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Kageyama Tobio Joins IVL's Ali Roma
One simple headline in his Volleyball Today daily email blast leads Tooru down a deep, dark, and familiar rabbit hole. Of course, Tobio-chan would somehow work his way up to the best men's professional league in the world in just a few short years. He'd always had that potential.
Potential. Of course.
The word stings in his chest, squeezing and pulsing around his fluttering heart. His throat goes equally tight. Potential is something that means you have a base level of talent — one that wasn't achieved through hours of drilling every position on the court in an attempt to make yourself useful. He was reminded of his lack of it, when he was quietly benched for anxiety-riddled mistakes or shuffled off the court to make way for the ones who prospered and marched on to nationals. It's disgusting, really, the way things are so unfair for Tooru. How he has to lie and pretend and slave and cry over something that pushes someone of the same skillset ahead, starting by a hair and graduating to miles.
Following the path to the Schweiden Adlers' game highlight reels section of their website, in deep-rooted but now growing farsighted script, is now second nature. His brain buzzes with want. Stop. This isn't good for you. It's easy to ignore, to give in to the desire to know just how far ahead Kageyama is, whispering the all too familiar mantra: he just needs to know, and then he'll move on with his life, like he always does.
Tooru also needs to stop being surprised when the highlight reel shows what it said it would, made worse by the fact that it always contains not just Kageyama, but Ushiwaka as well. His gut roils. Genetics aren't too far off from potential. Some people are dealt tall decks, with height and strength and levelheadedness built-in. Advantages that he would never have realized if not for the hours he'd spent in the gym, repeating and retrying until his palms were red and fingers cramped. Praying for just a few more centimeters to make him worthy wasn't something he could practice, but neither was left-handedness or a grandfather who played. Time, time, time, is his only answer to the innate. Ushiwaka slams the ball down so hard that it bounces off the opposing team's side of the court and into the stands. Time stops. He lifts a hand to apologize, but without shame.
Kageyama throws the other team out of system with a dump. They only get two touches on the ball before they hit out. Audacious, even years into his career. Tooru would have thought of that. Would he have? Probably. Maybe. No, he wouldn't have. It hurts.
He rolls to his right side, tugging the blankets up to his chin. It's warmer out, the first dregs of summer blowing in while Iwa-chan gets snow in New York. Upstate, he reminded Tooru for the thousandth time, it's a lot cooler than in the city.
New York is colder than Buenos Aires, and colder than Tokyo, and definitely colder than Rome. Kageyama's contract with Ali Roma is in currency he can't translate in his head, so he types the euros into pesos and pesos into yen. The number makes his stomach turn. He's sure there's potential for more.
Why? Why are they in the same position but so different? Kageyama doesn't overthink. He probably doesn't even watch Tooru's highlight reels like Tooru does his. It's obsessive. It's compulsive. His therapist told him to stop indulging the former with the latter, but times like these make it impossible to resist. Success is easy to measure with gold medal blinders on, but quick to give way to a hefty paycheck. Volleyball isn't a sport that makes men rich, unless you're in Italy and Poland. Which…
Iwa-chan (¬`‸´¬) is calling.
It's an unwelcome jolt to the brain. Part of him wants to decline — to lie and say he's too tired. The clock reads past midnight. He is tired, but his brain is wide awake and running in circles until it digs a path into the soil. Iwa-chan probably wants to say goodnight. He could pretend he's already gone to sleep. But then Hajime could think something was wrong. The thought of the tension seeping into his personal life is unbearable. The phone is just about to send his boyfriend to voicemail when he taps the green accept button.
"Hi, Iwa-chan!" He coos, putting a smile on his face even though it's a voice call. Maybe it'll cut through the fog and irritation of having a ritual interrupted.
"Hey, sorry I'm calling so late." Hajime's voice is warm and comforting on the other end, even if a little tinny because he's wearing his wireless earbuds. He's probably multitasking. So is Tooru. "We went really late tonight, and everyone decided now's the time to fall apart."
"That can't be good," Tooru replies with an amused huff, exiting the call screen to look at Ali Roma's stats. The current setter will definitely be benched.
"I'm glad you're still up."
He smiles, for real this time. "We can't break our one thousand-day goodnight streak, can we?"
"Sounds like you're asking me to hang up."
Tooru pauses a little too long. "Noooooo."
There's a heaviness that somehow transcends 8,500 kilometers and change. Hajime pauses too.
"What're you up to?"
There's also a guilt that comes with not fessing up to indulging in old, past, harmful behaviors that force him into this distracted state. It acknowledges the discomfort of existing somewhere between the lines, not here but not there. He's only inhabiting his brain behind heavy eyes. He can't tell Hajime that he's spent the last hour toiling over Kageyama, and now Ushijima. The battle wages on in his head; to disclose or not to disclose, that is the question that plagues him. Either way, the shame will persist.
"Oh, you know," Tooru spits out finally, after sorting through all the scenarios in his head. Those include Hajime yelling at him — which he has never done seriously, but now's a good a time as any to start when he's being a terrible boyfriend — breaking up with him, or not responding at all. Worst, he could continue to build the quiet resentment Tooru is sure he holds for him being too far, too neurotic, too obsessed with people he only has to face once every four years. He holds it against himself, too. "Just lying in bed!"
Tooru carefully balances reading Ushijima's statistics with Orzeł Warszawa while hearing about the mundane things of Hajime's life. On a normal night, they'd be comforting. Now, they're a soft lull of noise on speakerphone. Ushiwaka is now hitting at 130 kilometers per hour.
"Tooru."
He blinks at his screen, quickly reverting back to the call page. "Hm?"
"I asked how your day was. What are you doing?"
That internal fight from moments ago is thrust into the ring, and he's backed into a corner. Tears prick at his eyes.
Iwa-chan (¬`‸´¬) is video calling.
This time, he knows he needs to see the way Hajime's brows are likely knitted together with concern, not with anger or frustration. His boyfriend's face takes up the whole screen. Hajime never did figure out his camera angles after all this time.
"Hey," he says, voice going soft, and sometimes Tooru hates it so much he wants to throw his phone at the wall and rip out his hair and scream and kick and be done. The other part wants to feel the warmth of Hajime's arms wrapped around him and holding him together. "You look upset. What's wrong?"
The words are flowing before he can stop, "Tobio-chan is going to go play in Italy, he's going to make over 15,000,000 yen, and Ushiwaka is hitting at almost world record speed in Poland. Isn't that amazing?"
Hajime lets his disappointment show on his face for a fraction of a second, but it's long enough for Tooru to notice and feel his body shrink into guilt once more.
Tooru's diagnosis was never a surprise to Hajime. He'd been the one dragging him out of the Kitagawa Daichii gym, socking him in the back of the head when he leered at Kageyama, and calling him just to make sure he was asleep (usually waking him up in the process, but Tooru couldn't mind when there were butterflies in his stomach because Hajime was thinking of him late at night).
Hajime swallows, then says, "It is."
The agreement feels like a slap to the face. Tooru wants pushback. He wants, no, you're better than both of them combined. Nobody will beat you. You have a gold medal to prove it.
Please, please tell me I'm good enough.
But Hajime is accustomed to this. He knows to push back when it's right — when Tooru needs to face the anxiety head-on to make it less horrifying in the long run. It's hellish to hear the opposite of what he thinks he needs.
"So what about it? Is that why you're not paying attention to me?"
Another punch, a distinct right hook. It's easy to get lost in the churning, unkempt tides of his mind when what matters most is on his screen.
He continues, just the way Tooru's therapist instructed him, "Who cares if Kageyama-kun is making more money than you do? And you're not a hitter. Ushijima-san's hitting speed doesn't matter."
"But it does matter," Tooru grits his teeth and balks back, "because if he's hitting 130 kilometers an hour, our defense is going to suck, and then we're going to lose."
"Sounds like you can't control literally any of those things," he says back, calm and even, green eyes zeroed in on Tooru's brown.
"Our libero will die. I can't lose to him again." He feels mulish now.
Hajime has a loaded arsenal. "Then I guess we'll see him in heaven if you lose."
"Iwa-chan," he murmurs, sad frustration seeping into the unvoiced plea. Hajime sucks in a breath.
"I know, Tooru."
"I just…I hate this." His free fist is curled, and his short nails dig into his palm. The slight pain is grounding.
"Good thing you know everything you do to make it easier on yourself." Hajime smiles a little.
Tooru protests, "It's not getting any easier."
"It's not," he agrees, "but you're getting better every time we do this."
"I know." A little pang of hope. "It's always the same bullshit."
"It is." Hajime settles into his bed. The clock is approaching one in the morning for Tooru, eleven for Hajime. "But you've been dealing with this particular kind of brain bullshit for a long, long time."
He watches Hajime through his screen, lying on his back with his head propped up by a single pillow. Tooru sinks into his two, curled on his side with his knees hugged close. He closes his eyes for a moment and wishes he could bury his face in Hajime's neck. It's grounding, like it always is. The anxiety begins its slow, downward climb.
He will truly never know why Kageyama's and Ushijima's successes always end up bothering him in the way they do; contentedness is out of his reach. His therapist once told him that OCD clings on to small tethers of anxiety and snowballs them until it feels like the end of the world is at his fingertips. It's his choice to press the button anyway, even if Hajime has to grab his wrist and help push.
"How are you feeling now?" He asks.
Tooru sucks in a breath and keeps his eyes shut. "Better. Tired."
He's met with a hum. "I know it takes a lot out of you when you compulse like this."
"I'm sorry that I wasn't listening earlier," he says, even if it's unnecessary, and Hajime already knows just how sorry he truly is.
"I'm just going to tell you again, but this time, you have to put your phone down and go to sleep, and you're gonna like it."
Even after everything, Hajime still draws a laugh out of Tooru. "Iwa-chan's boring days always put me to sleep."
Hajime's laughing too, lips pulled tight like a hyena. "Yeah, yeah. You gotta hear about what this kid did to his hamstring."
"Mm, okay. Then goodnight, Iwa-chan. I love you."
"I love you too." Hajime turns onto his left side, like he's facing Tooru, and begins his story. "Anyway, so this kid…"
And distantly, "Goodnight, Tooru. I love you."
I love you too.