I Really Do Love You//DAISUGA

Help Them They're In Love

Sugawara's stomach flipped.

At this point, he was way past butterflies. His stomach was twisting, sending pulses of nervous heat through his abdomen and down through his limbs to his sweaty fingertips. His ears rang with the white noise of his racing heartbeat, and he was becoming acutely aware that he was in danger of suffering from a major heart attack in the middle of the Tokyo Metropolitan Gymnasium; it seemed like today was the day that his mediocre cardio training was getting ready to kick him where it hurts, and he simply was not prepared for a goddamn heart attack before he executed his current plans. How incredibly embarrassing this was turning out to be.

Still, somehow, he was managing to force his feet to carry him, slowly but surely toward the locker room where he overheard that Daichi was, where he was undoubtedly still scolding himself for the injury he had recently earned in his wreckless attempt to save an offending spike. A quick memory of the impact flashed in Suga's head, and he couldn't help but wince when his stomach flipped again.

Your face, Daichi?! Really?! Suga thought with an ache of worry and a sharp pang of annoyance, reluctantly remembering the horrible moment of the impact. The memory was still fresh, raw, enough so that Suga could still hear the captain's stupid face collide with Tanaka's hard shoulder, the high pitched squeak of Daichi's sneakers sliding against the court as his body failed on him, rendering him momentarily immobile. Several seconds of an ear-ringing silence had passed on the court before anyone even dared to move, each player frozen in a state of pure shock. From the sidelines, Suga remembered, he had completely stopped breathing.

With his frozen lungs and twitching fingers, too, he distantly recalled his own body's chilling inability to move; partly, it was because he wasn't allowed on the court as a sub player, but it was mostly because his body had instantly turned to lead with a crushing fear for Daichi's wellbeing. Suga nearly passed out from relief when he urgently watched the captain start to get up.

Basically, there was absolutely nothing about the experience that was at all enjoyable, and Suga internally decided to pack this memory as far back into his head as he could possibly manage. For Daichi's sake, of course, because at this point half of his face was now inflamed with an aggressive bruise and he had lost a tooth, for god's sake, but for Suga—

Suga decided to pack it away for himself, too. In fact, Suga was having less fun than him, even, as his emotional state was an absolute mess and for this he wholeheartedly blamed Daichi. That's why he was going to talk to him now—to scold him, to yell at him, to ask him why he was so stupid, to tell him that it could've been his last game, to make sure he knew how scared Suga was, to tell him that it wasn't even his ball anyway and to make sure that next time he at least calls for the freaking ball so this doesn't happen again, because Fuck, Jesus Dai.

Basically, Suga had a lot he wanted to say.

So quietly he continued walking, trying his best to ignore the daunting fact that his destination kept getting closer and closer, huffing as he continued doing all he could to dry his palms that were somehow getting increasingly more damp. With yet another swift wipe of his hands down the front of his Karasuno joggers, another pang of post-worry hit him in the gut as Suga's head reluctantly danced around a single last thought:

If Daichi wasn't okay.. What would I have done?

His jaw immediately clenched at that. Nope. A cool shiver ran down his spine and he found a renewed determination to stay positive as he chose to shove this particular thought to the deepest, darkest corner of his mind, right next to the day's most recent injury-inducing events. Suga was, at this point, in no way prepared to deal with them.

Instead, he decided on deciding how exactly he was gonna approach his best friend when the time came.

Of course, Suga knew that he couldn't simply waltz into the locker room and begin to tear Daichi a new one, especially in his current state, because that would just be uncalled for and entirely too forward. Instead, Suga had come up with the perfect plan—he had sneakily grabbed an instant ice pack from Karasuno's med kit before he started to make his way to Daichi, having smugly realized that this would give him an excuse to see him.. Alone. It was simple, perfect. Suga's heart flooded warm for a moment, a perfect moment in the intense harshness of the anxious ache in his chest. The ice pack, he knew, was his tiny, not-very-cold Trojan horse. Suga couldn't help but smile for himself. I'm brilliant!