Chapter Text
The first thing that Tooru does after Hajime leaves him is to go fuck someone else.
He waits in a house that is too big, that echoes with the sound of Hajime's voice, that now threatens to swallow him alive. He waits for the sound of a key in the lock, he waits for a message, a call, anything.
He curls up on the floor, exactly where he was left and he becomes someone else, a ghost in the middle of a living room full of someone else's happy memories. There's a forgotten shirt that Hajime draped on the sofa and Tooru tugs it off, breathes in the smell so that he can sleep.
Abruptly, he wakes in the night, disoriented and eyes full of salt. At first, he wonders what time it is, why Hajime isn't home yet. Then he remembers and it screams in him, screams like a murder on the street only it's within him and the pain goes on and on and on.
-selfish -you're not listening. I don't know who you are anymore. I love you but-. I love you. But I don't know how to deal with this. I don't think I can handle this anymore, not if we're not in this together.
He waits until he loses track of the moving shadows and he's dehydrated from all the crying jags, he waits until his hands tremble because he doesn't remember his last meal, he waits and wishes the cool floor underneath would rise up and envelope him and maybe the stabbing feeling in his gut would ease. He waits and Hajime doesn’t come back because he meant it, he was going to leave and he did, he left.
Tooru stays and with every beat of his heart, he wills for Hajime to come back to him. For that last, damning fight to have been a dream, for the "I can't do this anymore, you need to sort this out" to have been a hallucination. He hears the whispers of the house coalesce into "he's never coming back" and it keens in him until it's bleeding out of him in broken sounds.
Then he pulls himself up, cleans up a little, swiping at gaunt cheeks, too pale to be alluring. He runs a hand through locks that are due for a wash and can't find it in himself to care. Applies eyeliner with a hand that shakes and smudges.
This pair of jeans was Hajime's favourite so he takes it off before he can start crying again, and throws on something else, something he would have hated, something gaudy and loud, and it bares his collarbones. He unbuttons it even more.
The lights in the club are too bright, dizzying, and Tooru can hardly focus, but they make it easy for him to forget himself, they blind him and make him invisible simultaneously. Just another body in the crowd - erasing him and propelling him into a black hole, pushing him into the dark with a single sweep.
Knocking back one drink on his painfully empty stomach is enough to make the place swing around him, dipping and reeling as he draws in a breath that feels like a knife and throws his gaze into the bobbing sea of people.
Even with his matted hair and his swollen eyes, even with the hollowness in his very being and the despair in his veins, he's a striking figure, a hot mess, and then he's leaning into someone, he doesn't know who, but someone.
He's saying words he doesn't understand - to him they all sound as though he's begging: "make it stop, make it go away, make him come back, please make him-"
Tooru knows it won't work though, his grief is tearing through the alcohol and he's sober with the acuteness of it.
So the first thing he does is attempt to discard himself because he doesn't want to be a Tooru that Hajime doesn't want. He doesn't want to be here, this, him.
Tries to disown his lips by fixing it to another's, tries to abandon his soul by baring his body to someone else, he flings himself into a clumsy imitation of something he used to know, just to stop feeling himself.
A stranger's hands are on his hips but if he closes his eyes he can pretend they're Hajime's. He can't, they don't feel right and he knows it.
He loans himself out and allows himself to belong to someone else for the night, as though it would bring Hajime back to him out of spite, out of desperation. Although he doesn't mean to, he falls asleep after, exhaustion drowning him and he sinks, with Hajime's name on his lips, as it has been the whole time.
This is someone else's bed, this is someone else's home, this is someone else, he realises when he jerks awake at pre-dawn. The regret tastes like acid, astringent and repulsive, and he barely makes it to the bathroom before he throws up the nothing in his stomach.
Somehow, he dresses himself, staggers into the street, the early morning light making sure he doesn't trip too often, his gut seizing and his entire body shaking. Everything hurts; his hips, his head, his heart. An initial, instinctive start for home, but then he halts, unable to face it. The empty place that used to be his home until Hajime left and took the home with him.
So he stumbles aimlessly, trying to remember what to do, trying to figure out where to go. There's no more water in him to cry but his body tries anyway, in silent dry sobs that make him heave and sit down on the curb for a while.
He ends up outside Sawamura's house, he doesn't know why but something in him knows that Suga will have the answers. Without knocking, he slumps outside their door, dozes off.
There are panicked voices and a warm secure cradle and Tooru opens his eyes to a frenzied Daichi and Suga, carrying him in and he reaches for Suga like a child for comfort, the tears coming hot and fast, dredging up his reserves and streaming out as he blubbers, the reality settling, crushing.
"He left, he's gone, he said-" It comes out in between gasps and sobs and he doesn't recognize this strained, weak voice to be his, "I messed up, I don't know how, I don't know why-"
The first few days pass in a blur.
Tooru takes showers and shaves and brushes his teeth, Suga and Daichi tag teaming to clean him up. He drinks bottle after bottle of water and takes disinterested mouthfuls of soup and whatever they try to feed him.
He stays in their guestroom with the curtains drawn and tries not to think about anything at all. At first, he can keep track of the days by the opening and closing of the door as they leave for work and come home, but time melts and turns to sludge, pooling on the floor and he breathes the dim air in, shallow and slow.
Sleep is something he craves and dreads, he closes his eyes and dreams of Hajime's hands, Hajime's voice, Hajime. In his feverish dreams, Hajime smiles at him, that smile he knows is only for him and there is no helplessness in his voice, no disappointment in the way he says 'Tooru'.
Tooru always cries when he wakes up, sometimes he's already sobbing, throat raw and face twisted in the purest expression of pain. He wishes he could sleep forever, he wishes he could slip into the world in which Hajime still loves him and never come back.
Nothing much registers in those first few weeks or even months, nothing makes sense and nothing matters. All he knows is a shrill wail in the well of his soul that never ceases and it rots him from the inside, eating away at his very being until he feels himself caving inward, collapsing into the thin air that's barely holding him up.
In the following weeks, Tooru shatters in the most absolute way; he fissures and fractures and falls apart in ways he didn't know he could. Even when he thinks, I can't possibly break any further, I can't possibly hurt any more, he does and then he does again.
He unravels and finds shards of his old self, his old life, on the floor, in his jeans pockets and when messages come in on his phone, the words blurring and incomprehensible.
It is in this way, standing among the ruins of himself, surrounded by the shambles of his life, that he begins to see what Hajime had meant and when he does, the stab of regret is dull compared to the way sheer revulsion of himself grips him.
He starts slow, leaves the guest room for meals that he spends trying desperately to find something on his plate appetising before forcing his way through a few mouthfuls that taste like his own despair.
Walks around the house when Daichi and Suga are gone for the day, taking slow turns about the living room that reeks of domestic bliss, of a comfort he used to know, that he used to have. Except now, he's scrabbling in the dirt for water that has been absorbed into the soil, trying to hold on to the liquid that has long vanished into the earth, only to come away with handfuls of dust.
He tries not to let the jealousy devour him, but the remorse does instead as he watches them have silent exchanges and share casual brushes. It gnaws at him, whispering, You had that. You had all of it but you squandered it.
Suga gets his laptop for him and slowly, he begins answering emails, pours himself into his work and doesn't emerge until he's numb from it. Numb enough that when he comes up for air, he almost doesn't feel the crippling pain that threatens to paralyse and hold him hostage.
For a while, he can almost believe it's getting better, that he can go for stretches without the tightness in his chest. So he goes home, thanks Daichi and Suga with a brittle smile and tries to stand on his own two feet.
The instant he opens the door, he knows it was a mistake, he knows he's not ready, will never be ready and he doesn't know how he could possibly face this, how he could possibly go on in a reality that Hajime is not there to come home to.
There have been no messages, no calls and no news of Hajime. If not for the photographs on the wall, the notes on the fridge, the clothes strewn on the floor, Tooru might almost believe that he had dreamed it all. That this was one long nightmare that he just had to fall out from.
But he trails fingers across frozen smiles in frames and refuses to change the bedsheets, curling into them as though if he tried hard enough he could cleave to a familiar body instead.
He knows Hajime has been in contact with Suga, has seen Hajime’s email address pop up in mail notifications on the other man’s phone. It takes everything in him not to lunge for the phone, snatch it up and grasp for the withering threads of any connection he has to Hajime. Instead, he closes his eyes, entire body trembling, nothing at all functioning and when he looks again, the screen is empty. He can almost pretend he imagined it.
He tries. He honestly does; he works and he eats when he remembers to and he glosses over the gaping hole inside of him, tamps down the urge to give in to that mindless cry within.
Distantly, he thinks about how silly this is, to fall apart for someone else, and in those moments it's as though he's watching himself from the outside or from above. But it's not just someone else, it's Hajime, and Tooru knows there's a place on the other end of this for him to emerge from, weary but intact, but at the moment, he can't see it and so he pulls himself through each day and tries not to think about anything at all.
A delivery does it.
It comes for Hajime and Tooru flinches when he hears the name in the delivery person's foreign voice, and with a hand that trembles a little, signs off on it. He doesn't want to open it but he also doesn't know where to send it and just in case it's important, he peeks to check.
His own name catches his eye and frowning, holding his breath, he uncovers the constellation themed musical box that they had passed in a shop window. That day, that life, seems eons ago and yet, Tooru can remember with bittersweet precision the way Hajime's hand was warm and calloused in his, how he had rolled his eyes and tugged Tooru along even as the corner of his lips lifted up.
Yet, here it is, with Tooru's name printed on the accompanying card and tinkling a little charming tune when wound and it's too much.
Tooru can't see, can't feel anything beyond this uprising of emotion that threatens to engulf him and then he's hurling the mug that was on the table at the wall. It smashes, to his satisfaction, it was a gift as well and that clenches deep in Tooru's gut, hurts even more and it feels good.
He sweeps an arm out across the dining table next and papers go flying, another cup careens to the floor, spilling tea as it goes and Tooru can't find it in himself to care. Not when he's like this, not when he wants to destroy everything including himself.
A photo frame clatters to the floor, the clock is pitted at the door and leaves a mark where it strikes, bounces; the bathroom trashed, bottles flung haphazardly, in the shower, into the corridor. He pulls hangers from the cupboard and rips clothes from the plastic, feels a cut bloom on a finger and hopes viciously that he will bleed on something expensive, he wants to ruin everything. He wants this entire place to look exactly how he feels on the inside and so he slams a fist into the mirror, can't feel it when his knuckles begin to redden and spots of blood appear.
The glass of the mirror is fragmented, splinters of it showering into the sink and Tooru can't even see himself in the distorted reflection, he only sees a stranger, a monster, someone Hajime doesn't love anymore.
Then he's sobbing, the pain wrenched out of him in gasps of air, watching the stranger's face crumple in a thousand different shards, and he lifts a bloody hand to his mouth as though to stifle the sounds but it's too much and it doesn't stop and he's on the ground, tears mixing with the red, his life in pieces around him.
The curtains are a wreck and the couch looks like a battlefield, the kitchen looks ransacked, nothing in the house has been untouched except for a music box that quavers the final note before going silent, a fragile survivor in the aftermath of Tooru.
He gets it together after that. Or at least, he tries to. A day is spent cleaning up his own mess before he turns to himself and tries to do the same to his insides.
It doesn't go as smoothly so he starts small, tries to rebuild himself into someone better, someone whole. He gropes around for a piece of himself, inspects it and decides if he likes it, if he wants to keep it, before fitting it in like a jigsaw piece, a Tooru 2.0.
Lately, he's been discovering that the pieces he wants to keep are the ones that Hajime loved the most.
After that, he realises that the ones that Hajime loved the most are the ones he had begun with, that he had nurtured and fought with and pushed and pulled until they were defining aspects of him. He also recognises a few that he had let go of to acquire some other trait that he thought would make him more useful, that he thought would make him the best.
It gets to the point whereby he stands back and looks at the person he had constructed in the last five years and realises that none of the good pieces were in there at all.
So he pieces himself back together, and in his head, Hajime is beside him, watching as he finds himself again. It's not so much that he needs Hajime's approval, but it seems that Hajime always seems to have known Tooru better than he did himself, seen Tooru as someone better than he actually is.
The world, Tooru comes to understand, doesn't wait for you. It spins while you grieve and while you try to pretend that life is simply paused, on hold until he returns. Life goes on and people flood by as you remain, grappling with yourself, simply trying to hold it together, too full of cracks to even think about moving forward.
He watches the seasons change, registers the leaves burning red then flourishing into deep green, but inside Tooru, it's eternally winter. In the frozen emptiness within, he remains stagnant as time trickles past, he's always too cold at night, his soul is always aching and it never feels right. Nothing does anymore.
Unlike what everyone else expects, he doesn't sprint to catch up. There's no miraculous return to a promotion and a fast paced life that doesn't let him breathe, doesn't let him feel.
He does consider it, consciously resists the lure of drowning himself in work, but he finds a new job instead. One that doesn't make him drink three coffees a day and leaves his weekends mostly free, it's a slow start, but he finds more meaning in it and that's good enough for him.
He imagines this is what people with conditions that cause chronic pain go through, learns to live with the lead in his lungs and the sensation that his heart is slowly, slowly being bled dry. It's exhausting, to function around it - to hold himself up and to go through the motions just as everyone else does although it costs him double as much.
There's a tightness around his eyes when he smiles and he can't practise it away in the mirror, his laugh sounds as though it's coming from a far off place, so he doesn't do it that much anymore and when he moves, it feels like going through water, slow and weighted.
He doesn't mind, he's not in the race to be the best anymore. He was, but that was before he ended up nearly losing himself in the process, before it cost him the only person he'd ever loved. He's let that boat sail and is content with walking. He doesn't know if he'll end up where everyone else does, doesn't know if he cares, but he's just focusing on existing, on getting through a day at a time.
It takes six months for milk bread to taste like anything to him, and another six for him to track down a bakery that has milk bread exactly like the ones Hajime used to buy for him.
In the same intervals, Tooru starts running again, and within a year, he's back on the court. It's for leisure, but no other sport compares. The bags under his eyes shrink and his face fills out, inching him away from the deathly visage he was sporting in the first few months.
It still hurts. He reckons it always will.
There are days that he forgets, he calls out a tadaima before belatedly remembering no one is waiting for him to get back; he buys Hajime's shampoo only to open the cupboard and find a bottle still unopened. He sets the table for two and only realises after he sits down to eat and then the tightness is crawling up his throat, the little hunger has long fled, abandoning him to a session of shaky inhales as he drops salty tears into his rice. He doesn't clear the extra setting away, it would hurt too much, but he barely makes it through the meal, shoving food into his mouth as the view of Hajime's empty bowl and clean chopsticks waver and blur through a film of tears.
But Tooru breathes in, breathes out, waters his plants and finds some sort of peace in this life he has built.
Breathes in. Breathes out.
Breathes.
The sun shines, the rain falls, and Tooru finds a new rhythm. He fills in the gaps that Hajime left and when he's pulled up off the ground, he finds that the hand he's gripping isn't Hajime's but his own.
It's strange, but not bad, and Tooru forges on. He gets groceries from the store and remembers to get the right number of eggs; he walks down the street and feels the sun on his face, takes in the little purple buds in the grass; he looks up and sees Iwaizumi Hajime and-
He looks up and sees his Hajime who isn't his anymore and he nearly drops his eggs, struggles to hold onto his bags and himself, and catches most of them (he still loses a bag of oranges).
Iwaizumi Hajime looks wan. Tooru would have thought that without having to deal with him, maybe Hajime would be better off, radiant with a life better lived. But this Hajime, three steps away, has lines that Tooru doesn't remember tracing, has eyebags to rival his own, and a dark depth that Tooru cannot access in his eyes.
Tooru watches as his own emotions play out across Hajime's face, feels the surprise chased by gut-wrenching longing to reach out across a distance that is far wider than three measly steps reflected on his best friend's expression. The burst of hope, tinier than a raindrop, that sprouts within his soul, is unfamiliar and so improbable that he almost wants to laugh.
He breathes in, can feel every mended crack of where he had broken and fallen apart, the ceaseless sob that wells and wells into unshed tears that crowd his vision.
Breathes out.
"Iwa chan."