Iwaizumi walked in the door to the sound of a phone ringing.
Recognizing the ringtone to Oikawa's cell phone, Iwaizumi frowned slightly as he set his bag down beside the door and toed off his shoes, wondering briefly why the setter wasn't answering before realizing that Oikawa could hardly be in the mood to talk to anyone else at the moment. "Oikawa?" he called out, suddenly feeling more awkward than he should walking into his best friend's house.
"Yeah," he heard Oikawa answer from the living room, voice uncharacteristically hoarse and emotionless. Worry edging at his mind, Iwaizumi passed the kitchen and entered the living room to see the muted TV glowing softly with one of those alien documentaries that Oikawa liked so much. Iwaizumi circled the back of the couch, seeing Oikawa sitting up on the cushions, brown hair in all directions around a worryingly pale face.
"You need to sleep," Iwaizumi said immediately, holding out a hand for the setter to take. "Come on―you're going to bed. I'll make dinner and wake you when it's ready."
"Can't sleep," Oikawa mumbled, but he was already reaching out to take Iwaizumi's hand with his own shockingly cold one. "Already tried."
"Well, you're going to try again," Iwaizumi said shortly, pulling Oikawa to his feet, which he wavered on. For a moment Iwaizumi was afraid the setter was going to fall back onto the couch again, but the taller brunet regained his balance and stood still, though he still leaned heavily on Iwaizumi's shoulder. The spiker hissed, "Seriously, did you even eat anything today?"
"I tried," was Oikawa's only response, and Iwaizumi gave up on trying to berate the half-asleep captain. Instead, he focused on helping Oikawa down the hall to his bedroom. It was slow going, and Oikawa stumbled every other step. Iwaizumi heard Oikawa's phone pinging with text message notifications from the hallway, and sighed. I told the team he was sick...who else would be calling him? Eventually they reached the bedroom, and Iwaizumi half-shoved Oikawa onto the bed.
"Sleep," Iwaizumi said, and Oikawa's eyes fluttered closed.
"Too tired," the setter mumbled.
"Then sleep," Iwaizumi repeated.
Oikawa snuggled into the mattress, and Iwaizumi reached across him to pull the sheets over his body. "Mmkay," Oikawa replied, his voice muffled against the pillow. "G'night, Iwa-chan."
Iwaizumi tore his gaze away from Oikawa, quickly grabbing the setter's cell phone off the nightstand before he left. Now that won't wake him, Iwaizumi thought as he turned the ringer off and quietly left the room, easing the door shut and moving into the kitchen to prepare dinner. Even as he was looking down at the phone, the screen lit up with another call. Iwaizumi took one look at the caller ID and the phone slipped from his hands, slapping against the ground with a harsh crack!
"Ah, shit," Iwaizumi breathed, hurriedly picking up the phone to see that it was, fortunately, uncracked. He stared at the caller ID. Why the fuck…? Iwaizumi gaped at the screen. Ushijima? Fingers numb, Iwaizumi answered the call, bringing the phone to his ear with shaking hands. "What do you want," he asked hoarsely, his voice thick with barely-veiled anger.
"Iwaizumi," Ushijima's familiar voice said on the other end of the line. "Is Oikawa there?"
Iwaizumi was silent for a moment, struggling to contain the intense rage that was boiling up in his chest. Slowly, he pulled the phone away from his face, ending the call and just barely resisting the urge to hurl the phone at the wall. He made his way to the kitchen on trembling legs, setting the phone on the counter face down, so that he wouldn't have to see any other incoming calls from the other captain if they ever came.
He glared at the phone for a few moments, softly hissing, "Fuck you," to the person he'd already hung up on. The amount of hatred in his own voice shocked him, and he took a deep breath, rubbing his temples with shaking fingers. What the hell does he want, why can't he just leave Tooru alone…
"Wait. Fuck." Iwaizumi stared blankly at the floor. "Did I just…?" Yes, you did, his mind answered gleefully, You called Oikawa 'Tooru'! Iwaizumi groaned, rubbing his face with his hands as if it would rub the thoughts from his mind. Stop, stop, he begged himself, just stop already.
Iwaizumi half-fell towards the kitchen table, his legs rubber underneath him, barely catching himself on the edge of the table before heavily seating himself in one of the chairs. "I'm so fucked," he moaned, putting his face in his hands. "I'm so fucked." He crossed his arms across the table, leaning his head down atop them, taking deep breaths. "I'm so damn fucked." Any previous thoughts he had about making dinner were swept away, and it was all he could do to sit there in silence. He was almost afraid that if he moved, he would trigger himself into an uncontrollable rage. Between his own impossible-to-requit feelings for his best friend, and the phone call from Ushijima, Iwaizumi felt like everything was just falling down around him.
He wasn't sure how long he sat there, head on his arms, just trying to calm his breathing. He came to again when he heard a soft tapping on the front door, glancing around blearily, unable to remember ever falling asleep. "What…?" he mumbled to himself, running a hand through his hair as he staggered to his feet and stretched, his shoulders aching from the awkward position they'd been in. "Who the fu…?" he yawned in the middle of his sentence, feeling the heavy exhaustion weighing on him.
Shaking it off, Iwaizumi walked through the house to the front door, the lateness of the hour barely registering in his mind as he swung the door open and came face to face with none other than Wakatoshi Ushijima.
Iwaizumi stared for a moment, his brain struggling to catch up to his eyes. He blinked once, twice. He's...still there, he thought numbly, as if he was expecting a mirage that would disappear as soon as he closed his eyes. "What the fuck are you doing here," Iwaizumi asked, his voice surprisingly monotone.
Ushijima opened his mouth to talk. He never got the chance.
Iwaizumi's brain finally registering that yes, this was Ushijima in front of him and yes, this was the man who raped Oikawa, and Iwaizumi found himself moving automatically. He could feel his right arm pull itself back, could feel his left foot stepping forward, could feel his left arm reach out and the fingers of his left hand grabbing a fistful of Ushijima's shirtfront. He could feel his own body twisting at the hip, driving the momentum of the movement up through his shoulder and his elbow as he straightened his right arm. He could feel his fist slamming into the hard bone of Ushijima's jaw with a satisfyingly painful crack! He could feel his left hand letting go of Ushijima's shirt as his right hand made impact, allowing the team captain to stumble back from the force of the hit.
It was as if the single action had broken a dam in Iwaizumi that had been previously holding back all his emotions. Filled now with rage and frustration at his best friend's situation, and his own situation, and the overall unfairness of the world, Iwaizumi did the only thing a person in his situation really could do, with the cause of most of his problems knocked on the ground right in front of him.
He snapped.
Oikawa slept fitfully, asleep for one moment and awake the next, often caught in that strange space between sleep and wakefulness. It was one of the most bizarre things he'd ever experienced. He was tired, too exhausted to do anything, almost asleep on his feet whenever he attempted to stand. Yet when he closed his eyes, his mind refused to grant him sleep. Images of Ushiwaka were tattooed on the insides of his eyelids, and for every five minutes he could catch a little sleep, he was jolted awake washed in a cold sweat from some terrible nightmare about the other team captain.
After one such incident, Oikawa sat up in bed, breathing hard, sweat cold and sticky on his face and across his chest and back. He pulled the damp shirt over his head, struggling to slow his breathing as he tossed the T-shirt aside and glanced over at the clock on his nightstand. The numbers split off into doubles, then triples, then back to doubles. They swam in front of his eyes, blurring together. He shut his eyes before he could get nauseous, raking his sweaty hair back with his fingers and putting his head in his hands, rubbing forcefully at his temples.
"What's wrong with me," he moaned to himself.
Crack! Crack! Crack!
Every swing of his arm was met with a satisfying meaty resistance. Iwaizumi could feel the hard press of the ground against his knees, which were on either side of Ushijima's mostly-limp body.
Crack! Crack! Crack!
He could feel his mind coming back to him after a while, shouting from far away to calm down, to back away, to think about what he was doing. After a while, he finally decided to listen to it.
Iwaizumi untangled the fingers of his left hand from Ushijima's now-stretched shirtfront, letting the other brunet slump against the ground. He stood up, stepping over Ushijima and turning away as the captain struggled to sit up, panting through bloody lips. Ushijima spoke, his voice raspy and thick with pain, "Will you let me talk to Oikawa now?"
Iwaizumi clenched his fist, feeling the torn skin over his knuckles scream with pain from the motion. "Get out of here," he growled, his voice quiet yet so full of rage. "Just...leave." Without waiting for an answer, Iwaizumi opened the front door to Oikawa's house, closing and locking it behind him. He leaned against it, panting. 1...2...3...4… he counted slowly as he inhaled, 5...6...7...8… he continued with his exhale, repeating until his breathing had calmed slightly. He better have left by now.
"Iwa-chan?"
Iwaizumi glanced up to see Oikawa leaning out of his bedroom doorway, a confused look on that too-pale, too-drawn face. "You're supposed to be asleep," he said dumbly, as if Oikawa was a child.
Obviously Oikawa caught the mothering tone in Iwaizumi's voice, because his lips twisted downwards into a frown that looked too ugly on his already-exhausted and unhappy face. "I can't," he sighed in response, rubbing his eyes, and Iwaizumi noticed the setter had removed his shirt. It wasn't something that should have mattered, not something he should have noticed, yet he did notice, and he hated himself for it. "Iwa-chan," Oikawa murmured sleepily, his syllables slurring together with tiredness, "Come sleep with me."
Iwaizumi instantly felt the heat of longing spring up in his chest, squeezing his heart. "Ok," he automatically responded, his voice rougher than he meant it to be. As he was staring at Oikawa, he noticed the other brunet frowning at him. Iwaizumi cleared his throat before asking, "What?"
Oikawa bit at his own lip, and Iwaizumi hated the way his gaze was immediately drawn to the setter's mouth at the action. "Are…" Oikawa started, then restarted, "Are you ok?"
Iwaizumi tried to smile, but he was pretty sure it came out more like a grimace than anything else. "Yeah, I'm fine. Why?"
Oikawa stared at Iwaizumi for a moment in silence, a thoughtful, distracted look in his eyes. "You seem…" he hesitated for a moment before finishing, "...different." At Iwaizumi's silent response, Oikawa waved a hand and laughed. His laugh sounded like broken glass grating in his throat. "It's just that...I don't know. You seem, um...more relaxed somehow? Or at least, you did, until you saw me." Oikawa glanced down, and Iwaizumi caught a sheen of guilt in his brown eyes. "Then you...tensed up again."
"It's not you," Iwaizumi immediately said, feeling the adrenaline fade away and leave a painful burn on his knuckles in its wake. "Let's...let's just get you to bed, ok? We can talk in the morning, but right now you look like you haven't slept in days." It was true; the pallidness of Oikawa's skin and the darkness of the bags under his eyes were much too pronounced, especially given it had only been a couple of days since the incident. Iwaizumi knew, more than anyone else, the trouble Oikawa always had sleeping, especially before a match. But this was getting bad.
The light from the kitchen bled into the darker hallway, reflecting on the unshed tears in Oikawa's eyes. Iwaizumi instantly felt the guilt tear into him, but he knew that telling Oikawa that Ushijima had been calling him all day and had shown up at his house...well, it wouldn't exactly be good for Oikawa's mental state, broken as it already was. Iwaizumi sighed, walking across the hallway to Oikawa. Closer now, he could see how badly the brunet was trembling.
Iwaizumi put a comforting hand on Oikawa's shoulder and was opening his mouth to tell the setter to go to bed when Oikawa's eyes stretched wide with shock, his head turning to follow the movement of Iwaizumi's arm.
"Iwa-chan, what happened to your hand?"