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Time seems to slow down as the ball hits the floor of the court. The sound of it is like a gunshot — might as well have been one, the way it tears through Tooru’s chest, his muscles, his knee.
The ringing in his ears is deafening, or maybe it is the judge’s whistle or the crowd — larger than any crowd Tooru has ever played for.
His teammates are staggering, some falling to their hands and knees, others simply standing on the court with blank, uncomprehending eyes. The other team is cheering, celebrating, piling on each other in frantic fits of joy — as if victory is a contact high you can pass on with only the press of your body.
Oikawa Tooru is a pillar of solitude. All the combined joy and want and relief in the world is concentrated at the other end of the court — on the other side of the net— away from him. It might as well be on the other side of the world for all Tooru can reach it. But it isn’t.
Joy and happiness and relief, it was all right there in front of him and he fumbled it. He let the ball drop on his own side of the court, only five feet from his fingertips, only half a foot from the libero’s shoe.
Someone is shouting over the speakers. English, French, Japanese. Oikawa can’t understand anything except the word silver.
Silver.
On home soil. Silver.
Might as well not have won anything.
Better, to not have won anything. Better to have lost miserably early in the tournament. Better to have been counted out due to injury. Better to not be the crowned standard-bearer of Japan’s golden dreams and deliver only silver.
Oikawa Tooru gets to his feet, slowly, slowly. He doesn’t remember falling to his knees. It hurts, but everything hurts. The things in his blood hurt, the buzzing in his head, the sight of the stadium and his team and the cameras and the other team. They are so joyous it makes horrible, nasty things stir in Tooru’s chest.
Things move quickly then; they line up and shake the hands of the victors. Tooru stares into their eyes as he touches them, squeezing their fingers, baring his teeth in a smile so sharp it might have passed for good-humoured if his eyes weren’t so wild. Most of them barely notice him, too caught up in their own euphoria, but some flinch away from him, their joy receding just a little. Tall, bulky men with cores of steel, they diminish under Oikawa Tooru’s acid gaze.
I know you, Tooru thinks at them, you are like me. You came here for gold and gave me silver. You are like me; you came here to wreck yourself and then recede.
The cameras flash. Oikawa Tooru wears the C. He stands on the middle of the second tier of a podium with three steps. He receives tokens and flowers and silver.
The cameras flash.
Oikawa Tooru says things to reporters, horrible, soulless words. Canned words, reused words, words he dredges up from that hard place inside himself that screams and screams. He says his words in English and Japanese. He smiles those words, lets them play on repeat through his body language. You will not see me break, they say.
He wishes they were true words, but they aren’t, he is breaking now.
Then they leave, filing out of the main stadium into the locker room like kicked dogs skulking away after a beating.
Tooru is the captain, so he is expected to say more words now. Honest, consoling words that will help his team heal. He doesn’t know any good words, though. He doesn’t wear the C because he knows how to say good things and console broken hearts. He wears the C because of all the hard things inside his mind, all the strategy and the planning and the willingness to break apart people who oppose him.
Oikawa Tooru is a force. He is a thunderstorm. He is a man who broke things and people and himself for silver.
Silver.
He walks to his locker and strips off his clothes. He ignores the expectant eyes on his back until they turn away and silence descends more fully over them all. Someone his sniffling, someone else is cursing in a thick Hokkaido dialect.
Oikawa Tooru strips, bathes, dresses and then walks out of the stadium alone, wearing a custom three-piece and glasses. Silver is tucked away carelessly in a bulky duffel bag next to shoes still damp with sweat. There is no such thing as business casual, someone once told him, and Tooru took it to heart. He takes a lot of things to heart. Things like off-brand comments, and unknowing slights, and well-meaning words that poison and fester until he has to cut off whole parts of himself just to survive.
There is a doctor and a physical therapist waiting for him somewhere in a room he is steadily heading away from. There are dozens of people frantically calling his agent, asking for interviews, photos and statements. Some very few are asking is he alright? As if Tooru’s agent would know such a thing.
Tooru checks into a hotel room he booked eight months ago for someone else, not for himself. He booked it because he thought surely someone would come for him when he won gold, and all the ugly things he had done were proven necessary and right and good.
I did it, he would have said, relieved, loving, joyous. It is over now. I promise it is over.
It is over , he thinks listlessly as he lets himself into the wide, well-decorated hotel room. He does find relief here, but only because it would be worse to stay in the Olympic village so close to his team and the other teams and all the Japanese athletes who can still win gold on home soil.
There is a bottle of painkillers in his bag, forbidden, horrible things that reveal him and his stupid broken body. He should be icing his knee and his shoulder. He should be letting professionals quietly take care of him and talk to him about surgery. He should be calling his mother and sister and planning a vacation somewhere, far away.
His mind spins in this room booked for someone else but also for him. It is over, but I didn’t do it. I didn’t win.
He let down a nation today. He let down his team. He let down himself.
He takes the right amount of painkillers and slips into bed, fully dressed in a custom three-piece suit worth more than his sputtering, second-hand car. There is a ringing in his ears, high and deafening, or maybe it is his phone ringing even though it is set to only allow calls from certain people who wouldn’t call anyway.
What a fuck-up I am , he thinks drowsily, the prescribed chemicals already working their way into his bloodstream. He is Oikawa Tooru, professional athlete, captain of Japan’s national men’s volleyball team, media sensation with 1.2 million Instagram followers and no time or room for weakness. He is Oikawa Tooru, beloved, charismatic, energetic, powerful, the nation’s favourite and now, Olympic silver medallist. A failure.
His phone is definitely ringing, definitely buzzing in his pocket against his thigh. He fishes it out curiously, his fingers clumsy on the touch screen and crooked on the fingerprint scanner. The name on the display is both unexpected and not.
The call goes to voicemail while he stares at the screen, uncomprehending, undecided, unnerved. It picks up again almost immediately, that same name appearing like an insistent ghost, haunting and sad and sterile.
Iwaizumi Hajime.
It is the name of a casual acquaintance, every Kanji meticulously spelled out as if on a business card, formal, indifferent, professional. Tooru wrote it out like that himself the last time he broke his lover’s heart.
He shouldn’t pick up, his drowsy brains warns him, his heart-rate accelerating, the faint tang of adrenaline in his mouth.
Picking up isn’t entirely a conscious decision. The phone slips in his clumsy, numb hand, his fingers sliding over the screen, letting it fall onto the pillow beside his head. A steady stream of cussing replaces the ringing — fowl angry hurtful language full of shattered glass and barbed wire — but this, too cuts off quickly as if in surprise.
“Tooru?” a male voice asks, sharp and hard and fragile as if on the verge of breaking. “Oh gods, Tooru, are you okay? Are you done? Tell me it is over.”
Tooru closes his eyes against the pain of that voice. Of course, it is over. Hadn’t Iwaizumi Hajime seen? Hadn’t he seen the silver? Heard the gunshot sound of that final volley hitting the floor? Hadn’t he felt it? The way it ripped through the stadium with horror and glee and finality.
Was Oikawa Tooru done? It was over, surely, impossibly over. But done? Can a man be done? There are always more games to play, games to win, more reporters, more toothpaste commercials, Instagram giveaways, fan events and more training. There is always more training.
Except there might not be any more games, now. No more winning and no more training, only all the exhausting media work with all the monetary perks and adoring fans who care more about who he dates and what he had for breakfast than his jump-serve he.
He had known this even before the silver. He planned for it even. He came to the Olympics to wreak himself and then recede, joyfully, golden, victorious, gone.
But. Sliver.
“I need you to tell me you’re okay. Just. Tell me you’re okay.”
A breath escapes Tooru’s lips, soft like a sigh. It feels like defeat. Like surrender. Oh , he thinks. Oh .
It is a nice thought. Being okay.
“Tooru? Iwaizumi Hajime’s voice is insistent, worried, growing angry again when Tooru fails to answer. “Are you there? Talk to me, you ungrateful, heartless bastard.”
Tooru is so tired, drugged, heartsore. He smiles sleepily at the insults, even though they aren’t the fond, ridiculous ones Hajime used to throw at him when they were younger and kinder and less afraid of each other.
Sleep reaches for Tooru its dark claws made of exhaustion and opioids. He thinks of how beautiful Hajime is out in the sunlight, and of how good he would feel in this bed holding Tooru tight. He wonders whether Hajime would have come, if only Tooru hadn’t won silver. If only Tooru had been brave and forwarded the hotel booking and the game tickets like he meant to, eight months ago.
“Sometimes you make it hard not to hate you.” Iwaizumi Hajime says it like it is a secret he has been keeping, his voice breaking on the words as if they shatter him, also.
Oikawa Tooru wakes up in pain. Not blinding pain, not burning pain, but a pain that aches and makes him weak when he needs to be strong. His alarm is chiming; getting angrier and more insistent the longer he ignores it.
“ Turn it off,” someone groans to his right. Kuroo Tetsurou is tall and lanky and misfortunate enough to share a room in the Olympic village with Oikawa Tooru. “Oikawa I swear I will kill you if you don’t—“
Tooru switches off the alarm deftly, the move almost automatic. He gets out of bed and heads off to the bathroom, going through his morning routine like he always does, half-an-hour before anyone else is even awake and finished with it sometime in the middle of breakfast.
His mind catches up just as he is reaching for the conditioner, halfway through his shower routine. His hand hovers in the air, uncertain, suddenly trembling. Hadn’t he fallen asleep somewhere else? In a hotel room alone and wanting to cry but not crying. Hurting.
But no, he is in the Tokyo Olympic village. He stumbles out of the bathroom, still naked and wet, his hair not even conditioned. Kuroo squeaks in alarm as Tooru almost bolts over him to where Tooru’s phone lies next to the bed, still in its charger. The last phone call he received from Iwaizumi Hajime was fourteen months ago.
A calendar event reminds Tooru it is Thursday, and that he is playing for gold today, at seven.
A dream then. A dream full of cruelty and all the worst things Tooru’s mind can conjure up. It had felt so real. So real, but the details are receding now, being shoved away into that dark cold place inside Tooru where all the uncomfortable parts of himself goes to be quiet. Quiet.
Kuroo is blinking at Tooru sleepily, his eyes narrowed but his mouth curling at the edges.
“Captain, you’re a tease,” Kuroo drawls, his voice still thick with sleep, “You know coach frowns on heavy exercise right before at match.”
“He also frowns on late risers,” Tooru tells him sweetly and makes a strategic retreat to the bathroom before any real damage can be done.
The steam has already cleared out of the well-ventilated bathroom, leaving the air cold enough to chase shivers up his spine. Tooru stares into the mirror, at the brown-eyed man with the high cheekbones and wet hair. If he squints, he can see the faint white edge of a scar peeking up over his right shoulder. He doesn’t squint.
He is winning gold today.
*
“Highness!” Bokuto shouts enthusiastically as Tooru makes his way down into the sterile, white-walled team kitchen. “The eggs are amazing, get over here!”
Most of the team sit gathered around the long dining table under tacked-up Japanese banners, shovelling down diet-approved omelettes and fruit. The greeting is picked up by other team members with varying degrees of intended irony, and Tooru smiles blithely through their good-natured mockery as he gets his food and then takes the empty seat across from Bokuto.It feels right to sit here, with the edges of the dream still so close to mind and the conversations around him repetitive and too familiar. He shoves the feeling away.
“Sleep well?” Tooru asks, casual, a crooked smile on his lips but his eyes avoiding the ice pack resting in a pool of condensation besides Bokuto’s plate. “I need you real sharp today.”
“Yeah bro,” Bokuto grins. “I’m all honed. Like glass or something.”’
“Knives,” Tooru corrects. He doesn’t look to see Bokuto gingerly flex the fingers of his left hand. It is what it is.
“Nah, glass I think,” Bokuto disagrees. His grin slips only for a second before growing back even brighter as Kuroo takes the seat next to Tooru.
Kuroo Tetsurou looks like he rolled out of bed five minutes ago, still damp from the shower, hair sticking up in every direction and his shirt on inside-out. Tooru narrows his eyes at a too familiar scent.
“Tetsu-chan, you used my shampoo again.”
Kuroo groans, “This is the first time! The hotel shampoo ran out, who cares.”
“ I care,” Tooru huffs, “Do you even know what that shit costs?”
“Can’t be that much.” Kuroo grouses. “Bo?”
Bokuto shrugs, “You know I don’t go to stores.”
“Right, yeah.” Kuroo nods like this is an okay thing to say and then looks down at his plate. He looks tired, maybe even a little nervous. It doesn’t suit him at all.
“No wonder your hair does that thing,” Tooru declares, aiming a vaguely rude hand-gesture at Kuroo and Bokuto’s hair. “It’s fortunate that you’re so fit, because at this rate you’ll both go bald in five years and die alone.”
“Remind me again when you last got laid?” Kuroo snarks back quick and vicious and with a smile tugging at his mouth. Tooru smothers a grin and huffs instead.
“It’s called prioritizing, Tetsu-chan,” Tooru says haughtily, leaning back in his seat and reaching for his mug of coffee. “It’s why I’m the captain. Besides, anyone would be lucky to have me.”
“Sure,” Kuroo agrees, too easy. The warmth of his breath ghosts against Tooru’s ear as he leans in real close. “But how can anyone be sure when you don’t allow test-runs?”
Tooru almost spits out his coffee.
“Bro,” Bokuto says reproachfully as Kuroo crackles with laughter and Tooru sputters. He looks almost concerned as he purses his lips and glances unhappily between them.
*
The head coach calls Tooru aside after breakfast to show him recaps from Brazil’s last game. He is a hawk of a man, all sharp hungry eyes, long sinewy limbs and a beak-like nose. He played volleyball for Japan late into his thirties, until a respiratory disease and a broken hand finally sent him permanently off the court.
Tooru has already watched the recording several times — has already noted how the middle-blocker favours left on the combo attack and how one wing spiker never serves straight across. They bicker about the starting line-up. Tooru thinks they need Bokuto away from the broad-shouldered number 15, but his reasoning is vague, based on nothing but things he saw in a dream he doesn’t want to think about. The coach isn’t impressed and Tooru defers, growing unsure again, unsteady. The sense of déjà vu haunts him.
Morning practice on game days is more ritual than actual practice. Tooru falls into the familiar dance of it, of poking fun at Nishinoya and stroking Bokuto’s ego. He trades barbs with Kuroo about naked wet men and they grin predatorily when Ushijima grows pale and younger teammates edge nervously away.
He carefully completes his own specialized light-workout routine. He winces as he moves, trying to get his muscles to that place where they are warm and loose and everything sort of springs into place. The ligaments around his bad knee are stiff, pulling at him oddly, gnawing against the bone like a chisel. He grits his teeth through the brunt if it, until the familiar twinge in his shoulder starts making its presence known in a familiar symphony of hurts.
Slowly, warmth builds and pain becomes a background sensation, a thing to ignore. It is easier on the court.
The Physical therapists frown at him a lot and look worried when they notice him wince. They ice his knee and his shoulder and then apply heat packets. They tell him to come back immediately after the game. The doctor says this last part very carefully, very quietly. Tooru’s physical condition has long been a topic of hot debate among staff.
Japan has not won Olympic gold in men’s volleyball since 1972. They haven’t even been medal contenders since 76. But two years ago, Oikawa Tooru led Japan to gold at Worlds, and now they are hungry for the real thing, the big thing. Hungry for gold against giants like Brazil and USA and Russia on a stage where people who aren’t volleyball aficionados care. They can taste it now, taste the metal, almost feel their teeth sink into it. Oikawa Tooru will lead Japan to glory and Japan will make sure he is there to lead them.
He goes back to his room for brief while, simply sitting on his bed in silence, hands folded in his lap and closing his eyes against this day that feels too much like déjà vu. Half an hour goes by like that, until he feels a little more settled. Until he feels like he has shifted the day away from his dream, just a little.
He sets to working then, pulling out his phone and snapping photos, fiddling with filters until they look acceptable and going through his dms. He snaps one of himself, pouting on his bed and captions it ‘pregame nap’. When he checks his notifications two minutes later, the post already has a hundred or so likes. Then he opens his mail one by one, marking them as read and replying when necessary. There is one, reminding him of a hotel booking he made eight months ago. He stares at it, both surprised and not, as if he had forgotten on purpose that this booking existed and was pre-paid for.
“Sometimes you make it hard not to hate you,” the incorporeal voice of Iwaizumi Hajime said in a dream. Said it like a curse. Said it like it broke him to say it. Nausea wells up inside Tooru, fast and swift as a tidal wave. It crashes into him and for a few long moments he has to fight for his breakfast to stay down. The nausea passes, the memory shoved back into that hard cold place.
He deletes the mail. It is too late to send it to anyone. Who would come anyway? Now, when the Olympics have mostly wound down and the excitement is mostly over. No. No one will come. Not if Tooru wins gold. Not if he begs. Certainly not, if he forwards a stupid email about a hotel booking.
*
Reporters are waiting for him outside the mess when he goes to lunch. They bow politely, but insistently. They want to know how he is feeling. How the team is feeling. Whether he can promise Japan Gold.
Around them, the village is a landscape of newly poured concrete. White cement dust sweeps across the wide manicured streets and into the creases of newly painted shop fronts. The space between buildings is reminiscent of a gap-toothed child, both repulsive and delightful after the tight-packed spaces of Tokyo. It is manufactured and too bright, too new, too sterile.
Tooru smiles brilliantly at the cameras, flashing his dimples, flashing his beautiful white teeth and his beautiful long eyelashes. “Of course we will win,” says he, promising. He might as well promise. He cannot lose. He can’t. Nothing but gold will suffice. Nothing but gold will prove him right.
The reporters titter. They like him; he photographs well and is good at saying witty, almost sensible things they can use for pretty blurbs.
*
The crowd roars when the team piles into the stadium, swathes of white and read move above them like the waves of an ocean, rolling, screaming overpowering. Tooru feels the noise like it is a live thing, like he has never lived before. The sense of déjà vu disappears, disintegrates in the face of the moment. Tooru smiles and yells, encouraging the wrath of the crowd and the lenses of the cameras, all of them so pleased with him, all of them loving and hungry and parasitic.
Then the game begins, and joy recedes. Bokuto, their best left-wing spiker is undeniably injured, though his dogged determination gives Oikawa leave to wring out magnificent plays, full of bone-shattering force and awkward angles. There is no mercy in Oikawa for injuries, not when there is gold to be bitten into, not when the tall nr 15 is shadowing Bokuto with an attention and brutality that speaks of both intelligence and talent. Nishinoya, crowned best libero for two consecutive years, struggles to pick up spikes placed calculatingly in blind-spots and his agitation is visible enough to put a strain on the rest of the team. Oikawa personally calls timeout twice in the first two sets, desperate to disrupt the momentum and circle through benched players. They lose the first set, then win the second and third by a hair. The last two are direly fought, Bokuto growing visibly agitated by the snide mouth of a middle blocker who must have read every piece of gossip ever published on Bokuto’s complicated personal relationships. Kuroo keeps his cool better, but he’s overworked, visibly fighting to compensate for Bokuto's distraction.
Oikawa can feel it all falling to pieces around him, that terrible sense of déjà vu returning with force. He feels the heartbreak of every volley botched, every spike that lands just an inch outside the lines with an acuteness that feels double, as if he failed to prepare for something he should have known would come. They rally in the fifth set, desperation in their eyes, the hard certainly of victory still in their bones, if they could just land two more points.
And there it is again,
There it is again, that gunshot sound of losing. Didn’t I do this already? Tooru wonders, as he shakes the hands of the victors and glares acid into their eyes. Didn’t I live this just yesterday, in a dream? Didn’t I break myself and everyone else just yesterday, for silver? Silver .
Time blurs. Greys. The pain of loss is cushioned slightly by confusion, penetrated only by a terrible sense of distortion. Of having doubly failed. Oikawa finds himself alone in a bland hotel room, booked for someone else, but also for him. There is physical pain, pain in his right knee like shards of ice under his skin, and pain in his groin and shoulder like fire, but this pain, too, is cushioned.
Tooru sits with his phone in his hand, waiting, ignoring the pain and delaying the panic. His custom tailored suit wrinkles as he shifts in his seat, the tie loosed, the jacket carelessly thrown on the duvet. Maybe the phone will ring or maybe it won’t. Tooru doesn’t know which option is best or even which option he wants.
The minutes tick by, marked by the indecisive thump of his own heart. It beats with the sound of all his plans collapsing; failure, failure, failure.
What a joke it would be, if the phone never rang. Tooru smiles grimly at the bland hotel room drapes and beige carpeting. It won’t ring, he thinks, because this day isn’t the day he dreamt last night, even if it feels like it.
It won’t ring.
The minutes tick by.
The phone rings.
Tooru scrambles to pick it up. He exhales into the receiver, the sound of it almost squeakish. Tooru knows what this means, that the phone rang.
“Oikawa?” Hajime sounds surprised, like he had been prepared to wait, or hadn’t expected a reply at all. “Oikawa is there-“
“Hajime,” Tooru interrupts, and feels the panic rising, finally, from that place under his skin where it has lain dormant. It becomes hard to breathe, hard to think. He slides from his perch on the bed onto the floor.
“Tooru?” The alarm in Hajime’s voice pulls Tooru back to himself. More words are being said, he catches a where and a come but it is all jumbled and turned around.
“Hajime,” Tooru says, “I think I’m stuck in a time-loop.”
“That’s not funny,” Hajime tells him, with a catch and a hoarseness in his voice like the words struck a blow. “Are you done now? Are you done?”
“I’m getting that gold,” Tooru says, promising like he has so many times before. “I will.”
There is a long pause, many thumps of a decisive heart.
“Okay,” Iwaizumi Hajime says, resigned, haunted, accepting. “You go do that, Oikawa.” He hangs up.
Oikawa wakes up in pain. Not blinding pain, not burning pain, but a pain that aches and makes him slow when he needs to be fast.
His alarm is chiming; that angry rising tone that means he’s slept through the beginnings of it.
“ Turn it off,” Kuroo groans, and Tooru complies deftly, his mind spinning, determination in his bones.
“Don’t use my shampoo,” Tooru tells him, as he gets up to start the day. To win gold.
*
Coach scowls at Tooru’s revised starting line-up, the positions and names drawn hastily on a napkin. His sharp eyes dart from Tooru to the napkin and back again with long-practiced calculation.
“It will work, coach,” Tooru tell him, projecting ease and confidence. It won’t do to look nervous — won’t do at all. Coach smells fear in his team like a bloodhound scents poultry. Besides, Tooru was sent back in time for this — to right the wrong that was silver and not gold. The universe made this mistake and Tooru will fix it, easy. There is no course for doubt. He will win gold today.
“You’re sure about that middle blocker?” Coach asks again, his mouth thin, eyes so sharp they almost cut out Tooru’s bravura. “We can’t play Bokuto’s full throttle for all sets, yet you’d have him up against their ace for most of the playtime.”
Tooru smiles with too much teeth and pushes away thoughts of swollen wrists and grunts of pain. Adrenaline is a temporary panacea, after all. “It’ll stroke his ego, make him play better, more even.”
Coach levels his hard gaze at Tooru, but Tooru is well armed, well prepared. He smiles and rolls his shoulders, feels the phantom heaviness of gold around his neck, sees the indistinguishable shadow of a golden retirement on the distant horizon. There can be no defeat. Not today.
They lose gold in three sets: Wrong-footed right out of the gate, and with Ushijima too slow to adopt a left wing role in their main combo-attack. Bokuto delivers where he failed before, but takes a fall in the second set and has the medics rushing him off the court and janitors mopping up blood. Kuroo starts dropping balls in the third set, the spiralling momentum of the game bad enough to screw up his concentration. Tooru’s shoulder aches more with every power-packed spike, until even his hard-earned precision slips just enough for another point to be lost.
They win silver in three sets, and Tooru has never been more furious.
He doesn’t pick up the phone that night; he doesn’t see the point.
The forth, fifth and sixth Thursdays are impossibly worse.
“Highness!” Bokuto’s enthusiastic shout cuts through the chatter in the team kitchen, as it does every morning on this cursed day. “The eggs are amazing, get over here!”
Tooru makes his way over wearily, settling across from Bokuto and eying the hand he is icing.
“Better make sure to tape that up really well, before the game,” Tooru comments, trying not to think of the blood that had been wiped up from the court or the terrible noise he had made when he went down.
“Mhmm,” Bokuto says around a bite of omelette. “It’s fine, the doctors will patch me up.” He curls his hand into a fist, the motion done much too gingerly for reassurance. Tooru looks to his right as Kuroo settles into that seat, and he plants a bright smile on his face that feels worn-thin and slightly manic.
“You really shouldn’t use my shampoo Testu-chan, it’s an invasion of privacy.”
“Some types of privacy are worth invading,” Kuroo responds, voice low, waggling his eyebrows suggestively.
Tooru must be going half-mad, because he leans in real close — as Kuroo does every morning — his breath hot his Kuroo’s ear. “If you get me ten clean spikes and gold today, then I’ll let you invade as much of my privacy as you want.”
Kuroo is much too cool to startle; he blinks slowly, sharp eyes gliding sideways to assess Tooru’s sincerity. A slow grin creeps across his face, mischievous under his messy black hair.
“Why, Captain, I didn’t know you were so easy.”
Bokuto makes an unhappy sound across from them. He looks uneasy, his eyes darting between them.
Tooru’s laugh edges on the hysterical. “Sure,” says he, “easy.”
*
Reporters are waiting for him outside the mess when Tooru goes to lunch. He tries to duck them, but they shadow his steps, calling out his name, growing increasingly insistent the more he tries to evade them.
“How do you feel about the game today?” They want to know. “How tired are you from previous games? Any special celebration plans? Fans want to know how you keep your skin so clean! How have you prepared for tonight?”
Tooru keeps his team Japan cap and glasses tucked well over his eyes, and he paints on his most glacial smile as they finally corner him and he is forced to face the mob. “We’ll take it one volley at a time,” he says, genial, generic, the perfectly boring athlete with too much media training.
“But will you win?” One reporter presses, obviously looking for a blurb to broadcast on every news outlet for the next two hours.
“Brazil is a tough team,” says Tooru, sticking to his lines, “it will be a tough game.” This day seems cursed enough without his added hubris. Tooru knows that there always is a lesson to be learned in movies with time-loops, so maybe this is his: to not fly so close to the sun.
*
Tooru’s phone rings suddenly, shrill and urgent in that listless piece of time before the team has to gather for warm-ups and play a game that keeps ending with silver and misery. It startles Tooru; almost causes him to fall from where he sits, perched on the windowsill in his and Kuroo’s room. His phone has never rung before, at this point in the day.
The display reads Iwaizumi Hajime, a uselessly impartial contact name for someone Tooru used to only ever call by a nickname. He picks up.
“Iwa-Chan?” Tooru holds his breath and waits with his heart jackhammering in his chest. It has been fourteen months of no contact and eight repeated Thursdays of confusion. Iwaizumi Hajime never used to confuse him — he was too steadfast, too close, too loved, before, for confusion. But Tooru supposes it was never that way for Hajime — never easy, never sure or so safe he couldn’t imagine the foundations of them shaking apart.
Hubris indeed.
“Oikawa are you sick or something?”
Tooru wrinkles his nose at the tone, the action unconsciously theatrical. “So mean Iwa-Chan, I know your mother taught you better manners.”
“I saw that interview you did. What hell was that?”
Tooru pauses. He opens and closes his mouth. There are many things he could say, but what comes out is: “You still watch my pregame interviews?”
“Gods,” Hajime sighs. He sounds tired. “How do you always manage to be such a piece of shit?”
There is an apology on the tip of Tooru’s tongue, the taste of it startling and unfamiliar. Tooru has always been a pleaser — he has always bent himself out of shape and into knots for things and people, but never for the people who matter. Not those. Hajime wouldn’t appreciate an apology now — he knows Tooru too well. Tooru swallows the apology down.
“Listen, I know you think I’m an asshole and that I should butt out.” Hajime takes a breath, letting another second go by before continuing. When he speaks, the words are careful and slow, as if their integrity depended entirely on the meter of his voice. “You wouldn't talk to a journalist like that unless something was wrong. So what is wrong?”
Tooru squints at the manicured landscaping outside his window — at the newly rolled out grass and the unblemished white-cement footpaths. It is a showpiece, just as these timber huts and their traditional Japanese inspired interiors are showpieces. Just as Tooru himself is, really. He is a thing to parade around, to look at and yell at and hang too many hopes on.
“Nothing is wrong,” Tooru tells him, feeling cornered and angry about it. “I was just trying not to jinx myself.”
“You’re not superstitious about volleyball,” Hajime replies, a mirroring exasperation creeping into his voice. “Can we cut this bullshit where you pretend I don’t know you? Is it your shoulder or your knee?”
They never used to fight like this. Volleyball was never a point of contention, before.
Tooru scowls at an unlucky gymnast who happens to be walking by his window, her colourful spandex suit visible beneath her tracksuit. She looks happy — as if the privilege of competing in the Tokyo Olympic Games isn’t also grinding her into dust. Tooru is petty enough to dislike her for it.
“I don’t know that you do, Iwa-chan. It’s been fourteen months, it really could be anything.” Petty indeed.
“Sure it could,” Hajime drawls, unimpressed with Tooru’s flippancy. “So is it?”
“I’m fine,” Tooru insists, and then grimaces, knowing he can’t lie about his injuries, not even by omission. Not to Hajime. Some lessons shouldn’t be unlearned. “I mean, they’re no worse than projected. I can play today.”
Hajime doesn't reply for a long time. Tooru closes his eyes and imagines Hajime’s frown — the line between his eyebrows and the way his mouth slants downwards unevenly. He thinks of how Hajime will be worrying the edges of his sleeves, picking at them until eventually they will be too threadbare to save. Tooru understands Hajime’s silence. The word ‘today’ makes everything too real for him, as well. He waits until Hajime finally sighs and he realizes that he too, had been holding his breath.
“Okay,” Hajime tells him, “I guess that’s… That’s…”
“Yeah,” Tooru agrees, opening his eyes. There are more gymnasts now, walking past his window in a slew of colours and nationalities. They are chatting with each other, visibly excited, happy to have each other and a day or two left of competition. Tooru thinks about a hotel room and how he never wants to go there again, alone. His shoulder aches. It is a stupid thought.
“Do you think… After tonight,” Hajime pauses, made hesitant perhaps, by the way the question stretches forward, outward, into some future that exists in a tomorrow Tooru doesn’t know how to reach — can’t even begin to know what to do with. “Do you think you’ll be done? That you’ll be ready?”
Tooru licks his lips and feels his throat constrict, feels his heart break into a gallop. “I don’t know what that means,” he admits.
Hajime sighs again. “I guess that was always our problem.”
Tooru doesn't know what to say to that. He supposes it might be true.
*
“Listen,” Tooru says, squaring his shoulders. The team stands huddled around him, leaning in close, clutching water bottles and towels. They are two sets down, and they all know that from here on out, the game can only be an uphill climb. Tooru wears the C because the team listens to him in these moments. He is Oikawa Tooru; hard hearted, sharp-minded, ruthless when he needs to be, always ready with a plan.
Tooru doesn’t have a plan. He has already tried his plans and they all end in silver. But he has played this game seven times in seven different ways, and there has to be some way to gold. There has to be.
Volleyball is a team sport, each team a symphony of motion and action with everyone playing their parts. Tooru knows all the parts, despite how every iteration of this game is different enough that he can’t predict a specific volley. Still, he just needs to put it all together
“Listen,” he says, and they listen.
*
Silver is heavy around Tooru’s neck and yet not nearly heavy enough. He is numb to the oppressive atmosphere in the locker room and to the expectant eyes on his back. His mouth tastes like energy drinks and vomit. Someone is definitely sobbing behind him. The prospect of a dull hotel room is unbearable where before it brought relief.
“I need a stiff drink,” Kuroo says, too loud into the silence of the room. Someone barks out a hard laugh, someone else agrees. Tooru finds himself tugged along with the rest of them, caught in their wake like debris in a receding tide. Some part of him curious to see what he has been missing out on, all these nights where he has been alone.
Tooru wears his team Japan tracksuit — can’t be bothered with the stiff formality of his suit — and tugs the cap down over his eyes. There is a physical therapist and a doctor somewhere in the building waiting for him, but he doesn’t think there is any future in which he would go there. Not today.
The Olympic village shines brightly with coloured fluorescents, the night having encroached enough to leave walkways and streets lit only by their brilliance. Everything looks less bleak like this — the white concrete dust hidden in soft shadows, the flaunting of the team’s cultural heritage less cynical and more comfortable, perhaps even consoling, for some.
They end up at a bar packed with athletes, some of them drinking water and watching the clock but most of them consuming alcohol with abandon. Japan’s volleyball team crowds into the tight space with visible relief, their thoughts diverted, the atmosphere alleviating some of the restrictions the locker room had enforced. They won Olympic silver today, and perhaps a few of them can be persuaded by well-wishers that this is accomplishment enough. But then, perhaps not.
“Easy, eh?” Kuroo says, sinking down into the booth next to Tooru with two beers in his hands and no apparent urge to share them. “Should have known you wouldn’t be.”
Tooru snorts and looks down into his own glass, the liquid in it unidentifiable by sight and mostly gone. It is almost as good as the painkillers in his bag.
“I don’t suppose you do pity fucks?” Kuroo jokes, poking out his tongue, his sly eyes dancing. He huffs a laugh at Tooru’s expression. “Yeah, me neither, bro. You know, Bokuto keeps saying I shouldn't hit on you because you have a boyfriend.” Kuroo tilts his head at Tooru and it makes his hair fall into his eyes, hiding them away from scrutiny.
“I don’t,” Tooru tells him, twisting his mouth at the sour taste of the words. “We broke up more than a year ago.”
“I don’t know,” Kuroo says, smiling with his mouth, wild hair still covering his eyes. Tooru thinks he looks like a lunatic, but perhaps that’s the allure of him — that he looks so confident in his otherness. “You don’t act like you’re single.”
“Why hit on me then, if you think Bokuto is right?” Tooru asks, irritated and curious but not surprised. The undercurrents of Kuroo’s flirtations have always been more playful than interested.
Kuroo shrugs, “You like the attention and I like the spectacle. I don’t know if you realise, but you’re pretty miserable to be around unless someone is poking fun at you. It’s a win win.” He slumps back in his seat and tips his head up with a groan. “Speaking of winning, do you think we’ll still be this good in four years, Captain?”
Tooru looks down into his drink. He feels nauseous and more than drunk than he wants to be. The volume in the bar has gone up as more people crowd inside and he thinks the noise alone might tear him apart if silver and this cursed day doesn’t do it first. “I don’t know,” he admits, digging deep into that hard place where all the things he doesn’t like to think about live. He finds he can’t stop now that he’s finally said it. “I might not ever play again, after tonight.” Tooru risks a glance at Kuroo and finds him looking back with dawning horror. “It was either PT and rest for a year, or play through the Olympics and then get surgery. Full recovery isn’t a guarantee.”
“Fuck,” Kuroo says, and for once of all his slyness is gone. He looks like he might cry. “How long have you known?”
Tooru shrugs but the action is too casual — too studied — and he knows it. He looks back down into his drink. “More than a year,” he says, and has to clear his throat.
“Shit,” Kuroo says. He reaches out and pulls Tooru into a sideways hug that would have been awkward if they weren’t both so drunk and numb with loss. “Shit,” Kuroo says again, and holds Tooru closer.
It is nice to be hugged. Nice that someone else knows.
In the loud dimness of the bar, nobody but Kuroo notices Oikawa Tooru crying, and even if they did, it would be okay; he won silver today.
Tooru doesn’t know how to face another Thursday. He cannot bear the thought of going through all of it again. He has no more plans, no more strategies. To hell with gold. To hell with the Olympics. He closes his eyes.
Oikawa Tooru wakes up in pain. Not blinding pain, not burning pain, but a pain that aches and reminds him that sometimes he is fragile. His alarm is chiming; getting angrier and more insistent the longer he ignores it.
“ Turn it off,” Kuroo groans sleepily. “Oikawa I swear I will kill you if you don’t turn that alarm off right now“
Tooru slaps blindly at his phone, making it clatter to the floor, still chiming. He turns and burrows deeper beneath the covers, pulling them up over his head. He can’t be bothered to pick up his phone — in fact he can’t be bothered with this day at all.
There is clatter and a thump as Kuroo hurls his pillow in Tooru’s general direction and falls out of bed in the process. There is a lot of cursing and sounds of flailing before the alarm cuts off. Silence rushes back into the room in its absence.
“What is wrong with you?” Kuroo grouses from where he lies sprawled on the hard timber floor, “Oh no. Bro, your phone cracked.”
“Oops,” Tooru mutters, but doesn’t move to pull the covers down.
“Are you sick or something? Please tell me you’re not sick or we’re not getting that gold, I swear.”
“Not sick. I just want to sleep in.”
“Really?” Kuroo asks, his voice dropping suggestively. “Want company?”
“No,” Tooru mutters. He is much too tired for games.
“Huh,” Kuroo says.
Tooru doesn’t hear the bathroom door close or the shower turn on. He falls asleep, exhausted by a day that has just begun and is already too long. Kuroo is long gone when he wakes up — the steam on the bathroom mirror evaporated and the tiles in the shower dry. He catches sight of his own reflection in the bathroom mirror and startles at the normalcy of it. He feels like he has aged ten years in the last eight days and yet he looks rested and young. He needs to do something else today, he decides. He needs to not talk to reporters, not face physical therapists, not play his heart out for silver. He needs space and quiet.
He skips breakfast and goes for a walk instead, his feet taking him outside the Olympic area and into the real world, where the pavement isn’t new and the trees have roots that dig deep into the soil.
It is a one and half hours drive from Tokyo to Mishima, the city where Tooru has lived since he got recruited for the Toray Arrows right out of high school. It is only two hours by train. He has played good volleyball in Mishima. He has lived there and made a life there.
It isn’t a snap decision to step onto a train that will take him home, but it feels like it. It feels like a distant, surreal possibility — to truly let down his nation and his team — until the train is moving and he really is leaving with no explanation and a cracked phone in his pocket. He sighs with relief, feels the weight of expectations crumble away as he settles down to watch the landscape sweep by. He wishes he was looking at the jagged, forested mountains of Sendai but finds he is content with the dark sweeping grey of industrialisation and the brief glimpses of the coast.
The trip is quiet and over too fast. He steps off the platform and into the bustling streets of Mishima and feels relieved to find it unchanged. He keeps his sunglasses on and a scarf tied up around his chin even though it is too warm for extra clothes. He is recognisable in this city where thousands of people file into the Toray Arrows’ home stadium to watch him play. He doesn’t want to explain himself to strangers. Not today.
He ambles towards home, keeping his head down but not hurrying. The team will be winding down from morning practice right about now and they are probably wondering where he has got to. It isn’t like him to miss practice, obligatory or not. Guilt gnaws at him because they are his team and he is letting them down. Then he thinks of getting silver nine times and it is enough to keep him moving.
“What the actual— Oikawa ?”
Something soft and heavy thumps to the pavement behind Tooru and then there is a hand clamping down on his shoulder and pulling him around to face Iwaizumi Hajime. Tooru blinks, unable to take in more than a few parts of him at time; the sun kissed skin across his nose and cheekbones; the green of his eyes and the devastating arch of eyelashes; how his chapped lips part in incredulity; the way his hand stays firmly on Tooru’s shoulder, comfortable in its right to be there.
“You’re in Mishima,” Hajime says, shaking his head in disbelief and gripping Tooru’s shoulder tighter. “Oikawa what the hell are you doing in Mishima?”
“Iwa-chan,” Tooru starts and has to blink away his own surprise. A glance up and down the street reveals that his feet have taken him down his old jogging route and onto the quiet familiar road where they once shared an apartment. He slips off his sunglasses, the motion jittery and too quick. “I, um…” Where even to begin?”
“Are you okay?” The alarm in Hajime’s voice is enough to kick start Tooru’s brain into a semblance of coherency.
“Yes! Yes, I’m fine, see?” Tooru makes a point of waving his arm and leg around a little even though the unwarmed ligaments around his knee protest at the sudden movements. “Barely any pain,” Tooru adds, because it feels like a lie otherwise. Hajime watches him carefully, a concerned frown replacing the outright panic on his face.
“By what threshold?” Hajime shakes his head, the question is perhaps better understood as rhetorical than earnest. “Oikawa what the hell?”
“Would you believe me if I told you I am stuck in a time-loop, and that no matter what I try Japan won’t win today? It will all have been for nothing. All of it Iwa-chan.”
Hajime presses his lips together and his eyes search Tooru’s with a scrutiny that aches and lays open Tooru’s heart like map you could follow down into deep secret places. He scrunches his nose at what he finds. “Did you hit your head?”
Tooru huffs a laugh. “No. But I’ve taken a few spikes to the head in my time.”
“Deserved most of them, too” Hajime agrees and smiles fondly. It makes his dimples visible. Tooru is suddenly painfully aware of Hajime’s hand still on his shoulder and of how the inches between them have inexplicably shrunk despite how Tooru can’t remember either of them moving.
“I was homesick.” It is true. He has been homesick for a long while now.
“On the day you’re playing for Olympic gold?” Hajime shakes his head again. He frowns but the softness in his eyes stays. The look is familiar enough to make Tooru’s mouth go dry. “I’m surprised the thought even entered your mind. You don’t get cold feet.”
“Not usually.” Tooru smiles his best smile — not the one he uses in front of cameras and strangers — the one he saves for Hajime in moments like these, when he wants to be believed. Hajime is so close, so near for the first time in so long, it is hard not to just — Tooru puts a hand on Hajime’s shoulder and curls his fingers in the neckline of Hajime’s white cotton t-shirt. It is the one with Ushijima’s autograph written awkwardly in sharpie across the front, the one Tooru gave him as a joke when Hajime got his bachelor in chemical engineering. It makes Tooru smile and he can’t help but press his fingertips lightly against the bare skin of Hajime’s throat as if the contact might help relive that terrible pressure building in Tooru’s chest. “Hi,” Tooru says, “I just. It’s good to see you.”
Hajime’s eyes are so green. They are the colour of Miyagi’s mountains during summer, the colour of Tooru’s childhood, of his home. He would know those eyes anywhere, even with the stress lines around them that weren’t there a year ago. Standing here, Tooru can’t quite wrap his head around all those months.
“Yeah,” Hajime says softly, with heat blossoming across his cheekbones. He looks uncertain suddenly. Hesitant. “I guess I thought you would—”
The loud rattle of an old diesel engine startles them apart as a car drives by too fast. They both glance up and down the road, finding it empty but they are now suddenly and painfully aware of their surroundings. Hajime clears this throat awkwardly.
“I guess you need to get going.”
“I um…” Tooru slips his glasses back on. Fiddles with this scarf. He really wants to know what Hajime was going to say before. “What?”
“The game,” Hajime clarifies and tilts his head at Tooru. His frown is back. “You’re not going to make it in time for warm-ups if you don’t leave soon.”
“Oh, right.” Tooru nods and pulls the scarf up over his chin. He glances back up the road towards the crappy old apartment building where he once shared a one-bedroom with Hajime for a full year, back when they first moved here and everyone could care less about Oikawa Tooru. He misses the place, though it had been cramped and the walls had been less than soundproof and the appliances had regularly short-circuited from old water damage. He owns an apartment now — one with a doorman and an elevator that opens directly into his lounge — and yet his feet had taken him here, to this place where they started out. “I mean, I’m not hurry or anything. We could—.”
“Yes you are,” Hajime interrupts and narrows his eyes at Tooru..
“I’m really not,” Tooru promises, taking care to sound carefree and calm. “I have some time. How about a late lunch? There’s that udon shop downtown—”
“Oikawa,” Hajime waves his arms incredulously “you’re supposed to be playing a gold medal game in five hours.”
“Right, about that.” Even with the added armour of sunglasses, Tooru can’t quite bring himself to meet Hajime’s eyes. “I’m not going.”
There is a dandelion growing up through a crack in the pavement almost directly beneath Tooru’s feet; it is surprisingly interesting to look at. Hajime doesn’t say a word for several heartbeats.
“What exactly do you mean you’re not—
“I mean I’m not going.” Tooru huffs. “Someone just gets hurt, or we play so badly the audience starts booing and even if neither of those things happen we won’t win.”
“Right,” Hajime says, his voice flat. He turns around and Tooru thinks, that’s it he’s leaving now, but Hajime simply retrieves an old duffel bag from where he dropped it on the ground earlier, and then walks back to Tooru and takes him by the arm. “Come on.”
Tooru stumbles slightly as Hajime starts dragging him down the street at a brisk pace. They come to an abrupt halt in front of an old baby-blue Nissan Note with a dent in its front bumper. Tooru remembers helping search through listings for this car. He remembers the first time they drove it home to Miyagi for New Years and how they had to stop every few miles because the cooling system was leaking and the engine kept overheating.
“Get in,” Hajime barks, pulling open the passenger door to throw the duffel on the backseat and then practically herding Tooru into the car.
“Where are we going?” Tooru asks apprehensively, once Hajime is seated behind the wheel and the engine is rumbling to life, old and clunky and familiar.
“You know where we’re going,” Hajime gives him a hard look.
“I’m not playing,” Tooru insists. Hajime just turns the car onto the road and speeds up.
“Since when were you a quitter?”
“Since when do you care!” Tooru crosses his arms and leans back in his seat petulantly as familiar landmarks slide by. “I thought this was what you wanted.”
Hajime doesn’t seem inclined to validate Tooru’s childishness with an answer, but Tooru has had a lot of practice out-stubborning him. He waits silently as they get onto the highway and the landscape starts blurring together in a monotone of grey asphalt and cars. At length Hajime gives in.
“All I ever wanted was to not see you hurt, or without the one thing that makes you happy.” Hajime’s hands tighten on the wheel, his knuckles turning white. He looks sad beneath his frustration. “I can live without volleyball. I don’t miss it like you would have if you hadn’t been drafted. I don’t need it like you do.”
Tooru swallows hard and stares out at the moving landscape — at the bursts of civilization between the stretches of jagged mountainsides and yellow vegetation — “I thought I had to try, Iwa-chan”
“And you chose to try.” Hajime keeps his eyes firmly on the road. He is angry and tense with it, his whole body wound so tight it makes Tooru’s own muscles hurt with a phantom ache. “So you’re going to go play and you’re going to make it count or so help me gods I will kill you myself.”
There is this terrible panic building in Tooru’s chest, like iron bands being welded into place around his ribs and lungs. He has to close his eyes against it and concentrate on not breathing too fast or clawing at his shirt for breath. “Hajime,” Tooru says, feeling the embarrassing pressure of tears welling into his eyes. “Don’t you get it? I chose wrong. I was wrong.” Tooru fists his hands in his lap, his nails digging into his palms. A sniffle escapes him when a hand gently pries them apart.
Tooru can’t help but clutch Hajime’s hand, now that it has been offered. It feels like he is being thrown a life raft while drowning — like it is a matter of survival. The shame of it is almost overpowering, enough to add nausea to the tightness in his throat.
“I broke us up for this,” he whispers, still horrified by himself all these months later. Why couldn’t that day have been the day he had to relive? Why get a do-over for a day that can have no impact on any of the decisions he actually regrets.
“We’re not broken .” Hajime’s hand tightens around his fingers, and Tooru looks up into a pair of green eyes that are gentle even when they are angry. “I’m still pissed at you though. I said I couldn't watch you do it, I didn’t say ‘don’t call me for fourteen months.’”
Tooru stares at Hajime and the bands around his lungs seem to loosen just a little as hope finds its way in.
“You didn’t call me either,” Tooru points out, quiet and horse, but it isn’t really an accusation.
“Like that has ever stopped you before.” Hajime huffs a shot laugh and then shakes his head, the motion contemplative and seemingly directed mostly at himself. “I made you choose between me and a shot at the Olympics. I don’t begrudge you needing space to forgive me for that.”
Tooru stares at Hajime’s profile — at the familiar spiky tangle of his hair and the arch of his brow and the way his mouth slants downward crookedly because he is frustrated and unsure. Tooru holds the hand Hajime isn’t using for driving between his own and doesn’t ever want to let go.
“We’re not going to win, today.” Tooru says. Hajime glances at him incredulously.
“Not with that attitude you aren’t.”
“Ugh,” Tooru grunts, and has to close his eyes. He is smiling though, and he can’t seem to make himself stop.
*
There is quite a commotion outside the Ariake Olympic Arena when Hajime pulls up outside the entrance. Several dozen camera-crews are crowded together, reporters talking animatedly into microphones, their expressions raging from gleeful to severe. One of them has gone so far as to bring a life-size cardboard cut-out of Tooru in his uniform and is gesticulating towards it aggressively. Tooru frantically motions for Hajime to keep driving and sinks down in his seat, desperate to avoid attention.
“...You didn’t tell anyone where you where going, did you?” Hajime guesses.
“Just keep driving!” Tooru squeaks, having folded himself almost entirely into the car’s footwell. “They’re vultures, Iwa-chan. I can’t deal with them.”
“You like cameras,” Hajime points out, visibly fighting down laughter. “You sure you don’t want me to—”
“Don’t you dare!” Tooru tries to make himself smaller, but his knee is starting to protest and Tooru is willing to admit this position was probably ill advised. “There’s a maintenance entrance. Just keep driving.”
The back-entrance is blessedly deserted and Hajime pulls the car to an idle without fanfare. He grins at Tooru who is still stuck in the footwell. “Need help?”
“Fuck off,” Tooru mutters, but accepts Hajime’s hand.
“Better get going,” Hajime reminds him.
It feels wrong to climb out of the car, but Tooru does it, knowing Hajime is right. He doesn’t get far though, because after only one step he finds himself turning back and ducking half-through the open passenger door.
“I have tickets,” Tooru blurts out because he doesn’t know how to face the rest of today without Hajime. “I have tickets reserved for you, and a hotel booking so you don’t have to drive home.” Tooru holds his breath.
Hajime blinks, and then gives him a scornful look.
“You think I don’t have my own tickets? I had your agent send me some months ago. What did you think the overnight bag was for?”
“Oh,” is all Tooru can say. And then has to climb back into the car and kiss Hajime right on the mouth, reporters be damned.
Hajime is warm and perfect under Tooru’s hands. His mouth tastes like stale coffee and the stubble on his chin grates against Tooru’s lips when he kisses Hajime there. His hair is coarse and familiar between Tooru’s fingers because Hajime never uses Tooru’s shampoo even when Tooru tries to make him. Tooru has missed him so much.
They pull apart too soon.
“As if I would miss out on seeing the love of my life playing for Olympic gold.” Hajime smiles at Tooru. “Now go make it count. You don’t get any do-overs.”
“I know,” Tooru says, looking into Hajime’s eyes. “I’m done moping around. I promise.”
*
The team is appropriately outraged when Tooru makes his grand entrance to the locker-room, dishevelled and with a noticeable stubble-burn — it isn’t hard to guess what he’s been up to.
“You’re kidding me,” Kuroo exclaims, “Oikawa what the fuck, coach almost struck you from the line-up.”
“I had some business to tend to,” Tooru says, and can’t stop grinning. It makes Kuroo snort in disgust but also earns him a couple of fist-bumps.
“Bro,” Bokuto practically tackles Tooru and squeezes him so tightly Tooru has to remind him of his bad shoulder. “I’m glad you made up with your boyfriend,” he says, and looks so earnestly relieved that Tooru finds himself hugging Bokuto back.
“Yeah,” Tooru says, “Me too.”
*
The crowd goes wild when they step into the arena, a great deafening roar of sound so intense Tooru is sure he will never grow accustomed to it, no matter how many Thursdays he lives through. Reporters fall over themselves to get him into frame, and he sees his own face up on the screens, his team behind him. All of them are so proud to be here today. To have made it so far. To be playing for Olympic gold on home soil.
Oikawa Tooru takes a deep breath and then smiles for the cameras. He grins at them because he is happy, and even if it costs him volleyball to be here, then at least it didn’t cost anything else. He is here, and he will play as well as he possibly can, and it will be enough. It will have to be.
The game begins and everything else falls away. Tooru is swallowed by the familiar thrum of it — the beats of the game — just different enough from all the previous ones that he cannot predict each volley. He plays harder to make up for it, but still has to calls time-out half-way through the first set to make Bokuto re-tape his hand under the sharp supervision of their physical therapist. They win the set, and then the next. Tooru grits his teeth and signals for a combi-attack the other team will learn to dismantle after only two uses. The ball touches down on the right side of the court, and Tooru grins, feels alive with it.
The ball is like a familiar friend in Tooru’s hands when he serves, the wrench in his shoulder a welcome pain when he snaps the ball home with enough spin and force to make it irretrievable. His knee threatens to give out beneath him with each jump and serve but it will hold today, and he won’t worry about tomorrow before it comes.
The team is a symphony of movement around him, choreographed to perfection by dogged hours of dedication and Tooru is a part of that movement, a part of the score. He sets the ball and magic happens.
Time seems to slow down as the ball hits the floor of the court. The sound of it is like a gunshot — might as well have been one, the way it tears through Tooru’s chest, his muscles, his knee. The ringing in his ears is deafening, or maybe it is the judge’s whistle or the crowd — larger than any crowd Tooru has ever played for.
They win gold in three sets and it beautiful, messy, over too soon.
Tooru looks up into the crowd as his team piles in around him, their touch a contact high, exhilarating, too-real, not enough. All the joy in the world seems to be here, on his side of the court, but he looks up into the crowd, and he thinks he sees a spiky-haired man wearing a stupid white t-shirt with Ushijima’s autograph scrawled across it, and he knows happiness is up there, in that crowd. At least for him.
[Fin]