Work Text:
Tooru is drunk.
He thinks.
He stares into the bathroom mirror, squinting as he taps the tip of his nose. Yep. Feels weird. He’s definitely drunk.
His leg still hurts though.
“Iwa-chan,” He says when he hobbles out of the bathroom on his crutch and Hajime loops an arm around his waist to help him to their table. He pats at Hajime’s chest fondly, and tells him, “You’re such a good friend.”
“Damn right I am,” Hajime says, and despite the good nature of his words he sounds tired. Tooru gets it. Tooru’s not even 30 and he feels ancient these days.
“You sound tired,” Tooru blurts, before he can think about it, “We can go home, if you want.”
“What I want,” Hajime says, and pauses, rubbing the bridge of his nose with the worn patience of someone who has been dealing with Oikawa Tooru since they were in diapers, “Is to have another drink and enjoy the night with my best friend who couldn’t pick up a phone to tell me he’d been in the hospital in fucking Argentina until he showed up on my doorstep.”
“Yes, well, the vibe of the first half of that sentence and the vibe of the second half are giving distinctly mixed messages,” Tooru says and reaches for his drink, only to have Hajime take it from him and slide a plate of hiyayakko towards him.
“I bet you’re not even supposed to be drinking right now with whatever meds you’re on. Eat your damn tofu.”
“I’m perfectly capable of drinking,” Tooru insists, though he doesn’t make a grab for his drink. “The pills just make me a lightweight.”
“Oikawa- Tooru, are you really okay?”
Tooru knows what he means. Knows he means ‘are you okay with your knee?’ and ‘are you okay with being back in Japan for good?’ and ‘are you okay with never, ever playing volleyball again?’ He knows that.
He’s not so drunk that he can’t feign ignorance. “With being a lightweight? Yeah, Iwa-chan, I am. There's nothing wrong with being a cheap date.” He winks and Hajime groans and throws a piece of edamame at him.
“You are such a-”
“A delight? A wonderful, attractive Olympic medalist whose beauty shines beyond compare?”
“A liar,” Hajime says flatly and Tooru clutches at his chest dramatically as though he’s just been shot.
“ Rude, Iwa-chan! You’re so mean to me. I can’t believe you’d be so mean in this, my hour of need.” His smile feels strangely brittle when he jokes, but he ignores it in favor of reaching across the table and snatching his drink back from Hajime so that he can swallow the rest of it in one neat gulp and shudder at the burn as it goes down. “Oh look at that, I need another.”
Hajime, because he’s Tooru’s best friend for a reason ( Or maybe , the dark, vicious part of Tooru’s mind whispers, because Hajime doesn’t care ,) doesn’t press the issue even when Tooru has another drink in his hand and has steadily worked his way right back around to drunk.
They talk about everything but volleyball and Tooru’s plans now that he’s back home for a while- covering everything from Makki’s increasingly more and more bizarre temp jobs, to the fact that Tooru’s mother has taken up pottery as a hobby, to the time Mattsun picked Hajime up in a hearse .
He doesn’t press even when Tooru has finished his drink and is slumped against Hajime’s shoulder, absently playing with his fingers. Hajime’s hands are broad boned and callused and, Tooru will admit just to himself, were certainly the star of many of Tooru’s rather unimaginative fantasies when he was a teenager coming to the conclusion that he was in a doomed sort of love with his best friend.
They’ve also been a source of comfort when Tooru was scared or in pain. They’ve applied plasters to his skinned knees, and slapped him upside the head when he’s being a neurotic idiot. They’ve curled into fists that defended him from playground bullies, and clutched at Tooru when they carried him out on a stretcher the first time he ever really hurt his knee.
(It almost feels ironic then, that when it’d happened for the last time, and Tooru had been in a hospital in Argentina, losing everything, Hajime had been ten thousand miles away and all Tooru can remember aside from the pain is wishing he was there.)
“I love you,” Tooru blurts into the soft fabric of Hajime’s t-shirt, either too drunk, or too tired, or too fucking done with everything including himself to stop the words from coming out.
Hajime’s shoulder goes still and stiff beneath Tooru’s cheek and Tooru doesn’t lift his head to see what expression could possibly be on his face.
“You’re drunk,” Hajime says.
“Yep,” Tooru confirms, nodding his head easily in agreement. “I’m in love with you when I’m sober too though.”
“You’re drunk,” Hajime repeats and Tooru lifts his head finally to see the hard look on his face- and the hurt. “You’re drunk and you’re upset, and that’s fine. That’s understandable. But you don’t- you don’t get to take this shit out on me, Tooru, not like this.”
“That’s- That’s not- I wouldn’t,” Tooru insists.
“You don’t get to use me as some distraction, either. I know you’re going through some shit but it’s not- It’s not fair to me to-”
“I’ve been in love with you since we were kids,” Tooru says quickly, interrupting whatever idiot thing Hajime was going to say next and feeling a strange little thrill of glee when Hajime does a brilliant imitation of a surprised goldfish.
“What.”
“I am drunk, and everything is so stupid right now, and I don’t have any idea what I’m going to do with my life now-”
“Literally anything-”
“Yes, yes, I know. I can do literally anything but professional volleyball, blah blah blah, make new dreams Tooru it’ll be fine ” Tooru says, waving that away with a flap of his hand, “But that’s not the point.”,
“And the point is… That you’re in love with me?”
“Yes, has it not been obvious for years?” Tooru knows that the world seems a lot simpler when he’s drunk, but clearly, clearly the fact that Tooru is in love with Hajime has been obvious since they were children.
“NO!” The exclamation is so loud that multiple people abandon their drinks and food to turn towards them in surprise, and Hajime utters an apology before turning back to Tooru and continuing, though this time in what can only be described as a whisper-shout. “ No! It hasn’t been obvious Shittykawa! You literally can’t go five seconds without dating someone.”
“That’s because I require constant attention and validation.”
Hajime lets out a deeply miserable sounding groan and pitches forward until his forehead makes contact with the table with a little thump. “Why. Why are you like this?”
“If anyone knows the answer to that question it’s definitely you,” Tooru says, giving Hajime’s shoulder a clumsy, comforting little pat.
“I can’t believe I’m in love with a dramatic, self absorbed, idiot.”
“Oh.” Whatever alcohol fueled confidence Tooru had been riding is suddenly gone. “You never told me you were into someone. Who is it?”
Hajime lifts his head to give Tooru what is possibly the most scathing look Tooru has ever received in his life. “You.”
“Oh,” Tooru says, and then again, once he’s processed that, “Ohhh.”
And then, before Tooru can say anything else that will probably (definitely) be incredibly stupid, Hajime kisses him.
Having been in love with his best friend for more or less his entire life, Tooru has had plenty of time to imagine what a first kiss between them might be like. He always imagined being a little smoother about it.
Maybe he’d be dashing and dramatic and swoop Hajime into his arms for a picture perfect first kiss like something out of an old movie.
He certainly did not imagine that he’d be three sheets to the wind, with an aching knee and the crushing weight of an unknown future, surrounded by other patrons in a crowded izakaya. This scenario had somehow never factored into his schoolboy fantasies.
Regardless of all of that, and it’s lack of cinematic appeal, the kiss is still kind of perfect.