Chapter Text
Koushi is seventeen when he learns the wrong way to cope.
The habit starts so laughably simple, so unnoticeable he can’t really pinpoint the exact moment it began. He thinks it may have emerged from the most horrifying period of his young life, those pitch-black days from which he recalls only disconnected snapshots of events. The order of these events has long since been muddled in his mind, even the most vital moments little more than a distorted collection of sensations and emotions too awful to dwell on for very long.
Koushi didn’t dwell on them when he first picked up the blade, and he doesn’t dwell on them in the present, in the quiet stillness of his bedroom, his hands trembling from pure adrenaline and his own blood dark and sticky where it stains his fingers.
Instead, whenever any heartache tries to surface from the murky, churning depths of his subconscious, he angles his blade above an untouched patch of skin on his thigh, takes a deep breath, and slices. A new cut weeps red and sings with pain, but Koushi himself gets to remain unaffected, gets to push down the worst of his emotions without ever having to touch them.
If a year and a half of riding the bench with a smile on his face has taught Koushi anything, it’s that he can shove as many of his own feelings down as he likes if he focuses on everything else but what’s going on inside him. Emotions like the ones he’s experiencing today are strange and unpredictable and downright unnecessary now that the worst of things has passed, but if he can just keep himself busy enough, pay those emotions no mind, then surely they’ll go away on their own.
He isn’t even sure why his brain is dredging the past up now of all times, but he can’t escape the sharp twisting of fear and apprehension that braids its way between his ribs, the vague twinge of nausea buried deep in his gut. The emotions fit his current situation well enough, but every few minutes his mind gets pulled back into a different time, into those horrific few hours where he felt his life was on the line, and he can’t get the emotions from that day to subside. He never knows when to anticipate a reaction like this, not when he never remembers the details of what happened, not anymore. And even without a source, the feelings just won’t go away, swirling around and around in his head until he makes the first cut, and then they fall silent.
It’s fucked up to do this to himself, that much he knows better than to try to deny, but he also can’t deny the effectiveness of it. The cutting works better than the compulsions do – hurting himself relieves tension instead of adding it, doesn’t force him into a never-ending loop of anxiety and intrusive thoughts – so much so that he sometimes cuts to stave off performing his compulsions at all.
And he can hide this new behavior better than he could mask the old ones. He used to fall to pieces whenever his obsessions reared their ugly heads, but now if he can just find a few minutes of guaranteed seclusion, he can regain enough composure to appear normal to everyone else.
All that matters, he thinks as he cleans himself up, is that he looks normal. If he can bandage the wounds, if he can hide them with enough layers of fabric, if he can leave this place and push down and down and down on any thoughts about the reason he did this in the first place until he forgets that reason completely, then he’ll be fine in the end.
So he pulls on his uniform, pulls his warmups on over that, and banishes all thoughts of anything but the pull of his shorts against his new wounds as he makes his way downstairs and out of the house. Inside the solitary confines of his room, he can be vulnerable all he wants, but the moment he steps outside of that space he has to be reliable and dependable and whole.
This is more important today than it is most days, because today the air buzzes with anticipation and his duffel bag hangs heavy against his back and Daichi waits nervous and eager at their usual meet-up spot.
“Am I late?” Koushi asks with a grin, even though he knows he’s not. He checked his alarm and the tournament schedule a dozen times each last night to make sure he got the time right. “Asahi’s not here.”
Daichi’s shoulders hold an almost imperceptible tension in them, and his steps are stiff as they turn together and begin walking towards the school. “He ran ahead. Literally. He couldn’t even keep still for the five minutes it took for you to show up.” Daichi takes a deep breath, the sound of it shaking a little in his lungs. “We’ve got this, right? I mean, our new libero is incredible, and Tanaka is a really reliable spiker, and I think we seem more cohesive this time around.”
“Or maybe you just jinxed it by saying that. Maybe we were going to go all the way and now we’ll never get a chance.”
“Gods, please don’t talk like that.” They draw closer in the cool twilight, Daichi arm bumping against Koushi’s as they make their way past the Sakanoshita Market. “You know the only time I ever pay attention to any kind of superstition is when we’re about to play.”
“We’ll be fine, Dai, you get too worked up about this stuff,” he says, ignoring the tiny part of his brain that mutters something about pots and kettles.
“I don’t want a repeat of last year. I want to make it to at least the second round.” He glances down at Koushi, and Koushi glances up at him, both of them holding eye contact before Daichi breaks away to stare at the sidewalk ahead of them. “Please tell me you’re freaking out too and you’re just not showing it. You look way too calm given the situation.”
“So, you’d rather have me panicking alongside you? Do you want the entire team to break down with you for solidarity’s sake?” Daichi’s mouth flops open and closed for a few seconds, then he frowns when Koushi starts laughing. “Relax, I’m joking. And of course I’m nervous, I could barely sleep last night because of this, but you know I won’t really feel it until the game starts.”
“I’m glad one of us can keep it together.” Something in Koushi’s chest constricts at those words, but he returns the smile Daichi sends him and says nothing.
They stay quiet all the way to the front gates of Karasuno, but just before they pass between them, Koushi notices their silence growing awkward and glances to his side to find Daichi frowning out at nothing. “What’s wrong?” Koushi asks. “Are you catastrophizing about the tournament again?”
“No, it’s not that.” He huffs a breath out of his nose, his expression thoughtful. “It’s nothing, really, it’s not a big deal.”
“It’s something, so tell me.”
Daichi reaches down to take Koushi’s hand, swallowing thickly before speaking again. “We just… haven’t done this in a while. Just spent some time together without anything else going on. I know you’ve been crazy busy and you had a lot to deal with these last few weeks, but it feels like I haven’t really seen you since you moved out of my place. Hell, your birthday was last week and we didn’t do anything to celebrate.”
Koushi left the Sawamuras’ house three weeks ago, going to live with his half-brother’s dads for a more permanent placement, and in the aftermath has indeed isolated far more than he probably should have. “Yeah, I’ve had a lot to do. But we can hang out more after this weekend, if you’d like.” He doesn’t know what else to say, and he always knows what to say in response to Daichi.
“I’d like that. I just sort of miss you, I guess. Are you…?” In the distance, the captain shouts at them from his place at the team van, and Daichi waves before continuing. “Are you doing okay? With the move and adjusting and everything, I mean.”
“It’s been fine. I’m fine.” He leads Daichi towards the rest of the team and pushes down on the guilt that springs from such an obvious lie, just like he pushes down on everything else.
Koushi is not fine.
He is not fine, because Karasuno loses in the second round on a spike a little too far outside, and while everyone around him has no difficulties expressing how they feel about that loss, he can’t get himself to react at all. It’s like somebody twisted the stopcock closed on his bottled emotions, and now he can’t figure out how to unscrew it. He wants to feel something, wants to cry like Asahi or sit with his head in his hands like Daichi or stomp around in rage like Tanaka, but no matter how many times he replays the last few seconds of the match in his head, all he comes up with is numb frustration and an awful sense of detachment from the rest of his team.
The air in the locker room is heavy with sorrow, with dejection, but none of it comes from Koushi. No one dares to make a sound, so he sits against the far wall and glances around him from one face to the next and tries to recall how he reacted to the last hard loss.
It was before his whole life changed, before he had even an inkling of the horrors he’d endure in the upcoming months. He’d cried silent, angry tears with Asahi and Daichi by his side, his hands balling into fists as he’d shoved his things into his bag; his senpais had patted him on the back, offered advice or consolation, but nothing could tame the howling flame of rage and the gnashing teeth of guilt that fought for control inside of him.
Logically, he remembers all of this. He knows, in the way he knows how to read or knows the dates of his friends’ birthdays, how unbearably heartbroken he’d been for days after the loss, but for the life of him he cannot now remember what that felt like. It’s as if he’s thinking back on someone else’s emotions, as if he’s watching through someone else’s eyes as a younger him breaks into pieces. That Koushi, that naïve first year who had little more to worry about than grades and friends and impressing a certain opposite hitter, no longer exists. He met a violent end ages ago, or maybe he just crumbled into dust without resistance. It’s so hard to remember what happened. It’s so hard to remember anything at all.
When he snaps back to the present, the captain is making some final speech, dancing around the fact that this is probably his and the other third years’ last game. The team huddles together, fists thrust towards the inside of the circle and chants so much quieter than they used to be, and then they all wander off to do their own things.
He hears Noya sneaking up on him and turns, plastering the biggest smile on his face he can manage. “What’s up?”
“The Aoba Johsai game is starting in a few minutes,” Noya says, his outward nonchalance betrayed by the puffy redness of his eyes. “Takeda-sensei is letting us stay for it if you wanna come watch with us.” He wiggles his eyebrows. “Daichi will be there.”
Spending time with his teammates when he has this great distance between him and them sounds awful, especially if those teammates involve Daichi, who won’t stop looking at Koushi like he’s a puzzle that needs solving ever since their conversation than morning. “I was going to take a shower.” It’s not a total lie; he can’t stand any sort of uncleanliness for longer than a few hours now, and his own cooling sweat has started to bother him. “Maybe I’ll come out after.”
“Sure thing. We’ll be easy to find, ‘cause we’re gonna spend the whole game heckling that loser Oikawa.” He gives a quick wave, then tackles Tanaka out of the locker room door.
Koushi showers in mechanical motions, like he's stuck on autopilot, but at least he doesn’t have to wash himself exactly three times to avoid dredging up old traumas like he used to. Progress is progress, in his book, even if he doesn’t feel all that much different than he did when he first moved in with the Sawamuras.
Those thoughts of progress, of old behaviors dropped and new habits begun, has his mind wandering to the little pocket in his bag where he keeps his blade. He takes it almost everywhere he goes now, a sick kind of security blanket, bringing it along to school to use during lunch or to practice just to have it by his side, and now he can’t stop circling back to it.
He’s never in a good headspace when this happens, is never thinking clearly, and this time is no exception. Before he can stop himself, he already has the blade out, a stripe of red already painting his thigh.
Here, leaning against the wall of a tiny shower stall and letting the pain of the cuts wash over him, he finally feels something. It isn’t much, isn’t close to what he knows it should be, but for the first time since the loss he embraces what little emotions flood him. Every regret and worry and sorrow has its own slice, burying themselves heavy and hollow in his chest, vibrant and stinging against his skin, bleeding into each another until he can’t make one out from the next. He never quite brings himself to tears, though, never quite restores the unbridled expression he showed just a year ago. He can’t remember the last time he knew how to open the floodgates.
The bathroom door opens, and a handful of what sounds like spectators come in, the noise of their chatter shaking Koushi out of his trance. He wonders how much time he’s spent like this, then fishes his phone out from his bag to confirm that he’s probably been gone long enough to worry his teammates. Not willing to endure the pain of washing his wounds, an irony that is not lost on him, he pats his legs dry with the darkest piece of fabric he has, then dries the rest of himself and pulls on his warmups.
By the time he gets out of the shower, he’s alone in the bathroom again, which is a great relief because he only notices the wide streak of red staining the bottom of his white shirt when he stands in front of the mirror.
Then, in a luck so great it must have dropped on him from the gods themselves, before he can try to scrub the blood away or change shirts or even move at all, the door slams open with such force it bounces off of the wall behind it. Daichi rushes in, lighting up when he sees Koushi and saying words that Koushi only half catches over the roar of panic in his ears.
“—you’re done you should come watch. Dateko is blocking everything, it’s like Seijoh doesn’t even have a chance, and…” Daichi trails off, only now realizing that Koushi is staring at him in absolute horror. His eyes trace a line from Koushi’s face to the mess of his shirt, and the corners of his mouth twitch upward in a nervous smile. “What is this, a murder scene or something?”
Koushi cannot get his mouth to move. He only blinks at Daichi, his hands clasping at the offending part of his shirt as if blocking it from view will make them both forget it’s there.
“Seriously, though, what’s going on?” Daichi takes a step forward, the awkward grin melting off his lips as he begins to comprehend what he’s seeing. “Are you hurt? Do I need to get the first aid kit?”
“No, it’s alright, I can handle it.” Koushi tries to turn away from Daichi, but his whole body has gone stiff and he can’t peel his eyes from the other boy’s face, from his gaze that is equal parts cutting and confused.
Daichi shakes his head, expression growing graver and graver. “I’m not sure you can, because that’s kind of a lot. Of blood, I mean. Did you… will you please tell me what I’m looking at?”
Koushi finally manages to move again, his hands flying to the zipper of his jacket because it seems his mind has subconsciously decided it’s best to hide the evidence even now, when he has nowhere to go. “I swear, Daichi, it’s nothing. I promise it’s nothing.”
Daichi seems to have overcome his initial shock in an alarming amount of time, and he crosses the floor and engulfs Koushi’s hands with his own, trying to wrest his fingers from the jacket. “You’re not getting away with that, not this time.” He finds purchase on the zipper and begins to tug on it, pulling it down to reveal the soiled shirt. “Is it your hands again? With the washing? I know it’s really hard to have to break that habit, but I don’t want you hurting yourself, so if you just—”
“It’s not that. It’s not anything, and I’d appreciate if you just forgot about this.”
He doesn’t give Daichi time to answer. With a quick step backwards and a yank, Koushi breaks free of his hold and zips the jacket up to his chin, then grabs his bag and brushes past Daichi, letting the door slam behind him.
For reasons he can’t fully explain, Koushi’s mind keeps telling him to run.
He weaves through the clumps of players and coaches and parents that crowd the auditorium’s foyer, clenching the strap of his bag in one hand and nervously straightening the bottom of his jacket with the other, ignoring the handful of odd stares that get thrown his way. If he can get out of sight, get somewhere he can blend in and disappear, maybe he can steer clear of Daichi or any of his other teammates until it’s time to leave. Hopefully that’ll be enough time for everything to blow over.
Running only makes things worse, he knows, only makes him look more suspicious. But if he’s going to remedy this situation, he needs an excuse, and even after several minutes of sitting in the audience of the Aoba Johsai game and doing nothing but trying to think of one, he comes up blank.
Before he can come up for any coherent explanation for his actions, the game ends and people file out around him, discussing the results of a match he looked at but didn’t even really watch. He doesn’t even know who won, can’t make sense of the jumbled cacophony of conversation around him as he follows the other spectators towards the exit. All he knows is that he has to get back to the rest of the team so he doesn’t cause another scene by making them wait.
Takeda stands in the doorway to their locker room, doing his best cat herder impression as he tries to double check that they have all their belongings while simultaneously keeping Tanaka from starting fights in the hallways with passing members of other teams and Noya from jumping on Asahi’s back. He gives only a brief nod as Koushi enters.
“Sugawara, make sure you take that bag out to the van to get it loaded up,” he says, returning to packing his own satchel. “Oh, and Daichi wants to talk to you about something.”
One of the few advantages of having a faculty advisor as the only adult supervising their team is that they can get away with quite a bit. Koushi rarely abuses this, except to occasionally peck Daichi’s cheek in public for the sole purpose of embarrassing the underclassmen, but now he finds his sensei’s frazzled state something of a blessing. With his simple inability to take on more than a few tasks at a time, his failure to question what Daichi wants or why Koushi looks so distraught, Takeda may have saved Koushi’s skin.
It is not as easy to avoid Daichi, who stands just inside the door and follows Koushi’s every move with a quick, concerned sweep of his eyes. Koushi manages, though, performing three inspections of his spot in the locker room before hauling his bag up higher on his shoulder and marching out to the van without so much as glancing back.
The two of them don’t say a word to each other on the ride back, and Koushi even goes so far as to take a seat next to Narita so Daichi can’t try to sit beside him. Instead, he spends the whole ride fiddling with his jacket hem, making sure it covers up the bloodstains, and does his best not to think about how long he has until he can’t run from Daichi anymore, even though he can’t stop the possibilities from spinning themselves in his head. Usually, to combat raging thoughts like these, he cuts, but he’s never cut himself twice in one day before. Doing so feels like a dangerous step, one he doesn’t yet want to take.
In the end, his peace lasts as long as the ride home does. As they begin hopping off the van, Koushi spots Daichi speaking with Takeda, who’d been too busy driving to discuss anything serious, and he watches long enough to see Takeda’s eyes go wide and his head swivel in Koushi’s direction.
Koushi grabs his things from the pile that someone dumped on the ground and walks away, not even pointing himself in the direction of his house so much as just going towards the fastest exit.
He isn’t fast enough, though, because Takeda lands a gentle hand on his wrist, and he doesn’t have the heart to shrug it off. “Sugawara,” he says, pulling a little to twist Koushi towards him. Koushi obliges, but stares off into the middle distance instead of looking the man in the face. “Do you have something you need to tell me?”
“No.” His response comes too quick, too loud, and with the sound of it a few of his teammates glance in his direction, falling silent as they look on in confusion. “I don’t. There’s no problem.”
“Okay, let me try again.” He sighs, adjusting his glasses, and grips Koushi’s wrist tighter. “Daichi told me that you have something going on, something we have to address. I think it will make things a little less scary if you just go ahead and tell me, so I don’t jump to conclusions and get something wrong.”
“It’s nothing. He’s exaggerating, probably.” Koushi clamps his lips shut, wills himself to keep silent, but as Takeda searches every inch of his expression for answers, he finds words tumbling out of his mouth unbidden. “There’s nothing on my shirt. There’s nothing going on.”
“Nobody said anything about your shirt. Is there a reason you’d bring that up if there’s nothing on it?”
The emotion that hits him is one he cannot fully describe, some horrid mixture of guilt and fear and self-loathing at his own stupidity. All he knows is that it feels like someone just punched him in the chest.
“Please, Sugawara, I want to help.” Takeda tilts his head to one side, a tenuous smile contorting his face. “I know it’s hard to talk about this, but we have to address it. I can’t just let you go home. So please, just tell me what happened so things don’t get worse.”
Despite Takeda’s best intentions, his unwavering gaze and vicelike hold on Koushi’s arm have already made things worse. The longer this goes on, the more his teammates turn to gawk at him, and the more he feels trapped beneath their curious stares, backed into a corner and surrounded by a dozen people watching and waiting for the moment something happens. The moment he snaps. Any lingering desire to just come clean about the whole problem disappears, replaced with smoldering indignation. Why would Takeda force him to reveal his greatest secret in front of everyone, force him to reveal it at all? Why did Daichi take this issue up with him in the first place?
“There’s nothing, sensei, really. I promise, it’s nothing.” He shuffles backwards, but the man doesn’t let go, digging his fingers into the fabric of Koushi’s jacket.
A jolt of panic, careening through his entire body like a lightning strike, washes over him, even though Takeda poses no threat to him. It’s the unrelenting grasp he has on Koushi that makes him intimidating, that makes Koushi’s skin crawl and his thoughts spiral. He can’t get away, he realizes, not without humiliating himself by tearing the man’s arm away from him, and with each passing second that escape is denied to him, his mind devolves further and further until the only solution he can come up with is to run.
So he runs.
He wrests his sleeve from Takeda’s hand and bolts, feet pounding across the school parking lot and over the sidewalks in town and up to his front door, where he tears through his house and locks himself in his room before anyone can speak to him. The rest of the night, he shakes so badly he can’t even hold his blade steady, so he curls up in bed and ignores his guardians knocking on his bedroom door and digs his fingernails into his arms because it’s the only thing that keeps him from breaking all the way down.