Chapter Text
Once, when they are both 17 and 18 and on the precipice of a life-changing moment, Bokuto drags Akaashi and the rest of the third years to his house for a sleepover. He puts on video games, orders way too much food, breaks into his parents' liquor cabinet, and shares a bottle of premium-quality umeshu between the six of them. Needless to say, being in high school and certain lightweights, they get very, very drunk in no time.
Until now, Akaashi can't figure out why his self-restraint broke on that day. When he reflects on it the day after, nursing a raging headache and a taste in his mouth like a rat had died in his throat, he realizes what he's done is decidedly awful and dangerous. Underage drinking is nothing to be proud of, and once Bokuto's parents are home, surely, they will take notice of the missing bottle in their cabinet.
"Nah," Bokuto assures them, his smile wide and owlish. "They never notice anything like this. Seriously, we'll be fine, Akaashi! Stop worrying!"
Telling him to stop worrying, Akaashi muses, is as futile as telling a worm to stop wiggling.
"Oi, Konoha! Get the cups!" Bokuto yells over his shoulder. When he trains his eyes back on Akaashi, it's gleaming with glee and mischief, and Akaashi imagines Bokuto as a five-year-old, snatching one too many cookies out of the jar without his parents catching on. His face would most likely be similar to this.
Konoha comes bounding into the kitchen bearing a stack of red solo cups, a syrup mix cradled in his armpit. Akaashi notes the discrepancy in drinking such a high-quality liquor from something so disgustingly American and cheap as plastic cups. Bokuto spreads the cups on the counter, pouring the amber liquid little by little. He grins. "Gotta pace ourselves," he says, with the air of someone who spent an hour Googling how to drink alcohol as a high schooler.
When his fingers brush Akaashi's as he passes the cups along, it feels too much like a cliché. Like Akaashi's drunk already.
"Please don't try to chug it in one go," Akaashi tells him.
"Of course not, Akaashi, what kind of amateur would do that?" Bokuto says, cradling his cup indignantly.
Komi finds Mario Kart, and they all file into the living room, placing dares and bets that Akaashi mostly skips out on until he finishes his first cup, and tries to drown out the gut-twisting combination of dread and excitement at the thought of next week's graduation with laughter and an active refusal to be nostalgic. The latter is especially hard on Bokuto, who's near tears already as Washio, who looks barely affected by the drinks, if at all, beats him for the tenth time.
Bokuto's proximity to him increases the drunker he gets. Their fingers touch again, and Akaashi feels hot all over from something that's suspiciously not alcohol. Bokuto smells clean, like the deodorant spray he used to spritz all over himself after every practice or match when showering doesn't feel enough to scrub off the dirt and grime from an intense play, the one Shirofuku complains makes him smell like a fuckboy, but fainter, hidden under detergent and a cool scent he can never put his fingers on. Bokuto leans on his shoulder, cheek pressed against the cuff of his arm, moaning something about missing Akaashi's tosses already. Komi yelps, tells him that Bokuto's broken the law on being nostalgic, and Bokuto pouts but drinks up.
Later, Akaashi wonders if that last drink is what drives Bokuto to do it.
He volunteers to do clean up just so he'd have some space from Bokuto. Into a garbage bag the cups and empty snack wrappers go, methodically going through the motions just for something to do that isn't confronting the way Bokuto looks at him. Or the way he knows he's looking at Bokuto.
He goes into the kitchen, disposes of the garbage bag. He listens to the rowdy voices from the living room, lets it sink in that this is all going away so very soon, and tries not to drive himself into an early grave thinking about who he'd be without the third years. Without his friends.
On the glass panel of the refrigerator, he catches movement out of the corner of his eyes. Akaashi turns around.
Bokuto, his cheeks tinged a pretty red, looking as lost as Akaashi feels.
Akaashi swallows. He thinks, with a surefire clarity, Bokuto's going away.
For years to come, this moment, frozen in time, will have him questioning the true strength of liquid courage. It must be the only reason why he feels compelled to let Bokuto invade his personal space, backs him up against the refrigerator, breath ghosting hot over his cheekbones. Bokuto raises two fingers, trails them soft down his jaw, and Akaashi doesn't dare to breathe. The disconnect of knowing what Bokuto's hands can do, slamming down a ball with a whip-like crack, a sound that reverberates through Akaashi's bones like they want to rattle and shatter—it's almost impossible to reconcile it with how gentle Bokuto is being. His bones threaten to fracture, but it's in an entirely different feeling. It's much more dangerous.
But the moment their lips touch feel inevitable, like they're always meant to be kissing. Akaashi doesn't have the time to overthink things, not when Bokuto's lips are soft and moving on his, with a tentativeness that feels so foreign, and an earnestness that is just Bokuto in everything he does.
Akaashi is ashamed of the sound he makes in the back of his throat when their lips part. It makes Bokuto laugh, warm and tender.
Bokuto presses their foreheads together, and Akaashi's lungs stutter, heart leaping in his throat.
"What am I going to do without you, Akaashi?" he asks the space between their mouths.
Akaashi stills, because what lies in that space is something very, very fragile, and it takes just the wrong puff of breath to smash it all into pieces.
"You can certainly do many things without me, Bokuto-san."
A safe territory. Deflect. It slides right off Bokuto, washed away like rainwater on mud-stained shoes.
"Akaashi."
Akaashi will always remember the way Bokuto says his name, he thinks. All the ways Bokuto calls out to him: obnoxious and clingy as he spots him walking in through the gate, yelling and demanding on court, sad and dejected when he gets down—quiet, like a secret he doesn't want to keep, every syllable spoken like he will burst if he doesn't, like Akaashi's name is the only name he wants to say.
"I need you," Bokuto confesses. "Like—I really, really do, Akaashi."
It isn't like Akaashi didn't already know it, but—
When he was a first year, stumbling over his growth spurt and a layer of baby fat he couldn't quite burn off, the retiring third years warned him of the whirlwind that was Bokuto Koutarou. That Bokuto Koutarou? He's a work in progress . Akaashi never understood why it was said like a terrible thing, as if anyone, at 16 years old at that, was ever finished at figuring themselves out. He gets told all the time, even by Konoha, who Akaashi knows considers Bokuto a close friend, you've got your work cut out for you , like Akaashi's been misplaced with some burden he didn't ask for.
But it was him who decided to go follow a star after seeing him one time. It was him who decided to observe Bokuto, catalogue all 37 of his weaknesses. It was him who wanted to see Bokuto playing at his most excellent, soaring high as if he had wings, hands outstretched like he was reaching for the divine, simply because it was satisfying.
It was Akaashi who fell in love.
All his quirks, the extreme shifts between on and off, this black and white thinking where he doesn't think he can ever be good at anything if he fails at one thing—those are manageable things. Akaashi's positive it will get better with the right treatment, sticking to a routine that works, and Bokuto's own iron-will to better himself at anything. In truth, while Bokuto may see Akaashi as a necessity now, Akaashi may only be a stepping stone. Someone fortunate enough to witness the birth of a star, in hopes that one day, when he's perched on top of the world, Bokuto remembers—there was a person who supported him all through high school. A footnote in his happiness.
Bokuto's scouted into a powerhouse university in Osaka. Seven out of ten times, the collegiate star players get recruited immediately into the national team. It's a free pass to the Olympics, the top of the world stage. Bokuto will be there, shining as he always has, and he will not have a need for Akaashi, who knows that his volleyball career will always be short-lived.
He remembers reading an English phrase once—'tis better to have loved and lost than never to have never loved at all. He thinks it's wrong; if he gives himself a chance to love Bokuto like this, instead of the quiet, burning kind that suffocates and grinds him to dust, he will never survive the fall out when the flame eventually dies out. He knows about the story of Icarus, and as the sun is also a star, he knows no one survives a supernova. It's his responsibility to save them both from the heartbreak.
So he takes Bokuto's hand, fits them over his own—longer, but Bokuto's fingers are sturdier, marked with calluses and little cuts from overworking himself—and kisses him one last time.
In the end, he doesn't answer.
*
They fall asleep as a pile on the floor of Bokuto's parents' living room. Despite the complete silence, Akaashi finds it hard to fall asleep.
In the slow, fading darkness, Akaashi jerks fully awake from the limbo between nightmares and consciousness. Bokuto's hands lie limp at his sides, still only when he's asleep. Akaashi wants to reach out. Now that he knows how their fingers fit over each other, he wants nothing more than to do it again, memorize the feeling before soon, everything changes.
He imagines their hands, reaching for each other. They'd make shadows on the wall, kissed by the sun rays. By nightfall, they will be gone, perfect darkness like they were never here at all.