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Today is a bad day.
No matter what he does, no matter what he tries, it just doesn’t work the way he wants it to. Everything just feels wrong, somehow. It’s like his body has forgotten how to do what had once come so naturally for him.
It’s frustrating. Unbearably so.
He’s supposed to be getting better. He’s supposed to be someone that the team can rely on when they need him the most, their captain, their ace. He can’t keep getting shut down during games, not anymore. He swore he would never let that happen again.
But you can’t do any of that if you can’t even get the basics right, can you?
He’s fighting a losing battle against his own mind, struggling to stay afloat as the waves of self-doubt and self-loathing crash over him. Each mistake is another weight pulling him under. The more he resists the chains, the tighter they wrap around him. It’s all he can do to keep himself from submitting to it.
Koutarou thinks he does a pretty good job of maintaining some semblance of composure during practice, though he’s almost certain his teammates could see his frustration slipping through the cracks of his hastily-made armour. He forces himself to go through everything the team does and only gets called out a couple times for missed plays, though with every mistake he makes, the urge to smash his head into the nearest wall only grows stronger.
At least spiking gives him an outlet for some of that frustration. Sort of. It’s only somewhat effective when half of them land out of bounds.
His teammates pat him on the back as they head out once practice ends. A sign of respect. A sign of trust, of belief in him, belief in the fact that he can get past this block and come back even stronger.
He’s not sure if he deserves it.
Of all times, why did he have to get stuck when he needs to be moving forward? Chained to the ground by his own ineptitude, unable to break free when all he wants is to take to the skies once more. The team is counting on him. He wants to be better for them. He needs to be better for them.
And more than that, he wants to be better for himself. He doesn’t want any more regrets. He doesn’t want any more opportunities slipping through his fingers.
But how can he be better when he can’t even be good?
A hand on his shoulder drags him out of his thoughts and he looks up to see Akaashi, studying his expression intently as though he could pull the answers from him without even needing to ask.
He doesn’t ask, though. He doesn’t push. He just glances over at the ball cart and gives him an expectant look.
“Toss to me, Akaashi?” The words come out hushed, barely a whisper. It sounds fragile even to his own ears.
He doesn’t need to ask, not anymore. The answer has never changed from the beginning. Still, he can’t help but seek the reassurance that he still has this, whatever this is, no matter how badly he’s doing. He still has this time after practice. He still has Akaashi.
And Akaashi knows it too.
He’s always been so good at reading Koutarou, after all.
“Of course, Bokuto-san.”
They settle into their usual routine, and he tries to remember how he normally hits Akaashi’s tosses. He isn’t really missing spikes, but they just don’t feel right. It’s not as satisfying as it usually is. He doesn’t feel good about anything he’s doing, and the more he thinks about it the worse it gets.
He’s trying to increase his options for attacks. Cross shots are his specialty, but everyone knows that. They stay on guard and adapt until they can shut him out. He needs more in his arsenal, which is why they’ve been working on his straights, something that had never really been his forte. For a while it had seemed like they were getting more consistent. But now, he can’t seem to hit the ball exactly where he wants it to go, no matter what he does.
It doesn’t take long for the doubt, the frustration, everything to come back full force, and it’s too much. He can’t get anything right. He’s never going to get better. The team would probably be better off without him. What good is he as their captain if he can’t be good enough to lead them to victory? What good is he as their ace if he can’t score any points?
Some ace he is.
The next time Akaashi sets a ball to him, he catches it. He can’t weather this storm anymore, not when he doesn’t have so much as an umbrella to shield himself from the downpour of negativity.
“Forget it. What’s the point? It’s not like we’re getting anything out of this.” His tone is hard, and he puts everything he has into making sure his voice doesn’t waver. He glares at the ball in his hands, as if it holds the answers that he’s looking for.
“Bokuto-san? What are you talking about?” Akaashi speaks quietly, carefully, as though anything louder might scare him off.
“I can’t do anything! No matter what I do, it just sucks! I suck! I don’t even know how I used to do anything!” His voice is rising with every word that comes out. He’s vaguely aware that he’s yelling but he can’t be bothered to do anything about it, too overcome with emotion to control himself. He doesn’t look up, too ashamed to look Akaashi in the eye.
“I’m supposed to be getting better, but instead it feels like I’m getting worse! My straights aren’t improving, my serves aren’t going in, I can’t spike for shit, I can’t even do the things I’m supposed to be good at!” His voice breaks on the last syllable. He feels his face heating up, feels the telltale prickle in his eyes, and he grips the ball in his hands tighter as he tries to hide his face with it. He wishes Akaashi didn’t have to see him like this, the humiliation almost too much to bear on top of everything else.
“Bokuto-san...” Akaashi starts to say something, but Koutarou doesn’t let him finish. The floodgates have opened, and now the words won’t stop spilling out. He lost control long ago.
“God, I can’t even keep it together! I’m such a mess, Akaashi! Why do you all still put up with me? I can’t even do enough to make up for it on the court!”
“Bokuto—“
“I want to be the one you can all rely on! I want to be strong, I want to be better, I never want to be the reason we lose ever again! But I’m not getting better! I can’t do anything right!” He slams down the ball he’s holding and the sound of it hitting the ground reverberates throughout the empty gym.
He finally looks up at Akaashi, though he isn’t really taking in anything in front of him. He’s vaguely aware of the tears that blur his vision and stream down his face and he hates it. He hates that his weakness is on display for the world to see. For Akaashi to see. His chest is tight, the overwhelming emotions feeling like a vice grip. His hands are shaking, and he clenches them into fists in an effort to stop it. His heart is racing, thumping so hard against his chest that he’s worried it might beat right out of his body.
“Bokuto-san, please—“
“What kind of captain am I? What kind of ace? I don’t have any right to call myself either of those things! I’m useless! The team would probably be better off without me! And you! Why do you still stick around, night after night? You don’t have to stay just to humour me! I’m not worth your time! I’m sure you probably have better things to do than put up with me—“
“Bokuto Koutarou!”
Koutarou’s mouth snaps shut immediately, chest heaving from his outburst. He’s never heard Akaashi yell like that, and if that wasn’t enough to shut him up then the sound of his full name spilling out of Akaashi’s lips like that certainly was.
He blinks, finally processing what’s right in front of him for the first time since he caught the last ball Akaashi set to him. He’s caught off guard when he sees Akaashi looking more expressive than he’s ever seen him, cheeks flushed and hands clenched into fists, brows furrowed and eyes shining as though he might start crying too. Koutarou almost flinches when he realizes just how upset Akaashi looks, and his mind immediately jumps to the worst conclusions.
He’s mad at me. He hates me. This is the part where he tells me he doesn’t want anything to do with me anymore, that I’m not needed—
“Don’t you dare think for a second that I’m just ‘putting up with you.’ That’s not true and you know it.” Akaashi sounds as furious as he looks, but he’s not saying any of what Koutarou was expecting to hear.
Akaashi starts walking closer to him, his steps slow but sure as he continues speaking. There’s a determined look in his eyes and Koutarou has to force himself to stay rooted to the spot, to not back away because he’s never seen Akaashi like this before.
“I’m here because I want to be. I’m here because I want to get better. I’m here because I want to help you get better. I’m here because I enjoy practicing with you. Not once have I ever thought that I would rather be anywhere else than right here with you. Whether or not it’s worth my time is my decision to make, not yours.” Akaashi’s standing right in front of him now, and he jabs a finger into Koutarou’s chest to punctuate his last sentence.
“I have so much respect for you, both as a player and a person, and so does the rest of the team. We chose you as our captain for a reason. We believe in you as our ace for a reason. You are our guiding light. Our star. We look to you to lead the way. I’ve never thought for a second that my trust in you was misplaced, and I can guarantee that nobody else on this team has ever thought that either.” Here, his voice softens. “We know you aren’t going to be perfect all the time. We don’t expect you to be.”
Koutarou bites his lip, more tears threatening to spill out. The words are a counter to all the insecurities he’d voiced earlier, each reassurance resonating somewhere deep inside him.
Akaashi reaches his hands out, hesitating only for a second before grabbing Koutarou’s right hand which is still clenched tightly in a fist. His spiking hand.
He eases Koutarou’s hand open before proceeding to fidget with it the way he would with his own. He absently plays with Koutarou’s fingers and traces nonsensical patterns into his palm. It’s surprisingly soothing, and Koutarou feels some of the tension leave his body. He unclenches his other fist and relaxes his shoulders, letting out a shaky breath before speaking.
“I’m just... tired. Tired of getting shut down, tired of being stuck, tired of not getting anywhere. Sometimes—” his breath hitches and the next words are barely a whisper, “sometimes I’m tired of volleyball, too.” His voice breaks at the end and he averts his eyes, looking off to the side as a few more tears manage to leak out. He feels like he’s just confessed his deepest, darkest, most shameful secret of all.
He feels awful saying that. He likes volleyball, loves it even. But on days like this, he sometimes finds himself wishing he could just stop. He doesn’t want to keep coming in to practice every day when he’s not even sure if he’s going to get anywhere with it. He’s started to dread practices, worried that it’ll just be more of the same. It feels pointless.
Think about what’s fun, not what’s easy. These are the words that have stuck with him through all these years. Right now, this isn’t fun at all. None of it is. When did he stop enjoying himself? What went wrong?
Akaashi gives his hand a squeeze and he reluctantly drags his gaze back over.
“I think... it’s okay to be tired sometimes. When you put as much into something as you do with volleyball, it’s inevitable that you’ll run into a few walls here and there. You’re the most passionate person I’ve ever met. You put all of yourself and then some into your playing, which is really hard to do. But I don’t think any amount of passion can prevent you from having bad days.” Akaashi’s voice is soft now as he speaks, comforting and full of understanding. He doesn’t meet Koutarou’s eyes as he speaks, instead opting to look at his hands which are still fiddling with Koutarou’s.
“Having a bad day doesn’t mean that you aren’t a great player. It doesn’t negate all the work you’ve put into making yourself better, it doesn’t erase all the progress you’ve made, and it certainly doesn’t mean that you’re getting worse. Growth isn’t linear. You’re going to have ups and downs, and you’re going to have days where it feels like you’re taking more steps backwards than forwards. But that doesn’t mean you’re not capable of doing anything. It doesn’t make you useless.”
He takes a deep breath before continuing. “Bad days are just that— bad days. They’re temporary. You’re not going to be stuck here forever. I think the best thing you can do on days like these is to just push through and deal with it the best you can, and you’ll come out stronger for it. If you can make it through the worst days, you can make it through anything.”
Something clicks in Koutarou’s mind.
Whenever something isn’t going well, he gets lost in his emotions, lets himself get swept away by the waves. He lets them take control as they overwhelm him, helpless to their influence. He would get so caught up in what he was feeling, all the doubts and frustration and insecurity, that he hadn’t even considered that those feelings would eventually die down. In the moment they’re so strong that Koutarou feels he’ll never be able to escape them, like they’ll never go away. He’s trapped in that state of mind, unable to do anything about it.
No matter how bad it feels, these feelings are temporary. They always go away eventually. Now that he thinks about it, he realizes just how true that is.
He realizes now that he has a choice. He can choose to get swept away, or he can choose to catch himself and push through it, knowing that it won’t be like that forever.
It seems so obvious to him now, and yet he hadn’t thought about it at all until it was pointed out to him.
It doesn’t make all his problems disappear, but the weight on his shoulders lightens a bit with this knowledge.
He doesn’t feel so trapped now.
“Akaashi, you’re really smart, y’know that?”
Akaashi flushes at the compliment and mutters something incoherent, likely trying to brush it off. Koutarou can’t help the faint chuckle that escapes him at the reaction.
He puts his other hand over Akaashi’s and squeezes, hoping to convey the gratitude he feels. Akaashi looks up at him then, and he smiles. It’s soft and barely there, but it’s more than the usual quirk of his lips, the almost-but-not-quite-a-smile that he usually wears. Koutarou smiles a little wider at this.
“‘Trust in your teammates a little more. We’ll be there to pick you up if you fall.’” Koutarou’s eyes widen at the familiar words, the words he had told Akaashi before their first tournament together. Akaashi spots the recognition in his features and he grins at Koutarou. “I seem to remember a certain somebody telling me that once.”
“Yeah? They sound like they give great advice, you’ll have to introduce me sometime,” Koutarou smirks. Akaashi huffs a laugh, freeing one of his hands to cuff Koutarou lightly on the shoulder.
“In any case, I think that someone should take his own advice once in a while. You already know that we’ve got your back, just like we know that you’ve got ours. You’ve got the whole team, but more than that, you’ve got me. From when we first started practicing together, I devoted myself to this sport. I devoted myself to you, my ace.” Koutarou’s eyes widen at this address and he feels his ears burn a little.
“I can’t do much on my own, but with you at my side I feel like I could take on the world. Together, we’re unstoppable. You told me that too,” Akaashi finishes, losing steam a little bit at the end. He looks away, cheeks flushing in embarrassment. Koutarou can only stare, for once rendered speechless by the genuine confession.
After a moment of silence, Akaashi clears his throat. “Sorry, I got a bit carried away there...” He trails off, rubbing at his cheek with his free hand, the other squirming where it’s still trapped in Koutarou’s grasp. He lets it go and Akaashi’s hands immediately find each other, fidgeting once more.
“It’s not a problem, Akaashi. I think... I probably needed to hear that. So thanks. For saying all that but also for just... being here. Even when everything else has gone to shit, I know that I’ll still have you by my side... right?”
“Of course. For as long as you’ll have me.” Akaashi doesn’t even hesitate before answering and he sounds so sure of his answer. It fills Koutarou with a feeling he can’t quite put a name to, a mix of gratitude and warmth and affection. It fills him up until he’s overflowing with it, and he doesn’t know what to do with all of it.
So he does the only thing he can think of and pulls Akaashi into a hug. He feels Akaashi tense up for a second, clearly having not expected this development, but it doesn’t take him long to relax and return the embrace. They stay like that for a moment, revelling in the comfort of it. Koutarou breathes, feeling himself relax more with every moment that passes.
He may not be able to weather the storm on his own, but with Akaashi holding him like this, Koutarou thinks they can do it together.
He’s not alone. He never has been.
This will pass.