Chapter Text
Round two.
Tooru felt sick as he packed his bags getting ready to go to the hospital for another week of what felt like torture. He kept telling himself that it was just seven days. Just seven. He could do this. Just one day at a time. This time would be better because he knew what to expect...or rather that’s what he was telling himself. He was still scared, still worried. He wasn’t as healthy as he had been before, and he wasn’t sure what was going to happen now.
Clothes, books, movies, laptop, and phone. He checked and double checked to make sure he had everything. He took a deep breath, grabbing a soft blanket that he’d bought with his friends to prepare. It was black with cute aliens and stars. Time to go. He walked down the stairs, blinking the tears out of his eyes. He didn’t want to go, didn’t want to get chemo four hours every day. Deep breaths.
Hajime was waiting downstairs talking to Nami and Tooru’s parents. They didn’t notice him coming down the stairs as they talked about some movie that Tooru wouldn’t be able to go see. He’d wanted to. He’d seen the trailer months ago before all of this, before getting sick, before the bruises and bleeding. He’d been missing out on so much, and hearing the conversation was a sickening reminder of exactly what.
His life was no longer his. It was doctor’s appointments, hospitalizations, pills, IV’s, an annoying central line that had become so much a part of him that he wasn’t even aware of it half the time. It was symptoms of exhaustion, depression, anxiety. It was spending time hunched over the toilet heaving when nothing was there. It was seeing blood in the toilet when his body just couldn’t take the amount of acidic bile coming up each time. There was no freedom, nothing that he had any control over. He hated it. And he hated that they could do whatever they wanted without a second thought. And furthermore he hated that he hated them.
He stood at the edge of the stairs feeling like he didn’t exist anymore. Would this be what it was like if he didn’t make it through? Would everyone just move on talking about movies, games, and the future? Was it that easy to erase him? He didn’t want to be erased. He thought about the Butsudan his in the extra room in the house for his grandparents, how nobody went in to perform the rites they were supposed to. It was almost like their ancestors were gone and forgotten. It may be something fading in modern times in the city, but it was still something that many people still did...his family used to...
Why was he thinking of this? Why was it that he thinking about death so much when every doctor and statistic said that he would get through this easily? He was an otherwise healthy eighteen year old with and active lifestyle. He should get through this. What happened to his positive attitude he’d had at the beginning? He was going to get better. What happened to that? He sighed trying to push the thoughts out of his head. Tooru put a smile on his face, walking into the room.
“I’m ready.” He tried to keep his voice chipper, and the smile on his face. His eyes met Hajime’s. He knew. He always knew.
“Do you have everything?” Hajime stood, crossing his arms over his chest.
“Everything.” Tooru held up an okay sign, widening his smile.
“Okay.”
Tooru hugged his parents and sister goodbye, and followed Hajime to his car. He was happy that his parents had been okay with Hajime taking him to the hospital, just him. His parents hadn’t been the best support last time, and part of him didn’t want the hassle. Hajime would keep him company and also ease his nerves.
The drive was silent. Neither of them wanting to talk, yet talking quickly in the silence. That was their friendship. It had always been their friendship. To this day, he didn’t understand how they could do that, or how anyone could know another person better than themselves. It was nice, there were no missed words.
Walking into the hospital made the pit in his stomach more intense. With each step he was closer and closer to the worst thing he’d gone through. He thought about the way it felt when they hung the bag of chemo that the nurse tried so hard not to touch. They wouldn’t touch it, but it was being pumped into his body.
Check-in didn’t help. All he wanted to do was cry. He followed the aide to his room. The room was nicer, but that didn’t really matter. He was consumed with fear, dread. It was like weight of the world was on his shoulders. Try as he might, he couldn’t be positive.
He wished to god that Hajime could stay with him every day. He silently cursed the schedule they had. They had planned going in on a Saturday for a good reason, Hajime was finished with his half day of school and practice was only two hours. He had Sunday off for the most part. Just practice that Tooru desperately wanted to ask him to skip, but he knew that wouldn’t be what was best for his friends. The team needed to have practice, needed to have everyone performing at their peak. He needed them to beat Shiratorizawa, they had to.
Someone came in to draw labs from his central line. He didn’t hear what her name was. He was too busy thinking. All he wanted to do was have that positivity back. Where was it? Where had it gone? He’d read online that there is a depression that comes along with cancer, and maybe this was it. It was a hopeless feeling. Even reminding himself he could get through this just like last time, and then there’d only be one more week, and this would all be behind him. He could look back and feel empowered that he had been able to get through. But his mind wouldn’t let him be optimistic. Nothing would. It was like a void.
Hajime nudged him, offered him a kind smile. “You’re going to be okay. You have me, okay?”
Hajime held up his pinky to Tooru, that gesture that they’d done so much as kids. When had they stopped that? When had those little things that seemed to be set in stone? When they were kids, a pinky promise meant truth. Nothing could be broken. But they learned that it wasn’t foolproof, that wasn’t how life worked. You couldn’t just promise something you had not control over, but still...the pinky promise helped to ease his nerves.
And so the waiting began. They cuddled up on the bed, just talking. Tooru talked about all the fears he had, how much he missed doing things he loved. Hajime assured him that everything would be okay, and Tooru found solace in his words. Hajime was his rock, his achor, the one person who he could trust infinitely to do right by him even if it wasn’t what Tooru wanted. Hajime did what he needed.
“Do you want your commemorative instagram selfie?” Hajime smirked.
“I don’t know…”
“Too bad!” Hajime made a silly face, snapping the picture.
“Hey! I wasn’t ready!” Tooru objected, reaching for the phone. Hajime jumped up, playing keep away.
“You do this to me all the time.”
“But you don’t know my angles, Iwa-chan! I know yours! I make you look perfect! I mean...as perfect as you can be standing next to me.” Tooru smirked.
“Oh, oh no, seems I accidentally uploaded it.”
“Rude!” Tooru gasped.
Hajime laughed, and kissed his cheek. “It’s okay. You look fine. You’re always ugly.”
“Why are you like this?” Tooru shook his head, unable to keep the smile off his lips.
“I’m going go get us some food, okay? I’m starved, and you need to eat something now that your stomach is settled before you start, right? It will help?” Hajime picked up his bag.
“Yeah, that sounds good.” Tooru smiled. He wasn’t sure that he could eat anything, or much less keep it down. Once the poison started dripping into his veins he wasn’t sure how his body was going to react.
“Okay, I’ll be back.” Hajime fist bumped him, with a smirk before heading out.
Tooru sat crossed legged on his hospital bed, staring out the window at the sunny autumn day just beyond his reach. The trees were a beautiful array of colors: green, red, and gold. He wanted to have the beautiful sound of a crunch under his feet as he walked down the streets covered in leaves. At eighteen, he still looked forward to making piles of fallen leaves to jump in. The past few years, Hajime, Matsun, or Maki ended up shoving him into the pile while he was still trying to make it perfect. He couldn’t do that this year.
The hospital room was just as boring and sterile as he remembered, though he now had a better view of outside, which was a double edged sword. The television was nicer and had more channels, and he was closer to the teen lounge that he was most definitely going to check out this time. He’d heard they had a library, and he was always up for new books. The walls were a more cheerful shade of blue trimmed with beige, and the blankets were softer.
Chemo round two.
He was nervous. Round one had made him feel so awful, he could barely stand it. All he had to look forward to was puking his guts out until he saw blood, and sleeping his life away. He was worried that this time he’d feel worse since now he hadn’t been as healthy and fit as he had been the first round. His immune system was still working well enough, but being in treatment was going to punch a hole into the already shambled wall.
His fingers drummed against his knee as he waited for his labwork to come back to see if his blood counts were good enough to start. Part of him hoped that he was too sick to be treated, but he knew he wasn’t. He felt fine.
The clock on the wall counted down his wait time in an almost deafening manner. Each tick echoed in his head. Hajime had left to get something to eat.
A knock on the door twisted his stomach into knots. Poison time. He chewed his lip and stared at his lap, not even able to pretend to be okay.
“Hello, hello!” A cheerful voice rang through the room.
His nurse he’d had for his first round was back. Her hair was shorter now, pushed back with a headband to keep her hair out of her face. Her eyes were made up in eyeliner and mascara making the warm brown stand out even more. The scrub top she was wearing today was Hello Kitty. It made him smile.
“How has my favorite patient been? Look at you! You look so good! I really like what you’ve done with your hair. It’s beautiful.” She offered a warm smile.
“Thank you! My boyfriend did it for me. He really should be a stylist.” A smile forced its way onto his face, a bit of ease settling over him.
“I think you’re right!”
She set a few packages of green nubs he recognized as what she used to sterilize his ports. His face fell, and stomach twisted. So this was it. Round two, day one. He tugged at his sleeves unconsciously.
“So mister, you have won the jackpot today. Your blood count was the best all day!” She pulled on a pair of gloves. Tooru pulled the line out of his shirt, allowing her access to put the caps on.
One day closer. Just six more to go. Then only one more round. Remission! One day closer. One day.
Tooru tried desperately to keep his thoughts positive. It was easy for one’s mind to go to the darkest of places during these situations, and he needed to claw his way up from the depths. Nothing good came from thinking negatively. Complaining changed nothing, and feeling sorry for yourself would only hurt yourself. He needed to be positive, to think positive. Hadn’t he spent that last six years of his life building himself back up, training his mind to drown out the negative voices. Sure, there were times where the negative voices were louder, but he wasn’t going down without a fight.
He watched her set out the lines and chemo. It really was an art how she did it. With all the lines and tubing, it looked like such a confusing mess, but here she was making it look like it was nothing. She really was impressive, all of them were.
“So tell me, Tooru-kun, what did you do with your freedom? Tell me all the juicy gossip. I tell you, I have been bored to tears without our talks.” She glanced up from what she was doing, her eyes crinkling into the smile hidden by her mask.
Tooru bit his cheeks for a moment before replying. “I got to go running. I’d missed it a lot. I got to see the team, and lead practice a few times. I got to set! That was really my highlight. They all shaved their hair for me!”
“Always a trendsetter, huh?” She laughed to herself. “I didn’t mean that as a pun.”
Tooru joined in with her, and their laughter filled the room. It was like meeting an old friend.
“I’m sorry. I am so happy to hear that you have such a wonderful team, and friends. I knew they liked you. So...what else?”
“Well I spent a lot of time with my older sister. Both of my siblings are a lot older than me, so we don’t always get to hangout and stuff. I haven’t really talked to Keishi much lately which is so weird because we are usually in constant contact, and he does call and text me, but I don’t really feel like engaging because he always brings up my symptoms and treatment. I don’t want to hear that. I know he’s an oncologist and he’s my brother so he wants to take care of me, but I just want him to be my brother?” Tooru sighed.
“Have you tried telling him that?”
“No…”
“Then try. People aren’t mind readers.”
He nodded, frowning at the ground. Everyone told him that, and he was just too stubborn to remind himself of that. How many times over the years had Hajime told him that exact same thing? It just started coming naturally to him after being told not to express his feeling his whole life.
“Nami made a lot of food trying to find something I could eat. She lived in Paris for six years, and she got to learn how to cook there in like a chef school, so she cooks the best food. We watched a lot of movies and documentaries. My friends came over and we had a lot of fun. A lot of cuddling. I got to go to school.”
“Is that so? How was it? School?”
She hooked up one of the first pre-chemo meds to his port while they talked. Tooru’s eyes scanned over the medications on the table she was using to set everything up. Six syringes of medications labeled with their contents on his patient labels. Two antiemetics to keep him from being nauseous and throwing up (not like they actually helped), steroids, Benadryl, fentanyl for pain, and a sedative. They were all his friends, making the chemo a little more tolerable. Laid out, it was unnerving.
“I don’t think I want to go back,” Tooru admitted.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Everyone was nice to me, but it wasn’t genuine nice. People I’ve never talked to in my life were talking to me. I hate pity. I hate being the cancer kid. The attention is unnerving.” Tooru shuddered.
“That’s tough. High school is awful enough before throwing in cancer.”
“I used to like it. I lived on the attention at school, the looks of admiration, the complements in the halls, the fawning girls. It was a high. I felt important, like I was somebody. The girls were the same though, sweet as ever. My friends thought they just thought I was hot, and I thought the same thing, but I was okay with that. But I learned that’s not true. They were the only ones besides my friends and the team that didn’t treat me any different.”
A tear fell down his cheek. He brushed it away quickly, begging she hadn’t seen it. It was stupid to cry over something that insignificant. People treating him differently was irrelevant to his situation. There were more pertinent things he was having to deal with like chemo and leukemia. In the long run, none of this would matter. He knew that. But he was only eighteen, and high school did come with its challenges. Image was everything, and Aoba Josai was a private school which made appearances even more of a big deal.
“I can’t think anymore,” Tooru whispered.
“What?” She stared at him.
“I was in class and I thought I just tired and couldn’t focus, but I couldn't figure out the problems on the homework. My friend Makki needed help with his homework and I just...it was like I couldn’t read anymore. Nothing made sense. It was terrifying.”
“Chemo brain…” She shook her head. “Chemo makes the brain foggy. It’s temporary, but while you’re in treatment, it’s going to be a common thing. If it gets too bad, the doctor can prescribe you something.”
Great. Just another symptom to add to the list of what to look forward to. Everything was so draining, but it was all temporary. He had gotten through round one, he could get through round two, and then round three. He could do this. Leukemia could fuck off. It wasn’t invited into his party, into his last year of high school, into his life plans. He would be damned if he let it win.
He was quiet now as he watched the bag with the biohazard symbol and the huge CHEMOTHERAPY on the bag above the kanjis being hung. He closed his eyes, trying to fill his head with happy thoughts. He felt her connecting him to it, and he fought back the tears, and swallowed the lump rising in his throat. The chirp of the button being pressed, followed by the mechanic sounds of the infusion getting started. He couldn’t feel it going through the line, but he visualized it, every second. It was going straight to his heart via the central veins leading straight to it before fusing through his entire body.
The bed sank next to him, and a soft warm hand took his. He opened his eyes, finding the nurse sitting next to him, a small wrinkle in her forehead. She was staring hard at the floor, glued to the same spot Tooru had so often stared at.
“I know what it’s like. It’s terrifying and you don’t have any control over it. Nobody seems to understand just how hard it all is on the body, on your mental state. Sometimes you just want to curl up and never wake up, and there are night you fall asleep wondering if you’ll ever wake up. I’ve done this a long time. I see what kids go through, and it never fails to shock me the amount of kids who go through their treatment and hospitalizations alone.” She met his eyes. “If you need someone to come sit you, just ask me.”
She patted his hand, forcing a smile through her tearful eyes.
“You were sick too?” Tooru brushed away a tear that fell down his cheek. She nodded.
“When I was a little girl, about eight. It’s why I wanted to do this job.” She took a deep breath. “Leukemia is brushed off so often because it’s so common and kids do so well, but they ever take into account what it’s like. A lot of leukemia is very curable, and young kids respond so well. It gets messy with your age group, and your type and I know that’s terrifying.”
“Oh…”
Tooru thought for a minute. He had never met anyone who’d had cancer before in his life. His brother was an oncologist, but that had always been the closest he’d ever come to cancer until he got sick. It seemed like such a random attack on him, like it was so rare that he was one of the few. He wasn’t a little kid, but he wished he was. Takeru came to mind.
Hajime walked through the door, interrupting the conversation. “Oh. I can wait outside.”
“No, no, come in. I was just leaving.” She put her hand on his shoulder. “Let me know if you need anything, okay?” Tooru nodded.
Her words resonated with him. He was lost in them as he nibbled the milk bread Hajime gave him, the sweetness of the bread mixed with the even sweeter custard. He didn’t feel so alone anymore, and his spirits had improved. He had shut everyone out, and let himself stew in self-pity with all the negative thoughts. They were trying to make him believe the worst, but talking to Hajime, and then to the nurse had made him feel better, like a shining light in the dark. Tooru was like a moth toward a flame.
His post to instagram was him sitting on the bed in his pajamas, milk bread resting on the wrapper in this lap with Hajime behind him, chopsticks dangling noodles into his mouth. Hajime looked ridiculous. Pay back.
OikawaTTTTooru Round two, day one. It’s been hard lately, I’ve been in my head too much. Things I’ve learned are that friends are the most important people in your life, talking about things that bother you takes the weight away, and milk bread is still the best thing in the entire world. Wish me luck! I’ve got a renewed fight in me. #MilkBreadIsLife #HajimeIsALoser #TeamTooru #Round2