Oikawa takes a moment to respond. “I’ll be over in twenty minutes. Want me to bring anything?”

“We’d be happy if it’s just yourself,” he says, and he wishes he could blame the tenderness in his voice on intoxication. 

The orange juice in the main refrigerator is situated with some of his other liquids: almond milk, sweetened tea, and a few bottles of water. There are vegetables in one compartment, and a packet of grapes is haphazardly squished in with his egg carton that’s turned over on its side. It’s been more organized, but parties tend to throw things into disarray. Not only that, but Matsukawa’s kids had clearly been rooting around for his cheese sticks again.

All of the other liquids are in two accessible coolers on the back porch. He didn’t want any of the condensation or melted ice getting on his living room rugs, and besides, most of the guests enjoyed the light decorations and cool air his backyard provided. Thus, where the people were, the drinks followed.

Only four people remain in his house, not including himself. It’s hardly a party anymore, but he knows that doesn’t necessarily matter to Oikawa. Iwaizumi honestly hadn’t fully expected him to accept the invitation. Their conversation about the party beforehand had led to a tentative maybe , and only then if it was nearing the end and everyone was relaxing on the alcohol. Iwaizumi promised him at every invitation and every outing that he would be there in case he felt that the pressure was getting too much, but Oikawa refused each time. And each time, Iwaizumi let him do so without a single complaint.

It wasn’t Iwaizumi’s choice to make. He could only be there for him if Oikawa decided he was ready to try going out again.

He joined the four other men in the living room. Hanamaki is sipping from a beer, but it’s the same one he had an hour ago and still isn’t close to finishing. Bokuto and Akaashi lean on each other on the big coach, with Bokuto spread-limbed to take up as much space as possible. Though Bokuto drank quite a bit, he handles his liquor well and finished his last drink a while back. He keeps animated conversation, but surprisingly, the edges of intoxication seem to be dulling his boisterous tendencies rather than enhancing them. The last of them is Hinata Shouyou, who drinks from his third glass of water and makes the most noise in the room in his conversation with Bokuto.

“Is he coming?” Hanamaki asks, his voice hopeful as he sets his beer to the side. Iwaizumi confirms, and Hanamaki adds: “Good. That’s good.”

And it is good. While Iwaizumi would never judge Oikawa for staying home, that didn’t necessarily mean he wouldn’t have felt a shimmer of disappointment. This is his celebration party for getting the job for the men’s national volleyball team, after all, and he wants to share part of it with the person who made him fall in love with sports medicine in the first place. He wouldn’t be here without Oikawa, and he doesn’t want to celebrate without him.

Oikawa was the first person he told when he got the good news, obviously. And, obviously, Oikawa immediately sobbed his eyes out. It’s been a long, long journey for them. Even if Iwaizumi teased him relentlessly for his reaction, he’d be lying if he said that he didn’t feel the same torrent of emotions coursing through him that threatened to make his eyes water, too.

Despite all the pride he feels for himself and what he knows Oikawa feels for him, too, they are haunted by the bitter current running under them. Even though they both have worked so hard their entire lives, only one of them has reached his dreams. The other had to quit before he crossed the finish line.

Iwaizumi’s enjoying the company and contributing to the ever-present conversation when Oikawa steps into the living room twenty-five minutes after their call. He’s dressed smartly in a blue blazer, black pants, and the brown-rimmed glasses he hates but Iwaizumi loves. Before he has a chance to greet his new guest, Hinata jumps up to slap Oikawa’s back.

“It’s been forever! Glad you could make it!” He exclaims. It has been forever for Hinata. Their last in-person conversation had been back in Brazil; their correspondence since has been made completely of text messages and Twitter reposts. From the stories he’s heard, he knows that Oikawa was a huge help to Hinata when he was feeling homesick and trodden in South America. Hinata has been trying to meet up again, but their lives were too conflicting until today.

Oikawa laughs lightly. “Congrats on the national team, shrimp,” he says. “Never doubted you for a second.” Hanamaki coughs to mask his scoff, and Oikawa sends him a glare.

He moves to settle on the ground beside Iwaizumi’s feet, resting his back on the arm of the chair. One leg splays out while the other curls into his chest, the metal knee brace making a small, audible click with the movement. Iwaizumi doesn’t pretend to not notice it; he runs his fingertips soothingly over the back of Oikawa’s neck, and Oikawa relaxes marginally.

The conversation is a little stilted and awkward at first, but that’s to be expected. He acclimates quickly to the natural ebb and flow of the conversation once he grasps their dynamics. And though Iwaizumi and Hanamaki make an active effort to steer the conversation, Hinata ends up asking the burning question. His smaller stature makes it harder for him to sober up, regardless of the fact that he’s now on his fourth glass of water. 

“How long have you been sober?”

Iwaizumi is the one who tenses, his fingers stopping where he was absently playing with Oikawa’s collar. Oikawa doesn’t show much of a reaction. He smiles and answers: “A year, as of last month.”

Hinata grins brightly at him. “I’m really proud of you, man.”

“Thank you. It… hasn’t been easy. But, you know,” Oikawa inhales, “I’ve never been good at backing down from a challenge.”

The faint tension breaks under the joke, and their laughs turn back into easy conversation. A few minutes pass. Oikawa slowly pries himself off the ground. “I’m going to get something to drink. My mouth feels like the Gobi desert and my skin will break out if I get dehydrated,” he declares before sauntering to the hallway.

When you have known someone for as long as Iwaizumi and Oikawa have, you develop a kind of sixth sense. They are tuned into each other in a manner that no one else is, as if their nerves are wired to feel the other’s physical and mental receptions rather than their own. There is nothing that outwardly indicates any kind of distress at all. Hanamaki doesn’t even notice anything off until Iwaizumi gets up to follow Oikawa several seconds later. Their eyes meet. Hanamaki raises his eyebrows curiously.

“I’m also thirsty,” Iwaizumi says lamely, not really trying to hide his true intentions. Akaashi kindly asks for a glass of water, and Hanamaki lets him leave without a word.

He finds Oikawa leaning his lower back against the kitchen counter with his arms crossed over his chest. Iwaizumi doesn’t say anything; just opens the refrigerator, pulls out the plastic jug of orange juice, and pours it out into a glass cup. He had set them all out for easy access to the guests. Only five remain.

Oikawa takes the cup when Iwaizumi hands it to him, staring at the orange liquid with a carefully neutral expression before taking a sip. “Thanks,” he says, and it’s nothing like the polite gratitude he gave Hinata when the spiker congratulated his sobriety. It’s two decades’ worth of pain and struggles for an attainable dream, only for it to lead to more pain and shattered goals. It’s the four years he couldn’t go a day without alcohol; it’s the year and one month he hasn’t let a drop grace his lips.

Then Oikawa sets the orange juice on the counter — an open invitation. Iwaizumi steps forward, wrapping his arms around Oikawa’s back and bringing him in close. Oikawa buries his nose into Iwaizumi’s neck, and his heart beats a little too fast; Iwaizumi can feel it against his own chest.

“What is it?” Iwaizumi prods gently, pressing a kiss to the crook between Oikawa’s neck and shoulder.

He doesn’t get an immediate answer, though he doesn’t need one.

Last month wasn’t just the anniversary of Oikawa’s sobriety. It was also the one-year death anniversary of Matsukawa’s wife, killed by a drunk driver.

Matsukawa had been at the party for a little while but had to take his kids home before they missed their bedtimes. He’d wished Iwaizumi well, and Oikawa, too, if he decided to come.

There was no bad blood between them. Oikawa didn’t kill his wife, and Matsukawa doesn’t blame him for struggling with addiction.

Oikawa’s hands tighten on his shirt.

A year and a month ago, Iwaizumi had called Oikawa to deliver the news. He’d been drunk at a bar, which hadn’t surprised Iwaizumi. He had just hoped he had a safe way home. Then Oikawa started cursing out all of the bartenders who’d served him in the past four years. His speech was slurred, and he’d stumbled on his way out of the bar. Into the phone, he swore off alcohol through choked-back tears.

I’m done. I’m sorry. I’m sorry!

A week later, he’d shown up to the funeral with Iwaizumi, completely sober, his hands stuffed into his pockets to hide the tremors.

“You smell like your awful shampoo,” Oikawa says. Iwaizumi knows what he’s really saying.

You don’t smell like alcohol.

“Insult my shampoo again and I’m breaking up with you,” he replies with no bite. Oikawa starts to sway them to the slow song playing from Iwaizumi’s speakers.

They are missing a lively conversation. Hinata and Bokuto’s voices rise again, and Hanamaki laughs loudly. “It’s so hard,” Oikawa whispers underneath the laughter and late-night joy.

“When have you ever let that stop you?” Iwaizumi whispers back.

This is the first party Oikawa has been to in a year and one month. He hasn’t allowed himself to be this close to alcohol. He named a certain phenomenon as personal pressure, an intense desire to fit in even when nobody is actually telling him he has to. It’d be worse if someone did try to give him something.

I don’t trust myself to say no , he’d admitted. And I trust you, but. You know.

Iwaizumi hadn’t needed anything more than that. He’d seen the ways Oikawa had skirted authorities while knee-deep in his reliance, the places he’d hidden his bottles, and the lies that had flown from his tongue to keep himself afloat.

Life has a funny way of taking everything good and tearing it to shreds. Oikawa had his career going great for him. In Argentina, he played for a professional team and was working on his citizenship. Iwaizumi was proud and happy for him, even if that meant their friendship would be permanently altered to fit long distance.

They would likely drift apart and make new friends that they could be physically close with all the time. They would find comfort in it, eventually, and no longer be pained by the love they almost had.

Then Oikawa’s knee slid out of place and dashed his career in the blink of an eye. He moved back to Japan before he could complete naturalizing as an Argentinian citizen, and Iwaizumi returned from the United States with his master’s, intent on continuing his grad school education to work as an athletic trainer.

What he found in Japan wasn’t an Oikawa adapting to life as he had during his first knee injury in high school. He found an Oikawa who couldn’t adapt.

He bounced between one job and the next, unable to keep up his work ethic, and gradually moved into worse and worse apartments when rent became too expensive to accommodate his liquid expenses. His liver was failing. His skin was tinting yellow at his extremities and around his eyes. By official standards, he was a functioning alcoholic, but he was not a functioning human being.

Iwaizumi didn’t leave him in that whole time. Hanamaki and Matsukawa were there, too, filling in the gaps where Iwaizumi couldn’t. But nothing changed because Oikawa didn’t register that he and his relationships were being hurt by his actions. If Oikawa was in pain, then nothing mattered. He was used to that one way or another.

Seeing himself behind the wheel, that wheel, was different. It wasn’t himself and those closest to him anymore. It was his best friend’s wife.

Oikawa hadn’t been driving that day, but he could’ve been. He easily could’ve been the one who killed Matsukawa’s wife — a mother of two, a daughter, a friend, a human being. He’d driven drunk before. His plan could’ve been to drive to the park an hour earlier instead of hanging around the bar. He could’ve been the one drifting across the lanes, failing to see or think clearly in the overwhelming daylight. He could’ve been.

A year and a month is a long time. But, Iwaizumi thinks, it’s easier when he has people he can lean on. People he associates with positive experiences and times when all he had to worry about were the concerning amount of confessions he was receiving every week, the English test he couldn’t afford to fail, and whether or not he could beat the next high school volleyball team.

Oikawa shifts to lean his forehead against Iwaizumi’s. “I love you.”

“I love you, too,” Iwaizumi affirms, tilting his head up to kiss him on the lips. Oikawa’s wearing Iwaizumi’s favorite chapstick, the kind that tastes like Coca-Cola. “I’m glad you could make it.”

1 - my fave fanfic of all time? hmmm.

this is such a big biiiig question. i have a lot of talented moots, and i have quite a few of their fics that i think about all the time. like @neptuneblue ‘cupid’s quiver’ and @twentyfivemiceinatrenchcoat ‘sometimes i long to eat you up’. any of @dollsuguru snippets i greedily scoff too lol. @pinknipszz heian era sukuna drabbles are little gemstones, the vibes are immaculate. ooo i also think of @bungalowbear ‘wolves of tokyo’ too, again because, VIBES!!

however my top one that takes up a lot of my thoughts is the series ‘the odyssey’ by @lovenona . i really take my hat off to this author and the series for getting me back into writing. the story is so brilliantly crafted, and the writing is absolutely astonishing and dreamy. adele took my brain to another world and needs to win a fanfic award ASAPPPP!

i have my fav art/fics under my favorites tag if you’d like to see more :)

2 - you wanna be moots?!?!? let’s be moots :3

honestly though i really don’t mind anyone reaching out to me, as long as we interact in a respectful way and keep it relatively light. please don’t be shy, i really hope i’m not intimidating hehe :)

and if you are too shy, plsplsplspls give me an emoji or something so i can assign it to you! then we can still chat and i’ll know it’s you (kinda, lol) (btw :3nonie if you’re seeing this, I MISS YOU WHERE DID YOU GO?!??)

helpful hint i guess – I LOVE TOJI!! in case you haven’t noticed already, i have a lot of toji brainrot hehe, so that is the way to my heart eheh :3 @tadabzzzbee is well aware of this hahaha

commenting your thoughts or how much you liked my fics really makes my day, and chances are i will instantly follow you if you’re consistently interacting with my pieces! because while i do notice my regular likers, but it’s people who comment that i really remember and am more inclined to follow!

3 - dream date?!?!?!