It was definitely not going his way whatsoever this week.
All Sugawara Koushi could ask for was one restful night of sleep, but he couldn't even have that. Between staying up late to study for exams and not being able to sleep in the first place, he barely got enough sleep as it was. But now this? The fire alarm screaming against his eardrums at nearly two o'clock in the morning? He just couldn't catch a break.
At first, Koushi dismissed the noise as his alarm clock. He tried finding the snooze button with his eyes closed, but gave up after a few tries and rolled over onto his other side. When the alarm didn't stop ringing, Koushi slowly brought himself into a sitting position. That's when he smelled smoke.
All in one moment, he was alert, blinking the sleep out of his eyes. Koushi glanced at his clock. 1:47 a.m. He suppressed a sigh of disappointment. Well, there goes his once peaceful night of sleep.
Hastily, the college sophomore jammed his feet into his slippers, drew his quilt around his shoulders, and calmly exited his apartment. Luckily, he lived on the first floor and wouldn't have to worry about tripping down the stairs with his blanket cloak.
Koushi made it outside, but immediately wished this was all a dream. The chilly wind nipped at his bare face, and the student drew his blanket closer around him. Although this didn't help, Koushi continued to walk away from the warmth of the apartment building. When he glanced over his shoulder once he was a good distance away, Koushi saw the orange-red light of flames in the wing adjacent to his building. Sirens wailed softly under the noise of all the alarms going off in the building. Sleepy families and other college students alike congregated a good ten yards or so away from the building. Koushi meandered through the sea of people and made his way to the back of the group. Catching on fire was not something he wanted to add to his list of bad luck.
As soon as he stopped moving, the cold seemed relentless and moved in to attack the bare skin of Koushi's face and exposed neck. A chill ran up his spine. Oh, how he wished this was just a bad dream and was still laying in his warm bed.
At least he had a blanket. As he looked around, the sophomore caught glances of people in barely anything more than tank tops and sweats with bare feet. He was about to move toward a family to offer his blanket to the two little girls that clung close to their parents, but Koushi heard a few colorful choice words tumble out of a man's mouth not too far away from him.
Koushi turned to get a look at him. He was tall and well-muscled, his biceps taut when he folded his arms across his broad chest. His hair was black, and his eyes were a rich, dark brown. He looked no older than Koushi himself, and he bounced on the balls of his feet in an effort to warm himself up. Garbled strands of curses rolled off his tongue at alarming speeds because he was standing in nearly freezing weather only wearing a t-shirt and boxers. No slippers, no socks, no sweatshirt. Koushi felt really bad for the guy. So, he shuffled over to him, already shrugging off the blanket that hung across his shoulders.
Koushi lightly tapped the man on the shoulder. He whipped his head around so fast that he thought this guy was going to snap his neck. Startled just a bit, Koushi took a precautionary step backwards. After realizing that Koushi wasn't going to laugh at him for being utterly ridiculous for not preparing for the cold, his tense shoulders dropped a little.
"You, uh, look cold." Nice way to start, Koushi inwardly rolled his eyes at himself. "You can have my blanket if you want."
The man blinked, dumbfounded, at Koushi. He started to protest, but Koushi had already draped the quilt across his shoulders. Almost on instinct, the man burrowed into it, happy that he finally had warmth. He mumbled a thank you. Koushi smiled lightheartedly and folded his arms across his rather small chest.
Not even two minutes later, the dark haired man sighed. "Now I feel bad that I took your blanket because now you look cold." The man looked at Koushi, then narrowed his eyes. "You look very familiar, you know..."
"Well, we do live in the same apartment building," Koushi teased. "Maybe you saw me in the laundry room or—"
"Not like that, I mean I think I've seen you somewhere else other than the apartment building." He scrunched up his eyebrows in thought. "I just can't put my finger on it."
The man stood there staring, his brows still furrowed, at Koushi. His staring didn't seem to bother the latter too much. He made to say something as if he had finally thought of where he had seen him before, but he kept quiet. It was then that Koushi found this guy vaguely familiar.
"Aren't you in my language arts class? With Takeda-sensei?" the man in front of Koushi said at last. Koushi's face lit up in recognition. A smile tugged at his lips.
"Oh, yeah! That's why you look familiar," Koushi agreed. "But, I, uh...I don't remember your name." He grinned sheepishly as his hand went to the back of his neck.
"Daichi. Sawamura Daichi," the man smiled. "And you're...Sugawara, aren't you? Koushi?"
"Yep," Koushi smiled up at him. "Everyone calls me Suga, though, so you could call me that if you'd like to."
In the pale light of the moon, the sophomore could've sworn that Daichi's face was turning the slightest shade of red. "Uh, right. Y-you can call me Daichi."
Suga elbowed him lightly, slowly forgetting how cold he was. "Sounds like a plan."
The two of them chatted for another fifteen to twenty minutes or so before the fire department arrived. It turned out Daichi's major was criminal justice with a minor in psychology. Suga had told him in turn that he was majoring in psychology and that his minor was sociology. The former was surprised that they had not shared their psychology class, but with it being Koushi's major, they figured he was lumped together with the other psychology majors.
Their conversation was cut short when the firemen confirmed that it was okay to go inside. They had pulled one family aside—Suga guessed it was their apartment that had caught fire—and they started to make arrangements for the family. When Koushi started to move, it was only then that he realized just how cold he was. He hugged himself and rubbed his arms in an attempt to warm up, but to no avail. Daichi noticed that he was shivering, and abruptly stopped after realizing he still had his fellow student's quilt wrapped around his broad shoulders. He let out a pretty unmanly squeak of embarrassment. Hastily, he shrugged off the quilt and haphazardly hung it across Suga's slender shoulders.
"Oh, wow, uh...sorry about that," Daichi sputtered as he sheepishly grinned and rubbed the back of his neck. "Almost forgot I had it on me."
Koushi waved his apology off and simply smiled again. "Really, it's no big deal, Daichi-san. You looked freezing when I got out here. It was the least I could do."
The duo had already, without realizing it, made it into the building. Cranky people pushed their way around them, and it was a minute or so before everyone was respectively in their apartments. Everyone except the two of them.
Daichi was the first to break eye contact. "I guess I'll see you around then, Suga-san?"
"I hope so," the silver-haired sophomore grinned. He really hoped that didn't sound too flirty. Would Daichi think it was flirty? Suddenly, he felt his face burn.
Yeah, he definitely thought it was flirty. The raven haired man blinked, dumbfounded, at Koushi. He swallowed before choking out a goodnight to him and dashed up the flight of stairs behind him. When he was out of sight, Koushi buried his burning face in his hands, mumbling to himself about how stupid it was to flirt with other guys.
It wasn't like he'd never flirted with other guys before. Oh, he had done plenty of that, and it was downright embarrassing when he had found out that the other was straight, or taken by someone else. Others had teased him about his sexuality towards the end of middle school and the beginning of high school. But Koushi had somehow not been brought down by any of the frequent name calling and bullying. He was over it all by now and couldn't care less about what anyone had to say about his love life. Most of his friends were just like him in the sense that they weren't really attracted to the opposite gender.
By the time he had made it back to his apartment, it was nearly three in the morning. Koushi wrapped himself up in his blanket, much like a one of those rolled up fruit snacks, and flopped down in his bed. But sleep didn't come to him for another hour or so. Koushi's mind was buzzing with the thought of the raven haired man that he had met. It wasn't until an hour before he had to wake up that he fell into a restless sleep.
Daichi woke up the following morning to an annoying pop song playing from his alarm clock. He lazily swiped in the general direction of it and managed to knock it off his nightstand. With a groan, the college sophomore sat up, his lidded eyes only half open, and shut the damned thing off. Rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, the raven haired man unsteadily rose to his feet and proceeded to get ready for class.
By the time he was showered and dressed, he realized that he was running a bit late. If he didn't leave now, he would surely be late to his first lecture of the day. It was either eat breakfast and be late to class or eat something later and just barely make it to class. Daichi went with the latter, promising himself that he would have a nice, filling lunch later between his language arts class and psychology.
That's when he remembered that he would be seeing Sugawara later.
Daichi's heart skipped in his chest as he remembered the other's smiling face. He had been a complete and utter mess around him, and he had wanted to so badly crawl into a corner when he stumbled over his words in their conversation earlier that morning. While he locked his door, he hit his head on it just a few times, muttering "stupid, stupid, stupid" to himself before hurrying down a flight of stairs. He could not—would not—be late to his lecture, being only a month into classes.
Campus was only a few blocks away, so he decided to walk that day. The fresh morning air helped to clear up any fog that had shrouded his mind, and he hummed quietly to himself.
When he turned the corner that lead to the campus of Karasuno University, he caught sight of the smiling faces of both Tanaka and Nishinoya. The latter was energetically waving at him, and Daichi rolled his eyes playfully. He wondered how this kid had so much vigor in the morning.
"Hello, Daichi-san!" Tanaka shouted and could possibly be heard from the next city over. Daichi walked up to the two of them and bid them good morning. The trio walked the rest of the way to the front entrance, chatting about their weekend and other small things.
"Did you hear that the Karasuno High School volleyball club is doing terrible this year?" Noya inquired from the raven haired man's right. "Boy, I'm sure glad we didn't go to Karasuno, other wise Kuroo would never let us hear the end of it."
Daichi scoffed. "You're not too far off." The three of them had graduated from a completely different high school a few towns over. Kuroo, another friend of theirs, had graduated from Karasuno High's rival school, Nekoma. Kuroo had been captain in his third year, and he seemed to think he had never left his position even after he graduated. Kuroo returned to the school frequently to see how everything was going and to see the new members that had joined since his departure.
The two freshmen on either side of Daichi continued to blabber on about the recent match of Karasuno versus Aobajousai. He had kind of tuned them out as soon as they entered the building. Daichi blinked as if to clear his vision when he caught sight of wispy, ash grey hair. His eyes traveled downward the slightest bit to lock with hazel eyes and a beauty mark. Swallowing hard, Daichi watched as the pair of eyes crinkled at the corners and realized Suga was beaming at him, giving him a wave in a brief greeting. The raven haired man stared, suddenly aware that his face was burning despite the cool draft in the hall. What should he do? Wave back? Smile?
His thought process was cut short when Suga turned the corner. Oh, how stupid Daichi probably looked just standing there and staring at him. Now he wanted to go hid his face for the next hour or so.
He felt an elbow poke at his ribs. "So, Daichi, who was that?" Daichi turned to stare into the smirking face of Nishinoya. He wanted to say a few different things at once, such as Why do you care? and Probably the prettiest human being I've ever been blessed to meet and Just some guy I met. But, of course since he was an oaf, he let out an unintelligent sounding noise while his brain tried to process what was the best thing to say.
Nishinoya and Tanaka shared a look before bursting into laughter. Now he really wanted to hide his face. Maybe even for a day. Or a week. Yeah, a week sounded okay to Daichi.
After their laughter had died down, Tanaka clapped Daichi on the shoulder as they continued in the general direction of their lecture halls. "Seriously, man, who was he? I don't remember him from high school."
"Because he didn't go to our high school," Daichi managed to spit out. "He-I met him the other day. He lives in the same apartment building I do."
Before either of them could ask him anymore questions, Daichi caught sight of his lecture hall. He joviantly bid them farewell, eager to get away from their pestering. Without acknowledging their calling him, he closed the door behind him.