TW: depiction of suicide, implied/referenced cheating, implied/referenced homophobia, implied/referenced child abuse
AN: hello! i uploaded this a few weeks ago for haikyuu angst week, actually but I just recently returned to make some edits, considering the original go around i'd been rushed to write it at 2am lol
/
"Goodnight, mother."
He receives a grunt in response as she continues to watch the figures blurring together on the television screen, expression blank as ever. It means "go away". He imagines it means "goodnight, Kageyama".
"I love you, mother."
This time there is no response. He is not stupid enough to have spoken so loud as to expect anything in return. His blanket drags behind him as he turns out of the living room.
He goes to bed and tucks himself in, staring up at the glow in the dark stickers on his ceiling. He doesn't know yet that those will be the last words he speaks to his mother.
––
"Goodbye, mother."
The wind blows through the blades of grass at his feet. The weather is nice, sunny. Nobody mourns, except for him.
"I love you, mother."
He can say it out loud without fear now. She can't hear him, and if, by some chance, she is listening, that is more attention than he has ever received from her.
Anybody else might learn, then, to close their heart and stop bleeding this unrequited love. Kageyama does not. He has never known how to give up.
––
He is a magnet with no poles. Or maybe all poles. Try as he might to hold the things he loves near, they twist away and repel him.
"Can I… Can I play?"
Kunimi shifts from foot to foot, throwing a darting glance to Kindaichi. Kindaichi is far more obvious about his distaste. "I heard your mother killed herself."
Kageyama's heart drops. "It's not true."
It is true, but his father says it isn't true. He's trying to block from Kageyama's memory the instant he stumbled upon the body, limp and lifeless in the bathroom.
Kunimi frowns, tugging at Kindaichi's sleeve. "You shouldn't say things like that," he hisses, looking at Kageyama with an apologetic nod. "Maybe we can… we can play together next time. We have to go."
"I mean it's not like I said anything wrong," Kindaichi is complaining, even as Kunimi pulls him away by the wrist.
With that, they're gone and Kageyama digs his fist into his eyes until bright stars of white light erupt behind his eyelids. It still isn't enough to erase his memories.
They don't ever play together. Not next time. Not ever.
––
Some years later, Kunimi lets Kageyama kiss him behind their school, messy presses of clacking teeth and braces.
Kageyama doesn't love the way Kunimi's eyes still look apologetic and pitying every time he pushes Kageyama away at the slightest noise, flinching back when their eyes meet in the hallways. He does love the moments in between, when they're both too breathless to listen with too much care.
"You can't… You can't tell anyone," Kunimi murmurs every single time, without fail.
As if Kageyama has anybody to tell, as if anybody listens to him at all except maybe mother when he visits her, buried deep within the ground (but never when she was alive).
"I won't," Kageyama assures. "I'll do anything you say, Kunimi."
"Anything," Kunimi repeats, staring down at Kageyama. He only frowns harder, instead of showing Kageyama the smile he's shown on occasion to Kindaichi.
He shoves his hand down Kageyama's pants anyway, awkward and fumbling as he presses him up against the wall, only to back away just as quickly when they hear footsteps around the corner.
––
"Anything" reveals itself the next day when Kunimi shows up behind the school only to shake his head at Kageyama, Kindaichi at his side.
"I'm not doing this anymore. Leave me alone, Kageyama."
When Kageyama can only stare on in silence, Kindaichi speaks up in his stead. "Ugh. This is disgusting. Come on, Kunimi, we're going to be late to class," he says. This time, he's the one who pulls Kunimi along by the wrist.
Kageyama would like to shout, scream, kick the wall, throw a brick at Kunimi's head, or maybe Kindaichi's. Instead, he can only shiver as he replays the moment in his mind, lingering on the way Kunimi's mouth had shaped the syllables of his name.
"Kageyama."
––
"Hello, mother."
He does not know why he returns to the graveyard every year. What love does he expect to gain from the cold stone or the grass, brittle and yellow, worn down from the paces he's walked back and forth, over and over them again?
"I love you, mother."
Perhaps he thinks that one day, maybe, if he is a good enough son, she will love him back. That she looks out for him from somewhere up above.
She probably does. She probably twists the strings of fate to force him to fall in love, only to turn everybody away. It would be fitting of her character.
—
A thousand kisses, a million of a thousand kisses, as many kisses as there are grains of sand on the beach, as many kisses as there are stars in the night sky — all of that, and still he can't find love in return.
The night passes in a whirlwind of lips, bodies, arms and legs tangling. Kageyama has never felt more alive, more loved than in that moment. He holds onto Ushijima's hair, lets the locks slip through his fingers as he gasps against his neck, brushing lingering kisses in between bruising marks. He could stay like this forever, surrounded by the stench of cigarettes and piss as they kiss in the bathroom of the rowing team house. It's only a little more disgusting than the average frat house.
"I've always," Kageyama stutters out, "Admired you."
Ushijima just grunts, mouth moving back to cover Kageyama's.
The next morning, Kageyama wakes up alone, covered in streamers and glitter and love bites. He sniffs the air to see if maybe there might be a trace of Ushijima's cologne but only inhales the stench of cheap beer and day old vomit.
"Ushijima?" he whispers into the empty air. He's not there. Obviously.
––
Kageyama runs into Ushijima some days, weeks later as he crosses campus, splashing coffee onto his shirt as he narrowly avoids barreling into his chest.
"Sorry," Ushijima says, eyes gliding past Kageyama as he moves around him.
Kageyama stares at her receding figure, holding his breath until he's turned the corner. There isn't even a hint of recollection in her eyes.
Kageyama joins the same club that Ushijima is president of – some community service thing where they ride a bus to whatever soup kitchen of the month. Kageyama watches for the whole year, stares and fumbles his own job as his eyes are too busy tracing Ushijima's arms, watching Ushijima's gentle nods to the people in line.
––
A few weeks before finals, they hold a farewell party for all the seniores. Kageyama doesn't know any of the upperclassmen, or really anybody in the club particularly well but it may be his last chance to see Ushijima before he graduates.
He's tempted to approach him, palms sweating as he mumbles practiced words under his breath, "Would you like to grab coffee? Would you like to grab coffee?"
"Hey, can you pass this to Kageyama?" Tendou, the vice president asks.
"Who?" Ushijima asks with a frown, looking around the room. His eyes slide past Kageyama's face as he blushes and goes to grab the plates himself.
By the end of the year, Ushijima still doesn't know Kageyama's name.
––
Kageyama remembers the cigarette still clutched between his mother's two fingers. He remembers shaking her, hard, so hard that her head lolled and smacked against the bathtub walls as he begged her to wake up.
And still, that cigarette didn't fall out of her grip.
Maybe, just maybe, if he had held onto her the same way…
But there wasn't time to think of maybes, not when his fingers trembled as he called 911 and explained in a monotone voice that his mother's lips were blue and frothing, wasted pills spilled onto the floor where they missed her mouth or fist. That her chest had stopped moving up and down with life, and that her heart had long since stopped beating.
Then again, her heart never really beat for him, did it?
––
There's an old folktale of a woodcutter who once stole the wings of an angel from heaven when she came down to earth for a bath. Holding those wings hostage, he forced her to marry him and love him until she bore him two children. Believing those children would be enough to keep her on earth, he returned her robes to her, giving her wings to fly once again into the sky.
Returning the favor, she grasped one child in either arm and flew away, leaving him behind, alone.
When Kageyama was younger, he always believed that he might be the angel, so loved that he needed to be held and trapped to the ground, just like his mother.
Instead, he realizes that he will forever be the woodcutter.
"Really, Tobio, I don't understand these stories of yours," Oikawa says, waving away the lingering tendrils of smoke, only to let out another cloudy breath.
Kageyama tamps down the urge to cough, and instead watches Oikawa's long fingers as they draw close to his mouth and away again.
"What?" Oikawa asks when he sees Kageyama watching. "Want some?"
Kageyama nods, leaning in to capture Oikawa's lips with his, inhaling the second hand smoke into his lungs. It burns, but he tamps down the coughs to relish in the ashy taste of Oikawa's tongue against his instead.
Once their lips finally part, Kageyama leans back against the balcony railing and says, "You shouldn't smoke. It's not good for you."
Oikawa merely quirks an eyebrow at that. "Looking out for me, Tobio? You really shouldn't. It isn't as if we'll be together long enough for things like that to matter."
Kageyama doesn't know how to say that he wishes it would matter. Really and truly. That he would like to grow old with Oikawa, even if it means that he'll have to watch him wither away from lung cancer at a mere sixty years old.
––
When Kageyama confronts Oikawa later, about how his "best friend" was never just a best friend, Oikawa rolls his eyes.
"Calm down, Tobio. You always knew it wasn't going to be anything serious."
Kageyama can only bow his head and direct his glare at the ground, begging the tears not to fall. Hajime at least has the decency to look apologetic.
"It really was an accident, Kageyama. I'm sorry," he says, even as Oikawa's fingers wrap around his wrist, always taking his best friend's side over Kageyama's.
"Sleeping with your best friend was an accident? That's your best excuse?"
Oikawa's eyes narrow into slits and Kageyama realizes that any hopes he had of him staying are now gone.
His words. His fault.
––
Oikawa takes their two adopted kittens with him, crates fisted in either hand as he slowly empties out the apartment they built a life in.
It makes sense, Kageyama reasons, consoling himself as he clutches his knees and sits in the empty bathtub, fully clothed. The cats always seemed to love Oikawa better, too. Kageyama has enough scars on his knuckles to prove it.
He stares up at the medicine cabinet.
––
"You little brat," she hisses, smacking Kageyama across the face. "You hid them, didn't you? You took it, you took my medicine!"
Kageyama whimpers, cowering back until the cabinet drawers are digging into his shoulder blades. "I'm sorry, mother." He doesn't know what he's apologizing for. He isn't sure that he ever does, just that maybe if he apologizes enough, he'll be forgiven.
Suddenly, a haze is lifted from his mother's eyes and she frowns, hand trembling as the bottle she's holding drops onto the ground, spilling out a clattering of pills across the kitchen tiles.
"Oh, baby," she says, dropping to her knees and clutching Kageyama close to her chest. "No, I'm sorry, baby. I'm so, so sorry."
Kageyama does his best to stand still, swallowing away any tears that rise.
It's warm, in his mother's embrace.
––
"It's early, where are you going?" Hinata asks. He sits up in bed and the covers fall around his waist as he rubs the sleep out of his eyes.
"I'll be back soon, you should go back to sleep," Kageyama answers, pressing his lips to Hinata's forehead.
Groping around for his phone, Hinata groans when he sees the early hour only to stop as the date registers. "Oh," he says, looking up at Kageyama. "I didn't realize it was October already. Are you going to go see her?"
At that, Kageyama finally pauses, setting down his jacket so he can sit on the bed next to Hinata. "Yeah," he answers before raising his head to look back at Hinata. "Do you… want to come with me?"
––
"Is this… is this her?" Hinata asks in a small voice, staring up into Kageyama's face.
It's blank, as it always is.
"Kageyama?" Hinata asks, inching forward until he can tug at Kageyama's hand, grasping it between his own.
"Huh? Oh, sorry," Kageyama says, blinking out of his trance. He turns to stare down his nose at the bright eyes that stare up at him from under a mop of unruly ginger hair. "Yes. This is her," he says softly before dropping Hinata's hand to bend down and kneel before the plaque. Bowing down low until his bangs brush against the grass, he kisses the ground before sitting upright again.
"Hello, mother," he says. "This is… this is Hinata," Kageyama continues, making an aborted gesture behind him before he's leaning forward again, pressing his forehead into the gravestone.
He's at a loss for words, all of a sudden. He isn't even sure why he'd asked Hinata to come here with him, after three years of brushing off Hinata's inquiries on where he went every year.
Kageyama wants to tell her everything.
About the way his heart dropped when he first knocked into Hinata and sent him sprawling against the ground. About the way Hinata took weeks of revenge on him by pestering him with complaints of back pain and hip pain at all hours of the night.
About the way Hinata asked him on a date first, because his flirting was terribly obvious but Kageyama was even more terribly oblivious. About the way Kageyama was hesitant to accept, but now, three years later it was the best decision of his entire life. About the way Hinata smiled at him, bigger and brighter than Kunimi ever could. About the way Hinata remembered how Kageyama liked breakfast in the mornings, and how Kageyama always knew he could wake up to Hinata's smiling face, rather than an empty room that reeked of alcohol. About how Hinata's always scolding him for trying to lift heavy things on his own, because, "I'm not paying for your back surgeries when we're seventy years old! That's when we should be retired and living easy lives together in Okinawa!"
He wants to tell her everything, even if she isn't listening and especially if she is, but he doesn't know how to say those words.
That he thinks he might be happy now.
That he thinks he might be able to forgive her, and forgive himself.
That he's…
"I'm in love with him."
"Oh," he hears Hinata's voice, soft behind his back. There's a moment of silence, before the grass crackles and he feels arms wrapping around his back. "I love you, too. Tell her that I love you, too. That I'll take care of you."
"I don't need to be taken care of," Kageyama answers, brutally, instinctively. When he hears, or rather feels Hinata's snicker against his back, he amends himself. "I mean… Mother. He loves me back. And he'll take care of me. Goodbye, mother."
He doesn't say, "I love you, mother."
He's learned now who deserves it and who doesn't.
/
AN: thanks for reading! reviews, favs, follows are always appreciated
I'm on twitter b4k95 and tumblr baddadscar if you ever want to chat or say hi :)