Work Text:
“He was replaced.” the first boy thought, looking over at the other boy in front of him as he wandered.
Oikawa Tooru watched the black-clad team pile onto the court. He had already shaken hands with the other team’s captain, Sawamura-san. At the very least, upon the coaches’ suggestion, he had the decency in himself to at least learn the names of the adversaries’ captains. He dully watched the many players from the opposite team, most of them unworthy of notice, between which his former kouhai Kageyama shined because of his innate talent and cockyness.
The more he watched, the more he felt like it was useless to even pay attention to them, resulting in him observing the numbers on their jerseys.
‘1, the annoyingly positive and polite captain… 3, the scared ace that looks like he’s about to faint… 4, the feisty libero, tiny and scary… 5, the loud spiker… 9, Tobio-chan, the one to annoy today… 10, Shrimpy… 11, tall glasses-kun- huh?’
The glaring absence of some numbers on their roster bothered him as he kept listing the players off in his head. He could definitely see the numbers 6, 7 and 8 being first or second years - probably not shining players, set aside to make space for taller or faster first years, like Shrimpy or Glasses. But what about the number 2? The question kept bouncing around his mind, leaving him with a strange feeling clutching his chest.
He stood there, until he heard Iwaizumi whisper right next to him.
“Poor Sugawara-san…”
As soon as he heard him, Oikawa whipped around immediately, facing his best friend with a questioning look on his face. He had never heard that name in his entire life and he found it absurd that Iwaizumi could know someone from the volleyball scene without him also being there.
“Huh? What are you talking about?”
“Uh, I meant Karasuno’s number 2. His name is Sugawara-san, you know? There. Do you see him at the bench corner?”
Oikawa trailed his eyes towards the far end of the opposite side of the court. His gaze got caught immediately by the big number 2 resting right in the middle of a sweet-looking gray haired boy’s chest. He vaguely remembered seeing him being the setter during the devastating match from the year before, against Dateko High. He dug around in his memory - a vague figure of a smile, permanently settled on his face to a degree that made him question the sincerity of it.
He looked back at Iwaizumi, the questioning look still on his face, as if he was pushing his best friend to give him more information to try and explain his unexpected pity for the boy.
“Shittykawa, don’t look at me like that.”
“I’m just wondering why we would care about that kid. Isn’t he like a second year?”
“No, you idiot. This is why I always say your character is rotten to the core. He’s the same age as us, and he’s pretty cool.”
Iwaizumi’s face was scrunched in an expression of distaste, clearly showing his disappointment - even if it wasn’t surprising - over his best friend’s disinterest. He knew that Oikawa was known to be pretty forgetful over anything that wasn’t useful to his own ‘revenge agenda’ as he commonly referred to how he obsessed over certain adversaries that he considered worthy of attention. Oikawa’s ignorance was in sheer contrast to Iwaizumi’s concern, the knowledge of someone that he considered to be a good guy being thrown to the side definitely concerning him the more he watched the situation that was unfolding on the other side of the court as the players ran to their places for the confirmation of their numbers and positions.
“And how do you even know someone from Karasuno?”
Oikawa’s question interrupted his flow of thoughts and made him come back to the present moment. He sighed, louder than he had during that whole morning. He looked at Oikawa with dead eyes, conveying to him how done he was with his idiocy. The setter felt a shiver run down his spine, shutting up to let the other speak once again.
“Damn it, you’re really this clueless, huh? Since SOMEONE won’t pick up the responsibility of having some kind of relationship with the other teams, I resorted to being the one to reach out first. I have both the captain’s and the vice captain’s numbers for each team we have played against. Sugawara-san is an incredibly nice and chill dude, and I feel bad for him. Being replaced is never fun. Even more when we - or better, you - set him up to be replaced by Kageyama in that practice match.”
Oikawa froze. His mind started spinning, the memories suddenly coming back as he recalled for a second his last year of middle school. The expectations, his love for his favorite sport, the excitement of finally being the captain and striving for victory with his beloved teammates. All of it immediately overshadowed and soured by the appearance of someone that threatened him with his innate talent. The looming shadow catching up on him, ruining everything, making his dream shatter and replacing it with constant fear and anxiety. Leaving him running against something he couldn’t even see, trying his hardest to not fall under the danger he saw the talent of the other was for him.
Oikawa shivered, his voice dropping to a chilling low tone as his eyes focused on the dark haired setter on the other side of the net. He felt his mind get clearer, some sort of cold anger taking over him when he calmly and quietly went again over his plan.
“So… He was replaced, you say? And we probably had a part in that?”
Iwaizumi turned around, looking back at Oikawa’s face. He felt his stomach drop as he realized what was going inside his best friend’s head. He recognized that desperate and wild gaze, the same he used to have back when he felt threatened in middle school. This was Oikawa’s way to fight back the threatening terror and anger that an innate talent like Kageyama made him feel.
He knew that Oikawa must have been empathizing with Sugawara at that moment, seeing in front of his eyes what exactly could have happened to him back then. He could feel the thoughts bouncing around his head. The guilt of possibly having been the one to speed up the process of number 2 being replaced, making him plan in his head all the ways to subtly take his revenge and, at the same time, give poor Sugawara some help in his very own twisted way.
Iwaizumi hated the fact that he couldn’t disagree with Oikawa after all. He also felt like destroying Kageyama could be a good thing for his best friend, even if it wasn’t the most ethical choice.
The clear sound of the referee’s whistle resonated all over the gym as Oikawa stepped back, preparing himself for the serve that was coming towards them from Glasses-kun. His concentration was at its best, and he felt great. He couldn’t wait to show who was the best on that court. For himself, and for the pitiful guy that had been subjected to the curse of having someone like Kageyama destroy their wings and make them fall, before they could reach their dreams.
As he jumped in the air and prepared to spike instead of setting, his eyes locked with the ones of the gray-haired boy. He kept eye contact as the ball landed on the other side of the court, scoring them the first point of the match. He watched the shocked expressions of Karasuno’s players delightedly. The image sunk deep into his mind, making him feel extremely proud and giddy for his feat. He stopped for only a second, before declaring he would do the same move again next time. Before he turned around, he quickly shot another glance towards the gray haired boy and smirked.
‘I should talk to him later.’
“I replaced him,” the second boy thought on the verge of tears, as he watched the boy in front of him smiling in his direction.
Kageyama had no idea what to do. He planned on doing the exact same thing he had always done since he had started playing on Karasuno’s team and began his companionship with Hinata, but he couldn’t explain why everything was falling apart in front of his very own eyes. It was entirely different from the time he was betrayed by his own teammates in middle school, but his mind kept taking him back to it.
He felt like he was losing control of himself, his thoughts going everywhere and nowhere, making him make mistakes he hadn’t made in months. It was probably the prodding and teasing from the other side of the net and the presence of his middle school senpais that made him go back - at least mentally - to when he felt like his whole world was being crushed. He watched Kunimi and Kindaichi - the former teammates of his that had started the “riot” against him first, as he had heard them refer to it - playing and smiling, showcasing their bond with their new teammates, something that they had never achieved while together with him. How Oikawa-san brought them all together under one unified front was made glaringly obvious even in a matter of a few points. He made them work and be part of the well-oiled machine that Aoba Johsai’s team had always been, despite them having just become part of it.
“Kageyama! Pull yourself together!”
He couldn’t even understand who was talking to him, the noises being too loud all around him to reason straight. He felt like the whole world was once again crumbling in front of him, the devilish smile of Oikawa-san being the triggering point to his desperate feeling. Kageyama felt small, he felt lost and he felt guilty.
He knew that he was good, one of the best even if he dared to say so, but he was lacking the experience and insight that someone of the older players could have and give to him. The more points the other team got, the more he felt like he was drowning in his insecurities once again. He desperately needed someone to pull him out, to make him breathe again in this confusing ocean of emotions that overtook him and brought him down.
He wanted to call out, to scream and go towards the loving and gentle guidance he had gotten used to in his short time at Karasuno, but he didn’t have the courage. He knew who could help him, but he also realized that he was the one that had taken him down. The one that had to fight for a place that in any other club would have been his for seniority rights, but that he had decided to fight for fairly with him.
‘Sugawara-san.’
“Sugawara-san!”
He whipped around, his heart aching. There he stood, a placard with the number 9 in his hand, held up high above his head as the referee blew his whistle to signal the change. He felt his stomach drop and his heart breaking in a thousand pieces. Part of him didn’t want to leave the court, selfishly keeping his spot by any means possible, even if that meant leaving Sugawara out of it in the worst way possible. At the same time however, another part of Kageyama was telling him to rush to Sugawara, his savior, and grasp that hand with all his might.
He needed to lean on someone for a second and no one was better for that than his beloved senpai, the only one that had decided to fairly judge him and not make him feel like some kind of monster for his talent. Sugawara had been nothing but fair and honest with him, lending him a hand when he needed it, but also providing him with a challenge and competition in their specific role, something that he couldn’t find in Hinata.
He strode forward, his head hung low as he grasped the much smaller hand of his senpai. He felt like everything was wrong, as if everything he had done was a mistake and that he deserved to be sent to the bench. His mind was telling him that he deserved to be thrown into the back and finally know his place, as he should have from the very beginning. Sugawara's hand was so warm under his icy cold fingers, throbbing with a dull pain from endlessly setting the balls high in vain for their teammates in that set. The screams from their teammates felt like cries to his deaf ears, only hearing his own heart beat like crazy.
"Kageyama."
Sugawara's voice reached him, breaching the wall he had been building all around himself once again, gently but firmly bringing him back to them all. The more he wanted to mentally escape from that moment, just as he had back in middle school, the more his senpai's voice pulled him right back, giving him a sense of calmness and level-headedness he didn't know he could reach, especially given the circumstances he found himself in.
The speech that Sugawara gave him - for how short it was - impacted Kageyama's mind so deeply. He felt like the ocean he had been drowning in, the feelings that were overtaking him and making him lose sight of what was really important, suddenly disappeared. The warmth he could feel from Sugawara's hand was soothing and grounding, telling him to not lose all his hope. They weren't enemies, but allies, friends even - despite Kageyama feeling like he wouldn't dare act as if his senpai was just a friend to him. Anything less than absolute respect wasn't even crossing his mind, and couldn’t believe that his senpai was telling him that he would be taking over for as long as he needed to recover his cool, implicitly confirming to him the fact that he wasn’t being replaced completely, but that they would work as one towards the dream of victory.
The smile he saw when he finally decided to lift his head wasn't one of hatred or contempt, but a genuine one. His heart started to fill with hope. Hope that not all would be lost to his anxieties, that the presence of his old teammates would finally stop haunting him. He was no longer the child under the rule of the terror of his past experiences had instilled in him. He was safe, with the team that supported and loved him even when he was starting from the very bottom. With a senpai that would wish the best for him and push him to be the best version of himself he could be. He felt loved and cared for, he felt that everything would finally be okay - the guilt dissipated slowly, leaving a tender love and admiration for the person that was the first to accept him.
'Finally,' he thought, 'I can be at ease.'
He sat down on the bench near the coaches and concentrated on the match, admiring how easily Sugawara-san's presence brought back serenity into the players' minds - the order on the court present once again at last.
He smiled, when he suddenly heard a scream coming from the court. He looked over to see Hinata jumping and waving at him, making him look like an overeager monkey.
"Hey, Kageyama!"
"What?!"
He watched as the orange haired player smiled broadly, a proud Sugawara looking from behind his shoulder and smiling at the two of them.
"Try to get better, I need you!"
Kageyama wouldn't deny that he felt strangely honored and immaturely hyped by the comment, a fire lighting in his heart as his head cooled down.
'Maybe I should speak to Sugawara-san later.'
"I was replaced," said the boy in front of a mirror, eyes free of tears in a shocked silence.
Suga couldn't stand being relegated to the side. Or better, he loathed the fact that he couldn't be the one physically doing the playing, but he had found a new joy. He had always had quite the eye for making many kinds of strategies, despite knowing full well the limits imposed by his own body. What his body couldn't do, his mind could and that was everything he was betting on at the moment.
Had he ever resented Kageyama for taking his place? Absolutely not, as it wasn't his place per se. It was a position that people who valued more politeness and hierarchy thought it definitely had to be his. He had waited three long and humiliating years, striving for it. Until he had it, for one match, and everything in his world fell apart.
Suga couldn't say he was satisfied or proud of himself, but as Asahi and Noya returned he started to accept that what he might have missed at that moment didn't define him as neither a player or a human being, but rather it had become a guide in how he could become someone even better. Maybe pushing him to use a different approach in his way of seeing the matter.
Here he was then, standing on the sidelines and then on the court, a sureness in his heart that he had never had until that point.
'It doesn't matter what happens; what matters is how I do it. And if I can't, I can lay down the foundations, so a better suited person could make a reality of what I couldn't.'
He took a deep breath and started hitting his teammates, finally eliciting a smile from their tired and worried faces. Suga himself smiled, with one of those that he called "a one thousand kilowatts smile", and did his best to cheer up the team. From the bench, he saw Kageyama looking at him with eyes full of admiration, a gaze that contrasted so harshly with the curious and tired gaze that came from Oikawa on the other side of the net. It was one that became even more insistent as he waved slightly at Iwaizumi before he turned around to talk strategies with the other players.
The gaze on his back burned, a kind of unsettling attention that he wasn't used to receiving. He had been a coward his entire life, thinking that justifications for his own faults in some areas would be inevitable, taking the beaten path to avoid being disappointed in himself.
However, he could no longer act like that.
The more he tried to hide, the more he realized that everyone around him was striving on their own, and he had no excuse to let himself go and compare himself to someone else. He was himself and, as such, he had some responsibilities over himself. He didn't want regrets. Suga had realized - maybe a bit too late for his volleyball career - that he needed to carve his own path in the midst of the confusion that was life.
Suga had decided to fight, to become a better person not only for the team, but mostly for himself, finally breaking free of his shell that had allowed him to hide and conceal his true self even from himself.
No matter how the match would have ended, he would be proud of himself - for making a mark with his time on the court, with his presence being impactful and meaningful to the situation, and that was enough to make him proud of himself.
'I haven't been replaced. I’m carving my own path. I don't need to be fitting into one mold to be me, I have the whole world at my disposal and I will find my own way.'
As he finally stepped off the court, Kageyama once again taking the position, he sat on the bench, satisfied with himself. No matter what would become of the match, he was proud of his - their - work, finally truly feeling like he belonged in the team.
'This. This is my place, my way, my home.'
For everything they could have said, their loss didn't come as a shock to Suga. He knew that Seijou's team was one of the toughest and most cohesive that you could find around the prefecture, making their team, hastily put together, look like a bunch of lunatics. It was something that Suga wasn't really sure they weren't already in the eyes of most teams.
What truly shocked him was the figure of Oikawa Tooru coming up to him right after the match, just as he was strolling up to the bathroom to finally get some peace and quiet to gather his own thoughts.
"Uh, Mr. Refreshing?"
Suga whipped around, eyes open wide in shock at the sound of the ridiculous nickname.
"Ehm, are you referring to me?"
"Yeah, you, I don't see a lot of other people here."
Suga wanted to roll his eyes, but he decided he wasn't going to be subjected to any kind of idiocy from someone known for being extremely immature when faced with adversaries he particularly disliked. Rolling his eyes might have been considered a victory in Oikawa's book, and he really didn't want to lose this kind of confrontation.
"Well, Oikawa, my name is quite different from 'Mr. Refreshing,' so my apologies for not immediately connecting the two together."
Oikawa stopped nervously for a second, fiddling with his hands and carding them through his hair. Suga lifted an eyebrow, not at all sure what was going on inside Oikawa's mind.
"Okay so, listen, I don't want this to become a mind game with some strange power play in the middle to add on. I wanted to tell you that I'm sorry for being an ass on the court and for riling up Kageyama - not that it wasn't part of the original plan, but after seeing how he reacted… I felt bad. I thought that maybe you would understand my reasons for doing so, but I think me and you are a little different in that matter."
Suga stood there, quite stunned by the other's honest and frank speech. He had known from the very beginning that Oikawa had been targeting Kageyama to rile him up and make him lose his cool, but was he thinking that Suga might feel the same? It had never crossed his mind, not even once in the whole time he had Kageyama as his junior.
"I- You- I have so many questions, Oikawa."
Suga watched as the other stood a little straighter, waiting for him to continue speaking.
"Firstly, I can't believe that someone as smart and capable as you would think an individual would be more important than the team. And secondly, why would you apologize to me and not Kageyama? I wasn't affected that much by it, and I wouldn't understand the reason behind being like that, despite admitting to feeling jealous sometimes."
He took a deep breath and continued.
"Oikawa, I have my own path, and Kageyama has his own. You have your own. Please, don't consider us as interchangeable. We are all setters, but we all are different. What I won't be, someone else will, but that doesn't mean I was replaced. I just have a better path to follow. One more suited for myself."
Suga smiled softly as Oikawa watched him, in shock and with eyes full of admiration.
"You know, you might be right, Mr. Refreshing."
"Hey, Kageyama! What are you doing, hiding behind the corner like a thief?"
Hinata's loud voice made Kageyama almost jump in his place. He had wanted to speak with Suga, but had stopped as he had seen Oikawa approaching him and starting a conversation. He hadn't meant to eavesdrop, but he’d heard everything anyway and felt as if his need to speak with his senpai was completely gone. Hearing their discourse had given him all he needed to feel better, the guilt completely dissipated and no longer weighing on his heart.
He watched with horror as Hinata rounded the corner, almost exposing himself all the way to look at what Kageyama was hiding from.
A moment of silence came after Hinata glanced at the scene, before he quietly retired back and slid down, sitting on the floor right near Kageyama.
He quietly whispered, something unusual for him, as he tried to only let his partner in crime listen: "They look good together."
"Yeah. Yeah, they do."
"I'm happy for Sugawara-san."
Kageyama stopped for a second, as he heard something resembling a laugh and what he presumed was the two older boys entering the bathroom laughing and almost flirting with each other as the tension between them was completely gone.
"Yeah, I am too."
The three boys once again looked at each other. The first one apologized to the third, promising to never let himself be dragged away in judgments.
The second boy wiped his tears and hugged the third one, promising he would never let himself feel undeserving of something he gained.
The third boy stood there, watching everyone around him come to their conclusions and looked up, finally free from his own guilt and judgment, able to brace himself for his new path.