Chapter Text
They've been staring at him ever since morning practice.
“Okay,” Hajime interrupts the lingering awkwardness during lunch break, though it seems he's the only one feeling such. They’re in Hajime’s classroom today, because the season is still uncooperative for their usual gathering on the rooftop, and it makes itself known by billowing gusts against windowpanes and a persistent January snowfall. They’ve had to drag Oikawa away from all the snow gathered on the rooftop. “Did Oikawa stick a note to my back again? Are there marker doodles on my face? Why are you guys looking at me like that?”
“Yeah, there's a dick on your cheek,” Hanamaki drawls, but Matsukawa just shakes his head before Hajime can extensively plan Oikawa's and Hanamaki’s murders.
“You’ve been—brighter.”
“We’ve passed the hell week. Of course everyone’s livelier.”
“Not you, though. Not exactly that.”
“You’ve heard how new mothers have that glow?” Hanamaki gestures unhelpfully. “You have that glow.”
Matsukawa nods along, like they’re completing each other’s sentences. And, well. Hajime’s an only child living in a house occupied by just the closest blood-relatives, cousins and the likes some cities or prefectures away, so he hasn't got the opportunity to observe such phenomenon up-close. A similar case might be when Oikawa's sister would come to visit her hometown: once to introduce her husband and disclose their discreet marriage, and another to announce her pregnancy (and, when asked by Oikawa and Hajime, amusedly explain how it works)—and that was that. When she decided on a surprise party to celebrate Oikawa's winning the Best Setter award, and told the news of moving closer so she could watch out for her other two favorite boys, Oikawa Takeru was already a bustling four-year-old.
Oikawa Tooru pops up next, intrusive as always. (Hajime lets him linger, anyway.) He's not sure why his setter would come into thought, but it might be that glow is a fitting adjective for the likes of Oikawa Tooru, star in the making, not the slightest bit afraid to showcase his hard-earned skills. Oikawa hasn't joined their group yet, either asking the third-year setter for another quick tossing lesson or getting caught in a traffic of admirers.
Speak of the devil, Hajime thinks when Oikawa strolls into the classroom not a beat later, giving his trademark smile and a wave over his shoulder for a passing acquaintance. He finds them by the windows, shoots a smile that warms the chilly classroom into something pleasantly bearable (but that's just Hajime's wistful longing for summery temperatures, surely), and skips over to their joined tables.
“You know,” Matsukawa says, “every time he sees you, he looks like a puppy.”
“If he had a tail, he’d be wagging it right now,” Hanamaki agrees.
“What? Oikawa?” Hajime asks, amused, because chaotic-evil Oikawa is the farthest personality from an innocent puppy and they all know better. That's the extent of his question, when Oikawa drags a nearby chair close, much too close, to sit on it backward, and Hajime has enough reflex trained over the years to snatch his own lunch away from Oikawa's thieving hands.
Instead of pouting or whining how Hajime is depriving him of precious nutrients, he beams at him. “You're positively glowing today, Iwa-chan.”
“There's your proof,” Hanamaki remarks around a bite of cream puff.
“You guys have noticed,” Oikawa gushes. “I’m so proud. I’ve trained you all well.”
Hajime flicks at his insufferable forehead. “Trashykawa—keep a hold on your inflated ego.”
He’s still grinning, anyway, the dumbass. “Iwa-chan's an open book.”
“Oh, he is,” affirms Hanamaki. “Heart on his sleeve, such a pure guy,” he adds, and Hajime purses his lips and frowns, somehow feeling ganged up on.
“You have yet beat 'this guy’ in arm-wrestling, Hanamaki.”
“Do you know why, though?” Matsukawa casually brings the topic back when Hajime and Hanamaki just start rolling their sleeves up for the fourteenth rematch. “Did our dear Iwaizumi get someone special recently?”
Oh, he does not like that gleam in Oikawa's eyes one bit.
“Iwa-chan’s got a girl, in fact.”
Matsukawa raises an eyebrow. “Oh?”
“Oh?” Hanamaki joins the fray.
“Yup!”
“Oikawa,” Hajime growls out the warning, even if it never works because Oikawa’s always had a shitty sense of self-preservation.
“She's a cutie,” Oikawa rambles on. “Tiny but fierce, and a bit of a meany. She's also spiky and prickly like Iwa-chan here—”
Hajime clamps a hand on Oikawa's face. “Hoshiko,” he asserts, before further damage is done, and resists the urge to facepalm himself. Of course. “He’s talking about Hoshiko.”
“Hm. He’s not completely wrong, in that regard,” says Matsukawa.
Hanamaki reaches over to pat Hajime's shoulder. “Congratulations, Iwaizumi-kun. You’ve officially become a dad.”
“You're glowing with it.”
“Just so you know, all your pictures with Hoshiko are saved for posterity in our secret group chat.”
“Ah, those. I think the most recent one, ‘Hoshiko asleep on top of Iwa-chan's unruly head’, is a brilliant candid. Oikawa should consider photography as a side hobby.”
“Wait. Pictures?”
Something moist and totally on the wrong side of warm coats the soft part of his palm. Hajime jerks his hand back from Oikawa's traitorous mouth, turning to glare at him; he finds the other boy's grin tapered down to something glowing, too, if not brighter, and he settles to ease the urge to reach out by kneading the sides of Oikawa's head with utmost violence. Under the hearty assault, Oikawa just chuckles, airy like some unbothered summer’s breeze, and Hajime thinks to attribute the heat on his own face to the unexpected fiasco of candid photos and the changing seasons.
(
Hajime will find and confiscate all evidence, damnit.
)
Unlike the Kitagawa Daiichi debacle, this time it's a slow drift, a deceptive fall, unnoticed until the strained joints and muscle tears accumulate into something breakable. Twenty more minutes. Ten more serves. Just a kilometer farther.
Steady snowfalls can still cripple a city.
Nothing too much at once, because there are higher places to reach, after all, and Oikawa's learned better, yet Hajime can't deny it has its catalyst. For being the one who chides other people to take care of themselves, Oikawa Tooru is a giant hypocrite. There's no official match in the few coming months (not ones they're participating in)—he’s simply panicking. A first year comes to a close, and the next one would start in the blink of spring break, new first-years and fresh faces to join their team. On their old team, a certain prodigy climbs one year closer to challenge them again.
“Twenty more minutes,” Oikawa insists for the fourth time tonight. He says this without meeting Hajime's eyes, not a bribe of peace signs or pleeease or trying to charm him with a wink and a pout (whose insincerity is more irritating than anything charming), or a promise to not steal Hajime’s lunch the following day (like Hajime hasn't always shared half of it), and this is when Hajime knows that's enough.
When Oikawa also omits the sharp-edged smile, his determined, stubborn gaze, I’ll take us to the top, Hajime knows there are other things else at play.
“Spit it out before I aim a spike at your head again.”
In return, Oikawa has the decency to hesitate with his next serve. He slaps the ball against the floor, catching it in its upward flight. He spins it, the white-red-green blurring like watercolors.
“I don't want to go home yet. I can't listen to okaasan,” Oikawa tells him. “She's got noon shifts now so she’ll be home at night.”
“So stay at mine for a while. Like we always do.”
“How long?”
“...What?”
“How long can we keep doing this?” He punctuates it with a chuckle. “Ah,” he breathes. “We’re getting a little too old for sleepovers like that.”
The last time, Hajime had woken up to Oikawa lying on top of him, his own hands wrapped around the other's waist, the hem of Oikawa's NASA shirt dragged up sometime in the night so he felt the heat and broadness of a muscled back. He’d shoved the still drowsy Oikawa onto the floor. His mother's good morning from beyond the room had sent him reeling, drumming in his ears along his erratic pulse. “We shouldn't sleep on one bed,” he’d said later. Oikawa's face had been unreadable, but Hajime couldn't bring himself to look in the first place.
We're getting a little too old for that. It's just how Oikawa prefers to rationalize these things (because Hajime's never given him reasons, has never wanted to), but Hajime can't ignore the traces of resentment in it.
“Don't be a dumbass,” Hajime retorts. Who's the hypocrite here, Iwa-chan? “I’m stuck with you all day long—have been for ten years and counting—and this isn't all that different—”
“You don't get to do that,” Oikawa hisses. There's resentment in his look. Confusion. Something lost, and at the vulnerable honesty of it Hajime plants his heels to the floor so he doesn't instinctively reach out. “‘Not that different’. ‘This won't change us’. You don't get to have your pick when you're so afraid of staying close as when we were kids. You don't get to choose what changes and what doesn't, when you're the one who’s afraid of it, and you pull away from me, from us.”
He breathes in. Teeth gnaws at a bottom lip and nails dig into the volleyball. Hajime sees the five-year-old again. “What are we, Iwa-chan?”
At this, after several seconds of a stand-off, Hajime glances down at the ball in his own grip, the whiteness of his fingertips from the pressure of it. What are we?
We're together, and of course there are many kinds of together, different kinds, some more declarative than others. Hajime had always kissed Oikawa's cheeks when they were red and stinging. In turn, Oikawa had pasted band-aids over Hajime’s post-adventures nicks and scratches with paramount care. He’d always buried Hajime in soothing blankets when there was a storm outside, Godzilla films played loudly on a borrowed laptop for further distractions.
Something’s changed from those simple times. (Kisses came with the fear of being caught, holding hands switched from a comfort to dreadful by the flit of others’ glances, and Tooru devolved to a call with the promise of unpleasant words and stinging cheeks.) There are a lot of tectonic shifts, some minute and others knee-jerk, but with time all sure to create new valleys and hills: like how when Hajime touches his best friend too close his chest feels like burning itself to ashes with warmth; how the way Oikawa looks at him has slowly differentiated, from that starry-eyed admiration to fleeting glances Hajime can't read or keep up with; how countless other small actions don't quite generate the same expected results.
He turns toward the court, sight at the net and the view beyond, and throws the ball high up for a service ace. He goes for the run-up and jumps, unsteady in the standstill but sure in this motion. The sting of hitting the serve is ever familiar, grounding, and he lands from the flight with something instinctive. They'd been together before things like volleyball entered the picture, and ten years is more than enough for divergences. (Yet—he’s determined from early on that some parts of them should preserve, rightfully persist, though which ones, he hasn't figured it out.)
“We’re best friends,” Hajime decides to say—it doesn't solve anything. But it also doesn't abolish. “My best friend is having trouble at home so I offer him a place to stay. Even when I’m too stupid to say it, he’s always welcomed there.”
This might be a different brand of together, one that Hajime can't or won't pinpoint. Because it's not like the simplicity of a trek through forests, or their restless wanderlust for things to do and places to explore, but it is still the two of them: Hajime and Tooru, and they might as well ought to be through it together.
Oikawa opens his mouth, Adam’s apple bobbing with words to say. He mashes his lips shut.
“Iwa-chan, youdummy.” He scoffs, that Oikawa Tooru’s huff, bounces the ball again a few times, and passes it to Hajime with a powerful serve (and he calls Hajime a brute, when he's this ruthless). Hajime intercepts with a receive as Oikawa takes his position as the setter. Oikawa catches the ball, tosses to Hajime in a flawless set-up, dead on, and Hajime's spike thunders throughout the gym’s spaces.
“Fifteen more minutes,” Oikawa insists. In this instance, despite the declaration of best friends, Hajime feels he has less say (less right) in the matter.
“You know better than that,” Hajime says later, as they loiter by the vending machines in front of a small store, addressing ten more serves and the likes. He pops open his can of C. C. Lemon and goes for a refreshing gulp, despite Oikawa's accusing screech at the crippling sourness of the drink. “No wonder you're such a sourpuss, Iwa-chan!”
“Who was it, again,” he continues, the fizziness swallowed like a bitter memory, “that gave me hell for blaming my mistimed spike for our loss in the Newcomer's Tournament?”
At this, Oikawa just contemplates the choices of melon or blueberry Ramune. “It's different,” comes the answer.
An automatic voice thanks them for their purchases with a cheery lilt, a humble show of LED lights, and one more carbonated drink is unsealed.
“You can't change what's happened,” Oikawa says, to no one in particular. “There were other factors that went into the making of that of that spike, but I can change the future. I can get better.”
Well, you're not alone on that, because that’s what has been plaguing Hajime ever since, too.
I can get better, so Hajime's practiced harder. We’ll win the next match, and they do, until the final rounds put them against even more powerful foes. I can change the future, he muses, when he finds Oikawa unable to go to his own home, and thinks to build one for him, instead.
With jaws set, Hajime puts his half-full can on the adjacent bench, calls out, “Oikawa,” and guides the other boy around to face him by a firm hold on the shoulders. Oikawa just blinks down at him (damn that extra height, when Hajime used to be the taller one), eyes still always wide like a childhood's innocence (even if he's nothing short of a menace). Before he can utter an insult to Hajime’s mere one-hundred and seventy-six centimeters, Hajime mercilessly headbutts him on the face, hard enough that he crashes back onto a vending machine.
“Ow! What was that for?!”
Oikawa’s voice is muffled as he covers the bruised bridge of his nose, a spilled Ramune held out at arm-length. Through the looming tension, he still does that nose-scrunch thing at the darkening stains in his uniform, that damn nice nose of his, and Hajime must've hit himself a tad too rough to think of such a trivia now.
“You dumbass,” Hajime says. “Jerkface. Asshole. Shittykawa—”
“Are those really necessary?! And don't shorten your insults!”
“Shitty Oikawa—”
“Not that either!”
But they're cut short, for better or worse, when the store's owner comes barreling out with a duster held high and a rebuke for noisy, dawdling teenagers at the top of his aged lungs. He swings at them like they're yowling street cats, and they might as well be with how they sprint the hell out of there. Hajime’s C. C. Lemon is left astray, and Oikawa’s splashed some of his drink onto Hajime in favor of running ahead, as if Hajime will let him run off that easily; he just catches up until they jostle shoulders. Behind them, an old man wails about the bleak outlook of this century’s generation.
A getaway turns into a race, because at fifteen it's not like they've learned any better to stay still. They meander through roads of a suburban night, the sleepy neighborhoods, this hilly side of Sendai, and count the streetlights to be their improvised check marks. Their steps echo to fill the silent spaces, the gaps between rows of the houses and alleyways and cul-de-sacs, and the rumbling wind triumphs over cicadas’ songs. With only the two of them out at this ungodly hour, a round moon and speckles of stars the ever-present audiences, they might conquer this part of the city.
(But that's sort of conceited of them.
Hajime thinks of the National stage, the peaks of even higher mountains that reach for the stratosphere, like the one named after the residents of a certain Mount Olympus; for the both of them, perhaps a city won't be enough.)
“I win.” Hajime pants, a hand planted on one of the two streetlamps guarding the beginning of a crossroad, partly to lean against it as he steadies his breaths. Oikawa, I-need-more-power-for-my-serves-and-forget-cardio-training Oikawa, has no oxygen left for such hassle after today's extra hundred serves.
He plops down on the asphalt, resting back on his hands and face tilted to the clouds. “Haah,” he breathes out, and straightens up to stretch, reaching skyward. “You're a cardio gorilla, Iwa-chan.”
“Your power alone isn't everything,” Hajime tells him when they’ve regained some air. “That’s what you don't like about Ushiwaka, right? He focuses on individuals’ strengths, but you know there’s a team on the court.”
There are the two of us, always; on this, perhaps Hajime needs to remind himself as much.
(So they're never alone, not really.)
“Such wisdom, Iwa-chan! You’ve truly become a dad.”
Oikawa's smiling, anyway. I might just feel invincible, the simmer in his gaze proclaims, and Hajime's just says right back, As long as I’m here, you are.
“You’re turning into an old man, Iwa-chan. You should stop thinking too much!”
“Come here so I can kill you.”
(
This is okay for now.
They have ten years at their back and more decades ahead.
They have time.
)
“Aya-chan broke up with me,” Oikawa says after he barges into Hajime’s room and casually flops onto the bed, right before Hajime can say, Spill.
Hajime goes to the menu screen and sets the Xbox's controller down. He stands up, legs all pins and needles from an immersive Overwatch session, and crosses the short distance to his bed (what seemed a spacious room when they were kids now starting to fill up). Oikawa's temporary crutches are deposited carelessly over the sheet, and he goes to retrieve them and props them against the wall. “What horrible deeds have you done for her to dump you when you're injured like this?”
“How rude!” Oikawa gripes. Arms raised to the ceiling, he wiggles his fingers. Hajime hurls the volleyball stranded on the floor at him, purposely missing, and lets Oikawa's indignant yelp ease a subtle tension in the both of them.
“You have so low expectations of me.” Oikawa tests the ball with a spin and throws it upward lightly in mock settings. “Look at how nice I am to you even if you’re such a grump.”
“Is that supposed to vindicate you?” Hajime shakes his head. “Nevermind that. What happened? You were together for, what, nine months now? That's more than ten times the usual lifespan.”
"Hm. We broke up before graduating first-year, actually.”
Hajime does the math. “You're a shitty person.”
“Wha—why?!”
“You just are.”
Oikawa halts the ball’s motion, letting it fall onto the cushion landing of the bed. He rolls over to his stomach, cautious for a braced knee. Hands anchor by the elbows and he perches his chin between two spans of lithe fingers, gazing up at Hajime with a cheeky grin that beckons all sorts of troubles. “Are you jealous that you were left out of the loop, Iwa-chan?”
“I knew, dumbass.” Well, he knew Oikawa had acted weirder. “You'd been sending less selfies to the group chat since then,” Hajime points out. “You're an asshole for not telling me or the group earlier.”
“I did?”
“Your narcissism befalls you.”
“Hm-mm.” Oikawa squints in a smile. “And you’re so attentive, Iwa-chan.”
“Why haven't I kicked you out again.”
“Because you looovee me.”
Hajime grabs a pillow and smacks it across Oikawa's face, just to put a dent in that grin.
“Seriously, though,” he says, taking a detour for Hoshiko’s habitat. She's going to be a little grumpy when Hajime wakes her up, but it's only for occasions like this, and he makes a note to offer her extra treats tomorrow in compensation. “Why did you guys break up? And why tell me now?”
“I kissed a boy today.”
She nips at Hajime's skin, which he kind of deserves for tickling her out of a pleasant slumber.He asks for forgiveness by gentle scratches, tempting her with Oikawa's voice—because Hoshiko remembers that his soft hair is the great place for a sleepy hedgehog to nest in—as he tries to string words through the deadening bite of panic. Get your head together; it's just Oikawa. It's Oikawa, who’d shrieked and bawled when Hajime placed an innocent frog on top of his head, who’d been so insistent to hold Hajime's hand, in spite of all judging eyes, because we'll always be together, so why not? and who clings Hajime even after eleven years of discovering his every flaw.
“A confession?”
Oikawa lies on his back, pinches a strand of his cowlick that’s been displaced by the pillow, and scrutinizes the expanse of the ceiling. “Not exactly.”
There's a false sense of relief when he doesn't search for Hajime's eyes, the twists of expression that show of his unadulterated reaction, whatever it is. Hajime can't say he’s reassured Oikawa won't guess it right, anyway; the fact that Hajime knows Oikawa past all his scripted theatrics means he knows Hajime just the same.
But maybe not everything, because there are things neither of them has figured out. Because part of being so in-sync with one another is the inability to recognize where one of them ends and the other starts.
“He came up to me while I was getting everyone's water bottles,” Oikawa continues. “He offered to help, and he was so nervous he spilled most of the ones I’d refilled.”
Oikawa had returned with his clothes soaked, this afternoon, and they'd just teased him for his clumsiness with the crutches. Hajime plays with Hoshiko a bit longer, but even she begins to notice something's off with him. “Is he an underclassman? I told you to not bully them, Crappykawa.”
“Iwa-chaaan, you know what a nice person I am.”
Oikawa would've teased the boy about other things until he forgot to be embarrassed of his recent fumble.
“He’s in our year, though. He thought I might like boys. I asked him, How so? and he said he'd guessed. He looked really brave when he said that, not like our cute Watari and Yahaba-kun.”
“I’m pretty sure they can and will kick your ass, once they realize what a horrible personality you have.”
“Mean, Iwa-chan!”
Hoshiko nibbled at his finger again. Tooru's here. Where's the fluffy nest.
“—and I asked him why he said this to me, and he said, I don't know. So, we decided to see. If we’d like it, kissing another boy.”
With Hoshiko tucked in cup of his hand, Hajime goes over to his friend. It's just Oikawa. He looms above him, grasping the bed sheet to support his own weight, and Oikawa just stares right back at him from the shadow. It's still Oikawa. Hajime releases their tiniest friend on Oikawa's forehead, watching the way lines form on his face at the ticklish feeling.
“Do you?” he asks, and hopes it doesn't come out as coarse as he thinks.
Raising a hand to cradle her, Oikawa moves to sit against the wall, giving the hedgehog a lift so she can burrow in his perfectly tousled hair. “I don't know,” he says. Hajime thinks that's an underrated phrase, I don't know, because it is the precursor to every momentous discovery.
“I didn't know him. I learned of his name on the spot.
“I don't dislike it.”
When Oikawa says this, he flips his sight to Hajime's, and Hajime can only admit he does the same. His gaze drifts, perhaps unwittingly, to settle somewhere on the lower half of Hajime's face, and Hajime feels that burn again. Some sort of electric jolts, stuttering the heart before accelerating it to overdrive, and he thinks it might crumble to ashes from the sheer warmth flooding in.
Between the rare stillness, he feels the ghosts of their mingling breaths (but it's just Tooru—it's just them). They're together, always together, sharing belongings and all the time and spaces they can afford, but in this instance they might share the same air as well. He thinks, It's wrong, because there should be a space between them, some kind of distance, a clear-cut boundary where he ends and Oikawa starts; on the spectrum of together, of like, there are uncharted layers they can't breach as who they are.
A thunder by the sound of knocks on his door separates them. They startle, jumping in their own skin, and Hajime just reaches out reflexively to catch Hoshiko as she tumbles from her newfound bed. On the way, the skin of his knuckle grazes one side of Oikawa's cheek, and he really shouldn't think of how warm it is under his millisecond touch.
Oikawa presses his shoulders against the wall like he might want to burrow in, and Hajime's got one foot on the floor when the door goes ajar, his mother's voice tinkling in with invitations for dinner. They reply yes in unison, to which she just chuckles.
It's like I have two sons, she often declares with motherly pride. Two wonderful sons, and Hajime questions how wonderful they actually are.
He listens to Oikawa and his mother's conversation like he’s underwater.
“Is your knee healing alright?”
“I’ll be a-okay, Auntie. You look beautiful today! The pixie haircut really shines on you.”
“Why, thank you. You always know how to flatter a woman, Tooru-kun. I’m going to be jealous of your future wife.”
He deposits Hoshiko into her habitat. She jumps off from his hand and goes to run on her wheel immediately, probably to blow off steam from twice-over interrupted sleep.
“Ah, that's so far in the future, Auntie, so let's not speculate.”
“Says my number one gossiper. Did you take your painkillers today?”
Oikawa forgot, but Hajime makes sure he does every day.
“I missed it today, actually. But thank the gods Iwa-chan was there—he’s so reliable!”
She lets out a boisterous laugh. “I’m glad you boys have each other. You're good for Hajime, too, you know? I can't be there to nag him all the time.”
“I’m right here,” Hajime pipes in with a roll of his eyes. “Your favoritism is showing, okaasan.”
“Aww.” She reaches up to ruffle his hair. “You two will always be my boys. Come down for dinner in an hour, okay? And, Hajime, your father will be home early.”
He only surfaces when her footsteps fade down the stairs. There's the noise of a hedgehog's wheel creaking as it turns and turns. Oikawa shifts around on the bed, extending his leg, wincing at the ache, and Hajime's own heart thuds against his ribcage like the barrier might crack.
He refrains from saying anything like shouldn't, because it's them, and he thinks—perhaps knows—that this might be one of the things that should stay: Oikawa in his room, the ease with which they navigate each other's spaces, past any labyrinth they're inadvertently building.
Hajime stoops over to pluck two Xbox controllers from the floor. He settles at the foot of his bed, leaning back, and tosses one joystick for Oikawa to catch.
“You haven't had your post-breakup gaming marathon yet,” Hajime says.
It takes Oikawa a second longer to reply. “Isn’t it post-exams marathon?”
“Shut up.”
His chuckle is no less soundful. “Mattsun and Makki?”
“I'm going to message them. We can take turns kicking their ass, and while you're playing I’ll watch themkick your ass.”
“Wha—Iwa-chan, why aren’t you on my side?!”
(
He has not mapped all the dead-ends and hidden corners, and maybe it’d take longer than the lifetime he has, but he knows enough to get to the other side.
There's a scary edge to it, because Oikawa knows the way around to his end of the maze, too, and Hajime isn't sure of the things he keeps in those twists and turns, either.
)
It's the summer of their second year. And they're dying.
“I’m gonna die,” Hanamaki croaks, clambering up the few remaining steps to the top of the grassy hill. He bemoans the trials and turbulence of teenage athletes, and flops face-down across Matsukawa. Lying on the grass with both arms over his face, Matsukawa might've not passed out already, as he gives up an oomph at the sudden weight.
Hajime wipes the stray water droplets near his mouth, caps his water bottle, and rolls his eyes at their antics. “It's the same as last year.”
“We’re first-string now. It's even more brutal.”
“You’re still one of the top ten with your speed as it is,” Hajime says, recalling the 2 out of 5 Oikawa had jotted down on Hanamaki's stats sheet.
“Give me a volleyball to spike and I’ll be top five.” Hanamaki groans. He jabs Matsukawa’s chest with an elbow. “Why’re you so bony. You make a terrible pillow.”
“I believe my thighs make pretty excellent pillows, if you want,” says Matsukawa.
“...Good idea,” Hanamaki says. Hajime cocks an eyebrow at the slight pause preceding his reply, noticeable considering how fluent they usually pick up after the other's sentences. Hanamaki crawls over to cushion his head on Matsukawa’s self-proclaimed excellent thighs, closes his eyes, and lets the sound of grass crunching under footfalls be a lullaby, played along their teammates’ weary grunts as they steadily approach the uphill. His face is almost the same color as his hair, and Hajime can't help but wonder if it's entirely from the exertion.
Watari Shinji half-jogs half-wobbles toward them. “Senpai,” he greets, hands clutching his knees as he wheezes. Hajime greets him back. The other two offer their waves from the ground.
Watari turns to the Mattsun-Makki pile. “Matsukawa-san, Coach Irihata called you.”
Matsukawa shifts his cover, squinting at the sparse clouds sheltering them from the worst summer burns. “Alright,” he says. “Makki, get off me.”
“No.”
Matsukawa bends his knees, lazily kicking out his legs to dislodge the other boy. Hanamaki eventually concedes with a grin and shuffles over to sprawl on the grass. Matsukawa huffs, tousles Hanamaki’s hair, the pinkish strands clumped together with sweat and sticking up at odd angles, and he and Watari jog down the incline.
Next to Hanamaki, Hajime sits down and nudges his friend’s cheek with his water bottle.
“Thanks.” Hanamaki doesn’t drink it, goes to press the cooler surface of the bottle to his forehead. Strangely enough, he looks more flushed than when he’d reached the finish line.
They sit in companionable silence, watching fellow club members and players from different schools run up the hill, fetch their own break, some going down like Hanamaki while others just try to catch their breath. Where they are right now isn’t the highest perch, but it still has quite the view. The blue sky bleeds to sunset as the day wanes, the sting of summer noon soothed by cooler, gentler breezes. It's a turbulent season, Hajime thinks—not unlike a certain someone.
“What do you think of Matsukawa?” Hanamaki asks.
Hajime blinks at the suddenness. A frown slides onto his face in musing. “He’s a good middle blocker. Good instinct, and he spots gaps in other teams’ offenses well. He appears nonchalant, which helps them to glance over him at first—”
Hanamaki throws a handful of grass blades at him. “I hate to admit it, but very rarely Oikawa’s right—you have muscles for a brain, specifically trained for volleyball.” He grins at Hajime’s disgruntled expression. “I meant Matsukawa Issei, the guy who sleeps through Japanese Lit. and still aces it, because somehow he manages to read during the walk home from school and not get into any accidents.”
Hajime tilts his head to the side. “You want to figure out how he aces Japanese Lit.?”
“Haha, very funny.” Getting up to his elbows, Hanamaki lightly smacks Hajime’s shoulder. Hajime just gives up a small grin. “Don't act all so innocent. We already have Oikawa for that.”
At the foot of the hill, Matsukawa’s met up with their coach near the entrance to one of the campus’ spacious gyms, pouring over a clipboard along with Oikawa and their captain. “Well, he’s Matsukawa,” Hajime tells him. “The guy has a deadpan look even though he's probably cycling through dirty jokes in his head that fit the situation.”
Hanamaki goes to sit cross-legged, chin propped by a hand as he finds the same scene unfolding. “I might've asked the wrong question,” he muses. “What do you think of Oikawa?” he asks next.
“What's with the out-of-the-blue questions?”
“Beats me.” Hanamaki shrugs. He's still staring at Matsukawa. “You guys have been together for that long, right? Tell us about our future captain.”
We’re not, is the first thought Hajime has—We’re not together, near defensive, and he's about to voice this before the higher function of his brain kicks in, that of course Hanamaki never meant it that way. He’s been asked about this childhood friends thing many times, their inherent closeness with each other both off and on the court (“Those two sync so well, don't they?” “I wonder if they've been friends for a long time.”)—so why would he assume of that? He’s never done so, never as a first response, almost a reaction, and it unnerves him enough that he's not prepared to quell the stumble.
“Do you want blackmail material?” he manages, when Hanamaki’s sensed the confusion and turned to face him for the answer with a raised brow.
“That too,” Hanamaki affirms with a snicker, light-hearted in taunting. When he peers at Hajime, it's with something searching, and Hajime just runs with the slip before it becomes knowing.
On the ground below, Oikawa catches his gazing. He cranes his neck up to find Hajime, breaking out a smile, cast in the sun’s setting rays like he might be glowing himself, and raises a hand for the over-enthusiastic wave. When Hajime just frowns right back, Oikawa pouts, huffs out a breath like he might be the exasperated one, and sticks his tongue out at him.
“If you have any plan to tone down his ego, I’m in,” Hajime says absentmindedly. His breaths are inaudible, tightly controlled, while the pounding in his chest rebels at the restraints. In contrast, Hanamaki is settled in his usual stance with his back slightly hunched over, still somewhat a slacker outside the court, his eyes half-lidded, like he might not give much care for the world's needless workings—but there's the upward curve of a humbling smile, and Hajime thinks of how he can keep Matsukawa in his sight for so long. He used to be able to do just that, with the other boy who has a penchant for looking up, and he still does, except sometimes it's just too much, all these changes and additions and tectonic shifts. Like there's a new foreign element to their chemistry, and you can't undo the reaction.
Letting their coach and captain mull over the discussion, Matsukawa goes to poke at Oikawa, probably for getting all distracted. Oikawa takes the teasing in stride, a grin and some playful quip at the ready. Their voices shouldn't be within hearing distance; Hanamaki's maybe-smile curls into something wistful, anyway, when Matsukawa gives up a chuckle.
(Hajime just wonders if he's seeing things.)