As you know, apart from the super awesome and perfect ship of YakuNoya, I also love other Yaku or Noya shipps such as these. 😁💖 They're super nice!

But, please, trust me when I say OINOYA!!!!!!!!! 😩 The dynamic! The POWER they'd have!!!! GODDDD!!!! I need to draw them!

And INUYAKU!!!!!!!!! 😭😭😭 For some reason, it doesn’t leave my mind since my brain decided to put them together!

so the first thing i’m thinking is “dude do oinoya even interact in canon???” and they do! well, sort of. they have indirect interactions if that makes sense. oikawa aims his serve at nishinoya and nishinoya remarks on multiple occasions that he thinks oikawa’s serves are so cool. there’s this little bonus sketch where noya even wishes that oikawa would always be the one serving.

like guys i think it might be a little gay to be so obsessed with another players serves.

and that’s where the concept for my fic came from. the idea was literally just “what if oikawa’s practicing his serves and nishinoya finds him and they just start practicing together?” and then they slowly fell in love doing that. the main driving force was how much they both respect the other as a player. i feel like they both respect each other’s skills, but (at least, in the beginning of the fic) don’t quite like the other as a person. like they’re on opposite teams, oikawa’s dramatic ass considers it a principle to hate everyone on karasuno, noya doesn’t like oikawa’s “pretty boy attitude”, and they just don’t really like each other. however, they both think the other is a really fucking good volleyball player so they both resign themselves to practicing volleyball together; you don’t need to like someone to acknowledge that they’re good at volleyball (as said by noya himself in the fic)

the very first time i came up with the concept of them practicing volleyball together, the first person who heard about it was, of course, oli (akur000 on tumblr) because they are always the first to hear my fic ideas. then the idea slightly evolved in the tiktok dms of one of my irl friends, sanja (who does not have a tumblr but i love her just the same (she also proofread my google translate spanish in the fic with her four years of high school spanish)), and honestly the fic just grew from there. i started writing, the title came to me while i was listening to the crane wives song allies or enemies bc it just immediately struck me as a song that fit them esp in the context of my fic. “now listen close // you owe me ears for dropping eaves // forget it all // you caught me in a moment weak” and “what happens now? // do we have another go? // do we bow out, and take our separate roads? // i’ll admit i’ve had my doubts // but i want to be let in, not out” and “all is fair in love and war // but i can't fight with you anymore” which fun fact! i almost made the title of the ff be that last line of “all is fair in love and war” but then decided that i didn’t make oinoya antagonistic enough for that title so we ended up with are we allies or enemies? (this will be the death of me)

so let’s talk canon basis. there isn’t really much of one, but there is a little bit! so as mentioned, nishinoya often talks about how cool he thinks oikawa’s serves are. he’s eager to receive them. example below. he even mentions that when he was in middle school, his team went up against kitagawa daiichi and there was a guy who “could serve really well”; i don’t think it’s a stretch to say that he is very likely referring to oikawa.

so we know nishinoya respects oikawa but what about oikawa? what does he think about noya? well we get considerably less from his side, but that’s not to say that we get enough! while watching the shiratorizawa v karasuno match with iwaizumi, oikawa refers to nishinoya by his name. this is notable only because oikawa doesn’t do it for other members of karasuno. you can see in the below image that he calls tsukishima “four eyes” and even refers to hinata as “chibi-chan”. (kageyama is, of course, mentioned by name but honestly he’s a whole other basket of worms). nishinoya is mentioned by his name. not by a nickname, his number, or a describing feature. what this means to me is that noya stood out enough as a player to catch oikawa’s attention and he made note of it; he remembered nishinoya. oikawa doesn’t learn the name of every member of every rival time he plays (why would he?) but he does remember nishinoya’s and i think it’s likely because he admires nishinoya’s skills. noya stands out to him as a particularly skilled player. oikawa’s petty, but he recognizes when someone is good at volleyball.

so what we get is a mutual respect between oikawa and nishinoya. they both think the other is good at volleyball. another thing from canon that pulled me into them is the way they are the members of their respective teams with the biggest reputation (though i’d say noya is second on karasuno reputation wise bc obviously kageyama has the biggest reputation on karasuno). i don’t think anyone will debate me on oikawa having the biggest reputation of any seijoh member. he’s feared by other miyagi schools and for good reason. i think nishinoya’s reputation is clearer in the manga than it is the anime, but there are so many occasions where karasuno is about to start a match and someone in the crowd goes “lol who tf is karasuno?” and someone replies “idk but they have kitagawa daiichi’s kageyama tobio and chidoriyama’s nishinoya!!” like i’m not even joking that the phrase “chidoriyama’s nishinoya” is uttered so many times when spectators are trying to figure out who karasuno is. i only have two examples that i can pull from the manga off the top of my head, but trust me that it happens a fair few times. oikawa and noya are both known to be really good players.

and honestly? that’s kinda the extent of the canon basis of their relationship. so then what can we discuss next? well, we can discuss what exactly about that makes such a good dynamic and why i think they would genuinely work as a ship/couple.

oikawa and nishinoya both love volleyball. they're both incredibly skilled and they love playing, but i think that out of the two of them, nishinoya is the only one who actually likes volleyball (at least, as of 2012/2013 canon). this is part of a longer oikawa character analysis i could write, but i think that though he loves volleyball more than anything and no world exists where he would allow himself to quit, during high school (and middle school too), he stopped enjoying it and focused more on "becoming great" rather than "having fun". it's not until the brazil trip where he meets up with hinata and remembers that volleyball is fun that he regains that like for volleyball. i think a very strong theme in haikyuu is the loving vs liking of volleyball as evident in characters like hirugami. volleyball is everything to oikawa.

oikawa is willing to sacrifice everything to succeed. he wants to be the best, he wants to win. volleyball is absolutely everything to him. he goes pro because he cannot fathom a life where he isn't putting absolutely everything he has into volleyball. he'll bleed and he'll bleed and he'll give everything. that's why he loses his enjoyment for volleyball. he loves it, of course he loves it, but he doesn't like it because it's so painful to him. and yet, he can't understand ever giving it up.

nishinoya, on the other hand, does love volleyball, but it isn't everything to him. he quits volleyball because his friend quit. he likes volleyball, but he can give it up. he doesn't go pro because he likes volleyball as a hobby. he would never want to do it as a job because i think it would rob him of the enjoyment he has for it. nishinoya likes volleyball because he gets to play with his friends. he doesn't have that all-encompassing obsession with volleyball that oikawa has. for him, volleyball is about the game, not the result. he just wants to play.

so the idea of putting oikawa and nishinoya face to face is really interesting to me because you have two players, both extremely talented and with the ability to go pro, but only one of them wants it. you have oikawa, who doesn't think he has a future if it isn't to do with volleyball and then you have nishinoya, who could never professionally pursue volleyball because it would destroy everything he loves about the game. i didn't have the opportunity to explore this in my ff, but something i was really thinking about oikawa looking at nishinoya and seeing someone who could go pro, but doesn't want to and he just doesn't understand it; a part of him is convinced that nishinoya is throwing away his talent. he just doesn't get it and this could be such a big point of contention between them.

(i will be potentially writing another oinoya fic where i can explore this specific concept more bc frankly, i'm obsessed with it 🤞🤞)

both oikawa and noya are very passionate about volleyball. they're both also very passionate people in general. they're very overdramatic. like out of their entire teams, they're probably the only people who would care about "fraternizing with the enemy" or whatever tf they get so dramatic about in the fic (tanaka would probs have an intense reaction at first but i think that would just be his general distaste for oikawa). like you cannot tell me that if some other member of seijoh was dating a member of karasuno, oikawa wouldn't throw the biggest temper tantrum ever.

i think that oikawa is a character who isn't used to playing the "straight man" in his dynamics. because he's around iwaizumi so much, he's often the one who gets to be the silly one while iwaizumi tells him to shut the fuck up. around nishinoya, he has to occasionally be the straight man which i think is a new role for oikawa and one that i found kinda fun to explore. like you get oikawa, now faced with someone who has so much energy that it looks exhausting and he starts thinking that maybe he finally gets why iwaizumi always seems so fed up. it's a fun dynamic to explore and it's not one that's very prevalent in most oikawa ships so it's something a little different.

and i think oikawa really likes that about nishinoya. i think he absolutely loves watching noya be so exhilarating and full of energy off the court and then immediately becoming silent and focused when he stops onto the court. i think he would find noya's serious demeanour while playing to be very attractive (taking volleyball seriously is a major green flag for him).

another part of their dynamic i like to explore is the confidence levels. oikawa appears to be very externally confident, but internally, he doesn't really believe any of that; he's actually very insecure. nishinoya, on the other hand, is externally confident and it's true. he has confidence in his abilities and though he is always willing to learn more, he, at least, knows that he is good. i think that noya would be able to help oikawa a lot with that part of his insecurities because nishinoya admires oikawa so much. i think they work together in that sense.

they’re both also always so eager to learn! they always want to improve, they always want to get better. yaku says that that’s what makes nishinoya such a terrifying opponent. they both have a very intense drive to improve. and that’s something they could do together; they can practice together and teach each other. you can’t tell me that noya wouldn’t absolutely love showing oikawa how to do his rolling thunder move and oikawa would get such an ego boost when noya would ask him to show him how to better his libero sets.

and ugh i absolutely love the idea of oikawa moving to argentina and then noya, who is in the process of travelling the world, visits him in argentina. noya would absolutely go watch oikawa’s games and whenever noya comes to visit, oikawa has to bring him onto a court to play some volleyball. the whole argentina team knows noya by name and i think they’d love to bring noya in for a little practice game from time to time. noya, while travelling, sends oikawa pictures of him doing obscure shit in the countries he’s in (eg: the one that noya sends asahi of him fishing in italy LMFAO) and oikawa’s team thinks that they’re the funniest things ever. it’s like “tooru, where is your boyfriend now?” and oikawa points his phone at them to show them a picture of nishinoya hugging a penguin in fucking antarctica or some shit.

also guys can we talk about how the ship name for oikawa/nishinoya might be oinoya, but they could also be called noyaoi which guys… that’s the funniest fucking thing ever. like are u kidding me?? this ship is called no yaoi and you don’t ship it??