Chapter Text
Just another day to get through.
That was the plan, anyways. It didn't really work out that way.
School passed in the usual blur, half finished notes, a test he barely looked over before turning it in, lunch he mostly pushed around instead of eating.
Practice was worse.
He missed two blocks in the first twenty minutes, messed up the rotation once, and noticed Ukai watching him longer than usual, like he was holding back from saying something.
By the time practice ended and everyone started heading towards the clubroom in loud, tired groups, Tsukishima had already decided he wasn't going with them.
He told himself it was one more hour. Just enough to fix whatever had gone wrong tonight, so tomorrow could start from somewhere better than this. He'd told himself the same thing yesterday. And the day before that.
He had told himself just one more hour. Just enough to fix whatever had gone wrong tonight, so tomorrow he could start from somewhere better than this. He’d told himself the same thing yesterday. And the day before that.
The clock read 8:52 pm when Yamaguchi finally decided to himself that he wasn't going home either.
Yamaguchi left with everybody else and said goodnight when their paths split. He walked halfway to the station before turning around without really thinking about it.
He already knew Tsukishima hadn't gone home yet
The side door was unlocked, just barely open enough for him to slip inside Yamaguchi stopped in the doorway for a moment, listening to the sound he’d started hearing almost every night lately.
The dull thud of a volleyball hitting the floor.
A jump.
A landing.
Silence.
Then again.
Tsukishima didn't turn around right away. He stood at the net with his back to the door, shoulders rising and falling way too quickly, his shirt was damp with sweat. Only the court lights were on.
Yamaguchi watched him for a moment.
Something about seeing Tsukishima standing there alone made him look different. Smaller than Yamaguchi had ever seen him before
“Tsukki…”
His shoulder went rigid. When he turned around, his face was already back to its usual blank expression. It took just a second too long, though, and Yamaguchi noticed.
“You should be home.” Tsukishima said.
“So should you.”
“I’m working on something.”
“It's almost nine.”
Yamaguchi slowly walked across the court. Up close, he could see Tsukishima's hands shaking slightly and the way his breathing wasn’t completely settled yet.
“Go home, Yamaguchi.”
“No.”
Tsukishima blinked. Yamaguchi didn't usually say no to him like that.
“I mean it. I'm fine, really. I just wanted to finish this.”
“Finish what? you've been doing the same drill for an hour. I watched you from the doorway.”
“Then you should've kept on walking.”
“I couldn't."
His voice cracked , and Yamaguchi hated that it did. He took a breath before continuing.
“I watch you tell everybody you're fine, and I keep going along with it because I don't know what else to do. But then I go home and keep thinking about it because I know you're not fine.”
“Stop being dramatic.”
“Am I?” Yamaguchi looked at him. “Why does everybody keep asking if you're okay, Tsukki? It's because something is obviously not fine. You keep saying that it's fine, and we keep pretending to believe you because we don't know what else to do.”
“There’s nothing to answer.”
“Then why are you here? Alone, this late, for the fourth time this week?”
“My timing’s been off.”
“Your timing has been fine for weeks.” Yamaguchi shook his head. “That’s not why you keep missing. You just… disappear sometimes. You're standing right there, but–it's like you're somewhere else.”
Tsukishima's hands curled into fists at his sides.
“Stop.”
“I won't."
Yamaguchi stood his ground, copying the same stance Tsukishima always did at the net without even realizing it.
“You can keep on saying you're fine. I'm still not going to believe you.”
The silence stretched between them.
Finally, Tsukishima spoke.
“Why does everyone keep asking me if I'm okay?”
It came out sharper than he meant it to.
“Why can't anyone just leave me alone?”
“Because you're obviously not okay.”
Yamaguchi's voice softened.
“Tsukki. You're obviously not.”
Tsukishima opened his mouth, probably ready with some sarcastic response like he always had, but this time nothing came out.
“I could make a joke about how observant you're getting.” He said eventually.
Yamaguchi waited. The silence stretched on.
“...I know.” Tsukishima muttered quietly.
“You know what?”
“That I’m not okay. That I'm not fine.”
There was no sarcasm in his voice this time. He sounded almost tired.
“I’ve known for a while, I think. I just… I don't know how to stop saying I'm fine. It just comes out.”
“Then why don't you tell us?”
Yamaguchi kept his voice soft.
“You know you can tell me anything, Tsukki. So why don't you?”
Tsukishima looked down at the floor.
“Because I don't know how.”
For a while, that was all he could say.
Then, slowly, he started explaining.
It wasn't just one thing. It was his ankle. The blocks he’d been missing. The way everyone looked at him now, like they were waiting for him to mess up again. Volleyball didn't feel the same anymore. It felt like something he had to get through instead of something he actually enjoyed.
Then there was the test he couldn't focus on. The nights he couldn't sleep. The constant feeling that something was wrong, even though he couldn't explain what.
And every time he tried to put it into words, it sounded like an excuse.
Like he was just making excuses for not being good enough anymore.
“I keep thinking if I just work hard enough, it’ll go away,” he said. “I'll stop being scared every time I jump. I'll go back to being who I was before I fell.” A breath that wasn't quite a laugh. “It's not working.”
Yamaguchi understood, listening, that this wasn't a refusal. It never had been. Tsukishima wasn't pushing everyone away to prove he didn't need them. It was something else entirely. He knew something was wrong; he just didn't know how to say it yet. He didn't know how to translate whatever was happening inside him into something that could survive being spoken aloud. It wasn't that he wouldn't say it. He simply couldn't not yet. And Yamaguchi felt something in his chest loosen slightly as he finally understood the difference.
“I know,” Yamaguchi said softly. “You don't have to keep doing this by yourself, Tsukki.”
“I don't know how not to.”
“You don't have to know how. You just have to let someone help you figure it out.” Yamaguchi reached out to put his hand on his shoulder. Not gripping, just present. “Starting with me. Right now. You don't have to have it figured out tonight. I just need you to stop telling me you're fine when you're not.”
Tsukishima looked down at his hand like he wasn't sure what to do with the face that was there. Something in him wanted to shrug it off out of habit; something quieter didn't want to at all.
“Okay.” he said finally. It wasn't an explanation. It wasn't a promise. But it was the first true thing he'd said out loud in weeks, and Yamaguchi didn't push for more. He'd learn when to let something be enough.
He did not ask Tsukishima to explain the rest of it that night. He didn't need the full picture yet, not really. What mattered more was that Tsukishima had let him get this close at all, if he had stopped, for a few minutes, performing like his old self, the version that was supposed to make everyone stop worrying. Yamaguchi just sat down on the bench, and after a moment of silence tsukishima sat down as well, close enough that their shoulders almost toughed, and neither of them moved further away.
“You’re going to be annoying about this now, aren't you?” Tsukishima said eventually.
“Extremely annoying. I'm going to ask how you're doing every single day. And you're going to actually answer me.”
“That sounds exhausting.”
“You’re exhausting. I think we're even.”
And for once, when Yamaguchi finally said it was time to head home. Tsukishima didn't tell him to leave first, and didn't insist on staying behind alone the way he usually did. He gathered his bag and walked to the station, something about the silence felt different than it had in weeks, less like a wall and more like two people simply not needing to fill the space.
It didn't fix anything. Yamaguchi knew that as he walked home beside Tsukishima a little later, the night air cool around them. But the door that had been sealed shut for weeks had cracked open, just slightly, and his job wasn't to force it open the rest of the way—it was to make sure it didn't swing shut again.
Yamaguchi found Daichi the next afternoon–in the narrow hallway outside the equipment room where the vending machines hummed against the wall and nobody lingered long enough to overhear anything.
“Hey Daichi! Can I talk to you about Tsukishima?”
Daichi's expression went stiff, like he'd been waiting for this exact conversation. “Yeah, what's wrong?”
“Something’s actually wrong with him. He's not just tired, he's also not stressed from school.” Yamaguchi chose his next words carefully, aware of the promise he wasn't going to break. “I’m not going to tell you everything he said last night—that’s his to tell, not mine. But it's serious, and I think we've all been asking him the wrong question.”
Daichi raised an eyebrow, giving him a quiet look that said to keep going.
“...I think we’ve been asking him ‘are you okay’ too much recently.”
Daichi went quiet for a moment. Then finally spoke.
“How bad?”
“Bad enough that I stayed in the gym with him until almost ten instead of going home.”
Something tightened around Daichi's eyes—not surprise, more like a confirmation of something he'd half suspected and hoped wasn't this serious.
“Thank you for telling me this.” he answered. “I’m not going to make a big deal out of it. Not going to sit down and interrogate him. I just want to keep an eye on him. And make sure the rest of the team doesn't pile on him.”
“That’s what I was hoping you'd say.”
Yagaguchi let out a quiet sigh, some of the tension finally leaving his shoulders.
“Can I ask you something?” Yamaguchi asked, before they parted. “Does this happen a lot? With other players?”
“I’ve seen the shape of it before.” Daichi admitted. “Someone deciding a mistake means something about who they are, then trying to out work the feeling instead of dealing with it. It doesn't usually end well when people push through it alone. So I’m glad you told me.” he ended with a smile.
“Yea, but it felt like breaking his trust.” Yamaguchi muttered, fidgeting with his hands.
“It’s not breaking someone's trust to make sure something isn't carrying too much by themselves. There's a difference between keeping a secret and making sure they’re okay.”
Word spread out carefully after that—not as gossip, but as quiet realignment. Daichi talked to Suga, who'd already noticed enough that filling in the rest didn't feel wrong. Suga then talked to Asahi.
Nishinoya gently steered Tanaka away from pushing too hard when Tsukishima brushed off another joke, without either of them understanding why.
Hinata was only told that Tsukishima was “going through something” and needed a little more patience than usual. He accepted it without question, taking the advice more seriously than anyone might have expected.
“I can be patient.” he proudly answered, standing with both hands on his hips, a bright smile spreading across his face. “I can be the most patient person you'll ever meet!”
“You interrupted me four times in the last two minutes.”
“That's an exciting patient. Different kind.”
Daichi didn't confront Tsukishima directly, not yet. He watched instead—the same quiet, carefully watching before Yamaguchi came to him, except more intensely now. He caught the tiny flinch Tsukishima tried to hide, whenever a conversation drifted anywhere close to how he was doing. He noticed the way his shoulders relaxed, just slightly, whenever the subject changed before he could be pressed for an answer. He kept track of every small detail, resisting the urge to push. Patience didn't come easily to him, but Yamaguchi had made one thing clear: this needed time.
Daichi also made a point, in the days that followed, of finding small ways to be near Tsukishima without it looking deliberate—walking beside him to the equipment room instead of letting him go alone, staying a few extra minutes after practice under the excuse of extra paperwork he didn't really need to do. He never brought up the conversation with Yamaguchi directly. He didn't think Tsukishima was ready for that, and pushing it before he was would only teach him to hide himself better, which was the last thing any of them needed. So Daichi stayed close, keeping his presence quiet and unremarkable, close enough to notice if something was wrong without making Tsukishima feel watched.
The team's behavior shifted in small, mostly invisible ways. Tsukishima noticed some of it—the gentler jokes, Hinata leaving him alone during water breaks, without fully understanding why, though he had a fairly accurate guess involving Yamaguchi and a conversation neither of them mentioned again.
None of it fixed what was happening underneath.
He was grateful for the sudden shift, in some distant way. But gratitude and improvement weren't the same thing, and the part of him that had been quietly eroding for weeks didn't stop just because people had gotten kinder about it.
He still stayed late most nights, though he'd gotten more careful about it once Yamaguchi started staying too, not every night, but often enough that sleeping away unnoticed had stopped being an option. He still ran drills until his legs shook uncontrollably, though someone was usually tossing the ball for him instead of him tossing it to himself alone, which should have felt better and mostly did—except for the part of him that still believed none of it counted unless it hurt enough to prove something.
He still wasn't sleeping. Still wasn't eating enough, though his mother had started leaving something in front of him at dinner he couldn't easily avoid. Every time he missed a block he kept hearing the same voices that had been getting louder for weeks, not anyone else's voice, just his own thoughts dressed in the accusatory tone he imagined his teammates using, even when they said nothing of that kind.
You're letting them down.
You used to be better than this.
They're being patient because they pity you, not because you deserve it.
Eventually they're going to get rid of you because they are tired of waiting for you to be useful again.
And when they do, you'll have no one to blame but yourself.
These thoughts whirled around him. He knew, somewhere in the part of his mind that still functioned, that this wasn't fair—that Hinata's patience came from care. He knew it the way a person knows a fact they've memorized without ever quite believing it. The knowing and the feeling had stopped matching up, and he didn't know how to force them back in line.
The fear of getting hurt again hadn't faded away, no matter how many blocks he landed clean. If anything, it had gotten more detailed–he could picture it, with surprisingly scary accuracy, the exact angle his ankle had twisted the first time, the sickening sound his collarbone made when he came crashing down to the ground. Every jump ran through his head, a half second of dread rushed onto a motion that used to be automatic, and no amount of “extra reps” seemed to be wearing it down the way he kept telling himself it would.
School wasn't any better. He sat through classes without absorbing much of anything the teacher was talking about, staring at pages that might as well have been blank, and when a test came back with another number lower than it should have been, he folded it in half and didn't tell anyone this time either, not even Yamaguchi. He was running out of ways to explain the pattern to himself. He'd already used up the excuse “exams are coming up” weeks ago. There wasn't a new excuse left that didn't sound like exactly what it was.
His teacher pulled him aside once, after class, voice careful in the way adults got when they were choosing their words around something they weren't sure how to name. “Is everything alright at home, Tsukishima?”
“Everything’s fine.” he mumbled back, avoiding eye contact.
“Your grades have dropped quite a bit this term.”
“I’ve been busy with volleyball.” It came out smoothly, the way most of his lies did by now, practiced enough to sound almost bored.
She studied him a moment longer, the way most adults seemed to be studying him lately, and let him go without pushing further, though he caught her watching him a little more closely in class after that, and hated the extra attention almost as much as he'd hated everything else nowadays.
The thoughts had started shifting into something he hadn't told Yamaguchi about, hadn't told anyone about, because he didn't fully understand them himself. It wasn't just guilt anymore—not just the familiar loop of you're failing everyone. Something heavier had begun creeping in at the edges of it, late at night when the house was quiet and there was nothing left to distract him from his own head. A quiet, persistent thought that everyone around him would be a little lighter if he simply weren't taking up so much of their worry. A tiredness that went past exhaustion, that made small tasks feel like they required a kind of strength he wasn't sure he had left.
There were nights when the thoughts went somewhere worse.
The weight in his chest became so constant that he started feeling desperate for some way to make it stop, some way to quiet everything screaming inside his head. And then a thought he didn't want to name would surface.
What scared him most was that it appeared.
It was how little it shocked him anymore.
He would lie there in the dark, staring at the ceiling, waiting for the thought to disappear. Sometimes it did. Sometimes it lingered, quiet and patient, until he forced himself to think about something else.
He never acted on it.
But that almost made it worse.
Because now he knew the thought was there. He knew it could come back. And once something had been allowed into his head, he wasn't sure he could convince himself it didn't belong there.
So he buried it.
He pushed it down beneath the fear, beneath the guilt, beneath every “I’m fine” he'd told.
He didn't tell anyone.
He didn't look at it too closely.
He simply pretended it had never happened and hoped that, eventually, pretending would be enough.
He did not examine any of it too closely. Examining it made it feel more real, and he wasn't ready for it to be real. So he pushed it down the same way he pushed down everything else with another lap, another drill, another im fine offered up like a toll to whoever was asking, buying himself a few more hours before he'd have to think about it again.
He tried, once, to write some of it down. He'd read somewhere that putting things on a page could make them easier to carry than words that had to be spoken aloud to another person. He got as far as I don't know what’s wrong with me before crossing it out. He stared at the words for a moment, embarrassed by the sight of his own handwriting admitting something he wasn't ready to admit yet.
He threw the page away.
He didn't try anything.
As the days went on he became more convinced that he was the problem sitting at the center of everything going wrong—the missed blocks, the failing grades, the careful new gentleness the team had wrapped around him like something breakable. He couldn't see it as the team caring about him. He saw it as proof that he'd become someone who needed to be handled, someone whose presence required everyone else to adjust around him.
He didn't tell anyone how far it had gone. Not Yamaguchi. Not his mother. Not Daichi or Suga.
Everyone around him was trying to close the distance that had opened between them, and he kept the most important part of himself just out of reach. Somewhere along the way, he'd started believing that if they knew how bad things really were, they'd realize he'd never been worth all that effort in the first place.
It was a thought he'd tear apart instantly if someone else said it about himself.
Some nights, he walked home repeating the same words he'd been using for weeks.
One more day. Just get through one more day.
He didn't know how much longer that would be enough.
Behind him, the gym stood dark and quiet. Tomorrow, it would fill with noise again, and he'd be there like always, carrying the same weight he'd been carrying for weeks.
One more day added to the pile.