Chapter Text
It was an average February morning. Cold, dreary, and otherwise uneventful, outside of bringing everyone one step closer to the arrival of spring. Nothing of any true national consequence was taking place, no regional festivals were set to happen. The only significance to the day was quite minor.
But it was enough that Akaashi Keiji, who had not missed a day of school since he was twelve, was giving serious consideration to the merits of cutting. In the end, it was a demanding exam in his Classical Japanese class and his new responsibilities as vice captain that made the decision for him. But he did not want to go.
Oh, he really did not want to.
“Try to give your teammates the chocolates you don’t want instead of bringing them home, Keiji darling,” his mother insisted as she slid his neatly packed bento across the kitchen table. “Your father is going to need new shirts if he eats as much as he did last year.”
Last year Akaashi had barely been able to carry them all home, so her concern was merited.
“I’m sure Koutarou-kun would appreciate… well, all of them, really,” she added wryly.
Akaashi loved his mother, and he was typically impressed by her powers of perception. In fact, she’d probably taught him everything he knew about reading people. But in this case she was neglecting the fragile nature of his teammate's ego. Or any teenage boy's, in fact. Which made sense, he supposed, considering his aunt had described his mother as being a “beautiful, emotionless bulldozer of hearts,” in her youth. The delicate sensibilities of teenage boys had never been her wheelhouse.
“Wait,” she put her finger on her lips as she corrected herself, “actually, perhaps he would not.”
Akaashi nodded, then stood and kissed her on the cheek before packing his things to leave. His stomach clenched with dread.
Forget Nationals. Valentine’s Day was the most brutal day of the year.
The first chocolates were, thankfully, those of gratitude and carried no deep implications for him to address. They came from the two cheery first-years that he’d been tutoring since the fall. Akaashi accepted the colorful, store-bought packages with a smile, sliding them into his satchel. He had emptied it as much as humanly possible the night before, hoping he could hide the evidence of his unwanted popularity better than he had the previous year. In junior high, fellow students had quickly grown resentful. Although he understood why, it wasn’t like he could do anything about any of this.
He would have robbed a bank to keep the same situation from playing out again, if such a thing were possible. But it wasn’t. Valentine’s Day was a struggle he had to face head on.
With a “Have a wonderful day, Akaashi-kun!” the girls skipped naively into the building, leaving him alone to prepare for what was to come.
Akaashi’s polite but frank honesty was normally a point of personal pride. It wasn’t that he enjoyed hurting people. But it was kinder, more respectful, to be truthful. Better to cause a small, immediate pain than to dance around reality and leave false hope in his wake. To subject people to the sort of oblivious humiliation that came with deception was a kind of cruelty that rarely justified itself.
But if the darting eyes and nervous giggles of the previous week still meant what they had in junior high, he was going to test the true limits of his ethical convictions. It was likely he’d be spending the entire day making girls he barely knew burst into tears. And since, contrary to popular rumor, Akaashi wasn’t made of stone, he didn’t know if his heart could take it.
But it would have to, because the second set of chocolates came with feelings attached.
He always remembered the first confession of February fourteenth with particular intensity. It wasn’t as though he forgot the others, of course he didn’t. But the first one haunted him because it was always either the haughtiest, or carried deep, fragile sincerity.
This one was the latter: an oddball, bookish girl who was actually one of his favorite classmates. But any aspirations of closer friendship were shattered the moment she caught him at the bottom of the stairs, holding a beautiful cupcake wrapped in iridescent cellophane. Based on the way she was looking at him, she had probably never given chocolates to anyone before in her life. By extension, her confession was the most self-aware and dramatic he’d ever gotten.
“I'm pretty certain you don’t want my affections, Akaashi-kun, but I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t tell you how much I admire you. So take this,” she shoved the homemade confection into his chest, “and remember me fondly?”
Her request gave the impression that she was about to disappear into the ether.
He held the cupcake in his hands, and gave her a single nod. Because he definitely would remember, even though she wasn’t going anywhere. He'd remember in the short term because he'd be unhappy about the space that was already sprouting between them. He’d remember in the long term because she at least had the guts to admit that this was all about her and not about him.
Because it never was. Not in the slightest. And it wasn’t their fault, really. The entire nature of the holiday prompted this sort of cold-call approach to communicate emotions. But if any of these girls had taken the time to actually get to know him, they’d quickly realize something even more important than his lack of interest in girls.
And that was that Akaashi hated sweets.
By lunch, he’d taken a break from being dignified and respectful in his rejections, and was eating his lunch in the supply closet outside of his classroom. If it weren’t for the five confessions he’d received on his way into his section of the building, the four times he'd been pulled into the hallway before class had started, and the single instance he'd been cornered at his desk in full view of everyone, he would have just sat and waited for giggly variations of: “Akaashi-kuuuuun...” and gotten them over with.
But he was so hungry. And he’d already made five girls cry. A break was necessary, or his slow simmering rage over the entire situation would spill out into his interactions; something that would make him feel infinitely worse. Preventing that was worth the humiliation of hiding to steal himself fifteen minutes’ worth of self-care.
In the closet he could hear more girls approach, while his progressively more irritated classmates made excuses for him. He’d tried to bribe them for their silence with chocolates – a terrible idea that they'd found ungrateful and insulting. But he couldn’t see into the hearts of everyone at all times. It did make sense upon further consideration, since they weren’t really getting any chocolates themselves. He didn't know why they were covering for him now, but he expected payback at some very inconvenient point in the future.
In general, it was very difficult to explain to anyone just how uncomfortable Valentine’s Day was without coming out of the closet (both figuratively and at this point literally), and also just bragging. There was no way to say "girls won't leave me alone because they mistakenly think I'm perfect" without sounding like an utter jackass. But it was the truth. He still felt objectified, and it hurt to lose what he thought were friends this way, either through rejection, or some misguided sense of competition. He was sixteen years old, and though he was considered steady and perceptive for good reason, his personality was not yet equipped to handle this level of identity management.
He should have just offered to let his classmates copy his homework instead.
When it finally seemed that the girls had stopped asking for him, he heard the familiar sound of extremely heavy footfalls thud past his closet. The doors to the classroom rattled as someone leaned heavily against them.
“Where’s Akaaashi?" a readily identifiable voice inquired through a mouthful of chips. The volume was barely muffled by the door.
His classmates laughed derisively, knowing full well that Akaashi could hear, “Hiding from all the girls who keep confessing to him. Cowardly bastard.”
There was the sound of a scuffle, and somebody shouting, “Calm down, you nutjob, we were just joking!” and Akaashi realized his brief respite had come to an abrupt end.
He stepped out of the closet with as much dignity as he could muster.
“Good afternoon, Bokuto-san.”
Bokuto dropped the collar of the boy he was grabbing, his face full of childish guilt. He looked even more disheveled than usual. His hair was out of place, the knot of his tie was hanging down around his third button, and he’d managed to get food all over his constantly untucked shirt. To be fair, Akaashi’s classmate didn’t look much better. And since Akaashi himself had just been hiding from his admirers in a small dark space, it seemed he had no room to talk.
“Akaaaaashi!!” Bokuto’s eyes shone with such unbridled affection that it was hard not to smile back. “I was thinking, you know, that maybe we could sit down and come up with a training regimen for the team? That is, if you wanted…”
“I think that’s an excellent idea, Bokuto-san.”
At his words, Bokuto's face lit up even further. "So do you wanna do it now, then?" he asked eagerly. Akaashi felt a swell of relief for managing to make at least one person something other than miserable on Valentine's Day.
But the moment was interrupted by the delicate clearing of someone's throat.
A somewhat unexpected duo of girls – two very popular third years – was for some reason standing in the first years' hallway. A statuesque beauty, and her equally adorable, tiny friend were looking Akaashi up and down as though they were pleasantly surprised by what they saw.
"Akaashi-kun," the smaller shot him a friendly grin, "Kimi-chan's out by the second gym. She was hoping you might come speak with her?"
His classmates gasped behind him. Kimi-chan, or Kimura Hiroko to the plebeian masses, was debatably the most attractive, popular girl in school. A more undebatable fact was this: she was someone Akaashi had never spoken to in his life.
"Just a minute here, girls," Bokuto took a self-important step forward, "my vice captain and I have some important club stuff to talk about."
"Do you have another disappointing national failure to orchestrate, Bokuto-kun? Or was once enough?” the taller of the two girls demanded.
His ecstatic smile crumpled in on itself like a collapsing building. After a long pause, Bokuto turned on his heel and slouched his way down the hall, head down, hands in his pockets. Akaashi knew the signs of one of his captain’s devastated moods, and this was certainly it. If they were at practice or in a match or really almost anywhere else, he'd know how to handle the situation. But this wasn’t a tantrum. It was a legitimate reaction to something horrible. And standing in the first years' hallway, in full view of everyone, it seemed like he might embarrass his senpai even more by following him. Not to mention these awful people vying for his attention.
Behind him, his classmates were snickering, and the girls were outright laughing.
The seething rage that had been surging through Akaashi’s veins at the discomfort of the day finally had an outlet.
"Are you under the impression that uncalled-for rudeness to my team captain is going to motivate me to speak to a complete stranger more quickly?" he inquired the same way he might ask about the weather.
The tall girl’s jaw dropped, and his classmates gasped behind him for a second time.
"Are you seriously defending that hot mess?" she sputtered. "He lost us Nationals!"
Us? As though she’d played. Akaashi's jaw clenched, but he released it immediately, cool logic taking center stage.
"If you had any understanding of volleyball, you'd know that a single person neither wins, nor loses a game," he said, mild and ruthless. "Now, I'll ask you again: how do you think I'll approach your friend when this unfortunate interaction is heavy on my mind?"
The girl's friend nudged her knee, first gently, then with more enthusiasm. "Bokuto's harmless, Chiyo," she whispered loud enough for Akaashi to hear. "He's just loud. And pretty nice, when he’s not being an idiot."
For several moments, no one said or did anything.
"Fine," the tall girl finally muttered in Akaashi's general direction. "I probably shouldn't have said something like that. I'll... apologize."
Akaashi nodded, "Then, if you'll excuse me, I should try to catch Kimura-san before the end of lunch."
Someone needed to make this pseudo-holiday illegal.
He was used to princesses of both the evil and benevolent variety.
In his large extended family, Akaashi had cousins of all genders who believed their unique eye color, flattering bone structure, and loose natural curls entitled them to the universe on a platter. He also had equally beautiful cousins who worked as counsellors for transgender youth, caretakers for dementia patients, and many other occupations that required a kind heart in the face of cruel reality, but provided little in the way of actual salary.
Akaashi considered himself neither, he was more like the neutral librarian guarding spell books that contained the power to save or destroy the world. But that was besides the point. He knew how to recognize when someone was poised to use her beauty for good or ill.
And as she “confessed” it was clear that Kimura Hiroko was unquestionably doing both.
Probably in a few years, her entitlement would be gone, replaced with just the right amount of bitter life experience, but that didn't help him much now. Because even though the petite redhead seemed like a truly kind person, she also seemed convinced that pretty people should stick together.
And there was no question that they were both very pretty.
But Akaashi didn’t care about pretty at all. If he wanted pretty, he just had to look in the mirror, or at his mother, two things he did every day. Pretty was all over the television, plastered on ads in the train, on the walls of stores where he just wanted to buy socks. Pretty was mundane.
He preferred interesting faces with character.
Also men’s faces, a fact he was considering announcing over the school's PA system so he’d never have to endure a Valentine's Day like this again. The public anonymity he’d sought by staying closeted had grown meaningless when, for incomprehensible reasons, every girl within a five-kilometer radius seemed to want to hold his profoundly sweaty hand.
Since breaking into the school office to make a public announcement was Bokuto-levels of drastic, maybe he could just start with telling his team. It could hardly be as harrowing as coming out to his parents had been. He could go from there, seeing how it went.
"I'm sorry, Kimura-san," he bowed when she finished her entitled pseudo-confession, "but I can't return your feelings."
The beautiful girl pouted for a moment, then smiled brightly immediately afterwards, as though she had come to the only conclusion that made any sense.
"You know, I figured girls weren't your thing!" she chirped. "But even though you are a first year, a face like yours doesn't come around very often. So I had to try. Keep the chocolates anyway!"
He held the beautifully packaged boutique chocolates loosely in his hands, feeling sweat slide against the wrapping paper. She knew? The most popular girl in school knew? But he'd been so subtle…
Or at least he thought he had been. Should he have pretended to stare at girls more often? No, that was rude and revolting. There was always the fake-girlfriend-at-another-school route, but that was always discovered. Should he have asked a girl at Fukurodani to pretend to have a relationship with him? Of course not. It was obvious that would be a complete disaster without even trying.
No. She didn’t know because he had or hadn’t done anything. She had guessed. And it was for exact the same reason that this entire day was so unpleasant in the first place.
Because he was pretty.
No one knew anything about Akaashi Keiji beyond the obvious. They knew that he looked nice, got good grades, and was a first-year starter on the volleyball team. No one ever seemed to get past those few pieces of information. No one ever seemed to try. They all just assumed a certain level of perfection that absolutely was not there, and paid homage to it on Valentine’s Day.
They didn't know that Akaashi sweat more than any person he'd ever met, so much so that he had to use prescription deodorant to make it through the day without ruining his uniform. They didn't know he ate some variety of nanohana for dinner almost every night for the entire month of March because it was his favorite and only tasted good in season. They didn't know that eating that many bitter greens made his farts smell like dead animals. They didn't know he couldn't carry a tune in a bucket, or that he'd be happy wearing the same outfit every day for the rest of his life. They didn't know how painfully shy he'd been as a child. How, deep inside, he still was, and admired anyone who had the guts to be unabashedly loud. They didn't know he had acne all over his ass.
And they didn't know he hated sweets.
"Since you’re not interested," Kimura ignored his thought process completely. Or, more accurately, was completely unaware that it was happening, "and since you seem like a safe person to ask, being gay and all, I figured... well, I was wondering about your manager, Yukie-chan? I was wondering if you knew if she happened to like, um... girls? Maybe girls like me…?"
The only thing he knew Yukie preferred was food, and lots of it. But even if he did know...
"I couldn't say one way or the other," he answered stiffly. "It's never come up."
Kimura bit her lip, and he was certain anyone who was spying on them thought it an adorable gesture. "Ah, don't worry yourself, Keiji-kun. I'm not going to tell anyone your secret… as long as you keep mine."
The rest of the day felt strangely bearable after that, though his bag was completely full and his patience close to the breaking point by the time he made his way to the volleyball club room.
Since the third years had all resigned to focus on their exams and there weren’t any regular first years to speak of other than himself, he was left with a room full of the second years that made up the bulk of the team. Bokuto's absence was noticeable. Although Akaashi expected he'd have to go find him eventually, it was better this way if he wanted to unload the excess sugar. It hadn't escaped his notice that their captain's popularity began and ended on the volleyball court. He probably had received obligation chocolates, if any. Given his competitive nature, the offer of Akaashi's ample charity would bring him down even further than the encounter at lunch already had.
The rest of the team, on the other hand, had girlfriends so they’d get over it.
"Excuse me, I...” Akaashi lifted his voice over the low chatter of the room, "have two announcements and a request, if you don’t mind?"
His teammates looked back at him confused. Making proclamations wasn't quite his style. Komi scratched his head while Konoha's disconcerting smirk seemed to grow just a bit deeper. But it was now or never.
"I'm gay,” Akaashi exhaled. “I hate sweets. But no one seems to know this, so could you please take these off my hands?" He tipped his bag, scattering dozens of packages of chocolates across the bench. Four sets of eyes gazed back at him with deep admiration, while a buzzing tension filled the room.
As expected of a libero, Komi sprung first, gathering packages into his arms as quickly as he could with little regards for what they actually contained, or even if he was squashing them.
"What do you think you’re doing, you greedy shrimp?" Konoha and Sarukui surged forward to try to get their share, shoving each other and Komi until they were all falling on the floor, surrounded by their scattered plunder. With his teammates all down, Washio reached out to pluck a single perfect cupcake wrapped in iridescent cellophane from the bench, a small smile of delight on his face.
"Here," Konoha tossed a store bought box back to Akaashi, "give this to Yukie, it's her favorite. Oh, and do you need us to talk about the gay thing? Or was that just to let us know so we stop pushing Sarukui's magnificent porn collection on you?"
Sarukui shrugged, no guilt whatsoever on his face, “I have sophisticated tastes, but I don’t expect everyone to share them.”
"The gay thing?" Komi scowled through a mouth full of salted caramels. "You can't say that, you smarmy asshole."
"Sorry, Akaashi, I didn't realize I was being indelicate. Do we need to discuss your budding homosexuality my young kohai? Or did you just want us to know, same way you know we’re straight?"
He laughed behind his hand, "I just wanted you to know. But if you could..."
"Keep it to ourselves?" Sarukui chimed in. "Got it." Washio gave a thumbs up as he delicately unwrapped his cupcake. Given the care that had gone into making it, his reverence in eating it was appropriate, and made Akaashi feel a bit better.
"How 'bout the ace?" Komi's words were barely recognizable through the mess of salty sugar in his mouth.
Akaashi hadn't really thought about that. It wasn't that he wanted to keep anything from Bokuto, but he had just decided that afternoon to tell the team. As a unit. Once he'd built up the momentum to do so, he couldn't have waited. Now that it was done, sitting down one-on-one and coming out to the single person on the team that he was building the most intimacy with… it had had an emotional intensity he hadn't really considered. But leaving him now out would unquestionably hurt Bokuto’s feelings and bite Akaashi in the ass.
"Feel free to tell him if he asks," was what Akaashi settled with, even though it felt wrong. He was more or less banking on the assumption that if Bokuto had a question like that, he’d just ask Akaashi himself.
Their captain still hadn’t arrived when they made their way from the locker room to the third gymnasium where practice was being held this week. The walk to the gym turned out to be the easiest all day, and he realized it was because Washio and Konoha were purposely staring down any girl who seemed to want to approach him. He wasn't sure what was more off-putting, Washio's scowl or Konoha's smirk. And although he didn’t necessarily need their help, he couldn’t say he wasn’t grateful.
Just as they arrived, there was a flash of white and grey and a shouted promise to just be a minute. That level of speed wasn’t the sign of any emotional desolation. It was an incredible relief. Perhaps the third year had apologized, and in the strange way that seemed to so often happen in films, she and Bokuto had become tentative friends. Either way, the captain was not unhappy, so Akaashi felt comfortable leaving him to his own devices while he led the warmup.
It felt more than a little strange.
Though the team had been the ones who'd elected him, it still was bizarre being both the youngest and the vice captain. Granted, he’d been playing volleyball since early elementary school, so it wasn’t as though he was new to the sport. But even after almost a year, he was new to Fukurodani. Shaking out the awkwardness that was trying to settle in his shoulders, he calmly called out the stretches.
Shortly afterwards, Bokuto bounded into the gym, fired up in a way that promised a productive team practice, as opposed to the one-on-one spiking drills that lasted until Akaashi's fingers were on the verge of falling off. Ironically enough, Bokuto's placid mood and easy cooperation through the afternoon made Akaashi want to stay for spiking practice anyway, his previous exhaustion forgotten. They finished with laps of diving drills, and even being forced to put on kneepads didn't darken his mood.
"Awh man, I wish I didn't have to go to my stupid appointment," Bokuto complained as he stripped out of his jersey in the locker room. "Feels like I would hit some awesome spikes, Akaashi."
"Agreed. You're in excellent form today, Bokuto-san," Akaashi had one foot on the bench as he struggled with the kneepads that were sticking to his sweaty legs.
Bokuto dropped his shirt and grabbed Akaashi by the shoulders, wild with the praise. "Really?!? You think so? What was good?? I thought my straights were more controlled than normal, was it that???"
"All of you was more controlled than normal, Bokuto-san."
"It's true," Sarukui agreed, returning from the showers. "Did a pretty girl give you chocolates or something?"
But Bokuto wasn't listening, instead he was tipping his head and looking at Akaashi from multiple angles.
"Akaashi," he observed without a single hint of malice or mockery. "I think you might be the sweatiest person I've ever met."
Everyone in the room sighed and there was the sound of palm against forehead. Sarukui seemed to be preparing some kind of lecture, when Akaashi started to laugh.
At first they thought he was crying. His chuckling tended to sound like whimpers to people who hadn't heard it before, and he had a habit of laughing behind his hand. But Bokuto, who was standing right in front of him, could see the crinkles at the corner of his eyes and knew what was going on.
"I mean, Akaashi," he snickered, "how many undershirts shirts do you go through a day?"
And he really should have been offended, or at least a little defensive, but after an entire day spent as the victim of his own face, someone noticing the most disgusting thing about himself was more delightful than anything. His laughter gained a hysterical quality, and Bokuto followed suit, even though there was no way he understood just why it was that the situation was so hilarious. Things escalated until they were howling, grabbing onto each other's shoulders as they tried to keep from falling to the ground.
"I think our ace finally broke our setter," Komi muttered at the point when they were on the floor, tears running down their faces. The observation got a grunt from Washio and a sad nod from Sarukui.
Konoha seemed to have washed his hands of the whole business.
It wasn't until Akaashi got home that he noticed the plastic bag in his satchel that hadn’t been there before.
It absolutely couldn't be a Valentine's Day gift. First of all, the only girl who'd have access to his bag was Yukie, and she'd given them all chocolates at the end of practice. Except for Akaashi: she’d reluctantly given him her second lunch, convenience store onigiri, when the team informed her that he didn’t like sweets. He tried to tell her that it was just fine, but she refused to take no for an answer.
Secondly, no one gave Valentine's Day chocolate in a flimsy plastic bag. Even the onigiri, the obligation gift to end all obligation gifts (and coincidentally the best gift thus far), was prettily packaged, with a small red bow she’d pulled off of the box of chocolates and stuck on the corner.
Despite the fact that it couldn’t be, the flimsy plastic bag was full of chocolate bars.
But no kind he'd ever seen before: American and European brands, with the international store's sticker on every bar. Even stranger, they were the kind of flavors you'd expect from a limited edition KitKat, not from actual Valentine's chocolate. Things like wasabi, ginger, and sesame, hot pepper, and even mustard. Flipping the last bar to read the ingredients, he noticed that sugar was very low on the list, indicating that there wasn’t a lot of it. As he scanned the English descriptions, one phrase stood out.
"Smooth bitter notes dance across the tongue."
These were chocolates. But by the look of things, they weren't sweet.
With nervous curiosity he opened the mustard bar. It was one of his favorite flavors and also sounded the most disgusting with chocolate; might as well start there. Breaking off a small corner, he brought the chocolate to his lips to investigate. He was shocked by what he discovered. Instead of cloying, sickly sugar, his taste buds were overwhelmed by a rich amalgam of coffee, clove, fig, and other spices he recognized, but could not name. This was all followed by the sharp bite of mustard that added just a little heat.
It was absolutely delicious.
They all were, every single bar, to the point where he selfishly decided to only share his least favorite (spicy pepper – it was still delicious) with his sweets-hating mother, so that he could keep the rest for himself.
A small smile lifted his cheeks. In his life, he’d endured twelve years of Valentine’s Days with his peers, each more overwhelming than the last. This was the first time that anyone had ever given him chocolate that he actually liked. What’s more, it came with no strings whatsoever, tucked into his bag without even a name attached.
That made him want to know.
With Yukie ruled out, it left only members of the team – no one else could get into the club room. But none of them had had the opportunity to be with his satchel unobserved, let alone the sort of motivation to go to the international store and translate pretentious English and Dutch food words just in the off chance that their teammate might like artisanal dark chocolate.
Although.
Actually, Bokuto had been in there alone, but their captain was so attention-desperate it was difficult to believe he’d give someone a gift without any sort of recognition for doing so. Not to mention he was abysmal at English – Akaashi regularly found himself tutoring him before and after practice – and certainly couldn’t read Dutch.
Digging in the plastic bag again for some kind of clue, Akaashi pulled out a scrap of paper he'd missed before. It was a tiny doodle of an owl with droopy green eyes and floppy dark feathers. In so many words, an owl that looked strikingly like himself.
The answer hit him like a serve to the face. There was only one person who would draw something like that. Only one person who had the opportunity to get into his bag. It was clear, beyond a shadow of a doubt, who had given him the only chocolates he'd ever enjoyed.
The question of motivation was something else entirely.
Akaashi's eye had been on Bokuto Koutarou since before he’d even been accepted to Fukurodani. When he saw the wild-looking wing spiker utterly destroy an impenetrable wall through sheer strength at a junior high match, Akaashi had looked down at his own slender arms and decided he was going to get stronger himself because that was the sort of person he wanted to toss for. Luckily that sort of person had been accepted to the sort of high school his parents insisted Akaashi attend.
Unfortunately, his new team needed his accurate toss and adaptable style more than they needed Akaashi to do over three pull ups in a row. More importantly, they needed him to reign in their ace as he taught himself to hit a perfect straight, a task that Akaashi had taken to easily, despite his realization that the senpai he admired was almost intolerably emotional.
With such a history of observation, it was obviously no secret to the setter that Bokuto thrived off of attention, in the general and the specific. A roaring crowd or an individual compliment: both had the power to raise his self-confidence to astronomical levels. On the court, it was Akaashi’s job to harness that confidence.
While Akaashi was still in junior high, Yukie had had gotten into the habit of misleading Bokuto once she realized certain white lies vastly improved his performance. She generally told him that a member of the crowd, a pretty girl more often than not, had noticed him. And although there was no question that the cheap tactic resulted in a surge of positivity, it also meant the wing-spiker was distracted by the thought of a pretty girl. He'd glance at the bleachers after his spikes instead of recovering, and ended up making more mistakes than he might have otherwise.
Akaashi was not about to tell their manager that her technique was flawed. It was more a matter of philosophy than anything, since it took little time to make up a story like that, and less time to tell it. But he himself tried to rely on the team's support, honest positive feedback, and the strength of their opponents to draw out the raw, feral power that was always simmering somewhere under Bokuto’s skin.
At the end of the day, Akaashi was certain that Bokuto loved volleyball more than he loved girls.
But Akaashi had been certain of quite a lot of things about his unruly ace. And now it seemed clear that those assumptions were not certain at all. Because, based on Akaashi's direct observations, Bokuto Koutarou liked girls. He definitely would never give Valentine’s Day chocolates to another guy. And even if he did, he would never do so without lurking around to see the look on said guy’s face when he discovered them.
And yet he unquestionably had.
Their next morning practice was less refreshing than usual, due to the fact that Akaashi had barely gotten any sleep. He sent Konoha’s tosses to Washio, Washio’s tosses to Sarukui, Sarukui’s tosses to Bokuto, and Bokuto’s to Konoha, who ended up getting tangled in the net since Bokuto liked them so close.
Their coach stepped outside to get some air, or perhaps to scream where the team couldn’t hear him.
“Akaaaashi… are you sick?” Bokuto was markedly more concerned about him than he was about Konoha, despite the latter still having pieces of net stuck in his teeth. “You look real tired.”
“I always look tired, Bokuto-san,” Akaashi smiled apologetically at Konoha for the fourth time.
“Nahhhh, I mean, you’ve got real dark circles under your eyes. And you’re kinda… twitchy.”
Akaashi grunted noncommittally, then apologized to his teammates once more.
“Alright!” Bokuto bounced and clapped, “it’s kinda hard to scrimmage with this many players, so let’s go for a run to finish, eh? Good luck catching me this time, Komi-yan.”
The coach didn’t even ask when they passed him at the door, pulling on their track pants and jackets.
Running was a much easier activity to do half asleep than setting was, and although Akaashi found himself at the back of the pack, he certainly wasn’t slacking off. The cold air felt nice on his skin, and distracted him from his exhaustion. He hadn’t even realized that the rest of the team had pulled ahead until he was running next to the captain and no one else.
The ace was usually half a kilometer ahead of everyone whenever they ran.
“Bokuto-san,” Akaashi huffed, “it’s really unnecessary to keep an eye on me. I didn’t sleep well last night, that’s all.”
At his side there was an enormous laugh, then Bokuto slyly remarked, “You know, Akaashi, not everything is about you.”
He whipped his head to the side, for once irritation plain and unmasked on his face. Instead of running, Bokuto was leaping so he was ahead then behind Akaashi with every other step. The look on his face was one that delicately balanced full awareness of the irony of his previous statement with the idiotic pride at making it in the first place. With only a basic understanding of the deep repercussions of his actions and words, Bokuto was simpleminded, unquestionably. But that didn’t mean he was stupid. He was actually surprisingly clever.
Bokuto laughed again, then started running backwards with the flawless agility that indicated he did such a thing frequently. “The thing is,” he said earnestly, “if you were too sick to run you’d just say, Akaashi. You take good care of yourself, just like you take good care of the team.”
Akaashi tripped on nothing and felt strong hands catch his arm right before he bit the sidewalk.
“I try, Bokuto-san,” he said with as much dignity as he could pull together.
They resumed running, albeit much slower than before.
“No, but what I wanted to say was, uh, I hope your… thing with Kimi-chan went alright yesterday. Sorry for messing it up.”
“There was nothing to mess up. I'd never spoken to her before yesterday, and I’m unlikely to do so again.”
“You turned her down?” Bokuto gasped.
“I don’t like sweets, and I don’t like girls. So yes. I did.” And there it was. Just like that. Not awkward at all.
Except for the sudden clang, as Fukurodani’s star player ran directly into a pole.
“I should be the one apologizing, Bokuto-san,” Akaashi insisted as they slowly walked back. Luckily Bokuto had no visible damage to his head, but he was still rather unsteady on his feet, and was leaning against Akaashi heavily.
“What’re you talkin’ bout, Akaashi?”
“One of Kimura-san’s friends was cruel to you, and it was somewhat my fault.”
Bokuto turned his head, and his breath was on Akaashi’s neck as he chuckled. “I’m used to that. Outside of volleyball, people think I’m uh… kinda... annoying, I guess?”
Akaashi blinked, not certain what to say. He had not anticipated this level of self-awareness from a person who threw daily tantrums on the court and had just ran headfirst into a pole. Maybe it was due to the pole, actually…
“They think I don’t notice because I'm an idiot. But I'm not. I'm smart as hell when I gotta be. Anyway... I just ignore it, mostly. Cause what else am I supposed to do, y’know? Try to be somebody else? Somebody else isn’t the fourth ranked spiker in the whole country. My… uh… well… a person I talk to a lot said that I’m just not for everybody, and everybody’s not for me. That's not a reason to change who I am.”
“I think you’re rather exceptional, Bokuto-san,” the words spilled out without his intending to say them. Although exceptional was the most appropriate word, since it was neither entirely positive or negative.
“Really??”
Akaashi turned his head just a bit, and already their faces were much too close. Bokuto smelled like sweat, bubblegum, and something piney.
“Do I make a habit of lying to you, Missed-the-Top-Three-san?”
With their ace sent home on concussion watch, afternoon practice was a well-oiled machine that ended promptly on time with no extra practice afterwards. Instead of going home to his empty house, Akaashi used the opportunity to take the train deeper into the city to visit the international store.
It was a cowardly move, certainly. Bokuto was memorable and chatty. If he had bought chocolates there, the cashier was bound to remember both the wild-haired teenager, as well as the reason why said teenager bought mustard-flavored dark chocolate. Because he would have told them at least six times.
The feeble excuse of Bokuto’s potential concussion and necessary recovery was not the actual reason Akaashi wasn’t asking the ace outright. Normally that was absolutely what he would have done. But he wasn’t certain of the actual reason he was avoiding an up front approach since he wouldn’t allow himself to think on it for more than a few moments at a time.
This wasn’t the first time he’d used his impressive emotional discipline for unhealthy purposes. And it wouldn’t be the last.
The store was massive, full of bizarre foreign foods that were probably made out of cardboard. He wound his way through the aisles looking for the chocolates, because actually purchasing something was part of his plan. He picked several chocolate bars in flavors he was familiar with to share with his mother, and some new ones for himself. He made his way to the register, pleased to see that no one was around but the cashier, a tall, dark-haired woman with feral eyes that gave him a sense of unplaceable déjà vu.
"You know, you're the second person in two days who's bought this weird stuff," she offered as he paid, saving him the trouble of bringing it up.
In order to seem disarming and trustworthy, he tried very hard to show more emotion than normal. It felt like he was wringing out his soul with the effort. "Was the other one this high schooler with crazy grey and-"
"You mean Koutarou-kun?" She grinned out of the side of her face, and Akaashi suddenly realized where he'd seen her eyes before. "What makes you ask, handsome?”
The jingle of the door was the only warning he got before a very familiar voice behind him was leering, “Ohoho… what do we have here?”
“So you wanna know why Bokuto gave you chocolates?” Kuroo repeated his question, holding a tiny teacup in his enormous hand.
“He just said that, you don’t have to repeat it,” Kenma muttered into his Vita.
“People don’t usually say what they really want,” Kuroo shot back. “That’s why you always repeat it.”
Kenma rolled his eyes as though he had more to say but wasn’t going to, then took a delicate sip of the mountain of whipped cream masquerading as a latte.
Akaashi let the bitterness of his own black coffee permeate his senses before responding. “Yes, Kuroo-san. I would like to know, but I would prefer my pursuit of knowledge not cause any chaos.”
“So don’t tell Koutarou,” Kenma directed to Kuroo again. He had whipped cream on his upper lip and nose.
Kuroo sat down his tea, “Well, that’s fine, I guess, but I’d think you of all people would know that the best way to find out is to just ask.”
Akaashi was well aware and the fact that he wasn’t doing so was physically painful.
“Cause the thing is,” Kuroo leaned back and put his arms behind his head, “I’m not going to tell you.”
Kenma rolled his eyes.
It wasn’t as though he expected anything different. It had only taken a single training camp to see that Kuroo was both a first-order meddler and also a lot kinder than he seemed. Akaashi wasn’t certain if his sometimes-opponent’s obstinacy was out of pure loyalty, or part of a larger scheme, but either way, he was now forced to do the single thing he wanted to do least in the world.
Approach his actual feelings on the matter.
There was a profound difference between knowing you were attracted to men and having feelings for one. The former was just something you knew. At least it always had been for him. He’d known from elementary school that he was drawn to other boys aesthetically, and that evolved into sexually. And when he imagined a bizarre future where he had a job and came home to his family, there was never a wife, only a husband, someone who he cooked dinner with. A person who managed to make Akaashi laugh somehow. A man who had done the rigorous work to actually get to know him, because Akaashi had admittedly not made it easy.
That was all conceptual, though. Other than a crush on Gon Freecss when he was ten, Akaashi had never had feelings for anyone. It was hard to say why, exactly. It wasn’t that he was opposed to the idea and it wasn’t that he didn’t experience romantic attraction. But there was always a choice to move forward with that initial interest, something he’d never done. The combination of situation (being gay in high school seemed like it would draw nothing but unwanted attention, both positive and negative) and inconvenience (who had time for such things?) left him always deciding that romance was off the table. It just wasn’t something he was planning to consider until after his college entrance exams or final volleyball season, whichever came last.
So if someone were to ask three days ago if he’d ever thought of his captain romantically, the answer would be “absolutely not.”
But if someone were to ask the same question now…
Across the café table, Kuroo grinned wickedly.