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“Dude! You won’t believe what happened today,” Bokuto says, falling easily into Kuroo’s outstretched, readied arms. Kuroo only manages to catch the flicker of silver before Bokuto gushes, “Akaashi asked me to marry him!”
-
It’s not usual for clients to marry the dancers. Sure, proposals happen all the time on drunken nights when everybody is red-cheeked and flying high, but dreams only happen at night. Come daytime, it all shatters, no more than a haze of faded warmth with the lingering smell of sex and regret.
But Kuroo is sitting by a hotel poolside for brunch with Bokuto across from him and Akaashi by Bokuto’s side, hand inside of Bokuto’s, fingers rubbing along the new glint of gold that wasn’t there last night.
Kuroo isn’t an idiot. As a musician for the gentleman’s club they both work for, it’s not like he can offer Bokuto a comfortable life -- or very much of a happy one, at that. If he could, then the two of them wouldn’t be selling their sweat eleven to four, seven days a week at an upscale gentleman’s club that past its prime a decade ago. No, Kuroo knew from the moment Akaashi pointed at Bokuto and Bokuto began to strut down the catwalk and dance for him beneath the blacklights that nothing he’d ever wanted to share with Bokuto -- all the soft touches, eyelashes fluttering, deep breaths, and fantasies of long nights and sweet, quiet mornings -- would never come to be.
He watched Bokuto flex his abs and spread his legs and run Akaashi’s palms up his chest, knowing that he’d never get to do that himself. Suddenly those pre-shift binges of shots to make it through the night and the early mornings at the end of shifts, when Bokuto’s head would rest against his shoulder as they watched the sunrise, were so far away. For a moment he fantasizes it’s himself, not Akaashi, who gets to wrap his arms around Bokuto, gets to slide his tongue down Bokuto’s throat.
Maybe if he had dared to do more than slip his palm against Bokuto’s after their graveyard shifts, maybe if he had kissed Bokuto on New Year’s when the fireworks were blasting so brightly that they lit up Bokuto’s eyes, maybe if he had just whispered the three little words he’d been keeping inside for years, maybe it would have turned out differently.
But he can’t even be mad about it because he could never afford a ring like that for Bokuto, because he knows they’re made for each other by the way Akaashi wipes the crumbs from Bokuto’s cheek and the way Bokuto’s eyes light up with adoration and love whenever Akaashi’s reflected in the glimmer of his eyes.
Nursing a hangover that is equal parts sleep deprivation and alcohol, Kuroo pushes the food around his plate and wonders how much this breakfast cost. More than what he makes in a month, no doubt. He thinks to himself, ‘I could never be what he needs.’
-
So he swallows his pride and smiles against the way his stomach twists and flops and he tells Bokuto how happy he is for him.
“I can tell Akaashi is going to treat you right. He isn’t like the others.”
“I’m so glad you’re getting the happily ever after you deserve.”
“You’re going to get out of here and have a great life.”
Whenever Kuroo says it, Bokuto smiles tightly and his eyes wander up and down like they always do when he’s about to dance for a client that makes him uncomfortable. But that’s silly because Bokuto’s been living the high life in hotel penthouses, gambling the night away while sipping champagne that doesn’t come in a plastic bottle, and hasn’t danced for anybody except Akaashi since accepting Akaashi’s ring.
“Hey, Kuroo, I know Akaashi is loaded and all, but do you think he’s really the one?”
Kuroo takes a deep, steadying breath, and doesn’t let the blood pumping in his eardrum overwhelm him. He wants to scream, ‘no. I’m the only one for you,’ but when comes out is, “It’s not just about the money. You’re going to be so happy because Akaashi will be beside you every day.”
And Bokuto’s face blooms like a desert flower in the dead of night, radiant in a way only the pale glow of moonlight reveals. Kuroo’s stomach is sick, but he knows Bokuto will start to believe it if Kuroo encourages him. Kuroo sees the doubt dispel from Bokuto’s smile; he’ll have to live forever with the fact it’s because Bokuto genuinely believes that Kuroo would never lie to him.
-
“Help me practice?” Bokuto asks, extending an open hand to Kuroo. “I wanna surprise Akaashi.”
Kuroo clasps his hand over Bokuto’s like he’s done countless times before and pulls him close. Unlike any other time he’s done this with Bokuto, it’s not under the shade of night and the glow of neon lights that bask Bokuto in ethereal glow. “Yeah, sure.”
Technically the studio isn’t open to anybody who doesn’t work at the club, but Bokuto’s become famous as a Cinderella story in the past few days. He no longer has to slink around in nothing more than body glitter and golden shorts that barely cover his ass, and now he’s wearing a velvet jacket that matches Kuroo’s hand-me-down uniform and stinks of the alcohol spilled and the cigarettes smoked by its previous owner. They look like bellhops for the casinos down the road, as if they could ever have jobs so steady or nice.
“Follow my lead,” Bokuto says, not that Kuroo’s done anything differently all his life. The music’s already playing from a crappy boombox that still uses a cord, a sad relic from the past that Bokuto haggled the pawnshop owner into exchanging him for his strip club uniform. Kuroo’s too numb to cry, which is a good thing because this song is the first one Bokuto ever performed in the club, and all he can feel is a curl of anger and longing that Akaashi will never know how important this song is to Bokuto.
Bokuto radiates warmth as he begins to move, twirling Kuroo in the same way he twirls every night, the same way he’ll twirl Akaashi three days from now. Bokuto’s movements are so slow and sultry that they seduce Kuroo into closing his eyes and pretending for a moment that this is meant for him. As the strings build up, Bokuto releases him like a thread about to snap and catches Kuroo in a dip, right as he’s about to hit the floor.
Kuroo’s breath hitches and Bokuto breathes heavily, both of them staring in the dim, yellow light of their shitty club, where the light in the corner is flickering as usual. Bokuto’s lips part and Kuroo’s brain shoots an electric warning that he needs to stops this, but Bokuto’s eyelashes are fluttering shut and Kuroo feels Bokuto’s hot breath against his face as he leans closer and closer.
Swallowing so hard that it feels like cracked glass is ripping down his throat, he whispers against Bokuto’s lips, “Akaashi’s gonna love it.”
Bokuto’s golden eyes snap open, the sweet, foolish spell he was temporarily under instantly shattering. Like Kuroo, he seems to remember that it’s Akaashi, not Kuroo, that gets to marry Bokuto.
-
The club hosts Bokuto’s bachelor party and it’s a party as wild as Bokuto himself. He dances like he’s told Kuroo he’s wanted to dance all these years, draped in a suit that Akaashi bought him, one that actually fits his shoulders and isn’t too short on his arms, glitter slathered on his cheeks. It’s impossible to tell if he’s crying or if it’s just the glitter’s sheen glistening around his eyes.
-
Kuroo tucks Bokuto’s boneless body, delirious from alcohol and exhausted from dancing the night away, into the starchy sheets of the motor hotel they’re spending the night in. The thin sheet that passes for a comforter smells like piss and Kuroo’s pretty sure a rat died in the bathroom drain, but the night is perfect, right until Bokuto slurs, “I always thought it’d be us. Us ‘gainst the world! Us gettin’ married! Us smoochin’.”
Bokuto immediately passes out after his confession, which is perfect for Kuroo, who spends the rest of the night crying into his hands.
-
Their breakfast consists of a stale loaf of bread from the discount rack in the dark corner of the grocery store and a bottle of Jack. Bokuto’s sitting on the bed with his legs crossed and coughing from when Kuroo makes him laugh so hard that he snorts bread crumbs out of his nose. It stains the top sheet with a mixture of Bokuto’s snot and soggy bread. “Oh-- Shit. Do you think they’ll mind?”
“Nah, matches the curtains now.” Kuroo feels his chest tighten with giddiness from the chain of laughs his remark pulls out of Bokuto, daring to attempt what he’s tried to say for years. “We’ll have to rent a nicer room when we get married, maybe one of the nice motels off Fremont.”
It’s only an instant, but Kuroo sees that fearful look in Bokuto’s eye. It’s the same one he gets at the blackjack table, when the dealer lays down a card that busts his hand. “What are you talking about, Kuroo? I’m marrying Akaashi.”
“Nothing, just joking around. Last night you said you wanted to marry me. Pretty sure you were wasted,” Kuroo says with an effortless shrug of his shoulder, looking away from Bokuto and conveniently forgetting the part about wanting to marry bokuto too.
-
The night before his wedding, Bokuto bites his lip and asks, “ride or die?”
“Ride,” Kuroo says, ruffling Bokuto’s hair and tucking it behind his ear.
So Bokuto holds his waist and presses his face between Kuroo’s shoulders and screams into the wind as dust clouds kick up behind Kuroo’s motorcycle and he floors it through the flats of the desert for what he knows is the final time.
-
It’s a beautiful wedding.
Kuroo can’t remember any of it.
He remembers the half-sized shots of bourbon made for polite company that the servers carried around. He remembers hitting the bathroom floor face first. He remembers waking up with his cheeks wet. But he doesn't remember anything about the wedding after the first dance.
-
The morning after, Kuroo quits playing for the club, buys a dingy, metallic trailer with the money he set aside to run away with Bokuto someday, and moves out to the desert with the last of his savings.
-
He doesn’t let himself think about it, but he keeps pictures around the trailer, only ones where Bokuto’s posing alone, showing off his ring to the camera in a childish, carefree way. Kuroo remembers feeling like his ribs were too tight for the overwhelming warmth that threatened to bubble out of his body. He remembers thinking that the picture was an injustice to the brilliance of Bokuto in the flesh as he looked through the view finder and snapped the disposable camera’s shutter.
-
Kuroo avoids the chapel where Bokuto cried as Akaashi slipped the ring onto his left hand, but sometimes he catches a familiar glint of silver hair in the crowd that disappears just as soon as it appears. He finds himself in front of the atrium where Bokuto held Akaashi to pose for their first pictures as a married couple. He sees ghosts of the past while walking along the strip of casinos, where Bokuto and Akaashi spent the rest of their honeymoon, adjacent to the strip clubs along Industrial, where he and Bokuto spent all of their working life side-by-side. He wonders if Bokuto misses him as much as he misses Bokuto.
-
Letters arrive sometimes. Kuroo reads them but never responds, even the one that asks, “what happened that night?”
-
It’s four years later that Bokuto arrives on the doorstep of Kuroo’s crusting mobile home in the middle of nowhere. It’s four years later that Bokuto collapses in Kuroo’s arms, face wet with tears hotter than the desert Kuroo lives in.
“It’s not working. I tried everything! I really, really did,” Bokuto cries in heavy, ugly sobs. Kuroo doesn’t hate his crying, but he hates Akaashi for being the source of them.
Kuroo holds Bokuto like he always held Bokuto throughout the years, during all those long nights and early mornings filled with desperation and longing for something, anything else, before Akaashi moved up North and took Bokuto with him. But Bokuto clutches onto him as though no time had passed, his grip tight and firm in Kuroo’s shirt.
“I can’t fix it this time,” he confesses hoarsely. “It’s over.”
Kuroo begins to pet Bokuto’s back in slow, gentle strokes, moving upwards until he’s petting Bokuto’s hair and wiping away the tears with a thumb. “Well, what’s the problem?”
Bokuto sniffles through a deep breath, looking more scared than Kuroo remembers him being right before he said ‘I do.’ “Akaashi says I'm still in love with you.”