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Iwaizumi is twenty-two and trying to get his university degree when Onibaba decides to wreak havoc in Tokyo; he’s not close to the epicenter of the destruction, luckily, and just sees the smoke, hears the horrible war cries, and is able to get a first-row seat for the end of the world and come away unscathed.
When asked what he remembers about that, about the first kaiju attack in Japan, he only has confused memories: the rush of getting away, people trampled in the stampede, the utter chaos of not knowing when the next blow would land, and the abysmal noises of the fight that could be heard even kilometers away. He doesn’t remember what it felt like, losing everything, having his whole world turned upside-down.
He remembers being shepherd away by militaries with the Pan Pacific Defense Corps insignia on their arms, pressed in the back of military transports together with other countless desperate lost people.
He remembers the first time his phone lit up with an incoming call, three days after the attack, when the communication lines were finally restored.
He remembers Oikawa’s voice. He always remembers Oikawa’s voice.
“I’m coming to get you, Iwa-chan,” had been the first words he had heard that day, the first words he had really listened to since the attack. Not even an ‘hello’, not even an ‘how are you’. Oikawa’s first and only promise had been that he would find him.
“But—” Iwaizumi let his eyes drift on the rubble, the desperate people pressing him on every side, and he choked on the dusty air, feeling the destruction lodge deep into his chest. “There’s nothing to come back to”.
Oikawa paused a moment, and Iwaizumi felt the statics drown everything around. He lmost missed it, when Oikawa spoke again.
“You’re always worth coming back to,” he said, and then the line goes went again.
Oikawa finds him two weeks later, in a refugee camp, among other survivors of the Tokyo attack. He hugs him fiercely, fingers gripping almost to the point of bruising, and Iwaizumi can take his first proper breath since Onibaba, since the destruction, only when Oikawa’s arms are cutting off the air from his lungs and he has his face buried in the shoulder of his best friend.
“I’m sorry it took me so long,” Oikawa is saying, voice almost as frantic as his hands. “I didn’t know where they took you, so I had to visit every camp”.
They take a step back, and Iwaizumi can finally take Oikawa in, raking his eyes up and down, up and down, until he’s sure that it’s really him, and that Oikawa is fine.
“… don’t worry,” he remembers to say after, his voice rendered a pitiful croak from disuse. “How is everyone back home?”
Oikawa’s shoulders slump a bit.
“Miyagi has been mostly spared from the first attack, and they moved everyone away from the coast,” he explains, and the relief in his voice is palpable. “Your family is fine. I told your mom that I would find you”.
They lapse into silence. The life of the camp around them drones on.
“Tooru—” his name snaps Oikawa out of whatever reveries he’s in, and Iwaizumi can feel his sharp gaze on himself without the need to watch. His eyes are fixed in the distance, somewhere along the straight horizon, locked on the precise coordinates where Tokyo used to be. “You’re not going back, are you?”
Iwaizumi can feel his small smile in the change of air, in the spark that runs on the live-wire that connects them. They breathe in synch, and Oikawa takes a step to stand by his side, shoulders squared, his eyes also finding the resting place of Tokyo without faltering.
“No, we’re not,” is his quiet answer.
One week later, they both enlist in the Pan Pacific Defense Corps. Six months later, when the Shatterdome in Tokyo welcomes their first batch of ranger recruits, they’re among the first Cadets to volunteer.
“Iwa-chan, you slowpoke, hurry up with your breakfast!”
Iwaizumi sighs, counts to ten, and decides that getting himself kicked out of the Shatterdome before even getting to step inside a Jaeger would be a waste of the six months he endured to get here. This probably implies not killing fellow Cadets, no matter how much he wish to do so.
Unfortunately, Oikawa is well aware of this clause, and tends to exploit it mercilessly. This doesn’t spare him an elbow to the ribs, though.
“I see the prince is hyper as usual,” is Hanamaki’s laconic quip, as he takes his seat in front of Iwaizumi, who just nods and reaches for his rice. Matsukawa slides at the table across Oikawa, who’s still doubled over and bemoaning the breaking of a couple of ribs.
“He’s impatient to have his ass handled over in the Kwoon Combat Room,” Iwaizumi says in lieu of an answer.
“So it’s a day that ends in y,” Matsukawa smiles, and Oikawa finally manages an indignant squawk.
“I can’t believe the three of you are not nervous about the matchings,” he huffs, cradling his cup of coffee in his hands.
Iwaizumi can’t deny that Oikawa’s bouncing has taken his toll on him, during the night; he won’t ever admit it, but hearing him toss and turn had kept him up as well, and when Oikawa had given up on sleep and slinked out of the Cadets’ sleeping quarters, Iwaizumi had spent the good part of the night staring at the bottom of the empty bunk over his head, feeling the echo of Oikawa’s anxiety in his bones.
“Well, not really?” Hanamaki cocks his head. “It’s not like we don’t have an inkling about whom we could be matched with”.
It’s a given, among the Cadets at large and especially their small group, that Iwaizumi and Oikawa will be matched up in the upcoming session. The idea sits hot and cold in Iwaizumi’s stomach, his thoughts about it a garbled mess of feelings and fears that he doesn’t even want to begin untangling. He knows that Oikawa feels the same, because his eyes go a little unfocused every time the topic is brought up.
Like all the other times it came up, Iwaizumi doesn’t answer; and like every time it came up, Oikawa plasters a smile on his face and whines.
“Why are you always bullying me,” he pouts, crossing his arms over the table and dropping his chin over them.
“Because you make it so easy,” Hanamaki laughs, devoid of any bite, and even Matsukawa cracks a smile as he pours himself a cup of tea and mulls it over for a bit, the silence of the three of them finishing up their breakfast only interrupted by the occasional whine or sigh from Oikawa.
Iwaizumi bumps their shoulders together as they finally leave the dining hall, falling in step at his side and leaving Hanamaki and Matsukawa to precede them. He rests his weight against Oikawa’s side for a moment, letting himself feel the brisk surge of strength that immediately answers, hidden in Oikawa’s lithe muscles.
“Don’t stress too much about this,” he mumbles, voice low so that only Oikawa can hear him. He wants to reach, drag his thumb over that small worried crease in between Oikawa’s eyebrows, ask him why he didn’t sleep. He settles for pressing his shoulder into Oikawa’s side, trying at least to be a comforting presence. “It won’t be so bad”.
It won’t be so bad being paired with you, he tells himself.
Oikawa stops, head ducked to hide his mouth and eyes for a moment, but his shoulder presses back into Iwaizumi’s. When he looks up, there’s an enigmatic smile on his face, and Iwaizumi thinks he looks almost sad, not at all excited about the upcoming matching despite his words during breakfast.
“I sure hope so, Hajime,” he offers, and then he slips away before Iwaizumi can ask him what that means, sidling up to Hanamaki and Matsukawa and draping himself over their shoulders, chatting a mile per minute.
Iwaizumi sighs and follows, trying to ignore the knot of nerves in his stomach which definitely wasn’t there before.
The matchings don't bring big surprises, like Hanamaki predicted. Two Cadets from Tokyo are the first of them to be deemed drift compatible, and Iwaizumi remembers seeing them always together, wrestling around in their spare time; then it’s the turn of the two rowdy twins from Hyogo, the ones that Oikawa apparently can’t even stand to be in the same room with.
When it is Oikawa’s turn on the sparring mat, Iwaizumi has seen so many rounds of fighting - and stepped onto the mats a couple times himself - that they all start to blend together.
He still watches, because Oikawa on the mat is a sight to behold, all lithe muscles and measured control. He fights just like he walks, with the sort of practiced ease that belies months and months of training and careful evaluation of every movement.
As he stares, Oikawa steps into a careless dive, throwing Hanamaki off-balance in his four-one point. Iwaizumi knows that it’s anything but careless, and Oikawa had probably practiced it a hundred times over.
“Next Cadet, Iwaizumi,” Washijo looks at his list as Hanamaki sends a thumb-up to Oikawa, before stepping off the mats. “As usual, four to win”.
Iwaizumi gingerly steps on the mat, the weight of the quarterstaff a reassuring anchor in his hands.
Oikawa is in front of him, hair disheveled from his previous spars, his eyes glinting in the white neon lights overhead, and his smile blossoms as Iwaizumi steps forward, rocking on his heels to test his balance.
“You ready to have your ass kicked, Iwa-chan?”
Oikawa’s taunts are familiar, and they untangle some of the nerves from Iwaizumi’s gut. He rolls his shoulders to ease off the remaining tension, dropping into a relaxed stance, one hand outstretched in front of himself, the other holding the staff behind him.
Oikawa smiles, pointy canines showing in his ferocious smile, and then he strikes.
Iwaizumi parries, and the forward momentum of Oikawa’s movement is enough to unbalance him. Iwaizumi steps into his guard, under his outstretched staff, and lands a palm on his solar plexus, sending him stumbling a couple of steps back.
“Zero-one,” comes Washijo’s voice from the sidelines, and they both step away to a ready stance once again.
Iwaizumi’s brow furrows. Oikawa should have foreseen that.
“Oikawa, are you alrigh—” he doesn’t even finish the word, before Oikawa’s staff is at his throat.
Iwaizumi is marginally aware of Washijo’s voice going one-one at the periphery, because all his focus is on the small, merciless smile on Oikawa’s lips, the tapered end of his staff pressing at his jugular.
“Don’t underestimate me, Iwa-chan,” he all but purrs, and Iwaizumi feels something inside his chest ignite at his words. The fire spreads, and Iwaizumi can feel a smile, most likely a perfect copy of Oikawa’s taunting one, splitting up his own face.
This time he’s the first one to attack, his staff swiping low and forcing Oikawa to step back, dancing on his feet just out of reach. He comes back in a flurry of movement, staff coming down, but it’s slightly out of synch with the way the rest of his body moves, and so Iwaizumi sidesteps it, grabs Oikawa’s hand, and pulls him beside and over his side, tapping him with the staff between the shoulder before letting him go.
Washijio’s “one-two” this time is accompanied by a murmur that goes over the crowd of Cadets. Iwaizumi is not the first one who got two hits on Oikawa, but this is definitely the first match-up in which Oikawa looks outmaneuvered.
There is something wrong in the way Oikawa is fighting, but Iwaizumi can’t put his finger on it as they get back on the ready once again, and then Oikawa is coming at him with renewed fury, and he doesn’t have the mental energies to think about it again.
The third time he scores on Oikawa is by pure luck, because Oikawa misjudges a lunge and ends up straining his leg and losing balance right into the tip of Iwaizumi’s staff. Iwaizumi tries to argue with Washijo that it wasn’t actually his point, but just a stupid mishap, but Oikawa bats away his concern with a guttural roar, and attacks him again before Iwaizumi even has the time to get in position.
The end of the staff digs into his stomach, hard enough to bruise, definitely hard enough to cut off the air from his lungs for a second.
“Don’t ever try to pity me again,” Oikawa snarls, and there’s desperation behind his eyes, and Iwaizumi wants nothing more than to drop his staff and cup Oikawa’s face between his hand, to try and unravel whatever monstrous castle of doubts and angst hides behind his façade.
“Oikawa—” he tries again, a pacifying note to his voice, but Oikawa doesn’t, won’t, can’t listen to him.
“Just fight, Iwa-chan!” he spats, then crouches into a fighting stance, not too different from a wounded animal.
Oikawa comes at him again, but it’s too reckless, nothing of his usual composure, and Iwaizumi drops on one knee at the last moment, letting the staff go, and uses Oikawa’s own inertia to tip him over, and then he grabs his right leg and drops him - hard - on the mat.
He sees it in slow-motion, the way Oikawa’s face twist in a pained grimace, his core muscles already tensing to spring back to his feet, but Iwaizumi is faster, and pivots on his knee, still propelled by the momentum of Oikawa’s previous attack, and cages him under himself.
He has a hand at Oikawa’s windpipe, and he feels the jackrabbit vibration of his heartbeat and the angry wheeze that leaves his lungs as his shoulders meet the mat.
“Two-four,” Washijo goes, but Iwaizumi barely hears it. “Next Cadet, Kyoutani”.
Iwaizumi doesn’t move. His hand is still around Oikawa’s neck, and Oikawa is pointedly not looking at him, and—
and they’re not drift compatible .
“Next Cadet, Kyoutani,” Washijo says again, this time with an annoyed note to his voice. Kyoutani is already lining up at the border of the mat, impatient as he always is, but all Iwaizumi can do is stupidly stare at Oikawa, and pray that his best friend would look at him.
“Oikawa—“ he tries, pulling his hand away, stepping back to try and give him space. His legs feels heavy, and he will have an impressive set of new bruises to match Oikawa’s tomorrow, but it still doesn’t compare to the vicious hold squeezing his heart right now.
Oikawa crouches in a smooth movement, getting his back off the mat, but still won’t look at him.
“Iwaizumi, step off the mat,” Washijo goes again, and this time his voice promises that it will be the last time he’ll give a kind order, before resorting to use his power. “Next Cadet, Kyoutani”.
Iwaizumi takes another step back, almost turns around but the image of Oikawa, crushed and defeated at his feet, doesn’t want to leave his eyes.
I did this to him , his mind supplies, and it lights all his nerves on fire, because it’s wrong, this is all wrong, it can’t be.
When he is at the edge of the mat, he turns back again, his voice a strangled whisper this time.
“Tooru—”
Oikawa’s head snaps up, and there’s a large, fake smile on his face.
“I’m sorry Iwa-chan,” he says, and Iwaizumi wants to punch that smile away, and he wants to hug Oikawa, and he wants so much that he actually can’t do anything about it. “Apparently we’re not good enough together”.
Sometimes, Iwaizumi wanders deeper into the bowels of the Shatterdome, down where the Jaegers are made. Sometimes Oikawa follows, incessant chatter mixing with the noise of the soldering tools and the moans of twisted metal; other times, like tonight, he’s alone.
He’s stupidly glad for the reprieve from Oikawa’s presence, and he immediately feels guilty for that. It’s not strictly Oikawa’s fault, but ever since the Kwoon Combat room and their failed drift compatibility test two days ago, Iwaizumi has felt a cold lump of something in his stomach every time he sits down beside Oikawa.
It is his problem, and he knows it; he’ll get over it as soon as possible, but right now being near Oikawa hurts. Being reminded that this is yet another way in which he can’t be with Oikawa hurts.
He nods at a couple of mechanics as he passes them, and they don’t bother with his presence here; on some nights he would stop and chat a bit, ask them how the building is going, trying to wheedle out some more spoilers from them, but tonight he isn’t in the mood.
Sometimes he wonders if he shouldn’t have gone down the J-Tech path, instead of the Ranger; if it wouldn’t have been easier to choose a path where he wouldn’t have to measure up his worth against other people’s (against Oikawa’s) every day.
There are steps behind him.
“Ah, Iwaizumi-san,” comes the soft greeting, and Iwaizumi tips his head in reply to the mechanic.
Akaashi knows him, at this point; he has seen him down here enough times to recognize his motive.
“No Oikawa-san, tonight?” Akaashi inquires, hand coming up to adjust the black frame of his glasses up his nose.
Iwaizumi forces a smile past the trembling on his lips.
“Nah, only me”.
It shouldn’t be so hard to talk, he thinks.
Lucky enough, Akaashi knows him, but also doesn’t, and so he doesn’t pry more into the matter. He just gives another soft hum of acknowledgement.
“He is turned off tonight, so it’s safe to visit,” he informs Iwaizumi, and it’s a testament to the number of times he has seen him down here for the exact same reason that neither of them has to ask who he is. “Have a good night”.
Iwaizumi tips his head in greeting once again, and then pads onward, rapidly moving until he has turned a corner, and can drop the tiring smile from his face. He takes the next steps down the empty corridor with both elation and uneasiness.
The assembly pit, when he arrives, is empty and silent; the massive Jaeger is illuminated by neon lights, white reflexes glaring off the chest plates, shadows in the still empty hole where the commanding pod will be.
“Hello, King,” he whispers, breath escaping in a fond puff from his lips, as he sits down. Something inside him unwinds.
Dauntless King is one of the new Mark-3s, set to launch at the beginning of the new year. Iwaizumi stares at his profile, already painted in turquoise and vibrant silver.
He remembers when he and Oikawa had sneaked into the garage, and they’ve seen the King for the first time. Iwaizumi remembers taking in the large outline of a single-handed sword at the end of his right arm, the imposing shield hooked on his left, and he remembers thinking, with unexpected clarity, that that Jaeger was meant for the two of them. He had turned, ready to ask if Oikawa had felt the same, but his best friend had been frowning at the same Jaeger that Iwaizumi had become enamored with in the span of a second, and he had looked like he was going to vomit his soul out.
Iwaizumi had forgotten to ask, too preoccupied with making sure that Oikawa was alright. And then it never came up again, and Oikawa’s visits to the Jaeger hangar had become scarcer than before.
It dawns on him now, the realization that maybe Oikawa never envisioned them and Dauntless King, not in the way that Iwaizumi did.
It shouldn't hurt, this thought. Iwaizumi had always been aware that Oikawa’s brilliance far outmatched his own, and that the most he could aim for was to stand a step behind and have his back when needed.
Knowing now that even that is impossible leaves him hollow and without a purpose, and he feels like an idiot to have so much riding on a stupid dream.
“Just me and you now, buddy,” he says to the Jaeger, and the light gleams off the silver shield, draws the edge of the sword impossibly thin and sharp, and Iwaizumi almost hopes for an answer. “What do I do now?”
The giant robot, of course, doesn’t answer him.
Iwaizumi looks at Dauntless King, and he feels more lost that he had in months.
When he gets back, the morning after, Oikawa doesn’t ask where he spent the night, and Iwaizumi doesn’t tell him as he slides into his usual seat at the breakfast table.
He spends the whole breakfast wondering if Oikawa is feeling the same hollow space behind his ribs, where his heart usually sits.
The Miya twins are the first ones to be deployed.
Iwaizumi gathers with Oikawa and everyone else in the Shatterdome to watch them, the first Tokyo Shatterdome Jaeger launch. There’s a large plasma screen suspended, right next to the War Clock ticking away the minutes since the last Kaiju attack. The numbers now mark the fifteen minutes since the alarm blared for the first time in the Tokyo Shatterdome.
Iwaizumi watches the twins leave, steps matched, cocky grins thrown around over their matching jackets emblazoned with a nine-tailed fox on the back, even breathing in synch, and burns with wantas he watches them disappear into the Conn-Pod.
Radiant Kitsune is all sleek black and gold under the inclement weather, the water lapping the tights of the giant robot as she wades though the ocean like she’s taking a stroll through the park.
There’s commotion in the LOCCENT Mission Control room, but it’s muffled and distant. Iwaizumi distractedly watches Major Kita talking into a headset behind the glass, eyes calm and composed; Sergeant Ukai and Major Sawamura are talking behind him, and even Fightmaster Washijo showed up, and is wearing his usual blank expression as he studies a monitor. All sort of movement, bristling about, buzzing like an outraged hive, trying to make all the last-minute corrections to ensure everything will go as smooth as it can.
In the Shatterdome, there’s complete silence. Everybody is nose-up staring at the large screen, as the twins deftly steer Kitsune at the mouth of the Uraga Channel, Tokyo’s Miracle Mile, and then stop and wait, posture deceptively relaxed for a robot more than a hundred-meters tall. The video feed from the helicopters cuts out, as they turn to fly back into a safer perimeter, and then another feed is on, this one from the perspective of Kitsune herself.
There’s a nervous turmoil deep into the pit of Iwaizumi’s stomach, clawing and gnawing at his insides like it is trying to dig his way out, leaving him gutted and broken. With every step the massive Jaeger takes into the waters of the Tokyo Bay, the dread inside his chest grows. His breaths are shallow.
He wants to be out there so badly.
The ticking of the War Clock is the only audible sound, and Iwaizumi tries to use it as an anchor. He can feel the pressure of Oikawa’s shoulder against his, and his best friend is wearing the same tense look of everyone else in the room. There are worried lines around his eyes, and his mouth is pulled into a single displeased line and—
—and if only Iwaizumi had been a little bit better they could have been the ones out there, fighting to keep their home safe.
The thought sits like a heavy, smoldering stone somewhere behind his ribs. Iwaizumi knows, he knowsthat it is his fault. That if he didn’t click with Oikawa, there’s no way that someone else is going to match with him. If the single person that he synchronized with long years ago didn’t want him, there’s no way that he will be good enough for everyone else.
The guilt over keeping Oikawa grounded washes over him in a very familiar wave.
There’s movement in the water before Radiant Kitsune, a pulsating light coming up from the depths of the ocean, and uneasiness creeps through the Cadets, murmurs rippling through the crowd.
And then the ocean explodes, and the camera shift as Radiant Kitsune steps forward into her first battle.
For all the memories he has of the Tokyo attack, Iwaizumi wasn’t close enough to get a good look at Onibaba. He has seen pictures, of course, but it’s not like this, not like staring at the grotesque face of the Kaiju as he would from the Jaeger’s cockpit.
The Kaiju rears back, its monstrous serpent-like body uncoiling from the water to loom menacingly in front of Kitsune, scorpion claws extended in front of it. It opens his maws, and Iwaizumi can see the countless rows of sharp, blue-flashing teeth as the Miya twins see them, from inside the Conn-Pod. He doesn’t hear the monster roar, as it rears back to attack, but he doesn’t need to.
He suddenly can’t breathe.
Radiant Kitsune gains speed, the feed shaking up and down with her movements, and Iwaizumi can’t breathe; the monster strikes, its claws grazing the camera for a moment, making everything shake, and Iwaizumi tries to force some air into his lungs, desperately trying to keep quiet as he slowly chokes because he’s not the one fighting out there, not the one actually risking his goddamn life, and yet he can’t help making it all about himself again, and—
There’s a warm grasp around his fist, and Iwaizumi didn’t even realize he had closed his hand. He looks down, and Oikawa’s fingers are resolutely grabbing at his fingers, forcing him to relent his vicious grip at least enough for his hand to worm its way into Iwaizumi’s, holding him steady and strong in response.
When he looks at Oikawa’s face, it is still resolutely fixed on the screen, not giving any sign that he noticed his predicament; but his hold is fierce and warm, and the cold and damp feeling digging his talons into his chest relents a bit, and Iwaizumi can finally draw a breath all the way down to his diaphragm.
Radiant Kitsune’s is equipped with a goddamn bow and plasma arrows and she obliterates the Kaiju in ten minutes.
It takes longer for Iwaizumi to let go of Oikawa’s hand.
They try to match them with other people, of course. Fightmaster Washijo is not one to mull over spilled milk or unmatched Cadets, and so there’s a plethora of other Cadets going up against Iwaizumi and Oikawa in the following weeks.
There’s Kyoutani, that Iwaizumi puts on the mats four times in two minutes and thirty-four seconds after they meet staff against staff in the middle of the room. Kyoutani snarls, and then gets up again, and asks for a rematch. It ends in a grand total of twelve-to-zero in favor of Iwaizumi out of the two rematches, and the most spectacular failure of them all.
Once they try to match Oikawa with one of the newest Cadets, a boy named Kageyama. Iwaizumi has to step in between that match, before things escalate too much and people are actually hurt.
Washijo puts him in detention for three days after that stunt, but Iwaizumi would do it again in a second. The detention may actually be more about the black eye he gave Oikawa than the interruption, but Iwaizumi would also do that again, should necessity arise.
This doesn’t mean that the end of the third day of detention doesn’t find him pacing in his cell, nervously waiting to be left out.
Matsukawa and Hanamaki show up when they let him leave, and that alone should ring a bell, at least make him pause to consider the incongruence. But Iwaizumi is tired, and he’s been restless and feeling mildly nauseated since yesterday, and he just wants to leave, go back to their room and collapse in his bed.
“Where is that asshole?”
Hanamaki and Matsukawa share a long stare.
“Well, Iwaizumi, is nice to see you too—”
“I said,” Iwaizumi growls, impatience making his tongue swell in his mouth. “Where is Oikawa? He doesn’t even have the balls to show his face after his stunt landed me in detention—”
There is another long moment of silence from his friends, and that definitely rings a very alarmed bell. Iwaizumi stops in the middle of the corridor.
“Where is he?” he asks for the third time, this time with ice in his voice. A horrible sense of dread is dripping down his throat, taking a hold of his stomach. He itches with the physical need to be near Oikawa.
Hanamaki looks distinctly uncomfortable.
“Are you sure you want to know right now?”
“Hanamaki, I swear to god—”
“He’s in the infirmary”.
Matsukawa’s face is drawn in, and Hanamaki instinctively leans toward him, their shoulders pressing together.
The world starts spinning.
“But I didn’t—” he manages to stammer, because Oikawa had been fine when he’d last seen him. Sure, he had cradled his nose like it was the end of the world, and there was disbelief on his face, but he had been standing on his feet when two of Washijo’s officers escorted Iwaizumi away.
“You didn’t break him, don’t worry about that. Sure, you messed up his pretty face with that black eye, but he was alive and kicking that night. We had to stop him to try and break you out of detention,” Hanamaki interrupts him, his sarcasm actually fond. “No, they—”
“Washijo had him test-drift with Ushijima”.
Once again, it’s Matsukawa who stops tiptoeing around Iwaizumi’s feelings. He steps into Iwaizumi’s space, his hands a warm anchor on his shoulders as he stares him down, eyes hard but not uncaring, his voice steadfast. Matsukawa has always been a pillar, and Iwaizumi grasps at him not to drown.
“Washijo kept trying Cadet after Cadet after you left. You know he’s partial to Ushijima, and him and Oikawa had a decent compatibility, I guess, so he had them take the test”.
Hanamaki’s face is grim and closed off. He is as mutable as Matsukawa is steadfast, his heart always worn on his sleeve. Hanamaki’s strength has always been his ability to flow among obstacles, always feeling but never holding on.
It’s a pity that Iwaizumi has been cursed with both the ability to feel deep in his chest, and the utter ineptitude at letting go.
“They had to force a stop before the nuclear core of the Jaeger would melt”.
Iwaizumi had never run up the stairs of the Shatterdome so fast.
It shouldn’t have happened, Oikawa is too good for that; out of all the Cadets of their batch, he’s the one who spent the most time obsessively training, stepping into the Jaeger simulator time and time again until he had it perfected, staying up in the Kwoon combat until he could wield the training staff like an extension of his own arm. He’s the best of them, Iwaizumi knows, Iwaizumi is sure, Tooru is the best, so this can’t be happening, it can’t—
They don’t even try to stop him as he barges into the infirmary. Or maybe they do try, but Iwaizumi doesn’t even spare time to check, as his eyes land—
—on Oikawa, propped in a bed with a pillow stuffed behind his back and keeping him upright, his face grey and grim, hooked on a couple of monitors that go awry as soon as he sees Iwaizumi.
And there’s Ushijima at the bedside, fuckin’ Ushijima with his arm crossed over his chest and one eyebrow slightly tilted up as he appraises Iwaizumi like he’s the one lacking when he’s the asshole that landed Oikawa in the infirmary.
Iwaizumi is ready to fight him; Ushijima mainly looks bored.
Oikawa looks terrified.
Before any of them can move, Ushijima stands up from the chair and uncrosses his arms, picking up his PPDC-issued jacket and draping it over his shoulders.
“I see it’s time I take my leave,” he announces, stepping back. “I wish you a fast recovery, Oikawa”.
Before he can move away, Oikawa’s hand darts to grab his hand. Iwaizumi wishes he could cut Ushijima’s arm and beat him with it.
“Don’t forget your promise, Ushiwaka,” he mutters, and Iwaizumi wants to scream, and his insides are boiling in ugly green jealousy and he despises everything.
“I made my opinion clear, but it’s not my secret to tell,” Oikawa’s hand falls away, like the movement drained all of his energies, and he sags back into the pillows. Ushijima gives Iwaizumi a terse nod, and then marches out of the room like a man on a mission.
Iwaizumi lingers at the corner of the room; Oikawa is still crumpled on the bed, and Iwaizumi takes a first, tentative step into the room.
“Iwa-chan?”
It’s more of a wishful thinking than actual words. It’s barely a whisper, but the name has barely left Oikawa’s lips that Iwaizumi is already draped on the bed next to him, his hands cupping Oikawa’s face.
There’s still the faint blue impression of the black eye he gave him three days ago on the right side of his face, bleeding into green at the edges. Iwaizumi wants to jump off the roof of the Shatterdome and die.
“I’m here, I’m here,” he reassures him, thumb skipping on the angle of his jaw, fingers buried in the soft locks around his ears. He feels so relieved he could cry. Something inside him finally acquiesces, pacified by the feeling of closeness. “What happened?”
Oikawa is not talking, mainly because his breathing is so erratic now that it’s going into a full blown panic attack. His rattled breaths are so painful that Iwaizumi feels his chest constrict in sympathy.
“Oikawa,” he calls him, pressing his fingers into his cheeks, trying to ground him. “Oikawa, listen to me”.
Iwaizumi drags his face towards his own, pressing his forehead against Oikawa’s. They’re so close now, nose pressing into his cheek, that he can feel Oikawa’s breaths coming out damp and hurried to his lips, can almost taste his panic and oxygen-deprivation.
“Tooru,” he calls again, softer but just as desperate to be heard, and Oikawa groans in pain, but his fingers come up to claw at the back of Iwaizumi’s hands, trying to keep him there, to keep himself afloat.
It’s difficult to extricate his fingers now, but Iwaizumi manages to free one of his hands and drops it to Oikawa’s abdomen, pressing against the thin, rough cloth of his hospital gown until he can feel the warm of his clammy skin underneath.
“Down there, Tooru, come on, breathe,” he orders, gentle directions falling from his lips like second nature. “Full breaths, I know you can do it”.
“Iwa-chan—” he tries to gasp, but Iwaizumi gentles shushes him, presses his forehead against his and keeps muttering nonsense under his breath, until he feels that Oikawa’s muscles under his hand are less tense, his breaths more spaced out and deep, and there are no more tears getting his face wet as well.
Only then he lets go, leaning back on the rickety chair where he doesn’t even remember sitting on, and taking deep breaths himself.
“Better?”
Oikawa hums his assent, and his eyes tentatively flitter between his own hands on the bed and Iwaizumi’s face, almost like he’s afraid. It’s so uncharacteristic of him that it makes anger boils under Iwaizumi’s skin, to think that something happened to Oikawa when he wasn’t there to protect him.
“I will kill him,” he just states, voice not even wavering.
It’s a fact. The sun shines, there are horrible, almost invincible monsters coming up from the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, and he’s going to strangle Ushijima as soon as he can put his hands around his neck.
It takes Oikawa a moment to understand who and what Iwaizumi means, but when he does a shadow quickly passes over his face, and he gives a rueful bark of laughter.
“Don’t,” he snorts, voice devoid of any emotion. “Ushiwaka didn’t do anything wrong this time. I was the one that chased the rabbit”.
Iwaizumi leans back, fixes his eyes on Oikawa and sighs.
“What happened?” he asks again, voice calm this time, trying to reign in his temper.
“I guess that Makki and Mattsun at least updated you on the general gist?” Iwaizumi nods, and Oikawa gives a pensive hum. “There’s not much more to say, to be honest. I fucked it up”.
Iwaizumi snorts.
“You are many things, but you’re not an idiot when it comes to the drift,” he points out. He doesn’t act on the sudden impulse to headbutt the invalid.
Again.
All in all, it amounts to a very mature decision.
Oikawa’s answering smile is tremulous at best, a complete lie if Iwaizumi is to be honest.
“You know how Fightmaster Washijo always goes on and on about how important trust and compatibility are when drifting with another person?” he quips next.
It is completely unrelated. It also makes Iwaizumi’s heart painfully constricts.
“Of course I do,” he answers, not sure he completely follows.
“My compatibility with Ushiwaka was above average, but not complete,” Oikawa goes on, changing once again the point. “I stepped into the drift hoping it would go alright, but also thinking that he wasn’t the one I wanted to drift with”.
There’s a sad note in Oikawa’s voice; he sounds like he knows who he wants to drift with, like this nameless person is very physical and very present. Iwaizumi doesn’t know who they are, but can’t help but envy whomever they are for the ability to put such a wistful note into Oikawa’s voice.
Unaware and uncaring of Iwaizumi’s internal turmoil, Oikawa continues to talk.
“I could feel Ushiwaka inside the drift and it felt—wrong, to be there with him. So I did the single thing I shouldn’t have done”.
Iwaizumi grimaces.
“You gave chase,” he sighs matter of fact. It makes more sense now, at least.
“Yeah,” his voice breaks, and Iwaizumi makes a valiant effort not to point that out, not to reach again. “The more Ushiwaka kept trying to get me out, the more I retreated inside, the more the drift got out of synch. We almost got the nuclear reactor of Eagle Spear into overdrive”.
A part of Iwaizumi is glad that it was Eagle Spear, and not Dauntless King, selfish as it is.
He forces himself to focus back on Oikawa’s words.
“They had to forcefully shut down the pod. I took most of the neurological backlash from it, and I had to be monitored for a couple of days. They should give the all clear tonight, after the third brain scan”.
“You took—” Iwaizumi’s lips wordlessly articulate around the words neurological backlash, and a part of him wants to joke that the scan probably picked up all the times Oikawa brained himself with a ball while they played volleyball during high school, but a bigger, more adult part is finally feeling all the weight of what happened drop on him. Oikawa got neurological damage. Tooru got seriously hurt.
It had seemed almost like a game up to this point, with their brazen invincibility, with the unrealistic thought that pain and damage was for others, not for them. With the even more far-fetched, childish idea that he could protect Tooru from the ugliness of the world around them.
“At least this means Washijo is not going to match me again soon, I think,” Oikawa tries do joke, finally finishing his retelling. He stares at him from under his lashes, and his voice breaks once again. “Say something, Iwa-chan”.
Iwaizumi tries.
He knows that Oikawa needs him right now, that he is not the injured one, not the one that had to suffer for the failed drift; he feels the need to be there, to comfort and soothe. He also feels like shit.
The first sob wracks his chest and it’s completely unexpected; it makes him claw at his own throat, trying to suppress it, desperately trying to make it go back and disappear, burrow back in the sliver of space between his lungs and his heart. It’s so selfish and so ugly, for him to be the one crying now, but he can’t help it.
He can see the moment Oikawa realizes he’s crying and goes straight into panic mode.
“Iwa-chan, what—” he fumbles, a scared note to his voice, hands hovering now in his general direction, desperate to touch, afraid he’ll ruin him. “Please, Iwa-chan—”
“I’m sorry”.
It tumbles out of his lips unbidden, spills out against his will; the moment his lips close, choking off another ugly whimper, he can already see Oikawa’s eyes grow larger.
“I’m sorry,” Iwaizumi is crying. “If only I’d been good enough—”
The sharp pain of a slap cut his words off, and the shock is enough to stop his tears in their tracks. He holds a hand to his cheek, feeling the skin throb underneath.
It’s the first time Oikawa ever slapped him. The contrast is absolutely jarring.
There’s a ferocious rage in Oikawa’s eyes, and he grabs Iwaizumi’s shoulders with enough force to bruise. He has never seen him so angry.
“Don’t you dare to think you’re not enough ever again, Hajime,” he snarls, voice taking a manic edge. “Don’t ever, don’t, don’t—”
He dissolves into angry cries, little hiccups held between his teeth and Iwaizumi’s shoulder. Iwaizumi doesn’t know what to do, how to make it stop, and so he does the only thing that he can think of, and he holds him closer again. If he starts crying again, this time at least Oikawa can’t slap him.
It’s 3AM, and Iwaizumi can’t sleep.
He fixes his eyes on the bed frame above his head, listening to the deceptive silence of the room. There’s a minute creak, like the person on the bed is trying to move and, at the same time, do not alert anyone that he is in fact moving.
Iwaizumi holds in a sigh, playing the same game of pretend.
Oikawa is not sleeping. Again.
There’s a soft rustle of bedsheets, the minute air movement of a pillow fluffed out with gentle hands, the smallest frustrated sigh, and then Oikawa slips down his bunk, feet softly padding on the floor as he grabs his jacket. There’s a sliver of light illuminating his bed, falling on Iwaizumi’s slumped back, as Oikawa opens the door, and then a soft click as the door shuts closed and darkness falls again.
Iwaizumi sighs into his pillow, this time unrestrained.
Tonight marks the twentieth time Oikawa has left the room after curfew over the last month, and it has started to show in the bags under his eyes and the tired lines around his permanently down-turned lips. Any attempt to make him talk has been of course fruitless, so tonight Iwaizumi does what he should have done since the beginning.
He gets up, and he follows him.
It feels weird to wander the Shatterdome at night, with the personnel around reduced to the bare bones of the chaos of the daytime shift. Iwaizumi feels almost like a ghost, haunting the corridors as he follows the noise of Oikawa’s footsteps.
He walks past the closed dining hall, through the main body of the Shatterdome, down stairs he knows so well it almost feels like sleepwalking at this point.
He stops outside the gym, just shy of entering. He can hear movements inside, the rustling of cloth as Oikawa gets rid of his PPDC jacket, a soft hum and wooden clicks as he selects a staff from the rack at the back of the room, padded steps as he gets on the mat. He doesn’t need to see it, to recognize Oikawa’s routine in the gym, and still he hesitates.
He could get back to bed, pretend he never moved when Oikawa will inevitably come back just an hour before the six AM wake-up call.
Oikawa never mentioned his nightly trips to the gym. Oikawa still isn’t cleared for these nightly trips to the gym, because the PPDC doctors put him on a mandatory two-months leave after the failed drift with Ushijima. Iwaizumi knows because he was there when he was discharged by a very salty doctor with the worst haircut ever, and also because Oikawa had been extremely vocal about how not happy he was with the decision ever since.
But Oikawa never mentioned it, like they never talked about what is making him so uneasy, what is making him so withdrawn from his best friends, so withdrawn from Hajime.
Oikawa is in the middle of the training mat, a quarterstaff in his hands, going through easy warm-up motions. He hasn’t noticed him yet, concentrated on the motions, eyes unfocused in the distance, his limbs getting laxer and laxer as he waltzes through the familiar exercises.
Iwaizumi finally takes his time to watch Oikawa; it has been some time since he was allowed to do so, and finally he takes back this little piece of normalcy. They used to take their time when they were recruits, spending time correcting each other’s posture. Iwaizumi can predict what Oikawa will do in a sparring match ten moves into the future, on a good day.
The thing is… this feels like the first times they sparred. Iwaizumi feels that he can read the easy motions of Oikawa’s body, can predict where his staff will land, can hear his breathing instinctively match up with Oikawa’s and his body thrum with restless energy.
Annoyance flits in the small line between his eyebrows. The idiot should be in bed, trying to sleep a decent amount of hours, not here getting himself worked up and kissing any chance to rest goodbye.
He almost doesn’t realize, when he steps into the room; it’s not a conscious decision, but rather a reaction to the undercurrent of tension running through his muscles. Oikawa doesn’t hear him stepping closer.
His staff meets Oikawa’s, and there’s a flash of surprise on his face as he realizes.
“One-zero,” Iwaizumi just announces, and whirls the staff back, dropping into an easy ready stance.
The following volley is longer, and he loses himself in the predictable rhythm of steps and staff, ducking under Oikawa’s hits and trying to slide one in the gaps of his guard, only to be rebuffed at the last possible moment.
It ends when Oikawa finally trips him, in a quicksilver move that Iwaizumi has seen him execute countless times on other unsuspecting adversaries, but still never managed to parry correctly with some consistency. Today, it seems, is not an exception.
Oikawa’s chest heaves as he towers over him, staff poised lightly on his sternum.
He grins.
“One-one”.
Iwaizumi mirrors that grin as he accepts the hand that Oikawa extends to help him get up from the mat; he flexes his fingers, and he can see the brief flash of realization crossing Oikawa’s face as he uses the grip to leverage himself off the mat and pull him out of balance at the same time. He grins, because Oikawa will never not fall for that, apparently.
“Two-one,” he says. “You should be in bed”.
Oikawa visibly bristles, like hackles raised upon a disgruntled cat.
“I could say the same thing back to you, Iwa-chan,” he pouts, but his eyes betray that he knows that Iwaizumi is actually right. He takes a lateral step to his right, moving in circle.
“I’m not the one not cleared for physical activities,” Iwaizumi rebuts, moving by reflex on his left. He stares into Oikawa’s face, attuned to every shift of muscle under skin. “What got you so keyed up that you can’t stay in bed two nights in a row?”
Twin muscles move at the corners of Oikawa’s eyes, there and gone in a moment — guilt. He swats his quarterstaff at him in a hurried arc, making Iwaizumi stumble back to avoid it — diversion.
“Nothing that concerns you,” he grits through clenched teeth — lie.
Iwaizumi sighs. There is no getting around Oikawa’s defenses when he gets like this, so Iwaizumi will have to just bulldoze through them.
“Alright, do what you want,” he spits, and twirls the staff in his hands, dropping again into a fighting stance. Oikawa’s eyes grow larger for a fraction of a second, taking in his feral grin. “But don’t expect me to go easy on you, then”.
There will be bruises, tomorrow morning. Iwaizumi’s got blood on his upper lip from a hit on the bridge of his nose, and Oikawa will be probably limping from the blow that Iwaizumi landed on his knee. It will be a pain to explain to their teachers, even more to Hanamaki and Matsukawa, but this…
… this is exhilarating.
Iwaizumi had almost forgot what it means to fight with someone as challenging as Oikawa. Oikawa is someone he respects, both on the mat and outside of it, someone that he would always trust with his life, someone that he is fully compatible with—
He drops his staff, when the realization hits.
There’s a split second before Oikawa realize he is defenseless, and panic flashes on his face as he tries — ineffectively — to stop the arc of his staff. Iwaizumi sees the panic, but doesn’t have the time to fully realize it before his body is moving on autopilot, hand coming up to protect his solar plexus, fingers closing around the tip of the staff that would have cut the air from his lungs just in time, because he just knew it would it there.
They share a long stare, both heaving with the exertion of the fight, Iwaizumi’s hand locked around Oikawa’s weapon. Iwaizumi looks at Oikawa’s face, finds there the same awareness that he has, and breaks into a large, tired smile.
“We are drift compatible,” he manages around the bubbly feelings in his lungs. “I knew it”.
Iwaizumi’s happy, elated smile falls away as soon as he looks at Oikawa, really looks at him, and Oikawa’s face is drawn closed in terror, and his hands are trembling so much that the staff slips from his fingers, landing on the mat with a muted thud.
“No,” he hears him whisper, hands trembling. He makes an aborted motion, trying to get up and reach out, but it seems to precipitate Oikawa into an even deeper panic. “Nonononono—”
So. Iwaizumi may be an idiot, and an idiot in love, but he’s pretty sure this should not be the reaction when you find out you match with someone.
“What does this mean?” he gets the voice out from the deep pit of anguish that managed to open beneath his ribs. If he thought that Oikawa had been distant the past month, that was nothing like the chasm that managed to open between them in the last half-minute.
Oikawa is not answering him. He is turned away, face carefully held devoid of any emotion, so unlike his usual demeanor that Iwaizumi wants to scream, no matter who will hear them and come for them.
Oikawa tries to move away; Iwaizumi follows before it’s too late.
“Oikawa, what does this mean?” he grabs his sleeve this time, pulling with trembling hands, urgency bleeding into his voice. “Why weren’t we drift compatible back when Washijo matched us but we are now?”
“Because I rigged the test!” Oikawa half-shouts; he twists and turns, getting his arm away from Iwaizumi’s hold. He is breathing heavily, shoulders moving up and down in a rhythm that tires Iwaizumi just by looking at it. His eyes are burning with so many different emotions that Iwaizumi can’t even read them all. “I rigged the goddamn matching, so I wouldn’t be matched with you!”
For something so earth-shattering, Iwaizumi feels like the world doesn’t change much. The ceiling doesn’t fall down, the earth doesn’t open up and swallows him whole, there’s no thunderous approach of the apocalypse. The Shatterdome is silent. Oikawa is just a centimeter away from Iwaizumi’s fingers, so close that he could just barely extend them, and he’ll grab him again.
He does not; because as much as the world doesn’t seem to have changed with Oikawa’s words, Iwaizumi can’t really say the same.
He feels like he can’t breathe.
He barely hears Oikawa’s belated “Iwa-chan—” over the noise of his blood rushing in his ears. He feels hands skittering over his arm, grabbing the sleeve of his jacket and tugging.
There’s a new line of worry on Oikawa’s face now, as he tries to get his attention.
“Iwa-chan, let me explain—”
“How?”
They both flinch at how monotone, how devoid of any emotion his voice sounds. There’s just too much, Iwaizumi thinks; too much, and to what is left is too little.
“How did you do it?”
Oikawa’s shoulders bunch down, and he looks smaller, and scared now. He averts his eyes.
“I just listened to my instincts and did the exact opposite”.
Oikawa isn’t looking at him as he speaks, and this may be the first time Iwaizumi is glad of it.
“Why did you—” Iwaizumi can’t breathe. He can’t think straight, can’t think past Oikawa’s so I wouldn’t be matched with you. “I know I’m not enough, but why—”
Oikawa’s head whips up at these words, eyes shocked wide in disbelief. He opens his mouth, closes it without managing to get out a word, and then his face colors up unexpectedly in red — anger.
“Why are you so dumb, Iwa-chan!” Iwaizumi reels back, mouth open in shock. Oikawa doesn’t stop, keeps going on, his hands balled in fists by his sides. “You are perfect, goddammit, would you just stop and listen to me—”
“But you told me! You rigged the test so you wouldn’t match with me!”
“It’s because I’m in love with you, you idiot!”
Oikawa is trembling, and there are ugly splotches of red on his face; he’s the most scared he’s ever seen him, but Oikawa still holds his head defiantly high and meets his eyes, even as he’s completely and utterly terrified, and Iwaizumi has never felt such raw, bottomless affection for a single disaster of a human being as he feels it now staring up into Oikawa’s face.
Oikawa is beautiful, and his words make absolutely no sense whatsoever.
“Don’t you see it?” There are tears in Oikawa’s eyes, glinting unshed. Iwaizumi isn’t sure if they’re out of anger or out of fright. “The pilots live on borrowed time. Don’t you see it every time the twins are out there? Every drop, every alarm could be their last one. Our last one,” he amends then, mouth twisting ugly around the words.
“And don’t lie and say you don’t feel it too,” he continues, and Iwaizumi wonders how much time Oikawa spent in his own head, here in the dark of the Shatterdome at night, fighting with these feelings for him to be able to articulate them so clearly now. “I saw how scared you were after my incident with Ushiwaka, when I was in the infirmary, and that was just a training accident”.
He’s panting by the end of it, mostly for the maelstrom of emotions that Iwaizumi can still see whirling under his eyes, barely held in check.
“I can’t do it, Hajime,” it’s Oikawa’s last confession, this time in a hushed voice, just as broken as Iwaizumi feels now. “I can’t get into a Jaeger with you knowing that it’s only a matter of time before I lose you”.
Iwaizumi doesn’t say, so you would curse me to think I’m not enough, and neither, so you would curse me to see you dying side by side with someone else, because even if they are true, they’re not what Oikawa needs to hear right now.
Right now, Iwaizumi grabs a handful of Oikawa’s shirt, angrily shaking him.
“If it were so easy to get rid of you, I would have done it way sooner,” he snarls, and then he pulls Oikawa closer, and he kisses him.
Iwaizumi flings himself into the kiss like he does for most of his interactions with Oikawa: completely unprepared, a bit overwhelmed, and totally charmed by the feeling of Oikawa’s clumsy lips. Oikawa’s hands hover around his shoulders, skim on his back, and finally settle at his sides, pulling him closer. Iwaizumi doesn’t complain.
When he steps back, Oikawa’s smile is brilliant.
“Iwa-chan,” he breathes, and his words are soft. “That was a terrible confession, you know”.
Iwaizumi laughs, gentle and unrestrained.
“What’s the point?” he smiles, carefree for the first time after what feels like a whole lifetime, and presses his forehead against Oikawa’s, breaths mingling in the virtual space between them. “You’ll see everything soon enough”.
The kaiju alarm blares through the Shatterdome at 4 AM, jolting Iwaizumi awake. He can feel Oikawa drift to awareness at his side as well, shifting under the comforter where he got all bundled up during the night, leaving Iwaizumi’s feet to freeze and fall off.
“Whyyyyy,” he hears, Oikawa’s whine muffled by the pillow and the atrocious sound of the sirens. “Why can’t they come during fucking daytime?”
And yet, despite that, he’s already mirroring Iwaizumi in getting off the bed, splashing some water on his face, and putting on some clothes.
When the knock comes, Oikawa is struggling with his boots as Iwaizumi goes getting the door.
Sergeant Mizoguchi looks way too put together and pristine for a man doing rounds at 4 AM.
“They’re deploying the King,” he just confirms, straight to the point. The breath itches in Iwaizumi’s throat, and he feels Oikawa’s react pretty much the same way, but he manages to nod in response. “Please report at the Drivesuit Room in five minutes”.
When Iwaizumi turns back, Oikawa is staring at him, determination clear in the straight set of his shoulders. He’s got their aquamarine jackets on his lap, heavy fabric bunched in his fists.
“So, this is it, then?”
He manages half a smile, lips tilted in a curve that manages to convey both elation and sheer terror. Before he realizes he’s moving, Iwaizumi is already kneeling in front of him, hand going to cup his face. He thugs him down, kisses him fiercely, and then rests his forehead against his shoulder.
His hand entwines with the one Oikawa has buried into his jacket and he leans up, leaning his head against Oikawa’s. He smiles.
“The last one to the Drivesuit Room buys dinner”.
Oikawa is still out of breath and trying to kick him in the ass when they step into the Conn-Pod, all donned up in their suites.
“All I’m saying is that my boyfriend is a cheater, Iwa-chan,” he is lamenting as he steps in place, the technician booting up the system. Dauntless King comes alive in a hum of blinding lights as both of them let the technicians of the Shatterdome clamp up everything.
“Dauntless King, your mark is a category III Kaiju,” comes Mizoguchi’s disembodied voice.
Iwaizumi watches the technician hooks up Oikawa’s spinal clamp, the subtle wince of discomfort immediately disappearing, and then Oikawa is staring at him as he goes through the same motions.
The spinal clamp goes in place, and Iwaizumi strengthens his hold on his helmet.
Oikawa’s eyes say, you go first, and Iwaizumi never really managed to say no to him.
“First drop,” he says, lips wobbling as Iwaizumi slips on the helmet.
Iwaizumi manages to wink before the Relay Gel completely fills up his field of vision.
“You still owe me dinner”.
Mizoguchi’s voice comes again, this time in the spectral void of his mind.
“Kitsune and Eagle will be in the Dome, ready to drop in backup. You’ll be the main attacker, and Night Hunter will run defense on the perimeter. Do you copy?”
“Loud and clear, Sergeant,” comes Oikawa’s voice, just as clear.
He feels the Conn-Pod moving, starting his descent.
Initiating neural handshake.
Iwaizumi bites back a smile, feeling the same tilt as it curves up Oikawa’s lips, and plunges headfirst into the drift.