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1
Life, thus far, has been a constant rotation of the dull and senseless drone of school, pork cutlet with a splash of sunny yolk on curry rice, and volleyball. Little breaks through this familiar cycle for Tobio, so well worn like the way the soft material of his jersey fits around his frame, or the way his fingers curl around synthetic leather, finding home and holding on.
Then, on a quiet evening, Tooru slips right in, coming in full force, nothing short of a spinning mirage. He is flying, except Tobio can’t see his god-given wings. The lights—their luminosity a shade too bright—bend against his silhouette, casting him far up into the sky. His jump is soundless, featherlight, but the hard slam of his palm against the volleyball is deafeningly loud.
When Tooru lands, Tobio thinks there might be fractured reflections left against the walls of the gym in Kitagawa Daiichi. He is scrambling to pick up the fragmented shards of light.
“Please,” he hears himself saying, the words tumbling out of him unbiddenly. He is breathless with it. “Teach me how to serve, Oikawa-senpai.”
Tooru is breathless too, but not because of the same reasons Tobio is. Only later does Tobio learn that he has been practising the same jump serve for the past three hours.
“What?” Tooru turns, only just noticing Tobio standing by the entrance of the gym. “You’re not supposed to be here.”
Tobio knows. It is now ten. Volleyball practice ended three hours ago. The rest of the team, seniors and juniors alike, have all gone home. Put volleyball at the back of their minds.
“Neither are you,” Tobio says, because it’s true. And, because he is only now hearing how rude it might come off, belatedly tacks on, “Oikawa-senpai.”
Tooru’s eye twitches, and Tobio traces a bead of perspiration that falls from Tooru’s sweat-soaked strand of hair, running along his temple to sit along the smooth curve of his jaw. Then it disappears down his nape, hidden away in the alice blue collar of his tee.
“We’re not the same,” Tooru says, lifting his shirt to futilely wipe away some of the sweat, and a strip of skin peeks out from above the waistband of his shorts. It falls away when Tooru lets go of his shirt again. “Go home, Tobio-chan.”
Tooru picks up another volleyball from the basket, testing it in his hands. Long fingers sit at the crest of the ball, wrist flicking to toss the ball up a little, before catching it well on the landing. Again and again, until the feel of the ball and the lightness of it becomes a second skin.
Then he throws it high up, following it lightning-quick. He is a close shadow, never straying far from the volleyball. When he makes contact, the sound of the ball hitting the court on the other side claps through the gym like thunder. Tobio feels the reverberation of it all the way up his spine.
“Why’re you still here?” Tooru says, exasperated. He is breathless. They both are, still. “Didn’t you leave with the rest earlier?”
Tobio shakes his head. “I stayed behind to practise.” Outside, on the grassy fields, not knowing whether a first year like him was allowed to practise late into the night in the school gym. He thought it would be locked up after official practice, until he saw the thinnest streak of light sneaking out from the gap between the heavy doors.
Tooru frowns, and he opens his mouth as if to ask where Tobio was practising, before deciding against it. His jaw snaps shut, then he turns away, turning his back on Tobio.
“Whatever. Just go home now,” Tooru says, reaching into the basket to pick up yet another volleyball. “I won’t tell on you to our coach if you don’t tell on me too.”
He’s not stopping. Tobio doesn’t want to stop, either.
“Will you teach me how to serve?” Tobio asks. Thinks about grasping at light, trying desperately to cling on to the bare-bones shimmer.
Tooru stills, his frame frozen in a bend against the basket, before he straightens up again. Facing the net, he spins the ball in his palm, over and over, and the swirls of blue and yellow blend so quickly that it nearly turns green.
“Never.”
2
They’re standing across each other on the court, separated by the net and the boundary lines and the yawning distance that Tobio can never seem to cross. Tobio has since shed Kitagawa’s navy blue for crow black, but Tooru still dons a sweet shade of blue. The teal of his jersey is a vivid hue that fails to dull his luminary essence—nothing can, and it almost hurts Tobio to look at him.
“I’m looking forward to defeating you, Tobio-chan,” Tooru says, lips curling around the words almost cruelly. It’s the only kind Tobio has ever seen directed at him.
In the distance, the other players on both teams are warming up, getting ready. Light rests gently on their silhouettes before bouncing off, so unlike the shimmer around Tooru that refuses to fade away.
Tobio grits his teeth, jaw tight. His hands clench into fists at his side, neatly trimmed nails digging crescents into his palm. The barely-there sting grounds him.
“I won’t make it so easy for you, Oikawa-san,” he says, refusing to back down.
No longer is he that bright-eyed kid back in junior high, naively following around a senior who hated him and only him.
At his words, Tooru barks out a laugh, insincere, and Tobio is helplessly wounded by the sound. “You haven’t changed,” he says. “And I don’t mean it as a compliment, Tobio-chan.”
The razor-edge curve of his words hook into Tobio’s chest, right over the soft beat of his heart. He thinks he may bleed for it. He certainly aches for it. And maybe the worst part of it all is that he lets Tooru do it.
“I won’t make it so easy,” Tobio repeats, trying to bring the point across, though it means nothing when Tooru has already turned away, returning to his new team.
In the simmering heat of summer the match kicks off, the endless back and forth stretching on into the late afternoon. By the third set they’re both breathless with it, so much so that Tobio is taken back to that night years ago in Kitagawa’s gymnasium, where the lights had futilely chased in the wake of Tooru’s shadow.
The sharp memory of it leaves something splintered in Tobio, the same clean cut that he has spent years mending.
The evening wears on until the volleyball lands on Tobio’s side of the court, barely inside the perimeters as it kisses the inner line of the white marker. For a moment, everything is quiet. Then the referee blows his whistle in favor of Aoba Johsai, and the gym roars alive, cleanly cleaved into two vastly different atmospheres.
A searing ache swipes at Tobio’s chest, reaching between the bones of his ribs to squeeze around his heart. He stands among his teammates, hit acutely by the violent sting of disappointment from their loss.
“I won, Tobio-chan,” Tooru says, stepping towards him, stopping short of the net that still separates them. The white checkers of the rope barely hide the callous glint in his irises. “I told you I would defeat you, and I did.”
Sweat tracks down the slope of Tooru’s side profile, and Tobio follows the movement of it with something akin to want. When he snaps back into himself, he is only left with the echo of Tooru’s voice. There’s finality in the words, in the way he says it like it is goodbye forever. Somehow, the sting of it hurts worse.
Tobio steps forward too, moved by something bolder than the heavy weight of defeat. “Next time I will beat you,” he says, if only for his pride and his ambition and that flicker of desire for Tooru to never take his eyes off him.
Tooru’s gaze burns darkly, the smile on his face still a touch too cruel. “I’ll crush you, Tobio-chan,” he says. “That, I can promise you.”
3
They’re much older now, stripped of the bitterness of teenage rivalry and the passion of youth and the lingering wisps of quieter Miyagi. The city is harsh neon lights and blaring traffic, a world that refuses to fall asleep.
They’ve both come a long way—Tooru arguably longer with the over ten thousand kilometers of chasmal distance stretching between Sendai and San Juan. There is hardly any reason for them to meet now, and they only do by the slim chance of the two of them returning home for New Year’s break.
“Oikawa-san,” Tobio blurts out in greeting, fingers clenching tighter around the milk carton he grabbed from the convenience store refrigerator earlier.
Surprise colors Tooru’s face, before it settles over his features calmly, a gentle ripple in the ocean he creates. Tobio searches for cruelty, only to find nothing.
“Tobio-chan,” Tooru returns, tone purged free of spite. The lights of the konbini are glaringly bright, though they’re concentrated in one section yet sparse in the next. They create a liminal hue across Tooru’s silhouette, picking up on the molten brown of his eyes and the sharpness of his nose while the rest sink into the shadows. “How’ve you been?”
“Fine.” Tobio swallows, throat suddenly parched dry. Without Hajime as a buffer between them, without volleyball dividing them, there’s no longer any reason at all for them to hold onto their acquaintanceship from youth. “And you?”
“I’ve been well,” Tooru says, and it’s genuine. A small smile cracks across his face, letting the light in. It’s the first time he’s smiled at Tobio without contempt, even if the smile wasn’t really for him. “Argentina has been good to me.”
And Japan hasn’t? Tobio wants to ask, but bites his tongue before the words hit the ground, tearing apart this semblance of peace between them. He is only now seeing the obnoxiously touristy I HEART JUAN printed across the front of Tooru’s black hoodie.
“When did you get back?” he asks instead. He hadn’t known Tooru had returned for the holidays, even though there was no cause for him to know.
“Ah, just yesterday actually,” Tooru says. He wears signs of jetlag in the red rims around his eyes, and he is beautiful. “And only for a week. The training schedule is demanding, you should know.”
Tobio nods. “More demanding than in school.”
For some reason, that makes Tooru laugh, the ring of it a soft echo in the mostly deserted store. The employee at the cashier doesn’t look up from their phone, ignorant of the quiet reunion occurring in the snack aisle.
“Of course it is,” Tooru says, and the ends of his words still tremble with the remnants of his laughter. “Ah, you really haven’t changed.”
“I have,” Tobio says, almost indignant. For one, he is taller now, that much is obvious. Holding just a little more than an inch over Tooru. He tells Tooru just that, and watches Tooru’s eyebrow tick at his words.
“What a brat,” Tooru huffs, but even that is tinged with nostalgia—Tobio isn’t bold enough to call it affection. “I’ll wipe the volleyball court with your face if we ever play against each other in future.”
“Will we?” Tobio asks. The words slip past his lips a near whisper, almost afraid. Terrified that this coincidental meeting can only last so far. “Are you coming back to Japan?”
Under the dingy lights, Tooru’s face softens, the way an adult’s does when they’re letting someone down softly. Tobio has seen it on Miwa a fair share himself.
“I don’t think so,” Tooru says. “Japan already has you.”
The lights of the convenience store are suddenly too dim, too blue, too much melancholy and regret and grief. Far from a mirage when they’re standing here, soaked in what will never be.
Yes, Tobio thinks to himself later on in the night, when he’s back at home in his childhood bedroom with the blue bedsheets and eggwhite walls, and ten years have gone and he still hasn’t changed, but Japan doesn’t have you.
4
They face each other again on the volleyball court, though this time it’s on a stage grander than grand. Leave it to the two of them to put their years-long rivalry in the spotlight at the most monumental event possible.
The Olympics is blinding. Second time around, and Tobio still hasn’t gotten used to the lights.
He blinks, once, twice, and then in the corner of his eyes catches the fleeting image of Tooru contorted by the gymnasium’s fluorescence.
Tobio has long forgo blue, switching out from Karasuno’s black to the Adler’s gold to Ali Roma’s white with swatches of green and orange. And, the occasional crimson red. Yet Tooru still holds onto blue, letting the sky run its course across the canvas of his jersey. Argentina’s blue is a soft shade that folds over him tenderly, gentle against the golden tan of his skin.
They’ve kept in touch after that New Year’s break, trading the occasional “Good morning” and “How was your training?” and “Do you miss home, as in Japan?”. But it’s the first time since then they’ve seen each other, face to face.
Both teams line up in their own neat rows, facing one another for a customary handshake between the captains before the match begins. Setter to setter, Tobio stands across Tooru, as he lets his eyes fall over the sharp glint of Tooru’s irises, the smooth curve of his jaw, the strong set of his shoulders. His hair is cropped shorter now, but the honey brown of it still looks soft to touch, the waves of his sweeping hair curling sweetly at the ends.
Tobio is taken by the image of him.
“I’ll crush you, Tobio-chan,” Tooru says, without any of the cruelty he used to carry in their teenage years. Says it like it’s an inside joke between them, as if they are fond acquaintances. Says it like he’s recalling the memory of something warm.
“I won’t make it so easy for you, Oikawa-san,” Tobio says, and even those words leave him with less hurt than they used to.
They lose themselves to the game, to what it means to set for their team in an international competition. Tobio thinks only about the movements of his fellow teammates, the strategies to win, and the ways he can make sure that each time the volleyball soars into the air it’ll land on the other side of the court.
Despite their best efforts, they concede to Argentina.
It stings to know that Tobio has lost to Tooru again. To know that if Tobio can’t even put up a good fight on the volleyball court, show Tooru there’s something in Japan to stay for, then he’ll really lose him to halfway across the ocean for good. He has already lost him to Argentina’s blue.
A wave of emotions surges in his chest, full from the overwhelming disappointment from his loss. Yet there is the inexplicable contentment at seeing the unabashed smile Tooru wears as he is surrounded by his teammates.
“Congratulations, Oikawa-san,” Tobio says later, when he manages to get Tooru alone, and finds that he means it.
Tooru quirks a smile, eyes gleaming with joy from his victory. He is sweat-soaked and breathless from the match, and still the most radiant person Tobio has ever seen.
“Am I hearing this right?” Tooru beams, gloating. Tobio can’t look away. “What happened to my stubborn and moody and petulant junior? Is my dear Tobio-chan all bark and no bite?”
Here, in the gymnasium, there is no sunlight. There are only artificial lights, a shade too bright. They catch the fragmented ends of luminance, and returns them tenfold to the edges of Tooru’s eyes.
Tobio still can’t look away.
“I am just glad you’re happy,” he says very softly.
Something shifts on Tooru’s face, gone as quick as it came. For a moment the world around them falls away, and it is only the two of them sharing a space that has turned softer, quieter, almost intimate.
“I am,” Tooru says, looking into Tobio’s eyes, brown meeting blue. “I really am.”
Then the world roars into focus again, Tooru’s teammates coming up to pull him away into their celebration. Taking him home.
And Tobio is struck with the recognition that, perhaps this is it. This is a testament to how far they’ve come, how much they’ve grown. This is the end of their rivalry, their shared providence, and everything that has connected them to each other.
5
At the tailends of the Olympic season, Tooru turns up outside Tobio’s bedroom door. He’s got hooked under his arm a 6-pack of cheap Sapporo from the nearby convenience store, the other hand gripping a bag full of random snacks in it.
“Have a drink with me,” Tooru says as means of an explanation, and barges into Tobio’s room without a formal invitation. Not that Tobio would have turned him away at his door.
“Oikawa-san, what’re you doing here?” Tobio says weakly, though he’s shutting the door behind him with the heel of his foot, as he follows Tooru further into the room.
It’s a small space—tinier even than Tobio’s own childhood bedroom—and the blue of the bedsheets and whites of the walls make him feel like he’s a child in his old room again.
“I told you. Drinks.” Tooru sets the beer cans down on the table, and dumps the bag of snacks on the floor. Finds a spot on the floor by the bedframe and plops himself down. “For old time’s sake.”
Tobio purses his lips, though he sits down on the floor across Tooru, legs crossed to fold under him. “We’ve never drank together.”
“Then I guess there’s a first time for everything,” Tooru says with a shrug. Pops open the tab of a beer can, letting it sizzle. “Here.”
Tobio is apprehensive at first when he takes the offered beer, but it eases at the approving smile tugging at Tooru’s lips when he takes a swig. The alcohol burns as it glides down his throat, and he remembers why he isn’t fond of it, aside from the fact that drinking isn’t a good habit to pick up for a professional athlete.
“When are you leaving?” he asks, replacing burn for burn.
Tooru flicks open his own beer can, and the sharp click of the metal tab is loud against the emptiness of the room. “Tomorrow night. Red eye flight straight back to Bueno Aires.”
“That’s soon,” Tobio says, “Right after closing ceremony?”
“Yeah.” Tooru leans back into the drape of Tobio’s duvet that has partially slipped off the bed, the cotton wrinkling under the pressure. “No reason to stay.” He sets his drink down, then rifles through the bag of snacks, before settling on a packet of agemochi. “Are you staying longer? Doing any sightseeing?”
Tobio shakes his head. “No. I’m leaving day after tomorrow. Training starts soon.”
Tooru laughs at that, a soft chuckle that Tobio scrambles to remember for keepsake. “And the training schedule is demanding, right?”
“Yes,” Tobio says, helpless to the small smile that cracks across his face. “You and I should know. And much more demanding than in school.”
It is surreal, this comfort that settles between them in the quiet of Tobio’s Olympic village room. He can pretend they’re two friendly acquaintances—or friends—enjoying a cool beer and some late night snacks on a warm night, uncaring of the little harm staying up late and unhealthy chips may do to them. They don’t have to care that they’re rivals, competitors, doomed to always have a loser. They don’t have to care that by tomorrow, Tooru will be halfway across the world, and, by the night after, Tobio tossed to the other side of the ocean.
“Tobio-chan, do you want to know what I’ll miss most about the Olympics?” Tooru asks, casting a glance at the far side of the room, before turning his gaze back on Tobio.
Outside, the world is impossibly quiet.
“The games?”
“No.”
“Being able to meet other players?”
“Mmh, close. But, no.”
“Then what?”
Tooru sets his drink down, and leans his weight forward on the palm resting near Tobio’s crossed legs. The world around them has fallen asleep. Terribly quiet. “I’ll miss playing against you.”
Tobio isn’t sure what happens next—if he leaned forward first, drawn by the soothing lure of Tooru’s voice and words; or if Tooru leaned forward further, closing the distance between them. But Tobio remembers vividly the soft press of Tooru’s lips, the bitter taste of Sapporo, and the way the world came alive at his fingertips.
It is all the fragments of light bursting against his periphery, fleeing shards of luminosity finally coming home, home, home to the point where they meet.
Then it’s gone, fast as it came, the way it always seems to do when it comes to Tooru.
“Shit, I’m sorry, I don’t know why I did that,” Tooru says, falling back to lean heavily against the bedframe again, the cotton of the duvet once again crumpling beneath him. Presses the heels of his palms on his eyes, as though he’s trying to stifle a bad memory. When he opens them again, they are red and bloodshot and sad. “Sorry, please forget this. It was a mistake.”
Then Tooru scrambles to stand up, looking down at Tobio who’s still sitting on the floor, shell-shocked from the way his world keeps falling apart. When Tobio glances at the duvet, the wrinkles left by Tooru are still there.
“Sorry, Tobio,” Tooru says, standing by the door. He’s not looking at Tobio anymore. “I never meant for this.”
When it comes to Tooru, Tobio loses and loses and loses.
+1
Life, in Rome, is a constant rotation of making a home for himself in a foreign city, homecooked curry rice with a splatter of egg yolk, and volleyball. Tobio is still searching for ways to find comfort and familiarity in his new routine, though he has now found solace in the team’s post-training aperitivo.
Then, on a quiet evening, Tooru knocks on his front door.
“Oikawa-san,” Tobio says, the rest of his words swallowed by the gaping wound left on his chest after that night during the Olympics.
It’s a thirteen hour flight that connects in Philadelphia to get from San Juan to Rome. The Argentina League starts in a week. Tooru shouldn’t be here, all the way in Italy, standing outside Tobio’s apartment door, but he is.
“I’m sorry,” Tooru says, letting go of his duffel bag which falls to the ground with a loud thud. Presses the heels of his palms against his eyes, hard, shaking with the sharp inhale of his breath. “I just—I messed up. I messed up so badly with you.” His hands fall to his sides, though they still tremble weakly. “I thought maybe we could work if I tried, if I thought it through properly and did you right. I wanted it to work so much and then I went ahead and messed up anyway. And when I thought about it more—” He takes a shuddering breath, eyes slipping close. When he opens them again, they’re as red and bloodshot and sad as that night. “I thought to myself, why would you want ever this?”
“Then why are you here?” Tobio asks, his voice, too, a weak tremble.
“Because I haven’t stopped thinking about you,” Tooru says sadly. “Because I wanted to say sorry properly. And because I thought, selfishly, maybe I could take advantage of your kindness one last time to give us both closure.”
“So, you’ve given up?” Tobio says, trying to sieve through the broken fragments left behind by Tooru, finding light. “Have you ever stopped to think about what I wanted?”
Tooru looks shocked, admonished. Then his head hangs guiltily, as he says, “Sorry. I should have asked.”
“Ask me now,” Tobio demands, hands clenched in a tight grip at his sides. His heart is a raging songbird trapped in his ribcage, begging to sing.
“What?” Tooru looks up, eyes blinking.
“Ask me now.”
Around them, the city is lulled by the setting sun, meandering into the late evening.
“What do you want?” Tooru asks weakly.
Tobio takes a shaky breath, before stepping forward, past the frame of the front door that separates his apartment from the rest of the world. Reaches across the sprawling distance between them, only to find that love is always within reach.
“I want you,” he says, before he crashes their lips together in a searing kiss.
Tooru all but sags into Tobio’s embrace, hands reaching up to hold him closer. The kiss is messy with too much teeth, but it is pieces of crackling light coming together again into the shape of home.
When they part, Tobio tastes salt on his own lips, left behind by the glistening tears running down Tooru’s cheeks. Still, it is honey sweet.
“You’re such an ugly crier,” Tobio says softly, all too fond. Reaches a hand to thumb away the stray tears that leave stained tracks on Tooru’s face.
“Rude,” Tooru says, choking on his own tears and the beginnings of laughter bubbling from his chest. “You’re the only one to see me like that.” Then he cracks a smile, bright and beautiful and creating new ripples of light. “I love you. Am I allowed to say that? I love you.”
Tobio smiles, helpessless to the way Tooru makes him feel. In his chest, the songbird sings. “I love you,” he says, pressing another kiss to Tooru’s lips, stealing away the soft giggle that falls from it.
And when it comes to Tooru, Tobio wins and wins and wins.