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i.
Hajime rings the doorbell and does his best to hide the large jar he’s holding behind his back. A few seconds later, the door opens and a small, fluffy head pokes out. Tooru’s face breaks into a wide grin. “Iwa-chan!”
“Tooru, look what I caught!” Hajime replies excitedly, pulling the jar out from behind his back and presenting it to him proudly.
Fluttering around inside the jar is a butterfly, the dark black base of its wings a stark contrast against the bright turquoise color that streaks through and dots the edges. Tooru audibly gasps as he leans in closer, eyes wide and nose almost touching the glass of the jar as he stares in awe.
“I worked so hard to catch it!” Hajime says proudly. “I was hunting this really cool beetle, but then this butterfly flew right in front of my face and I knew I had to catch it! So I started chasing it…” He recounts the epic story of his butterfly capture while Tooru continues to stare at the insect in question like it’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.
“Tooru?” Hajime had finished the story a good minute ago and Tooru has yet to say anything, which is decidedly unusual. Tooru’s head snaps up at the sound of his name, and when he makes eye contact with Hajime, he looks like Hajime has just shown him the secrets of the universe.
“It’s so beautiful, Iwa-chan,” Tooru says reverently, looking back down at the jar. “Are you going to keep it? Oh, you have to!”
Hajime looks at Tooru, then down at the butterfly in the jar, and it really isn’t a hard decision. “Nah, I want you to have it,” he replies, extending his arms and holding the jar out to Tooru.
Tooru’s eyes widen in shock. “I-Iwa-chan! You worked really hard and—”
“And you like it way more than me, so you should have it,” Hajime replies stubbornly, placing the jar in Tooru’s hands. “I like beetles better, anyway.” Tooru actually looks like he might cry, so Hajime crosses his arms and adds, “Besides, you suck at catching bugs so at least you can have one now.”
Tooru laughs in a way that probably means he sees right through Hajime, but at least he doesn’t seem like he’s on the verge of tears anymore.
When Tooru pulls a jar out of his backpack at school the next day, Hajime can’t stop his jaw from dropping open.
“Stupid Tooru!” he hisses, “why did you bring that to school?! You’re gonna get in trouble!”
“I don’t care!” Tooru replies, holding the jar to his chest stubbornly. “Iwa-chan gave me a beautiful butterfly and I’ll bring it to school if I want to.”
The butterfly gets a lot of attention from the girls, but Hajime notices some of the boys snickering behind their hands and he glares at them as menacingly as he can. The teacher does, in fact, yell at Tooru for bringing something so distracting into the classroom, but when Tooru actually starts crying when she tells him to go release it outside, she sighs and tells him to just keep it out of sight under his desk.
Recess sees Tooru recounting the story Hajime had told him (oh, so he had been listening), but as it gets more and more ridiculous each time Tooru tells it, Hajime rolls his eyes and wanders off to play kickball with some of the other kids who are starting up a game. Recess ends way too quickly after that—Hajime’s team is only one point ahead, he had wanted to do better than that—and the students reluctantly filter back into the classroom with wistful glances at the beautiful weather they’re leaving behind.
Hajime, however, is more preoccupied with the empty seat next to him that remains empty even when the teacher starts talking. His eyes keep darting towards the door, waiting for Tooru to come back from whatever he’s doing, but after a while it becomes clear that he isn’t coming.
“Excuse me, sensei, I have to go to the bathroom,” Hajime says hurriedly, jumping up out of his seat without waiting for a response and running out the door.
He finds Tooru outside behind the school building, looking about as broken as the glass jar that lays in pieces at his feet.
“What happened?” Hajime asks angrily, kneeling down next to him to inspect the gash on his ankle.
Tooru’s head snaps up and he looks panicked. “Iwa-chan!” he whimpers. “Iwa-chan, I’m so sorry! I’m so so sorry, I know you worked really hard to catch that butterfly and then you gave it to me and I—”
“I’m not upset about the butterfly, stupid,” Hajime cuts him off, “I’m worried about you hurting yourself.” He frowns as he examines the wound. “Why didn’t you go to the nurse?”
“I’m sorry,” Tooru whispers. “I couldn’t stop them from taking it from me and—”
Suddenly the blood flowing from Tooru’s leg isn’t the only reason Hajime is seeing red. “What? ” he spits, turning to look at his best friend’s crumpled face. “Who? Someone did this to you?”
“It—it was just some boys from class—I’m sorry, Iwa-chan,” he sniffles. “You would’ve been strong enough to stop them, but I couldn’t, and your butterfly—”
“Shut up, Tooru, I don’t care about the stupid butterfly,” Hajime says, grabbing Tooru’s wrist and throwing his arm around his shoulders after he pulls him to his feet. “You need to go to the nurse, come on.”
Hajime stands next to Tooru as the nurse cleans and bandages his ankle, hands balled into fists, as angry at himself as he is at the boys who had done this. I knew they were teasing him, and I just left him—
“Iwa-chan?” Hajime looks up and sees that Tooru is standing in front of him. He’s stopped crying, but he still looks incredibly fragile as he asks his next question. “Are you mad at me?”
“Stupid Tooru,” Hajime huffs. “Of course I’m not mad at you.” He looks down at his feet. “I’m sorry about your butterfly. I’ll catch you an even prettier one next time, okay?”
A tentative smile creeps across Tooru’s face. “Okay, Iwa-chan.”
They walk home holding hands. If some of the boys at the back of the class start screaming the next day because they find worms and beetles in their backpacks… Well. Hajime doesn’t know anything about that.
ii.
“Stupid Oikawa,” Hajime mutters under his breath as his friend’s phone goes straight to voicemail for the third time in a row after being silenced once (really, Oikawa? ). He’s been waiting at Kitagawa Daiichi’s school gate for ten minutes now and his patience is wearing out. Hajime shoves his phone back in his pocket as he stalks off to drag Oikawa away from…whatever he’s doing that’s more important than finally getting some food after a grueling practice at the end of a long week.
When he opens the door to the locker room, he’s met with the sound of water running from the tap. “Oikawa?” he calls. He rounds the corner to find Oikawa bent over the sink with his hands covering his face. Hajime frowns. “What are you doing?”
“Iwa-chan!” Oikawa squeaks, using that stupid nickname that he’s never dropped and Hajime, for some reason, has never asked him to. “What are you doing here?”
“I’ve been waiting for you at the gate for like ten minutes, idiot, and I called you four times,” Hajime informs him, annoyed. “What are you doing?”
“Oh, Iwa-chan, you don’t have to worry about me!” Oikawa laughs without moving. His voice is slightly muffled by his hands. “You should just go ahead without me, you must be starving.”
Hajime’s frown deepens as he walks forward to stand next to Oikawa. “What’s wrong?” he asks, wrapping his fingers around Oikawa’s wrist to pull his hand away from his face.
“Iwa-chan, no!” Oikawa cries, jerking back and stumbling against the wall. His hands remain pressed stubbornly against his face.
“Oikawa, are you crying?” Hajime asks incredulously.
“Yes!” Oikawa says. “Yes, I’m just crying over something stupid, so you should probably just go so you don’t have to deal with me.”
Hajime rolls his eyes. “I’m used to it by now, I think I can—” He grabs Oikawa’s wrists, and Oikawa’s voice breaks as he begs, “Iwa-chan, please,” but it’s too late and Hajime is staring at Oikawa’s red-rimmed eyes and defeated expression—at the bruise on his cheek and the smudged writing on his forehead.
Oikawa has clearly been trying to wash it off, but Hajime can still read it.
Okama. [1]
“It’s not—it’s nothing, Iwa-chan, they were just making assumptions, I’m not—”
“As if I’d care about something like that,” Hajime growls as he grabs his towel out of his bag and starts scrubbing furiously at Oikawa’s forehead.
“I don’t—ow, Iwa-chan, that hurts—ow—Iwa-chan!” Oikawa grabs Hajime’s wrist, forcing him to stop his efforts, and looks him in the eyes. “Do you…” He swallows. “Do you really mean that?”
Hajime’s eyes soften. “Of course I do,” he replies, returning to wiping Oikawa’s forehead more gently. He looks up and focuses on making those terrible, awful black marks go away. “You don’t always have to do everything alone,” he adds softly.
The silence into which they settle is one of comfortable understanding. They don’t leave the locker room until Oikawa’s forehead is raw and red, but clean, and Hajime makes Oikawa run his own towel under cold water and hold it against his cheek. He’ll have to get a new towel of his own, but it’s just as well; given the reason it’s ruined, Hajime just wants to burn it. He also has a sneaking feeling that Oikawa will need a new phone—he’s pretty sure, now, that Oikawa hadn’t silenced his call. Shit. I should’ve checked on him sooner. Hajime drops Oikawa off and throws his bag at the wall when he gets home.
The confession letter that appears in Oikawa’s locker next week, from a girl that Hajime knows likes Oikawa… Well, he doesn’t know anything about that. He pretends not to know how much it hurts to encourage him to accept her confession, but he does notice the grateful look Oikawa throws him as he leaves the classroom to find a girl who probably won’t make him happy. But she will protect him, in a way that Hajime can’t, and he doesn’t even try to deny how painful that is.
iii.
Hajime squints at Oikawa, who’s walking next to him on their way to morning practice. “Are you limping?”
Oikawa jumps in surprise, but recovers quickly. “Oh, you noticed?” he asks lightly. “I think I just bruised my ankle a little bit, it’s no big deal.”
Hajime narrows his eyes even further. “Yeah, okay, well, you’re sitting out of practice today,” he says firmly.
“Iwa-chan, I’m fine!” Oikawa protests. “You’re really gonna make me miss practice for an itty bitty bruise?”
“Yes,” Hajime replies without hesitation. “I want you to ice your ankle while you sit out, too.”
Oikawa sniffs. “Iwa-chan is just jealous of the attention I get during practice and wants it all to himself.” That earns him a slap to the back of the head. “Ow, Iwa-chan! You think I’m an invalid and yet you’re hitting me?!”
“You’re not an invalid, Shittykawa.” Hajime glares at him. “Just take care of your damn body, okay?”
“Fine, fine,” Oikawa grumbles, but that doesn’t stop him from trying to join in on running laps until Hajime shoves an ice pack in his face and forcibly sits him down on a bench with an aside to Mizoguchi about what’s wrong with his ankle.
Oikawa is in a sour mood for the rest of the day. Hajime buys him an extra milk bread at lunch to try to make up for it, but he isn’t very sympathetic.
“It was one practice, Oikawa,” he says exasperatedly. “Would you rather skip one practice and be able to play for the rest of the season, or play that one practice and do something like twist your ankle because it can’t support you properly and miss a bunch of practices after that?”
Oikawa shifts uncomfortably and mumbles something unintelligible into his milk bread. Hajime rolls his eyes and turns back to his own lunch. “I’ll walk you home after school.”
Oikawa looks up in surprise. “But Iwa-chan, what about practice?”
Hajime shrugs. “It’s just one practice. We can go home and watch one of your stupid alien movies so you don’t do something stupid like obsess over missing one practice, or worse, actually go to it.”
Oikawa sighs, but Hajime can see that he’s actually smiling. “Okay.”
Hajime is just getting ready to go to bed when his phone rings. He doesn’t even look at the number before he answers it.
“What the hell do you want, Shittykawa? Do you know what time it is?”
“I’m sorry, Iwa-chan.” Hajime freezes. Oikawa’s voice is small and wrong and…echo-y?
“Where are you?”
Oikawa laughs nervously. “About that—”
Hajime’s eyes widen. “You’re at the gym, aren’t you,” he says, and it isn’t a question. He’s already throwing on a jacket and heading towards his front door. “Seriously, Oikawa? What the hell were you thinking?”
There’s a silence for longer than Hajime is comfortable with. “You’re coming to get me, right, Iwa-chan?”
Hajime’s chest tightens and he feels like all of his breath has been knocked out of him. “I’ll be right there,” he promises.
He reaches the gym in record time.
And there, sitting on the floor in the corner of the court, is Oikawa. Hajime stomps over to him and kneels on the ground more forcefully than is strictly necessary. “Why do you have to do this to yourself?” he asks as he wraps a hand around Oikawa’s right calf and pulls it forward to ease off his shoe. But his hand doesn’t even make it to Oikawa’s foot before he cries out in pain.
Hajime freezes. “Oikawa…?”
He turns uncertainly to look at his friend, but Oikawa is looking anywhere but at Hajime, not saying anything. “I—” Hajime starts hesitantly. “I’m going to take off your shoes and socks so I can look at your ankle, okay?”
He’s untying the shoelaces when Oikawa finally speaks. “It’s not my ankle.”
Hajime turns his face slowly upward. “What?”
Oikawa takes a deep, shaky breath. “It’s not…my ankle,” he says weakly.
“It’s my knee.”
There’s a moment it takes for Oikawa’s words in to sink in and then Hajime feels like bursting into tears. As it is, he can feel his eyes welling up and he falls back onto his haunches, staring at Oikawa’s knee and knowing, too late, what he should have known for a long time.
“How long?”
Oikawa finally looks at him and has the audacity to feign confusion. “What do you mean?”
“How fucking long, Oikawa?” Hajime growls. He doesn’t have time for this right now.
Oikawa looks back up at the ceiling. “Three months,” he breathes.
He starts in shock when Hajime punches the floor. “God damn it!” he yells, and he hates the way Oikawa shrinks back at his outburst. When he looks at Oikawa, there’s no anger, or frustration, or anything but hurt on his face.
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
Oikawa finally starts tearing up. “It—it started right before Interhigh and I couldn’t—I couldn’t miss it, Iwa-chan. You would have made me sit out. I couldn’t do that.” He takes a shaky breath. “And then, I thought, you know, I made it through the tournament fine, right, so it shouldn’t be a problem! I didn’t…I don’t want to stop playing volleyball…”
Hajime presses the palms of his hands to his eyes before finally standing up. “Can you stand?” he asks Oikawa, extending a hand to help him up.
Oikawa’s only response is to look up at him with a very scared look on his face. Hajime feels like crying again. Instead, he leans over and maneuvers Oikawa onto his back. He carries him back to Oikawa’s house, where his mother moves faster than Hajime’s ever seen her move. Hajime sits with Oikawa in the back of the car on the way to the hospital.
He sits next to Oikawa’s bed as the doctor explains his prognosis. Patellar tendinosis. Can’t return to regular activities for four to six months. Wear a brace—even after recovery. Oikawa nods like he’s hearing the words, but his gaze is empty.
Hajime blames himself.
He knows it’s Oikawa’s fault. But of course Oikawa was going to act like an injury was no big deal, so is it really? It’s always been Hajime’s job to keep an eye on him, to see through his bullshit, and Hajime has failed. Completely and utterly failed, and now all he can do is watch as the doctor gives him a brace, prescribes him physical therapy, shows him how to use the crutches that he’ll be on for the next two to four weeks.
The car ride home is strained. Oikawa’s mother tries to be optimistic and cheer him up, but neither of the boys really hears her words. When they arrive back at the Oikawa household, it’s an unspoken agreement that Hajime will stay the night. Oikawa’s mother murmurs a quiet thank you to Hajime as he follows Oikawa to his room. He feels like he’s going to be sick. I don’t deserve your thanks.
The worst part, Hajime knows, is that Oikawa will forgive him. That Oikawa won’t even blame him in the first place.
He apologizes anyway.
Oikawa looks at him and the haze that has settled on his face slowly clears and becomes an expression of surprise. “What for?” he asks.
Hajime stares at the ceiling. “For not knowing.”
Oikawa smiles a smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “Iwa-chan’s always so hard on himself.”
Hajime snorts. “Look who’s talking.”
They both skip school the next day. They had stayed up so late that it’s not really feasible anyway. Hajime stays at Oikawa’s house for the whole day, and if he’s extra nice to Oikawa...
It’s definitely on purpose.
iv.
Hajime hears it, but he can’t believe it. The sound of leather hitting wood that can’t be real, it can’t, because that means…
He turns around slowly and sees Oikawa. Sees Oikawa dropped low in a receive position, sees his arms outstretched.
Sees the ball sitting on the floor behind him.
Hajime’s shoulders sag as the weight of reality hits him. They lost.
They lost, to Karasuno of all people, to Kageyama, and they don’t even get a chance to take down Shiratorizawa. It was their last year, their last bid, and now they can’t even try.
It’s so unfair that Hajime thinks that fate must really, personally hate him.
As they bow in closing greetings, Hajime replays the last rally in his head over and over, and he comes to a single conclusion.
I don’t deserve the title of ace.
As the coach gives them their post-loss pep talk, Hajime keeps replaying all the points he missed that match—especially that last play. That last spike. That last toss by Oikawa, which he damn well injured himself to make, set perfectly for Hajime to make the spike that would keep them alive, keep the match going, so that they could stay on the court just a little longer. Despite Hajime’s best efforts, the tears start to flow.
How can I be the ace when I couldn’t even make that?!
But a strong, affirming, familiar slap on the back grounds him. Oikawa. Hajime lets the others give their own reassuring pats, taking the time to gather himself together before joining the team to thank their fans for their support. Hajime needs to be stronger than this, for the team, and most importantly, for Oikawa. Oikawa deserves better than having to be strong for Hajime, because Hajime isn’t the one who’s going to be hurting the most from this. He’s not the one who spent hours working, overworking, in order to get better; he’s not the one who injured his knee in his overzealous dedication to beat Shiratorizawa, to be the best.
Hajime throws himself into his vice captain role as he makes sure everything (and everyone) gets loaded on the bus. Of course Oikawa is the last one they’re waiting on, so Hajime goes in to look for him.
He freezes when he sees him standing across the hall from Ushijima Wakatoshi and boils when he hears the words coming out of Ushijima’s mouth. You chose the wrong path.
Hajime is ready to storm out there and give Ushijima a piece of his mind, but he relaxes when he sees how Oikawa is handling it. Of course, he’s got this. Instead, he goes back outside and leans against the wall to wait for him.
Oikawa gives him a small smile when he sees him. Hajime pushes off the wall with a grunt. “Did you punch him?”
Oikawa laughs. “Iwa-chan is such a brute,” he jokes lightly. His façade doesn’t fool Hajime for a minute.
Oikawa makes it through the bus ride. He makes it through his last speech as captain. He makes it through the walk home, Hajime doing the best he can to bolster him with promises of the future. His bravery is so commendable that even Hajime almost believes it.
Almost.
The floodgates come late at night, when exhaustion overwhelms his defenses, when there’s no one left to pretend for because it’s just the two of them and Hajime has never been on the other side of his walls anyway. Hajime holds him tight as tears fall onto his shoulder, and if Oikawa feels tears against his own hair… Well. Hajime doesn’t know anything about that.
v.
Hajime doesn’t remember exactly when it started, all he knows is that he’s used to it now. He’s used to being woken in the middle of the night by Oikawa’s screams, used to lifting his covers and embracing the shaking body that climbs into his bed and is gone by the time he wakes up in the morning.
Oikawa doesn’t tell him what the nightmares are about; whether he can’t or he won’t, Hajime doesn’t know, but he doesn’t push. Oikawa insists that Hajime is helping, but he sees the dark bags under Oikawa’s eyes, hears the exhaustion in his voice when he insists that “Iwa-chan worries too much, I’m fine!”, feels the wetness of his pillow when Oikawa has left the bed to deal with his worries on his own.
Hajime hates it, but he’s known Oikawa for his entire life, and if he seems like he’s resigned himself to being helpless… Well.
Hajime is long familiar with the fact that he can’t keep Oikawa safe inside his own head.
fin.
Hajime comes home to find Oikawa standing on the balcony, a slight breeze ruffling his hair and his head buried in his hands. Hajime throws his bag on the floor and walks over to join Oikawa in leaning against the railing.
“What’s wrong?” he asks, startling Oikawa into looking up from the palms of his hands. He looks panicked, maybe even guilty, at being caught in whatever this mood is.
“Ah…it’s nothing,” he lies, turning to look back at the horizon.
Hajime snorts. “Right,” he says, “well, let me know when you’re ready to talk about it.”
Oikawa doesn’t say anything. Hajime studies him; he almost never sees Oikawa this undone, even at home. He frowns. “Is it volleyball?”
“No.”
“Your family?”
“No.”
“Is it a boy?”
“No!” Oikawa answers too fast and too high and Hajime knows he’s hit on the problem.
Hajime crosses his arms and turns so his back is against the railing. “Who is it?” he asks casually.
“No one you know.”
Hajime raises an eyebrow. “Really? You like someone I don’t know?” he asks skeptically. “I would think you would be talking about him all the time, at least.”
Oikawa flushes pink. “You don’t know everything about me, Iwa-chan.”
“Thank god,” Hajime mutters under his breath.
“Hey!” Oikawa pouts, but it’s very half-hearted. Hajime frowns.
“Seriously, is everything okay?” he asks. “Did someone hurt you?” Oikawa flinches. “Because, shit, if they did I’ll—”
“You can’t protect me forever, Iwa-chan!” Oikawa snaps.
Hajime stares at Oikawa in shock. Oikawa’s ducked his head, looking at the floor away from Hajime, and they stay like that for a while until Hajime finally scowls and grabs Oikawa’s shoulder. “Hey,” he says, turning Oikawa and forcing him to face him, “you’re wrong.” Oikawa opens his mouth to argue, but Hajime cuts him off. “I may not be able to always protect you, not every time, as much as I hate that. Hey.” Hajime makes sure that Oikawa is looking at him as he stares fiercely into his eyes. “Maybe I can’t always protect you, but like hell will anyone stop me from being here forever to try.”
Oikawa’s jaw drops open and it would be comical if it didn’t also look like he was on the edge of tears. “Iwa-chan…”
Hajime pulls him into a hug. “So do I have to kill anyone?” he asks, only half joking.
“Not unless you wanna kill yourself,” Oikawa mutters into his shirt.
Hajime furrows his eyebrows in confusion and pulls Oikawa back so he can look at him. “What?”
“I meant, nothing, I just—” Oikawa laughs nervously. “You hit me pretty much every day, Iwa-chan, so if you want to go after people who hurt me I figured you were a good place to start—”
“Oikawa,” Hajime interrupts firmly, staring at him with wide eyes. “Do you…like me?”
Oikawa looks like he’s about to cry. “Maybe.”
“And you…think I don’t like you back,” Hajime says incredulously.
“No? Of course not?” Oikawa laughs again and Hajime hates the way it sounds. “I mean, of course I don’t think that, that would be stupid, I’m st—”
Hajime, thankfully, doesn’t have to hear what else Oikawa is going to say because he cuts him off with a kiss. Oikawa makes a surprised noise against his mouth and stiffens for a long moment before throwing his arms around Hajime and kissing him back and, oh, Hajime had never imagined that kissing someone could be like this .
When Oikawa pulls back, he’s definitely crying, and Hajime thinks he’s never looked more beautiful. “Iwa-chan…”
“Tooru,” Hajime says, cupping his face in his hands. Tooru’s breath catches in his throat.
“Hajime,” he breathes, and then they’re kissing again, and even if Tooru is the densest person on earth and has only just discovered that Hajime is in love with him…
Well.
Hajime has known about that forever.