(un)conditional

Oikawa had been fifteen when he got his first girlfriend.

A young, fresh sophomore at the time, he'd been foolish enough to believe that that had been love.

They'd gone on coffee dates and to the cinema and to each other's houses, hung out in the school courtyard, treated each other like boyfriends and girlfriends did.

It was sickeningly sugar-sweet and sappy and not quite perfect enough to be perfect, but just perfect enough that Oikawa had enjoyed it anyways.

He'd been overjoyed to tell his family about the girl he poured his whole soul into, so he ran home after school like fifteen-year-olds do with his heart halfway in his throat and a huge smile on his face and a plan to tell them everything.

It had been two months since they started dating, and all was well, and he'd announced to the whole house just how much he loved her like it was the only thing he had left to do.

He remembers that her hair was long and pretty and red, and that her eyes had sparkled, and that she had just a few more freckles than him. He remembers thinking she was the prettiest girl in the world.

He remembers that the first time he told his dad about her, he'd been lectured for saying he loved her.

He'd been told love was something conditional, something you had to earn and certainly not something to give out to the girl you sat next to in chemistry class. He remembers feeling guilty for wanting to say he still did.

He remembers crying in his bedroom late at night after everything had all gone wrong, and believing his dad was right and never to tell anyone you loved them without good reason to.

He probably shouted a few too many angry words at her in the throes of heartbreak, and slowly he'd healed and started saying I love you again, and never let it get to him more than a fifteen year old boy would.

He remembers letting her go.

Oikawa was sixteen when he got his first boyfriend.

He'd internalized the fact that he ever wanted one for several years prior until he'd met a pretty boy who made him want to shout it to the whole world. They hadn't held hands in the hallways or kissed each other in public the same way Oikawa did with his girlfriend; they were private and careful behind locked and bolted doors.

But Oikawa had been happy, and he'd thought maybe this time love was in his favor.

He remembers that he never told his parents about that. They probably would've been fine with it, but it worried him too much to try.

He remembers crying over that boy too. He remembers wondering why he thought it was worth it. He remembers thinking that his dad was right and that love really did just have to be conditional, and that boy, that relationship, just didn't fall under good conditions. And that was okay.

Oikawa was seventeen when he fell for Iwaizumi.

They'd been talking for longer than that ( since they were children) , long enough that they knew each other like the backs of their hands. Iwaizumi had been also seventeen years old at the time, and Oikawa had barely even noticed that he was falling until he was head over heels, immobilized midair and positively unable to live without him.

(He's always been that way)

They'd spent night after night either on call or at each other's houses, laughing at each other's stupid jokes, talking about their favorite songs and their hopes for the future. It didn't matter that Iwaizumi was going to be 4,000 miles away from him after they graduate or that he was pretty and smart and talented and funny in ways that Oikawa didn't think he'd ever be.

Oikawa had wanted him more than anything in the world.

He's twenty-one, and he thinks he still does.

Now he's got the best job he could ever ask for and he's six years away from the silly little fifteen-year-old who'd fallen in love for the first time, and he's a better person and things are looking positively skyward for him.

Now, he's not stuck remembering anymore, because the life he's got is the only one he wants. Oikawa is happy and he has amazing friends and a thriving community, and the ability to do so much where before he could only fantasize. He's twenty-one, and he'll never be fifteen again, and he's really, really happy.

And he's also still in love. Maybe.

—

It's been four years since he fell for Iwaizumi. Four stupid years that changed absolutely everything, and here he is, still in love with the boy he grew up with. They are both 21 rather than 17, four years later, and he still loves him now just like he did then.

(Whoops.)

Oikawa can rationalize that it isn't his fault for being like that in the first place. He's easily attached, especially to people who like the same things he does, and Iwaizumi is the easiest person in the world to get along with. They're both volleyball whizzes, both stupid idiots who were losers in high school, and combined with Makki's humoris energy and fierce enthusiasm they've become the closest group of friends (along with mattsun) Oikawa thinks he'll ever be a part of.

He can rationalize, too, that Iwaizumi is just easy to be in love with. He can rationalize that anyone could love him, that anyone could fall for someone as sheerly perfect as Iwaizumi is, but deep down there's a knot in Oikawa's stomach that makes him want to be the only one who loves him like that.

He can rationalize that he's spent his whole life thinking love is something that has to be bought, but that with Iwaizumi it feels like it just exists. Between them, nothing more and nothing less than real. Oikawa thinks that's the easiest thing to believe, because it's true.

He doesn't want love to be for sale. He wants it wholly, in its entirety, not with some silly little price tag attached.

Unfortunately, he and Iwaizumi aren't even together, so all of that's an idle fantasy.

Still, Oikawa thinks he can imagine.

—

"Oikawa?"

The soft shuffle of tired limbs against bed sheets reminds Oikawa just how late it must be for Iwaizumi, lying there on the other end. The tiny timer on the call at the top of his phone indicates that they've been on call for around four hours now. They have just been talking about random things, how Oikawa's team won the last few games, and how Iwaizumi is back training with Japan's national team. "Yeah?" he mumbles. The slipping tiredness of his own eyelids is probably just as heavy as Iwaizumi's.

"Can we just talk tomorrow?" He's acting politer than usual, Oikawa observes, so he must be either getting tired or irritated, probably a combination of the two things. He makes a note not to push him.

"That's fine," he yawns with a stretch of his arm, shutting down the plug-in and listening as, four thousand miles away, Iwaizumi does the same. His heart aches at the crackle of static on the other end, and he shoves it down. He has no time to be lovesick anyways.

"Are you gonna go to bed?"

"Well, are you?"

"I guess so," Oikawa decides, shoving away his chair beneath the desk once and for all. "It's early, but I'm tired enough."

"Bet you are." His camera's off, but Oikawa can sense his grin. "You practiced all day today, you really need to catch a break." He adds, as an afterthought, "you idiot."

"practice is what I do, Iwa-chan," he says with a little more flair than he probably needs to have at eleven-o-clock at night. "I like volleyball."

He sounds sleepy. "You think I don't know that?"

"I think you do know that."

Iwaizumi huffs out a laugh. "I do. I wish you'd give yourself a day off or something, though-"

"Now, why would I do that-"

"Just one, Shittykawa, c'mon."

Okay, so maybe Oikawa needs a break, but why should it matter to him? He's doing perfectly fine practicing this much, and it's not like he's even shouldering all of the work anyways, having plenty of other people to help him with it. "No," he says, very pointedly and very decidedly.

"Let's argue 'bout this tomorrow, Iwa-chan, okay?"

"No, I don't think I will," Iwaizumi shoots back, and although it's lighthearted, Oikawa certainly doesn't miss the annoyance that shows itself in shallow hues beneath his calmness. "In fact, I'm not going to bed until you say you'll take a day off."

"You what?"

"Yeah."

"What happened to talking tomorrow? I can just hang up on you-"

"No, you can't."

"No, I can't." Of course I can't.

"So."

There's something really pretty about Iwaizumi's tired voice, especially when he's mumbling half-insults over the phone, or maybe Oikawa is just whipped. Either way, he definitely won't be hanging up anytime soon.

"So," Oikawa wavers uncertainly,

"What?"

"So are you gonna listen to me?"

"No," he says, a bit pained. "I don't need it."

"Yes you do!" Iwaizumi claps his hands loudly into the speakers. Oikawa winces, despite his best efforts not to, and jerks his ear away.

"Ow," he mutters.

"Sorry," Iwaizumi mutters, "won't do that again. Anyways, Crappykawa. Are you stupid?"

"A little," he admits.

"Well, yeah, you are," He clicks his tongue. Mumbles something beneath his breath. Breathes out a laugh that could easily be missed. "Okay."

"O...kay?"

Iwaizumi suddenly sounds oddly like he's plotting something, perhaps pulling out another Iwaizumi Plan that's almost sure to get him exactly what he wants. It's not the first time he's bargained for a compromise, and Oikawa, being the idiot of a reoccurring target that he is, almost always falls for said compromises. Not this time, though, no, this time he's going to be smart no matter what bullshit Iwaizumi pulls.

This time he's going to-

"I'll wear that hoodie you sent me."

-never mind.

"You'll what?" he splutters, the surprise almost making him forget his tiredness entirely.

"If you take a break," Iwaizumi reiterates gently, "I'll wear the hoodie. The one you sent me that I said I wouldn't wear. I'll do it, Oikawa."

Oh, my god. "Iwa-chan..."

Oikawa, overcome with longing and secret pining, has a habit of doing impulsive things when he feels lonely. As Iwaizumi is the object of his affection, he's almost always the receiver, so it shouldn't have come as any surprise when Oikawa sent him over a favorite hoodie. It was supposed to be a joke - It's just a piece of athletico san juan merch he'd gotten a bit attached to and worn a few times. He was dared (definitely..) to send it to Iwaizumi, but now he finds that he's desperate to see Iwaizumi in it, to see their size and height difference and how pretty he looks in Oikawa's clothes, and yeah he's definitely whipped.

Iwaizumi had outrightly refused to wear it when it showed up uninvited in his mailbox. Oikawa, disappointed as he'd been, would never want to force him. But here he is, offering back up the leverage.

"You know that's unfair, Iwa. I can't say no to that."

"So don't," he says, positively glowing with triumph. "Just don't. You take your break, and I'll wear your hoodie. Okay?"

Oikawa wonders when he let a pretty boy in his hoodie override his work drive, but he thinks he doesn't care. "Okay," he groans. "You got me."

"Hooray."

"Hooray my ass," he complains, but he's smiling.

They sleep call together again, phones tucked beneath covers and eyes shut, and Oikawa's stomach is horribly fluttery as Iwaizumi whispers to him a soft goodnight. As he drifts off, his mind begins to tip into yearning again as he wonders, what would it be like if he had Iwaizumi here? What would it be like if they were together?

God, he doesn't know, but he wants to.

It takes maybe half an hour for Oikawa to drift off to the thought of Iwaizumi, Iwaizumi in his clothing, Iwaizumi in his arms.

—-

He isn't sure how he fell so hopelessly for a boy, but he doesn't mind.

The prospect of Iwaizumi wearing his hoodie is, frankly, the only thing keeping Oikawa from diving straight back into bed when he wakes up first thing in the morning a couple days later.

He waits around his phone, charged with electric excitement, all but ready to see the closest thing he'll get to hugging Iwaizumi for months and months. He's stuck on the idea of it, and nothing else even matters until he hears that fateful phone notification.

A message from Iwaizumi pops up in his inbox. Fingers flying to his phone, Oikawa opens his messages and reads it with wide eyes. Okay, so maybe he's a little too excited.

Oikawa?

morning Iwa, he sends, even though he knows it's not morning for Iwaizumi anymore, rather it's one in the afternoon and the daylight will be falling in strips through his bedroom window and onto his balcony and he probably looks stunning under the sun.

hi, you're finally awake

took you long enough

Oikawa snorts. You just wake up later than me, shut up

no, he replies, and Oikawa wishes terribly that he could hear him say it right up close. He's halfway to the call button when Iwaizumi gets there first, synced with Oikawa like his darker-haired counterpart, his shorter mirror image.

"Morning, idiot," Iwaizumi says the moment they get on call. His camera's on, tilted at a strange angle where only a bit of his head shows. Oikawa eyes him with mild interest and turns his on as well. "How'd you sleep?"

Oikawa would've been better with you, but that's much too boyfriend-ish for a single guy with a secret infatuation to say. "Fine," he settles on. "I accidentally woke up at like five, almost knocked over my whole beside table."

He tells the story like it's just another thing about himself, because it is. Why should Iwaizumi dislike him for being exactly who he is - often clumsy and easily wakeable and usually irritated when shaken from sleep?

(Iwaizumi will never judge him. Iwaizumi cares. Oikawa knows that much.)

"You clumsy idiot," Iwaizumi teases. "Well, I didn't do that. I woke up like a normal person. I even made pancakes."

"Really? The cinnamon roll-looking ones?"

"You're so..uncultured"

"What?" He raises an eyebrow. "I live in Argentina! What are you on about?"

He sighs "They're pancakes, Oikawa." Iwaizumi shifts the camera angle to show a little more of his dark hair, shiny eyes popping out from beneath the locks that sweep his forehead.

"Disgusting."

He rolls his eyes and disregards the comment, sparing no time for Iwaizumi's playful bickering.

"You know what else is disgusting?"

"What would that be, Oikawa?"

"You're not wearing the hoodie." He frowns.

Iwaizumi's eyebrows furrow, and he shoots a disapproving look right into the camera. "I am"

"You... are?" He almost cranes his neck to take a peek before he remembers painfully that Iwaizumi is too far to do that.

"Can I see?"

Show me, please, just show me.

It's almost sad just how bad he wants to see it.

"Fine, you dumbass. Here."

Iwaizumi angles the camera down properly this time, and sure enough, he's wearing it, just like he said he would. Oikawa wonders why he ever doubted him for a second, but only for a second before his entire mind is replaced with oh.

Oh.

"Oh," he gasps.

The fabric fits Iwaizumi, wrapping his arms and waist in dark material, the san juan logo stark against the black of the hoodie. It's simple and barely even different to what he normally wears, but it suits Iwaizumi so well, and that hoodie is Oikawa's, and now the prettiest boy (besides himself) in the world who he also happens to be in love with is wearing it like it's nothing but a pair of pajamas.

"Oh..?"

"Sorry Iwa-chan!" Hyper-aware of his camera being on, Oikawa fights to maintain an air of composure.

"Yeah, it looks good, you idiot. I told you it would."

"Maybe you were right," he admits sheepishly. "It's comfortable. Don't make me wear it again though." Oikawa watches Iwaizumi pull the hood over his head and snuggle into it, and smiles wryly. He doesn't think he'll have to.

They spend the rest of the day on call, and Oikawa swears that every minute, every second, he falls farther and farther for Iwaizumi. He's irresistibly soft today; Oikawa thinks if he were right there he'd barely be able to stop himself from scooping Iwaizumi into his arms and kissing him all over his stupid hair.

He doesn't voice it aloud, but he yearns desperately for it, even if it's stupid and he shouldn't and he will get hurt in the end.

Because how can he not?

"Iwa-chan," he says, after the sun begins to set on his end and has already long since set for Iwaizumi, "you can take the hoodie off, you know."

It's been hours, hours of Iwaizumi just wearing the thing, and hours of Oikawa forgetting he even needs to work to play online games with him and cook experimental dinner and pet Patches instead. Hours of nothing but bliss.

He doesn't want it to end, but he figures Iwaizumi is probably tired of the hoodie by now.

"What?" Iwaizumi, still with his camera on, turns around from whatever he's arranging on his desk to look up at Oikawa. "You want me to take it off?"

"I mean." He pauses, letting the fork he's been eating fall to his plate with a clatter. "Don't you?"

There's a slightly flustered look on Iwaizumi's face as he blinks, shakes his head, and fiddles with the strings uncertainly. "well. I don't really mind."

"You-"

And at that moment, Oikawa realizes something. Iwaizumi didn't hate the hoodie, didn't want to refuse it, never has. Probably has worn it already anyways. It was useless leverage. He likes it, doesn't he?

"You like it?"

He scoffs. "Well, I mean, yeah. It's comfortable."

It's comfortable. What else is it, Iwa-chan? Does it smell like me? Do you wear it to pretend I'm holding you?

Oikawa, reckless, pushes further. "What else is it, Iwa-chan?"

"Huh-"

"Do you like it because it's mine?"

Iwaizumi bites his tongue. "So what if I do?"

"That's..." He remembers to breathe for only a second.

So what if I do?

I don't know, Iwa. You tell me.

"I dunno, I just think it's funny, you're pretending you hate the idea of wearing my hoodie and then not wanting to take it off. You like me that much?"

Oikawa smirks, despite his spiraling thoughts. He likes the way Iwaizumi reacts, how it makes his heart feel. He doesn't want to stop.

"When did I say I liked you that much?"

Oikawa doesn't answer.

"You like the smell of me, Iwa-chan?" he murmurs. "Remind you of something you want?"

"I,well-'' he almost chokes too sincerely, sincere enough that Oikawa almost feels his own see through facade break.

Tell me you want me. Tell me, tell me, tell me.

"Maybe," he admits. Whatever answer he'd been expecting, it certainly wasn't that.

He's so red, and it's so late, and suddenly Oikawa's cockiness slips away from his grasp because everything feels very, very real. "I was joking," he says quietly.

"I wasn't."

—

Iwaizumi glances right into the camera, and Oikawa's stomach ties itself into a complicated knot.

His eyes sparkle, deep and brown and just a bit nervous.

His face, lightly freckled from the sun and dotted with pink, holds an expression Oikawa doesn't often see on him, thinks he's only seen once before, late at night on another call on their own where the lines between friendship and something more had begun to blur.

Iwaizumi had been so open that night, lying wrapped in the midnight coolness of his apartment and laughing at all of Oikawa's stupid jokes and saying things he perhaps normally wouldn't have, and for a moment Oikawa had thought, really, he'd thought, that he could say it.

It was on the tip of his tongue.

They'd fallen into complete quietness after a while, tired enough to drift into a slumber, and Oikawa forgot all precautions.

"Iwa-chan?" he whispered, when the silence felt right. "I think I might have something to tell you."

He heard Iwaizumi shift around on the other end, and held his breath. They'd been so close.

"What is it?"

"I dunno if now's the best time, but I've been meaning to tell you for... for a while."

He waited for Iwaizumi to respond before going further, getting only a gentle "mhm" on the other side and hoping it was good enough.

"It's complicated," he said, ready for the confession to fall from his throat once and for all. He took a leap of faith, clung onto the words he'd been holding back his whole life-

"Iwa-chan, I think I..."

"Hold on, Oikawa, one second."

-and they fell.

He didn't say it. He should've known. Iwaizumi stepped away for five minutes, apparently occupied with something in his kitchen, and left Oikawa with only far-away noises of a domestic life he didn't have. Oikawa wondered if Iwaizumi knew. If he'd left the phone on purpose, perhaps, and therefore left the words unspoken.

He didn't try to say them again. They fell asleep on call, and he let Iwaizumi have his silence. Let Iwaizumi take control of his whole heart once more, and let him stir the ocean between them with lithe hands and soft words as he whispered, "sleep well, Oikawa."

He didn't sleep well.

He isn't sleeping now either.

"Oikawa?" Iwaizumi whispers, so, so loudly.

"Yeah?"

"Can I keep this?"

He shifts the hoodie around his shoulders. Dark fabric clenches beneath tanned fingertips, bunching in Iwaizumi's hands, spilling through his fingers like ink.

He looks like he aches to belong to Oikawa. "Yeah," Oikawa says, just loud enough for the mic to pick up, "yeah, yeah you can."

How did we get like this?

"Good, because-" Now he's blushing furiously, and Oikawa knows his face looks exactly the same if not redder. "I mean. It's nothing, really."

"I mean, it's warm, isn't it? Comfy?"

"Mhm."

It's nothing, really.

He plays with the words between restless hands. It isn't, is it? It isn't nothing.

No, Oikawa knows it's not, knows that in the subtle shift of Iwaizumi's eyes away from the camera lense, there is something so much more than just nothing. Not something he can put a name to, nor utter even a single word on without it having the potential to be false. But something.

He doesn't know what to say, to think, as he watches Iwaizumi readjust himself beneath the sweater that now belongs to both of them. He doesn't know if the air he breathes is thicker than before, barely aware of it rushing through his lungs and settling itself in the pit of his chest.

But looking at Iwaizumi, breathing seems second-best to him; so Oikawa, unable to pinpoint the feelings that flutter in his chest, lets himself be breathless.

When they hang up hours later, it's with a tense unsureness, a feeling of things left unsaid. Oikawa doesn't push it. Iwaizumi doesn't either. They don't fall asleep together that night.

–

Love is meant to be conditional.

Oikawa understands that by now. Understands that a hand to hold or a pretty smile isn't enough to make you love someone forever. Love is meant to be earned, kept in a little box and treasured. But he's beginning to think it's not that way for Iwaizumi.

The thought fucking terrifies him.

All his life, he's gambled for love. He grew up in a place where love was spent like money, only on the things you really needed and sometimes on the things you wanted if you had enough to spare. Iwaizumi, though - Iwaizumi gives himself away for free, and Oikawa wants to do the same without worrying about a price, without worrying about having to pay for it or spend it wisely. He wants to spend it all on him. Every stupid, foolish little bit of it - what is love if not fool's gold, after all?

But he doesn't know how, no matter if Iwaizumi is smiling or calling him tearfully at some ungodly hour because he needs to talk about something. Doesn't know how to love him properly, because what would he ever want Oikawa for, if he gets nothing in exchange?

Is the whole of your heart enough to give a person?

They haven't talked properly since that call, skirting loosely around territory neither of them understand, and Oikawa is beginning to think it isn't.

It's already four in the morning when he decides he wants to get over it, lying in bed with the curtains shut miserably for hours prior. Oikawa's tired of thinking, especially about Iwaizumi and everything he can't have, would rather think about trivial things instead.

He opens his phone, then instagram, then hits the Go Live button on his account. He doesn't go live often, but wasting the next few hours on something other than a boy across the entire world sounds nice.

Chat floods in. He greets them softly as he scrolls through their messages, letting them ask questions and trying to come up with answers.

"I know I don't do this often," he tells his eager viewers, and a small smile sticks to his face.

"I know it's prolly a bad time for a lot of you guys, too, but I couldn't sleep, I guess."

He talks a little about his own sleeping patterns, finding that he has quite a lot of stories of his bouts of insomnia as a teenager. It's funny how many stories you can pull out of a single moment, he thinks, and tries not to let it remind him of Iwaizumi.

"I remember,my friend Makki and I were on call one time," Oikawa says, recalling the memory with a fond glance at Makki's contact at the corner of his screen. "It was like, twelve AM, so I made him go to sleep because we had school the next day. I was still awake when he woke up, and he said-"

A laugh bubbles up in his chest, and he has to stop for a moment. The chat responds with peaked interest, wondering what on earth Makki could've said that makes Oikawa laugh about it even now.

"It's not even funny," he says through a contradictory spell of laughter. "He said he'd come over and take my volleyball himself, if I didn't start going to sleep too. He was dead set on it, I bet he still remembers."

That's a story that'll maybe be all over Twitter for the next few days. He smiles, again, at the thought of it.

"There's more to that story, I think. I think Iw-"

The name almost spills out of his mouth without intent to. Iwaizumi, Iwaizumi, Iwaizumi.

Fucking hell.

Oikawa scrambles to correct himself. "-I actually. I don't know what i was gonna say. I dunno. Anyways."

He moves right along, refusing to dwell on the unsavory thought of his stupid childhood friend. The memory teases him every time he falls silent.

"I can't read any of this," Oikawa half-groaned. Chat moves faster than he can let his eyes adjust to. "I uh, might actually move the QnA to Twitter."

He opens a new tab, blinking at the brightness of the screen, and clicks on the search bar when suddenly, quite suddenly, there's a tiny ping from his notifications.

He pauses. Closes the twitter tab, says something he doesn't even hear to his chat, and opens up Discord to the sight he already knew was going to await him - Iwaizumi.

Of course it's from him. Oikawa readies himself.

what were you gonna say about me? the message reads, outlined so sharply against the dark gray background of the window, almost daunting in nature. Oikawa knows, despite everything, that he doesn't mean to sound harsh.

nothing important!!, he texts back. don't worry about it :)

not worried about it

just wondering

Wondering? Wondering about what? Wondering the same way Oikawa has been wondering?

I'm live, Iwa-chan, he replies with a smile that may or may not carry into his own voice as he says something offhanded. give me a second

You never go live, were you thinking about me?

He isn't aware that he's fallen silent until his rapid keyboard clicking sounds ten times louder than usual. Iwaizumi, angry, sometimes reserved Iwaizumi with the most uncertainty of auras and the most cautious of demeanors, is being bold.

Well, bolder than he normally was.

His face heats up. Was I thinking about him?

Oikawa ends the live ten minutes later. His heart is racing.

He fumbles with shaking hands over his mouse and calls Iwaizumi, letting his colorful profile picture take over the whole of Oikawa's screen and even more of his mind. His familiar voice envelopes Oikawa's ears as he picks up, offering a "hello," and maybe it hasn't even been 24 hours but Oikawa is beyond relieved to hear him again.

"Iwa-chan," he says the moment he picks up, the word like a prayer on his tongue.

"Oikawa," he says, and there's a shyness in his voice that didn't carry to the smug messages lingering in their DMs. "Yeah, hi."

They square each other up, awkward. Neither of them speak, neither know what to say. The dark chill only four AM can bring creeps down Oikawa's neck.

He clears his throat. "I'm... sorry about last night."

"What? Sorry about-"

"You know what I mean," Oikawa says abashedly, "and I'm sorry. For... for being all forward like that, then for hanging up on you."

For almost telling you I love you right in-between.

"Oikawa," Iwaizumi says again,unusually soft. "Did you think I was mad at you?"

"Were you not?"

"Not really, I was just-" He coughs awkwardly. "I guess I was embarrassed."

Oh.

"You too?"

"I mean, y- what?"

Oikawa breathes. In, out, in, out. I guess I really have to do this now.

"There's a reason," he says, "that I acted like that yesterday, and, um." Suddenly aware that Iwaizumi's camera is on, he changes his angle onto his face as well. "I guess I should tell you."

He can see the anxiety flash in Iwaizumi's eyes, and it ricochets right off into his chest.

He tries to ignore it.

I have to tell him, to fix this, to explain, now that I'm here.

Iwaizumi deserves the truth.

"What is-"

"It's because, um," he mumbles. "I've liked you more than a friend for a very long time."

The air stills, and Oikawa's confession lingers in the night air, and four years have gone by just like that and now they're sitting here on call and it's happening, it's really happening, and this is it.

He hears Iwaizumi gasp, as if trying to swallow the feeling that seems to surface in both their chests all at once, overflowing and uncontrollable in the way that only love can be.

Iwaizumi is disbelieving.

"You mean it?"

Oikawa means every second. Every word. Everything.

Four years, all for him.

"Of course I-" He exhales shakily. "Of course I mean it, Iwaizumi, oh my god, of course I do.

Fuck, how could I ever n-"

"Tooru." A shocked smile peeks out from behind his sleeve, wide eyes and red cheeks glowing to match it, and Oikawa thinks he might be the most beautiful thing in the world.

His next words seem to tremble.

"I- I love you too. It's okay."

Warmth explodes in Oikawa's stomach, and his own hand flies to his mouth. Across from him, so many miles away, his brown-haired mirror image laughs just the same way he does.

"You idiot," he giggles, and now he can't stop smiling and there's a million perfect little butterflies sticking to his face and his clothes and bursting out of his screen and he swears he's never loved anything more than he loves the boy who just said he loved him back.

He loves me too. He loves me too.

Oikawa could cry. "You stupid little idiot."

"I'm the idiot? Who's the one who-"

"You're always the idiot," Oikawa buries his face in his hands, overwhelmed by pink and red and perfect, because this, this is all he's wanted, even though they're so, so far apart that it hurts, this is all he's ever going to need. "Oh my god, Iwa-chan, I- I love you so much. I've loved you since I was fucking seventeen and I-"

"I know," Iwaizumi whispers, "I know, Oikawa."

"That's four years," he says, peeking up at his phone again and seeing the blush still stark on Iwaizumi's cheeks, the overjoyed sparkle still bright in his eyes. "You're... okay with that?"

Iwaizumi just nods, unable to speak.

Oikawa thinks he understands.

He might not have spoken, but Oikawa knows it in the way Iwaizumi smiles, knows it in the tiniest tilts of his head, knows he's felt the same way for years without even having to ask.

"How long for you, then?" he teases, full of admiration, and it's not even really a question because Oikawa reads him so easily this time. "Four years?"

Iwaizumi's warm brown eyes meet his own through the screen, and they crinkle up as he smiles.

"What if it's longer than that?"

Oikawa's eyes go wide. "Then... then I'll do everything I can to make that stay. To make you happy."

He declares it like it's all he's good for, expecting to be met with approval.

He gets anything but that.

"Oikawa," Iwaizumi giggles, and now his face is splitting into a million fond little things that compliment him just as well as anything else in the world, and Oikawa wonders if he's ever been anything less than absolutely beautiful. "I'm already happy with this. You don't have to- to earn it, or something."

But wait.

Oikawa chews on his lip. He lets it sink in, but it seems more to pool on top of his skin like rain rather than soak into it.

Because... how?

Love is something to be earned.

"I-" He swallows lamely. "-don't?"

Iwaizumi brushes a perfectly holdable hand through his hair, a content little sigh escaping his lips before he speaks again. "Mom told me at a young age that the best kind of love was unconditional," he whispers.

"Did she?" How could she?

He hates how uncertain he sounds, so small that Iwaizumi seems to notice it too. "Yeah," he says. "I never really believed her, at first. Wasn't that I didn't want to, but I didn't meet anyone who made me think it was true. Until I met-"

There's a silence, like someone turned the radio down, and Oikawa isn't sure if he should dial it up again.

"Until you met...?" He lets Iwaizumi linger on the words for a moment longer.

"Till I met you," he mumbles.

Oikawa thinks he could cry just hearing him speak the words.

Instead, he just looks into the camera and hopes to reach right through to him. "Do you know how much you mean to me?" he murmurs.

"I do," Iwaizumi says, quiet and soft. "I have to."

"Iwa. Can I tell you something?"

He's overflowing with questions, but Iwaizumi just sits patiently and answers them (odd), one after the next, never tiring of providing some kind of solace or an invisible hand to hold.

"Yeah, tell me."

"I think I got brought up on conditional love."

He feels selfish saying it. After all, he had a nice life when he was younger; perhaps stupid, perhaps too sheltered to understand what it meant to be a good person, but a nice life nonetheless.

It's still true, though.

Iwaizumi's expression splits into one of concern.

"I mean," Oikawa rushes, "I'm okay. I'm fine, it's just... Dad liked to tell me I had to earn the love I got. So I went the whole way, and I never really loved somebody without needing to."

"I think I understand," Iwaizumi says. "Love shouldn't have to be like that."

The light from his bedroom washes over his face, reminding Oikawa that over in the UK, it's morning.

Iwaizumi is probably right.

"I know it shouldn't," he muses, and the silence that follows is comfortable.

A couple times, Iwaizumi looks as if he wants to say something. Oikawa, however, is the first to break the tiny crackles of poor audio that separate them.

"I love you without needing to, Iwa-chan," he confesses, then, as if it's an afterthought, as if it's natural, "I mean it."

He's never felt more at home with those words before.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

He's never felt more at home with a person, either.

Iwaizumi smiles at him. "I'm glad you told me."

"Even if it changes things?"

"Even if it changes things," Iwaizumi repeats. "It's okay."

Oikawa thinks it is okay, even if they're confused, even if four years beating around the bush was a little bit too long to wait.

"Where do you think we'll be in four years?" he asks, not really on purpose.

"Hopefully... together?"

He thinks of movie nights turning to trips to the cinema, phone calls turning to sleepovers right down the highway, mailed packages becoming homemade gifts.

"Together is good," he decides.

When Oikawa finally touches japan ground a whole year later and Iwaizumi greets him with open arms and teary eyes, he thinks together is the greatest gift he could've asked for.

Maybe, love is unconditional after all.

Maybe all the years were worth it.