Work Text:
Happy Valentine’s Day, mi amor (♡°▽°♡)
The thing about time differences is that they fucking suck and Oikawa’s pretty sure that they exist specifically to make his life stupid and hard and painful.
Look, most of the time, the long distance thing is okay. It’s manageable—it aches, and aches often, and they’re impossibly different from what they had been in high school, but it’s okay. They’re dealing. He’s dealing.
It’s not as hard as he thought it would be when he first moved and they decided that if anyone could figure out how to have a relationship across an ocean, it was them. It’s not the constant crying that Oikawa pictured it would be, it’s more of the constant thrum or a dull ache behind his ribcage.
It only hurts, really, when loneliness sinks in at specific times. But mostly, he’s just warm in the security that Iwaizumi chooses and loves him enough to do this long distance thing that he probably wouldn’t do with or for anyone else.
He trusts Iwaizumi, always has; despite the possessive, jealous side of himself, Oikawa does trust him. He trusts Iwaizumi to be honest and true, to communicate what he needs and wants from him and their relationship, to be there in every way he can be.
So while he may have expected the distance to make his heart flare up in envy—at all the people who get to be with him in the flesh, at all the things Iwaizumi gets to experience without him, at all the life he’s living that has no place for Oikawa—that’s not quite how it worked out. He’s so settled in their relationship and their love that most of the time, he forgets how to feel jealous or possessive or even lonely at all.
That all being said, there are days. Days that sneak up on him and remind him of the hours upon hours of time between them, of the ocean that stops him from being able to walk next door and hold the love of his life, of the way their lives are no longer entangled so close as to be a ball of yarn but rather two straight parallel lines that can never touch.
There are days that remind him that while he’s not alone in the grand scheme of his life, he is alone in his apartment every time he comes home from practice. While Iwaizumi loves him and he loves Iwaizumi, they haven’t kissed in exactly nine months and two weeks and six days and something like four hours. While they’re dating, they can’t celebrate Valentine’s Day in the way Oikawa knows his teammates and friends will, in the way he knows Iwaizumi’s team and friends will.
Yeah. So. Most of the time, long distance is manageable. It’s just…some days are more manageable than others. Valentine’s Day, Oikawa thinks, probably ranks among the worst days to be in a long distance relationship.
Valentine’s Day has never been Oikawa’s favorite holiday to begin with, but now that the love of his life is so impossibly far away from him, he hates it even more. Before, it had been a minor inconvenience: the uptick in confessions, the chocolates he didn’t particularly enjoy, the teasing from his friends about being a heartbreaker when the only person he actually wanted had never looked twice at him.
Now, though, it’s just a painful reminder of the distance between him and Iwaizumi. Everywhere he turns, someone is talking about how in love they are, or how happy they are, or what their plans with their significant others are. He can’t even find sympathy in his single friends, because they all know, ultimately, that he’s in a deeply happy and comfortable and stable relationship. They don’t really care for his sadness about the holiday because they know he is, at the beginning and middle and end of the day, loved.
He knows that too, really, he does. He knows Iwaizumi loves him. They have plans for a video call the next day, because Iwaizumi is apparently too busy the day of Valentine’s. This is something that does not bother Oikawa. Not at all.
It’s because he knows that Iwaizumi is apparently, oh, so busy all of February 14th that he refuses to overthink the fact that Iwaizumi hasn’t replied to his good morning text yet. It’s a twelve hour time difference between Argentina and Japan. A good morning from Oikawa should warrant a response from Iwaizumi. Or, it always has before.
There’s no obvious reason why Iwaizumi would be letting this text go unanswered or maybe even unread. Oikawa texted at 7am on Valentine's Day, which means that he would have at least liked a heart emoji—not that Iwaizumi uses those—or just some acknowledgement by 11am, which is his water break and often Iwaizumi’s bedtime.
Everything had seemed fine the day before. Iwaizumi had wished him a happy Valentine’s Day when he woke up and Oikawa had responded almost immediately. They even had a brief phone call later, and everything was fine. Oikawa was fine, if a little sleepy. Iwaizumi was fine, if a little distracted. But Oikawa had assumed any distraction had been because he was on his lunch break and therefore at work, wrangling a bunch of people Oikawa can almost stand the names of on a good day.
Oikawa had gone to bed at one in the morning, under the impression that they were fine. They’d have a real celebration and call on the 15th, because Iwaizumi is busy and this is something Oikawa understands. He gets being busy. He does.
But fuck. Fuck. Fuck. He’s also lonely. He’s lonely and he misses Iwaizumi a little more than usual today, and while Oikawa knows this isn’t true, sometimes it feels like Iwaizumi doesn’t miss him nearly as much as he misses Iwaizumi.
Iwaizumi had adjusted to the distance much more quickly than Oikawa did. While Oikawa somewhat stumbled his way into being comfortable with it, Iwaizumi seemed to slip into it in the same way you wade into water.
He had taken Oikawa’s new schedule in stride, and had understood every time Oikawa had to reschedule or skip a video call. He had easily communicated it when he was starting to feel left behind or forgotten, and then again when he felt more secure. He had been satisfied by the good morning texts in place of good morning kisses. He had adjusted his own behavior when Oikawa finally gathered up the guts to tell him that he felt lonely, and felt it all the time.
They had figured out a new rhythm, one they were both happy with, but Iwaizumi figured out what he could give and what he needed much easier than Oikawa did. Still—Oikawa had gotten there. They’re coming up on ten years dating, and most of that has been with them on opposite sides of the globe.
But maybe ten years of long distance is just—a few too many for Iwaizumi. Maybe Iwaizumi is done settling for what Oikawa can manage to give him. Maybe he’s done waiting for a change in what they’re both coming to understand: as long as Oikawa plays volleyball and as long as Iwaizumi stays with his dream job, they will not be able to build a life together.
In the CA San Juan training gym, Oikawa exhales shakily. He serves the ball, a deadly punch that holds all his frustration and loneliness and fear. The one jump serve doesn’t solve any of that, not really, but at least some of the jittery energy in his hands is subsiding. He can’t afford to be thinking about this during practice. He needs to focus. Just—give him another shaky breath and another jump and maybe he’ll feel better.
At noon in Argentina—four hours after Oikawa’s text and midnight in Japan—Oikawa goes on lunch break, pretending for all he’s worth that he’s not itching to look at his phone notifications. He doesn’t care if Iwaizumi hasn’t answered him at any point between Japan’s 7pm and midnight. It just means that Iwaizumi is busy, as he had said he would be. There’s nothing to worry about.
But it’s Valentine’s Day and Oikawa is not exactly known for his ability to not worry about things. Iwaizumi has given no reason to doubt him, but it’s also just been a long week and the loneliness that Oikawa is usually so good at fighting seems to have just a few more teeth today.
His teammates invite him over to sit together in a nearby courtyard outside, but Oikawa waves them off. He’s tempted to stay in the gym and keep practicing, but then he thinks of Iwaizumi’s frown if he were to find out about that—but also, Iwaizumi isn’t fucking here.
No, Iwaizumi isn’t even talking to him. He’s off in Japan doing fuck knows what. He’s with other people doing things that do not ask for Oikawa’s presence and Oikawa is trying to deny how much that hurts, but it’s getting harder and harder to do so with every minute that he doesn’t hear from Iwaizumi on this stupid fucking day of love.
The thing is—okay, look, twelve hours is a big time difference. Oikawa knows that. He does. It’s something he’s as familiar with as Iwaizumi is. It means that texting and calling and seeing each other is really fucking hard. When one is free, the other is asleep. When one is out of work, the other is just arriving at work. It’s hard to schedule things when your suns rise at the opposite times of day. So Oikawa has never faulted Iwaizumi for falling asleep on a call or not being able to text back within a few minutes like he did in high school.
Usually, though, the two of them manage to make up for the time difference. They text throughout the day despite the lack of responses. They leave voicemails when the other can’t pick up the phone. They send voice memos when a video call is out of the question due to the hour.
It’s the little things that have begun to matter the most since they moved from neighboring childhood bedrooms to different time zones. It’s the Snapchats captioned, “This reminded me of you.” It’s the Instagram memes they tag each other in. It’s the shared playlist on Spotify, filled with fourteen hours of sappy love songs and bad club music and angry music and TV show theme songs and songs with lyrics that hit a little too close to home.
So sure, the time zones make texting and calling hard. But never in their relationship has the time difference meant complete radio silence. Hearing absolutely nothing from Iwaizumi for so long is strange and uncomfortable and worrying, all emotions Oikawa hates associating with his partner.
He debates it for the entire first half of his lunch break, before giving in to his anxiety. And just—he’s not proud of it, but he misses Iwaizumi and he just wants to hear his voice and see his stupid smile that Oikawa is so in love with.
In four of the previous few hours that they’re both awake for, Iwaizumi has left exactly nine texts and a Snapchat unanswered. Oikawa wouldn’t consider himself a clingy partner—at least, he wouldn’t anymore—but he only gets so much time when they’re both awake and it would be nice to at least get some acknowledgement. It could just be in the form of “can’t talk rn, text back soon,” and that would be enough. It really would be.
But he doesn’t get that, and so he texts Hinata; one of the few Japanese national team players Oikawa has the phone number for. They’re all practicing together this week, Oikawa knows, in preparation for Japan’s last upcoming friendlies before Volleyball Nations League in May.
This training camp won’t be over for another two weeks. While Oikawa is excited to see their games—read: analyze their weaknesses—it also means that Iwaizumi is at the busiest he’ll be until the actual tournament. There, they’ll be able to actually see each other so teams might matter but time zones won’t and—
He’s getting ahead of himself. Just get through this stupid holiday to start with. Who’s fucking idea was this anyway? The commercialization of love feels wrong, not just because Oikawa is feeling bitter and sad.
Hinata texts back within a few minutes: Practice let out early so I went home a while before him, but I think he went out with a few of the team to celebrate Valentine’s Day! He was feeling kind of down, so I think that plan was to lift his spirits a bit. Hoshiumi said something about getting drunk enough to forget how to be lonely.
Oikawa blinks. Iwaizumi drinking on a Wednesday might not have been unheard of in California—in undergrad and later his grad program with Utsui—but it’s a rarity nowadays. Oikawa would know; he’s spent a good amount of time trying to get it to happen.
Hm, Oikawa texts back. Interesting.
Atsumu was with them too, Hinata says, and Oikawa’s mood instantly sours even worse than it had been. Here’s his number if you want to check in or something.
Attached is the contact information for Atsumu Miya, which is a contact that Oikawa was kind of hoping he would never need. He knows Atsumu and Iwaizumi are friends, but that doesn’t mean he gets why. He’s happy that Iwaizumi is making friends and getting comfortable with his team, but still. Really? Atsumu Miya? If Iwaizumi ever insinuates that Atsumu is better than Oikawa now that they’re on the same team and Oikawa is so damn far away, he’s getting broken up with.
Even as Oikawa thinks that, though, he knows Iwaizumi would never say such a thing. Oikawa may play for his mother’s country instead of his father’s homeland now, but that has never made Iwaizumi support him any less. He should just take Hinata’s word for it and let Iwaizumi have a fun night.
Then again, Oikawa has never been one to leave things alone, and something in his gut says Iwaizumi is being weird. He sighs heavily, turns his face up to the San Juan sun, and then gives in and texts Atsumu.
Hey, Atsumu. This is Tooru Oikawa. Is Iwa with you?
The response comes much too quickly for what it is, as if it had been pre-programmed to send: Busy right now, but he went to go dance a bit ago. Said not to bother him until we’re all ready to stop talking about VDay. Ask Bokuto.
Oikawa frowns. The response time of that text was not the response of someone at a club, or someone busy, much less someone who’s both.
Give me Bokuto’s number, he types, and then waits. He could probably have been nicer about his request but it’s too late now, and the contact information comes in a few moments later.
This time, Oikawa doesn’t hesitate in texting to ask if Bokuto is with Iwaizumi. His response, though slower than Atsumu’s response, is no less cryptic: He’s with Keiji!
Who the fuck is Keiji? Oikawa is getting increasingly frustrated with this fucking goosechase he’s on. It shouldn’t be this hard to track down his own boyfriend on the most romantic day of the year or whatever they call it.
Then it hits him: maybe Iwaizumi just…doesn’t want to talk to him. Maybe he’s decided that he has better things to do. Oikawa scowls, gripping his phone much tighter than maybe is warranted. If Iwaizumi doesn’t want to talk to him, he can damn well say that to Oikawa’s face.
Can you tell him to text me back? Oikawa asks. He’s clearly awake despite it being midnight, so Oikawa is running out of reasons for Iwaizumi to be ignoring him.
It takes until nearly the end of his lunch break to get a response: He broke his phone! I’ll give Keiji your number!
Oikawa glares deeper at his own phone. There’s no possible way that Iwaizumi broke his phone. He’s meticulous and careful about his phone—and all electronics, really—and the care and keeping of it. Last time Oikawa checked, Iwaizumi had a screen cleaner he used twice weekly, not a single crack in the screen, and stickers on the case that look like they’ve been there no longer than a day.
There’s no possible way that Iwaizumi just completely broke it beyond repair in the last twenty-four hours. Besides, Iwaizumi would still have found a way to tell Oikawa that. They both know that Oikawa’s is the only number he has memorized.
The text from Keiji—whoever the fuck that is—doesn’t come until after practice. That puts the mysterious Keiji as awake at 6am in Japan, but at least texted. Oikawa isn’t going to spend that much time questioning it; he’s spent enough time questioning literally everything else.
Oikawa? This is Keiji. Bokuto’s husband.
Oikawa blinks. Okay. Sure. This is Oikawa. Are you still with Iwa?
There’s a long beat before the next text, and Oikawa wants to blame it on bad cell service in the locker room, but he’s really not too sure anymore.
I’d tell him to text you, Keiji says, which kind of matches up with what Bokuto says, but then he continues and it no longer makes sense because he says, but he’s pretty out of it right now. Not sure if he has many thoughts to text.
Oikawa rolls his eyes—he’d listen to Iwaizumi read the dictionary to him; nothing that he could ever say would be worthless to Oikawa. Besides, drunk Iwaizumi is a beautiful thing that Oikawa has only gotten to experience a few times and he wouldn’t say no to one more.
Then what Keiji said clicks in a different way. I thought his phone was broken. I believe your husband said that.
Oikawa can practically hear the responding sigh in Keiji’s text. He says a lot of things.
It's quiet for a long moment, but Oikawa doesn’t take his eyes off his phone. He’s sitting in the locker room, freshly showered but still half undressed. He doesn’t realize how hard he’s glaring at his phone until someone hits their towel against the back of his head.
He looks up, an indignant protest already on his tongue, but teammate, Nicolas, speaks first. “Stop moping about your boyfriend who loves you. C’mon. We’re going for a walk.”
Oikawa frowns at him. “A walk?”
“You need to cool off, get your head on straight.”
Nicolas is a tall, built man with the smile of someone trying to mess with you—he’s not the kind of man you argue with when he tells you to cool off. He had been one of the first on the team to truly connect with Oikawa, and Oikawa really does respect his opinion and advice, but right now he would very much like to keep moping.
Nicolas sighs, a long, heavy sound. “You’re obsessing over what’s probably nothing and you need to chill out before you implode. His friends are messing with you and he’s probably just sleeping. He’ll get back to you soon.”
“Fine,” Oikawa mutters. “At least let me put a shirt on first.”
Nicolas snorts. “You don’t want to walk through San Juan naked? Your fans would love that.”
“Hajime wouldn’t,” Oikawa says. Then he sighs, his bad mood back in place and settling in his stomach.
Nicolas rolls his eyes. “Get dressed, loverboy.”
Oikawa heaves another sigh. But with that, he manages to pull himself together long enough to finish dressing and gather all his things into his gym bag. It’s about 6pm, meaning that Iwaizumi will need to be up for work in an hour or so.
Or maybe he won’t be—if some people are to be believed, he was pretty drunk. But then again, his phone is supposedly broken beyond repair and/or he’ll use said broken-beyond-repair phone to text Oikawa if he has something to say, which he apparently doesn’t.
Just as he and Nicolas are leaving the gym complex, a text rings in from Keiji.
Koutarou was mistaken about Iwaizumi’s phone. He lost it, not broke it. A pause, while Oikawa watched the typing bubble appear and disappear for what seems to be hours. Then, I’m sure he’ll text you soon. Last I checked, he had his phone again.
Oikawa’s hands are typing furiously over the keyboard before his eyes have moved away from the last line of the text. He’s tired and he’s lonely and he doesn’t understand why everyone is lying to him.
I thought you said you were with him only a few minutes ago.
It’s another endless minute while the typing bubble loads on Oikawa’s phone screen. He’s stopped in his tracks in front of the gym, while Nicolas sighs loudly and pointedly.
I’m in a different room, Keiji says. It’s been a long night. I’m going to bed, but Hinata is with him in the other room if you want to continue this conversation with someone.
Oikawa practically growls low in his throat and not nearly encompassing all his frustration. He’d probably throw his phone against the pavement if he weren’t so desperate for any sign of life from Iwaizumi. If Hinata is with him now, that means he had gone out with the rest of them to get Iwaizumi drink, which was apparently the big plan that Iwaizumi couldn’t move for Valentine’s Day with Oikawa. It also means that Hinata lied about his own whereabouts.
“I just don’t understand—” it’s almost a yell, almost a sob— “they’re all lying to me and I don’t—I just want to talk to my boyfriend on Valentine’s Day—why is that so fucking—”
Oikawa pushes his palms against his face and yells into his hands. He didn’t really realize it until then, but this whole thing is more hurtful than it is frustrating. He doesn’t know why Iwaizumi is avoiding him when their communication has always been so good before.
Sure, they’ve had flaws in their ability to talk things out—particularly at the start of their relationship, and then at the start of long distance, which kind of felt like starting an entirely new relationship—but they’ve never ignored each other like this. Yes, they’ve argued, but Oikawa is discovering that this radio silence is so much more painful. When they yell or cry, there’s an end to it. It’s a thunderstorm: it’s painful, but they always know that the sun will be back at the end of it. This is more like a drought.
It’s a drought and Oikawa is lost in it. He doesn’t want to cry, he doesn’t, but Nicolas puts a steady hand on Oikawa’s shoulders and he thinks he might burst into tears then and there.
“C’mon,” Nicolas says softly. He eases Oikawa’s gym bag off his shoulder, taking on the weight, and Oikawa can’t help but feel a little like a child crying for comfort after their first heartbreak. “Let’s just walk. You’ll feel better with some fresh air.”
Oikawa wants to protest—he doesn’t want to get fresh air, he wants to wallow in the miserable knowledge that Iwaizumi is ignoring him and it’s Valentine’s Day and everything is terrible—but he lets Nicolas lead him out to the sidewalk and down the street.
“Where are we going anyways?” Oikawa asks, finally, and then winces at how shattered his words sound.
“There’s a park nearby,” Nicolas says. “You and Hajime used to practice in your local park together, right? When the gym was closed?”
“Yeah.” Oikawa knows he must have at some point, but he doesn’t remember telling any of his teammates in Argentina that. It had always felt like too precious, too intimate of a memory to share with anyone. He laughs a little, wet and tired. “We had a deal. We’d catch bugs or dig holes or whatever it was that Iwa wanted to do for an hour, and then practice volleyball for an hour, and then we’d thumb wrestle for who got to choose what to do for the third hour. He always won.”
Nicolas laughs. It’s gentle, like he’s honored by this rare show of trust and vulnerability and doesn’t want to break it. “That’s cute. How old were you?”
“Oh, we kept that up for years. Don’t remember why we stopped.”
Nicolas hums. “How long have you been friends?”
“Our whole lives.” Oikawa sighs when he says it, and it sounds pathetically dreamy even to his own ears. “I don’t remember ever not having him around.”
Oikawa doesn’t really understand why Nicolas is doing it, but he’ll never say no to a chance to talk about the great love of his life, so when Nicolas keeps asking questions as they walk, Oikawa keeps answering.
“When’d you fall in love?” he asks, just as they turn the corner into the park. It’s more of a botanic garden than a park: long winding pathways through rose bushes and pavilions with terraces of ivy and a bank of sunflowers in the summer. They enter through a little white gate and keep walking as Oikawa talks.
“Not sure,” Oikawa admits. “I first realized I was in love with him in high school, but I’ve probably felt it for longer before that. And I spent most of high school pining for him before he confessed.”
There’s a laugh behind a tree in front of Oikawa—achingly familiar, but also so impossible.
“It was painful to watch,” Hanamaki says anyways, despite the impossibility of him being there, despite time and distance and—Oikawa gapes at him as Hanamaki hands him a single red rose. “But I guess watching the pining was worth it now that you’re together.”
Oikawa takes the rose gingerly, turning around in his hands. “What—”
Nicolas puts a hand on Oikawa’s shoulder again, guiding him forward and past Hanamaki’s wide smile. “He was the one to confess?”
“Yeah,” Oikawa says, swallowing hard. “It was actually on White Day. I told him the gift was strange because I hadn’t gotten him anything in February, and he said it was because—”
“He chickened out on Valentine’s Day,” Matsukawa says, stepping onto the main path from where he was hidden. “And I had to talk him into trying again a month later.”
Matsukawa beams at Oikawa, and hands him another rose. It’s perfect and real and fresh and Oikawa might cry for real now.
“You two are sickening with how cute you are, but I don’t regret talking him into it for a second,” Matsukawa says.
Oikawa exhales shakily, but there’s an entirely different tremble to this breath than there had been to his breaths an hour ago. “Mattsun—”
Matsukawa just keeps smiling at him, stepping back for Nicolas to continue guiding Oikawa down the path. It’s truly beginning to be spring, and while not all of the flowers are awake yet, the sun is blooming brilliantly over the horizon in front of them. Nicolas keeps him walking steadily forward into the sunset.
“What happened on your first date?” Nicolas asks as they round a corner.
Oikawa smiles, the memory coming back to him fondly, and oh, he’s so in love with Hajime Iwaizumi. How could he ever doubt that the two of them are meant to be together?
“We, uh—” he coughs into his fist, clearing his throat— “we went to the movies, some animated thing I was looking forward to. It was fun. We sat in the second to last row and I tried to kiss him but then the people behind us burst into laughter. It turned out to be—”
“Your sister and her fiancé,” someone else finishes.
Oikawa’s mouth drops open as his sister steps in front of him. She’s smiling at him in the same way she had been on that night: fondly, teasing, loving, and unconditionally supportive. All he’s able to get out is, “Hi,” because this is the first time she’s come to Argentina and she’s here with Hanamaki and Matsukawa and—fuck, this is really happening. Is this happening?
He takes the rose that she offers him, adding it to the bouquet that he’s collecting. Nicolas again pushes him forward.
“When did you make your relationship official?”
Oikawa laughs, and oh, he’s definitely going to cry in the next ten minutes. “It was because of Takeru, actually. I accidentally told Takeru that I was scared Hajime would say no if I asked, and so he—”
“—did what you were too scared to do yourself.” Takeru—brilliant, bold, incredible Takeru, who is somehow there—laughs, stepping out of a little alcove and handing him a rose.
He grins at Oikawa, and Oikawa can’t help but chuckle. He’s gotten a new haircut since their last call and Oikawa is certain that he hadn’t been this tall when Oikawa was last visiting Japan. But he has the same smile and laugh as he did when he was seven years old and staring Iwaizumi down, saying, “Can you just hurry up and be Uncle Tooru’s boyfriend already? He’s annoying when he complains so much.”
And oh—Iwaizumi is every bit the boy who couldn’t bite back his grin when he said, “Yeah, I’ll be his boyfriend.” He’s every bit that boy who stumbled through a confession and shoved four chocolate roses into Oikawa’s hands, the foil slightly crinkled from his sweaty palms.
He’s the boy Oikawa fell in love with, his first real love, the partner Oikawa has never been without and never wants to try to be without. He’s the boy Oikawa watches turn into a man to be proud of—though Oikawa has been proud of him before the graduate degrees, before the career milestones, before the Olympics.
Oikawa has stood by his side since the bug catching days, the thumb wrestling days, the dirt streaks on cheeks and the grass-stained shirts and the scraped knees. Oikawa has loved him and he cannot imagine a world in which he stops. How could he do anything but love this man?
And now: Iwaizumi is standing there, at the end of the path in a little gazebo, just jeans and a t-shirt and a handful of roses, set alight and alive by the sunset.
“Hey, Tooru,” he says.
Nicolas pushes him forwards. Oikawa takes a few hesitant steps forward, glancing at the small group of his loved ones who gathered around him. They all smile, bright and encouraging and real and here, and then they make themselves scarce as Oikawa makes the rest of the walk to Iwaizumi.
“Sorry for not answering your texts,” Iwaizumi continues, somewhat sheepishly. “I was on a plane.”
“You were on a plane,” Oikawa repeats. His hands are shaking and he grips the roses tighter to ground himself. “You were—Hajime.”
Iwaizumi smiles, small but honest. Hopeful. “I asked you out on White Day, so maybe I’m doing this a little backwards, but I wanted to—I wanted to do it today and be here with you in person so I can ask—”
He cuts himself off, taking a deep breath. He tips his head up, blinking rapidly, like he does when he’s about to start tearing him but doesn’t want to. This is happening—
“Tooru,” Iwaizumi starts again, stepping closer to Oikawa and taking his free hand in a slow and purposeful movement. “We’ve been on every adventure together since we were kids learning to walk. I want to be on every adventure with you until we can’t walk. We live worlds apart, but I want to bridge the distance every day however we can until it isn’t there anymore, no matter when the day comes.
“You’re my best friend and my partner and my soulmate, and I want to be with you for the rest of my life, and in the next one too. I want you to always let me love you, and I want you to never be lonely with me, and I want to make you happy every day of my life, no matter the time zone or the country, because that’s what you do for me.”
Iwaizumi takes a shaky breath and Oikawa takes a good look at him and realizes—he’s nervous. Oikawa swallows, and the tears are coming, just a little, but it’s enough that the touch of them against his skin makes this all seem a little more real.
“Yes,” Oikawa breathes out. “Yes, yes—”
He’s laughing now, grinning wide at the love of his life, and Iwaizumi laughs too, bright and joyous, the brilliant, loud, song of a laugh that Oikawa loves. “You didn’t even let me ask, Tooru, you—please, just let me ask, I had a whole thing prepared—”
“Okay, okay,” Oikawa says, but he can barely wait another second; no, he feels electric, feels like the sun: bursting open at the seams with light.
Iwaizumi kneels in front of him and he pulls a velvet box from his pocket. Suddenly those nine months and two weeks and six days feel entirely minuscule when he’s looking at Oikawa like this, like he’s something worth keeping. Like he’s something Iwaizumi never wants to let go of. And, oh, Iwaizumi opens the box, and so he doesn’t ever want to let go of Oikawa. He wants to keep holding on to this.
“Tooru,” he says, breathless. “Will you marry me?”
All breath, all doubt, and all other words leave his chest in an exhale. “Yes, Hajime, yes, of course.”
Iwaizumi laughs as if he’s relieved, as if there had ever been any doubt that Oikawa would say yes. He slides the ring onto Oikawa’s finger but Oikawa isn’t even looking at it. He’s looking at Iwaizumi, who has so much love in his eyes, in his lips, in the set of his jaw, in the way he’s looking up at Oikawa once the ring is on.
Oikawa can look at it later, but right now, he kneels on the ground in front of Iwaizumi and pulls him into a kiss. It’s not their most coordinated of kisses and Oikawa’s still crying just a little bit and Iwaizumi is smiling more than kissing—and it’s absolutely perfect.
Later, Oikawa and Iwaizumi settle at a picnic table at the edge of the garden with all of the people Oikawa loves most in the world. Oikawa leans into Iwaizumi’s side, their hands linked together and feeling absolutely giddy with love.
“You really did think of everything, Hajime,” Oikawa’s sister marvels. “Who knew that we’d end up here back when I was teasing Tooru about you in high school?”
“Not everything,” Iwaizumi admits, though his face is still flushed with joy. Oikawa frowns, lifting his head from Iwaizumi’s shoulder to look questioningly at him. Iwaizumi sighs. “Nicolas told me about all the texting that went on today. I figured you’d ask someone when I stopped replying to you to get on the plane. So the team knew what I was planning and that it’s obviously a secret, but I didn’t think they’d be that bad at covering for me.”
Oikawa snorts. “Yeah, it wasn’t any of their finest moments.”
“I told them to just agree on something simple, and—they truly exceeded my expectations of how badly they could fuck up the two instructions I gave them: to not say where I am and to not worry you.”
“I thought you were going to break up with me,” Oikawa says, looking at their intertwined hands. “Should’ve known not to trust anything Atsumu Miya says.”
Iwaizumi sighs again, longsuffering and tired. But still—there’s a pleasant happiness underneath all of that, like not even Atsumu Miya’s antics can ruin anything for him right now. “He was truly terrible at this.”
“I should’ve texted one of your two first,” Oikawa says, nodding towards Matsukawa and Hanamaki. “Though I guess you were all on planes, too.”
Hanamaki shakes his head, exchanging a look with Matsukawa. “We’ve been here for two days now.”
“Three,” Matsukawa corrects.
“Three.” Hanamaki looks at Oikawa’s gaping mouth and shrugs. “We’ve been setting up. Spent a full day figuring out Plan A through—what was it?”
“We got to Plan Q.”
Hanamaki laughs. “Yeah, that’s right. We figured out Plans A through Q to get you here. Back up plan for pretty much every single scenario that could go wrong. And then a day talking your coach into giving you tomorrow off—that was an adventure. He’s very nice but doesn’t know nearly enough Japanese for us to, like, talk to each other. Oh, and then we spent today breaking into your apartment.”
Oikawa stares. “What?”
“You get tomorrow off,” Matsukawa elaborates, staring blankly at Oikawa. “You’re going to show Iwaizumi around the city. You have wine tasting reservations, but if you don’t want them, Makki and I are definitely going to take advantage of that. You’re welcome, by the way.”
“You broke into my apartment?”
“I helped,” Takeru pipes up. “We’ve been here for two days.”
Iwaizumi sighs, then presses a kiss to the back of Oikawa’s hand. “I tried to tell them not to.”
“Sure,” Oikawa’s sister says, “but you did not even come close to succeeding in convincing them not to. Anyways, Tooru, your teammates are waiting there for your engagement party.”
Oikawa blinks, and then he laughs. He should probably be concerned by the fact that they were able to get into his apartment, but he can change the locks another day. For now, he’s just going to enjoy the lack of distance in between them all, and the fact that, by some unfathomable design of the universe, in his life, there is still nowhere near a lack of love.