literally anything. Literally any fucking thing would have been better than this,” Iwaizumi says, though she can't really help but halfway-smile. What a pack of idiots. “Did you consider just talking to us?”

“What can I say?” Mattsun replies, shrugging again. “Maybe we’re just not as wise and all-knowing as we appear.”

Iwaizumi snorts. “You two have never looked anything other than dogshit stupid.”

“It’s a fair cop, ‘guv,” Makki says, leaning into Mattsun’s ear.

“Chicken. You just don’t want her to punch you.”

“I do not deny that!”

“I’m not gonna punch you guys,” Iwaizumi says, and appears to surprise them both with the admission. “It’s late, and I need to talk to her. Can you just tell me where she is?”

“Yeah, okay, but one question first— stop your moaning it’s important.” Mattsun holds up a finger, staring Iwaizumi dead in the eye.

“Do you,” she says, “Iwaizumi Hajime, finally and for certain, on pain of us never talking to you again, admit that you are into Oikawa Tooru in an emotional, spiritual, physical, and/or very nasty sense?”

And the thing is, as borderline offensive as the question is, Iwaizumi can hardly believe it even needs asking. How dumb are they that they let it get this far? Oikawa, her, them two— anyone. The answer’s so obvious. Iwaizumi can feel it shining in her, like a superpower.

“I love her so much I think I’m going to have to kill her and then myself,” she says, and Mattsun beams.

“True love, true love, true love!” Bokuto is chanting behind them, her clapping muffled by the blanket. Mattsun holds up her finger again.

“Okay, then, last question—” Iwaizumi frowns, hands dropping to her sides. “—no, I promise, come on! Listen. Iwaizumi. Would you say that tonight’s startling revelation is due in any way to the careful and concerted efforts of me and my trusted partner?

Laughter pops out of Iwaizumi’s mouth like it’s been pulled on a line.

“No, fuckwit,” she says, “I called my mom.”

Makki chokes and Kuroo sniggers and Tsukishima says, “Oh, so that’s why you were sitting in a corner in the dark,” and Bokuto continues, undeterred, to chant, “true love! true love! true love!”

Mattsun’s shrug this time slinks up her entire body, her hands springing up at the end like a cartoon diagram of benign acceptance. “Okay, so we’ll take like, half-credit,” she says with a grin. “Just to keep it even.”

“Mattsun—”

“She’s on the roof, Vice-Captain,” Mattsun says, smiling, eyes creasing. “The window outside the master bedroom. Go get ‘er.”

Iwaizumi inhales.

“I— okay,” she says, eyes fixing to the door just left of Mattsun’s head. “Okay.” She doesn’t move. Kuroo has joined the true love! chant now, as has, sleepily, Akaashi. They’re starting to add a melody. Iwaizumi feels the night stretch out behind her like a dream she never thought she’d finish, a test she never thought she’d pass.

Makki flicks her shoulder.

“Hey, man,” Makki says, with a crooked smile. She’s leaned herself awkwardly over the couch between Kuroo and Tsukishima’s heads, her fingers barely brushing Iwaizumi’s shoulder. “It’s gonna be great, yeah? She’s just stupid for you.”

“Ain’t that the truth,” Kuroo says, and Bokuto barks a laugh.

Iwaizumi smiles at Makki and says, “Yeah, alright.” It’s past time. “Fuck you both and your mothers. Don’t wait up.”

There’s applause, and a wolf whistle, and then she’s gone.

The master bedroom is blessedly empty, the glass door to the balcony ajar. Iwaizumi steps outside, looking up. There's a trellis, which she climbs, then there's the roof, then there's the moon, and then there's Oikawa.

She sitting hunched on the sloped tile, her knees drawn up to her chest and a hand in her long hair. Her back is to Iwaizumi. She faces out over the midnight neighborhood, its low constellations of streetlights, the dapples of reflected moonlight in windows and windshields and the perfect bean-shaped faces of ponds.

Iwaizumi hesitates a moment. Funny, how familiar that pose looks. All the thousands of little differences they’ve grown into over the years, and the only thing that separated their misery was a couple of hours and two flights of stairs.

She doesn’t like the look of the roof’s slope, so she plants her feet on the trellis and props her elbows on the tiles when she says, “Hey.”

That long hair shifts and slides, like water over granite. “Hello, Iwa-chan,” Oikawa says, still looking out over the houses.

“C’mon inside, weirdo. You’re gonna catch a cold.”

“It’s not so bad.”

“Or you could slip and die.”

“So little faith in your Captain, Iwa-chan?”

The words are teasing, as familiar as Coach shouting the plays, but Oikawa’s heart isn’t in it. It always makes something cold and steely close around Iwaizumi’s guts, watching Oikawa pretend to be herself.

“Well, if I come up there I am absolutely gonna slip and die, and if I kicked it now after the night I’ve had—” she sighs to herself, rubbing at one eye. “I need to talk to you, man. Could you please come down?”

She thinks for a moment Oikawa might say no. But then she stands, careful and sure-footed even though Iwaizumi knows she must have been drinking all night, and picks her way across the roof. Iwaizumi scrambles down the trellis, swinging over the balcony rail, and offers Oikawa a hand. Oikawa takes it without looking, keeps not looking even as they slip into the bedroom and Iwaizumi doesn’t let go.

The master bedroom is huge and dark and airy, curtains pulled back from windows to reveal pristine hardwood, tasteful art pieces, the soft-blinking LEDs of expensive electronics. Oikawa perches at the edge of the bed, one arm wrapped around her middle. Iwaizumi sits beside her, watching the slow sweep of her lowered eyes. Their hands lay between them. Akaashi’s parents’ sheets are very nice.

“So, Mattsun almost got me thinking she was psychic tonight,” Iwaizumi says, into the stillness. Oikawa’s fingers twitch against hers. “Turned out to be a series of weird fucking coincidences and honestly I may have gotten a contact high at some point, or everyone else did, but, anyways— would not have been surprised if the psychic thing turned out true, honestly. Like you were always saying, you know?”

Oikawa doesn’t reply.

“Her and Makki owe me like, their fucking firstborns,” Iwaizumi continues, undeterred, “but it probably worked out alright. Ran into a lot of people we know, talked to my mom at one point. Got— oh man, got cornered by Ushijima just after I lost you. Did you know she has a crush on you? Kept talking about how pretty your hair is—”

“Iwa-chan,” Oikawa says, finally, something thick in her voice. Her breathing is slipping from its careful control.

“I— yeah, okay,” Iwaizumi says, free hand rubbing under her jaw. Her other stays where it is on the sheets. She can’t shake the feeling that if she lets go of Oikawa she’ll never see her again. “Sorry. I guess I was doing that thing where I stall for time and hope you take the lead, because, you know, that’s what you’ve always done, ever since we were kids, but also I don’t know if that’s actually true or just something I always thought was true, and either way I think I kinda screwed us both this time.”

She takes a deep breath. Oikawa is looking at some spot between Iwaizumi’s feet and listening with her entire body.

“You’re moving to Tokyo in ten days and that fucking sucks,” Iwaizumi says. “But I’m in love with you and I’m pretty sure you’re in love with me and I think probably we’ve been in love with each other for a really long time, and we should do something about it. Before you go.”

Silence. “Oikawa—”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

She slips off the bed before Iwaizumi can stop her. Doesn’t make for the door, so Iwaizumi doesn’t have to— tackle her, shove her up against a wall, something— just stands in the center of this massive, blue-dark room and looks small.

There’s a sliver of moonlight in her hair, the orange glow of streetlights down her cheek. She’s so ridiculously beautiful.

Too bad she’s also a moron.

“Hey, Oikawa—” Iwaizumi starts, face scrunching, almost a growl. She’s rising from the bed, too.

“It’s just, any relationship we’d have,” Oikawa’s saying, starting to pace over the immaculate hardwood, the tasteful accent rugs, “if we had a relationship, which we shouldn’t— it would obviously be long distance, and long distance never works, and I don’t even know if I like you like that—”

Iwaizumi stares. “You’ve made out with me like eight times!”

Oikawa throws her hands in the air. “Well, I don’t know! You seduced me!”

“The fuck are you— you kissed me!”

“Yeah, I— the heat of the moment!” Oikawa replies, half-frantic, hair whipping around her as she turns. “I, I got caught up, I don’t know, it was obviously a mistake, we’re friends first—”

“You total idiot, I know you’re scared!”

Iwaizumi shouts it, with her shoulders up like hackles, panic like a bile she refuses to let up her throat. Oikawa freezes. She’s too shocked to keep from meeting Iwaizumi’s eyes.

“How do you not get that I’m scared, too?” Iwaizumi says. It’s almost pleading. “This whole fucking thing is scary! I hate that you’re leaving and I’m staying here and I hate that I won’t get to see you every day, and I hate that I have to do this whole university thing without you! It’s terrifying!” Oikawa is staring back at her, eyes big and lit and unmoving. “But you don’t get to just wave your hands and make this not be happening, okay? We aren’t just friends anymore. We keep making out and mooning over each other and everyone we’ve ever met knows this is happening. We’re past the point where you can just— make this go away by closing your eyes. Which, I’m sorry if this is so unappealing to you—”

“No,” Oikawa says suddenly, like it’s been jerked out of her. “I—”

“And yes, I want a relationship with you,” Iwaizumi continues, unable to give up her momentum, “and yes, long distance sucks but like— we can do it! We can just do this! Just— call me all the time, and text me, and come back home some weekends, and I’ll go to Tokyo and text you back and I’ll send you stupid shit in the mail and we can just— date! We can be in a relationship!”

She barely holds back from adding ‘please.’ She should have added the please. Oikawa’s already speaking.

“...What if it doesn’t work,” she says, her voice thin. She’s still staring, like a deer into a pair of headlights, waiting for the rest of the car. “And then we can’t even be friends after, and it was all a mistake.”

Iwaizumi deflates, letting her shoulders fall, her hands land at her sides. “That’s not going to happen,” she says.

“You can’t promise that.” Oikawa returns it immediately, like a ricochet.

“I—” Iwaizumi starts, and then pulls up short, closing her mouth. “No, I can’t,” she says after a moment. “Fine. Life is weird, shit happens. But I’ve known you since before we could talk, Tooru.” She moves forward carefully, stepping over the floorboard, onto the carpet. “Our entire lives. And despite seventeen years of your bullshit, I’m somehow madly, out of my mind in love with you.”

She smiles her best lopsided smile, reaching out and to carefully uncurl one of Oikawa’s long hands from its anxious fist.

“You’re not just gonna get rid of me that easy,” she says, and Oikawa, finally, after god knows how long, seems to hear her.

She sways a moment, just for a moment, and then she lands on Iwaizumi like she’s taken an axe to the knees. Her breathing is heavy, her hands tight under Iwaizumi’s shoulder, pulling her hard to her chest as she buries her face in Iwaizumi's neck. “You stupid lush,” Iwaizumi says, laughing, as Oikawa goes boneless. Six feet and made of boob and muscle, she forces Iwaizumi back one step, then another. Iwaizumi’s knees hit the bed and buckle.

“Oh, fuck—” she gasps, breath shoved out of her as they land with force in the sheets. Oikawa only grips her tighter, hands pressed flat against the covers and digging pits in Iwaizumi’s delts.

“Okay,” Iwaizumi says, a little weakly with all of Oikawa on top of her, “okay. Is that a yes? Are we going to do this?”

She holds what little breath she has left like a talisman in her chest as Oikawa shifts on top of her. Long hair, still somehow soft after a night of absolute mania, brushes against her cheek. And then again.

Iwaizumi realizes it’s a nod.

She laughs, helpless, feeling drunk and stupid and happy and wonderful. Oikawa is an overwarm weight in her arms, pressing against her chest, felt with her ribs and thighs and every raucous pound of her heart. She wriggles one hand free, puts it to Oikawa’s hair.

“C’mere, would you?” she says when Oikawa’s hot face stays buried against her neck. “Are you hiding your crying face from me? Come on, you know I love when you’re ugly. Makes me look so good.”

Maybe it’s mean to tease her brand-new girlfriend— her girlfriend— or maybe she’s a genius, because Oikawa looks up in a sudden huff, face damp and red and streaky, and says, “Iwa-chan, how dare you, I look beautiful all the time.”

What a lunatic. Iwaizumi forces her back until she can take Oikawa’s very ugly crying face between her hands, curled up to meet her like a beanstalk to the sun, and kiss her. Long and slow, with happiness pouring out her ears.

The night doesn’t last forever. Though Iwaizumi was kinda hoping it would, in the end.

She wakes up in a tangle of Akaashi’s parents’ extremely high thread-count sheets. The room is warm with sunlight, noise drifting up from lower floors and in from the street. Oikawa is awake and watching her, with her head on her fist and her hair spilling across the pillows. She’s smiling, like she can’t help herself.

“Morning,” says Iwaizumi.

“Hi,” Oikawa replies. She must have just woken up— there’s still impressions of the pillow on her cheek, rumpled rosy lines that Iwaizumi reaches out to trace with her fingers.

The first kiss is sleepy, just lips pressed together, half-conscious and maybe just a little careful. Then Oikawa leans over her, rolling her slowly back, and it's suddenly a little less careful. Iwaizumi gets her hands on Oikawa’s waist, pushing up under her sweaty, day-old tank to rub over her sides, making Oikawa hum pleasantly against her mouth.

“So what was your plan—” she manages, as Oikawa is kissing sharp marks down her neck, somehow so much hotter now that everything is laid out between them and Iwaizumi knows that Oikawa loves her and probably even thinks she’s handsome, “—if I hadn’t managed to talk to you last night? And you’d just— ha, fuck— just left for Tokyo?”

“Oh, wasn’t sure,” Oikawa murmurs, kissing down to Iwaizumi’s collar, starting to tug at the hem of her tee. Oh shit yes. “I was kind of hoping you’d realize you were utterly desolate without my shining presence in your life, so then you’d drop out, move to Tokyo, maybe get a café job, and become my beautiful butch housewife who did all the dishes and made tender love to me after class.”

She has in fact gotten Iwaizumi’s shirt off by this point, and is starting on her bra, so it takes a moment for Iwaizumi to corral enough of her brain to get a hand on Oikawa’s shoulder and push.

“That is the stupidest thing you’ve ever fucking said to me,” she says, to Oikawa’s cheery grin. Oikawa took her bra off before they went to sleep. She knows exactly why Iwaizumi can’t seem to keep eye contact. “Like, to the point of being offensive. Do you realize that you’re the biggest idiot I’ve ever met?”

Oikawa grins wider and pulls off her shirt. Iwaizumi’s mouth goes dry. “It may not have been my best plan,” she says, purrs really, leaning in. “But that’s why you’re here, right, Iwa-chan? So brave and smart?”

“I—” Iwaizumi says, and then stops talking, because Oikawa has taken Iwaizumi’s hand and put it right on her breast— just like right on it— and words suddenly seem a little hard to grasp.

“This is a pretty sturdy bed,” Oikawa says, into her ear. This is the hottest thing that’s ever happened to Iwaizumi. “Think we can make it rock?”

What a dumb question. As if they won’t even try.

“I can’t believe you two fucked in my parents’ bed at ten in the morning,” Akaashi says. “You knew that it was ten in the morning, yes? When everyone is awake and can hear you moaning?”

Iwaizumi is flushed to the tips of her ears. Oikawa, who draped herself across Iwaizumi’s shoulders two minutes ago and will not be dislodged for love nor money, is startlingly indifferent. “Sex is a beautiful, joyful part of the human condition and we’ll give you some money for laundry detergent if you like, need more,” Oikawa says. “Iwa-chan, where’s your wallet?”

Iwaizumi flushes harder. Makki and Mattsun are leaning against the kitchen island, looking smug. Their faces will be stuck like that for several more years. Kuroo and Bokuto are arguing over the eggs, Kuroo with a very mild-looking hangover, Bokuto with absolutely none at all. Akaashi, staring balefully at Oikawa’s resplendent grin, is near death. A timer dings brightly.

“You shouldn’t even have been in there in the first place—”

“But the course of true love, Akaashi-chan! Like a great river that should never be diverted, even if we did maybe knock over one of those nice little statues that was on the endtable—”

Akaashi makes an extended, high-pitch noise, much like a small bird who has been done a great wrong. Oikawa grins harder, arms wrapped around Iwaizumi’s neck. She doesn’t seem keen on letting go, which means Iwaizumi’s probably going down with her when Akaashi reaches for a knife.

Well, she always knew that was going to happen.

Akaashi is despairing and furious and hungover, and Oikawa is laughing like a kid in Iwaizumi's ear— like they're eight years old again, like they'll never be parted, like any night alone could only precede a long riot of days together on bikes and in creeks and marrying their dolls to the little yellow lizards that scuttle through their backyards. Like maybe it could all be little yellow lizards, for as long as they want.

Iwaizumi will at least shoot her mom a text before Akaashi begins the slaughter. As a courtesy. Let her know she might be a little late to dinner, maybe a little bloody when she shows, and if she could lay out a plate for Oikawa, too, that would be really, really great.