Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

(PROLOGUE: IN WHICH YOU ARE BOTH THE PLANE AND THE CRASH)

Iwaizumi falls into California with all the fire, frenzy, and fear of a plane crash. He falls and he crashes and he burns and then he gets back up again as if he has been made anew. It’s strange, this new life, this new world. It’s strange and he hates it; which is to say that it’s different and he loves it.

This body and this smile and this laugh and this name and this feeling: it’s new. It’s all new, and Iwaizumi doesn’t really know what to do with it yet. He doesn’t know how to move in it, doesn’t know how to navigate this ocean. Everything familiar is gone and distant, somehow and suddenly just as alien as this new life.

He doesn’t know how to feel about any of it. He loves it. He hates it. He misses everything he had. He misses everything he was. He never wants to go back. He never wants to be that again.

LATE NIGHT (EARLY MORNING) DOUBLE FEATURE (ROCKY HORROR) PICTURE SHOW

In his first few weeks of university, Iwaizumi makes two friends who seem like they’re going to stick around. He meets plenty of people and learns plenty of names, but there are a specific two who seem like they’re still going to mean something to him by the time winter break comes around and he has to go home and report to his mother every person he’s ever hung out with outside of class.

The first is Annie: tanned, strawberry blonde, blue eyes, California girl, never left the state. She likes soccer and boba tea. She is kind and shows Iwaizumi that he has to use his keycard to ride the elevator in their dorm building. She lives down the hall. She dresses like someone could be taking a picture of her at any time. She’s made up of pink eyeliner and high heels and just a little glitter at her eyelids and bright red lipstick that sometimes smudges on her teeth.

The second is Ronin, who is all tattoos and black leather cuffs and chain bracelets that rattle when they walk and platform boots half of the time and slippers the other half of the time. Demonias, Iwaizumi is pretty sure the shoes are called; and the slippers are for when the Demonias start to pinch at their heels and toes. Ronin is all scraped knees and long, thick hair braided down to their waist and bleary eyes from playing video games at three in the morning.

Iwaizumi has never met anyone like them. He’s entranced by it: the way they are both so incredibly themselves, so entirely authentic and genuine and true. There’s not a single mask between them. If they were to piss someone off with their appearance or their words or their volume or their pride, then that’s almost an honor rather than a shame.

He’s obsessed with them both.

For their part, Annie and Ronin, somehow, get along like water to a river. Iwaizumi introduces the two of them to each other, some days after meeting Annie in the hallway outside the elevator and meeting Ronin in a Gen-Ed English class they’re in. Ronin seems fascinated by Annie, and Annie seems to feel much the same way, but any real differences that Iwaizumi had perhaps unfairly feared seem to be negligible issues.

As the semester goes on, Iwaizumi meets more people and he’s sure that the two of them do, too. But somehow, despite the dozens of new names they learn every day in their first year of university, the three of them stick together, only getting closer. Before long, Iwaizumi almost feels like he’s known them his whole life.

Neither of them are particularly into sports—though Annie will watch their school’s basketball games every now and then, and Ronin doesn’t dislike sports so much as they just don’t seek them out—but Iwaizumi seems to be enough of a draw to pull them to the volleyball games anyway.

He’s honored by the gesture in a way that he doesn’t think he’s ever felt about someone showing up to his games before. Even when—if, really—his mother came to games, it felt more like she was completing a chore than it felt like she was supporting him. Maybe it’s because he doesn’t have many friends yet in California, or maybe it’s just because he’s only known them for so long, or maybe it’s just because he really wants to keep them around, but—he loves it. That they care enough to come.

So he tries to do the same for them. He tries to support them and show up to where they need him and be where they want him to be in the crowd when they have their own events. Annie plays violin in department showcases at least three times a semester and Ronin gets their art put up in galleries during midterms and finals. Iwaizumi tries to make time for them as best as he can.

Which maybe he how he ends up in a room in the music building—a small performance space where Annie’s showcases are often held—during his freshman year fall, telling one of Annie’s friends that no, he’s never seen this movie nor even heard of it but Annie asked for his help and he can never really bring himself to say no to her.

Annie’s friend, Howl, grins at him with all his teeth. He has a sharp grin, like he’s excited to drag Iwaizumi into a world that Iwaizumi possibly doesn’t want to be dragged into. But he’s here already, he already told Annie he would do it, and Ronin laughed a lot when he agreed but also told him it would probably be fun, and so he’s not backing down now. Iwaizumi is a lot of things, but he’s not a quitter.

All he has to do, Howl tells him, is shine a flashlight at specific times on a runsheet that’s been scribbled out in pencil on a piece of notebook paper and shoved into his hands. It’s crumpled and the writing is a little smudged, but Iwaizumi can read it and that’s all that matters. He’s given the flashlight and told where to stand for each scene. They run through the show and—

YOU, AS A DREAMER

He’s not thinking about it. He’s not thinking about it. He’s not thinking about the glitter and the corsets and the queerness and the lights and the shadows and the fucking freedom. He’s not thinking about the masculinity and the femininity and the something in-between that Ronin and Annie both are and are not.

He’s not thinking about the way Howl’s hands traced their way up his body as he did his strip tease. He’s not thinking about Howl showing off his body with complete confidence, without a trace of the vulnerability that he has to be feeling showing on his face.

He’s not thinking about the others in the cast either, the subjects of his flashlight and decidedly not the subjects of his thoughts. Like:

Heath, in red lingerie and four-inch high heels, stalking down the stairs from the stage to the audience with a riding crop in hand singing a song that’s labeled Sweet Transvestite, even though Iwaizumi is 87% sure that’s a very outdated term. Like:

Kitty, practically glowing under the dimmed lights of the showcase room: silver glitter on their cheeks and painted down their sternum to the waistband of their skirt. Doing a tap dance in ballet flats—one two three four dance you little fucking whore—collapsing on the floor at the end of the song, center stage and breathing hard. The callbacks, Iwaizumi is told they are, are often crude and sexual and objectifying and filthy—and somehow Kitty is unapologetic in their pronouns and their laughter and their movement anyway. Like:

Peyton, with a black corset and lace underwear both made for the cis female body. Peyton, with black fishnets and shiny platform heels. Peyton, decidedly not a cis female. But the clothes fit her well in the way the corset frames her chest and the way the underwear clings at her body and—

Iwaizumi is not thinking about it. He isn’t. None of this is—it’s just—

The thing is that it’s just a movie. It’s just a show. It’s just a performance. Everything about the shadowcast is performative; it’s theatre of a kind. Non-traditional, but still performing arts.

But it’s also the most true and authentic version of Annie that Iwaizumi has ever seen, and if he knew any of the rest of the cast better, he’s pretty sure he’d feel the same about them. It’s the most confident he’s ever seen her—Janet is an asshole slut! She chews and chews but never swallows! Go for the Oscar!—and it’s the happiest she’s ever looked while performing.

Violinist Annie is like a dream, in a way. She’s put together with her black shirt and white button down. She’s concentrating on the movements but she’s still at peace and in tune with the sound. She’s gentle. She’s the kind of girl Iwaizumi would bring home to his parents if he could—if he wasn’t thinking so fucking hard about Howl Heath Oikawa Oikawa Oikawa—

Rocky Horror Annie—Janet, for this performance; but she also knows the tracks for Colombia and Trixie—is a dream in a very different way. She’s unreal: gorgeous and alluring and having an awakening of sorts, or perhaps it’s more of a becoming. Rocky Horror Annie makes Iwaizumi’s hands shake a little; not in any repulsion, but more like he wants something. Something he refuses to name. Refuses to think about. Refuses to acknowledge.

He has a dream, a few days after their rehearsal and the night before they present the shadowcast to a group of friends from around campus. In the dream, he is on fire. He is on fire, but he doesn’t feel the burning or the heat or the pain. He feels kind of like he’s being cleaned in the same way you would disinfect metal with alcohol and a flame.

The fire simmers down, then goes out entirely. When he looks down, he does not recognize himself as himself so much as he sees a body that could be his. He is still all muscle and hard lines and strength. He is ripped black fishnets and a black pleather skirt that barely reaches past his upper thighs and he can feel that there’s glitter on his cheeks like grief or perhaps like his own awakening.

Once, when he was in his first year of junior high, the night before a big presentation, he had a dream that accidentally he went to class naked and everyone pointed and laughed at him. He woke up crying and made his mom call him out sick.

When he told Oikawa the reason why, Oikawa had rolled his eyes: don’t care so much about people’s opinions on what you wear. If you look good, you look good.

I was naked, dumbass. It wasn’t a bad fashion choice. They were laughing at me because I didn’t have clothes on.

Yeah, and I bet you looked good. Don’t think so hard about it, Iwa. It was a dream.

Iwaizumi wonders, sometimes. About clothes. About bodies. About his own body. About dreams. Maybe a little about Sigmund Freud and maybe a little about his dreams of Oikawa in Argentina and—

He’s not thinking about it.

I WANNA GO (I WANNA COME)

The first time Annie asks him—“Did you like it? Rocky?”—Iwaizumi lies.

“It was…” he trails off. “I don’t know. It was…interesting. New. You were good, though.”

Here is what he does not say: it was so much fun, it was brilliant, it was bright and dizzying and alive. I looked at you and I realized I am so lucky to be your friend. I looked at the others and I thought, I want that. I want to be that. Look like that.

Or, I want to feel like that. Feel that way about my own body, about my own movement, about my own heart. Feel that way about other boys’ bodies. It was fun and I had a great time and Annie, Annie, Annie, I am so afraid of how much I want this.

Annie studies him for a moment, like she’s seeing something more than he’s saying. He shifts uncomfortably in her desk chair, looking away from where she sits on her bed. Her room is cozy—pink quilt, white bean bag chair with a small coffee stain credited to Ronin, photos of everyone she loves on her walls, Iwaizumi and Ronin’s faces beaming out at the camera from a photo by the lamp on her desk—and Iwaizumi has never felt so uncomfortable in it before.

She nods slowly. “Well, just get through this first performance. If you want to do the next one, just let me know, ‘kay? We’re always looking for more people.”

They’ve been on campus for roughly a semester and she is completely settled into The Rocky Horror Picture Show student performance club. Iwaizumi aches to understand. Aches to be in a world that feels so bright and open and alive. Shouting at a screen. Throwing playing cards. Music and dancing. Whole in your body and full in your movement and comfortable in your bones.

He wants and wants and wants—

The second time Annie asks him is after the performance: “Did you like it?”

He’s sitting in the showcase room while the rest of the cast packs up their props and changes back into street clothes. They leave their glitter and eyeliner on, like the performance never ends. He says, “I think I did.”

She hums. “You did a good job.”

“All I did was point a flashlight at people a couple times.”

“Well, you didn’t get uncomfortable and run away,” Annie tells him, “which is probably bare minimum, but it’s still good and I’m glad about it.”

“Did you think I was going to?”

Annie shrugs. “Dunno. But still. I’m glad you think you liked it. Want to do it again?”

Iwaizumi hesitates, the word yes heavy on his tongue. He wants to. He wants to be a part of this. He wants to feel like he fits somewhere that isn’t volleyball, somewhere that isn’t athletics—or, he wants to be something other than the man he has always been supposed to be. The man he thought he wanted to be. The man he thought he was, before he was shown that there are other options. Other ways he can be, if he just chooses.

“You can have some time to think about it,” Annie tells him, after he hesitates. “Next show isn’t for another two weeks. It’ll be fun. I’d like it if you were there.”

Iwaizumi is a fire. Iwaizumi is a crashing plane. Iwaizumi is a body. Iwaizumi is afraid.

He is going to be brave.

“Yeah,” he says, swallowing. “I can help out. It’d be fun.”

THE DESTROYER, OR: KILL THE WORLD BEFORE IT KILLS YOU

He tells Oikawa that he found a club to join other than volleyball. He does not say what the club is. He does not know why he is so afraid.

“That’s exciting,” Oikawa says, chin in his palm as he smiles at the video camera. “Tell me more?”

Iwaizumi could tell him. He doesn’t know why he doesn’t, why he can’t. Maybe it’s because this feels so private, so personal; something he doesn’t need to share with the world.

But this is Oikawa. Oikawa has always gotten to know every piece of him, whether or not it was something he wanted to share with the world. Besides, these are public performances that students on campus can show up to if they feel like it. This isn’t a secret. His name is announced in the fucking credits.

So why is he so ashamed of admitting to it when it’s Oikawa? Oikawa is the most important person in his life, despite the physical distance between them. Maybe it’s because of that rather than in spite of it that Iwaizumi is so afraid to admit to everything he’s been thinking about. He can’t afford to lose him. He can’t afford to let go of this. He can’t afford to ruin what they have.

They are best friends, first and foremost. Iwaizumi will not destroy this with the filth in his thoughts.

I love you and I want you and I want to be different than I am but perhaps I have never been this if I think about it too hard and I want to be with you all the time and I want to kiss you or maybe do more than that if you’ll let me and I am so in love with you that it overwhelms me with how great and wide the feeling is.

I want to be something other than this. I don’t want to be myself. I don’t know who “myself” is anymore.

Oikawa has always known him best. He also always cared so much—because ultimately, at the end of the day, Oikawa has a heart that spans oceans. His passion colors his view of the world sometimes, and his ambition could destroy the fabric of the universe if he decided he wanted to do so, and his dedication often turns self-destructive rather than productive.

But he cares. He cares so much, and Iwaizumi is well aware that he himself is one of the things that Oikawa cares about. He’s one of the few people that Oikawa has taken into his hands gently, and has never once thought about throwing away.

Oh, Oikawa is nice to people, and he’s friendly, but he’s not gentle. His niceness is never his true self. His friendliness is, to a certain degree, performative. It’s only when he’s with a select few people that the performance ends: the glitter is wiped off and he is left bare in front of Iwaizumi to love. He is left with his hunger and his drive and his desire and so much love.

Iwaizumi has always seen this in him, and loved him with and because of it. He doesn’t know why he is so scared that Oikawa will look at him, bare and vulnerable, and dislike what he sees. That’s never been a risk, not really.

Do you understand at all in any way? Can you ever? Will you try anyways?

But Iwaizumi feels a little like he’s coming up for air or waking up from a dream for the first time in his life. He feels a little like he’s discovering something. He feels a little like he is being made anew.

And if he’s being honest, he isn’t sure how to share any of that with Oikawa. He’d rather kill every terrible thought inside of him before breaking apart his friendship with Oikawa. He'd rather kill every circumstance that has ever brought him to the conclusion that he is different than he was supposed to be before he has to face Oikawa’s dislike of this new him. He’d rather kill the world before it killed him.

“There’s not much to say about it,” Iwaizumi says quietly. “It’s just a club.”

TAP TWICE IF YOU’RE GAY

Annie drags Ronin into the shadowcast club too, and soon the three of them are so deeply ingrained in it that Iwaizumi forgets there was a time when he didn’t know what Rocky Horror was.

Ronin gets into the acting part immediately; and having already known how shadowcasts went, they were able to find their groove in the productions quickly. They play Riff Raff, and then Colombia, and then Brad—and they love all of it. They had been resistant at first, preferring to be in the audience, but they got hooked after their first performance.

Meanwhile, Iwaizumi continues with tech: spotlighting actors with the little flashlight, organizing props in the hallway that serves as their backstage, keeping track of costume pieces as they come on and off. He finds that it’s a good break from volleyball, and that he likes being a part of the productions.

He likes the people in the cast and he loves that he gets to help make something so crazy and beautiful and free. It feels a little revolutionary, in a way. A little rebellious. His mother might kill him if she knew the kind of dancing he was watching every other Friday night, but maybe that’s part of the draw—doing something he’s never been allowed to hold before.

At the end of the fall semester, Howl hosts a party for the cast. It’s in the usual showcase room, but just the cast and crew members are invited. The party is after volleyball practice, and Iwaizumi is pretty sure that it’s the quickest he’s ever showered and changed. He makes the twenty minute walk across campus into an eleven minute one, getting to the party only an hour after it really got into the swing of things.

Maybe it’s at this party that he bursts into color. Maybe he has been slowly simmering his entire life, waiting for an opportunity like this one to come into himself. Maybe he has always been this bright, he just didn’t realize it before.

Or, Howl finds him only moments after he enters the room. Then he’s saying, “I’m the designated driver tonight, so I’m not drunk,” and Iwaizumi is about to say something stupid, probably, but Howl continues, “So you know that I’m being honest and also consenting when I say that, God, you’re hot and I want you in my show, and also maybe to kiss you a lot,” and Iwaizumi kind of short-circuits.

Somehow, he says, “I—okay. We can—we can, yeah, yeah.”

Howl blinks, staring at him for a moment. “Fuck, I didn’t think you’d say yes. Holy shit, okay, yeah, wait, there’s a—room downstairs. Now. Um. If you’re okay with that.”

Iwaizumi swallows, something warm boiling in his stomach and something his chest beating hard enough to break his ribs. He can feel his cheeks burning and he knows he probably looks flushed and scared and all kinds of things he doesn’t want to look like, but it’s not like Howl looks much better.

Howl has always seemed so confident and put together and bright and otherworldly and sensual and fucking gorgeous—you should be so lucky!—but right now, he’s blushing a pretty red all over. He looks a little nervous, for some unfathomable reason. But Iwaizumi gives him a small nod, then an enthusiastic one—fuck him with your eyes, bitch—and Howl takes his hand and drags him right back out of the room.

REMEMBER HOW NOTHING MADE SENSE BUT EVERYTHING FELT GOOD?

Iwaizumi’s first kiss happened when he was fourteen. It went like this:

“Have you had your first kiss yet?” Oikawa asks, lying in Iwaizumi’s bed and staring up at the ceiling.

Iwaizumi, lying on his stomach on the floor while he stares at math homework that he isn’t doing, doesn’t look up. He’s not embarrassed by his answer, and he doesn’t really care that Oikawa is asking—they’re fourteen, it’s not something that really matters to him. “No.”

Oikawa hums. This is something that matters to him very much. “I haven’t either.”

“Okay.”

“I want to practice with someone,” Oikawa says, “so I don’t suck at it when I have my first real one.”

There’s some flaw in logic there that Iwaizumi isn’t really sure what to do with. But he doesn’t say anything, just hums and continues staring at his homework.

There’s a long, almost tense silence. Iwaizumi stares at his homework, but he can feel Oikawa watching him from above. He knows that Oikawa is having ideas, and that he’s probably been working up the guts to tell Iwaizumi these ideas for weeks now. And while Iwaizumi can guess where he’s going with this—he’s always known Oikawa best—he waits for Oikawa to put them into words.

“You should practice with me,” Oikawa says, finally.

Iwaizumi swallows. “We’re both boys.”

“That’s why it doesn’t count,” Oikawa tells him, like he’s thought this through and decided that it’s a stupid point. “That’s why it’s not a real kiss.”

Iwaizumi licks his lips. There’s a flaw in that logic too, but he is fourteen and has been recently starting to wonder what Oikawa’s lips taste like and so he doesn’t want to question this either. “Hm.”

“Hm?”

“Hm.”

The bed frame squeaks as Oikawa shifts, climbing off of the bed and lying down on the floor next to Iwaiuzmi. He lies on his back, looking over at Iwaizumi like he’s something to cherish. Or no—he’s looking at Iwaizumi like he wants to devour him.

Iwaizumi never wants him to look away.

“Fine,” he says. “Just for your practice.”

I SEE YOU SHIVER IN ANTICI— (SAY IT! SAY IT!) —PATION

Howl and Iwaizumi’s relationship lasts for the night and nothing more. Neither of them are really looking for a committed relationship and they both knew that—but the night was fun. Howl with his teeth biting into Iwaizumi’s shoulder; Iwaizumi with the shaking gasps he didn’t know he was capable of making; Howl with his hands everywhere; Iwaizumi with his mouth on Howl’s inner thighs—it was a fun night. That was all it was.

But it also—fuck, it made it all so real. It was Howl, who is not someone Iwaizumi’s mother would ever approve of. Howl, with a sharp smirk to rival Oikawa’s and a body perfect for calloused hands to trace the lines and muscles of and a grin that immediately set Iwaizumi at ease despite the lack of clothes and control.

Howl, who is very much not a girl. Who is nothing like what Iwaizumi is supposed to want. Who has never once apologized for being queer and who has never once asked Iwaizumi to apologize for whatever the fuck it is he’s doing right now.

Which, really, can mostly be summed up by panicking. It’s been a week since that party, and he’s back at home for winter break. He’s supposed to be on Skype with Oikawa but minutes earlier, Howl texted and asked if he could call this week because he misses him. Iwaizumi knows it doesn’t mean anything romantic but now he’s thinking about that night and wondering why—when all his California friends clearly knew where they went—he can’t bring himself to tell Oikawa.

There’s nothing to be afraid of, probably.

But part of him thinks that it’s just—Oikawa doesn’t need to know. He’s in fucking Argentina, and he doesn’t need to know about the recent developments in Iwaizumi’s romance and sex life. He doesn’t need to know that Iwaizumi is beginning to come to terms with the warmth in his stomach that has always known he’s gay but never wanted to admit it. He doesn’t need to know that Iwaizumi—safe in this little community of the Rocky Horror shadowcast club—is starting to act on it. He doesn’t need to know that Iwaizumi is probably in love with him.

Still, it feels wrong to hide things from Oikawa, especially things that have this big of an impact on his life. It feels wrong for Oikawa to be so far away and so unknowing. Unlike when they had lived only a house away from each other, now Oikawa only knows what Iwaizumi chooses to tell him. Which means that Iwaizumi can omit as many details as he wants to: his newfound queer self, his fear of that self, his love for that self.

He’s spent so much time hiding it. And he doesn’t think he wants to hide anymore. He wants Oikawa to know the full reality of him, the truth that lives in him, the piece of his heart that he’s been repressing since they were fourteen. He wants Oikawa to see him. He wants Oikawa to accept him.

Oikawa logs onto the Skype call, and Iwaizumi takes one look at him—hair messy like he lets no one but Iwaizumi see, clearly just woken up for the day, remnants of hickeys scattered over his neck and collarbone and the bits of his chest visible by the v-neck of his shirt—and knows he can’t ever say it. If Oikawa said a single wrong word, it would ruin him.

There are things he doesn’t have to know. Judging by his neck, there are things Oikawa isn’t telling him either.

Iwaizumi doesn’t owe him this information. Oikawa is in Argentina, and he’s suddenly so entirely separate from Iwaizumi’s life in a way that both hurts desperately but also allows Iwaizumi an unprecedented freedom to explore being new. Oikawa is in Argentina, and he doesn’t have to know.

Maybe that’s why Iwaizumi has to tell him, though. Maybe that’s what makes it so important.

Oikawa starts, “Iwa! You’re back in Japan for break, right?”

—Say it! Say it! Say it! Say it!—

And Iwaizumi tells him, “I gave a guy a blowjob last semester and I really liked it and I think I’ll probably do it again.”

Oikawa blinks. “Oh.”

“Sorry,” Iwaizumi mutters. He looks away from the camera, away from Oikawa and the bedhead and the bright eyes and the fucking hickeys everywhere. He knows he shouldn’t apologize. He didn’t do anything wrong. He knows that. But Oikawa is looking at him like Iwaizumi is something unforgivable and Iwaizumi can’t fucking stand it. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have—”

“Don’t apologize,” Oikawa cuts in, voice sharp. Iwaizumi looks up and, oh, maybe he is not unforgivable after all. “Don’t you dare apologize to me for being who you are and doing what you want.”

Iwaizumi swallows. “Okay.”

“Okay,” Oikawa says, mouth in a hard line. “Iwa, you never need to apologize to anyone for that. Especially not me.”

“I—” Iwaizumi takes a long breath, closing his eyes, then opening them to study Oikawa— “I don’t want you to think—badly. Of me.”

“I could never,” Oikawa says. And the way he says it: it sounds almost like a promise and almost like a confession.

Iwaizumi just nods.

Chapter Text

GO FOR GOLD

In Iwaizumi’s sophomore year, two years into doing tech for the Rocky Horror club, he realizes that he knows the tracks for almost all the roles just by watching. This is something that he tells Howl about, mostly as a joke, and does not expect to ever come back to bite him. But honestly, after two years of knowing Howl and Annie and Ronin and the rest of the cast, he probably should have expected this.

Which is to say that in the third show of the fall semester in his sophomore year, he is given a pair of gold shorts and his arms are wrapped in bandages and he is laid out on a table and covered in a blanket and told to play Rocky.

A year ago, he told himself that there are things that Oikawa doesn’t have to know. Things that Matsukawa and Hanamaki don’t have to know. Things no one in his hometown ever needs to know. Things his family doesn’t need to know.

He thinks that this is perhaps one of those things.

Still: he does it. He does it, he dresses up and he does the routine and he gets laughs and shouts and screams and—

Oh. So this is what it’s like.

He thinks—okay—he kind of loves it.

IF YOU DON’T LIKE THE MIRROR, IT’S OKAY TO BREAK IT

Sometimes, after he showers, Iwaizumi stares at himself in the mirror for much too long. He has his towel tied around his waist and he just…looks. He’s always had a mostly neutral relationship with his body. He likes being strong, having muscle. He likes being the undefeated arm wrestling champion of Aoba Johsai. He likes that he has callouses on his hands from sports. He secretly likes that his hair is untamed and sticks up in weird places.

But sometimes he stares at the mirror. This is something that he can remember himself doing for as many years as he remembers understanding that it’s his body in the mirror when he looks. He’ll look at himself, running a hand over his chest, just feeling the skin there. It doesn’t feel like it’s his. It doesn’t feel like it’s something that belongs to him nor does it feel like something that’s a part of him.

It’s just kind of…there. He’s not that tall. He’s not that short. His hair is getting a little longer than he’d like it to be. His chest is—flat. His thighs are all muscle. There’s not a curve to his waist nor to the slope of his shoulders. He’s the spitting image of a man who plays sports, who has dedicated his life to athletics, who wants to continue supporting athletes for his career.

He is not someone who dresses up with glitter and lace and red and black. He is not someone who—and please, be quiet, this is a secret—sometimes doesn’t want so much to be a man who looks like he lifts weights in his free time. He knows that this is literally what he is and there’s not much changing that, but—

But is it so wrong? To want to look delicate, sometimes? To want to look like his body fits into something lacy and thin and revealing? To want that reveal to be something different from this? To crave being something else and never, ever speak that out loud?

He thinks probably everyone else has caught on already. He’s sure that they’ve all noticed the discomfort on his face at the word “man” and the tension in his shoulders at the word “sir” and the way he clenches his fist at the mirror before shows when he undresses completely and sees himself naked and vulnerable.

At this point in his life, his body is bare for his own eyes only, but sometimes he wishes he didn’t have to be the one looking. Sometimes he wishes no one would look, including himself. Sometimes he wishes someone else would look and tell him that there’s nothing to see. Sometimes he wishes someone else would look and tell him that they see everything and that it’s okay.

But none of those things happen. Iwaizumi grows more and more uncomfortable in his skin and no one can tell him how to get out of it.

A GREASER FROM THE FREEZER LIKE A BAT OUT OF HELL

Iwaizumi plays Rocky, and then Eddie, and then Brad. He dives into his role in the cast with a fervor, excited and enthusiastic and burning to do more. He wants to play every character, he wants to take on the entire world in his two fists.

He also thinks, sometimes, that he’s falling apart. Just a little bit. He thinks, sometimes, that he needs more than this. More than dressing up and playing a role. He thinks, sometimes, that he has a craving that cannot be fulfilled by crossdressing for a performance. He thinks, sometimes, that he wants to walk out and around campus and under the sun and in class and he wants to look feminine; or at least more feminine than he usually does in the daytime.

He likes the feeling of the lace and the lingerie. He likes that people’s eyes gravitate towards him and hang there. He likes the way he looks, the way he moves. He likes the confidence that performance comes with. He likes the makeup on his face and he fucking loves the lipstick Annie lets him borrow sometimes.

There are moments—few and far between—when he thinks that the only time he’s comfortable in his skin is when he’s pretending to be someone else. Or, maybe it’s that the only time he’s comfortable in his skin is when he’s being who he wants to be—who he could be. Or, maybe it’s that the only time he’s comfortable in his skin is when he’s being who he is.

Maybe this little experiment is getting unhealthy.

Maybe it’s getting him exactly where he wants to be.

REMEMBER WHEN IT WASN’T LIKE THIS? REMEMBER HOW IT NEVER WILL BE THAT AGAIN?

There’s this narrative that everyone always kind of, at least a little bit, knows about themselves before they say anything. There are little hints, little tells and giveaways and clues. Not ever wanting to wear pink. Always looking a little too long at prom dresses before moving on to suits. Feeling out of sync with your own body; hating your body. Feeling wrong in it.

Iwaizumi doesn’t remember feeling any of that, not really. At least, not when he was a kid. When he was younger, his main concerns were winning every volleyball game they played and keeping his grades up and making sure Oikawa didn’t self-destruct on a daily basis. He didn’t really think too hard about things like penis size or if he wants one at all and body hair or if it’s an option to get rid of it. It just wasn’t something that occurred to him.

But now that the fact that there are options is something that’s been pointed out to him with a flashlight and a boatload of glitter—now he can’t stop noticing things. He can’t stop noticing all of the little things that he could change about himself, all of the little things that he isn’t quite sure he feels are him. He can’t stop noticing the big things, too: the ones that feel wrong sometimes and perfect at other times and most times just don’t seem to be his own.

He hasn’t always known that there was something different about him. About the way he saw himself and saw the world. But now he can see there might be something, and he can’t ever unsee it.

SIT DOWN AND ENJOY IT!

Ronin is the first one to say it. They mean well. Iwaizumi knows they mean well. But still—something about it makes him want to cry. He doesn’t want this. He doesn’t want to deal with this, doesn’t want to confront it, but oh, Ronin is so right when they say: “You look kinda sad, Hajime.”

They’re in Annie’s dorm room again, because she’s the only one of the three of them that has a single, and they’re supposed to be doing homework but Iwaizumi would really rather do anything else. Well, maybe anything else except for having this conversation.

Annie hums. “What’s been up with you recently?”

Iwaizumi licks his lips, staring down at the readings he’s supposed to be doing. He’s lying on his stomach on Annie’s plush rug and he refuses to look up from the textbook laid out on the floor in front of him. “I’m fine, I don’t know what you guys are talking about.”

“Liar,” Ronin says, because they’ve never really known how to be subtle about anything. They’re willing to call Iwaizumi out on his shit, which is something that can be both helpful and needed and also something that Iwaizumi desperately wants to run from.

“I’m not lying,” Iwaizumi mutters. “Can we focus now? I’m pretty sure we aren’t supposed to take a break for another eleven minutes.”

Annie sighs. She’s sitting on her bed, scrolling through her phone instead of reading whatever Shakespeare play she’s supposed to be going through this week. When Iwaizumi glances up at her, she puts her phone down and studies him for a moment. “Hm. Can I do your makeup, Hajime?”

Iwaizumi tenses. He’s been so on edge recently, and about everything. “Why?”

She shrugs. “I dunno. It’s fun, and you're a good test subject.”

“Fine,” Iwaizumi mutters, because he’s weak for one of his closest friends—though the title of best friend will always belong to Oikawa—and he really likes it when she does his makeup. She’s always been able to do it better than him and Ronin’s efforts combined.

Annie grins at him as he sits up and positions himself comfortably on the open bean bag chair. It’s not until Ronin starts talking that Iwaizumi realizes this was probably a ploy to just get him to sit still and stop doing homework.

“Do you want to play Frank for the February show?” Ronin asks, because they were recently elected to the board of the Rocky Horror club, alongside Annie, and they’ve both been obsessively planning their Valentine’s Day performance for the past two weeks. “I think you’d be good.”

Annie brushes something over his cheeks and Iwaizumi closes his eyes, just letting her do her work. “Could be fun.”

“Great,” Ronin says. “I’m putting you down for Frank for Valentine’s Day. I think Howl wanted to do Brad, if you’re comfy with that. And we were thinking about Peyton as Janet.”

“That works.”

Ronin hums. Iwaizumi can hear them typing on their laptop—a cast list to be sent out later tonight, maybe. The club is open to anyone who wants to participate, but there’s a rotating list of recurring actors who sign up for the mailing list that goes out every week. Iwaizumi has become a regular since the first show Annie roped him into doing tech for.

“Would you ever want to play a female role?” Ronin asks.

It’s framed as innocent curiosity, but Iwaizumi can feel every muscle in his body tense anyway. If he said yes, his friends wouldn’t look at him any differently. The point of this is playing different roles. They just want him to be comfortable. Saying yes doesn’t even necessarily mean he will play a female role, it just means they would put him on the list of people who can. And if he said no, they would take that and move on.

He could do anything. Say anything.

He could be anyone.

But mostly, he just wants to run.

Don’t care so much about people’s opinions on what you wear. If you look good, you look good.

Would Oikawa think the same thing as he did when they were teenagers if Iwaizumi were wearing a dress? Would Oikawa think the same thing as he did then if Iwaizumi were wearing lingerie and doing a strip tease on stage for random members of the student body?

There are some things Oikawa doesn’t want or need to know about Iwaizumi. There are some things Iwaizumi doesn’t want to know about himself. There are some things that Iwaizumi would like to run from.

In another world, he would hide in the safety of childhood, of familiarity, of Oikawa’s stupid, fond, earnest smile, the one he only ever turns on Iwaizumi.

He would run to Argentina and never look back at all of this: at Rocky Horror, at his body in glitter, at his mind in transition, at his distaste for his own skin, at his ideal self-image, an image that haunts and does not exist. He could leave it all behind: the thoughts about sexuality, about Oikawa, about gender, about himself.

There are some things he doesn’t want anyone to know. Sometimes he thinks people can see it on him, can smell it on him. The insecurity. The fear. The discomfort. The craving. Sometimes he thinks his body is transparent but his heart is so ugly that no one wants to tell him they can see it. Sometimes he thinks his body is so ugly that no one wants to tell him they can see his heart.

Don’t you dare apologize to me for being who you are and doing what you want.

“Sure,” he says quietly. “If you needed me to, I could play a female role.”

STUDIES ON YOUR OWN DAMN BODY / GHOST STUDIES

Iwaizumi is waiting for Oikawa to answer the Skype call. For the moment, though, he’s looking at himself in the camera. The sharp line of his jaw. The peach fuzz at his chin. The thin lines of his lips.

He’s looking at himself and he’s realizing that when he looks at that body, it doesn’t feel like his. It doesn’t feel like his own. He is something different than that. More than that? Less than that? Either way, something other.

He is bone. He is flesh. He is skin. He is muscle.

There’s this part in Rocky Horror, where Frank calls himself a transvestite. It’s one of Iwaizumi’s favorite songs in the movie. This is his first introduction, and it comes full circle when in his final scenes, he sings about how he looked at women all dressed up and thought he wanted to look the same.

Iwaizumi sometimes thinks about that; thinks about himself and how he looks at Annie and her makeup and skirts and high heels. He thinks maybe he would look a little foolish if he dressed like that: a man built the way he is in heels and a dress. He thinks maybe he would just be laughed at.

That doesn’t change the wondering, and it doesn’t change the wanting.

He is bone, and flesh, and skin, and muscle.

In the movie, Frank is building the strong, perfect, muscular man. He’s building a creature who can satisfy every need. He’s doing it in seven days, and six long nights. Maybe Iwaizumi needs to take apart his own body and rebuild it in the shape of a perfect man, because lately, he’s been feeling a little like his body is not something he wants any part of. Maybe Iwaizumi needs to unravel himself and build something new in its place.

Rocky—the perfect man, the Creature, the newborn child of a transvestite—sings a song about the sword of Damocles. Or, he sings a song about how terrible things are to come. “All dressed up and no place to go,” he sings, and Iwaizumi thinks about that, too.

Every two weeks, he gets dressed up like that Creature, that creation, that man born without a birth. One day, this is bound to come back and bite him. One day, the thread holding up the sword over his head will be cut, and it will kill him.

He dresses up and he is not laughed off the stage, but—ultimately, this is a show. This isn’t him. When he plays Trixie, once, and later when he plays Magenta, he can hide behind the characters. He’s doing drag for the sake of performance and not because there’s something in his head that feels so wrong in his body.

Bone. Flesh. Skin. Muscle.

At some point during his wait for Oikawa and his staring at the mirror, Iwaizumi stops feeling real. He stops feeling like he’s in his body, like he has a body. The bone, flesh, skin, and muscle that he has isn’t his. It’s just something that exists. If it were up to him, everything about it would be different.

There are days where he doesn’t feel that way at all. Days where he plays volleyball and jumps and spikes and serves and feels fucking invincible. Days where he walks to class and feels the sun on his skin and thinks he is so grateful to have skin on which to feel the sun. Days where he puts on clothes and they feel soft and familiar and boyish and they fit right. Days where he looks in the mirror and thinks the spikes in his hair are uniquely him and the fuzz at his chin is masculine and handsome.

There are good days, and bad days.

There are people in his life who are unapologetic about being true to themselves. He is not one of them. No, he is bone and flesh and skin and muscle. Boy. Young adult. Blooming into a perfect, chivalrous, handsome man. A husband and a dad, one day. Bone/flesh/skin/muscle.

But still, despite that: he wants to be more than what he is. He doesn’t want to be bone and flesh and skin and muscle. He wants to be girl and boy and free and safe. He wants to be something different from what he is now, but he doesn’t want to be other-ized by the world. He doesn’t want to be a monster. He doesn’t want to be a slur.

There are more things he does not want than there are things he does want.

And about Rocky Horror, again: there’s a moment towards the end, where they’re all in the bare minimum of clothing and their faces are painted over in makeup. They end up in a pool—the last one in has to be in the sequel, Frank tell us whose pool this is in thirteen words or less—and the makeup begins to wash off. They are swimming in this pool together, the group of them, makeup smearing off to reveal the skin underneath, water washing them clean. The scene continues into group sex, but that’s beside the point.

The point is the song: I’m a wild and an untamed thing. Rose tint my world, keep me safe from my trouble and pain.

The point is that the makeup is gone, that they are messy, that they are wild and untamed, that the world is beautiful if they want to believe it is and they are so goddamn free. Be it. Be it. Be it. Be it.

Oikawa picks up the call, eventually, but not before Iwaizumi has come to several conclusions.

He is not his body. He must remake his body. He is not a man. He is not a woman. He is unknown. He is malleable, reformable, ever-changing. He can look however he wants as soon as he’s brave enough to try. He can be whoever he wants as soon as he’s brave enough to try. He can be reborn. Renewed. Bone/flesh/skin/muscle—none of it means anything to him. For now, he is ghost.

Chapter Text

ROCKY HORROR ROLE CALL

In his junior year, Oikawa calls him and tells him that if Iwaizumi doesn’t say no in the next ten minutes then he’s buying a plane ticket to LAX and Iwaizumi better be meeting him at the airport.

“In what world,” Iwaizumi had said, not even checking his calendar, “would I have said no?”

Oikawa shrugged. “It felt polite to at least pretend it was a question. I bought the plane ticket two weeks ago.”

So for the long weekend they get in the fall for Thanksgiving, Oikawa shows up on Thursday evening with a plan to leave on Monday and absolutely no plans for the three days in between.

Reuniting with Oikawa is—it feels a little like coming home, and like breathing fresh air, and like jumping in the deep end of the public pool on a day boiling over with sun. It feels a little like Iwaizumi is himself again. Like who he had been in Japan and who he is in California are both different people and are entirely far away from this moment, because who he is with Oikawa is who he’s really meant to be. Who he’s comfortable in being.

There’s a reason, Iwaizumi figures, that he and Oikawa have stuck together for so long.

Iwaizumi shows him around campus, talking about every memory he has on every corner while Oikawa listens with rapt attention and a loose smile on his face. Oikawa has looped their arms together so that their sides are pressed close while they walk, and while they hadn’t used to be very tactile with each other, Iwaizumi is relishing in the touch now.

The problem doesn’t come until Oikawa meets Iwaizumi’s friends. He meets Annie first, and charms her into a smile and a laugh and easy conversation. Then he meets Ronin, and Oikawa already knew almost every detail about them already from Skype calls and texts, but he still seems taken aback by the stick and poke on Ronin’s neck and the spiked collar Ronin’s girlfriend likes to see them wearing.

But still, Ronin and Annie and Oikawa get along, which Iwaizumi didn’t really expect. Then Oikawa meets Howl.

Howl, who is, as a general rule, open and genuine to everyone he meets, exchanges two words with Oikawa and his smile turns sharp in the same way it had when Iwaizumi first spoke to him about not knowing anything about Rocky Horror.

His smile is sharp like he knows things about Iwaizumi that Oikawa doesn’t—which is true, but isn't something Oikawa needs to come to understand. It’s the kind of smirk that lets Iwaizumi know that he’s planning something, or trying something, or testing something in the same way he runs tests on the lab rats in his biology classes.

“So,” Howl says, when the five of them end up at a dining hall for dinner together on Friday. “Tooru, are you coming to the show tonight?”

Oikawa glances at Iwaizumi, then back at Howl. “What show?”

“Oh, you didn’t hear?” Howl asks, innocent in a way that Iwaizumi knows he isn’t. “The four of us are part of a club that does a shadowcast of Rocky Horror every two weeks. Hajime, remind me who you are for this show?”

Iwaizumi very carefully does not look at Oikawa. He can feel Oikawa’s eyes on him—why didn’t you tell me? What is he talking about? What was I not trusted with? Why didn’t you trust me with it?—and he doesn’t want to answer his questions. Doesn’t know how to answer them.

How do you tell someone that you trust them with the worst of you but, still, you don’t know how to trust them with parts of you that you don’t have names for yet? How do you tell someone that you are so in love with them and so you cannot give them every piece of you lest it break?

“I’m not in it this week,” Iwaizumi mutters, pushing rice around on his plate with a fork. Oikawa is still frowning at him and it burns. “I’m skipping this one. I told you that a while ago. I told everyone that.”

“Oh,” Annie says, swallowing a gulp of water. “I actually meant to ask you about that. Kitty can’t do Frank this week because they had some family crisis or something. I know you have the weekend with Tooru, but you’re our only available backup…”

Iwaizumi finally glances at Oikawa, and his face is unreadable. He knows that Iwaizumi has been hiding things now, and he’s not happy about it. “I really want to skip this one, Annie, and spend time with—”

“You should do it,” Oikawa cuts in. He’s still looking at Iwaizumi, face carefully blank. He has on that mask, that fake smile that Iwaizumi hates so much. He hasn’t been on the receiving end of one since Oikawa went to Argentina, but he supposes he deserves it now. “I don’t know anything about this show, but it’d be fun to watch you in it.”

Iwaizumi swallows. Thinks about lace and dream and hope and fear and love and femininity. Thinks about Oikawa. Annie smiles at him hopefully, and Ronin wears a similar smile. “Fine. But one of you has to sit with Tooru so he doesn’t run out horrified when he sees Frank’s entrance.”

YOU, IN THE DICTIONARY

Iwaizumi went to California with a decent understanding of English and an okay grasp of Spanish and ready to conquer every language which crosses his path. Then he reached California and learned that there’s an infinite amount of words that he does not know and an entire encyclopedia set’s worth of culture that he’s never heard of.

Here are two of the definitions that he did not know before:

Queer. Adjective. Strange, or weird, if used in one of his texts for his Victorian literature class. Or, a reclaimed word: a part of the LQBT+ community. Sometimes a slur when in the mouths of certain types of politicians, and sometimes an identity when offered as a self-descriptor. Sometimes a mark of pride in not knowing and in othering and in rebelling and in community and in being true to yourself. Strange, or weird.

Genderqueer. Adjective or noun. Not adhering to the gender binary. Queering the gender binary. Something pridefully other and new and unique to each individual in a special community of its own, like queer, except specifically referring to the ache and pride of gender. Like Ronin, like Kitty. Like—

Maybe like Iwaizumi. A gay genderqueer kind of a person. A volleyball player; all bruised knees and hard muscle and trimmed fingernails and messy hair. A performer; all glitter and black fishnets and pink lip gloss over a bitten down mouth. A ghost, in some ways. A body, in others. Or something in between that.

He has always cared for procedure, for rules, for guiding paths. Oikawa was the one always breaking the boxes he was put in. While Oikawa would crash through cages and break limitations with his bare hands, Iwaizumi would quietly push at them until they bent.

But maybe this self-discovery thing needs fewer mind games and puzzles and anxiety over right and wrong and permanency and lovability. Maybe he needs to spend less time gently pressing at the cage of his ribs and more time looking at the cage of maleness that is his whole life’s making; then maybe he should try hitting it until it breaks.

NOT THE ARTERY BUT THE VEIN

Iwaizumi makes sure that Oikawa is with Ronin—who promises to play nice and not tell embarrassing stories about him—and then he heads to the performance space with Annie and Howl. Oikawa doesn’t seem to mind that he’s being set loose with one of Iwaizumi’s friends, and considering that he’s never really minded being introduced to new people and making new friends, Iwaizumi is inclined to believe that he truly doesn’t mind.

That being said, there was something unreadable about Oikawa’s face, even after the conversation moved on from Rocky Horror and they parted at the doors to the music building. His plastic mask is up again, despite it having been gone ever since leaving for Argentina, and despite having not been something he showed Iwaizumi specifically since elementary school.

He’s upset that Iwaizumi didn’t tell him about the show—that the club he joined is a performance club, that the thing he spends so much time doing but doesn’t really share much about is something that everyone in California treats as common, mutual knowledge. He’s upset that Iwaizumi didn’t tell him something that’s so clearly important to Iwaizumi and to his friendships. He’s upset that Iwaizumi didn’t trust him.

It’s not like Iwaizumi didn’t want to tell him—except for the fact that he didn’t want to tell him, did he? He didn’t want to talk to Oikawa about this thing that’s leading him to conclusions about himself that scare him. He didn’t want to talk to Oikawa about this thing that feels so intimate, so personal, despite it being a show for any of the student body. It felt like a secret, and he wanted it to be something that was just his. Something he didn’t have to share with anyone else, much less someone who has only ever known him to be the epitome of the masculine athlete.

Maybe it was that he feared Oikawa’s judgment. Maybe it was that he feared Oikawa would laugh, or hate him, or roll his eyes and treat it as a game.

Or maybe it was just that he was scared Oikawa wouldn’t do any of those things. He might accept it for all that it is, and then he might still not understand. He might not understand that the clothes and the music and the dancing—it all means something to Iwaizumi. Something that he has a name for but can’t say out loud to even an empty room. Oikawa might not get it. It might just be a show, just a game, for him.

Oikawa has always seen all of Iwaizumi. So if he sees this, and he doesn’t like it or he doesn’t understand it or he doesn’t even try to do either of those things, Iwaizumi doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to do it again. How can he be true to this newly discovered heart if the person who has always known his old heart best doesn’t like the way it’s changed?

Maybe it’s not healthy, the way he gets ready for the show and feels like he’s moving in amber just because Oikawa is out in the audience tonight, waiting for something. Something that he isn’t ready for, maybe. Something that he doesn’t want to hear or see, maybe.

The first time he ran tech, Annie admitted she worried he would get overwhelmed and leave. For the first time, Iwaizumi is understanding the sentiment. If Oikawa doesn’t want to see this, if he leaves halfway through, if he laughs or rolls his eyes at anything Iwaizumi does now—he thinks maybe he’ll break.

So maybe it’s not healthy, the way he puts so much of his worth in Oikawa’s hands. Maybe a stronger man wouldn’t care what his best friend thinks of him in drag. Maybe a braver woman wouldn’t rely so much on Oikawa’s reaction to justify her passions. Maybe a better person than him wouldn’t be so afraid in the moments before entering the stage. But at the end of the day, the person who is there backstage is Iwaizumi and there’s no changing who he is and what he wants to do now.

So he walks on stage—whips and chains and anal sex and oral sex and whips and chains—in a jacket that gets tossed into the audience. He stalks around the room bare in his fishnets and high heels and leather skirt and glittery black corset—don’t get strung out on the way I look or taste or smell—and he makes it an artform. He does the show and he does not search the crowd for Oikawa—lie through your teeth, bitch—because if their eyes meet, he may lose his nerve.

He reveals his skin and his heart and his every artery and every vein to the audience, but he knows that it’s really just one person he’s thinking about at that moment. He knows that it’s really just one person he simultaneously wants and doesn’t want to see him in his entirety.

With the facade of confidence painted over his skin and the dance burning in his muscle memory, he tries to forget that Oikawa is there. He tries to pretend it’s just a regular show, just an audience of people he doesn’t really know.

He can’t really forget, but he tries. He tries. He tries.

NOTHING BUT LOVE AND NOTHING BUT PRIDE—

Iwaizumi gets through the show, gets through bows. He washes off his makeup in the hallway/backstage where a freshman is organizing the props. He stares at himself in the mirror. He looks tired, some flecks of glitter still lingering at his eyelids.

He knows he needs to go back into the room and he needs to face Oikawa, now that Oikawa has seen him so vulnerable. Now that Oikawa has seen him as himself, even if he didn’t realize that was what he was looking at because himself is so vastly different from anything Oikawa has ever known him to be. Has ever wanted him to be.

He doesn’t want to do this. He doesn’t want to talk about it. He doesn’t want to admit to it.

The rest of the cast has already begun to leave, and the performance space is empty. Annie is the last with him, and she kisses his cheek then gives him a small smile and makes her own way out of the music building. There’s no more putting it off, not really, so Iwaizumi figures he might as well ruin Oikawa’s visit sooner rather than later.

Going out into the showcase room, Oikawa is still sitting in the second row of the audience, one foot pulled up onto the chair and the other foot tapping at the floor impatiently. He's still talking to Ronin, though Iwaizumi really doesn’t know what they have to bond over except for a mutual love of teasing him, and he doesn’t turn when Iwaizumi enters the room.

In one hand is a playing card, and he’s folding and unfolding the corner of the card over and over again, even as he keeps his eyes on Ronin. He looks so deeply comfortable in the space, despite Ronin’s overall lack of clothes and the dim lights of the room and the two boas tossed to a corner at some point after the Floor Show scene.

“Hey,” Iwaizumi says, walking over to the two of them. He moves slowly, carefully navigating the mostly empty room. He clears his throat as Oikawa looks over at him. He’s smiling and it’s sharp like knives. “You ready to head back to my room?”

“In a minute,” Oikawa says. “See you later, Ronin?”

Ronin looks between them, and gets Oikawa’s hint even if they don’t get Iwaizumi’s desperate plea to not leave him alone for this conversation about drag and crossdressing and identity and all the other things Iwaizumi hasn’t told Oikawa about.

“Sure,” they say. “Great show tonight, Hajime. Best yet, dude. Have a good rest of your night, ‘kay?”

Iwaizumi nods as Ronin claps him on the shoulder and then heads out of the room. Then it’s just Iwaizumi and Oikawa in the room. Iwaizumi takes a breath, and sits down next to Oikawa, keeping his eyes on his feet. He can feel Oikawa watching him, studying him, trying to unravel him, and Iwaizumi doesn’t know what he’s finding. He barely knows what there is to find when he himself is looking.

Finally: “Why didn’t you tell me? That you do stuff like this?”

Oikawa doesn’t sound judgmental, not yet, just passively curious. Iwaizumi still feels like he wants to leave immediately. Since the first time, he’s gotten so comfortable in this space, in this community, in this world of the queer and the performing and the art and the collaboration.

But now that Oikawa is here, it doesn’t feel quite so familiar anymore. It feels like his three worlds—Japan and California and Oikawa alone—are colliding in an explosion of glass and ceramic and broken hearts. It feels like his private space to be something reinvented has become a glass dish under a microscope, and like Oikawa is making breakthrough discoveries.

It’s not that he doesn’t trust Oikawa, because he does. It’s not that he doesn’t love Oikawa, because he does. He loves Oikawa so much, he is so deeply in love with him, and still he doesn’t know if he can tell him this. It’s not that he doesn’t want to share—it’s that he doesn’t know if Oikawa wants to hear it.

He shrugs, tugging at the string of his hoodie. “Just didn’t feel relevant, I guess.”

Oikawa scoffs. “It’s clearly a huge part of your life if you’re playing as the lead in a shadowcast of such a—you know. A movie like that.”

Iwaizumi flinches, feeling his face flush and his heart sink to the pit of his stomach and begin to rot. He could cry, he could run, he could punch Oikawa, he could make a joke about how it’s stupid and silly and he should probably give it up because it’s not something that matters—and instead of anything safe, he snaps, “No, I don’t fucking know. What kind of movie is it, Oikawa?”

“It’s just—” Oikawa exhales for four beats exactly and Iwaizumi knows to count them because he knows how Oikawa calms himself down when he’s overwhelmed and Iwaizumi wants this conversation to end. He wants to go back to a world where Oikawa doesn’t see him the way he feels now, where he is nothing more than athlete and friend and boy— “It’s just not something I ever thought you would like. That’s all I meant.”

“Well, I do,” Iwaizumi mutters. “I do like it. It’s—”

He cuts himself off. Oikawa is still staring at him like he’s something to study rather than love. “I can tell it’s important to you.”

Iwaizumi shrugs.

“I don’t mean to sound like I don’t get that it’s important,” Oikawa continues, dropping his gaze down to the playing card in his hand. “I just—I want to be important to you, too. I want to know about the things that make you happy.”

—AND NOTHING BUT YOU AND NOTHING BUT ME

Iwaizumi closes his eyes. Oikawa speaks every word like he’s in a confessional or at a shrine or in the privacy of his bedroom praying to gods that maybe aren’t listening and asking for acceptance and love and support despite that. It somehow both sets Iwaizumi at ease and makes his skin crawl. He doesn’t know how Oikawa can manage to sound that tender while speaking to his best friend, when his best friend has been lying to him so much and so often.

“I was—scared,” Iwaizumi murmurs. He opens his eyes and the room’s lights are dimmed but he can see Oikawa perfectly when he turns to look at him. Maybe he’s ready for this. “It makes me—being in this shadowcast makes me—it’s like I can be…different. New.”

He takes a breath, looking away from Oikawa and towards a spot on the ground where the floorboards are all scraped up.

To the scratches, he says, “I can be new, but also like me. I like the community and I like getting to be proud and I like the energy and I like the brilliance and life of it. I didn’t want to tell you because I like being free to dress and act in a way that feels good, even though it’s not what you know me as.”

His voice is beginning to turn bitter and pained and he hates that he’s losing control of his words, but they continue spilling out anyways. “I didn’t want to tell you because—I want you to remember me, in Argentina, the way you want to know me. Not as some queer in dresses and makeup.”

“Hajime,” Oikawa says softly, “I want to know you as who you actually are. We’ve known each other since we were babies. Neither of us is the same person as we were when we were two years old. It’s okay to change and it’s okay to, like—to come into yourself in a different way that you expected. I’m never going to be mad at you for that, or hate what you become. Iwa, you could literally go on a murder spree and I would go to court saying you’re justified.”

Iwaizumi closes his eyes again, taking a breath for four beats exactly. Four beats to steady himself, four beats to reassure himself that this is okay. He’s allowed this. He wants this—is this. Proudly. “I’m not a man. I feel more feminine than masculine, a lot of the time. And I think I didn’t realize before because I was so caught up in being who everyone thought I looked like.

“But now I—I like being something in between. Something that’s both and neither at the same time. I feel—like, fucking euphoric when someone accidentally calls me a girl or uses she for my pronouns. I don’t expect you to care or want to be my friend still or—”

“Hajime,” Oikawa cuts in, snapping, his words biting and angry. “You better fucking expect both of those things from your best friend. If I didn’t do those things, I’d be an awful friend and awful person and—and of course I care and still want to be your friend. You really think so fucking low of me? I have stuck with you through every part of your life and every shift in who you are or want to be and I will be dead before you get rid of me, and probably not even then, because I swear to everything good that I will come back and haunt you, you dumbass.”

Iwaizumi’s eyes go wide open. The playing card flutters to the ground like ashes when Oikawa punches his shoulder hard enough to bruise and then drops his forehead onto him, saying, “Fuck, Iwa. I’m not throwing everything we are away because you’re transgender or nonbinary or whatever label you use. I would never.”

“Tooru—”

“Every version of me is so deeply fucking in love with every version of you that has ever been,” Oikawa says, his voice muffled by fabric at the shoulder of Iwaizumi’s sweatshirt. He lifts his head, flushed from cheek to the base of his neck, hands shaking where they’re gripping Iwaizumi’s sweatshirt sleeve. “I’m not giving up on our friendship because you’re discovering who you are. I just want you to be happy.”

Iwaizumi turns, staring at him. “What?”

Oikawa drops his hands but doesn’t move away and doesn’t break eye contact. “I know you heard me.”

“I think you should say it again anyways.”

“Shut the fuck up.” Oikawa looks away, his face still red and his eyes now on some fixed point in the distance. His voice is raw and unsteady when he says, “Can we go back to talking about Rocky Horror again now? I liked it. You were good.”

“No,” Iwaizumi says immediately. “You said you’re in love with me.”

Oikawa stiffens. “I also said I’m not stopping being friends with you, and because we’re best friends—which means it’s a mutual rule of not able to stop being friends with each other—you can’t leave either, so basically we should pretend that I never said anything and be normal and maybe we can just go to your room and go to sleep and not talk about—”

“Shut the hell up,” Iwaizumi tells him. He’s grinning. “You’re so damn dramatic. Kiss me.”

DON’T DREAM IT—BE IT

Imagine: Iwaizumi, as a blank slate. Iwaizumi, as an empty canvas. Iwaizumi, as a block of unmolded clay.

Now, imagine Iwaizumi: covered in eighteen years of expectations; painted all over in other people’s dreams; molded into shapes he doesn’t care for but doesn’t have any better fitting shapes to ask for. Now, imagine Iwaizumi: a sheet of origami paper folded and unfolded and folded back up again along the same crease lines.

Along different crease lines, maybe. Echoes of the old ones still there. A shape that had been maybe still lingers a little bit. But there is still something new in this next round of folding. He is remade in an image he chooses rather than a canvas painted by the men around him.

And finally, Iwaizumi: in an act of discovery. An act of creating himself from scratch.

(EPILOGUE: ALL RISE FOR YOUR QUEEN!)

On the last day of his trip to California, Oikawa goes with him to the mall. He drags Iwaizumi from store to store because he loves shopping, and he refuses to buy anything for himself because he doesn’t have the room in his luggage.

He buys clothes for Iwaizumi, instead. A deep red satin dress that falls over his shoulders nicely and frames his waist in a way that puts a mirage of curves to his body. A mustard yellow sweater that’s half a joke and half not, because it’s the ugliest color Iwaizumi has ever seen but it’s also loose enough around his chest that it could be made for a body he sometimes craves. A cheap plastic “silver” necklace with a volleyball charm on it. It’s ugly and stupid and silly and it’s his and Iwaizumi wants to wear it forever.

Oikawa does not let go of his hand while they shop. Iwaizumi carries the shopping bags in one hand and holds Oikawa in the other.

It’s funny, the way dreams sometimes stop being dreams. Sometimes, they instead become satin dresses and a hand in yours and confidence when you walk down the street in your body. Sometimes, you start looking like a daydream in high heels and thigh highs rather than wishing you could make even just one of your daydreams come to fruition. Sometimes, you get brave and get bold and get prideful and get strange, or weird, or not adhering to the binary.

Sometimes you are the plane and the crash and the fire and the ashes and—no. No, that’s not right. Sometimes, you are the flying.

Imagine, here: a home not only to dream in, but to be real in. Imagine, here: a daydream who is not a boy who is not a girl who is not muscle who is not ghost. And this is quite hard to imagine, some days, but other days it feels like it is the only thing to be: other than something and more than everything.

Imagine, here: rising for the motherfucking queen, just a gay genderqueer kind of a person with bruised knees and rose tint-red lip gloss, someone so entirely whole that he might as well be the whole goddamn sky. Okay. Yeah. He can work with that. The whole sky, and everything above it.