sugar high // daisuga week drabbles

until i had you on the open road

DAY 1: journey / technology

~

The road stretches on in front of them for miles upon flat miles. On either side is an endless sea of farmland, and yet there's not a single farmhouse or mailbox in sight. Tall grasses—grains, maybe?—bend in the breeze as they pass, washed in the bright light of the sinking sun. Daichi switches cruise control on, lowers his visor to block the sun, and looks over to the passenger seat.

Suga fell asleep an hour ago in a contorted position that looks the opposite of comfortable, with his legs tucked up and arm crushed under his head. Daichi kind of wants to wake him up, if only for his own selfish reasons. In the almost silence, he lists them off.

1.
Suga's voice is one of the nicest sounds Daichi has ever heard. It's too quiet in the car as it is, with only the dull hum of tires on concrete and the occasional rattle of the tools in the glovebox. He's not quick to speak, but when he does, his words come out thoughtful, practiced, like he's spent ages calibrating the exact thing he wants to say with the exact way he wants to say it. His laugh could make angels weep, and the times he explodes in fury—more often than Daichi could honestly say he expected—even the bite to his words is attractive, somehow.

2.
Suga has good taste in music. It's taken Daichi a good five or six months to get a handle on the kind of music Suga likes, because he used to be unable to find a single common theme to unite the singers and bands Suga listens to most often, but now he thinks he gets it. He misses the saccharine Britpop and the pop punk of the mid '00s and the fuzzy lo-fi hip hop of right now, misses when he didn't know the one thread that held it all together was, in Suga's words, "the feeling of wanting to be somewhere else."

3.
Suga's commentary is ruthless, hilarious, and spot-on. Nishinoya once suggested secretly recording all Suga's dry observations and compiling it into a stand-up comedy album. Daichi was loath to do so because of the invasion of privacy—mostly his own. He wants to keep Suga's witty commentary limited to the afternoons spent people-watching outside at cafe tables and hours in airport gates. And right now, on long car rides in between bursts of adventure.

4.
They're driving into the sunset, and Daichi knows Suga is going to want to see it so he can take sixteen pictures of it. Daichi may also want to see the golden glow of the rays falling over Suga's face, and thought he can't take pictures himself, he'll burn the image into his brain to keep like a treasured heirloom.

Suga stirs, unfurling himself from his crunched position, and looks up, squinting in the blinding light. "Oh, the sunset! I'm gonna take a picture for Tooru."

Daichi smiles and keeps driving.