Chapter Text
It took a long time for anyone to notice Shouyou’s tics. His father had left when Shouyou was seven, and his mother was busy trying to provide for two kids all on her own. There was no one at home watching Shouyou closely.
School wasn’t much different. His teachers were overloaded with thirty kids in each class to lecture and watch over. Asking anyone to identify the abnormal fidgeting of one student compared to three-dozen other energetic elementary school kids would be too much.
Even Shouyou didn’t notice the change at first. He was aware of the itch he’d feel before he shook his head or scrunched his nose. He recognized the impulse to move, but he didn’t realize how compulsive the behaviors had become. He had to shake his head. He had to scrunch his nose. He had to shrug his shoulders over, and over, and over.
It wasn’t until he was nine-years-old that Shouyou realized he couldn’t control his movements like other kids could.
“Hinata-kun, please stay still. There are quizzes out,” his teacher said from the front of the room. Shouyou nodded his head quickly before jerking it to the side a few times.
As soon as he felt like he had shook his head enough, Shouyou stared down at his test. He crinkled his nose a few times. Exams always gave Shouyou anxiety. It was hard for him to pay attention in class, and he had difficulty reading and writing because of it. Half of the time Shouyou was in a desk, it was all he could do to stay still, let alone listen to what the teacher was saying. Taking quizzes like this only proved what a terrible student he was.
Despite being only nine-years-old, Shouyou felt a lot of pressure to perform. He wanted to be smart, and he wanted his mother to be proud. Shouyou could feel sweat starting to bead at the nape of his neck as he looked over his exam. He could hardly read the questions.
The more nervous Shouyou felt, the stronger his urges to shake his head and crinkle his nose grew. He jerked his head to the side a couple times.
“Eyes on your own paper,” his teacher announced pointedly.
Shouyou bit his lip and tried to keep his head still. He stopped thinking, stopped breathing, focusing on nothing but looking straight down at his paper. Tears welled up in his eyes. He wanted to shake his head so badly; it was hurting him not to move it. There was no reason for Shouyou to desperately want to move his head around like this, but he couldn’t suppress the urge at all.
I’ll do it just once, Shouyou thought. His eyes flickered up to look at his teacher. The second she was looking the other way, Shouyou whipped his head to the side so fast he thought the tendons in his neck might break.
“Ah!” Shouyou squeaked. It had startled him; the action had been so violent.
His teacher turned back around at the noise and frowned when she saw Shouyou looking up from his exam. “Hinata-kun, you know full well that you’re supposed to be quiet and look at your own paper when tests are out,” she said, patience gone.
Shouyou’s eyes widened as she walked towards his desk. He couldn’t make eye contact with his teacher, he was too busy shaking his head, but he could tell that she was glaring. Shouyou felt his stomach drop when she grabbed his paper and ripped it in half.
“What? No!” Shouyou yelped, terrified to see his exam torn into pieces.
“Cheating won’t be tolerated in this classroom. You can talk to me about extra credit to make up for this exam later, but next time, don’t look at your classmate’s papers.”
“But I wasn’t!” Shouyou exclaimed, his head finally stilling. His heart was beating furiously in his chest, he was so anxious. He couldn’t remember ever feeling this nervous before, this jittery. He was two seconds away from crying, and all he wanted to do was… was… was scrunch his nose again.
“Don’t make faces at me, or you won’t be getting any extra credit points at all,” his teacher said.
She wasn’t being particularly mean, but she didn’t understand. Shouyou didn’t understand either. He hadn’t realized he’d been making a face. Tears welled up in his eyes. Shouyou crinkled and uncrinkled his nose over and over as he started to cry. “Sorry, sorry,” he apologized. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m sorry.”
His teacher arched an eyebrow at him, surprised by how emotional he had become. Her face softened when she realized how distressed he was. “Why don’t you take a walk,” she offered kindly. “Take a break and come back when you’re ready to learn.”
Shouyou nodded and stood up on shaky legs. He left the room biting back sobs and jerking his head to the side, unable to help himself.
The older Shouyou gets, the more body parts start moving without his permission. By the time he was twelve, his tics consisted of head jerking, nose twitching, hair twirling, jumping, hopping, flapping his arms, and humming.
It had become exceptionally difficult to sit in his desk at school. He jumped in his seat every now and then, and his teachers scolded him for being so wound up. He flapped his arms near constantly. The bullies in his class called him “Dodo” because all the flapping made him look like a bird that couldn’t fly.
The worst was the hair twirling. Shouyou’s mother always got worked up over his messy hair. She would take out the knots with a comb as gently as she could every night and every morning, but Shouyou still had bedhead.
“Mom, careful!” Shouyou squeaked as his mother tried to brush out his bangs.
“Well, I’m trying to- Geez, Shou-chan, this would be a lot easier if you would just sit still,” she complained as Shouyou’s head whipped to the side twice. He hopped in his seat. “I swear, you’re the most fidgety kid I know.”
“Mmhmm,” he hummed, tears collecting in his eyes when his mom set to work on a particularly big knot. Without thinking, his hand went up to twirl the hair at the nape of his neck. His mother smacked his hand.
“You’ve got to stop doing that, Shouyou.” She sounded exasperated.
Shouyou crinkled his nose a few times. “I don’t think I can,” he replied uncertainly. It had been three years since the day he couldn’t keep his eyes on his own paper in class, but things were only getting worse. Everyone was always telling him to stop moving, but only recently had Shouyou realized it wasn’t a choice for him. If he didn’t move, the tension in his throat and chest would grow so great that it hurt to breathe. He was pretty sure that wasn’t normal.
“Habits are hard to break, but anything’s possible with some willpower.”
“No, mom, you don’t-“ Shouyou cut himself off with a long hum. “Mmmmmm-get it. I can’t –mmmmmmm- sit still, I can’t.”
“You’re just energetic,” his mom assured him. “We have to find some way to get you to relax. You should join a club that will wear you out, something where you get to jump as much you like to. I feel like you’re constantly bouncing around.”
Shouyou’s mind leapt back to the volleyball tournament he had seen on TV the other day. He could still picture that tiny little player, jersey number 10 on the Karasuno team, jumping higher than the net, higher than the tallest spiker. Shouyou could jump like that. His mom was right; he was constantly hopping in place. Jumping to Shouyou was the same as scrunching his nose or flapping his arms.
“I was thinking I might try volleyball,” he admitted, wincing when his head jerked to the left and the comb got stuck in his hair.
His mom huffed out a sigh. “The sooner the better, huh?” she laughed lightly.
Shouyou nodded pitifully. He yanked out the comb and passed it back to his mother, a giant frown on his face. He hated getting his hair pulled out.
Starting volleyball doesn’t help Shouyou at all. In fact, it only makes things worse.
The tics don’t die down. If anything, they grow more frequent. Plus, every now and again, Shouyou felt compelled to suddenly scream whatever he was trying to say, and no one appreciated his random increases in volume or the outbursts he would have in class.
Now on top of getting bullied for his flapping arms and various other tics, people made fun of him for playing volleyball alone. Shouyou had never felt like more of an outcast. Sure, he had a few good friends who tossed to him when he asked and didn't laugh at him too much, but Shouyou wanted a team, and he wanted his body to stop moving without his permission.
Distracted by his thoughts of volleyball and the stupid bullies he had to deal with, Shouyou accidentally passed a ball out into the sidewalk. It rolled in front of one of his classmate’s feet.
“Here you go, Dodo,” the boy said, throwing the ball as hard as he could at Shouyou’s twitching nose. It hit him square in the face.
Shouyou fell backwards while the other boy ran away laughing. He groaned as he picked himself up off the pavement. Shouyou stood up on shaky legs, face aching, but determination in his eyes. “One more time,” he yelped, unable to help himself. He practiced receives until his mom called him in for dinner.
“Shouyou, stop moving around so much, you’re embarrassing me,” Kouji complained. He looked disturbed as Shouyou jumped up and down at his side. Waiting at the train station was hard, especially when your body wanted to move around so much.
Shouyou’s face crinkled up; although, he wasn’t sure if he was upset or if his nose scrunched up on it’s own. “Yeah, well, your dumb haircut is embarrassing me,” he complained, sticking his tongue out in Kouji’s direction.
Izumi hid a laugh behind his hand.
“Hey, it’s not funny,” Kouji complained, self-consciously pulling his hoodie up over his head. “My hair is fine.”
“Yes, it is, and so is Shou-chan’s jumping,” Izumi replied. He was always a great referee when it came to Shouyou and Kouji’s arguments. He never got on Shouyou’s case for his perpetual state of motion, and he always reassured Kouji when he needed it.
Kouji frowned but he perked up when he remembered where they were going. “Hey, Izumi, you said your mom got us kiwi popsicles, right?”
“No, just peach.”
“Oh, I like peach!” Shouyou exclaimed, his body stilling as he started talking. “I also like grapefruit. But have you had the Neapolitan spaghetti flavor one? Because that one is so gross, I can’t even believe that they made it a flavor. Every time I eat it, I feel like gagging, but I keep getting it anyway just to see if I can figure out why they made it, like maybe I just keep getting bad ones, but if that’s true then I’ve had an awful lot of bad ones, and maybe I should just stick to peach, and grapefruit, and soda, and-“ Shouyou cut himself off when he realized his friends were laughing at him. “Hey, what’s so funny?”
“Nothing, nothing,” Kouji promised, snickering behind his hand.
“Wha~at?”
Izumi flushed. “It’s just funny how you can be so hyper all of the time, and then the second you start talking, the only thing that stays excited is your face, and the rest of your body is still.”
Shouyou frowned at that, not sure what Izumi meant when he said he had an excited face. The train pulled up to the platform and all three boys stepped on. “I guess that’s true,” he agreed taking a seat and immediately fidgeting. Maybe if he was still when he was talking, he should try doing it more often.
Shouyou knew practice exams were going to be hard going in. However, he never could have predicted the sheer physical and mental strain they would be. Having to sit perfectly still and somehow focus enough to not bomb every question on the test was impossible. The only way for Shouyou to not move was to think really, really hard about not moving. Being still was something Shouyou did at the exclusion of everything else.
His tiny hands clenched into fists as he stared blankly down at his paper. He wasn’t reading, he wasn’t seeing. His skull felt like it was inflating like a balloon, and the pressure of it was immense. Shouyou squeezed his eyes shut as his headache grew more and more painful and his mind screamed at him to move, move, move!
The tiny part of his brain that wasn’t focused on keeping still remembered that time when he was nine, when his teacher accused him for cheating because he couldn’t keep still. That was just a regular test. This was a practice exam for high school. It was supposed to be taken seriously, and Shouyou didn’t want to get in trouble for moving.
He was so sick of getting in trouble for moving.
But just because Shouyou was determined, that didn’t mean this wasn’t painful. The longer he went without twitching, the more body parts were affected. His face felt itchy, his shoulders were tense in an effort not to shake his head. His arms burned as he tried to keep them still. His legs cramped in an effort to keep from hopping in his seat. Even his throat felt scratchy as he tried to keep from shouting.
Shouyou whimpered.
He felt a few eyes flicker over at him, but he ignored his classmates. If he lost his concentration, he knew he’d lose control. Every time Shouyou tried to stop his tics, he ended up twitching three times harder than before.
The exam instructor looked towards him curiously. “Hinata-kun, are you okay-“
“Ah!” Shouyou shouted, hardly letting his teacher finish. He wasn’t even sure if he was shouting to answer the professor’s question, or if it was just because he’d been holding back his voice and motion for much too long. The noise triggered something in him, though. One little shout, and Shouyou lost control of his entire body.
“Hinata-kun?”
“Hinata?”
“Shou-chan!”
Shouyou’s arms raised and lowered, his legs twitched, his shoulders shrugged, and his face scrunched all at the same time. The worst of it was his head, whipping to the side and back to the front over and over again. The movement was so fast and forceful, that Shouyou was worried his head would corkscrew off his neck.
He had never had so many tics at once. It was obviously alarming to his classmates, who were all calling his name.
“He’s having a seizure, let’s get him on his side,” the instructor said. Shouyou wanted to argue, say that all of his twitching was as voluntary as it ever had been. He just had to ride this all out. But before he could, he was being picked up out of his chair and laid on the floor.
Shouyou had stopped moving by the time the ambulance came to get him. Or, at least, he didn’t look like he was having a seizure anymore. Even getting every tic out of him at once wasn’t enough to keep him still for very long. The paramedics looked at him with concern when he jerked his head to the side as they helped him into the back of the ambulance.
Kouji ran up to Shouyou before class on Monday. “Hey, Sho-chan, are you okay? I heard what happened during the practice exam.” His eyes were wide with concern, and Shouyou laughed. It was always funny when Kouji was serious for a change.
“Yeah! The doctors said it was no big deal, I just have Tourette’s, and it gets super crazy if I try to sit still for too long.” Shouyou spoke like he was talking about the weather or his history class, not like he was announcing a neurological disorder to a close friend. If anything, the smile on his face grew wider when he was talking to Kouji.
“Tourette’s?” Izumi asked, sneaking up behind them and pinching Kouji’s sides. Kouji didn’t even pout, just kept staring at Shouyou.
“Yeah! It’s this brain thing where like… you have all these little motions you have to do? Like you have to do them,” he explained.
Izumi’s eyes sparked with understanding. “So the arm flapping…?” he asked as tactfully as he could. Shouyou nodded quickly. His cheeks flushed, but his smile grew brighter.
“Yeah! And the nose twitching, and the head shaking, and the humming, and the hair twirling, and the arm stuff, and the jumping stuff, and even the shouting stuff!” he yelled, demonstrating each of his tics as he listed them. Izumi giggled behind his hand, and Kouji pouted.
“But isn’t that a bad thing? Like… like that you have the brain-thingy? Isn’t that bad?” he asked.
Shouyou shrugged. “Well, I mean… Not really. Most people grow out of Tourette’s, so I won’t have to put up with it for long, I don’t think, and if it’s really bad, there’s medication I can take. But mostly it’s a good thing, you know? To know that I have it? That’s good because now I won’t get in trouble for twitching in class and my mom promised to stop yelling at me for tangling my hair. Like… like it’s good to know what is wrong with me. And it’s good to know that I really can’t help it. Like, I always said I couldn’t stop moving around, but now I know that’s really true, and it’s like…” Liberating. “It’s just good, I guess.”
Kouji nodded, but he looked pale. Izumi beamed and clapped Shouyou on the back. “Great! Even I was getting tired of hearing sensei yell at you for bouncing in your seat, I’m glad we don’t have to deal with that anymore!” Izumi said as he pushed their trio towards their classroom.
Shouyou twirled his hair and nodded with a brilliant smile. He was so relieved to know that he wasn’t crazy, that there really was something different about him. He had been living with these tics for so long without knowing what they were, it was alleviating to have a name for it.
Shouyou had Tourette’s. And even if it meant he got bullied, and even if it meant he got yelled at, at least he didn’t have to blame himself anymore. He had a neurological disorder to blame for his bad behavior. Shouyou didn’t have to feel guilty, or stupid, or anything.
And one day it was supposed to go away.
This was temporary. Most people grew out of Tourette’s by the time they were twenty. Shouyou could wait until then. All he had to do was bide his time with this silly disorder, deal with the bullies, and struggle through his homework, and one day it would all be over. Shouyou would be normal; he just had to be patient.
Except sometimes being patient wasn’t easy.
“Ah!” Shouyou yelped before slapping his hands over his mouth. His elbows flapped out at his sides. Public libraries tended to be bad places for Shouyou to hang out, especially when he had no way of controlling his volume or his voice.
However, he had entrance exams coming up. If he wanted to pass, he needed to study. Half the school was packed into the library. Shouyou could feel the stress radiating off of his classmates, and even the librarians looked tense. Meanwhile, Shouyou was distracting absolutely everyone with his constant twitching and noise-making.
“Shou-chan, are you okay?” Izumi whispered, looking up at him with concern.
Shouyou nodded. “I’m fine,” he lied. One of the things the doctors had talked to him and his mother about was his inattention and his reading and writing problems. Apparently they were common symptoms for people with Tourette’s. But just because Shouyou had difficulty with these things, that didn’t mean he was exempt from his entrance exams. The more he thought about how much material he still hadn’t studied, still didn’t know, the more anxious Shouyou became, and the harder it was to study.
The doctors said that anxiety and Tourette’s often walked hand in hand. Not only was Shouyou likely to feel more stressed than his classmates, but additionally, the more anxious he became, the harder it was to keep from ticking.
Izumi frowned. “Are you sure? Because you’re supposed to be quiet in the-“
“Mmmmm!” Shouyou hummed, bouncing his feet up and down on the floor.
“-Library,” Izumi finished. He looked pained. “Listen, maybe it would be better if you studied at home, yeah? You don’t do well in quiet spaces like these,” he said with a wince. His eyes flickered down to Shouyou’s still stomping feet.
“But I can’t study at home.” Shouyou’s neck burned as he realized how many people were staring at him. While it was nice to have a name for his behavior, that didn’t stop Tourette’s from embarrassing him on a daily basis. “Natsu wants to play, and my mom needs me to do chores, I can’t focus there.”
A student at the table next to them bristled. “Well, we can’t focus with you here,” he snapped.
Kouji finally looked up from his textbook. His face turned redder than Shouyou’s. “Hey! He can’t help it! You don’t know what he’s going through, it hurts him to make him sit still!” he shouted much too loudly.
Even Shouyou’s ears felt hot as he blushed. “Kouji-“
“No! No, it’s not fair that everyone makes fun of you, just because they don’t know! They don’t know what’s wrong with your brain! They don’t know anything, and it… it sucks! Everyone teases you! Even me, I used to tease you and yell at you all the time, and it’s not… it’s not… f-f-fair-“
Kouji started crying and Izumi snapped his textbook closed. “Maybe we should leave,” he suggested, although he said it like an order. Izumi threw Kouji’s things into his backpack and lead him out by the arm. Shouyou quickly scurried after them with his things, but he didn’t speak until they made it outside.
“Kouji,” Shouyou murmured, not sure if he should talk just yet. His friend looked up at him with watery eyes. “It’s okay that people make fun of me. It’s even okay that you did. For a while, not even I knew what was wrong with me, and I thought it was weird, too, you know? I don’t… I don’t move like normal people, not everyone is going to be understanding of that, especially when moving is a choice for them instead of a necessity.”
“I just… I hate it.”
“I hate it, too,” Shouyou agreed.
“Promise me that you won’t let any bullies follow you to high school, Shouyou. And promise you’ll only hang out with people who are nice to you, like Izumi.”
Izumi flushed. “Kouji-“
Kouji’s eyes flashed. “I mean it. No one gets to call you dodo anymore. You’re not a flightless bird; I’ve seen how you jump. You could be something incredible one day. Promise me you’ll make sure that happens.”
“I… I promise,” Shouyou replied nervously. He shook his head, this time on purpose, trying to force every ounce of timidity out of his body. “I promise!” he yelped, this time louder. His hands curled into fists, and he held them close to his chest. “I’m going to be great in high school!”
“Good,” Kouji agreed. He sniffled for a second, but all signs of tears quickly fell from his face. He ruffled Shouyou’s hair. “Now, let’s go to somewhere else to study, okay? My house is quiet, and my mom bought pistachios yesterday.”
“Perfect. Dealing with you two has made me hungry,” Izumi teased, elbowing Kouji in the side.
A smile crept up over Shouyou’s lips, and he fell instep alongside his two friends. Choosing a high school was going to be difficult. Picking a school far away would be best; he could get a fresh start. However, going to a high school in another town would mean playing volleyball without Izumi and Kouji -two of the greatest teammates he could ever ask for.
But Shouyou was ready for a change.