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Bokuto meets Akaashi when he’s nine. Bokuto meets Akaashi with a broken arm and cookies ‘n cream ice cream dripping down his wrist.
Bokuto meets Akaashi and yells, “You go to my school!”
Akaashi, who is not Akaashi yet - Akaashi, who is eight years old and waiting in line to get his ice cream, turns around. His eyes are so big, so blue, it’s the first thing Bokuto notices about him. “What?”
“I’ve seen you before! You go to my school, blue eyes!”
“What- blue eyes?”
Bokuto smiles, because it all makes sense in his head. Blue eyes, a spring morning, and rainbow sprinkles; why wouldn’t he be happy? (Sure, he’s broken his arm, but he’s done that before. He knows it’ll pass, now that the pain is over.) “Yeah.”
The boy, blue-eyed Akaashi, doesn’t say anything else. He looks confused, frowning, and Bokuto notices his hands are shaking.
“Are you okay?”
“Keiji,” a woman turns and hands Akaashi an ice cream cone with strawberry and mint chocolate chip. Akaashi takes it, slowly, carefully, and Bokuto bites some more out of his own cookies ‘n cream. “You’ve made a friend?” She smiles at Bokuto, and he sees she has the same blue eyes as the boy, except hers are kinder, softer. He turns to look at the boy again, look at his eyes, but he’s looking down, hunched over, his cone trembling along with his hands.
“Hello, ma’am,” Bokuto says, quieter, because now he doesn’t understand anything.
“Good morning, dear. Do you know Keiji from school?”
“Um. Yes?” Bokuto looks between the woman and the boy, unsure, nervousness creeping behind his eyes, underneath his stomach. He feels like running away. He feels like all the times when he knew he had done something bad, because a grown-up was looking at him with angry eyes, an upset face. Except this time, the grown-up looks sweet, but the kid beside her looks scared. Is Bokuto scary? Has he been scary all along, and only now did he access his superpower?
“We have to go, but Keiji will see you at school, then, okay?”
“Okay. Bye, blue eyes...?” Bokuto frowns, waves gently with his ice cream, and the boy nods, as faint as ever. Bokuto watches them walk away, and feels like crying.
For a boy who goes to the same school as him, Akaashi does a good job of never being around, and Bokuto never finding him. Every time Bokuto walks around during breaks, he thinks of what he’d do if he found the boy again. Bokuto spends an entire week making up an apology and clenching his fists, wondering how to keep his scariness under control.
He sees Akaashi for the first time after school, while he waits outside the gates for his dad to come pick him up. Akaashi walks out, gripping his backpack straps like they’re holding him together, shoulders tense like a guitar string.
“Hey! Blue eyes!” Bokuto stands straight, stops leaning, and runs toward Akaashi, even if they weren’t more than ten feet apart. He realises, when Akaashi grows tenser and turns around, his eyes wide and afraid, that he wasn’t keeping his powers under control. So he stops, swallows, and looks down. “I’m sorry for scaring you.”
The boy doesn’t say anything. Bokuto looks up, and he looks calmer. Now, he doesn’t look terrified, just confused. Bokuto remembers the ice cream parlor, and remembers how the boy had gone from normal, to confused, to frightened. He’s scaled back to confused; Bokuto hopes he’ll go to normal soon.
“I’m Bokuto Koutarou!”
The boy frowns, presses his lips against each other, and won’t look Bokuto in the eyes. Still, he says, “Akaashi. Keiji.”
Bokuto feels like sunlight. He feels like the joy in him could overflow, knowing he turned the situation around. He feels like running home and telling his mom how good he was today. “Hi, Akaashi-kun! It’s so nice to meet you!”
“Yeah, it’s… nice to meet you, too.”
“Ahh, I’m so happy! Aren’t you happy, Akaashi-kun?”
“I’m…” Akaashi looks up, Akaashi who is now Akaashi, who has let go of his backpack straps and stuck his hands in his pockets, and smiles. “Yeah.”
Bokuto made a friend.
He asks Akaashi what grade he’s in, where he lives, what he likes to do in his free time, if he likes volleyball, what’s his favourite flavour of ice cream. Akaashi gives him short, simple answers, humoring Bokuto until his dad arrives. When he does, Bokuto waves all the way to the car, gets inside and lowers the window to yell, “Bye, Akaashi-kun!”
Akaashi smiles, and Bokuto notices his eyes crinkling at the corners, notices he looks so sweet, soft and rosy, like dumplings or cherry blossoms. Like air bubbles in sparkling water, in soda.
“Bye, Bokuto-kun.”
The car turns the corner, and Bokuto hugs his backpack tight, thinking, see you tomorrow.
He does. See him tomorrow, that is. Even though he’s got so many friends, even though he’s so outgoing and happy-go-lucky, Bokuto had never had a friend like Akaashi. He had never had a friend that would always stick around. Bokuto has friends from school, friends from volleyball, friends that are neighbours - Akaashi ends up not being any of those, like the others. Technically, he’s a friend from school; technically, he becomes a friend from volleyball, joining the local junior team to play with Bokuto; technically, he’s sort of a neighbour, living only a few blocks away from him. And, being all of those, and none at all, Akaashi is something Bokuto had never had before.
Akaashi is Bokuto’s best friend.
After a little while, Akaashi starts coming over regularly, after school and on weekends, just to hang out and play. When summer holidays roll around, they see each other nearly every day, because it seems like they never run out of things to do together, never get tired of hanging out with each other. They’re so different, too, Bokuto almost like a bouncing ball, overflowing with energy and ambition and never ever growing tired, and Akaashi so much more somber - however somber his young age would allow -, quiet, almost shy. They complemented each other, together bringing out nothing but the other’s best parts, becoming a single organism with nothing but qualities.
Their friendship goes past third and fourth grades, though. Before anyone notices, Bokuto goes to junior high and his friendship with Akaashi stays strong, even as he makes new friends, joins a different volleyball team, starts having new schedules that make him busier than he’s ever been. Sure enough, however, it only takes a year for Akaashi to join him again. They’re inseparable, they’re one.
“Hey, Akaashi?”
Bokuto is thirteen years old, and he’s starting to be more than he can handle. Bokuto is thirteen years old, his feet are huge, and he thinks he’s the coolest cat in town. (Akaashi is twelve, he has been Bokuto’s friend for four years now, and he likes drawing. He doesn’t part with his sketchbook for a minute. Whenever anyone tries to make fun of him for it, Bokuto stands by his side, mid-growth spurt and awkwardly teenaged.)
“Yeah?” Akaashi raises his eyes, sharp, steel blue. Bokuto doesn’t look him in the eye; he’s sitting on the office chair Akaashi has in his room, and he’s spinning around and around, bored.
“We’ll be together forever, right?”
“What?”
Bokuto swallows, and stops spinning. Akaashi’s room is crazy tidy, at least if compared to Bokuto’s. The floor is immaculate, and Bokuto’s gaze wanders through it, looking for anything to stare at below eye level.
“Well, you’re… My best friend. You’ll stay that way, right?”
(Bokuto feels like a child. He feels young and stupid, but his worry is genuine. He’s always hanging out with Akaashi, always practicing with him, always telling him jokes. Akaashi’s the only one who has always been there. Bokuto’s not stupid, he sees how his parents barely have actual friends, always living for work and each other, and he doesn’t want to be like that. He wants to know he won’t be alone when he’s older.)
Akaashi’s quiet. Bokuto’s mind is terrified, his heart is racing, faster than sports cars, faster than Ferraris. He squeezes his eyes shut, opens them, stares at the ceiling. He stuffs his hands inside his pockets and closes them tight, his nails digging red crescents into his palms.
“I just… I feel like we shouldn’t drift apart, right? We’re best friends, have been for years, why would we stop, right? We-”
“Hey,” Akaashi stands up, frowning. Bokuto’s brain shuts down, crap, no, oh no. “Of course. Forever.” He smiles, hesitant, and stretches out his arm, his fist in the air, inviting.
Bokuto fist bumps him, slowly. Bokuto swallows through the jello in his throat, thick, shaky, and smiles back.
If Bokuto and Akaashi were inseparable in elementary school, they’re unstoppable in high school. They’re on fire, they’re each other’s; Akaashi knows Bokuto better than anyone ever has, and Bokuto trusts Akaashi with his whole heart. Akaashi is who he is because he smiled at Bokuto, next to the school gates, and Bokuto gets where he’s gotten because he yelled at a blue-eyed boy at the ice cream parlor.
Both of them cry when Bokuto graduates.
Not because it’s the end for the two of them; they know it’s not, or at least hope it’s not. They just hadn’t lived such different lives in so long. If they weren’t in the same school, they were at least always nearby, with similar schedules, both enrolled in neighbourhood schools-
Akaashi cries because he sees what Bokuto has become. Fearless, terrifying, awe-inspiring. Stronger than either of them even knew he could be, but also so very much the same kid with the broken arm and the ice cream cone.
Bokuto cries because, first and foremost, he can’t stand to see Akaashi cry, even if out of joy like this. He cries because he can’t imagine not seeing Akaashi every single day, sleepy in the mornings, tired after practice. He can’t imagine not having his goddamn anchor around.
When they hug, they whisper forever in each other’s ears. They smile, they laugh, and they can’t stop crying for anything in the world. Neither of them ever wants to let go.
“We’re not done here,” Bokuto mumbles, voice thick with tears and sweet like honey. He speaks with flowers and butterflies climbing up his throat.
“Didn’t think so,” Akaashi says, and the smile in his voice only makes Bokuto hold him tighter.
It doesn’t surprise Bokuto that, once he gets busy, and Akaashi gets busy, and they don’t see themselves as often, he starts missing him pretty bad. It doesn’t surprise him that sometimes they text until two in the morning, because they haven’t seen each other face-to-face in a week, and they never run out of things to tell each other. Their lives grow apart, but sometimes they grow closer; eighteen-year-old, high school senior Akaashi is busy and studious like every other version of himself has been, and nineteen-year-old, U21 volleyball player Bokuto is going through so many new experiences that it almost aches to not have Akaashi, constant and unwavering Akaashi, around.
Then, it does come as a surprise that it literally aches to not have Akaashi around. That his breathing grows ragged when he thinks of him, thinks of playing next to him, thinks of what it felt like to have such unconditional support. That his fingers grown numb when he thinks about what it felt like to spike one of Akaashi’s sets, what it felt like to receive his serves during practice. That his brain grows foggy and his heart slams against his ribs when he thinks about Akaashi’s hands, Akaashi’s chest, Akaashi’s hair, Akaashi’s blue, blue eyes.
Bokuto rubs his eyes with the heels of his palms in the locker room. His mind can’t stop, won’t stop, running through event after event, Bokuto holding Akaashi’s hand and running when they were ten and playing pretend, Bokuto drawing on Akaashi’s arm when they were twelve and Akaashi had gotten his first drawing kit, Bokuto resting his head on Akaashi’s shoulder when they were sixteen and going somewhere on the train, on a bus, on the subway. Mere months ago, Bokuto holding Akaashi and never, ever wanting to let him go, tears streaming down his face simply at the thought of seeing Akaashi less than daily.
The only thing worse than realising you have a huge, ten years old crush on your best friend is realising that he’s the one you come to when you have to talk to someone about anything. Who’s going to help you when the one who’s always helped you is the last person you can come to?
Bokuto dials Kuroo’s number, because he can’t think of a single other possibility. Kuroo doesn’t pick up, so he considers drowning in the shower. Well, he does try; it’s not his fault that it doesn’t work.
Kuroo calls him back when Bokuto is on the subway home, head in his hands, feeling like his world has collapsed and he’s walking on a tightrope between the ruins.
“Bro, I was in the middle of class, and you knew it-”
“I think I’m in love,” Bokuto says, interrupts him, raising his head and sitting up straight with nothing but desperation on his face.
Kuroo’s silent for a moment, and Bokuto feels asphyxiated by the quiet on the line. Then, he laughs, and Bokuto pouts.
“What?”
“S’not funny. I’m going through something.”
“What, who’re you in love with?”
“Akaashi,” Bokuto mumbles. He might just be crying. Just a little. He sniffles, and tilts his head to the side, pout intensifying.
Kuroo cackles.
“Stop!”
“You’re not kidding?”
“Why don’t you believe me?”
“Bo, dude,” Kuroo controls his laughter, snickers, sighs, “it’s not that I don’t believe that you’re in love with him. I don’t believe that you’re reacting like this- there’s no way it just hit you.”
Bokuto runs his hands through his hair, which, ungelled, falls on the sides of his face and on top of his eyes. “Fuck. Have I been really stupid?”
“Oh, Bokuto, man… Better late than never, right?”
Bokuto runs to Akaashi’s place as soon as he knows he’d gotten home from school. Bokuto’s legs tremble as they walk to Akaashi’s room, and he can’t keep his hands from shaking as he tells Akaashi- as he, well, confesses. (He’s talking, but he can’t hear his own words; the only thing resounding in his head is Kuroo going, tell him. today. trust me. and other alliterations.) Even once he’s done, he has no idea what he just said; all he knows is Akaashi’s face, their school uniform, and the familiarity of the same bedroom he’s visited for the last decade.
Then, he learns that being kissed by someone you love feels like getting your lungs squashed with a hydraulic press, all the oxygen in your body fucking evaporating through your skin. Akaashi holds his face gently but kisses him like he’s been waiting for years to do it, and Bokuto thinks, oh . Bokuto holds him back, and can’t help smiling against Akaashi’s lips; Akaashi laughs (his laugh! Bokuto loses the feeling in his legs), “Stupid,” and kisses him again.
In less than an hour, everything Bokuto knows is replaced by something else. In less than an hour, Bokuto knows the smell of Akaashi’s soap, and the texture of his hair when it’s been recently washed. Bokuto knows the rhythm of his pulse in his neck, and just the spot of his lower back that makes him shiver with goosebumps. In less than an hour, Bokuto could recite the shape of Akaashi’s mouth from memory, draw it blindfolded, mold it with no guidelines.
Bokuto could kiss Akaashi forever. It feels too good to ever let go.
He does. Kiss him forever, that is. They whisper forever in mingled breaths after Akaashi proposes, and repeat it to each other at the end of their vows; Akaashi says something about broken arms, and ice cream cones, and graduation tears, and Bokuto says something about blue eyes, and childhood friends, and the act of missing someone so much it hurts. He kisses Akaashi’s tears away in front of their friends and family, and, in retrospect, kinda wishes he’d done that at eighteen. Kinda wishes he’d hugged Akaashi outside the school gates, held his hand when they were thirteen and uncertain.
Akaashi kisses him through the smell of flowers and the taste of tears, and Bokuto doesn’t think of what they’ve been to each other for more than fifteen years now. Doesn’t dwell on the past, doesn’t bring back any memories.
He’s got forever to look forward to.