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The first time Tooru heard about soulmates, he was five.
He doesn’t remember much from that time; memories washed away by the ones made over the following years.
But his parents were witnesses to every step he’s taken in life, from first breath to now, so when he asks his mother one day to tell him stories from his childhood, she reiterates this one that he finds embarrassingly hilarious:
“You were going to start school next year, but Touko was already in her last year of elementary school. And she had started getting flowers from boys who liked her. One day, she came home with a pink wisteria in her hands and started squealing about how she had found her soulmate. And you, my baby, got curious about what the word meant.
“We explained to you that a soulmate was a special someone who could become your partner for life if they wanted to, who would be by your side through good and bad, and love you for everything that you are; and you decided to turn it into a quest and find your soulmate by yourself. On your way to the very first day of elementary school, you picked out flowers from the roadside trees and shrubs, and gave them to anyone you wanted to befriend in class.”
His mother laughs, recalling the memory.
“Hajime-chan was the last to get flowers. You ended up giving him a daffodil, and it turned out that the fate string tying you together was orange: the color of a friendship bond. As for all the other kids in class whom you gave flowers, most didn’t have any strings attached to you, and some had yellow threads: the color of a harmony bond. You were so upset when you came back home because you hadn’t found your soulmate, but the next day, Hajime-chan found daffodils to give you back, and well - you both have been inseparable ever since.”
Tooru traces the small flower inked on the back of his wrist, smiling fondly at a memory that feels like a faraway dream—as if he had been there in some other life, but in reality, he had lived it in the present one. “What happened after?”
“Hmm?”
“Did I… keep giving flowers every year?”
“No,” his mother replies, chopping carrots and cucumbers into small flowers. Tooru watches her work her skills with the knife—wonders how long she must’ve spent in the kitchen to master this art. “You stopped trying after that first day. You seemed to have decided that you didn’t need a soulmate like Touko did, as long as you had your best friend. You were given flowers a few times after that, but none of them turned out to be your soulmate.”
Tooru gulps, nodding like he could recall that information all too well.
He helps her by peeling the shell from the boiled eggs, till his restless thoughts get the best of him, and the words stumble out, “Is it possible that… you don’t have a soulmate at all?”
His mother’s hands falter on the cutting board for a short second, but Tooru notices it all the same. “Yeah… It’s possible. Your dad and I aren’t soulmates, after all.”
She doesn’t explain any further. Tooru steals a few concerned glances at her, but her face gives away nothing.
“So then, what do you do?” Tooru presses, his fifteen-year-old mind knowing nothing better than to ask for answers he probably doesn’t want to hear. “If you don’t have a soulmate? You just, marry someone else?”
His mother gives him the smile he only sees from her at the end of each day, when he tells her that he’s going to bed as she’s winding down for the evening on the couch with some cheesy sitcom playing on the television. She looks tired, but she also looks content.
It reminds him of the pet parrot his best friend had a few years ago. Francesca. She would look out the window longingly, muttering sweet noises to herself.
They had let her go free after keeping her for two short years.
“If you want to, yes. It’s not the end of the world if you don’t have or don’t find your soulmate. Sometimes…” her words falter, and she gets this look in her eyes as if she’s seeing some distant memory.
Tooru thinks of the barren land in his inner thoughts, about the wildflowers he’s been learning to grow amongst a sea of green and brown. He wonders if everyone has a secret world they go to in their minds when they don’t feel like living in the real one.
“Sometimes, it’s better not to have a soulmate. The strings of fate don’t dictate how you should live your life, Tooru. They only show you the path. Whether the path is worth the journey is up to you to decide. Remember that,” she ruffles his chocolate brown hair, before returning to packing his lunchboxes for the overnight trip.
Middle School Volleyball teams don’t usually attend away games in different prefectures, but their coach had set up an overnight practice camp with two other schools in the area - and the boys couldn’t be any more ecstatic if they even tried.
They would be spending the night in the classrooms, so packing sleeping bags was a must. Everyone had enthused about how it felt like a picnic of some sort, just with volleyball practice instead of sightseeing as the main event. A volleyball camp picnic… he thinks to himself, pulling the baby blue covers up to his chin.
Tooru double-checks if he’s packed everything in his overnight bag before he heads to bed.
Most students end up staying awake the night before a picnic from all the uncontainable excitement. Instead, Tooru stays up the whole night replaying the conversation with his mom in the kitchen.
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The practice matches are grueling.
As always, Tooru gives it his all.
He spins the ball in his hands, his weapon of choice, and aims it like an arrow nocked into a bow. Sharp. Precise. Deadly. And with practiced pace, he sends each attack barreling across the net, racking up points for his team with every service ace.
The weight of the ball is perfect over his fingertips as he makes his calculated tosses. He’s hypnotizing with how he manipulates their opponents' minds into a false sense of control while opening up a path for his spikers.
There’s an eerie sense of calm to his cunning, tireless brown eyes.
There’s also an eerie sense of being watched as he makes his every move on the court. A storm follows closely at his feet like a shadow, clawing, threatening to devour him whole.
He’s familiar with the blue of that hurricane, blue like the volleyball in his hands.
He knows it’s futile to try and outrun the tempest. He’s just biding his time.
Iwaizumi presses a cold water bottle to his forehead, making him flinch back before he grabs it out of his best friend’s hands. The matching daffodil tattoo stands out on the back of his tan wrist.
“Thanks, Iwa-chan,” he mutters between gasps for air, swallowing the cool liquid like a parched desert traveller. Iwaizumi waves a hand dismissively, dropping down next to him on the bench.
All the matches are done for today. All the boys are sighing in relief. All except one.
While everyone is preparing to head to their designated classrooms (where the desks have been moved to make space for the kids to put down their sleeping bags), one blue-eyed boy stays back on the court to continue practicing volleyball.
Tooru peers through the tiny window outside the gymnasium, feeling like a creepy stalker.
If someone asked him who Kageyama Tobio is to him, Tooru would tell them that the boy is his self-fulfilling prophecy.
The prophecy—as foretold by their volleyball coaches in whispers and murmurs that follow Tooru like a bad omen—dictates that Kageyama Tobio has the potential to one day surpass Oikawa Tooru.
As he watches the ravenette spin the ball in his hands in preparation to serve, he realizes that the words have always affected him from the moment they had been spoken, turning his fears of being replaced into a suffocating belief that wrapped its hands around his throat.
It’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when.
Tobio tosses the ball up in the air, not quite right, yet when he jumps to slam the ball, it fits perfectly in the curve of his palm like holding the hand of a close friend, and is sent hurtling to the other side of the net and past the white bounds.
His form mid-air is all wrong, Tooru thinks to himself. Like a fledgling trying to learn how to fly for the first time, with a too-small body carrying the weight of his too-big wings, reaching for the sun. Like Icarus.
He wonders when Tobio will learn that imitation wings do not compare to the real thing, that he needs to grow his own wings from his spine; instead of holding his flight feathers together by wax that will melt eventually when he inevitably flies too close to the sun.
Most of the boys have finished their bath and dinner by the time his Icarus puts away the ball he had been playing with. Tooru leaves his spectating spot and heads up to the club room while the ravenette cleans up in the gym. Tobio enters the club room a few minutes later, with a quiet kind of energy still radiating off of him in waves.
It’s electric. It burns Tooru’s skin.
“Oikawa-san,” he bows in that ever-polite way of his.
“Quite rude of you to keep your senpai waiting, Tobio-chan,”
“Sorry,” he bows again, but no one is around them to see that Tooru is a liar.
(Because Kageyama Tobio has never been rude to him.)
It’s starting to rain in the garden of Tooru’s mind. “Go take a bath, I’ll lock up the gym,” he tells the shorter boy in the unwavering voice of a team captain.
Once he’s made sure the gym and club room are affirmatively locked, he returns the keys to their coach and heads back to his classroom to set up his stuff.
Iwaizumi has already unpacked his sleeping bag and is buried in a science workbook.
“Who else is supposed to be sleeping in our classroom?” Tooru asks as he begins to unroll his own sleeping bag next to Iwaizumi’s.
His best friend’s voice replies monotonously, without raising his head from the book. “Tashiro and Toobetsu from the second years, and Hashikami and Kageyama from the first years.”’
The rain picks up its pace at the mention of his name, pelting heavily on the windflowers of his budding garden. They’ll hold out, he convinces himself.
He had been quick to learn that his garden wasn’t always going to be sunshine and soft grass—he had to weather the storms if he wanted to see the flowers in bloom someday, needed to pull out the unwelcome weeds with his own hands.
“Umm, Oikawa-san,”
Speak of the devil.
Anytime Tobio asks for something from him, he feels the rotting vines spread across his garden like a parasite. He can handle the rain, but his nails bleed from digging into the ground countless times to unearth the anxious thoughts planted there by outsiders.
Tooru turns to the class door, where the scrawny 12-year-old boy stands in his white t-shirt and black shorts, toothbrush in hand. “I forgot to bring toothpaste. Can you lend me yours?”
Alas, he’s just being paranoid most of the time.
He’s about to pull a face and refuse the request when Iwaizumi puts his book down to glare at him.
The look in his eyes is readable from a mile away—or maybe it’s just their true friends' bond that helps them read each other like a well-loved book from childhood—and it screams Do it, I dare you. Try and disturb the peace in this room, and you will not know peace ever again in your life.
Tobio stays in the doorway, fidgeting with his brush. He looks like he’s waiting for someone to jump out of the shadows in the room and jumpscare him.
Tooru clicks his tongue, unzipping his bag and tossing the tiny tube of toothpaste in the boy’s direction. Of course, Tobio catches it with his quick reflexes.
He mutters a quick thank you before scurrying away to the bathrooms.
“If you care so much about him, you should’ve given him your toothpaste.”
“It’s just a fucking toothpaste, Tooru,” and he’s gone back to his workbook.
Tooru sighs. He prepares to be unable to sleep two nights in a row.
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He doesn’t even blink when Tobio asks for his toothpaste again the next morning as they all get ready for the day.
It’s just a toothpaste, he reminds himself.
It’s not your serve technique. You can compromise, Tooru.
(The storm has passed. Tooru’s flowers are miraculously safe and thriving.)
They play some more matches till late afternoon, and before they know it, it’s time to pack up and say goodbye to the two attending school teams.
“And with that, the camp concludes,” Tooru yawns, stretching his arms overhead as he and Iwaizumi walk home together from school like clockwork.
“You have bags under your eyes,” his best friend remarks. Tooru had been waiting for it.
“I know,”
“Go sleep properly when you get home, idiot.”
The insult has no bite, and the brunette smiles to himself as he realises just why his younger self had refused to look for a soulmate after finding his best friend.
Red and Yellow make Orange. Love and Harmony make Friendship.
How could it be any less than finding your soulmate?
It’s a pleasant Sunday, the summer sun painting the skies orange but not dipping below the horizon just yet. Tooru’s never liked the heat, but the weather today had fortunately been tolerable. And yet, he cannot wait to go home and burrow under his blankets with the air-con on. Maybe he’ll rewatch one of his favorite sci-fi shows until he conks out.
“Oikawa-san!”
The soft edges of his thoughts shatter into sharp shards of glass.
If he’s being honest, he’s mostly in disbelief that the ravenette even managed to hold out this long from asking Tooru his usual request. But of course, it wouldn’t be a real interaction between the two of them if Tobio wasn’t bugging Tooru to teach him his serve technique.
The two friends turn around to face their junior, who is running towards them at an alarming speed. “Don’t sprint, Kageyama! You could trip and fall!” Iwaizumi calls out to the boy like the good senpai he is. Tooru loses the battle in hiding the sourness from his expression.
It’s almost routine for him now, to feel Tobio trace his every action and gather the courage to ask for his guidance before being completely shut down by Tooru’s defiant eyes and fake smiles. He had avoided giving the younger a chance to approach him during the camp by throwing himself into incessant practice matches, but Tobio is nothing if not persistent, like the stubborn brat he is.
The boy slows into a jog at Iwaizumi’s words, yet is still winded by the time he reaches them.
And it’s then, while Tobio is catching his breath, that Tooru notices that he has one hand hidden behind him. He wants to peek out of curiosity, but a pair of deep blue eyes suddenly obstructs his view.
“Can I talk to you for a second? I won’t be long…” he trails off, looking to the side at Iwaizumi, who takes the hint and steps away from them.
Tooru wants to take back everything good he’s said about the friendship bond. He feels terribly betrayed right now.
“What is it? Make it quick, I haven’t got all day, you know?”
“Oikawa-san I—, maybe you already know what I’m going to say,” Tobio starts, fidgeting with his hands behind his back. He looks uncharacteristically nervous. Tobio never looks nervous when he’s asking Tooru to teach him his serve.
In fact, his usual expression in such scenarios is to stare up at Tooru with stars in his eyes in hopes that their light will blind Tooru enough to distract him from his conviction.
“But I’m hoping that you’ll let me say it, anyway,”
How many times does Tooru have to refuse him for it to get through his thick skull that Tooru doesn’t have what he’s looking for? Tooru’s good at taking care of his flowers, not at building wings for a boy who is going to learn how to do it himself anyway one day.
Something has to give.
Tobio brings his hand forward, revealing the hidden item.
“I like you, Oikawa-san,”
All of Tooru’s thoughts screech to a halt, slamming into each other and causing a splendid smoking trainwreck in his head. This… is not how this was supposed to go.
Tobio isn’t asking him for his help in volleyball like he’s gotten accustomed to, and something about the novelty of the situation rubs Tooru wrong. He’s used to leaving after rejecting Tobio’s advances; he’s not prepared to face whatever this is.
“Um, you don’t have to answer that, but I would like it if you at least accept this flo-”
“No,” he cuts through Tobio’s words with a tone of finality.
The ravenette looks up at him in surprise, as if he had somehow been convinced that Tooru would say yes to his request. It makes Tooru’s heart burn blue, and he digs his nails into his palms to stop himself from doing something foolish like impulsively accepting the flower.
The garden in Tooru’s mind has a few new buds growing alongside the wildflowers now. It’s not yet good enough to house the sunflower Tobio’s handing him.
“But, I just wanted to know if—”
“If we’re soulmates? Don’t be ridiculous, Tobio-chan. Even if we were soulmates, I wouldn’t accept you.”
Let it be known, what has already been said many times before, that Oikawa Tooru is a liar.
His words and smiles are masks—both often fake to cover up the face of his own vices. But while his usual, cheery, sugar-laced facade paints him in a positive light in the eyes of the world, it transforms into an ugly sort of envy and resentment when it comes to Tobio.
Tobio’s ambition is a double-edged sword, and it cuts them both all the same.
You’re trying to get too close to the sun, Tobio; it will bring us both no good.
Tobio doesn’t get the chance to get another word out as Tooru turns on his heels. Iwaizumi asks him what the hell that was all about as they continue their journey home.
In saving them both from their demise by the sword, Tooru convinces himself that he’s doing them a favour by keeping things familiar. By rejecting Tobio’s advances once again.
By leaving, once again.
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When the news arrives, Tooru is at the dinner table with his family, the bittersweetness of graduating middle school having finally settled into an optimism looking forward to starting high school. He and Iwaizumi would be attending Aoba Johsai together, and nothing in life could be any better than that. But then.
His mom gets a call from his elder sister, and she picks it up with a warm greeting, followed by her chopsticks clattering down to the table.
“Touko baby, what’s wrong?”
What’s wrong is that the man Touko thought was her soulmate and the father of her three-year-old son was never in love with her.
Their bond had been blue when he first proposed to her: a vulnerable bond.
And they had expected that once he and Touko started dating, it would turn purple.
Vulnerable love bonds make soul bonds, his mother had taught him at twelve when Takeru was born, when they had discussed what the different bond colors meant. Tooru had brought flowers for his sister after the delivery when she came back home with his nephew, and watched a red string of fate tie him and his sister together as she accepted the flowers. A love bond, shared between family related by blood or not. These only turned into wrist marks if they weren’t blood relations.
If Touko’s boyfriend had truly loved her, their bond would’ve turned red after the birth of their son. Turns out he hadn’t been able to truly love Touko back, despite being the person to initiate the bond. She only found out now because he bought her flowers for their tenth anniversary. The color didn’t turn purple as they both had expected.
It turned green. Vulnerable harmony bonds make superficial bonds.
“Tell me where the hell he is right now, nee-san!” Tooru snatches the phone furiously from his mother’s hand, chair scraping on the floor as he gets up.
“Tooru!” his mom calls after him as he runs upstairs to his bedroom.
“Don’t do anything stupid, Tooru,” his sister tells him through the receiver, voice watery and tired. She sounds so meek, nothing like the joyous, annoying older sister he is used to.
It stings like thorns in the flesh of his heart.
“What do you mean? That asshole’s asking for it-” the curses spill out once he’s locked himself into his bedroom, changing into jeans and a jacket. “Is he still at your house? I’m coming over—”
“Tooru! No, he’s not here, don’t go looking for him either, just-” the fight dies in her voice and becomes the ghost of her resignation. “Just come over and stay for the night? Please?”
The brunette sighs heavily, trying to calm his fired-up nerves. “Okay, okay. I’ll be there soon.”
He waits for her to cut the call, then packs up an overnight bag as fast as he can and heads downstairs to tell his parents of the plan.
As he walks up to the bus stop with a bleeding heart in his chest, he promises himself two things. One, as obvious as it is, he’s never going to forgive that bastard.
And two, he’s never going to accept anyone’s bond.
His mother had indeed been right. Having a soulmate didn’t mean shit.
A bond meant nothing when it could wither away like the flowers that created it in the first place. The ink on your wrist will fade, the petals will wilt, the bond will die.
Once he’s seated on the bus, he stares down at the mark on the back of his wrist in fear that someday, his bond with his best friend might change for the worse, too.
He wishes life would be kind enough to spare him from seeing such a day.
Iwaizumi picks up on the second ring. Tooru patiently, carefully pulls the thorns out of his heart, tells his best friend in the whole world the entire story, and tells him about his fears too while he’s at it. Iwaizumi does what he does best—talk sense into Tooru’s anxious brain with his brutal honesty. After all, what are friends for?
“Get out of your head, stupidkawa. I’ve put up with your terrible personality long enough to be able to do this for the rest of my life with ease. I won’t make false promises that we won’t change as people, or that we won’t be separated by distance or life or otherwise. But I have faith in our bond. And you fucking better have faith in it too, or I’ll beat you up,”
“How reassuring, Iwa-chan,” Tooru tells him with a broken laugh, swallowing back the flood of tears that threaten to break the brown dam of his eyes.
He might’ve given up his faith in soul bonds, but he believes in Iwaizumi’s steady presence in his life. And for now, it is enough to keep him anchored amidst the drifting waters.
(He’s willing to tell himself this lie as many times as necessary till he starts believing in its truth.)
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Guilt is an all-consuming ocean that laps at you from all sides with no land in sight.
Tooru’s never had much to feel guilty about in his life, save for a handful of childish incidents that don’t really matter in the long run. But when he hears about Kita-ichi’s defeat against Kousen in the prefectural qualifier finals, he can’t help but feel like a heavy stone is tied to his ankles that’s trying to drag him down to the bottom of that ocean.
“Tobio had it coming,” Iwaizumi had said when they discussed it during lunch break this morning. “Though I do wonder why the coaches didn’t do anything until the damage was already done. Tobio’s not the type to disrespect what the elders tell him.”
Tooru ponders over it too, mindlessly turning the bottle of blueberry milkshake in his hands. He’s at the local convenience store picking out snacks for a weekend sleepover with his Seijoh friends.
So Icarus finally took the fall.
He’s torn between believing he made the right call by refusing to become Tobio’s sun and feeling guilty for the same. However, Pride demands praise, and so the former reasoning wins his mind.
(But his heart knows.)
What will Tobio do now, though? It would be a shame if the incident made him stop playing volleyball altogether, but knowing how stubborn the kid was, Tooru doubts that outcome.
Someone enters the dairy aisle and picks up a milk carton from next to him, earning his attention. The person is wearing a matte black suit, complete with a black tie and leather shoes. They’re a little shorter than Tooru, with black hair and—and striking blue eyes.
“Tobio-chan?” He calls out before his mind has the time to process the action.
The ravenette stiffens at his voice, turning to him with a barely there surprised expression.
“Oh, Oikawa-san,” Tobio’s voice sounds very off—it’s been two years since they’ve actually spoken to each other, and yet Tooru can instantly tell that something’s wrong.
Tobio doesn’t even bow in his usual polite way, just sends a nod his way before going back to picking up a few more milk boxes and putting them in his basket. There’s a box of toothpaste in there as well, and Tooru recognises it as the one he’s been using since he switched to it in middle school from the one his family had been using.
The unfamiliarity of the situation pricks like needles on his skin. “Are you coming from somewhere?” he asks after the boy despite his better judgment.
“Hm, memorial service,” Tobio answers monotonously, and leaves it at that.
“Oh,” That explains his attire. “Whose was it?”
The question makes Tobio stall, and Tooru wonders if he’s crossing a line.
Two years since they last saw each other in person, five since they’ve known each other, and never once have they had a serious conversation about their lives. Because that’s not the kind of relationship they have.
“My grandfather’s,” Tobio answers in the end anyway.
“Oh,” Tooru repeats smartly, unsure of how to navigate a conversation for the first time in his life. He’s nothing if he doesn’t know how to charm people with the way he weaves his words, but trust Tobio to have a penchant for being the one who puts him in unexpected situations and throws him off his game.
“My condolences,” he says simply, because there’s really nothing else to say.
Curiosity rears its head and prompts the questions What happened to him? and Were you close to him? in Tooru’s mind, but he smothers it down along with the frothing guilt that returns to his chest. Why was the sinking weight around his ankles back?
“I won’t be going to Seijoh,” Tobio states out of nowhere, startling Tooru out of his thoughts.
He meets the younger’s eyes, heart drumming in his chest. He understands why Tobio must’ve made that decision, so all he does is nod in reply. “Shiratorizawa, then?”
“No, I couldn’t get in.” Tobio replies, looking down at his basket to avoid meeting Tooru’s scrutinizing gaze.
“Even with a sports scholarship?” Tooru presses on, astonished.
Tobio simply shakes his head, pressing his lips in a tight, thin line.
The longer the silence stretches, the deeper the stone around Tooru’s ankles pulls him.
I hope you grow your real wings someday. The words claw out of the guilt consuming his heart, but get stuck in his windpipe as he refuses to open his mouth in fear that if he does, the words will drown with him in the bottomless ocean of his feelings.
He keeps holding his breath underwater, surrounded by all his what-ifs.
(What would’ve happened if he’d accepted Tobio’s feelings that day? What kind of a bond would they have, and would it have been enough to save his wings from melting?)
The night seems to be filled with surprises, for Tobio is the one to break the painful silence. “I might go to Karasuno,”
“Yeah,” Tooru rushes to reply foolishly. Then thinks it over before continuing, “Yeah, Coach Ukai might be good for you.”
Well, at least he knows now that Tobio isn’t giving up on Volleyball, just as he had expected.
“I look forward to facing off against you in a match then, Oikawa-san,” the ravenette declares, a little life returning to his voice, a little color returning to his face, and reminding Tooru that he’s still his most esteemed rival.
It almost makes Tooru smile.
Maybe it’s just a bad time, and maybe it’s been like that for a while. And maybe it will be like that in the future too. But the ghost of hope in Tobio’s eyes tells him that life will get better.
“The feeling is mutual, Tobio-chan,” he tells him with unwavering conviction.
In a local convenience store of their hometown, Oikawa Tooru and Kageyama Tobio realise that maybe they’ve never been able to define their relationship because it’s something beyond words.
No bond ties them together stronger than volleyball. And yet, simply calling them rivals or senpai-kouhai doesn’t do justice to the crackling energy that is born every time they’re in the same room. They are closer than rivals, friends, lovers, and soulmates alike. The same goal binds them. They are two hues of blue linked together by their similar tints and shades.
Tobio would learn to grow his wings with or without his help; that much has always been certain. Tooru’s garden will continue to flourish no matter how many thunderstorms and heatwaves pass. It’s never been a matter of what-if, Tooru realises. It’s a matter of when.
The thought liberates the guilt from Tooru’s lungs.
It’s only a matter of time.
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The problem with truth is that it reveals itself at the worst possible timing.
Tooru gets the mail from Coach Blanco at the same time as Iwaizumi’s UCLA acceptance letter. By now, Tooru’s anxieties over the uncertainty of life’s twists and turns have untangled into smooth waves that he can handle much better at eighteen than at fifteen.
So no, he’s not worried that their bond would take a hit from this sudden change in their life. It’s only a new chapter in their lives, and as long as they both keep writing each other’s names into the pages, the ink on their wrists will remain.
Iwaizumi tells him that he’s looking forward to studying sports science. Tooru tells him that he’s going to miss playing volleyball by his side. They have their last sleepover at the brunette’s house before their separate journeys begin.
Iwaizumi falls asleep next to Tooru, on the same spare futon he’s been using since their childhood. Tooru falls asleep and dreams about his garden, the buds finally starting to bloom as rays of hope shine down on them. He lets the wind tussle his hair, lets the hope soak his skin in a golden light. Here, sitting amidst the little flower garden he’s been tending to since he first started playing volleyball, he feels brand new, he feels free.
He feels ready to leave this place—his hometown, his birth country, a place that has loved and raised him as much as it has bent and built him into who he is today—and move his garden to greener pastures.
Tooru is the first among the two to leave Japan.
The airport has seen many hellos and goodbyes, but Tooru thinks that he’s definitely witnessing the most dramatic farewell in existence.
Trust his teammates from Aoba Johsai to love and embarrass him in the same breath - or in this case, in the same banner that they bring to the terminal where the brunette is waiting with his family.
It’s a teal blue colored paper—more specifically, Seijoh’s blue—with white calligraphy and two printed pictures of Tooru’s face stuck on either end. One has his iconic wink and peace sign that he’s sure everyone in Sendai is going to remember him by, and the other-
“DID YOU SERIOUSLY NOT FIND A BETTER PICTURE TO PUT THERE?” Tooru whines, aghast as he stares back at the frown on his face in the picture where a hanger is stuck in his uniform shirt. He whines a little more as the group of boys laugh at his expense, hiding his rapidly reddening face in Touko’s shoulder.
When he realises that her shoulders are shaking too, he snaps his head up to send a withering glare in her direction before haughtily turning his nose up in the air, arms crossed over his chest.
“We’ll miss you, captain,” Yahaba starts. He sounds three seconds away from bursting into waterworks. Tooru can tell that he’s holding hands with Kyoutani for moral support behind their backs, even if they’re trying to hide it.
Tooru smiles knowingly. “You’ll be fine, Yahaba,” he tells him with conviction.
The words reassure him enough not to break down in the middle of the busy airport.
The brunette looks back at the banner.
Rule every court you step on.
Brown eyes trace the letters, a sense of finality washing over him.
For as many chapters he’s closed in his life thus far, this one carries a heavy weight, like the end of the book before he starts a new one. And no ending is as beautiful and painful as the one when you turn the last page.
They huddle together for an awkwardly hilarious group hug, laughing and teasing in their usual ways. Once they part, Iwaizumi suggests that they all hand their parting gifts to Tooru before they forget.
“Oh, you all brought me gifts?” the brunette asks in genuine surprise.
“It wasn’t planned; we didn’t discuss much of anything aside from the banner for your farewell,” Matsukawa explains, stepping forward to hand him a small paper bag.
Tooru takes it with a muttered thank you, and one by one, they all step forward to hand him their gifts. All of the bags feel awfully similar in size and weight.
“Are you sure this is unplanned? I’m starting to think you’re all lying to me—”
“Have some faith in us, captain,” Hanamaki drawls, elbow propped on Matsukawa’s shoulder. “I have no idea what all of them got you, but I am damn sure you’re going to love the one I’ve given.”
Tooru stares them all down skeptically. They return his stare with sincerity.
“Fine. We’ll see about that when I open the gifts,” he gives in, carefully putting all of the small bags in the backpack he’s taking with him onto the plane.
The group doesn’t stay long after that, and soon, they’re saying their final goodbyes and walking out of the airport. Now it’s just his family, Iwaizumi’s family, and of course, Iwaizumi.
There’s an announcement overhead for his plane, stating that boarding will commence soon.
Saying goodbye to his family is the hardest.
He’s going to miss them all deeply. He’s going to never look back after today.
The first call for boarding is announced just as he surrenders Takeru to his sister after attacking him with a barrage of tickles for saying that he won’t pick up Tooru’s calls.
“So, this is me,” he says with a bow to both families. They wish him safe travel once again, and Iwaizumi smacks him hard on the back while telling him to take care of himself.
“You can’t hit me and then tell me to take care of myself, y’know? When will you stop being a hazard to me, Iwa-chan?”
“I won’t be there in Buenos Aires to bully you into taking rest anymore, Oikawa.”
His solemn tone makes Tooru’s expression soften.
He notices the tremble in Iwaizumi’s lower lip and feels like he’s five again, befriending the rowdy backbencher in his elementary class at the end of the school day. Iwaizumi had almost cried then—it’s strange that he remembers it now somehow, and has gotten used to picking up that sign that rarely shows on his best friend’s face.
“Aww, Iwa-chan, don’t cry now—”
“Shut up, shittykawa - just get over here,” he’s already pulling Tooru towards him by his shoulders. They don’t usually hug. Today seems to be a first for many things.
They leave just as the second announcement is made.
Tooru stares out the floor-to-ceiling windows at the bright blue sky. Come tomorrow, he’ll be standing on new land, under this same blue sky. It’s a daunting idea, just as it's thrilling.
Making sure he has his cabin luggage and plane ticket in hand, he turns away and starts towards the boarding terminal. Goodbye, Japa-
“Oikawa-san!”
Tooru’s first thought is that he just hallucinated the voice. Maybe the farewell had affected him way more than he thought. Maybe his body was starting to catch up with his mind, which already knew. But no, the voice calls out his name again, making him whip around in spot—
And Kageyama Tobio is running towards him like he did that day after camp in middle school. This seriously can’t be happening right now…
The problem with truth really is that it reveals itself at the worst possible timing.
“Tobio-chan, how did you—?” he starts as the ravenette reaches him.
“Please,” is the first word Tobio gets out between gasps for air. “I need to know before you go—” and he’s putting his hand forward again, the yellow flower staring into Tooru’s honey eyes and straight into his soul.
He promised himself. He doesn’t give a damn about soulbonds anymore. His pride refuses to let love become the reason he loses sight of his goal and subsequently, of himself.
Tobio gulps, eyes darting away nervously. It’s been years since middle school, and despite winning against each other, against Shiratorizawa, and playing at Nationals—
Kageyama Tobio still looks nervous in the face of Oikawa Tooru.
Yet there’s this glint in Tobio’s irises, the one he always has whenever his gaze follows the brunette. Even after six years, even after Tooru’s desperate attempts at keeping Tobio at an arm’s length, that light in his eyes hasn’t snubbed out.
Good. Keep looking at me like that.
“Quit looking at me like that, Tobio-chan,”
It’s never brought you any good.
“What good would it be to know now? You know I’m already leaving—”
“If you don’t care about the outcome either way, at least let me have my closure.”
Tooru hates to admit that Tobio’s words are convincing. He deserves as much from Tooru.
Maybe as some compensation for all that Tooru’s put him through all these years. Maybe as a final parting gift between two people who were fated to be each other’s punishers.
(After all, Tooru’s only ever been good at leaving when it comes to Tobio.)
He reaches his hand out and silently prays for the truth to be tender to his trembling heart.
A single sunflower takes birth amidst the growing field of blooms in his garden.
The string of fate that ties their pinky fingers and their souls together is blue.
˚‧｡⋆🌻⋆｡‧˚
Turns out the skies in Buenos Aires take on pretty shades just like they did back in Japan.
It doesn’t make it any easier to be living under the same sky, though.
With no experience in speaking Spanish, a foreigner to the culture and its people alike, and a one-track mind to achieve his dream, Argentina welcomes Tooru with arms that don’t quite wrap around his frame in the right way, yet. He’s learning to adjust himself in its hold.
The one thing that knows how to keep him steady in the face of adversity is, of course, Volleyball.
It’s an honour and immense luck to be coached by his favorite volleyball player in the world. He wouldn’t have given up this chance for anything. And that’s what keeps him going most days, when the heat becomes unbearable.
And on the days he feels like he can’t keep going, he returns to the garden in his mind.
He’s spent so much time there now since arriving in Buenos Aires that he’s started keeping a small nursery of potted plants in the bedroom of his rented apartment.
There are all types of flowers in shades of the color he’s loved since he was a babe, and the only two flowers that stand out are yellow. A Daffodil, and a Sunflower.
He’s despised the sun for so long, it feels ironic to be living in a place where summer is the norm. He can feel it channel into his blood with every morning that the potted sunflower tilts out his window to gaze at its north star.
Maybe he’s slowly turning into a heliotrope too, with the way his skin tans gold like the petals of the flower. He smiles to himself at the thought, because there are many ways this country’s going to change him, but this one felt like a welcome surprise.
It takes months of patience and practice, and the unwavering support of the new people who surround him, before his bones stop longing for a place he refuses to return to, before his heart learns to settle into the new shape of his body that is gradually becoming familiar.
And after the first few months, Tooru realises that life really does get better.
He also realizes that he's a very greedy man, because even when everything in his life finally starts falling into place, he finds himself reminiscing about the one person he left behind in his hometown.
The one he watches play volleyball through a digital screen in the depths of the night, in the secrecy of his bedroom. The one whose stupid curry ad has been on loop on his phone for an embarrassingly long time.
Iwaizumi laughs at him through the phone when he tells him as much.
“I still can’t believe you told Tobio to see me off at the airport and get ‘closure’.”
“Because knowing you both, it would’ve taken embarrassingly longer to figure your shit out. What the hell even happened that day after we left? I’m surprised that the bond turned out blue despite how obviously he’s loved you since you’ve met.”
It’s been a while since Tooru’s felt guilty for anything. “That’s because… I wasn’t ready,” he mutters the last words under his breath, hoping his best friend would both hear it and not.
"Oikawa-san, do you... dislike me?"
"No,"
"Then, do you like me?"
"No," Not Yet.
"Then why hasn't the bond turned green?"
"Oh, so you do understand how bonds work," Tooru snaps under the weight of his overwhelming emotions, but his words make Tobio frown, and that renders him tongue-tied.
"I—I just, I need to figure some things out about myself and my life first, Tobio-chan, before I can give you an answer," he tells him, making it one of the rare moments he’s being completely honest to the boy’s face instead of in the safety of his heart.
"Oh, okay.” Tobio had replied easily, “I'll wait for you, then," he says, unprompted.
It makes Tooru's heart stutter, and he has to try hard not to act like a lovesick fool in the middle of the airport.
“Well, it’s obviously not going to turn green, given how obsessed you are with each other,” Iwaizumi mutters back, without addressing his friends whispered concern. He must have known without Tooru having to voice them.
“In any case, don’t let the guilt eat at you, Oikawa,” he continues, in that stern but reassuring voice he always uses when he’s talking sense into Tooru’s frazzled brain. “I know that stupid promise you made to yourself after what happened with Touko nee-san, but that was at fifteen. Everyone’s dramatic at fifteen. You’re almost nineteen now. So just focus on your life like you told him you will—the answer is just waiting for you to grasp it when the time’s right,”
Tooru thinks of exchanging contact numbers hastily at an airport, of carefully flying the sunflower all the way to his new home, of replanting its seeds—all just to keep the day in his memory. To keep him in his memory.
He looks at the sunflower sitting at his bedroom window and thinks,
Yeah, the answer is right there.
˚‧｡⋆🌻⋆｡‧˚
“Thank you for the food!” they both say in unison.
Who would’ve thought, out of all the people he could run into during his trip to Rio with some of his teammates, that he would run into none other than Hinata Shoyo?
The human tangerine had been playing a game of beach volleyball with the locals when he spotted Tooru with his friends, and the two decided on a whim to catch up over dinner.
Hinata tells him about his last two years at Karasuno before he decided to travel to Brazil. Tooru sympathizes and shares his stories about how difficult it is to move to a new country with no knowledge of the language and the culture. When Hinata asks him if he’s watched any of Kageyama’s recent matches, Tooru reverts to his old habits and lies.
“Funny of you to say that, because when I asked him, he said the same. You both are really bad at lying when it comes to each other, you know? Kageyama gets that same faraway look like you did just now, whenever he’s talking about you,” the ginger calls him out, but he doesn’t sound teasing at all. If anything, he looks genuinely surprised by this discovery.
Tooru thinks about the last two years and how many times he’s had to clear his search and watch history to avoid someone finding out how helplessly obsessed he still is with his former kouhai. There’s a satisfying warmth growing in his chest at the knowledge that he is not alone in this predicament. So Tobio’s been watching me too…
Well, not that it was new news. Tobio’s always been watching Tooru.
Just like Tooru’s always been watching Tobio.
“What about you, though?” the brunette starts, trying to distract him from their previous topic. “You look like you’ve got some kind of bond there,” he points to the small inked rose at the front of Hinata’s wrist, close to his pulse.
“Oh, that! Yeah, I found my soulmate during my first year at Karasuno. Well, we didn’t know we were soulmates until I was in my second year, but we started dating immediately after we found out. He’s the one who sponsored my trip to Brazil, too! His name’s Kozume Kenma, and he’s like this super cool streamer—” Tooru lets Hinata yap about his soulmate, grateful to have the conversation diverted away from him.
He’s zoned out for most of it, but the longer he stares at the inked flower on Hinata’s wrist, a single question bugs his mind. “What color was the fate string?”
The ginger sputters mid-sentence. “Huh?”
“When you gave him the flowers, what color was your bond?”
“Oh, it was a soul bond from the start, so it was purple! We seemed to have liked each other since we first met, and we both ended up confessing at the same time! It was so hilarious, I have to retell this story to everyone all the time—”
How fortunate, God really must have favorites.
How unfortunate, that Tooru and Tobio don’t seem to be one of them.
Tooru doesn’t realise Hinata’s stopped talking until he looks up from his wrist and to his face that is set in a solemn expression. It’s when he realises that he’s had a pensive look on his face all this time.
“He told me, you know. That your bond color was blue,” the ginger starts, looking down at his own mark with an understanding smile. “He said he’s still waiting for you.”
Tooru’s face flushes maroon, and it’s not an effect of the beer they’ve been drinking.
“I think he said he’s going to fly down to Brazil in two days, for the Olympics. He’s training with the national team, as you must know,” and here, Hinata shows the first sign of friendly mischief, a teasing smirk tilting the corner of his lips upward.
Tooru hides his burning face behind the bottle of beer he chugs down while Hinata laughs at his expense. He’s not about to tell him that the reason he and his teammates are in Rio is, in fact, to watch the Olympics.
Once they finish dinner, Hinata invites him to play a match of beach volleyball, and the two of them take to the sand with a few locals. Oikawa struggles to find his footing in the unfamiliar version of the game, Hinata gets to feel a sense of superiority over the “Great King” (as he’s dubbed him since high school), and at the end of the match, they decide to celebrate their newfound friendship by taking a commemorative selfie together.
“Cheers to new beginnings!” Hinata announces gaily before they bid each other goodbye.
˚‧｡⋆🌻⋆｡‧˚
Beach volleyball with Hinata had been so much fun. Watching Tobio’s first Olympics (even if he was just a pinch server) had also been so much fun.
Tooru thinks he’s finally doing something right in his life.
His garden's fully in bloom, with flowers surrounding him as far as his eyes can see, new trees taking root in the fields. His mind feels less swayed by his anxious thoughts than when he was fifteen or eighteen, and more grounded, like the roots reaching deep into his soul.
He can feel his character strengthen with every day he spends taking care of himself, learning to love himself, and rediscovering the pure, unadulterated joy he found in the sport that he's chased after his entire life.
He always wondered why his garden was clouded by gloom for so long, despite his persistent care for the blossoms. Now he knows it’s because he’d been so blinded by his envy, regret, and resentment that he’d lost sight of both himself and his goal. He refused to let love in for so long that he forgot to love himself as well at some point.
But now the sky's clearing, there are fewer thunderstorms these days, and there's an enchanting gleam to every petal that blooms under the golden sunlight. All because love, which he once thought of as unnecessary in the face of victory, and of him as undeserving of it after shunning it all his life, has finally returned to him.
With grace, with no strings attached.
He’s back in his rented apartment in Argentina that he’s been calling his home for the past two years. It’s a little past 6 am, and he doesn’t have any practice today. He gets out of bed and fixes the covers before heading to the bathroom to start his morning.
He brushes his teeth, staring at the tube of toothpaste in wonder.
Has Tobio also been using this toothpaste? Or has he switched to something else?
He showers, goes through his skin-care routine, and waters all the plants in his bedroom.
I wonder why he specifically chose sunflowers both times. I mean, isn’t a rose considered more romantic? Shoyo and his partner gave each other roses too…
He prepares a light breakfast that his team's dietician and his best friend would be proud of.
What does Tobio have for breakfast? He doesn’t seem like a picky eater, but what if he is?
He remembers that the boy would always have a small carton of milk with any meal he ate. He wonders where he must’ve picked up the habit from. What’s his favorite food?
On his way to the couch in his living room with one of the Spanish classics he’s been reading in his hand, he passes by the small cabinet next to the television, where a bunch of photo frames have been propped on the glass shelves.
There’s a photo of him with his and Iwaizumi’s families during their high school graduation, one of the entire Seijoh team during his captaincy, and one taken with the Kita-ichi team on the day he was awarded best setter in the prefecture.
He stares at the short, blue-eyed boy next to him in the picture and notices something he hadn’t until now. Tobio had been holding onto the bottom edge of his jersey jacket.
“He said he’s still waiting for you.”
Maybe Tobio’s been waiting for him for a much, much longer time than since the airport.
He returns to his bedroom, abandoning the novel on his bed to reach for his phone.
As the call starts ringing, his eyes fall on the sunflowers growing in his window.
There are nine of them now. And all of them are facing the rising sun.
The call connects just as realization dawns in Tooru’s mind, and he finally snaps from his daze when Tobio’s voice reaches him.
“Oikawa-san?”
Tooru seems to have the worst timing at being tongue-tied.
“Oikawa-san? Is everything okay?”
“Tobio…” How embarrassing and unfortunate for Tooru, that all of his hidden, decade-long yearning spills into the way he says his name, after trying so hard not to talk to him.
There’s a hitched breath on the other side of the call. “Yes?”
Tooru has just one thing in mind that he wants to ask him. I want to get to know you…
“When can you fly down to Argentina?”
˚‧｡⋆🌻⋆｡‧˚
Tooru pays for his plane tickets, and they pick a long weekend when they’re both free for Tobio to come stay over at his place. He arrives on a Friday past lunchtime, and Tooru picks him up from the airport in a car he borrows from his friend on the team.
The ride back to the apartment is filled with small talk and the kind of restless energy that reflects the anticipation of a new dawn, after a particularly bad storm has passed the night before. Tooru offers to carry his bags upstairs, but Tobio politely refuses with a soft smile.
Once they enter the quaint single bedroom flat, however, Tooru insists on putting Tobio’s luggage away in his bedroom by himself and tells him to get comfortable in the living room.
Before Tobio can protest, Tooru’s taking the two bags in his arms and crossing the apartment to his bedroom to put them at the foot of his bed. Ain’t no way I’m letting him see the flowers before I even get the chance to give them to him.
Tobio’s sitting on the cream colored couch when he re-enters the living room, and the sight makes Tooru halt in his steps.
Afternoon sunlight filters through the pale white curtains of the floor-length windows, casting golden shadows over Tobio, the crown of his dark black hair shining like a halo.
He looks like a sunflower.
But he’s not looking at the sun.
“Oikawa-san,” Tobio starts when he sees Tooru just standing and staring at him in awe. He stands up from his seat and rises to his full height—oh, he’s taller than Tooru now, just a little bit. He’s not the beautiful, red-faced boy he left waiting in his home country anymore.
He’s grown into a tall, handsome man.
Seeing Tobio on the screen or from a distance in a crowded stadium will never compare to having Tobio standing right in front of him, in flesh, in his own apartment. It feels surreal.
The entire room is bathed in golden light, making it feel like a scene from some French romance film, or like a soft-tinged dream.
And his Tobio, who’s finally grown his own wings, is not facing the sun.
He’s facing Tooru.
Everything Tooru knows about heliotropism is thrown out of the window because he realises—they’ve always been two sunflowers facing each other, instead of the sun.
“I—”
“If we’re doing this right now, then let me have a moment,” Tooru scrambles back into his bedroom with those words. He had spent all this time leading up to their meeting preparing what he was going to say and how he was going to present the flowers back to him, but now—it all felt useless. Nothing prepares you for love.
He grabs the bouquet of sunflowers he prepared last night—just the nine sunflowers he wants to give him; there’s no fancy paper or decorative flowers, lest it hinder the acceptance of their bond—takes a deep breath, before he steps out of his bedroom again.
Only to not find Tobio in the living room.
The sudden concern that spikes in his heart is jarring, like being woken up from a good dream. “Tobio-chan?”
“In the kitchen!”
Ah. Tooru sighs in relief. His footsteps echo through the quiet house as he pads over to the kitchen and finds the ravenette helping himself to a glass of water.
“Sorry, I was thirsty—”
“No worries, that’s alright. I should’ve offered it to you earlier when we arrived,” Tooru replies with a dismissive wave of his hand. His other hand hides the flowers behind his back.
Tobio notices as much. His eyes look tired. It must be the jet lag, because there’s a smile ghosting his thin pink lips.
“Your sunflower died the day after I landed in Argentina,” Tooru starts, because he doesn’t know where to begin unpacking the longing he’s been hiding from both of them till now.
“So I replanted its seeds. I’ve been taking care of them for a while now, and—” he brings his hand forward, holding the bouquet in the space between them. “—and I’m finally ready to give you my answer. I’m sorry it took so long, Tobio. But you don’t have to wait any longer, because I accept your bond.”
When Tobio remains tongue-tied, he adds for good measure, “If you’ll still have me,”
Tobio smiles softly and reaches for the bouquet instead of giving him a reply.
There could never be a day when Tooru doesn’t recognize the look in his eyes. How could he not, when Tobio’s been watching him with those eyes since middle school?
Tobio’s love has remained all the same, all these years, in the depths of those blues. It’s about time Tooru shows him the secrets he’s been suppressing behind his own.
The second Tobio accepts the flowers, the string of fate reappears.
Tooru and Tobio watch in fascination as the color of their bond changes from blue, to red, and then finally, to purple. A soulbond. And right after, two matching sunflower marks appear on the front of their wrists, right next to their pulse.
Their eyes meet, across the small gap between their bodies, as the bond bathes the room in an enchanting purple glow. Tooru’s never been much for fairytales, but maybe he’s going to start believing them from this moment.
It feels like they’ve both been transported to the garden in Tooru’s mind, the flowers swaying gently in the setting sun, tiny fireflies flitting around, their bond glowing as they face each other with recognition shining true in their eyes. It was always meant to be you.
“I love you.”
There’s not a single thread of doubt when Tooru voices the three words, finally confirming their reality after denying it for so long. “I love you, Tobio, I—”
They’re closing the gap between them before they know it, Tooru’s hand reaching for Tobio’s face as Tobio puts the bouquet on the counter to reach for him too.
The first taste of each other’s lips is like touching the stars, sparks igniting at every point of contact between their bodies and at the back of their eyelids as they close them to just feel.
Tooru clenches his fists in Tobio’s hair hard, as if he’ll wake up from this dream if he lets go, as if Tobio will disappear in the middle of his apartment kitchen if he stops kissing him for even a second. And there is nothing Tooru wants more in the world right now than Tobio.
He’ll be damned if he ever lets go of him now that he finally has him.
Tobio kisses him back with just as much fervour, teeth and tongue all coaxing and demanding the honesty of Tooru’s feelings straight from his lips. His hands grasp the front of Tooru’s sweatshirt hoodie, holding onto him the same way he did all those years back in middle school. Tooru thinks his heart might burst from all this affection.
His tongue runs over Tobio’s teeth, pressing into his mouth as he tilts their faces to deepen the kiss. His hands trace Tobio’s hairline at the nap of his neck, following it down to his smooth jawline, cupping his face with all the intensity of the emotions racing through his brain. I love you. I’m sorry for everything. I never gave up on you. And I never will.
Tooru's always been soft and sharp to him in all the right ways. It keeps pulling Tobio towards him like gravity. He presses forward, pushing into Tooru’s body like he wants to climb into him, and Tooru just drags him closer by one hand on his slender waist like he’d let him. His back hits the counter, and they kiss, and they kiss, and they kiss.
The world outside the four walls of his apartment feels so far away, all noises drowned out by the slick sound of their lips, loud in the silence of the room. Tooru has no chill, unable to decide if he wants to keep holding Tobio’s face or circle his waist to keep him in place. His hands are everywhere in the end—indecisive, and always wanting. Greedy.
His breath hitches in his throat at the first drop of wetness that falls on his cheeks. Lashes finally flutter open, unaware of time and space, and brown eyes zero in on the sight before him. Tobio’s gasping for air, lips swollen and kiss-bitten, glistening with spit as his face burns a warm shade of red like the glorious sunset outside. And he’s crying.
“Tobio—” Tooru doesn’t get to say another word before the ravenette smashes their lips together again, saltwater rolling into their kiss. Tooru’s heart is far from complaining; in fact, he feels like he might just start sobbing too.
“I love you,” Tobio speaks the words right onto his lips, letting Tooru taste them. “I love you so - much - Oikawa-san, I—” he keeps interrupting himself because neither of them stop kissing. Tooru holds him close, feeling his heart pounding through his sweatshirt in time with Tobio’s. He runs his hands up and down the ravenette’s back in a comforting gesture.
It takes him a while to calm down, passionate kisses turning to soft, repeated presses of their lips until Tobio’s laughing through his tears. Tooru wipes them away with gentle thumbs, unable to stop himself from grinning back giddily.
“I’ve only known the taste of your toothpaste until now, but I can’t believe I finally have the real thing in front of me,” Tobio explains out of nowhere.
It catches Tooru so off guard that he has to remind himself to breathe. And with the first exhale, he turns his head up to the ceiling. “Damn it, Tobio—you’re making me cry too now,”
Tobio laughs wetly, forcing the brunette to look back at him with his hands on Tooru’s nape.
There’s silent tears rolling down his flushed cheeks, and he softly presses their foreheads together, both closing their eyes and listening to their matching heartbeats.
“I,” a deep, shuddering breath, “—really love you, Oikawa-san,”
“I know,” Tooru almost whines in complaint, because why aren’t the damn tears stopping?
He opens his eyes to find Tobio already staring back at him. His eyes look like two blue oceans—and this time, Tooru’s prepared to dive in and learn their depths.
“I really love you, too, Tobio.”
˚‧｡⋆🌻⋆｡‧˚
“So you’re saying that you did have toothpaste and still asked for mine?”
The purple twilight outside the windows makes them feel like even the world is celebrating their long-awaited reunion. They’ve kept the lights around the house on dim settings to bask in the tenderness of the day.
“I had the misfortune of having an embarrassing crush on my senpai back then, okay? Cut me some slack—” Tobio mutters, equal parts annoyed and flustered as he skillfully chops up the vegetables for their dinner.
Tooru had asked what his favorite food was. Tobio told him it was the pork curry rice with slow-cooked eggs, the way his grandfather used to make it.
And that’s how dinner was decided, with Tobio acting as the main chef to follow his grandfather’s recipe while Tooru helped him get familiar with the kitchen and followed his instructions as the assistant chef.
“You wanted to know what I tasted like, so you asked me for my toothpaste?”
“Will you stop repeating that?”
“No. Come here—” he pulls Tobio away just as he’s finished putting the vegetables in the pot, stealing a kiss from his lips before attacking the ravenette’s flushed neck and cheeks with a barrage of butterfly kisses.
In the end, it takes them an hour to complete a 30-minute recipe because Tooru proves to be more of a hindrance than help in Tobio’s cooking endeavours.
During dinner, conversation flows effortlessly (much to their surprise) as they get to know each other for the first time. Who would’ve known, that the two rival setters who always seemed to be at each other’s throats like lethal leopards in a battle would melt in each other’s presence so easily outside the court?
Certainly not the rival setters in question.
Their middle-school and high-school selves hadn’t found themselves yet, mind solely focused on the sport and the win. No idea of who they were outside of volleyball, to themselves, and to each other. Every action, every word was like cannons aimed to sink each other to keep their ships afloat. Every conversation back then was a means to an end.
But now they’re sitting at the small dining table in Tooru’s living room, laughing like they’re old friends, eating the pork curry Tobio made for them, sunflowers in the small vase between them as they talk like they’ve known each other from some other lifetime.
“Why sunflowers, though, Tobio-chan?” Tooru asks as they clean up after dinner.
He’d done his own research on the symbolism of sunflowers when he was learning to take care of the plants potted in his bedroom. He just wants to know if Tobio knows it too.
The ravenette takes a moment to contemplate, deep in thought with a furrow in his brows, before he answers, “Miwa nee-san really got into floriography when I was ten. So when I asked her what flower I should give you, she told me that sunflowers fit us best.
“They symbolize unwavering devotion and enduring love, because sunflowers are faithful—they’re always facing the sun. She thought that’s how I felt about you back then, and well, she was right.”
A pure, steadfast love that remains resilient even through difficult times.
“Plus, giving a single sunflower can also mean that the person is your first love.”
“Was I? Your first love, I mean?”
Tobio’s hand twitches ever so slightly on the plate that he’s drying. Tooru notices it anyway.
“No, it was volleyball,” he replies curtly, returning to the task to finish cleaning up.
But his ears are turning red, and Tooru has to look away to avoid being caught laughing.
“Of course, of course. How can anyone ever forget? That Kageyama Tobio’s first love was, is, and always will be volleyball, am I right? Your poor Oikawa-san doesn’t even stand a chance, does he?”
“You’re only second to it.”
“Ah, sweet relief! My heart is saved!” Tooru cries dramatically, putting a hand on his chest.
His smile is so infectious that it makes Tobio grin too, shaking his head in wonder.
“Dance with me, Tobio,” Tooru says suddenly, putting on some pop music on his phone and placing it on the counter, before taking the ravenette’s hands in his.
“What—” Tobio doesn’t have the chance to protest before Tooru’s hands on his waist sway him to the music. Their steps are messy and uncoordinated, and they’re too busy laughing like they’re mischievous kids again, dancing with all the grace of seven-year-olds.
“Do you know what nine sunflowers mean?” Tooru asks as they keep dancing, spinning Tobio around under the kitchen lights before pulling him close by the waist again.
He presses a kiss to Tobio’s lips before he replies.
“I never asked nee-san about that, so no. What do they mean?”
Tooru is rapidly realizing that he might be addicted to kissing Tobio. So he kisses him again.
“It means I want to love you forever, even in the next life.”
It is well past midnight when they stop talking about anything and everything under the sun and decide to finally go to bed. They still have plenty of time to get to know each other over the weekend. The knowledge that they will have the other by their side come morning and hereafter, makes Tooru’s heart rest easy.
“Um, Oikawa-san, were you planning on proposing to me?” Tobio asks once they’ve settled in the bed, his back to the brunette’s front because Tooru had insisted on Tobio being his little spoon.
“Huh? Where’s that coming from?”
“Then is that a ring box in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?”
Kiss in the kitchen like it's a dance floor
I couldn't want you any more tonight
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Epilogue
They shake hands at the net before the match.
The stadium is ecstatic with loud cheers and calls for their favorite teams. People are holding flags, cheer cones, and some even have their country’s colors painted on their faces to show their loyalty. The overhead lights drench the court in a brilliant white glow.
A special kind of electric spark buzzes through their veins.
"Blue really suits you, Oikawa-san," Tobio starts, without retracting his hand from Tooru’s.
"Thanks, it's the color of my favorite eyes," Tooru replies with a knowing smirk, pride swelling in his chest at the blush that creeps up to the tips of Tobio’s ears. “On the other hand, Red looks good on you.”
Tobio’s face turns ten shades deeper than his JNT jersey, and Tooru almost worries that they’re going to have to alert the medical staff before the match even starts.
Red and Blue make Purple, just like the color of their bond.
If you asked Tooru when he was five, fifteen, and eighteen years old if he thought he’d ever find his soulmate, his answer would’ve been no.
But in truth, loving someone has never been a one-time one-event thing. It requires just as much patience as putting individual feathers together to shape wings, and just as much care as growing a garden full of flowers.
At 27, he stands across the net from the love of his life, on a volleyball court like when they first met twelve years ago, this time on the world stage during the Tokyo Olympics.
There's still a long journey waiting ahead for them, both as people and as pro players.
Tobio, to soar even higher with his ever-growing wings. Tooru, to plant even more trees in his ever-growing forest. But this time, they're not running around each other in circles.
This time, they're taking the journey together, as each other's biggest influences in every step of life. Parallel ships sailing the endless, erratic waves together, sinking no more.
Tooru taps his index finger three times on the tattooed sunflower on Tobio’s wrist next to his pulse. He feels their heartbeats sync under his palm as Tobio returns the gesture.
I love you.
They walk back to their teams with the declaration of a challenge clear in their eyes.
Give your damn best to me.
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