#moonsvrana

At three, you’re feeling like prophets.

You’re sprawled out right over Iwa-chan, and his steady heartbeat gives you something solid to measure your visions against. You say, “Beware the Ides of March,” and laugh because wow, that is such a nerdy thing to say and you’re not sure if Iwa-chan will get it, being the brute that he is. You’ve never been sure if he understands half the shit that spouts from your mouth anyway.  

But Iwa-chan only gives you a noogie that’s almost gentle in the way his fingers tangle in your hair. “Don’t’ be stupid,” he says.

“It’s the fifteenth of March,” you explain. “Iwa-chan, didn’t you read Julius Caesar?”

“No.”

You nod because, “I didn’t either.”

“Go to sleep, Oikawa,” Iwa-chan tells you. These days, there is a frown in his voice that’s almost palpable. It’s more noticeable now, when he’s sleepy enough not to subconsciously control what’s there and what isn’t. “You need it.”

“That’s why you’re here.”

The answer must be obvious, you think, because Iwa-chan doesn’t answer you—but you do feel his arms tense. He seems to be telling you that you must know the answer. It has been forever since you’ve met and anything else is inexcusable. Obligingly, you wrack your memories for something that could have brought this on and come up empty. You turn over the conversation and look for double meanings (your specialty) and find none. At least, nothing you’re aware of.

That’s the funny thing; you’re being perfectly sincere about all this.

“Isn’t it?” you ask. You just want to go to sleep for five months straight, so the words come out a bit funny. You almost think Iwa-chan has misheard you.

Then, “Go to sleep.” Final, resolute.

For a lack of things to look at, you close your eyes.

–

At three, you’re feeling like angels.

That’s what they do, you hear; they’re all caught up in a war of morals where someone has to be right, someone has to be wrong. You wonder if they get bored like that. If there are days when they can’t even stand the sounds of their own voices repeating the same arguments over and over again. Maybe they have laundry lists and there’s just this one asshole who never does what they’re supposed to do. You bet they have TV rights—you bet they have a flatscreen, actually, and they all share it. You bet that’s really what they’re fighting over. They just have this irrational need to be deep, to be by a higher cause at all times.

“You are,” Iwa-chan says, “the single most messy thing in the world. It’s like a mall exploded. Do you just never clear out your room?”

“Why would I do that when you’re doing such a good job of being my mom?” You answer.

Iwa-chan rolls his eyes. You don’t think he can quite bring himself to actually jab at you today, and that’s good, you suppose. “I don’t understand why they let you go.”

You tip yourself to the edge of your bed and tilt your face up at Iwa-chan. It is a long way up, you notice. Somehow this strikes you as poetic. That when you reach up, your hand barely grazes his shoulder and you feel silly, and so, so gay, when he steps in so your hand isn’t dangling over thin air. It makes sense that you waggle your eyebrows at him and adopt the smuggest grin that you can.

“I told them my best friend would be really lost without me, and he’d make a spectacle of himself. It would be embarrassing. And tragic. I’d have to stop talking to him completely.”

A familiar exacting look. You see it in games sometimes, when Iwa-chan is trying to figure out the best way to get through blocks and support his team. But you see it in the mirror more often–in fact, you see it everyday. You wonder when you taught this sort of calculation to him, and if it the teaching was intentional. And your hand slips from his shoulder–a natural action (reaction). Of course, you wouldn’t let it be otherwise. Still, three minutes later (you accidentally counted) and Iwa-chan still hasn’t said anything. He’s sitting by you on the bed now, but his face is directed toward the balcony.

You wonder if you can see the stars tonight, if they’re bright enough to make it past the fog and intermittent drizzle. You wonder if Iwa-chan can see further. He has perfect vision. On the other hand, you’ve been wearing glasses for four years now.

Maybe you both need a telescope. You’re sure that yours is buried somewhere underneath all your old grade-school shoe-box-and-string planetariums, stuffed under piles of pin-hole-pricked construction paper and purple-blue gluesticks.

Iwa-chan sighs. He takes you by the arms and pushes you back, fully, onto your bed. “Be careful, Shittykawa.”

“The doctor said I’m fine,” you tell him. To your everlasting horrification, there is a note of–ah, well, anyway. “She said to rest. I’m resting. I’ve propped my knee up and everything.”

“Then take your medicine.”

You think about rolling your eyes and settle for a smirk instead. “I did.”

He must be muttering curse words under his breath again, you know, because he turns ever-so-slightly away from you and rolls his eyes at the ceiling. You can’t hear what he’s saying, but you’re pretty sure it has to do with you. Maybe you should apologize.

(Iwa-chan has always made you want to apologize.)

Finally, he decides on, “You walked a mile to my house. That’s not fine. That’s you realizing you can’t cope and dragging me here to deal with you.”

You start cackling. The expression on his face reminds you of that one mold of the Loch Ness monster they found once, His confusion only adds to the image. Why am I here in this lake? Why am I made of gelatin? Who would even think about playing a prank like this? Your mouth tastes like cotton and it feels like someone has drilled a hole into your head. You have the biggest headache in the world. The lights are too bright. You arrange your arms over your eyes.

Iwa-chan lies down beside you.

But you have never wanted to be enough. You want to be everything.

–

At three, you’re feeling like mercury.

Iwa-chan is asleep. He doesn’t know that his fingers are laced in your own, or that his lips are pressed against your neck. It’s drafty, for March; Iwa-chan has always gravitated toward warm things. You pull a blanket over him because that feels about fair. After all, he has a habit of putting a hollow sort of aching in your throat. You’re thinking it might hurt to look at him. The lava lamp casts ghoulish shadows over his cheekbones. His eyelashes are spidery in the green light. Most of all, he’s only ten days older than you. He shouldn’t be here, taking care of you like this.

You wonder what you could possibly do. Or what you’ve ever done for him.

When you were seven, Iwa-chan’s parents moved to another neighborhood. Until then, you had been neighbors; you went to school together, you went home together, you stayed out too long in the playground together. Suddenly, there was no one. There were other kids, but none of them were Iwa-chan. But he’d showed up at the old playground the day after, the biggest stag beetle you’d ever seen in his hand and a newly chipped tooth in his mouth, one mile downtown from where he lived.

(Lives.)

You still go to school together.

Sometimes you think too much and you stop liking the things that pop into your head. Often, you feel spent on all the wrong things when you should be saving for Iwa-chan instead.

“Shittyzumi,” you whisper just to try it out.

He doesn’t stir.

Other times you should go to sleep. You snort at the little trickle of drool on Iwa-chan’s chin. Thinking about it now won’t solve anything, and you have to be at practice tomorrow, injured knee or not. You owe it to your team, to Iwa-chan… and alright, most of all, to yourself. Because you’re just a bit petty, you take one last look at Iwa-chan before you close your eyes. You need to build up that image of utter humiliation so you can remember it when he inevitably serves another volleyball at your head. You’ll see how he likes it when you embarrass him in front of his fans.

But you suppose keeping it a secret is alright, too.