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Bokuto calls Akaashi's name and waves frantically at him during their evening practice. Akaashi's taken a few steps outside the gym during break, standing in the cool autumn breeze, a towel around his neck and a water bottle in his hand. He doesn't bother to turn around, but he doesn't leave from his spot as Bokuto skids across the floor to stand beside him. His dark hair is matted, sweaty, and he keeps his eyes focused on the other side of the schoolyard.
"Can you stay late after practice again tonight?" Bokuto asks. He rolls on the balls of his feet, taking deep breaths of fresh air, anticipation hovering in the buzz of his shoulders as he waits. "I want to practice my straight some more, and you set those better!"
And that's when it happens. When Akaashi drops his shoulders, when he lolls his head to the side, when he gives his eighth sigh of the evening. The setting sun catches in his eyes.
Bokuto had always thought Akaashi's eyes were the only thing darker than his hair. He's never been able to see the pupil from the iris, never suspected that Akaashi's eyes were anything other than black on black on black, unreadable and calm like the ocean at night. He'd always just assumed they had no colour, that Akaashi was a special case, or that the brown was so dark he'd have to be on the sun to catch glimpse of the difference in hue.
He's been wrong every second of the eleven months and twelve days he's known Akaashi.
They're green.
The colour cracks through the darkness, streaks of lava through molten rock, brilliant green and dangerous. The colour flecks and emerges around his iris, in streaks and rings, in patterns and swirls. Intense, captivating, refractions of refractions, lit from a fire that seems unable to push out from Akaashi's body any other way. The edges and tops, barely in contact with the light, barely visible, still dazzle in deep forest green, a sea of pine and cedar and spruce.
Bokuto's forgotten how to breathe. He's forgotten how to think. He's forgotten to listen to Akaashi's reply.
His hands shoot out and grab Akaashi's face, and he can hear the huff of protest but not the following complaint. He feels his arms shake, feels his nerves jitter like he can't find the opening to spike the ball into, like they're deep into the third set and he has to break a tie, like he's going to blink and it'll have all been a lie.
He turns Akaashi's head away, fearing the worst, and then pulls it back into the light. Akaashi's eyes shift in the movement. Dark to light. Black to green. Each time he twists Akaashi's head, each time the light catches, the greens shift in hue and the flecks change their location. The brilliance only grows more and more intense, until there's white hot fire and sparks shooting from his eyes, until Bokuto feels himself being drawn in, until-
Until Akaashi shoves Bokuto's chest and pulls his face back and the light and the green both disappear into a glare.
"Stop that," he says. "What are you doing?"
Bokuto drops his hands to his side, twisting them into his shirt and shorts and each other to keep from cupping Akaashi's face again. He opens his mouth, willing his voice to work, willing an apology to emerge, and he comes up with nothing but a strangled squawk. Akaashi's face relaxes a bit as his eyebrows shoot up, and the sun worms its way into his eyes again.
It helps Bokuto find his words, but doesn't help him keep it down. His shout is loud enough to rattle the doorframe behind them. "You have green eyes!"
"Yes, Bokuto."
"Did you know about this!!"
"They are my eyes, Bokuto."
"When did this happen?!"
Akaashi exhales through clenched teeth. "When I was born, Bokuto. We need to get back to practice."
He gets one more flash, one more look into the spectrum of colour, before the fluorescents turn Akaashi's eyes dark again. Bokuto takes two deep breaths. He feels two clenches of his heart. He lets two seconds slip by. He knows he has no chance of focusing for the rest of practice, no chance of keeping the image from his mind, no way of escaping from what he's just witnessed. The colours are too beautiful to forget, imprinted on the back of his mind like sunspots he can't manage to blink away.
He's known Akaashi for eleven months and twelve days, but this is the first time he's really seen him.