After a good half an hour of picking around his apartment -under the scraps of clothes left in the hall, between couch cushions, and on every countertop- you find your wallet sandwiched under his shoulder.
you spend the morning figuring out his coffee pot and petting his cat (who chirps and beeps when you feed him a little bit of dry food). The apartment is sparsely decorated, a couple of old books piles on the shelves. you pick at one-- a study book for some fucking test.
around noon, the man emerges, sheepish and still barely clothed, only briefs on. his little pet hops off of your lap and meeps it's way over to his owner, twirling between his legs as he walks.
"Are you waiting for this?" he holds your wallet out. there's an imprint of it on his skin, red and swollen.
"thanks," you say. he tosses it your way and it flops on the couch. "I would have left, but..."
"you made coffee; you can stay as long as you want." He pours himself a cup and downs half of it. Dark circles sit under his deep set eyes. All of his features are bold -dark hair, nose like a dolphins fin- except his subtle smile, just barely pulled up in the corners. There's a charm to him, one you certainly saw last night. "do you want a shower? wash the cat hair off of you?"
"It's not the cat hair I'm worried about," you say too quickly. he snorts at that before busying himself with feeding his pet. Pulling an open can from the fridge, he pops to food into a dish, then turns to his kettle.
"Are you heating up the cat food?"
"He likes it warm." It only takes a couple seconds for the dredge of water to heat up. He adds it on top of the food and sets it down-- and the cat in question digs in. "He's a sophisticated man."
You sip the last of your drink. The mug is stamped with some sort of pun - this lawyer is always appealing.
"What's his name?"
Your one night stand blanchs a bit at that. "Uh, well- Lumps."
You don't even get to ask the question.
"My ex named him." He's quick to say. "She's not in the picture, so you don't-- last night was okay from a moral aspect."
"Only okay?" you tease, despite yourself.
"From a moral aspect," he repeats. He takes a long drink, a satisfied gasp at the end. "Phenomenal from an everything else standpoint."
You don't leave until almost two hours later, post shower and draped in a shirt he says you can keep. He talked to you about the LSAT books, how he had to take it twice before he got a score he liked, and how much he likes the law before he asked about you. Against better judgment, you told him about life and work and everything in between: enough conversation for a second pot of coffee.
When the pot was drained and you were at the door, he hesitated.
"If you can ever think of an excuse to see me again," he said. "I would like that-- Lumps would too."
He was nice, and the sex was, in fact, phenomenal, but you weren't sure if you should let a random hook up progress that far.
"I think if we're meant to see each other again, the universe will make it happen."
He smiled, but you knew he wanted to roll his eyes. "What is this? A rom-com?"
You shrugged. "See you boys later."
He let you go, with just a little: "I hope."
It wasn't until halfway home that you realized your wallet was still sitting on the couch cushions on his apartment.
Life has been throwing you a lot of curve balls lately: your boss is terminally ill, you just turned thirty, your boyfriend left without a word, and you've made a huge mistake at work. The only thing that could make it worse is if you end up sending that sext to the wrong person-
Oh. Shit.
when i say “girl” randomly as an interjection i’m speaking to the omnipresent all knowing being of Girl. asking her for mercy. taking girl’s name in vain
it may come as a shock (to anyone who doesn't know him, anyway) but ukai keishin is not particularly... skilled at talking to women.
actually, he's pretty good—or at least passably okay—at talking to women. it's anything beyond talking that challenges him. taking a conversation further than surface level niceties or flirtation. which is why it's all the more surprising that you're here with him, in the little apartment he lives in behind his family's store, tipsy on the beers he grabbed from the drink fridge in the shop just after close, and staring at him with your undivided attention and a playful little smile on your face.
"okay," you say, draining the last mouthful of your beer and then setting the can aside. "it's my turn to ask a question now."
you two have been going back and forth like this for hours, asking each other inane little questions between laughter and drinks. keishin learned that you cheated on your university entrance exam and got away with it. you found out he stole his first pack of cigarettes from the shop when he was 14, and he burst into tears when his grandfather confronted him about it. keishin takes another sip of his own beer and nods you on encouragingly, trying not to let his eyes dip too low on the neckline of your top—a tiny little tank top you'd pulled your sweater off to reveal a few drinks in, since his apartment runs hot without A/C.
you look at him with an impish twinkle in your eyes, leaning in a bit closer to him where he's leaning back against the sofa.
"what's something you've never told anyone?"
keishin hesitates (trying really, really hard not to look down your top when you lean in like that) as he mulls over your question. there are quite a few things that come to mind that he could say right now—zero of which would result in him ever seeing you again. he wracks his brain until finally.
"i got a nose job."
"HA!" you toss your head back, shoving him playfully as you laugh. "you're so full of shit."
"no, no! i mean it!" keishin says. "i was 18!"
you're still laughing, leaning over him to push him again. "if you're gonna lie at least come up with something believable."
"i really did!" keishin groans, increasingly despairing. the only thing worse than someone knowing he got a nose job as a teenager was having someone think he was lying about it.
in a moment of desperation he reaches out for your hand, bringing it up to his nose. he carefully navigates your pointer finger and thumb to either side of the bridge, using his own fingers to maneuver yours into just the right spot.
"see—" keishin says, when he feels that familiar little bump underneath both of your fingertips. all at once he seems to realize what he's done, staring up at you, so terribly close to him. feeling the warmth of your touch over his suddenly burning face.
"wow," you breathe, quiet as anything. "i... feel it."
keishin can't blame the lack of a/c for how heavy the air in his shitty little apartment suddenly seems. can't blame the beer for how dizzy he feels. it's all because of you, and the faint smell of your perfume, and how fucking soft your hands are.
"you really got a nose job?" you ask him, still quiet. still close.
keishin swallows, nodding a little bit. you let your hand fall from his face, but you don't move away. still angled over him on the sofa, still deliriously close.
"i broke it. uh, twice actually, playing volleyball. first time healed up okay on its own. second one was a real bloodbath. couldn't go more than 4 hours without having to shove a tamp—" keishin cuts himself off, realizing what he's in the process of admitting to you. he clears his throat. "anyway, after the second break they had to go in and fix it with surgery."
"that's not really a nose job," you say with a light laugh, and keishin thinks his eyes must be playing tricks on him because he swears your gaze has slipped down from his doctored nose to his unremarkable mouth.
"i'll be sure to take that technicality up with the rhinoplasty specialist next time i see him," keishin croaks out in response—though what was meant to be airy and joking comes across rather pained, because you only seem to be getting closer to him now.
"hey, keishin?" you ask him, your mouth so close to his that he can feel the warmth of your words on his lips. he can almost imagine what your lips must feel like, from this near. can almost taste them.
"yeah?"
"aren't you gonna ask me something now?"
he swallows hard again, his fingers twisted into a vice grip on the thigh of his pants. "oh, uh, sure..."
you wait for him to find his next query, but his brain is moving syrupy slow now. he's not even sure he could tell you what his own name is, let alone come up with an insightful question.
you laugh a little to yourself, leaning in again. keishin's sure you're about to kiss him and he freezes like a deer in the headlights, but instead you dip down close to his ear, your lips ghosting over the shell.
"if you can't think of anything, you can just ask me the same question i asked you, y'know," you whisper, a teasing lilt in your voice. when you pull away you've got that same cheshire cat smile on your face that you've been wearing for most of the evening. the one that keishin has to actively avoid thinking about or he's worried he's gonna go half-hard like a pubescent teen.
"oh, yeah. uh—" keishin clears his throat, shifting a bit. "w-what's something you've never told anyone?"
you put a gentle hand on his chest, pushing him back gently into the sofa as you crawl into his lap.
"well, i've never told anyone that i've been waiting for you to make a move for the past two hours."
keishin peers up at you with a cartoonishly shocked look on his face; eyes wide, and a furious red blush slithering up his cheeks and across that perfect, ski slope nose. his lips part like he's going to reply, but he's so dumbstruck that no words manage to come out.
you breathe out a laugh, dipping down into his space again, and this time he doesn't have to imagine the feeling of your lips against his, because when you speak again they ghost against his own like a promise.
"since it's my turn to ask a question: how much longer are you gonna keep me waiting?"
i think that tobio is the type of person who speaks in absolutes. he's always been frank—sometimes to a fault. but it translates to the way he speaks in terms of certainty. he deals in whens, not in ifs.
WHEN i go pro. WHEN i join the national team. WHEN we win the match.
and this conviction carries over to your relationship.
you've barely started dating, barely gotten your toes across the threshold of that new relationship—still giddy with nerves and thrumming with possibility—and tobio completely takes you off guard with some of the things he says.
WHEN you meet my family. WHEN we move in together. WHEN we get married.
and it's all so overwhelming to you; not because you don't want those things, not because you don't like that he's saying them, but just because you've never had a partner who's as forthright as he is—especially not so early on in the relationship. and though it's largely down to inexperience—you're the first person tobio has ever said these things to, after all—there's something so endearing about the fact that you know he really means it.
cw. hockey player!sukuna, college au, reader just became the team manager and doesn't know how to ice skate. shiu + satoru are also on the team. reader & sukuna do Not like each other. sfw, 1.5k words.
you hear the sound of the gym door slamming closed at the very same moment your butt hits the ice. again.
your head whips around towards the door, wondering who else would come to the campus ice rink during winter break. everyone should be home, enjoying time with their families, or at least time away from school.
sukuna stands at the entrance, a duffle bag hanging over his right shoulder and two hockey sticks in his left hand. he just looks at you for a moment, his hostile expression heating your face. you catch the subtle curl of his upper lip and roll your eyes, turning back around and lifting yourself off the ground. you’re close enough to steady yourself on the ledge of the boards before you lose balance again.
you hear sukuna's footsteps echo in the empty gym, the keys clipped to his duffle bag rattling loudly. the sound stops abruptly once he's close enough to analyze you through the shielding.
"what are you doing in my rink?"
cool, cool, cool, cool. as if your sworn enemy walking in on you wet and cold and exhausted wasn't bad enough, he's gonna be a total dick about it too. (to be expected honestly.)
you shrug, still holding onto the ledge. "i can't be helpful to a hockey team if i can't ice skate."
sukuna sneers, muttering something you don't care to hear before heading off towards the locker rooms.
you know sukuna never wanted you to get hired on as team manager in the first place. unfortunately for him, the captain doesn’t get to veto the decision of the coach, who offered you the job the day after your interview.
it's not even your fault. shiu and satoru are the ones who schemed and plotted for you to become their manager anyway. they encouraged you to go in for the interview even though you hadn’t even applied. (at least, you thought you hadn’t. turns out shiu submitted an application in your name while borrowing your laptop. you suspect him and satoru also “encouraged” their coach to pick you out of the dozens of other students who had applied.)
you manage to fall three more times before sukuna comes out of the locker room dressed in his practice gear. he sits down on the bench where you’d abandoned your things to put on his skates and you sigh, preparing to scoot out of the rink.
when he steps on the ice and glides towards you, you aren’t expecting him to hold his hands out for you to grab. he yanks you up with too much force and you nearly tumble again. your cheek meets his chest, face smushed up against him while your hands are still in his. he lets go, instead grabbing you by your upper arms and forcing you upright.
“bend your knees,” he says, voice steely.
you just blink, stunned that he’s not carrying you off the ice and demanding you go home. it takes you too long, but you bend your knees slightly and look up at sukuna, silently waiting for more instruction.
“stop trying to walk on the ice. this isn’t walking, it’s skating. march.”
sukuna spends the next three hours teaching you the basics of ice skating. you fall some more, but it hurts less after he tells you to fall on your side and stop flailing. he reprimands you for always staying within arms reach of the wall, something about it stunting the learning process or whatever. you don’t touch any of the ledges again, your arms mostly staying extended out in front of you. his directions are harsh, but by the time it’s dark outside you’ve managed to skate your way around the perimeter of the rink nearly a dozen times without falling.
you almost squeal with joy after the tenth loop, opting instead to raise your arms in the air and smile wide. sukuna just nods once, arms crossed over his broad chest.
“okay, you’re good for now. buy a new pair of skates, it’ll be easier on sharper blades. those rentals suck. and you didn’t tie them right.” his tone is no different than it was when he first entered the building, as if talking to you is a chore he has to get out of the way. maybe a couple years ago it would’ve made you shrink, but now it just pisses you off more than anything.
you nod slowly, making a mental note to ask satoru where you should buy skates from (and wondering if you can convince him to buy them for you). sukuna makes a dramatic sweeping motion with both his arms, gesturing towards the exit.
“can i have my rink back now?” he asks, arms still outstretched.
you roll your eyes but don’t argue, his reward for successfully teaching you how to skate. you even mutter a thank you as you glide past him, but he just waves you away.
he starts to set up for drills as you untie your borrowed skates, dropping little orange cones on the ice in some intricate zig zag pattern. you watch him for a moment before your phone rings, vibrating the entire bench.
a picture of you and satoru lights up the screen, his name dancing across the top. sukuna gives you a pointed glare when you answer it without making any move to leave.
“hi ‘toru.”
he greets you excitedly from the other end. “we’ve been texting you all day,” he whines, probably referring to him and shiu. “where’ve you been?”
you smile. “i, uh, came back to school early. the thought of managing a hockey team while not being able to skate was actually haunting me, so i came to practice a little.”
satoru fusses about how you should have told him and that he would have come back to teach you in a heartbeat, but you just brush him off.
“i didn’t need you. i made it around the rink ten times in a row without falling. i’m basically a pro now.” your voice drips with pride and you’re sure satoru can hear your grin.
“oh yeah? who taught you how to do that?”
it only takes you two seconds to decide you do not want him to know about your impromptu skating lesson with his captain. satoru already knows all the unsavory details about your previous spats with sukuna, and you know he’d tell shiu immediately, who would be quick to interrogate you about it. he'd probably tease sukuna about it too, which would probably make the man hate you more. you wouldn't even blame him. shiu's teasing can be incessant.
“nobody did. i taught myself,” you say.
you swear you see sukuna stiffen out on the ice, and when he turns to face you the look on his face can only be described as malicious. it’s enough to make you immediately gather your things and rush out of the building. you feel his eyes crawling over you all the way from the bench to the double doors.
a blast of icy wind shocks your system when you step outside. satoru’s talking, saying something about how he can be back on campus by tomorrow night, and how he can probably get shiu to come with. you want to tell him that he doesn’t have to come back early just because you did, but the look on sukuna’s face still has you a little rattled.
not for the first time, dread slithers its way up from your gut. shiu was the one who ultimately convinced you that becoming the manager for the hockey team would be a good idea. good for your resume, good for the team, a good way to get to hang out more often. at the time, you thought he was right. he’s not really wrong now, but you worry that you and the captain’s mutual dislike for each other will get in the way.
satoru says your name, and the way he says it sounds like he’s been repeating it for a while.
“yeah hey, sorry i’m here.”
“you okay?” he asks.
“yeah, yeah, i’m good.” the walk from the ice rink to the parking lot is unnecessarily long, something you’ve heard satoru complain about many, many times. “i’m just walking to my car. it’s so fucking cold. there’s no reason for the parking lot to be this far away.”
“ugh, i know,” satoru huffs. he asks again if you want him to come up early. you say yes.
the two of you hang up when you make it to your car. your phone vibrates with a text from shiu a couple minutes later. you’re still sitting there in the parking lot, blasting the heat and trying to figure out how to make the next few months of school bearable.
maybe sukuna will suddenly transfer schools in the middle of the semester. or do something that gets him benched for the rest of the season. or get hit by a car. yeah. any of those would be good.
you can only hope.
a/n. this is part of a kinda larger enemies-to-lovers thing i'm building and i just wanted to get this off my chest. i hope it still made sense with minimal context (..◜ᴗ◝..)
Iwaizumi doesn’t see her again until the snow melts. He wears a short-sleeved shirt on campus. The air smells fresh, like cold water and dirt.
She’s standing in the middle of the courtyard at the central campus, both of her hands around the strap of her backpack. Iwaizumi stops when he sees her, in the middle of rushing from one class to the other. But the sight of her drains him of any sort of urgency.
He just has to stop, and look.
Her hair’s longer. Just marginally. The type of growth he wouldn’t have noticed if he’d been around. The bottom of her shoes have a thin coating of mud from the wet spring ground, and the bottom of her jeans are rolled up to her ankles to keep them from the same fate. She wears a shirt that’s too big for her. Her head is tilted slightly to the side, and she’s talking to Akaashi.
It's weird, seeing the both of them there, just standing, talking. Iwaizumi stands still in the middle of the cement path that connects the campus buildings, and he just watches. He’s not close enough to hear what they’re saying, but it looks pleasant, easy. She says something, and Akaashi nods his head. He says something back, and she smiles.
And Iwaizumi likes to think that he’s over this kind of thing. It shouldn’t bother him anymore. It’s been months since she silently left his apartment in the early morning. There have been others, too, since then. Warm bodies to fill the space that she left, brought in to try and imitate the way he felt when her skin was pressed against him. Iwaizumi has carefully put space and time and people in between him and her.
But Akaashi takes his hand, and places it on her shoulder, and to Iwaizumi, it is suddenly like no time has passed. He is there again, with his arms around her waist as they laid bare in his bed, asking her not to leave while she was thinking about him.
Someone takes a large step around him, making a noise of discontentment at the way Iwaizumi clogs the walking path. But he doesn’t move, he doesn’t think he can. He’s so transfixed by the way she looks at Akaashi. Warmly, like she used to.
He imagines it all. Iwaizumi imagines her leaving his apartment only to answer one of Akaashi’s calls. He imagines her hearing his plea for forgiveness and giving in easily, the way she always did whenever it came to Akaashi. He imagines her regressing, slipping back into his side to be used and disregarded whenever she became inconvenient. He wonders if it’s any different than how it was before. He wonders if it’s possible for things like that to ever get any different.
Iwaizumi knows in that moment that it’s not for him. It’s not different at all. Standing there, watching her look at Akaashi and Akaashi look at her, has dredged everything he’s buried back up. The thought that he wants her as much as he always has doesn’t make Iwaizumi feel as sick as it used to.
It’s just harder for him to delude himself, now.
Akaashi is saying something, and the wind blows a bit of her hair into her face. She pushes it back, and turns her head slightly as she does so. For a second, Iwaizumi thinks that she looks right at him. His heart nearly stops in his chest, and he takes an involuntary step forward.
But her head just turns back to face Akaashi, If she did see Iwaizumi standing there, it must not’ve meant anything to her. Iwaizumi shakes his head, and makes himself take another step forward. He’s late for class, now, and he doesn’t have any time to speculate.
⋆⭒˚.⋆
Iwaizumi’s standing in the middle of his room, fresh from the shower. Water drops from the ends of his hair onto the back of his neck, and sweatpants hang low on his hips. He can’t find a clean shirt.
There’s a knock on the door. “Come in,” Iwaizumi says, without thinking about in, fishing through his drawers, trying to find something hidden in his sock drawer. He could’ve sworn he had more time to do laundry.
The door behind him opens, and then closes. Iwaizumi sighs and turns. It’s her.
She’s standing by the door of his bedroom, hands behind her back, wearing the same too-big shirt and cuffed up jeans. Her smile is awkward, and she rocks on her feet slightly. “Hey,” she says, and it’s the first time he’s heard her voice in months.
“Hey,” he says back, and doesn’t know what else to say. Because she had disappeared, slipped from his life like it was nothing, and now she’s back, standing before him in his room like no time at all had passed. “I erm, I thought you were Oikawa.”
“Yeah,” she says, nodding. “He let me in and said you were in here. I’m sorry I didn’t like, text or call or anything I just, I just really wanted to see you and kind of, I dunno, acted on impulse.”
That’s familiar. She’d spent plenty of time on her back in his bed because she’d acted on impulse.
“I saw you today, on campus,” she tells him. “It looked like you were on your way to class, and I didn’t want to make you late, but I just really wanted to talk to you. So I was hoping I could talk to you now, instead.”
All that time Iwaizumi stood there still, staring at her, and she didn’t see him until he was walking away. He nods. “Yeah, sure. What’s up?”
He wishes he had a shirt. He feels vulnerable, standing in front of her, bruises left down his neck in a trail evidence of what he’s been doing ever since she left. Iwaizumi keeps notice the way she tries not to look at it.
Her eyes fall to the floor in front of her. “I miss you,” she whispers, and crosses her arms over her chest. “I actually miss you a lot, Haji.”
Iwaizumi winces. He used to bask in the way she said his name, Now, it hurts. Haji feels desecrated. “Don’t call me that,” he says. “You can’t just show up after all this time and call me that.”
She nods. “Okay,” she says, and then asks, “Are you mad at me?”
He’s not sure. Maybe he is mad at her. He had spent almost all of their time apart thinking only of how much it hurt to be away from her, Iwaizumi didn’t consider that he could be angry over it. But now that she’s standing in front of him, saying his name softly and sweetly like she never stopped say it, maybe he is.
“I don’t know,” Iwaizumi answers. “I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel right now.”
She takes a step closer to him. Iwaizumi can see now how her eyes trail along his neck, down to his collarbone. He wants to know if she’s jealous. He wants to know if it cuts her up the same way the mention of Akaashi’s name used to. “Can I tell you how I feel?”
Iwaizumi gives her a curt nod. “Yeah,” he says, as if it were squeezed out of him. “You can tell me whatever you want.”
“I wanted to come back, as soon as I left,” she tells him, taking another step closer. Iwaizumi tenses up. “I thought I was doing the right thing by putting distance between us, but it just hurt. I didn’t know how to undo it, though, I didn’t know how to turn around and say I changed my mind.”
Iwaizumi watches her carefully. Her hands are by her sides, fidgeting, because she doesn’t know what to do with them. She doesn’t look up at him. “I thought it wasn’t real, because it wasn’t the same as it was with Akaashi. But it’s just different. I don’t know how to put it into words.”
“I saw you with him today,” Iwaizumi interrupts her. “Talking, like nothing had ever happened.”
“Well, we have a lease together,” she reminds him. “I couldn’t just ignore him forever. I had to get over it, at least until I can move out.”
“Do you still love him?” Iwaizumi asks and holds his breath while he waits for an answer.
She looks to the side, and then looks back at Iwaizumi. “No,” she answers. “It’s not love anymore. I think I still care about him in a way I don’t want to, but I don’t love him.” She takes another step closer to him. Iwaizumi can feel her breath on his skin. “Hajime-“
“Don’t say it if you don’t mean it,” Iwaizumi warns her.
“I mean it,” she insists, and she places a hand on his chest, right over his hammering heart. “Please let me say it.”
He shakes his head. Her hand slides up the back of his neck, and tangles in the roots of his hair on the back of his head. “If you say it and then change your mind, I won’t be able to take it.”
“I won’t change my mind,” she whispers. “I promise I won’t.”
Iwaizumi leans his forehead down to rest it against hers. He missed this. He missed touching her, being touched by her. He missed the way she smells, the way she tastes. “I don’t want you to say it, yet,” he tells her.
“Okay,” she agrees. “I’ll wait.”
Iwaizumi dips his head down, and he kisses her. It doesn’t feel the same as it used to. She kisses him back, like she means it, not like she’s sorry for it. Iwaizumi places a hand on the small of her back, and tries to press her as close to him as he can. He figures by the time morning comes, he’ll be the one to change his mind.
tobio showing up to the adlers training gym on a monday morning and when someone asks him what he got up to that weekend he's just like "i didn't leave the house much."
ushijima overhears and, in his usual monotone, asks "are you sick?"
and then tobio tugs his shirt up over his head to change into his training jersey, and the bite marks, scratches and hickeys inked across his skin are suddenly on full display. he turns to ushijima, rucking his jersey up over his elbows as he prepares to pull it on over his head, and with a very confused expression (and complete lack of awareness as to the bewildered looks on his teammates faces) says "no? i feel great."
In the morning, she is gone. Her space in his drawer has been cleared of her clothes, and his bed is made neatly, sheets tucked under the mattress. She left the copy of the key he had made for her on the kitchen table.
Iwaizumi wishes he could feel numb. It would be more tolerable than this sideways pain that cuts through him. He makes his stiff scrambled eggs and one cup of coffee, and he thinks nonstop of just how gone she is.
He told Oikawa she left, expecting and almost hoping that he would lambast her for her decision to go and stay somewhere else, but was disappointed to hear Oikawa express how good of an idea he thinks it is. He tells Iwaizumi it’s for the best, and it’s the last thing that he wants to hear.
In the days following her absence, the apartment feels colder and darker without her around, and Iwaizumi notices that he hates it there. He hates his dull and empty room, and how it feels to lie on his bed without her body heat by his side. He hates the empty living room and it’s cold, miserable white lighting. He hates the kitchen and the constant build-up of dishes in the sink and the tasteless food he makes.
He hates it.
He’s started spending much more time on campus. Holed up in the library or spending extra time at the gym. Sometimes he crashes at Matsukawa’s place and gives Oikawa the excuse that he was on campus so late, and Mattsun’s apartment is just closer. He stops eating at home and starts eating his meals at the dining halls and he does not ever admit to himself that this is because he has a greater chance of running into her on campus.
But he doesn’t ever see her. It’s like she’s disappeared.
After a while, he stops checking his phone for notifications from her. He stops looking over his shoulder and scanning every room he enters for any sign of her. That sideways pain that constantly lives inside of him starts to dull, and he thinks he’s almost there. Iwaizumi thinks he’s almost given up on her.
