Hi, long time no see. This is my first take on Iwaoi and I really should be working but I simply cannot resist them. I love them and wanted to try out making a contribution to this lovely fandom. I focused on Oikawa's hidden personality traits because it really is interesting to see him conflicted, not so confident and being misunderstood. I hope they're in character.

Please give me some feedback if you like and want me to deviate from my work to finish this.

Disclaimer: Haikyuu doesn't belong to me, only this idea. The lyrics used are from "It Takes a Lot To Know a Man", from Damien Rice.

Thanks for reading it and I'm sorry if there's any mistake even though I revised it a few times. I'm tired and English isn't my mother language.

See you,

Neffer-Tari

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How To Be Truthful

- On Wednesday -

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"It takes a lot to know a man
It takes a lot to understand
The warrior, the sage
The little boy enraged"

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- You got it wrong here – Iwaizumi said, pointing out a specific place in Oikawa's notes. – Sensei said to switch these numbers and then start solving it from this point, not that one. See? – he showed the same exercise in his notes to prove his point.

Classes had finished long ago and they were checking the day's notes in the classroom. It was very rare for Oikawa to make a mistake so it was being hard for Iwaizumi to conceal his excitement. However, his blank expression was unreadable. On the other hand, even though Oikawa's was almost as good, in that moment he wasn't making any effort to mask his emotions. With his arms folded on the desk and one hand sustaining his chin, he looked unimpressed and utterly bored. Now that Iwaizumi thought of it, he'd been able to see Oikawa's real emotions without effort for the past few days. Since his childhood friend was such a pretender and had mastered building up illusions around him, it was an odd turn of events. Ignoring what was being displayed in front of him was starting to get harder. Oikawa was more like his true, petulant self in front of others, giving saucy answers without any kind of sugar and not caring about the damage it would cause to his image – "My beauty is not just a mask and I sound cool either way", he managed to quote Muse and justify his actions at some point yesterday. Iwaizumi wanted to punch him and correctively call him "Queen of the Superficial", but he was being truthful so he had to resign himself. Furthermore, that also seemed to be a correct assumption because whenever he behaved like that the girls would worry or squeal in delight. Iwaizumi bet that, if they knew how twisted and messed up Oikawa was, they would scream in horror instead.

Whatever.

- Are you listening?

Oikawa raised his burnt amber eyes. His expression was raw, evaluative and he seemed deeply submerged in thoughts unrelated with calculus.

He was intensely looking at Iwaizumi. The sunset rays were invading the classroom turning his eyes even more green and giving his skin a dangerous tone of dark gold. Oikawa could tell that his stern expression was barely covering the pride he felt for being able to help him correcting a mistake. No matter how pissed off he'd been for the last few weeks (and specially for the last few days), he was never able to miss moments like this.

Moments where Iwaizumi shone on his own.

And it pissed him off even more. He needed to be careful not to notice that (too late) in order to not become jealous (too late) or admire it (too late).

Dammit.

He ended up nodding, focusing on the notebooks.

- If you scratch this out and then replace this segment for this one then I think it's enough to prevent you from following the mistake while studying.

It was unnerving. How the hell could someone dare to look at Iwaizumi when Oikawa was right by his side? He was extremely good looking, was nice to everyone, had great grades and had a fearsome reputation in the court. Oikawa was the perfect stereotype for any girl to fall in love with. Therefore, he successfully gathered all the attention around him, right? Wasn't he supposed to gather all the attention? He was, because Oikawa was the one on the spotlight. He had always taken it over since it did wonders to his ego and he knew Iwaizumi never felt comfortable with it. Therefore, Iwaizumi should stay in the shadows quietly, safely.

He pursed his lips and cut that chain of thought which was becoming ridiculous. His thoughts were being turned into a soup opera. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

- Oikawa…

He instinctively opened his eyes and looked again at his best friend, sitting in front of him. What was so good about him, anyway? Oikawa used to be smarter than this. Come on, Iwaizumi didn't even know how to sit properly on a chair! He was using it wrong! And he had a voice so deep it was freaking scary. His hair was an ugly, wild mess. His eyebrows were too thick. All of him was unattractive. He was so unattractive it hurt. And scary. Yeah, too scary for girls. And annoying. Madly annoying. Those were facts and it was killing Oikawa's brain to try and understand why would anyone have the nerve to… to… Ugh. Iwaizumi was pissing him off so-damn-much! And thinking of it over and over again made him feel so confused… confused to the point of not paying attention during classes.

He had to ask. He couldn't afford to keep on living like this, it'd make wrinkles appear on his pristine forehead.

He'd go insane at this rate if he didn't ask.

- What's wrong with-

- Iwa-chan. – he said, softly even though there was a permanent storm inside of him.

Iwaizumi didn't finish his sentence. Oikawa was calling out to him. Was he in trouble? The rich chocolate in his eyes and the way he sounded certainly hinted that. Iwaizumi felt something inside him clenched as worry started to gather in his brain. Oikawa was an apparently carefree human being, but he knew where he hid all his insecurities, fears and anxieties. If he was calling out to him after having had such a weird behaviour for the past days, then there must be trouble. He braced himself, he had to tiptoe this time.

- Yeah?

- Who was that girl?

Iwaizumi frowned.

Girl?

A girl.

Oh.

This is why he feels so often the urge to beat the crap out of Oikawa.

- Is this why you've been acting shittier than usual? Because of a girl?

Oikawa's gaze didn't waver, which showed he was serious about it. Iwaizumi felt anger former in his stomach. Oikawa's behaviour was proper of someone having serious trouble, not some futile question, and this was why he sometimes hated how stupid he could be for worrying about him. Whenever Iwaizumi started to get worried, Oikawa would always blow it with some bullshit. He'd tease him for it and laugh, saying something like "I'm sorry Iwa-chan" while not feeling sorry at all. Then he'd tease him for having genuinely been worried. During those moments Iwaizumi would hit him in order to release accumulated stress and punish himself for never learning how to not give a fuck about Trashykawa.

- C'mon Iwa-chan, I want to know who was the girl talking to you on Monday. – Oikawa looked like, depending on Iwaizumi's answer, he'd throw havoc on the school and, later on, on practice.

The sun was giving Oikawa's hair a slightly reddish tone of brown and illuminating his pale skin. He was hypnotizingly looking at Iwaizumi from above, thanks to their sitting positions. It made Oikawa appear to be somewhat regal as that kind of aura which scared the shit out of anyone whenever he got serious about volleyball was oozing out of him at that moment as well.

This was important to him, Iwaizumi concluded. As important as those times while playing volleyball.

Knowing that somewhat made his chest heavy. He sighed, trying to make it lighter.

- Which one?

Which one? Oikawa wanted to punch him.

- Tall. Pretty. Glasses. Caramel waves. – it took all of him to not scream each word.

- Hum, that sounds like Kawai-san. – perfect girls with perfect surnames do exist, huh? Oikawa wanted to throw up. – She's from the Journalism Club. Are you interested in her? What about your girlfriend?

Oikawa wasn't interested.

Oikawa was mad jealous of how openly Iwaizumi had smiled at her.

Thank God for the other boy's lack of brain. He'd not be able to deal with the embarrassment if Iwaizumi discovered his secret. It'd been bad enough to come to terms with the fact that he had fallen head over heels with this scary and ugly idiot. Oikawa had always thought that he was smarter than that, but if he was completely honest to himself (which didn't happen very often) he had to recognize that deep down he had always known. Iwaizumi could be all of the things that Oikawa thought he was (or not), but he also was his. That was why it was becoming harder to deal with these unwelcome feelings now that he consciously knew that Iwaizumi was oblivious to it and that there was someone like Oikawa. Someone who probably also noticed everything Iwaizumi did. And it was making it harder to stop himself of always wanting to touch him so that everyone would know how incredibly close they are. It was also harder to not try to catch Iwaizumi's attention (he didn't really try this one to be honest) and it was extremely hard to not be suspicious of any interaction he had with anyone who looked a bit too friendly – which was the case of Pretty-Glasses-Caramel Waves. Who was the one who appeared to suffer of the same illness that had infected Oikawa.

He hated it.

He hated her.

- I broke up with her last Friday. – he confessed and lied, because it had been more days than that. How was he supposed to kiss someone if he had such a lack of interest for that person? It had been hard enough when he didn't have the desire to jump on Iwaizumi whenever he could.

Now... now it was just impossible.

- And you're already looking for a new one? How insensitive can you be?

Oikawa glared at him.

He had received his share of insults for that day, even if Iwaizumi wasn't being mean on purpose. That was enough stupidity for one day. He didn't know if he should feel grateful or desperate for Iwaizumi's obliviousness, but he definitely felt frustrated - so, so, so frustrated! So much so he was beginning to want to scream into Iwaizumi's face that he got it all wrong. He wanted to be honest and throw a tantrum of how much he fucking hated him and wanted him all to his fucking self because if anyone ever deserved to have him it was Oikawa and he'd never accept any other outcome.

Never ever in fucking forever.

But the thought of coming clean and being honest was just as scary as it was appealing.

So he decided to angrily grab his stuff.

- Oikawa!

He decided to leave and go home.

- Hey, Oikawa!

Damn.

How he wished to be insensitive.

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