Chapter Text
Objectively, avoiding Oikawa isn’t actually going to fix anything. Iwaizumi knows that. He does.
That does not change the fact that he’s doing it. That does not change the fact that he doesn’t know what to do other than avoid Oikawa. He can see very few options for himself at the moment, if he’s being honest. He could own up to what he said, he could turn around and face Oikawa, he could admit that he’s so, so in love; or he could avoid doing any of that. He could pretend it never happened, and he could wait out the tide until Oikawa forgets that it had even happened.
Which is exactly what he plans to do—wait it out. Oikawa will forget soon enough, and they’ll both be able to move on. Maybe, now that he’s actually confessed, he’ll be able to get over this. Get over him. Maybe now he’ll be able to love someone else.
Oh, he’ll always love Oikawa best, he knows that—Oikawa is his soulmate. At the end of the day, Oikawa’s soul was made for Iwaizumi to love. At the end of the day, Oikawa’s soul was always going to be perfect for Iwaizumi. He’ll always love Oikawa to some degree.
But then again—sometimes perfect isn’t enough. Sometimes perfect doesn’t mean be together forever. Sometimes it doesn’t even mean they’ll be able to be together in the first place. Oikawa was born for Iwaizumi to love. This does not mean that Iwaizumi will be allowed to. Not in the way he wants to. That much was clear from the way Oikawa froze next to him, breath caught in his throat.
Avoiding Oikawa lasts barely two days. If Iwaizumi is being honest, he doesn’t know how he lasted even that long, however short an amount of time that is. He and Oikawa have always been a little attached at the hip, and though both of them deny this being unhealthy, Iwaizumi also knows that being apart from him feels a little like being apart from a bone or muscle or limb. It feels a little like being apart from his soul.
So it only lasts two days.
Iwaizumi manages to get through morning practices and then the school days and then afternoon practices without talking to him. He eats lunch in a stairwell that he’s pretty sure Oikawa will never find him in; he pairs up with Yahaba and Kyoutani during drills; he takes the long way home after practices and avoids seeing Oikawa in the light of the sunset. He thinks, should he see that, he might break.
But he’s sitting in his room doing his math homework—read: staring at his papers and feeling sorry for himself—when he hears voices downstairs. His mom, who had always welcomed Oikawa into her home as a second son, is talking loud enough for the words to carry upstairs to Iwaizumi.
“Of course you can come in,” she says. “You know you’re always welcome here.”
It’s a testament to how strained their friendship is at the moment, really, that Oikawa hadn’t just barged in to the house and up the stairs to Iwaizumi’s room. It’s a sign that something is deeply wrong between them, and Iwaizumi hates it. He hates this tension that’s lying between them, the one that even his mom has apparently noticed.
“Hajime is in his room,” she says. “He’s been feeling down recently, I think. Hopefully you can cheer him up. You’ve always known him best, haven’t you?”
Oikawa laughs a little, but it sounds forced. “I guess so.”
“Go on up,” Iwaizumi’s mom says, chuckling to herself. “I’ve kept you long enough.”
Oikawa doesn’t say anything—he must just give her a nod—and Iwaizumi can hear steps on the stairwell after only a moment. The walk to Iwaizumi’s room feels like it takes an eternity, despite his room being right to the side of the staircase. Iwaizumi waits, staring at the door, for Oikawa to enter. He doesn’t know what he can say to Oikawa and he doesn’t know what he wants to hear from him.
Then there’s a knock on the door, and before Iwaizumi can even give his permission to open it, Oikawa is stepping into the room. Iwaizumi swallows, staring at him as he closes the door shut behind him. He looks terrible, as if he hasn’t been sleeping since that evening when Iwaizumi confessed to him. He looks as if the world is on his shoulders and there is no one else helping him bear the weight. That was, once, Iwaizumi’s job. But he isn’t sure that he’s welcome to be near him anymore.
“Hi.”
“Hey.”
Oikawa stands awkwardly by the door for a moment, tugging at his fingers. Iwaizumi motions towards the bed, and Oikawa takes his usual seat by the headboard. After a moment of internal debate, Iwaizumi stands up from the desk and joins him, sitting by the foot of the bed. His feet stay solid on the floor, his body turned away from where Oikawa is facing him, crosslegged.
“Can we talk?” Oikawa asks softly. “I—”
“Can I go first?” Iwaizumi cuts in. He takes a breath, one that does nothing to fill the hollow feeling in his lungs. “I want to apologize.”
“For what?”
Iwaizumi looks over at him with a half-hearted glare. “For what I said.”
Oikawa sucks in a breath, almost imperceptible if you aren’t well learned in the art of reading each and every one of Oikawa’s tells. “Is it true? Do you—love me?”
“Yeah.” He shrugs trying to seem as if this conversation doesn’t burn, doesn’t hurt, doesn’t ache deep in his soul. He looks away from Oikawa, down at his hands in his lap. “I’m sorry. That I said it. I didn’t mean to.”
“Don’t,” Oikawa says, rough and sudden. “Don’t make loving me sound like a—like a mistake. Like it’s wrong.”
Iwaizumi’s eyes snap to him. He thinks about the recent constant touches, about the sleeping on his shoulder, about the teaching him chemistry, about the confession.
“It is,” Iwaizumi says flatly. “I shouldn’t have let myself fa—I shouldn’t have let myself do this. Not when you can’t want me back. And—it’s fine. I’ve come to terms with it, with you not liking me in the same way. I’ll be fine, Oikawa, and you don’t have to fucking look at me with so much pity.”
Oikawa drops his gaze away from Iwaizumi, looking at his hands. Tracing the lines of his palms with tired eyes. He’s quiet for a long moment, taking the time to digest every one of Iwaizumi’s words. On one hand, Iwaizumi is glad he’s listening, on the other hand, he wishes Oikawa would just say something.
Oikawa doesn’t seem like he’s going to say anything, so Iwaizumi continues as if Oikawa’s silence isn’t lingering between them. “I know I’m not your soulmate, and I promise that I’m fine with that. I don’t want anything you don’t want, and I’m not gonna—gonna do anything weird to you. I’m fine with being alone. So can we just fucking forget that I said anything?”
He takes a breath, ready to keep going, but out of the corner of his eye, he sees Oikawa shake his head, and it makes him pause.
“You’re not as alone as you think you are,” Oikawa says quietly. “I know the universe hasn’t—given you what you deserve but, you’re still not alone. I’m not forgetting what you said.”
It’s eerily reminiscent of what Hanamaki had said only a few days ago, Iwaizumi remembers. You don’t have to carry this alone.
He knows that, on some level, Oikawa cares about him. He knows that Hanamaki and Matsukawa both care about him. He knows that, really, he’s been the one pushing them all away, thinking that he isn’t good enough for them. Thinking that he isn’t good enough to be loved by them—and why? He hasn’t thought about it hard enough; because, if he’s facing it, his reasons for believing all of that are phantom beliefs more than hard truths.
The universe fucked him over with the soulmate thing. The universe, however, also gave him three friends who care about him anyways. Who choose to care about him. Not despite his broken bond, his untethered soul, but because of everything else. Because he’s still a person, he’s still real, he still matters. The universe may have told him he’s not destined for love, but he has an entire team of people who said fuck that, and loved him anyway.
So why won’t he just let them? Why won’t he let them love him how they want to?
And maybe they feel the same.
“I know you don’t believe me, and that you never have,” Oikawa continues. “But I do care about you, Iwa. I’ll always love you, however you want me to.”
Iwaizumi swallows. He closes his eyes, pressing his head against the wall. “What if I want more than you’re willing to give?”
“I’m willing to give you everything.” There’s something choked up in Oikawa’s voice. Something weak, like he thinks that Iwaizumi isn’t going to accept him.
Iwaizumi opens his eyes, studying Oikawa’s face. Oikawa has his eyes wide open, watering at the edges. Iwaizumi hates that—that look of fear and sadness. He’s never been more vulnerable in front of Iwaizumi than he is now, but with the tremble of his lip, it looks like he’s also never been more afraid that he’s going to be hurt.
He doesn’t know, does he? Iwaizumi thinks in wonder. How careful I am to never hurt him.
But he has been hurting Oikawa, he realizes. He’s been pushing him away for years now, refusing to let him be as close as he wants. Refusing to take his hand. It was only recently—when Iwaizumi realized that they both know how he feels, and when he realized that it didn’t matter, and when he let himself fall even further because of it, getting more and more obvious with every glance turned Oikawa’s way—that Iwaizumi let Oikawa come close.
And Oikawa—Oikawa had jumped at that chance. Had taken every inch that Iwaizumi gave him. He had been waiting to love Iwaizumi a lot longer than Iwaizumi had been allowing him to.
“I caught you a butterfly,” Iwaizumi blurts out. “The first time we met. I caught you a butterfly.”
“I remember.” Oikawa frowns at him, licking his lips. “What does that have to do with anything?”
Iwaizumi takes a deep breath. “It was the wrong season for it. The butterfly probably froze to death not long after we let it go. And then we found out that you’re my soulmate. And everything changed. We had just met, but it—we were six. And I felt like the butterfly. Like we had found something beautiful and then I was set adrift only to die from the cold not too long after.”
Oikawa swallows visibly, his breaths shallow. “But we’re not butterflies and the name on your wrist isn’t the cold weather and where are you even going with this?”
“I’m just saying,” Iwaizumi says hollowly, “that I wasn’t made for this. I wasn’t ever supposed to be good enough for you. For anyone. And—Oikawa, you told me to break the bond. You told me you didn’t want me. So how could I ever—”
“That was years ago, and I—I didn’t mean it like that,” Oikawa cuts in, voice shaking. A tear slips down his cheek and he wipes it away furiously. “I wanted you to break the bond because you hated dealing with me so much. Not because I didn’t want you.”
Iwaizumi frowns at him, and he suddenly feels like crying too. He’s never known how to deal with Oikawa’s heartbreak because he’s always been too caught up in his own. He swallows down everything he really wants to say—I love you, I could never hate you, if you want me, you can have me, please, please let me have you too—and says, “I don’t hate dealing with your pain, Oikawa.”
“Fine.” Oikawa meets Iwaizumi’s eyes; takes a breath that rattles. “Then why do you feel like a—a dead butterfly, or whatever your metaphor was?”
“Because,” Iwaizumi says, looking at Oikawa’s feet, “I caught you something beautiful for, for two minutes, and then we had to let it go. We were just kids. Playing around for a day. And then that night changed everything. Because we were beautiful for two minutes and then I had your name on my wrist and the butterfly was dead.”
Oikawa exhales deeply. He shifts to the side, closer to Iwaizumi, pressing their shoulders together. “Okay. Sure, that butterfly died. But you caught me another one. You kept catching them for me. And I hated letting them go, but you didn’t care so much, partly because you thought they deserved to be free and partly because, no matter the season, you always found me another one. You told me that, once. That you’d always get me another one, as long as I wanted them.”
“What’s your point?”
“You’ve given me everything,” Oikawa says quietly, putting a hand on top of Iwaizumi’s hand. Just letting it rest there. The touch makes him shiver, makes his heart shake. “You’re not that dead butterfly. If anything, you’re the boy who let them all go because he knew I’d always be there, patiently waiting for the next one.”
“You’ve never been patient once in your life,” Iwaizumi says, somehow finding it in him to laugh, wet and sad and tired.
Oikawa shrugs. “I’ve waited for you, haven’t I?”
“You could have had me at any time,” Iwaizumi chokes out.
He raises his eyes to meet Oikawa’s gaze; and oh, he looks beautiful in this moment. Beautiful in the same way as sunlight through stained glass flowers, beautiful in the same way prisms reflect on skin, beautiful in the same way as butterfly wings, beating through the air. Iwaizumi’s breath stops.
“What about now?”
Iwaizumi exhales, long and steady, wondering if Oikawa can feel the light whisper of his breath on his mouth: yes, now, always, forever, please.
“Now is good,” Iwaizumi murmurs.
Oikawa, eyes still watering and his free hand gripping the bedsheets tight in his fist, his other hand slotting his fingers between Iwaizumi’s fingers as if Iwaizumi is going to disappear, smiles. It’s soft and quiet, still a little sad, still a little scared, but a smile all the same. “Can I finally kiss you now?”
Iwaizumi breathes out his consent more than says it; like a prayer or an absolution. Then Oikawa is shifting even closer, his hand going to Iwaizumi’s cheek, guiding him in. Oikawa has to lean down a little bit, which is just slightly embarrassing, but Iwaizumi doesn’t have a minute to think about it because then Oikawa is kissing him. Sweet and gentle and real.
This isn’t his dream, this isn’t the fantasy that he thought would never come true. This is Oikawa, pressing his lips to Iwaizumi, moving just slightly, his tongue touching Iwaizumi’s mouth; this is Oikawa, as close as he can be, and Iwaizumi wants him closer, closer, closer.
He kisses Oikawa back and thinks that he still isn’t sure if he deserves this—it will take more than just one conversation to unlearn all of his insecurities—but oh, oh, he’s going to take it. He’s going to take whatever Oikawa will give him, whether or not it’s selfish, because Iwaizumi has never been more in love than he is when Oikawa smiles into their first kiss.