Chapter Text
Akaashi looked in the mirror again, smoothed out his black shirt, which was see-through on his arms and chest, brushed against the clasps of his corset, and turned to look at the open back held together by silver chains, revealing his shoulder blades.
“I told you, you look great!”
He looked at Oikawa, who was wearing something similar but with gold accents and a turquoise shirt. He sat down across from his friend and let him apply his makeup. There was about an hour left until the ceremony, and everyone was getting ready; the venue was packed with people, and the air was thick with a sense of expectation.
Akaashi entered the venue alongside Oikawa and Iwaizumi, running into many people they hadn’t seen in years. He adjusted his glasses, and they sat down next to Kageyama. They were chatting until their friends arrived to join the conversation and continue greeting more people, some Akaashi didn’t know and others he did.
“You both look great as best men,” Akaashi told Sugawara and Kenma.
“Blue isn’t exactly my color…” Kenma said, holding his shirt.
“You look great in any color,” Kuroo told him, kissing him on the cheek. “Let me fix that for you.”
“Go find a room!” Oikawa told them, and Iwaizumi laughed.
“You’d better have some good headphones,” Kuroo said as he took a punch from a blushing Kenma.
“Go take your seats, it’s about to start,” Sawamura told them, guiding everyone to their seats.
The evening was truly beautiful. Akaashi looked up at the sky, which was a mix of light blue and orange, heralding the approaching sunset. He thought about how much he loved weddings, took a deep breath, and felt the tension in his shoulders melt away. When he looked ahead, Hinata and Kageyama were holding hands while everyone watched. He glanced sideways at Oikawa and Iwaizumi, who were leaning against each other with their hands intertwined. He looked at his own hands and thought back to that time, the time that felt like the only one that truly existed.
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2021
“I’m home!”
The sound of keys on the table snapped Akaashi out of his trance, and he set aside the plate he’d been drying. He turned around, and there was his boyfriend, coming over to hug and kiss him. Akaashi melted once again into his arms, feeling, for a moment, a sense of peace.
“Hi, how was practice?”
“Ahhh… exhausting, but good, I did a lot of cardio today,” Bokuto said, stepping back to open the fridge and grab a bottle of water. “How was work?”
Akaashi felt a wave of stress wash over him, so he just told him everything was fine, skipping over the part where his boss had lectured him, or that the food was bad, or that nothing was going right and he wished the ground would swallow him up, he just wanted to get home and rest.
“Great! Perfection personified,” Bokuto replied, kissing him on the cheek and heading to the bedroom.
He watched as Bokuto entered the room and let out the breath he’d been holding. Perfect? He wasn’t even close to being okay. He watched his hands tremble and clenched them to calm the creeping anxiety. He took off his apron and sat down on the couch, followed by Bokuto, who sat down next to him, and they began folding clothes while watching TV.
“Kou…”
“Yes?”
“What do you think about me quitting my job?”
“What? Why would you want to quit? You say things are going well for you,” his boyfriend replied, looking at him incredulously with a t-shirt in his hands.
“Well, yeah, it’s just… I don’t know, it feels weird.”
“Is someone giving you a hard time? Do you have few projects? Are you unhappy?” Akaashi shook his head at all of them, and Bokuto continued, “Then what? It’ll be really hard for you to find a job later, plus we have expenses, and you’re still paying off your mom’s hospital bills.”
He felt a wave of anxiety wash over him and looked at the unfolded pants on his lap. Of course, the expenses. He had to have enough money to support himself. Besides, how long would it take him to find a job? Without stopping to think that many companies wouldn’t hire him if he’d just quit, he clenched his hands again and folded the pants.
“You’re right, it was just a thought, nothing more.”
He hated his job. Every day was worse than the last, he just had to tough it out. Finishing his projects on time might earn him an extra bonus. They’d assigned him two more mangakas, he can do it. He spilled coffee on his clothes, his boss threw his papers on the floor because they weren’t up to his standards, his lunch burned. He looked at his hands, which wouldn’t stop shaking, and took a deep breath. He looked around and felt as if the walls of the room were crushing him with a weight he couldn’t lift.
“I can’t…”
He was so sick and tired of everything, coffee was the only thing that kept him going for the rest of the day, but all cups are easy to fill. When he got home, soaked from a sudden rain, he found that his clothes were still hanging outside and the window was open, as if no one were home. He quickly went to get his clothes and saw that Bokuto was home, putting on a sweatshirt.
“Hi! I was just about to go get it.”
“But look! Everything’s already wet—the floor, the clothes—and a plant fell over!”
“Keiji, calm down—there’s a solution to all this.”
“No! Look at the mess, w-we have to dry everything, and I was going to wear those clothes tomorrow!” Akaashi said, running his hands through his wet hair. “Why didn’t you do something as soon as it started raining?!”
“Okay, you need to calm down. There’s a solution to all this. Let’s—”
“Calm down?! I’m not going to calm down! Look at all this!” he interrupted, picking up the wet clothes and throwing them on the floor as water dripped from them. “This isn’t going to be dry by tomorrow!”
Bokuto looked at his boyfriend in surprise as he moved toward the bathroom and slammed the door shut. Bokuto didn’t hesitate to follow him after closing the window.
“Hey, just because you had a bad day at work doesn’t mean you have to take it out on me like this. You must have another shirt around here.”
“I don’t have the patience to argue right now.”
“Well, you haven’t had the patience to talk to me for the past few days, but this is easily fixable, I don’t know why you’re making such a fuss.”
“I’m not making a fuss!” Akaashi said, opening the bathroom door and tossing his wet clothes on the floor. “But you were home and could have prevented this.”
“No, seriously, you need to calm down. It’s fine—I’ll clean it up,” Bokuto replied, picking up the clothes from the floor.
“Get out.”
“What?”
“I said get out!”
Bokuto left that night, and Akaashi felt as though no light could find him that night, nor the next, nor the one after that, and he couldn’t feel anything as he packed his things into boxes; he felt nothing when Bokuto came back home to beg him to take him back, to say they could work things out, but there was a distance that Akaashi’s mind had created that felt like an abyss impossible to cross.
“There’s nothing to talk about…”
“Of course there is! We just, um, we just need to take a good look at things. We’re going to get better; you’ll see,” Bokuto said, taking his hands, which felt cold to the touch.
“I can’t. I’m sorry, Bokuto.” He tried to close the door, but Bokuto pushed it open, got down on his knees, and rested his forehead on the floor.
“PLEASE!”
“No, I’m sorry.”
Closing the door only widened the distance between them.
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2026
Akaashi snapped out of his trance when Oikawa touched his hand, a gesture they used to check if the other was okay, and after Akaashi nodded slightly, Oikawa smiled at him and didn’t let go of his hand for the rest of the ceremony.
“…There are moments when I feel like I’m going crazy, but I know everything will be okay because tonight, and every night from now on, the lights will shine on me, and I won’t feel blue, because somewhere in the crowd, there´s you, Shoyo.”
“I’ll bet you 15,000 yen that Suga wrote that,” Oikawa whispered to Akaashi, and Akaashi smacked his arm.
It was the sunset that sealed the marriage, Hinata and Kageyama walked down the aisle under an arch of volleyballs. He squinted as the sun’s glare hit his face, though it wasn’t the only yellow glow he saw that day.
“What’s this called?” Kuroo asked, looking at his glass after his first sip.
“Cachaza.”
“I’m going to need about 20 of those, thanks,” he told the waiter, who then left.
“Don’t even think about 20,” Kenma told him. “I need you sober.”
Akaashi looked around as everyone settled into their respective tables. He spotted Hinata and Kageyama at the MSBY table, laughing. He smiled at the sight of the happy couple, and as if it were a cruel twist of fate, amid the crowd, some lights flickered, and there he was: Bokuto, staring intently at him as if no one else existed in the world.