hi i'm sorry i've forgotten how to write. please enjoy this semi-nonsensical drabble-esque story of love and overwhelming pining told in three parts. not much happens here, really, besides my constant abuse of "feeling deep" metaphors regarding nature and space. i apologize in advance for any errors/mistakes, as this fic had gone unbeta'd.

Disclaimer: I don't own Haikyuu!; all rights go to Furudate Haruichi-sensei.

Oikawa Tooru is more than a pretty boy.

He is chapped lips and bruised arms, graphite words smudged with heart-shaped doodles in sketchpads and rule-lined notebooks; sweat-slicked skin and hard work incarnate, the loud voice calling out 'don't mind' and 'one more time,' hands behind the quick swoosh of rubber tossed on a worn-out court.

He is faded polaroids and half-honeyed tea, a mop of brown hair buried between bed sheets and pillowcases until forty minutes past noon on weekends, a hoarse voice at twelve past three in the morning, boisterous laughter amongst acquaintances in dinner tables and late night karaoke bars.

He is quiet limbs and fractured hearts, songless hummingbirds and a shipwrecked mark, empty treasure chests, crumpled mementos, crooked smiles and a bright-eyed soul curious about the future and uncertain of the world, of the endless mysteries that lie beyond it– for what else is this world than but a mere fraction of the universe? – a memory from childhood, a relic from a forever.

He is marble cracked and nebula collapsed, waterlogged galaxies and lonely voyage, a wayward star lost and whirring through the vast and distant universe – fragile and imperfect, yet beautiful all the same.

He is also, unfortunately, Iwaizumi Hajime's—

(first love)

(true love)

(only love)

– best friend.

i. meet me underneath the lavender tree (basked in the brilliance of your smile; your solitary figure)

Hajime is seven when they meet for the first time. It is on a cold day in the middle of February, a prologue to their spring, when the winter winds no longer flitted through the air and the vestiges of snow banks remained littered around the streets, in crevices of backyards and unkempt park grounds. The sun is setting and night is drawing near, and Iwaizumi remembers his small hands cupping leftover snowflakes and forming a snowman on the pavement of his front lawn when the moment happens.

"Hello," croaks an unfamiliar voice. The greeting goes ignored but a tap on the shoulder is all it takes for Hajime's gaze to whir into attention, pupils falling on tousled locks of brown hair on a young boy's frame. Wordlessly, Hajime looks on as the young boy throws him a crooked smile.

"My name is Tooru," the boy says, beaming. "Oikawa Tooru. What's yours?"

"Iwaizumi Hajime," he replies with a questioning glance. "Do you want something?"

"Uhm, yes, you see…" the boy – Tooru — answers sheepishly, twiddling with his thumbs, itching for reprieve. His eyes dart to the side. "My ball. It, uh…I kinda need to get it…can I?"

"Sure. Where is it?"

He gestures to the far right of the lot, the ball in question having landed in the hellebore bushes of his mother's garden. Hajime wouldn't have noticed it, to be honest, if not for the stark contrast of the blue-white-yellow stripes against the sea of greens and pinks. At this point, the stems are laid askew and a few stray petioles have fallen, seemingly plucked off from the ball's impact.

"Oh," is all Hajime says.

"Oh no," is all Hajime hears the boy answer.

"Wait," Tooru blurts out before he dashes from the lot and runs off to god knows where, returning a minute later with the same crooked smile and a handful of something green. "Here," he says, in between panting breaths, and shoves a fistful of grass in Hajime's gloved palms. "I'm sorry I ruined the plants! Please don't be angry with me, Iwa-chan."

"T-Thanks," Hajime replies, somewhat stunned. Iwa-chan? The name wraps itself around the interstices of his mind, rolling off Tooru's tongue with ease, and Hajime finds himself pondering on it for a brief moment, relishing in its sound. "It's okay, I'm not—"

"Yay! I'm glad," he says with the same crooked smile, but to Hajime it feels warmer this time. He reaches out his hand, open and friendly. "Want to play volleyball with me?"

"Sure," Hajime says, and when he takes it, he feels the nebula collapse and the gravities shift and the stars twinkle in his hold.

For Tooru is the sun, and oh god, does it burn.

ii. i'll wait for you where the wisteria blooms (beneath the moonlight; beyond the horizon)

They are ten when Hajime first learns what it means to be faced with the world and its prejudice; far too young to know the origin of a bias that runs so deep, but wise enough to understand the repercussions of the pain it can cause.

He is halfway through putting on his outdoor shoes when he chances upon Tooru against the lockers, thanks to a muffled sniffle he knows the other had meant to go unheard. The boy is crouched on the aisle's parakeet floors, knees bent and body hunched forward, rivulets of liquid staining flushed red cheeks. His eyes are bloodshot. Snot dribbles down his nose.

He was always an ugly crier.

"Oikawa?"

No response - just a quiet hiccup, a soundless glance. No words.

"What's wrong?" he asks, hesitant, with his fingers curled at the hem of his shirt. Tooru buries his face deeper into his palms. The tears continue a little while longer, and Hajime takes it upon himself to step forward and plop down beside his sobbing frame. He waits for a good two hours, or perhaps maybe even three, until Tooru's tears have all dried out and the waterworks can't come anymore. Hajime hates waiting, but he's always patient when it comes to Tooru. When the crying stops, he nudges the other's shoulder.

"You don't have to force yourself," he says. "D'you want some?"

He offers him his jug of water, still a quarter full, and Tooru takes it gratefully, with a mumbled thank you and an even softer I'msorry. Hajime shakes his head, reminds the brown-haired boy that he doesn't need to apologize, plastering on a quiet smile. He doesn't have to say anything. It's a smile that tells Tooru: you can trust me, you know.

And so Tooru does.

"The-th-they…they s-said," Tooru stutters, "I-I-I w-was g…guh—"

"Guh?" Hajime asks, bewildered. "They said you were what?"

"T-That I…w-was…gay," Tooru whispers almost inaudibly, his voice cracking as he mutters the last word. Hajime notices the dampness in his eyes, a new wave of tears threatening to spill. "B-because I…hic… I look like a girl, they said, and 'cause I kept sticking around Iwa-chan…I told them it wasn't…it wasn't like that. They s-said I-I was lying, but I'm not. I l-like Iwa-chan but not like that. But they wouldn't b-b-believe me. I'm really not gay, you know, I'm a boy. They wouldn't listen. T-They punched my face…said it was too g – hicc – gross. I c-can't help that I look like a girl 'cause I look like my mom. They told me to stop being like this or else Iwa-chan would find me gross too and wouldn't want to be my friend anymore and if...if that—"

"Hey," Hajime stops him for a moment. It's become a habit of his, lately, to pick at his words and filter them through his mind before saying anything. "Could you…could you look at me for a bit?"

A nod.

When Tooru obliges, Hajime sees the tinge of purple hidden beneath the puff of his flushed cheeks, the small bump of bruised skin threatening to swell in the coming hours. How could he have let this happen? He feels himself weighed down by a plethora of guilt and shame. Hajime feels his fingers coming together – a fist forming – knuckles gone white. Furl. Unfurl. Breathe, Hajime tells himself. Just breathe. Composure.

He wraps the other boy in his arms.

"I believe you," he says, with as much intensity as a ten year old can muster. "I believe you the same way you believe in aliens. And that's a lot. You know that. If you say you aren't gay then you aren't gay. They're all just too stupid to understand you, which is why they couldn't believe you. Who cares what those idiots think anyway? Sure, they're right you do look kinda like a girl but that's okay. It suits you. You look pretty that way. But you aren't gross. I don't think you're gross at all. You can be pretty weird sometimes, but that's fine because we're still friends even if you are. Sometimes I'm weird too, so we can be weird together."

He feels a growing dampness on his shoulder, and when he feels the subtle trembling of the other's frame against his, Hajime's sure that this growing puddle of tears on his shirt is thanks to the emotional instability of this even bigger puddle of tears in his arms.

"Come on. You're getting your snot all over me; that's pretty gross," he chides, curling his lower lip in mock disgust though his voice carries with it no bite. "Quit bein' gross, Trashykawa."

"Mean, Iwa-chan!" Tooru cries in mock offense. He rubs at his eyes with his wrists, a feeble attempt to wipe the tears away. "You're mean."

"Yeah, yeah…now stop crying," Hajime placates. He pats the other's back reassuringly, rubbing soothing circles all the while. "Can we go home now?"

Tooru dutifully puts on his shoes in response, lest they linger by the entranceway. Hajime heaves his backpack onto his shoulders; Tooru picks up his lunchbox and quickly follows suit. His figure lags behind Hajime's for a while, and the taller boy takes a moment before he stops, slows, and matches his pace.

"Hey," says a whisper.

"Hey what?" Hajime answers. "Did you forget something in the classroom?"

"Mm-hm. It's just…t-th…thank you," Tooru murmurs, his voice a quiet whisper that very nearly echoes against the stillness of an after-school dusk. "I'm happy I have a best friend like you."

Best friend.

Yes, of course. That's right. Hajime is Tooru's best friend, just as how Tooru is his.

He doesn't know why his heart aches at the sound of that.

iii. kiss me in the shadows, beneath the cherry leaves (where the sakura blooms brightest; such is the memory of our existence)

Hajime does know, seven years later, when he comes to realize his feelings for the boy on their third year of high school.

The locker room reeks of salon pas and day-old sweat – of teen spirit, Hanamaki would often say – and Hajime excuses himself after a quick change of his shirt and an even quicker spray of cologne, towel still in hand to dab the sweat off the nape of his neck. He hears the squeak of rubber against wood and the slam of a ball hitting the court, and it comes as no surprise when he sees a familiar mop of tousled hair still bouncing around and dripping with sweat. A bottle stands on the other side of the net; it is a marker – a goal.

Tooru tosses the ball and jumps, prepares himself for another service ace. And another. And another. Hajime squints his eyes at the boy's form – the curve of his arm, the bend of his knees, the breadth of his back. He looks flawless, like a comet streaking brilliance across the sky, and yet—

"Oikawa," he says, calling out to his captain. The ball he serves veers off a good two inches from the corner, and the plastic vessel remains untouched. Unscathed.

The battle goes unwon.

"Oikawa," Hajime says again, eyes narrowing at the other's expression as he lands on the ground. Hajime walks towards the net and bends over to pick up the bottle. Tooru's lips quiver to a pout. "Let's go home."

The journey back home is stifled somewhat, an awkward tension looming over them in a way that terrifies Hajime more than he would like to admit. Hajime listens as Tooru prattles on about goukon plans and his fan club's latest gimmicks. Tooru insists that nothing is wrong, keeping with pretense and holding up an act, but his smile looks perfect, practiced – almost forced. Hajime doesn't buy it.

"Hm," he hums, shoving his cellphone back into his pocket, and throws caution to the wind. "I'm sleeping over tonight."

"Did you text your mom?"

It's nothing new to them. They've done this before, ages ago – weekly sleepovers, bi-monthly housewarming parties, overnight gaming marathons…the list goes on.

(Once, Tooru crawled his way into Hajime's bedroom at two in the morning when they were twelve, begging the boy to help him search for adventure. Tooru is a child too stubborn for his own good, never taking no for an answer, and Hajime was a twelve year old simply too groggy to refuse, much less put up a fight. He nabbed the sheets off his bedspread, told Tooru to pick up the extra blanket from the leftmost drawer of his dresser, and crawled out the window of their humble one-story home. Hajime called it stargazing; Tooru called it alien-hunting.

Nevertheless, they spent that night huddled in blankets with their pinkies linked together, a promise of forever forged beneath the stars.)

"Yep, and I've texted yours too. Told her to make you some milk tea."

"Wh—?!"

"You always crave for milk tea whenever you have a headache," he replied a matter-of-factly. When Oikawa is about to throw him an astonished are you an esper how can you read human minds expression, he continues, "You looked pretty rough out there during training earlier. Your form was perfect, so I know it wasn't your knee that was bothering you back then. You always get headaches when you're stressed. Did something happen?"

The answer comes to him like a slap in the face.

"My girlfriend and I broke up."

Oh.

"It's okay. It was a mutual thing. I wanted more time for volleyball; she didn't like that I gave it more attention than I did her. She cried, though, when she asked me to choose between her and the sport. The answer was obvious, we both knew, but it still hurt her to have me say it. I needed to be honest though. It wouldn't have been good for us otherwise. So I guess…I guess I'm just tired."

"I see," Hajime mumbles softly, and then jokes, "Don't worry Oikawa, I'm sure your fangirls will be rearing to date you now that you know you're on the market again. "

Emotions are tricky things, terribly fickle and often time-consuming. But Hajime knows how to be patient. He knows how to weigh a situation and visualize the prospects, to master the rules and work around it in hopes of maneuvering the outcome in his favor. Tooru probably doesn't know it yet, probably hasn't realized the breadth of such sentiments that run skin-deep – and most likely, never will – but Hajime's a loyal fool, an optimist at best, and he's played this waiting game a whole lot longer than most.

Still, he admits, it doesn't make it any easier.

"Why of course, how could I forget those darlings? My loyal admirers! It would be a sin to deny them of this precious commodity now, wouldn't it?" Tooru answers back, gesturing to his face and tossing his fringe with theatrical flair.

"'Spoiled goods' is more like it."

"Rude, Iwa-chan!"

How easily do we say the words we never truly mean, but never the ones we really feel? The emotions that in fact and in truth, actually do matter?

"Aah," Tooru replies with a faint lilt of his voice, almost singsong. He lifts his schoolbag over his shoulder as he sighs and discards the remnants of his false bravado. "I guess I lost, huh? There's just no winning against you, is there, Iwa-chan. Why does it seem like you know everything that there is to know about me, anyway? Sometimes it's like you know me better than I do myself."

Hajime catches himself right there and then; ponders on the rotten nature of luck and the cruelty of fate and the causality of the universe in the realms of space and time, before he puts himself at the mercy of the galaxy and mouths a soundless prayer to the sky.

(There are a million things he wants to say in that moment:

Because I love you –

Because I care about you –

Because I've been watching you all this time –)

"Because you're an idiot," he retorts and settles for these words in their stead, "so there isn't that much to know about you to begin with. And knowing you, you're going to spend the next few hours obsessively analyzing game replays of Karasuno instead of sleeping, which will only worsen your condition at this point. And as an idiot's best friend, it's my job to look after you and prevent that from happening."

(So many words, yet at the same time, none at all.)

"Is that so?" Tooru says with a grin, flashing the same crooked smile Hajime has grown to so fondly love. "I sure am one lucky idiot, then, to have a best friend like you."

The sentiments linger another second longer. Almost they spill out of his lips sooner than he can control them, but Hajime holds his tongue and bites them back before he ever lets them slip. Man is often known to be a stranger to his emotions, purely because of his cultivated habit of pushing them away.

In the case of Iwaizumi Hajime, this propensity has very nearly become routine.

"It's the same for me," he says instead with a soft smile, pursing his lips to keep himself from sounding too hopeful. Miscommunication will be the bane of his existence, but to Hajime, it is a cross he does not mind carrying. Old habits die hard, after all. "I sure am one lucky idiot to have a best friend like you, too."

[And whereas society may dictate for us to never be together, the fact still remains that you will always have my heart.]

i feel the need to apologize for what is probs badly construed purple prose and my inconsistent almost nonexistent writing style but i'm a self-indulgent fool that wanted to get this plot bunny out of my system to make up for my inactivity HAHAhuhu. speaking of inactivity hot damn iwa-chan y u gotta be so chaste this fic doesn't even contain so much as a kiss i am both amused and appalled by the lack of libido these supposedly healthy teenagers have like omg maya get ur shit together and get them some action someday woah wtf selfi hope you enjoyed reading this though! please leave a review as i would love to hear from you :)

PS: i remember seeing a tumblr post that said grass stood for homosexual love in flower language but no, mind you, little seven-year-old Tooru did not imply that at all with his peace offering of grass blades HAHAHA but i do admit this kinda prompted/inspired me to write that moment in this piece