on our way to twenty-seven // kuroo x daichi

27 - IT WAS HERE WHERE I FIRST LEARNED TO BREATHE.

The wedding is a small ceremony on the beach across from Tetsurou's childhood home. Tetsurou's mom cries. Daichi cries. Tetsurou cries. Suga cries. Suga's fiancé Keiji cries. Everyone cries.

Tetsurou steps up on the breakwater and holds a hand out to his fiancé. No, his husband, now. Daichi smiles up at him, the gold ring glinting in the rays of the setting sun as he climbs onto the breakwater next to him.

"Remember the first time I took you up here?" Tetsurou says with a laugh. "You were clinging onto that rope like you'd die if you took your hand off of it."

"I was young and stupid then. A lot's changed." Daichi's focus is on the horizon, lips twisted in a thoughtful smile.

"Right. Like how you married me, so now you're just old and stupid."

Daichi laughs. "We're not that old."

"We complain about property taxes and watch Wheel of Fortune after dinner every weeknight. We're getting old." But he smiles softly anyway, tilting their hands so he can see the rings again. He'll be staring at these for the rest of his life, he can just tell.

The photographer is trailing them at a distance to take 'candid' shots, but the farther they walk, the soft click of the shutter begins to fade away. Tetsurou takes Daichi to the end, where he's written something just for the two of them to see.

"Back when we were planning the wedding, I was looking up quotes about the ocean," Tetsurou says. "You know, for the signs and stuff. And there was one that I really liked, because it made me think about you."

"Which one?"

"We didn't use it for any of the signs. I never told you what it was. But I'm telling you now." He squeezes Daichi's hand and points down, at the neat letters stenciled into the rock. "I don't know who said it. I think it was supposed to be about the ocean. But it made me think about the day we met."

"Volleyball tryouts," Daichi says with a nostalgic grin. "I'd just moved."

"It was the first day I used my real name with someone who wasn't my mom in five years." He'll never forget the feeling of standing there in that gym, how hearing names like his own brought a pang to his chest.

"And then you took me here and I was clinging onto the rope like I'd die if I took my hand off it," Daichi adds. "Yeah. I remember that."

"You also basically told me it was okay to be gay," Tetsurou says, dropping his voice to a whisper. "I don't know if you remember that or if you even knew. But that was the first time I ever heard something positive. Something that wasn't saying 'gay' like a joke or something bad."

Daichi pauses. "We came out to each other here, too," he says. "After we won states and we left the graffiti. I told you I was gay and when you didn't say anything, I thought it meant you were homophobic. But then you said you were gay too."

"And you said you were proud of me." Tetsurou sniffs, coughing out a laugh to distract from the tears springing to his eyes. "That's why...that's why the quote made me think of you. Of us. Because it was here, with you, that I felt like I could breathe for the first time."

Daichi reaches up and cups Tetsurou's face in his hands. "Tetsu." His voice is soft, barely audible over the sound of the waves lapping at the rocks.

"I don't know who or where I'd be if I never met you," Tetsurou whispers. "But I'm so happy I don't have to know."

Behind him, he can hear the shutter sound that means the photographer's caught up with them. He pays her no mind. He holds Daichi close as they watch the sun disappear, and in the last flashes of light, he smiles.