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There’s a lighthouse on the water in the little beach town that Akaashi likes to go to whenever he has writer’s block, even though the finicky bastard never calls it that. I just need to clear my head. You would never understand, because you don’t use yours in that mind-numbing, soul-crushing corporate job of yours.
For someone who likes fucking me as much as you do, you sure don’t like me very much.
I don’t like you at all, Kuroo. If not intelligence, shouldn’t you have picked up social cues in your line of work, at least?
Indeed, Kuroo is a businessman of the highest order, wherein the only smarts that actually matter are in that of clever jawboning, mouth cottony from the spun sugar of flattery and carefully worded jabs that sound more like compliments than criticisms. They’re both wordsmiths in that way, liars at the core, because Kuroo is standing on the pier of a sleepy village on the shore, miles away from the city, looking at a lighthouse with a man who apparently does not like him.
“I hate this stupid little town,” Kuroo mutters, dishonest. The view is beautiful, with the opaque blue of the water turning a frothy white as the waves lap up at the rocks, receding away and back again with the undulating tide. It’s quiet in a distant way, as if from a boyish dream long ago.
“You asked to come,” Akaashi replies, frowning. “Don’t you have better things to be doing than this?”
There’s a lopsided dimple at the left corner of his mouth as he purses his lips. Kuroo wants to kiss it smooth until Akaashi stops grimacing, or maybe deepen the divot with laughter. He doesn’t do either. He rolls his eyes and says, “Wanted to see what the hype was about. Plus, I needed a break from work anyway. You know how it is — they love vicariously living through my vacations. It gives them something to talk about. The right amount of absence makes them fantasize about the life I’m living. I’m an object of envy and desire.”
“You are so full of shit, Kuroo.”
Concise and to the point as always. Akaashi talks nothing like he writes. Kuroo first imagined him to be something like a Hemingway — austere and cryptic and supposedly full of meaning in his brevity, but he’s much more flowery than he seems, with lilting metaphors and weighty dialogue. They’re opposites in that way. Kuroo will talk and talk and talk until there’s no more air in the room for him to use, but put a piece of paper in front of him and ask him to write about something beautiful and he won’t know how to even write a single sentence.
“Does anyone even use lighthouses anymore?” Kuroo asks, changing the subject.
Akaashi doesn’t even look at him. “Yes. You think modern technology has come so far that sailors don’t need light to see anymore?”
“Seems so archaic.” Kuroo shrugs. “I mean, who’s docking into this piece of shit of a town?”
“If you don’t like it, you can leave,” Akaashi says, rolling his eyes. “I'm not chaining you here.”
It’s a three hour train ride from the city; they had made the trek at dawn, Akaashi dead silent on the train as Kuroo groaned about how tight his hamstrings were. They had checked into the cabin, Akaashi beelining upstairs to hole up in some deep literary trance, leaving Kuroo to wander around the wide, empty roads and marvel at the seagulls. He feels like a lost dog.
“I guess you’re not,” Kuroo says carefully. “I like the quiet,” he lies. And I want to be here with you, he doesn’t say. “Maybe the lighthouse will give me a burst of inspiration and I’ll write my own story and get it published and beat you out in sales.”
“Not everything is a competition, Kuroo,” Akaashi sighs.
-
You’re so vapid. Do you only care about money and status?
Do you have a thing for hate sex or something? You keep insulting me right before we fuck.
Just trying to understand you. You’re a strange specimen. I feel like I should take a sample of you and study you under a microscope.
Is that what you’re doing? Taking samples of me? Don’t you think you’ve gathered enough samples for your research?
I’m collecting data on you. Maybe I’ll write you in as an awful villain in my next book. Or a side character to be killed off for a plot point.
You’re so cruel to me, Akaashi. Is that what I am to you? A side character to be studied? To be killed off unceremoniously in your story? Would you even give me a name?
Akaashi’s all quiet and polite but he’s also a force of nature, all sarcasm and pointed quips. Lithe and careful and all smooth lines in turtlenecks and thin-rimmed glasses. Kuroo imagines that Akaashi would be one of those strangers you admire quietly from a distance at a coffee shop, the kind of beautiful man you would be so lucky to watch for an extended moment of coincidence.
As it is, they met at Bokuto’s housewarming party. Kuroo’s ex — Akaashi’s childhood best friend. An extended moment of coincidence, or maybe an inevitable crash of two speeding cars on a narrow messy highway called Bokuto’s fratty townhouse on the east side of the city. The place was tiny, filled with knick-knacks from Goodwill around the corner, and the perfect setting for Akaashi to reject him: “I had to hold Koutarou’s hair back as he vomited while crying about you.”
“His hair was down?” Kuroo had asked, bewildered and a little mortified. It was a bad day if Bokuto didn’t gel his hair.
“For a week,” Akaashi affirmed solemnly. “You’ll have to excuse me if I’m wary of you.”
“The breakup was amicable,” Kuroo protested weakly. “I swear.”
Bokuto and Kuroo were fundamentally incompatible. No hard feelings; Kuroo’s always been a little rough around the edges and cold when it came down to it, whereas Bokuto was all softness and wide, wide warmth. He had thought someone his opposite would balance him out and make a good partner.
Akaashi Keiji was cool, sharp, and probably a little mean. Kuroo had never wanted anything so bad in his entire life. It felt a little bit like a terrible accident. There were two cars both going at a hundred miles an hour down a winding highway and maybe it’s inevitable that they will crash but Akaashi opened his mouth when Kuroo leaned in to kiss him anyway.
This is bad. Really bad.
We can stop whenever you want.
I don’t like you at all. I don’t know what Koutarou saw in you.
My dashing looks, perhaps. Or maybe it’s the wit.
Don’t know what wit you’re speaking of.
I noticed you said nothing about the dashing looks.
I’m not blind. Nor a liar.
Aren’t you a writer?
-
“Tell me about what you’re writing,” Kuroo asks, rolling over to his side. For a second, he contemplates resisting the urge to trace the rounded cliff of Akaashi’s shoulder, but decides to throw all caution to the wind and caress the skin and bone there anyway. To his credit, Akaashi doesn’t even flinch.
“Didn’t know you were interested,” Akaashi drawls, flipping a page in his book. “Honestly, I didn’t know you could even read.”
“You’re such a bitch.”
He looks at Kuroo, then, something unreadable flitting over his expression. If Kuroo squints maybe he could interpret that look as isn’t that why you like me? Or maybe it’s the much simpler sentiment of you know that already. Or, you have the habit of stating the obvious when it’s utterly unnecessary. Or, or. Kuroo could chip away at Akaashi’s iron nonchalance for years and still never make a dent in understanding him.
Years. It’s been two since they met.
“Do you hate it?” Akaashi asks instead.
The question completely knocks Kuroo off-balance. Blinking, he sputters a little before clearing his throat. “Not really,” he admits.
Akaashi hums. In affirmation, understanding, dismissal — Kuroo doesn’t know. He doesn’t get an answer either, because he changes the subject back: “It’s a romance.”
“A romance?” Kuroo repeats, still bewildered, maybe even more so. “I didn’t know you were interested in love stories.”
The wrinkle in Akaashi’s eyebrow deepens in a sign that Kuroo knows as annoyance, before it smooths out as he sighs and turns his attention back to his book. “Maybe I’m trying something new. My editor keeps telling me that people would be more interested in reading my work if I had more interpersonal tension.”
“Interpersonal tension,” Kuroo repeats again.
“Is this your attempt at cosplaying a parrot?” Akaashi finally snaps, exasperated. “Yes, I’m writing a love story. Could you act a little less shocked, please? You’re making me feel like I’m incapable of experiencing love.”
There’s a million things he could say here. Kuroo could say, well, I’ve been fucking you for two years and I don’t really think you’re capable of giving someone a shred of romantic affection. Or, I guess you really don’t like me, huh. Or, you’ve never told me about your exes. Instead, he grins and says, “You need inspiration?”
Akaashi goes unreadable again. The weight of his gaze feels like lead, heavy and cold and full of poisonous, malleable things that will kill Kuroo if he thinks about it too much. A knife, a hammer, or maybe a gun. Kuroo wishes he could take Akaashi’s contempt or his reluctance or his apprehension or whatever it is he feels towards him and mold it into a weapon he can kill himself with, or maybe just kill the hope that bubbles up whenever Akaashi’s gaze lingers just a moment too long.
Akaashi says, “Don’t make promises you can’t keep.”
-
“Do you want to go get dinner?” Akaashi had asked once. They had spent the afternoon rolling around in Kuroo’s California king — a gargantuan thing that one only buys for the express purpose of having rambunctious sex. Akaashi did like to be thrown around a bit, even though he’ll never admit it. Kuroo was always happy to oblige. He did take up extra sessions with his personal trainer just to grip onto Akaashi a little tighter.
“Are you going to pay for it?” Kuroo teases. “You know the client dinners I go out to are fully comped and extravagant. The best steakhouses. Omakases.”
“Do you need extravagance and gluttony to be satisfied?” Akaashi sighed, looking weary. “No, I was just hungry, Kuroo. You don’t need to make it this whole thing.”
“What whole thing,” Kuroo said.
“This is fucking stupid,” Akaashi said, rolling over and away from Kuroo, reaching for his phone. “I’m just going to order delivery.”
Kuroo felt a little winded. “Okay,” he said, dumbly, feeling off-kilter. “I mean, it’s fine. I’m not that hungry.”
“Sure,” Akaashi replied, as if that said anything.
Talking to Akaashi felt like talking to three different people, sometimes. Or maybe having three different conversations at once. Or maybe it’s like reading a hefty exposition paragraph in a novel, the passage foreshadowing a multitude of hidden messages that might be relevant later on in the story, or maybe a description full of red herrings and unreliable narration. Kuroo had no fucking idea. What the hell are we talking about, he wants to ask. Can’t you just tell me what you want? He can imagine the dialogue in his head, ping-ponging like a pathetic scene from a soap drama screenplay:
KUROO: I just want you to tell me what you want from me.
AKAASHI: Your idiocy confounds me. Isn’t it obvious?
KUROO: No. It’s why I’m asking.
AKAASHI: I can’t believe I’m even wasting my time here with you.
KUROO: See, this is what I mean. You never give me a straight answer. Why are you wasting your time on me? Don’t you have better things to do?
AKAASHI: Surely. Maybe I’m a glutton for punishment.
KUROO: So do you like me or not? Am I your punishment? Are you gluttonous for me?
AKAASHI: So what if I am?
KUROO: Do you just hate the fact that you want me?
But that was all very stupid and pathetic and Kuroo already felt like a fool, trailing after Akaashi like this, like chasing the attention of a cat that ran away if you approached it too fast. Kuroo could never approach Akaashi too fast. It was a miracle that he was even still here. So he leaned over to peer over Akaashi’s shoulder to watch him scroll through the menu items of some terrible fast-casual Indian place, and said, “Just order me a chicken tikka, actually,” as if that was enough to shove the three conversations they were having under the rug, and Akaashi just grunted in response and adds the order to his cart.
-
Food in this terrible little beach town left a lot to be desired, so the two of them end up getting burgers at the local drive-through and sitting on the patch of grass across the lighthouse. The meat is underseasoned and the lettuce is sad and soggy, but the sauce isn’t bad, so Kuroo just shrugs and stuffs his face unceremoniously.
“You have sauce on your mouth,” Akaashi points out. He looks prim even when holding a shitty smashburger. Kuroo seriously has never wanted something so bad in his entire life.
“Yeah, yeah,” Kuroo mutters. “Lick it off me then.”
Akaashi does not do that. He does, however, stare at Kuroo incredulously for a couple seconds, before reaching up and wiping what must be a dribble of dressing away with a thumb, skimming the ridge of Kuroo’s bottom lip with slow, tortuous touch. Kuroo could do many things here. He could swipe his tongue down and catch the tip of Akaashi’s finger. He could wink and say something lewd and stupid. He could suck on his thumb, even.
Kuroo doesn’t do any of that. He sits and stares. Akaashi looks so beautiful under the harsh, yellow beam of the lighthouse. It casts shadows stark and sharp across the planes of his face, and he looks like a ghost, or a statue, or maybe just a boy.
Akaashi, the bastard, takes his thumb away, glistening with sauce, and licks it off his thumb.
“Taste good?” Kuroo says, trying desperately to diffuse the situation.
“Sure,” Akaashi replies. “I mean, we ordered the same thing.”
“You’re so unsexy,” Kuroo lies.
“Sure,” Akaashi repeats, raising an eyebrow.
The beam from the lighthouse swings away and back over the ocean, casting light over the sea like shimmering cloth, the waves scrunching and smoothing.
“Is the lighthouse relevant to your writing or something?” he asks, turning his attention back to his limp burger. “Not really much else to the town. Does it like, guide you to your plot points?”
That rips a laugh from Akaashi’s chest, the sound throaty. “That’s definitely an idea,” he says, voice warm. “It’s nothing sentimental like that. Though I guess that does sound nice — if this lighthouse could guide me to the perfect thing to write.”
The sound of the sea is soft, cyclical, rumbling. Kuroo says, “Do you want me to leave?”
Akaashi doesn’t respond; he just cocks his head to the side, questioning. They always do this. He always says one thing, and means another. When Kuroo asks do you want me to leave he is really asking do you want me to stay. Do you want me here with you. Do you care if I leave. Would you ask me to stay. Akaashi knows what he is asking, he always does.
“I mean,” Kuroo adds, “am I distracting you from your writing?”
Do I get in your way? Me, with my idiocy and vapid personality and gluttonous, greedy tendencies. I want everything and I want you.
“Would you rather be alone?”
We’ve been sleeping together for two years and I know every freckle on your back and I could draw it blind, this shape of your body. All the little blemishes and bumps and every perfect nook and cranny. I can mold you from memory even if I can’t see the clay. Do you too know me so well that you could remake me from nothing? Just memory and desire, if you have even that?
Akaashi stills. Hears every question underneath, because he is a writer and he is a liar but he always listens to the undercurrent, churning and brewing and simmering. And so he asks, “Do you want to stay?”
Kuroo remembers:
-
Akaashi likes his coffee with a splash of milk and two heaping spoonfuls of sugar. He likes rock from the eighties, the kind of unknown, no-name music that you only find on vinyl tucked away in a corner of a record store. Kuroo had bought a turntable because he thought it was cool, but Akaashi would come over with the wax discs, changing the music methodically before leaving the records neatly tucked away on his shelf, saying your music taste is shit. Keep the damn vinyl. Akaashi has insomnia, but he always sleeps well after a glass of wine, and he only drinks the sweet shit, like Portuguese port or a Riesling. Kuroo always keeps it stocked in his cooler, and those bottles sit snug next to his own bottles of mezcal.
Akaashi does not like him, but he always makes Kuroo’s bed before he leaves. He stocks his dishwasher and wipes down his counters and pushes the chairs under the dinner table. He stays the night, and he only leaves in the morning after Kuroo has already gone.
-
“You can leave whenever you want,” Akaashi says.
“And if I don’t?” Kuroo says back.
-
I don’t understand you at all, you know.
That makes two of us.
We live in completely different worlds.
What’s wrong with that?
We’re never going to understand each other.
Do you really think that? And even if that was true, doesn’t that just make it interesting?
Is that what I am to you? Interesting?
You’re a lot of things.
-
“Are you going to keep this one?” Akaashi finally asks. “Are you promising what I think you’re promising?”
“What do you think I’m promising?” Kuroo asks, laughing. “You said you don’t even like me.”
“I haven’t meant that in a long time,” Akaashi admits. “You said it yourself. I’m a writer. I’m a liar. It’s what I do. And you said—”
“— that I don’t do this,” Kuroo finishes. He cracks a smile; he can’t help the way his lips stretch across his face, uncertain. “Well, I’m a salaryman. I’m a liar too.”
Akaashi falls quiet once again. Beyond them, a ship approaches, blaring its horn in announcement of its arrival as it cuts through the waters. The glow from the lighthouse guides it, radiant and clear and illuminating its path; the boat rides the light, headed straight for shore.
Kuroo says, “Can I be honest? Just this once?”
The ocean wind is full of salt, brisk and unforgiving but also refreshing, carding through the grass and Akaashi’s hair and pushing away the strands to display the expression on his face, open and vulnerable with a small smile that Kuroo only sees when Akaashi thinks he’s not looking.
Akaashi doesn’t let him answer. Instead, he offers up his own truth before Kuroo can, because despite what he says there’s always a competition in between them and Akaashi always has to win, even here. It’s been a long game of chess. Or a drawn out cold war, a waltz in the rain where the music goes on and on and on, a lilting triple-meter that spins on for eternity.
Or maybe not.
“I’ve let you do whatever you wanted to me,” Akaashi confesses. Whispers it, like it's a secret. “And I’ll continue to, as long as you want. Even if I hate it. I’d let you.”
Do you hate this?
Just kiss me.