My brain is defective, I want a new one.
Oikawa Tooru is perfect, and damn it all if he isn't. He has to be. Nothing matters if he isn't. They tell him he has a nice smile, now it snares any heart lucky or unlucky enough to meet the sight. They tell him that his hair is pretty, now he spends upwards of twenty minutes each morning worrying that it isn't. They tell him he's talented, now the only thing burning inside him is the need to be the best.
He blossoms under praise before wilting when he's alone because did he really deserve it? He flies amongst the clouds in the moment before plummeting, crashing down at the thought of one imperfection, no matter how innocuous.
It gets ridiculous. He rides out his highs, never feeling the pain in his legs or the stinging in his palms. He doesn't notice his muscles screaming or the sweat sticking his clothes to his body. More importantly, he doesn't notice the worried looks his teammates trade with each other.
They all stay the night at Hajime's house, squished together on the couch. Tooru's lying more or less on Issei, across from Hajime, with Takahiro sprawled over the three of them. There's a movie on, for background noise only.
Times like this, Tooru feels like he's floating. They don't expect perfection from him in these moments. Issei smiles at his dorky pajamas, Takahiro lightly teases at his messy hair, and Hajime kisses his temple when he wakes up, having been able to get a full night's rest.
Tooru likes these moments. He can feel himself climbing higher and falling farther each day and he knows soon enough the clawing need in the back of his head will soon take the forefront.
But he'll cherish these boys until that day comes.
His nails are bitten, down to the skin and raw as they bleed. And it burns. It hurts. He can't touch anything, the slightest pressure sends tiny bottle rockets of pain through his hands and up his arms. So he lays back and looks at the swirling color behind his eyelids. Pretty faces don't shed tears. Oikawa Tooru has a damn pretty face, and boys don't cry, they don't not at all.
He can't even open the bottle of painkillers he keeps under his bed.
Instead, he waits until the pain fades to numbness, then pulls a box of band-aids from his nightstand and wraps up each of his fingers. He can't practice with his hands like this, so he watches recordings of their previous matches. He's merciless with himself, lenient with his team members.
He doesn't bother watching their last match with Shiratorizawa. He's analyzed it a thousand times over, beat himself down for his failures and set up a new foundation.
Nevermind that he's scrapped that foundation time and time again.
With his skill, Oikawa Tooru could fly to the moon all on his own, kiss the world goodbye and go further. But he remains. He's almost up to his knees in self made concrete. He digs himself deeper. Longer practices, less sleep. More bruises, more blood. He doesn't eat enough, he works too hard.
He's never enough, he knows that.
Not perfect enough. He's marred with spider web fractures, letting his everything seep out in slow glistening rivulets. Tooru just covers them up, slaps on a bandaid and calls everything okay. He cakes concealer on the dark circles beneath his eyes and only eats so he can take painkillers. He sits and reads with his mother, because she's worried, and perfect children don't make their mothers worry about them.
That first falter, Oikawa Tooru hates it with a burning passion. To feel something so intrinsically wrong shudder up his leg as the floor rushed to greet him, it was unsettling. An injured knee was nothing to scoff at, but he disregarded his doctor's suggestions to stay off his leg for a while. He wore the brace, that was it. And now he's here, on the gym floor, curled up as his entire leg just throbs. His knee is mottled, deep earth and moss green and he wants the ground to open up beneath him and swallow him up. His face is a mess, rivers of salty tears cascade down his cheeks, blood, an angry red and boiling, spills from the worried hole he'd chewed into his lips.
Oikawa Tooru is a mess.
Hajime finds him. Of course he does because who else would come back to the gym at ten o'clock? He doesn't even bat an eye, just scoops Tooru up, helping him balance on one leg before turning around. Hajime piggybacks him home, carries him inside as silent as the dead and sets Tooru on his bed.
He passes out, and when he comes to, there's water and painkillers on his nightstand. His knee is wrapped up, a melting ice pack on the floor on top of a wash cloth.
And Hajime's asleep in Tooru's office chair.
Tooru declines the offer to come to Issei's. He needs to practice his serves because his accuracy is unacceptable.
Tooru says he can't walk home with Takahiro. He needs to stay and retake a test because he'd gotten no sleep the night before and had passed out, spending his test period in the nurse's office.
Tooru tires to tell Hajime that his knee is fine and gets flicked in the ear for his trouble. Hajime bodily picks him up and carries him to his house, all the while mumbling about how Tooru needs to take better care of himself.
He doesn't listen to Hajime, he never does. The second Hajime's gone, Tooru goes outside to his backyard and practices in the dim light of the moon, even when the cool breeze freezes his sweat to his skin and makes him shiver.
He can't walk well the next day because he can't bend his leg, but it's worth it.
Tooru falls asleep on Issei's shoulder at lunch, too tired to keep his eyes open. He doesn't dream so much as his brain supplies memories. Usually they're fairly nice, his brain likes to remind him that he wasn't always such a perfectionist.
He's on the roof with Hajime and Issei, looking at the stars. He's in Takahiro's bedroom, laying across his bed while they do homework. Hajime's leaning on his shoulder, laughing at something Takahiro says. Issei presses a kiss to Tooru's forehead, absent mindedly, while they watch Takahiro and Hajime arm wrestle.
Tooru wakes up to see a look of concern on Hajime's face, and a curious warmth in Takahiro's eyes.
Issei tells him he should be getting more sleep.
Tooru waves off his concern like he always does.
The screaming is too much to handle. His father wants perfection, his mother wants him to be okay. He can be both. He has to be. Maybe if he is they won't yell. Oikawa Tooru can be perfect. He can get perfect marks. He can hide his red eyes. He can win. He can be perfect, and that will make him okay.
But they still fight. They still yell. The yelling doesn't let up until one evening when he comes home from practice, three hours later than usual, to find his mother sitting at the table, her head in her hands. His father's shoes are missing from the front door.
And Tooru cries.
Because damn it if boys don't cry.
He failed. It's his fault, it has to be. Why else would his mother be crying? Why else would his father be gone? Tooru hasn't cried this hard in a long time. Not since Hajime found him in the club room with a swollen knee and bleeding fingers.
It's all his fault.
It's all his fault.
He does a good job of hiding his limp on the way to the bus, but he doesn't fool Hajime, he's never been able to. But luckily, Hajime's a little too busy blaming himself to point out just how injured Tooru is. They're all blaming themselves.
They shouldn't be.
Tooru's the captain, the setter, the one who missed the ball.
His knee is screaming bloody murder, more than it usually does. There's probably a good reason for that. He doesn't have anything with him to stop it, but it doesn't matter. His focus is on the relay in his head.
Each moment of the match flashes in his mind. He picks himself apart, points out everything he did wrong, everything he could have done better.
He's not going to cry, not in front of his team anyways. He's modified the 'no crying' rule to 'no crying in front of other people' it's easier to manage this way.
During the ride, he chews on his fingernails. He always manages to stop before matches, so he can set properly, but the second one is over, it's back to ragged skin and band-aids. Compared to his knee, the sharp stinging in his fingers is nothing. He tastes blood but keeps running his fingers through his teeth before realizing that some of the blood has dripped down his hand to stain his jacket sleeve.
As everyone goes home, heads hung and shoulder slumped, Tooru finds that he physically can't walk another step. His knee can't take any of his weight. It's swollen, for sure, but this is probably something that can't be fixed with an ice pack.
So he stays in the gym, all of his dead weight on his one exhausted, functional leg, until Takahiro figures out why he's not moving. He motions for Issei and Hajime to wait.
Tooru must look like a mess. No makeup to cover beneath his eyes, blood stained lips and fingers, leaning heavily, ragged and soaked in sweat, oozing fatigue. Takahiro only looks better because he's not covered in blood stains.
Without a word between them, Tooru puts his arm around Takahiro's shoulders, and Takahiro supports Tooru at his waist. They walk slowly, Hajime takes over for Takahiro about half way and lets Issei help him. Tooru breaks his 'no crying in front of other people' rule because it's the three of them and it doesn't count.
They end up going to Hajime's house, the four of them falling asleep in a jumble on the floor. Tooru's the last to fall asleep.
It's been three days since Oikawa Tooru has come out of his room. His mother is on a business trip so she doesn't know. She can't worry if she doesn't know, so Tooru is still perfect in that regard.
He's long since ripped out his phone battery, the incessant ringing and vibrating put to a stop.
His fingers have stopped bleeding, but his knee is still throbbing.
Tooru doesn't want to go to college. There will always be people better than him, logically, he knows that. But that doesn't mean he accepts it. Oikawa Tooru is supposed to be perfect, never mind that he can't walk right now, never mind that there are bloody fingerprints all over his bed.
It'll get worse, he knows. He'll push himself too hard one day. He can feel that day coming closer. He's exhausted all the time but there's too much to do. He needs to finish applications despite being contacted by scouts. He needs to practice more, he's been slacking. He needs to see his doctor about his knee. He needs to watch the Aoba Johsai v. Karasuno match for the millionth time because surely there's something he missed. And god, he needs to shower.
Then there's knocking at his front door.
He ignores it. There's no reason for anyone to come by, and he's not answering the door looking like a cave goblin who doesn't know what hygiene is.
That problem is solved for him by his bedroom door opening instead.
Hajime's there, so are Issei and Takahiro. The former looks incredibly concerned, the latter two look like they want nothing more than to rush in slap some sense into Tooru. He watches their eyes drift around his room. They take in the band-aid wrappers on the floor, the bottle of painkillers and the five empty water bottles. They notice how messy his hair is, how he's still wearing pajamas despite it being four in the afternoon. They see just how red his eyes are, the multicolor scabs on his lips, the stack of match disks beside his t.v., and his battery sitting beside his phone.
Hajime wastes no time. He leaves the room and a few seconds later, Tooru can hear the water running in the bathroom. Hajime comes back, scoops Tooru into his arms and ignores the protest. Apparently knowing how bad Tooru's leg is, Hajime had run a bath instead of starting a shower.
While Tooru bathes, really he just shifts restlessly in the water, Hajime sits on the counter and keeps up a steady one sided conversation with no intention other than keeping Tooru's mind occupied.
Issei pops into the bathroom after five minutes with a small stack of folded clothes and a towel.
Once the bath has drained, Hajime lets Tooru keep his pride and leaves the bathroom so he can dress himself. Tooru can't walk back to his room though, and he knows that he's too exhausted to keep his balance.
So he accepts Hajime's help.
His room isn't so much of a mess as it was when Hajime carried him out. His bed is clear and the match disks are out of sight. A movie menu takes up the screen, one of Tooru's old alien features he used to make them watch. Issei's already sitting against the headboard, twirling the t.v. remote between his fingers. Takahiro's beside him, a packet of wet wipes and Tooru's band-aid box in hand. Hajime sets him down before laying across the foot of the bed, laying over Issei's legs.
Issei starts the movie and Takahiro channels his attention properly cleaning Tooru's fingers, since they've started bleeding again. Once they're up to Takahiro's standards, he puts the band-aids on then leans forward to kiss Tooru's forehead.
They rearrange themselves they're all laying down, Tooru between Issei and Hajime while Takahiro lays on top of them.
"You're more than enough, Tooru," Hajime says quietly, pressing a kiss to his temple. Issei squeezes his hand, and Takahiro rests his chin on top of Tooru's head.
For the moment, Tooru can agree with them.
And, to no one's surprise, the author projects on characters like there is no tomorrow.
Originally, I wasn't going to include the last part, or the last bit of the part before that. But I just decided 'hell, give this child a semi-happy ending at the least'.