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5. Thighs
Daichi eyes the chair before him, but only pauses for a moment before sitting down quickly. He swings his shoulder bag onto the ground in one smooth motion.
“You look like you sucked on at least three lemons and then had to chew the pits. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong.”
“Daichi,” Suga says quietly. There’s hardly any pressure at all to his words. Nothing in his manner is forcing Daichi to answer him, but Daichi doesn’t like making Suga worry for nothing.
He smiles and gestures in a helpless kind of way at his legs.
“I’m a little sore. We did a lot of running yesterday, and I made a lot of good receives yesterday,” he explains. “Nothing hurts more than it should.”
Good receives mean getting low to the ground.
Suga smiles at him, his eyes crinkling at the corner.
“Our hardworking captain is always so dedicated.”
Daichi smiles back. He and Suga have been playing volleyball for a long time. They’ve been best friends for just as long, sharing water bottles, spare shirts, and the occasional meat bun on the way home from school. It’s so familiar, checking in on each other, asking and expecting an answer, not because one has to be given, but because it’s good to know you can trust someone to listen and understand and worry a little for you.
“What about you? You’re a very persistent vice captain, and you’ve been upping your training regiment, haven’t you?”
“I’m fine,” Suga says with a sunny smile. Daichi searches his face for some anxiety, anything to indicate that maybe he’s pushing too hard to try and fight his way onto the court, but Suga meets his gaze steadily.
“Let’s help each other stretch today to make sure our old man bones are being taken care of,” Daichi says at last.
“Sure. But right now I have to ask you about problem twenty. I need some help with it, please.”
Daichi nods and fishes out his homework from his bag, careful to bend at the waist and avoid moving his sore legs.
Getting up from his chair for lunch is going to be downright awful.
4. Knees
“Hurry up, Sawamura! I thought you would show the most athleticism among us, since you’re in the volleyball club.”
Fujiwara and Ikeda are up ahead, bounding up the stairs two at the time in a desperate race to get to roof first and stake out the spot with the best view. They remind him of Kageyama and Hinata except his two friends also compete for best marks, which is an arena that Kageyama and Hinata have forsaken.
Otai trails a bit behind Daichi.
“Yeah, Sawamura, what’s with the hold up today?”
“You could walk ahead of me. No one is stopping you.”
“Are you alright?” Otai asks as he catches up to walk next to Daichi. “I joke about you fainting all the time, but I don’t actually want you to collapse or anything.”
Daichi nods to show that he’s heard. Right now, he’s focussed more on trying to take slow even steps up the stairs than trying to addressing his friend’s belated concern for his wellbeing. The spasms his knees give as he puts pressure on them is worrisome, but he’s not too bothered about figuring out why each step sends shudders through his knees. He wants to eat lunch with his friends on the roof of the school, but he would also very much like to win Karasuno’s next volleyball match.
The feeling is like someone has reached right past his kneecaps and is squeezing at the ligaments under them with ice cold fingers.
Otai is quiet the remaining few steps up to the roof.
“Do you ever regret it?” he asks as they open the door. The roar of the wind at this height nearly blows his words right up into the sky, but Daichi hears them as they rush by and he smiles a little, tilting his head back to look at the impossibly blue sky above him. There’s not a cloud in sight, and there are a few crows cawing somewhere in the distance.
“Not really. What do I have to regret when I’m having so much fun?”
“What about...”
“That’s another worry for another time.”
Otai bumps shoulders with Daichi gently.
He says, “Don’t try to play cool, Sawamura. I saw you wincing as you walked up that last flight of stairs. How are you even going to get down, eh?”
“Another time,” Daichi repeats firmly, and tells himself to it’s true.
3. Back
On the other side of his blinds, the moon is shining big and fat. It’s like the reflective underbelly of a bottle of soda, huge and unavoidable when someone takes a drink in the hot summer sun and shines the damn thing right into your face.
The light sweeps across the floor of Daichi’s room the same way time is taking mincing steps across his floorboards.
“Urgh,” he says into the darkness, softly because his parents are asleep. It’s just loud enough in the stillness of his room to affirm that yes, he’s still awake, and yeah, his back still aches something fierce.
He’d taken a particularly hard fall upon receiving a ball earlier today. It had been an ordinary, run of the mill kind of fall, the ones that people are prone to have when they’re moving too fast and connecting with even faster flying objects.
His lower back aches now, and it’s a pain that he’s not exactly comfortable with. He feels the bruise forming even now, probably darkening into something green and yellow across his tail bone. He’d put some ice on it as he had been doing homework, but it was all melted now. He couldn’t find the aspirin in the medicine cabinet either, so he’s stuck laying in bed half asleep because he’s so tired, but awake enough to toss and turn in bed to try and find a way to lay in it that won’t hurt or twist or jostle his back.
Finally, he settles for splaying spread eagle on his stomach and ignores the crick on his neck and the way his pillow is slowly suffocating him. He counts to five slowly at each inhale and exhale.
A hundred and twenty five five’s later, he drifts off to the sight of time jumping over his feet, nimble and silent, pale as moonlight.
2. Shoulders
Coach Ukai’s mom is manning the counter this afternoon. She’s a lovely woman with a loud voice and a mellow temper who greets them all with good humor.
“What a busy day it is today,” she says, and the whole store can hear her, but Tanaka keeps challenging Nishinoya to a fist fight over the last mango flavored ice pop. Nishinoya’s enthusiastic shouts in reply echo everywhere.
Daichi can see a blazing headache, his long lost lover, running forward to greet him.
“Uhh, Daichi?”
“Yes,” Daichi says, suppressing surprised a flinch, and looks down to meet Hinata’s slightly nervous and very questioning gaze.
“Could you get me the Hello Panda’s on the top shelf over there?” Hinata babbles, his eyes going wide and pleading. He raises his empty hands as if in supplication. “I would get it myself. Actually. No, I wouldn’t. But. Jumping for it in Coach Ukai’s store doesn’t seem right.”
Daichi doesn’t laugh, but it’s a near thing. He nods and tries to keep a straight face while reaching out with his right hand to grab the pink package hovering just out of Hinata’s reach.
A deafening crack echoes through the store and Daichi drops his hand holding the container of chocolate filled cookies.
“Sorry!” Hinata cries.
“Why? Don’t worry about it,” Daichi says even as his shoulder pops and crackles like a rice crispy treat. He shrugs to get some feeling back and smiles as reassuringly as he can before shooing Hinata forward towards the counter. Kageyama appears down the aisle and glowers at Daichi like Hinata’s increasingly more frazzled sputtering is his fault.
Daichi shrugs again.
It’s about the prices people are willing to pay. Nothing more and nothing less.
“Wow, we’re sure getting old, huh?” Suga says as they amble along behind Karasuno’s volleyball team, shepherding them out of the store.
Azumane is trying to hide from Nishinoya behind a postcard display as the other boy waves around a bag of spicy potato chips when they finally head out the door.
“It’ll make you feel extra hot, Asahi!” Nishinoya shouts as he chases Azumane out the door.
“Maybe.”
They leave the store accompanied by the sounds of Tsukishima’s snickering and Asahi’s quiet gasps as he tries to breathe around a mouthful of chips, their black volleyball club sports coats flapping in the wind behind them as dramatically as any capes.
1. Fingers
The athletic tape is out before the first whistle is blown and is the last to disappear at the end of the night right before everyone helps clean up the gym.
Hinata is shaking his hand up and down quickly while Tsukishima stares down at his jammed fingers like sheer force of will could heal them.
Daichi hands over the tape wordlessly and Suga begins to tell them, again, how to wrap their fingers properly before practice begins. His own fingers are a little out of sorts, the joints creaky and slow when he moves them but that’s just because practice has been long today and his fingers are stiff from being in almost the same position for hours.
He’ll have to tape his third and fourth finger together with a length of gauze in between for a while, but by the end of the week he will probably be fine with just taping the joints.
Hinata crows with delight when he shoves his freshly wrapped fingers in Kageyama’s face.
“If only we could go back to those times,” Suga says, making his way to stand at Daichi’s side. He’s smiling though and he looks pleased at Hinata’s enthusiasm.
Nodding his agreement, Daichi picks up a volleyball and weighs it in his hand speculatively as he looks on.
“That handwritten rough draft is due tomorrow in Japanese history," Daichi says, his tone deceptively light. "It’ll be easy for you because the way you talk makes it seem like you grew up in the 1200’s.”
“Just trying to come to terms with our leaving,” Suga says sweetly, which make Daichi fumble with the ball he was just about to toss.
“We’re not gone yet!”
“We’re going to leave some time.”
Daichi frowns and looks down thoughtfully at his taped fingers, at the volleyball in his hands. The weight of it feels good, feels right, and he doesn't know if leaving Karasuno high school will mean a new beginning or the end of something precious. He’s not sure if he truly wants to know, but maybe it’ll be a little bit of both.
“We’re not that old,” Daichi insists.
Suga make a little face and shoves Daichi’s shoulder with his hand. “Lighten up, old man. Just accept that we’re not ‘new’ and ‘hip’. Relish your old age and wisdom! Congratulate yourself that you survived so long.”
0. Hips
“Fuck,” Daichi hisses into the half darkness. He bites back a gasp. The residue it leave behind in his mouth is the texture of cotton candy. It melts on his tongue, fleeting but still very sticky.
Kuroo rolls off of Daichi, quick enough that the cool night air rushing into the warm space he had previously occupied is a shock.
“Is there anywhere that you don’t have bruises?” Kuroo asks, amusement and concern warring in his voice. Amusement wins as he laughs a little at Daichi’s guilty expression.
“Not really.”
“Let me take care of you,” Kuroo says in a voice barely more than a whisper. His palms skim over the curve of Daichi’s shoulders and he leans in close to press a kiss to the tip of Daichi’s nose, terribly slow and tender and careful not to jostle anything that might be hurt.
“Yeah. Yeah, okay.”
They are half hidden by the night and a trusty tree trunk, their bags containing their sweaty workout clothes fermenting a little ways away. Their efforts to try to get tangled up in each other are for not, because their bruises and other aches have gotten in the way.
Kuroo reaches out and snags his bag, unearthing a box of salonpas patches and a tin of bruise balm. He smirks as he leans closer and lifts Daichi’s shirt to reveal a motley patch of bruises and scrapes.
He sucks in a breath and touches each one, cataloging them not only by sight, but also by the way Daichi breathes in a little too heavily when he pressed on particularly tender skin.
“Your hips are basically one giant bruise.”
“The penalties for losing matches aren’t kind to anyone,” Daichi says dryly as he drags his hand along Kuroo’s chest, deciding to return the favor. Kuroo sucks in a surprised breath when Daichi's fingers trail over his ribs. “And what about your knees?”
“I can do that myself. Put this on my back for me?”
The patch is sticky against his fingers, but Daichi marvels at how close they are now, how vulnerable Kuroo looks, baring his back to him, each breath making his ribs press up right against his skin. He can feel the flex of Kuroo’s back muscles under his hands as he laughs while Daichi tries to apply the salonpas, the curve of each vertebra are sweet slopes under his fingers.
“Sorry, that tickled.”
“You tickled,” Daichi mutters, cheeks flushing despite the cool night air.
“You tickled my heart,” Kuroo says, and his voice is low and too close. Daichi tilts his head back to look at the stars to avoid wondering if Kuroo is actually sincere or not.
The words crawl up his throat, and Daichi doesn’t know how to stop them from leaping from his mouth. Daichi blurts out, “That didn’t make even a little bit of sense.”
Kuroo leans in close and presses them together, shoulder to thigh, side by side, so that it becomes just the two of them leaning their backs against rough tree bark with their bruises bared to the open air and nothing less.
“I’m trying to tell you I really like you.”
When Daichi finally returns to his futon, a bruise the shape of Russia is forming somewhere on his shoulder, and the memory of Kuroo’s mouth on his makes his lips tingle the same way the skin on his shoulder does.
Daichi thinks he’s managed to successfully sneak in and out of the dorms without anyone noticing until he hears a faint laugh coming from his left.
“I take back what I said about us being old,” Suga says in a whisper.
Daichi wraps himself into a mortified little bundle of blanket, boy, and bruises and turns his back to Suga. He thanks his lucky stars that everyone else is dead tired and snoring, but Suga continues, “You might want to put some bruise balm on that very impressive hickey. And walk more quietly on the way back in. I think you might have tripped over Asahi just now, which is why I'm awake enough to embarrass you.”