object impermanence
pairing: iwaizumi hajime x female! reader
summary: a love letter to small towns, and all the other things we outgrow. inspired by "the dry season" by hannah gramson.
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The thing is this: if there’s anything you’re sure of, it’s that Iwaizumi Hajime loves his hometown, small as it is.
He loves the quiet streets, the roads that he’s been walking since he was old enough to take those first steps on his own, face screwed up in extreme concentration in a way that his mother loves to mimic even today. He loves the grandmother around the corner that always tells him Goodness, Hajime-kun, you’re getting so tall, even though he hasn’t grown even a fraction of a centimeter since his second year of high school, much to his dismay and Oikawa’s delight. He loves the konbini next to the school that always keeps his favorite popsicles in stock (the ones that come with two sticks and are perfect for splitting,) even in the heat of summer when everyone and their mother is scrambling to buy anything that’ll keep them cool. He loves his school, his team, and his friends: he loves the foundations he’s built here, the foundation he’s become. He loves his family, and the agedashi tofu that his mother makes for him whenever she thinks he’s done a good job at something or he needs something to cheer him up or she just wants him to know that she loves him.
He loves you: you know this. Have known this, ever since he’d started offering to walk you home from school, ears red, hand scratching the back of his neck as he looked anywhere but at you. You’d grinned at him, then. “Are you gonna look at me at any point the entire way?”
The red had spread to his cheeks. Part of you wanted to reach up and poke them, see if they could get any redder. “Shut up,” he’d said, wrenching his gaze to yours with what looked like some difficulty. “Do you want me to walk you home or not?”
You did, although he didn’t need to know just yet quite how much. Instead, you had grinned at him, shuffling a little closer and letting that stand as your response.
One day bled into two, then into a week, and before you knew it he was standing in front of you, hands clenched into fists as he yelled into your face: “I like you!”
“I know,” you’d said.
He’d stood there, mouth still half-open, until you decided to take pity on him, reaching up to cup his face in your hands, pressing a quick kiss to his cheek before stepping back. He’d reacted almost immediately, grabbing your hands in his and pulling you to him, close enough that your foreheads almost knocked together.
You remember thinking a lot of things. How his eyes were greener than you’d ever noticed, that he smelled like salonpas and clean cotton. Mostly, you remember thinking about how rough his hands were: callused and sturdy, far bigger than your own.
They’d held you so tenderly. Fingers loose around your wrists, palm cupped underneath yours: soft, so soft.
Tonight it’s hard to remember a lot of things about Iwaizumi: the exact way his chin dimples when he grins, or how his voice rasps in the morning without the tinny sound of your phone’s speaker laid over it. You still remember his hands, though. You don’t think you could ever forget.
A crackling yawn comes through the speakers. “Babe? You there?”
“I’m here,” you say, quiet. “I always am.”
Night for you means morning for him, and Iwaizumi wakes up diligently every week for your scheduled calls, even if it means you get the pleasure of hearing his earth-shattering yawns every five minutes for the entire duration of the call. It’s what both of you signed up for, you know: it’s part and parcel of being in a long-distance relationship. And California to Japan is about as long-distance as it gets: your friends in college, when you tell them about him, all cluck disbelievingly. “So far away,” they all say. “That must be so difficult.”
“I love him,” you always say back. There’s no point in talking about whether or not it’s difficult. What matters is whether or not you’re willing to do it. At least that’s what the two of you had decided, when you sat down and talked it out a month before he was set to leave for California.
“I don’t want to let you go,” he’d said, eyes holding yours steadily. “I want to make us work, do you?”
He’d said your name, cradled in between his tongue and the roof of his mouth like it was the most precious thing he’d ever held, and you knew then you would never forgive yourself if you hadn’t tried.
“Yeah,” you’d said. It had been worth the tightening in your stomach to see the way his face lit up like the sun. “Of course I do, Hajime.”
“Hajime!” comes from the other end of the call, heavily accented and distorted almost beyond repetition. You catch a glimpse of blonde hair on the screen: Iwaizumi’s roommate. All you’ve been able to discern about him is that he’s a beanstalk of a man – long and lanky, with no coordination whatsoever – and is from the south of the U.S., which Iwaizumi tells you is apparently famous only for cowboys and meat. He seems nice enough, from what you can tell; still, hearing Iwaizumi’s first name in his mouth leaves a sour taste in yours.
It’s not like he means anything by it, you know. It’s only a difference in culture: Iwaizumi has told you about how it still shocks him, sometimes, to hear near-strangers call him by his first name. It’s not the same, you want to tell him, but there’s no way to tell him how it makes you feel without sounding ridiculous. That it feels like letting go. That it feels like your hold on him is weakening, somehow.
Back home, it was only his parents and you that regularly called him Hajime. Mattsun and Makki called him Iwaizumi, or Iwa, if they were feeling particularly chummy; Oikawa, of course, stuck with the tried-and-true Iwa-chan. At school, you’d been the only one to call him Hajime, and everyone knew what that meant. Now, everyone does, and it pokes at something tender in you, something you hadn’t even realized could be hurt in the first place.
Iwaizumi swivels around in his chair, saying something in English. You tuck your chin into your forearms, resting on the desk, watching his expression as he barks out a laugh, loud and harsh and your favorite sound in the whole entire world.
The last time he’d come home was almost three months ago, sun-tanned and with even broader shoulders. Still, there was the same familiar press of his hand on your back as he’d gathered you up in a hug. “Missed you,” he’d said, and you’d known that he’d meant it.
“Missed you more,” you’d said, and you’d meant it, too.
The thing is this: you’re absolutely certain that Iwaizumi Hajime loves his small town.
You’re also sure that he’s outgrown that love.
Two months and two weeks ago, you’d bounded up the stairs to his bedroom, hand poised at the doorknob to let yourself in when you heard Iwaizumi’s voice, gruff and irritated as usual but with a thread of tension through it, brittle in a way you’d never heard it before.
“-- I know it’s a good opportunity,” he’d said. “Utsui Takashi is a legend. I’ve wanted to work with him since forever –”
The person on the other end had cut him off with something you couldn’t hear. Iwaizumi had heaved an enormous sigh.
“Yes, even though he’s Ushijima’s dad. You know, you’re the only person in the world who’s still holding on to that grudge, I bet. But it would mean that I’d be committed to live in the U.S. for the next five years after I graduate, at least. Maybe more, if they decided to give me a job there. It might mean staying there permanently. And… I’m pretty committed to coming back here.”
Another pause.
“I know she’d understand, if I told her. But I don’t think I could do that to her. I don’t think I could make her wait for me like that. She deserves more than half a relationship, and I want to give that to her.”
A longer pause, this time, then an irritated growl. “I know I’m losing a good opportunity. I just – I can’t. I don’t want to talk about it anymore, okay? Utsui-san said I could have time to think about it, anyway. I’ll have plenty of time to figure out how to let him down gently.”
Your hand was shaking, you’d realized with a start, pulling it back to your side. You’d turned and walked straight back out of his house, swiveling at the doorway to rap three times on the frame, letting the sound echo limply through the rooms.
Iwaizumi had come downstairs and grinned at you. “Hey,” he’d said, as if he wasn’t giving up his life for you.
“Hey,” you’d said back, as if you weren’t letting him.
You’d meant to talk to him about it, you really had. But he’d seemed so content in Miyagi, in the same little town you’d both grown up in, the one both of you had known since birth. And a part of you, a selfish part, a larger part than you’d like to admit, had been whispering the entire time: Would this be so bad? He could be happy here. You could make him happy here.
And then he’d left, and now you’re here, sitting at your desk in your childhood bedroom, watching him tip back in his chair dangerously far, laughing so hard you’d probably be able to see his molars if it weren’t for your shitty camera quality.
You’re happy he’s happy. You don’t think you could stop being happy for his happiness.
There’s just this part of you that wishes he could find that here, still.
But you know contentment isn’t happiness, no matter how desperately the both of you have been trying to pretend it can be. He’s happy there, where he’s constantly challenged, constantly pushed to be better, better, better. Where he gets to chase his own dreams and not be constantly haunted by his what ifs.
Here, you think you could give him everything you had and it still wouldn’t be enough.
Iwaizumi would pretend it was, if it came down to it. If you let him. He loves you enough that he would. He’d press a kiss to your forehead before leaving for work in the morning and a longer one to your lips when he came home in the evening. There would be quiet dinners and bland weekends, a soft existence spilling out before you every day.
But there would still be a hunger in him.
It would be so selfish of you to keep him. You don’t know how to stop wanting him to stay.
“Hey.” Iwaizumi says your name, soft, a fondness in the sound that even bleeds through the screen. His roommate is out of the screen again, accompanied by a bang you assume is the closing of their door. “Is everything all right? You’ve been kinda quiet these past few weeks.”
Your stomach hurts, because of course he noticed, it’s Iwaizumi. You force a smile to your lips, although the muscles in your cheeks tremor with the effort. “Yeah, Hajime. Everything’s okay.”
“You know you can always tell me anything, right?” he asks. You know that if he were here there would be a hand intertwined with yours, or a gentle kiss pressed at the crook of your neck, right where it meets your shoulder.
That’s the problem, though. He’s not here. He can’t be here. You can’t – won’t – make him be here.
“Hajime,” you say, because some days it’s the only thing you have left to say.
He waits, silent. You can just make out the rise and fall of his chest over the pixellated laptop screen.
Coming back here, Iwaizumi had said, back when you had overheard him all those weeks ago. He’d said here, not home. Not coming back home.
“Hajime,” you say again, because you can. “Hajime, I think we should break up.”
A thud, and then Iwaizumi disappears from your vision with a muffled curse. He must’ve tipped back too far in his chair in surprise – you’re always warning him about it, ever since he’d told you about the odd chair that they’d given him in his dorm room, the one that rocks back a little too far – and fallen over. Part of you wants to laugh. The other part of you aches, a little, that this is the last time Iwaizumi will do something stupid with you here to watch it, you here to gently chastise and tease him after.
“Be careful,” you say, almost on reflex, as his head appears back on screen, hair mussed up and face red. “You’re going to crack your skull open someday.”
“I’m not going to – why are we even talking about this right now? You just said you think we should break up.” He takes a seat back in the chair, although he doesn’t tip back this time, you note.
“You should still be careful,” you say. He’s placed his hands on the desk, where they’re in view of you and the camera, and you can see the way they’re opening and closing hopelessly, as if he’s looking for something he can hold, or something he can hit.
“What the fuck?” he asks, disbelievingly. Then, “Is this a joke?”
“No,” you say. “It’s not a joke, Hajime.”
“Why are you saying my name like that,” Iwaizumi demands. His hands squeeze into fists and stay that way, white-knuckled on the desk.
“Like what?”
He shakes his head, rough, like he’s trying to get water out of his ears. It’s a familiar gesture, one you’ve seen him do many times before. Some distant part of you wonders if it’s too late to take it all back.
“I don’t fucking know, like – like you’ve given up already. Like you’re letting it go.”
“I’m not giving up,” you lie. “I just think that this will be better for us. In the long run.”
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” Iwaizumi asks.
“I heard you talking,” you rush out. “To Utsui-san. It’s a good offer. I think you should take it. If you don’t mind taking advice from an ex, that is.”
“Is that what this is about?” he asks, then says your name again, so full of something that makes your chest ache. “It doesn’t matter. I’ll turn him down, I’ll come back to Japan. It’s okay, baby. We can still be okay. I love you so much –”
“I love you too,” you say, even though something in your throat is making it so that it hurts to speak. “But – Hajime, I think you love me like you love Miyagi. Or the grandmother who gives us those sweet potatoes in the summer. Or that park that you always take me to, the one with the bugs you say you don’t want to catch but I can tell that you do. Hajime, do you understand me?”
Iwaizumi opens his mouth. Closes it again. “I love all of those things,” he says. “I love you the most. What’s wrong with that?”
“You love us,” you say. “We could make you content. But the offer, Hajime. It would make you so happy to be able to study with him. Really, truly happy.”
He doesn’t contest your words. You’d known he wouldn’t, had half-hoped he might. Instead: “I could still come back after,” he says. “If you were willing to wait for me.”
“You know that’s unfair to ask,” you say. There are tears at the edge of your vision, threatening to spill over. You don’t bother to wipe them away. “Unfair to me, and unfair to you. You have to keep looking forward, Hajime. I think this – all of this – belongs in your past.”
He says your name again, voice cracking, spilling over.
Iwaizumi Hajime loves his small town. Iwaizumi Hajime loves you.
Both of those love him enough to let him go.
“Can I change your mind?” he asks, and you shake your head. The action dislodges a few tears, and they run down your cheeks, plopping onto the fabric of your pants and no doubt leaving a stain.
“I love you,” you reply, like an apology, like a goodbye.
“I love you,” he says, like a prayer.
“Okay,” you say. “Okay.”
“Don’t forget to keep taking your vitamins,” he says, voice brittle. “And go to bed early and don’t forget to give yourself breaks and make sure to go for walks, every once in a while, okay? Just to get some fresh air. You can’t forget any of those things just because – just because I won’t be there to remind you.”
You nod, not trusting yourself to say anything back for a minute. “Don’t stress so much,” you say, forcing it out past the lump in your throat. You may never get a chance to tell him again. “I’m sure Utsui-san will recognize how hard you work. You’re going to be incredible, Hajime, do you understand?”
Iwaizumi nods, stiff. His shoulders are shaking.
“Bye, Hajime,” you choke out.
He says your name – just your name – and you nearly fold, nearly give in, nearly buy the next ticket to California just to press your face into the crook of his neck and reassure him that none of it meant anything at all.
Instead you give a little half-wave, click the button to end the call, and shut the laptop woodenly. Your childhood bedroom has never felt so small, with the peeling posters and the small bed, tucked into a corner, with the knicknacks and stuffed animals cluttering up the shelves someone else must’ve come in and dusted, in your absence.
Outside, your little town remains quiet. You allow yourself to mourn alongside it.
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