Work Text:
Oikawa Tooru was always beautiful, according to Iwaizumi. It didn’t matter if he was sweaty, or tired, or excited, or sad, or upset. He was always beautiful, and that never changed.
However, as Iwaizumi kneeled on the floor behind Oikawa, using his palm to trace soft circles on the setter’s back, Iwaizumi was considering extending his prior assumption to “Oikawa was always beautiful, even when he was completely sick and vomiting his entire body weight into Iwaizumi’s toilet”. Though, he wasn’t sure that Oikawa looked beautiful because the man’s head had been buried in the toilet bowl for the last thirty minutes, and every time he tried to lift his head he would jerk back down and throw up some more.
“You’re okay,” Iwaizumi murmured gently, still circling Oikawa’s back as the taller man’s body wracked with a mix of sickness, sobs, and vomit. “You’re okay, Tooru.” If any time was a time to use Oikawa’s given name, it would be now when Oikawa was shaking beneath his palm.
“Iwa-chan,” Oikawa whimpered, his words sounding blurred and wet. The setter rested back on his feet, relaxing and taking deep, gasping breaths.
“I’m right here, come here,” Iwaizumi said, holding up the warm, damp rag that he was holding in his other hand. Oikawa turned to Iwaizumi, and his faced looked a mess but Iwaizumi just used the rag to clean up as best he could. It was fairly disgusting, but Iwaizumi was glad that this kind of stuff had never really bothered him. If he hadn’t become an astrophysicist, he would have been a doctor.
“I’m...gross,” Oikawa choked out, sniffling and then gasping again to get more air to his lungs. This was the longest that he had gone after sitting up without throwing up, and Iwaizumi was glad. It looked painful.
“Yeah,” Iwaizumi said, using the rag to clean up a little more. “You are. But you’re still beautiful.”
It was impossible to tell if Oikawa’s cheeks flushed due to another round of nausea or if he was blushing, but Iwaizumi was just glad to see some color on his boyfriend’s pale face.
“I think…’m good,” Oikawa said slowly, his eyes traveling down his body as if looking for a physical sign that he was going to throw up again.
“Are you sure?” Iwaizumi said, since he wasn’t too keen on getting vomit in his apartment. Oikawa scrunched his nose, waiting for another second before nodding and sitting up a little straighter. He took a few deep breaths, before turning his eyes to Iwaizumi. Sympathy instantly flooded through the shorter man’s body because Oikawa’s eyes looked to sad and broken and that didn’t fit his boyfriend at all. Iwaizumi reached forward and cupped Oikawa’s cheek in his palm. The setter put his weight into it, seemingly thankful for the slight bit of relief from not having to hold his own head up.
“Do you want to go lay down again?” Iwaizumi asked and Oikawa nodded, starting to climb up. It wasn’t hard to see that the setter’s legs were shaking as he had a death grip on the counter and used it to try and pull himself up. It only took a second for Iwaizumi to move forward and put one arm behind Oikawa’s back and one under his legs, quickly standing up and holding his boyfriend in his arms. Oikawa let out a little gasp, but was too exhausted to fight it and leaned into Iwaizumi’s touch, letting his head fall onto his chest.
“Iwa...chan,” he said, sniffing again. “You’ll get si-sick.”
“I’ll be fine,” Iwaizumi said as he walked into his bedroom, and placed Oikawa on the right side of the bed, which he more often than not occupied anyway at night. “If I was going to get sick, I would already be sick.”
Oikawa curled up into a ball as soon as he hit the bed, and Iwaizumi sat down on the bed beside him, grabbing the cold pack they had sitting next to the bed and gently pressing it onto Oikawa’s forehead. The setter hummed with contentment, closing his eyes. Iwaizumi admired Oikawa’s long lashes and the sharp curve of his jawline. Again, he couldn’t help but think about how beautiful he was.
“I hate this,” Oikawa muttered, barely even raising his voice. Iwaizumi moved his hand down to rub long strokes on Oikawa’s thigh, trying to soothe him.
“I’m not too fond of it either,” Iwaizumi said, honestly. “But at least I’m getting some peace and quiet.”
“R-rude, Iwa-chan,” Oikawa said, opening his eyes and sending a half-assed glare at Iwaizumi. “I’ll still f-fight you.”
“Oooh, strong words,” Iwaizumi said. “I’ll be sure to keep my distance.”
“Don’t go too far,” Oikawa responded, grimacing before closing his eyes and tucking his face back into the pillow.
“Do you need water or anything? A new cold pack?” Iwaizumi asked, trying to hide the pang that went through his heart when Oikawa was in pain.
“Water,” Oikawa said, his voice muffled by the pillow. “Please.”
Iwaizumi gave a squeeze to Oikawa’s thigh before standing up and walking out of the room and into the kitchen. He opened his cabinet, pulling out Oikawa’s favorite cup; it was a black plastic one with little green alien faces printed all over it. He smiled fondly at the cup, because it was such a silly thing but it was Oikawa’s favorite and that made it special.
It was like that with a lot of things in Iwaizumi’s apartment, really. He always took special care when he watered Oikawa’s favorite plant (the tiny little succulent that Oikawa had dubbed ‘Neptune’). He always made sure that Oikawa’s favorite pillow was placed front and center on the couch (it was a plain blue one, but Oikawa said it was softer than the others). He had always slept on the right side of the bed, but once Oikawa said that it was his favorite side, Iwaizumi had gone to the left in a heartbeat. Everything in Iwaizumi’s life had a piece of it that belonged to Oikawa. He almost wished that he could have a little bit more.
He didn’t want to take care of Oikawa’s favorite things that belonged to Iwaizumi. He’d rather take care of Oikawa’s favorite things that were theirs. He wanted Oikawa to always be sleeping there on the right side of his bed, rather than only most nights. Instead of hopping between their two apartments, he wished they could work together and get the larger one at the end of the hall that had been empty for a while. After all, they had been together for almost eight months now. But it felt like longer. It felt like they had always known each other. Iwaizumi wished he could suck up the courage to ask Oikawa about the new apartment, but he wanted to be sure that they weren't moving too fast.
Iwaizumi walked back into the room where Oikawa still lay, curled into a tight ball, clutching a medium sized stuffed alien that Iwaizumi had won for him at a festival early in their relationship. Iwaizumi smiled, laughing a little bit, which caused Oikawa to open his eyes and pout.
“Don’t laugh at me, Iwa-chan,” he said. “I need someone to cuddle when I can’t cuddle you.”
“So you chose the alien?” Iwaizumi asked, putting the water down on the bedside table.
“Not ‘the alien’,” Oikawa said. “His name is Hajime Jr.”
Iwaizumi rolled his eyes. “You named him after me? I don’t know if I should be honored or repulsed.”
“Honored,” Oikawa said, pushing himself up into a sitting position and reaching for the alien cup, his smile growing when he saw it. “Good cup choice.”
“I know it’s your favorite,” Iwaizumi said fondly.
“You know that?” Oikawa said. “Do you know my favorite color?”
Iwaizumi rolled his eyes again, putting his hand down on Oikawa’s leg like before. “Teal, white, and pink. Because you could never just choose one. Teal is because of your high school team, white is because it makes you look good and pink because ‘it defies gender stereotypes’ and you like pink sunsets.”
Oikawa smiled. “So s-sweet Iwa-chan. But so easy. Favorite nebula?”
Iwaizumi made a small tsk sound because if anything, this was actually easier. “Horsehead nebula. In Orion. Because when it’s viewed at near-infrared wavelengths, it has pink, blue, and the white of the stars. It’s also the first nebula you ever studied in your astronomy class in high school. Come on Tooru, give me a hard one.”
“Favorite place I’ve ever gone?”
“Trick question. Your favorite place you’ve ever gone is going to be the Olympics next year, when you win gold.”
Oikawa snorted, rolling over a little to look at Iwaizumi better. “What’s my favorite place to go with you?”
Iwaizumi had to think about that one for a second, because there were several places that they’d been that could be Oikawa’s favorite. Weirdly, they had never really talked about it.
“Huh,” Iwaizumi said. “The telescope?”
Oikawa hummed, as if considering it. “That’s number two.”
“What’s number one?”
Oikawa smiled a tiny little smile, that looked so obnoxiously adorable on his face. “Right here. In your bed.”
Iwaizumi scoffed, flicking Oikawa’s leg. “Haha, Shittykawa. You like being in bed with me, very funny. Even in sickness, your jokes still suck.”
“Not like that, Iwa-chan,” Oikawa said, his face rolling into a pout again. “I mean just like, j-just laying here with you at night. Sleeping with you. By w-which I mean l-literally sleeping.”
Iwaizumi felt the blush grow on his cheeks at Oikawa’s words. The setter obviously noticed. “We’ve been together so long, Iwa-chan. How does that embarrass you?”
“It doesn’t,” Iwaizumi quickly said. “Go to sleep.”
Oikawa giggled, but closed his eyes and turned on his side. After a few minutes, his breathing seemed to have steadied out and he appeared to be asleep. Iwaizumi sighed.
“It embarasses me because I love you, Shittykawa,” he whispered to the sleeping form, aware that it wasn’t listening. “I love you and I still haven’t told you because I don’t want you to think I’m going to fast. I want to get that empty apartment at the end of the hall with you, and I want to wake up every morning with you by my side because I love you. I love you so much, Tooru. And I still haven’t told you. That’s why I’m embarassed.”
The form didn’t move, and Iwaizumi stood up to go get a new cold pack since the other one seemed to have warmed up a bit on Oikawa’s forehead. He took it off gently, and went to the fridge to swap it out for the other one that he had. This one was printed with little cartoon stars, since he had owned it since his mother had forced him to take “medical supplies” with him when he moved to Tokyo. Iwaizumi smiled and walked back into the room.
He yelped a little when what he found wasn’t an asleep Oikawa, but the setter sitting up and leaning on the headboard, with silent tears rolling on his cheeks. The shorter man lunged forward to his boyfriend, putting the back of his hand on his forehead, feeling for abnormal heat, but it just felt the same as it had been.
“What’s wrong, Tooru?” He asked, panicked. “Do you need to throw up?”
Oikawa shook his head slowly, wiping away the tears under his eyes. Iwaizumi watched him with worried eyes. “Tooru, what’s wrong?”
Oikawa didn’t respond for a second, then he turned and locked his eyes with Iwaizumi. “You...you love me, Iwa-chan?”
A shock of alarm went through Iwaizumi’s body as he heard the words. He wasn’t asleep? What the fuck? The shorter man wasn’t even able to respond for a second, while getting over his shock. He wasn’t supposed to hear that! But then, he just resigned himself and ignored the flush growing on his cheeks.
“Y-yeah,” he said, leaning forward and putting his forehead on Oikawa’s chest so that the setter wouldn’t see how embarrassed he was. “I do.”
“Do what? You do what, Iwa-chan?” Oikawa asked again, sounding like a petulant child but making it sound endearing all the same. “Please, just say it.”
Iwaizumi sighed. “I love you, Tooru. I love you so much.” He felt hands lifting up his head, and suddenly he was facing Oikawa again.
“I love you too, Hajime,” Oikawa said, his eyes brimming with tears again. “I th-thought you’d never say it.”
“I’m sorry,” Iwaizumi said. “I should have just said it.”
“It’s okay,” Oikawa said, smiling through the tears. “You said it now.”
They were both silent for a second, just looking at each other, before Iwaizumi leaned forward and pressed his lips to Oikawa’s. His lips were hot and tasted disgusting and Iwaizumi didn’t want to think about that, but it didn’t matter because he was kissing his boyfriend and it felt like second nature. When they pulled away, Oikawa looked worried.
“Y-you’ll get sick!”
“I’m fine, Tooru, seriously. Now, you actually need to sleep.”
It took a few minutes to get Oikawa to lay down again, but once he finally did, it was obvious that he was exhausted. Iwaizumi sat next to him on the bed, running his hands in soothing circles over various parts of the setter’s body. Just as he thought Oikawa had drifted into sleep.
“Hajime?”
Iwaizumi sighed in annoyance, because Oikawa needed to fucking sleep before he passed out , but simply said, “Yeah?”
“Did you mean it? About the apartment?”
Iwaizumi’s heart lit up. “Of course. You don’t have to, but it just seems like it would save us both money, and we would only have to move our stuff four doors down.”
“It’s a good idea,” Oikawa agreed. “You should talk to the landlord about that once I fall asleep.”
Iwaizumi felt a wave of exhilaration flood through his body. This was so perfect, it didn’t seem true. It almost made him wish that Oikawa had gotten sick earlier.
“I will, now go to sleep. I love you, Tooru.”
“I love you more, Hajime.”
“I love you the most.”