Chapter Text
- OCTOBER -
Summer was starting to cool off as you were nearing the end of the month, so the morning air was a little more chilly than it had normally been. As the train that had pulled in whirled the air around you on the platform you clutched your light jacket a little closer to your body. Making your way straight to the seat you’d been sitting at for months, you let out a huff of air as you plopped yourself down next to Akaashi and turned to smile up at him like you always did.
He didn’t look at you, his focus was on the new book in his lap with his eyebrows knit together. He didn’t even acknowledge when you handed over your earbud, instead of grabbing it like he always had he closed up his book and looked up. His gaze was facing forward and looking through the window on the opposite side of the train car.
You got a sense of almost anger emitting off him and you sulked back a little in your seat, pulling your hand back into your lap and feeling the corners of your mouth start to pull down in a frown. You sat in silence for a few more stops, your own focus on playing with the free earbud and wire that was attached to it as the music continued to play quietly in your ear. You were unfamiliar with this tense air between you and Akaashi and didn’t really know what to think about it since nothing like this had ever happened between the two of you before.
Maybe he had finally had it with your obnoxious behavior. Your flirtatious advances, the constant touching, the nicknames, bugging him when you clearly didn’t need to be bothering him. You had prepared yourself for when this would happen, the breakup that wasn’t actually a breakup per se, but was going to feel like it anyways.
“Akaa-”
“Why didn’t you come to my game yesterday?”
“Uh,” You stuttered out, reeling a little bit from his sudden question. “Game?”
“Yes,” He said, turning to face you now. His expression was as serious as always but it was his eyes that told you he wasn’t actually mad, instead they looked sad and it tore at your heart. “I told you about it on the way to school.”
“I-I didn’t know you wanted me there,” You said, still stumbling over your words a little. Honestly, you were just thankful he wasn’t mad at you (you think?) and your brain was still working through that fact. “And I had to work!”
“Well, I told you about it.” He said with a blunt tone to his voice. His expression softened considerably when he took note of how you had leaned back a little away from him and your eyes were wide with a look of shock and sadness. It was not his intention to make you feel sad. “I’m sorry, (Y/n). I just… I told you because I wanted you to be there and I was upset you weren’t. I should have made my intentions more clear.”
His intentions? You thought.
“I don’t really have experience with these sorts of things, and I’m not sure exactly what I should be saying to you that makes sense.” Akaashi kept his tone pretty neutral, as he always did, but as he paused and you studied him you noticed the very slight wrinkle between his eyebrows - he was thinking hard about the words he wanted to say. He took in a deep breath and turned in his seat to face you better, “(Y/n), I’d like you to be at my games, going forward. Your schedule permitting, of course.”
“Of course,” You repeated, your lips pulled into a pout as you tried your hardest not to let your face break out in the most obvious smile. Eyes squinting slightly, you looked up at Akaashi’s face that he continued to have in an almost bored expression. “I knew you’d fall for me one of these days, Akeiji .”
He let out a breath in a half laugh and you were amazed at the sight before you. Akaashi’s shoulders lowered from being so tensely shrugged up and he was actually… smiling. He didn’t deny what you had said, and while he also didn’t confirm the feelings, you accepted his laughter as being enough for your heart to feed off for probably the next hundred years.
“Do you have your schedule?” You asked.
He nodded and pulled out his phone from his bag, tapping the screen a few times and after a moment you felt the buzz of your own phone notifying you of a new message. You looked down to see it was from Akaashi, a photo attachment that was his volleyball schedule for the entire year. Pulling your phone a little closer to your face, you squinted as you purposefully poked around on your phone - seeming to have forgotten about the boy sitting next to you.
“What are you-” He started but was interrupted when you shoved your phone into his face with your smile as bright as ever. Akaashi leaned back and grabbed at your wrist gently, tugging your hand and phone down so he could get a look at what you were trying to show him.
“See?” You asked, a proud tone to your voice. “It’s my background, so now I’ll never miss another one!”
You were so giddy as you turned away from him, your focus back on your phone as you actually looked closer at the photo to see what the upcoming dates were for games. You didn’t get to see the calm smile that fell across Akaashi’s face or the way that the tips of his ears had turned a little red.
And you certainly didn’t see when he replied to the text that had come in on his phone, asking if things had been cleared up. He replied yes, things were back to normal, maybe even better than.
You walked through the school halls with a little bit of a dazed smile on your face. Your friends had tried to ask you what happened, wanting to know what had got you looking like the main character in a Shojo manga. How could you explain what you were feeling? The boy you’d been crushing on the entire year had just told you that it was important to him that you were going to his games. He didn’t ask you out, and by no means was it a confession of feelings, but it was something.
- NOVEMBER -
“Fu-ku-ro-dani!”
You clapped along to the chanting student cheer section, screaming when everyone else did and crying out in sadness when things didn’t go your way. The third-year cheer captains yelled through their plastic megaphones what the next cheer would be and the students surrounding you cried out in unison.
“Go! Go! Akaashi! One more! One more! Akaashi!”
You cheered especially loud when the boy in question had turned slightly to face the crowd, his eyes immediately landing on you. He didn’t lift his hand to wave, that was much too obvious of a thing for him to do in the middle of a game, but he did clench his fist by his side. It was a little signal you had come up with, as you raised your own fist high in the air and pumped it a few times to cheer for him.
You had stuck to the promise you made to Akaashi a month ago on the train, you did not miss any more of his games - practice matches or official. At first your aunt was a little peeved at having to rework the bakery schedule, but when you mentioned that to Akaashi he made a point to stop by the bakery and meet your aunt in person. After that, you were free to miss as much work as you wanted or needed.
The national qualifiers were in their finals in Tokyo. Fukurodani beat Nohebi in the initial game and were now playing Itachiyama and their wild ace Sakusa Kiyoomi to determine who would be the higher seed for the national tournament. You didn’t really understand the importance of this, thinking to yourself that if they already qualified what was the big deal, but you were still trying to understand volleyball so you cheered as loud as you could anyways.
Itachiyama scored, ending the set and the match entirely. It was close and the boys had played really well, so they weren’t too disappointed when the ref blew the whistle. As the teams took their time to shake each other's hands, you darted away from where you’d been watching and down the stairs to the main floor. The crowd was dispersing with the end of the game so it wasn’t too hard for you to navigate around people towards your destination.
Your eyes found him before he saw you, drinking from a water bottle with a towel so casually draped over his shoulder. From the first time you saw him in his uniform, you always told Akaashi how good he looked in it and today was certainly no different. He was nodding at something a teammate was saying when you stumbled up to the partition that was separating the volleyball court from the spectators and called out.
“Akaashi!”
His blue eyes shifted from where his attention had been, and had you not been studying them so closely for the better part of a year you might not have caught them light up just a little bit when they landed on you. You felt yourself smile brighter than you think you ever had in your life, waving wildly at the boy with both hands - probably hitting a few other people but not minding too much.
Akaashi set his water bottle down on the bench and walked over to you. In his own mind he had to tell himself not to run, which was hard when every step he took made your eyes sparkle and shine more and more.
He had asked Bokuto earlier in the week when they had facetimed to catch up if he should be concerned that his chest was hurting a little bit, it was an unfamiliar feeling but he didn’t think he was sick since he didn’t have a fever. Bokuto asked if it only hurt when he was around you - that seemed to diagnose what exactly was going on with Akaashi. That same feeling was creeping up in Akaashi’s chest now and wasn’t going away the closer he got to you.
“You were amazing!” You cried out, hands spreading wide and eyes crinkled in excitement. Akaashi wondered how he could take a picture of you in that very moment. Your hands came back together in a series of claps and motions, you doing your best to imitate the setting of a ball and really doing a poor job of it.
Akaashi had to laugh. He reached out and wrapped a single arm around your shoulders, effectively pinning your arms to your side. If you hadn’t already frozen up at the action of Akaashi showing physical affection towards you, what happened next sent your brain into overdrive. The feeling of him pressing his lips to the top of your head, burying his face in your hair, was enough to make your feet lift from the ground and have you float away.
You looked up at him, chin pressed against his chest, and made to wrap your own arms around his sweaty torso. The way you looked up at him, like he was the most important thing that ever had or ever will exist in the world, was not lost on Akaashi. He knew how you felt about him, and he was sure that the burning sensation in his chest meant that he was feeling the same way.
“There’s someone I want you to meet,” He said as he looked down at you.
You looked a little puzzled, head tilting to the side as he pulled away and nodded his own head in the direction behind you. You begrudgingly unwrapped yourself from him and turned around only to feel Akaashi keep his arm on you, draped over one shoulder to hang loosely around your neck and pull you into his chest.
Immediately, the hair is what you recognized, although it had been almost a year since you saw the older boy on your train rides to school. He smiled brightly as he walked up to you and Akaashi, pulling the hand of a pretty girl behind him who was also smiling equally as bright.
“Akaashi! Great game!”
“Thank you, Bokuto.” Akaashi nodded his head at his former captain. “You didn’t have to come.”
“You think I’d miss this?” Bokuto cried out, waving his hands dramatically around, practically ripping the arm off the girl who was next to him and still holding on.
“No, I suppose not.” Akaashi said, giving you a little squeeze. “(Y/n), this is Bokuto, he was captain last year.” You smiled at the tall boy in front of you as he beamed down at you, recognizing your name from his conversations with the setter.
When Akaashi spoke again, your heart stopped.
“Bokuto, this is (Y/n). My girlfriend.”