Archive of Our Own ^beta

“Hey.”

Izuki’s voice is quiet, but it carries in the damp stillness of the night, and Hyūga almost flinches at everything he doesn’t say. At what’s clearly hanging in the air, all the hatred and rage and blame. At what he is undoubtedly thinking: It was your fault, you were a shitty captain, and look at where we are now. 

Izuki sits down on the ledge next to him, and Hyūga shifts a little to give him space. Izuki settles in, making himself comfortable. They don’t speak for a few more minutes, and the silence is heavy and uneasy, just waiting to be broken. 

Nothing has ever been this tense between them before. Something in Hyūga aches, the way a bruise aches before it really shows up on your skin - a sort of foreboding pain, a warning to step away before you hurt yourself too badly.

“Hey,” Izuki says again, shattering the quiet into a million little fragments, and somehow this is worse because an answer is expected. 

Hyūga swallows dryly and waits a touch too long before he says, “Hi.”

“You know…” And now Izuki’s voice has taken on that particular inflection, the one that Hyūga hates most of all. The one that goes all gentle and patronizing, about to tell him it wasn’t his fault when they both know it almost certainly was. “We’re gonna need to talk about… this.”

“This?” He doesn’t intend the bite in his voice when he says it, but it comes out anyway, hot and heavy. “You can’t possibly mean the fact that I’ve quit basketball. That totally isn’t the reason you’ve been hounding me these past weeks, right?”

“That was uncalled for,” Izuki says evenly, “but I get why you’re upset. I was, too. Still am, if I’m being honest - it’s not like it was nice to lose.”

“Upset?” Hyūga can’t help scoffing. How ridiculous. He isn’t upset, like a kid throwing a tantrum. In fact, it’s just the opposite. Basketball is for people like the Miracles, not for him, and he’s just accepting the truth. He’s growing up, if anything. “I was mad then, but I just… don’t have any shits left to give. This is all so stupid. Why do you still care?”

“I don’t want my wings to be clipped before I can fly.” Izuki shrugs as if he hadn’t spouted a shitty line that could’ve been cut from one of his mother’s beloved drama shows. “There are always going to be people better than me. I just… I want to keep fighting. I want to win someday.”

“And what if you don’t?” Hyūga snaps, meaning the acridity in his voice now. Izuki laughs.

“Well, whatever happens will happen, right? I’m okay with that. You aren’t. That’s fine, but don’t you think you should process it a little?”

“Process what?” He inhales a clear lungful of the crisp night wind. It’s laden with the taste of summer ending, burning gold crumbling into the brilliant and biting russet of autumn. “It’s just a game.”

“A game you loved.” Izuki’s voice is the same calm tenor as always, without the slightest hint of distress or wheedling. But all Hyūga will have to do is look into those eyes, so expressive when you know how to read them, in order to see that world of worry and pain.

He elects to look away instead, and echoes, “A game I loved.”

It’s only been about four months since he quit, but a hundred years have passed since his ears welcomed the sound of a ball thumping against the court. A thousand years, even. There could be stars younger than his lost love for basketball. He is sixteen and sixteen million all at once - worn and battered and painfully trusting that there will be a path he can follow even on a moonless night.

Izuki hums, irritatingly understanding, and lifts his head back up towards the sky. Hyūga doesn’t want to wonder about it, but he cannot help asking silently: What distant star are those depthless dark eyes fixed upon now? What unreachable coldness are you trying to pierce with that unflinching warmth?

Being around Izuki used to be as easy as breathing. Now Hyūga opens his mouth to suck in air and finds an invisible mesh over his throat. The wind will not come and neither will any words, all trapped in his screaming heart where they’ll stay if his conscious mind has any say in it. He doesn’t want this; he never has. This is the best choice he can make for himself, now and forever. So if losing basketball means losing Izuki—

Well. He’s lost him already, anyway.

“What about you?” No one could adore something as ridiculously and blindly as Izuki does basketball, but Hyūga asks anyway because there's nothing else to ask without falling into that awful silence all over again. 

“What about me?”

“Why did you—” His voice snaps halfway through, careening upward like a broken rollercoaster, and it comes out: Why did you? Well, Hyūga supposes that isn't too far off the mark.  

“Why did I… what, keep at it?” Izuki’s turned to look at him, head cocked questioningly, but Hyūga doesn't nod in answer. He doesn’t need to. They both knew what he meant from the moment he opened his mouth. “Er. Well. I can’t - really say? There’s a lot of reasons, y’know.”

“Elaborate,” Hyūga says dryly, leaving no room to argue. Classic evasion tactics are uncharacteristic of his best friend, but it’s fair enough when you consider the nature of the question - Why did(n’t) you stay (even though you did)? - loaded as it is from every possible direction, with every kind of ammunition in existence. 

Izuki exhales and lowers his gaze, dropping from the stars down to the lonely mud beneath his battered sneakers. His eyes are like little meteors, filled with all the light in the world and burning themselves out; failing and falling clean out of orbit, a piece of heaven breaking upon earth. 

“I really hate it when you forget,” he confesses, and Hyūga knows it’s directed to him but he still can’t be sure who Izuki’s talking to, “that I followed you here. That’s not keeping at it. That’s keeping at you.”

These words are not ones that ask for a response. They carry questions that don’t want to be answered. Because Hyūga is an obstinate, bullheaded fool, he opens his mouth anyway.

“Kiyoshi,” he says, and it thumps flatly against the air, wet and slimy like a freshly-caught fish. “You - with him—”  

“A stroke of luck,” Izuki interrupts, quiet and cutting as he’s never been before. “It was never definite. I gave up basketball when I applied here, same as you.”

I gave up basketball because I applied here just for you goes unsaid. Hyūga wants to say it. He thinks better of it, and they lapse into a tense silence once more. 

“He offered me something I thought I’d turned my back on forever,” Izuki says eventually, warm voice trembling in the chill air. “I thought I’d made a binding choice. But Kiyoshi laid it out for me to choose, and it’s not like you’re exactly… big on me right now, so there wasn’t much to think about. I just did it.”

“Not big on you? What’s that supposed to mean?” Fear and confusion churn in Hyūga’s gut, acids mixing with bases, the world turning upside down. He’s been walking along all this while seeing it the right way up, but his vision is swirling now, and nothing’s where it’s supposed to be. Not like you’re big on me right now. What even—? 

Izuki laughs, airy soft and sweet, and that’s where the hidden bite peeks out because his laughter is never sweet - it bursts out of him like he’s a popped balloon losing air at three litres a minute. Not like this, restrained and trying his best to stay composed. 

When did those iron walls rise up in front of Hyūga?

“Forget it.” He smiles, eyes crinkling with the wideness of it, and it would be simple to believe it was real if you hadn’t known him for fourteen years and known that when he really meant to smile it was small and soft and lit his face up like a sunrise over the sea. “Let’s just say blond isn’t my colour and leave it at that.”

Blond isn’t my colour. 

Well. You wouldn’t have had to know him at all to feel the acid dripping off that phrase. Hyūga should push, should ask if he’s okay: Should, should, should. But he’s so tired of should. Is it so wrong to care about himself, just for once? Is it so wrong that the way Izuki said blond is ringing in his ears now, overlaid with every word that went unspoken? I stayed, so why didn't you? Why did you leave me in the dust? Why didn’t you care when I followed you? Why weren’t you strong enough?

“Ass,” he mutters, barely audible. Izuki frowns.

“Come again?” Hyūga knows he heard him, and shakes his head anyway.

“Whatever.”The anger is rising now, slow and steady. He used to be able to control it - to use it on the court, drive the team with steel tempered in the fire of his rage. Now it scorches his insides and turns him into a helpless pile of ashes. It falls out from his unwitting tongue and razes everything before him in a fifty-mile radius.

Izuki, he wishes, suddenly and madly, run away from me already.

Why are you still here? Why are you still standing over the remnants of me and driving your spear in deeper? We both know you hate me, and we both know it’s justified too - can’t you just leave me the fuck alone already? 

“It’s not whatever.” Izuki’s shoulders are taut as a drawn bow, and his eyes are glued to the glimmering bay. “You called me an ass. What for?”

“What for, huh?” Hyūga laughs derisively.

“Oh, if anyone’s the ass here”—Izuki’s incensed now, his voice sparking like lava through bedrock—“I should think it’s the one lashing out at the person who’s been trying to help him for goddamned months now.”

“It’s not like I asked you to try to help me,” Hyūga sneers. Something dark and ugly has taken full control now, and the part of him that’s still sane is pleading for him to stop.

No. He deserves this. Following me around like a damn puppy. You deserve this. Push him away so you don’t hurt him worse.

“We’re friends. Best friends. You might not have asked, but I know you need my help. And still you won’t listen to me.” Izuki’s visibly deflated, and a sick pleasure rises up in the monster within Hyūga at the sight.

“Not everyone needs the help of a wonderful saint like you are,” it mocks, using Hyūga’s body as its meat-suit. “There’s nothing to listen to. Just let me be.”

“I don’t want you to come back! I just want you to—”

“To what? Sit here and spill my guts out?” A terrible, grating laugh falls from Hyūga’s mouth that sets even himself on edge. “No thanks. I’m not a crybaby like you.”

Izuki grits his teeth, the sparks returning in full force.

“I’ll let you insult basketball as much as you want,” he says, voice shaking with barely-restrained anger, “but don’t you dare act like I didn’t go through it, either.”

The words that are about to spill out next flash in front of Hyūga’s eyes, like closed captions in a movie, and against his will his mouth opens to pour them out, bitter and furious.

“You, going through it? Really, and after all this was your fault?”

Izuki’s face whitens, and for a second Hyūga regains control. He tries to speak, tries to say, No, I didn’t mean that, I’m sorry, but before he can twitch his lips the monster is back in control again, fixing a harsh glare upon his face.

“Don’t look at me like that,” it snarls, and Hyūga wants to scream, to drown out the horrible sentences it’s stringing together. His throat does not obey. “You’re the reason I quit in the first place. You and your stupid jokes. No one cares about them, and no one cares about you!”

Izuki doesn’t answer, looking down at his lap where his hands are still against his thighs. Rain’s started to fall, a steady trickle for now, but thunder rumbles in the distance and the drops grow so much colder with every second that there’s no doubt this will turn into a storm.

“Your ridiculous puns got you slacking,” the monster continues, and Hyūga burns at the audacity of the lie. It’s not like that! He’s the most hardworking of all of us! Against his own will, he stays mute. “If you’d just been better, faster, more reactive. Maybe we’d have had a shot. But when our point guard was such a mess—”, it shakes his head for him, offering a scoff, “—what could you do? I did my best, but you were supposed to control the court. Why didn’t you?”

Why didn’t I?! Why didn’t I do better? Why did I put it all on you? Hyūga slams his hands against the monster’s back to stop it and receives no reaction, as it goes on manipulating his body just the way it likes. 

“Hyūga.” Izuki sounds tormented. “Stop it. Please.”

I want to. Please, Izuki, this isn’t me.

“Why would I stop it?” taunts the monster. “Why would I call it quits when I finally get the chance to hurt you as you hurt me?” Izuki draws in a sharp breath.

“Hyūga, I—”

“Ugh, just stop talking! I wish you would just die, just fall off a damn building somewhere!”

Hyūga has never seen anything crumble the way Izuki’s expressive eyes do in that moment. And suddenly the monster is gone and he’s in control again, just in time for a front-row seat to the way ice shutters over those dark irises, the light dimming. Those eyes are open books to him no more.

Why does it feel like they never will be again?

“Alright. Have it your way.” Hyūga knows he’s a scaredy-cat, but the worst horror movies he’s seen don’t compare to the gaping maw of dread stretching its way across his stomach now as Izuki’s lips shape the coldest words he’s ever seen him speak. “If you’re really going to be like that, then…  I can’t do anything else, and I don’t think I want to.”

Hyūga has been friends with patient, gentle Izuki for fourteen years now. In all that time, he's done a massive amount of stupid shit, enough that anyone else might have left long ago. But Izuki has never, ever let go of his hand; never shaken his head in frustration and looked elsewhere; never done anything but stay. Not until this moment, anyway; not until Hyūga dragged him to the edge of a cliff and kicked him off it, and even then he’d reached out as he fell, like Hyūga was the one in need of help.

Izuki rises now, slow and steady like a harbinger of doom, and turns away. It’s the first time Hyūga’s ever seen his back in such clear view for years now - he’s filled out the way teenage boys do, shoulders broadening even within his naturally slender frame, spine as straight as they come, a heavy conviction filling his every movement.

Then he starts to walk away, and Hyūga knows that he will not come back.

He stays glued to the bench, even though the rain’s soaked him clean through. Every muscle screams at him to go grab Izuki’s wrist. To turn him around and apologise, fall to his knees, beg and plead and cry. To explain that this isn’t what he meant. But his body refuses to move and what part of his mind is left conscious in the numbing downpour thinks: Perhaps it’s better this way. It’s better Izuki leaves now, before the mess that you are ruins every bit of his life. It’s better he’s gone. It’s better, it’s better, it’s better. Yes. It’s better this way, for sure. 

He’s never been particularly susceptible to cold. It was always him draping a jacket around the shivering Izuki’s shoulders when the rain began to fall. But now he’s trembling like a leaf in the autumn wind, coming apart piece by piece at the veins. The raindrops continue tearing their way down his face, settling around the corners of his downturned lips, warm and salty. He is not crying.

He can blame this on a monster controlling his tongue all he likes, but in the end, that monster grew from his own tainted soul. It was his blackened heart, worn through with rot and malice.

He is not crying, for what monster deserves the humanity that sweet tears trace down your face?

Izuki’s there the next morning at school, a pale ghost just barely following him. Just barely there, just barely touching. 

Just barely.

A month down the line and Hyūga hates himself when he realises: He never knew exactly when the ghost disappeared and the boy came back to life, even if he wasn’t fully there yet; never knew exactly when someone else (someones?) became the reason that those eyes lit up; never knew exactly when just barely became no more.