Archive of Our Own ^beta

On the eve of Oikawa Tooru’s twentieth birthday, they call his television debut the lowest rated in the country’s history, doomed from the start of a particularly rainless rainy season. He ingrains it into his memory anyway, that July 19th: a balmy summer, the rustling trees of the Koishikawa Botanical Gardens, the peripheral of some leading man waiting in the shadows. “It'll always be your fault,” Oikawa thinks of him, right past that long and deliberate shade. “But no matter.”

From under the umbrella, Oikawa forces the smile anyway, waits for the crew to turn on the hose, and preens into action. He imagines the thunder they'll add in post-production, and begins the count of one, two, three in the usual takeoff. Hello, storms. Hello sighs (and the heavenly sort at that, because he had to be proud of anything, it was mastering the art of bated breath). When Oikawa looks into Shimizu Kiyoko’s eyes, tucks back a tuft of hair behind her ear to declare, “I’m in love with you,” she comes back right on cue, ever the professional. 

“I cannot love you back,” she announces, apologetic, before leaving him in the downpour. Oikawa stretches into resolution from there, and remembers cues from the script: from there, a confessor stands rejected, but proud in his efforts. A smile creeps on his lips, nearly invisible, but just enough for the audience to see. He is satisfied with her answer. The rain lets up.  

“Aaaand cut!” the director shouts. “Time to bring in Kuroo-kun, now.”

Oikawa exhales. He slinks off to the side via assistants and their tiny prods, slicking back wet hair and unsticking a damp dress shirt by the pull of a collar. An intern hands him a cold drink of water. His co-star, the male lead, comes brushing by, offering a hand towel on the way. 

“Good work,” comes his high praise. “If only breaking up with someone was that easy, right?”

“Well,” Oikawa starts right back, immediately testy, "who says I've ever had to break up with anyone?”

“Is that another way of saying that people have only ever broken up with you, then?” The co-star, the one and only Kuroo Tetsurou, smiles over his shoulder in passing, ever-taunting, and looks right at home in the manufactured storm. It drizzles, misty instead of ruinous, and Oikawa wonders why he couldn't have been given that same courtesy. Rain drips heavy from his fringe.

“You know, I think I might be in love with you,” he watches Kuroo say in his scene. Terribly casual. Hands rest in his pockets. A chest stays open, and head looms tipped and only half-expectant in some first kiss.

And delicately, right on cue, Shimizu returns the confession.

“Cut!” the director shouts, giving a single clap of the hand. “Great. Now let's review what we've got and go from there. Oikawa-kun, I noticed you looked a bit distracted in your last scene. We might have to redo your takes for good measure.”

(The director then sighs, over it, like he doesn't want to redo the takes for good measure.)

“A-ah, yes,” Oikawa says with a bow of his head anyway, mostly sorry. He fidgets in his folding chair in the meanwhile, head still caught in middling reviews and even worse ratings; because even if he hadn't counted NHK’s Love Over Tea to be the most popular drama of the day, he had expected better than the likes of a 2.1. Ratings like 2.1 got someone laughed at, and he'd been known to prefer—well—the opposite of that. He blames it partly on the premise itself, recalling a review from an internet article he'd read late last night: Love Over Tea is woefully, egregiously generic, pasting together all the worst tropes any drama can muster. If you are looking for that bad boy with the secret heart of gold, or the pushover tea-shop owner with perfectly coiffed hair, then this love triangle disaster might be for you. Otherwise, you might want to look away. 

There were other things, too. NHK had counted on a particularly torrential rainy season to force people inside for a revamped afternoon lineup, but the weather had been ridiculously mild the past month, and everyone had been more apt to take strolls than stay inside to watch. Even Oikawa’s mother, an avid herb gardener back in Miyagi, had been guilty of recording showings to tend to her award-winning chives. Oikawa might blame other things, too—the uneven pacing, the too-ambient original soundtrack, the ridiculous amount of product placement for POCARI SWEAT—but if one thing stuck out to him as a complete bust, it was the presence of a one and certain co-star. It’ll always be your fault.

Up ahead, Kuroo Tetsurou smiles at Oikawa again, takes a sip from his water bottle, and flits the gaze away. Oikawa just turns back in his chair, hellbent on ignoring him.

“Whatever,” he mumbles to himself, flipping to the last of his script before tossing it on the table. It’s not like they had much time left together anyway; today’s filming was for the last episode, and Oikawa would be able to forget this drama and Kuroo Tetsurou in no time. 

“Last scene,” someone calls. Peering up, Oikawa watches Kuroo lean down to kiss Shimizu on the cheek, all slow and barely pressed and half-smiling.

Oikawa studies the last of the script to follow along, even against all better judgment to stop caring. He'd forgotten the last part of this scene, because he'd wanted to forget about the last three months altogether—but he can't help but hang onto the words anyway, a quiet show of respect for the writers on staff.

the two of them remain, the motions command. and that's all that needs to be said.

The director does not call Oikawa for any re-shoots after that. He solemnly declares, much to the relief of everyone else on set, that “it's a wrap.”

At the end of things, Oikawa catches Kuroo once more before parting, diligent to leave with a goodbye and good riddance.

In an apartment in Sangenjaya, Oikawa Tooru celebrates his birthday downing instant ramen and looking at new roles his agent’s sent him.

“I mean, I guess there really is weight in saying, there's nowhere to look but up.” Matsukawa grins up from his Suntory summer ale. “I'm sure you'd make a wonderful…” he trails off, looking down at the paperwork, “Zookeeper number sixteen.” 

Hanamaki frowns, eyes still glued to his phone screen. “Why would they even need more than one? Doesn't the movie take place in an aquarium?”

“It doesn't matter,” Oikawa laments. “I wouldn't take that role in a million years.” It is with a swift hand that he takes the page from Matsukawa’s hand, chucking it into the waste bin by the kitchen. As if summoned, Iwaizumi Hajime emerges in the doorway to refute him.

“Listen,” Iwaizumi starts, tightening the pink apron around him in supreme authority, “I get that you won't take just anything, even if your agency likes throwing everything at you, but at some point you're going to run out of rent money. And guess what I won't let you do?”

“Run out of rent money,” Oikawa singsongs back to his oldest friend, dipping down to see his other options. “And I get that, but you don't understand, Iwa-chan. All of these roles are so terrible, and I'm tired of terrible. I already had to put up with that for the last three months!”

Matsukawa hums, nodding in remembrance. “Oh yeah, that Kuroo guy you had a crush on. Did you ever do anything about that?” 

“I did not have a crush on him,” Oikawa chimes back in a grave little hush. “If anything, he has a crush on me, being all snide on set.”

“He might've just wanted to, I don't know, keep you in check?” Hanamaki suggests. “Some guys are like that, I guess, and he was the lead, right? He probably had to make sure the audience still saw him as the guy who got the girl. Top dog status. Virility. I don't know,” Hanamaki drones on nonsensically, half-drunk and talking with his hands. 

Oikawa shakes his head. He looks to Iwaizumi for the proper guidance instead, but finds no solace with him. “Just pick something,” he prods instead, “so we can have birthday cake after.”

“Fine,” Oikawa wilts, tired of lingering on about Love Over Tea and certain co-stars and their terrible, ugly, no-good faces—with a wave of his hand, he just paws at a random sheet on the table, picks it up for his friends to see, and grimaces at the selection. 

“Foaming citrus peel extract face wash,” Matsukawa and Hanamaki read in unison. “Line dancers wanted.”

“You know, I didn't think I'd see you on our cast list today.” 

Ennoshita Chikara, non-primetime TV commercial aficionado, welcomes Oikawa to the door by the way of a queasy little smile, the tip of his director’s hat, and the insistence that it might be his lucky day. Oikawa ducks into the tiny little studio space on the south side of Shibuya from there, enthralled with all the interns scrambling to set up the sink basins and last minute faux-bathroom decor. He dotes on the giant rubber duckies hanging from the set ceiling, barbarically used as strobe light lamps.

“I mean,” Ennoshita explains further, nursing his own cup-of-whatever in a Styrofoam cup, “it's just that you just got off your own show and all, and this isn't exactly one of those fancy endorsement deals you see on the billboards, so I'd think this thing would be sort of, well, beneath you, you know?”

Oikawa shakes his head. “First of all, the rent doesn't pay itself,” he says, because it's true. This seems to put Ennoshita more at ease, judging from the lowered shoulders, the ambling smile, the loosened grip on a picked-at paper cup. Oikawa continues, “and I’m not sure you've heard, but, well, TV ratings don't lie, so I'd say I have some work to do.”

Ennoshita does this little funny mix between a frown and a smile. “Ah, yes, I might've heard some talk about that,” he refutes, going quite red, “but I don't think it's your fault. Not you, or Shimizu-san, or Kuroo-san. Really, you'll all be in primetime soon enough.” 

“Oh, thank you—”

“But I'm just nervous, maybe, because I might've also heard some talk about things on set.”

Oikawa frowns at this. “On set? The set of what? Love Over Tea?”

Ennoshita nods. “I mean, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but I heard some things. You know, about you and Kuroo-san. That you two don't really get along.”

(This is when Oikawa thinks back to another online review, written just in time for Love Over Tea’s penultimate episode two weeks ago: well, even if the final days of this drama’s run will be nothing to write home about, one cannot deny the brighter spots of his show. No doubt will veteran Shimizu Kiyoko make her glorious return to the period drama circuit next fall, while we await new projects from newcomers Kuroo Tetsurou and Oikawa Tooru. Their natural antagonism was one of the high points of the show, possibly fueled by the claims they were quite frosty to each other on set. But here's hoping for otherwise, and that we’ll see them together soon again!) 

Oikawa smiles. “Not true at all.”

Ennoshita nods, but keeps the grimace on his face like he's unconvinced. “Perfect, then. Great to know.”

“Oh? And why’s that?” 

“Well, we needed five people for this commercial, you see, for the scrub-your-troubles sink dance, and uh, Kuroo-san’s agent came calling last night and—” 

“Hey,” comes the voice behind the both of them. Kuroo waves, emerging from the dressing rooms in an open bathrobe and casual clothes below, sleeping mask worn over his forehead all lopsided like that might be the en vogue way to do things now.

Oikawa forces a smile. He eyes Kuroo up and down and determines no one’s looked more hideous in pastel; but Kuroo takes it in stride either way, flipping up the lapels of his cooler-than-cool terry sleepwear.

Ennoshita slinks away from between the two of them, declaring that filming will start in ten minutes.

“Hello, Kuroo-chan,” Oikawa offers. “I'm surprised to see you here.”

Kuroo offers a wry little smile, and the wrinkle of his forehead. “Yeah? And why’s that?” 

“As leading man, I wouldn't think you'd do commercials like this,” Oikawa offers, partially mimicking Ennoshita from not five minutes before. At this, Kuroo just goes over to one of the cameras to mess with the buttons.

“Wow,” he remarks, looking into the lens. “It's breathtaking, really.” 

“What is?” Oikawa asks right back.

“How determined you are to keep leading man against me,” Kuroo answers. “Sorry we auditioned for the same thing, I guess.”

Oikawa feels his teeth grit behind a grin. He regains his form from there, chin tipped up in challenge. Because that was the thing about the two of them—it wasn't for a lack of skill that Oikawa might dislike Kuroo, because he’s never been in the habit of denying anyone’s prowess on camera. Even if the reviewers had erroneously overlooked Kuroo’s more nuanced approach to the role of leading bad boy, and the marketing team had failed him by promoting him as just that, Oikawa would be wrong not to see past the smolder, the constant bed head, and the low drawl. More often than not, Kuroo was capable of a certain sort of needling, a performance that might get under someone’s skin, and he'd been adept at picking at Oikawa’s. Those secret smiles, that sudden upturn of a chin—Kuroo pressed at him continually, whether they were filming or not, and Oikawa could never decipher if it was a matter of love or hate or a deft mixture of both.

“Ha, well, you couldn't be any more wrong about that,” he says. “I only bring it up so I can keep score. We're at one-zero, now, Kuroo-chan. Next time, we’ll be even.”

Kuroo smiles at this, genuine, judging from how he lets it fall by the wayside a second later (because that was the thing about hiding in plain sight—something Oikawa was adept at too—genuine was only but a flash, the first string of lightning in his peripheral vision. He'd only be looking in vain for anything sustained).

Oikawa catches something in his eyes from there, dark and heavy-lidded and not to be trifled with.

“Some people aren’t always looking for the limelight, you know,” Kuroo says. “How about getting by?” 

Oikawa hums, picking up a spare sleeping mask from the table. Smacking it on over his forehead, he makes sure it doesn't drape over his eyes. “It should never be about getting by.”

“What?” Kuroo asks back in a scoff. “Like you really think you'll make it to Cannes, one day? Give me a break.” He leans forward from the camera, taking Oikawa by surprise, and lightly drags down the edge of a sleeping mask over his sights. 

“But I’ll see you out there, Oikawa,” Kuroo whispers to him, close by the vibrations of a voice built to taunt, fingers dancing along a shoulder, all before getting called for final makeup. 

Oikawa yanks the sleeping mask off his face, crumples it in his hands, and watches Kuroo never turn to see him; a hand runs up to the back of a neck instead, some graze across some tricky expanse, and Oikawa pretends to find no fascination with its thickets.

“I’ll never find work again, Iwa-chan,” Oikawa laments over a park bench that same night, head in his hands with soap still behind his ears. “It all just happened so fast, you know?”

Iwaizumi sighs, lifting Oikawa up by his shirt collar and forcing him to sit up. “How about you start from the beginning? I’m still wondering why you still smell like oranges.” From there, he offers Oikawa a bit from his bentou box, which Oikawa takes in halfhearted bites.

Sniffling, Oikawa swallows down a bit of rice and umeboshi. “It's just,” he starts, not even knowing where to start, “at some point, I decided I wasn't dancing, I don't know, hard enough, and so I started to, and then I heard Kuroo laughing at me at the next sink over. And the music was loud, sure, but I knew he was! Because you know why I knew he was laughing at me, Iwa-chan?” 

“Because nothing ever gets past you,” Iwaizumi drones, as natural as a best friend’s bound to be. He doesn't even look up from his dinner, but it's no matter; Oikawa knows he's listening by the nods, and the prods to continue by a nudged shin down below.

“Right,” Oikawa says. “So, I figured, there's no way we were going to do this in one take anyway, because Kuroo hadn't bothered to memorize the dance completely, you know, what I showed you last time…” One palm meets his cheek, then another, and he makes the swirling motions like he's got foam cleanser on his face. “So I sort of pressed my thumb to the faucet and, um, tried to get him with the stream like they do in the movies…”

Iwaizumi looks up. “And you got him?”

“I mean,” Oikawa starts again, “not exactly.”

A sigh.

“What did you do, Oikawa?”

Oikawa shrugs. “Kuroo sort of dodged last minute. So I kind of hit the guy next to me by accident. And I think it took him by surprise…oh, poor Yahaba-chan, I think I might've broken his nose. I didn't know he'd slip, you know, but he insisted he was fine.” 

Iwaizumi frowns back at him. “He’s probably fine. But what about you? Were you arrested?” 

“No, but Kuroo-chan and I were escorted out of the studio,” Oikawa says. “I mean, the poor director, he really thought we could go on, but there were executives at the shoot and they thought it was all unacceptable.” 

“And?”

“And nothing.” Oikawa doesn't bother to go into the other details, like the way those same executives had also called out Kuroo Tetsurou for being too harsh looking for the shoot in the first place, and that no amount of mid-grade citrus foaming cleanser could wipe the delinquent off someone's face. It had been a small consolation prize, hearing this on the way out, but not one to help him ease off any sort of prickliness.

“Nothing at all? So you got kicked out, and that was it?” Iwaizumi asks. “Because you can come back from that.”

Oikawa sighs, carding his fingers through his hair. His fringe still had soap in it. “Sure,” he says, a white lie, because he figures someone might print the story at some point anyway: fresh off an abysmal run on NHK’s Love Over Tea, minor celebrity Oikawa Tooru has found himself embroiled in another on-set fiasco—getting into face wash fights with former co-star Kuroo Tetsurou! After the two of them were reportedly booted from a commercial set, two of them duked it out in the studio’s washroom and reportedly caused ¥100,000 in total damages. No arrests were made in the debacle, but it is clear that the rumors of animosity between the two might hold some truth, after all.

“You're kidding me,” Iwaizumi says, looking down at his phone. There we go. Oikawa forgets how easily news can spread. “Oikawa, there's video footage of you shooting face wash from easy-squeeze tubes.” He lifts his phone up, un-muting it for the whole park to hear.

“I never want to work with you again, Kuroo-chan!”

“You think I want to, either?”

Oikawa rolls his eyes. “Those damn interns and their viral videos.” 

“Come on now,” Iwaizumi continues. “You've got to come back from this. I'm not going to let you become the face wash fight guy.” 

“Well, if I'm going to be that guy, so can Kuroo-chan. He can go down in flames with me,” Oikawa insists. “No more leads for the both of us!” he says, falling into a wince at the end of it. “I mean, wouldn't that just save me a ton of trouble? A career can't end if it never started!” 

Iwaizumi stares back, blinking, before jabbing Oikawa in the arm. 

“Ow.”

“You’re doing it again,” Iwaizumi barks. “I know you always want to be two steps ahead, but sometimes you end up taking a thousand.” 

“But you don't get it, Iwa-chan, you don't know the business like I do and—” 

“Oh, shut it. I don't know show business?” Iwaizumi asks, so impassioned that he lets the bentou box drop right off his lap, just missing his shoes. “Fine, whatever, but I don't care about the rest of show business. Make your own damn business. Just don't tell me you're ready to retire, you idiot.”

Oikawa looks back at Iwaizumi, huffy in retaliating before letting up. Because Iwa-chan’s right. He allows himself the deepest exhale from there, the lean of his head against Iwaizumi’s shoulder, and the shut of weary eyes. And because Tokyo might continue the trend of mild summers this year, the rest of the night falls cooler around them; it's soothing enough to bring him back from any strained heights, and this is when Oikawa remembers that it might be okay—more than okay—to walk along the earth sometimes.

“Iwa-chan,” he calls, looking back down the roads from whence he came. “Do you remember that promise we made when we were kids?”

Iwaizumi sighs. “To be whatever we wanted to be,” he says, almost on reflex, because it was something they ended up revisiting every couple of years. Oikawa likened it to time capsules that didn't like to stay buried, and Iwaizumi always helped him do the digging.

“You wanted to be a veterinarian, right?” Oikawa asks.

“Yeah.”

Oikawa laughs, just a smidge. “And what are you studying to be right now?” 

“A veterinarian.”

“And what will you be eventually? Before you even know it?”

“I get it, a veterinarian,” Iwaizumi says. “Now let me ask you.”

Oikawa raises himself off Iwaizumi’s shoulder, attentive.

“What did you tell me you wanted to be, back in Miyagi?” Iwaizumi asks. “And I'm only going to ask you once.” 

Against all better judgment, and the propensity to say, it's perfectly okay to settle, Oikawa remembers a promise to himself. The milestones flip by. He's five again, and fresh off an impromptu stunt as boy eating cereal for a commercial in Sendai. He's fifteen, when he discovers that high school cultural fair plays were something to take very seriously. By sixteen, he's devoted to a series of scripted v-logs reenacting The Tale of Genji. By seventeen, he learns of the film festivals in Venice, Berlin, and Cannes. 

And by eighteen, Oikawa’s bags are packed and ready to make it in Tokyo, dreams too big to belong to small Sendai sets and tiny point-and-shoot cameras.

“I said I wanted to be in movies.”

Living up to his word, Iwaizumi keeps silent in the swell. Oikawa rises from the bench. Because two years since coming to the city, it might be tempting to say, it's perfectly okay to settle. I'm okay with my 2.1 ratings and accidental viral videos. I don't have to be in movies. So he tries the words out again, out loud this time: “I don't have to be in movies,” he says, before realizing how wrong they rest on his tongue. Iwaizumi just leans back, eyes rolling back into something closed, because he knows it, too.

“I want to be in movies, Iwa-chan.” 

(He always, always knows.)

Iwaizumi smirks. 

“So, let's get out of here, then.”

“And maybe you should stay clear of that Kuroo guy for now, huh? Unless you want another viral video on your hands.” 

“Oh, no, Iwa-chan, how many views is it at now?”

“About a million in the first two hours.”

And this is when he thinks Iwaizumi might be right about the whole Kuroo thing. When he watches the view count go up, relentless in spiking, Oikawa takes one good look at a co-star’s face, declares it one to be avoided, and resigns himself to the most terrible fate in the meanwhile. 

“I'm going to die,” Oikawa announces on the way back home. “And this video is all I'll have to show for it!” 

But death is not something that comes for him (well, minus the fake blood on his cheek). He rises up as a vampire for a TWO OK ROCKS music video later that autumn, blood dribbling down a lip after feasting on his victim. He looks up when the director Konoha leans over to whisper something in his assistant’s ear, and peers back at Oikawa with the most curious frown. 

“Hey, Oikawa-kun,” Konoha calls out. “Can you remind me what role you auditioned for?”

Oikawa takes out his fake fangs. “Lead vampire? You know, the classic type.” 

Konoha nods along, slow. “I see.”

“Is something the matter?” Oikawa asks back, stepping off of the soundstage.

“Well,” Konoha starts, tapping his chin, “it's just that this video is about people accepting their differences, right? So we've got classic vampire and oh, how do I say it...the other type. The ikemen sort with the hair and the…” He trails off, looking Oikawa up and down. “You, in short. A pretty boy—”

“Oh, director, please don't think my range is that limited,” Oikawa interrupts, insistent. A bothered little smile comes across his face, a reflex more than anything. “I can play what you're looking for.”

Konoha sighs. “I mean, I believe that, but you just look so much like the other part I envisioned, you know? And hey, this’ll get you the exposure you want, either way. TWO OK ROCKS is really hot on the scene right now, and it'll only help you from that, um, that scandal of yours.”

“I don't know,” Oikawa offers back.

Konoha smiles. There's something threatening in it, as if to say, I mean, I'm not really giving you an option.

Oikawa considers the possibilities: because yes, he had auditioned like a madman all season. Because yes, he'd been working hard all summer, booking time for all sorts of commercials and workshopping and shadowing the veterans at Hatsudai (even with their waning audiences and paltry attempts at western revivals). Every day was one further away from FACE WASH FIGHT MUST WATCH.MOV (now at twenty-seven million views on YouTube), and it’d be a shame to backtrack now. He could take another pretty boy role in the meanwhile. He’d go along with it, if it meant bigger and better things later on.

“Fine,” Oikawa tells Konoha, much to his delight. “I'll do it. But I want a ton of screen time, got it? Minimum cuts.”

Konoha smirks back. “Got it,” he says, not exactly a promise. He calls for new makeup after that, and to switch the velvet cape for a sensible unbuttoned blazer.

And like that, filming proceeds with little fanfare. Oikawa wouldn't call it a masterpiece, not with the modest budget, the small space, the minimal props, but he had a way of making things work either way—because if a director couldn't quite reign all his players together, Oikawa always had a few tricks to help pull them in. Today's efforts come by the way of helpful little suggestions, the gentlest delivery in offering them, and a smile for the garnish. Confound them, he reminds himself. Intoxicate them with the thought of better things.

From there, Oikawa casually spins an urban legend about personal space to vampire number three. “Did you know that people who stand too close are more likely to go bald?” he asks him, before floating away. In the aftermath, he steps into the spot where the light shines the best, and challenges the others to take it, too.

“Look alive,” he coos under the sound of TWO OK ROCKS, and it's enough to incense everyone in the room. Just perfect. Keep them on their toes.

(And five years later, the magazines would declare him an absolute force to work with on set. Calling him a cross between pleasant and “absolutely haunting,” major industry players would go on to write testaments to his keen sense: now, here's someone who's obviously studied every millimeter of the production. One of the things that makes Kuroo Tetsurou's directing debut such a film to behold is the fact that Oikawa Tooru finds such an uncanny way to connect with his surroundings, his co-stars, and the source material at every turn. He arrives as the most memorable sort of maestro, commanding the set with only the sort of ease a well-seasoned professional could achieve. With a smile, the tease, and years worth of depth, it is no wonder he was the director’s first choice, despite their apparent differences.)

After filming, Oikawa meets his friends for dinner in a cozy little shop near the studio, content enough with soba and the taste of domestic beer. Tipsy enough, he laments, “I didn't like the vampire they paired me with today.” 

Matsukawa shifts in his seat, leaning against the booth-back. “Did you just say vampire?” he asks, popping edamame into his mouth. 

“He was in a music video today for TWO OK ROCKS. It was vampire themed,” Iwaizumi answers, never one to miss a beat.

Oikawa nods. “I mean, there were six of them, mind you, all cast as underlings, but there was one that was supposed to be the classic to my sparkly-revisionist.” And with that, he swats at his cheek, shooing away any excess glitter. “But he was all wrong. He brought nothing to the role, just stood there in his plastic fangs. Waved his cape around. The director loved it, anyway.”

Hanamaki lifts up from his phone. He'd been consumed with setting up the official Oikawa Tooru fan club as of late, something he hoped to cement as their group’s greatest inside joke. “What would you have done, then?” he asks, while letting FACE WASH FIGHT MUST WATCH.MOV play again in the background.

They get to part with the projectile cleanser. Not sorry, Oikawa pauses the video, accidentally on a certain co-star's awful face. 

“There has to be an intensity to it, I think,” he muses, preening away from the screen altogether. He looks up at the ceiling lights until he swears he’s seeing stars. “You know the moment a vampire has a victim in his clutches? That small space between fang and neck?” He presses two fingers to his own nape.

Matsukawa nods for everyone else. “Oh, sure, and there's like a really dramatic sonata playing in the background? Or organ music? Because damn, nothing beats some really good organ music.” 

“What?” Hanamaki asks. 

Oikawa nods past that, pressing two finger guns into a neat little frame. “There's an unspoken pressure to that space. I'd bring that out more, if I was that particular vampire.” A simple matter of going for the jugular.

"Artists," Matsukawa sighs. 

"Hey, now," says Oikawa. "You don't have to be one to know that casting the right person is key."

“Yeah? And who would you cast, then?” Iwaizumi asks. “Since they switched you to something else.” 

Oikawa leans over the open palm of his hand, dazed.

“Hm,” he murmurs, shutting his eyes for a moment. “I don’t know.” The video plays on in Hanamaki’s care, low for only their table to hear, and Oikawa hears Kuroo’s laugh through the speakers, biting in the dulcets. It was much too easy, to imagine him again: Kuroo, backed up against a stall door, wrist to his mouth, the face wash on his cheek; the drenched undershirt collar; the peek of a smile that’d like to sting. Oikawa sighs deep, annoyed that Kuroo might cross his mind at all.

(But still. It'd only be a detriment to himself, to deny the skills of others.) 

Kuroo, Oikawa admits to himself. Kuroo Tetsurou might be your man.

When winter breaks into a particularly pleasant spring, Hanamaki announces that the official Oikawa Tooru fan club has swelled to ten thousand, seven hundred, and seventy-five fans. Oikawa perks up at the news, pocky stick falling out of his mouth, and closes the script he'd been reading on the floor. 

“It's ridiculous,” Hanamaki laments. “I've had five people email me this week alone about becoming moderators for the page.”

Oikawa blinks. “And what do they say to you?”

“Oh, president Hanamaki-san, I know you're Oikawa-san’s biggest fan, but would you let us volunteer? Count me mortified.”

“Aw, Makki-chan, I didn't know you wanted to be my fanclub president that badly,” says Oikawa.

“I'm shutting it down right now.”

“What? Now, Makki-chan, let's think about this!” From there, Oikawa pushes himself off the floor to stop the unthinkable. He edges his way partly onto Hanamaki’s seat, leaving little room to share. “You can't tell me you'd do that to an up-and-coming community. I mean, look at them—it goes past anything about me. See? Akemi234 is sharing a cake recipe with another anon-chan in this thread. Bonds are forming across the world.”

Hanamaki sighs, offering something too tired to be a full-on grimace. 

“So who are we, to sever them?” 

At this, Hanamaki just gets up from his seat, taking an empty mug with him. “Fine,” he declares, “but you pick those moderators out yourself. Joke’s on me, for thinking fans wouldn't join a fanclub.”

“It's okay, Makki-chan. Everyone makes mistakes,” he offers with a pleasant tilt of his head, and Hanamaki just scuttles off to the kitchen for more coffee. Oikawa goes to the tab labeled private messages from there and prepares what to say: hi there, this is Oikawa Tooru in the flesh! ^_^ you've been chosen to help run my fanclub. Then come copious amounts of backspace, backspace, backspace.

Oikawa runs through several revisions of this before giving up. Glazed over at his inbox and running through the list of things he still had to do this morning, he thinks about the unread scripts and checks to cash for commercial stints. A viral video comes to his head, current hit count at approximately forty-seven million. In smallest defiance, he decides to give himself a much-needed day off instead.

NEW MESSAGE. Oikawa blinks along with a flashing inbox. It prompts him to refresh the page, and when he does, he's got the most curious message waiting for him. From Kuroo 1, it says (because he would later learn the username Kuroo was taken by an anti-fan, looking to disrupt the forums in a rather mild fanclub war).

Hey, Oikawa. Would you mind meeting me at the Botanical Gardens this afternoon? I have something I'd like to say to you. Let's say 2PM?

Your biggest fan,
Kuroo

“You're kidding me.”

Oikawa finds three things wrong with the message.

First, the salutation: your biggest fan? Yeah, right—because even if Oikawa had been extensively coached on the finer points of (not) looking too much into tone on the internet, he'd be a fool to miss Kuroo’s attempts at getting the last word in, edgewise. 

Second, the want. Meet me, because I have something to say to you. Oikawa had imagined this day throughout the past seasons, on and off and in between takes, what he'd say, and how he'd say it: I don't like you, and you're not worth forty seven million views, and I'll ruin you for the industry. Maybe none of those things. But Kuroo—he's not sure what Kuroo possibly had to say at this point, and he’d be damned to admit to being curious about things.

And third, the gardens. Koishikawa Botanical Gardens, to be exact. Not only had it been the last place where they'd filmed for Love Over Tea, but it'd also been their first (even if Oikawa's not sure why he'd ever want to count any of their firsts).

Still, he thinks back to that time. They had both arrived early before filming, two hopeful strangers on a bridge over the water’s edge. A morning in May. Kuroo wore chambray and drawstring jumper sweats; Oikawa had kept his glasses on to hide the fact that he'd barely slept the night before. He remembers staring ahead then, leaves blanketing the pond surface, planes making chicken scratches in a faraway sky. He'd only turned to Kuroo on a whim. He had to tell someone. In turn, Kuroo had regarded him with something peripheral. 

(You can be that someone.) 

“I'm going to be on television today,” Oikawa had told him.

“Well, what do you know? Me, too.”

And the rest might be history (even if he didn't want to count things like history). Oikawa finds himself getting dressed after that, with ¥300 in his pocket for general admission and a note for Hanamaki: sorry, but I've gone to meet a grave enemy of mine. I (probably) won't get murdered. Don't wait up for lunch!

He rides the train until he gets to Korakuen Station, pays that ¥300 to get into the Botanical Gardens, and pretends not to look for him. Gravel nagging under his feet, low branches tapping his shoulder, Oikawa refutes with the best of them. I am not here to see him. He does not admit to falling prey to fan board messages. 

Above, the sparrows harp on him anyway. Uh yeah, you have, they all chirp. Oikawa, against his best judgment, walks on.

Kuroo waits at the arched bridge where they'd first met last spring. A DSLR camera keeps on a tripod this time, along with Kuroo’s unfailing attention; he doesn't notice Oikawa standing on the other side, and Oikawa can't help but think it might be better that way, anyway. He lets himself watch from there, all in private showing.

Hunched over, Kuroo’s got an index finger hovered over a button to fire. Oikawa thinks of small spaces again. Fang to neck. Finger to trigger.

Kuroo licks his lips, one smooth lap, before proceeding. Oikawa flinches at the closing of distance, the click and the kill, and feels the sparrows bound off the branches behind him. Preening up, and watching them veer off into the clouds, he spots Oikawa in the aftermath. Kuroo’s smile spreads wry before wilting, slightly, into something guarded, and he lets his sights fall to the ground.

“You're early,” he says, going back to fiddle with his camera. He presses a lens cap into place. “I thought I wrote the message for this afternoon.”

Oikawa shrugs. “The suspense was killing me,” he insists, looking over. “What were you working on just now?” 

Kuroo leaves the camera. “Test shots.”

“Test shots for what?”

“Personal project."

"What personal project?"

"Mornings were not made for prying," Kuroo tells him, as if this was a truth he's abided for years.

Oikawa rolls his eyes. “I mean, if you're so busy then, I can come back,” he says, turning his back on him. 

“Wait,” says Kuroo. “It's fine. This won't take very long.”

“What do you want?” Oikawa asks, peeking over his shoulder. “Another viral video? Are you going to throw me in the pond for a hundred million views?”

Kuroo scoffs. “Something I’ve thought about, but no, not this time.”

“Then what?” 

“I've seen your work for that TWO OK ROCKS video. Not bad,” says Kuroo. “And you should hear what my agency’s been saying about you—Oikawa this, and Oikawa that. If we could get him to sign with us, having the two of them together would be great.” He says the last part like a myth, exaggerated like he knows what it'd mean to bring them together. But Oikawa can't help but be flattered either way, because all sorts of agencies had been coming after as of late; and like all the others, Kuroo’s must've heard the rumors about the great Oikawa Tooru looking for new management.

And it was true: he had come to a crossroads with his current agency, which believed too much in the power of shortform as of late. Enough with the thirty-second commercials and music video stints, he'd decided. If they were so hellbent on making him some fleeting star, only remembered by hit counts on embed video placements, he really might have to walk.

But that was neither here nor there. Oikawa watches Kuroo edge closer towards him on the other side of the bridge, all without backing away. “So?” Oikawa asks him, holding his ground. “What does this all have to do with me?” 

Kuroo grins again. “They've sent me to court you,” he says, “so that's what I'm doing.” He comes closer, hands skimming against the railing, and Oikawa stares down at the ground.

“And why would you want that?” Oikawa asks. “Why would I want that?” 

“I’m looking at a wonderful bonus if you sign—”

“Be serious.” 

Kuroo glances up, precisely that. Serious. 

“Because I've been thinking about it,” Kuroo says, averting to his camera to switch out the lenses. “And I hate to admit it, but you're right. It's never been a matter of getting by. I've got things I want, and you do, too.” 

“And what do you want?” Oikawa asks back.

Kuroo does not answer right away. Peering back through the peephole of his camera, he adjusts it for the perfect shot, and hovers before taking the picture. Oikawa glances down at the open notebook again, catches the title on the top margin. “Movies to make,” it says upon closer inspection, and Oikawa feels the need to bury this in secret.

“A lot of things. Things I don't have to tell you. But for now, let's just say I'd like a challenge.”

Oikawa smiles, not opposed. “And me? What do I get out of this?” 

Kuroo glances back at him, rising up from the hunch.

“Well,” he says, “let's just say this: I'll be yours, and you'll be mine.”

The first job Oikawa gets at his new agency has him in high school again, cast as team captain for a coming-of-age movie about the merits of untucking uniform shirts, taking deep breaths, and not being afraid to beat any uphill battles. Under the pretty filter of slice-of-life and teenage angst, he cries out by the riverbank, eyes wet with forced tears and splintered bat at his feet.

“I never wanted to quit baseball,” he shouts out, voice cracked and fantastic. He'd been practicing this scene for the last few nights. “I wanted to see it through the end, with you.” 

A silence emerges between him and his co-star. Sugawara Koushi has a way of carrying his scenes with a quiet, insistent grace.

“You're still a part of the team, no matter what,” he tells Oikawa. “We’ll go all the way to nationals, captain. For you."

The director, one action-movie-specialist Tanaka Saeko, yells cut after that. She'd taken on Diamonds In The Sky Forever as a departure from her usual efforts, mostly in an attempt to take on a rival director back in Tokyo. Haiba Alisa, rom-com tragicomedy extraordinaire, was busy shooting a horror ghost thriller the next town over too, and the two of them had created a sort of fervor across both sets, one town to the next. 

“Oikawa-kun, Sugawara-kun, good job. That was exactly what I'm looking for. How about we take a break for the rest of the day?” she offers, flipping through her clipboard. “I hear it's going to rain soon, anyway, and the next scene I wanted to shoot has to be under clear skies.”

Sugawara sighs. “That explains why it's been so humid today. I thought I was going to sweat my skin off.” From there, he gets up from the grass and looks over to the camera crew. “Daichi,” he calls to one member in particular all singsong, “let's go get ice cream before the storm comes. And then we can go ghost hunting later. I'm tired of being haunted.”

Oikawa perks up, getting up and brushing off glass blades. “Ghost hunting?” 

“Oh, didn't you hear?” Sugawara asks back. “Our hotel is plagued by ghosts. Apparently it's been really bad the last few days. Rumors of them plaguing the halls and whatnot.” 

“Folklore,” says Oikawa.

“It's true!” Sugawara calls. “You wait up tonight and go to the second floor sauna. He’ll come and scare the wits out of you.”

“Maybe I will, then,” says Oikawa, gathering his things, and he briefly considers taking the splintered bat with him for tonight. Deciding against it, he wipes off the fake tears instead. 

Later that evening, Oikawa stays up just as instructed. He'd been given a light schedule for shooting tomorrow anyway, and he could probably afford to sleep in without getting in trouble. The night wears on perfectly after that, and the hours seem to meld into the next; Oikawa spends most of them watching old movies on the dingy television in his room, lost in the likes of Casablanca and Harakiri. The vanilla ice cream melts in his bowl without a fight.

Two a.m. rolls around, and Oikawa sneaks out of his room, door creaking shut behind him. He wouldn't be surprised if Sugawara were right, because this would be the sort of hotel that might be haunted; after some research, Oikawa had discovered that it was not only one the oldest inns in Yonezawa, but all of the Yamagata prefecture, and the site of a few grisly double homicides during the 1950’s. He swallows hard in taking his first steps down the hall. The floorboards betray him, insistent on whining under his footfalls, and he nearly jumps at the hiss of a fussy cat in the stairwell.

By some miracle he makes it down to the second floor without being dragged to the abyss. It starts as a perfectly normal hallway, reasonably lit and narrow, and the quiet is the kind that weighs down on both ears. Not even the crickets cry here. No tenants talk through thin walls.

Oikawa makes it down the hallway, feeling the lamps flicker with his strides. Shit. It would be his luck, for the lights to go out right then and there. Pawing up against the wall, he wonders how the authorities will find his body in the morning.

“Hello?” he asks. “Is anyone there?” He makes it to what feels like a door, and he slides it open without a second thought. In the near darkness, he thinks he might hear running water, the echo of a sink; by the little light of a cell phone flashlight, he points it up to find a silhouette by the mirrors. He's got nothing but a towel on, hair dripping, and—shit. His face rings something like "you're a dead man. The absolute deadest."

Oikawa screams at the sight of him, ghoul’s face and all, and feels himself faint right on the floor.

“Hey.”

Oikawa squints under the light, feels himself groan in regained consciousness, and sees him, hovering over. Kuroo Tetsurou’s got the worst sort of smile on his face and a hint of white makeup still on his cheek, and Oikawa’s tempted to smack him back from whatever underworld he’s come from. He, in turn, suppresses the most obvious sort of laugh, and goes back to the table to get Oikawa water.

“What's wrong with you?” Oikawa asks right away, taking the glass indignantly. “Scaring me like that. I should have you thrown out of here.”

Kuroo frowns. “Listen, I'm not the one creeping around during a blackout.”

“Well, I'm not the one wandering around in ghost makeup. Why didn't you wash that off from whatever set you were coming from?”

Kuroo takes the washcloth he had draped around his neck and wipes off the last of his disguise. “Do you want the long story or the short story?” 

Oikawa shrugs.

“So, the hotel where we were staying got a really bad case of bedbugs, you see, and I figured it was a good time to pay a visit to my aunt anyway. Did you know she owns this inn? She's even got a little cat that wanders the hall. A real charming place.”

“And a real charming cat, I'm sure.”

“You've got the right idea.” Kuroo sits down by Oikawa’s bedside. “So, as I was saying, I'm part of this ghost film the next town over, in Kawanishi. Have you heard of it?”

Oikawa nods. “The agency told me it was called To Be Determined. No name yet?”

Kuroo nods. “No, because that's what it's actually called. To Be Determined. It's about a ghost that waits too long in purgatory and succumbs to ghosthood. We're telling it from his perspective. He doesn't even decide to haunt anything until the end.”

“That doesn't sound like the next Ringu to me,” Oikawa sits up straighter against the headboard, throwing off the covers and drawing his knees close. “People want something, I don’t know...scary on their screens, don't they?" 

“I mean, it's not supposed to be a blockbuster,” Kuroo says. “I liked it because it's a small production. Very low key, ‘cause you know how these independent films are. Which is why I was washing my own makeup off here. We’re a little short-staffed on the other side of things, which is all right, since we've decided to go light on the effects ultimately.” 

“What? Was your face deemed scary enough on its own?”

Kuroo gives up a grin, best coined as shit-eating.

"Just do me a favor, why don't you?" Oikawa suggests next. "Wash off your stage makeup before you give me another heart attack next time."

"Oh, I mean, what you saw me in wasn't the makeup." Kuroo recreates the motions from one infamous face wash commercial, swirling motions and all. "It was a citrus clay mask, from the same line as, well, you know—"

"Let's—" Oikawa starts. "Let's not."

“Ah.”

Oikawa keeps silent for a moment, dancing fingers along the rim of his glass. Kuroo’s taken to messing around with one of his ankle socks, slipping it on and off his heel before tossing them altogether. “So, do you like independent movies?” Oikawa asks next, just to pass the time, whatever passing the time might mean at three in the morning.

Kuroo shrugs. “I guess. Yeah, I think. I haven't really figured it out, yet. Do you?” 

Oikawa’s tempted to shut the conversation down without answering. No matter if they were actors at the same company now. He hadn't signed up for closeness, or any semblance of it, and he'd be damned to inch closer; let them stay at incredible distances and a million expanses. Wasn't it Kuroo, anyway? His fan club had written whole sonnets about his cleverness, and cleverness might mean the death of Oikawa and his career, if he wasn't careful. He stares back at Kuroo this way, slightly squinted. Rightfully suspicious.

In turn, Kuroo does not notice. He just goes back to fidgeting with his sock.

“No,” Oikawa answers for some reason. “I'm sort of filming one right now, and I'm not the biggest fan.” 

Kuroo hums, not looking up. “The baseball movie? It seems like a decent time.”

“I'm not looking for a decent time,” Oikawa says, looking back. “I want—” he bites his tongue to prevent himself from getting too ahead about things. “I mean. Never mind about what I want. This is just a stopping place, is what I'm trying to say.”

“Oh?” Kuroo asks, getting up, going towards the television. He wipes the dust off the top of it, eyeing a muted showing of Seven Samurai. “And what if this is the farthest you'll ever go?” 

“I won't have you here to insult me,” Oikawa tries not to bark back. It comes out in a small seethe instead, like peeling a band-aid off something you're not sure will scar later on. 

Kuroo comes back with a shake of his head. “I'm not trying to insult you,” he replies calmly. “I'm just asking. It's not like we're in such different places.” 

Oikawa thinks about this for a moment, taking the time to stack their filmographies together. He'd heard things about Kuroo at the agency. They’d begun at separate times—Oikawa at five, Kuroo at fifteen—and had different portfolios to show for it. Oikawa’s was immensely commercial by now, thanks to pastel-colored commercials and minor roles: he could do bright-eyed rich boy, or captain of the baseball team, or agreeable ex-boyfriend number three, or circa-2000’s shoujo vampire. He had the face that might be deemed billboard-ready—he could lift the hearts of weary commuters via signage and a smile. Ever-refreshing, critics might liken him to a clear, blue sky. 

Kuroo, on the other hand, had the sort of look that might make someone look twice. He watches the way Kuroo watches television: those half-shut eyes, those long sorts of stares that took years to get from point A to point B. The small upturn of a chin, the crane of a neck; languid might be the word for it, the way he carries himself, not trying to be cool because he is cool. Like cigarette smoke rising up against a flickering street light. This made for decent bad boys and vagabonds with hearts of gold.

Oikawa watches the way Kuroo laughs at nothing at all, at a scene no one could ever think of as funny. Maybe that was Kuroo’s appeal with the people that liked him—the fact that you could never really pinpoint what it was about him, exactly: was it those droopy eyes? Him, laughing at thin air? Everything and nothing at once? Oikawa imagines the droves of fans, all coming after Kuroo like they came after Oikawa, forums dressed in greys and blacks instead of minty green-blue.

(‘Who are you, Kuroo Tetsurou? And how do I get to you?’ nekofan7899 had asked in a thread yesterday. Oikawa knows this because it'd be wrong, not to keep an eye on the competition. 

‘And what does it take for you to be with someone?’) 

But nevermind about such things. Kuroo glances back from the television, over his shoulder in his summer-thin tee. He doesn't seem afraid of late nights, either. Oikawa pulls back like he hasn’t lived with them all these years.

“Well,” he starts without finishing. Then comes some odd urge to escape, but Kuroo’s already ambling to the door like he knows he's outstayed his welcome.

“Fine,” he says, shaking his head. “We both have filming tomorrow, don't we? I should sleep.”

Oikawa nods, not tired in the least bit. “Yes,” he says anyway. “You should go.” 

Kuroo smirks. It looks like surrender. I'll go, if you tell me to.

“But one more thing, about reaching your limits,” Oikawa runs his mouth. He frowns, letting his knees fall from the bend. He sits up straight against the headboard and breathes in, always ready to wind up and start again: “if you wait around, waiting for the end to come, you'll never get anywhere.”

Kuroo stays at the door for a moment. Back against it, he stares at Oikawa dead on. “And how long did it take you to realize that?” he asks. 

Oikawa smiles back at him. It feels like defiance. I'll tell you, if you promise not to laugh.

“Sometimes I feel like I'm figuring it out all over again.”

And just before he leaves, Kuroo tosses one last look over his shoulder. 

“You should come by some time,” he says to Oikawa about the set of To Be Determined, casual in the shrug, mouth caught in some knowing sneer. “To see what we can do.”

‘And to see what I can do, too,’ he might be saying, all without uttering a single word. But Oikawa knows. Because that might be the deadliest part about Kuroo; while blue skies rang undeniable, and smoke seemed to dissipate in moments, he'd be a fool to forget how it always got caught in his throat hours after. 

To this, Oikawa swallows down, wondering if he just might be delirious from staying up so late. He smiles, too weary to call it full-on, and tells him yes, anyway. “Fine,” he says once more for the ghosts and gods above to hear, because self-preservation might be terribly overrated, anyway.

on a summer night too hot to bear, a boy withers into ghosthood.  

In a final scene, Oikawa watches the way Kuroo unfastens each button on his dress shirt, untucked and wrinkled and gone to the rest of the world. Kuroo was right about the makeup, because that had become a non-factor; “any semblance of phantom has been wiped nearly clean in favor of something more minimalistic,” says the director, an up-and-coming tour de force by the name of Haiba Alisa. All that is left is the thin dust of white chalk and some (possibly) natural dark circles, things that Kuroo keeps on with a surprising amount of poise. He undoes the last button at the bottom of his shirt, lets it hang off his shoulders, and looks back out at the rest of the room.

he undresses. he takes one more look, before climbing into bed. he turns out the light on the life he’s led.

Oikawa swallows, careful not to be seen or heard. He hides behind a particularly tall set assistant, a half-Russian kid by the name of Lev, a Haiba sibling too antsy and gawking to work on quiet scenes like this. Still, Oikawa watches how the whole room goes quiet for Kuroo, how he falls into neither despair nor abyss. It is with a cool finality that he makes it onto the bed, undoes the covers with one clean swath. Lamplight simmers like he’s riding off into the sunset. He lingers on it for a moment, and lets no tears fall. he turns out the light on the life he’s led. Night descends, and he is finished.

But that was the thing about Kuroo. In that last moment, under the manufactured neon night, Kuroo rises again, no longer the boy. He sits up in bed, shrouds off, and stares right into the camera. He heaves. Hello, ghosthood. He lets the smile rise until it caves into mayhem, and Oikawa feels the oddest pressure build on his back. Eager to quell it, he just stares down at the script for final direction.

no one ever sees him coming. 

Oikawa equates it to the shiver one gets when they're alone somewhere vast and tranquil, only to have the buzz zip past them, ear to other ear. Like the low haunt of a hornet, it tells him to stay on high guard.

When Haiba Alisa calls for the cut, Oikawa stares on, speechless.

(You have no reason to be speechless, he tells himself.)

At the call, Kuroo exhales deep, throws himself back on the bed, and regains his alley cat form. He turns his head back to the crowd, right at Oikawa like he might've known, all along, that he was there, and offers the same look from the face wash shoot—that grin emerges, poorly hidden behind the raised hand, and fingers unfurl from a loosely-held fist. The mind wanders, just as it tends to do, back to something he'd read last night.

(‘Do you think he has a type?’ anonymous_forever had asked in a new forum post yesterday. ‘Someone he'd like to call his own?’)

Alisa follows Kuroo’s line of sight from there, head bobbing towards the crowd. The moment she spots Oikawa, her mouth forms a little gasp, because even if he wasn't that well known yet, the directors had a good idea of who he was, and Alisa probably didn't take too well to intruders on set. “Aren't you in Tanaka Saeko’s movie?” she asks, skeptical before rising into something more sure. “You are, aren't you?”

Oikawa offers an ad-ready smile, tilts his head, and throws up a peace sign. “Big fan.”

“I hate to tell you to leave,” she says, more exasperated than anything. She waves a paper fan to her face. “But you're in her movie and I can't have actors making googly eyes and flirting—” 

“Flirting?” Kuroo interrupts, sitting up and throwing off the covers. “We're not flirting—”

Alisa shrugs. “Oh, whatever it is you're calling it these days! But I'm going to have to ask you to leave, either way.”

Mortified, Oikawa bites down on his lip without saying anything back. He watches Kuroo’s face morph into a cross between amused and terribly offended, and what's left is the standstill between them. Oikawa flails in it, and all of a sudden he's much too aware of his movements, like not knowing where to look or place his hands or breathe through his goddamned nose.

“I'll go,” Oikawa says, putting on a smile. “Just wanted to see what all the fuss was about.” Kuroo takes one step forward at this, but Oikawa gives the finest bow of his head, gone before anyone can say a word about it.

“People are starting fan wars over you two,” Hanamaki, webmaster extraordinaire, declares one afternoon, hovering over his laptop and hellbent on ignoring any of the programming work he'd taken home.

“Ah.” Oikawa peels himself off the floor, rolling on his side to absentmindedly pull at one of Iwaizumi’s socks. “What's happened this time?” he asks while Iwaizumi nudges him away with a stiff foot, and Oikawa has to settle with, well, staying still for once.

Matsukawa looks up from his magazine, Iwaizumi from his anatomy textbooks. Hanamaki squints, looming towards a too-bright screen. “Petition to stop Oikawa Tooru from making any more movies,” he says. “He is terrible and I hate him. Sad face, crying face, angry face.”

“Oh,” Oikawa says, offering the smallest of frowns. “What else?”

Hanamaki hands the laptop over to Matsukawa, who reads, “a counter-petition to stop Kuroo Tetsurou from making any more movies. He is ruining Japanese cinema.” Matsukawa pauses, trying not to laugh. “Angry face, a bunch of x’s, and some sort of sobbing bear.” 

Iwaizumi shakes his head. “Those kaomojis are getting out of control.”

“But at least we both have one, I guess,” says Oikawa.

“And that's not all,” Hanamaki continues, letting Iwaizumi do the honors next.

“A counter-counter petition,” Iwaizumi reads, “because everyone on the internet is ridiculous.” He nods along to this, proud like it's the truest thing he's ever read. “If we can get one hundred thousand e-signatures on this, let’s ask Kuroo Tetsurou and Oikawa Tooru to make amends—”

“And what? Make amends and what?” 

“Let me finish!” Iwaizumi scolds, finding his place back on the screen. “If we can get one hundred thousand e-signatures on this, let’s ask Kuroo Tetsurou and Oikawa Tooru to make amends by showing up to one film premiere together.” 

“Excuse me?” Oikawa asks back. “Not like that's ever going to get enough signatures, but no. Never.”

“Well, I wouldn't count either of you out. Both of your fanclubs have grown a lot over the summer,” Hanamaki remarks. “It could happen, and then you'll have them to answer to.”

At this, Oikawa curses the power of breakthrough roles. His heartfelt role as ex-baseball captain in Diamonds in the Sky Forever had gotten him some attention after pre-screening events and promising early reviews, and it was hard to deny the fact that he might be some sort of rise. The same could be said for Kuroo, too: after his spirited performance as ghost-to-be for To Be Determined, it was all the talk in the J-Horror world, with words thrown around like subtle and terrifying and villainous. Oikawa briefly wonders how Kuroo might like that last one (and promptly scolds himself, for caring). Let him play all the world’s bad boys! I hope he gets type-casted forever! 

The other three catch Oikawa drifting, judging from the way they turn and exchange glances; Oikawa, in turn, smiles for them like he's won ¥1000 in the lottery.

“So, uh,” Matsukawa starts. “About that Kuroo guy.”

“Don't start,” Oikawa says. “I have nothing to say about him.” 

Hanamaki leans in closer over the kotatsu. “But that's the thing, because everyone else does. There have been rumors flying around, you know?”

Oikawa looks over at Iwaizumi. ‘Did you know about this?’ he asks him in supreme telepathy. He shakes his head, no.

“They say you two really hate each other,” Matsukawa says, leaving no suspense. “That ever since you stormed off that ghost movie set over the summer, it's been nothing but bad blood. The worst blood.” 

“There was no storming. I just left! I had my own movie to shoot, anyway, and—” he cuts himself short after that, remembering Kuroo’s last scene: the lightly dusted face, the slow demise of fastened buttons, that look after the cut. “I had to go. I mean, it was a bad idea for him to invite me there anyway and—”

“Oh, so you've been sneaking around, then?” Hanamaki asks, deadpan. “Inviting each other over to your sets!” He sounds the sharpest tch between his teeth. “You artist types are always so romantic.”

“So passionate.” 

Iwaizumi shrugs. “You should've seen the way he dealt with elementary school crushes. It's not so different from this.”

Oikawa shoots a glare over at Iwaizumi. “We do not talk about the crush I had on you in elementary school.”

“Who said I was talking about that?” Iwaizumi chirps back, ever plain about things. “But I know how you work. When you like someone, you always turn your nose up at them and pretend not to care.” 

“I do not.” 

“That’s what's happening now with Kuroo Tetsurou. I mean, look at the state of you.” At this, Oikawa lowers his head, determined not to have him be right about things, but it might be too late; Matsukawa taps the tip of his nose when Oikawa feels himself rising again, and the rest of them all snicker like this isn't the most catastrophic thing that's ever happened to him.

Oikawa takes his leave from there, sans their insistences that he might like someone like Kuroo, and goes back to practicing lines. He was auditioning for a role as a period drama warlord of all things, and warlords did not let themselves be lovesick.

(He stumbles the rest of the day, and goes on to curse every god of love up above—Cupid, Yue-Lao, and Aizen Myō'ō, included.)

On the night before his first real movie premiere, Oikawa shows up at Kuroo Tetsurou’s door in Nerima, waits for him to answer, and wonders if he'd be better off dead.

“He's not home,” a roommate answers, partially hidden behind a half-shut door. Oikawa spots a jagged ombré of blonde, dark at the roots, with a giant pair of noise-cancelling headphones around his neck. Kozume Kenma, he remembers, from senseless hours spent cruising the Kuroo Tetsurou fanboards. Resident secret genius music producer and video game aficionado. On those same forums, Kenma was rumored to be one of Kuroo’s alleged many paramours, the childhood friend turned more, but Oikawa was not inclined to believe much of it. Still, they both regard each other with the utmost suspicion, tacticians studying faces like war paths to survey.

Kenma does not strike. He opens the door a tad bit more, tilting his head to the side. He's smaller than Oikawa, shorter, but does not bother to look up. “You're that guy in all those commercials. And that vampire music video,” he says.

Oikawa nods. “That's me. I'm here because, well.” He glances side to side, just to make sure no one else might be stepping out of their apartment for the evening. “That petition.”

“You mean that counter-counter petition,” Kenma corrects him. “I saw.”

“Five-hundred, seventy-five thousand, and eleven people signed,” Oikawa sighs out. A record breaker. “And I figured I'd just ignore it, but I've been getting a lot of messages about it, you see, so I guess I better not. I figured Kuroo-chan might feel the same.”

Kenma shrugs, glancing up this time. “Kuro might. But he doesn't have any premieres coming up. To Be Determined was a couple of weeks ago.” 

Oikawa knows. It was still doing surprisingly well at the box office, according to all credible sources. In turn, Oikawa shows Kenma the envelope. “I mean, I have one coming up. I could possibly invite him, you know, just out of good will,” he says, showing him the headline: Diamonds in the Sky Forever, a premiere event at the Tokyo Film Centre, February Ninth, 7:00 PM, and most importantly: plus ones allowed.

“Hm,” Kenma hums out, taking the pamphlet into his hands. He does a quick little survey, before handing it right back. “I would just give this to him in person.”

“But you said he's not home.” 

“He's probably around somewhere,” answers Kenma. “The park, maybe? I think he was getting test shots again.”

“You know, he was doing that when we met last spring. What's he even working on?”

Kenma gives Oikawa a funny little look, a cross between a frown and something more inspecting. ‘Oh, wouldn't you like to know?’ Kenma asks, all without having to say a word. Oikawa backs off from there, deciding to stay on course.

“Ah, well, I'll just go to the park then,” he says with a smile. Kenma nods once, like that is enough to satisfy him. They regard each other with nods, one pleasant and one slight, and Oikawa sets off into the wilderness of Nerima.

Oikawa finds Kuroo not long after that in Shakuji park, on his side on the ground with a camera to his face, coos soft to a stray cat under the remains of an ancient shrine. Holding his breath, Oikawa keeps himself hidden behind a tree, making sure not to be seen.

“Hey there,” Kuroo singsongs, and the sound of it is well, nice. There's a half a laugh in the way he calls after it, hand extended like he might be acquainted with every cat in the neighborhood, or the country, for that matter.

(‘I hear he's got names for every stray in Nerima,’ said user @yunyun0005 on Twitter the other night. ‘My friend Sayako-san even heard him call one of them Momo-chan at the train station once!’ Oikawa tries to imagine this, snorts a little when he does, and thanks his lucky stars when Kuroo doesn't hear him.)

Oikawa goes on watching him, night ruling on overhead, and lets himself sink into the thick of it. His whole body thumps to beat of something familiar, but unknown, like he knows the sound of falling for someone might be different every time.

(‘Hey, do you think Oikawa Tooru has anyone special in his life?’ sendaiqueen7 had asked in the message boards this morning. ‘Someone to call his own?’) 

Kuroo dips his head down, leather jacket right off a raised shoulder. He sits upright on the path, legs criss-crossed, and calls out once more. “Hi,” comes the whisper, when he welcomes the stray into his care, camera at his side but mostly forgotten. “Have you been looking for me?” Kuroo asks it next, loud enough for Oikawa to flinch in place. He accidentally crumples the invitation in his hands in the meanwhile, so loud that it scares the resting birds from their roosts above. 

The stray scampers away, too. Kuroo turns to find Oikawa, not so hidden amongst the elms anymore.

“Oikawa?” he asks through the dimness. “Is that you?”

“Yes,” Oikawa answers, as upright as he’s able to muster. “I just happened to be in the area,” he lies, hiding the invitation behind his back. “You know, filming locations and all that. This park is pretty popular for that, right? Can't beat the pond here.”

Kuroo gets up, brushing the dirt off his knees. “You might be right about that. Or you could be here to kill me. I never know with you.” Up close, Kuroo offers that signature grin, closed mouth and the slightest bit lopsided.

“Well, I should go,” Oikawa offers, backing away. “It's getting late. Goodbye, Kuroo-chan.”

“Night,” he says back, quieter, before lighting up. “And oh—did you see that counter-counter petition, or whatever? Looks like you'll have to take me out for a date sometime, bow-tie style.”

Oikawa freezes at the suggestion, one step forward and one step back. Kuroo picks up on this, because of course he would, and furrows into a little frown; but he makes no mention of it. Mouth hung open to say something, Kuroo hesitates in his own way too, when he cannot find the words to joke back. Oikawa crushes the invitation in his hands into oblivion.

“In your dreams,” Oikawa just tells him, light, and right at the edge of an uncomfortable silence.

Kuroo laughs back, equally as forced. “And all my worst nightmares,” he finishes for the both of them, right before parting.

A smile gritted between teeth, Oikawa bites down on the feeling, and swallows down the things he's not prepared to say. 

(He hopes he'll never have to, with time.)

By the end of summer and past his twenty-second birthday, Oikawa finds himself in a pool of his own blood, the fanciest robes he's ever worn in his life, and a dying wish, whispered in tears. He remembers the motions, all grand and withered at the same time: a warlord bestows last words to his best friend before dying, heartbroken by his village, the woman he was supposed to love, and the confidante he was meant to rule with. 

Kuroo looks down in quiet horror, face subtly squinted, no sign of crying on his face, and goes to say his line. He takes a deep breath, shaky. Even Oikawa knows the words by heart. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” Kuroo’s supposed to say, but the moment he bites down on a lip to keep from laughing, Oikawa knows he won’t go through with it. He bursts out after, and the poor director, Ennoshita, is forced to call for the cut. 

Oikawa sits up, swatting Kuroo’s arm away, and lets a costume assistant pull the armor off of him. “Stop laughing,” he barks out to him, getting up after everyone’s decided to break for lunch. “I don’t even know how you could find any of this funny.”

Kuroo shrugs. “It’s just nowhere near convincing,” he says. “Best friend! How are we supposed to play best friends when I can hardly stand you?” He gets up, bows his head lightly when he takes a bottle of iced tea from one of the passing coordinators. “I laugh, just thinking about it.”

Aghast, Oikawa lets him walk away. It was true; past the whisperings and reports of alleged all out war on the set of Late Summer Flood, Oikawa and Kuroo were getting along worse than ever before. For two characters who were supposed to be lifelong companions, they’d been more likely to snap at each other more often than not; Oikawa was determined not to fall prey to the fact that maybe they were starting to become friends the year before, and it was easy to inspire any ire pretending they weren't. And while it would’ve been nice to have a friend, especially now since they were in the same agency, Oikawa was determined, more than determined, to forget any sort of companionship—because his stupid little crush on Kuroo Tetsurou had to die somehow, and he might be willing to douse their friendship along the way to kill it.

On that note, he sneaks a peek back at his co-star. Kuroo’s taken to leaning in one of those fold-up director’s chairs, flipping through his script with his legs up on the table.

“Lazy housecat bastard,” Oikawa mumbles, before brushing past his shoulder. He thinks of helping himself to POCARI SWEAT and maybe a sandwich.

At the vending machines, he hears an executive talking things over with Ennoshita. “Listen, Chikara-kun,” he says, “I know the casting directors meant well when they picked those two, but they haven’t changed one bit. Everyone knows how much they don’t get along.”

Oikawa keeps himself hidden. He hears Ennoshita sigh.

“Can’t we give them a little more time? We’ve hardly begun shooting and I’m sure they just need—” 

“They need nothing. Some people just aren’t meant to work together, you know? And you’re right, we’ve hardly begun shooting, so there’s always time to recast if need be.” 

“But those are big roles, sir.”

“With plenty of hungry actors to play them,” says the executive. “So I’m giving you a month. Show me they can shape up then, and we won’t have a problem. I don’t think you’d like another face wash fiasco on your hands, right?”

“No,” Ennoshita says, withered beyond whispering. “Definitely not.”

Oikawa hears no more after this and stiffens up, marching back to set. Determined to fix this all by himself, he imagines what he'd do: he could grab Kuroo right by the shoulders, and tell him, “now listen here” and “stop it with that face of yours,” and put on the most magnificent show anyone had ever seen after that. Forget about working together. I'll deal with you myself. The command sounds much too ugly in his head to say out loud.

At a standstill, Oikawa skids his heels along the hardwood when he sees him. Kuroo’s gone back to re-don his uniform, worthy of any warlord; the gold undertones flirt under dark plates and pitch-black sleeves; red weaves through his under-robes in a nearly-there maroon. Kuroo tips his chin up to welcome a makeup brush, and gentle goes his motions, left cheek to right and up the bridge of his nose—and then he goes, always, always finding spotting Oikawa in the thick of it. 

But that might be the thing about Kuroo. He does not stare. There was something about the way he looked on, never really full in his sights; he liked to blink in the peripheral, scoping until he gave enough of a damn to see someone head on.

(‘Don’t you think that’s one of the loveliest parts about him?’ asked hearteyes77 on the message boards last evening. ‘I could've sworn our gazes met once at one of his premieres. Oh, it was like magic!’) 

Today Kuroo hangs on for precisely two seconds. One, two. After, a wry little smile appears when he thinks no one can see. Third comes a laugh, the single note.

Kuroo lets that fade into some loosely-held grimace, and Oikawa knows: Kuroo-chan’s mad at me. He hates that he can even tell.

“Hey,” he calls, making sure no one else is close enough to hear. He shoos away a few eager makeup artists, nearly coughing up the finishing powder they leave like dust. “I have to tell you something. I just overheard something and—”

“Shooting will resume soon!” an assistant calls out to the rest of the set. “Let's do our best!”

Oikawa feels a tap come over his shoulder. “What?” Kuroo asks back, maybe a little more short with him than usual.

“I—” 

Oikawa watches the executive come back with director Ennoshita into the room; the former stares them both down, like he might be inclined to just fire them both today, and the worst part is that Kuroo has no idea. He just waves to them both like nothing's on the line, and Oikawa can only smile pleasantly and do the same.

“It's something important,” Oikawa says with his teeth still clenched. “Something you should know.”

“Then tell me.” 

“Not here,” Oikawa refutes. “Can you meet me, I don't know, after or something?”

“Wow. You barely even speak to me on set, and now you're asking me to go with you somewhere?” Kuroo asks, hopping out of his chair.

“Fine, okay! You can pick where we go! I just have to tell you.”

Kuroo turns back to him. “And what is this? A confession?” 

“No, it’s…” Oikawa starts right on the verge of losing a temper he's usually good at keeping cool. “You know what? Forget it. It's nothing.”

“Hey, is everything alright, back there?” Ennoshita calls from the other side of the room.

Kuroo nods back. He holds up his script to pretend they’re running lines. Oikawa just stares on at him, ready to rip it up in his hands and forget the whole thing (because maybe that’d be for the best after all, period pieces be damned). 

He goes on to start the next scene regardless, shot down by an assassin’s arrow with Kuroo in sight once more. The blood packets pop on cue. Take one look at Kuroo at the doorway and smile for him. Watch his face spread into horror. Oikawa knows the steps by heart because he's studied relentlessly. He knows the back of his neck will tickle, when Kuroo goes to hold him in the tender scene.

a warlord bestows last words to his best friend before dying, heartbroken by his village, the woman he was supposed to love, and the confidante he was meant to rule with.

Oikawa holds his breath. He's going to laugh again, because Kuroo had done so the past three days they've already spent on this scene. He's going to laugh, and we’re going to lose our jobs. 

He doesn't this time, though, but neither does he say his lines. Kuroo just scoops Oikawa up in some last-ditch improvisation, a swoop so close Oikawa might be tempted to give a little yelp. Instead, he takes a deep breath (passing it off as a general’s last pained moments), stays right in character to keep going, because I won't let you mess me up, and smiles right up at his favorite confidante. Holy hell. He lets his hand graze the side of a cheek for the extra touch.

Kuroo does not laugh at this, either. He breathes out, staggered, like Oikawa really might be dying in front of him, while Ennoshita does not call for the cut.

Still close, too close, Kuroo goes to embrace Oikawa closer. Right in his ear, pretending to choke out in tears, he whispers, “if you have something you need to say to me, find me at our place.”

(And for a moment, Oikawa thinks he really might die in his arms.)

“And cut!” says Ennoshita, red in the face from holding his breath. “That was...a-amazing!” He looks to the executive, who still seems far from impressed about things. “Did you see that?” The executive nods before stomping away, but Ennoshita is too amazed to care. “Really good work!” 

Oikawa pushes Kuroo off in the meanwhile. “What was that?” he asks him, ignoring the director and any incoming assistants. “Our place? What do you mean by our place?”

Kuroo shrugs, ending it in a smile. “I'll let you figure that out.” 

From there, Ennoshita comes to yank him away, absolutely enthralled. “Kuroo-san, we should talk about this! I mean, yeah, we should try to stick with the script, but...what you just did—how did you think of that right on the spot?” 

Oikawa gets up, waiting for an answer too, anything, really, but watches Kuroo walk away with their director, instead. “I don't know,” he answers, glancing right back at Oikawa on his way out. “But I guess it's all in the moment.”

“I hate him, and I want to smack him in the face.”

“So…you love him, and you want to kiss him in the—” 

“Oh, don't start!” 

Spiteful, Oikawa throws a pillow at Matsukawa at their apartment’s monthly movie night, only to miss and hit Iwaizumi, instead. It's the usual affair. He barks on about something about a death wish while Hanamaki drones on, reading the funniest forum comments of the week. (My dream boy! Boy wonder! May you grace our billboards forever!) Ahead, their DVD copy of Sonatine goes unwatched, right in line with all the other classics they've ignored since their high school days.

Oikawa coos out a sigh. It's one of those nights, the peaceful, cool kind that might make someone wonder if they should just pack up everything to go live in the woods and bathe in rivers. This must be written all over his face, from the way Iwaizumi reaches over to tug on one of his earlobes. In turn, Oikawa barely registers the gesture. 

“Hey,” says Iwaizumi. “What's wrong?”

Oikawa throws himself back on the floor. “Our place, Iwa-chan! What is that even supposed to mean?”

Iwaizumi just turns to Hanamaki and Matsukawa. “That Kuroo guy again?”

“That Kuroo guy again,” Hanamaki wastes no time in answering, clicking on. “And in shoujo manga terms,” (something he read quite frequently, like a disciple to scripture), “it means someplace special.”

Matsukawa leans over the table, shaking his head. “Man, this really must be serious, if you've got Hanamaki talking about shoujo.”

“Like a high school rooftop. Or a riverbank, with the memory of your first fireworks,” Hanamaki continues, dreamlike. “Even the top of Tokyo Tower, if you want to go really classic about things.”

Oikawa offers one sneer of a smile, unamused. “Well, we have nothing like that, as far as I'm concerned.” He flips through all the places they've been to from there: the haunted hotels, the viral video bathrooms, the dusty sets, the city gardens—that one city garden in particular; the botanical type where people might meet before really actually meeting, at some bridge-side with a head to the sky and a curiosity too much to bear. Oikawa pictures it again, head turning to speak to the stranger. There goes the click of the camera, the fake rain, the ¥300. Memories jumble like loose change. Kuroo brushes past him regardless, whispering the word: our place. 

(Even in a fantasy, Kuroo Tetsurou laughs at the notion of something so heartfelt.)

“Nowhere at all,” Oikawa finishes, quiet enough for old friends to notice.

He dreams out loud, written all over his face.

With a few days in between shooting and hours spent alone waiting at Koishikawa, one leading man stomps to Nerima to knock on the door of another’s. Oikawa smoothes the sweat out of his hair, all in a huff, when Kuroo answers the door, disbelieving. 

“You—” Oikawa starts, still out of breath. “You said our place. Koishikawa! The garden. Isn't that it?”

Kuroo mashes his lips together like he's trying to keep from laughing. “Sure. Yes,” he admits, reaching over. He picks a leaf out of Oikawa’s fringe.

“I've been there for hours.”

“Did you expect to just find me there hunched over a camera or something? Without even giving you a time? What if I had errands to run? Couldn't you have called? Oh, Kuroo-chan, I figured it out!” comes the mimic, eerily on point. “It's Koishikawa, isn't it?”

“Well, whatever. I'm here, now. I figured it out, didn't I? Can't I just tell you right here, then?” asks Oikawa.

“Hm.” Kuroo ponders this for a moment. “No,” comes the hum, then a shut door. Mouth agape, Oikawa waits there for a moment, mortified. He considers knocking again.

“Kuroo-chan!”

He doesn't have to, when Kuroo comes flying back out in no time, donned in a flu mask and aviator sunglasses. They match the ones Oikawa kept in his own bag, too.

“Where are you going?” Oikawa asks, following right behind him, disguises back on.

Kuroo doesn't answer. They just end up taking a train not too crowded at a nearby station, thanks to the odd time between rush hours, and switch trains in silence. Platform to platform, from the Ikebukuro to the Marunouchi, Oikawa waits for the quiet to becoming stifling, and drifts, when it never does.

Koishikawa waits on the other side, a few minutes away from their stop. They both pay the ¥300 to get in, and Kuroo keeps his lead, never stopping.

“Well,” he starts. “Start talking. You wanted to say something to me, right?”

Oikawa frowns. “So this is our place.” 

“And you're admitting we have a place,” Kuroo counteracts. “But, no. It isn't. At least, I don't think it is, now that we’re here again.”

“Where else could it be?” asks Oikawa. 

“Who knows?”

“Wait,” Oikawa calls, catching up to Kuroo on the path. “So you've just brought me back here to waste my time? This is serious, Kuroo-chan! We might lose our jobs.”

This is when Kuroo stops short, heels digging into the cement. “What?”

“It's because we're fighting too much on set. I heard an executive talk to the director about it. They might recast us. Recast us, Kuroo!” 

Kuroo laughs.

“And what is so funny?” asks Oikawa. He flinches when he hears some of the park folk begin to whisper—hey, isn't that Oikawa-kun?—and pushes Kuroo into the bushes before they have a chance to get their phone cameras out.

“You’re the one that started it, Oikawa,” Kuroo answers plainly, finding his place against a tree. 

“I did not.” 

“Oh, yeah? Are you really sure about that?”

Oikawa gives up something between a shake of the head and a nod. “Yes?” he answers, not meaning to wince, and Kuroo just stares back with no signs of letting up.

“Explain what happened, then,” Kuroo says, “when we first got to the set.” 

“There's nothing to explain.” 

The sunglasses come off, and Kuroo casts something pointed before heaving out an exhale. Above them, the sun beats low for the end of summer. Sweat cools for the unexpected chill, and Oikawa feels a shiver creep past his neck.

“I mean, not that it matters much, but. I don't know.” Kuroo stops himself, struggling with the next part. He shakes his head a few times. “I thought we were doing the friend thing. And then you come back at the beginning of the summer like you hate my guts, which is fine too, I guess, but you should really warn a guy when you switch on someone like that.”

From there, Kuroo scrunches his face up in that annoying smirky thing he does, and it drives Oikawa absolutely wild. Livid, really. He smiles through it anyway, sculpts the appropriate answer, because ‘I have the world’s most confounding crush on you’ might not be a good way to explain things.

“Because you were right back then,” Oikawa says. “We’re competing, aren't we? We’re supposed to challenge each other.” Turning, he goes to start down a new path, towards a private little bridge over the water. Kuroo comes after him from his place at the tree, never too far behind, and that's when he remembers. He says it, as soon the words come to mind: “you'll be mine, and I'll be yours.”

Kuroo raises an eyebrow, yanking down his flu mask with the light hook of a finger. “Wow,” he says, and his gaze goes wide for a moment. “It's breathtaking, really.” 

“What is?”

Coming closer, Oikawa looks to the ground when Kuroo comes whispering in his ear. Hands skim, centimeters apart on the ledge.

“How much you need to lighten up.” 

Oikawa raises himself back up, not willing to lose, and tips his chin back up at Kuroo. “Fine,” he says. “Whatever you say. Just. We have to find a way to do this, because I'm not getting re-casted. I'm sure you feel the same about being a five-minute-wonder. You know how many views that face wash fight has, now?”

“Unfortunately,” says Kuroo. “But what do we do?” With a sigh, he takes to leaning over the bridge side, and Oikawa mimics him. “There must be an angle we’re not getting right. Longtime friends. Warlords. How many taiga dramas have that already? Blah, blah, blah. We must consolidate our lands to the left.” Oikawa's never seen a more magnificent eye-roll.

“There has to be something more interesting than that. Maybe if we find some other layer…dig deeper into their stories.” Oikawa hums, thinking about it. “You know what I mean? Things we don't see in the script. Like maybe your character hates mine and vice versa. A secret vendetta.”

Kuroo looks back at Oikawa, skeptical. “And how is that any different from what we've got? By that logic, this movie shouldn’t be a problem for us.”

“I'm being serious,” says Oikawa.

“Well, so am I.”

“Let's get one thing straight, then.” Oikawa steadies himself, gulping down. Honesty, the complete kind, was only something he reserved for the most dire moments; he wasn't like Iwaizumi, who wore it so diligently on his sleeve—there had to be a panache to it, words dressed like pleasantries, and he'd always had a hard time forming them for Kuroo. “I don't hate you,” he just says, as eloquent as he can get this time, and he bites down on his tongue for the lack of better terms.

“Well, I don't hate you either,” Kuroo says, even if Oikawa never asked, because of course something so nonchalant would come out of that smug and awful mouth of his. He watches the line of it for a moment, catches the upward turn of a grin on the verge of a smirk; Kuroo even softens, maybe by accident, when he realizes Oikawa’s staring, and they both quickly tear away. 

“Ah, well, now that we have that out do the way,” Oikawa starts up again, the first to regain composure, “let's try to figure things out.” He digs into his bag. “Are you free the rest of the day? Or do you have errands to run?” 

Kuroo rolls his eyes. “Oh, funny,” he spits out, and Oikawa starts walking off without him. “Wait, where are you going?” 

“No use staying in one place,” Oikawa calls. He lifts a flu mask back over his face and takes the script from his backpack. “Do you have your copy with you, by any chance?”

Lifting off the bridgeside, Kuroo follows after him, pressing the sunglasses back on his face. “Afraid not,” he answers, and Oikawa just walks over to hand him his in return.

“That's fine, but you'll have to start it off, then,” Oikawa insists. “It's yours to take, anyway.”

“The scene starts with me?”

“The scene starts with you.”

Kuroo glances down. Initial table reads with him were a terrible affair from what Oikawa remembered, because he was the type to drone on, bored, until it was actually time to get on set. But Oikawa watches the way his sights follow the first scene, how he might take in this read-through with care for once, and braces himself for the very beginning.

Oikawa had read it in a book once—a magazine article, maybe, he couldn't quite remember—and the advice was something that stuck with him since. Tell a story between the lines, it had told him, and see what people might not think is there. Observe, observe, observe. Create a sort of depth that you could only call yours.

In a sleepy coffee shop in Ginza, where the espresso was too expensive and only half as good, Oikawa flips through his lines once more. “I can't get married,” he says with quiet gusto, lips on the edge of a porcelain cup. He sets the cup down altogether. “I can't.” He tries this a few more times, a few more ways—with duty, with pride, in terrible stubbornness—while Kuroo peers up from his plain coffee to survey the next set of motions.

the two warlords sit in a silence that feels years long, it says, appropriate for such heavy admissions, and nothing more about is said. 

Oikawa shakes his head at this. He remarks, “there's something we're missing here,” and holds the script closer to his face. “Like, why can't he get married?” 

“He wants to rule,” Kuroo says, finding the simplest answer. 

“Too easy.” Oikawa flips through the pages again, finding more to read. There's mentions of the two of them riding horses together, and sneaking about like stray cats in the dark. “It must be something else. Something I'm not seeing. And why didn't his confidante ask him about it? You'd think with something like that, he'd say something like ‘why? Why can't you get married?’” 

With a sigh, Oikawa blows on the whipped cream atop his drink like a gale on seafoam. Kuroo, in turn, takes no issue with sipping on something scalding.

“I actually don't have to think about that part too hard,” says Kuroo, flipping through his script again. “Because they're close, aren't they?” He stops at the particular scene again, tracing a finger along the line. “Hey, actually, can you read it back to me again?”

“Why?” 

“I want to try something.”

Oikawa beckons this time, peering down at his copy with the faintest grimace. He sets down his cup on the saucer.

“I can't get married,” he recites, slow and honest. Solemn, this time. He feels something sting at the corner of his eyes.

“I know,” Kuroo follows, equally as low.

It takes a moment for Oikawa to collect himself. He drops his script on the tabletop, a jolt back into reality, and shakes his head. “That’s…not in the script.”

“It might as well be,” says Kuroo. “Because, in my head, that's what he's saying. I know, as in ‘I know it’s actually a matter of want.’ Because he can full well get married. He just doesn't want to.” 

Oikawa leans forward, propping the lean of a cheek over an open palm. “Tell me, then. Why wouldn't he want to? Continue the story for me.”

Kuroo thinks about this for a moment.

“Because his heart’s not in it,” he answers. 

“And why wouldn't his heart be in it?”

“Because.” He hunches over, dancing a finger along the edge of a paper cup. “I mean, I don't know,” Kuroo almost says like a scold, shrugging. “And don't interrogate me when we've barely gotten through the rest of the script yet. I can go home and we can forget this whole thing.” 

“What? Not enjoying your French press?” 

“It’s not amazing enough for me to want to stay.”

Oikawa sighs, digging into his pocket for money to leave on the table. “Fine,” he proposes, getting up from his chair. “Let's keep going.” He's already halfway down the aisle before Kuroo takes his coffee with him, script in hand.

“I'm at nine-hundred and ninety-nine thousand, four hundred, and six fans,” Oikawa says in the midst of some great sword battle one day in near-autumn, right under his breath but loud enough for Kuroo to hear. Shooting fight sequences had always been daunting—especially knowing that hours of footage would just be spliced and packaged neatly into a two-minute montage by post-production—so Oikawa takes the liberty of chiding Kuroo in the midst of it. “Last time I went on your fan cafe, it was looking pretty paltry.”

(And by the time all editing was finished, they’d probably make him sound like he was condemning entire clans. Ah, the power of movie magic.) 

At his back, Kuroo lunges forward and pretends to strike down an enemy from the other village. “Ha,” he says, pretending to strain, because they're supposed to be outnumbered two to a hundred in this scene. “For your information,” he continues, swiping a prop sword again, “I'm at nine-hundred and ninety-nine thousand, five-hundred and eleven fans.” He turns, smiling back at Oikawa like he’s killed whole legions. “So don't get all high and mighty on me.”

“How about this,” Oikawa proposes, “first one to a million owes the other dinner.”

“I could go for that.” 

Right on cue, Oikawa dodges out of the way when an extra comes barreling at him from the side. They'd gone through this in their script reading sessions and filled in the gaps: Kuroo’s character, they'd decided, was more apt to slash and burn suddenly, towering by some ridiculous on-screen pressure, while Oikawa’s had found grace by coordinating the efforts of every ally in their midst. In this particular scene, it was just Kuroo, swinging by the arms and standing back to back; I'll lead you to glory, but only if you'll help me get there, too. They stop when Kuroo’s character gets struck in the side, prompting Oikawa’s to come to his immediate aid.

one warlord never fully recovers from a mighty blow by a marauding fiend. that day still, he swears allegiance to a boy that would be great. 

the grip of their hands is firm and undying.

Ennoshita calls for a cut. 

“You two,” he starts, shaking his head. “You two were great out there today! I don’t know what’s happened but...whatever it is that you’re doing, please don’t stop.” He hurries off to see someone on the lighting team after that, too rushed to pay any more attention to either one of them. 

“Hey, uh,” Kuroo starts. Oikawa looks down at his fallen friend.

“What is it?” 

Kuroo smiles something wry. “Don’t mean to alarm you, but you’re still holding onto me.”

“Oh,” Oikawa says, instantly unlacing his fingers. “Ew.” He pretends to wipe off his palm off on the cloth of his haori robe, and Kuroo does the same by smoothing his hair back.

They go quiet from there, heads averted, sights to the floor.

“Let’s...let’s keep going,” Oikawa starts first, inching forward to get up. Kuroo nods, only to follow; and when their hands accidentally graze again on the way up, Oikawa briefly thinks about catching the first flight out of the city to China.

“I’m telling the world,” Hanamaki declares that night, when he catches Oikawa skulking around on a fan cafe thread named A MILLION AND ONE THINGS WE LOVE ABOUT KUROO TETSUROU; and it’s a mortifying affair, trying to explain that he was only looking for research purposes. Hanamaki doesn't buy it, and neither does the rest of the apartment, but dinner comes calling, and everyone soon forgets. It is with a quickness that Oikawa exits the browser when no one’s looking, and that's that.

But then again, maybe it isn't. Later that night, when everyone else has fallen asleep in front of the TV and the hours turn into something more honest, Oikawa opens up the thread again and mindlessly sorts through the entries. He laughs at the soliloquies devoted to bedhead hair, the tidbits he might not have known before (like that Kuroo’s best subject in high school was biology, and that he had six cats named after Ghibli characters growing up).

Oikawa whirs past most questions, smug at knowing the answers. “Cinnamon aftershave,” he answers drowsily, when he encounters a question about what Kuroo might smell like. And the light kind, too, always behind his ears. “Cranky,” he follows with a smile, when he encounters a question about what Kuroo might be like in the early morning.

He goes on: Red. Nerima. A vintage DSLR on days off. The answers come in quick succession, all in response to impersonal little questions, and they read like things anyone might find in a magazine bio blurb years (or even months) from now. Oikawa only pauses, full stop, when he gets to the last question in the thread. 

‘ What's he like up close and personal?’

Oikawa thinks he should be able to answer this. They'd brushed past each other in more ways than one; by passive-aggressive shoulder bumps, by valiant and closely-held death scenes. He could say he knew, because Kuroo was no novice at getting up close and personal, and Oikawa might be damned to say he was good at doing the same. They could both sting. Unnerve by the buzz. But that was the thing, maybe: neither one of them was good at staying for too long—Kuroo liked surprises, being the hornet at someone’s ear, only to zip away, and Oikawa was never great at settling by nature. A honeybee, he'd read once, roams flower to flower in search of the best nectar. They keep the fields healthy by never keeping still. 

Oikawa wilts by the question again. Staring up at his phone screen, he determines he might not know enough past those fleeting little haunts. He blames it on the night when it bothers him more than it should, and determines, at some ungodly hour, that he should attempt some semblance of sleep.

“One million fans,” Oikawa says at Kuroo’s doorstep in Nerima a week later, still out of breath from the countdown, a quick pace to the station, and the dash up fifteen flights of stairs. He holds his phone up to rub it in, but lets the grin come off his face when Kuroo’s the one who starts laughing about it. 

“Congratulations,” he starts, “but did you really have to run all the way here to tell me this?”

Oikawa supposes he didn’t have to, but a victory was a victory. He gulps down the lump in his throat either way, adjusting the lapels of his cardigan like the finest suit he’s ever owned. Kuroo stands undeterred in his red apron, soup ladle still in hand. Red carpet worthy. 

“I have an idea,” Oikawa starts, finding his words. He digs out his script from his bag. “Since I won, and that means you have to buy me dinner, let’s review in the meanwhile. It’ll be like killing two birds with one stone. And if it’s for work, you won’t get the wrong idea about things.”

Kuroo knits himself into the slightest frown; this time, it crosses hairs with something on the verge of a smile. “So I won’t get the wrong idea about things?” he repeats back. “And what might that be?”

Oikawa murmurs a strange cross between I don’t know and nothing. In return, Kuroo just closes the door in his face.

“Hey, Kuroo—”

There’s no chance to knock when he comes back to open the door a moment later, his own script in hand. “I was worried you’d be missing our meal together,” he reads from it, droning on. “I’ve made soup tonight.”

Oikawa grimaces at the thought of hanging out in Kuroo’s apartment. “I’m not sure I really want to eat your cooking.”

“You can’t really go wrong with what I’m making. You okay with instant ramen?” 

“I mean, sure, but, what about your roommate Kenma?” Oikawa asks, already stepping in and taking off his shoes. “Won’t he mind?”

“You make it sound like we’re up to no good,” Kuroo remarks, going back to the stove top. One package of Maruchan ramen waits for him on the counter. After a series of wordless gestures, Oikawa picks out the chicken flavored one for himself, and it’s off to the races for dinner. “Anyway,” Kuroo begins again, steam making his nose prickle. “He’s off hanging out with his friend, you know, that v-blogger? The one who shouts at all the video games on the internet? I don’t know.” He talks about this as if he were already an old man, weary over all things dot com and etcetera.

Oikawa nods. “Ah, I know the one. Hinata Shouyou, or something?”

“Yeah, that’s the name,” Kuroo says. “So he won’t be back for a while. But what about you? Shouldn’t you be off with that new model girlfriend of yours? Hana-chan? I figured that’s why we haven’t had a script reading in like, what, a week?”

“Ah,” Oikawa says, leaning against the counter. “So you do read the forums.” 

Kuroo blinks back up at him, undeterred. “You’re saying it’s true, then.”

“I’m not,” comes the answer, casual in the truth of things. “Because it isn’t. So whatever you’ve read about me, just forget.”

Kuroo hums out a songless little tune. “Coy.” He goes back to cooking dinner, frying eggs on the side for the extra garnish.

When the silence hits between them, all that's left is a sizzle and a running sink, Oikawa takes to looking around the apartment in the meanwhile. It’s a smaller place than his, and more cluttered, too, but it’s the sort of mess that seems more amicable than the rest, like some chaos that belonged on all levels. He takes note of it all: the rumpled throw blanket on the couch, the corner of unread scripts hiding under, the posters on the wall for The Cat Returns and Amelie; Kenma’s vintage video games lay in a toppled hill by the TV, surrounded by tangled wires and disconnected keyboards; even the polaroids, scattered everywhere around the apartment, have some semblance of attitude to them—you've come into this mess, and you're going to like it, and Oikawa had to admit he did (and very much so).

Wandering into the hall, he finds what he presumes is Kuroo’s room, dimly lit because overhead lighting might be the world’s greatest sham. Oikawa admits it might be little more put-together than the shared quarters, but not by much—worn-looking t-shirts made crumpled little islands on the floor, open books lay everywhere in temptation—but there’s a neat order in which the movie posters and postcards hang on the wall: Seven Samurai livesd in peace with Sundance, Kagemusha with Cannes. Oikawa takes one look at the latter, a vintage print from the 1939 competition, and watches it flutter, unceremoniously, to the ground.

Oikawa makes out writing in the back of it. In a child's penmanship, it reads: Kuroo Tetsurou, 2002, eight years old. Make movies (and get a hundred more cats). 

He can't help but snort at the last part.

“Funny, huh?”

Oikawa jolts upright. Kuroo comes into the room, two bowls of instant ramen on a tray. Without a word, he just sets down their dinner on a floor table by his bed, and sighs out loud.“The great boy wonder Oikawa Tooru,” he remarks. “Here to see all my secrets.”

Oikawa shakes his head, looking down at his noodles. He pokes at a fried egg with his chopstick. “Well, I didn't mean to snoop,” he starts, “I just happened to see it, and you've got to admit your room is that sort of room people might want to see and—”

“Oh, relax,” says Kuroo. Oikawa does no such thing, because it’s weird, being in the bedroom of his greatest enemy and unfounded crush. He slips into a smile instead, pleasant enough, and feigns something not impressed. He turns his nose up at the posters, ones he might like himself, and glances wearily at famous set photos. 

Sights come back down to the advertisement for Cannes, and Oikawa flips it back up from the table like the winning card in a deck. “Cannes, huh?” he asks indignantly, and Kuroo takes one more slurp from his bowl, not catching on.

“Your ramen’s going to get soggy.”

“You told me once, you know,” Oikawa keeps going. “That day on the face cleanser set. About how Cannes was nothing but a dream.” 

Kuroo lifts his head. “You remember that?”

“Oh, like I'm going to forget a video that the whole world must've seen by now.” 

“True.” 

Drawing his knees close to his chest, Oikawa forgoes any sort of eating. The butterflies have been voracious in his stomach lately, and he was starting to wonder if anyone would be apt to call it a whole hive, instead.

Looking out, picture still in hand, he flips to the back of it once more. “You wanted to make movies,” he repeats, and Kuroo perks up before drifting back into normalcy, or not. Oikawa can tell Kuroo might be embarrassed, just by the averted sights, the way he sets his chopsticks down, firm and finished with a whole meal still at hand. 

“I was just a kid, I guess.” 

“But you kept this card. You hung it on your wall.”

Kuroo smiles, cutting. “How about we get to that script review, huh?” 

“Don't change the subject on me,” scolds Oikawa, shaking his head. “What?” he asks, feigning a certain kind of breeziness. “Did you fall into acting by accident, then? Did someone just pick you off the street and say, ah, young man, you look like the villain for our anti-plaque toothpaste commercial?”

In turn, Kuroo heaves the heaviest sigh. He picks up one of the open books on the floor, takes the bookmark stuck in the crease, and shows Oikawa a polaroid. Old and worn, he sees it: Kuroo Tetsurou of all people, in plastic devil horns and the ever-dramatic red cape, promoting a box of super hot red curry.

“I was fifteen,” Kuroo shrugs out. “My mom was in between production jobs, and I wanted to make a little extra money. It wasn't supposed to be a big deal.”

But it had been. From there, Kuroo shows Oikawa a bunch of other polaroids, memories from the jobs he'd taken since then. Anti-hero to irredeemable villain, Kuroo had played the bad boy and run with it; even now, in the midst of filming Late Summer Flood, he'd been penned as the cool friend, a confidante of lowborn but street-smart prestige.

Oikawa stares up from the scattered album in his hands, finds some sort of sorry almost escape his lips, but shuts up when Kuroo shrugs about it, all a matter-of-fact. 

‘It doesn't bother you?’ Oikawa wants to ask. ‘To get these roles all the time?’ He slumps back without meaning to, and Kuroo picks up on it right away. 

To match Oikawa’s recoil, he leans forward, at ease. A grin peeks across his face, daring to be mere this time. It still rests assured.

‘It doesn't,’ Kuroo answers without having to. “Let them think what they want about me,” he says instead, and Oikawa gulps the sentiment right down.

“But.” 

“But, what?” Kuroo asks right back.

“I thought you wanted to make movies.”

“I do.”

“Then what are you still doing here?”

Kuroo sighs, taking the postcard from Oikawa’s hands. He looks at the back of it like an old friend. “You're really good at that, aren't you?” 

“Good at what?”

“Looking that far ahead. I mean, think about it. We’re still on the river. Let's see what's in store along the way, before looking to the mouth of it. Keep it flowing.”

Oikawa frowns back, dismayed. “Maybe you should go into philosophy instead, talking like that.” 

Kuroo laughs. “Kenma tells me the same from time to time. I must've picked it up from an acting coach I had back in high school. That old man Nekomata would've been proud, I suppose.”

“Sure,” says Oikawa. “But don't you ever think about it? Making movies again?”

“I do,” Kuroo answers. “A lot of the time.”

“Then,” Oikawa pauses for a moment, reflecting on the plainness of such an answer. “What’s next?” 

Silence hits the room for a moment, and it feels like eons. Kuroo places the postcard back on the table, face up. 

“I don’t know. I'll tell you when I figure it out.”

Amongst the posters and old movie scenes, Oikawa mashes his mouth closed when he feels he's pried too much for the evening. Quiet looms, and the city rumbles beneath them. Oikawa goes to eat some of his dinner, when he thinks of some small comeback:

“You better,” Oikawa tells him. “A postcard in the mail.”

At this, Kuroo just smiles.

(He also gets the last laugh when Oikawa, indeed, slurps up the soggiest sort of ramen.)

Oikawa tries to imagine it. In a scene where he should be doting on his new wife, a rookie actress by the name of Yachi Hitoka, he guesses what sort of movies Kuroo might make instead. He ends up staring at him from across the set, and sips back tea like a shot of something strong. Murder mystery? Action? Dystopian? The possibilities ring endless, and Kuroo stares back at Oikawa like his patience might be running out. 

(And years from now, when Late Summer Flood is heralded as a cult classic amongst neo-period drama enthusiasts, the questions come reiterated in forums like urban legend: “Did you ever catch the scene after the marriage? It's only a split second, really. But the way the two warlords just sort of stare at each other like no one else is there? Now that's when you can really feel the heat between those two. Something really deep-seated, don't you think? Magical.”)

(“Oh, certainly our generation’s best actors.”)

Oikawa squints. Action? Romantic comedy? Satire? Maybe satire.

Giving up no answers, Kuroo gets up from his place at the table, all to follow his cues. Oikawa refocuses, remembering the motions. a confidante gets up to congratulate his best friend on the new union.

“I wish you all the best.” 

their own hangs in the balance, when crossroads are met. he leaves through one door. the boy wonder, the other. And that is what they do.

“Cut!” Ennoshita calls out, ambling on over to Oikawa. “Wonderful. Really wonderful. You guys have been adding in these great things, and usually I wouldn't encourage it too much, but. It's been working.” He shows that signature queasy smile, before straightening into something more assured. 

Oikawa crosses his arms. “So...we’re safe then?”

“Safe from…?”

“You know. Getting recasted.” Oikawa says the last part in seething, barely uttered at all. Ennoshita shrinks, noticeably, before finding his footing once more.

As of late, Ennoshita Chikara had been touted as a respectable director in the industry, renowned for the three following things: 1) working ridiculously hard to make things work on set, 2) burning out for that one year after the face wash fiasco, and 3) coming back better than ever, all to try his hand, again. Oikawa certainly had to respect his willingness to forge on, even if he wasn't sure he agreed with the whole being replaced thing. 

Ennoshita just grins at Oikawa though, like that might not be a problem anymore. “Where did you hear about that?” he asks back.

“Rumors,” Oikawa answers, only half a lie. “Because Kuroo-chan and I weren't getting along.”

“Well, you are now,” says Ennoshita. “And that's what matters, right? And believe me, I had my doubts about you two—I'll be blunt about that—but maybe it's just a matter of sticking to things sometimes." 

“So we're not getting recasted?”

Ennoshita shakes his head. His smile is unfaltering. 

“It's been a good month, so I'd say no.”

Oikawa sighs out at the news, short and restrained. “Good to know,” he says, like he couldn't give a damn either way. “Maybe I'll tell Kuroo-chan, since he's been worried sick and all.”

“Sure,” Ennoshita tells him, suddenly occupied when an assistant offers him a new to-do list to work with. “But he might already know he's not going anywhere.” He squints down at his clipboard, scribbling something out. “We had a nice conversation in my office this morning. Also, did you know he was interested in directing? I wouldn't have expected it from him.” 

Oikawa perks up. “What?" 

“Oh, I guess it's just the way he carries himself. He's already so low key about things, so it's hard to guess what he might like outside of being on camera.” 

“No, I mean, what did he say to you about that? About directing?”

Ennoshita still doesn't look up from his clipboard. “Oh, that. Nothing much, really. Workload and such. But he seemed interested in it. Even bought me a can of coffee for any insights.” 

“Interesting,” Oikawa remarks, letting Ennoshita wander off for a phone call and the rest of the day to come.

To speak of the devil and all the world's worst demons, Oikawa searches for Kuroo on set in the meanwhile, finds him lingering near the cameras, and does not go to disturb him.

“What kind of director do you think you'll be?” Oikawa asks Kuroo one winter day, when they've decided to spend the early morning skulking around Nerima alleys before filming. 

Kuroo yawns at the question, still hazy from sleep, and wipes away any drowsiness from his sights. “That's not the sort of question you ask so early in the morning. Give me some time to wake up, why don't you?”

But Oikawa presses on, even if Kuroo makes it a point to pace ahead of him on the road, because he’d grown tired of reviewing the script over and over the last few months. If he could be confident in anything, it was the fact that they'd learned it to the extreme; their parts, their nuances, how to orbit around each other—and it was enough, maybe, just to tolerate him at this point. (Or no, not tolerate. This might be something else. Was something else.) Oikawa steps closer to him, whatever this might be, close but not too close, and relies on some natural sort of stasis. Don't get any closer. Kuroo notices either way, and slows down for Oikawa to make it next to him. 

They make a little game of it, Kuroo, two steps ahead, Oikawa, another three.

“You know,” says Kuroo. “I actually don't know how to answer your question, because I haven't done it yet. Like, legitimately.”

Oikawa stops for a moment, before remembering what he'd asked in the first place. “Ah,” he tells him back. “Have you thought about it, then?”

“What?”

“Directing full time.”

Kuroo smiles. “I don't know. Maybe. Yeah,” he admits, but all low like it might not be a big deal. “But we have a movie to finish, right? I hear we might have to redo that last scene—you know, the one where you sorta die.”

“Oh?” Oikawa dreads the idea of popping more blood packets and falling in someone’s arms for the hundredth time. “And why’s that?”

“Hm,” says Kuroo. “Some of the executives are saying we’re too much like star crossed lovers in that scene. Like holding you close, making infinite promises.”

Oikawa laughs without meaning to. He kills the nervous little note at the end before it can do any real damage. “What, like you were playing romance?” he asks.

He looms up at the question, teeth clenched under a tight and forced smile. Kuroo loses his for an answer, oddly dulled for something he normally took the opportunity to sting with—things like, “what, with you?” and “never” and “never in a billion, billion years”—but no such thing ever comes.

No answer does, when a calico tabby comes running across the street, and Oikawa curses it under his breath. May you only find mild success as an Instagram cat. Kuroo just dotes on it like he does all the others.

“There you are,” he coos, like speaking to a child. That's when Oikawa notices the collar. “Obaa-san’s been looking for you all week, you little brat. Have you been visiting other people’s yards again?” He scoops the tabby up in his arms, natural as can be, before beckoning for Oikawa’s knapsack. 

“He's not going to stay still in there,” Oikawa insists, never amazing with animals in the first place.

“She is probably the most relaxed cat you'll ever meet,” says Kuroo, and Oikawa doesn't put up much of a fight this time. He continues talking with her, like he might be some world renowned cat whisperer. The tabby, in turn, welcomes Kuroo like some feline’s messiah.

In Oikawa’s pocket, a phone rings. It's Ennoshita.

“So sorry to call so early in the morning,” he starts. 

Oikawa looks to Kuroo. “It's no problem,” he responds. “I'm already up. Is everything okay?” 

“Ah, yes, I think so. I just need to speak with you in person. Is, um, Kuroo-san there, too?”

“Unfortunately.”

“Well—and I am SO sorry to do this, but could you come in as soon as possible? It's about that last scene. I don't want to re-shoot it. I’ve decided to go in a different direction altogether.” 

Oikawa sinks at the news, and it's palpable enough to get Kuroo’s attention. He mouths a silent little “what is it?” back at him, and Oikawa just shakes his head in return.

“Oh, uh. Sure.” Oikawa swallows, feeling the heat rise up in his cheek. “We'll be there right away.”

“Thank you so much for this. Promise it's nothing terrible. Really, I can promise you that.”

“Looking forward to it, then,” Oikawa forces out, and the phone call ends. 

He stares at a black screen for a moment before looking back up at Kuroo, and from there it is a matter of seeing the sky fall.

“They said they wanted to take things in a different direction, Kuroo-chan.”

Kuroo frowns, before uttering out a curse for even the cat to hear. “Great,” he says back, “do you think that means we’re getting recasted?” 

Oikawa doesn't answer this. It is with haste that the two of them finish their morning walk instead, give a certain cat back to a certain grandmother, and run off to the studio. 

Along the way, right in the heart of a rush hour train, Oikawa keeps his sights on Kuroo from the handlebars. He leans forward, close enough to let their knees graze in the touch, and Kuroo does not stir. Neither of them do, and Oikawa lets himself have this moment of peace. In the midst of it, Kuroo’s question remains. ‘Do you think that means we're getting recasted?’ comes again until it is nothing but vaguest inkling, and Oikawa decides to toss his shoulders back, take a deep breath, and look on towards the next stop.

(Onto the next, and the next, and the next.)

“It's a love story,” Ennoshita explains, “and I want to add this scene for the final touch.”

Oikawa peers down at the revised script, a scene stuck right in the middle just before his character’s marriage and the downfall by an assassin’s arrow. He reads: in the comfort of home, the barren room, the two of them don't say a word. they have been built from the ground by body language, and this is no different. 

Kuroo takes a deep breath. “You're kidding me,” he says, not exactly a refute, but there's a certain lightness in his tone about things, like Ennoshita’s actually managed to surprise him this time.

“Wait, what?” Oikawa asks. 

“I'd...keep going,” advises Ennoshita.

Oikawa does what he's told. our boy wonder, it reads, never flinches when he's cutting down a foe.

our boy wonder, as fearless as can be, never flinches when they press on the deepest wounds.

our boy wonder, past the point of any return, flinches, defenseless, when his confidante goes in to kiss him.

“You can do this,” Matsukawa insists. 

“It'll be one hell of a story for a fanclub thread,” Hanamaki chimes in.

“And think of how much rent you'll be able to pay off,” says Iwaizumi.

Oikawa presses a script over his face, sends a muffled scream into it, and looks back up at his friends, hopeless. 

“I have a confession to make,” he says, careful not to wrinkle the robes they've put him in today. The other three lean in to hear it, a funny little huddle amidst a sprawling, hectic set: “I think I...” Oikawa starts, covering his face with his hands. “I think I like him.” 

Hanamaki recoils back. Matsukawa feigns a sigh. The clicking of their tongues is relentless, and enough to sharpen swords. “I thought he was going to tell us something surprising,” says Matsukawa, and the two of them go off to find the catering table. But Iwaizumi stays, taking a seat next to him, and offers no scold or solace. 

“I mean,” Iwaizumi starts. “You’ve kissed people on set before. Models.”

Oikawa shakes his head. “This is different.” 

“Isn’t changing all these things at the last minute bad for the movie?”

“The director says it’s warranted,” Oikawa answers. He scans the rest of the set ahead, the familiar house in which he'd gotten married and died for scenes already shot. “He says it's the way that Kuroo-chan and I grew into our roles, and that it was clear what had to happen. All his writers agreed, too. Even the marketing team is changing their whole strategy for this. It's now the decade’s greatest love story.”

Iwaizumi winces noticeably at the moniker.

“I don't hate it,” Oikawa admits. “It's just...not ideal.”

“Because you don't want to kiss him this way.” 

Oikawa sighs. “I don't want to kiss him this way.” 

(And when the countdown begins—fifteen minutes until shooting!—Iwaizumi jets off to meet the others at the catering table. Oikawa just stays in his chair, mulling over comments he'd read the night before: ‘According to old high school flames, I hear Kuroo Tetsurou is actually a terrible kisser, but a master of looming those few seconds before,’ said user kissingcat90. ‘It might be enough to make you feel like the only person in the world.’)

Oikawa presses the thoughts away. They come back, when they get him ready in makeup, and again, when they set his fitting for today’s robes—not grand sort, but the simple kind, and just a little loose around the shoulders. Comfortable enough for a confidante to kiss him. 

Kuroo’s already sitting on the floor when Oikawa reemerges on set. Their sights cross for a moment before flitting away.

(‘Well, I hear he's an amazing kisser,’ @kurookuroofanxo had written on Twitter this morning. ‘Sources tell me he licks his lips before starting. Just like an alley cat.’)

Kuroo does no such thing this time. He tips his head to say, hey, get here already, and Oikawa sets himself down, right at the opposite of edge of the table. What happens next is something he might dare pin as some phenomenon or law of motion, best known by those in the throes of some unseemly infatuation: that if you like him, you might really like him, and it'll be enough to launch a thousand ships (or at least get you to move those few centimeters closer). And that's what Oikawa lets himself do this time, hands skimming across the table’s edge. Kuroo remains to welcome him to port.

“You don't like personal space, don't you?” There's a hush in his voice, a shiver if a shiver could speak. 

Oikawa huffs out a sigh. “I'm just getting into the scene,” he tells him, half a lie, “since we didn't get a chance to go over this.”

“What?” Kuroo grins. “Like you wanted to practice kissing me?”

Oikawa doesn’t answer. He doesn't get the chance to, when Ennoshita comes back to the set and the rest of the crew gets into place. Kuroo looks away before he can make another jibe about proximity and the matter of breaching it. “Five minutes,” a set assistant calls after that, along with “everybody do your best!”

In those five minutes, Oikawa thinks about any time he’s ever kissed anyone: Iwa-chan (accidentally!) in elementary, Mayoko-chan in middle, the three exes in high school, and etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. They come by in a whir, mostly because kisses had always just been kisses—the mechanical movement of parting lips, especially on set. It was not something to think about, because he’d kissed people before. He’d felt their lips and the peck and the press. He’d heard deadly silence of the right-after. He’d run from it just as much as he'd dived, straight in, under the covers (and he narrowly avoids thinking what that'd be like, with Kuroo). 

“Don't worry about it,” Kuroo says out of the silence.

“What?” 

“You'll see.”

Oikawa watches the cameras swing into position, to his back and too far for any sort of close-up. Overhead, the spotlight beats down in judgment before dimming into intimacy. Ennoshita paces to the side, at beck and call to prying executives, while Oikawa’s friends have gone to take their place as his cheering squad. Matsukawa and Hanamaki even have the nerve to hold up a pink neon sign—KISS THE HELL OUT OF HIM, OIKAWA TOORU—while Iwaizumi settles for a more subtle nod. You can do this, he says in the usual telepathy, and Oikawa gulps down, a bow of the head back.

(‘I don't think I'd be able to go through with kissing someone like him,’ said fanclub user nerima_tabby81. ‘Whether he might be good or bad.’)

Kuroo doesn't acknowledge any of the commotion whipping up around them. He surveys the set with a keen eye, sights up at everything from the lighting to the cameras with undying focus. Oikawa watches the way he tips his chin up to Ennoshita, like everything had to be perfect, and how Ennoshita follows right back: we're good to go, he says with a little grin. Minutes pass by in milliseconds.

“One minute to go!” 

Oikawa gulps down. “Ah, shit,” he seethes under his teeth, but not quiet enough for Kuroo to ignore. 

“Are you nervous?”

“I'm not nervous.”

“Whatever you are,” Kuroo says, “don't worry. Really. I've got this all sorted out.”

Oikawa’s eyes go wide. “What are you planning, Kuroo-chan?” 

“I told you. You'll see.” 

From there, Ennoshita gets into place. He breathes in, sets himself firmly in his chair, and beckons. “Action,” he starts, and the world descends into madness.

And this might be the thing about reading lines and cues: that some things might be better left to interpretation. It is in that moment when Oikawa realizes he has no idea what to do with his hands, because he hadn't had the time to read this part of the script more than twice, and hadn’t thought this far ahead about things. He scrunches them in his lap before tugging on his own robes, palms covered in sweat, all senseless in his motions. 

Oikawa waits for Ennoshita to call for the cut. He wonders if his spirit will speed right out of his body. 

(But what he doesn't know, and what he'll only realize years later, is that there’s no way Ennoshita would ever call for the cut. In a tenth anniversary interview, a critic from the Tokyo Journal would come to explain that “there was no denying the honesty in the scene. It wasn’t perfect, and it was clear Oikawa-san might’ve had his doubts kissing a well-known enemy on set, but he played through the scene effortlessly. Even with his back to the camera, he'd put everything into his motions: the heaving, the subtle rise and fall of shoulders, just the peek of some cheek, the downward look—one might be convinced that he was actually in love in this scene, and it's a sight to behold.”)

Oikawa looks up, taking a deep breath, because even warlords had to stop for a moment, and there was no better place to stop than with a confidante. With no cameras to the front or too close for comfort, he lets himself tug on Kuroo’s robe, words all mouthed without sound. “Are you playing romance?” he asks. Are you playing it like I might be?

Kuroo stays without an answer, too gentle in the way he pulls Oikawa by the sleeves. There's a lightness in the grip, all sparse in affection. Oikawa stares up at him. “What are you doing?” comes the next question. No answer comes.

He remembers the cue, the flinch, only by the most natural motions. Oikawa lets his sights fall to the ground again when Kuroo leans in. Hands fall away from sleeves. Goodbye, grip. Kuroo tips Oikawa’s chin up, careful, inspecting, before closing his eyes and pressing their foreheads together. An arm comes wrapped around Oikawa’s back.

Oikawa breathes Kuroo in, too close, without the kiss.

“Come on,” mouths Oikawa, pulled into the possibility of something real, but Kuroo does not oblige him. They become the greatest pretenders, and the camera will love them for it, anyway.

“Come on.” Oikawa winces into the smile. Kuroo does not give in to the best of them. 

“I know you can hear me.”

(I know you want to kiss me back.)

“Just.”

Oikawa feels him pull away. It happens by the millimeters, that slow and terrible crawl, but it might as well be miles upon miles. He remembers that rejection has a certain way of ringing like homesickness, one pang to a million in the face of unwanted distance (and how, oh how, they were supposed to close it).

Delirious, Oikawa still lets the hook of his fingers stay on a lapel. He knows it is a thin attempt at pulling him back. Kuroo doesn't shift away in the face of it, but he doesn't dive back in, either; in the next second, Ennoshita calls for the cut, and Kuroo raises his signature defense—the back of a wrist to his mouth, a deep, unbridled breath. 

“Perfect, you two!” Ennoshita actually exclaims, the look on his face palpably bright (and the word Oikawa might be looking for is jubilant). “I don’t know how you pulled that off in such short notice, but!” He shakes his head. “I can't think of another way to do this scene. And thank you for your suggestions on filming angles, Kuroo-san.” 

Kuroo nods along. “It was no problem.”

“The distance of it really created this sense of privacy, I think. Intimacy.”

Oikawa turns to Ennoshita, snapping out of any sort of haze. “Wait,” he starts. “How was this scene supposed to be?”

“Ah, well,” Ennoshita says, “we were supposed to keep the camerawork close, you know. Two profiles meeting in the middle...but Kuroo-san suggested taking it out further, keeping the focal point at someone’s back. Yours, specifically, since you're the lead on this—” 

“And the audience always has its eyes on you,” Kuroo interrupts. “So I thought it’d be interesting, to emulate what the confidante always sees instead. Your back. In that one instance, he has the boy wonder all to himself.” 

Oikawa shoots a dirty look at Kuroo before preening up. He tries to ignore the flush on his face. “I…” he starts, before stopping. “Fine. That works. It's just—I'd prepared myself for the horror, you know, of kissing Kuroo-chan and all that.” 

Wearily, Ennoshita casts a glance between the two of them. “I mean, I thought this rework would've saved you the trouble and all.”

“I mean—yes, it has, but—”

“But?” Ennoshita asks.

Oikawa bites the inside of a cheek, stopping himself from saying anything further. “Nothing,” he just says, all forced out like a lie, a big one, and it’s almost too hard to swallow down. “Besides, who'd ever want to kiss Kuroo Tetsurou, anyway?”

“I say we report him as missing,” Matsukawa declares two weeks later, when shooting for Late Summer Flood is done, buried, and singing forever hold your peace.

“We can't report him as missing when he's just moping around in bed.”

“But that's the thing,” Matsukawa tells Iwaizumi, “because his soul has clearly left his body. If we’re talking metaphysical, that would make him missing, wouldn't it?”

Iwaizumi pokes Oikawa in the side to make sure he's still alive. In retaliation, Oikawa swats him from under the blankets.

“Well, we aren't talking metaphysical,” Iwaizumi says. “I swear, you take one philosophy class…”

“All right, all right,” Matsukawa relents. “We can debate that later, I guess—but what I don't get is why he's like that in the first place.”

Iwaizumi clears his throat. “He got his heart broken,” comes the answer. 

“I did not!” Oikawa bolts up in bed, launching a pillow at Iwaizumi. He catches it without a problem. “I told you I was kidding about all that, remember?” 

“Yeah, but you're not,” Iwaizumi says (or more like knows, because it's Iwa-chan and nothing ever got past Iwa-chan). He just throws the cushion right back at Oikawa, inspiring a small flurry of goose feathers. Matsukawa, as dutiful as ever, goes to pick them out of Oikawa’s fringe.

Oikawa swoons out a sigh, slumping into an embrace with his pillow. “I'm just tired, you know? Shooting takes a lot out of a guy, and it's just a matter of resting up.”

Matsukawa leans over, fingers still carding through Oikawa’s hair. “Have you even spoken to him since filming ended?” he asks, picking out the last plumb.

“Who?” Oikawa asks petulantly. He wanders his gaze up to the ceiling. “I don't know who you're talking about.”

“Yes, you do,” says Iwaizumi. “Don't act so clueless when it's that obvious.”

Oikawa peers up at the sign hanging over his bedroom door, a horrible (but expected) practical joke played by the likes of Hanamaki and Matsukawa late one night: ‘KISS THE HELL OUT OF HIM, OIKAWA TOORU’ remained to say, “uh, well, you didn't,” and it was enough to taunt the daylights out of him. Still, he dares not to show it; he just raises himself up without the security of covers and cushions to force a proud little grin. 

“Well,” he starts, “even if I did have some small crush on him, you can be sure that it's gone now. Besides...it's not like I'll be seeing him ever again.” 

Iwaizumi frowns. “Don't you have a premiere for your movie at the end of spring? He'd be at that, right?”

“Oh please, like Kuroo-chan would ever go to that sort of thing.”

Matsukawa betrays a scoff. “You seem confident.”

“He's just…” Oikawa answers with a shrug, linking his fingers together for fiddling. “He’s just like that, you know?”

“What? Skipping award ceremonies to hang out in underground clubs? Chain smoke?” Matsukawa asks. “I mean, I've seen that hair. Has he got any relatives in the yakuza?” 

“No, actually.” Oikawa takes pause at the thought of Kuroo doing anything of that sort—and sure, he might've played a yakuza member here and there, smoked fake cigarettes for roles, and cursed for some part in a scripted havoc—but that wasn’t Kuroo Tetsurou off the camera.

Still, he doesn't blame anyone for not knowing. Because they'd never seen the Cannes postcard from 1939, or the promise that he’d adopt a plethora of cats on the back of it. They'd never seen how good he was with them, tabby and otherwise, like some patron saint for the strays and housebroken. Because it was one thing, to hear the drawl, the gravel, and the impending doom of a voice on screen, but it was another, to hear him whisper sweet nothings to a feline he'd barely known for two minutes, the plainness of a simple kid from the streets of Nerima.

Oikawa keeps up such thoughts—like the finicky way Kuroo pulled up his socks, or left his textbooks open everywhere, or got into face wash fights on set. He thinks of ramen for dinner and DSLR cameras by the pondside. How he’d called his grandmother’s cat goddess divine.

He thinks of the back of a wrist pressed to the mouth, not particularly shy, but right on the verge of some rare and sudden modesty. He thinks of movies, and how they'd been in a few now, together and not. He thinks of the kinds they might be in next. He thinks of the kind Kuroo might make in the future. 

In fullest clarity, he thinks of Kuroo. 

(And in dreaming, always in dreaming, the back of a hand comes off parted lips. Kuroo smiles back, never in full force but certainly well meant, and Oikawa looks to return it.) 

“Hey, I think his soul has really left his body this time,” Matsukawa remarks, poking Oikawa in the temple. “He hasn't listened to a word I've said.”

“That's because he's too busy thinking about him,” says Iwaizumi. “And no one wants to listen to your philosophical ramblings, anyway.”

Matsukawa hums out a chuckle, light, before letting a certain sort of quiet enter the room. Iwaizumi pats him on the shoulder, both in sympathy and an urge to get out of bed, and it is enough to move armadas. They stare back up at the sign over the doorway, sighs made in various amounts, and Oikawa counts it all as a casual mourning and the condemnation of all things love.

It is only in private, when everyone else is debating the incomplete status of Hanamaki’s shoujo manga collection, or falling asleep to late night movies, that Oikawa goes back to the postcard he'd stolen like some national secret. The Cannes Film Festival, he sounds out. Côte d'Azur. In a promise to an older self, his co-star has written:

Kuroo Tetsurou, 2002, eight years old.

Make movies (and get a hundred more cats).

At this, Oikawa can't help but laugh. He sets the postcard down, shuts it in the crack of an unread script, before deciding to mail it back to its rightful owner. In an attached post-it note, he writes back: I did not keep this as a memento. but don't think I'll forget about this, either.

In turn, Kuroo does not write back until a week later, as simple as can be: you were right about things.

The rumors swell about his vagrancy. A fanclub's numbers dip and new threads speak in anxious tones. Our favorite bad boy has disappeared off the face of the earth, they all say, and Kuroo Tetsurou has neglected any new projects—no movies, no shows, no embarrassing TV spots.

In the midst of things, Oikawa does not stop. He reads for movies, new TV shows, and the embarrassing TV spots.

Just like that, the world spins faster under his feet, still never enough to take him off-balance. 

(If only, if only, he knew where to find him in the whir of it.)

In hindsight, it was not hard to make distance along the way.

This is what Oikawa learns on the edge of spring, when Tokyo becomes nothing but a weekend stomping ground, mostly used to catch up on a lack of sleep, or watch movies in the apartment when sleep was nothing but a dream; he keeps his morning jogs to Sangenjaya, and refuses the temptation of chasing stray cats out of the neighborhood. For him, the season had been living out of suitcases anyway, and no means dead by the usual winter standard—because Oikawa had been busier than ever as Japan’s newest it boy, and being an it boy meant all sorts of things: shooting commercials, giving radio interviews, going to auditions for roles he'd never dreamed of—there wasn't enough time in the day to miss Tokyo, and certainly not enough to casually ask his agent, “oh, hey, so how has Kuroo-chan been lately? Is he still living in Nerima?”

This is what Oikawa tells himself when he's back in Tokyo this evening, just a few hours away from the premiere of Late Summer Flood. He gulps down when Matsukawa goes to straighten his tie. All proud, Hanamaki hands him a newly shined pair of leather shoes. 

“Our son has grown up so nicely, don't you think?” Hanamaki asks, wringing an arm around Matsukawa’s shoulder. “His first movie premiere as a leading boy.”

“Hey, now,” Matsukawa says. “Leading man.”

“Soon he's going want to move out,” Hanamaki whispers gravely. “What will we do without him?” 

“Aw, well, we’ll still have Iwaizumi, I guess.” 

Iwaizumi glares up from his own battle with a sticky lint roller and a pair of his best slacks. “Keep talking like that, and I'll move out tonight.”

Oikawa laughs, but it is brittle enough for Iwaizumi to notice. He doesn't say anything about it, though—not until they're alone in the backseat of a car the agency sent, city whirring by in swaths of neon and sound. “You know,” he starts, nicer than usual. “I thought there was a period of time when I thought you hated me.” 

“Aw, how could I ever hate you, Iwa-chan?” Oikawa breezes right back, head pressed against the window. 

“What was a six year old supposed to think?” says Iwaizumi. “Two weeks without talking to me. All because of a crush—”

“We don't talk about that,” Oikawa interrupts. “And I know where you're going with this. I'm not talking about him, either. It was all silly to begin with.” 

“You’re doing that nose thing again, though. Every time. You know that weird kids’ story? The one where that puppet’s nose grows every time they lie? You do that,” Iwaizumi imitates, tossing his head up. “That's how I could tell you didn't hate me back then. And that you don't hate Kuroo Tetsurou, either.” 

Oikawa glares back. “Forget veterinary school, Iwa-chan. Write my unauthorized biography instead.” He means this as the ultimate dig, but Iwaizumi barely musters anything past the standard-grade scowl for that one.

“I'm serious.” 

“Well, me, too,” says Oikawa. “I'm over all of it. I've had enough time away from the city, and I'm too busy to care about him, you know? It's all great. I wish him the best!” 

“Fine,” Iwaizumi gruffs out. “As long as you think you'll be okay about things, then so be it. But this isn't some crush you had on me when you were six.”

Oikawa smiles. “For your information, Iwa-chan, it took me years to get over you.”

“Then I rest my case,” he only states back, head rolling over to him over the leather. The car comes to a stop not long after that, and Oikawa catches the dull flash of a camera looming outside. “We’re here,” Iwaizumi says, and he gets out on the other side to corral the photographers. 

Oikawa closes his eyes for a moment to collect himself. Forget the queasiness. Forget the nerves. Forget him. He tells himself that Kuroo Tetsurou would never be caught at a place like this anyway, and that some long and expanding distance would remain as such. He welcomes the premiere as some pleasant stranger instead, and waves without shaking anyone’s hand.

The reporters rise up one by one, weeds sprouting up for spring, and Oikawa can only put on his best face. He hears the echoes of some usual chorus—it boy, boy wonder—and welcomes the first question. “How does it feel to be one of the country’s fastest rising stars?” she asks, and Oikawa looks to the crowd with a friendly grin. He doesn't see Kuroo Tetsurou, but about a million more reporters waiting for him, instead. 

Insatiable, he thinks, with just the smallest bit of venom. An absolute swarm. “Oh, it's been an adventure,” he says back with the most civility, that signature tilt of his head, and offers the (faux) nervous laugh. “But there's still so much work to do, and this movie’s turned out so well.” He looks into the camera to singsong the last part: “so if anyone's watching this, please come see it, okay?” 

Oikawa holds up a peace sign that cannot be conquered. The reporters around him laugh. 

“So,” another correspondent from NHK starts. “Have you heard the news?”

He hasn't. Oikawa shakes his head, glancing over. The reporters around him erupt into whispers, shaking their heads and exchanging furtive glances.

“Kuroo Tetsurou is retiring from acting. He says he's going to film school!”

The rest of the story comes in a blur, like how Kuroo had just announced it ten minutes ago, and that it was time to focus on directing, and that he was here, in a rare appearance, to field any questions just this once. Oikawa excuses himself from any more inquiries, pushing past the crowd and right into another. He spots glimpses of him through camera flashes and the gaps between people; the bed head, the sleep-lidded eyes, the infuriating little smirk. Kuroo talks of film school. Oikawa does not step back. At once, he thinks of their movies, together and not, and how distance had only been something he'd made to be broken.

“You're leaving?” Oikawa asks him, maybe too loud, and the photographers capture his face in flashes. 

Kuroo sees him past them all, anyway. Blindsided was never his strong suit.

He just smiles, easy as ever, as level as ever, and mouths the words anyway. “Hi, Oikawa,” he says all smooth, in syllables no one else will catch.

“I hate to surprise you like this.”

They sit on opposite sides of the same row, take different cars back, and don't speak of it.

“Here,” says Iwaizumi. He hands Oikawa another bouquet for the apartment back home, orchids this time. By the time Oikawa gets back from a final call for pictures, a whole garden’s engulfed the backseat of their town car, but he can barely be damned to brush the petals out of his hair. He lets Iwaizumi tell the driver their address in the haze, too tired for words. On his lap, his phone blares on and off, from an agency email chain gone awry—subject: did you know he was going to retire tonight? Well, neither did I!

But alas, the world spins on. Ties come loose and opening weekends end. He prays quietly for adequate box office numbers. Iwaizumi swats a few daisies out of the way, and dares to hand Oikawa the unread cards.

“I'm too tired to go through these, Iwa-chan,” Oikawa laments. “Just let me have some peace, won't you?”

Iwaizumi does not let up. “I just want to know why everyone thought it'd be a great idea to get you flowers.” In annoyance, he takes the time to pick a few petals off his shoulder, and fails to hold in some much needed sneezes. “Maybe they should've considered a few rolls of toilet paper. Rent money.” 

“I could probably afford to get us all a house or something by now,” Oikawa says with a sigh. “We don't need to care about rent money.”

“Well, maybe the flowers aren't so bad, after all,” Iwaizumi decides, taking the stem of one between his fingers. “I'd rather go to hell than owe you for a house.” 

Oikawa hums out, noncommittal. He'd been shopping around for one in the area for the four of them, because it'd be nice not to be so crammed in their apartment for once; but that was neither here nor there, nor something to talk about in the backseat. Maybe he could save it for a summer surprise. In its place, he takes the greeting cards from Iwaizumi, goes through the usual salutations—amazing, spectacular, the ghost of grace itself—and huffs out a sigh when he cannot be more excited.

“I'm losing my touch, Iwa-chan,” Oikawa admits, slumping back. “There's nowhere to go from here.”

“You're not losing your touch,” Iwaizumi tells him, deadpan. “You're just upset.”

“I'm not upset. What would I even have to be upset about?”

Oikawa hears his phone go off in a new notification. Subject: Kuroo Tetsurou has just officially resigned from the agency.

“That,” Iwaizumi answers.

“I'm not—” 

“But you are,” he finishes, says in that simple way he always does. It speaks the volumes only found in high and ancient shelves, time-tested but never in need of dusting off. Oikawa even thinks of every instance he's taunted Iwaizumi for resembling a naggy old man, only to secretly thank him for being as such.

And in turn, Iwaizumi sits back to listen. 

“I'm not upset that he's retiring,” Oikawa starts. Iwaizumi nods along to this. “I can't be, because he wants to make movies. He told me. And when you want something, you go after it.”

Iwaizumi shrugs. “So why didn't you, then?” 

Oikawa stares back past the leaves, blinking. “Iwa-chan.”

“I'm serious,” says Iwaizumi. “I'm not telling you to make him the reason you get up in the morning, but—I don't know,” he gruffs out, scowling, because this might be the most he's ever spoken on the matters of the heart. “It's better than watching you get pent up about things.” 

“So you're saying I should tell him, then?” 

“Whatever gets you to stop sulking.” 

Oikawa feels his eyes go wide. 

“But, Iwa-chan. What if he doesn't like me back?”

A sigh. 

“Then that's the only time I'll let you sulk a little while longer,” Iwaizumi answers. “But not for long. You know why?”

“Because I have rent to pay?” Oikawa finishes in the usual answer. “And you won't let me get away with not paying my share?” 

“No.” 

“No? Then, what?”

“Because you want to be in movies, don't you?” 

And it is then when the smile creeps across Iwaizumi’s face, sure in its place, and Oikawa reminds himself that things always have a way of working out wherever he might go. “Nerima, please!” Oikawa even calls to the driver, and Iwaizumi hands him a bouquet in quiet preparation.

Never the main event, but always one to stay for, Kuroo will come to him like the after-party. This is what Oikawa learns the moment he sees him in Nerima, blazer flung over a shoulder, his tie a thing of the past; he keeps his sleeves rolled up as if they were meant to be worn that way all along, and relieves the top button of his shirt of any sworn duty.

Oikawa remains, steadfast. He tightens his own tie, only to breathe in the strange lightness in the air. Spring, he reckons. The nerves don't hit like he thought they would, and Kuroo sighs like he’s never known them at all. Unbothered, he looks out over the city, smiling: “Hell of a night, huh?” he asks, and Oikawa shrugs, knowingly difficult. He stays at the front door, head held up high in some crumbling cold war. 

“For you, maybe,” Oikawa says. “It's big, going to film school and all."

“It was time, I think," Kuroo tells him. He lays his jacket across the ledge, leaning over to meet Oikawa. “I learned that from you, actually, a long time ago,” he dares to say—that bastard—“so thank you.”

“What’s that even going to be like?” Oikawa asks, feeling his shoulders rise in some unexplained antsiness. “Studying in New York of all places?”

“I don't know, yet. I haven't really thought that far about things.”

“That's fine.”

“And you?” 

Oikawa smiles at this. “I actually just accepted a role recently. I'm playing Spyman.”

“Who?”

“You know. Spyman. Based on that noir shounen manga?” Oikawa asks. “Makki tells me it's really popular these days.”

“Well, good luck to you. Sounds fun,” Kuroo says, even if it sounds like he doesn't really mean it. “What are you even doing here in Nerima, anyway?" 

“I just happened to be in the area,” Oikawa says, the lie a familiar one. “Filming locations and all. You can’t beat a scene overlooking the city. That might be something to keep in mind, when you’re thinking about cinematography.”

Kuroo shakes his head. “You’re lying,” he says, too low. The volume of it rings honest for the both of them, because lying has never been the thing to do on a numbered night.

Oikawa stares up, still as he ought to be. He bites down on a bottom lip, comes close to some unmitigated gush: he decides he doesn't know whether to laugh or cry at the lack of an actual answer, and settles on the strange phenomenon of wanting to do both.

(oh, I honestly have no idea how I'd tell him, said forum user keepitcool77 one evening. because it's terrifying to put yourself on the line like that.)

(still—i have to try.)

(a letter maybe?) 

(a very viral video!)

(some writing in the sky?)

"Why didn't you want to kiss me, too?"

And at once, without any indication, he thinks Kuroo might understand. Oikawa breathes in—dread, meet hope; hope, meet dread.

“Oikawa,” Kuroo sounds, and Oikawa thinks of the senseless things a person enthralled might see in visions: the last call, the two of them all hushed and huddled on some oversized plush lounge chair; some fading moon on the precipice of morning, and walking home in the eve of it; hands brushed and loosely held, and how they might fit together if they were given the chance; “Oikawa,” spoken again, this time in a private context. The close confines. Some neverending after-party. Kuroo bounds off the ledge side to close the distance.

Just a place between us, Oikawa decides, and Kuroo comes into the thick of it, full in stride and the weight of all things done waiting. Oikawa counts to the beat of his breathing. Kuroo hovers heavy, and eyes close but do not shut tight. 

It happens slow, even threatens to stray into another near-kiss, until Kuroo decides he is tired of the loom. He kisses like the person he might be—inconsequential until he's not, like ember into wildfire. Oikawa holds on either way, clamors at the collar, and kisses him right back against the door. He starts off sweet, barely there in some modest little press, before rising into insistence. An urgency arrives, for all for the different places they might find themselves later, and Oikawa remembers the banner back at home: kiss the hell out of him, Oikawa Tooru. 

He thinks of doing better. He thinks of kissing the living daylights out of him, past the heavens, and any ever-expanding universes ahead. He makes a place the two of them won't forget—go, he wants to tell him. Go and make your movies. 

(And maybe I'll be in them.)

Oikawa stays close, dragging the words across his cheek. Some rumbling quiet hits the air after that, every plane, train, and automobile in the city, and it is then when Oikawa thinks about escaping on any one of them; but some things were made to stay for. Because gods only know where they might end up next, miles and countries and worlds apart, and this was his chance. You have come to the crossroads, a certain place—not Koishikawa, or Nerima, or even all of Tokyo; just somewhere between the two of them, wherever that might be. Wherever they might go.

“And just so you know,” Kuroo says out of parting, a smirk on his lips, “I was playing romance.”

“So,” Hanamaki says over lines of code and neglected moving boxes, “I assume you two are together, now.”

Oikawa owns up to a grin when he slides over a new series of postcards and polaroids, the accompanying letter as crude as a new director and movies not yet made. Hanamaki reads, “New York City is just as terrible as Tokyo in August. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”

Oikawa laughs. He stews over the rest of the pictures on the table, remembering what Kuroo had told him in a phone call a week ago. Last he recalled, he’d mentioned something about studio apartments and funny street names and having no good place to eat grilled mackerel pike. “No one knows how to season anything here,” he'd claimed, sleepy out of his mind at the time. “Almost makes me want to take a plane back to Tokyo.” 

Hiding a smile under a palm, Oikawa pretends to go back to reading his script for Spyman: The Start of the Syndicate.

“You didn't answer my question,” Hanamaki calls from the other side of the table. He sorts through the other postcards, and Buenos Aires, Berlin, and Bangkok flash by in seconds. “Are you two together or not?”

Oikawa shrugs, flipping a page. “We’re...in contact.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Hanamaki concedes, “you have friends all over the industry. But I'm going to need more than that.” 

Oikawa pauses for a moment, biting down on his lower lip. “I guess we’re just in different places right now,” he answers, with the sort of diplomacy only a newly-minted twenty-four-year-old could be able to answer with: artfully vague might be the words for it, because that's how things had been. The last four months with Kuroo had been about living in his postcards and polaroids, those late-night phone calls and napkin-scrawled letters; any notion of doting could only be found between the lines, and at times Oikawa wondered if he'd been reading too much into every hey and half-developed test shot. The skeptics in the room might coin it a very friendly correspondence, but there was nothing friendly about that kiss in Nerima, or how Kuroo had made his confession: “I was playing romance,” Oikawa replays for the millionth time. It sounds like pillow-talk against his ear.

At this, he sighs, heavy enough to fall into slumber. Moving was always a terrible affair, no matter how many people were there to help, and made him immensely cranky. Still, he summons all the strength left in him to gather all his postcards, his letters. It is with a certain petulance that he drops them in an empty shoebox, aptly labeled these are not mementos.

Hanamaki takes the last postcard, a new watercolor print of Cannes, and holds it up for Oikawa to see. 

“France, huh?” he asks. “Romantic. Maybe we should be getting a house there, instead. Start fresh so we don’t have to worry about moving everything. Maybe I'll even donate my Sailor Moon collection.”

Oikawa doesn't hate the idea.

“In your dreams,” he tells him instead. "Because you'd never throw that away."

Hanamaki hums out something tired, or doting, or curious. Oikawa decides it is a combination of all three. "I'm serious, though," Hanamaki says back. "Maybe not Cannes, but why couldn't you just follow him? Or have him follow you? Wouldn't that be easier than trying to talk across timezones?"

"No," comes the answer, easier than he'd like to admit.

"No?" Hanamaki asks. "And why's that?" 

Oikawa doesn't know what to say at first. Because he'd be lying if he said he hadn't thought about it at least once, just taking the next flight out of the country and finding Kuroo on some street corner in a sprawling city. New York couldn't be that big. But when he stares down at his box of the polaroids, the postcards, the pieced-together conversations—the certain uncertainty of what they might be going forward—Oikawa decides he wouldn't change any of it. Because here, Oikawa had whole prefectures to conquer on-screen. In New York, Kuroo had movies to make.

This is when he remembers a promise made between those thin lines, under those undying smirks and that airy sort of laughter. A challenge. I'll be yours and you'll be mine. He decides to keep this to himself, and lies right to Hanamaki's face.

"I didn't even like him that much in the first place," Oikawa says, "so good riddance."

Hanamaki sees through him right away. Oikawa doesn't try to hide it, this time.

The two of them laugh about it in the end, mostly over how silly it’d be for the four of them to be in places like the French Riviera anyway, and stay to inspect the remains of their first Tokyo apartment. It is with an undying fury that Iwaizumi arrives at the kitchen soon after, the last of their home in his hands, and the two of them go back to hauling the heaviest moving boxes.

It is only in secret when Oikawa goes back to the postcard on top of the stack. The Cannes Film Festival, he reads to himself. Côte d'Azur. He glances at the painted trees, the golden coast, the sprawling ocean ahead, and realizes he’s never had the chance to read the newest message on the back. In messy handwriting, a former co-star talks of things for the future:

Kuroo Tetsurou, 2018, twenty-four years old.

Come here one day (and maybe forget about getting a hundred more cats).
 

At this, Oikawa can only laugh. He keeps the postcard at the top of the pile, shuts the box, and presses it shut for some momentary goodbye.

"Until next time," he whispers, too low to be caught, but he hopes Kuroo can hear him across continents.

“Do you ever think of him?” she asks him two years later, right in the throes of spring and a country he's never been to before. They're having an anniversary dinner, six years strong, composed of candlelight, gold-lined plates, and a promise to forget about the men they've left for dead. Two of Japan’s best spies, on the run again. Oikawa unfastens the top button of his dress shirt, right on the cue.

On a rooftop in Cannes, Oikawa smiles back at Shimizu Kiyoko, subdued, and lies the best he can; head flung away from the camera, in a city he thought he always thought he'd come to with a certain former co-star, he remembers his lines.

“I don't,” he tells Shimizu, “not even a little bit.” She tilts her head at the answer, sets down her dinner under the strung up lights and the early dusk, and stares on, unconvinced. Dinner goes cold from there, and two spies come to some proverbial fork in some proverbial road. 

The director calls for the cut from there, satisfied by the last scene. Oikawa peeks up, mouth caught in a sigh behind his palm, and lets Shimizu pour the tea between them. Rooibos today, he muses to himself, and he thinks he'd prefer some long-steeped jasmine. 

“They’re going to tell us to go home soon,” Shimizu says, all matter-of-fact, taking the cup to her lips in lightest reprieve.

“And how do you know that?”

“Because you're distracted.”

Oikawa does not deny this, but neither does he give in. He just looks out over the rest of the city, the edges of a place called the French Riviera, and decides that he might just need a couple of days to get used to its splendor, or the nagging jet lag, or both. “I need to get being here out of my system,” he tells her, certainly not antsy about things. “I haven’t even had a chance to explore since we’ve landed. I’d like to play the part of tourist, for once.”

He grins about this all pleasant, but Shimizu is immune to any of his charm, any inclination to pry. Better that she doesn't ask, anyway. Oikawa does not tell her about postcards and some boy’s promise to adopt a hundred cats, or how nice it would’ve been to meet him here along the way. He does not tell her how they haven't spoken in two weeks, thanks to varying schedules, egregiously different timezones, and how things tended to fall by the wayside. No, there's none of that—two co-stars just part for the day, comfortably impersonal, and Oikawa follows the written instructions back to his hotel down the road. 

In the lobby, three friends hold up a bottle of champagne, a newly pressed tuxedo, and a bowtie, ready to be worn.

“What are you guys doing here?” Oikawa asks, scurrying along through the door. “In France?”

Iwaizumi shrugs. “Thought it might be okay, before starting work at the clinic, and all,” he says. Matsukawa claims something about needing a break from theology dissertations and the dangers of studying to death, while Hanamaki comes forward with his laptop in tow. Oikawa reads the news from the Tokyo Shimbun: Kuroo Tetsurou, rookie director just out of film school, will be competing for the grand prize at the Cinéfondation competition at the Cannes Film Festival in France this spring. He is considered this year’s frontrunner, for his simplistic but weighted approach to the short form medium—although he is still regarded as one of the country’s most elusive artists, never to be caught in the same city for too long, the whole country will be waiting on the news of a potential victory.

“You made a promise,” Hanamaki says, still the most diligent forum moderator and fan-club president. “Everything lives on the internet, don’t you know?”

Oikawa winces. “You’re not talking about the face wash fight, right?” Of the years he’s spent becoming one of Japan’s most top-billed stars, FACE WASH FIGHT MUST WATCH.MOV was still a point of conversation amongst long-time fans and late night variety show sketches.

Matsukawa shakes his head. “You don’t remember?” he asks. 

Oikawa mouths the quick little no.

Iwaizumi sighs, glancing down at his phone. “A counter-counter petition,” he comes forward to read, “because everyone on the internet is ridiculous.” He nods along to this, as if it’s still the truest thing he’s ever read. “If we can get one hundred thousand e-signatures on this, let’s ask Kuroo Tetsurou and Oikawa Tooru to meet again—” 

“No,” Oikawa stops him, recalling. “It wasn’t meet again. The petition wanted us to make amends.”

Hanamaki smirks. “There’s this handy function, you know, called the edit button,” he says, like he might’ve had some part in this, but he says nothing more about it; in fact, the three of them just nod to each other, all in smiles and the curtest sighs of relief. You're here now, they say without having to, and so is he. In its rightful place, Oikawa finds the folded postcard in his pocket. He takes the suit and the bowtie, all sans the champagne, and offers the grin right back. 

"Go on," says Iwaizumi, "and make sure he puts you in his next movie."

At this, Oikawa can only look on towards the rest of the city, the hellos about to be had. A hey, just for Kuroo.

Oikawa had learned long ago, in some other lifetime on the set of Late Summer Flood, that some people made their living in the afterparty, the waning spotlight, and the last hours of long-standing public commitments. In Cannes, it is no different—Oikawa catches the glamour of it all like sun in his eyes, but blinks it away when he knows he's waiting for the night. Outside the venue, he calls himself best dressed, best actor, and best without invitation, and smiles to himself at the sea and the rest of the Promenade de la Croisette. "I'll get here one day," he assures himself. This might be the least of his worries, today.

It is in all seriousness that he remembers the words of a certain former co-star, a coolness like a deep and deliberate shade. He emulates them: "It's breathtaking, really," comes the mimic, wholly mouthed, "how much you need to lighten up;" but with all murmurs lost to the wind, he realizes he can't, no matter how much he tries. He shuts his fists closed over the railing. He stares on, prepared to wait for the next decade either way. He practices every hello and good to see you and I didn't miss you that much until they sound like nonsense on his tongue.

Meandering along the promenade, up and down, a thousand times over, Oikawa doesn't stop until some semblance of morning hits the sky. The gulls call in their long songs. Waves hit the shore in languid non-crashes. Even the stray cats here have an air to them; heads held up high, they hold themselves too haughty for the attention and potential breakfast scraps. Oikawa stops to pet them, anyway. He wishes them the best of luck in their endeavors.

To the ledge-side, he breathes right over it, a body too antsy to be appeased. He inhales in the sea, this country, the new season. He musters up the courage, to tell no one in particular: "I promised I'd meet someone here, one day. I just wonder if he made the same one, too."

Oikawa shuts his eyes closed. He hears the intimate drawl of a laugh right back.

"You know, I once worried about the same thing."

He feels the smile lift up his face. It is with the utmost nerve that Kuroo takes his place right next to him, almost close enough to kill all the distance between them. Blazer off, he throws it over the railing, and keeps quiet until he can't help but laugh about the whole thing. Oikawa looks on, dazed as can be, and follows him without abandon. 

Along the way, right in the heart of some unknown city, Oikawa keeps his sights on Kuroo. He leans forward, close enough for some new and second kiss, and Kuroo does not stir. Neither of them do, and Oikawa lets himself have this moment of peace without it. They'll be time for that later, he supposes, when the rest of the world has fallen away. For now, it might fine, to live in it. 

In the midst of things, the questions still remain. ‘Were you playing romance?’

'Are you still?'

He shakes his head. That is when Oikawa decides to pay them no mind, to toss his shoulders back, take a deep breath, and see the morning in full clarity, instead. Kuroo comes back to him, easier than ever, and whispers something in his ear.

With something only between them, Oikawa laughs and thinks of the masterpieces they'll make next.