Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Tooru is five years old when he loses his first tooth, and on the very same day, he meets Hajime.

The two momentous events are thoroughly linked; it is because of Hajime that Tooru loses his first tooth, when a baseball soars through the sky and collides with Tooru’s unsuspecting mouth. Tooru, more out of surprise than of pain, bursts into tears. A dirt-streaked hand appears over their garden fence, which is followed by a shirt-clad arm, and then a scrunched-up face, and then it’s a grumpy boy about Tooru’s age who’s got a plaster stuck over his nose—and then it’s Hajime in his entirety, even if Tooru doesn’t know it then.

Later, when they are both eleven and much too mature to be crying, Tooru’s mother laughs that it was fate that pushed the two boys together. Fate, itself, that pulled Tooru’s incisor out of his gum, and made the kids at school call him gapface for three whole months. Fate, that wove their souls together with golden, gleaming thread, and tied their lives together irrevocably.

At the mention of fate, Tooru notices Hajime stiffen. He sees how Hajime ducks his head, and avoids their eye, and pulls even further at the sleeves of his shirt. At eleven, Tooru has never seen the skin below Hajime’s wrist or above Hajime’s ankle. He wonders whether it’s as tan as the rest of him, or whether its limited exposure to the sun has made it paler. Tooru thinks it’d look cool either way. He just wants to be able to see.

“I don’t think fate works like that,” Tooru proclaims instead, and crosses his arms and shuffles his chair closer to Hajime’s.

“Fate doesn’t work like that,” Hajime says, afterwards, when they’ve escaped back up to Tooru’s room. “It just doesn’t.”

“I know,” Tooru groans, collapsing onto his bed. “I know, I know, I know. Please don’t tell me the story again, because if you do I will actually die.”

“It’s not a story, idiot,” Hajime says, and hits Tooru on the shoulder so hard he squeals. “It’s real. Don’t pretend that it isn’t.”

“Iwa-chan! I was defending your honour, and now you’re abusing me?”

“It’s not my honour,” Hajime says, scowling. “You’re not defending me, just by telling the truth.”

Tooru pouts. “I think I was very chivalrous.”

“You don’t even know what that word means.”

“I do too! Just because Iwa-chan is an uncivilised brute, it doesn’t mean that everyone around him is!”

“Shut up!”

“You shut up!”

“You!”

To Hajime, fate and soulmates are one and the same. To Tooru, they couldn’t be more different; fate is a made-up idea that appears in stories about witches and dragons and knights, whereas soulmates are just as real as Tooru’s left thumb.

Tooru loves to hear about soulmate stories, and loves watching them even more—he pesters his parents to show him their brilliant trick, cheering and clapping when his mother finally concedes and inks a small heart on the curve of her wrist. Tooru watches in awe as the drawing shimmers into existence in the exact same spot on his father’s lined skin.

Tooru picks up a pen and draws heart after heart after heart on his arms, covering them in black and purple and blue and pink and green. Moments later, as he’s admiring his work, he stops, and rushes to the bathroom to scrub the ink off before his parents can see. They’re not nearly as strict as the Iwaizumis next door, but Tooru’s parents are still wary about him communicating with his soulmate, especially when he’s only seven.

Tooru must never talk to Hajime about soulmates because Hajime is religious, and so they probably wouldn’t see eye-to-eye about it at all.

His father tells him this, one morning when Tooru is five-and-three-quarters, when he seems to forget that Tooru’s listening to his conversation with Tooru’s mother. When he realises, he sighs heavily, and crouches down to impress upon Tooru that everything he just said should be kept to the upmost secrecy. Because Tooru is a perfect son, he nods sweetly and promises that he won’t repeat a single word to the Iwaizumis.

That afternoon, Tooru clambers over the garden fence and tells Hajime everything.

He regrets it instantly. Hajime’s face crumples, and he tugs furiously at his shirt sleeve as he stalks around his room. Tooru watches him from the floor, not sure what to do. He’s been neighbours with Hajime for ages, and they’ve been best friends for almost four months, and he still hasn’t asked about the long sleeves or the long trousers, or why exactly the Iwaizumis are never free when Tooru wants to play on Sundays.

“Are you angry?” Tooru asks, tucking his knees into his chest. “Don’t be angry with me.”

“I’m not angry,” Hajime says, glowering. He kicks at his wastepaper basket, and it tips.

Tooru chews on his bottom lip. “I think you might be angry, Hajime-kun.”

Hajime glares at him. “I’m not. I’m fine.”

“I don’t think my dad meant to be mean,” Tooru says, nicely, because he’s such a perfect friend along with being a perfect son. “I just don’t think he wanted us to argue.”

“Why would we argue?” Hajime asks, stopping his pacing and crossing his arms. “I shouldn’t be angry. I’m not. I’m not angry. Because I shouldn’t be angry.”

“Why not?”

“Because.” Hajime shrugs, moodily. “Because this is the whole point of it, you know? This should be an opportunity, not—ugh.”

He stomps over to Tooru and sits beside him, his face still pinched and sour.

Hajime’s knee knocks against Tooru’s. He’s not sure if Hajime meant to do it, or if it was accidental, but Tooru decides not to think about it because there’s more important things going on right now.

“This is my chance to explain it to you,” Hajime says, finally. “I mean… ‘cause you have questions, and it’s my job to answer them and stuff. Like, to get you to join in.”

“Join in? You mean, convert me?” For some reason, Tooru finds the idea so ridiculous it makes him burst out laughing. At Hajime’s glare, he turns the laugh into a cough, and covers his mouth with the back of his hand. “Sorry. Sorry! I just think it’s pretty funny.”

“Yeah, I know.” Hajime splays his legs out on the carpet. “It’s a stupid idea. It’s stupid. It’s all stupid. Soulmates are stupid, and these stupid clothes are itchy and stupid, and everything’s stupid and I hate it.”

“It’s not all stupid,” Tooru offers. “I mean, your clothes are pretty weird-looking. But not everything in the world has to be stupid. For example! I am not stupid. So. There.”

Hajime chuckles and rubs at his nose with his sleeve. “You’re really stupid, Tooru.”

Tooru beams. “You’re wrong, but that’s okay. You can learn, Hajime-kun, because I’ll teach you, because I’m the world’s most perfect son ever!”

Hajime leaves for Bible camp in the summer between elementary and middle school. He’s only gone a week, but Tooru is restless the whole time; he keeps running into the garden, bursting to tell Hajime about this new idea he’s just thought of, until he remembers with a jolt that Hajime’s fifty miles away. When this happens for the third time in one day, he stomps over to the Iwaizumi household and, very politely, asks if he can use their phone to contact Hajime.

“Oh, I’m sorry, Tooru,” Hajime’s mother says, smiling. “They only allow outgoing calls at Saint Joe’s, and only between half-six and seven. That’s when you’re eating dinner, hmm? It wouldn’t be proper to disturb the family time.”

Tooru shakes his head vehemently. The possibility of talking to Hajime far outweighs any stupid family time. “I don’t care! My parents wouldn’t either, I promise!”

Hajime’s mother laughs, a little taken aback. “Well. I suppose I shouldn’t have expected any less from the two of you. Hajime was just the same when you left for that holiday last year—could hardly sit still, the dear, jumping about everywhere. I’ll see what I can do, Tooru. Next time he rings, I’ll knock on your door, and you can have a chat, alright? Alright.”

“Iwa-chan! Hey! Hi!”

“Oikawa?”

“The one and only! Have you missed me?”

“Huh? Oh. Not really.”

“That’s a big, fat lie. You’ve missed me loads.”

“Haven’t.”

“I bet you have. What have you even been doing out there? It’s so boring on my own, I’m going to cry.”

“Not much. We do activities in the day, which is fun, and then we have to do singing and prayers in the evening. It’s alright, I guess.”

“That sounds really dull.”

“Maybe. If they heard me saying that then I’d get in loads of trouble, but it really, really is.”

“Oooh! You don’t think the lines are tapped, do you? What if they’re listening in? Like spies, Iwa-chan!”

“That’s so stupid. It’s Bible camp, not Alcatraz. Idiot.”

“How long have you wanted to be a setter, Tooru-kun?” asks a girl in Tooru’s class, when they’re in their final year of middle school.

“Oh,” Tooru says, a little uncomfortably, because the girl’s leaning slightly too close and he can feel her hand slightly too tight on his wrist. “I—”

“Since he was six,” Hajime interjects, crossing his arms over his chest and staring the girl down. “We watched the first game at my house. He thought it was cool. Why d’you ask?”

Tooru’s six-and-a-half, and he and Hajime are watching boring cartoons on the television.

“Next!” Tooru demands, and Hajime flicks to the next channel. “Next! Next! Next! Ne—ooh.”

A pass. An intake of breath. Lithe fingers, a man taking flight. A boom, as a yellow-blue ball ricochets off the floor.

Tooru’s eyes are wide. His lips part. He moves forward, and his hands press against the screen.

“Next!” Hajime says, and flicks to the next channel. “Yes, Pokémon!”

Tooru’s dragging Hajime to their elementary school volleyball club. He’s got his fingers clamped resolutely around Hajime’s forearm, and he refuses to let go even when Hajime threatens to kick his head.

“It’ll be fun, Iwa-chan! Don’t be so grumpy, c’mon!”

“You’re so—quit it! Let go of—you’re so annoying, Oikawa!”

“Just because you’re too—”

“Don’t you—”

“—too short to play volleyball, it doesn’t—ouch, Iwa-chan!”

To say thank-you, Tooru uses all his pocket money to buy Hajime a bag full of strawberry-flavoured sweets. It’s only a small bag, because Tooru is only seven and sweets cost a lot of money, but he plops the bag in Hajime’s hand as they walk to school together and still feels immensely proud of himself.

“For you,” he says, pushing Hajime’s hand closer to his chest. Hajime frowns at him. “For you,” Tooru repeats, a little exasperated. “For being a good friend.”

“Oh,” Hajime says. His face flushes a brilliant pink. He opens the crinkly bag, and slowly crunches on one of the sweets. He smiles, and then frowns grumpily and scuffs his feet on the floor. “We can share. If you’d like.”

Tooru beams. “Yeah! Yeah, thanks, Iwa-chan!”

Hajime mumbles something, but it’s too quiet for Tooru to hear over the sound of his giggles.

According to his parents, Hajime was a miracle baby. They had been praying for a child for years, and even though the doctors had told them it was nearly impossible, they hadn’t lost faith. And then, like a miracle, they had realised that Hajime’s mother was pregnant, and that Hajime was going to be made. Hajime was born four weeks early, at 2.8 kilograms exactly, and had to be monitored afterwards to make sure he was fit and healthy. According to Hajime’s father, who tells the story all the time, his mother hadn’t let go of her necklace once—a silver crucifix that glitters daintily in the light.

Hajime’s status as a premature baby, miracle or not, leaves him short throughout all of elementary school and most of middle school. They both get sick of people asking him why he doesn’t want to play libero; Tooru always rolls his eyes very conspicuously and proclaims that Hajime is much too aggressive to play anything in defence.

Tooru never lets Hajime live being a ‘miracle baby’ down. Hanamaki and Matsukawa don’t understand the references at first, and, in one of their after-school practices in their first year of Aoba Johsai, Tooru delights in recounting his version of Hajime’s most miraculous birth to such an eager audience. When Tooru tells the story, Hajime shoots from his mother’s womb and takes flight, soaring around the hospital room as a golden light warms the souls of the few lucky witnesses. Hajime, interjecting for the first time, thumps Tooru on the arm and tells him to quit the weird references to the Holy Nativity.

“It’s probably blasphemous,” Hajime says, after Hanamaki and Matsukawa have strolled away to get changed. He tugs at his tie and struggles with sliding it over his ears; Hajime has never learnt that undoing it slowly will save him time when he has to put it back on, and always pulls at it with such force that it makes Tooru wince.

“Probably,” Tooru says, unbuttoning his own shirt and folding it neatly on the bench. “Oh, well. I’m sure the Heavenly Father will let this one pass.”

“You’re such a dick, Oikawa,” Hajime says, and Tooru grins.

“So crude! Iwa-chan needs to learn better ways of communicating than insults, or else people will think that he’s got the same IQ as a caveman.” Tooru cackles, and hops out of the way of Hajime’s flying fist. “Don’t injure me before our first practice match, Iwa-chan!”

“I’ll resist,” Hajime says, stuffing his tie into his bag. His school shirt is open around the neckline, but the ever-present cotton of his undershirt prevents Tooru from partaking in even the most innocent of glances.

“Please do,” Tooru says. “If Myoga falls fatally ill, I think Irihata-sensei will sub me on as his replacement. Isn’t that exciting!”

“Thrilling,” Hajime says. “I guess you’re hoping that Myoga-san gets carried off in a stretcher mid-game.”

“Yep! That would be so lucky, wow!”

“You’re a sadistic piece of shit.”

“I’m reaching for the stars!”

“Gross. I’m going to go change.” Hajime hoists his bag over his shoulder and departs for the bathroom stalls, making sure to knock elbows with Tooru as he leaves.

Tooru smiles. He stares down at his trainers for a handful of seconds, still grinning dopily, before he remembers that he’s got a stellar reputation to foster and busies himself with getting changed.

Tooru’s thirteen, and his right knee aches.

He tells this to Hajime, who looks at him funny and says that Tooru should grow up and stop complaining about it all the damn time, and go see a stupid doctor before Hajime punches him.

Tooru laughs, and continues his drills.

Hajime wears long-sleeved jerseys and ankle-length leggings when he plays volleyball. There’s two other people in their middle school team that keep themselves as covered as he does, but Tooru can’t stop thinking about the blond third-year who displays his skin with no reservations at all.

The blond third-year is tall—taller than Tooru, and definitely taller than Hajime—and has thick hair that falls in waves past his shoulders. Before he plays (because he’s a wing spiker, which just fits, for some reason) he sweeps it up into a bun, and Tooru’s eyes latch onto the exposed skin of the nape of his neck, watching as it glistens with perspiration when he returns to the bench in time-out. He knows Tooru’s name, too; he’d been walking between with some of his third-year friends, and Tooru had accidentally bumped into his side when trying to make his way to chemistry.

“Oof, sorry—oh, hey. Oikawa, right? From volleyball?”

Oikawa, right? From volleyball.

Tooru squeals with joy when he retells the story, embellishing the tale with fireworks and starlight and orchestral music.

He pretends he doesn’t notice when Hajime shuffles away from him, or when he avoids making eye contact with Tooru for the rest of the day.

Even though there are other people who keep their skin covered, it’s not common. Tooru knows that some of the other kids snicker behind Hajime’s back, as if it’s some bad thing to keep your soulmate private. When they turn up to their first volleyball training session of elementary school (braving it together, Tooru’s arm threaded through Hajime’s, despite his protests), someone asks them how Hajime’s going to play if he’s not allowed to show his arms or legs, and Hajime shrugs.

“They sell sports stuff with long sleeves,” Hajime says. “I’ve brought them with me.”

“Right,” says one of the fifth-graders, exchanging a glance with one of his friends. “Your choice, I guess. I’ll check with coach if that’s okay.”

Next week, Tooru marches into the changing room with a brand-new white base layer. It covers his arms wholly, pinching in at the wrist to prevent it from slipping. He smiles cheerfully at the rest of the team, and stares pointedly at anyone who makes an irritated expression.

“Is everything alright?” he asks, sweetly. The older kids shrug, and look away.

Hajime doesn’t talk to Tooru for the rest of training. Tooru’s just starting to think that he’s made an incredible mistake, until they’re walking home together in silence, and Hajime stops, suddenly. Tooru’s mouth is opening to ask what’s wrong, and then Hajime is surging forward and he’s wrapping his arms around Tooru’s chest as tightly as he can.

Tooru stumbles back, and stands there for a second, dumbfounded. Hajime’s head is buried in the crook of his neck, and his hair is scratching the underside of Tooru’s chin. Tooru can feel his breath, warm against his shoulder. Hajime’s squeezing him, and then loosens his grip, like he’s going to let go, and then Tooru realises what kind of incredible opportunity he’s passing up, and holds Hajime tightly in his arms. Hajime’s body jolts, and then he stills.

“Sorry,” Hajime says, gruffly, when he untangles his arms from Tooru’s. “I shouldn’t—I didn’t—“

Tooru pinches his mouth into a smile, and claps Hajime on the back. “Don’t worry,” he says, as jovially as he can manage. “I won’t tell your parents.”

Tooru’s twelve and he’s in art class, and they’ve been commanded to draw the person sitting opposite them. Unfortunately, Hajime had taken a seat to Tooru’s left, so they’ve been stuck with random partners that neither of them cares about.

“What colour are your eyes, Iwaizumi-kun?” Hajime’s partner asks, biting down on his paintbrush.

“They’re green,” Tooru says, examining his drawing and tilting it towards Hajime. “Do you think I need more shading here?”

“No, it looks like sludge.”

“Hmm.” Tooru dabs a bit of blue paint onto his paper. “I’m gonna add more shading.”

“Uhm, are you sure, Oikawa-kun?” Hajime’s partner peers at Hajime’s face, and Tooru stiffens. “Sorry, Iwaizumi-kun, but aren’t your eyes brown?”

Hajime wrinkles his nose.

“They’re green,” Tooru says, coldly. “Obviously.”

Hajime shrugs. “He’s right. Sorry. Green.”

Tooru preens, silently, and mouths: “Obviously.” to the downturned head of their classmate, when he makes sure no-one can see.

Hajime gets his first growth spurt when he’s thirteen. In one week, he shoots up five whole centimetres, and a second week later he’s grown by another three. Hajime complains that his bones are aching, but swears at Tooru when he offers to give him a sports massage. Tooru laughs and sticks his tongue out, but feels his face drop when Hajime’s back is turned.

Hajime notices. He sits next to Tooru at break, and pinches Tooru’s thigh when he pretends not to see. Tooru focuses on copying up his work from the morning’s class, and most definitely not on the way Hajime’s shoulder is now at the exact same height as his.

“Why are you acting so weird?” Hajime mutters, so no-one else can hear him when he’s being kind.

“I’m not.” Tooru pulls his face into a beaming grin: it would have dazzled half the girls in his class, but Hajime’s eyebrows just bunch together, creases lining the bridge of his nose. “I’m acting perfectly normally.”

“You can’t lie to me, Oikawa,” Hajime says, glaring, and the absolute certainty in his voice makes something flip in Tooru’s chest.

“I’m not lying, Iwa-chan—”

“Your face is all twisted.”

“My face is beautiful!” Tooru pouts, and turns away from Hajime. “Don’t insult me.”

Hajime groans, and Tooru glances back to see him burying his head against his desk. Tooru slouches down and copies his posture; they stare at each other, cheeks pressed against smooth oak. Hajime squints at him intensely, and Tooru’s face feels warm.

“What is it?” Hajime asks, quietly.

“It’s nothing,” Tooru says.

“Hey,” Hajime says, and Tooru tries not to pay attention to the way his eyes open wide and glare into Tooru’s, somehow both determined and unsure. “C’mon.”

“Hey,” Tooru repeats, and then shrugs. “You’ll make fun of me.”

“I won’t,” Hajime protests, and then hesitates. “I promise I won’t. What is it?”

Tooru sighs. He squeezes his eyes shut, and then whispers: “What if you get taller than me?”

Hajime doesn’t say anything. Tooru wants to implode.

“What if…” Tooru hesitates. “What happens if you keep growing, and then you grow even taller than I am?”

Tooru cracks an eye open. Hajime’s just staring at him. Tooru lets out a whine and covers his face in his hands, peeking through his fingers to scan for Hajime’s reaction.

Hajime blinks. “What are you on about?”

“You’re growing loads faster than me,” Tooru says, his voice muffled. “And if you keep growing like this, then you’re going to get really tall, and then you’re going to be even taller than me, and then people are going to think I’m short because they’ll see me standing next to you all the time, and I’m not short, but people will think I am, and then my life will be over!”

With this, Tooru throws his hands in the air, and slumps back into his chair, crossing his arms and sulking.

“Yeah, but,” Hajime says, “but you’re growing too.”

“But it’s the rate of growth, Iwa-chan!”

“What?”

“You’re growing at a much greater rate than me,” Tooru complains. “And if you continue like that, then I’m going to end up being shorter than you.”

“I’m 159 centimetres,” Hajime says, his lips quirking up. “That’s not even that tall.”

“You will be tall,” Tooru whispers, dramatically. “You will be, in about three days.”

Hajime chuckles, and sits back up. “You’re so stupid.”

Tooru gasps, outraged. “You promised you wouldn’t make fun of me!”

“I’m not, I’m just—I thought it was something serious,” Hajime says, flicking Tooru’s ear.

“It is serious!”

“You’re so stupid.” Hajime grins, and flicks Tooru again. Tooru flicks him back and tugs at Hajime’s hair, and Hajime swats his hand off sharply. The back of his neck burns a dusty pink. Tooru likes the colour.

In truth, it would probably be better if Hajime grew a bit more. He’d be able to hit spikes from even higher off the ground, and Tooru would never have to worry about the other team’s blockers ever again. If Hajime can get his palm to the ball, he can score, but sometimes things get in his way. Tooru wants to make his play as easy and simple as possible—that’s his job.

Still, he likes the sight of Hajime tilting his chin up to look Tooru in the eye. He likes it when they’re out in public, and Tooru has to swoop his head down next to Hajime’s so he can hear him properly.

He likes it even more when Hajime gets his second growth spurt at fifteen that puts him solidly above average height, and Hajime decides that Tooru bending down to his level is demeaning and ridiculous. Instead, Hajime pulls Tooru down himself, gripping him tightly on the shoulder, or yanking him by the collar of his uniform. Tooru always protests, but never tries to stop him.

He pretends that he’s saving Hajime’s feelings, by playing along with the roughhousing. He vehemently ignores any other explanations, because anything else is an impossibility—anything else couldn’t happen, and never will.

Hajime keeps growing, and the gap keeps decreasing, and there’s no need for Tooru to bend down anymore; and then they’re seventeen and have both practically stopped growing, and Tooru’s still the tallest, and Hajime keeps muttering complaints about not being 180 centimetres, and Tooru keeps bragging about being fifteen whole centimetres above national average height; and they’re spending their lunchtime sitting under the shade of a Sakura tree with Hanamaki and Matsukawa cracking jokes in the background, and Hajime’s just spilt some sauce on his uniform and he’s licking his thumb and rubbing it to make sure it doesn’t stain, and Tooru can’t help but think that he’s never been so content as he is right now.

It all goes wrong, soon enough.

Not in one great moment of change; where before, all is well, and after, all is broken. It’s a gradual thing, and it’s something quiet (many things, mingling into one larger thing), and it’s something Tooru’s been ignoring all his life.

Because when Hajime turns eighteen, he will ink his name onto his wrist, as his first message to his soulmate in his life. It’s an important step towards adulthood, his parents say; the act of scrībere, of writing to your soulmate, where words absorb and blossom on another human’s body, is sacred. It must not be taken lightly, and so you must only perform the act once you’ve reached maturity, and are willing to devote yourself to your soulmate, mind, body, and soul.

And it won’t be Tooru.

Because Tooru is one of the unlucky ones; in a world where you have one perfect match, only one, it’s only natural that life gets in the way, sometimes. Because Tooru has written and written and written, but has never once received a response.

He's fourteen when he finally stops pretending; because Tooru doesn’t have a soulmate, and Hajime is destined to love someone else.

Chapter Text

Tooru is seven when he finds out about the Less Fortunate. That’s the kinder phrase; when he first hears about them, they’ll be described as the Luckless, Damned, Broken. Always in whispers, voices never raised, because even children know that they shouldn’t mock those without soulmates.

There’s a kid who sits next to him in class who won’t stop drawing on her hands. It’s always in the same pen, a blue felt tip that makes her handwriting look cool and squiggly. Tooru watches her draw whenever he gets bored, enjoying the sight of flowers slowly growing across her arm.

“Your writing’s really pretty,” he says, one day, after she decorates her index finger with a twining rose.

She jumps, looking round to him sharply. Her eyes are wide and the deepest brown Tooru’s ever seen, and he grins toothily. Compliments always help him make friends.

The girl doesn’t say anything, only stare, and then her deep brown eyes dart to Tooru’s hands, and they slowly fill with tears.

“What was that?” whispers the boy who sits to Tooru’s left, whose hands are covered in words and pictures and drawings of a rainbow of colours. “Don’t be mean!”

“What?” Tooru wasn’t trying to be mean. He never wants to be mean. “What’s wrong?”

“She’s a Luckless, Oikawa!” The boy checks the girl can’t hear him, and shuffles his chair closer to Tooru’s. “Don’t you remember that family who got killed in the car accident last month?”

“Yeah.” Tooru’s mother had lectured for ages about the importance of wearing a seatbelt after they’d seen the news story on the television. It’d been super boring. “So?”

“They found out through a soulmate placement service,” he whispers, “but the boy who died, the younger son, he was Chiyo’s soulmate. Doesn’t that suck?”

Tooru knows he can’t be Broken. That type of stuff happens to other people, not perfect sons like him. Besides, he’s too popular to be all alone like that; it’s not just Hajime who likes him, even though he counts the most, but because everyone in school thinks he’s amazing. Nice boys like Tooru always have nice soulmates.

And it’s not like it’s rare for people to hold off on talking to their soulmates, especially when they’re young, and just because Tooru keeps writing, and no-one’s been writing back, it doesn’t have to mean anything. Tooru imagines his soulmate as a pretty girl his age, who keeps blushing cutely whenever she sees the stuff he writes for her, and he sighs contently. She’ll write back one day. He can wait.

What’s your name? Tooru writes, and stares at his hand, waiting for his soulmate’s response. He tucks his feet underneath himself, and then shifts so he’s sitting with his legs crossed, and then moves completely and lies down on his bed, his eyes not moving from his hand.

Maybe she’s shy, he thinks. Or maybe she hasn’t seen it yet. Or maybe she lives in a different country, so she’s asleep! That’d be so cool, if his soulmate wasn’t even Japanese. Tooru adds a heart to the question in a different colour pen, and then leaves it there.

Tooru never lets other people see his writing. He rubs it off in the shower, soap and hot water, like a ritual, every single day. He hasn’t even shown Hajime, who’s never once asked to see. Tooru’s grateful, for that quiet act of kindness.

It’s common enough, for people to want privacy between their soulmates. To some people, if they take it very seriously, it’s something that they should always keep hidden, to preserve the mysticism and intimacy of it all. Tooru lets people pretend that he’s one of those, and when asked about the reason he doesn’t have any writing, he waves his hand vaguely and says something about romance and true love.

A girl in Tooru’s kindergarten class has a soulmate who is English, and everyone thinks it’s the best thing ever. They flock around her as she writes to him in wobbly Latin alphabet, and they coo when he responds in broken Japanese.

You are nice, he writes, and Tooru grabs Hajime’s arm in delight. Hajime tries to shove him off, but Tooru latches on like a barnacle. I am Josh. I like cars.

“I’m taking English lessons,” the girl says, proudly, to the amazement of the rest of the class. “I’m going to move to America to meet him when I’m older. I’m saving up my pocket money already.”

“Isn’t that romantic, Hajime-kun?” Tooru enthuses, skipping along the pavement ahead of their parents. Tooru’s mother has a coffee in her hand, and Hajime’s mother has a tea. “My soulmate’s Japanese, but that’s so boring. Is your soulmate Japanese, or is she foreign?”

“She’s Japanese,” Hajime says, jumping up to catch a falling leaf and not meeting Tooru’s eye. “I’ve seen her writing.”

“Whoa.” Tooru gapes at him. “And you haven’t written her back?”

“Nope.”

“Haven’t you wanted to? Just to let her know that you’re there?”

“Doesn’t matter what I want,” Hajime says, as if it’s obvious, and he snatches the leaf out the air. “Just what God wants. I don’t count. Duh.”

At the age of four, Tooru realises that maybe his soulmate would respond to him if he had nicer handwriting, and so he makes the characters pretty and curved whenever he tells her about his day. It takes a long time, writing with such concentration, and he can never keep it up anywhere else.

His mother spots him, once, practising his words dutifully in a workbook. She teases him, pinching his cheek—and Tooru feels like she’s making fun of him, and he starts to cry.

Hastily, his mother assures him that it’s very common for people to change their handwriting when they write to their soulmate. Some people like the privacy, she says, and some people just want it to be fancy. It’s perfectly normal, Tooru-chan, sweetheart, please stop crying, oh, bloody hell.

Still, when he’s calmed down, he decides that he likes that his handwriting looks different when he writes to his soulmate. It makes their bond special, unique. He hopes she appreciates it.

“How old were you when you and Mom started talking?” Tooru, aged seven-and-a-half, asks his father. “When you first did scrībere?”

Tooru’s father looks down at him, his eyebrows pinched together. “Scrībere? Where’d you hear that word from?”

“Iwa-chan’s parents keep talking about it,” Tooru says, fiddling with his coat buttons.

“Ah. Of course.” His father’s mouth pinches. “You—I don’t want you calling it that, Tooru, alright?”

“Why?” Tooru frowns. Hajime calls it that, and Hajime’s never been wrong about anything.

“I—well.” His father sighs, and crouches down so his eyes are level with Tooru’s. “Don’t you feel that calling it by some… old, archaic name, that it makes the whole thing seem so much more overwhelming? I just don’t want the Iwaizumis making you feel some kind of pressure about talking with your soulmate, hmm? When you’re old enough, there shouldn’t be any problem with it. Does that make sense?”

“Sure,” Tooru says, impatiently. “But how old were you?”

His father smiles. “Oh, I don’t know. Too young, probably. Maybe six, seven? Why?”

Tooru watches the older boys in the Kitigawa Daiichi volleyball club.

They work so hard, he realises; they turn up earlier, they go home later, and he overhears that the team captain even watches volleyball games when he eats his breakfast. Despite his best efforts, Tooru is bitterly jealous, because there’s so much time in his day that he doesn’t spend working, training, and he suddenly realises just how of his life has been wasted.

Tooru wants to be the best setter in his school. Tooru starts turning up earlier, going home later, working harder than he’s ever done before. He falls asleep in his uniform every night, and wakes up even earlier to iron the creases out of his blazer.

Hajime watches him, as Tooru slams another ball into the net and swears. He’s trying to learn jump serves, but it’s been weeks and he hasn’t made the tiniest modicum of progress. Tooru inhales sharply, and readies another ball.

“Your knee’s acting up,” Hajime says, and Tooru falters. “It’s hurting you. That’s why you’re not doing as well. Dumbass,” he tapes on, as an afterthought.

“I’m fine,” Tooru says, amused. “Don’t be so silly, Iwa-chan. You can go home if you want, you don’t need to wait—”

“We’re going home.” Hajime stalks over to the net, and starts tossing the balls into the basket. “Not just me. I’ve got the keys to lock up. Come on. Now.”

Tooru goes camping with the Iwaizumis when he’s just turned twelve. He tells Hajime that it’s his birthday present, spending a whole week away from home with his best friend, and doesn’t miss the way Hajime’s ears burn red beneath the tufts of his hair.

Tooru’s too stubborn to put on sunscreen, and finishes the first day with ugly red burns all up his arms and legs. Hajime laughs at him, and reminds him that he was the one who chose to wear shorts and a sleeveless shirt. Tooru seethes, glaring at Hajime with his stupid happy skin all covered by his undergarments, all happy and healthy and burnless, before Hajime roots around in his backpack and produces a small tub of aloe vera gel.

“Your dad told me I should bring it,” Hajime says, gruffly, chucking it into Tooru’s lap and flushing a ruddy scarlet when Tooru beams at him. “Said you’re always getting burnt.”

“My complexion’s too fair for the outdoors,” Tooru says, smiling. He picks at a bit of skin and watches it peel. “Ew, Iwa-chan, look at this!”

“I wonder if my soulmate has sunburn now,” Tooru says, lying on his back and staring up at the sky. He holds his forearm over his head; as usual, it’s unblemished, inkless and pale. “Do you think she can tell?”

“No,” Hajime says, “idiot. Unless you want to write to tell her that her soulmate’s a stupid dumbass.”

“Don’t be so cruel,” Tooru sighs, “my soulmate thinks I’m brilliant. Did you know that she told me what she looks like?”

“Wow.”

“I know. Very very long hair, she said, and green eyes. Pretty soulmate for a handsome me.” Tooru yawns, bored, and kicks at Hajime with his foot. “Hey.”

“What?”

“Wanna look for flying saucers with me?”

Hajime grumbles something about realistic expectations. After Tooru pouts, he complains: “But we never see any.”

“That doesn’t mean we won’t today! Please? Please-please?”

Tooru pinches Hajime’s cheek and rolls over to his side, throwing an arm around his chest and tucking his head snug into the crook of his neck. He sighs, relaxing into the familiar smell of Hajime: comfort and warmth and linen, with the subtlest hints of mint.

He’s shoved off, harshly, and his shoulder hits the ground with a dull thump. Tooru blinks, eyes smarting. His mouth opens.

“What are you doing?” Hajime hisses, recoiling. His head whips around, gaze darting from Tooru’s face, to himself, and then to his parents—only a few metres away, their stares racing along the field and striking Tooru with their intensity. Tooru hears his heart skip, painful, as realisation hits him.

“Sorry,” Tooru says, his breath catching on the lump in his throat. “I forgot. Sorry. Sorry.”

Tooru isn’t allowed to sleep in the same bed as Hajime anymore. He’s nine, nearly ten, and apparently that makes them too old. He asks Hajime’s mother, pleads with her, even starts to cry, and though she gives him a sympathetic pat on the knee, she doesn’t change her mind.

“You’re growing boys,” she says, wiping away Tooru’s tears with the pad of her thumb. “Oh, Tooru. You’ll understand why when you’re older. When you’ve got a girlfriend for yourself, you’ll be glad you weren’t spending your childhood nights like a cuddlebug to your Iwa-chan, hmm?”

“But I don’t want a girlfriend,” Tooru says, his eyes stinging, hot tears racing down his cheeks, “I just want Iwa-chan!”

(He learns, later, that this was the wrong thing to say. As he grows, Tooru realises that grown-ups don’t want to hear the truth, just what will make them happiest. And because Tooru is a perfect son, he decides that he will never tell the truth about Hajime ever again.)

“They’re close enough already,” he hears Hajime’s mother say, when he tries to sneak downstairs to get Hajime a glass of milk. “Tooru’s such an affectionate child, I just think—anything more, and it’ll confuse him.”

“They’re just kids, darling,” Hajime’s father says. “He’s not even thinking about girls yet, just those cars and spaceships and Tooru. He doesn’t have space in his head for anything else.”

“I know,” Hajime’s mother says, a little sad. “That’s what I’m afraid of.“

Tooru, nine, asks Hajime, ten, why they have to sleep in separate beds two weeks after the rule is established.

Hajime looks down, scratching at his newly-cut hair, and tells Tooru that boys don’t sleep in the same beds as other boys. Tooru asks if it’d be different if he was a girl, and Hajime shrugs, and says that’d probably be even worse. Tooru frowns, and Hajime shuffles a bit closer, linking their arms.

“I know it sucks,” Hajime says, bumping their shoulders together. “But it just doesn’t happen, okay? So… just keep away from me, yeah? At least when they’re looking.”

“Just when they’re looking?” Tooru asks, leaning his head on Hajime’s shoulder.

“Just—”

And then a window slams shut on the bottom floor, and Hajime jumps away from him, his eyes darting to the door, placing a clear and defined and obvious distance between their bodies.

“Can boys have soulmates who are boys?”

Tooru’s father looks up from his newspaper and yawns. “What was that, Tooru?”

Tooru, eleven, repeats the question. His father thinks about it.

“Of course they can,” he says. “It’s not common, but it happens.”

“Oh.” Tooru doesn’t know what to think of that. “I’ve always thought my soulmate was a girl.”

Tooru’s father looks at him, and then looks down. “It’s likely that she is,” he says, and he almost seems embarrassed. “In terms of probability and statistics, that is. But she doesn’t have to be. ‘She’ could be a ‘he’, and—well, and that’d be fine, I suppose. If you love your soulmate… then there isn’t anything else I could say.”

Tooru’s parents and Hajime’s parents disagree about the soulmate thing. Tooru doesn’t know who to side with, because he loves them both.

It’s even worse when Tooru and Hajime disagree about the soulmate thing, because Tooru loves Hajime more than anything else in the world, but he sometimes hates the things that Hajime says.

Tooru, at the sprightly age of fifteen, has decided that he’s going to be the best setter at Aoba Johsai before the end of his first year. A starting player, nothing less—Hajime, too. They’re supposed to be walking around Aoba Johsai high together in a complimentary tour for the future pupils, but Tooru feels a flash of rebellion that he urgently needs to satiate. He waits for the rest of the group to trail ahead of them, and then grabs Hajime by the back of his blazer and tugs him off to the side.

“Ouch—you—Oikawa!”

“Come on!” Tooru grins, letting go of Hajime with a wink. “Let’s go explore on our own, this tour guide’s hopeless!”

“You’re so annoying,” Hajime says, chasing after him with a twisted smile.

They arrive in the outside field, pressing their backs to the walls whenever they see adults or older kids in uniform. Tooru keeps giggling, giddy with the thrill of it all, and Hajime keeps barking at him to shut up. There’s a flock of third-graders already there, kicking a football around and hollering. One of them slams the ball into the back of a net, and half the class cheers uproariously, streaming onto the pitch to tackle the kid in a hug.

“That’s me when I play,” Tooru whispers, sneaking a glance at Hajime.

Hajime’s transfixed. He doesn’t acknowledge Tooru’s words, or give any indication that he heard—he just stares. It’s a warm, bright day, and Hajime’s chest is heaving from the exertion of running. His hair’s overgrown, brushing past the nape of his neck, and Tooru wants to reach out and touch it, to see whether it’s still as rough as he remembers it being when they were kids.

Maybe it wouldn’t be, because Hajime looks so different now. He’s been growing so much taller recently, but he manages to carry it off; when Tooru had hit his growth spurts, it’d left him long and overgrown and lanky, but Hajime looks so solid, firm, secure. Tooru wonders, suddenly, when Hajime decided to grow up.

Earlier that week, Tooru catches Hajime lying on his bedroom floor, face screwed-up, breathing heavily, holding himself mid-way through a push-up position. He stares at Tooru, horrified, as if he’s been caught committing a heinous act of violence.

Hajime admits he doesn’t want anyone to find out because it’s plain embarrassing, but Tooru doesn’t understand that at all—there’s nothing embarrassing about trying to improve yourself, just as there’s nothing embarrassing about the deep flush Hajime’s face takes on when he finishes a set, or the deep way he grunts out his count when tallying the reps, or the sheen of perspiration that layers Hajime’s neck and makes his shirt cling to his back, highlighting the smooth curve of shoulder blades and waist and spine.

And there’s nothing embarrassing about the results of his efforts, which show themselves in the toned muscle of his arms, strong when they hit Tooru’s sets straight through to the other side of the court, or his legs, powering every step and jump to greater heights, or his core, which he flexes whenever he hangs upside-down on the monkey bars at the old playground they still go to, partly because of nostalgia, partly because it’s just fun.

Tooru, fifteen, standing on the outskirts of a football field, doesn’t understand why Hajime would be embarrassed—but he looks at his best friend, who’s watching everyone and everyone and everyone except for him, and Tooru’s world slips away.

“No,” he whispers, voice shaking. “No, no, no.”

Tooru is just a child when he realises his feelings for his best friend are different to the feelings other people have for theirs. He’s a little older when he realises how wrong that is, and how strongly he must work to make himself not feel those bad, bad feelings. He’s older still when he realises that he can’t pretend anymore, and he realises that he can’t cry.

Tooru doesn’t know how old he is when he realises that the feelings he has for best friend are completely, wholly, intrinsically different to the feelings his best friend has for him.

It’s quiet. It’s always more quiet at Hajime’s house than at Tooru’s, whose parents stay up late to talk and watch the news long after he’s headed to bed. Tooru’s used to the noise, but he likes the quiet even more.

Hajime’s got the bed this time, and Tooru’s on the floor right beside it; they’d flipped a coin, and Tooru had won. It’s been a long time since Hajime’s mother has let the two of them sleep in the same bed. Tooru never used to be able to sleep alone, curling into a pillow and pretending it’s Hajime, the way they used to sleep—limbs tangled together, Hajime’s drool on Tooru’s pyjama shirt, Tooru’s head resting on Hajime’s arm. He can sleep through the night, now. He’s gotten used to it.

“Oikawa,” Hajime says, and his voice is a whisper in the dark.

“Yeah?” Tooru says, rolling onto his side to look up at where he knows Hajime would be lying.

“Are you awake?”

“I’m talking to you. Course I am.”

“Okay.”

Tooru waits for Hajime to say something else, and then groans. “So? What did you want to say?”

“Nothing.”

“Liar.”

“It’s nothing. Forget it.”

“Oh, don’t pretend, Iwa—”

“Why don’t you believe in Hell?”

Tooru pauses, shocked for a second, and then is even more surprised when he can’t find an immediate response.

“Well,” he says, slowly, “I don’t believe in God.”

“But if you did?” Hajime asks, and Tooru can hear a hint of desperation rippling through his voice. “If you did believe, would you believe in Hell?”

“No. No, I don’t think so.”

“Why?”

Hajime’s scared.

Hajime never lets Tooru witness him this scared. Maybe it’s the dark, or maybe it’s because he’ll be eighteen next year, scrībere looming over both of them.

“I…” Tooru grasps for the right words. “I don’t like the idea of eternal punishment. I don’t like the idea of anything eternal, actually, but… I don’t like the idea of someone else deciding what’s right and what’s wrong about my life, and then punishing me for it. My life is my life, you know?”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t know if that makes sense,” Tooru says, “but that’s the general idea. Am I making sense?”

“Yeah.”

“Why, Iwa-chan? Hey, you’re not worried about Hell, are you?”

Hajime doesn’t respond.

“Iwa-chan?”

Instead, Tooru feels a rough, callused hand brush his arm. His heart skips, and he reaches up to thread his fingers through Hajime’s.

Hajime squeezes, tightly, and doesn’t let go.

“Am I your favourite person?” Tooru asks, and rolls over on his side to look more clearly at Hajime. Tooru’s six years old, and has just figured out that he likes to make Hajime embarrassed. “Because you’re my favourite person, in the entire world.”

Hajime, on cue, coughs and splutters. “I—why did you say that?”

“I’m wondering,” Tooru says. “Am I?”

“I don’t know,” Hajime says, and he doesn’t make eye contact with Tooru. “I don’t know many people.”

Tooru hears this, and he notices everything, and he grins as wide as the sun.

It’s the fourteenth of February and Tooru’s twelve and there’s a chocolate flower on his desk. He stares at it for a few seconds, and then picks it up and examines it. He sniffs it, and peels at the foil cautiously.

“Oh, it’s not poisonous, you idiot,” Hajime says, sitting down at his own desk and scowling at the rose as if it’d just sworn at him.

“Yeah, yeah,” Tooru says. He holds the rose between his forefinger and thumb, and sticks out his tongue at Hajime. “Do you want it?”

Hajime recoils, and Tooru feels strangely embarrassed. “Course I don’t want it,” Hajime says, “it’s yours. Some girl’s got it for you.”

“And I’m giving it to you,” Tooru says, scraping his chair back and bowing to Hajime like a girl in those teen television shows they make fun of. “Accept my confession, Iwaizumi-san!”

“Idiot!” Hajime barks, snatching the flower from Tooru’s hands and shoving it in his pocket. He’s flushed bright red, and he runs a hand over his face as he glares furiously at the ceiling.

Tooru’s stomach feels swoopy. He doesn’t understand why.

Tooru is in his first year of high school when he decides he’s got to change. He can’t change that his soulmate is dead, or that he’s probably in love with his best friend, or that his best friend’s soulmate is alive and real and a girl, but he can still make his life look as nice as possible. Even if everything’s decaying on the inside, Tooru can still appear to be happy, and that’s going to have to be enough.

He flirts with the pretty girls in his year, and is delighted when they blush and look to the ground and twirl their hair around their fingers. When one of them confesses, he accepts, and shares the box of heart-shaped chocolates with Hajime.

Hajime’s parents don’t think that boys should be in love with other boys.

Tooru is eleven, and he doesn’t understand why. Soulmates are soulmates: sometimes (rarely, sure, but sometimes) boys will have a soulmate who’s another boy. He tells this to Hajime, when they’re walking to school together, and doesn’t understand why he feels a little afraid to ask.

“It’s about what’s natural,” Hajime explains, after he’s thought it through. “Because family’s so important for us—the most important thing. Soulmates are just one step closer to keeping the perfect family and raising the perfect children and then teaching them about God. That’s all they are, really.”

“And,” Tooru says, trying to understand, “because you can’t…”

“Yeah,” Hajime says. He shrugs, a bit awkward, and rubs at the back of his neck. “If you can’t have babies, then you can’t have a proper family, and you can’t bring more people to Heaven. It’s not evil if you decide not to marry your soulmate if they won’t bring you closer to God, but it is evil if you turn away from Him completely, just for one person. That’s selfish, Oikawa. That’s a sin.”

“But you think that God decides who your soulmate is. Isn’t it weird that he’d make your soulmate someone you’re not supposed to love?”

“The world’s full of temptation, Oikawa. It’s just another way for Him to test you, to see who you love more. If it’s Him, or if it’s some stupid, flawed, sinful human. And you’ve got to choose Him. Over everything, always.”

Tooru is ten when he stops writing to his soulmate. Instead, he draws; of long, twisting vines that wrap around his fingers; of sea-life and shells and foaming waves that lap along the arch of his foot; of flowers that bud and bloom across his stomach.

Before he goes to school, he showers the ink off, and watches the colour drip and swirl away into the drain. He doesn’t show anyone the pictures, and he lets everyone else think that his soulmate has asked to keep her a secret.

The girl is pretty, and she’s nice, and Tooru should like her. He decides that he will have to, because she was the one who asked him out, and he likes it when people chase after what they want.

Hanamaki complains that Tooru always gets the hot ones, and Tooru laughs and shrugs modestly and pretends to preen. Hajime scowls, and walks away to work on his serves. Tooru watches him, and then says goodbye to the team as he walks off to get changed; he’s leaving ten minutes early because he’s going on a date, and he is going to make himself fall for her.

Tooru sits on the swing set with Hajime in an early January morning. His breath frosts in front of him, and he watches as the clouds part over the hazy sky of ice.

“Like a dragon, Iwa-chan,” he says, puffing a silver cloud into Hajime’s face. “Phwarh! I’m breathing fire!”

“Raaagh!” Hajime roars, waving his arms like wings and sprinting around the play park. “I’m a dragon!”

“I’m a dragon!” Tooru cackles, utterly delighted. He bounds off the swings and chases after Hajime, beating his arms through the air so hard he could take flight. “I’m gonna fly! I’m flying faster than you, Iwa-chan, look!”

Tooru does like the girl, really—she’s funny, and makes him laugh so hard that his stomach aches. She’s on the tennis team, and they chat about balancing schoolwork and sports as they wander around the sun-dappled market. She smiles up at him, and Tooru smiles down at her, and he actually does like her, but he tries so hard to want her.

Tooru likes talking to her much more than he likes kissing her. She doesn’t think the same way. Tooru’s heart contracts and squeezes and it’s physically painful, because this is the best chance he will ever have at happiness, because this is the best life he’s ever going to get, and he’s never going to be happy like this.

When he kisses her, she gasps against his lips—and all he can feel is the movement of muscle and how his hands are cold and how he should have brought gloves and how he needs to finish his homework before he goes to sleep tonight, and he wonders when he’ll be able to cry.

“I’ve caught you!”

Tooru leaps forwards and wraps his arms around Hajime’s stomach. They tumble to the floor, giggling and shoving and tussling, and Tooru flattens himself against Hajime so neither of them can move at all.

“I’m a dragon,” Tooru says, as Hajime wriggles and laughs beneath him, “but I’m a hugging dragon, Iwa-chan, RAAARGH, and I’m never going to let you go!”

Tooru is thirteen and he wishes he could give up.

The pen hovers over his skin, dancing just above the point where he’d make contact, and then he plunges it down, swiping over skin, words bubbling out from the nib like tears.

Please write back, he pleads, and his sobs are choking in the back of his mouth. Why can’t he cry? He gasps for air. He needs to cry. Please, please, let him cry. Please. Please. I just want to know if you’re there.

I don’t want to be on my own. I need to know if you actually exist.

Are you alive? Please don’t be dead. I don’t want to be alone. I want a soulmate.

Are you real? Are you real? Can you see this? Can you read this? Just give me something. I promise, if you just give me something, I won’t bother you again. Just one sign, that’s all I need, but if you could just show me, then I’ll never talk to you again. I know you don’t want to talk to me, I think, if that’s right, is that right? Why don’t you want to talk to me? What have I done wrong? Please just tell me, and I’ll stop it, and I’ll never do it again, I promise, but I just need for you to give me one sign, that’s it, that’s everything I’ll ever need.

Please?

I’m begging you.

Please, I love you, I love you, I love you.

Please.

Tooru waits.

There’s nothing. Nothing. No response at all. His skin is covered in the rantings of a child who just can’t give up. He hates it, and he hates himself.

Tooru washes the ink off. He rehearses his smile in the mirror. He still can’t cry.

Tooru is fourteen.

His fingers slowly, slowly, press down on the computer keys. His hands shake. His eyes are dry.

Child killed in plane crash. Soulmate unidentified.

Family of three murdered. Soulmate of son unidentified.

Body found: boy, 11, buried. Soulmate unidentified.

Which of these—which one is his soulmate? How far back does he have to look? Tooru’s soulmate has never written to him. Maybe infants, then, or babies. Someone who never got the chance to pick up a pen.

Tooru tries to find the connection, the spark of fate, in the mass of pages and pages of death; but it’s just names, situations, times, places. More and more and more children dead.

Tooru exits out of the webpages. He gives up. His soulmate will never write to him. His soulmate is dead.

Tooru is Broken.

Chapter Text

I should tell you something, Tooru writes.

They're the first words he’s inked on his skin in nearly a full year. He’s eleven, and he’s terrified, but he thinks his soulmate should know.

I’m sorry if this is scary, but I’m a boy. Tooru hesitates. Are you a boy? Because I don’t think you’re a girl.

I used to, but I don’t think you are, anymore. I’m really sorry.

Is this a shock? I don’t think it has to be a bad thing. Maybe you’re really cool, and you don’t care about boys liking boys. If you wanna know, my parents don’t care, not really, but I know people who do. I hope you don’t! Or maybe that your parents don’t.

I’m just assuming you’re my age. Are you my age? 11, 11, 11, in case you forgot. How old are you? And are you a boy?

Anyway, I’ll leave you alone. Write back soon!

Hajime doesn’t come into school the next day. Tooru kicks his feet under his desk, and drums his fingers on his textbook, and pokes the boy who sits in front of him until he gets told off by the teacher. Tooru realises that he doesn’t really know how to exist without Hajime being around. He’s not sure how that should make him feel.

Tooru knocks on Hajime’s house for two whole minutes before the door opens.

“Tooru? Are you—”

“Is Iwa-chan home?” Tooru peers over Hajime’s mother’s shoulder, leaning up onto his tip-toes.

“I—Tooru, Hajime’s not feeling too—“

“Iwa-chan!” Tooru calls, trying to duck under her arm. She holds him back at arm’s length, lips pursing. “Are you in? Are you sick? I brought you food!”

Tooru holds up the bag of strawberry-flavoured sweets and shakes it under her arm.

“I brought him food,” he says, sincerely, to Hajime’s mother. “I don’t care if I get sick, I just want to see Iwa-chan!”

She hesitates, so he sends her a brilliant smile, and she melts.

Hajime’s curled on his side, lying in his bed with the duvet bundled up to his chin. Tooru creaks the door open, and Hajime shuffles the blankets even higher up so Tooru can only see the back of his head. Hajime’s hair is ruffled and spiky and the texture is as familiar as his own, and Tooru blinks many times before he starts moving again.

“Iwa-chan?” he says, kindly, and shuffles into the room. He toes the plush alien out of his way, and recognises it as the toy he’d bought for Hajime for his sixth birthday. “Hullo, Iwa-chan, are you feeling very sick? Do not worry, for the brave Oikawa-sama is here to save you from your misery!”

Hajime grunts. Tooru plops himself down on the bed next to him and, after checking the door’s closed, slides down so they’re lying side-to-side. Comfortingly, he rubs his thumb over the shell of Hajime’s ear—and Hajime jerks back, shoving himself suddenly far away from Tooru, sitting up on the other side of the bed. Hajime’s chest is caved inwards. He presses his head into his hands.

Tooru shrinks back. His hands itch to tap Hajime’s shoulder, to touch, but he keeps himself still. “Iwa-chan?”

Hajime doesn’t say anything. Tooru is caught in-between motion.

“Do you want to share the sweets?” he says, after a pause, and pushes the bag a little closer to Hajime. “Your favourite. They’re the ones you got me, when I had the flu. Remember? You said they were the nicest sweets you’ve ever had.”

A tentative hand reaches out. Tooru places the bag into Hajime’s palm. Hajime’s lips quirk up.

“You know your soulmate, right, Oikawa?” Hajime asks, mouth full of strawberry-flavoured sweets.

“Hmm? Oh, yeah, course I do.” Tooru crunches down on the hard outer shell and pats his lips together to savour the sugary aftertaste. “We talk all the time.”

“And… what’s she like?” Hajime asks, looking down at his hands. They’re dusted with sugar, and some of it has fallen down onto his blue-and-red bedsheets. “Is she… I mean, is she?”

Tooru gives him a quizzical look, and snickers. “Is she? Uh, yeah, she is! She’s super cool. We talk about volleyball, like, every day.”

“You do?”

“For sure,” Tooru says. “She plays the same position as you. It’s awesome.” He scrapes his fingers against the bottom of the empty bag, and frowns. “Awh. All out. Did you eat the last one? Boo.”

Hajime frowns, and then shakes his head. “Good. Okay, okay. That’s okay.”

“What? What’s good about us being out of food? This sucks—ooh, do you think your parents have anything left in the treat jar?”

“Maybe. Wanna try and steal something?”

Tooru whoops with joy, and Hajime cracks a faint smile, and they both pretend to have forgotten that stealing is a heinous sin.

Tooru’s six, and he’s got his arm linked tightly through Hajime’s, exactly where it belongs. This is the first time Tooru’s actually been to Hajime’s church, and he thinks he understands why Hajime likes it so much. Everything’s so warm, and Hajime’s smile is so wide, and they’re sharing a pretty paper booklet that tells them the lyrics to the songs, and it’s the same booklet that everyone has, and it means that the whole church can sing, together.

Tooru starts swaying, side-to-side, and Hajime rolls his eyes and pinches his arm to hold him still. Tooru grins at him, scrunching up his nose, and Hajime stifles a snort. Hajime’s mother sends them a warning look, and they both flick their heads to the front.

When the song ends, and the guy in the robe at the front starts speaking, Hajime digs his elbow into Tooru’s stomach, and Tooru chokes out a laugh.

“Presents!” Tooru hollers, and leaps forward to pounce on the nearest one. “I love presents!”

“Tooru-chan,” his mother warns, standing in the corner of the room with a glass of wine. She’d told him to be civil around at the Iwaizumis’ house, but Hajime is as excitable as he is, and Tooru just can’t contain himself.

“It’s a holiday!” Tooru says, and wrestles with Hajime to open the largest present. It’s a Hajime-holiday, the type of holiday that only Hajime’s family celebrates. Hajime’s parents had taken him out of school for the day, and Tooru had nearly died of jealousy. “Getoff, Iwa-chan, it’s mine!”

“When do you want to meet your soulmate?” a girl in Tooru’s class asks him, when he’s eight and is trying to complete his history homework.

“When I’m old and grey,” he says, and she giggles. He looks up at her, grinning in a lopsided way that always makes girls blush. “How about you?”

“Oh, I’m not sure,” she says, fiddling with her hair. “Maybe when I’m eighteen. I’ll get to experience life and everything first, and then I’ll be able to settle down with the perfect guy.”

Hajime unsticks his cheek from his desk and perks up. “When you’re eighteen?”

The girl blinks at him. “Uh, yeah. But, Tooru-kun, I was saying—”

“That’s what I believe!” Hajime says, eyes bright. “You meet your soulmate when you’re eighteen! You get to experience life to the fullest before then, like, dating people and stuff, but then you get to devote yourself to the person God intended for you! That’s exactly what we believe—and, oh, wait.” His expression falls, and he gives the girl’s now-empty chair a sour look.

Tooru snorts, and Hajime punches him.

Hajime’s fifteen, and he hasn’t dated anyone yet. Tooru doesn’t understand why, because if he was a girl he’d date Hajime in a second, because surely Hajime would be the best boyfriend in the world, and now he doesn’t want to think about that anymore so he pokes Hajime on the cheek to distract himself.

“Why haven’t you had a girlfriend, Iwa-chan?” he asks, ducking out the way as Hajime attempts to hit him. “And why don’t you want one? You never—hey, watch the hair—you never talk about girls. You’ve only got, like, three more years to date people. So why?”

Hajime scowls, and manages to land a blow on Tooru’s shoulder that makes him squeal. “I talk about girls,” he says, blinking at the floor. “Don’t I?“

Tooru’s sixteen, and he’s just lead Seijoh to the finals of the Miyagi Prefectural Qualifiers. He’s a starting setter in his second year, and he’s guaranteed the captain role next year, and they’re going to beat Shiratorizawa in the finals tomorrow.

“We won!” he calls, as they walk home together in a gaggle of victory-drunk teenage boys. “One more game! One more game!”

“We’re so close, Oikawa-san!” Yahaba says. “We’re going to win!”

“If we work hard,” Tooru begins, and the rest of the team groans. He laughs, and waves his arm in defeat.

“We can do it,” Hajime says, clapping his hand on Tooru’s shoulder and grinning. “You’ve already worked hard, idiot. You’ll see.”

Tooru is enveloped with such an overwhelming affection, pride, and gratefulness to the universe for sending him Hajime and his life and Hajime, and he bounds forward to tug him into a bone-crushing hug.

The team whoops and hollers, because their best setter and their future ace are such close friends, but Tooru can only think of Hajime’s hands; they still, and then place themselves on Tooru’s back and pull inwards, and Tooru digs his chin into Hajime’s shoulder, and, just for a second, Hajime doesn’t seem to care that boys aren’t supposed to hug other boys.

When Tooru pulls back, Hajime’s still smiling. Tooru smiles back, and Hajime doesn’t look away. He links their arms, and Tooru leans into him, and neither of them lets go.

Tooru’s seventeen, and his girlfriend has just broken up with him. He collapses on Hajime’s bed, and they share a bag of the strawberry-flavoured sweets that they haven’t eaten since they were kids.

“I can’t believe you, Oikawa,” Hajime says, amusedly. “Grow up.”

“I’m so depressed.” Tooru pretends to sob. It makes Hajime chuckle, and Tooru instantly feels better. “What happened to living life to the fullest before you turn eighteen, Iwa-chan? Look at where that’s got me. I’m gonna die from heartbreak.”

“Sure,” Hajime says, rolling his eyes. “that’s exactly right. Since when did you start believing in that shit?”

“I must’ve picked it up from you, obviously.”

Hajime barks out a harsh laugh. Even Tooru can’t hold back a snicker.

“They don’t get it,” Hajime’s saying, aged fourteen and pacing around the school gym. “They don’t fucking get it! I talk, and I talk, and they just—they quote shit at me, all the time, just quotes!”

“I know,” Tooru says, tossing the ball up and up and up and up to himself. “I know.”

“But they won’t listen to me! Neither of them, they refuse to listen, they just talk at me, not to me, you know?”

“I know, Iwa-chan.”

“And it doesn’t make sense! All the stuff they’re saying, it doesn’t—it—it doesn’t make sense, I—”

Tooru stops. He lets the ball drop to the floor. Slowly, he walks over to where Hajime’s standing, who’s looking around like a lost child, eyes frantically sweeping around the gym. Tooru reaches forward, reaches down, and grips Hajime’s shoulders to pull him close.

Tooru holds him, as Hajime’s shoulders begin to shake, as he starts to cry.

“Oikawa-san,” says the prettiest girl in their year, when Tooru’s going to volleyball practice in the middle of their second year at Seijoh. He breaks away from Hajime, and walks over to her. She’s the prettiest girl in their year, he reminds himself. That might make it easier.

“Heya,” he says, charmingly.

“Oikawa-san,” she says, smiling prettily and offering him an embellished pink card. “I admire you very much. Please would you go out with me?”

Tooru blinks, and graciously accepts. He watches her stroll over to her friends, who pile on her in a congratulatory hug, and he steps back in line with Hajime, who’s scowling at the ceiling.

Tooru raises his eyebrows, and Hajime tuts, and walks on without him.

“Why?” Hajime says. He’s thirteen, and Hajime’s mother has just told him that his future wife will have to give up her job to take care of their family. “Why not me? Why do any of us have to?” His mother blinks and fails to respond. “What’s so wrong with that?”

“Hajime,” his mother says, a crease forming on the bridge of her nose, “she’ll be your soulmate, sweetheart. It’s fated that she’ll want to do what you desire. And—it’s your future family. It’s your children. You’re not going to marry a woman who doesn’t prioritise her family.”

“Why not?” Hajime says, standing up, and Tooru watches in disbelief. “Why can’t I? Says who?”

Hajime’s mother laughs breathily, eyes flicking to Tooru like she’s asking for support. Tooru casts his gaze to Hajime, and stands up next to him.

Hajime’s seven, and he’s handing out pamphlets in town centre. Tooru hangs out by his stall, kicking his feet and whistling tunelessly.

“Save your soul and your soulmate’s!” Hajime says, cheerfully, thrusting a wad of paper to a passer-by. “Read this, and you won’t go the Hell! Save yourself from eternal damnation and stick with your soulmate!”

“Poor kid,” Tooru hears someone whisper behind them. “Should be illegal, that stuff. Brainwashing.”

Tooru turns, and shoves a pamphlet towards the nasty voice. “Save your soul,” he hisses, just quiet enough so Hajime can’t hear, “and don’t be so mean!”

Hajime’s sobbing in the corner of their middle school bathroom, tears streaming from his face as he frantically rubs at his ink-stained sleeve.

“It’s out, Iwa-chan,” Tooru’s saying, trying to hold Hajime’s hands back. “It didn’t even touch your skin, I promise, it’s fine—”

“I didn’t mean to,” Hajime sobs, his wrist scraped red-raw and bleeding. The ink was there for a second, even less, but Hajime hasn’t stopped washing at it since, and Tooru’s starting to get scared. “I didn’t mean to. It slipped, right, Oikawa? The pen slipped. It wasn’t my, but you saw, right? I didn’t mean to, right?”

“I know you didn’t,” Tooru says, lowering his voice into a comforting hum that just makes Hajime cry louder. “Hey, hey, I know you didn’t. You’re okay. Nothing’s going to happen, I won’t let it, okay?”

“I’m going to Hell,” Hajime says, gasping for breath. “I’m—I’m going to go to Hell, I’m not eighteen yet, and I—does that count, as scrībere? Do you think God will count it? Am I going to Hell? I—I don’t want to go to—don’t let me go to—”

“Scrībere,” the Priest is saying, as Hajime and Tooru sit at the back of the church, “is the most sacred act a human can ever complete.”

Tooru’s bored, but Hajime’s seven and beaming and listening eagerly. Tooru wonders when they’re going to sing another song again, because they always pass the time. Secretly, Tooru kind of regrets how he’d begged his parents to let him join Hajime for Sunday worship.

“It binds us to our soulmate,” the Priest continues, walking over to the people in the front pews and smiling warmly. “It shows that we are, truly, one soul in two bodies. The soulmate bond is the Father’s way of caring for us; He provides us with companions, and in return we honour Him with our bodies and our ink. He tells us it is not good that the man should be alone, so He made man a soulmate. Our way to honour Him, then, is to honour our soulmate. It is for this reason that we wait, everyone. We wait, and only when we are mature and wise can we truly grasp the entirety of what a soulmate means.”

“Cool,” Hajime whispers to Tooru, his eyes wide. “So cool.”

“Well,” the Priest adds, winking to a seventeen-year-old in the first pew. “We’d wait until we’re wise enough, hmm?”

The congregation murmurs a chuckle. Tooru and Hajime join in, even though Tooru’s sure that neither of them get the joke.

Hajime’s mother gives Tooru a white knee brace for his sixteenth birthday, and he doesn’t know whether to be upset or shocked or grateful.

“To stop Hajime worrying,” she says conspiratorially, when he sends her a questioning look. “The number of times he’s come home ranting about your knee… it is the right side, isn’t it? I checked with your dad, and he said it was, but I’ve left the receipt in if you need to change it.”

She pats him on the shoulder, and Tooru feels his face beginning to burn. He sniffs furiously.

“Just wear it so he’ll stop complaining, hmm?” she says, ruffling his hair in the way she hasn’t done since Tooru was a kid. “I’m sure neither of us wants Hajime to be stressed. Take care of yourself, Tooru, and he’ll be so much happier, alright?”

“My cousin’s soulmate is a girl,” Hajime says, when they’re fourteen and walking home after practice. Tooru stiffens, but doesn’t let it show.

“Oh,” he says, instead. “How do you know?”

“She told my uncle last week,” Hajime says, staring up at the clouds. “My dad told me we’re not allowed to talk about her anymore.”

“But,” Tooru says, slowly, “but it’s her soulmate? Her… her God-given soulmate. Isn’t she supposed to…?”

“It’s still a sin,” Hajime whispers, to the sky. “It’s still going to send her to Hell. They can’t have children together, and that’s the whole fucking point of it all. She wouldn’t give up her soulmate when they wanted her to, so we’re not allowed to talk to her anymore. They had a nice Broken boy to set her up with, but she wouldn’t do it, and now I don’t have a cousin. Isn’t that such utter bullshit?”

“Love can be unconditional,” a teacher in their elementary school says. “It flows, and it makes things better. But a lot of people think that your soulmate’s love is going to be as perfect as that, just because they’re your soulmate. Unfortunately, life doesn’t always work that way.” He chuckles to himself, and then looks up to the sea of enraptured faces and startles. “Or something like that,” he says, carefully. “I got lost in my own little world. Oops.”

Hajime, who had been sitting pin-straight, relaxes. When Tooru pinches him on his cheek to ask why, he leans over and explains:

“The only unconditional love you’ll get is from God.” Hajime smiles, relieved. “You don’t get that from anyone else. Apart from God, everything has to be earned. I was worried he’d disagree.”

Tooru isn’t a very good boyfriend. To make things worse, he doesn’t feel all that bad about it. He’s only made to pause when he thinks about whether, in the insane hypotheticals that exist only in his imagination, Hajime would actually like going out with him; if Tooru skipped their dates to watch volleyball reruns, or if he chose all the movies they’d watch at the cinema, or if he avoided being alone together so he wouldn’t have to pretend to enjoy when they touch.

Then Tooru remembers that Hajime watches the volleyball reruns with him, and that they’ve been alternating movie night choices since they were seven, and that Tooru sometimes can’t stand to be in the same room as Hajime because all he wants to do is touch and touch and touch.

“Do you think she likes me?” Hanamaki asks, checking himself out in the changing room mirror. “If I asked her out, would she say yes?”

“Probably not,” Matsukawa replies, and Hanamaki flips him off without looking away from the mirror. Hajime’s still getting changed in privacy of the toilets, and Tooru’s watching the exchange with a sly smirk.

Hanamaki groans in a lust-addled frenzy, and collapses onto the bench. “She’s just—wow. You know? I just wanna—” He reaches his hands out into the air and mimes something that Tooru can tell would just come across as a desperate teenage boy’s fumbling.

“I can ask her out for you, Macchan,” he says, in his eternal generosity. “I’m sure she’d say yes if I asked her.”

“Fuck you,” Hanamaki says, flipping him off as well, and Tooru snickers.

All of a sudden, Hajime’s grown broad. Tooru struggles to hide how much he likes it.

Hajime works out five times a week and gives himself the weekend as rest days. He wakes up early, even earlier than morning practice, and jogs to the gym before Tooru’s crawled out of bed himself. It means that he’s flushed and sweating every morning; his underclothes are white, which Tooru greatly appreciates, because they turn sheer and translucent with perspiration and allow him a clear view of the contours of Hajime’s muscles.

Tooru admires what he can see of Hajime’s arms through sticky fabric, admires the tan skin of the back of his neck, the gentle freckles that appear across Hajime’s nose whenever it’s summertime, the way his cheeks dimple whenever he laughs. Tooru chases that laugh: he has been chasing it, now, for all that he can remember of his life.

Tooru’s seventeen in a few months. This is his fourth girlfriend. It was going to happen at some point.

Tooru sleeps with a girl for the first time. Even he can tell that it’s not good: his movements are robotic, placing his hands and mouth exactly where they should go, trying not to focus on anything that will make him want to run away. Once it’s over, he lies down on the bed and is unable to look her in the eye.

She breaks up with him a few weeks later, and he doesn’t even feel anything.

It hurts. It hurts, it hurts, it hurts.

Tooru gasps, clutching his right knee as pain splinters up and through the bone. He tries to move it, tries to put some weight on it and stand up and stop being such a child, but it twists underneath him and he collapses, slamming his head against the floor.

“Oikawa!”

Tooru feels hands on his face, shoulders, chest, and he’s being pulled up into a sitting position, his arms draped around someone unknown. Tooru cracks open his eyes, blinking in the bright light—and, ah, now it’s not just his knee that’s in agony. He’s leaning on someone, and they try to shift him upwards but Tooru’s knee brushes the floor and he cries out, pain pulsating through the joint, red-hot.

“Oikawa-san?”

It’s Kindaichi, sweet, sweet Kindaichi, who had been the one that Tooru had collided with just before he fell. Tooru smiles up at him, his usual winning smile, a pained attempt at reassurance, and Kindaichi pales even more.

“Oikawa? Oikawa!” Tooru’s leaning against someone firm. Tooru would recognise his voice anywhere.

“Relax, Hajime,” he says, and Hajime’s voice falters. Vaguely, Tooru wonders if he might be concussed. “I’m fine. Stop worrying so much, jeez.”

The doctor insists on an overnight stay in the hospital to ensure he’s feeling alright, and then prescribes two weeks of rest from intense physical activities. She provides Tooru with a repertoire of stretches he’s got to complete every morning and night.

Hajime stays. He brings Tooru a bag of strawberry-flavoured sweets, and they crunch on them together before they’re caught and scolded by the nurses.

When he hears about the time he’s got to take off from volleyball, Tooru rolls his eyes, utterly unimpressed. He tries to explain that it was a one-off injury, and that it’s not going to happen again (if only because he doesn’t intend on running head-first into his underclassmen anytime soon), but the doctor just gives him a firm look and tells his parents to come back if he finds anything too painful.

“I’m not giving up my Captain-ly duties, just because I’ve got a bad knee,” Tooru says, crossing his arms at his mother, who sighs. “You’ll have to bar me from school if you want to stop me from turning up at practice.”

“I know I will, Tooru-chan,” she says, and strokes a lock of hair from his forehead. Instinctively, he leans into her touch, and she smiles. “Just look after yourself.”

“I am—”

“If not for you,” she continues, “then for Hajime-chan.”

Tooru freezes. “What?”

“He was pacing all around the waiting room before they let him see you,” Tooru’s mother says. “It’s supposed to only be family who’s allowed in. We had to convince them to make the exception.”

“But I’m fine,” Tooru says, “I’m fine. I promise, I’m fine.”

Her eyes flicker. “Tooru-chan,” she says, and takes a slow breath. “Please don’t lie to me.”

Tooru doesn’t understand. He’s been lying his whole life.

“You’re doing the two weeks of rest,” Hajime’s saying, as they walk back from late-night practice.

They’re nearly home: within eyesight, really. Tooru’s slowed them down, hobbling on his crutches, but Hajime had refused to leave him behind. Instead, he’s got Tooru’s school bag slung over one arm, and as he walks by Tooru’s side they swing in time with his steps.

“You can’t make me,” Tooru says, and Hajime scoffs.

“I’ll punch you.”

“I’m already injured!” Tooru jabs at Hajime’s shin with a crutch, and Hajime stumbles. “You’ll give me another concussion. I’ll be calling you Hajime all the time, and you’ll hate me.”

The tan skin between Hajime’s brows crinkles. “I don’t hate that,” he says, grumpily. “You think I do, but it doesn’t mean I actually hate it.”

“Don’t you?” Tooru looks over at him. “You always frowned when I said it, when we were kids.”

“I frown at Iwa-chan more, idiot.”

“But that’s your name, now.” Tooru grins, tugging at Hajime’s school blazer so he reluctantly trails to a stop. “You’re Iwa-chan, forever.”

“Kill me,” Hajime says, and Tooru chuckles. “Get moving, Oikawa, we’re basically home.”

Hajime pretends to try to break from Tooru’s grip. Lethargically, he pulls at his sleeve, and Tooru laughs and doesn’t let go.

“Hold on,” Tooru says, and Hajime groans and falls back into place in front of Tooru.

“I want to sleep,” Hajime says.

“I want you to be more considerate,” Tooru says, “because I’m still injured. Slow down a second.”

Tooru means it as a joke, simply because he doesn’t want their day to be over yet, but Hajime jerks to a halt instantly. He glances down at Tooru’s knee, and shuffles a little closer—as if Tooru was going to keel over again, as if Hajime was planning on catching him.

It’s so easy for Tooru to forget how brilliant Hajime is. He never wants to become accustomed to it; he wants to recognise and savour every moment of Hajime’s kindnesses, and hold them close to his heart so he’ll never forget.

“Slow down,” Tooru repeats, and he tightens his hold on Hajime’s sleeve as he lets his crutches fall to the ground. He chuckles, the faint sound echoing through the empty road.

A little slower, a little quieter, as he takes the smallest step closer, as Hajime accepts his weight without question, as Tooru’s smile slowly fades.

But Hajime doesn’t try to move. It’s a warm evening, and a whisper of a breeze ruffles his hair as it passes by. Hajime blinks.

Tooru’s still holding on to the sleeve of Hajime’s blazer. Hajime looks down at it, at Tooru’s pale hand curled in the fabric of his uniform, and then looks back at Tooru.

“Iwa-chan,” Tooru says, and Hajime hums. Tooru hesitates. “You really don’t mind it?”

“It’s just my name,” Hajime says, but Tooru can sense something flickering behind his eyes that transcends the simplicity of it being just a name.

He waits, a heartbeat; the moment before the ball touches the floor, the fraction of a second that lasts a decade.

“Hajime,” he offers, finally, and Hajime inhales.

Tooru thinks he can hear the moonlight. It’s soft, a baby’s lullaby. Hajime looks beautiful under the wash of its song. Tooru remembers the myth of the full moon causing madness, and wonders if that’s what’s happening now.

“Okay. Your turn,” he says, and his hand shifts past Hajime’s sleeve to cup his wrist. Hajime’s eyes don’t leave Tooru’s. Green. Green, like wildflower fields and bitter apples and jade. How could anyone think they’re brown? Tooru’s eyes are brown, like so many other people’s, but Hajime has always been wonderfully different. Since they were children, Hajime’s never been afraid to brace the adversity of others’ judgement. Tooru hides in the mass of a crowd, like a coward, but Hajime steps aside, steps away, and Tooru loves him for that.

Tooru’s fingers curl around Hajime’s wrist. His thumb ghosts the rough skin of Hajime’s palm.

Hajime’s lips part. Tooru watches.

“My turn?” Hajime rasps, and Tooru tries to hide his shudder. “You…”

Tooru wants to rush forward, to assure him that he doesn’t have to, that they should get moving, because they’re right outside their houses now, and they should get to sleep, and Hajime should forget everything Tooru’s said because he’s not thinking straight, but—

“Oikawa,” Hajime says, and Tooru smiles faintly. “Dumbass.”

“Dumbass?” Tooru echoes. He and Hajime breathe out a laugh, waiting.

The word seems to get lodged in Hajime’s throat. His Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows. With his free hand, leaning all his weight on his grip on Hajime’s wrist, Tooru slowly reaches up to brush the knuckles of his fingers against the curve of Hajime’s throat. The skin, Hajime’s, it’s Hajime’s, is warm under Tooru’s touch. It burns. Tooru can hardly think.

“Tooru,” Hajime breathes, and catches Tooru’s hand in his. They stand there, chests rising, connected at two undeniable points. Hajime’s hand is callused, indelicate, roughened from years of scoring Tooru’s team the winning point. His fingers entwine with Tooru’s. Tooru doesn’t let go.

“Hajime,” says Tooru.

“Tooru,” says Hajime.

He’s so close. Tooru sees green, familiar and comforting and new and thrilling, all at once. Hajime’s nose is freckled. It must be summertime soon. He’s so close. He’s so close. Tooru breathes in as Hajime exhales. He’s so close.

“Hajime—what are you—get away from him!”

Hajime gasps, and the green splinters, and he pushes himself away from Tooru as he turns, turns, to face the horrified eyes of his mother. She’s standing just metres away from them, because they’re standing just metres from their homes, and the weight of the air around him comes crashing down on Tooru’s shoulders as he stares and stares and stares.

“Hajime?” Tooru whispers.

Hajime doesn’t turn back.

Chapter Text

Tooru knows that not everyone ends up with their soulmate. Even Hajime’s parents accept this, in their own way.

Less Fortunate people, for example, still find other Less Fortunate people to fall in love with. They can get married and have children and grow old together. It’s good for them, because even if they can’t have a perfect soul match, they can still try to be happy enough. Tooru is very open-minded about these kind of things.

He’s nine years old when he finds out that some people reject their soulmate, willingly. And even then, when he’s still writing to his soulmate and waiting for her to respond, Tooru feels a sense of definite injustice on behalf of the discarded soulmates. Because how worthless would you have to be, if you’re not even wanted by the one person destined to love you?

Tooru’s seventeen, nearly eighteen, and he’s listening to his best friend argue with his parents. He can hear them through the partition wall of their houses—even when he tries not to listen, they’re still there. It’s not an argument, in the civilised term: they’re both shouting, yelling, with castaway words falling through the wall to burn at Tooru’s ears.

He hears his name a lot, and Hajime’s, mostly strung together. After about twenty minutes, Hajime’s mother starts crying, and his father starts leading the shouting instead. His voice is deep, like Hajime’s, but is nowhere near as warm.

Tooru’s mother brings him a cup of cocoa, and his father ushers him away from the wall. They both exchange a glance when they think he’s not looking.

When he’s sixteen, Tooru tells his parents that he’s got a girlfriend. He bends his mouth into a delightful smile, and ignores his mother’s sharp stare.

“Oh,” she says, after a conspicuous pause. Her lips press together. Tooru smiles at her even harder, and she finally concedes. “That’s lovely, Tooru-chan.”

“Thank you,” Tooru says. He nods, and walks out of the room.

“Will we get to meet her?” his father calls, as Tooru’s leaving.

Tooru laughs under his breath, and doesn’t respond.

Hajime doesn’t need to climb over the fence anymore.

Over the many years of Tooru and Hajime, as over-enthusiastic children scaling the weak wooden slats every day to see each other, time has bent a gaping hole in the divide between their gardens. Now, Hajime just has to step through and he’s at Tooru’s.

Tooru sits with his legs spread on the grass, his crutches discarded at his side, and Hajime lowers himself down with a foot of distance between them. Tooru doesn’t know what that says, what the subtle yet blindingly conspicuous distance should mean for them. Hajime’s mother hasn’t stopped sobbing, and they can still hear her, just louder than the breeze.

Tooru shivers, and he tries to forget that just an hour ago, he had been able to count the freckles on Hajime’s nose, and had held his hand and had breathed his air and had been so close.

And then he doesn’t just try to forget: he forces himself to, because none of this is possible, because he still doesn’t know what Hajime wants. The worst thing that Tooru can imagine is Hajime hating him, Hajime leaving—if Hajime ever left him alone. Tooru would do anything, anything, to stop that from happening.

Hajime’s desk has writing on it. Tooru, who’s seven and is still learning how to pretend like he’s confident, walks over and gasps.

MAKING YOUR SOULMATE BROKEN, the words say, inked and absorbed into the thirsty oak of Hajime’s desk. LUCKLESS HAJIME.

Hajime stares down at it. Tooru stares at him.

Hajime doesn’t move, until Tooru’s shoving past him, bending down and rubbing furiously at the evil words with his cream blazer sleeve. Hajime doesn’t move, and he stares, and then he walks over to the corner of the classroom and picks up a coarse scrubbing-brush. He kneels. He helps Tooru clean.

“I’m sorry,” Tooru says, when it’s clear that Hajime doesn’t want to start. Tooru doesn’t know what he’s apologising for, but he feels he must, because everything is going wrong and everything can be traced back to him.

Hajime shakes his head, confused. “Why are you sorry? You haven’t done anything wrong.”

“I—” Tooru’s mouth opens and closes, and Hajime’s eyelashes kiss his cheeks as he chases the movement. Tooru is selfish, and he doesn’t want Hajime to stop looking. “I haven’t?” he says, because surely they both know, surely they’re both aware. “Really?”

And at that, Hajime’s gaze falls to Tooru’s hands, and then to the floor. He doesn’t speak.

Tooru meets Hajime’s cousin when he’s eleven, and when she’s fourteen. She’s short and talkative and lively, but has Hajime’s bristly hair and tawny, sun-browned skin. She wears the same underclothes as he does; Hajime always wears white, but hers are a faint grey.

At Iwaizumi family gatherings (the gatherings that Tooru is always invited to), he shows her around Hajime’s room when Hajime is trapped socialising with his aunts. Tooru digs out Hajime’s secret dinosaur toy set that he still hasn’t gotten rid of even though they’re eleven and grown-up and much too old for toys and, affectionately, Tooru and Hajime’s cousin laugh at him together.

There’s nothing wrong with her. She talks normal, she laughs normal, and she punches Hajime on the shoulder when he shouts at them for moving his brachiosaurus.

After Tooru turns fifteen, and after Hajime’s family finds out that her soulmate is a woman and that she won’t give her up, he doesn’t see her again. There was nothing wrong with her. She was normal. Hajime liked her. Tooru wants to scream.

“It’s not your fault, Oikawa,” Hajime says, and Tooru feels the name puncture a gaping hole in his lungs. “It’s my fault. It’s… it’s always… shit. Shit.”

Hajime presses the flesh of his palms into his eyes and shudders. Tooru holds back, unsure whether his comfort is wanted. He could touch Hajime, but Tooru’s hands are tainted with hour-old memories and it would hurt more than anything if Hajime flinched away from him, now. Tooru retreats.

“I’m not doing it,” Hajime says, to the damp grass at his feet. “I’ve told them. I’m not doing it.”

“What? Not doing—what do you mean?”

Hajime laughs mirthlessly. He still won’t look up. “Scrībere. I’ve told them. I won’t give them the fucking satisfaction.”

Tooru’s heart seizes. “You’re—but, Iwa-chan, you—”

“I’m not doing it,” Hajime tells the earth. “I’m never doing it. I don’t care what they do to me. I’m never going to do it.”

It’s Tooru’s tenth birthday. He’s been given a volleyball poster, and a volleyball pump, and two volleyballs that just end up being shoved into the back of his wardrobe.

“I do have a personality outside of volleyball,” he says at the end of the day to Hajime, who’s trying to do a handstand in the garden.

“I know,” Hajime says, wobbling, “and it’s annoying. Open mine.”

Tooru, muttering complaints, tugs at the wrapping paper. Onto his lap, a clunky DVD case falls; on its cover, a gigantic blue alien with black-red blood dripping from its piercing teeth. Tooru flips it over, and sees that the age rating says ‘R18+’. He gapes at Hajime, who’s grinning.

“Next time your parents go out on their own,” he says, rolling over and shuffling closer to Tooru, “we can stay up super late and watch it.”

“Iwa-chan!” Tooru cackles, hugging the DVD to his chest. “That’s so cool! How did you even—how did you even buy this?”

Hajime puffs out his chest. “Secret. Not telling. Mwa-ha-ha-ha!” He pauses, mid-evil laugh, and glances over at his house. “Just don’t tell my parents,” he says, quickly. “They think films about magic are a bad influence.”

They’re fifteen, the last ones in the school gym, and Hajime’s gripping tightly onto Tooru’s exposed forearm.

“No,” he’s saying, fiercely, and his eyes blaze like a burning forest. “We’re going home. No more.”

“I’m fine,” Tooru tries to laugh. “Iwa-chan, you’ve got to stop acting so—”

“I don’t give a shit,” Hajime says, and he tugs at Tooru’s arm so he stumbles, forward, towards Hajime. “I’m not watching you kill yourself over a fucking serve.”

Tooru inhales. “I’m not—”

“Come on,” Hajime says, and he releases Tooru’s arm from his grasp. Tooru feels the indentations of Hajime’s nails, and wonders if he’d be able to see them. “Come on, Oikawa.”

“Okay,” Tooru says. He swallows. “Okay, okay, calm down.”

Tooru’s staring at himself in the mirror. He stares at his sweat-slicked hair, at his reddened eyes, at the face of a stupid kid who can’t even win a game of volleyball. Red-hot loathing surges up in himself, coursing through his throat like he’s going to vomit. A nobody who can’t even make it out of prefectural qualifies. Tooru pushes himself away from the mirror. Disgust.

“Hey.”

Tooru tries for a laugh. “What?” he says. He can’t even look at him. It’s pathetic.

Hajime steps towards him, the door of the bathroom closing, and, slowly, he takes a hold of Tooru’s wrist. Tooru twists his body away.

“Hanamaki said he saw you come in here,” Hajime says, squeezing gently.

“And he didn’t feel like coming here himself?” Tooru scoffs. He’s being cruel. He can’t bring himself to care. “That’s so kind. Sending someone else in his place, so he doesn’t have to deal with me right now?”

“He sent me,” Hajime says. “You know why.”

Tooru swallows. Of course he knows.

Tooru is seventeen, and he and Hajime are okay.

Hajime wakes up early in the morning and has breakfast at Tooru’s. After school, he stays with Tooru until late into the evening, and Tooru’s father cooks them dinner. He remains in Tooru’s room until his eyelids begin to sag, and then he walks through the partition of their gardens, through his house’s back door and directly to his bed.

Tooru knows that Hajime’s mother tries to talk to him. Tooru knows that anytime Hajime responds, the ensuing argument always ends up spilling his name, and then Hajime will shut it down and slam his door and try to sleep. Tooru knows that Hajime’s father hasn’t said a word to him since that first night.

Tooru tries to tell him that he doesn’t have to go back. Hajime always has a place in his room, in his bed, but whenever he tries to say this, Hajime smiles tightly and shakes his head.

“Thanks, Oikawa,” he says, “but I’m fine.”

And Tooru knows that it’s because boys don’t share beds with other boys, and because Hajime is still wearing his underclothes; and because when Tooru hands Hajime his water bottle at the next evening practice, his fingers brush Hajime’s, accidental, light. Hajime jerks his hands away, dropping the bottle and watching it clatter and spill. Water, glistening, seeps over the surface of the polished gym floor.

Tooru’s thirteen, and he wakes gasping from the dream. His bedsheets are damp and sticky, and he knows what that means, and he shoves them away from his body like they’re burning. He sits, his arms wrapped around himself in a wasted attempt to pretend someone’s holding him, and tries to imagine that none of this is happening.

He cries, quietly, so he doesn’t wake his parents. He doesn’t think of his dream, because he doesn’t want to think of who was in his dream. Tooru sits, and rocks, and cries, and he doesn’t think.

Hajime’s eighteenth birthday passes quietly.

At practice, Tooru ensures that no-one mentions scrībere. Kyoutani, unknowing, begins to ask Hajime when he’s going to finally fucking write to his—, but Tooru sends him a sharp glare and he quells, shrinking back to the side of the gym. Hanamaki gives Hajime a card with a 2,000 yen bill and cheerfully explains that he’d forgotten when his birthday was. Matsukawa, with a heightened sense of superiority, hands Hajime a CD from the rock band he likes. Hajime claps them on the shoulder appreciatively, and they try to hide their winces.

Tooru’s mother bakes him a chocolate cake with vanilla icing, and Tooru pipes a pretty ‘H A P P Y B I R T HDAY’ with pink buttercream. He knows that Hajime won’t mind that he ran out of space at the end, and when he sees it, Hajime snorts and rolls his eyes and calls Tooru a dumbass.

It’s the first night that Tooru’s sleeping away from Hajime. They’re in the same room, and Tooru keeps wondering why he can’t just tuck himself into Hajime like he’s used to, prop his head on Hajime’s shoulder like it’s a pillow, tangle their legs together under Hajime’s blue-and-red bedsheets. Then, he remembers, and he curls into a ball on his side and wraps his arms around the blanket instead. Hajime’s breathing is steady and comforting, but Tooru’s used to feeling it brush against his ear.

The air is cold, and it tastes of winter.

“You can stay over, Iwa-chan,” Tooru says, as they pack away the ‘Happy Birthday’ banner. His parents trudged up to bed hours ago, but Hajime and Tooru had procrastinated tidying up by watching movies and laughing and exchanging insults, and now it’s past midnight and they’re exhausted and it’s technically not even Hajime’s birthday anymore.

“I’m fine,” Hajime says, and he turns his back on the wall the Iwaizumis share with the Oikawas. “I want to face my problems, not avoid them.”

That’s brave, Tooru thinks. He’s been avoiding his problems for all of his life.

They both know Hajime’s parents are still awake. When conversation lulls, they can hear the quiet shuffling of two people lying in wait. Like a tiger, stalking its prey from a great distance and readying itself to pounce. Tooru’s eye catches on the dewy skin of Hajime’s neck, and he wants to cover the exposed space with his own hands—to protect him, from the powerful bite or slash of claws.

They could go to sleep. They could end the day here, and reconvene for breakfast tomorrow, when Hajime’s eighteen and Tooru’s seventeen and everything’s the same as it always is.

Or.

And, so similar to the time they’d gone to tour Aoba Johsai back when they were still kids in middle school, Tooru’s gripped with a thrilling spark of rebellion.

Yahaba is one of the new first-years, and Tooru immediately decides that he’s going to be Tooru’s replacement. Yahaba’s nice and tall and, though he’s not as brilliant as Tooru, two long years under Tooru’s tutelage will make him a perfectly decent successor.

Yahaba, along with being the only person in the team to sport a haircare routine as elaborate as Tooru’s, has willingly chosen not to communicate with his soulmate.

“I decided when I went into middle school,” Tooru overhears him tell Watari, when they’re a few weeks into the school year. “It’s my life, so… I decide who I fall in love with. I’m the best judge of myself, not some mystical fate-ish force.”

“Cool,” Watari says. “That’s braver than me, Yahaba-kun.”

“Yeah, well.” Yahaba bounces a volleyball on the floor. “It’s not too rare nowadays. I’m not special, or anything.”

Tooru listens, and then he walks around the corner to see the two boys jump, caught.

“Don’t be getting lazy, now,” he says, and Watari flushes. “Good old captain wants the nets put away. Chop-chop!”

Tooru, seventeen, and Hajime, eighteen, watch the sunlight spill over the pomegranate sky. The park is a ten minutes’ run from their houses, but they had taken it at a walk—Hajime had made the excuse of Tooru’s knee, and Tooru had been too full of affection and contentment to object.

The grass is dewy underneath their backs, and Hajime throws a fistful into the air and stares as it twists and pirouettes to the earth. Stars retreat into the rich liquid of the sky, but Hajime points at some of the more conspicuous; he teaches Tooru their names, as if it wasn’t Tooru who had taught him first when they were children. As Hajime stares above, Tooru stares below, and he watches the movement of that achingly-familiar profile as Hajime talks him through the position of the North Star.

“Can I tell you one thing?” Tooru says, and Hajime’s shadow shifts as he falls silent. “I don’t think you’ll like it, and you might get mad at me, but I want to say it.”

Hajime huffs out a faint laugh, but when he speaks he doesn’t sound jovial: careful, maybe, or nervous. “That’s pretty ominous, Oikawa.”

Tooru smiles in the faint half-light of sunrise. “I know. But still, I should… yeah.”

The rustle of clothing. “Okay, then. Say it. I’ll try not to be mad.”

Tooru props himself up on his elbows. Slowly, he says: “I think you should talk to your soulmate.”

Hajime’s eyes widen, almost imperceptibly.

“It doesn’t have to be anything big,” Tooru says, “or even anything repeated, but I think you should let her know that you exist. ‘Cause she thinks she’s Broken—I mean, she thinks she’s Less Fortunate, Iwa-chan. She thinks her soulmate’s dead.”

Hajime doesn’t say anything for a very long time.

“Just one thing,” Tooru says, and with a jolt of horror he feels his eyes beginning to burn. “You just need to tell her—just so she knows you’re there. So she knows she’s not alone. That’s all.”

He clears his throat and sits up, massaging his knee. Hajime sits up with him—he’s staring at Tooru, with an expression Tooru doesn’t understand.

“Why?” Shadows fall over Hajime’s eyes. “Why do you say that, Oikawa?”

And Tooru thinks—he’s hidden so much of himself from Hajime for so long. He wants Hajime to know him, in full, and he’s been pretending and lying for nearly two decades. Tooru’s Broken, and he’ll have to someday accept that he will never be fixed.

And so Tooru thinks—fuck it.

“You’ve got to take better care of yourself, Hajime-kun,” Tooru says. He pulls the off the plaster’s paper backing and, careful not to touch the sticky ends, smooths it over the angry graze over Hajime’s cheek.

Hajime, eyes smarting, juts out his jaw and mutters something about accidents.

Tooru giggles. His new friend is cool and exciting and dangerous. Tooru doesn’t understand why the other kids in their neighbourhood think he’s stuck-up or weird. Hajime knows so much; like how to climb a tree without falling off, or how to climb over the fence that separates their garden without falling down. Most of the time, at least.

Tooru pats the dinosaur plaster with his index finger, and springs to his feet. “My turn,” he says, sticking out his hand to help Hajime up. “I’m not going to hurt myself. I’m the best jumper in the world, Hajime-kun, I’m going to do amazingly!”

“No you’re not,” Hajime’s saying, and he’s sitting up and gripping onto the bones of Tooru’s wrist and staring. “No, you’re not.”

Tooru smiles weakly. “I’m not lying. Not now.”

“But you’ve got a soulmate.” Hajime’s shoulders heave. His head shakes, side-to-side. “You’ve got a soulmate. You’ve got a soulmate.”

“I was—”

“You’ve got a soulmate,” Hajime impresses, as if repeating it will convince Tooru, or Fate itself. “She’s Japanese. And you talk about volleyball with her, and she’s got green eyes, and she plays wing spiker, and she makes you—Oikawa, she’s real, you’ve told me.”

Had Tooru really said all of that? He laughs, and runs a hand over his face. How obvious had he been, as a kid? How blindingly obvious should it have been, that Tooru has always loved Hajime? Since they were kids, and as they’ve grown up, and now.

“I’m not lying,” Tooru offers instead. “But it’s not a big deal. I looked it up, when I realised—about 17% of the world’s population is Luckless. That’s much more than I thought, right? It still makes me rare, though, and I think some youthful tragedy will make an excellent story for when I’m—oh.”

Hajime heaves out a frustrated huff and rushes forward to grapple Tooru into what he realises is supposed to be a hug. Tooru’s hands are trapped between their chests and his elbows are digging into Hajime’s ribs and Hajime winces—Tooru breathes out a laugh and repositions them, reaching around Hajime’s back to pull him closer.

“I’m sorry,” Hajime says into Tooru’s neck, and Tooru blinks into the soft strands of Hajime’s hair.

“Don’t be silly,” Tooru says, patting Hajime on the head in awkward, jerky movements and trying to focus on keeping a centimetre of distance between both of their racing heartbeats. “I’m over it. I have been for years.”

“I should’ve known,” Hajime mutters. His fingers tighten their hold on Tooru’s back; one hand grips at the space between Tooru’s shoulder blades, the other pressing flat against the base of Tooru’s spine. “I always know. How long have you been keeping this on your own?”

Tooru’s mouth feels dry. “Oh, all my life, basically. No-one wrote back, so I just figured it out.”

“That’s a lie.” Hajime pulls back so he’s glaring at Tooru, their faces just inches apart. “I know that’s a lie, at least. Shit.”

“It’s not your job to be a lie detector, Iwa-chan.” Tooru feels like he should pull away. He doesn’t.

“Of course it is,” Hajime says, and his face screws up like Tooru’s just said the most blatant lie he’s ever heard. It’s heart-wrenchingly endearing, and Tooru really needs to get away from him now, because Hajime’s close again—he’s close again, but he’s too wrapped up in Tooru’s Brokenness that he doesn’t seem to have realised.

Unfortunately, Tooru’s incredibly aware of the warmth of Hajime’s hands on his back, of the way his underclothes have hitched upwards and now display a clear strip of stomach inches above the waistband of his trousers, or the smooth dip Tooru can feel between Hajime’s shoulder blades, and how it begins after the bump of bone at the top of his spine and how it follows the curve of his back down to the tantalising skin of his tailbone.

Tooru extends his fingers along this ridge and lets them curl inwards, pressing the fabric of Hajime’s shirt taught against his back, urging Hajime to realise, remember, pull away.

Hajime stiffens, and his breathing hitches, and Tooru thinks for a second that he might move back. He only entertains the thought momentarily, because then he can feel the weight of Hajime’s hand shifts—instead of retreating, he reaches upwards, and the tips of his fingers rise above the neckline of Tooru’s shirt to press against the sensitive skin of his neck. Hajime’s fingernails graze Tooru’s nape, and he shivers.

Hajime’s gaze is dark and flickering. Tooru’s shoulders rise involuntarily in response to his touch and Hajime’s brow furrows. Tooru, careful and gentle, brushes the pad of his thumb along Hajime’s cheekbone. Hajime leans into the touch, and Tooru’s lips part.

Oh.

It’s happening.

Hajime seems to recognise the expression that flickers across Tooru’s face. He breaks their gaze, and stares down at the floor. Tooru’s thumb traces the curve of his cheek, to the shell of his ear, to the sharpness of his jaw, to the pink indent of the corner of his mouth.

Hajime blinks. He squeezes his eyes shut tight, and stares confusedly at a spot on the floor for a second as his eyes refocus. He still doesn’t meet Tooru’s gaze, and Tooru hesitates before he says what they both know.

“Do you feel guilty?” Tooru asks, gently pressing his fingers against Hajime’s jaw so he looks him in the eye. He knows, somehow, that they’re thinking of the same thing. “Being here, like this, does it make you feel guilty?”

Hajime squeezes his eyes shut, and Tooru’s heart breaks at the realisation. “I’m sorry,” he whispers, his breath ghosting Tooru’s lips.

“No,” Tooru says immediately, “don’t apologise. Don’t apologise, not when…”

He trails off. Hesitant, he moves his hands from Hajime’s back to his face. Hajime looks so young, and so scared.

“But do you know it’s not wrong?” Tooru asks, hardly daring to raise his voice above a murmur. “You feel that it’s wrong, but do you know that it isn’t?”

“It doesn’t feel wrong,” Hajime says, and he opens his eyes to meet Tooru’s. His gaze shifts to Tooru’s lips, and then flicks back up. “Right now. It doesn’t feel wrong.”

“It’s not.”

“I know.”

Hajime blinks, and blinks again. Tooru’s heartbeat quickens.

“It’s not bad.”

“I know.”

“Do you?” Tooru scans Hajime’s face and, like the poles of North to South, his stare is pulled to Hajime’s lips. “Do you know it’s okay? If you feel guilty, then how do you know it’s okay?”

“I know,” Hajime murmurs, his voice low and crackling like a waning flame, “because you wouldn’t lie to me about this.”

Tooru swallows. “Oh.”

“You’re saying it’s okay—”

“It is.”

“And I believe you.” Hajime cups Tooru’s face in his hands, fierce and gentle. “I believe you.”

“Okay,” Tooru says. “Ah—okay—I mean—”

“Yeah?”

“Iwa-chan,” Tooru says, and Hajime’s chest buckles in his laugh. Tooru smiles with him, hesitant and brave. Tooru doesn’t want to run anymore. He doesn’t want to run, or pretend, or lie, because Hajime believes him. Tooru has never been good enough for Hajime, but he can start right now. The truth. “If I kissed you right now, would you hate me?”

Hajime is like pottery; on the edge of breaking, so close to shattering beyond repair. But, Tooru thinks, as Hajime’s lips curl into a breathless smile, maybe he’s already been broken. Cracks splinter though his body, but it will never be irreparable—because Tooru has been there to mould him back together. He fixes the shards of Hajime’s soul with a golden lacquer and shapes him into something beautiful, and Hajime turns to him and does the exact same for Tooru. Under the burning sky, they glow golden, gleaming.

“You’re an idiot,” Hajime mumbles, and he tilts his chin upwards and kisses Tooru.

Hajime’s lips aren’t soft. Girls’ lips are soft; they’re exfoliated and moisturised and small, and Tooru has never once wanted to kiss them. With Hajime, there’s force, and Tooru nearly falls backwards with the intensity of it all. Hajime’s lips are chapped, determined, and Tooru has to pay attention to every movement he makes just to ensure he doesn’t crumble.

Their noses bump together and Hajime huffs in confusion. He tilts his head to the side to try to gain more access of Tooru’s mouth, and Tooru smiles. It’s beautiful. Hajime’s still got his hands cradling Tooru’s jaw, and one of his ring finger curls around a strand of Tooru’s hair that usually tufts down around his ear. Tooru realises that he’s allowed to do that too, and his fingers thread through Hajime’s hair—unruly, completely untameable, mussed up from lying on the grass and staring at the stars and at Tooru.

Hajime leans forward even more and his teeth graze against Tooru’s bottom lip, and Tooru feels heat swirling and sparking in his abdomen. Everything’s at an intensity he’s never felt before; not with another person, not with someone warm and solid and real, someone who—oh, who wants this just as much as Tooru does.

Tooru tugs slightly on Hajime’s hair, just to get him to lean back and take it a little slower, but Hajime gasps against Tooru’s lips and shudders, his whole body moving against Tooru’s because of something that Tooru had done, and he’d made Hajime shudder, him, Tooru, and he feels dizzy and hot and exhilarated—and it’s okay, he’s okay, because Hajime’s here. They’re together.

Ah, he thinks, as Hajime pulls away, blushing fiercely and panting heavily, trying to breathe in the air that so clearly belongs to them both, ah. So this is what it’s supposed to feel like.

Tooru’s sixteen, and he’s watching his best friend fall asleep in their Biology lesson. Hajime’s cheek is pressed against his textbook, and his light snores make the pages flutter. They’d stayed up late, last night, watching the newest sci-fi film that had only just come out on DVD. They’d been waiting months to finally watch it, because Hajime’s mother had told them that anything above an R-15 was much too mature for them.

Hajime begins to drool on a diagram of the carbon cycle. Tooru tries very hard to not find it adorable. Unsurprisingly, he fails.

For Tooru’s eighteenth birthday, Hajime takes him to a rally.

They share a bag of strawberry-flavoured sweets. When they finish it, when Tooru’s just beginning to complain about the fragile life span of things he loves, Hajime procures another one out of his pocket. He says it’s Tooru’s birthday present—indulging his sweet tooth for a whole day. Tooru hides his face in his hands and attempts to contain his beaming grin.

“I was expecting violence,” Tooru says later, as he surveys the crowd of smiling, badge-wearing students. They chatter and happily exchange cardboard signs, and Tooru wrinkles his nose pompously just to make Hajime laugh. “This is pretty tame, Iwa-chan.”

“You wanted a riot?” Hajime grins. “Seriously?”

“Sure,” Tooru says, and someone hands him a badge that says ‘My Life, My Love’. He raises his eyebrows at Hajime, who tries to hide his smirk.

“Yahaba said he’d be here,” Hajime says, as a way of explanation. “I thought it’d be pretty cool.”

A gathering, more than a rally—of people who reject their soulmates, and Fate, and want to live their life regardless of what the world says for them.

“And your parents would hate it,” Tooru says knowingly. “Imagine if they saw all of this, huh?”

“They’d explode,” Hajime agrees, chuckling. Tooru smiles.

There’s space between them. Hajime’s wearing his underclothes. Tooru would like to be holding Hajime’s hand, but he’s not. Hajime’s asked him not to tell his parents, because then they might tell Hajime’s, and then Hajime might not have the comfort of sleeping in his own house. Hajime doesn’t have his parents anymore, but he still doesn’t want to lose them completely.

Tooru gets it. He can wait. They’ve got time.

Somewhere, a nightingale sings.

“Is this allowed?” Hajime whispers in the dark, as his fingertips ghost the soft skin above Tooru’s ribs. He’s hesitant, reverent, and Tooru wants to burn anyone who had ever made Hajime feel like he was unworthy of anything.

“It’s allowed,” Tooru whispers back, and he leans down to capture Hajime’s lips in another kiss.

Tooru’s in his first year of high school, and he’s going to be amazing.

In their first ever practice game, the coach pairs Tooru and Hajime up in the same team, and it’s basically destiny. Tooru sends Hajime a wicked grin as they walk on court, and Hajime punches him on the arm.

Don’t get ahead of yourself, it says. But also: We’re going to win.

They do. Tooru feels the weight of the ball against his fingertips and he pushes, sending it flying in a sharp line through the air, and then Hajime’s taking flight, soaring, sending it across the net and past the other side’s blockers and slamming with a resounding crack onto the floor.

When the momentum reaches its peak, Tooru sends Hajime the winning point. Hajime’s face lights up and, a moth to a flame, Tooru finds himself pulled towards him. Hajime thumps him on the back, laughing and exchanging fist-bumps with the other members of his side, and Tooru knows that he’s never going to be able to let him go.

Tooru’s eleven, and he’s trying to count all of the good things that Hajime does in a day.

It starts in the morning, when Hajime lets Tooru borrow his jumper because he was complaining about the cold. By midday, when Hajime pushes his dessert over to Tooru and explains that he’s sick of sweets when they both know that he’s lying, there’s been too many good things for Tooru to remember. He gives up completely by the time they’re walking back from school, when Hajime flushes and glares at the floor and tells Tooru that he’s the best friend he’s ever had.

Tooru likes it when Hajime gives him compliments. He likes it when Hajime’s face burns red, and when his voice gets low and gruffly, and when he tries to pretend that he’s insulting Tooru when he’s actually making his entire week.

Tooru tells Hajime that he’s the best friend ever (in the entire world, obviously). He discovers that he might like it when Hajime receives compliments even more.

Tooru’s ten, and he’s sleeping over at Hajime’s house tonight.

“Are you still friends with anyone from your childhood?” Tooru asks his mother, idly picking through the snack drawer to find something he can bring over to Hajime’s. “Like me and Iwa-chan?”

Tooru’s mother hums. “No,” she says, reaching over him to pluck a bag of chocolates from the top shelf. They’re Tooru’s favourite brand, which he thinks is the reason they were kept out of his reach. “No,” she repeats, “my earliest friends are from high school. I guess I just drifted away from everyone before that.”

“Rubbish,” Tooru says. He wrinkles his nose: he thinks it’d be impossible to drift away from Hajime. Tooru would never let him leave so easily—he’d be a stubborn anchor, keeping Hajime rooted by his side for ever and ever. “That sucks, I think. Why didn’t you keep in touch with them?”

His mother smiles, and clicks her tongue as she walks out of the kitchen. “I suppose,” she says, “I never found anyone who stuck around.”

Tooru’s eight, and he’s at a sleepover at Hajime’s house.

They must have fallen asleep on the sofa watching the movie (something Tooru had insisted on, whatever it ended up being). Tooru tries to stretch, but Hajime’s got his arm thrown over Tooru’s stomach and his head’s buried into Tooru’s shoulder. If he tried to move, he’d wake him up.

Sighing, because he’s such a good person and such a good friend, Tooru shuffles into a more comfortable position. He pats Hajime on the top of his head, and Hajime tucks his head into Tooru’s torso even more and tightens his grip.

Tooru’s six, and his best friend is awesome.

Hajime knocks on their door every single day, and every single day he asks: “Is Tooru in?”

Every single day, Tooru will bound down the stairs and whoop with glee, because Hajime’s here, and Hajime’s back, and Hajime’s decided that Tooru’s good enough to be his friend for one more day.

Tooru knows himself, and would say he’s a pretty good person, but Hajime is so brilliant it’s just completely different. Tooru keeps waiting for the day that Hajime will realise that Tooru’s secretly weird and nerdy and too uncool for Hajime to ever associate with.

He hopes that day never comes. He wants Hajime to keep coming round forever.

Tooru is fourteen when he gives up on his soulmate.

Tooru is eighteen when he realises he didn’t have to.

It happens accidentally. They’re on Tooru’s bed and have told his parents that they’re doing homework—but Hajime’s got his sleeves rolled up to his elbows for the first time, and he’s laughing as Tooru keeps getting distracted by the sight of his forearms.

“I don’t know how you cope, Iwa-chan,” Tooru says, running a finger along the tan skin. “You’re a prude in comparison to me, it’s unfair. How do you get stuff done?”

“I manage,” Hajime says, rolling his eyes and jotting down an equation in his workbook before grinning back up at Tooru. He spins the biro around his fingers: something Tooru had never learnt how to do. “I get that it’s hard for you to comprehend, but I think about other things than you.”

“But how?” Tooru shuffles down to blow some air against Hajime’s arm. It breaks out in goosepimples, and Tooru smirks. “Maybe you just don’t like me as much as I like you,” he sighs, “because if you walked around with this much skin on display—”

“It’s my arm, you idiot—”

“I’d just be too distracted to do anything,” Tooru says. He pecks a kiss against Hajime’s forearm, and Hajime pretends to look annoyed. “Aren’t I distracting, Iwa-chan?”

“You’re distracting me from my homework,” Hajime says, as Tooru moves to his wrist. “Watch the pen, I’ve lost the lid.”

“Mmhm,” Tooru hums. “Not until you admit I’m attractive.”

“You don’t need me to tell you that.”

“But I want Iwa-chan to have to say it.” Careful with the open pen Hajime’s still holding, Tooru takes Hajime’s hand in his and, looking up at him innocently, he presses a kiss to his open palm. Against his skin, Tooru murmurs: “I want you tell me I’m distracting, Hajime.”

Hajime’s fingers jerk, and he stabs Tooru’s cheek with the blue ink pen.

Tooru squeals, sitting up and pressing his hand to his face. Hajime’s eyes widen, and he scrabbles at Tooru’s arms to pry them away from his cheek.

“Are you okay? Did it go in your eye? Shit, I didn’t mean to—”

But Tooru’s already laughing, batting Hajime’s hands away and chucking at his horrified expression.

“You’ve got ink on my face!” he complains, through his giggles, as he pats at his cheek and sees his fingertips come away blue. “That’s going to stain, Iwa-chan! I’m going to look like a blueberry for weeks!”

“You made me jump,” Hajime says gruffly.

“You mean I distracted you?”

“Shut up.”

“I totally distracted you,” Tooru teases, and he grins. “Ah, but you got some on your face, too. At least we’ll be blueberries together.”

Hajime frowns. “No, I didn’t.”

“You did.” Tooru yawns, and gestures to the vibrant, obvious splodge on Hajime’s face. It’s like a big blue birthmark, right over his cheekbone. “You’re all inky.”

“I wasn’t anywhere near it,” Hajime says, and he shuffles over to Tooru’s desk to examine his reflection in the bedside mirror. He stares at himself, scowling in confusion, and then raises his hands to prod at his cheeks. Hajime freezes.

“What?” Tooru says, heaving himself up with a huff. “Don’t sulk, just because you look even more childish than you usually do. I think ink stains are very fetching, Iwa-chan. Everyone’ll love it.”

Tooru props his chin on Hajime’s shoulder, and smiles at his reflection.

And then he sees it.

The blue birthmark, right across his cheekbone. It’s vibrant and unattractive and obvious—and it’s a mirror image of the mark that’s splayed across Hajime’s. Tooru brings a shaking hand upwards, and he extends his fingers in the air. His index, middle, and ring: blue. Hajime lowers his hands from his face. Tooru sees. The tips of his fingers, index, middle, ring, are stained a bright, unmistakeable blue.

Tooru staggers to his feet, his breath coming in sharp, jerky inhales.

“Tooru,” Hajime says, “Tooru.”

“Oh my god,” Tooru says. “Oh my god.”

“It’s you,” Hajime says. He’s covering his mouth with the back of his hand, and Tooru can see another splotch of ink that’s sprayed against his palm. He looks down, half unable to see as his vision begins to swim, and sees the exact same pattern in the exact same shade in the exact same spot on his own hand.

“You never replied,” Tooru breathes, as realisation crashes down on him like waves in a pounding storm. “Because…”

“It’s you,” Hajime keeps saying, and he’s stumbling towards Tooru, catching his foot on a textbook and almost falling. “I—it’s you.”

“Because you couldn’t,” Tooru says, and he’s holding him, running his fingers through Hajime’s hair and caressing his jaw and stroking his cheek. “Because you couldn’t.”

“I—”

“All these years,” Tooru says, as joyous laughter begins to bubble up his chest, as hot tears streak down his face, “I’ve thought I was alone. But I—I never was. You’re here. You’ve always been here. How have I never realised?”

“It’s you,” Hajime whispers. “And I never wrote back. Tooru, I’m so—”

Tooru shakes his head and smiles. “I know,” he says, “but it doesn’t matter.”

Hajime looks close to tears. Tooru, unashamedly crying, pulls him into a soft kiss.

“I thought I was alone,” Tooru says, against the now-familiar touch of Hajime’s lips, “I thought—because I was Broken, that I had to be alone. But you’ve never let me be alone, not once. So it doesn’t matter, does it? Fate just agrees with me when I say that I choose you. It’s not the other way around, like everyone else thinks. It never has been.”

Hajime begins to laugh, and Tooru holds him closer to feel the reverberations travel through his own body.

“That’s not how Fate works,” Hajime says, his eyes glistening as he smiles and smiles and smiles.

Tooru closes the gap between them. “I know,” he says, and he’s so full of love that he thinks that if he lets go of Hajime he will fly up, up, up away until he’s swimming through the sky with the planets and aliens and supernovas. Best to keep hold of him, Tooru thinks giddily, and never let go. “I know,” he says, “I know.”

“Can I have my ball back?” the boy says, as he scrabbles over the fence to jump into Tooru’s garden. The boy gives him an appraising look, and then begins to root around in the grass on his hands and knees. “Where did it go? Did you throw it away?”

“It went there,” Tooru says, sniffling. He thinks his mouth’s bleeding, but the boy doesn’t seem to care, and if Tooru’s not going to get an apology then he doesn’t really care either. He bends down to pluck the ball from where it had squished his mother’s daffodils.

“Gotcha!” the boy says, and grabs for it. Tooru, who is a whole head taller than the stranger, holds it high out of his reach.

“I’m Tooru,” Tooru says, because his curiosity has peaked at the sight of this interesting, new neighbour. Tooru sticks his free hand out for the kid to shake.

The boy hesitates, and then he takes it. His hand is small in Tooru’s grip, but he’s strong. Tooru grins.

“I’m Hajime,” Hajime says, and he squeezes Tooru’s hand carefully. Tooru squeezes back. Hajime blinks.

“Hajime,” Tooru repeats, nodding. “Nice to meet you, Hajime.”

In the wash of the morning sunlight, his mother’s daffodils seem to glow a brilliant gold.

Hajime cracks a smile. “Nice to meet you, Tooru.”