Chapter Text
“Another postcard?” Suga asks, coming up behind Iwaizumi. He wraps his arms around Iwaizumi’s waist, hooking his chin over Iwaizumi’s shoulder to look at the mail that Iwaizumi is carding through. “Where’s he this time?”
“China,” Iwaizumi says, something awfully fond in his voice. “It’s the first week of the Nations League tournament. He’ll be traveling a lot in the next few weeks.”
He sets the rest of the mail onto the coffee table, holding the postcard like it's something priceless. To him, Suga supposes, it must be. Suga doesn’t really know all the details of Iwaizumi’s other relationship—he knows that Oikawa exists, has been dating Iwaizumi even longer than Suga has, can be a little insufferable and yet is deeply, thoroughly loved by everyone who knows him, and that none of that is really any of Suga’s business.
What Suga and Iwaizumi share together is enough for him. He’s never been a particularly possessive or jealous person, and he’s sure enough that Iwaiuzmi has enough love in his heart for both him and Oikawa that it doesn’t bother him to know Iwaizumi is dating the two of them at the same time.
He’s known from the start, after all, that Iwaizumi and Oikawa are dating. It wasn’t for a while into their friendship that Suga learned they’re in an open relationship, and Suga could try to make a move without another man flying from Argentina to possibly murder him. Though it was technically Iwaizumi, in the end, who asked him out, the point still stands.
“Fun,” Suga says, pressing a kiss to Iwaizumi’s cheek. “Looks beautiful.”
Then he pulls away, ready to give Iwaizumi the space to read the message without him hovering over his shoulder. Iwaizumi, he knows, is a deeply private person. He’ll talk for days about Oikawa and the things he’s up to in Argentina, but the details of their actual love for one another are his alone.
Suga has never pushed to know more, mostly of the opinion that if Iwaizumi wanted to share, he would. He’s gotten curious before, but he’s never wanted to make Iwaizumi uncomfortable by asking nor has he ever wanted to put Iwaizumi in a weird peer pressure situation. If Iwaizumi doesn’t want him to know everything about his other partner, Suga is okay with that.
So he pulls away as Iwaizumi flips the card over to read the message. But this time, Iwaizumi’s hand catches Suga’s hand just before he can move his arm away from his waist. Suga isn’t trapped by any means, but Iwaizumi’s hand is resting on his and he intertwines their fingers a little, and if anything, it’s an invitation.
For the first time in their year of knowing each other, in their five months of dating officially, in all the months that Suga has known that Oikawa sends postcards and Iwaizumi reads them immediately upon arrival—for the first time, Suga stays to read one too.
Iwaizumi reads it out loud, and the smile in his voice is fond and adoring even just reading Oikawa’s words. Suga knows that they’ve been dating long distance for most of their relationship and at first he hadn’t understood how two people could possibly make that work, but now that he really knows Iwaizumi, he truly believes that there isn’t anything that could break those two’s trust.
Iwa,
China is lovely! There aren’t a lot of Argentinian supporters here, but that just means there’s more people we get to prove wrong, right? I wish you were able to come. The center where I got this postcard is HUGE. It’s built around an old temple that’s simply beautiful when it’s lit up at night. I had the best dumplings that I’ve ever had here. Excluding your mom’s cooking, anyway. Including your cooking though. Sending all my love to you in Japan!
Yours,
Tooru
Suga snorts. “He’s right. Your homemade dumplings are pretty bad.”
“Whatever,” Iwaizumi grumbles, but he doesn’t actually look particularly hurt. He’s beaming at the postcard like he’s received the greatest news of his life rather than a simple, somewhat silly, one paragraph long message. “I think they’re perfectly fine.”
“That’s because you have no taste.”
Iwaizumi huffs a laugh. “This is why you and Tooru can never meet. You’ll just gang up to make fun of me forever.”
“Sounds like all the more reason for me to meet him,” Suga teases lightly.
It’s a joke, but Iwaizumi goes still within his arms. He tips his head back onto Suga’s shoulder, taking a deep breath. He asks, “Do you want to? Meet him?”
Suga blinks. Somewhat reluctantly, he pulls away from Iwaizumi. Then he guides Iwaizumi into spinning around so that they can face each other. “I mean. Do you want me to?”
Iwaizumi licks his lips, looking down at the postcard still clenched tightly in his hand. “I don’t…not want you to meet him.”
“That’s not really an answer, baby.”
“I—” Iwaizumi takes a breath, making a frustrated noise as he steps back, running a hand through his hair.
He looks upset, and Suga isn’t really sure why, not when he thought what they had arranged between the three of them was working so well. Suga himself is starting to panic a little—maybe it hasn’t been working for Iwaizumi, not like how it’s been working for Suga. Maybe it’s not working for Oikawa, and he’s flying here from China to fight him for Iwaizumi’s hand after all.
The thing is that—and it’s not him being self-deprecating, really, it’s not—he knows that if Iwaizumi had to choose, he would choose Oikawa. Suga is well aware that they share something he can’t touch, can’t hold a candle to. He would never ask Iwaizumi to choose in the first place, but if an ultimatum was ever given for whatever reason, Suga knows what the outcome would be.
Suga swallows, looking Iwaizumi up and down. He looks distressed, like there’s something on his mind that he doesn’t know how to say—or something that he isn’t sure Suga wants to hear.
“Talk to me,” Suga says quietly. “What are you thinking?”
Iwaizumi drops his hand from his hair, looking at some spot in the distance beyond Suga’s shoulder. If there’s one thing that Suga has learned about him it’s that he can’t actually force Iwaizumi to do anything or talk about anything if he doesn’t want to. The best way to get Iwaizumi to open up is just to be quiet and wait.
“It’s just…” Iwaizumi takes a heaving breath, setting the postcard down on the table. It’ll get pinned to the refrigerator later, Suga knows, because there’s a collection of probably fifty others plastered there. Suga keeps meaning to buy him more magnets, but it slips his mind every time he’s at the store. “It’s strange.”
He stops. Suga waits for a moment, and then when Iwaizumi doesn’t continue, he prods gently, “What’s strange?”
Iwaizumi sighs, then moves away to sit heavily on the couch. He rubs his palms against his knees. “Tooru knows about you, and you obviously know about him. But I just—it’s weird. To keep these parts of my life so separate all the time. I shouldn’t have to be so worried about it, because you both already know about each other and you’re both fine with it and—I don’t know. It’s just weird.”
“Weird,” Suga echoes thoughtfully. He steps over to the couch to sit down next to Iwaizumi and tangle their fingers together. “You really don’t have to be worried about it. I’d be happy to talk to him if you want me to. I just didn’t think either of you two wanted that.”
Iwaizumi snorts. “Please. Tooru’s been begging to meet you for months. Since before we even started dating.”
Suga blinks. “He has?”
“He’s obsessed with me,” Iwaizumi says dryly, but not unkindly. “He wants to know everyone I talk to. And you’re important to me, so he especially wants to know you.”
“Oh,” Suga says slowly. He takes a minute to process that. In his head, really, Oikawa is a distant figure on the periphery of his life; important to Iwaizumi and integral to Suga’s understanding of his boyfriend’s life but not someone who would think about Suga in turn. In his head, he and Oikawa are on opposite ends of a line that stretches across continents, where the middle point is Iwaizumi. He looks at Iwaizumi, studying him closely. Then, “He’s not, like, being possessive about it though, right? Because—”
Iwaizumi huffs a laugh. “No, it’s not in a possessive way. He’s genuinely always just interested in the people that catch my attention.”
Smirking a little, Suga leans into Iwaizumi’s side. “And I’ve caught your attention?”
“I mean, yeah,” Iwaizumi says, his cheeks just the faintest tint of pink. “I know that I—we haven’t been together as long, but…but you’re important. You’re a big part of my life. So Tooru wants to know this part of me, too—” Iwaizumi laughs lightly— “He’s greedy like that.”
Suga hums. “He’s deeply in love with you. Greedy or not. It’s just that he’s in love with you.”
It’s a sentiment that Suga can understand, even if he can’t bring himself to say it yet. Iwaizumi, at his very core, is so easy to love. So easy to fall in love with.
“That too,” Iwaizumi says, rolling his eyes. He’s smiling, so small that Suga wonders if he knows he’s doing it. Then he sobers a little, looking at Suga. “Really, though. You’d be okay with meeting him sometime? Hanging out, the three of us?”
Suga smiles at him and tries to quell the sudden nerves in his stomach. “Of course, Hajime. I’d like that.”