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They have always loved each other, and they remain as close together as they step apart. University acceptance is one, but Iwaizumi never stops craning his ears towards any news from his university’s own volleyball team, about a server- one day to be setter- with soft brown hair and wild eyes.
Within one year, Oikawa is a pinch server for his university team, well on his way to take over as setter once a space frees up. Tests are coming up for Iwaizumi when Oikawa’s first game airs, but he makes sure to turn on the TV and watch intently when the announcers narrate Oikawa’s name. Oikawa leaps into the court lights and slams down a perfect service ace, and Iwaizumi jumps up so fast he knocks his textbooks to the floor.
And at the end of things, he’s confident that Oikawa Tooru will stand atop the world.
Iwaizumi wakes up to lightning flashing through the clouds. A breath, two, three, then thunder rumbles across the sky. He groans, the room shutting tight as blood pounds across his temples. Something is rubbing up against his head, and as he reaches his arm up, the infuriatingly bright light stings.
Light brown walls, a mattress that doesn’t curve beneath his back, a wide window hidden behind an encircling curtain, cream colored furniture that Oikawa would never pick out in a million years. This isn’t his home, but last he wasn’t in his home. He remembers teetering, stepping out with his head throbbing, swaying before bright cold lights. He’d been sick, but he needed to get food for dinner—
“You’re awake.” Iwaizumi looks to the right to see a thin man with a neat haircut, wrapped in a sterile white coat. He’s looking at the machines behind Iwaizumi and the numbers they’re spitting out, copying the important ones down onto a computer file. “Do you remember your name? The year?”
Iwaizumi does, and answers. The doctor nods, marking the answers down, and from his silence, Iwaizumi assumes he’s not on his way to death just yet.
“How did I get here?”
“You were a little too far in the road,” says the doctor with the even voice. “A car hit you.”
Iwaizumi gulps down the first of his fears. “I wasn’t drunk.”
“Never said you were. Just delirious from a fever.” The doctor returns to his charts, as professional and orderly as ever as he types in some lasting comments. “You passed out after the accident, so I’m scheduling you for x-rays and metabolic panels tomorrow. We’re going to ask you to stay in the hospital for a few days while you recover.”
The doctor exits, functioning on autopilot. Iwaizumi nods, still seconds behind, checking the clock on the wall. 19:21, same day that he remembered it to be. Which means tests in nine days, while he’s a prisoner at the hospital, all because he had to pass out in front of a moving car. Great.
A nurse announces that he has a visitor, and from behind her steps the first and last person he wanted to see. Oikawa walks in and sits stiffly in the wooden guest chair, spitting fire with his glare. Iwaizumi’s throat is too dry to gulp, so he watches and waits.
Thunder snarls through the city.
“I told you I’d pick up dinner after practice,” Oikawa growls behind gritted teeth, every note of irritation as discordant as the next.
“I didn’t want to bother you.” The nearest convenience store is in the opposite direction between Oikawa’s campus and where they live. Between studies and sports practice, Oikawa always comes home in a daze, sometimes too tired to even make coffee.
“You’re still sick, Iwa-chan. And who said not to overwork themselves again?”
“Sorry.”
Oikawa sighs, shuffling through the plastic shopping bag he brought. “I wasn’t sure how good hospital food was, so I bought you food. Age-tofu and curry.”
“How do you not know what hospital food is like?”
“I’ve never had to stay overnight!” Oikawa protests, and even though he dumps the containers on Iwaizumi’s chest with all the grace of a bulldozer, he still went trekking an extra fifteen minutes in the rain to get some food. It aches when he moves, but not enough that he can’t put his hand on Oikawa’s.
Rain patters on the window, no louder than the drumming of fingers. Hospital beds squeak as they’re wheeled briskly in the corridors. The wind hums like a coming typhoon, even though typhoon season is long left behind with the stickiness of summer.
A shadow stretches behind the curtain, waiting for their silent conversation to be done. Even if it’s visiting hours, Iwaizumi knows the nurses shouldn’t be kept waiting. He inclines his neck towards the curtain, once, twice.
Oikawa follows Iwaizumi’s gaze, and pulls back the curtains.
Nothing but the empty room.
“Want me to open the blinds too?” Oikawa asks.
Iwaizumi eyes the curtains uneasily, wondering if someone is hiding behind there. When he sees Oikawa waiting expectantly for his answer, he coughs out, “Sorry, I thought someone was there.”
“You did hit your head hard,” Oikawa acquiesces. When he pulls the curtain back into place, the shadow is gone.
He wobbles on his feet when he walks, and a bandage that’s a crime to fashion as Oikawa so puts it, is wrapped around his head, but those aside, he can move pretty well. His professors have been sympathetic, and have given him time off while he recovers.
The first two days he spends sleeping, studying, and watching reruns on TV, but boredom swells up by the third day. As much as it makes him feel like an old man, he wakes up with the sun, studies between meals, and goes out walking.
Outside of his usual prescribed walking route he’s never had time to explore the neighborhood, so widens his familiarity day by day. Ten minutes away is a small river that stretches under an old bridge and is just deep enough to lap his knees. The convenience store by the next train over puts their magazines out one day before usual publication. A new café has opened up by the department store, and even if there aren’t many customers, they brew a good coffee.
Iwaizumi chooses to walk west today and half an hour in, he finds a neighborhood park with a newly installed set of swings. Some kids are tossing a volleyball back and forth, shouting as they run all over the place to retrieve the ball when one of them hits it a little too hard. They’re clumsy on their feet and don’t have any control over the ball, but they keep on trying, laughing all the while.
Iwaizumi sighs, happily with a twinge of melancholy, thinking of the fearless and energetic days of him and Oikawa, when fun was just fun, and they didn’t have to worry about whether they could carry their skills into the future. The call of the childrens' mothers breaks the reverie, and those days are gone with a gust of wind, and he’s alone in the park again.
Their building is just the same as all the other buildings in the neighborhood, all low, boxy, and nondescript. He stumbles as he makes it past the gates, an undone shoelace flopping on the concrete as the culprit. Even if he’s almost home, he doesn’t want to risk another accident and ruin Oikawa’s hastily put together dinner with another hospital trip, and kneels down to redo the laces. The afternoon sun stretches up behind the apartment complex, bringing its shadow forward, but as his eyes follow it, his fingers stop short.
The sun stretches all shadows, but rarely does it distort them, and what he sees isn’t the building. Something titanic is growing off it- standing atop it- swallowed it up- something that wriggles like it’s alive, disorderly and impossibly shaped, hazy on the ground like a reflection of mist. Even though it’s impossible, Iwaizumi has the feeling that this shadow is watching him. Shivering, Iwaizumi feels like he’s been split apart, paralyzed as he tries to discern something that shouldn’t be.
A shock brings him back as Oikawa’s voice pierces the space, and when he turns to look, nothing is out of the ordinary, save for Oikawa half-hanging out the window. “Why are you just standing there? Your noodles are getting soggy!”
“I’ll be right there!” Iwaizumi yells back, but when he turns to look at the building’s shadow, it’s as square and blocky as it always is.
“Notes,” Ooka says in his usual dead-toned voice.
“Because someone doesn’t know how to use Line,” Tanabe chimes in.
Iwaizumi sighs and takes the folder from Tanabe’s hands. “My eyes hurt enough without having to zoom in and out on an image a thousand times.”
“You just wanted someone to come to your house and prove you don’t live in the library. Still out on doctor’s orders?”
Iwaizumi chuckles, scratching at the bandages on his head. “Yep. All the professors know, so I’m taking final exams late.”
Ooka squints at him. “You’re sure you didn’t just step in front of that car to get out of Dr. Kawamura’s exams?”
Even though he laughs, Iwaizumi can’t deny how that is a perk. “Thanks for coming all the way here.”
“You brought us ramen during midterms. And it was the good instant ramen. We don’t mind. Fuck necessary competitiveness, it would be terrible if you failed. You’re going to be a kickass doctor.”
It’s nothing like volleyball, where the more he thought about it, the more he realized that he wouldn’t be able to sustain himself. What was once a shared dream is now a lone one, but he has other ways to stay close. “Thanks.”
Oikawa walks into the foyer, sees the guests and how his hair is messy and he’s just in a bathrobe, and freezes. He doesn’t recover as fast as he claims he does, but shoots back comically, “Are we having guests? Why didn’t you tell me!”
“They’re just here to deliver my class notes.” Iwaizumi nods at his two classmates. “Come on, I’ll walk you guys back to the station.”
The cool autumn air nips at Iwaizumi more than he expects. Crows peck at their flanks as they perch bored on telephone wires and measured roofs. A lazy, bored, normal neighborhood that comes to Iwaizumi as refreshing as a seaside breeze.
“So,” Tanabe starts up so Iwaizumi doesn’t have to, “That’s your boyfriend? The volleyball player?”
Iwaizumi feels a tiny well of pride as he says, “That’s him.”
Ooka nods, thoughtfully. “Not bad.”
Tanabe gets a thoughtful glimmer in his eye. “How did you manage to get a boyfriend? Because I’m still out searching for a cute girl, and—”
“We all know of your girlfriend troubles,” Ooka cuts in.
“It’s really nothing special,” Iwaizumi admits. Oikawa and him have always gravitated towards each other, in orbit and finally worked up the courage to join. “Dating for two years. But we’ve known each other since we were kids.”
“Childhood friends?” Tanabe sighs dramatically. “What is this, a drama? You have a boyfriend who’s going pro and you’ve been friends forever? Seriously…”
Ooka smoothly adds, “So how did you meet?”
Iwaizumi grins at the memory. “Well, I was an outdoors kid and used to go play in the local park. Up the hill, there were some trees where sometimes the neighborhood grandparents would exercise. Now I know there’s just a clearing and some trees, but as a kid, I thought there was some secret up there.”
“I know what you mean,” Tanabe says. “My parents told me not to go by the lake nearby school so I just had to check it out.”
“Right, just like that. So one day, I climb up there and I find a kid sitting up there by himself. It didn’t look like he was waiting for anyone, so I asked him if he wanted to play. He was confused, which makes sense, a random kid just starts talking to you out of nowhere like that, but we played together until it got dark. You know, he was kind of weird at first- I think I was his first friend, since he seemed surprised at all the games I taught him to play. And then it turns out that he’s moving in right next door, and we’ve been close ever since.”
Ooka nods, but Tanabe is much less impressed by the story. “You’re telling me I have to know a girl since we were kids to get a date?”
“Ignore him,” Ooka says, shoving his friend up the stairs towards the train platform. “Iwaizumi, feel better.”
Iwaizumi watches his friends vanish up the steps, waiting until he can’t hear their voices anymore. The night closes in.
All the houses on the way home are the same; concrete fences built around their entryways, barricading fading trees and crouching houses. Nobody is out but him, with cars all parked tight in cramped driveways. Telephone wires cross the sky, and the road slims down as the streets curve down a steep hill. The corner of Iwaizumi’s sneaker snags on a pothole, and he fumbles, catching himself right before he falls.
A skitter, like a bug fled right next to his ear, and Iwaizumi turns to swat it away. Something is right by the corner, between the potted plants outside one of the neighbor’s gates. Maybe it’s just a trick of his eyes, but then the shadow undulates, creeping his way.
Plunging into the streets, he takes off.
He runs faster, but he feels the something behind him just as ravenous and eager and eternally ceaseless. Blood beats in his head, and a sharp pain beneath his ribs pierces deeper. There isn’t anyone to sabotage, he’s no rising star, he’s just a student like the rest of them, why, why, drums madly as he runs faster, faster, faster.
No footsteps thunder behind him, not even when he comes to a stop beneath a streetlamp. Nothing but stillness.
Even if his eyes can’t pierce the dark, he feels something is there, utterly quiet, watching.
“A little lower, mm, that’s it.” Oikawa hums contently as Iwaizumi presses his thumbs against the muscles above his knee.
Beneath his fingers is stiffness, and Iwaizumi warns, “Don’t overwork yourself again.”
“I think I know how not to hurt myself! I’m an athlete!”
“Your knee in high school?”
“That was a sprain, I didn’t blow it out. You know those happen all the time- every one of my current teammates had one of those. It comes with sports, and you know it.”
“Yeah, yeah. Just because you’re making starting string next year doesn’t mean you can’t be careful.”
“I know.” Glee turns up Oikawa’s cheeks. “One day university, and someday, the Olympics.”
“Aiming that high?”
“I’ll look great in red. Everyone will see me, and everyone will love me. Whole crowds of people, chasing after me, listening to everything I say.”
“Maybe I should work on your head next to get some of that air out.” But inbetween Oikawa’s huffs, Iwaizumi admits truthfully, “You’re made for something great.” Something under the starlit road of universal fame. Somewhere far where Iwaizumi can only watch, for it’s too big for him to understand and that will never be his world.
A feathery touch glides across the shell of Iwaizumi’s ear and snaps him away from tormenting thoughts. Oikawa is looking at him, the living room light stirring a nebula in his stare. “You’re thinking too hard again.” After a short breath, “You didn’t have to stop playing, you know.”
With a sigh he acquiesces, because as much as he knows Oikawa, Oikawa knows him just as well. “I know.”
Oikawa’s fingertips run along the familiar slopes of his face. “Do you?”
Heavy comes out his breath as Iwaizumi sadly admits, “Not everyone in high school can make it big. I wanted to be with you, but I knew… I knew I couldn’t make it. But turning a different way isn’t too bad.”
“It isn’t. Because you’ll do great at whatever you do. You’ll be a fantastic doctor, and I’ll be your first customer, your best customer. Give me a checkup, doctor.”
Iwaizumi slaps Oikawa’s side. “You’re obnoxious.” But the teasing aside, his heart surges, and he wants to kiss Oikawa’s hands and trace the tautness of his thighs until Oikawa melts just how he’s melting right now. “But you’re going to take over the world, for sure.”
“You’re the best there is,” Oikawa tells him with finality. “Iwa-chan, my Iwa-chan. Always mine, forever.”
Oikawa is dressed in a red uniform, landing after the last service ace of the game forces victory to their side. Pumping his fist, he howls, as the crowd screams madly with him. Iwaizumi in the stand yells as the world rises for Japan’s newest gold medal.
Glee becomes terror as a shadow rises, blackening the court and seats with its smoky, viscous form. Iwaizumi freezes, but the crowd is still cheering as Oikawa picks up the volleyball and turns towards the net where the monster engulfs the court and Iwaizumi is rooted in place, only able to scream as Oikawa walks into the dangerous far beyond where he can never reach—
He wakes up, back drenched in sweat. Oikawa is asleep by his side, arm slung over his chest, face buried in the crook of Iwaizumi’s shoulder. Serene in sleep, chest rising and falling.
The night sky is blacker than usual, so dark that not even the lights from the streetlamps or the windows from the apartment complex across the way are visible. As if someone draped a thick sheet across their way.
Iwaizumi squints, and in his scrutiny he sees something move. He squints, and the dark wriggles, like it’s made of bubbling oil. It swirls, and unearths a glowing split of turquoise. First he thinks it might be an opal, with how the colors dance within it, but when it moves he realizes it’s no stone but something that can see.
He can’t move. With the breath tight in his chest, he’s rooted to the bed, because if he as much as turns away it will know.
It stays there, watching, until all the energy in Iwaizumi’s body leaves him and he falls into the only other option of sleep.
“You’re not watching the movie.”
“I’m tired,” he lies.
“It’s Shin-Godzilla. You love Godzilla. You were falling asleep during the laser spines scene!”
“Sorry.” Not even his favorite movie can take away the fear that something is out there, waiting until he drops his guard to lunge.
Oikawa turns around, a tint in his eyes making his flat. He slaps his palms on Iwaizumi’s cheeks, squishing them tight and holding is head firmly in place. “Tell me what’s going on.”
He trusts that Oikawa would set fire to the world if he asked him to, but even knowing that he can’t tell the full truth. Monsters don’t exist in Oikawa’s universe.
After a deep, shuddering breath, he admits, “I think something’s following me.”
“Like a car?”
“Or someone. I keep seeing shadows following me.” Ever-changing shadows. “But they hide themselves really well. I’ve never seen a body, just... a feeling. Something’s there, but they don’t want me to know.”
Oikawa’s eyes take on that dangerous luster. “If you have a stalker, we have to do something.”
“I don’t want to get the police involved. They won’t do anything if I haven’t seen anyone.”
Oikawa frowns, taking this into consideration. “We can’t not do anything.”
They sit in silence, sounds of destruction wafting from the TV.
“Alright, you know what? I’ve been thinking about this for a while. We come home from classes and practice, we eat dinner, we fall asleep. We never do anything fun together anymore. Now some stalker is after you? There’s nothing to do about our conflicting class schedules, but aside from that, I’ll walk with you. It’s awful, but this is good incentive for us to spend more time together.”
Oikawa is working hard, aiming to grasp the world in his hands. He doesn’t have time to be chasing ghosts. “But you’re busy.”
“Who cares if I’m busy? You think I can’t at least do this?” Oikawa puffs up like a blowfish, spines and all. “I know you can handle it, Iwa-chan, but you don’t need to handle it alone. We can help each other.”
Stalker aside, it’s true. Their life together has been squashed under real life and responsibilities. Oikawa won’t be able to do much, but he feels much safer with him by his side. “Alright. Let’s do that.”
After the movie, they tumble into each other, wandering hands and just as needy as always. Oikawa brushes his lips across Iwaizumi’s neck, tracing the jut of his collarbone beneath skin with tender slowness. His hand snakes down, cupping Iwaizumi through his boxers, and pauses. He squeezes once, twice, and frowns. “Nothing, huh?”
“Sorry. It’s the stress—”
“You don’t need to apologize for not being in the mood.” Oikawa huffs, rolling over. “I just can’t believe Iwa-chan wouldn’t be interested in me, me!”
He knows that Oikawa’s just being silly and dramatic, but guilt needles into his fingers. This has never happened before and this can’t be a permanent thing, he won’t allow it to be forever. “You know this doesn’t change. I’m not using it as an excuse, I mean it. It’s just… everything’s been a lot.”
“Iwa-chan, if you think that I’m going to be disheartened by something as small as this, you have another thing coming.” Oikawa flops down, and he’s heavy and sweaty and Iwaizumi isn’t going to tell him to move. Propped on his chest, Oikawa smiles at him, sweet and gentle. “I know, I believe you. You’re the best of them.”
The university is a mix of scents whirling by every second, but the hallways connecting the science labs don’t smell like anything.
With the heavy doors shut, all the labs look nearly identical, serious and grim. Down the hall, one of the heavy doors cracks open and out steps a girl still in her lab coat. She pauses when Iwaizumi approaches her, and one of her fingers tangles around a long strand of hair that frames her cheeks.
“Nakajima Yoshie?”
She bobs her head, all while squinting at his face.
“Iwaizumi Hajime.” Helping her further, he adds, “I’m one of Ooka’s classmates.”
Her face lights up with recognition then, and she bows politely. “Sorry for not recognizing you.”
“It’s okay, I bet you’re not looking much at the rest of us.”
She laughs a little at that. “He works hard.”
“He does. Actually, he recommended you to me, says you’re top of your class.”
“Just in marine bio,” she sheepishly admits. “I haven’t noticed you in the program…”
“Oh! No, school of medicine here.” Fishing through his pockets, he produces his folded-up sketch of the nightmares he’s been seeing in the day. “Actually, I was hoping you might be able to identify a specimen.” She takes it politely, and he launches into the lie. “A friend drew this, but I don’t have a clue what it is. He won’t tell me, so I was hoping I could maybe get some hints.”
Nakajima looks at the paper, then to Iwaizumi. “Your friend drew this?”
“Yeah.”
“Well,” she folds up the paper and hands it back to him, “your friend is quite creative.”
“You think so? I’ve always told him his drawing’s just okay…”
“Not the art. The animal. It’s a very clever monster.”
“It’s not real?”
“Oh no. Cephalopods don’t have a skeleton, or any bone structure really. But in your friend’s drawing, this thing is upright. Most creatures underwater are horizontal, to move through the currents, but this is standing upright. Something of its size, and you see those limbs there? It needs skeletal support. It’s shaped something like a cephalopod, but this definitely isn’t one.”
“Are you sure?”
She nods, convinced. “That doesn’t exist. It’s a nice drawing, but your friend must have made it up.”
“I’m sorry for bothering you like this.”
“It’s not a problem.”
For once Iwaizumi’s glad that some of the old members of Inarizaki’s team also came to his university, and had their former captain’s Line handy. Aoba Jousai never had the chance to play against Inarizaki, but they knew Kita Shunsuke’s reputation as a measured man- one that kept in touch with tradition.
Iwaizumi’s grandparents passed away before he could meet them, and the stories told on the internet aren’t the same ones he would’ve heard at home.
“A friend of mine really likes youkai stories,” Iwaizumi starts, “He drew this picture, but I can’t figure out what it’s supposed to be. Your old teammates said you really knew your legends, and I was hoping you could help me out.”
Kita squints at the picture, and ruminates for a long moment. “It looks like a Hokusai painting.”
“It’s not ukio-e.” Iwaizumi pauses, a heat rising to his cheeks. “Or shunga.”
“A sea monster? A plant?” Kita murmurs to himself, shaking his head. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what this is.”
“Nothing,” Iwaizumi echoes.
“For sea creatures, no. Serpents, yes. There are also whales, turtles, and drowned people, but nothing quite like that.” Kita pauses for a moment, studying the picture again. “And you’re sure it’s not...”
“It’s not shunga.”
Kita shakes his head, sadly. “Sorry, but this isn’t like anything I’ve seen. Whatever it is, I don’t think it’s anything close to what I’ve heard of— ever.”
“You’re just asking me because I like scary stuff. Admit it.”
Iwaizumi isn’t dignifying that with an answer. “Just tell me if you recognize where this is from.”
“I’m a horror movie fan,” Ooka sighs, plopping down in his desktop chair and fixing his glasses. “Not a monster encyclopedia.” He studies the drawing for a few moments. “Does your boyfriend like aliens?”
“He had a sci-fi phase, yeah.” Which has waned, even if it’s still there, unlike Iwaizumi’s ever-consistent love of kaiju. “Why, is this from an alien movie?”
“Sort of. Does your boyfriend read horror novels? Cosmic horror, maybe?”
“Cosmic what?”
“It’s a sub-genre of horror. And this one guy,” Ooka reaches over into his bookshelf and pulls out a book with a worn spine, “really pioneered the genre. And hated Italians. Anyway, it sounds like your boyfriend drew something like the monsters this author talks about.”
“And what does he talk about?”
“That there are great monsters out there in the universe, some that we as humans can’t understand. Just by being nearby, they wreck the foundation of humanity. They’re like aliens only they’re too alien- we can’t comprehend what they could possibly be. Things never really end up well for those that try. Go ahead, take a read.”
It’s a big book and Iwaizumi doesn’t have the time or patience to read the whole thing, but the stories are short so he skims. With each passing page comes a fear that narrows his throat and chills his shoulders.
The creatures are barely touched upon and barely described at all, but even in the vagueness of the words Iwaizumi knows that what he’s seen is something very close, maybe the same.
It’s a story, just a story. The same way children’s fantasies are just fantasies- there are no rabbits on the moon, and there isn’t a horrifying woman wandering the countryside with scissors in her hand. But the shapes in his eyes are real, and as the wind rattles the windows and the pine tree in Ooka’s yard thumps lightly against the house, goosebumps rise on Iwaizumi’s arms.
He looks out the window, looking for the oily shadow, but all he sees are the sloping backstreets and the normal dullness that they’re so practiced in.
“Kakigori gummies!” Oikawa crunches on the hard sugar slathered on top of the gummy as he pops it into his mouth. “I didn’t know these existed. Never stop, Japanese candy companies!”
Iwaizumi chuckles, because even if Oikawa comes loaded with sugar, he’s still made do on his promise to walk with Iwaizumi outside whenever he can. During moments like these, he’s so focused on Oikawa that there’s no time to care about anything else.
A jangling as his keys slip from his pocket. He usually pays such close attention to his belongings that the distractions must be really strong if he’s this hazy. When he bends down to pick them up, he looks behind them and beholds at the far end of the street that misty terror.
It lingers, swaying like a reed in the light wind, but the stars glimmer from its abyssal presence. Towering, shapeless, ever-watching. Oikawa looks to where Iwaizumi is transfixed and asks, “What are you staring at, Iwa-chan?”
He can’t see it, he doesn’t know there’s a monster right there , it could snatch him up and he’d never know—
Iwaizumi grabs Oikawa’s hand and starts running, because it can hound him all it wants, but it isn’t allowed to take Oikawa, not him, never! The narrow streets are barely wide enough for the two of them, but Iwaizumi feels the thing lumbering soundlessly behind them, madly persistent.
His right knee aches and he can barely breathe and his palms are slick with sweat but he’s not letting of Oikawa, no matter what, no matter—
“Stop, stop!” Oikawa yanks him back to a halt, right before the dull neon of their local convenience store. Breathless in his confusion, Iwaizumi listens, because he’s not leaving Oikawa behind. Maybe they can have a moment of peace, because the streets they were running down are shadowed, but with consistent shadows.
He peers fearfully over his shoulder but there it is, crouched behind the convenience store, indiscernible even under the parking lights, infinitely persistent. All Iwaizumi can do is laugh because no matter how he struggles and runs, it will catch up anyway.
“Oikawa,” he gasps, and grips Oikawa’s hand so tight because if he lets go, then that thing might take him as collateral to get to Iwaizumi, and if he can act as one last barrier of safety he will. Oikawa is stiff and smells of fear, but Iwaizumi has to tell him. “I’m sorry, the thing that’s following me— it’s not a person. It’s a thing.”
“What? Wait, are you talking about the stalker?”
“I don’t know how to describe it— it’s huge, a squid, a plant, I don’t know, but it’s there, it’s there all the time, and it’s following me! It doesn’t have a face, and it’s hazy when I try to look at it and I don’t know what to do!”
“I’ve been with you all the time. I haven’t seen anything.” Oikawa gets that tone when he’s trying to calm Iwaizumi down when he gets too angry, and everything overflows.
“You must think I’m crazy but I’m not— I’m not! It’s there! It’s right there, leaning by the convenience store! You can’t see it, but I can!” He whirls around to glare at the transient monster, because even if it breaks men by its presence it will not break him. It cranes over him, towering but never touching, silently seeing without anything he can tell are eyes, shrouded in a blanket of black mist.
Iwaizumi follows the monster’s form down, down, to where the its shadow melds with Oikawa’s.
He looks from the monster to his love and back again at the same swirling shadow they share. Oikawa’s expression becomes a smooth sheet of marble, as he’d forgotten how to fold his mouth or that he has a face at all.
Iwaizumi lets go of Oikawa’s hand.
“Iwa-chan—” Oikawa starts, but Iwaizumi has already starting sprinting, leaving him behind.
Oikawa’s lips are soft as he kisses him. There’s a tinge of vanilla from his protein shakes, and Iwaizumi sinks into it. Calloused hands rubs across the smooth skin of Oikawa’s neck, nudging against the slight bump of a mole right below his hairline.
With a sob, he wraps Oikawa tight in a hug, squeezing until their heartbeats thud against each other. Oikawa is stiff, but ebbs into something far softer.
“I’m sorry,” Iwaizumi’s voice is cracked between his tears. “I should’ve noticed.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I let that monster get you. I should’ve opened my eyes, I should’ve noticed, I can’t believe I couldn’t tell…”
Oikawa’s palm drums across Iwaizumi’s back, rubbing tender circles. “Don’t cry, Iwa-chan. You don’t have to worry. There was never any monster.”
“No, no, there was. I saw it. I saw it, Oikawa, it was there.”
“You saw it?”
“I know what I saw. That thing in the convenience store lot… how it had leeched into you...”
“Ah. So you did see it.”
Is it night, or has the world around them dimmed?
When did he get here? How did he get here? After he saw, he’d ran all the way to Tanabe’s and asked to stay there for the night. He didn’t go home. He didn’t go back to where Oikawa could find him.
But Oikawa is here.
This space is beyond reality. The ground beneath them is white, uneven and rocky, and above them stretches a starry infinity. Every second the pressure shifts from pressing firmly on his shoulders to being so feathery light that he could float away if he took a step. Inhaling feels like tasting stained glass coated in thick oil.
“Was it when you hit your head? I guess that must have knocked you around enough to notice something you were never supposed to.” Oikawa’s words are slivers of ice, each stabbing into the nocks of his spine. “Imagine my surprise when you could actually see me.”
This must be a dream.
“It’s not a dream.” Oikawa is standing, smiling, alight with ruthless beauty. So beautiful that he looks inhuman, something that could grow out of this alien space.
Iwaizumi blinks and sees not his beloved but something giant— even at a distance, he can tell that this thing is far larger than he could ever be, and through its haze he knows that this is the nightmare that’s been haunting him. An amorphous tree that expands and slims like a terrible fall of breath, glimmering like the beams off jewels and swallowing the light in its shadow. He isn’t sure whether such a thing could possibly be alive, and from its branches sprouted clawed hands, tentacles, buds that could only bloom dead flowers, so horrible in its majesty that Iwaizumi can’t do anything but turn and run.
He kicks up dust across the endless moon, breath drying his throat, but even as he runs he can feel the thing close behind him, under his feet, swirling around him, snatching him up. Surrounded by tightening air, slick gelatin kneading his skin, he screams, “What are you?” because even if he’s to die here, he has to know the form of what’s so adamantly determined to ruin him.
“Don’t be silly.” A familiar voice reverberates in Iwaizumi’s ears and aches Iwaizumi’s heart. “It’s me.”
All the fight drains out of him, and he’s left floating in the monster’s grasp. He doesn’t want to turn around, and see that thing with endless eyes. “Oikawa?”
Around him, the hold relaxes, and he feels the freedom of movement once again. Beneath him is still a pulsating cushion of air, but it doesn’t squeeze or hurt him. A presence looms, but it remains quiet. He feels something on his cheek, something in the shape of a cold hand, but he knows that hand, he could never forget it. “Oikawa… when?”
“When?” Oikawa’s laughter shakes the stars. “I didn’t become this, I was this. But maybe you’ve always been able to see something. We’re childhood friends, after all.”
“But you were—”
“Human? That’s just how I looked to you. You managed to see me- and you get some credit for that- and then your brain twisted me into something recognizable.”
Fear turns his legs into jelly. He can’t move, he can’t blink, he can’t breathe. That day in the park, Iwaizumi extending his hand to a friendless young boy. “Then— then what did I see?”
“You saw me.” Oikawa’s voice swirls with the pull of a nebula in motion. “A small human child, asking me if I wanted to play. So ridiculous! Iwa-chan is ever charming.”
If Oikawa only looked human because everyone filled in the blanks then— what has he spent those long days practicing with? What had he been making love to? Was it really a hand he’d been taking hold of all those years?
He feels something wrap around him, an embrace that feels all too rubbery, enraptured by the stench of melting metal. Even if the touch itself is foreign, it feels like how Oikawa hugs him when he’s worn down and tired. “It was you,” he exhales. “That whole time, it was you.”
“You said you were being followed. If someone dared to, I would’ve ate them up. I wasn’t going to let anyone harm you.” He didn’t catch a glimpse of a mouth, but the steely assurance in Oikawa’s words don’t leave much room for doubt.
Somehow, he’d managed to gain the love of something monstrous.
“Then is everything… everything you said all these years— was a lie?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Volleyball is fun. I want to go to the world stages. I’ve never lied about that.”
The higher Oikawa climbs, the more people will see him, know him, be pulled in by his inexplicable gravity. When the whole world is enraptured by an existence outside of the normal domain, then… then—
“You can’t. You can’t! Oikawa, that would—“ He can’t even imagine the hole it would leave in the world, let alone say it.
A pause, as a blue wind whirls through the stagnant space. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It doesn’t matter? How could that not matter?”
“Humans to us are fruit flies to you. It doesn’t matter— nothing matters, but you.” A gelatinous hand gently strokes his cheek. “You’re the only exception. You’re the best of them.”
It dawns on him like a splash of cold water, and tears prick his eyes, even if a sob is so far lost in his chest. The world could crumble around him and would- through fire, through sinkholes, through madness, through fear- and he is the only one safe, protected by a monstrous love as everything washes away.
And everything would. Nothing would remain as Oikawa stands in the spotlight of the world, his glory capturing the eyes of all. Everything he’d do would twist the hearts of those who behold him until they're susceptible to the beyond, and they'll follow him in blind love and listen to the whispers beneath his words. Trusting someone like Oikawa, throwing open all their faith and belief into a being that gazes back from the bottom of the abyss in the greens of moss, fine-tuned to something they can never entirely understand! And what would he see, when he’s protected by the very hand that crumbles everything around him, when he's the only observer left before the world becomes a fading dream?
“I love you Iwa-chan, so I’ll give you a choice. You can keep things the way they are, and you can help support me be the best that I can be. I’m a partner you can be proud of, right?” Now his declaration of trust sounds demonic. “Or, I can fix your brain so that this will all be a nightmare that you’ll wake up from. When you do, you won’t be able to see me like this anymore, and everything can go right back to normal.”
In the blank of Iwaizumi’s mind, he remembers a story from his childhood. Sun Wukong, Son Goku, the monkey king, was challenged by the Buddha to fly free of his palm. Courageous, the monkey flew to the furthest reach of the universe, and upon seeing five pillars, marked his conquest with a brush. But when he returned, the Buddha showed his fingers, inscribed with the same words Wukong had written on those pillars.
No matter where he goes, he’s already in Oikawa’s palm.
“So? What do you choose?”
And at the end of things, he’s confident that Oikawa Tooru will stand atop the world.