Chapter Text
Kageyama awoke the next day in a rather comfortable bed with fluffy sheets and even fluffier pillows. His head pulsed with a faint rhythm, eyes glued shut with heaviness. The usual black that shrouded his sight when he closed his eyes, tinted red with a faint glow. He gave a breathy sigh. He really did have to install some curtains on his windows for mornings like these.
Something tickled at the end of his nose and, subconsciously, the young man found himself nuzzling the soft feathery texture, manoeuvring closer to the source of heat nestled by his side.
The King sighed, “Good Morning, Yuki.”
A sleepy voice mumbled in answer, “Good Morning.”
Kageyama took no particular mind, his mind still clouded over with a lethargic haze, merely muttering his next words to himself as if stating an interesting fact, “Yuki can speak?” He had no idea that dogs were capable of that. Is that why Ushijima gifted her to him?
The warmth by his side shifted noticeably and after a few moments, something slapped his arm, the sudden pain immediately shocking him awake.
"What the -"
"This is Yuki speaking," Oikawa spoke plainly, an unimpressed expression set upon his face. "She's quite thirsty and your fridge is empty."
Kageyama blinked before jumping out of his bed - quite literally - only for his legs to get tangled in the sheets. He landed flat in his ass, a signature scowl set upon his face as he fought the pink hue that started to dust the surface of his cheeks. "What are you doing here?"
Oikawa seemed to have already guessed his line of thought, merely rolling his eyes before reaching to grab a bottle - Kageyama’s water bottle - from his night table and gulped its contents down. Smacking his lips, he gave account in a rather bored tone, "You got drunk and I ended up having to take you home."
"Then why are you here?"
The man in question scoffed. "Surely you don't expect me to go home by myself that late. More so in such a strange city with no one I know to call upon ~"
Kageyama wanted to argue that it's Tokyo in Japan and Oikawa was very much Japanese even if he spent the last few years in Argentina but then the semantics of that whole idea would probably just be deliberately ignored and gloss over the other’s head entirely.
So instead of wasting time actually refuting his senpai, the Grand King raised an eyebrow and appeared just as irritated as he felt. "And you chose my bed to make your stay?"
"It's not as if you have a guest room and I refuse to sleep on a couch."
Well, at least that was believable.
Oikawa got out of the bed and walked over to the wardrobe braced against the other side of the bed, sifting through the other’s clothes randomly before settling on a choice of a freshly laundered sweatshirt before trudging to the other end of the apartment towards the kitchen. Kageyama’s eyes refused to leave his frame the entire time.
It wasn’t as if it was the first time that Kageyama met Oikawa after high school. They never stopped encountering each other even after they both joined the national teams. The series of losses and victories that they won in setting for teammates in different venues of different championships made his head whirl. Not that it was hard to keep track, He could rattle off the set scores, dates and scheduled times of each match with no problem at all. But still...
Kageyama stood, untangled himself and followed Oikawa to the other side of the room.
Every encounter lasted a day at most, days that came every few months and amounted to many weeks once you counted back at the end of the year, yet, even with Kageyama’s exceptional observation skills and innate perception, he couldn’t quite wrap his head around the change that came over Oikawa’s entire personality.
If he thought about it, Oikawa had always been incomprehensible.
No, not in the sort of way one would consider another person mysterious or a puzzle to solve. (Pfft, Iwaizumi would quickly call him out on his outrageous behaviour the minute he got to know of it)
Rather, Oikawa Tooru had always been incomprehensible because he had a personality that Kageyama could easily comprehend but a personality that never could be used to actually predict the other’s actions.
When he first met his senpai, Oikawa was one who didn’t really pay him any mind, just sporting a soft smile and made his way over to irritate his best friend with whatever idiotic comments he had at that time. Yet, as soon as his kouhai’s talent as a setter became more apparent, Kageyama was the only person that got treated with hostility rather than the usual praise and flattery he received from his coach and other teammates. Perhaps it was that which made the young man interested in his senpai - to receive a different reaction rather than the usual generic response - though he felt more lost than anything else not knowing where he went wrong.
Why was he treated like that? Oikawa as his senpai had a couple of years experience more than him and more nurtured skills than he cared to openly admit. Admiration that Kageyama had displayed for him seemed to be interpreted differently as opposed to the same admiration that came from others. The same appreciative gratitude and gentle smile that Oikawa had shown Kageyama when they first met could be mistaken as a fever dream rather than a distant memory.
Knowledge that that shared smile wasn’t a fever dream made his relationship with Oikawa feel unfulfilled, made their bouts of volleyball practices inefficient and made Kageyama only more frustrated.
High school was the time when Kageyama realised what might have been the reason Oikawa treated him so differently.
Because it was his first year at Karasuno High when Kageyama discovered his powers as a Tengu and learned of the kodama tree that stood at the center of Oikawa’s hometown when he passed by that Summer to get to the Tokyo Training Camp a few months later.
Ideally, it would have been easier to dismiss Oikawa’s behaviour as pure jealousy of Kageyama’s budding talent as a setter. That could have prompted Oikawa to distance himself from the younger man - the existence of a threat who assumed the role of an irritating kouhai that looked up to him too much. But the addition of a supernatural element to his life, that his own physical talent as a setter was directly influenced by some blessings his family’s ancestors received a few centuries earlier from some kami.
It really didn’t seem fair and if Kageyama was in Oikawa’s position, he probably would have felt that the other was too unbearable as well.
Was that where the hurt was supposed to come in?
Cobalt eyes spied as Oikawa leaned to the side, draining the remaining contents of the milk box in front of him into a stirring pot - the milk that Kageyama had been saving for his morning protein shake before he went for today’s grocery run the said man noticed disdainfully - before wiping his lips and looking over to the place where the other stood aimlessly behind him, blankly staring.
“If you want to help, just grab some painkillers and sit down. Your soup will be ready in a minute.”
Kageyama blinked once. Twice.
“Soup?”
“Hangover soup,” Oikawa sighed in a resigned manner. “You obviously don’t drink much. People usually know their boundaries, and even bring a plus one on the nights they choose to let loose.”
So, his ‘friends’ did leave without him.
“More so the case for lightweights.” Kageyama didn’t need to look up to know of the smirk on his senpai’s face. Still, he didn’t feel like refuting anything that early in the morning, especially when the other person in question was Oikawa.
So he obeyed and took a seat by the dining table and in a matter of a minute exactly Oikawa set a steaming bowl of soup in front of him. It was strange, a creamy white liquid bristling with tiny unknown herbs he definitely didn’t have in stock in his kitchen with one soft-boiled egg floating in the middle. A half-burnt buttered toast lay on a side plate gently pushed towards him.
“What is it?” Kageyama asked for a second time, in clear disbelief that Oikawa can actually make edible things with the same hand he could knock those ridiculous serves of his.
Oikawa looked at him irritated, the answer already obvious to the redundant question. He enunciated his words slowly this time. “Hangover soup.”
Kageyama scowled in response, already embarrassed for reflexively asking the same question twice. “It’s not Japanese.”
“So what? You only eat Japanese food for breakfast or something.”
“I don’t eat much for breakfast.”
“Figures with how permanently constipated you look all the time.” No wonder Iwaizumi calls him a crappy person. Oikawa Tooru really doesn’t have a filter when it comes to running his mouth.
Kageyama sighed, taking his spoon and poking at the egg floating at the top. “Is this an Argentine dish?”
“No. Columbian.”
He looked up again. Oikawa now scrolling through the social media feed on his phone that had been on the side table. The messy bedhead of brown locks clearly untouched, eyes still a bit bleary from sleep and body a bit stiff in its movements as he made his way to sit on the seat next to his kouhai. Save for his rough, blunt manner of speech, his senpai still took time to immediately make something for the other though he also just awoke.
These situations where Oikawa suddenly displays out of the ordinary behaviour more thoughtful than hostile was new and part of the change that came with adulthood Kageyama supposed. Of course, it wasn’t as if he became an entirely new person moving abroad. Oikawa was Oikawa. One person that still had Iwaizumi remain as his best friend, that still had a burning passion to defeat all of his competitors in volleyball and still possessed that irresistible charm as a guy who could easily fit in any and everywhere he went. Differences complicated things and it was undeniable that his senpai had a certain difference in his demeanour.
One difference it seemed where the competitive and ambitious nature that came with his passion for volleyball wasn’t a defining feature of his relationship that he shared with Kageyama but unnecessary baggage of a bygone era. That freshness of new change. Was it an Argentine thing?
The differences didn’t make Oikawa any more incomprehensible anyway. And honestly, if Kageyama did continue to think about it now, the young setter was sure that his head would spin more, the dull throbbing having not disappeared for an instant the moment he awoke.
"Anyway," Oikawa yawned slightly before making a slight stretch, "You owe me for transport costs, hangover treatment and general first response. Payment is restricted to only via food or financial transaction. So if you really wanted my help with that thing, I suggest you pay up."
Kageyama froze. Least to say, he had no idea what that thing was. As much as he was a lightweight and drunk off his ass from yesterday, he still didn’t think he would vent about that problem to Oikawa in the first place.
The other man looked at his sweatshirt, thumbing the edge of Kageyama’s long-sleeve absentmindedly. “Don’t keep me waiting for you to decide on the method, Tobio-chan ~ You should know I don’t give things for free.” His calm expression didn’t match the teasing lilt of those words.
Kageyama nervously spooned a mouthful of the soup in his mouth with his other hand, gulping the contents, hoping to swallow the heavy lump weighing on his throat with it.
The click of his door opening didn’t escape his notice even as his eyes noticed Oikawa’s sudden movements, turning to his side to look at the new occupants that shuffled themselves into the apartment with audible yawns and grumpy groans. The new duo that entered clearly shocked at the unexpected guest in the abode of the Japanese National Team’s setter judging from their loss of words.
“Da-Dai Osama?”
“Oya? Osama?”
Right. He had forgotten Hinata and Bokuto were coming over today.