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Tsukishima represses his emotions. It’s what he does. It’s what he’s always done. He stays silent until he’s alone, where he can break down and sob. Where he’s allowed to not be okay.
He knows it’s normal to cry. He know’s it’s normal to have anxiety, to have panic attacks, to need help sometimes. He also knows, however, that he doesn’t want to be seen as weak. He’s so afraid, so petrified to ever be considered weak, to be considered anything but perfectly fine.
Because he’s fine.
Really, he is.
Tsukishima is fine all the way up until he can lock himself in his bedroom and rock back and forth in the corner where he isn’t immediately visible if the door opens. Tsukishima is fine all the way up until he’s not.
But the thing is, he’s never really fine. He’s always scared, always afraid. Constantly wondering what life will throw at him next, who’s gonna scream at him next, how badly his hands will shake the next time someone tries to talk to him.
So he represses it. He forces it down until he himself can’t even tell if he’s anxious. He pretends he’s not feeling anything because it’s better than feeling everything. He thinks that, maybe, if he tells himself he isn’t scared enough times, he won’t be.
Eventually, he isn’t. It takes a while. A few years, maybe, but now he isn’t anxious. At least, not noticeably.
He won’t even realize he’s not okay until he can’t breathe and he wants to cry so bad, so fucking badly, but no tears will come out because only weak people cry, and Tsukishima is not weak.
So what if he can’t really form relationships because he refuses to trust anyone, even himself, with his fears and anxieties? So what if his whole life is a wreck because his hands shake more often than not but he won’t admit it, talk about it, or fix the problem?
Refusal, denial, repression, and avoidance have worked for this long, after all. Why not a bit longer?
His hands sweat. They sweat all the time. They’re gross and clammy and he refuses to hold Yamaguchi’s hand. When he does, he pulls away after a short amount of time. He doesn’t want Yamaguchi to know, because if he knows, he’ll care. If he cares, he’ll try and fix it.
Tsukishima doesn’t want it fixed.
Sure, he wants it to go the fuck away, but not by solving the issue. Who solves issues?
“I don’t know, maybe sane people, Tsukki. Maybe people who actually want to get better. Don’t you want to get better?” Yamaguchi tells him, and fuck, he does. He really does want to get better. But not if that means admitting he has a problem, not if that means crying, not if it means talking to someone because talking is scary and so are people.
He thinks maybe Yamaguchi just doesn’t get it, but he knows that’s false. He knows that Yamaguchi gets it just fine, that he deals with issues just like Tsukishima does. It’s just kind of hard to wrap his head around. When there’s something wrong with you, you get close-minded. You think that no one understands you, that you’re alone.
He just feels so fucking alone.
He knows he’s not. He knows Yamaguchi is right there for him, but it feels like he’s gotten caught in the currents of a river and he’s just an inch shy of Yamaguchi’s hand.
So he’ll stay crippled, mute, and scared to breathe. He’ll pretend it’s not there, but it becomes so abundantly clear every time he has a room to himself and his breathing becomes shallow and labored that he is far from okay.
Sometimes, when he’s alone, he has really bad stomach aches that leave him in the fetal position, face twisted in agony. Maybe he’s just a wuss, he thinks. Maybe it’s just something he ate. But part of him knows that it’s more than that. Part of him knows he needs help, because this anxiety is getting worse and worse.
But he’s fine. It was probably just something he ate.
Not that he’s eaten anything all day, because he feels nauseous after he eats, or he’s already nauseous and couldn’t even consider the idea of consuming something.
He tends to get cold really easily. He tries to hide it, but it’s pretty obvious when he’s shivering during practice because the gym is practically freezing . He’s wondering why everyone else seems fine because, seriously, it’s like ice to him. Sometimes, it’s hard to tell the difference between cold tremors and normal shaky hands, because they look the same. Maybe it’s just both.
Now that he thinks about it, he kind of gets everything really easily. He’s sensitive to the cold, heat, pain, agitation, being startled, everything. He’s just physically and mentally sensitive, which, once he realizes, makes him even more upset because he doesn’t want to be sensitive. He wants to be a rock, he wants to be tough.
He doesn’t want to be sensitive .
He’s not an idiot. He knows the difference between denotation and connotation. He knows that the definition of sensitive is simply “highly responsive or susceptible,” but he also knows that the connotation for that word is negative. It’s something along the lines of “weak, a crybaby, bad. ”
So he gets angry. He gets angry at everything because at least if he’s angry, he’s not anxious. At least anger isn’t seen as a weakness.
He talks down to people, he bullies them almost. But it’s okay, because at least he’s not anxious. Yamaguchi tells him to lighten up on people sometimes but, after a while, he’s right there next to him. He gets almost as bad as Tsukishima does, sneering at people from behind him and heckling them when they try to defend themselves.
He tries to ignore how fucking terrified he is that he’s ruining Yamaguchi’s life, turning him into a carbon copy of himself. He tries to ignore everything.
It brings him joy to watch a call ring out on his phone, watch as the person gives up on contacting him and hangs up. It’s nice to know that he has the power to do that. So he starts to shut himself off from everyone, partly because he doesn’t want to subject them to his bullshit, and partly because it’s the only thing he feels he has control of anymore.
The only person he talks to is Yamaguchi, his family members (sometimes), and a passing word or call-out in volleyball. Even then, it feels like it’s not enough. The sentences he says get shorter until, eventually, he’s only saying a ‘hello’ and a ‘how are you?’ to his mother and brother.
They worry, he knows they do. He’s not that stupid. But he just doesn’t have the confidence to tell them what’s wrong, or to stop ignoring them. He is a coward, a very weak one. And that’s when he realizes that, no matter what he does in life, he will always be weak.
He ignores the idea. He ignores everything from the people around him to his own emotions. He’s like a machine, only doing schoolwork and playing volleyball (though he only does so for Yamaguchi’s sake).
He’s not sure why he does anything anymore. He just doesn’t see the point. He doesn’t understand why he’s like this, but he knows he hates it more than anything. He hates the feeling of being cold with a hoodie and long sleeves on, he hates how easily he gets angry, he hates the stomach aches, the sweaty hands, and the tingling sensation that sometimes goes along with it.
But he still doesn’t hate it enough to try to fix it.
He has too much pride. He’s hard-headed. He doesn’t want to fix it, because that means admitting there’s something to fix.
He's confident enough to say that he would die like this. His plan was to bottle everything up and then, eventually, he would die, and that would be it. Over and done with. Simple enough.
Except it's not that simple when Yamaguchi asks him if he's okay one day and he just breaks into tears. He's sobbing, falling to the ground so he can hold himself, shaking so badly he might as well be having a seizure.
And he just gives up.
He's not sure why he even tried to hold it in at all, because anxiety is like a fucking tar bubble caught in your throat, your lungs, your arms and legs, making you choke and heave and fall to the ground. He just needs to cough it all up, not shake it off. Why, why, why, he’s asking himself, pleading himself, what did he do to deserve this?
But Yamaguchi’s hand is rubbing up and down on his back so slowly, so very calmingly.
He's still aching and heaving, he's dizzy, but he can feel. He can feel the cold press of metal on his lower back, reminding him that he’s alive. He's on Earth. He can hear Yamaguchi’s voice, sweet and slow, telling him that he's gonna be okay.
He doesn't think he's ever been this light-headed in his life.
Nor does he think he's ever felt so alive.
His whole body is sort of tingling, or wait, no, he's shaking. Maybe both. He's not entirely sure what even set him off. He was just scared. So scared.
It isn't until he tastes salt on his tongue that he realizes he's crying. He hasn't cried in so long, he was certain that his tear ducts had simply shriveled up.
He has this moment where he sort of feels like he's waking up, and then he feels like he's dreaming, and then he feels awake again. Eventually, he opens his eyes (they're so sore, they sting, his eyes sting so bad), and looks at Yamaguchi’s concerned face.
And then he feels guilt.
Who is he to drag him into this? If he had just kept to himself-
“Hey, Tsukki, you're okay. It's alright. Oh, Tsukki… what happened? Are you okay?”
He's really glad no one else is in the locker room.
He wipes his eyes, only then realizing he didn't have his glasses on. He makes a weak sniffling noise, and laughs a little.
“I'm sorry,” he crackles, voice phlegmy and almost pathetic-sounding.
“There's no reason to be sorry,” he replies, a question in his voice. “You can't really control when you have a panic attack.”
He groans at that. Did he have to say it? He figures, if he's too stubborn to admit he has an issue, Yamaguchi can always admit it for him.
“I don't,” he starts, pausing to wipe his hand down the side of his face, “I don't know why I did that.”
“That's okay. There's not always a reason, you know?”
“I think I need to get help.”
“Maybe, yeah.”