Work Text:
Dear Daichi,
And Suga crosses out the first line already. It has to be perfect. It just has to be, so he tries again.
To Sawamura Daichi,
is quickly crossed out as well. Too formal. Too weird. It has to be perfect; not too formal, not too weird. Hopefully not weird at all, but writing random suicide notes in the middle of the night with no purpose other than to write them is already pretty weird. So Suga tries again.
He doesn’t stop until he thinks he gets it down perfectly, to make his point clear. A love letter and a goodbye letter and a suicide note, all compressed into a neat page in equally neat handwriting, written with a pencil that sketched plays, on paper stolen from his father’s printer. Suga doesn’t stop until he thinks it’s done, and by then, his hand is shaking from pushing himself through cramps.
My dearest, Sawamura Daichi, it reads.
I didn’t think I’d be telling you this way. I never thought that I’d ever tell you at all, but here we are. You, reading. Me, dead.
Please forgive me; it wasn’t my intention to do this at all, but I wanted to reassure you that none of this was your fault. There was nothing you could’ve done, despite how much I love you. There is nothing anyone could’ve done. There is no rhyme or reason as to why I chose to do this. There was no lead-up, no argument, no hate or anger or confusion or sadness; there was just me and my window, and the night was too beautiful to pass up.
Daichi, dearest, thank you for being my friend for all these years. Thank you for making me your vice, your best friend, your partner in flirting and playing and everything. I would like to think I did well; you certainly did. Thank you for enduring when I rambled, thank you for staying by my side and supporting me when I needed it the most. And above all, thank you for letting me love you. I know it hasn’t been the easiest task.
As always, with much love,
Sugawara Koushi
He looks down at the paper with a satisfied smile. His hands ache, throb with the pleasant sensation of a heartbeat and the warmth that comes with pain. His eyes hurt from staying awake.
He ignores the beautiful night outside his window.
And then, Suga goes to sleep. He got his feelings out on the page, and now he would never let anyone see it ever again. He keeps it folded in one of his dictionaries, wonders if he’ll ever get to send it. Perhaps, if he wasn’t such a coward. He hasn’t made Daichi his birthday gift yet, though, so it will have to wait.
When Suga wakes, he’s in a much better mood. He still remembers the note hidden away in the dictionary, and his hands still ache a little from overexertion, but he doesn’t mind. They shake a little as he puts his stuff away on his desk. He picks up his exacto knife.
I could just…
Nope. Suga holds it away from his body. He can’t think like that, especially on a school day, when he had stuff to do.
But imagine how it would feel when it…
Suga reminds himself that the knife wasn’t even sharp, and stuffs it into a pencil case before his mind could argue back. It loves to argue. Suga, however, isn’t in the mood for any confrontation, much less confrontation with an inanimate object.
The note remains at the front of his mind as he packs his things for school, and stays there until he spots Daichi waiting for him on the corner of the block.
“Morning, sleepyhead,” Daichi teases in lieu of a regular greeting. “Ready to face Hinata and Kageyama in the early morning?”
Suga smiles, rolling his eyes as he grabs Daichi’s arm to cling onto for the walk. “I think I’m used to them already,” he says. “Though I’m sure they have it in them to surprise me.”
They chat the whole way to the school. Suga forgets about the note for the day.
Daichi, dearest,
I love you so much. Maybe too much. I feel like no matter what I do, I won’t ever be enough for you, and most days, I’m fine with that. Most days, I’m okay with being half of what you want while you’re everything I’ll ever need. I can take that. I’ll take anything for you.
Daichi, I don’t know how much you know me, but I’ve told you everything except this part of me. The secret part, the part that doesn’t really care what happens, the part that thinks dying is a good solution to most of my problems. And also, the part that just wants to love you forever. I haven’t told you about that part either. I think that’s part of the problem, because lately I feel like you’ve been brushing me off. Maybe it’s all in my head, but I feel like you don’t really like me as a friend anymore. Much less anything more.
I don’t know, maybe I’m reading too much into it. You’re not this mean. I know you aren’t. I feel like you don’t care about me in the slightest when I don’t hear from you when you’re usually here. I know
Suga’s phone chimes with a new message from Daichi, who’s apologizing for not texting sooner since he had to deal with his siblings terrorizing each other. Suga smiles then, neatly folds up the paper he was writing on, goes outside, and lights it on fire.
He replies to Daichi a minute later:
Don’t worry about not texting sooner lol, I didn’t even notice. I think I’m going to fail our math quiz tomorrow.
Of course, he doesn’t think that he was going to fail, but a few seconds later another text from Daichi comforts him in saying that he definitely won’t fail the quiz tomorrow, and if he was up to it, Daichi could call him and they could revise together.
Suga accepts immediately, brushing the ashes off of his hands and closing the back door behind him.
“Hey, Dai,” he chirps as the call connects. “I was just getting a snack.”
Daichi,
Lately, I’ve been feeling hollow. Like nothing I do makes me happy anymore. I just do them because I’ve been doing them for as long as I can remember. Sometimes, it’s a reflex. Sometimes, it’s a chore. But I don’t think I want to keep doing this anymore.
I could really use someone to talk to, but I don’t want to hurt you more than I need to. I think it hurts to be someone who knows because you can’t fix what’s broken for me and you can’t fill the void that’s inside of me and for that, I am so, so sorry. I don’t know if I love you. I don’t know anything anymore, other than the fact that I’m done. I don’t want to do this anymore.
I’ll see you tomorrow. Bye, Daichi.
From Suga.
He dots the period and sits back. His hand aches again. His back hurts from his hunched position over his desk. Suga doesn’t really mind it.
Absent-mindedly, he runs his fingers over the bruise he got on his right hip, a gift from his little brother who likes to push people into things. Suga presses it gently, prodding at it as he listens to the rain. It’s soothing. Calming. A good balm and background against his thoughts.
Suga knows that he isn’t alone. Logical reasoning suggests that he actually has a very big support system. But on a night like this, he feels completely and utterly alone.
He hums softly, a quick ten-note tune that he repeats over and over again until he gets so lost in thought that he doesn’t notice that he’s stopped. The muffled sound of rain hitting his roof adds to the fuzziness of his internal monologue. It sounds like when they don’t tune the radio correctly, and they get stuck between stations and have to listen to static for a few moments until they force the knob elsewhere.
Suga feels alone. He might not be, factually, but he feels like the night could just swallow him whole and no one would notice. Or care. Or remember him.
Which is false, but the thoughts are persistent and perseverance always wins out. Waiting to catch you unawares and ambushes you when you’re tired. Strength and fortune can fade, but perseverance hides in the bushes and strikes you when you’re at your most vulnerable. Suga knows. He’s very fond of that tactic. It’s his signature, after all.
He decides to add a post script.
PS. Keep your chin up!
Daichi,
You lent me your jacket today. That was nice of you. I never got to say thank you for that. I was caught up in everything.
On the topic that came up during practice today. Did you know when we met that we’d be here? Going to nationals next week? Did you feel it in the air that I’d gotten a crush on you the first time you’ve ever lead practice? Did you ever think that we could get to here now, two and a half years later? I’ve counted the days. I’ve counted months. I’ve counted every one of our achievements and losses and somehow they’ve all lead back to you introducing yourself on the first day of class.
We’re graduating soon, Daichi. Have you forgotten? I’ve looked at universities and I know you’ve been staring at those recruitment forms a little too seriously to not have considered them at least once. Asahi knows what he’s going to do. For some reason, he’s the surest one out of the three of us. I wouldn’t have bet on that until recently. I hope you find something to devote yourself to that you’re proud of.
I’m not sure when I’ll be leaving— I’m still a coward— but when I do, I want you to know this:
Wherever life takes you, I’ll be there with you in spirit. It doesn’t matter that by then, I’ll likely be a pile of ashes in an urn; I’ll be there for you and with you and I will be waiting for you in the afterlife.
Please move on after my death. I’m not worthy of too much of your grief.
Love,
Suga
He sits back after a moment of silence. It’s one of the longer letters he’s written, but he folds it up and slides it into the dictionary all the same. The book has thickened up with all the paper shoved inside, but it still hides them perfectly well.
Suga lets out a sigh as he stuffs the dictionary back into the overfull shelves, wondering when the last time he read an actual book was. When he last picked up one of his sketchbooks. When he last wrote a song.
Then again, words and images don’t come as easy these days, and he had more important things to do than to read. He still time to read, maybe later on in his life. He doesn’t think he’ll ever muster up the courage to do what he kept saying that he’d do one day.
It’s one in the morning. Rain patters on his roof. The room is dark, save for the glow from the streetlamp.
It’s calming. Suga opens his window and sticks his head through it to smell the rain. The smell of rain soothed him for some reason. It always has.
This night reminds him of the last time he wrote a note, when he last felt alone. Well, he always feels alone, but that night, he’d felt particularly worse. He had had the house to himself; his brother had a sleepover at a friend’s house, and his parents were on a trip to visit their parents in the country. They hadn’t even asked him whether he wanted to go. Suga would have had to turn them down because of school, but…
It would’ve been nice to have been asked. Just for the sake of it.
In the quiet of the darkness and the night, Suga’s phone rings.
He picks up.
“Suga, are you still awake?” Daichi’s tired voice asks him.
Suga lifts the corners of his mouth into a smile that he hopes Daichi can hear over the phone. “No, I’m sleeptalking and sleep-responding to you,” he teases. “What’s up, Dai?”
“Just wanted to talk to you, and you’re usually unfortunately still awake at this hour, so I assumed it was safe to call.”
“You assumed right.” Suga slips under his blanket and holds his phone closer to his ear. “What’s the topic of choice tonight? Hinata and Kageyama? Asahi and Noya? Narita and Kinoshita? I noticed those two swapping jerseys last week.”
Daichi laughs. “I thought I was the only one.”
Suga smiles then, and starts explaining why he thinks that the first real couple out of their group would be, surprisingly, Tsukishima and Yamaguchi.
Dearest, Daichi,
I’m so sorry. I’ve failed you. I tried to be the one you can rely on and I couldn’t. I promised you that you could rely on me and you couldn’t. Not when you needed me the most. I’m so sorry. I’ll do better. I’ll live so I can do better.
Love, Suga
An ache burns in his chest as his trembling fingers fold the note and tuck it into the dictionary. Suga knows that he’s a failure, knows that he’s a disappointment, so why did this sting? He already knew that nothing he ever did amounted to anything, so why did this hurt? He knew this already. He should be shielded from further pain. He should be fine.
He isn’t.
Suga doesn’t know whether it is adrenaline or stupidity or anything, but when he spots the exacto knife sitting prettily in his pencil case, he takes it out.
He promises himself to not go under the skin, just to trace the sharp edge over the top.
He breaks that promise too.
The wound heals nicely. Suga passes it off as a paper cut. He doesn’t do it again, but he presses on the cut every now and then, feels some sort of dull satisfaction when it warms under his fingers, almost like a pulse.
“Daichi.”
“Suga? What’s going on? Are you outside?”
Suga wipes the rain off of his face even as more comes down. “Yeah,” he says, because that is the truth. “Yeah, I am.”
“Are you wearing a jacket? You can’t get a cold, we’ve got a practice game tomorrow.”
A smile. Suga’s not afraid anymore, though he’s not sure why he changed his mind. Words fall from his mouth, unbidden. “Don’t worry about me, Dai,” Suga says cheerfully. “I won’t get sick.”
I might die, though, and I think you’d like that a lot less.
“Suga?”
“Yeah?”
“Are you on your roof?”
Suga hums. “Am I really that predictable?”
There is a long silence. A quiet sigh. The sound of skin brushing against damp skin. Then a rustle.
“Since you’re outside already, do you want to come over? I’m making hot chocolate.” Daichi is grasping at straws. Suga lets him. “Putting on a tape of Karasuno’s game from the little giant days. We can compare him and Hinata.”
“Okay,” Suga says, carefully climbing down to his front lawn and slowly making his way to Daichi’s house. “Can we watch some of Seijoh’s games?”
Daichi huffs a laugh. Relieved. “Why, you want to stare at Oikawa more?” he asks. It’s not an unusual request from Suga. He likes to study his opponents. It just helps that his opponent is attractive.
“I just want to see him and Iwaizumi in action again.” Suga lets out another hum. “I’m at your door.”
The door swings open and Daichi is there, giving Suga a once-over.
“You’re in your pyjamas,” Daichi says, stating the obvious. “And you’re soaked.”
Suga rolls his eyes. “What did you expect? I walked here. I don’t have a fancy schmancy umbrella like you rich folk do.”
Daichi closes the door behind him, shaking his head amusedly. “Do you want to change into warm clothes? The dryer load just finished,” he offered. “I can find you one of those t-shirts that you like.”
Suga smiles and nods, though not before pulling Daichi into a hug. “Thanks,” he whispers.
Daichi squeezes him tighter. “Of course.”
Some time later, Suga slowly stops adding to the dictionary.