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The new kid moves into the house across the street when Iwaizumi is four.
Hajime watches the big moving van pull up in front of the house with great curiosity. He likes trucks. This one comes with a big dining room table, a couch, a little-kid bed frame that’s just the same size as his– and a whiny brat with huge eyes like milk chocolate and brown hair that’s so shiny that Hajime wants to reach out and touch it, and find out if it’s real. The kid seems perpetually anxious, always hiding behind his mother when he makes accidental eye contact with Hajime through the windowpane but still peering out from behind her legs to catch another glance.
Hajime thinks he’s weird. He tells his mother this, to which she unceremoniously kicks him outside to go make a friend.
So he’s standing outside, scuffed velcro sneakers kicking a rock through the grass when it happens– New Kid is laying down in the grass across the road, looking through the green blades, and then he screams and sprints across the road without even bothering to look both ways. He’s weird. He also runs straight towards Hajime, screaming continuously and uninterrupted, and not even a full body slam into the other boy can get him to shut up.
“HEY!” Hajime shouts at New Kid, who is now fully on top of him and screeching still to heaven and earth and anyone else who could hear him (which is most everyone in Miyagi, Hajime is sure) and the New Kid pauses to take a breath, trembling and eyes huge and glassy with tears as he stares at Hajime momentarily.
“I saw a bee .” New Kid whispers before the tears spill over and he begins wailing. Jeez. He’s so weird, Hajime thinks, but wraps him up in a hug anyway and pats his back with one tiny hand. The kid buries his snotty crying face into Hajime’s Godzilla t-shirt and as much as he wants to shove him off, the boy’s hair is just as soft as it looks and all up under Hajime’s chin.
“Did it even sting you?” Hajime questions, half annoyed, half jokingly.
“It DIDN’T.” New Kid looks up with indignation, already wiping away the tears. “But it’s a BEE and I don’t LIKE IT.”
“Were you scared? Lotsa people are scared of bees.” Hajime reassures him, patting his back again. The other boy swipes his hand aside.
“I’m not scared. I don’t get scared because I’m super brave!” It’s not a very convincing show, considering the flush on the boy’s cheeks from all the crying and the string of snot dripping from his tiny nose, but he seems dead set on this fact, so Hajime doesn’t push it.
“Well I’m Iwaizumi Hajime.” He says. “I live in the blue house.”
“Iwai… Iway-soomy?”
“IWAIZUMI.” He corrects firmly. New Kid looks like he’s about to burst into tears again as he tries to pronounce it, tongue stumbling over the Z, and Hajime relents. “You can just call me Iwa, I guess.”
“Iwa… that sounds DUMB.” New Kid sticks out his tongue. “I’m Oikawa Tooru.” Hajime is just getting ready to light into him for calling his name dumb when Oikawa says cheerily, “I’ll just call you Iwa-chan!”
“NO!”
“Iwa-chan!!” The new kid hits Hajime with this thousand watt grin, one that feels like sunshine and butterflies and rainbows and makes his heartbeat speed up, or maybe skip a few beats. He brushes off the feeling as best as he can and hides the sudden weirdness underneath a facade of annoyance.
“You’re just mad you can’t pronounce my name, Dumbykawa.”
“HEY! That is very mean.” Oikawa says, stomping one foot. “Iwa-chan is a meanie.”
“It’s IWAIZUMI!”
And so begins the greatest adventure that never truly ends.
______
Within a few weeks of the Oikawas moving in, Hajime has become Tooru’s brave knight in shining armor, and Tooru his delicate prince.
As much as the brunette claims to be big and strong and valiant, he screams when he sees ladybugs and the Iwaizumis’ dog and cries when Hajime reminds him that he’s shorter. “I’ll grow taller than you one day.” Tooru proclaims, cheeks pink and embarrassed, and shrieks at his Iwa-chan to stop laughing after.
Hajime has never had anyone to share everything with before. They eat melonpan and milkbread together in the green grass of spring and share watermelon popsicles when the sticky heat of summer comes around. Oikawa screams when grasshoppers appear before them as they sit on the curb and leaps into his knight’s arms, screaming “SAVE ME, IWA-CHAN.” as he hides behind tiny fingers. June passes fast and July faster, a blink of an eye in 31 long afternoons spent wading in the creek and catching dragonflies. Birthdays pass by full of excitement and cake and new toys to play with, but their new five-year-old status means something new: by August, the pair have a far greater foe than large bugs and thunder to reckon with. They are going to kindergarten.
Oikawa doesn’t want to, vocally complaining every chance he gets, and Hajime doesn’t either– but he still holds his prince’s hand and tells him important things, like that it’ll be just fine and don’t you want to get super smart and big like your mom and dad? Tooru nods, face screwed up tearfully like it always is when anything remotely bad happens, and the two prepare for the first day of school of their lives.
The last sleepover of summer hurts in all the best ways. Oikawa is up in Iwaizumi’s godzilla themed bedroom with his alien patterned pillow under one arm and the two play trucks late into the night, the last sunset of freedom streaking gold and orange across the evening sky. They watch movies until too late, eat far too many sugary snacks, and as night falls, Oikawa snuggles into bed next to Hajime despite the existence of a perfectly good futon and whispers into his neck, “Iwa-chan, I’m scared.”
“Me too.” Hajime mumbles. He knows he’s the brave knight. He knows he’s supposed to protect Tooru, his sweet prince, but he’s scared. And they’re only five. And kindergarten feels like the biggest monster he’s ever had to fight, or maybe the end of the world.
“But I’ll be with you!” Oikawa looks utterly shocked, surprise written all over his five-year-old features, rosy cheeks so endearing, eyes so big and brown and warm. “Iwa-chan will protect me and I’ll protect Iwa-chan.”
“Yep! That’s a good idea.” Hajime feels the smile spreading over his face as the brunette snuggles closer.
“We’ll be together forever, right, Iwa-chan?” Tooru asks. His face is all pink and sweet and worried, and Hajime doesn’t know what to do. Doesn’t have the words yet to say, of course. I want you with me always and forever and no matter what. Doesn’t know how to say I love you. So he just kisses his best friend on the cheek, short and swift, and hides under the covers.
“Yeah. Go to sleep, Dumbykawa.” He mutters, face flushed.
Iwaizumi is sure of the undeniable truth at that moment– as long as they are together, everything will be okay.
______
Elementary school comes and goes in a whirlwind of time after the two discover volleyball in second grade.
At first, Iwaizumi is sure it’s another one of Oikawa’s phases that come and go– brief obsessions with constellations, with aliens, with dinosaurs, with drawing, with baking (the shortest, forcefully put to an end by his mother after he almost set fire to the kitchen) but the sport sticks in his life, a new and permanent fixture that changes their friendship in a thousand perfect ways. Time spent wandering through the creeks, Tooru complaining about bug bites, is now spent sweaty and starry-eyed as they both pull off their first decent receives, first basic serves, first sets and spikes that they cheer at, fist bumping as they raucously yell in excitement. Everything about volleyball is new to them both and yet utterly addictive, terrific, fitting into their lives flawlessly like the last piece of the puzzle. Childhoods always pass people by quickly, and theirs is a thing to behold; a thing to dream about in thirty years, a quintessential youth spent finding ways to fly.
But by the end of fifth grade, Hajime is already feeling it– the omnipresent weight of the growth to come, the transition to junior high marking an abandonment of childish freedoms. They have both changed so much since they have met, but volleyball remains, a remnant of a picturesque boyhood to carry onward. Oikawa has latched onto it like a lifeline, and Hajime has to stop him from practicing before he collapses on some worrying nights.
They still have sleepovers often. They practice volleyball constantly, but they still watch space movies at Oikawa’s behest, still share dorayaki and still buy ramune on hot days. But there are other, subtle changes now that they are older; his best friend has begun to sleep on the futon without complaint most nights, and their midnight chatter has become sprinkled with a new topic of conversation: girls.
“Do you have a crush, Iwa-chan? Don’t you think Ishida-chan from our class is cute? She looks at you all the time, you know, I bet she likes you.”
“Knock it off.” Hajime always says, pushing the topic of conversation off before Oikawa can probe too much. The problem with this whole situation is that he doesn’t have a crush. Girls don’t interest him. Boys don’t, either (and it would be sacrilege to admit it if he did). He really doesn’t know what it means to have a crush, anyway. Oikawa has explained it to him before, and he still doesn’t get it.
“It’s like, your heart gets all fluttery and you get excited and you just wanna talk to them! And get to know them. And you think they’re soooo pretty and like to look at them and stuff.”
“The only person I really get excited to talk to is you.” Iwaizumi mutters, voice gruff. “I don’t think I get this whole crush stuff.”
Oikawa looks at him, big brown eyes wide and so, so warm. “Does Iwa-chan have a crush on me?” It’s teasing, but there’s something underneath that Hajime can’t quite place.
“No, Stupidkawa. I don’t have a crush on anyone. You’re my best friend, is why,” He huffs, turning over on his bed. Oikawa sleeps on the futon again and doesn’t whine about being cold, not even once.
______
Tooru gets even more serious about volleyball somehow, once they’re in junior high.
Hajime has to personally drag him home from practice now that they go to Kitagawa Daiichi and are competing. The setter is always grinding himself to dust, trying to be better than anyone else, trying to bring out the best in every player, and trying to beat the Miyagi prefecture’s powerhouse junior high– Shiratorizawa. Oikawa is far from the little kid Hajime met– he doesn’t cry anymore, biting back every feeling instead; refusing to say if he’s hurting, refusing to admit he’s tired or hungry or has any kind of human need, like it would expose a weakness. Every time they have a sleepover now, talk of girls and crushes is a blip on the horizon of Oikawa’s infinite hunger to practice volleyball, get better at volleyball, be the greatest at volleyball, hit a perfect serve, throw a perfect set, c’mon, Iwa-chan please hit it for me just one more time, I want to make sure it’s perfect. It makes so much sense for him and yet is so puzzling to Hajime; the boy who cried in his arms because he saw a bee, not even getting stung, won’t admit when he’s overstretched the ligaments in his knees again, won’t admit when his fingers bleed as he wipes them surreptitiously on the inside of his dark blue uniform. There’s one incident, though, that really cements this new facet of Oikawa’s personality in Iwaizumi’s mind. It’s during a game.
Oikawa and Iwaizumi are second years, and Kitagawa Daiichi is playing Shiratorizawa. Tooru is spinning the ball between his fingers, preparing to serve, and his eyes are locked on the enemy– Ushijima Wakatoshi, the left handed freak spiker decked out in purple uniform, eyes narrowed as Tooru goes in for his jump serve. He’s become great at those serves. What once was a cheer-worthy hit as long as it made it over the net is now insufficient unless he scores a service ace, and he’s been practicing for hours and hours, training to perfection, training to the point of injury.
Iwaizumi can feel it from his position on the court. Tooru’s knees are just the slightest bit wobbly as he makes his approach, leaping into the air for the jump serve and his hand hits the ball with a deafening crack, its trajectory poorly aimed but its speed and power immense for a middle school team. But Oikawa’s descent from the jump is wrong. It’s like Hajime can see it in slow motion: his best friend landing on both feet, and then his right knee giving out under his body weight, collapsing to the ground.
There’s some shouting and general commotion but the setter pulls himself to his feet, face screwed up in pain, and continues to move– preparing to set the ball, to score a point, to win the game. Determined to the point of detriment like always. But the color drains from his face when he puts weight on the hurt leg, and he is mid-hobble to a setting position when the time-out is called.
“I’m not hurt, please don’t take me out of play.” He’s begging, pleading, when Hajime walks up to him and grabs him by the arm.
“What were you thinking? Getting back up to play? Stupidkawa!” He’s trying not to shout at his best friend, who’s already in so much pain, but Oikawa just launches himself into Hajime’s chest, finally letting the tears loose. It’s a whispered admission, for him and him alone, into his shoulder that Iwaizumi receives: “Iwa-chan, it really hurts.”
“I know. I can’t believe you tried to keep playing.” Hajime admonishes, pulling his best friend up by an arm around his shoulder, helping him hobble out to the nurses’. Tooru is trembling, trying not to cry some more, but holds onto Iwaizumi like a lifeline. “I want to keep playing.”
“I know.” the spiker replies as he sits him down in the nurse’s office. “But you can’t keep playing if you’re hurt, okay?”
“Shit.” Oikawa mumbles weakly into Iwaizumi’s arm, and the spiker doesn’t know how to tell him: I care about you so much. Please don’t get hurt. I love you too much to see you hurt. I want you to be happy all the time.
So he just says, “Stupidkawa. Take better care of yourself.”
“I know.” Tooru mutters, voice distant. “I know, Iwa-chan.”
______
Hajime doesn’t really get all this crush stuff until he’s a first year at Aoba Johsai.
Oikawa definitely gets it. He’s always gotten it, literally. Confessions left, front, and center, Valentine’s day candy piled up on his desk. He loves sweets, and attention, so he doesn’t seem to mind the overload of girls following him around like lost puppies everywhere he goes. But he never dates any of them, citing he’s too busy with volleyball or some other reason that’s never quite sufficient for his suitors.
There are lots of changes now that they’re in highschool. Like the myriad of girls with one eye always on Oikawa (and by proxy Iwaizumi, because they walk together so much). Like their new teammates and fellow first-years on the team, Matsukawa and Hanamaki, who are rapidly becoming their close friends. Like Oikawa growing taller than Hajime, for god's sake. But the weirdest change has definitely been this crush business.
Why does Iwaizumi get a sudden hole in the bottom of his stomach every time Oikawa is getting a confession? Is he worried that he might say yes?
He just doesn’t want to lose his best friend. That has to be it, right?
But the feeling continues. It happens when Oikawa gets excited about a heart-shaped lollipop someone gives him. It happens when Oikawa doesn’t throw away his confession letters and keeps them in a stack on his desk (“It’s not nice to throw them away, Iwa-chan! Just because you’re bad with the ladies doesn’t mean you shouldn’t respect their feelings). It happens when Oikawa goes on a cautious first date or two, never committing to a relationship but always dipping his toes in, toeing the line, something, never everything, and never nothing. And it definitely happens when Oikawa has his first real kiss and Iwaizumi feels a horrific twinge deep down in his gut that sounds exactly like, I’d feel gross kissing anyone unless it was Oikawa.
It hits him right then and there. And he doesn’t tell anyone his secret, but he’s always been a terrible liar, and the guilt feels so heavy, like an iron ball sitting in his esophagus whenever he swallows back his feelings: I have a crush on my best friend.
It isn’t a revelation in the sense that the feeling is new. It’s more of an epiphany, finally understanding something lost in translation for the last eleven years since they met, and it makes him a little sick to his stomach to finally know. Surely he had fallen for him, really, at a certain time, hour, day, minute. But the feeling seems to him to just be a natural way of being, an undeniable fact. It hurts around the edges, uncomfortable lodged in his heart now that he’s aware it’s there, but the world doesn’t end as much as Iwaizumi is sure it will, and he could never tell his best friend he loves him, so life goes on unchanged.
Oikawa keeps saving confessions on his desk, until the pile has to be shoved into a drawer. He keeps rereading them sometimes late at night, when he’s sure he’s unlovable, and Iwaizumi keeps working to make sure his best friend knows that can’t be true. How can you be unloveable if I’ve loved you since the moment I met you? It’s what he wants to say. But he doesn’t have the words, and he doesn’t look for them. It wouldn’t change a thing. Iwaizumi would rather have him, incompletely, his best friend and everything and anything, then lose him to a stupid crush.
So he does his best to forget it.
______
It’s after the last game of an illustrious highschool career. A game against Karasuno. A game that means that Aoba Johsai’s team, and by proxy Oikawa and Iwaizumi, will never go to nationals.
They’ve all cried already. Iwaizumi has already cried into his best friend’s shoulder, wiped Tooru’s tears, compartmentalized all of this as what it is– a childhood dream gone unfulfilled, a good memory to keep nonetheless, and the last volleyball game of his highschool career with his favorite team he’s ever had the joy of playing on. And the last real game with his best friend. But they’re walking home and Hajime knows his best friend’s eyes are too hard to reflect acceptance; he grieves hard and slow and leaves a mark for himself to remember being hurt.
“You know, you probably won’t be truly happy until you’re really old.” Iwaizumi says, trying to break the silence.
“Iwa-chan! What kind of curse is that!” His best friend’s voice is playful, but it’s off. The loss is still aching. Hajime knows him.
“No matter how many tournaments you win, you’ll still be that annoying guy who chases volleyball forever.” Iwaizumi is trying. He wants to tell him, you’ll be doing this forever. He wants to tell him, you’ll get another chance to win. And another and another and I know you won’t stop until you win everything. And I believe in you– but the words are failing him just like always.
“You always have to throw in an insult.” Tooru rolls his eyes.
“What I’m trying to say–” Hajime’s brow furrows in frustration, the irritation getting to him. “Keep going without a second thought, anyway.”
Oikawa comes to a pause in the middle of the sidewalk. Does his best friend know how beautiful he looks in the moonlight? The flush in his face, the redness near his eyes from crying, lashes long and still wet, his soft hair swaying slightly as he walks. Hajime wants to tell him all of the most important things. He’s going to lose him soon. They will go their separate ways for the first time in fourteen years. I love you, he wants to say. You’re the love of my life. You’re going to be incredible anywhere. You always are. You’re every star in my sky. Iwaizumi Hajime has never been good with words. But he tries, just like always.
“I couldn’t be prouder to have you as a partner.” He says. “And you’re the absolute best setter.”
Iwaizumi Hajime does not know how to say it yet, how to say I love you , but he can see in his best friend’s eyes that it reaches him anyway.
______
Everything is changing all over again. Iwaizumi is moving to California for university. Oikawa is leaving, too, but even farther somehow– twelve hours of time difference away from the street with their two houses in Miyagi, to Buenos Aires, Argentina. The setter will train and train, train with José Blanco and train on the beach and grow huge wings that will fly him to the moon and stars. Hajime’s prince is becoming a king, and he won’t need a knight in shining armor by his side any longer.
It’s all happened too soon, and the unspoken confession weighs too heavy, too noticeable in his throat, bleeding all through the spiker’s lungs and skin as the date creeps closer and closer like a scheduled execution– the day his best friend, and possibly the love of his life, boards a plane and disappears to a far-off land to chase stars all by himself.
Iwaizumi has been taking care of Oikawa his whole life. Defending him from ladybugs and holding his milkbread and bandaging his scraped knees and helping him to the nurses’ office. Humming him to sleep on rough nights, spiking every set he throws at him, helping fill out a thousand forms for volleyball team applications. He’s never been good with words, but his love has been spoken through a million actions, a million moments caring, protecting his best friend from bees. Even the ones that didn’t sting. Hajime hopes, prays, pleads, that it’ll be enough. The date of departure creeps closer and closer, and the confession aches as it grows, always too close to the surface to swallow, never close enough to say.
The night before the light of his life vanishes into a memory, though, Oikawa Tooru knocks on his window and ushers him into the muggy midnight of a last Miyagi summer.
Iwaizumi gets out of bed slowly, groggily, rubbing his eyes. They come into focus to show pale, perfect setter fingers pressed up against the glass, cheeks flushed, the prettiest brown eyes on earth staring back at him. He cracks open the window. “What are you doing?”
“Iwa-chan!” His best friend smiles that thousand watt grin that got him so whipped fourteen years ago. It still fills Hajime with that big feeling, a swelling thing that makes him feel invincible, like his soul itself was buoyant, unencumbered by any evil of the world. Light. Free. But Tooru is taller now; there is a smugness in his eyes, muscles rippling along his arms, a full set of grown-up teeth between those pink lips Hajime wants to kiss so badly. His prince has grown beyond where he can reach.
That’s okay. He’s proud of him.
Iwaizumi shoves on scuffed white sneakers and swings one leg, then the other, out of the window and lands in the grass. They’ve snuck out like this hundreds of times before; at six, looking to hunt for fireflies in the stickiness of post-bedtime July; at nine, gazing up at the same constellations they always saw while Oikawa pointed out the Little Dipper, Cassiopeia, Orion’s Belt, Ursa Major. Asking if Iwaizumi thought aliens would come and kidnap them if they stayed out too late. Constantly at thirteen, Oikawa throwing set after set tirelessly or practicing his serves until his muscles ached and his knees were scraped on the pavement, Iwaizumi chastising him for his stupidity and holding his hand while they crept home; drinking at seventeen, sharing a secret sip of stolen beer under the light of a half moon, dew catching on the grass, always sharing Iwaizumi’s big green scarf that kept them both warm even if Oikawa had to lean on his best friend’s shoulder to fit. And now, at eighteen; Hajime feels his heart catch and tear on the jagged ribs that cage it. Maybe because it’ll be the last time this will ever happen, and he is not ready to let go.
“It’s my last night, Iwa-chan! Don’t you want to go out with a bang?” Tooru whispers. His voice is hushed and yet so electric; an undercurrent of excitement and passion and the slightest hint of his petulance. So, so easy to love.
“It’s the middle of your last night.” Hajime mutters dubiously. “Doesn’t your flight leave at 10am? Have you even packed?”
The silence is loud. Iwaizumi looks at his best friend incredulously. “You really are a dumbass.”
“Shut it!” Oikawa retorts, ever so slightly whining, and God, Hajime loves him. “I wanted to go get snacks first! And you can help me pack, Iwa-chan.”
“I am not helping you pack.” Hajime snorts.
“Yes you are. You adore me.”
They walk to the convenience store with those words ringing in his head. They have far too much weight, and they’re so casual, but so true. How do you say I love you to your best friend after fourteen years of knowing it? How can you even start to explain the way you feel? Hajime could tell him lots of things. He could tell Oikawa his stupid hair is so soft and perfect even when he’s slept on it and that it doesn’t matter how much he fiddles with it, his anxiety is pointless. He could tell him that his eyes are warm like milk chocolate and fringed with lashes and that’s what makes all the girls orbit around him like he’s Jupiter, ninety-five moons always circling and never quite touching the planet’s surface. He could tell him that he hates the way he works himself so hard, hates the way he treats himself. Iwaizumi could say that he hates the way that he has to lose him, hates the way that he will let him go, every time, because Oikawa deserves to chase and pin down every dream he could possibly conjure; win everything, all of it, have the world and all the stars in the sky that Hajime dreams of hanging in those big eyes.
Tooru rushes him in the store, proclaiming various things like time waits for no man! and, it’s the last night of my childhood! as they pick out milkbread and pocky and lychee ramune and all the other things Oikawa won’t have in Argentina. They’re still poking around six minutes before closing, and the cashier gives them a withering glare that sends the setter into a fit of quiet giggles. Oikawa’s laughing is pretty, and Hajime resigns it to memory, keeping careful note of it for later– even though he’d really prefer to keep it, to have and to hold forever. They crack the cold ramune open outside and it fizzes sticky all over the setter’s slender fingers. Iwaizumi calls him an idiot like always and everything in the world is right.
They wash their hands in the Oikawa house upstairs, quietly so as to avoid detection. The setter’s room is a mess– luggage only half packed, Aoba Johsai jersey slung across a chair, glow-in-the-dark star stickers on the ceiling from when he was scared of the dark peeling, everything unkempt. Socks aren’t in matching pairs in his suitcase, his Best Setter Award from junior high hanging tilted on the wall, blankets askew. It really only hits when he sees Oikawa’s volleyball shoes tucked neatly into the suitcase: he’s leaving. Possibly forever.
Fuck. Hajime loves him and he’s never gonna know.
Tooru decides after half an hour that packing is boring and also sad and it feels like a sear, red-hot and electric when he grabs Hajime’s hand to pull him outside. Too close. Not close enough. He hops onto his bike, Aoba-Johsai teal, and tells the spiker to get on, right behind him.
“We’ve tried this before. You always get too tired.”
“Iwa-chan, I’m big and strong now and I can totally cycle you to wherever I want to go.” Oikawa protests. He’s right, and Hajime isn’t sure he wants him to be.
“Besides,” The setter continues, “It’s a surprise.”
Despite his insistence, Hajime is the one pedaling uphill with Tooru’s arms wrapped around him within five minutes. His calves ache, burning under tan skin, a sheen of sweat along bare arms. The workout still isn’t enough to distract him from the secret buried inside his voicebox, though, and his best friend’s arms glow pale in the moonlight, fingers pressed into Hajime’s torso. They burn holes right through to his skin, cool through his shirt which is altogether too thick and far too thin. Oikawa’s chin rests on Iwaizumi’s bare shoulder, scorching and distracting, and the setter murmurs a myriad of facts Hajime won’t remember in the morning, pointing out constellations and telling him about the Mars rovers; Iwaizumi is too busy noticing the starlight that catches in Oikawa’s eyes, soft on his skin, reflecting off his hair, to care about anything in the sky. The pair emerges at the top of the hill and Hajime curses as he throws the bike aside, muscles aching, Tooru scrambling off him and the burn of his touch ebbing. Oikawa grabs his face. “Look, Iwa-chan,” he whispers, and tilts Hajime’s chin towards the sky.
He is sure the earth must be a tiny dot. The darkness stretches from end to end and the milky way is sprinkled across it like salt or snow, a trillion celestial suns dotting the cosmos. The moon hangs heavy and cold and Iwaizumi is reminded of the Chinese fairytale of Chang’e, the memory flitting by from a mythology elective. She steals a pill of immortality and is banished to the moon for all eternity. Her husband Hou Yi watches her from earth anyway. Hajime wonders if the trajectory of their lives is the same as his own, Oikawa always chasing things that cannot be held, trapped on the moon for eternity. Hajime will watch him from earth anyway. Hajime will watch him in Argentina from the TV, watch him lose and lose again until eventually he wins, watch Tooru win everything and anything forever and ever and love him all the same from his view on the ground. But just for a little longer, the moon is far, and they can look at it together.
The cicadas are chirping and the two lay in the grass, sipping the last of their ramune, passing the box of pocky back and forth as they stare at the stars. Hajime stares at the empty bottle like it has answers.
“I wanted to take you to the planetarium, before you left.” He admits, voice gruff. “They have all the shit you like, the constellations and stuff. I wanted you to see them.” He does not say, I wanted to see them together. He does not say, I wanted to capture all of those stars and hang them in your eyes. He does not say, I wanted those eyes full of stars to close for a moment so I could kiss you, find a way to say I love you, hold you, never let you go. But all the love he feels is laced into every word, hoarse with adoration, and he wonders if Oikawa catches it. He doesn’t look over in time to see the setter’s face screw up in tears, flush creeping up his cheeks.
“Fuck.” Tooru mumbles, finding his way into Hajime’s arms just like he always does. “I’m so happy I have you, Iwa-chan. I don’t know how to tell you, I just–” He wipes his eyes, cheek burning against Iwaizumi’s bare collarbones. “Thank you for being the greatest best friend in the whole wide world.”
Hajime feels his stomach twist, but his heart still beats warm and steady and certain that he is home.
“And,” Oikawa murmurs, head nestled against his best friend’s shoulder, “We have all the stars anyone could want right here.”
The silence is almost comfortable, almost perfect, with the boy he loves tucked safely up against his collarbone, brown hair tickling his jaw, the warm summer night brushing up against their skin and soaking through. But Iwaizumi’s skin is being burned everywhere Oikawa touches, where his cheekbone sears against his neck, where his chin surely scorches his bare shoulder through his tank top, where his arm wraps around his back and clings to his side, where their legs tangle oh-so-slightly in the grass. The smolder coalesces into a glassy marble, hot on Iwaizumi’s tongue: I love you. It aches. Everything aches, yearning, hungry for just a little more than he can have, insatiable by nature, stinging around the edges. I love you seems serrated now, thorny and caught in the flesh of his tongue, unable to escape and begging to be released. The silence is almost comfortable. But it hurts, too, clawing its way into his flesh with the longing for just a little more.
Iwaizumi Hajime has never been good with words. Oikawa tries, just like always.
“Iwa-chan.” Oikawa breaks the spiker from his anguished reverie. “Iwa-chan, this isn’t enough.”
Hajime turns his head to examine his face, swallowing the panic that threatens to explode. “Huh? What does that mean?” He says flatly, emotionless, bracing himself for the sting.
“Fuck. That came out wrong, fuck, it’s just, Iwa–” And for the first time, Iwaizumi really sees him. The boy he loves, shaking. Face flushed. Eyes shining. The tremble of his lower lip, moreso on the left side. The goosebumps on his pale forearm even on such a warm night. Oikawa bites his lip, hard, fingers trembling against his best friend’s skin.
“Iwa-chan, you’re the greatest best friend in the entire world, and it’s not enough.”
“I know.” Iwaizumi mumbles after a moment. “Obviously. You have dreams, and there’s Argentina, obviously–”
“No– fuck– I mean–”
Hajime stares at the ground. Hard. “It’s fine, Shittykawa, I get it–”
He is cut off by a kiss.
Oikawa Tooru crushes his lips into Iwaizumi like he is dying. His fingers find purchase, clinging onto the black tank top, tangling in his hair, finding lines along his jaw, begging, pleading, stay . Let this be okay. His lips are soft against his best friend’s chapped ones and he squeezes his eyes tighter closed than they need to be, too afraid to see. It’s I love you in a thousand ways that neither of them are quite sure how to say. Hajime tangles his fingers in the other boy’s hair, pulling him close, holding all of him, and Tooru is the one to pull away. The one to confess a secret held and kept for as long as he can remember. “Iwa-chan. You are the greatest best friend in the whole wide world, and I don’t want you to be my best friend.” The setter is shaking. Tears threaten.
“I’m in love with you, Iwa-chan.” He whispers.
Dead silence.
“Tell me it’s stupid.” Oikawa laughs brokenly. “I know it’s stupid, Stupidkawa being stupid, I know, I know– ”
Hajime kisses his best friend again, every cell in his body screaming to pull that boy closer, hold him tighter, cling to him until he never thinks he’s stupid ever again. It’s rough and hungry and confused and scared, and Iwaizumi Hajime has never been good with words but he’s sure he’ll die if he doesn’t say it, sure he’ll explode.
“I’m so fucking in love with you.” Hajime tells him, holding him so close, staring at those big brown eyes. “I’m so fucking in love with you, Oikawa, I love you more than anything.”
Tooru’s face is pink and sweet and wet with tears and he whispers, “I love you more than anything, too.”
“Can I kiss you again?” Hajime’s voice is rough. He isn’t good with words. He doesn’t know how to say everything he feels and knows to be true. Doesn’t know how to tell Tooru he’s the center of the universe. But he can see in his best friend’s eyes and all the sparkle in them that he already knows.
“Yeah.” Oikawa whispers, and for a moment, everything in the world is right.
So continues the greatest adventure that never truly ends.
______
The new kid moves away from the house across the street when Iwaizumi is eighteen.
There’s no moving van this time. Tooru hugs Hajime tight in front of the blue Iwaizumi house and they hold hands the whole car ride in the backseat. They both do their best not to cry. Change is a part of life, one they’re both well aware of by now.
Hajime gives the love of his life one last secret kiss in the airport. Their fingers untangle as Oikawa says goodbye, vanishing into a dream. But he’s never really gone. He’ll be scared of stupid things just like always, work himself to the bone just like always, get stupid confessions just like always. Hajime’s prince is becoming a king, and he couldn’t be prouder. And when Tooru has caught every shooting star he’s ever wished on, won everything and flown to the moon a million times, he’ll come running home. Gold medals will hang from his hands and clank together with the sound of victorious return, that thousand-watt smile on his face even after all this time, his hair still soft and shiny as always, milk chocolate eyes still the prettiest sight in the whole world.
Iwaizumi Hajime has never been good with words, but he says I love you at the airport anyway.
And, goodbye.
And, I can’t wait to see you again.