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It starts small.
Hajime is four when he meets Tooru. He’s four when he rakes his eyes over the skinny little boy with mousy brown hair and milk chocolate eyes. He’s four when he spots the little aliens emblazoned over the boy’s shirt.
“Who are you?” Hajime asks, peering down at the boy. “Mama told me we’re friends now.”
“My name is Oikawa Tooru!” the boy chirps. He waves around a square of cloth that Hajime assumes is his baby blanket. “I’m four and I like aliens.”
Obviously, Hajime thinks as he looks over Tooru in his alien-patterned shirt. “I’m Iwaizumi Hajime,” he replies. “Come with me. I’ll show you my room and then we can go butterfly hunting.” And when he holds out his hand to Tooru expectantly, when Tooru takes it as easily as breathing, a knot loosens in his chest like he had been waiting for it all along.
“Can we go alien hunting instead?” Tooru asks as they run up the stairs. “I wanna see the stars.”
Hajime rolls his eyes and opens the door to his room. “Sure,” he says, because it seemed easier than convincing Tooru that one, aliens weren’t real, and two, that even if they were, they wouldn’t let four year old boys find them nor would they bring them to space. “Well, we can go alien hunting after butterfly hunting.”
Tooru beams at him brightly, and Hajime likens it to laying underneath the sun by the way warmth thrums under his skin, just from it.
That night, after a long, hard afternoon of work, Hajime thinks about how Tooru wants to see the stars and files it away in a small corner in his mind that he labels “for Tooru only”, and keeps it there. The fireflies that he and Tooru caught buzz in the jar by the window. Tomorrow, he’ll give them to Tooru to keep.
One day, he thinks, he’ll give him the stars, too.
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The bell rings at the start of class on their first day of middle school, and Hajime— Iwaizumi, now that he was in grade school— slides into the seat next to Tooru. Oikawa. Oikawa when they were at school.
“Morning,” he says softly as he prods Oikawa awake. “You’re going to get in trouble if you don’t make yourself presentable for the teacher.”
Oikawa yawns. “Aww, do you care about my well being, Iwa-chan?” He yelps as he avoids a light smack delivered to his head. “You’re so mean to me,” Oikawa whines.
Iwaizumi just shrugs and sits back in his seat, thinking.
He and Oikawa would need to go to the clubs fair that afternoon and find the volleyball club. Oikawa’s been obsessed with volleyball for years now, and honestly, Iwaizumi understands. Volleyball is fun. Hitting the ball, feeling the sting of his skin after it is fun. Winning with Oikawa is fun.
He looks at his best friend— because that’s what they are, what they have been since that first day— and sees the way the light glows around his hair. For a moment, Oikawa is haloed by sunlight and Iwaizumi will have this image seared into his mind for years to come. This is the moment he remembers later, when people tell him why they like like his best friend, when they ask him to understand their point of view. Like this, Oikawa is ethereal.
Iwaizumi thinks about the way he hears about love in fairytales, in the stories that his and Oikawa’s mom tell them before bed. The ones about how you get butterflies in your stomach when you like someone, where you’d die for them, live for them, change for them, all because you liked them. Because you loved them. Sometimes it’s because they’re beautiful, sometimes it’s because they’re smart. Sometimes there isn’t a reason.
He thinks about all of that. He looks at Oikawa, still bathed in sunlight like some elven prince lost in the human realm, and he thinks:
“Yeah, he’s going to get me one day.”
Oikawa ambushes him after class two months into their first year.
“Please, Iwa-chan,” Oikawa whines, pulling at Iwaizumi’s bag straps. “She’s so pretty. And she’s nice. Please help me ask her out. You’re the only one who can help.”
Iwaizumi snorts. “Somehow, I doubt that that’s true.”
Oikawa throws his arms up. “But what if she’s the one?” He fixes his hair for a moment before throwing himself back on Iwaizumi. “What if I miss my one chance at dating my future wife?”
“I don’t think that’s how it works,” Iwazumi replies, unconvinced. “Plus, I think we’re a little young to be thinking about marriage.”
“Please?” Oikawa hums as he latches onto Iwaizumi’s arm. “C’mon, you’re my best friend! Aren’t best friends supposed to support each other?” When he gets no reply, he sighs. “What if I buy you ice cream later?”
And lookie that, Iwaizumi changes his tune immediately. After Oikawa gets the girl, Iwaizumi gets a few less headaches. Oikawa forgets to treat him to ice cream, but he doesn’t really mind. He knows that he can force him to buy it later on, when they’re older.
Suddenly, though, he finds himself alone a lot more. He does have other friends outside of Oikawa, but not a lot. Everyone already has their designated friends, and lwaizumi just lost his to romance, of all things.
It’s during one sunny lunch period where Oikawa’s girlfriend, a nice girl by the name of Yuki, calls out for Oikawa by the classroom door, and Oikawa’s face lights up.
All at once, Iwaizumi thinks, crap, if I fall in love with him now, it’s going to hurt. Obviously, it would. He would hate to see someone he was in love with be in love with someone else. Anyone would.
Right now, though, he thinks that it’s enough to see him happy.
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As time goes on, things change. They change. It’s impossible not to, at this age. They grow up together, grow closer, grow apart. Oikawa’s list of ex girlfriends grow, and so does his list of ex boyfriends. Somewhere along the way, Iwaizumi makes a tally on all the confessions he was forced to help out with.
Whenever someone asks him about girls, or guys, or anything like that, Iwaizumi plays it off as gross. Says no. Says that all his years of wing manning for his best friend has turned him off to romance of any sort.
It’s easier to lie and say those things instead of what really goes through his mind whenever he thinks about dating, or marriage, or love. He can’t say what he really thinks, because ‘actually, I’m going to fall in love with Oikawa’ sounds pretty weird, if he does say so himself.
Look, at least he’s self-aware.
Oikawa is… Oikawa. Their third year of middle school rolls around, though, and suddenly, he’s a lot more Oikawa than Iwaizumi is prepared for.
They still play volleyball. They actually play a lot more. And they’re good. They win game after game after game, and Iwaizumi worries. Winning still feels good— would always feel good with Oikawa next to him— but he’s worried. Oikawa doesn’t walk home with him as often, citing ‘extra practice’. His skin is always warm when Iwaizumi finds him after these practices, his forearms, his hands, his fingertips.
When Iwaizumi finds out that he can pick up Oikawa easier than before, he takes it upon himself to make sure that Oikawa finishes his bento before he heads off to the gym to practice more. He forces him to have onigiri before afternoon practice. Forces him to sleep earlier by inviting himself over and going to sleep at a reasonable hour. Forces him to walk home together like old times.
Iwaizumi’s not in love with him, but he doesn’t need to be to want to take care of his best friend. Especially when his best friend was being a grade-A dumbass.
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By the time high school begins, Iwaizumi begins to get a little worried. Not too much, mind you— they are still only fifteen, still a bit young for all of that nonsense. At least, that’s what Iwaizumi tells himself. First year passes without a hitch. Second year is about the same, but their friends, Mattsun and Makki, they get together.
It’s a sweet confession, though quite uniquely them. For reasons he will never understand, it takes a cat, a tree, a pile of cream puffs, and the pocky game to get those two together. Iwaizumi’s happy for his friends, though.
Whenever he looks at them, he wonders. Wonders when his time with Oikawa will come, wonders when his love will break through and wreak havoc on his life. On his heart. On his stomach, maybe, with all those butterflies and whatnot.
Time passes. Slowly, for a bit, then quickly during interhigh— they lose to Shiratorizawa, again— and then slowly as exams grow closer.
Any day now, Iwaizumi thinks. He’s single. I’m single. We’re just about old enough, and maybe let’s do this before he sets off to Argentina and crushes the both of us? Please?
It doesn’t happen. Not in December, not in January, not in February, not in March. Iwaizumi waits for the click, for the spark, for something. He’s waiting for it. He wants to love Oikawa like he knows he will. He wants it now, so desperately he would crawl through hell. He wants to feel it, the ache of love, the sting, the butterflies. He wants it all, and he wants it with Oikawa. But it wasn’t coming.
Why wasn’t it coming? It should be here by now.
Oikawa lives life as normal, because of course he does. He doesn’t have a clue of the turmoil that goes through Iwaizumi’s head every night before they go to sleep. Their little sleepovers happen more often than not. Oikawa stops dating around. Iwaizumi stares at him a little too much. It’s all fine.
… It’s not fine.
Iwaizumi is tired of waiting. What if it never comes, hm? Well, he knows it'll happen as sure as he knows which direction the sun rises, but… well, sue him for being a bit impatient. They are on a bit of a time crunch here. He’d like to get a little bit of dating in before they have to go long distance.
Because Oikawa, like it or not, isn’t going to be Japanese for much longer. Iwaizumi doesn’t have the rest of his life to discover that he was in love with his best friend. He had until March of next year. Another month, maybe, before Oikawa leaves for Argentina and he’s in Los Angeles. It’s decided. It’s been decided for months now.
Iwaizumi wants his heart to know now. He wants it to decide, too. He wants it to tell him to kiss his best friend, to love him, to cherish him like his parents cherish each other, to take care of him in more ways than he already does. He wants all of that with Oikawa. Only him. He knows that he does.
So why doesn’t his heart know that?
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It happens at the start of their third year. One day, finally, one day, at the beginning of their third year, Oikawa laughs and leans in a little too close as he's teasing him, and Iwaizumi's heart does a heavy thump in his chest and he just goes:
Ah. There it is. I was waiting for you.
The butterflies. The sting. The spark. The ache. It’s like he unlocked a whole new colour palette to paint the world with, when this new love gets him. Oikawa is there again, as ethereal as he was when they were thirteen, as beautiful as the star-studded night sky he loves so much. Iwaizumi knows it. He loves him.
And so there, in that exact moment, when his heart had finally caught up with what his soul had known on the spot, he asks if Oikawa has any plans that evening, and asks him out.
And Oikawa has the audacity to be surprised.