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When Daichi spikes the final ball, its bounce echoes throughout the gym.
“Nice kill!” Someone shouts half-heartedly. Most of his teammates are lying on the floor or standing bent over like wilted flowers, hands on their knees as they try to remember how to breathe. Kageyama turns to Daichi with a scowl, which he’s learned by now is his most neutral expression as he silently asks for feedback.
He would never say it aloud, but secretly, Daichi prefers Suga’s tosses.
Kageyama’s tosses are technically perfect. It’s a mystery how his grades can be so bad when he calculates each trajectory with such mathematical precision, sending the ball directly into Daichi’s palm at just the right angle for him to spike the ball with maximum power. Suga’s tosses are messier, gentler. They arc through the air with decidedly less grace. But they always send the ball where it needs to go.
Suga isn’t a mind-reader so much as a heart-reader, feeling the emotion thrumming in each player through the air, or perhaps the vibrations in the floor, and he conducts them like a symphony. To Daichi, his tosses are well-worn and familiar, and they always leave him feeling more confident as captain and player.
“Great tosses as always,” Daichi says, giving Kageyama a thumbs up. He responds only with a shrug and a searching look as practice ends.
(They still have to stretch and put their equipment away, but those things will pass in quiet moments like they always do, and soon enough everyone will trudge up to the clubroom, leaving Daichi and Suga alone to fill out their daily checklist ensuring that nothing has been broken and everything is clean.)
“Sawamura, Sugawara, may I speak with you before you leave?” Asks Takeda. Daichi isn’t sure when he came into the gym.
“Of course, Takeda-sensei,” Daichi says with a respectful bow. Beside him, Suga wavers.
Daichi gives him a curious look, one eyebrow raised. Suga responds with a head jerk and wide eyes. Daichi lowers his chin but keeps his eyes forward – what do you mean Takeda-sensei is acting weird? – and he knows Suga thinks he’s being thick because he does that deep breath that’s not quite a sigh that means he’s missed something obvious. Daichi turns back to look at Takeda, but there doesn’t seem to be anything unusual about his demeanor. He just watches their silent conversation politely, if not a little amused.
Daichi turns back to Suga, but he’s too busy staring straight ahead like he’s steeling himself for something. His nerves tend to infect Daichi; he's too level-headed for them not to mean something.
When everyone has finished stretching and Daichi has extorted promises from Hinata and Kageyama not to stay too late practicing, Suga approaches Daichi with one hand out, and Daichi lightly taps the inside of his palm in acknowledgement.
He’s not sure when they started doing that exactly, the whole palm-touching thing. It doesn’t even have a set meaning. Sometimes it means, okay or I’m here for you or you’ve got this, but it isn’t always encouragement. Sometimes it means I’m nervous or please make an excuse to get me out of here. Sometimes it’s just a greeting or a way of saying I see you. The patent-pending Daichi-Sugawara nonverbal language doesn’t come with a list of definitions, only contexts.
This time, it sort of means everything all rolled into one. Suga rolls his hand into a fist around Daichi’s finger, and that means he understands. They head together towards the far end of the gym where Takeda stands.
“Coach Ukai and I have been talking,” he says, and Daichi feels his back subconsciously straighten. “And we want you to know that we’re putting a lot of trust in the two of you during the training camp in Tokyo.”
Of course they are. Coach Ukai and Takeda can’t be with the team every second of every day, and it’s up to Daichi and Suga to keep their unruly kouhai in line. Of course Takeda would want to make sure they’re prepared for the level of responsibility they’ll be undertaking. There’s nothing wrong with that.
So then why is he looking between Daichi and Suga so nervously? Does he really think that would offend them? Or is he about to institute some rule he thinks they won’t like?
Daichi furrows his brow. When he’s gone too long without responding, Suga cuts in.
“Yes sir,” he says.
“And I know that you’re both too responsible–“ Takeda stops himself just as Daichi raises a finger to argue. “–Well, Sawamura-kun is too responsible for us to worry about anything happening. But you don’t exactly get a lot of opportunities like this, right?”
Daichi shakes his head. This is the first time the team has ever gotten to do something like this.
“Right, so if you two behave yourselves, Coach and I will give you one night out, unsupervised, in the city. Officially, it’s a reward for your hard work as captain and vice. Just don’t do anything that’ll get us in trouble, okay?”
Daichi and Suga exchange looks, and they both know what to do. “Thank you, sensei,” they say as they both bow, trying not to look too excited at the chance to hang out in Tokyo without having to corral their teammates the whole time.
They turn around, and Suga punches Daichi in the stomach and takes off running. Daichi would laugh if he knew how to breathe. Instead, he starts following behind with his best angry captain face, even though that has never once worked on Suga before.
“Boys?” Takeda shouts from across the gym. They turn around sheepishly. “Enjoy your date.”
“Thank you, sir!” Daichi shouts back automatically, and then he stops. “Wait, did he just say—?”
“He thinks I’m your boyfriend,” Suga replies, breathless.
Sugawara is not Daichi’s boyfriend. Suga is his vice captain, his partner, his best friend. If Tsukkishima is the moon and Hinata is the sun, then Suga is all the night’s stars, and Daichi is the bold darkness that contains them. Their strings of fate are carelessly intertwined. Daichi is a trellis, and Suga is his climbing rose.
It’s not romantic. How could it possibly be romantic?
It’s a volleyball thing, Daichi supposes, so Takeda must not understand. There is a connection between setters and spikers; when they are completely in sync, their movements flow into one another like rivers into lakes. Even off the court, Daichi catches them walking in step.
They do even now as they exchange twin expressions of confusion and alarm all the way to the club building. It’s empty by now, of course, stray bits of laundry strewn about that Daichi has to stop himself from tidying up so he can scold the team about it tomorrow instead. You’re not animals, Daichi writes in his head.
“God, they’re such animals,” Suga says just as he thinks it, looking around the room with exasperated fondness. It’s such a classic Sugawara Expression that Daichi can’t help but laugh.
“Do you want to lecture the children about it?” Daichi asks, and then — because he really can’t help it — reaches down and grabs a jersey off the floor, folding it neatly and placing it on the bench.
Suga grabs a pair of underwear and holds it an arm’s length away with his nose pinched. “Nah, I kinda like being the cool dad that lets them get away with stuff.”
Daichi snaps him with a towel. Suga shrieks and retaliates, and somewhere in between the cleaning and the fighting they end up wrestling on the floor, Daichi pinning Suga down with all of his weight because Suga never fights fair. He doesn’t feel too bad about it — they don’t have much homework tonight and they haven’t changed out of their gym clothes yet.
“You better watch out,” Suga says with a shit-eating grin, “if you can’t keep your hands off me, we won’t get to go on our magical Tokyo date.”
Daichi rolls off of Suga to lay beside him on the floor. They touch at the shoulders, the hips, the feet. It doesn’t feel awkward, but it doesn’t feel electric, either. It feels comfortable — if a little sweaty — and warm. It’s easy to lean over and give Suga a kiss on the cheek.
“Dating or not, you’re still my favorite person,” he says.
Suga shuffles over so his head is resting on Daichi’s shoulder, so Daichi wraps his arm around Suga and lets it rest at his chest. Suga reaches up and laces their fingers together. Daichi isn’t so thick as to not realize that this isn’t how most boys their age act, but that’s because they don’t have a friend like Suga.
Suga, who Daichi met at a practice match in junior high, who seemed to glow when the windows of the gym let in that golden summer mid-afternoon light. Suga, who tackled Daichi on the school lawn on a dare and bought him ice cream from the cornerstore to make up for it. Suga, who smiled with his whole face scrunched up as he told Daichi to look him up on MySpace, and Daichi, who did even though he’d never had an account there before.
It had been a point of pride when Daichi reached the number one spot on Suga’s friendlist. There it was, empirical evidence that he was someone’s favorite person to talk to.
Suga’s eyelashes start fluttering shut. Daichi uses their joined hands to punch him lightly in the jaw.
“Come on,” he says, “we can’t sleep on the club room floor.”
“Why not?” Suga grumbles, sitting up so Daichi can have his arm back.
“Because then Takeda definitely won’t let us have our Magical Tokyo Date,” Daichi replies. “Besides, I have a hunch we have a couple of first-years in the gym to scare away.”
Suga stands and takes off his shirt, revealing muscle and skin and the little moles that dot his back. Daichi lets his eyes wander, taking in the shape of his shoulders, his pecs, his abs. Suga is lean, but he’s strong, and all the extra practice he’s been putting in is starting to show. It would be easier if Daichi were attracted to this – or not easier, but simpler perhaps. He would run his hands along the planes of Suga’s body, and Suga would shiver, and they would fall into each other the way everyone assumes they already have.
Daichi doesn’t think about sex except as an abstract; he doesn’t look at people the way others do. But he loves Suga’s body. He loves the way his eyes crinkle up when the smiles, the muscles that flex when he sends Daichi a toss, the hands that run their length over the ball or hit a karate chop over Daichi’s head or gesticulate when he talks. Daichi loves Suga’s body in all the ways it contains him, but he doesn’t want for it the way that lovers do.
Suga notices Daichi and raises an eyebrow. “If you want to fuck me, you’re going to have to wait till we get home.”
“Shut up!” Daichi says, finally tearing his eyes away to focus on getting changed.
It’s dark outside by the time they leave the clubroom, which means Hinata and Kageyama have definitely been overexerting themselves practicing for so long. Daichi scares them away and they begrudgingly pack up, Suga snickering the entire time.
They walk back to Daichi’s place together. It’s a warm night, but everything is colder in the shadows of the mountains. Suga shivers a little and zips his jacket all the way up. Daichi wants to hold his hand, but it’s buried in his pockets. He tries to make eye contact, but Suga is lost deep in thought, his nose crinkled up the same way it does when they’re sitting side-by-side on his floor working on math homework.
“If you think about it, Takeda-Sensei was only half-wrong,” Suga says.
Daichi is too afraid to ask Suga what he means. But he looks over and sees a soft smile lit by the moon and the streetlights, and he thinks it’s probably a good thing. (And maybe what Suga means can’t be defined so easily anyway. Maybe it’s like their palm-taps, and it can mean so many things at once.)
“Yeah,” Daichi replies. “I think you’re right.”
Daichi lays out a futon for his parents’ sake, but he knows without asking that Suga will sleep in his bed with him. Officially, he’s over to help plan the Tokyo trip. But he’s mostly over because both of them are too restless to be alone. They’ve been so busy with exams that they haven’t had as many opportunities to hang out, and now that they’re anxiously awaiting the results, they gravitate towards one another like magnets, like planets, like a flower to the sun.
They abandon the whiteboard they’ve been obsessively filling with ideas for plays early on and settle against each other on Daichi’s bed, Daichi scrolling on his phone aimlessly while Suga is reading a book.
Daichi lifts his head when he hears whispering, but it’s just Suga unconsciously reading aloud. Daichi leans in closer, and Suga starts reading louder. He doesn’t need to. Daichi doesn’t listen to the words so much as the way they sound coming out of Suga’s mouth, soothing and witty and just like his best friend.
Suga has this way of speaking with a hint of a smile like everything he says is an inside joke with himself. When Daichi is popping a vein yelling at their kouhai, Suga speaks to them softly, so not even Daichi can hear what he says. Melodic, his voice tilts in amusement, and it makes Daichi want to live for a moment within his head.
Now, he reads a book of poetry assigned to him in one of his advanced English classes.
“And I, tiny being, drunk with the great starry void, likeness, image of mystery, felt myself a pure part of the abyss,” Suga reads. “I wheeled with the stars. My heart broke loose with the wind.”
“Beautiful,” Daichi says, his own voice a low rumble. “Is it about love?”
“No,” Suga replies. “It’s about passion. It’s about discovering poetry for the first time.”
Daichi tries to remember the first time he played volleyball and made a solid receive. It had been so satisfying, the way the ball bumped perfectly off his arms and into the air. His coach had told him that theoretically, a game could go on that way forever so long as nobody let the ball touch the ground.
He remembers the first time he spiked the ball over the net and watched the way it slammed onto the court. He remembers the first time he truly synced up with Suga on a play, the current that ran between them, and he understands. His heart breaks loose with the wind.
On the bus to Tokyo, Daichi checks that everyone is present and every bag is packed at least a dozen times. Multiple times he starts to freak out that Hinata and Kageyama are missing, and Suga has to remind him that they’re still retaking their exams, like they have been since his last headcount. He slumps in his seat, then, and wishes vehemently that he could turn his captain brain off.
“Stand up,” Suga says suddenly as he taps Daichi on the shoulder. The tone of his voice leaves no room for argument. “We can’t have our captain wearing himself thin before we even get there. We’re switching places.”
“But—“ Daichi starts, but Suga puts a hand on his shoulder, and there’s something so delicate behind his stern expression that Daichi instantly feels himself melt.
“It’s okay, I’ll take care of it,” Suga says. “Just put in some headphones and stare wistfully out the window, okay?”
Daichi doesn’t have a choice, really. He follows Suga’s instructions, letting himself unwind even as the music he listens to ramps up in intensity. The team always makes fun of him for his love of dad rock, but Daichi finds it calming in a strange way. He leans his head against the window; the glass is cool and it feels nice against his burning skin. Suga’s right, of course, he hadn’t realized how tight his muscles were until he feels them slowly loosen up.
The others must think Daichi can’t hear them anymore. He really should turn up the volume, but he can’t help himself, even as he knows he can trust Ennoshita to stop any shenanigans Suga encourages.
“No fair, Suga-san,” Tanaka complains, turning back to face them in his seat. “You’re the only one who gets to talk to him like that!”
“Vice Captain privileges,” Suga replies.
Daichi keeps himself from smiling along to the conversation by watching the scenery pass by. As a kid, he would imagine spies, decked out in suits with all the latest gadgets running alongside the bus, jumping over dumpsters and gliding along clotheslines as they passed by. Now, he pictures Hinata and Kageyama racing each other to see who can catch up to the bus the fastest, the ever-nefarious basketball team hot on their trail.
The Hinata in his mind sprouts wings from his back and circles around the sun.
This isn’t how Daichi expected his third year to go. He couldn’t have expected this — the freak duo, the uninterested middle blocker, Asahi’s return after he insisted he’d never play volleyball again. It hurts to have all this with Suga on the sidelines; he’d always imagined them spending their third year on the court together.
He closes his eyes, and imagination slips uncomfortably into dream as he sees Suga on the ground, the broken wings of the old Karasuno on his back as he lifts his arms to the sky, ready to catch his kouhai if they fall.
It feels like no time has passed at all when Daichi wakes, but he looks out the window and the sun is shining so brightly it hurts to watch the sidewalk hurtling by. Suga’s head is resting on his shoulder, but he’s still wide awake — he rarely sleeps outside of bed.
Nishinoya and Tanaka are still awake, lost in an animated conversation about some hot celebrity or another, but most of the rest of the bus is sound asleep. Sitting at the front by Takeda, Coach Ukai looks back at them with the sort of fond expression he saves only for the moments he thinks no one’s looking.
Suga taps the inside of Daichi’s palm. He’s saying: I see you’re awake, and I hope you’ve calmed down, and I love you. Taps don’t always require responses. Suga knows Daichi felt it, and he knows Daichi understands its infinite obvious meanings.
Daichi can’t always twist his tongue into I love you, so he says things like I couldn’t have asked for a better vice captain and Suga, you must know you’re my favorite person instead. It’s okay. When Suga can’t hold Daichi’s hand or reach an arm around his shoulder, he punches him in the solar plexus. They are built from layers of contradictions — sturdy and crumbling, gentle and violent, guiding and lost.
When they step out of the bus they are Captain and Vice Captain of the Karasuno volleyball team, and all their contradictions are reduced to the roles they have to play.
Daichi shakes Kuroo’s hand a little too hard, Suga commiserates with Yaku, and they both run around trying to keep everyone else in line. When they set up the team’s futons, they place theirs side-by-side at the edge of the room.
(They’re not going to sleep here the way they usually do, cuddled up and feeling every breath. Friends don’t wake up all tangled up together in the bedsheets, even if nothing else happened between them.)
They’re all exhausted by the time they go to bed that first night, Hinata and Kageyama finally among them. It’s sort of endearing watching those two boys who pretend to hate each other place their futons so close and fall asleep whispering into the night.
Daichi knows when Suga is faking sleep. His breaths are too shallow, his body too tightly curled. He’s overthinking something — he must be. Daichi reaches his hand into the space where their blankets overlap and nudges Suga’s elbow lightly. Suga rolls over to face him.
Their eyes meet in the darkness. Suga’s eyebrows are knitted together, but he lets them relax like he’s trying not to look too concerned.
“What’s wrong?” Daichi asks, his voice so low he’s not actually confident Suga will be able to hear.
“Nothing,” Suga lies.
“No it’s not,” Daichi replies. “But I’ll drop it if you want.”
“Can we talk—“ Suga’s eyes dart about the room. “—outside?”
Daichi gingerly steps over his teammates’ sleeping bodies as he makes his way to the door, Suga just behind him. He’s tempted to look back, but he knows how that myth goes. Best to press forward and trust.
They sit across from each other in the hallway, carefully placed between their room and the one that Coach Ukai and Takeda share so no one has a chance to overhear their whispers. Suga has never looked more like a child with his arms wrapped around his knees, looking up at Daichi like he’s afraid he’ll get in trouble if he voices his thoughts.
“I’m trying so hard to be supportive of Kageyama,” Suga says.
His sentence is lilting; the end of it hangs unspoken in the air.
“But you want to play,” Daichi finishes.
“Part of me was disappointed when he got here,” Suga admits. His voice is trembling, and he drops his head onto his knees so only his hair is visible, cute in the way it’s been tousled with sleep. “God, I’m a terrible vice captain.”
“No,” Daichi says, a little louder than he intends.
Suga looks up, startled. “Daichi—“
“No, you listen to me, Koushi,” Daichi interrupts. “You have helped every single person on this team grow. I won’t let you talk about my vice captain like that.”
Daichi doesn’t use Suga’s first name very often. No one does, really — he’d bet some of the first years don’t even know what it is. But that’s why he saves it for moments like these, when he needs Suga to understand how serious he is.
Suga offers gentleness in all the places Daichi hurts with all his sharp edges. He brings levity, till the entire team seems so light on their feet they float — he punches sense into them, sometimes. He lets them get away with things Daichi won’t, and it lets them feel rebellious without actually harming anything. He’s the kind of person who is always thinking about how everyone else around him feels.
It’s like Suga fills in all the cracks in Daichi’s leadership, and truly, that is what makes him appear so strong. More thread than glue, he weaves himself expertly throughout others and holds them tightly together. Daichi wonders if he ever feels like he’s losing himself in the process.
“You’ll always be my setter,” Daichi says.
Suga looks at him, his expression almost faraway but Daichi knows that he’s searching for something hidden in his face.
“I love when you say things like that,” Suga admits, finally, after several seconds of silence. “Because you never try to lie to me.”
Daichi snorts. It’s gross and probably too loud, but he can’t help himself. “It would be stupid to lie to you. You can always tell.”
There’s something thick in the air between them now, Daichi can feel it. It’s not tension. It’s this pressure squeezing his chest until he feels as though his ribs may crack from the force of it — it’s a strong wave of affection, more powerful than anything he’s ever felt. Is this romance? Daichi isn’t sure he knows what romance is.
“I love you,” Suga says, cutting through Daichi’s disparate thoughts. He looks, really looks at Suga now, still sitting across from him in the hallway, smiling in that knowing way that makes Daichi think he must possess some secret ability to read minds.
What he really means is, stop overthinking. It doesn’t matter to me why you feel this way, only that you do.
“I love you too, Suga,” Daichi says, and he means it exactly as it is.
Sawamura and Sugawara are responsible, Takeda thinks as he hears voices drift languidly down the hall and through the slightly open door of his and Ukai’s room. If they were to sneak out in the middle of the night, they would at least wait until they got to the bathroom to do anything intimate. He’ll go out there, gently reprimand them for being awake, and send them on their way.
He considers asking Ukai for backup, but he looks as though a tornado siren wouldn’t wake him up.
Takeda creeps out of bed and sneaks a glance through the gap of the door to get a read on the situation. It’s just as he suspected — the boys aren’t even touching, though they are deep in conversation. He can’t hear their exact words, but he can tell Sugawara is upset by the way his voice shakes. Sawamura’s has that hard edge when he’s shutting something down.
Takeda has been a teacher long enough to be jaded against the concept of young love, even if he is a hopeless romantic. It’s not the kids’ fault that their relationships all seem to fall apart within a few weeks — or, more accurately, it is, but there’s an inevitability about it that makes it seem much more like the hands of fate. Teenagers just aren’t emotionally mature yet, and their inexperience in sharing their lives with another person means they tend to fumble towards collapse.
But he has a soft spot for Sugawara and Sawamura.
(He remembers with fondness the way the two of them had burst into his office at the end of their second year, newly elected captain and vice of the Karasuno boys’ volleyball team tripping over each other in their rush to get inside.
“Sir,” Sugawara had said, standing with his back unnaturally straight as Sawamura stood equally stiffly beside him. “We have a favor to ask. Our teacher sponsor quit because we don’t have a coach, and no one else will take us because we’re the fallen powerhouse and the flightless crows—“
“You won’t have to do anything,” Sawamura had interrupted. “We’ll coach the team and Kiyoko’s already agreed to do all the administrative stuff—“
“We’ll write you an essay! We’ll write so many essays, how many essays do you want?” Sugawara asked.
And Takeda had laughed because he did not in fact want to spend more time reading student essays. He laughed because he’d had both of them in class and knew how passionate they could be.
“You don’t have to write me any essays,” he’d said. “They don’t make me hit a quota, you know.”
“So you’ll do it?” Sugawara had asked. Sawamura sent an elbow into his ribcage.
“I will,” Takeda had said, and he’d made a promise to himself then that he would do everything he could for them.
By them, of course, he’d meant the entire volleyball team. Those boys, with bruises dotting their wrists, deserved a chance to prove themselves. They deserved an opportunity to be a real team.
Sawamura and Sugawara looked at each other like all the world’s light was contained in the other’s eyes.
“Thank you very much,” they both shouted, bowing deeply with their eyes squeezed shut. When they left Takeda’s office, they were almost holding hands. They let them fall awkwardly at their sides when they seemingly remembered where they were.)
Takeda doesn’t want to treat them differently for being a couple, but he has to be realistic, too. He lets them have keys to the clubroom because every other team captain does. He lets them share a room because the entire team is there, and he figures there is probably nothing more unsexy than a room full of sweaty teenagers packed into futons like sardines. He’s letting them have an evening out in Tokyo because he’d feel safer knowing where they were for a few hours than he would if they tried to get some time to themselves by sneaking out.
And he likes them. They’re good kids, not out to the rest of the team, and Takeda knows how hard it is to hide yourself away.
He pushes the door open and enters the hallway. The boys look up at him and scramble to their feet, faces practically glowing red in the darkness.
“Is everything alright?” Takeda asks.
“Yes, sir,” Sawamura says, though he seems uncertain. He looks to Sugawara, who nods his assent. “Suga was feeling, ah, insecure about his place on the team. I had to talk some sense into him.”
“Are you feeling better now?” Takeda asks. Again, Sugawara nods. He looks vaguely as though there is something lodged in his throat. “Good. Then you should both go back to bed. You won’t be setting a very good example if you’re exhausted at practice tomorrow.”
“Yes sir,” Sawamura says. Takeda’s letting them off easy, and they both know it.
“And Sugawara?” Takeda adds before they go. “Your work with your kouhai has more value than you realize. I’m biased, but I think you’d make an excellent teacher.”
Sugawara’s eyes widen, and he shoots Sawamura a strange look before returning to Takeda.
“Thank you,” he says, and he sounds genuinely touched.
Takeda shoos them away with his hands, and as they walk carefully back to their room, they whisper fiercely to each other, their voices just loud enough to be overheard.
“Did you tell him I want to be a teacher?” Sugawara asks accusingly.
“No!” Sawamura responds.
“Well I didn’t!”
“Then maybe he just happened to think that! Maybe teaching is your destiny.”
“Ugh, stop, this is way too much sincerity for one night.”
“Fine, you suck at volleyball and at teaching and everyone thinks you’re stinky. Is that better?”
“Yes, now come on, Hinata’s probably migrated to your futon already.”
“He is a surprisingly mobile sleeper.”
Takeda struggles to keep his laughter under his breath as he walks back to his own room for the night. He won’t let this count against them in earning their Tokyo night out, even if it probably should.
He can’t help it. He doesn’t know a damn thing about volleyball, and yet he’s come to love the kids on this team like children of his own.
It’s hot outside and so humid it’s sticky, and the air feels full, so much heavier in Daichi’s lungs than what he’s used to in the mountains. That should give Karasuno a slight advantage — and maybe it does for Hinata, who never seems to tire — but they’re up against some of the best teams in Tokyo, and all they do is learn and improve and lose.
Daichi takes each penalty with dignity, but he’s tired of running up and down the hill. Sisyphus, he thinks like a curse, rolling the stone only to have it fall back down before he makes it over. It’s a frustrating thing, improvement without success. They have to trust that they’ll get there, that all this effort will mean something.
This is it: the year the flightless crowd take to the skies. This is when they go to nationals.
It’s their last penalty run of the day, the sun just beginning to sink into the horizon as the sky paints itself in shades of orange, pink, and blue. The light scatters; having crested the hill before anyone else, Hinata glows. He holds his hands up to the sky in victory as Kageyama gets there just behind him, and they fight with an energy Daichi doesn’t understand.
It’s almost cinematic, an epic battle between two glowing figures in the sunset. Daichi’s calves burn, but he runs faster anyway to break it up. As soon as he does, they both collapse onto the ground, breaths coming deep and heavy. Daichi leans forward with his hands on his knees and watches the rest of his team.
Tanaka makes it up the hill next, then Nishinoya. Daichi greets them both with a sweaty clap on the back.
And then there’s Suga, sunlight glistening against pale skin, muscles straining, face red as he takes his final steps. Daichi laughs because he knows Suga’s too tired to punch him for it. He gets a murderous glare in response, and no one else dares join in. Everyone may joke about how only Suga can lecture Daichi, but they’re just as scared of Suga too.
(Daichi does get punched as soon as Suga is able to catch his breath. It’s totally worth it, though.)
Takeda stands next to Coach Ukai at the bottom of the hill. They’re a strange pair, Takeda waving up at the team as Ukai has his arms crossed and a perpetual coach-face. The only thing missing is a cigarette hanging out of his mouth.
“Sawamura, Sugawara, get down here!” Ukai shouts. “Everyone else, hit the showers!”
Daichi and Suga exchange looks, then turn their heads as one to the distance they have to cross.
“Do you think Ukai would get mad if I rolled down the hill?” Suga asks.
Daichi chuckles even as he reaches out a hand to help Suga down. “No, go ahead. I’d love to see that.”
They continue to hold hands the whole way down. Suga’s palms are sweaty, but Daichi doesn’t mind. It’s nice to know that Suga is there.
“For the next three hours, you two are officially off-duty,” Coach Ukai says.
“Don’t do anything that will reflect poorly on your team,” Takeda reminds them.
“Yes sir,” Daichi replies. He wants to tell them the truth – Suga and I aren’t dating, we’re just – but he doesn’t know how the sentence would end. It leaves him unbalanced and a little afraid. He squeezes Suga’s hand, and they head together to the locker room to change.
“Is it weird that I’m a little insulted at how much they trust us?” Suga asks when they’re a few stops down the line, walking the streets of Tokyo hand-in-hand to avoid getting lost in the crushing crowds. Or something like that.
To be honest, there’s not even that many people, but Suga keeps holding on, and Daichi sees no reason to let go. He’s been keeping a careful map in his head of the route they’ve taken, where they are. Daichi’s only been to Tokyo once or twice but he has a good sense of direction, and he absolutely refuses to get lost.
“What, you want them to think you’re a miscreant?” Daichi asks, one eyebrow raised. Suga puts on far too innocent an expression for teachers to believe half the shit he’s done outside school hours.
Suga snorts in that way that always embarrasses him. Daichi finds it incredibly endearing.
“You’re such an old man,” he says. “We’re gonna prove them wrong by having public sex right here in the middle of the street.”
“That’ll teach them,” Daichi replies dryly. “Can it wait though? I want to try some of the food here before we get arrested.”
“Hmm, I suppose.” Suga puts his off-hand on his chin like he’s really thinking about it, then laughs. Their arms swing a little between them.
The sun has sunk just below the horizon now, but they’re lit up by shop lights and neon signs. Suga’s silvery hair reflects the colors like chrome, and Daichi thinks he belongs like this, a disco ball in the night.
To anybody watching, they must look like teenage boys out on a date. That would be enough to earn them stares in Miyagi, and Daichi would have to let go of Suga’s hand to avoid explaining that it’s not, but it is, but not like that, and yeah it’s complicated, but it’s also the easiest thing in the world. There’s freedom in being out here, and Daichi understands what Takeda meant by when he said they must not get opportunities like this often, the opportunity to disappear amidst a tidal wave of strangers.
They can’t afford to eat at any of the fancier restaurants, so they duck into a hole-in-the-wall ramen shop and sit at a table by the window. It’s strangely intimate, sitting across from each other in this nearly empty shop, knees knocking together underneath the table. They stare at each other for a few silent seconds, and then they laugh.
(When Suga laughs, his eyes crinkle up like a cat’s, and the sound starts to bubble until it just bursts out of him, and he loses all control. Daichi loves hearing him like that.)
Suga reaches under the table, and for a moment, Daichi doesn’t know what he’s doing. He grabs one of Daichi’s hands from where he has them rested at his lap, forces it open, and taps the inside of his palm. Daichi chases his retreating hand to tap him back.
The server comes by to take their orders. Daichi mouths along whenever Suga says, ‘make it so spicy I get a nosebleed,’ with perfect synchronization. Suga makes a face at him and kicks him under the table, but he doesn’t really mean it. It's an affectionate kick, and it's admittedly weird that Daichi knows the difference. The server looks at them with a sparkle of amusement in his eyes before he walks away.
“You’re nervous,” Suga says. They’re long past the point of him pretending to ask. “You know this isn’t a real date, right?”
Daichi doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t want to fuck this up, the one perfect thing he has outside of volleyball — and Suga is volleyball, anyhow. But Suga will know if he lies, and that would fuck things up even more. Daichi takes a breath and silently prays that the server will interrupt.
“I’m afraid because I think I love you differently than my other friends,” he says, spitting out the words like poison in his throat.
“Do you… like me?” Suga asks.
Daichi can’t look at Suga, so he buries his head in his hands. “I don’t know. I don’t— I don’t think so. Is it possible to like someone without knowing?”
“Maybe,” Suga replies, and then his hands are wrapped around Daichi’s wrists, and he’s forcing him to look into hazel eyes, eyebrows knit together with concern. “It’s okay if you do. I mean, if it’s okay with you. It’s not like anything has to change, right?”
It’s then that the server comes by, placing two steaming bowls of ramen between them. Daichi’s stomach growls, but he can’t even think about eating now.
“I love you so much, Suga, I’m afraid I’m getting something out of this that you aren’t,” Daichi says. “I feel like a monster.”
Suga karate chops him over the head, hard. It hurts like hell and makes enough of a commotion that Suga has to apologize to the server, and he at least has the decency to look a little ashamed.
“You idiot!” He hisses under his breath. “Don’t talk about my captain like that.”
“I know you told me to stop overthinking—“ Daichi starts.
“I didn’t say that,” Suga interrupts, but he has a look on his face that means he definitely thought it. Daichi feels a little smug about it – Suga's not the only one who can read minds sometimes.
“You didn’t have to,” Daichi replies. “I’m sorry for ruining our not-date, I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t taking advantage of you.”
“Daichi, you’re literally like, my person,” Suga says like it’s obvious. “My partner in life. Stop being stupid and eat your damn food.”
There's a part of Daichi that feels like it can't be that easy, but he knows when Suga's lying, and he really, really isn't. He wishes he wasn't so confused, that he could love in the way that seems to come to everyone else so naturally. It's like he's trying to capture the breeze out of the air, tangible but not concrete.
Daichi plunges his chopsticks into the bowl without looking and unceremoniously shoves the ramen into his mouth. It’s too late by the time he realizes. His tongue is on fire, but all he can do is swallow and let the feeling sear through his throat. He feels his eyes water and a bead of sweat rolls down the side of his face.
“Yours,” Daichi manages to say through the tears. He pushes the bowl forward a little too aggressively, and some of the broth splashes over onto the table. “Your food.”
A cold glass of water is thrust into his hand, and Daichi downs the entire thing in one go. Suga doesn’t laugh, but he makes direct eye contact with Daichi as he switches their bowls and takes a bite of the spicy ramen with no expression. Forget loving him too much, Daichi wants that bastard dead. He tries sucking on an ice cube, but it only seems to amplify the heat, and he spits it out.
“That’s what you get for implying that I don’t love you as much as you love me,” Suga says with a sickly sweet grin, the kind that makes teachers think he can be trusted to do things have a night out unsupervised.
“You’re right,” Daichi croaks. “I hate you. I hate you so much.”
It’s not quite time for lights out yet, and Suga is leaned against the wall reading the poetry book from his English class. It has been translated from Spanish into English and – at least in Suga’s mind – into Japanese from there. Daichi wonders if a poem loses meaning going through that many people, or if it just becomes a more collaborative form of art.
We have lost even this twilight.
No one saw us this evening hand in hand
while the blue night dropped on the world.
Daichi’s never been good with poetry. He doesn’t know how to interpret beautiful things. He’s too straightforward, too direct, and the ideas always sound less pleasant coming out of his tongue-tied mouth.
Maybe that’s the problem, Daichi thinks as he leans his head against Suga’s shoulder and lets the words fall out of focus. We’re abstract and too easily misinterpreted.
But maybe that's what art is. Maybe all beautiful things are.