#hbd jay

Lately, there has been this pent-up frustration within him. He sees everyone improving and that's great, he loves to see that. But he feels like he doesn't move on at all. Everyone does except for him. Or at least even if he improved, he is unable to show it. Unable to show his worth and his place right there on court. He wants to be a reason for Karasuno to be seen as a better team. And he wants to push himself more and more, he knows he can and he knows that he puts all of his effort into becoming stronger – but somehow he gets the feeling that it doesn't pay off. It bothers him, greatly.

He feels like he starts looking at the others from afar, like he is there with them but as a spectator rather than as a player. He sees their improvements, their newly achieved but also their old and recently refined skills, he feels the team growing together and he does feel like a part of them but like one who is expendable. Exchangeable. He wants to be essential to them. But he isn't, he realizes when he is sent off the court whenever Kageyama is exchanged. It bothers him so so incredibly much.

He knows he shouldn't take it personally, and his mind is still reasonable enough to tell him that it's a simple truth that, right now, his skills aren't good enough to stand on court alone. That he works better with Kageyama than with anyone else and that, on the other side, the others work better with Suga than he does. He knows he is important to the team, he knows that all of this has a very legit and valid reason.

He knows all of that, he is aware of it but even if his mind tells him that, his stomach still prickles and his heart pounds as he thinks about it as if there is something, deep deep at the back of his mind nagging him that there is no way they need him to win. They can do without him. What is he anyway, a decoy yeah, but a team can do without one. There are so many teams without a set decoy. He sucks at serving, he sucks at receiving, his blocks aren't particularly good even though he tries really really hard. All he has left are his reflexes which are good, he admits, but not through training they just are, and his spikes. But they are by far not as good as Tanaka's or Asahi's. They can't crash through blocker walls. There is the thing that he never actually aims to meet blockers, and that Kageyama helps him with that because he can see how they move but that doesn't qualify him if he still has so many deficits. It bothers him. He doesn't want to think like that because he knows it's not true. He knows but that something in the back of his mind still tries to confuse him.

Sometimes it feels like it wants to destroy him.

He can ignore it most of the time, his will and his passion are stronger than the poison in his mind but then there are times when he can't and luckily enough, he is mostly alone when that happens. He lets his mind run wild and he starts crying and yelling and he goes for a run then, to shake it all off and by the time he comes home, it is dark and he is tired and in the morning it is all fine again and he feels as fired up as ever.

One day though – a damned day, it already started with one tyre of his bike flat and 20 minutes late at school, plus a quiz he most likely failed – at lunch time, he isn't alone at all and he can feel it bursting up again but he tries to tame it. He needs to.

He is in the gym, Kageyama with him training his serves and Hinata tries to receive. But his mind is off, it tries to suppress the bad, bad feeling he feels coming and he fails to receive even a single one of Kageyama's serves. Of course. It's just an excuse, it floats through his mind, that he is distracted. He simply is that inept at receiving. After months of training, this is the result. Nothing. Still as bad as before. He bites his lower lip in frustration until he tastes iron on his tongue. It bothers him, it breaks him.

He hears footsteps approaching and he curses fate that it is Kageyama he is with. Because he knows what is coming. He can feel the comments raining upon him how badly he sucks and what he's been doing all this time and why he's such a clumsy shit bastard. He doesn't want to hear any of those. He doesn't need that right now. He already knows he is useless.

He hopes Kageyama just glares at him and tells him to keep on receiving but he guessed right before.

“What's your problem today, huh? Your receives are shittier than usual.”

He likes it, usually, to be provoked like this. It makes him want to show off that he can do better. It's why working with Kageyama has become a blessing to him. The more obnoxious the other was, the better. But not today when everything - every bird, every breeze, every sound, every breath - bothered him.

“Nothing,” he hisses and turns his head away angrily. He wants to stop. He wants to leave. He wants to be alone but Kageyama won't let him. He usually appreciates the gesture but not today, still.

“My ass. You didn't receive a single one of my serves. You weren't even this shitty at the very beginning.”

“Get off my back if you know there's something wrong, yeah?”

Please just say okay. It keeps whirling in Hinata's mind. Please just let Kageyama say it's fine, that he's fed up training with him for today and that he should go and look at what he's done. That he should go and run around the school for 20 laps until he pukes the entire breakfast and lunch he's had.

“So you have a problem. What is it?”

Rather than thinking of it as an act of consideration, though clumsily formulated but it's Kageyama after all, Hinata feels endangered. Like an animal poked with a stick even though it clearly isn't up for jokes like that.

It doesn't try to destroy him, he notices. It tries to destroy everyone else first.

“You're the problem.”

“What.”

“You heard me. You're the problem. Your serves are. How the hell am I supposed to receive them?”

Kageyama glares at him but the confusion is visible in his eyes and his voice sounds cold as he speaks.

“So, what, you expect me to serve softer for you? You do know that there are others who have harder serves than I do.”

And then Hinata remembers how the story ended. The beast went out for a hunt, with frustration and anger boiling within it, wanting to show that it's been wrong to underestimate it. It found a prey and but it was weaker and got beaten up by it. The other beasts, despite mocking it usually, came to its aid and told it to step back or it will get killed. But the beast felt bothered. Why wouldn't they let it be? Why did they have to prove that they are better all the time? So it ended up rampaging, and it killed the prey itself and the other beasts too. It hurt them and killed them and by the time the beast realized what it has done, that the others were just trying to help and to warn it, it was all too late. It returned to the den and it was punished by being leashed into heavy, heavy chains to remind it of its sins.

He remembers because the beast is rampaging now.

“You mean like the Grand King's serves, right? You are right, they are on a totally different level than yours. That's why you were just the King, I guess.”

His own voice sounds alien to Hinata. Kageyama hasn't done anything wrong. Sure, his words were harsh but they always were. And it was good. If this would have been a normal day for Hinata, he would have laughed into Kageyama's face and told him to serve more. But this day is forsaken.

“Hinata, what the hell is your problem?”

Kageyama spits those words and he takes one step closer to Hinata, trying to be menacing. Except this is what Hinata wants. He wants it but he doesn't. Not really. He doesn't want to hurt Kageyama. He isn't at fault. But he knows Kageyama's weaknesses, unfortunately far too well.

“I told you, you are. I only ever get to play when you are there too. Like I am just an addition to you. Buy one, get one free, you know, that type of thing? You are so great, you are so good at everything, congratulations, really.”

He is, that Kageyama. He is really good. In Hinata's eyes, he is definitely the best player at the same age as him. There is no one who is better than Kageyama. He is incredible. He doesn't want to keep on talking like this because there is no reason to. He doesn't even believe all of the things he accuses Kageyama of. Hinata has never seen him as a problem; Kageyama has always, always been the solution.

But he physically can't stop and it hurts him as if he fights against the heavy, heavy chains, trying to spit the last venom at someone who has nothing to do with his agony.

“I hope you feel good now that you have someone who belongs to you. Because it's always the two of us, right? You and me, me and you, and all that crap. It's not like you're alone anymore like before, yeah? Good for you.”

“Hinata stop.”

He looks at Kageyama with absolutely no expression but he can't see his face. His eyes are cast down, his head lowered. His hands are clenched into fists, his knuckles already white from how tightly.

He wants to stop. He can tell Kageyama is hurt. He really, really wants to stop. Because it hurts him too. It's true that Kageyama and him are a set but he doesn't mind it. Not anymore. Because Kageyama does his best, he really really does, to support Hinata's way of playing. They aren't the same set as before where Hinata needed Kageyama's toss to score. They are a new one in which their individual strengths are combined. And that's the reason why they are always on court together. Because Kageyama can pull everything out of him, everything he has. No one else can.

“Yeah, I mean it's cool for you because you don't get sent off the court when I'm not there. You can keep on standing there. But when you leave, I have to leave too. I told you, like I'm just your add-on. You can do just fine without me but I'm nothing without you. It's the same as it was at the very beginning. So what if your tosses are different now? So what if I'm spiking willingly and I know what I'm doing? I'm still dependant on you. Nothing changed. That fucking sucks.”

The last word comes out of the back of his throat so hard that it keeps ringing in there for minutes after, crawling and itching and he wonders at what point Kageyama will violently shut him up. Just take him and throw him, just punch him. He'd welcome it, right now that's all he wants. So that he can just leave him be.

But he doesn't.

“Just stop it already! I don't understand what the hell your problem is! So what if you're my fucking add-on! At least you get to stand on court there and experience entire games! Do you expect to just waltz in and be great? Do you expect training to pay off in some months!? Do you even understand how far you've come for 'just a few months' of training? Because if you don't, then shut the fuck up instead of acting up like this!”

Hinata feels a mild discomfort about the lack of grabbing and the lack of a scary and angry face on Kageyama. Simply because he can't see it at all. He doesn't look up. But he continues yelling. Oddly soothing to Hinata's heart, somehow, as if the chains restricting him are not that much of a bad idea.

“I have been working my ass off for years to be 'great' or whatever the hell you called me! It's not like I've been born like this! It took me three years to learn how to serve like that! Three! And even now I'm still working on it because I know it's still way off! Because I know I still have ways to go until it is perfect and until I can be proud of myself! You've just started playing volleyball recently! But you're still as you are now, you can't expect to excel at everything right away!”

This pitch of Kageyama's voice, he has never heard it before. It is anger, but not the type of anger Hinata expected. He seems angrier about the things Hinata said about himself than the ones he said about him. Yeah, right. Kageyama is that conscious about faults that aren't even faults in the first place. Ways to go for his serve? It's just a bit of polishing and working on the precision. It's already really good. Kageyama lacks to be proud of what he does – he rather says it's not enough than say it's good for now. It's admirable but at times, Hinata feels like he pressures himself too much because of that. He breathes out and opens his mouth but Kageyama is faster.

“And you know what,” he says and he lifts his head now, his nose wrinkled, his eyebrows furrowed, he looks a little like he's about to cry but not quite there, yet his eyes still emit a strength that Hinata loves seeing, “you are right. It's good for me that I'm not alone anymore. I have someone who understands me even if that someone is a fucking dimwit and a moron and being called a set made me angry because I thought you were just a clumsy shit bastard and that you would drag me down but then I remembered how fierce you were during our match in middle school and I wanted to see that again and... I knew you could do it even without my help but I wanted you to rely on me because... no one ever did that and--- shit.”

Kageyama interrupts himself because now he is there, he started crying somewhere between his words and even though he desperately tries to rub the tears off his face, they keep on falling. He stands there - the person Hinata has always wanted to stand on one level with, the person who was the most important one to surpass yet also the most important to succeed with – and sobs involuntarily.

Hinata opens his mouth yet again but it's dry and his throat hurts and he wouldn't know what to say anyway. He expected Kageyama to be angry, to be furious, he was ready for a fist fight even but for Kageyama to cry – and not out of anger or out of pain caused by Hinata's words – but by the simple fact that Hinata fails to understand his importance. As if he is frustrated that his partner can't seem to see.

Originally, Hinata thought this would end like the little beast's story. That he would wreck Kageyama and look at the ruins of his actions. That he'd hurt Kageyama, permanently, and drive him away. But it's just a story, after all, and Hinata knows that stories aren't as real as that.

His legs move on their own accord and he tugs at Kageyama's shirt with caution, holding onto its hem. He doesn't know if he can explain what happened, he doesn't know how to word his apology so that he can make Kageyama understand. But then it dawns on him that maybe he doesn't have to. Because this is Kageyama and he is dense but he will understand either way, well or not so well worded.

“I... I don't mind. Not.. really, I'm just... I guess I am frustrated that things aren't working out for me as well as I thought. I keep thinking that I am not good enough to stand there on court even though everyone tells me that that's not true. But it's because I'm new to this and because I haven't played for as long as most of you that it makes me feel like I fall behind, like I'm not quite there, with all of you. Sometimes I look at each and every single one and I am amazed that I have teammates who are so amazing that it makes me feel like I am not---” “That's bullshit and you know it,” Kageyama says and his voice is strong even though it's still trembling, “If you weren't good enough, you wouldn't be playing. Who of us do you think surprises the opponents the most? Who do you think amazes everyone the most?”

Hinata keeps quiet and looks at the floor, squeezing the fabric of Kageyama's shirt between his fingers. It's like this again. If Hinata is the beast, then Kageyama isn't one of the other beasts, he thinks. He is the chains. Restrictive but safe, keeping him sane.

“Just because you don't see your results doesn't mean you haven't achieved anything. Months ago you would have never been able to play like you do now. You still have to improve, you're still suck so bad sometimes that it hurts me to see you play and I want to grab you by the collar and ask you if you are serious but... You know how to use your height and your velocity to your advantage, you know how to spike even if blockers are right there, you know how to trick them by using a feint. And...”

Hinata looks up and his eyes meet Kageyama's. They are still teary and red but they radiate power which he reflects onto his words and Hinata feels a little mesmerized as Kageyama continues speaking.

“You still have me. Even if you dislike it that you are bound to me, you are not the only one. I work best with you. I wish I could work as well as I work with you with the entire team but I can't. So even if you have to get off the court when I'm not there, for me it feels like I lose a considerable amount of strength when you are not there either because I am a setter and I depend on those around me to score. I do work on getting along with everyone else too and I hope it will work fast but as for now, you are my strongest weapon and when you are not there... you are not the only one who is dependant. Because we are---”

“Because we are a set,” Hinata says and nods slowly. “I know. I know that. I'm sorry. For saying all those things before. I'm really sorry. I know they aren't true.”

“Well you better be,” Kageyama says and sniffs angrily, looking away with ears covered in red.

Hinata can't help but smile when he leans his forehead against Kageyama's shoulder and exhales deeply.

He is glad it didn't end like in the story. He is glad, after all, that it was Kageyama he was with. He wonders if Kageyama knows, if he realizes that sometimes Hinata just goes past a limit and it's like a beast breaking free. Because it feels like Kageyama knows how to handle this. Or perhaps it is just his natural boldness. Either way, Hinata thinks as he lets go of Kageyama's shirt watching it being all wrinkled, Kageyama always saves him.