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It’s hard to imagine a time before this.
Daichi doesn’t remember when it became normal, seeing Suga like this. He doesn’t remember why he feels like there’s a fist clenching the life out of him through his heart.
(Except he does, god he does. It comes in the form of words shaped through a phone speaker that sound like “infection” and “hurry” and “fuck, is he okay?”)
~*~
When Sugawara first told him, he didn’t cry.
“You’re hilarious, Suga, but you’ll have to get some better excuses than that. I know you hate the cold, but we still have practice.”
He had actually laughed, the nerve of him. It was supposed to be a joke. (Right?)
“No, Dachi I really can’t- my mom says it’s not good for me. The cold- it hurts my bones. It’s because I’m dying.”
“Yeah, yeah. Funny. Now come on.”
Suga had taken a nervous glance back, then, “Fine, fine. Let me grab a coat, at least.”
He told himself it was normal to wear two jackets in autumn, that the way Suga’s knees buckled repeatedly during practice was due to a lack of sleep or maybe a soft-core injury.
(Daichi knew from the start, deep down, that everything was going to change.)
~*~
Suga collapses in front of the entire team a week after nationals.
The third years all run over to him at once, but the rest of the team is standing in shock around the gym. Daichi sits with the other first years on the bench, water bottle paused midway to his mouth. Faintly, he registers someone let out a broken yell. His coach mutters something that sounds like, “His mother said it was only a matter of time, the poor kid.”
It takes until he’s shoving the third years out of the way, panting desperately, to realize he’s the one who yelled.
~*~
The thing about Suga is that he’s so strong. That’s something Daichi hadn’t realized he was underestimating until The End.
“How long have you been like this?” Daichi asked the first time he went to visit Suga in the hospital.
The collapse, the doctors said, was a minor issue. It wasn’t, as Daichi had quickly learned, the first time Suga had been hospitalized for his condition. He had an entire medical record, apparently. Some of the things on there were way worse than a collapse.
“Since I was twelve,” Suga had told him through raspy, labored breaths. “But it got a lot better. I was clear, for a while.” he finishes when Daichi stares at him with incredulous eyes.
“You didn’t even tell me.” he chokes, pulling Sugawara’s hands into a vice-like grip on the edge of the bed, almost as if he’s afraid he’ll disappear if he doesn’t hold on for dear life.
“I didn’t want you to worry. And I was better, I swear.”
“You don’t look better.” he sighs.
“I’ll be fine,” Suga assures, softly.
(Fine, Daichi thinks, doesn’t make your twenty-year-old best friend look like a walking corpse.)
~*~
“What do you call it again?”
“Acute Myeloid Leukemia,” Suga recites for probably the eighth time that morning.
Learning to cope with the sudden boulder that is the cancer infesting Suga’s bones is a slow and gruelling process. A part of Daichi is still in denial of everything happening to his best friend, though that part is fading rapidly as the number of times he finds himself visiting the hospital grows, faces of nurses becoming names and the blipping of machines a nuisance he’s learned to cope with.
“You look tired, Daichi. Go home.”
Daichi grunts in protest, but there’s no hiding the dark circles painting his eyes or the way his eyelids take just a fraction of a second longer to open each time he blinks, not from suga.
“‘M fine,” he mumbles, resting his chin on the edge of Suga’s bed. “Can sleep later. Wanna be with you now.”
“I’ll still be here when you get back.” Suga hums, laughing when Daichi startles himself from passing out to the rhythmic rubbing of the fingers that found their way into his hair.
Daichi sits up in his chair slowly, taking the fingers that fall from ebony locks into his palms. “Will you, though?”
“Of course, Daichi. I’m not gonna let this disease kill me yet. I have things to do still in my life, people to see.” The laugh he finishes with sounds weaker, trailing off into a fit of coughs that scare Daichi more than reassure him.
“Okay, fine,” he relents instead of the protests waiting on his tongue, “I’ll be back tomorrow when they let you out.”
Suga smiles warmly and nods, burrowing into his sheets until only his head is poking out so he can sleep in Daichi’s absence. He looks ridiculous. Daichi wonders for a moment what would happen if he kissed him. He doesn’t.
“I’ll be okay, Daich.” Suga says, once more.
He walks out of room 138 swiftly and quietly. He does not cry, and he does not collapse in the hall besides the door to his friend’s prison when the pain gripping his chest threatens to suffocate him.
(It’s just that Suga’s trying to be strong, but he sounds like he’s breaking.)
~*~
The fracture that signifies what Daichi has taken to referring to as “the Beginning of The End” comes two months into their third term.
He wakes up shaking, breathless, plagued by images of Suga laying lifeless in his hospital bed, monitors screaming and heart pounding- a recurring dream.
Suga has been getting worse, inevitably. He spends a majority of his time now at the hospital doing checkups, and when he’s home he sleeps or watches tv, too weak to do much else. Daichi knows The End is coming, but still he denies it all and acts like nothing is wrong, even though the skinless knob of Suga’s knee digs into his thigh when he sits cross-legged beside him, even though he sounds like he smokes four packs of cigarettes a day, even though he can’t walk more than ten feet without stopping to take a breather and even though he quit the team three weeks ago and even though.
(Because he’s dying. He’s been dying. Nothing is going to change that.)
His phone rings beside him in loud, haunting tones. He knows it's Suga before he picks it up. He set a ringtone just for him.
“Koushi? Is everything alright? It’s early.”
“Daichi.”
“Mrs. Sugawara?”
His heart skips. On the other end, Mrs. Sugawara lets out a shaky exhale.
“Daichi, don’t freak out, but-”
“What happened? Is Koushi okay?” he questions, panicked, already sliding on his shoes.
“He’s in the hospital. An infection- it got worse- just- please hurry. We don’t know how long he’ll make it.” She sounds so broken, sobs spilling out in between phrases, fragmented incoherently. Daichi get’s the message loud and clear- something is wrong with Suga. This is it.
~*~
It’s hard to imagine a time before this.
Daichi doesn’t remember when it became normal, seeing Suga like this. He doesn’t remember why he feels like there’s a fist clenching the life out of him through his heart.
It’s sickening to think he knows the route to and through the hospital like the palm of his hand, every callous a pothole, veins like the roads on a map. He’s more familiar with it than anyone should have to be, and yet Suga probably knows how to navigate it better blind than he.
What a fucked up world they got put into. What a fucked up situation.
~*~
“Daichi,” is the first thing Suga’s mother cries when he bursts through the lobby. When she hugs him she shakes, exhaustion and fear adding years to her face.
“Where is he? Is he okay?” he croaks into her hair.
“He’s fine he’s- they put him on antibiotics and he’s sleeping, but- Daichi, they say he’s getting worse and-”
“Hey, hey, shhh, it’s fine, right? We can- we still have some time, right?”
He tries with what’s left of his sanity to keep his voice from shaking, though he doesn’t suppose he does a very good job as Sugawara’s mother only hugs him tighter, knowingly.
“They said weeks, a month at the most.”
When Daichi’s world falls apart, the only thing he can think is, “He doesn’t deserve it.”
~*~
It takes two excruciatingly long days before Suga’s mother is allowed to see her son, and five hours after that until Daichi is allowed. He doesn’t leave to waiting room once before then, boycotting school and eating and life so that he can stare at the door to the I.C.U. hall and will the gods to send someone out that will take him to Suga.
When he finally see’s him he’s asleep. Daichi takes a seat next to his bed and holds his hand in his until he too falls asleep, dreaming of pale, veiny skin and a boy who had too much love, too much passion, to be going the way he is.
~*~
“I used to love this song,” Suga says, smiling weakly. He tugs at the cord of his headphone, pulling at it until the bud falls from his ear and tangles in the hair at his neck. Daichi pauses his ipod and tugs his own earbud out, looking up at Suga. He looks back with a querk in his lips before a fit of coughs forces him to turn away.
It’s been two weeks since they found out his life expectancy. It’s Wednesday, not that it matters. Daichi hasn’t been to school in a long while, despite Suga’s complaints. Today is a good day, though lately everyone has been measuring Suga’s well being as to how long he can stay awake before his lungs stop working and the nurses have to put him under. It’s been three hours, a personal record.
Something tells Daichi it’s the calm before the storm, and that the gods are giving him this time to say goodbye. He doesn’t want to.
“Haven’t heard it a long time. Still pretty amazing.” Daichi agrees.
“Do you remember that time we saw them live? At that amazing venue with the-”
“The seats built into the rocks. I remember I spent weeks delivering pizzas to buy those tickets, and they were still in the very last row.”
“The stars were amazing that night though,” Suga retorts. “That was one of the best nights of my life. Don’t know why you wasted so much money on me though.”
It’s because I love you.
“Everybody deserves to see Red Rocks at least once in their life, even if the walk to the top is literal hell. Plus you’re-” Special. “You deserved it.”
There isn’t time to do what Daichi so desperately wants to, and neither of them deserve that kind of pain. Losing Suga is going to destroy him enough as it is.
“Daichi,” Suga rasps, curling fragile fingers around the edge of Daichi’s sleeve. “Can I- I’m going to be little selfish right now and um,” it takes a moment to register that the cracks in Suga’s voice aren’t from his faulty lungs but the tears building in his eyes. Daichi grips Suga’s hand, heart clenching and fingers tingling painfully. “I just- can you please kiss me? Just once?”
Daichi shakes with the force it takes to stop from screaming.
“Koushi I can’t,” he chokes, “I- you can’t ask that of me. Not when- I can’t, I can’t, I’m sorry.” Frustrated tears threaten to fall from Daichi's eyes.
“Dachi I love you,” Suga says, lifting a hand to Daichi’s cheek. “I love you and I’m dying and I’m so, so sorry but please, before I go just-”
Suga’s lips are dry, cold as ice, and he tastes like tears. When Daichi lifts a hand to Suga’s cheeks in a mimicking posture his face is just as cold and Suga shivers, still sobbing as he opens his lips to Daichi’s tongue. Suga’s too fragile in his arms, too frail.
It wasn’t supposed to go this way.
“You shouldn’t have asked me to do that,” Daichi chokes when they’re done, hiding his face in his hands as the emotions he’d been holding in the past few months all flow out at once.
“I told you I was going to be selfish,” Suga sighs. “I’m sorry.”
“I love you,” Daichi sobs, and then, for the first time he admits, “You’re about to die and I love you and I can’t do a thing about it.”
~*~
Daichi never expected the boy with silver hair and a heart of gold to be the one who destroys his life.
(He used to think, a lot, about maybe starting a new one with him.)
Sugawara Koushi dies three weeks after an infection triggers the cancer in his lungs, on October 5th, 2019. He dies in his sleep, Daichi and Mrs. Sugawara both sitting beside him as they watch the lines on his heart monitor slowly straighten.
“Koushi,” daichi sobs, gripping tightly onto the fabric of Suga’s hospital gown. He buries his face in Suga’s stomach, tears soaking the fabric as Mrs. Sugawara wraps an arm around his back and breaks down. “Koushi, please, no. I love you, please. Koushi.”
When the nurses come Daichi refuses to let go, and it’s with brute force that the guards drag him out, crying, yelling, kicking.
A knife to the chest would hurt a lot less than this, he decides.
~*~
The End is the worst part of every story, regardless of how good it was. Endings suck because it’s over, because nothing is going to keep the end from happening.
Suga’s end was the shittiest ending to the most brilliant and unfair book, full of courage, almost-love, and a disease that tore apart the previous last pages. Suga’s ending sucked because it shouldn’t have been over.
~*~
Daichi doesn’t attend Suga’s funeral. He doesn’t say goodbye, at least not there, surrounded by people who were never there to witness his final days, the ones that really mattered.
He goes to see his grave a week after the ceremony, and then he doesn’t again.
In his pocket he keeps the note he found on Suga’s night stand the day he died, written when Daichi slept by his side.
Daichi,
I love you. I’m sorry. Goodbye.
One the back, scrawled in the same shaky handwriting, are the lyrics to his favorite song.
“As I exhale this breath of fresh air,
I feel the distance tear the space between us,
‘Cause we’re always climbing toward the sun,
But the cabin pressure gets to me,
And there’s so much more than we think there is to see.”
Daichi looks at it the day he visits Suga’s grave, sings it to the stone engraved with his life, and thinks about a world where this hadn’t happened.
“It’s not the same here without you,” he says.
~*~
“Goodbye, Koushi.”