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This will be Daichi’s seventh time as the new kid, so it’s not like it’s something he doesn’t know how to do. It’s all just a matter of blending in, finding the patterns and fitting himself inside them, and that’s something he has years of experience with.
It gets tiring though, following this routine. Leaving when he slips up, because somehow he always does, and starting out again in a different place, with a new set of people who are all the same. The same as the ones at his last school, the same as each other. All of them cut from the same cloth, except for him.
Daichi is different. Daichi can crack the earth with his anger, he can shape the soil without lifting a hand. When he laughs, if he isn’t focusing hard enough on his control, pebbles will rise up and dance with his voice.
That’s what happened at his last school. He’d been doing so well, he hadn’t stood out at all, but he made the mistake of thinking maybe he could have a friend. A real one, not just someone he was friendly with, the way he was with everyone. He’d gotten relaxed, careless, and when they’d joked together he’d lifted stones into the air without meaning to, without even noticing. Everyone else eating lunch in the sunny courtyard behind the school noticed, though. They didn’t all know it was because of him, of course, but Daichi stopped laughing, the stones fell to the ground, and it was very, very quiet.
His friend was staring at him with wide eyes, and Daichi knew he’d have to tell his parents that night. He knew that would be his last day there.
So now it is his first day again, but the middle of the school year for everyone else. He introduces himself to his fellow third years without making unnecessary eye contact, only giving a second glance to the tall boy near the back who watches him with curious eyes before grinning at him crookedly. He regrets it immediately. The boy’s face is bright and friendly, and Daichi still sees it in his head when he turns away. Or the impression of it, anyway, the lingering warmth.
He doesn’t look at him again, not directly. He won’t repeat his mistakes. No real friends, and definitely not ones with wild hair and long limbs that shift restlessly at the edge of Daichi’s vision like little flashing lights. Just to his left, and one row up. The last thing he needs is to be connected to someone who draws attention to himself, who is drawing Daichi's even though he's pretending all he sees is the worn desk in front of him.
He’s good at pretending. He ignores the tall boy every day, and he fits in. It doesn’t take him long at all to do it. He’s friendly and average around his classmates. He does his assignments on time, eats lunch at his desk like everyone else, never yells, or laughs genuinely, or lets the tingling under his skin escape.
He’s exactly what he is supposed to be, what his parents want him to be, so they can all keep acting like his abnormality doesn’t exist. He is an imitation of a person. A black and white sketch with nothing inside.
He wonders, if he keeps going like this, if maybe he’ll just fade right out of existence.
*
On Fridays, Daichi skips lunch and goes for a walk instead of sitting in the classroom. It’s a gift he gives himself, because he doesn’t want to disappear. He likes the warmth he gets in his limbs when he’s close to the earth, even if he can’t let himself talk to it. It pulls at him when he sits down at the base of a tree and presses his hands to the ground. He feels it stirring under his palms, just waiting for his command to move.
He doesn’t give one, but he digs his fingers in and lets the dirt fit itself under his nails. He’ll have to wash it out carefully before he goes home, or his mother will think he was doing something he shouldn’t, like when he was a little boy and his power first began to show itself. When he’d call the earth into every shape he could think of, little mountains and dragons overtaking his family’s backyard.
He closes his eyes and pushes the memories away. The joy of creation, the freedom of not yet knowing that this wasn’t normal—those feelings aren't his anymore. He bites his lip and digs his fingers in deeper. He needs to stop, he can’t sit here pitying himself. If his emotions get too strong, it won’t matter if he doesn’t want it to happen, the earth will just—
“Holy…shit.”
Daichi’s eyes spring open. The ground beneath each of his palms has split, leaving dark jagged lines on either side of him, and Kuroo Tetsurou—the boy with the smiling eyes who talks a little too loud in class, just loud enough that Daichi can’t ignore the rhythm of his voice or the ease of his laughter—is standing before him.
Daichi stares up at him and doesn’t move. He can’t believe this. He can’t believe he screwed up so quickly. He hasn’t even finished unpacking yet, and now Kuroo has seen him and it’s already time to go.
“Sawamura-san?” Kuroo says, taking a step towards him.
Daichi spreads his fingers over the earth, as if he can cover what he’s done. He doesn’t know if he should lie, or pretend nothing has happened at all. It doesn’t really matter in the end, because he’s scared and he’s frustrated, and the ground cracks again, sending zigzagging lines right up to Kuroo’s feet.
“Hey…hey, I’m sorry,” Kuroo says, taking a small step back. “I won’t…I’m not gonna…it’s okay.”
Daichi shakes his head. This has never once been okay.
“I’m…can I sit down?”
“What? No, I don't…” Daichi takes a breath, trying to steady himself. “What are you even doing out here?”
“I was looking for you,” Kuroo says, blinking at him as if this should be obvious. “You always leave on Fridays.”
“Because I want to be alone,” Daichi growls. There’s a rumble beneath them and the ground opens up between him and Kuroo, yawning until they’re separated by a foot of open earth. “Goddammit.”
Kuroo drops to his knees and clutches the dry grass, golden eyes wide and startled. “I’m sorry!” he says again, even though Daichi is the one doing everything wrong. “Sawamura-san, listen…you don’t have to worry about me, okay? I’m…”
“You’re what?” Daichi says. “You’re gonna cover for a guy you don’t know at all?”
“Yes!” Kuroo says. “Because I do know you. I felt it in you the first second I saw you.”
“What are you—felt what?”
“This,” Kuroo says, and he lifts one hand, waves it carefully through the empty space in front of him, and paints the air with color.
Bright lines of orange and gold and red appear in the path of his fingertips. He circles his hand and leaves a loop of color, like the trail behind an airplane, then closes his fingers so they’re pressed right next to each other, and paints a wide swath of amber over the crack between them, like a gilded river.
Daichi’s mouth falls open.
“Yours is cooler,” Kuroo says, smiling wryly.
“You…” Daichi begins, but it’s too hard to put words together right now. He’s never met anyone else like him, and he can't stop staring at the colors Kuroo's drawn through the air, wavering at their starting points now and beginning to fade. He watches every bright line bleed into transparency, until it’s like there was never anything there to begin with.
“You didn’t feel it in me?” Kuroo asks.
“I…I was trying to ignore you,” Daichi says. “But you’re very…bright? I didn’t feel anything, but it was like you were always burning in the corner of my eye.”
“Huh,” Kuroo says, tapping his chin thoughtfully. “I guess it's not weird that we’d sense things differently, too. I only know one other person like us, so…”
“What?” Daichi says. “Where? Someone at this school?”
“No,” Kuroo says, shaking his head and folding his knees more comfortably underneath himself. “He lives in Miyagi, I met him at summer camp a couple years ago.”
“What…what can he do?”
“He…sees things? I guess? He sees things about people, without knowing them. Not exactly mind reading, but…kind of. His name’s Oikawa.”
“Wow,” Daichi says. “Also what the hell? That sounds way easier to hide.”
Kuroo laughs, tossing his head back. Tiny lines of shining gold streak through the air around him like someone has flicked a wet paintbrush. “You’re telling me,” he says.
“Wha—that never happens in class,” Daichi says.
“You watch me laugh in class?” Kuroo asks, waving the color away casually.
Daichi feels his cheeks burning and he looks at his hands, picking at the dark lines under his nails. “I told you, I couldn’t help seeing you.”
He can see him now, shuffling right to the edge of the rift Daichi made between them. He reaches over it and runs long, elegant fingers through the grass in front of Daichi’s knees, painting it in sunset colors. It’s so beautiful, Daichi wishes it wouldn’t fade away.
“Can you make it stay?” he asks.
“I can, but I never do,” Kuroo says, waving his hand over it gently and sending the bright hues scattering. “I’m careful at school, in class. That’s why it doesn’t happen there.”
“Do you ever mess up?”
“Of course,” Kuroo says, “but that’s why I met Oikawa. It’s why you met me. Oikawa’s met someone else, too. There must be more of us.”
“I’m pretty happy just knowing there’s more than me,” Daichi says, raising his eyes to Kuroo’s again.
He’s smiling, and his eyes are so rich Daichi wonders how he managed to even pretend to ignore him before.
“Can you fix this?” Kuroo asks, nodding towards the broken earth.
“Ah…yeah,” Daichi says. He touches it again and guides the pieces back together with his will, closing up the tiny fissures first, and then drawing the gap between himself and Kuroo slowly closed until there’s no space there at all, just Kuroo’s knees bumping his.
“That’s really fucking cool,” Kuroo says.
“I like yours,” Daichi says honestly. “It suits you.”
This time it’s Kuroo with the pink cheeks. “I used to draw on myself, when I was a kid,” he says. “The other kids thought it was just marker, or facepaint.”
Daichi smiles and tries to picture this. He thinks Kuroo’s angular face would look beautiful with careful lines of color accenting it. “Show me?” he asks.
“We should get to class,” Kuroo says, but he reaches out for Daichi’s hand, and Daichi lets him take it. Lets him turn it palm up, and lets him draw a glowing spiral in its center.
“That doesn’t look like facepaint,” Daichi says.
Kuroo gives him a look, then drags his fingers from the inside of Daichi’s elbow down to his wrist, leaving lines that are still rich and bright, but not so luminescent. “I’ll paint you something nicer when we have more time,” he says. “You wanna walk home together?”
Daichi doesn’t walk home with people. He doesn’t build relationships that are close enough to extend beyond the classroom. He has only ever been the approximation of a normal student—careful, and studied, and empty.
“Sawamura?” Kuroo asks, when Daichi doesn’t answer him right away. He lets Daichi’s hand slip out of his. “You don’t have to, if you—”
“I do,” Daichi says. “I want to.”
Kuroo’s smile is back, and sunbursts of color bloom out from where his hands rest in the scraggly grass. “Shit, you’re just pulling it out of me now.”
“That wasn’t on purpose?” Daichi asks, feeling absurdly pleased, and then a little embarrassed that his loss of control in front of Kuroo resulted in destruction. He finds himself wanting to show Kuroo what else he can do. How he can build instead of taking apart.
“Nope,” Kuroo says. “Better get a hold of myself, huh?”
“For now,” Daichi agrees. “But later…”
“I’ll show you mine, if you show me yours?” Kuroo says, with that bright, cooked smile that first caught Daichi’s eye.
Daichi laughs and flicks his hand at Kuroo, sending up a little spray of loose soil. “You’re gross,” he says.
“I'm colorful,” Kuroo says, smiling at his own play on words. “Ready, Sawamura?”
He extends his hand again, and Daichi takes it.
“Daichi,” he says, as they stand up together.
“Daichi,” Kuroo repeats. He doesn't complain about the soil still damp on Daichi's skin, and he doesn't let go when they start to walk back to the school.
The dirt scatters at Daichi's feet, and beats with flashes of color under Kuroo's.
They let go of each other when they near the building, and hold onto their power, reigning it in.
Daichi sits at his desk and watches Kuroo. The light contained inside him, and the way he runs his fingers carefully over the hand Daichi held. Not brushing anything away, just touching what Daichi left there.
He unfolds his own hand on his lap and sees that Kuroo marked him, too. A bright patch of pink right in the center of his palm. He thinks it might be a heart. He thinks maybe that's why Kuroo is blushing again.
The rosy shape doesn't fade, and Daichi doesn't mind at all. He's been nothing but an outline for so long, and he's ready to fill himself in, at least in front of one other person. He's ready to be painted with all of Kuroo's colors.