ok apparently my haikyuu quadrant AU has decided (yes my AUs make decisions now. whatever) that it needed PALE iwaoi. why. With pining, misunderstandings, and then pale not-porn. Which actually starts BEFORE they get together.
this is the version of the quadrant AUs that starts when Earth make contact with the trolls, and of course Oikawa gets interested and learns everything he can get a hand on. And the quadrant system makes a lot of sense to him. Well. The black quadrant makes a lot of sense to him. Though the whole black ushioi thing should never have happened. But it did. And now we have to live with it.
The pale quadrant makes a lot of sense to him too. Also there might or not be some trolls being Very Shocked by the things he and iwaizumi get into in public. really. there might be blushing trolls. Who totally refuse to believe they’re not already together. and are even more convinced he’s having them on when they hear about middle school.,but well.
Anyway the point is that just because there’s no sex involved doesn’t mean confessing to your best friend is easy. It might even be a little harder, because will Iwa-chan really understand what he’s saying? What if he confesses and is not understood? Because those feelings are DEFINITELY not friendship, they’re DEFINITELY romantic, but- but. It’s way too easy to confuse moirallegiance with just being very close BFF and. He can’t have that. He can’t get the courage to confess and his feelings not being very much iunderstood.
(Which is a silly concern because iwaizumi is good at understanding him, but.)
Or not reciprocated. Because, well, just because HE gets the quadrant system at a visceral level, doesn’t mean iwa-chan does! Or he might, but HE might only feel friendship.
(meanwhile,. iwaizumi takes the part where he has siad nothing in that direction to mean that either oikawa is not interested in that quadrant, or jjst not interested in him,. Whic ^h is fine. Totally fine. He absolutely didn’t expect nything. I mean oikawa is experimenting with the black quadrant - once again, ushijima was a mistake - but that doesn’t mean he should get a partner in each quadrant, right? And. Well. Iwaizumi is - not sure how he feels about this alien system honestly. he’s entirely not sure if what he feels actually fit in any quadrant but -. Well. Obviously it’s a moot point to figure it out, given Oikawa’s lack of interest, right? Right.)
(also, pre-contact confusion. Mutual unspoken acknowledgment the other is hot,feelings that are not just friendship, or maybe not really friendship at all, and yet the idea of a conventional relationship -and the idea of sex -is - Nope.)
ok no but. it gets even weirder/more amusing when combined with the soulmates&enemies AU. Because teh names have so many interpretations already! but for the trolls - well tehy have names too, and they are Obviously Matesprits and Kismesis. (actually no, they also have a few ‘this person will repeatedly try to kill you in a very serious don’t take it lightly manner’ with moirail and not matesprist, they have few who have their own names, a few who have the same name on both wrists - like, there’s a lot fo things that can go on, and the matespris+kismesis interprtation is only has partly right than any human interpretation)
Anyway the point of the S&E quadrants Au is that while oikawa has Obviously iwaizumi and Kageyama. (i’ll fight you on this, i’m not kidding, i spent way too much time thinking about black oikage and reading iwaoi doujins/fanfics to give up on this), Iwaizumi has. Hm. Kinda OIkawa on both wrists.
Listen do you want to know how Not Fun that last Year at kitagawa wa? Because it was Not Fun.
The thing is, you ‘re not BORN with the Names. There’s not a Magical Date where you get your Names. Instead, you’ve got, at first, lines of text on each wrist, which, between one year old and threee years old, start to look like names. But! What happens is that Names fluctuates! A LOT.basically every day - every hour sometimes, your Names change. (you’re kinda encouraged to keep track of the Names - even if they’re not definitive, they’re definitely important. It can’t help you keep track of which wrists is which, because that changes a lot too)
And, between eleven and fifteen, they stop changing, slowly. So, the first time you get the same Names two days in a row, you start hiding them. It’s not generally the permanent configuration, but it should Settle soon.
So, for years, Iwa and oik have had each otehr’s name show up on the other regularly. (let’s talk about ho the whole enemy-thing means family memeber appears, so yeah. Platonic soulmates! (not wrong) so same gender name means OBVIOUSLY platonic or enemy. ABSOLUTELY. ) It’s okay! Until one day, during the last month of their second year at middle school, Iwa wakes up with the same name on both wrists and compeltely flips out.
Listen, he was what? 13? And he kinda assumed that it would be easy to figure out his Names, unless he somehow didn’t get Oikawa - but he didn’t believe it. And this - this means that even if they don’t Settle this way, he won’t know for sure. (also, they totally Settle this way.) It’s - not somethign he’s prepared to face.
So, yeah, complete and utter panic, that mostly manigfests into sudden distance from Oikawa. Just as he starts hiding his Names.
So, when OIkawa’s Names Settéle a month or two before, he’s understandably kinda. not very allright with the concept of Names in general. He kinda hoped things would get back to normal once his Names Settles, but if anything? it’s worse. Mostly, they manage to stay friends, Iwa is still here to forcibly take him out of the gym, but - yeah. things are Not Okay.
Just in time for Kageyama to arrive! And lsten, Kageyama’s Names Settled incredibly young. Not only that, but they Settled just when he either say volleyball for the first time, or the moment he fell in love with the sport, when he touched a ball for teh first time - it doesn’t matter. HGe knows the exact moment, he Felt it, and it had to do with volleyball.
So while Oik is - really not into the whole Names thing, little Kageyama? Oh, he Believes. And we remember first-year of-middle-school Kageyama,right? Earnest and smiling and just a bit awkward who admired his senpai and wanting nothing more than to learn from him? (and then becoming better. but tha’s another thing) Now imagine him having oikawa’s name on one of his wrist. Imagine him hopeful and starry-eyed, not sure if it’s a great rivalry or a great partnership, but either way, he can’t wait.
And you know, just because he has other problems doesn’t mean Oikawa isn’t still very much Not Okay with havign a genius on the team threatening his place. And having his name on his wrist? Oh it’s not making things better. At all. Whateevr it means - yeah.
Still, things basically goes like canon - including iwaizumi headburt. And that night, Iwaizumi Hajime looks at his wirsts, and he knows, now, that his place is by his best friend’s side, and that he wouldn’t have it any other way. That’s why he has his name, after all. And that means, since he’s made that decision, taht the biggest, most important fight of his life will be against Oikawa’s demons, the ones that live instead his head. That’s why he has his name.
It makes sense. It’s still too much,he still feels too young for that burden, but it doesn’t matter, because he understand, right then and there, tah he would make the same choice, Names or no Names.
(so he makes the decision not tot ell OIkawa, because if that’s too heavy for him, how would oikawa deal? For years, he won’t say anything.)
