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He’s overshot his last three spikes, wrist bending unnaturally, and the ligament is beginning to ache. He’s been trying something new out and it isn’t working, so really he ought to stop lest Iwaizumi find out about his minor injury.
He just can’t help it. He’s nervous.
The upcoming match will be a tough one. They’ll be going up against Brazil, and while it’s almost guaranteed that they’ll win and move forward, he’s seen their starting lineup, and he can’t help but feel intimidated by them. He can’t deny that he’s afraid. He’s afraid that he won’t get through the blocks, won’t make it through to the other side, won’t be able to be a good ace for his team.
When he entered the pro leagues, his mood swings had virtually ceased to exist, but he still had triggers that sent him into spirals of worry and apprehension.
Their coach shouts corrections at him from the sidelines. “Just let your arm fall!” he calls. “Keep proper form or you’ll throw your shoulder!”
“Yeah, yeah,” Bokuto grumbles under his breath. “I know.”
“Then do it, dipshit,” snarks Atsumu from beside him. The blonde has been testy ever since they learned about their next match up. “Yer wasting my sets.”
“Sorry, Tsum-Tsum.”
“Fuck off, Miya,” says Sakusa. “There’s no need for your assholery today.”
“Ya wanna say that again, Omi-kun?”
“Everybody just chill out!” hollers Yaku from the back of the court. “We’re all on edge, but this is no way to talk to each other. Just relax.”
Bokuto shrinks even further in on himself at the reprimand. It wouldn’t have happened if he just got his head out of his ass. He knows what Akaashi would say. If he’s struggling with the spike, he should just go back to the basics and work his way back up. So he tries.
And then he throws his shoulder while attempting a cross.
Iwaizumi leads him through some movements to gauge the full extent of his strain and guesses that he should be fine with a couple of days off. He asks if there are any other areas of pain, and Bokuto admits that his wrist has been hurting as well.
“That’ll take a bit longer to heal,” Iwaizumi says, “but you should be good for Sunday’s game as long as you rest it and hold proper form next time.”
“Thanks, Iwaizumi,” Bokuto nods.
“Don’t thank me yet, I’m about to grill your ass,” says the shorter man, standing in a way that makes Bokuto feel small. He’s been feeling small a lot today. “What do you think you’re doing? I already had to babysit Oikawa through his injury, do you think I want you to get one as well? You are an athlete. Listen to your body.”
“I know, I know,” says Bokuto. “Sorry.”
“I’m not the one you should be apologizing to,” he says. “It’s not my wrist.”
“How would I apologize to myself?”
“By being better,” Iwaizumi grumbles, stalking over to his desk to jot something down on a sticky note.
Bokuto slumps back into the white brick wall, looking around the office that he’s grown quite familiar with over the past few months. He didn’t expect Iwaizumi to become such a close friend of his’. He’d thought that the brunette would hit it off better with Sakusa or one of the other, more brooding members of the national team. But it was Bokuto whom he had confided in, who’d been the only one able to relate with him about missing a long distance partner aside from Ushijima.
And as one of Bokuto’s best friends, he’s become quite familiar with what the spiker looks like when he’s close to breaking.
“Go home, Bo,” he says. “Rest up.”
“What?” Bokuto squawks. “No, I can stay here and go over plays with you guys!”
Iwaizumi places a hand on his shoulder, gripping tightly to grab his attention. “You’re going to go home even if I have to drag you there,” he says, menacingly. “And you don’t want me to drag you there. Go home. Take a shower, watch some TV, maybe even talk to Akaashi about how you’re feeling.”
He doesn’t voice it aloud, but they both know what he’s trying to say. No one in this building can help him bounce back like Akaashi can.
“Alright,” he concedes. “I’ll see you tomorrow then, I guess.”
“Bright and early,” nods Iwaizumi, leading him to the door. “Text me when you get there.”
“I will,” says Bokuto, and then he’s off.
On the way home, he can’t stop himself from thinking about those flubbed spikes from practice. He knows he could’ve made them better, could’ve done something differently to make sure that they landed. But he just kept messing up. What kind of professional was he? If he couldn’t even do well at practice, how was he meant to do in an actual match?
The ache in his wrist is a periodic reminder of what not to do when trying to hit the ball. It doesn’t constantly hurt; he only feels it when he makes certain movements. It’s enough to bring his mood down even further, though. On top of all of his screw ups, he’s also managed to injure himself, not once, but twice. The last time he’d been so careless as to get injured was in middle school when he strained his left quad from playing without a proper warmup.
He dwells on all of the little things as he weaves through passerby on the streets, thinking about what he could’ve done better here and there, how he could improve his game for next time. He wonders what would happen if he ended up doing this at the game, suddenly remembering that he has to miss three full practices because of his own incompetence.
The thought makes his stomach turn.
There is a very real possibility of him being benched on Sunday.
His chest tightens and he speeds up, trying to shave a minute or two off of his walking time. He can feel his face beginning to heat up, his eyes starting to water, his breath coming unevenly. He’s going to cry, but he’ll be damned if he does it in front of people.
He doesn’t throw tantrums anymore. He is a professional, for God’s sake.
And yet, he can’t stop the first tear from falling, or the second one, or the third. By the time he finally fumbles with his keys to open the door to his’ and Akaashi’s apartment, his hands trembling in the midst of his breakdown, his face is red and hot and streaked with tears.
A shirtless Akaashi is standing by the kitchen counter, hunched over his computer as he stares at the screen, looking just a bit harassed. He glances up as Bokuto walks in, opening his mouth to greet him, but Bokuto just shuts the door and speed walks to their bedroom, not even bothering with a quick ‘hello.’
He doesn’t stay in there for long, only grabs a change of clothes so he can hop into the shower. He grabs the first few things he finds, then locks himself inside of the bathroom and turns on the faucet. At first, he sets the water temperature to scorching hot, but he flinches when he touches it, so he dials it back to freezing.
He steps into the small bathtub and closes the shower curtain, letting the water run rivulets down his skin. It’s almost numbing, how cold it is, but his trembling gives way to shivers, so he can pretend that his shakes and sniffles are in response to the water and not his fragile emotional state.
He feels less guilty about his tears in the shower. He’d found it out at the beginning of his career with the Jackals, when he was fighting for a spot on the starting lineup. It hadn’t taken much, and he’d secured one in a matter of weeks, but the pressure of everyone watching him became too much to bear at times. He likes when everyone has their eyes on him on the court, but when everyone is waiting for the ‘fresh new recruit, right out of highschool’ to either improve the team or fail miserably, the stares start to become suffocating.
He’d cried a lot back then, in the privacy of his own home where no one could see him. Akaashi hadn’t been living with him at the time, as he’d still been finishing up his last year of high school. They didn’t even move in together until the younger man graduated college, so Bokuto would rely on himself and the steady stream of water coming out of the showerhead to calm him down enough to actually tell Akaashi how he was feeling, and then Akaashi would take the three hour commute to his apartment and help him put himself back together again.
He doesn’t need to do that now, but with all of the beginner-level screw ups he’s been doing today, he figures that this is the one habit from the past that he can accept reverting back to at the moment.
Eventually, he grabs the soap and begins to wash his body, spending extra time massaging his wrist to try and get the tissues there to relax some, then he gets out of the shower. He avoids looking into the mirror as he towels off, knowing that he won’t like what he sees. There’s just something about seeing himself crying that makes his stomach turn. Maybe it’s because he knows that he really has no reason to be crying, that it’s immature, that it’s not how a pro-league volleyball player acts. A normal one, at least.
He slips on the clothes that he brought with him as slowly as possible, knowing that as soon as he exits the bathroom, he’s going to have to face his boyfriend. He isn’t looking forward to it, to putting his feelings into words, but he can try, so as not to leave Akaashi in the dark.
The hallway floor is cold on his bare feet, and his damp hair still drips a bit at the tips. He runs his towel over it once more before tossing it into the hamper. Akaashi is already sitting on the bed, his laptop perched on his thighs, but he quickly shuts it when he hears the larger man approaching. Wordlessly, he opens his arms, and Bokuto doesn’t hesitate to fall into them, head pressed into a smooth, soft stomach, arms resting on either side of Akaashi’s torso.
“Bo…” whispers Akaashi, left arm thrown around the other’s shoulders as his other hand combs through his hair. “What’s wrong?”
“Everything.”
“That isn’t possible, love.”
Bokuto presses closer to the raven. “Yes it is.”
Akaashi concedes, wanting to get to the root of the problem as quickly as possible so he can help his boyfriend get back on his feet. “Okay, well, what specifically?”
“My wrist hurts,” Bokuto sighs. “I kept messing up my spikes today and I couldn’t even keep proper form. I strained my shoulder a little bit too. I have to miss three days of practice, Iwaizumi said.”
“Iwaizumi-san has always taken good care of you,” Akaashi affirms, petting his head a bit. “I’m sure you’ll be good as new when you get back on the court.”
Bokuto nods. “And Tsum-Tsum yelled at me. He said I was wasting his sets.”
Akaashi bristles above him. It’s no secret that he doesn’t quite like the blonde half of the Miya twins; his aggressive attitude towards his teammates has always slightly irritated the manga editor. “He shouldn’t be taking his frustrations out on you.”
“That’s what Yaku and Omi-kun said.”
“They were right.”
Bokuto’s arms tighten at his sides. “And then I cried on the way here.” Akaashi hums, a signal for him to keep going. “I hated it. I felt- I felt weak.”
“Weak?”
“Yeah,” mumbles Bokuto, face pressed as close as it can go to Akaashi’s stomach. “‘Cause I’m not s’posed to have emo modes anymore.”
“Koutarou,” Akaashi says firmly. “Getting frustrated with a bad game and an uneasy atmosphere is not a bad thing. This is not the same as high school. You’ve grown leaps and bounds since then. You know that, right?”
Bokuto shrugs as much as the position will allow. “Doesn’t feel like it.”
“Well you have,” Akaashi asserts. “In high school, you’d become dysfunctional and not even be able to continue a match.” He shifts, pulling Bokuto up a bit higher so he can press his lips to his hair for a moment. “Now, you’ve managed to keep your frustration at bay enough to figure out the root of the issue and try and fix it. Making a mistake here or there and feeling like you want to cry does not make you any less of a pro player.” He pats Bokuto’s cheek twice to get him to look up at him. When they lock eyes, he continues.
“It doesn’t make you any less of a pro, Kou. You are still an ordinary ace.”
And isn’t that just what he needed to hear?
Bokuto moves forward for a kiss, and Akaashi meets him halfway. Their mouths move together gently as they hold each other. When they pull back, Bokuto finally cracks a smile, the first one to grace his lips in hours. It’s small, but it speaks volumes.
“Thank you,” he whispers.
Akaashi smiles back. “There’s no need to thank me. I just love you, is all.”
Bokuto chuckles. “I love you too,” he says.
A weight feels like it’s been lifted from his shoulders, and his thoughts don’t feel so overwhelming anymore. Here, not under a stream of cold water, but in Akaashi’s arms, he feels free to be himself, fully and uninhibited.
This is home, he thinks, all warm skin and blue eyes and love like the mist of the ocean, like waves rolling up on a shore. Not hot trails down red cheeks, not a chilling spray on trembling legs, but a salty breeze carrying tiny droplets of cool water onto your eyelids, the hydrogen energizing you to your bones and the oxygen making you feel like you can breathe again.
He lives in the city, nowhere near a coast or an ocean of any sort, but maybe here, in their home, the ocean breeze can become ordinary.