One-Shot (2k), General Audiences, No Warnings
Relationship: Kageyama Tobio/Oikawa Tooru
Tags: Canon Compliant, Post-Canon, Post-Time Skip, Post-Break Up, Angst, Sad Ending, Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics, Hurt No Comfort, POV Oikawa Tooru, iwaizumi and hinata make a minor appearance
Written for Oikage Winter Week 2021, Day 2, Prompt "Canon Compliant/ Post Canon"
Title: We’ve All Got Baggage Hun, But Yours Could Fill A Hotel Lobby
Word Count: ~1100
Oikage Week: Day 7 - Free Theme
Summary: (No longer a theoretical) series of interconnected drabbles following the themes of Oikage week.
1 2 3 4 5
Or read the collection on Ao3!
Bees have made a home in every corner of the winery, chasing the sweet scent of citrus notes and vinegar. Oikawa's shoe sticks on the pavement outside, the noon sun drying out any liquor lost to the ground into a sticky layer of rogue.
Kageyama looks up at him, not even flinching as a bee zips past his nose. His cheeks have adopted the very same rogue that polka dots the walkway. Before Kageyama can say anything his throat rasps with a small cough.
Oikawa plops to the cleanest path of cement beside him. The railing to his back sticks out at the bottom, digging into the bend of his back. Oikawa leans forward, drags his knees to his chest.
"You're supposed to taste," Oikawa titters at him.
Kageyama sags back onto the railing. He looks to the sky and breathes in. Oikawa wonders if he's sick, already buzzing with liquor in his veins. His eyes look like they’re swimming.
"I was tasting."
Oikawa snorts. "Sounded more like you were choking."
Kageyama glares at him. Oikawa thinks it's more heated than the afternoon sun. He revels in the attention of it. After a while Kageyama tells him, "You should return to your party."
Oikawa hums. "I should," he agrees. He rests his head over both hands along his knees and strains his neck to watch the other man. "But Maki-chan is buying me an extra bottle to be here."
The admission wins him no favor.
"Why did you come?" Oikawa asks.
"Maki invited me," Kageyama says directly. He rolls his head against the wood behind him. Oikawa watches his surprise when his head hits into some of the negative space. "I can leave," he offers a second later, whipping out his phone. Oikawa thinks of the pretty little blonde, how she probably wouldn't make a big deal out of coming all the way here just to collect him.
"You should change your lock screen to her," he suggests.
"To who?"
"Your girlfriend," Oikawa coughs. When he puts his hand to the pavement it is warm and sticky and Oikawa grimaces. "Girls like that. It makes them feel important."
Kageyama looks down at his phone. He clicks the side power button and Oikawa is greeted once again by the gymnasium windows, the same volleyball ascending towards the heavens above. Kageyama's stare is intense, the hand holding up his phone, shaking.
"This is important."
"Oh?" Oikawa lifts an eyebrow.
Kageyama holds the phone upwards, towards the sky. It almost looks as if he's watching it soar before his eyes, just until the screen fades to black once more. "This was the first time Oikawa-san showed me his serve."
"Begrudgingly," Oikawa adds and then, "oh."
Kageyama looks down at him. His lashes long under the bits of sun that slant down the sloping roof to their off-the-main-path hiding spot. Oikawa wonders if he's drunk from just the few sips of wine he'd managed down. "I think you've been misunderstanding something," Kageyama says. One of his legs kicks out in front of him. Under the sun his skin is golden, but Oikawa can see the farmer's tan just under the flirting height of his gym shorts. "I don't have a girlfriend. Especially not Yachi."
And always direct, Kageyama tells him, just barely pink in the face, "I'm still in love with you, Oikawa-san."
His eyes are soft when he says it, sends Oikawa's muddled mind back to the first time he had said something like it-- tight-fisted, direct. Ready.
Resigned.
It is too much, all at once, and Oikawa feels hot--would blame it on the sun if it just leaned further his way-- and clambers to hide his face with his hands, in the shadow of his knees. He forgets the spilled wine clinging to his left hand until it has already touched his face.
"Oikawa-san?" Kageyama calls. His fingers on Oikawa's elbow could scorch him if he let them lay there too long. "Do you need a bag?"
Oikawa breathes in. He holds out a single digit, asks Kageyama to wait. Something buzzes by his ear, too close for comfort, and Oikawa jumps away from it. Kageyama's side is solid where it catches his weight and Oikawa isn't sure what sets the tempo of his heart-- near death, or Kageyama himself--but it's enough to make him feel deflated, to sink in to the weight behind his shoulder.
"It's a bee," Kageyama says nonchalantly, as if that means nothing. Kageyama's arm moves and he swats at the air as if he isn’t frightened at all.
"I never rejected you, Tobio-chan." Oikawa says on his next breath out. Kageyama stills, his arm still hanging in the air and Oikawa grabs for it, pulls it to his own side. His mouth opens, but nothing is said. Kageyama is warm, and toned, and Oikawa pushes on in his lack of response, "I wanted to. Dreamed of it."
Orange flowers drape over the fence, droopy and eavesdropping. Oikawa sees them all the time, but he doesn't know their name.
He drops Kageyama's arm, likes the weight of it where it drops on his side, and holds up his own invigorated fists. "I so wanted to see Tobio-chan's crying face. Something like a sad puppy, you know?"
"You're so unbelievably twisted," Kageyama comments. Oikawa isn't sure if this is a bad thing. He can see the tenseness in Kageyama's muscles, down to his hand. "So why didn't you just reject me?"
"I saw it," Oikawa continues. "Your face." His hands drop and he maneuvers himself around to look Kageyama right in the eyes. "And I didn't like it." He taps a sticky finger to the side of one of Kageyama's eyes. "I think I like this better," where Kageyama's eyes are as bright as the afternoon sky, where Oikawa can see the traces of hope mingling between the clouds reflecting from above them. Kageyama bites his lip and Oikawa cannot stop himself if he even had the strength to try.
He hooks his fingers along the round of Kageyama's ears, beckons him closer with tapered fingers at his jaw, and smashes their mouths together. Kageyama's darker hair soaks in the worst of the sun and Oikawa enjoys the soft warmth of it on his fingertips where they thread through every strand.
Kageyama is simple. Oikawa knows this, loves this, is cut from that same cloth, and is not surprised that when he leans away, Kageyama follows, lips lingering even when Oikawa licks along his own. "Citrus notes," he whispers in the lack of space between them, tittering.
"Does this mean you like me back?" His cheek looks sticky, and patchy, where Oikawa's fingers had touched him, had stained him, marked him.
Kageyama stares at him, eyes dark and drunk on something more than liquor, and Oikawa surges back forward. They'd stay like this, more than the afternoon, Oikawa is certain, if a bee hadn't landed in his hair too soon.
Kageyama smiles at him, just a touch shy, behind Maki's back on the way home and this, he thinks, feels a lot like winning.
Kageyama wakes up the morning of the new year and Oikawa is still there.
Or: after a bitter loss at the Summer Olympics in Paris, Oikawa and Kageyama find their way back to the city in winter, and learn that almost anything can bloom, with care, in time.
Or: you can run all you want, but you can't outrun your gay.
