Archive of Our Own

Fate thinks, though the memory is from so long ago it tends to escape her, that in their first lives they were mere puffs of smoking elements; new and exciting and buzzing about, pinging through hot and cold space in the aftermath of the Big Bang.

Though this one, too, is a touch hazy in her mind, she looks back with fondness on their fifth, where they grew as inosculated elm trees, conjoined at the hip and untouched by humanity’s horrors, standing hardy against the winter chill and relishing in the summer heat, listening intently to the songs of cicadas.

She remembers very well, however, their fourteenth. It was the first where she pulled them together into human form. Spinning tales of personhood is a mite more difficult than turning those of plants and rocks and other such parts of nature, but fate was a proud lady -- she did what she set her mind to and she did it well.

(A prince and his knight was what she came up with, by the by; perhaps one could call it cliché, if it were not the beginnings of society, and that term had yet to become common parlance. In all iterations they have been the first of their kind, unique, birds of a feather that fall and flock together.)

As time wore on, fate became a much better storyteller. She learned to weave carefully but still bring a whimsical lackadasicality to her work, be not afraid of her two young lives messing up and stuttering along the way.

After all, no matter the tumult, no matter how many tears were shed or how much blood pooled at their feet, they always came back to each other.

As if separation was never an option, two old souls bound to each other forevermore ran their bruised, time-worried finger tips along the length of that invisible thread that kept them anchored to each other, and found one another.

Like Polaris, stubbornly rooted to its spot, blinking brightly at due north, they were each other’s guiding light.

Through the snow, and the storm, and into the next life, they were pulled, like magnets, together.

-

He was the star that led Akaashi to Fukurodani.

And the first time he saw the boy, well, his feet ached with the millions of steps run by lives that stretched so far behind him.

Fate had grown a little weary, as of late, of heartbreak and deathbed confessions and tasting blood in one’s mouth the first time the word “ love ” left their lips. Some recent troubles in Europe had her tired, a bit, and she wanted something easier.

Well, perhaps easier isn’t quite the right word. That seemed a disservice to the lives she had spun this time. Simpler, maybe, but she took issue with that term, too -- it carried with it a sense of derisiveness that she wasn’t all too fond of. It wasn’t mercenaries and soldiers and it wasn’t politicians and assassins, this time around, that’s about all she could say. That’s the best way she could think to put it.

Something lower stakes -- strictly in a life or death sense, of course, as she seemed unable to dress up these two souls in clothes that did not reek of passion.

Two Japanese schoolboys. She pitted them across the globe from where they were in their last lives (fishermen in Nova Scotia; believe it or not, there’s a lot of drama in the business of fish), and instead of forcing them to cross oceans to find each other (a pirate and an unsatisfied prince; now that was a fun one), she merely let them grow up in the same prefecture, and lounged back as time wound and wound up until Akaashi first caught sight of that blazing star, and the world was set in motion.

And, oh, how it will come to turn for them, and them alone.

-

In his first year of high school, Akaashi jams his finger in the midst of a scrimmage, and although it hurts like Hell, he bites the inside of his cheek and remains silent.

It’s not until he tries to set that the throbbing pain makes itself a problem, and he flinches when his toss goes off course. Bokuto still manages to hit it over, and it waterfalls against the blockers to the floor. Akaashi grips his hand, wincing with a tightened jaw as Bokuto glances at him, perplexed.

“Coach!” he calls. “I think Akaashi hurt himself.”

“It’s not that bad,” Akaashi objects, perhaps too loudly. From over on the bench, their coach leans back with a frown, arms crossed, listening for elaboration. “Just a jam.”

“You should still tape it up,” his coach replies evenly. Not one for confrontation when he so clearly does not have the upper hand, Akaashi acquiesces.

“Can I help?” Bokuto pipes up suddenly. At Akaashi’s surreptitious look, he cocks an eyebrow. “What? I’m really good at taping fingers.”

“But you never tape yours…”

“What’s that got to do with it?”

“Well, if both of you are gonna be coming off, I’ll just switch up the teams now.” Their coach waves at them, and Bokuto leads Akaashi off the court. The team croons at Bokuto; they give Akaashi apologetic looks. He can’t say for sure whether either of these reactions were earned.

“This isn’t necessary, Bokuto-san. You can get back to the scrimmage,” Akaashi insists as one of their managers pops open the first-aid kit and hands them a roll of gauze and a roll of tape. Not to be deterred, Bokuto sits him down, stubborn, and starts unrolling the former.

“One day, I’m going to be the captain of this joint,” Bokuto declares, “and so, I have to know how to take care of my teammates.”

“That’s an awfully bold claim,” Akaashi murmurs.

“Nothing’s impossible if you work hard for it!”

(Said once a miner to a member of the relief team who rescued him; this was perhaps not the best platitude to spout to the person who was pulling him out from between the literal rock and hard place he had fallen into and couldn’t twist out of. He, of course, was referring to a certain rumour regarding diamonds in the area, rather than a future leadership position.

“I see,” responds the rescuer, water bottle in hand. “But everything is impossible if you die of dehydration.”

The miner had no comeback for that.)

It’s been barely two months since they’ve first met proper, and already, Akaashi has a hard time not believing the words he says with such an honesty that Akaashi doesn’t think the alternative even exists in his mind. When he tells Akaashi he’s going to be the captain, well, there’s not the slightest doubt between his ears.

With his hand -- sweaty, red-knuckled -- he holds Akaashi’s own -- trembling slightly -- to the bench, slipping a folded piece of gauze between his fore and middle finger.

How dexterous he is surprises Akaashi some; his fingers move deftly as he winds tape around the base of the two fingers, unparalleled focus shimmering in his expression, making him glow with both his perspiration as well as his concentration.

Gentle, perhaps, is the word for it. Looking at Bokuto, and watching how he plays, gentle is the last thing to come to mind. However, it’s far from off-putting, and for reasons Akaashi chooses not to cogitate over, he inches closer.

Suddenly, Bokuto pauses.

“Is… there a problem?” Akaashi asks.

“Nah, nah.” Bokuto gives himself a shake, breaking out of his stupor. “Just got a weird feeling.”

Quiet dawns.

“How come you don’t tape your fingers, Bokuto-san?” asks Akaashi, feeling an odd sense of discomfort pervade him the longer his silence prolongs.

“I don’t like feeling anything other than the ball,” Bokuto pouts as he moves up to tape the skin between Akaashi’s joints. “It throws me off... Anyway, do you want me to do your fingertips?”

“...No.” Akaashi looks into Bokuto’s eyes, which don’t meet his gaze. “I don’t like when the feeling is off, either.”

“Oho! We’re similar then, Akaashi!” Bokuto chirps. He takes away his hands, leaving Akaashi to flex his fingers warily. True to his word, he did a good job, even counting the sensation that pulled through his chest when the warmth of Bokuto’s hand closed over his, which he is presently choosing to ignore. None of that will do any good. He glances up dubiously.

“Perhaps in some ways,” he replies. “Thank you.”

The graciousness seems to catch Bokuto off guard, as he puffs out his chest, proud. “Any time! Good, right? Right?”

It will be some time before Akaashi’s mental list of Bokuto’s flaws becomes exhaustive, but by now, he knows that laying it on too thick can do more harm than good. There’s a difference between stroking and gingerly patting an ego.

“It’ll do,” he says mildly.

“That’s not what I asked!”

(No one tell the geographer he’s overthinking his conversation with a slightly unhinged explorer.)

“Anyway,” Bokuto goes on, with a theatrical sigh, “if you need help, you can ask -- Konoha, on your right!”

He cuts himself off in the middle of his speech to yell something at the court. In the blink of an eye, Konoha, as if trained to do so, follows Bokuto’s instruction and manages to get under a jump floater, sending it up in a graceful arc. Their coach sends him a glare, and he withers. “Sorry!”

Their coach shakes his head, amused.

“You were watching?” inquires Akaashi, impressed not only by his accuracy but at his speed in giving out the command.

“‘Course!” Bokuto cheers. “Volleyball doesn’t stop when you step off the court, you know. The moment the game starts, that’s it.” He tips his head. “If you lose track for a second, it can cost you the win.”

All of him is blazing -- his eyes especially, and Akaashi learns something new about Bokuto in that single moment in the middle of an innocuous practice.

He’s a bit of an airhead, and at times his bravado has the integrity of a balloon with latex stretched so thin you can see through it, floating around in a seamstress’s parlour, but if there’s one thing unwavering about him, it’s the determination that shines in the hard, glittering ambers set into his skull.

You can take Bokuto Koutarou out of the game, but you can’t take the game out of him, he supposes. And perhaps Akaashi had already known this, but looking at him, now, it finally solidifies, and sinks into him that his fun-loving, irresponsible senpai is utterly brimming with spirit and tenacity. He’s burning up inside, completely aflame at every turn with his unbridled desire for victory.

That fire licks at Akaashi’s skin, and, in spite of its heat, sends a shiver through him. He wonders how it doesn’t consume him whole.

Bokuto was always watching; nary a mouse scampers out of the owl's gaze.

Ah, that’s what he is -- captivating, thinks Akaashi, distantly.

“Bokuto-san, you ought to apply that same type of focus when you’re playing,” is instead what comes out of his mouth. Bokuto whips around to look at him, indignant. “You have a habit of letting yourself get distracted from the game.”

“Yeouch! Warn a guy, Akaashi!” Bokuto retaliates, gripping at his chest as if dealt actual physical pain. Akaashi raises his eyebrow at folds of fabric bunched between offended fingers. Well, even with all his poeticism, Bokuto is Bokuto. One would sooner divert a river from its course than deny him his… unique nature.

(Thought this once, a landscape painter did, musing over a deer that oft hung around the woods beyond their windowpane. They thought it quite marvellous, an inspiration they were impossibly drawn to, but it was, at the end of the day, a deer. A not very graceful one, at that. Bit of an oxymoron, no?)

“If you two are finished,” their coach interjects, “and Akaashi’s finger is set?”

“Yes, sir.” Akaashi gets up off the bench and bends slightly at the waist. “My apologies for interrupting, coach.”

“Yeah, yeah. Jams happen. It’s fine.” He waves his hand flippantly. “I’m more criticizing that one.” He points straight at Bokuto, who recoils.

“Low blow, coach…”

“Get over here, you two.” Despite his words -- or, perhaps, because of them -- there’s an affection to their coach’s words as he gestures to his side. Akaashi gets the sense he has a little bit of a soft spot for Bokuto, but that he keeps it pared down.

“Okay! Akaashi, let’s go!” Bokuto thrusts out his arm, and marches over to the designated spot. Akaashi follows suit, finding a bit of levity in the brightness to him. In such a simple action -- that being walking -- he manages to inject so much passion.

It’s as if his zeal for life and everything in it is infinite, stretching beyond the barriers of reality itself, spilling out into other lives and leaking into new worlds.

His glow is neverending; how easily he could blind, thinks Akaashi.

And yet, he wants to stare for longer.

(Fate recalls this with a smile to her lips; it was when she noticed that this Akaashi had begun to fall.)

-

"Akaashi, do you believe in reincarnation?"

Akaashi is struck threefold; once by the question itself, twice by the uncharacteristic solemnity to Bokuto's tone, and three times that he was familiar with the word itself.

(This is the same question a poet once asked a skeptic. "I'll believe anything I can observe with my own two eyes," huffed the skeptic, not for the first time wondering why he had chosen to spend his time in such company.

"Ay," replies the poet whose irises glimmer playfully in the half-light of an oil lamp, "will they really be your eyes at that point?")

"I've never really thought about it before, Bokuto-san," responds Akaashi matter-of-factly, tip-tapping the graphite of his mechanical pencil on his homework sheet while Bokuto lies on the floor, face up, rolling a yoga ball up and down the rut his legs form.

"Really?" Bokuto angles his head to look up at him. "I dunno. Guess I've been thinking a lot about it these days."

Bokuto thinking too hard and long about anything can serve to worry, Akaashi realizes quickly, so he takes his attention off of trigonometric identifies and eyes him. "How come?"

"I've just been getting a feeling lately." He pulls the yoga ball up to his chest, and wiggles around, trying desperately to keep it centred. "Lot of 'em. Er, whattya call it when you get the feeling like you've already been through something?"

Akaashi rests his chin on one fist. "Déjà vu?"

"Bless you."

Akaashi blinks.

"No, it's like, I walk into school, and I walk into school every day, right? But someone's saying something weird or there's a smell in the air, and I just think, I've totally done this before," rambles Bokuto. The ball sadly bounces off of him as he prioritizes frantic hand gestures, and it nudges over to Akaashi's ankle, where it hesitates. "Or I get back a quiz I failed, and I think, yeah, this definitely happened, I just dunno when. That sort of thing."

"That's because you failed your English quiz on Monday, Bokuto-san."

"Oh. Right." He rolls over onto his stomach, jutting his chin over his own binder, which he had been noticeably neglecting. Doing homework together only really works if both of you are working; of course, Akaashi has long since realized this is a losing game. "It's been happening a lot lately. Especially with you." He looks down glumly at lines of classical Japanese. "Be honest, Akaashi, did you meet me before this, at like, a tournament or something, and have been tricking me the whole time?"

(This is eerily similar to what a teenage heartthrob once asked an academic with little interest in his courting, one Friday afternoon in an attempt to shoot his shot; though, perhaps, he was a little smoother. And so the academic glanced up from the essay he was attempting to draft, and replied in kind.)

“We’ve known each other for some time, Bokuto-san," he remarks. "Is that what you mean?"

"No, no, don't be silly. S'like… blah." Bokuto's cheek falls to his binder. "Thinking about it hurts my head! I don't want to think about it any longer!"

"Then I suggest you get back to work," Akaashi comments, watching him lamely pick himself up off the floor and slouch forward, leering over his homework book. "We both have a lot to do."

"There! that!" As if he were possessed, a sudden burst of energy rockets Bokuto from his spot and onto his feet, teetering right beside Akaashi. His knees brush Akaashi’s uniformed thigh. “What you just said! We’ve definitely had this conversation before!” He crosses his arms with a huff, glaring down at Akaashi with unmitigated intensity.

Akaashi, a rational man first and friend to Bokuto second, realizes they might be playing in this space for a bit. “That’s a strong possibility. After all, we often do our homework together like this.”

“Nah.” Bokuto waves his hand against his bicep. “It’s… what’s the word… uncanny? Is that it?”

“That makes sense.”

“Uncanny, then!”  Bokuto blurts. “Obviously we haven’t been in this exact same situation before, but I just, for a split second, feel like we are.”

“You’re describing déjà vu,” Akaashi points out. “It’s nothing to be worried about, I don’t think. If you’re experiencing it a lot, perhaps that’s cause for concern.”

Of course it’s cause for concern nonetheless, because it’s Bokuto.

He’s a third year and Akaashi is a second and they’ve known each other long enough that Akaashi can’t afford to try to lie to himself. He’s a methodical man, you see, and there are few things less methodical than asinine, petulant denials of feeling.

Whether they go anywhere or not notwithstanding.

This is his life -- so seems to be set out by the stars to worry his head over the things his senpai says and does.

“I just… That’s what it is!” Leaning against Akaashi’s desk, Bokuto snaps his fingers. “It’s like we’ve known each other forever. Maybe that’s why you’re so fun to talk to.”

Whether they go anywhere or not notwithstanding is notwithstanding of the fact that Bokuto has no tact, and the words he’s struggling to get out of his mouth sound like something from a cheap drama Akaashi’s mother would catch in between chores. And so, glancing down at his paper as he fears he’ll give himself away if he looks too closely at Bokuto, he replies in an attempt to crack a joke, “Are you making a pass at me?”

“Huh? I’m not trying to pass you. What are you talking about?” Bokuto cocks his head.  

Akaashi smiles, slightly and privately. “No mind. What do you want me to do about it?”

“I dunno.” Deflating, Bokuto slinks down the side of the desk and lands, dejected, in a slumped pile of boy at the foot. “I was hopin’ you could relate.”

“Unfortunately not.”

“Damn.” The spikes of his hair frump against his drawers. “I don’t mind it, ‘cuz I like spending time with you, but it’s kinda blah!” he repeats, this time for emphasis. “Ya dig?”

“I suppose I dig.”

Bokuto finger-guns at him. “That’s what I like to hear.” He angles his head up, and he appears to look straight at Akaashi’s ceiling lamp, for reasons neither of them could probably begin to determine. Same thing that compels folks to stare into the sun during a solar eclipse, maybe.

Nevertheless, Bokuto’s words stick to the wall.

(Akaashi has dreamt, many, many times, perhaps even every night, of puffs of smoking elements and inosculated elm trees, but never before has he remembered them. Remembering dreams in general does not oft come easy to him.

He could relate to Bokuto more, if only these memories of past lives and loves persisted past his REM sleep.

Maybe if they did, however, that would be a little too easy for fate’s story.

She’s chuckling as we speak.)

“It’s probably best for you to focus on your homework, Bokuto-san,” Akaashi says. “You have a test on Friday.”

“I have a test on-- why do you know that, and I don’t?!” Bokuto throws down his fists and glares pointedly up at Akaashi. “Have you been sneaking into my classes without telling me? Is that why you’re so good at school?”

“Nothing of the sort. You mentioned it at practice.”

“How could I mention it when I didn’t remember it?”

“That’s a good question.”

After pondering this impossible query for five to seven seconds, Bokuto shrugs apathetically and somersaults back to his binder. Not for the first time, the fact that Akaashi has tatami mats in his house is a blessing. They have a practice match this week (it’s a busy one for them both); he doesn’t need Bokuto hurting his neck.

“Kanji sucks,” groans Bokuto, poring over his work. “What’s the point in writing things no one remembers how to read? We already have furigana. Why can’t we just use that and not even bother?”

“I don’t know,” answers Akaashi, gaze flickering to eye an adorably pouty Bokuto frowning at lines of uncommon kanji. “You’d be better off asking the person who came up with it.”

“D’ya think I could get in contact with Mr. Japanese? Or… Ms. Japanese?”

“I’m not so sure that’s in the cards.”

Bokuto flops back down with his binder, squinting at it resentfully. “I bet they couldn’t play volleyball,” he sighs.

Akaashi doesn’t engage with that one.

Childlike and immature he may be at times, but there’s an unbelievable, almost frightening honesty to every facet of Bokuto, from his complaints to his dedication, through his temper tantrums and into his flashes of manic brilliance. 

Although Akaashi thinks nothing of reincarnation (he’s not the dreamer type, but in the wake of their conversation, he guesses it’s an interesting concept to play around with; after all, if Bokuto has taught him one thing, it’s that there’s more to life than pragmatism), what was asked of him seeps into his mind.

Sometimes the things Bokuto says are inane, sometimes spending any brain power on them at all is not the most efficient way to pass time. Sometimes, though, more often than one would assume, there’s a genuine lilt to them, something much deeper than its face value.

He wonders if the reincarnation comment is one such.

What for, he doesn’t know, but certainly for him, being with Bokuto isn’t entirely warm and comforting. Not entirely familiar. He’s a splash of cold water as one wades hesitantly into the black abyss that is the early summer sea, slicking your swim trunks to your legs and ripping shivers across your limbs. Or he’s toothpaste after orange juice, or hardwood floors in on a winter morning. Sudden and shocking and surprising.

Akaashi has never once thought of him as easy.

But he, as with all these scenarios he thought up, acclimated. He got used to him, learned to deal with him, memorizes his special language in the way Bokuto is struggling to as his vision goes sideways, staring at his homework.

Maybe it’s that simple, continuous action of learning him, watching him, that caused him to become so wound up in everything he had to offer.

His desire to understand what happens in that beautiful mind borders on obsession, thinks he, from time to time. All that makes him up and clicks him together, it’s a wonder, and when those pieces come together and leave him a fiery ball of bright white light, untouchable and unstoppable in the centre of the court, it makes every lesson, every hiccup, worth it, for Akaashi.

Nothing is more fun than Bokuto Koutarou in his element, after all.

What’s next for them, neither could tell you. Perhaps that’s some of its novelty.

(This is not some grand gesture, some amazing, heartfelt reveal of emotion, that fate is remembering. No; she is merely a fan of this moment as a greater part of their daily lives spent together, of their growing recognition of the story they’ve unwittingly become characters in.

She’s rather fond of when they are simply able to be with each other. She, being as she is, becomes sentimental, nostalgic, even, for the act of existence.

Others ought to let themselves debate semantics and reincarnation every now and again.)

-

Even the politician, analyst, activist, master of the written word that Akaashi once was could not aptly bring to words how he feels in the aftermath.

Maybe the artist could.

It is as if the air is congealing.

Fluids flow, air is no strange exception. But as Akaashi's chest heaves, as his sweat tracks down his body and clings to his jersey, as his arms and legs tremble with the sheer exertion of their five set long match, he is met with nothing but resistance; the substance around him is thick and stifling, and instead of oxygen finding its way into his lungs, he gulps in a viscous facsimile, one that coats his organs in ice and leaves him both freezing and burning up.

Nothing is quite there; the ceiling lights are unconfident and the floor is shy and Akaashi himself moves forward on noncorporeal limbs, phasing through what must be solids he can’t feel.

It's the end of the Spring Interhigh and Fukurodani has lost to Ichibayashi.

The screams of the audience threaten to tear his skin off his bone and leave him to clatter to the floor.

“That was my fault.” Bokuto doesn’t double over. His shoulders don’t sag with disappointment; his eyes don’t well with frustrated tears. However, his skin, ruddied, dripping with sweat that glistens in the lights of centre court, is puffy under his eyes. His gaze is sharp, tempered with their loss, staring straight ahead into their warzone as they lick their wounds. He doesn’t even look at Konoha, whom he’s speaking to.

He is their captain. He doesn’t have the time to mourn what’s passed. 

“I had to score off of that one.”

Because he is Bokuto, and there is no one he will blame save himself.

Akaashi isn’t planning on continuing volleyball after high school. He likes it, and he especially loves to do it on this team, but he’s always fancied himself someone who, at one point in his life, simply played because he was good at it, and he did what he was told.

That all changed when he joined this team -- and when he met Bokuto.

When he plays, his actions are no longer physical, mental. He has lost the ability to merely play as an analyst, to complete what’s been asked of him in the most rational way possible. His volleyball has become emotional, each win and loss has strung together inside of him like his DNA, making up the person he has turned into. Piece by piece, Fukurodani has rebuilt him.

Bokuto saw what foundations he already had and burnt them to the ground; in its place he inserted himself and his expectations.

He was the only one who laid no bricks. Instead, he forced Akaashi to do that himself, and his passion, love, and dedication was what spurred him on, made him place them by his own hand.

As a result, Akaashi can’t tell him to blame himself. He can’t, in good conscience, open his mouth and tell the person who, little by little, infected every single one of him with his personality and energy and unrelenting drive not to take this personally.

Not to feel like there was something more only the ace could have done.

“Bokuto-san.” They’re not to leave immediately, for obvious reasons. They still need to attend the awards ceremony; to disappear now would be uncouth. As the formalities get sorted out, though, Akaashi slips down onto the floor beside Bokuto, who’s stretching with his fingertips beyond his toes, towel on his neck. “Are you feeling alright?”

“Fine.”

Maybe there’s a kernel of truth to that; Bokuto often went silent when he was truly beaten down by a match. Akaashi pulls his knee over his leg and twists, touching his opposite elbow to it. “Are you certain?” 

“Yeah, ‘Kaashi, I’m fine. Good, kinda.”

He returns to upright. “Weirdly, it’s not too bad. I mean, this major sucks, I wanted us to take home the championship, but after what Konoha said, I dunno…” He trails off. “He’s right. This isn’t the end.”

But this is the end of you and me, like this.

“Was I that much of a pain in the ass?” Bokuto wonders earnestly.

When Akaashi switches up his legs, he responds with, “A little.”

Bokuto makes a non-distinct, guttural whine. “But I had fun,” he elaborates.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

And then there is silence. 

(Well, in reality, the space is filled with the kinetic energy of the game that has just passed, a vibe that persists in buzzing atoms, and the chatter and cheers float around them. But to the two athletes -- a pro wrestler and his councillor -- it is impossibly quiet.)

Whether it’s their vigil for what has been lost, or simply their low blood sugar, Akaashi cannot say. For him, it’s a mixture of both; disappointment and sorrow, stronger than he ever could have thought, mingle with the vestiges of roiling nausea, even after he’s had a banana and some water.

“Here, Akaashi, lie down.”

Surprised, Akaashi looks at him, his strained, hormonal, vulnerable mind immediately leaping to every wrong conclusion. “What?”

Bokuto blinks at him, perplexed. “I’ll help you stretch? I mean, you’ve been moving around a lot, your legs are probably killing you.”

Emotionally, he doesn’t know if he’s equipped to handle this. But he stares into the eyes of the boy -- or, rather, the man who has brought them so far, and knows he could never begin to refuse him.

He has become so easy, now, hasn't he.

Doing as instructed, Akaashi lays down on his back. The floors are, despite not being wood, ice cold under his skin, which is still pulsing with heat. And he thinks that's only going to worsen, as Bokuto's shadow falls over him.

"You know what this means, though, right, 'Kaashi?" Warmth closes around his calf, and his throat folds up from beyond the naked eye. The nickname doesn’t make it any better, and although after a game is when Akaashi should be deeply breathing, returning to his centre, the oxygen (and its facsimile) catches in his throat.

“What does it mean, Bokuto-san?” He wills all of anxiety this out of his voice.

“It means you’re the captain, now.” Bokuto pulls up his leg straight, doing his best to stretch it up as much as possible. The strain in his gastrocnemius doesn’t stand up to the pressure in his chest as Bokuto hikes his knee up onto his thigh.

He thinks something snaps. Doesn’t matter whether it’s physical or emotional.

“You’re correct,” Akaashi responds airly. “Big shoes to fill,” he mumbles.

“Well, our sizes aren’t that different. You know that!” Akaashi looks up at the ceiling as Bokuto says this while being a few shuffles from being on top of him. “You’ll do great!”

“Your support -- ouch -- is appreciated.” Akaashi winces. Maybe in another life, Bokuto could have a wonderful career as a physical therapist.

(In that other life, a patient recovering from a car accident thought that his doctor’s muscles were that of an athlete’s, instead.)

“Hits the spot, right?” Bokuto grins in a carefree way, and Akaashi bites his tongue. Seeing that expression -- easy, lazy -- on him is comforting, and fits the angles of his face far better than the frustration that had contorted them prior. He shifts to Akaashi’s other leg, and Akaashi steadies his breathing in an attempt to keep his blood flowing where it ought to. His temples pound. “You’ll take them back here, though, and you’ll win, next time.”

“You think?”

“I know!” From his hamstrings down into soleus, all of his leg aches with the game’s pain, and his muscles whine as Bokuto pulls them taut. “Well, it’s more like… I expect it, from you.”

As Bokuto stretches up his left leg, their eyes meet, and the intensity within them pierces into Akaashi and lies just below his skin. His face, his eyelashes, they’re all too close.

He wants to scream.

Bokuto told him, the night of their second day, that because he was going on to play after high school, this tournament didn’t feel all that different to all the rest. And, truth be told, he played brilliantly as if that were the case. But it matters to Akaashi, it matters that it was the last game they’d play together, and it matters that they lost.

He’s the setter -- he’s the team’s control tower, he’s their conductor, ifonlyheweremorelikeKageyamaorMiyathenmaybetheycouldhavewon, and he wanted to play with Bokuto even a little bit more. See how the light hits him differently, a little bit more. He wanted them to win, and he wants that with an unprecedented ferocity that makes him tremble, and he wants to apologize over and over to Bokuto for denying him that, even though he would never accept that, and all he has is his suffocating, shaky thoughts of want, want, want--

“Hey, Akaashi?”

He’s drawn out of his self-deprecation as Bokuto eases his leg down. “I don’t like thinking too hard about things… and I think you do it too much.” His hands let up, and he scooches across the floor to sit by Akaashi; his knee presses into his side.

Akaashi can’t help it; he laughs. “Maybe you have a point. Maybe you should start thinking more. It'll serve you well.” He reluctantly gets into a sitting position, body hesitant. His head swings a little, gravitating toward Bokuto. “I’ll do my best to live up to your lofty expectations.”

When he glances up, Bokuto’s face is mere centimetres from his.

He feels like he’s looked at him like this for a thousand years, but he can’t cogitate over that sudden, familiar rush, because embarrassment comes up from his neck and flushes pink into his face. Bokuto’s eyes spark, and those cracks of light jump off of him and set little fires as freckles across Akaashi’s cheeks.

"Your face is really red," comments Bokuto in a rough, tapered tone that makes Akaashi go mad. "Do you need some water?"

Right. Because Bokuto is always facing toward the future; why would Akaashi be more than a footnote?

Heat emanates from him into the space they share, and, actually, Akaashi is rather parched, all of a sudden. "I'm alright," he says thinly.

"Oh, well, that's good."

But neither of them move back. Ah, there's all the noise -- the squeak of sneakers, the loud chatter, the mumbling babble. Akaashi had forgotten about it, but then it all storms back, all at once, and his ears hurt. You're killing me, Bokuto-san.

Time ticks in the reality where their exhales intermingle, and outside of them, the gym is locked in chronostasis. Blue meets yellow and Akaashi can’t breathe.

"You'll be a great captain." Finally sparing his poor, poor heart, Bokuto leans away, stretching his arms high above his head. Akaashi’s eyes track how his jersey stresses at where it’s tucked into his shorts. "I'm saying it, which means it's true.” He straightens up his spine, puffing out his chest. “All you gotta do is believe in me. Easy, right?”

Bokuto’s skin below his eyes is smooth, damp with sweat. He, somehow, has nary a freckle or blemish across his cheeks -- in the time Akaashi has known him, he has, miraculously, never seemed to suffer from bad acne like the rest of the mortals in high school. He’s a delicate, pastel shade of red, and Akaashi can’t take his eyes off of him.

“Easier than believing in myself would be?” Akaashi responds numbly.

(Into Akaashi floods the warm, fuzzy trust that an astronaut once imparted unto his friend, a private eye with a penchant for self-doubt. “Ya know, they like to say the sky’s the limit, but I’m living proof that those people are wrong!” he had mused, scratching the back of his neck.

“Are you trying to tell me,” the private eye had replied, adjusting his cuffs, “that I should jump in a rocket to deal with my insecurities?”

“Well, sure!” cheered the astronaut. “Everything’s less heavy in space! There’s no gravity!”)

“Oo! We should try that, too. Believe in yourself and believe in me, while I believe in you. Then, you’ll doubly believe in yourself and there’s no way you’ll fail.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. But I don’t plan on failing in the first place.”

Of course, he has no inclination to tarnish what Bokuto has given to him, no thoughts of dirtying the mantle resting now upon him. There’s no way he could hope to imitate Bokuto, but perhaps, he could serve as a worthy heir to the captain’s throne.

...Well, it’s no question of perhaps. It’s something he must do.

For the team, and for those who will be leaving it behind.

“There’s my Akaashi! That’s the guy I know so well!” Ignoring how the sides of his throat and the lining of his stomach flare up at his possessive speech, Akaashi’s chest startles as Bokuto suddenly gets up, seizing his wrist and pulling him to his feet.

“You’re still full of energy, I see,” comments Akaashi, teetering on his heels with his overwhelming emotions. Even after all of this. 

“What do you mean?” chirps Bokuto. “I’m always like this!”

Akaashi can only focus on the sensation of Bokuto’s hand around his wrist. In the beautiful wreckage of their crumbling world, it’s the person who pulls him out of the rubble who steals away all of his attention. The way his joints flex around his bone. How they slot into the folds and cells of his skin, dried slightly by the winter weather, despite his best efforts, and his expensive hand cream. The sensation of how his fingertips press gently into him, how his thumb lies across the underside of his wrist, pressure on the the carpal bones just below the surface.

It nearly gives him a headache.

He doesn’t want Bokuto to ever let him go.

“Aren’t you, though,” murmurs Akaashi.

(Fate looks back on this, a little soft and a little amused, because she pinpoints this as the moment he fell so irrevocably. 

Maybe that’s not all too true; he was a goner since the beginning.

But here, perhaps, is his quiet moment of realization; no fanfare, no cheers. Please never leave my side, and stay with me until kingdom come, asked the general of his soldier, as he spat blood from his mouth.)

-

“Bokuto-san.”

The afternoon of graduation, two lost souls find each other.

There’s little bite to the air as winter winds up into spring, coaxing out shy buds of new, oftentimes eager flowers up out of the young ground, warmed by unfurling rays of sunlight. In about a month’s time, less so perhaps, the air would be adrift with sakura petals and the sweet scent of fresh beginnings. Now, though, under the shade of a tree that has yet to blossom, Akaashi catches up to Bokuto.

“Akaashi!” Bokuto whirls around, holding his diploma in one hand and the cap of the tube in the other. The underneaths of his eyes are a touch red -- probably from crying, something he doesn’t do all too often. “Did you see the ceremony?”

“I did,” replies Akaashi, as it had been mandatory. Had it not been, though, he would have been there anyway. “Congratulations.”

“Thanks!” Bokuto says this brightly, even though he can be no more radiant. “Man, it’s so weird, though.”

They fall into step alongside one another. Bokuto has shorter strides than Akaashi, despite being taller. “How so?”

“Well, y’see…” He puffs out his cheek. “Just because my high school career stops here, doesn’t mean my career career stops here, right?”

Akaashi looks up at the sky.

“I’m gonna keep on playing volleyball until the day I die, in a century or two, so I got a lot of time. But it’s gonna, I dunno, kinda suck playin’ such a different volleyball for a while.” Bokuto kicks a stray rock out of his way, as Akaashi realizes, distantly, that he’s aware of the moods he gets into. “But it’ll be alright. Do what’s fun, not what’s easy, right?”

“Right.”

He’s looking up at the sky because it hurts to look at someone he, too, will no longer be able to play with.

Bokuto, however, faces forward, his very essence glowing through his skin and sharp gaze, like he’s able to see through a pinhole in the clouds and into his destiny. “I’m going to the top,” he murmurs. “No one’s gonna stop me, so nothing’s really changed.”

After some seconds deep in thought pondering words bereft in meaning, Akaashi realizes they’ve stopped walking. “My goal is the same as always.”

Those electric eyes turn instead to Akaashi, and the lightning in them zaps all the way through him and rips down the vertebrae of his spine in hot flashes, leaving him a little weak in the knees, in spite of his better judgement, staring back at him. His intensity wears on people, stupid, foolish, desperate people such as Akaashi. “Play volleyball, and have fun doing it.”

It’s in moments like these, between hazy sunlight and promising treetops, that Akaashi sees into Bokuto; sees not a hyperactive, overemotional kid, his senpai in name only, but instead bears witness to the perhaps shakeable but steadfastly unbreakable (former) captain of the formidable Fukurodani High.

A slight zephyr disturbs his hair, makes him look more like a piece of art than a person.

“You always do what you put your mind to,” Akaashi remarks quietly, attention trailing down, unfortunately, to his lips, before it jolts back up. “I’ll be cheering for you.”

“Of course,” hums Bokuto, “the whole world’ll be watching me!”

He grins in his self-satisfied, dreamy way, no doubt imagining the outpour of adoring fans mobbing him in droves or otherwise screaming/crying/chanting his name. He needs to get over his bad habit of getting in over his head like that.

But, of course, he had a point. He was a star; humanity had no choice but to watch them if they lifted their chins.

"But, Akaashi, you're super sure you don't wanna do volleyball after high school?” Bokuto suddenly asks him, his sudden change of topic briefly stupefying Akaashi.

“No, I don’t think that’s what I’ll be doing.”

He wants to watch Bokuto play volleyball over and over, create something new out of it every single time, but as for his participation, he has other aspirations in life.

(Perhaps he doesn’t want to face a reality where he can no longer catch up to a man who demands his 120% at all times, perhaps not. Perhaps their diverging paths are how they’ll continue to walk, side by side.)

Bokuto deflates. “Man… But I get it. Not everything is for everyone.” He says this sagely, as if he were a wise old man. He strokes his chin, which causes him to drop the lid of his diploma. Stooping down to retrieve it, he continues. “But it’ll kinda lame without you, anyway.”

Again, Akaashi’s gaze comes down from the sky to fix back on Bokuto. Perhaps he ought to keep his eyes on him at all times.

“You’re not underestimating yourself, are you?” responds Akaashi tepidly.

“Heh? When did I ever say that?”

“You’re going even further beyond,” he says, knowing he would never have to remind Bokuto of this. “Further beyond our team, that is. You don’t need to worry about someone like me. You’ll have plenty of incredible setters to play with.”

People such as Kageyama and Miya; although he tries to keep these thoughts out of his mind, they pervade nonetheless, swirl like spilled ink and paint his thoughts black.

“Akaashi!” Bokuto yells, accentuating the kaa in offense as he’s want to do. “Don’t say that! Never say that!” He sparks. “Are you trying to say you’re not incredible?!”

Certainly not on the level of those monsters, Akaashi thinks faintly. “There’s nothing wrong with observing where you have faults and working to better them.”

“Buuuut-- if you’re always, uh, observing faults, then when do you pay attention to the super cool stuff?” Bokuto purses his lips. “You’re hard on yourself, ‘Kaashi.”

Caught between being struck by the insight and warming uncomfortably at the less than creative nickname (he does this every time, much to his chagrin), Akaashi is momentarily silent as he reaches into his brain to pull out a well-developed response to the inquiry.

Apparently he has no need to search, because Bokuto keeps talking either way.

“I like playing with you.”

Something about the cadence of his voice makes Akaashi’s heart, against his better, stubborn efforts, weasel its way out of behind his sternum and crawl into the bottom of his throat. “What’s this about?” he struggles to say through what’s been lodged there.

“Your sets are still the best.” Bokuto swings his diploma. “And doing homework and hanging out with you at lunch is still the best. It’s…” Here, he pauses for flourish. “Indispensable. Did I use that right?”

Akaashi can’t help the hint of a smile that finds its way to the corner of his lips; he’s not sure if Bokuto is cognizant of the fact he’s killing him, and he has been for so, so long. “...Right enough.”

“Right enough? Man, I’ve been on a roll lately. Can you tell Konoha that I used that? I told him I used repugnant and he didn’t believe me.” He goes off on another tangent, but it doesn’t wipe the smile off Akaashi, nor does it do anything to allay the fuzziness of his stomach at his direct compliments. “Sure, maybe I don’t really know what it means, but I used it right!”

“Very well done, Bokuto-san.”

“So you believe me?”

“You’ve surprised me before.”

He preens, glowing. “Tell him that! Anyway, what were we talking about? Oh! Volleyball. You. Basically…"

They've reached the outskirts of the school by now, hanging out at one of the side entrances, flanked by tree stumps and pavement that bleeds into sidewalks upon which some of Bokuto’s graduating class are striding. Here, though, they’re a little secluded, far from the school’s front entrance. Bokuto looks off into the distance.

“Wanna go stop by the gym?” He grins widely and easily.

They end up winding back to Fukorodani’s gym -- for obvious reasons, it should be empty, so Akaashi walks alongside a hopping Bokuto who, for some reason, is oddly silent, only merely humming to himself as they cut across well-manicured grass.

Their whole conversation has been a bit out of the ordinary, in fact. Akaashi knows Bokuto has a penchant for the serious and the sagacious when it behooves him (which is not frequently), but maybe the ceremony has him in that much more of a mood.

It hasn’t entirely solidified for Akaashi just yet -- that the person who first drew him out to this school, and the person whom he’s spent the last two years learning to decode like his own personal Rosetta Stone, is going to be gone.

...Well, it might be presumptuous of Akaashi to think, even privately, of Bokuto as his own. After all, the only one he belonged to was the sport of volleyball; Akaashi has no control over him. He doesn’t even have real estate in the part of his heart he so desperately craved to.

Perhaps Bokuto doesn’t belong to him, but the vice-versa is a touch more complex; certainly, over months and months of training and sleepovers and struggling through word problems Akaashi doesn’t even know how to solve because, again, Bokuto is a grade ahead, part of his soul has eked out of him and found purchase right beside Bokuto’s, snuggled up tightly with no plans to leave no matter how much Akaashi fought that eventuality.

Things just don’t feel quite as right without him.

Bokuto is headstrong, thoughtless, spontaneous, and loud, but he’s also overflowing with an overwhelming vitality that chokes anyone in his radius who even thinks about taking it easy. Not only is he endlessly talented and dedicated, more importantly, his passion exists as a threat not just to others, but to himself. His drive rockets him across the midnight sky in the form of a meteor; his love doesn’t let him remain in stasis.

He’s about as terrifying as he is exhilarating.

It’s like the very oxygen he breathes is different, and he makes Akaashi want to breathe like he does, too.

“Did you want to go in, Bokuto-san?” prods Akaashi as they come to a stop, Bokuto standing with his arms akimbo, diploma in one fist, staring at the door.

“I wish I could have played with you more.”

This is how Bokuto is -- headstrong, thoughtless, spontaneous, loud. He thinks nothing much of these phrases that strike deep into Akaashi’s chest. He can’t. Why would he? He has greater aspirations, either way, greater than him.

Who would Akaashi be to stymy him?

What kind of selfishness would that be?

“Have you gotten a concussion, Bokuto-san?”

“What?! Have I?” Panic runs across Bokuto’s face. He makes a wide-toothed grin, lifts both of his arms above his head, and says in a rush, “My name is Bokuto Koutarou. I’m the ace.”

“That’s a stroke test, Bokuto-san,” Akaashi says, watching his hands drop back to his side. “I don’t think you’ve actually got an injury.”

“Oh.” Bokuto’s grey brow furrows. “Then why’d you say it?”

“Well, because you’re speaking a little oddly,” Akaashi responds honestly. “It’s not often that you talk like this.”

“It’s my graduation!” exclaims Bokuto, scandalized, “can’t I be a little out of character? I’m sad, you know! I’m gonna miss the gym! The storage closet always smelled like mothballs!”

“That is a bizarre thing to miss,” notes Akaashi, who is having trouble with his heartbeat at the moment, and is working to calm it down.

“Well, you get it, don’t you?”

“...I do.”

"But, but, Akaashi…" he drawls on his name. It worries the edges of Akaashi's heart and leaves his chest feeling a little incomplete that he'll no longer hear that same voice calling out for a toss.

God, wasn't he far gone.

When Akaashi turns to face him, something has taken over his expression, morphed his countenance into a betrayal that is, if he were to rank them, the most strange thing he's bore witness to this afternoon.

He can only describe it as vulnerability.

He pouts, tips of his hair almost seeming to droop, even though Akaashi’s pretty sure he puts enough hairspray in it to choke a lesser man, fiddling, suddenly, with the hem of his blazer. “Obviously you’re gonna kick ass without me…”

Akaashi is able to fill in the part that Bokuto seems to be having difficulty voicing. “Yes, I imagine it will be quite different without your presence, if that’s what you’re trying to say. Of course.” After all, there was no single person on this Earth who could replace him. “But why is that of concern? You can come back and visit at any time, can’t you?”

Please don’t go so far I can’t reach you anymore.

He curses himself for thinking such aggrandizing things.

“Akaashi.”

Akaashi’s throat dips into his stomach and coats it in bile, leaving any further words to rise out of his mouth like acid. “Yes?”

“Why are you talking like it’s the end of the world?” After a moment’s pause, Bokuto eyes him suspiciously. “...You don’t know something I don’t, do you?”

It’s the end of something, that’s for certain. “If I had the ability to predict those sorts of things, I’d be leading a much different life.”

“Well, then,” sniffs Bokuto, “I’m glad you’re not. But you don’t have to be the predictor. You just have t’ have someone tell you.”

“I suppose you have a point.”

“Speaking of points! Let’s get back to mine!” Snapped back into attention, Bokuto suddenly rounds on him. “You! What’s with all the doom and gloom?”

Glancing askance, Akaashi goes on. “I’m not sure what you’re talking about.”

I’ll miss you I’ll miss you I’ll miss you--

“All we can hope to do,” he continues, putting a cap on his surging emotions that threaten to shoot out of his pores even if his mouth is closed, “is continue to do our best.”

“That doesn’t seem related,” retorts Bokuto. “Are you trying t’ distract me or summin’?”

Curse his perceptiveness. Akaashi doesn’t know what to say, and so he holds his tongue and leaves it to Bokuto to fill the sudden silence.

“Man! Are you getting all weird because you’ll miss me?” Some seconds later, he hits the nail straight on the head without any remorse. When Akaashi doesn’t meet his eyes, he plops down onto the cement step before the gymnasium’s door, patting for Akaashi to sit next to him. Reluctantly, he obliges, unfortunately aware of how Bokuto’s thigh presses up against his own. They’re so close, they’re so alone, it’s stifling. “Did I get it?”

“...Didn’t I already say that?” Akaashi looks at his feet.

Bokuto puts his hand on his chin. “Maybe you should try being more straightforward. That’s what you can work on when I’m gone. That’s your fault."

Funny, that; the man suggesting it is what causes Akaashi to be anything but. He’s full of contradictions that press at the corners and edges of his body, made a fool of in his heart and soul, left knowing not how he’s supposed to act or what he’s supposed to say.

Somehow, being with Bokuto is the easiest and hardest thing in the world, something so natural as breathing yet as terrifying as walking a tightrope. He has to hold his breath to make his way across.

“Someone very wise once said that you should do what’s fun, instead of doing what’s easy,” Bokuto says, blowing air out of his lips. It’s not quite cold enough for it to consolidate into white smoke, but the breeze carries it away regardless.

“Yes, you said that a couple minutes earlier.”

“I don’t think it applies just to volleyball. Like, what’s funner? Just putting your clothes in the laundry basket or spiking them in?” Bokuto muses, and Akaashi realizes why his room is always so messy. “What’s funner? Just going home after graduation or staying here with you?”

Akaashi intakes a breath, so sharp he feels it cut his throat on its way down to his lungs. “I do not know, Bokuto-san.”

“The answer is obvious, duh, where am I?” Bokuto nudges his shoulder affectionately.

Akaashi inclines his neck. 

Above them, white clouds trot across a greyish-blue sky, one that promises rain come the evening. It’s the same sky it’s been and has always been, no matter if Bokuto is sitting beside him or if he’s nestled between planets as a star high up above him.

Here, though, Akaashi has the sense that he’s a star, too.

That’s what Bokuto has the power to do, no matter any and all negative or irritating traits that Akaashi has come to find endearing over the course of their years together, he’s so utterly infectious down through his blood and into his marrow. He doesn’t bring up the people around him, not quite, he demands they come to his level, he scrabbles at the cliff’s edge, bleeding and wounded, tethered by rope to his teammates that he forces to match him.

And he does it all so unknowingly, without malice or ill-will, not even knowing how powerful the gravity of a star is.

Does he have no clue what he’s done to Akaashi?

How many lacerations cut across his legs and how many bruises run the circuit of his arms in trying to meet his expectations?

(He did this with no complaints, of course.)

“You’re here,” answers Akaashi, realizing he’s waiting on him.

“Damn straight.”

Bokuto stares into him.

“It hasn’t been easy playing with you, but it’s been the most fun volleyball of my life.”

The window shutters in Akaashi’s chest stutter in the sudden gust of wind that whistles between the two of them, and his skin goes a different temperature than the rest of him, because there, he goes freezing cold, while the inside of him rushes hot, so hot he can’t even speak.

“That’s a high honour.” His words are so numbingly warm he doesn’t feel them leave his mouth. “But it’s also rather bold.”

“Maybe things’ll change.” Bokuto shrugs nonchalantly. “But right now? It’s you.”   

(This is solely what Bokuto said to Akaashi; although their love may remain, there is no life in which it has been the same.)

With those shutters torn open, Akaashi is having some difficulty regulating how he’s supposed to breathe, again. Bokuto is indiscriminate, throwing the latches off his heart and making a home there, without a second thought to the affect he has on someone like Akaashi. 

“That almost sounds like a confession, Bokuto-san,” chokes Akaashi out in a half-joke.

“Huh…” Bokuto hums to himself as Akaashi’s pulse rises exponentially. “If it is, will you call me Koutarou?”

What.

The sky erupts above them, curls at the edges of clouds shooting off and colours spiraling down into the horizon line, painting the tips of swaying blades of grass in glowing cyans. They melt down, dripping like hot wax on top of them.

“What do you mean?” Akaashi’s stomach hinges like a door that doesn’t fit in the frame quite right.

“What do you mean, what do I mean?”

“Do you know what you’re saying?”

“Um…” Bokuto blinks at him, an indistinguishable emotion lighting on his face. “I said it, so I think so?” He swings his legs around so that he’s angled toward Akaashi, instead of merely sitting side-by-side. “I’ve had this feeling lately, over and over, that when I’m with you, we’ve done it all.”

He’s mentioned that before.

(Again, though, beyond dreams and unconsciousness, Akaashi has not been awarded that same self-awareness.)

“Go on,” Akaashi murmurs.

“But, it’s like, whatever, you know?” Akaashi decidedly does not know, and this sudden rush of information has him a touch dizzy. “Because even if I feel like I’ve spent a thousand million hours with you, I wanna keep spending more. Because it’s crazy fun, no matter what.”

“Bokuto-san…” The name Koutarou lodges itself in his throat.

“I don’t wanna stop being with you, just ‘cuz I’m gonna be a crazy cool pro. And I won’t! I’ve decided.”

“So…” Akaashi matches his position, moving his knees over so they graze against Bokuto’s, unable to decide what part of him he should be focusing on. His eyes dart between his lips, his hands, his face as a whole. “You think we should… you think I should…”

He can’t remember the last time he got so flustered; warmth prickles across his cheeks. He needs to compose himself, and so he breathes in the spring air that exists only in the space between their mouths. 

“Welllll… I think you should do whatever you feel,” Bokuto says, introspective look to him that turns the space around him pinkish. “But I want you to call me Koutarou.”

Maybe, just maybe, Akaashi loves Bokuto.

He’s a rational person, you see, attributing all he feels (and most certainly, there is so much) to one seemingly simple term goes against his moral principles. He’s a teenager; although romance films and novels aren’t his first choice, should he really play the fool and act like he knows what love is?

What does it even mean, anyway?

Is it merely an emotion, love, or is it that which compels people to feel? Is it a driving force, or the end result? Akaashi had never had any reason to wonder these things before, to get all caught up in the throws of romance and yearning, before the boy beside him crash-landed into his life with a triumphant yell and a spike that resounded in every echelon of the gymnasium. And he can’t pretend to be an agent, because he is not (or rather, is no longer) a poet, a writer, a romantic, someone who dedicated their life to… to… to love. 

Is there any reason to name it?

What is love, he wonders?

Is what he feels, now, not enough?

But I can’t. I can’t be the person who holds him back. No matter what I desire…

“I’m reticent to be so selfish,” he says, and he gets the sense his voice echoes into a void, desperation heard by no one. He has no hold over Bokuto; how could he?

I want you to stay with me. I’m not finished yet. I’m not finished learning you. I’mnotI’mnotI’mnot--

“I dunno what exactly you mean by that,” pipes up Bokuto after looking to valiantly sort out the definition of reticent from context, inching ever closer to the universe’s end. “But I guess I want you to be a little selfish.”

Akaashi looks up into those wide yellow eyes.

They’re incandescent, as if you could peer into him and see the very fire that burned so intensely inside of him. That fire that licks through him puts heat into every action and word he speaks, searing the leg of Akaashi that’s pressed up against his. Ah, now this is so familiar.

It’s that same impossible feeling that tore through him years ago.

Bokuto is everlastingly bright, inextinguishable.

“Do you know what you’re asking?” questions Akaashi gently.

“Not entirely!” says Bokuto cheerily. “But I know what I want -- that’s alright, innit?”

(Whatever love is, if he’s not in it, he can fall into it as time goes on.)

“You want me to call you Koutarou...” Akaashi tests out the way the name sounds on his tongue and lets it lie between his taste buds. “...san,” he adds as an afterthought.

“Just Koutarou?”

He says this with hope.

Cobalt blue meets smoldering amber as something more powerful than any word could hope to do justice flickers behind and through Bokuto’s irises and passes between them. The knuckles of Akaashi’s fingers whiten with pressure as he grips his knees, not trusting his hands at the moment, and the warmth rising out of his chest has finally tightened his throat with a dry rope that slowly smothers him the longer Bokuto stares at him.

“Koutarou.”

And he glimmers.

(And Akaashi knows, if love is not what he feels, whatever he has is so much better, by leaps and bounds.)

“Can I call you Keiji, then?” he starts. “Do you mind? ‘Cuz I really wanna call you Keiji, and I thought that if you called me Koutarou first, then you would feel less awkward, and I just, I think the name Keiji is really nice to say, and no one on the team calls you it-- well, no one calls me my given name, either--”

Akaashi, shudderingly, with the tempo of his racing heart, leans in closer to Bokuto.

I want you to be a little selfish.

Closer, and closer still.

I want you to be a little selfish.

Closer until his mouth cuts off Bokuto’s rant.

I want to be a little selfish, too. 

He falls completely silent as their lips touch without much direction, force, or intent. It was simply what Akaashi felt he had to do, what he thought to be right in the moment, what every erratic impulse Bokuto was wanting him -- challenging him -- to lean into was telling him what was the best option.

Every world dissolves around them, dripping from tree branches and pooling in the dips of worn concrete that marks the path to the gymnasium. Every alternate universe and past life that isn’t Bokuto and Akaashi, Akaashi and Bokuto, falls through the sieve of their bond in this world, in this timeline, the only one that matters right then, and completely disappears, leaving but two stars who wink and out of existence in tandem with each other in the deep violet night sky.

Because as Bokuto gently takes his tie and uses it to pull him in so that his palms find themselves grappling awkwardly for support on Bokuto’s legs instead of his own, he realizes that it’s but them in the world. At this moment, it’s only them, and not a single soul (besides the pair eternal) could persist in the suffocation that winds two people who only know how to find each other. They’re the only spirits who feel at home in the stranglehold.

They alone are in the world.

They are the protagonists of not only their story, but seeing as they’re the only ones left, of every story fate could find herself creating; when the planet spun, when every planet spun, it did so for its two leads.

Oh, how Akaashi feels so alive.

“‘Kaashi… I mean, Keiji.” Bokuto shines with wonder as he pulls away. “Wow.”

Akaashi tentatively draws back, receding into himself, watching Bokuto with hesitance. “ Wow? ” he breathes, partly in a huff of laughter.

“Yeah, wow! Why haven’t we done that before?” Bokuto gestures frantically from his lips to Akaashi’s. “We could’ve been doing that the whole time and we haven’t?!”

All of Akaashi melts away, his physical form, his worries, his fears. Because of course there’s no way Bokuto would have left him behind for greater pursuits; what a fool, what an idiot he is. Away with having the audacity to think he had some grip over Bokuto, his real and only folly was his lack of trust and belief in his wing spiker.

Because it’s Bokuto Koutarou, and there was nothing important to him he didn’t see through completely.

And, as he sways closer to Akaashi, as the warmth and the taste of Bokuto’s mouth grows ever more solid, he comes to the conclusion, with a pang in his bones and his blood, that he’s important to him, too.

Good Lord, he aches.

“Maybe not the whole time… ” Akaashi mumbles to himself. He’s about to elaborate when he’s caught off guard by Bokuto smushing his cheeks in as he grabs him with little grace and and basically flings his whole body weight (which is a lot) into Akaashi for a second go.

He barely has time to react before lips are on his, legs are pressed up against his, and pleasure is sliding through all the cells in his body at speeds so breakneck Akaashi is worried, briefly, that Bokuto is going to make him pass out for the first time in practice rather than in theory.

His legs are too warm and their noses are crushed together and he can feel his cheekbones bruising, but he could get used to this. He could get very, very used to this.

“Keiji, Keiji, Keiji.”

So that they both have a chance to take a breath, Bokuto first detaches and then allows his forehead to rest against Akaashi’s. “Are you just going to keep saying my name?” Akaashi responds, fuzzy, not really caring what he chooses to do for the rest of this life and the next one as long as they’re like this.

“I’m getting used to it,” gulps Bokuto, “I love you.”

Like he’s just been shot, a round fired off into the quiet afternoon, Akaashi reels backward.

“Bokuto-san-- I mean, Koutarou, you’re being awfully presumptuous about love--”

"Presumptuous-shmumptuous," leers Bokuto as he leans in to close the gap between them. Akaashi’s heart palpitates. “I know how I feel, right?” Every molecule of his inhales and exhales paints Akaashi’s face in new, shy colours. “And how I feel is I love you.”

Eighteen years old, and instead of following the path the stars set out for him, he gets distracted by a constellation along the way and forges his own, instead.

“You think too much, Keiji,” he says, utterly correctly, and his words play upon Akaashi’s tender lips.

In love, huh. 

Maybe, just maybe, Akaashi should let himself fall into how Bokuto sees the world.

Perhaps should he feel unworthy of being a spectator on his greatness, he should, with reckless abandon and devoid of hesitation, throw himself into that world of monsters and madness without a second thought for whether he’s good enough, or smart enough, or talented enough, and just be as is in the place Bokuto has created for them.

There’s nothing they can’t do together.

He must be good enough, for he is where he is, by nowhere save his own merit.

Bokuto laces his fingers into Akaashi’s. The movement makes his thoughts stop and stutter.

“You may have a point,” hums he.

I love you. 

It seems so simple.

...Well, of course it was simple; for they had been in love, though Akaashi is still grappling with that, before love was even a twinkle in the eye of the universe. 

And until that universe collapses -- and even beyond that -- they will remain in love. They would return to that never-ending blackness that they were born in, with nothing solid to hang on to save the impossible love that connected them for eons and eons forevermore.

They would, once again, be as smoking elements in that beautiful, destroyed world, because all that changed between them is the form that love took. It would carry them through each and every end of the universe.

Because no matter what, eyes would always find the star that led them back home.