Work Text:
No, I couldn't stop it
I couldn't wait for you
To see what I wanted
To be who I wanted to, but
I'm talking way too much
Ran out of fingers already
Counting down places to be
Can't run out of business to do
Red and blue lights flash around the dark space in tune with the booming of the bass from the large speakers situated on the corners of the room. Scent of smoke and sweat are the first thing anyone could feel as the air becomes heavy in the club. People wearing their best outfits are seen everywhere and yet nobody would care if someone would show up with so much as a thin piece of cloth to cover up their privates.
Clubs like these are safe spaces for Akaashi, who knew that people in these four walls could care less if he wasn’t as honorable a man as he could be. Unlike them, however, he simply chooses not to engage in anything raunchy save for a couple shots of heavy spirits from the bartender.
Life had been stiff and righteous for him enough to give him comfort in wearing a dignified suit in such a stained establishment. Therefore, he chooses to bask in the comfort of unfamiliarity and being shrouded in a crowd of unfamiliar faces.
Outside these walls he would be known for being an heir, expected to stay in pretentious gatherings and celebrations that require expensive champagne and fake smiles with restrained handshakes and rehearsed lies. It was one event after another, one handshake and one hand in marriage after another that he had to reject.
“Can you believe it, Bokuto-san?! What kind of idiot puts that much valuables on the line just for a night of meaningless sex?”
He becomes talkative when past five shots of Jagermeister, but his inhibitions have been pushed aside after the third one and the bartender, Bokuto, had to listen to more of Akaashi’s adventures of his life.
For most part, he was thankful. Years of socializing has shaped him to recognize in a split second when a person is merely attempting to get on his good side, and hardly everyone he meets in the industry of business had good intentions. The bartender was everything they weren’t.
“Can I stay with you after your shift?”
When he gets intoxicated, Bokuto knows that Akaashi stops becoming eloquent and slides in sentences and thoughts that randomly cross his mind. He was a man of many, many thoughts, and Bokuto was always there to hear them all.
There are lines that he prefers to stay behind in his comfort zone, and the thought of spending the night with Akaashi Keiji is crossing that line. But maybe for one night, he thinks beyond the beating of his own heart, he has nothing to lose.
“Yeah sure, you can’t go home with how drunk you are anyway.”
But I'll always think of you
And you'll always think of me
Tell me you'll think of me
'Cause I'll believe anything
I'll believe anything
I'll believe everything
I'll believe anything you say to me
“God, I love you.”
Akaashi has always sounded like an angel regardless if he was sober or drunk. However, hearing Akaashi’s voice all airy between breaths, air hitting the bare skin of the bartender’s shoulder was a sight that he doesn’t want others to see.
There have been nights when he’s thought about this, their lips locked and all over each other’s body and their skin desperate for more contact. Most nights the thought gets him off well, and other nights it makes him wonder if the heir feels the same.
Bokuto was neither rich nor had to live a life of facade. He was blessed enough, however, to be given the liberty of following his dreams and going after them despite the lack of practicality or recognition. But if there was anything he had similar to Akaashi, it was that he also has been given the gift of observing and reading people.
He knows that those words are on a whim, founded with nothing but fondness and lust. And yet, he still basks in them, pushing his fingers more against the skin, leaving traces of himself on the pale delicate patch of flesh just so he could hear those words once again. He kisses a little harder, slides his tongue further in hopes that Akaashi remembers this night.
Because even if he says he does, Bokuto knows that it’s a lie.
Invention
Nothing could ever compare
All of these versions of God
They don't fit nobody else
Bokuto leaves first, making sure that Akaashi was dressed and there was medicine on the tabletop and a small note to thank him. It takes him a while to leave, making sure to take in the details of Akaashi looking peaceful in his sleep.
He's seen different faces and different people, and this definitely isn't the first time he's slept with someone. Yet, there was something different about the runaway heir that makes him believe that there is a God.
No,
Akaashi Keiji is his God..
Invention
Weren't you part of my world?
When did my world become you?
Akaashi visits the club once more as if nothing had happened the past night. In the sea of people, the first person he sees is Bokuto. Although it wasn't hard to find him in a crowd considering his hair is dyed and he was illuminated by the counter's lights (to see spilled drinks better, according to the bartender), He knew it was due to a force of habit.
He stared at the clear glass of sprite vodka, watching as droplets form on the surface of the glass. In the silence Akaashi wonders what life would be like if he didn’t have to rely on statuses and what people would have to think of them. The thoughts move from one to another, and a sigh releases his lips. Only was he brought back to reality when he catches the bartender looking at him with warmth and care.
“Did something happen again, Akaashi? You seem down.”
Bokuto dearly hopes that he doesn’t remember anything of the night, and yet he was fully unaware that the blue-eyed heir had him in his thoughts. But who was he to even have the right to hope, he was merely a peasant among many and Akaashi was far beyond reach. Or so he thinks.
The guy was thankful to have the club dim or else the blush on his cheeks would have given him away and everything else would spell trouble for both him and the object of his affection.
“Object of my affection…?”
The thought strikes a chord in Akaashi and so he leaves his drink on the countertop and dashes for the bathroom without any words. He misses the mixture of relief and pain in Bokuto’s eyes as the former tends to his own feelings.
Akaashi isn’t seen around the club for the rest of the night.
As long as you take me for anything better
Only the me that you wanna remember
And we, we can play make-believe
But you'll never make me believe
A few weeks have passed and Bokuto feels the stinging of his chest upon seeing his favorite regular customer back on his usual spot. The kindness in Bokuto’s eyes have never changed, the heir notes, despite having been gone for quite long without an excuse or a reason.
“The usual?”
Akaashi nods and everything feels like what it had been days ago, except this time there has been a noticeable tightening of his chest. He didn’t realize how much he missed the ambiance of the bar, the ways the glass feels against his lips, and how he enjoys watching the bartender’s back view.
To hell be damned with Bokuto Koutarou and his broad shoulders and disarming smile and his charming ways , Akaashi thinks with a smile on his face, just subtle enough for him not to look too smitten.
“Say, Bokuto-san, can I walk home with you tonight?”
If anything, Bokuto wanted to get angry. The guy leaves for days without explanation and the first thing he asks after his order is to spend time together as if nothing happened. However, he notes that Akaashi hasn’t taken in an ounce of alcohol yet, and he couldn’t bring himself to get upset over a sober request.
Or any request for that matter, as long as it’s from Akaashi.
At the back of his mind he wanted to request for the younger male to not get too drunk for the night if he plans on meeting, but who was he to demand much when it was probably the only time that he gets looked at as if he owns the world, the only time he feels like he stands a chance with someone from a different world.
Bokuto knows he doesn’t amount to anyone that Akaashi meets in tall buildings and expensive hotel suites and fancy restaurants. He knows that all he could do is serve his favorite customer a drink of average quality and pull him down for a while so they see eye to eye. Once Akaashi sees or experiences the kind of life he lives, making ends meet and just surviving with his measly paycheck to pay for his living expenses in an apartment fit for just one person, he’s sure that the raven-haired will keep his distance.
But if it’s like this, he’s willing to close the curtains and hide the hideous parts of his life just so Akaashi draws closer to see the good parts of it.
Ice spills from his hand and he plays it off with one of his signature smiles, something he practiced to make customers soften up to him a bit more in case he trips or falls on the job. A feeling of warmth bubbles up inside Akaashi at the sight, enough to subtly coil and bite the insides of his cheeks. He is definitely smitten and awed by how quickly he bounces back on his feet, something that he always has a hard time coming into terms with.
And maybe, just maybe, he gets scared of Bokuto finding out that aspect of him.
The touch lingers when the empty glass was taken from his grasp, the notes of the song on the background fading into the last of its percussions and strings, and Akaashi was taken to the summer days of his childhood as Bokuto’s warmth remains on the quiet spots of his fingertips.
It was a bittersweet moment of resignation, and for the first time in a long time, Akaashi Keiji has felt how it is to fall in love.
What happens next when we're all out
Of breath to breathe in this mirage?
Panting can be heard all over the room, breaths mixed with the heavy atmosphere of heat and sweat. It was larger than the place where they last met, and thankfully Akaashi hasn’t drunk much to be fully drunk.
It always starts with clumsy steps, giggling and hand holding in the middle of the dark and empty street. Red light districts never had the eyes of judgment, and thankfully that goes with the motel staff as the two checked in for the night. And once they were in their private space, their bodies were more honest than their voices allow them to.
“I want you so much..”
The words drown in yet another kiss, another thrust, and another drag of their palms onto each other’s skin, It was meaningful, yet at the same time meaningless, being shrouded in the border between lust and love, of carnal desire and genuine affection.
Both Bokuto and Akaashi put it off for later, when their minds are clouded and their hearts settled. For now, they only want each other’s gravity bringing them together, skin against skin and their eyes on each other, conveying everything all at once.
Because they know tomorrow wouldn’t be the same again.
To breathe in this mirage
'Til death do us apart
The sun peeks on its windows and Akaashi finds himself alone once more in the motel room. His body ached from the night before and he sees the marks pressed carefully on places where people wouldn’t bother taking a peek of.
Although seemingly reckless in both life and in the way he makes his drinks, Bokuto is surprisingly calculated and meticulous in everything that he does. It shows in the way he knows how much cola the customers want in their rum, and how many ice cubes in a glass of whiskey for different people.
There was a note on the nightstand along with a glass of water and some headache medicine. Akaashi in his morning stupor doesn’t bother to read what’s in it and focuses on the cream-colored ceiling above him instead. He’s supposed to be used to staying in accommodation rooms alone but for this moment, he doesn’t know how to shake off the feeling of his chest clenching and his body submitting into his emotions.
Even though he was used to loneliness, the thought of last night being the last he’d see of Bokuto gives him an ache that was foreign. Even if their arrangement was like this, just for lust and lust alone, Akaashi would take it in a heartbeat if it means having Bokuto by his side until his last breath.
To breathe in this mirage
Until I fall apart
Bokuto arrives back in the motel room and almost drops the plastic bag he was holding when he sees Akaashi curled up underneath the sheets. The sniffling wasn’t loud to be heard from outside, yet the silence between them amplified the soft sniffles.
The food he was bringing was placed on the chair and he rushed to where the younger male was, engulfing him in an embrace that was only noticed after a while when Akaashi’s vision was cleared. He has always looked up to the younger as someone larger than he was as a person. Akaashi definitely had a brighter future, better opportunities, and more in store for his life compared to his own, and yet it felt nice to be needed, to be a source of comfort and warmth as Akaashi clings to him like his life depended on it.
They didn’t need more words. If they were in love or if it was platonic doesn’t have to be an issue for now. Titles, status, judgment: every single one of those can be faced later on when the time comes. For now, Bokuto tells himself that he prefers it this way regardless of how hard the fall he would take at the end of it all. He would gladly submit himself to being broken for Akaashi..
... Because there is no other way to tell Akaashi Keiji that he feels like home.