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blushingbaka · 3 years

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SPOKEN BY YOU (AS THOUGH IT’S SACRED) — IWAIZUMI HAJIME X READER

synopsis: iwaizumi goes to college in california despite everything that tells him not to. it’s there that he begins to be forged by the people he meets, but most importantly, you.

word count: 7.6k

warnings: a few swear words, very very light angst

note: hello this is my first long fic on tumblr in a very long time but i deeply love iwa <3 appreciate all of you and i hope you enjoy!!

when he moved to california, iwaizumi fell in love with the beach; the feeling of sand settling beneath his feet, the chilling ocean breeze, the rippling of waves over his skin and the sound of the crashing water curling into his ears. when iwaizumi, terrified, nervous iwaizumi, flew halfway across the world to arrive on new soil, he didn’t expect his legs to carry him to the coast, and that here, he’d feel the most at home he had in a while.

and yet, wind kissing his skin, the scent of sea salt resting somewhere in his nose, he can feel himself start to calm down. suddenly, the swirling of the earth seems to slow for a while, the ground—though rough to step through and constantly catching on his heels as he walks—feels steadier.

and so he walks along the intersection of land and water, his shoes dangling off of his fingers as the ocean laps against his exposed skin.

he’s spent nearly a week here now, texting oikawa and everyone else over half-broken messenger apps, getting videos sent to him of mattsun and makki screaming their ‘miss you’s over music in their cars, calling his parents after late-night dinners, hoping to catch them after the sun rises in japan. he’s lonely, though he’d hate to admit it, and he misses the sound of his friends’ or his family’s voices when they weren’t entangled in static and twisting through his phone speakers.

and so he keeps walking, one slightly unsteady foot in front of another, and lets the beach carry him wherever it may wish. and though he knows that in just one more week school will start and things will get better, there’s a terrible nagging feeling in him that maybe they won’t—that maybe, another few weeks will pass and he’ll still be walking along the beach alone, that most nights will be spent in his apartment with his laptop in front of him, that maybe chasing his goals and his dreams for the past three years of his life will tumble before him in nothing more than a wish to go home.

he hates his nagging feelings, he really does.

and because he’s living half in his head and half in the soil, because he’s terribly nervous and, no matter how much he loves the beach for how it steadies his breath, he’ll never quite be steady enough in the sand, his shoulder bumps into someone who’s standing in the water, the ripples of the ocean just barely resting around their ankles, and he sends both of them stumbling through the waves. apologies spill past his lips as he goes to grab them before they lose their balance and fall into the water, hand resting somewhere on their back as he pulls both of them back upwards—but he’s just as quick to remove it as he was to place it, a terrible bit of redness biting at the tips of his ears from the- well, not even just the touch, really, it’s everything about the situation.

“shit,” he mumbles again as you turn to him, hair a little messier in the breeze than it might’ve been a few seconds prior, but a light smile resting on your face. still, the words i’m sorry manage to snake over his tongue again, as though curses and apologies are the only thing he can manage out of his throat.

“it’s okay!” you say, laughter sweet and light on each little syllable, your hands waving him off in front of you, “you caught me, didn’t you?”

he looks over you, the way your hair twirls in the sea salt air, the sun mingling with your skin, the crinkles that rest by your eyes as you smile up at him—and he’s terribly confused by it all.

“i did,” he replies, a little stupid and a little unsure.

you’re looking at him as though he hadn’t nearly made you drive or walk or ride the bus home—whatever it is you did to get here—soaked in the ocean water.

“then no worries,” you say, a shrug of your shoulders punctuating the sentence. he watches as your eyes flit down from his to his sweatshirt, and then he sees the flicker of recognition lay somewhere in your expression, the way the corners of your lips quirk upwards as you inhale a little gasp of breath. “you go to uci?”

“yeah,” he replies after a little pause, “yeah, or, i will in a week, i guess.”

and then you smile, wider than the first time, your gaze catching his and not daring to leave as you speak.

“i will too,” you say, and then you turn back out to the horizon, the breeze catching your hair and twisting it around your cheeks. “i just moved here, actually.” you send him a quick glance over your shoulder. “i’m guessing you did too?”

iwaizumi laughs, quietly, hardly more than a rush of breath.

“what gave it away?”

“don’t know,” you say, and he watches as your fingers reach up to toy with the sleeve of your own sweatshirt, twisting the fabric over your knuckles. “you seem nervous, i guess.” another glance back at him, a little, barely-there smile resting on your lips, “i get it.”

there’s a bit of silence that settles for just a moment. here, iwaizumi can hear the quiet squawking of faraway seagulls and the much louder sound of water flowing between them, leaving his skin a little cold at the touch.

“hey, what did you say your name was?” he asks after only a moment. he knows you never gave your name, and yet the question still falls past his lips like that.

“don’t believe i said it,” you reply, a little teasing tone on your tongue, a tilt to your head as you turn back to him. “you first.”

“iwaizumi,” he says, because it’s first instinct, because even though the name hajime rests somewhere in the back of his head, or even the nickname iwa, his last name feels correct when he says it—and even more so when you repeat it back to him with a little nod of your head.

and then you say your name, letting the sound mix with the ocean and the seagulls and the sweet breeze running past his ears, letting it settle with the water and the grains of sand that rest beneath him, letting it twirl in the sea salt and fall upon his ears.

and though he doesn’t say it at the time, the thought of oh, that sounds nice, settles into his skull.

—————

it’s a wednesday when he sees you again, sitting under one of the trees on campus to stay in the shade, your laptop propped up on your legs. he sees your gaze catch his, that flicker of recognition sitting on your face for just a moment, and then his name spills past your lips in a single breath.

“iwaizumi!” you call, though it’s hardly something loud, just a slight raise of your voice over the breeze whistling through the leaves. he laughs a bit at your excitement, a sputter of breath over his tongue, a blush at the tips of his ears at the sound of his name. he walks over to where you sit, amusement slipping through his face from the way his lips quirk into a smile and the way his brows raise just a bit.

he watches you mess with your fingers as you go to speak again, twirling your knuckles one around the other, pulling on your thumbs and pressing on the joints.

“sorry,” you say, a shake of your head following your voice, but then you take a breath and speak again, “i was just wondering, are you doing anything right now?”

“no,” he says, “i was just getting some air.”

and then you smile up at him, another question sitting on your tongue—he can tell by the way you’re looking at him, eyes a little wider, maybe a bit brighter, lips parted as your gaze falls over his face.

“okay, so there’s this taco place just off campus that i’ve been dying to try but i really don’t want to go alone.” you pause to look at him, bottom lip caught between your teeth and brows furrowed.

“i’ll go with you,” he says, a shrug of his shoulder following the reply.

and he isn’t entirely sure why—beyond the normal satisfaction of making someone happy—but he finds he likes the way you grin up at him after he agrees, the way your smile digs into your cheeks and the way your eyes crinkle at the edges. if he wasn’t sure, he’d think you’d been waiting for him to turn up just to ask him the question, if he wasn’t much smarter and much more of a realist than that, he’d almost let the thought settle. he doesn’t, of course, because he honestly finds that he likes the coincidence more than he would the alternative.

“great, okay, i just have like, two more pages left of this reading and then we can head over.” he watches you move a bit against the tree, opening up space beside you on the grass. “if you sit down i promise i’ll be done in ten minutes.”

“ten minutes,” he repeats, a smirk settling against his cheeks as he moves down next to you, “i’ll be timing you.”

“well now i’ll beat ten minutes,” you reply, already dividing your attention between your laptop and iwaizumi. he doesn’t dare respond again, because you’re far too busy with the text to even hear him now, and instead leans against the tree, scrolling mindlessly on his phone—though he keeps a close eye on the time, he has to hold you to your promise, doesn’t he?

and so he lets the bit of time pass beneath the shade of the tree, lets the wind pass through the leaves and onto his skin, kissing the exposed flesh of his arms and twirling through his short strands of hair. it feels nice out here, still warm from summer despite the steady approach of fall, the grass green and the sun, though not entirely upon him, shines over the campus and paints it in this pretty kind of light.

and here he sits, beneath a tree on an end-of-summer day, with you next to him, skimming a reading that you were paying much more attention to before he got here and before you made plans.

and when you shove your laptop closed, a full 12 minutes after you’d first started again (because two pages had turned into four, and because the way you creased your brows together as you read gave you a headache, and because the headache made you stop skimming and actually try to read), you put your things away and get up from your spot, offering iwaizumi a hand to pull him up as well.

and then you lead him along, walking through campus and telling him all about the things you’ve found while you’ve been here (which, admittedly, hasn’t been much. not between the pre-class readings and trying to figure out where your classes are, anyway).

and things feel a little better than they had just a few days prior at the beach—though he has to admit, he does miss the sand settling beneath his feet and the smell of sea salt twirling in the air. but things feel better, a little lighter maybe, as he watches you laugh at yourself and smile over at him as you speak.

iwaizumi, tentatively, carefully, feels a little less alone than he had before.

—————

the taco place becomes a frequent stop for iwaizumi—not alone, no, never alone. from the moment you walked with him into the little restaurant, filled with tables only meant for two people and music playing on an old speaker, the voices crackling through the quiet air, from the moment he stood at the register and saw you waiting beside him before adding a little theirs, too, at the end, adding your order onto his receipt, both of you’d known that this might become something of a tradition.

so he’s managed to find himself here again, the first month of classes now behind him, and you sitting across from him at what the two of you have now designated as your taco place.

“you have to let me meet oikawa,” you say, a tortilla chip settled between your fingers, hanging in the air as you wait for his response.

“absolutely not,” he replies, shaking his head and waving you off with a hand.

“makki and mattsun, then,” you say, and laughter leaves him in a rush of breath as he rolls his eyes.

“that’s even worse.”

“i guess we’re facetiming oikawa tonight, then,” you say, looking at him with a smile on your face that he knows means you’ve won, so he pulls out his phone, sighing as he scrolls through the contacts.

“he’s been begging me to call him all day, so you can call him now.” he offers the phone out to you, and then raises it up quickly as you go to grab it. “not facetime,” he says as he lays his phone in your hand.

he watches as you happily click the call button, your bottom lip pulled between your teeth to bite back the smile that encroaches onto your cheeks. he hears it ring for a few moments before oikawa’s muffled voice rattles through the speakers.

“oh thank god, iwa, i’ve been waiting-” is all iwaizumi catches before you gasp, turning to him with your mouth hanging open.

“he calls you iwa?” you ask, the question spilling past excited breath. he feels the familiar feeling of blush creeping up his ears, and he bites on his tongue as he considers his response. of course, the response never leaves him, because it’s only a few seconds before he hears oikawa’s panicked voice on the other end.

he can’t make out everything he says, not between the static, how fast he’s talking, and the fact that the phone is pressed to your ear, but he does catch the word dating, and he’s quick to lean forward to try to grab the phone from your hands.

but of course, you’re just a little faster, turning away so that his phone is just out of his reach.

“no, no, we’re not dating, oikawa,” you say, and then there’s more of oikawa’s voice on the other end of the line, still a little too fast for him to catch, “yes, that’s me,” you reply through your laughter. iwaizumi hears oikawa begin to settle through the phone speakers, and then he speaks again.

“wait,” oikawa says, a little clearer now that he’s not talking as fast as he can, “he told you about me?”

you lean forward just a bit, and it’s then that iwaizumi can grab hold of his phone again, placing it against his ear with a sigh.

“yes, dumbass, of course i talk about you. i need someone to make fun of while i’m here,” he says, watching the way you stifle laughter and holding back his own as he hears oikawa’s little sigh on the other end.

“how nice of you to finally call me, iwa.”

“oh shut it, i’ll call you again later tonight,” he replies, and he hears the half-hearted protests come from the other end before he ends the call, leaning over the table with his head in one of his hands.

“he seems fun,” you say after a beat of silence, your voice light and teasing. he looks up to see you leaning forward, tilting your head at him, your eyes crinkling at the corners. “i think i like him.”

“please don’t tell him that,” he says with a groan, shaking his head before grabbing a tortilla chip from the basket that sits between you. “i can’t deal with his ego getting bigger.”

you laugh then, and if he’s honest, it’s a sound he’s been missing lately. classes have been so busy, he hadn’t gotten a chance to see you yet this week besides quiet study sessions. today’s the most you’ve laughed in a while, the most he’s seen you smile and roll your eyes and shake your head at him because, if he’s not the one being stupid, someone he knows certainly is.

there’s another bit of silence as your eyes flick over him, your brows furrowing and you suck one of your cheeks into your mouth as you think. your hair falls over and into your eyes, catching the bit of sunlight that leaks in through the window beside you—it’s beginning to set, he realizes when he notices just how orange the rays are.

“iwa, huh?” you say. the tips of his ears heat up at the name.

“yeah, since we were kids.”

“i like it,” you say, punctuating the sentence by plucking another chip from the basket, “i think it makes you seem a little softer, you know?”

“because iwaizumi’s so gruff,” he replies, amusement pricking at his tone, his arms now crossed in front of his chest as he listens to you.

“only when he wants to be,” you tease, lowering your voice and laughing when he narrows his eyes at you.

“iwa it is, then,” he says. you smile up at him, fully now, the sunset mixing with the glow of your cheeks.

“iwa it is.”

he’d never tell oikawa, but he’d agree with you here. iwa’s always felt softer, a little more refined, maybe, but with your voice coating the syllables, with your voice settling in the air and creeping into his ears, with your voice saying his stupid little childhood nickname, he’s certain he feels a little softer, too.

—————

the gymnasium lights feel a little too bright now that the game’s over, now that his team has pulled everyone into a celebration, the sound of cheers filling the stands and slicing the air by his ears. his throat feels scratchy from yelling, his voice already a little gravelly when he congratulates one of his teammates with a hand on the back.

and then he’s letting his eyes wander the bleachers, searching for his black jersey that you’d insisted on wearing tonight because, for his first game, you swore you would show some team spirit.

but he doesn’t manage to find you there, because you’re already on the gymnasium floor when his gaze meets yours, your hands held close to your face and your lips parted in an easy smile.

“iwa!” you call—never quite a yell, just enough to reach above the rest of the noise that echoes against the floors and the walls. he walks towards you, ignoring the sounds of muffled confusion that arise from his team behind him at the name. “you did so well,” you say as he reaches you, your hands flying up to rest on his upper arms. “i’m proud of you.”

the nickname is still new on your tongue when you say it, still sounds a little foreign when it passes your lips, but he likes the way it sounds—likes the way it carries with your voice and the way your tone always lilts with the sweet syllables.

and you’re so close to him now, hands steady on his arms, looking at him with a smile that presses into your cheeks with how wide it is, and there’s not a single complaint in your expression—even though he’s sweaty, still a little out of breath despite already meeting with the coaches and the team, even though he’s sure he needs a shower and he’s still riding the high from that final play.

his appreciation follows the breaths that pass his lips, whispers of thank you crossing his tongue before they sit in the air that rests between you.

“oh come on,” you say, raising a hand from his arm to push his head to the side, letting it loll over his shoulder for a moment as laughter bubbles out of his throat, “you could stand to be a little more excited. i mean, that save was insane!”

“it was nothing,” he replies, voice scratching at the muscles of his neck, a blush biting at the tips of his ears. he hopes it blends with the redness of exhaustion.

“oh my god, iwa, please shut up,” you groan, swatting at his chest with a roll of your eyes.

he goes to respond, to say something snarky in reply to you, but he’s interrupted by a passing hand on his back, and then another, his team walking past him and saying their goodbyes.

“see you at practice monday, iwa,” one of them teases, the nickname spilling past his lips with the bite of tempting laughter, and then there’s a few more echoes of the name throughout the group.

“oh shut it, dumbasses” iwa replies, leaning forward to swat at a few of them as they pass, just barely grazing their arms as they move out of his reach. he hears you laughing at him, the words good job passing over your stuttered breath to his teammates, and iwa, half-heartedly, and terribly, wishes those words were only for him—that his stupid teammates couldn’t hear the stutter of your breath that bubbled past your lips because of him.

and there, as readily as he feels the heat at the tips of his ears, as clear as his heartbeat against his ribcage, as apparent as the faltering breath in his lungs, iwa comes to know that maybe friends don’t think this way. that maybe, friends don’t look at the beach and know the stretch of sand where you met, that they don’t yearn for your laughter or your smile, that they don’t wait for your texts with shaking hands, a wish that you’ll meet him soon.

iwa, who has never known anything more than second place, realizes in a breathless moment that he wishes to be first.

“hey,” you say, pulling his attention back to you and the way the now fading gymnasium lights lay on your skin, the way your smile pulls on your lips and the way your hair twirls around your face, “if we run i bet we can still get tacos tonight.” your voice drags out the proposition, and you lean into him as you speak, as though you could drag him purely by the sound of your voice.

terribly, iwa believes you could.

“then you better start running.”

—————-

it’s honestly getting too cold to be out on the beach like this. october’s begun to settle into the california air, and though it’s not nearly as cold as it gets in japan, the nearly-midnight chill is enough for iwa to pull the coat he grabbed earlier tighter around himself.

and still, despite the cold, he can only watch as you walk into the water, letting the ocean lap at your ankles and attempt to pull you in deeper. you have a coat of your own that you’ve refused to zip, so instead you shrug your shoulders together as you stuff your hands deep into the pockets. your shoes and your socks are abandoned in the dry sand behind you, though he keeps a careful eye on them, and there you stand in the water, letting the breeze twirl in your hair and kiss across your cheeks and your nose until they’re both too cold for you to feel.

“iwa,” you say, turning back to glance at him, the moonlight sitting on your face and floating in your lashes, casting little shadows all across your cheekbones, “do you ever miss home?”

he laughs, though there’s hardly humor to it. his breath leaves him in a rush as he moves to stand a little closer to you, not daring to let his feet dip into the chilling water.

“yeah,” he begins, “constantly.” he reaches out a hand and watches as his fingertips brush against the material of your coat, trailing up your back as silence settles between you. his touch is light enough that you can’t feel it, and he can only just barely feel the fabric against his skin.

“what do you miss most?” you ask, and he pulls his hand away just in time for you to turn to him fully now, both of you standing, one in the water, the other on land, hands deep into the pockets of your coats.

“friends, my family,” iwa starts, but you shake your head and pull your hands out of your pockets to grab him by the arms, just above his wrists.

“no, iwa, more specific.”

he stares at you for a moment, the reflection of the moon over the water sitting behind you, the sound of the waves washing against the shore filling the moment. the breeze whistles between you, and he’s sure both his nose and his ears are red from the chill, but he feels the way your thumb brushes and rubs into his sleeve, and suddenly he can only focus on a response to you.

“there was this bakery my mom and i used to go to. we would get bread and then a few sweets for my little sister,” he pauses, taking a moment to watch the way you tilt your head at him, the way the corners of your lips begin to turn upwards, “honestly, i miss the bread. oikawa would always steal some if he came over.”

“that sounds nice,” you reply with a little breath, your voice just barely carrying over the breeze.

“it was,” he says. “what do you miss?”

“my mom’s laugh,” you reply, as though the answer had been sitting on your tongue, “it doesn’t sound the same over the phone.”

“i get it.” you step out of the water to move closer to him, and it’s then that iwa can see the goosebumps that raise across your skin. he takes your hands off of his wrists and puts them back into your pockets, leaning forward to pull the hood of your coat over your ears. “i miss hearing her say my name.” his hands stay on the hem of your hood for a moment, watching the way your eyes flit over his face and the way your lips part with his movement.

“iwaizumi?” you ask.

“no,” he replies, “hajime. she calls me hajime.”

“i’ve always thought your first name was pretty,” you begin, and then repeat the name back to him, letting it float between you, your faces close enough that he can feel his name in your breath when it brushes his cheeks. “i think it suits you.”

if he could feel his ears, he’s sure they’d be warm with something like adoration. that, at the sound of your voice curling around his name, his first name, there would be a blush coating his cheeks all the way down to his neck if he wasn’t already red from the cold air of midnight.

“then call me that,” he says—thoughtless, a little too quick for his liking. “hajime, i mean. if you’d like.”

and then you smile, your eyes dark from the night but still managing to catch the bit of light that still settles on the beach, and you nod, your bottom lip caught between your teeth.

“okay, hajime,” you say, “whatever you’d like.”

and maybe if he’d been a little more brave, maybe if he’d known how to be first, if he’d known what it was like to know someone like this, he would’ve kissed you then.

he doesn’t. part of him wishes he did.

—————

hajime’s been in his apartment for too long now. he’s known his laptop more than any other person this week, known the way the keys feel against the pads of his fingertips more than he’s known the sound of anyone’s voice besides his own.

so when there’s a knock at his door, a quiet little thing that floats through the walls of his apartment and into his space on the couch, there’s part of him that’s hoping it’s you—and an even better part that knows it has to be. so he rises from where he sits and opens the door, only to find the person he wished for most standing behind it, giant plastic bags in your hands.

“okay, i know you said you couldn’t make it to dinner tonight but i haven’t seen you in like, forever, so i brought you tacos,” you say, all in one breath, as though you can’t keep anything safe behind your lips, so you might as well say it all now.

“you brought me tacos?” he asks, disbelief scorching his tongue.

“hajime,” you begin, your brows furrowing as you look at him, “of course i did. i like having you around.”

he stands there for a moment, a little unsure of what to do now, but he watches you in the doorway until you tilt your head and your face breaks into a smile as you gesture inside, silently asking to come in. he mumbles something that means yes, and then steps aside, grabbing one of the bags from you and setting it onto the counter.

he won’t say it aloud, not now, at least, but he’s missed you. it’s stupid, because it’s only been a week or so, but with all the papers he’s been writing and midterms never really being over, he feels like it’s been forever since he last got to see you—as though he hasn’t heard you laugh in months.

so as he sets up your tacos and the chips and the rest of the food you got him onto his little table, it feels a bit like coming home.

“well, hajime,” you begin, drawing out his name, still letting his first name get used to your tongue and your tone, “i’d say you were due for a break anyway.”

“maybe,” he replies, not daring to admit that you were ever right. “i’m just using you for the tacos, if i’m honest.”

“is that why this is the first time i’ve ever paid at that place?”

hajime laughs, choking on the bit of his taco he’d just taken a bite of, and shakes his head at you, narrowing his eyes at the way you smirk and the way your brows raise a little too pridefully.

“if i wasn’t so lonely, i’d kick you out right now,” he replies, though any threat is lost somewhere in his throat, because it comes out much more endearing than he’d ever planned.

“aw, did you miss me?” you tease. he rolls his eyes at you.

“hardly.”

he won’t say it, not now, especially not when you’re biting back the smile that presses into your cheeks, not when you’re sitting in front of him, crinkles at the corners of your eyes, your laughter biting at every word you speak.

he’ll tell you he missed you another time, maybe. but now just doesn’t seem quite right.

—————

he’s leaving tomorrow.

he knows he’ll be back after just a few weeks. that, once winter has started to move its way out of japan, he’ll be going with it, traveling back to california on a much too long flight just to get back here again.

but for now, he’s leaving, and neither of you really want to talk about it.

you’d offered to help him pack, and though it was hardly a grueling task, he still allowed you to, still said yes when you asked to come over without any hesitation, because he can’t imagine spending his last day here with anyone else. and now you’re sorting through his shirts, holding some of them up for him, the question leave or take? passing your lips with every piece you hold up.

you’re holding up one of his sweatshirts now, his favorite one, the one he’d wore on cold summer nights with oikawa, makki, and mattsun screaming in his ears, the one he wore when you spent late nights at the beach with him, the one he threw on whenever it was cold after practice.

“leave,” he says. you furrow your brows, turning the sweatshirt and leaning over to make sure it’s the one you think it is, and then look back at him, confusion written all over your expression.

“you love this one though,” you reply. he shrugs, folding more clothes into his suitcase while you keep staring at him, and then you throw it into the take pile.

“hey, no, i said leave.” he picks up the sweatshirt and throws it back at you, but you’re already placing it into the pile again.

“hajime, you’ll miss it if you don’t take it,” you reply, a little scolding tone sitting on your tongue.

“i said no,” he says, a little more stern than he expects it to be, and he pauses for a breath when your eyes widen at him, and for a moment, he regrets ever fighting you on this. but then he gathers himself, and he speaks again. “i want you to have it while i’m gone,” he starts, every word punctuated with his heart rattling against his ribs, “you’d keep it safer than i would.”

the explanation is a lie, a terrible one, because he’s had that sweatshirt for years now, because there’s not a single thread out of place on it because he’s made sure it looks nice, because every stain that ever worked its way into the fabric was cleaned out within seconds—and because you know all of this.

but then you grab the sweatshirt back and you hug it to your chest, your fingers tracing over the design and twisting the strings over your knuckles.

“okay.” the word comes out as a breath, just barely loud enough to reach his ears. “let me go put it in my bag.”

and hajime isn’t sure why, but he gets up and follows you to the doorway where your bag sits, and you laugh at him, mumbling something about him not letting you out of his sight, and he doesn’t even have the energy to deny it, not when it feels like every step you take away from him feels like another second lost with you.

so he watches you fold the sweatshirt and put it in your little bag, and he leans against the wall as you stand back up, not daring to take his eyes off of you. you lean back against the opposite wall, your eyes flicking over him, and god you look as tired as he feels, your eyes a little dimmer than usual, your lips turned downwards—you haven’t even said goodbye yet.

and maybe now isn’t the best time, maybe the day before he leaves—a friday afternoon where both of you have just barely finished your finals, his closet half-torn apart, isn’t the time, but he doesn’t care, because if he doesn’t try now, he isn’t sure if he ever will.

it takes two strides for him to reach you, and then one of his hands finds your cheek and the other wraps around your waist, backing you into the wall as his lips catch yours.

you mumble his name into his lips, the word hajime passing between you as you kiss him back, your hands finding their way onto his cheeks. he can feel the way your thumbs press against his cheekbones, the way they brush against his lashes as he kisses you, and now he’s only wondering why he never did this sooner.

because god, kissing you feels idyllic, like every stupid story oikawa ever told him about his fucking dates has crumbled away in front of him because none of them could have felt like this—none of them could feel like the way your whispered laughter felt late at night in the library, when the two of you were meant to be studying but couldn’t be bothered to focus. they couldn’t feel like your hands on his wrists as you pulled him further into the ocean when it was still warm. they couldn’t feel like—

well, they couldn’t feel like a heartbroken goodbye.

when he pulls away, he’s a bit breathless, leaning his forehead against your temple, his fingers falling over your cheeks because he’s never been allowed to know this before, and god he wants to.

“leave or take?” you ask, a scratch to your voice, a little crackling in your tone.

and in the worst realization yet, he remembers that he’s leaving tomorrow, and that he won’t be back for a month.

“take,” he whispers into you, burying his head into the juncture of your neck and shoulder. “i wish i could take you.”

—————

it’s late for him, nearly midnight now, the moonlight is filtering in through his blinds and over his bed, and his finger is hovering over the call button. he knows it’s still pretty early for you, that maybe you won’t even be awake anyway, but you’d told him to call you, that you’d never be mad at him for trying, and even though you’ve talked all throughout winter break, he’s still nervous every time he tries.

but he presses the call button, and he lets it ring.

it’s only a few moments later when the ring stops, and then your voice comes through the line, a little muffled, a little static coating your tone, but it’s still you, so he’ll take it.

he has to admit though, you were right. it’s not the same over the phone.

“hajime,” you breathe, relief in your voice, and he laughs, echoing your name back to you. “it’s good to hear your voice.”

“it’s good to hear yours,” he replies. you laugh, and he can picture the way you’d bow your head, rolling your eyes at him to brush him off.

“did you go to the bakery today?” you ask, and he sighs, rolling over onto his back.

“yes,” he breathes, “and we got my sister a few pastries, just like i promised you we would.”

“well, i have to make sure you’re being nice to her,” you tease, and he groans. if you were there, he would’ve knocked his shoulder into yours and then you would’ve shoved him away, undoubtedly into the sand or the water.

“she’s almost thirteen, she can handle not being spoiled,” he replies.

“oh shush, she deserves it for putting up with you.”

you both fall into laughter after that, yours a little too technology-ridden for his liking, a little too mechanical and a few too many cracks over the line. he’s sure he sounds the same to you, like he’s half-there and half-not, like you can’t really be sure if he exists or if he’s just technology.

but he knows your skin, and your lips, and your laughter when you’re there with him, and for that he knows you’re real.

“so, how many days do we have left now?” he asks after silence settles between you. he’s keeping count too, but he’d rather hear the number in your voice.

“six,” you reply. “just six.”

another bit of silence passes over you, and for a while, he’s just listening to the way you breathe on the other end of the line. you sound tired, like you’ve stayed up late and you’ve hardly gotten enough sleep, and he swears he can hear your breathing settling into rest, but then you speak again.

“haji,” you say, cutting yourself off before you can say more.

“haji?” he asks, a bit of amusement cutting at the word. he thinks he likes it—it’s all your own.

“yeah,” you start, “haji.” he hears you take a breath, listens to the way you breathe as though he could place himself there, as though merely the sound of your lungs could allow him to see you. “i miss you,” you say.

and he remembers before, back during midterms, when the words hadn’t felt quite right on his tongue, when he’d been too prideful, when he wasn’t sure it was the right time, and he realizes that he’s glad he saved them.

because now, when he’s halfway across the world, feels a lot more correct than when you’d only been a few steps away.

“i miss you too,” he replies.

“good,” you say, and he can hear the smile that leaks into your voice, “i think there’s a beach waiting for us back in california.”

—————

haji fell in love with california beaches about six months ago, when it’d been warmer and he’d been able to walk the line between land and sea without a chill running down his spine. and now, haji sits with the sand beneath him, cool to the touch from the february chill, but he’s wearing a coat, so it hardly matters.

it’s his first day back here, his first day back at the ocean, and though he misses his family and his friends back home, he feels a hand on his shoulder, and he finds that missing things takes up too much time—especially when there are good things right in front of you.

so he turns, and there you are, leaning down to press your palm into his shoulder, your bag slung over yours as you look down at him.

he doesn’t have to be the one to pull you into him, because by the time he’s seen you, you’re already falling into him, wrapping your arms around his neck and kneeling beside him. he’d expected things to be worse, that maybe you’d take everything back, or that neither of you would quite know how to act around the other, but when he feels your fingers tangle with the short hair at the back of his neck, he realizes he doesn’t need to know much around you. things just tend to happen with you.

“it’s freezing out here,” you mumble, your voice muffled by his shoulder, and he laughs, wrapping his arms tighter around you.

“it was your idea to meet at the beach,” he replies. and you groan, your voice reverberating into his skin.

“you should know not to listen to me.”

“i think you’ve told me the opposite before,” he says, and you stifle laughter in his coat.

“then you should know when to tell me no,” you reply, and now he laughs, pulling away from you to unzip his coat so he can wrap it around the both of you—at least as much as he can, but with you situated between his legs, he can get most of it.

“i think i tried to.” you let out one final groan before resting your forehead against his shoulder, and he laughs again, letting one side of the coat go so he can bring a hand up to the back of your head, letting his thumb trace into you there.

“haji,” you start, but pause when you feel the stutter of his breath. you raise your head from his shoulder, looking up at him with that smirk that he’s missed so much, your eyes bright with something that he could never find back home. “haji,” you repeat.

he doesn’t reply for a moment, just lets his eyes flit over your face. though the sunlight isn’t as warm as he’d wish for, it still manages to twirl in your hair and leave a soft glow on your skin.

“that sounds nice,” he says finally, and he lets go of his coat to brush some hair out of your face, and then his hands still on your cheeks. here, he can feel the way your smile presses into his palms, can feel the brush of your lashes against his thumbs.

“you think so?” you tease, and he rolls his eyes at you. if his hands weren’t already occupied with your cheeks, he’d swat at you, or maybe he’d knock his shoulder into yours, but for now, he accepts the eye roll and the way he narrows them at you afterwards. you laugh at him, your head bowing forward, nearly close enough for your forehead to touch his. “i like it too, if that makes you feel any better. it’s pretty.”

“now, i never said i liked it,” he replies, and because you have a free hand, you swat him in the chest and he laughs now, unable to stop the way it spreads across his cheeks. “i guess i’ll let you call me it though, since it makes you happy.”

what he doesn’t say, and what he doubts he’ll ever say, is that haji is entirely yours. he’s iwaizumi to everyone, iwa to oikawa, and hajime to his family, but he’s never been haji before—so this, this part of him, is something that exists and lives only for you, and he’s so glad to give it to you.

this part of him, though still new, was forged here in california, in the end-of-summer waters that lapped at his feet, in the taco place that he knows by heart, in the sound of your voice echoing in his ears and his name being best known in the way you say the syllables.

“haji,” you breathe, “you’re impossible.” but he knows you don’t mean it, because you’re mumbling that against his lips and he can feel the pull of your smile against his own.

and though haji knows he fell in love with the beach six months ago, what he realizes now, when you’re kissing him and your fingertips are against his skin and he can feel the warmth of you more than he can feel that of the sun, is that he may fall in love at the beach, too. he isn’t there yet, but he’s well on his way.

#AHHHH THIS FIC MAKES ME SO HAPPY #this brought me strong feelings of nostalgia !#idk if it’s bc it’s like longer fics i used to read all the time or bc my college town has a beach #b u t i loved it and it left me feeling so warm and content #SHFKA TALK ABOUT MEET CUTE #i adored the dynamic of their relationship sm #and the evolution of iwaizumi to iwa to hajime to haji :’)#and the fact that you only used each one as the reader used it was such a small but satisfactory detail !!#SHSKLA AND THE SWEATSHIRT BANTER WAS ONE OF MY FAV PARTS #I WAS SO READY FOR THAT KISS #ahhh i could say sm more bc as usual there were SO many quality lines #but overall the feelings in the fic were just so pure and comforting #i’m taking the iwa brainrot with open arms <3 #my love iwaizumi #fandom.hq #ficrec

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