Chapter Text
Akaashi Keiji was pretty sure the world was ending.
He is sitting in the middle of his bed, notebooks scattered across his bedsheets as he’s staring at his phone in his hand while the golden champagnes of the afternoon sky are getting sucked up into the stratosphere, the sun threatening to fall down right at his feet.
Within his roommate’s messy and horribly punctuated block of text, his eyes are stamped onto the words couple’s retreat and for my birthday week, and he could swear he feels the earth begin to melt from the top down and flood into the storm drains at the impending doom of this particular situation.
For the first time in a while, Akaashi feels genuine dread sitting heavy on his shoulders, kicking its legs without any concern for him as he thinks into the phone screen. His heart beats in confrontation, and he thinks he might pass out while his apartment crumbles around him and leaves him in the dust.
Akaashi did not like to be bothered.
If there was one thing everyone knew about him, it was that he hated being annoyed, and put a twenty-foot pole in between himself and the slightest inconveniences that ever tried to face him.
He only dealt with things if he had to, personal shackles in the form of A) university, B) his roommate nearly burning down the apartment when he cooks for them every other night, and C) that silver-haired freak in his culture club that he’d rather die than interact with.
Not to be dramatic.
It kind of sucked that this boy was not only their vice president, but he was also one of his roommate’s best friends in the entire world, so Akaashi was always hiding in his room whenever they had study dates, or found himself researching the best ways to repel annoying pests without using bug spray.
Akaashi thinks Kuroo brings him over just to make him suffer.
He was doing a pretty good job at running away from his problems, but this one in particular always seemed to catch up to him no matter how many times he’s tried to evade it.
Like a damn plague.
And of course, because his roommate was so disgustingly in love, he goes and invites Akaashi on something like a couple’s retreat with a bunch of their coupled friends for the end of next week, knowing damn well Akaashi did not have one singular ounce of a romantic relationship to even entertain something like this.
Akaashi did not mind going, but it was considered very weird to hide in your room every day on a retreat made for daily interaction with at least one other person, and he couldn't say no to him, either, so he was royally fucked regardless.
He sighs all the air in his lungs out and lets his eyes trace over the participants of this group, wondering if there was anyone else probably having a silent mental breakdown alongside him.
Kenma, of course...Oikawa...that must mean...yeah, Iwaizumi’s in here, too. Hinata, and...Kageyama, right…Yamaguchi, and...that blonde boy must be in here, too...Yukie...Suzumeda...and three unknowns.
All couples, and maybe one other single person that Akaashi would have to make awkward conversation with to hopefully pass the time quicker.
Or worse, they were part of a throuple and Akaashi would be violently reminded that he was the only one not in a relationship out of every person in the group.
Akaashi feels his head go up in flames and sees the smoke puffs out of his ears as his thoughts eat their tails and leave him with nothing to fall back on.
He decided that the end of the world was one thing he would not spend alone as he gets up to go see his roommate about this predicament.
Akaashi lets his legs carry him down the hallway of their small apartment — the best they could afford as nearly broke college kids — and he knocks on the cherrywood door near the kitchen twice, a little too hard in his haste, the sound making his brain bounce around.
“Come in!”
Akaashi practically throws himself into Kuroo’s room as his current concerns push him to solve this problem as quickly as humanly possible.
Kuroo is there, a fluffy red blanket wrapped around him and covering his head so that only his bangs poked out from beneath the fabric. Kenma’s head is lying on his lap, his portable console in his hands as his fingers tap over the curved corners of it, anticipating what Akaashi was going to say as soft music plays from the pause menu.
So they were waiting for him. Bastards.
Kuroo’s small television is running an ad about toothpaste, the kind with baking soda in it.
Akaashi blinks and Kuroo does the same, gathering his thoughts in a little pile and trying to figure out what to say.
“I cannot go on that couple’s retreat.” He says, and Kuroo makes a face that shows he did not understand Akaashi’s plight in the slightest.
“Why not?”
“I am not part of a couple.” He says, matter-of-factly, and Kenma raises his eyebrows. “I’ll be the only single one there.”
Granted, Akaashi usually never comes to either of them with a dilemma like this, but still.
This was important.
“That’s okay!” Kuroo says, smiling big like a 6am sunrise as he thinks of an idea. “It’s not really a couple’s thing. You just get discounts and go on dates and get a really cool suite for you and your partner!”
Akaashi nods with a perceptive ah as if he hadn’t thought about that before, making Kuroo nod with him in whatever mutual agreement he thinks they had at this moment.
“I see.” Akaashi nods, before his face falls and Kuroo stops smiling. “So it’s exactly like a couple’s thing.”
“Yes.” Kenma says, and Kuroo groans while Akaashi sighs.
“Kyanma! You weren’t supposed to tell him that!”
Kenma turned his head so that he was looking up at Kuroo directly, his hair messing itself up against the fabric of the blanket over Kuroo’s lap and falling out of the bun he tied it in.
“You couldn’t possibly think Keiji wouldn’t see through that, right?” He asks, his voice soft and patient, and Kuroo pouts.
Kenma reaches up and lightly squeezes Kuroo’s cheek with a smile, just to make him feel a little better about his last-minute idea that was built on faulty foundations from the start.
He did not say I told you so, but Akaashi thinks he didn’t have to.
“I cannot go,” Akaashi tells them again, slightly disheartened that he would be staying in the apartment for a week without Kuroo, but it was a small sacrifice to make in order to avoid the absolute embarrassment for a week. “Just bring me back a souvenir.”
Kuroo huffs and the blanket falls off of his head, making his hair stick up like a halo of black wisps from where the fabric dragged it. Akaashi shakes his head, the humiliation already making its way into his cheeks at the mere thought of going to a couple’s retreat by himself.
It makes him want to throw up, actually.
And then he thinks he’s being too dramatic.
“You’ve gotta come!” Kuroo looks disappointed as his eyebrows worry in the middle of his forehead, before they hitch with yet another idea that Akaashi didn’t want to hear. “We could be a throuple!”
There it is.
“Absolutely not,” Akaashi says, and he is reminded of the throuple in the group chat and how they were probably excited to go on a vacation made for them.
Akaashi truly would be the only odd one out. The fact of the matter makes him shudder.
“How come you don’t just bring a friend?” Kenma asks, and Akaashi shakes his head.
“You two are my closest friends. Everyone else I know is just acquaintances. I can’t go around asking them to come with me on a couple’s retreat.” Akaashi shakes his head and Kenma raises his eyebrows with a nod in agreement.
“That’s true.”
“Just get a partner.” Kuroo shrugs, and Akaashi’s face falls stoic again as he stares at him.
As he said, Akaashi hated being bothered.
There was no way he could fit someone into his life right now with so much commitment. And even if he were to date someone at this exact moment, the question of a couple’s retreat in a week would probably scare them away before he even really got a chance.
He was fucked from every angle he could think of.
“I can’t. A week-long vacation with someone I just met would be worse.” Akaashi shakes his head for what felt like the nth time during this conversation.
Kuroo looks like he's given up, and despite Akaashi preferring this, the world was still crashing and burning and Akaashi felt like he should have entertained more opinions from him. “‘kaashi…”
“I just can’t go, Kuroo.”
Kuroo looks at the floor again and slowly, he squints a little, the dark brown of his eyes flicking back and forth between two tiles like his brain was playing a game of table tennis.
Akaashi squints, too, feeling extremely nervous. He knew that look.
It was very, very close to Kuroo’s thinking face, and in the years that they have been close friends, what usually came out of Kuroo’s mouth after making his thinking face was not good in the slightest.
Fortunately for Akaashi, Kuroo was only halfway there. His real thinking face would have him…
...Pouting and tapping his chin with his forefinger, just like that.
“Stop,” Akaashi says immediately, not bothering to wonder what Kuroo was thinking about saying or doing to him. “Right now. I mean it.”
“What?” Kuroo asks, tilting his head, before he smiles one of those shady grins that slant, like a bridge on the brink of collapsing.
Akaashi felt just as uneasy from the danger.
“It’s not like I was thinking of setting you up with one of my friends or anything.”
Akaashi’s face heats up and Kuroo laughs at the scarlet that powdered his cheeks, giving him away so easily.
It made him sick.
“Do not do that.” He says, abhorrent already to something that hadn’t even taken a malleable shape, yet.
Knowing Kuroo, it would take its form by tomorrow, considering they both conveniently had classes and Kuroo would probably see whoever he was thinking about then.
“It’s the only way, Akaashi,” Kuroo says, final, and Akaashi shakes his head again.
“I’d rather die than be set up on a blind date with one of your friends.”
“A blind date is perfect!” Kuroo claps with the blanket and it makes a muffled sound, and Kenma shuts his eyes, his console lying on his stomach and his arms at his side, deciding he needed to rest before he got the energy to convince Kuroo that this would, in fact, be a horrible idea.
“It’s terrible. It’s probably the worst thing you’ve ever come up with.” Akaashi says, and Kuroo gasps softly, offended.
“Not true. Remember when we went to that lake? With the fireworks?”
Akaashi does remember that lake, and he silently takes back what he said and waits for Kuroo to finish his stupid sentence. “Whatever.”
“I know the perfect guy.” Kuroo nods and smiles, trying his best to be reassuring but instilling fear in Akaashi instead. “You’ll love him!”
“Kenma, please talk Kuroo out of this,” Akaashi says, and Kenma opens his eyes to look at Kuroo.
“Don’t do this, Kuro. Blind dates are bad.” Kenma says, though his voice was tired and he knew he probably wouldn’t be able to deter him tonight.
“Not true! Yukie got her girlfriend from a blind date!” Kuroo says, and Akaashi sighs, looking at the floor.
“I will figure something out, okay?” He says, though he knew he wouldn’t because he was talking about a plan that he didn’t even have. “I’ll go as long as you don’t do whatever the hell you’re thinking of. I’m serious.”
Kuroo sighs into the air. “Fine. Fine, but you’d better come, okay?”
“Fine.”
Akaashi shuts the door and mutters beneath his breath on the way back to his room, flopping onto his back on the bed, listening to his notebook slide off the sheets in a flap of paper wings as he lets his thoughts float off into the air and stick onto the ceiling.
He stares at them, before sighing again and feeling another headache coming on.
Figure something out, huh?
Akaashi was screwed.