How to fly with clipped wings (English ver.) HAIKYUU!! FAN FICTION

Chapter 24: The Team

When she woke up again, it was because her leg was beginning to cramp up.

Normally, Mikaela used her alarm clock in her room to wake her up by at least 6 am. Whenever she slept over at Kageyama's place, he was always up early enough to wake her up by her usual time. She'd done this so often that her body seemed to have an internal alarm clock, so she was always up before her alarm. It was probably the fact that yesterday was so mentally exhausting that she needed all the sleep she could get.

But why was this 'sleeping in' a problem? Because she needed to take her pills by 7 am.

It felt like fire, like something that was crawling through her thighs and heating up her blood. God, it'd be so much easier if she could just rip her thighs off of her body. Mikaela groaned, trying to stretch her legs out, but the pain hit her like a brick and she froze.

"Shit."

Her bag. Tsukishima had mentioned that Kageyama had dropped off her bag- Come to think of it, the last memory she had of yesterday was chatting with Tsukishima on the couch. She had put her head on his shoulder...

Mikaela sat up so fast that she didn't even notice the pain in her legs.

Did I fall asleep on him?

Her cheeks burned. Not the time! Focus!

She twisted her body, eyes searching desperately for her backpack, only to notice that it was knocked away from her and out of reach. Shit. As soon as she extended her arm, another set of cramps seized through her thighs- now, not just the one leg. "Crap," Mikaela hissed through gritted teeth, wincing.

"Uh, Mikaela-san?" To her surprise, Tsukishima's older brother- Akiteru?- was the first in the room, a confused look on his face. "Are you-"

He never got to finish his sentence. Mikaela hissed out, "bag, front pouch, yellow!"

He stared at her for a very long moment before she waved her hand vaguely at her fallen backpack. Finally, he crouched down next to it, opened the front pouch, and pulled out the yellow container of her pills. Akiteru handed them to her and she snatched at them, opening the container with trembling fingers and forcing two pills down her throat. She choked, coughing hard enough that Akiteru hit her on the back, but thankfully the pills stayed down.

She flopped back from her seated position to bounce her head off the pillow underneath her, sighing. "Thanks," she croaked.

"No problem?" he replied, saying it more like a question than anything else.

"Akiteru? What's..." Mikaela turned her head and saw Tsukishima standing in the hallway, his lips parted in a yawn. His eyes went wide behind his glasses when he saw them together. "Mikaela? You're awake?" He shifted his gaze to his brother. "Did you wake her up?"

"No!" they protested in unison.

Tsukishima raised an eyebrow. "So why's she up so early?" Mikaela glared at him and held up the tiny yellow bottle, shaking it. The dozen pills that were left inside clattered noisily against the insides of the container. "Ah. You take those twice a day?"

"Yeah, and the first round is at 7 am," she replied breezily. "And as much as I love sleeping in, I like being able to walk even more."

"I've got to go to work," Akiteru put in, his gaze flitting from her to his brother, "but I'll be back early afternoon. Don't do anything dumb."

"It's Friday, we still have school," Mikaela said tiredly.

Both brothers turned sharply and glared at her, and it was so terrifyingly similar that she finally understood why Hinata freaked out every time she and Kageyama glared him down. "No," Tsukishima said sharply. "You're taking the day off."