Archive of Our Own ^beta

The plant that hangs in front of Tooru’s window is a vibrant, living thing: ever-growing, especially in the summer months, its long stems spilling out in earnest.

“It’s low maintenance and practically impossible to kill,” Iwaizumi had told him the day the golden pothos arrived on the doorstep of Tooru’s new home in Buenos Aires. That had been a couple of years ago—he thinks it might’ve been just a few weeks after the All-Star Match in Sendai, in that soft, syrupy afterglow of nostalgia that had turned everything sweet and warm and just the tiniest bit aching. Iwaizumi’s smile in it had been golden. “It’ll be perfect for you.”

“I’m hurt, Iwa-chan,” Tooru had complained then. “You don’t think I’m a responsible enough adult to keep a plant alive?” He then brushed one finger against one particularly verdant leaf. The way the sun caught on its waxy cuticle reminded him a little bit of the color of Iwaizumi’s eyes in the summer—how they seemed to soak up all the green around them, back when they’d spend hours upon hours playing in the grass.

“I’m saying you’re going to have a lot of other things to do.” There had been a tiny sigh on the other end of the line, small enough to be mistaken for static, but Tooru had caught it anyway. “You’re a busy man.”

“And yet I’m still able to make time for you,” Tooru had answered playfully.

The next sigh had been obvious, deliberate. Tooru imagined that Iwaizumi was rolling his eyes. “Whatever, Shittykawa. Just take care of it, okay?” He said the words take care in the exact same tone he used whenever he gave Tooru advice on his knee, or wished him a safe flight. “Don’t let it grow too long either unless you want to give yourself a hard time.”

“Is that a challenge, Iwa-chan?”

A snort. “Honestly, I doubt your skills would even allow it to grow an inch.”

Now Tooru looks at the pothos, how it cascades like a waterfall and curls around the windowframe; how it takes up a larger space in Tooru’s lived-in apartment than anything else ever has. He wonders what Iwaizumi would think of it all: the new pot he’d bought after it had outgrown the one on his windowsill, the little hooks he’d put up to keep its longer stems in place. The endless yield of love and the extent of its longing.

Still, he lets it continue to grow.

“I’m pleased to inform you that my pothos has survived a month,” Tooru proudly declares, squatting down next to the tiny pot. He holds out his phone far enough to include both the plant and himself in the frame, throwing up a peace sign for good measure. At the other end of the line, Iwaizumi barks out a laugh.

Neither of them have ever been the type to say hello—it wasn’t worth expending breath or time on, not when their calls were counted down to the seconds. There was also the fact that saying hello implied the need for a goodbye—something they hadn’t really needed before, back when they were growing up joined at the hip. When see you later meant in only a few hours’ time.

Tooru never really knew what later meant these days, so he stopped saying that, too. Iwaizumi had learned that much earlier on than Tooru.

But when we fight again, I’ll defeat you, he’d promised, at the tail end of high school and the beginning of the rest of their lives, instead of I’ll see you again.

I’m still going to grind you into the dirt, Shittykawa, at the Sendai Airport gates, face scrunched into a picture of determination and pride. It had been difficult for Tooru to not look back then, to see if the tears his best friend had been so obviously holding back had stained the cheeks he’d barely just stopped himself from cradling.

There had only been one time Iwaizumi had slipped: at the Olympics, backlit by the sun rising one last time for the both of them above Tokyo, when he’d sworn, blazing in the heat of all things sacred and renewed: I’ll beat you next time.

And so all of their meetings and partings had woven themselves into a single, tangled vine that stretched out over continents and seas, all while tightening around the beating, red flesh of its root. Tooru feels it seize now, like it does every time he hears the ring of a laugh or sees the glimmer of a smile, and wonders when the thing between his ribs had become so tender.

“Why are you laughing at me?”

“You’re ridiculous, that’s why,” Iwaizumi answers, voice laced with amusement. The screen flickers, and Tooru feels his breath catch in his throat as Iwaizumi smiles up at him, soft and unguarded, sleep only just beginning to ebb out the corners of his eyes. He itches to take a screenshot, but settles for cataloging it in his mind instead.

“Hey, congrats, though,” Iwaizumi is saying, a smirk playing on his lips. “You’ve exceeded both our expectations.”

“Iwa-chan! I’m offended. My expectations for myself are much, much higher.”

“I know,” Iwaizumi replies. “You wouldn’t be Shittykawa if you didn’t expect to do more than what you’re capable of.”

“I believe this kind of attitude is unwarranted on a nice Sunday morning—”

“—and still do it anyway, against all odds.”

“Oh.” Tooru blinks. “Do you ever know how to say something nice without throwing in an insult?”

“Was that me being nice?” Iwaizumi asks, feigning innocence. Tooru hates how good Iwaizumi’s gotten at doing that these days. “It wasn’t my intention.”

“Oh, whatever,” Tooru scoffs. He leans back on the balls of his feet and rises to his full height, phone still in hand so Iwaizumi gets a scenic view of his ceiling for a couple of seconds. “So if you expected me to have high expectations, which I exceeded, as you also expected, then that’s basically the same as you having high expectations for me, too. Or at least, that your expectations match mine.”

“Uh huhhh,” Iwaizumi drones, his response slurring into a yawn.

“I don’t know why I even bother,” Tooru laments, propping his phone up on the kitchen counter while he grabs a couple of ingredients from the fridge—some beans, salad leaves, an avocado, miso paste. “Talking to you is like talking to a rock.”

Iwaizumi smirks again, which is objectively bad for Tooru’s heart, so he turns away pointedly. “Go try getting your training advice from a rock, then.” When Tooru makes a show of ignoring him to slice the avocado, he adds, “Or your recipes.”

Once Tooru finishes preparing the salad, he takes the bowl and his phone to the dining table. On the other side of the equator, Iwaizumi does the same. It’s breakfast for him now, four hours behind, and he’s got some protein-laden plate in front of him that he’d acquired at some point between being woken up by Tooru’s call and accompanying him as he prepared his lunch.

He hasn’t touched it at all, though, seemingly having waited for Tooru to settle down.

“Thank you for the meal,” Tooru recites, folding his hands together as Iwaizumi does the same. He raises his head just in time to catch Iwaizumi with his eyes still squeezed shut. The corners of his mouth curve into a grin.

Iwaizumi finds his gaze a second later. Brows furrowing, he asks, “What?”

“Nothing,” Tooru says lightly, but he’s still beaming as he spears the lettuce with his fork. Iwaizumi grunts, but it’s the endeared sort, and Tooru catches himself wondering if Iwaizumi finds as much joy in this as he does. The mundane act of sharing a meal, and the magic of it occurring across nine thousand kilometers. It isn’t an easy feat for the both of them, in the heyday of twenty-eight—with Iwaizumi settling into his position at Birtwistle University and Tooru just beginning to learn the ropes of his new team—which is why to him it feels like as much of a win as a no-touch service ace.

“Weirdo,” Iwaizumi mutters, but Tooru, who’s always been perceptive and knows Iwa-chan best, doesn’t miss the twinkle in his eye.

Some people say it takes twenty-one days to build a habit; others cite a range between eighteen and two hundred fifty-four. Tooru, once he commits to something, is always set from the very first day.

Still, it’s only on day two hundred fifty-five of growing the pothos that he realizes, with no small amount of wonder, that he’d actually done a good job of keeping the plant alive. Too good, in fact, is what he thinks as he examines the dense roots threatening to burst from the bottom of the pot.

He snaps a photo and pulls up LINE, anticipation thrumming beneath his skin as he thumbs past the bubbling notifications in the Seijoh group chat to locate his conversation with Iwaizumi. He considers calling until he remembers that Iwaizumi is currently away on a training camp in Anaheim; has been for a week or so, based on his last message from then.

So he settles for a text instead.

iwa-chan i think it’s going to explode

He pockets his phone shortly afterwards—he’s got about half an hour until his meeting with the newest members of CA La Boca, with a twelve-minute commute to go. He feels a fresh wave of gratitude for having found an apartment within reasonable distance from the gym, especially since it was also the first place he’d ever bought for himself (and the plant that was steadily growing on his windowsill).

The meeting, much to Tooru’s delight, goes spectacularly. He’d had a feeling it would. It’s a stark contrast from his first day at CA San Juan almost nine years ago, where he’d stumbled through his self-introduction in broken Spanish and had been met with awkward, unsure half-smiles. This time, he’s the one to welcome the new members of CA La Boca with honeyed words and a dazzling grin, to invite them for dinner which wheels into drinks as the night continues to deepen. All of it is a lively affair, filled with laughter and conversation that flows as steadily as the booze.

“Cheers to Tooru!” their captain, Ignacio, bellows. “The youngest Olympian of our team.”

Tooru’s cheeks, which had already been flushed crimson from the alcohol to begin with, grow impossibly warmer. “I’m pretty sure that’s Tomas, not me.”

“But look at him,” coos their libero. “He’s so red! Just like a baby.”

“I’m not a baby,” Tooru argues, unable to help his case when his voice pitches into a whine. “It’s the Asian flush, okay.”

“Oh, but you are,” the libero drawls, pinching Tooru’s cheek. Martín, he remembers all of a sudden through the haze. “You don’t look a day over eighteen. Are you sure you’re allowed to drink?”

“I’m twenty-nine! And I drink all the time with my friends, you know.”

“Ah, are you the bunch that likes to hang around Palermo?”

“No, no,” Tooru shakes his head, and feels himself grow dizzy with the sensation. “Online. We do drinking parties online.”

“That doesn’t sound like any fun.”

“It is!” Tooru yells defensively. “It’s so much fun, because I get to make fun of all my kouhais, and it’s almost like we’re in the locker room again, but, you know, we’re old.”

“You brought alcohol to the locker room?” Ignacio butts in.

“Been there, done that,” mutters one of the newbies under his breath. Ignacio shoots him a disapproving glare.

“I’m still not very convinced,” Martín admits.

“That’s because I haven’t told you the best part yet,” Tooru says, heart thumping in his ribcage. “The best part…” He leans forward in a conspicuous whisper, “is Iwa-chan.”

Martín and Ignacio exchange a look that Tooru, in his hazy state, is unable to decipher.

“My best friend since childhood,” he explains, frustrated at their seeming lack of recognition. “He doesn’t want to admit it, but he gets drunk so easily, he’s worse than me, I swear.”

“Yes, we know—” begins Martín before Ignacio slaps a hand over his mouth.

“That’s why he never really drinks anything more than a can of beer during our parties, and it’s so hard to get him to talk,” Tooru continues, incognizant. “But sometimes if I can convince him to stay behind, when it’s just the two of us…” He bursts into giggles. “He jokes around a lot! He starts acting sappy and all that, isn’t that so funny?”

“Very,” agrees Ignacio, eyes bugging out of his head. Tooru thinks it’s hilarious, so he lets out another peal of laughter. “Speaking of Iwa-chan—”

“Don’t say that! He doesn’t like being called Iwa-chan. Only I’m allowed to do it.”

Martín, perplexed, mutters: “But how would he know if he’s not here?”

Tooru pouts, feeling his heart sink into the hollow, Iwa-chan-shaped hole in his chest.

“Alright, sorry, speaking of your best friend,” Ignacio amends, “you don’t suppose he’s been the one calling you all night, do you?”

“What?!” cries Tooru. “Iwa-chan’s been calling?”

He fumbles around for his phone on the dingy bar counter. Sure enough, when his screen lights up it’s packed with missed call notifications, as well as a variety of texts ranging from “?????” to “you can’t just say that and not explain yourself” to “call me RIGHT NOW.”

“Oh, fuck,” Tooru mutters, and presses call without even bothering to check the time.

It’s only when he hears the roughness in Iwaizumi’s sleep-addled voice that he realizes it can’t be any later than four in the morning in California. The wave of guilt that washes over him is almost sobering. “Iwa-chan?”

“What the hell is going to explode?” Iwaizumi demands. “Has it exploded yet?”

“Huh?”

“Your text, Shittykawa,” Iwaizumi growls, and it’s with a punch to the gut that Tooru realizes how long it’s been since he last heard the insult-nickname directly from his best friend’s mouth. Melancholia rises in his throat, thick and unbidden.

“I don’t—” He lowers his phone for a second to check their conversation. “Oh. Oops. I forgot to attach a photo.”

“Photo of what?”

“The pothos,” Tooru tells him, voice taking on a hysterical edge. “It was—it’s growing so well the roots are gonna bust through the bottom of the pot.”

For a moment, Tooru hears nothing but static on the other end of the line. He thinks that if he’d called any later, when Iwaizumi was even just slightly more awake, he would’ve gotten the scolding of the century.

At last, Iwaizumi heaves a sigh. “I should’ve known you were just being dramatic.”

“Is that why you were calling?” Tooru asks somberly. “Because you thought it was something serious?”

“I called because I thought it was an emergency,” Iwaizumi answers plainly.

“Why don’t you call to check in on me anymore, Iwa-chan?” Tooru wonders aloud. “I miss you, you know.”

Another sigh. “You know that’s a lie, dumbass.”

“That I miss you?” Tooru scoffs. “Who are you to say how I feel?”

“No—that I don’t check in on you anymore, you idiot.” The image of Iwaizumi rubbing his temples flashes in Tooru’s mind, making him snicker in spite of everything, and he almost—almost misses the next thing Iwaizumi says.

“I do miss you, too.”

“Then you should come here,” Tooru slurs. “Take care of the pothos with me. I’ve been thinking of naming it, you know? Should we think of one together? I’d even let you name it Gojira-Hajime if you wanted.”

“Are you drunk?” Iwaizumi asks tiredly, though it sounds like he already knows the answer.

“A little bit,” admits Tooru.

“Go drink water, shithead,” Iwaizumi instructs him. “You’re with your teammates, right? Don’t go home without them.”

Tooru’s stomach churns as he senses the conversation hurtling to its inevitable end. With the desperation of a rope flung over the edge of a cliff, he asks: “What about the pothos, Iwa-chan? What should I do?”

“Repot it. Figure out how. And text me when you go home, so I know you don’t hit your head and pass out on some random street.”

“Okay, Mom,” Tooru replies, already accepting that he’ll hear the disconnect tone in seconds.

It doesn’t come. Instead, there’s Iwaizumi’s voice on the phone again, tender as a bruise as he says, “Take care, okay?”

Take care, in lieu of a farewell. It’s the one thing Tooru hasn’t grown used to—even when it was cushioned by familiar abrasives like get your shit together, step up your goddamn training regimen, or don’t get sick or I’ll seriously kill you.

“Okay,” Tooru whispers, and it’s almost as difficult as saying goodbye when he says, “You too.”

He wakes up the next morning with a hangover, and a single link to a gardening website at the top of his inbox.

“So who’re we rooting for in the Paris Olympics?” Hanamaki drawls.

Tooru pauses watering his pothos to turn to the tablet he’d left on his desk. He’d finally gotten the chance to drape the plant in front of his sliding window, having transferred it to a large, hanging pot several months ago. Now its stems dangle almost halfway to the ground. It seems to like the newfound space created by gravity.

“What kind of question is that?” he demands.

Hanamaki grins cheekily, shadowed by the terrible overhead lighting of whatever convenience store he’d deemed an appropriate place to answer their call. “A question from a curious man.”

“Isn’t a given—”

“I’d say the answer is pretty obvious,” Yahaba interjects.

“Exactly!” Tooru nods his head in fervent approval. “Tell them, Yahaba-chan!”

With a serene look on his face, Yahaba lifts the mug of tea beside him and takes a nice, long sip before saying: “Obviously, we root for our home country.”

Tooru gasps. “You were my favorite kouhai, Yahaba-chan. My successor. My hope.”

“And? I’ve fulfilled my duty to you, haven’t I?”

“You’re just saying that because your students are JNT fans,” Tooru grumbles.

Yahaba shrugs, hiding a smile behind his mug. “I’m not going to say no to that.”

Tooru pouts. “Fine. Everyone else?”

Matsukawa says, “I don’t involve myself with the matters of volleyball anymore.”

That stings Tooru more than he’d expected. “Mattsun.”

“But I’d still watch the Games for the thrill of the culling,” he intones, the darkness of his office just barely concealing the sinister smirk on his face.

“That’s it,” Tooru declares, slamming his hands on the table hard enough to rattle the watering can he’d placed on it haphazardly. “Whatever. You don’t have to say it. I know you all want to root for Iwa-chan now since you all abandoned him for me in Tokyo. I understand.”

His gaze flickers to Iwaizumi, the only other person in the call still backlit by the sun, and feels his heart stutter.

Iwaizumi gives a noncommittal shrug. “They don’t have to root for me. I’m not going to be at the Paris Olympics.”

The joke that had been sitting at the edge of Tooru’s tongue dissipates, replaced with the heavy feeling of lead. “You’re not—what?”

“I’m not gonna be at the Paris Olympics,” Iwaizumi repeats plainly, as if he isn’t twisting the knife one more time. “The schedule conflicts with the training for my new job.”

“But you said—” Tooru’s voice gets stuck in his throat. He thinks of the blazing heat of a Tokyo summer, the looming silhouette of Ariake Arena behind them. “You said you’d—”

“A new job!” Kindaichi exclaims through the ringing in Tooru’s ears. “Congratulations, Iwaizumi-san!”

“Congrats,” drones Kunimi, finally showing the slightest bit of interest in the conversation.

“‘Grats, Iwaizumi,” Matsukawa drawls. “You’ve officially beaten Takahiro in the job search.”

“Hey!” Hanamaki exclaims. “Fine. I’ll congratulate you this time. You owe me ramen the next time you visit.”

“What’s the job, Iwaizumi-san?” asks Watari.

“Athletic trainer still,” Iwaizumi answers. “For the Irvine Polar Bears.”

There’s a thump from Yahaba’s end that makes Tooru look up through his daze. Kyoutani shuffles into the frame, dark uniform rumpled and face stained with motor grease.

“Takashi Utsui’s team,” he grunts. “Right?”

“Hey, Kyoutani,” Iwaizumi greets. “Yeah, he put in a word for me. It’s a pretty good team.”

“Ushiwaka-chan’s father, huh?” Tooru cuts in suddenly, unable to help the way his voice drips with disdain. “Congrats, Iwa-chan. It’d only be right for you to root for him and Japan, then.”

Iwaizumi’s expression tightens, but he doesn’t say anything more, the tension slowly stretching across the globe as Tooru mulls over everything in silence.

I’ll beat you next time, Iwaizumi had told him at the culmination of their first and last Olympics together, and Tooru had taken it as a promise, just like the one they’d made under the moonlight a decade before. He remembers drinking up the determination on his best-friend-turned-rival’s face, absorbing it into his system and letting it run like fuel in his veins. He’d held onto his words even as they drifted further and further away from that moment, back towards separate hemispheres and separate lives, until the image of Iwaizumi’s face blurred at the edges and the sound of his voice became muddled with static.

Still, Tooru had held on. And in spite of his inattention to goodbyes and omission of see you later’s, he’d still unconsciously, foolishly counted down the days to their next meeting anyway.

“I’m sorry,” Iwaizumi is saying, and it’s only then that Tooru realizes that they’re the only people left in the call.

“Sorry?” Tooru repeats. “Why should you be sorry? You should be celebrating, Iwa-chan.” Regret over his earlier scorn clumps tightly in his stomach, and he hopes Iwaizumi knows he’s genuine when he says, “You should be proud of yourself.”

“Still. I should have told you earlier.”

“You’ve been busy,” Tooru says hollowly. The dull, adult truth tastes like sawdust in his mouth. “So have I.”

“You know they’re still gonna root for you no matter what, right?” Iwaizumi tells him, and Tooru wants it to sound like we.

The question slips away from him before he can stop it. “What about you?” His own voice sounds desperate to his ears, but he needs to hear Iwaizumi’s answer, craves it in the same way his golden pothos needs sunlight.

“When have I never not pushed you on, idiot?” Iwaizumi counters sharply, but everything else about him seems to have softened. “It doesn’t matter if I’m across the court or outside it.”

But it does, Oikawa doesn’t say, and wonders when things started to go unspoken between them. Every goal I’ve run towards, I’ve run towards it expecting you to meet me on the other side.

And it terrifies him, to hear that thought so clearly in his head. He wonders if Iwaizumi can hear it, too—he used to be able to pick up on everything Tooru never said, after all—but after over ten years and nearly ten thousand kilometers, he’s not really sure anymore. All he’s certain of now is the sharp, painful realization that something has to change. He can’t keep running back to Iwaizumi; in the same way Iwaizumi can’t keep running back to Tooru.

Again, it seems like Iwaizumi had learned that much earlier on than him.

“Hey,” Iwaizumi says. “It doesn’t matter, okay? All of that, in Tokyo? That was just another stepping stone to you. You’ve said it yourself. You’re going to kill it out there, and show the monster generation that you’re on the upward climb for life.”

“The upward climb, huh,” Tooru muses, his gaze drifting towards the golden pothos and its drooping stems. He’ll have to do something about that soon, too.

The sun is high in the sky when Tooru celebrates the New Year exactly twelve hours before its onset in Buenos Aires. He listens to the signal-transmitted sound of bells ringing across Miyagi, on the other side of the world, and feels some chord struck within him: something a little like homesickness, but without the need to return.

“Takeru, stop eating the soba!” Nee-chan yells from somewhere just outside the frame.

“But I’m still hungry,” complains Takeru through a mouthful of noodles.

“You’ve been hungry since last year,” groans Nee-chan, exasperated. “You’re going to take all of that appetite and your bad luck into this one.”

“Tooru’s still eating his noodles, though,” Takeru points out, gesturing to the screen in front of him.

“He’s a bad example,” Nee-chan chides as she sits down on the mat beside Takeru. Then, with a pointed glare at Tooru, she says: “Some kind of role model you are.”

Tooru puts down his chopsticks with a delighted grin. “Ah, so I am Takeru’s role model!”

“Again, a terrible one.” Nee-chan reminds him, and for once, Takeru deigns to agree with her. “You’re not even supposed to be eating soba that early.”

“It’s part of the countdown spirit!” Tooru argues.

“Tooru, is that you?” comes another voice. Almost immediately Tooru feels the lines of his body soften, shoulders drooping as if a warm blanket had been draped across them.

“Happy New Year, Kaa-chan,” he greets warmly.

“Tooru, baby, why are you celebrating so early?” his mother asks, clicking her tongue. “It’s still the thirty-first there! Don’t you have anywhere else to be?”

“Not yet,” Tooru admits. “Everyone’s out on the beach with their families.”

“And nobody invited you to come along?”

“Don’t worry, Kaa-chan, they did,” Tooru reassures her with a grin. “I told them I’d join for dinner.”

“Hmm,” Kaa-chan hums. With a glimmer in her eye that tells him she’d known his intentions all along, she says, “Well, then. You can watch the first sunrise with us.”

It’s an hour’s trek from Tooru’s childhood home to the observation hill, and he stays on the line throughout it all. Nee-chan is the one who holds the phone up for Tooru to see, and through this lens he catches glimpses of his quiet hometown: the long residential road with its flickering streetlights, the facade of the old bakery where he used to buy his favorite milk bread, the neighborhood park where he’d first learned how to pass a volleyball back and forth with Iwaizumi.

They arrive at the top of the hill right as the first vestiges of light begin to shimmer on the horizon, the inky darkness fading away into a gentler, paler blue. It is this azure that washes the city in a soft haze, as if painted over with nostalgia. Not for the first time, Tooru feels a pang run through his chest.

“Hey, Tooru,” Nee-chan says all of a sudden. “Why don’t you show us a view of your city, too?”

“Hold on,” Tooru mutters, flipping the camera as he makes his way towards the balcony. He hasn’t even made it halfway towards the sliding window before Nee-chan stops him with a gasp.

“Is that real?”

“What?”

“The leaves draped all around your window,” she says. “I don’t remember seeing them before.”

“Oh,” Tooru pauses, unsure why he feels conscious all of a sudden. He steps forward and angles the camera towards the hanging planter in the center. “It’s the pothos Iwa-chan gave me. You’ve seen it before.”

“You’re kidding me,” she says, incredulous. “It’s still alive? It grew that much?”

He’s about to retort when his mother peeks into the camera and smiles knowingly. “Of course it is. Tooru wouldn’t let something like that die.”

“Obviously,” Takeru deadpans, in the tone that alerts Tooru immediately that he’s in hot water. “It’s from Iwa-chan.”

Tooru splutters as he slides the balcony door open. “I wouldn’t let any kind of living thing die—”

“It took a week before you killed the betta fish I got you from our university fair,” Nee-chan reminds him.

“I fed it every day!”

“You overfed it.”

“I was six! I didn’t know any better!”

“But when Iwa-chan gave you a stag beetle,” sneers Nee-chan, relentless, and god does Tooru sometimes hate how much they're alike, “you spent an afternoon in the library poring over insect books. You bought beetle jelly cups with your spare allowance.”

“It’s not like I kept it for any longer than a week, either,” Tooru grumbles. He isn’t going to tell Nee-chan that it was because Iwa-chan had told him to let it go. They’d had an argument over it, even, because Tooru hadn’t been able to understand why Iwaizumi would give him such a gift just to tell him to get rid of it.

“We’ve done enough for it,” seven-year-old Iwaizumi had told him stubbornly, formidable even with the gap in his front teeth. “Now can you imagine being trapped like that forever?”

Tooru, personally, had thought the beetle looked perfectly happy guzzling all the jelly, but the determined look in Iwaizumi’s eyes had been enough to persuade him to let it go.

All of that, in retrospect, had been a very Iwaizumi thing to do.

“Speak of the devil,” Kaa-chan says, features lighting up in amazement. “Iwa-chan!”

The camera shifts, he catches a glimpse of the lightening Miyagi sky, the world spins with the movement of it—and Tooru, caught completely off-guard, feels his heart plummet to his feet.

“Kaa-chan,” says the voice that Tooru would know anywhere. Familial, warm. It throws him off-kilter enough to feel dizzy from tens of thousands of miles away, as if the earth had suddenly shifted in its orbit. “Nee-chan. Takeru. Happy new year.”

“Happy new year, Iwa-chan,” Kaa-chan greets with equal warmth. The camera turns to them—Nee-chan must still be holding it, then—and Tooru watches, chest tightening, as his mother embraces his best friend as if he were her long-lost son. “My goodness! You’ve grown even more handsome since I last saw you!”

Iwaizumi chuckles, sheepish, one hand coming to cup the growing flush at the back of his neck. “It’s been a while, hasn’t it?”

“It has,” Kaa-chan agrees. “I’m so glad you were able to make it back for New Year, though. Tooru’s here, too, but on the phone.”

For one fleeting moment, Tooru considers ending the call then and there, but all thoughts vanish from his mind the moment Iwaizumi turns to the camera with a smile that punches the air out of his lungs. “I figured,” he says mildly. “Happy new year, Oikawa.”

“Happy new year, Iwa-chan,” Tooru greets as Nee-chan passes the phone to Iwaizumi, who holds it at such a ridiculous angle beneath his chin that Tooru bursts into laughter.

“What the…” Iwaizumi’s eyebrows knit together in confusion. “Why the hell are you laughing?”

“Your nostrils,” Tooru wheezes between breaths of laughter. “They’re huge.”

“Assi—” He clamps his mouth shut. “Don’t make me cuss you out in front of your family.”

“We can hear you, you know,” comes Takeru’s unimpressed voice from behind the camera.

“Hold on,” Iwaizumi says, the cleft between his brows deepening. He looks up to make a gesture to excuse himself and steps away from Tooru’s family. “Oikawa, are you crying?”

“What?!” Tooru exclaims. “No!” His fingers come up to brush his cheeks—which are, decidedly and unfortunately, very much damp. He recoils in horror. “What?”

Iwaizumi shakes his head ruefully. In a low voice, he says, “You can just tell your family you miss them too, you know.”

Tooru swallows. “Who’s saying that I don’t do that already?”

Iwaizumi shrugs. “Just had a feeling. You’re not really the type to say it out loud.”

“Are you speaking from experience, huh?” Tooru asks without thinking. Realization dawns on him a split second later, and he splutters, “I mean—do you not tell your family you miss them, too?”

“I do,” he says quietly. “But you know how it is. You tell them you miss them, they ask why you don’t want to come back home instead.”

Is that why you won’t tell me you miss me, then? Tooru wonders. Are you afraid I’ll ask you to come here and leave everything behind?

He looks at Iwaizumi—Iwa-chan, who looks content and at peace, mature and grown-up in ways Tooru had been unable to witness. Handsomer than ever, just like Kaa-chan said. And it is with a certainty in his heart Tooru knows that he could never, ever ask such a thing of him; just like how Iwaizumi could never have asked him to stay all those years ago.

So he swallows the enormity of his longing down, and says, instead: “Then hand me over to them, Iwa-chan. You are infringing on our quality time.”

Iwaizumi laughs, bright and beautiful, and lets him go.

It’s after a late night at training that Tooru comes home and finds the first signs of yellow on his pothos.

“No, no, no,” he mutters, dread welling up in his chest. His bag falls to the floor with a thud—his knees follow soon after as he digs through the rolls of athletic tape and sweaty kneepads to locate his phone.

When he finally finds it, his shaky fingers have half a mind to open LINE first. He switches to Google at the last minute.

what does it mean if plant leaves turn yellow

golden pothos yellow what to do

He spends the succeeding half hour scrolling through various gardening forums, mind spinning with the sheer amount of information presented, most of them conflicting.

Too much sun, one user had suggested, to which another had replied: It’s too little sun, you dimwit.

Many others suggested overwatering as the cause. But Tooru had been pretty consistent with waiting until the top two inches of the soil were dry every week before watering. And the water quality had never been a problem for him before—why would that suddenly change now?

He lingers on the tab that says old age, and feels a fresh wave of dread pool in his stomach. He’d only had the pothos for about three years, and yet it had grown and thrived so beautifully that Tooru had almost believed that it would live forever. Was it really going to die on him so soon?

His thoughts drift back to that first conversation he’d had with Iwaizumi, back when the pothos had been first delivered to his doorstep. He’d told Tooru that it was practically impossible to kill. But he’d also given him another warning—one that Tooru had bypassed because of the stubborn belief that he’d had it all under control.

“Don’t let it grow too long either unless you want to give yourself a hard time,” Tooru repeats under his breath. A dry, humorless laugh tears itself from the tightness of his throat. “Well, I guess you were right, Iwa-chan.”

But Iwaizumi isn’t here to gloat, so Tooru pulls up his messages instead—and scrolls, and scrolls, and scrolls. The longer he spends scrolling the more the pit in his stomach grows, until he finally finds his last conversation with Iwaizumi, and nearly smacks himself upside the head because it’s been exactly a month since Iwaizumi’s last message and Tooru had forgotten to fucking reply.

Their last conversation was from when Tooru had a sudden flare-up of pain in his knee and decided to consult Iwaizumi—not because he didn’t trust his own trainer, but because it was Iwaizumi he trusted best. Because it was Iwaizumi who had run to him first, that terrible, life-altering afternoon in middle school, when he’d dropped to the ground at the tail end of a game with nobody else to catch him. It was Iwaizumi who’d stayed by his side throughout his weeks of recovery, bringing him milk bread and the most neatly-written notes he’d seen from him since kindergarten. It was Iwaizumi who’d dragged him home on those nights he nearly pushed himself to overexertion; who’d been there for him all the way until the very end of their last match together, when he’d sat him down in the locker after everyone else had gone home, pulled down his kneepad, and pressed his hands to his tender skin.

And again, at the Olympics. And again, at the All-Star Match. And Tooru—who had felt the reverence in his every touch, who had seen the devotion in his watchful gaze—had, completely and idiotically, turned a blind eye every time.

Text me updates after a week or so, Iwaizumi had told him. If the pain doesn’t let up, rest.

He dials Iwaizumi’s phone number, and waits. Opens a new tab and types in flights to california, and makes it as far as the payment method selection when the line finally connects with a beep.

“Hey.”

Tears prickle at the corners of Tooru’s eyes. “Hi, Iwa-chan.”

“How are you?” Iwaizumi asks, as if it’s something they do. As if they don’t always jump headfirst into conversation the moment they hear the other’s breath.

“I’m okay,” Tooru manages. “I, just—” He looks up at the pothos again, unsure of how to continue. It looms over him from his position on the floor, and Tooru wonders when he’d let it occupy such a large, overwhelming space in his life without even realizing it. He hadn’t even needed to attend to it on the daily—just a watering every two weeks or so, a re-potting here and there. Still it grew, and grew, and grew.

It really hadn’t taken much to look after it—but it hadn’t taken much to start killing it, either.

“Your knee alright?” Iwaizumi plays it off as casual, but Tooru can hear the edge of concern in his voice. Good, he thinks, with a sick feeling in his stomach. He still cares.

“It’s… okay.” He unfolds himself from his kneeling position and gingerly extends his right leg in front of him. “I’ve been doing those exercises you recommended. The swelling is pretty reduced, though.”

“There was swelling?” Iwaizumi’s voice has lost its cool. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Our trainer said it was fine,” Tooru explains, and ignores the subsequent grunt of protest from Iwaizumi. “I didn’t—I didn’t want to worry you too much. Besides, I’m more concerned about the pothos than anything.” He’s beginning to ramble now, and he knows it. “Its leaves are starting to turn yellow, Iwa-chan, and the internet says it could be from a million different things, and I don’t know what I did but I swear I didn’t do anything weird, but well, maybe I really am terrible at keeping things alive. Maybe I’ve really gone and done it now.” He inhales sharply. “I’m—I’m sorry.”

He exhales, waiting for Iwaizumi to tell him off or call him an idiot, which, frankly, he very much deserves.

But Iwaizumi only asks: “If I tell you to take a couple of days off, will you do it?”

“What?”

“Take some time off,” Iwaizumi repeats. “I’ll give you some things to do for your knee. If you need me to talk to your trainer, I will.”

Tooru swallows. “I can talk to her, it’s fine.”

“Good,” Iwaizumi says with finality. “I’m going to be very specific with the instructions I’ll send you, so I need to know you’ve read my message when it comes. Understand?”

“Got it,” Tooru says weakly.

“Okay,” Iwaizumi replies evenly. “I’ve got to drive back to my place, so I’ll hang up now.”

“Okay,” echoes Tooru. “Take care.”

A beat of silence. Then, in a tone steeped in tenderness: “You too, Oikawa. I’ll see you soon.”

If your plant is large enough, you can try to cut off a piece and propagate it.

Tooru mulls over the message for what feels like the millionth time in the past three days as he ascends the stairs to his apartment, grocery bag in one hand and newspaper-wrapped pot in the other.

He’d been completely averse to the suggestion at first, when it had just been sent after a lengthy message on how to take care of his knee. The idea of deliberately cutting away any part of his beloved plant terrified him. But with no training and nothing much else to do, he’d decided to look into it, and the information he’d gathered had been enough to convince him to try it out—or at least, to buy the necessary materials for propagation.

He’d ended up splurging on a nice ceramic pot with a glossy cerulean finish. It’s too bad he ends up dropping it before he even reaches his apartment door.

“Iwa-chan?!”

He doesn’t know if it’s the resounding crash of the pot or the volume of his voice that does it, but Iwa-chan’s head—with those ridiculous spikes of hair that Tooru would recognize anywhere—jerks up suddenly from where it had been resting against folded knees. Earth-colored eyes meet Tooru’s across a measly fourteen meters instead of through a screen, and before Tooru knows it he’s stumbling forward, groceries and broken pot abandoned behind him as he falls to his knees in front of Iwaizumi—

Except Iwaizumi rushes forward first to catch him, one hand shooting out to cushion his right knee, so Tooru ends up in this position where he looks like he’s proposing, of all damn things, but it wouldn’t even be the most unlikely thing for him to do at this moment. Because Iwaizumi is right in front of him, and he looks like a dream, with his hair slicked back and muscles straining against his shirtsleeves as he holds on to Tooru as if he can’t let him go. He can’t.

“You reckless idiot,” Iwaizumi snaps, voice breaking with affection, and pulls him into a full embrace.

For all that Tooru has known Iwaizumi to be steady, he can feel him shaking in his arms. Tooru knows that he, too, is trembling—even when the two of them pull apart seconds later, their desperation dissipating into discomfiture, covered up by a lopsided smile and a derisive huff.

“...You’re crushing my leg.”

“Oops!” Tooru squeaks, scrambling to extract himself from the mess of tangled limbs on the linoleum. Once he’s on his feet, he holds out a hand to Iwaizumi on the floor. The motion is so acutely familiar that Tooru aches with it—the memory of being seven years old again, with soft grass beneath their feet; of being fifteen, making haste to get back up again on the court.

Now they’re thirty-one, in a low-lit apartment corridor a universe away from it all, when Iwaizumi takes his hand again for the first time.

“Thanks,” Iwaizumi grunts, and lets Tooru pull him off the ground. There’s a few seconds wherein neither of them make a move to let go—a few seconds of searching each other’s naked gazes, afraid to look further but equally afraid to look away.

It’s Tooru who drops his hand first. “Let me get this open,” he mutters, cheeks heating up as he pats around his pockets for his key.

When he finally finds it, Iwaizumi’s got his grocery bag in one arm and the now-misshapen lump of newspaper in the other. “What the hell is this supposed to be?”

Tooru’s eyes flicker towards him, land on the biceps flexing underneath his tight-fitting tee, and furiously snap back to the task at hand. “A new pot for the pothos.”

“Ah.” Iwaizumi shifts. “Are you transferring it, or are you going to propagate it?”

“Not sure if I’d be able to do either, considering the pot’s been smashed to pieces.”

A vein pulses in Iwaizumi’s forehead. “You’re making it sound like I threw it against the wall.”

“You scared me!” Tooru exclaims hotly, and it’s funny how words are coming so easily to him now that they’ve fallen right back into their bickering. “What were you even thinking, Iwa-chan? Since when were you waiting out here?”

“Just this morning,” Iwaizumi answers, as if the sun isn’t already beginning to set outside. “I was asleep for most of it, though.”

“You could’ve been robbed!”

“More of the opposite, really,” says Iwaizumi. “The lady next to you offered me something to eat earlier. Her empanadas were pretty good.”

Tooru lets out a tiny sound of frustration as he wiggles the key some more—behind him, Iwaizumi lets out an amused snort—until he finally hears a satisfying click.

“After you,” he says gracefully, swinging the door open.

“Where should I put the groceries?”

Tooru holds out his palm until Iwaizumi reluctantly passes the bag to him. “Go take a seat wherever you like. I’ll just put these away in the fridge—perishables, and all that.”

Iwaizumi pads off towards the living room while Tooru heads into the kitchen in a daze. He shakes his head in disbelief as he opens the fridge, body going into autopilot as he wipes down each food item and arranges them on the shelves.

1,114 days. The realization hits him like a strike to the chest. It had been 1,114 days since they’d last seen each other, and Tooru had unknowingly, consistently kept track of them all.

He grabs his pitcher of tea, takes out his mug and the spare one he’d bought long ago but never really had an opportunity to use, and heads into the living room.

“Iwa-chan, why aren’t you sitting…”

Iwaizumi is standing in the middle of the room, right below the dangling planter, its long, trailing vines framing him in a way that makes him look ethereal in the late afternoon light. The shape of his back is as sturdy as Tooru remembers, surrounded by the leaves that seem to grow out from the outline of his body—vibrant, as if their life force had been renewed by the mere presence of the man standing in front of them.

“It’s—” Iwaizumi begins in lieu of another greeting, “It’s thriving, Oikawa, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Tooru swallows past the growing lump in his throat. “Is it?”

“Are you seriously asking that?” Iwaizumi huffs. He turns to face Tooru, and nearly blinds him with the sheer awe that radiates from his expression. “You really let it bloom.”

“These ones don’t flower, though,” Tooru says in a small voice. “I think I let it grow too much. I don’t know how to control it, and I’m running out of ideas on where to put all of it—” he spreads his hands, helpless in the face of a longing so great in scale he can’t even remember where it begins, just that it never ends— “and now it’s dying, Iwa-chan, and I don’t know what to do—”

Iwaizumi’s hand wraps around his wrist, steadying. “Oikawa.”

Tooru blinks at him slowly, heartbeat easing in his chest in spite of everything.

“It’s just a couple of yellow leaves,” he says calmly once Tooru has quieted, and crouches down next to one of the vines that dangles the lowest. Tooru draws closer to him, just because he can. “Look. This one’s about to fall off naturally, and soon a new one’s gonna take its place.”

“But what am I supposed to do about it?”

“I told you already,” Iwaizumi repeats, but his tone is patient. “If you’re so worried about it dying, cut it off and propagate it.”

Tooru turns and stares into the eyes of his first, best, and only childhood friend, the ones that were once able to pull every truth from the depths of his ribcage, and feels the anchor tremble within him. “I don’t think I can bear to do that,” he admits quietly.

“Still as stubborn as always, as I see.” The corners of Iwaizumi’s mouth curve into a lopsided smile—and then he flicks Tooru on the forehead.

“Ow!”

“Come on,” Iwaizumi urges, rising to his full height. “Let me check your knee now, since I came all this way for it.”

“You did?” Tooru asks as he lets himself be led towards the edge of his bed.

“You weren’t updating me,” Iwaizumi points out dryly as he kneels down in front of him. “So I decided to come see it for myself.”

Tooru makes a choked noise. “But—”

Iwaizumi raises an eyebrow sharply, juxtaposed by the gentle manner in which his hands roll up the hem of Tooru’s shorts. “Yes?”

Worrying his lower lip with his teeth, he says, “I think it’s gotten a lot better.”

“Looks like it,” Iwaizumi agrees as his fingertips dance across the top of Tooru’s kneecap, making a shiver run involuntarily down his spine. He has the brief image of Iwaizumi doing the same to one of his new athletes, and feels an unwarranted spike of jealousy. “How does this feel?”

“Normal,” Tooru grits out.

A hum. “You seem pretty tense, though,” he observes as he digs his thumbs into either side of Tooru’s knee.

Tooru scoffs. “What can I say, Iwa-chan? It’s been a while. You’ve got me on edge.”

“I’ve known you since before you were potty trained, Shittykawa,” grunts Iwaizumi, unimpressed. “You’ve got nothing to be afraid of.”

“Right,” Tooru laughs. “And I’d say I’ve known you long enough to know you haven’t changed your haircut at all since your first one, except you finally did.”

That elicits another snort from Iwaizumi. “It’s hardly new. I just pushed it back, that’s all.”

“It looks good,” Tooru comments lightly, and wonders if Iwaizumi can hear his heartbeat jackhammering in his chest.

“You too.” A pause. “I mean—your knee. It seems fine. Your physique, too.”

“Thanks, Iwa-chan,” Tooru mumbles, flustered for what feels like the first time in ages. Perhaps distance had made him soft. Or perhaps it hadn’t really changed anything at all, with the way his heart swells with an age-old ache.

“Well,” he manages to say, “you came all this way for a perfectly good knee. Is there anything else you want to do?”

Iwaizumi’s eyes widen, as if he hadn’t considered the possibility of actually being able to spend time with Tooru. As if he’d come here with a single-minded purpose and hadn’t thought of anything else.

And then the barest hint of boyish excitement brightens his face. It makes him look almost young again, wearing the same expression that used to light up his features every time Tooru proposed they try out a new combo play, or watch his favorite Godzilla movie.

Tooru realizes, I can still make him feel like that, and his heart soars with elation.

“I guess I do have something in mind, yeah.”

Slam.

In a split second, the ball leaves his palm and sails towards Iwaizumi’s outstretched arms. It glances off his form perfectly, in a trajectory that takes it straight back into the open cradle of Tooru’s hands, before it soars into the air once again. And again, and again.

Minutes pass, maybe hours. The cycle starts, ends, and repeats itself, and Tooru thinks he could do this forever.

“Holy crap,” someone says from behind them. “They’re still going?”

“I don’t think either of them have dropped the ball since they started,” another voice replies.

Tooru grits his teeth. They’ve been at it long enough for sweat to drip from his bangs, and so he nearly gets a taste of salt when he opens his mouth and says, “Yep, we haven’t.”

“Dios mío.”

“Is there a problem?” Iwaizumi asks as he tosses the ball back towards him. His skin glows with a soft sheen of sweat, and there’s a brief, crooked grin on his face when he makes eye contact with Tooru that sends his already rapid heartbeat into overdrive.

“Well, as much as it has been an honor to witness the definition of perfect harmony,” the voice—Ignacio—says, “we have to start practice in a while.”

It’s with a satisfying smack that Iwaizumi finally catches the ball between his hands. “I’ll leave him to you, then,” he says in his practiced English. Then, to a starstruck Tooru: “I’ll wait for you in the bleachers.”

Their fingers graze when Iwaizumi hands him the ball, lingering, before he finally lets go and trudges off.

It’s silent for a moment as the three senior members of CA La Boca watch his figure disappear behind the door.

“Goddamn, Tooru.” Ignacio says, finally. “You’ve got one hell of a partner.”

The way home is a thirty-three minute walk through a quaint residential area, close enough to the sea that Tooru can sometimes smell the salt of it, on days when the breeze blows in from the shore. This late in the evening it’s fairly quiet, the nighttime buzz of downtown Buenos Aires far removed from the bubble where their footsteps echo against the stone pavement.

“Your form earlier was really good,” Tooru remarks, breaking the silence. “I thought Iwa-chan didn’t play volleyball anymore.”

“I work with volleyball players, Shittykawa,” Iwaizumi reminds him. “I am a bit rustier than I’d like, though.”

Tooru laughs. “Not at all. It almost felt like we were—” his voice breaks in his throat, the word invincible catching in his windpipe, “like we were seventeen again, or something. Like we’d never stopped playing together.”

It had been exhilarating, the rush of enjoyment as potent as when he’d tossed a volleyball for the first time. He supposes it makes sense—Iwaizumi Hajime and volleyball had come into his life hand-in-hand, after all—that even after thirteen years, nobody could make him feel the way Iwaizumi does.

“Well,” Iwaizumi says, “you are the first and last person I played with. It’s hard to lose what’s ingrained into your muscle memory.” He shrugs. “And as for you—well, you bring out the best in everyone, Oikawa. I’ve seen it in all your past matches, and I saw it today. Hell, you could be playing with someone for the first time, and you’d still be able to make it good.”

And that—that is exactly what Tooru aims for, and yet he hates the way Iwaizumi’s downplayed himself for it—as if all the time they’d spent together isn’t the reason he’s able to bring out the best in everyone in the first place. As if their perfect trust, their aun no kokyuu relationship, isn’t the standard he keeps reaching for, even after all this time.

“I can’t see you ever being satisfied with perfection,” Iwaizumi had once told him on an evening walk like this, so many years ago. But the truth is that Tooru had already once held perfection in the palm of his hand, and in it found a joy so great it terrified him.

“You know I couldn’t have learned to do that without you, right?” Tooru tells him, eventually.

“You wouldn’t have been able to learn to do it with me, either,” Iwaizumi counters, as sure and resolute as when he’d told him, in the safe cocoon of his childhood room: “Why not? You’re set on it already, anyway.”

And such is the paradox of it all: to keep someone at a distance and yet still hold them at the very core of your being. To chase relentlessly after something you chose to leave behind. To meet and part a million times without a single hello or goodbye.

But Tooru, who had learned to grow in a place where he had no roots, was used to such paradoxes forming the fabric of his reality.

So it’s nothing out of the ordinary, really, when he finally asks: “So if I cut the pothos, will it keep it alive?”

The footsteps beside him cease.

“Oikawa.”

It’s the gentleness of Iwaizumi’s voice that gives him pause. “Yeah?”

“Do you know why I chose to give you a golden pothos, of all things?”

“Because it’s practically impossible to kill?”

A smile tugs at the corner of Iwaizumi’s mouth. “That, yeah, but also for what it represents.”

“Oh.” Tooru swallows. “I didn’t—I thought only flowers had meanings.”

“Perseverance.” He lets the word linger in the space between them. “Or, at least, the website I checked said so.” A laugh escapes him, sudden and breathless, as if the sound of his own voice surprised him. “But I believe it’s true, because it never stops growing to new heights.”

Tooru chuckles. “I think so, too.”

“And when you cut it along the stem,” Iwaizumi continues, “it’ll still grow, whether in soil or in water, no matter how far the leaf is from its original roots. Because it can put down new ones wherever it goes.”

He turns to Tooru then, jaw set, eyes shining with the same verdant, determined faith he’s seen countless times: before matches, the words we believe in you, Captain on his lips; from across the court, muscles set to jump with a point of a finger. At the airport, carrying a pack of Seirogan in his hands. On the Olympic stage.

And like each and every time before, Tooru feels something grow within him, and thinks, Iwa-chan, perhaps this is something you make bloom.

“Wherever it goes, you say?”

“Wherever. Anywhere. Anywhere you want to go.”

“Good,” Tooru grins. “Now let’s see if we can put that broken pot back together, Iwa-chan, because you’re going to take it home.”

The plant that sits on Hajime’s desk is a sprightly, growing thing: evergreen, even in the winter, its leaves beginning to brush the margins of its patched-up pot.

“I trust Iwa-chan to take care of it,” Oikawa had proclaimed to him just before his flight back to California, eyes bright and touch hot and lingering on his skin. “When it arrives, that is.”

The propagules were due to follow Hajime later on, once they made it past all the cross-border regulations involved in transporting houseplants, and so it had been just the two of them then, and the miniscule space between their beating hearts.

Hajime had grinned at him, teeth bared and eyes sparkling with intent. “I’ll take that as a challenge,” he’d declared, before pulling a laughing Oikawa into his arms.

Just days before that, Hajime had asked him why he insisted on sending a piece of the plant to California with him, even with all the hassle.

And Oikawa, with the most honest of smiles, had confessed—

“I don’t know where to put all this longing anymore.” The truth rises, relentless as it climbs higher and higher, slipping past the bars of ribcage and the cords of his throat and the walls of his teeth. “I was hoping you could share it with me.”

And then he waits. It’s only for a few seconds—nothing compared to a lifetime, really—but it feels like forever before Iwaizumi finally speaks.

“C’mere.”

“What?”

“Come here,” he urges again. When Tooru finally rises from his chair, a shard of golden sunlight falling upon his face, Iwaizumi’s hand wraps around his neck, drawing him ever closer.

They’re standing right underneath the planter when Iwaizumi says—in a breath that ghosts warmth against his lips— “Here,” and Tooru finally, finally blossoms into understanding.

And so he pours all his longing into that first kiss; until the press of their lips isn’t enough and he has to coax Iwaizumi’s mouth open, slide into the crevice of warmth, cradle his face in his hands and swallow every sound that rises gorgeous and unbidden between them. Still, that isn’t enough, so he longs for him even more; drags his strong setter’s fingers down the taut muscle of Iwaizumi’s skin, wraps them around his waist, dips past the waistband of his sweatpants to pull them flush together.

“Easy, there,” Iwaizumi mumbles against his lips. “I’m not going anywhere.”

But Tooru only whines as he presses on, making them both gasp into each other's mouths. “You are, though.”

“Okay, yeah,” Iwaizumi rasps as Tooru drags his tongue down the column of his neck. “But I haven’t even booked my return flight yet.”

Tooru bites down, and the sound Iwaizumi makes is the most gorgeous thing he’s ever heard. “Good,” he says after he’s soothed the spot with his tongue. “Because I’ve hardly even begun to show you the extent of it yet.”

“Tooru,” Iwaizumi groans. “You’re fucking insatiable.”

“I know,” Tooru hums as he walks them towards the bed, Iwaizumi matching his every step. “I’ve got a whole lifetime to make up for, and then I’ll still keep going.”

Iwaizumi says, “I know you will,” and Tooru loves him.

Now Hajime looks at the pothos and marvels at the lifetime of longing behind it, just beginning to bloom. And like the outwards projection of its far-reaching branches, he dreams of the countless places they could go from here; the unfathomable heights they could reach as they continued to grow.

“Hey, Tooru,” he greets, right after the first ring. “Have you received the tickets yet?”

“Mhm,” Oikawa replies, the smile evident in his voice. “Ah, I can’t wait to get gyudon when we land. Or sushi, though Takeru would kill me if we went to Sushiro without him. I can’t decide.”

“We have plenty of time to do both,” Hajime reassures him, amidst visions of what lies for them on the horizon: cooking dinner for their families in their childhood homes, taking the scenic route past the neighborhood park to Aoba Johsai, watching the fireworks light up the sky above Hirose River.

Oikawa hums brightly. “Do you think your pothos will survive without you, Iwa-chan?”

“Just mine? Aren’t you concerned about yours?”

“Nope!” Tooru replies swiftly. “I am a seasoned expert, after all.”

Hajime rolls his eyes fondly. “Then I don’t have anything to worry about, either,” he decides.

“You really believe that?”

“I always believe in you.”

“You flatterer,” Oikawa churrs, but Hajime can hear the elation in his voice. It softens into something sweet when he sighs, “I can’t wait to see you.”

“Soon,” Hajime tells him, and this time it’s a promise. “Love perseveres.”

“Silly Iwa-chan,” laughs Oikawa. “How long have you been waiting to say that?”

When he smiles, there are years etched into the lines around his eyes. “I’ve been telling it to myself my whole life.”