Archive of Our Own ^beta

Despite having day jobs, Matsukawa and Hanamaki still play volleyball. Even after they split ways with Iwaizumi and Oikawa, and even after they graduated college, volleyball never lost the exhilaration they felt at their highschool games. Thus, after graduation he and Matsukawa joined a neighborhood volleyball team.

Hanamaki would say it is a pretty good team; he and Matsukawa definitely improved since their high school days, and their team members are pretty solid as well. (It has been an interesting day when Daichi, that receiver from Karasuno, had joined their team or when Terushima from that one party school had showed up with a mean straight shot.) In fact, weirdly enough, he would even say they were one of the best non professional teams in their prefecture.

Turns out, neighborhood teams have rivals too, and their rival for some godforsaken reason, is based in Tokyo. Apparently, their team had been founded by a group of Karasuno alumni when their rivalry with Nekoma was at its peak. Thus, a rivalry began between the neighborhood teams created by Karasuno and Nekoma alumni.

Which is how they are here: twelve adult men crammed into Terushima’s borrowed shitty white company van that they had dubbed the Kidnappermobile as it speeds off towards Tokyo to play their rival team while ‘I Want it That Way’ by the Backstreet Boys plays at the maximum volume the van’s shitty speakers could possibly squeeze out.

“Oh shit, Ennoshita’s about to throw up!” Someone yells from the back.

“Why am I here,” sighs Watari, as Matsukawa, Hanamaki, and Terushima dramatically read the entirety of the Bee Movie script to the rest of the van.

“Just one more hour, one more hour,” Daichi chants under his breath over and over as someone, probably Ennoshita, throws up through the open window, narrowly missing the car behind them.

—

In hindsight, their group shouldn't have split up to explore Tokyo before lunch, especially since he and Matsukawa forgot to get their phones back from Daichi, who had confiscated them on the drive to Tokyo after the fourth time they almost made him swerve into traffic when they yelled a line from the Bee Movie a little too loudly.

Whatever. They could probably find their way back. Probably. Hopefully. Daichi would get Very Angry if they didn't, which would be bad. But that was a problem for later them.

“Makki!” Matsukawa points gleefully at a store on the other side of the road, his eyes glinting with mischief that promised to piss someone off. “Look who I found.”

Hanamaki stares. A medium sized cardboard cutout of Oikawa Tooru in a revealing maid outfit and cat ears winks back at him.

Iwaizumi would love it as a birthday present.

(They buy the cutout. Worth it.)

—

After passing the same seedy looking onigiri shop for the fifth time, Hanamaki was getting the sense that he and Matsukawa were a tad lost. Just a tad.

Especially with the Oikawa cutout under his arm drawing attention and the fear of Daichi going ham on them if they were late left Hanamaki a bit desperate on finding their way back.

Perhaps their team hadn’t noticed they were gone yet, Hanamaki prays. Then again, they were already twenty minutes late from when they were supposed to meet up, so perhaps death by Daichi was already imminent.

“Oh shit,” Matsukawa says, “what if they left us behind?”

Hanamaki and Matsukawa over the years had developed a special technique to deploy when faced with a challenging situation that required a Responsible Decision. It was one that had served them well over the years and they had come to rely on it heavily. This technique was, of course, ‘Do What Oikawa Wouldn’t Do.’ But then again, Hanamaki thought, if Oikawa had been in their situation, he would probably just cry and beg Iwaizumi for help, which Hanamaki and Matsukawa Don't Want to Do. So, they were back to square one and starting to realize they were in a bit of a pickle.

This was the reason why five minutes later when a relieved looking random blonde man runs towards them, yelling at them to follow him, Hanamaki doesn't question him.

“Hey!” The man yells. “We gotta get to practice, everyone's looking for you!!”

That confirmed it then. Daichi was going to cook, flay, and season them alive. Hanamaki decides to face his fate instead of running away not because he is brave but because he knows that Daichi would find him and hunt him down even if he ran away like a bloodhound tracking their prey.

The man takes them through a maze of busy streets until they reach an enormous stadium. It looks over them, its grandeur sweeping as far as the eye can see as if it were some sort of high temple for sports. It seems a bit too fancy for a neighborhood volleyball team to meet at.

“Wait a minute,” Matsukawa murmurs, “is that the Tokyo Metropolitan Gymnasium?”

The man, still not pausing to look back at them, ignores Matsukawa’s statement and opens the doors, leading them into a cavernous room that definitely looks way too expensive to be a place where a neighborhood team practices.

“Guys! I found Sakusa!” The blond man drawls as he steps towards a group of very muscular and very Not the Sendai Neighborhood Volleyball Team people that look like they were in the middle of warming up.

“Miya, Sakusa, would you like to tell us why you brought a stranger into practice?” A stern looking man asks, hands crossed, brow furrowed, looking very much like he is Done With Life.

It is then that the blonde man, Miya, turns around for the first time to actually glance at the two of them. Hanamaki thinks the man has a striking resemblance to Barry the Bee. Miya’s eyebrows furrow and he frowns at Hanamaki as if he were something distasteful under his shoe, but Hanamaki isn’t able to take him seriously as the image of Barry Benson crooning “Ya Like Jazz?” flashes through his mind.

“Who are you?” The man glares icily at him like a knockoff Regina George. “And why are you here?”

The group behind him breaks out into whispers. Hanamaki thinks he feels rather like the new girl at a highschool that had intruded on the space of the queen Bee and was now going to be humiliated and labeled a social outcast to the rest of the school, or in this case, the random group of people stretching in the background.

“Wait Miya,” one of them says, “You were the one who brought this guy, and you don't know who he is?”

“Well excuse me! I didn't realize he was following Omi and I like a creep!”

“If it makes you feel any better,” Hanamaki starts, “I also don't know why I'm here.”

“Oi, Omi, what are you waiting for? Stop standing there and go stretch,” someone yells at them.

Miya turns to Matsukawa with a grin. “Come on, Omi Omi, don't be shy.”

“Wait, that's Matsukawa,” Hanamaki says as Miya pales in horror in realization that Matsukawa Issei is in fact Not Sakusa Kiyoomi.

“Oh shit,” Miya mutters under his breath, speed running through all five stages of grief in two seconds, “I lost Omi.”

Murmurs break out in the crowd.

“Wait a minute,” a short guy with orange hair that Hanamaki was pretty sure he faced in a volleyball match back in highschool, says, “what happened to Omi then?”

“Oh my God,” another man with zebra colored hair exclaims, looking close to tears. “They must have kidnapped Omi and swapped him with this lookalike so we wouldn't notice.”

“What did you do with Omi!?” The orange haired guy demands, glaring at them very angrily. Except Hanamaki is taller than the guy so it just looks sad as he glares from below. “Give him back!”

“Yeah!” Another member of the crowd echoes, raising a volleyball at them. The rest of the group follows suit like a herd of sheep. Hanamaki would laugh at the absurdity of the situation if not for the life threatening danger of being hit with a volleyball.

Then it happens.

A volleyball at seventy kilometers per hour narrowly misses Matsukawa’s head, nailing Miya instead, who drops like a stone.

As the orange guy, Hinata?, raises the volleyball at Hanamaki next, he takes off running, grabbing Matsukawa in one hand and the Oikawa cardboard cutout in the other.

Turns out, an angry mob of professional volleyball players is really fast, and Hanamaki and Matsukawa soon find themselves trapped in a corner of the gym.

“Mattsun, get behind me! I'll protect you!” Hanamaki screams as he raises the Oikawa cardboard figure like a shield, although he wasn’t very sure how useful it would be when faced with volleyballs fast enough to break windows.

The pack of volleyball players crowds around them, each holding a fully pumped brand new grade A Mikasa volleyball ready to be tossed and spiked into their heads.

Just before Hanamaki and Matsukawa are murdered via volleyball induced blunt trauma, a loud familiar voice bellows through the gym.

“WHAT IS GOING ON HERE!?”

The gym goes silent, and Hanamaki and Matsukawa look at each other as the angry mob goes silent and pouts like a group of chastised toddlers.

There was no way, Hanamaki thinks. No, freaking way it was him. But Hanamaki stares, and stares a little more. Then, he looks at Matsukawa, who raises an eyebrow at him as if to say ‘Are you seeing what I'm seeing bro?’ Hanamaki solemnly nods.

Breaking the silence, Matsukawa waves at Iwaizumi, and says in a deadpan voice: “Yaho, Iwa-chan. Long time no see.”

Iwaizumi Hajime, in all his glory, stares back at Hanamaki and Matsukawa and their Oikawa maid cardboard cutout shield, a chastised Japan’s national men’s volleyball team, and wannabe Barry the Bee aka Miya still passed out on the floor, and walks back out the door.

“WAIT IWA-CHANN!! COME BACK,” Hanamaki screeches.

—

“Daichi,” Iwaizumi sighs through his phone, “Please come pick up your children.” Hanamaki hears Daichi’s mirroring sigh™ as Iwaizumi proceeds to dry swallow a fist full of aspirin to block out the pain of his existence.

“Duuude,” Hanamaki says to Matsukawa as he puts his head in his hands, looking grimly, “It’s actually over for us.”

“Shrek-sama, grant us luck,” Matsukawa says at the same time, bowing his head and putting his hands together for prayer.

Miya Atsumu, who had woken up a couple minutes prior, glares at them. Hinata and the rest of Japan’s national men’s volleyball team sit apart from each other in different parts of the gym as ‘time out.’ The Sakusa guy is apparently still nowhere to be seen, much to the panic of Miya Atsumu.

Matsukawa greets Miya using his best Oikawa impression because even Miya Atsumu’s terrible personality can't compete with the sheer amount of narcissism and viciousness stuffed into a vaguely human meatbag that is Oikawa Tooru.

“Yaho Atsumu-chan! Has anyone told you that you look like Barry the Bee?”

Miya’s right eyelid twitches.

“So,” Hanamaki snickers, “Ya like Jazz?”

Miya’s eyelid twitches again.

“Are you beelivin this, Makki?”

“Mattsun, beehave yourself! Apologize to this young man at once!” Hanamaki says as he points at Miya.

“Makki honey, you know I don’t like to bee nice~”

“Oh Mattsun pookie, in front of the babee?” Hanamaki says as he covers the eyes of the cutout of Oikawa, “that’s foul–”

“Oh will you two just shut up!” Iwaizumi yells as he hangs up the phone.

“Ouch Iwa-chan! That stings, you know!”

“Unbeelievable Iwa-chan. Just beecause of that, it’s over beetween us!”

Iwaizumi glares at them, and glares again at Maid Oikawa, his ears turning red.

“Don’t stare at our precious Tooru-chan like that!” Hanamaki exclaims as Matsukawa embraces the cardboard cutout protectively.

“Shh, shh, it’s okay,” Matsukawa calls as he pats the cutout on the shoulder and rocks it like a baby. “Don’t be scared of little Iwa-chan, Tooru-chan!”

Matsukawa has to duck as Iwaizumi chucks his phone at him.

—

“Am I still unconscious, this is just a fever dream,” mutters Miya Atsumu as he watches Iwaizumi Hajime, the man who parents Japan’s national men’s volleyball team on a daily basis, get brutally bullied by an Omi doppelganger, a pink haired man, and their strangely risqué cardboard cutout of a man in a maid costume.

“Iwaizumi-san, who are these people?” Atsumu asks as pink haired guy, knockoff Omi, and the cardboard cutout collectively turn their heads slowly with their eyes blown wide open to face him in sync like those creepy Victorian dolls in haunted houses.

Pink guy lets out a loud scandalized gasp as knockoff Omi talks to the cardboard cutout soothingly.

Iwaizumi massages his temples before he speaks, “These two clowns are Hanamaki and Matsukawa. They are the bane of my existence.”

The pink guy, Hanamaki, pauses and frowns. “Wait a minute, I thought Oikawa was the bane of your existence!”

The other guy, Matsukawa, slaps him against the head. “Don’t say that in front of Tooru-chan you fool! He’s cried enough already today.”

Matsukawa goes back to rocking the cardboard cutout in his arms. “Don’t worry Tooru-chan! They just hate you because they ain’t you. That man,” Matsukawa points at him, “is just jealous of you.”

Atsumu is offended. How dare this knockoff Omi-kun and strawberry head tell him that this cardboard cutout is superior to him. Whatever. Atsumu was voted most handsome volleyball player and was a setter for Japan’s national Volleyball team, and he didn’t see this Oikawa guy doing either of that. So there. Hah.

Before Atsumu can spike a volleyball into the Oikawa cardboard cutout, a man Atsumu vaguely recalls from one of his matches during one of his volleyball matches in high school comes angrily marching into the gym, Sakusa running behind him.

—

Daichi marches into the stadium with a man that if not for the two moles on his forehead, could very well be Matsukawa.

“You,” the man points at Matsukawa as if he had done something gravely wrong. “Me,” Matsukawa nods and points back, like that one spiderman meme.

“Hanamaki, Matsukawa,” Daichi says, placing a hand on each of their backs and forcing them into a bow, “apologize to Iwaizumi-san over here for causing him all that trouble.”

“...I’m sorry…Iwaizumi…san,” they grit out as Iwaizumi snickers and snaps a picture of them.

“Sorry for the delay, Iwaizumi san,” imposter Matsukawa says, bowing as well.

Iwaizumi holds up the picture he took of them, “I’m going to send this to Oikawa,” he says, grinning.

Hanamaki sags and glares at him as hard as he can, which isn't that hard because with running for his life while dodging volleyballs and his caffeine monster drink fueled binge watching session of all of the Shrek movies the night before left him exhausted.

Daichi drags the both of them by the scruff of their neck towards the gym entrance.

“Thank you again, Iwaizumi,” he says, “but we have an urgent match soon, so we must go.”

Iwaizumi nods at Daichi with the look of understanding that only two people who have suffered the same burden can share and nods solemnly.

Before Daichi drags them out, Hanamaki hands Iwaizumi the Maid Oikawa cutout and salutes him while Matsukawa wiggles his eyebrows suggestively.

Terushima’s creepy white van waits for them in the parking lot, and Daichi pushes them in as their teammates question Matsukawa and Hanamaki on where they had been.

“Guys, you'll never guess who we met today."