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At 17 he caves on athletic trainer and in between making a Duolingo account for English leaning purposes and looking up American universities, he feels, fondly, and then acutely, the old ache of not being who he thought he’d be when he was 8, and then again at 14, and again at 17. Back then he thought, I belong here on court, thought, I’m good enough to go pro, thought, fervently, this is what I want.
The dream is still there, preserved in insect amber, close enough to touch. He reaches out and touches and feels sentimental, but not enough.
Still, he doesn’t remove the bookmarks for the 20 ways to improve your spiking form articles on his computer, he laces his shoes, he does his stretches. The axis of the world spins under his feet, and he braces for the disorientation, but it doesn’t hit, and he thinks it was always here. He was just looking the other way.
*
As all things go, love, love, wonderful love, is never excavated from his northbound heart and it’s better that way, because things change and at some point attachment becomes hesitance and Hajime saw it before, the trembling angles of Oikawa’s face morphing from incredulity, to misery, to desperation, and back. He won’t stay, but for Hajime he might, and it wouldn’t be what he wants. Oikawa grabbed his hand when he broke the news, but he doesn’t want to be someone Oikawa apologises to.
They know it’s there, and Hajime thinks that the knowing - eyecontactship, a cackling Hanamaki termed - will be enough. Asking Oikawa to give up volleyball for a friend he can always contact is the shitty end of a shittier draw, and what Hajime could be doesn’t hold a candle to how fundamental volleyball is to Oikawa. He’s been heading straight ahead for this since they were 8 with volleyball-beaten palms, plowing through better paved paths without a morsel of regret and eagerly dragging Hajime along, and Hajime liked it, he did, but now he knows how to discern between the things he wants and the things that were just side effects of loving Oikawa.
Hajime knows this iteration. The childhood best friend is a trope as old as the surety is deep, as the grief is disappointing - in its shallowness, not its depth. It’s not supposed to go like this, unspoken and unaddressed, but Hajime is learning, relearning, that they are all the things they aren’t supposed to be. He never imagined this would happen, and that’s okay.
Importance fluctuates, at 8 and then again at 14 and again at 17. He spent the past 17 years of his life stumbling to catch up with Oikawa, but he, after all, isn’t Oikawa. He’s Hajime.
Besides, he can’t ask Oikawa to stay when he’s leaving too.
*
At graduation he does cry, but he has Oikawa’s contact and distance can’t divide what has already been mutually given up. He drops a cup of fruit punch but it’s just baseless nerves. He almost trips over Matsukawa’s shoe but it’s because the music is so goddamn loud. He grips Oikawa’s shirt and honestly, he’s more disappointed about how he isn’t very disappointed. At some point the inevitability and irreversible nature of the parting dawned upon him and friendships are fickle, people are spaces to fill, and they have places to go, things to do.
Maki punches his shoulder. Hajime scowls. “What.”
“Keep in contact, all right?” He says, smiling easily. His windblown hair is sticking up, hot pink and curling over his ears. It’s grown longer because he doesn’t clip it above his ears for Nationals anymore, because Nationals are over.
Hajime claps him back, feeling jittery, feeling fine. Of course I will. Of course. Keep in contact too. You better.
*
The next day Oikawa calls him and asks for help packing. Hajime, who was in the midst of doing the same thing, surveys the disastrous pile of clothes heaped by the foot of his bed, considers the ridiculous amounts of packing that he needs to be doing, thinks very briefly about priorities, and then makes his way over.
*
“There’s a song, isn’t there?” Oikawa hums. He’s sitting on his suitcase to force it close. Although he called Hajime over, he did most of the packing himself and protested when Hajime tried to help, so Hajime spent the past two hours absently rereading his yellowing HunterxHunter volumes and providing occasional commentary. The sweater is two sizes too small, you’re not going to wear it anyway - that is not how shampoo works - do not bring the bugs.
“About the American states.” Oikawa continues. He lilts his voice into a melody. “Arizona…and then something.”
He smirks. “Very informative.”
Oikawa looks around but Hajime lunges onto the pillow before he can fling it. Oikawa rolls his eyes, and that's an improvement. One year ago his default was pouting. “I’m going to Argentina, not America. I’m sorry if I don’t know their national anthem.”
Hajime flips a page instead of dignifying a reply and Oikawa scoffs. He looks around for something to throw again but Hajime curls protectively around the pillow, smells scentless detergent and the anonymous smell of fresh things - he must have laundered it recently - and feels, unbidden, resentment.
I helped you, he thinks, but he doesn’t know how to progress the thought. He has his own clothes to pack.
“Why can’t I bring the bugs?” Oikawa says, switching topics easily.
The bugs are the many ripe afternoons worth of slightly crushed insects pinned, with as much grace as 8 year old hands could muster, into small glass boxes, encased and preserved exactly as they were when Hajime plucked them from long grassses, the crooks of flaking tree branches, the delicate webs spun between brittle stalks, and chased Oikawa around with them pinched between his thumbs, laughing at Oikawa’s terror. Even at 8, he had been faster, always running ahead and forgetting to check if Hajime was still following, but it was an indulgence Hajime gave him - the assurance that he would always be there.
You’re disgustingly codependent, Matsukawa declared once, meticulously weeding chives out of his ramen broth.
He’s my best friend, and I care about him. Stop being picky.
He arched an impressive eyebrow and neatly folded up his chive spotted napkin. Sure.
It’s too early and too late for Hajime to decide if he regrets it.
Oikawa picks one up and thumbs at the label, pressing back the peeling flap. The crooked kanji are faded and the glue is losing its stickiness. He can just barely make out the dragonfly’s name. “Aren’t they cute.”
It’s a blatant, obvious lie. Hajime laughs. “You’re terrified of them.”
“Not anymore!” Oikawa defends. Hajime knows firsthand how much he hates the legs - they’re too spidery, too long, too many, they feel disgusting skittering on your skin, and so on - and his eye is twitching from the effort of holding the bug close.
But he does know why Oikawa’s asking.
He gestures to the shelf. “Take a volume with you.”
“It’s too heavy.”
“Take your old volleyball.”
“There’s no point.”
“Print a photo.”
“I already have photos in my phone. I want something tangible.”
“Take your stupid sweater.” Hajime says, exasperated.
“It’s too small. You said so yourself.”
“What the hell do you want then?”
“You.” Oikawa grins.
It’s the afternoon, again. If he looks out the window and peers out at the roads, there could be two kids crouched by the curb and picking invisible bugs from the ground, and it’s cyclical, that this window is where Oikawa’s mother would yell at them, lemonade and towels at hand, to come home every evening at 8, less freqently at 14, and not at all at 17.
Hajime could go up and hug him right now - one for the road, one for the show - but not now. He’s saving that for later.
“You’re leaving.” He says, shaky, but his voice comes out steady. He was vice-captain, and he isn’t anymore, but he’s still proud of it. “So commit to it.”
“I know that.” Oikawa says, smoothly, easily.
Hajime politely pretends that he can’t see Oikawa’s hands trembling. He snorts, caustic and mean. “Focus on volleyball, idiot. Don’t you fucking look back.”
Oikawa doesn’t comment on his voice crack, and how fortunate Hajime is, to have grown up with someone like him.
*
He looks up the stupid song Oikawa was talking about and listens to it while he packs, and by the time he’s done, he has it memorised by heart. He types up another email addressed to Takashi Utsui, saves it to his drafts, does push ups and he agrees affably when his mother reminds him - again - to call back often. He doesn’t promise that he’ll come back and settle down in Japan after university because he doesn’t like lying to his mother, but she sighs anyway..
“Take lots of pictures for me.” She tells him. The wine in their cabinet is a poorly kept secret but she poured water for herself instead. “I haven’t been to America before.”
He agrees again, and she laughs. Parents say goodbye to their children every day, he thinks, so how can they love the incessant motion? How can they keep the temporary? “It’ll be selfish to ask you to come back, but I hope you will, anyway. Don’t forget about me.”
He loves her, he does. “Of course I won’t. I’ll visit.”
“It’s not like you’re dying.” She says, and then laughs. “Isn’t it hilarious - you’re just leaving Japan to look for a Japanese man.”
“He’s a great man.”
“He is. But this would all be so much easier if he didn’t leave.”
“He had to.” Hajime insists, because he’s read the interviews and bought the magazines and clicked through websites, and he’s sick of the symbolism, he’s sick of differentiating heads and tails, leaving or staying, displacing or was it replacing? “He - ”
“I know.” She cuts in, because she’s his mother, and mothers know best. “I know.”
*
Ambition is weight, except the stage underfoot is still under construction, so determination means certain death. Gravity, Matsukawa once explained to him, is like a really heavy guy sitting in a hammock with a bunch of other, less heavy people. So the hammock curves around him, right? Because he’s the heaviest. So all the other people around him are pulled towards him, and that’s gravity - less heavy things sliding towards more heavy things. But he forgot to mention that the world is not a singular, humongous hammock but a daisy chain of many hammocks strung between many trees, and leaving the magnetic field of Oikawa’s ambition turned out to be as simple as looking up. And that’s fucked up. And that’s a relief. And that’s what he feared. And that’s what he always hoped.
And that’s just how it is.
*
He has a Duolingo streak to preserve, English letters to copy into spiral-bound notebooks, clothes to discard and clothes to buy, emails to send and administration to handle with and money to count and one Oikawa Tooru to send off.
The entire team comes for him, and, smiling and crying, he pulls Hajime into a hug before Hajime can offer first, and Hajime had braced himself - prepared himself - for something incredibly stupid and unfeasible like a kiss, but Oikawa holds him like a teammate, claps his back, and grins at him. I’ll send photos. Send some back, okay? You’re my best friend. You are, too. I will. Stay safe.
The team leaves to get lunch together, so he doesn’t stay long enough to see Oikawa’s plane take off.
*
At 20 he meets Ushijima and Oikawa meets Hinata. He’s busy when Oikawa calls and Oikawa’s busy when he calls, and here is the great test of distance, pitting continents and Atlantics against childhood, against willowy grasshoppers scrabbling into his palms, but they can survive, he thinks, they can make it. He loves - he loves.
Sometimes he laughs about how stressed he was about the entire ordeal. Leaving Oikawa was simple and pursuing a career adjacent to volleyball is surprisingly uncharted territory, and he likes putting his mind to it, he likes the effort. He meets new people, his campus is big, and occasionally he plays pick up volleyball games in the park and, smarting from consecutive losses, he thanks 17 year old Hajime for being too sentimental to remove 20 ways to improve your spiking form from his bookmarks.
He adjusts to a life without Oikawa, and it’s easy. It’s easy.
*
Don’t take the bugs, he didn’t say, I want to keep them for myself.
*
A few years later he meets both Hinata and Ushijima, and then he laughs, but doesn’t ask for a photo. It’s all over the news anyway: Hinata Shoyo and Ushijima Watakatoshi for the Japan men’s national volleyball team. He offers to buy them drinks, but Ushijima is busy and Hinata refuses because he has a diet regime now - and timers on his phone and books on meditation and an unsettling air of calmness to him - so Hajime takes Hinata to a ramen place instead.
“Iwaizumi-san!” He says, chewing before he speaks. He even dabs his mouth with a napkin. Dunks a straw into his juice. Avoids dipping his sleeve into his broth. “How’re you doing? Did you know I met Oikawa-san in Brazil - oh wait, you do. He sent you a photo.” He rubs his head sheepishly.
Hinata must understand now what Hajime forced Oikawa to accept so many years ago: dedicating a life to volleyball is not volleyball is life, as 8-year-old Oikawa declared with his hands propped on his hips, but the other way around. Pushing needs pulling and all things that go up will come down, but gravity is a sham and they’re scarily good at adapting, him and Oikawa both.
“How was Brazil?” He asks instead, and Hinata launches into a mostly incoherent anecdote about a roommate named Pedro that involves a Zoro cosplay and very poor eyesight and getting hopelessly lost.
“Oh, and Kageyama.” He continues, face animated. “I’m so happy he’s here. Man, he was mad when I sent him that photo with Oikawa. He’s so funny when he’s jealous.”
“Are you -” Hajime begins, but can’t bring himself to continue. They’re athletes, and he’s living a life without Oikawa, but the truth is, he flew to America to look for a Japanese man, but since then he’s come back to Japan and the Japanese man that he really wants is still in Argentina, and he doesn’t have a return ticket. He’s not planning to.
Hinata is either extremely dense or acutely socially aware. “Kags? He’s great. I’m really grateful he’s been with me all this while.”
It’s intentionally vague, Hajime realises, and huffs a laugh. Fuck you Hinata Shoyo, but he doesn’t mean it. High school was a lifetime ago, and somehow, he’s losing to their littlest spiker again.
“Do you talk? With Oikawa, I mean” Hinata asks. Hajime can’t tell if he’s prying or if it’s just characteristic Shoyo-ness. “You guys were like - like, super tight.”
“Yeah, but not as much.” He admits.
“Why not?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s all the more reason.” Hinata insists. “So why not?”
*
At 24, he’s accustomed to Hinata enough to make fun of his own high school grudges over monthly drinks - Hinata can make exceptions sometimes - but he flicks an unrecognisable bug perched on his windshield, slumps into his car, thinks about Oikawa by proxy. Oikawa, near but far, and Hinata, one year ago: why not, why not?
Calling his mother is his usual balm for homesickness - and he doesn’t get homesick often - but this time he punches in Oikawa’s number.
He waits.
*
At 17, Hajime: “What the hell do you want?”
Tooru: “You.”
“I love you.” He replies, selfish and in love, in love, because in this one, if there is rice on his chin Hajime will kiss him, and, fine, they will never be satisfied, but contentment is a different matter entirely, and isn’t it enough? Isn’t it enough?
It’s not, but this is how it continues:
Tooru says it back, and he’s ruined now, he won’t go, he’ll stay, he’ll take the fucking bugs and Hajime will let him. There’s no rice on his chin but Hajime leans forward, and look what he’s done now.
It didn’t go like this, though.
*
“Hello?”
*
The grief was shallow but that only means that, over time, it accumulated, lapping the fangs of his ribs, beating around the pulse of his heart that told him, 17 and determined, 14 and uncertain, 8 and unable to express it but knowing nonetheless, that they don’t need to say it. Just knowing will be okay. There’s an ocean in his chest and there’s an ocean between them, but what he means to say is, the earth is round, so I’ll have you if you’ll have me.
Today Hajime is 23. He knows where he’s going, and Oikawa is rooted, except that doesn’t mean anything. Everyone is changing every day.
*
“Hajime?”
*
“Tooru.” You lean forward. Your head hurts, but your heart is singing. “Hey.”