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A lot of things, Hajime decided, were dangerous.
Things that could push through the skin of your wrists and bear marks that people wore like fallen angels that were trying to protect themselves. A lot of things that were a lot like falling snow but felt like hard kisses, a lot of things that kind of smelled like rain but left you with a raging headache when the sun wasn't up in time with your breaths.
A lot of things that were a lot like Oikawa Tooru.
I.
Tooru, it seemed, was a headache that wouldn't go away. Hajime could push aspirins between his lips like they were candy, swallow them down and stick in his throat, and Tooru would still be pounding behind his forehead.
They say that aspirin is used as a blood thinner so it can circulate to the head, and maybe that's the reason it doesn't help Hajime, because his blood is already water. Already so thin, so strained, it's crashing against the surface of his skin from below and it's a miracle that he hasn't just about erupted from the tsunami that pushes against his chest.
But maybe it isn't a miracle. He's never believed in miracles. It explains why he doesn't believe in Tooru.
Explains why he couldn't really believe that he was in the car seat next to him a while ago. Just sitting a foot away at most, long fingers running over the edge of the window, glass down and car fast and curls bouncing back in the wind. His face was cold, Hajime could tell, because his nose was pink compared to his pale cheeks and his lips looked dry.
He just looked existent, arms almost shaking and eyes fighting to stay open. Pink lips curled up at the corners, he was smiling, smiling, and oh god could Hajime remember every kind of slope that's ever played on those lips, Tooru had been smiling and looking out the window like the sort of boy people wrote poems about. His head was bobbing slightly, chin tipping forward and falling back to the beat of the song on the radio, a song, some song, Hajime didn't know it and he was half sure that Tooru didn't either, but his hair was blowing in a way that seemed to dance in tune. He guessed it was enough for Tooru to act like he knew the song, all gentle smiles and cold cheeks and movements.
And Hajime also guessed that the worst part of it was that he had his hands on the wheel and his eyes on Tooru instead of the road and he never wanted to turn away. Looking at Tooru instead of the pavement in front of him, watching him nod his head to a song he didn't know the words to, face out the window and lips tilted up.
He was watching him up until he hit the telephone pole, just quietly observing until he heard the airbags start to hiss and the shards of glass cut through his shirt. Watching him up until his eyes started to close and it wasn't that he shouldn't anymore but he just couldn't.
II.
He was seventeen when he broke his nose, and he didn't really remember how.
All Hajime remembered was that the blood was running down so quickly that it hit his mouth, and it parted his lips and hit his tongue and it tasted like metal and cigarette smoke and promises that didn't really break but just hit the ground and shattered.
All Hajime remembered was the way the blood was dripping between his fingers when he tried to cover his face, the way it traced lines between the gaps like it was holding his hand. The way it streamed over the skin on his palms as he tried to hide himself when Tooru took a look at him, because he was scared that he'd see what he mess he was. Scared that Tooru would see him the way he saw himself, see that a hurricane had passed over his skin and it hadn't left him completely void of the wreckage, and he tried to cover it up.
All Hajime remembered was the way Tooru's touch was feather-light against his wrist, how it pulled his hand away from his nose and how both of their fingers were shaking when he did it. His grip had fallen away and he'd been left to stand there with blood all over his face and dripping onto his shirt (sure to make stains that would last longer than the both of them).
The part that Hajime remembered more than anything was the way Tooru had reached forward, other hand still wrapped around his wrist, thumb brushing softly over his upper lip. Pushed the blood around his skin, cleared it off his lips, and he spoke as quietly as the wind.
"It's okay, Hajime. Broken things are beautiful."
And then he'd kissed him, kissed him hard and soft and fast and slow and it made him feel like all his bones were being pulled from his body. Made his heart beat hard and just burn, singing his ribs and pushing a fire to the tips of his toes.
III.
He didn't really know when he confessed, but when he did, he said it with his eyes closed.
Hajime had been some sort of hopeless romantic, stuck in his own head, stuck in his own body, obsessed with the idea that he and Tooru were two pieces of the same soul.
It usually left him with holes in his tongue and hot tears fastened to his eyelashes at three in the morning, when the only comfort he had was the light plugged into the wall and the way the curtains waved to him with the wind blowing hard through the open window.
So when he finally gotten around to it, finally gotten around to doing something like telling the truth and trying to help himself breathe, he'd done the simple thing that wasn't so simple.
"I love you."
The words had fallen from his lips like rain kissing the asphalt, and he could almost hear the way they broke into the air and pushed something like desperation into (and out of) his lungs. He didn't know whether his head was hurting from how he wasn't breathing or if his lungs were hurting from how he wasn't really thinking.
Fingernails digging into his palm, hands clenching and releasing, rinse and repeat, a cycle he'd have to live through for a long time.
And when Tooru had turned around, words locked into his own head, he'd just looked at Hajime. Looked at him for what felt like a leap year and half a heartbeat, and then grabbed his shoulders and pulled him into a kiss that almost hurt. He'd kissed him to the bone, skin against skin so harsh that Hajime wondered if it was real, tongues pushing and pulling and breaths coming out in gasps and whines.
"I love you," he'd said, and when Tooru kissed him hard, he pretended it meant the same thing.
IV.
So young, he was so young, and that was the best part he could remember.
It was the weekend and every raindrop just seemed to sound the same to Hajime. His hands had memorized the path on the keypad to dialing Tooru's phone number, his ears used to the dial tone and the rapidly speaking voice of the robotic voice mail answer. But his chest wasn't adjusted to it, it seemed, because every time he called Tooru's phone and there wasn't an answer, he felt his breathing get tighter. And tighter. He was sure he'd suffocate by the end of the day.
Tooru didn't answer at all in the morning, didn't answer at noon. He didn't pick up his phone in the afternoon either, and when Hajime called the voicemail in the evening, he almost cried. And then right before bed, when he was sitting up against the headboard and his feet were tucked underneath the covers and he had the phone in his hand, he called again.
When Tooru hadn't answered that time, he had cried.
He tried again the next morning. And afternoon.
He gave up around evening.
He spent the rest of the day walking around the house, pushing his way through the doors, in and out like a wind that didn't quite know where to go. Hajime's head was pressured and dizzy, spinning around his shoulders, heavy like there was a whole ocean inside. But he still felt like he was empty, terrifyingly hollow, to the point where he could just about jump into water and float because all he had was air inside his veins.
And it scared him, the way he needed Tooru so much. Made him afraid to the point where he felt his lips shake in time with his heartbeat, and he was almost sure that he'd end up falling into the pool in his backyard and not coming back up.
V.
Hands together tight, fingers slipping together like they were meant to be (what a joke), Hajime could've been looking right at the stars in the sky but he preferred to look at them in the reflection of Tooru's eyes.
Infatuated, he'd just about decided. He was infatuated, drowning, hopelessly caught in the middle of a storm that was Oikawa Tooru. Not quite the eye of the hurricane yet, because everything was still raging around him, and he'd decided at this point that maybe there wasn't even a calm point. Maybe there was no eye to this hurricane because that was Tooru. He was destruction, he was the crashing waves of an ocean and Hajime was just the sand, and maybe when they collided, it wasn't as pretty as he though it'd be.
"I'm all yours," Hajime had breathed, too far deep to wipe the constellations from his eyes, counting the breaths from Tooru's pretty nose and comparing their consistence to his heartbeat. And it was true, it was tragically true, he was tied to Tooru in a way that he knew shouldn't be good, strung to his bones and woven between his eyes.
"And I'm yours," Tooru had said back, said it so softly that Hajime would've missed it if he hadn't been begging himself to listen, he craved attention, he craved Tooru, he needed him the way most people needed air, and it scared them both.
"I'm yours," but he said it through his teeth, and his fingertips curled around Hajime's collar without an ounce of grace and pulled him into a kiss that pushed sparks from their lips to the crooks of their elbows.
But he'd kissed Hajime with his eyes wide open, light brown slowly slipping into a different sort of darkness, and his hands moved from his neck to his chest, where he could feel Hajime's heartbeat. Fingers splayed across, and he felt Hajime's pulse race, and all Tooru could think was how it shouldn't be beating only for him (because he didn't deserve it).
The first time he'd seen Oikawa Tooru, the first word that came to mind was perfect. Perfect, with eyes that smiled from his cheeks and a laugh that pushed Hajime down to his knees.
The last time he'd seen Oikawa Tooru, the first word that came to mind was scared. Afraid of forever, he thought, afraid of lasting too long without closure to anything and everything, terrified of anything that had anything to do with an always. He just was afraid of lasting too long. If his heart beat any harder, he just might lose it.
Hajime guessed that it was probably what made him so beautiful.
Dangerous and fragile at the same time, he was a pile of complications that you could only try to figure out and end up crying right beside him. Hajime loved him something fierce, and maybe he wouldn't regret him.
Maybe he wouldn't regret him.