Summer
The wet sand squelches between his toes, refreshingly cool for all that he'll be cursing its very existence later. He just stands there a moment and breathes, taking in the lazy breeze, the squawks of seagulls, and the crash of the waves. Then-
Laughter. Delighted, joyful laughter washes over him pleasantly, and already, the corners of his lips are quirking up, helpless against the infectious happiness of this one person.
Opening his eyes, he turns around and spots Oikawa kneeling in the sand, his arms curled around his bare stomach and tears leaking from his eyes as he laughs. Hajime follows Oikawa's line of sight, and he can't help his own laugh once he finds what set him off.
Matsukawa had dozed off after he and Hajime had spent a few hours attempting (and failing, horribly) to boogie board, tired from both that and volleyball practice that morning, and once Matsukawa falls asleep, it's almost impossible to wake him, bar throwing water on his face or one of the other various (nefarious) methods Hanamaki has gleefully employed to wake him on overnight trips.
Apparently, Oikawa had not wasted the opportunity, either. Hajime walks over and properly appreciates the shockingly detailed mermaid tail and seashell top Oikawa had sculpted over his captive model.
Oikawa, finally calming down, falls back on his ass and asks, breathless, "What do you think of my masterpiece, Iwa-chan?"
His eyes are practically sparkling with mischief, mouth curved into an impish grin, and it takes nearly all of Hajime's willpower not to lean over and kiss him right then and there.
Instead, he glances over Matsukawa again and says, "I'm impressed you managed to give him D-cups." There's more sand on Matsukawa's chest than anywhere else, it seems. How is he even breathing under all that weight?
"He said his ideal girl had at least a D-cup, Iwa-chan. How could I not deliver?" Oikawa asks, fluttering his lashes, and it's so stupid, he's not even flirting, just being obnoxious as usual, but still, Hajime's dumbass heart kicks into high gear.
Then what Oikawa said sinks in. He snorts. "Are you implying Matsukawa's ideal girl is a mermaid version of himself?"
"I'm not implying anything. We all know Matsun's in love with his own reflection. I just added an extra feature," he defends himself, and Hajime is surprised he doesn't choke on the hypocrisy.
Before he can say so, they're interrupted by another burst of laughter, this one also familiar, and as one, they turn to find Hanamaki pointing at Matsukawa and looking like his entire day has just been made.
"He looks so stupid!" he barely gets out, fumbling to pull his phone out of his pocket and take a picture. "Oh man, I need to immortalize this forever. This is great. I'm never letting him live this down."
"Isn't he beautiful?" Oikawa chimes in, smug.
"Never?" Hajime asks, quirking a brow judgmentally.
Apparently satisfied with his photo, Hanamaki, also irritatingly smug, explains, "He let me walk around an entire day with my shirt on inside out, and he only told me once I was about to get off the train home. He has pictures. This is nothing less than he deserves."
The other brow rises to join its brother. "You know this isn't that bad, right?" he asks the both of them.
"Of course it's not! I would make a lovely mermaid," Oikawa says immediately. "But I'm sure if we shame him enough, he'll get embarrassed and be unable to bear the ridicule." He holds a hand out for a high five, and without looking, Hanamaki gives him one.
"It's our solemn duty as friends to instill a sense of shame in our other friends and properly roast them for it," he adds, like any of that makes sense or isn't an objectively awful thing to say. Behind him, Oikawa nods in agreement.
Hajime looks from one unrepentant jackass to the other and then gives up. Sighing, he wonders aloud, "Why do I put up with you."
His breath catches in his throat at the cheeky grin Oikawa shoots him. "Because you love me, of course!" he chirps, blindingly bright, and Hajime feels lightheaded with the truth of it, unable to come up with a retort.
He manages to scoff convincingly enough that Oikawa laughs it off, twirling around with the declaration, "I'm going to give him some long, luscious hair too! Can't be a mermaid without it!" He grabs a bucket and runs back to the shore for more wet sand, cackling all the way.
Hajime watches him go, eyes following him without any conscious input.
"Damn, you're smitten," Hanamaki says, somehow both commiserating and making fun of his plight. At Hajime's snort, he offers, "At least there's only two years left on his weird ban?"
Two years at this point feels like an eternity, but- "Yeah," he agrees and lets the carefully guarded hope bloom through him, warming him from the inside out. "Only two more years."
On the shore, Oikawa screams, upends his bucket over something - a crab? - and backs away only to visibly startle when the crab escapes. He loses his footing, falls back in the shallow water, and gets immediately hit with a wave.
Jogging over to check on the dumbass, Hanamaki's mocking laughter loud behind him, he grins and doesn't stop even when an indignant Oikawa tackles him into another wave for it.
(Matsukawa wakes up later, looks at Oikawa filming him, looks down at his sand body, which is no longer an actual body and has upgraded to a mound of sand covering everything except his head, and says, deadpan, "I am the sand guardian, guardian of the sand."
Without missing a beat, Hanamaki drops to his knees in view of the camera and shouts, "Poseidon quivers before him!"
Grinning like an idiot, Oikawa hastily circles around behind them, capturing the back of Matsukawa's sand mound and the ocean in front of him.
Obligingly, Matsukawa yells, "Fuck off!"
Oikawa and Hanamaki lose whatever composure they'd scraped together during, breaking into snorting laughter, and Hajime continues to pretend that he doesn't know any of them.)
-o-
Hero
He parts ways with Iwa-chan at his front door, giving him a wan smile and wishing him a good night. Were this any other night, he knows that Iwa-chan would force his way inside and try to aggressively mother him, just the way he's done after other defeat or low moment, would keep him company and distract him with movies and junk food and rehashing dumb arguments they've had a million times, would make him feel better in that Iwa-chan way that absolutely no one else has come close to managing.
This isn't any other night, though, and after a cursory glance, Iwa-chan nods, returns the sentiment, and walks away, not looking back even once.
Once he hears Iwa-chan's front door close, Tooru drops the smile, steps fully inside, and closes his own door, thoughts he's been beating back since that final buzzer finally allowed to run free.
They lost to Karasuno. They lost to Tobio. They lost their last chance to defeat Shiratorizawa, to beat Ushiwaka, to win just once before graduating, just like they were supposed to. Despite every effort of Tooru's, despite promising himself that he would lead his team to victory, despite everything.
Distantly glad that his parents are already asleep, Tooru slides down to collapse on the floor, leans his head back against the door, and stares unseeingly at the dark ceiling overhead.
In the end, he didn't change anything. Small things, maybe. The gap between scores because he knew his opponents' weaknesses and strategies beforehand, steering teammates towards positions and moves he knew they'd be good at, befriending Iwa-chan and Makki and Mattsun right away because he knew they'd get along. But nothing that truly mattered, in the end.
A side character will always be a side character. Oikawa Tooru was only ever meant to be Karasuno's - Tobio's - stepping stone. Shame on him for thinking things might be different, he supposes. For thinking he could do any better than the original, who he knew never gave anything less than his best.
He was arrogant, and his team paid for it. No, he knows better. Knew better. He didn't go into that game thinking he was the sole deciding factor, future knowledge or no. He'd just been confident in his team, had been sure they would win because all of them were that good. He hadn't let himself contemplate any other outcome, and so the defeat is twice as harsh, doubly heartrending. A literal upset.
In that instant, Karasuno had the better six, and so they won. There's no point dwelling on it or thinking of what ifs. And yet-
Beneath the anger and frustration, Tooru is just tired. Tired of always, always coming up short. Tired of never being enough. Tired of working himself to the point of injury and having nothing to show for it. Tired of having to defend himself to fucking Ushiwaka.
He's just- tired.
(His only reprieve from this ever-present exhaustion he feels in his soul is the fact that he no longer has a set script to follow. He lost interest in the show after the fictional Seijoh's defeat and never really regained it. He has a vague idea of what will happen to Karasuno - and he is not thinking about their match against Shiratorizawa; he doesn't have the mental or emotional strength to decide how he feels about that right now - but the other Oikawa's fate is a mystery.
He has never been more glad not to know something. Never felt so relieved at the uncertainty of tomorrow, but right now, it's the only thing keeping him moderately together.)
He takes in a deep breath, exhales slowly, tries not to think. Tries not to think that today had been his last official game as captain. Tries not to think about his team's downcast faces or Iwa-chan's tears. Tries not to think about not being on a team with Iwa-chan ever again-
His next breath comes out as a sob. He puts a trembling hand over his mouth, wary of waking his parents, but the tears keep coming, choking little gasps escaping as he curls into himself, suddenly viscerally aware of the weight of his failures, like a physical thing pressing down on him, impressing harsh words and harsher truths on his bowed back.
What use are you? It seems to say, and Tooru has no answer for it. What have you made of this second chance?
What makes you any better than the boy you replaced?
Absolutely nothing, he knows, and this truth at least he has never denied. Tears leave hot trails down his face, and Tooru thinks, what was the point?
Abruptly, the door behind him swings open, and Tooru yelps, his falling back halted by a pair of strong legs.
Dumbly, he tilts his head back and looks up at the owner of said legs. "Iwa-chan…?" he asks, bewildered.
Iwa-chan looks right back at him, dark eyes sweeping over his face and coming to conclusions Tooru would really rather he not. "Shittykawa," he growls, and Tooru hastily sits up, turning his face away, self-conscious.
"How is that any way to greet your best friend?" he admonishes lightly, angling his body even further away when Iwa-chan steps past him, shuts the door, and drops to his knees next to him. "Such a brute, Iwa-chan, this is why you can't get a girlfriend-"
Calloused hands grab hold of his face and forcibly turn his head. He instinctively closes his eyes, bracing for pain, but rather than a headbutt, a soft sigh ghosts over his face.
"You're such a pain," Iwa-chan says, and it's equal parts fond and exasperated.
Tooru peeks with one eye and finds Iwa-chan staring back at him, eyes steady and infinitely patient.
"You already cried so much earlier today. How'd you even have anything left?" he asks, thumb smoothing the puffy skin under Tooru's eye.
He sniffs. "I'm capable of many astounding feats, Iwa-chan. Keep up."
Iwa-chan snorts. "Feats of idiocy, you mean. I can't believe you were just gonna sit here on the floor in the dark and cry alone."
"Hmph! I knew Iwa-chan's Tooru senses would tingle, and he would come save me," he says, haughtily.
"Yeah, right."
"Well, you're here now, aren't you?"
"My 'Tooru's being an idiot' senses were tingling," he admits, and Tooru scoffs. Before he can retort, Iwa-chan says, "But you should have come and got me anyway. It's my duty as your best friend to prevent you from listening to that dumb voice in your head. The only voice you should be listening to is mine."
"And what do you say?" he asks, quirking a brow.
"I say, 'You're a damn good captain and teammate, and you gave it your all today. So what if it wasn't enough? My best wasn't enough. Seijoh's best wasn't enough. We did everything we could, so there's nothing to beat yourself up about.'"
"I know that-"
"I'd also say, 'You're the best person I know, and someone who inspires me to be better everyday. You work hard, and you never let setbacks keep you down for long. Also you're a dumbass, and you're full of yourself, and you have a shitty personality, and none of that is a dealbreaker for me, so you have to be pretty great for me to stick by you, right?'"
Tooru gapes, unable to respond.
"I'd say, 'After everything, you deserved to stand over Ushijima as the victor, and it's not fair that you never got the chance. But I don't need a scorecard to tell me that you're better than him. You always have been, in every way, and you don't have to prove it to me or to him or to yourself, okay? You're better.'"
"...Iwa-chan," he murmurs.
He laughs, and his expression is almost unbearably sweet. "Crying again, Crykawa?"
"Iwa-chan," he says again, through tears, wobbly, overwhelmed.
"I'm here," Iwa-chan answers, so, so gently. "I'll always be here, Tooru."
With a choked cry, Tooru throws himself forward, knocking Iwa-chan onto his ass and sprawling all over his lap in the process. "You too," he says, nonsensically. "You, too!"
Laughing, Iwa-chan wraps his arms around him and holds him tightly. "I know," he says, and he does because Iwa-chan has always understood him best. That thought, this moment sparks something, just a flicker of an idea, a promise of something more, something better. Tooru grasps it, keeps it close, hides it away until it has time and room to grow.
With that spark burning inside him, Iwa-chan right here, and his uncertain future ahead of him, Tooru carefully, cautiously allows himself to dream.
End Notes: if you're wondering how iwa-chan knew smth was up, it's bc it had been like 10-15 min & oikawa's bedroom light hadn't been switched on
I'm currently suffering thru/recovering from a nasty cold & this is the 1st day i was coherent enough to write anything & i wanted cozy/fluffy iwaoi, so here ya go. hope it's not a confusing mess lmao