Work Text:
“Where do you think you’re going? How do you think you’re going to survive out there? What are you going to do- go running to your dear Akaashi?” Koutarou grits his teeth. His shoulders tremble. He shouldn’t be scared, he shouldn’t be scared. “Or what about the friend of yours...Kuroo, was that his name?”
“Be quiet” Koutarou hisses, his hand tightening on the strap of his bag.
“Oh Kou, honey” his mother says, her voice as sweet as poison, as the sap that lures flies to a Venus flytrap, only for the taste of that nectar to be their last. He trembles. He doesn’t want this anymore, he doesn’t want it.
Ever since his father divorced his mom after their marriage started falling apart and he found a man who was better than how his mother would ever be, she has become worse. Koutarou is the only kid left in the house. His older sisters, all into athletics, have moved out long ago, the youngest four years ago. They’re successful. They’re smart, as his mom likes to remind him so often. They don’t have mood swings. They don’t become seriously depressed easily. They never tried to run away.
Her fingers dig into his shoulders, perfectly manicured nails like the blades of knives, digging into his skin through the thin cloth of his t-shirt.
At first it was only words. He knows he’s a bad kid. He’s confident! And his mom says so anyway and there’s no one to tell him otherwise. But after she saw him holding hands with Kuroo one day when the Nekoma captain came to hang over, she became worse. She started to hit him. She said it was unnatural, bad. That when he got a wife and children, he would leave them in the condition they are now: broken. Because he left them for a man, his thoughts were poisoned and darkened and made him leave a perfect family.
That’s the only thing he doubts. He takes it in stride when she hits him for getting a bad grade, for getting a call from the teacher for falling asleep in class again. He’s adapted to changing with his back to the wall, to learning to apply makeup to the skin of his body to hide the bruises and cuts that can’t be explained by volleyball. But when she hits him to “beat the poison out of him”, he knows she’s wrong.
They were taught at school that love is love. Even though same-sex marriage isn’t legal in Japan yet, there are BL mangas. There are boys at his school who walk with his hands together, pecking the other on the cheek, and they aren’t teased about that. The only way their teased is by the girls cooing about how cute of a couple they make.
He wonders if people would say the same if he were to stroll through the park with an arm around Kuroo’s waist (or the other way around). If he won’t be hit for kissing him. If he could be himself without fear of punishment.
“You know this is for your own good” his mom says, other hand taking his off the doorknob. He wonders what she was doing awake at eleven o’clock at night. His head falls and he takes in a shuddering breath. “Now go get some sleep. You won’t be going to school tomorrow.” Koutarou’s head snaps up. They have a practice match against Nekoma tomorrow! It may be late, but it’s not that late-
It clicks.
She knows. She somehow knows. He can tell, as he turns around, by the glint in her dark brown eyes. He loves his own eyes, tracing the area around them as he looks at himself in the mirror everyday as he does his hair. His dad has grey eyes. She has brown. His siblings has grey and dark brown eyes. He happened to get the perfect blend to achieve bright owl-like gold...cat-like gold, some could also say.
“And Kou?” His mom asks as he moves to go back up the stairs. “Give me your phone.” He doesn’t argue.
The next day, he gets up, brushes, and puts on his practice clothes before he realizes he’s not going to school today. With a groan, he flops back onto the ground. And he doesn’t even have his phone to entertain himself. Ruefully, he looks at his backpack. He’s been better with his homework as of recently because of his mother. It’s boring, but there’s not going to be any volleyball games playing on the TV, but he needs the noise….
He turns the TV in his room on to the anime channel before going to his desk and starting on his homework. Sometimes when he’s focusing too much, he scratches at a scab he has no need to cover up today on the back of his hand. He’s unable to escape because his mom, he thinks she has paranoia to a certain degree, has locked the door to their apartment and installed a deadbolt on the outside. And he can’t go out the window since they live on the fifth floor.
When she comes home, Koutarou receives the beating he expected to get the day before. After laying in a small puddle of his own blood that managed to seep through his shirt, he trudges to the kitchen to get the cleaning supplies, wipes away the blood from the floor, and then goes to the shower.
The next day, he doesn’t go to school again. He’s waken up by a slap to the face. The doors are locked again. His mom comes home. Gives him an even worst beating, one that leaves a large bruise on his face and makes him dizzy enough when he goes to the bathroom to clean up that he stumbles and shoves his loosely closed container of hair gel to the floor. It most of it falls out. There isn’t enough to even spike his hair up one more time. He’d been needing to go to the store anyway. But it’s not like there’s anyone he needs to wear it for other than himself.
This repeats for the rest of the week. His mom somehow obtains him the homework he needs. There’s new material so he needs to look up videos to learn the topics, since he can’t do anything besides toss a volleyball to himself, do stretches and weights, and watch videos in regards to volleyball. And that’s when he gets the brilliant idea of emailing his friends, only to become, not angry, but disappointed when he discovers that his mom wiped his computer, all data on it, gone.
When he tries to log into his email again to get to his contacts, he learns the account has been deleted. Great. Just great. Vaguely, he wonders what his mom has been telling the school to explain his absences. He’s rarely sick. And even then, he just goes to school with a mask on so he can participate in practice. And if he’s not allowed to play, he helps from the sidelines. Backseat player, Konoha had called him with a playful nudge.
One day, Koutarou just gives up.
His left cheek and temple are turning purple. His hair is greasy because a fall twisted something in his shoulder and his back is sort of bruised (he can’t see where, so it’s a rough estimate) making it hurt to raise his arms for the required amount of time. He just lets the water fall on his hair, the heat of it acting like a soothing balm to his muscles. He doesn’t do homework after showing that morning. He doesn’t turn on the tv. He lays in his bed, energy gone, unable to do so much as think. That thoughts come to him since he doesn’t go to find them.
You’re a horrible son. Look at what you make your mom do. She’s trying to help you. Think of your friends. Think of Kuroo. He’s definitely better off without out. And so are there, always having to deal with your mood swings . The dark thoughts continue. He doesn’t get up for lunch since no one is there to tell him to. He continues to limply lay over the covers, staring at nothing in particular.
He hears the home phone ring.
It keeps on ringing.
When it stops, it starts up again. It continues for ten minutes and finally Koutarou gets tired enough of it to get up. He shivers, taking the blanket with him, wrapping it around his shoulders successfully and painfully by the time he gets to the door to his room. He pads down the cold hallway, down the stairs, and then to the home phone. It’s still ringing, gods. Who is it?
“Hello?” He rasps. He never realized how little he’s talked in the past few days. It’s silent for a moment.
“Woah, bro- you really do sound sick, jeez” Kuroo laughs from the other end and Koutarou feels something, a little thump in his chest. She failed . “You should charge your phone, y’know, not answering my texts or Akaashi’s. I’ll let you get some re-”
“No!” Koutarou commands. “I-I’m not sick.” Silence.
“Dude” Kuroo sighs “I’m not picking your sick butt up just so that you can get even sicker. Physical activity will make you worse” he chides. “And it’s probably been really bad for you to go radio silent for five days-”
“Bro” Koutarou whines, managing to dredge some emotion up “You know I’d charge my phone! I’m not that dumb! My mom took my phone when I tried to run away and she’s not letting me go leave the place, so I’m stuck.” Then he yawns. “I am a bit tired…” and then he realizes what he had said. In the past few months, he’s never let anything about his home life slip. Not even to Akaashi. Not even to his dad when he calls and they have energetic chats.
“What do you mean” Kuroo slowly says “You tried to run away? And your mom has your phone? I thought you were avoiding me after I asked you out!” Koutarou’s blood freezes.
“You asked me out?”
“Yeah. Like, an hour ago I sent you a text. Not as a last ditch effort but because I really do like you, bro.” Koutarou looks at the door with fear and he takes the phone. It has enough battery to last two hours, he’s sure. He takes a few steps backwards and then as if that’s all he needed to do, he hears the deadbolt sliding open and a key being inserted into the lock. He quickly runs up the stairs, slamming the door to his room shut, locking it, then pulling his desk so that it blocks the door. Then, for extra measure, he sits against the door at the space beneath the desk where a chair would slide in. It makes him feel safe anyway.
“Bo? Talk to me! What’s going on? Hello?”
“S-s-sorry” Koutarou says and then there’s a banging on the door.
“BOKUTO KOUTAROU, YOU COME OUT HERE RIGHT NOW OR GODS HELP ME I WILL KNOCK THE DOOR DOWN!” Koutarou whimpers and curls up more tightly into a ball.
“Hey, Bokuto, come on, talk to me. What was that?”
“My mom” Koutaoru says. “She saw, she saw us holding hands one day. She didn’t like it. And she’s been trying to make me better but it’s not working because I still like you and she has my phone and you tried asking me out so she probably thinks I corrupted you or something and I’m going to-”
“Are you safe?” Kuroo asks. “I don’t need any explanation right now- you’re panicking.” No, you are Kouratou wants to retort back because he really is panicking and he’s scared. His fight and flight instincts are ramped up and his body is telling him GO GO GO !
“No, I’m not safe.” Koutarou manages. Kuroo hisses.
“Okay, I’m coming. And you’re in your room?”
“Locked.”
“Room 502, yeah?”
“Y-yeah.”
“Okay, I’m coming with the police. Stay on the line.”
“NO!” Koutarou exclaims. “I don’t need the police-”
“ Koutarou ” Kuroo says. That shuts him up quickly. “From what I got, your mom is abusive. Because you’re gay. Gay isn’t a disease, it’s who you are. There’s nothing bad about it. And she’s making you think that it is. She’s beating you up for it. She didn’t let you go to school! To practice! I’m coming.” Koutaoru nods.
Kuroo talks to him for the next fifteen minutes while his mom continues to try and enter. The banging stops for a moment and he relaxes, crawling out to check if she managed to break any parts of the door...
Only to be greeted with the sight of the heavy butchers knife managing to cut through the door. He screams and goes back under the desk.
“Bo? BO!”
“Shehasaknifeshehasaknifeshehasaknife, oh my gods Kuroo, please” he begs. He hears the sounds of sirens grow louder and louder and he suddenly hears the doorbell ring repeatedly. The hacking stops for a moment before his mom continues. He drops the phone and curls into a tight ball, ticking his head in and covering it with his arms.
He doesn’t know how much later it is. He never realizes when it’s his mom who starts screaming and yelling and that there’s more than one voice now. And then, suddenly, there are gently hands on his knees. He flinches, trying to get closer to the door, only to feel empty air. It’s gone.
“The police brought the firemen with them” Kuroo says, fingers gently taking one of his hands off his head. His voice sounds strange, like he’s about to cry. “You weren’t responding so they unscrewed the door and took it off the hinged. They agreed I should try first because I know you best.”
They’re not wrong Koutarou thinks, peeking up to look at Kuroo. The rooster-haired teen actually is crying, silent streams coming down his face, the area around his eyes puffy and red.
“Come on” Kuroo says, lightly tugging at his hand to guide him out from under the desk. “Your safe. Do you have anywhere else to go?” Koutarou nods.
“M-my dad. He divorced my m-mom. He has a husband.”
“Will he let you move in?”
“Y-yeah. Th-they were s-s-supposed to have shared custody.”
“Okay buddy.”
His mom isn’t in the building anymore, taken by the police already. Kuroo sits next to him as Koutarou reports to the police officer what happened the past few days. She asks if there’s anything else, he childishly asks for a hug. Kuroo mutters so only he could hear it no one can say no to those eyes . He’s right, apparently, or maybe it comes with the job, because the officer does hug him before being replaced by a doctor.
Over the weekend, he moves in with his dad. His sisters visit, apologizing for never figuring out what was wrong with their mom. On Monday, he goes back to school and submits all of his homework. When he goes to practice, he tells Akaashi why he’s been gone.
And Kuroo? He meets up with him after school to practice a little more. Even though it isn’t until a month later that Koutarou gets over the fear of getting punished if he went out with him (mom’s in jail, remember that, and be happy, his sister had said) he still enjoys each day as they come and go.
The date just makes it all even better.