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It's December 21st, the last day of the fall semester, and two hours after his last exam (a grueling anatomy final) finished and nearly 40 hours since the last time he got uninterrupted sleep. Instead of wallowing in anxiety about his grades, basking in post-finals bliss, or lying comatose in his twin-sized bed, Oikawa is stuck in line at the local supermarket.
Oikawa really needs to stop taking advice on how to be a good role model on campus. He definitely needs to stop taking said advice from Sugawara.
Sugawara is honestly a lovely guy. He’s caring, charismatic, and a complete hit with all his residents, turning an ordinarily rowdy freshman dorm into an oasis of controlled chaos in the way that only a capable third-year like Sugawara would be able to. Oikawa begrudgingly respects him for it, even if he suspects most of it is due to bribery (he’s tasted the cookies that Sugawara bakes for his residents when they’re on their best behavior, and he knows he would do whatever it takes to keep them coming, too).
Oikawa just thinks it’s unfair that Sugawara is now the standard for the rest of the Resident Assistants, as if anyone else on the team would be willing to stay up until three in the morning (during finals week, of all times) to reward freshmen for doing their dishes and not clogging up the shower drains.
(He honestly thinks some of Sugawara’s enthusiasm for the role might be a delayed apology to the RAs of years past for all the shit they had to go through. He remembers him and Sugawara giving that particular freshman dorm its awful reputation back in their own first-year.
It's a miracle they ever got hired.)
His own experiences as an RA have been varied, to say the least. Taking on a leadership role was an exciting opportunity, a fine accompaniment to being vice-captain of his college volleyball team, and having the chance to build a community for his residents was a responsibility that Oikawa took very seriously.
What Oikawa didn’t count on, however, was the sheer number of residents who would end up confessing to him throughout his first semester on the job.
Oikawa knew that many residents developed crushes on their RAs. RAs of years past had warned him during trainings to always stay alert, politely decline, and never accept chocolate on Valentine's Day. Oikawa knew the drill, and he had his fair share of admirers in high school, anyway, so he figured it couldn't be much different.
He was wrong.
No part of him was prepared for the onslaught of attention he would get when he accepted the RA role this past summer, right before entering his junior year. Most of his residents had seemingly decided that Oikawa was the perfect fulfillment of their teacher-student fantasy, and every time Oikawa would politely turn them down, they only grew more enthused.
Oikawa had nowhere to run.
He developed a nasty habit of avoiding some of his more persistent residents in the kitchens and bathrooms, choosing to hover outside of entrances and take earlier showers to avoid getting ambushed. As much as he enjoys some extra attention, and as genuinely flattered as he is about their kind-hearted advances, RAs dating their own residents was strictly forbidden. And Oikawa, being a good role model with good intentions, no matter what slander you spread about me, Suga-chan, wanted to avoid fueling their fantasies as much as he possibly could.
All things considered, he supposes it could’ve been worse.
He knew there were at least a handful of residents who either wanted nothing to do with him (and, honestly, there’s no way to account for bad taste), or that Oikawa himself had sworn to hate for all eternity (unless his boss asked, in which case he loved all his residents equally and would never wish them harm, and would definitely never hope that they sprain their ankle on the way to volleyball tryouts.
It’s not Oikawa’s fault that Kageyama did this to him. In what world does a college freshman get a starting lineup position, anyway?)
Oikawa also had the unfortunate luck of needing to parent Ushijima, the volleyball captain, on his floor. He made it a habit to tell Oikawa that he was wasting his time doing night shifts and hosting events for residents when he could be practicing combinations with him instead.
(Oikawa wasn’t allowed to flip off his residents, but he sure did get close.)
In either case, Oikawa was more concerned about the people who were supposed to become his newest best friends, yet were uniquely determined to evade his friendship.
And by people, he really just means one person. Oikawa got lucky enough to have a familiar face from biology lectures on his floor: a fellow junior with spiky hair, whose room was all the way down the hall from Oikawa’s. Oikawa looked forward to having a non-volleyball friend to chat with in the kitchen, to annoy into attending events, to keep him company during open door hours (since apparently store bought cookies weren’t good enough as a persuasion tool for the general public in this day and age).
However, despite the fact that they definitely knew each other and would frequently see each other in classes, this resident never really interacted with his RA outside of mandatory floor meetings, not even when Oikawa, in all his shirtless glory, passed him on his way out of the showers every morning. Oikawa would greet him with an enthused good morning, Iwa-chan!, as any good RA would, and Iwaizumi would avert his eyes, mumbling something akin to a good morning while not looking in his direction. It didn’t even work when Oikawa flashed the winning smile that got everyone to like him instantly.
Oikawa needs everyone to like him instantly.
In fact, he needs everyone to like him so much that he came to Sugawara’s floor in the middle of the night, stared at the flour stuck in his best friend’s hair from a baking experiment gone wrong, and collapsed in his arms, whining and begging Sugawara for any event idea that would a) get his residents to stop hitting on him, and maybe start hitting on each other instead, b) occupy his volleyball rivals long enough to keep him from feeling inferior for just one night, and c) give him a chance to win over the friendship of a certain stubborn third-year.
Sugawara stared at him incredulously when Oikawa finally stopped hugging him, although the antler headband on his head kind of dampened the effect.
“It’s December. Why don’t you just host a holiday party?”
“Everyone’s doing holiday parties! There’s nothing exciting about the expected, Suga-chan. I need something unique. Something that people will actually want to go to.”
“A masquerade?”
“Decorations are too fancy. Ukai-san would never give me the budget for that kind of event.”
“You could buy dinner for all your residents?”
“Suga-chan, I literally have, like, twenty dollars.”
“What about a potluck, or some kind of cooking event?” Sugawara offers, thinking back fondly to his own wildly successful cultural exchange party from October.
Oikawa remembers the fire that one of his residents started after making toast. “Any other ideas?”
“Okay, you don’t want a regular holiday party. What about a New Year’s party?”
“Suga-chan, everyone’s going to be home for New Year’s—”
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Sugawara interrupts him, suddenly excited. He grabs him by the shoulders. “But listen. This could be perfect. You can do a fake New Year’s on the last day of finals, right before everyone goes home. It’ll be like a mix between a holiday party and some weird Oikawa-style extra thing. Most of your residents probably go home for the holidays and never got to go to any kind of New Year’s party. It’ll be exciting, at least for them.” Sugawara pauses before looking at Oikawa mischievously.
“Besides, what happens at midnight on New Year’s?”
Oikawa spends New Year’s at home, cuddled up on the couch and lamenting how far away he is from anyone he’s not related to, but understanding dawns on him immediately. “If I do this right, my residents will be too busy flirting with each other to flirt with me.”
“Right—”
“And,” Oikawa continues excitedly, “Tobio-chan and Ushiwaka won’t get the chance to corner me since I’ll be too busy hosting.”
“Yes, Oik—”
“And!” Oikawa exclaims, high off the adrenaline of a new idea at two in the morning, “I’ll finally get to talk to Iwa-chan!”
“Exactly,” Sugawara says, smiling to himself like the genius he is, “it’s the perfect plan.”
And now that a week has passed, exams have ended, and the time has come to actually set up and host this party that he’s been advertising for the past week, Oikawa regrets ever becoming friends with Sugawara.
He’s the reason, after all, that Oikawa is currently lugging four grocery bags full of refreshments back to his dormitory wing, on his way to host a non-alcoholic party that he was not emotionally (or financially) prepared to deal with.
A New Year’s party. In mid-December.
Oikawa is going to murder Sugawara for this.
The party is scheduled to start at eight, just in time for everyone to return from their own finals. It’s seven-thirty, and Oikawa is currently too busy trying to squash a roach that’s scurrying around in the kitchen instead of finishing up with the decor.
Needless to say, it’s not a good time.
“Need a hand?” someone says from behind Oikawa, and he shrieks, because even though he is old and competent and incredibly wise, bugs still freak him out and he is slightly on edge. Sue him.
“No, it’s okay, I’m fine,” Oikawa starts, before turning his head and seeing Iwaizumi standing in the kitchen entrance, awkwardly scratching the back of his neck and exposing his biceps in the process.
Oikawa forgets what he was saying almost immediately.
“Are you sure?” Iwaizumi says in Oikawa’s pause, taking a step closer to both his RA and the roach giving him grief. “I can take care of this.”
Oikawa is momentarily floored by the fact that this is the longest conversation they’ve ever had directly with each other before he realizes what Iwaizumi is offering and attempts to shoo him away.
“I can’t let you do that, Iwa-chan” Oikawa says, even as Iwaizumi rolls his eyes and steps closer, “taking care of pests is my responsibility, as your friendly neighborhood RA, and I cannot let my residents put themselves in danger—”
Iwaizumi kills the roach in one fell swoop, interrupting Oikawa’s monologue. Oikawa’s mouth drops open.
“There. Didn’t need to make such a fuss. Just knock if you need my help again,” Iwaizumi says, before looking at Oikawa’s shocked expression and laughing quietly to himself, “Shittykawa.”
(Oikawa has previously successfully reconciled the image of the confident, intelligent classmate with the awkward resident he had known up until now, but nowhere does the idea of this cocky bastard calling Oikawa Shittykawa fit into the image.
He texts Sugawara immediately and gets one long voice message of Sugawara loudly cackling to himself, promising to use the nickname no matter how much Oikawa threatens him in response.
Oikawa has never been so thoroughly betrayed or intrigued in his life.)
Oikawa has always worked well under pressure, motivated by an unrelenting fear of failure that forbids him from coming up short.
It serves him well for event coordination.
He gets everything set up five minutes before eight, at which point Sugawara shows up wearing homemade New Year’s glasses bathed in glitter and carrying an old stereo that he borrowed with permission (read: stole while no one was looking) from the supply closet. He’s dragged a bunch of other RAs with him, with Kuroo and Bokuto starting to make enough noise that residents began to curiously (and fearfully) peek their heads out of their rooms. Some of Oikawa’s residents see their RA in the distance and emerge from their rooms, ready to use their opportunity to flirt for good, but Bokuto is ambushing them before they have the chance and Kuroo is attracting the attention of the rest, many of whom recognize him as their woefully unattainable chemistry TA.
Together, they do a remarkable job at gathering all the residents in the common room, where Sugawara had slipped out and returned with a disco ball from who knows where, and encouraging them to stay and enjoy some free snacks and party games.
(No one has ever said no to free snacks and party games.)
Most importantly, the RAs sent from heaven do their job of distracting the residents from Oikawa, who has time to slip into the bathroom for a minute of peace before his own self-constructed chaos unfolds.
He runs into Iwaizumi in the bathroom right then, because a minute of peace is too much to ask for, but it’s the first time Iwaizumi doesn’t immediately look away upon his entrance. Oikawa has to take advantage of the opportunity.
“Are you coming to the party, Iwa-chan?”
Iwaizumi looks away and Oikawa doesn’t like it at all, because why is Iwa-chan being so difficult?, but Iwaizumi is smiling softly, so maybe Oikawa can permit it.
“Why do you always call me Iwa-chan? We barely know each other,” Iwaizumi says, and Oikawa would be worried that he overstepped with the nickname he’s been using all semester, except Iwaizumi is still smiling and he honestly has no right to be mad, considering he called Oikawa ‘Shittykawa’ half an hour ago.
“That’s not true!” Oikawa sputters, almost indignant, and Iwaizumi has the courtesy to laugh at Oikawa’s outburst. “We’ve been in the same classes since freshman year!”
“We never really spoke.”
“You always waved hi to me!”
“That’s because you waved hi first,” Iwaizumi says, and he’s still smiling, so Oikawa takes it as a win. “Still doesn’t explain the familiarity.”
“I’ve heard you say more things about immuno than I care to remember. That bonds people for life. At this point, it would be almost offensive if I didn’t have a nickname for you.”
“You noticed me in class?” Iwaizumi asks, and Oikawa has to laugh, because the star student of the sports therapy department not knowing he’s the star student of the sports therapy department is more ironic than it ought to be.
“Everyone noticed you in class, Iwa-chan.”
“I didn’t care about everyone noticing,” Iwaizumi mutters, but Oikawa barely registers it, his mind still reeling from the hypocrisy of the nickname fiasco.
“Besides,” Oikawa says while Iwaizumi regrets his last words, “how can a cute nickname like Iwa-chan bother you when you had the audacity to call me Shittykawa?”
“Oh, that,” Iwaizumi says, embarrassment coloring his cheeks. “I was with Kageyama-kun and he was complaining about how you treat him during practice. He called you Shittykawa." Oikawa's eyebrows shoot up and Iwaizumi immediately backtracks. "Don't kill him! In his defense, he panicked. Immediately.”
Oikawa stood silently.
“I just really happened to like the nickname. Suits you well.”
“You hang out with Tobio-chan?” Oikawa says, letting the slander go.
“Yeah, I mentor him.”
The universe is out to get Oikawa.
“You mentor Tobio-chan.”
“Yes.”
“Volleyball star, Tobio-chan?”
“Yes.”
“Lovely.”
“He’s a great kid, Shittykawa,” Iwaizumi says, letting the nickname flow so easily that Oikawa can’t even be annoyed at it, not when he says it, “and he looks up to you.”
Oikawa knows this is true. He’s an excellent role model.
“So stop bullying him and give him a chance, okay?” Iwaizumi asks, and when he asks so sweetly, the corner of his lips barely tipping upwards and eyebrows raised in expectation, Oikawa thinks Iwaizumi could probably convince him to commit a felony with him, too.
“Oh, fine, if it means that much to you. Anything for a resident,” Oikawa replies, blushing profusely. He emphasizes the resident part mostly for himself and his traitorous lizard brain. He’s now forced to keep reminding himself that Iwaizumi is his resident and prevent his brain from going into overdrive because somehow, over the course of their first real and sustained conversation, Oikawa forgets that he’s in a position of power and that Iwaizumi is strictly off limits. At least for now.
“Besides,” Iwaizumi says, approaching where Oikawa has been blocking the entrance for their entire conversation, until he’s standing about a foot away but entirely too close for Oikawa’s sanity, “you wouldn’t want anyone to think you have favorites on your floor, would you?”
Oikawa forgets how to breathe.
“Shittykawa, where have you been?” Sugawara says, storming into the bathroom with wild eyes, “we’ve been occupying all your freshmen for like fifteen minutes! They’re almost done with all the cookies already, and they’re getting hungrier.”
Sugawara stares out the door, his face the picture of sheer anxiety. “They’re monsters.”
“Not to fear, Suga-chan!” Oikawa says, released from his trance and back to being his normal level of malfunctioning, “let’s do this.”
“See you soon, Shittykawa,” Iwaizumi says, smiling good-naturedly at Oikawa, as if he didn’t nearly invoke cardiac arrest in him a minute prior.
Two can play at that game.
“See you soon, Iwa-chan!” Oikawa replies, blowing a friendly kiss in Iwaizumi’s direction and watching as his eyes go comically wide at the simple gesture.
Sugawara stares at the both of them in rapid succession before dragging Oikawa out, muttering something about stupid teenagers and their stupid hormones, even though Oikawa was happy to point out that all of them had abandoned their teenage years over the last summer and had now entered the age of stupid 20-somethings and their stupid hormones.
He keeps quiet. He doesn’t think Sugawara would appreciate the correction, and he’s nothing if not responsive to the needs of his dearest friends.
Oikawa doesn’t know what he expected, but he thinks he owes his friends an extra-special holiday gift for everything they did tonight.
It’s nearly midnight, and the party has been a resounding success.
Oikawa can count on one hand how many times any of his residents attempted to talk to him for the purpose of a confession. At some point, almost everyone began to realize that their fellow floormates were actually attractive and interesting people, and many of them had split away into smaller groups to get to know each other, chatting the night away with their newfound friends. Even Kageyama and Ushijima were joining in on the fun, caught in the middle of a conversation between an overactive orange-haired freshman and an equally overactive red-haired junior.
(Oikawa doesn’t think he’s seen either of them on his floor before. He suspects Bokuto dragged them over.
He sees the way that the four of them bond and realizes that Bokuto is an evil and criminally-underrated genius.)
He also took the opportunity to chat with Kageyama before Bokuto’s shrimpy resident stole him away, telling him how impressed he was by his service aces the other day in the practice match. Kageyama’s face lit up so brightly and he seemed genuinely lost for words at the compliment, managing to somehow say a heartfelt thank you to Oikawa. He said it was the best birthday present he could’ve asked for. Oikawa’s face froze as he realized that, yes, Kageyama’s birthday is tomorrow, and, yes, if Iwaizumi had not confronted him in the bathroom, he would’ve been dismissive of Kageyama on his birthday.
Oikawa makes a New Year’s resolution to never be an asshole again.
(He’ll see how well that goes.)
It’s nearly midnight, and Oikawa hasn’t spoken to Iwaizumi much since the bathroom incident, but he sees him glancing over every now and again, and if the circumstances were different, Oikawa wouldn’t hesitate before making a move.
Rules are a pain to follow. Oikawa has never felt it as strongly as he does now.
It’s a minute before midnight and Sugawara leads the eager residents in cheers, getting everyone into the real New Year’s spirit as the clock approaches midnight of December 22nd.
15
“Hey,” Iwaizumi says, sitting down next to Oikawa, who’s taking a break on the corner couch after deciding that Sugawara is more than capable of counting down alone.
14
“Hi,” Oikawa responds, taking care to leave some space between himself and Iwaizumi, not trusting himself in the slightest.
13, 12, 11
“I just wanted you to know that my housing contract ended today. I’ve already moved most of my stuff out.”
10
“Oh… oh?”
9, 8
“Yeah. I was only dorming here for the semester. Already have an apartment off-campus and everything.”
7, 6, 5
“You’re not my resident anymore?”
4, 3, 2
“I’m not your resident anymore.”
1
They lean in.
Happy New Year!
The room is electric, filled with the rush of adrenaline and anticipation from all the potential couples getting to know each other over the course of the night, drunk off of the newfound company and non-alcoholic cider warming their souls and their hearts. The strobe lights bounced beautifully off of Iwaizumi’s cheekbones as Oikawa ran his hand reverently across them, cupping his cheek and finally closing the distance between him and his now-former resident. No one paid them any attention, isolated as they were in the corner of the room, and Iwaizumi took full advantage of that fact, running his hand down Oikawa’s arm before holding his free hand ever so gently in his own, refusing to separate even for a breath.
“I’ve wanted to do that since sophomore year,” Iwaizumi replies, out of breath and shaking as Oikawa gently presses a kiss to his cheek. Oikawa processes what he says a moment later, leaning back in confusion.
“Sophomore year? I thought you didn’t like me this whole time. You never even said a proper hello to me before today.”
“You were shirtless every time. I had to protect myself.”
And Oikawa laughs at this confession, pleased with his explanation, but Iwaizumi continues onward.
“Besides, I knew you can’t date your residents. By the time I wanted to just… ask you out, or something, you were my RA. I didn’t want to do that to you.”
Oikawa stares at Iwaizumi in disbelief, mouth dropping open for the third time in one night (and, really, he should probably get used to it if he’s going to be around Iwaizumi more often now). It’s the most considerate thing Oikawa has ever heard.
He doesn’t think he could like him more.
“Well,” Oikawa starts, giggling from the joy of it all, “Happy New Year to us, then.”
“Happy New Year, Shittykawa.”
“Hey!”
He gets a kiss in response, and Oikawa admits that he can definitely learn to live with this.
They can clean up the mess in the morning.