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Sometimes the coach cancels practice.
And that’s okay; the captain always tells them beforehand. But Oikawa is a volleyball geek, and Iwaizumi is his best friend who is bound by obligation to accompany him in everything he does.
That includes staying at school after-hours, only for Oikawa to cancel his plans for solo practice (it wouldn’t have been solo, Iwaizumi says but doesn’t complain), opting instead to sit leisurely in their now-empty classroom, where he claims looks absolutely beautiful when the sun hits just right. True enough, there is a sunflower glow to it, and dust particles suspended in the light.
Iwaizumi never quite outgrew his childhood habit of picking small flowers.
He’d spun them on their fragile stems between his fingers, touch light enough that they hadn’t broken, and watched the petals go round in blurs of purple and pale yellow as he and Oikawa headed to Room 2-4. In his other hand there are more, because Oikawa had been engrossed with something on his phone and hadn’t told him this time to let the wildlife rest.
It’s a quieter afternoon, Iwaizumi notices. The way everything seems to still doesn’t escape him, painting the picture of some warm afternoon when they were children, had nothing better to do, and spent the day lying down on the floor of Oikawa’s room with a fan blowing hot air into their faces.
Oikawa, he remembers saying then. A single world, spoken to the ceiling and left unanswered. It was more confirmation than anything, that someone was there and suffering in the sweltering heat with him. If he racked his brains for it, maybe he could hear Oikawa grunting in response. He’s still not sure if he did.
The classrooms at Aoba Johsai are considerably cooler.
There isn’t any interesting thing apart from his little flowers, so he focuses on that, and arranges and rearranges them in rows on his chosen desk. Oikawa had adopted a relaxed posture on the seat next to him, scrolling with less than focused eyes on whatever social media app he had open. His expression is less boredom and more the kind that means not all his facial muscles are engaged, and Iwaizumi is careful not to jostle him, letting Oikawa’s left hand settle in his space.
They’re not ignoring each other, Iwaizumi muses. This is just how it is; the comfortable silence, the lack of questions or judgement between them. You-do-you, and yet somehow it isn’t a glaringly solo act. Like Oikawa and his volleyball practice, had it pushed through.
It stays like that for a time: Oikawa scrolling and Iwaizumi fiddling with—he didn’t even know what they were called; sumire?—until Iwaizumi shot an impromptu, impassive look over at his best friend’s hand, settled close to his right elbow, and got an idea.
Maneuvering himself on the desk chair, Iwaizumi picked up a flower with a longer stem gingerly, and measured how that looked; if it was going to be enough.
Oikawa didn’t so much as flinch when Iwaizumi took his hand; didn’t so much as look up from his phone. But when Iwaizumi started wrapping a little weed around his finger, Oikawa looked over at him with veiled curiosity, watching how expertly Iwaizumi’s hands moved about something that had been, up to that point, child’s play. Neither he nor Iwaizumi are children now, two beat-up boys at the tender age of sixteen. Distractedly, Oikawa thought he and Iwaizumi grew up rather well. Watching the piece of grass transform, he also thought that, around Iwaizumi, he was capable of feeling so old.
Must be part of the deal, for spending so long with someone. The end and beginning started to merge—not that he ever did mind. At the moment he feels maybe like he’s twenty, on the way to fulfilling his plans to probably conquer the world.
Iwaizumi focuses his hooded gaze on the flower he’s trying to place in the center of the ring.
His forehead, for once, doesn’t crease under his concentration, instead pleased and enjoying the little craft. Oikawa’s skin color complimented the flower beautifully, and for a fleeting time Iwaizumi had the nagging sense that he’d like to trace small patterns over the back of Oikawa’s hand. Tap the bump of every knuckle, one by one.
Oikawa doesn’t look like he’d mind, eyes still glazed over as he tries to read something on his mobile—so he does.
He’s been told he has rough palms; it comes with being the volleyball team’s future ace—so he treats Oikawa’s setter hands with a delicateness he often reserved for flowers. Over each knuckle, like he’d said. Up and down the grooves and tell-tale placement of bone, moving to follow the veins in his hand and tracing over those, too. They look fascinating, and unconsciously, he starts running a thumb over them in steady, gentle motions.
Oh, there it is, he thinks. The light Oikawa was talking about, hitting the ring and Oikawa’s hand in a way that doesn’t make him catch his breath. Rather, he exhales a breath he hadn’t known he was holding.
Gently—gentler, if he could—he places his left hand beneath Oikawa’s, supporting the involuntary curve of fingers there with his own; places the other on the opposite side, and then he lifts it to his lips. His eyes droop further, as if being wholly conscious would break the serenity of the gesture.
The contact lingers, breath blowing softly on just-traced hand, before Iwaizumi brushes his lips over Oikawa’s knuckles again and puts it just as gently back onto the desk.
He goes back to fiddling with the other flowers, gaze soft and downcast, and Oikawa doesn’t move.
Oikawa doesn’t move for a while.
He’s seated in an area of the room where the curtains hit his face just right and so the sun is obstructed from view. And Iwaizumi, on the other hand, is haloed by phantom ichor, outlined against the window and the other buildings of Seijoh, Midas-touched.
Oikawa blinks out of a stupor, and puts his device down with a speed akin to slugs.
It makes a light tack on the desk, and he steadies his breathing.
Hyperaware of how the ingenious piece wraps delicately around his digit, Oikawa moves his hand closer benignly; observing and finding that while he’s generally relaxed, a feeling he hasn’t identified has flooded its way into his chest, similar to other times Iwaizumi’s done something seemingly mindless like this. He exhales microscopically, like if he blows on the ring it might break, and tugs it off, so slowly.
He turns it in his fingers and casts a thoughtful glance at Iwaizumi’s right hand.
He takes its familiar, calloused weight in his and slips the flower ring onto the same finger as it had been on Oikawa’s. And Oikawa watches it for a few moments, trailing the outlines of Iwaizumi’s knuckles and marveling at the instinctual way his hand has learned to curl over his.
It’s too much—this ochred moment, and because of that it feels out of place, for Oikawa to smile even when affection tugs at his mouth just so.
And so, he brings Iwaizumi’s hands to his lips and kisses; solid, and yet, wispy.
Iwaizumi feels all of it—the softness and the exhale—and doesn’t stir.
Until Oikawa has placed his hand back on the desk with a startling solemnity, he doesn’t even think, and even then, with the sky darkening in the sun’s descent, and Oikawa back on his phone; he only manages it’s okay—cool, even—that sometimes the coach cancels practice.