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The night is warm as Tooru drives towards his home in Miyagi. The windows are down, and one hand rests on the sill, the other holding the wheel. Classical music plays softly through the radio, static crackling occasionally.
As he drives, Tooru mulls over the conversation he’d had with his mother.
“Honey, I think it’s time you gave up volleyball. You’re injured, and it’s possible the more you play, the worse it will become. Your father and I think it’s for the best. I’m sorry, hon. We know how much it means to you.”
Tooru’s left ankle throbs from where he’d torn a muscle earlier this week. He feels tears pricking at his eyes, and takes a moment to swipe his free hand across them. Anger burns in his throat, leaving an acrid taste that makes him nauseous.
The sky above him is clear, and the setter takes a moment to look for Polaris, always sitting due north.
Headlights shine bright in his eyes from the other side of the road, and Tooru has to glance away sharply, spots left in his vision. He swipes his arm across his face again, and as he does, he feels himself falling.
Pain shoots across his shoulder, and panic begins to crawl into his throat as he and his car plummet through the air. It feels like he falls forever, but seconds later, he hits the water below.
The first thing Tooru notices is the cold. It’s bone deep, seeping through his skin and into his muscles, making it hard not to panic. The second thing he notices is the pain in his arm and worsened in his ankle. Even if he could move to unbuckle the seatbelt tight across his lap, he wouldn’t be able to swim to the surface, much less make it to shore.
So he holds his breath as he sinks into the dark waters, somehow managing to free himself from being attached to the car. He pulls himself up out through the open window. One stroke up, another, towards the streetlights shining on the bridge. His vision clouds and he closes his eyes.
He’s going to die here.
The last thing Tooru notices before he succumbs to unconsciousness is a dark figure making its way towards him.
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Hajime watches from a distance as a car is rammed through the bridge’s meager rails, seeming to hang in the air for a second before it begins to plummet.
He closes his eyes, using the smell of blood to direct him through the dark waters, nose keen. The selkie finds the wreckage easily, finally opening his eyes to see…Tooru?
Hajime pauses for a moment, lost in thought, but is pulled out quickly as he sees his old friend’s eyes flutter closed. He quickly grabs under Tooru’s arm, tugging him quickly towards the surface.
As they break through, Hajime quickly checks for a pulse, breathing a sigh of relief when he feels the quick but steady beat. The selkie then begins to swim towards shore, pulling their best friend alongside him.
Once at shore, Hajime turns him onto his side, to make breathing easier. Tooru doesn’t wake, so he slowly takes his pelt off and sets it gently beside his unconscious friend. With legs once more, he gently pulls Tooru’s head onto his lap and takes a minute to actually look .
Since middle school, Tooru has clearly filled out. Gone are the soft cheeks, the skin on his arms turned into muscle. He’s always been pretty, Hajime thinks, but he’s hot now.
The selkie sighs, setting a hand on the pelt they’ve folded next to them, bringing him some comfort. He stares into the sky, looking for Polaris, quickly finding the star using Ursa Major. Hajime looks at the sky for a few moments longer, until Tooru begins to stir beneath him.
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Tooru is suffocating, a noose tied tight around his throat. He gasps and sputters, but it only serves to tighten the noose.
He can feel his vision going dark, when his best friend appears before him, after years of being missing.
Hajime? he can feel his eyes asking. Where have you been?
The panic overcomes him then, and he splutters—
Tooru wakes with a cough, water feeling so deep in his lungs he can’t breathe, he thought he was going to die before but now he’s made it and is actually going to die because he can’t breathe.
“-eathe, damnit Oikawa, I know you can do it, come on. In and out, follow my voice.” And damn it all but Tooru knows that voice, knows who is here but doesn’t understand because Hajime has been missing for ten years where the hell has he been?
Tooru can feel the gentle pressure of his friend’s hand rubbing circles on his back as he hacks up the river water from his lungs. Slowly, the setter is finally able to breathe without the threat of falling into another hacking fit, and he begins to assess his situation.
His left shoulder aches something fierce, and hurts to move, a sharp pain driving deep into his bone. Tooru can practically feel the bruise blossoming under his skin, which means he probably dislocated it. His ankle is alright, but his head—
“Here,” he hears his friend say. “Your head is bleeding.” A second later, a gentle pressure wiping away the blood. Tooru rolls onto his back, and stares into the blue eyes of Hajime Iwaizumi, who looks back at him with nearly the same face as he had ten years before.
He’s grown up, Tooru thinks. “Are you here? Are you real?” he asks brokenly, thinking of the nights he spent curled in Iwaizumi’s bed, crying out for his missing best friend.
Hajime at least has the merit to look guilty. “I’m so sorry, Oikawa. I couldn’t….I couldn’t lie to you. And there was something else calling my name.” His friend looks away. “So…I left.”
Tooru pushes himself up with his good arm, turning to face Hajime. “Couldn’t lie to me about what?” he asks. “What is it?”
With a sigh, Iwaizumi reaches to his side and picks up a folded…blanket?? that Tooru hadn’t noticed yet. No… not a blanket. A pelt .
“You’re a selkie,” he states, the night holding still around him. Hajime looks away, guilt evident in his eyes. “You’re a selkie, and you left….because of me?” Tooru whispers, the night holding its breath. “Iwaizumi…I don’t care what you are. And if it meant keeping you safe, I would burn my lips shut before I told your secret. Why didn’t you trust me? ” he asks.
Hajime is looking at him, now, face wide open. “I was….I was scared. Of what you would say.”
“Iwa-chan? Scared of me? That’s so unlike you,” Tooru teases, trying to keep the pain from his voice.
“Shut up, shittykawa,” his friend says, face turning red, but a smile spreading across his face. God, I’ve missed this, both of them think.
“I never stopped looking, you know,” Tooru says, staring out across the water, after a few moments of silence have passed.
Hajime startles at the broken silence. “You didn’t?” the selkie asks, looking at his friend.
“Every day after school, I would pick a new point to start. I’d walk for miles, calling your name. I made a list, of all the things I’d tell you once I found you.”
“What….what did you want to tell me?”
“Well, Kageyama and the shrimp finally got their crap together and beat our asses at the last InterHigh. Not after we destroyed them the first chance that year, though. Let’s see….Oh, Kindaichi and Kunimi finally got together. And…” Tooru pauses.
“What?” Hajime prompts.
“I never told you how much I wanted to kiss you. How much I loved you. It was our last year of high school, and you left and I was lost. I tore myself apart. But all of that, and I still love you.”
—————————-
Hajime is quiet, and it’s Tooru’s turn to look. His best friend, his first love is staring at him with something akin to hunger. “It killed me to walk away. But I’m here now, and you know. I promise I won’t let you go again,” the selkie says, and pulls Tooru in, an arm around his shoulder. Tooru is shaking from the cold, and it’s then that Hajime realizes he needs to get his friend warm. “Come on, Oikawa. Let’s get you someplace else.”
Hajime’s heart breaks a bit as he sees tears reflecting off Tooru’s face in the light. “Okay,” his friend says, teeth chattering slightly.
Hajime picks up his pelt, pondering for a second, before making a decision. “Will you hold this for me?” he asks, and wonders if Tooru can see his hands shaking. No one else has touched it before and Hajime is terrified.
“Aren’t these supposed to represent your life?” his friend asks, cautious.
“Yes,” he responds, simply, praying his eyes convey his message. I trust you. I’m sorry.
After a few seconds, Tooru accepts it, holding it close to his chest with his good arm, trying to keep his clearly injured arm still. It’s then that the selkie walks towards the tree line and begins pulling branches off a car, hidden to look like a bush. “You have a car here?” Tooru asks, shock written all over his face.
Hajime blushes in the dark, wondering why he feels like this. “There were a few times that I needed to get places on land.”
Tooru nods, but Hajime can see the way he’s shutting down his emotions, and guilt floods him from top to bottom. He pushes them down as well, and pulls a key from his pocket, putting the key in the passenger side door to unlock the car. He opens the door for his friend, who is clutching onto his pelt like it’s a lifeline. “Let’s get you warmed up.”
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Tooru holds his best friend’s pelt tightly, absentmindedly running his fingers over the fur. It’s soft , he thinks to himself, as Hajime walks to the driver's side to start the car.
“Get in, dumbass,” he hears over the rattle of the engine, but something pins Tooru to the spot he’s standing. He doesn’t know how to cope with his best friend suddenly coming back into his life, after he left, purposely , with no word to anyone.
He thinks of the scars that litter his skin, the old ones nothing but light lines on his skin. He thinks of nights spent in a neighbor’s field, tracing the constellations. He thinks of late night drives, after they’d both gotten their driver’s licenses, and bickering over who would be in the passenger seat.
Tooru thinks of volleyball, of being so perfectly in tune that he could place any ball and have his best friend land it in any situation.
Most of all, he thinks of Hajime. He’d missed the bickering and constancy that his best friend had provided through elementary, middle, and most of high school. He thinks of what it was like, when they were young. He thinks of what it was like after losing InterHigh. He thinks of what it was like when he lost Hajime, and what it will be like now that he’s back.
“T- Oikawa?” Hajime asks, now standing next to him.
“Say my name,” he breathes into the night air.
A pause, and then– “Tooru. I’m here, Tooru, and I’m not letting you go again. But please, get your ass into the car, so you don’t catch hypothermia.”
He looks at Hajime, then. Tooru is still holding his best friend’s pelt. His best friend’s pelt, that represents his life. His best friend’s pelt that represents his life, that he trusted Tooru to hold.
Everything feels like it’s all coming down, but falling together at the same time.
“Okay,” Tooru says, and reaches for Hajime’s hand. It’s warm, he thinks.
The pair heads to the car, and it’s moments later that he realizes he’s still holding the pelt. “Do you want this back?” he asks.
Hajime closes his eyes for a moment, itching the side of his neck. “If…If that’s alright.”
Tooru knows what it means to be granted a chance to hold one, so he hands it back without saying anything.
They sit in silence, the heat from the car slowly making its way into his bones, silencing the chill from the water. He finds himself drifting, on exhaustion and warmth and the knowledge that his best friend is here.
Hajime eventually breaks the silence. “Me, too,” he whispers.
He turns his head lazily to look at his best friend. “Hm?” Tooru asks.
“I love you, too. I was too scared to say it earlier.”
“Scared isn’t a good look on you, Iwa,” he sasses on instinct.
It has the intended effect. “Shut up, shittykawa,” Hajime says, but there’s no heat behind it. “I mean it though. I didn’t think about how much I hurt you, when I left. I want to make it up to you,” his best friend says, staring into Tooru’s eyes.
“Okay,” he pauses. “I can work with that,” Tooru says, and reaches over to take Hajime’s hand once more.