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Homework was becoming too much too quickly, class kept on ending late, and his professors just loved having him stay back and talk to them about stuff because he was actually a good student and what is he supposed to do to get some sleep around here ?

It’s not that he doesn’t have the time- it’s just three weeks into university, into practice with his new team, and his body is starting to turn on him. It’s as if his brain is adapting to functioning without sleep. And maybe he would of been fine with it so that maybe, just maybe, he could stop yawning and zoning out for minutes at a time at the dead of night when he’s trying to work on his essay with the laptop light burning his eyes. Except for the fact that his body is crying for sleep at every waking moment. Pleading. 

And it’s only day number two , entering three, Daichi solemnly thinks. And he doesn’t mean like an hour or two of sleep, but zero. Zero sleep while being able to be productive when he should be asleep but barely able to pass himself as alright and functional when awake. It’s a Thursday night. Once again, this is the one of two days a week (three if you include the absolutely horrible and pointless Extraterrestrial Life class) when his schedule is bad. For some reason, he decided on taking two late-night classes on the days he doesn’t have evening practice. Bad idea. He’s found himself passing out at random moments, blinking only for everything to be different to disorient him. But he can never actually sleep and that alone makes him want to pull his hair out in frustration. 

College is surpassing all his expectations at this point. For one, he never imaged himself going anywhere other than Sendai University before he got a letter to a university to Tokyo. He’s just going to ignore his current state of immense sleep deprivation and move on to the next unexpected point of his roommates (more like housemates, since the dorms are more like little apartments) of not one, not, two, but four people who he actually knows. And they all play volleyball. And they were all captains. And now they’re stuck on the same TV and sleeping location. 

Once the last two nights he heard Ushijima and Bokuto getting up in two in the morning or something. He didn’t really care at the time, too busy further ruining his eyesight by staring at his laptop screen. He got to listen to some of Oikawa’s Symphony of Snores No.42. He was able to do some homework, make his essays more detailed than they had to be and filled with paragraph long rants. He tried to read through some of his textbooks and learn advanced concepts so he’d be ready when they’d come. And when the sun finally started to rise and shine through the thick curtains, it’s then that he’d feign waking up, going to the bathroom before everyone else, and using Oikawa’s makeup to cover the shadows under his eyes. He’d think that maybe if he tried to ask them for help, maybe tell someone like Bokuto or Ushijima about his situation, then they could help him actually rest. But he barely knows most of them. And even though he knows Kuroo the best, it seems like the friendship they formed at training camp and the days until their final match at Spring Nationals has been reduced to a small pile of dust with the permanent introduction of Kuroo’s “Brokuto” into the picture. And even with the surprising amount of emotionally intimate moments that have happened since his arrival...he still can’t help but see them separate from himself. 

Bokuto Koutarou, fourth ranked high school ace. He’s energetic, easy to get along with, surprisingly understand, and even more surprisingly, he’s very intelligent in contrast to his outward behavior. Kuroo Tetsurou, one of the best (if not the best) middle blocker Daichi has gotten to meet in person. A nerd, crafty, very-street smart, and has a wicked memory. Oikawa Tooru, the best high-school setter in Miyagi and one of the best in the nation, self-declared rival force to Karasuno during their third-year. Ushijima Wakatoshi, third ranked high school ace with a cruel serve, intense gaze, and an all-around skilled player whose also stupidly smart, probably because Shiratorizawa is also an academically prestigious school. 

What he’s trying to get at is that they all stand separate from him. They’re strong. They’re of the same type- different cloths, different threads, different everything , but the same style, the same atoms. Daichi, on the other hand, he’s lucky that he knows them. He’s lucky he’s in their presence, that he can play with them, that he can look from the side and watch them shine while he sinks back into the concrete. Even though they talk to him, even though he’s seen Ushijima smile, he still distances himself when he can, takes a step back when he’s too close, and smiles and hides away when he sees the four of them together. Because that’s the right picture- he’s more than happy that he at least got to be the photographer. 

He holds back a yawn as he turns his phone on to check the time just as the professor dismisses them. It’s so ironic that psychology is one of his two late-night courses. One of the first things he was taught in an attempt by the professor to improve everyone’s sleep is the effects of sleep deprivation: After three days, your ability to think is limited, it’s hard to do things like multitask, remember small details, and pay attention. And, of course, emotions are effective. But not for him! Nope, he is not cranky and upset and near manic with how much he just wants to sleep and he swears he’s going to cry because of it (for some reason, he criticizes his ability of not using words other than sleep to describe sleep in his brain- he should be thinking with variety, like shutting off brain function or dying, but not dying).

Class runs late. By thirteen minutes (it’s an omen, he hears Koushi say in his brain. Shut up ). He thinks he’s officially made it into day three of sleep deprivation. Is it something to celebrate? He packs his bag and trudges back to his apartment. Nah . 

The “dorm buildings” are relatively small in terms of how many groups are held per floor, with there being four living quarters per floor, he guesses one could call the mini-apartments. He’s pretty sure that there’s no one living full-time in the three other housing units down the hall (that’s a good word to use- good job, Daichi). Sometimes he sees people go in. They’re mostly leaving when he spies them. He once asked the young woman manning the lobby of the building- he had been right with his assumption that they only live here part time because they live in Tokyo, so they often switch between home and the dorms depending on if they feel like cooking their own food or not, out of a variety of reasons. 

Nice. 

He wonders if he’d get better sleep at home. 

He adjusts his bag. It’s already 2:00 because he got lost a bunch of times (that’s a first) on the dark, sprawling, city-like campus. He also almost collapsed even more than that and as a test, he sat on the ground about ten minutes ago, leaning against a trashcan, curiosity winning him over to see if he could get some sleep.

Alas, no. 

So he was forced to walk back to the stupid building with the stupid elevator that doesn’t work past twelve in order to keep students from going out and drinking, so he has to climb up the stairs with lethargic legs and-

He trips. At the bend halfway up the stairs between the third and fourth floors, so close , he trips and lands on the large flat area of space of the bend. For some reason, his body just doesn't want to get up. His muscles weakly twitch as he stares at the next set of stairs, eyes naturally landing on them, left cheek turning cooler as it remains pressed against the ground. If his body doesn’t want to get up, then he won’t. He lays there and even though it’s not comfortable at all, only mildly relaxing with his bag is digging into his side and his phone vibrating in his, and he can see the walls becoming more and more visible as the sun starts rising? He doesn’t really know-too much details. He turns his head after what he thinks is a few seconds (so does that mean the sun rose in a few seconds? Was his phone broken? Had he roamed for longer?), glimpsing the brightened window out of the corner of his eye. Oh yes- he has practice. With that realization, he tries to get up but finally, finally , his eyes decide to close on their own accord, fluttering shut, promising him comfort and warmth and-

And he forces himself up his feet and continues trudging up the stairs. He opens the door and his mind freezes and maybe passing out would be a good option because Bokuto and Ushijima are there getting ready for their daily jog, Bokuto getting up from where he had been knelt, tying his shoes. They stare at him for a few moments and Daichi, just like how Bokuto sometimes forgets how to hit crosses, forgets how to lie. He forces his facial muscles to pulls his lips into a smile, keeping his teeth firmly pressed together before he talks. 

“I was at the library” he brightly says, probably too loudly. “Had to get a book for today's lesson in psychology.” He moves past the two. He misses Bokuto’s frown and the twitch of Ushijima’s eyebrow up as they momentarily turn around to watch him return to his room. . 

“But you just had psychology.”

By then, noise has turned into a continuous drone. Daichi grabs random clothes from his room, throwing his bag onto the ground with a thump , not caring about Oikawa asleep in his bed, before marching to the bathroom, locking the door, and stepping into the shower, putting the water on the coldest setting. He lets out a gasp that gets lost in the drone, staring at his clothes as they turn transparent with the water, sticking to his body. His teeth chatter and his mouth opens, a small noise exiting. A light chuckle. What am I even doing ? The chuckle turns into a laugh which turns into a sob that’s the only thing that permeates the drone like the edges of a radio signal. 

Something is wrong. Something is so wrong . Of course it takes the coming of the fourth day (middle of the third?) to realize this. He can’t actually sleep but he feels himself “passing out” more and more often. Middle of class. During lunch. He’s just lucky he hasn’t been caught yet, his thoughtless staring assumed by all to simply be him being in immense thought and having to fib his way through questioning. 

Everything seems like so much. Friday. Volleyball. Right. He makes it through volleyball since, thankfully, he’s doing stretches and yoga with one of his senpais so that his body can become much more flexible for his enforced position of libero. A few times he thinks he heard Koushi, Asahi, or Kiyoko whispering words of encouragement, only to be thoroughly disappointed when he opens his eyes after the burn in his muscles grows too much to empty air. 

The strangest part was when after having lunch, he went to the bathroom, and looked in the mirror. And then he thought: This isn’t me . Daichi stares at the thing in the mirror. It looks like it’s made of wax, a sculpture- no, a doll. Eyes of glass, glint of white from its slightly parted mouth pieces of sun-dried paper glued to a flat something. Move your left leg a thought clearly says in his mind and as if it were a command in a line of code, his leg does that. Turn to the left it echoes in his head and that, that’s the end of the line. Everytime he tries to move, it just continues like that. It’s like one day you start squeezing your eyes shut quickly and tightly randomly and it becomes a habit and you know that you used to not do that and it scares you when you really think about your newly formed habit, but you can’t do anything about it. 

Move this there, move that here. The sequence continues and loops until he finds himself in the room he shares with the grand king, skipping class for the first time, having no idea how he got to his room in the first place. Eyes widen his mind tells him. Body trembling starting . Stop thinking . 

It must be fate that Oikawa is always the one to find him. Running away from a meeting? Oikawa. Breaking down over the phone? Oikawa. Whatever the fuck is happening to him now? Oikawa. 

It happens an hour past the start of evening practice. Daichi is reeling back from having just thrown up in the toilet for the second time, control of his mind just really starting to come back to him instead of feeling like something more akin to a vivid dream. Forehead sweaty and hair pasted together, his throat burns from regurgitating everything again after another binge-eating session, shaking hands taking in the command move-

“ Daichi !?”

He discussed it with the rest of them already- something is up with Daichi, as in something is stressing the guy out or something, Oikawa thinks. Is he being bullied? Are people mistreating him? Did he run into that jackass again? He knows for sure that Daichi didn’t return home that morning, his excuse to Bokuto and Ushiwaka about waking early and going to the library being a lie. That was the thing that confused him the most- well, it didn’t confuse him first, he just took it as Daichi being a bad lier, but then Kuroo said that Daichi was a surprisingly good liar. So for him to use such an obvious lie while looking and sounding so fake, it’s an obvious sign that something is wrong. 

Now only if he could figure out what exactly those signs are trying to lead him to. 

So he talked to some people that are in Daichi’s post-lunch classes. None of them had anything on Daichi except for one thing: For the first time, the guy missed class. And then he doesn’t show up to practice? It was enough to stir too much worry and fear for him to wait another hour or two to get the answer to. 

Something is suspicious. So he volunteers to check and see if he’s  at home, if he fell sick or anything. And that god Oikawa’s mind running with what sort of diseases have been going around and if he is going to catch it from the libero. And then his mind running turns into his body running because right, Daichi missed his classes too and what if something bad actually happened to him? Like he collapsed? Ran into a mugger or murderer? Got run over and left for dead? 

“Yoo hoo~! Dai-chan!” He calls too quickly and too loudly upon bursting into their home only to get no reply. He stands there, catching his breath. Maybe Daichi is asleep. Maybe he’s listening to music! He tries to think positively. Daichi does get pretty distracted when he’s eating, being so fond of food. So he goes to the kitchen first. And then he stops. And frowns.

 He tilts his head back and frowns at the litter of messily opened snack wrappers, dirtied spoons, three mostly empty ice cream containers which he recognizes because he bought them yesterday, crumbs and liquids scattering the countertop and floor, two protein shake bottles,  three tupperware containers with the remains of who knows what, the dinner that Ushijima made taken out of the fridge but left unopened, half a chocolate bar, a scattering of raw coffee beans (why?), and a six-pack of beer with two of the cans confirmed to be empty with a shake of it. He looks at the chocolate bar, being the easiest to get clues for what the heck happened here (or maybe he’s craving chocolate for some insane reason) only to see that the bar wasn’t split first into the squares they’re engraved into. Oikawa knows Daichi prefers eating them square by square, starting slow before speeding up, but the bar has bite marks on it. As if he just went nom nom nom on the chocolate like Bo-kun does.  

Wait wait- better yet, there’s beer . Daichi isn’t even close to twenty! How did he even get beer ? Why is he drinking beer? Is someone else here? 

His train of thought is interrupted by a sound from the bathroom. He grabs the closest weapon- a rolling pin from the drying towel- and walks close to the bathroom, raising the wooden stick as he reaches a hand to open the door. 

He sees Daichi, first and foremost- he’s sure it’s Daichi and not some random intruder who ransacked their refrigerator and freezer. Diachi, he looks… horrible. His forehead and clothes are sweaty, hands tightly gripping the sides of the toilet. The obvious sounds of retching comes again and Daichi gasps for air, lifting his head up from where it’d been hanging to lean back against the wall, hands shaking and moving to his biceps, where there are harshly scratch lines of red, blood beading from them, and his fingers curl and the only thing Oikawa things is that they’re going to go back to those light scabs and open them again and no . 

“Daichi!” Oikawa exclaims in shock, rolling pin clattering on the ground. He lunges forward and drops to his knees, selfishly happy his kneepads cushion his fall. He grabs Daichi’s hands and they’re too warm and shaky. “Hey, Daichi, what’s wrong?” He swallows, stroking the short strands of hair back away from his forehead. His skin is burning. So he is sick, but that doesn’t explain why there was so much food out. No matter how much the other loves food, he never eats that much so suddenly!

“Oikawa?” Daichi rasps, voice so raw and weak. And then, suddenly, there are tears coming out of the outside hitter-turn-libero’s eyes, glistening drops trailing down his face. Now Oikawa is scared. 

“Hey hey hey- what’s wrong?” He his feet slide out so that he’s sitting on the floor, wrapping his arms around the crying man. “Tell me what’s wrong. Do you need to call that guy again or someone? Is it the stress? Are you depressed? D-do you have a-a” he stutters, mind quickly pulling up the memory from his first year of the horrible thing categorized into three “an eating di-”

“I think I’m going crazy” Daichi’s breath hitches, voice muffled from where he has his face pressed against Oikawa’s shoulder. “I haven’t been able to sleep in the past three-four, something days and it’s like time’s skipping and-and I can’t even remember coming back home!” He cries. “And I looked in the mirror and it was like I was looking at someone else standing in front of the mirror instead of me and I feel like a stranger in my body and everything is becoming too much and I can’t focus and everything is just ” Daichi continues to ramble. Oikawa can only blink. 

“You haven’t slept, in three days ?” Daichi sniffles, head shifting in a nod. 

“You’re going to bed.”

“I told you” Daichi confesses “I can’t sleep. I’ve tried. I got tea. I tried over-the-counter sleeping pills. I even got alcohol-”

“Yeah, I was wondering about that.”

“-and I think I looked it up before? No, this is...psychology” Daichi’s voice reduces to a wet frustrated growl, eyes squeezing shut. “First week of school? We learned about the effects of sleep deprivation and all of this falls under it and gods is this how anxiety feels like?” Oikawa bites his lower lip. He stands up, flushes the toilet without looking inside it, and helps Daichi up. Then, he leads him to their shared room, grabbing a blanket and pillow before dragging him to the couch. Daichi watches from the side and the poor guy is trembling, shadows under his eyes (he must of covered them before- so that’s why when he checked his makeup container it looked to smudgy). 

“Sit.”

“Sit…” Daichi mutters back to himself before sitting. Then he lays down and Oikawa draws the blanket over him. His eyes are still open. 

Oikawa quickly goes back to the kitchen, slightly more relaxed but also a lot less relaxed now that he knows what he hopes is most of the story. 

So Daichi was sleep deprived. 

That’s the problem.

He opens his phone and looks up: what happens after three days of sleep deprivation , then clicks on the first link that pops up.  “Oh. Well, this is horrible” he says to himself, leaning against the kitchen countertop as he clicks on the embedded links on the page for each of the side effects. Derealization. Daichi’s definitely been feeling that and wow- it sounds scary . And then there’s the microscleeps. 

“I’m taking you to the doctor” Oikawa says. When there’s no reply, he feels relief. Did he finally fall asleep? No- Daichi is sitting up, slowly standing and walking dully to Oikawa’s side. Not really walking, it’s more like trudging, shoulders hunched forward and toes just avoided grazing the hardwood. He’s quick to hold onto his wrist, scared with how blank those usually warm and bright eyes have become. 

“I got you” Oikawa softly says. Derealization. Making himself become a good setter, to become the best of the best, has forced Oikawa to become observant- a setter must know what’s going on at any given moment at all times. He remembers hearing Daichi command to himself move and then sit before carrying the action out. He has the feeling that right now, he isn’t leading Sawamura Daichi because Sawamura Daichi is conscious but not really aware at the moment. 

The two come back after a quick appointment with the on-campus doctor. They got the sleeping pills and he warned them to try and not get Daichi addicted to them- only give them to him for one week max, until he shows signs of being able to sleep on his own. He also needs to wait twelve to twenty-four horse before letting Daichi start taking the pills, since Oikawa had suddenly remembered the fact that besides the alcohol, he’d admitted to also taking pills and he doesn’t know how much he took and how much he managed to throw up. So, for this first night, chamomile tea was the recommendation. It’ll help both with sleep and the fever, which leads to Oikawa mentally praising the gods for letting him have have tea-loving Ushiwaka as a roommate (for once). 

By the time they come back, though, practice has long-since finished. Bokuto and Kuroo ask questions, Ushijima merely observes. The kitchen is clean of all the trash that had been on it so that means at least one of them saw what was there. 

“Daichi” is all Oikawa says, shoving the diagnosis that the doctor printed out at Kuroo who’d be able to explain it best. Kuroo leads the two to the living room after a confused glance at Daichi who doesn’t give any sign of even knowing the others are there. Oikawa sits Daichi down at dining table, quickly getting a mug and filling it up with water while looking over his shoulder in case Daichi somehow disappears . 

He doesn’t know if that’d be better or worse than the empty stare he’s being subjected to. The increase in volume from the murmurs drifting from the living room gets him moving again, grabbing Ushijima’s jar of dried chamomile from the cabinet, putting a spoon of it into the mug before putting it in the microwave. After forty-five seconds, he takes the mug out, hot but not too hot that it’d burn his tongue.

“Drink slowly” he says, one hand pushing the mug into Daichi’s hand while he uses the other to feel his forehead. Sleep deprivation also contributes to weakening the immune system. The fever feels like it’s increased and Oikawa wants to give him the cold medicine his mom used to give him (or Iwa-chan would force down his throat). But he knows that he can’t. Not right now. It’s also scary how robotically Daichi turns his gaze to the mug and picks it up with trembling fingers, slipping through the handle and lifting it to his mouth, lips staying on the rim, never leaving. 

Oikawa stands there for the minute it takes for Daichi to drain the mug, lips turned red from the head of the liquid. Oikawa gently guides him to stand before leading him back to their shared room, laying him down and tucking him into bed, the plain looking comforter he’s seen on the other’s bed surprisingly soft. 

“Do you think you can sleep?” Oikawa asks. Daichi nods after a few seconds of hesitation. Oikawa turns the lights off, the dim light the drifts in from the living room being the only thing that allows him to see the flickering glint of eyes as eyelids blink. Oikawa bites his lower lip. He doesn’t really like being in this position. For all his life, it’s always been people taking care of him instead of the other way around, but it seems like in the past three weeks everything he has gotten used to with his old life has been thrown out the window and replaced with something different. 

He’s not going to say that he used to hate Sawamura Daichi. No, hate’s too strong of the word. It was more like dislike, mainly because he was on Tobio’s team and was his captain, taking away his last chance at Nationals. But Daichi reminds him of Iwa-chan, a lot. Iwaizumi only has his mother, an older brother whose been living in a different part of the country for a long time, and two younger siblings. He’s been forced to grow up quickly, forced to adapt to taking care of others and rarely being taken care of. As ace, he doesn’t expect for people to pick up for his slack because he makes sure that there’s no slack to pick up. He thinks it’s the same with Daichi, except different circumstances. Iwa-chan has taken that weird maturity and made it his own, blending his own personality with it. With Daichi, it’s like he’s commanding that maturity. And below the outward appearance of the focused captain he shook hands with at their practice match is someone who is still very much a child. It’s unnerving for Oikawa to think about the fact that Daichi is the youngest one here- he mentioned his birthday being in winter. New Year's Eve? 

He sits at the edge of the bed, twisting so that he can comfortably place his hand on the space between Daichi’s shoulders, lightly patting his back with what he hopes is the same comforting motion his mom used to perform when he was a kid. 

It works. He almost goes to the closest shrine right there and there when after ten minutes, he tilt of his head forward and to the side confirms that Daichi’s eyes aren’t open and the muscles of his body have relaxed, lips slightly parted. He stops the patting and two more minutes of just sitting there confirms that he’s not waking up this time. The fever will probably help keep him down too , Oikawa guilty thinks as he gets up and leaves, closing the door behind him. But with the fever too he’ll probably have to skip his classes tomorrow. He’ll ask around for the lecture notes. He knows that they’re all adults now but it doesn't feel right leaving Daichi on his own and it’s not because of him projecting his childhood want of having a younger sibling on Daichi. Nope.

He collapses onto the couch, tipping his head back and closing his eyes with a small grunt. He landed right on the blanket he had covered Daichi with before they had left for the doctor’s, before he really went into that state of disassociation. It feel uncomfortable under his bum but he doesn’t feel like moving it. He opens his eyes and looks at Bokuto, who is the first of the three to approach him Alright then. He can do this. 

“Will Daichi be okay?” He asks. Oikawa gives him a wry smile. 

“Yeah. I’m pretty sure he will be” Bokuto nods, swallowing. He looks guilty for some strange reason. It’s not like that it’s his fault, or any of theirs. Maybe they contributed somehow, not noticing quickly enough, but the events weren’t theirs to control. 

“We poured the beer down the drain before throwing it away.” Kuroo speaks up. “I have no idea where he got it from but” Kuroo runs a hand through his hair, fringe momentarily moving back before falling back over his eye “Gods, I hate this. That paper wasn’t pretty.”

“Good job, Tetsu, throwing the beer away. He managed to drink two, but I’m pretty sure he threw it all back up.”

“I cleaned the bathroom” Ushijima plainly adds. Oikawa has never been more thankful for his simpleness. 

“Will he be fine?” Bokuto asks again, golden eyes wide and pleading. 

“Absolutely.” He sighs. “I just...it was scary.” Bokuto sits down beside him, wrapping an arm around him. He covers his eyes with a hand, rubbing them before dragging his hand down his face. “He’s been getting pretty stressed out, I think, but I never thought anything this bad would happen. This was worse than the first time. It was like he wasn’t even in his own body, like he was just running on autopilot.”

“Derealization, dissociation; I had to look the first one up.” Kuroo nods. “But, Oikawa. I know Sawamura is the real subject of worry, but how are you holding up?”

“Surprisingly well, Tetsu-kun. It’s weird taking care of him again” he mentally shudders at the memory of the first time “and having to be responsible, but I’m happy I’m able to help him get better. It makes me better knowing that it’s us here instead of some random people who would of done nothing for him.” He nearly spits out. “And I need to get some sleep to.”

“All of us need to get some sleep around here.” Kuroo grins.