Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Iwaizumi Hajime loved the outcome, but detested the process.

Why, of all people, did he have to be the one suffering endlessly through growth spurts? He going through a growth spurt wasn't just some kind of dull discomfort in his limbs. It wasn't just a little headache, and it wasn't just a slight dizziness paying him an unexpected visit every now and then, either.

Hajime going through growth spurts translated to him enduring joint pains so severe that he popped an analgesic first thing in the morning, a second one in the afternoon before volleyball practice, and a third one before collapsing into bed. It translated to his hormones somehow worming through the convulsions of his brain, causing migraines so severe that his ability to focus vaporized and left him in a mood that earned him the worst kind of "Are you on your period or what?" jokes boys his age could come up with. And some boys on the volleyball team dared to make these absolutely inappropriate jokes, simply because Hajime was still among the shortest (if not the shortest...) of Seijoh's first years on the team. These damn growth spurts really didn't do enough for him!

And being the kind of guy Hajime was, he certainly kept his mouth shut about his apparently bottomless abyss of misery. He wasn't one to whine. Had never been. Would never be. As long as he grew, it would be okay—or he liked to tell himself that when he woke up with knees that hurt so badly he doubted he could set one foot in front of the other. Or when the dizziness didn’t just fog up his head but flipped the switch on his consciousness entirely. Thankfully, passing out was the exception, not the rule. However, Hajime had lived through countless mornings shackling him to his futon due to an unhealthy low blood pressure.

Much to his great chagrin, today was yet another of those fateful mornings that demanded every ounce of strength to lean on his elbows and eventually, after far too many minutes, sit up, while the whole room was spinning like a centrifuge. With both of his hands clinging to his desk chair, the 15-year-old finally managed to stand on his feet. His stomach instantly commented on the act with a wave of nausea that Hajime could only tame by breathing in so deeply he felt like his sternum was about to split open. Maybe nature hated him. On days like this, he almost believed the kind of absurd nonsense Oikawa would spout to explain it all. Something like:
"Karma, baby! I don't wanna know what you did in your last life, Iwa-chan, but wow, you must have been a real dick!"

Just thinking about it made Hajime seethe. Oikawa could be such a prick when he wasn't plagued by one of his too many personal crises, which made his company so unbearable that he became the target of all the idiotic "Are you on your period?" jokes for once. But Oikawa was in a better mental state since winning the Best Setter Award and starting high school. Despite being friends since early childhood, though, he had no idea of what growth spurts put Hajime through—and Hajime surely had no intention to change that. He'd sooner bite off his tongue than cry about puberty's unfairness. There was nothing he could do about it anyway. So it was solely a matter of hoping for the best—which was growing tall—while experiencing the worst.

"Hajime? You're not up yet?" A sudden knock on his door called for his attention. His gaze hit the door the moment his mother slowly opened a crack and peeked into the room. Upon spotting her son and locking eyes with him, her smile faltered.

"Oh my, you're pale like a corpse. You feeling dizzy again?"

He could only muster the tiniest of nods, and even this close to nonexistent movement earned him yet another nauseating round in the centrifuge of adolescence.

"Slowly then. You want me to give you a ride to school today?"

"No, it's fine, Mom..." Or it would be fine. Eventually.

His mother gave him the kind of stern look people (like Oikawa) constantly told Hajime he had inherited from her. She respected her son's decision, though. After all, her son was not only a spitting image of her, but she also knew from personal experience what he was enduring. "It runs in the family," she had informed him during his first puberty-elicited growth spurt, when he was a miserable twelve-year-old, convinced he might have some rare cancer or muscle disease. His parents had taken him to see a doctor, who ran numerous expensive tests, just to confirm that Hajime was perfectly healthy—thank God!—and that his mother's instinct had hit the nail on the head: He was growing.

"Well then, breakfast is ready whenever you're ready." It was his mother's attentive way of telling him that she was returning to the kitchen to pack up his breakfast, so he could take it along to school. Hajime was already late, and considering his condition, he didn't have enough time to eat before leaving for school.

Once his mother had closed the door, the trembling fingers of his right hand reached for his school bag on the desk, fishing unerringly for the blister pack housing the painkillers. Hajime shoved one of the small white pills into his mouth and swallowed it without any liquid. He was so done with his body's heavy reactions to growing. His muscles ached as if tied to a stretching band, and his mind was bullying him with the most despicable sing-song:
"Karma, baby! I don't wanna know what you did in your past life, Iwa-chan, but wow, you must have been a real dick!"

Oikawa so deserved to get clobbered! Even if he had only ever said that whole karma-crap in Hajime's hormone-crazed imagination. It was truly awful that Tooru lived practically rent-free in Hajime's head. And it was even more awful that Hajime was lacking a remedy against it just as much as against the growth spurts' side effects...

About half an hour later, Hajime found himself in a "Speaking—or in his case, Thinking—of the devil" situation as the doorbell unexpectantly rang. Headache somewhat held at bay by the painkillers, Hajime had just emptied the whole cup of black tea with milk and two sugars his mother had prepared for him to get his circulation going, as the gong-like sound of the doorbell cut through his brain fog. Wasn't it a little early for the mailman? Hajime furrowed his thick eyebrows while his mother left the kitchen to answer the door.

"Good morning, Mrs. Iwaizumi." It was Tooru, sounding so obnoxiously happy that Hajime almost lost his grip on the teacup. Why the hell was his friend here? They usually met at the bus stop located between their homes because it was a detour if one of them walked to the other's house first.

"...and tell your mother thank you again for bringing her delicious daifuku to our meeting on Saturday! We had the rest on Sunday. Here, I cleaned her box and packed you boys some snacks for school."

As if he had been abstracted to some inanimate object in the background, Hajime—still bracing himself against the kitchen counter—watched his mother grab a pastel-pink box from the table and hand it to Tooru, who had breezed in right behind her. A genuinely grateful "Oh, nice! Thank you so much!" burst from his dry lips as he took the box from Hajime's mother and stowed it in his school bag, before greeting his friend.
"Ah, morning, Iwa-chan!"

"What are you doing here?"

"Wow. Never heard this version of 'Good morning to you, too' before. What language is it? Orkish?"

"I texted Tooru to pick you up." Just like Hajime, his mother had a very practical attitude. Unfortunately, said attitude interfered with her son's secretive nature surrounding his condition.

"But why?"

"You didn't want a ride to school," she replied flatly, before checking the clock on the wall that declared it was high time for the boys to take off.

"Mom, I'm fine!"

It was of no use. Hajime earned himself nothing but a death glare from his mother.

Tooru almost lost it. Hajime could see how his friend was capturing a snorting laugh in his mouth by drawing his lower lip between his teeth tips and grinning like the little shit he always was.

"You boys better get going, or you'll miss the bus."

"Absolutely right, Mrs. Iwaizumi! I assure you, Hajime will arrive at school safely and on time with me. His poor brain won't miss out on any of today's valuable lessons. If it will make any use of the syllabus, that I can't guarantee with him being him." Before Hajime even knew what was happening, Tooru half-dragged, half-shoved him out of the kitchen. In the act, he also flung Hajime's school bag and sports bag over his shoulders, evolving into a compact mass double his normal size.

"Thank you, Tooru! Hajime, give me a call if you need me to pick you up. Have a nice day, boys." Hajime heard his mother call sweetly after them, just as the door clicked shut. Then it was only the two of them, stumbling down the short path in the front yard, before turning onto the quiet side road riddled with traditional Japanese houses standing peacefully behind tiny stony garden walls and neatly trimmed bushes.

"What did she write you?" Hajime fully zipped up his jacket in one offensive move, almost clamping his poorly-tied tie in the act.

"Just that your head's swimming a little," Tooru said, busy adjusting the positions of the four bags. All straps crossed over his chest, two from each shoulder. The sports bags were slung over his back, and the school bags swinging at each hip. Why was he even doing this? Hajime felt his face heat up as their eyes met, whereupon Tooru smiled as if it was no trouble at all, eyelids half-closed.

"It's nothing. My mom is blowing this out of proportion. I'm just growing." Hajime shoved his hands into his jacket's pockets, nervously kneading the thin fabric inside, while half of his face got swallowed by his collar. He really felt like shit... and Tooru's suspicious side glances, combined with that inquiring smile, surely got under his skin.

"Growing? I thought you'd be more excited about that."

"What makes you think so!?"

"Oh, just you always complaining that you're too small, Iwa-chan."

"I'm not complaining, ever!"

"Right, sometimes you're just blind with rage. Like last week, when you got on your tiptoes, so we were the same height in the class photo. And when the photographer noticed, he ordered you to stand in the row before me, and you said to that poor man who was only doing his job that—"

"I know what I said! I—Ugh, fuckthisshit!" the wing spiker grumbled through gritted teeth, instinctively lifting a hand to his right temple as if the gesture could chase away both his stinging headache and the remnants of giddiness like an annoying fly. Needless to say, it didn't. Instead, Tooru was now visually dissecting him. In this quiet, all analytical way that people deeply detested. Hajime knew because he was people.

"Don't even start, Oikawa. And don't, absolutely don't give me that karma-crap!"

"Karma-crap? What on earth are you talking about?"

"As if you're not thinking that I've been a dick in my past life, and now karma is catching up with me. But you know what? That's total bullshit. There's no such thing as reincarnation, and therefore it's not life's excuse for roasting me during growth spurts!" Hajime sped up, although not enough to miss his friend's partly offended, partly confused "Iwa-chan, I'd never say something like that! Do you have a fever? Are you feeling alright?".

Hajime just snorted. Tooru caught up with him seconds later, just as he crossed the street and stopped at the bus stop. Something about the constellation of Tooru's scrunched nose and critically low drawn eyebrows made Hajime want to puke his tea on the spot. It didn't get any better when Tooru spoke up again.

"I'm not mad, just concerned. So tell me: How many times did you fall from the changing table and hit your head as a baby?—Hey!" In a quick attempt to dodge his friend's punch, Tooru turned halfway around, causing Hajime's fist to slam into Tooru's school bag.

"Stop hitting me! I'm carrying your bags! I'm a good friend!"

"You're embarrassing me, right here in public! What kind of shitty friend does that? Now gimme my bags back!"

It wasn't like the bus stop was crowded with people. In fact, it was the exact opposite; just the two of them were waiting for the bus, which happened to turn the corner at this very moment, thus preventing Iwaizumi from unscrambling his bags from Tooru's grasp.

"You're truly ungrateful!" Tooru spat right before the bus's doors opened, and they got on the crowded vehicle. With most seats already taken and Tooru overloaded with bags, their entry was anything but smooth. Their bags collided with various passengers' shoulders while Tooru, always gravity's biggest fan in moving buses, waddled to the bus's back like a duck with nothing but lousy sorry's for all the people he molested with their bags. Hajime followed his friend like a chick trotting behind a hen. Everybody was too polite to give any other reaction than a razor-thin smile, but if views could kill... And not only that: People were also wondering about the bags. Boyfriends sometimes carried their girlfriends' bags; that was a thing. An act of endearment, to be precise. Naturally, then, in a conservative society like Japan's, Iwaizumi and Oikawa attracted a particular kind of attention and judgment.

"You're unbelievable!" Hajime hissed in Tooru's neck, his face blazing red. At least, Tooru's cheeks were tinted by a thick blush, too. They had finally reached the last free row positioned almost at the very back of the bus. Tooru let Hajime have the window seat, so he could squeeze himself into the other seat with all their luggage.

"People are staring...", he gulped, fully aware that they would have been less of a spectacle if they had worn matching "just married" shirts.

"Don't say, Sherlock." Hajime scooted as close to the window as possible, chased by Tooru's surprisingly honest, "I'm so sorry, Iwa-chan!"

"I hate you so much right now. Gimme my bags back!"

"I can't really move. Plus, I think people would stare even more if I tried to get them off of me now..."

"Great! Why couldn't I faint this morning instead of just being dizzy?" This was definitely the most embarrassing bus ride in Hajime's entire life. Whisper-cussing against the window, he longed to get back into bed and disappear between the covers. He should have asked his mother to report him in sick, just for one single day. But no, he had to be a thickheaded idiot, as always. Who needed karma if he could fuck things up himself? Or with a friend like Oikawa?

"You faint sometimes?" Tooru was suddenly attached to him like a Siamese twin. One bag pressed against Hajime’s shoulder and neck, while another sprawled half across his lap. Leaning in so close that the tip of his nose almost touched Hajime’s cheek, Tooru seemed ready to catch whatever answer he was about to give.
"For real?", he pressed.

"Stop talking to me!"

"We should be talking. People assume we're boyfriends. It'd be weird for us not to talk to each other then." Tooru had just unlocked a new level of ridiculousness. This guy was completely out of his mind!

"I'm never talking to you again, Trashikawa!"

"We absolutely need to talk!" The sudden seriousness in Tooru's low yet clear accentuated pitch was defeating. Hajime didn't get that one often. "You faint sometimes?"

"Rarely. Growth spurts tend to do that to me..." Hajime's disgruntled gaze burned into the grey plastic seat right in front of him. He felt vulnerable in a way he wasn't comfortable sharing with anyone, not even with Tooru.
But if it had to be anyone in the whole wide world, then who, if not Tooru? Still, he felt like a criminal leading his clueless victim straight to an abandoned place. Tooru would be shocked to learn the number of skeletons buried there. And then he would get mad that Hajime had kept this secret for so long.
He had lied his way through every growth spurt, always claiming he was fine, always scolding his friends if they even dared as much as to sneeze. Really, Tooru wasn't supposed to put his noisy nose into Hajime's business, for as long as nobody knew what was actually going on, Hajime, too, could pretend his problems were nonexistent. Well, for the most part, at least.

Swallowing, Hajime shoved the memory of his last fainting episode back into the furthest corner of his mind. So far, he had fainted five times in the last three years. Four times at home, and once while he was shopping with his mother on a busy Saturday. He had meant to give her a hand with the groceries, considering that a family gathering was scheduled for the following weekend. But, instead of helping, he somehow ended up the one who needed help.
Back home, he had had an earnest conversation with his mother, who expected more honesty from him in the future. Hajime had felt nauseous and dizzy all morning, but he’d pretended he was fine, fit enough to go with her to the store even though his instinct had felt it coming. He hadn't been fine.

Fainting didn't mean walking around all cheerful and then collapsing all of a sudden. When fainting, Hajime's world grayed gradually before plunging into complete darkness. It was nothing like in the movies, where people, in the majority of cases, women, were portrayed as mentally weak; they easily fainted when confronted with a somewhat shocking revelation. A hand on their bosom or to their forehead, they declared that they were about to lose consciousness, and other people thought it funny or panicked immoderately. But the audience was never concerned, for it was nothing but comical and overdramatic. It was void of any authenticity. It couldn't be further from Hajime's reality.

Therefore, the last thing Hajime wanted was for people to know he fainted occasionally and draw any wrong conclusions. He didn't need an audience. He wasn't acting. He wasn't a comedy show. He was an anxious heartbeat in a cold-sweat body, succumbing to the power of vertigo, losing time and control, and missing out on everything taking place around him. God, he was terrified of it happening again, especially in public.

Leaning forward until his brow met the cool plastic seat, Hajime mumbled under his breath:
"Actually, growth spurts do a lot of shit to me, but fainting is the worst. It's nothing like in those sappy movies... It just sucks ass."

And his mother was well aware of his deep-rooted fear. That was why she had asked Tooru to come over this morning, respecting her son's wish to take the bus to school like he did on any other day, but sparing them the worry of letting him walk alone. And Tooru, the idiot, had probably dropped his breakfast or interrupted his hair routine the second he saw Mrs. Iwaizumi’s message, so he could be on time. Picking Hajime up was a 20-minute extra, and although Tooru might be strict about school and volleyball, he was rather tightly organized in the morning. Consequently, some part of his morning routine must have fallen short. Taking into account that he smelled freshly showered and his hair was styled as well, he had most certainly skipped breakfast.

And Hajime? He had dragged Tooru into his personal slaughterhouse, where the nasty smell of mood swings, fainting, headaches, nosebleeds, and frequent joint pains hung in the air. Charming, really. If Tooru wasn't angry about being lied to, he would feel obliged to monitor and mother Hajime.
And Tooru was good at taking care of people he held close to the heart. Much better than taking care of himself. However, Hajime feared it would backfire on him in the form of taunting remarks once he was out of the woods. He just knew. He knew Tooru and how they treated each other. But this fainting thing was too tightly interwoven with Hajime's anxiety to be put on any teasing list, ever.

"I don't faint, but I get dizzy too from time to time. It happened mostly in middle school, especially during and after practice." Tooru whispered after a minute or two, which had passed in eerie silence between them. His posture turned into a parallel copy of Hajime's; his brown hair tickled Hajime's ear.
"Then I eat. A lot. And feel sick. I made myself throw up sometimes..."

The bus's engine noises were either too loud or Tooru had stopped his short anecdote-walk down the dark secret lane. Hajime realized it was the latter as his eyesight wandered in horrified slow motion from the plastic seat in front of him to his friend's face that was so close that the chopped heat from Tooru's breath clashed against his cheek.

Tooru’s lips twitched, but he didn’t look at him. It was as if he were petrified by the deformed monster of a cat he had just let out of the bag, and what it might be able to do, to ruin.

"Iwa-chan?" His Adam's apple jumped as if he were swallowing a round candy. His voice was practically a dead beat, begging Hajime for some sort of reaction.

Hajime, however, could only wonder what kind of face he must have made when he mentioned fainting. Whatever it was, it had been enough for Tooru to spill this kind of tea on a random weekday bus ride.
It was early May. The weather was perfect, not sticky or humid yet. No tests had tied them to their desks last week, the practices couldn't have been better lately, and—Boom! Tooru just confessed he had made himself throw up in middle school.
This hit Hajime like a nuclear blast, leaving him staring at the person he thought he knew inside out, realizing he didn't.

"We are still fake boyfriends in public, right, Hajime?" Tooru nearly choked on his bad joke. His brown eyes flickered due to mental stress. In fact, he looked like he was about to cry.

Frantically, Hajime shoved his right hand under the school bag covering half of his lap and half of Tooru's, and bingo. Somewhere buried beneath the bag and between their thighs, he found Tooru's hand, damp and shaking. Unable to respond in any other way, Hajime simply clasped his fingers tightly around Tooru's. Certainly a little too tightly. His stomach felt like it was turning upside down. Meanwhile, Tooru was still busy shoving uncried tears back into his eyes instead of granting Hajime even the slightest glance.

They remained sitting like statues in a bus full of people; still so close, yet their confessions had been barely audible to the other. In Hajime's head, though, the world was unbearably loud. His palms were sweaty, his heart wore itself out to a rabid rhythm, and his brain was reduced to a gibbering mess, disabled by the constant throbbing of painful overthinking.

At some point, they leaned back in their seats, still silent, still holding hands underneath the concealing bag. Not a word passed between them when the school came into view, when they separated, when Tooru finally handed over Hajime’s bags at the school gate. Hajime wanted to thank his best friend for carrying all the weight this morning, but he didn't know how to. It was like the cat monster had gotten his tongue. Consequently, they ended up saying their usual greetings to their classmates and friends, but didn't speak to each other for the rest of the morning.

Chapter Text

He was in the mood to burn the whole damn world down, and it only got worse when the painkiller’s effect began to fade—leaving Hajime aching for rest and fresh air, yet too uncertain of his legs to trust them. Hence, doomed to remain seated when lunchtime rolled around, he ruffled a hand through his dark, spiky hair and tugged at his already crooked tie until it hung loose around his neck. Considering the circumstances, it was probably best to have lunch at his desk. Maybe his blood sugar was just low, so food might steady the dizziness and restore some faith in his muscles. After all, his mother didn’t prepare him black tea with two spoonfuls of sugar on days like this for no reason.

"Bench or stairs? We still have your mom’s treats." As if he’d read Hajime’s mind, Tooru circled his desk like an affable cat, winking as he swung the pastel-pink lunch box in one hand.

Apparently, he’d made a full recovery from their unholy conversation earlier—or, which was far more likely, he was just faking normalcy par excellence. Hajime didn’t mind, for once. He’d already wrung his pathetic excuse of a brain dry over their confessions—over why Tooru had chosen to bring it up now, when the issue lay in the past. But if it really was all water under the bridge, then why was Tooru still so upset about it? It didn’t make sense to Hajime, who was struggling not only with the labyrinthine psyche of his best friend, but with practically everything today.

Again and again, he’d tried to take notes in class, but by the time he’d written down the beginning of the teachers' sentences, he’d already lost track of their end. It was maddening—irritating in that slow, simmering way—and Hajime was already bitch-facing in anticipation of the humiliation waiting for him when he’d have to ask one of his friends for their notes before the next wave of exams crashed onto the beach of his life. They wouldn’t understand, given that Hajime was usually a solid student who had a habit of scolding others when they scrounged his homework because they hadn't paid attention in class. That was, of course, only on days when his brain wasn’t failing him. But today, his brain wasn’t the only thing giving up on him.
Right now, his legs refused to be at Hajime's service as well. So when confronted with Tooru's casual question of whether he wanted to eat on a bench in the schoolyard or out on one of the staircases, Hajime could only choose solitude and safety.

“Nah, I’m staying here…” Avoiding eye contact, he rummaged through his bag, pretending to search for his bento box.

“As you wish. We can still catch a breath of fresh air after lunch.”

Hajime froze, realizing that Tooru had just decided to keep him company in the classroom.

“In any case, we need to fix this, or you’ll get another admonition and after-school punishment. And this time I won’t skip practice to sneak in and help you clean the classroom or weed the school garden.”

If Hajime hadn’t already been frozen to the core, he surely would be now, for Tooru had clasped the pink box under his arm and leaned down. With practiced ease, his skilled fingers closed the top buttons of Hajime’s shirt, adjusted his tie knot, and smoothed his upsticking collar. All the while, he hummed a melody Hajime knew but couldn’t place. Hajime only felt suffocated. Tooru was smiling at him with mesmerizing eyes. Then his finger flicked against the freshly adjusted tie knot, and his smile evolved into a playful grin that turned challenging. Cornering.
Who was this guy even?

Hajime felt himself blush inappropriately. Forcefully, he tore his gaze away from Tooru. It crashed right back into his bag.
“When did you ever help me, Lazikawa? Most of the time, you just stand there, stuff your face with chocolate bars, and tell me to hurry the fuck up!”

“Never underestimate mental support! And the words you’re looking for are ‘Thank you!’ Maybe they’ll stick better if you repeat them. Try it! Say: ‘Thank you, Tooru.’ Come on, do it for me. Let me hear that lovely voice of yours—”

“You two coming?” Matsukawa and Hanamaki appeared, just as Hajime seriously considered cracking Tooru's skull with his lunch box. Great. Now Matsukawa and Hanamaki were on his case as well. Couldn’t people just vanish in smoke instead of bugging him? Frustrated and fed up with everyone and everything this shitty day had thrown in his face so far, Hajime slammed the box onto his desk, grumping:
“Actually, n—” No, but Tooru just snubbed him by telling their friends, “We’ll find you later.”

What an asshole!

“He’s coming with you!” Hajime spoke a word of power, death-glaring at Tooru and gesturing with his middle finger for him to leave with their friends.

The constant juggle of the pink lunch box in Tooru’s right hand stopped abruptly.
“But I thought we—”

“For God’s sake! Just gimme a break for once!”

“What have you done this time, Oikawa?” Hanamaki snickered, nudging his elbow against Matsukawa to draw his attention to the icky pink box clutched between Tooru’s fingers.

“Me? Nothing! Grumpy Bear here is just cultivating his bad mood!” The smile had vanished from Tooru’s offended lips, while Hanamaki—and now also Matsukawa—continued snickering.

“Sure. You’d better leave Iwaizumi be when you’ve pissed him off with…whatever it was this time.”

“Why do you think I pissed him off!? Y’all are prejudiced against me! He’s the mean guy here!”

“Uhu.” Hanamaki pretended to be sympathetic. “But I get why he’s so upset with you, Oikawa. Valentine’s Day was almost three months ago.”

“Yeah, you could’ve at least added one of those gaudy ribbons and a card. Even Iwaizumi’s secret admirer knew better. We still don’t know which poor soul has such bad taste in love, though, do we?”

Hanamaki and Matsukawa burst into laughter.

“Get lost! All of you!” Hajime growled, flustered by the vivid memory of the small, rectangular present draped over the handle of his locker when he’d entered the school corridor after lunch on February 14th. The delicate, heart-shaped card attached to the box had simply read 'You mean the world to me' in printed italics. No one had signed it or ever come forward. It had all been a joke, obviously.

“At least the pralines were good!” Tooru said with a pout. This guy truly had nerves. Hajime wanted to strangle him right then and there.

“I still can’t believe you ate all of my Valentine’s chocolates, you greedy bastard!”

“You said I could have one!”

“Precisely! One!”

“And then you handed me the box and said you didn’t really want them! So why wouldn’t I eat them? Did you even check the label? They were from that fancy patisserie downtown! I bet that person spent a month’s worth of pocket money on you!”

“Whoa! You fed your super-expensive Valentine’s chocolates to Tooru ‘I eat candy like a pig’ Oikawa?” Matsukawa butted in, genuinely stunned. “What a waste!”

“Hey!” Tooru swung the pink box but missed, thanks to Matsukawa’s excellent reflexes.

“Man, Iwaizumi, that was a real dick move. That poor girl,” Hanamaki added, his brutal judgment hitting Hajime like a brick.

“I’m not a dick!” Hajime barked in defense, massaging his temples. Both his and Tooru’s protests fell on deaf ears, though, as Hanamaki grilled Hajime with his derogatory stare, while Matsukawa eyed Tooru suspiciously.
“I wonder why you remember Iwaizumi’s Valentine’s Day gift so well?”

“I just happen to!”

“So, if you think about it, Iwaizumi gave Oikawa a Valentine’s Day gift,” Matsukawa stated matter-of-factly, earning a nod from Hanamaki. “Yup.”

“N-no, that’s not what happened…!” Tooru stammered, his long fingers strangling the box. He had audibly and visibly lost his cool, for reasons Hajime’s defective brain couldn’t comprehend. But the blood in Hajime’s veins—hitherto only simmering—began to boil as their treacherous friends continued their musings as if it were just the two of them in the whole wide world.

“But Oikawa didn’t give him a present back on White Day.”

“And now he’s not only two months late, he also forgot to bring a card.”

“Unexcusable! Iwaizumi basically told him he’s his world!”

“Mhm. How could Oikawa fuck this up? I mean, they’ve practically been dating since forever! It’s nature’s plan to prevent them from procreating!”

“Out! Both of you! And take Trashikawa with you!” Hajime roared, the urge to physically eject all three from the classroom burning hotter than his legs could tolerate. Standing up would have been a tactical nightmare, though, but he was this close to doing it anyway.

A condemning hand landed heavily on his shoulder.
“Don’t worry. I understand your disappointment. We’ll take care of Oikawa. But just so we’re clear: recycling another person’s Valentine’s Day gift because you didn’t have the balls to buy one yourself was a real dick move!”
Without further ado, Hanamaki grabbed a still-protesting Tooru by the forearm and dragged him out of the classroom. The aghast expression on Tooru’s flushed face read 'Why don’t you want me around?' and was directed solely at Hajime, who felt instant remorse gnawing at his guts. Tooru hadn’t done anything wrong, except confide in his best friend, who was still at a complete loss as to what to make of Tooru’s confession—or how to survive this day.

Hajime rested his elbows on the desk, supporting his head with both hands, shutting his eyelids against the harsh midday light. He needed to eat, take another painkiller, be in top condition for practice, and then somehow get home and sleep. And somewhere in between all of that, he had to do justice to Tooru. Tooru, who had carried his bags to school and gorged on his Valentine’s Day chocolates…

Taking a bite of his lunch, Hajime sighed, letting the rice, nori, and shiokara conquer his taste buds. His only good excuse for giving Tooru all the pralines on Valentine’s Day was that chocolate never failed to lift Tooru’s spirits—and his spirits that had been buried at the center of the Earth since middle school. Saying Tooru had been stressed back then would have been the understatement of the century.
He had been permanently on edge, constantly occupied with masking his anxiety. For Tooru, it hadn’t been a question of if he would be surpassed in volleyball, but when. Losing to Shiratorizawa year after year, and then slowly but surely being overshadowed by the new kid’s talent on the court, had stolen any joy Tooru used to radiate while playing. It had been sad to watch, and Tooru had been a pain in the neck 24/7—brooding in class, hostile and aggressive on the court, and disgustingly stubborn and conceited outside of school and sports.

It was no surprise, then, that aside from the members of the volleyball club, people at school had gradually cut him off during their last year at Kitagawa Daiichi Junior High. Girls still found him cute, but also unapproachable; he was kind, yet never truly receptive to their admiration. He posed for photos with them and offered countless well-mannered “Thank you so much!”s in response to their squealed compliments and scented love letters—but never once did he exchange phone numbers or email addresses.

When in the mood, he thrived on cocky ambiguities, but he had never matched action to words. He was into volleyball, not dating. He was also naturally shy—a trait all the girls had missed, but one Hajime found endearing in Tooru. Beneath massive layers of silliness and smugness, beneath big-mouthed flirtation and histrionic self-staging, Tooru Oikawa was still the boy who would blush oh so tenderly when receiving a birthday present or when they were out in public and a couple passed by, holding hands and exchanging kisses.
“Can’t they leave their fucking happiness at home?” Tooru would sulk, narrowing his prying eyes, whereupon Hajime would only say, “Shut your jealous trap!”—causing Tooru to blush even harder.

“I’m not jealous!”

"When are you ever not jealous, Shittykawa?"

"You're being vulgar again, Iwa-chan. And mean. Who would put up with that grumpy frown-face of yours on a wonderful Sunday like this, if not me? I don't see any girl lining up for that!"

Hajime would grunt, and Tooru would flash one of his nasty smirks, whereupon Hajime would kick Tooru's ankle or punch his upper arm ("Look in a mirror!"), but not look at him again for at least three minutes. During that time, Tooru's grin would soften into the kind of pretty, undistorted smile Hajime actually liked to watch ("I did this morning. I'm not a girl."), particularly on Sundays, when they were freed from school uniforms and peer-group etiquette ("Don't say!"). Tooru might treat him to ice cream or dango in the park ("We should get Pocky."), and it went without saying that neither of them would rather spend the day with anyone else ("We just had ice cream!"). Whether they hid in a tree's shadow during a bright summer day or sought shelter under the playground's playhouse during a sudden rain shower, they were fine ("..."). Tooru had developed a habit of drumming out melodies on the back of Hajime's hand in calm, unobserved moments, and Hajime had picked up the habit within a few days, if only because he was terrible at guessing melodies.

So yes, Hajime had to give his friend some credit—even though rumor had it that Tooru had a disgusting personality, and the rumor hadn't sprung to life without reason.

"Too judgmental," "so arrogant," and "no longer fun to be around" were only some of the things the other boys at middle school had come to say about Tooru during their last year. Some had even found him insufferably insincere, with his restless focus on volleyball and his unbearable pretense of caring little about school, while simultaneously visibly struggling to be satisfied with any grade below an A.
Various group projects had been overshadowed by ugly arguments because Tooru had called out others for their "defective performance," which could range from an irrelevant typo in a presentation to a missing source on a paper's list of references. He had never been this patronizing or demeaning before. Yet in his act of striving for perfection, in his seemingly endless effort to smooth out his deficiencies on the court, Tooru Oikawa had become a controlling perfectionist.
It had backfired like hell on him in the few cases where he himself had been responsible for the tiniest typos in a group presentation he had compiled after hours of physical exertion at the gym. After all, teenagers don’t forget or forgive easily, and Tooru had created an unhealthy "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth" atmosphere, resembling a ticking time bomb. So after one group project, he had been force-fed a dose of his own medicine by some classmates. It had been a nasty, post-last-period manhunt, leaving Tooru so devastated that he had eventually fled the scene, proud nose held high in the air.

Everybody had thought he had gone home, but Hajime had known better, for he had discovered the tip of a brown shoelace sticking out of Tooru's slipper locker. The floors had emptied, the school building had fallen into silence, and Hajime had gone outside to wait at the school's gate in the chill October wind, texting Tooru: "You coming?", "Hurry the hell up! My ass is freezing!", and "If I were you, I'd rather cry at home than on a smelly school toilet."

Tooru hadn't responded until Hajime had added, "Be here in 5min or I'm going to kick your sorry ass home!" Hajime would find that idiot—even if he had to double-check every restroom and broom closet.

Exactly four minutes and twelve seconds later, Tooru had rushed outside, buttoning up his stained blazer with jittery hands; his shirt sleeves were wet, and his leather shoes were tied too tightly. He hadn't said a single word, but Hajime had known he had bawled his eyes out—for far more reasons than a stupid typo. He had been freshly fourteen and hadn't yet learned how to process feelings of inadequacy or respond to self-imposed performance pressure. His parents had never had a problem with him investing so much time in volleyball—as long as he didn't neglect school. So he had brought nothing but straight A's home—the grades a currency he had needed to earn his parents’ permission to spend more and more hours at the gym, practicing until a mental breakdown had been inevitable.

Deep down, Hajime had reasonable doubts that his friend's mindset had significantly improved after the "Kageyama incident," but Tooru had at least partly gotten a grip on himself since winning the Best Setter Award and starting high school. If someone were to ask how Hajime had survived middle school with a best friend like that, the answer would be that they could grow tired of everything and everyone, except volleyball and each other.

Still, Hajime found it grueling whenever he was tortured by growing pains, and Tooru had nothing better to do than announce a sleepover. Tooru always brought plenty of candy and plenty of complaints, but he would also pack this tense miserability he never shared with anyone but Hajime, who, in turn, could be as grumpy, taciturn, and honest as he liked in Tooru's company. Tooru would whine or erupt, call him out on it, or join in, but at some point, they would either dive into a relatively normal conversation or rot shamelessly between the covers before falling asleep, watching movies or stupid YouTube videos, reading manga or volleyball magazines, or listening to music on one of their cell phones—the concept of personal space abandoned long ago in the process of growing up together and growing fond of each other.

Some people certainly wouldn't believe it, but when together, they could sink into an abysmal quietness, limiting their communication to subtle gestures, facial expressions, and the briefest of glances. It was the exact same understanding they shared on the volleyball court, one that didn’t know secrets or blind spots. Hajime was fine, the space between them was clearly defined, and Tooru had never made himself vomit.

No.

Wrong.

The truth was that Hajime hid his misery, that their closeness had become transgressive, and that Tooru used to make himself sick—the latter a meticulously calculated plan, put repeatedly into practice behind Hajime’s back so he wouldn’t take note of it.

What Hajime had suspected, though, was that Tooru had been somewhat depressed during their last year of middle school, not only because he had lost touch with his otherwise outstanding ability to bond with others (if only on the face of it). There had also been nights when Hajime woke to an atmosphere of damp despair, his instincts telling him that he wasn’t the only one awake. Tooru had been crying, all snotty yet suffocated by shame, never meaning to disrupt Hajime's sleep. These had been the nights when Hajime rolled over on the futon, claiming "You snore!", and, as if intending to wake him, tossed an arm around Tooru's shoulder or waist to give him a hard shake, whereupon Tooru hicked, sniffed, and eventually calmed down in the warm embrace, his nose so clogged that he snored like a lumberjack once he finally fell asleep.
The mornings after, they would both wake sleep-deprived, canceling their forenoon plans in huffing agreement, shifting under the covers and sleeping half-embraced until noon. It had come in handy on more than one of the mornings when Hajime struggled with vertigo and a migraine. He would feign sleep until Tooru got up, leaving for the bathroom and then the kitchen to prepare two cups of cocoa with way too much cocoa powder. Sugar had always proven a reliable kick-start for Hajime's circulatory system; and while sipping the warm drink, he would silently pray he wouldn’t faint or get a nosebleed, thinking that Tooru looked far healthier after a proper amount of sleep than after just three or four hours.

High school had been a fresh start for both of them. People perceived them differently there. They were no longer the oldest at school, but juniors again. Tooru behaved more goofily from day one, appeared relatively easygoing, and thus quickly won the sympathy of other students. He was back to making the most of his natural talent: attracting people, provoking laughter, and finding the right ways to twist his classmates around his finger.
He tagged Hajime along to lunch breaks, always made sure they worked on the same group projects, and often arranged after-practice hangouts with other team members at their favorite ramen restaurant.

Coach Irihata thought a great deal of Tooru, recognizing him as a former junior high volleyball captain and future high school captain material, because Tooru gave his heart and soul to volleyball without blinking twice, whether on an individual level or for the sake of the team. Tooru finally flourished again after months of withering.

The thing was just that, beneath all the jovial enthusiasm he abused to win people and make high school work for him, Tooru was still a cunning bastard with an extraordinary ability to read people and an unhealthy habit of placing too-high demands on himself. First and foremost, though, he was still Hajime's best friend. And whatever ill humor and growing pains clouded Hajime's mind today, Tooru didn’t deserve the cold shoulder.

So when their last period had come to an end, Hajime secretly stocked up on another painkiller and had the best of intentions. His brain, however, wouldn’t comply, regardless of how many hidden glances Tooru darted at him or how many inviting remarks and inside jokes he sat out like traps to make Hajime's tongue trip. For the most part, Hajime bluntly ignored them, since they made his heart falter in regret and his fingers smolder in all the places he had touched Tooru’s during this morning's bus ride.

Hajime didn’t exactly speak to other people, either. Words were undecodable strings of sound to him, meandering through his auditory canals and triggering a feeling of unmatched unease. The worst part was that Hajime was all too aware of it. He knew he should acknowledge his friends and teammates. He shouldn’t just stare and snort instead of giving proper responses. People didn’t like that. Hajime didn’t like that. Too bad for him that he was apparently unable to put his pain-evoked, sour mood aside.

Consequently, trouble was bound to arise once Coach Irihata matched up little training groups. Unlike usual, Hajime had planted himself near some older teammates, hoping their coach would just send him over to join them. His legs felt somewhat steady since lunch, but his play was almost as off as his mood. Running, jumping, hitting the damn volleyball—it all felt like wading through molasses. As much as he loved the game, his aching body seemed to conspire against him, making him crave nothing more than the mercy of his bed. So, despite his best efforts to handle Satō's tosses, Hajime couldn’t turn a single one into an ideal spike.

It happened, then, what had to happen: Kobayashi, a third-year student for whom discretion was a foreign concept and who was the third member of their small practice group, blatantly rolled his eyes before turning to Satō, the team's captain.
"I can receive his spikes blindfolded. What is it with Tiny Spiky today?"

Hajime's neck hairs stood on end.
"What did you just call me?"

"Don't know, don't care. He's probably on his period or somethin'..." Satō, a third-year student with the patience of Job, simply shrugged, treating Hajime like air while grinning idiotically at his friend.

Damn, these two were always so aligned with each other. Why was Oikawa working himself up about random couples in public places when the real enemy was so much closer and didn’t even know how to spell the word “argument”? At least Hajime couldn’t recall a single time he had seen these two besties not get along. It was enviable, and that truly pissed him off at this moment—especially with the deriding nickname and the period joke added to the equation.

"Screw you! Why don't you try reading a biology book for once?"

That earned Hajime the undivided attention of his practice partners—but not the kind he had wanted. Slowly, he realized their smiles had hardened, and they now loomed over him like a 1.85m-high wall, with abs and bicepses that Hajime could only dream of having someday. If there was one thing he was aware of, then it was the striking differences between their bodies.

"Pardon?" Kobayashi pressed a volleyball against Hajime’s chest, daring him to repeat himself. The impact stung like an icepick through his sternum.

Satō, meanwhile, lowered his eyebrows in a way more demeaning than even Tooru could manage. Just realizing he was comparing anyone to Tooru sent Hajime’s sanity over the edge. The last person he wanted to think about right now was Oikawa!

"I said scr—" His growl was cut short by a volleyball crashing into the narrow space between his and his practice partners' feet, ripping their attention off Hajime at once.

"Sorry, Satō-san! Sorry, Kobayashi-san!" Oikawa scratched his neck while jogging over to fetch the ball he had just smashed over the net. Hajime caught his scent but didn’t dare meet his eye. He didn’t need help—especially not from someone who played fake boyfriends with him in public, secretly held hands with him on casual Sundays, and seized every opportunity to cuddle with him during sleepovers—but hadn’t cared to inform Hajime that he had an eating disorder, or address that particular afternoon last August that Hajime couldn’t quite get out of his head and heart...

"Watch it, Oikawa! And teach your friend some manners, or we'll rinse out his big mouth with a good load of soap. I bet that'll teach him a better lesson than reporting him to Coach Irihata." Suddenly very amused, Satō's face smoothed out, making it impossible for Hajime to gauge his true degree of anger. Naturally, as a third-year, Satō didn’t take disrespect from younger students—that was for sure—but he didn’t seem to take Hajime seriously at all. Instead, his right hand took the volleyball from Kobayashi, while his left landed on Kobayashi's shoulder.

"First-years these days. Let's just hope they get their shit together by the end of the year, or this team is fucked once we've graduated."

"I thought, as captain, you're obligated to have faith in all of them?"

"Right... Well, that spike from Oikawa was on point."

"You noticed, too, huh?" Kobayashi chuckled, putting an overly wide grin on Satō's face. Then he said, "Try to make your tosses a bit slower and lower for Tiny Spiky. He's not the highest-flying Speedy Gonzales today."

"Will do, will do. Or do you two wanna switch groups? Then you, Iwaizumi, go back with Oikawa and send us Katō over."

The question flustered both first-years. Hajime felt unprepared, as if he had been put to a test in a subject he had never studied. Panic ripped a "No" from his lungs at the exact moment Tooru breathed, "Yes." Against the constant swooshing of volleyballs echoing through the gym and the squeaking of sneakers, their contradictory answers created a tense silence among the four players. Hajime still couldn't bring himself to meet his friend's brown eyes. His gaze merely fell on Tooru's hands, which clutched the volleyball with such intensity that his knuckles had turned white like flower buds.

"Alright, then, groups stay as they are," Satō decided, ordering Tooru with a nod to return to his already waiting practice group.

Hajime felt Tooru stare at him in a way that made all his wrath collapse at his feet like the remnants of a stake gutted by fire.

What was wrong with him? Why was Hajime so irrationally mad at everybody? He wasn’t the type of guy who disrespected older students or anyone in general, and he had never been bitter about last August. However, he felt betrayed by Tooru's secrecy in some subtle, wicked way that just hurt.

Feeling nothing but stupid and immature, Hajime swallowed and bowed to Satō and Kobayashi.
"I’d like to apologize for what I said," he articulated clearly, if only to spare himself the trouble of having his mouth rinsed with the school’s cheap soap (Satō and Kobayashi were certainly capable of doing that) or to avoid an unpleasant conversation with their coach about proper manners during practice. He wasn’t an idiot—he was just in pain.

____________

By the time Coach Irihata declared practice over, Hajime was not only exhausted but also wobbly on his knees. His pulse thundered through his body like a techno beat as he dragged himself off the court and was promptly absorbed into the sweat-soaked pack of boys heading for the locker room. The flow of bodies—left, right, behind, and in front of him—forced Hajime to muster enough composure until he could finally collapse onto the bench next to his locker, breathing in and out. The omnipresent chatter closed in on him, but the shrill beeping in his ears slowly took over, growing louder with every passing second.

He didn’t spot Tooru, Matsukawa, or Hanamaki, and even if he had, Hajime wouldn’t have known what to say. Nausea crept up on him like a snake. He felt its presence, then the bite—a sting in his peritoneal cavity—but it would all be alright. He just needed to relax, to keep breathing evenly and steadily. In a minute or two, it would all be over, and he could get changed and head home...

Some team members returned from the shower room. Some had already left. Hajime was sure that, at some point, somebody had asked him if he wanted to join them on their way to the nearby bus stop, or if he was waiting up. Waiting up—for what? Hajime couldn’t recall, let alone remember the conversation. Everything whizzed past him like a storm of shooting stars. One second, the nausea was gone; the next, it returned with full force. Hajime tried to keep it at bay—or at least he thought he could—until the quantity of saliva in his oral cavity suddenly increased drastically. With one hand pressed against his mouth, he pushed himself up from the bench in the now-deserted locker room, heading straight for the restroom.

He made it just in time to puke a sour surge of water, bile, and some still-undigested bits of his lunch into one of the sinks on the right side of the restroom. The sound of his retching thundered off the white tiles and through the empty stalls behind him. Even the frosted glass in the oblong windows and the mirrors above the sinks seemed to shudder in disgust.

At least he felt a bit better now, although he was still panting. All ten of his fingers were coiled around the sink, and sweat ran down his forehead, dripping into the mess his stomach had just ejected. But he was okay. He—

The shrill ringing in his ears returned in one fell swoop, ripping the colors from his world and blurring its borders, sucking the air from his lungs and drowning out his vision, before greedily stealing all his senses from him.