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Suguru feels bad for people like Kageyama, Aone, and maybe even Oikawa, who fall for big, bright stars that burn hotter than any fire on Earth. They fall for people like Hinata Shouyou, whose smile is like staring directly at the sun itself. Suguru doesn’t really like things that intense, but he can appreciate the searing heat that shocks people awake, the way Hinata makes people feel born anew in some type of way.
He appreciates it—to each their own he guesses, though they have his condolences—but he prefers sitting down in the grass of a park, letting filtered rays of sunshine dance across his skin from underneath a tree, and just feeling warm, not hot. He likes how it’s a slow, easy type of warm that just pools in the core of his stomach and encases him in this barrier, one that the cold can’t seep through, no matter how hard it tries. He likes how it’s almost fun to just let go and the sunshine is a safety net there to catch him.
Daishou Suguru can appreciate people like Hinata Shouyou—he really, really can—but he likes people like Terushima Yuuji so much better, and it hurts.
There’s no singular moment that Suguru can pinpoint when his resistance crumbled. There are these little capsules of time that knit together so perfectly, like a robin’s nest stitched with hours upon hours of labor. He realized it too late, he supposes, after the nest was already built and the eggs were nestled a few branches higher than he could reach on his own.
He might’ve been doomed from the start, actually, when the very first flicker of the rays glided over his fingertips, and he just craved—no, he needed—more.
They meet in college, at a party Suguru wants nothing to do with but allows himself to be pulled along for regardless. He knows that this is his first social gathering with new peers, but it will also be his last, and so he decides to pump his veins with enough alcohol to make him forget every thought he has ever had about himself.
He ends up outside—surprisingly, since he can barely manage one foot in front of the other without feeling like the whole world is tumbling—and there is no one else to witness his regret. He does regret this on some level, but he also can’t quite remember what it is he is regretting, so all he can focus on is the seed of yearning planted in his stomach for someone who doesn’t exist, who is not and never will be him.
It is dark. So damn impossibly dark, but he still can’t see the stars, and all he wants is the sunlight instead of those flashing neon LEDs back inside, with people who don’t know him or want him or want anything to do with him. He wants to watch the leaves of a tree sway in a nonexistent breeze and have that sunshine swaying along with them. He wants the ant stings and the splinters from the bark and he just wants, wants, wants. He gets splinters from the porch steps and mosquito bites instead, and it’s not the same at all, but he supposes that they’ll have to do.
Someone opens the door and it’s all over, really, because Suguru is tipping back, back, back into a world where everything is clear, and now all he really wants in his hands is another beer to lose himself to.
“Hey, what’cha doing out here all alone?”
That, right there, is the moment—the time capsule—that condemns Suguru to years of misfortune and days without light.
Terushima is all bright smiles and light giggles and nudges in the shoulder, and they don’t stop even when he catches sight of Suguru’s nasty glare. He is not affected, a flame that cannot be extinguished, a weed that will not whither, and Suguru, in his half-drunken state, is thoroughly impressed.
Terushima pries him open like a can of expired condensed sweetened milk, expecting something nice and sugary and instead obtaining a mixture of broken chunks of bitterness and forming mold. He expects a recoil as he lashes out, pushing the smiles and the giggles and the nudges closer and closer to a chasm where all the people in his life eventually fall into, and receives a push back in response.
Terushima rests on the very edge of that canyon, until suddenly he is nowhere near it, and Suguru is being pulled up by the arm and back into the house with artificial light that he can’t stand, leaving behind porch splinters and starving mosquitos and an image of himself that can’t be filled.
And then they are dancing.
Suguru wants to pretend that it is the alcohol spilling over into his conscious that dilutes his actions then, when he allows himself to shove the aching back where its talons can’t reach, and Terushima—with his warm hands and matching height and broad shoulders that shield Suguru from the cold—can, but he knows that he is feeding himself false information. It is Terushima ripping that lid off the can and downing its contents, sweet or not, all in one go that convinces him to wallow in something other than self-pity for just a little while.
Suguru gets his wish that night. He gets his sunlight, but at what price?
The thing about Terushima Yuuji, Daishou Suguru knows, is that he is a fisherman in a sea full of people just waiting to be baited. His lines, though—the ones that plunge deep into the ocean waters with hooks of cheeky winks and unconditional adrenaline—bring back a plethora of fish that Suguru can’t possibly compete with. Because Terushima is out at sea and Suguru is on land, slithering in between mounds of sand on the beach and wishing for fins instead of his horrible, rough scales that only peel off every once in a while. Knowing that it will all fall apart if he chases what he desires outweighs taking that risk to sink his fangs into Terushima’s beating heart. He keeps himself away from the water. He wouldn’t wish himself on even his most-hated enemy.
The thing about Terushima Yuuji is that everyone takes the bait when he casts his strings into the ocean. They want what he has to offer—which is everything, in Suguru’s opinion; he offers everyone everything he has, and so freely at that—and so no one passes up the opportunity once they are given one. They take the smiles, and the love, and the cherished moments that Suguru tends to tuck back alongside the aching, and they barely give anything in return.
The thing about Terushima Yuuji is that he is not bothered by nearly as many things as Suguru is, so when he is broken down into dust, he doesn’t just blow away; he reforms. Stronger and stronger, until he is back out there again, wearing a bloody heart on his damn sleeve with absolutely no hesitation.
The thing about Daishou Suguru is that he stays friends with Terushima Yuuji for uncountable months after initially meeting him, basking in the glow of unwavering sunshine.
It has been five years.
They drift, but never tear apart. Like the seams of his favorite t-shirt; they hang on loosely to each other, but the threads are wavering, the strings are snapping one by one, and Suguru is beginning to panic. He wants to dunk himself in the sea, but knows that if that happens then he will not surface again.
Every few months, Suguru travels down to Miyagi, where Terushima owns and operates his own hair salon. He hasn’t done so in longer than usual, is trying desperately to clear his schedule so he has the chance, when Kuroo calls him up.
They, too, meet every so often. Funnily enough, it is every few weeks instead of months, and visits with Kuroo have thorny shrubs and tall grass that tickle Suguru’s ankles, but there is no light, and there is no wind, and there is no yearning. Most of all, there is spicy ramen that fuels sarcastic remarks and avoidance of certain subjects that Suguru is grateful for.
Kuroo meets with him the day before another excursion down to Miyagi to get his usual dose of sunshine, and Suguru can tell that this visit will have no comfort of familiarity. When he enters the shop, Kuroo is sitting, stewing in his thoughts in a back booth where drafts swirl around them. It is to the jingle of the shop’s bell that he looks up, and his eyes are fierce with something Suguru hasn’t glimpsed since high school.
“I’m taking the risk,” he says as soon as Suguru takes his seat, and he knows exactly what he’s talking about.
It is not only Suguru who is familiar with the craft of hidden love, the only difference in their situations being when they had met the object of their unreturned affections. Where Suguru wraps himself in a quilt of sunshine and gets drunk on vibrant laughter, Kuroo relaxes into the hymns of game music and smothers himself with too-large hoodies dusted in potato chip crumbs.
And it is with those four words that Suguru realizes now just how weary he is. Somewhere along the way the sunshine has become artificial and he is tired, so tired that he can feel his eyelids slipping down, down, down, but he can’t sleep yet while knowing that there is no warmth to shelter him from insecurities that dig and claw and ravage a body that should be safe for him, but isn’t.
It is with those four words that Suguru acknowledges their invisible and very well imaginary deal stating that neither of them will be left behind. Both of them do it, or neither of them will. All or nothing.
It is with those four words that Suguru concedes to the fact that tomorrow could very well be his last day in the light, artificial or not.
At the end of their meal—solemn and quiet and packed with unspoken thoughts—Suguru says, “I am, too,” and Kuroo gives a nod set in determination and fear.
So, they leave, both with war paint smeared across their cheekbones and no plates of armor protecting their fragile, delicate bodies, heading out into a battle they’re fairly certain they won’t win, but they’re willing. They’re willing to plunge deep into those waters.
He learns so much on these trips to Miyagi, every minute spent with a man whose smile is much too wide to be facing Suguru’s direction. They usually sit down after the salon’s closing hours, each in their own chair across from each other, trading playful banter and then taking turns treating each other to one of the local food stalls. Suguru finds out the latest gossip on the street and in exchange lends Terushima business management advice. It is all fun and swell and warm and then Terushima is mentioning the latest person that he is trying to reel in with his bait, and the sunlight is blocked by clouds that make Suguru nauseous even though he is on land, nowhere near Terushima’s boat.
Today is different. It is so, so different.
Terushima’s smile is anything but welcoming to Suguru; it is maniacal and terrifying in a way that he just wants to run back down the path he came from.
But Kuroo is out there, right now, diving deep into somewhere foreign where he can’t see either, and Suguru can’t let him do that by himself.
They take their usual seats, and Terushima immediately begins to ramble about his life the past few days, excited and adorable and Suguru is so fucking sick and tired of the clouds when Terushima is right there, his sunlight and warmth right within reach, and Suguru just wants.
“Yuuji.”
Terushima clamps his mouth shut, looking at Suguru with those wide, kind eyes and long eyelashes that he wants to count and kiss and wish on. Suguru slithers between mounds of sand, tongue flicking out and catching a taste of the salt water. He sees the sunlight in the distance, feels the sweet warmth dripping slowly across his scales like honey.
With one final breath, he plunges his head into the deep, dark, cold waters where he might be able to reach that hook, or he might drown.
“Yuuji, I’m in love with you.”
Daishou Suguru hates Terushima Yuuji as much as he loves him, because for all the cloudy days that he suffers through, they share smiles and jokes and Suguru can finally, finally leave behind a bitter shell of himself that lashes out through swollen mosquito bites and porch splinters that sink too deep inside for anyone to reach, and that’s the way he wants it.
Yuuji and him sit under a tree in the park, fingers caressing the grass that tickles their thighs and smiling up at leaves dancing in the breeze. Yuuji shares his sunlight as he kisses Suguru’s knuckles one by one, and Suguru sews them a blanket of laughter and kindness and love, and this is the warmest he has ever felt in his entire life.
Suguru feels bad for people who love the sun directly, because the sun’s rays of light are so, so much better. They have absolutely no idea what they’re missing out on, but thankfully, he does.