Unhealthy obsession (Haikyuu AU)

Chapter 29

RECOMMENDED SONG: INSOMNIA BY ZAYN

Kuroo released the pressure from the pillows between which his head was. The phone had stopped ringing four days ago because it had run out of battery. And Kuroo hadn't even bothered to charge it.

He wasn't interested in messages or calls—nothing they had to say really seemed important.

A light beard grew around his jaw, usually soft and without a shadow of facial hair. His eyes were red after so many nights without sleep or sleeping so badly that it couldn't be considered resting. The room was dark and it smelled musty. His stomach ached after a week on an empty stomach: the pain started from nerves and anguish, and that caused him not to eat; but after three days, the pain changed to a pain caused by lack of food, a pain that took away the desire to eat and therefore increased more and more, like a vicious circle.

A warm smile.

His mind wandered through limbo between a state of consciousness and a dream state where nothing made sense. He didn't know where he was, what day of the month it was or what time it was, he just knew he was a failure, overwhelmed by his own dark and twisted feelings. He felt that he was suffocating every time he took a breath of air, that he choked every time he shed a tear that got lost between the sheets that covered him.

Black and white hair.

He closed his eyes and let himself be rocked by a gentle breeze that made his head spin, absorbing every drop of sanity that remained inside him. He heard nothing, just a rhythmic flowing sound: the sound of blood flowing thanks to the beating of his heart, now broken into a million pieces.

Golden eyes.

He did not know how long he had spent in his world full of darkness when a hand tugged at the covers that covered him, uncovering his body almost naked except for the black underwear. His skin crawled at the sudden cold and his mind snapped out of the black eclipse in which it slowly consumed itself, devoured by self-pity and apathy. Morning sunlight streamed through the window and hit his skin, and fresh air flooded the room that had been closed for days.

Kuroo's reason to be.

He heard a voice screaming, but he didn't have the strength to move, so he kept breathing evenly, too tired to make any gestures. Maybe he was dead.

And deep down inside, Kuroo wished it were so.

***

"KUROO-SAN!" Tsukishima yelled desperately.

He rolled him over onto his back and shook him, but Kuroo made no move, as if he had lost all ability to react to external stimuli. Tsukishima had been calling him for the last 7 days, ever since Kuroo hung up the phone saying he would "call him later". But he never did.

Tsukishima didn't know what to think. Was he drunk? No. Was he high? No. There was nothing in the room to indicate that Kuroo used some kind of substance on his body; noise or light didn't make him cringe in discomfort. But the way Kuroo barely moved scared Tsukishima. He had never been so long without answering the phone, he never made anyone worry like that, he never isolated himself from the world.

He had never been like this.

He was alive because he was breathing—slowly and shallowly, which was certainly worrying—but Tsukishima didn't know how conscious he was. His eyes opened and closed at irregular intervals, his gaze lost somewhere on the wall and his pupils fully dilated.

"Kuroo-san, please," Tsukishima almost begged.

He sat down on the mattress and, as best he could, applying more force than he thought capable, he pulled Kuroo off the bed and left him sitting on the mattress. He had to hold him so as not to let him fall on the bed again, because his body felt heavy and inert, limp on the bed as if all life had left his body and had only left behind an empty shell that could hardly be considered a person.