Chapter Text
The seatbelt light dings on.
Daichi’s eyes flick up to it with a passive curiosity, frowning slightly before moving his hands down to quietly clip his belt together.
“Ah, man…” Bokuto mutters, glaring up at the light. “That’s so annoying…”
“I’m sure it’s nothing,” Daichi murmurs, putting his attention back down to the book he was reading. “They turn that thing on for pretty much any turbulence.”
“I know, but I hate being stuck in my seat,” Bokuto sighs, before leaning forward in his seat to try and get a look down the aisle. “And I was hoping to go bother Oikawa.”
Daichi chuckled slightly. “Don’t. He’s not with us, don’t interrupt his trip because you want to be nasty.”
“I’m not nasty.”
Daichi looks to him to reply, but is distracted as Kuroo reappears, mumbling apologies as he slipped down the aisle and back into his seat. He has to slide past Bokuto to drop into the middle seat, huffing as he puts his seatbelt back on.
“I was right,” Kuroo says.
“Ushijima’s up front, really?”
“Yeah! I was just grilling him on the chances of him ending up on the same flight as us and Oikawa, but the hostess chased me away when the light came on.”
“That’s so weird,” Bokuto says, shaking his head.
“Maybe we can talk to them when we land in Brisbane,” Daichi says, slowly moving his eyes back down to his book. He’s only reading for a second, though, when there’s a loud bang to his right, and he barely has to flick his gaze to the window to notice the burst of flames that came from the wing engine.
---
“Hang on, is that- that is!”
Daichi looks over to Bokuto, who’s bouncing out of his airport seat and already running away from their gate, off towards one of the little cafes. He’s about to shout after him, but he notices who he was running towards.
Was that Oikawa?
Daichi gets up as well at that point, chasing after Bokuto to hopefully do damage control.
“Hey! Oikawa! Is that you? What are you doing here, man?”
Oikawa turned to look at him, eyes raising in what was not a pleasant surprise, seeming more irritated than anything else as he took them both in.
“Oh, hey,” he says, quickly flicking his charm back on and relaxing. “Wasn’t expecting to run into you two.”
“Us three!” Bokuto announces, loudly. “Kuroo’s around here somewhere.”
“Three, how… awesome,” Oikawa says, before nodding to the gate. “Do not tell me you’re on 337.”
“Hey! We totally are!” Bokuto says, putting his hands on his hips. “Australia, here we come!”
“Are you traveling with anyone?” Daichi says, cutting in and hoping to lighten the tension Bokuto seemed oblivious to. “Or… what’s bringing you to Australia?”
Oikawa gives him a tight smile. “All alone,” he says, followed by: “And I’m not going to Australia, this is just a connecting flight to me. I’m actually on my way to Argentina.”
“Oh, that’s super cool,” Daichi says. “What’s in Argentina ?”
“My future,” he replies, before the barista calls his name and he turns around to take the coffee cup offered to him. “And thankfully not you guys, it seems. Not that I don’t love catching up, but I’m going to go sit somewhere you’re not.”
“Rude, we’re a delight,” Bokuto scoffs, and Oikawa gives them a faux-polite dip of his head before turning to head back towards the gate.
---
Daichi feels like he’s able to see the flames in slow motion. His brain turns over rapidly, seeking out any hint of what could happen next. A part of him, stupidly, believes that maybe one of the hostess is able to just… stop the flames.
Maybe the flames are normal.
Maybe this is a normal technical error and it’ll be resolved in just a second.
There’s a weightlessness in his stomach.
It snaps him back to reality as he feels the plane beginning to fall from the sky, twisting slightly as only one engine propels it. He can’t breath-
Thunk
The oxygen masks fall in slow motion. He feels Kuroo’s hand gripping his wrist, but he has to shake it off to reach up and grab the mask.
He can see everyone doing the same.
And then the screaming hits.
Wham!
There’s another impact.
Daichi puts the mask over his mouth and nose, but he’s not sure what it’s supposed to do. He’s hyperventilating anyway. Out of the window he can see black smudges, shapes. Birds? Birds?
The fire from the engine has turned into thick, choking black smoke.
There’s an announcement over the intercom but Daichi can’t hear it over the screaming.
Everything has slowed down.
He leans forward slowly, hands lifting up to cover the back of his neck as he puts his head against his knees.
---
“Kenma, please, stop worrying, I’m going to text you as soon as we land. It’s not even that long of a flight,” Kuroo is laughing, pacing around in front of their seats. Daichi watches him pace with amusement. “No, it's not that long, you’ll be hearing from me tonight. Yes! I promise, now just go play your stupid game or something, distract yourself.”
Daichi smiles slightly, watching Kuroo disconnect the call with a shake of his head and turn to wander back over to them.
“He’s nervous?” Daichi asks.
“Yeah. Kenma hates flying, basically refuses to leave Honshu if he can’t do it by boat.”
Daichi chuckled softly, nodding along to that. “That’s too bad.”
“I’ve tried explaining that it’s one of the safest ways to travel, but he just doesn’t care.”
“Anxiety can be like that, it doesn't matter what’s true or not…”
“Yeah…”
“It’s still sweet that he worries about you,” Daichi says. “Are you guys still…?”
“We didn’t tell anyone we were dating, if that’s what you’re asking,” Kuroo says, putting his hands in his pockets. “We talked about it a bit, especially towards the end of the year, but since Kenma has another year left at Nekoma, we decided against letting it out. He doesn’t want Lev and the rest of the team getting their nose up in our business.”
“Ah. Well, that’s understandable,” he says.
“Did you even get around to asking that setter of yours out?”
Daichi stiffened slightly, lifting a hand to scratch through his hair. “Kind of? It’s a little bit complicated right now, actually, so…”
Kuroo raised his eyes. “Is that so?”
“Yeah, I-”
“Actually, hold that thought, I’m gonna run to the bathroom real quick,” Kuroo interrupts, turning to back away from him and seek out the bathroom.
Bokuto, who’d only been half paying attention beside him, suddenly turns around to look down the airport.
“Hang on, is that-”
---
The plane is shaking so violently he expects it to be torn apart.
The plane is then torn apart.
The whole thing is thrown into chaos and Daichi isn’t aware that one of the screaming voices is his own, as the wing is stripped from the body of the plane and they are sent careening down at an unfixable angle, twisting in the air and making everything feel weightless.
This is going to hurt.
Oh, god, this was going to hurt.
He doesn’t know if he’s crying, but his nails are digging into his skin as if he can change the future through sheer force of will.
No, no, no, no-
“I don’t want to die here,” he hears, muffled under the screaming, in Kuroo’s voice. “Please, God, anything, please, I don’t-”
---
“Australia is pretty cool, why’d you pick it?” Suga says, wandering around Daichi’s room and playing with the little trinkets and awards on the shelf - the gold medal from the interhigh tournament getting an extra pause to appreciate.
“Honestly, when we were booking tickets it was one of the cheaper options,” he said. “We considered somewhere in the U.S - California is apparently amazing this time of year, and the Rockies would be great, but Kuroo got all weird about crime and serial killers, which I tried to tell them that both exist in Australia, but-”
“Don’t even talk like that,” Suga laughs, turning to head back over to his bed, crawling onto his knees to sit in front of him. “I don’t want to think about all the dangerous things you might encounter, just how much fun this is going to be, and all the souvenirs you’ll bring me.”
“Oh, is that what I’ll be spending my time doing? Buying you souvenirs?”
“Of course it is,” Suga says, smiling back at him. Daichi can’t help but grin back, nodding. There’s a small lull in the conversation, one that is heavy with potential but Daichi misses entirely, eventually just drawing one of his knees up instead.
“I wish I was doing something cool this super, before Uni,” he says. “You’re gonna have all these cool stories, I’m so jealous.”
“It’s not like I’m moving there, it’s two weeks. We can definitely do something cool once I’m back.”
Suga nods an agreement, before letting his breath out and saying: “Still. I’d always thought it would be me and you and Asahi doing a cool graduation trip. I hadn’t realized you’d ditch us for some preppy city boys.”
“You sound like Tanaka,” Daichi says, before shifting around more fully to scoot in and sit beside him. “And we’ll do something when I get back. All three of us, if we want.”
Suga smiles a bit, biting his lip before saying: “Is it too late to uninvite Asahi?”
“You’re so mean!”
“It’s just a question!”
---
The impact almost kills him.
Daichi doesn’t know this medically, but he feels it in his gut. That if he’d been braced even slightly differently, or the plane had hit at a different angle, his neck would have snapped entirely.
As it is, the sheer force of the impact knocks him out for a few seconds, and when he’s blinking vision back to his senses everything is dark and loud and hissing.
There’s heat.
There’s water.
Screaming and sobbing and more screaming.
“Kuroo,” he says, tasting blood in his mouth and finding the word hard to say. He lifts his woozy head a bit, struggling to make sense of what he was seeing. Everything had stopped shaking, but the chaos felt insurmountable anyway.
He reaches a hand out to put on Kuroo’s shoulder. There’s water around their ankles and it’s rising quickly.
He shoves at Kuroo.
“Kuroo,” he repeats, before moving his eyes to Bokuto, who seemed more lucid, eyes fluttering as he sucked in a breath.
Bokuto looks over to him. There’s a glassy look in his eyes. A look that is begging for explanation.
“ Kuroo ,” Daichi says again, digging his nails into Kuroo’s shoulder. He felt a shuddering breath, and Kuroo flinched, eyes squeezed shut.
The water is rising.
Daichi unclips his seatbelt.
“Are you okay?” he says, unsure what that question could possibly be asking.
“No,” Kuroo replies, retching slightly. “Fuck, my head, I-”
Daichi reaches over to undo Kuroo’s seatbelt as well, nudging him. “Bokuto-”
“Yeah,” Bokuto says, wrapping an arm around Kuroo and trying to start moving. Daichi waits for the explanation. The flight attendant. He expects to hear shouting any minute now, as the plane wobbles and floats in the water, but rapidly starts tipping out of control and into the waves.
It would sink if they didn’t get out.
Where was the flight attendant? The pilot?
The movement he makes to look back towards where some of the flight attendants had been makes his head explode with sparks and pain.
He locks eyes on a flight attendant, a pretty, young woman with perfectly done hair and lipstick, strapped in to her seat. Her neck is twisted at an angle Daichi understands implicitly to be final for her.
It takes a lot of effort for him not to throw up.
“Daichi, we- oh god…” Bokuto says, standing in the aisle now and half dragging Kuroo. Daichi takes a look through the airplane.
They’re dipping down, the water rising furiously. Everything is a mess, there’s shrapnel scattered everywhere, some of the seats are crooked and bent, there are people, some alive and screaming and others terribly, terribly still.
One voice he recognizes, though, a scream of agony that’s pitched in a familiar way.
“Oikawa!” he shouts, unsure where he finds his voice as he pushes himself to his feet. He takes a few steps and immediately feels the stinging in his ankle, making him stumble against the back of the seat as he fought to get to the aisle. “Hey! Oikawa!”
“I’m - fuck! Fuck- ”
Daichi puts a hand on Bokuto’s arm, pointing to the emergency exit.
“Open it, get out, we need-”
“There’s nowhere to go,” Bokuto says. “It’s just water-”
“This plane is going to sink,” Daichi says, cutting him off firmly. “It doesn’t matter where we go, but - ah… grab the… seat cushions, from the plane, they float, and… and- get…anyone-”
Bokuto nods along, slightly, though Daichi isn’t sure he’ll be able to work through the panic reflecting in his eyes.
“Okay,” Bokuto says.
And Daichi turns away from them, heading down the crushed aisle of the plane, having to step over carts and luggage and all sorts of things to get down. The water is rising rapidly.
Oikawa has blood running from his temple, down over his nose and lips to his chin. It looks like whatever cut him got almost the entirely of his temple to his ear, and there’s blood in the water, from the seat in front of him that had twisted back on impact and crushed against his legs.
“Let me help-”
Daichi’s words die on his tongue as his eyes scan over the two passengers that were sharing his aisle. One of them was glassy-eyed and limp against the window. The other was pinned much like Oikawa was - but having been down in a position much like Daichi. With the seats twisting back, their neck and back had been broken in so many places they may as well have been flattened to the seat.
Oikawa’s tears are cutting through the blood on his face, and he’s pushing, with all of his strength, against the seat in front of him.
“Please, please-” he’s gasping.
“I’ve got you,” Daichi says, putting his hands on seat and throwing his whole weight into prying at the seat, desperate to get it to move. “I’ve got… I’ve got you-”
“It’s not working, it's not moving,” Oikawa sobbed, slamming his palm into the back of it. “ Fuck! ”
---
“Argentina, huh?” Iwaizumi says, sitting on the steps of the school, pretending to be more interested in his drink.
Oikawa wraps his arms around his knees. “It was a good opportunity, I’d be crazy not to take it up.”
“But… Argentina?”
“What’s wrong with Argentina?”
“It’s not Japan.”
Oikawa smiles slightly. “I know,” he says, before sighing softly and tightening his arms around himself. “I just… I don't think I can be here anymore. The community here is always going to think of me as a second-rate Kageyama. A consolation prize, for whoever doesn’t get to sign him.”
“You know you’re better than that,” Iwaizumi murmurs, putting a hand down on Oikawa’s shoulder and squeezing gently. “You’re an incredible player, anyone would be lucky to have you.”
He nods. “I know. But I need to do this for myself.”
“Okay,” he says, then: “It’s just… so far away. I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t have to spend most of my time making sure you didn’t get into any fights.”
“I know,” Oikawa mumbles. “I’m going to miss you too.”
“Well… you’ll just need to let me know when you get settled,” Iwaizumi says. “I’ll come down and visit, for sure. You’ll have to fight to keep me away.”
“I know,” he repeats, before saying: “I don’t think you should come visit.”
“What?”
“I don’t think-”
“I heard you, idiot, just explain yourself.”
Oikawa lifts his head now, looking over to him and giving him a smile that was entirely too sad. Iwaizumi swallows, immediately realizing what Oikawa meant and feeling his heart twist in on itself.
“I’m sorry Iwa,” he says. “You know I love you, so much, really, and that’s never going to change, but-”
“You’re breaking up with me,” Iwaizumi says, his voice cracking slightly as he worked to keep it neutral and calm.
Oikawa gives a small shrug, tears springing to his eyes. “I haven’t been a very good boyfriend this last year anyway. And I wouldn’t feel right forcing you to wait for me only for me to decide I’m never coming back to Japan.”
“I don’t want to break up,” Iwaizumi replies. “I don’t care about distance, or… whatever, maybe I’ll come to Argentina, maybe that’s the future, I don’t care, Tooru, don’t do this-”
“I love you so much.”
“it - I love you too.”
“Then let me go,” he says. “Let me do this with no strings attached. And maybe one day I’ll come back to beg for your forgiveness.”
---
Daichi grits his teeth, spitting blood out into the murky water and pulling as hard as he can on the seat. Oikawa is crying, nearly hysterical, but doing his best to fight too.
Someone bumps into him from behind, screaming and panicked and nearly shoving him over as they scrambled past to get to the exit.
“Everyone, please, move in an orderly fashion. Make your way to the emergency exit at the back.”
The voice is loud and calm, and Daichi lifts his head up, surprise running through him to see Ushijima herding people down the aisle, face shockingly passive and unbothered, despite the fact that his lips and chin are smeared with blood, his nose obviously broken.
He notices them, helping a young man up out of the seat and directing him down the aisle towards the exit before pulling away to head over to them.
“You seem to be holding your shit together pretty well,” Daichi spits.
“Would you feel better if I panicked?” Ushijima replies, but his voice is not without the bitterness and fear Daichi himself feels.
“Happy reunion, please someone get me out of here,” Oikawa cuts in, shoving at the seat. “The water is-”
“Getting bad,” Daichi finishes, soaked entirely now and feeling the plane starting to roll. If this took too much longer, they’d all be getting dragged down.
Ushijima puts his hands on the back of the seat, and Daichi moves around to help him.
It’s the only time in his life he’s ever been glad Ushijima is so strong.
It creaks slightly, and Ushijima is more likely to break the back of the seat than he is to shift it entirely, but the metal had bent once, and with a grit-toothed growl there’s a grinding of mental as the seat bends back into position.
Daichi doesn’t waste a second, wrapping his arms around Oikawa and dragging him up out of the seat.
Oikawa’s sob of relief is perhaps a bit premature, as the broken body of the plane begins to tip.
“We have to go,” Ushijima says, and Oikawa’s grip on Daichi’s arm is loosened, as he stumbles on weak legs up towards the exit, which had begun to rise in the sky as the plane took on water.
Daichi nods, focusing on where Bokuto was waving passengers out through the door, braced in the doorway.
---
“I wish I could go,” Akaashi says, nudging him. “But this is a graduation trip, right? It would be fair for me to go a year early.”
Bokuto smiled. “Ah, the guys wouldn’t mind. They like you nearly as much as I do.”
“That’s just not true.”
“No, but they still wouldn’t mind.”
“It’s a sweet offer, but you guys have fun, okay?” he assures him. “Maybe next year, you can take me and show me all the sights for my own graduation.”
Bokuto grins, nodding eagerly and putting his hands on Akaashi’s shoulders, following him out of the bus and down to the street.
“I think I can work with that,” he says. “It’s a date.”
Akaashi raised his eyes. “Oh?”
“Ah - sorry, no, that’s not… uhm… It’s just an expression, I think, I didn’t… mean anything by it, uh…”
Akaashi rolls his eyes, folding his hands together to give them something to do. “I know it is,” he says, before saying: “But, if you are free, maybe we can schedule a real date? Maybe before next year?”
Bokuto raised his eyes, surprise shooting across his face. “Hey - what? For real? Really?”
“I mean, only if you say yes. And I know you’re leaving in like two day, so we’ll need to wait until you get back, but-”
“Yes, yes, obviously, yes, we will plan the most perfect first date in the world-” and Bokuto is nearly crushing him, wrapping his arms around him so tightly. Akaashi laughs, and doesn’t dare complain about it. “Ack, now I’m not even excited for the trip, I just want to come back.”
“That wasn’t my goal!” Akaashi laughed, waiting a second longer before trying to shove him off. “Go, have fun, I’ll be here when you get back.”
---
“How’s Kuroo?” Daichi calls.
“Bad,” Bokuto replied. “But what isn't? Oikawa!”
Ushijima passes Oikawa off to Bokuto, and he does his best to support him, getting under his arm and angling him towards the opening. Oikawa stares down, horror crossing his face.
It’s the first time Daichi’s looked outside too.
The water is littered with both shrapnel and bodies. The blow-up exit had been deployed, which helped, but it seemed like it was sagging on one end, and there was oil and jet fuel slick in the water, dark violet and green streaks that caught the sunlight.
Some of it was on fire.
Daichi tried to find something to provide safety , but there was nothing.
He pulled away to tear off one of the seat cushions, ignoring the wet, red stain across it’s front and shoving it into Oikawa’s arms.
“You need to jump,” he ordered.
“Into the water,” Oikawa replies, staring down the scene ahead of him.
It was just endless, expansive water.
“Onto the blow-up,” Daichi says. “And then into the water. If it starts to get dragged down with the plane.”
“There’s nowhere to go,” Oikawa replies, looking over to him. “We’re going to drown, or… freeze, I-”
“No,” Daichi replied. “Planes don’t go down without being noticed. We just need to survive long enough for rescue to spot us. We just need to float.”
Oikawa doesn’t trust him.
He can see it in his eyes.
But it’s the only thing that’s the truth.
It was not about getting home , right now. It couldn’t be. There was no solution. It was a game of right now . What did they need to do right now.
The plane creeks and spins, and it’s now or never. Seconds, maybe, before it sunk.
Daichi shoves on Oikawa, and he shrieks a betrayal as he hits the blow-up and rolls off to the side, gasping and trying to pull himself together.
“Go,” he says, nodding to Bokuto.
Bokuto is less hesitant, nodding slightly and lining up in the door, trying to plan his exit.
There’s crying.
There’s been a lot of screaming and crying, but this is pitchier, it catches his attention more than the others for its volume and tone. He pulls back, scanning the plane's aisles, of broken luggage and seats and bodies .
And there , down at the bottom, as the plane begins to sink, drowning, is an older woman carrying a kid maybe no older than two years old.
Panic over takes him.
He screams, twisting around to scramble back down the aisle and reach them, but something wraps around his waist and hauls him back.
---
“Make sure to tell your dad I say hi,” Tendou says, taping up the last of his cardboard boxes. It was the last day to move out of the dorms. They had to be gone by that evening, and it was a bittersweet moment. High school might have been hell for Tendou in a lot of ways, but this room had come to signify the best years of his life.
Ushijima hums a response, before bending down to pick up Tendou’s box. “I’ll carry this down for you.”
Tendou knew, realistically, that this could very well be the end of his friendship with Ushijima. It’s not like the other was very good with texts, or calls, or keeping in touch. If Tendou didn’t pay attention, he had no reason to guarantee that Ushijima wouldn’t fade out of his life without another word.
“So, when are you flying out?”
“Next week.”
“Are you excited?”
“Sure.”
Tendou folded his hands behind his back, following Ushijima down the stairs and out to where his cousin’s truck had been borrowed, ready to haul his stuff off.
Ushijima sets the box in with the rest of his stuff in the back, brushing his hands off.
“Are we still going to be friends? Once we’re off doing different things?”
Ushijima looked over to him, seeming surprised by that.
“Of course.”
“I know, but… you’re not exactly social, right, and… well, you’ll be playing professional volleyball with a bunch of super cool new guys, and I’ll be wasting all my time in culinary school, so… like… what if we just… don’t talk as much anymore? What if we stop being friends?”
Ushijima closes the back of the truck.
“I’m not worried about it.”
“Oh. Glad to see someone’s confident…”
Ushijima puts a hand on his arm. “I just mean that I intend to keep in touch with you. You’re the closest thing to a best friend I’ve ever had. It might be hard to believe, but that means something to me.”
Tendou smiled, then leaned in to wrap his arms around him tightly.
“Oh, Wakatoshi! You’re such a softie you know that?”
Tendou might be making it up, but he’s pretty sure he can feel Ushijima laughing, even if he tries to stifle it.
---
Ushijima is stronger than Daichi is, and basically drags him back to the exit.
“There’s a kid down there!” Daichi shrieks, but it’s too late for him to do anything, as Ushijima gives him a hard shove and throws him from the plane.
He feels himself hit the blow up, immediately tipping and spilling off it into the water.
The plane is sinking.
It happens in seconds .
It was slow, when the water was building up, but the moment it reaches the point of no return, the metal hull is dragged down beneath the water in the blink of an eye. The blow-up emergency exit is attached to that hull, and is dragged down with it.
Daichi gasps, feeling the water beneath him sink and tug, and he turns and throws his effort into avoiding the current.
He can still hear that little kid screaming.
His whole body is numb, and he feels sick. He wants to throw up, but he manages to hold back.
“Daichi!”
He sucks in a deep breath, trying to ignore the cold of the water as he looks around.
Water.
Just water.
And bodies.
And metal.
Someone tosses something over, that splashes beside him, and he grabs onto the seat cushion gratefully, letting it take some of his weight.
All of that, just to get out of the plane?
That had taken everything he had, and they weren’t even done.
He sees Bokuto some distance away, doing his best to keep Kuroo awake and floating. Oikawa had tossed him the seat cushion. Ushijima is making his way, slowly, through the water towards them, stopping by a few of the other survivors to put a hand on their shoulder, try and check in. But there’s nothing to do , no way to help, even if they need it.
He turns to where the water was still bubbling, from the plane disappearing.