Once again, I tried writing something outside of my usual aptitudes for Hero. As I'm about to owe her a pretty huge favor, lol.

...But if anyone I know in real life reads this, I'll have no choice but to light myself on fire.

Midway through practice, Oikawa sent him a text reminding him that it was their one month anniversary tomorrow – as opposed to bombarding him with calls the moment he (Oikawa, not Kageyama) woke up. What had Kageyama concerned, however, was not the fact that Oikawa had waited until literally the last day to inform him. Or that it had clearly been an afterthought. It was that Oikawa was supposed to have practice with Aobajousei at the same time as Karasuno's, and he'd clearly slacked on at least part of it today.

He glared at the time stamp again, but the first message in the short chain still indicated that it was from almost an hour ago.

3:42 PM: How could you forget? (;_;)

Kageyama hadn't forgotten, he'd just been busy with – okay, he'd forgotten. But it should've been Oikawa's fault too, for waiting so long to remind him.

"Maybe you should at least get him a present?" Hinata asked. His breath hit the back of Kageyama's neck in a way that made him jump, then scowl because he'd managed to let Hinata, of all people, sneak up on him.

"How much did you read?" Kageyama grumbled.

"Like…" As a testament to how much stronger their bond had become over the course of a year, Hinata hesitated for only a moment before admitting, "pretty much all of it."

The scowl deepened.

"Gotta admit, you and Oikawa? I never would've guessed."

Kageyama's head snapped up, a quick survey of the room revealing that… no one else had heard, thankfully. Asahi was halfway through changing, moving slower than normal and staring at his locker contemplatively. Something had been upsetting him all day, and so far he'd refused to say what. Daichi and Sugawara were absorbed in their own conversation, a safe distance away from where he and Hinata were standing, and the rest of the second years, for whatever reason, had popped the collars on their white school shirts and were pretending to be vampires.

The biggest threat to Kageyama's privacy, Tsukishima, was nowhere to be seen. His biggest follower, Yamaguchi, had apparently finished changing and left with him.

"Keep your voice down," Kageyama muttered sourly. "It's not… We're just testing it out, okay? It's an experiment."

According to Oikawa, anyway. Kageyama, on the other hand, had thought he'd woken up in another dimension when Oikawa had asked him out – until the brown-haired bastard had smirked and said that, anyway. But he'd agreed anyway. Oikawa could call it making amends, a romantic experiment, a bonding excerise, or whatever else he wanted, but to Kageyama it was a chance to put all those distracting little thoughts in his head to rest. After Oikawa inevitably used him and loosed him. Maybe then he could finally get a proper amount of sleep.

"Well," Hinata huffed, only slightly taken aback. "Do you want help picking out a present?"

Kageyama glared at him. "No."

"I don't know Shittykawa as well as you do, but from the looks of it, you haven't even thought about a present yet, and he really wants you to."

"I don't need your help," grumbled Kageyama.

He set to work creating a mental list of things Oikawa liked instead: volleyball, milk bread, outer space, girls…

For the first time in a long time, Kageyama left practice feeling more pissed than when he'd arrived.

He texted Oikawa back, he went shopping at the supermarket for his family, and he made plans for tomorrow. He bought a gift at a nearby sports store on the way home, and wondered if it, or if he, would ever be good enough for Oikawa. Knowing it was unlikely Oikawa would do the same for him, not once did Kageyama bother pestering him for a gift in return.

The next day, Oikawa's eyes shone with amusement as Kageyama, who woke up far too early on a Sunday, for this, handed him a hastily wrapped package pulled from his backpack after finishing their food at some shitty little diner Oikawa wouldn't have been caught dead in if Kageyama were a girl.

"It was a joke!" Oikawa laughed.

There's no doubt in Kageyama's mind that if he hadn't brought a present, Oikawa would be complaining about being ignored instead. Put in that perspective, Kageyama much prefers his laughter. Besides, the gift is something Oikawa can use – an expensive new water bottle and a pair of sports socks – but Kageyama mostly thinks of it as a passive aggressive reminder to not slack during practice anymore.

He unwrapped his gift at the table, and thanked Kageyama with a smile that could've been genuine. Then they left, wordlessly. By that point, the silence between had stretched thin enough that the jingle of the welcoming bell hanging above the diner's door sounded much more intense than it had when they walked in. It was a welcome distraction.

The only one, in fact, until Oikawa stopped in his tracks a few blocks later.

"Y'know," Oikawa chucked softly, twirling Kageyama's hair around his fingers, "you didn't have to buy a present."

"Of course I did!" Kageyama scowled (for what? The fourth time that day? Well, Oikawa should've known better, since he was the one who made such a big deal about it in the first place.) "You would've whined if I hadn't."

"I've decided that I like you, Kageyama."

For a moment, Kageyama's heart stopped. If this is what Oikawa had meant by not buying a present – cardiac arrest seemed like a damn fine gift after all. And it hadn't cost Oikawa a single yen.

Then he remembered, this was supposed to be Oikawa's present. He never expected Oikawa to get him anything in return. It didn't mean the same to Oikawa as it did to him, unless maybe, maybe, he'd changed his mind?

"A lot," Oikawa continued, but that shit-eating grin still decorated his face. "More than you seem to realize."

"I, uh, l-like you too..."

And curse the man who made Kageyama weak enough to not only blush, but stutter as well. Damn him, damn him. For the confusion, for pulling his heart along on a string – for making his own feelings unclear while messing with Kageyama's, for allowing Kageyama to believe he had a chance when he so obviously didn't. For pretending middle school hadn't happened, for making Kageyama like him even though his memories were still clear as glass.

After that, Oikawa apparently had no problems kissing him in public, despite Kageyama still being a boy.

It wasn't a chaste kiss. It was hard and suffocating and he could taste the tonkatsu sauce from the diner again on the tip of Oikawa's tongue, which shouldn't have been attractive, but it sent shockwaves through him nonetheless. Kageyama was aware of being more than a little pink when Oikawa finally pulled away. And it was Oikawa who pulled away. With his hand on the back of Kageyama's head like that, there was no question about who was in charge.

Kageyama's breaths were still coming out in puffs when Oikawa licked his lips and said, "Tobio-chan, let's go to your house. I think I have a gift for you after all."

"Don't you mean… your house…?"

Kageyama's legs and lungs don't feel this weak while he's exercising. Then again, one could say his putting up with Oikawa was an exercise in patience all along.

"You really are oblivious, aren't you?" Oikawa cooed. Both of his hands, his long fingers, found their way back to Kageyama's head now. This time, the pads of his thumbs were rubbing circles into Kageyama's cheeks. "Your house. Fewer people at home."

His face burned even fiercer.

His hands unlocked the front door to his house without having thought twice, throughout the entire fifteen minute walk, about whether it was okay to be this compliant or not.

It was a surprise he'd made it all the way without attracting any indignant stares. He moved a little more stiffly than normal, and Oikawa pretended not to notice the instantaneous effect being kissed in public had on Kageyama's body. A blessing, actually, because Kageyama was too worked up to even pretend to be embarrassed.

Once Kageyama had gotten what Oikawa was saying, the thought wouldn't leave him alone – a fact made even more evident by the way he was all too eager to let Oikawa's mouth trace lines up and down his jaw, the second the door was closed. Dry kisses, where he could feel Oikawa's lips moving against the sensitive skin of his throat. Sometimes Oikawa stopped, and Kageyama could feel the way his lips twitched as he smirked. Against his jugular, against his Adam's apple, enjoying the tiny mewls and moans Kageyama made in response. There was a brief moment where he wondered what Hinata would think, if he knew that Kageyama knew he was being used like this.

Then they were in his room, on his bed, forgetting everything except Oikawa and Oikawa's pleasure and Oikawa's teasing and, just, Oikawa. One of his hands traveled up Kageyama's shirt, massaging the muscles in his chest, in the exact spot above his racing heart. Between gasps, Kageyama swear he saw him smirk at that. Oikawa's other hand was fiddling absently with the waistband of Kageyama's shorts, on the small of his back, while Kageyama's own demonstrated an awkward death grip on his blankets, for lack of not knowing what else to do with them.

They hadn't bothered closing his curtains. The light leaking through his window seemed too bright for this kind of thing, and Oikawa's smile wasn't nearly dark enough.

Oikawa was undoubtedly the more experienced of the two. He would poke and prod and pinch at places Kageyama hadn't even thought of before, and simultaneously kept both hands clamped around Kageyama's heart, twisting it like a rubik's cube – except the solution wasn't what Oikawa was looking for.

When Oikawa wanted to explore even further, he let it happen.

"You're such a good boy, Tobio-chan," was the last thing Kageyama before his eyes closed completely. He hadn't known that sex would be so utterly draining. Or maybe it was just sex with Oikawa.

Oikawa's hands were in his hair again, pushing his bangs up and away from his forehead, where they proceeded to stick that way from sweat. One arm was slung across his chest, and the side of Oikawa's face was resting on his collarbone. One of his legs was resting atop Kageyama's thigh, bent at the knee so his foot was on Kageyama's calf. Oikawa was the type of person who liked to sleep curled up, apparently, and Kageyama would allow it by not moving even if he didn't feel like every ounce of energy had just been drained from his body.

He didn't feel like a good boy.

He felt like a used boy, or perhaps just a very stupid one.

So when Kageyama woke up later that evening, still damp and sticky, and no sign of Oikawa, all he could tell himself was that he'd known from the start what would happen.