Work Text:
The first time Iwaizumi's eyes flicker over Oikawa Tooru wasn't all quite the same as the last.
First is where Oikawa is sitting on a stool, wood colored light blonde and legs teetering under the arch of his bare back. Two small dimples at the bottom of his spine, a squadron of freckles on his neck that Iwaizumi can guarantee Oikawa has never seen. Light brown hair tickling the edges of his ears, skin unmarked and uncharted, stretched taut over muscles and bones and places that could be kissed.
He was in the center of the front of the classroom, being the model for the photography course that Iwaizumi majored in. The theme that day was "shadows," shadows, a dark image or figure cast on a surface by a body intercepting light. That was Oikawa, that was him through and through, he was intercepting the light and maybe darkness existed just to flicker behind him, sewn to the pads of his feet.
He wasn't classically beautiful, but he there was something pretty about him, and it made him all the more interesting.
Iwaizumi could see the ridges of his spine through his skin, the angles of his hipbones, and he felt like his lungs were getting pounded into his back.
The first time that Iwaizumi would get the chance to graph the skin and lines of muscle, he was half asleep, early hours of the morning, nervous out of his mind.
The last time, Iwaizumi would be wide awake, late at night, not nervous anymore but just tired and sorry.
The first sound he'd ever heard from Oikawa was a small laugh, one that stole the breath from his lungs and left him with his heart in his throat, fingertips tapping against the screen of his camera.
The last sound he'd ever heard from Oikawa was the footsteps of him walking away, the sound right before that being the click of a door closing, leaving Iwaizumi with lungs that had too much air now, fingertips pushing his camera away, away, away.
•
"I like being a mess," Oikawa had stated, fork carving a circle in the air as he spoke.
"Mess?"
They were in a restaurant that could hardly be qualified as one, just a hole in the wall that was put together with bricks and light bulbs covered over with dust. It was their third date, the one where the tense laughter in conversations has died down and they can actually talk without feeling the ghost of fingertips scratching at their words.
"Mess. A disaster. A wreck."
"I know what a mess is. I guess I just don't know what you're saying."
He pressed his glass to his lips, fingertips pressed against the droplets, cold like Oikawa's hand under the table.
"I don't want to be the same every day."
Oikawa was wearing a blue pullover, faded and worn around his slim shoulders. Gentle slope of his nose, light slipping along his eyelashes, Iwaizumi could slowly feel him making a home in his veins.
It terrified him.
"I want to live like I'm not even living, Iwa-chan." His fork finally found its way between his lips, jaw moving as he chewed. "I'll end up on the ground one day and my heart won't beat and I'll be dead. It'll happen whether I've done everything perfectly or not. So it doesn't really matter to me, y'know, Iwa-chan? Doing things the right and proper way doesn't matter to me. Because taking the interesting route will get you to the same place. There's really nothing to lose."
Iwaizumi felt suddenly self-aware to an incredible extent, ironed crease in his shirt feeling like a mountain and straight spine feeling like a train track that was about to cause a wreck.
"I don't like familiarity or too much of something," Oikawa said, eyes cast up. He glanced down, then to the side, eyes ricocheting like the reflection of a light that wanted to run away.
Shadows, Iwaizumi thought, watching Oikawa.
"Because too much of one thing just doesn't make it special anymore."
He was looking straight at Iwaizumi now, and he felt heat subtracting from his skin as he shivered. The corners of Oikawa's lips pulled up into a smirk, eyes half-lidded now. Iwaizumi almost flinched, almost turned away, because that smirk always made him feel like he was fraying at the fingertips. It told him to come closer, it told him to stay away, it shot a rush through him and made him think of gentle touches and screaming winds.
"I don't like things to last a long time."
His words were a whisper now, just brushing through the air, low but strong like a challenge.
Iwaizumi shook his head, lips curling around his chopsticks as he brought a piece of pork to his mouth, "Well, I think you've got what you like."
Oikawa tilted his head, hair bouncing and lips moving in thought. "What do you mean?"
"You've looked like a mess ever since I first saw you."
Oikawa balled up his napkin, hurling it towards Iwaizumi's chest indignantly. "Mean!"
Iwaizumi just laughed, voice warm but chest cold, "Stupid Oikawa."
The first time that he had been to that restaurant, it had been in the evening when it was cold and they'd kissed right afterwards.
The last time, it had been four in the morning and the doors had been locked and the only kiss he'd gotten was from the wind outside, curling against his cheeks like an apology.
•
It always spun a storm in Iwaizumi's mind, how gentle touches led to warm skin against warm skin and slides of tongues.
Fingers underneath a camera strap, hand moving down and down and pushing up until it was lifted over his head. There was a soft scratch of metal against wood as the camera was set down on a table somewhere, and the hands were back on Iwaizumi, caresses like a hurricane all over his shoulders and chest and stomach. His shirt would come off eventually, and so would Oikawa's, then the rest of their clothes, fallen on the floor like they'd been dropped from the sky.
Everything with Oikawa was almost a chiasmus, entirely reversed to create some larger point, all opposites and likeliness and a dizzying tsunami of everything that was different. He was cold, he was like freshly fallen snow and the kisses of the air when the sun was down. And he was hot, he was searing, he was like his own fire and he burned everything he touched. He was sunsets after a week of rain in June and he was ice under your fingernails.
Oikawa was everything and nothing in between, he was eternity and ephemeral all at once, and Iwaizumi didn't know what to think of it.
He didn't know much of what to do when they ended up with sheets tangled around their ankles, hands against hips and moving down to thighs, just to come back up and just lightly drag against collarbones and leave stars behind.
Iwaizumi had trouble remembering nights with Oikawa, or maybe he had trouble forgetting them.
He didn't know which one was worse.
•
Their dates weren't often, Iwaizumi constantly shouldering through his courses and Oikawa not being able to get him to ditch class.
The restaurant was clean, nice enough to pass for a button-down and comfortable enough to wear jeans. It was their first time out in a while, first time they'd gotten the chance to hold hands on top of the table and feed each other bites more often than actually eating it themselves.
Oikawa was in some sort of t-shirt, white and plain white like a polaroid of the sun, neckline a V that sloped down and whispered against his collarbones. It was some form of casual that still made him look beautiful, still made Iwaizumi's eyes flicker to the freckle in the hollow of his throat and start counting down the seconds until he could kiss it again. His pants were simple khakis, his legs looking long and long and long and sometimes Iwaizumi wondered how something so well put together could be so torn apart.
His light eyes were currently scanning the menu, stopping now and then just to keep trailing across the page. Iwaizumi already knew what to order for himself, and he'd already waved off the waiter twice to let Oikawa keep browsing.
"Hey, are you ready yet?"
"Hush, Iwa-chan. I have to pick only the most perfect meals for my most perfect-"
"If you don't pick something in sixty seconds, I will throw the water into your hair."
Oikawa's chin instinctively tilted up, tipping his curls just an inch further from Iwaizumi. He murmured something under his breath, something like "Rude Iwa-chan, not caring about my finely-tuned tastes," and stopped his finger on a dish in the menu.
When the waiter stopped by this time, they knew what to say, ordering their food quickly and watching him go off into the kitchens. Iwaizumi kept his eyes on the swinging of the doors until he felt Oikawa's fingers pull away from his. He looked over just to see his hands clutch at his stomach, his lips working in some form of thought, shoulders curling in slightly.
"You okay?"
He asked because he didn't want to hear Oikawa complaining about something for the rest of the night. Because Oikawa was a whiner and was loud and annoying.
Not because he cared for him and seeing Oikawa hurt felt like a bullet to his own back. Not because he really wanted to know if he was alright, if he was hurting, if he could help.
Of course not.
When Oikawa excused himself once the food came and rushed to the restroom, Iwaizumi's fingers tapped against the table. Because he was hungry, he'd waited for a while, no, he wasn't worried.
When Oikawa hadn't come back after half an hour, Iwaizumi was pulling at the corners of his napkin. It was because the way it'd been folded into a crane was too much for him, too much for the gentle curves of casualness that he liked. It wasn't because he was worried.
And when he got up to go check on Oikawa, it was because the food was getting cold.
He wasn't worried.
Iwaizumi pushed his chair away with the backs of his knees, standing up and starting for the men's room. He pushed through the door, and as soon as his eyes flickered over the row of stalls, he caught the middle one half open and Oikawa on his knees.
He rushed through and pushed the stall open, dropping down behind him and setting his palm on Oikawa's trembling spine. His head ducked down into the bowl, shoulders curving in on himself as he heaved. Iwaizumi pushed his bangs from his forehead, not for some charitable act or because he cared, but he didn't want to hear the complaints of sweaty hair later.
Iwaizumi would never hear the end of it if Oikawa ended up being sick and he didn't help. That was the only reason that he kissed at the top of his ear, rubbed small circles on his back, held him close from behind until he was just shaking.
That was the only reason.
•
There were always a lot of things that Iwaizumi wanted to know about Oikawa Tooru.
He wanted to know why his hands shook sometimes, wanted to know how his tears would fit between his lips. He wanted to know how much his knees would shake when the world was falling around their ears, because Oikawa seemed so strong sometimes.
Sometimes.
Other times, Iwaizumi didn't know what to do, didn't know what to do when his fingers were spread across shaking shoulders and there were eyes going out the window, looking but not seeing, breathing but not living. Iwaizumi could feel an unraveling hurricane under Oikawa's skin, could feel bones held together by fraying thread.
When he looked at Oikawa on these days, just hollow and like a damaged photograph, he had a storm inside him.
(I'd kiss you if you were dead.)
It always felt like Oikawa Tooru was too much for him, but at the same time, it was like Iwaizumi didn't have enough.
(You want the world, I'll give you mine.)
(He offered him the world, he said he had his own.)
He felt most of the time like his stomach was in his throat when he looked at Oikawa. Like there were flames in the hollows of their kisses, like their fingers were stitched together, like their eyes reflected light when they were beside each other. He didn't love him, though. Couldn't, shouldn't, love was just a shout into a world where he wasn't the only one shouting. He didn't love Oikawa Tooru.
And when Oikawa was just reduced to warm skin in his lap and gentle lips against the skin of his cheek, when Iwaizumi reached up and carded his hands through his hair, he almost wanted to cry. It wasn't love, it wasn't.
When Oikawa kissed the shutter button of his camera before he took a picture, Iwaizumi could feel his fingertips ache and his bones drop out of his body. It wasn't love.
When Oikawa slid his hands under the camera strap just to turn it around so that it wasn't twisted, when he moved his hand from Iwaizumi's shoulder up to his neck and around to trace the curve of his jaw, Iwaizumi felt an earthquake in his chest. It wasn't love.
The first time Oikawa had done all of these things, all Iwaizumi could do was push away and deny.
The last time, strangled by storming thoughts of please don't go, he realized that it was.
•
"I told you, idiot. Stay still."
The bed was still warm, floor cold against his knees as Iwaizumi knelt in front of Oikawa, fingers wrapped around his camera and eye pressed to the viewfinder. His shutter button was quick, a series of shots being captured one after the other like bullets.
"You shouldn't be so picky, Iwa-chan, with a beauty like this at your disposal~"
Iwaizumi's camera was always on his nightstand, on standby in case he ever felt the need to take a quick picture. Sometimes it was the shapes moving behind closed curtains, sometimes the refraction of something in a water glass, sometimes just the pattern of the wooden floor.
But, today, he woke up and found Oikawa on his side, one arm stretched out and fingertips brushing the headboard. Head against his shoulder and the borrowed button-down from Iwaizumi falling around his shoulders, his collarbones rose under his skin, the sheets a mess around his hips. His eyes were closed, eyelashes so dark against pale skin, skin that almost seemed to be a source of light from the sun that was curling around him. His hair was up in every direction, some sort of disturbed prettiness that drew Iwaizumi's blood right to the surface of his skin. There was light slipping along his eyelashes too, so small that it made Iwaizumi's breath come in fractions and his heart slip. One eyelash had fallen, lone, sitting on his right cheekbone, changing the plane of skin and skin and skin.
He was beautiful, almost too beautiful, and Iwaizumi wasn't even taking pictures because he wanted to. He was taking them because he felt like he needed to, and as soon as he'd moved to get out of bed and Oikawa had woken, he almost shouted at him to stay still. Don't move, don't move, don't.
Oikawa was never really the type of aesthetics that could be captured in a picture. He was like the moon blown wide on a night that was far away from people, when the stars seemed to laugh and there was some streak of light up high that you could only guess about. It was impossible to fully understand what it was that pounded Iwaizumi's veins to his wrists, impossible to grasp what it was that made him feel like he was a living inconsistency that was held together by kisses too fast to remember.
He was zooming in on the shadow across his neck from the curve of his chin when Oikawa spoke softly.
"Iwa-chan?"
Iwaizumi hummed out a response, fingers holding the shutter button until it focused, and he took a picture.
"Thank you."
Cheeks already warming, Iwaizumi continued to toy with the angle, dropping to another knee, "What for?"
"I don't know," Oikawa took a deep breath, and Iwaizumi took a picture of each frame where his chest rose.
"It's just that doing things the right way, not having them to be a mess... it isn't so hard when you're with me."
This time was just like the last, and Iwaizumi found himself choked on "I love you."
•
When they broke, it wasn't all that big. It wasn't ugly (it was), it wasn't a torrid push and pull, it wasn't dramatic. It was easy, some could say (not Iwaizumi).
At some point, the polaroid kisses stopped being enough. Thinking back, Iwaizumi wasn't sure when it was when his heart stopped beating faster for Oikawa.
(it never did)
He wasn't sure when they stopped laying so close together, when what was only a sheet between them felt like a forever of distance.
"I told you that I didn't like things to last for a long time."
He hadn't seen it coming. Or maybe he did. Maybe he was trying to fight it off because Oikawa felt like he was his, and he like he was Oikawa's and all that was in between.
"Remember, too much of something doesn't make it special anymore, Iwa-chan. I guess we're not special anymore for either of us."
He was wrong, he was so wrong that Iwaizumi felt like he could just about grab his arm and force their chests together but everything was moving in fast motion and all he could do was stand and watch the world pass him by (Oikawa was his world).
"Just do something for me."
He was like a gray sky. So beautiful, but he didn't want to be. Iwaizumi didn't know if he was losing something or if something was losing him. Maybe it was both.
"Don't forget about me. Please."
He'd made love to him into the empty sheets for the last time before he left, and he got to know how his tears really did fit between his lips (perfectly).
"Don't forget me, Hajime."
When he left, Iwaizumi's eyes followed him, and so did his heartbeat. He traced his bare back until it disappeared, the same back with the dimples and ridges of the spine that he'd first taken a picture of. He didn't touch the camera this time, just watched his figure grow smaller and smaller until he wasn't sure if his eyes were blurred with hot tears or if he'd gone.
Heart beating in reverse, breaths going backwards.
Could I ever forget Oikawa Tooru?
Years pass and he still feels the ghost of Oikawa's hands turning the camera strap on his shoulder, still feels him in the pocket of his jeans and the knots of his shoelaces.
Never, dumbass.
Never.