Archive of Our Own

The first time is at the library.

Akaashi spends most of his time between classes there, treading lightly through the stacks. He hasn’t quite memorized every aisle, but he’s mapped out enough to make his way and keep his eyes down, for the most part. Usually, he makes less noise than the books he peruses. It’s a haunt so practical for a literature student that it borders on cliché, but Akaashi keeps that observation to himself.

He’s combing through the cart of books waiting to be reshelved – he likes checking those out, because the fact that someone read those books recently usually means there’s something worthwhile in them – when a stranger taps his shoulder.

Whatever he was expecting to see when he glances up, it’s far from the reality he’s faced with. Akaashi can barely register the spiked-up hair and flashing gold eyes before he instead has to focus on the rush of words that barrage him. “Hey! So, I’m looking for this book, I saw it online and it’s got, like, a green cover, I think, green or brown or something, and it’s about yea big…” The stranger forms a vague rectangle with his hands as he talks, constantly shifting between creating a larger and smaller outline. Akaashi starts to wonder if he knows how big the book is at all. “…and I don’t remember what it’s called, but I saw it online so I know it’s real! Can you give me a hand?”

The stranger flashes him a winning smile and nods when he stops talking, all brimming confidence as Akaashi struggles to process. His eloquent response is, “Excuse me?”

“It’s about owls, if that helps?” the stranger adds, and his enormous eyebrows fly up in a distracting fashion. “Owl mating. They mate for life, I heard, isn’t that cute? So I wanna read about it, y’know, how they do it and raise their babies and—”

“Stop. Stop a minute,” Akaashi interrupts, holding up a hand and struggling to keep a straight face, because he’s suddenly realized this guy bears more than a passing resemblance to an owl himself, and hair like that has to be on purpose, but why on earth would it be on purpose, and more to the point: “I’m afraid I can’t help you. I don’t work here.”

The stranger blinks at him, very owlishly, and Akaashi bites the inside of his cheek to keep his expression neutral. “Huh?”

“I don’t work here,” Akaashi repeats, enunciating each syllable clearly.

“You don’t?” the stranger questions, and he sounds incredulous. Maybe it’s because Akaashi was at the book cart? Did it look like he was reshelving? That seems like a reasonable basis for the assumption.

“I’m not a librarian,” Akaashi informs him, shaking his head.

“But you look so smart!”

Akaashi squints, because that’s not a reasonable basis for an assumption; this guy didn’t even mention the book cart. “Thank you?” he replies automatically, because being polite is an undying sort of habit, and then recovers. “Well, you won’t have any luck here, these are all literary criticisms. You should try the biology section. It’s the next floor up, but you won’t get anywhere without a title.”

The stranger brightens. “Right, right! Thanks, I’ll check there!” he answers, and vanishes down the aisles of bookshelves.

Akaashi peers out after him, watching him take the stairs two at a time. “Yea big,” he repeats disdainfully under his breath, tsking. Who even says something like that…

The book cart doesn’t yield anything half as interesting as Akaashi’s brief conversation with the stranger; the guy crowds his mind, all his eager words and his weird hairdo and his preferred topic of study. Owl mating. Of all things in the world, Akaashi had to hear about owl mating from a stranger. So now he’s stuck with the image of an owl wedding in his head, complete with traditional attire, because, apparently, they mate for life, or so he’s heard, and now he’s snickering imagining owl wings poking out of kimono sleeves and vows communicated through emphatic hooting, and it’s ridiculous.

It’s October, the start of Akaashi’s second semester of his first year at college, and it’s starting to feel like autumn outside. Akaashi feels the warmth fading faster from the air when the sun sets, and today when he starts the walk back to his dorm, he notices how the sunlight catches on the window panes and burns gold, just like the stranger’s expressive, wide eyes. He straightens his scarf and doesn’t turn back to regard the library, but even so, somewhere in the back of his mind he wonders if the stranger will ever find his book.

Akaashi spends the night on Wikipedia, skimming official-looking reports about owl nesting and courtship rituals, and it can’t possibly be worth the sleep he loses, but he doesn’t really mind.

The second time they meet, Akaashi is already late to class and isn’t paying enough attention to where he’s walking. “Hey, watch out!” someone calls frantically from somewhere behind him. Akaashi turns at the sound and is promptly run over by an unmanned hoverboard.

The collision sends him sprawling into a bed of flowers. He’s trying to decide if his head or his attacked ankle is throbbing more when the stranger from the library pops into his field of vision. His appearance is even more baffling from upside down. “Oh man, I’m so, so sorry, I stepped off and it just went wild on me, are you hurt?” But before Akaashi can get an answer out, the stranger beams. “Oh, hey! You’re the librarian!”

Akaashi lets out an irritated puff of air through his nose. “No, I’m not,” he replies, slowly picking himself up limb by limb.

The stranger leans around his side to continue studying him, brow furrowed. “No, no, I remember you! Definitely! I totally met you at the library,” he insists.

Akaashi is forced to concede the point. “Well, yes, you did meet me at the library, but I don’t work there,” he explains, rolling his eyes and leaning on his elbows, trying to judge if he can stand on his ankle without limping. It’s already bruising terrifically.

“But you look so smart!” the stranger says again. Akaashi closes his eyes and keeps his composure, but it takes genuine effort.

“We’ve had this conversation before,” he points out once he’s sure he’s smothered the irritation in his voice. “Would you mind helping me up?”

The stranger tugs Akaashi to his feet with one hand, and Akaashi finds he can stand just fine, and also finds the hoverboard has crashed into a building and flipped over. Its wheels keep spinning on the empty air, scrambling for purchase so it can go on attempting to murder innocent passerby. “Well, if you’re not a librarian, what are you?” the stranger asks, still examining Akaashi from head to toes. Akaashi fixes his mussed clothing as best as he can, trying to look presentable under the scrutiny, even though he’s sure there are crushed flowers in his hair.

“Just a student. My name’s Akaashi,” he answers.

The stranger holds out his hand to shake. “Bokuto Koutarou. Pleasure to meet you! Again, I mean. And I’m really sorry about knocking you over, are you sure you’re okay?”

“Positive,” Akaashi nods. He’s biting his tongue – metaphorically, of course – to stop himself from commenting on the stranger’s surname, which he’s pretty sure is the same name as a type of owl. For a moment, he’s suspicious this guy’s messing with him, between the name and the hair and the book from last time, but he doesn’t want to be rude. At least, not out loud. Seeing the guy’s hair again sparks a realization. “Were you riding that thing without a helmet on? You’re going to get yourself killed.” Behind him, the hoverboard is still whirring away pathetically.

The stranger – Bokuto, Akaashi amends to himself, because this is, allegedly, the stranger’s real name, until proven otherwise – groans at that. “And get helmet hair? No way! Besides, I’ve got elbow pads, and I’m pretty good on it, so it’s okay,” he insists, pointing to said elbow pads, which are strapped on over his hoodie sleeves and look comically bizarre. “I swear, I only stepped off it for a minute, it’s gotta have a mind of its own or something…”

“If you were good at it, you wouldn’t send it off at strangers like some demented Roomba,” Akaashi criticizes with his arms crossed. He must look funny, covered in dirt and flowers and trying to be stern.

The expression on Bokuto’s face falls from neutral to crestfallen in the time it takes Akaashi to blink. “It’s not a Roomba, it’s a hoverboard and it’s cool, and I said I was sorry!” he whines. “I’m better, usually, it just got away from me!”

Akaashi’s phone buzzes in his pocket and he abruptly remembers that he was late to class ten minutes ago. “Excuse me,” he says, giving Bokuto a halfhearted bow and escaping the conversation, but he only gets halfway up the stairs to his building when he stops, because a question is burning on the tip of his tongue and he can’t bring himself to walk away. He sighs and shakes his head, but turns anyway. Bokuto’s inspecting his hoverboard, which is still spinning its wheels without any apparent intention of stopping. “Hey,” he calls; Bokuto glances up and drops the hoverboard. Once it’s on solid ground, it promptly rams into his ankles too, which Akaashi decides is karmic retribution. “Did you find your book? About the owls.”

Bokuto beams and nods at him, one foot planted on the hoverboard to keep it in place; it buzzes at him indignantly for his trouble. “Yeah! It was up on the next floor like you said!” he answers. He makes it sound like the suggestion was a flash of brilliance on Akaashi’s part, like nobody else could have possibly figured it out, and Akaashi scuffs the toe of his shoe on the concrete beneath his feet to ground himself.

Akaashi shrugs. “Educated guess,” he says lightly.

“And it was super good, too! There was a chapter about this one owl couple, right, and it followed their first mating season and the author gave their babies nicknames, it was so cute.  You could borrow it from me, if you want, I think you’d like it,” Bokuto informs him, as if he could judge what Akaashi likes, even though they’ve only met twice, and that’s only if they can classify two accidental, odd encounters as meetings.

“I don’t have to borrow it from you. It belongs to the school library,” Akaashi reminds him, eyebrows raised.

“Oh, right,” Bokuto says, since somehow this fact escaped him.

“It’s not my field of study anyway. But I appreciate the thought, I suppose,” Akaashi says, and with that he’s finally able to tear himself away and make a dash for his classroom, even though he’s already past the point of excusable lateness.

He doodles owls in the margins of his notes during class and earns himself a lecture from his professor, for, quote, “unprecedented inattentiveness.”

The third time Akaashi sees Bokuto, Bokuto doesn’t see him, so it doesn’t really count. Akaashi passes him walking the opposite direction after his poetry class, and for the first time he wonders what Bokuto is studying. He can’t actually be studying owls or biology or anything like that, since he didn’t know where the scientific reference books in the library were. Maybe he’s in Akaashi’s field of study; the building Akaashi’s leaving and Bokuto’s entering tends to house literature classes. But surely Akaashi would have seen him before, then, in class or the library, coming out of a meeting with a faculty advisor, anything. Or maybe he is a biologist after all and he’s more of a practical, hands-on learner who spends his days birdwatching in forests, or he’s a transfer student unaccustomed to a new campus, or he’s just scatterbrained. He can’t decide, and so goes on wondering.

Akaashi wonders about Bokuto more than is strictly necessary. He has a funny way of hovering in Akaashi’s mind, as overwhelming in absence as he is in person. He tells himself it’s not so strange; his encounters with Bokuto are easily the weirdest things to happen to him since coming to Tokyo for college, and Akaashi’s not the type to let things he can’t make sense of rest. He likes finding solutions. But Bokuto is not a puzzle. He is a collection of jigsaw pieces from a thousand different puzzles and Akaashi rearranges the fragments as best he can, but a picture never emerges. He tells himself he’ll forget about it soon. Yet October keeps rolling on and he doesn’t forget.

Once he realizes he’s been counting their meetings, he stops keeping track. Keeping track makes it seem too serious, too purposeful, too real.

There’s a night near the end of the month when Akaashi stays up to an ungodly hour finishing a paper, squinting into the glare of his computer screen in his pitch-dark dorm room. Each word he taps out on his keyboard emerges letter by letter and he’d be having more fun pulling out his own teeth one by one, but he finally hits the minimum page length and calls it a night, right at the same time somebody starts warbling through a pop song down the hall.

Akaashi smothers himself with his pillow and tries to ignore it, but the sound worms its way in anyway. He recognizes the song: it’s been playing on the radio non-stop lately, it’s terrible, and he already hated it before some idiot started using it to sabotage his sleep cycle.

He’s used to noise in the daytime. His room is on the same floor as one of the dorm’s communal kitchens, which is convenient when it’s not crowded with strangers cooking. However, nobody’s ever used the kitchen at two in the morning, and nobody’s ever started singing while doing so.

This is a problem.

He lets it go for a few minutes, assures himself the noise will die down or he’ll pass out or the problem will otherwise resolve itself. However, once he realizes the noise-maker – he can’t honestly refer to this person as a “singer,” considering they’re woefully tone-deaf – is listening to that same song over and over and singing along with climbing enthusiasm and volume, he decides he will not stand for this any longer. Akaashi is fuming when he stomps out of his room. He doesn’t look particularly intimidating, what with his pajamas and eyebags and mussed hair, but he can make up for a non-threatening appearance with some choice threats for whoever’s in the kitchen.

“Do you know what time it is?” he hisses as he rounds the corner, and then sighs, because, of course, he recognizes the culprit. This is another spontaneous run-in with Bokuto, who can’t hear him, because he’s got headphones on and he’s still singing to the same terrible song. “Bokuto. Bokuto.” He taps Bokuto’s shoulder and is almost whacked with the muffin tin Bokuto’s holding for his trouble. “Watch it!”

“Oh, Akaashi, hi! You scared me for a minute there,” Bokuto laughs, taking off his headphones to talk. The song bleeds out even louder since he hasn’t bothered to pause it.

“You’re loud,” Akaashi informs him bluntly. “It’s too late for singing. Too early, I mean. Too…whatever. You’re loud. Stop it. What are you even doing here?”

“Making cupcakes,” Bokuto says, gesturing to the batter on the stovetop and the brightly-colored paper baking cups as though Akaashi can’t see them and deduce this for himself.

“At two in the morning?” Akaashi questions, eyebrows raised so high he’s starting to give himself a headache. Or maybe that’s from staring at his computer too long.

“I couldn’t sleep,” Bokuto explains with a shrug. His hair’s not gelled up today, or maybe it was before, since it’s too messy and immobile for normal bedhead. He still looks ridiculous, just differently so. “I get antsy cooped up in my room, and a little late-night baking never hurt anybody, right? And these cupcakes are gonna be awesome, the box said they’re like double chocolate or something, and the only thing better than chocolate is double chocolate, so—”

“Wonderful,” Akaashi interrupts flatly. His eyelids are drooping already; he can’t keep up with the pace of a Bokuto conversation right now. “Bake all you want, but please don’t sing. It’s rude. I can’t fall asleep listening to that awful song.”

“It’s not awful,” Bokuto objects. “Songs you can dance to can’t be awful, everyone knows that!”

Akaashi pinches the bridge of his nose and sucks in a breath through his teeth. “Fine,” he allows, because he has a funny feeling arguing with Bokuto will become an unstoppable force versus immovable object kind of confrontation. “Just no noise. Please. I have class in six hours to hand in a paper I just bullshitted my way through at the last minute. Have some pity.” Fortunately, the plea gets through to him; Bokuto nods, mimes zipping his lips, and gives Akaashi a salute, to which Akaashi only responds, “Okay,” because he has no idea how else to respond. Bokuto goes back to his bad taste in music, but he only hums, and Akaashi can’t hear it once he leaves the kitchen, so it’s good enough.

It occurs to Akaashi much too late that this means Bokuto lives in his dorm somewhere – maybe on another floor, maybe a few doors down, he can’t know for sure without asking, but he can’t go back to ask now. Mostly because he’s dead on his feet, but a little because it seems embarrassing, seeking Bokuto out on purpose like that. Akaashi’s content with all their meetings being accidental.

But Bokuto must have seen Akaashi go into his own room, because in the morning, Akaashi almost trips over a plate of chocolate cupcakes in front of his door, complete with a note jotted down on a spare baking cup: Sorry for the noise!!!! P.S. That song’s not awful it’s great!

The song stays stuck in his head for a week, but Akaashi has to admit the cupcakes are, as promised, awesome, so he settles for only being mildly annoyed about it.

The next time, Bokuto sees him first. They’re going in opposite directions again, Akaashi leaving a lecture on a particularly boring dead novelist and Bokuto going in to wherever he goes, and Bokuto waves enthusiastically and calls his name as if they’re friends. They aren’t, or at least, Akaashi is pretty sure they aren’t. His skepticism isn’t spiteful. He doesn’t know how many times you have to run into somebody by accident before you become friends instead of strangers linked by coincidences.

“Thank you for the cupcakes,” Akaashi says instead of hello, and he bows instead of waving back. “You shouldn’t have, it was very thoughtful.”

Bokuto flashes that brilliant smile at him again, although Akaashi can’t tell why. It’s a small thing, after all, saying thank you when gratitude is warranted. “You got the cupcakes!” he crows too loudly, and people passing by turn to stare. “Why didn’t you tell me you lived in the same building as me? I’m on the floor right below the kitchen! Isn’t that wild?”

“How could I have possibly known where you live?” Akaashi asks.

“You could have asked!”

“And so could you.”

Bokuto laughs, and his laughter is as loud as everything else he says and does. And sings, Akaashi reminds himself, and one corner of his mouth twitches up into a smile for an instant. “Well, pleasure to meet you again, neighbor,” Bokuto says, golden eyes alight. “Where are you headed?”

“Back to my room. And you?”

“Ugh, lucky! I still have one class to go today,” Bokuto whines. “It’s like a history course, but it’s cooler since it’s more about books and movies than, I don’t know, wars and boring dead people. ‘Media as History,’ it’s called, something like that. It’s fun and all but I’m tired…”

Akaashi furrows his brow, because he recognizes the description of the course. “Oh. That’s funny, I was looking to take that course too, but it had filled by the time my registration date rolled around. The books on the syllabus seemed like they’d make an interesting narrative all together.” Meaning that Akaashi loved every single book on the syllabus and spent an entire weekend feverishly refreshing the class listing, hoping someone would drop out so he could sneak in. Again, he finds himself debating Bokuto’s major for no reason beyond sating his curiosity. The course definitely counts as an elective for literature majors, but it’s also part history, and now this brings film into the running. What he can deduce, however, is this: “You would have had a better chance getting in if your registration date was earlier, so you must be older than me, Bokuto.”

“No way!” Bokuto insists. “I’m only a second-year.”

“And I’m a first-year. Please excuse me if I’ve been rude, I didn’t know,” Akaashi says as he bows. Another courteous habit he can’t break, even though, if he’s being honest, he’s quite surprised that Bokuto’s older than him, considering how he acts.

“No, no, you’re fine, you don’t have to bow at me,” Bokuto replies hastily, and actually tugs Akaashi up by the shoulders so they’re eye to eye again. Akaashi clears his throat and settles for a nod. “But you seem so…”

“Smart?” Akaashi teases, and this time the grin playing at the corner of his mouth lingers. “I’ve been told I look like a librarian. Can you see the resemblance?”

“Yeah, that’s why I said it last time I saw you! You’re older and wiser than your years. Like, you’re one of those guys who’ll have wrinkles when he’s thirty, I bet,” Bokuto asserts. “That’s what my mom says about people who are too serious.”

“My mother told me people who don’t take life seriously enough never make serious accomplishments,” Akaashi replies. “Or something like that.” His eyes flicker over to a clock and he says, “You’ll be late. And if your professor kicks you out of that class, plenty of people would jump to take your place. Me, first and foremost.”

Bokuto moves too much to turn and check the time, Akaashi notes; his whole body seems to whirl around and he’s lucky there aren’t any passerby now, because he’d surely smack somebody by mistake moving that fast, and he throws a loud “See you later!” over his shoulder that echoes down the hall in his wake. He walks slowly back to his dorm, weighing his options. The class fits best with liberal arts of some variety, no doubt, but it is an elective, so Bokuto could still be a scientist looking for a change of pace in his schedule, or perhaps not…he can’t be a literature major or Akaashi would see him around more, or perhaps not…he doesn’t seem pretentious enough for film, and besides, that lecture had better books than movies…Akaashi still can’t decide, and still doesn’t go back to ask.

It’s funny, though, how Bokuto seemed to think they’d see each other again. At this point, Akaashi reasons, it’s not a bad guess. They’ve developed quite a habit of crossing paths.

The next time Akaashi passes him, Bokuto’s sitting on the steps of a different building, eating an apple with one hand and steadying a textbook lying open in his lap with the other. “What are you reading?” Akaashi asks without any preamble; it’s not yet cold enough that sitting outside is unthinkable, but still, Akaashi shivers behind his scarf.

“Hey, Akaashi! It’s for class, but it’s actually kinda cool?” Bokuto says, and flashes the cover of the textbook, which is titled Silkworm Rearing. The font is plain and unmistakable, but still, Akaashi scrambles to fit this new information into his speculations about Bokuto’s major. Owls, media history, and silkworms? How on earth…

Again, Akaashi wonders if he’s being messed with. “It looks…fascinating,” he says, finally, maybe a little too suspiciously. “What class is it for?”

“‘Intro to Agriculture,’ something like that,” Bokuto explains, shrugging. “Hey, if I study enough, maybe next year I can have a garden on my windowsill. That’d be fun, right?”

He almost asks, even though he resolved to answer this mystery on his own, but then Bokuto’s watch beeps and he’s off to class before Akaashi can open his mouth. Furiously, he scrolls through the department listings on his phone, struggling to find a major that fits, but either of those classes could be electives and Akaashi doesn’t know which is the red herring. The question is, again, shoved to the back of his mind, but for the first time, he assures himself, I’ll ask next time, and for the first time, he lets himself think there will be a next time.

However, when the next time rolls around, Akaashi doesn’t have any room in his head for speculations. It’s late and he’s in an awful mood, having spent his entire afternoon working on a group project with classmates from his expository writing class. It shouldn’t have been hard, but since he’s working with four other people instead of handling it himself, as he’d prefer to do, it became torturous. He’s determined to sleep off his ire, because at this rate he’s going to snap at the first person unfortunate enough to cross his path. The elevator in the dorm is broken again, because it always is, so he trudges to the stairwell next to the door to the student lounge. But he pauses there with his hand outstretched, because he recognizes the sounds of the movie someone’s watching on the lounge TV and it chips away at his exasperation.

He peeks into the room, finding it almost deserted – it’s Friday, too late for whiling away an afternoon and too early to be home for his more sociable neighbors – but even with the lights dimmed, he recognizes the person in front of the TV. It’s hard not to stand out with a silhouette like that.

Akaashi hangs back for a moment, considering, but then decides if watching Howl’s Moving Castle can’t improve his mood, nothing will, so he goes in. “Mind if I join you?” he asks Bokuto.

“Oh, hi! Yeah, I only just started, I saw the lounge empty and I’ve been meaning to watch this again for ages,” Bokuto replies enthusiastically, patting the empty space on the couch and beaming wide. “Sit down, sit down.” Bokuto came prepared, Akaashi notes with mild amusement; he’s got a bowl of popcorn ready and he’s wrapped up in a blanket, clearly settled in and comfortable. Akaashi practically collapses onto the couch. The weight of the day is heavy on him, like an anchor around his neck, and it must be noticeable, because Bokuto’s peering at him curiously. “What’s up? You look tired.”

“I am tired,” Akaashi says, tossing his bag to the floor and rubbing his temples for a minute. “Group project. Don’t ask.” Bokuto doesn’t ask, but Akaashi keeps talking as if he had. “They spent three hours talking themselves in circles before we even started formatting the presentation and every letter had to pass unanimous approval or else someone started pitching a fit…it was ridiculous. No compromise at all.” It’s a little hypocritical of him to say, since Akaashi wasn’t interested in compromising, either, but that was only because he was right and they were wrong and they didn’t deserve compromise, and anyway, he doesn’t have to tell Bokuto that. Bokuto offers him popcorn in a show of silent sympathy, and Akaashi seizes a handful.

They watch the movie in silence, aside from wordless reactions like laughter or gasps, and those are mostly on Bokuto’s end. Akaashi doesn’t mind, and Bokuto doesn’t complain when Akaashi keeps helping himself to the popcorn, which he supposes makes things even. He feels the tension he built up through the day unspooling itself bit by bit, and by the last frame his bad mood has lifted. Over the credits, Bokuto asks, “Hey, Akaashi, what’s your favorite Ghibli movie?”

“I like this one and Castle in the Sky,” Akaashi answers easily, head tipped back and resting on the arm of the couch. He has to be careful not to get too comfortable or he’ll fall asleep right here. “They’ve got really fascinating settings. And yours?”

“This one and Princess Mononoke.”

The answer surprises Akaashi enough that he opens his eyes again. “Oh. That’s a pretty serious one. I wouldn’t have expected it of you,” he says.

“It’s so cool, though! Lots of action and adventure, that’s why I like it,” Bokuto informs him cheerfully, and Akaashi supposes he has to grant Bokuto that one. “I like the romance plots too, though, especially with Howl and Sophie, how they bring out the best in each other.”

“They’re not in love in Princess Mononoke,” Akaashi points out.

“They are a little!” Bokuto insists. “Or they could be, maybe. But it’s my favorite because it’s exciting, not because of that.” He pauses, and then goes on excitedly, “Did you know Sophie’s a witch in the book? And a really good one, too! Did you ever read the book for Howl’s, because it’s kinda different, the war’s not as much of a big deal and Howl has all these girlfriends and stuff…”

Akaashi lets him talk without interrupting, because the cadence of his voice is almost as soothing as the background music in the movie, and the next thing he knows Bokuto is shaking his shoulder to wake him up. “I’m sorry,” he says automatically, but he starts to yawn as it he says it, which undermines the apology significantly. “I was listening, I promise, I just…”

“Long day?” Bokuto guesses.

Akaashi nods fervently. “Very long day.” He picks himself up from the couch and his exhaustion almost drags him back down again. “Thank you, though, for letting me watch the movie with you. I needed to unwind a bit.”

As he’s leaving Bokuto calls out, “We should watch another sometime! When you’re not so busy.”

“I’ll think about it,” Akaashi blurts out, because for a second it seems like too much and he doesn’t know what to do, say, anything, and he misses a step going up the stairs.

The next time sneaks up on him. Akaashi’s umbrella breaks the same day a howling thunderstorm descends upon the city. He lingers in a doorway, pacing back and forth, trying to decide which of his schoolbooks he can use as a shield from the rain. He settles on the one he likes least, a poetry anthology, because it’s enormous and he hates the vague imprecisions of poetry, but it does an awful job; the shoulders of his jacket are soaked through in seconds and rainwater dribbles down the back of his neck, because his scarf sticks too close to his skin and leaves a gap. He makes it a few feet outside before he runs back into shelter, shivering and contemplating a new approach. “Useless,” he mutters at his soaked poetry anthology. The book drips water from its edges in a sad sort of way, which makes sense, because the poems within are all sad too, every one about death or lost loves or muddled feelings, or else entirely beyond his understanding.

“Akaashi?”

Of course.

Akaashi blinks raindrops from his eyes but, strangely, feels more relieved than exasperated when he nods hello to Bokuto this time. This is probably because he can see Bokuto has an umbrella, demonstrating that perhaps all is not lost. “Are you going back to the dorm, Bokuto?” he asks. “My umbrella broke. I’d appreciate it if I could walk with you.”

Bokuto nods. “Yeah, of course!” he agrees brightly.

The umbrella is too small to cover them perfectly and leaves them both with opposite drenched shoulders, and Akaashi has to correct the umbrella’s alignment to keep the water from running off onto him when Bokuto holds it sideways, but if they walk slow enough, it works. “I’m sorry to trouble you,” Akaashi says; he’s not, really, since he’d rather be dry and rude than drenched, but it’s the polite thing to say.

“Don’t worry about it! It’s not your fault your umbrella broke,” Bokuto replies. “And you’d catch your death out here without it, I bet. Pneumonia or something.”

He looks so serious about this that Akaashi can’t help but laugh, only for a moment. “A little rain never killed anybody,” he answers, shaking his head. “I know how to take care of myself. I have first aid certification, even.”

“Really? Why?” Bokuto asks.

Akaashi shrugs; a puddle on the wet shoulder of his jacket trickles down his arm. “It was a practical thing to have at home,” he explains.

“At home…” Bokuto repeats thoughtfully. “So, not from around here, huh? I don’t think you’d say that if you were still at home, y’know?”

“School isn’t home. Even if you are from around here,” Akaashi refutes, but Bokuto’s got a point, so he tells him so. “You’re right, though. I’m from Chiba. Not far, but not home.”

“I didn’t know Chiba was that dangerous,” Bokuto says, almost to himself. Akaashi pictures his sleepy little hometown and the idea of it being dangerous in the least is too absurd to imagine, so he laughs again. Bokuto looks offended and the umbrella tilts, sending puddles splashing to the sidewalk. “Well, what’d you need first aid for, then?” Bokuto asks, and he’s almost pouting now. Akaashi presses his lips together and forces himself to be serious. Nobody likes being laughed at. He ought to know better.

“My parents own a resort on the beach. We usually host children’s sports teams for their training camps, and you always need first aid with schoolkids running around,” Akaashi explains. “I’ve applied more bandages to scraped knees than I can count. My mother likes to joke that I’m wasting my talents studying literature, that I’ve obviously been called to be a pediatrician instead.” He thinks about the poetry anthology, still sad and damp and wrapped up in a plastic bag to keep it from ruining his other books. “When I get particularly frustrated with an assignment, I start to wonder if she was right,” he adds, only half-joking, because a month into the semester, certain kinds of writing are still inscrutable to him, and it’s long since gotten on his last nerve.

“That’s so cool!” Bokuto gushes, eyes alight again; Akaashi’s startled by the enthusiasm, because somehow he hasn’t learned to expect it. “Well, not about school problems or scraped knees or anything, but wow! What kind of teams did you guys host? Anyone cool? Do you play sports?”

“What order should I answer in?” Akaashi asks, eyebrows raised.

“The last question’s the most important,” Bokuto decides.

“Alright. I didn’t play sports seriously, no. Only casual games with other kids in town. I know a little bit about lots of sports, though, from watching the kids and refereeing their practice matches.” He considers, and then continues, thoughtfully, “I liked volleyball. I played setter, usually, because if I didn’t I made a fool of myself, I wasn’t any good in the other positions…”

He didn’t think it was possible for Bokuto to be more excited, and yet, there he is, so excited that he stops dead on the sidewalk with his mouth hanging open, and Akaashi takes one step too many and ends up in the rain. “Sorry, sorry!” Bokuto says quickly, running forward to shield him again. “It’s just! I love volleyball, I’m on the team here and I played all through high school and middle school too and wow, you were a setter? That’s awesome, I bet you were really good! Did you play in high school? Ooh, did you get to Nationals, because my team went twice, maybe we played each other!”

Akaashi shakes his head and Bokuto’s entire body seems to slump from disappointment, starting with his shoulders, until he’s so far down that he’s almost below Akaashi’s eye level. “My high school didn’t have a volleyball team. It was a small school, more academically focused, so not much choice for extracurriculars,” Akaashi says. “Although, we did have a rather impressive debate team. They talked circles around everyone, even the teachers.”

“Did you debate?” Bokuto asks.

“No. I locked myself up in the library. That was an easier hobby to balance with helping out at home.” Akaashi poses the next question: “I take it you’re from Tokyo, then? Following your logic, since you didn’t say you played volleyball at home, that means this is home, isn’t it?”

“Good call!” Bokuto laughs, and then puffs up with pride. “You’re talking to the former captain and ace of Fukurodani Academy’s volleyball team.”

The name is vaguely familiar to Akaashi. “I think I’ve heard of your school,” he says with a shrug. “I ought to, at least, if they were at Nationals. We watched all the tournaments, no matter what sport it was. Occasionally kids we hosted ended up on the powerhouse teams in our prefecture, and then once or twice we recognized a name at one Nationals or another. But we would have rooted against the Tokyo teams.”

“Aw, Akaashi! You didn’t have to say that!” Bokuto squawks indignantly.

Akaashi rolls his eyes, but he’s smiling, and it’s such an easy thing to do that he doesn’t notice at first. He can’t help it. Bokuto’s funny, in his weird way. “I’m only trying to be honest. I have to support the home teams, especially against fancy academies from Tokyo. You understand,” he teases, evenly enough to sound serious.

“Well, then, if Chiba’s so great, why’d you leave?” Bokuto asks, and he still sounds petulant, but Akaashi catches him glancing over and the look in his eyes is more curious than the tone of his voice.

He ponders the question. The raindrops keep pelting the pavement, providing background noise to his contemplations, until finally he says, “It’s a place I had to leave sooner or later. Maybe it’ll only be for a little while and I’ll go home when I graduate, but…” He twists his lips. “I had to be somewhere else. Just to know what it’s like.” He shrugs again; suddenly he thinks he’s said too much and his face feels hot when only moments ago it was wind-whipped and cold from the rain. He watches his footsteps leave ripples in the puddles, one more disturbance among the flurry of raindrops. Bokuto stays quiet, too, and Akaashi can’t tell if he’s waiting to see if Akaashi has more to say or he’s just overwhelmed hearing something so personal from a near-stranger, such a serious answer to a non-serious question. Akaashi has never said something like this out loud, even though it’s something he’s known for a very long time. He breaks the silence first: “Bokuto, what do you study?”

If Bokuto’s put off by Akaashi’s reflections on Chiba, he doesn’t show it. “A little bit of everything!” he answers cheerfully. “Intro stuff, though, which isn’t always the best, but I can’t take anything else until I get those done…my media history course, the agriculture one, literature, coding…” He counts off the classes on his fingers and the umbrella almost falls from his grasp; Akaashi rights it and his fingers overlap with Bokuto’s, which are warm, despite the cold that the storm brought in. He pulls back too fast and accidentally exposes more of his shoulder to the rain.

“What kind of major requires all of that?” Akaashi questions casually, like he’s not burning to know.

Bokuto seems caught off guard by the question, if the way his eyes dart to his shoes is any indication. “Oh! Oh, well, none of them. I’m undeclared,” he explains, voice dimming with every word until “undeclared” comes out as a barely-audible mumble. Akaashi wants to laugh at his own ignorance – of course, undeclared, not everyone settles on a major so easily, he should have thought of it – but knows it’ll come off the wrong way, so he bites his tongue. “I’m only really good at volleyball and you can’t major in that, so I’m giving anything interesting a shot.”

“To find something practical to study, as a secondary career after you’re done with volleyball,” Akaashi speculates, nodding. “Planning for that is sensible of you.”

“It’s stressful,” Bokuto complains, shoulders slumped again. “Nothing really feels right. Like, when I started playing volleyball, I knew right away, this was the thing for me. I don’t get that with any of my classes, and it’s…!” He trails off, clearly struggling to find the words. Akaashi knows this phantom feeling without Bokuto defining it; it’s the same unspeakable helplessness that plagues him when he wonders what comes after college. “It’s just the worst.”

“You should follow your passions,” Akaashi advises, as if it’s that easy. He knows it’s not. “If you love volleyball, you should pursue it professionally. Going to Nationals twice certainly can’t hurt your chances, so you’re probably in a decent position already.”

They’re walking so slowly now, Akaashi realizes, like they’re both trying to buy time, because talking close together under an umbrella like this is different from talking somewhere else. These aren’t things Akaashi would usually say, or things he would usually listen to with such focus. “But if we lose, or something terrible happens, like I don’t get scouted or I get hurt or I’m not good enough…” The words pour out of Bokuto’s mouth in barely-connected fragments, and his eyes are searching, jumping from the sidewalk to his own hand on the umbrella’s handle to Akaashi’s face, and Akaashi has no idea what he’s looking for but wants, suddenly, to provide it. “So much could go wrong, and I know that, and I need some kind of backup, right? You said so, too, that it was sensible, and I wanna be sensible about it, really…” He leaves off, and they stopped walking somewhere between sentences when Akaashi wasn’t paying attention. The rain patters atop the umbrella and blows in sideways onto Akaashi’s hands.

Tentatively, Akaashi lets his fingers overlap Bokuto’s on the umbrella again, on purpose this time, trying to steady him. “You’ll find something,” he says; it’s not groundbreaking advice, but Bokuto blinks at him slowly and Akaashi knows these ordinary words mean something to him. “But in the meantime, do what you love.” He catches himself smiling again when he goes on, “You’ll get wrinkles if you waste all your time worrying. Even sooner than me, I bet.”

There’s a lull, filled only by the storm rumbling overhead, and then Bokuto snorts. “I bet not! I smile way more than you!” he points out, and they walk again, at a more normal pace, like nothing out of the ordinary happened. And perhaps nothing did. Again, Akaashi debates with himself whether or not he and Bokuto are friends. At this point, it’s hard to say no, but he still can’t quite say yes.

Akaashi hums in agreement. “You’re right. You’ll have laughter lines, then,” he comments.

“Akaashi! Those are wrinkles, don’t say that!” Bokuto bursts out, sounding wounded, and the umbrella twirls in his hands and splashes water onto them both.

They make it back to the dorm without further incident and it rains all afternoon into the night, obscuring the sunset. For the first time in a long time, Akaashi’s head is filled with volleyball; he can remember the weight of the ball on his fingertips so clearly, that and the calluses and the sound of the ball hitting the court after a successful spike. He was no ace at Nationals and only ever played bits and pieces, never with a team, but even so, he can remember what it felt like, sending off a good toss, and he can begin to understand Bokuto’s dedication.

He tries, he really does, tries hard enough to make his mind run around in circles, but he can’t remember if he ever watched Fukurodani Academy play at Nationals. He could have, he knows it’s possible, yet he can’t decide for sure and the uncertainty doesn’t placate his curiosity.

The next time, Bokuto spots Akaashi first; the sound of his voice calling Akaashi’s name is audible even from across the quad. Fleetingly, Akaashi wonders if this isn’t the first time Bokuto’s seen him without him noticing Bokuto in return, but decides it has to be impossible, because he has a feeling Bokuto is incapable of passing someone he knows without greeting them.

When he turns, he sees Bokuto waving at him, trailed by a taller guy Akaashi doesn’t know but immediately distrusts. They’re both in athletic gear with duffel bags slung over their shoulders, but the other boy’s shirt bears the logo of a neighboring university. “Hey, I thought it was you!” Bokuto says. “How’re things?”

“The same as usual,” Akaashi answers. “Aren’t you cold, wearing shorts in November?” Admittedly, Bokuto’s wearing full-length kneepads along with his shorts, so it could be worse, but it hardly seems like ideal attire for the weather.

Bokuto waves a hand dismissively. “Just a little detour, we’ll be fine. Oh, this is my best friend Kuroo, he plays volleyball too! We’re rivals,” he chatters, gesturing at his friend and then crossing his arms in a self-important manner.

“Nah, you’re not my rival. You don’t count as competition,” Kuroo teases, and his voice slides through the sentence so each word gets dragged out. His smile is far less cheerful than Bokuto’s, and gives Akaashi the distinct impression he’s up to something. Bokuto punches his arm and Kuroo snickers at him, waiting until he’s not looking to kick the back of his shin in retaliation.

“Quit being a jackass and say hi to Akaashi,” Bokuto tells Kuroo sternly; Kuroo waves and Akaashi raises his eyebrows before nodding hello in return. “Akaashi lives on the next floor up in my dorm, we’re friends. We watched Howl’s Moving Castle.”

“Cute,” Kuroo comments, still with that suspicious, toothy grin on his face, and the back of Akaashi’s neck burns behind his scarf. He can’t tell if he’s more embarrassed by the teasing or pleased to hear Bokuto say they’re friends. Both options are worrisome in their own ways.

“Pleasure to meet you,” Akaashi lies, just to fill the silence.

“You coming to see our practice match?” Kuroo asks. “It’ll be a good one if Bokuto gets fired up, they’re finally letting him start this time.”

“Not finally,” Bokuto objects, lip jutting out in a pout. “I’ve been on the starting lineup in practice matches before! And you won’t be laughing when I spike through your blocks, you prick.”

“I’d like to see you try, birdbrain,” Kuroo returns, and Akaashi wonders if that grin ever leaves his face. Maybe it’s stuck that way. Or maybe Kuroo’s even less capable of being serious than Bokuto is, but differently so. Bokuto substitutes enthusiasm for seriousness, while Kuroo seems to replace seriousness with proficiency in smirking and riling people up.

Akaashi clears his throat; Bokuto and Kuroo quit glaring daggers at each other, although Bokuto’s still pouting and Kuroo’s still grinning. “I have a paper to finish, but I wish you best of luck in your practice match, Bokuto,” he says simply. “I’ll be rooting for you.”

Somehow, Kuroo looks even more amused by this, but Akaashi elects to ignore him and instead focus on how Bokuto’s eyes are shining brighter than he’s ever seen them. Judging by Bokuto’s expression, this actually makes a difference, having Akaashi wish him good luck, even though it’s such a simple thing to do, and Akaashi feels his neck getting hot all over again. “I’ve got this,” he assures Akaashi, puffing up with pride again. “This smug bastard can’t keep me down, no matter how hard he tries.”

Akaashi has never noticed this before, since Bokuto’s worn more layers every other time Akaashi’s seen him, but he’s certainly got the right build for a powerhouse ace spiker. He forces himself to meet Bokuto’s eyes again, and even with too much heat rushing to his face and his head full of observations he shouldn’t be making, he can’t help but smile back. Bokuto seems to radiate confidence and ease, but Akaashi supposes he’s always known that. He’s seen something of that self-assured poise every other time they’ve met, just more subtly expressed. It takes someone confident to keep talking to a stranger for long enough to make them a friend.

Kuroo interrupts them by slinging an arm around Bokuto’s shoulder and Akaashi resents him for it. “Alright, alright, break it up,” he says, guiding Bokuto away as he talks. “You keep chatting like this, you’ll be late and they’ll bench you, mark my words. And I didn’t show up here to miss out on killing all your spikes.”

“You’ll be lucky to get a one touch!” Bokuto insists loudly.

“Nice meeting you, Akaashi,” Kuroo calls over his shoulder.

“I’ll see you later! Good luck with your paper!” Bokuto chimes in before Kuroo makes him face forward, making some comment Akaashi doesn’t quite catch about avoiding distractions. Whatever he said, it’s enough to make Bokuto punch him again, which he laughs off even though Bokuto caught him square in the ribs.

Akaashi does have a paper due tomorrow. That excuse wasn’t a lie, and he knows it’ll take all night to finish even if he started now. But he hesitates, considers, and then makes his decision.

He follows along the path Bokuto and Kuroo took, slowly, so slowly, one step at a time, because he doesn’t want to catch up to them. It’s too purposeful. All of it is suddenly too purposeful. He doesn’t follow after Bokuto, doesn’t arrange to see him. They just cross paths by accident. Until now, it’s been complete happenstance, and Akaashi feels he’s overstepping some unspoken boundary deciding to watch this practice match. But he keeps walking, some other instinct dragging him forward, and decides if he manages to evade attention, it’ll be like it never happened, and that’ll be alright.

He gets turned around once or twice looking for the athletic complex – he’s never been inside and only vaguely recalls where it is from an orientation tour – so by the time he gets there, the practice match has already started. It’s temporarily paused for a time-out. The scoreboard shows the second set just started, but the visiting team already has a troublesome lead. It’s not crowded enough so he forces himself into the farthest corner, eyes down and face buried in his scarf, as if that’ll help him conceal his identity. But none of the students milling around or calling out encouragement notice him, and his view of the court is unobstructed, so he’s satisfied.

Bokuto is easy to spot, as always, even from far away. Akaashi observes both teams, noting Kuroo making constant comments from the other side of the net, but his gaze flickers back to Bokuto over and over no matter how many times he tries to focus on something else. The whistle blows and play resumes. The ball leaps back and forth, sent off by the setter to a spiker, sent back over by a last-minute receive, blocked and followed up by the libero, everything happening so rapid-fire that Akaashi can hardly keep up.

And then the setter tosses to Bokuto, and Bokuto soars.

Akaashi forgets, then, that he’s trying to be inconspicuous and leans forward in his seat, and then moves up several rows closer when he realizes he can’t lean far enough. Bokuto spikes a perfect, whip-fast straight right along the side line, evading the blockers by split seconds and millimeters and single breaths. The room erupts with cheers from the stands and the court, and Bokuto turns back to his team, grinning in a way Akaashi has never seen before; Bokuto’s smiles are always overwhelming, but this one is prouder, fiercer, and it suits him just as much.

I’m only really good at volleyball, Akaashi remembers Bokuto telling him the last time they met, beneath his umbrella, under a tumultuous sky, and now Bokuto’s worries about his future sting more acutely than they did before, because now Akaashi is watching him play and seeing what Bokuto described, that immediate surety of belonging somewhere. He watches the plays that follow Bokuto’s spike, observes how the point he scored boosts the team’s morale and shifts the momentum, how his crackling, live-wire energy infects his teammates and helps them all fight harder to match him. This is where Bokuto belongs. This is where his passion, that enthusiasm that hovers around him in everything he does, becomes his greatest weapon, and Akaashi can’t begin to imagine the burden of trying to find an equivalent niche.

Akaashi stays until the end of the third set; it quickly becomes clear that Bokuto’s team will win the match, and once Akaashi’s sure enough of it, he leaves to avoid being noticed. Yet Bokuto lingers regardless, not in person, but as a static image in Akaashi’s head. Somehow, without meaning to, he’s memorized the moment before that spike; he closes his eyes and sees Bokuto suspended in flight, every line of his body thrown into sharp focus by the harsh lights on the court.

It takes Akaashi even longer than anticipated to finish his paper. He just can’t seem to focus on it, no matter how hard he tries.

He sees Bokuto in passing a few times after the practice match, but that’s all it is, a fleeting glance here and there; Akaashi’s mind is full of deadlines and midterms and looming calendar dates and he only recognizes Bokuto once they’re already far apart. But this is probably for the best; lately, Bokuto makes Akaashi’s head swim worse than the stanzas of poetry he has to memorize for recitation, and Akaashi has had migraines over memorizing poetry, so it’s a serious problem. He has a creeping sort of suspicion about it, but the theory makes his migraines worse and he can’t afford to test it. Part of him wants to let it rest in hopes it’ll die away; part of him is dying to know. But he chooses the sensible option.

They talk once, though, after midterms have started, when a hush has fallen on campus and the library has become overcrowded. Akaashi sees Bokuto in the hallway, sitting on the floor with his eyes rooted to a book, and he drops his weight beside Bokuto, as usual, without prefacing himself with a hello. “What are you reading?” Akaashi asks, and immediately recognizes the title when Bokuto shows him the cover. “Oh. I didn’t know you liked murder mysteries.”

“I don’t know if I do,” Bokuto tells him, frowning at the book. “But I’m trying to read different stuff and I heard this was a good mystery—”

“It’s a classic,” Akaashi interrupts before he can stop himself. He was exhausted when he left his midterm five minutes ago, but now, he thinks he can talk for hours. Such is the transformative power of literature. “You’ll like it. And if you don’t, it’s your fault, not the book’s.”

“Akaashi, that’s too much pressure!” Bokuto complains, eyebrows scrunched together. Akaashi bites back a grin.

“I’m sorry,” Akaashi says, but the words come out a little too amused and Bokuto doesn’t unscrunch his eyebrows. “It’s one of my favorites, so I hope you enjoy it.” He pauses, tries to restrain himself, but his curiosity gets the better of him. “Are you enjoying it so far?” he adds, nodding to the book.

“Yeah, I think so,” Bokuto answers, shrugging. “I just started it, so nothing much has happened yet…the detective guy just got on the train.”

“Did you get past the part where he meets—?” Akaashi starts excitedly, but Bokuto claps his hands over his ears.

“Don’t tell me anything!” he interrupts loudly. “I wanna try and figure it out for myself, Kuroo reads mysteries and he’s always talking about how he figures it out halfway through and I told him it probably wasn’t that hard, right, it’s a mystery, you’re supposed to get all the clues to solve it, so he bet me I couldn’t but I will but I gotta do it myself or it doesn’t count.”

“Sorry,” Akaashi says again, more sincerely this time; cautiously, Bokuto lowers his hands. “I suppose that’s something I have in common with your friend Kuroo. Mysteries are fun reads.” Akaashi doesn’t particularly like having something in common with Kuroo; he can still remember that leering grin. However, a traitorous thought passes his mind, directly contradicting that sentiment: Well, he said Kuroo was his best friend; is being like him such a bad thing?

“Do you always solve the murder before the book ends?” Bokuto asks, and Akaashi banishes the thought from his head so he can pay attention properly. “I bet you do. You’d probably be a good detective in real life.”

Akaashi snorts. “Based on what? You’ve never seen me solve a mystery,” he replies.

“Well, you’re already smart, so that’s a point in your favor, right? Detectives have to be clever and pick up on little details. That sounds like you,” Bokuto explains, and it’s funny, Akaashi thinks, how confidently Bokuto speculates about him, like they’ve known each other forever.

“I couldn’t even figure out your major until you told me,” Akaashi informs him. “And I tried, too. I was very curious.” Usually Akaashi wouldn’t broadcast his shortcomings like this, but it doesn’t feel odd to do so here. Maybe because it’s not that big of a deal. Or maybe that’s a byproduct of talking to Bokuto; he has a funny way of putting Akaashi at ease, loosening his tongue and getting him to talk. Maybe it’s a little of both.

Bokuto waves a hand to dismiss the point. “I don’t have a major, remember? So nobody could have figured it out, no matter how smart they were,” he points out. “The data was skewed, or whatever.”

The corner of Akaashi’s mouth twitches. “Fair enough. For what it’s worth, in fiction, I’m pretty good at figuring it out. And if I can’t, it’s the book’s fault, not mine,” he replies, and Bokuto laughs as if he said something funny. “What?”

“You can’t blame the book for that! Doesn’t you not being able to figure it out make it a better mystery?”

“No,” Akaashi answers seriously, and Bokuto keeps laughing and it’s infectious, but Akaashi keeps his expression even. “I’m the one studying literature, remember. So I would know best. It’s entirely possible to blame a book for being incomprehensible.” Saying that reminds him of the poetry midterm he just walked out of and he winces, feeling the weight of the anthology in his bag. The book never dried right after that storm. Even now, its pages crinkle distractingly whenever he turns them.

Bokuto seems to read his mind. “How are your midterms going? Good? I should be studying but I needed a break, that’s why I’m reading this instead,” he explains.

“Fine. It’s fine,” Akaashi answers, but it sounds like a lie. “Mostly fine.” He twists his lips. “I just left one. I didn’t fail it, but it wasn’t my best work, either. It’s frustrating, knowing that already. It’ll be hard not to dwell on it.” Finally, this sounds like the truth. He remembers how Bokuto opened up to him that day in the rain and wonders if asking for the chance to open up in turn is too much of a burden. “Can I talk to you?” he asks carefully, eyes flitting between Bokuto’s face and his fingers splayed over the pages of his book. “Or. Well. Vent to you, more. If you don’t mind.”

Bokuto snaps his novel shut and nods. “Of course you can talk to me. That’s what friends are for,” he says brightly, and it’s not an enormous act of kindness, but to Akaashi, it feels like one. Or maybe that’s because, again, Bokuto declared them friends, and Akaashi has suddenly found himself clinging to every repetition of it as proof, and he doesn’t want to think about why he wants proof so badly.

He tries to focus on what to say, weighing different combinations of words in his head. “I’m not used to being frustrated with my work,” he starts slowly. Each syllable takes effort, consideration, but Bokuto doesn’t interrupt to fill the gaps. “Literature, I mean. I’ve always liked reading, liked studying books, liked writing about them. It came easily to me. I should count myself lucky that it took me this long to find something I’m not good at, I suppose, but…” He pauses, lips pursed. “I don’t know how to handle it. Not being good. Having to work at it more than I’m used to.” He shakes his head. “That sounds terribly arrogant, doesn’t it,” he says, and the sentence doesn’t lilt up into a question, because he knows it’s a fact, and he’s left staring at his fingers, watching them twist around each other. It’s a habit of his, fiddling with his fingers; when his head is overfull of whirling thoughts, fussing with his fingers seems to let off some of the pressure. He notes all the papercuts and the calluses on his writing hand, feeling them burn when touched.

He sees Bokuto shrug out of the corner of his eye and doesn’t look up, but his gaze is cast sideways instead of down. “No, no, I totally get that!” Bokuto assures him. “That’s your thing, of course you’re used to being good at it. I remember when I was in high school and I had to learn how to hit straight spikes instead of crosses. It was the worst, because I was so bad at straights and had to practice and I used to be good without thinking about it that much, I thought I was losing my touch with volleyball completely…” When Bokuto mentions volleyball, Akaashi sees it again, the memorized image of Bokuto in flight, and his fingers curl around each other more tightly and the pressure turns his fingertips white. “What are you having trouble with? You can figure it out, you just have to practice.”

“It’s poetry,” Akaashi tells him, and scrambles for his usual justifications. “I can appreciate the use of language, of course, the style and structure, but that’s only the surface. I’ve never made my way underneath to the real meaning. Sometimes I wonder if there’s any meaning at all, when the poem only describes a leaf in the wind or an empty wheelbarrow or whatever else. Novels and short stories, they just make much more sense to me.”

This is a topic he’s been grappling with all semester, but it only takes Bokuto a second to identify the root of the problem: “You’re thinking about it too much.”

“Excuse me?” Akaashi asks, both stunned by the response itself and the abruptness of its delivery.

Bokuto shrugs. “You’re thinking about it too much,” he repeats. “You don’t like poetry, right?”

“It’s not about liking it, and I never said I don’t—” Akaashi blusters defensively.

Bokuto talks over him. “You already don’t like it, so when you sit down to read it your head’s in the wrong place, so you don’t get the meaning. Poetry’s just about feeling it, isn’t it? So if you’re trying to solve it while you’re reading it, you’ll never get it. It’s not a puzzle, it’s a feeling.”

Akaashi blinks at him, slowly, suspiciously. “My midterm wasn’t an extended meditation session, Bokuto. Lying back and trying to feel it doesn’t answer my essay prompt,” he criticizes, trying hard to sound aloof, but his mind is turning over Bokuto’s logic, mulling it over piece by piece. A clock nearby strikes the hour, reminding Akaashi how long he’s been dawdling here; he has more midterms after today and more studying to do. “Thank you for listening,” he says to Bokuto as substitute for good-bye. “And tell me how you like the book, once you finish it.”

He doesn’t realize until later that he left Bokuto with an open invitation to find him again and the fact of it sends his head spinning, which is the last thing he needs in the middle of midterms. But, surely, Bokuto will only interpret it as a courtesy. Akaashi dispenses so many courtesies, after all. Bokuto probably won’t take this one as something concrete. They’re only words.

One night, out of curiosity, Akaashi tries reading from his poetry anthology again, opening to random pages and trying to understand. No, not to understand, to feel, as Bokuto described it. For awhile, all Akaashi feels is silly; what emotion can be wrested from a flower petal in full bloom, of the moon reflected on the surface of a lake, of a beam of sunlight dancing on a kettle? He rereads the lines over and over, waiting for the breakthrough – and eventually, it comes.

Somewhere along the way, the poems cease being words printed on warped, stiff pages – the sound of them turning is louder than ever in the late-hour silence – and are suddenly pictures instead, and seeing them in his mind’s eye changes his perception. Not significantly; he still wonders if he’s missing something grander. But now the flower petal is part of a handpicked bouquet, the rippling reflection of the moon represents a moment of hushed solitude back home in Chiba, the sunshine on the kettle is a warm morning routine condensed into a flickering flash of light. These pictures can’t possibly be everything, but they’re a start.

Akaashi wonders how to admit Bokuto had a point and decides against admitting it.

Another thing he won’t admit is how the love poems are starting to make more sense. Akaashi used to wonder why poets tried to describe something as indescribable as love, but is learning, more and more, that the desperate attempt to describe the indescribable isn’t a choice. It’s compulsive. It’s a trap, though, the whole scheme, because the more he pokes at these things he can’t understand, not with all the words in the world, the more real they become, and the more questions they pose in the back of his mind.

They pass each other during midterms, both before and after the time they talk. Akaashi squirms admitting to himself he’s avoiding Bokuto, because it’s not fair to him, not really. He didn’t do anything on purpose. Akaashi keeps his eyes down regardless, because Bokuto is suddenly made of stanzas Akaashi has never had context for, and he’s not sure he can meet his eyes without giving it away.

Midterms, surprisingly, transform Akaashi’s expository writing class from a collection of wary strangers to a group of almost-friends. It’s something about struggling through together, Akaashi reasons. It gives them something in common. Because of this, Akaashi is invited to someone’s end-of-midterms party. He doesn’t know the host, in fact wonders if anyone does, because everyone who passes the invitation along seems to hear of it from another guest. It sounds like half the school is going, though, so Akaashi resolves to make an appearance. He could use a break, after all.

And, in the back of his mind, he wonders if his luck will hold, if he’ll cross the threshold of this mysterious stranger’s apartment and find a particular familiar face.

Akaashi isn’t surprised that this turns out to be the next time he runs into Bokuto; in fact, hearing Bokuto call out his name over the hum of conversation and background music sends an entirely different kind of thrill through him. But he tries not to examine the feeling too closely.

“We need to stop meeting like this,” Akaashi teases when Bokuto makes his way over. They have to stand close to hear each other without shouting. Akaashi doesn’t mind it.

“How should we meet instead?” Bokuto returns, and Akaashi is drawn to the way he grins when he says it; it’s something in between his usual smile and the one Akaashi saw at the practice match, the fiercer one, not quite either, something else entirely. Almost flirtatious, if he’s being honest.

Akaashi doesn’t mind this either.

“Less frequently,” Akaashi says with a practiced eyeroll, but he can’t fully smother an answering smile.

Bokuto groans. “Akaashi, I thought we were friends!” he exclaims, and his lip actually wobbles, but Akaashi can’t tell if this is an intended exaggeration or just a standard reaction from Bokuto. His gut says the latter. “Like, we’re hanging out right now at a party, that’s what friends do.” The music changes overhead and Bokuto seizes onto his arm. “Oh, shit, I love this song, it’s my favorite!”

Akaashi remembers Bokuto’s favored song to bake cupcakes to and wrinkles his nose. “I don’t trust your taste in music,” he says loftily, enough so that it comes out as a more playful sort of jab instead of a serious condemnation of Bokuto’s taste in music, which it is. He wonders, briefly, if it’s Bokuto being around that makes him so much more talkative, or if it’s the two drinks he’s already had. But he decides it has to be the former. Akaashi knows how to hold his liquor. He does not know how to remain a step ahead of Bokuto, like how he can with other people. Bokuto keeps him on his toes.

Bokuto looks dejected for a moment, but quickly recovers and says, “Hey, I told you, if you can dance to a song it can’t be bad. You just don’t dance enough, I bet. ‘Cause you’re so serious and getting wrinkles and stuff.”

“Oh, really?” Akaashi catches his voice lilting to become a challenge, an invitation, an extended hand, and his heart leaps into his throat. It’s too much, isn’t it?

Bokuto leans closer and Akaashi’s mouth feels dry, and it has nothing to do with what he’s had to drink. “I bet,” he repeats, and his bright gold gaze has Akaashi pinned down. “Come on, I’ll show you.”

Akaashi nods. Just once. But it’s enough.

They’re not ballroom dancers by any stretch of the imagination; Akaashi is vaguely familiar with the concept of a box step and Bokuto tells him, loudly in his ear over the music, he watches celebrity dance competitions at home with his parents so he basically knows what he’s doing. It’s mostly swaying and turning along with the music, and every time the song changes Bokuto excitedly announces how it’s his favorite, but their hands are loosely clasped and they stay close together and Akaashi hums along to the songs he knows, capturing their melodies in between the ambient noise and Bokuto’s chattering.

Bokuto tells him about how he finished that novel – “…I thought I figured it out but I was way off, it was really disappointing! Still, it was really fun, following all the twists and stuff. One time I was so surprised I dropped the book!” – and Akaashi complains about his midterms again without admitting his recent progress with poetry, and then asks about the volleyball team. Bokuto practically glows, and his excitement is spellbinding, even when he cheerfully complains about the early-morning practice he has tomorrow, eight sharp. Akaashi tries to listen, but that image still hangs in his head, Bokuto flying without wings to guide him.

He almost admits it then, that he went to the practice match, that he saw Bokuto play, that he was awed by watching Bokuto play, but he opens his mouth and Bokuto watches him, waiting, and he loses his nerve. “I wish you the best of luck,” he says instead. Bokuto doesn’t miss a beat and goes on talking, and Akaashi takes a moment to find his balance again.

They don’t ever get the hang of dancing. Akaashi apologizes over and over for stepping on Bokuto’s feet until his face goes red; he’s not used to being graceless. Finally he gives up on his approximation of box steps and lets Bokuto guide them instead.

It’s nice, he decides to himself, when the song playing around them is slower and more soothing, and he realizes his chin is resting on Bokuto’s shoulder and their fingers are intertwined. He closes his eyes and lets it sink in, all of it, tries to memorize how it feels. It’s stuffy in the apartment between the flurry of dancing and the press of the crowd, but Akaashi doesn’t think that’s why he’s feeling dizzy.

He can’t find his balance. Not here. Not this close.

“We should walk back together,” Akaashi tells Bokuto, and then clears his throat and steps back. “To make sure we get back to our rooms safely. It’s practical, don’t you think?” Bokuto blinks at him, like he doesn’t understand – Akaashi can’t tell why, it was a simple enough idea – but then he nods. Just once.

It’s cold out but Akaashi doesn’t bother to tie his scarf. The heat from the party sticks to him, or maybe that’s his own fault. He catches a glimpse of himself reflected in a window and the flush on his face isn’t just from dancing. It’s lingering too long for that. He shoves his hands in his pockets and listens to their footsteps on the pavement. It’s the only noise either of them make, but that’s understandable, Akaashi’s exhausted from the mental strain of midterms and the physical strain of standing all night, surely Bokuto is too.

I’m glad I ran into you, Akaashi almost says, but the words stick in his throat and don’t reach his mouth. I was happy to see you again, he thinks about saying, but can’t make the sentence sound right in his head. I like spending time with you, he knows for a fact, but he can’t say that out loud, it’s too sappy. I want to see you again, not by accident, on purpose, he could say, because it’s the truth, but he doesn’t dare.

It’s deserted back at the dorm, and Akaashi feels as though they’re the only ones awake on campus, but he knows that can’t be true. They stop on Bokuto’s floor first, because it’s below Akaashi’s, and Akaashi lingers in the doorway of the stairwell to see him off from afar.

But Bokuto stops in front of his door without opening it. Even from the other end of the hall Akaashi can see him worrying his bottom lip, like he’s mulling something over. “Bokuto?” Akaashi calls after him. “Is everything alright?”

Bokuto only glances at him sidelong when he asks, “Hey, Akaashi? Do you like me?”

The question is unexpected and Akaashi furrows his brow. “What do you mean?” he asks, even though he knows better than to answer a question with a question. His heart thumps traitorously against his ribs.

“Like…we’re friends, aren’t we? Even though we only see each other sometimes.” He means “by accident,” Akaashi knows. Bokuto shakes his head. “It’s nothing, never mind. I was just…never mind.”

“Of course I like you,” Akaashi blurts out. The words linger in the space between them and Akaashi can feel their weight, the way they take up all the room in the hallway. Bokuto looks up at him and Akaashi can’t decipher his expression. Both of them are caught in alternating planes of shadow in the night, and nothing emerges clearly, nothing but words, and even the words are murmured low. “Very much,” he adds; it’s the closest thing to the sentences he’s buried that comes out and it’s not enough and too much at the same time. Akaashi just doesn’t know how to bridge that gap, and it becomes plainer every time he compares the way he acts to Bokuto’s indomitable honesty. He twists his fingers together and stares at his shoes. “Good night, Bokuto.”

He hopes that Bokuto was too far off to note that Akaashi walked into the doorframe on the way out. That’s his reward for staring down too much, he supposes.

Akaashi only gets to sleep that night after he accomplishes two things: making a decision and setting an alarm.

When he wakes up the next morning, far too early for his body’s liking, he knows there will be no more next time. Instead of relying on happy accidents, he resolves to cut his own path.

The sun glows palely overhead and Akaashi picks out his way to the athletic complex through the early morning frost hanging in the air.

Bokuto’s volleyball team is preoccupied enough by their practice that Akaashi manages to remain unnoticed for an hour. He watches Bokuto play and jumps between sentences in his head, hands clenched into fists on his lap, occasionally opening his palms to twist his fingers individually. He has no idea how to say this, or even what he wants to say in the first place; everything with Bokuto is more impulse than substance. The closest he gets to words is I want to be with you but there are too many ways to interpret that and Akaashi means all of them, he can’t pick one to focus on. He scowls at his hands when he reflects that a poet would probably be able to define it, this formless surety that Akaashi feels burning within him, as though his heart itself were aflame.

He runs out of time before he decides what to do.

Bokuto makes it obvious when he notices Akaashi there. Akaashi waves at him and his wide eyes and hanging-open mouth, and can only watch helplessly as a particularly nasty spike hits him in the face.

Akaashi leaves his seat and runs into Bokuto in the hallway, clutching a handful of paper towels to his bleeding nose with one hand and applying a cold compress with the other. “I think that was my fault,” Akaashi says apologetically instead of hello, and it suddenly strikes him as odd that he never starts with hello. “Good morning, by the way,” he tacks on, and it sounds weird, so he winces. He doesn’t think Bokuto can see with all the impromptu medical equipment in the way. “Let me help. Tip your head back.”

“I’m fine!” Bokuto insists. His voice sounds funny with his nose pinched. Akaashi tries hard not to laugh. “It happens all the time. I’m not even bleeding that much.” He’s not, but he lets Akaashi fuss over him anyway. “What are you doing here?”

“I…well, I…” Akaashi can’t remember the last time he stammered and it makes everything worse. Already he’s lost his footing. Finally, he manages, “I came to see you.”

Bokuto blinks at him, very owlishly, and Akaashi bites his lip to stop from laughing. It’s still funny, thinking about how they met. “Why?” Bokuto asks.

“I wanted to talk to you,” Akaashi says, and he busies himself applying a clean edge of paper towel to Bokuto’s nose to ignore the roaring panic threatening to take him over. “Ask you something, actually. Or tell you. I think. I’m not sure.” He’s babbling now and he can’t meet Bokuto’s eyes anymore, it’s just too much. “I didn’t really have it figured out.”

“I wanted to tell you something too,” Bokuto answers. Akaashi freezes with his fingers almost touching Bokuto’s skin, almost, so close, not quite.

“Oh,” he says, eloquently. “Go ahead. Mine can wait.” Coward, he berates himself.

Bokuto stammers through his reply of, “Well, I mean…! You came all the way here this early to tell me so you should go first, right? That sounds more fair to me.”

“It’s no trouble,” Akaashi lies, as if he usually gets up at this time on the weekend and he didn’t have to drag himself sullenly out of bed with his alarm. “I insist.”

“Mine’s kind of…I don’t know…” Bokuto can’t find the right descriptor and winces up at him. “I definitely can’t say it with my face messed up like this, I’ll look really dumb. I didn’t want to have a nosebleed when I told you this.”

“The nosebleed was my fault, technically. I distracted you. I won’t hold it against you,” Akaashi says, lifting the paper towels to inspect Bokuto’s face. “Besides, I think you’re done bleeding.”

Bokuto seizes the paper towels and smashes them back against his face. “Nope, no, it’s definitely still going, I can feel it.”

Akaashi narrows his eyes. “I thought you said it wasn’t a big deal. The nosebleed, I mean. It looked alright to me.”

“Way bigger deal than I thought! I, uh, misjudged my injury. Yeah. Definitely,” Bokuto insists, nodding fervently. “So you go.”

Akaashi puts his arms behind his back so Bokuto can’t see him digging his nails into his hands. The words don’t come but the feeling persists, unfathomable yet known. He focuses on something tactile. “I went to your practice match. The one a couple weeks ago, against your friend’s team.” He scuffs his toes on the ground. “You were very good.”

Bokuto’s hands fall slack at his sides and the tip of his nose is muddled red and pink and purple from blood and a bruise likely to form. But he doesn’t seem to care about his injury anymore. “You watched me play?” he asks. “Like, on purpose, you mean? You showed up to see it?”

Akaashi nods and the gesture is small enough to be shy. “Yes,” he murmurs.

He was right to say it like this, to recreate a nameless feeling in something solid and real, because Bokuto understands the gravity of this and – Akaashi doesn’t want to jinx it, but he thinks it anyway – he grasps the deeper meaning. This is a better answer to last night’s question. This is purposeful, and Akaashi was wary of being purposeful, but it was the only way to be sure.

He feels himself soaring too, not flying as Bokuto does, but taking a leap, searching for earth to land on. For a moment, he lets himself enjoy being weightless.

Bokuto is still sitting and staring up at him. There’s something almost reverent in his expression, something that makes Akaashi’s stomach flip and his neck get hot, but he doesn’t look away. “What I said last night,” Bokuto starts slowly, “what I meant was…you know, if you…maybe…”

“Yes,” Akaashi says, and it’s probably the first time he’s agreed to something without knowing precisely what it is, and yet, he’s only been this sure of precious few things before.

“Would you want to…I mean, do you…like, you and me…?” Bokuto goes on.

Akaashi understands the empty space better than he understands the words. “Yes,” he says again.

“That…we could…”

“Yes,” Akaashi repeats. “I do. We should. Let’s.”

Bokuto says nothing further, but then his face cracks open with a blinding grin and it’s the earth Akaashi was seeking, the thing that made leaping worth the risk.

The first time Akaashi sees Bokuto on purpose, it’s outside the dorm and Bokuto has flowers. Nobody has ever given Akaashi flowers, and he tells Bokuto so, and Bokuto doesn’t believe him. “Don’t tell me you’ve never been on dates, you’re way too cute!” he insists.

“I’ve been on dates. My previous dates haven’t given me flowers,” Akaashi informs him.

“That’s just rude. It’s good manners to give flowers on a first date,” Bokuto says, and the words “first date” ring loud in Akaashi’s head and he smiles at the flower petals in his arms. They see a movie and Akaashi doesn’t comment when Bokuto performs a woefully transparent maneuver to get his arm around Akaashi’s shoulders, mostly because he doesn’t mind having Bokuto’s arm around his shoulders.

On the way back Bokuto says, “Hey, you never told me your first name.”

Akaashi mulls it over. “Oh. It’s Keiji.”

“It suits you,” Bokuto decides, and Akaashi pieces together the sound of his voice, tries to imagine Bokuto calling him Keiji, and barely resists his impulse to ask Bokuto to say it outright. But that’s too forward. He still has some of his manners, even when he’s with Bokuto, who often makes him forget why he bothers being so composed.

The second time they see each other on purpose, it’s for lunch between classes during a window of time that was previously used for accidental encounters. Akaashi reminds himself of this every minute, just to appreciate the difference between seeing Bokuto on purpose and only ever being so lucky. “I think I could take care of silkworms now, since I read the whole book and that’s the point of it, isn’t it? To learn how to do it for real?” Bokuto says to him.

“Start with plants, Bokuto,” Akaashi advises. “I’ll help you pick some out.”

The third time they plan a meeting, it’s quieter. Akaashi meets Bokuto after practice and they lie next to each other in Bokuto’s room, listening to songs Bokuto picked out. “They’re more what you would like, I think,” he says, shyly, searching for approval, and it’s true, and again, Akaashi marvels at how easily Bokuto knows him, like it’s been forever. Sometimes it feels like it has. Sometimes Akaashi wonders how he went so long without a piece of himself that seems so critical now that he has it.

This third time is also the first time they kiss, properly, not just one-second good-night pecks or kisses on hands or foreheads or noses. It’s a careful process, Akaashi reflects, both of them navigating unknown terrain and treading lightly. They fade into shadow as dusk gathers outside and neither of them reach for a light, and when Akaashi opens his eyes for a moment he sees nothing and drowns in the ambiguity, in the way he can only find the way forward by feeling instead of seeing or thinking or making a map.

He immortalizes the first kiss, time-stamps it and keeps it close, but the first becomes the second, and the third, and the fourth, and then it gets hard to tell where they separate because they seem continuous, and then he realizes he doesn’t want to count it at all. He wants to have more shared hours and meetings and kisses than numbers. He wants to be infinite. He knows it already, too soon and yet not soon enough. He grins into Bokuto’s mouth and feels Bokuto grin back, because every movement between them is shared now, and Bokuto asks him, “What?” Akaashi kisses him harder, takes the opportunity of his open mouth to get closer still, and Bokuto doesn’t ask him anything else.