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When Oikawa Tooru leaves Japan for the first time in his life, it’s on a chilly day in May, a little over a month after his high school graduation. His mother wakes him in what barely counts as morning, earlier than any person with a sense of self-love would ever consider, so he can help his entire family in playing Tetris with his army of luggage until it fits in his brother-in-law’s small but mighty family sedan.
Turns out, half asleep Tooru’s not a very helpful teammate in luggage Tetris, so he’s quickly banished back inside to do another sweep of the house, triple checking he won’t leave anything essential behind. He meanders back up the stairs, truly not all that worried about forgetting something. His carry-on is ridiculously stuffed and dangerously hard to zip closed, all sense of cool and decorum he might usually carry withered in the face of a day-long flight across the world.
He stops in front of his bedroom door, laughing a little at himself. He can almost hear what Hajime would say if he had heard what just went through his head. ‘You’re the most uptight perfectionist I’ve ever met, packing like you’re a doomsday prepper is completely in character for you.’ Tooru can even picture the accompanying eye roll. The thought makes him smile.
He pushes open the door, and has a moment of standing at the threshold, taking in the bareness of his bedroom. His walls are light blue and blank like they haven’t been since he was very small. Only the standing furniture outlines the shape of his room, the place in this house that was completely his own. His clothes, his dorky alien figurines, his movie posters, spreads from sports magazines, books and manga he couldn’t bear throwing away, and more volleyballs than he knew he owned, all eighteen years of his life packed away into two giant suitcases and a dozen unremarkable cardboard boxes.
It should have amounted to more, he thinks, these things that lived on his walls and on shelves and in closets, these expressions of the person that he tried to be and the person that he is. It feels like there should be more , like the boxes should be full to the edge of bursting the way his chest feels looking at them, but they aren’t. They just sit there, one on top of the other, quiet and unassuming. Waiting patiently for the day he comes back for them.
Tooru turns off his overhead light, striding across the room to fall back onto his bed, gaze locked on the ceiling. Outside, the sun is only beginning to give the first hints of rising, meaning that when he looks up, it’s still dark enough for the rubber stars scattered across it to glow faintly.
At first glance, they look to be grouped randomly, but if you look just a little longer, and if you know what you’re looking for, they form the shape of constellations, their positions charted out from star maps and astronomy books spread across the floor for reference as a twelve year old Tooru went up and down the step ladder, constructing a mini galaxy one and two stars at a time. He traces their shapes now, over and over until they glow on the back of his eyelids, and breathes.
It’s finally hitting him, maybe, that he’s crossed the event horizon, the point of no return firmly in the rearview mirror. He’s about to turn his entire life upside down, absolutely no take-backsies, and he waits for the anxiety to hit, the way it did applying for his visa, or finding an apartment in San Juan that wouldn’t leave him destitute within a month. And it does, faintly, a dull pang that only just registers among the buzzing flooding his veins, the same kind as the early parts of a tournament, the way he feels when he’s staring down a challenge he knows he can win. Somehow, despite all of the endless arguments and assurances he’s given to almost everyone in his life for the last half a year, Tooru is a bit shocked to recognize the jitters making his hands tremble are excitement.
Downstairs, there’s a commotion, the warm cheer of his mother loudly greeting newcomers to the moving party. The Iwaizumis must be here then, to have a quick breakfast before they all get in their respective cars and drive to the airport. Then, not soon after, thumping steps bound up the staircase, trailing down the hall until there’s a knock on his door frame, short and curt. Tooru turns his head and isn’t surprised to see Hajime standing there, bundled up in a sweatshirt, looking tired and sleep rumpled. He pads over to the bed, wordlessly shooing Tooru to the side with a sleepy glare, and Tooru shuffles over on his twin bed, making space for his best friend. Hajime falls into place beside him, a warm line against Tooru's side, and for a while they both lay there in silence, nothing but the steady beat of their breathing and the chorus of their families moving around below them, laughter ringing out and food sizzling on the stove.
“You feel ready to go?” Hajime asks.
Tooru doesn’t answer right away. He’s self aware enough to admit that with anyone else he wouldn’t have hesitated to whip out a smile and yet more promises that he knows what he’s doing and is more than ready for it. But this isn’t anyone, this is Hajime, and Tooru understands the real question going unsaid under the small talk. And even more than that, he knows Hajime won’t accept something half-assed or dishonest, not now.
‘You still sure you’re doing this for the right reasons?’
Tooru'd be offended if he couldn’t recognize Hajime’s gruff tone as encouragement and not an accusation. If he hadn’t camped out in Hajime’s room less than three months ago, terrified he was making the wrong choices, that he was still letting his insecurities rule his life, that rather than forging his own path he was running away from Japanese volleyball and everything it implies.
Hajime had weathered that storm right next to him, and after a short but embarrassingly intense crying session, had smacked Tooru upside the head and reminded him exactly who he was. Oikawa Tooru, one of the best high school setters not only in Miyagi prefecture, but in all of Japan, who’d been scouted by multiple highly ranked volleyball teams in his home country, but is answering a call from across the globe because the world is bigger than Japan, and maybe, in some ways, so is Tooru. Hajime certainly seems to think so, while for himself… saying so easy, but he’s still working on believing it. He has faith that if he keeps saying it loudly and long enough, eventually he’ll think so too.
Tooru nods, a small smile on his face as he replies with certainty, “Yeah. I feel good about it, all of it.” He turns his head to the side to look at his friend and sees him looking back. “I’m okay.”
Hajime’s hair rustles against the sheets as he nods in return, and Tooru watches his mouth stretch into a jubilant grin. “Good.”
Above them, rubber stars trace out the shapes of two constellations, neighbors in his room as they are in the sky. Cancer and Gemini. Tooru and Hajime. He didn’t ever tell Hajime what these two constellations were, a little too embarrassed, a little too raw; his heart branded on his ceiling for all to see, if you knew what you were looking for. Maybe he will one day.
Hajime stretches next to him, hands reaching up to the stars, before he lets them drop, one arm draping across Tooru’s chest. Well, more like thumping across his chest. It hurts, but the contact sends sparkles all throughout his nervous system, so Tooru can’t bring himself to really care.
“Ow! Iwa-chan, you brute!” Tooru complains anyway, for the sake of tradition, and Hajime just laughs at him, sitting up and running his hands through his hair.
“Come on, they’re gonna call us down soon, and I need to get a bowl of rice before Takeru eats it all.” He pushes up and off the bed, standing still and taking stock of the room just as Tooru did. He thinks Hajime must be finding himself in that same uncanny valley, seeing Tooru’s bedroom stripped down to the bare essentials. In truth, it’s never really just been Tooru’s, it’s always been theirs , shared as were most parts of their lives. The solid tote bag of items Tooru had to lug next door to the Iwazumis’ house while sorting through his belongings says that clearly enough. It was mostly Tooru, in here, but there was a lot of Hajime too.
He tries not to think about how he won’t be here, in a couple months, when Hajime packs up his own life for his own move across the world. He does wonder, though, how much of himself has lived in Hajime’s space for all this time, for these eighteen years, where the longest they’ve been without one another was the month and ten days Hajime lived before Tooru was born.
It sends a pang of hurt through Tooru’s heart to think of it, the thought of Hajime not being a window away. But it’s quickly overcome by anticipation. There’s so much to do, once he gets there. Meeting a new team, practicing with them, then going home to his own apartment, unpacking and settling down to begin something completely and totally new. And in the center of it all remains one of the most well loved and familiar parts of Tooru’s life, the throughline that connects everything he has ever been and done. Volleyball .
And it’s terrifying, of course. But at its core it’s a challenge, and if there’s one thing Oikawa Tooru does not do, thinking viciously of Ushijima, of Tobio-chan, of Karasuno with their heads hung low in defeat and high in ecstatic victory, it’s back down from a challenge. With his world blown wide open and the blinders of stifling envy crumbling more and more by the day, Tooru sees now that he has so much left to prove, and so, so much more time to do it then he can even imagine. It’s almost hard to believe less than a year ago he wholeheartedly believed his high school career was the culmination of all he could be. He wonders if a month is enough distance to already be kind of embarrassed by his high school self.
Hajime watches him fondly from the doorway, clearly enjoying whatever journey Tooru’s face has been going on, and Tooru can’t resist sticking his tongue out at him, just to see him roll his eyes around a grin the way Tooru knew he would. The first light of day is starting to break in force now, bathing Hajime in gold. Even like this, rumpled and somehow still barely more than half-awake, he's excruciatingly handsome and looks like all of Tooru’s coziest daydreams. It's going to suck being away from him, Tooru misses him already and he’s only across the room, but he’s also so excited to see everything Hajime’s going to do, and excited to show Hajime what he can do in return.
“Tooru! Hajime! Breakfast will be ready in a couple minutes! Come down quickly, we have to be on our way in an hour!” Tooru’s sister calls from downstairs. “Takeru, come back here and sit down-” Her voice fades as she walks off, and it’s just the two of them again, in a silence that isn’t heavy. This is probably the last chance they’ll get to be just the two of them for the rest of the morning, all the way up until Tooru boards his plane, but energy between them isn’t urgent. They’ve been saying their goodbyes for months by now, to the point that instead of goodbyes, they’ve become “see you laters” and “until we meet agains”. Now all that’s left between them is an understanding and the rest of their lives.
“What could be better than that?” Tooru says quietly.
“Huh?” Hajime asks, because he has functioning ears and Tooru is an idiot with a bad habit of talking to himself.
Blood rushes to his cheeks instantly, but his voice is thankfully steady when he laughs and trills, “Nothing, nothing! Get it moving, Iwa-chan, the food’s probably getting cold with you just standing there staring at me.”
Hajime shoots a significant glance at Tooru lying down on his bed, nowhere near the door, and hence, the food, but he doesn’t call him out because he is the best friend Tooru could ever ask for. Instead, he simply shrugs and says, “C’mon then, Matsukawa and Makki should be here soon.”
Tooru finally pushes himself upright, getting to his feet with one last look around. The boxes will be here, when he comes back for them, when he finds a place for the first eighteen years of his life in the next fifty. He’ll be fine.
“Don’t forget your travel case,” Hajime prompts, pointing over Tooru's shoulder, and when he follows the line of his finger he’s met with the new leather travel case his mother gifted to him sitting pleasantly on his desk. The travel case that holds his freshly minted passport, visa, and boarding pass. Exactly the sort of absolutely essential item his mother sent him back inside to ensure he wouldn’t forget. He scrambles over to collect it, turning back to see Hajime’s smile has gone smug.
“That’s why I was up here in the first place! To make sure I had everything!” Tooru huffs. Hajime just looks unimpressed.
“You’re telling me you wouldn’t have walked out of here without it, totally forgetting you left it on your desk for “safe keeping”?” He says, actually making air quotes with his fingers because he’s genuinely the worst person Tooru has ever met.
“Yes,” Tooru insists, lying through his teeth.
Hajime snorts, clearly not buying it but willing to let it go. The fact that he knows Tooru can tell he’s not buying it is probably enough for him, the asshole. Tooru has no idea why he loves this man, but it’s not like he’s going to stop, so he just groans and moves on, pushing Hajime out his doorway and down the hall, brand new travel case with a boarding pass for a one way flight to Argentina in hand.
So much newness, Tooru thinks later, after his last two friends have tumbled through the door, sitting down with his family and those who are close enough to count to eat one last breakfast before he goes off to start the rest of his life. The dining table doesn’t have enough room for everyone, so they all pile into the living room and gather around the low table.
And for the hour before they leave, there’s never an absence of laughter or smiling, everyone only a tiny bit teary eyed as Makki tells the Iwaizumis and Oikawas both embarrassing and heartwarming stories of their sons from the past three years in equal measure, Mattsun piping up with nuggets of the driest color commentary that never fails to send Tooru’s mother into hysterics.
Tooru’s cheeks hurt from the grin that never leaves his face, big and stupid and totally unselfconscious for once in his life. It’s a perfect send off, the most warm and loving bookend for his childhood Tooru could have come up with. Hajime nudges his shoulder with his own in the middle of one of his own mother’s stories, smiling so wide his eyes crinkle, and Tooru feels uncountably lucky, to have always had him, and to know he always will, no matter how far apart they may roam. He laughs, and nods.
First day of the rest of his life. He can’t fucking wait.