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On the first completely free weekend he gets, Hajime books a train ticket to the nearest station to Waseda University.
It’s only been a few months since he started college, but it feels like it’s been years. He’s doing his best to pretend he doesn’t know why. That isn’t working out very well for him, especially with a few texts from this morning that consist only of exclamation points and kaomoji.
Despite Oikawa’s characteristic histrionics (and less characteristic stoicism to hide his real feelings) pointing to the contrary, an hour and a half’s distance by car couldn’t kill over ten years of friendship. As such—and as usual—Hajime is the one to cave to the subconscious game of chicken and make plans to visit Oikawa.
It had been an unspoken agreement that they would be seeing each other soon enough. Soon enough, though, turned out to be longer than expected with their respective responsibilities. Texts and phone calls and the occasional video chat (because Oikawa can’t let his mask drop for even two minutes anymore, the times when he’s free and the times when he’s presentable don’t overlap much) had made up for it until now, or at least as much as they could when two people were used to spending most of their waking hours together.
But now, homework for next week already complete and volleyball duties set aside, they’re able to spend a weekend together. By some miracle, Oikawa had no roommate, so he’d offered the couch in his dorm room up out of the so-called goodness of his heart.
(Hearing that out of his mouth had just sounded wrong, and Hajime had said more by instinct than anything else, “What, that shriveled black rock in your chest?”
He’d had to hold the phone away from his ear less than a second later, but Oikawa’s shrill protests had been worth the remark.)
On the train, leg bouncing as he keeps scrolling up and down his messages app like he’s expecting something else from Oikawa, Hajime finds himself more nervous than expected. His stomach jolts every time they so much as turn.
It’s just Oikawa , he tells himself, glaring out the window. There could be some really nice trees or something outside, captured in the amber glow of the sunset, but with how fast the scenery is moving, he wouldn’t know, so he’s just all the more nauseous for watching it. Best friend for an embarrassing amount of time. Ex-captain—screw that, actually, ex-teammate. Asshole. Awful person.
His thoughts come to an almost audible pause.
Not that that cancels out anything else. Or that anything else cancels it out. He wouldn’t be Oikawa if he wasn’t the absolute worst. Brushing off a concerned look from the older woman in the seat opposite him, Hajime presses a fist against his mouth to make sure he doesn’t vomit. Other than her, the train is surprisingly bare for it being a Friday afternoon. What’ve you got to be nervous about around Oikawa?
There are a great many things to be nervous about around Oikawa, mostly given his observation skills. But the fact remains that Hajime has seen him drooling and crying and in general making an idiot of himself too often to really be intimidated of Oikawa, so the point stands. And besides, there’s no time to lay out all the things he probably shouldn’t think about around Oikawa now. (His early elementary school fears that Oikawa was a mind reader, while ridiculous, have never been quashed without a shadow of a doubt.)
The train comes to a stop. Hajime grabs his stuff—a duffel bag filled with clothes and toiletries for two days, nothing special—and leaves in as much of a hurry as he can manage.
He might stop in the train station bathroom to straighten the wrinkles out of his sweatshirt, but he also might compromise by not giving himself a literal actual pep talk in the mirror. It’s still a little sad.
*
Just Oikawa turns out to be more accurate than he’d thought.
Oikawa still somehow can’t drive and hadn’t gotten out of classes until late, so he meets Hajime not far from the dorms. As they stand opposite each other on the sidewalk, they’re silent, taking each other in. After all the hype, seeing Oikawa in person is… underwhelming.
The first thing Hajime notices is how tired he looks. There hasn’t been any major moment Hajime can remember when he hasn’t looked tired, given his bad sleep schedule and genetic dark circles that aren’t always hidden by the concealer he steals (stole?) from his sister. It’s just more noticeable now.
As a testament to his exhaustion, he’s wearing his blocky glasses instead of contacts and the rattiest clothes Hajime has ever seen. Which is saying something. The only reason anyone has ever been deluded into thinking Oikawa Tooru is at all fashionable is because of mandated uniforms for both everyday school life and volleyball; now, despite giving off the general air of sophistication, he looks almost plain.
It’s strange how much someone can hype another person up in their mind after not seeing them for a while—even when they’d seen them almost every day of their life before. Hajime’s mental image of Oikawa had evolved into some amalgamation between what he imagined most of the girls at Seijoh pictured him as—handsome, oozing charisma, always beaming and winking—and his own less flattering memories of what he considers the “real” Oikawa (though he’s pretty sure that if that exists, even Oikawa doesn’t know)—drool lines on his chin, acne beneath his bangs, wink looking more like a painful spasm. The Oikawa before him is neither extreme nor even the Sims-esque middle ground in Hajime’s mind. He’s… just Oikawa.
The phrase sounds like an oxymoron, though. Oikawa is still handsome and striking, naturally, because he couldn’t ever really not be, but he’s now so in a normal way. It’s such a stark difference from his usual flashy persona that it’s almost off-putting.
Compared to this, Hajime can’t imagine how he looks to Oikawa. “Hi,” he hears himself says, belated.
“Hi,” Oikawa says back, blinking owlishly.
Another thing about knowing someone for, well, practically every day of one’s life is that sometimes small talk just doesn’t do it. There’s been far too much of that over the past few months. Too many empty questions about classes and their new teams (Hajime learned to avoid this after a couple of Oikawa-patented rants about happening to go to the one fucking school in all of Japan that Ushijima Wakatoshi also happened to attend. The rage was justified but difficult to listen to while doing homework) and, on one dark day, the bottom of the small talk barrel, something only to be discussed by new acquaintances and soon-to-be divorcees: The weather. It had taken a solid week for them to talk to each other after that, too afraid of running out of interesting things to say. Oikawa had broken the silence with an unprompted comment about surplus killing by stoats at three in the morning. (Not small talk per se, and interesting when it wasn’t three in the morning. Still a pretty weird topic.)
So in lieu of anything like that, they step toward each other in slow motion, just short of running or jumping, and stumble into a hug that bridges the physical and emotional distances better than any words could. It’s a most majestic hug even with the realigning and awkwardness. One for the record books.
Hajime can count on one and a half hands the times he can remember him and Oikawa hugging, most from when they were kids. The most recent was after the Inter-Highs, he thinks, the last time they’d lost to Shiratorizawa. Even that had been less of a real hug and more him wrapping an arm around Oikawa to stop him from swapping out the movie they’d put on with their recorded match.
Beyond that, the last time he can really remember was back in early middle school—before they stopped using each other’s first names. Before Kageyama. Before volleyball became so much of a focus, a universal constant rather than a hobby.
Now is enough to wipe all the others from Hajime’s memory, anyway. Oikawa’s grip is tight but not suffocating—secure, safe. His head is lowered to rest in Hajime’s shoulder, hair soft but a little itchy where it brushes the side of Hajime’s face, and the rest of his body droops similarly into Hajime’s for pillar-like support, which (with some struggling) Hajime gives, holding them both up. The faint scent of Oikawa’s floral cologne or perfume or whatever hangs all around. It envelops them like their respective arms and is just as warm. The thought that this is kind of embarrassing to be doing in the middle of a (mostly empty, but still public) sidewalk comes and goes, disregarded.
After a moment that feels like both thirty seconds and three hours, they break apart. Though still looking weary, Oikawa grins, showing off the slight gap between his teeth that the recently-removed braces couldn’t alter. Hajime finds himself laughing, own expression sure to be just as giddy.
“Well, welcome to Tokyo,” says Oikawa, gesturing all around. He turns on his heel and starts walking, and Hajime takes the hint and follows him. “What do you think so far?”
“It’s loud and obnoxious.” Hajime glances at the street, but his double meaning is as clear as anything, if ruined by the smile he’s still wearing.
Oikawa elbows him in the ribs. “I see you for the first time in months and the first thing you do is insult me?” He shakes his head. “So ungrateful! I have plenty of other people I could spend this weekend with, you know.”
Do you really? Hajime wants to ask, but what he says is, “Sure, but you won’t.”
Oikawa doesn’t dignify that with a response, but the way he pauses the slightest bit before taking another step is answer enough.
They head back to Oikawa’s dorm room—well, Oikawa heads there and Hajime follows in his wake—which is small and minimalistic but visibly lived in already. Hajime is certain that Oikawa would have painted the walls or put in new carpeting or something if that weren’t probably against the rules.
As it stands, he’s made it his own for sure. A couple of posters stick to the walls, drag marks from where the furniture has been rearranged are visible, and the bookshelf is full to the brim with fiction, volleyball-related nonfiction, and DVD cases. To say nothing of the stack of magazines on the floor. Oikawa is a cleaner person than most might think, but that doesn’t mean he’s still not a slob sometimes.
Oikawa, in the midst of a running commentary about various decorations and locations (which is unnecessary, because Hajime recognizes most of the decor from Oikawa’s room back home), shows off the couch where Hajime will be sleeping. There are no questionable stains, and the throw pillows and blanket look comfortable enough. So it seems fine.
…Or at least it does until Oikawa himself flops down on it. He’s smiling one of his flimsier but more pointed smiles. While he doesn’t go so far as to pat the seat beside him, there’s really nothing Hajime can do but sigh and join him.
Despite the prior insistence on actions speaking louder than words, now they launch into a fervent conversation about everything and nothing. They go over the basics—classes, new manga, what Tokyo and Tsukuba are like, even volleyball. Oikawa gets forty seconds to soapbox about Ushiwaka before the timer on Hajime’s phone goes off and he interrupts to complain about not knowing anyone on his team, which he doesn’t even think he’ll have time for in a couple of years with his studies.
“At least you already know Ushiwaka.” Oikawa’s nostrils flare. “Yeah, yeah, he’s the worst, I won’t disagree, but you got to observe him play and everything. And he’s a good player.”
“He’s—”
“An ass and the root of most of your middle and high school insecurities,” Hajime recites, though that’s not exactly the way Oikawa phrases it. There’s even more swearing, for one. “I know, I know. But I’m having to learn how to synchronize with setters from schools I’ve never heard of and can’t find any information about online.”
And who aren’t you, he doesn’t say, even with a cautious or Yahaba tacked on, but it’s definitely implied. Oikawa preens before moving onto the next topic.
Which is soon interrupted by Oikawa’s phone buzzing with a text message. His screen lights up, but his phone doesn’t show previews and Hajime can’t get a glimpse of the contact name before Oikawa is saying, “Oh—one sec, Iwa-chan,” and picking it up to respond. He leans away so Hajime can’t see the screen.
Not that he’d try to read it anyway. Oikawa is stingy about his privacy even while butting his head into everyone else’s business, and as infuriating as the hypocrisy is, Hajime can respect it. Though he’d given up most pretenses of privacy within his and Oikawa’s relationship sometime circa their fourth year in elementary school.
Still, it piques his interest. As Oikawa sets the phone back down, he raises his eyebrows in suspicion. “What’s that about? You don’t have a new girlfriend already, do you?” He’s already ready to extend his sympathies on behalf of the poor girl. He’d seen what Oikawa was like with girlfriends in high school; he can only imagine him now, far from home and with more responsibilities.
“No, no, that’s just Kiyo-kun,” says Oikawa, smile somewhere between genuine and not.
“Kiyo-kun?” Hajime echoes. Knowing Oikawa, that name could belong to a person of any gender or age.
Oikawa hums. “You remember Karasuno’s manager, right? Not the scaredy-cat first-year, but the third-year with pretty hair. Shimizu Kiyoko.”
“Oh,” says Hajime, memory jogged, “the one who ignored you that time and sent you into a downward spiral for the next two weeks.”
Going pink, Oikawa sputters. “Well, she doesn’t ignore me anymore!” he says, covering his obvious indignation with derision. “She’s going here too, it turns out, and we’re friends now.”
“Huh.” Hajime is entirely used to this behavior by now. He’d told himself at some point in junior high, when Oikawa’s fans had been growing in prominence and number, that he’d have to get used to Oikawa’s natural magnetism. Still, given Shimizu’s original reaction to him, this development is a little unsettling. “How’d you pull that one off?”
“Everyone falls for my charms eventually!” Oikawa slides to the side to avoid Hajime’s half-hearted kick to the shin, laughing under his breath all the while. “I don’t know. We just got to talking in the library the other day. She’s cool, and she used to do track and field before she was invited to be a manager for Karasuno’s volleyball team. Now she’s going into sports medicine like you.”
These are much less superficial traits than Oikawa has cited for his interest in other girls before, so maybe she really is a friend. Still, Oikawa seems to be deliberately leaving something out.
“Huh,” Hajime says again. “You should introduce us, then. I’ve been meaning to get to know more people in sports medicine.”
“What, have you not been able to make friends at your own college, Iwa-chan? Are you having to resort to stealing my new friends?”
It’s a very obvious piece of bait with an even more obvious underlying meaning. Hajime rolls his eyes. “I’m not going to replace you, dumbass. No one could ever be quite as terrible as you, after all.”
Oikawa scoffs, but he’s smiling thinly again.
And the thing is, Oikawa is objectively terrible. For all his complaints, he’s the mean one and takes pride in it. He’s not mean in ways that hit too deep anymore—at least not on the surface—and hasn’t been since junior high, but when it comes down to it, Oikawa has sharp edges beyond compare, and God help you if you cut yourself on one. He’s petty and immature and haughty and downright cruel if he wants to be. Hajime could list out his worse qualities for hours.
But he’s not all that, either. He’s ambitious and stubborn (even when it hurts him) and smart and the hardest worker Hajime knows. And, for all the vanity and conceit he puts on and the pride he really has, he cares—not always for himself, but for his team, his career, his friends. For all the negative traits Hajime could name, there’s a positive one to not necessarily override but at least complement it.
And pomp and circumstance aside, he’s Hajime’s best friend above all else, and when it comes down to it, Hajime does lo—
“Hey,” Oikawa says, apropos of nothing. It jolts Hajime out of thoughts that probably shouldn’t cross his mind right now anyway, and he blinks up. “It’s getting late, so we should get dinner. There’s a great ramen place just off campus, and—”
*
There’s really no question as to whether Hajime will agree to ramen despite any hemming and hawing for posterity. It’s dinner—he’d managed to ignore the grousing of his stomach in the conversation, but at the mention of food it spikes again—and it’s ramen and it’s with Oikawa. This is familiar, more than anything else. No weirdness required.
So he leaves his bag in the dorm and, like always, follows Oikawa’s lead. As they’re leaving campus, they (more so Oikawa) almost bump into a young woman. Hajime catches Oikawa’s eyes widen out of the corner of his eyes, but his focus is on the woman, whom he recognizes but can’t immediately place up close. She startles backward, halfway into an apologetic bow, but she stops when she sees Oikawa and adopts a look of painstaking patience instead.
“Oikawa,” she says. “Good evening.”
Oikawa relaxes in turn, though he still looks a little on edge. “Hi, Kiyo-kun,” he says, tone offering no hints as to his feelings.
“Ah,” Hajime says, the woman’s face clicking in his mind. He doesn’t repeat Kiyo-kun despite being tempted to and instead says, “Karasuno’s manager.”
“Aoba Johsai’s ace and vice-captain,” she responds with a nod. “Oikawa mentioned you were visiting.”
Oikawa clears his throat. “Iwa-chan, this is Shimizu Kiyoko. Kiyo-kun—” He stops with a glance in Hajime’s direction, and a childishly devious expression crosses his face before he looks back at Shimizu. “This is Iwa-chan.”
“Iwaizumi,” he corrects through his teeth, glaring at Oikawa and his angelic smile.
Shimizu smiles and ducks into a bow, which Hajime is quick to return. “I remember your name, especially with what Oikawa has told me about you.”
That’s not worrying at all. Hajime tries to glare at Oikawa some more, but Oikawa is focused on a still-smiling Shimizu, giving her a warning grimace. Hajime’s concern spikes. Before he can question either of them, though, Shimizu is continuing to speak.
“He said you don’t go to school around here,” she says, face neutral again, “but you’re focusing on sports medicine.” It’s not a question, but it’s not exactly a statement either.
“Ah—yeah, I’m attending Tsukuba’s School of Medicine. I want to take a doctoral degree in sports medicine there, so—” He trails off, rubbing the back of his neck.
Shimizu studies him. Her gaze is almost like Oikawa’s, holding the same sort of careful scrutiny, but it’s more harmlessly curious and inquisitive than prying to find any weak points. Still, Hajime feels put on the spot under it just the same.
After a beat, Shimizu adjusts her glasses and averts her gaze. “I’m focusing on sports medicine, too, but I want to eventually go to Nittaidai’s graduate program. I’m planning on becoming a physical therapist.”
“Oh, nice,” says Hajime with a small smile that Shimizu returns. “I’m not sure what I want to do in the field specifically, but I was thinking about doing something similar, just working more directly with teams.”
“Hm.” Shimizu’s eyes crinkle. “I see. Oikawa, I’m surprised you didn’t introduce us sooner; we could have been comparing notes or something like that.”
Oikawa coughs into his fist. It’s very fake. “Yeah, well, school rivalries… I didn’t want to stir any pots, you know, I was just being considerate!”
“Our rivalry with Karasuno only mattered in the long run to you. And even if it didn’t, I wouldn’t hold a grudge against the manager of all people.” Hajime pauses. “No offense to you, Shimizu-san.”
Shimizu holds up a hand. “I agree. Well,” she adds with a flat look, “I might have held a grudge against Oikawa for being the main one to destroy my team’s morale.”
“Kiyo-kun, don’t be so rude!” Oikawa squawks.
He and Shimizu break into squabbling, his spirited and Shimizu’s quieter but more truthful. But they’re both smiling, and it takes Hajime a second to notice what’s off about Oikawa’s: It’s real.
Racking his brains, Hajime can’t remember the last time he saw Oikawa smile that genuinely in front of a girl. Somewhere around their second year of middle school, the confessions had increased tenfold, and Oikawa had begun using his notorious “straightforward and pure” smile more often. It showed up when he rejected confessions, accepted them every now and then, and even during casual interactions. He’s found a girl he’s comfortable around, Hajime realizes, and—
It’s confusing and a little frustrating, if only because Hajime can’t peg what’s so different about Shimizu except that she’s not falling over herself for Oikawa like most of his girlfriends and fans do. That might be it. It might not, given Oikawa’s tendency to revel in positive feedback, especially from girls.
But it’s also nice to see. Oikawa should get to feel comfortable around someone else and make other friends. Hajime hadn’t realized he was worried about that, but now that it’s come to mind, it had been one of his more distant concerns. Despite his personality and appearance, Oikawa has always had trouble making real friends—it had always been just them and teammates over the years, with the teammates a degree less important, and Oikawa had never seen any reason why it had to be another way. Now it seems that that’s changing, out of necessity if nothing else.
Oikawa turns away from Shimizu, facing Hajime again, and his dimples are replaced with a frown. “Hey, Iwa-chan, you’re smiling to yourself,” he says, eyebrows pinched together. “Were you thinking about something weird?”
This is more familiar territory, so Hajime sighs, long-suffering. “I wasn’t going to point it out, but there’s a huge zit on your jaw.”
As Oikawa yelps and whips out his phone to check his reflection in the dark screen, Shimizu hides a laugh behind her palm. Then she glances down, checking her watch, and startles.
“I’m meeting my friend Yui for dinner nearby,” she says, a strange flush in her cheeks. “And I assume you two have plans, so I don’t want to hold you up either.”
Oikawa, plastering on his old scheming face, waves. It’s more a lazy flick of the wrist than anything. “Have fun, Kiyo-kun~”
Shimizu only reddens further. “You too,” she says with a pointed look that makes Oikawa flush too. “I’ll talk to you later, then. It was nice meeting you, Iwaizumi-san.”
“Oh—you too,” Hajime manages. “I’ll ask Oikawa for your number later. So we can talk, uh, sports medicine stuff.”
Shimizu nods, but Oikawa cuts in, “Hey, what makes you think I would give out a girl’s precious phone number so easily?”
Hajime gives him a look. “I’ll pay for your dinner.”
“Wh—really, Iwa-chan?! How shockingly benevolent of you!”
“We both know it would have been that way anyway because you’re broke as fuck and probably don’t even have your wallet on you.”
Oikawa shrugs airily, but the look on his face says he’s busted. “Kiyo-kun, don’t listen to a thing he says,” he says in a mock whisper. “He’s just jealous that I have the charm and good looks to not have to pay!”
“What charm?” says Hajime, narrowing his eyes. “All I see is a heap of trash.”
Shimizu snickers, already turning away. “Goodnight, Oikawa.”
“Ack! All of my friends are turning on me!” Oikawa wipes a blatantly fake tear from his eye. “Why are beautiful people always made to suffer? …Hey, Iwa-chan, don’t walk away from me, you still need to pay for dinner! And you’re going the wrong way anyway!”
*
The ramen place is large but still almost intimate, given the low lighting (more from a few lights having gone out than any sort of purposeful dimming) and the fact that only a few other people are inside, and the food itself—though not as good as any restaurant back in Sendai—is excellent. They make no mention of their encounter before dinner while they eat. Hajime mulls over the casual, comfortable relationship between Oikawa and Shimizu at the back of his mind, though. He can only come to one conclusion besides the face value explanation, but if Oikawa won’t bring it up now, neither will he.
Their walk back toward Oikawa’s dorm is silent and strangely awkward. The weird energies aren’t helped by the surprising lack of other people out and about.
“She was nice,” says Hajime, after a minute or so, not so much nudging the elephant on the street as pulling its ear and starting a stampede. “Shimizu, I mean. Too nice to willingly be friends with you.”
Oikawa snorts. “Trust me, she knows.”
“It’s, uh—” Hajime scratches the side of his neck, not sure how to phrase his thoughts, but manages, “It’s fine if you are dating her, you know.”
A beat. Oikawa stops in his tracks, fixing Hajime with an incredulous look. “I’m not.”
“Really? Because—”
“Nope.” Oikawa’s expression grows increasingly cagey; in other words, increasingly suspicious. “I’ve sworn off dating for a while, in fact,” he adds. “Just too busy with school and volleyball and everything.”
Hajime doesn’t buy his blase tone for an instant. “That’s never stopped you before.” It should have, given all of the times he’d been publicly dumped for not managing his time like a good boyfriend/student/volleyball player/volleyball captain would, but it didn’t. Somehow, girls (and the occasional boy) kept flocking to him in alarming numbers.
Oikawa sighs and pushes up his glasses to rub at his eyes. “Maybe I’m changing for the better. College is supposed to be about finding yourself and all of that, right?”
“Hmm.” Hajime shrugs. “She was the least interested I’ve ever seen any girl be in you, though. Is there a reason for that, aside from her knowing how terrible your personality is?”
“Well—” Oikawa’s voice takes on an unfamiliar strain. “The main one would be that she’s gay.”
“Oh.” Of all the things Hajime could have expected, that wasn’t one of them. “Is she cool with me knowing that?” he asks, narrowing his eyes.
“Of course, of course,” Oikawa says quickly. “How little do you think of me, Iwa-chan? Even I wouldn’t divulge that kind of information without the person’s permission.”
“I don’t think little of you at all, you’re just—” Hajime chooses not to finish that sentence despite the vast array of adjectives he could apply. A wise choice, given the way Oikawa bristles. “So you’re not interested in her, either?”
“Nope. No romantic interest whatsoever.”
Oikawa looks almost like he wants to laugh, and then for a split second like he wants to cry, and then he’s taking a few feeble steps forward, enough that he’s facing away from Hajime. Hajime comes to a more awkward stop behind him. The moon has risen above and sits full and bright against the dark and clouded sky. It illuminates a strip of Oikawa’s skin on the back of his neck, flushed pink and scattered with faint freckles.
“When we ran into each other that day in the library,” Oikawa says, his voice quieter than Hajime thinks he’s ever heard and almost believably even, “I tried asking Kiyo-kun out again. She rejected me, with words this time, and—well, it just ended up slipping out. That I was gay, too.”
What, Hajime opens his mouth to say, but no sound comes out. He stares at Oikawa’s back, a rigid line ahead of him, and blinks. He’s surprisingly calm for the quiet revelation, aside from a slight uptick in his heart rate that he notes with less emotion than he thinks he should.
He takes a shuddering sort of breath. “If this is your idea of a joke, Shittykawa—”
Oikawa tilts his head back a little. The way he does when he’s trying not to cry or to stop crying, Hajime registers, but he can’t move in a way that will let him see Oikawa’s face.
“So, yeah,” says Oikawa. “We’re friends mostly because I accidentally came out to her, and that made her actually listen to what I had to say. Definitely not dating.”
There are a lot of things Hajime could say here. A simple Oh, okay or a marginally better Thanks for letting me know or even an admission of his own: Cool, I’m bi. Part of him also wants to burst into questions—what about Oikawa’s high school girlfriends (though their fleeting existences and disparate personalities and appearances track), when had he realized, how had he realized, why had he told a virtual stranger but not his best friend (though that’s not fair; it’s not as if Hajime has been completely transparent with Oikawa, either, and them being as close as they are doesn’t mean they owe each other information by default).
Instead of all that, though, a feeble clicking sound is all that escapes. Hajime can’t make himself speak, not even a single syllable.
Oikawa takes a sharp breath that seems like a shout in the quiet nighttime air. “Right,” he says, not bothering to cover the shakiness of his voice anymore. He starts walking again, hands in his pockets. “Well, now you know. Feel free to hop on the train back to Tsukuba now if you can’t stand to spend the weekend with me after all.”
Hajime is moving before he realizes it, feet pounding against the concrete. He almost catches up to Oikawa before stopping just inches away. Oikawa himself stops at the sound of his footsteps.
Don’t go, Hajime finds himself wanting to say. I’ve always been the only one able to keep up with you, so wait for me.
What he actually says is—
“Hey, hold up—” He falters, then, and it slips out before he can do anything about it: “Tooru.”
The silence is tangible. Oikawa turns his head so fast it looks like it hurts his neck, expression open with shock, and audibly swallows. “You—you haven’t called me that in years,” he says, on the side of bewildered.
Hajime shuffles his feet, embarrassment coming only after the fact. “You were the one who said not to anymore.”
“We were getting older.” Oikawa’s voice is half-faded, stiff. He huffs. He’s still not turned all the way around, but he’s continuing to look over his shoulder with his neck crooked at an odd angle. “It—it gave people the wrong idea.”
Hajime feels a little insulted that Oikawa still thinks he can hide everything from him, but most of his bubbling anger is directed at the fact that Oikawa thinks he has to. “People,” he asks, unsure now that he speaks, “or you?”
Oikawa’s smile is reflexive and so goddamn plastic it hurts. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Would you—” Hajime curls his hands into fists and shoves them into his sweatshirt pockets. “Can you cut the bullshit for even a minute, Oikawa? You’re my best friend, dumbass, and—” He bites his cheek. “I care about you probably more than I do anyone else, and this doesn’t change any of that—” except maybe in a positive way, he doesn’t say because it’s really not the time “—so please.”
Oikawa stares at him for a second, and then sighs, visibly sagging. He turns his entire body around to face Hajime head-on. The short distance on the sidewalk feels even greater than their typical physical distance as of late. At least the metaphorical brick wall isn’t up in front of Oikawa anymore—he’s slouching, a pained frown replacing his just as pained fake smile, and while he’s not looking right at Hajime, his focus is still clear.
It isn’t better than the mask, because Oikawa is still obviously hurting, but at least it’s open now.
“Sorry I told Kiyo-kun before you or whatever, but why would I expect you to listen, let alone understand?” says Oikawa, spreading his arms. Those sharp edges are visible now—in the twist of his lips, in the cold glint in his eyes under almost-fogged lenses. “You’re busy, Iwa-chan, and straight besides—”
“That’s—” Now at least Hajime is stifling a laugh, if a semi-hysterical one. “I’m bi, Oikawa, did you really never realize?”
He gets a blank look in return. Oikawa blinks a few times, processing, before folding his arms with a petulant frown. “You never told me.”
“You never told me,” Hajime retorts like a petty child, stooping to Oikawa’s level. “And you’re more observant than I am, so you don’t even have any excuse.”
“Wh—you just called me a dumbass!”
“I mean, yeah.” He shrugs. There’s no contesting that, at least. “But there’s a difference between being dumb and being a dumbass, you know?”
“No, I have literally no idea, what the absolute fuck are you talking about?!” Oikawa laughs and immediately looks horrified with himself, covering his mouth even as more snickers slip loose. “God. You’re a dumbass too, holy shit.”
Hajime stops resisting the urge to laugh himself. He ends up snorting, just as delirious as he’d felt, and Oikawa’s wheezing giggles join his, a back-and-forth symphony of frenetic laughter that would probably end up throwing off any other passersby. Maybe that’s why they haven’t seen any other people out and about—the pure sense of instability made everyone steer clear.
When his face clears, Oikawa is still smiling, but it’s a little faker now, his dimples starting to fade. “That, uh… wasn’t the only thing I ended up telling Kiyo-kun. Or the only thing I probably should’ve let you know about first.”
“Are you going to tell me the other thing?” says Hajime, blinking at the sudden sober tone.
“I—” Oikawa’s jaw twitches before visibly unclenching. “You know what? I don’t think I have much to lose at this point, Iwa-chan. Except, well—” He laughs again, this time without any humor to it, and shakes his head. “Probably the most important thing to me. But if I don’t take stupid risks, then my name isn’t Oikawa Tooru!”
“If you don’t do stupid shit in general,” Hajime says under his breath, but given the silence and Oikawa’s apparent super-strength hearing (or mocking radar), Oikawa hears it anyway.
“You’re really not making me want to tell you, you know?”
Hajime falls silent in an instant.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” says Oikawa, appeased. He crosses his arms, fidgeting, and takes a deep breath, looking a hair away from breaking into an outright pace. His face is turning both a sickly green and luminescent pink, which can’t be a good sign.
“If you don’t want to tell me—”
“Iwa-chan, no offense, but shut up. If you talk I’ll chicken out.” Hajime stops again, raising his eyebrows at the mental breakdown Oikawa seems to be having. Oikawa clears his throat, loosens his shirt collar, starts to bend down to fix his shoelaces—
“I know you said not to talk, but seriously—”
“Hey! Have you no respect for meaningfully dramatic silences?”
“There’s a difference between meaningful silences or whatever and just stalling for time, Shittykawa—”
“I’m in love with you and have been for years!” Oikawa blurts, throwing his arms up in the air. “There, I said it! Remember when you’re complaining about me not giving a novel-worthy confession later that you were too impatient for me to come up with something poetic!”
Hajime freezes, processing the confession, and the entire world freezes with him. The night stands still. Oikawa’s arms are frozen in midair, his expression caught somewhere between serious affection and also serious irritation. It’s like the world itself has been upturned in a way only Oikawa Tooru could pull off, but it’s more like it’s been upside down this entire time and only now been put back in its rightful alignment.
This time, Hajime doesn’t have to say anything, doesn’t even try. Instead, he moves without a second thought to bridge the distance between them, which no longer seems insurmountable, and pull Oikawa into another hug.
It’s less desperate and considerably more one-sided than the one earlier. Hajime tries to return the security of Oikawa’s embrace, all that protectiveness and joy, and combine it with the raw feeling of everything left unsaid not just today or the past few months but their entire lives. Oikawa, who’d stiffened under the sudden touch, is more like a limp toy in his grasp.
Under the impression he isn’t going to reciprocate, Hajime starts to step back and gets a pair of octopus-like arms wrapped around him instead. He starts but settles into the grip.
“Not to rush you or anything,” Oikawa says after a moment, in a tone that can mean nothing good, “but I just gave one of the most emotional and genuine confessions I ever have in my life, so I would really appreciate an actual verbal answer. Or written. I am used to reading confession letters, you know—”
“Oh my God, you’re the worst,” says Hajime, pulling back.
He’s startled to find Oikawa’s eyes glassy and wide. For all the delicate (and often manipulative) shows of emotion he puts on, Oikawa isn’t actually a crybaby, which may be why when the floodgates open, his crumpled sob- and snot-streaked face is so different from his generally appealing appearance. Hajime lays a hand on Oikawa’s cheek, sliding beneath his glasses, and wipes a half-formed tear from the corner of one eye. He draws the line at wiping Oikawa’s already-dribbling nose, though.
He shuts his eyes as he presses his forehead against Oikawa’s, but still he hears the sharp intake of breath. “Tooru,” he says again, “obviously I love you too.”
“Oh,” says Oikawa, more an exhale than a real word. His voice is unreadable, so Hajime opens his eyes to find Oikawa’s face even more unreadable save for a soft smile. “Oh,” Oikawa repeats. “Okay.”
It’s really an impressive show of newfound restraint that Oikawa doesn’t tackle him right then and there, Hajime will later reflect. Maybe Oikawa’s insistence that he’s changed since leaving for college holds water after all. Or it’s because they’re still on a technically public sidewalk.
Instead, Oikawa just laughs, bright and sunny and still a bit wet, and turns. Hajime takes the hint and falls into a comfortable pace with him, shoulders brushing as—together in this the same way they have been in (almost) everything else—they walk the rest of the way back to Oikawa’s dorm.
(Halfway back, Oikawa reaches between them, tentative but nonchalantly staring straight ahead at the horizon, and takes Hajime’s hand in his own. Hajime almost trips over the sidewalk and gets the piss taken out of him for it. Upon recovering, he squeezes Oikawa’s hand back.
It’s not much, but it’s a start.)