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“Did you ever think we’d end up here, Tobio-chan?” Oikawa asks. He’s got the better position, back to the wall, whereas Kageyama has his back to the door he’d just entered. It could be an ambush, it more than likely was a set up.
He doesn’t answer the question, because the answer is no. He’s more than a little confused by the fact that he doesn’t have a bullet in his head with his body lying limp on the sidewalk. Instead, he was allowed to walk all the way up here, into a veritable sniper’s dream of a site, and meet Oikawa face to face.
The room is small, unfurnished aside from Oikawa’s gun case and the mount poised near the open window. From Kageyama’s angle he can only see most of the square below, but he can extrapolate the rest of the scene, Oikawa saw him coming from a literal mile away and did nothing to stop him.
They’re snipers, they aren’t built for the up close kill. And Oikawa? Well, he’s definitely here on execution orders.
“Nothing to say?” Oikawa prods, and this time Kageyama looks at him more directly, since the room has shown all it has to offer. Oikawa looks a little worn, not as young as he used to be, neither of them are, and maybe like he hasn’t been sleeping again. Kageyama doesn’t like the image, doesn’t like how seeing Oikawa in such obvious distress, even with the arrogant facade over the top, causes him his own sympathetic pains.
“What is there to say?” Kageyama says finally, and his throat protests the words, scratchy and dry from disuse. He doesn’t speak much on jobs, he considers working alone a perk for that facet alone. He really doesn’t know what there is to say, but he knows Oikawa wants to say it. He’s clearly got a monologue planned and Kageyama only hopes he can somehow use this knowledge to get out alive.
“We’ve got enough history and it’s been years since you’ve seen me, are you sure there’s nothing you’re dying to tell me?” He smiles, all fake, and rubs the palms of his hands down the front of his black shirt. Maybe they were sweaty, or maybe he wants Kageyama to think that, he can’t tell from the distance that they stand apart.
Kageyama remembers the first time he noticed Oikawa’s hands. It was the first time they met, almost a decade before when Kageyama had been marched before his supervisors, shoved into a chair in some dingy office, and offered a promotion. Oikawa wasn’t making the offer, and for all intents and purposes shouldn’t even have been in the room, but he drew Kageyama’s eyes like he was tracking a target. He watched him, standing quietly against the wall of the office, watched him fold his hands in front of him, twining long fingers together in some image of civility that would look innocent on anyone else, but on him looked more like a mockery.
He was good enough at multitasking to hear the promotion offer when it was said, and he doubted his supervisor noticed the slight hesitance in his voice as he accepted. He would begin training under Oikawa immediately, his supervisor said, and Kageyama only watched the way Oikawa’s hands wound around themselves.
“Funny.” Kageyama says, and watches as Oikawa’s face scrunches up in brief confusion. “Dying to tell you. That was a joke, right?” He tries to laugh, not expecting it to sound anything but hollow as it bounces off the walls of the bare room, but Oikawa doesn’t join in.
“You’ve changed, Tobio-chan.” Oikawa looks at him like he’s reading a book in a foreign language, squinting slightly as his eyes rake from top to bottom to top again.
It’s not wrong that he’s changed, he’s grown up, and he imagines Oikawa has changed as well. They can’t be the same people they were when everything started. This job changes people, and Oikawa was only fresh out of his own training when he had started Kageyama’s.
”Have you even fired a gun?” Oikawa had asked him, with the type of disdain Kageyama had only heard directed at others, never himself.
He had been a soldier, and now he worked for an intelligence agency, so the question was moronic as well as insulting, and Kageyama had to muster himself the courage to keep his tone respectful. ”Yes, sir.”
Oikawa laughed then, and leaned closer to him across the narrow table. “But have you fired a real gun?” There was something in his tone, something seductive in the way he spoke about rifles, about lining up your target in the sights, and Kageyama was lost to any other career path. He could be this mythical creature Oikawa spoke of, arbiter of life and death, a god with a steady trigger finger, he would be, nothing else mattered anymore.
That night he watched Oikawa disassemble, clean, and oil his rifle. His hands, strong but with the delicate precision of a surgeon, took the weapon apart, inspecting it for damage. The slick gun oil ran over the tips of his fingers where they touched each piece. He didn’t offer any explanation of his technique, he didn’t name the pieces or describe how each part of the gun served a purpose to the whole. He was silent, and Kageyama had no recourse but to watch him in similar silence, broken only by the occasional ragged intake of air when he forgot to breathe.
He was dismissed, hours after late nights transition to early mornings, and when he finally managed to get a few hours of sleep, he dreamed of Oikawa’s hands covered in blood and gunpowder.
“It’s been ten years.” He chooses to say, instead of agreeing. It’s an agreement of sorts, and the weak smile Oikawa gives him in return is enough to show that he understands that as well. Oikawa seems content to let them stand in silence, the benign threat of his rifle between them, aimed just barely out of the frame of the open window. Kageyama still expects a speech, some reasoning behind meeting him like this, getting them in a room together, but he’s impatient to get this over with, whatever this is. “Why are we here?”
“Why shouldn’t we be?” Oikawa replies, and looks out the window instead of towards Kageyama. He can see the sun setting now, painting the grey-white walls of the room a mottled orange, fire glinting in Oikawa’s eyes. He doesn’t sound mocking, it’s different, and it takes Kageyama a few seconds to realize why that is. He sounds sad.
Their orders, Kageyama should say, or this unspoken rivalry between them, or the uncontrollable magnetism Kageyama feels when he’s in the same room as Oikawa, any logical reason to answer Oikawa’s illogical response. Instead he takes a step towards the window.
It’s towards Oikawa too, and Kageyama doesn’t miss how his muscles tense, how his wrist flicks towards what must be a chest holster beneath his jacket. Kageyama only watches him from the corner of his eye, turning to see the view. The sun burns his eyes from where it’s setting behind the distant building filled horizon. Oikawa doesn’t move. Kageyama doesn’t answer his question.
They don’t speak until the sun is gone and Kageyama’s eyes adjust to the newfound darkness.
“I wanted to see you.” Oikawa says, and Kageyama takes a deep breath.
”He wants to see you.” The secretary had said, gesturing towards Oikawa’s small office in the back of the nondescript building they called their headquarters. Kageyama had only been inside the office half a dozen times in their months together, Oikawa preferred the conference room, or the parking garage, or Kageyama’s own tiny apartment. There wasn’t a part of Kageyama’s life that wasn’t tinted red-brown by the presence of Oikawa in it, lingering like oversprayed perfume. Red-brown like his hair, pushed unflatteringly behind his ears when he lined his eye up to the scope, like the slowly blooming flower through the white shirt on the chest of a target.
Oikawa sat on his desk, holding a file folder full of pages, but when Kageyama looked at his eyes they were still. It was just another display, a show he kept performing as if Kageyama was a full audience. He put down the file, deliberately closing it and running his fingers over the off-white page, and removed the pistol from his chest holster. The handgun looked small, compared to the rifles Kageyama was used to seeing Oikawa’s hands around, but the way he held it proved he was just as capable with the smaller caliber. Oikawa slid the gun across the corner of his desk towards Kageyama.
”Show me.” He smiled with too much teeth and Kageyama took the gun. He stood close enough to the desk that his hip bumped Oikawa’s bent knee. The desk wasn’t tall enough that Oikawa loomed over him, but his presence was there all the same, and Kageyama felt small.
He didn’t look up from the weapon as he disassembled it, laying each piece precise and straight along the wooden edge of the desk beside Oikawa’s thigh. It was something he did quickly, almost instinctual at this point in his experience. When he looked up Oikawa was watching him.
”What?” Kageyama had asked, too quiet to be stern the way he wanted to.
”Continue.” Oikawa replied. He didn’t look away, and the stare was wild enough to make Kageyama self conscious. His hands shook against the metal as he reassembled the gun. This time he could feel Oikawa’s eyes on him until he set the gun back where it had originally been, flat on the desk, magazine loaded.
Kageyama remembered how he had expected what came next, the challenging flash in Oikawa’s eye when their gazes met, how he couldn’t look away and he knew Oikawa wouldn’t. It felt like another start, another beginning in their story that no one would ever tell.
”Again.” That smile again, but he had looked away for just long enough to grab Kageyama’s hand and rest it on the gun.
”Is this why you called me here?” He thought he knew the answer, though the question came to his lips with an ease he didn’t expect, he was somehow more comfortable in Oikawa’s presence when they were only breaths apart.
Oikawa’s fingers tightened into a fist around the back of Kageyama’s hand and the gun beneath it. He had smiled, that toothy ”trust me” smile that Kageyama wasn’t sure if he loved or loathed, before he moved. It was fast enough to catch Kageyama off guard when Oikawa dug his heel into the back of Kageyama’s knee. He fell, knees to carpet, and his elbow ricocheted off the edge of the desk like so many unskilled bullets.
“Wha--” Kageyama had tried to say before the gun was in his mouth, but it smashed against his front teeth hard enough that he winced and pried open his jaw until the muzzle fit inside firmly. He froze in what he had thought was fear, and at least a little intrigue.
“I wanted you to listen to me, Tobio-chan. That’s why I called you here.” Oikawa laughed with a lilt of innocence that his voice normally lacked. It was the type of laugh that would have made a younger Kageyama smile just at hearing it. Instead he knelt still and silent beside Oikawa’s knee and the desk. He could feel the metal barrel click against his the bottoms of his front teeth.“You’re still learning, and you need practice, don’t you agree?”
He had asked the question as if he expected an answer, but Kageyama didn’t dare move his mouth. Oikawa’s thumb flicked, barely a flicker of movement from the corner of Kageyama’s vision, but he could hear the click of the safety catch as it was released.
“I want an answer, Tobio-chan.” Oikawa said, voice lower that time, and if Kageyama hadn’t been able to hear the danger inherent in the tone before, now it was dripping with it.
Kageyama nodded as short as he could, jerking his chin only a few millimeters. “Practice.” He’d tried to say, but without bringing his lips together for the sounds it was nearly incomprehensible.
Oikawa seemed appeased and he smiled.
“Good.” He said, nodding like Kageyama had given the correct answer. “That’s good. I’m glad we’re on the same page. Now move back from the desk.”
His elbow was still ringing with pain from where it had hit the edge of the desk, and his shoulder was nearly touching Oikawa’s knees. He’d been hesitant to move back, to separate them further, and to jostle the live round aimed at the back of his throat. Oikawa was clear in his command, and Kageyama knew he had no choice but to comply. He slid back, first one knee than the other. Oikawa had moved with him, keeping the gun in place and extending his arm until Kageyama was a step away from the desk and centered between Oikawa’s legs. He was looming over him now, really, leaning forward like a shadow rising on the wall.
“That’s better, now stay where you are.”
Kageyama knew he had never had intentions to do otherwise. He had already known at this point just how deadly Oikawa could be, at range or up close, and with his finger so near the trigger, the fickle switch of Oikawa’s mood could have cost him his life.
He wanted to ask it again, ”Is this why you called me here?”, but he’d always sort of known that they would end up here eventually, Kageyama at Oikawa’s mercy completely. They’d been leading towards this since they met, since Kageyama first watched the flex of Oikawa’s hands and stared longingly at the steady pull of his trigger finger. Kageyama had always wanted that attention focused on him alone.
“I’m going to pull it out now, and you’re going to tell me what you want me to do to you, okay, Tobio-chan?” He was nothing but a smile then, just black fear in the back of Kageyama’s mind and the nagging pull of that smile. ”Don’t be shy. Don’t hold anything back, because as soon as you’re finished the gun is going back in and I just won’t be able to understand what you’re saying if you ask me for anything else.”
He had known what that meant, even in the blind panic of the moment. Oikawa gave him a chance to back out, but he knew if he left now he wouldn’t be able to face himself and come back. He also knew, that if he stayed… it would be all or nothing.
Oikawa pulled the gun out slowly, dragging the now damp metal over Kageyama’s bottom lip. It would have felt like a tease, something pleasurable but not nearly enough, if it had been anything other than a deadly weapon rubbing against his lips. Kageyama took a breath then, and he was almost embarrassed at how his chest shook with the inhale. His hands, clenched into fists on his knees, were still white knuckled with fear.
What did he want, he wondered then, and he wondered now. What could he have even asked for? The only thing he had known for sure was that he wasn’t going to walk away. He could never say no and leave this life. And so he answered. He told him everything he wanted to do and everything he guessed that Oikawa wanted to do to him. All or nothing.
I didn’t want to see you, is what he wants to say, he wants to yell, to forget about all the ways that Oikawa made him who he is and all the ways he broke who he used to be.
“I would have been just fine forgetting you for another decade.” He lets himself say. It’s the most Kageyama has spoken, but somehow it feels easier in the darkness, when he can let himself forget that it’s Oikawa standing behind him.
“Aw, don’t be mean.” Oikawa says, and if Kageyama looked back he is sure he’d be able to see a familiar smile, the I’m getting what I want expression that Kageyama used to bend over backwards to achieve. The sky in front of him is almost too dark, but the city lights have begun to spread, popping up like fireflies across the vista, the city is still alive and Kageyama still doesn’t know why he is too.
He can hear Oikawa breathing and how his feet shuffle impatiently when the silence falls around them. Kageyama is still. He’s watching the city, but he’s more focused on his peripherals, as much as he can, he’s watching Oikawa without admitting he’s watching. It’s something like looking at the sun, and now is not the time to blind himself.
“Can we get it over with?” Kageyama asks finally. He’s tired of the wait he’s put himself through for the sake of annoying Oikawa. If he’s going to try to kill him, let him try. Kageyama’s picked up more than just what Oikawa taught him over the last ten years and everyone has always told him he was destined for greatness.
When Oikawa touches his shoulder he’s got half a second to make his decision: attack or hold?
He attacks.
Kageyama swings back his elbow, to deflect any assault that would be aimed towards his spine whether bare handed or with a weapon,and when he spins Oikawa’s hand is thrown from his shoulder. Oikawa reacts. He blocks the blow from Kageyama’s elbow with his forearm but when he should step away, to reassess the field of battle and engage intelligently, he steps in, crowding Kageyama against the window and putting him off balance. It seems Oikawa has learned new tricks as well, but if there’s any advantage to the position Kageyama hasn’t found it yet.
Kageyama grabs Oikawa’s shirt for balance, and when he finally catches himself, the back of one shoulder is braced against the window frame, the other in open air, and Oikawa is too close to be safe.
“Is this what you wanted?” Oikawa asks, sneering, and he’s close enough that Kageyama can see the wild whites of his eyes.
Kageyama is not sure why he kisses him.
It’s new and familiar all at once. Oikawa tastes the same when Kageyama pulls his lower lip between his teeth, but the way Oikawa melts against him, like something frozen too close to open flame, is entirely new and it is terrifying. Kageyama has never felt in control when they kissed, he’s always lost himself entirely to the process but now Oikawa’s hands are roaming over his chest, pinching and scratching with an obvious neediness and Kageyama likes something about it that he can’t explain.
Oikawa crowds close enough that Kageyama can stand up straight, pressuring the leverage from his hands on Oikawa’s shoulders to gain his balance and move to the side of the window, free of any danger save the man attached to the foreign tongue in his mouth.
When he can think coherently, he thinks it’s funny what Oikawa had asked him, and how he’d answered. Was this what he wanted? If he was honest, yes. He’s been wanting this since the last time he watched Oikawa walk into his old headquarters, knowing that he wasn’t coming back. He wanted to kiss the concentrated frown off of Oikawa’s face when he looked back over his shoulder in suspicion. He wanted to shove Oikawa against the wall of the building and kiss him until the comments of the passers by were loud enough to reach his brain. But he hadn’t done it then, and he had to stop doing it now.
He pushes Oikawa away, only a centimeter, and finds himself gasping for air. It takes a few seconds before he can speak, but Oikawa doesn’t move a muscle. “You’re here to kill me.” He says, and he makes himself look Oikawa in the eye.
He doesn’t look surprised at the sentiment, but there’s just a split second of something, and Kageyama reads it as confirmation, the assurance that a result Oikawa had been expecting had occurred. “And you are here to kill me, too, Tobio-chan.”
Kageyama doesn’t deny it. It isn’t his foremost mission, but Oikawa is an enemy combatant now, and a skilled enemy at that. He would be praised for his valor, rewarded, possibly even promoted if he takes him down. He only wishes he could do it with his rifle, the way Oikawa taught him.
Oikawa seems to compose himself more quickly than Kageyama can, but instead of stepping away, he holds his ground and slides the palms of his hands around Kageyama’s waist to his lower back. “So,” he says, and his voice sounds whimsical with promise, “what now?”
Kageyama gets the pistol from Oikawa’s hip in the same second that Oikawa pulls his from the holster at his lower back. Kageyama pulls the trigger just as his elbow knocks Oikawa’s arm wide.
The aim was faulty, messy, and if the blood seeping through the black fabric near Oikawa’s waistband is any indication, the wound is in his lower abdomen. Oikawa doesn’t fall immediately, and he recovers well enough to take his own aim again. Kageyama knocks his arm wide a second time, this time smacking the gun from his hand and sending it careening across the dark room.
When he does fall, it looks no different than any of the hundreds of targets Kageyama has seen fall, just closer. It feels more personal, when the pained expression can be seen with his own eyes without the aid of a high powered rifle scope.
“I knew it.” Oikawa says, and it’s half a croak that has Kageyama itching to clear his own throat in sympathy. “Good boy, Tobio-chan.”
Kageyama’s knees shake, and his hands shake, and soon enough it’s his entire body, shaking as if the cold was in his bones and Oikawa laughs like he’s not the one bleeding out on the unfinished wood floors. Kageyama wonders if the blood will sink in, if it will leave a stain to deep to get out.
His mind runs through dozens of responses, ranging from thank you to you deserved this and everything in between. Instead he says nothing. He doesn’t collect his gun from where it flew across the room, and he drops Oikawa’s with a dull thud. When he leaves the room Oikawa is still laughing, but it’s now that Kageyama realizes half of them sound like sobs.