Work Text:
January second is a weird day of the year.
Oikawa usually spends it sleeping off his New Year’s Eve partying – his sugar consumption alone has him feeling hungover, despite only having had one drink. Once he finally wakes up around one thirty in the afternoon, he doesn’t quite know what to do with himself.
Classes don’t pick up again until Monday, and he didn’t have any assignments to do, so he just watches YouTube videos and texts his friends about random, unimportant things.
Their first year of university is coming to a close, and Oikawa is pretty happy with how things are going, but he appreciates the break to sit around in his underwear and do nothing.
Iwaizumi seems to be doing more or less the same, though Oikawa can’t help but notice that he’s been typing something pretty seriously on his laptop for the past twenty minutes.
They had celebrated the new year together, and Iwaizumi just hasn’t gone home yet. His apartment isn’t even far away, but he spends most of his time at Oikawa’s place anyway, these days.
(Oikawa thinks they should probably just move in together. Iwaizumi had insisted that he needed his own space when they went off to university last year, but he doesn’t seem to use it much. He’s even got a spare futon at Oikawa’s place.)
Oikawa likes these days almost as much as playing volleyball together or going out: just sitting in the same room, only talking when they feel like it, and otherwise just existing together.
“Hey,” Iwaizumi says, closing his laptop and turning to Oikawa.
“Hmm?” Oikawa says, pausing his current YouTube video.
“Did you make resolutions for the new year?” Iwaizumi asks.
“Eh, not really. Why wait for the new year to make commitments to improve yourself?”
“I guess. The new year is a chance to feel like you’re starting over, though,” Iwaizumi shrugs.
“Did you make some, then?”
“Yeah,” he replies, rubbing the back of his neck like he’s nervous, though Oikawa isn’t sure why. “I mean, I’ve been making new year’s resolutions since first year of middle school. Well, serious ones, at least.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Yeah, well, they’re usually like, personal things. Like wanting to get more organized or being able to lift a certain weight or something. Being kinder.”
“Could’ve fooled me,” Oikawa teases. “Iwa-chan is always so mean to me.”
Iwaizumi shoots him a look. “I can start head butting you again whenever you’d like.”
“No!” Oikawa covers his face protectively with his hands.
Iwaizumi smirks. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. But anyway, I’ve always achieved my resolutions. The past six years, I’ve fulfilled all of them.”
“That’s pretty impressive, Iwa-chan,” Oikawa tells him honestly.
“All except one, actually,” Iwaizumi amends, and he looks nervous again. “I set it the first time in second year of high school. Didn’t do it. Set it again. Still didn’t do it.”
“What was it?” Oikawa asks, sitting up with curiosity. Iwaizumi has always been a dedicated kind of person, and he just said that he had fulfilled all his other resolutions, so what was so hard about this one that he couldn’t manage it?
“So, I set it again this year,” Iwaizumi continues, ignoring Oikawa’s question. “But I think that if I don’t… If I don’t do it right away, I’ll just never do it. So I think I’m going to do it right now.”
“Aren’t resolutions supposed to be like, year-long goals?” Oikawa wonders absently.
Again, Iwaizumi ignores Oikawa. He takes a deep breath, closing his eyes for a couple of seconds.
Now Oikawa is starting to get nervous. What is going on?
“Oikawa Tooru,” Iwaizumi says seriously. He looks intensely at Oikawa, right in the eyes.
Hearing his full name startles Oikawa, so he sits up straighter and leans towards Iwaizumi to show without a shadow of a doubt that Iwaizumi has one hundred percent of his attention.
“I’m… sort of…” Iwaizumi balks. He can’t hold the eye contact, and his gaze drops to the ground. His hands fidget, picking at a hangnail.
Oikawa holds his breath because he has no idea how this sentence is going to end, and the anticipation is killing him. He's never seen Iwaizumi like this, and he's a little worried.
He doesn’t dare interrupt, though, in case Iwaizumi loses the courage to say what he’s going to say.
“I’m in love with you,” Iwaizumi finally manages to tell his shoes.
A quiet gasp escapes Oikawa’s lips, and he is quite literally taken aback: he leans back, away from Iwaizumi, as though he needs more distance to fully take in the scene before him.
The silence starts to stretch too long, though, and Iwaizumi seems to panic when Oikawa doesn’t say anything.
But what is he supposed to say? He was, in no way, expecting this revelation.
“You don’t have to accept my feelings! It’s… it’s okay. Well I mean, obviously it would be, uh, really great if you did, but if you don’t… I understand. I just. I’ve felt like this for so long and I needed you to know,” Iwaizumi says.
His voice sounds smaller than Oikawa has ever heard it, and he still won’t look at Oikawa directly, though he steals a quick glance now and again.
“I…” Oikawa tries.
“I’m sorry,” Iwaizumi says, “for springing this on you. I can, um, give you some time to think about it, if you’d like.”
Oikawa wants to tell him not to leave, but he doesn’t really have an answer.
So he watches as Iwaizumi packs up his belongings and heads out the door, mumbling that he’ll be waiting for Oikawa to contact him when he’s ready.
The truth is, Oikawa has wondered about his own feelings towards Iwaizumi for years, but since he never imagined that Iwaizumi would be interested in a romantic relationship with a man, much less with Oikawa himself, he never let himself look into it too deeply.
For Oikawa, the closeness of their friendship would always be enough, and complicating that with his potential feelings just didn’t seem necessary.
Since their third year of high school, Oikawa thinks that their friendship, from an outsider perspective, is probably much more… intimate than the average best-friendship. That year, they became somehow closer, both physically and emotionally, culminating in their loss to Karasuno in the spring Interhigh.
When Iwaizumi isn’t smacking him around, he is actually very gentle with Oikawa. He rarely initiates physical affection, but he accepts it willingly and more enthusiastically than Oikawa had originally thought he would. Iwaizumi is often the last to let go of a hug, and he always nuzzles into Oikawa’s touch, especially when Oikawa runs his fingers through Iwaizumi’s hair.
The increase in these behaviors certainly confused Oikawa at first, but it seemed to become one of those things that they just did, and since Iwaizumi didn’t say anything about it, Oikawa, not wanting to rock the boat or lose these new privileges, didn’t bring it up, either.
He did start to wonder if the warm, comfortable feeling in his stomach was strictly platonic, but decided not to question it. Best to just enjoy it while it lasts.
Now, sitting in his living room, wearing one of the many sweatshirts that Iwaizumi claims he accidentally forgets at Oikawa’s place, he starts to replay all of those interactions and question all of those feelings once more.
Oikawa knows he doesn’t feel this way about his other friends: he’s never questioned if he had a crush on Hanamaki or Matsukawa, despite their good friendship and relative good looks. He’s always known that they were just friends.
(And okay, yes, sometimes Oikawa wonders what making out with his friends would be like, but that doesn’t mean he wants to date them.)
He wonders if he should ask Hanamaki or Matsukawa about this: did they know? Had Iwaizumi talked to them about his feelings before? Would they somehow be able to tell him if he likes Iwaizumi back the same way better than he can figure on his own?
He shakes his head. He has no idea if Iwaizumi wants them to know about this, so he shouldn’t involve them without Iwaizumi knowing about it, at the very least.
He closes his laptop and moves to his bed to lie on his back and stare at the ceiling as he replays the past year or so of their friendship.
In his mind’s eye, he watches Iwaizumi on the volleyball court: always looking to Oikawa, and Oikawa always looking to Iwaizumi.
Chalking that up to experience as teammates and a simple trust in Iwaizumi’s skills, he decides he has to dismiss their on-court chemistry. Sure, he always tossed to Iwaizumi in a pinch, but that wasn’t because he had romantic feelings for him, it was because he was the ace of the team.
He moves on to their time outside of volleyball together: getting snacks at the konbini, watching shitty movies together, making each other music playlists, studying together, walking to and from school together every day…
He realizes that he and Iwaizumi have spent so much of their time together that Oikawa seems to have a harder time thinking of times when they weren’t together than when they were.
And sure, that’s not really the norm for even the best of friends, but it’s all Oikawa has ever known. They could spend that much time together, so they did: it was as simple as that.
He thinks about the way Iwaizumi has softened, over the years, and how he himself has matured. The two probably went hand in hand.
He thinks about how Iwaizumi always drops everything when Oikawa asks to spend time with him, and how Iwaizumi almost always does things Oikawa’s way even if Iwaizumi’s way would have been better.
But soon, Oikawa realizes that he’s only thinking about Iwaizumi’s actions and Iwaizumi’s feelings. Iwaizumi already admitted how he felt, so the thing he needs to be questioning is his own feelings.
He starts over.
When the question of Oikawa’s feelings for his friend crossed his mind, there was always something stopping him from investigating further: he didn’t want to risk anything; he didn’t want Iwaizumi to pull away, to realize what those touches might mean to Oikawa and decide to stop because he didn’t want to lead him on.
But Iwaizumi’s confession has effectively removed the greatest barrier to Oikawa’s worries about having those same feelings for Iwaizumi.
Iwaizumi already took the leap of courage.
Maybe now, it’s Oikawa’s turn.
Oikawa fully intends to think about his feelings for at least two or three days, so he doesn’t feel like he’s only reacting on impulse and the desire to give Iwaizumi what he wants, to not hurt his friend.
After less than a full day, though, Oikawa is feeling restless.
He pulls out his phone and opens a text to Iwaizumi to check that he’s home.
Iwaizumi responds almost immediately—not the norm for him, which makes Oikawa’s gut clench, that Iwaizumi has probably been waiting by his phone for Oikawa to reach out.
He’s glad he didn’t wait longer.
He tells Iwaizumi he’s on his way over, grabs his keys, and heads out the door, still wearing Iwaizumi’s sweatshirt.
Iwaizumi’s apartment isn’t too far, but Oikawa feels impatient as he walks the kilometer and a half.
It’s cold, and he regrets not wearing gloves, jamming his hands in his pockets as he quickens his pace, taking full advantage of his long legs.
Thirteen minutes later, legs cramping slightly in the cold wind, he rings the buzzer to Iwaizumi’s apartment.
The intercom crackles. “Oikawa?”
“Yeah.”
The door unlocks with a loud click and Oikawa pushes it open and jogs up to the third floor, where Iwaizumi is standing in his doorway, waiting for him.
Oikawa has a script he planned in his head on the way over, but when he sees Iwaizumi, it all evaporates.
They meet each other’s gaze, and Oikawa can tell Iwaizumi is struggling to maintain the eye contact, but he’s being stubborn and doesn’t want to be the first to look away.
Oikawa saves him the trouble, and breaks contact. A little shyly, Oikawa walks down the hall until he’s standing right in front of Iwaizumi’s door.
“Can I come in?” Oikawa asks.
Iwaizumi seems to realize that he is, in fact, blocking the entrance to his apartment, and nearly jumps out of the way.
“Yeah, of course.”
Oikawa removes his shoes and Iwaizumi scurries to the main room of his studio.
He looks torn between sitting at the desk or on his bed before settling into his desk chair. The disadvantage of a studio, of course, is not having much seating, and sitting on the bed probably seems awkward, given the circumstances, and sitting at the desk creates a safe distance.
Oikawa figures that Iwaizumi is expecting rejection, so it makes sense that he would choose to sit there, but now Oikawa doesn’t know what to do: does he sit on the bed? Does he stand next to the desk?
He sits on the bed as close to the desk as possible.
“How are you?” he asks, cringing as it comes out of his mouth because he probably knows the answer already, given the dark circles under Iwaizumi’s eyes and the tension in his shoulders.
“Fine,” Iwaizumi replies anyway, out of habit more than an honest response.
Oikawa lets out a slow, steady breath.
“I had um, planned my reply, but of course I forgot everything as soon as I saw you, so… this is going to be a little awkward, I guess.”
He’s aiming for levity, but Iwaizumi doesn’t seem to relax any.
“I thought about what you said. I mean, obviously, I did. That’s… the whole point. Of why I’m here. I mean… Shit.” Oikawa shakes his head at his terrible start. “Let me start over?”
Iwaizumi manages a faint smile and nods his head.
“The first time I thought I might have a crush on you was in our second year of high school,” Oikawa admits slowly. “But I did my best to squash that feeling, because I had no idea that you were anything but straight, and I loved our friendship so much that it seemed… unnecessary to want to change anything.
“I um, in third year, I definitely started to wonder about my feelings for you. But again, I told myself that it wasn’t worth it. I wanted to experience our friendship, pure and simple, without mixing up pining and unrequited crush feelings in there. It would’ve been a disservice to our friendship, I think.
“Yesterday, you… you caught me off guard, to say the least,” Oikawa laughs. “I mean, who would have thought that big manly Iwa-chan would like a boy? And would like me, at that?”
Iwaizumi looks like he wants to say something, but he holds his tongue.
“But… I trust you. I trust you more than anything in this world, so it’s not for me to doubt your confession. And so I tried to ask myself how I felt. I asked myself what stopped me from admitting to having feelings for you before this?”
Iwaizumi’s eyes grow wide, like he’s not quite sure what Oikawa is trying to say, but the look on his face says that he hopes, oh how he hopes.
“The biggest thing stopping me was that I didn’t think you would ever feel the same. And well… you do. And I know that even if we don’t work out, as a couple, I mean, there’s nothing to fear, really. I’ll still have my best friend.”
“I don’t think I could get rid of you if I tried,” Iwaizumi says, and they both laugh a little.
“So, what I’m saying is this,” Oikawa says, moving to crouch in front of Iwaizumi, taking one of his hands in both of Oikawa’s own. “Iwaizumi Hajime, I accept your feelings, and I would be honored if you would please be my boyfriend.”
The grin that breaks across Iwaizumi’s face is brilliant and honest, and Oikawa can’t help but match it.
“You’d be honored, huh?” Iwaizumi smirks.
“Don’t tease me when I’m confessing to you!” Oikawa complains. “Is that a yes?”
Iwaizumi nods. “Of course it’s a yes; I’m the one who confessed to you, dumbass.”
“That’s no way to talk to your boyfriend!”
“If you think I’m gonna stop calling you a dumbass just because we’re dating now, you’re delusional.”
“Mean, Iwa-chan!”
Iwaizumi licks his lips, a sly look crossing his face. “I could kiss it better,” he offers, standing up.
Oikawa stands too, meeting Iwaizumi’s gaze fully and without hesitation from either of them.
“Oh you think you’re so smooth, don’t you?”
“Definitely smoother than you.”
“It’s not a competition!” Oikawa sighs. “Is this what dating you is going to be like?”
“This is what I’m always like with you,” Iwaizumi says. “This is what dating me is going to be like.”
Iwaizumi steps forward, raising a hand to Oikawa’s jaw, holding his face how he wants it, and closes the distance.
Oikawa feels the last of the tension melt out of his body and he happily meets Iwaizumi’s lips with his own, putting one hand on Iwaizumi’s hip and wrapping the other arm around Iwaizumi’s neck.
Oikawa feels a little thrill up his spine as his eyes flutter closed: Iwaizumi’s hand is warm on his jaw, and the texture of his lips feels perfect.
They pull back, but their faces stay close. Iwaizumi rests his forehead against Oikawa’s, and they just stand there, holding each other for a moment.
Then, Oikawa tugs Iwaizumi closer, so they’re chest to chest, and he kisses Iwaizumi again.
The kiss starts soft, exploratory more than hesitant just like their first, but then Iwaizumi presses in harder after just a few seconds, adding a bit more energy and intensity.
The pressure feels good, and Oikawa begins to move his lips against Iwaizumi’s more insistently.
Iwaizumi accommodates Oikawa’s movements, and opens his mouth little by little. His tongue pokes out, testing Oikawa’s reaction.
Oikawa wants to let Iwaizumi’s tongue in, so he opens his mouth and sucks.
The suction seems to catch Iwaizumi off guard as he inhales sharply before he relaxes once again.
They don’t seem to need more than a moment to establish a coordinated push and pull between their mouths.
It shouldn’t surprise Oikawa, he supposes, that they’re in sync for this as well.
They pull apart once more, but only so they can sit down on the bed together and get more comfortable.
As soon as they’re seated, they find each other’s mouths again, and Iwaizumi’s tongue meets Oikawa’s as it dips into Iwaizumi’s mouth in little circular motions.
They lay down on their sides, still holding each other, unwilling to separate.
It feels like they’ve been doing this forever, and Oikawa thinks that doing this forever might not be so bad.
When they break apart minutes later, he kisses each of Iwaizumi’s cheeks, his nose, and his forehead.
“We should have done this sooner,” Iwaizumi breathes.
“Your new new year’s resolution is to make up for the lost time,” Oikawa grins, and Iwaizumi kisses him again, hard and deep.
Oikawa doesn’t intend to let Iwaizumi miss a single resolution ever again.