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Oikawa ran through the rain with a soaked cardboard box clutched in his hands.
A row of light posts led him down the empty street towards the first few stores marking the inner city. It was already quite late. Too late – but Oikawa had the frantic hope of the desperate and the inane luck of the good-looking, so of course he found the store he was looking for with the lights still on.
Once he came to a slithering halt in front of the door, however, it turned out to be locked.
That couldn't keep Oikawa out, of course. Not that he had any secret lock-picking skills – it's just that he was a desperate and good-looking man, clutching a soaked cardboard box in the rain, and if someone was still in here, then they would definitely open the door for him.
“Hello?” he called, knocking against the door in what he hoped to be a sufficiently desperate and good-looking manner. “Hello? Please, let me in! It's an emergency!”
A shadow appeared behind the milky glass, growing bigger and bigger, until it almost didn't fit in the frame anymore. The door opened with a jingle and Oikawa stood before a man that might as well have been a nightclub bouncer.
“Uh...” Oikawa gulped. He glanced upwards to where the store's name was written out in cutesy letters. It just said 'Pet Shop'. But now that Oikawa thought about it...
“This is an actual pet shop, yeah?” he asked.
The stranger glanced up to where Oikawa had just looked and raised his eyebrows. “I thought the name made that clear,” he said.
Oikawa wasn't going to tell him that he looked more like he belonged as a bouncer in a fetish nightclub, so he lifted his soaked cardboard box for the stranger to see.
“It's an emergency!” he repeated. “May I please come in?”
The man examined him for a minute, but Oikawa already knew that he was too powerful. There were raindrops falling from his long lashes and all. No one would-
“We're closed,” the man said, his voice sounding more mechanical with every word.
Oikawa's jaw dropped open.
“Yeah,” he said. “I know! I was hoping...” He took a step closer, so the light shining out from inside would better illuminate his beautiful features, but that stupid hunk blocked most of the light with his unnecessarily large chest. “I was hoping you'd make an exception for me?”
The man still considered him with a stone-cold expression.
Fine, then. Oikawa never backed down from a challenge. If he had to seduce that brick wall of a man to be let inside and save his own skin, then by God, he would!
He took another step closer, until they were almost nose-to-nose (- well. Nose to chin.) - and looked up through his lashes. “Sorry,” he breathed. “I'm getting tired of standing in the rain.”
The man gave a sharp nod, then he stood to the side to let Oikawa in.
Hah. Victory!
Oikawa gave him a thankful smile which evolved into a sneaky grin as soon as he walked inside the store with his back to the man. Lined up along the wall was a huge glass-front filled with hay and funny little pet houses. Most of the animals were awake now, looking at Oikawa with their black, beady eyes and rapidly twitching noses. There was a counter in the corner. Oikawa walked towards it to plant his soaked cardboard box on it with an ugly wet sound.
“What's your emergency?” the man asked. He had locked the door again and was just taking his place behind the counter as if he was just working after-hours and hadn't been completely seduced into letting Oikawa in and personally making sure that Oikawa would have his every wish fulfilled. He even took a magnetic name tag from a metal shelf behind the counter and stuck it to his cardigan.
It read 'Ushijima Wakatoshi'.
“Well, Ushi-Waka,” Oikawa said, lifting the lid from his cardboard box. “Take a look at this!”
Ushijima ignored the awful nickname and bent over the box to look at the goldfish lying belly-up on a bed of paper towels. He frowned, but by now Oikawa was sure that it was nothing personal, just the natural state of his face.
“We're not an animal hospital,” he said. “I don't think I can help you with this.”
Oikawa dripped a few raindrops onto the counter in protest.
“Really?” he droned, gesturing at the clearly dead fish between them. “You don't think I realize this is a bit late for the animal hospital?”
“So... it's a complaint?” Ushijima asked, looking completely serious. “We don't offer take-backs. Especially since this fish was clearly used.”
Used? There was something seriously wrong with this guy's wording. But Oikawa didn't have time to bicker with a dense salesman – he had to fill the fish-tank with a new goldfish before Iwaizumi came home.
“It would be much easier if you just let me explain why I'm here instead of taking one ridiculous guess after the other, you know?” Oikawa said. “I'm here to get a new fish!”
“We don't offer free refills either,” Ushijima said.
Oikawa wondered if it would put a damp on his attempt at seduction if he were to throw a dead fish in Ushijima's face. He took a deep breath until he could forget what had just been said.
“Just sell me a goldfish, please. That's all I'm asking. I just need a new goldfish. In exchange for money. Please.”
Finally, Ushijima's eyes widened a bit in understanding. This was a simple task that he clearly had been programmed to fulfill. Wonderful.
“Why did you bring the dead fish, then?” he wondered, looking down at the bloated, white belly.
“For reference,” Oikawa said. “The new fish will have to look exactly like this one.”
Ushijima threw him a skeptical look before he used his fingertips to grab the fish by it's tail and turned it around. Oikawa pressed his lips together, waiting for a reaction.
Finally, Ushijima was done staring at the fish. He looked back up at Oikawa to state the obvious.
“This fish has a heart-shaped black spot right on its head,” he said.
“Yup,” Oikawa retorted.
“I don't think we have a fish that looks exactly like this in our shop.”
“I didn't think so,” Oikawa said.
“It is a very distinctive mark.”
“I'm aware.”
Ushijima stared at him, waiting for his words to register, but Oikawa had never let the impossible stop him before and he would not let a dead fish start doing it now.
“I'm afraid I can't help you,” Ushijima said, when Oikawa just stared back.
“What kind of service is this?” Oikawa protested. “Your google reviews said you were 'zealous to please'.”
Ushijima looked back down to study the fish, then shrugged his shoulders. “If you give us a few months, we might be able to breed one that looks similar.”
“No,” Oikawa said. “It has to be tonight. As fast as possible.”
“As fast as possible is a few months!” Ushijima said, looking a little frustrated by now. “I can't perform a miracle!”
Oikawa rolled his eyes. “You're not very creative, huh?” he said. There was no need to keep being nice to him – Ushijima could have thrown him out holding him by his nape like a cat, yet he just stood there, watching Oikawa drip all over the place. He was clearly smitten already. Oikawa could finally let his true colors shine.
He leaned over the counter to knock at Ushijima's forehead.
“Ah!” he said, listening to the sound he had produced. “Like I thought. Completely hollow.”
Ushijima, as if playing along, kept his stony expression and didn't say anything.
“Listen, Ushiwaka. I really don't think it's my job as the customer to provide the solutions, but since you seem a bit dense, I will help you just this once.”
He let his eyes wander across the counter, until he spotted a pencil cup. “Ah!” he said, reaching for one of the pens. “This is exactly what we need!”
Ushijima squinted at the pen that was waved in front of his eyes.
“... a sharpie?” he said, tilting his head a little so he could talk to Oikawa without a sharpie in his face.
It almost looked cute, if a brick wall could be called cute.
“What would that do?”
“You don't seem to be very good at math, since you can't even put one and one together,” Oikawa scoffed. “Obviously we just draw the heart on another fish. These things are water-proof, aren't they?”
Oikawa was getting used to Ushijima needing a few more seconds to answer than most human beings. Partly because everything Oikawa said was kind of mind-blowing, but also because he had to run it through his program first.
“You want to draw on a fish,” Ushijima repeated. “With sharpie.”
“You got it!” Oikawa said, almost proud.
“It's never going to work!” Ushijima said.
“Well...” Oikawa flashed his practiced-in-the-mirror, field-tested 100-watt-smile at him. “We'll just have to try it, won't we?”
The smile worked. A few minutes later, Oikawa stood in front of a huge fish-tank with Ushijima balancing on a ladder next to him, looming above the water with a fishing net at the ready.
“Which one?” Ushijima asked as Oikawa studied the numerous fish swimming through the tank.
“Not sure yet,” Oikawa said. “It has to be the perfect one!”
“The one hiding in the plant at the bottom right corner looks very similar to yours,” Ushijima observed.
Oikawa had seen that fish before, but it was not the right one. “Wrong personality,” he said.
“Wrong personality,” Ushijima repeated to himself.
It sounded almost mocking, so Oikawa felt the need to defend his reasoning. “Heart-head was always swimming along the glass, staring at you. He was a real shithead. Iwa-chan would definitely notice if he suddenly started hiding in the plants like a wimp.”
“Iwa-chan?” Ushijima asked. “Is he your son?”
Oikawa barked a laugh at that.
“Quite the opposite. He's my mother.”
“Okay,” Ushijima said.
“He's a grown-ass man.”
“Okay,” Ushijima said.
“Who keeps goldfish. Isn't that ridiculous?”
Ushijima looked at him with a frown. “I sell them,” he said. “So I kind of depend on ridiculous grown men keeping goldfish.”
“I like the way you worded that,” Oikawa praised.
“It was just the way you worded it,” Ushijima pointed out.
“You're a fast learner!” Oikawa said. “Here – I'll teach you some more things!”
He pressed his nose against the glass, staring deep into the aquarium and then just waited for a few minutes. Ushijima didn't ask what he was doing. He seemed to be more comfortable with situations where he wasn't forced to give any input, so he happily waited for Oikawa to finish putting on his show.
After about five minutes, one of the fish floated up from the bottom, curiously swimming closer. It floated in front of Oikawa's face for a while, then it suddenly bumped their noses together.
“That's the one!” Oikawa exclaimed.
Ushijima expertly swung his fishing net. The fish, still being hypnotized by Oikawa, didn't stand a chance. It was dropped into the little water-filled container Ushijima held in his other hand, flapping around, betrayed.
“That was impressive,” Ushijima admitted, as he carried the container through the door into the sales-room with both hands, like he was going to crown someone with it. “Where did you learn that?”
“I keep doing it to Iwa-chan's fish, back at home,” Oikawa said. “For some reason he keeps buying the stupidest fish who always want to fight. It's like they observe him all day and then... Wait a minute.” He stopped in his tracks. He'd just had an epiphany. “Oh no.”
“What?” Ushijima asked, putting the container next to the soaked cardboard box.
“He was right!” Oikawa shrieked. “It's not a coincidence they always die when left in my care! I'm killing them!”
“How so?”
“Brain damage!” Oikawa said, waving his arms.
Ushijima just looked like he suffered from a case of brain damage himself.
“You know – sometimes I get so bored without Iwa-chan around, and I have no one left to play with except for his stupid fish. And this is the only trick they can do!”
“Ah,” Ushijima said. “You only just got that now? How many fish did you kill?”
“Shut up!” Oikawa howled. “I'm allergic to not being right!”
“Must be tough.”
What a great moment to realize that Ushijima could be a sarcastic little shit in his own way. Oikawa slammed his fist down on the counter, probably giving the poor goldfish in its container some more brain damage.
“Just shut up and do what I'm paying you for!” he said, gesturing at the sharpie and the fish, but Ushijima was not done yet.
“I'm getting paid for this?” he asked. “You're wasting your money. I couldn't even draw a stick figure. I have two right hands.”
“You have two right hands,” Oikawa repeated, dryly.
“Yes,” Ushijima said. “You see, I'm left-handed, so-”
“I get it!” Oikawa was close to tearing his own hair out in frustration.
Deep breaths, he told himself. Deep breaths!
“Okay,” he said. At least Ushijima wasn't one to interrupt his calming-process. “Then I guess I'll be the one to draw the heart and you will hold the fish.”
“Sounds good,” Ushijima agreed.
“But!” Oikawa said. He had just thought of the perfect payback. “We only have this one chance, so I'll have to practice it first!”
Ushijima turned to search his metal shelf for a stray piece of paper, but once he turned back around, Oikawa had circled the counter and was standing right before him with a sinister grin.
“Uhm...” Ushijima said, sweating. “I have some... paper?”
“That's not the same!” Oikawa said, hopping onto the counter so they were at eye-level. “I need to practice on a live animal. Come here!”
“I'd rather not,” Ushijima said, but he came closer anyway. Oikawa turned his magnetism on, fascinated by how well it worked. One flirty grin and this huge, mean bouncer-looking guy was willing to let Oikawa draw right on his face.
“I'll be gentle,” Oikawa smiled.
“And it's not like my head is shaped like a fish's,” Ushijima said, standing right between Oikawa's legs now.
“Hmhm,” Oikawa hummed, grabbing Ushijima's neck with his free hand to pull him closer. That finally shut him up. Oikawa placed the sharpie right in between Ushijima's furrowed eyebrows, making sure to keep their faces as uncomfortably close as possible.
He could feel Ushijima gulp from where his thumb was pressed against his Adam's apple.
“Don't wrinkle your forehead like that!” Oikawa instructed. “How am I supposed to draw anything?”
Ushijima released a breath and relaxed his face, his body moving closer in the process. His hands came to rest on Oikawa's thighs to give him better balance. Which was...
Oh
Oikawa bit his lip, drawing the first curve of the heart.
Inches before his own lips, Ushijima's lips moved.
“What's you name?” he asked.
Oikawa drew the second curve before he dared to glance down into Ushijima's intense green eyes, looking right at him.
“Oikawa Tooru,” he said, quickly looking back up at his heart.
“Oikawa Tooru,” Ushijima repeated.
His voice was somehow deeper when he said Oikawa's name, and again, Oikawa thought,
Oh!
“And this Iwa-chan...”
“... is my roommate,” Oikawa finished, taking his sweet time to fill the heart he had drawn with slow strokes.
“I see,” Ushijima said.
His hands gripped a little tighter.
Oh.
Ooooooh!
“Done!” Oikawa said, the hand with the sharpie slowly sinking down. He leaned back just a little bit, pleased when Ushijima's body moved with him.
He might not have come here with the intention of being ravished on the counter of a pet shop, right next to a dead goldfish, but he was not completely opposed to it. There was something charming about Ushijima's simple-mindedness. And he was definitely hot.
Very hot.
Oikawa was just about to open his mouth to tell him that, when a wet splash from his right distracted him. Shortly after, something gross collided with his arm and Oikawa screamed, loud and high-pitched, making Ushijima jump backwards in shock.
“Fuuuuuck!” Oikawa howled, lifting his arm. On the counter next to him, the goldfish was wildly flopping, fighting for its life.
“It bit me!” Oikawa cried. “That monster fucking bit me!”
Ushijima, despite his usual lag in conversation, seemed to catch on quickly enough.
“Oikawa, they don't have teeth!” he said, taking Oikawa's arm to inspect the bite, which wasn't a bite at all, just a wet spot. “You're fine.”
Ushijima let go of him and took the goldfish into surprisingly gentle hands to deposit it back into its container, where it exchanged vitriolic looks with Oikawa.
“Well, one thing is clear now!” Oikawa said. “That thing is the perfect replacement for heart-head!”
“Except it still doesn't have a heart on its head,” Ushijima pointed out.
Oikawa grabbed the sharpie he had dropped to the floor and smirked at the fish swimming in narrow circles around its container. “That's right,” he said. “And it's time to change that.”
“This will never work,” Ushijima repeated his prophecy from before, warily eyeing Oikawa, who was biting the tip of his tongue and brandishing his sharpie.
“Only because you're not holding it still enough!”
The fish was currently winding in Ushijima's grip, trying hard to escape into the corners of the container, which was about as far as it could go.
Ushijima gave him a tired look. “It's a fish!” he explained. “They're slippery.”
“I thought you were some expert fish handler,” Oikawa said.
“I'm a pet shop employee. My main responsibility are the guinea pigs. My colleague handles the fish.”
“Well, if this is the best you can do,” Oikawa said, pinpointing his sharpie to the fish's head. “Then I guess there's no use in hesitating.”
He attacked – the sharpie drawing a quick circle across slippery fish skin. To their surprise, it actually left a black line. “Hah!” Oikawa cheered. “Did you see that, Ushiwaka? I was right!”
“I'm glad. This would be a bad moment for an allergic reaction,” Ushijima said.
Oikawa blinked in surprise.
Before, he had thought Ushijima was joking – but now...
Oh.
Oh no!
He was a little dumb. He was a tall, muscular, dumb guy who honestly believed that Oikawa was allergic to being wrong and it made Oikawa want to tear his clothes off right in the middle of this mind-bendingly stupid task of drawing a heart onto a struggling goldfish with sharpie.
“Oikawa!” Ushijima warned, but it was too late. He was not concentrating on his drawing and in his mind's absence, his hand had drawn two circles for the heart, but slipped on the pointed part, which was now way too long and not the right shape at all.
“Oh,” Oikawa worded the only thought his mind had been able to form this last minute. He squinted at his drawing. “Oh no. Damn you forever, Freud!”
Ushijima let go of the fish with a disappointed sigh.
“We'll never sell this fish now!” he said.
“What? You're telling me no one would buy a fish with a penis on its head?”
“How will I explain this to my coworkers?” Ushijima lamented. He took the container out of Oikawa's reach, obviously not trusting him to interact with his fish any further, and walked around the counter to deposit it back in the fish-tank in the next room.
Shit. Iwaizumi would definitely know what Oikawa had done now. He was due back home soon, and it was better to be confronted immediately, when he was still tired from his trip, instead of tomorrow morning, when he'd had all night to fume and think about what he would do to Oikawa to make him pay.
Oikawa shuffled his feet once Ushijima came back with an empty container.
“I'm sorry about your penis-head,” he said.
“I'm sorry about your Iwa-chan,” Ushijima retorted politely.
“Yeah. Well...” Oikawa looked at his watch, acting surprised. “I should really go back. You know – it's been fun and all, but... He's going to kill me.”
He turned towards the exit, but right before he reached the door, Ushijima called out a sudden, “Wait!”
When Oikawa looked back, he found Ushijima running towards one of the glass cages, opening it and digging through the hay until a protesting squeak could be heard.
“I... I might have something for you,” Ushijima said, conjuring a furry little guinea pig from the cage.
“Okay?” Oikawa said, coming back to look at the animal from up close. “Uhm... that's a guinea pig? Not a fish?”
“It...” Ushijima looked down at the guinea pig as if he only now noticed that he wasn't holding a fish. “I know, but. It has... look – it has a heart on its head!”
Oikawa looked closer. The guinea pig was entirely black, except for a white spot on its forehead, which – with a lot of imagination – could be mistaken for a heart.
“So,” Oikawa said, incredulous. “I'm just supposed to take the guinea pig instead of the fish and... I don't know... sell it, somehow?”
Ushijima looked at the guinea pig again, clearly regretting his decision.
“What am I even supposed to say?” Oikawa asked. There was a laugh boiling at the bottom of his stomach. “Hey, Iwa-chan! The weirdest thing just happened! When I wasn't looking for a second, your fish suddenly became a tetrapodomoph and then, before I could even blink, it executed a speed-evolution right into this guinea pig!”
Ushijima slowly put the guinea pig back into the cage, where it buried itself into a pile of hay while muttering a few choice squeaks.
Oikawa's eyes were still trained on Ushijima.
“You didn't want me to go,” he realized, the laugh in his stomach suddenly extinguishing with a sizzle.
Ushijima just shrugged his shoulders.
“Oh,” Oikawa said again. “Well, that's... that's very sweet, but. Listen, you didn't miss out on anything, okay? Sure, I'm a great shag and all that, but – you know, you're pretty hot. You could enter the next bar and leave with the prettiest person there.”
Ushijima looked up, surprised. “What?” he said. “I wasn't trying to-”
“What – get into my pants?” Oikawa scoffed. “Please!”
“I'm not lying,” Ushijima said. “I simply enjoyed meeting you.”
That was the worst lie Oikawa had ever heard.
“You enjoyed meeting me,” he repeated, unfolding his arms to gesture at everything. “All this. You enjoyed all this.”
Ushijima shrugged again.
“I see you walking past this window every day,” he said, chin pointing to the shop window. “I was wondering what you would be like.”
Oikawa wasn't sure if his eyebrows could raise any higher. His forehead was already straining.
It was true – this store was on his way to the train station. He passed by here every morning. But he had never known that some hot guy was sitting by the window every day to watch him skip down the street.
Now that he thought about it, he would be pretty taken aback if a random stranger he had started to notice suddenly showed up one night, clutching a dead goldfish and turning out to be a cheeky pain-in-the-ass who vandalized his sales items with penis drawings.
“Interesting...” Oikawa hummed, taking a step right into Ushijima's space. Ushijima took a step back, colliding with the glass-front of the cages. “So tell me, Ushiwaka... was I everything you imagined me to be?”
“Not at all,” Ushijima admitted.
Oikawa grinned. “And what did you imagine me to be?”
“Much less...”
Ushijima never finished the sentence and Oikawa realized that 'much less' probably included everything Ushijima had wanted to say.
“So I'm more than you bargained for, huh?”
“I think you're more than anyone could possibly imagine,” Ushijima said. It sounded weird to hear something like that in such a hard-headed, monotone rumbling. Oikawa found he quite liked it.
“I will take this as a compliment,” Oikawa said. “Is there anything else? Some question you have for me?”
If Ushijima was too shy to ask for his number now, Oikawa would kick him.
“Yes...” Ushijima said. “Would you like to borrow an umbrella?”
Oikawa blanked out for a second.
“Huh?”
“An umbrella,” Ushijima repeated. “It's still raining outside.”
Oikawa just blinked at him.
“You're still dripping wet,” Ushijima reminded him. “At this rate, you will catch a cold.”
“I'm... you're... you seriously...”
Oikawa had forgotten how talking went.
“I think it's already starting,” Ushijima said, clearly worried. “Hold on.”
He slipped out of the cardigan he was wearing, dropping it right on Oikawa's head. Oikawa couldn't stop it. Talking didn't work – that usually came after moving had stopped working too.
Ushijima's voice came muffled through the cardigan he currently used to dry Oikawa's hair with.
“I'm sorry. I should have done that from the start. I was... distracted.”
Energy suddenly surged back through Oikawa's limbs. He freed his face from the cardigan, holding it up like a giant hood to glare at Ushijima.
“Are you kidding me?” he spat. “You were supposed to ask for my number, you giant oaf!”
“Oh!” Ushijima said, biting his jaw back shut. “I was?”
“You never even meant that as a compliment, did you?” Oikawa just realized.
Ushijima stared at him, wide-eyed, not daring to give an answer.
“Oh my God!” Oikawa hissed. The embarrassment was taking bites out of him like a parasitic alien, readying his stomach to nest in. “I honestly thought there was some kind of chemistry between us, but you're just a robot! I should have seen it coming! Talking with you is worse than talking to a robot answering machine trying to divert you from calling customer service!”
“I... what?” Ushijima stammered.
“You didn't even let me in because my flirting worked – you were just curious about why I showed up at your shop!”
Each new realization was like a punch to the guts. He pulled the cardigan back over his face, wishing to disappear in it forever.
“Uhm... Oikawa?”
Ushijima's voice was still muffled. “Oikawa, could you look at me, please?”
“No, I can't!” Oikawa cried. “The embarrassment might obliterate me!”
“Okay,” Ushijima said. “You can still hear me, so that's fine.”
He paused for a moment to draw a shuddering breath.
“The truth is...” he said. “I... I wanted to kiss you ever since you showed up at my door.”
Oikawa froze suddenly, not daring to move another inch in case the cardigan would make a sound against his ear and muffle what Ushijima was going to say next.
“You... you had these raindrops in your eyelashes, and-”
Oikawa ripped the cardigan right off his head.
“You noticed!” he cried.
“Of course!” Ushijima said. He was still pressed against the glass front, eyebrows furrowed in confusion at Oikawa's reaction. “It was irresistible.”
“I knew it!” Oikawa whispered to himself. “I'm irresistible!”
“You're irresistible,” Ushijima nodded, glad to have found one thing they completely agreed on, with no miscommunication in the way.
“You're into me!” Oikawa breathed with awe.
“So into you,” Ushijima eagerly agreed.
“And you're going to kiss me right now!” Oikawa said, still with his eyes wide, as if he had just read the lines from Ushijima's forehead.
“I'm going to... ah!”
Red blotches appeared at Ushijima's neck, which had to be his version of a blush. He cleared his throat.
“I'm going to... okay.”
Oikawa awaited his lips with a huge grin, which made aiming difficult, but he couldn't help it. This whole thing could have been a lot less awkward if that penis-head hadn't attacked him before, but Oikawa didn't mind so much. This was great, too. It was perfect, actually. Ushijima kissed him with feeling. Two trembling hands were pulling at Oikawa's waist, bringing him closer. He let himself be pressed against the glass-front, let Oikawa lean into him, let Oikawa open his mouth with his tongue, let Oikawa rock his hips forward.
Let Oikawa come back for air and open his eyes only to be stared at by a hundred tiny, unblinking, black, beady eyes.
“FUCK!” Oikawa screamed, stumbling right out of Ushijima's arms.
“What?” Ushijima sounded alarmed. “Oikawa, what happened? Did I do something wrong?”
“Turn around!” Oikawa panted.
Ushijima did.
Across the whole glass front, every single bunny and guinea pig was out of their houses or hay stacks, staring at them. Their noses twitching. Some of them had pieces of salad rapidly disappearing into their mouths. Like a human eating popcorn at the movies.
“Oh...” Ushijima said. Turning to Oikawa, he explained, “They really like sex. I'm sure you know the term: To fuck like bu-”
“If you finish that sentence,” Oikawa said. “I will storm out of here and take a different route to the train station for the rest of my life.”
Ushijima bit his mouth shut.
“Good,” Oikawa said. “Okay.”
He took his usual deep breaths, until he had somewhat calmed down.
“Good,” he said again. “Great.”
“I'm not sure it is,” Ushijima said.
“No, no, it definitely is,” Oikawa affirmed. “We will just keep getting interrupted. That's fine. But at least let the next interruption be something I will greatly enjoy. Okay?”
Ushijima, clearly having no idea what he was trying to say, simply nodded his head.
“Okay,” he said.
It took one whole hour for Iwaizumi to arrive.
It was agony.
Oikawa had Ushijima pinned to his bed, somehow all of their clothes still on their bodies, even though they might have been revealing a lot more skin than they usually were. They couldn't go any further than this. Not when they knew that a furious roommate would soon kick down the door, asking about the whereabouts of his most creepy fish.
By the time he heard the key turn in its lock, Oikawa was hurting.
“Thank God!” he moaned, sitting up. Beneath him, Ushijima looked flushed and breathless, the sharpie-heart on his forehead starting to come apart at the edges. “This will be hilarious.”
It didn't even take two minutes after that. They heard a feral scream, then Oikawa's name was butchered into a very insulting wordplay, and finally, the door banged open, revealing a fuming, red-faced Iwaizumi.
Oikawa startled up from Ushijima's lips as if he had just been caught.
“Iwa-chan!” he squeaked. “I told you to knock!”
Iwaizumi was taken aback, but not enough to stop his screaming.
“Where the hell is my fish!” he raged. “Do not tell me you managed to kill another one!”
Ushijima sat up as well, regarding Iwaizumi with a sheepish look.
Oikawa could clearly see how Iwaizumi's eyes caught on the heart on Ushijima's forehead.
“Right – about that,” Oikawa explained with the cheery voice he loved to tease Iwaizumi with. “Iwa-chan – you wouldn't believe it! I was playing my usual game with the goldfish, but this time, I pressed my lips against the tank instead of my nose. And what do you know? As soon as our lips met, heart-head here started to grow and grow, until finally-”
He gestured at Ushijima, like he was a thing to behold.
“Incredible, isn't it?”
Iwaizumi looked too angry to talk. He looked too angry to move.
“Oikawa,” he finally croaked, looking surprised that a sound had made it past his lips at all. “Once you're done in here, I will drown you in the fish-tank!”
He banged the door shut again.
Ushijima opened his mouth to say something, but Oikawa shushed him, waiting for it.
“And fucking congratulations!” was finally yelled from the other side of the door, five seconds later. “He's fucking hot!”
“Ah,” Oikawa grinned, turning to yell something back through the door.
“I'm sorry about your fish! I have already chosen the perfect replacement. It has a penis on its head! You'll love it!”
“I fucking hate you!”
That was the last thing they heard from Iwaizumi. Oikawa turned back to Ushijima to find him lying there with a faint smile on his lips.
“What?” he asked. “You enjoyed meeting Iwa-chan as well?”
“I think I enjoy everything about you,” Ushijima said.
Oikawa smiled.
“Good answer,” he said.
And leaned down to kiss him. With no more interruptions for the rest of the night.