Archive of Our Own

Akaashi has always admired the stars.

As a child, he preferred to float up and dance among their graciousness as opposed to enduring the mundane happenings of the Earth. When clouds usurped the skies, they taunted him, dangling the threat of devouring his favorite stars right in front of his naive credulity. The stars always persevered, though; they always broke through the misty veil, banishing it from the sky.

He used to berate the Sun for monopolizing the daytime sky. How selfish of the Sun to outshine Akaashi’s stars, to deprive Akaashi of their comforting glow. Resentment ate at his insides. That was until the Earth offered him his own pair of stars to level the Sun.

“Hey, uhh, Akashi-kun.”

“It’s Akaashi,” he had responded before glancing up from the gym floor.

“Could you please help me practice spikes for just a little bit?”

Akaashi’s eyes met two gleaming, golden stars. Their subdued wonder enchanted him, swiftly dispelling any discontent from Akaashi’s mind. At that moment, Akaashi decided he’d gladly surrender the daytime to the Sun in exchange for the Earth’s generous gift.

A year later, as he leans back on his arms, tight from the first day of summer training camp, his eyes trace over the familiar constellations in the midnight sky. To Akaashi, they serve as a reminder of the sparkle in his exuberant teammate’s eyes.

The door behind him slides open, wood scraping against the floor.

“Can’t sleep?” Bokuto’s sleep-laden voice sounds from the doorway. His slippers tap against the patio.

“It would appear so.” Akaashi takes the glass of water Bokuto extends to him, deliberately brushing his fingers over Bokuto’s hand. He takes a sip.

After an entire year, Akaashi has grown accustomed to suppressing the flutter the touch sends through his chest. It had only taken a month after meeting Bokuto for Akaashi to realize Bokuto’s eyes aren’t the only captivating thing about him. Everything, from the way he commands the respect of an entire volleyball stadium to the way his hair droops during one of his slumps, lights a flame behind Akaashi’s rib cage.

Bokuto drapes a blanket over Akaashi’s shoulders before dropping onto the step beside him.

“You don’t have to stay out here with me,” Akaashi says, lifting the blanket up to his face.

“I want to.”

The flame tickles Akaashi's heart.

“Weren’t you asleep, Bokuto-san?”

“I was, but then I woke up.” The corners of Bokuto’s eyes crease over a tender smile. “So what are we looking at tonight?”

“The stars,” Akaashi responds contentedly.

They both turn their eyes upwards. Akaashi maps out the brightest constellations for Bokuto, pointing animatedly across the sky.

“That one over there is Aquila. It kind of looks like a couple of triangles, but it’s actually supposed to be an—”

“An owl! It looks like an owl! It’s just missing the ears.” Bokuto brings two pointer fingers up to the sides of his head, turning back to Akaashi.

“I suppose it does look like an owl,” Akaashi says through a soft chuckle.

“I can’t believe you remember all these constellations. What’s so special about a bunch of dots in the sky anyway?”

“It’s not about the dots, Bokuto-san. It’s about what you can see in them.”

“Well, what do you see?”

Oh, Bokuto-san, Akaashi thinks, how do I tell you ‘When I look up at the stars, I see the joy behind your eyes, the pride, the hope, and the playfulness all shining back down on me’ without scaring you off?

Instead, he opts for “I see… something bigger than myself.”

At Bokuto’s wide-eyed silence, Akaashi continues to spout the first things that flood into his mind.

“We’re all human down here. We have morals, and passions, and fears; we love, and we hate. But why? I think the easy answer is that the same processes that create the light in those dots created every last atom that put us here. It’s just a chain of events, isn’t it? Seeing the first link in that chain, though, it just feels like it lifts a load off my shoulders. Something about a primitive universe or other.” Akaashi clears his throat. “Y’know?”

“Not really,” Bokuto mumbles to himself. In Bokuto’s defense, Akaashi did throw a liberal sampling of philosophically involved ideas at him at one in the morning.

Bokuto squints up at the stars, uncharacteristically quiet. Akaashi doesn’t need to know it’s because Bokuto is focused on counting every single pinprick of light he can find.

Twenty-six pinpricks later, perhaps 27, a weight drops onto Bokuto’s shoulder.

“Akaashi?”

Muffled snores vibrate against his sleeve.

Bokuto’s mouth quirks up. He eyes the humble curl of Akaashi’s lashes, then rests his cheek against Akaashi’s hair. Stray tufts tickle the tip of his nose.

Akaashi’s words replay in his mind. Even if their meaning goes over his head, Bokuto is glad he was there to hear them. It would've been quite a shame for the orchestra that is Akaashi’s voice to fall on an empty theater.

Peering up at the sky, Bokuto urges the stars to explain. If he can’t grasp Akaashi’s meaning, surely they can. Even so, they withhold their secrets from him. He scoffs. Those conceited bastards, they just want Akaashi all to themselves. One day, he’ll pry an answer out of them.

He tucks an arm below Akaashi’s knees and carries him back inside, tiptoeing around his teammates before lowering Akaashi onto the futon. He hops back outside to bring in their empty glasses.

Sliding onto his own futon, Bokuto forgoes detangling his blanket from around Akaashi; the steady rise and fall of Akaashi’s chest beside him is warmth enough. He draws his knees into his chest, finally drifting off into an uninterrupted sleep.

In the morning, Akaashi wakes before the rest of his team with a weight on his chest. Looking down, he finds a mop of gray hair. Bokuto’s futon lies empty and forgotten. Akaashi bites at his lip as he drags his fingers through silver locks.

If Akaashi tries hard enough, he can pretend he and Bokuto aren't in the middle of a training camp surrounded by obnoxious, teenage boys. In lieu of their current setting, they’re waking up beside one another in a pool of sunlight pouring in from the window of their shared bedroom. Midori, Shida-san, and Hana project lopsided shadows over their satin bed sheets. (In his fantasy, Bokuto insists on naming their houseplants before placing them on the window sill.)

Loud snores from his teammates invade Akaashi’s daydream.

As he wriggles himself out from under Bokuto, a disappointed grumble reverberates inside Bokuto’s throat. Akaashi tosses the blankets over Bokuto, tucking the edge under Bokuto’s chin before retreating to the bathroom.

After summer, school starts back up in full swing for Bokuto and Akaashi. Battered by relentless exams, they spend all their free time studying, or at least Akaashi does.

While Bokuto tries to study, his thoughts constantly drift back to new attacks to practice with Akaashi, new rotations to rehearse with Akaashi, and new serves to show Akaashi.

He looks back at his notes. Instead of the definition of a redox reaction, he finds Akaashi’s name scrawled out in mindless strokes across the page. He sets his pen down on the table.

Knock, knock.

Through his window pane, Akaashi spots the glimmer of Bokuto’s grin piercing through the darkness. Akaashi jumps to his feet, bumping his desk and sending his loose-leaf notes toppling to the ground. Akaashi steps over the stationery splayed across his floor to open the window.

“Bokuto-san, what are you doing here?”

“Come on.” Bokuto gestures for Akaashi to follow him.

“To where?”

“Don’t worry. You're going to like it.”

Akaashi watches Bokuto bounce up and down on the balls of his feet, hands tucked neatly behind his back. Easily, Akaashi replies, “I’m not worried.” He crawls through his window frame and falls into step beside Bokuto.

The Moon lends Akaashi and Bokuto her patronage through the wistful evening. She showers placid light over the street for them until Bokuto turns away from the main road, cutting through a strip of weeping trees. She bids them a final, graceful farewell before dipping under the horizon.

On the other side of the patch of trees, a rusty park gate awaits Bokuto and Akaashi. It lets them through with a sustained creak. Resolute darkness swallows them up, and Akaashi rubs at his eyes. He blinks through fuzzy silhouettes, recognizing the outline of a flimsy swing set.

“Where are we, Bokuto-san?”

“You can see the stars so much better here, can’t you?”

Akaashi looks up over Bokuto’s head.

“Oh, Bokuto…” he breathes.

Hundreds of twinkling diamonds rain down on Akaashi, calling to him in an intimate symphony. Where the stars usually suspend themselves against a black backdrop, they now command the sky, funneling the darkness through slender gaps between their brilliance.

“This is…” Akaashi trails off.

Bokuto gazes at the reflection of stars in Akaashi’s glistening eyes.

A mess of emotions surge into Bokuto’s stomach, coalescing and contracting. The nebula continues compressing until it ignites. Under his skin, its gravity pushes and pulls delicately, breathing, growing. Bokuto’s surprised; he didn’t think he could feel this way with Akaashi looking anywhere but at him.

He wraps his hand around Akaashi’s wrist and pulls Akaashi down to the overgrown grass.

“But you think stargazing is boring.” Akaashi’s eyebrows pinch together.

“You don’t. And spending time with you isn’t boring.”

They lay down shoulder to shoulder. It takes a moment, but Bokuto begins to recognize constellations in the sky from astronomy blog diagrams he’d studied.

“There’s Aquarius!” His hand darts across the sky. “And Pegasus! And Pisces! Akaashi, do you see them?”

“I do, Bokuto-san.”

“There are so many more stars out here than there were in summer, Akaashi! Did you know it’s because there’s so much light in the city? But in our neighborhood, there isn’t as much, so we can see more stars.”

Doesn’t Bokuto have a chemistry exam in two days? When did he find the time to learn all this, Akaashi wonders.

“Bokuto-san.”

“But even if there are more stars, these aren’t the same stars as in summer either. Y’know we can see different constellations in different seasons?”

“Bokuto-san.”

“In a couple months, we’ll see new constellations, but there are some constellations you can see all year long.”

“Bokuto-san!”

“What?”

Akaashi isn’t in the habit of indulging. Yet there he lies, succumbing to his most forlorn desire.

The ground falls out from under him, but remarkably, Akaashi doesn’t follow. Hovering in empty space, the welcoming arms of the heavens summon him. One with the stars, his unadulterated emotions fuse into light and sheer rapture.

Akaashi pulls away, relinquishing himself of his mindscape. Bokuto’s flushed lips desperately chase after him, just falling short. Their laughs spill into the abandoned park.

“So… you like me, too?” Bokuto whispers.

“Yes, Bokuto-san,” Akaashi says into the floor. Heat pools in his cheeks, and he prays the dark conceals his emerging blush.

Bokuto pulls Akaashi into a hug. Over Bokuto’s shoulder, Akaashi exhales in relief. Akaashi isn’t concerned in the slightest that he left the stars behind; he had his own little package of heaven right there in his arms.

They walk back to Akaashi’s house hand in hand. At Akaashi’s door, Bokuto presses a heavy kiss on Akaashi’s lips. His hand finds Akaashi’s cheek, and they stumble backwards into the wall.

“We have”—kiss—“school tomorrow”—kiss—“Bokuto-san.”

Bokuto groans, peeling his lips from Akaashi’s. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then?”

As Akaashi nods, their noses brush against each other. He hums in response.

Bokuto watches Akaashi disappear into his house before turning on his heel. The Moon has long since set, and the flickering yellow of the streetlights does little to brighten the street in front of him. Lucky for Bokuto, the stars look out for him, and their starlight illuminates the road in front of him.

He supposes he should thank them for lighting his path. Not just the path home, but his path to Akaashi.

If they’d offered Bokuto the cursory response he’d asked for all those nights ago, he’d probably still be huddled over his chemistry notes, yearning hopelessly. Instead, he’s walking home with a giddy feeling in his chest and a tingle in his lips.

It was their stubbornness that gave Bokuto the intrigue he needed, their stubbornness that led Bokuto to study the night sky, and their stubbornness that paved his way to Akaashi. Gone are the little pinpricks of light, and in their place are hopeless romantics who’ve rooted for Bokuto and Akaashi since the beginning.

Sorry for calling you conceited bastards, Bokuto thinks.

Now, whenever Bokuto looks up at the stars, he tips a metaphorical hat to them in gratitude for their efforts. It's the least he could do for them after they helped him win over the man of his dreams.