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“Something’s not right.”
Hanamaki and Matsukawa look up at Tooru from their desks, eyebrows raised in a horrible twin mimicry that makes Tooru have flashbacks to the time Iwaizumi’d pegged them as “the hive mind.”
“Oh?” says Matsukawa, turning a page in his math workbook.
“That so?” adds Hanamaki, wiggling a pen in between his fingers.
Tooru throws a cautious glance over his shoulder, making sure that Iwaizumi definitely won’t be coming to their class yet (he guesses that he’s got maybe six minutes before Iwaizumi heads over to Tooru’s class, discovers he’s not there, and then makes his way here), and then pulls up a chair besides the two of them. Voice lowered to a whisper, he nods and says, “Yes. Something’s definitely going on, and I have no idea what it is.”
Hanamaki makes an intrigued noise, smacking his lips. “That sounds fascinating, Oikawa.”
“Really fascinating,” echoes Matsukawa, scribbling out an answer in his book and not even bothering to look up.
Tooru narrows his eyes. “The sarcasm isn’t appreciated. Now, listen—“ He throws another glance over his shoulder just to be sure that Iwaizumi isn’t lurking somewhere behind him. “Iwa’s been acting all suspicious. Have you guys noticed at all? He’s been quieter than usual, and last practice he didn’t even yell at me, even when that one girl from the girl’s team came by to say hello. And the other day, I asked him if I could use his phone, and he wouldn’t let me see it! Can you believe that? He wouldn’t let his best friend see his phone. So something is definitely going on, right? I’m not crazy, right?”
Hanamaki and Matsukawa pause, exchanging a long glance. After a moment of silence, Hanamaki clears his throat and lets out a low whistle. “You’re probably crazy,” he says.
“Yeah, definitely crazy,” agrees Matsukawa.
“There’s absolutely nothing going on,” Hanamaki concludes, exchanging another glance and—Tooru gasps; was that a wink?—with Matsukawa.
Tooru frowns. “You two better—“
“There you are. The hell’re you doing? Took me forever to find you, dumbass.”
Tooru jumps, turning to Iwaizumi with a fake smile plastered all over his face to disguise his feeling of being caught red-handed. “Oh, Iwa-chan!” A nervous laugh bubbles out of his lips, and he tries to ignore the snickers from Hanamaki and Matsukawa beside him. “Took you long enough!”
Iwaizumi rolls his eyes, nudging his shoulder and then pulling up a chair. “Move over. You’re not even gonna leave me any space?”
Tooru scoots aside with mere mild complaint, trying to ignore the stirring sensation in his gut that tells him something weird is going on with Iwaizumi, as well as the pointed looks that Hanamaki and Matsukawa keep throwing his way.
~~~~~
It hits Tooru two days later, as he sits in his room reading some stupid, mind-numbing book that he couldn’t honestly care less about, and it hits him hard. He sits up suddenly, book slipping from between his fingers, and then runs out of the room, throwing on a pair of his mother’s slippers and bursting out the front door, slippers slapping against the sidewalk as he runs.
The block between his house and Iwaizumi’s has always seemed to go by too fast (especially on those late nights, walking Iwaizumi home because he had such an early curfew, their hands nearly brushing as they walked side by side, only to say quiet goodbyes at his doorstep), but he’s breathless by the time he makes it to that familiar doorstep, ringing the doorbell loudly.
Iwaizumi opens the door after a moment, blinking in confusion at the sight in front of him. “Why aren’t you wearing pants—?” he starts, raising an eyebrow.
“You have a girlfriend!” Tooru blurts, pointing a finger into Iwaizumi’s chest and attempting to ignore the cool breeze against his calves.
Iwaizumi stares, eyebrows raised dubiously, and licks his lips. He watches Tooru attempt to catch his breath, trying to conceal a smirk at the sight of Tooru’s mother’s slippers, and then clears his throat. Turning around to head into the house, he calls over his shoulder, “Right. Well, now that we’re done with the stupid accusations that aren’t even true, do you wanna come inside and maybe put on real clothes?”
Tooru freezes. “You mean…you don’t have a girlfriend?”
Iwaizumi glances over his shoulder, eyebrows raised. “I don’t know why you thought I would. Now come in, idiot, you’re gonna get cold.”
Hesitating for a moment, until a colder breeze sweeps through the air and makes Tooru shiver, he follows Iwaizumi into the house, shutting the door behind him.
“I’ve probably got an entire drawer filled with your clothes, so I’ll get you something,” Iwaizumi grumbles, taking his stairs two at a time. He returns moments later, handing Tooru a pair of old sweatpants that he must’ve left there during one of their sleepovers. “You hungry? My mom left me some leftover curry.”
Tooru follows Iwaizumi into the kitchen, pulling himself up to sit on the counter. “I love Iwaizumi-san’s curry,” he says simply, fiddling with his thumbs as Iwaizumi makes two plates. If he didn’t have a girlfriend after all, then what could possibly explain the shiftiness? The unwillingness to let Tooru see his phone, as if he was hiding something? The overly good moods all of a sudden? It just doesn’t make sense, and that frustrates Tooru, because he always knows what’s happening with Iwaizumi, just as Iwaizumi always knows what’s happening with him.
(Truth be told, he’s very glad that there isn’t a secret girlfriend. But he still doesn’t know what’s going on, and it’s driving him crazy.)
“Alright, so what’s the deal with you?”
Tooru blinks at the plate that’s pushed in front of him, turning to Iwaizumi in confusion. “Me?” he asks, making sure he heard the question right.
Iwaizumi rolls his eyes, taking a bite from his food. “Yeah, you. You come over here half-dressed and inform me that I have a girlfriend? Not exactly normal behavior, Oikawa. Even for you.”
Tooru hums, taking a bite of curry and chewing it slowly. He might as well just come out with it, he figures. “Well, Iwa-chan,” he says with a smack of his lips, building up faux confidence. “You’re the one that’s been acting strangely, not me. Being all secretive and yet so nice all of a sudden. So excuse me for assuming you had a girlfriend!”
Iwaizumi coughs, glancing away. Tooru watches with bated breath as he chews, swallows, all the while maintaining a careful gaze directed anywhere but Tooru. After a moment, he says, “You’re overthinking things. I can’t be in a good mood?”
Tooru frowns. “You haven’t scolded me in, like, a week.”
The chair makes a scraping noise as Iwaizumi stands, grabbing his plate and heading over to the living room. “Don’t worry about it, Oikawa. You’ll find out soon, alright?”
Tooru sits straighter, watching after him with wide eyes. “So I’m not crazy?” he calls after him.
“No, but you are overreacting. Now come on, I recorded this weird alien movie. We should watch it.”
Tooru knows it’s a distraction, but god damn are alien movies the best distractions. (Plus, he thinks, at least Iwaizumi’s admitted to something, and he said he’ll find out soon enough. If Iwaizumi says so, then surely that’s good enough for Tooru.)
~~~~~
“So, I was thinking. If it’s not a girlfriend—which, actually, I was hesitant to admit at first, because it’s Iwaizumi and he’s admittedly not terrible looking, if you go from a certain angle— Where was I again? Right, yes, so if it’s not a girlfriend, then maybe he’s moving away. Isn’t that awful? I couldn’t imagine anything worse, but— Are you even listening to me?”
“No,” Kyoutani replies instantly.
Tooru gasps, placing a hand to his heart as if offended by the underclassman. Yahaba, who sits in between them both, shifts uncomfortably and asks, “Um, Oikawa-san, if you don’t mind me asking…why exactly are you telling this to us?”
“Because you’re my beloved underclassmen,” Tooru lies.
“He has no one else to talk to,” grumbles Kyoutani with an exaggerated eye roll. He pauses, shrugging. “Or no one else cares enough to listen to his annoying prattling.”
Yahaba shakes his head, sighing. “And you would be so familiar with that, wouldn’t you?”
“You saying I prattle?” Kyoutani hisses.
“Anyways,” Tooru cuts in, knowing fully well that any conversation that involves both Yahaba and Kyoutani can turn ugly quickly (and knowing fully well that maybe Kyoutani had hit the nail on the head with his whole “no one else to talk to” accusation). “I was thinking that maybe he was moving. And that would’ve been terrible—“
“But he would’ve told you, wouldn’t he?” Yahaba supplies.
Tooru snaps his fingers. “Exactly. Iwa-chan would’ve told me! So clearly it can’t be that. So then, I thought, maybe he got into university! And maybe he’s just too shy to tell me, or he’s making a decision between several on where he wants to go! Don’t you think that could be it?”
“Or you could be overthinking literally everything,” mutters Kyoutani, lazily resting his chin on his palm. “It’s Iwaizumi-san you’re talking about.”
“Well, what does that mean?” Tooru questions.
“I don’t think Iwaizumi-san really thinks that far in advance, do you?” Yahaba muses, tapping his chin with his thumb. “I mean, really, he’d only think seriously maybe a…month? A month in advance. He seems the type to focus on the now.”
Tooru hums, unwilling to admit that maybe Yahaba is a bit more intuitive than he’d originally pegged him. “Well, alright,” he concedes after a moment. “But then what’s the big deal?”
Yahaba chews his bottom lip, thinking. The three of them sit in silence, watching the other students mill about in the courtyard and attempting to think.
“It started a bit over two weeks ago, right?” Yahaba asks quietly.
Tooru nods.
“Oh, come on, are you two serious right now?” The two of them turn to Kyoutani, eyebrows raised. He rolls his eyes, as if the two of them are the dumbest people he’s ever met (Tooru makes a mental note to add more laps to his practice regiment), and then says slowly, “How long until your birthday?”
~~~~~
At long last, Tooru finds his answer on the night of his birthday in the form of a blindfold. It’s a bit surprising, to say the least.
He’d been expected something the whole day, smiling eagerly every time that Iwaizumi so much as looked at him, only to be utterly disappointed when Iwaizumi had said goodbye and walked home alone with not so much as a “Happy Birthday” directed his way. And then, right when Tooru was two episodes of the X-Files away from slipping into one of his self-declared pity parties, there was a knock on his door. He’d flung the door open (totally, definitely appearing casual), and Iwaizumi had greeted him with a soft grin and a blindfold.
Now Tooru’s seated in the passenger seat of Iwaizumi’s car, listening to the sounds of the road underneath the tires and rubbing the sore spot on his head for when Iwaizumi had smacked him for making a joke along the lines of, “Wow, Iwa-chan, I didn’t know you were into this kind of stuff!”
“Where are we going anyways?” he queries, ears straining to pick up on any sort of clues on where they might be headed.
“It’s a surprise.”
The words come from somewhere to the left of Tooru, and he clings to them, not being able to recognize anything else but the soft, warm fabric on the seats of Iwaizumi’s car and the softer, warmer intonations of his voice.
“So this is why you haven’t been showing me your phone or anything?” Tooru asks, feeling the need to clarify.
Iwaizumi hums affirmation.
Biting his lip softly, Tooru feels the car lean as they make a turn. He’d attempted, at first, to try to keep a mental record of where they were going, but it all quickly fell to pieces when Iwaizumi went around a roundabout, so Tooru genuinely has no idea where they are or where they’re going.
“You know,” he grouses, “all this secrecy has been killing me! I could’ve died from all the stress you caused me, Iwa-chan.”
“Yeah.” Tooru jolts at the feeling of a hand gently patting his knee, and then—he tries to swallow his heart, because it’s somehow leaped into his throat—staying there. “But I think it’ll be worth it.”
The air in his lungs seems to vanish, but he’s not entirely sure if it departed in a sigh or a laugh. The blindfold’s fabric is scratchy, irritating the skin on his cheek, and he wants so badly to just take it off. But this is a side of Iwaizumi that he rarely sees (“Iwa-chan is a werewolf, you see. His good moods come once a full moon,” he’d once joked with Matsukawa), and so he’s going to relish every minute of it.
“You put this much effort into a surprise?” he asks softly, curling his hands into fists to resist the urge to mess with the blindfold.
Iwaizumi clicks his tongue. “It’s your eighteenth birthday. Thought I’d do something special, dumbass.” There’s a pause, during which Tooru concentrates on the sound of what must be gravel underneath the tires. “And it’s two surprises, by the way.”
“Two?”
Iwaizumi hums in response. “Yep. Now you might as well sleep. We’ve got a while to drive and I do not want to be bothered with your ceaseless questions.”
Tooru grumbles a weak, Mean, and then turns slightly in his seat. He peppers Iwaizumi with a few more questions just for the hell of it, just to be annoying, but Iwaizumi is perhaps more stubborn than Tooru, and keeps his mouth shut. The car swerves suddenly at the sixth question, causing Tooru to slam his head against the window. With a whine of defeat, he slumps back in his chair, and closes his eyes.
~~~~~
“We’re here.”
Tooru wakes, disoriented, and immediately slams his head against the roof of the car, his hand flailing out to find the passenger door open. Hands come up, circling his wrists with warm, calloused palms, and Tooru takes a breath, releasing it in a low whine. “That hurt.”
“Oh, be quiet. You’re fine.”
Tooru gasps, feigning offense, but lets Iwaizumi guide him out of the car anyways, hands firm around his wrists. The car door shuts behind him, and then Iwaizumi’s walking, slowly leading him somewhere. They walk in silence for a few minutes, gravel crunching underfoot and then eventually switching to the feeling of firm ground. Tooru assumes they must’ve entered some building, and they continue down one hallway for what feels like forever.
“Where are we going?” Tooru asks eventually, more for the purpose of simply saying something than actually getting an answer.
Iwaizumi lets out a breathy laugh, hand tightening on Tooru’s as Tooru’s foot hits a slight incline and he trips. “Remember how you said you wanted to get abducted by aliens once in your life? Well, I may or may not have come into contact with an alien leader and worked something out.”
Tooru stumbles forward blindly, his steps higher than normal as a means of compensating for the incline. It’s hard enough to focus on walking, trusting that Iwaizumi won’t lead him off the edge of a cliff or into a volcano, so the sarcasm doesn’t register. “You what?”
“Messing with you, dumbass,” Iwaizumi mutters, grin evident. “Alright, we’re going through a doorway. Step up.”
Tooru does as he says, but his toe hits the doorway and he stumbles forward. Iwaizumi’s arms encircle his waist, supporting him as they push him forward, deeper into whatever room they’re entering. They march forward several paces, and then Iwaizumi tugs his wrist, bringing him to a halt.
“Stand here,” Iwaizumi says, and then his arms are gone, leaving Tooru feeling colder and—he’ll even go so far as to admit it—perhaps a bit longing. There are the sounds of footsteps as Iwaizumi walks off, and Tooru folds his arms, spinning as if that would somehow make him realize where he is.
“I hope you’re not planning on just leaving me in some random location in the middle of nowhere,” Tooru grumbles, ears straining to hear where Iwaizumi has gone. There’s a small clatter—ah, he must’ve gone to the right; Tooru turns in the direction of the noise.
“That was the plan,” Iwaizumi replies smoothly. A slow whirring sound starts up by his right, and then spreads throughout the room. Tooru hears footsteps heading in his direction as a slow tinkling music begins, slow and peaceful.
“Hey,” Iwaizumi says, soft and closer than Tooru’d thought, and Tooru realizes he’s misjudged his angle; he turns slightly to the left, and Iwaizumi’s hands find his face, one of his thumbs accidentally brushing near the corners of his lips as they move to frame his face.
Maybe he’ll kiss me, Tooru thinks.
He doesn’t.
“Stay still. I’m gonna take it off now,” Iwaizumi instructs. Tooru does as he says, biting back the unnecessary feeling of disappointment, and Iwaizumi’s fingers work away at the blindfold. He feels it loosen, and then feels his hair curl outward, damp with sweat but finally free of its restraint.
The first thing he sees is Iwaizumi, face open and vulnerable and bathed in a sort of glowing blue light. This is clearly one of his better angles, Tooru thinks, mocking himself at the idea that Iwaizumi would be anything less than beautiful in all of the angles.
Iwaizumi blinks, confused. “Tooru,” he says. “Look up.”
And so Tooru does, and gasps.
All around him are stars, littering the ceiling, sprinkling down across the walls, glowing with different levels of brightness that make him blink—once, twice, a third time—just to be sure that they’re real. And they are real, and prettier than any stars he’s ever seen. He watches the soft curl of nebulas and galaxies behind the stars, like gold sprinkled across milk, and his lips part in awe.
He glances back down at Iwaizumi. “How did you do this?”
Iwaizumi shrugs, grinning. “Your sister knows a guy who knows a guy who owns the planetarium. I just…asked to borrow it for a night.”
He points somewhere behind his shoulder. “I can start the cycles, if you want?” Tooru nods, breathless. “Alright. Then sit down. You’ll love it.”
~~~~~
The stars move through their cycles, alternating through months and seasons and latitudes and longitudes. Tooru watches them all with eager eyes, pointing out the constellations he knows and listening avidly as Iwaizumi points out the ones he doesn’t. He teases him about the unknown knowledge, to which Iwaizumi replies with an annoyed (and somewhat bashful), “I studied up beforehand, okay?”
It’s comfortable and relaxing and before long the stars cause their conversation to slow to a halt, attentions completely captured by the swirling patterns of lights above them. Iwaizumi pulls out a cake from his backpack that they split, silently enjoying both the stars and each other’s company. When they finish, leaving forks discarded amongst the remaining frosting, they both simply lay on the ground, staring up at the fake sky. Their hands barely brush against each other, sending electricity running up Tooru’s arm, and Tooru knows he could simply scoot away, but neither of them do.
Eventually it occurs to Tooru that there was, in fact, something else that Iwaizumi had told him about, and that the stars aren’t it.
“You said there were two surprises,” Tooru mumbles, eyes never leaving the stars above them. He can feel Iwaizumi shift beside him, just barely.
“I did. The second one is—well, you know.” He clears his throat, straightening into a seated position, and Tooru lifts his head from the ground, frowning slightly in confusion. Iwaizumi glances over once, and then away again, fixating his gaze on the stars. “It’s just something I have to say.”
“Alright,” Tooru replies, eyes wide and heart beating fast. It couldn’t be— No, he’s only overreacting. Jumping to conclusions. There’s no way Iwaizumi would actually— He thinks of the feeling of Iwaizumi’s hands on his face, of his hand clasped within Iwaizumi’s, and forces himself to swallow. “Shoot.”
Iwaizumi nods, but it’s a long several minutes before he works up the nerve to speak again.
There’s no way, there’s no way, there’s no—
“I think—“ Iwaizumi catches himself, and restarts his thought. Tilting his head up towards the stars, Tooru catches the hint of a smile on his lips—one that is soft and embarrassed and maybe even a little afraid, like Iwaizumi figures he’s about to mess something up but there’s nothing he can do about it. “You know, Tooru, I think I’m in love with you.”
There is.
Tooru sits up, elbows digging into the floor as he moves quickly. Iwaizumi glances over once, still with that same smile, and shakes his head. “Had to say it. I didn’t want to make your birthday weird, but—“ He chews on his lower lip, glancing away again. “Maybe I thought you’d feel the same, I guess. So I risked it. And, uh, if not, then what I just said will stay here forever. We can forget about it, and—“
“I do.”
Tooru blinks, surprised by his own words. They’re true, completely true, he knows, but admitting to them is something he never thought he’d be able to do. Iwaizumi turns, looking equally surprised, and his breath escapes him in a barely audible, “What?”
“I do,” Tooru repeats, enunciating his words slowly. He feels his cheeks burn like they’re on fire. “Feel the same, I mean.”
Iwaizumi stares for a long moment, likely gauging Tooru’s seriousness, before his expression cracks into one of relief. “That’s good,” he says, bubbling up in a nervous laugh, and Tooru knows the words are an attempt to stay cool, suave, unaffected. His chest aches. “That’s really good.”
Tooru reaches out, catching Iwaizumi’s hand in his and causing Iwaizumi to blink, nervous grin turning into one more secretive—one that, Tooru realizes, is just for him.
Maybe he’ll kiss me, Tooru thinks.
He does.
~~~~~
“So?”
“How’d it go?”
Tooru smiles softly to himself as he takes a seat in front of Hanamaki and Matsukawa, placing his lunch on the desk. It becomes clear to him, suddenly, that they’d known all along (what else would explain all the winking and teasing?), and so he leans forward, biting back a grin. He throws a glance over his shoulder for good measure; Iwaizumi must be on his way to their classroom at this point.
“Can you keep a secret?” he asks.
Hanamaki and Matsukawa nod, both of them leaning forward to better hear him.
“On my birthday,” Tooru lies, voice dropping to a whisper. “Iwa-chan took me to this secluded place and proposed. Makki, Mattsun, he proposed. We’re going to elope, after graduation. But you can’t tell anyone, not even—no, especially not our parents, alright? I’m trusting you.”
Their eyes go wide, and they exchange a glance, frowning.
“There’s no way,” says Hanamaki, but his eyes give away his uncertainty. His voice lowers, but Tooru still picks up the unmistakable, “There’s no way Iwaizumi actually confessed.”
“It’s true, I guarantee it,” Tooru insists.
“Did you seriously not save me a seat again?”
The three turn in time to see Iwaizumi shove Tooru over, placing his lunch beside him on the table. He scowls at the desk, getting himself situated in what can’t be a comfortable seat, given the lack of space. Glancing over at Tooru, his face softens, and he silently offers him a hand.
Tooru grins, twining his fingers with Iwaizumi’s and throwing a wink over in Matsukawa and Hanamaki’s direction, relishing as they explode into a disarray of questions and comments directed towards Iwaizumi.