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Two. No, three now. Three teeth loose in his mouth. Akaashi tries to focus on whatever the teacher is saying but he can't read the chicken scratch on the blackboard, or the identical scribbles in his notebook. The teacher's droning might as well be Greek for all Akaashi can understand. The important thing is not embarrassing himself. Opening your mouth and having teeth fall out onto your lap? Absolutely embarrassing. He'd be the laughing stock of his class.
"Akaashi."
Akaashi almost falls for it, but manages to keep his lips shut. Four teeth now, he can count them with his tongue. They taste like coins.
"Akaashi, it's not that bad, you know!"
Bokuto, as usual, fails at using an indoor voice. Somehow the teacher seems not to notice and keeps lecturing unintelligibly. Akaashi glances sideways at his friend.
"I mean, I know it sucks but really, it happens to everyone," Bokuto chirps. "See, look."
Akaashi watches (five teeth) as Bokuto reaches into his mouth with two fingers, all the way to the back, and plucks out his own molar.
"Told you. Quit moping." He flicks the tooth at Akaashi, hitting him square in the forehead. Akaashi jolts, blinking until his eyes finally focus on the dark ceiling of his bedroom. The clock on his desk glares at him. 6:57. Of course. He rolls over and pretends to sleep for another three minutes until his alarm goes off.
Akaashi pays no mind to the dream as he shuffles to the bathroom. It's not like he has them especially often, and everyone has teeth dreams sometimes. At least he's pretty sure they do. He can think of worse things to dream about, anyway. The light in the bathroom buzzes briefly when he flips the switch, as usual, and he squints against the brightness. He almost doesn't notice it, half asleep and preoccupied with using the toilet, but it catches his eye at the last possible moment.
A tooth.
Saliva slowly fills his mouth. Tastes like coins again. Akaashi stares at it, unsure if he's still sleeping, but no matter how many times he blinks, there it sits. A single tooth, whole and only slightly less white than the porcelain of his sink. The root is long, just like the diagrams he's seen at the dentist, and there's a bit of pink tissue attached.
Panic floods in after the delay of shock passes and Akaashi runs his tongue over his teeth. He sticks a finger in his mouth and touches each one, counting. Twenty-eight. A normal adult set, less the two wisdom teeth he had removed and the two remaining that never erupted. He presses into his gums and can just feel the bony hardness of them still underneath. Finally tearing his eyes off the tooth in the sink, Akaashi leans into the mirror, pulling his lips back and counting again, and then again. Twenty-eight. None missing.
And yet there is a tooth in his sink.
Akaashi wipes his fingers on his shirt and carefully, haltingly, picks it up. It's too small for a molar, not flat enough to be an incisor. He tries to remember the diagrams at his dentist’s office… bicuspid? He bares his teeth at his reflection and holds the tooth up to compare. Same size. Definitely adult. Well duh, he thinks, brain sluggishly trying to come up with anything useful, baby teeth don't have roots.
Long roots with a bit of pink tissue attached.
He swallows thickly against the not-quite-bile that threatens to rise in his throat. With his free hand, Akaashi opens the medicine cabinet. The bottle of ibuprofen he keeps is almost empty; he dumps the last few in the wastebasket and replaces them with the tooth. He stares at it there, only slightly less white than the plastic of the bottle. Akaashi replaces the lid and puts its back in the medicine cabinet. He half expects to see something horrible in the mirror's reflection when he closes it, but it's just his own pale face staring back at him.
---
Akaashi eats more carefully than he thinks he ever has before, paranoid that every next bite will break his teeth. Nevermind that the hardest thing in his lunch is steamed broccoli. Bokuto is talking, has been talking since he skipped into Akaashi's classroom for lunch period. Ordinarily, Akaashi likes listening to him talk. Today has felt somewhat less than ordinary.
"I had a weird dream last night."
Bokuto pauses mid-sentence. Akaashi almost apologizes for interrupting but Bokuto barely seems to notice.
"Yeah? What was it about?" He takes a bigger than necessary bite of his neglected food and watches Akaashi. Akaashi feels almost comforted by the genuine interest in his wide eyes.
"My teeth were falling out," he says.
Bokuto's nose scrunches up. "Ugh, those are the worst," he says around his mouthful.
Akaashi almost smiles. "Yours were coming out, too."
"Ew!" Bokuto pulls a comedically horrified face. "Now I'm gonna have gross dreams too, thanks a lot."
"Sorry," Akaashi laughs. It makes his gums itch less, soothes the sensation of being claustrophobic in his own skin. He thinks of telling Bokuto what happened after that but it would ruin the good mood. This morning was… weird, but Akaashi can handle it on his own.
"Your tomato is forfeit," Bokuto announces. "Payment for the freaky dreams I know I'm gonna have tonight."
"Truly the most heinous punishment."
"Can you at least pretend to be upset? I'm stealing your vegetables, Akaashi, fight back."
---
When it happens, it feels like his whole body lights up. Every bone buzzes and his muscles lock. Crunch. Akaashi spits his food back onto his plate and pokes the half chewed pile with his chopsticks until it emerges. Smooth, white, shiny.
Half.
The remainder scrapes sharp against his tongue, right at the front of his mouth. He touches it gingerly with his fingertip, feeling the ragged edge, when it suddenly shifts, loosened. It falls out into his hand, the other half of his tooth. Well, two thirds, more likely, now that the long root is exposed, a bit of pink tissue still attached. Blood drips from the hole in his gums onto the tooth, onto his plate. Akaashi grabs his napkin, pressing it against his open mouth. It feels too wet too quickly. Do gums bleed this much?
"Mom," he says, muffled.
Neither of his parents have noticed his dilemma. They continue their conversation. Akaashi can't hear much over the white noise in his ears.
"Mom."
"Keiji, please don't interrupt."
Akaashi runs his tongue around his mouth, pushing out blood and spit. Tastes like coins, tastes like buzzing fluorescent light bulbs. Another tooth gives under his tongue and he makes a choked noise. When he pulls the napkin away, the tooth is somehow clean and white, only a wet shine on it despite the pink and red swirls in which it sits. He drops the napkin on his plate and takes a mouthful of water, swishing it around and spitting it back into the glass, making more red swirls.
His dad tuts at him. "Table manners, Keiji, please."
Akaashi watches another tooth slowly sinking in the glass. When it touches the bottom, it shrieks. He reaches for his alarm clock before he even opens his eyes. The glowing red numbers (red swirls, white bone, a bit of pink tissue still attached) glare at him when he squints at it. 7 o'clock. The bathroom door is open. The bathroom door is always open but now it feels like a nauseous invitation.
One tooth. Whole, clean, slightly less white than the porcelain of his sink. There's a spot on it that's brighter than the rest; a filling, probably. Akaashi picks it up. Adult sized (long roots), wide and cup-like at the head. A molar. He looks in the mirror and checks his mouth. Twenty-eight, no cracks, no chips. He looks back at the tooth in his hand and nearly drops it when his stomach suddenly churns. Breathing deeply through nose, Akaashi puts it in the bottle with the first one. They clack together as he returns them to the medicine cabinet.
---
The bell rings for lunch and barely a full minute passes before Bokuto skids into the classroom, bento in hand. Akaashi's lunch is open and untouched.
"I was right and you totally suck," Bokuto says. "I had a dream that I was in gym class but we were all kind of goofing off, y'know, since it was so hot outside and then Izumi, you know Izumi from my class, he pulled out his book bag and it was full of fruit for some reason? He said I could have some and he gave me like the biggest, nicest apple I've ever seen so I took a huge bite and it was rock hard . Like three of my teeth got chipped, it was so lame. And then the school flooded or something, and we started swimming laps in the hallways."
Akaashi pretends to laugh but it comes out more like a hum. "That's weird."
"Yeah, right? I'm taking your tomato again."
"You can have whatever you want," Akaashi says, pushing his bento across the desk. "I'm not hungry."
Bokuto frowns at him. "Are you okay?"
"Stomach ache." It's not a lie; Akaashi's guts have been in knots since he woke up. The next part is the lie. He puts on a little smile. "I'm fine."
"If you're sure," Bokuto says, still watching Akaashi with a careful eye. He takes a couple of the offered vegetables but with less gusto than usual. "Eat some rice at least. I'm older so you have to do what I say."
"That has never once worked," Akaashi says. He picks at his rice anyway.
---
The blue-white glow of his phone screen casts Akaashi and his bed in a ghostly light. He's searched the internet for any kind of answer. Teeth dreams, teeth nightmares, dreams where your teeth fall out, dreaming the same thing again, dreams that feel too real. He can't bring himself to type out what he really wants to search for. The two teeth are still in the ibuprofen bottle in his medicine cabinet. He checked on them after he got home from school and again after his bath. Still there each time. Typing it out feels too much though, like the full weight of the weirdness will finally collapse on him if he actually acknowledges it.
The floor creaks slightly in the hall. Akaashi locks his phone and slips it under his pillow. It's not unusual for his dad to watch television in the living room when he can't sleep, but if he catches Akaashi up at this hour on a school night he would definitely tut at him and Akaashi isn't in the mood. He shuts his eyes to feign sleep just as the door opens.
It sounds like a buzzing fluorescent light, white noise rushing in his ears and the taste of coins at the back of his throat. Akaashi's body locks. It isn't his dad.
Feet slide across the floor. Past the desk, the bed, Akaashi's frozen body. Into the bathroom. He can't open his eyes, can barely hear over his own frantic heartbeat. Plink. A barely-there sound, Akaashi probably wouldn't have heard it at all if not for it's high, tinkling pitch. Plink. Like rain on glass. Plink. Like teeth on porcelain.
The shuffling returns from the bathroom and stops at the side of the bed. Akaashi wants to cry. Tears burn his eyes but he won't, can't open them. His stomach twists violently and his blood rushes too fast, pounding in his chest and head and making him dizzy. It's still there, unmoving, Akaashi can feel it. Every ounce of his power goes to breathing slowly through his nose (smells like, tastes like coins) and keeping his eyes from screwing shut too tightly. Sleeping. Just sleeping. His fingers curl into fists under the sheets, so hard he thinks his knuckles might creak.
Slow breaths. Relaxed face. Akaashi doesn't know how long he's been playing this game, or how much longer he'll have to keep it up. It's still there at the edge of the bed.
He starts slipping toward something like actual sleep. Or maybe unconsciousness is more accurate. People can pass out from fear, he thinks. High blood pressure, maybe. It's an unhelpful thought, a single clear but useless idea rising from the sludge of his brain. Buzzing fluorescent lights like a white noise machine. Metallic bile like vomiting up coins.
The alarm clock screams. All the tension in Akaashi's body snaps, eyes flying open and a creaky cry ripping from his throat before he can even see.
He's alone.
Akaashi stops the alarm with a shaky hand and swivels his head to check every corner of the room. He slowly lowers his upper half off the bed and peeks upside down underneath. Checks the room again after righting himself. Empty.
He ignores the sink when he checks the bathroom. He already knows what's there, so he looks behind the door and in the tub. Nothing. Finally, he turns to the three teeth in the sink. Two are the same, one different. He can't think to name them. They join the others in the bottle, his body moving without input from his brain.
---
The day passes in a haze. Akaashi can barely stay awake through class. When the lunch bell rings, he hides his head in his arms and falls asleep as soon as his face touches the desk. He doesn't dream at all ( it takes at least an hour for the brain to enter REM sleep , he remembers vaguely) and when he's roused by the next bell, he feels grateful for that. He sits up and finds a note tucked under his elbow in Bokuto's handwriting.
Are you okay? :(
Akaashi sighs and sticks the note in his pocket. It's comforting just to know that he cares, but Akaashi is reminded that Bokuto is more astute than people usually give him credit for and lying to him that everything is fine hasn't felt good at all.
At the end of the day, Bokuto, predictably, finds him in the hallway. His mouth opens to speak but Akaashi beats him to the punch. “Can I come over to your house for a little while?”
A look of surprise crosses Bokuto’s face, mouth snapping shut. He takes a second to process before answering. “Yeah, of course!”
The two of them walk side by side. Bokuto fiddles with his shirt buttons and the strap of his bag. It’s clear he wants to ask something. They’re at the school’s front gate when he can no longer hold it in. “Did you get my note?”
It’s probably not what he really wants to ask but it’s close enough. “Yes,” Akaashi says. He hesitates for just a moment before continuing. "I might be getting sick, but I'll be fine." Akaashi hopes dearly that it's the last time he has to lie.
At Bokuto's house, they have a snack together and then Bokuto is practically pulling Akaashi upstairs to show him a video game he's been playing. Akaashi watches and listens to Bokuto as he explains the game controls and plot until his eyes start to feel heavy again. "Bokuto-san?"
"M'yeah?"
"Is it alright if I lie down?"
Bokuto turns to meet Akaashi's eyes, concern written plain across his face. He looks as if he might say something, start fussing over Akaashi, but instead he just slides off his bed to the floor. His head flops backwards and he gives Akaashi a little half smile, not nearly his usual beaming wattage, but it still makes Akaashi feel better. "It's all yours," Bokuto says. "Want me to turn the TV down?"
"No, it's alright." Akaashi makes himself comfortable, pulling the blanket up to his chin. The sheets smell like his friend and he drifts off quickly to the sound of Bokuto's game, feeling more relaxed than he has in days. His dreams are loose and shifting, so unlike the detailed nightmares of late. Memories of volleyball practices and after-school study dates are made harmlessly absurd by his sleeping brain, and not a lost tooth in sight.
---
Akaashi walks home as the sun begins to set, having been cajoled by Bokuto into staying for dinner. The ease he felt with his friend drains with every step until he’s back in his bedroom. He has a plan, though. A terrible one, he thinks, but he has to do something.
He bathes, puts on his pajamas, brushes his teeth (all twenty-eight, whole and white like porcelain), and lets himself go numb to the anxiety twisting his stomach. He spits and watches it swirl down the sink drain. The bottle is still in his medicine cabinet, and the teeth still in the bottle. Akaashi takes it and sits in his desk chair.
Then, he waits.
The minutes tick by, each furtive glance at his alarm clock peeling away a bit more of his resolve. He briefly considers doing homework while he waits and then the absurdity of the idea forces a single tight laugh out of him. Really, the whole thing is absurd. His mind wars with itself, telling him it was only a dream or maybe just hoping that it was, but then he remembers the feeling, the marrow-deep fear, the prickle in the back of his skull that screamed I’m going to die . A dream can’t do that. So he waits.
After another five minutes that feels like thirty, he turns to look at the clock again but stops. All at once, his jaw tingles and saliva floods his mouth. Buzzing, like a fluorescent light, like his bones want to escape his skin, like biting coins. The floorboards creak at the end of the hall. Akaashi can only just hear it over the rushing blood in his ears. With each soft step his chest tightens until he can barely breathe. They stop just outside his door (the bottle rattles in his fist, teeth on plastic, buzzing, buzzing) and the knob turns.
Akaashi sucks in a halting breath through his nose when he sees it. He can’t open his mouth, can barely swallow against the scream trapped in his throat. It’s shaped nearly like a person, not quite right, and every inch like charcoal, like flesh blackened and cracked. Akaashi smells metal, like wet coins, like blood, like the buzzing now louder than his heartbeat. There is no face. Only teeth.
If the thing is surprised to find Akaashi awake, it makes no indication. It comes to stand before him, looks down at him, waits. Akaashi wants to vomit. Instead, he raises the bottle, teeth clacking against the plastic in his shaking fingers. The thing lifts its crooked hand, palm up, and Akaashi dumps the teeth. Five, long roots, bright white against impossible black. It tilts its not-face down to regard the teeth, then back up to Akaashi. Though every cell of his body is screaming, his voice comes out a whisper, sounding far away from himself.
“Thank you,” he says shakily, reciting the words he so carefully chose, “but I have all that I need.”
It stands there, holding the teeth, and Akaashi isn’t sure if the ones on its face are moving or if it’s his own blurred vision. He blinks his stinging eyes, swallows against the taste of metal, breathes despite the vice on his chest. Finally, misshapen fingers close over white teeth. It turns, shuffling back to the hall, closing the door behind it. Akaashi listens to its creaking steps grow softer until the buzz disappears and the house is silent again.
A sob rips from him and he collapses in his chair, head between his knees, until the bile in his throat subsides. He wipes his face on his sleeve and sends Bokuto a text with fingers still trembling, telling him he won’t be at school today. He’s sure Bokuto will reply with a flurry of texts when he wakes and probably come see him after class no matter what Akaashi says. He wonders if he’ll tell him the truth, if Bokuto would believe it, if anyone would.
If it weren’t for the lingering taste of coins, Akaashi would hardly believe it himself.
He stumbles to his bed, mind and body both exhausted, and falls into blessedly dreamless sleep.