#i will try to reopen commissions again when school and work is not as hectic ^_^;

[ningadudexx]

commissions i did last month!!! thank you so much to everyone ^_^ these were really fun to draw!!

[kythen]

Haikyuu!! - it's not that i don't like you,

Fandom: Haikyuu!!

Pairings: Oikage, background blink-and-you’ll-miss-it kurodai

Summary: Oikawa has a confession to make to one Kageyama Tobio. But the universe won't let him make it. Also here on AO3.

This is a fic commission and if you would like to know more about commissioning a fic from me, please click here! (Commissions are currently closed but may reopen in December.)

Word count: 3,863

Summer in July is hot and humid, the air heavy and unmoving, the chittering of cicadas and children unnervingly loud in the background. Perspiration beads the back of Oikawa's neck and the palms of his hands but it isn't because of the stifling weather. He clenches his hands and lets go, forcing nonchalance into his countenance as he looks Kageyama in the eye and says, "It's not that I don't like you, Tobio-chan. In fact—"

WHAM.

---

When Oikawa comes to, the summer sun is gone, replaced by a clean white ceiling and the sterile smell of the hospital. Oikawa blinks once, twice, thrice without moving his throbbing head and mumbles, "I like you."

Girlish tittering comes from beside him and Oikawa turns to see a middle-aged woman in nurse scrubs blush a deep scarlet and fan herself. "Oh my, a confession from a handsome young man like you at my age? Sorry, dear, but I'm married."

She winks at him and bustles along with a spring in her step. Oikawa puts his head back down on his pillow, wincing as the pressure against the back of his head only makes the throbbing worse.

"Wow," a familiar voice comes from his other side. "That went well."

"Iwa-chan," Oikawa groans. "My head hurts."

"That's what happens when you receive an Oikawa-style serve straight to the back of the head," Iwaizumi tells him unsympathetically. "You're lucky that it was one of the elementary school kids that did it."

"But of course," Oikawa preens. He has been teaching this class for a good year or so now and he is proud of them, gremlins or not. Then he pauses. "Wait, did they do it on purpose?"

"Who knows?" Iwaizumi says with a shrug. "Kageyama said that they were really sorry about it when you fainted."

"Tobio-chan!" Oikawa shouts as the memory of his interrupted confession comes straight at him with all the force of an Oikawa-style serve. He bolts upright, holding his head in his hands as his head protests at the abrupt movement. "Ow..."

"You should be lying down, Dumbkawa," Iwaizumi advises, putting a hand on Oikawa's shoulder and pushing him back down. "They said you had a concussion."

"Ugh, I was going to... You know," Oikawa gestures expressively, "tell him something important."

Iwaizumi stops pushing at him and raises an eyebrow. "What, seriously?"

"I was on the subject of it and right as I was going to spill my heart to him, this happened," Oikawa laments.

"Lucky for you, he's waiting outside now," Iwaizumi says. "They only allow one visitor at a time, but he's the one who brought you to the hospital."

Oikawa bolts back up into a sitting position, aghast. "Why didn't you say this earlier?"

"How was I supposed to know that you were halfway through a confession when you got sent to the hospital?"

Iwaizumi has a point since even Oikawa hadn't been planning on confessing there and then. It had just happened when he and Kageyama were leaving the community centre after an afternoon of teaching small children to play volleyball. The glow of the evening sun had lent Kageyama an oddly romantic cast, reflecting off the intense blue of his eyes and bathing his skin in a warm, sun-soaked colour, and Oikawa had looked at him and thought, not for the first time, that he was doomed.

Oikawa straightens up and says, "Send him in, Iwa-chan."

Iwaizumi shrugs, getting up from his chair and heading out of the room. As Oikawa watches his back disappear through the door, his palms start to sweat again despite the air conditioning in the room and he wipes them surreptitiously on the sheets, clenching and unclenching his hands like he is about to go into the last match of his life.

The door opens again and Oikawa sees Kageyama hurry through, searching the rows of beds. Oikawa waves at him and Kageyama makes a beeline for him, his face thunderous in a way that Oikawa has come to associate with immense worry.

"Oikawa-san," Kageyama asks with a frown, "is your head okay?"

"I'm completely fine, Tobio-chan! Thanks for taking me to the hospital," Oikawa tells him cheerily, even as his head throbs at the lie. "So who hit me with the volleyball?"

The look on Kageyama's face intensifies, which can only mean that the culprit had probably asked him not to tell. "I don't know. I didn't see."

"Whatever, it's fine. There's no major harm done but we should give them a lecture on when and where to launch volleyballs the next time." Oikawa shrugs, hurrying on to the next subject. "So, Tobio-chan, back to what I was saying before—"

"TOBE FLYYYY!"

Oikawa jumps at the sudden jingle coming from Kageyama's bag and he loses Kageyama's attention to it as he starts rooting around in his bag for his phone.

"HIGHHHHH!"

The nurse from before hurries over, looking disapprovingly at Kageyama as she says, "Excuse me, young man."

Kageyama pulls his phone out from the depths of his bag and glances between the nurse, Oikawa, and his blaring phone, trying to decide his next course of action.

"You better get that, Tobio-chan," Oikawa tells him, smiling apologetically at the nurse.

Kageyama nods and gathers up his belongings. "Excuse me, Oikawa-san."

Then he is gone. Oikawa's smile drops and he buries his face in his hands.

He will be able to tell him next time. He will.

---

The next time Oikawa finds himself alone with Kageyama, it is at Oikawa's house when Tobio comes over to show Oikawa his abysmal grades and Oikawa tries to save him from being permanently banned from club activities.

They are in his room with the door shut, the air conditioner running on high, and the table between them full of scattered books and papers. Kageyama has a frown on his face again, a furrow etched deep between his eyebrows as he tries to cram all of Japan's history into his head. He probably needs a break and Oikawa jabs his shoulder with the back of a pen, drawing his attention.

"Ease up, Tobio-chan. I think you're gonna break something if you keep it up." Oikawa puts the pen down and stretches, pulling his arms up over his head and hearing a satisfying pop. "Let's take a ten minute break."

Kageyama looks relieved at the mention of a break and he slumps forward on the table, resting his head on his open notebook. His hair fans out around his head, the short black strands splayed out this way and that on the notebook paper. Oikawa finds his hand gravitating towards them. For someone who doesn't use anything else but drugstore brand shampoo, Kageyama's hair is surprisingly soft, curling around Oikawa's finger easily when he prods at it.

"You know, Tobio-chan," Oikawa says as he fiddles with Kageyama's hair. His heartbeat races as he works up the courage to say what he has to say and Kageyama peers up him curiously, without minding Oikawa's hands in his hair. "I actually really—"

"TOORU!"

The door bursts open unceremoniously and Oikawa withdraws his hands from Kageyama's head instantly, his heart nearly falling out of his throat as he looks up at the intruder.

His elder sister stands there in all her glory, one hand clutching Takeru's hand and the other carrying a bundle wrapped in sweet pink cloth. She grins wolfishly as she catches sight of Oikawa, her eyes lighting up when she spots Kageyama still half-wilted on the table.

"Hey, Tobio-chan!" she greets him as she strides into Oikawa's room, uninvited and unwelcome.

"Nee-chan," Oikawa chokes out, his voice somewhere between a wheeze and a hiss. "What are you doing here?"

"I need someone to look after Takeru and Mimi-chan while I run down real quick to work. Someone screwed up royally so they're calling me in to fix their mess, ugh." She dumps the pink bundle in Oikawa's arms and Oikawa scrambles to catch his niece, his arms fixing themselves into place automatically under her neck and her backside.

"Nee-chan, I'm busy," Oikawa argues half-heartedly.

"So am I and so is everyone else," his sister says, unslinging the baby bag from her shoulder and tossing her hair back. "Here, just watch them for a little while and I'll be back by night. Diapers, milk, and extra clothes are in the bag so you know what to do."

And with that, she breezes out of the room in a whirlwind of perfect hair and clothes, leaving behind her two kids, an aghast Oikawa, and an indifferent Kageyama.

Takeru peers down at the books and papers on the table then shifts his attention over to Kageyama. "Hey, Tobio-sensei."

"Hey." Kageyama nods back at him, his head still fixed to the table.

The bundle in Oikawa's arms begins to wriggle and Oikawa looks down to see his niece's tiny face scrunch up, a telltale sign that she was about to wail. Oikawa bounces her hurriedly in his arms and looks at Kageyama in resignation as he says, "Tobio-chan, Takeru, how about the both of you grab a volleyball and practice outside for a while?"

Kageyama lights up.

---

Oikawa only has bad feelings about the evenings after volleyball classes ever since that concussion incident but he doesn't have much of a choice when it is one of the few rare moments he gets to see Kageyama. Life as a second year university student studying sports medicine is hectic and life as a third year high school student preparing for Nationals and the future is just as confusing, which leaves little time for Oikawa to meet up with Kageyama.

Coming right out of class, Oikawa slings an arm around Kageyama's shoulder and drags him in the opposite direction of where they usually go, steering him towards a small park tucked away in a corner of the neighbourhood. The park looks far more romantic in spring with the cherry blossoms in full bloom or in autumn with the trees decked out in gold and orange, but he supposes that it is doing its best even in the unbearable heat of summer.

"Oikawa-san, what are we doing here?" Kageyama asks as Oikawa picks out an appropriate bench and gestures towards it.

Oikawa sits next to Kageyama, trying not to wring his hands as he prepares his next words in his mind. He feels pressured, in addition to feeling sweaty and nervous, because at this point of time, he just knows that the universe has it out for him. The stars are never in line for him to get his full, whole-hearted confession out to Kageyama. Somehow, some way, he will always be interrupted by the next thing the universe decides to send his way as if Oikawa's love life was just one big running joke to the universe.

He has to be quick about this. Oikawa shoves his hands into the pockets of his jacket so that they don't bother him anymore and turns towards Kageyama fiercely, opening his mouth to say—

"Stop pushing me, Takeru! I'm going to fall out of this bush."

"I didn't ask you to come along with me, you big busybody! Now shh, they're going to hear us."

"No, they're going to hear you because you're talking too loudly and— Oh no!"

Oikawa pulls his hands out of his pockets and covers his face, fighting back the urge to scream or wail or get up and physically fight the universe for doing this to him as two of his students and one nephew roll out of the bushes to their side and come to a stop before them, smiling sheepishly up at the pair of them.

---

"Don't you think it might be karma?" Kuroo suggests with the most annoying grin Oikawa has ever seen in his life. Oikawa decides, there and then, that he hates that grin and by extension, Kuroo.

"What karma?" Oikawa mumbles into his beer mug, trying to inhale the liquid in it without actually lifting it to his lips, which is proving far more difficult than he thought.

"You know," Kuroo shrugs, "I heard you hated Kageyama in middle school and for a good period of time in high school. Iwaizumi told Sawamura that you nearly hit him when you snapped, which doesn't exactly sound like a promising start to a romantic relationship."

"That was then," Oikawa argues loudly, resting his face against the lip of his mug and staring down at its foamy contents. "I didn't mean to do that. I'm glad Iwa-chan was there. I apologised to Tobio-chan, once we started teaching together at the community centre, but you know what? He said he didn't really remember that."

Kuroo pats his shoulder sympathetically.

"I really like him now," Oikawa continues talking to his beer. "I mean, I don't know, I guess I never really did like him that much at the start but then we started spending more time together after I graduated and then I realised that there was more to Tobio-chan than good volleyball skills. That there's more to me than being better than him in volleyball or in life or in school whatever. But I'm better than him in school anyway."

"That's deep," Kuroo tells him. "Except that last bit. That's petty."

"Shaddup," Oikawa turns to gesture at Kuroo and nearly topples over. "You don't get to judge. You didn't even go here in high school."

"I'm surprised you even remember who I am," Kuroo says. "I'm just here to collect my boyfriend but you've been ranting to me for the past half hour."

Oikawa squints at him. "Who the fuck is your boyfriend?"

Kuroo pats the head on his lap, which belongs to a very passed out Sawamura. "This one."

"Ugh," Oikawa waves him away and goes back to hugging his beer mug. "Collect your boyfriend or whatever and get your successful romance out of my face."

"You'll get there someday," Kuroo tells him with another sympathetic shoulder pat. Then he slings Sawamura's arm over his shoulder and rises to his feet with a grunt, nearly falling sideways into the table. Oikawa snorts.

"By the way," Kuroo adds before leaving, "I called Iwaizumi to come collect dead bodies number one and two," he points at a pink-haired body and a black-haired, strong-eyebrowed body sprawled out on the floor of the izakaya, "but I don't know if he'll be able to manage a dead body number three if you drop dead too."

"Fuck off," Oikawa says goodbye to him and his head slips off his mug to meet the polished surface of the table.

---

Oikawa is moving but he isn't actually moving when his body is as limp as a dead fish. His arms weigh too much for him to lift and his legs are supported by what feels like a pair of solid hands, which means that he doesn't have to move them to move. It is convenient and Oikawa blinks, the world swimming in and out of his vision.

The first thing he sees is the back of someone's head. He can make out black hair in his blurry vision, which must mean that it is Iwaizumi and that Oikawa is being carried on his back. It also accounts for the curious sensation of moving without moving and the cool air against his skin, which must mean that they left the izakaya.

"Iwa-chan?" Oikawa groans, pressing his head against his shoulder and fighting back the urge to be sick. "Are we going home? Did you take Mattsun and Makki too? Sawamura was there but his asshole of a boyfriend came to pick him up and you know what he told me? He said that all my ruined confessions were the work of karma. Ugh, is that really what it is, Iwa-chan?"

"Maybe it is my fault," Oikawa carries on. His eyes sting and he rubs them against the shirt in front of him. "I spent so much time getting hung up over him being a genius and better than me that when I finally got to know him, he's probably going to Tokyo and leaving me behind in the dirt. Again. I just can't win, can I?"

"I wish Tobio-chan was here now," Oikawa mumbles into his shirt. "God, I wish that the universe would give me a chance. I just want to tell him that I really, really, really like him."

Oikawa finds his eyes slipping shut on their own. Iwaizumi's back is warm and wide and the sheer amount of alcohol sitting heavy in his stomach and clouding his brain invites him to drop back into a blissful darkness.

Right before his consciousness drops out from under him, he thinks he hears, "I like you too, Oikawa-san."

---

Oikawa wakes up with a humming in his head, annoying loud and strangely jarring. He swears his head is vibrating along with it.

BZZT. BZZT

Oikawa jolts and his head slips off his pillow. When he opens his eyes, he finds himself in his room, lying diagonal to his futon with the blankets tangled up around his legs.

BZZT.

"Gah!" Oikawa yelps as his phone vibrates right by his ear and he scoops it off the floor, squinting at the lit screen.

Iwa-chan: hey did you get home in one piece

Iwa-chan: brought m and m back to my place so they're safe and called kuroo for sawamura

Iwa-chan: wtf were you guys drinking

Me: what

Me: you brought me home didn't you

His phone buzzes almost instantly.

Iwa-chan: no

Iwa-chan: i got kageyama to do it

Iwa-chan: can't carry you all you know

Oikawa freezes as flashes of last night come back to him—the cool night air, the sensation of moving without moving, rubbing his tears and snot all over a shirt that he thought was Iwaizumi's. And—

"I like you too, Oikawa-san."

The phone in his hand continues buzzing.

Iwa-chan: you didn't actually answer

Iwa-chan: are you home in one piece?

Iwa-chan: i mean i trust kageyama

Iwa-chan: but not you

Oikawa tosses his phone aside and fights his way out of the clinging mass of his futon and blankets. Hope rises in him, burning hot in his stomach and traveling upwards—or it could also be the staggering amount of alcohol he had consumed last night. He manages to stand, nearly slips on a corner of his blanket, regains his balance, and dashes to the bathroom.

A minute of intense teeth brushing and mouthwash gargling later, Oikawa skids out of his house and into the startlingly fresh morning air. It is only about six in the morning and Oikawa probably shouldn't be moving this much after a self-pity night of too much alcohol but he needs to find out what Kageyama had meant by "I like you too, Oikawa-san." Had it been a hallucination? Or had Oikawa finally got a confession through to Kageyama and, even more astonishingly, had it actually been accepted?

It is a fifteen minute run to Kageyama's house and Oikawa makes it in twenty, his insides burning with bile and questions. When he gets there, the first thing he should ask Kageyama for is a glass of water, the second being an answer about the confession or not-confession, but when he sees a familiar figure by the front of Kageyama's house, all his thoughts scramble right out of his head.

"Tobio-chan!" Oikawa gasps, hanging onto the wall of Kageyama's neighbour's house.

"Oikawa-san?" Kageyama says incredulously, his face scrunching up into that familiar look of worry. He rushes over to him, throwing Oikawa's arm over his shoulder so that he stops clutching his neighbour's wall and ripping their creeping vines. "What are you doing here? Are you okay?"

Oikawa looks at Kageyama, freshly decked out in his school uniform and ready for a day of training and learning and more training. Coming right from a night of drunk drinking and reeking of it, Oikawa feels even more pathetic than he already does. But he has to know.

"Were you there last night?" Oikawa asks.

Kageyama nods. "Iwaizumi-san called me for help since he said he couldn't handle everyone by himself."

Oikawa nods back frantically. "So you carried me back home last night? Did you... Did you say something to me last night?"

"I don't think so. You weren't awake."

"I was. For a very short, and very delirious, period of time," Oikawa says, his heartbeat accelerating in his chest. His palms feel sweaty again and all of him just feels awful and achey and all he wants to do is lie down for a very long while. But here he is and here Kageyama is and they are alone by Kageyama's front gate on an empty street in the morning and Oikawa thinks that this would be the best time to show the universe what he has got.

"Tobio-chan," Oikawa says, putting his weight back on his own feet and pulling away from Kageyama, his back hitting the front gate of Kageyama's house and keeping him upright as he looks into Kageyama's confused eyes. "I said that I liked you yesterday and I meant it. And you said something back to me, didn't you?"

Kageyama blinks at him once, twice, thrice and Oikawa follows the quick flit of his eyelashes over his intense blue eyes, hanging onto that slight movement as he waits for Kageyama to say something. Then Kageyama glances down and says, "I don't know."

He is lying and Oikawa knows this because Kageyama is possibly the worst liar in the world. But this isn't the time to call him out on that because Oikawa has more pressing issues at hand. He pushes on, "So if I said I like you today and meant it, what would you say to me? Hypothetically."

Kageyama's brows scrunch a bit. "I don't know."

"Tobio-chan," Oikawa reaches out to tug at Kageyama's hand, startling him into looking up. Once he catches his gaze, with surprise and uncertainty blooming in the depths of those blue eyes, Oikawa says, "Tobio-chan, I've been trying to tell you this for the longest time but I like you, not just as a friend but in the romantic sense. Would you go out with me?"

Take that, universe, Oikawa thinks euphorically as he finishes off his question successfully without being hit in the head by a stray volleyball or coerced into babysitting or interrupted by eavesdropping students or split into half by a bolt of lightning out of the sky or anything.

Kageyama's face turns furiously red, his hand tensing up in Oikawa's grip and feeling almost as clammy as Oikawa's hand. He opens his mouth to reply and what comes out is an echo of last night's words, a stammering, "I like you too, Oikawa-san." But there is something like confusion in his eyes as looks up at Oikawa and asks, "But where do you want to go?"

Oikawa doesn't know whether to laugh or cry but he settles for throwing his arms around Kageyama's shoulders and pulling him close, his entire body sagging against Kageyama in sheer relief. It is a start, he decides. "We'll settle that later on," he says.