Chapter Text
"Iwa chan."
In that breathless second, the world quivers into a pinprick before yawning into an overly bright weight that envelops Tooru, squeezes him until he fights for air.
The old Tooru would have faked a winning smile and slung a couple of breezy comments over. He would have gone off feeling like he had won simply because he hadn't shown weakness, hadn't broken down.
But that was then, and now, Tooru knows that his biggest weakness is the refusal to be honest with himself.
This Tooru doesn't try to widen his smile so that his dimples show. Instead, he lets the residual affection from the name that drops from his lips lead the way into a soft, tentative curve, tugging at the corners of his mouth.
Here I am, he is saying, this is me now. This is all there is and this is all I have.
He stands, his core tight from the concerted effort to stay, to remain rooted to the hot concrete of the street instead of bolting.
The worst is about to happen, he thinks, Hajime is going to walk right by without even acknowledging him. Or he's about to turn around and leave again.
Tooru doesn't know if he can remain standing if that happens, his knees already feel as though they're about to give out, he tightens his grip on his shopping bags.
"To- Oikawa," The name sounds as though it's been forcibly dragged from Hajime and Tooru barely refrains from wincing.
He watches as his best friend's throat works, struggling to continue, and abruptly, they lock gazes for Tooru to find that Hajime's hazel eyes are clouded with anguish.
"Can we talk?"
. . .
They end up at a small cafe down the street and Tooru hides behind the show of putting his groceries down properly. Hides his hands that shake, his breath that jumps faster than his heart seems to beat, he wants to climb into one of the bags and hide himself completely.
He's not ready to have this conversation, will never be ready, he's not strong enough, he can't- He takes a deep breath and holds it, tries to use the air to push out all the fear. It doesn't work and he feels his fingertips grow numb.
Another part of him needs to have this conversation, ready or not, he's already craving the mere proximity of the anchoring presence that he instinctively identifies as Iwa chan, the back of his throat itches with the desire to delve into any conversation and prolong it so that he never has to leave. Or be left.
It's a magnetic pull, the way he's tugged into Hajime's gravitational field and he doesn't try to resist, doesn't want to resist.
He doesn't remember ordering but one of his favourite frappes is served along with Hajime's usual coffee and he can't stop his gaze from leaping to Hajime, not even bothering to conceal his surprise.
I thought you would have forgotten, he wants to say, I thought you forgot me.
Pulling the drink closer, he wants to take a sip but refrains because he thinks that he might throw up. There's a storm of emotions roiling in his belly and the only thing that can calm it is sitting one tabletop and yet, an unreachable distance away.
He tries not to focus on Hajime's hands, wrests his gaze away from familiar knuckles, fingertips, palms that he can recognise blindfolded. Yet, those hands seem to dominate his vision and his own fingers yearn to inch across the smooth wooden surface for a brief encounter.
There's a silence that makes Tooru fidget, his feet shuffling nervously under the table and he casts around for something to say, even as he drowns in words that he can't, won't let out into the fragile space between them.
But Hajime just looks at him, seeming more like a broken man than the Iwa chan that Tooru remembers.
All at once, Tooru is unbelievably self-conscious. He's got a zit on his left cheek that he didn't bother concealing for a trip to the supermarket and he's wearing his glasses, his hair is mussed from the late afternoon breeze and God, what is he wearing? He clamps down on the urge to glance down and check his outfit.
Jittery sensations dance up and down his arms and he forces down a shiver, because he's been living in a muffled world for so long. Like being able to rebuild his television but never figuring out how to turn the colour or sound back on, he's been trapped in some limbo of existence that has him going and going and not really living.
He hasn't felt so at home in his own skin in just over a year, hasn't felt so right even though the nerves, the uncertainty and fear have him on edge.
There's a pain in his chest that's been needling into his flesh, into his bones and hardening into a solid knot. It loosens here, just infinitesimally and it's not much, but it's something.
It makes Tooru think, maybe I don't need to be with him, I don't even need to be his friend, I just need to see him from time to time, to know he's well and that's enough for me. That will be enough.
How are you?
Do you eat well? Sleep well?
Do you still eat lime popsicles only when you're stressed?
Are you still someone I know?
Questions bubble up along with the old ache of love lost but this Tooru is stronger, clearer and a good year away from the grieving mess he was before. He doesn't let the emotion sweep him away, doesn't let it rise up and overwhelm him, blot him out.
He takes a deep breath, in and out, summons his willpower and control, focuses on what really needs to be said.
"I'm sorry," He tries to ignore the way Hajime's eyes dart to him, shock mixing with bafflement and slowly morphing to horror.
“Don’t,” The word itself seems to have torn itself from Hajime’s throat, strangled and wretched.
Tooru presses on because he needs to get this off his chest, needs to sleep at night.
“I’m sorry I pushed you to that, I-”
“Don’t,” This time, the word is forceful, bearing the weight of a myriad of emotions and sharp enough for Tooru to involuntarily jerk upward and make eye contact. He catches sight of Hajime’s expression and falls silent, the words fluttering away, dissipating into the air like the vapours rising from Hajime’s coffee.
Hazel eyes wild, jaw clenched, Hajime looks incensed and helpless, distraught and lost, all at once. Tooru quells the instinctive urge to reach out and smoothen a hand over that taut expression, to soften the blows of life with a touch that says, I’m here, whatever it is, I’m here and I’m not going anywhere.
Because that doesn’t hold for them anymore.
Instead, he emphatically folds his hands on his lap, more a warning to himself than anything. He tries again.
"You were right,” He grins ruefully, “I was turning into someone else, something else, you-”
“No,” Hajime interrupts fiercely, eyes ablaze and mouth flattening into a thin, unhappy line. Tooru has been dead inside for a long time, but he’s still Oikawa Tooru, and so he draws himself up, the upset igniting into a simmer of anger.
It feels like champagne buzzing in his veins. He feels alive. He keeps going.
“No,” He says, tasting the word in his mouth and gathering momentum, “No, you listen. I was driving myself insane, turning myself inside out for that goddamn job, I was degenerating into a stranger, someone even I didn’t recognise, someone I didn’t want to be.”
He sucks in a breath, his voice has steadily risen in volume and several customers shoot him inconspicuous looks. Hajime looks stricken, but he’s listening and so, on Tooru goes.
“I turned into someone else, you tried to tell me and I never listened,” Here, his voice abruptly dries up, cracking into a rasp as he re-lives in visceral detail, the last few months of their relationship, “I never listened.”
“I was falling down this pit and I would have dragged you down with me,” Tooru’s throat begins to hurt but this feels cathartic and he knows deep in his gut that he’s been harbouring this apology in his chest for a year now, “I was making you hate me, hate us, hate yourself. I was becoming this person that neither of us liked, like.”
“Then I should have gone down into that pit with you.”
At first, Tooru believes that he mishears this low statement and it must show on his face because Hajime makes direct eye contact with him and slams a hand on the table so hard that liquid slops out and onto the surface.
"Are you listening? I should have gone down there with you."
Eyes wide with alarm, Tooru’s mouth opens and closes, opens and closes again.
“Wherever the fuck you were going, whatever the fuck you were becoming, I shouldn’t have let go of your hand, we get into shit together and we get out of shit together.”
By now, the entire coffeeshop is staring openly at the two grown men having a meltdown in the corner, but this is a conversation that Tooru isn't going to let slip out of his hands, not again.
"My mistake," Hajime mutters, seemingly to himself, his head in his hands, the picture of misery as fingers knot in dark hair and pull, as though struggling to anchor, or to punish, "It was my mistake."
When he looks back up at Tooru, the air flees from Tooru's lungs. This is a man who has seen his nightmares come to life and dance around his bedroom, this is a man whose eyes are haunted, whose mouth only seems to remember unhappy shapes.
"Tooru," He starts and then he loses himself, seems to retreat into the shell of Iwaizumi Hajime, something he never used to do. He visibly pulls himself together, broad shoulders pushing back.
"You were becoming someone else and I couldn't do anything, I was watching you from the sidelines and you were chafing at your own sanity for that godforsaken job and I couldn't do shit," Hajime's chest heaves as he leans forward, as though trying to impress upon Tooru the force of his words. Out of the corner of his eye, Tooru notices that those tanned hands he loves so much are shaking where they hover over the tabletop.
"It was like watching you drown and being unable to save you, do you know what that was like?"
Tooru swallows because the magnitude of Hajime's struggle to leave is, all of a sudden, slamming into him and he sways in his seat, as though dealt a physical blow.
"So I left, some kind of wild card that I thought- Well, I don’t know what I thought, but it felt like the only card I had left," Hajime laughs mirthlessly, a harsh, thin sound that forces a needle straight into Tooru's chest.
Hajime hangs his head, his entire body slumping and instinctively, Tooru's hand reaches out halfway before he pulls it back and curls his fingers into a fist.
"My mistake," he repeats, sounding so hollow that it scares Tooru, "I should have drowned with you even if I couldn't save you."
Tooru wants to cry. He wants to sink to the grey cement floor of this hipster coffeeshop and let the sound of his sorrow ricochet off the plant-covered walls, because he could bear his own pain, he could suffer his own loss, but Hajime's pain is cutting him open and there's nothing he can do about it.
How can you be sad? You were supposed to be okay, you were supposed to be fine, he thinks desperately, I could have borne anything if you were alright.
Hajime's face looks like a mask, something Tooru doesn't recognize, it's a face that carries an immeasurable amount of torment, with rue written into the lines of his features and agony dictating the set of his mouth.
"You did what was best," Toou whispers, because his voice has failed him, "For both of us. I needed that wake up call. Or else I never would have realised and I never would have gotten myself out of there."
Slowly, as though greatly weighed, Hajime lifts his head with disbelief and despair swimming in his eyes.
"You're not- You don't blame me," Hajime states, his brows scrunched up in a way that Tooru loves, he loves so much it starts to become difficult to breathe again and he's barely keeping it together now.
He shakes his head, slowly and firmly.
"I hate myself, for letting it get to that," Tooru says, soft but steady, his gaze seeking and holding Hajime's so that he can emphasise this, "But not you. Never you."
"Well, I hate myself for leaving, so I guess we're even, huh," A baleful expression spreads out across Hajime's face. It doesn't alleviate the distress that is etched there but it's a start.
Between his fingers is a thread of hope, finer than spun silk, and Tooru clings to it, ties his breaths to it.
"Could we stay in touch? Not- We don't have to- I just-," Deep inhale before he ends rather feebly, "It would be nice to know if you're doing alright."
Something clears in Hajime's eyes before he's nodding.
"Yes," There's a measure of relief woven in with hope and desperation. He clears his throat, "I'd like that, yes."
Before he can change his mind, Tooru pulls out his phone, swipes away an old anniversary photo that he never got around to swapping out for a neutral lockscreen and then pauses.
"Did you change your number or…?" Another question hangs between them, Did you try to avoid me? Stop me from calling?
Abruptly, a sheepish expression crosses Hajime's face and he mumbles something.
"What?" Heart sinking, his expression folds before Tooru can catch himself and immediately Hajime comprehends what he just insinuated and straightens.
"It's not that I changed my number exactly," Hajime fumbles before trailing into a murmur, "I don't actually have a phone anymore."
"What- Did you lose it? What happened?" Tooru is puzzled but relieved and then he forgets to feel anything when Hajime blushes, the tips of his ears turning red.
"By the time I wanted to call you, Suga told me that it was such a bad time to do so that it would have been better to let you get back on your feet first before contacting you."
Tooru takes a moment to consider and comes to the conclusion that as with most things, Suga is sadly, painfully correct. Hajime coming back into his life while he was self-destructing would have probably been catastrophic not just for him but for their relationship too. More than he’d already been anyway.
"But it was torture trying not to call you," Hajime continues, the blush staining his cheeks an even deeper shade, "Deleting your number didn't work because I'd memorised it so I just threw my phone away."
Tooru just gapes at him.
"Work can be done through emails and I just told Suga and Mattsun to email me as well," He shrugs as though he didn't just deal a devastating blow to Tooru's heart, "I didn't really want to talk to people anyway."
"Well, get a new phone and call me when you do," Tooru tells him, striving for coolness despite the fact that he can't feel his legs and his heart is about to explode out of his chest, before promptly losing it, "Or just text or whatever, you don't have to uh, call. My number is still the same."
Their eyes meet. And for a second, the past year falls away, slips off into a different dimension and in that instant, Tooru reads Hajime clear as day. As though they haven't spent an excruciating year apart, as though Tooru hasn't died and been brought back to life over and over again, as though the Hajime in front of him is the one from before and not one who looks like he's been to hell and back.
In the way it feels to have a jigsaw puzzle piece slide perfectly into place, Tooru feels the world right itself on its axis as he finds complete comprehension in that brief moment, effortlessly back on the same page, even with all that's between them.
There's no way we can go back to what we had. But there's a way forward, and perhaps there, we can find something for us.
. . .
When Tooru looks back, that wasn’t the moment his life restarted, but that was the moment he started seeing shapes in clouds and the colours of flowers. Life is never reviewed in a strictly chronological reel of events, rather, they flash by in moments that make us, shape us and gently nudge us on to where we are meant to go.
In hindsight, that entire year was but a moment in Tooru’s life. An arduous, heavy moment that he now shelves in with all the others, that he carries with him because it’s part of him but not all of him.
. . .
A moment in the future:
Tooru watches as the droplet he’s following on the glass fuses with another tiny smidge of water before it careens down, gaining momentum as it rolls steadily down the window. The world outside is gloomy and he expects lightning, with thunder hot on its heels, any minute now.
It feels as though a whirlwind has swept through his life, transporting him into a different world. Because now he wakes up to messages from Hajime, sees Hajime for meals, they smile, they laugh.
He observes how every conversation, every comfortable silence soothes the rampant guilt that hovers over Hajime’s every move, every breath. They’re almost back to where they started, all those years ago, when Tooru found that he couldn’t draw the line between friends and what they were and that he did not want to either.
Now here they are again, Tooru pressed comfortably against Hajime on the couch, watching the world amble by, perfectly happy to remain like this for a long time. And Tooru is about to throw himself off the precipice, possibly ruining it all, most probably damning himself but he’d rather that than move forward without being completely honest with Hajime.
“There’s something I have to tell you,” He starts, before taking in a deep breath. Hajime has already turned to him expectantly, affection laid bare on his face and that makes it all the more difficult.
“After you left, I was a mess - which you know, “ He adds with a wry smile, “Um, and I got really drunk and I- There was someone, I don’t even know who but I-” He doesn’t get to finish his mangled confession because one broad palm comes to cover his mouth and Hajime is looking at him with understanding written in soft eyes and Tooru isn’t sure if this is it, if this is the end and if he’s truly ruined everything and how he will get through it again.
“It doesn’t matter,” Hajime tells him, voice level and Tooru knows this voice, he knows Hajime isn’t lying, “Whatever you did, it doesn’t matter to me. All that matters is that you’re here now.”
Something inside Tooru cracks but not the way it did before, not in the way that hurts, and he’s flinging himself into Hajime, something he hasn’t done in too long, but his body remembers, knows just which way to fall. Hajime catches him, enfolds him in a way that seems so natural, so right, Tooru can almost trick himself into believing that they really did pick up where they left off.
Tooru’s fingers creep up and clench the t-shirt material on either side of Hajime as he buries his face in the crook of his best friend’s neck. He never wants to let go.
“I didn’t think I’d have you here again,” Hajime says quietly after a while.
“In our house?” Tooru mumbles confusedly into the neckline of Hajime’s shirt, greedily breathing in familiar scents, and he feels Hajime shake his head slightly.
“In my arms.”
In response, Tooru clings tighter as he squeezes his eyes shut, a stray tear escaping to soak into the fabric because this was also somewhere he didn’t think he would be again in this lifetime.
Yet, here we are.