Chapter Text
Daichi takes a few seconds, blinking the room into focus as he processes the pillow under his head and the back facing him. His eyes trace the figure’s nape, mind still half-awake, and soon the grey hair and scattered moles register.
“Suga?”
Suga turns around, propping his elbow up on the mattress, grinning. “I know you said that bio’s boring, but I didn’t think it was that boring.”
“Hnn?” Is all Daichi can muster, half-heartedly pushing himself up to sit, even though his muscles protest. A blanket slides off his arm and he can’t remember even having pulled it over himself in the first place.
“You fell asleep,” Suga comments drily, and that much is obvious. “I thought I’d just let you nap for like, fifteen minutes but you didn’t budge when I nudged you.” Daichi remembers their study session, padding in to Suga’s room in the early afternoon as they complained about the only class they shared, an introductory biology module. He remembers rubbing his eyes tiredly as they compared notes and did the required homework—what he doesn’t remember, however, is falling asleep on Suga’s bed.
Suga seems to figure as much at Daichi’s blank-eyed stare, as he nods over to where Daichi had been sitting, notes visibly wrinkled. There’s even a slightly damp spot on one of them. Shit.
“You fell asleep on your notes,” Suga says. “But it didn’t look comfortable so,” he shrugs, as if that explains anything.
Daichi stares at him, sitting up straight.
“You carried me to bed?” He asks, incredulous.
Suga raises an eyebrow, his grin teasing. “What, you don’t believe I can? We’re almost the same height, and you’re the one who’s been telling me to remember to stay in shape so I don’t know what you’re trying to say but—”
“You didn’t have to,” Daichi cuts in, suddenly embarrassed, both for falling asleep during their session and for everything else. “A few more shoves and I would’ve woken up.” Probably, he doesn’t say, wondering how out of it he must have been to not have stirred at Suga picking him up and moving him to the bed.
Suga shrugs. “You looked half dead when you came in anyway, figured you needed the rest.”
Daichi frowns. Suga wasn’t wrong, but Daichi hadn’t thought he’d been that obvious about his tiredness either, and he feels it like a quiet, tugging worry at the back of his mind.
“Thanks, I guess,” he smiles, sheepish, as he pushes the blankets off himself, folding them up. “How long was I out for?”
Suga checks his phone as Daichi looks out the window at the darkening sky. “Hm. An hour and a half?” He glances over again, and Daichi’s now awake enough to catch the way the teasing slides off Suga’s expression, into something a little too neutral to be anything but carefully arranged.
Suga never really did neutral, Daichi thinks.
Suga turns back to the low table in front of his bed, back to his work. “You alright?” He asks, sounding off-handed, and Daichi’s suddenly guilty for even possibly having made him worry.
“I’m fine,” he reassures him, sliding off the bed to sit back at his spot.
Suga nods, flipping through his textbook. “Good nap then?”
Daichi nods on reflex, pulling his arms backwards in a stretch, and the resounding crackling pop of his joints is satisfying. He blinks at his own notes, wrinkled and stained, but his mind feels clearer than it has been for… A while now, if he were to be honest with himself.
“... Yeah. I feel better.”
“Well, good.” A small stack of exercises lands heavily on top of his notes, and Daichi barely manages not to flinch in surprise. “‘Cause you now have an hour and a half’s worth of exercises to catch up on,” Suga grins, and slaps Daichi’s back for good measure. “Gotta keep up the pace, captain.”
(And that’s part of the problem.)
--
If it ever comes to it, Daichi’s defense has been that he hasn’t told Suga because it’s not a problem. Even if it were a problem (which it wasn’t), it was a small one, a barely-even-a-problem sized problem, and there was no reason for him to bother Suga with it. It’s not like I have depression, he’s thought to himself more than once, chasing the same train of thought around his head for the upteenth time.
I’m maybe having a little trouble sleeping, it’s not like I’m having suicidal thoughts, Daichi mentally repeats to himself. It’s not even that I’m not sleeping at all or anything, maybe this is just… A thing. That people go through sometimes.
His sleep non-problem didn’t usually bother him much. It was usually just this baseline tiredness at the back of his mind, his muscles not quite as well-rested as he was used to.
Then two days after falling asleep at Suga’s room, Daichi somehow manages to fall down a flight of stairs. He had been talking talking to Iwaizumi, perfectly fine for most of the afternoon, but there was a moment that his concentration just slipped entirely, and his footing followed. He could have sworn he heard Iwaizumi’s sharp intake of breath, but before he could grab onto the railing he was already at the foot of the stairs, a point driven home by a sharp clacking hit to his jaw at the final step.
Suga blinks at him hard the next time they meet up, for lunch at the school cafeteria before their biology lecture. Daichi’s hand automatically comes up to touch the bandage at his jaw. He’s been through worse, Suga’s seen him at worse, but he supposes it does still look a little alarming.
“I’m fine,” he waves Suga off pre-emptively, walking ahead to get into line.
“Really,” Suga intones drily. “Because I’ve seen ‘fine’. I’ve even seen ‘okay’ and it really didn’t look like that.” He nudges Daichi’s back with his empty tray. “What happened?”
“Fell down a flight of stairs,” Daichi admits. It’s not like Suga wouldn’t find out anyway, somehow.
“Hmm,” Suga hums, and the tonelessness makes Daichi tense up. “... Be more careful next time.”
He’s used to Suga’s teasing, the too-frank way Suga punches him a little too hard when he thinks Daichi needs a little motivation to fall back into step. It’s been good, consistent, even if a little more sparse in university, just because they’re suddenly seeing each other a lot less than they’re used to. This tonelessness, in comparison, feels like a draft in the otherwise warm building, and Daichi tries not to make the tension in his spine too obvious. He nods, moving along in the line, doesn't think too hard about anything, especially not any distance growing between them, even with Suga inches away, just next in line.
--
The next morning, Daichi wakes up having felt like he hadn’t gotten any sleep at all. Again.
By now it’s a common, daily occurrence and he wonders if he’ll ever have to stop feeling bothered by it, by the fact that he’d clocked in a solid six hours and yet it barely felt like anything at all. He rubs his eyes as he gets out of bed, muscles sluggish.
He hadn’t gotten a good night’s sleep for about a month now.
Any sleep he managed felt thin and barely-there. He found himself being woken up by the rattling of his door, by someone walking down the hallway outside his room at 4am. It was disgruntling every single time—Daichi had always been a sound sleeper, and being woken by the smallest thing was a bone deep itch of annoying he couldn’t scratch.
The first time it had happened, Daichi had shrugged it off as pre-game nerves. It was their team’s first practice match against a decently ranked school the next day, and their coach had been impressing upon him the importance of winning. As if Daichi hadn’t felt the pressure himself, looming, ever since he had accepted the scholarship and took up the position of captain in this brand new varsity team.
“It’s really going to set the tone for the team,” the coach had stressed, for the hundredth time. “Our first practice match with a ranked school—Of course, the university understands that we’re a newly formed team, but—”
“It would be a good signal,” Daichi nodded, and the coach looked visibly relieved.
“Exactly, of course you understand where the university is coming from. You and Iwaizumi—you’re both doing a fantastic job, this is definitely the kind of work-ethic we’d been expecting when we invited you here,” the coach beams, pleased, as he gives Daichi a firm clap on the back. “The team is definitely shaping up well.”
“Thank you,” Daichi nodded again, his smile tight, and he hopes the coach doesn’t notice.
“Just try your best tomorrow,” he’d repeated, as they both made their way out of the gymnasium.
(They lost, and Daichi loses that much more sleep.)
--
“... Hey.”
Daichi blinks at the tap of fingernails against the table, looking up from the inventory list.
“Yeah?” Daichi replies, and Iwaizumi staring at him, eyebrows furrowed.
“I called your name twice,” Iwaizumi frowns. “Are you okay?”
“Fine,” Daichi sighs, rubbing the back of his hand over his eyes. Maybe if he says it enough… Yeah. “Just. You know, tired. Long day.”
“... Yeah,” Iwaizumi nods, but it’s easy to tell that he’s unconvinced. Iwaizumi is straightforward, easy to read even at his best, and Daichi kind of likes that about him. They’ve they’ve grown closer through the past half a year or so, working as captain and vice for the volleyball team. Iwaizumi’s not someone Daichi gave much thought to before entering university, but both having taken up similar scholarships under the university’s new varsity volleyball scheme, they’d gotten along surprisingly well. It wasn’t hard when they saw each other for practice, mornings and evenings, at least five times a week or more.
“What were you saying then?”
“Nothing, just checking if you were done.”
“Well, looks like pretty much everything’s in order,” Daichi states, shuffling the papers back together. “I don’t think we’ll have to touch our budget much past what we expected. We could probably use a new air pump though,” he muses, filing the papers back into the binder. “Our current one looks like it might give out soon.”
Iwaizumi nods, and stands when Daichi does as they get ready to lock up the club room. Late nights are becoming common, discussions about their team and game strategy stretching into late evenings. Iwaizumi has never complained, not once, and for that, Daichi’s respect grows.
Daichi’s already thinking about going back to his room, attempting to do something about the in-class exercise due for discussion tomorrow and then—hopefully—knock out and attempt to get some rest for another long day—
And then Iwaizumi’s stomach growls, loud in the quiet corridor, and Daichi can’t help but laugh, even when on the receiving end of Iwaizumi’s embarrassed glare.
“Hey, no, no don’t look at me like that I’m hungry too,” Daichi grins, shouldering his sports bag onto his other shoulder. “Ramen?”
“Ramen sounds good,” Iwaizumi admits, sighing. “Weren’t going to head back though?”
“It’s fine, I need to eat too,” Daichi shrugs, as they push the front doors of the building open, walking into the chilly late-autumn air. “Shit it’s cold,” Daichi mutters, pulling his sports jacket closer around him.
Iwaizumi shrugs. “Winter.” Cough. “... By the way, are you headed back to Miyagi for new years’?”
Daichi shakes his head. “I don’t really have the cash,” he admits, and Iwaizumi nods understandingly.
“It’s not cheap for sure.”
“Yeah,” Daichi sighs.
The pause after is held a little too long, more calculated than the silence between them usually, and when Daichi looks questioningly at Iwaizumi, he notices the weird, unreadable expression on his face.
“I… Was persuaded to go back though,” Iwaizumi coughs again, looking away, and Daichi is damn sure that no one makes that expression if they’re talking about being talked into going back home by just their parents.
“Oh really?” He tries for nonchalant, but clearly not hard enough, given the look Iwaizumi shoots at him.
“Shut up.”
“I didn’t say anything,” Daichi laughs, holding his hands up in surrender. The way Iwaizumi’s face is going red is sweet though, in contrast to the permanently-serious expression he usually has on. It’s funny enough for Daichi to want to tease him more.
“Your face says enough,” Iwaizumi grits out, with no sense of irony, and Daichi narrowly ducks a chokehold when he laughs a bit too loudly.
“Yeah well, yours is telling me all I need to know then,” Daichi grins, sidestepping another grab. “Who’s the lucky girl?”
Iwaizumi, for all his merits, is really a terrible liar, and Daichi watches him freeze up completely in the middle of the sidewalk.
“Who said—”
“C’mon,” Daichi rolls his eyes, “it’s obvious, you’re red up to your ears,” and there’s a few seconds where he gets to enjoy the sight of Iwaizumi pawing irritably at his face, as if that would do the blush any good.
“That’s— It’s not—”
“Relax,” Daichi laughs, punching him in the shoulder lightly. “I’m not gonna force it out of you or tell anyone or whatever.” Iwaizumi slowly recovers, and falls back into step. Daichi monitors the slightly disgruntled look on his face, but mostly thinks it’s pretty funny.
“Hey seriously,” Daichi tries again, clapping a hand onto Iwaizumi’s shoulder. “I’m happy for you, whoever it is. It’ll be nice to go home for the new year with someone,” he says, meaning it more than he might think. He’d accepted it months back, rationing out his scholarship money for the rest of the semester, that he probably wouldn’t be able to afford going back this year. He had put aside thoughts of spending new year’s back under his family kotatsu, his birthday with his mom who always made him katsu curry, exactly how he liked it. He remembers the moment he’d figured his year end plans (or lack thereof) with uncanny clarity, rubbing his eyes, and thinking that being an adult sucked.
And then he looks at Iwaizumi, still flushed up to his ears, mouth not quite resisting a smile, and he can’t help but think that must be nice too. He’s been so busy and tired lately that the idea of dating someone never really even registered solidly since he entered university.
“Thanks,” Iwaizumi manages, still not quite managing to keep a straight face, and Daichi feels happy by proxy.
--
Daichi does knock out after dinner, unfortunately, without having done anything about the exercise due for discussion. As if in punishment, he wakes up with a splitting headache, half an hour before class, which is barely enough time for him to get there in a presentable state.
He rushes out of the dorms, cursing to himself at how his body couldn’t even have the decency to at least feel like it got some kind of rest, under the buzzing of his headache. He feels stretched-thin with the end of the week coming up. His lack of faith in getting any kind of rest, even over the weekend, doesn’t help.
He hates it, hates feeling this helpless, and promptly crashes right into Suga in the lobby of their dorms.
“Woah there,” Suga laughs, as they somehow manage to catch each other by the arms, stabilizing instead of knocking each other over. “Good morning?”
“Shit I’m sor— Suga? Morning,” Daichi manages, mouth reflexively curling up into a reciprocal smile. “Sorry I just—” He gestures at the door, and the papers in his hand, half-stuffed into his messenger bag, and Suga, thankfully, gets it.
“Yeah no, don’t let me stop you,” he grins, nodding at the door, before looking back at Daichi, and Daichi can feel Suga’s gaze sweeping over his face. “You look terrible though, are you alright?”
Always pulling no punches, huh.
“I’m— I’m great.”
“Right,” Suga intones drily, rocking back on his heels to give Daichi a once over. Daichi kind of wonders what Suga sees, and the default explanation rolling off the tip of his tongue is starting to tire him out too.
“It’s— It’s just been a long week,” Daichi sighs, scrubbing a hand over his face. “Work piling up, practice, the bio test next Monday— Stuff like that. Look, I really need to—”
“Yeah, you should but— You haven’t done your notes for the chapters five till seven right?”
“... No, I was going to but—”
“You can take mine.”
Daichi tears his gaze away from the dirty carpet where he’d been toeing his sneaker, blinking at Suga. Suga, who’d been forcing Daichi to attend the lectures every week, at the threat of refusing to share his notes after if Daichi skipped.
“What? But you—”
“Yeah, well,” Suga shrugs, a grin playing at the ends of his lips, “you’re just gonna have to make it up to me, right?”
Daichi crowds Suga into a quick, one-armed hug (his other still awkwardly half-stuck in his messenger bag, papers still sticking out of it) before he realizes what he’s doing. It feels right, for that moment when Suga unfreezes (exhales?) and squeezes back, breath rattling on a laugh as Daichi pulls away.
“God, as if I’d ever stop owing you,” Daichi grins, backing away to the front doors. “You’re a lifesaver, I swear I---”
“I want it printed in the papers!” Suga calls, shooing Daichi away.
“Consider it done. I’ll see you uh, tomorrow at 2?”
“Yeah yeah, now get out of here.”
--
Miraculously, an hour frees itself up between Daichi’s last class and his study session with Suga. On his walk back to his dorm, he decides, with absolute clarity, that he’s going to take a nap. A nap to end all naps, one of such utterly amazing restful quality that there would be no conceivable way biology would be able to put him to sleep later on.
He spends most of the hour with his eyes shut but completely awake.
When his phone buzzes on his desk, it’s almost a welcome distraction from the irritation of insomnia, and Daichi gives up on attempting to sleep, and checks his phone.
Kuroo Tetsurou: hey u free next wed?
Daichi frowns at the message. He and Kuroo were on decent terms ever since they were both captains in high school (a minor lie, but Daichi had come to realize that he wasn’t like the cunning didn’t detract from the other aspects of Kuroo’s personality)—and after, when they’d bumped into each other in Tokyo one day, and discovered that they were both enrolled into schools here. Still, they didn’t text much, if at all, and didn’t see each other beyond accidental run-ins.
Sawamura Daichi: I’ve got class till 3. why?
Kuroo Tetsurou: lol so suspicious
Kuroo Tetsurou: clearly im asking you out on a hot date lol lol
Sawamura Daichi: … no seriously
Kuroo Tetsurou: lol youre no fun
Kuroo Tetsurou: nekoma vs karasuno on wed. 5pm. practice match on nekoma home turf. i’m gonna go cheer on the winners, how about you? :D
Daichi snorts, rolling his eyes as he types out his reply.
Sawamura Daichi: what a surprise, me too.
Sawamura Daichi: how nice of you to cheer for karasuno, but yea i know they’re pretty amazing
Kuroo Tetsurou: clearly this is a misunderstanding which can only be cleared up on the court
Sawamura Daichi: let your team do the talking lol unless you have no faith in the current team?
Sawamura Daichi: text me nekoma’s address?
Kuroo Tetsurou: take that back theyre GREAT!!!
Halfway through typing a reply, a link to the address of Nekoma high school pings. The school’s located in one of Tokyo’s many suburbs, away from the area Daichi’s school is. He squints at the map. It’s not too far. He could probably make it there in under two hours, he estimates, which isn’t too bad.
He’s busy, but not busy enough to turn down the opportunity to see his old teammates again. His new team is great, but he sometimes catches himself missing Hinata’s high tension, Nishinoya’s ridiculously unnecessary moves, even having to pull Tanaka by the back of his shirt before he shit-talks himself into a penalty. It’s a soft, consistent ache for something familiar, something he’s used to, like the routine way Asahi snaps his headband into place before a match, the confident grin Suga would give him as the starting whistle is blown. How he always felt, bone deep, that if it was with them, anything was possible.
Sawamura Daichi: save the trash talk for next week lol see you there
Kuroo Tetsurou: ;D
--
“So I heard there’s a Nekoma-Karasuno practice match next week,” Daichi mentions, a few minutes into his study session with Suga.
Suga looks up from rifling through his papers. “Really? Did Ennoshita text you or something?”
“More like an overcompetitive ex-captain,” Daichi grins, and Suga laughs.
“Speak for yourself,” Suga snorts.
“Hey, I’m not that bad,” Daichi protests, taking the notes Suga hands him. Suga’s handwriting is its usual scrawl (which was surprising at first, when Daichi first met him, but now he can’t imagine it being anything else), but the content is meticulously detailed and well-organized. “But yeah. It’s gonna be next Wednesday, around 5pm. Wanna come with me?”
“Sure. Didn’t think you had the time though,” Suga comments off-handedly, and Daichi looks up to blink at him.
He settles for “I always have time for Karasuno,” and ignores the way the Suga’s comment sits oddly at the pit of his stomach. He thinks it might be his imagination, but for the span of a single held breath, he feels tension in the room, pulled taut.
But then Suga looks up at him, the corner of his mouth curled up in a smile which couldn’t be anything less than genuine, and Daichi exhales a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.
--
Karasuno wins, obviously, and even Daichi has to take it to be the perfect excuse to spend the rest of the night with the mismatched group of Nekoma-Karasuno ex-seniors, drinking more than he usually allowed himself to.
Kuroo rolled his eyes at him at one point, as they both reached into the fridge for more beer.
“Don’t look so cocky, Captain, it’s not like it was actually your win or anything,” he snarks, and by this point, Daichi’s heart feels too full and warm to do anything but grin back, jostling Kuroo playfully.
“It is our win,” Daichi declares, cracking his third can open. “Karasuno for life.”
Kuroo just laughs as they walk back to the front of his house (walking distance from Nekoma, and blissfully empty, something about his parents being away), approaching the rest of their group.
“Yeah,” Kuroo admits after a pause, quiet enough that Daichi has to strain to hear him. “I know what you mean.”
--
The warmth of the alcohol continues to suffuse Daichi all the way home. It’s not the drunkest he’s been, but it’s fairly close, close enough that Suga doesn’t trust him to walk by himself, apparently.
“Ugh, finally,” Suga groans as he shoulders Daichi into the seat next to him after their last change of trains. The carriage is empty for Tokyo, Daichi hazily notes as he relaxes into the seat.
“What time is it?” He asks, attempting to blink the haze away from his vision.
“Past your bedtime,” Suga snorts, kicking at Daichi’s extended legs to settle beneath the seat, instead of blocking the way. “Do you always drink this much?”
“Naaaah,” Daichi drawls. “‘M always resh-- responsible,” he nods, and the action feels huge and tiring. “Like… Like an adult.”
“Mhm, so adult-like,” Suga intones, and Daichi knows he’s laughing at him, could tell even with his eyes closed. He tries to jab Suga with his elbow but misses tragically, and over-balances instead, the jut of Suga’s shoulder crashing painfully into his side.
“Ow,” Daichi frowns, rubbing at his side, and the last thing he remembers is the jostling heave of Suga’s chest under his cheek, and the hazy thought of well that’s kinda nice too.
(Later, he thinks about the fuzzy memory of the surprisingly hard edge of the pillow under his cheek moving, and him mumbling some excuse against waking. There’s the vague impression of a laugh that sounds familiar, a strong hand coming around him to pull him up.
Where are we going, he thinks he asks at some point, the strange sensation of his legs walking without his active control.
Home is suffused into his cheek, a gusting breath warming him like alcohol.
Yeah, he remembers thinking to himself. Let’s go home.)