Sendai was a large city, but it was even larger when one first moved there.

Suga was reeling from the difference between rural Miyagi, where he had grown up, and this sprawling metropolis that was the prefecture's beating heart. It made him want to re-examine the practicality of commuting from his family's home near Karasuno, but not only was the train ride was almost an hour each way, the station was a half hour's walk from Suga's family home. He wasn't sure his studies could bear the loss of three hours out of every day just to a commute.

The student housing, however, was a ten minute walk from the university, which made the move a bit easier to swallow. At the very worst, he could change his mind at a later date, even if his parents would lose forty-thousand yen in key money.

But as much as he should have been, Suga wasn't worried nearly as much about university or Sendai or living in a brand new place. His mind kept diverting to Aichi, where Daichi was likely settling into his own tiny broom closet disguised as an apartment, the flush of a new challenge burning inside of him. Daichi was born for challenge. Suga had gratefully leeched that quality from his best friend for three years and sorely missed it right at that moment.

He could almost hear Daichi cheering him on as he stuck his key into his apartment door and opened it.

The room was, as he had guessed, beyond small, as most urban housing tended to be. The narrow bed and desk together took up almost half the floor space, which made him grateful for the recessed kitchenette and closet. A cursory examination of the rest of the unit turned up a tiny toilet cubicle with a sink, but no shower or bath.

He had been aware that the bathing facilities would be shared with the rest of the residents on the second floor, which hadn't disturbed him because he had spent three years in a locker room with open showers. It was just the loss of that last, indulgent bit of home, where he could linger a little longer than necessary in a cold shower when he wasn't able to dispel thoughts of a certain wing spiker from his mind before he crawled into bed. And there had been more of those cold showers than Suga would have liked to admit.

That was all over now.

With that thought, he unpacked the few belongings he had brought until he deemed the room to be home at last. He even changed the rough, unfamiliar sheets to the ones his mother had lovingly forced him to bring. As he settled himself in for a long night, he was grateful for that last scent of home (even if it was only his mom's favorite laundry detergent) before he drifted off into that restless sleep he always felt in an unfamiliar place.

The next few days made Suga's head spin. His small desk was soon piled high with books and syllabuses and charts — the regular pre-med student fare. He already had more homework than he knew what to do with to the point where, although he missed home and his friends and the volleyball club, he was grateful for the solitude so he could start his school year on the right foot.

Before he knew it, two weeks had passed at a blistering pace, and Suga found himself fishing through his dirty clothes pile (his mother would be scandalized) for the least-wrinkled thing he could find and hoped a dusting of air freshener would take care of the rest.

After nearly a month, Suga realized he couldn't continue like this, disheveled with Febreze soaking into his pores. He had no classes for the rest of the day and, hence, no more excuses. With a glance over at the corner and the unopened box of washing powder, Suga took it, his clothes basket, and his anatomy textbook to the coin laundry on the ground floor.

A few machines were running, but the room was empty. Grateful for the numerous open machines, he split his entire clothing supply between two machines and settled onto the bench along the wall to study while the forty-five minute wash cycle ran its course.

Something hot and sticky vaulted into his lap.

Looking up in horror from his probably-ruined textbook, Suga saw a dark-haired boy around his own age holding a now-empty cup from the area coffee shop and wearing a smirk that might have made Oikawa Tooru jealous.

"Where have you been all my life?" this boy asked with a quirked brow and a no small measure of melodrama.

Suga bristled as he realized that whoever this was had probably doused him in cappuccino on purpose. Forcing the most genuine-looking smile he could fake, Suga answered, "In need of a shower, apparently."

The boy laughed and clapped him on the shoulder with an unnerving air of familiarity. "I like you. We should be friends."

Not in this lifetime, Suga thought uncharitably.

"My name is Kawasaki Kai, but you can just call me Saki."

Fighting the urge to glare at this loud, ridiculous person who had dumped coffee all over him and his twenty-thousand yen textbook just to introduce himself, Suga smiled even wider with every polite bone in his body and nodded. "Nice to meet you, Kawasaki-san." He momentarily wondered whether it was rude to not offer his own name, but he could not think of a single reason he would ever voluntarily seek out Saki and found no reason to encourage Saki to do the same.

"Why such a spoil-sport, Sugawara-kun?" Saki said, a far-too-toothy grin stretching across his irritatingly pleasant face.

Suga started. "How do you know my name?"

Saki had the good grace to at least blush. "I've seen you around, so I asked the floor supervisor about you. He gave me your name. I live three doors down from you on the second floor."

Irritation warped into trepidation as Suga realized that he would probably see a lot more of Saki than he ever cared to do. Rudeness would gain him nothing, and politeness would only cost him a little bit of his sanity. With a heavy sigh, Suga shared, "I've been trying not to fall behind on assignments, so I haven't been the most sociable person. I guess it's about time to meet my neighbors." He even gave Saki's arm a playful punch.

Suga thought he imagined something darken in Saki's eyes before it was replaced by a mischievous sparkle. "That it is, Sugawara-kun. That it is."

Three weeks later, they were in a coffee shop, swapping embarrassing stories from middle school. Two weeks after that, they were having sex on the floor of Suga's apartment.

Floating on a cloud of bliss that could only spawn from one's first real romantic relationship, Suga found himself wondering why he had ever been put off of Saki. He often found little gifts on his desk after a long day of classes. Chocolates (which Suga adored), little baubles, and even a tongue ring that was the result of a lost bet over which one of them had the most embarrassing mother. Suga had dawdled over the decision to try the piercing, but the gift spurred him to get it. It only lasted a week, but the experience had been a worthy one.

In one of these little moments of bliss, Suga and Saki were curled into one another on Suga's bed, sharing a pair of earbuds as they lazily drifted in and out of sleep. A feeling of well-being covered Suga like a blanket. He could not understand why he had closed himself off so abruptly when he got to college, when he could've been reveling in this new and exhilarating feeling that much sooner.

Just as Suga was ready to drift back off to sleep, he felt the faint buzz of his phone in his pocket. As carefully as he could, he pulled it out to see who had texted.

From: Gorgeous-chan
Text: Dude, I've never felt like such a shitty player in my life. Everyone on this team is better than me. I told you that you make me better.

Suga smiled at Daichi's text. It had been a well-worn subject between the two of them. Daichi insisted that Suga was instrumental in making the players around him better, whereas Suga had always countered that Daichi's leadership by example was what drove the team to a higher level. It took Ennoshita telling them to stop being ridiculous, that they both contributed equally, before they stopped debating the issue. With a grin, Suga replied:

To: Gorgeous-chan
Text: Don't make me tell Chikara on you. Don't think I won't. :P

Beaming at his phone, Suga eagerly awaited Daichi's response. He had only talked to the other boy a couple of times via text since they parted ways at the train station, and he hoped to have a proper conversation sooner rather than later. Nothing seemed to be amiss after Suga's awkward kiss and confession, which relieved him to no end. Even if Daichi was now a long-distance friend, at least they were still friends.

The phone vibrated one more time, but before Suga could answer it, a fast-as-lightning hand snatched it from his grasp.

"Who's Gorgeous-chan?" Saki asked coldly. The lack of warmth in his boyfriend's tone belied their comfortably intimate position.

Taken aback, Suga shrugged while Saki's arm was still firmly belted around his waist. "It's just Daichi. It was a nickname I gave him when we first met because we weren't exactly given a chance to exchange introductions."

A fist curled against Suga's belly, making him want to push out of Saki's increasingly uncomfortable embrace. "It's nothing," he reassured, not entirely sure why he was justifying his friendship with someone from high school that lived hundreds of miles away.

"Good," Saki hissed right next to Suga's ear.

Suga couldn't help but shiver.

From that point, Suga made a point of not texting around Saki. He didn't think he was doing anything wrong or unfaithful, but his boyfriend seemed so threatened by anything slightly affectionate from anyone else — male or female. Not wanting Saki to feel like he wasn't loved, Suga kept his texts to himself from then on and regularly deleted his history.

It became routine and seemed to resolve the issue.

It took Suga a while (to the tune of months) to realize that he was texting his best friends in the world less and less as a result. He had still not really made many connections at college since he had started dating Saki. It wasn't that he had not wanted to, but more that the opportunity to mingle really did not present itself that often. When he felt lonely, he called Saki. When he needed someone to talk to about something bothering him, he called Saki. When he needed to get off, he called Saki.

Noting his absence from his Karasuno friends circle, Suga shot a few texts to his former teammates to get caught up: one to Ennoshita, asking how things were going with Tanaka as vice-captain; one to Kageyama, inquiring about whether he had learned anything about his new spikers and where they liked the ball; then to Hinata, asking how he liked being called senpai.

Ennoshita, to Suga's lack of surprise, replied promptly.

From: Ennoshita Chikara
Text: Well, Ryu doesn't karate chop and body punch everyone quite like you did, but he's managed all right.
Text: It's really nice to hear from you, by the way. It's weird not having you around.

Frowning that Ennoshita had thought enough of Suga's social absence to remark upon it, he shot a quick reply about being busy and promising to do better. He barely hit 'send' before he got his second reply, this time from Hinata.

From: Hinata Shouyou
Text: Suga-san! I was just thinking about you
Text: Kageyama and I have been trying a new type of quick toss, and we're so terrible at it!
Text: I just told him that you could probably learn it faster because you're good at that and then he hit me and called me a dumbass.
Text: Then Takeda-sensai pulled us into the office and started talking all serious about how we were teammates and needed to rely on each other
Text: We just kind of stared at him because Kageyama hitting me is like Natsu hitting me.
Text: Anyway, it was weird.
Text: And yes! Being a senpai is THE BEST. One of our first years asked me to save him from Kageyama, and I laughed for like an hour. Who's even afraid of stupid Bakayama, anyway.
Text: Are you playing on your college team?

Suga chuckled at Hinata's inane chatter, easily picturing the incident in his head and remembering so many more like it with fondness. Quickly after Hinata's last text, Kageyama replied:

From: Kageyama Tobio
Text: Don't listen to Dumbass. I'm not scaring first years, and it's Hinata's stupid fault that he can't hit the ball because he is terrible at everything.

At this, Suga laughed out loud. His kouhai were growing up, but deep down, they were still the ridiculous first years Daichi had banned from the gym until they learned to play together. He missed their lively bickering and relentless enjoyment of the game, and he didn't miss the fact that Kageyama knew what Hinata had said to Suga, and it was nearly ten at night. It meant that they were spending time together outside of practice and that Daichi owed him dinner when they saw each other again.

Nonetheless, when he thought about it more and more, he missed Daichi most of all. He loved his kouhai and wanted the best for them, but none of them had been his best friend quite like the boy who had carried him a half mile for medical attention when he didn't so much as know Suga's name.

Well, what Saki didn't know couldn't make him jealous.

To: Gorgeous-chan
Text: I miss you.

Staring intently at his phone as if willing a reply, it took barely a minute before he got his answer.

From: Gorgeous-chan
Text: I miss you too, Koushi. I mean it.

Daichi had never used Suga's given name before, but it tugged at something in his chest — something he knew he should not be feeling when he was in a steady relationship with somebody else. A knot the size of a melon in his belly, Suga answered:

To: Gorgeous-chan
Text: I meant what I said.

And he did.

Less than an hour later, Saki came over in a mood and in the mood. With the pang of loneliness his earlier correspondences had stirred in him, Suga happily obliged. He drifted off to sleep in Saki's arms, content that his other family was doing all right.

Suga supposed that had been the night all of his phone contacts had been erased, save for Saki and a handful of relatives. With Suga's general lack of outside contact, it had taken him nearly a month to notice.

Shaking with anger, Suga thrust his phone and its naked contact list in Saki's face and growled, "What gives you the right to do this?"

Saki plucked the phone from Suga and gave him a stern look. "You can't seriously expect me to let you sweet talk half a dozen other guys while we're dating. I love you, Koushi. I'm right here, not in the middle of fucking nowhere!"

The sound of Suga's given name on Saki's tongue felt wrong and accusatory. He had never felt so close to punching someone in earnest in his life as he did right then. It was only the iron grip he had on his own biceps that kept him from lashing out at Saki. "You have no right to tell me who I can and cannot talk to. They have been my friends for years, and they were my teammates."

Suga barely recognized the fire in his tone. "Karasuno was my home a long time before this place ever was, and if you can't deal with that, then you can't deal with me." With that, Suga stormed out the door and back to his own apartment to cry himself to sleep.

The next morning, he awoke to a neat little spread on his desk of sticky rice, pears, and a drinking glass full of tulips. The bowl of rice was weighing down an extravagant letter from Saki, which begged his forgiveness and repeated how sorry he was at least a dozen times.

Not remotely in the mood to forgive Saki's horrible attitude towards his friends, Suga threw away the flowers and the note before eating the fruit and rice, if only to keep ants from collecting in the apartment.

This pattern continued — breakfast and a florid apology — for two solid weeks before Suga finally texted Saki and said they needed to talk. When Saki came over less than five minutes later, they merely flung themselves at one another. Suga found himself bent over his desk, with Saki poised at his ready and waiting entrance.

"Tell me you love me, Suga. Me and only me."

His entire body aching with desire, Suga gasped, "I love you. Only you."

After that torrid bout of lovemaking, Suga decided that it would be best to keep his texting to a minimum. And as the school year progressed and the workload buried further and further, Suga even felt relief that the only social contact that was required of him outside his ever-growing stack of books was Saki. It was easy and orderly and inevitable.

He felt something akin to trepidation when he received a text a month later from an unknown number, but the sender was obvious.

From: Unknown [Create New Contact]
Text: Well, I guess I owe you dinner. Chikara caught Hinata and Kageyama all over each other in the broom closet at the gym before practice. When we're back for summer break, we'll hit up the ramen place.

An ache the likes of which Suga had never felt poured into his body. He missed Daichi so much, and he hated that he couldn't reply. Saki would be so angry if he did.

That thought made Suga grit his teeth. "I'm a grown man," he said aloud, just to hear the words with his own ears. "I'll talk to who I like."

To: [Create New Contact: Gorgeous-chan]
Text: You're on.

The small victory boosted Suga's mood more than anything had in weeks. With a grin on his face, he sent one more message:

To: Gorgeous-chan
Text: If you don't mind, could you send me the guys' numbers? My phone had a mishap and I lost my contacts.

From: Gorgeous-chan
Text: Sure.

Alert after alert chimed as Daichi refilled Suga's contact list. This time, he was going to tell Saki that, under no uncertain terms, he could text whoever he pleased and would do.

However, with exams leering over both of them, Suga didn't see Saki for three days, nor did he have time for unnecessary communication. The subject simply did not come up. It was not until right after they both sat their term exams and Saki grabbed Suga's phone to snap a selfie of them victoriously leaving the exam hall together that the other boy truly looked at Suga's phone.

Assuming Saki was simply perusing the photo gallery, Suga waved at a fellow exam sitter with a cheerful smile on his lips before a hand closed around his wrist like a vice.

"Ow!" Suga exclaimed as he fruitlessly tried to tug his arm away from Saki's grasp. "You're hurting me."

"You're still talking to these people?" Saki said in an even, humorless tone. "I thought I told you how I felt about that."

A scowl, something Suga rarely associated with his realm of expression, dropped into place. "You don't have the right to tell me who my friends are, Kai."

"Oh?" Saki said, his light tone unharmonious with the pain shooting up Suga's arm. His grip tightened, and Suga could almost feel his fingers go white. "Then why haven't you told them about me, Koushi? If you loved me half as much as you pretend you do, they would know you're taken."

Tears pricked the corners of Suga's eyes. "Stop," he gasped. "Please."

"You're a slut, Koushi. All these boys you talk to," Saki leaned in closer, "All the dirty things you do with me."

Suga's free left hand balled up until his nails bit into his palms, and with a strangled cry, he sent his fist careening into Saki's cheek. He felt bones crunch under his knuckles; whether they were Saki's or his, he neither knew nor cared. There was a shriek of pain from Saki, which made Suga relish the idea of having a broken knuckle or two.

Seconds later, hands closed around Suga's throat, and his lips mouthed cries for help that never came. Black spots danced in front of his eyes like rain splashing into puddles until the puddles grew and so did the black.

The last thought in Suga's head before unconsciousness washed over him was of whether Daichi would ever know what happened to him.

Suga woke up in a sterile white room with something lodged in his throat. He splayed his aching fingers over his neck, only to find a cast over his right hand, an IV in his arm, and a tube jammed down his esophagus. That tube ran across the bed and was mounted into the wall. Any pre-med student like Suga knew intubation when he saw it.

He was already nauseous, but that thought alone made his belly churn angrily. But ultimately, Suga was just tired. So, so tired.

Rather than give into the urge to rip out his IV and his oxygen tube so he could storm out and demand to know where Saki was so he could break his other hand on his now-ex-boyfriend's face, Suga sank further into the cool, crisps sheets and lay there until someone finally came in to check on him an hour later.

The doctor, his voice thankfully dispassionate, told Suga that Saki had been arrested for assault, that Suga's esophagus had nearly collapsed, and that they were going to keep him overnight for observation. He also had three broken bones in his hand.

Suga nearly asked about any injuries Saki had suffered, only to realize that he genuinely no longer cared.

The next day, Suga was released under his own care with a prescription for painkillers that he flushed down the toilet. He regretted that later when his hand throbbed in its cast and kept him awake for most of the night.

He didn't go to his classes the next day. Or the day after that. Suga was just so very tired.

After three weeks of truancy, he received a phone call he did not answer, a voice mail he didn't bother checking, and a letter he didn't even remove from the post box, informing him of an appointment with the dean of students that he never attended. Suga supposed his expulsion letter was in the stack of mail he never read sitting in front of his door.

The only person who saw him during those three weeks was the delivery boy from a nearby restaurant. And then the delivery boy didn't come anymore because Suga's credit card was declined. Suga didn't bother to pay that, either.

Soon after that, the landlord informed Suga that his rent was past due, which Suga baldly told the man he could not pay. Three large, burly men arrived the next day and monitored Suga as he packed up his belongings and vacated.

A girl from his physiology class, Harada Mari, took pity on Suga as he gawked at his luggage on the sidewalk. She invited him to stay with her during the summer holidays, as her family was wealthy and spending a month in Hawaii. At this, Suga felt a twinge of sympathy for Harada-san before realizing that he was far more pathetic than she could ever be.

He had not so much as looked at his phone, let alone charged it, since the incident with Saki, which had been over a month before. It wasn't until his second night at Harada-san's house that he checked the barrage of messages he had waiting. There were a few from Saki, calling Suga filthy names and threatening to kill him if he testified at a criminal proceeding that had no doubt already passed.

Suga guffawed at this as he skimmed the rest of the messages. There were a few benign ones from Daichi, wondering when Suga was going to get back so he could ante up. Something caught in his throat that had nothing to do with his already-healed neck.

He scrolled his contacts and almost-called his parents to tell them what happened. When he rehearsed how he would tell him he let himself be beaten and bruised so handily, Suga merely opened the window and threw his phone into the yard, hoping the gardener would run over it with the mower.

The next day, Suga took a much-needed shower and began looking for a job.