Chapter Text
Oikawa awakens with a sharp and a dull pain, simultaneously.
Sharp pain, because someone just elbowed him in the temple.
Dull pain, oozing slowly throughout his whole body, from all the alcohol he drank last night.
He opens his eyes slightly. His eyelids feel heavy, his eyelashes are gooey. His head is aching and throbbing, and his lips are so dry they chap as he opens them. He breathes in through his slightly cloggy nose.
.
The room he is in is unknown for him; so is the smell of the fabric softener.
It’s different from the one he uses but not unpleasant.
It’s not a floral scent like the one he got used to when he woke up in his ex-girlfriend’s room. Rather, it’s a fresh smell, something that has either “mountain spring” or “ocean breeze” on its bottle.
..
The room he is in is unknown for him; so is the arm swaying above his head.
The hand is relatively big for a girl. It has long, slender fingers and nails cut short. The skin is pale but rough. Its calluses are way too familiar from somewhere.
…
The room he is in is unknown for him, so are the pair of boxers on the floor.
He winces at the fact that it’s a pair of boxers – not that he doesn’t approve of the pattern, on the contrary, the design fits his tastes just fine –, but he really would have preferred something more frilly.
The idea that he might have pulled it off of someone makes him dizzy.
Oikawa considers falling asleep again, hoping that when he wakes up next, he will wake up to a different situation.
For example, his own room.
Or his ex’s.
Or a couch at someone’s living room.
Really, the back door of some bar doesn’t sound that bad either…
The inside of his mouth is dry like a desert. A desert that someone poured napalm on and set on fire. It tastes like hell.
He is pretty sure that he puked at some point along the night. He wishes to jump up right now, to start for the bathroom and rinse his mouth well and drink from the tap until the thirst disappears from his mouth entirely.
Problem is, he has no idea where the bathroom is, and he is not willing to awaken his partner of the night to figure it out.
As he lies in the unknown bed in that unknown room, with an unknown arm dangling above his head, memories of the night start to knock on the door of his consciousness.
He recalls something involving Matsukawa and some other third years from the volleyball club. A goukon, was it? Iwa-chan and Makki ditched them for some arm-wrestling tournament, and then someone said they are missing two people for a goukon.
He remembers Mattsun raising his hand for him.
He opens his eyes again, slowly, carefully. He tries to take in the view, the room, the hand, everything, and analyse.
The walls are light blue, the furniture, as much as he can see, simple.
No posters on the wall, at least not on the side he can see, to help him identify his partner-for-the-night.
He then examines the hand, hanging aimlessly mid-air. He swallows back the urge to push it off of his face, inspecting the tiniest details of it meticulously. The skin rough on the fingertips but soft on the palms, and milky white like that of a yamato nadeshiko.
As soon as he reaches his simile, ‘the epitome of pure, feminine beauty’ decides to slap him in the face.
The person next to him turns, and murmurs something half-asleep before dozing off again in a voice that’s undoubtedly male.
Oikawa feels like his heart is about to jump out of its place, but he doesn’t dare to move.
Instead, he tries hard to activate his brain cells he tried to kill so methodically last night.
Oikawa recalls how awkward he felt, with all the girls’ attention that he would usually find flattering, under the grudging glares of his friends.
Mattsun was not there to help him out – he hooked up with someone. Probably. Oikawa saw him kissing with some girl beside the toilets for sure.
He also remembers how the beauty of the group has sit on his lap – but that beauty neither had calloused hands, nor she wore a pair of boxers with banana patterns on them, he knows for certain – and how he pushed her off by calling for a toilet-break.
Oikawa remembers the intense sensation of wanting to escape.
He remembers… what does he remember again?
.
Oh yeah.
They went out of town to meet some girls from another school, with cute blazer uniforms.
..
Oh.
Yeah.
They went to Torono town.
…
To meet the prettiest girls in Miyagi prefecture.
The girls of Karasuno.
His heart nearly jumps out of his chest at the sudden thought that the boy next to him might be Tobio.
Nah.
Impossible.
For one, Tobio wouldn’t have such great taste in underwear.
Oikawa could bet all of his monthly allowance that Karasuno’s setter wears the same type of lame white briefs every day. Not that he would ever, ever want to see the briefs of Kageyama Tobio.
His stomach takes a painful turn.
Definitely not Tobio.
Nonetheless, the realization stays with him. The reason why he connected the boy next to him to Tobio the moment he remembered he went for Torono town the day before was not because he realized that he had been on a goukon with girls from Karasuno.
It was the hands. Calloused fingertips, relatively soft palm.
These hands are not that of a wing spiker, nor are those of a middle blocker. The fingertips, that became hard from all the tosses he has done… there are undoubtedly the hands of a setter.
He knew it from the first glance, it just took his alcohol burnt brain a bit more time to realize.
He considers Yahaba for a fleeting moment – he has the same pale shade of skin, though probably with a slightly yellower undertone – but he hushes the idea as he recalls that he went out with only third years.
He is kind of thankful. Yahaba is a good kid, who’s working hard for his club and who’s desperate to get a girl… getting laid by his captain he looks up to and fears at the same time would break him beyond repair.
The boy next to him shifts again. A soft huff of air runs down the nape of Oikawa’s neck as he snuggles closer to him.
Oikawa is uncomfortably reminded that they are both naked, as something not-so-familiar rubs against his butt.
He pulls away, crawling further away from his bed-sharer, slowly, as unnoticeable as possible.
The boy turns again, rolling over Oikawa’s side of the bed, placing his hand conveniently on the stomach of the captain of Aoba Jousai.
Oikawa presses his eyes together firm shut, but that doesn’t help to relieve him from the gross sensation of the weight of the hand through the thin blanket over his body. He can feel the other’s hand on his muscles, he can feel the thumb resting just above his weak spot of skin under his belly button…
He inhales sharply, sneaking further away, inch by inch, not to awaken the boy who claims more and more territory on the bed.
It’s the moment a stray leg lands on his hips that Oikawa falls off the bed.
“For God’s sake!” he shouts, drops of tears forming in the corners of his eyes from frustration.
A deep, dark giggle emerges from under the blankets. The boy lifts his head: his ashen-blonde hair is a terrible case of bed-head, his face is slightly puffy from sleeping, and a wide grin is on his face.
“You provide premium quality amusement, Oikawa,” the boy greets him.
“Fuck it, Sugawara,” Oikawa replies back, throwing the banana boxers into the face of Karasuno’s setter. “You play unfair.”
“Or you are just not a good sport,” the boy remarks, giggling softly in his pillow. He doesn’t even care for the pair of boxers dangling idly from his ear.
Oikawa shrugs.
Now he remembers. His memory clears up at once, and the pieces suddenly fit together.
He was annoyed. He felt awkward. He wanted to be anywhere, but in that karaoke room with the hungry girls and angry boys all gawking their eyes out in his direction. He hated the smell, the songs the others picked, the mushiness of the sofa, the syrupiness of his coke…
He left for the restroom, but he didn’t stop until the entrance.
He bumped into Sugawara at the front desk. He came to sing, to blow the fuse.
Oikawa knocked his wallet out of his hands by accident, littering the floor with coins. He squatted down instantly to help pick up the money, muttering fast apologies, when the sleeve of his coat was grabbed by long, pale fingers.
“Oh, look. Such royalty in our humble town,” Sugawara greeted him, amused. “What brings you here, picking up coins for the townspeople, great king?”
“Shut it, Mr Refreshing,” Oikawa mumbled, smashing the cash into the palm of the other setter.
“You seem frustrated,” Sugawara said in a quiet voice. “Care to join?”
Oikawa recalls it now. Sugawara has a tricky voice. It’s soothing, but haunting at the same time.
He remembers how the boy led him back to an empty room, just a few doors away from the goukon he abandoned. The songs Sugawara chose were old and melancholic. He sang them with passion.
Oikawa felt as if he was in another country, or more like another universe. No open gazes of girls hunting for a popular boyfriend; no ill glances of boys regretting they took him with them. No mocking remarks from Mattsun about how he still cries over an ex who left him.
Just Sugawara, who couldn’t care less for his problems.
Sugawara, who had his own pain to sing out.
It was… refreshing.
He remembers them walking out of the karaoke bar some time before midnight. He remembers how the stars were shining on the clear night sky. He remembers how they walked down, then still fully sober, in the direction of the station. Sugawara offered to walk him to his last bus, which they wouldn’t have missed… should they not stopped only meters away, at the entrance of a liquor stand.
“Hey,” Oikawa started. “Do you think they would serve us here?”
Now, that Sugawara peeks out of the blankets with a devilishly innocent look on his face, Oikawa recalls more than ever the expression the boy had on his face last night, under the flickering neon lights of the city. It was a look completely indifferent. Lifeless.
“I don’t see why they wouldn’t,” he said solemnly, sinking his hands inside his pockets. “We are in casual clothes anyway, there is no telling we are high school students.”
It was Oikawa’s idea.
Yet, it was Sugawara who pushed the entrance open.
And they were served. Oooh, they were.