The sea.
When Akaashi wakes up, he smells nothing but the sea.
He imagines a shipwreck and gold glimmering tokens just below the surface of the water in the distance. The birds ask him how he's doing as they soar above him, white feathers looking nearly silver in the decrescent light of the sunset. The waves gently coax him out of his sleep, spinning softly around his ankles as he stands at the shore, the sun warm.
He was warm.
The sunlight pours through his window, draped in white curtains that didn't really do much to keep the light out, but Akaashi never minded it. Pretty black shapes engrave themselves on his legs from the glass panes from where the sheets had ridden up.
Akaashi could barely see, but as he goes to reach for his glasses on the nightstand, feeling Bokuto in front of him, he remembers that he was here, in his arms, and yesterday was not a figment of his imagination, but a real thing that really happened.
And sometimes Bokuto did feel like a dream, but Akaashi thinks the realities of him were even better.
Little by little, he inches to pull his glasses from the top of the nightstand to try not to disturb him. He slowly slides them on with one hand, careful not to wake Bokuto up as he sleeps soundly against him, his fingers lazily curled into the fabric of Akaashi's shirt from the night.
Akaashi looks down at him once his frames were on.
His cheeks are pink from the cold of the room, a small healing cut on the apple of the right one. His hair is still wild from the night before, falling into his face with a few strands clinging onto his silver lashes. There are a few surface scrapes scabbing over on his chin, and Akaashi tries hard not to feel bad, telling himself that they would go away and Bokuto would be okay again.
He would be okay.
Akaashi stares at the small pout on Bokuto's lips, the same ones that would smile big like city lines and part the Red Sea to let a loud laugh out, a gentle fog over a calming seashell shore. A deep pink color that matched with the blush over his skin sat on the tip of his button nose, reminding Akaashi of the peonies that greeted him by the door of the flower shop every day.
Akaashi wanted to kiss him.
Bokuto was just as beautiful in the morning as Akaashi thought he'd be, as the daylight painted him in delicate porcelain, lit him up like constellations really were harbored beneath his skin, and made him truly feel like his whole universe.
There's shifting in the sheets, and Bokuto stirs, stretching his arms out against Akaashi's waist with a delicate shake before they fall right back over the curve of it. His eyes open, and gold showers Akaashi in curiosity and an excitement that seemed to reset before every encounter, looking over his face.
"Daisy! Good morning!" He says, hiding his face back into the crook of Akaashi's neck from where he was before.
Akaashi feels the heat seep into his cheeks at the name, and he hums, Bokuto's rib brace itchy against his own skin.
He lets himself roll onto his back, stretching himself out while Bokuto does the same, feeling the sheets on his skin.
Akaashi glances at Bokuto once, seeing his shirt riding up from the stretch, dark ink over a crease of muscle peeking out beneath the fabric near his hip, and Akaashi quickly looks at the ceiling, trying to subtly turn his face away from Bokuto as fuschia bleeds into it.
The duck plushie falls off of the bed and Bokuto juts his cheeks out in silent disappointment.
"Hi. How are you feeling?" Akaashi asks, his voice still heavy with sleep.
Bokuto tilts his head so that the top of it was pressed against Akaashi's shoulder, wanting to be close to him without explicitly asking to be, since there was no storm today.
Akaashi didn't mind.
"Good! Can I make you and Kuroo breakfast?" Bokuto asks, and Akaashi shakes his head, shifting so that he is looking down at Bokuto.
Bokuto's hair is messy and soft against Akaashi's cheek.
"No, Bo. Sakusa says I can't let you do any extra work for the next six days." He says softly, not wanting to even remotely get on Sakusa's bad side, dark eyes leaving an impression in the dimmed light of his garage.
"Then, in six days can I make you guys breakfast?"
Akaashi breathes out a smile, reaching over to run a hand through Bokuto's hair as a final gesture. "Fine."
"Yeah!" Bokuto pulls back a little to look at Akaashi, a tiny stunning smile on his face as he thinks of what to say. "I'll make you the best breakfast you've ever had!"
"I'll look forward to whatever you make."
Bokuto's grin starts to fade as he looks at Akaashi, silently taking him in like he usually did, like when they're at the flower shop and the park and the disco. Akaashi's eyes travel towards his mouth, and his nose and his eyes, caught in his orbit again as he falls further and further to him.
He's having trouble pulling away from him.
Bokuto looked like he wanted to say something, but the words never came out, too shy to leave his mouth.
Akaashi wants to break the silence, wants to distract himself as his butterflies whisper secrets within the quiet, his heart listening intently. Akaashi did not want it to listen to those secrets. They were the kind that you keep locked in a box with a silver-plated key to be thrown into the bottom of the ocean, never to be seen again.
He wanted to stop thinking.
"Let's do something today." Akaashi looks at the ceiling again, mentally telling himself to never do that again.
"Ooo, like a date?" Bokuto asks, his voice expectant, and Akaashi almost felt the need to not let him down.
He shuts his eyes and lets a breath out, Bokuto already eager for something that didn't even happen yet.
Though, Akaashi couldn't blame him.
"Y-yeah, fine. Like a date." Akaashi says, hoping that the light didn't filter through the color in his cheeks. "We can go get breakfast instead of making it, today."
And Bokuto gives him another happy yeah! that makes the sun outside grin in return, and he helps him out of bed so they could get ready for the day in the bathroom.
They make conversation while he was brushing Bokuto's teeth, his own toothbrush in his mouth, finding it less difficult to understand what he was saying in the way his eyebrows jumped and his dimples pressed themselves into his cheeks after his statements.
Stuff about getting back to racing and if it was true if sunflowers face the direction of the sun.
Akaashi is helping him wash his face when Bokuto asks about hair gel, sitting on the toilet lid with his eyes closed. Akaashi didn't really have any strong gel that would hold Bokuto's hair back like how he usually did, only the pomade thrown somewhere in a drawer for whenever he wanted to look fancy for dinner dates with Kuroo.
Bokuto said he didn't like it in his face all the time, as Akaashi was wetting a washcloth beneath the faucet of the sink, and then he had to think.
They were kind of in a dilemma.
"I could offer you...a rubber band from my desk drawer." Akaashi says, gently wiping the white suds from Bokuto's cheeks as he presses his hands against the toilet lid. "Or, I'll go out and buy you a headband."
Bokuto juts his top lip out in thought, though Akaashi knew exactly which route he'd take, considering he was trying extra hard not to inconvenience him so much.
"I'll take the rubber band."
Akaashi leaves to get the rubber band from his desk, spreading his fingers out so the band crawled up his wrist and sat there, before he met Bokuto in the bathroom, who was looking at his socks and tapping his feet rhythmically on the tile, waiting for Akaashi to return.
He tries not to smile at that.
Instead, he flushes and clears his throat, though there was nothing in it, and it makes Bokuto grin up at him.
"You're back!"
"I'm back," Akaashi says, pushing his glasses up his nose bridge with the back of his hand. "Hopefully this works."
"I think my hair is long enough for it to stay," Bokuto says, staring at Akaashi's shirt and resisting the urge to lean on him, just so his body wouldn't have to do that much work.
Akaashi begins gathering Bokuto's hair in his hands, not looking at them. He thinks he hated them less when there was a little daisy drawing on one of them, but his skin was bare and there was nothing to focus his attention on except for how they looked.
He didn't let it be known.
"Keiji."
Oh.
Akaashi's blood rushes too quickly from his brain and he feels like he's going to pass out. His heart races in confrontation, a little disoriented in how Bokuto broke the silence in saying his name.
He heard it once before from him, slipping past Bokuto's lips and carrying that pretty wind chime ring to it. Akaashi would have likened it to music anyway, the kind that was hidden in wind up snow globes for you to shake up and dream about later.
And Bokuto was playing his music, as he said his name again, and Akaashi felt like he was floating all the same.
"Keiji~."
"Don't...say that," Akaashi says, hating the way his butterflies dance in his stomach as he blushes and focuses on trying to get Bokuto's hair into this rubber band, his fingers trembling.
"You have such a beautiful name!" Bokuto says. "I like the way it sounds."
And Akaashi also liked the way it sounded coming from Bokuto, but he would never put that into the light.
Akaashi had put up a seal between his heart and Bokuto Koutarou, and he just discovered how weak it truly was, as all Bokuto did was push against it since they met. It was cracked and had holes in it, letting in light from that same smile that threw Akaashi for loops.
Akaashi breathes, and Bokuto's grin fades a little as he thinks, eyes trained on Akaashi's mouth.
"It's okay." He says, shaking his head and feeling his brain trying to connect thoughts, only for them to melt out of his ears as Bokuto makes eye contact again. "Just...stick to Akaashi, okay? Just...only for now."
"Does that mean I may call you Keiji in the future?"
Akaashi blinks, wondering if he meant to say that implication or if his heart was speaking for him.
In the future, he would love for Bokuto to add his first name to the list of the many that he calls him. In the future, he wouldn't mind hearing his first name from Bokuto, maybe in passing or a quick callout when seeing him for the first time in a day.
In the future, Akaashi liked the idea of being something worth more to Bokuto, of Bokuto being that much more important to him, enough for them to trust each other with something like their first names.
But because of that, he was running from it, really.
He hoped with everything in him that he would be able to keep up the pace, to never have to face something so intimate involving Bokuto because he does not think he has the strength to keep himself from drowning in him.
But instead of saying all of this, he wraps it all up with a simple maybe, and Bokuto smiles.
"Then, you can call me Koutarou, when I could call you Keiji! It could be like an exchange!"
"Okay."
"Promise?" Bokuto tilts his head, his eyes gleaming.
"...Promise," Akaashi says, trying not to grin at Bokuto's smile.
"Boku-bro!" Kuroo practically explodes into Akaashi's room and finds the two of them in the bathroom. He's got on that red bomber jacket and he's wearing a smug grin that made Akaashi suspicious whenever he saw it. "I would have thought I'd find my cool best friend and my less cool best friend here."
"Takes a loser to know a loser. Loser." Akaashi grumbles, trying to forget about the nickname Kuroo called Bokuto and hoping that he'd never hear it again.
Boku-bro. Akaashi shudders.
"Kuroo! I missed you last night!" Bokuto looks over Akaashi's shoulder as the other tries his best to loop his hair through the rubber band, wetness from the washcloth on his fingers making it a bit easier. "You went straight to bed by the time I got here."
"I know, I know." Kuroo shakes his head in disappointment. "I was out all day with Kenma. I did have a premonition that we were hanging out, though. They're never wrong!"
"We could hang out tonight! After me and Akaashi's date!"
"Date?" Kuroo's eyebrows raise and his voice is like a trumpet blare and Akaashi is this close to jumping out of the window to run back to Kurosaki before Kuroo has the chance to ask the question. "So, you finally–"
"Nope. No." Akaashi says quickly, shaking his head. "Not a date."
"Aghaashi! But you said it was a date!" Bokuto whines and Akaashi's eyes are wide as he stares at his hair.
"Only because you asked!"
"Are we hanging with you, too, 'kaashi?" Kuroo asks, crossing his arms over his chest and deciding to ignore whatever the hell was going on between them this morning, but making sure to bother Akaashi about it later.
Number one on his to-do list, in fact.
"No," Akaashi answers, not sure if he'd be able to keep up with the fire that warmed Bokuto's skin and the volts of electricity that lit Kuroo's bones up in a neon violet for an entire night. "I'll stay home and clean the house."
"That's fun for you?" Kuroo asks, making a face like he just bit into a lime. "I cannot believe what I'm hearing."
"We could help!" Bokuto says, and Kuroo nods.
"Well, Bo can't. But I could just help you clean when I get back!"
Akaashi shakes his head, knowing that by help you clean, Kuroo meant performing terrible renditions of 80s music he sang himself, while subjecting a broom to his horrible dancing. And by dancing, he meant body rolls and side steps that barely matched with the tempo of the music he was playing in his own head.
Akaashi could live without it.
"It's okay. You two should go." Akaashi says, hoping he wasn't coming across like he didn't want to hang out with the two of them that much, gently pulling Bokuto's silver hair through the rubber band to keep it a bit tighter out of his face. Stray strands fall over his forehead and Akaashi tries not to notice how much of a different person Bokuto looked like with his hair like this. "We could make dinner together when you guys get home."
"Wow, you are good to us! I am so gonna marry you, 'kaashi." Kuroo says, and Akaashi grimaces, making a face like he would throw up. "We're already like a married couple. We might as well just seal the knot!"
"Gross," Akaashi grimaces. "And it's tie the knot, stupid."
"Not if I marry him first. You could cry while bringing us our rings." Bokuto challenges, pointing menacingly at Kuroo with his eyebrow raised.
And Akaashi's heart fucking dies in the middle of his chest. He could taste the bitterness of its corpse right on his tongue.
"Both of you, get out. We both need to change." Akaashi ducks his head and gathers the towels on the counter, hoping the sunlight wasn't enough for them to see his skin. "And do not let Bokuto do anything that involves raising his arms over his shoulder tonight. No lifting. No climbing."
"See? He's just like a husband!" Kuroo says, lightly jabbing Bokuto in the ribs, and the two of them laugh at Akaashi's expense.
"And I cannot wait to divorce you. Go away." Akaashi says, wiping down the counter with the towel he had in his hands, though it wasn't wet considering he already dried it earlier.
"Where could we go?" Bokuto asks Kuroo on the way out of Akaashi's room, and once the door shuts behind them and they carry their conversations out into the hallway, Akaashi lets out a breath.
And then another, and then another.
~❀~
It was freezing.
Akaashi found himself in Alaska this time, the air dry and frigid as he walked his fingers across the glass of their dining room table. He can't find it within himself to complain too much, watching as the auroras from the sky above him dress him in carmines and emeralds that he'd only ever seen in lace ballgowns and silken royal flags.
He thinks, in his world – as the night is clear and painted in fleeting streaks of color – that Bokuto is with him. His heart smiles as he imagines that spectacular grin he would have as he stares at the sky, and he would watch the colors melt over the apples of his cheeks and the curve of his nose.
He thinks Bokuto would laugh, and point to the colors, and Akaashi would take in how they flood into the hollow lines of his tattoos.
Pretty, pretty.
"What are you smiling about, loverboy?" Kuroo asks, peeking in from the doorframe of their kitchen and kicking him out of his head.
Akaashi wipes the smile off of his face quickly, back into its usual stoic state, hoping Kuroo would account it to just seeing things. He lets his hand fall flat against the glass and he looks at Kuroo as if he was caught doing something he shouldn't.
"Nothing," Akaashi says, folding his arms across his chest and looking at the wall beside him, trying to avoid eye contact. "Not important."
Kuroo looks at him with hooded eyes and he has that slanted grin Akaashi hated because he knew it wasn't just some innocent smile. There were venom and jester hats behind it, and Akaashi was hoping Bokuto would change his clothes that much faster so he could come to Akaashi's rescue.
"Were you thinking about him?"
"No."
Kuroo gasps.
"So, you were thinking about your boyfriend." He declares, as if he was playing in a gameshow, looking through Akaashi's lies for some stupid prize. He leans on the back of the only other dining chair across from him.
Akaashi looks away, clenching his jaw and feeling his brain begin to rewind on this lie.
"I just said I wasn't thinking of Bokuto, dammit."
Kuroo raises his eyebrows. "I didn't even say his name. Your head went immediately to Bokuto. Why? Because you have the lovebug~."
"Who else could you be talking about?"
"That guy who you bet on for Inarizaki! With the hair!" Akaashi shudders at the mention while Kuroo hums thoughtfully. He tilts his head with his eyes shut as he thinks, holding his chin in the corner of his thumb and forefinger. "...Your boss!"
"Excuse me?" Akaashi asks, and Kuroo blinks, as if Akaashi was not understanding the most blatantly obvious thing in the world.
"You know, like your boss, Konoha. The one you work—"
"I heard you." Akaashi waves a hand in the air, trying to think of any other instance where Akaashi wasn't either getting yelled at or trying to avoid getting yelled at by Konoha, despite liking him enough to come into work every day. "Why him?"
Kuroo shrugs. "Nothing wrong with trying to get ahead."
Akaashi groans and leans against the back of the chair. "Don't you have something to do today? Go do that instead of bullying me."
"Where's the fun in that? I'm supposed to bully you. Who else would have told you about those red striped pants that one time?" Kuroo rolls his eyes. "You're welcome."
Akaashi shuts his own and unfortunately remembers exactly which red striped pants Kuroo was talking about, before flicking him off and feeling the beginning of a headache coming on.
"You truly are the worst best friend I've ever had."
Kuroo gasps, and Akaashi opens his eyes to see him clutching his shirt, his hand over his heart.
"I've done nothing but support you, and that's how you repay me?" Kuroo starts his antics again and leans forward as if he just found out the worst news he's ever heard. "I should fuckin' tell the landlord I just got hatecrimed in my own apartment by you."
"Our landlord doesn't even like you. Why do you think I'm always the one they talk to whenever there's a problem in the apartment?"
"Aghaashi! You wound me, truly. I feel my heart breaking. I'll die without your love!" Akaashi ignores Kuroo's antics, so dramatic, though he couldn't say he didn't appreciate the change of mood so quickly as long as it was not about Bokuto.
Akaashi looks up at him. "Then perish."
"Wh—"
"Akaashi..."
Akaashi and Kuroo stop talking, turning their attention to Bokuto's voice from where he was poking his head in between the crack of Akaashi's bedroom door and the wall, soft as if he didn't want anyone else to hear save for Akaashi.
"Um...I cannot get my shirt off." Bokuto says, his eyes trained on the ground. "It hurts..."
Akaashi gets up and flicks his eyes to Kuroo, squinting at him in warning, only to see him pull down his waterline and stick his tongue out in return, before smiling softly at Bokuto in encouragement, planning to kick Kuroo in the shins the next chance he got.
"It's fine. I'll help you, and then we can go, okay?"
Bokuto nods and quickly ducks back into the room as if he didn't want Kuroo to see, holding onto a black shirt in his hand, looking at Akaashi once he walks into the room.
Akaashi works on taking the braces off of Bokuto, a bunch of velcro and buckles, before he hooks his fingers at the bottom of his shirt, keeping his eyes trained on the fabric.
He felt like his room suddenly had red laser beams crossed over the walls and every corner, like he was ready to pull off a secret mission with no one there to help him in the way he was trying not to mess this up. Carefully, he pulls up Bokuto's shirt, scared to even breathe too loud, like an alarm would go off if he did.
One wrong move as he's dead.
Bokuto was quiet, embarrassed and feeling like he was being annoying, though Akaashi kind of missed his voice.
"Do you...have a particular place in mind for breakfast?" Akaashi asks, letting Bokuto poke his head through the hole of the black shirt, messing up his hair that much more, and he nods.
Akaashi pulls the shirt down, ignoring the snake tattoo on his hip, detailed, black ink creeping up from the waistband of his pants. He wants to ask about it, never seeing it before until this morning considering he's never had to physically pull a shirt off of him, but he thinks now was not a good time.
He takes a while to put the braces back on Bokuto's body, despite doing it a couple of times before. They were too complicated for anyone to be able to put on and take off, really.
He basically struggles horribly with them, while Bokuto obliviously spouts to him about a diner in Namaso. He said Akaashi would love the miso, and that was enough to convince him.
"I always think of you when I go to new places," Bokuto asks Akaashi's back as he digs through his closet for a thin, oversized sweater to hide his braces, finding a navy blue one that he stole from Kuroo and never bothered to give back.
Akaashi stops and stares at the sweater with a blush, knowing he did the exact same thing, even in old places.
They were similar like that, except only one of them was brave enough to tell the other.
"What makes you think of me?" He asks.
He lets Bokuto push his head through the hole of the sweater, letting his arms into the sleeves of it. It fit well enough, kind of tight around his chest and shoulders, but Bokuto didn't say it was uncomfortable once Akaashi asked, so it was okay.
"I wanna take you all over the world! So when I go to new places, I wonder if you'll like it. Is that weird?" Bokuto says, blinking at Akaashi with a small grin as he tugs the sweater down over the black shirt.
"I do the same," Akaashi says, looking up at Bokuto and seeing his eyes drop to his mouth as he speaks. "I think of you all the time. So, no. I don't think it's weird."
There is a silence that settles over the two of them as they look at each other, one of those pauses in time where Bokuto was quiet and thinking, and Akaashi had let him get distracted in him. He had one of those expressions Akaashi usually had when he was reading for class or writing notes.
Studying, like he himself belonged between those same glossy pages or in the ink of his black gel pens.
His heart was beating in his ears, begging him to close the small distance in between them, like Akaashi's world would finally make sense had he pushed himself to know it.
As if Bokuto would finally make sense to him, had he let him push against his seal and let the pieces fall at his feet.
He shouldn't, considering Bokuto technically still went against the law and Akaashi was still wary of the dangers that came with someone so bright, but he was stuck in his cosmos, and he wasn't sure how to get out.
He wasn't sure if he wanted to get out.
There is a soft scent of linen, and by the time Akaashi pulls himself back to his earth, Bokuto is staring at his lips, as if he was waiting for them to open and spill another one of Akaashi's thoughts.
"You're staring, Bo..." Akaashi says, and Bokuto blinks, a light carmine flooding into the tip of his nose.
"Sorry, um..." Bokuto glances at Akaashi again, before he turns to grab his phone from where it was on the nightstand, flustered. "We should go!"
Akaashi nods, trying not to let his head take him down a dirt path he'd been struggling to keep off of for a while.
They were friends. They've been friends. It worked for them, not having too much commitment while still finding ways to seek refuge in each other when they needed to.
Lately, Akaashi has been letting himself be more open, letting himself wander, but every single time, he's carried to that same dirt path that led to the what ifs and maybes that Bokuto has made for him. Maybe he would allow himself to go down it, to see what it would offer him in its entirety.
Just once.