Work Text:
If you looked up golden child in the dictionary, you might find a picture of Oikawa Tooru, beaming with an easy, practiced smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes.
For as long as he could remember, it was easy to be perfect. He never made trouble for his parents, never caused a ruckus in class. He got along with other kids, always quiet with a cheerful atmosphere that made him an acquaintance to everyone. He brought home report cards that were perfect all the way down, and even had “a pleasure to have in class!” written in the loopy script of his teachers in the comments section.
His parents told their friends he was a social butterfly. It was true, to an extent - he liked being the center of attention. The other adults would smile and comment how mature he was for his age, and how he could help keep the other kids in his third grade class in line. Oikawa would nod politely.
Those adults didn’t know about the time during math where he just couldn’t do it, no matter how many times it was explained to him, and while the rest of his classmates seemed to grasp the concept with ease and move on to harder things, Oikawa shuttered himself off to the back corner to stare at the numbers until they made sense. He was already in the higher level math class for his age, this should come easily to him. It didn’t. He always got it, eventually - but it took twice as long as everyone else, and that gap ate at his confidence like nothing else. A small part of his brain reminded him that he just barely made the threshold for admittance to the “gifted” class, and maybe that was just a fluke, and he shouldn’t be there. He pushed the thought away.
Oikawa might’ve been mature, or he might’ve just been quiet - at his age, it was hard to tell the difference. He knew everyone in his class but didn’t have friends, at least, not in the sense that he felt he was a first choice. He hung out with the same group during breaks, but always as a group. Always as an add on. He sat at his desk for lunch and watched everyone around him, taking mental notes. Decided who he wanted to associate himself with and who he wanted to keep at arm’s length.
At first, Oikawa spent time with Iwaizumi because it was convenient. He'd known him forever, never had to do awkward introductions. He lived close, he was an excuse to get out of the house, and he was just as reserved as Oikawa was. They didn’t push into each other’s space, and they both appreciated that.
He’s not sure when their bug hunts went from an excuse to put off homework to something they both looked forward to and, dare he say, enjoyed. At some point, the anxiety of unfinished work stopped lurking at the back of Oikawa’s mind, the procrastination driven by the fear of imperfection gone, replaced with procrastination egged on by that genuine warmth in his chest when Iwa-chan laughed at him for being scared of a beetle.
He clung to Iwaizumi. He knew that. He denied it when his mom commented, when she asked if he wanted to invite someone besides Hajime over, and he always gave a noncommittal answer and Iwaizumi always spent the night anyway. He also knew Iwaizumi had other friends that weren’t him - other friends that weren’t also Oikawa’s friends - and he ignored that fact. The sinking feeling in his stomach was far from jealousy, more like a need to prove he was worth keeping around. He told this to Iwaizumi once, when he was sleeping over at his house in the sixth grade and they were laying head to head on his floor playing gameboy, the connection cord stretched between their consoles and over their heads.
Iwaizumi’s Venosaur cut down Oikawa’s Blastoise with ease. Oikawa pursed his lips. “Mean, Iwa-chan.”
“‘S not my fault you picked water when I picked grass.”
“You picked after I did! You did it on purpose!” Oikawa pouts, and Iwaizumi snickers.
Oikawa disconnects the cord and sets his gameboy on his lap, having ceded victory to Iwaizumi. “Sometimes I worry you’re gonna get bored of me.”
“What?”
“Sometimes I worry-”
“No, I heard you,” Iwaizumi cuts him off. “I mean ‘what’ as in ‘what are you talking about’.”
Oikawa rolls over in his stomach to look at him. “You have lots of friends, and I worry you’ll get tired of hanging out with me all the time. I…” he trails off, looking away sheepishly. “It’s selfish, but you’re my best friend.”
“And you’re mine,” Iwaizumi replies easily. “Even if you are dumb as a rock. If I didn’t want to hang out with you, why would I invite you over?”
Oikawa bites his lip, knowing the words will sound foolish once he says them out loud. “Because… you’re really all I’ve got. And you feel bad for me.”
Iwaizumi smacks him upside the head. Oikawa grumbles, rubbing his jaw, but knows him well enough to realize that’s the end of the conversation.
It feels nice to be reassured, but the nagging voice is still there somewhere.
Every summer, he has volleyball camp. Every summer he joins a group of kids his own age and is quick to make nice with all of them. Every summer he steps up to lead the team, and the coaches use him as an example, and he stays late to help the littler kids one-on-one. Every summer, at the end-of-season banquet, he wins the MVP award for his age group.
In fourth grade Iwaizumi joins him at camp, and it’s a completely different experience. Everything is the same - he’s still the example, still the leader, still the MVP - but now Iwaizumi is there, always, in everything. They walk to the rec center where the camp’s held together in the mornings, and walk back in the afternoon when practice is over. They play on the same team, joined at the hip, even in the midst of a 3-on-3, Iwaizumi is never far from Oikawa, their coordination so familiar that it’s impossible to separate them. The camp matches the kids up into games on the weekends, and afterwards their team always goes out to celebrate. Oikawa and Iwaizumi would sit together on the bench at the ice cream shop, content in each other’s silent company to eat their ice cream in peace.
The next year, Ushijima Wakatoshi shows up on the first day of camp and introduces himself almost shyly. Oikawa and Iwaizumi accept him into their small group as a tentative friend. He’s quiet, and cares deeply about the sport, so he fits in fine with them. It’s not quite the same, but it’s not entirely different, either - it’s still Oikawa’s element, Iwaizumi at his right hand, and considering Oikawa’s trouble with finding people to be close to, he thinks there’s enough room for Ushijima, too.
He quickly realizes that Ushijima is better than him.
Well, no - he refuses to believe that. They’re both about the same age, have the same years of experience, even played at the same club during the school year. Ushijima’s a wing spiker, too - Oikawa can’t accurately compare himself to someone playing a different position.
The coaches start using Ushijima as the example. One asks him to stay after and demonstrate for the fourth graders. Oikawa isn’t asked, but he has plans with Iwaizumi anyway, so he grits his teeth and pretends it doesn’t bother him.
He’s elected team captain that year, and his teammates' trust in him nearly brings him to tears. He’s probably the only one who notices when the captain for one of the other teams asks Ushijima a question - something mundane, like if they’re done using the court for cooldown - and Ushijima answers uninterestedly, but the jealousy sneaks up into Oikawa’s throat, and he shoves it back down to the pit of his stomach before Iwaizumi can notice the minute change in his face.
They’re sitting on the grass outside the gym one day, taking a mid-practice break. The sun is hot on their backs, breeze cool, cicadas loud as anything. For the life of him, he couldn’t remember what they were talking about before he brought it up.
“You know,” Oikawa starts with a smirk, “We’ll all be old enough to compete by the next next Olympics. Not the Beijing ones, but after that.”
Iwaizumi tilts his head. “London, right?”
Oikawa lights up. “Yup! Wouldn’t that be fun, if we all went to the Olympics together?”
He looks up at both his companions. Iwaizumi has a fond smile on his face, the one where he’s amused with Oikawa’s antics, but Ushijima hasn’t moved. Oikawa turns his eyes on him, expectantly.
“I suppose it would,” hums Ushijima.
“Let’s work towards that! You never know what’ll happen, right?”
Iwaizumi laughs behind his hand, and Oikawa punches him in the arm.
Ushijima won MVP that year. Oikawa clapped for him, politely, and congratulated him afterwards, but the voice in his head wouldn’t shut up about it when he tried to go to sleep that night.
He enrolls in Kitagawa Daiichi, with Iwaizumi. They’re in class together and they both join the volleyball team. They’re hardly ever seen apart.
The first time he sees Ushijima again, it’s at the junior high preliminary tournament. He’s in Shiratorizawa’s junior high, and he completely ignores Oikawa.
Maybe it’s not on purpose, Oikawa tells himself. You weren’t really that close, after all. But the second time Ushijima passes him in the hall and doesn’t say hello, he resigns himself to think that he’s not worth the other boy’s time.
Kitagawa Daiichi, for all its talented players and well-fought plays, loses in straight sets to Shiratorizawa. Iwaizumi spends the night after, and Oikawa tries not to cry in front of him, but Iwaizumi tells him gently that he’s allowed to be upset. Iwaizumi thinks he’s shook up over the loss - he is, it’s true - but he doesn’t know that he’s also just realized that Ushijima was better than him the whole time, and he’s worried he’ll never catch up.
He spends his birthday with Iwaizumi and a few friends from the team. He feels guilty when they sing to him and doesn’t know why. He tries to make his thank-you cards sound as grateful as he actually feels.
His third year at Kitagawa Daiichi, Kageyama Tobio joins the team. He seems like a shy little kid, eager to fit in. He introduces himself as having played volleyball for years, but Oikawa still underestimated him until he got on the court.
The kid was good.
And he was a setter.
Oikawa stays in as the designated setter, because he’s a talented third year who already had rapport with the team. Kageyama watches him like a hawk, and he’s ridiculously happy about the attention, inwardly preening. Iwaizumi kicks him in the shin and tells him to focus. Later, during the second set, Kageyama is subbed in. They’re well ahead of the competition, but it still grates on Oikawa's nerves, and his coach must notice because he’s called over. It’s just for the experience, and I wanted you to get a breather before the last push. Oikawa agrees easily, but still spends the rest of his benched time playing over every one of his sets in his head, looking for the one that wasn’t good enough. He’s subbed back in for the last five points, and he delivers the winning ball to Iwaizumi with a grin.
Kageyama gets his moment during practice games, when he’s opposite the net from Oikawa and setting for the other half of the team. Oikawa watches him constantly, carefully, studying him. In mid-August, something seems off, and it hits him suddenly - Kageyama is picking things up from him. The kid is all raw talent and quick reflexes and now he’s picking up on all the little things Oikawa does to set himself a step above the rest. It’ll make for a stronger team, he reasons with himself, especially after he’s gone - but the thought of his time with the team ending just sours his mood further, and he plays through the rest of the practice game with a scowl.
He does what any insecure perfectionist would do - he finds something he can do that Kageyama can’t. He stops walking home with Iwaizumi, making excuses every other day about how he’ll be home late. Finally Iwaizumi catches on and walks back to the gym after changing out of his practice clothes to find Oikawa slamming serves into the gym floor. He opens his mouth to say something when Oikawa falters on his serve, staring at him owlishly, but closes it instead and sinks down to the floor, arms crossed over his knee.
“Well, don’t let me distract you,” Iwaizumi says.
Oikawa nods solemnly, and collects another ball to toss into the air and jump up to meet. It sails across the net and ricochets off the floor and into the wall, but it’s just barely over the line, and Oikawa curses under his breath. He repeats this over and over, the sound of sneakers on the floor and a palm against the ball the only sounds reverberating in the gym, until Iwaizumi notices how he’s barely standing up and only getting more upset at every imperfect serve.
“Hey, dumbass,” he says, picking up a few balls off the floor and depositing them back in the basket, “C’mon, let’s clean up and go home.”
“But-”
“Hurry up, I wanna eat dinner at a decent hour.”
“You don’t have to wait up for me, then.”
“And let you walk home alone? In the dark?” Iwaizumi shoots him a glare, and Oikawa relents.
Iwaizumi closes up the gym while Oikawa changes, then they both make their way home in silence. Comfortable silence, close but just far away enough that their shoulders don’t touch. Iwaizumi doesn’t mention anything about Oikawa’s practice, or how he’s been off lately, or how he’s absentmindedly rubbing his palms together where they’re red and sore, and Oikawa is immensely thankful.
It’s not fair, he thinks, that just as he starts to get his jump serve Kageyama has the audacity to ask him to teach it to him. Looking back, Oikawa knows that it was a genuine curiosity - maybe even respect. But in the moment, Oikawa just saw red, and when Iwaizumi caught his arm from hitting Kageyama he was glad that at least one of them had some common fucking sense. The guilt of that moment ate at him for a day and a half. He expected it to go away after he apologized to a startled Kageyama, but it simply solidified and sat in his stomach along with all his other regrets.
At his last tournament of Junior High, he saw Ushijima again. He was much past the point of expecting a greeting from the boy, instead opting to flat out ignore him - and if he noticed, fine. Oikawa was willing to hold this grudge.
They stole a set from Shiratorizawa, driving it into a deuce and ripping it at the last minute from Ushijima’s hands. He and Iwaizumi screamed at each other across the court, the joy of victory making the ache of their limbs worth it, and he thought maybe, just maybe, today could be the day of his revenge.
It wasn’t enough.
It stung, coming in second to Shiratorizawa - second! their coach said excitedly, congratulating them and saying a few words to each of the third years, you should be proud of how you played today, and proud of what you accomplished. Oikawa could still feel the heavy weight of resentment settling deep into his bones, but pushed it aside for the sake of smiling at his wonderful team. When he was presented with his award, designating him best setter in the prefecture, it was enough to dull that weight to the slightest ache, barely there, and faint enough to easily ignore. Iwaizumi even commented that his smile was genuine (“For once,” he added, teasingly) and Oikawa was glad that he noticed.
“Why do you insist on overworking yourself?” asked Iwaizumi one day, on their traditional walk home from Seijoh, and Oikawa’s shoes stopped on the pavement.
He looked up at his best friend, clear confusion on his face. “What are you talking about? I don’t overwork myself. Just keep myself busy.”
It was true, he was busy. School and volleyball. Day in, day out. He still took higher level classes where he could, and still delivered perfect report cards. It didn’t matter that he stayed up on Thursday nights to always get his math homework done, since he still struggled with it, after all these years. It didn’t matter that he was the leader for all his group projects, despite the strain, because he didn’t trust anyone else to do it. If he stopped now, his grades would fall, and after this long of a streak, what was the point of failure? That was just how it had to be.
And in volleyball - he had morning practice, and then extra practice on the weekends, and then stayed after school to work on his own, and always volunteered if someone needed a partner to practice with. It was fucking exhausting, but it earned him the starting lineup, and then the vice-captainship, and then the captainship. Means to an end, no matter how many times he came home with barely enough time to take a shower and eat cold leftovers as he finished his homework, with just a little time to spare for sleep. It didn’t matter that his girlfriend dumped him after hardly a month because volleyball took up all of his time (he didn’t click with her much anyway, and he was almost relieved when she ended it). It didn’t matter if that excessive practice meant he was tired and sore and would slip on a jump serve at a scrimmage and land on his knee to the sound of a sickening pop. That was just how it had to be.
With the few hours in between, it was a crapshoot to see if he would pick up his friends’ invitations. Sometimes he was overjoyed to go out with Iwa-chan and Makki and Mattsun, to see them and spend time with them, to be reassured that he was part of the group. Other times, the effort of going out and interacting with other people, even his best friends, was too much, and he’d apologize profusely in the group chat until Iwaizumi texted him privately to cut it the fuck out because it was fine and yes they were still going to invite him out next time, too.
Staying busy was good. Giving himself something to do, constantly, was good. A little struggle here and there was good. The truth was that the moment he stopped, or slowed, or even backed down just a little, he was convinced he wouldn’t be able to run again. He’d stay there, frozen, until the ghosts caught up to him and pulled him down, down, into the dark sea of swirling thoughts, and he’d drown there while the ghosts sang a haunting song of not good enough.
“Are you sure it’s just keeping busy?” Iwaizumi questioned again, and his face actually looked genuinely concerned. The sight of it made Oikawa’s stomach coil into uncomfortable guilt.
“What are you, Iwa-chan, my mom?” he laughed - fake, and Iwaizumi would be able to tell, but oh well - and swung an arm around him, leading them both towards home.
The glass is half empty or half full, depending on the viewer. For so long, Oikawa had taken pride in seeing it half full, or maybe even more than halfway full, with plenty to help refill his friends’ glasses without sacrificing more than half of himself in the process.
Somewhere along the way, the water level sank past the halfway mark, just enough to be imperceptible to others but infuriatingly obvious to Oikawa. He kept reaching for something to refill it with, just that last little bit, but the pitcher he grabbed was always empty.
At first, he would search and search and search his brain and his friends and his life for something to fill the pitcher with, until the frustration of it was too much - but by the time he cried enough to fill up the pitcher to the brim, he was too tired to refill the glass anyway. At some point, he skipped the middle steps altogether and left his glass alone, pushed to the back of his mind.
Of course it hurt to lose to Karasuno. It hurt to fight so hard and still lose his last chance for Nationals, even if the voice in his head, those terrible ghosts, kept saying it didn’t matter because you’d lose to Ushijima, again. He watched in slow motion as Hinata’s final spike hit his arm hard enough to sting and continued sailing past him, out of bounds and out of any of his teammate’s reach, and the force of it hitting the ground so hard it threatened to shatter his glass completely and spill what was left inside.
His first-choice college called him for an interview. He had a breakdown two hours before it happened.
He’d quickly forget what it was about, or why it was so important, but getting upset for no reason seeming to be a theme nowadays.
Regardless, he cleaned up nicely, dressing in his best sweater, blazer, and scarf, catching the train with plenty of time to spare. He put on his best smile for the interviewer, nodding his head politely in greeting and sitting up as straight as he could manage.
He was an excellent talker and a charismatic person, but he did mess up once:
“What’s your biggest weakness?”
What a silly question. He didn’t have any. And even if he did, he wouldn’t share his weaknesses with a representative from his dream college.
Quickly, he thought up some bullshit, using a conversation with Iwaizumi that he had sitting somewhere in his head, “I overwork myself.”
The interviewer looks at him thoughtfully. “What do you mean by that?”
“I, uh…” Fuck. What would Iwa say? “I put too much on my plate sometimes. Like group work, or leadership, because I trust myself to do the work.” That was fine, right? A weakness construed as a backhanded compliment. His college would love a student who always wanted things done correct the first time, and who was willing to take on a harder workload. Right?
The interviewer nodded thoughtfully and moved on. Oikawa flew through the rest of the questions with effortless charm.
When he made him home, untangling his scarf and hanging by the door, his mom asked, “How do you think it went?”
“Good,” he replied, even if the ghosts were screaming at him.
Iwaizumi called him on a Friday in mid March, not an hour after they were home from school.
“Hello?”
“I got into Irvine!”
“What?”
“UC Irvine! The University of California! Tooru, I got accepted!”
It took Oikawa several seconds to process what Iwaizumi had said, and once he did he broke into one of his biggest, realest smiles. He didn’t know if he’d ever heard Iwaizumi so happy.
“Hajime, that’s incredible!”
“I can’t believe it!”
“I can,” Oikawa bragged, “You’ve worked so hard. You really deserve this.”
There was silence on the other end for a long second, then a soft, “Thank you.”
Oikawa crossed the street later that night, the California-themed congratulatory gift he’d picked out for Iwaizumi months ago in hand. He nearly dropped it when he saw one of his boyfriend’s rare, beaming smiles and couldn’t help but to run up and sweep him off his feet in a hug.
Two weeks later, Oikawa got his emails.
He grabbed for his phone, fumbling to hit Iwaizumi’s name. He picked up on the second ring.
“Yeah?”
“They’re here! I want you to be there when I open them.”
“Of course - do you want me to like, come over be there?”
“Phone’s fine! I just want you to be the first one to know.” Iwaizumi hummed a reply, and finally Oikawa opened his eyes to look at the three emails waiting for him. “They’re all here. Which one first?”
“Whatever order you’re feeling.”
The one he picked first - the National University of San Juan - had almost been a last minute decision. It was his mom who convinced him to apply, because it was a great school and an adventure away from home and you'll get to play volleyball! He wasn’t particularly dead-set on going, but also wasn’t looking forward to a rejection. He logged into the admission portal and closed his eyes as the page loaded.
“I got into UNSJ,” he said with a smile.
“Congrats! Are you happy about it?”
“Of course I am! I’m just excited about the others, y’know?”
“Then let’s keep it going.”
He picked University of Tohoku next - closer to home, both a pro and a con. It was an excellent university, but also one of his safer choices, though he certainly wouldn’t be upset to go there, by any means.
“Oikawa?”
Iwaizumi snapped him out of his stupor, staring at the admission letter as he read the first few lines over and over.
“I got waitlisted at Tohoku.”
“That’s still amazing, and that’s not a rejection!”
“Still, Iwa-chan.”
“Don’t get too worked up over it. You weren’t super interested in Tohoku anyway, right?”
“Right.”
“Last one?”
Oikawa had felt good when he started this ordeal, the first admission leaving him glowing, only to crash back down with the second letter. There’s an Icarus metaphor there, somewhere.
His chest was tight with anxiety when he opened the last letter, and this time, there was a long, long pause before he let out his breath.
“I…”
“Yes?”
“I didn’t get in.”
“What?”
“I didn’t get into the University of Tokyo.” It came out with more malice than he intended, and Iwaizumi didn’t deserve that, but he couldn’t take the words back now.
“Are you oka-”
“I’ll talk to you later.”
“Tooru. Don’t do that.”
“I just need a minute, Hajime,” he said, and then he hung up.
Iwaizumi gave him a half hour to wallow, then came banging on his bedroom door. “Your mom let me in. Open up.”
Oikawa didn’t reply, worried his voice would fail him, but after a moment of silence and three more incessant knocks from Iwaizumi he finally relented and swung open the door. “I really don’t want to talk about it.”
“We don’t have to,” said Iwaizumi, pushing past Oikawa to sit on his bed. “You’re just not gonna be alone right now.”
He just nodded, moving to sit beside him.
“How are you?”
Oikawa snorted, laughing through his hastily wiped tears and runny nose. “Pretty shitty, actually.”
“That’s fine,” Iwaizumi said without missing a beat, “I’d be more worried if you weren’t upset right now. It’s fine to be. It’s… grief, I guess, for lack of a better word, but it’ll pass.”
“...It just hurts.”
“How so?”
Part of him wants to snap back, but Iwaizumi is looking at him softly, not a hint of malice in his expression, and Oikawa figures he’ll play along.
“It… stings. I feel like… I have regrets, maybe? I’m wishing I could have done something differently. Or that I should have, and it’s my fault.”
Iwaizumi pauses to take this in. At some point, his hand moved over Oikawa’s to rub his thumb across his hand. “That makes sense. I think it’s pretty normal to feel like it was you who did something wrong, but you have to remember that you did everything you could. You’re captain of the volleyball team, your grades are great, you did fine on the entrance exams, you gave them a great interview - they asked you for an interview! The thing is…” he trails off slightly, looking at Oikawa, “Maybe everything happens for a reason.”
“Probably. But I still feel like shit.”
“And again, that’s fine. I’m just saying that you can’t blame yourself. You have no way of knowing for sure what tipped the scales for them, if anything.”
“...How will I play professional volleyball if I’m not in Tokyo?”
“Tooru, can I ask you a question?”
Oikawa just nods.
“Was Tokyo your first choice because it felt like you had to, like it was the only choice to do what you want to do, or did you really, truly want to go there?”
“I-”
“You don’t have to answer. Just think about it.”
Oikawa leans his head on Iwaizumi’s shoulder.
He feels different, after a while - sadness gives way to something more akin to guilt, which he covers heavily in a stifling layer of resentment. Their loss, he said to himself, over and over, even if he didn’t really believe it.
He’s not upset with Iwaizumi, he decides very quickly. Any kind of unconscious jealousy gets recognized and put down immediately, because the last thing he’ll let his ghosts do is take that away from him. They can have anything else; they can take away his confidence and his ability to ask for help and his desire to take care of himself, but they can’t have his Iwa-chan. If anything, Iwaizumi should be upset with him, because Iwaizumi is perfect and obviously Oikawa wasn’t enough -
He stops himself and takes a deep breath. Then he grabs his track jacket and his headphones and goes for a run. It helps, to clear his mind in the fresh air and think about nothing at all, but his knee starts to ache after an hour and it makes everything come back full force.
The feeling of guilt and resentment and anger fades over the course of a month and a half, replaced by a numbness that hurts in a different way, but it’s much more manageable. The more he researches about his two choices, the more he has a gut feeling about which one is right.
He makes his decision when he’s sitting up the hills overlooking the city, with Iwaizumi. They’re both watching the lights twinkle, the hectic business of the day fade into quiet nightlife. Somewhere, out to the horizon, the moon reflected off the ocean.
“Remember that question you asked me?” Oikawa starts, to which Iwaizumi replies with a prompting hmm, so he continues, “about if I really wanted to go to Tokyo.”
“And?”
Iwaizumi is patient and kind with him, as always, waiting for him to gather his thoughts. “I thought about it a lot, and I came to the conclusion that perhaps I was forcing myself to go there.” He pauses, taking a breath. “It was a combination of a lot of things. I do want to move away from home and see something different. I do want to play volleyball professionally. I do want to go to a good university. But I conflated all those things, and you were right - somehow I decided, or maybe my brain decided for me, that going to Tokyo was the only way to do those things. The only correct way. And I had to do it, or else…”
“Or else what?”
“...What was the point?”
Iwaizumi smiles one of his rare smiles that only Oikawa gets to see, the ones where he’s completely at ease and totally trusting Oikawa to understand the meaning of his words. “The point,” he enunciates, “Is to be happy. Not to make anyone else happy, or feel like you have to impress anyone. Just to live life knowing that you did the things that would make your past self excited to grow up.”
“I don’t know if he ever thought he’d get here.”
“Well, here he is. Make him proud.”
It takes time, and work. Oikawa counts the days he gets out of bed. After a while, he loses count.
He eats when he’s hungry, sleeps when he’s tired, allows himself to cry and allows himself to smile. He smiles more often, nowadays.
He is gentle with himself. He forgives his mistakes and doesn’t just tell himself to do better, but tells himself how to. Iwaizumi helps, reminding him to be kind.
He graduates with a single B in math tarnishing his perfect report card, and he had never been so proud of earning something. The smile in his senior portrait is one of his genuine ones.
He goes out with his friends, one last hurrah before they part ways, and he does not spend a single second wondering if his friends enjoy his company. Instead, he memorizes Makki’s laugh, and the way Mattsun claps him on the shoulder, and Iwa-chan’s brilliant, mesmerizing smile.
He involves himself with the process of moving. He’s motivated, his usual attention to detail back in full force, no longer dulled by that numbness that plagued him. He’s excited - for the first time in a long time, he’s looking towards what’s ahead, even if he doesn’t know what it is, even if it scares him.
He hugs Iwaizumi for a long, long time at the airport.
University is difficult. Volleyball is difficult. Living his life in Spanish is difficult. The time difference with California and Japan is difficult.
In one of his harder classes, he sends his first ever email asking for an extension. To anyone else, it would seem like such an insignificant moment, but to him, he’s showing someone else that he’s not perfect, that he needs a little extra time. He’s granted the extension, and he earns high praise on the paper.
The ghosts remain. He assumes they will continue to haunt him forever. He’s not afraid anymore; they can’t drown him because he’s learned how to swim.
Oikawa takes a two month break in Brazil for the summer. When he meets Hinata there, it’s like his two worlds of the past and present are crashing together. It’s jarring at first, but after an entire afternoon spent in the company of someone he shared just a small part of his high school experience with, he feels completely revitalized. As he tells Hinata goodbye and throws in a “see you later" at the end, he realizes that the feelings he has towards Karasuno’s former decoy are no longer bitterness, but fondness.
He watches the Olympic matches, and even on a tv screen, he’d know Kageyama anywhere. He watches the setter carefully, almost proudly, and forgives himself for ever comparing himself to him. They’re similar, started on the same road but took different paths, and Oikawa does not regret his choice.
(He does not forgive Ushijima. Not fully, not yet. He will, he promises himself, but it's okay for it to take time.)
He does not remember his conversation with Ushijima and Iwaizumi behind the gym years ago until the match is over. When he does, it’s briefly accompanied by something he can only halfway recognize as regret. Over what, he’s not sure - the feeling of never attaining something he dreamed so long ago, perhaps, but was it ever really a concrete goal? Maybe, he thought, the feeling is nostalgia instead.
Iwaizumi sends him a snapchat from the stands of one of Irvine’s volleyball games. He’s smiling for the camera, obviously excited about whatever play was just made. Dressed in one of his Irvine sweatshirts and a baseball cap, he matches the rest of the student section, but Oikawa can see the teal t-shirt peeking out of his collar. What a sap. He plays club now, not collegiate, but still gets a season pass and attends nearly all the games.
“It’s a little sad, to see something that reminds me of the good old days,” he told Oikawa once, on a video call, “but I know that’s not where I was supposed to be.”
“But you miss it.”
“Of course I do. Don’t you? Moving on doesn’t mean I have to forget.”
“I never insinuated that it did.”
Iwaizumi huffs into the receiver. “And you? How are things?”
“Busy as ever!” He can see the concern on Iwaizumi’s face, so he amends, “But not too much.”
“That’s good.”
They sit in silence for a while, enjoying each others’ company. It’s late in Irvine, but even later in San Juan, and they really both ought to go to sleep, but like the disgusting couple they are, neither wants to hang up first.
“Are you glad?” Iwaizumi asks.
“Hm?”
“Are you happy with where you’re at?”
Oikawa thinks about making a smart remark about his current home in San Juan, but stops himself. Instead, he says, “I’m really happy, actually. I have two lives now, one that ended when I graduated and one that started when I arrived in Argentina. Not in a bad way - it’s still me, you know, but different. I get this feeling sometimes, where I wish I could go back in time and tell myself I’ll be okay. But since that’s impossible, I just try to live like how my younger self would’ve wanted to grow up. What he wanted to be.”
Iwaizumi smiles. “I’m the same way. I was scared, to move away, to go somewhere different, but I got here and I felt like it was where I was supposed to go. The universe was pushing me there the whole time.”
“Like you belong.”
“Yeah.”
“I know the feeling.” I do, he thought, finally, I really do.
Now I only want what's real
To let my heart feel what it feels
Gold, silver, or bronze hold no value here
Where work and rest are equally revered
I only want what's real
I set aside the highlight reel
And leave my greatest failures on display with an asterisk
Worthy of love anyway
- Sleeping at Last, “Three”