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There’s a bump against the front door that makes you perk up from your place on the sofa.
Placing your book on the coach table, you turn to glance at the wooden clock standing in your living room. 02:15. Certainly late for most, definitely too early for Oikawa to return from a night-out.
Another bump and a string of curses that unmistakably belongs to the boy in question. You stand up to unlock the door, but before you can make it halfway across the room it flies open and bumps into the wall and takes Oikawa with it.
You wince and are once again glad for the doorstop you bought after their first week of living together. You call out to him, but Oikawa is busy dropping his phone and kicking his shoes off.
His hair is a mess, his glasses sit askew on top of his nose, there's a noticeable hickey forming on his neck. And, if the yellow living room light doesn’t betray your eyes, for some reason his sweater is on backwards, with the hood bunched up at his neck. You’re not even sure it is the same sweater he left with.
“Well, someone’s shitfaced.”
Oikawa huffs a greeting and then marches (well, staggers) down the hallway, turning the first door to the right. You hurry to close the front door he left open and follow after him.
“Hey, buddy! Wrong room!”
You stand frozen in the doorstep for a moment, as you watch the boy plop down on the mattress and sprawl out over the blankets.
“And that is MY bed.”
“Really?” He props himself up on his elbows, lazily tracing a hand over the patterned sheets. Your nice cotton bed sheets that you bought with your own money. He glances at you through hooded eyes and smiles. “I didn’t notice.”
You shake your head at him. “And you know that I don’t like outside clothes on my bed.”
Oikawa wiggles his eyebrows. “Want to help me take them off then?”
He keeps smiling, but your brows begin to furrow.
It takes a lot for Oikawa to slur when he’s drunk, as if he is simply too stubborn to admit to his inebriation that way.
But there is a strange lilt to his words and a haziness in his gaze that you haven’t seen before. One that seems different from the boisterous laugh and shining eyes you are used to when he returns from his nightly escapades. More often than not, not alone and making sure you know your noise-cancelling headphones were money well spent.
Sure, he flirts with you sometimes, both drunk and sober, but it is clearly with the only intention to get a rise out of you. Just as you counter everytime with the exact same motive.
But tonight, he just seems weirdly…out of it. You take a few tentative steps forward, coming to a halt at the foot of the bed. His smile turns into a grin, spreading out on his face as his eyes follow your movement, but they seem to drift in and out of focus.
“Hey, you okay?”
When he doesn’t answer and just continues to look at you, with a swirl of emotion in his eyes you can’t decipher, you take another step and reach over to shake his leg a little.
“’Kawa? You want some water?”
“No,” he leans in your direction, his voice a conspiratorial whisper “I want you.”
He sends you a flirtatious wink (at least you think that was the idea, one of his eyes closes in slow-motion and stays shut for so long that you are almost surprised to see it open again).
You snort. “Yeah, you know what, I’m gonna get you a glass.”
“No! Don’t go!” In a surprising display of agility, he reaches forward and grabs your hand, pulling you towards him.
You stumble forward, hands and one knee clumsily hitting the mattress to stop your fall, but at least you do not faceplant onto the mattress or the boy lying on it. Looking up, you realize that you are however, now caging Oikawa’s legs with both arms. “Oh, I see.” Oikawa chuckles. “So you do want to help me…”
He shoots you a (under different circumstances maybe) seductive look and begins to pull his sweater over his head.
Only to promptly get stuck in one of the sleeves.
You lean back on your knees and watch him wrestle for a bit, cursing under his breath before he somehow manages to wring one arm through the head hole but not any other parts of his body. Maybe you had just imagined the weird look in his eyes. You decide to not yet aid the struggling man in favour of your own amusement.
Oikawa stills for a moment, and then a small “Help?” comes muffled through the thick fabric. You narrow your eyes at him.
He can’t see you right now, but surely he can still feel the aversion radiating off of you. “Is this just a ruse to get me to take your clothes off?”
“Noo. I’m really stuck. Please?” He flaps with the paws of his sweater.
With a sigh, you roll your eyes, wondering just since when exactly flat sharing came with babysitting obligations on the side. In hindsight, maybe that’s why Oikawa let you have the bigger room but insisted to split the rent 50/50.
“You really are a giant baby. You’re worse than my little nieces! You smell worse, too.” He does smell, like alcohol and smoke.
Oikawa gives a disapproving wiggle in your direction, and you don’t need to see his face to know the scowling expression on it.
“Excuse me? That perfume was very expensive.”
“Yeah, but I would bet that beer wasn’t.”
You can physically sense Oikawa rolling his eyes. “Okay, will you help me or not? You want me to suffocate in this thing?”
“Tempting. But I couldn’t afford this place alone, so I guess I can’t let you die just yet.” You tug at his sleeve. “Alright. Put your hands up.”
Thankfully, he follows the order without arguing further. Your hands grab the bottom of the fabric, careful not to touch the bare strip of skin that becomes visible in the dim lighting. Still, you can feel the heat of his body. It fans over your fingers like a warm breath as they curl around the material. With the conscious effort to not be gentle, you yank the sweater off his arms and over his head.
The movement jerks his glasses across the mattress which prompts an appalled sound and makes Oikawa narrow his eyes at you in indignation.
Or just because he cannot see very well without them on.
Which would be a good thing, because it takes you one long, terribly un-platonic, second to realize that he did not wear a T-shirt under his sweater until you divert your eyes.
It’s not like you haven’t seen him shirtless before. It’s just a torso. This isn’t affecting you in the slightest.
“Ouch!” Oikawa pouts at you. “Could you at least try to be a little more gentle? I know you have it in you!”
“Yeah, sure. Dream on.” With a patronizing pat on his leg, you move off the bed and towards your wardrobe.
“Put this on.”
You toss him one of his shirts that you had borrowed and never bothered to return. It’s not like he asked to have it back. A pair of joggers who had landed in your drawers due to similar reasons, follows.
~
Oikawa is still lounging on your bed when you return from the kitchen, a bottle of water in each hand, albeit this time dressed in your (his) joggers and shirt.
“Great. Now that you’re dressed, go brush your teeth and then go into your own room.”
“Mhm. Already brushed my teeth.”
Again, your brows furrow and you tilt your head to the side in disbelief. “At the party??”
“Yes, I-“, He avoids your eyes. “Ate something bad. Asked Iwai for a toothbrush.”
“Okay. Even better. Now your only task is to get your ass into your own bed.”
Oikawa shakes his head. “No. I want to sleep here.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Yes.”
“No!”
“Please?”
You groan in frustration. “I- You know what? Suit yourself.” You lean over him to grab one of your pillows. “I’m gonna sleep on the coach.”
“But I -“, Oikawa starts and then bites his lip.
You halt your movement.
In the silence that follows, you can he hear him swallow. The sheets rustle as he sits up on the bed. When he speaks again, his voice is much smaller.
“You’re right. I’ll go into my room.” Oikawa laughs, it sounds hollow. He rubs his hands over his face, eyes travelling across the room but not making any contact with yours. “I’m sorry for bothering you. I’m- just being weird today.”
His eyes flit over to you as he moves to get up and then swiftly look away, but it is enough to see the silver lining his lower lashes.
The sight makes you sit down on the bed immediately. Your head is spinning, unsure if your eyes had played a trick on you in the dark room, lit only by the streetlamp outside and the little teddy-bear shaped night light on your bedside table.
You place a careful hand on his shin. “Oikawa…did- did something happen at that party? Did you not have a good time? Or did- ”
“Nothing.” He cuts you off. “Just got tired, so I went home early. Is that such a crime?”
There is a long a moment in which you just stare at him, trying to let the traces of something lingering in his brown eyes lead you to any kind of idea what might had put him in this mood. He juts his chin forward almost stubbornly and you have to accept that you aren’t getting anywhere, not like this.
Wordlessly, you stand up and turn to leave.
“Wh- where are you going?”
There was it again, that quiver in his voice, but when you turn to look at him, his placid face betrays no emotions.
“Getting your stuff. We are NOT sharing blankets. The least you can do is use your own.” You had crossed the room in a few steps only to halt in the doorway and turn around. “I can put your blanket onto my bed, right? Like, you wash the sheets regularly?”
“What? Who do you take me for? I changed them yesterday.” The familiar indignant tone is back, but this time you are glad for it.
~
It takes you less than a minute to cross the hallway, grab Oikawa’s blanket from his bed and return to your own room. You toss the blanket to him, much like you did with the clothes, and force yourself not to hesitate as you clamber into bed beside him. You had splurged on a Queen-size when you first moved in, you’d be fine. It won’t be a thing of you don’t make it a thing.
If only the way the mattress moved under Oikawa’s weight as he struggles to find a comfortable position wouldn’t make it so hard to ignore his presence.
You immediately laid down on your back and tried to will yourself to fall asleeep, but it takes some time for him to still.
The air in the room feels heavy. Maybe you should have opened a window.
“Thank you.” Oikawa's voice is barely audible.
You swallow. “Don’t mention it.”
With him finally resting on his back without fidgeting, the two of you lay in silence. You have no idea how long it’s been; it feels like ages but it might as well been only five minutes.
Oikawa doesn’t move and neither do you. You’re almost certainly he must be asleep by now.
Until little by little, you feel Oikawa inching closer. He halts, his blanket still a few inches away from even touching yours.
Sleep refuses to come to you. You start a staring contrast with your bedroom ceiling.
Another long moment passes before you accept defeat and squeeze your eyes shut in frustration.
You wiggle your arm out of your blanket cocoon and throw it over the boy lying next to you, draping it over his stomach. Oikawa’s questioning eyes on you feel like something material, heavily weighing down on you. You refuse to meet them.
Almost annoyed you shrug your shoulder, making your ellbow bounce on his stomach. But Oikawa still doesn’t react, and you still feel his eyes on you, so you move your arm away. Or at least you plan to. Faster than you can blink, two large hands are on your skin, your forearm and bicep, and then you feel his muscular arms enveloping yours, hugging it close to his chest.
You clear your throat. The sound is uncomfortable loud in the silence of your bedroom, but maybe that’s exactly what it takes to shatter the glass wall between you two.
“You don’t have to say anything now, but, um, when you want to talk, you can. With me I mean. In the morning or whenever. So, yeah- just wanted to say that. I- I’m here.”
His fingers twitch against your arm, and you’re almost certain he wants to move away from you, that you said the wrong thing, made this into something you shouldn't have. You’re already thinking of how you could backtrack, make him ignore what you just said. That is, before you notice it’s not just his fingers, his entire body is shaking.
“Oikawa?” You try to move away from him just a little and are met with some resistance before you can pull away enough to rest your weight on one elbow and look down at Oikawa lying next to you. Even in the dark you can see the redness surrounding his lash line, the streetlamp outside reflecting its light in the wetness pooling in his eyes.
He looks at you like he is just daring you to taunt him. And at the same time, his eyes plead with you to be gentle in this unknown vulnerability, strange and foreign to the both of you.
You want to say something, but the silence shoves the words back down your throat.
It’s makes it even worse that he still is eerily quiet while his lips are quivering. You feel helpless with this Oikawa, seeming so uncharacteristically uncertain and weak that it makes you want to crawl out of bed and move far far away from him.
But you don’t.
Instead, you try your best to comfort him, the only way you know how to.
Carefully, you push one hand up his nape and into his soft hair, grasping his neck and pulling him in like you do with your nieces when they are sad. Countless of times you have pulled them on your lap like this, to console a scraped knee, a broken doll, the pain of a hurtful comment.
Oikawa lets himself be rolled over by you until he is laying on his stomach, with his face to your collar bone and your hand in his hair. It still smells a bit like smoke, but even more like the shampoo you started to share. The strands are tickling you as you speak, so quietly that only the close proximity makes it possible for him to hear. “Is this okay?”
He nods against your shoulder and you pretend not to notice the wet spots forming on your T-shirt, no matter how deep your stomach plummets at the feeling of Oikawa’s tears on your skin.
There is so much more you want to be able to do for him, to say to him. You don’t even know why he’s crying.
Your hand softly brushes through his hair while the other one draws broad circles over his back, steadily moving over the soft cotton material of his shirt. Gently, but firmly, you press into his skin, until you can feel the muscles beneath your hand slowly lose their tenseness.
There is so much more you wish you could do.
But until morning comes, you’ll settle for being the one he can cling to.