Work Text:
The hall buzzed with people, half of which didn’t really know why they were here. Practically buzzing himself, Daichi smiled and waved by the entrance. Pleasantries seeped out of him, “Thank you for coming!” and “Koushi and I appreciate it!”. Most people waved back, but hardly acknowledged him and the few that did notice he was there clapped him on the back or chatted him up. Despite how tedious it was, it made the event feel special.
The police hall was decorated up all nice, with dollar store streamers and table clothes they’d rented for the occasion. Across the room the buffet had opened up, and some guests had beelined right for it. Daichi could see Suga at the end of the line, two empty plates in hand. It seemed like Superintendent Hashimoto and he were chit-chatting and Daichi felt nerves rise in his chest. He really hoped Suga wouldn’t say anything too embarrassing, considering it was Daichi’s boss he was talking to. However much faith he had in his best friend was quickly squashed when Suga pointed in Daichi’s general direction and Hashimoto doubled over in laughter.
Distracting himself from the idea that Hashimoto was going to definitely bring up whatever anecdote Suga had shared at a super inopportune time, Daichi returned to pleasantries by the door. Spotting Mrs. Ishida waddling her way through the door, Officer Ishida at her side, Daichi smiled warmly. She was always pleasant enough to talk to. He spent a lot of the parties thrown at the station talking to the officer’s wives rather than the other officers and Mrs. Ishida was sort of their leader. She’d accepted him easily enough after he’d shared some recipes with the group.
“Sawamura, how are you!” she yelped before he could even start his welcome-spiel.
“I’m well, Mrs. Ishida. And you?”
“Probably not as good as you, Mr. Off-the-Market!” She laughed heartily and Officer Ishida relaxed into a fond smile.
“I’m pretty sure I’d been off the market for a long time before Koushi finally proposed. As far as most of our friends thought, we were already married…” Mrs. Ishida laughed even harder and Officer Ishida let out a small laugh. Quite the stoic character, Daichi was glad to get even a little smile out of him.
“Finally admitting that I proposed?” Suga had practically snuck up on Daichi. Officer Ishida laughed at the expression on his face and Daichi felt embarrassment color his face as he turned to his fiance. The man was smiling wide and confident, hip cocked to one side. He still held the two plates from earlier, though they were now full of enough food to feed a family of ten.
“Whether you proposed or not, you just one upped my romantic moment,” Daichi regarded Suga fondly. He could never get tired of looking at him. From the warm mornings when he’d catch Suga glowing in the sunrise editing lesson plans, to standing here in the cheaply decorated police hall having gotten food for them both because all the good stuff would be gone by the time Daichi finished greeting people, to the late nights when Suga would come home bone-tired and end up in a tizzy because he got microwave ramen on his good work shirt, it was all welcome.
Suga inclined his head toward a sort-of empty table by the entrance, at which Superintendent Hashimoto and his daughter sat. Daichi extended the invitation to the Ishidas and they all crowded to the table. Hashimoto looked up from a seemingly intense conversation with his daughter to smile politely at the new arrivals. The teenage girl couldn’t be bothered to look up from where she stared holes into the tablecloth.
There was a fatigue at the edge of Hashimoto’s smile and Daichi picked up on it almost immediately. He gave a sort of nod at Suga who noticed and took a seat next to the angsty teen.
“I’m amazed you could convince your kid to come, Tsubasa,” Mrs. Ishida laughed, “I couldn’t convince Kei to come if I paid him.”
“I’m sure she’s just here for the free dinner,” Hashimoto grumbled, glancing at his daughter.
“That's perfectly alright. I’m here for the same reason,” Suga jumped in.
“It’s your engagement party, though,” Mrs. Ishida barked, either valiantly trying to keep a happy tone or unaware of the sour mood of the table.
“He’s well aware of that,” Daichi joked. He turned to face Suga who gave him a quietly questioning look. He gestured beside him slightly. Daichi smiled and mouthed something. As the table laughed, Suga turned to the girl beside him.
“Mina is it?” She looked up, if only because she’d heard her name, “I like your nail polish. It’s a pretty color.” Reluctantly, the girl moved her hands around in her lap, showing off the pale orange.
“They get even better.” Mina moved her hands up into the light, where the color promptly mellowed out into a hardly noticeable nude color.
“Wow, yeah! That is even better. Daichi, hun, check this out.” Suga leaned back a little so that Mina could show off her nails to him.
“Neat. I think my sisters would love nail polish like that. Easy to hide in school,” He commented. Without hesitation, Mina launched into ways to get such nail polish and the rest of the colors the brand had to offer. Behind her Hashimoto smiled thankfully at Suga.
“Thank Daichi. If he hadn’t said anything then I wouldn’t have noticed she was upset.” Hashimoto smiled even wider.
“So lovebirds,” Mrs. Ishida grinned slyly at Daichi and Suga, “I need all the details. Koushi, you proposed, did you not?”
Suga exhaled a laugh, “Sort of…It’s a weirdly complicated story actually…”
==
‘Til this day Suga has no idea whether it was earth shatteringly loud or dead silent after the accident. The only sound he could really hear was the drum of his own heart beat, pulsing blood out of the gashes on his face and right arm. A paramedic had seen to him earlier and they said he was lucky. If the other car had t-boned his coming from the other side he would have gotten hurt much worse. At the same time, Suga remembers thinking, if his car had gotten hit on the other side he would have just hit the car parked next to him, not rolled onto its side. It was a win and a loss at the same time.
The curb was hot under him, and weirdly sharp. Shoddy concrete, he thought. It was good to focus on the little things, like the color of the asphalt under his feet, because if he didn’t he’d realize how numb his arm was feeling.
“He’s all clear to start giving a report at the station,” The paramedic said, waving towards Suga. A police officer, Officer Noma if Suga was reading his nametag correctly, strode toward him, bleeding a false confidence Daichi wouldn’t be caught dead with. Annoyance toyed with the last of Suga’s patience. If he had to have his car totaled in a hit and run why couldn’t it have been just one little prefecture over? If he was in Miyagi then maybe the officers would be nicer since they know him through Diachi.
“Mr. Sugawara?” Suga hummed and looked up at the officer trying not to seem too disrespectful but wanting to communicate a general distrust, “Real fast, what exactly would you say happened here? You’ll have to come with us to the station, but I want to get your side of the story.”
“Well Officer, I was backing out of the parking spot, careful as always,” Suga was too damn tired to talk, “and the person that hit me came around the corner faster than I could stop. T-boned the left side of my car and it rolled over the curb. I was…I think I was too…scared to really take in much detail after that, but someone must have called the police. In all that time the guy who hit me drove away. I hope someone got their license plate.”
“Mhmm yes. Stand, please. I’d like to get you to the station as soon as possible.”
Suga frowned, but stood regardless, “The only injuries I got were from the window breaking and cutting me. Thanks for asking.”
=
“...Okay he wasn’t that much of a dick but the guy that hit me wasn’t there for me to be mad at so Officer Stupid was my backup.”
“Please tell me you weren’t super mean to him.”
“I wasn’t any more passive aggressive than normal… He made no effort to even make sure I was okay. Like, my car just got totaled, could I at least get some water?” Suga huffed, and despite his efforts to stay mad, Daichi’s little laughs only made his mood lighten. The two were laying on Daichi’s bed, staring up at the ceiling. Suga had closed his eyes about twenty minutes into the silence, but Daichi had started a conversation, and Suga, as much as he wanted to curl up and go to sleep, couldn’t deny the other.
“If it’s any consultation, we would have gotten you water… Or anything really.”
“What about a stuffed animal of a bear?”
“...Maybe not that…”
“Daichi Sawamura, how dare you lie to me.”
“I mean I could get you a stuffed animal of a bear, but as a police department it’s not like we have those lying around.”
“You should get me a stuffed animal of a bear…” Suga was losing steam, fatigue was taking over. A stuffed animal would be nice right now. A comfortable silence stretched through the room. Silent as it was, Suga could practically hear Daichi thinking. Eyes closed, laying on his back, Suga had this sense that Daichi was upset about something. He also knew that the man would never say anything unless provoked.
“It’s hard to relax with you thinking so hard over there,” Suga snorted. Daichi made a sort of apologetic noise and rolled over to face the other. Suga would feel the intensity of his stare, but refused to look over at him. Some twitching part of his brain knew that if he rolled over, it’d all be over for him. He’d give in to caring about Daichi and his worried expression and dorky hair and rough hands and wouldn’t be able to function anymore.
“I was just… I wanted… Uhm,” As composed as he always seemed, Suga thought, Daichi wasn’t one to express what was going on in his head. He could read people’s moods and help others easily enough, but reading his own emotions was another thing, “I wanted to know what you were thinking about…Like when it happened- I mean if you were thinking at all. I usually don’t too much when stuff like that happens at work and-”
“I was thinking about you, honestly.”
Daichi just about choked, “What?”
“After the car rolled, I couldn't really do much. I froze, deer in headlights. I was trying to come up with things to distract myself from how much my arm hurt, and I ended up thinking that you were probably on your way home from work right about then. I must have started to fall asleep or pass out because my brain came up with this whole elaborate scene.”
“Tell me about it. Please.” The tone in Daichi’s voice made all sorts of emotions swell in Suga’s chest. All kinds of neurons bumping around trying to process what was going on.
He heard that being in love with somebody like this, so totally and completely, felt like flying. But for him it was more like the second before the drop on that carnival boat ride that swings back and forth. When you hover in the air for barely long enough to inhale and then swing back down again. It’s not a complete free fall, and it’s not soaring forever, it’s a practiced rhythm, swinging back and forth and hitting highs that make you know something better than flying.
“I saw you coming home from work…Dropping your bag and kicking off your shoes. The mudroom was so tidy without all my shit making it messy. Like… none of my shoes were there and my backpack wasn’t anyway to be seen. And y’know that picture we have one the wall when you walk in of both of our families when we did that stupid Sugawara-Sawamura family camping thing!? The picture was just your family. And I wasn’t in the picture of the team reunion.”
“That’s scary.”
“You just went through the house like it was normal. You went through the living room and instead of a table at both ends of the couch, there was just one table on your side. My bedroom was a weightroom and you hardly even glanced at it. Just went to your room, changed and went back to the kitchen to make dinner. It made me so…something. I don’t even know how I felt but watching you make dinner for just yourself hurt, I guess. You just ate in the kitchen.”
“Was I sad?”
“No! That’s the weird part. It’s like you couldn’t miss me because I was never there in the first place.”
“I…I don’t like that.” Daichi sounded so disgusted. It was almost funny to Suga, how upset the scenario had made him.
“When I kind of came to, I was sitting outside and I realized that the idea of you being happy without me had made me so sad. I wanted to be happy with you. Saying it out loud seems kind of selfish, like I won’t let you be happy without you-”
“That’s not it at all, because-” Daichi sat up in a flash, causing a distressed Suga to open his eyes and blink owlishly at him, “I don’t want to be happy without you. I don’t ever even want to be without you! When I found out you’d gotten in an accident I cried, Koushi. At the pick up window of a fast food place!” Suga snorted and Daichi smiled at the sound. Undeterred from making his enthusiastic speech, Daichi continued, “I’d gotten both of us food because I knew you were going to be coming back from the grocery store and you wouldn’t want to stop because you had milk in the car! And I love that!” Daichi’s face had begun to flush and Suga couldn’t help but stare. He loved when Daichi got like this, all loud and passionate. Maybe it was kind of mean, but Suga loved to chip away at the great wall of Daichi and find whatever passion or sadness or anything that mushed around behind his collected demeanor. For as long as they’d known each other Suga was the only person who managed to do it so effortlessly.
“I love that you buy us groceries and I cook dinner and we work together to live like this! I love being able to share a life with you. I love that I wasn’t worried about who was going to put away the groceries because I was going to get home first and eat and then when you got home I could put them away for you while you ate. And I was terrified when I heard that you were in trouble because I realized how alone I’d be all of a sudden…” Daichi had finally paused. Taking a breath, he turned away from Suga to look down at his hands.
“I saw a dustpan the other day that was blue, like your favorite shade of blue, and I was gonna buy it for you since the one we have is your least favorite color. I didn’t end up buying it but I realized that we together have a dustpan…it’s just so mundane. I love it. I…I love you, Koushi.” The silence after Daichi had finished talking hit the room like a brick. Suga laid in stunned, but pleased, silence and Daichi stewed in embarrassment as the silence knitted through the room.
In one swift move, Suga swung his leg around and used it to make Daichi lay back down. The momentum swung Suga over top of Daichi, pinning him.
“Marry me- Like…we should get married,” Suga was inches from Daichi’s face and despite how shocked he was, Daichi couldn’t be happier, “I know we never technically dated or done anything explicitly romantic, but we’ve been in love with each other since we met and I would give anything to be with you forever, so marry me?” Suga felt his chest lighten, the moment of flying before the fall, when Daichi kissed him. It wasn’t the first time they’d kissed, and hardly the last, but it was definitely top three in the times they’d kissed.
When Daichi pulled away, Suga felt the loss, the sudden and heart-wrenching disconnect. But he wasn’t too worried, because after Daichi gave his teary-eyed nod and mumbled, “yes,” they could get right back to it.
“I’ll get you a ring later…I kind of might need to get a new car first,” Suga admitted after a few more moments of unadulterated love. Daichi exhaled a fond laugh.
“I do think a car is a little more important than a ring I won’t be able to show off.”
“Why couldn’t you show it off?”
“If my hand gets injured, my ring is the last thing I’ll want to lose. I’ll wear it like a necklace to keep it safe.”
“You’re fucking adorable.”
“Thank you?”
“I love you, Daichi Sawamura.”
“I love you, Koushi Sawamura… Is that- Do we-?”
“We’ll work on it.”