Level Horizon (Haikyuu!! WingedAU)

Year One.30 1/3; Mortal Contention

I think that everyone has a choice in every difficult situation. The thing about anger is that it invades your thoughts in such a way that you forget you have those choices and your emotions take control. ~Jim Medlock

~One Month Later; Summer's End~

Koushi Sugawara hands a glass of water to Daichi where he sits beside the Volley net, sweat coating his brow.

"How's it going?" He asks with a grin and his leveler glances up at him.

"Excellent. Thank you, my beautiful silver star." He murmurs softly, his hand brushing across Koushi's fingers a little too long. The thrush's face heats and he knows he's blushing.

"Daichi, you're being embarrassing." He murmurs, but his mouth tugs in a sheepish smile all the same.

"How else am I supposed to get you to look like that?" The crow says with a smirk and Koushi's eyes widen. If he wasn't blazing red before, he is now.

"Daichi." He scolds. Daichi reaches for him and he ducks away with a laugh.

And then he stumbles at the sharp bark from Kageyama, and the thrush wants to both cringe and sigh. The two have been taking passive-aggressive shots at each other for over a month... since the last time they'd brought Hinata into Sheru Bay, to be precise. And they had planned another trip with the redhead today, but it sounds like Hinata has taken the same approach as last time and opted not to say anything until they are basically ready to go.

Koushi gets why the redhead has stooped to keeping his plans from the other setter until the last minute, but it makes him anxious with dread because Kageyama doesn't do surprises— unpleasant ones even less so.

For the first months after they'd joined the beach crew a year ago, things had been fine between the two in the wake of their leveler 'enlightenment'. But Hinata had slowly been losing his mind by the following spring, and that's when things had begun to unravel. With Kageyama stuck at the beach house while Hinata mitigated his sanity with human interaction, a tension had returned between them that had only built. By that third trip with the redhead, they were blatantly arguing over it which had done nothing but escalate over the next six months.

As the thrush hears the rise of Hinata's musical voice until it competes with Kageyama's, he laments at where they've come. It truly breaks his heart to see them fight; they are members of his unit and his friends— his family at this point.

But he and Daichi have never had this kind of problem and he has no idea what to do about it. He's tried reasoning with both Hinata and Kageyama to get them to mellow and has apparently hit a brick wall in both directions, because they are at it as hard today as they were last time— maybe more. And it's accelerating down that horrible spiral much faster this time.

"I can't stay here all the time, Kageyama! It's like going around a circular room searching for a corner." Hinata finally snaps at the setter, his patience gone and that heavy voice that betrays his fury lashes out at Kageyama.

Koushi sucks in a breath and turns to stare at them. He can't remember a time where the redhead has turned that tone against the black-haired setter, no matter how insufferable he could be. Daichi had told him that it did occasionally happen growing up, but it was quite uncommon. Apparently, it's as rare as he thinks it must be, given the way Kageyama stares back at the redhead. Finally, the crow setter's face smooths out.

"Then go. And maybe don't back, because I can't do this every time you want to take a field trip." He says flatly, his voice sounding horribly dead, and Hinata's face goes slack, as if the words were a capital sentence.