Archive of Our Own ^beta

LOCKED DOWN: JAPAN’S MOST ELIGIBLE BACHELOR OFF THE MARKET?
OIKAWA TOORU SPOTTED LOCKING LIPS WITH JAILBREAK CO-STAR IZUMI REN

The headline flashes tauntingly at the top of Iwaizumi’s feed. Normally he doesn’t bother reading the tabloids. Half the time they’re complete fabrications, and the other half there’s so little substance there’s no real story being told, just a quick attention grab to try and be the first with what may or may not be a scoop.

Oikawa Tooru certainly isn’t a stranger to paparazzi. He’s been the country’s leading young actor for the better part of the decade. He isn’t even a stranger to scandals, per se; his early twenties were full of wild parties attended by beautiful people. As far as Iwaizumi knew, nothing illegal had ever occurred at any of those soirees, and the worst the tabloids could say about them was that they were too loud or too frequent, and how would so much frivolity affect his budding career?

(It hadn’t hindered him in the slightest.)

The picture attached to the headline isn’t even that scandalous, aside from the fact that the pair framed in the center are definitely in a public park. At first glance it could even be mistaken for a casual conversation, Oikawa’s head bent towards Izumi-san’s as if she beckoned him to listen to a secret. No matter what angle Iwaizumi holds his phone, though, the photo is clearly a kiss. They aren’t holding hands, but the way she has one hand twined around his arm it looks like they might have been walking arm-in-arm prior to the photo being taken. The other hand is placed delicately at the nape of his neck, sleekly manicured fingers teasing the small hairs there, the biggest indication that this is more than just two people having a private conversation. Oikawa’s face isn’t completely visible from this angle, but Izumi-san’s is, and there is a lovely blush on her cheeks that may or may not have been photoshopped on for flair. Most damning of all are the lips pressed to hers, too firm to be convincingly chaste, lips that can’t belong to anyone else but the man in her clutches.

Some of the comments on the article claimed that Ren-san, as she was known to her fans, was a perfect match for him. The maturity of an older woman would be good for the capricious Oikawa Tooru. Others lamented that the age difference was too much. That she was preying on the poor, innocent Toto for nefarious purposes. Never mind they were both adults and she was barely past thirty, only about four or five years older than them.

Iwaizumi doesn’t know why it makes his chest fill with lead. The heaviness settles over his shoulders as he clicks out of the article and returns to his scrolling. His thumb brushes his screen on autopilot, his usual routine of checking the news and seeing what his friends are up to, thrown off by the bizarre news. Instead of relaxing after a long day of press for his own upcoming film, his mind won’t let go of this one ridiculous headline.

For all his appeal and charisma, the one immutable fact that everyone knows about Oikawa Tooru is that he doesn’t date. 

Iwaizumi hadn’t believed it when he’d first returned to showbiz at 18, a former child actor who had left the spotlight a decade before to live life as a somewhat normal kid. He’d seen some of the shows and movies Oikawa starred in, the characters he portrayed and the persona he put on for interviews and award shows. He was insufferably handsome, and women fell over their feet just to be close enough to say they breathed the same air as him. He rubbed elbows with attractive people in every area of the industry and was a shameless flirt. There was no way he didn’t have a line of girlfriends out the door of his gaudy party mansion.

Not that it mattered to Iwaizumi what Oikawa Tooru did in his free time. Despite his childhood acting experience, he’d been out of the game a long time. He wasn’t a household name anymore. He was basically starting from scratch, and as a relative newbie, it wasn’t likely he would be involved in projects of the same caliber as Oikawa right off the bat and so the chances of them crossing paths was low. Which was just as well, since there was no way Iwaizumi could compete with that pretty boy in the popularity rankings.

Except one of his first big breaks came on a buddy cop film starring alongside that same pretty boy.

He’d heard the rumors that Oikawa was a terrifying actor to work with. The Demon King, some less favorable review blogs dubbed him. He was an actor who managed to bring out the best in his co-stars, pulling out their greatest performances simply by setting the bar higher himself. He was an actor’s actor, one other performers wanted to rise up and meet on his level, but he was also so thorough in his own portrayals that he could influence the flow of a scene, drawing out the correct reactions from the others in a scene with him.

Iwaizumi witnessed it firsthand in their first shoot together. An interrogation scene where his character was watching from behind the one-way mirror and Oikawa’s character was alone in the room with the suspect. Bokuto Koutarou was a great actor in his own right, but watching Oikawa guide him through the scene with the force of his own acting was a sight to behold. It was terrifying and a little bit thrilling.

He wouldn’t give in so easily though, and throughout filming he managed to elicit his own reactions from Oikawa. They developed an easy rapport through insults and teasing. Oikawa would do his best to rile Iwaizumi up, and Iwaizumi would ignore him until he was barging into his trailer crying “Iwa-chan, why are you so mean to me!”

The first time he’d called him Shittykawa out loud, a nickname he’d kept strictly in his head until the unfortunate outburst, he was sure he’d be fired. No one dared insult the Grand King of Acting, but maybe they would have if they’d seen the absolute delight on Oikawa’s face when he did it. Or maybe it was just because it was Iwaizumi who’d given him such an awful nickname in return. He certainly had a harder time getting rid of him, then.

After the movie came out, Iwaizumi’s popularity skyrocketed. He got more calls than he could conceivably audition for. Most were from productions that already had contracts with Oikawa. Directors loved their chemistry and wanted to cast Iwaizumi alongside him in all his upcoming films. A sidekick. A best friend. A rival turned reluctant ally. Always the second leading man. 

He would be an idiot to turn all of them down, work was never served on a silver platter like he was getting, but it was infuriating that he was only being sought after because of how good he made Oikawa look. He didn’t return to showbiz just to reinvent himself as someone else’s shadow, least of all some vapid pretty boy who landed all his roles because he was everyone’s favorite.

Well, that wasn’t really fair, was it. He’d seen first-hand how hard Oikawa worked, even if it was eerie how easily he slipped into his characters and got everyone else to act at his level.

He flipped through all the offers to see which ones would be the best fit for him. He would do a couple more with Oikawa, use his popularity to his own advantage, and then go off to the rest. His jaw dropped when he saw the production schedules, though. No way one person could have that many projects going on at once. He’d heard of actors burning out on half this load.

But if Oikawa could do it, so could Iwaizumi. 

He signed on for three more movies, a miniseries, and two CVs with the Demon King, much to the latter’s delight. Oikawa brought out the best in all his co-stars, but in Iwaizumi he brought out his competitive nature. It was hard, grueling work keeping up with him, and there were days Iwaizumi wanted to throw in the towel, but every once in a while he caught a glimpse of the man beneath the monster. Quiet moments where Oikawa wore no masks and the real, flawed, beautiful human slipped out.

He understood, then, why Oikawa never dated anyone. He worked too hard, sacrificed too much, built his walls too high, devoted his entire soul into his acting that he had nothing left to offer anyone else. It was kind of sad, Iwaizumi thought. It had to be a lonely life. He found himself wanting to be a pillar of support for him, even while he wanted to wring the bastard’s neck for always pushing himself too far. 

Maybe he had already fallen for him back then.

A knock at his door snaps Iwaizumi out of his stroll down memory lane.

He’s not surprised to see the mop of fluffy brown hair through his peephole. He’d invited the man over, after all. After reading the online article and comments beneath it, he really wishes he hadn’t now. Invited Oikawa or read the article, both.

He swallows his growing irritation and opens the door.

“Iwa-chan! Don’t you know it’s rude to keep a guest waiting?” He strolls in past Iwaizumi, slipping his shoes off in the genkan and unwinding his scarf to hang on the hook like it belongs there. Like he lives there. Iwaizumi does his best not to look at Oikawa’s slender neck when he turns away to hang his jacket, too. He tries not to search for signs the other man has been with his girlfriend recently.

His skin is smooth and pale, not a blemish in sight. Of course. Oikawa is too much of a professional to let a lover mark him so visibly. Iwaizumi trails his eyes down his back and, before he can stop himself, wonders if there are secret marks instead.

He shakes his head to clear it of such dangerous thoughts. What does it matter anyway? They’re just colleagues. Not close friends as he’d thought, though they’ve known each other now for years. A close friend would have shared news of their relationship. Apparently, what Oikawa does in his private life is none of Iwaizumi’s business (even if it does seem to be the entire gossip industry’s business).

“What guest?” he grumbles, folding his arms across his chest and following Oikawa back into the living room; his own living room. “I only see a pest who invites himself to mooch off others and take advantage of their hospitality.”

Oikawa stops abruptly and spins on his heel, an exaggerated look of betrayal on his face. “Iwa-chan,” he whines. “You promised you would help me tonight. The first day of shooting is Friday, I need to memorize my lines!” He waves a spiralbound book next to his head dramatically.

Iwaizumi rolls his eyes even as he extends his hand for it. “Like you didn’t memorize them as soon as you got the script last week.”

“Iwa-chan has such high expectations of me,” he coos, but there’s a tell-tale glint in his eye that Iwaizumi knows he guessed correctly.

“No I just know you’re an idiot who works harder than he needs to and you were probably up two days straight reading it.” 

He remembers the radio silence from Oikawa over the weekend, but he couldn’t do anything about it because he had been shooting a commercial on location in Singapore. He could have attributed it to Oikawa being courteous of his schedule for once, but the brat had never had an ounce of consideration for Iwaizumi’s schedule before and Iwaizumi wasn’t foolish enough to believe he chose to start now.

Oikawa has the grace to appear abashed at being caught, but he brushes it off immediately with a cheeky wink. He drops to the floor in front of Iwaizumi’s leather recliner, crisscrossing his long legs in front of him and propping his elbows on them to lean his chin in his hands. He beams up at Iwaizumi. “Well, shall we begin?”

Iwaizumi huffs a sigh and grabs two water bottles out of the mini fridge next to his entertainment system. He sits opposite him, mirroring his posture minus the childish way Oikawa holds his own face up and sets the bottles on the floor in front of them. “Shouldn’t you be asking one of your co-stars to do this with you?” Shouldn’t you be asking your girlfriend?  

“Iwa-chan is more fun to read lines with,” he shrugs.

“Ok, knock it off with the Iwa-chan this and Iwa-chan that. I’m literally right here. You can just say you .”

Oikawa purses his lips in an honest-to-god pout. “But Iwa-chan is Iwa-chan. Okay, okay!” he yelps when Iwaizumi raises the script to throw it at him. “Geez, you’re no fun after all.”

“I reiterate: why do you want to run lines with me ?”

It’s definitely a breach of contract. Iwaizumi isn’t on the project, so he shouldn’t even have access to the script. Not that he’d ever leak it or do anything to sabotage production–he’s not an asshole–but it’s the principle of the thing. Oikawa may be the darling of the industry and he may get away with blurring a lot of lines, but even he should have some respect for procedure. Absently, Iwaizumi hopes he doesn’t have this habit with any of his other friends. Matsukawa should really try to rein him in more, but lately he’s been letting a lot of things slide when it comes to Oikawa roping Iwaizumi into his antics.

Oikawa sits up, planting his hands on either side of him on the floor. He’d be leaning on them if it wasn’t for the chair at his back. His head tips to one side, exposing the pale column of his throat. Iwaizumi does not stare at it, he doesn’t. Besides, his eyes are immediately drawn to the sly curve at the corner of Oikawa’s mouth. He braces himself for something idiotic to come out of it.

“Iwa-chan, I am doing this for you, you know.” He presses a hand over his heart and slips on the mask of a benevolent king. Iwaizumi hates this look. It’s his least favorite of all his masks. “What better opportunity to grow your own skills as an actor than to do a cold read with the Great Oikawa-san?”

The mask drops as soon as the water bottle hits him square in the shoulder. Iwaizumi was aiming for his head, but thought better of it at the last second.

“That was uncalled for,” he grumbles, rubbing the abused shoulder with the hand that had just been on his chest. He pulls his knees up to his chest and tucks his chin against them. There’s a slight flush on his cheeks as he shyly meets Iwaizumi’s eyes. “I just wanted Iwa-chan to be the first to see my new character,” he says. “You never seem to have any trouble getting into your characters and I value your opinion.”

Something stirs in Iwaizumi’s chest at the open honesty. It’s ridiculous, he thinks, because he definitely has his fair share of NGs and retakes, asides with directors and screenwriters to adjust his portrayals to their vision. And he does tend to play a lot of similar roles. He worries sometimes about how often he seems to get typecast, but now doesn’t seem like the right time to point that out.

He starts to feel warm under Oikawa’s earnest stare and flips through the script for an excuse to break eye contact. In spite of skirting the rules regarding sharing the script outside of the project, Oikawa hadn’t actually said what the movie was about. Now that Iwaizumi is skimming it, he has a better idea of what they’re working with.

The movie is a clever thriller following a woman on a search for her husband’s killer and the private detective who takes her case when all leads run cold. Something about the murder reminds him of a cold case from his past, a wild chase that cost his partner his life. The murderer was never caught, and the detective believes it’s the same killer, back again a decade later. The plot twist in the eleventh hour is that the killer and the detective’s former partner are the same person. He’d faked his own death and returned to get the detective’s attention. The bigger plot twist is the implied relationship between the detective and killer, that they were partners in every sense of the word before the villain faked his death.

The biggest plot twist, to Iwaizumi’s opinion, is that Oikawa is playing the villain.

He’s played antagonistic and bully roles before, but this is his first truly heinous character. Once he gets over his initial shock, Iwaizumi thinks it makes sense. If there’s one thing he’s learned about Oikawa over the years, it’s that he loves a challenge and thrives when he’s pushed to his limits. As they fall into the read, and Oikawa slips into the duplicitous role like he’s slipping on a new suit, Iwaizumi sees all the hard work he’s put into developing the character in such a short time. He’s reminded once again what a terrifying actor Oikawa is, and how absolutely fucked he is for being in love with him.

Because this is also not Oikawa’s first queer character. He’s had practice, a BL short series and a film in the last year and a half on top of all his usual projects. Iwaizumi remembers when he’d first brought up the idea of doing BL, how his own heart had lurched at the thought of Oikawa with another man, acting or not. How it kindled the flame of hope in his chest and sparked that protective streak in him that only Oikawa pulled out.

They had gone out with Kuroo and Bokuto, their schedules miraculously all free at the same time for once. 

As a general rule, Iwaizumi doesn’t make a habit of searching his own name online. He barely uses his own social media at all, and lets his publicist handle his public profile. He doesn’t need the added stress of trying to keep up with what people may or may not be saying about him online, and after his experience as a child actor, he knew it was just better if he didn’t look. The positive comments far outweighed the negative, but it was the negative ones that stuck to him, wiggled into his brain and caused him to doubt himself. The overwhelmingly pleasant majority of his fans didn’t deserve that from him, so he kept that barrier up for their sake. Hanamaki makes sure he gets all his good fan mail, filtering out any hate mail he may or may not get. (He wouldn’t know, but he assumes he must get some.)

He can’t keep his friends from doing the same, though, and under the dim lights of Club41, his so-called friends entertained themselves by reading thirst tweets about them all. Most of the tweets about himself revolve around his arms, but there were plenty of tweets correlating his height and the size of his dick that he will neither confirm nor deny. Oikawa, being the industry pretty boy that he is, had more than the rest of them combined.

“Oh man check this one out,” Kuroo guffawed as he read a particularly raunchy tweet that was basically an ode to Oikawa’s ass that made even Bokuto blush. Kuroo leaned back in his stool with a smirk, not even bothering to hide the way he leered at his friend’s backside. “Clearly they have never seen you in person. How much do the magazines photoshop that thing anyway?”

Oikawa squawked indignantly. “Tetsu-chan! Are you implying that my ass is anything less than perfect?”

“I’m saying it isn’t ‘ a dump truck I’d let back over me .’”

“So mean!” he whined, throwing back a shot of something that smelled sickeningly sweet. He waved the empty glass at the bartender to get her attention before latching onto Iwaizumi’s arm like a koala. “You don’t think my ass is flat, right Iwa-chan? Tell them! Tell them how beautiful and perky it is!”

Kuroo and Bokuto’s howls of laughter drowned out the sound of Iwaizumi choking on his beer. “What the fuck , Shittykawa? Why would I ever say such a thing?” Oikawa was a perceptive bastard, but even he couldn’t have realized Iwaizumi’s budding infatuation with him already, not when he’d only just begun to realize it himself, could he?

“Careful what you wish for, Tooru,” Kuroo went on. “You don’t want people hearing that and getting the wrong idea. There are more than enough feral fans who would kill to see you two in a BL together.”

That made Iwaizumi lower his glass back to the table slowly. “Seriously?”

“Yeah dude,” Bokuto said, practically bouncing in his seat. “There’s like a whole cult around you guys as a couple. I think they’re called Iwaoists?”

That got Oikawa’s attention again after the bartender brought his next shot and a glass of club soda. “Wait, why is his name first? They should be Oiiwaists. I’m clearly more popular.” Bokuto and Kuroo exchanged a look as he took his last shot. Iwaizumi prayed they wouldn't elaborate, but it turns out they didn’t have to. He slammed the shot glass upside down on the table with a lip smacking sigh and leaned forward to mock-glare at all three of them. “I am also clearly the top in this relationship.”

“ Oh my god .” Iwaizumi dropped his head to the table underneath all their laughter. “I am not even going to dignify that with a response.” He was also absolutely not going to imagine Oikawa hovering over him whispering sweet nothings in his ear as he filled him and brought him to climax. He was certainly not going to think about Oikawa holding him up against a wall, pounding him until he’s sure he won’t be able to walk straight for a week, even though he knew Oikawa conceivably could hold his weight and no he was definitely not thinking those thoughts at all.

“Remind me why we don’t drink with him more often?” Kuroo’s hyena laugh grounded him back to reality. He had an arm draped over Bokuto’s shoulder and they were both wheezing so hard Iwaizumi wouldn’t feel bad if they choked.

Oikawa grinned as he sipped at his straw, completely unfazed by the obvious taunt. “It is truly tragic our schedules do not align more frequently. You are deprived of my good looks and excellent humor.”

Bokuto pointed at him with his eyebrows up in an aha expression. “There it is. That’s why we don’t do this more often.”

“No room for us and all that ego ,” Kuroo cackled.

“You guys are the worst friends ever. Why do I even invite you out?” Oikawa grumbled, lips pursed around his straw as he sucked up his soda. 

Iwaizumi’s shirt suddenly felt too hot. “No one else would put up with you,” he hastily added to the conversation, sitting back up and chugging his beer to whistles from the idiot duo.

There were no more thirst tweet readings after that as they fell into mollification mode. For all they tease him and give him shit, Oikawa is their friend, and they do always have a good time with him. Kuroo lightheartedly reminded him that someone has to keep him humble, but they all know that beneath all his masks hides a man full of insecurities and an honest drive to be the best.

“It wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world,” Oikawa mused as he and Iwaizumi headed to their train station after saying goodnight to Bokuto and Kuroo.

“Hmm?” They’d been walking in comfortable silence, rare because Oikawa never shuts up, but not awkward since they’d grown to tolerate one another by that point. Iwaizumi was warm from the alcohol and the company and he couldn’t recall what they had been talking about to make Oikawa launch into that non sequitur.

“Acting in a BL,” he explained. Iwaizumi almost missed a step. “I’ve got the face for it, and it would be a fun challenge. I want to be able to play any role. Why not BL?”

The social backlash. The rumors that will start about you. The increased scrutiny you’ll endure in your private life. Iwaizumi could think of plenty of good reasons not to dip into that particular genre. His own sexuality was such a closely guarded secret, he couldn’t imagine the possibility of being outed by a performance in a drama. Of course, Oikawa didn’t have his hang ups. Oikawa was an actor and a professional of the highest caliber at that. 

So Iwaizumi didn’t say any of the fears that whisper to him at night.

“Yeah,” he agreed instead. “You could definitely pull it off.”

And he did. A month later he announced his first BL film and Iwaizumi’s heart was the first casualty. Oikawa played his role so perfectly, so convincingly, that Iwaizumi almost believed he had a chance, that he could confess his deepest secrets without fear of rejection.

But at the end of the day, Oikawa is an actor . None of it is real . He’s no more gay than he is a serial killer, and even though he portrays that role perfectly as they run through his scenes together on the soft carpet of Iwaizumi’s quiet condo, Iwaizumi reminds himself again that that’s all it is. A role. A mask. 

He doesn’t let himself read into the way Oikawa smiles at him when he tells him, honestly, that he thinks people will love to hate his character, that he’ll get more offers for villains and morally grey characters after this. He doesn’t read into the way Oikawa clings to him as he orders takeout, draping himself over Iwaizumi’s shoulders, telling him to remind the restaurant to go easy on the spice on his. He tries to ignore the warmth of Oikawa pressed against him on the couch as they eat, watching a game show and poking fun at the contestants who are struggling like they always do when they hang out. He doesn’t read into it because it doesn’t mean anything. It’s just how Oikawa always is with him and it’s never bothered him before.

Tonight, though, it bothers him.

He hits his breaking point in the third episode. Oikawa is starting to get drowsy, so his head is resting on Iwaizumi’s shoulder, his legs are curled under himself and his hands have been playing with Iwaizumi’s pretty much since they put the empty takeout containers on the coffee table. Now that he’s nearly asleep, he’s still got Iwaizumi’s hand loosely held in his own. It’s not even that unusual for Oikawa to relax like this. Iwaizumi usually indulges him too much when he gets sleepy like this. Vulnerable. It’s probably his favorite way of seeing Oikawa because it’s the only time he sees him without masks. 

It was fine before, because even if it meant nothing, at least he was the only person potentially being hurt by it. Before, Oikawa was unattached.

Now though, he can’t, in good conscience, even enjoy it in secret.

“Oi, Shittykawa, you gotta get up.” Oikawa whines, turns his head towards Iwaizumi’s neck, placing his lips dangerously close to Iwaizumi’s spiking pulse. He steels his resolve and barrels on before he can lose his nerve, despite how much he does not want to say the words on his tongue. “Seriously, Oikawa, what would your girlfriend think if she saw us right now?”

Oikawa jerks up, nearly clocking Iwaizumi on the chin. “Girlfriend?” He laughs but Iwaizumi knows him well enough by now to detect the slight shake in it that indicates he’s nervous. “Iwa-chan knows I’m far too busy for a girlfriend.”

Iwaizumi raises an eyebrow and frees his hand to unlock his phone, the gossip article still loaded in his web browser. “So this isn’t you swapping spit with Izumi-san in broad daylight?”

Oikawa’s face becomes impassive as he looks at the incriminating evidence and Iwaizumi corrects his earlier assessment. This is the mask he hates the most. He can’t read it, and he never knows if Oikawa is going to shut down or fight. “Ah, they printed it already,” he says flatly. He doesn’t meet Iwaizumi’s eyes.

Iwaizumi decides to press him, to air his lesser grievance about it. “You could have told me, you know. I would have supported you.” Even if he couldn’t have Oikawa as a lover, he still wanted to have him as a friend, and this bombshell had shaken the foundations he thought were solid. “You could have trusted me with this.”

“That’s not–” Oikawa sighs, scrubbing a hand through his hair. “I was going to tell you, but I got so caught up in this new script that I forgot.” He chews his lower lip as he mutters, “I thought I’d have more time before they published.”

Iwaizumi barely suppresses a snarl. “What does it matter when they planned to publish? If you were seeing someone, you could have told me!”

“Because I could have warned you!” His sharp reply cuts through the accusations Iwaizumi wants to make, silencing him so Oikawa can continue. “I could have told you on my own terms that it isn’t real. We’re not dating. I mean, the kiss is real, we definitely did that,” he shrugs one shoulder, “but it was staged. Ren-chan wanted to stir up some drama to get the attention of an ex lover, to make them jealous. And, well everyone knows how I love a bit of drama, so of course I went along with it.” He slumps against the back of the couch, the sudden distance between them cavernous and cold. “Ren-chan is lovely, but she’s not really my type,” he adds in a voice too small to be his.

Iwaizumi snorts at that. Izumi Ren is the epitome of a Japanese beauty. Every mother wants their daughter to look just like her, and every father wants their son to wed a woman like her. Before he realized he didn’t look at girls the same way all the other boys did, he often imagined he would have a wife like Ren-san one day. She’s everyone’s type.

“It’s not just my schedule that keeps me out of the dating pool,” Oikawa adds, noting Iwaizumi’s bemused silence. “The…people I want to date, well let’s just say they aren’t exactly approved.” He finally lifts his head back up, stares pointedly at Iwaizumi from where he sits, his fingers pulling at each other in his lap. He’s nervous, Iwaizumi realizes, but he doesn’t understand why. 

Unless…? The people I want to date…

Oikawa pulls his shoulders up practically to his ears and he chews at his lower lip. “There’s a reason I’m so convincing in BL, Iwa-chan.”

Oh.

He's opening his chest and offering Iwaizumi his beating heart in his hands. Baring a secret Iwaizumi knows all too intimately—not that Oikawa knows that—and trusting that Iwaizumi won’t crush it with the weight of rejection. 

As if he could ever betray any piece of Oikawa.

He decides to trust him as well.

“Did it work?” he asks. Oikawa blinks, confused at the sudden redirect. “Was Ren-san’s lover jealous?” he elaborates. “Did your stunt get their attention?”

“Oh,” Oikawa’s shoulders slump again as he considers. “Well I don’t know. I mean the article only just went live this afternoon and I haven’t heard from–”

“It got mine,” he cuts in. Oikawa snaps his mouth shut, his eyes widening in earnest surprise. Not a mask. “It worked on me, Oikawa. I was jealous. Of her ,” he hastens to add, because he can already see the taunt forming on the other man’s lips. Then he laughs. “Well, ok, I am also jealous of you, but not because you made out with Ren-san.” 

Oikawa sulks. For all his uncanny intuition, he can’t see where Iwaizumi is going with this, and Iwaizumi might be getting a little thrill of satisfaction from knocking him off balance for once. Not that he’ll make Oikawa suffer for long.

“I’m jealous that you are brave enough to act in any role without hesitation, even one that could potentially have a detrimental impact to your reputation. I don’t have your confidence, I’m too much of a coward to take on a role that might out me before I’m ready for the world to see me, but you’re not afraid of that at all, and I’m so proud of you.” 

He watches Oikawa’s eyes well up as his words settle in his mind. His breath hitches to stifle a sob. “You don’t hate me or find me gross?” he asks, voice wobbly.

Iwaizumi reaches for the hand trying to cover his mouth. He cradles it between his hands and offers Oikawa the smile he only ever shares with him. “Far from it, Shittykawa.”

“You’re the worst,” he whines even as he coughs a wet laugh. “At least say my name right when you’re confessing.”

“Who says I’m confessing?” And this time, he leans in, grinning the heart-melting smile that always gets fangirls squealing. Oikawa teases him for it, but Iwaizumi knows he secretly likes it as much as they do, maybe more than they do if his recent admission is anything to go by. “Pretty sure this was your confession.”

He relishes in the way Oikawa’s ears redden. “Well if Iwa-chan didn’t believe everything he reads on the internet,” he mutters, but Iwaizumi notes, with his heart pounding in his ears, that Oikawa has also leaned towards him, as if drawn in by him, as if Iwaizumi was half as captivating as the incredible man in front of him. 

Their faces are just inches apart, and he sees when Oikawa’s eyes flicker to his lips. 

“Tooru,” he breathes, and Oikawa closes the distance to swallow it up.

His hands cup Oikawa’s face, tilting it to get a better angle, as Oikawa snakes his arms around Iwaizuim’s neck. His cheeks are damp with the tears he shed in relief at their mutual confession, but Iwaizumi can’t really blame him for crying. He feels light, a weight he hadn’t realized he’d been carrying lifted with the reciprocation of Oikawa’s lips parting against his. The kiss is wet and hungry and Oikawa makes a delightful little sound when Iwaizumi pulls him closer, into his lap, and licks into his mouth like he’ll starve if he doesn’t get his fill right now.

After a while, a giggle bubbles up in Oikawa’s chest, and he pulls away to rest his forehead against Iwaizumi’s. He keeps shaking with laughter and it infects Iwaizumi too. He wraps his arms around Oikawa’s chest and presses soft kisses to his neck between giggles. “What’s so funny,” he teases, nipping at a ticklish spot under Oikawa’s jaw.

“I was just thinking,” he sighs.

“Dangerous.”

“Rude,” he swats at Iwaizumi’s shoulder, but there’s no heat in his scolding. “No, I was thinking about when Ren-chan asked me to pretend to date her. Her plan to have us photographed and all that. I wasn’t sure I could pull it off. Acting is one thing,” he says when Iwaizumi leans back to make a comment about his impeccable acting abilities. “I can do it if the character requires it, but I was still supposed to be myself. And well, I would much prefer to be kissing someone else, if given the choice.” Iwaizumi hums understanding. “So,” and he curls his fingers shyly in the collar of Iwaizumi’s T-shirt, looking up at Iwaizumi through thick lashes, “I just pretended I was kissing you instead.”

Iwaizumi buries his face in Oikawa’s sweater with a groan to hide how red he turns. It just makes Oikawa laugh again. He decides this is his new favorite Oikawa, open and joyful, and grins into his chest.

“And to think, I could have been kissing you all this time.”

“Well you don’t have to pretend anymore,” Iwaizumi says, leaning up to steal another kiss. They didn’t have to pretend at all.