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The machinery around them shudders with the aftermath. Everyone in the control room holds their breath and stays stock-still, as if their lack of movement will stop the hull from rupturing or the engines from blowing and blasting them into the vacuum of space. Tooru's hands are tight on the steering gear. His eyes, like the rest of his crew's, are fixated straight forward, at the shuttered plexiglass, at the blank walls of his home; his attention is altogether more focused on his sense of hearing, trying to listen out for the tell-tale screech of metal crumpling in on itself. You could hear a pin drop.
A low groan sounds from the walls, a deep vibration — a skeleton ready to break. Tooru hunches his shoulders, tensing. His heart is racing, a hyperactive drum dragging him along at breakneck speed. He grits his teeth. Come on, baby. Come on. You can pull through this. Come on.
A silent moment hung in nothingness.
…And the skeleton remains intact.
Quickly, and then more gradually, all the flashing red panels and light ease back into their peaceful green, into blue, into white. There's a collective exhale of relief as everyone in the control room relaxes as one as the immediate threat of danger drops from their shoulders. Yahaba's body crumples into the side of Kyoutani, who himself is leaning against the wall. Kindaichi buries his face in his hands, trembling slightly. Watari is bowing over with his hands on his knees.
Nervous laughter bubbles from Tooru's lips. "I think..." he breathes, voice raspy, "we're okay." He clears his throat, because a barely-sidestepped imminent death or not, a captain has to support his crew. "We're okay," he repeats strongly. He wills that conviction down to his bones, through his muscles, into his joints, and leaps into motion. "We're okay," he affirms for a third time, this time accompanying his words with a quick survey of the room..
He barks out instructions to his crew. "Kunimi, survey the fuel tanks, check how many of the algae cultures survived. Yahaba, Kyouken-chan, give him a hand, and check the cargo while you're down. Kindaichi, give me read-outs on our outer plates—" he fiddles with buttons as he speaks, making sure the Voice Operated Communication System is still in order, and then— "VOX, do you read me? Makki? Mattsun?"
"Alive," come the wearied voices of their engineer team.
Tooru grimaces. "Fabulous. Get the stats from Kindaichi and see what you can fix now—"
"Definitely not everything," Makki mutters.
"—and Watari, I need to know where the closest dock port planet is. Somewhere with an adequate machinery quarter. We'll need repair parts, and a lot of them."
"Not if we can help it," says Mattsun quietly, voice breaking up slightly through the radio. "This humpty-dumpty bitch of a ship isn't dead yet. We'll do our best, Cap.”
You always do. "I'll be counting on you," Tooru thanks him.
Like puppets cut from string, everyone stays stock-still for a moment, suspended in that middle ground between nightmare and reality — but then, like blinking it away, they wake up and leap to action all at once. The control room is suddenly a flurry of activity. Like hell the crew of the Aoba Johsai would let something like a botched hyperspace wormhole engineering job (and consequential almost-being-pulled-into-the-fourth-dimension-void) deter them from slipping back into routine like well-oiled cogs in a clock.
Everyone gets to work, Tooru notes, except for his second-in-command.
He bites his lip as he realises what’s happening. Oh, no…
Hajime is still at the helm, his fingers still tensed and hovering. The tension clearly still hasn't left his shoulders, and as Kindaichi tests the shutters on the plexiglass, only Hajime's head moves as his eyes scan the unveiled stars reflexively. The hard line of his back says it all, and Tooru isn't the only one watching him with worried eyes. Kyoutani stares at the still figure, a meaningful look in his eye, before following Yahaba to the cargo hold, and Kindaichi keeps interrupting himself with helpless anxious glances in Hajime's direction.
Iwa-chan... You're worrying the kids, Tooru wants to laugh. But he gets the feeling, he just gets a feeling deep in his chest, that Hajime wouldn't laugh along. Not this time. Not right now, not this near-death escape. It's different. Iwa-chan isn’t okay.
Tooru walks towards him, footsteps masked by the insistent beeping of the navigation system under Watari's clever fingers. He doesn't know what to say, but he knows what Hajime's thinking, and he knows he has to put a stop to it.
"Iwa-chan—"
Before he can say more, before he reaches Hajime and puts a hand on his shoulder and finds a way to articulate the guilty protectiveness curling in his gut like an open wound, figures out the right words, those desperate words, to make his second-in-command stop hurting, Hajime turns on his heel and all but runs out of the control room.
A… A captain has a duty to his ship, and to his crew, to his ship, but— but Tooru has a duty to his Iwa-chan too, and is he allowed to—?
"Go." Tooru starts and looks up to see Watari's staring at him, frowning. "Go, he says again, "we're fine here, we'll get you on the VOX if we need you." His eyes flit to the door where Hajime exited. "You need to do something. Go."
"So... So insistent, Watari-chan..." Tooru can barely say the words before he's running after his Hajime, hastily calling back, "You damn better VOX me if anything happens!"
He finds Hajime in the kitchen, hunched over the sink with shaking shoulders. He's letting out muffled broken breaths, and it's obvious he's crying, and it's more obvious he can't help it, that he doesn't want to, that he feels ashamed that he’s letting it out.
Tooru's heart clenches and jumps to his throat.
"Iwa-chan..." Hajime tenses, and Tooru wets his lips. "Iwa-chan, you... That— All of that just now, that wasn't—"
"Don't, Oikawa," Hajime spits out harshly. When he turns to meet Tooru's gaze, his eyes are rimmed with red and it breaks Tooru's heart. Iwa-chan, no, not my Iwa-chan.
He takes a careful step forward. Hajime's lips thin into a narrow line.
"Iwa-chan, what happened wasn't your fault."
Immediately, Tooru knows he's hit the nail on the head, because Hajime ducks his head, he ducks his head in shame and swallows so hard Tooru can see his Adam's apple bob, and Iwa-chan, no, don't do this to yourself.
"Believe me," Tooru tries, walking forward until he's standing right in front of Hajime, close enough to touch, to hold, to comfort as he can with the simple physicality of his presence. "Things like this shouldn't happen. It's the company's fault for not scouting out dark-matter pockets like that, it's too dangerous for anyone to try navigate. That's why— That's why it's illegal, Iwa-chan. That wasn't meant to happen."
Hajime doesn't say anything but he's shaking his head slightly, a minute movement.
“Iwa-chan—“
"Oikawa, I—" Hajime exhales shakily, squeezing his eyes shut before glancing away at the wall and then back to Tooru. "Tooru, I'm the pilot. It's my job to navigate us. To get us through anything, planned or not."
"This—" How can Tooru say it? How can Tooru explain that it's not Hajime's fault, that it shouldn't have been that way in the first place, that they're okay now and they're going to be okay? "This wasn't in the job description, Iwa-chan," he jokes weakly, "nobody could expect you to—"
"It's my job to get out of there safe, Oikawa!" Hajime cuts off him off loudly. "And I didn't, I couldn't, I took the wrong turn and I fucked up and I almost just got us killed!"
"Iwa-chan, that's not your fault—!"
"The whole crew, I almost killed us all—"
"You did your best!" Tooru says over him, voice stern. "We got in trouble and you got us out alive." When Hajime tries to look away again, Tooru takes his face in his hands, strokes Hajime’s jaw with his thumbs and keeps their eyes locked. "You saved us, Iwa-chan, thank you. Thank you."
Hajime grits his teeth, looking like he's back on the verge of tears. "We got lucky, Tooru. I couldn't guarantee our safety—"
"W-We're safe now!"
"—and that's what I'm meant to do." He roughly brushes Tooru's hands away and shakes his head. "I fucked up, I couldn't follow through, and I endangered the life of every person on this ship. Everyone, Tooru. Because I wasn't good enough." His voice is shaking. "What... What kind of pilot am I...? What kind of crewmate?" He rubs a hand over his face, and looks at the wall over Tooru's shoulder. He’s wearing this tiny small smile, so bitter, so full of shame, and tears in his eyes, and Tooru fucking hates it. "I don't deserve to be on this crew. You deserve better. I'm... I'm sorry."
Something cracks in Tooru, breaks, snaps, echoes through him like a gunshot. He grabs Hajime by the front of his shirt and drags him forward, crashing their chests together and ducking his head in for a fierce kiss.
It takes Hajime by surprise, and the moment he opens his mouth in a gasp of surprise, Tooru takes advantage and slips his tongue in, determined to kiss Hajime senseless. He tastes of salt, and Tooru licks it away, licks away the tears he tastes on Hajime's lips until all that's left is the delicious heat and desperation and an underlying relief because they're alive and they're here and they made it.
He pulls back, and whispers forcefully, "Don't you dare say shit like that to my face ever again, Hajime." Tooru glares into his eyes, their lips a bare centimetre apart. "If I have to hear that again, I'll stuff you in an exosuit and tie you to the panatomic rudder. You can float along behind us. And then you can tell me our crew could ever do without you."
Hajime makes a choked sound, but Tooru doesn't let him speak, cuts him off with another deep kiss and searing their lips with what feels like fire. This time, although it takes him a second, Hajime kisses back — gentler, more tentative, but there, here, here in Tooru's arms, here cradling his cheek, here to steal groans from his mouth, kissing him back, kissing him back, Hajime’s here in Tooru’s arms and they’re safe and they’re alive, and Tooru wants for nothing. The panic, the frustration, the fear, the weak-kneed relief, it all bleeds into the angle and press of their lips. It blooms between them like a delicate flower, and the beauty of it steals Tooru's breath away.
He pants when they finally break apart. "Please don't say stuff like that to me. Iwa-chan, just don't. Not when I almost just lost you already. Don't make it sound like I can do any of this without you."
"Tooru..." And Hajime's frowning again, but it's a different sort of frown this time, pointed outward rather than internalised. Tooru thanks the stars for it. "I'm sorry."
He doesn't want apologies. "Hajime."
"I—" He meets Tooru's gaze, eyes big and green and hazel and brown and beautiful and Tooru's from five years old, and he loves those eyes, knows those eyes, belongs to and owns those eyes, sees the world and stars and universe in those stupid lovely eyes. And as if Hajime can read Tooru's mind, they soften, then narrow in a quiet sort of smile, heartbreakingly pretty and rare. It’s the sort of smile Tooru hides away deep in his heart; only for Tooru, only from Hajime. Theirs. "Yeah. Yeah. You're right." He knocks their foreheads together. "Thank you."
Tooru sniffs to hide his own oncoming tears, and hums, trying to keep his voice lightly. "It's nothing, Iwa-chan."
“Is it your turn to cry?” A soft chuckle, almost not there but just.
And Tooru loves it, Tooru loves it all. “Meanie… The meanest man in the universe, jeez, Iwa-chan. We did almost just die, you know?” He knocks Hajime’s head back, ever so gentle, and feels his own voice break. “Would being kind for one day k-kill—”
When Hajime's arms come up to hug Tooru to his body, tight and hard and warm, Tooru lets out one little sob, he can’t hold it back, because oh God, almost dying is so scary, and now that he knows his Iwa-chan is okay, he’s trying to make sure he himself is, too.
But it's okay, because Hajime's there, and he's holding Tooru close and stroking his hair and murmuring, "I'm here, Tooru, we're okay now, we’re okay," into the crook of his neck, and it honestly feels like everything that he could need in the world.
Aoba Johsai is a small spaceship, a sweet little fix-it-upper rackety mess of a spaceship, that Tooru picked out all on his own at the ripe age of sixteen (perhaps with guidance and help of a certain of a certain Iwaizumi Hajime). In truth, it's made of the leftover parts of centuries’ worth of space trawlers and hyper-speed jet vehicles and even a broken-dwown deep-space pod taxi. The four of them, Tooru and Hajime and Makki and Mattsun, all worked on it for years, chipped away at the metal and the gears, patching something beautiful together. Beautiful and functional and a place they didn’t have to pay rent or tax or fees — just fuel and food and whatever their heart’s desired, all built from the ground up with their own two hands.
For Tooru, it feels like a part of his heart, as much a part of his family as his crew.
His crew, just as much put together from scrap pieces and reject parts.
Hanamaki Takahiro, who somehow managed to get his hands on an old-Earth style 'alien' figurine for Tooru's thirteenth birthday.
Matsukawa Issei, who let Tooru soak his shirt in hysterically happy tears when he received the present and patted his back like a champ.
Kindaichi Yuutarou, who graduated at the top of his class at a prestigious interstellar institution and disappointed everyone by joining his favourite pilot's crew on a falling-apart ship, who always ends up tearing up at holofilms.
Kunimi Akira, who smiles as he hands his boyfriend tissues, and gives everybody what he calls 'friendship chocolate' on old-Earth Valentine's Day.
Kyoutani Kentarou, who accepts them with red ears, and eats every single piece, even the burned crispy disaster nobody else will touch.
Yahaba Shigeru, who gets insecure and jealous over it and yet insists on helping Kunimi make them every year (and thoroughly enjoys the process).
Watari Shinji, who doesn't laugh when Yahaba is mean to Kyoutani to hide how pleased he is when he gives him 'love chocolates', who never forgets birthdays and plans adventures over breakfast.
And Hajime, Tooru's sweet good Iwaizumi Hajime, who pilots the ship he calls home, and guards the heart Tooru gave him twenty years ago like a hero, like a knight.
Tooru's family is a humpty-dumpty bitch of a ship and the crew that help it live.
Again and again, they patch it up. Again and again, they sail unhindered through the stars, a home among planets, a family made of junkyard scrap.