Cherry Lips

Now -

The door shut behind him, softly, as Iwaizumi stepped into the twilight haze of the apartment. Light filtered from the main room, and he grinned; Oikawa would be there, sleep stained eyes smudged with dark shadows, head in the curl of his arm as he waited for an air-cooled press of lips against his forehead.

He would lift his head lazily, hair tousled slightly from the impatient way he would twist at its end with his fingers, and pout.

"Milk bread, Iwa-chan," would greet him as Oikawa's hand opened expectantly to close quickly around the proffered bag with a triumphant grin, or followed by a long sigh if Iwaizumi only smiled apologetically without handing anything over. "Why do I keep you around again?" The setter would grumble, settling deeper into the cushions of the sofa to sulk.

Iwaizumi would smooth out the half-hearted frown lines on the other boy's forehead with the pad of his thumb, and smile. "Because you're so generous," he would whisper, earning a smug look in the other's eyes, "And no one else could cope with your constant whining."

He threw his jacket haphazardly, not caring where it landed because Oikawa had already made the hallway into an obstacle course, shoes strewn roughly by the wall and a scarf lying discarded in a crumpled heap. Iwaizumi sighed, fishing the package of bread from a garishly blue bag handed to him by a disinterested shop assistant more interested by the blurry footage of some game or other shown on a narrow TV screen than customer service.

Keeping one hand on the wall to keep his balance, Iwaizumi padded through to the lit room, opening his mouth to greet a sleep-softened Oikawa as his toes curled at the touch of cool laminate flooring. "Come get your damn bread, Shittykawa," he mumbled, half to himself as he dropped his keys into the dish on the side table.

Oikawa didn't answer, and Iwaizumi scowled, turning to chuck the package in his hand at where the prone form of the setter was usually found. He stopped.

There was a girl, on the sofa. She was, he thought numbly, pretty, he could acknowledge that. Oikawa was there too, brown locks mussed; Iwaizumi wished that he wasn't.

His fingers were intertwined with the black waves of her hair; in her eyes shone infatuation, cloying and fuelling the blush that raged in her cheeks. She was drunk on him, and Iwaizumi couldn't blame her. Because he was too, and he couldn't find his way out.

Oikawa grinned (he hadn't seen him yet), and the dimples that Iwaizumi had hoped, yearned, to be his and solely his, peeked from his cheeks.

It was a smile of triumph, cold and selfish, gloating that one more had been added to the countless others under his thumb. Iwaizumi wanted to scream that he was so far under his thumb that he couldn't even see the sun, but the words tangled into a knot that lodged in his throat; it hurt to swallow, but it hurt more that although he was irrevocably Oikawa's he would never and had never been enough.

He wondered if he had known that from the start, and found that he had.

She saw him first. Her gaze was devoid of recognition, for they had never met; only tinged with embarrassment that he had walked in, and indignation that Oikawa's lips were no longer on her own. He was angry, and thought that he ought to be so, but when he tried to direct it his heart would only point to her, and when his face twisted his mind made it slide away from the girl and to the one holding her.

Sure, she had kissed his Oikawa, no, Oikawa had never been his, not really, but she hadn't known about him, about the man hopelessly lost in the memories of the arms that fell from her with panicked speed.

How could she? Under the tales that Oikawa spun with his silver tongue, she was a victim, held fast by the promise of those lips and the smile that lit up a dark room as if it were night, and Oikawa was the embodiment of all of the stars solidifying into one being.

His cheeks were wet.

And then Oikawa turned, and his face, so familiar (a strong nose, bow-shaped lips that were soft and sweet and so Oikawa, brown eyes that had watched him grow up), showed dread. Iwaizumi clenched his eyes tight, saw red behind his eyelids twisting with black as his chin quivered, and opened them again, to see the girl gone and Oikawa's skin drained pale.

He didn't speak at first, hands now empty and kneading the air between his palms, and then he did, and Iwaizumi listened numbly as syllables tripped from his tongue, a boy usually so poised and perfect breaking apart under the silence.

Apologies dripped from his cherry lips like frosting, tears coating the wide and screaming whites of his eyes.

"Don't leave," he said. Hitching breath, a sob that tore at his throat.

But how could he leave when he was never there in the first place?

Because Oikawa had never really been in his grasp, always slipping through desperate fingers with the barest touch; yet his smile seemed close, a curve of strawberries and cream that looked sweet and tasted sweeter. It was a lure, blatant and proud, and Iwaizumi had gladly fallen for it from the start, tumbling into the freefall of loving someone who couldn't quite love at all.

Oikawa certainly knew lust; kiss-stained lips on the nape of his neck, heated fingers dancing along the veins in Iwaizumi's forearm as if claiming the rhythm that made them jump beneath his scalding touch, the barely spoken whisper of a name in an ink-black room.

Iwaizumi had begun to hope that he knew love, too. He'd thought it was in the goodnight texts that the setter sent regardless of whether he had been sprawled next to him or not, backs pressed together, cold phone-light washing across Iwaizumi's wall and making him smile because he knew what his phone would say if he were to pick it up.

He'd thought that not needing to look at that text, that simple
Goodnight Iwa-chan,
showed something, because it never changed and neither did the way the other boy would nuzzle into his back on cold nights, or press chilled toes against his calves to get warmer and to giggle at the mumbled and sleep-blurred profanities that Iwaizumi replied with.

And now Oikawa was the one with a desperate grip, grasping at Iwaizumi's arm as he turned to walk (run) away, skin so familiar that his touched burned because somebody else had had a taste of it too. Desperately reaching for something that had been his for so long that he hadn't even had to look back, because Iwaizumi had always been there.

Oikawa's breath caught in the space after a sob, blocking his throat. When had he started having to look back?

He whispered apologies, hair tangled within the hand that wasn't reaching for someone that had followed him; he was now the follower, and that was bitter on his tongue, even through the tears tracing the edges of his lips.

There was a time in which Iwaizumi had always been by his side: on the court, walking through school hallways now beginning to fade into bittersweet memories, tracing the creases of his palm with gentle fingers.

They were together, and then they weren't.

He had pulled forward, and Iwai-chan (his Iwa-chan) had trailed behind him, maintaining a steady pace to keep him in sight but unable to keep up because he couldn't see the way that his feet were speeding up and taking him away.

Why hadn't he looked back?

--- A/N
Idk if this will have published properly now instead of making it look like I just hit my head on the keyboard a few times and then got my cat to walk over it, but I cba to try again so meh.