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The moment Hajime sees Oikawa for the first time in ten years is rather anticlimactic.
He’s not sure what he expected to happen. Maybe the swell of music. Some tears; a stray one or two from himself, more than a few from Oikawa. Sometimes, he’d have entire daydreams of an airport reunion where they’d see each other from hundreds of metres away before their legs broke out into sprints, almost knocking down everyone in their way just to reach each other. He imagined no pause to catch a breath—just two bodies slamming into each other in relief, in something that could only be described as the feeling of finally.
Other times he imagined it would be something of a train wreck. This was a few years ago, when Hajime wasn’t sure if everything he felt for Oikawa was capable of waning and disappearing altogether with time and absence. He imagined feeling uncomfortable and tense, or they both would, with ten years and five or six thousand kilometres of distance between them and absolutely nothing to say. Maybe there would be too much resentment and guilt or just the leftover residuals of it, no longer painful but the scars lingering somewhere under their clothes; a constant reminder that it existed and created a rift between them.
At the peak of his loneliness, somewhere around the third year of not seeing Oikawa and missed calls and conversations that always tapered off, Hajime spent almost all of his time willing it to go away. In the middle of the night, unable to find sleep and looking through years of memories in his phone. At frat parties, inebriated to the point of slurring words and sharing cigarettes and losing his shirt and hitting the dougie in the crowded room with forty other college students all drunk off their faces. In beds and in stairwells and against his dorm door with classmates and strangers and friends, sloppily making out or on his knees or throwing his hips into the person bent over for him. In the silence afterwards, drenched in sweat or barely out of breath from the lack of effort—he wished.
Hajime wished, almost desperately, for the moment he could move on but of course it never came.
The love stayed. Sometimes it could be forgotten when a million other things piled on top of it, but it never faltered and it stayed as strong as it had been the years they saw each other every single day. Hajime had come to accept it, to live with it.
So when the top of Oikawa’s head came into view, peeking out from the other bodies coming through the arrivals gate before it finally turned in his direction with a double take, and that same boyish smile Hajime knew so well greeted him, his heart swelled in his chest but it wasn’t unanticipated. He didn’t feel overwhelmed by happiness, by anger, by nostalgia.
When Oikawa finally reached him, his banged up suitcase rolling noisily behind, Hajime’s own grin spreading across his face as they reached for each other to meet in a solid embrace, it hadn’t been awkward or earth-shattering. As his left cheek squished against Oikawa’s right, the longer hairs behind his ear tickling Hajime’s nose and Oikawa’s wide hand splayed across his shoulder blades, it felt a little more like something clicking back into place.
It was anticlimactic, because it felt like how things should’ve been all this time instead.
The mistletoe Matsukawa made him hang as a joke a week before is starting to look terribly tacky and glaringly obvious, but he has no way to inconspicuously take it down without Oikawa noticing so he leaves it and hopes they don’t go out onto the balcony any time soon.
“Looks different in person,” Oikawa hums, leaving his suitcase by the entryway to poke his head around the (in Hajime’s opinion) cozy 2LDK quarters. The second room has a spare futon laid out, but it’s also used to store all of the things he brought over from his childhood home, including random trophies and loose volleyball merchandise and photos of their little squad from back in the days. From the kitchen Hajime can’t see what expression Oikawa has on his face when he peers into the room, but he lingers and his hand drags along the door jamb when he leaves it.
Hajime pulls out two chilled cans from the fridge and holds one out. “Different how?”
Oikawa accepts the drink, lithe fingers wrapping around the can. “Bigger, I guess. Hard to see what else there is when Iwa-chan only ever sits at the counter when we talk.”
They’ve been better about their calls in the last few years, even when the only times their schedules line up is when Hajime’s sitting down to have dinner and Oikawa’s getting ready to leave for his morning run before practice. Their chats usually last half an hour, sometimes a full hour if Oikawa’s practice starts late, so Hajime never has to move to a secondary location during the call.
He explains as much to Oikawa, who waves a hand as if to say excuses, excuses. Their drinks open with a crack and a fizz that fills the whole room, and the taste of the beer is pleasant and familiar on Hajime’s tongue. “I like it, though. Suits you,” Oikawa says, bringing the can to his lips.
Hajime tries to not watch the bobbing motion of Oikawa’s throat with each gulp. “Thanks,” he says. “How’s Argentina?”
He meant to say how’s your place in Argentina, because asking something so broad feels like opening up a can of worms. Even though it’s a topic that’s mentioned passing over the phone, the weight of the question feels heavier asked in person. Before he can correct himself, Oikawa’s nails are tapping the counter rhythmically as he considers his response with a thoughtful hum.
“I don’t know how to describe it. The energy is so different to anything I’ve ever experienced here. Sometimes it still surprises me even after ten years,” he says and Hajime nods. He pushes off the counter before he continues, pacing in small strides around the apartment. “But it’s good. The food is good. It’s always like a party, or stepping into a lively bar everywhere you go. Everyone you meet there is so open and friendly. My neighbours are over so often that it feels like living with my family again. With the amount of food they drop off, it’s like they’re trying to sabotage my career.”
“Like you’d let anything like that happen. You’re probably working yourself twice as hard to make up for it, dumbass.”
Oikawa gives a fond chuckle. “Maybe. No one’s lecturing or head-butting me about it though.”
“It’s called looking out for you. With all those friendly people over there, surely someone’s doing the same because I know you never learn.” Hajime grumbles, taking another swig from his drink.
There’s a soft noise of affirmation in reply. “There’s a few of them, my neighbours included. My coach, of course. Teammates. But even with all those people fussing over me, it gets…” The pacing comes to a stop in front of a framed picture Hajime has on his wall, one taken at the beginning of their first year. Oikawa, Hanamaki, Matsukawa and himself were much closer in height back then, before the other three hit their growth spurts. They were just kids. His fingers drag absently over the glass, almost wistfully. “Lonely at times, you know?”
Hajime knows. He knows better than most just how isolating moving away from home to live in a country you know nothing about the language, let alone the culture and everything else can be. Trying not to cry himself to sleep those first few months was a battle he lost frequently.
“It’s strange, being around all those people and still feeling isolated. It’s like something’s missing, but I never know what,” Oikawa says with a shrug. “It is good. But it’s also good to be back. To be home.”
Whether he means Japan as a whole or here, with Hajime, isn’t elaborated on. It doesn’t matter—knowing Oikawa still feels as strongly about being back is enough to settle something inside Hajime he hadn’t known had been there. “It’s good to have you back,” is what he lands on responding with.
“Helps that I get to stay in such refined, luxurious quarters,” Oikawa jokes, arms spread wide as if he’s in a palace and not already almost touching the other wall with his fingertips. “You spoil me, Iwa-chan!”
Hajime raises an eyebrow. “You’re always welcome to stay at a hotel,” he quips without heat and without meaning it. His own mother would never forgive him for the lack of hospitality.
“And miss out on this amazing view?”
By the time Hajime hears the lock on the sliding door click, he knows it’s too late.
“It’s nice out here. My balcony’s probably the same si—” The sentence cuts off abruptly, and Hajime knows without seeing his face that he’s already seen it. He watches the way Oikawa’s head twists upwards, cocking to the side in a double-take before a burst of laughter escapes him. He turns around with a delighted expression, a hand gesturing up to the sad-looking leaves hanging from the ceiling. “What’s this?”
Hajime feels himself grinning despite the mortification of being caught, stepping past the threshold too to stand beside the other. “You can blame Matsukawa for that one.”
Oikawa laughs again, unabashed and genuine. “Oh, I’m sure. Once a poor liar, always a poor liar,” he teases.
Hajime’s about to protest a little petulantly in response when all of a sudden, Oikawa dips his head and leans in, his face just a breath away from Hajime’s. His eyes almost look like they’re sparkling in the low light. “I bet Iwa-chan put it there on purpose.”
Hajime’s breath catches in his throat at the unexpected proximity. Words surface in his brain but no sentences form, no coherent thoughts coming to him as he looks down his nose at Oikawa’s mouth, the soft line of his upper lip almost touching his own.
And for the briefest of moments, he sees it playing out like this.
Oikawa, with all his charm and the breezy plastic exterior he hasn’t learned to let go of yet, flashes his dazzling smile. Hajime sees the puff of fog from his laugh before he feels it against his face, filling the growing space between their mouths as Oikawa pulls back. Far enough that they’re leaning side by side on the rail again. Far enough to be friendly and nothing else.
“Iwa-chan,” he’ll say. “Keep that up and I might think you have feelings for me,” he’ll tease.
Then, because Hajime isn’t brave enough to say of course I do, he’ll say, “Shut up, Shittykawa. Not everyone in the world is your fan.”
Maybe Oikawa would poke his tongue out, the same person Hajime’s known him to be for the last thirty years, and maybe Hajime would pull him into a headlock just to mess up his hair, just to feel like the years aren’t slipping away from them—that ten years without being in the same room haven’t lapsed between them already.
Instead.
Instead, Oikawa’s eyes soften and somewhere inside Hajime, it’s new because he’s understanding the look for the first time. But it’s familiar, because even when he didn’t understand it, Oikawa had been looking at him like that from the very beginning.
The tenderness lying beneath the weight of his gaze. Something different to the sharp, committed edge reserved for the love of the career he’s been building his entire life, but just as intense—just as important to him. Not unlike a novel Hajime once read back in California of a man with outstretched fingers towards a green light, reaching and reaching for something out of instinct, out of desire and yearning that had lasted a lifetime.
His eyes, the same ones that Hajime has always found sanctuary in, house a thirty-year unasked question that finally finds its way to Oikawa’s tongue.
“Hey, Iwa-chan,” he says, real and deliberate and not pulling away. Their lips brush against each other as his mouth moves around Hajime’s name, the contact sparking pinpricks of electricity underneath his skin.
Ask, Hajime thinks. He channels it through his veins, the urgency making itself known through his body moving closer, his face angling upwards but not yet daring to close the gap. Ask me.
Oikawa’s voice is low and soft, a secret for only Hajime to hear. He asks, “Does this mean I can kiss you?”
Hajime’s not sure if the word yes actually leaves his lips but it doesn’t matter, when the next thing he feels is Oikawa’s hands coming up to cradle the back of his neck, his own hands finding themselves clenched in the fabric of Oikawa’s sweater to pull him in.
It’s just a moment, really. A moment where all the years he’s loved Oikawa flash by him as the inch closes between their lips—growing up together, scraped knees and the infinite freedom that came with running as fast as they could down the street. Of meals shared at each other’s homes, feet warmed under kotatsus and two growing boys squeezing onto a single bed together. Of volleyball, so much volleyball; all the losses and all the wins together, of all the years played apart and on opposite sides of the world. The lonely years in between where Hajime realised too late that things could’ve been different, less alone.
And just before that, the night that Hajime told Oikawa that nothing would ever change him being the best setter he’d ever known and meaning it more than anything he’d ever said out loud in his life.
Aside from the next words that leave his mouth now, after they finally part for a breath, he supposes.
“Oikawa,” Hajime says, then thinks that’s not right. Not right now.
He swallows. “Tooru,” he tries, and it feels better. Feels right. “I missed you.”
I know I was the something that had been missing all along. I know, because it’s always been you for me.
The smile that Oikawa gives him is brighter than all the lights across the world combined.
“I know,” he says, capturing Hajime’s lips for another kiss that warms up his entire body despite the snow falling just past the ledge. “But you don’t have to miss me ever again.”