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Bokuto has, amongst other tendencies—like texting just as Akaashi’s about to fall asleep, or ripping through paper while autographing, or running his wallet through the washer via the same pant pockets every month—a penchant for digging up dusty old pieces of their high school lives each time they visit the Akaashi family home.
“What’s this?” Bokuto picks up a large glass container, decorated with a ribbon and fitted with a cork lid. Inside, the jar is filled with colorful paper hearts and stars.
Akaashi puts down his phone and takes the jar with two hands. “A high school project,” he says, admiring his own handiwork from seemingly a lifetime ago. It was a fitting craft for his 17 year old self, with those restless hands and a hopeful heart that held bigger dreams and more adoration than he knew what to do with. And so during adrenaline filled nights that could only be defined as youth, his feelings had manifested into rainbow paper, folded and pinched by careful, bandaged fingers. He'd always hid the jar on his bookshelf, nestled in the shadows of Calculus I and Conversational English , but one of his mothers must have discovered it and thought it deserved to see the light again. Years ago, he might have felt embarrassed—bewildered—if Bokuto found such a thing. But right now, he feels at ease.
Bokuto bends down to peer closer. “There’s gotta be like, a hundred in there! No wait, two hundred. Or a million!” His gaze lingers a bit longer, as if really trying to count the paper crafts, before giving up. He looks up at Akaashi with big, curious eyes. “Who’s the lucky girl?”
“You know I have no inclination towards women,” Akaashi says evenly.
“Oh, right. Lucky guy then?” Bokuto grins, then pouts, then smiles again, as if unable to decide which expression might ease the answer out. Truthfully, Akaashi finds it distracting and would rather he stop all together. Still, his expression softens.
“I think you know who it was, Bokuto-san.”
Bokuto stops fidgeting. He straightens out, and looks at Akaashi earnestly. “I, um. Oh. Well, if you put it like that, yeah, I...yeah.”
Akaashi sets down the jar. “In hindsight, I think I hid it a lot worse than I may have thought. Well, no. I don’t think I even realized there was anything to hide, for a long time. It was all very confusing.” Bokuto nods along, even though Akaashi suspects that Bokuto’s brain is already trying to build its own thoughts on top of these words. “It must have been months before I could put any words to any of it,” Akaashi continues. “High school crushes are… a lot.”
Bokuto’s still nodding, but the way his lips hang slightly open looks like he wants to say something, so Akaashi pauses, and waits. “Why… Why didn’t you ever say anything?” Bokuto finally asks.
Akaashi’s lip twitches upwards. “Well, why didn’t you?” he asks back.
Bokuto gapes, caught off guard. “Wha- Huhn?”
“You liked me too, didn’t you?”
“I- you-... You knew??” Bokuto shouts, visibly recoiling.
Akaashi dips his head just slightly. “I… had a feeling. I thought it was certainly possible.”
Bokuto looks at Akaashi, again with the big eyes. “Wow..! Wow Akaashi, that’s incredible. I mean, I didn’t even know I liked you until like, years later. And I didn’t even know I liked guys until like, last year! Or maybe it was the other way around. Anyway! You’re really something. I mean, you’re a person. But you’re also something, like, more.”
“Sure,” Akaashi says, but finds it hard not to smile. “I also had thought that might be the case, since you were always showing off to girls and what not. It’s not uncommon for people to realize their preferences later in life.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Bokuto agrees, although it looks like his mind has once more jumped to new topics. “Well, hey hey, what about now, Akaashi? Do you still like the super awesome me?” He stands tall, posing with his hands confidently on his hips, a smile stretched widely on his face.
“Hm,” Akaashi replies, studying the man before him. In the back of his mind, in a corner of his heart—he supposes, yes, he still likes Bokuto. A childish, naive, and impulsive emotion, but nonetheless, like a good memory, the feeling lingers. It’s really quite hard not to feel it at this point. But over the years it had become something more like nostalgia, a baseline inclination towards the other. If he has to say whether he “likes” Bokuto in the way that he should want to kiss or spoil him right now, a selfish part of him might say yes. But if he has to say whether he's able to carve out a Bokuto-shaped hole into his everyday life, whether he could truly cherish even all of Bokuto’s shortcomings, whether he could love the present, real Bokuto to the extent he surely deserves to be loved, then the logical part of him must say—“I’m not sure.”
“Not sure?!” Bokuto yells, disappointment written in every crease of his face. His hair, though shorter than high school days, wilts alongside the rest of his body.
Akaashi stays focused, though. “It’s silly to think that nothing has changed at all since high school, don’t you agree?” he says. “A crush that developed in a 17 year old me, is a crush that existed for the 18 year old you. We’ve grown now, Bokuto-san. We talk a couple times a week; we see each other every other month. If I were to declare that I still like you now, wouldn’t you say it’s a bit disingenuous?”
“I guess so…” Bokuto grumbles. “Wait, what does 'disingenuous' mean again? Wait, nevermind Akaashi. I get what you're saying. Maybe like 40%. But, but!! I want you to hear me out too. And what I think is that, if you still Iike me even the slightest bit, then I'd say, go on a date with me! Because I’ve thought about this a lot you know, like, when I’m going to sleep and I’m supposed to be counting sheep but then there’s too many sheep and I forget how to count, and what I realized was, I’ve never liked someone as much as I liked you. I really think you’re great! And I regret—even though I never regret things!—that I didn’t ask you out before, because I feel like there’s still so much more of you to know and to like, like how you're always grumpy in the mornings when I text, or how you always know where to find my wallet, or—"
"You already know those things," Akaashi can't help but interrupt.
Bokuto huffs. "Details, Akaashi!! Your timing is just as bad as always! Anyways, as I was saying, I just feel like, this could really be something great, ya know? And before you come at me with the ‘Maybe it won’t work' stuff, hear me out: maybe it will. So, what d'you say? Akaashi?”
The look that Bokuto gives now nearly punches the air out of him. Just like that time with tear-clouded eyes in the hallways of a foreign Tokyo gymnasium, Akaashi has always felt small in the face of such unbridled optimism.
“I’d say…” Akaashi starts. He wants to say: it’s foolish. It’s silly. It’s wishful. It’s money and time and energy and vulnerability and yet—it’s Bokuto. Slowly lifting his gaze, Akaashi meets Bokuto’s eyes and sees the reflection of a hundred, no, a million colors, a galaxy of stars, and the carefully creased edges of his own heart. He feels an unexpected wave of fondness in his chest, blooming and glowing at the edges, as if teasing at how much more affection he, too, could learn to give.
Akaashi reaches forward to take Bokuto’s calloused hands into his own, and presses a chaste kiss to the knuckles. “Treat me to something good then. I look forward to being in your care.”