Work Text:
The beautiful thing is music can be like a time machine…
It was January 2nd, 2021 the first Saturday of the year, and Akaashi was lazily picking up trash and taking down decorations left over from the small get-together he and Bokuto had organized with a few friends. Only a handful came due to covid precautions so there wasn’t really a mess. The only things really left were the balloons and banners reading “Happy Birthday!” that hung all around the place. Bokuto always insisted that it was more fun to celebrate “time’s birthday” than a “new year” and everyone let him do as he pleased with that.
Akaashi’s favorite playlist was on in the background as he moved around from one area to the next. If anyone could hear what was playing they would question him, no doubt. Akaashi had a very odd taste in music for who he was. Sure, he listened to pop, and rock and whatever else was on the radio and trending recently, that was normal enough. What wasn’t quite normal was for a 25 year old Japanese male to listen to English music released in North America in 1942, at the height of World War II.
Only a handful of people knew that side of him and he quite meant to keep it that way. He blamed a class he took in college, it was a contemporary history class, but it was an elective class and most of the class were college freshmen who didn’t care or pay attention to the teacher who spent 80% of the class between 1935-1955, and while she lost points for that very specific focus, she gained them for actually teaching them everything about that time period worldwide. From clothing styles to food trends to war topics, to music.
There were two whole days during class where they just listened to songs from this time period and the teacher taught them how to dance a little. Akaashi remembers coming home giddy and happy that day, and immediately making a playlist of his favorites, from Cow-Cow Boogie to We’ll Meet Again . The one starting right now was I Had the Craziest Dream and Akaashi found himself setting patterns into his steps along with the flow of the music. He found himself slightly muttering the words, tasting how they felt with his slight accent, under his breath.
“ I kissed you, you didn’t mind it at all… ” he kept singing as he pulled the full trash bag out of the container to take outside, “ If there's a chance that you care, then please, say you do… baby. Say it and make my craziest dream come true .” He kept humming and swifting around the apartment swaying a bit, this song always reminded him of Bokuto for some reason. Probably because he was Akaashi’s craziest dream come true.
Akaashi picked up a yellow balloon that was on the floor as he listened to the next song start to play, it was one that he liked and had brought him to tears when he had seen Avengers: Endgame when he recognized the song playing in the background of one of the scenes. “ Kiss me once, then, kiss me twice, then, kiss me once again… ” he hugged the balloon close to his chest and felt the giddy urge to spin. He was alone, so he indulged, his feet finding the rhythm from that day in class.
The song ended and another started and at one point in a spin Akaashi let go of the balloon and then bumped it into the air, and as it fell slowly he bumped it up again in a mock example of how he used to set with trumpets playing in the background and Vera Lynn telling him they’d “...meet again, one sunny day, ” and Akaashi moved with the balloon’s trajectory instinct to not let it hit the ground second nature. He felt happy and at peace by simply bumping a yellow balloon in his living room with We’ll Meet Again playing in the background.
Without warning, arms wrapped around his waist and his back pressed against a chest, Bokuto was home. The yellow balloon instantly forgotten in his momentary startlement, but he let his hands fall and placed them over the ones on him, and as the next song began he started guiding, two steps this way, two this way, a pull here a pull there, moving Bokuto to the beat of the song. “We'll kiss again, like this again, don't let the teardrops start…” he turned suddenly so he was face to face with Bokuto. Akaashi pulled him close and murmured into his lips “with love that’s true, I'll wait for you, Auf wiedersehen, sweetheart.”
Akaashi didn’t know what it was about the music or the atmosphere but as he muttered those words he felt his mind drift, and he found himself painting a picture, a frightening clear one of coming home after a long war to discover the love of his life had not left the battlegrounds like he had. He could see himself hugging his lover’s sister. He could see himself talking to his lover’s mother. Going to a grave. He could see himself alone. Akaashi’s eyes quickly filled with tears, he wasn’t sure where this was coming from, or why he felt such devastating sadness, but he pulled Bokuto closer. A whisper of a memory, a moment in time calling to him.
“I love you,” he whispered in Bokuto’s ear. His voice was heavy with emotion and he felt Bokuto start to pull away with a worried question, but Akaashi ignored him and held him tight so he wouldn’t pull away. “One more song.” And so one more song played, and they swayed “long ago and far away, I dreamed a dream one day, and now that dream is here beside me…” They moved with the music and Akaashi let his mind come back to this moment, to the present in Bokuto’s arms, and let himself enjoy what he had now instead of thinking of what he could have missed somewhere in time as the song finished with a soft, “just one look and then I knew, that all I longed for long ago was you.”
...one song- the lyrics, the melody, the mood- can take you back to a moment in time like nothing else can.
- Lisa Schroeder