3 & 97 for spotify wrapped? :D
with the snow covering the sun
summary: in another life, maybe things would be different, oikawa knows. but the life they live in is one where iwaizumi will love suga and oikawa will, by his own self-fulfilling prophecy, his own stupid design, be alone again.
prompt: spotify wrapped prompts #3 & 97, so much (for) stardust and thnks fr th mmrs, both by fall out boy
pairings: hajime iwaizumi/tooru oikawa/koushi sugawara
words: 2374
warnings: none
1.
Here’s the thing: they were never even dating. They were never together. Iwaizumi confessed, and Oikawa rejected him.
It was the day of their high school graduation; they were going to different universities and wouldn’t be near each other all the time like they were while they were younger, and Oikawa—Oikawa was fucking scared. Scared of breaking up, scared of losing his best friend, scared of everything changing in a time when things were already changing so much. So Iwaizumi asked and Oikawa said no.
They never dated. They never had any kind of relationship beyond best friends. Despite the tension between them, despite the pining, despite how they both knew it was mutual—they never dated.
Which is why Oikawa has no fucking right to feel this heartbroken right now. He has no right to be hurting so badly when Iwaizumi introduces him to Sugawara, and they are holding hands. He has no right, and he knows that. He knows that he needs to take a breath and calm the fuck down because Iwaizumi isn’t his, never has been and never will be, and it’s his own fault. He knows he needs to get over himself and be happy for his best friend, because he has no fucking right to be upset that Iwaizumi is happy right now.
But it’s so hard, and Oikawa is weak, and between him and Iwaizumi, Oikawa has never been the kind one.
2.
The thing about Sugawara is that it’s impossible to hate him.
Oh, Oikawa wants to. He wants to hate Suga so badly. He wants him to be the worst boyfriend in the world and he wants Iwaizumi to break up with him and he wants Suga to be awful and none of that is true. None of that is happening. Suga is, by all respects and means, a lovely person and boyfriend and he’s good to Iwaizumi and good for Iwaizumi.
As much as Oikawa wants to hate him, he can’t bring himself to. He’s bitter and he’s heartbroken and looking at him hurts sometimes, but he can’t hate Suga. He can’t hate that Iwaizumi is happy. He just hates that he himself isn’t the one making him happy.
It’s his own problem, not Suga’s issue. It’s his own bad mood and regret and anger and frustration and his own stupid, stupid, awful heart that wants Iwaizumi so badly but is too late coming to the realization that his love is bigger than all the fear in the world.
It’s his own problem, and he’s trying so hard to keep it from Iwaizumi because he knows—he can tell so easily—that Iwaizumi is happy with Suga. He doesn’t want to be the thing that ruins them. If they do break up, Oikawa will be there to pick up the pieces, but he doesn’t want to be the reason they fall apart. He wouldn’t do that to Iwaizumi. He wouldn’t. He likes to think that he’s better than that. He doesn’t know if it’s true.
But despite his best efforts in keeping this to himself and containing his own heartbreak inside of his chest rather than on Iwaizumi’s shoulders, Suga figures him out.
It doesn’t take long. They’ve only met a couple times before Suga is sitting down across from him at the kotatsu in Iwaizumi’s apartment, his arms folded on the table and his eyes on Oikawa, saying, “You’re in love with him.”
3.
Oikawa is a good liar. It’s what made it so easy to tell Iwaizumi no. Tell him that they can’t go on a date. Tell him that he’s been making up the tension between them, the thing pulled taut between their hearts. Tell him that everything he thinks he’s noticed means nothing. He’s a good liar. It makes it easy to break people’s hearts.
But something about Sugawara takes the string of honesty in his chest—the feeble, trembling thing it is—and pulls at it. Tugs it free. Makes him want to tell the truth.
Oikawa hates it. Hates that Suga is taking hold of him and reeling him forward. Hates that Suga is holding tight to that honesty and dragging it free, kicking and screaming. Hates that he himself is letting it happen. Hates that Iwaizumi loves Suga so much, and hates that he can understand, so easily, why he does.
So when Suga says, “You’re in love with him,” and raises his eyebrows and waits, Oikawa sets down his chopsticks and swallows a bite of rice and says, “Yes. Are you?”
It’s a dare, it’s a push, it’s a give and take, it’s a game of words and Oikawa intends on winning. Oikawa is in love with Iwaizumi, because it is so impossible not to be. He asks, Are you? as if the answer could be anything other than yes.
But still, he asks. It’s a challenge more than a question. Tell me the truth, I triple dog dare you. Truth or dare, Suga: look me in the eye when you break my heart.
“Yes,” Suga says. “I am. Is that a problem?”
Oikawa takes a shallow breath. “Of course not. He loves you back. I’m not—I’m not going to ruin that.”
“I don’t think you’re ruining anything,” Suga tells him, and then Iwaizumi comes back into the room with three matching mugs of tea and they both go quiet. Oikawa doesn’t know how to explain it, but he thinks maybe he’s missing something.
4.
Oikawa spends a lot of time in Iwaizumi’s apartment. Maybe, back in high school, he shouldn’t have been so afraid of the distance. Maybe he shouldn’t have been so afraid that they would drift apart because they didn’t live next door to each other anymore. Maybe he should have just trusted in the love they had for each other.
But thinking that now doesn’t change anything. Doesn’t change the fact that Iwaizumi asked and Oikawa said no. Doesn’t change the fact that Iwaizumi respected it, and moved on. Doesn’t change the fact that Oikawa never went anywhere and doesn’t plan on doing so.
Suga also spends a lot of time in Iwaizumi’s apartment. The difference here is that, at the end of the day, Iwaizumi chose Suga. And look, Oikawa isn’t going to hold that against either of them. They all made their choices and Oikawa just has to deal with it, just has to be at peace with it. He’s not a complete asshole. At the end of the day, he just wants Iwaizumi to be happy—he can be mature and an adult and deal with some unrequited feelings. He can.
But he starts spending more time with Suga and he’s starting to think he loves Suga, too, and maybe he can’t handle this at all. Maybe he can’t do this. Maybe he’s tired of lying about not loving Iwaizumi back, maybe he’s tired of lying about disapproving of Suga, maybe he’s tired of himself. Maybe he just wants to be done with these charades.
The problem with this is that he’s so sure that the only way to move on is to cut both of them out of his life, and he has never been brave enough to do such a thing. When they were kids, Iwaizumi would rip Band-Aids off in one go. Oikawa, on the other hand, would soak the wound in warm water for ten minutes and then slowly, gently, ever so carefully, pull the Band-Aid off.
The same principle applies to love: Iwaizumi confesses and Oikawa gets too scared to say yes. It applies to Suga, too: Iwaizumi loves him, and maybe there’s a chance he still loves Oikawa, and Oikawa is too much of a coward to say he loves them both, too. But he’s also too much of a coward to walk away. He’s just standing in the warm water, soaking his bruised heart, and not doing anything about the blood.
5.
He will have to give up eventually. He can’t do this forever. He can’t spend his entire life like this: pining for his best friend, his first love; wishing his first love’s boyfriend would love him back. He can’t do this forever. He can’t. Oikawa has always been stubborn, always willing to do whatever he has to do in order to get what he wants. He’s of the thought that dedication and loyalty can win out over time.
But maybe that’s true of things like volleyball, and untrue of things like love.
Maybe it’s time to move on. Tear off the Band-Aid. Walk away. Maybe it’s time to give up.
Or: he doesn’t cry, the day he tells Iwaizumi, “I can’t do this anymore.”
And Iwaizumi, the beautiful, kind, caring soul he is, says, “What are you talking about?”
They shouldn’t be having this conversation now, here, at the bus stop where Suga is standing only a few feet away, calling his own best friend, a best friend who probably isn’t in love with him and probably isn’t falling apart. They shouldn’t be having this conversation at all, but Oikawa’s heart is like a bursting balloon or a powder keg next to an open flame, and he loves them and he cannot have them and he has to give up before he breaks.
“I can’t watch you two,” Oikawa whispers, voice cracking. “I can’t do this. I can’t be your third wheel anymore, I can’t do it.”
“Oikawa,” Iwaizumi says, quiet, low, dangerous. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m in love with you,” Oikawa murmurs. It’s not an act of bravery, like Iwaizumi’s first confession had been. No, this is an act of surrender. “I’m so in love with you and it is going to kill me if I don’t say it at least once.”
6.
Or: he cries, the day Iwaizumi says, “You have no fucking right to break my heart like this, Oikawa.”
Oikawa squeezes his eyes shut. “I’m sorry, Iwa, I—”
“Don’t,” Iwaizumi snaps. “You told me that you didn’t—you were the one who—and now that I’m happy, you can’t fucking stand to see it? What the hell, Tooru?”
Oikawa flinches. He can’t see Iwaizumi, he doesn’t want to see Iwaizumi, but he can imagine it: the crease at his forehead, the thin line of his mouth, the clenching of his fists until his knuckles are white and that vein on his left wrist tenses. He can’t say anything, there’s nothing he can say. Nothing that will fix this, nothing that will take it all back and let him try again.
“What’s going on here?” Suga asks, stepping between them. His voice is calm, measured, like he already knows that something is breaking and he’s going to have to pick up the pieces. That used to be Oikawa’s job, but Oikawa supposes maybe it’s someone else’s turn nowadays. “Are you two—”
“You can’t do this to me,” Iwaizumi whispers, but the anger has faded from his voice and turned to a kind of grief. “You can’t.”
Oikawa opens his eyes. He looks between Iwaizumi and Suga. Suga, who looks so concerned for both of them, whose eyes are wide and his lips parted, an exhale hanging in the frigid winter air between them. Suga, who cares so much and who loves with his whole heart, and who is good to Iwaizumi in a way that Oikawa could never be.
Oikawa swallows. Looks at Suga when he says it because he can’t stand to see Iwaizumi’s heart shatter any further, raw and breaking on his expression. “Both of you, really. If we’re putting everything out there. Both of you.”
7.
Or: he cries, when Suga’s hand touches his arm ever so gently; and he cries, when Suga says, “It’s okay. It’s not—I already told you, Oikawa. You’re not ruining anything.”
“You don’t understand—”
“I do,” Suga says quietly, confessing to Oikawa’s closed eyes and Iwaizumi’s clenched fists, “because I know Hajime loves you—”
“Koushi,” Iwaizumi says helplessly, hurting and aching and upset in a way Oikawa has never heard him before. So this is what his best friend looks like when his first love is breaking his heart for the thousandth time. “I don’t—I—I love you—”
“You didn’t let me finish,” Suga says gently. He puts his hand to Iwaizumi’s hand, uncurling his fist and intertwining their fingers. “I know because I know you love both of us and I know I love both of you.”
Oikawa opens his eyes. He can see Iwaizumi’s breath, a puff of air, hanging in the air between them. Snowflakes are starting to gather on Suga’s hair. For the first time, the cold is beginning to register at Oikawa’s fingertips and ears.
“There’s a pretty simple solution here,” Suga says, something teasing in his voice. “Isn’t there?”
8.
And isn’t it simple? Isn’t it the most simple thing in the world?
9.
It is also impossibly hard. The snow is coming down harder, and the tears on Oikawa’s cheeks feel frozen and cold and he wants someone to wipe them away but his own hands are too cold to bend his fingers.
10.
Iwaizumi takes his hand. He doesn’t look Oikawa in the eye. Instead, he takes off his own gloves and pulls them over onto Oikawa’s hands. It’s a tender, gentle, caretaking motion. He has not been forgiven for what he has done, but he is still loved.
“I’m sorry,” Oikawa whispers.
Iwaizumi swallows. Then he shakes his head and drops Oikawa’s hands, only to put his hands on either side of Oikawa’s face and lift his chin so they can look at each other. There is something unsure, unreadable there, between the falling snow and Iwaizumi’s wide-open eyes. Then Iwaizumi leans up and kisses his forehead in a gentle motion that Oikawa has never seen him do before.
Oikawa takes a deep breath. There’s a hand on his shoulder, rubbing circles against his light jacket—Suga.
“It’s cold,” Suga says softly. “Let’s go home and talk, okay?”
“Yeah,” Oikawa tells him. He looks over at Suga, and gives him a small smile. That string of honesty that Suga pulls out of him is taut and tense, ready to spill open all of his secrets. Maybe that won’t be such a bad thing. “Okay. That sounds good.”
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