Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

"Y'know," Bokuto was saying, lifting his hands up to hook them in his jacket pocket as he wandered down the streets of Tokyo. "Summer is almost here. We're all almost graduated. Done. Finishio."

"Feels like just yesterday we were fresh high schoolers," Kuroo sighed dramatically, wiping his eye. 

"Ew, no," Oikawa replied, glaring at Kuroo. "I don't know about you all, but I've been counting down until this day, and it's taken forever to get here. I'll be glad when it's done." 

"Really?"

"Yeah!" Oikawa went on. "High school sucks. And I'm way more talented than all the scrubs around here, I want to move on to something better." 

"Ah, of course, of course," Kuroo said, nodding seriously. 

"Does everyone have plans for after graduation?" Bokuto asked. "I still don't know what I'm doing. I wanna play volleyball, but that's it. I don't know how to do all the other real-life stuff. And now I got Akaashi to worry about! What if I get an awesome volleyball-job? He's a second year! He's got another year to get through before he can come join me at my awesome volleyball job!" Bokuto broke this train of thought off with a gasp, before adding: " What if he wants a job in a totally different part of the country!? "

"Relax, Bokuto," Kuroo said. "Just take it easy. Akaashi's great, I'm sure you two will be totally fine whatever happens. A year of long distance won't be so-"

" A whole year of long distance!? " Bokuto wailed. "Absolutely not! I can't do that. That's too many days! That's like… three hundred and twelve days!" 

"That's… not…"

"It's too long, is my point! I can't do that many days of long distance, we've barely gotten to be close-distance boyfriends! There's still so much I wanna do with him!" 

Daichi smiled slightly, listening to them talk. He was off to the side a bit, compared to the three others. They were all louder, more eager to chat and make jokes. He likes to listen to it all, he liked their company, but he found just as much entertainment in walking elbow-to-elbow with the even more quiet Ushijima. 

The summer sun was warm and bright above them, the clear blue sky dotted with fluffy clouds that turned every so slowly across the near endless expanse. It was days like this that made time feel infinite. Where nothing could stop them, or touch them. They were completely unreachable here. Even if here was just some dirty Tokyo street three blocks from the small place they'd stopped for lunch. 

A small bird flitted from a garbage can to a street sign, dark feathers ruffled slightly by a breeze. A car honked as it avoided colliding with another car, before angrily turning the corner and swerving off. Daichi stopped walking as they approached an intersection, waiting for the walk signal. 

" So much , you say?" Oikawa teased. "Well, I'll have you know that I've already done so much with my dearest Iwa-kun," he boasted, giving a slightly condescending grin as he pretended to preen his nails. Bokuto blinked at him, then just continued as if the interruption hadn't happened. 

"Seriously, guys! This isn't good. What am I gonna do?"

"What do you want to do?" Kuroo said. 

"Uhh-" Bokuto thought about it for a moment, face slowly beginning to flush red across the cheeks and nose. 

"Oh."

"Hey! It's not just that!" Bokuto stammered, trying to reclaim his dignity. "I just… I like… I want to spend more time with him, y'know? Everything's always volleyball this or don't fail your exams that. I want good memories to hold me through a whole year of not being together. And possibly longer!"

"Can't relate," Oikawa said, giving a happy shrug. "Iwa is graduating with me, so…"

"I'm lucky, too," Daichi agreed, giving a small smile and piping up for the first time. He was surprised that him and Ushijima hadn't been completely forgotten, but all eyes turned to him as he spoke. He lifted a hand to rub the back of his neck, habitually working out the stress knots in his shoulders that never seemed to go away anymore. His fingers worked over the thick scars that crossed his neck and shoulder, and he tried not to dwell on it. "Suga is graduating with me. He wants to be a teacher, so we kinda talked about going to universities in the same place. I'm not sure what I want to do yet, so I don't mind wherever we end up."

"Wow," Oikawa said, clapping slightly, almost sarcastically. "That's a big step. You two gonna move in, share an apartment, adopt a dog?"

Daichi frowned, tilting his head. "That doesn't sound like a bad thing at all - are you trying to make fun of me?"

Kuroo laughed, clapping Oikawa on the back. "He just means, like, are you sure that's not moving too fast? You want to make sure you go somewhere that makes you happy…"

"Like you're one to talk," Daichi scoffed. "Don't lecture me on moving too fast when you haven't even moved at all."

"Huh?" Bokuto said, looking back at Kuroo. 

Kuroo suddenly looked put on the spot, his usually impassive, calm look replaced by one of mild embarrassment. He looked away from them. "I have no idea what you're talking about. Shut up."

"Yeah, you do," Daichi said. "Now don't be coy. I thought you said you were asking your special friend on a date a month ago. And yet-"

Oikawa gasped, almost accusingly. "You haven't said anything about a successful date - did you get rejected? By Kenma? "

"I didn't get rejected!" Kuroo snapped, turning to look back at them, clearly very upset that this had been turned against him. Couldn't they just go back to making fun of Bokuto?

"Then why aren't you on a date?" Bokuto said. "Huh? Huh? "

"I… screwed up my word choice, that's all," Kuroo said. 

"You… Mhm?" 

"Well, I asked if he wanted to eat dinner with me on saturday, and he just… said yeah, and moved on. He didn't really notice, and so I asked if he was okay with this nice restaurant down by the park, and he seemed confused and was like yeah, sure, but I thought we'd just order pizza or something. "

"Oh, my god, he thought you were just asking to hang out," Oikawa snickered. "Classic mistake."

"It was super awkward!" Kuroo said. "I panicked! And we just ordered pizza and played video games. I mean, it was actually super fun, and probably more fun than if we'd actually gone out, but-"

"But it does not qualify as a date," Ushijima finished. "And you do not have a boyfriend."

"Like you're one to talk," Kuroo snapped back. "You constantly go on dates you have no idea what they mean."

"Tendou is confusing," Ushijima agreed. "He says a lot of things and I do not know which of them are true." 

Daichi snickered slightly, patting Ushijima's arm. "Buddy, come on… you gotta ask him point-blank and figure it out."

"That is…" Ushijima hesitated, seeming uncertain of what he wanted to say. 

"Scary?" Daichi suggested after a moment, and Ushijima turned his head to look down at him. 

"...Yeah."

He hummed softly, nodding an agreement. "It takes a crazy amount of courage to tell someone that you like them," Daichi agreed. "I don't blame you guys for taking so long."

"Thank you… if I'm being completely honest, I've run out of ideas," Ushijima said. "I have nothing good in my brain, and every time I try and tell him honestly how I feel it just… turns to nonsense on my tongue…"

"Aww, the indomitable Ushijwaka is such a cute loverboy," Oikawa cooed, leaning over to them. "But let me tell you what you two need-"

"I'm scared of the end of this sentence."

"Help!'

"Oh, shit, he actually had a good point. That's new."

"Shut up."

"Actually, both of you two need help," Oikawa said, looking over to Kuroo as well. "Come on, guys! You don't wanna be the two loser captains who graduate before getting to kiss their crushes, right?"

"Okay, I don't think there's anything wrong with waiting a little bit," Kuroo said. "Kenma's a year below me, I don't want to put any pressure on him…"

"What, so you're expecting him to wait around for you?" Bokuto gasped, tilting his head. "Akaashi's a year below me, and I'm very certain I would not be comfortable going off to university if he was still single, being as pretty as he is."

"Kenma's not a people person," Kuroo said. "I'm sure it'll be okay."

"So you're saying you don't think Kenma could get a date if he wanted one?" Ushijima said, frowning. 

"No! Not at all! Kenma, if he wanted it, could get absolutely anyone, I'm sure. He's awesome. But I don't think he would."

"Maybe not while he's holding on to hope that his dear, sweet best friend is still around. But once you're gone, and the most he sees of you is the occasional phone call from university…?" Oikawa prompted. 

Kuroo groaned. "Oh, shut up!" he said. "And besides, it's not like we're in a rush. None of us are in a rush! We're eighteen, we have our whole lives ahead of us. We've got lots to look forward to."

"I dunno," Oikawa said, clicking his tongue. "I may be headed straight for the stars, but not all of us are gonna be famous volleyball players."

"Speak for yourself!" Bokuto said, putting his hands on his hips. 

"Daichi just said he's probably not gonna continue playing," Oikawa said. "I'm not trying to slander anyone, I'm just saying… we're not always gonna be the five captains, y'know?" 

A sort of silence falls over the group, and Daichi pays attention to the sky again. The clear blue, the little bird that flittered above, looking for garbage it could steal for a meal. Cars honked and passed them, they stepped to the side to avoid a young couple and their baby coming the opposite direction. 

The silence was comfortable, but filled with a sort of unspoken uncertainty. That uncertainty every soon to be graduate faced. 

What happens next?

It was easy to ignore, when you could pretend your biggest worry was if your friend hooked up with the guy he liked or not. When big questions revolved around dates and first kisses and first-something-elses. 

"We're gonna be friends, after graduation," Daichi said, folding his arms across his chest, eyes focused on the pocked cement of the sidewalk. 

"You think?" Oikawa asked, looking back to him. "We're all going different directions…"

"No, we're going to be friends," he repeated, a bit more firmly. He lifted a hand now up, to rub at his shoulder. Rubbing over the still healing, painful scarring that tightened his muscles and irritated his skin. The scarring that tore up his back and marked his figure forever. The scaring that would have been his death if not for the men he was walking with right now. "Yeah," he repeated. "We'll be friends."

Ushijima patted his back, roughly enough that he coughed and stumbled forward. "I agree," he said. "I am not… good at making friends, but… I enjoy your companies, and would like to know where you'll end up in the future."

"It just sucks , man," Bokuto groaned. "I don't want to leave Akaashi, I don't want to leave you all… I mean, I'm so excited to finally graduate, it's just… I wish we had more time. I feel like we just all got to be friends. We just started hanging out, and now we have to separate?"

"Well, maybe we can… make one more memory?" Oikawa said, looking between them all. 

"What are you thinking?" Kuroo prompt. 

"I don't know, I just… We should do something, this summer. Before we all disappear to get jobs and be adults and whatever, we should have one last big hurrah. An adventure."

"We don't have a great track record with adventuring," Ushijima said.

"I… think it's a good idea," Daichi said. "We could… rent a cabin, or something?"

" No! " Bokuto said eventually, almost immediately. "Are you a lunatic? Nothing that involves a forest, I'm not fighting off a second bear!" 

Daichi laughed, nodding. "Okay, okay, then… we could take a trip somewhere along a beach? Spend a few days in the sun?"

"Mhm.. that's so… small scale," Oikawa complained. "I want to really make a memory. Something that only the five of us will have, something we can remember and hold on to."

"God you're-"

Daichi's phone went off, and he pulled away from the conversation to answer it. The other guys watched him curiously but let him answer without a sound. 

"Hey, Daichi?"

"Oh! Suga," he said, breaking into a small smile. "Hey, sorry. I meant to call, I'm still out in Tokyo. I probably won't be back until late…"

"It's no problem, no problem… I was just worried, you were supposed to text an hour ago, and…"

"I'm okay," Daichi said, as softly as he could. "Thank you for being worried. I'm just with the guys."

"That's not as reassuring as you think it is. How are they doing?"

"Hah. They're doing well. I think we're gonna try and set up Kuroo and Ushijima."

"Together!?"

"No no no, with their respective crushes. Sorry, that was my bad…" 

"That makes… much more sense. Well, that… sounds fun. I'm glad you're having fun. When did you say you'll be back?"

"I… don't know. Late. Sorry. I'll text you tomorrow and we can hang out, okay?"

"Yeah, that's cool. Uh… Yeah. Cool. Have a good day, okay?"

"I will. Thank you. Take care, Suga."

There was a warm, comfortable silence from the other end of the phone. "I will. See you ."

He hung up, lifting his head in time to see all the other captains looking back at him, with the same sort of devious expression. 

"Aww," Oikawa cooed. "I do enjoy young love."

"We- you can shut up."

He laughed, turning to waltz down the street with a grin across his face. Daichi picked up his feet, hurrying to keep up now. "I just forgot to text, he got worried." 

"Bad boyfriend," Bokuto scoffed. "I never forget to text Akaashi."

"Hey!" 

---

Suga hung up the phone with a smile, chuckling softly. Daichi was adorably oblivious most of the time. He was probably worried that Suga was hurt that they weren't spending the evening together. Now, as much as he liked spending the evening to Daichi, it wasn't like he was the only one with friends. 

"So I take it your happy expression means they're still alive?" Akaashi said, taking a sip from his glass. The small group - Sugawara, Akaashi, and Iwaizumi - were resting on the patio of a new little cafe on the side of a street. The umbrella above them provided just enough shade from the new summer sun, and the light in the sky made it almost impossible to be in a bad mood. They were an odd group of friends, the lot of them, sort of friends in the same way you're always friends with your boyfriend's partners. 

Originally they'd gotten along just for the sake of getting along, so the captains didn't feel bad about hanging out as a group. Nowadays Suga was calling Akaashi up every weekend he didn't have plans with Daichi. And Iwaizumi, has standoffish as Suga had thought he would be, wasn't half as bad as expected. They… got along. Well. Sure, a lot of their conversation focused around volleyball, their teams or their captains, but that wasn't exactly a problem. 

Daichi had been through a great trauma. That was undeniable. Suga wanted more than anything in the world to be able to take his nightmares, take his trauma, take the pain of that away, to help him heal. It wasn't something he could just fix, though. 

And he felt bad, asking for anything in return. It felt bad, to tell Daichi, who'd been mauled by a bear and dragged through the woods and damn near dead from dehydration that Suga, too, had gone through a trauma.

But Akaashi understood. Iwaizumi understood. They understood each other. They had partners, friends, lovers who had disappeared, who'd been lost. They'd been in the same position of wondering if they'd ever get a chance to see them again. 

And now they were in the same position of trying to heal them. 

"Bokuto tries to pretend like it was all some fun game they played," Akaashi had said, one of the first times him and Suga had met up. "He tries to pretend, but he wakes up in the night. He leaves the bed, I can hear him pacing and see how clearly terrified he is, of whatever his dreams are doing."

"Oikawa doesn't ask for help, usually," Iwaizumi had said, after Suga had been sure that the man would never open up to him. "But his knee never fully recovered, and I can see how hard he's working to get it better, to make it perfect again, but I've heard him crying, when he thinks we've all left the weight room. I know he's pushing himself too hard." 

It broke Suga's heart, to love someone so bothered, so in pain, and sometimes he needed support for that. 

So what started as a small friendship revolving around their partner's mutual traumas, and learning how to help them better, and how to be the best boyfriends they could be, had very quickly turned into: 

"So I accidentally dared Bokuto to eat an entire ghost pepper and he did, " Akaashi was laughing, as they ordered lunch during one of their frequent get-togethers. "I owe him thirty dollars now. I didn't think even he was that stupid." 

"I think I'm going to go into personal training after high school," Iwaizumi said, chatting amicably as they talked about university entrance exams and professional careers. "I love volleyball and sports, but I'm not sure I'm cut out for a professional career, but I'd want to be involved somehow."

And Suga loved them. He loved them a lot, they'd become some of the best friends he'd ever had. 

And before you pass judgement, saying, Oh, Sugawara, you had a best friend, you had Asahi, you don't need a new best friend, what about him? Well, Suga had had that same thought. Suga had felt horrible for how little time he'd spent with Asahi, wondered if the other man's silence and lack of text messages were him being passive aggressive, tried to track him down after school one day and found him making out with Nishinoya in the storage room. 

So Suga was one hundred percent comfortable with the idea that Asahi was not that torn up about not spending so much time together anymore. 

"Yeah," Suga said, smiling at Akaashi. "They're still alive, thankfully. I'm not sure if I'd ever completely trust that group on their own again." 

"I'm not planning on it," Iwaizumi said. "I'm not sure why we let them go out without leashes now. Or tracking chips." 

Akaashi rolled his eyes. "Wasn't that was Kenma was saying? That he was never letting Kuroo leave the house without him?" 

"Yeah," Suga laughed. "But Kenma's clearly over that, at least a little. I haven't actually heard from him in a while." 

Kenma and Tendou were both elusive figures to the small friend group. Though talked about a lot by their teammates, and Suga possessed both of their phone numbers, they'd never really managed to bond like the other three did. Tendou did sometimes hang out, but he preferred to hang out with the captains themselves, or with big group get-togethers with everyone. Kenma frequently rejected his calls. 

"I wish those two were around more," Akaashi said. "I feel like I'm constantly leaving them out."

"It's not their fault they don't want to hear us fawn over our boyfriends while they remain - some-fucking-how - dateless."

"That is weird, right?" Suga said. "That Kuroo and Ushijima haven't tried to make a move - Daichi was saying, the boys might try and force it. Set them up somehow." 

"Now that's a quality idea," Akaashi said. "Maybe we should. Give them a… little nudge." 

"We're not meddling in someone else's lovelife," Iwaizumi said. 

Suga laughed softly, then was surprised when his phone rang, making him jump. He glancing down, frowning when he saw Daichi's name, and answered it. 

"Daichi? What's up?" 

Both his friends watched him curiously. 

Suga was sure his expression gave away his surprised horror as he listened to Daichi speak. 

"Hey, baby, sorry to call back right away. Me and the boys were just talking and we want to do something awesome for the summer, something to celebrate graduating, and Ushijima remembered that his father lives in California, so we were thinking of, you know, flying to America and doing like… an American Roadtrip or-"

"No!" Suga said, making Akaashi jump. "I mean - Daichi, I mean… Daichi ."

"Suga! It's okay! We'd be meeting someone we knew, Ushijima's father isn't some stranger we met, we'd probably spend most of our time on a beach in California or seeing the sights…"

"America is big! " Suga said. 

" America? " Iwaizumi echoed, sounding absolutely not down for that, immediately pulling out his phone. Akaashi put his head into his hands. 

"I know, I know, and I know we have a bad track record, but that's no reason to stop living life! I want to go on an adventure! It sounds incredible. It'll be incredible."

Before Suga could replied, he heard Iwaizumi speaking, snapping over the phone: 

"Does your dumbass really think if he can barely survive Japan, he'll do better in America? No! Screw that, screw you, you're not - no, Shittykawa if you get on a plane to America I'm going to hijack it and bring it back to Tokyo-"

Suga has never seen Akaashi look more stressed. 

"Daichi," he said. "I really… I don't want you to go. We barely have gotten any time together, we're graduating, I wanted to spend the summer with you…"

"Suga - yeah - of course, yeah," Daichi was saying, sounding surprised. "We were gonna invite all you guys. As long as we can pull the money together, it won't be a problem… you didn't think we weren't gonna invite all you, right?"

As he was speaking, Oikawa must have been telling Iwa the same thing, because Suga heard him shout: 

"You bet your ass I'm coming! You think bears are bad, Oikawa? Wait till you see the bullshit they have in America!" 

Chapter Text

Graduation Day

Graduation caps are tossed into the air. Daichi watches his twirl up, the gold tassel spinning in an arch, illuminated by the glow of the fluorescent lights above them. With it, it thought, as time seemed to slow and his eyes focused on the haloed colours, was life as he knew it. With it into the air went his problems, his goals, his ambitions. With it went volleyball. With it went being the Karasuno Captain. He missed it as it came crashing back down, feeling it brush against him and hit the ground. 

People were cheering, the lights were so bright. Everyone crowded in, shouting, calling. He felt hands smack him on the back, congratulating him and themselves. He bent quickly and picked up the cap, feeling heat flush through him. He closed his eyes, overwhelmed by the sound and the passion. There was sweat forming on his forehead, and he wasn't sure if he wanted to scream or cry. 

He wasn't sure if he was elated, or terrified. Relieved to be done with dreary high-school life, excited for the future, for the beginning of everything, or mourning the loss of the world he held so dearly. Of the friends he considered family and the game he had made his identity for years. 

" Daichi! "

He lifted his head, just in time to be met with the leaping form of Suga, who came at him like nothing had ever been more important. Their teachers would not be happy, breaking rank. But Suga's name came so close to Daichi's already, and what were they going to do, expel them? 

He gasped, breaking into tears - happy or sad, undetermined - as he wrapped his arms around him and caught him, pulling him in close and breathing in the scent of his shampoo, the warmth of his skin, the comfort it brought. He felt Suga hug him tighter, relaxing completely against him, into his shoulder. 

"We did it!" he was laughing. "Take that, high school!"

Daichi broke into laughter, holding him tighter. 

The uncertainty budded up against his chest, blooming like a weed and consuming his senses. But he held onto Suga tighter, because that was all he knew how to do at that moment. Suga tries to pull away and Daichi holds him tighter. He feels hands rub his back, and the excited laughter in his ear fades into quietness. 

"I'm so proud of you," Suga murmured, shifting his head down to rest his cheek against his shoulder. 

"Proud of me?"

"Not everyone could go through what you did and still graduate with honours," he laughed, smiling against him. "You would have had every excuse to fail a test or two, or slack off the last few weeks…"

"And let you get the top spot in Chemistry? In your dreams ."

Suga laughed, then lifted his head, and before Daichi could make a move to stop him he was being kissed. And Daichi supposed this was a valid way to come out to the entire school. 

But lord knows he was never going to be able to reject Sugawara Koushi. So he held him close, and he kissed him back, and he celebrated the end of the only life he knew. 

Three and a Half Weeks before Leaving

The last box was sealed, packing tape set aside and everything labelled. Ushijima sat on the floor, pressing the tape down firmly, almost anxiously, not sure what he would do once he was finally finished packing. Once that tape was secure, he was done. He was leaving. Forever. 

He felt arms on his shoulders, leaning down heaving and making him grunt softly as he was forced forward.

"Why are you groping that box like that?" Tendou asked, tilting his head. 

"I'm just thinking," Ushijima replied, letting his hands slip off the cardboard. 

"Thinking? About what? Boxes?" 

"Leaving."

"Leaving!" 

"Leaving."

Tendou huffed softly, then pushed off Ushijima's back and headed to the bare bed, dropping down to sit and bouncing slightly. "Thinking about leaving is sad. I don't want to do it."

"But we're leaving right now," Ushijima replied. "We can't not . We have to be gone by this evening." 

Tendou huffed again, louder, looking away and swinging his feet slightly. Ushijima wished he would come back, closer, to lean on him again and be a comforting presence that he was so often without. Ushijima liked his company, which in itself was a groundbreaking sentence. Ushijima hadn't liked anyone's company since his father left. 

But Tendou was different. Tendou didn't… care about all the things that everyone else always wanted Ushijima to care about. 

"Are we gonna be friends, after you get some big contract with a volleyball team somewhere?" Tendou asked eventually, not quite looking over at him as he gazed over at the window they'd shared the previous year. Being roommates with Tendou had been one of the best parts of Ushijima's school career. He'd never had a friend that asked him to stay up until midnight watching movies, he'd never had someone who so shamelessly asked to borrow his stuff, or laughed so loudly when it was three am and they'd spent the last four hours laying in bed, talking about nothing and everything and the world they wanted to live in. 

Ushijima, for the first time, had felt like he was a teenage boy. Tendou made him feel real , not just some volleyball machine to fear. 

"We're going to be friends," Ushijima agreed, instead of saying all of that. "You're my best friend."

Tendou nodded. "Well, I guess we have America to look forward to," he commented. "Before we really have to part. It'll be a good chance, get a few wild and crazy memories in before… life."

"Technically we're only visiting the United States," Ushijima said, because Tendou's words - wild and crazy memories, good chances, life - had sparked crazy and consuming thoughts in his head. Thoughts of holding hands, of kissing him under vast american skies, never letting go, never parting. At least, not yet. And those thoughts were too terrifying, so he chose to focus on semantics. "America encompases all of Canada, and Mexico, as well as all of South America, too, which is-"

"Wakatoshi-kun," Tendou said. "I'm being sentimental. Stop."

"I'm sorry. I'm looking forward to it too."

Ushijima pushed himself up, bending down to pick up that last box and stack it on top of a few others. The dorm had been small, so there wasn't much room for stuff anyway. The boxes were minimal. 

"Come here."

Ushijima turned to see Tendou, then nodded slightly as he shuffled forward, taking a seat down beside him. Tendou stayed quiet, swinging his feet slightly before saying: 

"So… what other countries are technically America?"

Ushijima knew Tendou was dancing around something, he knew he didn't actually care. He knew he wanted Ushijima to say something else. There was a downturn to his usually wide eyes, a set to his lips and jaw that was rare, if not nearly unseen. He was upset, or sad, or something. And Ushijima had no idea what to do about it. 

So he answered his question. 

"Well, all of South America. Any country there. That whole continent makes up the Americas." 

"Why do they only call the U.S America, then? Seems weird…" Tendou said, quieter. 

"Well… Geography is hard for most people, I suppose. And they call themselves American. Not… United-Statesian…"

Tendou slipped forward and rested his head against Ushijima's shoulder, sighing softly. "Weird."

"It is weird," Ushijima replied, feeling his breath catch. He didn't dare move, though, lest he disturb him in any way. The suddenly harsh beating in his chest was probably disturbing him enough anyway. 

But Tendou didn't speak again. He just rested like that, looking more tired and calm than Ushijima had ever seen him. Even after volleyball games, when they'd gone their hardest and worked until they were drenched with sweat, he'd never seen this kind of quietness in him. 

Acting on an instinct Ushijima had never once trusted in his life, he lifted a hand and very gently drew his fingers through Tendou's red hair, brushing it out of his face. His thoughts were immediately swept back into invasive ideas, images of starlit picnics on the wide, open expanses of American deserts, the warm winds, the glittering, azure blue skies. All the more vibrant and lovely for getting to see it with his closest friends. With Tendou. 

It wasn't a minute into cursing the fantasy of kissing Tendou in all of those places that he realized he could make that a reality, if he really, really wanted to. 

He did really, really want to. 

Two Weeks Before Leaving

"Look, the only way I'm going to be okay with this is if you promise me, absolutely promise me, that you're not going to be fighting any bears," Akaashi was saying, voice soft and absolutely not joking. 

"No, no bears, obviously I'm not going to fight any bears," Bokuto laughed. 

Akaashi put a hand over his face, before peeking out from his fingers to look at him. "Look, you're wonderful, I really appreciate you doing this, but-"

"We're not gonna be in class anymore!" Bokuto said. "I'm not gonna see you every day! We need to make memories now before we can't anymore!"

"Just because you're graduating doesn't mean you're going to space ," Akaashi said. "We'll be able to make memories just fine, even next year."

Bokuto pouted. "Okay, but… it's a date, so…"

Akaashi looked away from Bokuto and lifted his eyes up to the big, block sign above them. Ueno Zoo . 

"A zoo, really?" Akaashi said. "I saw your fight or flight instinct when a kid had a picture of a bear on his shirt at the park, do you think you can handle this? Also, why this? Why not literally anything else." 

"I don't want to go to America all traumatized!" Bokuto said, as if it were some big joke. Akaashi felt his heart twist and seize. "Gotta face my fears now!" 

One Week, Five Days before Leaving

Suga was never really a light sleeper, but he certainly didn't sleep through hurricanes or anything. He wasn't sure what woke him up this night, though. Maybe he was just anxious and excited about the trip. Maybe it was because the window was still cracked open, and it was chilly. Maybe it was the movement at the edge of the bed. Maybe it was the way his heart still hadn't stopped fluttering, even after falling sleep. It wasn't his fault Daichi was such a good kisser. 

But none of that mattered right now. He woke up, slightly cold, slightly excited, slightly nervous. He let his eyes adjusted to the pitch darkness, and focused on the shape sat on the edge of the bed. 

The moonlight illuminated just enough for Suga's eyes to follow every scar that lined Daichi's back. He'd seen it all before, and it was more healed than it had ever been, though still comparatively raw. They've never fully heal. It would always look… different. Different from the back Suga had grown accustomed to seeing in locker rooms and after practice - not different, however, from the back that Suga had become familiar with seeing at night. 

Usually when one of them slept over at the other's house, they stayed apart. Not just for their sake, but to avoid the hassle of parents, or in Daichi's case, four younger siblings . Sometimes, though, they managed to pull it off. 

And though it always made Suga's day, to get to fall asleep against Daichi's chest after an old movie marathon, or whatever they'd chosen to do, it usually…

Led to this. 

The most common way Suga found himself studying Daichi's back. 

He thought, briefly, that maybe it would be better if he continued to pretend to be asleep. If Daichi could have a moment of peace, and alone, that's what he needed. But after a moment, he realized Daichi was shaking slightly, fear and pain raking through his body. That he was trembling not just from a nightmare or the cold, but from his aggressive efforts to hold back tears and not wake him. 

Suga sat up, scooting forward. As soon as the bed shifted Daichi whipped around, the energy of the room buzzing as he prepared for the worst. 

Suga reached out a hand slowly, putting it on Daichi's arm. 

"Oh," he said, swallowing back a heavy voice, the tears in his eyes reflecting the light of the moon from the window, making everything look glossy. "Oh, Koushi… I'm sorry, I didn't mean to wake you-"

"It's okay," he said, softly, moving to swing his legs over the edge of the bed, setting in beside him. "Did you want to talk about it?"
"No," Daichi responds, almost before Suga can finish talking. 

"Are… you sure? Was it a night-"

"I don't want to talk about it," Daichi interrupted, a little more upset. Suga nodded quickly, deciding to let it drop. After a moment of the two of them sitting in silence there, Daichi clearly trying to pull himself together for Suga's sake, he reached over and wrapped an arm around Daichi, rubbing his shoulder. 

"Will you come lay down again?" Suga asked, softly. "I'd like if you came and laid down with me…"

Daichi sniffed, then nodded quickly, lifting a hand to rub his eye roughly. Suga wanted to tell him to be gentler with himself, but held back. 

They scooted back into the bed, laying down together, facing each other. Suga lifts a hand up to gently brush hair from Daichi's face, feeling the slight warmth of sweat against his finger tips. The gentle action only seems to irritate Daichi, though, and with a huff he shifts around, curling up into himself and facing away from Suga. 

So far removed from the warm and open Daichi of the daytime, Suga thought. But he couldn't blame him. It had only been a few months, everything would still feel raw. Daichi was not someone who accepted help easily, he couldn't take it personally. 

Suga took it a little personally, though. 

He found himself staring at that scared back of his, wondering when in his brain had it stopped looking so foreign to him. It was just Daichi , now. 

He reached forward and set his hand gently on his waist, and when Daichi didn't reject, wrapped his arm fully around him, hoping at least some comfort could be found from him. Suga wasn't sure if Daichi ever fell asleep again, but he knew he didn't. 

One Week, Two Days before Leaving

"Ooooh, I am shit at English," Oikawa is laughing, flipping through a dictionary and frantically trying to find the word for hotel . "We are going to die ." 

"That's why I'm coming," Iwaizumi replied, setting a suitcase down beside Oikawa. "Stop worrying about English and start packing."

"How can I not worry about English?" Oikawa said. "That's the whole language they speak there! And if I can't speak it, how am I supposed to meet all my adoring fans?"

"You don't have American fangirls, Oikawa," Iwaizumi said, putting a hand on his hip. "You're a high school volleyball player. In Japan."

"Not yet ," Oikawa corrected. 

"What? No, you can't meet fans you haven't made yet."

"But you agree that I will make them!" 

"That's not the conversation we're having-"

"But you're not denying it!"

"Oikawa!"

Oikawa shut his mouth, but looked for all the world like he wanted to continue pushing and teasing, holding back laughter. Iwaizumi took a deep breath. 

"Oikawa," he repeated, more calmly. "It is very important to me that you pack your suitcase properly and make sure you have everything you need. And then some."

"I have like a week to pack," Oikawa said, waving a hand dismissively. "It'll be fine."

Four Days before Leaving

"Kenma?" Kuroo asked, watching the TV that Kenma was hooked into. He was pretty sure the kid was winning, considering how the points kept popping up, but that didn't mean he wasn't on hour four, at eleven am. "Did you find your passport?"

Kenma waved a hand vaguely towards the dresser, so Kuroo headed over, searching for a moment. He found it, thankful that someone had known where it was. He figured that it was probably Kenma's mom. He checked it out quickly, relieved to see that it wasn't expiring soon. Kuroo's own passport had been out of date, and the frantic game of trying to renew it had been a nightmare, but it had come just in time. 

"Are you excited?" Kuroo called, glancing over to Kenma again. The screen continued to blip and bleep for a moment longer, before suddenly switching to the pause screen. He watched Kenma slowly take his headphones off, before looking back to him. 

"Yeah."

"Yeah?"

"Of course I'm excited. It'll be cool."

Kuroo headed over to him, taking a seat on the bed beside him, watching the paused TV screen. 

"Personally, I can't wait," Kuroo said. "It'll be like nothing we've ever done before."

"Yeah."

Kuroo hummed, slightly aggravated, before saying: "Do you even want to go? You've been dragging your feet about packing for days." 

Kenma shrugged slightly, then looked away. 

Even for Kenma, it was weird behaviour, Kuroo thought. After a moment he sighed and stood up, patting Kenma's head sarcastically. 

"Well if you feel like being my friend again, give me a shout. I've gotta go meet up with Bokuto."

Kuroo had made it halfway to the door when Kenma spoke again. 

"I am really excited," he said, softly. "Thank you for inviting me…"

Kuroo smiled, glancing back at him. "Of course," he said. "You're my best friend, who else would I want to traverse America with?"

Kenma nodded slightly, looking slightly less nervous, before saying:

"I've never been on a plane before."

Kuroo already knew this, so he nodded slightly. 

"Is it… scary?" 

"Uh… I don't think so," he said. 

"But it's so heavy… what if it falls?"

"Falls?"

"Out of the sky."

"Planes don't just fall out of the sky," Kuroo chuckled. "That's not how it works."

"Then what's a plane crash?"

Kuroo shut his mouth for a moment, then said: "Our plane's not going to crash. You'll be fine. We'll all be fine."

Kenma nodded again, and looked away. After a moment, Kuroo cracked a bit of a wider smile, and said:

"If you get scared, you can hold my hand."

Kenma gave him the middle finger over his shoulder. 

Leaving Day

"See?" Iwaizumi scoffed, throwing his hands in the air as he watched Oikawa scramble around at 11pm, 5 hours before they had to be at the airport. "This is why I said you should start packing earlier-"

"Shut up and help me!" Oikawa snapped, brushing past him in a hurry. 

Iwaizumi rolled his eyes and settled by the suitcase to start folding clothes. 

---

"Have you ever been to the United States?" Tendou asked, looking at Ushijima as they wanted around at the front of the airport, the first to arrive. 

"No," he said. 

Silence. They stood for a bit, before Tendou got distracted by a snail and wandered away. Silence a little bit longer, and Tendou returned with a snail in his hands. 

Ushijima watched him look at the snail for a moment, before saying: "I haven't seen my father in years."

Tendou looked up at him with wide eyes, before smiling slightly. "Really? Well I can't wait to meet him! If he's half as awesome as you I'm sure we'll get along."

Ushijima couldn't help but smile back. 

---

"There they are!" 

Bokuto took off running, practically leaping around with excitement as they met up with Ushijima and Tendou. Akaashi could only hope the fact that Bokuto didn't sleep at all this night would let him sleep on the plane, and not cause any problems. 

Akaashi realized he was acting like a parent, then decided it wasn't his problem with Bokuto caused problems. 

---

"Are you ready?" Suga asked, grinning slightly as he opened the door for Daichi, helping him out of the taxi and up onto the sidewalk by the airport. 

"Hell yeah," Daichi replied, chuckling. He looked like himself again, Suga thought. When he was awake, he was so… happy. So okay. Suga leaned forward, pressing a quick kiss to lips before grabbing his hand and turning to tug him off, looking for the others. 

"Let's go, then!" 

---

"Hey!" 

"Hey!"
"Hey!"

Oikawa, Bokuto, and Daichi are shouting at each other, clapping hands and trading brief hugs. They laugh, talking about travel plans and airplane entertainment. 

Akaashi shuffles over to Suga's side, commenting something about how exhausted he was. Ushijima hung back from the crowd, but after a moment, Tendou was up in Suga's face, showing him a snail he had found. 

It was fun.

--- 

Oikawa and Iwaizumi arrive last, looking stressed and panicked, having run into the obstacle of Oikawa not preparing or packing at all. 

"We're okay!" Oikawa said, as Kuroo rolled his eyes. 

"Finally!" he replied. "We gotta get through security, or we risk missing boarding."

"And I am not missing this flight!" Bokuto called, giving an unnecessary shout before turning to crash through the busy Tokyo airport. People turned to watch the herd of teenagers clamber through security, making jokes and shoving each other the whole way. 

Daichi makes it through security without an issue, but Suga groans loudly as he's hauled away to be randomly checked. 

Ushijima is also randomly checked, and Oikawa snickers, leaning in to murmur to Daichi that they have proof that these truly are random checks, because why else would those two have been their suspects. 

Kuroo fills up some water bottles for the trip, and Bokuto buys a bag of chips from a vending machine. 

Tendou has never even been in an airport before, and unlike Kenma, who's drowned out his anxiety by plugging into his PSP, Tendou has begun pointing out anything and everything he sees. Daichi is impressed by how engaged Ushijima remains in the conversation, long after it dissolves into tedious nonsense. 

"Hey," Suga said, nudging him. "I'm gonna go find a bathroom. Wanna come?"

"Yeah."

As he stands up, Iwaizumi whistles to get their attention. 

"Plane should be boarding in fifteen minutes."

"Next stop," Oikawa called from beside him. "America!" 

"Hey!" Tendou said: "Did you know-"

Chapter Text

"It's actually a fascinating field," Kuroo was saying. 

"What is?" Bokuto replied, leaning up over the edge of the plane seat, hanging down in front of Kuroo.

"Aeronautics," Kuroo replied. "The physics required to make a plane fly make absolutely no sense. The vacuum created by the air splitting over the wings pulls the plane upwards - we're literally being lifted, right now! Lifted by the vacuum of space!"

" Stop ," Kenma whined back, lifting his hands to cover his head. "Please, please, please stop talking about how stupid planes are." 

Kuroo laughed softly, putting a hand down on Kenma's head. "Oh, relax! We're gonna be fine. Nothing's gonna happen, it's one of the safest ways to travel!" 

"Yeah, but at least dying in a car crash isn't preceded by a thirty thousand foot drop," Kenma snapped back, lifting a hand to swat Kuroo's away. 

"I think it's awesome," Bokuto said. "Flying and dropping."

"Dropping isn't awesome," Akaashi replied. 

"And we're not going to drop!" Suga interrupted, a song of song-like tone in his voice. Anxiety was spiking high among all the boys. Well, that was a lie. Kenma's anxiety was spiking, and Akaashi, Suga, and Iwaizumi were beginning to wonder if their boyfriend's bad luck was about to send them careening down into the depths of the pacific ocean. 

"We're not going to drop."

Daichi laughed softly, before turning his eyes back to look out the plane's window. They had just taken off, slowly rising to hit the cloud level and burst through the fluffy white fog and into the rolling expanses of skies. 

Their flight had been delayed slightly, so finally boarding and starting was more than a relief. It was roughly an eleven hour flight from the Tokyo Airport to Los Angeles, in California. The international flight was going to be an entire day of their lives. 

The seats were four across, which was convenient for everyone to sit with their preferred seat partner. 

Kuroo and Kenma were sitting at the front, stuck beside two strangers the group didn't know. Kenma had taken the aisle seat, to distance himself from the window. Behind them, Bokuto and Akaashi shared a row with Ushijima and Tendou. Tendou had also been given the aisle seat. Not because he wanted it, but because none of that row wanted to deal with his endless energy coming in and out of the row after reaching cruising altitude. Behind them were Daichi and Suga, seated beside Iwaizumi and Oikawa. 

Above them, the little light dinged to signal that they were free to wander about. 

"Hey," Suga said, reaching over to nudge Daichi. "Can you believe we're actually on our way to California?" 

"Not really," Daichi laughs. "It feels like a dream."

"It's not!" 

"Well I know it's not, though I can't help it," he replied, laughing a little more and shaking his head. "I'm on a flight to California, with Sugawara Koushi as my boyfriend. This whole thing feels like I'm going to wake up any moment." 

Suga flushed slightly, giving him a grin. "Well, you're not! It's all real. Or it better be. If you wake up and leave me here in the dream world I'm going to be very angry."

"Stop flirting," Iwaizumi replied, lifting his headphones up to plug into his ears. "It's exhausting." 

" You're exhausting, shut up," Suga replied. 

Tendou turned around in his seat, watching them with wide eyes for a moment before grinning and looking back to his row. "Are you guys excited? I'm excited! I've never been on a plane before, you think we're gonna get plane food? Do you think it's as bad as comedians say or are they just doing that for a joke?" 

"We'll get food," Akaashi assured him, leaning forward to look around Ushijima. "Don't worry. But it is pretty bad."

"Yes!" Tendou said, punching the air. 

"You're excited for bad food?" Kuroo interrupted, hearing their conversation and turning around to look at him. 

"Hell yeah," Tendou said. "Now I'm one step closer to being a comedian." 

"...What?"

"I can't tell the plane food joke if I haven't had plane food," he said, as if this were obvious. When he was met with blank stares of confusion, he nudged Ushijima beside him. "Isn't that right?" 

Ushijima had his eyes closed, not responding. Immediately Tendou lost interest in his food conversation, tilting his head. 

"Wakatoshi?" 

No response. 

A sharp shove got his attention, though, and Ushijima turned to look at him with pained eyes. 

"Are you scared of flying?" Tendou said, before breaking into laughter. "We should sit you with Kenma!" 

"No," Ushijima grumbled, lifting his hands up to his head and breaking into a groan. "My ears are killing me…"

"Oh! Yeah, the pressure sucks," Tendou agreed, tapping his fingers awkwardly on his leg. He wasn't great with comfort - nothing about him was built for comforting people. Mostly he just caused anxiety. But Ushijima was his friend, and he wanted to help get rid of the-
"Hey, here," Daichi said, interrupting the conversation and leaning between the seats to offer a packet of gum across to Ushijima. "These usually help me, and little sisters." 

Ushijima looked up, looking almost confused as he took the packet. "Thank you…?"

"Try it," he insisted. "Chew a piece or two, it'll help pop your ears and get you used to the pressure. If it doesn't work you just gotta-" he mimed plugging his nose to blow. "Get that pressure bubble outta there." 

Ushijima nodded, hurriedly opening the package to put some of the gum in his mouth. 

Tendou huffed, sitting back in his seat. Whatever. He didn't need to be Ushijima's hero. It didn't matter. 

"Does anyone wanna play a game?" Bokuto asked, turning in his seat to look around at everyone. "What kind of game?" Daichi asked. 

"Aaaah…."

"When you figure it out, the answer will be yes," Kuroo said, before looking back to Kenma. "How're you doing?"

Kenma had put his headphones on, glad when the hostess had allowed him to turn his PSP back on. A distraction from the metal death trap would be appreciated. 

Kuroo sighed without a response. 

At the back of the group, Oikawa was trying to pop his ears, groaning unsuccessfully. He leaned forward after a moment, harshly tapping Ushijima's shoulder to get his attention. "I need Daichi's gum." 

Ushijima handed it over without complaint. 

"You all need to learn to bring your own gum," Tendou said, rolling his eyes. "It's not that hard to bring gum." 

"Did you bring gum?" Oikawa asked. 

"Shut up."

Oikawa huffed, then tossed a piece of gum into his mouth, handing the packet across Iwa and Suga and back to Daichi, who stretched to grab it. 

After a few more moments of this, everyone settled into silence or idle chatter, more calm than before. Daichi kept his eyes on the rolling clouds below them. Tendou bounced his leg, and Ushijima leaned back, looking as if he were trying to meditate or something. Oikawa and Bokuto both plugged themself into a movie, and Kenma was playing his game. Kuroo pulled out a book, and Suga found himself watching everyone for a moment before leaning over to Iwaizumi. 

"Hey," he said, keeping his voice low to not disturb anyone. "How are you feeling about this trip?"

"Pretty excited," Iwaizumi replied, clearly annoyed he had been made to take his headphones off. "Why?"
"Just…" 

"Bokuto!" Daichi said, interrupting him as he leaned forward on the seat. "Are you watching that new horror movie?"

"Hell yeah, man!" Bokuto replied, grinning. "It's on channel four! Plug in, watch with me!" 

Suga watched Daichi root around for his headphones for a moment before looking back to Iwaizumi. "It's just… it doesn't seem like…"

"Like they need us?" Iwaizumi supplied, arching an eye. Suga nodded slowly. "They're like a pack of animals, don't think too much on it."

"I just can't help but…"

"Be jealous? It's an ugly colour. Don't." 

Suga flushed red, somewhat annoyed at the harshness of Iwa's call out. But the other man just put his headphones back in and left Suga to sulk in silence. After a moment he reached over to poke Daichi, reaching up to tug one of his ear buds out and steal it for himself. 

He'd try not to think too much on it.

---

Five hours into the flight and the novelty has worn off. Tendou is lord knows where, having given up on the tired and boring crew of volleyball players and wandered off to get scolded by a flight hostess. Kenma is still just playing his game, and Kuroo should have predicted that he'd be happy to have eleven uninterrupted hours of play time. The game distraction has helped keep his anxiety down. 

Ushijima's ears popped with the levelling out of the plane, and as soon as the pain subsided, he promptly fell asleep. Akaashi spent a good thirty minutes wondering if he should warn him about the landing. 

Bokuto and Diachi worked through a good few shows together, laughing at everything before growing bored of even that. Suga had read and read and read from a book he bought, alternating between that and whatever Daichi was watching. 

Oikawa had fallen asleep as well, curling up with his head on Iwaizumi's shoulder. Suga found this fascinatingly adorable, as the usually stoic and impassive Iwaizumi was reduced to a slightly flushed wall, refusing to move and accidentally wake Oikawa, but snapping at anyone who spoke too loudly. 

The hostesses came around, offering them pop and snacks, then lunch, though Suga was pretty sure time didn't exist this high in the sky, so it might have been dinner. 

Tendou returned excitedly for the lunch, taking three bites, declaring it garbage, then refusing to eat the rest. 

The lights in the cabin were still on, and after another thirty minutes of boredly flipping between time killer activities, realizing most of his travelling companions had fallen asleep or were engaged in screens and books, decided to entertain himself by pulling Daichi out of the show he was watching him and kissing him. 

---

Disaster struck when they still had three hours to go. The plane hit turbulence, and the whole thing shook and jolted around. Kenma let out a cry, eyes opening slightly and reaching out, hand latching onto the sleeve of Kuroo's shirt. He refused to look up, nauseous as the plane continued to shake and dip. 

Oikawa, returning from the bathroom, lurched and fell against a seat, immediately profusely apologizing to the woman there. She just blushed and said it was totally okay - pretty privilege could get a lot of things forgiven - and he stumbled back on the shaking floor as the seatbelt light came on. 

"Hah, dumbass-" Iwaizumi had begun, overshadowed slightly by Daichi leaning forward, concern dripping from his expression. 

"Are you okay? It looked like your bad knee gave out."

"I'm fine," Oikawa replied. 

"Now I've heard that one before," Daichi said, playfully wagging a finger at him before sitting back in his seat. Suga knew him well enough to know the warning wasn't entirely just playful, no matter how he tried to play it. 

"I'm fine," Oikawa repeated. "I just wasn't prepared for everything to start- oah!" the plane dropped a few feet again, everyone's stomachs rising to their throats. Kenma wailed softly, but louder than that was a baby that started crying. Just great. 

"This is kinda fun," Bokuto said, breaking into laughter as the plane jolted again. 

"This is not fun," Akaashi said, voice wavering slightly. 

"Awww, Keiji-kun," Bokuto teased. "Are you afraid of the turbulence?" 

"No!" 

"You are! You totally are!"

"I am not !" 

Daichi laughed softly. "I'm sure it's nothing," he said, though nobody had really asked him. He reached over to hold Suga's hand, offering him an easy smile. 

Suga was pretty sure, with Daichi's luck, they were all about to die. 

Tendou reluctantly clipped his seatbelt on, laughing slightly as the plane continued to lurch and dip. "This sucks," he said. "I was enjoying wandering around."

"It won't last forever," Ushijima said, seeming a little rattled by all the dipping. 

"I know, I know," Tendou said. "But you probably can't sleep when it's like this, huh?" 

"No," Ushijima agreed. 

"Too bad, you looked really cute while you slept."

Suga broke into laughter, watching what could barely qualify as flirting absolutely fry Ushijima's ability to speak. 

No wonder they hadn't yet gotten together. 

The plane dipped again, and Suga squeaked, laughter turning nervous as he held Daichi's hand faster. It was going to be okay. Kenma was taking deep breaths, seeming like he was staving off a panic attack of epic proportions. Kuroo dropped his teasing mockery, instead staying quiet and wrapping an arm around him, rubbing his arm and holding him in close. 

"It'll be okay," he murmured. "Don't worry."

Suga didn't trust any of the boy's perceptions of okay, but tried to believe it.

---

It was totally okay. 

Ushijima damn near crying in pain as the plane descended, hands wrapped around his head. Kenma was trying not to cry, too, but because their pilot had a very rough landing, constantly jerking and dropping. Oikawa was impatiently tapping his foot. Daichi had finally fallen asleep, only about an hour ago, leaning against the window. Suga wished landing took longer than it did, to give Daichi a bit of extra sleep time. 

He wasn't a huge fan of the dark circles under Daichi's eyes, or the yawning he never quit. But he couldn't do much about that. It wasn't Daichi's fault he was sleeping so poorly. 

Suga watched Tendou's hands dance over Ushijima, never quite touching him as he tried to figure out how to possibly comfort the suffering man, before glancing at Iwaizumi, who was half packing his things up. 

"Hey," he said, again. Iwaizumi gave an eye roll and looked over to him. 

"Yeah?"

"Daichi's still having nightmares, has Oikawa been…?"

Iwaizumi nodded slowly. "Pretty often, I think. I was glad that he slept on the flight. He says he doesn't have as many nightmares when I sleep over."

"Oh."

Daichi had tons of nightmares, with or without Suga. 

Was Suga a worse boyfriend than Iwaizumi? Surely not… wait, wait… Suga shook his head. God, what was he even thinking? 

Stupid, not a competition. Not a competition. Daichi invited you to freaking America! You're plenty enough, Suga, he told himself, over and over again until the planes wheels hit the ground and Daichi jolted from his sleep. 

"Hey, sleepy," Suga teased, reaching over and putting a hand on Daichi's arm. "We're here."

"We're here?" 

"Hell yeah we're here!" Bokuto shouted, giving a call far too loud for the airplane. The baby started crying again. 

---

Ushijima was smacking a hand against his ear, groaning as he couldn't get it to pop, despite standing at the baggage claim. Tendou had never felt such self-resentment as he did then, knowing that he'd watched Ushijima hurt for half an hour now and he still hadn't been able to do anything about it. stared back, clearly confused, before returning to try and force the pressure from his ears. 

Kenma was practically praising being back on earth, and Kuroo had returned to mocking him for it. 

Oikawa and Daichi stood off to the side, watching the two not-couples work around each other and generally rolled their eyes. It was painful almost, watching the two pairs dance around what was so obvious to everyone else. 

"Hey!" Daichi lifted his head, seeing Bokuto lifting his suitcase up over his head as if he were going to chuck it over to him. Daichi laughed, rushing over to take it before he could try. 

"Thanks, man," he said, grinning. 

"No problem!" Bokuto called, before turning to seeking out all the suitcases, apparently enjoying this activity greatly. 

Daichi took the moment to gaze about at the massive L.A airport, eyes wide and excited. They were in America! That was amazing! Suga joined him after collecting his suitcase, holding onto his arm and yawning slightly. Twelve hours later, and they were actually in the states. 

This summer was going to be absolutely incredible . 

After a while, Daichi realized they hadn't left baggage claim. 

"Who still needs their suitcase?" he called, glancing around. 

Oikawa awkwardly lifted his hand, looking embarrassed to, once again, be the one causing problems. 

"Did they lose your stuff?" Iwaizumi huffed, glancing around the otherwise empty baggage claim. "What the hell?"

This summer, Daichi repeated, feeling his anxiety beginning to rise. Was going to be absolutely incredible . It was going to be incredible. It was going to be incredible. Nothing was going to stop it from being incredible. 

No matter how much went wrong. 

"Hey Daichi," Suga said, putting a hand on his chest, getting his attention. "You're starting to freak out, take a breath."

Daichi took a deep breath. At the edge of his vision he could see trees.

Chapter Text

Sunbaked sidewalks were lined with palm trees and the oceanside walkway was busy with foot traffic and bikes. The white sand beach seemed to stretch forever, dotted with umbrellas and towels and girls in bikinis. Oh, my god, were there girls in bikinis. 

"Holy shit," Daichi whistled. "We made the right choice to come to Cali-"

Suga smacks him on the back of the head. 

"Don't think I can't see where your eyes go," Suga warned. "It's not special, we have girls in bikinis back home."

"But these are American girls in bikinis," Daichi replied, turning to look down the line of travellers, a goofy smile on his face. "I mean, look at some of these girls, I've never seen- wait a minute…"

Staring at the blank looks they were giving him, some fully confused, like Ushijima, and others sort of amused if not surprised, like Oikawa, he had a startling realization. 

"What - are all of you fully gay?" he asked. "Am I the only bisexual in this whole party? Am I the only one who truly appreciates how wonderful this beach is?" 

Suga raised his eyes, before turning to follow his gaze back down the line. 

"Uh…"

"Well…"

Everyone was looking between themselves. Birds of a feather, right? Nobody had ever really questioned the fact that they were all queer in some way - often that was the case in friend groups. But all being exclusively gay? That was weird. 

"If it helps," Tendou called, way from the other side of the group. "I don't identify as anything, ever. Labels make me sick." 

"That tracks," Oikawa said, looking back to Daichi. "So yes, one bisexual, one whatever, and eight gay men. Problem?" 

Daichi opened his mouth, then shut it. "Well," he said, turning to look back over the beach. Blue waters crashed down against the sand, the sun high in the sky and already scorching their skin. Sunscreen would be their best friend, he imagined. 

They'd left the airport a while ago, traversing across the city somewhat challengingly. Daichi, Iwaizumi, Ushijima and Akaashi were the most fluent in English, managing to navigate maps and signs just fine. The rest of the crowd stuck near them. The only travellers who were flat out useless with English were Bokuto and Tendou, and this Daichi mentally attributed to neither of them having the attention span required to remember a language. 

Ushijima's father had come to meet them and taken them back to the house he was staying in. He was making a name for himself as a coach and private trainer, and seemed to have done so quite effectively. Though ten people were a lot to have staying in one house, all the boys were prepared to spend a few nights on the floor. 

While Ushijima had gone out with his father for a long overdue reunion, the rest of the group had gathered around to make a plan. Rent a car, scratch out a destination, and have the summer of a lifetime. 

Immediately, upon a quick google search, they realized the mistake that they'd made. 

"Oh, sorry!" the friendly receptionist at the rental company said. "We can't rent cars to anyone under the age of twenty-five."

Well shit! 

After a brief moment of panic and frantic reorganization, realizing that not only could they not rent a car, but North America didn't have any functioning train system, the boys realized if they were going to travel anywhere, they'd be doing so by bus. 

Now this wasn't the biggest deal…

Kuroo pulled up a map, and the long distance bus schedule. 

"See," he had said, pointing a few things out. "We just plan our return flight from our destination. We can still hit a lot of the best sights! At least in the west, for sure. It's just not quite as interesting. Tons of-"

"We can totally make bus-friends!" Bokuto interrupted. "There'll be so many american travellers, and other travellers, we can have a blast!"

"Yeah, besides, I don't trust anyone here to drive anyway," Oikawa chuckled. 

"So bussing it is?" Daichi said. 

Everyone glanced around at each other, but Bokuto was already speaking:

"Bussing it is!" 

"I'll get planning," Kuroo had said, pushing himself up off the floor.

"He sure does love planning," Kenma had murmured, from across the room on a couch. 

So a plan had been made. A very simple plan, really. Kuroo seemed absolutely thrilled to be able to organize bus routes and schedules.

And the plan was made. A bus ride up the California coast, a stop in San Francisco to see the Golden Gate Bridge, a short jump across to Reno, through the Great Basin National Park, up to Craters of the Moon, then to Yellowstone. Kuroo wanted to be meticulous. He wanted to plan and schedule and guarantee a place to be each night, but that didn't sit right with the rest of the gang. 

"It's time for an adventure," they agreed. It's time to be spontaneous. Lets find a city! Let's explore, be crazy, do shit together like we're never going to see each other again. 

Some tongue-biting had been done. Bus tickets were purchased for the next morning, straight up the coast and towards San Francisco. The bus had a few scheduled breaks and stops, which would give them plenty of time to see the coast. 

For today, though, that left them with an evening to kill in Sunny California, the Golden Coast. 

And, of course, the only place to spend that time was the beach. 

"Let's go ," Oikawa said eventually, stretching out the word before taking off into the sand, towards the water. Daichi grinned, grabbing Suga's hand and dragging him off with them. 

---

It's a big group of boys, most of them in love. The sand is hot, the sky is clear, the waves are crashing and pleasant. Daichi takes a long moment to stand and enjoy the view, enjoy the day, the world, his friends. It's perfect, almost, he thinks. He takes a deep breath, almost feeling the tension that forever stuck with him leave his body. This was a good idea. 

"Daichi!" Oikawa calls, prompting him to turn in the sand. "There's an ice cream stand not far from here. We're gonna walk over. You coming?"

"I'm coming!" he calls, before rushing off. 

---

The water hit Kenma in the face, leaving him gasping, eyes wide and shocked. He jerked his head up at Kuroo, fire in his eyes. "Oh, you bitch -"

He leapt, and Kuroo found it absolutely effortless to grab him out of the water, chucking him off into the waves with a cackling laugh. 

Tendou burst into laughter with delight, a bright and happy glint in his eyes. He bounced around the water and seemed to want to replicate it. He reached for Ushijima, grabbing his waist and immediately realizing he was absolutely not going to lift Ushijima up. He grunted, trying for a moment before huffing and looking up at him. Ushijima's eyes were riddled with confusion, probably wondering how Tendou had even considered being able to pick him up. 

"Heh…"

Ushijima put a hand down on Tendou's back, patting his shoulder supportively. 

"Not my fault you're so freaking big," Tendou said. "Like a damn elephant. What's the point in being- hey wait no- "

Ushijima had turned and grabbed him, hefting him up with only slight struggle. Tendou screeched, feet kicking and grabbing at Ushijima wherever he could. 

"Hey!" he squeaked. "Wakatoshi! No! Put- hey! "

Tendou is tossed, hitting the water with a splash. He sinks down into it, hands stirring up sand and grit and bits of shell. He can see legs and murk, bits of seaweed flowing by his eyes. He pushed himself up, gasping as he got his legs under him. It wasn't deep water - just enough to splash about in. He was soaking now, dripping and lifting a hand to push his hair from his eyes. 

He looked up across at Ushijima, feeling his face flush slightly as his eyes wandered up. He could see Ushijima's own eyes slowly widening. They both wondered if the red across the other's cheeks was the sun's doing, or something else. Ushijima held a hand out, and Tendou took it, pulling himself up out of the water. 

"You look like you're getting a sunburn," Ushijima said, pulling him in. Tendou didn't let the moment pass, stepping in closer than the small tug had recommended, keeping their hands linked as he smiled. The sun was behind him, giving him a clear view of the sunset-burnt colours dancing across Ushijima's face and in his eyes. 

"It's not a sunburn," Tendou said, before flushing further and laughing: "I guess I am, though, I probably am. I mean, I'm not afraid of a sunburn, though. I'm having too much fun! This is fun."

"This is fun, being here with everyone…"

"Not everyone," Tendou said. "You know I don't like everyone. Well, I like these guys just fine, I enjoy their company more than I enjoy some company and I've never really had a big group of friends before, I haven't really had any friends before, that's why you're… special. My point was just I wanted to say it's fun being here, because I'm here with you. And I like being with you." 

Ushijima looked even more red than before, either the sun or sunset or Tendou getting to him, and he ended up looking away. Tendou had often wondered if Ushijima even knew himself - he hadn't objected when Daichi insinuated he was gay, but he never spoke about himself anyway, unless directly prompted. Tendou liked to talk to him, but he'd never talked about that. Tendou's own brain was so messy when it came to subjects like sexuality and gender. He wanted it all to go away, he just wanted to be happy. 

To be happy with someone who didn't think of him as freakish or weird or get sick of his energy. 

"Hey guys!" Bokuto is calling from the beach, and before Tendou can do anything about it, Ushijima is looking away from him, and the hand he was holding was loosening. He wanted to squeeze it, to hold it and get Ushijima's attention again, to see those eyes fixed on him. The only eyes that ever looked at him like he was more than just a background character, the look that cared about him, that knew him, and enjoyed who he was. 

"We're heading in to grab dinner! Come on!" 

Ushijima lifted a hand in acknowledgement, then glanced back to Tendou, patting his arm to signal he should follow before taking off back to shore, a few steps behind Kuroo. 

And Tendou watched him go for a moment. 

Ushijima wasn't good at social cues, and came across as standoffish when he was usually just shy, he wasn't good at speaking up, and although he looked incredibly smart and capable and self directed, he had a hard time defending himself. Tendou wasn't even sure if he liked volleyball as much as everyone thought he did, or if it was just a comforting familiarity that he would struggle to let go of. If Tendou wasn't scared of offending him, he'd have asked if maybe Ushijima was autistic, in some capacity, but he didn't know if pointing out his obvious social ineptitude would qualify as being a bad friend or not. 

So instead he trudged up the beach after all the others. Back to group activities. He wondered when he'd get to be alone with him again, if ever, before they split for university.

---

"Hey-"

Oikawa stopped, feeling Iwaizumi tug him back. The rest of the group was laughing as they took their seats in the cafe. 

"Hey, what's up?" he chuckled, putting a hand on Iwa's elbow. 

"Nothing's up, I was just wondering how you're feeling," he said. "You got pretty quiet, back at the beach…"

"I'm doing fine," Oikawa said. "A little tired, maybe. The airline said my bag never even boarded the flight, so I told them not to bother sending it, since we'd be off by then… I'll have to borrow some stuff from everyone, but…"

He nodded, before saying: "Was your knee acting up?" 

"Iwa-chan," Oikawa sang, taking a step back towards the restaurant. "I'm fine. Stop worrying."

"I'm not worrying," Iwa said, slowly following after him. "I just want to know if you're okay, I know you won't speak up. Well, not to me," he said, adding the last bit under his breath. 

"What's that supposed to mean?" Oikawa scoffed, raising an eye. 

"Just- uh…" Iwaizumi searched for words to say that wouldn't piss Oikawa off. "Just that… you run off to Daichi whenever you have the slightest ache, I just want to be your best friend, you can tell me these things." 

Oikawa huffed, somewhat fondly rolling his eyes as he stepped back in towards him, leaning up to press a quick kiss to his cheek. 

"Iwa," he said. "You not insulting me and acting all sweet is actually kind of off-putting. It's okay. You know I trust you with my life, I'll tell you if anything's wrong."

He hummed, nodding. "Okay. Okay, fine…"

Oikawa took his hand, turning to lead him into the cafe. Iwa kept his eyes on the back of his head, feeling his heart swell up with affection and fondness that was so hard for him to get out, so hard to articulate and express. He wondered if that affected them. Him. He could be sweet, right? Oikawa was kidding, it wasn't off-putting…

Oikawa slid into a seat beside Daichi, leaning over with a grin to brush a bit of sand of Bokuto's sleeve. 

Iwaizumi wondered if he was ever going to be Oikawa's best friend again. 

---

Suga laughed, lifting a hand to cover his mouth. He lifted his drinking, trying to find the straw without looking. The sun never seemed to want to set, long summer days keeping them warm and light. Nobody wanted to go home anyway. 

Daichi leaned his head into his hand, sighing happily as he watched Suga laugh and talk, enjoying dinner. The sunshine and blue skies and warm, salty air seemed to have almost immediately healed his head and heart. All he wanted to do, now, was wrap himself up in Suga, lay in the sands together, cool off in the waves, feel skin against skin. He'd struggled to be really physically affectionate, the last few months, uncertain of his hands and his lips. But now, in the hot California sun, it seemed the perfect vacation activity. Just them and the heat...

He found himself gazing back at Suga's brown eyes for a solid twenty seconds before realizing that meant Suga was looking at him too. 

"Oh-" Daichi sat up slightly. 

"Hey," Suga laughed, tilting his head. "You zoned out there for a minute."

"Just admiring how handsome you are," Daichi said. This only made him laugh more, which Daichi didn't mind at all. He reached over and nudged him playfully, rolling his eyes. 

"Stop flirting. We're in public. It's gross."

"Don't call me gross," Daichi pouted. "I'm just affectionate."

"Stop it."

Daichi scrunched his nose up, then sat back in his seat, turning to look at the rest of the group. 

"So?" Akaashi had begun to say. "Are we about ready to-"

"Oo ooooh my god-" Bokuto cut in, half standing up and leaning over the table. "Lookit!" 

Daichi had stiffened at Bokuto's excited shout, immediately feeling anxious as he looked around for whatever he had spotted. "What? What's up?" 

"They're playing freaking volleyball! Beach volleyball!" Bokuto gasped, pointing across the road and back to the beach, where a bright white net was set up in the sand. A handful of young adults were bouncing around, happily smacking at the ball but clearly very clumsily. Just having fun. 

"Oh, god, that looks like fun," Oikawa laughed. "I wish we had- oh!"

Bokuto was already up. "I wanna play!" he said, grabbing Kuroo's arm and dragging him up, heading out of the restaurant. 

"Oh, dear…" Suga laughed, looking back to Daichi. "Do you wanna go?"

"Someone has to pay," Daichi replied. "I'll go, I'll go, but…"

"Let's handle payment," Akaashi agreed, worry in his voice as he watched Bokuto sprint away. 

---

The American man had short, closely cut dusty blonde hair, and a bright, white-toothed all-American smile that dazzled in the sun. He was tall - as tall as the volleyball players, at least. 6'3", because something in the water here grew their people up so tall. 

Daichi had noticed it in the women more closely. Everyone always talked about America being fat, or America having everything be bigger, and as far as Daichi could see, that was true. But he had yet to see one bad thing about it, drooling over the women in their swimsuits, the men on the beach, everything from toned bodies on a surfboard to heavenly thick thighs lounging in the sun. God, he'd never considered bisexuality a curse, but here he was. 

That is to say, when he approached this man there wasn't a thing about him that seemed non-American. Just the Clark-Kent boy-next-door they were raised to believe populated this area. Golden skin, defined muscles down his stomach. 

He smiled as they approached, noticing the large group heading their way. He waved them over, grinning. "Hey, can I help ya with anything?" 

Bokuto, without much English, grinned happily at the head of the party, before looking back helplessly to let Iwaizumi take the front. 

"Hey," he said, slowly, in English. "Me and my friends are travellers, from Japan. We play volleyball lots, and were interested in your game."

"Oh yeah?" the man said, grinning and looking out over at them. "Big group, probably too many for volleyball." 

"What?" 

"Not too many!" Suga laughed. "We don't have enough! Only ten, need twelve. Plus some." 

"We… really play volleyball," Iwaizumi agreed, turning to put a hand on Bokuto beside him. "Some of the best in Japan." 

"Well damn, hotshots," the man laughed, nodding. "Fuck yeah we'll play. What's your name? Names?"

They took turns introducing themself, and the man gave them a dazzling smile, and replied, putting a hand to his chest. "My name's Adam, born and raised in Cali here, not nearly as interesting as Japan I'm afraid. Nor am I that good at volleyball. I'll give you a run for your money though!" 

"Hah! Doubt it," Oikawa said, heading across the sand. The man laughed. 

"Nice, nice," he said. "Loving the confidence. Oh!" 

He reached over, grabbing a young woman who was watching with curious eyes. She had tanned skin, and thick, curly brown hair hanging over her shoulders. Her curvy body was accented with a shark tooth necklace, and a white floral bikini, high waisted with tons of straps. Another very American person. 

"This is my girlfriend, Julia," he said. 

"It's so nice to meet you all!"

"Nice to meet you too," Iwaizumi agreed, chuckling before glancing around. "So, are we gonna play volleyball?" 

---

It don't think it takes 1000 words to describe how severely the captains and their boys absolutely smoke the American beachgoers in this game. 

The first time they play they do America against Japan, splitting up the teams and rotating out when appropriate. It didn't seem to matter who was in what position. Suga found himself spiking a lot, which generally brought him joy, not feeling left as the second-setter. Kenma and Oikawa were there as well, but he liked playing a bit of a different - but equal - role for once. 

Daichi and Kuroo made an impenetrable defense in the back. Iwaizumi and Bokuto were hitting absolutely anything that came their way. Tendou seemed to be having the most fun, though bored out of his mind as he leapt when he could block. Just random, instinctual leaps that the Americans clearly wanted to be able to make sense. 

Tendou stuck his tongue out, taunting them as the ball falls on their side of the count. Daichi scolds him for bad sportsmanship, but the sincerity is lacking. They're having too much fun.

Watching Oikawa's serve slam into the sand before anyone could react made everyone laugh, and it was only slightly overshadowed by the sheer terror on Adam's face the first time Ushijima nailed a spike down.

It gets more interesting when Adam says: "Okay, okay, you're all experts! I get it! Now how about we scramble the team so I don't gotta keep losing, yeah?"

Daichi and Suga made a big show about getting split up onto opposite teams, pretending like they'd never see each other again. Kenma rolled his eyes as he headed to the opposite team, but seemed a little more interested now that there might be a challenge. Julia came trotting over, and after a bit of deliberation, Tendou and Akaashi and Iwaizumi also left. 

"Hey!" Daichi laughed, glancing back at the captains left on his team. "Looks like it's just us."

"Fuck yeah!" Bokuto shouts. "Let's show 'em why we're captains, yeah?" 

"Yeah!" 

The serve goes up. It sails. Julia had served it, which made it easy for the other team. Suga received it to Kenma, who set it up-

Daichi barely had time to appreciate how good Iwaizumi's form was before the ball was spiked directly into his face, sending him into the sand. 

---

"It's not that bad," Daichi said, tilting his head up as he pressed tissue to his nose, trying to get it to stop bleeding. "Seriously, it's not that bad."

Adam laughed, sitting beside him. "That guy has a wicked spike. Actually, they all do. You do too. I was terrified half the time."

Just the two of them sat on the sidelines. Daichi had absolutely refused to let anyone make a fuss, but did need someone to provide a tissue for him, so Adam had volunteered, since he had his beach bag nearby. The game continued. Suga kept glancing his way, so Daichi gave him a thumbs up. 

Eventually Daichi tilted his head down, pulling the tissue away and testing to see if he was still bleeding. 

Some silence passed as he cleaned himself up, before he felt a hand touching his shoulder. 

Daichi jerked back, looking at him with alarm. Adam put his hands up in defense, chuckling softly. 

"Sorry, sorry. Those are some crazy scars on your back. What's that from?" 

Daichi stared at him for a moment, before realizing that it didn't have to be a secret. The whole day, Daichi had kept his shirt on. Kept himself hidden. Terrified of being the freak with the scarred up back on the beach. Suga told him he didn't have to worry so much, but it was really hard not to. It didn't matter if anyone else was looking. Daichi hated how it looked, and that was that. 

"A bear," Daichi said, looking back to the volleyball game. "Early in spring. Me and some of my friends - some of the guys here - got lost. Encountered a bear."

"A bear? " Adam gasped, looking more intently at the scars. "Holy shit man!" 

Daichi chuckled. "Yeah… Bokuto saved my life."

"Wow…" he breathed, looking to the volleyball game as well. "And now you're travelling America? You're one brave dude, man." 

Daichi nodded. "We were going to roadtrip. But we forgot we can't rent cars. We're getting a bus up the coast tomorrow."

"Oh, that's a bummer - you know," Adam said. "Bussing is not the way to go. Absolutely not. If you wanna see America, the real America, you gotta see the wilds. The long roads, the endless scenery. Me and Julia are travellers too. I was born in Florida, she's from Montana. We met on the road."

"Nice," Daichi said. "That's nice."

"It is. You know, we were planning on hanging in California a little longer, but we're truckin' around in this old motorhome, we could head off together," he said. "What do you say?" 

"Huh?"

Adam beckoned to the others. "Come join us. We can see everything you guys wanna see. Travelling gets boring, when you've done it so long alone. We've seen all of the west coast here, more than once. We could use a fresh perspective. And you guys won't be stuck to the whims of tourist traps and bus routes."

Daichi looked at him, staring for a moment before giving him a smile. 

"I'll talk to the others about it."

Chapter Text

Though the gang almost changed their minds when faced with the reality of the small little motor home this couple was using to travel the continent, ultimately they were convinced to go along. Maybe not for the sake of getting the road trip they had planned at the beginning, and avoiding long bus rides with strangers, but for sure because of the freedom it offered, the chance to make do as they wanted, see the world at their own pace. 

Plus, Adam brought out map after map, all dotted with pen marks and notations. He drew them a line and proposed a plan. The best sights in the hot west, then straight through the center. Depending on how long that took, they could decide where they wanted to go next.
"You guys have two whole months before you have to be home!" Adam laughed, igniting the engine. Him and Julia grinned like adventure was just around the corner. "We can see everything!"

Daichi laughed, sitting on a couch-seat behind the driver's seat, and nodding along. 

"We're happy to have a guide. Are you guys really sure you're okay with us tagging along?"

"Oh, for sure!" Julia giggled, waving a hand dismissively "Look, we've already seen everything. But there's nothing like seeing it through someone else's eyes. Makes it all feel brand new again!" 

The motorhome was the only thing on the long, narrow roads. One lane each way, and the last car they saw had zipped past them at damn near dangerous speeds, and long since disappeared. The sun was high, and it was hot as all hell, but they remained in happy spirits. 

"We're heading straight through the Mojave Desert, now. Ever heard of it?" Adam called. 

"Uh… yes?" Ushijima called. "Sort of."

"I have… heard the words before… I think…" Kuroo called. 

The motorhome bumped over a crack in the pavement, sending all of them bouncing and swinging. A cabinet door opened, and Bokuto leapt up, almost thrown off balance as he stretched to shut it. He started at the cabinet door for a second, as if something was puzzling him, before sitting down again. 

"It's just a loose latch, it'll probably open a dozen times," Akaashi said. 

"What?" Bokuto asked, looking over to Akaashi as if confused over what he was talking about. 

"You looked - sorry," he said, looking away.

"It's the smallest desert in North America," Julia supplied. "But has some of the hottest temperatures on earth!" 

"And it reaches four states!" Adam supplied. "Tons of awesome wildlife, and we did some wicked hiking out here about a year ago…" 

Julia giggled. "Adam's from Washington, where it's always raining. He wasn't used to the hot, dry stuff and almost passed out. You gotta remember to bring water." 

"Ah, yeah," Daichi said, nodding along. They were speaking fast, and in English, and it was very hard to keep up with. "We don't hike."

"Wadya mean you don't hike?" Julia scoffed, and for a moment Daichi thought he got the English wrong. Thankfully Suga cut in, laughing with:

"No, they're banned from hiking."

"They had some kinda… incident, right?"

Daichi lifted a hand to his scarring. 

"We don't hike."

Julia looked at Adam, a sort of concern on her face, but he waved her off. 

"There are plenty of cool sites to see that don't require hiking," Adam assured them, before looking back to the road. 

"Yeah? Where are we going first?" 

"Well, first we're just driving," Adam said, a sort of song-tone in his voice. "But if I remember correctly, it's… there's a few absolutely stunning outlooks along this road. You guys can get the pictures of a lifetime." 

"Sounds really fun," Daichi said, before looking back to Suga. Suga gave him a grin. 

Across the motorhome, sitting carefully in the different seats available, the rest of the gang chatted and read off their phones, or told jokes. After a few minutes, Adam cranked up the radio, which came through crackling some loud American pop song.

Adam sang along, loudly and badly, and Julia joined in. The bouncing, electric energy was almost contagious. 

Oikawa lifted his phone, taking a photo of himself before scrambling across the moving floor to force himself between Daichi and Suga, lifting the camera to take another photo. 

Daichi leaned in within a grin, letting the photo snap before saying: 

"You look like you're in a better mood."

"My knees fucked, I don't have any of my stuff, I'm wearing clothes that don't fit, and I think the moment I step outside I'll die of heat exposure," Oikawa replied. "But this is fun! It's so nice that we finally get to have an adventure together."

Daichi laughed, nodded, and nudged him slightly. "True, true," he said. "But don't jinx us, okay? I've already gotten a bloody nose and you're still out all your stuff. Speaking of, did the airline ever contact you?"

Oikawa nodded. "They said it never left Japan. They offered to send it over, but since we weren't going to be staying in California, I told them not to bother. Iwa is letting me borrow his stuff."

"That's good," Daichi said. "If you need anything, let me know."

"Put your game away!" 

Attention is turned to Kuroo, who's snatching Kenma's PSP away, and stuffing it into a bag. "Seriously, man! We're in America! A whole new continent! Won't you please just look around?"

Daichi raised his eyes, overcome by the instinct that this was not a conversation that was meant to be started so loudly. Kuroo immediately looked embarrassed, not meeting anyone's eyes. 

Kenma stared at him, angrily, before saying: "Sorry that my fun isn't an adventure in the hottest shithole in the world," he muttered. "We're just driving, what's there to do?"

"If you didn't wanna come, why did you come?" Kuroo said. "It's not mandatory, Kenma. And I'd rather you have stayed home than bitch about everything we do."

Daichi accidentally made eye contact with Ushijima, finding his own sense of oh god please let me die right now to avoid seeing the rest of this reflected back at him, and turned to look at Suga. 

"Hey, have I told you I like your eyes recently? I like your eyes. They're pretty."

"Aw, that's sweet-"

"Of course you'd rather I have stayed home," Kenma snapped, rolling his eyes. "You don't actually like me, you just like having a best friend."

Kuroo raised his eyes. "Excuse me?" 

Daichi let his breath out, turning away from him to see Julia looked back with concern.

"Are they…?"

"No idea," Daichi replied. 

"You heard me," Kenma snapped. "You don't want me around, you want someone who's your loyal best friend. Fucking… Bokuto or someone. I'm just a body you can project onto."

"Hey, hey," Bokuto whined, snapped out of his confusion as Kenma said his name. "Please, don't use me as a pawn in this… thing…"

"That's not true!" Kuroo said, sounding truly astounded it was even brought up. "Of course that's not true, Kenma. You're the one who only made friends with me because it was convenient, remember?" 

Kenma looked away. 

"I want you here. I just… it feels like you hate everything we do, and I can't wrap my head around why you would force yourself to do this, if you hate it."

"Just forget it," Kenma said, standing up to move away from Kuroo, shoving his way in beside Tendou, who was shifting over for him, but stared at him with big, watchful eyes. 

Everyone was silent. 

"So… the first outlook is here," Adam said, as the motorhome pulled onto the gravel outlook. 

They stopped moving. Kenma groaned. 
"Oh, don't bother complaining," Kuroo huffed, standing up after the motorhome lurched to a stop and heading to the door. "We'll go enjoy the American landscape, you can sit here and bury your nose in your game."

"Yikes!" Tendou said, standing up and putting his hands on his hips.

Kuroo was out the door. 

Everyone avoided looking at Kenma. 

"Are they… good?" Julia asked, again, as Daichi looked over to it. It occurred to him that she couldn't speak Japanese, and likely all of that had been missed. Probably for the better. 

"Yeah," he said. "They're just… tired and hot. I'm sure it'll be fine."

She nodded, slowly, then headed out the door. 

The desert landscape was dusty, brown and red, with a boiling sun high in deep, bright lit blue skies, and endless expanses of rock and earth. The boys wandered off towards the edge, where a small, rickety wooden fence was holding everyone back from slipping down. A car roared past on the highway behind them, and quickly the sounded faded. It left behind nothing but hot, dusty air in a stifling heat that warmed the lungs unpleasantly. The whole world seemed hazy. 

“This is amazing!” Suga shouted, leaping forward to go hang over the edge of the fence. “Lookit it all!” 

Tendou gave a shout, and turned to grab Ushijima’s arm, tugging on it in excitement. The other pulled his phone out, starting to line up a photo. Immediately upon doing so, Tendou sprinted away to pose in the shot. 

“Holy hell, that’s a view and a half,” Oikawa said, nudging Akaashi. “Do we have deserts like this in Japan?”

Akaashi stared at him. “No.”

Daichi grinned as he watched them all fawn over the landscape, before feeling someone nudge his shoulder. He glanced over to see Adam, and he raised his eyes. 

“Come on, there’s a trail over here,” he said. Daichi nodded, and followed him off down the pullout. Kuroo started to trail after him, but most of the gang were left up on the edge, taking photos and staring at the scene. 

“If you wanted,” Adam went on, stopping by a small goat trail and pointing across the landscape, picking it out into the distance. “This is a pretty cool hike, y’know. If you want to get the guys together and go explore, we totally could.”

“Hike?”

“Yeah-”

“No,” Daichi said. 

“I don’t know if you got the story,” Kuroo agreed, lifting an elbow to rest on Daichi’s shoulders. “But we have this whole thing with hiking, we’re not hiking.”

“Oh, right,” he said, putting his hands on his hips. “Well shit. Nevermind then. Was it really that bad?”

Daichi lifted a hand to his neck. “Yes.”

“Mhm. Well, maybe we just move on, then,” Adam said. “Head further through. Better to see the sights from the safety of a car.”

“For sure,” Daichi agreed. “No hiking. No wilderness.”

“Well,” he said. “You came to the wrong country.”

Daichi laughed, then turned to start heading back towards the main group. “I’ll see how they feel.”

“And I’ll talk to Julia about alternative plans.”

‘See how they feel’ indeed. Daichi whistled to get everyone’s attention, surprised when they all complied and turned to face him. 

“Hey,” he said, clearing his throat. “Adam suggests a hike down through the desert - I’m not sure how long it would be, but-”

“Absolutely fucking not,” Suga interrupted.

“Do you think we’re letting you guys do anything you call a hike anymore?” Akaashi scoffed.

“For sure not,”  Iwa replied. 

“I will gladly fight you if you try to hike,” Tendou agreed. 

“Well damn,” Daichi said. “I guess that was a really simple conversation. Not sure what I expected, but-”

“Why don’t we just drive through the desert,” Suga said. “And then get to a city. And enjoy a nice guided tour among nice civilian people where food and water and medical aid exists.”

Daichi stared at him. 

“I second that option,” Akaashi said. 

“Thirded!” 

“Fourth!”

“Honestly,” Kuroo said. “They make an excellent argument. 

“And my knee is fucked anyhow,” Oikawa agreed. “Let’s just-”

The engine of the motorhome roared to life. Daichi turned around, curious as to what was happening. He was surprised to see the door shut, both Adam and Julia out of sight. Daichi stared at the motorhome as it rumbled, waiting for a moment before watching it pull out back to the highway. 

“Hey- wait!”

Bokuto took off first, sprinting at the motorhome. What he actually expected to do, Daichi was unable to guess, but it didn’t matter. He didn’t get anywhere close to it before Julia’s hand was waving out the window and they were heading down the empty, long highway. 

“Oh, fuck that!” Iwaizumi shouted, turning around with a huff. “Holy shit , are they serious? Are they actually- no, there’s no way-”

Oikawa put his hands on his head, staring at the receding back of the motorhome. 

“Oh my god,” Suga replied, moving over to Daichi’s side. He felt a hand on his elbow, and glanced over to-

“ Kenma .” 

“What?”

Daichi glanced back, further, to where Kuroo was looking around. 

“I don’t think Kenma got off the motorhome-”

“Surely they would have noticed if he was still on board, right?” Ushijima said. “I mean, he is an entire person…”

“He’s pretty quiet-”

“Kenma!” Kuroo shouted, cupping his hands around his mouth. “If you’re hiding in the bushes somewhere to play your game, come out right fucking now!”

Silence greeted them. 

“He’s a whole person!” Akaashi shouted.

“Unless-”

“Unless what,” Kuroo snapped, turning to glare at Daichi as he spoke. 

“Unless that was the point,” he replied. “They took all our fucking stuff, they’re clearly okay with cruelty.”

Kuroo narrowed his eyes, head tilting slightly. “Are you suggesting they willfully kidnapped Kenma?”

“I’m saying we shouldn’t assume they didn’t,” Daichi said, panic rising in his voice. 

“It might just be prank,” Tendou offered, eyes big and clearly just as concerned as the rest of them. “Maybe they’ll be back. You know. A prank.”

“No,” Bokuto said, shaking his head. “ Fuck .”

“No?”

“No,” he repeated. “God, damnit. I knew I should have said something…”

“What is it?” Akaashi asked. 

“Their cupboards,” he said. “Their cupboards were empty. There was nothing inside them. I thought it was weird, since they were living out of the motorhome, supposedly, but…”

Daichi put his hands on the top of his head, staring back at him. 

Slowly, he turned to face the vast, empty highway. Stretching off in both directions. Empty, not a car to be seen. 

“Someone will come by-”

“They still fucking have Kenma,” Kuroo interrupted. “I don’t give a flying shit about whether or not we get rescued , okay? Whether we do or not, someone- someone has- oh my god, they’re going to hurt him…” 

“I’m sure-”

“What if they really hurt him, man, we gotta - do- something…”

“Do what?” Oikawa said, voice distant, as if he hadn’t been listening. “All our stuff is gone, we’ve only got, like, a bit of water. We’re miles and miles and miles from any city, and no cars have driven past us here since he stopped.”

“We have to do something,” Kuroo replied. “We can’t…”

Daichi felt Suga’s hand slip down into his own, fingers interlocking. He squeezed his hand, drawing comfort from it for a moment before clearing his throat to catch all their attention. 

“Okay!” he called. “Come on, now. We don’t want to waste time sitting around.”

“Right,” Ushijima agreed. “Which way do we go, though?”

“Well,” Daichi said, slowly. “Let’s…”

Kuroo pulled out his phone, immediately trying to search for a signal, get any help. Of course, out here in the middle of nowhere there wasn’t exactly cell service. But he had pre saved a bunch of maps, from when he had planned their little adventure. An adventure they should have stuck to. 

“Okay,” he said, pointing off in the direction that the motorhome had gone. “It looks like we’re closer to a town that way. Let’s go.”

“We’re walking?” Bokuto echoed. 

“Better than waiting,” Daichi agreed, turning to look down the road. “If there’s a car coming, it doesn’t matter if we’re here or not, it’ll have to pass us. Let’s not waste time.” 

They were only ten or so minutes into walking down the shoulder of the narrow highway, already beginning to sweat with the heat bearing down. There was no optimism in their steps. 

Daichi stared straight ahead, having taken the lead. He didn’t let go of Suga’s hand, and he could feel the anxiety radiating off him. Why, then, did it feel so normal, for him? It wasn’t anxiety in Daichi’s brain, but familiarity. 

Perhaps this was worse than the woods of Gunma, the heat alone capable of killing them, but it was almost natural. To Daichi, at least, he already knew what to do. Anything it took to get his friends back to safety . 

A car. 

Headlights, a car, and the group lit up with joy. They jumped, waving their hands excitedly as the red jeep roared over the asphalt. And without even slowing down, blasted right past them in a wave of fumes and dust, and off into the distance. 

Daichi saw the look in everyone’s eyes. Kuroo’s, dark and filled with fear and rage and it was probably for everyone’s safety that he wasn’t speaking. Bokuto, absolutely horrified, fearful. Oikawa, set and determined, but soft and worried and tired , more than anything else, and Ushijima, almost unreadable, except for that he had put his hand on Tendou’s elbow, and wasn’t letting go. 

“Well that’s not a great start,” Suga murmured, watching the taillights of the red jeep disappear.

Chapter Text

Have you ever seen the Mojave Desert? Barren doesn’t even begin to describe it. Long expanses of dry dirt, faded green brush and stickly trees that climbed towards a hot and unforgiving sun. The horizon was blocked by steep plateaus of rock, creating the illusion of being trapped. It wasn’t wide open spaces, but it was endless. It was endless, and hot, and quickly it began to sap the life out of the nine men who wandered across it. 

“No,” Bokuto said, pointing at a vulture that rested high atop a scraggly tree. “Fuck that.” 

“He’s not going to bother you,” Akaashi murmured. 

“Still. Fuck that, fuck birds, fuck everything.”

“Fuck everything,” Oikawa echoed, throwing his hands in the air. 

Cars passed, sparingly. A grey honda. A blue bug. None of them stopped. 

Daichi didn’t blame them. He tried not to, at least. He tried not to watch the taillights with anything but understanding - they were nine men, nine grown men . What was one young couple going to do? If Daichi had learned anything, it’s that sometimes people fucked you over for real. Sometimes they lied and pretended to be friends and then ripped the rug out from under you and watched you fall, with glee. He didn’t blame the people in the cars for not stopping, because all things considered, Daichi’s group of athletic volleyball players, trudging in a line across the desert, was probably terrifying. 

“I’m so hot,” Suga whined, fanning his face. “And I’m not even trying to make a pun. This is horrible.” 

Daichi looked back to where Suga was, feeling struck by guilt for not being able to fight the sun for burning his boyfriend.

“I’m sorry,” he said, because there was nothing else to say. They were all hot, and tired, and ready to give up. How long had they been walking for? Three hours? Four? “Do you want to take a rest?”

Suga looked back to him, sad, downturned eyes just shrugging. 

“It’s not going to cool me off.”

“I could use a rest,” Tendou said. Of everyone there, he seemed the most cheerful. Or, maybe, he was just the best at pretending. He trotted along at a rambling pace, eyes keen and wandering over the features of the land. Daichi almost envied his relaxed expression. Perhaps Tendou was just stupid, but maybe it was everyone else over reacting. 

Or…

Kuroo glanced up at them, as they tried to decide if they were going to rest. 

“What do you think?” Daichi asked. 

Kuroo hadn’t really spoken, or tried to lighten the mood at all. Daichi remembered how quickly he had begun to crack with pragmatic anxiety when they had been lost in Japan, and figured this would only be a thousand times worse for him. Kenma, alone somewhere, possibly hurt. And heaven knows what was happening to him. 

“I think we keep going,” Kuroo replied. “What have we got to lose? Sore feet? Burnt skin? Come on. All we need is to get within range of cell service.”

Daichi nodded. 

“It’s so hot, though,” Oikawa complained. “I feel like I’m going to pass out.”

Another good point.

“We don’t have any water,” Iwaizumi murmured. “If we don’t reach a town or city soon, we could… have a problem.”

“Maybe if a car finally stops, somebody there will have water they can give us…” Suga offered. 

“You know where there is water?” Ushijima said, causing everyone to suddenly turn to look back at him, hopeful. Ushijima reached a hand to Kuroo. 

“Your phone?”

Kuroo glared at him, then handed it over. 

He brought up the maps Kuroo had saved from his planning before, and turned them around to show the group. “There’s rivers running along across the desert, and Lake Mead. This road, curves-”

“No,” Kuroo said, taking his phone back. “We’re following the road.”

“Seconded,” Iwaizumi agreed. “Absolutely no way we’re leaving the sight of this road. Someone will eventually call the cops, and they might be confused, but at least they’ll take us to a city.”

Ushijima nodded slowly. “Alright.”

Suga nodded, then looked to Daichi. Actually, Daichi realized, everyone was looking to him. 

“Let’s keep walking,” he said, taking Suga’s hand and turning to start back down the paved cement. 

Walk. Walk. Walk. 

Walk. 

The sun was a bitch. 

“Hey there!” 

Daichi jumped out of his skin at the voice, turning around with the group as they watched a shit, beat up white cab of a tractor-trailer come slowing down the road. The woman who hung out of it was probably in her thirties, with dry reddish hair braided down her back, and sunburnt skin that was absolutely alive with freckles, moles and marks. 

“H-hey!” Daichi called, perking up slightly, and watching as the truck came to a halt beside them. 

“What’s, ah - what are you guys up to?” she said, leaning over to the passenger side window. She had an accent that made her English hard to understand in Daichi’s very formal understanding of the language. 

“Uhm…”

“We…”

“Well…”

“It’s a weird story…”

“Our friend got… taken,” Kuroo piped up. “Can you call the cops?” 

“Oh, geez, sorry,” she chuckled. “No, there’s no service out here. Not even radio. Wait - whadya mean taken?” 

“My friend - we were with this couple… they had a van…”

“Yeah, and we didn’t understand American car rental laws…”

“And we thought it would be fun…”

“They were nice…”

“Someone just tell me what the hell is goin’ on,” she chuckled. “You guys look beat.”

“Yeah,” Daichi said, speaking up because clearly nobody else was going to string a full sentence together. “We were stupid, we agreed to travel with this couple, they… ditched us here and stole all our stuff. And our friend.”

“Oh…”

“Can you give us a lift to the nearest city?” Daichi said. 

“Oh, it’s about an hour’s drive down the road,” she said, beckoning ahead of her. “But I don’t have enough room here for all of you. I could take one… two, if you’re willing to squish.”

They all started glancing at each other. Split up? 

“Okay,” Kuroo said, heading forward and reaching up to the door. “Is it unlocked?”
“Oh, geez-” she said, clearly surprised as she hurried to unlock it. 

“Kuroo!” Ushijima said, clearly just affronted that he might decide so quickly. “It’s - did we not learn our lesson? It’s not safe.” 

Kuroo tugged open the door. “And Kenma’s will a fucking criminal hours away, probably. I’m not wasting time walking. I’ll go with her, then call the cops when I get service and get them to come pick all you up. And find Kenma.”

Daichi felt like there was no way to change his mind, so he nodded. 

“Okay,” he said. “That sounds like a plan-”

“Do you have any water in there?” Oikawa called, leaning forward to look at the woman. She stared at him, then shrugged and handed him a black water bottle.

“There’s some left, I think.”

“Thank you,” Oikawa said, dipping his head. He took the bottle, unscrewing the top and swirling it around to see how much was left. He turned, offering it back to Iwaizumi, who seemed surprised as he took it. 

“The name’s Misty, by the way,” she said, leaning back as Kuroo climbed into the seat. 

“Kuroo Tetsurou.” 

“Well it’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Tetsurou.” 

Kuroo stared at her, opened his mouth to correct her before deciding he didn’t have the energy, and just looked back to the group. 

“Anyone coming with me?”

“Someone should,” Daichi said immediately.

There was hesitation, as everyone looked at each other. 

“Akaashi,” Bokuto said eventually. “Why don’t you go with him? He could probably use a bit of rational thinking don’t you think?” 

“I want to stay with you,” Akaashi replied, blinking back at him. 

“Aww,” Bokuto said, smiling back before nodding towards the truck. “Not kidding though. Go, get out of this heat and get back to the city.”

“I don’t care, I-”

“Please?”

Akaashi stared at him, before relaxing his shoulders and nodding slowly. 

“Okay.”

Bokuto gave a brighter smile, before leaning forward and kissing Akaashi’s forehead, relaxing slightly. “Stay safe,” he said. “We’ll be okay.”

“You better,” Akaashi murmured, squeezing his hand before turning to head to the truck. He pushed himself up, squeezing in beside Kuroo, who was forced onto the middle, which was barely a seat at all. 

Misty’s water bottle was passed around. Daichi took the smallest sip he could, just enough to wet his lips, before turning and handing it to Suga. Suga took a small sip as well, before passing it on. 

“Are you going to be okay?” Daichi asked, quietly. Suga looked a little distant, nodding slowly as he focused on him. His cheeks were flushed, but with the hot sun glowing on the desert around him, he seemed more washed out than ever before. 

“Okay!” Misty called. “You fellas hang out, okay? Well getcha help real quick!” 

“Thank you!” Daichi called, distracted from Suga as he turned to watch the truck slowly drive off. 

Akaashi waved half-heartedly for a moment, but after a few seconds they were nothing but a small note in the distance. 

Bokuto sighed, looking down to his hands before starting to walk again. 

Daichi nudged Suga slightly, who gave him a weak thumbs up before beginning to follow. 

---

“I’m sure it won’t be much longer,” Daichi said, taking a deep breath. They had walked for a bit, before deciding that it wasn’t worth it, if they were just waiting for cops to come grab them. They sat, then, on the side of the road, among the thistles and the groundhogs and watched vultures circle up in wide blue skies. 

“It’s been about an hour,” Ushijima murmured. “They must have had service by now, so it shouldn’t be more than max another hour before someone shows up…”

“Unless Misty ditched them and stole their stuff too,” Oikawa muttered.

“Don’t say that,” Bokuto muttered. “Please.”

Everyone sighed. 

Suga slipped and let his head rest down against Daichi’s shoulder. Everyone was red and burnt and exhausted, but Daich was beginning to worry about Suga. There was nothing he could do to cool him down, though. 

“Are you okay?”

Daichi lifted his head, to look across at where Ushijima was talking with Tendou, one arm gently around his shoulders, comfortingly and almost tenderly trying to hold him. It was awkward, and weird, and exactly the type of energy two “just friends” would bring to the party in this moment. 

“I’m fine,” Tendou muttered, lifting a hand up to his forehead. “I really don’t feel well, though… Everything’s hazy…”

Ushijima hummed, rubbing his shoulder. “Here,” he murmured, gently guiding him down. “Lay down for a moment. 

Tendou gave him a smile, something clearly intended to be amicable and playful, but came out as desperately tired and uncomfortable. He laid his head down on Ushijima’s lap, taking a deep breath. Ushijima shifted his body, trying to block most of the sun from him. 

Oikawa watched them for a moment, then flopped back to lay in the dirt. “This is horrible,” he muttered. “I don’t think I can survive this any more. Why did we think this was a good idea?” 

“Mhm?”

“Travelling together! Why did we think this was a good idea?”

“I told you all you should not be friends, right at the beginning,” Iwaizumi muttered. “You’re all cursed, or something.” 

Oikawa groaned. 

Suga jerked away from Daichi suddenly, causing him to jump in surprise. He only made it a few feet before buckling in, vomiting suddenly into the hot dirt, overcome by heat and exhaustion. 

“Oh-”

“Ah-”

“Shit-”

Daichi shoved himself over to him, quickly pulling him back and sitting him up, trying to get a look at his face. He pressed the back of his hand to his cheek, the skin hot and flush and dry, no sweat to be seen. His eyes were barely open, and glassy. 

“Oh, Suga-”

“Oh, god…” Bokuto groaned, pushing himself up. “This is not good… Not good…”

Ushijima put a hand down, worriedly feeling Tendou’s skin. Tendou didn’t really respond, weakly batting at his hand as if trying to sleep. 

“Are you okay?” Daichi asked, holding Suga tightly. “Do you think you can stand?” 

Suga shook his head, coughing and shuddering - almost shivering - before leaning forward and thumping against Daichi’s chest with a soft groan. 

“We have to get out of the sun,” Daichi said. 

“Out of the sun is half the battle,” Ushijima replied. “It’ll still be hot , even in the shade.”

“Well we can’t stay here!”

Ushijima shut his mouth. 

It took him a second to figure out how to stand up with Suga’s weight against him, eventually managing it with Bokuto’s help to keep him steady. Daichi grunted, hauling his delirious boyfriend up. Suga did his best to stay on his feet, swaying. 

“I really… mhm… really don’t… feel great…” he coughed, stumbling a step forward. Daichi caught him, immediately giving up on seeing if he could stand and bending to swipe out his knees and pick him up. 

“Don’t you worry, baby,” Daichi murmured. “We’re going to get you cooled down.” 

Ushijima got Tendou up again, and briefly made eyecontact with Daichi. For a second, Daichi almost hated him, because he recognized the fear reflected back in his eyes. At least it’s not my boy. Not yet.

How long would it be? 

Daichi was already exhausted. Suga in his arms felt like a burning weight, but he didn’t dare stumble or put him down. They had to go. They should never have stopped - or, should they have stopped sooner? Should Daichi have been the one to suggest Suga go in the truck? Bokuto had leapt, knowing immediately what to do to keep his partner as safe as possible… 

If Daichi had taken less water, would Suga had been more hydrated? If he’d moved quicker or stopped more frequently, or if he’d waved down a car sooner. If, if if. If he hadn’t seen Adam, if they’d never played volleyball, if they’d checked the laws around car rentals, if Ushijima’s father didn’t live in California, if Adam was a fucking bitch, if if if if. 

“Suga? You there?”

No response. 

If only. If only they weren’t cursed. If only Daichi could do something. 

If only he could fix everything.  

Chapter Text

“Well, see, my daughter’s back on the ranch,” Misty was saying, driving with one hand and using the other to crunch on handfuls of doritos. She seemed to relaxed for Kuroo’s tastes and expectations, but he didn’t dare complain. Not only was he on the edge of his seat, desperately hoping to get Kenma back okay, but he didn’t dare risk setting Misty off and triggering her to turn on them. Forgive him, for not exactly trusting strangers right now. “She’s turning eleven in the fall. Beautiful little girl, loves horses. But it don’t really pay the bills, and I do local trucking around the state to help pay bills. My cousin, now, he’s a state trooper and real good at his job, but a bit lazy, y’know? He helps pay the bills too.”

Kuroo, truthfully, did not understand most of what she was saying. English was hard, and her accent was annoying. He was pretty sure they were talking about horses, or something. 

“Is anyone watching your daughter?” Akaashi asked, slightly better than Kuroo in English. 

“What? She’s eleven, she’s fine. Jim does up there and makes sure she’s doin’ alright when I’m gone.”

“Oh.”

Kuroo groaned, sinking further down into his seat. He was developing a headache. The air conditioning of the old truck was nice, at least, but he still felt like he was going to throw up. Everything felt tipped over on its head. Everything was wrong. 

He just wanted to go back to what he’d had a few weeks ago. Stupid summer roadtrip plan meant nothing, all this friends meant nothing, adventure meant nothing, if he didn’t get to do it all with Kenma. 

Especially not if Kenma got hurt because of it. 

He’d never live with himself. He’d never be able to forgive himself - he’d never be able to forgive anyone if anything had happened to Kenma. He couldn’t. It would be over for him. Say goodbye to his future, his plans, his family. He can’t imagine his life moving forward if Kenma wasn’t in it. 

He wrapped his arms around his stomach, closing his eyes. God-

“There!” 

Kuroo jerked his head up, anxiety spiking through his body as he glanced around, looking for what Akaashi was pointing at on the road. 

“ Pull over! ”

---

Kenma Kozume was very unhappy. Not like, in life. In life, in general, he found himself decently happy most of the time, and when he wasn’t, there was usually a distinct reason for it - Kuroo demanding extra practice, any time anyone made him run, or when he lost a save file on his game. Right now, specifically, he was very unhappy because he was pretty sure he was in great physical danger. 

Kenma had grumbled after fighting with Kuroo, and had not wanted to leave for the achingly hot sun outside of the camper. On the best of days, he could barely tolerate the heat or discomfort. On a day when he was fighting with Kuroo? Absolutely not. So he had snuck away, locking himself in the bathroom of the camper to play on his game. 

He knew he was dragging everyone down. He knew that, because he always did. That’s what everyone told him, at least. All of his volleyball teammates, complaining about him never hanging out with them outside of practice. All his classmates in his history class, grumbling about how boring he was, only wanting to talk about the project. Kuroo, ten minutes ago, complained about how Kenma didn’t like him. 

He continued to mutter to himself as he mindlessly played his game, an easy level that he was barely paying attention to. The game helped him think, and it helped him forget everything. It was perfect.

He didn’t understand how Kuroo didn’t see the obvious. 

You’re only friends with me because it was convenient.

Did he think Kenma was that complacent? That he needed friends that badly? If Kenma didn’t like Kuroo, Kuroo would have been told that . He should know better than to think Kenma ever did anything he didn’t want to do at least a little bit. 

Kuroo was just an idiot, he decided. An idiot that thought he was so smart, because he studied advanced chemistry and got an A in every class he took. But he was an idiot none the less and Kenma would hold to that. 

So Kenma stayed in the bathroom because he was sulking, and he would never have admitted it, but he was hoping maybe Kuroo would come knock on the door to find him, and apologize first, so then Kenma could apologize and maybe he would get a hug, and they could go out and look at the view together, and everything would feel okay. 

And then the camper had started moving. 

He lifted his head, looking around, wondering if they’d gotten sick of the sight super quick, or maybe he’d lost more time playing his game than he thought. 

He heard a cackling laugh, standing up and hurrying to open the bathroom door, looking down the length of the motorhome and noticing it painfully, startlingly empty. Julia was driving, and Adam had his feet up on the dash. They were laughing, throwing middle fingers out the window and grinning. 

Kenma cast his eyes around quickly then ducked back into the bathroom, heart hammering against his ribcage as he stared at the frosted glass window, at the blurry smudges of colour passing beyond it. 

Why were they leaving? Where was everyone else? 

He closed his eyes. Oh, god, what was happening? 

Maybe he missed something, he decided. Maybe Adam and Julia were leaving to get something, and were going to go back. Maybe they were just relocating to be more out of the way. Maybe, maybe… But… but…

They were going so fast. The rumble and bump of the wheels over the highway indicated that. He could hear the couple laughing at the wheel. Kenma wasn’t very good at English at all, and figured there would be no use asking . 

Plus…

The instinct in his gut was rarely wrong. Kenma had amazing intuition, and everything about right now screamed wrong . 

What had they done to Kuroo? To the others? Just leave them there, or were they hurt? Why?

Kenma sat down on the little toilet again, staring at the door. 

Did they know he was here?

What did he do? 

Oh, god… what did he do? 

What should he do? 

What now? 

Kenma felt his heart beginning to race, breathing tightening in his chest as his lungs started to seize. He squeezed his eyes shut, swallowing and wrapping his arms tighter around himself. 

Think, Kenma, think… you got this… 

They can’t drive forever… eventually they’ll stop. When they stop, he could run. 

Yes. Yes, that would work… 

He still had his phone! He checked it, though, incredibly disappointed to find no service. Shit. 

Nevermind that. He would wait until he felt them park, and then listen for them to leave. When they left, he’d get out and run off. Who cares where and how and when, he’d just make a break for it. Find someone to call Kuroo, sort this out. 

It would be okay. 

Kenma took a shaky, long breath, squeezing his eyes shut as they bounced along the highway. It would be okay. 

He glanced at the time, and watched the time pass as he listened to the muffled chatter of the couple. Far too happily. 

Of course they would be happy. They just successfully robbed ten people blind. Or, nine, technically right now…

He kept checking his phone, hoping for service, to call for help before having to reveal himself. 

Still nothing. 

His anxiety rose. Time ticked on. Twenty minutes. Thirty minutes. Forty-

Footsteps. 

He squeezed his eyes shut. 

Footsteps, coming closer. Adam’s voice, louder and still muffled by the door. 

Please, please, please be going to a closet. Please be going to the bed at the back of the motorhome. Anything but the bathroom. Anything but the bathroom. Kenma felt the world beginning to slow down, and he reached up a shaking hand to lock the bathroom door. 

A second later, he saw the whole door shake as Adam tugged on it. 

“What the- Hey Julia!” he called. “The bathroom door’s locked!”

“Maybe it’s just stuck again?” Julia called. “Try jiggling it!”

Kenma’s nails dug into his palms, whole body frozen as Adam gave the door a yank. 

“No, it’s actually locked!” Adam said. “How’s it locked?”

A sudden and harsh slam came against the door, and Kenma gave a reflexive, uncontrollable yelp. 

“Holy shit, someone’s in there!” 

“What?”

Now they were really yanking on the door. Kenma felt the whole motorhome swerve slightly, and he thumped against the wall, shaking in fear as he tried to figure out how to get out. He glanced up - there was a little hatch in the ceiling. But the most that would do, if he could even fit through it, would get im onto the roof. And that was even more-

The weak lock on the cheap motorhome’s door was easy to force open. The door slammed into the opposite wall. 

“ You! ” Adam shouted, anger across his face. Kenma had no doubts in his head that Adam was a dangerous man - not just a thief, or a criminal or an asshole, but someone truly capable of violence. 

Kenma shrieked and bolted. He shoved into Adam with as much force as he could muster, enough to surprise him into taking a few steps backwards, and then turned to bolt down the length of the motorhome. 

“Hey!” 

Adam was fast, and strong, and twisted around, grabbing Kenma by the shirt before he could get more than a few steps, yanking him back. He got tangled up in his grip, twisting away but losing his balance. Kenma hit the floor of the RV heavily, grunting as the wind left his lungs and he tried to push himself up. 

“Holy shit!” Julia is shrieking, torn between safe driving and glancing over her shoulder to see what was going on. Each time she looked away, she swerved, causing the battleground behind her to shift and jerk the occupants off balance. 

Kenma tried to get up, but was immediately thrown against the table. He took a deep breath, vision spinning. 

Fight or flight was an understatement. The only thing in his brain was survival, and he didn’t know if that meant breaking a fist on Adam’s jaw or leaping out the window. 

“You little shit-” Adam growled, tripping over some of the bags they had stolen and grabbing Kenma’s shirt again, hauling him up. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

Kenma twisted around as he was moved, deciding not to answer and instead just slamming his fist into Adam’s gut the best that he could. It earned him a gasp of pain, and he was let go, and then he was running. 

The motorhome was still racing down the highway. Julia seemed to be slightly slowing down, looking for a pullout to stop so they could handle the problem, but Kenma wasn’t going to wait around for that. 

He took a leap, tripping over bags that belonged to his friends. Wishing he had just a second or two more to grab something as he went. He stumbled down the few internal steps to the door. He crushed into the screen, grunting as he fumbled to find the lock on the door. 

“Hey!” 

He felt Adam grabbing, hands painfully tight, trying to haul him away, but the moment the door was open, gravity took over and he decided to take the pain of leaping from a moving vehicle in favour of facing the couple’s full wrath. 

Adam shrieked, barely managing to let go of Kenma as Kenma let gravity take over, clinging onto the inside of the door with barely a finger’s grip, gasping. 

Kenma, immediately upon making it out the door, had much bigger fish to worry about than whatever was happening with Adam. 

His knee hit the pavement first, but his momentum carried him both forward and out, and soon he left asphalt and hit dirt and brambles, then he was rolling, and then the ground disappeared. 

Pain flared through every part of his body as he was torn up by the bushes, twisting around until finally the prickly brambles brought him to a stop, a few meters from the road down a sharp angled cliff. 

As he felt his body stop moving, his head started to spin and his vision was flickering in and out of darkness. The sun was immediately too hot, the heat too stifling. He took a deep breath, and when he managed to focus his eyes down on his predicament, he was suddenly very thankful for the painfully scratching bushes that stopped him from hurtling down a cliff. 

He tilted his head back, still drawing deep, thick breaths of tepidly warm air, not seeing a sign of the motorhome. 

Silence. 

Bugs, hissing in the bushes. 

Kenma felt sick. 

He waited, and waited. Adam must have decided he wasn’t worth chasing. 

He pushed himself up slowly. The movement required to move his body felt heavy and painful and almost impossible, and each motion dragged his limbs through thorny brambles, scratching up his skin even more than it already was. 

When he tried to walk, shoot, agonizing pain shot up his leg. 

But he did. 

Kenma may have been unhappy doing so, but he dragged himself up, slowly but surely. One foot, two, three. Up, through the bushes. Blood prickled from his arms and legs and hands and every other patch of exposed skin. A million tiny scratches, scraping up his body. 

He clawed his way to the top, then glanced down beside the road. His chest heaving, body shaking, he sat in the dirt and broke into anxious, terrified sobbing. 

He laid down after a minute, letting himself just breathe and cry. 

Eventually, he had to get himself together. He couldn’t just die out here from exposure after all that . 

When he went to push himself up, to sit up, he found his hand almost unusably sore, his fingers aching and stiff. He stared at it for a moment before concluding he wasn’t a doctor and wasn’t going to assume anything. 

When he tried to use his other had to get up, he found his knee absolutely wrecked, already beginning to turn red, then bruised dark blue and purple. Again, no assumptions. He’s not a doctor. 

He stared at himself, covered in blood and sand and wondered if this was how all road trips in America go. 

---

Akaashi had never in his life expected to have Kuroo Tetsurou climbing on him but here they were. 

“Oh my god - I’ll get out too - holy- Kuroo- ow- ow- ”

Akaashi squirmed and tried to make room as Kuroo unceremoniously and ungracefully shoved over him and out the door, practically falling out of the cab and to the ground below. Misty had thankfully managed to stop in the middle of the road, but from the expression on her face, she was as shocked as he was. 

Akaashi took a breath, brushing himself down. 

Kuroo hit the ground and was up, sprinting down the side of the road to where the limp, prone shape of a young man was laying. 

“Kenma!” Kuroo shrieked, and the pure pain and anxiety in his voice tore Akaashi’s heart out - it made him think of the spring, of the last time Akaashi had thought a loved one dead. He saw Misty flinch, closing her eyes. He wondered if she was thinking about her daughter. 

“Kenma! Kenma, are you alright?”

Kenma looked like a victim of something , body cacked in dried blood and dust. The bruising up his wrist and on his knee looked bloody and violent. Did Adam do that? 

Kuroo put his hand on Kenma’s cheek, shaking gently to try and get his attention. “Come on, Kenma, please… come on…”

Kenma croaked, weakly opening his eyes. 

“Kuroo- oh, god, did I die?”

Kuroo broke into laughter, that at first sounded like a sob, then turned into hysterical relief, hauling Kenma up and wrapping him up so tightly that Akaashi feared he might crush the delicate setter. 

Misty pulled the truck off the the shoulder of the road, then Akaashi got out, heading over to them. 

Kenma was weakly hugging back. 

“I’m alright,” he was murmured, nestled in against Kuroo’s shoulder and looking so relieved. “I was just… resting…”

“Oh, my god, Kenma, what happened to you… Did…” Kuroo pulled back, holding his cheeks in his hands. “Did Adam do this to you?” 

Akaashi heard the threat in the question, and the hairs on the back of his neck began to stand up. 

Kenma swallowed, then shook his head slightly. “No, no…” he said. “I… I jumped…”

“You jumped?”

“From the… he was trying to get me… I don’t know… I was scared, I fell… I…”

Kuroo nodded, listening and listening as Kenma tried to get his scrambled thoughts together. As he trailed off, Kenma lifted his brown eyes up, glistening with tears of relief and pain. 

“Kenma, I…” Kuroo started, before cutting himself off, both of them looking completely at a loss. Tension hung high in the air - the anger radiating from Kuroo, the fear and trauma off Kenma. 

Kuroo leaned forward, and since there were no words to be spoken, no words to justify or explain this, no words that could make it better, he kissed him instead. 

Akaashi raised his eyes. 

Kenma seemed to freeze, gasping slightly in surprise before sinking into the kiss, relaxing almost completely into Kuroo’s arms and closing his eyes. 

It was only a second, maybe too, before Kuroo pulled away, pressing a soft kiss to his forehead.

“I’m not going to let you out of my sight again,” he murmured, before pulling him back into another tight hug. 

Kenma did not complain.

---

The police sirens ruined an otherwise perfectly good romantic moment, they thought. Kuroo lifted his head, one hand cradling the back of Kenma’s head against his shoulder, the other wrapped around him. The police, two cruisers that pulled off to either side of them, had not been called by Kuroo’s understanding. Who did that? 

The police got out, announcing themselves, and approaching with great urgency. 

“Hey, boys,” one called. “Is there a problem here? We had multiple reports of a body-”

Kuroo broke into tired laughter. 

Misty hurried forward to take over, pulling one of the cops aside. “Oh, officer, the story is so much worse than you’re thinking,” she laughed. “Unless there’s another body somewhere - no, no, I think the body you’re lookin’ for is that kid right there, who I think is named Kenma, but I don’t speak Japanese, so don’t trust me on it.”

The officer blinked, looking over to the boys, before looking back to her. “Oh?”

“But there’s so much more.”

Chapter Text

Things were bad, admittedly, far before it reached a critical point. Daichi could only carry Suga for so long. Though in his romantic heart he wanted to insist that he would be able to carry the boy for as long as he needed to to get him to safety, the ache that was burning in his muscles was telling him otherwise. His vision swam in darkness and fuzz, his head pounded, and his tongue felt like it had swollen to three times it’s regular size, blocking burning air from scalding his lungs. 

Daichi only had a mind for Suga, a mind that was swimming not only in terror and anxiety, but in heat and pain and thirst. As such, he didn’t realize his friends were dropping like flies. 

Tendou, who seems most cheerful despite being in one of the worst states, was laughing and mocking and playing along, as if terrified of admitting he felt sick, until suddenly he wasn’t , and his silence was jarring as Ushijima slowed down, falling behind to accommodate the other’s walking before asking, softly, if he wanted to be carried. Tendou resisted, laughing, making fun of the situation-

“Oh, Wakatoshi-kun, that’s so romantic! You, carrying me in the desert, oh, but I could never ask you to do such a thing-”

And then Tendou was hitting the dirt, his feet unable to make full steps, tripping over himself and collapsing. Ushijima pulled him up, tenderly helping brush dirt and rocks from his hands and elbows. Please, let me help you. 

So Tendou relented, silently, and the silence was the part that unnerved everyone. Ushijima was stoic as ever in his expression and posture, and Tendou hooked his arms around his neck, awkwardly climbing up into a sleepy sort of piggy-back that could almost have passed for cute if not for the life threatening heat driving that sleep upon him. 

But still, Daichi only worried about Suga. One step, then another, through the desert. 

Oikawa had started to lean on Iwaizumi. At first it was normal, tired, but when it began to become apparent that Oikawa was losing the ability to keep his own feet moving, Iwaizumi was barely better off. He wrapped an arm around Oikawa, murmuring encouragement, trying to keep him going. It wasn’t doable. 

Iwai couldn’t keep him standing by himself, and when he tried to do as the others did, taking his entire weight, his head swirled and his vision darkened and he had to stop, before he passed out. 

Bokuto shuffled over, grabbing at Oikawa to try and help, but it was mostly tired himself. They managed to keep him up. 

And Daichi walked, watching the dryness of Suga’s skin. It was too hot . Too-

A loud, honking truck came to a halt beside them, and the group all turned. 

There were two guys there, seeming confused. Heavier set guys, with big beards, then kind that you never really see in a city. They seemed gruff, sort of greasy, probably really into antiques. 

They seemed like angels to the dying group. 

“I’m sorry, what’s goin’ on here?” one of the men says, leaning out of the door. “Are you fellas alright?” 

Oh, god, Daichi thinks. Another heavy American accent his English class had never prepared him for. What the hell was this state? He feels himself slipping. He feels Suga slipping. The other groans, quietly, and Daichi curses quietly as he’s forced to put him down, into the dirt. 

“We need - do you have water? Please?” he manages to say, looking back up at him. He’s struck by a sense of mortality here like nothing before. The truck is too big above him, his vision warps the sky, and the deep azure blue seems endlessly expansive and deep in a way it never has before. Suga is heavy and warm in his arms, and this mysterious man looks down on him, like a god to an ant. 

And then he hands him a water bottle. 

Daichi takes it, hands practically shaking in excitement and eagerness, unscrewing the cap and doing what came to mind first and just splashing a random spurt across Suga’s face, the cool water soaking burnt skin and causing him to gasp, half waking up. Daichi pressed the bottle to his lips. 

Suga is confused, disoriented, but he drinks, just for a moment, before saying: “What- Dai-uh- mmm-”

“It’s okay,” Daichi said, nodding to encourage him. “Take another sip, you’ll be alright.”

“I don’t feel good,” he said, voice heavy with sickness. 

“I know,” Daichi replied. “I know. But it’s almost over. We’re going to get you home, okay? Hang in there.” 

Suga nodded, big, exhausted hazel eyes filled with nothing but trust. A look that Daichi would do anything to not betray. 

“Daichi-” 

He looked up, seeing Bokuto stumbling forward. He realized everyone else was waiting for the water, too. 

As much as he wanted to keep it for Suga, to hoard it all, he knew it had to be shared. He handed it up to Bokuto, who took it eagerly and took a sip, before passing it to Iwaizumi, who began coaxing Oikawa to drink. 

“What’s happened to you fellas?” the man said. “I haven’t seen a car for miles, where’ve you come from?” 

“We- ah-” Daichi doesn’t even know where to start. He stands up again, muscles screaming and tired and hot. He lifts Suga up, the other swaying on his feet and leaning against his shoulder. To steady himself. “It’s a long story. We need to get to a hospital, some of us - all of us, need water, to cool off…”

“Oh, hell yeah - do you mind riding in the back of the truck?” 

“At this point, I’d ride in a fucking wagon if it got us to a city.” 

---

The entire police squadron blurred passed them, screaming, sirens on, lights going, the whole deal. Daichi had never felt wind feel as good as the hot wind did in the back of that truck. Suga lay against him, half asleep. Ushijima kept hair out of Tendou’s eyes. Oikawa lay on Iwaizumi’s lap, and Bokuto had laid down, tolerating the bump of the highway. 

Ushijima watched the lights retreat. 

“I don’t think that’s the last we’ll see of them,” he says. 

“No time to stop,” Daichi replied, voice hoarse.
---

“You boys are very lucky,” the clinic doctor was saying, slowly going through inspecting everyone. Oikawa was barely awake, but with the water the doctor had given him being hurriedly taken down his throat, he was feeling a little more lucid. 

Lucid enough to process the warmth of Iwaizumi’s hand on his leg, the tension in his fingers, the anxiety in his posture. He leaned over to press a soft kiss to his cheek. 

“We’re okay, Iwa-chan,” he teased softly. “We’re always good. We’re damn near invincible at this point.”

Iwa turned his head slightly towards him, but didn’t say anything. 

“Too much longer, and there may have been irreversible damage,” the doctor went on. Oikawa was barely listening. “As it is, you might feel sick for a while yet, and you may experience some memory loss, or fuzziness. I’ve called for a transfer to the local hospital, so you can get proper medications and be looked after.”

“Thank you,” Daichi was said. “We- we have friends… I don’t know if you can ask, they went ahead, one of them was kidnapped-”

“ What? ” the doctor interrupts, eyes raising. 

“Oh, god, right-” Daichi said. Oikawa actually managed to laugh at the tone of his voice. “Right, shit, yeah, there was a whole reason we were stuck in the desert-”

---

“Mr. Tetsurou?” 

Kuroo lifts his head to look down the hospital corridor, watching as Misty approaches him. She was kind. Kinder than he had been prepared for a stranger to be. She had helped him get Kenma out of the police car and into the hospital. She’d helped him fill out all the paperwork and explain what everyone was doing. She’d stayed with them an hour or so longer, until they knew nothing was going to change, then she had stepped out just long enough to call her daughter and explain that she wasn’t going to be home when expected. 

Kuroo had tried to tell her she didn’t have to say, but she’d had none of it. 

“The police are saying they’ve found your friends,” she said. “It took them a while - actually, they’d shown up at a clinic on the edge of the city. Very dehydrated, heat stroke, everything. But they’re being transferred here. It shouldn’t be too much longer.”

He felt the tension in the air break, and broke into laughter. “They’re all okay?”

“All seven of them,” she confirmed. “Well, I’m sure there will be some… doctor stuff to do, but I didn’t ask about that. They’re all found, that’s what I know.”

He laughed louder, relief washing through him, and he leapt forward, wrapping his arms around Misty and squeezing her tightly. She squeaked, seeming surprised, before chuckling quietly and patting his back. 

“Alright, mister,” she said. “Don’t go gettin’ emotional on me now, ok-”

“You don’t understand,” he laughed, pulling back in slight embarrassment. “I… we’ve been through a lot. I’ve… I don’t…”

“It’s okay,” she said. “Really, I haven’t done anything that any good person wouldn’t have.”

“No, it’s not… it’s just…” he pulled back more fully from her, wrapping his arms around himself. “It’s about me. If you hadn’t shown up, if someone had’t shown up, I would have been useless. I didn’t do anything, and I didn’t even have ideas - and Ushijima’s ideas were bad, but at least he was trying, and Bokuto managed to save Akaashi and lord knows Daichi probably willpowered an air conditioning unit into the desert and I - I just… I can’t do anything. For anyone. Ever.” 

He looked at her. 

“Oh,” Misty cooed softly, lifting a hand up to his shoulder. “That’s not true… You know that’s not true, you’ve been through a lot, and you can’t expect yourself to be prepared for everything. You’re just a kid.”

“I should have been able to protect Kenma, at least,” Kuroo said. “Instead I…”

“You know what you can do?” Misty said, voice quiet and assuring. “You can go back to Kenma’s room, and you can be beside him when he wakes up. Being there for someone, that’s the best thing anyone can do.” 

He nodded, first slowly and uncertainly, and then with more vigor. 

“Yes, of course,” he said, dipping his head slightly. “Thank you.”

She smiled again, then pinched his cheek. “You boys need someone to look after you, don’t you?”

“That’s… that’s what people keep saying.”

---

“ Akaashi! ” 

The tackle hug was not unfamiliar, and right now it was beyond comforting. Akaashi grabbed at Bokuto, breaking into soft laughter against his shoulder. They hugged in the corridor for God knows how long, swaying and laughing and pressing kisses to cheeks and foreheads and eyebrows. Eventually he pulled back, looking up at him. 

“You’re okay,” he said. “The heat wasn’t too bad?”
“Ah, no-” Bokuto chuckled, pulling back and lifting his arms to flex. “Piece of cake! No sun is gonna kill me.”

Akaashi laughed, shaking his head in amusement, then smacking him gently and trying to get him to stop showing off. “What about everyone else. Is everyone okay?” 

“I… think so,” he said. 

“You think so?”

“Some were better off than others.”

---

“That was scary,” Daichi murmurs, his head on Suga’s leg. Suga is in a little hospital room, a curtain pulled around him, fluids being pumped into him. They’d given Daichi what he figured was basically gatorade to boost his electrolytes and sodium content. He’d been lucky, that a quick evaluation showed signs of heat stroke, but nothing more severe that a cool pack on his forehead hadn’t helped clear. 

Suga had been hooked up to an IV to get fluids into him now . 

That was scary. That was the scary thing, when a professional was suddenly worried, when they were hurrying around. Suga, and Tendou, and Iwaizumi and Oikawa, all hurried and cared for. 

“It was,” Suga agreed, voice heavy and tired. “But it’s over now.”

Daichi wasn’t sure. 

Well…

It was over, wasn’t it? So why didn’t it feel like it was? 

Was it just anxiety that clawed at his stomach? A sick sense of dissatisfaction? Like something hadn’t come to completion, like something had been forgotten. He was looking for a  climax to a story he had never been reading in the first place. 

“They said you’ll be okay,” Daichi murmured, more for his own benefit than Suga’s. “But that you might be sick for a few days, and you have to keep out of the sun…”

“This sunburn will do that for me,” Suga muttered. 

“And you need to stay hydrated,” he continued. 

“All of our stuff got stolen,” Suga replies. 

“We got real fucked there, huh.”

“Like so fucked. We let two Americans steal our shit and our friend.”

“Well we got one of those back.”

“Speaking of-”

“Kuroo’s been speaking with the police,” Daichi confirmed, before he could ask fully. “So has Ushijima. They’re sorting it out, filing a report…”

“Do you think we’ll get out stuff back?”

“I… I don’t know…”

Maybe that’s what was missing. Their stuff, their stuff. Would having their stuff back make this whole thing feel complete? 

Or maybe Daichi had just developed a reflexive need to be stressed. Don’t get him wrong, he hated everything that had happened, and would never risk any of his friends in that situation, ever again. He was going to develop the habits of an agoraphobe at this rate. 

But there was something comforting about it. About knowing his role. 

In that, when it was life or death, there was no worrying . It was just do or die, and Daichi was really good at do . 

“Are we going home?” Suga asked. 

“Yeah,” Daichi murmured back. “We’re going home.”

“When?”

“As soon as you’re better, okay?” 

“Okay.”

---

“He said his name was Adam,” Ushijima said. “The girl was Julia.”

“Easily fake names,” one of the cops said, putting his hands on his hips. “Do you remember any other details, anything about the camper, their faces - scars, birthmarks, anything defining?”

“I… no,” Ushijima said. “You can ask everyone else, but, honestly… no… Like I’d said, they were just sort of… average. Normal.” 

“I thought Julia might be latina,” Kuroo offered. “She looked sort of… mixed, in some way. Her hair was very curly.”

The police officer nodded slowly, looking to his partner. 

“And the camper, do you remember a license plate, or which company had made it?” 

Both boys shook their heads slowly. 

“Do you think Kenma would know something?” Ushijima asked, glancing to Kuroo. 

“I doubt it,” Kuroo said. “It’s not like there’s anything inside it, right. Just… all our stuff…”

“Alright,” the police officer said, dipping his head. “Thank you, for your time. And I’m so sorry you had to go through this.”

“Thanks,” Kuroo said, though it’s not very genuine. 

---

“I’m so glad you’re okay,” Ushijima murmurs, wrapping his arms tighter around Tendou, practically crushing the boy in the process.

Tendou laughed softly, enjoying the crushing. “Ah, me? No, no need to worry. Like a small bug, I’ll be the thing surviving the nuclear war.”

Ushijima snorted, moving his arms down further to hug him even tighter. 

“I wouldn’t have been able to handle it, if something more serious had happened to you,” he murmured. 

“Like a broken rib? Wakatoshi-kun, you are really testing the strength of my bones right-ah, thank you,” he chuckled, as Ushijima pulled back. He lifted a hand to his head, scratching through his hair. 

“I’m sorry,” Ushijima said, quietly. 

“It’s okay,” he said, before saying: “But I think we should get going. They said they’d put us up for a night in motel or something.”

“Right,” Ushijima agreed, though he didn’t make any move to leave. 

Tendou stared back at him. 

A staring contest, perhaps, Tendou decides, reflexively keeping his eyes open until he sees Ushijima blink. Oh, so not that. 

“Is something wrong?” Tendou asked. 

Ushijima shook his head after a moment. After all, there were no proper words to encapsulate how relieved he felt, to have him safe. To be out of the heat and back to playful banter. How badly Ushijima wanted to lean in and kiss him, to hold him close and be there for him like everyone else around him was for the people they loved. 

“Okay, this is weird,” Tendou said, because Ushijima was still staring. 

I think I’m in love with you. I think I have been for a really long time. I think if I had to live without you, I’d never feel alive again. You were my first real friend, the first person to see me as more than an athlete, as more than my mannerisms and my anxieties and my awkwardness. You laughed at my jokes and you understood my problems and you invited me to play games and hang out and I fell in love with the way you snort when you laugh and your eyes squeeze shut and the fact that you’d never admit how much you still love the childhood cartoons you grew up on and bright colours and new things. And sometimes, if I’m lucky, when you’re really tired, late at night, you’ll be laying in my bed and laughing at a video and you’re lean in close, close enough to kiss me but we never do, and you’ll whisper my name to see if I’m awake, and thank me for being your friend when you think I’m asleep and so yes, yes, Satori, I’m in love with you and always will be and I don’t know what to do with that. I don’t know how to tell you that. 

Tendou snapped his fingers. “Dude,” he said. “What’s up? Where’d you go?” 

“Sorry,” Ushijima said, before turning to head down the hospital hall. “We should catch up with the others. 

Tendou frowned, watching him go for a moment before just sighing and following after him. 

---

“I wish we didn’t have to leave Kenma,” Kuroo mumbled. 

“It’ll be okay,” Daichi said, patting his back. “We’ll be good as new shortly, and we’ll be back in Japan, and we can put all this behind us.”

Kuroo laughed. “I think we said that last time.”

“Yeah,” Daichi agreed. “I think we did.”

Chapter Text

Daichi wakes up just past one am, whole body coated in sweat and skin cold to the touch. The darkness suffocates him, each tiny shadow a leering, horrifying monster that might rip or scratch or consume him. He feels his lightheadedness and wonders if he can see any darkness at all, or if his vision has blurred out. 

Everything is too exposed. He draws his legs up under the covers and wonders if hiding like a little kid might even help. He’s comforted his siblings before. The youngest of which went through a spell of nightmares. He knows how sometimes the only thing they want is simply to not be alone in the dark. To not feel vulnerable. 

He turns and reaches out to grab Suga. Put a hand on his shoulder and wake him up. Tell him everything, spill everything, admit to how difficult it is to be alone, wondering if this time, maybe, he’ll never find his way back to people again. But his hands stops short. 

Suga sleeps peacefully. For now. Eyes closed and hair a mess, he’s resting on his own hand and breathing in deep, relaxed breaths. Even in the dark, Daichi can just make out the soft outline of his jaw, the curve of his nose and lips, the calmness of him. 

He can’t. 

He can’t wake him. 

He can’t put all this onto him. He’s not supposed to need to be coddled, he’s not supposed to need protection and assurance and comfort, he’s supposed to be the leader. He’s supposed to be stronger than this, than nightmares . 

Daichi is not supposed to be traumatized, he’s supposed to be a captain. 

He sits up fully, moving slowly to not disturb the bed too much. He runs his hands over his eyes, through his hair, then down his cheeks. He tries to willpower a fear of the dark away. He tries to force himself to think rationally - look, Daichi, look. 

Those aren’t eyes, in the darkness, it’s the glow of the motel microwave’s time. 1:13. 

It’s not looming, dark trees and endless forest, it’s shadows from the closet that was left just slightly ajar. 

It’s not bears in the woods, growling, and bugs swarming, and predators watching, it’s cars and horns and the city traffic outside. 

Suga is beside him. The other boys, his best friends, they’re all in the motel. Everyone is safe. 

Even Kenma, discharged from the hospital with thankfully recoverable wounds, was safe and comfortable under the motel roof. They were flying out tomorrow evening, they’d be home before they knew it, and life could… be normal. Again, again, Daichi finds himself wishing for life to just be normal. 

He takes a shaky breath. It was evening already in Japan. His family hadn’t even been notified about what had happened to them, but perhaps it was for the best. They’d be cooking dinner and laughing and watching the evening news. His siblings, free from school for the summer, would be eagerly rushing about and making plans for the next day, for play, for fun.

He gets out of bed, glancing back only long enough to make sure Suga remains asleep. He takes his phone and throws his jacket on, before grabbing the room key and slipping out of the room. 

Everything is dark and his heart rate is still annoyingly loud in his throat, but at least here in the hallway the overhead lights never turn off, giving just enough light for late night adventurers to return to their rooms. At the end of the hall, it’s even brighter, where an ice machine and a few vending machines stand, brightly lit. That’s where he heads. 

He stares down at his phone for a while, wondering what he was even doing. Killing time, distracting himself? Anything felt better than laying like a child in the dark, scared of his own shadow. 

He sighed, then thumped his head down against the wall. 

“Daichi?”

He nearly loses his skin in his jump, turning with wide eyes to see who was there. He’s somewhat surprised, though, to be greeted by Oikawa. 

“Oh, hey, Tooru,” he says, quickly, clearly his throat to cover how badly he was shaken. “What are you doing up?”

Oikawa waved a hand slightly, passing by him to head to the vending machine. “Got thirsty. There’s nothing in the room,” he said, eyeing the machine. Unlike the machines in Japan, these ones seemed confused about what they intended to give. Most of it was bottled water, then a lot of coca cola products, and most of the spaces were empty. Oikawa doesn’t seem to eager for any of it, just sort of staring. 

“Can’t sleep either?” Daichi asks. 

“No.”

Silence. Oikawa taps on the side of the machine, as if pretending to make a decision. 

“Is Iwaizumi sleeping okay?” he asked. 

“Seems like it, I guess,” he murmured back. Daichi nodded with him. After a moment, he adds: “I heard some of the others heading outside, want to go check it out?”

Daichi pushed himself up. “Don’t have anything better to do.”

They wandered side by side through the motel, silently staring at the floor. Both tired, but unwilling or unable to sleep. They found a small exit out to where the pool space was, and slipped out into the cold night air. Still humid, the chlorine from the pool spiked his senses up quite successfully. 

The smell of cigarette smoke surprised him, and apparently their arrival surprised those who were already waiting out here. 

Kuroo hurried, dropping the cigarette and crushing it out with his foot. “Oh- ah, hey, guys…”

“I’m not your mom,” Oikawa said, watching him keep his shoe pressed over the cigarette. 

Kuro chuckled awkwardly, looking away. 

“When did you start smoking?” Daichi asked. As well as Kuroo, standing over by the small black metal fence ringing the kinda dirty looking pool area, Bokuto was sitting down by the edge of the pool, knees drawn up and staring at the water. He gives them a half wave. 

Kuroo looked down to the plants on the other side of the fence. “About three days after we got back from the forest,” he replied. 

Daichi fell quiet. Kuroo didn’t like the silence, and after a few moments, spoke again. 

“It just… helped, I guess. My nerves are shot, everything terrifies me, and the nightmares …”

“The nightmares,” Daichi agreed, moving to lean beside him on the fence. “Yeah…”

“I didn’t sleep for three days,” he said. “I couldn’t. I was losing my head, shaking, and… thought maybe... And I was right. Maybe it was a stupid choice, but it calms my head down, lets me go to bed…”

He nodded, slumping further into the fence. “Maybe I should start too, then.”

“Don’t,” Kuroo muttered. “It’s disgusting.”

Oikawa leaned in on Daichi’s other side, tilting his head back to look up at the dark, inky sky. The moon was almost hauntingly large, and he closed his eyes to take a deep breath. They listened to frogs and bugs and the hum of cars from the road. 

“Why does it feel…” Daichi started, before cutting himself off. “Why does it feel like… a punishment?”

“A punishment?” Kuroo asked. 

“The nightmares, the fear, the constant ache in my back when I work too hard. It’s like we never got out of that forest. It’s like we’re being punished for surviving,” he said, turning around to look over to where Bokuto was. 

“I wish I knew what to say…”

“And it feels like a waste,” Daichi went on, voice sharp. “It feels like we suffered in fear and pain and nearly died in the goddamn woods, only to what? Go on vacation and nearly get people we care about killed? Nearly die ourselves, ruin the summer for everyone, traumatize the few of us that weren’t already?”

Kuroo hung his head, closing his eyes tightly. “I don’t know, man…”

“It should mean something,” Daichi growled, voice raising as if he was holding back from shouting. “Life shouldn’t suck if it doesn’t mean anything. If we can’t do anything with it. It can’t all be trauma and pain and fucking nightmares. Something good has to come of it, otherwise - otherwise why did we even bother surviving? Why try, why do anything?” 

“Daichi,” Oikawa said, reaching out to put a hand on his shoulder. “I know, but it’s okay… We’re with people we care about, we have a future ahead of us… doesn’t that mean something? Isn’t that something?” 

He gave a shrug, not trusting himself to speak without screaming. Frustration boiled under his skin, the cold air seemed only to heat him up more, the moon mocking him with it’s light. Eventually he found his voice, saying: 

“It’s just not fair. It’s not fair that it was random. It’s not fair that people like Adam and Julia can fuck us over and come so close to ruining our lives and then just be done, and escape, and… I should be in so much pain if it doesn’t mean anything.” 

Oikawa set his head down on his shoulder. 

“I know.”

“I just want our suffering to be worth something,” Daichi said, tilting his head back. 

They stood like that for a while, breathing in cold, chlorinated air and trying to calm down. He supposed this really was the end. They were just going to go back to Japan. Suga would go to school, Daichi to… something. He’d get a job. Maybe they’d get an apartment together. Maybe they’d live a long and happy and safe life, and Daichi’s trauma, and his pain, and the scars that tore up his back, maybe they meant nothing and would never mean anything and he’d have to deal with the nightmares all his life and never move on. 

A scream split through the city, though it was quickly muffled by something, turning into weak sobs that seemed to reverberate in the air. Daichi thought for a moment he was hallucinating, but he frowned, turning his head from side to side and noticing that the others had perked up as well. 

“Let’s go,” he said, tapping Kuroo’s arm before turning and taking off back into the motel. 

The boys ran. 

Through the motel, down to the lobby, the front-

“Did you two scream?” 

As they rounded the corner, Daichi nearly collided with Ushijima, who looked sleepy and alarmed, looking around. 

“No.”

“Well I heard you shouting,” he said, pointing at Daichi. “And then this scream, I thought-”

“Let’s go,” Daichi repeated, pushing past him and to the front doors. The front receptionist frowned, sitting up slightly as she watched the five rush out so early in the morning. 

The city street was almost quiet, just a few cars passing. 

“Which way did it come from?” Kuroo asked. 

“Here,” Bokuto said, passing and taking off down the sidewalk. The small group jogged down the sidewalk, heads tilting to every alley and nook and cranny trying to find the source of the scream. Try as they might, they couldn’t seem to figure out where it had come from, and no screams followed. 

They slowed to a walk as they wandered through the dark city, heads turning and scanning the area around them.

“Where was it…” Daichi mused, stopping outside of a twenty-four hour gas station and looking around. “That was real, right?”

“Maybe we’re going crazy,” Kuroo said. “That would track with the rest of our luck.”

“You don’t think, do you?” Oikawa says, crossing his arms. 

“It is peculiar that only Ushijima was woken,” Bokuto says, glancing back to the guy. “Surely someone else would have woken. Akaashi is a light sleeper.” 

Daichi nodded slowly, lifting his hands up to his head. 

“We’re not going crazy,” he said, because he had to convince himself, too. “I know we’re not. I heard that. You don’t just all hear things…”

Ushijima put a hand on his shoulder.

“We’re not going crazy,” he repeated. “Someone was screaming…”

Silence. Silence, then more silence. 

“Let’s go back,” Bokuto said, after a moment. “I don’t want to be out here at night.”

“But-”

“Daichi,” Oikawa said. “We... we’re all tired.”

“But I heard it. You don’t mass hallucinate screams,” Daichi insisted, pulling away from them and wandering down the street a bit. “Someone might be hurt, or in trouble, or need help in some way, we have to keep looking. It’s our duty.” 

“I don’t think-”

Whatever Ushijima was about to say went in one ear and out the other, when Daichi locked eyes on the big motorhome pulling out of a small parking lot and back onto the main road. He felt his vision narrow, everything else slipping away as fury took over. 

“Adam,” he said, starting off after the motorhome. 

“I’m sorry-”

“ Look! ” he shouts, pointing down the road as he glances back at them. “I’d recognize those fucking taillights anywhere. That’s Adam .” 

“Daichi, don’t-”

Daichi takes off. He doesn’t care if his feet hurt, or if the air is cold or if sprinting after a moving vehicle is stupid and impossible. He’s fuelled by a deep desire to make things make sense and that puts energy into his limbs. 

Someone was screaming, and now Adam and Julia are trying to leave. 

He’s not letting them get away with another crime. 

“Daichi!”

“ Daichi! ”

He can feel the other captains sprinting behind him, the sound of their feet on cement and the heavy breathing. A stoplight ahead of them turns red and Daichi forces tired limbs to race even faster. Cold air cut over his skin, the city blurring around him as he focused in on that motorhome. 

“Get back here you-”

The light turns green right as he catches up to it, and he does what might qualify as the stupidest thing he’s ever done. (And this man has tried to run from a bear.)
He grabs onto the ladder and the back of the motorhome and hauls himself up, right as it begins to pull away. 

Chapter Text

“ What the fuck? ”

“ Holy shit? ”

“ Oh, god, this can’t be happening this can’t be happening this can’t- ”

To say the small group was in absolute hysterics would be a complete an utter understatement. Bokuto was bouncing around on his heels, hands clawing at his hair. Kuroo had crouched down on the sidewalk, head between his knees. Ushijima was staring at the taillights disappearing, seeming frozen to the spot before turning suddenly to look at everyone else. Oikawa was just screaming . 

“What do we do? What do we do? What do we do man?” Bokuto went on, turning and grabbing Oikawa and practically shaking the screaming out of him. “ What the fuck? ”

“I don’t know!” Oikawa shouted back. “I don’t know! He’s a fucking lunatic or something, I don’t know! He just-”

“Oh my god,” Kuroo groaned, rubbing his hands over his eyes. “Oh my god, Daichi kidnapped himself…”

“Daichi…”

“We need-” 

“What the fuck are we supposed to do?” Bokuto went on. 

“We need to-”

“Seriously!” Bokuto turning to grab at Kuroo now. “What the hell is this? Daichi must be out of his goddamn mind. Do we go after him? No man left behind, right? But I guess in this case, we’re the ones that-”

“Bokuto,” Ushijima said, loudly. “We need to go tell someone what’s happened.”

“Right.”

“Now.”

“Right.”

Silence. 

“ Now. ”

Like horses off at gunfire, they turned and booked it back towards the little motel. 

---

Hey, Daichi had had bad ideas in his life, but this was an all-time high for shitty ideas. He wondered if this was a story he’d ever be able to tell. He had to survive, first, which was starting to look less and less possible. If not for the idea that he’d clambered onto a dangerous man’s vehicle, but because that vehicle had taken a slow left turn up onto the merging ramp of the highway. 

Daichi was athletic and strong and had the general build of someone who could survive anything coming at him. Hell, he’d survived a bear attack, dehydration in the woods, heatstroke. He’d survive this. 

Unless his arm slipped from the ladder and he got smeared across the asphalt at 120 miles per hour. 

Well. 

He adjusted his hold, hooking his elbow through the ladder and holding on as tightly as he could. The air was ripped from his lungs as quickly as he could breath it, and already a burn had grown in his shoulders and ankles, from the awkward attempts to secure himself by more than his white-knuckled grip. 

For a minute, maybe ten, as he hung on for dear life, his plan was simply to not let them escape. Perhaps, even if he killed them, this would all be worth it just to break one of Adam’s teeth. 

After ten minutes, he thought maybe if he planned a little better, he could sneak around, see where they were wholed up, and call the police. Actually bring them to justice, make this all end. 

After who knows how long, he was beginning to doubt all of this. This was stupid, of course, it was a dumb plan with dumb exhecution and he should be in bed right now. He thought of Suga, sleeping, peacefully, about to be woken up by more horrible news, by another worst day ever. Another day of wondering if Daichi would make it home. 

Maybe one day he’d stop terrorizing his boyfriend with deathly experiences. 

He wished he’d woken him up, instead of going for a walk. He wished he’d had the courage and gut to admit to Suga that something deep inside him was broken and he didn’t know how to fix it. 

He leaned his head back, cursing as the metal of the ladder dug into the inner skin on his elbow. 

Good thing he had the courage to do whatever the fuck this was. 

Just as Daichi was considering jumping ship the moment the stupid thing slowed down, just as all of it was beginning to mean nothing to him anymore, there was a piercing, screaming sob. From directly inside the motorhome.

He had been right. 

The scream and Adam were connected. 

And suddenly it was all worth it again. Suddenly Daichi was on a mission, and suddenly there was a goal. 

Whoever was in there was going to be safe. Daichi was going to make sure it stayed that way. 

Another shriek, some crying, and then an angry, muffled shout. Most of the altercation was lost to the sound of the roaring highway, but Daichi didn’t need to hear it. 

Just hang on , he thought, to himself or to the victim. 

---

Fists, pounding on doors. Young men, waking up. 

“Wakatoshi,” Tendou yawned, a sleepy, happy smile on his face. 

“Daichi’s gone.” 

“Wakatoshi,” Tendou replies, a very disappointed but unsurprised tone in his voice, as if Ushijima himself had had a hand in this. Perhaps he had, perhaps he was part of the curse. 

---

Another boy, waking up. 

“Oikawa?” Iwaizumi yawned, opening the door and wondering if he’d left his key or something. “Come in, get your ass in bed, we-”

“Daichi is in danger, we need to call the police,” Oikawa is saying, loud and awake and up in his face. 

“Oikawa,” Iwaizumi echoes, watching his boyfriend disappear down the hall. 

---

“Bokuto!” Akaashi groans, opening the door. He probably forgot his key-

“Daichi kidnapped himself!” Bokuto is shouting. “Daichi kidnapped himself and Adam is going to hurt someone or him or everyone and we gotta call someone or something and do something or-”

“Kotaro,” Akaashi says, lighter and more friendly and grabbing his shoulders, trying to calm him down. 

---

“Kuroo…?”

Kenma opened the door just a crack, hoping to see him and not someone else. It seemed very out of character for Kuroo to forget his key, but when he noticed Kuroo immediately turn to head down the hallway, it was even more uncharacteristic for him to be so brisk and distant. 

“ Kuroo! ” Kenma repeats, chasing after him. He’s slowed, by the bandages wrapped around his knee and ankle, and it’s more of a hobble, but he keeps him in his sights and is determined to participate. 

---

“Daichi...” 

---

There was a small, jagged crack it the road, and the motorhome hits it with a fury. Daichi’s posture is dislodged from the ladder and he feels his weight jerk his body down, the speed of the vehicle dragging him along. 

His ankle is damn near skinned to the bone as its ground against the pavement, and he screams, fully, before every muscle burns in his chest as he hauls himself back up. It doesn’t bode well that he can barely set it on the ladder to rest, but he grits his teeth. 

Hang on. 

---

Suga puts his hands over his mouth, tears already in his eyes and finding it nearly impossible to see anything anymore. Impossible, even, just to think. Everything is too hot, too cold, too dizzying. The floor is gone beneath him and before he even realizes what’s happening, he’s on the floor. 

“Sugawara,” someone is saying, a voice that’s distant and muffled. His ears are ringing, loudly. 

“Why would he do this,” Suga croaked out. “Why would he do this? We were so close to going home.” 

“Suga,” the voice repeats, and Suga tries to lift his head, tries to respond, but the only thing he can feel is the burning of his skin and the icey blood that seems to occupy his veins. 

“Why,” Suga says again, and now he can tell that he’s fully crying. “Why, why, why- I don’t… Why…”

“Koushi,” Akaashi says, more firmly, but in a tone that’s far more forgiving and kind than the man usually uses. He puts a hand on Suga’s cheek, pulling him to face him fully. “Listen to me.”

Suga sniffs, lifting a hand to wipe his eye. “I… I just…”

“It’s not like last time,” he said. “Daichi chose to do this. Whether or not he should have done it is not the problem, but it’s his own choice, meaning he’s not a helpless deer this time in the woods. It’ll be okay. We’re in a city in America, surrounded by people, he has his phone. He’ll call for help if he needs it.”

“What if Adam kills him?” Suga says. 

“He’s not going to kill him,” Akaashi replied. Movement on the other side, and Iwaizumi settled in on the other side of him, rubbing his shoulder. 

“This is crazy, I know, but Akaashi’s right. This isn’t the same, this is…”

“It’s almost brave,” Tendou offers, somewhat awkwardly, unsure how to connect to the small group of boys. “It really is. Ushijima said a woman or someone was screaming, and if Adam really is responsible, Sawamura could very well be a hero in an hour or two.”

Suga sniffed. “But… Adam…”

“But Adam nothing,” Akaashi insists. “Daichi will be fine.”

Suga nodded, almost reassured, but when he lifted his head again to wipe his eyes, he looks across the small motel lobby, where police officers were once again swarming and statements were being taken and the poor motel clerk that really just needed a pay raise was sitting and waiting for their shift to finish, and he saw Kenma, standing with his arms crossed, staring at the ground. It was clear that he’d been listening, because the look in his eye was pure disagreement. 

It was a look that made Suga’s stomach twist into terrified knotting all over again. 

Adam is evil , that looked seemed to say. But nobody was asking him. Nobody dared ask Kenma if he thought Daichi would be okay, because Kenma had been the one to fight Adam first hand. Kenma had had to claw, desperate and pained, out of a moving vehicle just to survive. Kenma wouldn’t lie if Suga asked. 

Adam is going to kill Daichi if he finds him, Kenma’s eyes were screaming. And then, that terrifying look was blocked by view, because Kuroo had stepped in and wrapped his arms around the smaller boy, hugging him tightly and close to his chest in the type of warm, loving, familiar embrace that Suga was desperate to feel. 

But the boys around him were nothing but a thin replacement for the companionship he was desperate for, and at the rate Daichi was going, it seemed that he was convicted to kill himself before opening up and allowing Suga that intimacy. 

“Why did he do this,” Suga is saying again, because there’s no way it doesn’t feel like a slight against him. Just that night, just six hours ago, he’d been laughing about some stupid memory from their first year of high school. They’d made conversation that was pleasant, but not important, and funny, but not emotional. He’d been given a soft goodnight kiss that had temporarily eased all of his anxiety and concerns, and so he’d given a kiss on the forehead in return, hoping to provide even a quarter of that same relief. 

And then they’d gone to bed, close but not intimate, partners but not lovers, and he’d fallen asleep first. And he knew he’d fallen asleep first, because he can always tell when Daichi’s breathing changes and deepens and he doesn't remember noticing. 

And now he is gone. 

And he remembers how close Oikawa and Daichi always stood, and how they way they looked at each other seemed more intimate than any kiss Suga had ever shared with him, and he looks at Ushijima as if the taller man has all the answers, but never asks Suga’s advice, and how, and how, and how, and how, and the list goes on, and on, and Suga wonders if it’s something that he’s done wrong, if he’s failed to be the person that Daichi thought he was, and he thinks about how all those weeks and months ago Daichi had asked him out on a date and then went through a life changing experience. And maybe it was just his honour that had gone through with taking him on that date, and if he’d gotten lost before asking him out, maybe he’d never have asked. Maybe he found his soulmate in that forest and Suga was just a friend that he didn’t know how to break it off with. 

Maybe if Suga had been more, been funnier, been braver, been sweeter, been smarter, been more outgoing, maybe if all these things, Daichi wouldn’t have felt the need to leave their bed. Maybe he would have been happy laying beside him. 

Suga is crying, and he doesn’t think he’ll ever stop. 

---

He’s leaving a trail of blood. The foot bleeds like a bitch, all the blood draining down, and Daichi watches it with a passive sort of disgust. The pain has numbed in his head, but he knows the moment he puts pressure down, it’ll come back to life. 

The motorhome is slowing, finally. There’s an ache in his neck and back and shoulder that he’s never felt anything like. His muscles, already torn and reformed once from the bear, have now been strained beyond their capacity. 

He looks around as the motorhome pulls off the highway, into an empty truck stop. Japan doesn’t really do truck rests - the country is too small to warrant it, but the industry of trucking in America is huge, and the continent spans several days worth of travel, so it was easy to find a small pull out with a restroom and a vending machine and a few trees that cast shadow and not a soul around. 

Daichi practically collapses to the ground  the moment the motorhome stops, gasping and tired, but trying to stay quiet. 

There’s no signage. This tiny little rest stop is so unimportant to the world that it was never even named, never labelled. But it was about to become a battleground. 

He thinks about Suga, and wonders if he knows he’s gone by now. He wonders if he’s mad at him, or cursing him out, or if he’s left a million messages on his phone demanding that he come back right now. He wonders if he’s telling the police that yes, Daichi has a penchant for stupid things, it’s probably not worth bringing his ass back this time. A cat has nine lives, but Daichi is human and has already used three of them. 

Part of him hopes that all his worst fears here come true. If Adam kills him, he won’t have to ever admit to all the other things swirling inside his head. He won’t have to face it, he won’t ever have to own up to what’s happened to him, to who he is now. He can let it all die, and Suga can mourn him peacefully, mourn a brave, solid man who never flinched in the face of challenge. 

Not the man that wakes up crying, that needs more comfort than a child, that sees monsters in shadows and flinches whenever a dog barks. Suga should be able to let him go thinking the best of him. Maybe part of Daichi wishes he never got out of that forest, so much has already changed in how people look at him. 

“Alright, alright,” Adam is shouting, and there’s muffled crying as someone is dragged, thumping down the steps. “Stop your fucking squirming, or I’ll break your ankles.” 

Daichi pushes himself up, focusing himself on the task at hand. 

An impossible task, that he doesn’t mind dying in. 

But he won’t fail. 

That woman was dependent, entirely, on him at this moment. So no matter what he personally thought, dying - failure - was not an option here. Not until she was safely back in her home, safely away from all this. From Adam. 

He closed his eyes, just for a moment, trying to think of where to start, and all he could see was Suga. 

Take Adam down. 

Save the victim. 

Tell Suga you love him. 

Easy.

Chapter Text

“Dai,” Suga is saying, shoving Daichi lightly to get his attention. He glances over, all confused and half-focused. They were ramping up to play a game, and Daichi was just working on getting his head into the game. Kurokawa was trying to psych himself up to give everyone a peptalk, taking deep breaths. It wasn’t that they were a bad team, it was just that they… weren’t great. Not yet. But they were better than last year. 

“Hmm?”

Suga is showing him the itinerary for their competitions. He points to one of the team, that, if they win this round, they’ll be playing against. “Isn’t that the high school your friend is at?”

“Who? Oh, Ikejiri?” Daichi says, raising his eyes from the list to Suga’s face. Suga looked up with him. 

“Yeah.”

“Yeah, I think so. Ah, man…” he chuckled, fond memories sweeping through his head. Hayato Ikejiri had been one of Daichi’s first best friends. Sure, the man had always been charismatic, and people liked him, but it was uncommon to find someone he really clicked with. Ikejiri was the first. Suga and Asahi took second and third place. “I wish I’d stayed in contact with him. We texted a bit last year, but…”

“I mean, maybe you’ll see him today,” Suga said. “You can always reconnect…”

“I dunno,” Daichi chuckled, a bit of embarrassment crossing his face. He lifted a hand up, scratching through short brown hair. “We sort of had… a thing for a while, I wouldn’t want things to be weird.”

“Ah… a thing?” Suga echoed. 

“Yeah, like… a thing,” he said. “We were kids, it probably doesn’t even count, but… I mean, he was the reason I realized I liked guys, too.”

It’s almost like Suga is struck by lightning, the way he stiffens, fingers crunching up the paper schedule in his hand. “You like guys?” he managed to squeak out after a while, face slowly beginning to flush more and more red. 

Daichi’s eyes widened, stepping back. “Uh - yeah, I mean, does that bother you? I’m sorry - I promise, I’m not like, it’s not - it’s just-”

“No no no no no-” Suga is now stammering, waving his hands around. “It’s okay I’m not bothered really I’m the opposite of bothered this is great news-” he cuts himself off. 

“... great news?”

Suga blinked. “I - ah - I’m… yeah, I think I like guys too. Totally theoretically, though, it’s not like I’m in love with a guy or anything, I just… think I would be,” he covers, terribly. 

Daichi looked back at him for a moment, then nodded slowly. “That’s… awesome, good to know.”

He claps Suga on the shoulder. “Now we should try and focus. I want to get a win under our belts.”

“Mhm-hmm!” Suga agrees, but he’s internally screaming and will not be able to focus. 

---

Daichi wishes he understood English better. The girl and Adam are stuttering and screaming and shouting and it’s all so fast and so English and so difficult to keep up with. And they’re using words that were never taught in a high school classroom. 

He doesn’t think his ankle has ever hurt as badly as it does now, no matter how many times he rolled or sprained it in volleyball. He hates himself for getting injured before anything even happened, it’s surely going to set him back. And if he survives this, the scar on his ankle is going to just be one in a long list of traumatizing memories. 

The woods at the edge of the truck stop are sparse and loosely connected. Daichi feels a sense of calm wash through him as he passes underneath the wide-leafed trees and through grassy shrubs. He tries to be quiet, no louder than any other nocturnal creature. 

It’s easy, when Adam is making so much noise. 

“You fucking bitch-” Adam is growling, before hurried working around and grabbing a piece of dirty cloth, shoving it into the womans mouth. “Shut up for one fucking moment. If you weren’t such a whiny bitch I wouldn’t have had to do this, don’t you get that?” 

It’s from here, as Daichi drags himself around through the woods that feel like home, that he gets a good look at the woman for the first time. 

She’s pretty, in an American way. Silky brown hair had been curled neatly, but was now a tangled mess as Adam was clearly dragging her around by it. Her face was stained with make-up from her tears, which ran in glittering black and dark blue down her cheeks. Her eyes were puffy and red from crying, and the glittery, short dress she wore had one strap snapped entirely, and was slightly down, exposing soft, bruised skin across her neck and chest and bust. The skirt of the dress is hiked up around her hips, from her fighting and thrashing, and she’s lost her shoes. 

He stays lower in the bushes, far in the darkness, away from where Adam’s looking. He’s tall and imposing and as classically handsome as ever, standing with what looks like a hunting knife in his hand, and duct tape in the other. He figures that’s what’s binding the girl's wrists - and is what he then uses to secure the cloth into her mouth to stop her screaming. 

Think, Daichi, think…

He remembers Bokuto, and the big black bear that tore him open, and digs around for a rock. A stone large enough to crack a skull, hopefully. 

He works faster as he hears Adam. 

“Couldn’t just suck a dick and be done with it, huh? Had to go off screaming and blowing whistles. Well fuck you, see where it gets you?” He's waving his knife around. “You won’t be screaming for long, bitch. And you won’t be calling for help, either.” He sounds manic - no, he sounds malevolent. He sounds unhinged in a way Daichi didn’t think people could be. 

He likes it . 

He likes seeing her afraid.

He likes seeing her bleeding, and weak, and beneath him.

He thinks of the way he had oh so tenderly helped Daichi with his bloody nose, how he’d held a cloth for him and sat with him. Had he gotten off on that too, being kind? Had he liked the implication of the blood, had he decided then and there to make them hurt more? 

No, because he didn’t . 

He just robbed them. 

Or maybe if Daichi had agreed to that hike, that knife would have found it’s way into him. 

Adam’s hand striked hard down across the girl’s face and Daichi realizes his time is up. He realizes there’s no way for him to get a weapon and make a plan. 

He just needs to get Adam. 

Adam’s knife is the next thing that’s going to come down on this girl. 

So Daichi bolts. 

His ankle is on fire, and he knows he’ll be doing possibly irreparable damage to it. But he fights through the agony and puts all of his power into his short sprint. The distance to Adam is no greater than that of an average volleyball court, and Daichi can cross one of those in barely a second to catch a ball. He was always very good at defense. 

He has less than a second to make a decision - tackle Adam head on and knock the knight out of play, or go for his legs and get Adam to the ground. 

His second is up, and with his aching foot he decides it’s smarter to get down to the ground. 

Adam turns at the sound of his running, a shout of surprise rising up in him. Daichi drops to slam his shoulder into Adam’s stomach and send them both flying into the bushes. 

They hit the ground, and then it’s a fight for his life. 

Immediately, Adam twists and snarls, screaming curses and insults and jamming his knee up into Daichi as many times as he can. It becomes immediately obvious, though, that although he could take a small drunk girl, he is not an athlete, and Daichi is far stronger than him. 

Daichi’s morale is boosted just enough to come plummeting down again as he realizes that Adam doesn’t need to be stronger than him. Adam has a knife. 

And it’s a searing, sharp pain in his side that reminds him of it, slicing open the skin beneath his breastbone, across his ribs, cutting and slashing like he doesn’t care at all. Adam’s original strike had been too weak to break through Daichi’s ribs, deflecting the blade but slicing up into him nonetheless. He screams and begins to panic and rage and fear and instinct cloud his vision and judgement. 

He grabs Adam by the collar and lifts him up, slamming him back down into the earth once, then twice, then a third time, hoping for a rock or stone or branch to appear beneath him, something to crack his head on. Adam is shaken, hissing and shouting, probably confused as to how this ghost from a few days ago came back to haunt him. 

And then the knife has found the soft, unprotected skin of Daichi’s stomach, and for all his planning and all his strength, the only thing that saves his life is Adam’s own haste. Instead of gutting him, across the line of his stomach and spilling out everything hot and bloody, he jabs the blade straight in. it’s painful, brutally so, but far more survivable. 

“You’re not getting away with this,” Daichi hisses, pain and iron burning in his mouth. “You can kill me all you want but I’m dragging you to hell with me.”

He doesn’t even realize he’s speaking in Japanese. 

Adam shoves at his face, trying to break the iron hold and pin Daichi had on him. A finger strays too close to his mouth, and like a raging animal, Daichi chews down on it, grinding his teeth into bone and making Adam cry out in a bloody scream, trying desperately to yank his hand back. 

“Holy fuck,” Adam is shrieking, desperately trying to twist away. Daichi’s grip is loosening, and he manages to twist around, clawing at the dirt to try and get away. The blade is slipping from Daichi’s stomach, blood pooling down and staining green and brown grass red and black. It coats Adam’s stomach and legs, it’s everywhere, he can taste it in his mouth. 

Daichi is staring down at Adam’s back, blood everywhere. His vision is swimming as his body tries to shut down to protect him from the pain and blood loss, but his adrenaline rushes, making him loopy.

He wonders if this is how the bear felt, as he drags his claws down Adam’s back. 

He wonders if he was always meant to become this person. 

Violent. 

---

“Daichi,” Suga laughs, nuzzling his face against his cheek, pressing a few soft kisses to the corner of his mouth before pulling back and looking at him. “Stop being silly, the movie isn’t that scary…”

“I want to protect you,” he said, only a little bit jokingly as he wrapped his arms tighter around his waist. “And the movie is so scary, I need to keep you safe.”

Truth be told, neither of them had really been watching the movie past the ten minute mark, having quickly found their way into each other’s arms, more focused on the feel of warm, soft lips and roaming hands than any ghost story on the screen. 

“I don’t need protection,” Suga chuckled, lifting both hands up to cradle Daichi’s face. “You know that, right? I’m not afraid of much.” 

“You’re not?” Daichi chuckled, pushing in to steal a kiss from him before relaxing again. “Lucky you. What are you afraid of? I need to know, so I know what to protect you from.”

“Well…” Suga thinks, and wonders if he stalls long enough if he can spend his entire life here in Daichi’s arms. “I’m afraid of… Tanaka’s sister’s cooking.” 

Daichi laughed. Suga liked the sound of it. 

“No, really,” he said. 

“I’m serious!”

“Well, what else?”

Suga thinks again, then says: “I’m afraid of… heh… well, I’m afraid of losing you again, like I did this spring…”

Daichi softened slightly. 

Suga’s hands come up, brushing through his soft hair and down his face, thumbs running over his cheeks. “I’m afraid of you getting hurt, of something uncontrollable taking you away from me. I’m afraid of sudden illnesses, of unpredictable accidents. Hell, I’d even say I’m afraid of God, if that sums everything up. You’re everything to me, Dai. I can’t stand the idea of anything ever hurting you like that again.” 

Daichi stares at him, before pressing a softer, more sincere kiss to his lips, eyes closing. “You don’t have to worry about that.” 

Suga nodded, giving a small smile. “I try and tell myself that.”

Silence. 

“What are you afraid of?” Suga asks, after a moment. 

Daichi thinks. 

The dark. 

Forests.
Accidentally eating poisonous mushrooms. 

Dogs that growl a bit too loudly. 

Tripping and breaking his knee. 

His friends starving. 

HIs friends being eaten alive. 

Being eaten alive. 

Bears. 

Koushi leaving.

Being alone. 

“Nothing scares me,” Daichi chuckles, in a voice meant to convey confidence and contentment. “I survived a bear attack. Think something like ghosts scare me?”

Suga stares at him, a very unamused, but loving, expression written across his face. 

“Well, I’ll protect you from ghosts anyway,” he said. “Even if you are superman.” 

Daichi smiled, tightening his hold on him. “Sounds like a deal. Now- come here!” 

And Daichi has rolled him over, burning Suga in between the couch and himself, and they’re making out again, because it’s better than discussing the terror that lurks in Daichi’s head, and he’d rather be superman than a victim. 

---

Adam doesn’t have his knife. He’s a few meters off in the bushes, clutching his injured hand like a baby and nursing a broken nose, staring at the blood and violent Daichi. 

Who knows who the villain is here. 

Adam knows with certainty that if he gets closer to Daichi, he’s going to die. That damned foreign kid, he should have known. They’d flown too close to the sun with that one - ten barely-fluent students, stupidly trusting and willing to get in their van? It was too good to be true. They should have just picked up that Brazilian girl and her friend. They wouldn’t have come back to haunt them. 

He remembers reading somewhere that Japan doesn’t really have serial killers, not like America does - that’s not to say Adam is a serial killer, far from it. But it explains why they might have wandered so easily into his trap. 

But looking at that Daichi now, the way his chest heaved, the blood he was spilling, the blood both his and his own that spilled from his lips, the fury in his eyes, he reasoned that perhaps they were wrong about Japan having serial killers. 

Adam knows that this man will kill him. 

He can see the knife in his gut, yet the guy is still bleeding. He wonders, if he got any closer, if Daichi would even hesitate to pull the blade out and drive it into Adam’s skull. Probably not. He wishes he hadn’t fucked up that first jab at his ribs. 

But Daichi is dying. Adam knows that. There’s too much blood. 

So he runs. 

He doesn’t need to stick around. 

They can’t track him. 

Adam isn’t even his real name. 

Neither is Jim, the one he gave to that drunk slut. 

Daichi will die here, and the girl will be found dehydrated and hungover and limp in her restraints. Neither will be able to pass on their information, what he looks like, the van. Lord knows how Daichi followed them anyway. 

Adam pushes himself to his feet and sprints back through the woods, to where Julia is waiting in the van. She didn’t really like this part of the job, but liked the money Adam provided for her, so she let him do what he wanted. 

He’d get back to the van, and Julia would drive off down the hallway, and they’d be halfway to Texas at least before anyone found the bodies. If not even further! This truck stop was abandoned as it was, and what long-haul trucker was going to wander that far into the woods? 

Hell, they could probably get into Louisiana before anyone found the bodies. 

He hears Daichi shrieking what he’s sure are expletives, but they’re all in Japanese. He’s glad he doesn’t know Japanese. 

Subconsciously, Sawamura Daichi gets added to the list of things he fears most in this world. 

And then, as he crosses the threshold of the forest, the other thing he fears most is staring right back at him. Flashing blue and red, half a dozen cop cars. Julia is already escorted out of the motorhome, handcuffed and being shoved into the back of a cop car. 

Before he can even think to run in a different direction, a dozen guns turn and pin him to the spot.

Chapter Text

Adam disappeared into the trees. Daichi can hear sirens, but he can’t figure out if that’s real or just the ringing in his ears. He swallowed, blood hot in his mouth. His vision swam, and pain overtook all of his senses. He hit the earth. Yes. Yes . Die in the mud, surrounded by trees. It was always supposed to be like this.

Something is kicking and scrambling and shuffling. Something grunts and moves, jerking around, the motion barely noticeable in his head. 

Right . 

I’m not done yet.  

He pushes himself up, putting a hand down to his gut and feeling the sharp blade and where it connected into his flesh. Well… fuck. 

He turned his head. 

The pretty American girl. The one he was supposed to save. She’s staring at him, eyes wide and horrified, twisting and fighting at her bonds. He stares at her for a moment, before beginning the horrid, long crawl over to her. 

He can feel himself shaking as he reaches out, bloody hands smearing dark red across her cheek as he tugs the duct tape off, pulling at the worn cloth to ungag her. She starts shrieking in English, calling for help and making a lot of noise. His brain can’t translate it, but he doesn’t think he needs to. It’s obvious. 

He’s dying! Help, someone, please! Help!

He hopes, with her mouth free, she’ll be able to figure out a way to unbind her hands. 

His head hits the dirt again. 

Maybe if she screams loud enough, they’ll save him before he bleeds out. 

She’s crying. 

Daichi’s crying. Or maybe that’s just blood as well. 

---

“Looks like a… young male, maybe nineteen, twenty years old. Bleeding badly. We have an ambulance en route right now.”

“He’s not gonna make it,” the other officer is saying, speaking into a device clipped to their shoulder. “Look at all this blood…”

“Please,” the second victim is crying, clinging to the shock blanket wrapped tightly around her shoulders. “Please, please… I don’t even know who he is… You need to save him…”

“We’re going to do our best,” the first officer assures her, trying to lead her off to the cop car. “But we also need to take care of-”

“I’m fine!” she cries. “I don’t know him… I don’t know where he came from…”

One of the other officers, further back in the woods, looks up from where they nudge branches and brambles aside, looking for evidence. 

“Ma’am, we need to get you to the hospital. It’s been a long night for you, and you need to-”

“I’ve lost his pulse,” the second officer says, hands on the bloody skin of the young man. “I’m starting C-P-R.”

The girl begins to scream again. 

The officers hurry her away. 

Above them, the clouds crack, and it threatens to rain. 

---

It’s several hours later when the boys get a call. 

The waiting had been the worst part. 

Call the police, give the statement, then they go off and chase down Daichi and everything is fine. They bring him back. Everything would be fine after they brought him back. But the police had left, chasing after their report, and instead of a call saying Daichi was fine and they were bringing them home, there had been silence. 

An hour seemed like a reasonable wait time. 

But that hour turned into two. 

Into three.

Into four. 

And it was approaching the fifth when, finally, Suga’s phone rang. 

Everyone jolted up. Some had tried to sleep, or rest, or been forced out by their own exhaustion, but Suga hadn’t been able to join them. He’d stayed propped in the uncomfortable little chair, even as the sun began to rise, staring at his phone. 

Ushijima lifted his head at the ringing. Oikawa stopped pacing where he was, turning to wait. Suga almost dropped his phone in his haste to answer it, pressing it to his ear. 

“Yes? Yes? This is Sugawara, yes, have you found Daichi? Is he okay?”

“I need to ask you to try and remain calm,” the crackling voice on the other end says. 

His stomach drops. 

“We were able to locate Daichi Sawamura sixty or so miles outside of the city. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to get there before-”

Suga gave a heaving gasp, before lifting his hand to cover his mouth and silence himself. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Continue. Please.”

“... he’s okay, Mr. Sugawara,” the officer says, a little bit more humanely. “He’s alright, right now.”

A level of relief Suga didn’t know existed washed over him. 

“He’s in surgery, though. There were quite severe wounds to his abdomen, and he’ll probably be out for the rest of the day. But if you wanted to come by tomorrow, he should be awake.” 

“Okay,” Suga said, nodding frantically. “Okay, okay, thank- he’s okay,” he said, looking up to look at everyone else, who surrounded him with big, scared eyes. He watched that same relief wave over them, each set of eyes turning away and closing and chests taking deep breaths. 

“What about Adam?” Kuroo said, half whispered. He kept one arm firmly around Kenma, and had been doing so for the past several hours, as if scared he too could get swept up into this nightmare. 

“What-” Suga tried to repeat, choking back tears. “What about… Adam? And that… the girl, that was screaming…?”

“Adam…?” the police officer echoes, confusion in his voice. The phone is suddenly muffled as he pulls away, mumbling away from it. There’s a muffled reply, and then he comes back to the call. “Oh, yes. Adam. One of many aliases, unfortunately. We managed to identify him as Colin Vellerman. Both him and his wife, Antonia Vellerman, were taken into police custody directly before we found the girl and your friend.” 

Suga stares at the floor. 

“Okay. What’s going to happen to them?” 

“Unfortunately, I can’t tell you anything just yet. But I’m sure they’ll be facing justice fit for them.” 

He nodded. 

“Okay, thank you.”

“Have a good evening, Mr. Sugawara. And tell your friend that he is incredibly brave. I’ve never seen anything like this before.”

“And hopefully you never will again.”

---

Everything is hazy. It’s like waking up from the longest nap of his life, which, in some respects, it is. He groans and squeezes his eyes shut even tighter, everything feeling numb and heavy. There’s a thumping ache in his gut. 

He slowly peels open his eyes, eventually, harsh hospital lighting cutting into his hypersensitive brain and forcing him to close them again. 

And a second later, his brain processes what he saw, and he snaps his eyes open again. 

Suga. 

A mess, hair everywhere and eyes big and glassy, and he’s squeezing Daichi’s hand so tightly he thinks his fingers will crack. Suga begins to force a smile, weak and sad, before breaking into laughter. 

“Dai…”

“Mhm… I know, I know,” he groaned. “I shouldn’t have run off.”

“I- '' Suga shuts his mouth for a moment, before breaking into heaving laughs, that bordered sobs. He brought Daichi’s hand up, pressing a kiss to his knuckles before holding it against his mouth. “No,” he said. “I don’t care about that. I don’t care about anything. I’m just… so glad I have you back.”

Daichi smiled slightly. “I love you,” he said, causing Suga’s eyes to widen even more than they already were, tears spilling over onto his cheeks. “I love you so much. I didn’t want to die without you knowing that.”

“You’re not going to die. You’re fine.”

“I will,” he said. “Something, sooner or later, has to take me out. It has to. I can’t keep going like this.” 

Suga leans in closer. “Like what, Daichi? Alive? Healthy? Safe? Happy? With me? Why? Why can’t you just do this with me? With all of us?”

He looked away, eyes wandering over the curtain of the hospital room, the pale walls, the harsh lights. 

“Daichi,” Suga repeats, more firmly. “Nothing will take you out unless you keep doing shit like this, so tell - I mean, yes, I get it, you’re a hero,” he said, frustration seeping into his voice. “You saved that woman and you will always be her saviour, it’s not like I think she didn’t deserve to be saved, but why you . Why jump on the back of a moving vehicle, why… We could have gone home. We could have left and-”

“I love you,” Daichi repeats, cutting in, still not looking at him. Suga sits back, a little put off, and Daichi can tell just from the slouch of his shoulders. “Why can’t that be enough?” 

A little pointedly, after a brief wait, Suga replies with: “I love you too. But that’s beside the point.” 

“There’s no point.”

“Sane people don’t leap onto a motorhome in the middle of the night.”

“A woman was dying.”

“You didn’t know she was in there. She could have been in the alley still. You didn’t even check.”

“I saved a life.”

“You did an amazing thing. Why.”

Why?

Why did he do an amazing thing? Because-

Because-

“There’s no why.”

Why? Why Why Why Why Why-

“Daichi-”

“I mean-”

I don’t know.

“There’s no reason.”

“ Daichi. ”

You should die in the woods.

“I know it was stupid, I know, but I just… wanted to save the girl.”

It won’t change what you are.

“I didn’t… Please…”

You’re not a survivor.

“I can’t be happy.”

“Why can’t you be happy? What’s stopping you?” Suga cuts in, voice anxious as Daichi’s own began to stammer and dip, a jaunty, unfocused rhythm to his words. 

“I’m not- I…” he can feel his throat tightening. Everything crashing down into him. No. No. Not this. He can’t be weak, not now . Not now. “I…”

Suga shifts in closer, lifting a hand and pressing it to his cheek, forcing his head to turn back to look at him. 

“I’m not a hero,” he said, voice cracking slightly. “I didn’t make it out of those woods. I’ll never make it out of those woods. I couldn’t, on my own. I should have died.”

“What are you talking about? Suga said, thumb brushing across his cheek. “Oh my god, Daichi, what are you-”

“I was carried,” he said, eyes glassy. “I would have died. I didn’t keep myself alive. And then everyone… everyone started praising me. Sawamura Daichi, the man who survived a bear attack. The man who can survive anything, the hero, the survivor, with all the scars to prove it. But I was done for. I was dead. I laid down in that mud and submitted to death and if Bokuto hadn’t dragged me out I wouldn’t have lifted one finger more to save myself.” 

He’s crying. 

“I should be dead. I’m not strong. I just got lucky.”

“No,” Suga replies. “That doesn’t mean anything, you… it’s… you don’t…”

Daichi closed his eyes. 

The nightmare, it’s always the same. 

It’s howling winds, and it’s dark trees, and he doesn’t know if it’s Gunma or Hell, but it’s either Bokuto, or Kuroo, or Ushijima, or Oikawa, one of them, laying in the mud, and they’re screaming and clawing and fighting like hell to escape, and Daichi’s there. Daichi’s unhurt, he’s fine, the bear didn’t get him. And he bends down, to drag them out, and he hears them, he hears them all, crying out. 

You were our leader.

Our captain. 

You were supposed to protect us. 

You said we’d survive.

He pulls, he drags, and they’re dying and bloody but he’s not strong enough. He can’t get them over his shoulder like Bokuto did, he can’t heal any of their wounds, he can’t find water, he can’t find food, He can’t find the road. They die. In his arms, on his back, at his feet. They all die. Over and over and over again. 

And when he wakes, he sits, he pulls away from Suga, and every time he gets close to reaching out, to asking for help, it’s the same. 

You always need help. 

Always forcing others to carry you. 

Go ahead, dump all your problems on him, he’ll coddle you and care and pretend you’re a big strong man and assure you you did your best but you’ll know the truth. 

You’ll know you can’t even survive your own head without help. 

Nevertheless a forest.

Nevertheless a bear. 

“I don’t know how to feel okay about surviving something like that. I don’t know how to take praise and thanks and tell stories and be happy when I didn’t do anything for them. They carried me out. And then I look in the mirror and I see these scars on my back and I think… they’re not earned. It’s just a reminder of how I’m meant to end.”

Suga pressed his head down, sobbing as quietly as he could as he pushed his face into his arm. 

“I don’t need you to be a hero,” he says, voice heavy and wet and muffled from his sleeve. “I don’t care what you’ve done or did or will do, I just want you alive. And I’d rather you alive and disgraced and a victim than dead a hero.” 

He closed his eyes. 

“But how am I supposed to want that?” 

Suga cries louder. The heart rate monitor spikes. Daichi lifts his other arm, sore and stiff and in pain, exactly how he thinks he should always feel, and settles it in Suga’s hair. 

Chapter Text

“Hey, here.”
Daichi looks up as the water bottle is handed to him. Suga looks down at him, eyes filled with warmth and love and everything that would be so easy to get swept away in. He reaches up a slightly shaking hand to take it. 

“Thanks.”

He knows he’s distant. He knows he’s been acting strange, and off, and unusual, he knows because everyone’s walking on eggshells, not quite making eye-contact, staying just a little further away than necessary. But they all praise him for it. Call him a hero - a dumb here, but a hero - and pat his shoulder and beg him to retell his heroism. 

Each conversation hurts. And when he sets his jaw and looks away and refuses to talk they call him brave again, call him tired, and brilliant, and that he should get some rest, and he’ll feel better soon. 

The American hospital is a death trap. Daichi has never wanted to leave a place so badly, but apparently getting on a plane for 12 hours while you’re freshly stabbed is unwise , so they’ve made him stay. 

Everyone has to leave at night. Apparently, despite having no family in the country, they won’t break their family-only policy and let his friends stay. The night is Daichi’s favourite time. Everyone has to leave, nobody can see him. When he wakes up from his nightmare, there’s nobody there to reach over and bother about it. He’s allowed to just curl up, to squeeze his eyes shut, to beg the thoughts away. 

Nobody notices him. Nobody cares. 

“The doctor said they’ll discharge you tomorrow morning,” Suga went on, sitting in the chair across from him. And Suga, poor Suga, the man Daichi will never deserve to be with, the man he’ll have to spend every waking moment of his life proving himself worthy of, the man that won’t leave him no matter how much he should. He stays in this room with him, nearly sixteen hours a day, refusing to leave. The only exceptions are the occasional bathroom break, and when Kuroo or Akaashi come by and force him to go eat something. And the night. 

“That’s good,” Daichi said. “Do we have flights booked?”

“Yeah,” he said. “A few days from now.” 

Daichi nodded, then shifted to lay more on his back, chin tilted up, eyes focused on the ceiling. Suga stares at him for a moment, before pulling his chair closer to the bed. 

“Dai, are… are we gonna talk any more about this? You’re barely yourself…”

“I’m laying in a hospital room. I got stabbed . Are you expecting me to be myself?” 

Sugar swallowed, looking away. Immediately he’s overwhelmed with guilt. He knows he shouldn’t have snapped at him. He knows he should be nicer. 

He feels Suga’s hand, cold and soft and gentle, slipping into his. He looks back over to him, finally, to meet the soft smile and warm brown eyes that seem to never run out of compassion to lend him. 

“No, of course not,” Suga chuckled, giving his hand a squeeze. 

Daichi stared at him for a moment longer, before saying: “I… feel terrible. I feel bad. And I’m sorry I’m not chatty, I just don’t know what to tell you again and again about what I feel will do. I told you, I told you, and you can’t fix me - it’s not your job to make me feel differently, so…”

Suga nodded, before saying: “But, you can let me help you help yourself,” he said. “Just…. Agree to let me give you the occasional piece of advice. Tell me when things are really bad. And… when we get home - and this won’t be right away, obviously, we’ll settle in at home, relax, recover from this, probably work on university prep, figure our lives out - and then, and then , maybe, you’d let me help you find a therapist.” 

Daichi took a breath in, looking the other way. 

“I know! I know you don’t want that. But you’re right! It’s not my job to make you better. But, there are people whose jobs it is to help us unravel our own heads. And maybe… you don’t have to - okay, I can tell I’m losing you. Please look at me.”

Daichi forces his head the other way to look at him. 

Suga rewarded him with a smile. “Okay? Again, it wouldn’t be right away, we’d take it slow… you could just try… one, or two sessions, and if you really hate it that much you can just drop it.” 

Daichi stared back at him for a long moment, before saying: “Okay,” he said, voice weak. “I’ll agree to do one or two sessions.”

Suga’s smile was worth everything to him, as he bounced up from where he sat and leaned across the bed, pressing an excited, affectionate kiss to his lips before murmuring: “Mhm- thank you… thank you thank you so much.”

“It’s just one or two sessions, I’m not promising-”

“I know,” Suga said, still smiling ear to ear. “I’m thanking you for letting me help.” 

---

“Daichi’s getting released tomorrow,” Ushijima says, finding Kuroo standing out by the bus stop under an awning. The cigarette in his lips told the other all he needed to know about the situation. He glanced around, finding none of their other friends around. 

Kuroo glanced up to him, nodding slightly. “Ah, good.” 

“Did Suga talk to you?” 

Kuroo frowned, then shook his head, then looked back down to his feet, kicking the gravel weakly. “No. What’d he say?”

“Daichi’s not doing well.”

“I thought he was getting released?”

“His body is fine. He said he was really struggling.”

Kuroo is quiet after that, before saying: “He’s a tough guy, he’s fine.” 

“I don’t know if that’s true.” 

Kuroo looked up at him, and Ushijima beckoned vaguely to the cigarette. “Suga said he was practically begging for a way to kill himself. It’s not like this is much better.” 

Kuroo drops the cigarette, crushing it under his shoe. “What are you on about?” 

There’s a long silence that hangs in the air, before Ushijima says: “I don’t think I’m okay, either.” 

“Oh?”

He shook his head. Before he could speak, the bus pulled up out front of the stop, and both boys shuffled back, wanting to get out of the way of those who actually needed it. They turned in unison, heading back towards the hospital that had been their home for the last little while. 

Ushijima doesn’t speak again as they make their way slowly through the halls. Everyone around them seems busy, but it’s beyond difficult to get their heads to a place that can process all of it. 

Go home, go back to life. 

“Wouldn’t it be easier,” Ushijima said, slowly. “If summer was never going to end?” 

“What are you on about?” 

“I mean… if everything was always around the corner. If we had forever to just… figure things out. To be this . But I fear… I think that the whole world is going to come bearing down on me before I’m done being a scared teenager. Before I’m done with the woods, before I’m done crying over my friends, before I get over my nerves and ask my crush out. Time isn’t going to stop. It’s not going to wait for me to feel okay. It would be so much nicer if everything just… quieted.”

Kuroo hummed, putting his hands in his pockets. “Adam stabbed Daichi.”

“He did… yes…”

“Do you think Kenma could have survived that? If he’d been caught?” 

Ushijima raises his eyes. 

“I don’t follow.”

“Kenma… Kenma was alone with him. He was trapped and Adam went after him and Kenma is small, and easily tired and he’s so strong, I know that, but… Daichi is a different kind of strong. Daichi is the type of strong that can survive a gaping knife wound. Kenma… if Kenma hadn’t gotten lucky, if he’d hesitated too long, been too afraid to leap out of that motorhome… or if Adam had stopped, gone back for him…” Kuroo closed his eyes. 

Ushijima put a hand on his shoulder. “But he didn’t-”

“It never should have gotten to that point,” he cut in. “I shouldn’t have… Kenma didn’t want to be here, to begin with, he just wanted to be with me . And I was selfish, and annoying, and I pushed him and pushed him and pushed him so far out of his comfort zone that he ended up in a life or death situation.” 

“That is not your fault-”

“You’re right. It would be so much easier if time just stopped because… because if time stopped, nothing gets to hurt anymore. You don’t have to feel better, you don’t have to be scared. Nothing will come for you, nothing will change, nobody gets stabbed. But time keeps ticking and inevitably everyone gets hurt and suffers and watches others get hurt and suffer and… there’s nothing we can do. Even… even taking vacations. Even hiking with your friends.”

Silence again. 

“Hey.” 

They both nearly leap out of their skin, whipping around to face the new person. 

Tendou stands there, an armful of wrapped baked goods that he bought (stole?) from the hospital cafeteria. He looks… fine. He looks almost happy. Regular. He gives Ushijima a small sort of smile and both Ushijima and Kuroo realize Tendou, despite everything they’ve already been through, still lives in a world in which is primary concern is whether or not he’ll convince Ushijima to hold his hand. 

Not time. Not death, not the inevitability of pain. 

Tendou’s still thinking about good feelings that are yet to come. 

He holds a chocolate muffin out. “They’re not good, but it’s technically a muffin,” he says. 

Ushijima takes it. “Thanks.” 

There’s another silence, and both boys realize a second thing. 

That Tendou knows Ushijima and Kuroo are worried about far more abstract fears. They realize that he knows they’re in a different world than him. Even if he hadn’t just overheard Kuroo’s ramblings, he’d been around them long enough. He knew they were hurting. 

“So, are you guys coming to the movie night?” 

“The what?” 

“The- Oh, right,” Tendou said. “You two boys have been off doing god knows what. Kenma played some kind of kitty-cat-face and convinced the nurse to let us stay extra late tonight. There’s a tv in the room Daichi’s in, and even though technically he’s sharing it with that guy with the leg thingy, he’s going into surgery and it’s gonna be a long one so we’ll have the place to ourselves, so… Iwaizumi is going to find a movie to watch. It’s probably gonna be in English, but that’s alright, I’ll enjoy the pretty colours.” 

“Oh,” Kuroo said, sort of surprised by this. “I… yeah, of course, we’ll come up with you.” 

Tendou gave them both a smile, before turning to head past them and up the stairs towards the wing Daichi was in. They both turned to watch him, before slowly following along. 

---

“Hey, stress can make physical injuries worse, right?” Oikawa says, 

“Dude, I have no idea,” Bokuto said, looking over to him. “Why?” 

Oikawa took a seat on the bench beside him, stretching his leg out and rubbing his knee. “This just… has been hurting all day. I can’t get it to stop.”

“That’s horrible,” Bokuto says. “I’m sorry. I mean, we’re in a hospital. Maybe someone will give you drugs.”

“ Drugs? ”

“Like, you know what I mean.”

“Heh, yeah, I guess I do,” Oikawa said, letting his breath out with a sigh and leaning back against the bench. He felt his head in the wall, and closed his eyes. The silence only lasted a few moments, however.
“Did you hear the news?”

“Mhm?”

“Daichi’s getting released tomorrow morning. We’ll finally be able to go home.”

“Oh, hell yeah…” Oikawa mumbled. “Finally home. Finally back to the real world, finally something normal . I think I have to end out friendship.”

“ What? ”

“I’m kidding, I’m kidding,” Oikawa said quickly, lifting his head and a hand to set on Bokuto’s shoulder. “It was a joke. But seriously, I don’t think we can hang out anymore.”

Bokuto just stared at him, then laughed, shaking his head. 

“Do you remember, right when we were planning all this?” Bokuto said, suddenly, looking off down the hallway. “And I was talking about how all I wanted was to spend time with Akaashi? Before everything changed?”

“...Yeah, and I made fun of you for not having passed second base yet.” 

“Yeah. Well… is it bad if that’s still all I want? Like… I know Daichi went through a whole lot of… trauma… but… this whole trip, it feels like… I haven’t even seen Akaashi - or you guys! Everytime I look at someone, they just… have this look in their eye. Daichi’s the worst for it. Playful and joking but like he’s looking right through you. But you’re no better.”

Oikawa shrugged. “I mean, this has been… a really terrible experience. Everyone’s stressed, man, you’ll get your change eventually. In Japan, at home, safe.” 

“Yeah, I know, I just… wish it had worked out. Wish things were better than they are, you know?” 

“Look, if I’ve learned anything, it’s that nothing is predictable and life is fragile so…”

“Also, don’t trust men named Adam.”

“Absolutely not, never,” Oikawa agreed, nodding. 

They sit in an amicable silence for a moment before footsteps catch their attention. Oikawa pushes himself up to his feet with a slight wince as he realizes it’s Iwaizumi coming down the hall, a small smile across his face. 

“Iwa-chan,” Oikawa cooed, nothing but pure mockery in his voice. “Where have you been? I’ve been walking all over looking for you, and look! Now my knee’s all aggravated.”

“Sorry,” Iwa said, glancing at Bokuto for half a second and deciding against reaching out to touch OIkawa in anyway. Bokuto was watching. “I was actually just out for a bit, we were gonna have a movie night. Kenma bribed a doctor, Tendou stole snacks, it’s a whole ordeal.” 

Oikawa seemed confused. “I don’t understand, Daichi’s hurt-”

“Yeah, so we’re gonna do it in his hospital room,” Iwa said. “I thought it would be worth trying to convince them to let him out early, but Akaashi didn’t want to push our luck.” 

“I still don’t…”

“It’s just a movie, dumbass,” Iwa said, leaning in to press a soft kiss to Oikawa’s cheek before heading past him and down the hallway. “Daichi’s stab wound won’t stop him from watching Godzilla!” 

Oikawa turned to watch him go, feeling a sense of awe washing over him as he lifted a hand up to where Iwa had kissed his cheek. Iwa had kissed him many times before, in fact, they’d done far more than kiss on several occasions, but that-

Oikawa had forgotten that they were still dating, in the throes of it all. Or, rather, he’d forgotten that they were allowed to be intimate. 

That they were allowed to watch movies with their friends, even if things were bad. 

Bokuto stood up. “Just gonna stare at his ass, or are you gonna follow him?”

“Yeah, sorry-” they both head down the hall after Iwaizumi. 

---

The TV is small and far away, but nobody really minds. Well… Kuroo considers complaining about the pointlessness of it. Bokuto wants to laugh at the whole thing and make it a joke. Daichi wants to tell them not to even bother. Oikawa thinks they should be focused on getting home. 

But nobody speaks up, because before they can, Tendou is stuffing a muffin into their arms and laughing about how he hasn’t seen Godzilla in ages, and how this is so nice to finally hang out with everyone. 

The hospital staff is nice enough to let them borrow chairs and drag them into the little room, allowing them to shut the door as long as they’re very strict about keeping it unlocked. 

Kuroo takes a seat on one of the chairs with a sigh, almost as if resigned to the affair of watching a movie, but his huffy aloofness is interrupted by Kenma, who very decisively takes a seat in his lap, as if to pin him there and force him to talk, as he looks back at him. 

“Ah - hey…”

“Hey,” Kenma replied, leaning an elbow on Kuroo’s shoulder. “Why do you look like that. It makes your face all ugly.” 

“Look like what?”

“All… scowly, I dunno. You’ve just been all scowly all the time recently.”

“If you haven’t noticed-”

“I don’t mean… I don’t mean recently like the last week, yeah, this week, I expect scowls, I mean… the last few months. You just always look like you’re getting ready to deliver bad news.”

Kuroo gave him a half smile. “I don’t know what to tell you, man,” he said. “It’s been a rough few months.” 

“And you always smell like cigarette smoke. And you haven’t been texting me first at all, I’ve had to start every conversation and you know I hate that.” he goes on. 

Kuroo gives a halfhearted shrug. “I’m sorry… I don’t mean to upset you.” 

“You’re not upsetting me, you’re worrying me.” 

“I’m sorry.” 

Kenma set his head down on Kuroo’s shoulder, looking to the little TV screen and sighing softly. “You kissed me.” 

Quiet. 

“I did.” 

“We didn’t talk about that.” 

“I’m… sorry, if-”

“No, no, I liked it. I wanted it. I’ve… wanted you to kiss me since ninth grade. But… More than that, I want you to be my best friend. And I know you love Godzilla, so the fact that you’re sitting in a corner here acting like you’re too good for movies is upsetting.” 

Kuroo wrapped his arms around him. “You’re right. This is nice. I should be thanking you for getting us permission to stay.” 

“You’re welcome.” 

Kuroo wonders if he means it. He wonders if he can enjoy this. He’s felt so numb for so long, the only thing that broke through that shell of numbness was the terror he felt over almost losing Kenma. It was the only thing rattling around in his bones. Fear. 

So he takes a moment to breath in, and out, and feel the weight of Kenma against his chest and remember exactly who he was, and what he wanted. And slowly, very slowly, as if seeping through the cracks in a window pane, other things came in. The first was a small, growing sense of excitement, because he’d finally kissed Kenma. And Kenma had liked it. Excitement. 

Kuroo hadn’t felt excited in a while. 

And on the tails of excitement came a flush of affection, and warmth, and a juvenile joy at holding Kenma in his lap like this, something he’d always imagined doing as the other played video games or watched his phone. He felt little things. He let himself feel little things.

And for the first time since the woods, Kuroo felt his body begin to leave fight or flight. He felt himself unravel, and relax, and that numbness, so vital for survival, was allowed to end. 

---

Bokuto doesn’t really know why he finds the Godzilla movie funny. Perhaps it’s just the old effects, but something about it makes him giggle. Either way, Akaashi continuously nudges him to get him to stop, but whenever he looks over, he sees Akaashi looking back at him with a restrained grin across his face, trying not to be amused by Bokuto’s antics. 

“I’m sorry!” Bokuto whispers, back, leaning into him. “I’m trying!” 

“You’re bothering everyone else!” Akaashi hisses back, but there’s no malice in his voice. 

Bokuto grinned, leaning forward to give him a soft kiss, one hand lifting up to gently hold his cheek. 

Akaashi smacks his chest. “Stop it! We’re surrounded by our friend!” 

“I can’t help it,” Bokuto sighs. “You’re so pretty. I wanna kiss your stupid face all the time.” 

“Romantic.” 

Bokuto grinned, then wrapped an arm around him. “We’re gonna be together for a long time, right?” 

“What?”

“Like, me and you. We don’t have to rush, yeah? This isn’t on a time limit?” 

“Bokuto,” Akaashi chuckled. “What on earth are you talking about? Of course it’s not on a time limit…”

“Awesome… sweet… amazing… okay…”

Akaashi laughed softly, but before he could say anything else, Ushijima had given Bokuto a sharp nudge to shut him up. 

---

“Don’t be mean,” Tendou whispered, from where he had settled with Ushijima on the floor of the room, against the edge of the bed. “They’re having fun!” 

“It’s a movie. They should be quiet!” 

“ You be quiet!” 

“I am!” 

“Not anymore!” 

Ushijima just sort of glares at him, and Tendou can’t help but smile back, wrapped up in the adorable way his eyebrows knitted into a death glare. He wants to push his luck, and wonders if this is the time. 

He ends up feeling his face flush red and looks away first, back to the screen. 

So they watch the movie in silence. He can hear Bokuto and Akaashi still whispering and giggling. And he’s only vaguely aware of Oikawa and Iwaizumi, but he’s pretty sure if he turned around he’d see them making out, and he doesn’t want to do that. Nobody really-

He feels Ushijima’s fingers interlaced with his own, loose and uncertain between them. Tendou looks over to him, eyes widening slightly. He thinks he should feel subconscious, because he knows the face he’s making. Bug eyes . Freak. But Ushijima had never cared, Ushijima had never seen him that way, had never called him names or thought of him weird. 

“Hey,” he said, feeling more awkward than he thought possible. Tendou was always awkward but… “Uhm…”

“I can remove my hand, if this is too far,” Ushijima replied. 

“No, no,” Tendou says. “No, this is… this is nice. I like this. I want more of this, in the future.” 

“Oh?”

“Yes. Me and you, holding hands. I could do a lot more of this quiet-”

And before he can finish, Ushijima has pushed himself forward, kissing him suddenly and firmly, as if he was powerless to have held himself back even a moment longer. It’s not long, but it gets the message across, and Tendou thinks his face is going to burn off in a minute or so. Ushijima is no less red, looking back at him like he was thinking of running away. 

“Oh,” Tendou says, still shocked, unsure what else to say. “Heh… okay… I…”

“I really like you,” Ushijima said, awkward and static. “I really really like you. Please forgive me, for doing that. I want to-”

“Yooo ooooo -” Bokuto is shouting, half getting up. “Ushijima just kissed Tendou!” 

Ushijima whips his head around, eyes wide. “Oh, no, no, please, I didn’t-”

“No you totally did bro I watched it happen,” he says. 

“Oh my god, really?” Kuroo says, from his chair. 

“Yeah I saw it too!” Suga laughed, a tease in his voice. “You boys can’t hide it anymore, we all saw…”

“No…” Ushijima whined, face even redder than possible. “It was not my intention…”

“What, you didn’t want to kiss me?” Tendou said. 

“Not that - no- I meant - everyone here - I didn’t want - people- I- ahh…”

Tendou broke into laughter, leaning forward amid a suddenly cacophony of hoots and whistles, to more fully kiss him, putting everything he had into it because even if life sucked before, and will suck after. Even if Ushijima had a lot of trauma to work through and even if even more was going to come bearing down on him, right here, right now, this was good. 

He feels Ushijima’s hand on his arm. 

This was more than good. 

This was worth it all. 

Spurred on by the laughter and teasing of their friends, Ushijima pushes himself up and into Tendou, holding him tighter and deepening the kiss into a moment that fully takes his breath away, stills everything around him and makes him forget about the loud celebration of their friends. Time stops. 

Ushijima smiles. 

---

“Are you awake?” 

The voice comes soft in his ear, and Suga shifts, yawning, turning to face Daichi. “Yeah… this is a super uncomfortable bed… hard to sleep.”

The nurses, after aggressively shushing their loud shouting, had agreed only to let Suga stay the night in the room, and only because Daichi was otherwise fine and leaving tomorrow (and they’d heard he was a hero, and deserved a bit of an allowance.)

“Sorry… you could go back to the hotel,” Daichi murmured, but even as he said it, he was snuggling tighter against him, arms firmly around his waist. Suga could feel his breath on his neck, his hair tickling his skin. He loved it. 

“It’s okay,” he murmured. “Is everything alright? Did you need something?” 

“No, no,” he said, pressing a soft kiss to his shoulder. “Just… I’m awake, so if you’re awake… I missed you. I missed sleeping with you.” 

Suga laughed, and moved to shift around to face him, but as he did Daichi began to wince and groan, their position having been precariously balanced as not to cause too much pain to his wound. 

“Ah - I’m sorry! I’m sorry- okay, okay…” 

Daichi rolls back to his back with a grunt, one hand resting on his stomach. Suga settles beside him, nuzzling into his shoulder and very lightly resting a hand on his chest, not even daring to wrap an arm around him. “There, there…”

They settled again. Daichi’s arm wrapped loosely around him, fingers gently playing with the hair curling at the back of Suga’s neck. Everything was quiet, and still, and good. 

For once, everything was good. 

Daichi kissed his forehead. 

“I love you… so much…” Suga says, after a minute. “You’re… my best friend in this whole world, you mean more to me than anything else. I just… want you to know that.” 

Daichi smiled into his hair. “I love you too. Even when I’m acting a little crazy, which… I can’t promise it won't happen again. I love you.” 

“Please, don’t do anything even close to this again.” 

“I won’t.”

“You’re wrong, by the way.” 

“Huh?” 

Suga lifted his head to look at him. “About not being able to save anyone, or do anything.” 

Daichi looks back at him, with tired brown eyes that used to be so driven and passionate and now just seem like they need restful sleep. 

Suga continues when he realizes Daichi won’t prompt him. 

“You carried me for an hour while you were dying of exhaustion. You fought a man with a knife and saved a woman’s life. No, no, they’re not technically the same, but… Even just… you inspire people. You inspire me. And yes, it hurts to feel like you don’t deserve the praise, but… there was a reason Karasuno called you the foundation. Nobody gets to stand without a foundation.” 

He blinked slowly. Suga lifted a hand to his cheek. 

“You never needed the spotlight before. You’re our leader, you’re the rock beneath us. You were always content letting everyone else - Asashi, Tanaka, Hinata - everyone else take the spot of hero. Why now?” 

Daichi gave a shrug. 

“I didn’t think I cared. And maybe I didn’t care because it was just a game of volleyball. And it was just fun, and my friends, and I didn’t need to prove myself to a bunch of teenagers. But… I still thought I was the hero. Just… not so literally. Writing training plan after training plan when we didn’t have a coach, leading practices, doing tons of extra curriculars, helping Michimiya with the girls volleyball team, staying later than everyone else and getting there earlier than everyone else… and at home, never asking for anything, always offering to babysit or help my siblings with homework or make dinner or do chores. I’ve always… always just… sort of felt like… if I wasn’t doing more than everyone else, I wasn’t doing anything at all. Even before the woods, before I… failed. Before I should have died. Maybe I was broken long before then.” 

“Or maybe you were a child,” Suga said. “Who got given too much responsibility too young and never learned how to put it down.” 

Daichi gives him a small smile, so Suga leans forward to kiss him, gently. 

“You can let other people do the work, sometimes,” he said. “The world will keep turning. Things will be okay. You can put it down.” 

And Daichi is kissing him again, more deeply, more affectionately, and for the first time in a long time Suga feels like Daichi is there with him, in the room. His hands are feeling his skin, his lips are against his and they want to be there, the heat of his body is physical and real. When he pulls back, Daichi is still there, but he’s not looking through him, he’s not humouring him, he’s seeing him.

Chapter Text

The woman scanning his boarding pass gives him a tight-lipped smile. It’s not kind, but not aggressive either. She barely even sees him, before waving them on to the next section to the airport. The airport is busy and chaotic, people rushing to and fro, riddled with excitement and anxiety and high off vacations or depressed from having to come home. Daichi wonders why he feels detached from it all, why he can’t feel present, why nothing seems to process in his head, and then he remembers his recent stabbing and fighting a man in the muddy woods and decides, for the first time, that maybe he should cut himself a break. 

It’s alright, that he doesn’t fully process what’s going on. He’s tired. It’s okay. 

He reaches to take Suga’s hand as they trudge along through the airport to their gate, all piling in to take a seat. He leans back and lets his breath out, stomach still sore and everything a little more work than he thought it should be. 

“I can’t believe we’re actually going home,” Oikawa is saying, sitting across from them, beside Iwaizumi and Ushijima. “There was a brief period there when I thought that hell was never going to end.”

“Hah,” Iwa says, but doesn’t look up from his phone. 

Daichi smiled back, pleasantly and almost sincerely. “Yeah. It’s really nice to be going home. I found out that the doctor did actually contact my mother, so… Yeah the conversation this is going to lead to will not be fun.” 

“Aww, she’s just worried. And rightfully so,” Suga said, looking at him. “Anyone would be.”

“I guess I’ll have to tell the squad, too,” Daichi chuckled. “It’s going to be…” he trailed off, eyes sort of glassing over. Oikawa is staring at him as well, before looking away. Ushijima pretends he hadn’t been listening, and beside him, Bokuto scratches the back of his head awkwardly. Kuroo distracts himself by watching Kenma’s game. 

Suga tilts his head, prompting: “It’s going to be…?” 

“Hard to explain,” Daichi finished, quickly, before saying: “But… I guess I don’t have to.” 

“What do you mean?” 

“We’re… not going to another squad meeting,” he said, looking over to him. “We’re not Karasuno students anymore. Those guys may never be in the same place at the same time again, there’s no reason for me to gather them up and tell them what happened, it’s not… it doesn’t matter. We’re… we’re not a team.” 

Oikawa chuckled softly. “We’re not captains, either, are we?” 

Silence. 

And more silence. And it’s longer than usual before Tendou leans forward in his seat and says: “Wakatoshi has an offer from the Schweiden Adlers,” he says. 

All eyes suddenly turn to someone who definitely doesn’t want all eyes on him. Ushijima sits up straighter, seeming embarrassed. 

“Yeah,” he said. “I… do.”

“Oh, man, that’s… amazing,” Daichi said. “Congratulations. You’ll be amazing.” 

“Thanks,” he said. “I… hadn’t thought to bring it up, I guess. I had figured this was supposed to be fun. And then it was the opposite of fun. And in both cases it seemed… improper to bring up the offer-”

“Well you’re not the only one!” Bokuto said, leaning forward more roughly. “I have an offer too! An even better offer! From the MSBY Black Jackals! Yah-ah!” 

Ushijima just sort of looks at him, before looking to Tendou for guidance, but the other just sort of shrugs. 

“You were also keeping it a secret, for the summer?” Daichi asks. 

“Actually I just forgot I didn’t tell you.”

Suga broke into laughter, shaking his head. “Oh, geez, you guys,” he said. “That’s amazing. Really, really amazing.”

“So… some of us are still going to have a team,” Daichi said, nodding. “I’d wish by some miracle we all could have… somehow stayed together, or even just… stayed competitors, but you can bet, I’ll be at as many games as I can.” 

“You know, I’m surprised,” Kuroo said, leaning in a bit to the conversation. “That you’re not pursuing volleyball post high school yourself. Or that you don’t have any scouts breathing down your neck,” he said. 

Daichi shrugged. “Maybe if someone had come knocking, I would have signed, but…” he opened his arms. “What are you gonna do? And I didn’t think it wise to chase it too feverishly.”

“Ah, wise,” Tendou said. “There are so many better things than volleyball anyway. Why stick around in something you’ve already mastered?” 

“I wouldn’t say I’ve mastered volleyball-”

“Sure you have,” Tendou interrupts, waving a hand. “What are you looking for, a little EXP bar above your head to ding to 100%? What’s volleyball anyway, it’s a bunch of guys playing a fancy version of don’t-let-the-ball-drop. I never even learned all the rules. I just jumped where the ball was. And now I’m going to move to Tokyo and make chocolate. It’s really not a deal, but I’d say I mastered the game.” 

“Your point of view is valuable, but breathtakingly bizarre,” Oikawa says. 

Tendou snickers. “All I’m saying is mastery is subjective if you remember that all things are made up. And Daichi was the best of us, barring practical skill, raw athleticism or strategy.” 

“You make less sense the more you talk,” Kenma murmurs, his voice soft.
“Ah, one could say I’ve mastered talking,” Tendou said, tapping the side of his nose. 

“I wouldn’t say I mastered volleyball,” Daichi said, grunting slightly as he stood up, putting a hand to his stomach to brace the wound. “Not by a longshot. But I’m… looking forward to doing something else. I’m not upset that it’s not my future.” 

“Me either,” Suga said, smiling slightly and watching him stand. “Do you need help?”

“No, no, I’m just gonna go to the bathroom,” Daichi said. “It’s just down the way.”

“Okay,” he said, and Daichi shuffled off, trying his best to walk without a limp but wondering who he was performing for. 

He had not lied. Volleyball wasn’t in Daichi’s future, beyond perhaps playing for fun or teaching his children. But there was a big part of him that felt raw, thinking of what he was losing. He didn’t want to play volleyball as a career, but the idea of stepping out of it terrified him, and saddened him. Perhaps Tendou was wrong, perhaps his angst over leaving the sport was more to do with his lack of mastery. Daichi liked to do good work. He didn’t need to be the best, but he needed to be his best. 

Tendou could leave the sport just fine, feeling like a personal master who had done something to the best of his needs and wishes. Daichi didn’t have that, did he? 

But that didn’t seem right, either. That was… for lack of a better term, selfish. And he had never cared that scouts only spoke to Tsukishima (before realizing his height was deceptive and he was only a first year) or that other teams whispered about the scary Ace or the quick first year. 

He let himself think about this issue in his own head, until he was washing his hands in the sink and staring at himself in the mirror. He was an adult, his face reflected back at him. He draws himself in, leaning a shoulder forward to show himself the pale, raised scarring down his back. Soon, his stomach and chest would have new, accompanying dark scars to show off the horror show that had been his graduation year. He thought of what that would look like. 

They’d think him a war hero, if a stranger saw him at the beach. They’d see scars and stab wounds and a set, traumatized expression to dark eyes and think wow, he must have been so brave, surviving whatever it was.

But the scars were barely earned, and the body he’d have would belong to someone far more valiant than he. 

And he wondered if he would ever get past the guilt that had settled in his chest, the ache in his lungs with each unearned breath, holding him back in his own head. He wondered if there was any way out of this life, this fake appearance of someone so strong, so perfect. 

He straightened up, and brushed himself down as he stared at his reflection. Perhaps he would join the military - he certainly had the face for it. In a sharp jacket and flat hat, carrying a rifle and marching to strict protocols. He might not be happy, but the regiment of a structured life would ease the pain of not knowing what he was meant to do. He was meant to serve, to fight, and eventually lay his life down. 

But, doing that would take away the life he had begun to - tentatively - hope for with Suga. That little whisper of life in his heart that was unmarred by his trauma and misgivings and anxiety, the one that has life breathed into it with every smile, every kiss and every touch of his hand. A small apartment, somewhere modest but nice enough and they were always warm. Suga, first as a student at the city university, and then later as a teacher, working a tiring job, but one that he liked, and having weekends off to spend as he pleased, plenty of time that they could keep up with old friends, with Asahi and Ennoshita and the captains. Bringing home story after story of the students that he taught, adorable anecdotes about misspelled words or playground fights, and these stories would tide them over until they couldn’t resist anymore, and one day, someday, there would be children of their own in that little apartment, to raise and care for and watch grow. 

But in all of this, Daichi was nowhere . It was Suga in a domestic life, wandering around the shadow of a man that had no defining features. It was Suga coming home to Daichi having cooked dinner, on a random Wednesday afternoon, but there was no information for what would being Daichi home on the following Saturday, what work he did that he liked, and what tiring but rewarding job occupied his time. It seemed to be his only driving factor was Suga, to be with him, and love him, but without personal meaning or invention. And Suga did not deserve that version of him. 

“Excuse me?”

Daichi’s thoughts are suddenly tangled, and then totally eviscerated, as he forces himself out of his emotional reverie and into the real world. Into the bust airport that bustled with life and energy, loud and chaotic as people laughed and talked and ran to terminals to meet their departure times. 

Right at his feet, almost to the point where Daichi had walked into her, was a little girl of about six years old. Her hair was curly and blond, her eyes big and brown, and she wore little blue overalls over a pink shirt. The picture of innocence and naivety, she stared up at him. 

“Uh - hi,” Daichi said, very confused. He had a small staring match with the girl, before realizing that she wasn’t just cute and innocent, but that she was putting on a very brave face and trying to look like nothing more than it. 

Daichi found himself, somehow, understanding this little girl better than he understood any of the guys waiting for him. 

Despite the pain in his stomach, he crouched down to be at her level. 

“Hey, sweetie, is something wrong? What’s your name?” 

She was quiet for a moment, before mumbling: “Clara. My mom said I was old enough to go to the bathroom alone, but I don’t remember where we were sitting…”

Daichi gave her a smile. “Oh, well that’s okay,” he said. “My name is Daichi. I’ll help you find your mom, okay?” 

She nodded slowly, hesitantly, watching him as he stood up again. He offered her his hand, and she took it readily. She was guarded, and uncomfortable, and had clearly been taught to never talk to strangers, but here and now she had felt like she had no other option. 

Daichi doesn’t want to pick a direction and get it wrong. If she was in this bathroom, it was probably one of the gates right near here. 

“Here,” he said, looking down to her. “Do you mind if I put you on my shoulders? You can see your mom and tell me where to go.” 

She nodded uncertainly, and ignoring the pain of his wound he bend down to lift her up, keeping a hand on her as he perched her on her shoulder. She clung to his hair, looking around. 

“I don’t see them…” she reports after a moment. 

“Well, let’s check the next gate down,” he said. “Don’t worry, we’ll find them.” 

She nodded as determinedly as she could, and Daichi began to walk, heading slowly down the line of gates, so that Clara could peer out at the faces of travellers and try and spot her mother. It only takes five, maybe ten minutes, but by the time Clara is tapping his face to get his attention, he’s already considering just going to one of the clerks and getting them to make an announcement. 

He’s not sure why that wasn’t his first instinct. 

“Oh! Clara- hey! Put her down!” 

Daichi has never responded to a command so quickly, and he doesn’t need to ask who her mother is because a short, frantically worried woman is rushing towards them. Clara runs to her, giggling happily as he mother picks her up. 

“What were you doing with my daughter?” she snaps. “You were trying to take her, weren’t you? Security!” 

Daichi’s eyes widened. “No! No! Not at all!” he said. “Not at all . She was lost!” 

“Likely story-”

“I was!” Clara whined. “I thought I was big enough to go to the bathroom alone but I’m not! I couldn’t remember where you were…” 

The mother softened slightly, and Daichi puts his hands up. 

“I swear, ma’am, it’s a misunderstanding. She was lost, I was just trying to help.”

The mother hummed, then nodded, and lifted her chin slightly, still clearly indignant. “Well, thank you, but don’t you think about touching my daughter again.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” he replied, as she turned to stomp off to the gate. Clara, over her mothers shoulder, waves goodbye. 

Daichi smiles, and waves goodbye. 

And he lets his breath out, running a hand over his face before turning slowly to head back to his own gate, to his own friends and family and hopefully with no more surprises before they get on the plane. And as he does, he thinks about everything he always thinks about, death, his own value, morality in the face of an evil world… normal things. 

But in addition, now, he sees Clara’s brown eyes, and though she could have easily stumbled across someone cruel and evil, she hadn’t, she’d approached him, and asked him, and he had been able to help her, and as a result she was safe with her family. He wanted to be in sight of every child who needed help, so that none of them ever had to approach someone like Adam. 

And he thought of her mother, who’s first instinct was that something horrible had happened to her daughter, that he was perverted or malicious and was trying to take her. A mother living in that world, in which a stranger is more likely to be a problem than help.

And when he thought back to Suga, as he usually always did, and he thinks of him happy and sharing a life with him, there was a small change that had never been there before, that settles resolution deep in Daichi’s stomach and hardens himself against his own bad thoughts. 

When he comes home, when it’s his work that demands long and tiring hours, he comes home wearing a symbol - a badge, a hat, a uniform, a vest - and it’s something that says I am help.  

If Daichi could spend his whole life making sure lost children found their parents safely, he’d be happy.

Chapter Text

“Mr. Sawamura, it’s a pleasure to see you again. If I’m being honest I was surprised to hear from you at all, after you cancelled our last session.” 

“I didn’t cancel for no good reason,” Daichi replies. His fingers tap random patterns on the rough fabric of the chair. His head is tilted to the side, avoiding direct eye contact with the older man who sat across from him. The window is clean, but on the outside of it, a small spider weaves a web. Hot, sunny air fills the room and lights everything up. The green leaves of a tree wave gently in the wind, and the office is located not too far from a school - distantly, he can hear laughter. 

The office is the exact temperature Daichi would want it to be. Warm enough that he doesn’t feel cold, but he doesn’t have to take his jacket off. And ergo, can get up and leave without having to grab anything, if he so desires.

The office door is shut, but the chairs are positioned so that Daichi can keep his eye on it, in case it decides to open. 

The spider drops from its web to hide and wait for prey. 

“I didn’t say that you did,” the man says. The man . Dr. Miho Yagi. He was fine. He was better than the first woman Daichi had gone to see. Good enough to have been graced with his presence three times now. Three . That was more than Daichi had promised Suga, and the latter was very much aware of it.  “But,” Yagi continues. “I do remember you saying - and I quote-” here he leans down to read from his notebook. “ I don’t need a therapist, I’ve got it under control. And then you cancelled your next appointment. I was surprised to see your name again.” 

“Something came up.” 

“Would you like to talk about it?” 

“It was a normal thing, not a mental health thing.”

“We can talk about it anyway.”

Daichi finally looks back at him. “I joined a search and rescue party, they were looking for volunteers. I wanted to go but it would have conflicted with the appointment, so I cancelled. There.” 

“Oh,” Yagi said, looking down at his notebook. “Well, I suppose then I’m just glad to see you rescheduled. You spend a lot of your time volunteering, it seems… I remember you saying you’re a volunteer firefighter, as well. And you’re currently employed in… road construction?” 

Daichi nodded, leaning forward onto his knees. 

“You have a passion for helping people. Why only volunteer?” 

---

“Well, this is far from the dream, but it’ll do for now, yeah?” Suga laughed, taking hold of Daichi’s elbow as they stood in the tiny, rather dingy, one-room apartment that they would now be considering as their home. It consisted of a kitchen-living room space that was barely bigger than a regular bedroom, a small connected bathroom, and the bedroom to the side with a bed that barely left any room to move around it. The nicest feature was a long window along the far wall, and though it only overlooked a ratty alleyway and pharmaceutical shop, it let in plenty of natural light that made the small place seem much nicer than it was. 

“It’ll do,” Daichi agreed, watching Suga wander into the room and set a box down. 

They’d both packed light, knowing how small the new space would be. They didn’t need a lot of fancy things, and although they’d found a much nicer apartment for about the same rent, they agreed that being more in the city would be beneficial. This one was within an appropriate walking distance from the university Suga had been accepted into, and would save them tons on train, bus or cab fare in the long run. Being able to walk places had trumped extra space. 

And besides, it was only the first stop. They’d start saving immediately, and once Suga had a full-time teacher’s salary, they’d be on their way to something better. 

He follows Suga in, shutting the door behind them. They meet in the middle of the small room, gravitating towards each other as all young couples do, hands in hands, comfort in proximity and relying on love and love alone to make all the struggle worth it. 

And it would be worth it. 

Daichi leaned in to kiss him, pulling him in closer and tighter and drowning in the smell of his hair and skin and the feel of his hands gliding up his back.

---

“I can’t,” Daichi said. “I fucked up.” 

“What makes you think you fucked up?” Yagi replied, tilting his head curiously. Daichi had decided he liked Yagi because of his eyes. They weren’t overly warm, or friendly, but a very pale sort of brown that scanned Daichi’s face like a machine looking for data. They were concerned, sure, but Daichi would have bet that Yagi spent most of his life wondering why he didn’t understand people, why he didn’t connect. He probably got into psychology in a desperate attempt to understand his peers. He spoke like he was constantly applying a formula to Daichi’s responses, instead of using intuition. 

Daichi liked that. The first therapist, the woman, had looked at him with these warm, loving doe eyes that had made Daichi squirm with discomfort, this motherly sort of understanding that indicated she had never once in her life felt at odds with her own psychology. She was emphatic to the point of uselessness. She could only apply suffocating sympathy and pity to their sessions, and while that might work for some, it didn’t for Daichi. 

Yagi, Daichi believed, though he had yet to ask any questions to confirm it, understood what it was like to feel disconnected from the people he was around. He had been different, even if his body was the same as everyone else’s. 

Suga hadn’t cared when Daichi had tried to explain this to him. Really, Suga had barely understood what he was talking about, but ultimately he had been more thrilled when Daichi had agreed to a second meeting with a therapist at all. 

---

It’s dark outside, now, the small window of their bedroom letting only a few dashes of starlight through the glass, across the blankets that lay messed and crumpled. It was approaching midnight - or perhaps midnight had long since passed. For all they knew, it could have been approaching sunrise. They were awake nonetheless, and had been for a while. 

It seemed impossible to sleep when Suga was this close to him. 

It’s soft giggling laughter and teasingly roaming hands, hissed words of fake-scolding and loud jokes that sent them both into fits. 

Suga rolled over after one such fit, still laughing and grinning, pushing himself up so that he could lean over Daichi, keeping him down against the bed. Daichi’s hand came up, fingertips gently trailing up the smooth skin of his arm, to the curve of his shoulder, and down again. He seemed impossibly pale in the bluish reflection of the moon, but beautiful in a way that took Daichi’s breath away. 

“You know,” Suga said, leaning down into a soft, chaste kiss before pulling back. “You’re quite a distraction. I have to go to school tomorrow, and here you are keeping me up.” 

“You’re the one that keeps talking,” Daichi chuckled, as Suga leaned down to kiss his jaw. “I had no issues settling down for the night.” 

Suga hummed in a sort of annoyance, but trailed soft kisses down his jaw, then to his neck. Daichi lets his hands explore his back, tracing the curve of his spine and every muscle. 

“When do you start work?” Suga murmured after a moment, pulling away after a moment. Daichi seemed surprised by the question. 

“What do you mean?” 

“You took the government exam two weeks ago. Surely you’d have heard back by now. I wanna know when I get to see you in uniform,” he purred, lifting a hand up to pinch Daichi’s nose, in a way that starkly contrasted what was previously a very flirtatious sentence. 

Daichi squeaked, swatting his hand away. 

“Well don’t hold your breath.”

Suga tilted his head. “Oh?”

“I already heard back from them, I didn’t pass.” 

“What?” Suga squeaked, sitting up even more in surprise. “What for? You had a near perfect GPA, definitely aced the fitness exam - what happened?” 

Daichi stared at him for a moment, before looking away as he answered:

“I failed the mental health evaluation.” 

---

“I’m really sorry to hear that,” Yagi says, lifting a hand under his chin. “But you’re making a good effort, coming back here. I’m sure with a little work, you’ll be able to pass the exam. Was it a goal of yours, to become a police officer?” 

“Not particularly,” Daichi replied. 

“Then why did you take the exam?” 

“I liked the badge.” 

“In what way?” 

Daichi thinks about it for a moment. “It would let me help people. But I can do that as a volunteer firefighter, and joining search and rescue crews. So I don’t feel particularly upset about failing the exam.” 

Yagi nodded, humming softly to himself. 

“And you enjoy this work - helping people on the side, construction day-to-day? This makes you feel good?” 

---

When Daichi had taken the fitness test to be a volunteer firefighter, the invigilating crowd had grinned and clapped and almost immediately offered him a position. Apparently stressfully trying to perfect himself in an effort to prove strong enough to survive anything had paid off. He lied in any area that he thought might prevent him from getting in. He didn’t feel guilty about it. 

Mostly, being a volunteer was just making sure his phone was always turned on, and the first few calls he responded to were minor things that the actual crew couldn’t make it to, due to unfortunate, more significant problems. 

He tried not to get in the way, hanging back and letting the professionals handle it. But he watched, how they spoke, how they held themselves, what decisions they made and how they spoke to the civilians they handled. 

He was invited to a small thank-you dinner that happens annually for the volunteers before he had attended any serious fire alarms. It was just a coincidence that his name made the roster three weeks before the dinner was being held. 

The imposter syndrome was intense, but Suga had insisted he go. 

So Daichi had sat, quietly, and listened to the more seasoned firefighters talk and laugh and toast to each other. And then someone, an older, strong looking man with a badge and a permanent place on the first responder team, nodded over to Daichi. 

“What’s that on your neck?”

He lifted a hand up, to where his fingers graced over a scar. 

“From an incident,” he said. “About a year ago.”

“An incident? ” the man echoes back. “Go on, then! Tell us your story.” 

Daichi suddenly had the attention of the whole team. The entire night they’d been trading alarm stories, of the most terrifying blazes they had ever seen, the scariest calls, the worst nights of their lives. 

It wouldn’t have been out of place at all for him to respond. 

“I got lost in the woods,” he said. “About a year ago, with some friends of mine.”

The table leans in. 

“We were in Gunma, hiking. We got lost off the trail and a friend hurt his knee… it was bad. Really bad, actually. We wandered for almost three days, lost, with… nothing to help us. The-” he curls his hand around his own neck. “The scars are from a bear. We had encountered a bear, with these young cubs, and it… came after me, almost killed me. My friends managed to chase it off.”

The eyes that are watching him are wide. 

Daichi realizes, very distantly, that this is the first time he’s publicly told his story. He’d always let someone else do it for him. He’d never wanted to open his mouth before. 

“Well damn, welcome to the team then!” 

“Hah! It’s good to know strong men like you are joining the ranks.”

“Clearly god’s watching out for you, surviving a bear!”

Daichi gives them all smiles, politely excuses himself, and leaves the dinner early. 

It’s two and a half weeks later, at 1 am, when he gets his first real call. 

His phone goes off and startles both him and Suga awake. Suga is trying to ask for information, for clarification, on where, on what, on how bad, but Daichi is stumbling around and rushing out the door before he answers any of it. 

The older man from the dinner is already on site when Daichi shows up. The firetruck’s lights are whirling but it’s barely needed amid the glow of the building. The flames lick up into the sky, curling smoke reaches into the inky darkness, the red flames light everything around them in a glow, and Daichi’s eyes have never been so wide as he stares up at the beast. 

It’s not a bear. 

It’s not Adam. 

It’s something entirely new. A new horror, a new challenge. 

But he doesn’t panic. He doesn’t even hesitate. He’d gone through the precursory training, he knew his role as a volunteer, he doesn’t even have to wait for the captain to give an order before he’s fallen into place and begun to work. 

---

“It makes me feel alive,” Daichi corrected. “The construction job is boring, and tiring, and it sucks most of the time, but it pays well. And knowing that, at any moment, someone could call on me to save a life… helps make waking up feel important.” 

“Is that… the only reason you have for waking up? Because someone might need you?”

---

The first time Daichi is first to respond is the scariest. 

He moves on adrenaline and instinct. 

He relies on that part of his brain that so easily shuts off self preservation. 

The building is roaring in flames, there’s screaming, a man is screaming, a child is crying, dogs are barking. Daichi’s hands don’t shake as he gets hoses ready and moves around with the small crew that had brought the firetruck. He usually helps with spraying down neighbouring buildings, wetting connecting structures, trying to douse the fire entirely. He’s always shown up second, or third, or last. 

But as he’s doing that, he notices that it’s mostly volunteers here today. It’s mostly people who always work beside him. The captain is still absent - was he on leave? Daichi couldn’t remember. The rest of the salaried firefighters are limited, the experience is low. 

When someone tells him there are people still inside the building, it takes him less than a second to decide he was going inside.

At home, Suga wraps him up in a hug and holds him tighter than he has in a while, likely more for himself than Daichi. He smells of smoke and ashes, with soot on his face and flushed skin from very minor burns.

“I was watching the news,” Suga whispered. “I thought you wouldn’t be able to respond, you were at work-”

“I’m okay,” Daichi says, holding him tighter in response. “I’m sorry I worried you, I’m okay.” 

Suga nodded, before pressing his nose down into Daichi’s neck and crying. 

---

“No,” Daichi admits.

“That’s good. It’s important to have things in your life that you value. What are you thinking of, when you say no?” 

“Sugawara,” he replied.

“Ah, yes. He was the one who scheduled your first appointment, no?” 

“He was. He’s the best thing in my life right now. I’d do anything to make him happy, even if that means… taking care of myself.” 

The look that crosses Daichi’s face indicates that he knows how that sounds. 

“Do you have any reasons, Mr. Sawamura, that aren’t other people?” 

“What do you mean? What else is there? I don’t care about money or anything like that.” 

“I meant yourself,” Yagi says. 

Daichi smiles slightly, but it’s thin and somewhat condescending. “Well if that was the case I wouldn’t be in therapy, would I?” 

---

“Did you hear?” Suga said, talking over the noise of the TV as he worked on an essay. Or, well, pretended to work on an essay. Suga had said he was working on an essay, but if he were really working on an essay, he would have asked Daichi to turn down the TV. Also, when Daichi had gone through the kitchen to get some water, he’d noticed Suga suspiciously and frantically changing the tabs on his laptop. Daichi wasn’t blind, though. He saw his open video tab.
“Hear what?” Daichi asks, calling over his shoulder. 

“Asahi and Nishinoya are dating.”

“Excuse-fucking-what?” 

“Yeah that was my reaction.”

“Since when!” 

“Apparently,” Suga said, looking up from his fake work. “Longer than we’ve been.” 

“Wh-”

“Yeah,” Suga interrupts, a hint of annoyance in his voice. And they never bothered to tell us. Can you imagine!”

“Hah!” Daichi laughs, and he really is sort of amused. “Next you’re gonna tell me that Yamaguchi and Tsukishima are secretly dating. Or Hinata and Kageyama!” 

“Now that would be surprise,” Suga snickered. 

---

“Why didn’t I tell you?” Asahi asked, stirring sugar into his tea with a little spoon somewhat mindlessly. The cafe is small and well lit, not so busy this early in the morning. Daichi hasn’t had a chance to hang out one-on-one with Asahi in a long time. The tall man was as quiet and withdrawn as ever, but the year since graduation seemed to have been good for him. He was dressing nicer, his hair was neater, and though he still seemed shy and anxious in tone, he met Daichi’s eyes and didn’t look away. 

“Yeah, man! That’s pretty damn big news! You’ve been together for like a year and a half and didn’t tell me! You were supposed to be my best friend.”

“It’s not like I kept it a secret,” Asahi replied. “Really, everyone knew.”

“I didn’t!”

Asahi laughs. “You’ve been busy. I… honestly didn’t think you’d even care. It was my dating life, and it was new for me, and Nishi, and I didn’t want to… get in your way.” 

“Get in my way?”

“Man, every time I thought to mention it to you, something incredibly shocking was happening. How was I supposed to announce to you while you were limping around with bear claws in your back? Or when you were planning a roadtrip across America or getting stabbed in a fist fight with a murderer .” 

Daichi looks away, as if feigning stupidity. 

“The truth is, you haven’t needed me, man,” he said. “A lot was changing in my life, but you’ve been… doing your own thing. I would have loved to tell you more, but… it didn’t seem like you wanted me in your life anymore.” 

“Huh?” he looks back at him, “that’s ridiculous, Asahi, you’re my best friend. Of course I want you in my life.”

“Are you sure?” he said. “Because Nishinoya had to tell me about what happened in America. And he only heard it from Ennoshita, who Suga had told. You never call. You didn’t ask about my dating life, you didn’t tell me you were moving to Tokyo, so I had to find out that me and Suga were in the same university by seeing him walk into my Intro-English class.”

“Asahi…”

“I’m not upset, Daichi,” he said. “It’s just… you’re a different person now. With different friends, and different goals. It’s okay if we’re growing apart.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Asahi said, leaning over to playfully shove his shoulder. “No matter how much distance, I’m always gonna have your back, okay? And I know you’ll have mine.”

He nodded. “I do.”

---

“Will I be seeing you again, Mr. Sawamura?” 

“Uh, yeah,” Daichi said, as he was standing up. He hesitates, thinking, looking around as if trying to figure out what he’d been doing. The rest of the session had gone by as normal. Daichi wasn’t even sure where the therapy was happening, it just seemed to be that they were talking about his daily life. Occasionally Yagi would say and how does that make you feel? And Daichi would have to resist leaving on the spot, but other than that… It was just a boring conversation with a man he barely knew. 

Daichi schedules another appointment for a few week’s time. He leaves the office and heads down the street, heading towards the train station on autopilot. 

He doesn’t feel bad the same way he used to, but he’s hesitant to give Yagi credit for that. He stands at the train station and waits for the next one. He loiters around on his phone, surrounded by people doing exactly the same thing. On his phone, he books a first-aid class to get his certification.

The train takes him a few stops around the city, before he gets off and walks the rest of the way. He stops to look into the windows of shops, making his way back home very slowly and occasionally checking the time. He knows Suga will be at the university until late tonight, so he’s not in any rush. He stops in to a little shop and buys a small bouquet of flowers, talking with the clerk for a moment as he put it together. 

“It’s turning into such a nice summer,” the clerk comments. “The sun is shining, the sky is clear, birds are out. And so warm!”

Daichi smiles as he pays. “Perfect day for a hike,” he says, in a snide joke that the clerk mistakes for sincerity, nodding along with him. 

He carries the flowers down the street and continues to eye shops full of things he doesn’t even want.

At home, he sets the flowers in a small vase, and centers it on their little table. He cleans up around the house, so that Suga doesn’t have to think about it when he gets home, and turns on the news station on their little TV. 

He puts his phone face-up on the table, even though he knows he’s not on-call today. 

---

“Did you hear?” Ushijima says, wandering down the city street. Kuroo is half distracted by the big neon sign advertising skin cream with a terrifying looking mascot. “Daichi pulled a kid out of a burning building. No suit, no nothing. The firefighters had said it was too dangerous to go back in.”

“For fuck’s sake,” Kuroo replies. “Someone oughta put him on a leash.”

“Suga was beside himself,” Oikawa agreed. “Kept Akaashi up all night yelling about it. Apparently he got burned pretty badly up his arm, but he’s alright.” 

“Is that why he wasn’t able to make it today?” Bokuto asked. “Stuck in the hospital?” 

“Apparently,” Oikawa confirmed, nodding. 

“Ah, well, you heard wrong.”

They all turn, raising their eyes in various levels of surprise as Daichi comes wandering down the street, one arm bandaged to hell and back and tied up in a sling to cover the burns. 

They all stare at him. 

“ Dude ,” Kuroo said. “Go home .”

“And miss our last full day together? Never!” Daichi laughed, using his good hand to pat Ushijima’s shoulder. “Oikawa’s flying abroad next week, Bokuto is moving across the country, Kuroo’s starting a new job - we gotta make the most of this!” 

“Never change, man,” Bokuto laughed, clapping him on the back. “You are one hell of a fighter.”

“Or change, like, just a little,” Oikawa said. “I can think of a few improvements.”

“More common sense,” Kuroo suggests.

“Better judgement,” Ushijima agrees.

“Ah, what about a bit more self-preservation?” Kuroo circles around too.

“Those all mean the same thing!” Daichi laughed. “Stop it! I get it! I’m working on it!”

“Now, what should we do?” Bokuto chirped, moving through them to start down the street again. “Something fun! Something exciting-”

“How about,” Kuroo said, slowly. “We head back to my place, rent a movie, and stay inside four safe walls where no curse can affect us.” 

“Oh, yes, that’s a much better idea.”