Work Text:
Bokuto was washed ashore for him like a mermaid, like a treasure, like a gift from the heavens. To this day, Akaashi doesn’t understand how he got so lucky. To this day, he kneels before bed, closes his eyes in prayer, and thanks the Lord above.
Except right now.
Right now, Akaashi digs glass shards out of Bokuto’s palm with his teeth and sticks it inside a bucket of freezing sea water to clean up the blood, which, for some reason, won’t fucking stop pouring out. Bokuto yelps, and Akaashi glares at him; he’s quiet in one second.
“Stupid,” Akaashi grits, wipes the cuts on Bokuto’s hand and fingers with a wet rag. “Clench your first, please.” Bokuto does, and only grimaces, doesn’t hiss like before. “Nothing new?” Bokuto nods. He’s quiet, he’s never quiet, but he knows Akaashi’s too angry for him to try to argue, for him to try to explain himself. Akaashi unrolls the bandages he’s got and wraps them tight around Bokuto’s hand, maybe too tight. Once he’s done, he realises the tips of Bokuto’s fingers are fading to purple and grits his teeth again, closes his eyes, takes a deep breath. He undoes all the bandages and twists them around Bokuto’s hand again, except softer this time, tight, but not too tight.
Akaashi ties the bandages at the end and looks at Bokuto’s face, angry. One of the big problems of being with Bokuto, especially when he gets into fights like this, is the fact that Akaashi can’t seem to stay mad at him for long.
“Next time you get in a fight, Bokuto, I swear to God I’m leaving you.” There’s a cut down the side of his face, next to his temple, following his hairline, and Akaashi reaches closer with the rag and wipes the blood away. Once it’s clean, it’s not that large, doesn’t bleed so much anymore, so he leaves it be. It’s annoying, being so close to Bokuto, his weak breathing hitting Akaashi’s cheek, all the while Akaashi is still holding onto being upset.
“Akaashi…”
“No!” Akaashi yells, pulls away, then takes a deep breath. His hands are fists, his jaw is tight, his chest hurts. It’s been hurting ever since Bokuto came home, bleeding, hurting, limping. “No more ‘Akaashi’, Bo! What the fuck? Why do you keep getting into fights? You’re supposed to be at the tavern for work, not for brawling! How the fuck will we get outta’ here if you keep getting into trouble?”
“Akaashi, I’m sorry-”
“No! What does apologising do? Fuck! Fuck, Bo. I know you don’t wanna be here. I don’t want it either, okay? It’s fucking shit to be stranded, to be poor, to not have any fucking money or food but- it’s what we’ve got! We have to get used to it! Unless we can find a captain willing to take two pissy sodomites in his crew, and we both know how likely it is for that to happen.”
“No,” Bokuto shouts, stands up. Bokuto out-shouts him, louder, stronger. Akaashi falls, sits down, and looks up at him, fury still bubbling in his chest. Akaashi’s more angry at this whole situation than at Bokuto, he realises. He realises he’s angry, he’s miserable, that they can’t make their way out of here. That they brought each other’s downfall. “Akaashi, you listen. You listen, because I fought them because they were badmouthing you, they kept-” Bokuto grits his teeth, and Akaashi sees his eyes are shining, his chin is shaking. Oh, fuck. “I can’t stand it here. I can’t stand them. I miss being out in the sea with you, fuck! I miss being free with you! Are we supposed to stay here, protected by a couple a’ wooden planks,” Bokuto points to the house around them, barely a house, never a home, “hiding from the government between whores and drunks, hoping no one tells them we’re here? Hoping no one tells them we’re- We’re-”
Bokuto falls sitting, almost an echo of Akaashi’s, but rougher, like blurred charcoal lines. Bokuto slams his fist against the nearest table, his eyes squeezed shut, and their copper plates clang against the wood. He winces, his bandages almost entirely bled through, and brings his hand back close to his chest.
“Bo-” Akaashi stands up, comes a little closer, and Bokuto looks down, hides his face. Akaashi holds his jaw, lifts it gently, but Bokuto still won’t look in his eyes. He wipes away some of the blood and grime, feels the tension in his cheeks from holding in the tears. “You know violence isn’t the answer. Not to this.”
Bokuto laughs at that, dry, sarcastic. “You sound posh. Violence isn’t the answer, my ass- where did the piracy go?”
“Oh, fuck you, Bo.” Akaashi pulls away, sneering, feeling something like hate in his gut. Feeling like he’s angry at Bokuto now. “You know damn well that’s not what I mean, you know damn well I’ve shot more people than you. You know damn fucking well that punching other pirates is not going to help you, you’re not on some sort of test to be a leader, you’re just giving them excuses to gang up on you and shiv you to fucking death.”
Bokuto stands up, too. Bokuto walks towards him, taunting his height even if on accident, like he’s running Akaashi into a wall. His face is red, from anger and tears. From whatever feeling comes from those two.
“What do you want me to do, Akaashi? Let them call you a fuckhole, let them call you a molly, let them say they’ll fuck you then report us? Let them sneer at me and call me lucky for fucking someone other than the prostitutes? Let them say they wish a captain takes us on board and throws us to the ocean with rocks tied to our fucking shoes?”
Akaashi swallows.
Bokuto’s not the only one, now; he also feels like crying. So much for a pirate’s thick skin.
“I don’t want you to fight for me,” Akaashi says. “Don’t want you to protect me. I never have. I don’t want you to fight, at all. It’s a way bigger display of strength to sit there and take it, to be superior, to hear them and not react, than to be a fucking animal and bite back.”
“Well, what if I’m not strong, Akaashi? What if I’m a fucking animal?” Bokuto’s shouting. Bokuto’s angry, furrowing his brow, and his spit hits Akaashi on the cheeks.
“You’re not,” Akaashi says, firmer, quieter. He stares into Bokuto’s eyes, and takes a step towards him. They’re inches away, they’re seeing who’ll back down first. “You’re not an animal.”
Bokuto’s eyes are glossy, are watery, are fierce. They’re the same shade of brown as sunburnt wood, the same shade of brown as old cotton clothes. They’re the same shade of brown as rum, as bread.
He gives in. He sits down. Akaashi sits beside him and reaches for his good hand, his hand with nothing but bloody knuckles and other people’s blood. He laces their fingers, but Bokuto’s the one who squeezes.
“Fine,” he whispers. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry for yelling,” Akaashi says, soft.
“Me, too.”
They sit in silence, until Akaashi offers to help Bokuto finish clean himself up. Bokuto nods, slowly, tightly, in pain.
Their shed, their shack of a home isn’t much; it’s sort of one room, sort of nothing at all. It’s a bed, just big enough for the two of them, although Bokuto’s feet dangle off the edge, a small wood-burning stove, more like a fire, that Bokuto made with mud bricks and perseverance, a table, a couple of chairs. They have buckets, filled every day at the sea, even if the water is nasty this side of the port – Akaashi sometimes goes on hour-long walks just to get to somewhere where the water’s at least a little cleaner, sometimes goes downtown to get water from one of the city fountains. They have chests and holes in the ground where they store food, usually nuts and bread and dried fruit, stuff that’s cheap, that lasts, that doesn’t spoil. They tend to eat fish every day, too. They tend to eat whatever they can get their hands on.
Akaashi rubs Bokuto down with one of the buckets of sea water, wipes away the blood from his face and arms, tries to scrape away the soot and the dirt from his skin. In some spots, Bokuto’s tan skin is turning purple, turning green, from new and old bruises. In some spots, he’s got scars and holes and scrapes, stuff they don’t care for, stuff they don’t mind. Akaashi turns the bucket on top of his head and squeezes the water down his hair, scratches his scalp, kisses his forehead.
Bokuto puts his arm around Akaashi’s waist, pulls him down until Akaashi sits down on his thigh, legs parted. Bokuto reaches for a kiss, hesitant, so unlike himself. Akaashi kisses him. Akaashi, “To bed, shall we?” Bokuto nods, and follows him into bed.
They curl on the mattress without sheets, just each other’s body warmth. Akaashi holds Bokuto, holds him tight, and notices he’s shaking; Akaashi plays with his hair, whispers shapes onto the top of his head, and feels him cry against his chest.
Bokuto’s strong. God, he’s tall, he’s strong, he’s all muscle; when they were out at sea, when they met, Bokuto was the strongest man in their captain’s crew, because he’s just like that. He wins any fight he gets into, even when he’s outnumbered. He has never lost an arm wrestle since he turned eighteen, or so he says. He’s a pirate in every sense of the word, violent, aggressive, angry, strong, dirty. Akaashi’s crush on him was foolish, was filthy, Akaashi’s crush on him was to be left in the bottom of the ocean.
Akaashi’s Bokuto’s weakest point. Akaashi’s his vulnerability, and he knows it.
Bokuto pulls away from his embrace, looks in his eyes for a second, and looks away. Bokuto gurgles with tears, Bokuto tries to smile, Bokuto squeezes his eyes shut and tears get stuck in his eyelashes.
“I’m so fucken’ sorry, love,” he says, he hurts, he aches.
Akaashi coos, “No, Bo, don’t apologise, we’re fine. It’s fine now, yeah? We’re good.”
“I wish-” Bokuto doesn’t stop. “I wish we could fucking leave here. I wish we didn’t, didn’t have to stick around these- these fucking pigs. Wish we had our own boat. Fuck, Akaashi, can you imagine how good that’d be?”
“Yeah,” Akaashi says. He smiles, and smooths his thumb down the side of Bokuto’s face, around his cut, traces the shape of his cheekbone. “We’ll get out of here, Bo. We’re good men to have in a crew. You know it.”
(They won’t think about how their last captain left them for dead, dropped them naked in this port when he found out they were a thing, spat on their faces and sailed away. They won’t think about how they’ve been here longer than they planned to, longer than they thought they’d be. They won’t think about how the captain before that, their first, the one who allowed them to meet and fall in love, was more polite than that, was more civilised than that, but called them into his room and said he’d shoot them if they didn’t get out of his boat in an hour.)
“We’ll find a captain that gets it- we’ll find one of our old crewmates, we’ll find Kuroo or Daichi, and they’ll be captains now.” Akaashi pulls Bokuto closer, talks to his hair, locks curling around his words. “We’ll sail with them. We’ll sail with them, we’ll find treasure, or find this really good loot- And we’ll win big, Bo. We’ll get our own ship, get our own ragtag crew of, of those who have been kicked and stoned. We’ll sail across the ocean, Bo, we’ll find our own island, our own land.” Akaashi smiles, can smell the sea on Bokuto’s hair. “We’ll become legends. The riches will hear of us, they’ll be afraid of us. We’ll make a name for ourselves, and everyone that lives around us right now, they’ll all regret their deeds forever. They’ll be terrified of us coming back for revenge, for vengeance. They’ll never talk dirty of either of us again.”
Akaashi sighs. He looks down, and Bokuto’s asleep. Bokuto’s smiling. Akaashi smiles, too; pulls him close, closes his eyes, and falls asleep.