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It’s dark and late. His body is sore and his feet hurt from all the partying they’d done after an already full day. He’s more tired and more drained than he’s been after any game. It’s possible that Shouyou’s wedding might be an anomaly as is he, generally speaking. From the choice of bride (a Brazilian supermodel all at once too tall and too attractive for the groom) to the amount of alcohol present, it had been bizarre from start to end. If this is what weddings are like, Tobio doesn’t know if he wants one.
“Tired,” Tooru asks him, smiling fondly as Tobio immediately goes to sit down.
“Yeah,” he says, slumping a bit.
Tooru walks over to him and cups his face in his large hands, bringing Tobio’s face up so it can be properly looked at. He smooths his thumb under Tobio’s eyes and looks at him reverently. His eyes focus on the bangs Tobio recently started to grow out again and in an instant there is a distance in his gaze. Like he’s gone somewhere that Tobio can’t reach.
“Tooru,” he prompts.
“Your hair, it makes you look younger,” Tooru says, still not quite with him. His brows furrow.
“Is it bad,” Tobio asks. He’s never been particular about his hair whether short or long. Miwa has always had liberty over his style and her lifelong dilemma has been about what to do with his hair. It’s routine for him to ask Miwa what she wants him to do and he will take any suggestions from her so long as it doesn’t involve color—which he likes firmly dark—or a need to be styled.
“No, it’s good,” Tooru assures. Though he appears troubled by something. His strong brows are furrowed and there’s a tick at the back of his jaw. “It’s cute, even. It just… makes you look very young. Your hair was like this in high school.”
“Was it? I don’t really remember.”
“It was. I remember.” When Tooru says this, he looks particularly haunted.
Eventually, he leans down and presses a kiss to Tobio’s forehead. He doesn’t move for a moment, simply cradling Tobio’s face in his hands near to his chest. It's almost as if he's caught between tucking him away forever or letting him go entirely.
“Tooru?”
He pulls away and turns, “Go shower. I’ll run you a bath after.”
“Ok,” he says, wary of the shifting mood. “Thank you.”
They are apart much more often than they’re together and for the most part, they work. Neither one of them is ready to give up on volleyball and it’s all the more exciting to compete against someone you hold in great affection and greater esteem. But when they aren’t separated by leagues of land, stretches of sea, or the demarcations of a court line, Tobio is always surprised at how… gentle, Tooru is with him. It’s a little off-putting, even after several years together.
Of course Tobio appreciates it—being cared for. But there’s still a part of him that remembers the dynamic of their youth. When Tooru had been mean and vindictive and cruel. Within that part of him that remembers is a small, fleeting part that still anticipates it.
“You’re so beautiful,” Tooru tells him as he sits on the edge of the tub. He’s lost his suit jacket and his navy blue slacks strain and crease across the breadth of his thigh, same as his light blue dress shirt does over his arms where it’s been folded up to his elbows.
Tobio hopes the heat of the bath is good enough an excuse for the blood in his cheeks.
“I think you’re more,” he says. Finished just like that. There aren’t enough words for Tobio to describe all the ways Tooru is more than him. More attractive, more smart, more talented; more, more, more. Tooru is just more.
Tooru laughs at him (slightly but a laugh all the same) while he rubs some cream onto Tobio’s face. It’s thinner and more gel-like than the one he uses so Tobio will have to use his own later. But it’s the thought that counts.
“No. You’re more beautiful,” he says. He moves his fingers away from Tobio’s face and brushes some hair back with his knuckles. Tooru’s eyes like raw, dark honey glance over him. He says, mostly to himself, “You’re so beautiful. How can anyone be this beautiful?”
Tobio cannot help but flush more. He tries to look away but Tooru catches his chin and swiftly then his lips. Tobio gasps a bit, surprised somehow despite the thousand times Tooru has done this to him. Never one to waste an opportunity, Tooru deepens their kiss to taste the remnants of the wedding cake they had earlier. His tongue slips over Tobio’s and he fists his hand into dark, wet hair.
Tobio allows his head to be tilted back and grips the edge of the tub for stability. Tooru shifts, going to kneel on the tile so he can be closer. One arm moves to brace himself on the wall of the bath behind Tobio before pressing the man against it. Some water sloshes and slaps dangerously high against the rim. Tooru smells of expensive cologne and dancefloor sweat and his skin is so unbelievably hot that it nearly burns.
Tearing away to breathe, Tobio heaves into the humid air of the bathroom as Tooru moves to besiege the white territory of his neck. He kisses there so fervently that Tobio isn’t unconvinced that he’s trying to rip out his throat with his awful teeth.
“So fucking pretty,” Tooru whispers to him. He’s more than a little wet now, clothes darkening from the water. His voice too has become sinisterly dark. “I want you.”
Tobio squeezes his eyes shut like a helpless animal fearing and awaiting its fate at the hands of a beast. Impatiently, he says, “Take off your clothes and get in here, then.”
Tooru laughs again and nips his cheek, “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Ok.”
How easily Tobio falls victim to awkward sex in a tub most definitely not made for two Olympic sized athletes just because Tooru is his counterpart. It’s a bit pathetic, he thinks as the sounds of disturbed water and his own noises echo off the walls. He is a bit pathetic.
“Like this,” Tooru asks.
He lets out an embarrassing sound and hides away in Tooru’s shoulder, “H-However you want it. I don’t care.”
Tooru is silent for a moment before he snaps, “You should care.”
“What—fuck!”
“Like that, then.”
Sometime later, after another shower, they’re lying in bed. Tooru, who never seems to get cold, is in nothing but some boxers and has insisted that they turn down the thermostat into the high teens. On the other hand, Tobio is dressed fully and is under his own sheet beneath their shared blanket.
Tobio is nearly asleep when Tooru speaks suddenly.
“You’d just let me eat you alive, wouldn’t you.”
He says it so casually as his long fingers draw swirling shapes across Tobio’s back. By then, it really is late and they have plans for brunch with some of the other wedding guests before they all depart back to their respective countries.
“What,” Tobio says, partly disturbed and mostly unsure. He furrows his brows, “When the hell did I ever say that?”
“Not literally, of course,” Tooru scoffs.
“What’s that mean then?”
“It means you let me do awful things to you,” Tooru adds. His tone is damp and dour and his voice is thick, like something is caught in his throat. He leans forward and presses his nose to Tobio’s neck and inhales deeply, “Isn’t that the same thing?”
“I don’t get what you’re saying,” he says plainly.
“You never do,” Tooru murmurs. His arms wind around Tobio and he pulls him tightly against his front. He holds Tobio like he is afraid of himself.
Tobio is just barely fifteen the first time he sees Oikawa Tooru after middle school. Karasuno had been invited over to a much bigger, much more funded, much more private school for a practice match. All because Oikawa Tooru had wanted and willed it.
Even after three years, it doesn’t take much for Tobio to realize the other boy is as much of a jerk as he’s ever been. It takes even less to realize that he’s somehow become even more amazing.
Tobio, fifteen and some months, is skinny and lanky and licking his deep wounds with a fresh victory—if not one won by pure luck. He tries to apologize to the person he hurt most but it falls through. In the end, it seems like he doesn’t really need to apologize, he just has to win again and for real the next time they meet.
Tobio is fifteen and some months old when he’s cornered by the boy he admired most. Oikawa Tooru is mean, particularly to him. All his fake smiles and deceptive words seem to run out by the time it’s Tobio’s turn. All he has left are taunts and teases and games that Tobio can’t keep up with. He confuses Tobio and says things that don’t make sense but he knows are meant to hurt him and—
Tobio is fifteen when suddenly he’s being pushed against a wall and kissed. With lips and teeth and tongue and roving hands that make his knees weak. His wrists are pinned uselessly on either side of his head and there’s a thigh shoved between his legs and it’s too much too fast too soon.
“Stop it,” he says—begs.
Oikawa Tooru pities him, for once, and pulls away with a vicious smirk and a bit of Tobio’s blood on his thin lips. And he leaves.
Later that night, he realizes that part of him had wanted Oikawa Tooru to stay.
Tobio is fifteen when he gets into a fist fight with the only friend he ever had. And fifteen when he runs into Oikawa at a place Tobio used to frequent with his grandpa. And fifteen when he asks his old senpai for advice. And fifteen when he’s forced to bow and be humiliated to get what he wants. It’s just synchronicity after painful synchronicity.
Tobio is still fifteen when Oikawa shows up at his house two days later, interested in payment for his small kindness.
His payment ends up being Tobio on his knees, in his dead mother’s best dress, and choking on a cock with tears on his cheeks.
“You’re so pretty like this,” Oikawa tells him, fingers gripping Tobio’s hair at the root. “So, so pretty. You should see yourself.”
It’s not pleasant at all. His nose is clogged from all the tears and Oikawa is shoved nearly all the way down his throat, obstructing his airways. He can’t breathe and his jaw hurts from how wide and long he’s had to keep it open and his knees are starting to bruise from the hardwood. His hands are gripping Oikawa’s jeans desperately. From this angle, the sunset catches on his hair from behind and he looks like a king wearing a mighty golden crown.
Tobio decides he can bear it.
“You’re not smart,” Oikawa tells him, cursing as Tobio’s throat constricts. “But you’re so pretty. If volleyball doesn’t work out for you, you’d be just fine as a dumb little whore.”
He pulls away suddenly and comes. When Tobio looks up at him, heaving and still crying with white spend sliding down his face and dripping onto the black fabric of the dress, he appears a little taken aback. Then he laughs.
“You’re even prettier like this.”
“Oikawa-san,” he tries, voice weak and airy.
Oikawa fixes his jeans and leans down to kiss Tobio, sloppy and quick. When he pulls away, he pauses to spit on Tobio’s cheek. He then smiles and says.
“You should clean up before that dress stains.”
Tobio wonders how he must look, soiled and crying and redly humiliated. His lashes are uncomfortably wet and heavy from his tears. By himself, he can’t tell sweat from snot or spend. Oikawa doesn’t tell him so he’s only left to find out when he shakily stumbles into the bathroom. When he gets a look at himself in the mirror, the answer is: utterly pathetic.
Tobio is sixteen when he is waiting at the train station for his sister to pick him up. The snow is thick along the sidewalks from the shoveled roads. All the clothes he took to the youth training camp are strapped to his back and he wants nothing more than to go home and lay down. But Miwa is nowhere to be seen.
I’m sorry, something came up. I thought I was going to be done but this meeting is running long. I can leave if you need me too.
No, I’ll be fine.
Only he won’t be because Oikawa Tooru finds him waiting at the wrong bus stop twenty minutes later.
“Little Tobio-chan lost his way,” he asks. “Don’t worry, senpai will get you home.”
“I’ll get there myself,” he tells Oikawa but he’s already being ignored.
On the way, Oikawa makes a somewhat respectable conversation. He asks where Tobio went, only to scoff when he’s told the truth. He doesn’t answer any of Tobio’s own questions about the matching bag on his back and instead goes on to talk about some girl he started talking to. Despite his untrustworthiness, Oikawa does deliver him home safely. Only it was all to break him into pieces.
Tobio is sixteen on his hands and knees like a sorry animal and getting “fucked like a girl” from behind in the middle of winter. It hurts, it burns, it feels like he’s being ripped apart—but he doesn’t do anything about it.
He grips the sheets in an attempt to control his writhing and feels some tears pooling in the area beneath his cheek. His voice won’t stop doing embarrassing things and his body seems to want something that he can’t determine. Something in him is winding and constricting like a snake, getting tighter and tighter and he feels like he can’t breathe.
“Oikawa-san,” he gasps. “Feel—Feels—!”
He can’t finish his sentence because he doesn’t know what he feels. It hurts, but it’s starting to hurt in a good way. Oikawa moves against something inside of him that makes him feel all at once electric and he gasps as a shock runs through from his spine to his nail beds.
“Oikawa-san,” he says again. “Please!”
Suddenly, Oikawa pulls away and then out and despite how torturous it is Tobio still feels like he has lost something at this. Big, rough hands grab and fist him with enough strength to bruise.
“Turn over,” Oikawa says, though he doesn’t wait for Tobio to respond before he forces him onto his back.
“Wha—” Tobio starts. He hits the bed with enough force that it knocks the wind out of him. He feels like a rag doll in a child’s hands, boneless and forced to fold in ways he isn’t meant to and yanked around to Oikawa’s liking.
A wide palm fastens over his mouth and Oikawa wastes no time in hiking up Tobio’s legs before pushing back in.
“You’re so loud. You want all your neighbors to hear? You want them all to know how much of a slut little Tobio-chan is,” Oikawa asks him.
Tobio shakes his head as best he can, thoroughly humiliated. Oikawa snorts and continues, “They’d tell your sister, you know. They’d tell your parents. Want your poor mom to hear about how her precious son spreads his legs like a whore?”
Don’t talk about my mother, he wants to say, but he can’t.
“I wonder what they’d think if they saw you like this.”
This, somehow, breaks Tobio’s heart just slightly. He reaches up and pulls Oikawa’s hand down below his nose so he can breathe but doesn’t fight for more than that. It burns, it hurts, but all he can see is Oikawa and he decides he likes this position much better. Even as his face begins to blur though the veil of Tobio’s tears.
Tobio is twenty-five, falling onto the sheets of a hotel mattress, and expecting a world of pain. He’s older now, he knows what sex is supposed to feel like, but he doesn’t expect it from the person he’s with. He doesn’t mind though, he wants the person more than the pleasure and that is enough for him. That’s all he’s lucky enough to get, really.
But Oikawa Tooru surprises him by pulling away and looking at him with such a soft expression that it causes Tobio to freeze.
“What,” Tobio asks anxiously.
Oikawa lifts a hand and reverently holds Tobio’s cheek. He then leans down to kiss his forehead—then his eyelid, then his nose, then his lips. Against them, he murmurs, “Let me treat you right this time.”
“What,” Tobio says again.
Oikawa doesn’t reply but sooner than he knows, Tobio is trembling at every soft touch smoothing over his body and shivering at every praise.
“You’re so beautiful,” Oikawa says against his skin. “You’re so, so beautiful, Tobio.”
“Please,” he weeps.
Oikawa shushes him and changes his angle, “You’re ok, I’ve got you. Stop crying, you’re not supposed to cry.”
Tobio shakes his head. He knows this but the softness is overwhelming. Oikawa isn’t supposed to be like this. He’s supposed to be mean to him and it’s supposed to hurt so that Tobio can’t be fooled. If Oikawa treats him like this, kindly and tenderly, when he leaves Tobio will only love him more.
“I need—I—”
“Yeah, whatever you want. Just tell me.”
Everything, Tobio thinks. He wants to say, all of you. But he’s too terrified. This gentle lovemaking is nothing like he knows from this man and it terrifies him as much as it arouses.
“Whatever you want,” Oikawa says again.
There’s nothing else that he says in that moment, but somehow Tobio gets the feeling he’s being promised something.
“You can be mean,” Tobio tells him. “Please be mean.”
“Mean,” Oikawa asks, sounding confused.
He nods, sheets tearing him into a frayed semblance of what he once was. “If you’re kind, then you’re just being cruel.”
Oikawa looks at him with shock, his handsome face going slack as he stills. Then, he takes Tobio’s hand and slides his fingers so, so gently around. He picks it up and runs his nose down the length of Tobio’s forearm, inhaling before kissing his way up to his mouth. He holds Tobio’s face like he could break—and maybe it’s because he’s already broken.
“What do you want from me, Tobio,” he whispers.
“I told you, be mean.”
Oikawa kisses him again. “I’m yours, I’m not going anywhere. So what do you want from me? I’ll give it all to you.”
Tobio is twenty-five when he thinks that the worst thing a person could do is be kind when they have been mean to you all their life.
“Hey,” Tobio says as they wait together in the airport. Tobio’s flight is in two hours and Tooru’s in three. They’ll go their separate ways again and probably won’t see each other for a couple months at least.
Tooru looks up from his book and pushes up his glasses. His arm has been resting behind Tobio’s shoulders and his fingers idly play with his hair. He raises his brows, “Yeah?”
“When are we getting married,” Tobio asks.
Tooru’s hand freezes as he stares. His mouth is parted and he could not have looked more comically shocked. Tobio furrows his brows at a lack of answer. “Well?”
“I—You—” Tooru splutters. “You want to get married?”
“You don’t,” Tobio asks. He supposes he would be fine either way, but he also thinks it would be especially nice to call Tooru his husband or something.
“I— I mean I do,” Tooru assures, though he’s still seemingly at a loss for words. “But— I mean what? What brought this up?”
“I don’t know. I was thinking about it the whole time we were at the wedding,” he reveals and is corrected when Tooru’s jaw drops further and he looks even more shocked. Tobio continues, “I don’t know if I would want to have a wedding like this, or at all, but it would be nice to be married.”
“To me?”
Tobio frowns, “Who else am I supposed to marry?”
“No one, of course, don’t get cheeky,” Tooru snaps, pulling his arm away back to pinch Tobio’s cheek. “I just… You’d want that, with me. Getting married.”
Tobio rubs the sore spot on the fullest part of his cheek sourly and mutters, “Not if you keep being annoying.”
“Tobio,” Tooru says, and he sounds very serious. He grabs his hand and folds it into both of his own to keep Tobio in place as he looks imploringly into his eyes. “You’d really want that with me?”
Pausing, Tobio stares at him unsurely. He shifts a bit before nodding, “Yes. Why wouldn’t I?”
“Because I was so mean to you.”
“You’re still mean to me,” he scoffs. But at Tooru’s continued seriousness, he looks down and shares, “But you’re also nice to me now. But what’s that even matter for?”
Tooru looks conflicted. His book slips from his lap and closes on the page he was at. This is something that he normally responds to with a knee jerk reaction however he pays no mind now. Quietly, a bit ashamed, he explains, “I don’t know. I guess I keep thinking that one day you’ll realize that I’m no good for you. You deserve someone a lot better.”
“There’s no one better for me,” Tobio says. “It’s just you, you’re all I want.”
Again, Tooru looks at him in no small amount of shock and Tobio flushes in embarrassment. He turns his head away and scoffs.
“Whatever, if you don’t want to get married I’ll just find someone else.”
“What? No! You just said you wanted to marry me, which totally does not count as a proposal by the way. I’m proposing to you and I’m gonna knock your socks off with the way I do it,” Tooru promises, throwing his arm back around Tobio to pull him into his side. “What kind of ring do you want? Something practical, huh? Though it would be cute if I bought you something fancy, wouldn’t it?”
“I don’t care,” Tobio says. “Also, why can’t I propose to you?”
“Because it’s proper for the person who’s going to give up their surname to be the one to receive the proposal,” Tooru explains like it’s simple.
Tobio wrinkles his nose, “Who says I’m taking your surname?”
“Because your sister kept her surname so you don’t have to worry about continuing the Kageyama name,” Tooru hums, pulling out his phone to start searching for something.
“Why does that mean I can’t keep it too? Your sister kept her surname.”
“Because you’re younger,” he reasons. He then leers at Tobio and leans over to speak lowly against his ear, “Besides, wouldn’t it be nice to be referred to as Oikawa-san’s wife? You’d be Oikawa-fujin in the news.”
Tobio elbows him sharply as his face reddens more, “That’s so embarrassing, like hell I’d let someone call me that.”
“You’ll get used to it,” Tooru laughs and squeezes him a bit before showing him some photos on his phone, “Anyways, where should I propose to you? In Rome? Or what if we took one of those cruises down to Antarctica from Argentina?”
“Isn’t something like this supposed to be a surprise,” Tobio scoffs.
“If you want it to be. I guess it should,” Tooru nods, continuing to scroll through an article titled ‘Top Ten Most Romantic Places to Propose in Italy’.
“Besides,” Tobio adds, “It doesn’t matter who proposes to whom. You still have to think about how you’re going to ask Miwa-neesan for permission to marry me. She’d never forgive you if you didn’t.”
At this, Tooru falters and he looks over with a color of fear washing over his face, “Shit. She’s going to kill me.”
“Do your best, Tooru,” Tobio says, perhaps a bit unkindly.