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It’s cold and Hajime wishes he’d thought to wear warmer socks as he wiggles his toes absently in his beat up runners and tries to figure out if he can still feel them.
He’s waiting for Oikawa to get off shift so they can go home together, but his shitty roommate and childhood friend is running late leaving Hajime to wander the block aimlessly waiting for his text and stew over the conversation they’d had at breakfast that morning.
“Hama-chan called me again,” Oikawa had said.
“Sorry,” Hajime had grunted, still not really awake, “Persistent bastard can’t take no for an answer. Reminds me of someone else I know.”
Oikawa had very maturely stuck his tongue out. Before settling into the chair across from him pushing the rice and egg around on his plate.
“You should go,” he said finally.
“Why? I’m not into that kind of thing.”
“We graduate in six months—”
“Assuming you don’t fail intro to statistics again,” Hajime couldn’t help but jab.
“Iwa-chan,” Oikawa had huffed, looking very like his mother, “You’re too anti-social. It’s almost the end of university, how do you ever expect to meet your perfect other half if all you do is study, work and play volleyball? If you don’t get on it you’ll miss your chance! Only—”
“Only two percent of all people report finding their match after completing post-secondary education and only point four percent of those report meeting their match after their thirtieth birthday,” Hajime parroted by rote. “You’ve been talking to my mom.”
“Auntie is worried about you, and so am I!” Oikawa had pouted, “We just want you to be happy.”
“If you want me to be happy why the hell are you trying to get me to go to a goukon?”
“Iwa-chaaaan~”
Iwaizumi Hajime hates meeting new people, he has ever since he was ten years old. In fact he remembers the exact moment that he decided he didn’t want to meet any new people. And it’s not, as Oikawa claims, because he’s anti-social. Once he’s met a person usually they get along just fine and he has no problems hanging out with them or working with them or whatever. He’s not anti-social, he just doesn’t want to meet someone and have them turn out to be his match.
He’d been frowning his way through the problem sets they’d received in math at the kitchen table while Oikawa had been helping Auntie make dinner, and the kid had been blabbering on about their day at school embellishing here and there.
“And then, at lunch, the transfer student Sakura-chan from class five came to borrow an extra t-shirt for gym from Riko-chan, and Ume-chan just started glowing! Like a real live alien, whoosh!”
“Idiot, Sakura is his match,” Hajime had said, not really paying attention but unable to let that alien comment slide, “Everyone glows like that when they meet their match.”
“Not me!” Oikawa had declared with some pride, brandishing his wooden spoon and getting sauce everywhere, “I don’t have the things that make people glow inside me so even if I meet my match nothing will happen.”
“Enzymes, Tooru, they’re called enzymes,” Auntie had said, “Now put that spoon down before you make a mess!”
Hajime had asked his mom about it later, after bath time while she was helping him dry his hair, explaining about the matched pair that had found each other at school that day and about what Oikawa had said, carefully pronouncing the word ‘enzymes’ just to one-up his cocky best-friend.
“Mmm? Ah, that’s because Tooru-chan’s parents aren’t a matched pair,” she explained, “They fell in love and decided they didn’t mind that they weren’t matched but sometimes babies that are born to unmatched pairs don’t develop the proper tools to find their own match, those tools are the enzymes that Auntie Nanako was telling you about.”
“So Tooru-chan won’t be able to find his match? Really?” frowned Hajime, “But isn’t that really sad? He’ll never be able to find his other half if he can’t light up. Why is that idiot so happy about it?”
“That’s because Tooru-chan knows that sometimes being in love is more important than being someone’s perfect match.”
Hajime doesn’t think that his mother would knows just how deeply those words sunk in, hell, he hadn’t known how deeply those words had sunk in until he was fifteen and stuck in a different class from Oikawa trying not to grimace as he touched wrists with his new classmates and realized, as yet another pair lit up next to him, that he was dreading the day that he glowed for someone else.
It took until he was sixteen for him to admit that the reason for that was because he was in love with Oikawa. At ten he’d already known that Oikawa was the best partner for him no matter what biology or fate had to say about it.
At sixteen he was just admitting to how much of a partnership he actually wanted out of his best-friend and setter.
After that it was just settling in to wait. Statistically speaking if you didn’t meet your match in high school or university you weren’t going to meet them, and after thirty the chances were as good as zero no matter what every other romantic comedy had to say about it. So that was another, what six or seven years. Or ten if he really did decide to go into sports medicine. Basically half-again the time he’d already spent with Oikawa.
And, speak of the devil, “Iwa-chan, if you’re not careful your face will stick that way.”
“Go away I’m contemplating my future.”
“What’s to contemplate? One day soon you’ll meet your match and if she doesn’t smile the two of you will have very scary looking babies and I’ll tease them about it all the time but they’ll love me anyway because I’ll teach them volleyball, and be cool Uncle Tooru.”
“That’s your future, Shittykawa, I’m deciding about mine.”
Hajime doesn’t let himself read too much into the wistful expression that crosses Oikawa’s face before he’s back to grinning and winking broadly. And it’s a good thing too cause it feels enough like a punch in the gut when the bastard shows up for practice the next day with a damn girlfriend.
Six years, he decides then and there. That’s how long he’ll wait.
Oikawa becomes an unwitting catalyst to three matched pairs in second year. After Emi-chan meets Yamada from AV club, trying to do a favour for the team and get them to lend out a few cameras so that they could record multiple games, Hajime finds him wedged into the narrow space between the ball cart and the storage room wall with his head on his knees.
He’s definitely been crying, his stupidly pretty face is a mess and the sleeve of his jacket is smeared with snot.
“You really liked this one, huh,” he says settling down next to him hip to knee.
He doesn’t know what else to say, he’s not good at this shit, but he can be there for his friend and that’s usually good enough.
“Not really,” murmurs Oikawa, “We only went out for a few weeks.”
“So why are you all messed up then?” Hajime demands, just barely resisting the urge to smack the idiot.
“I’m just tired,” sighs Oikawa miserably, slumping against him heavily and hiding his face in the crook of his neck, “I’m tired of being the only one trying to fall in love while everyone else is just killing time until they meet their stupid perfect match. I’m tired of being the only one who’s upset when it happens, if they liked me even a little wouldn’t they care a little more?”
Hajime wants to tell him right then, to say: “I love you and if I ever do meet my match it’ll probably be the worst fucking thing that ever happens to me.”
He gets as far as opening his mouth when Oikawa interrupts again.
“Iwa-chan was right. I was stupid. It’s not fair to anybody, dating in high school,” he says, “Iwa-chan has the right idea, waiting so patiently for his match. Any girl who’s matched with you is so lucky.”
Hajime shuts his mouth. Five more years.
In their first year at university they get an apartment mid-way between their two campuses, and it’s a shitty little hole in the wall but it’s a space that’s completely theirs and for the first three months Hajime feels like he can walk on air.
Then Oikawa discovers casual sex and it’s a little bit hot sometimes and pretty much awful the whole rest of the time.
Hajime joins a service on a drunken whim, figuring that it’d suck if he had no experience to bring to the table if he ever managed to get Oikawa into bed. As it turns out sex is a great way to relieve sexual frustration even if it does nothing about the heartache that accompanies it.
Oikawa is of course a little shit about it, teasing him about not being able to go out to the campus bar and pick up someone his own age or invite the cutie that sits in front of him in calculus home for a ‘study session’.
“Don’t compare me to you, Shittykawa,” Hajime says, pencil creaking in his grip as Oikawa unknowingly hit on a few sore-spots, “This is just sex, a physical release. If it was anything more than that it’d be a relationship and I’m not interested in that shit.”
“Ah, Iwa-chan~~” Oikawa coos, “Such a romantic saving his heart for his one true match.”
“Shut up, and do your damn work.”
Hajime wanders into a café that looks like it’s just starting to close up. He orders plain coffee for himself and something with whipped cream that the cashier recommends for people with a sweet tooth for Oikawa.
The total is exorbitant as it always is when he buys coffee for Oikawa, but he hands over a few bills anyway.
His hand brushes the cashier’s and then all of a sudden they both have lit up. A pale blue glow that turns their skin transparent suffusing their veins for a brief moment before Hajime jerks away.
They stare at each other for a long moment. The cashier is pretty for a guy, and tall. He might be good at volleyball, he might go to Hajime’s university or be in his program or something. He smiles widely and honestly. His nametag says Izumi.
Hajime thinks he might puke.
Why now? Why, when he’s so close, he’s waited so long already, he can’t just—
He texts Oikawa, tells him to go home without him and waits for Izumi to get off work so that he can walk him home and they can talk. He tries to apologize, tries to explain about Oikawa. He know that what he’s said doesn’t make any sense at all but apparently Izumi understands him anyway, because he blinks back tears. Says that he’s disappointed and it might take him awhile but he’d like to still be a part of Hajime’s life.
He says that his friend and their match are just friends and have been since high school, he says that his friend is asexual and sex-repulsed and that their match is wildly promiscuous but they fit each other anyway. Hajime says he’ll think about it. And they exchange numbers.
Hajime doesn’t know if he’ll ever call Izumi even as he spend the train ride home staring at the contact information. He wonders when he became a selfish asshole and if he should be more bothered by this whole thing.
It’s late when he gets back to their apartment but the light is still on and the door is unlocked, and Oikawa is sitting at the kitchen table with his legs tucked up under him.
“Your lip is bleeding,” he observes, shrugging out of his coat.
“Iwa-chan you’re back, I was starting to worry. What happened? You just texted me out of the blue—”
“I love you,” Hajime interrupts, “I’m in love with you
He’s waited five years too long to say it, it feels like, and now that he’s one hundred percent positive that nothing else matters, not even the perfect little click, like the slide of a key in a lock or a puzzle piece slotting into place, that had occurred when he met his perfect match.
Oikawa goes pale and his voice trembles slightly when he says, “Iwa-chan don’t, I can’t—your match—if it’s you I can’t, I’d just—”
Hajime can read between the lines. It’s been a year since he’s walked in on anything racy, and Oikawa hasn’t had a formal relationship with handholding and couples’ nomenclature since their second year of high school, after all.
“Shut up, idiot, you’ve been it for me since we were ten years old. If there is a person out there who’s a better match for you than me I don’t want to know them.”
Oikawa makes an ugly choking noise and squeezes his eyes tightly shut. The tears leak out anyway.
“Stupid, stupid Iwa-chan,” he sniffles, “And what happens when you meet your match, huh? What am I supposed to do then?”
“Whatever you want,” shrugs Hajime, “It’s not going to change how I feel.”
“You don’t know that, Hajime!” snaps Oikawa, banging his palm down on the table, “I’m not about to risk really getting my heart broken this time when you finally meet the person you’ve been waiting for all this time! Okay? I can’t do it. I won’t.”
“As if I’d’ve said anything if I wasn’t damn sure of this. I was always waiting for you to be ready, idiot,” Hajime says sharply, “I decided a long time ago that I’d confess after university. Once we graduated there’d only be a two percent chance of me meeting my match, I figured it’d be good enough odds for you to agree.”
“Y-you, what? You—wait why are you telling me now then if you were going to wait until graduation? What happened tonight?”
“I met them,” Hajime says, “My match. I met them tonight.”
Oikawa lets out a little gasp, like Hajime has sucker punched him and starts crying in earnest, great ugly hiccupping sobs.
Hajime does what he should have done five years ago in that storage room, he cups Oikawa’s stupid crying face in his hands and carefully slants their mouths together, letting his eyes fall shut and lingering in the sensation of the crack in Oikawa’s lower lip against his own.
He pulls away after a few seconds to rest their foreheads together.
“I love you more than anything else, stupid, I don’t care what biology or fate has to say about it. I choose you. I’ll always choose you.”
Oikawa throws his arms around Hajime’s shoulders, buries his face in his neck and wails like a small child. Hiccups something that might be his first name and smears snot all over the collar of his jacket.
Hajime wouldn’t want anything else.