Work Text:
by the stubborn will of gravity
even after everything we’ve seen,
we’ve barely caught a glimpse of what it means;
in the architecture of the soul
the universe began with our eyes closed
When Sugawara Koushi cracks open his eyes at half past two, he barely sees the flash of light between the cracks of his dark bedroom curtain. But he certainly hears the booming crash and consequent violent rattle of the earth. It’s louder than the time the tree outside his window got struck by lightning and fell onto the driveway, thoroughly scorched. It’s louder than the time he was sitting in class during the earthquake that collapsed the auditorium ceiling just down the hallway. It’s louder than the screech of metal upon metal when their family’s minivan collided with the side of swerving tractor trailer that put him in the hospital for a couple days with a bad concussion, internal bleeding, and memory loss.
Briefly, Suga wonders if he’s dead. But he opens his eyes, looks up at his swinging ceiling fan, and decides the afterlife probably has air conditioning.
He pulls back the covers, hops out of bed, throws on a bathrobe over his undershirt and boxers, shoves the cell phone on the nightstand into his terrycloth pocket, and ambles down the stairs to the front door. He yells to his mother that he’s going out to investigate, slips on a pair of sneakers, grabs the lantern by the door, and runs out into the late autumn night.
It’s eerie, he thinks, how quiet the farm remains after such a tremendous racket. The air feels cool on his face and exposed ankles, and he smells smoke and something else he can’t quite place. Gasoline? Chemicals? His nose twitches and anxiety pools in his stomach. He’s heard of explosions on farms because of accidents or the mishandling of natural gas. Grain elevators blowing up when accessed improperly. Leaking fuel lines on a tractor. A million opportunities for tragedy pop up in Suga’s mind, but his curiosity gets the better of him.
He follows his nose behind the house. He stumbles through the lumpy soybean fields, thankful that they finished the harvest a few weeks ago, and that none of the crops had been damaged. He hops the fence into the hillier pasture land and proceeds no more than twenty yards before he spots the fire, licking at the dry grass in the valley between two hills.
He doesn’t realize the scale of the site until he reaches the top of the first hill, and when he does, he almost drops his lantern in surprise.
The space between the rolling hills is no longer a valley but a crater, smoke pouring from a mass of twisted metal at its center.
“Holy shi--”
“Uh, excuse me?”
Suga yelps before he whips his head around and comes face to face with a young, burned, and extremely naked man.
“Wha--who...why are you--”
The boy cuts him off with a violent shiver. “I need to borrow your jacket.”
_
“So let’s go over everything I’ve heard so far,” Suga says, setting two mugs of hot tea on the kitchen table. “Your name is Daichi. You’re an alien. And that mess back there that we put out with the center-pivot is your space ship. Or what’s left of it anyway. And…actually, that’s all I got. I’m still failing to grasp just that."
Daichi nods and examines the mug in front of him like he’s an archaeologist.
“What’s your name again?”
“Sugawara Koushi, but only my Mom can call me Koushi. Just Suga is fine.”
“Okay, Suga,” Daichi says cheerfully.
“Okay, Daichi,” Suga returns.
Daichi tips back his drink as if to chug the whole thing in one go and then sputters. “What is this?”
“Tea,” Suga replies evenly, taking a sip of his own. “Specifically chamomile tea. It’s what I drink when I get a bad grade on a test or hear about a drought or something stressful. I figured it might cover sudden alien crash-landings too.”
“It tastes like plant juice.”
“That sounds about right.”
Daichi scowls and sets his mug down. “I wasn’t supposed to land here,” he grumbles. “I was running errands. I was on my way to the Andromeda galaxy, but I took a scenic detour through the Milky Way, and then my warp drive lever was sticking, so I couldn’t leave warp fast enough to maneuver around some asteroids. My right-side thrusters took a nasty hit and I had just enough power in the left to compensate and maneuver into your planet’s orbit. I was gonna send a help signal, but I miscalculated your planet’s mass and ended up getting sucked right in. Now I’m here. I don’t even know where here is, but it must be some kind of backwards-ass planet for you to not know a rocket ship when you see one.”
“Earth,” Suga says.
“What?”
“Planet Earth. That’s the name.”
“It’s like a stroll through history. Prehistoric, even. Do you people even get off planet ever?”
“People have been on the moon, I guess. Once. Maybe a couple times,” Suga says. “Before I was born.”
“That white satellite up there? That hardly counts. That’d take me maybe thirty seconds on warp-four.”
Draining his mug, Suga wipes his lips on the back of his hand. “Alright,” Suga says, glancing at the kitchen clock. “Alright, how about this? I want to go back to sleep, because it’s four in the morning and I need to be up by six-thirty if I want to gather eggs and milk the cows before school. Please tell me your, uh, species--is that the right word? Please, please tell me you sleep at night.”
Daichi rolls his eyes. “Of course, we sleep. After all, you earthlings are the weird ones.”
_
Suga feels like he’s sleepwalking when he trudges up the steps back to his bedroom, Daichi following just behind him. And maybe he is. Or maybe he is actually dead and the afterlife has ceiling fans and strange crash-landing alien boys.
“Stay quiet,” Suga murmurs. “My mom probably went back to sleep.”
“What about your dad?”
“He died last year.”
“Oh. I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Don’t be. It’s not your fault.”
Suga leads his new companion into his room and shuts the door behind them. “You can sit on the bed,” Suga tells Daichi. “I’ll grab you something to sleep in.”
“How’d he die?” Daichi asks, leaning back on his elbows. Deciding to abstain from commenting on the way Daichi leaves his legs open despite wearing nothing under the short robe, Suga rummages through his dresser for a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt. He estimates that Daichi is about his size, or maybe just a size bigger. And, he thinks, that’s supposing he isn’t hiding any weird alien appendages under that terrycloth.
“That’s kind of an insensitive question,” Suga says finally, throwing a set of old clothes to his guest.
“Not on my planet,” Daichi says, with a shrug. “Death has a purpose, just like life does. Planets are made of the same ingredients people are.”
Suga grimaces. “And that’s pretty morbid.”
“How else do you reason it? It’s not like the universe is gonna waste its resources. It’s pretty efficient. I would know; I’ve seen it in action.”
“I’m sure you have.”
“You’ll have to face it eventually! It’s fascinating stuff, I promise. When I get my ship fixed, I’ll take you out to the satellite galaxies, right where they’re colliding with the Milky Way. We can’t get too close or we’ll get annihilated -- all that movement really riles everything up and the ship can only take so much of a beating,” Daichi says, eyes twinkling. “But it’s worth getting pelted with meteoroids and avoiding black holes and everything. Man, you just have to see it up close, and you’d understand.”
“I don’t know if I could even begin to comprehend that,” Suga says. “I’ve never even left this town. I’d been meaning to travel, but after last year… Well, Mom needs me on the farm, and I like working with the animals a lot, so it’s all just fine.”
Suga throws a reassuring grin over his shoulder. “Anyway, the bathroom door is right next to my closet if you want to change and freshen up before--”
He balks as he turns to face a naked Daichi for the second time that night, as the other man pulls Suga’s lent clothing over his head. Suga immediately averts his eyes. His cheeks burn. “Uh, sorry,” Suga sputters. “I probably should’ve told you that first.”
Daichi gives him a weird look and slips on the pants before wandering over to the bathroom.
“Er, how do I--?”
“Open the door?” Suga says, incredulously.
“Yeah.”
“You slide it open.”
“Oh.” And he carefully slides it open like he’s going to break it if he’s not gentle enough. Suga marvels.
“You don’t have that on your planet?"
“They’re all automatic and they slide up when you approach them, unless they’re locked. They had doors like these once, I guess, but I’ve never seen them. They were in the history chip I was supposed to download to my memory bank, but I might not have downloaded the summarized version to save bandwidth…”
Suga gapes and then follows him into the bathroom to make sure he knows how to use the faucet.
__
It’s five in the morning when Suga finally gets Daichi out of the bathroom, and he wonders whether he should just give up on sleeping and spend the rest of the night showing Daichi the wonders of “appliances of the age of antiquity” until the rooster crows at daybreak.
“I’m pretty tired, so I’m not gonna wrestle a futon out of the closet downstairs,” Suga says and punctuates it with a wide yawn. “So you take the bed and I’ll be on the floor, okay?”
Daichi snorts. “This bed is for just one person? It’s huge.”
“It’s just a full-size bed,” Suga mumbles self-consciously. It’s not like he’s a rich kid with a flat screen TV and a Jacuzzi and a king-size water bed. His room is nothing short of ordinary.
“Back home we sleep in these little pods that come out of the wall. You tell it how long you want to be asleep and then as soon as it closes over your face, you’re out like a light until it jolts you awake.”
“With electricity?”
“I dunno. I’ve never asked. That’s just how it is.”
“Hmm,” Suga replies, grabbing a pillow and a blanket. He’s thankful for the soft carpeting of his bedroom floor.
“We’ll share it. It’s yours after all. You should get to sleep in it at least. And there’s more than enough room.”
Suga blanches. “Isn’t that...improper?”
“How would I know?” Daichi says dismissively. “This is a goddamn novelty. Novelties shouldn’t have any rules.”
Suga’s too tired to put up any semblance of resistance, so he throws the pillow and the blanket back on, peels back the covers of his unmade bed and climbs in, settling next to the wall with his back to Daichi.
“If you press that button on the lamp, the light will turn off,” Suga instructs, and Daichi complies. In the pitch-dark of the room, Suga hears Daichi’s steady breathing and can feel Daichi’s warmth on his back -- thinks perhaps aliens run a few degrees warmer than earthlings. To his dismay, it feels really nice, lying in bed next to this clueless stranger he met not three hours ago.
Moments pass him to the even soundtrack of Daichi’s inhale, exhale, and repeat. He curls his body into a tight fetal position and tries to ignore the rapid and inexplicable pounding of his heart. He’s only getting an hour of sleep at most, he reminds himself, and he knows it’s best to use it or school is certain to be hell tomorrow. He squirms and buries his face in his pillow. Futilely, he tries to count sheep.
“Suga?” Daichi says quietly.
“What?”
“How do you go to sleep?”
“How do I go to sleep?”
“No. I mean, people in general. How do they fall asleep? I’ve never slept outside a pod before, and it just kinda...shuts me down. I’ve never had to do it, uh, manually. Ever.”
Suga turns over to face him. It’s dark, but Suga can make out the shape of his face. Suga’s seen his face today, but he hasn’t really seen his face, hasn’t memorized the details. His hand itches, like he wants to just reach out and run his fingers along the defined square of his jaw. He grips his undershirt instead and pulls the covers over his shoulders.
“You just do it. You close your eyes and lay still. You never feel yourself do it, but then you wake up and it’s morning.”
“Oh.”
“I can’t fall asleep either,” Suga admits. “Not right now.”
“That’s okay.”
Suga runs a hand through his hair and says, “Since we can’t sleep, let’s play a game.”
“Sounds good.”
“It’s called Questions.”
“Questions,” Daichi repeats.
“Yep,” Suga says, before switching positions and lying on his back. He knows if he keeps looking at Daichi’s face, the butterflies bumping around in his stomach will never disappear. “Here’s how it works. I’ll ask you a question. You’ll answer it honestly. Then you’ll ask me a question. I’ll answer it honestly. If you don’t want to answer the question, say ‘pass,’ and the asker will think of a new question. First person to run out of questions loses.”
Daichi nods. “And I can ask anything?”
“Anything you want,” Suga confirms.
“Can I go first?”
“Be my guest.”
“Seriously, what was in that drink you gave me?”
“You’re still thinking about that?” Suga laughs, rests his hands on his stomach. “People grow tea plants and every so often they harvest the leaves, let them dry out, grind them up and package them in different combinations, so there are all different flavors. Then you buy them and pour water over them and you get hot tea.”
“It’s still gross,” Daichi says, wrinkling his nose.
“We’ll try coffee tomorrow morning, then. The way sleep is going, I’ll need a bucket of it,” Suga says. “Aaaand I need a question for you. What planet are you from?”
“I’m actually live on a moon,” Daichi answers. “Moon One. Original name, right? The planet it orbits is called Karasuno, and I was born there. But my parents moved us out to M-One because they’re in the warp-shipping business and M-One is a big hub for cargo ships that come by. It’s the outermost moon, so it’s accessible I guess.”
“Hence why you have your ship?”
“Hence why I have my ship. And my rocket license. My parents have a whole fleet of small ships they find used for cheap and they fix them up. Dad’s a mechanic by trade. But...you asked another question before I got a chance, you cheater!”
“Ah, my fault.”
“It sure is,” Daichi says cheerfully. “How did you get that spot on your cheek?”
“My mole?” Suga snorts.
“Yeah, under your left eye.”
“I was born with it, I think. I can’t remember not having it,” Suga says, trying not to laugh. It seems so silly. “You really don’t have any?”
“No. Should I?”
“I dunno. Maybe your skin is different?”
“Maybe.”
“Your turn.”
“Hmm,” Daichi ponders. “Is your planet always so cold?”
“No. But it’s about to get a lot colder. And then it’ll get sweltering in the summer. It depends on what time of year it is. Seasons change,” Suga replies and then, “How come we speak the same language?”
“We don’t,” Daichi says, and then he sticks his finger into his mouth and wrenches out what looks to Suga like the cap of his tooth. He sits up, which pushes the covers down to his lap and reveals to Suga a sliver of Daichi’s toned stomach muscles where his too-tight shirt doesn’t quite reach the waistband of the borrowed sweatpants. Suga gulps and looks back at the ceiling like it’s the most fascinating painting he’s ever seen. Daichi drops the white cap in his lap and says something completely guttural and foreign. Examining the device, Suga is certain he is incapable of making the sounds that Daichi utters.
After a while, Daichi takes back the device and shoves it back in his mouth. He opens and closes his mouth a few times, and Suga hears it click into place.
“What was that?”
“A real pain, but worth it. It’s a universal translator, and a good one at that. It scans my brain and the brains of everyone around me and determines primary language via brain waves or something. And it translates everything into the electronic pulse we understand -- so if I say something you can’t understand, like what I said when I took it out, right? You couldn’t understand that? I say the same thing now, and you understand that I’ve said ‘universal translator.’ You can say ‘universal translator’ in whatever language you’re speaking, but I hear it as my native language. Cool, right?”
“Definitely,” Suga says, and wonders if he could borrow it for his next English exam at school. It seems so silly to learn something fully with that kind of technology at your disposal. Suga feels a sudden wave of crushing futility overtake him, but he tries to shake it off as best he can.
“You’re lucky I was wearing it this trip, ‘cause I normally don’t, but I knew I was riding cross-galaxy, so… Do earthlings have a way to communicate that isn’t face-to-face?”
“Yeah, a bunch. I can show them to you in the morning if you want. They probably look clunky to you, but they do the job well enough,” Suga says. “What kind of errands were you running when you crash-landed here?”
Daichi smiles sheepsihly. “Grocery run.”
__
Suga forgets when he falls asleep, but when he wakes up, his arms are wound around Daichi’s back and his face is buried in Daichi’s chest and he feels warm. Blinking the sleep from his eyes, he stares at Daichi’s muscled arms confusedly and wonders where he is, before remembering the events of the night before. Embarrassed, he untangles himself from Daichi’s embrace and shimmies out from under the covers so he can crawl out of bed without disturbing Daichi.
“Suga?”
“...Yes?”
“You lost the game last night.”
“I did?”
“Yeah,” Daichi says, stretching his arms above his head with a relaxed yawn. “I asked you why the o-zone layer was such a mangled mess and you said you didn’t know because you’re a farmer and not a chemist and then I told you it was your turn, and you said okay, so I waited for you to think of something, but when I actually looked at you, you were out cold--”
“Koushi?”
Suga freezes at the use of his first name, remembering he hasn’t told his mother any of this, and he can hear her foot steps padding down the hall toward his room.
“Dammit, dammit,” he swears, and then whispers, “Daichi, I need you to hide in the closet and do not ask questions, just go. Trust me.”
Daichi does what he asks and Suga burrows under the covers. His closet door clicks shut just as Suga’s mother swings open his door.
“Koushi, dear, it’s already quarter to seven, and I was going to make omelettes,” she says.
“I don’t feel well,” Suga lies. He hates to lie to his mother, but he has to admit, the whole ‘cuddling with the crash-landing alien boy’ is a tough morsel to chew. “I don’t think I’m going to make it to school today.”
She purses her lips but doesn’t press it further. “I’ll tell Narita and Kinoshita to get here earlier then. Feel better, sweetie.” She bends to press a kiss to the top of his head, the only bit of his not covered by his comforter. “You seem warm. I hope you aren’t running a fever.”
And Suga thanks the deities for blessing him with a too-warm alien boy.
__
“I can’t believe you locked me in a closet,” Daichi complains, when Suga turns the door handle to let him out.
“There are worse places to be locked,” Suga says. “I accidentally locked myself in the cellar when I was six and I saw a rat and thought for sure I would be eaten.”
Daichi smiles. “Sounds intense.”
“That’s farm life for you.”
“Hey, Suga?”
“What?”
Daichi leans forward, holds Suga by the shoulders, and plants a kiss right above Suga’s eyebrows. Suga goes cross-eyed watching him do it, staggers backward upon contact between Daichi’s surprisingly soft lips and the skin of his forehead.
“Oh my God,” Suga says.
“What’s wrong?”
“You kissed me. That’s what you did right now!” Suga exclaims with childish hysteria. “With your lips. Just now. What was that?”
“I kissed you,” Daichi confirms.
“What was that?” Suga demands.
“I kissed y--”
“Why was that?”
“Oh. Uh, a greeting? I saw your mom do it. Through the crack between the closet doors. I thought it was a thing.”
Suga barks out a laugh. “I cannot believe this,” he says, covering his face with his hands to hide the deep red blush he’s sure is taking over his face. “I cannot--”
“Can I do it again?” Daichi asks innocently. “It was kind of nice.”
“What? Don’t you have kissing wherever you’re from?”
“Sure we do,” Daichi says. “I don’t live under a rock, you know--”
“You live on a rock,” Suga mutters.
“I’ve kissed plenty of people. But, uh, it’s all different?”
“What?”
“I mean, the place you kiss means something different.”
“I can’t believe I’m having this conversation at seven in the morning with an alien I met five hours ago,” Suga says, positive that the blush has engulfed his entire body and he might just remain red for the rest of his life as long as Daichi is standing over there looking at him like he’s breakfast. “ ...Also,” Suga adds, tentatively, “do aliens have chapstick?”
“What’s that?”
“Your lips are also...uh, nice,” Suga says. “I can’t believe I just said that.”
“Thanks?”
“Sure.”
They stand in an awkward silence for a while, until Suga musters every ounce of courage in his body that he can manage, and says, “One more.”
“One more?”
“One more kiss.”
“Okay,” Daichi says, cheerfully, stepping toward him. Suga shuts his eyes and waits for contact, but it doesn’t come. He peeks with one eye and finds an amused Daichi watching him, inches away.
“What are you waiting for?” Suga seethes.
“I’m not gonna do it if you look like you’re in pain!” Daichi says, throwing his hands in the air. “It’s just a kiss! I’m not gonna poison you. We’re both carbon beings.”
“Alright, alright,” Suga says, shutting his eyes, albeit more gently this time. “I’m ready.”
“Good.”
Daichi rests his hands on Suga’s hips this time, feels the shorter boy tense at first and then relax, before he slowly leans in and briefly touches their lips together in a chaste kiss. He pulls back, watches Suga lick his lips and open his eyes, and there they are, holding each other as the morning light filters through the space between Suga’s dark curtains, listening to the rhythmic shudder of the ceiling fan, blushing equally deep shades of fuchsia.
_
bonus:
Suga informs his mother that the noise they heard the night Daichi literally crashed into their lives was an earthquake. Because Daichi manages to rewire the ship’s cloaking device just before the farm hands show up and notice the crater, Daichi’s secret is safe for the time being. He eventually introduces himself to Suga’s mother as “Suga’ classmate who just moved in.” Suga’s mother politely asks where he’s from, to which Daichi responds, “Karasuno” because, as Suga finds out, the space alien is completely incapable of lying, especially not to authority figures, but he just lucks out, when Suga’s mom tells him, “Oh, right, the small town in the Miyagi prefecture.” Suga swears he almost collapses in relief, and Daichi is right there with him, sweating in his borrowed school uniform (which also doesn’t fit him quite right around the shoulders).
Daichi agrees to come to school with him during the day and searches for spare parts for his rocket repairs in the afternoons when Suga has his usual lineup of farm work to complete. As fun as it was to teach Daichi to drive a tractor or watch him fetch eggs from the chicken coop, Suga cannot deny that Daichi looks best leaning over his rocket with a wrench in his hand, like he’s always belonged there.
(“Our vacation-to-the-galaxy’s-edge plan is still happening, right?” “I’ll take you anywhere you want to go. Um, provided I can find a suitable rocket fuel, ‘cause I don’t think you wanna go headfirst into a black hole.” “How romantic.”)
Suga knows that Daichi plans to return to M-One sooner than later -- once Daichi has his communicator up and running again using a combination of chemicals he found under the sink, metals he found in the junkyard, and interestingly enough, a unripe mango, he’s on the line with his father nearly every afternoon, putting together a repair checklist.
Suga also knows that he probably can’t follow him there (he’s got chores and he’s sure the cows’ll miss him too much), but he tries to keep it out of his mind.
“Hey Daichi,” he says one night over a cup of coffee (which Daichi deems palatable ith enough cream and sugar and much preferable to tea). They’re sitting side by side under the kotatsu in the living room.
Daichi bumps their shoulders. “Mm?”
“If I take your picture, will it develop? Or will it not develop, like you’re a vampire?”
“That is the silliest question I’ve heard you ask since that game of Questions.”
“At one point you asked me if I was really an earthling playing a practical joke on you.”
“So I was tired,” Suga says, sticking a tongue out at his best friend? boyfriend? alien make out buddy? Daichi. “I asked some very good questions that night. You asked where my goddamn mole came from!”
“Then let me ask you a better question. A do-over question.”
“Okay.”
“And you have to answer it honestly.”
“Okay.”
“And you can’t get mad at me for asking.”
“Spit it out already!”
Daichi sighs, wraps an arm around Suga’s waist. “How did your dad die?”
Suga stiffens. “I...I guess I knew you were going to ask that again. Eventually.”
“You can still pass if you want. I’m sorry for being insensitive.”
“Car accident,” Suga tells him, resting his head on Daichi’s shoulder. “A really bad one, but I can’t remember any of it. Mom said it crushed the driver’s side completely, and that he probably didn’t feel a thing.”
“I’m sorry you didn’t have him in your life longer,” Daichi says, moving his arm up so as to stroke Suga’s hair. He presses a kiss to the boy’s ear. “You loved him a lot.”
“Yeah,” Suga agrees.
“That’s why you don’t like using his name.”
Suga bolts out of Daichi’s arms, away from the kotatsu and stares at him half-horrified and half-awed. “H-how did you--?”
“Your mom. You were taking a shower, and I was sitting in the kitchen. She said, ‘if Koushi-san were here, the farm hands would be on time every day.’ I figured she wasn’t talking about you.”
Suga feels tears welling up behind his eyeballs and blinks furiously. He fights against the lump rising in his throat.
“I think it’s cool, Suga,” Daichi confides. “It’s like retiring a number for the baseball teams like I see on TV. You retire the number. It’s not that they’re dead; it’s not about being sad because you miss them. It’s remembering and honoring what they did while they were alive, how they touched you and the spaces they, I dunno, hallowed. I get it now, Suga, and it’s so damn unselfish.”
Daichi leaves the kotatsu and crawls over to where Suga kneels, tears streaming down his face. he gathers Suga in his arms, plants light kisses over his forehead, his cheeks, his nose, his lips. He lets Suga sob into his (better-fitting) t-shirt, tells him to let it out, it’s fine, he’s not being weak. He buries his face in Suga’s hair, inhales the scent of his mint shampoo, and sighs.
“I thank the universe every day for that damn asteroid. Even though I thought I was going to die for sure as I hurtled down to the earth at the approximate acceleration of nine-point-eight meters per second squared.”
Suga pulls back with a sniff and wipes his eyes, and Daichi kisses him again, longer and lingering, fingers gently tugging at the shorter hairs at the top of Suga’s neck.
“Even though we’re prehistoric, tractors are scary, and our sci-fi tv shows are all scientifically impossible?”
“Yes,” Daichi confirms, “though the tractor thing is cutting it close.”