Chapter Text
The day is coming. Akaashi dreads it.
He’s stretched out on his bed, arms crossed under his neck and he sighs.
Tomorrow he’s going to be eighteen and then he’ll know. His stomach twists and his hands feel clammy as he sits alone in his room thinking about what will surely be the worst moment of his life.
The problem is that he’s been in love with his best friend for longer than he can remember and while he is helplessly, endlessly in love with Bokuto Kotaro...he also knows what an absolute idiot the guy can be at times. Bokuto is oblivious beyond reason and therefore has no idea that Akaashi has feelings for him that aren’t solely platonic.
The only thing that has kept him going is the fact that Bokuto hasn’t heard his soulmate song yet. He hasn’t--there’s no way Bo could have or would have hid that from him. So, either some lucky girl out there is still yet to turn eighteen or...maybe... just maybe the constant yearning, the need to be in his space at all times, the crushing weight of something missing whenever Bo isn’t around, could mean they are actually soulmates.
“No,” he tells himself, shaking his head. Bokuto isn’t the kind of person that can hold his thoughts back all that well and he loves without bias or boundaries so if he were attracted to guys, Akaashi would know. He has only ever complimented girls figures or hair or eyes. Bokuto has never once looked his way, not even at Kuroo who was, unfortunately, Bokuto’s other best friend.
Quietly he reminds himself not to get his hopes up.
He takes a deep breath and tries to sleep.
“Get off me,” Akaashi grunts, feeling the familiar weight of Bokuto on him as the boy climbs into Akaashi’s bed with him.
Completely and utterly oblivious.
“But, Kaashi, it’s your birthday!!’
“I’m aware, Bokuto-san,” he says, grunting as he quickly angles his body in the opposite direction.
“Let’s go get breakfast, it’s on me ,” he says. And it’s hard to resist. It would be impossible if Akaashi opened his eyes a little further and took in the sight of that gorgeous, bright, sunshine of a smile he knows is spread across Bokuto’s lips.
“Later,” he says instead, burrowing further under the covers.
“Okay, it’s your day Kaashi. You can sleep in if you want,” Bokuto says.
Two light thumps hit the floor, not heavy enough to be his friend's footsteps. He’s not sure what he’s expecting, but it certainly isn’t Bokuto sliding under the covers with him. It’s not really the first time that it happened, his best friend has no concept of personal space and they’ve shared more nights than they’ve had apart..
The thing is though, in those situations, Akaashi had time to prepare and he always makes sure to wake up before Bokuto for obvious reasons. He knows it's a natural reaction with or without the added stimulation of sharing a bed but he refuses to let his friend catch him off guard.
“Kotaro!” Akaashi says, scooting over and pulling the blanket tighter around his waist.
“Kasshi, I just wanna cuddle,” he coos, “you might get to hear your soulmate today. What if you meet them right away? What will you do? Will you quit volleyball and spend all your time with them?”
Akaashi relaxes just a little. He honestly should have known this was coming.
“I won’t,.I won’t quit volleyball and leave you behind Bokuto-san,” he says, trying to make himself more comfortable but the line of heat on his back isn’t easy to ignore.
“You’re the best, Kaashi!”
“Besides, you’ve been eighteen for a while now and you haven’t heard your soulmate so maybe I won’t meet them today,” he says, though he adamantly hopes he’s wrong.
“What kind of soulmate do you wish for, Akaashi?” Bokuto says, his voice strangely serious. It doesn’t fit him at all, but Akaashi knows that his friend is trying to be supportive.
“Someone that makes me want to smile. Someone who gives me a reason to not stay in bed all day. Someone that wants to take care of me and lets me take care of them sometimes, too,” he adds softly. “I just want someone that’s going to love me as much as I love them.”
“They will probably be amazing, Kaashi. You are like the best so they have to be really cool if they’re yours,” Bokuto says with a small sigh.
“Bokuto, no matter how amazing they might be, they’ll never replace you.”
“Thanks, Akaashi,” he says, and lays a comforting arm over his middle.
“Go to sleep, Bokuto-san. We’ll go for breakfast when we wake up.”
Before he can settle in and fall back asleep himself, he hears a light snoring behind him. With a smile, Akaashi lets himself close his eyes as he tries to memorize the sound.
Waking up with Bokuto wrapped around him is something that he has always loved but also something that has always terrified him.. He tries to keep his breaths even because he can tell that Bo is already starting to stir, and it’s just as heartbreakingly wonderful as it always is. They fit together perfectly--the slight hint of Bo’s cologne seeping into his senses, the way his heart is rabbiting in his chest even though he’s not fully awake yet--it’s just more things he’s going to miss. Part of him regrets not pushing Bo to the floor before they went back to sleep but somehow Akaashi has no doubt that he would miss it just as much even if he didn’t know what waking up next with Bokuto feels like.
“Breakfast now?” Bo asks softly. His voice is still a little rough from sleep and Akaashi has to close his eyes and think of something else, anything else.
“I need to shower, but yeah,” he says once he has had a few deep breaths.
Akaashi is conscious of every movement. He doesn’t turn back to look at Bokuto as he gathers his clothes and enters the ensuite bathroom. He tries not to take too long in the shower because he knows how hungry Bokuto must be, but it does take a fair amount of his coconut shampoo to make it easy to breathe again and a bit of cold water to get him ready to meet the day.
Once he’s dressed, they leave for the cafe a few blocks away from his building. They discovered it a couple years ago and have been going together regularly since.
Bokuto is a stream of conversation and Akaashi always has his ears open to the rambling but the thoughts in his own mind start to overshadow it just a bit. He can multitask of course, so it’s not all lost but the tightness in his chest is definitely anxiety and the numbness in his fingertips is getting a bit worse the closer it comes to 10:25 am.
“Akaashi?” Bokuto says, drawing his attention back to the moment.
“Yes, Bokuto-san?”
“Are you okay, man? You look like you’re about to pass out.”
“I’m fine,” he says, knowing it’s a lie.
Of course, Bokuto knows it’s a lie too. After so many years together even his poker face isn’t enough to hide the truth.
“I don’t think you are…” he says, a little softer.
“It’s fine, just...everything, y’know?”
Bokuto blinks at him with a small piece of waffle hanging off his lips and Akasshi has never wanted to taste something so badly in his life. Before he can stop himself, he’s moving closer. Then, he hears it.
There's a soft instrumental that begins in his mind and Akaashi turns to his friend with a hopeful heart.
Bokuto just frowns at him and claps a hand to his shoulder. “Whatever it is, we’ll get through it, buddy.”
Buddy
Pal
Friend
Kaashi
To Bokuto, they all mean the same thing. And in that moment, Akaashi has never been so hurt by one single word.
“Hmm, this is a nice tune,” Bokuto says, humming along with the beat in Akaashi’s head.
He jerks upright, eyes wide in a silent plea. He listens carefully to the tune playing in his mind and the smooth cadence of his best friend’s voice. He double checks that it’s not music playing in the cafe but there’s almost a dullness to it as it reverberates through his mind that the crisp clear speakers have never given off.
He has a few full beats to convince himself it’s the same sound, long enough to feel an overwhelming relief. He imagines telling Bokuto that it’s him, that they are meant to be more than friends. He even feels heat flush his cheeks as he thinks about confessing, about telling his best friend that he’s always hoped it was him.
“Bokuto-san….”
“Yeah, Kaashi?”
That’s as far as he can get before the soft smooth female baritone melody is bleeding in over the music.
He forces down the pain despite the fact that it’s making it hard for him to breathe and then shakily responds, “Bokuto-san, there’s no music playing in here...Congratulations.”
It takes a moment for Bokuto to realize what’s happening but when he does his normal bright smile is multiplied by ten and even if it weren’t already impossible for Akaashi to look at him without crying, he knows he’d probably be blinded by it.
Bokuto pulls Akaashi into a hug and everything he has been holding threatens to spill out.
“Isn’t that so cool, Kaashi? My soulmate has the same birthday as you!! Maybe your soulmate will have the same birthday as me!”
“I don’t think that’s how it works.”
“You never know! Oooh, maybe I can-”
“That sounds nice,” Akkashi says, and with the last of his strength he stands up, pulls out his wallet, and lays some money down on the table. “We should get home, maybe she’ll try to contact you or something.”
“Akaashi? Are you..are you upset?” Bokuto asks, clearly surprised by Akaashi’s abrupt attempt to escape.
“Of course not. I’m happy for you,” he says, the stinging at the edge of his eyes gets even harder to manage. “I just think you should get home. I wouldn’t want you to miss anything.”
He knows that Bokuto knows it’s a lie, Akaashi also knows that he wants to call him out on it but he won’t. He’ll expect some kind of explanation later but for now, at least, he can leave, get time to pull himself together, and then come up with a believable excuse.
They exit after paying and Akaashi uses every ounce of concentration on keeping everything buried down until they reach his building. He fakes a smile, wishes Bokuto goodbye, and then quickly makes his journey upstairs.
He locks the door behind him, closes all the curtains and windows, and then once he’s satisfied that Bo isn’t going to ‘sneak in’ when he’s not looking, he lets himself fall apart.
He knew it, honestly he did. He doesn’t know why it feels like such an enormous surprise. Bokuto is clearly straight, his soulmate is probably beautiful and soft, probably outgoing and playful, all the things that he himself isn’t. She is what he deserves. She’s what’s best for him and as much as it hurts, Akaashi knows he has to make peace with this because the only other option is losing Bokuto entirely and he doesn’t think he can survive that.
Tears stream against his cheeks, the chill of the room around him freezing their tracks into his skin.
He takes time to mourn the loss of potential. Of the thousands of scenarios he stupidly created in his mind. The dreams of a life shared with his best friend, the one person he loved above all else. He feels the weight of an empty future bearing down on him and he hates everything about it.
There’s no one bedroom, shoebox apartment where they constantly bump into one another and it turns into Bokuto teasing him and then kissing him to apologize. There’s no ramen for two as they save as much as they can to purchase their dream home. The tears come faster when he reminds himself that there’s no dark haired, golden eyed babies perched on Bokuto’s hip waiting for him to come home for dinner.
Akaashi digs his palms in against his watery eyes and tries to stop the flow but it’s already far too late.
Even as he tries to silence it all out, the years of fantasies, hopes, and dreams come flooding to the forefront of his mind to mock him. The hollow wall in his chest is shattering into splintered pieces that feel like shards of glass against the soft, tender shell of his heart.
In a fit of rage and despair, Akaashi pulls his phone out of his pocket and immediately deletes Apple Music, Spotify, Pandora, Tiktok, anything that could be associated with music and then cradles it to his chest.
There’s no room for that in his life, not now...not when it took away the one he loved most in the world.
He wants to throw something, to scream, but he doesn’t have anything to throw and neither of those have ever been his style but somehow clicking delete and erasing the downloaded songs does nothing but make the gaping hole in his chest even wider. It sure as hell doesn’t give him the satisfaction he’d hoped to find.
He can feel the vibrations of his phone against his chest and he knows exactly who it is but he ignores it, just a little longer...he just needs a little longer to grieve.
Akaashi closes his eyes and welcomes the darkness into his mind.
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