Chapter Text
Life is meaningless, the universe was an accident, and the only consistent rule of existence is chaos.
Or, in other words, Akaashi Keiji is having a very, very bad day.
He trudges across campus, socks squelching in his shoes, wondering why it is that he was cursed with being born human instead of, say, a housecat. Or a snail. Or a bird of some kind. If he’d been born a bird, he wouldn’t be in this situation. He’d have a pea-sized brain and live in blissful ignorance of the concept of roommates, and, like, online shopping and other stupid stuff like that. But he’s not a bird, and unfortunately for him, that means he has to deal with the reality that his roommate, bringer-of-chaos-Tendou-san, stabbed their ceiling with a surprisingly sharp plastic katana he purchased online, burst a pipe, and flooded their entire dorm.
Keiji remembers the way Tendou-san had slowly turned to look at him, water pouring out of the hole he’d just created in the ceiling behind him, the sudden realization that his actions have consequences written all over his face. And Keiji had laughed. It’s all he could do. Shortly thereafter, though, he came to his senses and began pulling every jacket he owns and a second pair of jeans onto his body, and shoving whatever other belongings he could grab into his pockets before the unforgiving (and suspiciously pee-colored) depths rose to engulf all of it. In hindsight, grabbing a bag may have been more beneficial – everything he’s wearing is sopping wet, and frankly, the jeans are chafing so hard he’s crying a little – but this is better than nothing, he supposes. Marginally.
The sky lets out an ominous grumble, and Keiji eyes the gathering clouds with a sense of indifference that can only be achieved through having every item of clothing on your body stick to you like the peel to a very, very sad banana. His phone buzzes in one of his pockets. He stops to pat himself down, rifling through twenty-two individual pockets before he finally finds it. There’s water behind his screen protector, and he nearly has to jam his fingers through the screen to get it to work, but he manages to pull his messages up in the end.
Tendou Satori
Hey roomie, u still mad?
*former sorry
They gotta condemn the building lmao my bad
Wakatoshi-kun agrees you have to forgive me because I didn’t mean it
Oh also I fished some of your stuff out of the water and it smells weird now but if you want it I left it in the bushes outside the math and science building
The screen goes black. Keiji stares at it, frozen where he stands. The sky growls again, and a few of the people walking by him pull out their umbrellas. Keiji thinks about his own umbrella – probably sitting in the bushes outside the math and science building. Something about the image of himself digging through the bushes on his hands and knees in the rain almost makes him want to start laughing again. He shoves his phone back into his pocket.
He considers walking the rest of the way to Sugawara-san’s home like he’d planned, but the idea of walking even another inch when it feels like his whole world has come crashing down around him makes him wish he could crawl inside his own mouth.
A single raindrop slides down his cheek.
As much as he despises wallowing in self-pity, he really can’t see very many other options at this point. A few more drops of rain hit the ground and Keiji looks up once more to curse the powers that be before surrendering to his fate. The clouds burst, releasing a veritable downpour on his head, and he stands there in the middle of the quad and just lets it happen.
Not like it matters anyway, he thinks. He was plenty wet already.
“Hey man, you okay?”
Keiji blinks rainwater out of his eyes, registering for the first time that someone had walked up to him while he was wallowing.
“No, actually.” He huffs, feeling far too fed up to bother coming up with a comforting lie to tell this random stranger, “I’m very not okay at the moment if you really want to know.”
“Oh, that sucks.” The stranger says, taking a step closer instead of walking away as Keiji had hoped, “Can I help?”
The rain stops. The gloomy skies above Keiji’s head have been replaced with the canopy of a big red umbrella. He roughly wipes at his face with his sleeves, everything coming into focus at once, and his heart stops dead in his chest.
The single most beautiful man Keiji has ever seen is looking at him with big, golden-brown eyes and an amount of concern that very nearly makes Keiji burst into tears where he stands.
“Can you-?” He repeats, staring far more than he would normally allow himself at what he is certain must be a hallucination brought on by pure desperation.
“If you want, I could walk you home or something.” The beautiful stranger says. Keiji frowns. The grim reality of his situation hits him all over again and his eyes start misting up without his permission.
“Or not!” The stranger adds quickly, sounding mildly panicked at the sight of Keiji’s tears, “We could totally do something else! Whatever you want, I’ll do it! Well, I mean- if I can, I’ll do it. But I also won’t like… murder anybody. Physically, I probably could, but emotionally I just don’t know if-”
“Thank you,” Keiji interrupts, a smile tugging at the corners of his lips, “I- no murder. No murder is perfectly fine.”
“Great! What can I do you for then?” The stranger asks, adjusting the umbrella and accidentally tipping half a liter of rainwater onto himself in the process. He seems not to notice, though, so Keiji decides not to comment.
“Can I be honest with you?” He asks, feeling like telling this random stranger all of his woes will make things better, somehow. “I kind of just need someone to talk to right now.”
“Sure, I’m a great listener!” The stranger replies enthusiastically before grimacing apologetically, leaning over and almost whispering, “I’m not too good at keeping secrets though.”
“That’s fine, um…” Keiji says, unable to fight a smile any longer. The stranger tips even more water onto himself.
“Bokuto Koutarou.” He supplies, smiling so brightly that Keiji feels for a moment that he might go blind.
“Akaashi Keiji.” He says, feeling for the first time today like everything is going to be okay, “Nice to meet you, Bokuto-san.”
It is embarrassingly easy for Bokuto-san to convince Keiji to go home with him. There’s just something about his demeanor that makes Keiji trust him immediately – well, that and the walk over was short enough that he didn’t really have time to think it through properly. It doesn’t even occur to him that any of this might be strange until he’s standing at the door of Bokuto-san’s apartment and all of the flowers and hearts that had been decorating his thoughts suddenly wilt, leaving him out in the cold with a single thought in his head.
Oh my god, I really followed a strange man to his apartment just because he’s cute.
Keiji opens his mouth to say something as Bokuto-san attempts to wrangle his keys, but his brain-to-mouth connection is completely fried and Bokuto-san has opened the door and ushered him into the entryway before he can manage to conjure a single sentence.
Bokuto-san gestures for Keiji to take his shoes off, setting his own beside the three pairs already lined up by the wall – one of which is a pair of very strange-looking white sneakers with plastic fish floating around in the platform. Keiji stares at them, watching the little pink and blue fish tap against the sides of their plastic prison, silently begging to be set free. He wonders briefly what kind of person would wear shoes that gaudy in public, but ultimately decides that he’s better off not knowing until he has to.
His shoes make an awful squishing sound as he pries them off, only adding to the list of many upsetting things that have happened to him in the past two hours, but Bokuto-san is thankfully polite enough not to mention it.
“Don’t be nervous.” He says, grabbing Keiji by the shoulders and looking him straight in the eye, completely oblivious to the fact that he’s seconds away from giving Keiji a heart attack, “You’re gonna meet my roommate and some friends, but they’ll definitely like you because I like you, so you don’t have to worry. Okay?”
Keiji blinks, desperately hoping that his face isn’t as red as he thinks it is, “Okay.”
Bokuto-san smiles and lets go of his shoulders, allowing him to breathe again.
“Kuro’s my best friend, so he’s obviously super cool.” Bokuto-san continues, and Keiji nods along because he doesn’t know what else to do, “Oikawa and Iwaizumi are… I mean, some people like them. But anyway, what I’m trying to say is that if you get too nervous, just say the word ‘hotdog’ and we can-”
“Bo? Is that you?” A man yells from further inside of the apartment, startling them both, “Who the fuck are you talking to?”
“Uhh… Hang on a second, it’s a surprise!” Bokuto-san yells back.
The other person pauses for a moment.
“I don’t know how I feel about that!” He yells, but Bokuto-san has already dragged Keiji toward the living room area and presented him to their unwitting audience.
“Ta-da!” Bokuto-san says loudly, doing jazz hands in Keiji’s direction.
The three men on the couch gawk silently for a moment at the drowned rat that was just dropped into the middle of the living room, the silence only interrupted by the occasional drip from Keiji’s clothing onto the floor. Keiji attempts a smile that ends up being more of a face twitch in a last-ditch attempt at making a decent first impression, and then closes his eyes for a few seconds and silently wonders what he ever did to deserve this.
Bokuto-san plows on, rattling off the names of each of his friends and then smiling eagerly at them, completely unaware of the awkward atmosphere he’s created.
The man Bokuto-san introduced as Oikawa pulls himself together the quickest.
“You kidnapped someone,” He says, sounding like he doesn’t really feel either way about it.
“No! This is Akaashi – I found him in the quad.” Bokuto-san says, pulling Keiji closer to the couch by the sleeves of his still very wet jackets. “He’s homeless.”
“I’m not-” Keiji begins to protest before he slowly turns to look at Bokuto-san, eyes wide with realization, “Oh my god. Am I homeless?”
“Yep!” Bokuto-san replies cheerily.
“Oh my god.”
“AND!” He continues, making what Keiji believes is supposed to be a drumroll sound with his mouth, but the result is more akin to the sound of a wounded animal. “He lives with us now!”
“What?” Kuroo-san asks immediately, looking more distressed by the second.
“He lives with us now!” Bokuto-san repeats, giving his companions a thumbs up.
“No, I heard you, I just- okay.” Kuroo-san sighs, putting his face in his hands as he tries to process what Bokuto-san just said, "Okay."
After a moment, he seems to come to some sort of conclusion. He takes a deep breath, pushes himself off the couch, and puts a hand on Bokuto-san’s shoulder, “Bo, can we talk in the bedroom for just a second?”
Bokuto-san nods enthusiastically and follows him, shooting Keiji a smile before the door closes behind him and Keiji is left alone Oikawa-san and his grumpy-looking companion. Oikawa-san uncrosses his legs and leans forward, amusement tugging at the corners of his lips.
“So,” He says conversationally, “How long have you been homeless, Akaashi-chan?”
Keiji is caught off guard for a moment at the bluntness of the question and the casual, almost sweet tone it’s delivered with, but he looks Oikawa-san in the eye for a split second and realizes that there’s no sense in trying to understand what he’s thinking.
“Um, about two hours,” Keiji replies, thinking back on his very unfortunate afternoon and feeling vaguely homicidal toward a certain redhead all over again.
“Your house burn down or something?” Iwaizumi-san asks.
“Or something,” Keiji says darkly.
“Huh.”
The conversation dies after that, as it naturally would given that the only thing these people know about Keiji is his last name and that he’s recently become homeless – a fact that he himself is too busy trying to come to terms with to hold anything resembling a conversation anyway. He laces his fingers behind his back and staunchly avoids eye-contact with the pair on the couch, wishing more than anything that he would suddenly develop the ability to disappear into thin air at will.
Naturally, all he actually develops is the need to pee.
After what feels like an eternity, the bedroom door swings open again, relieving Keiji of his burden as the focus of the room.
Bokuto-san strolls out with just as much confidence as he went in with, smiling at the rest of them while Kuroo-san trails behind him, resignation written all over his face. Keiji holds his breath and waits for the verdict (though he has a feeling he knows what it is already, if the fact that Bokuto-san is enthusiastically trying to communicate with him through strange hand gestures he doesn't understand is anything to go by).
“Okay, uh…” Kuroo-san says finally, running his fingers through his already messy hair and letting out a despondent sigh, “Bo made some very convincing arguments, and on account of that, I’m agreeing to his proposal.”
Keiji lets out the breath he was holding, feeling a whole lot of... something. Relief, maybe? Apprehension? To be fair, all he really knows about his new roommates is that they're the type of people who take less than ten minutes to decide whether or not a random homeless person gets to live with them, and he's really not sure how to feel about that - even if he is the homeless person in question.
Iwaizumi-san and Oikawa-san sit in stunned silence for a good few seconds before Kuroo-san's words seem to fully sink in and Oikawa-san starts laughing.
“Stop laughing!” Kuroo-san yells, his face getting pinker with every new giggling fit Oikawa-san has, “This isn’t funny!”
Oikawa-san wipes at the tears in his eyes, managing to choke out, “This is why you’re my favorite, Tetsu-chan,” before dissolving into another bout of hysterics.
Iwaizumi-san elbows him in the side for that, and Bokuto-san lets out an indignant, “Hey!” but Oikawa-san just keeps laughing until Iwaizumi-san practically drags him out of the apartment, grumbling something to himself about not being sure why he puts up with this.
"Anyway!" Bokuto-san says, enthusiasm undampened by... well, everything, "Welcome home, Akaashi!"
Keiji smiles, mentally going down the list of all the ways this could possibly go wrong as he is dragged around on a tour of the apartment, half-listening to Bokuto-san rattle on about his collection of energy drink cans and which day is laundry day.
Keiji snaps back to attention just in time for Bokuto-san to casually announce that the three of them will be sharing a bedroom, and all at once, Keiji is certain that he's not at all prepared for what he's just gotten himself into.