Archive of Our Own

For as long as he can remember, Iwaizumi has known, on some sort of level, that he’s loved Tooru Oikawa. 

He doesn't actually remember the day they first met, but both of their mothers regularly feel the need to bring it up in detail at birthdays or dinners, even though it stopped being cute years ago and now just feels more embarrassing than anything. 

According to them, the two of them had met at the local park shortly after Oikawa had moved into the neighbourhood when they were five. Not even old enough for elementary school yet. Certainly not old enough for Iwaizumi to remember how it happened. 

Oikawa had slid down the slide, fallen off and skidded his knees where he’d been wearing short pants, and no doubt odd coloured socks if he’d been dressed anything like what Iwaizumi remembers from their later childhood years. Iwaizumi had been playing nearby and Oikawa’s mother recalls him running up to a crying and snivelling Oikawa, pointing at the offending slide, holding out his hand and saying, “My mama says the slide is ‘dangerous’! I don’t know what that means, but I think it’s bad. You should come with me on the swings!” 

He doesn't even remember what Oikawa looked like at that age but the earliest he’s able to reach back into his memory to properly picture Oikawa is when they were about six or seven and he knows by then that Oikawa had a front tooth missing. It had been the butt of many jokes for many years to come. Family photos are eternal, after all.

So whenever his mom reminisces about that ‘adorable’ first meeting, he can’t help but imagine that gap in his teeth was also there when Oikawa had looked up at him with teary eyes for the first time. He probably didn’t, but all they have is other people’s accounts of that day.

They hadn’t even exchanged names, but Oikawa had apparently taken his hand and gone with him, but not before Iwaizumi had patted down his knees like he’d seen his own mom doing for him countless times. Within two minutes, Oikawa was back to laughing and giggling as though nothing had happened. Their mothers always recall in embarrassing detail the lengths they had to go through and the bribes they had to offer to get them to leave the park to be back home in time so they could feed their fathers. 

The first memory of Oikawa that he actually has of his own is one or two years later. It seems fitting, he thinks, that it should involve volleyball. 

They’re laying facedown on Iwaizumi’s living room floor, their tiny legs sticking up and kicking around in excitement, their chins resting in their hands. It’s been so long at this point that it’s a pretty vague memory, the edges unfocused and the details unclear through the passage of time. 

What he does remember though, is the excitement of seeing his first volleyball game on TV. The way it made his heart race and his feet twitch. It already made him feel antsy lying there on the floor even at seven. He remembers the stars in Oikawa’s eyes too. He definitely had a gap in his teeth by then and Iwaizumi remembers how funny-looking he was and how it caused him to have a small lisp as his permanent teeth grew in. 

He remembers wishing that he could be on the court with all those giants and have that entire crowd cheering for him. He was naive of the hard work and dedication it would take. At the time, it had just seemed awesome.

He doesn’t know if it was that same day or some other nameless afternoon in the future after they’d made their way back to Oikawa’s sister’s house, left to play in the living room till their respective parents came home from work. But whenever it was, he knows it had been life-changing. 

Someone had spiked and scored. Whether or not it was a particularly good spike, he can’t recall, but everything seems cool to a seven-year-old boy. He and Oikawa had jumped up and pumped their fists into the air. 

“Tooru, we should do that! You and me, we should play just like these awesome guys!”

Oikawa had nodded so hard that his head went blurry, before his eyebrows had sunk low and sad. There was a time once when he’d actually been bad at hiding when he was sad. 

“I dunno, Hajime,” he’d mumbled, pointing at the TV. “Those guys are super tall, I could never jump that high.”

Iwaizumi had run up to the TV and punched the air like a superhero. “Then you don’t have to jump! I’m bigger, I’ll do the jumping! See, I’m just as big as all of these guys! I could reach that net easily!” 

The confidence of youth is something he still sometimes misses.

“Hajime, you’re awesome! I bet you could jump higher than the net!”

“Yeah!”

He’d turned to the TV and peered at it with renewed fervour, like a detective looking for a solution to Oikawa’s height problem as though there were meters and meters separating them and as though he himself could come up to even the players’ knees. It would take years for Oikawa’s growth spurt to come and for him to outgrow Iwaizumi. It would be like this for the majority of their friendship. Oikawa, smaller and slightly unsure, Iwaizumi always bigger, leading the way. 

“Look!” he’d squeaked, pointing at a slow-motion replay. “That guy’s not jumping, Tooru!”

Oikawa crawled to stare at the TV screen as close as possible. 

“I could do that,” he’d said, eyes wide as he watched the player in motion. 

Neither of them would even hear the word setter until they started playing together at school. Iwaizumi doesn’t know if Oikawa even remembers that day. But his eyes had been wide and hypnotised. Like he was seeing something beautiful. Like he was seeing something he wanted. 

“You can throw it to me and I’ll bash it down!” he’d said, imitating the motion as best he could.

Or maybe none of it ever happened and it had all been a figment of his imagination. 

That’s how he remembers their early elementary school years together; walking home to Oikawa’s sister’s, spending time in front of the TV or playing mock volleyball outside in the garden. 

Both of them had received their fair share of knocks and bumps to the head with training balls over the years. They’d been naive about a lot of things. The height of a volleyball net, the time it took to boil water for an instant noodle cup, and just how special their relationship truly was. 

Iwaizumi doesn’t necessarily remember the first time he’d heard the word love, but he knows without a doubt that he must have loved Oikawa. In the innocent and carefree way that only children know how to love. 

He’d been an only child, and with Oikawa’s sister nearly twenty years his senior, Oikawa had basically been one himself for all intents and purposes. “I overheard my mom say that I was a bit of an ‘accident’ today,” Oikawa had once told him around a mouth full of milk bread. 

“What does that even mean? Did you wet yourself?”

“No, she was talking about herself I think. About how I was born, I dunno.”

“Maybe your mom had an accident then,” Iwaizumi had pondered.

“You mean like a sneeze?” 

“Yeah, I guess.”

Regardless of their lack of understanding as to how Oikawa and Kazuko had such a big age difference or what an accident was, it had become natural, expected really, for them to become something like brothers. To love each other like brothers. They’d never referred to each other as such, but they didn’t need to. They were always there, always each other’s shadow, close in age and ready to take on the world for the other. There wasn’t any other way they understood how to love. 

When Takeru had been born a couple of years into them starting elementary, Oikawa had been insufferable, referring to himself as Uncle Tooru at every opportunity - only child syndrome without even being one - fawning over Takeru in his crib for hours with his gawky smile. He’d needed to wear glasses full time at that point and Iwaizumi remembers how they used to fall down his nose as Oikawa peered over the crib on his tiptoes.

“Hajime, this means I’m older than you now!” he’d said. 

“Are not!”

“Sure I am, uncles are super old, see? That means I have to be older than you! And I’m gonna look after Takeru because I’m his uncle.”

In his eight-year-old brain, it had made half a sense and had frustrated him to no end. 

“You can’t look after Takeru, you’re not a grown-up, stupid.”

Oikawa had blinked rapidly. “He’s only tiny, what does he even need?” Takeru had gurgled at them from the bed, completely oblivious as to who was looking after him and not caring in the slightest as long as he was fed and changed. 

“I dunno, but it sounds hard. Why else is your sister always tired?” Oikawa had nodded, clearly convinced by Iwaizumi’s grade school level genius.

“You should let Kazuko look after Takeru.”

Even then, Oikawa had mastered the skill of looking thoughtful and vacant at the same time. “But then who’s gonna look after me if she’s busy with him?”

“You said you were older.”

Oikawa had puffed out his chest in rebellion. “Yeah, that’s right, I am! I can look after myself!”

Takeru in the meantime had, rightfully so, gotten bored of their conversation and dozed off, drooling on himself. Iwaizumi had taken Oikawa by the hand and dragged him out of the room to play volleyball in the garden. 

The truth was, even then he’d felt a strong sense in the pit of his stomach that Oikawa needed looking after, needed protecting. He didn’t have many friends at school. He liked to sit and play his games console during break and the other boys sometimes laughed at him for the lisp he hadn’t managed to shake just yet. It wouldn’t be the worst teasing Oikawa would experience in their years together, but the seeds had been sewn. 

“I’m gonna look after you, stupid. Because I’m older for real.”

Like most childhoods, much of it passes in a blur with pockets of clarity appearing occasionally. A conversation here, an expression there. Many of his clearest memories are related to volleyball, many are embarrassing moments and many are recreated in his imagination thanks to the recollection of other people. 

What he knows for sure is that throughout all of those moments, Oikawa remains a constant; someone’s whose hand he grabs on a regular basis when they’re running somewhere, someone who he receives sets from when they’re playing together in Grade 2, someone who he watches cartoons with late into the evening when their parents try to get them to go to bed, the two of them sharing one blanket and getting crumbs all over it. 

There’s a definite shift - not a great one, but a noticeable one - when Kazuko gets married. 

They’re eight years old and about as bored as two eight-year-olds can be when they’re expected to sit quietly for a long period of time. It’s not till the reception that they get to shake off their excess energy and run around outside in the grass with some of the other kids while the adults dance indoors. 

They come inside to scrounge for food and cake and to get a scolding from their parents for getting grass stains on their outfits. 

“When is it time to go home?” Oikawa asks. 

His mother laughs and continues to pat him down as Iwaizumi watches with a smug look on his face. 

“Not having fun, are we?” she asks. “You know, when you and Hajime were little we couldn’t shut you up about how you wanted your own wedding.”

“What?” Iwaizumi asks, laughing.

“It’s true,” Oikawa’s mom says, her smirk ready to embarrass them both once again. “Tooru would go on and on about how he was going to marry you one day. We all thought it was adorable and harmless. Do you really not remember, Hajime? You even got in trouble at school for pushing a boy into the sandpit for making fun of Tooru for it.” She looks up as though counting something in her head. “Then again, you were probably only six or so, I suppose you wouldn’t remember. Time really flies!” she says with an airy sigh. 

Iwaizumi most definitely does not remember it. He remembers confronting boys at school on several occasions, but he could never really remember the cause. Only that it had something to do with Oikawa crying and him feeling the need to do something about that. No one else had the right to tease Oikawa except for him, because at least when he did it, Oikawa didn’t cry. But this particular memory certainly hadn’t made it into the hall of fame of encounters he could recall years later. 

“Alright, young man,” Oikawa’s mother says as she finishes cleaning him up. “Stay out of trouble, please? At least stay off the grass.” 

“Okay, mom,” Oikawa says with an innocent smile. He’d been so much more agreeable as a kid, that much Iwaizumi does remember. 

As they rush back outside, Oikawa looks at him and giggles, “Hajime, who would wear the dress if we really did get married?”

He knows and remembers feeling embarrassment before that moment. But this time, it runs hot and deep and in a way that would fester and settle. 

“Shut up, dummy,” he mumbles without any real heat. “Someone might hear you saying that and I don’t wanna have to get in trouble today.”

They grow less physical with each other in the same way that all best friends do as they grow up. They stop holding hands a couple of years into their friendship, probably after realising that none of the other boys in their class are doing it either. At some point, though he doesn’t know when, they stop hugging as much. Instead, they advance to fist bumps or back pats. 

The one thing that remains their constant are the futons. From their very first sleepover, Iwaizumi knows that they were disgusted by the thought of sleeping separately and even though their mothers had always laid out two futons, they would still end up tangled in one. For as long as he can remember, Oikawa has suffered from nightmares, especially since he’s always been stupid enough to watch or read things that scare him before his bedtime. 

After a while, they stop finding two futons laid out for them and instead are treated to one big one where they can sprawl out and take up as much room as they needed while Oikawa is still able to hide his face in Iwaizumi’s arm when the aliens bother him in his nightmares. 

As they get older, it becomes increasingly clear to Iwaizumi that they’re a little unique in that sense. He doesn't think anything of it until they start having sleepovers with other boys from elementary school and he and Oikawa are the only ones sharing a futon. None of them makes a big deal of it though, and it’s not until their first Golden Week training camp that he goes from unsure to incredibly embarrassed. 

It’s their first training camp at elementary school where they’ve been allowed to all sleep in the same room together and the room takes forever to quieten down in the way that only a room full of ten-year-olds could make happen. Eventually, and with a lot of prodding from their teachers, they all start to crawl under their covers, some with yawns, some with irritation at being put to bed. 

Without missing a beat, Oikawa drags his futon the short distance between them and places it right next to Iwaizumi’s. The second he’s about to settle, someone near them says, “What you doing, Tooru?”

Oikawa blinks vacantly. “Going to sleep,” he says.

“Next to Hajime? Isn’t that a bit weird?”

They’ve got the attention of about two other boys at this point and Iwaizumi can feel the sweat pool beneath his knees. He wishes that just once, Oikawa had been born with a zip on his mouth or at least was able to read the room. At ten, he’d still been earnest and honest without too much fear of consequence. 

“Well… yeah…” he says. “I always sleep next to Hajime. He makes me feel better…” 

Iwaizumi can tell by his voice that he’s nervous from everyone’s eyes on him and he turns to him as though to ask why everyone’s staring at them. He’s relied on Iwaizumi for so many things in the five years they’ve known each other at this point and there’s rarely been a question of his Iwaizumi hasn’t been able to answer. 

But not this time.

Iwaizumi doesn’t have the faintest idea what everyone’s problem is, all he knows is that what they’re doing is apparently not normal. 

And then he hears it for the first time. He hasn’t a clue what it means and he’s never heard the word before. But there’s no mistaking the tone or look on the other boy’s face. They’re being judged.

“That’s pretty weird, you know. What are you, gay or something?”

By the look on Oikawa’s face, he also has no clue what that means, but the looks on the other boys’ faces are enough to touch his sensitive nerves and Iwaizumi feels his blood boil when he sees Oikawa’s eyes fill with tears. 

“H-Hajime?” he squeaks. 

“Back off, Yuji,” Iwaizumi growls. He’s still bigger than them at this age and one angry frown is usually enough to keep boys at bay whenever he notices a bunch of them laughing at Oikawa for his funny-looking clothes or his obsession with alien movies and UFOs and his glasses too big for his face.

They don’t understand him at all. And sometimes Iwaizumi doesn’t either. He doesn’t give a damn about some of Oikawa’s nerdier things, but that’s okay, because it’s what makes him Oikawa. He could find a million other friends that didn’t like those things if he wanted to. 

They also poke fun - literally, sometimes - at Oikawa’s baby fat that he still hasn’t lost and his strange haircut. Iwaizumi thinks it’s stupid to laugh at someone for that when they can’t exactly help what they look like. And if Oikawa were bonier, then sharing a futon wouldn’t be nearly as comfy. He’s already losing his lisp and Iwaizumi sometimes misses how friendly it always made him sound. 

They make fun of him for so many things, and now they’re calling them both a name he doesn’t even understand and Oikawa is close to tears. 

The frown works and keeps Yuji and his friends at bay, but it doesn’t protect them from the humiliation of being asked to pull their futons apart by their teacher who comes in to check whey they’re not all asleep already. 

He doesn’t have the tools yet to understand what went wrong, but that day, he learns that for whatever reason, Oikawa wanting to sleep next to him was something he shouldn’t be doing. Something strange. 

He barely gets any sleep trying to figure out why that is, knowing full well that Oikawa might be thinking the same thing just centimetres away from him. 

The first sleepover following the Golden Week incident is the first time Iwaizumi remembers there being an awkward moment between them. Five years of nothing but laughter, teasing and volleyball and Iwaizumi feels the sting of discomfort for the first time. 

“Maybe we should ask your mom for another futon,” Iwaizumi mumbles as Oikawa yawns, indicating that he’s ready to sleep.

His head turns so hard Iwaizumi is shocked he doesn’t get whiplash. He’s wide-eyed and confused, but that’s not particularly new for him. 

“Why?” he asks, halfway to shifting himself under the covers. 

Iwaizumi bites his tongue before finally managing to grunt, “I just— we’re too old for that now, Tooru, aren’t we?”

“Oh… sure…”

Iwaizumi grips the white sheets of the futon in an attempt to not just offer Oikawa everything he wants, because it’s the most crestfallen he’s ever seen him. More than after any mean comment, more than after a scraped knee. But they have to grow up at some point and it’s better they do it now before one of them gets the crap beaten out of them at school for still acting like babies in short pants. 

Oikawa asks his mom for another futon and slowly, quietly, places and arranges it on the floor at a comfortable distance from Iwaizumi. It’s probably the quietest he’s ever seen him and the silence makes his skin unusually prickly. 

They turn the lights out and Iwaizumi lays on his back, his chest feeling heavy with the feeling like he’s just done something wrong, as well as the strange empty space next to him. He looks to his left and sees Oikawa’s back to him in the second futon. He’s usually a belly sleeper, which instantly makes Iwaizumi suspicious that he’s either mad at him, or the worse alternative. 

As soon as he hears the barely-there sniffles, he knows it’s the alternative. 

Oikawa has two types of crying. The kind he does when he wants someone’s attention and the type he’s doing right now, the quiet kind when he doesn’t want anyone to see how hurt he is. It’s usually the type of crying that’s reserved for after he’s had any interaction with his bullies. Except Iwaizumi is usually the one person he doesn’t hide his face from and he’d very much like to keep it that way. How is he supposed to protect him if he doesn’t know when he’s sad?

He lets out a loud exhale, knowing deep down that Oikawa is probably crying because of him. He’s never been the reason for his tears before. 

In one graceful move, he sits up and slowly drags his futon across the floor as quietly as he can. In the silence of the room, it still makes a noticeable shuffling sound that causes Oikawa to turn his head in curiosity. 

Iwaizumi tucks the edge of the futon underneath Oikawa’s and lays down, trying not to let the embarrassment get to him of not only how quickly he gave in, but also how much better it feels when Oikawa isn’t on the other side of the room.

“You gonna sleep, or just gawk at me all night, Crappy-Kawa,” he murmurs into the dark.

He hears a hitch in Oikawa’s breath as he moves closer. “Hajime!” he whispers. “Are you allowed to say that word? My mom gets mad and tells me to watch my language.”  

Iwaizumi can’t help but smile. “Yeah, well, don’t say it in front of her, stupid. My mom doesn’t know I know that word.”

He stretches his arm out in a non-verbal agreement that if he wants to, Oikawa can move closer. He takes the invitation without batting an eyelid. 

“Hajime, you really are a genius,” he says into his shoulder. 

“Go to sleep, you nerd.”

The weight around his heart lifts after that with the knowledge that Oikawa is happy again. Except he can tell that their nights together have now been somehow transformed from something that was natural, pleasant and comforting, to something that now feels like it should be kept a secret. And if something should be kept a secret, it’s probably wrong.

“We can’t do this at school, Tooru,” he says. “Only at home, okay?”

But Oikawa is already asleep. 

He doesn’t have it in him to suggest to Oikawa again that they sleep apart. But he never quite sleeps as soundly as he did before that realisation.

In their last two years of elementary school, Oikawa is probably the clingiest that he’s ever been up until that point. He’s always wanted Iwaizumi around for any possible excuse, but now it becomes increasingly obvious that Iwaizumi is pretty much his only friend. 

His own friends ask him about it sometimes, why Oikawa hangs around them so much and why he’s such a weirdo. Iwaizumi usually tells them to fuck off in whatever language appropriate way an eleven-year-old would be able to. Some of them let it go and accept Oikawa as an addition to Iwaizumi wherever he goes, and the ones that don’t, Iwaizumi ditches pretty quickly. 

For a while, he thought the other kids ignored or picked on him just because of his looks. His funny hair and his baby fat and the fact that he was consistently the shortest in the class for years. But over time, as his teeth grew in and as he slowly but surely grew a little taller every year and became leaner and less round, Iwaizumi came to the realisation that there was something about his personality, not his appearance, that people tried to avoid. 

Throughout most of their friendship, he’s always been under the impression that Oikawa was really cool. He always had random, obscure facts to tell him that he’d read in this book or that book, he was a great gamer and always knew the secret hacks that would get them to win every single time. His house had the best snacks known to man, even if his taste in movies was god awful. Others their age most certainly did not feel the same.

He’s always talked too much and he’s always tried to be a smartass, that much has been true for the longest time. He’s been known to be a bit of a teacher’s pet, always wanting to do the right thing and always the one willing to put in the most amount of effort into everything, criticising those that didn’t feel the same. But it’s thanks to those qualities that by the time they’re getting ready to move onto middle school, they have one of the most improved elementary teams. Unfortunately for Oikawa, it had meant years of not fitting in while everyone else was busy blending into the background. Iwaizumi doesn’t even know if he’d have known how to do it any other way. 

What shocks him the most throughout all of it is that Oikawa never talks less, never shies away and never seems to retreat. 

By the time they turn twelve, Oikawa has his first real growth spurt and for the first time in their lives, he outgrows Iwaizumi. His features slowly begin locking into place; not a perfect representation of what he’s going to look like going into his late teens, but it’s enough for him to shed the remainder of his baby face and become what was always hiding underneath; a pretty boy. 

They still sleep side by side most of the time when they’re at each other’s houses, but their excess body heat and awkward limbs make for an uncomfortable night’s sleep most of the time if they’re plastered to one another and so they resign themselves to sleeping close, but not touching. Sometimes he’ll still hold Oikawa’s hand even though he knows that to anyone outside of that room, it looks weird. All that matters is that it at least doesn’t feel weird within their four walls. 

During one such evening, when Oikawa is halfway to his nerdy, ridiculous dreams, Iwaizumi turns on his side and murmurs, “You know… we probably shouldn’t be on a first-name basis when we go to middle school. People might not like it. We’re older now, we need to be more serious.”

Oikawa mumbles something, his eyes still closed.

“Huh?”

“I said, yeah I guess that makes sense. What about like this? When it’s just the two of us?”

“I guess… I guess that would be okay…”

Oikawa smiles sleepily, never once opening his eyes, his cheekbones sharper and prettier than Iwaizumi has ever known them to be before. 

“Your name is funny though, Hajime. Iwaaaaaizumi,” he says in an elongated drawl. “I might have to come up with something else.”

“Oh yeah? And you can come up with something better?”

“Mmm, m’sure I’ll think of s’thing…”

When Iwaizumi thinks back to what Oikawa had been like at twelve years old, with the gift of hindsight and a slightly wider perspective on the world, he realises how easy it would have been for Oikawa to become an introvert, to sink back into his shell, to read his alien comics in the corner of the room and become the epitome of class nerd like he’d been preparing to be for so many years already. If it had been him, he might not have had the resilience that Oikawa had. Because what happens instead, is something entirely different.

It’s almost like he’s been secretly cataloguing everything around him, looking from the outside in without becoming a part of things directly. And he uses that knowledge, all the pent up desperation to be noticed and liked, all those nights of crying into Iwaizumi’s shoulder because he didn’t understand why people never wanted to sit with him during lunch, and he unleashes it onto the world with frightening precision.

It’s like the promise of a new school, a new beginning lights a fire under him that Iwaizumi has never seen before. And it comes in a form no more apparent than when in their first week at Kitagawa First, a girl runs up to Iwaizumi to ask what Oikawa’s name is and if he’s his friend. It would be an experience he’d grow all too used to over the years to come, but at the time it stumps him. The thought of little (or not so little after his second growth spurt during the summer) Oikawa getting the attention of a pretty girl.

But the thing is, that although Iwaizumi has prided himself on being pretty perceptive with everything to do with Oikawa, he’d somehow failed to notice that in the span of about a year, he’s not just turned into a generic pretty boy. He’s truly transformed from an ugly duckling to something that could resemble a swan. Graceful and poised on the surface, with all the work to achieve that composure happening underneath. 

Because Iwaizumi knows deep down - because he does still know Oikawa better than anyone else their age - that on the inside, he’s still the same silly, dorky volleyball loving nerd he’s grown up with and loved like his own family for most of his life. It’s just that over time, he starts to notice a stark difference between the Oikawa that plays games with him in his backyard, to the Oikawa that interacts with their peers. 

It’s a bizarre and disconcerting experience at first, to see Oikawa so sure of himself after so many years of hiding behind Iwaizumi and clinging onto his sleeve. He asks his mom for prescription lenses and stops wearing his glasses full time, only when he’s around Iwaizumi and his family. He starts growing and styling his hair a little. He starts putting more effort into the way he dresses.  

It’s not just that he becomes confident; he transforms the second they’re within eyeshot of someone that isn’t the two of them. And what’s even stranger is that it works. For the first time since they’ve known each other, Oikawa seems to have friends that he’s made of his own volition, however distant they may be to his real self. 

It takes him a long time to decide if he likes it, this new altered version of his friend that moulds and changes from room to room and who laughs at other people’s jokes and learns to dish out the right compliment to make people fawn over him. 

In the end, Oikawa cries slightly less and less over time. He smiles a lot more and doesn’t always need Iwaizumi sleeping so close to him in order to have a peaceful night. At age twelve, he’s not old enough yet to grasp how much of it is the real Oikawa and how much is something very different. 

All he knows is that Oikawa seems happier. And somehow, that makes the rest of it seem unimportant. 

It isn’t an immediate moment, but more of a slow and gradual process where he pieces together the puzzle with the information that is available to him. 

It’s the embarrassment he’d feel even in the last years of elementary school when they all would take baths together and he noticed that the other boys didn’t seem to shy away the same way he did. It’s the distinct lack of need to enter any conversation about female celebrities and singers with his own comments about how much he loves and wants to marry her. It’s the way he tends to focus on very specific characters in the shows he watches, while his peers clearly focus on others. When he gets to middle school, it’s the distraction, both physical and mental, of bodies and shapes and sharp corners and barely broken-in voices. 

He’s known of the word ever since he and Oikawa were accused of it back during the unforgettable Golden Week training camp. It hadn’t bothered him then, because he didn’t have the vocabulary to understand it. As the years pass, he hears it now and then, sometimes directed at Oikawa as a hurtful jab, and other times in out of context conversations where he slowly starts to understand what it means to be ‘gay’. 

It takes him years and he doesn’t even recall whenabouts it happens, but at some point during his time at Kitagawa First, while he’s navigating his own strange and changing body and while he feels his voice deepening and his limbs lengthening, and while he attempts to learn what it means to be a teenager, he also learns the different ways in which it’s possible to love boys.  

Whether it’s a fear of judgement, fear of loss, or the general uncertainty that comes with realising something so integral to oneself, it’s one of the only secrets he ever keeps from Oikawa in all their years together. 

Keeping something from Oikawa used to be fairly easy once upon a time; he’d been an easily distracted, happy go lucky kid with few ulterior motives. Now, however, he’s tuned in to everything around him. 

It’s one of the reasons why he’s going to become the greatest volleyball player Iwaizumi has ever known. Why he’s already the best setter he’s ever met and only getting better. He works too hard, that much is certain, and it drives Iwaizumi’s nerves into a frenzy worrying about him injuring himself through rigorous and constant practice. But he’s also discovered his natural gift. 

Iwaizumi knows full well where his own gifts lie; he’s physically stronger than a lot of the boys his age, he’s honest to a fault, but blindly loyal. His teammates will come up to him on a regular basis for moral support or to share their grievances, even the older ones. They know that if they come to him, it will always stay between them no matter what. 

Oikawa’s natural gift, which he’s been slowly cultivating and grows more proficient with every year, is his mind. It’s a pleasure to watch him work sometimes, to see him command a room as though he owns it. It used to bother him at first, how much he seemed to have changed and how he didn’t seem like that five-year-old boy with the scraped knee anymore. But once he’d realised that underneath the groomed and charismatic Oikawa was still Tooru who regularly got nosebleeds and still needed glasses to watch TV, Iwaizumi started to get a strange sense of satisfaction out of being one of few that Oikawa ever let see his scraped knees. 

He wishes that he could give him the same, that he could show Oikawa his own secrets and fears of not being accepted and dreaming of boys rather than girls when he wakes up in the morning, sticky and confused. He’s never given Iwaizumi a reason to doubt, but he just doesn’t know if he’s ready to take that risk. 

In an attempt to throw Oikawa off the scent, he makes a valiant effort to talk about girls whenever there’s an occasion for it. It becomes easier once Oikawa gets his first girlfriend and Iwaizumi can complain about how he’s a pretty boy who doesn’t leave any chance for the rest of them. A part of him does kind of mean it. It’s frankly amoral for awkward, gawky Oikawa to have grown into the epitome of a ladies man who has half the female student body fawning over him at every game and all the moments in between. 

“If they knew what a nerd you really are, they’d soon change their mind,” he grunts during their second Valentine’s Day at Kitagawa when he sees Oikawa’s locker almost overflowing with cards. It makes his blood boil.

“Awww, that’s not very nice, Iwa,” he coos. He sometimes regrets suggesting they stop using their first names, because now that Oikawa has found a nickname that he likes, it’s Iwa this and Iwa that, even in private. “I can share some of mine with you if you like? After all, I already have Karin.” 

He sidles up behind Iwaizumi and puts an arm around his shoulder, close enough that Iwaiuzmi can feel his breath as he speaks. 

“Get lost,” he shoots with a frown. “And stop hanging off me.”

Oikawa giggles, like he does in response to all of Iwaizumi’s barks and retorts and squeezes his shoulder tighter in defiance. Where they’d cooled off a bit with their physical affection in elementary school, Oikawa seems to be making it his effort to return to the good old days like it’s nobody’s business, to the point where the constant contact starts to get on Iwaizumi’s nerves.

After suitably riling him up as usual, Oikawa slides his arms off him and glides away, leaving only the smell of his shampoo behind. 

There are quite a few girlfriends. Not an excessive amount, but certainly more than their classmates. Against his will, Iwaizumi remembers each and every one; their name, their grade and exactly when they and Oikawa broke up. Largely because he’s always the one who has to console his friend after another failed attempt at romance. They’re fourteen. Iwaizumi really doesn't know what Oikawa expects at this age. In fact, he should be lucky that he has girlfriends to speak of at all what with his outwardly appearing pompous attitude. 

He’s still so sensitive, so easily wounded and hurt, even after all this time. He still feels things on such a deep level, even the smallest most insignificant disappointments, that Iwaizumi sometimes doesn’t know how he manages to keep it all inside on a day-to-day basis. He doesn’t know how many times he’s allowed him to curl up next to him on his couch, the two of them under one blanket, while Oikawa sniffles, thinking that he’s being subtle enough that Iwaizumi can’t hear him. 

He always wants to say the same thing. She wasn’t good enough for you. Clearly she didn’t like you enough. She didn’t really know you. 

Instead, what he says every time is, “Come on, idiot. You’re missing your favourite part.”

Iwaizumi goes through middle school without a girlfriend and to his relief, without much female attention at all. It may be a full-time job keeping his secret from his best friend, but at least no one else seems to think it’s strange that he’s never seen with any girls when his best friend is Tooru Oikawa. He’s equally loved and hated by most of the male students at the school for monopolising the female attention.

Oikawa, of course, loves to tease him, to rile up whatever temper he seems to notice under Iwaizumi’s skin, and it works every single time. 

Iwa, don’t worry about looking good on the court, the girls aren’t looking at you anyway! 

Iwa, maybe if you smiled more, you wouldn’t scare the girls away!

Iwa, the next time a girl comes up to you to ask about me, why don’t you try flirting with her friend? It’s worth a try, right?

Oikawa would know a thing or two about flirting, that’s for sure. 

But besides the flirting, fourteen is the age that Iwaizumi remembers as the start of Oikawa’s ‘little shit phase’. Every little thing that he says or does, at least in public, is primed to annoy him, to make him want to grab his hair - hair which he’s grown out considerably since they were kids and that looks like something out of magazine cover half the time - and shake him until that smug grin falls right off his face. 

The worst thing is that there’s no escaping it. In their final year, he’s stuck to Iwaizumi’s side like a cat, patting him and touching him almost constantly, especially once they become captain and vice captain. He both wants Iwaizumi’s constant attention and yet basks in his newfound power by making himself oddly distant from everyone around him.

The week that he gets benched, Iwaizumi knows it’s not going to end well. He drags his stubborn ass out of the gym countless times and back home where he can get a good night’s sleep, far away from the distraction that Kageyama has become for him. It’s made him reckless, terrified and stupid in a way that Iwaizumi hasn’t seen on him perhaps ever. 

The day that he walks in on Oikawa’s altercation with Kageyama is one of the most intense fights they ever have. He has his hands in Oikawa’s shirt and screams in his face, not because he hates him, but because it’s the only way he knows to get through to him how scared and worried he’s making him and how far Iwaizumi feels he’s slipping away. 

Oikawa looks back at him with wide eyes, unassuming and open for the first time since they were kids. Open enough that Iwaizumi finally feels like he sees Tooru in there for the first time in a long time. 

Something shifts inside him like a physical weight and he feels his legs become that little bit less stable as he backs off and lets Oikawa stand up again. 

Going to Seijou does both of them a world of good. Neither of them knows whether or not Kageyama will end up with them when it’s his time, but Iwaizumi can see the difference in Oikawa immediately. 

He’s still pompous and irritating, but he’s also light as a feather, calm and at home with probably their favourite team of guys that they’ve played with to date. They’re accepted into the family instantly and the connection is palpable between them. With the toxicity of their old school long behind them, Oikawa blossoms under the support of his upperclassmen as well as their coach. 

Not only does he blossom in terms of his skill, his charm and his ease, but Iwaizumi notices in the first few months of high school just how much he blossoms physically. They all do. The training at Seijou is pretty rigorous as it is, but both of them take it upon themselves to make the most out of their three years here, to beat Shiratorizawa whatever the cost. They spend their weekends training together, not in the obsessive way he’d witnessed Oikawa doing in middle school, but for fun. 

He notices the way that the muscle grows on him, not large and visible the way it seems to have done on Iwaizumi, but lean and strong, perfect for the invisible weapon that he’s slowly becoming on the court. The tension in his legs is visible now when he practises his jump serves and his shoulders begin to broaden over the months that they sweat and work and dream together. 

He doesn’t notice the extent to which he’s changed until they’re alone together in the club room one day, mopping down and getting changed after practice. 

The days of them running around naked in the garden are long gone and Iwaizumi makes it his mission to avert his eyes from anywhere that could be considered suspicious whenever he’s in the clubroom with the other guys and especially whenever they take a bath together at training camp. He has a perfectly clean track record of not being suspected and he’d like to keep it that way. 

So as much as he knows what Oikawa looks like, he hasn’t really seen what he looks like in a very long time. There are always people around, always a reason why he should keep his eyes to the floor as opposed to risking the spreading of rumours or worse, another use of the word ‘gay’, which Oikawa certainly should know the meaning of by now. 

But it’s just the two of them and there’s no one there to make assumptions, no one to poke or pry. And so when Iwaizumi turns around to grab a towel and sees Oikawa shirtless, his shorts slung low on his narrow hips, he feels his eyes glue into place, unable to look away. 

It’s like there are lines and angles everywhere he looks, almost no fat on his body, years and miles away from the chubby boy he used to run around with in the street. He feels his stomach coil in what he assumes is envy and he doesn’t like it. They’ve always been equals, partners, friends. He doesn't want to look at Oikawa and feel this kind of negativity for any reason. And yet, he finds himself furious at the fact that it somehow slipped his notice that Oikawa is possibly one of the most attractive people he’s ever seen in his life. 

Oikawa yawns and stretches, his neck craned back and his arms extended above his head, making his torso look even longer. His back muscles twitch and move obnoxiously, rubbing them directly in Iwaizumi’s face. 

Oikawa then turns to him and giggles. “Oh dear, that’s not a happy face,” he says with his eyes crinkled and his face a map of innocence, the complete opposite to his model-like figure. Iwaizumi might wonder if he’s going after the wrong career if he didn’t already know that no one could ever hold a candle up to Oikawa in a game of volleyball.

He frowns even harder and turns, slamming his locker shut. “I’m fine,” he grunts. “Could have done better today.”

“Awww, don’t be too hard on yourself!” he hears from behind him. He wants to turn around but he doesn’t know if Oikawa has put some clothes on yet and he might very well headbutt him if he sees him shirtless again. 

“Look who’s talking, idiot.” 

He dares to turn his head and is blessed with the sight of a clothed Oikawa, his eyes sparkling as he acknowledges the slight tease in Iwaizumi’s voice.

“I’ve mellowed out in my old age, haven’t I?” 

Iwaizumi rolls his eyes. “OId age,” he mutters under his breath, trying to come up with a list of logical conclusions as to how he got saddled with such an overdramatic moron for a best friend. 

“You have been a little tense at practice lately though, Iwa.” He’s packing up his things now and casually wiping any excess sweat off his neck and face. His hair is full enough now these days that it starts to stick to his forehead and around his ears when he plays. “I know you’re upset that you haven’t had a girlfriend yet, but I’m sure we can figure something out.”

He feels the urge to headbutt return with startling speed. 

“Shut up, Shitty-Kawa.”

Oikawa’s eyebrows raise in amusement. “That’s a new one!” he says with a smile. Iwaizumi ignores him and turns his back on him to put the rest of his stuff away. “I’m serious, though,” he continues. “There’s no reason you shouldn’t be able to get a girlfriend now we’re in high school. You’re kinda hot, you know.”

He’s never, never been more grateful for anything in his life as he is for having his back turned to Oikawa in that moment. He feels the blood rush to his cheeks in seconds and his pulse stutter in confusion. He’s received compliments from many people over the years. Oikawa even compliments him all the time, whether it’s for his spikes, his pushups, his serves - he can’t help himself. 

But this is different. It pierces something inside of him that makes him grip the side of the locker like it’s a life jacket. 

Without checking to see if he’s got a neutral expression or one of pure shock, he turns around to find Oikawa already engaged in something on his phone, paying no heed to the mayhem he’s just caused in Iwaizumi’s head. 

“Ah, gotta rush!” he chirps. “I’m picking Takeru up from club. You know he’s into volleyball now?” His cheeks pink and his eyes squint in pride and Iwaizumi exhales, knowing that he probably didn’t see his freakout. He picks up his bag, swings it over his shoulder and before he heads out the door with a “see ya!”, he skips the short distance over to Iwaizumi and brushes his hand against his shoulder in farewell.

It isn’t until he’s on his way home that Iwaizumi has the chance to process what happened and why it upset him so much. The ringing in his ears finally gone, he’s able to digest the tone in which Oikawa had spoken to him. Because he’s heard that tone on him a thousand times before. It’s the one he uses to pick up girls, the one he uses to get the upperclassmen to do whatever he wants. It’s not manipulation, per se, but it’s a specific brand of Oikawa language that makes people fall for him every time. 

His charming, natural process. It's flirting.

Iwaizumi clenches his fists in the knowledge that in all their time together, he’s never been treated just like everybody else. Oikawa could flirt with a lamppost if he tried hard enough. It’s not even intentional, it’s just the way that he’s learnt to speak to people as he’s gotten older. But Iwaizumi had always been immune to that behaviour before now. 

And what makes it even worse is he doesn’t even think Oikawa is aware of the fact that he blatantly just used it on him. Was completely naive to the fact that he’d just directed a flirtatious comment towards his best friend. He would probably be horrified by his actions if he knew that he and Iwaizumi had a very different relationship with other boys. 

He should have told him the truth years ago.

Ever since he’s realised the truth about himself, Iwaizumi has never been ashamed of being gay. Concerned, perhaps, of the trouble it could make for his friends and family and what the school might think, but he’s never felt shameful for liking boys the way he’s supposed to feel about girls. Not until that night that he comes home from the clubroom. 

At fifteen, he’s had his fair share of dreams that have resulted in uncomfortable mornings or hushed and rushed changing of the sheets before his mother finds him. They’ve been fairly generic up until now; hands and bodies, muscles and narrow hips and strong legs. His mind has never conjured up a face for those body parts apart from the odd athlete that he’d see in a professional game on TV, before forgetting about him a couple of hours later.

Tonight, however, when he goes to sleep, he dreams of chestnut hair, long, lean limbs, brown eyes and a shit-eating grin that’s all for show. He dreams of a muscled chest and a flat stomach from years of hard work and a strong, firm back and arms that know how to deliver a cannonball serve. He dreams of a soft, melodic voice telling him that he thinks he’s hot. 

He wakes up in a cold sweat, two hours before his alarm and a chest filled to the brim with disgust that he just had a sex dream about his best friend. 

It doesn’t happen again, and Iwaizumi puts his humiliating encounter with his own subconscious down to a clear lack of an outlet. It’s not like he can talk about boys with his peers the same way they do with girls. It’s not like he can deck his room out with posters of pretty boys without raising a few eyebrows in the house. So he’s fifteen years old and a slave to his own head which fixated on the one compliment it ever received from another boy. And it had been directed at him as a joke. By someone who trusts him and would never speak to him again if he knew what a pervert he was. Or maybe he'd be into it. It wouldn't surprise him in the least if Oikawa might actually use it to pump his ego some more. That he even got his male best friend to lust after him as well as all the girls in his class.

He’s relieved that he can still look Oikawa in the eye again after three days of angry huffs and avoided conversations. And to Oikawa’s credit, he doesn’t outright say anything of the sort again, even as a joke. 

The physical affection continues, but Iwaizumi doesn’t have the heart to tell him to stop it, especially since the dreams don’t return and he’s convinced that it was a one-time act of desperation on behalf of his teenage hormones. 

He responds with his own brand of physicality, which is to say that he pokes and prods Oikawa like he used to when they were kids. Slaps his back, pulls his hair and any number of things that gets his daily irritation out and equally gets them into trouble with their upperclassmen on a regular basis. 

And with the promise of their first high school nationals just around the corner, he finally feels their dynamic settle into its natural, comfortable rhythm that he’s known for all of their lives. 

They never make it to nationals the first time.

But as much as it hurts, the promise of Spring Interigh and a second chance to take on Shiratorizawa thrums in their veins. They train even harder, even smarter and even in the few short months between their loss and the preliminaries for the spring, Iwaizumi notices how much they improve as individuals and as a team. He knows in his gut that one day they’ll make it to the national stage and he knows Oikawa believes it too.

They don’t make it through preliminaries in the autumn either. 

It’s the first signs of a crack he’s seen in Oikawa’s exterior since middle school. For a second, he’s scared that Oikawa will break down right there and then in the gymnasium. But he holds it together like the leader that Iwaizumi knows he’s bound to become one day. Just bites his lip and holds it in. 

He holds it in during the ride home, during the team meeting and during the silent walk back to Iwaizumi’s house. They don't even ask if that’s where they’ll be headed. Iwaizumi just leads half a step ahead and Oikawa follows as easily as if Iwaizumi had picked him up off the ground with his skidded knees and taken him by his hand.

He prepares some snacks for them in the kitchen, a mix of his and Oikawa’s favourites including the weirdly shaped gummy sweets that Iwaizumi’s mother buys specifically for Oikawa. 

When he comes back into the living room, he finds the movie lighting up the room with the start menu and Oikawa curled in on himself on one end of the couch, his long limbs tucked up and his body making itself as small as possible. He’s wearing his glasses, something which Iwaizumi hasn’t seen him do in years, even when they’re alone. He looks so vulnerable and small despite being half a head taller than him, that whatever smartass remark Iwaizumi might have wanted to give, dies right on his tongue. 

Instead, he silently sits next to him and doesn’t stop him when he shifts over and lays his head in his lap, eyes facing the TV. Iwaizumi knows that it’s just as much for comfort as it is for hiding his tears where Iwaizumi won’t see them. It’s still the closest they’ve been to each other since middle school.

“Tomorrow,” he says, putting a hand on Oikawa’s back and yes, those are definitely cries he’s trying to muffle. “We’ll practice some new combos. Just you and me. Till we’re perfect at them.”

He feels his breathing even out at that and Iwaizumi rubs his hand up and down his back just the once. 

About halfway through the movie, he looks down to see Oikawa fast asleep, the light from the TV flickering across his nose, his cheeks, his hair. There, in the near darkness of the room, all cried out with nothing but the two of them and the shared weight of their failures and dreams between them, he’s the most peaceful Iwaizumi has ever seen him. 

And it’s like the last 15 years of his life finally slide into place. He sees the rest of his life stretch out in front of him exactly the same way as it has been up till that point. Late nights discussing volleyball, eating too much food that they’ll regret, crying, laughing, sharing in successes and losses both. Raised voices and hushed whispered secrets, and beyond all of it, the undercurrent to all their shared experiences beating with one word; partners. 

Only he thinks he might have been wrong this entire time. He blames the very nature of time and how slow it is, how easily it can trick the person stuck in it, for making him believe that he’d loved Oikawa like a brother all these years and that he wants to continue to do so. Because as he looks down at his best friend sleeping on his lap, the visions he has for his life, for their life suddenly feel shared in a way they’d perhaps always felt, but he’d never had the words for. Been too comfortable to find the words for. Not as brothers. Not as best friends. Not as teammates.

For as long as he can remember, Iwaizumi has known, on some sort of level, that he’s loved Tooru Oikawa. The love has been constant, habitual and unquestioned. Now that he questions it, he knows why it is that he’s never really crushed on a boy at school despite there being a large pool of candidates for him to break his own heart over. Why he’s both defended and hated Oikawa in equal measure depending on the circumstance. Why the hands on his shoulders and smell of his shampoo have driven him to near animalistic rage sometimes. 

He’s never backed down from anything in his life. He’s been honest, forthright and straightforward for as long as he can remember and he doesn’t intend to change that now. So he just leans his head back against the couch with a hand still placed on Oikawa’s back and lets the knowledge slowly wash over him that he’s not just loved Oikawa his entire life. He’s been in love with him. Maybe not since day one. Maybe not even for many years. But here, now, in this room, on this night, he knows that it’s the truth.

He looks back down to see Oikawa’s cheek twitch in his sleep and feels the envy nearly choke him of Oikawa being the only one out of the two of them now who’s naive to that truth.