Chapter Text
Akaashi Keiji is ten when he falls in love for the first time.
It’s summer, the terrible kind not worth knowing, and he’s got a volleyball in his bicycle basket, the most curious sweat on his nose, and a hankering for something cold to drink. When he comes up to the ticket booth at a theater with six-hundred yen (he had prepared accordingly for the villainy of overpriced snacks), he takes one look at the attendant, asks for a fountain drink without the movie, and waits for the cold and corporate response of, sure, what do I care? But the thing is, much to Akaashi’s chagrin, she does care, she claims, most ardently, that “this isn't just any place for blockbusters, kid.” Akaashi feigns the slightest bit of interest when she first mouths the name, Laputa theater, and hands him a free pass to an afternoon showing of some movie he's never heard of before.
“Sorry, I don't really like watching movies,” Akaashi apologizes. Especially old ones with grainy film and no color, judging by the posters on the bulletin board.
The attendant smiles, unfettered by Akaashi’s claims, and shows him through the door anyway. It's air conditioned in the lobby, and just by the right amount, and Akaashi can only wilt at the thought of heading back into the heatwave outside. When he sighs, relenting, he thinks it shouldn't be too much trouble to stay for half a movie (or maybe even less), and that he could always curl up to nap if he hated it. Thus, he lets the free pass come back into his open hand, the fountain drink in the other, and sees what he's getting himself into: it's 1954’s Seven Samurai, four hours long, and well, ancient by a ten year old’s terms.
Akaashi immediately regrets his decision.
He thanks the attendant anyway, ever courteous. Reading right through him, she opens the door to an empty theater, the beginnings of some long and tireless epic, and informs Akaashi of one thing: “have patience, and it'll pay off,”comes the advice, and he can only count it as wishful thinking. He sits down after that, volleyball at his side, and waits for boredom to take him at the opening credits.
It doesn't, though. He is only left sprawling in something else, and warmth unfolds by the hands of Seven Samurai.
Akaashi is ten when he falls in love for the first time, and lets himself be overcome by the irrepressible motion. When he stands outside the looming facade of the Laputa, now closed for the night, cool night air hitting a heated cheek, he thinks to become a loyal patron.
Akaashi’s first date to the Laputa theater occurs in the autumn season, when people start looking for the reprieve from the cold and excuses to cozy up.
He does not yet know it's a date, and doesn't classify it as such until later, because he's only thirteen and not aware enough to know that he might like other boys; he just chalks it up a mutual like of samurai films, volleyball, and all the tiny shared interests that usually comprise a first (and fleeting) crush. It's a good enough time at first, when Akaashi shows him the winding stairs and the projection room, all the little delicate rolls of film in their ancient tins; but he sees the way his date’s eyes roll over in boredom, hears the way he asks, “do they only show old movies here?” and remembers that the Laputa isn't for everyone.
Hands unlink from there (he's not sure why they were held in the first place), and the spark is gone as soon as it had come.
Still, because his mother has taught him the importance of understanding the differences in people, because you're like water, Keiji, and you'll flow with the best of them, he takes no offense to his friend’s nonchalance. Akaashi suggests the arcade instead, has himself a decent time, and stays acquaintances with him afterward.
Their friendship fades rather naturally a year after that, as they tend to do at his age, and Akaashi contemplates life’s oddities with a late night foray, solo, to the Laputa theater. It's a Monday, “a particularly slow one,” the attendant tells him at the ticket booth, and Akaashi thinks he might be lucky enough to see the featured matinee alone. They're showing Seven Samurai again, one of Akaashi’s favorites by now, and he'd be glad to watch it for (what feels like) the millionth time in this short, but decent life.
“Need a second ticket today, Keiji-kun?” the attendant asks, quite familiar with Akaashi by now. On special occasions, he even calls her onee-san, but this time, he just shakes his head no. Some nights were meant to be spent alone.
When Akaashi pops into the back of the theater, volleyball in tow and previous movie rolling it's credits, he scans the empty rows until he finds his favorite spot: he's long determined that it's the very middle seat of the middle-most row, perfect, and that it should be taken when every chance arises. Shoulders slump when he realizes someone's already beat him to it, but he doesn't blame them, and settles for the row right behind him. Akaashi just hopes he’ll only be here until the end of the credits, and that he'll have his chance to take the seat, then.
It doesn't take him long to realize that the other moviegoer is crying. Quite audibly, in fact.
Great.
Akaashi usually doesn't like to eavesdrop, because it usually means hearing things, surely the most troublesome things, and he'd prefer to have peace in his life, but he can't help it since they're the only two people in the theater. When Akaashi leans forward in his seat, handkerchief offered and waved out of courtesy, he accidentally lets the volleyball slip from his lap. It hits the ground in a soft thud, which gets the other boy’s attention more than anything else, like the sound of it is instinct.
He doesn't turn around. “You play volleyball, too?” he asks instead, still choked up. His voice is on the husky side, scratchy, but young, and Akaashi determines they are around the same age.
“Ah, yes,” Akaashi tells him, wondering how he could tell from the sound so easily. “I'm a setter.”
The stranger reaches over his shoulder to take the handkerchief still in Akaashi’s hand. He blows his nose loudly, insists the air is much too dry in here to properly live, and that anyone would cry from it. “Do you play, too?” Akaashi asks him right back, just to make conversation until Seven Samurai starts, and he gets a shake of a head as a response.
“No.”
“Oh,” answers Akaashi.
“I quit.”
“I see.” What a shame. “When did you quit?”
“An hour ago.”
“Oh,” Akaashi just remarks again, not really knowing what else to say. In his head, he lays out the options in an attempt at crafting the appropriate response. He could A) ask why he quit, because some people were prone to vent, needed to vent to feel better, and it wouldn't be too much trouble for Akaashi to nod his head in the smallest sympathy, or B) not say anything at all about the matter, because some people liked to be left alone to stew and think and make sense of it all without the prying. (He quite liked this option.) With a sigh, Akaashi realizes he doesn't know the answer, because a lot of kids played and quit and cried over volleyball on a daily basis, and it'd be hard to guess either way; so he just sits back, leans his head over the backboard cushion of his seat, and decides on a whim.
(Akaashi aptly calls it living on the edge.)
“Why you'd quit?” he asks up to the ceiling, and he hopes he hasn't made a giant mistake.
“I was off my game today and the coach benched me. It was my first time getting to be in the starting rotation, and my chance to really do my best, and I blew it! I might as well just quit forever!”
“I see.” That's happened a couple of times to Akaashi before, getting benched, and he certainly understands how jarring it can be. Still, he would hardly call that the end of the world, with all the pestilence and warfare he’s heard about in the news, so he writes it off as a practice in dramatics.
Expecting as such, Akaashi peers back up to the front, only to see a head still down, wonders if this more serious than he thought, and breaks out the bigger guns in his arsenal.
“Ah, well...there's always next time,” he says, and he feels a cringe form across his face when over how unconvincing his encouragements ring. Certainly a misfire, he guesses, because he's always been sort of terrible at offering any sort of consolation, but maybe it’ll do the trick anyway and—
“There won't be a next time! I'm done for!”
Ah. Nope. Akaashi suspects this will be more difficult than he's suspected. Part of him is tempted to leave altogether, because he's still got homework and tosses to practice against the wall, and it's not like Akaashi knows him anyway.
But like a sign, he watches the screen come back to life in glorious black and white, faded but ready to play. Bandits raid the opening scene of Seven Samurai, just like they'd done when Akaashi first watched this movie four years ago, and he wonders, briefly, if the other boy will stay the entire runtime. Akaashi is even tempted to tell him yes, you should stay, and you should stay with volleyball even if you've had a bad day, but he knows it would be out of place.
“Hey.”
Instead, Akaashi presses himself up against the back of the seat right next to the perfect one, and warns, rather bluntly, that the movie is four hours long. He even goes on about the lack of color, and the scratchy sound natural of a movie from 1954, and that sometimes, just sometimes, it's hard to keep up with—but in due time, by the end, he might just have himself a brand new favorite.
“So give it time,” Akaashi says simply, picking up his duffle bag, his cherry soda, and the volleyball off the ground. He leaves without looking back, but he hears the other boy climb up on his seat, squeaky leather abound.
“What about your handkerchief?” he asks, and Akaashi waves over his shoulder. In passing, he muses that the shadow looks like he's got a white flag raised, ready to surrender.
“Please keep it,” Akaashi tells him with the lightest nod of his head, because he really couldn't care less about something like a handkerchief (and he really ought to start paying attention to the movie, anyway). “Just put it away, if you don't need to use it.”
With this, Akaashi leaves without another word, content enough to chat with his favorite attendant at the booth and the fifteen minute train ride back home. He carries on with his night as usual, pretending to care about cram school work and practicing his tosses like he said he would, and thinks no more of the boy in the Laputa theater.
Three months later, right on the edge of spring, Akaashi gets the news from a phone call to his house and a very elated mother.
“Fukurodani High School just called, Keiji. They want you on their volleyball team. Can you believe it?”
Akaashi lets the rice slip out from between his chopsticks, sets his dinner down altogether, and pinches himself under the table. When he realizes none of this is a dream, that he's going to play volleyball at an actual powerhouse school, he offers his mother the smallest smile, trying not to gape, and shakes his head in disbelief.
“Hardly,” he says back to her, and she laughs. He plays it off like he's not particularly thrilled, but there's no hiding it, because he is, and she can only set herself down to muss up his hair in the usual way she does. Akaashi briefly wonders if this is why he's got perpetual bedhead, but he'll let it pass this time. He just lets another grin sneak through, right back down at his rice bowl, and a single mother sighs at her only son.
“You're always so calm about these things, Keiji,” she tells him. “The team will be so lucky to have you.”
It's raining on the day before Akaashi’s first practice at Fukurodani.
“Damn it.”
He's not sure how he's ended up here, right at the doorstep of the gym he'll be calling home for the next three years, off his usual running path and in trainers too wet to run back home in. Akaashi thinks this is what he gets for being proactive about keeping in shape, for playing the part of backup setter for a powerhouse school, and he wonders if maybe, just maybe, he should to remember to exhale. In for a penny, in for a pound, he reminds himself. Let it unfold.
Akaashi takes another deep breath, remembers that the subconscious has a habit of leading you to places you'd never think to go on your own, and settles himself down to please it, anyway. Hello, Fukurodani. Akaashi peers at the stray weeds and the chipped paint of the walls, imprints the sight of them until they might seem familiar, but knows that will take time. Getting used to Fukurodani, a new school, a new team, will take time.
In the meanwhile, Akaashi thinks he might be content to just sit around until the storm lightens up. He flips off his shoes, peels off his wet socks, and leans back on top of the first step to gym, eyes shut and world away. He wonders what the Laputa’s playing this week, or if his mother’s making nanohana with mustard for dinner later. After a supreme bout of peace, he even thinks he hears the sound of sneakers squeaking—what a good and honest sound, Akaashi thinks—and congratulates himself for drifting off into this near nirvana.
(But never do they last.)
This particular one ends by the outburst of a swinging door, and Akaashi nearly falls over from the fright. He bolts up, turning and back in the rain, and comes face to face with the sight of him.
“I thought I heard someone outside,” he remarks, keen, and Akaashi scowls, deep.
“You...heard me?”
“You know, like the shifting. Like, when it's the middle of the night and you've invited a friend over, and you can hear them toss around under the covers of their futon. Scritch, scritch, scritch. Because, you know, city nights are never quiet nights.”
“I don't understand,” Akaashi tells him, but somehow, he does. He peers back to his thrown-off trainers, remembers that he's barefoot in front of an upperclassman, and thinks he might as well be naked. At his indiscretions, the other boy laughs, and Akaashi bows, deep, apologetic, and ready to disappear.
“I'm sorry, Bokuto-san,” he says, and Bokuto raises an eyebrow before settling.
“You know my name?”
Akaashi nods, head down. “You're very well known in volleyball circles, Bokuto-san, it's not everyday you meet someone in the national ace’s top ten.” When he peers up, Bokuto makes a strange mix of a tch and a hiss, and Akaashi thinks he's offended him horribly. He keeps in his bow from there, not sure how to proceed with the likes of Bokuto Koutarou, and waits for his reprimand.
“Top ten!” Bokuto shouts out, and his voice echoes across the courtyard. “Top teeeeeeen! I can do better than that! If only I could master that bastard straight spike of mine!”
Bastard straight spike. Akaashi’s never heard a mix of those words before.
He opens his mouth to say something when Bokuto beats him to it; pressing his hands on Akaashi’s shoulders, Bokuto brings him back upright like a wind up doll and leans in close. Too close. Akaashi can smell chocolate protein powder on Bokuto’s breath. (Akaashi is more apt to have vanilla.)
“Say, Akaashi!”
“You...know my name?” it's Akaashi turn to ask.
Bokuto nods, still unaware of the term personal space. “Why wouldn't I? I'd be a bad captain if I didn't know the people joining! And better yet, you're a setter, aren't you?”
Akaashi nods. “Ah, yes, but I'm not sure if I—”
“Nonsense!”
Akaashi is tempted to say, well, no, you're the one who's made of nonsense. But he doesn't, because that's rude, and he keeps his mouth shut. When Bokuto lifts himself away from their closeness, Akaashi braces himself, feels Bokuto grip a hand in his like he wants to shake it, and smiles wide.
Bokuto stares back down at Akaashi’s bare feet. “Whether or not you've got your shoes on, or whether it's sunny or raining, I believe in the tosses you'll give me!” he says, struggling with his words along the way, like he had meant to come up with Japan’s next great proverb. Akaashi gets it though, somehow, even if he's already exhausted, because Bokuto Koutarou is exhausting, and feels himself swell in something like firm belief.
“Hey, Akaashi. Can I call you that?”
“Sure.”
Bokuto smiles again, wide and uncontained. Akaashi suddenly feels like he's known him for many, many years.
“So, what do you say?” Bokuto asks. “Will you help me get into that top three?”
Akaashi considers the possibilities.
A) Leave.
B) Stay for the meanwhile.
C) Stay for the next hour.
D) Stay and take your time.
Deep comes his exhale. Akaashi shakes Bokuto's hand and keeps it there for a little longer than he'd like.
“Let's begin, Bokuto-san.”
When Akaashi shows up to the Laputa theater in his new Fukurodani tracksuit two months later, his favorite attendant perks up from her wedding catalogues, hands him his usual admit one ticket, and continues to gawk.
“Keiji-kun, you look so—”
“Don't say it, onee-san.”
“You look so handsome!”
Akaashi merely accepts the compliment with a small shrug, chin buried into a high-zipped collar. It's still a bit chilly given the usual springs he's used to in Tokyo, but he doesn't complain about it. The attendant does though, asking Akaashi if they'd prefer to talk inside, and puts up the usual be back in five minutes sign on their way into the theater.
“So…” She asks about all the usual things, like how he's enjoying his first year of high school so far, if he's made any friends, and if he's been getting a ton of homework. Akaashi nods along, answering, a decent amount, to all of her questions, and lets her lead him up the winding stairs. She takes one look at the duffle bag and the tracksuit again, feigning a frown, and sighs when they reach the very top.
“Now what was the sport you play again? The one that's been costing this grand old theater at least half their profits every month?”
Akaashi frowns. “I don't come here that often.”
“Oh, you'd be surprised. But seriously!”
“Volleyball,” Akaashi answers.
“Do you like it?”
Akaashi is tempted to drone on with the same answer again, a decent amount, but stops himself when he knows it's more than just that. He thinks of the time spent tailoring his tosses to the teammates he's still getting used to, the dumps he's learned to add to a repertoire he'd still like to expand, the trips to Nekoma and Shinzen for the liveliest of practice matches, actual matches—remembers, again, that not everyone will care about the specifics—and shrugs. “It's good,” he says, and feels the back of his neck break out into something red.
“Good?” the attendant asks. “That's way more than I usually get out of you.”
It is then when Akaashi thinks about Bokuto Koutarou, their extra Sunday practices, and all their time spent getting that bastard straight spike to be, well, less of a bastard. They'd been successful about thirty percent of the time with it by now, judging by all of Bokuto’s wild exclamations across the gym, all his “I'm gonna conquer the world’s” and every happy guttural in between.
The other seventy percent—all their failures—had ranged from just off the mark to terrible misses, but Bokuto had lamented the end of the world for every single one. By now, with every hurtle into the deepest depths of his dejected modes, Akaashi’s even learned how to say, “please take this time to calm down, Bokuto-san,” served with the cushion of chilled chocolate milk boxes and five minute breaks.
(Akaashi thinks might do away with the breaks soon, though. The chocolate milk, too. Patience is key with Bokuto, not pampering him.)
Well, whatever their success rate is at this point, Akaashi forces himself to shake the thoughts of him away for the meanwhile. With two-hundred yen out, he asks for his usual fountain drink, a large cherry cola, and takes the first sip from the straw like a drag, blatantly indulgent (and a travesty, nutritionally, but he doesn't care). The attendant just leans over concessions with a big smile, a quiet gloat of a chuckle, and Akaashi just frowns.
“Is there something on my face?” he asks.
“Oh, no,” she says. “I was just thinking that you've got a lot on your hands, don't you?”
Akaashi takes another sip instead of a sigh, gulps down, and finds the most diplomatic way to answer. He bows, light in the usually way he does with her, and points towards the door. He hears the beginnings of 1949’s Late Spring, remembers the season is not yet over, and knows what to say.
“Ah, well. The movie’s just getting started,” Akaashi says, hopefully not too cheeky, but it really just has.
In the back of his head, Bokuto Koutarou looms again, that focal point in a sea of negative space. Faraway, Akaashi watches the wilderness grow around him, proud and uncontained, but lets him stay.
(But he also thinks, defiantly, ‘well, I'm not going to give him chocolate milk tomorrow.’)
“How do you do it, Akaashi-kun?”
“What do you mean, Konoha-san?”
“Well, you never seem to lose your cool with him.”
Akaashi peeks over past the net to find Bokuto spinning a ball on his finger, smiles bright for his side of their practice squad and much too excited about a lap of flying balls. An assistant coach scolds him when he fails to do a set with a his team, to which Bokuto apologizes and throws himself upon the mercy of hardwood. While they're finishing up with that, Akaashi works on his receives on the other side (his least favorite drill), distracted enough to miss one from his coach on the ladder, and he apologizes profusely for any mishaps.
“Hey, head in the game, Akaashi!” the coach calls after him. “We need all our setters focused for inter high!”
Akaashi bows again and Konoha just pats him on the back, all sympathetic. They jolt up when they hear the coach yell to the principal setter on the other side, a war-weary third year about to enter his last tournament. To him and Bokuto, the coach says they need to stop focusing on that “garbage straight spike, because it'll never be usable in matches!” and the third year setter can only nod in agreement. Akaashi stops everything he's doing.
“Tell Bokuto stop insisting upon it, then!”
“I'm only doing that because I know it'll work!” Bokuto yells back.
“But you heard the coach! Why don't you just give it up already?”
Akaashi raises a stiff hand and walks himself up to the net, where Komi and Konoha quietly cheer for him on the side with small fist bumps along the way. “Coach,” he calls to him, and everyone looks to the first year setter in spectacle.
“May I?” Akaashi asks in the other setter’s direction. There are no objections. Bokuto’s gaze widens, a bird of prey, and he takes that as a sign to start.
Akaashi picks a volleyball off from the ground, presents it to all parties involved as a peace offering, and silently throws it over for Washio to toss to him. Bokuto gets the signal, jumps up by the time Akaashi’s already got the ball in the air, and exhales when he thinks he's got it in the right spot. He's going to get it, Akaashi thinks, and when Bokuto does, he hits it down with the utmost fury, taking out the middle blockers on the other side. He even goes to high five Akaashi on the way down, but it's a blur from there—Akaashi getting grabbed by a handful of his pinafore, the names like asshole upstart know-it-all—before Bokuto takes the liberty of coming in between the two of them.
Shaken, Akaashi barely has the time to compose himself when the other setter says it: “if you think you can do it, go ahead. See if I care.”
“I...I really meant no disrespect,” Akaashi fumbles for once, “it's just that I think Bokuto-san really can do it and—” he bites his tongue when he knows he's said too much, past the point of polite language. It tastes like conviction.
(Akaashi sours, when it reminds him of blood on a busted lip.)
“Whatever.”
“What?” Bokuto pipes up.
“I’m resigning anyway,” says the only third year left on the team, enough to shut the coach up. “I can't do this anymore, and I've really got college to think about. I'm going.”
“Inter high is a week!”
“The team will be fine, captain.” The third year swallows a pause, eyes on Akaashi. “You know this.”
Akaashi feels himself wilt before rising. Bokuto steps forward.
“Are you sure about this?”
Once again, there are no objections.
Glances dance amongst the three involved: setter to setter, setter to captain, captain to setter. Akaashi to Bokuto. It is an unspoken changing of the guards, old to the new (even if Akaashi suspects he's only quitting completely in the heat of the moment). He feels his hands clam up when even the coach nods in their direction, because even he might agree, and Akaashi can only allow himself the deepest bow. As tempted as he is to refuse things, to say, let me remain your backup setter, he knows the sweat on his palms isn't from wanting to stay on the bench.
So Akaashi doesn't say it. Let me remain your backup setter.
Because he doesn't want to be a backup setter.
He never wanted to stay the backup setter.
“I thank you for this opportunity,” he tells everyone instead, a signal in the only sort of selfishness he’ll allow of himself today, maybe ever, and no one dares to refute it.
When Akaashi shows up to school three days after the incident, he finds a folded note underneath his indoor shoes, name messily scrawled (and spelled with the wrong characters), and reads to himself with little urgency.
practice is canceled today after school!!
do not be alarmed!!
HOOT HOOT HANGOUT EXTRAVAGANZA (part three)
“How vague.”
Still, Akaashi does what he's told, wonders if the gym’s being worked on or if another sports team needs it this afternoon, and goes about his day. It is a slow crawl of a morning until lunchtime, one that Akaashi usually takes with no problem, but he's been more restless lately than not; and while certain people—certain team captains—prefer the audible groan, or the wild fidget, or god forbid, the whine, Akaashi’s always hated the stilted brand of his own antsiness. A fever rises again. Hands clam up. He wonders if he is dying.
Komi, the second year libero, taps him on the head after, and brings Akaashi back into reality.
“Hey, Akaashi, what's up with you?” he asks. “Your stomach upset you? That's why I don't mess those convenience store boxes you know, too high in sodium, makes you all sluggish,” he prattles on, and Konoha just clicks his tongue.
“Can't you see?” Konoha butts in. “Akaashi-kun’s tired as all hell. Look at the circles under his eyes!”
Akaashi just drops his chopsticks, presses his fingers over his cheeks, and shakes his head—but they aren't wrong. He really hasn't been sleeping in between the late night practices and the heaps of homework, but in all modesty Akaashi just tells them it’s part of being a setter—because it's true, for better or worse, and goes back to mapping strategies for their offense.
“Ah, well, we've all been working hard,” Komi sighs out. “I recently saw a tournament match in Miyagi, and saw the most amazing libero I've ever seen in my life from this no-name team. Torino, I think they’re called? He was a first year, too! Makes you wanna work twice as hard.”
Akaashi closes his eyes, leaning his cheek over the cup of his palm. “Well, we'll beat them if that time ever comes,” he drones out without meaning to. Komi and Konoha laugh, and Akaashi immediately shuts his mouth closed.
“Oh ho ho, how forward of you, Akaashi-kun,” Konoha remarks, mocking of a certain team captain. “You really have been working too hard if Bokuto’s rubbing off on you.”
“Good thing one of our team gatherings is today. It should be fun, and you need the break,” says Komi, getting up to wrangle an arm around Akaashi’s neck and muss up his hair. “This magic spell will be lifted off you soon! We will have our Akaashi-kun back to normal!”
“Normal?” Akaashi releases himself.
“Oh, you know, the usual Akaashi-look.”
Komi goes all heavy-lidded, eyelashes fluttering, and Akaashi is tempted to say, ‘I certainly don't look like that,’ but he's too busy wondering about the meaning of back to normal to make any rebuttals. Komi stays with his impressions—the nonchalant, the nonplussed—and Akaashi doesn't blame him, or anyone, for thinking he might be caring about this more than usual. Because like water, his mother once told him, you will always look cool to the touch. Akaashi’s tempted to tell them that this is the way he gets before games, regardless of what's written on his face, and wishes they could feel his simmer.
It's a fever you can't shake, he wants to say, but lets the chance pass him by. One Bokuto Koutarou crosses his mind instead, wayward but not unwelcome, and Akaashi swallows down, gritting his teeth before releasing.
“So,” he asks, mostly to change the subject, “why are we having this get-together? I already told my mother I'd be home for dinner tonight.” She was going to prepare his favorite too, nanohana with mustard, and Akaashi was never one to miss those sort of evenings.
Konoha and Komi exchange glances, peering around their classroom to make sure no one can hear. Akaashi slumps back in his seat.
“A team tradition since 1871—”
“You're making that up,” Komi interrupts.
“Okay, fine. A team tradition since 2011, the Fukurodani volleyball team has always embarked a few team gatherings before tournament season. It's been called many a name over the years, like ‘Amaratesu aid us!’ or ‘VB-free streak,’ but the goal is always the same: for a day, with tournaments on the horizon, we take a break for one whole evening. No volleyball whatsoever.”
Akaashi perks up at this. “Really? And who even plans this every year?”
Glances shift again, like this one outing might be for the record books, and Akaashi already knows the answer.
“Well, it's always up to that year’s team captain.”
Akaashi knows, instantly, to kiss that nanohana goodbye.
Bokuto calls it last man standing.
“We're going to sit here and watch horror movies until we drop,” he says, disciplined with balled fists over his lap, eyes already glued to the DVD menu screen for Ju-on. “Last man standing gets himself two free passes for the movies and all my respect.”
Konoha leans against the doorway of the club room. “And why aren't we actually going anywhere this year? We got to do karaoke last time.”
“Coach says we needed the funding for new equipment this year! So I had to improvise!”
“I wouldn't call horror movies an ideal for stress management."
“Sure it is!” Bokuto insists. “You'll get so stressed during these movies that you won't feel it any more for the tournament. It'll be like sweating it out in a sauna.”
“Gross.”
Akaashi scowls deep, wondering where their captain got that sort of logic this time, but settles his bag down nonetheless. He can always use the extra movie passes—even if it probably isn't for the Laputa—and he's never been one to scare easily during horror movies anyway. Bokuto claps when Akaashi takes a seat next to him, and the rest of the team groans and does the same.
It doesn't take long for a few of them to bow out. The team manager, Yukie, leaves on the pretense of mere boredom (and Akaashi believes it, because she's probably the toughest person on the team). Washio and Sarukui say goodbye to the free movie passes when they get to the first jump scare in Ju-On, with claims that games like this were too sadistic to play. Komi, poor Komi, actually lasts until the very end of the first movie, but barely makes it fifteen minutes into a showing of Audition before hightailing it out of the club room altogether; he insists that his mother is calling him for dinner (“oh, I can already hear her calling from down the street, actually, so I guess it's time for me to go!”) and leaves without so much as another word.
“Scared yet, Akaashi-kun?” Konoha asks, though he's probably the one that's gone ten shades paler than any ghost they've seen in Ju-On.
Akaashi just peers over at Konoha with somewhat of a devious grin, unspoken code for, I'm gunning for the prize. He flits his sights to Bokuto (who’s absolutely shaking by now), then back to the screen, still not in the least bit perturbed.
“You demon.” Konoha slumps back in utter defeat; he and a few other bench players get up after that, content to find stress management in the form of ice cream bars and other convenience store fare.
“Bokuto-san.”
Only two remain.
“Y-yeah, Akaashi?”
“I mean no disrespect, but do you need to forfeit?”
“N-never!”
Before Akaashi knows it, the DVD ends and Bokuto looks wearily to the next one. He reaches over to the remote, still caught in his kneel, and keeps his whole body bowed in surrender.
“Well, time for the next one!” Bokuto proclaims, his laughs nervous, to the floor. “Be brave, Akaashi!”
“But Bokuto-san, you're the one sweating.”
“A-am not!”
Akaashi gets up to eject Audition out from the media player. The next movie, Nakata Hideo’s Ringu, pops in with a click, and Bokuto winces at the sound of the movie, already mid-scene. You will die in seven days. Bokuto’s eyes pop open like he might die in the next five seconds.
“Bokuto-san,” Akaashi calls again, pausing to go back in the main menu. It stops on the close-up of a gaping ghost.
“Can’t you see I’m trying to watch the movie, Akaashi?” Bokuto scolds, but he’s only got eyes on his kouhai. They’ve gone as wide as two moons, watery by the television light, and Akaashi knows immediately what to do.
Finger to the power button, he ends the competition altogether and declares Bokuto the unanimous winner. Last man standing. Bokuto stays on his knees.
“Are you scared of horror movies, Bokuto-san?” Akaashi asks, graceful upon the loss.
Bokuto shrugs. “Maybe.”
Akaashi shrugs and sits back down, legs crossed, in front of his captain. He’s delicate in putting the disks back into their right boxes. “My mother refuses to watch them, because she gets the worst nightmares,” he tells Bokuto. “They last a couple of days, and she gets dark circles under her eyes.”
“What are you trying to say?” Bokuto asks.
“Well,” Akaashi remarks, sealing the boxes clean and stacked. “Maybe Konoha-san was right. I don’t think these movies are good for stress management.”
“Well, you seem calm.”
“Ah, well. I just happen to like movies.”
Sitting up only to collapse onto his back, Bokuto smacks his palms against his cheeks and lets them settle over his eyes. Silence meanders into the room, thick but not uncomfortable, and Akaashi stays where he is.
“I can’t settle down, Akaashi,” Bokuto tells him. “No matter what I try, I feel like I got a thousand ants running over me all the time.” This is the first time Akaashi is hearing this, but he is not surprised. “Like I gotta keep moving, or else I’ll go into a coma. I just want to play already. I want to hear the crowds and the way those volleyball carts squeak by you! There’s nothing else like it.”
Akaashi understands—oh god, does he—but he also knows a captain is no use when he’s lying flat on the ground. Getting up to brush the dust off his knees, he makes his way over to Bokuto, presumptuous enough to stand over him, and offers both hands, open as can be. He lets his gaze skimper away, because such closeness was never in the playbooks when it came to spending time with an upperclassman, a rising star, and he wonders if he’s made himself too keen this time around. Exhale. Prepare for the reprimand.
What Akaashi gets instead is a grip taken.
Bokuto pulls on him, maybe a little too hard, too eager, and accidentally sends him flying to the ground, too. Shit. Ow. Akaashi is sure he’s punctured Bokuto’s spleen (or at least kneaded him in the ribs), and feels the daze of two knocked skulls on the way to the floor.
“S-sorry,” he says, but Bokuto just laughs. Akaashi rolls over, right off of him, and stays down at a comfortable distance. He begins to wonder if he should’ve gone to Nekoma instead.
“Hey, Akaashi!” Bokuto shouts out of nowhere.
Akaashi tilts his head to face him. “Yes, Bokuto-san?” he asks.
“I actually think this is kinda nice.” Bokuto smiles up at the ceiling. “Lying here like this. I feel calmer already.”
“Ah.” Akaashi thinks he might sneeze from the dust bunnies on the ground. “Well, that’s good to hear.”
Another beat of silence comes. Bokuto welcomes a sigh to push through it.
“Hey, Akaashi,” he calls again.
“Yes, Bokuto-san?”
“You mind if we just stay like this a little?” asks Bokuto. “Sometimes the quiet’s just fine.”
Akaashi can’t help but agree, and nods to his requests. “Whatever you please, last man standing,” he even yawns, cupped behind his hand, and finds himself a victim of his own fatigue. Maybe he really has been working too hard; Akaashi feels it curl in his toes and scrunch up his calves, burn on scraped knees and tense by bandaged fingers.
“Hey, Akaashi.”
“Yes, Bokuto-san?”
“You know, this is the first time I’ve learned anything about you,” Bokuto says. “So...movies, huh?”
Akaashi nods, half asleep. “I like watching them.”
Bokuto hums. “Sometimes, I don’t have the will to sit through movies. They’re either too long, or too intense, and I have to bow out before I get to the end. I get spoiled a lot because I never make it to the credits, and I'm just dying to know what happens.”
“Is that so?” Not a surprise. Eyes close. Breathing finds a reasonable pattern to settle in, and speech comes, less guarded. “It’s just finding the right amount of patience, Bokuto-san. It gets better,” he tells him, drunk off drowsiness. Akaashi already feels himself one foot into a dream. He doesn’t mind if Bokuto comes along, too.
“Hm? Well, maybe you have to show me, then. What’s your favorite movie?”
Akaashi doesn’t have to think about that one. “Seven Samurai.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“Me, too!”
“I think that’s the first time I’ve learned anything about you, Bokuto-san.”
Another one of his laughs ring through the air, and nothing more is said. The air keeps cool for the night, the lights stay off, and the two of them drift off into sleep with the dusk. Neither one of them wake up from nightmares, or the itch to run onto the court, and Akaashi settles for the slight twitch of tossless fingers.
When Akaashi wakes up, it’s night and Bokuto is still asleep. His breathing is hearty and on the verge of a snore, but not quite so, and Akaashi watches the way his face furrows in a frown before settling. Akaashi breathes a sigh of relief over the calm, sits up, and notices the gap between them. It’s definitely grown smaller, he thinks, before putting the thought away altogether; he knows he should not be counting the centimeters in the first place.
Akaashi wipes the sleep away from his eyes with the jacket still over him. He notices how it smells like spearmint deodorant. Lemons, too. How it’s been worn much too thin and just a tad too big. How it’s definitely not his, because it has to be—
Ah.
—his jacket.
Bokuto’s jacket.
Akaashi feels the back of his neck redden, because senpais should not be giving underclassmen their jackets to wear, and he shouldn’t be in the proximity to know what Bokuto’s deodorant smells like. Still, he finds the oddest disrespect in just folding and giving it back too, because Bokuto had taken the great effort of laying it upon him.
“Bokuto-san,” Akaashi resolves instead, keeping the jacket on him. “Bokuto-san,” comes the call, until Bokuto shakes awake and alert. He is certainly not the type to straggle in his post-sleep, jolting upright and ready to go. Akaashi leans back, startled, and Bokuto smiles at him.
Too bright, Akaashi thinks. Like a new day in the night.
“You passed out, Akaashi! I’ve never seen anyone fall asleep so fast!”
Akaashi frowns. “Speak for yourself, Bokuto-san.”
Bokuto lowers his shoulders, squaring himself up for the peace of things. “Anyway! Enough about that. What was I saying when you dozed off?”
“Um,” Akaashi sighs out. “Oh. Movies.”
“Oh, yeah! Movies!” Bokuto pounds a fist into his palm when he remembers. “We should all have a movie night next time, I think, one without the horror kind. That might be nice.”
Akaashi nods. “Okay.”
“Wait. Shit!”
When Bokuto soon realizes the time, the darkness outside, he gasps, curses to himself, and swears he didn’t mean to stay this long. “My family’s having yakiniku tonight. I can’t miss that!” He gathers his things—everything sans the jacket—and rushes to the doorway. Still caught in a blur, Akaashi just waves, sure he’ll lose him, and Bokuto stops himself short before dashing off.
Akaashi reaches out with the jacket in hand. “Bokuto-san, your—”
“Hey, Akaashi!” Bokuto smiles wide and Akaashi stops himself with the mash of his lips. “Thanks for helping me through this whole stress thing! I think I really needed that.”
“But I didn’t—”
“I’ll see you tomorrow morning, all right?” Bokuto says, swinging himself out the side. The grin comes like a flash, but Akaashi catches it like old film caught in its projector. Against the moon, Bokuto rules it, like he could rob all the light and get away with it, and Akaashi remembers it’s not polite to stare.
Bokuto, in turn, says nothing about the jacket. He leaves, ever on his feet, and Akaashi finds two passes to the Laputa theater in one of the pockets.
The Laputa announces a romance week for the summer, set to play western classics like Casablanca, Roman Holiday, and It Happened One Night. The attendant tells Akaashi it’s in honor of her upcoming engagement (because it's bound to happen any day now), and that he should consider bringing himself a date.
“I have the perfect person for you!”
“Not today, onee-san.”
“Aw, are you sure?”
Back at home, the jacket hangs in his closet, freshly ironed and hung. Bokuto calls by the two tickets he’s left in the pocket.
Ah.
Akaashi feels the the burn break for his cheeks when he equates the two of them together. He considers his options promptly:
A)
No.
B)
No.
C)
No.
D)
Absolutely not.
“Maybe not this time,” Akaashi tells the attendant, when he’s still reminded of spearmint deodorant and a pleasant lemon scent.
The interhigh arrives, and the interhigh takes.
Akaashi lands from his final set in the semifinals, shoes loud and taunting in a squeak against the floor. The sound of it is worse than the final whistle. He hears a scorekeeper flip to an unsavory number.
The other side spills out in celebration, and Akaashi limps away by Fukie’s help. He's bandaged up by a nurse—where she tells him it's only a minor sprain—and he takes the recommendation of ice, rest, and some time away from court. Konoha even tries to joke that he'll carry Akaashi onto the bus, but laughs whittle away into nothing when he realizes how little levity remains.
It's quiet on the train ride back. It takes Akaashi ten minutes to realize that Bokuto hasn't taken his seat with them.
“Time to prepare for harukou. That's all we can do now,” the coach says to them, back in the gym. When Akaashi bows, he hears a static ring past his ear drums. You can do better than this, it tells him, and Akaashi isn't sure he can.
Weary, he looks around the gym. Bokuto still hasn't come back. Before he even gets the chance to ask, Fukie tells everyone he's skipped for the rest of the day, and to expect him back in the morning. Komi calls it dejected mode: extreme version, while Konoha calls it the abyss, and Akaashi just feels a needling urge to get him back in the gym.
“He’ll be all right,” says Konoha. “You know how he is about sulking. Sometimes he’ll drag one of his friends from the baseball team to the batting cages to swing the night away.”
“Or he’ll see how many ice cream sandwiches he can stuff in his mouth,” Yukie sighs. “He still owes me money for that one.”
“How about that time he dragged us to the observation deck of Tokyo Tower to scream?” Komi chimes in.
“That was fun, you'll have to admit. I could've sworn we were going to get arrested that night, though.” Yukie laughs. Konoha and Komi follow with a few snickers of their own, while Akaashi lets a small smile sneak through.
Konoha shrugs, throwing off his shoes. “Point is, Akaashi—the guy will always find a way to rebound, no matter what kind of abyss he's landed himself in.” To this, Fukie nods along. “Wouldn’t have elected him captain if he couldn't.”
At once, Akaashi might understand.
(—or no, that's not it.)
When the back of his neck burns again, Akaashi thinks he already has. He knows. The static comes rising back in his ears when he leans down to stretch, pleading the same things:
Can’t you do better than that?
Akaashi isn't sure. Maybe he never will be. Still, he gets up, not sure of where he'll end up going, and decides that he'd just like to see Bokuto.
“I believe in the tosses you'll give me!”
A grin comes upon his face.
He could always rest his ankle later.
Because Akaashi decides, knows, that this is not an evening for patience.
“Figures.”
Past all his stops at observation decks, batting cages, and the city’s various ice cream shops, Akaashi finds Bokuto at classic night in a movie theater, not the Laputa, feet up atop the seats and all alone for the ending credits. Out of breath, with too much running done on a bad ankle, Akaashi composes himself before seeing him; trying not to limp, he zips his jacket up to his chin, bites the inside of his cheeks with the bare nudge of his teeth, and forces out an exhale.
“Bokuto-san,” comes the call, quiet enough to be lost, but firm enough to be heard. Undeterred, with nerves still humming from the day, Akaashi rubs down the back of his neck with ever-cool fingers. Steps keep up the aisle and past the guiding lights of the theater tarmac.
“Hey, Akaashi,” Bokuto says, too small. Akaashi thinks he'd like to build him up again. He takes the seat next to Bokuto, and notices he’s landed himself right in the middle of the row this time.
“Your favorite’s on,” Bokuto proclaims next, chin up, when Seven Samurai starts soon after that, and the two of them watch the first few seconds in silence.
That is when Akaashi realizes, oh, he remembered, and ‘oh, he remembered’ turns into something of a recollection, too: by the small gleam in Bokuto’s eye, Akaashi thinks back to the clubroom, the jacket, and that first fact.
It’s my favorite, too, Bokuto says in the forefront of his memory, lemon-scented, and Akaashi settles into something comfortable.
They don’t talk about volleyball that night. In fact, they don’t talk much at all: Bokuto stews in all the action, grins up at them like he might want to join in himself, while Akaashi prefers to study quiet scenes and cinematography, whole panoramas and the tiniest onscreen motions. He flinches when Bokuto cheers—because he probably has the worst theater etiquette Akaashi's ever seen—but remembers it's better than watching him sink into the seat cushions, only to disappear.
For the sake of both of them, Akaashi might accept it, maybe even like it—maybe even crane to see him rise again; but Bokuto doesn't notice, with eyes kept ahead, all brighter by the minute. In secret, Akaashi watches the way Bokuto reclaims the victory in his veins, the way his shoulders swell out of slumping, like he was never meant to stay down in the first place, and thinks back to what Konoha asked him in the gym: how do you do it, Akaashi-kun? You never seem to lose your cool with him. Akaashi presses rewind. He knows it is not a matter of tolerance, anymore.
First comes the beginning. The unforgettable first impression. It's the kind that catches Akaashi off-guard, like a scene in medias res. He's barefoot in the rain, and Bokuto’s got his hands on his shoulders. Akaashi can't decide if he wants to stay, or go, but he knows he will never forget it. He will not forget him.
Then comes all the little jolts, and the details of the climb, their rise: Bokuto messes up another straight spike. A third year gives up his starting position. There are horror movies and midday naps, and Akaashi learns to share a favorite. Seven Samurai. Fukurodani even makes it past qualifying rounds and almost advances to the finals. Bokuto leaps with all his might.
Akaashi gets to the climax and he thinks—oh—the climax.
Akaashi’s not even sure he wants to be at that point, because with the peak comes the fall right after it, and he’d like to think he's still working on climbing. Because even if Bokuto is apt to stumble, he never stays down, or dares to break the surface of some endless rift.
Instead, he just thinks back to Konoha’s question again, a question he's been asked more than once over the course of the past couple of months, and replays it anyway.
“You got wrinkles on your forehead, Akaashi.”
It is at this point when Bokuto catches Akaashi staring. He does not fret, or avert, but decides to stay.
“Oh,” Akaashi says. “Do I?”
Bokuto smiles. Warmth unfolds. It is neither soft, nor forced, nor clever. It's as easy as Akaashi’s ever seen it.
How do you do it, Akaashi-kun?
A memory comes through in a blip. Akaashi is ten again.
“Have patience, and it'll pay off.”
All at once, he understands—that being with Bokuto is like sitting through the movies. A cult favorite. An award winner. A director’s worst nightmare. A plethora and a wilderness.
And at this, he smiles back.
Akaashi Keiji is fifteen when he falls in love for the second time, mid-movie, dumbstruck, and ready to keep watching.
“You think I can do it, Akaashi? You think I'll really make it, this time?”
Another clean straight spike gets past the defense. The other side never knew what was coming.
At this, Akaashi leaps up, fists clenched, mouth wide to yell. A moment, the moment arrives, past whatever national rankings they want to place Bokuto in this time, past whatever tournaments they’ll lose or win, and the rest of the team joins suit.
“Yes, Bokuto-san. I think you'll make it this time.”