More Important
An angsty Timeskipped!Toru Oikawa x GN!Reader
WC: 903
Notes: This one is angsty so far! Toru and the reader are in a strained established relationship, Toru is checked out, Reader wants to feel close again. This is only part one and there will be a poll for y'all to decide what happens in part two.
Beta read by me at roughly 3am so there's probably mistakes, whoops
More Important:
It was almost three in the morning when you finally heard the front door open. You rushed to the front room, calling out to your fiancé, “Toru?”
He only gave a hum of acknowledgement.
And despite knowing the answer, you cautiously asked, “Where have you been?”
“I was at the gym,” he snapped, “But you already knew that, so why are you asking stupid questions?”
You bit back the irritation that formed behind your ribs at his tone; clearly his extra practice hadn’t gone the way he wanted it to. “Toru, you told me you were going to be done at midnight, and that would have already been four extra hours by itself. The team-”
“The team is depending on me to be perfect!” He turned fully to face you then, staring at you like he was daring you to challenge him.
“I know that Toru,” you said in attempt to quell whatever this anger was. “But your body can’t take this. Your health is more important than-”
It was the loudest you’d ever heard him when he screamed at you that, “Nothing is more important than volleyball!”
And Toru kept yelling after that; about the set he couldn’t get right, about how exhausted he was, about how you’d started pestering him the moment he walked through the door. But you couldn’t really hear any of it over the ringing in your ears. Nothing was more important than volleyball? Nothing? The fingertips on your right hand found the ring on your left.
Nothing was more important than volleyball. You knew that. You’d known that for a long time; it was the reason you’d initially turned him down when he asked you out. You’d known who he was, how much the sport meant to him, but he was charming, and he’d convinced you otherwise. Against your better judgement you’d started seeing him, and for a long time, he kept his promises. He came home at reasonable hours after extra practices, took days off to spend time with you, set up romantic date nights and occasionally even trips to make up for his time gone for away games. He’d proposed by telling you that you were the most important person in his life, that he loved you more than anything, “even volleyball,” he’d joked. And you’d believed him. But that was a year ago. Now, he was preparing for the Olympics, and those promises started asking more of you in exchange, then stopped being upheld entirely.
You vaguely heard Toru say something about going to bed, then flinched when you heard the bedroom door slam shut.
Your eyes, still mostly glazed over, drifted down to the ring you’d been fiddling with, a cold detachment settling over you. You were right, you realized, those almost four years ago when you’d speculated that he’d never love anything more than the game he’d been so dedicated to for so long. You never thought you’d hate being right. You’d wanted so badly to be wrong that you’d let him convince you the things you knew were a lie, and maybe that was the part that hurt the worst. Because you’d known better, you always had, and you’d fallen for it, fallen for him, anyway.
It had been months since the last time he’d taken you out on a date, months since he’d come home at the end of his team’s practice, months since the last time he’d sat down with you long enough to even watch a movie. Forget about a day off to spend with you when the Olympics were at stake, forget about taking kindly to your reminders about rehabbing his knee, and apparently, forget about memories like “more than anything, even volleyball.” There was a flash of something bitter in your mind that begged to forgive this too, that Toru didn’t mean it, that he was tired and angry, and it wasn’t your fault, that he’d just been lashing out. But when this was the longest conversation you’d had in weeks, when you couldn’t remember the last time he’d kissed you goodnight, it was hard to hold that space. The attempt you’d made at telling him that you missed him and how much you’d appreciate him taking time out of his incredibly busy schedule to have dinner with you tonight had been met with a disinterested hum.
Your eyes drifted toward the table, where just a few hours ago, you’d laid out a beautiful dinner, then sat to eat it by yourself. You were tired of eating alone. You were tired of waking up in the middle of the night to him sliding into your bed without saying anything, without touching you. You were tired of feeling like an afterthought.
You knew a long time ago that this was where you would stand in the hierarchy of Toru’s life. What use is companionship when every effort has been leading to the most famous sporting event in the world? Nothing was more important than that. Not you, not your relationship, not the promise of forever he’d asked to make with you only a year ago.
Your ring clinked lightly against the counter when you set it down.
Your pajamas did little to shield you from the breeze when you locked the door behind you.
Your tears blurred your vision when you rounded the corner, and your shared home fell out of the reflection in your rearview mirror.
How long does Toru wait?
1 week
2 weeks
