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The first few weeks, the time it takes him to get settled, to get his bearings in a new country with a new lifestyle, to get used to always hearing any language but his own, to having to survive on his own in what feels like an entirely different world altogether... those few weeks, he doesn't really notice it.
He gets over his jetlag, meets new people, and starts a new life, and that distracts him.
But then routine starts to encroach on his everyday (wake up, eat, train, socialize, train, eat, go to bed, rinse and repeat), and longing and homesickness rear their ugly little heads and start wriggling in, slimily making themselves at home in the spaces between his ribs.
He misses his family.
He misses his friends and his home.
He misses, most of all, and so fiercely it takes him by surprise (though perhaps it shouldn’t, really), his grumpy, grumpy Iwa-chan.
When it hits him, he’s just taken a break from some solo training and checking his phone. And lo and behold , to his horror, the date informs him that it’s his best friend’s birthday . And he’s been so caught up in… well, everything that is now his life, that he’d almost forgotten about it, almost missed it entirely.
“Well, crap,” he mutters to himself. It’s… He thinks about it, really hard, and he realizes that this is the first time. The first birthday that they won’t spend together in the long years they’ve known each other. Next month, his own birthday, will be their second.
And ah, yeah. There’s the hot, twisty, shattered-glass feeling, spreading through his veins from in between his lungs towards all of his extremities. I should call him, he thinks, I should call him, at least. What time even is it over there? Every breath scorches its way down his airways.
It shouldn’t be this bad. It shouldn’t, it’s not like they’re… It just shouldn’t .
It shouldn’t, but it is.
It shouldn’t, but he would miss sunlight less.
The call connects. “It’s three in the fucking morning , Oikawa,” comes Iwa-chan’s garbled, annoyed voice. He yawns, as if to prove a point.
Oikawa let out a breath. “Hey, Iwa-chan. Happy birthday!”
There’s silence, for a few seconds. Just the sound of their breathing in the miles and miles between them. “It’s three in the fucking morning,” Iwa-chan says again, sounding more awake, less of a grump. And then, “Thanks.”
Oikawa breathes, and it feels just a bit easier. Still aching like an open wound, yes.
But. Easier.