From: Zari To: Umbry
Message: Happy holidays! Hope you’re having a wonderful break! This is only the first chapter, love, so please venture to my ao3 for the rest of the fic. Thanks for reading and have a wonderful winter holiday. :)
Title: he’s in love {hello}
i.
When Daichi realizes that he’s been in love with his closest friend, it is too late.
~
It’s no surprise when you fall in love with Daichi; Daichi is steady and strong and reliable and rarely disappoints. There is a steady ebb and flow to him. But those qualities aren’t what make you fall in love with your best friend, captain and confidant.
It’s his damned smile.
The way he smiles at you, at the underclassmen, at both managers, at coach, at Sensei Takeda, at anyone. And that’s the fucked up part. It’s not the way he looks just at you but how he looks at everyone. With this kind of universal appreciation and love and respect. God, it’s wonderful.
God, he’s wonderful.
And you love him. It’s not fair to him or to the team or the perfectly pleasant girl who confessed to him last week or to his future. But you love him. Oh you love him.
~
It’s the end of a practice when Daichi first notices the warm burning in his chest that could only be described as still-hot embers of a fire that he usually associates with Suga.
They had just finished an inner-team scrimmage: first years with Tanaka versus the third years with Noya and Ennoshita. Everyone is tired and content and nothing feels out of place. Everything is as it supposed to be. It’s not like anyone is missing or mysteriously down on the court, injured, or crying or arguing (with malice—not like how Kageyama and Hinata argue) or anything like that.
But to Daichi, something feels off.
As they’re walking home, Daichi’s hand brushes against a fellow third year’s and sparks go alight on his skin, nerves receiving and sending something electric through his veins and something clicks. Suga’s smiles, his voice, his mannerisms, his general being.
Oh.
~
During any kind of task, he’s constantly focused and ready for almost anything. You can’t help but admire him, all muscle and controlled ferocity.
It’s nerve wracking.
You can barely focus. You don’t miss any of the sets but that’s because your body just moves on its own and has nothing to do with where you are mentally. When the scrimmage ends, you try to shake every thought of Daichi out of your head along with his dumb smile.
You hope he never finds out.
~
When Suga looks up at him for the third time since they brushed hands and Daichi had a little epiphany, concern written across Suga’s beautiful face. So of course, Daichi flashes him a smile. Something freezes the look on Suga’s face into something cold and frigid and then into something neutral. Before Daichi can ask, Suga gives him something like ghost of a smile.
He makes excuses, a whirlwind of motherly concern and vague panic. Something about dinner and homework and then…he leaves in the wrong direction of his house and Daichi is still very concerned. Everyone turns to look at him, thinking that he would of course have some semblance of an answer. Daichi opens his mouth.
Nothing comes out.
~
When you get home, you jump onto your bed and try to figure out what happened back there. Why he had smiled at you. What the hell was that?
Everything he does has a purpose. Everything he did was for a reason and sometimes those reasons were stupid but always a reason. It all has a purpose.
You feel like you have little to none. Especially in his life.
Then you get the letter.
{sneak peak at ch. 2}
ii.
Daichi notices that things. A lot of things. A habit formed from constantly watching the volleyball court during a game. Daichi takes to noticing a lot of things about Suga since realizing that he—
Anyway, Suga has been avoiding Daichi. Except that he’s really not? It’s more like Suga will be in the same room as Daichi for a while and then he’ll just freeze and leave the room with some half-baked excuse that makes no sense but Suga still leaves, an apologetic smile with a small wave goodbye. Daichi is a little confused, but chalks it up to unlucky coincidences.
Everyone on the team is a lot more than a “little” confused. They are so convinced that “Mommy and Daddy” (as Daichi had found out what he and Suga were being called during a hushed conversation between Asahi and the freshmen) were fighting and that some, ah, ‘intervention’ was necessary.
At first, the ‘intervention’ was just whispered conversations and weird looks his way. Then it was the team bringing Then there were instances where he and Suga were placed in the same room.
Alone.
Under normal circumstances, this would have been fine. They would have laughed it off, started talking about something completely mundane. Probably the team. Sometimes about Noya and his increasing nervousness that Asahi was leaving. (Not that it showed but sometimes, a person could just tell.) About Ennoshita becoming captain someday and how he was developing as a person. Almost always, the subject of ‘an Oni with a club’ versus ‘an Oni and an Oni’ would come up. (Suga always worried about their relationship, Daichi always worried about their teamwork. Their concern would always meet in the middle somehow. Like two worried parents.)
But now, the circumstances seem to have changed.
Now, it’s all uncomfortable silences and weird glances. Every conversation line is two-to-three syllables long. Maybe a whole sentence (if they’re lucky). These “conversations” leave Daichi wanting to tear his hair out and in big chunks, angry because what on earth had he done wrong? And not only that but the entire team is hellbent on fixing whatever happened, completely uncaring about what actually happened. Even Asahi is on board with the hellish schemes the first years (and Noya) have managed to concoct. Anything from them just being alone to them simulating fights for himself and Suga to interfere in.
It’s getting completely ridiculous and Daichi still doesn’t know what he’s done so so so wrong.
“Senpai…” Daichi snaps out of his post-practice reverie and turn to look at their first year manager who is nervously shuffling foot-to-foot. Yachi is biting her lip and keeps look from side to side.
“Yes?” The captain asks and there is just silence from Yachi for a couple of moments. Then, she closes her eyes, seems to center herself, swallows, and then looks her senior in the eye.
“I don’t think you’ve done anything wrong. But I do think you’re going about this the wrong way.”
[for the person who has to post this and everything: pls tell me if anything is wrong or if something happened. i’m really new to this whole ‘using the submit box’ thing and it was seriously confusing. sorry about it being multi-chaptered and all that. :)]













