Chapter Text
The next day is clear and sunny, the sky blindingly blue, the waterlogged ground steaming. Daichi can move without feeling like parts of his body are about to start falling off, which is a definite improvement, although he can also unfortunately remember last night, which is retrospectively mortifying.
Yesterday’s mud squelches underfoot when he goes out to feed the chickens. He pushes the toe of his dad’s old rubber boot into it thoughtfully, watching the unabsorbed water pool over the flattened grass. It’s giving him Ideas.
“A race, huh?” says Kuroo, when he wanders over after breakfast. He’s acting like last night didn’t happen, which is awfully polite of him. Possibly this is due to unbridled confusion. Which is understandable.
“A race,” Daichi confirms. He gestures for Kuroo to follow him across the road, with his siblings all trailing behind them. The akiya across from Koharu’s house has been empty for as long as Daichi can remember, although Daichi’s dad says there used to be a big family living there when he was growing up. Every year its walls sag a little lower and its roof loses a few more shingles and the grass in the yard grows a little taller, competing with hydrangeas that threaten to swallow the crumbling house whole. Daichi points to the remains of the crumbling fence by the road and says, “We’ll start here, and go all the way to the treeline over there. First one into the forest wins. Kaori will wait over there to call it.”
“But I wanted to call it this time!” whines Saki.
“No, Kaori’s going to do it,” Daichi says quickly. “You can count us in.”
“Seems straightforward enough,” says Kuroo. He frowns. “What’s the catch?”
“No catch,” says Daichi, shrugging. “Just a good old-fashioned race.”
“I have longer legs than you,” Kuroo points out.
“Then it should be an easy win,” says Daichi.
Kuroo narrows his eyes at him. Daichi stares back, stubbornly impassive. He can feel Kaori looking at him, can picture her face frozen in an expression that says are you serious, for real, you’re doing this? He deliberately does not look back. It’s already taking an intense effort to keep his face straight.
“Alright, fine, let’s race,” Kuroo says at last. “I hope you’re ready to get your ass handed to you again, Sawamura.”
“Your overconfidence is cute,” says Daichi. “Kaori, you know where to go?”
“Yeah,” says Kaori, “but—”
“Go on,” says Daichi. “Wave when you’re ready.”
***
They begin crouched like they’re on starting blocks, one hand each touching the decrepit fence that sags behind them, to keep things fair. Long grass brushes against Daichi’s face, making his skin itch. He glances over at Kuroo beside him, and finds Kuroo looking back.
“I won the school relay for the volleyball club two years in a row, you know,” says Kuroo.
“Last year we got disqualified from Karasuno’s inter-club relay because Kageyama started racing Hinata instead of passing him the baton,” says Daichi.
“Yeah, that sounds about right,” says Kuroo.
“Doesn’t mean I won’t kick your ass, though.”
“Illegally.”
“You’re the one who cheated at apple picking. I’ve got a clean record.”
“Well—”
“Neechan’s waving!” Saki says suddenly. She bounces on the balls of her feet excitedly. She, Norio, and Nonaka don’t know the area like Daichi and Kaori. As far as they’re concerned, this really is just a good old-fashioned race. Daichi bites the inside of his cheek to keep from grinning as Saki counts them down. “Three—two—one—go-go-go-go-go!”
They take off, skidding in the mud, stumbling over the long grass as they tear across the overgrown yard and vault over the fence around the back, running flat-out, all-out, until Daichi’s lungs are burning and his heart is pounding in his ears—mud splatters up his legs, Kuroo yelps as he slips, but then he’s up again, and he wasn’t kidding, he’s fast —Daichi watches him run, then looks to the forest up ahead, where Kaori is waiting for them, having taken the long way around by the road—almost there, almost there—
Just ahead, between the field behind the akiya and the first few trees, the grass changes: hakone to low, dense, groundcover, always a lush green even in the dry season, speckled with pink and yellow flowers. Better for running; no long grass to trip you up, and the ground is nice and level. At least that’s what it looks like.
Kuroo is ever-so-slightly ahead, which is, in fact, exactly where Daichi wants him. “C’mon, Sawamura, my obaasan runs faster than you!” Kuroo shouts.
“Hope you wore your swimsuit!” Daichi shouts back.
“What?” Kuroo says blankly. He looks back over his shoulder just in time to see Daichi veer off sideways, sprinting towards the road, which curves around into a bridge over what looks like grassland. Daichi sees the uncertainty in his face, but he hasn’t stopped running. This means that when his feet clear the hakone and hit the groundcover—which is, to be precise, a combination of sphagnum, cinquefoil, lobelia, asters, and other plants adaptable to aquatic environments—
Aomori is an ecologically diverse prefecture, home not only to Shirakami-Sanchi and a variety of coastal habitats but also to brackish lakes, volcanic calderas, mountains, floodplains, and wetlands. For instance, Daichi’s dad and his older sister grew up catching frogs and salamanders in the marsh across the road, behind a big old house that used to be home to a big family, right on the edge of the woods.
One moment Daichi can see Kuroo, staring at him in confusion. The next moment is occupied by a small splash, followed by Kuroo’s abrupt disappearance downwards, in turn followed by a much bigger splash.
Daichi staggers around the marsh to the forest. It’s not big, but his progress is significantly hindered by the fact that he’s laughing so hard he’s doubled over. He slaps the beech tree beside Kaori, who looks unimpressed, and then turns to see Kuroo’s head pop up out of the dark, tannic water, cinquefoil draped comically across his head, coughing and spluttering as he flounders in the mud.
“That’s—” Daichi manages, before he cracks up again. Tears are running down his face. He’s clutching at his stomach. “That’s two—two wins for—”
“That’s two wins for you, yes, yes, very funny, shut up,” says Kuroo. Water and aquatic plants and possibly some small fish cascade off him as he stands up. He takes a step and pitches forward into the water again as the mud shifts underfoot. He gets back up and wades forward to the bank, where he crawls out of the marsh, shaking himself off like a wet dog. Then he flinches, pulls a face, and carefully extracts a small frog from the pocket of his shorts. Daichi is laughing so hard he has to sit down, right in the mud.
***
When they trudge back down the road, wilting in the heat—squelching with every step, in Kuroo’s case—it’s to find Koharu and Kimura-san on Koharu’s engawa, lounging side by side, sharing a couple of beers. Two of Koharu’s cats are with them, and Kimura-san’s dog, all sprawled out and panting and too lazy to chase each other.
“Ahh, I see you got swamped, Kuroo-kun,” Koharu calls from her engawa. Beside her, Kimura-san has had to set down her beer to keep from spilling it all over herself as she cackles. “Too bad. I played that same trick on Daichi-kun’s dad, you know. Three times!”
“That’s a lineage to be proud of,” says Kuroo. “Once, okay, fine, maybe even twice, sure, not that I want you to take that as an invitation, Sawamura, but—”
“Big talk from the guy currently covered in pond gunk,” Daichi counters.
“Well you’re not setting foot in my house like that, kid,” says Kimura-san, still snickering. She points to the hose lying in her front garden, the one Daichi saw her using earlier that morning to wash the mud off her dog.
“Great,” says Kuroo, looking dismayed.
***
Daichi tries to pretend not to watch as Kuroo strips out of his clothes, although to be honest he doesn’t try all that hard. His t-shirt, his shorts are tugged off and left in a muddy heap in the grass. He stands there in his underwear, which is also soaked, splattered in mud flecked with swamp slime, and scrunches his face up as he braces for the cold water, although he still lets out a yelp when Daichi turns on the hose and sprays him.
“This is degrading,” Kuroo mutters, as he stands there shivering.
“But you’re kind of into it?”
“Kind of, yeah.”
“I’ll have you know I have a strict no weird kinks until at least the third date policy,” says Daichi.
“Oh, Sawamura, we’re well past the third date.”
“We are not ,” says Daichi, affronted. They are, at best, at half a date, because he’d said maybe about yesterday, and then Norio had tagged along. Past the third date? No way. He definitely would have noticed. He would have, right? It’s no good agonizing over whether or not to attempt an experimental romance with your ex-high school rival only to find you’re already dating him.
“What do you call this, then?”
“This ? Me bathing you like a dog in your obaasan’s front yard? I don’t know what I’d call it,” says Daichi, “but definitely not a date.”
“Kenma keeps warning me you have an inoperably unromantic soul,” says Kuroo, sounding wounded.
“How would Kenma know that?” Daichi demands. This is offensive, and also deeply unsettling. He’s had all of exactly one conversation with Kenma ever in his life, in which Kenma only made eye contact with him once, fleetingly, by accident, whilst trying to sidle away surreptitiously.
“He’s played so many video games that he can scan real-life encounters for stats,” says Kuroo.
“What…?”
“Don’t worry about it.” Then Kuroo gestures for the hose. “Give me that for a second. I’ve got some gunk in my hair.” Daichi hands it over. A mistake. Kuroo immediately sprays him in the face.
***
“And that’s another hand for Norio and the baby,” Kaori says with a sigh, throwing down the last few cards in her hand. She twirls her pen in her fingers and reaches for the pad of paper sitting on the floor beside her. “So that’s zero points for them, and ten points against for me, and—”
“Ten for me too,” says Saki. Normally this would make her sulky, but right now she’s too busy grabbing Daichi’s leftover cards to show them off. “Look at niichan! Fifty against! Again! What about you, Kuroo-san? Look, look! Fifty-five against! You guys suck!”
“Fifty-five? So I beat you by five,” Daichi says triumphantly.
“Yeah, you’re now in second-last place. Congrats,” says Kuroo. “Second-last place with your two-year-old sister annihilating you. I hope you feel good about yourself.”
“You guys might actually win a hand for once if you quit trying to sabotage each other at all costs,” says Kaori, rolling her eyes.
She starts reshuffling the deck, but before she can deal out the next hand, Koharu pokes her head into the room and scowls at them. “Why are you kids still here?” she demands. “It’s a beautiful day. Go play outside. Kuroo-kun, that obaachan of yours will need help turning over her compost heap—go make yourself useful.”
Daichi looks at Kuroo, and finds him looking right back. A silent agreement of sorts is reached in under a second, and then the two of them are scrambling upright, charging past Koharu and sprinting down the hall to the door, shoving each other off-balance as they race to be the first to get their shoes on. Outside they stumble across the yard and leap across the decaying fence, Daichi grabbing the back of Kuroo’s shirt to slow him down, Kuroo putting a hand over Daichi’s face so he can’t see where he’s going, until—
Kimura-san is out back in her rubber boots and overalls, shovel in hand. “What’s gotten into you two?” she demands, wrinkling her nose at Kuroo, who currently has Daichi in a sort of headlock, while Daichi has his arms wrapped doggedly around Kuroo’s waist.
“Do you need help turning over the compost, Kimura-san?” Daichi asks, as politely as one can possibly ask such a question whilst bent over double and struggling slightly to breathe.
“I’m going to help. I got here first,” Kuroo insists.
Kimura-san scowls. She thrusts the shovel tip-down into the compost till it stands upright, and crosses her arms over her chest. “I already turned it over,” she says, to their mutual dismay. “You think I’m some frail old lady? Hm? Is that it?”
“No, no, no,” Kuroo insists hastily, while Daichi shakes his head.
“If you two are so bored, you can do some weeding,” says Kimura-san. “There are gloves in the shed. Go on. Don’t touch my kabocha, Sawamura-kun. I’ve got my eye on you.”
Daichi struggles out of Kuroo’s grip and shoves him away. “Bet I can—” he starts.
“You can’t! You can’t! Shut up! I can pick so many more weeds than you—”
And so Kuroo’s very last afternoon in Aomori is spent not falling into swamps or cheating at apple picking contests or even going on semi-romantic dates to the grocery store but kneeling in his obaasan’s garden, tugging up stubborn weeds, while Daichi sweats beside him in the sun, bending over until his back starts to ache.
“Am I winning? I can’t even tell,” Kuroo admits after a while, squinting at the piles of wilting weeds gradually accumulating behind him. “I think I’m winning? I’m pretty sure.”
“Are we doing it by volume or weight?” Daichi asks. He wraps his hand around the base of another weed and tugs, but it stays stuck fast. He starts loosening the soil around the roots instead, trying to dig it out. “If we’re doing it by weight, you have to shake the soil off the roots. Otherwise you’re cheating.”
“I don’t think my obaasan will let me use her kitchen scale,” Kuroo says doubtfully.
“Well, then we should—” Daichi’s fingers touch something hard in the soil, too flat to be a rock. He tugs it free and tries to brush the dirt off, but his muddy gloves only succeed in rubbing the dirt around. “Hey, what’s this?”
“There’s a band,” says Kuroo, picking it up. “Looks like a watch.”
The band is ragged leather and parts of it fall away under Daichi’s fingers, but the mud comes off the face when Kuroo takes off his gloves and rubs his bare thumb over it. They bring it inside to show Kimura-san, who takes one look and bursts out laughing.
“That old thing! I’ve been looking for it for years!” she exclaims. “Mao-chan lost it when she was digging the new beds, oh, it must be ten years ago now. Belonged to her dad, I think. Go on, take it over to that Sawamura-chan. She’ll be happy to see it. Ha! I thought it was gone for good.”
Then a tremendous yowl echoes out behind them, followed by frantic barking. Kimura-san scowls and stalks over to the door, yelling, “Udon, you cut that out! Leave that damned cat alone!”
Daichi and Kuroo turn to see Udon tearing through the garden, hot on the heels of one of Koharu’s cats. They race through the two carefully distinct piles of weeds, kicking up dirt clods and roots and leaves and spreading the weeds out all over the place, until their carefully distinct piles are just one big mess. So much for that tiebreaker.
***
“Hm,” is all Koharu says, but she takes the watch and puts it in her pocket—and later Daichi sees her sitting with it at the table with a cloth and an assortment of delicate tools, carefully cleaning out ten years’ worth of dirt.
“Daichi,” she says abruptly after dinner, and Daichi looks up from the dishes, watching her pause in the process of rolling out one of her endless sheets of pastry. “That grandson of Kimura-san’s has to catch his train tomorrow in the city. I was supposed to drive him, but I really don’t have the time. You’ll have to do it.” By which she means, thank you for finding the watch, and let me do something for you in return.
“Okay,” says Daichi. By which he means, you’re welcome, and thank you.
***
“We could do another race,” says Daichi. They’re sitting on the engawa and the sun is setting and they’re still tied two-two and Kuroo is going back to Tokyo tomorrow morning and it sucks, even though it’s not supposed to suck, because Daichi decided he wasn’t going to get involved enough for it to suck, and yet here he is. The heavy scent of Kimura-san’s beach roses, baking in the sun all day, rolls across the yard, making Daichi’s head feel fuzzy. He forces himself to focus, and adds, “For real this time. No swamps, no bogs. Fingers crossed.”
“No way in hell, Sawamura. You’ve lost your racing privileges for life,” says Kuroo, shaking his head. “What about, hmm… Jinsei? I saw an old version on the shelf when we were playing cards. Bet I can have more kids than you.”
“Bet you can’t,” Daichi says automatically. “But no thanks. That game’s depressing.”
“Fair enough,” says Kuroo. “Alright, your turn to suggest something. What do you want to do? Any ideas?”
From the front of the house, the voices of Koharu and Kimura-san arguing about the hydrangea again drift back. Nonaka is asleep inside, reluctantly; last Daichi saw Saki and Norio, they were dozing over yet another game of cards with Kaori. In other words, everyone else is busy, elsewhere, while Kuroo’s hand is right beside Daichu’s on the worn wood, lit up gold in the evening light.
Kuroo is watching him, waiting for an answer. Daichi looks at him, and finds himself shifting ever-so-slightly closer, and then thinks Kuroo’s leaving TOMORROW, you stupid dumb idiot, and so he looks away again and says, “Not really, no.”
“Okay,” says Kuroo. From the corner of his eye, Daichi sees him prop his chin on one hand and sigh. “Well, I’m mature enough to consent to a draw. Clearly it’s what the universe wants.”
“Fine,” says Daichi. It’s not fine. This sucks. He wanted to kick Kuroo’s ass. Or get his own ass kicked. If he’s being honest with himself, he didn’t really care either way; he just wanted the high of being able to gloat, or else the equal but opposite low of simmering bitterness. This just feels like… nothing. Which he supposes is what he was going for.
***
Dawn along the coast in Aomori is beautiful, all pink sky and golden light shining through the clouds, the chill of night still lingering in the air, dew sparkling on the hydrangeas and seabirds shrieking over the water. Daichi stifles a yawn and thinks that he would be happy to miss out if it meant getting to sleep in for another hour or two for once. On his first morning back in Miyagi, he’s making a promise to himself to sleep right till noon.
Kuroo looks like he feels the same way as he comes out of Kimura-san’s house, stifling yawn after yawn of his own as he adjusts his duffel bag over his shoulder. Kimura-san follows him out, gesturing for him to stoop so she can say a few quiet words to him before she pats him on the shoulder and shoos him away, and that seems to be it.
“The back’s open,” Daichi tells him as he gets into the driver’s seat.
“Good morning to you too,” Kuroo mumbles.
Aomori is about an hour by car. Most of it passes in silence. Awkward, thinks Daichi, about forty minutes in. Just like on that first day they’d met up here. Except at that point Daichi and Kuroo hadn’t almost-kissed three entire times, or shared ice cream, or gone swimming together, or snuck out at midnight to eat curry buns and look at the ocean.
“How’s school?” Daichi asks, just to break the silence. Kuroo doesn’t answer, and when Daichi glances over at him, he discovers that the awkward silence is due, at least in part, to the fact that Kuroo is fast asleep, his face squashed against the window.
As they’re driving into the city, Kuroo twitches and sits up with a yawn, stretching his arms behind his head as best he can in the cramped front seat.
“Morning, sleeping beauty,” says Daichi. He shifts gears as the traffic slows, and the van barely lurches at all.
“You’re getting better, Sawamura,” says Kuroo, sounding surprised. “An hour in the car with you and I only felt motion sick about eight times. That’s about a fifty percent reduction. Mind you—”
“You’re more than welcome to get out and walk,” says Daichi, after which Kuroo wisely decides to shut his mouth.
When Daichi turns into the parking lot, though, Kuroo starts to fidget in his seat—and then, as Daichi selects the optimal parking spot and puts the car in park, Kuroo blurts out, “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure,” says Daichi. He looks at Kuroo, whose face has either imminent confession or extreme motion sickness written all over it, and his heart starts doing stupid acrobatics again. Is this—?
Kuroo takes a deep breath, and says in a rush, “Why did you park in the furthest possible parking spot when the entire lot is empty? Also, can I have your number?”
“Listen, I—wh—oh, uh, sure, yeah,” says Daichi. He recites his phone number. Kuroo enters it in his phone.
“That’s what I was going to ask for if I beat you,” Kuroo admits. He’s going red.
“Really?” says Daichi. “That’s it? You could have just asked earlier. It’s not a state secret.”
“Oh,” says Kuroo. He clears his throat. “Well, thanks. I guess I’ll talk to you later.”
When?? Daichi wants to ask. When is later? Will you text me on the train? Will you text me at all? Didn’t I decide I wasn’t going to care either way? But what he says is, “Yeah.”
Then Kuroo undoes his seatbelt and gets out of the car, and a second later Daichi hears the back of the van open as he tugs out his bag, and then he’s gone, and Daichi lets his head thump down on the steering wheel in frustration, being careful to avoid the horn, because that’s the last thing he needs. He doesn’t get it. He just—doesn’t get it. He knows he made the right decision, the smart decision, whatever. Or he’s pretty sure, anyway. That’s always what he does. So why does he feel like—
The door swings open, and Kuroo climbs back in the front seat, looking at him intently, breathing hard. “Okay, Sawamura,” he says, “one more question. Do you like me? Because I have to say you give off the most unbelievable mixed signals. It’s like flirting with my sister’s KitchenAid.”
“What?” says Daichi.
“KitchenAid. Stand mixer. Mixed signals, right, so—you know, they have the bowl, and you can change out the—”
“No, I know what a stand mixer is,” says Daichi. He clears his throat and stares out the windshield at the people across the road walking along the sidewalk, so as to avoid meeting Kuroo’s gaze. “I, uh…”
He could lie and say no. Or he could tell the truth and say yes, but. Or—
To be honest, it would have been much easier if Kuroo hadn’t ended up in Aomori with him at all. But—then he would have missed on the swimming and the apple-picking betrayal and the shared agony of the mikoshi team and dunking Kuroo in the swamp and eating curry in the van in the rain and all that. This part right now sucks, really sucks, but actually, he doesn’t think he would give all of the rest of it up just to have right now suck less. Almost like—
“No way,” Daichi says in disbelief. “Suga… was right…?”
“Excuse me?” says Kuroo.
“The emotional employee discount,” says Daichi. “I get it now…”
“The what…?” says Kuroo.
“It’s a metaphor,” Daichi explains. “For life, or whatever.”
“What? It is? What are you getting a discount on?”
“It’s not about the discount,” Daichi says as he unbuckles his seatbelt.
“Then what—” Kuroo starts to say, but before he manages to get the whole sentence out, Daichi leans over and kisses him.
If he’d been hoping that kissing Kuroo would bring about some kind of ontological epiphany, the kiss is a disappointment. On the other hand, it does have exciting effects on his entire body, of the kind that drugstore medications sometimes list as side-effects warranting a consultation with your physician. So that’s something.
Kuroo grabs Daichi’s hand and says, “Come visit me in Tokyo.”
“Maybe I will,” says Daichi.
Kuroo’s fingers squeeze tighter. “Don’t be cool. Just say you’ll come visit me.”
“Okay, I’ll come visit you,” Daichi admits. “Pick a weekend and I’ll be there. Now go get your train.”
Kuroo kisses him once more, and then once more after that, just for good measure—and then he’s gone.
***
Daichi is staring vacantly out the windshield again, Having Feelings, when the door swings open once more, and Kuroo says, “Actually, my train doesn’t leave for half an hour, so we could definitely make out in the backseat for twenty minutes if you want. I promise to keep my hands to myself. Cross my heart.”
“Okay,” says Daichi, after giving this due consideration. He gets out of the driver’s seat and opens the back door. “I mean, you don’t have to keep your hands totally to yourself.”
“Duly noted,” says Kuroo.