Chapter Text
Deep breaths. In… and out…
Soft footsteps down a quiet backstreet. When Akaashi’s thoughts got too much, his feet started to move on instinct. It wasn’t so much a coping mechanism as an involuntary reaction now.
It didn’t matter where he was going, and he knew he would always eventually end up in the same place.
His feet carried him in quick, rhythmic steps. Soon, he found himself at that strange, liminal place, the highway. It cut up the neighbourhoods, snaking its way through the land, taking its riders off into the horizon. There was a kind of solace in the traffic noises and constant movement. Akaashi sat and watched the cars pass by for a while, a swarm of headlights staring into him through the early-evening dusk. Once it got too dark, he turned on his heel and disappeared back into the streets.
At some point he passed a park that he used to play in as a child. Suddenly, he was hit with a familiar wave of nostalgia, a warm feeling that rose in his stomach but ached in his veins. Things were so much simpler back then… back when he was blissfully oblivious.
Before he even knew it he was home.
The house he had grown up in; at a first glance, not much had changed in the time since he had left. The lights were on, like any evening, and the door was still painted blue and the flower box at the front was blooming purple and red in the summer air. He could almost pretend like no time had passed at all, like he was eighteen again.
Akaashi felt so torn about being back here. In many ways it was safe and reassuring. He knew every little detail like the back of his hand, no nasty surprises, no painful shocks. But he wasn’t meant to be here - he was meant to be out making a new life, being a twenty year old.
Yet already, he felt the unbearable weight of those twenty years. His heart felt heavy like he had come crashing to earth and it had been ripped out of his chest on impact.
So it was for the best that he was back here. That’s what the college counselor had said, and she was probably right.
“Go home and take some time to process everything”
Deep down, Akaashi knew he was running away. He didn’t really feel ashamed of that, although he felt like he should . It just was what it was. When things got tough, that was always an urge he felt. His feet got restless and his arms itchy, the tension built in his body. A lot of the time, that urge would be satisfied by disappearing into a good book, where his mind could escape into another world. But here, in the real world, it would be so easy to keep walking, to walk right past the house, to the station and jump on the next train that came. It would be so easy to vanish and leave everything behind.
Yet that was exactly what he had done, but in the wrong direction. He had left his life at a top university in Kyoto behind, one that he had worked so hard to get, and returned to whence he came.
He had been lucky that the Library where he worked on Saturdays while at school needed full time staff, and were quick to hire him back. It wasn’t any kind of dream, but he didn’t mind being surrounded by books, and he didn’t mind the repetitive schedule of this kind of life. It was easy, it didn’t require any kind of difficult thinking. Something about the routine of the job soothed him.
It hadn’t taken long for Akaashi to sink deep into this routine, and soon the days had turned into months. Before he even knew it, most of his year out had passed. Now it was the spring, and the prospect of returning to college in the autumn was creeping ever closer. He didn't want to even think about going back, he wasn't ready yet, he needed more time. But time was something he didn't have.
The universe gave him something else instead.
*
He heard him before he saw him. A familiar voice floating over the aisles of books, that jerked something awake inside his stomach.
“Oh, my friend in high school used to work in here! Do you remember him? Akaashi Keiji?” That voice was deep and colourful, full of a variety of expressive tones.
Akaashi rounded the corner and immediately caught sight of a solid, broad set of shoulders. That height and that hair. He suddenly realised how long it had been since he had seen him.
“Bokuto?” He asked quietly, his voice a little hoarse.
When Bokuto turned at the noise, Akaashi immediately noticed that one of his arms was in a sling. Apart from that, the man looked healthier than ever, in the prime of his life, some might say. Bokuto’s face lit up in recognition and excitement on seeing him.
“Akaashi!” Bokuto said his name the same way he had always said it, like two years hadn’t passed in the blink of an eye. It had been a long time since anyone had said Akaashi’s name like that. No, wait, no one had ever said his name like Bokuto did.
Akaashi raised an eyebrow. “What the hell did you do to your arm?” He looked at Bokuto with that astute stare that saw straight through the other man. Bokuto fidgeted and scratched the back of his head.
“Uhhh… basically I dislocated my shoulder. But then they also found a bunch of my muscles were in bad shape... So they sent me home to recover.”
Akaashi looked him up and down. “Well you’re not doing much recovering if you’re running all around town with it, are you?”
Bokuto smiled and shrugged. “I don’t like resting, it’s so boring! You just have to sit there not doing anything, watching TV all day.”
Akaashi snorted. “Sounds pretty good to me.”
“They won’t even let me play volleyball…” Bokuto grumbled.
“Well, of course not, that’s the whole point of resting.” Akaashi said, deadpan.
Bokuto looked at him for a moment like he was suddenly realising something important. “Wait, so why are you back here Akaashi? I thought you were studying in Kyoto.” He asked.
Akaashi swallowed down the lump that had suddenly appeared in his throat. He thought for a moment how best to explain, staring blankly down at the book in his hands that he had been replacing on the shelf.
“Second year was really tough. A lot of stuff happened and I… I just needed a break.” Akaashi avoided eye contact, trying to make it clear that he didn’t want to be probed any further.
Still, he could feel those wide, excitable eyes looking at him. “I’m sorry, Akaashi, that sounds rough.” Akaashi just batted his hand in the air, and he knew that Bokuto wouldn’t push it.
“Well, we should hang out as we’re both back.” Bokuto smiled his honest, boundless smile. It triggered a foreign feeling inside Akaashi’s chest. It had been so long since there had been any kind of warmth there... He just nodded in response.
It was a dangerous feeling that Bokuto had set off in him, one that walked a tightrope strung between passion and panic. It would be so easy to fall off on the wrong side...
But, he had to admit, he had missed it.
After all, how were you meant to live if you couldn’t believe that one day, you might feel hope again? That one day, it might get better?