#gratuitous amounts of greek analogies and metaphors

[thisvictoriangirl]

(Read it here on ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24310861)

The ball slams down on Kamomedai’s court.

Karasuno pulls ahead, and Hinata thinks of Icarus.

///

They study Greek myths and stories in Literature class in the odd day that Hinata actually pays half a mind and at least one ear to his sensei instead of fully investing himself in his daydreams of volleyball practice.

The class reads the story of Icarus and the sun, and how his wax wings melted from flying too high.

Hinata doesn’t really understand, but there’s an illustration of a falling Icarus in their book that looks a lot like a spiker’s form in mid-air. One of his arms is outstretched, fingers reaching up to the sky.

Hinata gets distracted by it, and stops paying attention to the story.

He traces the drawing over and over with the end of his pen instead, and thinks, if I jump high enough, can I touch the sun, too?

///

In their match against Kamomedai, as his next crumbling breath drags across his throat and the crowd roars in his ears, Hinata remembers the picture of Icarus.

Remembers the line of an arm and the curve of a hand, greedy fingers clutching for the horizon.

A spiker’s form in mid-air, he remembers.

Hinata feels the pull of muscle and gravity in his next jump, as Kageyama sets the perfect toss into the air. For a second, the ball’s arc collides with the brightness of the overhead gym lights and creates a halo. For a second, between the swing of his arms and the crack of his flat palm against the smooth rubber of a volleyball, Hinata’s breath catches.

If I jump high enough, I can touch the sun.

If I jump high enough—

If I jump—

The ball slams down on Kamomedai’s court.

Karasuno pulls ahead, and Hinata thinks of Icarus.

///

“Oi, oi! Nice, Hinata!”

Tanaka-san’s words are blurry sounds submerged in a sea of noises.

Hinata’s body feels like he’s being scorched alive, burning, burning, burning.

Like the sun has devoured him in his victory.

Tanaka-san offers him a hand.

“Thanks!” Hinata grins, the fire thrumming under his skin. He makes a grab for his senpai’s hand and misses.

Hinata falls to the floor, eyes wide.

Hinata falls and falls and falls—

—and burns.

///

“I’m not injured,” Hinata says when they bench him. “It doesn’t hurt anywhere, I can still play—”

No one looks at him. No one listens, no one dares to pull their eyes up from the floor and look at him directly, even Coach Ukai’s eyes look glassy in their disbelief, piercing through him like he’s not there—

“I’m not injured! I can move, I can jump—”

—like he’s still falling—

“I’m not injured,” Hinata pleads, and it falls on deaf ears, swallowed up completely. “Please, Coach.”

Please.

Please.

“I’m not injured.”

///

His wings are made of wax and feathers and borrowed time. His father says just as much, warns him just as much.

Don’t fly too close to the sun, his father says. Don’t let ambition melt your wings off.

But I can do it, he wants to say. If I fly high enough, I can do it. I can touch the sun.

If I fly high enough—

If I fly—

///

There must be a lesson to be learned there somewhere, that Hinata must have missed in his distraction. A moral from the story that he didn’t completely pay attention to, drawn away by the streaks of ink and still motion across the pages of his Literature book.

There must be a lesson, Hinata knows, but all he could wonder about is this,

When Icarus fell, did he beg for more time, too?

///

Karasuno loses just as he reaches the hospital.

Just like that, the borrowed time on the court comes to an end.

Just like that, the wings come off.

Just like that, it’s over.

Hinata hands off Kenma’s tablet to Yachi-san and bows his head to an invisible gymnasium of people. The fire in his chest has left the taste of ashes in his mouth.

Just like that.

///

After Coach Ukai brings him dinner in his isolated room, his senpai gather and peek from behind the sliding doors with warm smiles and concerned eyes.

They can’t all come into the room at once—Takeda-sensei’s strict orders—so Noya-san and Tanaka-san coax him out his futon and closer to the door by bribing him with a bottle of sweet tea.

Hinata doesn’t need to be bribed at all, but he takes the sweet tea anyway and listens to the third years and second years’ retelling of the match with as much enthusiasm a sick person could possess. They leave him once it’s time for bath, but not without reaching into the room and ruffling his hair.

///

Suga-san comes back after an hour, freshly-showered and equipped with a face mask, to give him his medicine.

“The team misses you already,” Suga-san tells him with a pat of his head and a smile that Hinata could trace under the cloth of the mask. It makes Hinata’s chest warm with something other than a fever. “So rest up properly, okay?”

He nods eagerly. “I will, Suga-san.”

Suga smiles as he stands and makes his way out.

///

Much later, Tsukishima and Yamaguchi drop by, too.

Yamaguchi slides him a piece of mochi ice cream on a paper plate and Tsukishima rolls his eyes as he promises not to rat out the two of them.

They leave with the empty paper plate as soon as Hinata eats the dessert.

///

Kageyama is the last to visit around midnight, and he’s bringing a glass of milk with him.

“You snuck out from your room, didn’t you,” Hinata accuses at the sight of him, voice rough from sleep and sickness. “I’ll tell Coach.”

“Shut up, boke,” Kageyama grumbles without any real heat. He bullies Hinata into holding the glass of milk and drops to a seat next to the futon. He nods to the glass. “Drink,” he says.

“What am I, your dog?” Hinata scowls but drinks the milk nonetheless. It’s warm on his tongue, comforting, and oddly enough, that makes his eyes sting with pinpricks of emotion again. He blinks them back stubbornly.

Kageyama doesn’t say anything for a long time. He lets silence envelope them, lets Hinata finish the glass in peace with only the hum of the ceiling fan and the distant noise of the city in the background. Kageyama doesn’t say anything even as Hinata hands him back the glass wordlessly for him set down on the floor. Doesn’t say anything even when Hinata shuffles closer with his fever-warm body and drops his heavy head against Kageyama’s shoulder.

Kageyama has a tendency to be cruel on the court.

Hinata knows this all too well.

He can still hear Kageyama’s declaration—“I win again.”—despite the low-grade headache that has settled into his temples.

Off the court, Kageyama is not the same person. He cannot be cruel. He simply doesn’t know how to be.

Hinata is only beginning to realize this. But he trusts it, trusts Kageyama and the silence that rests between them as he speaks.

“Kageyama, have you heard of Icarus?”

Kageyama shifts in place, drops his shoulders lower to adjust to Hinata’s head pillowed on him. “From Literature class,” he says after a moment of consideration. “Remind me again.”

Hinata tells him, as best as he can with his croaking voice and heavy thoughts, the story of a boy who flew too high and fell.

He tells Kageyama about the drawing. Like a spiker, when they jump for your toss, you know.

He tells Kageyama about his mistake. There’s probably a lesson in the story, too. Or a warning, or something.

When he stops talking, Kageyama lets out scoff that Hinata finds to be generally offensive. “What, and you think you’re Icarus?”

Hinata glares. “Bakageyama, I’m being serious—“

“So am I,” Kageyama deadpans, cutting him off. Hinata’s words die in his throat. “You’re not Icarus.”

Hinata drops his glare to the futon. His fingers fidget with the covers. “I mean, I kind of am—“

“You’re not,” Kageyama insists stubbornly. “You’re—You’re better.”

Hinata lifts his head up and turns, eyes wide.

Kageyama meets his stare evenly.

A second passes by, and then two.

“You’re better,” Kageyama repeats quietly, insistently. “Unlike him, you don’t need wax wings to fly. You just need yourself.”

Hinata blinks. He remembers his jump, the glory of it captured in a split-second inhale, and the burning fall after.

His lip wobbles, eyes stinging. “But today. I—“

“Unlike him, you also get another chance, boke. He doesn’t.” Kageyama frowns. “Doesn’t he drown and die at the end?”

“I don’t know,” Hinata hiccups, crying again. His eyes hurt too much already and he hates it. When he buries his wet, snotty face in Kageyama’s sleeve, Kageyama lets him and pets his hair with his free hand. “I don’t know, you asshole, I didn’t pay attention to the story.”

“I didn’t either,” Kageyama says gruffly. He drops his head on Hinata’s hair and rubs his face against it like an angry cat. “Stop crying.”

“I’ll get better,” Hinata swears through his tears, choking out the words. He presses his face against Kageyama’s arm. “I’ll get better and then I’ll jump again. As high as Icarus flew.”

“Dumbass,” Kageyama whispers to him and to the empty vastness of the room. “You can go higher.”

///

The morning after they had lost to Kamomedai, Hinata wakes up with sunlight filtering through a sliver opening of the door and his fever mostly gone. For a moment, in the quiet of dawn, Hinata sneaks a hand out of his futon and lets it connect with the ray of light that reaches across the floor.

Hinata thinks of Icarus.

Of his melted wings and burning back and drowning lungs.

Of his arm and his hand and his fingers, forever reaching towards the light.

Hinata thinks of Icarus, and promises to be better.