Work Text:
Iwaizumi loses Oikawa on a Wednesday morning.
He’s not there when it happens. He finds out because Hanamaki won’t stop trying to call him, which is a little annoying since Iwaizumi’s trying to study in the library. He finally picks up after the 8th dropped call; if Hanamaki is this persistent, it’s probably somewhat important.
He barely even notices the way Hanamaki sounds, or the fact that his friend calls him Hajime. He’s only half listening as Hanamaki starts and stops his sentences over and over, more focused on finding the correct page in his reference.
Then Hanamaki says Tooru, and Iwaizumi’s heart stops.
He runs through the rain, unheeding of how his things are getting wet, because not Oikawa, please, no.
After Oikawa dies, Iwaizumi’s days are quiet.
It’s odd. Iwaizumi’s always read about the shattering of the heart as a loud thing, all tears and screams and hysterics. He’d thought it would be a storm, a hurricane; a fracturing from the inside-out until everything is in pieces.
After Oikawa dies, Iwaizumi finds that when the heart shatters it is not loud. He walks home from the funeral and pauses on the street corner, by the vending machine where Oikawa had always bought his strawberry milk back in high school. Iwaizumi looks at the display and finds that when the heart shatters, it’s simply the soft splintering of a soul as you come undone. He stands there and feels himself quietly, painstakingly unravel, until the spaces between his ribs feel hollowed out.
Then he takes the train back to Tokyo, and lets himself into a dark, too-small apartment. He takes off his shoes by the door, drops his bag down beside them, and then sinks down to the cold floor. From the outside, the noise of the city traffic filters in, but here where Iwaizumi sits, he is quiet.
“I’m home,” Iwaizumi says, voice hoarse.
He waits. No one answers.
In the aftermath, Iwaizumi settles into the quiet.
He wakes up, makes breakfast, goes to school. Three days a week, he goes to his part time job. As the day starts to wind down, he walks to the train station. He comes home to the apartment that he and Oikawa had shared. He sits at the small table with dinner for one, and he eats on his own, and he tries not to think about the person meant to be sitting across him, stealing the karaage from his takeaway box.
Iwaizumi gets up to throw away the food containers and make himself some coffee. His mug still sits there in the cabinet beside Oikawa’s, the matching FMA set that he’d gotten for Iwaizumi’s last birthday. The box of Oikawa’s favorite tea is still there as well. The drawers still hold tableware for two. He still has some of Oikawa's clothes in his closet, a few of Oikawa's books on his shelves. Iwaizumi cradles his mug in his hands and thinks about the things around him, all that’s left of the life they’d been building together.
(And he thinks about what he has left: this love with a half-life of forever, decaying slow and bittersweet under his skin. The way everything now feels like an epilogue to a story where he meets Oikawa and falls in love with him and loses him.)
After a few more moments, Iwaizumi closes the cabinet door.
The sound of the electric kettle seems particularly loud when the water boils.
Outside the apartment, it’s raining.
Waking up in the mornings means waking back up to an apartment with only him in it.
Memory is a terrible thing, but Iwaizumi clings to it like a lifeline. He thinks he might hurt less if he forgets, but memory is all he has left. In the wake of loss and in the middle of everything that’s been left, he needs something of Oikawa to persist, to linger.
So Iwaizumi stands in the kitchen in the mornings, and remembers: Oikawa stumbling out of the second bedroom, hair a mess, squinting in the early morning sunlight, wearing another one of Iwaizumi’s shirts that he’s stolen. Oikawa sitting across him at the low table in the living room, tiny furrow in his brow as he reads another text for class. Oikawa with Iwaizumi, out for dinner on a Saturday night, bright lights of the city bathing his face in a dozen different colors. Oikawa in a volleyball match, a force in and of himself, head held high as he steps onto the court.
(Oikawa in Iwaizumi’s room, in his bed, on the nights that he couldn’t sleep. Head laid on Iwaizumi’s chest as he’d listen to the other boy’s heartbeat. A thousand times in which Iwaizumi had wanted to kiss him.)
Iwaizumi remembers the first time he’d hesitantly, uncertainly said Tooru, and Oikawa had looked up, and his expression would have razed cities to the ground. He remembers, too, the last time, catching Oikawa in a quick hug before his friend had run out the door, hurrying to training.
Take care, Tooru, pressed into soft hair. Fingers briefly grazing the back of Oikawa’s neck.
Take care, and come back to me.
But Oikawa hadn’t come back.
Slowly, minute by hour by day, Iwaizumi settles.
He still sometimes takes down the tea box along with his coffee. He still turns to say something to someone who is no longer there. He still feels like he’s breathing into empty spaces.
But he settles.
Little
by little
by little,
he settles.
The afternoon is also quiet when Iwaizumi stumbles onto the shrine.
Oikawa had loved Tokyo in the rain; he’d said the downpour would make the lights look brighter, would blanket the city like a secret. Iwaizumi can still remember walking home with his friend one afternoon when a drizzle had picked up. He’d ducked under a nearby awning, but Oikawa had simply dropped his umbrella and tipped his face to the sky.
(The way Oikawa had looked – eyes shut as if in benediction, hair matted to his forehead. Smile soft, lips lightly parted. Iwaizumi regrets, now, that he hadn’t kissed Oikawa then.)
The sky now is a dull, dark grey, the threat of a downpour creeping over the city. There’s a bit of a chill in the air, so Iwaizumi pulls his jacket tighter around himself. He’s just debating to himself whether to buy takeaway for dinner tonight or just cook for himself when a fat raindrop lands on his shoulder. Then another, and another, and the drizzle quickly builds into a downpour. Iwaizumi curses to himself, hugging his bag to his chest and searching for the nearest shelter.
Red flashes in his peripheral vision, and Iwaizumi runs in that direction, hoping there’ll be at least an awning he can stand under until the rain stops. He stumbles up a pair of stone steps and blessedly, there’s a roofed area at the end of a short path. He ducks under the cover, cursing his lack of umbrella (lent to Matsukawa, who still hasn’t returned it) and his terrible luck. As Iwaizumi pats down his things, checking that nothing is too badly damaged, he bumps into something by his hip that rattles.
Iwaizumi turns, startled, and finds a coin box behind him. A red-and-gold braided rope hangs down from the ceiling above it. Further back, a set of wooden doors lead to what is undoubtedly the main room of—
A shrine. Iwaizumi peers through the rain at the red-painted wood, the red pennants plastered to their poles by the water. There’s a chozubachi a little ways down the path. If he squints, he can just make out a pair of stone statues at the entrance, on either side of the gate.
He’s in an Inari shrine.
Abruptly, he claps a hand to his mouth, although it’s a little late to feel sheepish for swearing. There doesn’t seem to be anyone around; no one’s come here for shelter aside from him. Iwaizumi exhales and sets down his things.
The rain looks like it won’t let up soon, so he frowns and digs through his pockets. If he’s going to be here a while, he might as well offer a small thank you for the shelter.
The clatter of the hundred yen coin is barely audible over the sound of the rain, as is the tinny sound of the bell. Iwaizumi bows, then straightens, clapping.
I’ll just be here until the rain stops, he thinks, so thank you for letting me stay.
He pauses, then, thinking. Usually, this is where he prays for Oikawa to do well in his next match, for both of them to do well in their studies, and for Oikawa to be safe. But now he has nothing to pray for, because—
Iwaizumi drops his hands hastily, stepping away from the coin box, trying to turn his thoughts away before he starts to hurt too much again. He shakes his head and looks around again, trying to distract himself by studying the shrine. It’s small, tucked away between two buildings, but it looks well-maintained. The area is shielded from the street by a few big trees, and a low stone fence runs along either side. He’s never noticed it before, despite it apparently being on his way to the train station. Iwaizumi reaches out and touches one of the wooden columns holding the roof up.
He remembers, quietly: the New Year celebration in Miyagi, in their last year of high school. The four of them at the festival, stealing each other’s food and sabotaging each other’s games and getting each other the most ridiculous souvenirs. Oikawa in his yukata, watching the fireworks.
(Iwaizumi looking at his childhood friend and realizing again, that he’s a little in love with this beautiful boy.)
He shakes his head again, trying to get away from his maudlin thoughts. Blinking out into the street, Iwaizumi realizes the rain has stopped – had probably stopped while he was stuck in memory. He feels a little foolish, like he’s wasted the gods’ time staying here too long. Not that the gods would concern themselves with the reminiscing of a young man who still can’t breathe for grief.
Iwaizumi exhales sharply, recollecting himself. Then he picks up his bag, hoists it onto his shoulder, and walks off.
He doesn’t look back as he leaves.
(Still, he has to admit he feels – better, somehow. Lighter. Remembering hadn’t hurt as much as it often did, when Iwaizumi is hit again by everything that he’s lost. Thinking about Oikawa had been—
Not happy, no. But Iwaizumi feels a little lighter as he lets himself back into an apartment for two, and says quietly into the dark, “I’m home.”)
He finds the photos a little later, after some digging around his desk. They’re tucked away in a volume of a manga that Iwaizumi is pretty sure belongs to Hanamaki. There are two photos; one is of the four of them, laughing, caught in the middle of a playful scuffle. Oikawa’s the only one in a yukata; he’s being pushed by Matsukawa, while Iwaizumi’s stopping him from falling.
The other photo is of just Iwaizumi and Oikawa. Hanamaki had taken it randomly, then given it to Iwaizumi much later, when they’d all been walking home. Iwaizumi can still recall the moment well: him, distracted by something Matsukawa's saying, takoyaki held aloft; Oikawa, leaning in and eating the food for himself. In the photo, Oikawa's just gotten the takoyaki in his mouth, Iwaizumi halfway turned to check just what his friend is doing.
He looks at the photo – at the crinkles at the corners of Oikawa’s eyes that give away his amusement; at his friend’s hand, braced on his thigh. At the way the festival lights color Oikawa rose and gold and breathtaking.
He puts the photo back into the manga, and shuts the drawer.
Iwaizumi doesn’t mean to, but he ends up at the shrine again.
He’s – he feels drawn there, inexplicably. Like something pulls him towards it. He heads home early, intending to pick up food on the way somewhere, and ends up meandering a little. His footsteps slow on the sidewalk, and Iwaizumi looks up to find two stone foxes glowering at him on either side of a wooden tori.
He hesitates, unsure. It feels a little – irreverent, being at a shrine when he’s not here to pray or make a wish. But perhaps – perhaps the gods won’t mind if he stays, just a while.
Iwaizumi walks up the little stone path. He pauses by the chozubachi to pour a little water over his fingers, cold enough that he flinches a bit. He finds another ¥100 coin in his jeans pocket and tosses it in, then rings the little bell. He keeps his eyes closed as he claps.
He still doesn’t have anything to pray for, so instead he lets himself remember. Iwaizumi thinks of Oikawa dragging him to the shrine near Seijoh, at arse o’clock in the morning of that match against Shiratorizawa during their last Interhigh. He’d been freezing his ass off in the chill, hastily dressed because Oikawa hadn’t even let him at least find something more decent to wear. His friend is, of course, bundled up in a coat and scarf, glasses fogging a little in the cool morning air.
Oikawa had stood a long while in front of the shrine, fingers pressed together and held to his lips, eyes scrunched shut. Iwaizumi’s own prayer had trailed off, caught as he was watching his friend, hair flecked with bronze in the early sunlight. Not that it mattered; even back then, Iwaizumi’s prayers were unchanging.
Keep my team safe. Keep him safe. Let him keep playing.
Then Oikawa had exhaled, long and slow, and stepped back. To Iwaizumi’s surprise, his friend had held out his hand, then, still looking at middle distance. When Iwaizumi had looked closely, Oikawa’s cheeks were dusted faintly pink, a color that had had him wanting to reach out and see if he could make it deepen.
He hadn’t, though. But he’d taken Oikawa’s hand and squeezed, once, lightly.
They’d walked all the way home that way, not letting go.
It’s a good memory.
In present reality, Iwaizumi sighs and opens his eyes. He looks at his left hand; fidgets his fingers, open-close, open-close. The calluses on his fingers and palms have long worn away, but Oikawa’s hands had always been practice-worn.
Iwaizumi drops his hands and shoves them into the pockets of his jacket. Hunches his shoulders a bit.
Turns and leaves.
He comes back three days later.
It becomes – not really a routine, but a habit. When he can, Iwaizumi drops by the shrine. He’s taken to offering a small prayer to thank the shrine’s guardians for letting him linger a little, letting him reminisce in the quiet. Something about the shrine makes the outside world feel muffled, somehow; like reality is a little distant. Like he can hide here.
So Iwaizumi comes to the shrine and stays a while. He stands under the little roof and just… lets himself remember. He thinks about Oikawa, about big things – like the way Oikawa would look for him before every game, to take Iwaizumi’s hand in his and give it a small squeeze, a reminder to them both that they can rely on each other. He thinks about little things, too, things he hadn’t even realized he’d noticed. Like the way Oikawa would scrunch up his nose while concentrating, or the way Oikawa had taken his tea, or the way Oikawa made small noises in his sleep before he would wake up.
After a while – after he’s settled into the habit of coming into the shrine; after he starts sitting at the edge of the shrine’s platform to pass the time – Iwaizumi starts to talk. Not too much, not to anyone in particular, although no one’s ever around when Iwaizumi is there. Sometimes it’s about other things he remembers, days and events piled up in his mind. Other times, he talks as if Oikawa’s there, listening. He talks about his day, about school, about work.
(One afternoon, just once, he sits on the edge of the platform and looks up at the grey sky. It’s drizzling; the faint patter of raindrops on the shrine roof is soothing.
“I wish I had told you,” he says, quietly, and his smile feels – brittle, breakable. “I wish I had let us be – be more, be something. But I always thought we’d have more time, that I would have so much longer with you.”
Iwaizumi bites his lip and ducks his head, squeezing his eyes shut.
He stays at the shrine longer that day, just sitting there in the quiet.)
The days go by. Iwaizumi keeps going back to the shrine.
He settles.
His days are less quiet, now.
Things change on a cold and grey Friday afternoon.
Iwaizumi’s a little distracted as he walks up to the shrine, frowning at nothing in particular. He’s been wondering if he shouldn’t tell Hanamaki and Matsukawa about this place, about how it… puts him at ease, a little, somehow. He’s grateful for how they’ve stuck by him, allowing him space as he’s needed, but he also feels they’d be more than a little concerned if they found out. He also doesn’t even know how to begin talking about it, how to put things into words.
His feet come to a stop on autopilot in front of the coin box. He searches absentmindedly for a ¥100 coin.
It’s the hundredth time Iwaizumi has come to the shrine, and he tosses the coin into the box.
He closes his eyes and offers his small prayer of thanks. Adds in a little wish for his upcoming midterms, and after a moment’s consideration, another wish for his friends’ well-being.
When he opens his eyes again,
Oikawa’s standing there.
For a moment – for several moments, Iwaizumi forgets how to breathe. He stares at Oikawa, because his friend can’t be real, he can’t, he—
“Hello, Iwa-chan,” Oikawa says, quiet and warm, and Iwaizumi feels ruined.
Oikawa is standing there, a few feet away. He’s in the yukata he’d worn that New Year’s eve, with the fox mask he’d made Iwaizumi buy, half-covering his brow. He’s there, expression soft at the edges, so real and if Iwaizumi were just to reach out—
But Oikawa shakes his head with a small, sad smile.
“I’m not,” he starts, and then pauses. “I’m not really here,” he admits gently. He is but he isn’t, in a way Oikawa can’t really explain. But Iwaizumi can’t touch him, and Oikawa can only stay a while, but it’s still him and he’s still there and – and Iwaizumi will take anything, really, because he’s happy just seeing his best friend and love again.
So he pulls back his hand, and he finds a smile somewhere inside him, because Oikawa is here and still, still everything Iwaizumi has ever wanted.
“How—” Iwaizumi hesitates, then shakes his head. “I’m—”
A corner of Oikawa’s mouth quirks up, and he crosses his arms. “Why, Iwa-chan,” he drawls, “did I manage to get you speechless?”
Iwaizumi stares at his friend, disbelieving and a little incredulous, because Oikawa is apparently still very much himself. But the longer he looks, and the more Oikawa pinches his lips together in a clear effort to restrain a laugh, the more something tickles at the back of Iwaizumi’s throat. When he opens his mouth to retort, what tumbles out instead is a laugh. And Oikawa cracks up too, doubling over a bit, carefree as he’s ever been.
Iwaizumi stares at his friend, and feels warm for the first time in so, so long.
“Again,” he says, the smallest tremor in his voice, and Oikawa blinks at him a moment before smiling, soft and sweet.
“Iwa-chan,” he replies, and Iwaizumi closes his eyes.
“Again.”
“Iwa-chan.”
“Again.”
“Iwa-chan.”
“Again.”
“Hajime.”
(“Tooru.”)
It doesn’t quite sink in with Iwaizumi until he’s left the shrine, left Oikawa behind (and he doesn’t even know where his friend will disappear to, or even how he’s here at all, but it doesn’t matter) – Oikawa had been right there, just a few feet away, laughing and real-but-not-real. It doesn’t sink in until Iwaizumi returns home to a dark, too-small apartment and says, I’m home, and no one answers.
Iwaizumi stands in the foyer and breathes and it hits him, then, all at once, how much he misses Oikawa and how good it had been to see him and hear him and how badly he’d been wanting that, wanting anything. He shuts his eyes and breathes and he can still hear Oikawa’s voice, sweet, saying Iwa-chan.
(All that time, at the beginning of loss, sitting in the quiet and wishing to hear Oikawa say his ridiculous nickname just one more time.)
When the grief ebbs, Iwaizumi presses his palms to his chest, digs the heel of one hand in and tries to quiet his heart. However it is that Oikawa’s here – whether it’s an answer to his prayers, or a hallucination from heartache, or some other force entirely – it doesn’t matter. If Iwaizumi can have him for just a while longer, just a little more, he’ll take it.
When the grief ebbs, Iwaizumi pushes off the front door and walks into the tiny apartment. He sets down his bag, and goes to get coffee, and figure out what to do for dinner since he’d forgotten to buy food on the way home.
As he takes down his mug, his fingers brush against a still-unfinished box of tea.
Afterwards, it takes almost a week for Iwaizumi to return to the shrine.
When he’d woken up on Saturday morning, he’d been far less sure that that had all really happened – that he’d made an offering, and opened his eyes, and Oikawa had been standing there. By Sunday he’d been ready to write it off as a hallucination or a dream, something from an overactive imagination. Then skepticism had given way to the fear that if he goes back to the shrine, Oikawa won't appear, and Iwaizumi will have lost him all over again.
So as it is, it takes almost a week before Iwaizumi steels himself and stops taking the long way to the train station. His footsteps feel heavy as he walks down the sidewalk. When he gets to the now-familiar tori, he hesitates.
There’s no one at the shrine as Iwaizumi walks up. The clatter of the coin into the box feels unnaturally loud, as does the sound of the bell. Iwaizumi closes his eyes and all he can think about is please, because if he opens them again and Oikawa isn’t there—
“I thought Iwa-chan was never coming back.”
( Oh. )
Iwaizumi looks, and Oikawa is there.
His friend is dressed just the same as last time – the dark grey yukata, the zori, the fox mask half over his brow. Oikawa smiles at him, that same cheeky smile that Iwaizumi had grown up falling in love with, the one that crinkles the corners of Oikawa’s eyes.
Iwaizumi’s breath catches as he says, “Tooru.”
“Iwa-chan was rude to make me wait,” Oikawa says, mock-pouting, and Iwaizumi never thought he’d be happy to see that stubborn expression on his friend’s face. He huffs out a small laugh, shaking his head.
“Don’t be a brat,” he snaps back, but his voice is fond. Oikawa’s expression is playful as he hops down to sit on the edge of the low fence, heels kicking at the stone.
“I’m only telling the truth!” Oikawa protests, and Iwaizumi chucks a crumpled receipt at his friend. It bounces off Oikawa’s forehead before he has time to dodge, and his nose immediately scrunches up.
“What was that for?” he demands, but Iwaizumi’s still half-caught up in the fact that the paper had ricocheted off his friend. Up until now, he’d been too afraid to believe Oikawa was real. It’s such an odd thing to feel relieved over, and yet.
And yet.
Then Iwaizumi realizes belatedly that Oikawa’s watching him with an amused and perplexed expression, because he’s been staring a little too long. Hastily, he shakes his head and settles down at the edge of the platform, dropping his bag to the ground.
For a moment they sit there, across each other, just looking. Oikawa looks the same as Iwaizumi remembers. Here, in the shrine, behind the cover of the trees, it feels as if they’re hiding away a while.
“Iwa-chan,” Oikawa says, like when they’d been six and meeting for the first time;
like when he’d pleaded with Iwaizumi to play volleyball with him;
like when they’d lost to Shiratorizawa for the first time and Oikawa had cried and cried;
like when Oikawa had asked him, shyly, if Iwaizumi maybe wanted to move in with him.
Like the last time he’d said Iwaizumi’s name, sleep-raspy and sweet, just before leaving for practice.
Iwaizumi looks at Oikawa, and even as something in him settles, there are splinters and ice in his lungs.
He flicks his gaze down to where his hands are clasped between his knees, feeling suddenly clumsy. There’s too many things he wants to tell Oikawa, words that are caught in his throat – things like how much he’s missed his friend; how quiet life is now without him; how Iwaizumi still sometimes makes breakfast for two, when he’s half-asleep and caught up in memory. But Iwaizumi opens his mouth and none of that comes out.
“I’m sorry,” he says, instead, with a small self-deprecating laugh. “I meant to come back sooner, I just didn’t—”
He breaks off, sheepish. I didn’t think you were really real, except it feels wrong to say that to Oikawa. But from the way his friend’s expression softens, it’s clear he understands anyway.
“I know,” Oikawa says, and the way he looks – Iwaizumi wants to reach out to him. Take those practice-worn hands in his and kiss Oikawa’s fingers. Lean against Oikawa’s chest and just listen to his heartbeat. But he can’t, he can’t.
So he shakes his head, and smiles.
“I dropped by the team’s practice match the other day,” he starts, and Oikawa’s face brightens.
The sky above them is grey, but the rain doesn’t fall.
Iwaizumi ends up staying for a good part of the afternoon, just – talking. He tells Oikawa about the team’s practice match, about how Kuroo still gets on Matsukawa’s nerves, about how Bokuto’s becoming more consistent. He tells Oikawa about how the dorayaki place near their apartment closed down two months ago. He tells Oikawa a lot of little things, and Oikawa listens and laughs, and for a while it feels like a year ago. For a while it feels like – if Iwaizumi were to close his eyes, they could both be on his bed, Oikawa wearing another shirt he’s snitched, telling each other about their day.
Then a dog barks, somewhere outside their little sanctuary, and Iwaizumi’s jolted out of his reverie. He realizes the time, and he still has to buy dinner on his way home, and Oikawa—
His friend smiles ruefully up at him and waves him off.
“Go ahead, Iwa-chan,” he says, like they’re just parting ways at the school gate. “I’ll be here when you come back.”
Come with me, Iwaizumi almost says.
(Come back, come home.)
“I’ll hold you to that,” he quips instead, as he shoulders his bag.
It starts to drizzle as he leaves.
When Iwaizumi gets back to the apartment, he looks for the photographs again. For a while, he simply looks at them. He tries to remember if they’d had more photos that night, and who has them, and if he has any other photos lying around that he’d put away, because it hurt to see.
He starts putting them back, then hesitates.
He settles for placing them on top of the manga, then closing the drawer.
The next time, it’s only three days before Iwaizumi returns.
He tosses in the ¥100 coin, rings the bell. Says a quiet prayer.
“Isn’t that my shirt?” says an amused voice from somewhere to his left.
Iwaizumi opens his eyes and Oikawa is sitting on the low fence again, watching him. His friend raises his eyebrows and tilts his head, looking pointedly at the button-down that Iwaizumi’s wearing. Iwaizumi snorts a laugh in response.
“No,” he says, stepping away from the coin box to settle on the edge of the platform. “You just stole it so much you think it’s yours.”
Oikawa has the audacity to scrunch up his nose and look miffed. “Well it looked better on me, anyway,” he retorts haughtily, even if his cheeks are turning pink.
“That’s your opinion,” Iwaizumi counters, and the laugh he’s been holding back threatens to break as Oikawa makes a face at him.
“Iwa-chan meanie,” his friend says, but there’s a smile at the edge of his expression, too.
They’ve settled together, like this – sitting across each other at the little shrine, and talking. Or Iwaizumi does the talking, and Oikawa asks questions. He asks after Hanamaki and Matsukawa, asks about Kuroo and Bokuto and Yaku. He asks about how Iwaizumi’s doing, his new favorite places to eat, the continuation of the mangas they both love.
It’s the most Iwaizumi’s spoken in weeks and weeks, after so much quiet. It feels a little like seeing Oikawa again has fractured something inside of him, and he can’t stop things from spilling out.
But there are also things they don’t talk about; things like those first months, in the aftermath of losing Oikawa, and how quiet Iwaizumi had been. How long it had taken Iwaizumi to stop taking down two mugs instead of just one. All those days spent going to the shrine, sitting here alone and just – remembering. The grief that Iwaizumi carries even now, that blooms with splinters in his lungs whenever Iwaizumi has to go home to an empty apartment and no Oikawa, because his friend isn’t really here.
Oikawa doesn’t ask about any of this, so in turn, Iwaizumi doesn’t ask what happens after he leaves. Doesn’t ask where Oikawa goes, or where he even comes from, or how he’s even here. If this is a kindness from the gods then he won’t question it. It’s enough that Oikawa is here again, even if just for a while, even if just like this.
(But is it, really?)
They settle together. Iwaizumi talks, Oikawa listens. It feels like before but also it’s not, it’s not.
It rains more often now, when he leaves.
“I love you, you know,” Iwaizumi says, on a Monday.
I love you, you know, so casually, as if Iwaizumi hadn’t held onto those words for so long, tucked them into the spaces between his ribs. He hadn’t dared say them out loud, but he hadn’t ever felt the need to. He’d realized over the years that they would say it in a hundred other ways, instead, like:
the squeeze of their palms before a match,
the Aqua that Oikawa would buy alongside his strawberry milk,
the way the lines of home always blurred between them.
The way they’d instinctively, unquestionably relied on each other on the court.
So he says them now, candidly, into the quiet of the afternoon. They’re seated beside each other, an arm’s length away, on the low stone fence. Iwaizumi doesn’t look at Oikawa; he keeps his eyes fixed on the grey sky over them instead. He reminds himself how to breathe.
He feels Oikawa watching him. Then his friend replies, so terribly gentle, “I loved you, too.”
Loved, as in past tense. Because Oikawa is here but he isn’t, because Iwaizumi has him for stolen hours in afternoons but Iwaizumi can’t keep him. Because Oikawa cannot stay.
I loved you, too, Oikawa says, and Iwaizumi closes his eyes.
“Okay,” he says, and his voice doesn’t shake. “Okay.”
It’s enough, he tells himself as he stands in the middle of the tiny kitchen and waits for the water to finish boiling. It’s enough, what he has, now, Oikawa sitting across him and smiling. It’s enough and he shouldn’t dare ask for more, not when the alternative is no Oikawa at all. It’s enough, it should be, but every time Iwaizumi comes home to a quiet apartment, it hurts.
It’s been hurting for quite a while now.
(And sometimes, when Iwaizumi gets caught up in the way Oikawa laughs, it’s half impossible to stop himself from reaching out and brushing the backs of his fingers over his friend’s cheek, because Oikawa is right there and Iwaizumi wants to feel him. But he always hesitates, is never sure, and his hand stays on the stone fence, closed in a fist.
He wonders if Oikawa’s noticed.)
Iwaizumi opens the cabinet just as the water begins to boil. He reaches for his mug, pauses by the still-unfinished box of tea.
He pushes it to the back of the cabinet and closes the door.
The next Friday and Iwaizumi watches as Oikawa hums to himself while he searches for small flowers in the grass around the shrine, and he realizes it’s not enough, it’s not, it’s not.
It comes to an end on a Saturday afternoon.
Oikawa’s the one talking, this time, something about a volleyball match from way back when. Iwaizumi isn’t so much listening as watching the way the sunlight brings out flecks of bronze in Oikawa’s hair, brings a little flush to his skin. And it hits him again, how much it isn’t enough, how much he’s missed Oikawa and misses Oikawa and his friend is right there, he’s real, he has to be. Iwaizumi doesn’t want to live with almosts and maybes.
Oikawa reaches out for a small flower and
without thinking, Iwaizumi curls a hand around a slim wrist
because he wants,
he wants,
he wants.
(Please.)
Under his touch, Oikawa’s skin is warm.
When he glances up, his friend is looking at him with a small, sad smile. His expression is soft at the edges, but there’s a brittleness to it, and a regret.
Iwaizumi feels his heart crumple as he begs, “Tooru, please.”
Oikawa’s practice-worn fingers are so terribly gentle as they ease Iwaizumi’s hand off, catching just a little before they let go. Then he lifts his hand to Iwaizumi’s jaw, touching with just the tips of his fingers. He leans in to kiss Iwaizumi, just once, on the cheek, careful and light and sweet.
“Thank you, Iwa-chan,” he says, and he doesn’t say the I’m sorry but it’s implied anyway.
Iwaizumi tries to turn his face, kiss Oikawa for real, just this once, just once. But there’s a whisper of wind and the touch leaves his skin.
Oikawa’s gone.
Iwaizumi sits on the grass by the small shrine, under a grey sky, all alone. His hand is still caught in mid-air. It feels a little like something inside of him has fractured.
After a moment, it begins to rain.
[ art by @dahliadenoire ]
He almost doesn’t, but Iwaizumi returns to the shrine the next day. He knows he shouldn’t be here, because it will only hurt more, but he has to try, he has to.
(After all, what else does he have to lose?)
The twin Inari statues seem to leer at him as he walks through the gate. The chozubachi water is cold to his fingers. His hand shakes as he tosses the coin in, the rattle of it too loud in the quiet. He rings the bell, then bows, and claps twice.
He holds his breath as long as he dares, then opens his eyes.
Oikawa isn’t there.
Please, Iwaizumi thinks, but he knows it’s no use.
It rains again as he leaves.
When Iwaizumi gets home, he’s half-drenched. Slowly, he lets himself into a too-dark, quiet apartment. He takes off his shoes by the door, and drops his bag down beside them, and stands in the dimly-lit corridor.
“I’m home,” he says, voice hoarse.
No one answers.