Work Text:
From: [email protected]
Subject: PACKAGE DELIVERY
HAJIME,
Your package has arrived on campus! Stop by during our open hours (10am-6pm) to pick up your delivery.
YOUR PICKUP CODE: TH2390-54
Hajime frowns.
More accurate, maybe, to say that Hajime’s been frowning, and only directs the source of his frown from his stats homework—starting to blur into nonsense on the page after several hours and several coffees spent at the library—to the email. Rishi says that Hajime’s frown is a source of mystique that leaves underclassmen awed and upperclassmen impressed, and that Hajime should cultivate the power that brooding good looks bring. Eli says the frown just makes him look perpetually upset. Hajime says that he doesn’t mean to do it, and would stop if he noticed sooner, because it gives him a headache, to which Rishi usually replies, that’s the kind of thing you can’t say for the mystique factor, Hajime, and then waves his hands around in some vague, magical gesture.
Neither of them are looking at him now, both buried in their own work instead. Eli’s looking tired in a focused kind of way. Rishi looks moments from death. So it’s as good a time as any for an interruption.
“I didn’t order a package,” he says out loud. Rishi picks up his head from where it’s buried in his chemistry textbook on the other side of the table. Hajime turns his laptop around to show him the email.
“Secret admirer?” Eli says, with the cadence of a joke but not so much the expression of one, as his eyes stay trained on his notes. Rishi blinks at Hajime’s screen blearily.
“I don’t even know where the mailroom is.”
“Thank fuck,” Rishi says. Eli laughs as he emphatically shuts his textbook. “Well, I guess we gotta show you, Hajime! Let’s all go right now!”
There isn’t room to argue with the tone he takes, so Hajime and Eli pack up their books and snacks and follow him out of the library.
There’s several detours before they actually hit the mailroom. First, the bathroom, where Eli dumps all his stuff at their feet with the urgency of someone who only realized a couple minutes ago how badly they needed it, then, the back hallway with Hajime’s favorite vending machine and Rishi’s rented commuter student locker, and then, the coffee shop, where Rishi buys one black coffee and one iced latte with 5 shots of espresso, which is two more shots of espresso than he usually orders.
(“Do you need that much?” says Hajime.
Rishi peers at him over the lid. “Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answer to, Hajime.”)
After all that, Hajime finds himself outside a nondescript door on the third floor of the student center, tucked in between doctoral student offices and conference rooms. Eli and Rishi wave him inside.
The employee at the desk walks him through the whole process—showing ID, showing the confirmation email, getting a key and unlocking a little locker so he can hand the key right back—and then Hajime’s greeted with a small, beat-up cardboard box, flecks of light blue paint peeling off where the packing tape hasn’t quite protected it. He recognizes the scrawl of handwriting across the top like recognizing his own face in a mirror.
“What’s that?” Eli says. Rishi is preoccupied, dropping off one of his two coffees with a girl working the desk of the student committee office across from the mailroom.
“Dunno,” Hajime says. “Something from Oikawa.”
Eli’s brows raise curiously. He steps closer, peering over Hajime’s shoulder as he digs in his pockets for his keyring.
The tape slices easily once Hajime gets a key between the layers of cardboard, thinned and beat-up from the international travel.
Inside the box, there’s an assortment of pink paper confetti, a San Juan postcard, a carefully cellophane-wrapped tray of homemade chocolates, and a handwritten note, neatly folded on top. Hajime picks up the note and can barely read it for a moment while he thinks about his fingers overlapping the spaces where Oikawa’s were.
Hi Iwa-chan!
I know you’ve been feeling homesick lately, and I have too, so I wanted to send you something to remind you how much I love you and how lucky you are to have a boyfriend who is so multitalented. I always wanted to make you chocolates in high school, but Makki told me if I did that he would make me confess, too, and I was too scared. Looking back it seems silly, because the whole time I’ve been friends with Iwa-chan, he’s only ever made me feel brave.
You always work really hard, Iwa-chan, but I hope you’re having lots of fun, too. Every day I know you makes me smarter and better and happier, so I need you in perfect shape so we can keep getting better forever!
I miss you so much. You’re my number one, Hajime.
Call soon,
Tooru <3
“What’s it say?” Eli says, leaning over his shoulder. And then, much more alarmed, alerting Hajime to the fact that he’s crying, “Dude, you ok?”
Hajime scrubs a rough hand down his face and turns on his heel. “Sorry, berightback—!”
He hurries out the door of the mailroom and rounds the first corner he sees out in the common space. There’s a lone bench tucked between the closed doors of two darkened conference rooms. Hajime sits down and calls Oikawa.
Only one ring before he answers. “Hello?”
“Fuck you.”
“Iwa-chan!” Oikawa scolds, instantly scandalized. Hajime chuckles wetly. “Is that any way to talk to your hardworking housewife?”
“You’re the worst,” Hajime says. “You made me—hic—you made me cry in front of my friends. Asshole.”
Oikawa laughs, all soft and sweet and ricocheting achingly through Hajime’s chest. There’s a little bit of feedback in Hajime’s ear, from Oikawa’s exhale too close to the receiver, and it’s almost as good as Oikawa’s breath on his cheek.
“Poor baby,” he coos. Hajime’s long past pretending that doesn’t make his heart flutter. “You really liked them?”
“Duh,” Hajime says. Oikawa giggles, delighted. “I love you. I miss you a lot.”
“I miss you too,” Oikawa says. “I love you, Hajime. Happy Valentine’s Day.”
“Happy Valentine’s Day,” Hajime repeats. And then, for good measure, “Dickhead.”
While Oikawa’s still giggling—in between telling him off, really lessening the severity of the thing—Hajime turns and sees Rishi and Eli’s faces peering around the corner, looking exceedingly concerned. Hajime laughs, voice still thick, and they both relax.
“It’s Oikawa,” he says to them, gesturing with the phone still tucked to his cheek. And then, to Oikawa, “My friends are here.”
“Oh, put me on speaker!” Hajime holds his phone out in front of him and obeys. “Hello hello, Hajime’s friends!” Oikawa says, in familiarly-accented English. “Nice to meet you!”
“Nice to meet you!” Eli says, just as Rishi says, “Dude, we thought you dumped him or something!”
Eli elbows Rishi sharply under the ribs. There’s a short delay for Oikawa’s scandalized gasp while Hajime translates through the slang and the crosstalk.
“Never!” he says, and Hajime laughs. “Hajime’s stuck with me forever, you know!”
It feels a little too intimate to say the next part in English. “Forever?”
“Of course,” Oikawa says, suddenly a little shy. “Right?”
“Of course,” Hajime repeats. It’s the easiest thing he’s ever said. “Always.”
“Well, good,” Oikawa says, shyness replaced with a much more characteristic prim satisfaction. “That was the right answer, Iwa-chan.”
“You suck,” Hajime laughs. “Go to bed. I’ll see you soon.”
“Bossy, Iwa-chan,” Oikawa teases. And then, in English again, “Bye bye, Hajime’s friends! Take care of Hajime for me, please!”
“Bye, dude!” says Rishi.
“We will!” says Eli.
“Love you,” Hajime says. “Love you, sleep well.”
“Love you, Hajime,” Oikawa says. “Talk soon, bye.”
Oikawa hangs up the call. Hajime looks at his contact on his phone and waits until the screen goes dark, and then neatly folds up the note and tucks it back in the box.
Eli shifts on his feet next to him. “You, like, really love him, huh?”
“Yeah,” Hajime says, and doesn’t care if he’s still a little misty eyed in front of them this time. “Yeah, I do.”
“Damn,” says Rishi. “Of course you would be the one person to not get dumped after the first spring break of freshman year.”
Eli elbows him again, but Hajime just laughs. “Like, you’re already so hot, Hajime! And you have a guy that loves you! It’s just unfair.”
Hajime shoulders into him as he stands up from the bench, scooping his backpack off the ground as he goes. “To be fair,” he says. “He’s really hot, too.”
“Fuck,” Rishi says, and shakes his head. “Of course he is. The world is lucky you don’t use your powers for evil.”
“Fuck off,” Hajime laughs. “You have a lab report you need to finish, don’t you?”
Rishi’s whole demeanor stiffens. His eyes widen. Eli and Hajime laugh as Rishi holds his hands out in front of him as if to protect himself. Eli pushes him into the elevator anyways.
“Don’t make me go back,” Rishi says. “I can’t do it anymore dude. I’m gonna die. Let’s just go get food or something.”
“I could eat,” Eli muses. Rishi slumps against the wall of the elevator in obvious relief. “But I have work to do after.”
“Oh god,” Rishi says. “Just one hour max, dude, please.”
Eli considers this. “I think I’ll need at least two.”
Hajime laughs as Rishi bargains, with a comparable desperation to a man bargaining for his life. His phone buzzes in his pocket.
Tooru: <3
Hajime: <3
Eli and Rishi have gone slightly ahead, Eli pushing Rishi down the walkway by his shoulders. They look back at him as he’s sending his reply and wave him on. Rishi runs back to link his arm with Hajime’s, pulling him bodily ahead as a solid barrier between him and Eli, and Hajime laughs and laughs.
His phone buzzes again—Oikawa liking the message immediately, like he’s staring at his phone watching the contact photo fade the same as Hajime, from nearly 6000 miles away.
It’s a little harder to be homesick the rest of the night.