Work Text:
Setting foot into Tokyo's Olympic village felt strange. His team had been one of the first to arrive, so most apartments were still empty and waiting for their temporary inhabitants. It was eerily quiet and unsettling, just like that calm before a storm. He couldn't deny that he also somehow liked it, though. Over the next few hours and days, more and more athletes would be arriving, and shortly after, the Olympics would begin. Just thinking about the upcoming games sent a shiver down his spine. All in all, it was going to be much like a storm, he was sure.
However, the weirdest thing about it was to be back in Japan. Although he had promised that moving to Argentina would be temporary and to visit his friends and family regularly, looking back now, almost a decade later, he had to admit that it had been an empty promise from the beginning. Not that he had specifically planned never to return to Japan, but he had left in search of new adventures and opportunities, and he had known he might never come back if he would find what he was looking for. He hadn't told anyone.
At first, he had tried to stay in touch with his family and most of his friends, but living on the other side of the world meant starting the day when everyone back at home went to sleep. It turned out very quickly that Argentina wasn't just going to be his home away from home — it became his new home. Japan was still dear to him, of course. How could he ever forget about where he had grown up and his culture? But it was just that, nothing more and nothing less.
Over the past years, he had only visited once or twice a year, usually to spend time with his family, so he hadn't seen most of his friends or other people he knew from school in years. While he was most excited for the games, he couldn't help but think about the reunions that would inevitably happen during the upcoming days. If anyone had told his past self that he, Oikawa Tooru, would be at the Olympics and think about anything but volleyball, he wouldn't have believed it. But here he was.
He knew that sometime during the day, Japan's national volleyball team was due to move into the same building at which he was staying. Naturally, he had been mentally preparing himself for seeing any of them, but as soon as he got the first glimpse of the one person he had both wanted and dreaded to see the most, he knew that none of the mental preparation in the world could have helped him.
Just as he had been walking down the corridor to get himself a snack from the vending machine because he had started to get restless, the elevator doors opened. While he knew pretty much everyone on Japan's national volleyball team, there was only one person he cared about — only one of the players, at least. Iwaizumi, his childhood best friend and the only friend from school he had stayed in touch with, had managed to become the team's athletic trainer.
Of course, he was looking forward to seeing him as well, but the moment his eyes locked with Tobio's, everything and everyone else became simply irrelevant blurred-out background noise. He couldn't simply ignore them, though, and before he could do or say anything, Hinata practically jumped at him to say hello. Fortunately, none of the others were excited about seeing him, so most of them just acknowledged him with a nod and went on to find their rooms.
Iwaizumi grinned at him and pulled him into a long and tight embrace after Hinata stopped hugging him. Even though they didn't see each other often anymore and hadn't talked about it before the Olympics, Iwaizumi managed to read him perfectly. He told him that they would talk later and excused himself and somehow managed to drag Hinata along with him. So now here they were, just the two of them.
Tobio put down his bag, but other than that, he didn't move a muscle. He didn't say anything, he just stared, and Oikawa stared back. Tobio was a few centimeters taller than him by now. Oikawa had known that from the internet already. However, standing in front of him and actually feeling the height difference was different from what he had expected. It was even slightly intimidating. Or maybe he imagined it, considering Tobio was always kind of intimidating with his piercing blue eyes and persistent scowl.
Oikawa couldn't tell whether Tobio wasn't saying anything because he didn't care and didn't want to or because he was just as overwhelmed as Oikawa himself. People always say that you will never fully get over your first big love, that if you don't see them for a long time, the feelings will fade, but once you see them again, they will wash over you again as if they were still fresh. In Oikawa's case, the people who say stuff like that were right.
Over the years, he had successfully convinced himself that he didn't care about Tobio anymore. Indeed, most of his days passed without ever thinking about him, and in case he ended up thinking about him after all, he at least didn't feel anything anymore. He felt neutral, indifferent, sometimes mixed with a tiny bit of nostalgia. Oikawa had left his old life in Japan behind deliberately, knowing full well what he had been doing, and Tobio had been a part of that too.
But oh, he was a fool to have believed he could maintain all of his indifference once they would meet again. He wasn't neutral or indifferent at all — he was very suddenly feeling everything at once. It came over him like a flood, like an avalanche crashing down the mountains, destroying everything in its wake. He didn't know what to say, and even if he had known, his throat felt too constricted to push out a single sound.
"To—" Tobio said but cut himself off. "Oikawa-san," he said instead, looking at him but not quite catching his gaze.
"Tobio," Oikawa replied eventually, deliberately calling Tobio by his given name. It had been a habit long before they had fallen in love, and he wasn't willing to let go of that last lingering bit of fake intimacy that calling an ex-lover by his given name created — for the sake of nostalgia only, of course.
Tobio seemed to be at a loss for more words, and Oikawa was too. Before today, he had thought about all the things he could ask and tell Tobio, but now that he was standing right in front of him, he couldn't think, only feel. The only thoughts in his head were flashes of distant memories, days and nights spent together, kisses, fights, tears, joy, laughter, pain. Goodbye.
"I still—" Oikawa stopped himself, suddenly not quite sure where he was going with this. I still... what? Miss you? Love you?
"Don't," Tobio said before he could continue.
Oikawa pressed his lips together in a taut line. He was starting to feel like their reunion hadn't been mutually anticipated. Tobio looked like he had dreaded it and wanted nothing to do with him at all but was too polite to have just walked past him. He wasn't at a loss for words because he was flustered — he simply didn't have anything to say to Oikawa.
Oikawa knew that he should just let him be, let matters rest, not dig up the grave another time, but he couldn't help himself. "I still miss you sometimes," he said firmly, trying to catch Tobio's gaze, caught off guard when he actually met it.
"I have nothing to say to you," Tobio said with a blank expression.
"Nothing?" Oikawa asked, knowing that trying to get Tobio to talk when he didn't want to was futile, at least unless he somehow managed to make him angry. So he had to try that, even though he knew falling back into old patterns might not be the best idea.
"Nothing," Tobio confirmed, gaze unwavering, "It's all said and done anyway — has been, for a long time."
"Well, I disagree, so you'll have to listen to me talk instead, I guess."
"I see," Tobio said and shook his head disbelievingly, "You still think the world revolves around you."
"You mean it doesn't?" Oikawa asked, a taunting smile on his lips in an attempt at masking the hurt.
"Time didn't stop when you left," Tobio said bitterly, "I won't let you upend my life again."
"Again?"
"A part of me still misses what we had, even though I've known that it wasn't real for years now," Tobio admitted, "I was blinded at first, but in hindsight, I didn't really like what I felt with you."
"It was real."
"It was a real bad decision to ever get involved with you," Tobio countered.
"At first, you feign indifference, and now it's animosity," Oikawa said nonchalantly, "What comes next?"
"See, this is why I didn't want to talk to you," Tobio said, a tint of anger resonating in his voice, "I idolized you, and you took advantage of that. And then you left me as if you didn't care about me at all. I've stopped thinking of you a long time ago."
For a moment, Oikawa wondered whether a different approach to a conversation would have changed the outcome but quickly concluded no, probably not. He felt helpless all of a sudden. He felt the loss all over again. Not just his freshly blossoming relationship with Tobio that he had abruptly ended when he had left for Argentina only months after it had started, but also the loss of friends and family and his home. He was happy with the way his life had turned out, but the what-ifs still haunted him at night when he couldn't fall asleep. But there was no going back anyway. He had no regrets except that he had hurt people he had loved.
"For what it's worth—"
"Don't you dare apologize," Tobio interrupted him, eyes glistening furiously.
"For what it's worth," Oikawa tried again, "I never meant to hurt you, but I'm not sorry that I left."
Tobio nodded as if what Oikawa had said was a satisfying conclusion to their brief encounter, but he didn't pick up the bag he had dropped to the floor. They just stared at each other for another moment.
"So I guess that means you don't want to catch up, talk about how we're doing?" Oikawa asked as the last attempt at drawing their talk out longer. He figured if he would be able to hold a conversation with Tobio for just a while longer, especially a normal and civil one, Tobio might warm up to him again.
Tobio shook his head and finally picked up his bag from the floor. "I have nothing to say to you," he reiterated, "And frankly, I don't care what you're doing."
His words lacked all bite, and where there had been animosity and anger and hurt just moments ago was now indifference once again, and Oikawa knew that he wouldn't be able to draw any more out of him, at least not right now. It was a spectacular defeat on all fronts, and he could do nothing but surrender his weapons. It felt more like goodbye than leaving him had in the first place all those years ago.
"Maybe, in another life—"
"Maybe," Tobio said and walked past him.
The hallway was wide enough so that he could have passed him with ease, but as he did, he slightly brushed their shoulders together, and Oikawa knew that it must have been on purpose. Oikawa was left to stare after him in confusion, watching him walk down the empty corridor without looking back.