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A bead of sweat trickles down Daichi’s back as he enters the bar, the muggy summer hot on his heels until he closes the door behind him. He’s early, about ten minutes before the designated meeting time, and he’s led to a table that’s just been left, glasses and opened cans of beer strewn all over. Someone comes to clean up, and Daichi checks in on his phone while waiting, arms diligently hovering just out of reach until he can set them down then orders a beer.
Fingertips flutter across his shoulders, startling him. “Old habits die hard, am I right?” Suga teases him before taking the opposite seat and flashing a peace sign. “What’re you looking at?”
“Nothing,” Daichi answers. He places his phone on the table, screen facing down. “Long time no see.”
“Yeah, well, who would’ve thought our schools would be in opposite ends of Miyagi, huh?”
“Well…” For a second, Daichi feared Suga resented him for it. He clears his throat. “I had no idea. I was half expecting you to show up in my class on the first day, but your smart ass was all the way in Tohoku.”
Suga laughs. “My bad—Master! Another beer over here, please! Wait, make that two!”
“So how are things over there?”
“Fun,” Suga answers in a light, lilting tone. “You should swing by if you have the time.”
“Yeah? But I don’t think your new friends are gonna find me any fun.”
Before Suga can respond, a familiar voice asks, “Did I get the time wrong?”
“Asahi, you bastard!”
“No, I just got here early,” Daichi answers.
“Oh, good.” Asahi heaves a sigh as he sits down, taking the seat next to Suga. A waitress comes to deposit two mugs of beer on the table. “I’m dying out there, man,” he says as he takes one of the beers in his grasp.
Suga slaps him on the back. “We’re gonna drink lots today, ‘kay?”
They raise a toast, all three of them chugging half the glass in one go. When Daichi pulls away, he scrunches up his face and goes, “Just what I needed.”
“You sound like an old man,” Suga quips. “What’s next, back pain?”
For some reason, the jab has heat sitting on top of Daichi’s cheeks. The most benign, inane jab. “Fuck you,” is all he can retort.
Asahi wipes away a tear from the corner of his eye from laughing. “I missed this,” he says.
“Thought you’d be partying every night or something.”
“I meant hanging out with you guys, but is that really what you thought of me?”
“You always surprise us, you know,” Suga brings up. “Fashion school?”
“It’s killer. I’m sewing literally every fucking night.” Asahi shows them the callouses on his hands, as if to prove a point.
“I’d rather just take a killer serve straight to the arms,” Daichi says through the squirming in his stomach.
“Nah, I’m having fun,” Asahi says with a huge grin in his face. “Different kinda thing, you know? Not as stressful, for sure.”
“Any cute girls?” Suga asks.
“Yeah. They’re either really stylish or very experimental.”
Suga gives Asahi a look, his expression deadpan. “That’s all?” he asks, so innocuously that Daichi felt a shiver in the August heat.
“I don’t know, man. Just not in the cards, I guess,” Asahi answers with a shrug. He lifts his mug of beer back to his mouth and that was that.
“You’re not gonna ask me?” Daichi says.
“We know you don’t,” Suga tells him with a laugh. “You’re too good and morally upstanding, I’d say. Like, if a girl invited you to”—he curls his fingers into quotation marks—“study, you probably thought she meant the real thing and told her to meet at the library.”
Unwillingly, Daichi’s face curls into a grimace as he listens, and Suga beholds him, wide-eyed.
“No way, you’re kidding.”
“That’s our guy!” Asahi declares with a laugh. “A true, first-class dumbass .”
“My bet is,” Suga says with a sly grin after fully recovering from his initial shock, “he’s not at all interested.”
Too stunned to speak, Daichi can only clear his throat, wondering how to keep his face on as it threatens to peel away from the intense heat.
“Don’t worry, Daichi,” Suga coos. “I’m sure she got the hint.”
“I wouldn’t say that’s a good thing,” Daichi finally manages to reply.
“Wouldn’t be the first time you fumbled the ball.”
“Thanks.”
“I’m gonna get us more drinks,” Asahi offers. He stands up and gives Daichi a good-natured clap to the back before heading towards the counter.
“I drank too much,” Suga complains, his words stringing together. He tilts his head back and exhales into the sky, body swaying just slightly, enough for Daichi to consider stretching out a hand to keep him steady.
Asahi is on the opposite way home, and Suga and Daichi have approximately fifteen minutes left before parting ways for the night.
“You tell me,” Daichi groans. He sits himself on the bench and lets out a huge yawn. Suga ends up sitting beside him to rest his head on his shoulder.
“I’m gonna pass out,” Suga threatens.
“Not now, please,” Daichi murmurs, his eyes falling shut. The following silence leaves him restless, begging for the cicadas to start singing. “Talk to me. I wanna know you’re alive.”
“Hmm? What do you want to know?”
“You didn’t talk about any girls you met in college.”
“What can I say, you’re still my type.”
At that, Daichi instinctively lets go of Suga’s head on his shoulder, now facing some strange clarity in Suga’s expression. Wide awake, as if to a new rush of adrenaline, eyes clear behind the glass.
“Yeah, you’re my type,” Suga continues to say. “I like you, “ in the most deadpan way, in a benign tone.
“For… for how long now?”
“Since I can remember.” Suga laughs at the confession he’s just made. “Don’t worry, I know it won’t get anywhere. Wipe that look off your face.”
Daichi tries to school his expression into something—literally anything—else, and manages a smile. “Thanks for telling me,” he says, not unkindly, and stands up, brushing the dust off his jeans. “I’m flattered.” He means it, truly he does, feeling that same lift in his chest as when someone would compliment his efforts.
The disturbance in the air finally shifts away and dissipates, and Suga smiles for real. “What are you doing tomorrow?” he asks.
“Not much.”
“Wanna hang out, then? Just you and me, like old times.”
“Sounds good to me,” Daichi answers. Suga pulls himself up to give Daichi a hug. Underneath the sweat and beer, Daichi notes a hint of citrus and wood, and he buries himself into the crook of Suga’s neck to chase it.
***
The humidity of the air has Daichi on his back, breathing like a fish. A single electric fan hums tirelessly between him on the floor and Suga on the bed, and their glasses of previously ice-cold water are now leaking puddles to the floor.
Suga is hunched over Daichi’s laptop, controller in hand, pressing buttons furiously at the fighting game he has on. Daichi seats himself up, placing his arms on the bed, the mattress dipping slightly to accommodate him.
“There are combos, you know,” Daichi points out.
“Don’t need them.”
“You fucking suck.”
Suga huffs just as his character loses its last life. He throws the controller at the side of Daichi’s laptop. “You do it, then.”
“Move over.” Daichi gets up, taking a cross-legged sit on his bed. Suga obliges and moves closer to the wall, their bodies side by side barely fitting but hanging on.
This was probably a mistake—Daichi is suddenly so conscious of the warmths of their bodies, the skins over their knees touching, the gleam of sweat on Suga’s arm making each brush of their limbs slippery. Then he has to wonder if Suga is feeling the same, if his heart is picking up its pace.
He picks up the controller and flashes Suga a grin. “Time to show you how it’s done.”
Only for Suga to fall over laughing when Daichi doesn’t make it to the next round. “You were so sexy when you were team captain, but this is cute, too,” he says.
“You thought I was sexy?” Daichi teases him. He clicks the option to restart the game at the last save point. “Then I can’t fail now.”
“You’re so sexy when you get all confident, but this is cute, too,” he teases him.
Daichi clicks the option to restart the game from the last save point. “You think I’m sexy?”
The lack of reprimand has Suga batting his eyelashes at him. “The dreamiest,” he says, and the two of them burst out laughing.
***
Summers in Miyagi are so uneventful. They do some practice games with the juniors before they head off to Tokyo for the training camp. Asahi invites them over to his house for drinks and to try on some of the prototypes that are due once classes resume in the fall.
In all this, Daichi finds himself spending the most time with Suga. It feels like high school again as they continue to look for the next thing to hold their interest.
Some days, he’d look out his window to find Suga looking back up at him with a wicked smile, drinks in hand or a new game. Other days, Daichi’s dragged outside to wreak havoc with him in their small town. Then, when guilt builds up, Daichi begs Suga to stay at home so he could focus on his summer assignments.
“Daichi,” Suga groans, “you’re killing me.”
“I have to finish this reading,” is all Daichi says without so much as lifting his gaze to face Suga. “Don’t you, too?”
“It’s such a nice day outside, but you wanna sit here and read some dull English novella.”
“It’s almost forty degrees outside, and if I don’t start now, I’ll never finish.”
Suga gets up from his little set-up at the opposite side of Daichi’s room to peer at the reading over Daichi’s shoulder. “What’s it about? Any good?”
“A teenage delinquent who talks about his exploits,” Daichi answers. “They’re pretty gruesome, but apparently he gets reformed or something by the end.” The sudden huff of breath on his shoulder keeps him still.
Suga hums as he scans the words in the page Daichi has open. His other arm loops around Daichi’s shoulders as he leans over him to examine the cover. Their fingers brush, and Daichi looks at their hands as if they were a crime scene.
“Interesting.”
“You wanna read it?”
“Nah, what I just read looked incredibly fucked up. Who would even make this assigned reading?” Suga says in a bored tone. He squeezes Daichi’s arm, doing it again when Daichi doesn’t protest. “What’s your major, anyway?”
“I haven’t decided yet, but I thought it’d be good to get enough units to qualify for the police examination.” He tries to avoid directing his gaze towards Suga, their faces close enough together that the little hairs covering Suga’s face are perceptible to the eye. He hopes his isn’t warm to the touch.
“Hot,” Suga says, finally pulling away to stretch his arms over his head. “I’d buy your calendar.”
“Miyagi Prefecture appreciates the contributions from its outstanding citizens.”
***
“As I was saying, some dumbfuck in my college asked me if I had to climb a mountain to get to school,” Asahi tells them.
“What did you tell them?” Daichi asks.
“I said I did, and that I also had to water the rice fields every morning.”
“What the hell kind of hick does he think we are?” Suga demands, wincing as his sudden movement has Asahi poking a needle into his rib.
“Hold still,” Asahi reprimands him. “Yeah, he probably wanted to rile me up. There’s no actual way people think like that. Imagine if he met someone like Shouyou, though.”
“Yeah, that’s not happening,” Daichi says with a laugh. He opens himself another can of beer and settles down on the couch.
“You guys should visit me in Tokyo,” Asahi suggests. Daichi suspects that he’s lonely.
“Oh, yeah, Kuroo-san said to call him if we’re ever there. Maybe we can get him to buy us drinks.”
“Could we crash at your place, then?” Suga asks. He lifts his arms to let Asahi peel off the shirt from him, the pins marking the adjustments to the hem making the process tediously slow.
“My place isn’t much. I don’t think we’d fit.”
“Come on, we can sleep diagonally! We’ll make it work,” Suga insists, voice muffled by the fabric covering his face.
“We’ll see, we’ll see.” The shirt’s finally off, and Asahi lets Suga go.
“When do you go back?” Daichi asks.
“Uh, probably the week before classes go back. It takes me a while to settle back in.”
“We’ll go with you,” Daichi says.
At that, Asahi gives them a wide smile. “Maybe we should also hit up that dumb fucker Bokuto.”
***
Asahi goes off in the opposite direction, to another subway line to his tiny apartment near campus, while Daichi and Suga continue on to Kichijōji, where the city noise dulls out to something quiet. They’ll all meet later again in Shinjuku, with the rest of their little volleyball circle of friends.
Suga happily lays down on the bed as soon as they enter the hotel room. He watches as Daichi fixes his things, laying them out into a neat arrangement inside his suitcase, his formidable discipline splayed across the lines of his back.
“So… did you meet anyone in college yet?” he asks.
Daichi stills in his movements, asking back, “Why do you ask?”
“I’m curious, of course. What if you’re suddenly hiding things from me just because—”
“I’m not hiding anything from you.”
“Just checking,” Suga says, laughing at the quickness of Daichi’s response. “How about Michimiya?”
At that, Daichi snorts. “There was nothing then and nothing now.”
“Ah, I really thought something was gonna happen between you two.”
“How can there, when I spend all my free time with you?”
Daichi says it so nonchalantly that Suga’s caught in surprise.
“Don’t worry about it,” Daichi tells him then, not unkindly. “I’m not really into Michimiya.”
“Kiyoko was your type, right?” Suga teases him. “Titties and ass.” He likes seeing the tips of Daichi’s ears flush red; they make him look cute and even mildly innocent.
They fall into silence with Daichi breaking it only to cough out his embarrassment and to say that he’s happy Kiyoko and Ryuu ended up dating. He finishes tidying his things and goes to his bed, sitting on it cross-legged like he intends to meditate.
“You know, you’re handling this really well,” Suga says. “I thought you’d avoid me all summer.”
“You’re still one of my best friends.”
Suga hums and sits up as well to face Daichi. “I know that, but I wish you would—I don’t know—be more dramatic.”
“You’re the dramatic one,” Daichi points out.
“Fair,” Suga concedes. “I thought I’d get over it once I told you, but…” Maybe with time and enough distance, if Suga doesn’t come home for the holidays, has an entirely new set of friends that will keep him comfortable in his own skin.
Daichi reaches out to Suga, hands encircling Suga’s forearms to caress the smooth skin. “I’m sorry,” he says.
“It’s no one’s fault,” Suga sighs. “Feelings can’t be controlled.”
“True. And I’d be upset as hell if you avoid me forever.”
The very position they are in is bad—Daichi leans too forward, and Suga adjusts by sitting more on the edge of the bed. As he finds himself unwilling to let go, a tiny voice in his head whispers, We’re good together , and so he declares that he needs a shower and gets off the bed.
***
Daichi once thought he had a good handle on secondhand embarrassment, especially after being in the Inter-High with his juniors. Turns out he just hadn’t lived long enough at that point to share a table with a drunk Bokuto fresh from a win in the V. League.
“I will spike this glass back to the counter,” he declares.
To make matters worse, drunk Suga keeps egging him on.
“That’s my cue for a smoke break,” Kuroo says abruptly. As he gets up, he digs the pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and puts a stick in his mouth.
“Can I bum one?” Asahi asks, following Kuroo out the door after being given an implicit nod.
“Seriously, it’s so great you guys made it all the way out here,” Bokuto tells Daichi and Suga with his words slurring together. He pulls them into a hug with both arms. “Have you seen my games?”
“Maybe when you have one in Sendai,” Daichi manages.
“Yeah! Bring your partners!”
“The last thing I want to do is bring a boyfriend to watch muscular sweaty men,” Suga says. It’s the first time he’s mentioned being gay all night, but Bokuto does not give so much as a stutter when he replies:
“Aww, you’re afraid I’ll steal him from you?” Then, after that, his face shifts, and his eyes rest on the dregs at the bottom of his glass. “Don’t be. I’d rather not risk my chance for the Olympics before it even starts, you know?”
“What do you mean?”
“Just… Yeah, I can date around, have a partner, but just not… where other people can see. Heh, maybe I’m not brave enough to try just yet.”
The mood had gone from lively to weepy—Suga wipes tears away from his eyes in a furious attempt to not look like he’d been crying in case the others come back and wonder.
“Well, it’s fine. I’ll have my time, but you—” Bokuto stabs his finger on Suga’s chest. “You should do whatever the fuck you want. And bring your boyfriend to see my games.”
Suga laughs loudly, shedding one last tear. “Dumbass. I promise.”
“I hate to say it, but he’s right,” Daichi says all of a sudden as he and Suga are walking towards the train station.
“Who’s right?”
“Bokuto-san.”
“Ah.”
“You should date around, see other guys. Don’t waste your time waiting for me.”
At that, Suga laughs, as if the very idea was preposterous. “Why do you think I’m waiting for you?” he asks with owlish blinks at Daichi, his eyes glassy and his cheeks red. After a pregnant pause, he shakes his head. “Can’t I enjoy whatever this is?”
“You don’t deserve someone who…” Doesn’t reciprocate, he should say. “Doesn’t know what he wants just yet.”
The blinks turn to a stare, the stare turns into Suga’s eyes looking around and finding a dark alley for them to duck into. He pulls Daichi flush to him, their faces close, so close that Daichi can’t tell if it’s balmy summer air he’s breathing or Suga’s exhales. Daichi’s own breath catches in his throat, and their lips touch.
“I think you want this,” Suga declares in a breathy whisper.
A hunger grows inside Daichi’s chest. A desire to gnaw. He ducks his head down and leans in to kiss Suga again, feeling some tingling in his fingertips as he reaches up to cup Suga’s face.
They fall on Suga’s bed in a mass of giggles and make it as far as getting their shirts off before the constant struggle for space on the bed has Suga good-naturedly shooing Daichi off, to which Daichi responds by wrapping an arm around Suga’s waist and pressing his nose into Suga’s nape, inhaling again that scent of citrus and wood weaving through sweat and alcohol.
“Do you remember what it felt like when we beat Shiratorizawa last year?” Suga asks. “That very moment when Shouyou blocked that spike, and the whole court went quiet. The game could have played out a million different ways, most in Shiratorizawa’s favour, but somewhere along the match, we had the right block, the right set, the right serve. The small things that built up to an eventual win.”
Their fingers lace together. Daichi remembers that improbability—the relief when its pressure was lifted and the happiness in knowing something had come up ahead.
“Sounds stupid, but that’s what I feel right now.”
Daichi presses a kiss to Suga’s nape, feeling light-headed. “I feel it, too.”
***
“Did you see that? Did you see my match?” Shouyou asks the pair excitedly.
“Made me glad you were on my team and not my opponent,” Daichi tells him.
“I’m relieved you weren’t eaten by a piranha,” Suga says.
“Piranhas are freshwater fish,” Shouyou, who spent practically his whole life in São Paulo by the beach, says as a matter of fact.
“What’s this about fish?” Bokuto demands. He pulls Suga into a hug and teases him, “Where’s your boyfriend?”
The grin Suga gives him is eerily smug as he wraps an arm around Daichi’s shoulder, to Shouyou’s shock and Bokuto’s boisterous laughter. “Right here.”