Begin Again
❤ ao3 link in reblogs ❤
ship: iwaizumi hajime/oikawa tooru
words: 1001
tags: Angst, Fluff and Angst, Light Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Fluff, Getting Together, Confessions, Childhood Friends, Pining, Mutual Pining, Post-Time Skip
summary:
Oikawa and Iwaizumi have drifted apart. When they drift back together again, who knows what they'll say.
---
Drifted apart.
That’s what Oikawa’s mother always said happened. He and Iwaizumi just… drifted apart.
That wasn’t entirely true. Drifting implied it was slow, like a lazy river, where no one event could be highlighted as the exact moment they broke away from each other - but no.
If she knew what had happened, she wouldn’t say they drifted. She’d say they found a pair of scissors, and severed the red string binding them. She’d say that they ran away from each other, and from themselves.
Oikawa had confessed to him. On their last day of highschool, Oikawa had held Iwaizumi’s shoulder, had looked him in the eye, and had told him the truth.
“I like you,” he’d told him, uniform jacket smudged with tears and girls’ lipstick, “and I always have. I love you, Iwa-chan.”
Iwaizumi hadn’t said anything. He’d just nodded. He didn’t look surprised, or upset, or flustered, or happy - he just looked blank, vaguely annoyed, like he always did.
They didn’t mean to stop talking. They just didn’t keep in touch. They had each others’ social media and all, but they just… stopped having conversations. Words stopped flowing so easily between them.
Iwaizumi hadn’t rejected Oikawa, exactly, but the look on his face, the plain glare he always held, hurt more than any rejection ever could.
Iwaizumi could’ve rejected Oikawa in so many ways. He could have been gentle, and let him down easily, or he could’ve been angry, or he could’ve been mocking, and every single one of those would’ve hurt far less than the blank stare, the “okay,” and then the silence.
Oh God, the silence. The way he'd gone radio flat, the way Makki and Matsunn had stopped hearing from him as well.
Apparently he'd moved to California. Good for him, Oikawa supposed.
Oikawa himself was back in Miyagi. Visiting his parents, or maybe he just missed the place - all the good memories, all the painful nostalgia, the person he'd been six years ago. Remember when he used to use way too much gel in his hair, or when his cologne smelled of watermelon?
And remember... remember his old friend, Iwaizumi?
If Oikawa was telling the truth, he still nursed a sweet spot for him. He came here not just to feel young again, but maybe, just maybe, to find Iwa, and become the people they once were for just one more day.
But he wasn't planning on telling the truth.
Sitting there, the wind flirting with his hair, the sun just acknowledging spring, Oikawa looked around the park he and Iwaizumi grew up in. Over there, under that tree, he'd had his first kiss - and there, that fountain, they used to splash around in in summer when they were ten. It felt like a fever dream, all the memories feeling so familiar and yet so foreign and so far away.
"Oikawa?" a familiar voice called. A familiar, foreign, far away voice.
"I...waizumi?"
"H-" he stammered, confused about how to start his sentence. "Hey? How... how have you been?"
"Fine."
"Good."
"You?"
"Same."
Their stilted, awkward conversation captivated neither of their attention; both of them dwelled in the past, in the memory of what was, in the thought of what could have been.
Before he could stop himself, Iwaizumi was sitting next to Oikawa, face turned slightly into the breeze, looking anywhere but the friend-turned-stranger beside him.
"I missed you."
He stared into bushes, or the horizon, or anything but Oikawa.
"I missed you too."
There was silence for a beat, and then,
"Iwaizumi?"
"Oikawa?"
They caught each others' eyes, stunned by their sudden, unified outburst.
"Let me go first."
Oikawa hesitated, but he allowed it. "Okay."
"About what you said... on the roof, all those years ago."
Here it comes. The rejection Oikawa had waited over half a decade for.
"Look, Iwa-"
"I feel the same. I did then, too." He breathed, and his heart was fighting up his throat, and blood thundered in his ears with the sound of balls ricocheting off the gym walls. "I hated myself for it." His fingers fidgeted and twitched, like spiders legs pirouetting on an invisible piano, and he continued, "So I tried to deny how I felt. I... I'm sorry I never told you the truth, Oikawa."
"Since when have you called me Oikawa?"
Oikawa was processing, still, and his mouth moved without him thinking.
"S...Shittykawa?"
A smirk graced Oikawa's pretty face, and he started to smile, but Iwaizumi wasn't done.
"I think... you know how they always say, you know, 'right person wrong time'? I think that's what happened with us. I think you were... the right person, and it might have been the right time, but I was so adamant it wasn't that I made it the wrong time instead. I forced it to to be the wrong time, so it'll never be the right time again."
He stood up.
"Anyway, Tooru- Shittykawa- see you around, maybe."
As he turned, his feet going one step, two steps-
"Iwa-chan, don't you go leaving now!"
Iwaizumi stopped, and Oikawa's heart beat like a train, like drums, faster and stronger than any spike or set or serve. That old candle that still flickered suddenly burned bright, as if dashed with gasoline, and every second Iwaizumi breathed in its direction, the flame grew from a flicker to a stovetop to a wildfire.
"We wasted nearly twenty years of our lives not knowing what to say to each other." He gulped, and then, "So what if there isn't a right time? The time is now, Iwa-chan, I don't care if it's right or not."
Iwaizumi didn't know what to say, but he didn't need to; soon, long fingers that used to send him sets all those years ago wrapped hard around his wrist and pulled him into a hug. They didn't face each other, but they didn't need to. They didn't speak.
Tooru's hair tickled the back of Iwaizumi's neck.
They didn't speak.
They didn't need to.