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It's barely past ten o'clock in the evening, and it's barely even been fifteen minutes since he got on the call with Tooru and Wakatoshi, but Kiyoomi already feels himself drifting just a bit.
His body is heavy from today's game—brutal, even more so than usual for a game near the end of the season. Kiyoomi feels like he's sinking into his sheets as he lies in bed, propped up on two pillows and hugging another, his blanket pulled up to his chin. He nods along to the story Tooru's telling, but he's getting distracted, watching the scenery go by in the background of Wakatoshi's video. Wakatoshi's video is shaky, and he's barely visible—just a tuft of hair and a single olive eye on the lower right corner—but the view of the streets of Warsaw are vaguely familiar as he walks back to his apartment.
Kiyoomi was there for three days last December, and he spent most of it in Wakatoshi's apartment. He isn't much of a tourist after all, and even for Tooru, three days was too short to waste on going sightseeing.
Three days. It was barely enough then, and Kiyoomi thinks it's still barely enough now, but it was something at least. He was with them at least, physically, in ways that made it feel like it counted. He could reach out and touch them, hold them, kiss them, until their time was up.
He knows the taste of Wakatoshi's lips after they've gone on a run, knows the feeling of Tooru's hair brushing against his cheek as he hugs Tooru from behind. He knows the sound of Wakatoshi and Tooru in the morning, their voices rough with sleep as they wake him up. He stored all these little sensations in his head, thinking they'd be useful, but now they poison him.
Kiyoomi misses them; he always does. Most of the time, the calls help, sate the ache in his chest just enough until the next time they can all find the time to see each other through a screen. But sometimes…sometimes, it hurts. Tonight, it hurts, and it builds and builds until it consumes him.
It starts with pinpricks in his eyes and a lump in his throat. It's a familiar sensation, as familiar as the frustration, the helplessness, the guilt that comes with it. He knows what's coming, so he fists his hands into the fabric of his blanket, pulls it up to cover his cheeks before the tears finally spill over.
Wakatoshi and Tooru become blurs on his screen, and Tooru's voice is drowned out by the sound of his heart beating in his ears. Kiyoomi grits his teeth, holds still and stops breathing because he knows that anything else would result in a whimper.
At this moment, he feels like a dam about to break. He can still rein it in, he tells himself. He can do it; he can stop himself from imploding like he has so many times before.
They've all been so busy. It's always harder to find time for each other after coming back from the holidays, easier to get caught up in the buzz of playoffs looming over them. He doesn't want to ruin tonight, doesn't want to waste the first time they've managed to set aside for each other in so long.
But the tears keep coming, and the ache in his chest keeps persisting. His breath is running out, and he feels dizzy with it. Kiyoomi shuts his eyes tight, willing the feeling to go away—one last-ditch effort—but it doesn't.
And eventually, he has to breathe. He gasps when he does, and it hurts. His vision doesn't clear, but his heartbeat subsides enough that he hears Tooru and Wakatoshi calling his name.
That's what breaks him in the end. Kiyoomi is crying, and he lets himself cry, lets himself miss them, long for them. He wants Wakatoshi's arms around him and Tooru's lips pressing kisses against his tear-streaked cheeks, and he lets himself want. He lets himself release everything that's been building up inside him until there's nothing left.
Kiyoomi's exhausted by the end of it. His eyes are heavy, his nose running, his cheeks wet. His lungs and his throat burn, but his chest feels a lot lighter than it did before.
He opens his eyes to Tooru and Wakatoshi, both looking at him with their furrowed eyebrows and their lips twisted into frowns that Kiyoomi wants to kiss away. He would have, if he were with them.
“I missed your story, Tooru,” he says. His voice is raspy, low, but he continues. “I'm sorry.”
“That's alright, Omi. Are you…” Tooru pauses. His face is red, but that's not very telling. He gets red very easily, like when he's concentrating too much or when he's angry or when he's about to cry. It’s too early to tell which one it is. “Do you want to talk about it?”
Kiyoomi hesitates. He should want to move past it, to hide himself underneath his blanket and pretend nothing happened. Maybe in the past, he would have said no.
But all be can think is, I love you, I hate that I can't be with you—
“I just miss you.”
“I miss you too,” Wakatoshi says, and Kiyoomi feels something twist in his heart. “I wish we could have held you while you were crying, Kiyoomi.”
Wakatoshi's already in his apartment now, sitting on his couch. They've cuddled on that couch, lazing away the rest of the early morning as Tooru made all of them coffee in the kitchen. Kiyoomi misses that.
“Wakatoshi—” he starts, but he cuts himself off because there's the sound of a sob, and Tooru's ducking away from the shot. “Tooru? Are you crying now too?”
Tooru comes back into frame with tissues pressed to his nose. “Of course I am. Ugh. I'm getting snot in my lunch.”
Tooru's face gets very splotchy when he cries, which Kiyoomi knows because Tooru has cried in many hotel rooms with his arms around both Kiyoomi and Wakatoshi, his face pressed against one of their shoulders. Kiyoomi thinks it's cute, but maybe that's just because he likes kissing every flushed patch of skin until Tooru becomes red from blushing instead.
He can’t do that now, but he will save every kiss he wants to press against Tooru’s skin and give them to him later.
“You know,” he says, his lips curling into something close to a smile, “two more months, and we'll be at Worlds.”
“Yeah, we just have to win some games first, huh?” Tooru blows his nose, and then he comes up, laughing. He's grinning so widely that Kiyoomi almost forgets that they've been crying. And judging by the way Wakatoshi smiles, the way his shoulders slump, the way he relaxes, he must feel it too. “Hey, we all have pretty good chances of getting into the playoffs this year. Wanna try for a triple win?”
And that's why they're apart, isn't it? The same reason they found each other, the same reason they're able to meet each other every summer in different parts of the world.
It has always been volleyball, and it will always be volleyball.
“We'll do it,” Wakatoshi says. Kiyoomi recognizes the look in his eyes—from the other side of the court and from the same side of it, and through a screen when he's miles and miles away. “We'll all win. And at Worlds, we'll be together again.”
As inevitable as them facing each other on the court again, as inevitable as them parting ways again to play on the stages they've chosen for themselves.
“We will,” Kiyoomi says. They'll be together again.