Chapter Text
Akaashi was in pain.
Usually when the teaching assistant placed the exam on his desk, Akaashi would immediately start planning how he’d attack the test—which problems to do first, which ones were the most important, which ones he could afford to skip graphing or showing his steps in order to save time. His formulaic method was a bit unsettling to watch, but no one could argue about how effective it was. It was like watching a cyborg solve for tangent planes and other mathematical nonsense. Although he felt out of place in this advanced calculus course, Akaashi consistently received the highest marks on his exams. At least, he usually did.
Today, however, his droopy eyes adorned with raccoon-like bags could hardly stay open as he glanced down at the papers in front of him. Akaashi’s head pounded and his headache seemed to throb more intensely as he squinted at the tiny mathematical squiggles. What the fuck is an iterated integral and a vector field? He felt more sick at the sight of the coordinate fields full of flocks of tiny arrows. Heaving a stressed sigh, Akaashi took off his glasses and massaged his temples in an attempt to soothe his headache.
Goddamn Bokuto keeping me up last night, he thought, what’s the point of having a single if I can still hear my neighbors? Akaashi groaned a bit louder than he intended, earning a strange look from the student sitting beside him. Flushed and sleep-deprived, he stared at the swirling numbers on the page and began to write.
~~~
It all started the evening before, when that damned Bokuto and a friend of his decided to have a barking competition. (Yes, you read that correctly: Akaashi couldn’t figure out how else to describe it.) Akaashi had just settled into his desk chair with his calculus textbook, a cup of chai, and his comfiest blanket wrapped ‘round his shoulders when it began.
“Woof,” he heard a distinctly human voice say from the other side of the wall. Akaashi ignored it. He’d learned to accept that weird noises were commonplace in that dorm room, and it was better not to ask too many questions.
“Oh yeah? Well, woof!” He heard again, but louder, and this time, it was coming from his neighbor’s mouth. While Akaashi didn’t recognize the first…woof, he knew the second belonged to Bokuto Koutarou, his next-door neighbor and chief pain in the ass. Sure, he had never had a conversation with Bokuto that went beyond “Hello, Bokuto-san,” but Akaashi didn’t particularly want to talk to him. If Akaashi was italics, then Bo was in bold, and as far as the exhausted student was concerned, the two were incompatible.
The man next door was loud and full of energy and entirely too much. He talked loudly and sang loudly and even walked loudly. Akaashi knew a lot of words, yet he still couldn’t find the right ones to describe his neighbor. “Too much” is the most appropriate, Akaashi figured. It captured Bokuto’s appearance…that bold hairstyle and huge muscles and big smile and a—
Another round of barks interrupted Akaashi’s thoughts: he couldn’t decide if he was thankful for the interruption or more frustrated by it. Do I live next door to a bunch of furries? He scowled and stared at his textbook. The numbers and letters seemed to dance an elaborate tango on the page, the animal sounds next door grew louder, and Akaashi’s seemingly endless patience was wearing thin. Well. His patience had been eroding for months now, and this just seemed to be the inopportune breaking point.
“WOOF—”
“C’mon, that doesn’t ev’n sound like a dog, Bokkun!”
“It totally does! And yours weren’t any better so, muah!”
Akaashi’s eye twitched—the involuntary action worried him only momentarily—and he let his head drop face first onto his textbook before sighing.
“All I want to do is study. That’s it,” he muttered into the graph of a very sexy hyperbolic paraboloid. The incessant barking stopped, but before Akaashi could be thankful, another round of terrible noises assaulted his ears. His neighbor had started moaning.
The sound was drawn out like that of a bad porn star: Akaashi wasn’t any kind of expert in pornography, but it was painfully obvious that this was fake. Again, he wasn’t sure if he should be grateful or not, but another moan came shortly after. The second was louder, more obnoxious, but also… more genuine? Akaashi wrinkled his nose at the thought. Disgusting—stop thinking about them. Stop listening —
As much as he would like to stop, the moaning (like the barking) increased in volume until the two men next door were basically creating some unholy symphony of sexual grunts and groans. Akaashi wished he had accepted Osamu’s invitation to study together, because while the two wouldn’t have gotten any work done, at least he wouldn’t be here, in his room, face literally in a book, while his asshole neighbor moaned his heart out next door. What a fucking joke.
Akaashi lifted his head to stare at the ceiling and, in an act of desperation, clasped his hands together for a little prayer.
“Please, whoever’s up there listening, I just want to study. I don’t want anything else. I don’t care about getting a fancy job or car or house or anything. I don’t ask for much, do I? And if I do, I’ll stop. I’ll stop wishing I could study literature instead of biology, I’ll stop hoping I can keep a cat in my dorm room, I’ll stop hoping for lots of things. Okay? I’ll be a better person. I’ll be a fucking angel, all I fuc—oh, my apologies for the swearing. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’m just stressed and so tired. I’m so tired. But all I want is to be able to stu—”
A particularly emphatic “Yes, daddy!” sounded from the room next door, and Akaashi knew that no help, divine or otherwise, was coming. He calmly removed his glasses and set them to the side. His head then collided rather violently with the textbook once more and didn’t come back up until long after Bokuto and his friend had stopped doing…whatever it was they were doing.
~~~
When Akaashi received his first failing grade in years on this test, he wasn’t surprised. Disappointed? Yep. Miserable? Check. Frustrated? Oh, definitely. The red markings liberally scattered over the pages made his stomach hurt and gave him heartburn, but more than anything else, he was angry with himself.
You need to stop letting yourself get distracted, he thought that afternoon, you can’t let your dumbass neighbors ruin your grades. Pull yourself together or your parents will pull you out of the university.
Akaashi put his head in his hands and closed his eyes, so he could focus on the problem in front of him. Alright. One failing grade. I can deal with this. He sighed. I have that scholarship. If I can get extra credit to make up for this assignment, then it’ll be like this never happened. But they still pay for part of my tuition…okay. Thanks to that tutoring job I had over the summer, I was able to afford my books and living expenses…maybe I should get back into tutoring. I can do this. I’ll talk to my professor and maybe I can get extra credit from tutoring through the math department over break. Okay. See, you’re smart, Keiji. I’ve got a game plan and nothing will distract— a hand lightly touched his shoulder.
With tense muscles, Akaashi looked up and let out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding. A tired smile graced his lips.
“Hey, you okay? Y’seem a bit stressed,” Osamu gave his shoulder a squeeze. “Didja remember that I was coming around?”
“I remembered, you just surprised me. I’m fine. Just thinking.”
“So you don’t have too much on yer plate right now?”
“No.” Akaashi’s brows furrowed. “Why? Is something wrong?”
“Well…” Osamu sat across from Akaashi, but he didn’t make eye contact. “Keiji, this is hard to say, but I…I’m not that into ya anymore.”
Akaashi blinked slowly. Not…not into me? I don’t…I don’t understand—
“Yikes, that’s not what I meant, I’m sorry,” Osamu corrected himself quickly. He met Akaashi’s eyes and continued, “Yer cute ‘n’ all, ‘Ji, really cute, and I love you. I still do. But this—what we have now—isn’t workin’. For either of us. All ya do is work and study and think about workin’ and think about studyin’ and it’s…it’s not making me feel loved, y’know? And regardless of what my stupid brother says, I deserve to feel loved. So since ya seem to want space so badly…here it is. Maybe things’ll be easier for you if I’m out of the picture. Shit. Shit, I don’t mean to sound so…so mean, but I’m tired, Keiji. I wanted us to work, but I think we’d be better off as friends.”
Heart feeling like a lump of lead embedded in his chest, Akaashi turned away. Hot tears welled up in his eyes, words got caught in his throat. So much threatened to spill out—he wanted to bare his aching soul to his now ex-boyfriend and profess his love—but nothing came out. Nothing. He lowered his head and squeezed his eyes shut, trying to contain his tears.
Osamu sighed. Not even going to try to convince me to stay? No final “I love you”? His own chest ached. He’d tried to be a source of comfort for Akaashi, but after months of this—being ignored, being neglected, being cast aside—he was sick of being there for someone who didn’t reciprocate the effort. Do I deserve to feel like this? Bad about breaking up with him? Am I doing something wrong…? He neatly bottled the feelings up to deal with later, in the privacy of his dorm room. I need to call ‘Tsumu. Or Kuroo. Someone…
“I’ll see ya around. Take care of yourself.” Osamu’s voice was strained, pinched almost. As if he was biting back what he actually wanted to say.
Akaashi stared at the floor in front of him, his fingers anxiously picking at his skin. He didn’t watch Osamu walk away, he didn’t call after him, he didn’t wipe away the tears that dripped down his nose and clouded his glasses and covered his cheeks with a shiny layer of salt. His thoughts seemed to be swimming in a thick jelly. Shell-shocked and unable to process what Osamu had said, Akaashi sat frozen in the library until long after other students had left the building.
It was only when the motion-activated lights started turning off that Akaashi realized that one, it was a Tuesday, and two, that it was already dark outside. I need to call him, I need to talk to him, I need to do something…I’ve wasted the whole afternoon. He stood up, but his tense muscles moved in slow motion. No, he wouldn’t want to talk to me. He sounded so upset. Akaashi’s lip trembled at the thought. He headed toward the library’s exit and glanced at the large bulletin board next to the automatic doors.
The usual “Looking for a Roommate?” and club advertisement flyers were haphazardly posted, but an ugly scrap of yellowed paper caught Akaashi’s eye. He paused.
“Casting call! Special opportunity for those looking for an escape this summer break,” he read, “and no acting experience required! Email the address below if interested.”
My life has officially come tumbling down around me. Why not add one more bad decision to the list? Akaashi impulsively ripped a tab from the paper and went outside.