Work Text:
The firm feeling of your mattress had long ago turned uncomfortable, the sheets covering you constricting around you as you curled yourself tighter and tighter into a ball, your only view the plain-white wall in front of you. It was tinted grey from the lack of light in your room, the only source coming from the hallway light leaking in from under your bedroom door and the dulled light coming from behind your curtains. How long had you been in this position, circling around and around in your mind the things you were struggling with? Life… sucked, for lack of a better description. School sucked. Being home sucked. Trying to hold onto friends as they started going their separate ways sucked. Wanting to be something more than you were sucked. No one seeming to want to help you sucked.
Everything sucked including you, you thought harshly. What was the point of continuing to try? It wasn’t like you were getting anywhere lately. You could feel that everyone was just putting up with you and not really enjoying having you around. It was getting more obvious each day and before you knew it the lid on the pot just blew clean off, straight into the living room, through the wall, straight through the neighbor’s wall and right into their kitchen’s pot, which blew that lid clean off and now there were two lids flying around and pots bubbling over and making a mess of everything.
God, why did it have to just explode like that? You couldn’t take it anymore. The heat in your blood was burning so intensely that you were sure your whole body would skip the melting point and just sublimate into pure, uncontainable rage. And well, it did, you guess. No one stopped you as you threw out every little thing that you could think of that was setting you off. You spared no one because like hell had they spared you any scraps of decency when you were struggling to keep it all together. What kind of teammates were they if they couldn’t help you? After you had expended all your energy on lashing out you stormed out of the gymnasium, not even caring to grab your things from the club room. All the way home you cursed under your breath, slamming each foot in front of the other as your chest tightened more and more. The anger soon mixed itself with desperate, blindsiding sadness. Your steps stopped being forceful and instead turned swift, the pavement melting away into a blur as you ran the rest of the way home, trying your best to keep yourself together long enough to get into your room without questions.
And well, here you were. In the dark, alone, filled with hate for everything and anxiety that you just made everyone hate you. Your stomach felt like it was traversing unrelenting seas and your body felt like it had already sunk with the ship. Yet, even though your body was out of commission, your mind couldn’t stop replaying all the things you had said, all the anger that you couldn’t tell was misguided or not, all the ways that they had looked at you. Stunned, confused, upset; just like you. Fuck, this is all so stupid…
A gentle knock came from your bedroom door followed by the equally gentle tone of your mom. You tried to pull your knees closer to your chest as if that would signal to her telepathically that you didn’t want to be bothered, now or ever. But, unbeknownst to you, no one could read your mind, not even your mother, and she asked through the door with concern in her voice much like her question.
“Are you alright, sweetheart? A friend of yours is here and wants to talk.” The dread ripped through you like grubby hands do to presents only to find out it was socks, and not even nice ones with animals on them. It was hard to swallow as you contemplated whether it was better to try and pass off that you were asleep or to face the reality that you had screwed up majorly and to take the medicine you were going to get eventually. On one hand, tomorrow could always wait, but on the other hand—
The door opening didn’t let you finish your thought and the intrusiveness of the lights being turned on stopped any possibility of maintaining your possum impersonation. A small hiss left your lips as you peered over the edge of your covers to see who it was that dared to enter your den of depression. Standing there, the door fully swung open and still holding onto the handle was the insurmountable giant of Dateko, Aone— or as you had so graciously described him “the perpetually unapproachable scowling meathead who does nothing but make you feel inferior and disgusted with yourself.” Right behind him, looking shocked at the forwardness and somewhat lack of respect for privacy, was your mom. She tried to stutter out a reprimand at Aone but he quickly gave an apologetic bow before closing the door in her face. You heard the bewildered gasp and the sound of her grabbing at the handle of the door; but, she never opened it, a tired sigh and some comment about teenage boys trailing off. Et tu, mother?
Aone dropped your bag onto the floor next to your door and then unshouldered his own. You rolled onto your back and watched as he stood there, doing nothing but staring back at you, the expression on his face giving no indication of what the hell he wanted. You glanced away from him to the wall on the other side of the room and back several times before you weakly lifted your arm up to vaguely gesture “What the fuck do you want?” Aone let out one of his customary huffs of air as if that was an adequate answer to the question you had implied. Sighing, you motioned towards the chair at your desk; at least if he was sitting there you wouldn’t have to be forced to look at him in your current position and endure his likely scolding headfirst. He walked over and took the seat, his large stature dwarfing the thing like it was from a playset meant for children. You both just existed for a moment, the only sound the soft hum of the outside world hanging in the air like the tension that you wished would just force itself into your lungs and suffocate you so you could avoid whatever was about to happen. You threw an arm over your eyes, the overhead light coming to be too much to bear while your voice slowly carried out your exhausted thought.
“So… What… do you want…?” You swore you could hear the gears turning in his head as he processed how he could, probably, get a grunt to portray “Hey, you said some really terrible things to people that have tried to do nothing but be supportive of you as both teammates and as friends and I’m here to figure out what exactly it is that caused what happened.” Or he could just say that; you knew he had the capability to talk but not that he had offered you that experience very often. Hell, you had offered him a lot of words over the course of your friendship because he had been one of the few that had given you a morsel of reciprocacy to the idea of being cool with existing together. Yeah, your observation was mean spirited but it wasn’t untrue to the people who didn’t know how he was actually pretty nice. And smart. And good at things. Better than a lot of people, to be fair—
“Are you okay?” You raised your arm a bit off your face to blink surprisingly at Aone, his voice a low rumbling but somehow filled with something that indicated he still gave some sort of shit about you. Actually, not just “some sort of shit,” it was a whole lot of shit. It was comparable to how much you had surrounded yourself with by blowing all of your anxieties and insecurities out onto whoever was in the vicinity. You groaned, letting your arm smack back onto your face as you wondered how you were gonna answer Aone if you couldn’t even answer that question yourself. Were you okay? The answer was no, obviously, but he wasn’t really asking that question; it was more “What’s wrong?” than anything else.
“You really wanna talk about it? You really up for that after what I did?” Aone let out an affirmative grunt and you let yourself chuckle a bit despite your mood. There was a nuance to his lack of wanting to speak; his affirmations had an inflection that started low and slurred up, like he was nodding his head. It had taken you a bit to get used to as it wasn’t as distinct as most where they’d separate the low and the high, but eventually you just understood him. First it was his verbal cues, then reading his facial expressions that were very subtle but telling, and then having to teach the others how to understand him. It was like you became his expert, all the while shrouding yourself from letting him know anything about you other than what you wanted him to. He was so openly honest and you returned that with a facade of being okay with how things were going.
“I’m just a shitty person, alright? I don’t like things about myself and I—”
“No.” Aone interrupted you with a resounding declaration and the sound of him quickly getting up from the chair. You heard his footsteps come closer as you continued to speak.
“No? My grades are tanking, I think all my friends are out to get me…” You felt his presence next to your bed and you turned to put your back to him, the words tumbling out faster and erratically changing volume on each syllable as you tried to choke back tears. “I’m holding everything and everyone back because I’ve fucking peaked. I barely belong on the damn bench for fuck’s sake. And best of all…” The bed shifted as Aone put his weight down on to the mattress, his hand coming to rest on your shoulder and trying to pull you to face him. You let him pull you and you threw your arm off your face, a hard knock coming from your knuckles roughly connecting with the wall. “I’m treating someone I really like like he’s just a stupid oaf incapable of dealing with my emotions despite the fact he’s right here!” Through the tears, you could see Aone shift backwards at your unrestrained confession, the way his brows shifted just a bit downwards and the corners of his mouth pulled back just a little. Surprised. “Isn’t that disgusting?! Look at me! I’d be surprised too since I’m a guy saying this!” Your eyes closed and you hoped they wouldn’t ever open again, that everything would just bleed away into a numbing darkness. And, for a moment, it did, but it was cold and lonely, like you were stranded on the top of a snow-covered mountain. You shook and you felt hopeless. Who the hell is going to climb this high to save you? You sure as hell weren’t going to come back down; it was untraversable going the opposite way, or at least that’s what you thought. You didn’t want to look over the edge, the thought of seeing what was at the bottom, if there even was one you could see, was too daunting. It was better to just lie still and suffer until it stopped hurting.
The warm feeling of a palm sliding under your back pushed you up off the frigid ground of your mind and back into reality. You felt the warmth snake around to your shoulder and then how it blossomed throughout your whole body. Something strong and warm held you and you clung to it as you felt your tears start to flow and stain the scratchy fabric against your face. You didn’t want to open your eyes, too scared that this feeling would leave. A rumbling rolled against your chest before it softly waltzed into your ear, inspiring you to open your eyes. The darkness quickly dissipated as the light chased it away, the storming clouds parting to reveal the nurturing sunshine carving the path down. Aone ran one hand down your back and another through your hair, trying his best to guide you back down.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” It was a simple question but one with a complicated answer. Or, at least, it felt like a complicated answer. How could you tell him that you felt bittersweet each time you looked at him? How could you tell him that you were struggling to match not just his pace, but others that weren’t at his level? How could you tell him that you couldn’t see any future where you felt happy? Satisfied?
“How could I? You wouldn’t look at me the same way if I did.” The truth was hard to materialize but you felt compelled to shape it from the swirling thoughts in your mind. Aone’s presence, both here and on the court, made you feel safe; he made you feel safe everywhere, really. He grounded you, kept you from falling over. Yet, you had turned your gaze away from the wall looking to keep your upright and instead chose to walk away from it. “It’s a stupid reason…”
“It’s not.” He pulled you closer as he said it, his chin resting atop your head. “I know, it’s scary not knowing if someone will care about you if you show them you’re struggling.” The two of you sat there for a moment, entangled in each other and listening to the unsynced pattern of your breathing with his. You let out a small laugh after a while, feeling Aone pull his chin down a bit into your head. Confused.
“I was just… thinking that was one of your longest strings of words since I’ve known you.” You felt the rolling feeling of a low laugh coming from Aone’s chest and you pulled away a little bit. You met his gaze with yours, a small but still sad smile on your face; even though it didn’t look like it, the right corner of his mouth was pulled back and his eyes were filled with intent. Relieved, or perhaps happy.
“I can say more.” You pushed yourself back into his chest and closed your eyes again.
“Save it for another time. Let’s just exist like this for a little bit longer…” Low slurred up to high. You’re not sure how long you two sat there, but eventually you mulled over the idea of asking or not for too long and decided to just bite the bullet. “Do you want to stay… the night?” The silence made time seem to stop, your breath catching in your throat as you waited for something of his to indicate his answer. When his face finally moved, it moved in a way that you couldn’t read causing you to pull back and see something you hadn’t seen at all. A full, completely-readable-to-anyone smile across his face.
“I’d like that.”
Sometimes, the path ahead seems like it’s impossible to travel, whether it is to climb above one’s hurdles or to descend back down from the clutches of the edge. But, much like volleyball, much like many things, the path fits more than just one. One’s journey will be filled with those that will help guide it to its destination; all one has to do is open their arms and ask for help.