Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Should we have invited Asahi?” 

Suga likes Daichi’s voice like this. It’s calmer than it is in the gym, more relaxed than it is at school, and deeper, from the alcohol. They can’t see each other, because they’re both lying on the floor of Suga’s room, blindly tossing a volleyball back and forth. 

The lights on his ceiling look a little bit too bright. There’s a bottle of sake somewhere in between them, three-quarters of the way empty with the cap screwed on tight. 

“He wouldn’t have wanted to drink, anyway,” Suga responds. His tongue is a little heavy in his mouth, and part of him feels like he’s sinking into the floor. The wood feels more forgiving than it usually would on his sore muscles. 

He sets the ball when it comes back his way, but he hears the telltale sound of Daichi’s big hands slapping on the leather of the volleyball a moment later, stopping it instead of sending over to Suga again. “You’re right,” Daichi responds. 

Suga hears him sit up, and after a beat, warm, dark brown eyes are staring down into his own. Daichi’s expression looks funny from below him, at first very serious and almost intimidating. Then, those eyes crinkle up with the perfect smile, the one Suga sees on Daichi’s face only sometimes, and Daichi adds, “I like when it’s just us.” 

Suga can feel it on his face that he’s grinning back, and when he sits up, too, his head spins for a moment. He places a hand on Daichi’s knee to steady himself. His lip quirks when he notes, just shy of teasingly, “It’s usually just us, Daichi.” 

Daichi places his warm palm atop the one Suga has on his knee. “I know.” His lips smack, and his brow furrows together. With another smile, he adds, “I like it.” 

And Suga laughs, because Daichi is kind of drunk, and so is he, and it’s only 9:30, so there is so much time for the rest of their night to be just like this. 

Sitting up, Suga realizes that he was perhaps deluded about the floor being more forgiving than it normally is. It’s uncomfortable on his tailbone, and he groans when he rolls his shoulders back. “The floor is hard,” he says cleverly. 

Daichi barks out a laugh, the kind of bark that sometimes Suga makes fun of him for because it sounds so stupid. “You’re being observant tonight, Suga.” 

“It’s the alcohol, Dai. It’s making me realize all sorts of new and wonderful things. Like the solid texture of a hardwood floor, and how incredibly foolish we are for utilizing it instead of my perfectly suitable bed.” 

Daichi snorts again at Suga’s tone. “So are we moving?” 

“Yes,” Suga whispers. “But we have to do it very slowly.” 

“How come?” Daichi whispers back, leaning their heads closer together, as if they are sharing a very important secret. “And why are we whispering?” 

Suga pauses to consider the question. “I’m not sure,” he continues in the same hush. “But we have to do it slowly because there is a fair chance that I’ll stumble in this inebriated state, and falling would be incredibly embarrassing.” He leans in even closer to tell the biggest secret of all. “There’s potential that I’ll need you to catch me.” 

Daichi nods solemnly. “Understood.” His eyes dart around the room, as if there could possibly be someone listening in on this top-secret meeting. “But Suga,” he starts, leaning even closer, so that their foreheads are nearly touching. He starts to giggle before he can finish. “I-I’m drunk, too. So we both might fall.” 

Suga considers this reality, and after an extremely brief deliberation, he grabs Daichi’s arm, declares, “If we fall, we fall together!” and yanks them both to stand. 

They do not fall. Instead, they wind up standing in the middle of Suga’s small bedroom, Suga holding Daichi’s forearm, waiting to hit the ground again. 

They collapse into laughter at once. Suga laughs so hard it feels like air isn’t coming into his lungs any longer. He steps forward and presses his forehead into Daichi’s shoulder. They both shake, feeling ridiculous and elated all at once. 

Once they finally regain composure, both of them still breathing very hard from their laugh attack, Suga gasps dramatically. 

“Daichi!” he exclaims. “We’re idiots!” 

Daichi pauses before he responds, as if to genuinely consider how stupid they are. “Yes,” he replies. “But why?” 

Suga squeezes Daichi’s forearm, where his hand is still securely planted. “We went from sitting on the floor to standing, which is possibly worse. Off we go.” 

After narrowly avoiding tripping over a volleyball and five short steps later, they’ve flopped backwards onto Suga’s bed, shoulders pressed together and legs hanging off the edge from where they lay perpendicular to the headboard. 

“You’re right,” Daichi says upon landing. “This is way better.” 

Suga begins to swing his legs aimlessly, his socked feet hitting the side of the bed. Above him, he sees his own offwhite ceiling. Next to him, the sound of Daichi breathing. “Why don’t we drink sake more often?” he asks – to Daichi, not the ceiling, with which he maintains steady eye contact because it does look particularly fascinating right now, for some reason. 

“Because we’re underage, and you’ll be hungover tomorrow.” Daichi’s voice is so deep. He sounds almost assertive, even though his words cling together just a little bit, having grown closer from the sake. 

“Oh. Right. Always the voice of reason, captain.” It’s Suga’s job to tease Daichi, and it shows in his voice. Sometimes his tone doesn’t always match his feeling. 

“Don’t call me that.”

Suga wonders absently if he is also talking at the ceiling. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see that Daichi’s head is tipped back like his own, but rather than focus on off-white paint, his eyes are closed. 

“Why? You are now.” He says this matter of fact. It spills off his tongue easily. As easily as it was to choose him to become the captain in the first place. Spring is approaching quickly, and everything is pushing, pushing, pushing. Pushing the petals to burst from their buds. Pushing warm air down from the sky and into the land. Pushing them as so to say, Your turn, now. Easy. It’s your turn. 

Daichi groans. 

Repudiation is not a good look for him, since he is so wonderful. Suga prepares to give him a push himself. Easily . Drunk, but still easily. 

Suga rolls his eyes at the ceiling, but thinks somehow Daichi will know that he’s done so.“What? Are you gonna go on that weirdly off-brand tangent again where you give a preachy speech about how you’re not fit to lead? No way. Ugh. And right after I called you the voice of reason, too. I know that you know you’re more suited to do this than anyone, so start acting like it. Don’t tell me Asahi has rubbed off on you?”

He sits up to look at Daichi just as he had done to Suga when they’d been on the floor. Staring down into wide, brown eyes that don’t match the mildly shocked expression that has taken over Daichi’s face, he smirks. “Besides, you have me as your vice, so you have nothing to worry about.” 

Suga leans a little closer to emphasize his point, and his silvery bangs nearly brush Daichi’s forehead. He watches as Daichi’s face bursts into a smile again. He barks out that stupid laugh once more. His eyes crinkle up with that perfect grin. 

“As much trouble as you are, that is reassuring.”

“Daichi,” he whines, “you and I both know how much you love dealing with trouble.”

Daichi hums in response, and it’s not disinterested, it’s a mere acknowledgement of truth. Suga is trouble, and Daichi reels him in, hand over hand over hand. Suga continues to stare down, and Daichi stares back. Their brown eyes stay reflecting one another, but it’s not tense nor heated, and it doesn’t leave either of them with the feeling that perhaps they should turn away. They just look, and it’s okay, because they’re allowed to. They’ve been doing this for a long time now – finding borders and crossing them. In the true nature of best friends. 

After what feels like just a moment, but could potentially be several moments, or maybe an eternity, the arm that was propping Suga up gives out, and he collapses unceremoniously onto the boy beneath him. His face smushes into Daichi’s shoulder, which honestly kind of hurts his nose, but from this proximity he’s able to note that Daichi smells wonderful , like someone fresh from the shower and aftershave. It adds up, considering they showered after practice and came straight to Suga’s, but for whatever reason, Suga had felt like drunk people never smelled good. Daichi proves him wrong, which is something they do to one another fairly often. 

They fall into laughter easily, since everything is funny when you’re drunk with your best friend – plus Suga fell, which is hysterical. And it’s probably laughter at nothing, but it feels like the only sound that should rightfully escape his mouth in this moment. Suga’s belly is warm from sake, for sure, but also from knowing that when he goes to lead, he’ll lead with his best friend. That stupid, smart brute who he can fall on, whose collarbone he can nose into, whose skin he can leave his face pressed into as they laugh and laugh and laugh. 

“Should we watch something?” Suga asks, voice muffled from where he lays semi-on top of Daichi. 

“If you want. It’s early.”

“Watching something means getting up, doesn’t it?” His mouth keeps pressing into Daichi’s skin. It’s accidental. He’s surprised Daichi doesn’t tell him off for his slobbering. 

“Well, I can’t get up, considering how you’re on top of me.” 

“Only sort of,” Suga reasons. He shifts a bit, but can’t bring himself to lift his head off of Daichi’s shoulder. “Suddenly, my laptop feels very far away. Don’t even mention the basement, that’s lightyears away.”

Daichi laughs. “We could sleep,” he suggests. 

“And go to bed without brushing our teeth? Captain, somewhere, your dentist is shuddering.”

“You’re so goofy,” Daichi mumbles, bringing a hand into Suga’s hair. He begins to comb through it with his fingers, and Suga melts. Daichi doesn’t touch him too often, but when he does, it always feels deliberate. He’s never too careful, because neither of them feel like they have to be. “Am I the only one who knows how ridiculous you are?” 

“Guard my secret carefully, Daichi. And please get the laptop.” 

He tacks on the request on a whim, because he doesn’t really feel like moving away from Daichi or having his hair be left alone, but he would like to watch something, and he’s starting to feel a little less drunk than he did before. Curling up would be nice. They’ll probably fall asleep together, like they do sometimes if they pass out by accident or if Suga is too lazy to unroll the guest futon.

They probably won’t brush their teeth. 

Suga has learned a lot of things since being in high school. One is how to have a best friend – and when they spend Saturday nights together he gets to say, Oh, thank goodness. Another night like this. 

They find themselves here often – the perfect setting, with low light and space that seems to adjust to their bodies like it knows them personally. Though, by now, one might argue that it does. Sugawara’s basement. Originally, it had started off as a little project of his back in the few weeks that separated the end of middle school and the start of high school. 

There had been a lot of determination in the Sugawara household at that time, and a warm energy seemed to surround his family. Suga’s father had gotten a promotion, and they made many improvements to their house because of it. Or at least, they’d fixed up the living room. 

Suga had made himself a project of converting their one-room, unfinished basement into a home for the old furniture they were going to get rid of. Convinced it would be the perfect place to have friends over during high school winters, Suga saved posters from his volleyball magazines that he hung on the freshly painted, dark walls. Warm lights were strung across the ceiling. It felt less musty with only a few days’ work. 

The TV was old and pixelated, and it only played VCRs, but there was something nostalgic about having to watch solely movies from the collection he had from when he was young. As an only child, he watched quite a few movies. 

The couch was possibly in a worse state than the television, but it had this sort of warm, homey appeal that one would probably only understand if they sat on it. Piled up with thick, fuzzy blankets, you wouldn’t know the difference anyway. 

It often felt damp down there, but it was private and felt like home. Not to mention the perfect place to watch the Japanese dub of both the first and second Toy Story movies. (Daichi’s favorite. He says he used to watch them with his little brother and sister all the time.) 

Suga’s currently on his knees in front of the TV stand, blowing on the VCR to be sure there’s no left over dust that could harm it or the old television. He essentially lives in constant fear that one (or both) of them are going to give out soon. He pauses with the film case in his hands at the sound of Daichi’s voice. 

“How’d that start, anyway?”

Suga cranes his neck up to follow Daichi’s eyes, and he sees his gaze fixated on the wall adjacent to the couch. 

“What, the writing?”

Daichi makes a noise of affirmation, leaning over the arm of the couch to get a closer look at what some of the words say. 

What was once a wall of dark navy blue is now somewhat hazy. Originally, just those volleyball posters had decorated the space, but about a year ago, Nishinoya Yuu had catapulted himself into the lives of every single Karasuno team member, and thus the state of Suga’s little basement hideout had been altered forever. 

It was a good thing, at the very least. 

Daichi had somewhat accidentally volunteered Suga’s basement at the start of their second year as the “perfect space for team bonding” and it has never been the same since. 

Tanaka, Noya’s soon to be partner-in-crime, had nearly imploded with excitement at the sight of it. 

“Whoa, Suga-san!” he said. “This is amazing! You know, my sister showed me this thing on Pinterest a couple days ago, and I’ve been itching to try it. But my mom would kill me.”

He made a scary, devious expression at Nishinoya who seemed to know where he was going with this. 

“Have you ever thought about writing on these walls with chalk?” 

Then two vicious grins were pointed Suga’s way, and he had barely even been given a chance to say no. Nishinoya could be quite persuasive when he wanted to be. Which, Suga would soon learn, is most of the time. 

In exchange for chalking his walls, he was promised two meat buns on Monday evening and Noya’s poster from the girls’ swim magazine that he’d been saving (which was hung up that night; it had been in his bag that very moment). Noya and Tanaka ran the whole kilometer to the store and back to bring packets of white chalk. 

“You were there, weren’t you?” Suga asks, sarcastic as he pushes the VCR into its slot and stands to get a better look at the wall. It had all sorts of things on it now – Karasuno team photos, posters of the Brazil national team, printed out 3x5s, bad report cards (courtesy of Tanaka). 

The navy wall was cloudy with chalk from where countless things had been erased haphazardly. It could be a timeline, but it was far from chronological. Maybe more like a map. As if someone had scrambled up a puzzle but decided that the pieces looked fine just like that. 

“Do you not remember Tanaka and Noya running to the store last year to buy chalk and promptly writing ‘FUCK’ on my wall? Without my consent?”

Daichi chuckles at the memory, coming up to Suga and resting an arm on one of his shoulders. Their eyes scan the memories in tandem. Suga isn’t really paying attention, more focused on all of what’s in front of him, all of what’s beside him, but he vaguely registers the voice coming from the TV, announcing, Coming soon to own on VCR. 

“You consented,” Daichi argues lightly, fingers skimming a photo of the two of them with Asahi on the day of their first official match. Almost two years ago. All of their hair was much shorter. Their eyes maybe a little bit brighter, but not by much. Asahi was not as tall as he is now, though the same couldn’t be said for the other two. (Sometimes Suga loves his fly away hairs, since it makes him nearly the same height as Daichi, his extra two centimeters be damned.) 

“Barely,” Suga huffs, but there’s no heat behind it. He’s distracted now, by the weight of Daichi leaning on him and at the sight before him. These days, it feels like the wall has always been like this. Just a part of the room. He almost never takes the time to truly look at it. 

Some time passes, and Suga can hear the menu screen of Toy Story playing on repeat behind them. Daichi’s arm is ever-present on his shoulder, unnecessary, but there. His face keeps quirking up with smiles as he reads the stupid shit written on the wall, like the list of words they once complied to use to refer to Asahi. It’s impressively long. Number one is “coward.” Number seven is “TURTLE!!” (This is in Noya’s handwriting. He’d explained this in an elaborate metaphor about a tough shell harboring a soft, shy inside. No one had the heart to tell him that it wasn’t exactly a metaphor that warranted explanation.)

They move back to the couch in unspoken agreement, but as soon as they’re covered in a blanket and the snack bowl is in Suga’s lap, he cranes his head very slowly and somewhat nervously toward what is surely going to be the brown-eyed, stern Intimidation Face of Sawamura Daichi. 

One quick glance to his right, and that is confirmed. 

But while his face is scary, his voice is far scarier. “You do it,” Daichi demands. 

Suga shakes his head no rapidly. “No, you do it.” 

“Suga,” Daichi warns. “You do it.” 

Suga pops a chip into his mouth and kicks his feet onto the busted old coffee table for good measure. “No, you do it.” He crunches obnoxiously. “I’m already comfy.”

Daichi pulls the blanket to his chin. “So am I.” 

“I already put it in.” 

“And I got the snacks.”

“It’s my house.” 

Daichi frowns. “Low blow, Sugawara. You know the kids like to watch TV on the weekends.”

Daichi’s parents are kind of strict about television when it comes to his younger siblings. When Suga comes over, he’ll put them on either side of his lap and watch YouTube videos with them on the couch to make up for it, fending off small, grabby hands in his best attempt to make them laugh. Daichi always smiles at him extra, on those afternoons. Suga likes his family. 

 Regardless, they almost always hang out at Suga’s house, especially for movie night – which specifically takes place in the basement, so it’s not too fair of an argument in the first place. Besides, he really is comfortable and has no intention whatsoever of getting up. 

The thing is, the busted old TV has no remote. It probably did, once, but not in Suga’s rather formidable recent memory, so it involves someone actually pressing play on the physical TV. 

“If you do it, I’ll do some other –  reasonable – favor of your choosing,” Suga suggests in an attempt at compromise. 

“What if I make you get up and pause it later?” Daichi asks, with a smirk that makes Suga want to punch him in the stomach. 

“Fine,” Suga singsongs, even though both of them know it’s absolutely not fine. Suga never gets up during the movie. He does, however, make unnecessary commentary throughout the entire thing. “I just don’t feel like getting up now. ” He pauses. “Though I have to ask, is that really falling under the ‘reasonable’ category, anyway? Because I’m not so sure.” 

Daichi laughs in a lighthearted incredulity just as he’s about to get up from the couch. As he removes his side of the blanket, their banter is interrupted by the sound of feet padding lightly on the staircase.

Daichi throws an arm behind Suga’s shoulders as they twist over the back of the couch to see Suga’s mother, still dressed in her work clothes, having just returned from her Friday evening shift.

“I figured I’d find you two down here,” she mutters. It sounds less sweet than usual, laced with something Suga can’t quite place in the moment. 

“Good evening, Sugawara-san,” Daichi says warmly. 

Suga’s mom loves Daichi. He’s polite, gracious, and the best friend her son could ask for. But when she smiles at Daichi tonight, it doesn’t reach her eyes. Suga is relieved to know that Daichi would never react to something like that. 

“Are you boys really just spending another night down here on this couch?” she asks. Her voice is cold. It makes Suga flinch. His mother has always been warm; one of the hardest things about getting older is realizing that she can turn callous in the same way he sometimes does. There’s nothing worse than recognizing that your parents’ worst flaws are the ones you share. 

Daichi’s arm that rests on Suga’s shoulder seems to twitch. 

“It’s movie night,” Suga explains airily, forcing a smile. 

“Seems like every weekend there’s a movie night,” his mother responds. Her voice, like her smile, is tight. Suga’s not so sure what her problem is, but it makes his chest feel strange. He’s irritated than uncomfortable, though, and part of him wants to say there is. Instead, he shrugs. Next to him, he knows Daichi is still smiling warmly. He doesn’t even have to look. “You two are so boring,” she notes. “Don’t you want to go out and do something fun?” 

Now, Suga wants to look. Daichi’s warm smile has burst into a grin. “This is fun,” he says, matter of fact. 

“Even though it’s just the two of you?” Suga’s mom questions. She has her head cocked slightly, and for a moment, she looks strikingly like himself. 

“It’s usually just us,” Suga says, echoing the other night. His mother raises an eyebrow. “You’re supposed to want to spend infinite time with your best friend, right, mom?” He teases her, because when he’s in a pinch, that’s what Suga does. That’s what Suga is good at. “Don’t tell me you’re getting sick of Dad now!” 

Sugawara’s mother just laughs and shakes her head with something knowing in her eyes, some of the tension easing from the room. The Toy Story theme song still plays on loop as a somewhat off-sounding soundtrack to their strange moment. She turns on her heel and murmurs, “Have fun, boys. Promise me you won’t get sick of each other.” 

“We won’t!” they call back. 

She’s already halfway up the staircase before Suga can realize what he insinuated by comparing his relationship with Daichi to that of his parents. 

After they settle back onto the couch, the disturbance of the strange conversation eases away from them like water seeps from sand on the shore. Suga lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding in, and he turns to rest his cheek on Daichi’s shoulder. Daichi’s body is steady and solid next to him, like it always is. “You do it,” he says after a moment, sneaking a cheeky grin that he knows Daichi will hear rather than see. 

Daichi laughs from low in his belly, and the way his shoulders shake jostles Suga’s face. Some of his hair falls in his eyes, and before Suga can reach up to brush it away, Daichi is already there, pushing it from his forehead and then flicking him right between his hazel brown eyes. “I was already going to, remember? Then you decided to make me your personal pillow.” 

Suga shrugs against him. “You’re so big and beefy, Captain. How could I not utilize the resources right in front of me?” 

Daichi flicks him again, and he waits for Suga to lift his head before he stands. Those are the gestures their friendship is made up of. A glance over the shoulder. A helping hand. Waiting so that they are always beside one another, and neither is ever behind. Suga smiles to himself, thinking that if their roles had been reversed, he would have certainly stood quickly and made it so Daichi had to stop his head from jerking down into open air. They would have laughed together, though. That’s how they work – an endless give and take, the recycling of oxygen into the air, making sure the other can always breathe. 

“Shut up,” Daichi responds with a sheepish grin. He folds his arms over his chest protectively as he stares down at Suga on the couch, but he does so without realizing that it makes his arms look even bigger. 

“You literally look like you’re about to beat me up right now,” Suga mutters, deadpan. He blinks owlishly up at Daichi, who frowns and gently kicks his shin. 

“If everyone knew how mean you really were, life would be so different.” 

“It’s not my fault that people get distracted by how scary you are.” 

Daichi chuckles as he walks to the other side of the room and kneels by the television, finally pressing play. 

“You’re scarier,” Daichi tells him, once he’s back by his side on the couch. He curls under the blanket again, and somehow he’s even closer than before. Their thighs press together through the fabric of their old Karasuno sweatpants from their first year, and their shoulders continuously brush as they both reach for snacks in the bowl that still rests on Suga’s lap. 

“I’m an angel, ” Suga responds, but his voice his quieter now as the movie has begun. He lets his head find Daichi’s shoulder again, the few centimeters that separate them in height truly making it a comfortable headrest. He sweeps his feet up underneath him, and as he watches Andy play with Woody and the rest of his toys on the screen, Daichi’s steady breathing and solid presence allows him to slip into his thoughts. 

His mother had been so strange. He and Daichi aren’t going to talk about it, not unless Suga brings it up, but he wouldn’t even be sure of where to begin such a conversation. His mother surely is used to them spending all of their time together, so why bring it up now? It’s not unusual for them to stay in and watch a movie, and in a small town like theirs, there isn’t always so much else to do. Besides, as athletes, they constantly need rest. His mother knows this, so why bring it up now?

Is there something unusual about wanting to spend so much time with your best friend? Suga doesn’t think so. Some people search their whole lives for a best friend who they can be close to. Still, the thought now eats at him a little. For as much as he thinks, no, he wouldn’t change this for the world, and he’s sure Daichi wouldn’t either, there’s no other reason he can think of that would prompt his mother to say such things. 

He lets a little bit more of the movie play, but because he stays quiet, Daichi notices. He’s always been that way —the type to notice when something is even the tiniest bit off. That’s something the two of them have in common. But when it comes to each other, it could be the most minute of details, and they would still pick up on it. It’s not even ten minutes into the film when Daichi shifts to look at him, craning his head awkwardly to make eye contact with Suga who still rests on his shoulder. 

“Everything okay?” he murmurs softly, his low voice rumbling in his chest and reverberating through Suga’s body. 

Suga pauses before answering. He lifts his head, but he doesn’t meet Daichi’s eyes when he speaks. “Do you think it’s weird?” He exhales. “How much time we spend together. Not really doing anything.” 

Daichi nudges him with his shoulder, and it’s a bit too hard, as if to say, you’re being ridiculous. They have their own body language, and even though the same touch could translate to a whole dictionary of things, they are always able to read one another. “Suga,” says Daichi. With a firm hand, he curls his palm around Suga’s shoulder. 

The movie plays on in the background, but neither fears missing any of it. Between the two of them, they could probably recite the whole thing. 

Suga turns his head to look at him, then, knowing that tone of voice and almost wanting to be comforted by those brown eyes, the ones that never waver. He doesn’t expect the smile he receives as soon as he tilts his gaze up. It’s subtle but confident, not condescending but still entirely knowing. For a moment, Suga’s heart skips a beat in his chest, though he’s not sure why. “You said it yourself, didn’t you? We’re best friends.”

He doesn’t elaborate. It’s a matter of fact. 

Daichi’s warm hand slides down Suga’s shoulder and onto his arm. His palm is calloused, but Suga leans into the touch. They hold eye contact for a beat, but they don’t have to search for anything. Suga’s lips twitch into a little smile, and Daichi’s hand falls from Suga’s bicep, Suga lets his head ease back to its place on Daichi’s shoulder, comfortable and reassured.

Glancing back at the screen, he smirks. He speaks lowly beneath Daichi’s ear, and a part of him thinks he might catch Daichi jump at the sound of his voice so close to his neck. “If you were in Toy Story, you’d be Mr. Potato Head.” 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Daichi argues, laughing. “I’d totally be Buzz Lightyear.” 

“We’ve had this fight before, Dai, and you always lose. Grow out your mustache, and you’d totally be the spitting image. Those ears. ” He moves closer when he says that, lips nearly brushing one before he leans up and tugs on it. 

Daichi yelps and shoves Suga in the side. 

Daichi’s ears aren’t even big. He’s just fun to tease. 

He crosses his arms again as he grumbles, “At least I can grow a mustache.” (Suga pinches him.) “And besides, if I’m Mr. Potato Head, that means I’m wildly in love, so it can’t be all bad.”

Suga just rolls his eyes. “I never even said being Mr. Potato Head is a bad thing, you’re just being rude.” 

“Fine,” Daichi says, “I accept my role as Mr. Potato Head. But you can’t call me ugly when I grow out that mustache.”

Suga cackles. “Daichi, Daichi, you make me sound so mean. Your body would still be plenty attractive, you’d just have to wear a bag over your head. Probably constantly, even to practice. Do you think you could still do receives blind?”

“Why can’t I cut eye holes out?”

Suga waves a hand around. “Too humanizing. Ruins the effect. It’s bag or nothing.” 

Daichi’s seriously thinking about volleyball now, it’s written all over his face, which makes Suga want both to hug him and to make fun of him. “Do you think we should try it? Blindfolded?”

“Oh, so we’re doing blindfolded receives now, Daichi? Okay, kinky.” He watches Daichi splutter and blush, but Suga moves on before they can stay on this topic for too long. “Besides, doing a receive or a spike blind would be insane. No way that’s happening. How would you know where the ball is coming from?” 

Daichi shrugs; Suga can see his face is still red out of the corner of his eye. 

Any tension that was ever in the room has long dissolved, like the mist that hovers over the grass on their early walks to school, or the smudged chalk on the walls.

Chapter Text

It’s hard to hate a bad thing that still brings good. 

Asahi leaves, and it’s not that Suga doesn’t miss his best friend — who winces at even the softest punches and offers to carry Suga’s gym bag on the days he whines with fatigue on the walk home. Of course not; he misses Asahi’s clumsy shuffle and his tireless blush and the way he can’t help but boast, “Did you see Nishinoya’s receive during the 3rd set?” nearly every night after practice. Of course Suga misses him. 

Suga misses Asahi, but he doesn’t deny the shift. And as one thing moves farther away, another moves closer. It’s less like an earthquake and more like the intangible crawl of the tectonic plates that are always in motion. The ground does not split and shake beneath their feet, does not tear buildings from their foundations, or cause the ocean to roar in a wave that consumes the shore. No, it’s the kind of change you can only see after the fact. The way the continents of Pangea swelled and separated and are slowly easing together again. The way the buildings rise steadily until you can see the view from their summit. The way the sea slowly steals sand from its beaches. 

Their ace is gone, but it opens a space for Suga and Daichi to close. It disappears as their shoulders brush on their morning walk. They ease closer in the evenings, when Daichi throws Suga the keys to the clubroom to lock up, and Suga catches them in a loose fist so they can share a smile about Suga’s knack for catching lefty. The gaps remaining from three becoming two are filled in ways that had been begging to stitch together for a long time. 

It’s only an extra forty minutes a day — twenty there, twenty back —but a clash without a buffer makes a louder sound. And when Daichi and Suga meet, it rings sweet. 

There’s a particularly clear, warm afternoon, a few days into the start of their 3rd year – into the start as Captain and vice, into the start of their new team that’s still unfamiliar but positively buzzing with potential – and Daichi cuts practice a little earlier than Suga would ever imagine. Nothing had seemed off during the day nor during practice itself. The team is still falling into place, and everyone was working hard to keep up with the competitive air brought about by the rambunctious first years and their tenacious spirit. 

(After all, one of them can hit a spike blind. Suga and Daichi had shared a good, warm-cheeked blush at that. A little joke meant for just the two of them.) 

But just before sunset, Daichi claps his hands in that very Captain-like way of his that’s slowly becoming habit, and he cuts practice before Suga can get a word in to object or even to ask why. He says something about eating well and getting rest, and as the team begins to clean up, Suga knocks their shoulders together. It’s a little harder than necessary, and he does it because Daichi knocks him right back, with this particular smile that Suga likes extra, for some reason. It’s something about an irritation that remains fond. Suga likes that he can do that. 

“Why the early cut, Captain?” Suga asks as the two of them go to untie one side of the net. 

Daichi shrugs. “It’s nice out,” he says plainly.

Suga raises an eyebrow, and Daichi almost, almost looks sheepish, because he’s never been the kind of player to skimp on practice, and that’s certainly not the kind of Captain he’s trying to become. “I want to watch the sunset,” he admits. 

Suga lets out a soft giggle, hides his smile behind his hand. “My, my, Captain! Abusing your power just to watch the sun go down?”

Daichi frowns at him. “Hey, I just–”

Suga shoves their shoulders together again, more gently this time. “Daichi, I get it. Part of the job is taking advantage of its perks, right?”

Daichi smiles at him wordlessly, warmly. Suga loves these parts of him, the ones that people would never imagine and rarely get to see. Most would not peg Sawamura Daichi to be the type of guy who wants to end his night with a sunset. The type of guy who has become so used to Suga’s antics that he’s started to initiate them himself. Who cried for the near entirety of Toy Story 3. 

Suga is so, so glad he gets to see these things, the little pieces of a boy hidden behind a firm stance and a commandeering voice and the facade of a man who never gives into pressure. These are afternoons where he looks extra close. At warm brown eyes, a strong body, the powerful hands that always manage to ease up with a careful delicacy, fingers forming a deliberate set that take their time undoing the knots of the net. The knuckles that brush Suga’s in a manner that could be intentional or not as they head to pick up extra balls. 

“Just hurry up now!” Suga calls after him. “Wouldn’t want to miss it after all the trouble!” 

They manage to fend off the woes of Hinata, who’s shouting about how he hates short practice, and eventually the team goes their separate ways, whether it’s to hit their own tosses in the grass by the school or down the road to the Sakanoshita store or back home for a rare afternoon of sleep. 

Daichi and Suga have always been good at falling into habits, and their routine of locking up as Captain and vice is no different. They close the clubroom door behind them, and they put on a show. With a flourish, Daichi pulls the keys from his bag and tosses them over his shoulder. Suga feels playful today, so when he catches them in his left hand, he gives Daichi a smirk and a wink. After the door is locked, he throws the keys back, and then they walk wordlessly, down the stairs, along the path, biting their lips until one of them can’t uphold their smile up against the light air of the moment and they begin to laugh. 

Suga’s not sure who breaks first today, but something is so freeing about a beautiful afternoon to themselves in April. 

He feels good today. 

After they laugh, the silence only persists for so long. Daichi is the one to break it. 

“You’re coming, you know,” he says. He’s talking about watching the sunset. 

They’re already walking in the opposite direction from home. Have been, for a while now. Suga grins at him, nudges his elbow into Daichi’s side. “Obviously.” 

It’s supposed to come out more teasing than that, but it isn’t. Instead it’s of course. Of course I’ll come with you. 

How could I not. 

It’s a short walk, one they’ve done many times, though not always together. The hill is a good place to think. Suga found himself here a lot when he first came to high school and always had a million things on his mind. Things have been much clearer lately. He doesn’t need a view from a summit for things to make sense. 

They live in a hilly region as it is, but this one’s just high enough to see everything below. The slope is covered in grass again now that it’s warmer, and the day of sunshine has left no dew. When they sit, they stay dry in their uniforms. The overlook seems to hold a million memories, so many of which haven’t even happened yet. 

The wind blows, and it shifts the hair that lays flat on Daichi’s forehead. Suga’s thankful for the sweater he’s wearing; he pulls back his sleeve and uses the exposed side of his palm to push the hairs back into place. He thinks his hand is warm enough that the touch won’t be jarring. 

Daichi smiles at him. 

Suga fills with an inexplicable warmth. 

Or maybe it’s something that he could explain, if he took the time to really find the words. Right now, though, it feels fine as it is. He lets it sit in his belly, heavy and radiating and the perfect shield against a breeze of early spring. 

The wind blows as if to remind him of the resilience this feeling brings him to the cold, and both of their hair is a mess. Daichi’s sticks up in little crops, and Suga’s is favoring the middle of his forehead, almost covering his eyes with how long it’s gotten. 

On its descent downard, just before it passes behind a large cloud, the sun seems to burst open. As Suga looks to his right, the light paints Daichi’s eyes a shade of gold. They’re beautiful like this, so different than their normal deep brown, dark, steady, and unwavering. He looks younger, maybe. 

As they face west, Suga imagines they’re so high that they could see the sea, even though he knows it’s almost too many kilometers away to count. He’d like to go the beach someday. It seems like a place that is worth being close to the ground for. A different kind of safety, less removed than that of height. 

Daich is still, unusually, quiet. 

“What are you thinking about?”

“Nothing.” It’s not curt, but it is defensive.  

Option one is always to tease, so he goes for that. “Oh, Daichi. So simple.”

(It’s never nothing.) 

“Oi!” Daichi groans. But he doesn’t answer.  

Suga just cocks his head. He waits. He’s always most patient for Daichi. Even though Daichi probably needs the patience the least. 

“The future.”

Suga smirks, just a little. “Big topics, don’t hurt yourself.”

Then, Daichi is frowning, and that’s when Suga knows maybe option one isn’t the best choice for today. He reaches out his knuckles to gently knock the side of Daichi’s knee. He finds that often the smallest touches are the most grounding. Just like the simplest questions can ask the most. 

“You’re feeling something today, huh?”

Daichi nods. 

“Wanna talk?”

Daichi seems to weigh it over, like the way he turns a ball in his hand before he serves, the way he flips his pen around in between his fingers when he doesn’t know the answer to a question on a quiz. “Maybe about something else.”

Suga keeps his voice playful, knowing that Daichi probably doesn’t want to get any more serious than this. If he wants to talk, he’ll take initiative. He always does. “Hmm… what are Daichi’s favorite things? Volleyball, ramen, Pixar, uh… pocket tees, that stern tone of voice, let’s see… Sugawara Koushi.”

Daichi hits him, but then lets his head fall to Suga’s shoulder. Suga watches his eyes fall shut, and he raises a hand to card through Daichi’s messy hair as he receives his response. “Yeah, the last one sounds good,” Daichi hums. “Let’s talk about Koushi. That’ll give us plenty to discuss.” 

Suga swallows. He likes the way his given name sounds when it comes out of Daichi’s mouth. He nearly never says it. 

“I suppose we can start with my dashing good looks,” Suga starts. The wind blows again, and more hair winds up splayed across their faces – Suga’s, in his eyes. “I need a haircut, as beautiful as I am.” 

“You’ve got that cute mole,” Daichi adds. 

Suga cocks his head, smirks. “It is cute, isn’t it?” 

Daichi laughs then, and Suga can see the way a memory is playing inside his head, just from the look on his face. 

“My sister thought it was dirt the first time she met you.” 

Suga laughs, too, airily. “She kept trying to brush it away.”

He feels Daichi sigh against him. There’s the sudden rise and fall of his chest. It’s a funny angle, but if he cranes his neck, he can see Daichi biting his lip. His eyes are closed. “I was so nervous for you to come over.” 

“Why?” asks Suga. All of this feels so long ago. But he has trouble pinpointing their beginning. At this point, it just feels like always. It feels like something that has never not been. That always will be. 

“I don’t know,” replies Daichi. “I liked you so much. It’d been a while since I’d had a friend I liked that much.” 

“I don’t know if I had a real best friend before you,” Suga admits. It’s not a hard thing to say. It’s just true. 

“Ah, you’re so lucky that your first best friend is as awesome as me.” 

“Hey, that’s supposed to be my line, Sawamura.” Sometimes Daichi’s cheek is surprising. Welcome, but surprising. Some might say he spends too much time with Sugawara. 

“Says who? I’ve had a best friend before you.” 

“Oh yeah, tell me you’ve had a best friend like me before, and then we can talk.” 

Daichi pauses, lifting his head. There’s something like a blush on his cheeks, or maybe it’s the wind, or fatigue, or maybe he always looks like this and Suga is just painting colors onto his skin. “Okay, yeah. You’re right. I’ve never had a best friend like you.” 

They search each other’s eyes, both their hair falling like crashing waves onto their forehead as the wind continues to pick up the strands and drop them again. The sun always seems to sink the fastest at the very end. It races toward the horizon, lets its colors burst, and then it dips below the line that separates land and air, so fast it feels like you can miss it in a blink. 

By the time they stop looking at one another, Daichi’s painted-gold eyes retreating back on the suddenly darker sky, the sun has already slipped from the sky. 

They had come here to watch the sunset, but as a matter of fact, neither had paid very much attention to the sun and its falling at all. 

With Asahi back, they should fall back into old patterns like its nothing. And they do fall back – into their mindless banter, their teasing, their seamless dynamic of three. But on the second or third day of meeting and splitting up at the special intersection where they start and end their days, Suga starts to itch. In a group, Daichi always laughs more and talks less. He’s a good listener, and though Suga adores Daichi’s knack for teasing Asahi (it’s almost as good as his own), he realizes that he’s begun to miss the way they’d talked about their afternoons together, how Daichi would sling a heavy arm over his shoulder when it was just the two of them, how sometimes Daichi would stop in the middle of the street to point toward the sunrise and say, “Suga, look.”

He’d missed Asahi, god, he’d missed him and his uneasy smile and spike that could make your jaw drop and those little flyaway hairs that come loose from his bun – but Suga misses his time alone with Daichi, too. He’d begun to get used to those moments during the school day that suddenly disappear. 

This becomes especially apparent after practice one day, while the team is changing, and Suga feels soft eyes on him as he packs his sweaty clothes in his bag. 

He turns to see Asahi with a slightly nervous look on his face and his hands in the pockets of his black volleyball jacket. 

“Hey, Suga,” he starts, voice low. His eyes keep flitting back behind him where the second years are packing up and loudly discussing the seasonal change of the girl’s uniform. 

Suga cocks his head. Though a nervous expression is not unlike Asahi, he stopped making that face at Suga a long time ago. “What’s up, Asahi?”

Asahi pushes a loose curl from his eyes, bun falling out after all the jumps he did during practice. “I just wanted to let you know that I won’t be walking home with you and Daichi tonight.” Suga cocks his head just the slightest bit more. “I told Nishinoya that I’d help him study, so... I’ll be going to his house.” 

Suga lets the smallest of smiles creep onto his face at the explanation he’s been given for Asahi’s wariness, but he doesn’t comment any further. “Okay, have fun.” 

He flashes a grin. Behind Asahi’s head, he can see Daichi giving Hinata a lecture, though he can’t tell about what. 

“You’ll tell Daichi?” Asahi asks, twirling his hair around his finger now. 

Suga is this close to making some quip or joke, but he decides against it. “Of course.”

He gives Asahi a playful but reassuring punch on the shoulder along with another encouraging smile. As Asahi turns away, he adds, “Text me later!” 

He barely catches Asahi’s quick nod as he turns to meet Noya at the door, who is seemingly bouncing with excitement as he grasps Asahi’s shoulders and launches himself into the air. 

Suga is not worried about the two of them. 

He scrolls through his phone aimlessly as he waits for the rest of the team to clear out, and he even gets so lost in the screen that he’s startled by the hand that eventually claps him on the shoulder. “Ready?”

When he looks up, he sees warm brown eyes and the best smile he knows. Daichi’s got Suga’s bag slung over his shoulders, must have grabbed it from the bench without Suga noticing, and when Suga stands, he snatches it away.

“I’ve been ready, Captain.”

Daichi chuckles when he throws him the keys. “So Asahi left with Nishinoya, huh?”

“Mm,” Suga hums, locking the club room door. “Observant as ever. He seemed a little nervous, but I’m glad things are better between those two.”  

“They’ve always been perfect foils,” Daichi adds. “But me, too. Not to mention the team would be a mess if they weren’t in top shape.”
Suga laughs. “Don’t I know it.” They start their descent away from school. “Ah, just the two of us, like old times.”

He bumps their shoulders together. It’s his way of saying I missed you, since he’s not so sure if it makes sense to say it out loud. 

With a chuckle, Daichi mutters, “‘Like old times,’ he says, as if Asahi didn’t rejoin just a week or two ago.”

Suga shrugs. “I’m nostalgic, what can I say.” 

Daichi laughs beautifully again, and he bumps their shoulders once more. 

Suga bumps them back, and – ah, there it is. A heavy arm is slung over his shoulders, and Suga swears he feels his cheeks heat. He lets his arm wrap around Daichi’s waist, which is not something he usually does. He tells himself it’s because he’d missed Daichi or something. Even through his clothes, he feels the taut muscles of Daichi’s obliques where his waist narrows. 

“You looked good today, during practice,” Daichi says out of nowhere. 

Suga smiles to himself, first thought being: You were watching? when he has so many other people to be keeping his eye on. 

“Paying attention to me, Captain? Don’t you have other things to be worrying about?”

Daichi frowns. “You’ve been practicing extra, I know you have.” 

Suga tries to straighten himself under the weight of Daichi’s arm. He suddenly feels a little smaller. “Well, you know nothing motivates me like a little healthy competition.”

Competition. He never thought he’d have to see a junior as a rival, but that’s not the part that worries him. All he knows is that he can’t deny the part of him that is unsure of how long the title of official setter is going to be his. 

“You always do put up a good fight,” says Daichi earnestly.

“I do, don’t I?” Suga quips, baring his teeth, making sure his eyes glint in an attempt to be playful. 

“You do,” says Daichi again. “Better than anyone I know.”

Yes, Suga had missed Daichi. That’s all he can think at the sight of his earnest eyes. How could he ever want to look away from someone who looks at him like that? Like he can do anything he tries?

The rest of the walk goes quickly. The cool breeze of spring blows, but Suga doesn’t feel cold, despite the dried sweat on his body post-workout. No, he doesn’t feel cold, if not for the arm over his shoulders and the flush in his cheeks. 

When they reach their intersection, Daichi goes to lift his arm from Suga’s shoulders, but with his free hand, Suga reaches up and grabs hold of his wrist, keeping his arm in place. 

It’s more bashful than he intends, but he turns his head to blurt, “Wait.” His face is hot, though he’s not sure why, as his question is not an odd one. Or, it shouldn’t be, no matter how much it feels so. “Walk me the rest of the way home?”

Daichi doesn’t respond, only grabs his hand for a second to squeeze it and carries on walking down the road to Suga’s house.

After a while, he begins to talk about the paper they have coming up soon, and even though Suga just gets an extra few minutes, he wishes every walk home could be like this. 

The next day, when Asahi is with them, he doesn’t even bat an eyelash when Suga and Daichi continue together to Suga’s house, on past the intersection where they usually split up. He doesn’t reach the next day, either. Or the one after that. 

Then again, Asahi was never the type to ask questions. 

Asahi doesn’t ask questions, until he does. Suga gets the feeling he never would have asked if it were the three of them, but he always has less inhibitions around Suga. Normally, Suga is grateful and pleased that Asahi can be more himself around him. He wants his friends to be comfortable around him, especially when it comes to someone as nervous as Asahi, but today, all Suga can feel is the slightest twinge of irritation. But perhaps that’s just because he’s not so sure what Asahi means. 

The two of them are on the roof together eating their lunch and enjoying the exceptionally beautiful spring weather of the afternoon. They’ve been going back and forth between picking at their bentos and pouring over the math homework that Asahi needs help with. He’s getting it, slowly, but it’s still not exactly how either of them would like to be spending their lunch break. 

“Want to take a break?” Asahi asks him, putting down his pencil. “You’re helping a lot, but I still hate math. It stresses me out.”

Suga laughs, lifting his chopsticks to his mouth with egg trapped between them. “Everything stresses you out.” 

Asahi frowns. “I know.”

“You really getting better, though. And after this year, you’ll never have to do math again.” 

Asahi puts his hands over his face. “Suga, stop – if we talk about how we’re third years, then I’ll start thinking about the future, and then I’ll be even more stressed out.” 

“Asahi, you’re a disaster.” 

“I know, ” he says again, pushing his food around with his chopsticks. 

Suga grins, but he stares down at his own lunch in distaste. He’s painfully aware of the silence that comes after their exchange; it’s not awkward, not even close, but Suga knows that if Daichi were with them, he would’ve chimed in with some mean comment to make Asahi whine and Suga laugh. 

Staring out at the green, new leaves on the trees, Suga speaks his mind. With a sigh, he says, “I miss Daichi.” 

They’d seen each other at practice this morning, and in class, but it is strange to not have lunch together. Daichi had promised Michimiya he’d eat with her so they could exchange ideas for practice structure together. Apparently she’s been struggling with motivating the girl’s volleyball team, which Suga can empathize with, considering the rough start to the season that they’d had, but still. 

Asahi raises an eyebrow at his comment. He looks awfully serious, Suga thinks. “Suga, you’ll see him as soon as lunch is over.” 

“I know, but I wanted to steal one of his onigiri,” Suga whines, which is not a lie. It’s not even so much stealing at this point so much as it is Daichi’s mother packing an extra one every day. “His mom always makes them so cute with little nori faces for his siblings!” 

Asahi does not seem to give a shit about the onigiri. He looks up from his bento to make eye contact with Suga. Something like worry is stitched between his brows. “What’s going on between you two?” he asks. 

The question doesn’t go any further, and even though it could mean anything, it makes Suga’s heart do a jump in his chest. What does Asahi mean? 

Suga echoes, “Going on?” 

Asahi frowns again. He seems to be doubting himself, and Suga watches his face change expressions as he mutters, “Yeah. You seem… closer.” 

The way the words take shape in his mouth make it sound like that was not what he intended to say. 

Suga can only think to smirk. “Well, of course we’re closer! You left!” 

He doesn’t mean it as a dig, but he almost thinks to apologize when he sees the way an upset expression tears across Asahi’s kind face. He wears the look that he gets when he thinks that someone has the wrong idea about him, like he’s mean or dangerous. 

Suga absolutely cannot place why. 

His friend does not speak up again, and Suga turns his body toward him. “Asahi… You know we–” he starts, even though he and Daichi have talked to Asahi a million times about why he left the team and how they understand. The fact that things are better between him and Nishinoya now reinforces that sentiment many more times over, too.  

“I’m not upset about that,” Asahi interrupts. 

Suga pauses. He drums his fingers on his legs, upset that he’s unable to get a read on the situation like he normally can. “So you are upset about something?”

“I don’t know if upset is the right word.”

Suga huffs quietly, just the slightest bit frustrated. Asahi is a horrible liar, but Suga doesn’t get the sense that he’s being dishonest. Sometimes he struggles with his words, so maybe this is just an instance of that. 

But then Asahi is gathering his things, and when his bag is all packed, he hugs it to his chest. Peering over it, he asks Suga earnestly, “Just – if something happens, you’ll tell me, right?” 

They tell each other everything, especially lately – Suga had received many text messages about his evening studying with Nishinoya the other night; Suga had swelled with happiness at how excited Asahi was about it – so he’s not sure why he’s asking. All he can do in response is to look him in the eye as wholeheartedly as possible and reassure, “Of course, Asahi. I would never keep things from you.” 

Then Asahi scurries from the roof, mumbling something about wanting to try to finish his math problem set on his own before the break ends, and Suga is alone, no friends to eat with, a lot to think about, and missing the onigiri that usually gets him through the afternoon. 

How strange. 

The strange comments continue into the evening, at the end of practice, when Suga comes up Daichi for a double high five after a nailed spike. He threads their fingers together to squeeze and shout, “Nice kill!” 

Daichi grins at him, and even though their hands only stay together for a second, maybe two, it sends a warmth rushing up his arms, the same kind as when he sets a really nice ball. Daichi claps him on the shoulder, and his fingers trace close to Suga’s neck before he pulls away. 

Suga doesn’t think twice about it, turns on his heel to go set for Tanaka, but at the sound of Nishinoya’s voice asking a question, he pauses. 

“You two sure touch a lot,” Nishinoya says to Daichi. 

Suga blinks. He supposes they do. He bends down to retie his shoe so he can overhear their conversation from his few steps away. 

“Do we?” Daichi mutters, seemingly unconcerned with the conversation. Suga is sure that if he turned his head, he’d see Daichi watching someone else on the team, likely thinking of some feedback to give them. 

“I mean, kind of,” Noya says. Suga stands, and he turns around to look at the pair anyway, too curious to help himself. He’s right. Daichi is watching Tsukishima block, and Noya is– Noya is watching Asahi. His eyes skate over Asahi’s tall body with focused eyes. “Not that it bothers me, though. I’m just saying.” 

Right. 

Daichi doesn’t say anything else, doesn’t seem bothered by the comment, and a moment later, Nishinoya is running over to Asahi, begging to receive his spikes, tugging on his arm. 

And he says they touch a lot. 

Suga makes his way to Tanaka. He looks impatient, anyway. 

Volleyball practice takes Suga’s mind off of things. One of his strengths tends to be not losing his focus to his thoughts, but as soon as he, Daichi, and Asahi are walking home, he begins to feel a little restless. Daichi is chatting aimlessly to the two of them about some of the ideas he’d gone over with Michimiya during lunch, but Suga isn’t listening. He’s sure he can ask about it later, if he really wants to know, though he’s not sure he will. He keeps looking over at Asahi, who’s giving Daichi his full attention. Asahi isn’t acting unusual, but Suga can’t help but reconsider his words, and Noya’s. 

Suga knows that he and Daichi have gotten a little closer lately, but he’d never thought it strange. He would have never considered it to be something worth bringing up nor a call for attention. For a brief moment, he thinks that maybe Asahi could feel left out, but he doubts that’s true. Suga and Daichi have always done things just the two of them, just how he’ll lift weights with just Daichi on the weekends or how he and Suga sometimes video chat at night to tell each other about their days. Suga and Daichi’s relationship has always been different and maybe a little separate, but never an issue. 

Suga picks at his nails and pulls his sleeves further down his palms, watching his feet on the concrete as they walk and hearing the steady music of Daichi’s low voice but not listening to his words. Is wanting to spend more time just the two of them strange? They’re best friends, so he’s not sure how it could be. He knows he’s not the only one to have been in a group of people and wished it were just him and his favorite person. Everyone gets like that, sometimes. 

He’s sure of it. 

As for the touching, well. Suga is affectionate, Daichi is kind, warm, and willing – so why would they not? He thinks about how often they touch in school and at practice, and it’s not even very often. Mostly just claps on the back or brushing fingertips on an arm. They never really hug. If anything, the most affection Daichi gets from Suga during the school day is an extremely fond punch in the stomach. 

Suga can’t really figure out what Noya was referring to, when he tries to mull it over. If one isn’t paying careful attention, there’s no way they’d notice that maybe they touch just a little bit more often than others. 

As they near the intersection where they part ways, Suga briefly remembers the way Noya’s eyes followed Asahi during practice today. 

Then again, maybe Noya is paying more attention 

The three of them stop, and Suga is taken out of his thoughts as he and Daichi come to say goodbye to Asahi. Asahi is looking at him a little funnily, though not in a way that Daichi will pick up on. 

“Have a good night, Azumane,” Daichi says. “See you tomorrow. Don’t beat yourself up over that flubbed serve today in practice.” 

Asahi frowns. “I wasn’t even thinking about that,” he whines. 

Suga laughs, and that little ounce of tension is broken. “Goodnight, Asahi.” He sends Asahi his best smile, who returns it easily. Suga feels a bit of relief. The last thing he wants is for their walk home to be weird. He doesn’t want Asahi to feel strange about Daichi walking him home. 

“Goodnight, guys.” Asahi gives them a once over. “Enjoy your evening.” 

They go their separate ways, and as soon as they’re halfway down the street to Suga’s house, Daichi throws a casual arm over Suga’s shoulders. With a big hand, he grips the top of Suga’s bicep and shakes him around a bit. “You good, Suga? You were quiet on the walk back.” 

“Oh,” Suga says. “I didn’t even realize. I’m fine, if not a little tired. Too much running, Captain.”

Daichi laughs. “You’re good at it, though.”

“I can’t help the talent I was born with; that doesn’t mean I have to enjoy it.” 

Daichi laughs again, and their conversation flows easily for the few minutes they have to walk to reach Suga’s house. Daichi walks him to the front steps, and Suga sighs at the dark windows. He’d forgotten that no one is going to be home tonight. Both of his parents have been working so much lately. 

“Night, Suga,” Daichi says. 

Suga meets Daichi’s warm eyes and shift beneath his arm, wrapping his arms around Daichi’s waist and pulling him in for a hug. It’s not like this every night, but all the thoughts he had on the walk home can be damned. Daichi just holds Suga close, and Suga breathes into his neck for the few seconds that the hug lasts. “Night, Dai,” he replies. 

When Daichi lets him go, he stops to smile and adjust the strap of his bag on his shoulder. Right as he turns away, Suga can’t help the deflating feeling in his chest. What a wash of a day, he thinks. They’d barely gotten to talk. 

Daichi has one foot down the first step to his house when Suga reaches out to grab his arm. He catches Daichi’s wrist, where the skin is soft, warm. Daichi stops immediately, turning his head and stepping back up. The tension on Daichi’s arm is relieved from where Suga pulled, and with careful fingers, Suga trails down to grab his hand instead. The expression on Daichi’s face is curious, but gentle. 

“Wait–” Suga starts. The weight of Daichi’s hand in his is both heavy and light simultaneously. “Can you just… come in for a little bit?” He exhales breathily and tries to smile without making this weird. “No one’s home, and it’s gonna be lonely.” 

He tries to whine, but it comes out more honest than anything. 

Daichi stares at their hands for a second, Suga watches him do it, but he doesn’t let go. Rather, when he looks up, he’s grinning, kind of cheeky in that way he gets sometimes. “You should’ve just told me that, and we could have gone to mine for dinner.” 

Their hands are still connected, either forgotten or a matter of which they are painfully aware. Suga smiles at his feet. “I feel like I’m always there.” 

They’re at Suga’s house often, too. But it’s different at Daichi’s – his parents are always home and there’s always food and noise and the love of two little kids who absolutely demand Daichi and Suga’s attention. 

“If I didn’t want you there, I’d kick you out,” Daichi says with a grin. 

“You would not. ”

Daichi laughs. “You’re right. But only because I always want you there.”

Suga blushes, red and hot and embarrassing, but his cheek knows no bounds. “Seems my charm has begun to affect even you, Dai.” 

He squeezes Daichi’s hand in an attempt to be playful, and Daichi pulls him forward as they unspokenly begin their walk back in the direction toward Daichi’s house. Their hands separate, but soon there’s an arm slung over his shoulder. 

“Who said I was exempt?” Daichi protests. “I’m scary, and you’re a flirt.” 

Suga snorts. “Yes, we both bring the ladies to their knees – you, because you terrify them, and me, because I’m irresistible.” He pauses in consideration. “Seemingly irresistible enough to get free dinner out of you nearly once a week. Speaking of which, I’m starving. I missed my onigiri at lunch today.” 

Daichi jabs his side. “A flirt, irresistible, and needy. ” 

Suga pouts and bats his eyelashes. “Feed me, Captain.”

Daichi makes a face like he wants to roll his eyes or grimace, but he ends up smiling instead. It’s as if his fondness takes over his face without being able to help it. “What were you gonna do if you had just stayed home?” he asks in that concerned, fatherly voice he likes to use on the first years. “Eat instant ramen for dinner?”

“Maybe…” Suga admits. 

He can cook, he’s just lazy. 

“Sugawara Koushi,” Daichi demands, looking into his eyes warmly, “where would you be without me?”

Suga does not know.

Chapter Text

Sugawara cannot pinpoint the exact day when Sawamura Daichi became his best friend, but he’s approaching eighteen years old, and from the sidelines – watching the bend in Daichi’s knees, the beads of sweat rolling down his temple, the crease in his forehead from concentration – Suga knows that the two of them have been fighting the same battles for a long time. Maybe that’s what true friendship is – when your battles are never really just your own. Suga feels that itch constantly from the place he’s found outside the court, even if he’s not yet comfortable here. 

Even farther from the net, he thinks he can fight. Or he can at least do his damn best to try.

As vice captain, he spends a lot of time watching his team. It’s his responsibility to accentuate their strong points and point out their weak ones. He makes it so their knees buckle at the weight of their flaws and helps them up again to learn to stand stronger. He knows all about broadened shoulders and a pointed stance and intense eyes. He knows what it means to be on the court – and that knowledge hasn’t just vanished now that he’s on the other side of the white line. 

Having Daichi across from him makes it easier. Yes, he spends a lot of time watching his team, but most days, he can’t stop his eyes from following the Captain. If Suga is support, Daichi is Karasuno’s foundation. His head is always held high. The bend in his knees never wavers, just in case something might come his way. If Suga pushes the team to be closer, to be better, it’s Daichi who brings them together in the first place. Sometimes Suga wonders if Daichi knows how good he is at bringing back the team’s attention. Sometimes Suga wonders if Daichi knows just how much respect he has. 

Suga spends a lot of time watching his team, but most of the time, his eyes are on Daichi. Everything seems to route to him. He stands there, on the back line, dark eyes focused on victory and strong legs that only know how to move forward. It seems natural that Suga focuses on his best friend. It seems natural that his focus comes back to Karasuno’s core. Daichi closes the gaps. He sets the expectation. Some days it feels like his heart comes out of his chest just to exist on the court. Suga’s eyes are often on Daichi, but it tends to be hard to look away. 

When they lose to Aoba Johsai, Suga doesn’t hesitate to say that he wants to stay. He doesn’t hesitate because it’s true. He doesn’t know what he would do if he didn’t spend his mornings and nights in the gym. He doesn’t know what he’d do if he didn’t spend lunch with his desk pushed up to Daichi’s while they go over drills. He doesn’t know what he’d do if he was suddenly able to walk away from the team they’ve worked so hard to build. 

He wouldn’t feel like himself if he was able to so quickly give up on something. 

Suga has always been a fighter, and even though he wants nothing more than to be here , with his friends, with his team, on the court or on the sidelines, there’s a part of him that feels as though he’s already lost. 

It’s not like that most days. Most days, he’s confident in his abilities and proud in his role. Most days, he’s working hard toward something bigger. And even on the days where his confidence slips, it rarely shows. 

Everyone who knows Suga knows he is a fighter. He’s been raising people up for as long as he can remember. They lose to Aoba Johsai, but just beyond the horizon lies the garbage dump, and as a team, they feel ready to fight some cats. 

A few days before the Nekoma training camp, Daichi huddles them at the beginning of an evening practice. Things have seemed different, lately. The team has been reinvigorated. Everyone is trying their best to fight well on their own so they can stand stronger as a team. 

“You guys know I’m not the type to make speeches,” Daichi starts. 

To which Tsukishima mutters, “Yes, we know.” This is followed shortly by a “Tsukki!” from Yamaguchi.

“But,” Daichi continues with one pointed glance toward his first years, “I want to say thank you.” He glances at Suga. “ We want to say thank you. There were moments where Suga and I thought Karasuno never was going to be able to fight. But thanks to all of you, we’re stronger than ever. In two days we go to Tokyo, so let’s go there and show those cats who’s boss!” 

Tanaka lets out a roar. “Yeah, we’ll crush those city boys!” 

Suga makes a disgusted face. “Tanaka…”

“How is that any worse than calling them cats?” Tanaka objects. 

Suga blanches. “Tanaka… they’re Nekoma.”

Tanaka is about to protest, but Daichi’s narrowing his eyes and lowering a hand into the middle of their huddle to say, “Karasuno, fight!” 

Everyone shouts along with him, and when Suga looks up, he sees Daichi from across the circle. When their eyes meet, it feels like every gap between them has been stitched together. Looking around at his team and the determination on their faces reminds him that he would never be able to do this alone. 

He looks at Daichi and thinks, I wouldn’t be able to do this without you, but throughout practice it shifts into one of those days where he thinks,  I might not be able to do this at all. 

The ball doesn’t feel right in his fingers today. It’s the end of the week, and he feels tired. He spends time fixated on Kageyama and his grace. He speaks less. Having spent nearly every day of his life in high school practicing volleyball, it’s not often that it goes as poorly as this. Time stretches in slow motion even though the ball seems to move so fast. Perhaps the only reason no one seems to notice his silence and meekness is because they’re all so focused on moving forward themselves. Today, everyone else seems so loud. 

By the end of practice, he’s sweaty and far more exhausted than usual. Fatigue seeps into him. He’s left without any fight. He changes quickly and leaves a towel hanging over his forehead. He’s not in the mood to look at anyone, nervous at what they might see. 

Suga is grateful that Asahi is not walking home with them tonight. He has some family thing on the other side of town, so he has to take the train. He leaves with the second years, joining in warmly with their rambunctious laughter. Absently, Suga suspects he’s going to end up having to pay for all of their snacks on the way to the station. The thought passes quickly, and soon he’s sucked back into his headspace, scrolling through his phone but not really seeing anything he’s looking at. 

He’s replaying one of Daichi’s receives from practice over and over again in his head. He and Daichi are sewn together by many things, and their common goal is one of them. They’ve been fighting for the same thing for a long time, but it doesn’t stop Suga from peeling back his own layers. He’s found that he would be no good at reading others if he didn’t know himself so well, and tonight he’s very much aware that he’s feeling vulnerable. He knows he’s going to fold in on himself further than he has begun to already. He knows by the time they leave the club room he’ll have folded over so many pieces of himself so many times that the creases will take a while to fade out. He knows by dinner, he might look like someone else, covered in ridges and wrinkles. 

He knows that Daichi is going to see this, but he’s not going to try to smooth Suga out. 

Suga loves Daichi for so many reasons, but one of them is the fact that he’s not a pusher. He would never try to tear Suga open, would never force him to talk, would never prod at the vulnerabilities they both know Suga has. 

That’s what it is tonight: the common goal, and the fact that Suga feels so much less capable in helping them meet it. 

He pockets his phone, relief flooding his eyes at the disappearance of the light. He rubs at them tiredly. He hadn’t even thought to turn the brightness of his screen down. When he lowers his fists, he stares at his open palms. They feel imperfect. He has setter’s hands – delicate, long fingers, small palms, calloused fingertips – but as he stares, he hates his knuckles, his nails, his grip. 

Sugawara Koushi is reliably good. Perhaps even reliably great. But he does not have an unpredictable excellence, and some days, it kills him. 

How does one begin to describe what it is to have a goal that you want with so much indescribable passion, but feeling like you have no way of helping to attain it? 

He cannot score from the sideline. He folds his nails into his palms – and it’s so dark in the clubroom from the disappearing sun that he didn’t even notice that the one remaining shadow in the space is looming over him. 

A dark shadow with the brightest eyes. 

“You’re coming over, right?” Daichi asks. His voice is neutral, and Suga thinks maybe he hasn’t noticed, yet. 

When Suga smiles, he knows it doesn’t reach his eyes. He watches as realization dawns on Daichi’s face. Suga forces his voice to stay chipper anyway, even though he knows it’s going to be lost on Daichi. “Oh, Daichi, do you still have to ask? I wouldn’t miss a Sawamura Friday night dinner even if you paid me.” He laughs gently, and it comes out more honest than he thought it would, but he suspects that’s because it’s Daichi. “Even if you weren’t there, I’d still go hang out with the twins.” 

“Jeez, Suga, give me some credit, would you?”

Daichi extends him a hand, which he takes graciously as he stands. The towel atop his head falls unceremoniously to his feet, and he peers at Daichi cautiously through his dampened strands of silver hair. “Credit is given where credit is due,” Suga parrots, but he knows it falls a little flat. 

They gather their things and leave the clubroom in silence. When Suga goes to catch the keys Daichi throws his way, he misses. As he picks them up from the floor, it’s with his right hand instead of his left. He’s not feeling particularly flashy tonight. He locks up, shifts his bag on his shoulder, and walks far enough away from Daichi that their hands and arms won’t brush. 

Their walk home is disgustingly, disturbingly silent. Suga hates the sound of their feet on the concrete, and he hates that it’s his fault that they’re not talking. He hates that he doesn’t have the gall to speak up tonight, and he knows Daich is not going to make him

He doesn’t expect for Daichi to grab his wrist and pull him to a stop when they reach the intersection where the paths to their houses diverge. Suga had missed his touch for the entire walk. He missed the arm over his shoulder. For some reason, he just didn’t feel deserving of it. 

It’s almost fully dark now, and Suga suspects they’re running a little late for dinner if they want to shower before. They’d gotten dressed slowly and walked slowly. He blames his own lethargy, and he wonders why Daichi would stop them with so little time to spare. Just like her son, Sawamura-san likes to start things on time. 

“Suga,” Daichi starts, hand curled tightly around Suga’s wrist. He feels his own pulse jump in his veins, and he absently wonders if Daichi can feel it, too. “Do you want to go home? You don’t have to come.” 

“No!” Suga exclaims hurriedly. He hangs his head a little. “You know it’s not that.” 

“I know,” Daichi agrees, “but if you’re not feeling good, I thought maybe you might not want to be around a bunch of rowdy kids.” He pauses thoughtfully. “And adults.” 

He smiles, and Suga lets himself return it. He really does love Daichi’s family. 

“No, I want to come. No one’s home, and I want to be with your family.”

“Do you want to talk before we go?” 

Daichi squeezes Suga’s wrist. 

“Aren’t we running late?”

Daichi shrugs. “This is more important.” 

It’s been clear to Suga lately that the two of them had been pushing so long to seal the cracks that they had been left with. They’ve become closer, more whole. Stronger. It’s not hard for him to see how hard work translates into a bond, but he never wanted to be the one responsible for their shortcomings. He doesn’t want to be the one who resplits the seams they’ve just begun to restitch. 

But as Daichi stares down at him with those warm eyes, he knows it would do much more harm to stay silent than to speak. He knows Daichi knows that, too. 

“We’re supposed to be leaders,” Suga says quietly, moving his gaze from the warmth of Daichi’s face to the cold concrete beneath his shoes. “I don’t want this fight to be over,” he admits. “I want to be by your side.” 

Daichi squeezes his wrist, and Suga knows he has to look up. Daichi’s face is terrifying. He looks furious. “Since when has Sugawara Koushi ever given up on a fight?” he demands. 

He can be so scary sometimes. Suga can’t think of what to say in response, but Daichi continues before he even has to try. 

With a softened face he says, “Besides, I’m not going anywhere. The only reason we wouldn’t be side by side is if you decided to leave, but you’ve already convinced me to stay. Don’t tell me you’ve changed your mind?” 

Suga swallows and shakes his head. 

“I don’t think I could do this without you,” Daichi says. “We’re all stronger because of you, Suga. You’re always working so hard.”

Suga twitches, still on edge even though Daichi has the most honest voice he’s ever heard. Sometimes Suga thinks he would believe anything Daichi told him. Defensively, he snaps, “Well do you expect me to just sit around and lose?”

Daichi takes a step closer to him and squeezes his wrist again. “That’s not what I mean. I’m asking what changed.” 

Suga sighs. “Nothing,” he says. “I just… don’t feel strong tonight.” He brings out a smile, because he sees the look on Daichi’s face. The competitive, motivating one. The look that gets Suga to out-run him, or to do more crunches than him, or to hit one more serve than him. The motivation that often hides behind both of mutual need to nurture. “I’m not gonna lose, though.” 

Daichi senses the shift. “Of course not. But don’t expect me to go easy on you.” 

Suga shakes his head. He doesn’t feel much better, but he can see more clearly. “I don’t want you to. If what I want is in reach, then I’m going to do my best to make it mine.” He pauses. “You’re right, you know. I want to fight. I don’t want this to be over.” 

“That’s more like it.” 

Daichi smiles at him, and Suga smiles back, even though there’s still something unsettling in his stomach. 

“You know,” Daichi begins, lifting his free hand to push Suga’s hair behind his ear. Suga blushes at his touch. “You have so many ways of fighting, Suga. You know that, I know you do. There’s not just one way of being strong. I know we wouldn’t be where we are without you. At the very least, I wouldn’t.” 

That goes deeper than volleyball, and it makes Suga have to swallow hard. He nods while meeting Daichi’s eyes, and he blinks back tears even though the last thing he wants to do is cry. He’s not usually the type to lose his confidence or footing like this. The bad days are rare, which is why he supposes Daichi is treating him so carefully, saying so much. 

Daichi’s words go so far beyond volleyball because he’s aware that Suga’s feelings go far beyond it, too. Volleyball is the catalyst the vision of the future tends to loom over him. He doesn’t want any of this to end. He wants to stand alongside his team forever. He wants to capture the moments on the court and put it in a bottle. If only time could stand still for a just a second so he could get rid of this feeling of having to rush. 

That’s what he feels – like time is slipping through his fingers and he’s doing a horrible job of holding onto the things that matter most. 

Part of him is sure Daichi knows that he’s scared of saying goodbye. Not being on the starting lineup feels like the first of many ends of something he wishes would never cease. But time’s arrow stops for no one, and he’s sure that Daichi wants to hold onto this as badly as he does. 

“Neither of us are allowed to go anywhere, okay?” Suga says. “Except to dinner, we can do that.”

Daichi laughs warmly at his joke, releasing his wrist to put an arm over his shoulder for the rest of the walk home. 

“Are you just moody because you’re hungry?” he asks. 

“Shut up!” 

Daichi’s mom chastises them for being late, but Suga has a long-standing-standing routine of sweet-talking her that works every time. They have to shower quickly, but they come downstairs in soft clothes to a table full of warm food. For the most part, Suga’s mind stays distracted, so he’s able to play Mario Kart with the twins after dinner on the big TV in the living room. He used to pretend to be bad for their sakes, so they could have a taste of victory, but that stint didn’t last very long – or, it didn’t have to. As it turns out, Daichi is actually bad at Mario Kart. 

By the time the kids are being sent to bed and Daichi’s parents are retiring to their own room, Suga has begun to feel tired again. While the distraction was welcome, he still doesn’t feel entirely right in his own skin. There’s still an itch, an unsettling feeling of discomfort that probably won’t go away until he sleeps. That’s how days like these tend to unfold. It doesn’t always have to be one thing in particular that offsets him. 

It’s cold upstairs, and he pulls the loose knit sweater hanging on the back of Daichi’s desk chair over his head. He sits on the floor unthinkingly, and though he makes to scroll through his phone, the familiar space pulls him in. His phone stays lit up in his hand, but the pale walls draw his gaze to every corner of the room. He’s vaguely aware that Daichi is somewhere, maybe rifling through the books left open on the desk or curling up on the navy comforter of the bed, but his eyes don’t register him. All he sees are the memories he’s had in here. He notes how the books on the shelves are the same as ever. There’s that panel of wood that’s a different color than all the rest laid in the floor. 

And pictures. Daichi has always liked pictures. He’s the old-fashioned type, has framed photos of his family and goes to the store to print out new ones and put them in books. The ones in his room, however, never really change. So much of this room is constant, and it feels like home. 

Suga puts his palms behind him and leans back, forearms and shoulders stretching. They will likely be sore from practice tomorrow. His eyes fixate on some of the photos stuck to the glass of Daichi’s mirror. They’re nearly all old – of his siblings, friends from middle school that Suga has heard about but doesn’t really know, maybe one or two from first year. 

Suga knows that Daichi will probably ask if he doesn’t say anything soon, so he settles for, “You know, your room could really use more pictures of me.” 

Daichi laughs, and Suga’s gaze finally places him. He’s standing by his desk, closing and organizing books, just like he had thought. “You say that every time you’re here.” 

Suga hums. “And it’s always true.”

“I’ve added more,” Daichi argues lightly, gesturing to the one on his nightside table. It’s Suga and Asahi at Golden Week training last year, and it’s hardly a new addition. 

“It’s never going to be enough, Dai. Sorry to break it to you.” 

Daichi exhales another laugh, but it’s off. The conversation is routine, and it happens robotically. Suga is not sure what is more strange: his passiveness while having it or the fact that he thinks it probably would have been better to say nothing at all. He decides to lay down, still cold despite the sweater. He yearns for touch, suddenly. He wants nothing more than to feel affection, and he curls up on Daichi’s rug. Suga knows he is in a space where he can listen to Daichi’s voice without the pressure to speak and knows that he will always be heard if he chooses to say something in return, but he’s not sure how to ask Daichi to start talking. 

He forgets that with Daichi, it’s rare that he has to ask for anything. 

“What if I make you my lockscreen?” he hears Daichi ask. He’s not by the desk anymore, but with his eyes closed and his head against the softness of the rug, Suga can’t bring himself to sit up and look. 

He hums again. “Am I not already?” It’s kind of half-hearted when it’s meant to be teasing. 

He closes his eyes again, but they flash open a few moments later when he realizes that Daichi has come to squat next to him where he lays across the bedroom floor. His eyes are dark and concerned in the low light coming from the lamp in the corner of the room. “At least come up to the bed so you don’t get sore,” Daichi breathes, voice softer than Suga expects. Suga watches the corners of his friend’s mouth quirk up into a quick but silly smile. “Don’t wanna let the floor trick you into thinking it’s comfy again.” 

Suga exhales as a weak form of laughter, not expecting a hand to come down and push his hair away from his face. Daichi’s fingers linger on his cheekbone, and then he stands, offering a hand to Suga to join him. Suga accepts, and he grasps Daichi’s palm. His hand is steady. Suga feels less dizziness when he rises to his feet. 

Suga gets on the bed first, quiet and gentle in his movements. He finds a seat with his back pushed against the wall and his feet curled beneath him, but Daichi lays right down, hands cushioning the back of his head, body looking longer as it stretches out on the soft fabric of the blue comforter. Suga lets his eyes wander over Daichi. His shirt is a little rucked up, so Suga can see the skin between the waistband of his boxers and the hem of his tee. His hip bones jut up. With his arms behind his head like that, Suga can trace his eyes along the line of muscle in his biceps, the roundedness of his shoulders. 

Everything about him looks relaxed except for his eyes – which are trained on Suga, wide, maybe a little worried. 

At the sight of him laid out like this, Suga changes positions and lies down next to him. It’s much less guarded, and he thinks he hears Daichi sigh in relief. Suga pushes his bare feet under the throw at the end of the bed. He stays on his back, not ready for that unrelenting eye contact. He pulls the sleeves of the borrowed navy blue sweater over his fingers, but on the bed, with Daichi next to him, he doesn’t feel cold anymore. He becomes blanketed in a warm comfort; despite the spring weather they’ve been having, he’s enveloped with the feeling of coming inside on a cold winter day. 

“You are my background already, actually,” Daichi says finally. The pause was really far too long to keep the conversation going, but Suga assumes that the silence had made Daichi uncomfortable. 

“Oh?” murmurs Suga. 

Daichi fumbles for his phone and holds it above both of their heads, waking it up to show the picture at large. “The whole team from last year.” They look so much younger. “I guess I should change it.”

It’s crazy, how much changes in a year. It’s crazy, the way memories become part of a face. Moments get braided into the length of your hair. There are things that get left behind with eyelashes. A year later, you are always different and the same. Any photo could tell you that. 

“Outdated,” Suga breathes softly. It’s all he can think to say. He’s thinking far beyond that, but nothing’s coming out. He responds because he knows he should, even though he wants to give Daichi so much more. It must be boring to hang out with him when he gets quiet. This is a rare version of himself. 

He closes his eyes, but he doesn’t expect to feel Daichi turn on his side and place a hand on Suga’s shoulder. His face hovers over Suga’s, those sweet, wide brown eyes staring down shinily. Suga wants to lean further into his touch so badly it’s like an ache. 

Daichi’s voice is soft when he speaks. The worry in his voice leaves a funny feeling in Suga’s chest. “Are you sure you’re okay, Kou?” 

His throat tightens at the nickname. It sends a warm feeling into his stomach – a verbal affirmation of their closeness. 

Outside of family, Daichi is the only one who calls him that, seldom as it is. 

He remembers to answer when Daichi’s thumb brushes over his collarbone. “I’m sure, Dai. Sometimes you just can’t shake a mood, you know?” 

Daichi nods and lowers himself back to the bed, removing the hand from Suga’s shoulder. “I know,” he replies. 

He doesn’t seem any less worried. 

Suga blinks at the ceiling, trying to think of ways to express what he wants out of the evening. He says all he can think to say – all he can think to convey what he needs to feel better, even though nothing in particular is wrong. “Can we be close tonight?” He keeps his hazelish eyes trained upward. They feel a little clouded. 

Daichi scoots closer so their biceps are pressed together. “Of course,” he murmurs softly. He doesn’t ask Suga to clarify; Suga’s not sure if it’s because he understands exactly what Suga means or if he’s just going to do his best to try. “Do you want to watch something?” Daichi asks the room. 

Suga thinks about it for a moment. He likes it like this, flat on his back, eyes opening and closing at his own whim, not having to follow anything in particular. It’s relaxing. “No, let’s just lay. And maybe listen to music? That playlist you showed me was nice.” 

“Yeah, that sounds good,” replies Daichi, sitting up. He brushes his hand over Suga’s forehead tentatively. Suga nearly jumps at the touch, not having seen it coming. “You’ll stay over?” 

His eyes flash open, and they meet Daichi’s once more, hovering over his face. They’re not particularly close, but it feels like there’s something connecting them, something keeping their eyes trained on one another. Suga thinks perhaps it’s that concern Daichi’s been harboring all night. 

“Mhm,” Suga agrees. “I think you’d have to drag me home at this rate.” 

“I wouldn’t dare,” Daichi replies. 

He hooks up his phone to the bluetooth speaker that sits on his nightside table, and they spend a chunk of time just lying on their backs and listening to music. Sometimes their arms will brush, or they’ll pause to discuss an artist or some lyrics. Once or twice they even hold the phone over their heads and watch the music video to a tune they particularly like. But for the most part, it’s quiet. They let themselves be tired. They let themselves relax. 

Suga gets lost in the fact that he doesn’t have to say anything at all. 

Eventually, he notices that Daichi is taking longer to respond when they speak. His eyes stay closed for greater periods of time. Shifting from his comfortable, warm spot in the corner of Daichi’s bed, he climbs over him while mumbling, “Gramps, you could’ve told me you wanted to go to sleep. I’ll set up the futon.” 

He moves unceremoniously over Daichi’s lap and hops onto the floor, but as he turns to head to Daichi’s hallway closet where he knows the futon is stored, having set it up many times, Daichi catches his wrist. 

“Wait, Suga,” Daichi breathes, his eyes a little bleary as he sits up. “Stay, you– you said you wanted–”

To be close. Right. He finishes the thought without hesitating.

The thought of sleeping alone on the floor runs through his mind, and it doesn’t sound particularly appealing – not when he could be up in bed with a warm body next to him to keep his mind from clouding up. 

“Could’ve said that before I completed the arduous task of climbing over your massive legs,” Suga jokes. 

“Massive?” Daichi whines, pulling on Suga’s wrist. 

They both laugh. 

Suga moves from Daichi’s grip anyway, going to shut off the light and quietly padding back to bed in the dark. When he returns, Daichi has moved under his blue duvet, with Suga’s side pulled down. Suga clambers back over Daichi and curls beneath the blanket, pulling it up to his chin. He feels just as grateful for the darkness as he is intimidated by it. He’s suddenly ridden with nerves, suddenly unsettled by this invitation into Daichi’s bed. It’s not that they haven’t slept next to each other before – no, they have and they do. But most of the time it’s by accident, like when they both pass out on the couch in Suga’s basement and move bleary-eyed and confused into Suga’s bed when they awake to the light of the TV still playing at 3 in the morning. 

As he adjusts his head on the pillow, a strip of moonlight comes in through the window as a cloud rolls past. He hears and feels Daichi adjusting next to him, pulling up the duvet further, and that’s all it takes. Daichi’s movements are so familiar and fluid that that brief moment of anxiety leaves him. Being close really does make him feel better. He can relax with Daichi next to him, with Daichi so close to him – and he loves that Daichi knows that it will make him feel better. 

Turning to his side, he reaches his arms around Daichi’s waist and pulls him into a hug. Shrouded in darkness, he whispers, “Thank you.” 

Daichi’s arms come to wrap around him, one slipping beneath the pillow where Suga’s head rests, the other curling around the back of Suga’s neck. It’s tentative at first, but he begins to card through Suga’s hair, always extra soft after a shower. They just hold each other for a while, and Suga wills his mind to think of nothing else other than this. “Always,” Daichi says after some amount of time, the stretch of which has been addled by the darkness and their syncing breath and the feeling of what it is to hold a person you care for so deeply. “You know I’ll always be here.”

Suga thinks, I’d go mad if you were anywhere else. Here, in particular, he begins to think. It would be a nice always, if Daichi’s hands were always carding through his hair, if they were always this close. If he could always smell the bergamot and cedarwood that lingers in the crook of Daichi’s neck. If there’s a place where he could always feel this safe. Where he can be either quiet or loud and have there be no expectations to proceed it. 

“Good,” he says instead. It seems like a fair enough response for now. 

Daichi pulls him a little closer, his wide hands spanning the length of both of Suga’s shoulder blades, and Suga clenches his fists into the soft, worn material of Daichi’s white tee. Beneath the blanket, everything is warm, and Suga lets his hands wander unthinkingly up and down the expanse of Daichi’s back. His broad shoulders meet at his narrower waist, and Suga loves the shape of him, big and strong as the fearless leader he is. By the time his fingertips have moved up and down, tracing the same circular track, he dares to reach under Daichi’s shirt – not sure what’s overcoming him or why he feels the sudden urge to touch skin. Daichi says nothing, only scratches at Suga’s scalp and lowers his face to the junction of Suga’s shoulder, where he breathes deeply. 

Suga’s hands wander along the divet of Daichi’s spine; Daichi’s mouth is pressed unmoving to where the scoop neck of his old shirt and the wide collar of Daichi’s sweater have slipped off, exposing his skin. Suga inhales heavily, but he doesn’t say anything. The moment has taken the shape of glass; words would surely shatter it. 

At first – he’s unsure if he feels it right – Daichi’s mouth opens and closes wetly on the skin of his neck. One of Daichi’s hands is still carding through his hair, scratching occasionally to make goosebumps threaten to run up his sides. For a moment, as Daichi’s mouth moves for the second time and places the gentlest of kisses higher on his neck, Suga thinks what– 

But he stops his brain there. It feels too good. Nothing about this feels dangerous. He feels safer than he ever has. 

His hands must have stopped moving on Daichi’s back on some point, because Daichi has frozen. He lifts his head, and his breath coasts along the now wet skin of Suga’s neck. 

“Suga–” Daichi starts, but Suga shakes his head gently. He pulls Daichi even closer to him by the waist, tilts his neck ever so slightly, and traces his nails lightly down Daichi’s back. 

“S’nice,” Suga whispers. “Being close to you.” 

Daichi kisses his neck again. And again. It encourages Suga’s hands to wander, curling over the tops of Daichi’s shoulders, tracing up the sides of his neck, running quickly down his sides so he can feel the muscles of his obliques tense and then relax. His breath is tickling Suga’s neck, but his hands and mouth feel so good. His movements seem slow but sure, and Suga feels like he owes it to him to feel the same. 

He retracts one hand from Daichi’s back and moves it in between their bodies beneath the covers. He scoots up the bed and takes Daichi’s jaw in his hand, tilting his head gently and settling his mouth on his adam’s apple. It’s so intimate, but he’s not thinking about that. Instead, he thinks of the way the absence of warmth on his own neck is very soon made up by the feeling of his lips on Daichi’s skin. He smells impossibly good, and Suga can feel the way he swallows as soon Suga’s mouth meets his neck. 

Suga is certainly less assured in his movements than Daichi had seemed – he’s never done anything like this before, has never felt this close to anyone before, has never felt this fire on his skin. But Daichi’s head tips back even further at Suga’s touch. His jaw is solid and sharp in Suga’s hand. His skin tastes clean; Suga’s tongue darts out to taste it, and he revels in the sigh Daichi makes in response. God, it’s good to know you’re making someone feel like this. For all Daichi does for Suga, Suga would feel just fine giving him every piece of the universe he’s had the privilege of experiencing. 

He kisses up Daichi’s neck but stops at his jaw, becoming timid as he nears Daichi’s face. Daichi seems to grow impatient, because he switches them back to kissing Suga again. He puts one hand on Suga’s neck so that his fingers can crawl up the side quite carefully. He reaches behind Suga’s ear to play with the soft hairs there. When he swipes his fingers close to Suga’s earlobe, Suga shivers violently. 

Suga occupies himself by reaching his hands around to Daichi’s front, feeling the warmth and firmness of his abdomen. He’s strong here. Daichi has always been centered right down to his core. 

They take turns kissing each other’s necks, eyes closed, breath increasingly audible. Suga is hyper-aware of the situation he’s in once the first noise that slips past lingers in the room. He remembers how they’re supposed to be asleep, and how Daichi was just moments from dozing off before Suga had crawled into bed beside him. He’s sharing a bed with his best friend, and his best friend is kissing up on his neck, making him dissolve like sugar in water. Suga becomes transparent and sweet and so close to syrup. Just watch him spill all over this bed, becoming something saccharine and delicious. Watch Daichi lick up the side of his neck. 

When he feels Daichi finally scraping his teeth at Suga’s collarbone, sucking bravely just a little bit, Suga finds that he doesn’t care. He just might crystallize. He’d boil over for this. 

He’s not sure what’s keeping him from getting nervous. Maybe it’s the darkness – only that small strip of light is coming in from outside. The moon, Suga thinks absently. But he can’t think about the implications of any of this. All he can think about is how good it feels when Daichi sucks gently on the corner of his jaw. How good it feels to reach his hand up to linger just between Daichi’s pecs. All he can think is that it feels good, and it’s leaving him so warm. 

He’s not sure when the shift happens, maybe it’s when he gasps again, but something in Daichi seems to change. His mouth grows hotter on Suga’s skin. The hand that was carding through Suga’s hair comes to grip lightly on the back of his neck. His other hand lingers on the small of Suga’s back, pushing them closer. His mouth moves quickly up Suga’s neck and begins to wander along the slope of jaw. He kisses beneath Suga’s eye, along his cheekbone, just at the corner of his mouth. 

And for Suga– the dam breaks. He thinks, it would be a waste if we did this much, and I got to taste all of you except this. They clearly aren’t avoiding anything. They’re clearly caught up in being close. All Suga knows is that he wants this. Daichi always manages to be everything he needs. He reaches a hand around the back of Daichi’s head, and all of the tentativeness they had before is left on the skin of their necks. When their mouths meet, it’s wet and hot, and they open to each other immediately. 

Suga’s eyes stay closed but his hands continue to wander up and down Daichi’s abdomen and back. If his skin is hot, his mouth is like fire. He kisses Suga with so much, their mouths moving sloppily but perfectly. He licks at Suga’s lips, and Suga is so glad that he got Daichi here . Here, his tongue brushes against Suga’s own, their hips slot together, and Suga lets out a moan into Daichi’s mouth that makes Daichi’s hand slips down his back and grips his hip hard. 

“Suga,” Daichi groans after Suga tugs on Daichi’s bottom lip with his teeth. 

It’s almost enough to pull Suga back into reality, it’s almost enough to make him think, what the– 

But then Daichi is murmuring, “C’mere, c’mere,” and pulling Suga by the hips onto his lap. 

Pressed together like this, Suga recognizes a few things. Daichi’s pupils are huge in the moonlight. He feels much hotter than he did a half hour ago. Suga likes it here, on Daichi’s lap. He feels everything. Daichi’s leaning up bit against a pillow, and his hands have found Suga’s waist. He trails one hand up to Suga’s jaw to pull him down for a kiss, and Suga finds himself leaning over Daichi’s chest, one hand moving up and down the smooth expanse of his neck and chest, the other propping himself. With his hips jutted back like this, right atop of Daichi’s, he finds it very hard not to move them. 

They make out for an amount of time that ends up being blurred by the darkness hovering over them. Suga tries very hard to keep his hips still. Instead he focuses on Daichi’s mouth on his neck and the way he quickly learns that Suga’s ears are sensitive. It doesn’t take long for him to start whispering. Suga wonders when Daichi became so bold. He wonders absently, barely, if that might just be only for him. 

“I’m glad you stayed tonight,” Daichi says into his ear, lips skirting the shell of it. “You feel so good.” 

“Well, you did make me feel better,” Suga says back airily. He’s not sure if they’re supposed to be joking, but strangely enough, it doesn’t feel like there’s an elephant in the room. It feels like his warm body is pressed to his best friend’s. That’s all. 

“You’re cheeky,” Daichi murmurs, his lips skirting Suga’s jaw. 

They’re not saying, is this okay, do you want this as much as I do, what are you thinking. 

They don’t have to go there. 

“Always,” Suga laughs, and he lets his mouth find Daichi’s, but only just. Their lips brush over and over, but they never meet fully, because Suga keeps pulling back. Why should he be any less teasing here? 

“Suga,” Daichi groans, and his nails run gently down Suga’s back. 

“Hmm?” hums Suga, lips moving to Daichi’s cheek, moving close to his ear. 

Daichi seems to grow frustrated, and he latches his mouth to Suga’s collarbone, biting in a way that makes Suga gasp. He rolls his hips down without thinking, and Daichi moans for the first time. 

“Suga, Suga, you’re so–” Daichi breathes. His hands have gone a little wild, moving from hips to shoulders to face. 

Suga laughs. “I’m so what, Dai chi?” 

He likes teasing Daichi. That’s never going to stop. This, he thinks, is no different. 

“Fuck, you’re sexy. Just – c’mere, I really wanna kiss you more.” 

When Daichi asks, he always answers. 

They kiss more, until the heat becomes unbearable. Suga starts to fidget with his sweater when Daichi catches his hand, fiddling with the hem of the navy knit material. It looks black in the light, like midnight. “This is mine,” he says. 

Suga feels his cheeks flush but he knows it won’t be seen in the dark. “Well, take it back then. I’m done with it.” 

Daichi laughs, sitting up a little bit, fingers twisted in the sweater, one hand resting on Suga’s back. “Tell me that in the morning when you’re cold,” he quips back. He reaches beneath Suga’s shirt, too, and he pulls both that and the sweater over Suga’s head before straining to pull his own shirt off. 

It’s so different, kissing when their skin is touching. Suga feels on fire. He has never felt closer and safer than this. His mind is totally clear. 

They kiss for a long time; Daichi ends up rolling them back onto their sides so he can bite all over Suga’s chest. Suga would have never imagined a side of him like this existed. He’s not sure when they slow down, when their kisses turn into brushes of lips, when the desperation of their hands turn into gentle fingers sweeping up sides. Eventually, Suga says, “M’tired,” into Daichi’s neck. 

“Who’s Gramps now?” Daichi replies, but he’s already pulling Suga into his chest so that Suga’s head is beneath his chin. He presses a gentle kiss to Suga’s forehead. “Sleep.” 

“You cuddle like a bear,” Suga murmurs sleepily into the skin of Daichi’s collarbone. 

“Don’t say that like it’s news.” 

“If anything, it’s good news,” Suga says, drifting.

When Suga awakes, he’s facing the wall instead of Daichi’s chest, but he finds himself still securely wrapped in Daichi’s arms, spooned closely. Suga’s shoulders are sore, he can feel it in traps, but he doesn’t really want to move and stretch, despite his discomfort. He pushes his face further into the pillow and lets the feeling of sleep leave his body slowly – simply because he can. 

Daichi’s breath is light on the back of Suga’s neck, and his hands are pressed to the flat expanse of Suga’s stomach. He’d forgotten they’d taken their shirts off. His cheeks warm into a blush at the memories of Daichi’s hands on his back, Daichi’s lips on neck, Daichi’s tongue meeting the seam of his mouth. He blushes, yes, but he’s not nervous, or embarrassed, not really. He closes his eyes once more and chooses to bask in the sunlight that’s pouring over the bed and onto their skin, instead. One of the hands pressed into Suga’s abdomen twitches, and Suga reaches down to thread their fingers together. Daichi snores lightly. 

Suga lays there until the sun moves from their bellies to his face. Eventually, the light becomes unbearable over his eyes, and he carefully pries his way out of Daichi’s grasp. Clambering over Daichi’s legs and the mess of blankets they’d tangled themselves in, he manages his way out of the bed. When he turns to look at Daichi’s sleeping form once more, he sees that he was immediately replaced by the nearest pillow. He laughs under his breath, smiles fondly. Fingers brushing the sheets, he leans over to kiss Daichi’s temple before he can help himself. He’s soon met with the compelling urge to wake him up just so they can kiss again. 

A pang of anxiety hits him then, and he shakes his head as he finds his t-shirt and the borrowed sweater on the floor, where they must have been flung. Without the shroud of darkness, it becomes much easier to question just what exactly had happened last night. He pulls his clothes over his head before wandering to the bathroom to wash his face and brush his teeth. His neck is pale as usual, but where the neckline of the sweater slips, he sees a faint purple mark. 

“Shit,” Suga says. 

Ridden with curiosity, he lifts his shirt, exposing his whole chest and collarbones, covered with marks. He flushes furiously and knows that the locker room is going to be a little miserable in the coming days. What was the side of Daichi he had seen last night? It could have been a whole number of things. 

He stops back in Daichi’s room to switch his shirt to one with a higher neckline. 

Pausing at the twins’ door right by the staircase, he peeks his head in once he hears the sound of two young voices, confirming that they are indeed chattering in their bunk beds. Peering around the cracked door, he smiles and asks, “Pancake time?” 

Jolting from their beds like they have springs in their feet, they cheer, “Pancake time!” and Suga can only hope it’s not loud enough to wake the whole house. 

Cooking with the twins is a nice distraction. They are the most eager of helpers, and many weekends of pancake-making has shaped them into excellent egg-crackers and flour-whiskers. This keeps him from thinking of just how badly he’d like to crawl back next to Daichi in bed, tilt his jaw up and kiss him slow. It keeps him from wondering when that became a thing he wanted at all. Keeps him from asking whether that’s a bad thing or not. 

Their team of three conjures up a batch of extra fluffy pancakes topped with bananas and some syrupy strawberries. Just as he hands the plates to the kids sitting excitedly at the kitchen table, Daichi comes downstairs. Suga supposes the smell woke him up – nothing usually gets him up before noon on a Saturday unless they have weekend practice. His parents tend to sleep in on weekends, leaving the kids to their own devices (and plenty of time to watch the television). 

Daichi is wonderfully rumpled, in a maroon crewneck sweatshirt and gym shorts. Suga supposes he hasn’t gone into the bathroom to freshen up yet, because there’s an alarming hickey halfway down his neck that Suga is sure he would’ve tried harder to cover. He thinks a collared shirt just might shield it from the public eye. 

“Pancakes?” Daichi asks, voice rough with sleep. Suga loves this version of Daichi – it’s when he’s at his dumbest and it’s absolutely charming. 

“It’s Saturday, and you have a stocked fridge. Obviously pancakes.” 

Daichi smiles at him. Suga wants to reach out and touch the mark on his neck. Or at least, say something. 

“I’ll make you coffee,” says Daichi. 

“You better.” 

Suga continues his work in silence as Daichi makes them both pour overs. (That’s one of his lesser known talents. Suga likes to tease him that if he wasn’t a spiker he’d have to be a barista.) Neither of them even come close to bringing up what had unfolded last night. The lack of discussion worries Suga, but he comes to discover that the kiss itself doesn’t. How could something that felt so natural be worrying? Neither of them are acting differently, either. Kissing Daichi had felt like he was supposed to be doing it, just like mornings like these make him feel like he’s supposed to be waking up slow and making pancakes. Some things are just like that – not worth questioning because of how right they feel. 

If the shoe fits, Suga thinks absently. 

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Daichi put cream and sugar in Suga’s mug. Daichi pads over Suga to slowly, coming up behind him and offering the coffee. Suga folds his free hand carefully around the warmth of the cup as he flips the final pancakes. 

With a gentle hand between Suga’s shoulder blades and warm eyes that seem to reflect the richness of the black coffee in his hands, Daichi asks softly, voice still low and sleepy, “How are you feeling today?” 

Something unplaceable glints in Daichi’s eyes. It’s playful and light, like a soft rain, or a first snowfall. 

Suga blinks before he replies honestly, “Better. Much better.” 

He smiles, but his lips stay parted. Without thinking, he drops his gaze to Daichi’s mouth. He watches, almost as if in slow motion, as Daichi’s gaze drops to his mouth, too. They say nothing. 

Suga turns back to his pancake to avoid it burning and sips his sweet coffee. He’s not sure where his thoughts might go once he’s alone again.

Chapter Text

On Mondays, they don’t have practice until the afternoon. The day seems to unfold with the same unease that rests in Suga’s belly. Time passes in quick jerks and long lapses, all leading up, strangely, embarrassingly, to the moment when he has to take off his shirt. Things had started normally enough, beginning with his walk to school alongside Daichi and Asahi. They moved bleary-eyed, not saying much. It was a testament to their Monday morning routine – none of them can ever seem to wake up. On Mondays, whatever conversation they usually have on their walks is reduced to groans and yawns.

Today’s silence, had, for the first time ever, felt uncomfortable for no reason other than Suga’s unnerving place inside his own head. Lunch was normal, class uneventful, and distracting if nothing else, but by the end of his second to last lesson, all Suga can think about is exactly how he’s going to manage to get to the clubroom first, and what Daichi is going to do about the mark on his neck that is just peeking out of the collar of his button down shirt. Suga is sure that he’s the only one who knows about it. 

After all, he’s the one who put it there. 

Just before the final lesson begins, Suga watches Daichi fiddle with his collar as he rises from his seat to go speak with their sensei at the front of the classroom. Absently, Suga wonders if Daichi can feel his eyes on him. 

He strains his ears to catch their conversation. Daichi speaks much more softly than normal. The only words Suga makes out are “volleyball” and “early.” 

Sensei speaks far louder. She doesn’t seem to assume that Daichi is trying to keep the conversation under wraps. “Right. I forgot that I have both volleyball captains in this class. You may leave early to take care of whatever you need, but only five minutes. Does Sugawara-kun need to join you?” 

Suga snaps his eyes down to the notebook on his desk just in case Daichi decides to glance over to him. 

“Ah, no, sensei.” 

“Very well. Now go sit, we’re running late.” 

Daichi thanks her and pulls at his collar again before hastily returning to his seat. Suga stares at the back of his head the whole lecture, notes untaken and feeling his stomach slowly rise into his mouth. 

Suga still rushes to the clubroom after class, hoping if not to beat Daichi that he can still beat everyone else. When he opens the door, it creaks loudly. He’s greeted with a gaze from the warmest eyes, but an expression he can’t place. Daichi has already changed, in tight shorts that hug his thighs and a plain white t-shirt. He may have avoided the team seeing whatever marks are below his neckline, but the column of his throat is exposed; the purple mark on its left side seems so stark despite his tan skin. Suga’s mouth feels dry. 

They say nothing, but as Suga steps into the room, he watches Daichi turn away and place a hand on his neck. Suga squirms; he wants so badly to touch him. 

Reality hits him hard as he hears the distant sound of approaching voices. He changes his shirt first, hastily pulling off his uniform and facing the lockers as he pulls a new, high-collared tee over his head. He can feel Daichi’s eyes on him. He’s sure that there are no marks on his back, but it almost feels like Daichi can see right through him. Can see where his chest is blooming purple, his cheeks blooming red. 

The room is incredibly hot, for springtime. 

Suga is so close to saying something – he’s not sure what – but the second years bursting through the clubroom door stop him in his tracks. Nishinoya, Suga supposes, would be the first to notice anything, but it’s not like he expected it. It seems that Noya’s keen senses and quick reflexes extend far beyond volleyball, because it takes him approximately thirty seconds of his eyes flitting back and forth between Suga and Daichi before blurting, “Daichi, is that a fucking hickey?” 

Things go far downhill from there as the rest of the team arrives. 

At first, Daichi says nothing, but his blush is formidable. He snaps, “Get dressed. We have a lot to do today.” 

But Tanaka comes up to prod at his neck. “Did you get a girlfriend before us? Is it Michimiya?” He frowns as Daichi yanks him away by the collar. “I wouldn’t peg her as a biter.” 

“You shouldn’t be pegging her as anything ,” Daichi growls. 

“So it was her?” 

“No! Shut up!” 

As they walk to the gym, Tsukishima snorts into his hand. “You’re all idiots. It’s obvious that Daichi-san just burnt himself with his curling iron. ” 

Yamaguchi, Nishinoya, and Tanaka all snort, but Hinata frowns. “Did he actually?” 

Tsukishima stares at him blankly. “I would ask if you’re stupid, but I already know the answer.” 

“Rude,” Hinata says. “I guess Daichi-san doesn’t really have enough hair to curl.” 

Tsukishima’s disbelieving look of distaste only deepens.

As they stretch, Nishinoya lets his eyes wander between Suga and Daichi. “So you at least have to tell us if it was good or not, uh, regardless of who it was.” 

Suga watches a strangely soft expression overtake Daichi’s face, but it morphs back into something scary rather quickly. “Knock it off, Nishinoya.” 

Asahi gives Noya a sympathetic look, probably somewhat amused by his antics, but his eyes have been wandering back between Suga and Daichi just the same. It makes Suga shift his weight between his feet. He feels like he’s being watched. Like he’s being read. 

However, beyond the sympathy he feels for Daichi’s apparent discomfort, the rest of him is more proud that he was the one who put the mark there in the first place. He’s overcome with a strange sense of power. For a moment, Daichi feels his. 

“If it’s anonymous, I don’t see how it could hurt,” Noya pushes. 

Daichi narrows his eyes, but Tanaka agrees. “He’s got a point.” 

“Both of you idiots, shut up! We’re not talking about my sex life at practice!” 

Nishinoya blurts, “You had sex?” (Suga wonders the same thing. They did not. It only takes a few seconds of him wondering what it would be like if they did before he has to shake his head to rid himself of the thought. ) 

Simultaneously Tanaka wonders, “So we can talk about it after practice?” 

Daichi groans, putting his head in his hands. “Fuck!” he says under his breath. Suga wants to comfort him, but for some reason, he’s afraid to touch him. Like then, everyone will know exactly what it was like when his lips were on Daichi’s neck, when their hips were slotted together, the sweet things Daichi whispered into his ear that he’s been replaying since he first heard them. “No! To both of those things! Now if anyone else has anything to say or asks me one more question about this, I’m making you all do flying falls for every receive you miss.” 

There’s a collective groan that seems like consensus to give it up, but of course, Nishinoya jumps to his feet from his stretches and jabs his thumb into his chest. “That’s not a problem!” 

Daichi appears murderous, but his voice is deadpan. “Great. So you can start practice with two laps.” 

Nishinoya dives to the floor. 

Daichi calms down eventually, and the rest of practice is fine, Suga thinks. Just fine. The only thing he fails to shake is the way Asahi and Noya keep looking at him like they know something, and the way his cheeks grow red each time they do. 

The walk home is decidedly not fine. Asahi walks in between the two of them, and he keeps looking back and forth, blushing madly and and stumbling over his words. Daichi keeps his arms folded over his chest, still a bit ticked off, and Suga looks at the ground, whistling here and there, not even bothering to make small talk when he knows it’s going to be a disaster. 

“Ah, good practice, right guys?” Asahi says after a moment of silence has begun to eat at them. 

Suga snorts. “I’d say the only good thing was the sheer joy I got watching Hinata slam his chin into the floor when he tries to do flying falls.”

Daichi lets out one chuckle. Asahi just smiles wearily. “He’ll get better.” 

“I know,” Suga says, “your best friend Noya said he would show him the ropes.” 

Suga watches Asahi’s blush deepen at the mention of Nishinoya. “Noya isn’t my best friend.” 

Suga cocks an eyebrow. He plays into the tenseness that blankets all three of them, even though he knows he shouldn’t. “He isn’t?” 

“Tanaka is Nishinoya’s best friend,” Asahi argues lamely. 

“Ah,” Suga says, knowing he’s being an asshole, knowing he’s being avoidant. “Something else then.” 

“Yeah,” Asahi grumbles as he narrows his eyes at Suga. “Something else.” 

There’s silence for the rest of the walk, until they part ways. Suga almost expects Daichi to go down his own road, but he lingers next to Suga as they say their goodbyes. 

Right before Asahi turns away, he begins to fiddle with his fingers nervously. There’s a saddened, disappointed expression on his face. “Suga,” he starts, voice deep but shaky. “Just – remember you promised you would tell me.” 

Suga sees Daichi shoot him a glance, but Suga keeps his eyes on Asahi, who turns away quickly. 

“Asahi–” Suga starts. 

Asahi, because he’s not nearly as draconian as he’s pretending to be, turns back around. “A-as soon as I know, I’ll tell you.” 

Suga’s smile is a little watery, he can feel it, and he sighs in relief when Asahi nods and says goodnight. 

Daichi twitches next to him, but as Asahi’s large figure retreats further into the shadows, the notion of just the two of them alone seems to calm them both. Because he’s Daichi, he doesn’t prod with questions, despite how many that conversation left to be asked. He fiddles with the strap of his bag before he throws an arm over Suga’s shoulders and pulls him close. Suga sighs, though he’s still on edge. 

“Oh, the gentleman is still taking me home?” he quips. 

Daichi frowns, starting them walking. “Why wouldn’t I?” 

Suga falters. Is there a reason he wouldn’t? “I don’t know.” 

Daichi’s fingers drum on Suga’s shoulders. “Did you have a good day?”

“We were together the whole time,” Suga points out, somewhat snappily. He knows his nerves are making him become defensive, but he plays into it anyway. 

“Well,” Daichi says slowly, almost with hesitance, “we didn’t talk much.”

“I guess you’re right. Talk to me now, loser.” He bumps into Daichi’s side. 

Daichi bumps him back. “You’re the loser.”

“Daichi, I never lose.” 

Daichi frowns lightly, as though deciding to change the subject. “My day was good. I’m tired.”

They’re halfhearted answers to a question Suga had barely answered, and he hates this. He hates the way their cogs aren’t lining up. They’re not running smoothly. 

Suga sees purple, but mumbles, “You slept the whole weekend.”

As if that’s ever stopped Daichi from being tired. 

“Your point?” 

By this point, they’ve arrived at Suga’s door, and he wants to redo the whole day. At the very least, he doesn’t want it to end like this. He figures there’s nothing he can say that will make the moment any worse, so he settles for truth. “I want you to come in.” 

He thinks, Why do I always miss you? 

Daichi’s eyes widen a little, and his grip on Suga’s shoulder tightens. “Can’t I?”

“Mom’s finally home,” Suga explains. “Said I’d spend the evening with her, help her make dinner and stuff.” 

Daichi looks a little disappointed, but he nods in understanding. He knows the way Suga misses his parents when they travel, even if he never says. “Well, call me later, okay? I need help with that new reading.” 

Suga looks up at him and smiles softly. He finds himself somewhat entranced in Daichi’s gaze as he mumbles, “Kay.” A softness fills him. A warmth he can’t place. Suddenly, he’s flammable, so ready to catch fire. 

“C’mere, sweaty,” Daichi quips, and pulls him close. 

They hug, and Suga ignites. A warmth that begins in his chest bursts, ripping down his arms and legs. He’s covered in goosebumps but hotter than ever. They’re outside in his neighborhood, where there are neighbors and children playing and little old ladies who walk with their canes, but Suga doesn’t care. He breathes Daichi in, his cologne lingering even after practice. Suga pushes his face into Daichi’s neck, then pulls back. His lips brush unhesitatingly over the mark that he left the other night. He so badly wants to darken it again. He raises a hand to brush against it lightly with his fingertips when they pull back from the hug, drops his palm briefly against Daichi’s chest to feel his quickened heartbeat, then releases. 

He glances upward at the tiny distance between them, and his eyelids feel heavy. He watches Daichi breathe in. His eyes fall to Suga’s lips. “Kou…” Daichi starts. He lifts a hand, and the joints of his knuckles seem to bend so easily, curling as vines twist toward the sun – gentle and deliberate. 

He brushes his thumb underneath Suga’s eye on the sharpness of his cheekbone. Suga flushes and swallows. “Gotta go,” he murmurs, and his voice is lower than he expects. “You know… vegetables to chop.” 

“Mhm,” says Daichi absently. His eyes look a little hazy. Just as Suga is about to turn away, working up the courage to break another glass moment, Daichi grabs his wrist before he can go anywhere. He’s pulled into another hug, tighter this time. Daichi’s hands fist in his shirt, and he leaves his lips close to Suga’s ear as he says, “You really better call me later.”

He knows Daichi feels him shiver in his arms. “I will.” 

Suga swears he feels the softest kiss on the top of his cheekbone before Daichi pulls away, but he can’t really be sure. The only proof he has is the warmth in his cheeks, and he’s confident that would be there anyway. 

He and his mother spend the evening goofing off in the kitchen, playing music and teasing one another. They eat at the floor of the table in their living room, and soft American jazz, an uncanny pleasure of his mother’s, comes in from the kitchen. Suga’s still pushing some of his rice around, thinking about how he has to call Daichi as soon as he retires to his room for the night, when his mother’s voice jolts him from his daydream. 

“Koushi,” she starts, and she has that hesitance in her voice that Suga has come to be weary of. “Can I ask you something?”

The look on her face is concerned, so Suga decides not to joke, although he gets the feeling that this conversation is going to fit the tone of how most of his day went. He sets down his chopsticks and replies, “Of course.” 

His mother, much like himself, is not one to beat around the bush. “Do you like boys?” 

Suga pauses, but the question doesn’t really jar him. How could it, after a weekend like this? He first thinks of Daichi and his warm smile – did he just kiss Daichi because it’s him? Then there’s the image of a smooth chest, broad arms, a narrow waist. No, Suga thinks. There was certainly more than one reason why it felt so good. 

His voice is a little high when he responds. “Well, I guess. I never really stopped to put a label on it.”

His mother cocks her head. “What about girls?” 

Suga’s brow furrows. “I guess?” he says again. “Mom, what is–” 

It’s not really that he minds the questions, though he can’t say he’s not a little bit worried about what she might think. Moreso, he knows his mother well, and these questions seem more like an angle she’s taking, trying to get at something bigger. 

“I guess the better question is,” she butts in, “do you have feelings for Daichi-kun?” 

He’d certainly talked about Daichi a lot tonight over dinner, but it didn’t feel any more than usual. She’s perceptive like that, though. He also thinks that perhaps she’s been wondering for a while.

Suga fiddles with his fingers in his lap. Ah, there it is. His mother has always had a way of making him think about the things he’s been avoiding. Somehow, she knows. In a way, he supposes he tends to have the same effect on the people around him, too. 

He sighs and lets his mouth run, knowing how far from words he is on this subject. “I haven’t really stopped to put a label on that either. He’s my best friend. People have started asking us questions more lately. Or assuming, you know. That there’s something. I hadn’t really… put that together. It never bothered me, that people might think that, I just never thought about it too hard. Mostly, I brushed it off.” 

His mother furrows her brow, and Suga realizes he’s done a bangup job of avoiding the question. 

“Have you been intimate?” she presses. 

Suga’s cheeks erupt into flame. “This is some interrogation, mom. Are you mad? Is that why you were acting weird in the basement a few weeks ago?”

She gives him a soft smile. “I’m sorry about that, Koushi. I’m not mad.” 

She waits for a response. 

Suga sighs, and when he answers, he speaks toward his lap. “We kissed once… just the other night. Things have been normal, mostly, but we haven’t talked about it.” 

“Maybe you should,” she says. 

Suga frowns. “Maybe. I think we both have stuff to figure out before then.”

He deflects, and his mother’s disappointment seems to radiate off of her. He forces himself to continue. Even before the kiss, these were the feelings he’s been avoiding for a long time. Everything has felt like one uncertainty after the next, the same way the pitch black of night makes one unsure if the sun will ever rise again. 

“I don’t want to lose him,” Suga admits. “He’s my best friend, but I never really thought about why things have to be different. Why is it different if I want him like –  that ? It doesn’t change my… my love. It just feels more. ” He huffs out a breath. The words aren’t hard to say, but once he relinquished them to the room, it feels like they aren’t his anymore. “He’s still my best friend, y’know? There’s been so many things I’ve been scared of losing lately. I don’t need there to be another one.” 

He blinks a few times. He registers how quickly his heart has begun to move in his chest. 

“Even as things change, you still take the things nearest to your heart with you. That goes for people and memories. You’ll always have choice, my son. Your life moving forward doesn’t mean you need to let go of what’s dear to you.” Suga’s mother exhales and places a gentle kiss on her son’s forehead. “I love you, Kou.” 

“I love you, too.” 

He feels both lighter and heavier as he ascends the stairs to his room a few minutes later. He settles on his bed, spreading the reading his class was assigned earlier that day in front of him on the bed. He has no intention of even looking at it. For all of the anxiety and uncertainty he feels, his undeniable relief and excitement to talk to Daichi is unwavering. So long as that stays the same, Suga is sure he will be okay. 

Suga ends up regretting avoiding the reading to stay up until midnight talking to Daichi on the phone, because he spends all of Tuesday and Wednesday catching up on homework and spending time with his mother before she travels again. Team dynamics find themselves back at equilibrium for the most part, save Tanaka still attempting to poke Daichi’s hickey and Asahi occasionally giving Suga a saddened stare. 

Suga more than anything wants to tell him what’s happening, but he’s still unsure himself. He didn’t like the way the words felt when he’d said them to his mother, so he doesn’t want to tell anything to Asahi until he knows it’s the truth. 

After practice on Wednesday, Daichi has to take his siblings to the dentist, so Suga goes home to another afternoon alone, his mother on another trip and more annoying homework to be done. He eats egg over rice for dinner since he can’t be bothered to make anything else, and by late evening, he’s curled up in his bed with a book that he fails to read. He wakes up with his lights still on, his phone vibrating somewhere near his head. 

The time tells him it’s nearly midnight, and he rubs his bleary eyes against the harshness of the light. He changes quickly and retreats back into bed with the lights off, suddenly far more awake after a strangely-timed nap. 

His phone has several texts from Daichi. 

daichi: this homework sucks suga save me

daichi: can you believe both of the twins have cavities? have you been feeding them haribo again? 

daichi: sugaaa

daichi: you’re either napping or dead 

Suga chuckles into the silence of his room and texts back, even though he gets the feeling Daichi is probably asleep. 

suga : i’m back from the dead

suga: also no comment on the haribo thing. i can’t help it if those rascal children STEAL my easily accessible gummies. tell ur brother and sister to stop being thieves. ╮(︶︿︶)╭

It doesn’t take long for Daichi to respond, much to Suga’s surprise. 

daichi: you’re a horrible influence

suga: all a matter of opinion

suga: what are you doing still up? captain not getting a full eight hours??

daichi: i was genuinely trying to do the homework but then i gave up

suga: and now what are you doing

daichi: listening to music to music and texting you 

suga: and what were you doing before? listening to music and waiting to be texting me?

daichi: ...maybe 

suga: (^_-)≡☆ 

suga: thrilling night you’re having

daichi: how is that you’ve made music less fun without you?

daichi: it’s not supposed to work like that

daichi: music is always supposed to be fun -_-

suga: (๑˃ᴗ˂)ﻭ just part of my charm i guess 

suga: i’m impossible to stay away from

Suga chuckles out loud at his own text, curling onto his side as his phone continues to buzz in his hand. He made the joke, but it feels like the opposite is true – tonight especially, it feels impossible to be apart from Daichi. 

daichi: :/ i wish you were here

He hitches a breath. Thinks again, how do I always miss you? Do you miss me too? 

suga: oh yeah? come over then

daichi: it’s wednesday

suga: your point (＃￣ω￣)

daichi: ok it’s 12 am :/

suga: maybe to you. if u ignore the crushing reality of time, it’s just u missing an opportunity to spend time with your favorite person

daichi: :(

It shows that Daichi is typing another message, but Suga lets his curiosity get the better of him. Beyond that, his desire. He beats him to it.

suga: how would it be different if i were there anyway? 

Daichi texts back immediately, and Suga smiles softly in the darkness. He pictures the other night, the two of them lying together. He envisions the closeness so deeply he can feel Daichi’s embrace. 

daichi: well you would probably talk over the music a lot when i specifically tell you i’m TRYING to listen to the lyrics in ENGLISH because you’re ANNOYING 

Suga’s soft chuckle fills his room. 

suga: my annoying defiance is your favorite quality of mine

daichi: that’s not my favorite 

Absently, Suga wonders what is. 

daichi: besides, if you were here that means you’d steal my clothes which is even more annoying

suga: that’s annoying? this is news 

suga: although you did seem to like taking your sweater back from me the other night 

daichi: suga… 

Suga takes a deep breath, and the guise of darkness and the late night gives him confidence. He can’t stop replaying the image of Daichi hovering over him, the warmth of his breath skirting his jaw, the way their hips touched. All he feels is the light touch of Daichi’s kiss upon his cheekbone on the front steps of his house, and he wants so much more than that. 

suga: if i was there, i’d probably want to kiss you again

There’s a moment’s hesitation after the exhilaration, so he sends another text just as Daichi’s comes in. 

suga: is that bad?

daichi: just kiss me? 

daichi: i’d want to do so much more 

A heat pools in Suga’s stomach. His heart skips in his chest. His breath leaves through his nose oh so slowly. So much rests upon a screen right now. Daichi keeps typing and typing. 

daichi: i don’t know if you’ve noticed, suga, but i can’t stop staring at your mouth

suga: i’ve noticed  

daichi: all i can think about is running my thumb along your bottom lip 

daichi: it felt so good to kiss you 

daichi: i think about how warm your pretty mouth is all the time

daichi: how good you’d suck on my fingers 

suga: as good as i’d suck your cock? 

daichi: suga

suga: you started it dai

suga: if you want me to text you about how badly i wanna be on my knees for you i gladly will 

The moments in between messages seem to grow longer and longer with each passing moment. So many lines have been crossed, but Suga hasn’t once thought about turning back. It’s as if stating their thoughts through text has suddenly made them okay to share – they find themselves in this lucid space where every want is palpable. Every bit of yearning is worth asking for. 

daichi: okay

daichi: so tell me

daichi: is this what you were thinking about the other night? when you couldn’t keep your hands off me? 

suga: no

suga: if i had let myself, i would’ve done it 

suga: i would’ve pushed your hips into the bed and taken all the time in the world to be close to you. 

If he closes his eyes, he can see it. He can see Daichi beneath him, and he can feel the smooth skin of his stomach underneath his hands. He imagines running his hands down muscled thighs and looking up into deep brown eyes. He shudders, and then he types. 

suga: would you have touched my mouth while sucked you off, dai? wanna feel where your cock was going in me? 

suga: since you like my pretty mouth so much

Suga is not sure what’s gotten into him, but his reaction is visceral. A desire pulses in his body, and it clouds his mind, relinquishes his inhibitions. His cheeks don’t burn with a blush. Instead, his mouth fills with saliva, and his hips stutter a little. For a moment, he thinks of the course of events that he and Daichi have taken, and he doesn’t reckon it usually goes this way. Strangely, it doesn’t feel backwards. He only feels closer. He curses the few streets between his and Daichi’s homes. He curses this Wednesday midnight. 

daichi: suga

daichi: kou

daichi: fuck

daichi: how can you just say all that? how are you acting like none of this is affecting you? 

Behind his eyes, he pictures Daichi alone in his room, lamplight washing over him. Maybe some of his textbooks are still open on his bed or desk. He’s leaning back against the headboard, shirt off, touching his stomach but trying so hard not to reach lower. He’s beautiful. 

Suga hates that he’s coming off as removed. He is so deeply into this that he knows he’ll relive it every night until it becomes truth instead of fantasy. 

suga: daichi 

suga: you can’t be serious

suga: of course it’s affecting me

suga: i’ve been thinking about you every day 

suga: and now… this

suga: just. of course it’s affecting me

suga: i don’t know if i’ve ever wanted anything as bad as i want you 

That goes far beyond just sex. It’s a million nights laying just with him. It’s a million walks to school. A million evenings sit atop a high, high hill. A million balls set to him. A million high fives. Every song they’ve ever heard together. Every blush on his cheeks. It’s everything. He could never reduce something so big and weighty to just lust. Daichi melts him down and turns him sweet. He’d wait through every evening of darkness if he could just wake to that. 

daichi: i’m glad it’s not just me

suga: is it ever? it’s usually… us 

daichi: you’re driving me crazy

suga: that’s my job

suga: keep thinking of me tonight

( Is this as much to you as it is to me?)  

daichi: i’m sure i’ll think of nothing else until i sleep

daichi: if i can even do that

daichi: wish you were here

suga: you said that already

suga: me too 

suga: kiss me again soon, would you? 

daichi: you better keep thinking of me too

The changes that unfold from there on out are so subtle, the only thing that reminds Suga that they’re taking place is the often-present warmth he feels beneath his collar, crawling up his neck. It’s like the way leaves slowly shift toward the light. Every day, closer and closer to the sun. 

Daichi’s hickey is lighter by Thursday; the team has stopped talking about it by then – in turn, Suga thinks about his lips on Daichi’s neck. They don’t bring up their midnight fantasies, the way they surely had wandering hands all along their own bodies to the thought of the other. It’s known but silenced. 

The sunset is particularly beautiful tonight, and Suga finds his eyes darting over the pink clouds, trying to memorize it. When Asahi leaves them at the end of the walk home, and Suga wishes it was the weekend. They have no plans to spend another afternoon together until then, and all Suga can think about is what will happen when they do. He wonders if Daichi’s hands will be as warm as he remembers when they’ll finally crawl beneath his shirt again. 

There’s a pause of time between Asahi’s departure and their bodies meeting, and Suga takes advantage of it. Without looking (he’s sure he’d blush if he did), he reaches for Daichi’s hand and tangles their fingers together as they begin to walk. 

Daichi turns to look at him, but he smiles before Suga can panic. His eyes crinkle, and Suga has one thought repeating over and over, timed to the metronome of his slightly quickened heartbeat: I want to kiss you. 

It doesn’t even feel foreign anymore. 

“Still behind on your homework, Suga?” Daichi asks, voice teasing.
“Yeah, thanks to someone I know,” grumbles Suga. 

“I’m innocent.” 

“Mhm. Your name will only be cleared if you send me the notes.” 

It’s funny, talking about things without talking about them. It’s so them, for everything to just keep being. If there’s an elephant in the room, he’s very well behaved. 

“What notes?” says Daichi jokingly.

“Oh, so we’re both fucked,” Suga concludes, swinging their clasped hands without thinking. 

Daichi squeezes Suga’s fingers and turns his head to look in Suga’s eyes. He’s still smiling. “I guess that depends on how you look at things.” He pauses, and his eyes dart down to Suga’s lips. “I’m pretty happy.” 

“ Dai chi, you’re happy with our impending failure?” 

Daichi laughs. “Suga, we’re not going to fail.”

“Well, I won’t, once you send me the notes.” 

“I don’t have any notes,” Daichi whines. 

“Not yet. ” Suga winks, and the way Daichi’s face blooms into an amused grin, the one reserved just for Suga, is the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. And he’s watched a hell of a lot of sunsets. 

They get to Suga’s house. Daichi doesn’t let go of his hand. It’s staying lighter out every day now. Suga likes the way the sun is hitting Daichi’s face. 

“I wish it was Friday,” Suga whines. 

Daichi’s eyes seem to twinkle. “Does it have to be Friday for us to hang out?”

Suga pouts, lifts his nose. “First of all, who said I wanted it to be Friday because I want to hang out with you? Second of all, you’re busy. Dinner with obaachan and taking extensive reading notes are both very valid excuses to not spend time with me. ” He pauses. “Well, semi-valid.”

Daichi chuckles. “Tomorrow.” 

“Yes, tomorrow, when we can mourn our failure on the reading test but celebrate the fact that it’s over.” 

“Suga, we’re not failing.”

“You must be very confident in your note-taking skills, then.”

Daichi rolls his eyes, but it’s fond. He moves his face closer to Suga’s with the beat of each of his pauses. “Your cheek. Is absolutely. Outrageous.”

He closes his mouth, and their noses nearly brush. Suga blinks slowly and holds his breath. Their hands are still tangled between them. Daichi’s eyelashes look so long up close like this. Suga only wants to be closer. 

“My cheek, huh?” Suga murmurs. He moves forward to brush his lips beneath Daichi’s eye, then right where a dimple would be if he smiled. 

“Yeah,” Daichi breathes. His free hand comes up to grab at Suga’s waist. Suga trades it for one in Daichi’s hair. 

“When’d you get so bold?”

“Bold?” Suga echoes, and he brushes their lips together just to prove a point. “Sawamura-kun, I thought you knew me better,” he teases, their mouths touching with every syllable. “I’ve always been this way.” 

They peck lightly then, once, twice, three times – it’s fleeting enough to feel like a taste, sweet enough to want to swallow whole. He waits for Daichi to break, and when he does, it comes as two hands on his waist and a tug of his body forward so their chests touch. 

They don’t kiss for long, but it’s enough time to make Suga’s sweater to feel far too thick. It’s enough of a reminder to make them as why they don’t do this more often. Why they haven’t always been. 

Suga pulls back, but not by much. He knows to stop himself before he starts his sugar rush, before this sweetness turns him into a glutton, always asking for more. He finds his way to Daichi’s neck and kisses there instead. With two wandering hands, he manages to untuck the back of Daichi’s shirt from where it was caught in his shorts just to run up and down the warm skin of his lower back. 

Daichi groans but makes no movement. If anything, his head tips back a little.

Suga hums against Daichi’s throat. “Hmm, Daichi, what day is it?” 

Daichi laughs, and it vibrates against Suga’s lips. “Not Friday.” 

“Weird,” Suga exhales. His tongue touches Daichi’s neck; it’s salty from practice. “I thought we’d figured out a way to speed up time.” 

Daichi blows air from his nose. “I think we have.” 

His voice is so low. Suga shivers. “Go home,” he announces suddenly. “Obaachan awaits.” 

Daichi wriggles in Suga’s grip. “You’ll have to let go of me first.” 

“ No, ” Suga whines. “As soon as I let go, I’ll have to take notes.” As he complains, his hands tighten around Daichi’s back. 

“Oh, so you’re gonna help now?” 

“It’s like you forget how kind I am,” Suga mutters, feigning shock, still speaking into Daichi’s neck. “Don’t you see how sweetly I treat our kouhai?” 

“They know you’re evil, Suga.” 

“Fine, maybe I won’t help you then.” 

Suga scoffs, but Daichi is clinging back now. “No, you have to,” he whimpers. 

They laugh. 

“Bye, Dai,” Suga finally says, pulling away from the home he’d found in the crook of Daichi’s neck in order to look into the warmth of his brown eyes. “Get home safe.” 

“See you tomorrow,” replies Daichi softly. 

There’s a moment of hesitation, but then they lean in to kiss goodbye, like it’s something they’ve always done. Suga’s bottom lip catches between Daichi’s, and when they pull away after just milliseconds, Suga realizes the sun has set, and the moment is no less beautiful than it would be a midday or midnight. 

He turns to his front door, and he lets himself feel everything. 

Friday does come, eventually, and both of them are too devoted to school to possibly fail anything. It’s after the test when Suga’s phone vibrates in his pocket. He sneaks a look under the desk. 

daichi: suga you look so good today 

Suga’s face grows unbearably hot, and he places his head in his hands. He’s thankful Daichi sits in front of him. 

suga: thank you dai, i know how incredibly sexy i am 

daichi: i wasn’t gonna say sexy 

Suga bites his lip, makes sure no one is looking when he texts back. 

suga: oh? 

daichi: you are though 

Suga exhales heavily through his nose. To have Daichi text him that, something so weighty and hot, when they’re not both staring at their phones under the cover of darkness, it does something to him. It makes all of this feel real. It makes him think about what it means that Daichi wants him. He digs his nails into his upper thigh. 

suga: what were you gonna say?

daichi: i’ll tell you later

suga: tease 

daichi: literally says you?
Suga has to muffle a snort. Maybe he has been a bit of a tease. He still just can’t believe that they’re talking about it, that all of their kissing and touching isn’t something just left for the silence of their thoughts. 

suga: fine tell me later 

Suga grabs Daichi’s hand again when they’re walking to Daichi’s house that evening, and Daichi turns to look at him, and then down at their hands. He’s grinning, and Suga so badly wants to ask, what, what, what is it? 

But he can’t bring himself to. Instead, he squeezes their interlaced fingers, and Daichi squeezes back. It makes up for the way he drops Suga’s hand as soon as they reach the front door. 

Their plan is to make a late dinner for Daichi’s family after they shower and do some homework, but Daichi leads them into the kitchen to say hello to his mother, and their plans seem to shift. 

“Hello, boys, how was practice today?” she greets warmly. She sends Suga a wide smile, and Suga returns it. He’s always loved Daichi’s mom, as strict as she can be. 

“Exhausting,” Daichi groans. 

“That’s not really the attitude of a captain, now is it?” she jokes. 

“I feel more like a babysitter sometimes,” Daichi admits. 

Suga snorts. 

“Are you still making dinner tonight?” she inquires gently. 

“I don’t know if we’ll have time to get it done early enough, with all the work we got for the weekend. Do you mind?”

Sawamura-san smiles easily. “I kind of figured. You boys seem so busy, with university coming up and all. Go shower and start that work. Wouldn’t want you falling behind.” 

Suga and Daichi share a sheepish look, but once they’re in the hallway, Daichi tangles their fingers again and basically pulls Suga up the stairs. Behind the closed door of Daichi’s bedroom, Suga finds his bag dropped unceremoniously onto the floor, his shoulder blades pushed up to the wall, and Daichi’s hand cupping his face. 

“I didn’t feel like cooking dinner,” Daichi admits. “This was all I could think about today.” 

Daichi kisses him then, the hand on his cheek gentle and warm, his other one coming to push into his hipbone. Their mouths move with a little less desperation than what has become usual; it’s like the repetition of a familiar pattern, falling into movements with ease – a homecoming. 

Daichi pulls back, and his lips are red. His eyes are shiny. Suga is not yet used to this sight. He clears his throat. “Ah, happy Friday.” 

Daichi hangs his head then, blushing. “Sorry, maybe I got a little carried away.” 

Suga stands up a little straighter against the wall. He cocks his head and lifts Daichi’s chin with a finger. “If you’re going to apologize for anything, at least say sorry for making me wait so long to kiss you again.” He looks away then, down at the floor. “I missed you.” 

Daichi smiles with relief. “I missed you, too. Let me make it up to you, okay?” 

And he kisses Suga again, kisses him up against that wall for minutes and minutes even though they need to shower, even though Daichi’s still holding onto his bag over his shoulder, even though they have homework to be done. They only let themselves get so distracted, though Suga finds himself absolutely viscous at Daichi’s touch, liquid in his hands and slipping right through his fingers. 

“We have to shower,” Daichi mumbles against his lips eventually. He drags his nose along Suga’s jaw and leaves a kiss right by the shell of his ear. 

It takes all of Suga’s strength to laugh and push him away gently, despite the way goosebumps run rampant down his neck and up his arms. “You do smell, Dai. You first.” 

He disappears from the room and leaves Suga to sit on the edge of the bed, head in his hands and heart beating far too fast. He ends up regretting sending Daichi to shower first, because when he reappears a few minutes later, there’s a towel wrapped low on his waist, and Suga has always been one for staring. Daichi’s hair drips water onto his shoulders that run the many courses along his body – over the ridges of his chest and stomach, pooling into his collarbones, down to his back. 

Asbently, Suga wonders if he forgot to bring his change of clothes to the bathroom on purpose. 

He stands quickly, hoping to just scurry to the bathroom before he says or does something stupid, but before he moves into the doorway, Daichi’s deep, low voice stops him. Daichi grips his towel with one hand and approaches Suga with the other. 

“Suga,” he murmurs. “Kiss me.” 

Suga’s heart jumps into this throat at the words; they seem so real when said aloud. To ask for it. Kissing. That is what they’ve been doing. But he keeps the composure of his character despite all that. “Hmm? Why?” 

Daichi cocks his head, smirks. “Do you not want to?” 

Suga smiles but rolls his eyes. Because he can, he places the flat of his palm to the plane of Daichi’s stomach, hot from the steam of the shower, still wet, smooth. “ I’m the tease?” 

“Kiss me,” demands Daichi. 

He tastes like mint, feels like steam – clears up Suga’s lungs but clouds his head. 

Suga showers cold. Daichi’s mother manages to make a dinner for the family in half the time that Daichi and Suga would’ve done together, probably due to time that they would have spent goofing off, and now – flirting? They eat quickly, and Daichi keeps bringing up how much work they have to do, even though it’s Friday. Suga finds himself a tiny bit irritated that he’s so keen on doing work, because frankly, he doesn’t fucking feel like it, and they don’t really have that much to do. They just had a test after all. 

The whining, however, seems to have benefits, because it gets them back upstairs without having to help clean up, and just as Suga makes to complain about how homework is the last way he’d like to spend his Friday night, Daichi is walking him back toward the bed, putting his face close to Suga’s face. 

Suga flushes red with the realization that this had been Daichi’s plan all along. His voice is slightly higher than he intends when he speaks. “Is this going to be a thing now? You just trying to get me kissed as quickly as possible?” 

His question sounds weightier than he intends as it comes out of his mouth; it sounds like a proposition. 

“Is that a problem?” Daichi quips, moving even closer. His voice is low and his eyes are dark. Suga wishes he could loop moments like this on repeat, for when he’s alone and dreaming. 

“Well, not necessarily, I guess it depends on how you frame the conception of the world ‘proble–’”

Daichi cuts him off by pushing him onto the bed. He frames Suga’s whole body with his own, knees on either side of Suga’s waist, arms up by Suga’s head. He kisses with Suga with everything, hovering just over his body. For as forcefully and playfully as he had pushed Suga to the bed, his movements are anything but. He’s steady and unhurried, soft and slow. He caresses Suga’s face, licks into his mouth with a slick determination, as if their bodies are sweet music and the meeting of their mouths is crescendo. 

Suga hears Daichi inhale, quick and disbelieving, and he snakes his arms around Daichi’s neck so that he can flip them onto their sides. He slots their legs together, and their hands wander without straining their arms. All he has been craving is to be back here, to listen to this melody. 

Daichi pulls back to look at him, squinting. “You’re like an infection,” he mutters. 

Suga shifts his head away, face expressionless, voice deadpan, “Thanks.” 

Daichi laughs, bumping his nose against Suga’s. “You know what I mean.” 

“Do I?”

He expects Daichi to laugh, but instead, his face pulls down into a frown, concerned – thinking. “I mean, it’s like you’re inside me, and all I can think about is you.” 

Suga grows warm at his words, curses the blush on his face. It’s like a feeling is crawling around in his chest, looking to burst. He manages to joke anyway. “Ah, has that really changed? I thought I took over your brain the moment you met me?” 

Daichi’s brow pushes together even more. “You’re probably right.” He pauses and brushes their lips together. “Only now I can kiss you.”

And he does, but just once, slowly, not giving Suga any time to think. When he pulls back, the sound of their smacking lips resounds in the room. He’s still wearing his thinking face when he murmurs, “Koushi… you’re here with me, right?” 

Suga cracks a smile, fighting just a little bit how badly he wants to melt at the sound of his given name. “All of me.” 

It could be a joke, but it’s more serious than anything. 

“Good,” declares Daichi. “Stay for a while. Please.” 

Suga laughs, smiling at Daichi’s attempt to be sentimental and the way words fail him with what Suga now knows to be this sort of deep, sweet, swirling flood of intimacy. “It’s Friday, we have so much time.” 

All this means, are we on the same page? And it’s the closest thing they’ve had to a conversation, but of course it stops there, because their lips are touching, which really leaves no time for talking or questions, just, yes, I’m here, with you. There’s nowhere else I could be. Want to be. 

They don’t do much else but make out for what is probably hours. It’s all kissing and no talking. At a particularly heated moment, Suga snakes his hand beneath Daichi’s shirt, runs it down the toned surface of his stomach, and because he’s feeling bold, he makes to reach lower. His fingertips graze the waistband of Daichi’s briefs poking out from beneath his sweatpants, but he hesitates when Daichi pulls away from the kiss with a bite on Suga’s lower lip. 

“Suga,” Daichi says breathlessly, “Suga, Suga.” He cups Suga’s face with one hand, seems delirious with emotion, disbelieving of what’s in front of him. He kisses Suga again, once, lightly. “I remember – I was gonna tell you. You looked so beautiful today.”

Suga’s breath hitches. He wasn’t expecting that. Daichi places his lips on Suga’s jaw and speaks there. “Just – gorgeous.” One of his hands runs up and down Suga’s side beneath his ratty t-shirt he likes to wear to bed. “I like you like this, too, though.” 

“I like you every way,” Suga breathes back before he can even think of what words are leaving his mouth. 

Daichi smiles, but he noses at the underside of Suga’s jaw. “Is this your corny side?”

Suga clears his throat. “As my best friend it seems you bring out both my best and worst qualities.” 

“Well, you’re a pretty good kisser,” Daichi says, meeting him halfway. 

Suga indulges him, but when they pull back, he snorts, “And I’m the corny one.” 

Suga finds his heart in his throat as he scrolls through his phone later that night, when Daichi has gone to the bathroom to wash up and left him alone in the bed to think too much. He watches some video Asahi posted, and he freezes. He knows he probably doesn’t have much time to execute his thoughts, not when Daichi will be coming out of the bathroom to lay next to him and pretend he’s not peering over Suga’s shoulder at his phone screen. 

It’s rushed, but guilt has been creeping up his neck for a lot of reasons over the past couple of days – he figures having one reason less might help him sleep a little easier. 

suga : asahi

suga : we’ve been hooking up for a couple of days now

suga : i didn’t tell you because i didn’t know what to say. i know you could tell, but we haven’t really talked about it at all. 

suga: all i know is that i love him and i’m a little bit terrified about that even though it’s probably the most natural thing i’ve ever felt. we can talk more about it soon. i’m sorry it took me so long to text you… i was just afraid of making it real. i’ve been feeling that way about a lot of things lately.

suga: you know how i hate being uncertain. 

suga: i’m putting my phone away since i’m in his house, but i’ll call you soon if you want. please don’t be mad. 

He watches the screen as “Read” pops up beneath each message. He’s lucky that Asahi is quick enough to get a response in before Daichi comes back from the bathroom. It’s something, at least, to put him at ease. 

asahi: i could never be mad at you for this suga. thanks for telling me. you guys will be just fine. sometimes i feel like i’m in love myself and i can still say i’ve never seen a love like yours. have fun at daichi’s 

Suga smiles warmly before he begins to overthink the details of that message, but then comes another one, just seconds later. 

asahi: don’t bite each other too much 

Suga shakes his head and laughs to himself, throwing his phone onto the table beside the bed. He fills with a sense of ease; it makes him feel better to talk about everything so openly with Asahi. For a few minutes, in between moments with his lover’s lips, it all feels normal. There’s nothing worth questioning, even if it’s just for a sliver of time. Daichi comes in with curious eyes right as he begins to laugh. 

“What is it?” he asks, sitting back on the bed. 

“Nothing,” Suga replies, smile still pulling at his eyes. “Just something that reminded me how bad I am at taking advice.”

And before Daichi can ask what he means, Suga is pulling at his shirt, deciding where his mouth will fit best on Daichi’s chest, knowing he might just have to sink his teeth. 

Lines blur. Maybe it’s not even falling in love because there is no fall. Rather, things inch continuously closer until they meet. It’s not a collision but a gentle brush of hands. The slowest of reaches. Each finger slowly intertwining with the next. It’s a shift like that, without a pinpoint. Without some breaking edge. 

Love like this isn’t one Suga can suddenly walk back. It’s made of a million things he doesn’t remember. Intangible moments that shape his version of a person. Words are molded into feelings that stick with him in a way sounds could never. The lover takes shape of love. The word itself is arbitrary. Love is everything else surrounding it. 

It looks like this: a beautiful summer’s day at the beach. Two go for a swim in the ocean, and they get lost in the space of water. The tide pulls and pulls but it’s so gentle. It’s only after they’ve gone so far that they realize, oh we’ve drifted. Oh, look how far we’ve gone. As they walk up back to the shore they can only wonder, how did the tide take us so far? It didn’t even feel like we were moving. I think I like where we wound up. Maybe we were meant to be here – I can’t believe it isn’t where we started. 

It’s not like skipping rocks, but rather a smooth glide. 

It’s the rough house punch of his teammate followed by the trusted eye contact of his best friend. It’s the butterflies, later, that he didn’t even realize had made home in his stomach. 

It’s all the answers he never thought would beg a question. 

It’s some invisible line they crossed, because he knows this is not unemotional. This is not no strings attached. It’s knowing that they’ve moved past one level of connection and having no idea where to go next. 

It starts to get to him, slowly, with time. It’s barely a few days, but Suga is only as resilient as he is rested, and this seems to tire him quickly. Nothing is as exhausting as an unanswered question. 

He finds himself on the verge of tears one night, after Daichi drops him off. He decides his head is not the best place for him to be, so he calls Asahi, the weight of being home alone almost unbearable. 

“Hello?” Asahi answers in his deep voice, just after the second ring. 

“Can I rant?” Suga chokes out. “I need to rant.” 

“I’ve kind of been waiting for you to,” Asahi admits. 

“Sorry if this puts you in the middle of things.” 

“You guys aren’t fighting, are you?” He sounds worried. 

“No, of course not. We never fight.” 

A sigh of relief. “Then just let it out, Suga. I don’t think it’s good not to talk about any of this.” He pauses. “I mean, I definitely think you should talk to Daichi about this, but here’s a good start.” Another pause. “Although, I’m such a hypocrite because if I was ever in your situation, I would definitely do nothing.”

Suga squeaks a laugh from his tightened throat. Then he sighs, the heaviness in his chest resettling once more. “It’s just – how do you say, you’re my best friend and I wouldn’t want to change that for the world? I need to know how he’s so good at pretending that’s all.” He pauses, voice rising. “But I guess, isn’t that all? Like, we just are, but that definition is all fucked up now. Shouldn’t you love your best friend? Or at least, shouldn’t the one you love be your best friend? Does that make sense?” 

“It does make sense,” Asahi replies, his voice uncannily steady through the receiver. Their roles are usually the opposite. Suga finds himself extremely soothed by his unusual calm. “But aren’t you doing the same thing in a way?” he says shyly. “I mean, you’ve been pretending, too, right? Both of you have just gone on acting like everything is fine. I’m sure he has the same questions.” 

Suga groans, because he’s right. “But it’s not that I don’t want to, it’s just that I don’t know how!”

“... And you’re scared,” Asahi tacks on. 

If they were in person, Suga would smack him. 

Because he’s right. 

“Yes. Love is scary, Asahi.” 

“I know,” Asahi agrees quietly. 

That’s a question for another time. 

“Any advice?” Suga asks, relieved that he vented but still feeling anxious. 

Asahi laughs. “None! I’m such a train-wreck, did you really think I could tell you what to do? I almost want to cry for you!” 

“Asahi!” Suga exclaims. He pauses. “At least you’re honest.” 

“Ah, maybe you should be, too,” Asahi mumbles. 

Suga’s jaw drops. “You know, people think you’re so sweet since you’re such a coward, but you’re actually an asshole.” 

They laugh together. 

The next day, Suga can’t shake his mood. Daichi keeps asking him what’s wrong, putting a hand on his shoulder, giving him those eyes, and Suga loves his naivete  – because he’s sure that Daichi thinks he’s sad about his position on the team again and not anything else. Asahi helped ease Suga’s mind, but he didn’t solve the problem. 

He and Daichi have been kissing for ten days now, and part of him feels further from his best friend than ever before. They are no longer telling each other everything – that was traded for protecting their own hearts. 

At the beginning of practice, he and Daichi linger in the clubroom. 

“Tell me what’s wrong, Suga,” Daichi asks. He’s taken hold of Suga’s hand. 

Suga is blushing; he wishes he could just spill open right then and there. 

“I will, Dai,” Suga affirms. “Soon.” 

It doesn’t seem to ease Daichi much, but he replies, “Okay, I won’t rush you,” because that’s just who he is. Ever patient, always there. 

He peers over his shoulder at the clubroom door, and when he sees no one is coming, he cups Suga’s jaw and kisses him gently. 

He’s bright red when he pulls back. Then, he whispers, “Sorry, was that okay?” 

Suga feels tears spring up into his eyes beyond his control; he watches the panic spread on Daichi’s face. 

“Oh god, it wasn’t. Suga, I’m so sorry–”

Suga cuts him off by kissing him again, harder. “It’s fine. More than fine. Stop worrying so much. Soon, okay? We’ll talk soon.” A third kiss. 

Daichi seems caught between distress and adoration. 

“Come on, captain,” Suga says airily, beginning to walk away. “Would look pretty bad to get caught like this with your vice, huh? The gossip we’d start.” 

Daichi laughs. Suga wants to kiss him again, above everything. 

Suga’s straight face fails him, because Hinata of all people confronts him. 

Naturally, he’s jumping all over the place all throughout practice, but when he comes to rest on the sidelines of a three-on-three they’re having, he places his hands on his knees to catch his breath. His wide amber eyes turn up toward Suga, and he furrows his brow. He’s innocently concerned, and it makes Suga feel unsettled. 

“Suga-san,” he starts, voice high, almost cautious, “you look sad today.” 

Suga blows out a breath and watches Hinata stand back up to his full height. “Sorry, Hinata,” he apologizes. “I guess I’m a little tired.” 

He doesn’t know how else to put it, but tired doesn’t feel untrue.  

Hinata does a little leap in place, gaze curious. Suga watches his line of sight and the way it falls to Daichi, folded onto his knees to receive one of Asahi’s scary spikes. “You should talk to Daichi-san,” states Hinata plainly. “He always makes you feel better.” 

He’s subbed in a second later, and Suga is left only to think of exactly how right he is.

Before practice ends, Suga asks Asahi if he can please walk Nishinoya home tonight, and Asahi understands. So Suga and Daichi begin to make their way home just the two of them, Daichi with his arm over Suga’s shoulder, the other in his pocket, probably fidgeting if Suga had to guess. 

He’s waiting for Suga to speak up, and Suga knows he hates the suspense. 

“Hey, Suga,” he starts five minutes into their walk, voice tense. “I meant to show you, I changed my lock screen.” 

“Oh?” Suga says, curious but too caught up in his head to sound as interested as he’d like. 

Daichi reaches into his pocket and flashes his phone screen at Suga. It becomes dusted with little flecks of water from the light rain coming down. It’s a picture of the two of them from when they took some selfies in Daichi’s bed the other night – it’s angled far too close to their pressed-together faces, so all you can really see is one eye each, both of their noses, and they way they have the faintest matching blushes and dopey smiles. This was probably the least ridiculous of all the pictures they took. 

It makes Suga’s heart sit like lead in his chest. Who knew love became so heavy when it goes unaddressed?

“Daichi,” Suga breathes. He shakes off Daichi’s hand from over his shoulders and pulls them to a stop on the side of the road. Daichi looks grossly concerned. The rain is covering them both gently, and it’s not cold. It feels like the first warm rain of early summer even though June itself seems so far away. 

“Daichi,” repeats Suga, and saying his name aloud once more releases the floodgates. It tells him to just go. “You know I’ve loved you for a long time, right?” 

It’s the only way he can think to start, as honest as he can fathom, and he hates the way Daichi’s brow pulls together at the sound of it. 

“Suga?” he asks quietly, looking around at their place on the sidewalk. 

“I don’t know if that love has changed,” Suga continues, “or if it’s still changing, or if it’s always been like this, but I love you. There aren’t any other words I can come up with that will say it better, even if it’s probably a little more complicated than that.” 

“Suga–” Daichi tries again, but Suga cuts him off by grabbing and squeezing his hand. 

“I just… I hate the way we haven’t been talking. It feels wrong. I know this isn’t the easiest stuff to talk about in the first place, but damn, even Hinata and Asahi were getting on my case for not being honest about it. Not being honest with you. I – I want to figure it out. I want to do everything with you.”

He begins to play with Daichi’s fingers gently, cocking his head and feeling a sense of relief wash over him. This time, when he gives up these words, it doesn’t scare him. In spite of the rain, it feels like all of him has turned out toward the sun. 

Maybe that’s because he knows Daichi loves him too, no matter what his response is. 

“Suga,” Daichi says for the third time. His eyes look shiny. “Me, too. Can we figure it out together?” He laughs lightly, nervous. “If it’s as easy as all of this has been so far, I think we’ll be fine.”

Suga chuckles. Retrospect does a lot for things like these. “It has been easy, hasn’t it?”

Daichi leans closer to him, tucking a strand of hair behind his ear. Suga wants to lean into his touch. “Surprising, considering what a piece of work you are.” 

“You love me,” Suga scoffs, replying without thinking.

Daichi just stares at him, point blank. “I do. I love you so much.”

Suga kisses him. Fist in the dampening fabric of his shirt, chest to chest, losing breath. He kisses him like that. “I don’t know why I was so worried to say all that. I guess I just don’t want things to change.” 

Daichi looks understanding, but he banters anyway. He cards his fingers through the back of Suga’s hair. “How could it? Our relationship has consisted solely of two straight years of us making fun of each other.”

“So basically now we can just be meaner than ever, but to make up for it we can just fuck and have steamy make up sex instead of apologizing?”

Daichi chokes. 

“Oh my god, Suga .” 

“Tell me you don’t want a piece of this.”

He leans closer to brush their lips together, loves their sleepy town where passersby would rarely risk their afternoon for the rain. It’s so quiet all around. The evening curls around them, like it’s only theirs. 

With a sigh, a fond, loving sigh, Daichi replies. “I really do, even though you’re corny.”

“ You’re corny.”

They kiss again, briefly, now with practice, and Daichi slings his arm back over Suga’s shoulders as they begin to walk toward home again, as if nothing is different at all. It’s all so circular. They’ve looped back again, duping change into thinking it had come even though so close to everything is the same. 

“Does this mean I get to call you my boyfriend now?” asks Daichi casually as Suga swings their hands together.  “I’ve been wanting to do that for a while now.”

“Yes,” says Suga easily. Then under the guise of a cough, “C-corny!”

Rain falls so easy, their walk home is slow, unaffected by time, shaped only by brushing hands and the way they come together. Like the dusk bleeds into evening – they’re shaped by infinite progression, hand over hand until the end looks so much like the very beginning.