Two Owls

Sweating

"Mine!" I dove for the ball, shit it was too low already. My body wasn't built to be libero, in fact I was built quite opposite the ideal libero build. I put my arms together, my body bracing to slide across the floor. 

My knees smacked into the hardwood, the ball hitting my arms at the same time, I flung my arms back, but I knew getting up wasn't an immediate option. I ignored the pain and twisted to watch the ball be recovered. As soon as I knew it wasn't a waste I leaned down on my hands, 

"Bokuto? Bokuto!" Coach was yelling at me, I put a hand up, keeping my head down as I tried to keep my breathing even. My knee was screaming, sending a grating pain up my thigh as I pushed down to my elbows. It wasn't a good feeling, but I just needed to get up, Akinori could take my place in a few minutes. 

I pushed up and immediately knew it was worse, My head flew back and I bit my lip to stop from crying out, I couldn't straighten the knee and I knew my dad was watching, most likely the entire court at this point. 

"Get your ass over here!" Coach screamed, I turned around, no one was playing, but the score had flipped up one on our side since I went down. I skipped over his face and saw Washio walking over to me, I hooked my arm around his neck. 

"Sorry," I muttered, I relied on him more than I needed to, putting any more strain on my knee would kill me and piss my dad off even more. 

"It's fine, it's the last set if we take it. We've got this." He reassured me. I nodded, "You're going insane and you need to take a break." He said before dumping me on the bench. I hissed as I twisted to sit down. 

"You could have let one go you idiot." Akinori  said as he ran past me, pulling on his jersey. He wasn't supposed to play today, but the third years weren't letting any of the first years get on the court in an official game. 

"Coach," I breathed before he could yell, "I know, but I need to go to the lockers." My wrap was in there, sitting in a bag of ice in the shower sinks. Someone put it there, a note in my locker told me about it; 

B~ 

You've been pushing your knee too hard, brought this in case. Stop being dumb 

XX

Of course the note was partially responsible for me being dumb, it was the first thing he'd said to me all week. 

"Go," he grumbled. I waved a first year over from the sideline, thankfully he had a little bit of muscle built up. He helped me to the locker room, 

"Here's fine." I said as I held the door open. 

"Sure, uh hey can I ask you a question?" His innocent green eyes looked up at me as I unhook my arm from his shoulders, 

"Sure kid, what's up?" I was dying to get the ice on my knee, but he looked anxious and I didn't want to make it worse by being mean. 

"Did uh.. Did you guys date?" My stomach turned. 

"Fuck off and go learn how to play volleyball." I rolled my eyes at him before limping into the locker rooms. Who wastes someones time like that? We were in the middle of a game and he was asking dumb questions. 

To be fair Akaashi and I had both been a bit more focused on the game lately, even practices were tense and everyone knew something was off. It was impossible to go back to that weird indifference we had as first years, instead it hurt to look at each other and I'd rather drop back and scrape up my elbows than let the ball go out. 

Coach hadn't pulled us aside yet, but I knew it wasn't far off. Last nights practice ended when Akaashi was put on the opposite side of the net, Akinori and coach spent less than a minute talking before coach said to go home instead of doing another practice set.