❝ i had no idea the view from up here would be so breathtaking. ❞ ok imagine. timeskip iwaoi but theyre BOTH pro vball players on the same team (idc which one. you can decide<3) and they just won gold haha <- person whos always hated that hajime didnt go pro
when hajime announced that he was going overseas with tooru, tooru had thought he meant it in an oblique way, as in: i’m going overseas too, but to a different country; or, i’m going overseas with you, to study bio-engineering at the nearby university — which would have been more out of left field than what actually happened, but since that hypothetical turned out to be off base, there was no point dwelling on it.
(so maybe leaving japan felt like running away a little bit. maybe he felt a little guilty about dragging hajime through years of volleyball. not that guilty, obviously, since hajime clearly enjoyed playing, even if it wasn’t to the same degree that tooru enjoyed it. or so he thought.)
what tooru needed to process was the fact that hajime had chosen to pursue a career as a volleyball player. in a professional league. on the same team tooru had made plans to join. in argentina.
at that time, he’d felt a little like his spotlight got stolen, but hajime had never shown signs of wanting the sort of attention that tooru craved, so tooru supposed he could be generous in this case and learn to share.
“dumbass,” he could imagine hajime’s voice running commentary on his thoughts, a fond note threading through it as he says, not unkindly, “stop thinking the world revolves around you.”
when the time came to go, tooru thought they’d burst onto the scene like a display of fireworks, dazzling everyone with their skills and unbeatable teamwork. hajime, more realistically, told him that he was being stupid and they’d only just lit the match, not even the fuse.
“fireworks fizzle out and die almost immediately, anyway.” — iwaizumi hajime, oikawa tooru wrangler and best friend.
he hates to admit it, but hajime might’ve had a point. between living in a country he could barely communicate in and playing with a professional team who were leagues above him in hindsight, tooru had been woefully underprepared and immediately overwhelmed by … well, for lack of a better word — life.
still, when he boiled it down to the microcosm of the two of them, it’d taken them no time at all to settle in and figure out a routine. tooru suspects that he would’ve been worse off without hajime by his side, which was a stupid thing to doubt from the beginning since it was a foundational principle of the universe that they were better together, but he was especially thankful for his best friend in this specific phase of his life.
the thing about them is this: tooru keeps shooting for the stars, hajime keeps him grounded. they were icarus and someone icarus should’ve had around, probably, because tooru may not have wings of wax but he was prone to burnout all the same, and hajime was a rational person who had twenty years of experience dealing with tooru. the point is that however they worked, they worked.
(sometimes, he wonders if hajime would have come to argentina if not for him. and then hajime kicks his ass at practice, which leaves tooru with other things to worry about, like keeping up with his best friend who he may potentially have dragged here and was now showing him up, the ungrateful son of a lovely pair of mothers.)
but life goes on. tooru grows up. he stops begrudging hajime his moments of being right, too occupied by the list of worries that refused to stop growing. practice continued to be grueling, matches were always unpredictable and therefore stress inducing, hajime remained by his side.
(sometimes, he wonders…)
the world may not revolve around me, tooru thinks to himself, but iwa-chan, sometimes it feels like you do.
time passes. at some point and despite the lack of conscious input, tooru has a paradigm shift. he doesn’t know when he reached this particular conclusion: maybe he woke up one day with it, or maybe it struck him at training, or maybe he was scrolling through social media one day and read an inspirational quote that led him to the thought:
if hajime came here because of me, then i have to take him all the way to the top.
the worries shifts into resolve.
“as long as we’re together,” tooru remembers a younger version of himself saying, writing their names out next to each other, “we’re invincible.”
when it happens, tooru doesn’t remember the time that passed in detail, can only recall snapshots of moments, hajime by his side in every significant portrait.
“i had no idea the view from up here would be so breathtaking.” hajime admits, flushed with joy and pride and victory.
when it happens, it feels like everything else pales into insignificance. because what happens is this, in order of importance: hajime is by his side. they lift the trophy into the air, and it’s not like fireworks at all. the feeling doesn’t dissipate or fizzle out, instead solidifying into a mass of satisfaction, not unlike resolve. their eyes meet, an ace and his setter.
iwa-chan, he thinks as his mind works rapidly to process the new paradigm shift, maybe i’ve been revolving around you all along, too.
“i told you i’d bring you here,” tooru grins, filing that thought away for later. he wraps an arm around hajime, keeping him close. “and we’re not done yet. this is just lighting the match, remember?”
