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There’s a thing that happens, when everyone keeps telling you the same thing, calling you a genius, a prodigy—over and over.
You start to believe it, and you start to live by those words.
For Kageyama, there is the court, there is the ball and there is everything else. There are the backs of the players and there are the ones behind the net—the everyone else.
It’s familiar, down to the way the rubber tread of his shoes grip the shiny surface of the gym floors—recently waxed, reflecting the lines of florescent lights above like a trick of the eye.
A breath, a toss, and his hand is slamming into the ball and the ball is sailing in an arc over the net—it’s messily returned but that’s fine. For Kageyama, a small fumble on someone else’s end is not a problem because he’s the genius setter and he’ll cover for everyone else’s shortcomings.
But he sees the ball fall in slow motion, perfect in its rotation—nothing stops it from bouncing hollowly against the floor, the sound reverberating a hundred times over until even his heartbeat falls in time with it.
It’s his biggest nightmare—a mistake.
He shoots up in his bed, t-shirt stuck to his back as he pants, wide-eyed.
He can feel his heartbeat, stuttering a familiar rhythm against his chest and he can’t stand it.
Ripping the sheets from his legs, his body moves itself into a steady pacing across the darkness of his room, his mind moving with it as it races through memories, trying to sift between the ones that were real and the ones that might have been.
It’s not until he’s stomping back towards his bed for the third time that he sees the flash of light, every few seconds, coming from beneath his pillow. His phone must have somehow gotten underneath there between all the thrashing and rolling around he had done in the short time he had slept for.
2:34 Akira: Alright then. Sleep well.
His fingers move to reply before he sees the time but when he does—4:08—his phone is already vibrating in his hands, the screen lighting up to show Kunimi’s face, half-hidden by his scarf from last winter.
“I thought you went to bed,”
Kageyama knows it’s deadly silent on his end but there is music playing softly on Kunimi’s, accompanied by a steady clicking of a computer mouse.
And suddenly, his heart is slowing down, his hands stops shaking and he starts being able to pick out the furniture in the corners of his room in shades of grey instead of just one giant black void, gnawing at his mind.
It’s funny—and a relief all the same—that Kunimi’s habit of sleeping late, being comfortable in the darkness of night, is what calms him the most.
“I did—I tried,” Kageyama eases himself back on his bed, a fist clenched against his knee as he concentrates on Kunimi’s breathing through the phone.
“You had a nightmare,”
The clicking stops, followed by the music, and it sounds as if Kunimi is sitting up.
“It’s—fine,” Kageyama forces out, eyes squeezed shut as he sees the court in his mind, and the ball that drops from his hands onto it.
And it hurts.
“It was a dream,” Kunimi says and a year before, Kageyama would have never thought that his monotone voice could sound so soothing at 4 in the morning. “You have no control over dreams, Kageyama. It’s not your fault.”
There’s a thing that happens to Kageyama when Kunimi starts telling him something different.
All at once, Kunimi is back to clicking his mouse and playing his music and Kageyama’s life resumes its normal pace—without a hitch.
“So go to sleep,” Kunimi continues solemnly despite the video game music that continues on in the background. “And dream of me instead.”
“Good night, Kunimi,”
When he hangs up, it doesn’t feel so silent on his end anymore. Maybe it’s because he thinks he might have caught the smallest hint of a laugh from Kunimi before he did.
Shaking his head at himself—now that’s a mistake he can live with.