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The apartment is dark, quiet, and still. And cold. Horribly, horribly cold.
Tsukishima curls up tighter under his four layers of blankets, cursing the power company in charge of the apartment complex. The power had gone out sometime after six, well after the sun had set and the last slivers of natural light slipped below the Tokyo skyline. Very soon, the nighttime winter coldness that the air conditioner had banished seeped into the apartment, settling into the walls and the floor and the marrow of his bones.
So, of course, the only logical option was to drown himself in a thick jumper and Akaashi’s scarf and burrow under all the thick winter blankets they possess. He’s been in this position for an hour and they’re doing a shitty job of trapping his body heat—well, his torso is the only thing that’s warm, because Tsukishima has his arms wrapped around his knees in some long-legged imitation of the fetal position. But his fingers are numb and his feet are like blocks of ice, and every time he scrunches his toes it sends goosebumps shivering all the way up his legs.
Cold. Cold, cold, cold. Tsukishima thinks longingly of spring—not summer, because summer is disgustingly hot—thinks of when February tips into March, when the sun burns a little longer and a little brighter. The air changes then; something unfurls, emerges, warmth prising open the glacial stillness of a frozen lake. Life trickles back into the world like a heart remembering how to pump blood.
Thinking of spring is a mistake. It just makes Tsukishima colder and more bitter, since it’s still early January and the end is far from sight. The darkness only contributes to the deadened chill that surrounds him, barely kept at bay by his protective blanket cocoon. He tried calling the power company when the lights had sputtered out, but the line had been busy, likely inundated with other annoyed residents, and he gave up because using a phone required exposing his fingers.
At least he has Akaashi’s scarf wound around his neck, muffling his ears and mouth and nose. His scent helps distract Tsukishima, the deep spicy-sweet smell of coffee and cloves winding down into his lungs and soothing away the icy bite that accompanies each inhale. Tsukishima closes his eyes against the darkness and breathes in deeper.
Akaashi isn’t a fan of the cold either, but he’s more tolerant of it than Tsukishima is. I like winter clothes, is one of the reasons he has. Tsukishima can’t argue with that because he also likes Akaashi in winter clothes, in long thick coats and turtleneck sweaters, favouring scarves so big they cover half his face. Tsukishima especially likes it when Akaashi tugs down that scarf to kiss him.
(And maybe he doesn’t completely hate winter, because Akaashi with his cheeks and nose red with cold and snowflakes caught on the tips of his hair like stars makes Tsukishima’s breath catch, makes his heart clench in his chest. Beautiful, he thinks then, forgetting to blush at having been caught staring until Akaashi smiles at him, slow and shy, yet knowing. Beautiful, he thinks now, breathing in the coffee-cinnamon-clove woven into the fabric of Akaashi’s scarf.)
Akaashi might be worried when he comes back home to this blackout. Tsukishima could go get a torch, or even turn on the portable gas stove, root around in the cupboard for some hand warmers while he’s at it. That requires him actually getting out from under the blanket pile, though, and that is unthinkable. So all he does is tuck his hands deeper into his jumper’s sleeves, burying them in turn into the folds of the scarf.
Eyes still closed. Breathe in, breathe out. Spring, coffee, Akaashi. Don’t think of the cold. Now he’s thinking of the cold. His toes are probably frostbitten. Maybe they’re already so brittle and bloodless he could snap them off himself without feeling anything.
He isn’t aware he’s fallen into a half-conscious doze until he hears the front door open, breaking him out of his trance. “Tsukishima?” comes Akaashi’s voice, a bit worn, a bit languid. He’d said he was going out after work with Udai-san and their small team after the success of the most recent chapter, but it doesn’t sound like he’s drunk too much. What time is it now, Tsukishima wonders, as Akaashi calls out again, “Are you home?”
“In here,” Tsukishima tries to say, but what really comes out in a wordless grumble. It seems it’s audible enough, because he hears Akaashi come inside the bedroom, and hears the rustle as he puts his bag down. Soon he feels a pressure on the blankets approximately where his upper arm is hidden beneath.
“How long has the power been out?”
“Since six,” Tsukishima says into Akaashi’s scarf.
The blankets are peeled down—they can’t be lifted up, since he’s rolled himself up like a burrito—just enough to reveal the top of his head. Tsukishima’s frown melts away when he feels lips press against his temple.
“Are you cold?” Akaashi asks with amusement.
“No,” Tsukishima says, very sarcastically.
“Then, you wouldn’t mind if I…” Akaashi tugs down the blankets further, exposing all of Tsukishima’s head. Tsukishima scowls automatically, his eyelids fluttering open.
Akaashi is looking down at him, his face lit up by the light of his phone torch, an amused smile tugging up the side of his mouth. His curling black hair is mussed about his ears and he’s still wearing all his layers of outerwear, which he’d have usually shucked off by now, but, well, the apartment is like a freezer.
“No more,” Tsukishima warns, fisting his hands into the blankets below his chin.
Akaashi’s smile widens. It distracts Tsukishima enough that he lets his boyfriend hook a finger into his scarf and pull it down, exposing Tsukishima’s lips to the chilly air before they’re covered in a very warm kiss. He tastes ever so faintly of alcohol and yakitori. Tsukishima wrinkles his nose, but doesn’t pull away.
“It looks good on you,” Akaashi says, twitching the scarf. “Have you called the power company?”
“Mhm. The line was busy.” But that had been an hour, two hours ago. “Maybe it’s not now. I don’t know.” His phone is on the nightstand, and he hasn’t rolled around to get it since he bundled himself up at six thirty and then realised he’d forgotten to bring it into the cocoon with him.
“I’ll give them a try.” Akaashi brushes his fingers lightly through Tsukishima’s hair. His touch is almost hot, like he’s been holding a coffee, or— “Take this,” Akaashi says, slipping two toasty somethings into Tsukishima’s multi-blanket burrito.
Hand warmers. Tsukishima claws them down, sighing as the warmth floods through the pitiful icicles he calls fingers.
Akaashi leaves the room, taking his phone with him and leaving only the weak light filtering in from outside. He’s likely going to find the power company’s number, which has been magneted to the fridge. Sure enough, Tsukishima soon hears him speaking quietly from the kitchen. The murmur of sound displaces the previous stillness of the air, inviting him to relax into its comforting undercurrent.
Now that his fingers are fingers again, he risks creeping them upward, pressing them against his lips. The affectionate gestures between him and Akaashi have already begun to feel natural, coming as easy as breathing. That doesn’t mean his lips don’t tingle and his stomach doesn’t do a little swoop anymore when Akaashi kisses him, because oh, they most certainly do. It’s just now, they’re accompanied by something else.
Akaashi ends the call, returning to the bedroom. “They said everything should be sorted in half an hour,” he says.
“Okay.” Half an hour until the defunct electric blanket he’s lying on starts working again.
“In the meantime.” Akaashi slips off his coat, hanging it up in the closet. “I’m cold, too,” he points out, coming over to the bed. “You’re going to have to let me in eventually.”
Tsukishima narrows his eyes. Unrolling himself from the blanket wrap means allowing the cursed air to get in. Granted, there’ll be an Akaashi Keiji soon after, but still. It’s a bridge he’s not sure he’s willing to cross.
Akaashi touches him again with his lovely warm fingers, a light caress through his hair from temple to ear. “Kei-kun,” he says, and Tsukishima relents immediately.
His cheeks are still burning when Akaashi settles down with his head on his pillow, glasses off and facing him, tucking the blankets firmly over his own shoulder so they’re now sharing a cocoon. The space between them—hardly a space, since Akaashi is very close—is quickly filled with their shared body heat. It was well worth it after all, Tsukishima thinks with only a hint of consternation.
Akaashi lets out a quiet sigh of contentment, his eyelids fluttering half shut. He seems unfairly comfortable, given the way he’d just yanked the proverbial rug out from under Tsukishima’s feet without so much as breaking a sweat. Tsukishima eyes him, wondering if it’ll be too obvious if he tries to get even.
“Keiji,” he says, letting go of the hand warmers to wind his fingers into Akaashi’s. Akaashi’s eyes fly open. “How did it go tonight? With Udai-san and the others?”
Akaashi stares at Tsukishima a beat too long. The startled look on his face is quite gratifying, but it also serves to make him even prettier, and that isn’t fair because Tsukishima’s insides take another dizzying swoop.
But Akaashi appears to realise his game, because his hesitation quickly fades and he’s gathering up Tsukishima’s hands with his own, rubbing his thumbs over the grooves between Tsukishima’s knuckles. “It was good,” he says. His small smile has returned, soft and just a bit mischievous. “Udai-san and Kugo-san got quite drunk. I was elected to plot and draw the next chapter, and Udai-san will be my editor.”
“Who would’ve thought your first publication would be a manga?” Tsukishima says distractedly, the circling of Akaashi’s thumbs coaxing his heartbeat into a faster rhythm.
“You’re watching the culmination of my dream in real time,” Akaashi returns archly. He draws Tsukishima’s hands up to the edge of the blanket and presses his lips to them with almost painful gentleness. “I’m thinking of putting my own spin on it. Aliens or monsters?”
It’s very hard to think when Akaashi is looking at him like that, fondness creasing the corners of his eyes and lilting the question in his voice. To escape the threat of being rendered wordless by him, Tsukishima wrests his brainpower into thinking of an actual answer. His mouth twitches into a smirk as he remembers the terrible horror movie Akaashi had insisted on watching last week and ended up being unable to sleep without a light for three nights. “Why not ghosts?”
A minute furrow appears in Akaashi’s brow. “Ghosts. Hm.”
Got you, Tsukishima thinks with satisfaction, inching forward to kiss him.
Akaashi hums out an mm that Tsukishima more feels than hears, lifting one hand to angle his chin slightly downward, deepening the kiss. For a blissful stretch of time it’s all Tsukishima feels, the movement of Akaashi against him stirring his blood from sluggishness to coursing through his veins. Keiji. This pure closeness grounds him but sends him soaring somewhere high above. He’s in two places at once but so very here, so very here.
Akaashi leaves his hand by Tsukishima’s face when they part, fingertips peeking above the blanket to rest on his jaw. “No ghosts,” he decides. Softly, softly. Tiny little circles.
“Keiji,” Tsukishima murmurs without thinking.
“Yes?”
He blinks, flushes. “Nothing.”
Akaashi laughs quietly. “Is that so.”
“That is so.”
“I see.” Akaashi’s fingers lead his awareness around and around, following the swirls he’s tracing on Tsukishima’s skin. You are here, you are with me, you are mine it spells. He completes a figure-eight loop, asks, “Have you eaten dinner?”
Tsukishima had been going to. He had been about to cook something when the lights had flickered out and the air conditioner died a choking death. At the first whisper of cold around his ankles, he had decided starvation as the cause of his death to be the preferable option.
“No,” he answers.
Akaashi’s other hand, resting on his below the covers, gives his wrist a squeeze. “That’s no good, Tsukishima-senshu,” he says teasingly. “You’ll lose all the meat on your bones.”
Tsukishima is reminded of summer, of training camps and friendly ribbing from his seniors. He screws up his nose. “Don’t start.”
“We’ll get you something after the power comes back.”
“I was going to make ramen,” Tsukishima says. He’d left the ingredients on the kitchen counter. It wasn’t like anything would spoil in this temperature.
“Ramen, then,” Akaashi says easily.
The hand warmers Akaashi gave him are embers nestled against his chest. Tsukishima imagines the feeling as a red-gold glow sinking into him, but the glow is strongest, the most potent, where Akaashi is holding his hands, having slipped both into the blankets again to clasp his.
Akaashi turns Tsukishima’s right hand so it’s face-up on the mattress, tracing the lines on his palm that neither of them can see. He takes his time, smoothing the tip of one lithe finger from the base of Tsukishima’s fingers to his wrist, up and down the webbing of his thumb. Tsukishima inhales. Hopes it doesn’t sound as shaky as it feels in his lungs.
Akaashi has long since lost the calluses on his hands that volleyball gave them, but Tsukishima hasn’t. He knows his palms are still rough, his index and second fingers slightly scarred from blocking too-powerful spikes. The layers of skin don’t deter Akaashi, neither do they dull Tsukishima’s sensitivity to Akaashi’s almost silk-like touch, always thoughtful, always exploratory, as though discovering him anew.
(It’s that fact, the fact that he wants to discover Tsukishima over and over again, it’s that fact which sometimes threatens to overwhelm Tsukishima, cresting over his head like a wave about to break.
In that wave is the something else.)
Akaashi’s gaze has drifted away, over his shoulder, as he returns to tracing the central line of Tsukishima’s palm. Back, forth. “I think this is called the wisdom line,” he muses. Back, forth. “I’m not sure if it means academic intelligence or emotional intelligence, or both. Do you know?”
“I’ve never been one for pseudoscience.”
“Maybe just academic, then,” Akaashi says.
“Hey.”
Back, forth. Akaashi’s nail scrapes lightly over his skin; a shiver uncoils at the base of Tsukishima’s spine. “Life line? Or love line. I’m fairly certain it starts with an ‘L’, at the very least.”
Life line— love line— lifeline.
“Is this what you research in your spare time?”
Akaashi chuckles, light and warm. “Bokuto-san was practicing palm-reading on me.”
Both of Tsukishima’s eyebrows shoot up. “Why would Bokuto-san care about palmistry?”
“He wanted to tell his teammates their fortunes,” Akaashi says, as if that explains everything. (It does.) “He also probably wants to hold Kuroo-san’s hand some more.”
“Like he doesn’t enough already.”
“It works though, doesn’t it?” Akaashi maps a spiral to the centre of Tsukishima’s palm, leaving a wheel of tingling in his wake. “It works.”
“I guess.” It comes out as a mumble instead of a complaint, much to his chagrin.
Up, down, now. “This one…” Akaashi trails off, arcing a half-circle around Tsukishima’s thumb. “Hm. It’s quite long, fairly defined. I think this one means you’re well-endowed.”
Tsukishima sputters incoherently, caught completely between embarrassment and incredulity. “Well-endow—what?”
“Perhaps I’m mistaken?”
Akaashi’s eyes glitter with unconcealed mirth as Tsukishima struggles with finding a response. All at once, the incredulity wins and he huffs in disbelief, his fingers curling around Akaashi’s to halt his poor imitation of palm-reading. “ ‘Well-endowed’, who says that?”
“The meaning is straightforward,” Akaashi says reasonably, but quiet glee is dancing all over his features.
Tsukishima would shake his head, if it wasn’t lying on a pillow. As it is, all he can do is roll his eyes. “Don’t tell me Bokuto-san taught you about that one, too. That would just be weird.”
Akaashi blinks once at that, and then they’re both laughing, little snickers that shake their shoulders and amplify the red-gold glow in Tsukishima’s chest. The gentle waves of Akaashi’s fringe defy their natural parting, falling into his eyes. Tsukishima’s is doing the same. They both get a bit lax with haircuts in the wintertime.
Feeling light and foolishly giddy, Tsukishima reaches up with his free hand to brush the strands away; remains there, his knuckle resting against Akaashi’s cheek. Akaashi gazes at him as he catches his breath, mouth upturned in the corners with traces of lingering laughter.
Tsukishima feels it again; that something.
Akaashi shifts his leg, nudging his socked foot against Tsukishima’s ankle. “Are you still cold?” he asks.
Tsukishima hasn’t thought about the cold for the last several minutes.
He looks at Akaashi, whose face, at least, is the very picture of perfect patience. Beneath the covers his leg moves again, pressing gently between Tsukishima’s calves. Another question.
So Tsukishima looks at him, and considers. “Yes.”
When Akaashi leans into him, slipping his hands below the hem of Tsukishima’s jumper and kissing his breath away, he forgets what it was like to be cold in the first place.
Sometime in between all of this, the power comes back on.
Neither of them notice.