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i.
Bokuto drops his lunch roll, looking thunderstruck as he announces to the corridor of students, "I feel like someone is praising me!"
Akaashi just sighs. "You're imagining things," he says, but his bland statement goes ignored when Bokuto twists around to press his face up against the window, staring outside, as though he could somehow pinpoint the source.
There are students glancing at them, curious eyes that slide away when they realise it's just another one of Bokuto's daily epiphanies. Akaashi pulls at Bokuto's sleeve, a cautious tug but Bokuto doesn't budge—just furrows his brow and squints.
"I can definitely feel it," Bokuto says, leaning back to cross his arms. He gives a firm nod. "Probably talking about my undefeatable straight spike."
"Kuroo-san blocked it in the second match against Nekoma at camp," Akaashi tells him, voice flat and Bokuto splutters. The lunch roll is still on the floor; Akaashi bends down to pick up it, and hands it back to Bokuto. "We're going to be late for the meeting, Bokuto-san."
"Why d'you always have to ruin things for me?" Bokuto grumbles, but another tug at his arm has him trailing after Akaashi this time and they continue down the school corridor.
ii.
“Shit!” Bokuto yelps.
“Language,” Akaashi says automatically, slinging his bag up onto his shoulder. He frowns. “You shouldn’t make swearing a habit, Bokuto-san. Not when there are scouts at every match—”
“I forgot my knee pads!” Bokuto blurts out. He yanks on his shoes and scrambles to his feet. “Could you—I’ll be back—”
Akaashi barely has time to turn and open his mouth to respond before Bokuto is already rushing back into the main hall, jacket flapping after him. The rest of the team rolls their eyes, and heads on out to the school minibus waiting out in the carpark. All around them, the Tokyo Metropolitan Gymnasium is busy, amass with teams and media alike milling around with a faint buzz occupied with talk of the semi-finals to Nationals.
He’d better wait, lest Bokuto get too distracted with all the activity. Or lost. That was also a distinct possibility, Akaashi thinks to himself glumly, as he sets down his bag and prepares himself for the long haul.
Luckily, he doesn’t end up waiting for long; Bokuto emerges from the gymnasium doors several minutes later, with kneepads clutched in his hand and a deep set frown.
“The rest of the team is outside,” Akaashi says, just as Bokuto blurts out, “I think I just got scouted.”
Akaashi blinks. Blinks again. “Pardon?”
“There was some official looking guy in there, he stopped me and asked questions—he was wearing a tie, suit, everything.” Bokuto puffs up, looking pleased. “He didn’t look real impressed though, kinda weird, and he thought I was a middle blocker? He kinda got confused when I started talking about the synchronised attack too—kept asking questions about what I liked, if I think we’ll win? ‘Course we’re gonna win—hey do you think he heard me swearing from before? That might disqualify me right?”
“I doubt that,” Akaashi says wryly. Then adds, “That sounds like odd behaviour for a scout, though. I think you might be imagining things, Bokuto-san.”
Bokuto deflates a little. “Oh? Really?”
There’s a small commotion at the doors, and Akaashi peers around Bokuto to see a midday NHK World reporter bustle out of the doors, cameramen in tow. “Is that him?” he asks.
“Yeah!” Bokuto says, loud and triumphant, and Akaashi quickly reaches out to grab Bokuto’s arm, yanking down his overexcited pointing.
“That’s a television reporter, Bokuto-san,” Akaashi says, under his breath. As soon as the crew leave, he and Bokuto both head out of Tokyo Metropolitan Gymnasium, to where Konoha is waving them over. “I’m surprised you didn’t see the cameras. Or the microphone.”
“Well I was kinda staring at his moustache, did you see it? And he asked heaps of questions,” Bokuto says, shrugging as he heaves his bag onto the bus before clambering aboard. “Would’ve been cool if I got scouted though.”
“I don’t think there’s any doubt that you will, eventually,” Akaashi allows, and then spends the rest of the bus trip back to Fukurodani Academy trying to rationalise himself out of the sudden flutter in his stomach when Bokuto positively beams at him.
(Then five minutes into the trip, someone grabs the back of his chair and jolts him with an excited,
“Wait, so does this mean I’m gonna be on TV?”)
iii.
”Akaashi! Man, I’m glad you picked up, you’ve gotta help me—”
“...Bokuto-san? It’s...3:49A.M. I was asleep—”
“—there are weird noises in my house! Everyone’s asleep, what do I do? What if there’s someone here, what if—”
“What? Bokuto-san, it’s just…it’s probably just your imagination? Or the house creaking—”
“You don’t understand—I think. I think it’s a ghost.”
“...but ghosts don’t exist?”
“No! I know it’s a ghost, it has to be!”
Silence. Waiting.
”I kinda, um—I sort of did something. Something bad.”
A pause. “What did you—”
“...I took Konoha’s lucky charm after practice—it was an accident! But he said it was haunted with his grandma’s spirit and she’ll get mad at me if I try to flush her down the toilet, how do I get rid of it, you gotta help me—”
“Bokuto-san?”
“What?”
“I’m going to sleep now. Don’t call me unless you’re dying, please.”
“I could die right now! Akaashi? Akaashi don’t leave me!”
“Please don’t call me unless you’re dead then. Good night.”
“Huh? Wait that doesn’t even make sense, what about the ghost—”
Click.
Akaashi ends the call and throws his phone somewhere in the general vicinity of his feet, before collapsing back onto his pillow.
The next morning, he wakes up groggy and grumpy as he hauls himself out of bed to make his way to the bathroom. As he stares into the mirror, bleary-eyed and still tired, he gets the vaguest memory of a ghostly Bokuto, grabbing his shoulders and leaning in—
Akaashi hurries to splash cold water on his face and with determination, he shakes the remnants of last night’s dream firmly out of his head.
iv.
"She winked at me!"
“She didn’t even look at you,” Konoha interjects, rolling his eyes. “You’re imagining things, man.”
To celebrate the end of the school term, Bokuto had ushered the entire Fukurodani team out to small eatery in the back alleys of Ikebukuro. Akaashi tries not to think about what his parents would say about his being at a place like this. "I don't think you're her type, Bokuto-san. She looks very sensible," he says, between spoonfuls of broth.
The girl in question had appeared to be a student from a nearby school, dressed prim and proper with her hair tied back in perfect place as she left the eatery just moments ago. Class representative, honours student type, Akaashi supposes.
Bokuto twists around, looking rather indignant. "What do you mean, not her type. I'm everyone's type!"
"I think Akaashi means your hair. And your...y'know, the delinquent look you got going," Komi says, gesturing vaguely at Bokuto. At all of him, really.
"I haven't even had a detention this month!"
Komi just shrugs in response. Onaga and Washio wisely keep eating. Without an audience to indulge him, Bokuto resorts to sulking. He pushes around the dregs of his soup bowl impatiently, until the waiter walks past and asks,
"Can I take this back?"
"Uh, yeah sure, here—"
The waiter takes the proffered bowl but then stops, with a strange look in his eye. Gives Bokuto a very clear once over, as the corner of his mouth twitches up into a grin. Then—oh.
There's a moment of collective silence.
"He winked at me?" Bokuto asks, sounding a little disbelieving. He stares openly at the kitchen doors as the waiter passes through them. Then hunches over, lowering his voice as he hisses, evidently pleased, “That guy just winked at me!"
Akaashi frowns; the waiter must've at least been a college student. Maybe a dropout, probably a delinquent himself, if judging by the tattoos was any measure. He pointedly stamps down the rising feeling of jeal—it’s concern, he hurriedly tells himself. Definitely concern.
"Told you I'm popular," Bokuto is saying, and he jabs Konoha with his elbow. He misses, and catches Konoha's arm instead; Konoha drops his spoon, yelping as ramen broth splashes over the edges of his bowl. "Shit, sorry—"
All Akaashi hears from Konoha, as he gingerly wipes the table with his napkin, is a muttered, "Can't believe he’s actually someone’s type."
v.
Akaashi scrubs his towel over his face, wiping away the sweat that trickles from his hairline. Spring High looms on the horizon, a dark, crackling cloud that seems to have inspired a rush of preparation and an odd sense of foreboding.
Though that could just be the stormy mood that Bokuto seems to be in lately.
The rest of the team is exhausted; Konoha lies eagle-spread on the floor, towel draped over his face, and Washio guzzling down his third water bottle. They’re chatting, exchanging tired words but words nonetheless, about the training regime and the last minute practices they’ll get to run. But Bokuto sits away from the team, hunched over with his hands on his knees as he stares, stony-faced, at the net still raised high over the volleyball court.
So Akaashi takes Bokuto aside, after they've mopped up the gymnasium floor and locked the double doors—stops him when they get to the bus shelter, about to part ways. "Is there something wrong?" he asks.
Bokuto's tie isn't done up properly, Akaashi notices; the knot is lopsided and the thinner end runs long enough to tuck into his pants. He resists the urge to reach out and adjust it for him.
All he gets is stubborn silence on Bokuto’s part. Akaashi fixes him with a pointed look; Bokuto tries to ignore him. Akaashi warns, “Bokuto-san,” once, and Bokuto’s face crumples as easily as he drops his school bag and slumps down onto the bus shelter bench.
"I failed my biology test, and then sensei made me stay back in class—” The words flood out of Bokuto’s mouth in a veritable torrent, like some form of rapidfire despair, and Akaashi barely manages to keep up. “—that's why I was late, and then coach got mad at me, because I'm captain and he said I have responsibilities—"
Bokuto runs his hand through his hair, agitated. "And in practice, I missed most of your tosses, and Sarukui blocked all my spikes. Yesterday I couldn’t even do the straight spike once! Spring High is next week— what am I going to do? I-I can't do it, I'm not good enough yet, we're gonna lose—"
Sometimes Akaashi forgets that for all of his carelessly raw talent and capricious happy-go-lucky attitude, Bokuto still feels the pressure. And as captain, it’s a pressure that manifests tenfold—maybe even more for someone like Bokuto who tends to lend himself to sudden downswings of uncertainty.
But even so.
"You are captain, and you do have responsibilities," Akaashi says slowly. "But you spiked at least eighty percent of my tosses today, and Sarukui only blocked half of your spikes. Yesterday, you pulled off the straight spike several times before you lost momentum."
Bokuto glances up at Akaashi, then turns back to stare down at his own palm. It’s strange when Bokuto gets into these moods, the kind of downs that happen off the court; he stops his usual whirlwind of activity long enough to slow down and think. "But it felt like I was screwing up everything. Thought I was. Even Onaga was looking at me weird."
Akaashi shakes his head. "It's been a bad day, Bokuto-san. You're just imagining, well, remembering things worse than they were."
The faint frown on Bokuto's face suggests that he isn't quite convinced yet, but several minutes later he tries a grin, and Akaashi is relieved to see it only looks slightly out of place.
"Y'know, sometimes you talk like Kuroo," Bokuto says after a moment.
The non sequitur has Akaashi frowning. "...Kuroo?"
"Yeah, all—encouraging and stuff. Good captain stuff. I don't do any of that." Bokuto suddenly looks inspired. "Maybe you should be captain, huh? You'd probably be great. I'll ask coach to make you captain after me—"
"No, that's—" Akaashi interrupts him, and clears his throat. He suddenly feels a little flushed. "That's not necessary."
Bokuto's grin stretches further, into something that looks almost soft and Akaashi resolutely stares down the road, wondering why the bus seems to be taking so long.
vi.
They win the Spring High tournament, and swept up with the coursing thrum of victory, as they leave the court—he feels like nothing could go wrong, he's so close—
Akaashi kisses him.
Bokuto's lips are soft. Softer than he'd expected, Akaashi thinks, feeling slightly dazed. Then his mind catches up with his actions, and Akaashi jerks back. His heart is thudding.
All he gets is a stare, as bewilderment and hope cross Bokuto's expression in a series of wide-eyed blinks.
"You're not imagining things," Akaashi says, after a moment of silence. His gaze travels over Bokuto's lax hands, hanging loose at his sides, and over the furrow in his brow. The changes rooms are empty, aside from themselves, but it suddenly feels far too open. They're both still damp with sweat from the match, running on restless adrenaline: their breaths come hard and heavy between them, and Akaashi doesn't dare think it might be due to anything more than exertion.
Bokuto touches his lips, unabashed, and Akaashi tries not to fidget with slowly growing mortification. Try as he might, he just can’t get a read on Bokuto in this moment. It’s unnerving. He opens his mouth, ready to blurt out a dismissal, as nonchalant as possible when he feels the embarrassment start to creep up the back of his neck in a hot flush.
But Bokuto gets there first, voice doubtful even as he cuts in, "'s not my imagination?"
Akaashi stares, not quite comprehending. He shakes his head mutely.
"Then," Bokuto pauses to cross his arms, fingers drumming a nervous rhythm over his forearms. "I reckon you should probably kiss me again." There's a red flush colouring Bokuto's cheeks, and he's suddenly not quite meeting Akaashi's eyes. "Y'know, just to make sure. And stuff.”
Akaashi stops, still not understanding. That’s—
Oh.
It's harder when Bokuto is watching him, expectation scrawled across his face, but Akaashi still reaches up, slower this time. He determinedly ignores the faint tremor in his hands and cups Bokuto's face instead, brushing over warm cheeks, pushing back sweat-damp hair. "Not your imagination," he tells Bokuto.
And with that, Akaashi leans forward again, presses their lips together, and this time, with a tell-tale grin, Bokuto meets him halfway.