Work Text:
It’s not the same, as how it used to snow back home. Back in Miyagi, it was thick, endless, and consuming. A complete white out that buried homes, weighted tree branches and blurred lines. Here, plows and people and whipping winds peel snow back from pavement before it has the chance to even really settle. Before it has the chance to quiet anything. Tooru might miss that the most. The quiet of it all.
“Is it snowing yet?” Iwa-chan asks over the phone. “By you?”
That’s a lie. That’s not what he misses the most.
Tooru says something. About how it’s too warm in the city, a hub of trapped hot air and exhaust, and he tries not to let his chest catch on the words by you. Tries not to think about how, if he was back home, they’d be together right now. Probably in Iwa-chan’s bedroom, peeking out the window, hot tea in their hands with steam unfurling around Iwa-chan’s stubble smattered jaw as he brings his cup up to gently blow. And Tooru would be trying not to stare at the purse of his lips.
“Gonna go out and build a snowman tomorrow?” Tooru asks. They had some idea as kids--a snowman army. So many snowmen they could conquer the world together. That had been a lifetime ago, staring at a front toothless Iwa-chan with snowflakes sticking to his fringe, his eyelashes, making them dark and wet. Red cheeks Tooru remembers wishing he could pinch without Iwa-chan getting mad.
There’s a laugh. “Aren’t we too old for that shit now?”
If Tooru was still back home, he would drag Iwa-chan out of bed tomorrow morning. He would smush those red cheeks no matter how mad Iwa-chan gets. He hums in the affirmative anyway, lowering the heat under the kettle he has on the stove.
“Does it get quiet there, too?” Iwa-chan asks. “It’s so quiet here.”
Iwa-chan whispers when it snows, like the flakes blanket his mood along with the ground. Softening it. Making Tooru’s heart swell at the sound of something so small.
“I don’t know. It hasn’t snowed at all here,” Tooru says. “My neighbor says it has to start snowing at a really specific time for it to get quiet by early morning. Otherwise everything is just as loud as it always is.”
In Tokyo. Where he is.
“Living in the city’s really different, huh?”
Iwa-chan chose to stay close to his family. Chose to play on a team at a local university, studying something or other that changes almost every time they speak, with an apprenticeship under a local artisan carpenter. He posts pictures all the time on stuff he’s made, and Tooru will sit running his fingers over the phone screen, mind conjuring up the worst possible images of Iwaizumi Hajime creating something from nothing with his own two hands.
“My mom misses you,” Iwa-chan says, changing the subject. “She says it’s too quiet without you.”
Tooru gasps, “I miss Auntie, too! Tell her Tooru-chan misses her, and give her a hug for me, and buy her a bouquet of really nice flowers. No baby’s breath, Iwa-chan, I’m talking something big and innovative. She deserves nothing less.”
He hears shifting, a door sliding shut. “Tell me how in the hell flowers can be innovative.”
“I don’t know, Iwa-chan. Tell me what it’s like to be so simple-minded.”
He hasn’t seen his best friend in over a month, and hearing Iwa-chan threaten him with bodily harm over the phone is nowhere near as endearing as it is when done in person.
He falls asleep to the sound of Iwa-chan talking about the basics of framing, curled up on the couch with his phone cradled against his tight chest. It’s what wakes him up the next morning, gray outside his window boast rain, rain, and more rain, notification dinging. He knows it’s the group chat. It’s always the group chat. If Hanamaki is sending them links to “real ghosts caught on camera” videos again, trying to convince them to start their own ghost hunting troupe, Tooru’s going to--
hey look who i found
It takes a second for Tooru’s eyes to adjust, for his sleep muddled thoughts to catch up, so he can believe what he’s seeing. Two heads of dark hair peppered with chunky flakes of snow, Iwa-chan’s face in that standard half-smile with his arm stretched out holding his phone to take a picture of himself and a semi-terrified Tobio-chan.
“You’ve got.” Tooru rips the blankets off of himself. “To be kidding me.”
He stares at it as he walks, pointlessly, around his apartment. Pacing. He paces and stares at his phone screen, waiting for some kind of reaction. From anyone. He can’t be the first person to say something, because it’ll just come out ugly and petty sounding, and now that he’s a university student he’s resolved to stop being so--
I can see snot dripping out of your nose, he taps against his screen, sends, and flings his phone back onto his bed.
Another week of off-and-on rain, a warm southern wind keeping him in light jackets. There are a few icy nights from leftover storms, frozen ground and frosted over windows, but still. No snow. As the outside world thaws, Tooru’s insides freeze as more pictures flood his phone.
“Since when are they even friends?” he hisses into the receiver. “They’ve never been close.”
“You know how Iwaizumi is with underclassmen,” comes Hanamaki’s flippant tone through the receiver. “He doesn’t do anything half-assed. You know how he is.”
Tooru does know. But still. It seems like a day in the past week hasn’t passed without proof of Iwa-chan and Tobio-chan’s New and Epic Friendship. If it’s not the group chat, it’s instagram. If it’s not instagram, it’s snapchat. If it’s not snapchat, it’s Tooru’s own traitorous brain conjuring up images of the two of them frolicking through meadows and braiding flower crowns and moving in together.
“And, you know, you left,” Makki says, like it’s the most one dimensional thing in the world. “Him and Mattsun and some of the other guys still hang out, but everyone else is gone. Iwaizumi’s just being friendly.”
“But why him?”
There’s a beat. “Oikawa, I know how you are, but honestly, you sound like a twelve year old.”
Tooru examines the split ends in his fringe between his fingertips. He hasn’t gotten a haircut in months.
“What if they play together,” Tooru feels the words rip out of his chest. “What if Tobio-chan invites him to Karasuno for a practice match or something and they’re on the same side and Tobio tosses to Iwa-chan and Iwa-chan--”
“If this is some convoluted scenario where Iwaizumi falls in love with Kageyama because he sets a volleyball better than you, I’m literally going to force myself through the phone and vomit all over you.”
“It’s not convoluted,” but he doesn’t bother denying anything else.
A pause, then, “I’m hanging up on you now.”
Hanamaki has always been a man of his word.
Almost immediately after this, there’s a new picture. Tobio and Iwa-chan eating ramen.
And eventually more: Iwa-chan and Tobio at the arcade. Iwa-chan and Tobio going for a run. There’s a day where rain in Miyagi turns to snow--dense, sticky, and perfect for packing together tightly. Instagram boasts a tiny snowman with twig arms and a pebble face, Tobio in the background, half out of frame, the caption, he’s small but don’t underestimate him!!!!
Somehow, it hurts worse. Worse than the picture of them at Tooru’s favorite burger spot. Worse than the one of them in Iwa-chan’s living room. It hurts worse than the picture of them with a volleyball tucked under Tobio’s arm, the orange glow of a gymnasium saturating the picture, blurry and filter-less.
“This is dumb,” Tooru tells his squeezing ribs, a closing fist around his lungs, his heart. “This is dumb.”
He turns his phone off and throws it, not paying attention to where it lands.
Imagine his surprise when the landline starts ringing.
He forgets he even has the thing, tucked into the wall next to the fridge, film of dust over the plastic. He figures it’s a telemarketer or something, ignores it, and turns the page in his text book, resolute. He rereads the same paragraph four times and retains nothing, skips to the next page to try again, rinse and repeat.
“Oi, jackass,” the voice rings out in the apartment when the answering machine beeps, against the walls Hajime has never been inside. It ricochettes in time with his heartbeat, rattling thought he plastic speaker, too loud and sure to belong in such a small contraption. “Pick up. I know you’re there.”
“How did you even get this number?” he asks from across the room, no intention of getting up to answer so he can actually ask.
“Your mom gave me this number. I don’t know. You won’t pick up your cell, so I thought maybe it was broke or...I don’t know. Pick up.” Tooru actually flinches, nerves urging him to move with thrumming electricity. “Or call me back. Please.”
Click. Tooru’s gut sinks. He should’ve picked up. Or it’s good that he didn’t. He can’t decide.
He daydreams through classes about storming into Karasuno, finding Tobio, and throttling him. He daydreams about kidnapping Iwa-chan and bringing him to Tokyo, locking them in his apartment together where they’ll watch bad daytime TV until spring. He hovers his thumb over Tobio-chan’s contact in his phone, thinks about texting, calling, yelling, he’s mine, he’s my best friend, get your own. And he’ll smile grimly at his ceiling, because how damn selfish is he? Iwa-chan can hang out with whoever he wants. He can do whatever he wants. Tooru knows he has no right to even try to tell Iwa-chan what to do with his life, but it doesn’t stop the waves of want pushing and pulling in his chest. He thinks about telling Iwa-chan that, but even daydream-Tooru can never manage to get it right.
And he thinks about saying it. Saying what he should’ve said before he left, but couldn’t find the words. He imagines, in agonizing detail, of Iwaizumi rejecting him. He fantasizes, quietly, in his weaker moments, about Iwaizumi saying it back.
He ignores Iwa-chan’s calls and texts, because he’s so afraid of what might spill out if he picks up the phone like this.
The square by his apartment building is decorated for Christmas in white string lights, a towering tree on the far end behind the fountain, wrapped in warm colors and glittering ornaments. It’s late, his dinner date a total bust--a nice girl from his economics class who wanted to go to karaoke after. I’ve actually got an early practice tomorrow, so I should probably get back. But next time, okay? Text me!
He entertains the idea of finding a bar and getting good and shitfaced. He does the next worst thing and turns on his phone, mentally preparing himself to see Iwa-chan and Tobio in matching sweaters or sharing hot coco or something equally horrendous.
His thumb hovers over the app when the screen lights up with a muted picture from that summer of Iwa-chan smashing a watermelon with a baseball bat. The short sleeves of his one man army shirt are rolled up, flexed arms bare, tongue tacked to the corner of his mouth in single minded determination as red and green explodes in front of him. A photo from a lifetime ago, alive in his hand.
He answers without thinking. He answers because Iwa-chan is calling his his body’s knee jerk reflex is to pick up.
“Hey, is it snowing by you yet?”
Tooru doesn’t bother to look up. “Nope.”
“It just started here. Really pretty. Big fluffy flakes,” Iwa-chan says. “I’m on my balcony watching them come down.”
And it just happens. He says it. “Is Tobio-chan with you?”
A gust of wind crackles in the receiver. “What? No.”
“Really?” it builds up, he feels it rising in his chest, bubbling up out of his mouth before he can even think to stop it. “Because I thought you two were like, the best of friends now.”
“He lives right by my job. We hang out sometimes,” he can practically hear Iwa-chan shrug. “That’s all.”
“That’s all,” Tooru parrots tonelessly. “That’s all.”
“What in the hell is your problem?” Iwa-chan bites. “We haven’t talked in almost two weeks, and I--”
He cuts himself off, and Tooru realizes he was hanging on the end of every word Iwaizumi said when they stop so suddenly.
“What?” Tooru asks. Demands. “You what? It’s not like you couldn’t have called me first.”
“I hate calling you when you’re like this,” Iwa-chan says. “I hate feeling like I’m the only one trying.”
And Tooru doesn’t know what to say to that. He doesn’t know anything past the white hot flush of anger that rips through him with the ferocity of an avalanche, burying him.
He ends the call without saying another word. The lights intertwined in the tree branches above head blur into beautiful, glowing orbs as his eyes burn.
The weather channel says there’s a 90% chance that the snowstorm is going to take a sharp turn towards the coast and head out to sea before it even reaches Tokyo. Good, Tooru thinks, because he can’t deal with dirty, loud city snow right now. He wraps himself in three blankets, hand warmers in his socks, space heater cranked up and heating pad against his back on the sofa as he flips aimlessly through channels.
The knock on his door is definitely Taka-chan from next door, asking to borrow his spare space heater or something, because her’s broke again. He groans, blanket over his shoulders as he shuffles towards the door. He calls out, “I’ve got an extra electric blanket if you--”
The door swings open. Iwaizumi, who ridiculously enough, looks just as surprised as Tooru feels. Like he didn’t expect Tooru to be there at his own apartment.
“You’re not Taka-chan,” Tooru says.
“Obviously, idiot,” Iwa-chan pushes through the door. “Let me in, it’s freezing.”
“Iwa-chan,” Tooru is breathless. They haven’t seen each other since the leaves were still changing colors. “Iwa-chan, what’re you--”
“Who’s Taka-chan?” he asks, his back still to Tooru as he throws off his gloves, hat, and scarf onto the floor.
Tooru blinks. “My neighbor?”
Iwa-chan spins around, eyes narrow and hard, mouth thin. “So you get to act all put out because I see Kageyama sometimes, but you can have Taka-chan and probably a million other chan’s--”
“I’m not put out that you talk to Kageyama,” Tooru snaps, and Iwa-chan’s eyebrow twitches in irritation. He bends. “Okay. I am. So what? He’s our rival, and he’s a high schooler and he’s a little bratty weirdo. I can’t understand why you’d want to replace me with him. Of all people.”
Iwa-chan’s eyes flash, lip curling over his teeth. “You replaced me with a whole fucking city.”
They stand there, in front of the door, TV murmuring in the background, the hiss and click of heat booming in the small space. For all the words that had just spilled out of Tooru’s mouth, suddenly not even a whisper of a half-sound could be forced out of his dry, tight throat as Iwa-chan stares him down.
Iwa-chan’s the first to look away. “Whatever. It’s not important. I don’t know why I came here.”
“Yes, you do.” Tooru presses forward. “You do.”
Because you knew I needed you, Tooru thinks, holding his breath.
Iwa-chan’s half lidded eyes gaze at him, raw and open and shining before it blinks away, Hajime stepping forwarding into the apartment, shoes still on.
He leans his forehead against Tooru’s shoulder. “I guess I just...really needed to see you.”
Tooru finally has a reason to take out the instant coffee he’s kept in the bottom cabinet for the last four months. I don’t get coffee machines, Iwa-chan liked to always say. Instant does the same thing faster, doesn’t it?
Iwa-chan likes things simple. Straightforward. That’s how he’s been their entire lives. Tooru is always the one who convolutes and complicates and makes a mess out of the clean and clear threads that intertwine them, stressing them to the point of breaking. He hands Iwa-chan a steaming cup and settles down across from him on the other side of the coffeetable, knees drawn in tight, shoulders hunched as he stares at his own rounded reflection in the tea.
“You get quiet like that,” Iwa-chan says over the rim of his mug. “And I get annoyed. Just say what’s on your mind.”
The pang of shock gives way to something just a shade shy of relief. Of course.
“I’m sorry,” is what finally comes out. “I’m just...really sorry. I think I suck at being a good friend.”
Iwa-chan shrugs. “Not all the time.”
Tooru’s head snaps up. “You’re supposed to say I’m always a good friend! You’re supposed to reassure me.”
“Oikawa,” he sighs, putting his cup down. “You are the best friend I have ever had. You’re my partner, okay? You know that. I--you know that. But no one is...you can’t be a good friend all of the time. Everyone fucks up stuff like that. You see it, at least. You realize when you’re fucking up. S’the first step to fixing it.”
He looks at Iwa-chan’s hands. “What’s the next step, then?”
A shrug. “Talking about it.”
He throws himself onto the coffee table, face down. “But that’s so hard!”
“You think this is easy for me?” Iwa-chan pokes at the top Tooru’s head. “I hate this shit! I hate that I play your games sometimes to get back at you because you ignore me like a petulant child. I hate that it makes me just as bad.”
He blinks up at Iwaizumi. “Play what game?”
He has the decency to turn red. “I didn’t have to post those pics of me and Kageyama every time I saw him. I just knew it would get your attention. I liked the idea of pissing you off as much as you pissed me off.”
Tooru jumps to his feet, pointing and exclaiming. “Fraud! Liar! Swindler!”
A dry, bored look meets him. “Sit down, you ass.”
Tooru sinks back down, pouting outright, arms crossed.
“And Kageyama’s a good kid.” He sips his coffee. “Intense and weird, but hey, apparently that’s how I like ‘em.”
Tooru wrinkles his nose. “What do you even talk about?”
“You, mostly,” Iwa-chan admits, so easily. Tooru has always hated and loved and envied and reviled how honest Iwaizumi Hajime can be. Like he doesn’t even think of ever being anything but.
Tooru wants that. He wants to be like that for Iwa-chan, if for nothing else. He feels it, alive under his skin, every moment spent late after practice, alone in the club room, on the long walk home. So many early mornings tucked into sofa cushions when they should’ve been asleep. Every half smile, and Trashykawa, every head thrown back in a peel of laughter. Every opportunity the universe gave him, every single time the stars overhead and every blade of grass and every falling snowflake screamed, tell him! and he still couldn’t do it. He feels it all sitting across the coffee table from Hajime.
“Hey,” Iwa-chan says, his head turned to the side. “It’s snowing.”
Tooru forces himself to look away.
They both stare through the sliding glass door, and Tooru moves to undo the latch, pushing it open, frigid wind enveloping them. Huddled together, they shuffle through onto the balcony under Tooru’s throw blanket. It must’ve been snowing for some time, because everything is white. Blinding, sparkling, untouched white. Whatever cars had driven up the street, their tracks were already brushed over with a new dusting, any footprints having vanished. It’s like, standing there on the balcony under the same blanket, hand warmers in their socks, together, that they’re the only two people in the world.
“It absorbs the sound,” Iwa-chan says, in that voice. “The snow, I mean. It absorbs all the noise.”
It isn’t absorbing the sound of Tooru’s thundering heart. He’s almost afraid to say anything, like if he opens his mouth, Iwa-chan will definitely hear it. “Hajime.”
Round eyes snap towards him, the lights of the city reflecting in a wide gleam, because Tooru might as well have said everything he’s been thinking for four years now in that one, breathy, soft, snowflake of a name.
Cold bitten noses bump, and warm mouths find each other. Suddenly, everything that’s been raging inside of him for what’s seemed like eons quiets the second Iwa-chan’s hand comes up to cup his jaw, leading the kiss to the barest suggestion of something deeper. A flicker and a pop before they pull apart.
The seams burst, and Tooru can’t help but laugh. An ugly snorted laugh as he lets his head fall forward, forehead against Iwa-chan’s. The hand that’s been on his jaw comes around to press against the back of Tooru’s head, messing with the hair there. “Don’t laugh, you ass, this is supposed to be the moment.” But he’s laughing, too.
“We’ll build a snowman tomorrow, right?” Tooru asks, later that night, tucked into Hajime’s side on the futon. He’d tried to be all gentleman like and take the sofa, but Tooru had clung and pulled and kissed until Iwa-chan caved. He’s tired of pretending he doesn’t want. He’s tired of pulling back. Now the soft inside of Iwa-chan’s bicep is his pillow and their knees are bumping under the blanket. “There’s a park two or three blocks from here.”
“If you want,” Iwa-chan sighs, like it’s such a chore. His fingertips stroke lightly over the sliver of Tooru’s hipbone peeking out from the ridden up hem of his sweater.
Tooru shifts closer. He wants another kiss. “When do you have to go back?”
Iwa-chan’s fingers pause. “I wanted to...talk to you. About that.”
“About what?”
“About,” he clears his throat, saying, “Maybe...Sawa-sensei said she has someone she knows in Chiba. A carpenter. He’s looking for an apprentice.”
Tooru bolts upright. Iwa-chan is bright, bright red. He asks, “What about school?”
Iwa-chan pulls the blankets up over his face. “Don’t make me say it. I’ve said enough for a lifetime.”
“One more thing,” Tooru pleads, tugging it back down. “Just say this one last thing.”
“When spring comes,” Iwa-chan says, “I’ll be taking the entrance exam. So you’re gonna have to help me study. And I mean study. Night day, seven days a week. Flashcards out the wazoo.”
“I--but--” he splutters, “What about Auntie?”
“She’s practically shoving me out the door!” Iwa-chan bursts out, flopping onto his back. “She and her boyfriend are going to Indonesia for like a month next summer. And she says they’re thinking about moving in together--I mean what the hell.”
He’s sitting up now, too, raking hand through his hair. Tooru wants to kiss the soft spot under his ear. Almost two decades of being best friends has left them with default settings for almost everything. But this is wholly new, wholly terrifying, wholly electrifying. At least, he thinks, he’s not in this alone.
“I realized some stuff. Past couple months, y’know, they’ve been hard.” Iwa-chan swallows. “Everyone is moving on except me. Everyone is changing. As much as I love Miyagi and, and Seijou, and all the places we grew up….even if I might want to go back there someday, I’m lucky enough to have this chance. I’m lucky enough to know one thing, and that’s--” He looks to the window, then to Tooru. “I want us to change, too. Together.”
He’s not crying. He’s not. He sniffles, though. Hard. “What about Tobio-chan?”
“What about him?” Realization dawns in half-lidded eyes, one corner of his mouth ticking up. “Are you seriously still jealous?”
“I will not and have never been jealous,” Tooru snaps, “of that grubby, bratty, weirdo--”
Iwa-chan laughs, falling onto his back again. “You’re such a liar.”
Tooru puffs out his cheeks to hold in the hmph threatening to come out. He twists away, folding into himself with his knees to his chest, arms around them.
“Oikawa.”
Nope. Not giving in.
“Come over here.”
No.
A sigh. “At least look at me.”
Tooru tightens his hold around himself. He’s not giving in. He’s not--
A large, warm, calloused hand--the hand that has spiked hundreds of his tosses, the hand that creates something out of nothing, the hand Tooru used to cling to walking to the park, to school, the hand that reached out to help him up every time he fell--slides up the back of Tooru’s sweater. Up the knots of his spine, rubbing slowly over the burning skin there. Tooru is on fire.
“Come back,” Iwa-chan says again.
He flops backwards onto Iwa-chan, and Iwa-chan shoves, the two of them winding up in a heap on the floor. There’s kissing, and there’s Hajime tangled up in his sheets, and there’s snow. Blankets and blankets of snow, trillions and trillions of snowflakes, and they just keep falling.
/end.