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Early on in high school, Bokuto Koutarou had decided that piercings were stupid.
He just couldn't see any use to them. They were pointy bits of metal you stuck in various parts of your body to look cool or tough or something, but honestly he couldn't see how they wouldn't get in the way. With something as simple as an ordinary earlobe piercing, he could imagine getting his hair caught in it and his shirt caught on it and it'd be all kinds of uncomfortable and miserable. Then there were those guys who got two right next to each other on their ear or something and had a chain connecting them?
Yeah, they looked kinda dumb.
Super dumb.
Totally not attractive. Not attractive at all.
Not to mention impractical. What if you got hit in the face with a volleyball while you had a piece of spiky metal in your face? It'd be like stabbing oneself with it! He shivered at the thought. Yeah, he didn't want any of that in his life.
His life was too busy being occupied by other things. Things he thought were important. Mostly volleyball things. Okay, entirely volleyball things. He'd practice until he was the last one in the gym every school day, and hang out and continue to practice and play silly impromptu games with Kuroo on the weekends.
Usually he'd try to get Kuroo to practice with him for as long as possible, and soon enough they'd invented their own "game routine" that stretched from the early morning until late at night every Sunday. Playing one-on-one volleyball was near impossible, so they would usually go find a high brick wall to practice serves and tosses against, then test them out against each other. Then, they'd actually TRY to keep a volley going with one another, in a sort of everything-is-allowed-just-don't-let-the-ball-touch-the-ground sort of scenario, even if it meant kicking the ball or hitting it with one's head. He'd rather focus on their obnoxious games than his looks anyway. He figured he looked like a volleyball player, and that was that.
~*~
Kuroo, on the other hand, enjoyed the thought of changing his appearance. Not drastically, by any means, but most of the time he wished he could just find a way to tame his bedhead. Even after showering, the awful hairdo would just spring back into place as soon as it was dry, and it was no use. It just couldn't be helped. He resigned himself to having messy hair until he had long past given up and was probably some salaryman in his late forties or something, and focus on other things.
He considered dyeing it, but he also didn't want to expend the effort. The initial dye job would be fine, but maintaining it wouldn't be. Not to mention growing it out. He didn't want to think about what he'd have to do if he felt the way Kenma did after changing his hair color. He also just never really thought he could pull off that sort of multicolored-temporary sort of look, whatever that meant.
Come to think of it, did it have to be his hair? He had already decided that, for the most part, it was untameable, not to be colored, and he knew he couldn't stand to have a short-cut style like Yaku, so cutting it was out of the question, as well. Hair wasn't the answer. Girls at school could color their nails, and, all things considered, painting his toenails wouldn't be too ridiculous, but with his personal volleyball regimen, they'd be destroyed in less than a day.
Then, it hit him. He could get a piercing. It wouldn't be too awful, there were just some he might have to take out for volleyball. Still, something little like a ring or a bar through his ear cartilage wouldn't be too terrible, or gauges. He had to weigh all of his options carefully, but upon a bit of research he found exactly what he wanted.
~*~
"Your eyebrow?"
"What, you don't like it?" Kuroo pouted, and his owlish companion screwed up his face in uncertainty.
"It's just sorta weird, you know? You've got metal stuck in your face. Don't you have to take it out for practice?"
"Well, yeah, I don't want to take a volleyball to the face with it in, but for now I can't take it out til it heals, so I just have to be super careful for awhile."
Bokuto nodded sagely, as if understanding all of it and nothing all at once. "Are you gonna get more?"
"More?" the other captain blinked. He paused a moment, twirling the ball in his hands. "Well, probably not. If I do, just a second one that matches this one next to it. That might look kinda cool."
"Good."
"Good?" He raised an eyebrow.
"Good, because if you put a ton of metal in your face, you'd look like a robot or something!" Bokuto teased, though Kuroo wasn't entirely sure where he was going with it. "I mean, dude. Don't go getting your septum pierced or any weird shit like those not-vampire ones."
"Not...vampire ones?"
Bokuto wasn't always the most articulate, but Kuroo couldn't blame him. The boy seemed to have a one-track mind. Well, it had two tracks, one being volleyball, and the other being his obsession with Akaashi, but he'd decided that was Bokuto's business.
"Yeah, the ones right here, they look really dumb," Bokuto explained, gesturing to below his lower lip with two fingers.
"Oh, you mean snakebites?"
Bokuto nodded, and Kuroo was pleased with himself for generally being able to decrypt his friend's increasingly creative attempts at communication. He slung an arm around his shoulder. "Hey, it's cool. Piercings aren't for everybody. No big deal."
Less than thirty seconds had passed before none other than Akaashi Keiji entered the gymnasium. He picked up a volleyball, spinning it between his fingers. Today, something was different about him.
Today, his skin bore none other than the tiny metal piercings below his lips that Bokuto had just complained about.
In that moment, the entire gym was silent to one Bokuto Koutarou.
In that moment, he decided, without a single doubt in his mind, that they were beautiful.
It was like something clicked in his brain, or perhaps, instead, something failed to fire entirely. The world was happening in slow motion around him. He couldn't keep his eyes off of those two tiny metal studs, the way Akaashi's face moved as he greeted them, the way they accented his perfect eyes being perfect as he watched them, nearly half-lidded, with this perfect relaxed face and perfect--suddenly he'd forgotten every adjective in the world to describe him, other than perfect.
Fuck.
"Bokuto? Dude? Earth to owl-brains?"
"Kuroo...Akaashi is so perfect."
The Nekoma captain waved his hand in front of Bokuto's face. "Dude. I've been calling your name for like thirty seconds, you okay? You've said Akaashi is perfect..I don't know how many times before."
"Kuroo, I...I gotta take back everything I just said. I think my heart just stopped. You gotta get an ambulance, right now, I'm definitely going into cardiac arrest." He doubled over dramatically, clutching the fabric of his tee shirt. Part of it was for the effect, but his knuckles were white. He really did need a moment to process how wonderful Akaashi looked in that instance.
He chuckled. "Cardiac arrest? If your heart is stopping, then you can't go over there and, oh, I don't know," he waved a hand dismissively, tossing the volleyball back and forth between his hands. "Tell your setter how hot he looks?"
Bokuto stammered aimlessly for a few seconds, before nodding to the other captain, running his fingers through his hair, making sure that it stood up just right for when he strolled over to the setter.
"Nice face we're having. I mean nice day for your face. Your metal is nice--I mean, I like your face." Perfectly eloquent. Ten points for the owlmaster, he'd be swooning soon enough. He'd have to pick Akaashi up off of the floor.
"Thank you, Bokuto-san," came the reply, sounding as even and unimpressed as ever. Bokuto wondered if he should clutch his heart and stumble back in offense, but that might annoy him further.
"So uh...nobody else is here besides Kuroo, I could kiss them," he offered. "I mean, the--" he gestured to his lips.
Akaashi served the ball up against the wall, and it landed a short distance away, bouncing and rolling to a halt. "If you wanted to kiss me, you could have just said something."
'Yeah, but I. Wait, what?" Bokuto squawked.
The setter raised an eyebrow. Bokuto had to stop himself from drooling. The way his lips were just barely parted when he served, the shape they made that impeccably accented his face, and even the way sweat beaded on his brow and dripped down his cheeks was enough to make the captain want to pounce on him.
"I wouldn't mind you kissing me. Or my snakebites, if that's what you've been staring at. Though I get the impression you've been staring at all of me for some time now, Bokuto-san." Akaashi answered, picking up the volleyball from where it had fallen, repeating his serve.
Well, he wasn't wrong.
"So, could I take you out tonight and maybe kiss all of you?" The captain asked, rocking back and forth on his heels as he poked his fingers together nervously. "Ma..y..be...?"
"I'm not busy. I was actually going to go back tonight and get my eyebrow pierced, if you'd like to come."
His grin widened, and he reached out a hand to the setter, but instead of taking his hand, he grinned and pulled him in for a huge, tight hug. "Thank you! Aw man, you're not going to regret it! We can watch movies and doodle and plan out games and--wait, you're going back? Er, okay. Do you think maybe...I could get one too?"
Akaashi glanced from Bokuto, over to Kuroo several meters away, who was violently and excitedly giving a thumbs-up in their direction. His encouragement was far from subtle, but sometimes Bokuto needed a lot more than subtle, which he could appreciate. "If that's what you want."
"As long as I get to go with you!"