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The airport was virtually empty, complementary of the fact that it was well into the early hours of a Tuesday morning. Before the light has risen and while the stars are still awake. Just as the sun was beginning to play tag with the moon.
“Iwaizumi,” Oikawa breathed.
The terminal was stark white. Pristine plastic seats glimmered under the fluorescent lights. The almost-silver linoleum floor refracted the rays to their eyes. If not for the few dozen individuals lining the perimeter, the scene itself would have felt subliminal.
Something about it felt very final.
“Oikawa,” he responded with conviction. The word felt odd in his mouth, a strange sort of slippery that wasn’t used to such formalities.
There had to be something else to say. A million different sentences were piling in his throat, suffocating him. They left razor sharp cuts on his tongue. The words wanted out.
Iwaizumi choked them down.
“This is your gate,” was all he said.
Maybe there should have been more, but there wasn’t.
Because really, what else was there to say? How could he sum up a lifetime of friendship into the number of seconds before Oikawa had to board the plane?
He couldn’t. And so Iwaizumi left it at that.
“Call me. Whenever you want to. Every day!” the setter demanded.
“I will. You know I will,” Iwai swore. And Oikawa laughed, because he knew it was true.
This wasn’t the end. Not really, anyways. Of course they would still talk, and maybe even see each other when Oikawa came to visit Japan. But the future seemed so far off, and Oikawa was leaving now, and who knew when he would be returning?
A small, distrusting thought gave voice to the doubts Iwaizumi had all along. What if Oikawa never came back? What if he loved Argentina so much that it wasn’t worth the trek back to Japan? Not even to see Iwaizumi?
Iwaizumi decided that those scenarios were, decidedly, impossible. Oikawa could barely survive a single practice without his vice captain there to back him up, let alone leading a life thousands of miles away – Oikawa would come back soon enough. He had to. And then they would live the life together they were always destined to carry.
Love hadn’t been mentioned, because perhaps even as they reached the culmination of their youth, it felt so much larger than either of the two wanted to admit. Or maybe it wasn’t mentioned because it didn’t need to be. Because both already knew.
“I need to board,” Oikawa whispered as the buzzing intercom notified the to-be passengers. Not a word was spoken as Iwaizumi helped gather his bags and walked him to the door.
Only as Oikawa was shuffling for his ticket did Iwaizumi speak up.
“I’m going to miss you,” he choked heavily.
Oikawa smiled, bearing his teeth. Iwaizumi had seen this expression hundreds of times before. Only this time, it didn’t reach his eyes. “I know.”
The rest was left unspoken.
The attendant scanned his ticket, and Oikawa grabbed what was remaining of his belongings before dragging to the door. Loose curls bounced with his steps. Oikawa didn’t turn back.
And then he was gone.
— — —
Argentina was, by all definitions of the word, dissatisfying.
It was too much. Too much, too much, too much, and nowhere near enough.
It wasn’t that the team was exceptionally bad, or that work was overwhelming. Quite the opposite, in fact! Oikawa had grown fond of his teammates. They had all bonded over the past three months through dinner after practices and regular meetings and camaraderie was blooming.
Which was exactly the issue.
Oikawa loved this team. He did. And he didn’t want to. It felt like the deepest betrayal, to enjoy such a thing without Iwaizumi there by his side. They’d grown up on this sport together; it wasn’t fair for Oikawa to hold true to his passion so far from its root.
He felt himself unraveling. Stretched so thin, spanning half the world, with a single lifeline pinning him down in Tokyo. Iwaizumi.
But here, he had no support. No one really cared. His teammates were nice, yes, but he didn’t
know
them. Because getting to know them would be like admitting he could be successful without Iwaizumi, and that just wasn’t true.
It would be like admitting defeat.
He needed his best friend. He needed Iwaizumi. They spoke every day, but it would never be enough. Oikawa is stubborn enough to deny the fact that he knew that from the start.
The realization hits him as he’s driving on from practice one day, hitting like a volleyball to the face. He wants Iwaizumi. He craves him. It’s a carnal desire.
But Japan was so far away. So incredibly unattainable.
Something in Oikawa shatters, and Iwaizumi isn’t there to glue it back together.
— — —
Oikawa died on a Monday.
His last breath is taken on the cold tiled floor of his upstairs bathroom. Aside from the orange bottle of pills on the arm of the shower, everything was as it had been. Stark white stayed stark white. Months of dust collected in the grooves of the grout remain forever untouched.
The call finds Iwaizumi standing in his kitchen, cooking himself a breakfast of scrambled eggs. The sun is shining through the window and glinting off the stove in a way just disruptive enough that Iwaizumi has to squint.
The world goes quiet.
Everything is extraordinarily normal.
Except for the fact that his best friend is dead.
It’s unexpected and all-too-soon and a number of other adjectives pinned by the official Team Argentina publicist.
Among those adjectives, none are earth-shattering or heartbreaking or crushing or absolutely-and-utterly-devastating, yet that is closer to the overwhelming flood of emptiness that swallows Iwaizumi.
“He is gone,” the man on the other line says, and Iwaizumi doesn’t respond.
Because “gone” is such a temporary word. It holds the same weight as “lost;” you can’t find it now, but it will come back. It is gone, and then it will be found.
Only Oikawa won’t be coming back. He is gone, in the permanent sense. Gone forever.
And that ever-scarring permanence is not one to take lightly.
Oikawa was his rock. His person. His best friend and the love of his life and every other good thing in the world.
And he was gone.