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PART I. QUESTION
—
Did you close your eyes?
—
Akira is fifteen, and his mother takes him to the ocean.
“You got good scores this year,” She tells him, packing the car full of useless precautions and things they’ll never need— three packs of beer and five life vests and the weight of knowing this trip will probably end in a big blowup with Akira running up to sleep on the roof. “If you don’t want to go, I’ll go alone.”
It’s the first time he’s ever been on a vacation, the first time he’s allowed to pretend his family is functional, even if it’s just the two of them. A family vacation, he’s certain, is something everyone has been on at least once. Except him, until now.
He sits on the sand more than he sits inside the house they’ve rented for the week, which is old and made of wood five centuries older than himself and creaks when he shifts a centimeter in either direction. It would be cozy if he spent more than an hour at a time on the couches or sitting in his room. The world is not kind, however, and with a mother like Akira’s, it’s necessary to delay the altercations as long as possible. He can handle a silent car ride back, but not a turbulent house.
Akira learns that the wind by the ocean is salty, light, doesn’t carry constant cold fronts like Miyagi’s. You don’t need a fishing license if you’re not on commercial ventures, ice cream tastes better with your toes in the water. The horizon is a void that swallows ships up like noise, and those same ships rarely use their anchors. They’re tranquil, alone. They’re huge. Akira kind of loves them.
He finds that sand sticks everywhere, no matter how hard you try to keep it out. It sticks to him. It sticks to his clothes. Lingers in his shoes, gets under his socks. It’s everywhere, and Akira is sure there’ll be more to find for weeks, in his ear or under his belt or tangled in his hair.
Sand sticks, and so does the sound of an angry shout from the kitchen window of the rental to get inside, Akira, it’s late, I think a storm is brewing. So do the ashes of Akira’s father. So does the aftermath, the silence, the empty alcohol bottles. So does the wind. The love. The lack of.
—
Did I close them first?
—
Kageyama has always just kind of… been there.
It’s strange, to Akira, who isn’t used to people staying. Things fade, with time, fade after they learn Akira is not warm and fuzzy, doesn’t jump for joy after every clean hit. It’s no matter that he’s newer meat in the sense of volleyball— it’s only been about a year for him, but he’s tall and strong and calculating. He can make it by on skill he’s built up and those natural gifts, even if he’s soft around the edges, a blur in a photograph, not yet focused. His impact on the team or how much his teammates want him around is not based on how much love he gives and receives. He’s a good player. He’s not mean. That’s enough for them, and once they move onto newer things in life, better spikers, better schools, they will fade.
But Kageyama has been working at this his whole life, and he loves it. He gives that love to his team, to the ball, most of it anyway, expects a lot of it in return, like an equilibrium. Akira can tell it’s just because he cares too much, puts too much stock in himself. It’s a bad idea, but Kageyama does it anyway. Because he loves volleyball. He loves everything about it.
Akira practices hard, for a while, because he wishes to love volleyball in the same way. He works until his calluses are stronger than his bones, skin hardened by a smack of the ball, dive on the floor. He works because he wants to love something that much, but figures out it doesn’t work that way. Two days become two weeks become two months, and he still doesn’t love volleyball as Kageyama does.
It’s not hard to pull back. Akira allows himself to sink into the waves that ride him blue. It’s not for him, that type of love, not the type to put all his eggs in one basket.
Kageyama is much more fit to be that black heat, care too much, go out with a bang. Akira will leave him to such.
—
Kageyama loves him, too, alongside volleyball. Loves the two months of hard work Akira put in before giving up and returning to the repose that comes easy. Loves his eyes, apparently, his voice. The way he jumps when he spikes, the muscles in his arms. Kageyama loves Akira much less than he loves volleyball, but enough that it’s special.
Akira can’t love himself. He can’t accept what Kageyama wants to give him, even if he was to love the boy back the same way.
“Is that a confession letter?”
Akira pushes Kindaichi’s face away from his shoulder. Nosy motherfucker. “I’m not sure yet. Either way, it’s for me, not you.”
He tears open the paper a little later, in the privacy of an empty corridor, and the first three words are the most blatantly stated I like you he’s ever had the privilege to read. Kageyama speaks of him and his person, the personality of Akira that he has made up in his head. Akira is a dream, to him. Visions, a false narrative. Kageyama is only a child lost to fantasies, Akira knows. Kageyama has overestimated everything that becomes of him, what colors he is, what colors he could be.
He still allows himself to tattoo each word, the doodles (a pond, a smiley face, a mountain) drawn in the margins behind his eyelids, traces the lines of Kageyama’s signature, his given name. Tobio. Kageyama Tobio. Tobio, player. Teammate. Tobio.
Does he like Kageyama back? Akira doesn’t really mind him, he decides, but has no other greater opinion. Kageyama is okay. He sets to him. He works too hard, cares too much. He’s only going to be hurt, eventually, and Akira doesn’t want to be there to watch it happen.
What would it be like, to love him? Is Kageyama the type of person to buy flowers, go on dates? Does Kageyama know how to kiss? Has Kageyama ever had a friend? Akira tries to remember what it feels like to be loved unconditionally, without a fantasy mask put around his head for the other person to look at, and does not succeed.
Akira can’t let other people love him. He’s tried, of course, with his mother and his old friends from elementary school, a few times over until he is smashed instead of fractured, empty where he was once full. But his wounds are too deep and his memories have dried, no longer wet paint on a wooden ceiling, and every feeling he’s ever known has had to claw its way out of him like a bear in the spring. Akira can’t let other people love him. Akira can’t love himself. Akira can’t love volleyball. Akira can’t love Kageyama back.
He throws the letter away.
—
Later, Oikawa will tell the first years the same words he heard, an echo from Iwaizumi— that Kageyama was crying by the gym mats, head buried into his knees. He does not say much else, but there is an unspoken notion to be kinder to Kageyama in the upcoming days. Oikawa really doesn't seem happy about having to care, but Akira can tell he does anyway.
Akira wants to apologize, maybe write a response, but the lonely warmth that the corners of him carry is too tempting to step out from. The pen is too heavy in his hand, the paper too thin. No matter how he wishes to chase away his limits, his laze, it will forever be the comfort he has not found elsewhere. He has been sculpted by the hand of a barbarous carver, glazed so thick it’s impossible to chip.
He will not talk to Kageyama for a long while, no matter what he watches happen or Oikawa’s warning, and Kageyama will not send Akira another letter; pond, signature, or otherwise.
—
Have we made a fool of love?
—
Kageyama graduates, fades from view, and meets Hinata Shouyou. Akira watches him find himself.
It’s easy to tell, really, just the mercy of consequence; those who are good will have good brought back to them. Kageyama is good when he’s not screaming curses because of missed sets, so the universe gave him a partner who runs alongside him instead of behind. Hinata hits his fastest tosses as if they soar at the speed of a fruit fly on the brink of its three-day-long life, and Kageyama gets back the love he gives away. Akira doesn’t know what to do.
He isn’t mad, or upset, really. It makes him happy to see them together. He likes the way they laugh, the way Kageyama smiles. It’s a new side to him he’s never seen. But there’s an ache, inside his gut, that spreads from top to bottom, scalp to toenail. Something that longs to fit into their sides. Is that what a crush is as it is for the average person? Is this jealousy?
After the first practice game, he kisses Kindaichi on the way back home. It doesn’t feel like anything. His lips are chapped and the air is heavy from his mouth, and it’s over as soon as it started. The kiss is matter of fact, absolute. It happened, and it won’t happen again.
It’s funny to watch his friend sputter helplessly, though, try to explain he doesn’t like Akira like that. That he can’t reciprocate his feelings, that he doesn’t want to date during high school, has to focus on volleyball, that he has to—
“I know,” It’s a chuckle from Akira’s throat. “I don’t like you either. I just wanted to kiss someone, I think. You’re so embarrassing.”
“That was my first…” Kindaichi folds over into his stomach in agony, a low groan that echoes even though they’re outside. Akira realizes it was his first, too, an offhanded thought. Does it make a difference, to him, that he lost his first kiss? He wonders if it felt like anything to Kindaichi. If it truly mattered. Does Kindachi like boys? Does Akira like boys?
He doesn’t mind that it had been his first, but he does wish the kiss tasted like something. He wishes he had laughed into it. He wishes Kindaichi had been shorter, just a little bit, or maybe a lot. He wishes Kindaichi had worn the Karasuno uniform. He wishes Kindaichi had been two people, two mouths. He wishes Kindaichi hadn’t been Kindaichi at all.
—
Have we taken all the good away?
—
“Kunimi!”
Akira startles with his name. He should’ve presumed that camp would end like this because the universe likes to test Akira’s patience— Hinata has been staring at him since the beginning. Hinata Shouyou, who isn’t supposed to be here. Hinata Shouyou, boy, real living boy who communicates with words and hand motions and broken onomatopoeias, something Akira never really thought he’d notice. Hinata Shouyou, hardworking as Kageyama, loud and boisterous, cares just as much. Hinata Shouyou who inevitably befriends everyone, even Akira. Hinata Shouyou who is as beautiful as the sun and just as bright. He has somehow lured everyone into his gravity.
It’s not common, even amongst the lack of self-interest and the fear, for Akira to truly envy someone, but he envies Hinata. The way he finds excitement in the littlest of wins. The neverending want to try.
“Kageyama and I were thinking we could all play together sometime!” Eyes hopeful, smile quivering. He is beautiful even in worry. “Kindaichi can come too!”
“Uh…” Akira struggles to form the word. Godforsaken Hinata Shouyou. “No.”
“Awe, come on, why not!?”
Kindaichi, forever Akira’s lifesaver, wanders up to them. “You’ll never get him to play if you ask. Especially not with Kageyama.”
Akira cannot tell Kindaichi that he would like to talk to Kageyama again, some nostalgia trip, maybe, or feelings he took as indifference back when the concept of liking someone seemed as far away as his mind. Akira cannot tell Kindaichi that he thinks Hinata Shouyou is beautiful, that he envies him, wants to absorb him, might want to kiss him. He can’t tell Hinata that maybe he would like to play them both, that he wants to know them like he knows nothing else. He can’t tell them both he doesn’t mind. He can’t.
Hinata wanders off, of course, because his attention never stays too long in one place unless Kageyama is involved, and Kindaichi goes to help clean up, because he’s good. Akira leaves before both of them and walks the whole way home, lets himself marinate in questions unanswered, in things he knows he can’t overcome.
Does he truly want to play them both again? Does he want to know them as friends? Does he want to lean down to kiss someone, another? Can he let someone kiss him with care, a flower that blooms red when it was meant to be blue? Does he know what love really is? Will he ever?
—
Did I love again?
—
If love is a kick to the shin, a punch to the gut, a tug on your hair, then Akira is coming out bloody and bruised. He is a beaten bag of bones and skin and lost blood, the only thing holding him up is the invisible weight of loss that hangs over his head. He will not lose to something so abstract as he cannot hold it.
“I think I like them,” He whispers to nothing, a foundation of the truth, curling up in a bed he does not own. It has been four months since he first asked himself. His stomach curdles. The ceiling aches with wind. Beach houses turn to enemies, at night, with their floors built on sand. They make too much noise, cause too much panic. Their closest neighbors are far from his bedroom.
Both of them? The tides ask, in replace of a friend.
“Yeah,” He answers the not-question from the ocean. His eyes close with his mouth, but not before spitting out his wants, his needs, his mind. “Both of them.”
—
Akira’s dreams are made from broken fragments of a life he had lived once before, and lost.
He is taken apart slowly from wrist to elbow to shoulder, limbs that come off like doll’s joints, and the marks down his throat are purple, bruised, healing. Akira is taken apart by not one but two sets of hands, marked by nails, lack of singularity in his timeline, and he has never once been clean in this life or any.
The tides who ask questions leak into the house, fill the spaces in between the floorboards, the times the hands don’t roam Akira. He might’ve felt like a toy if the touch was not so warm, so cool, if he was not himself. His destruction feels like art.
How can you love two people, they say, if you can’t even love yourself?
Akira is limbless. He is only aware of his heart, trying desperately to find places to give life to. What does he have, now? “I don’t know. It’s just how I feel.”
They’re going to leave, you know, the voice of the sea is that of curiosity. It is limbless too. Heartless. Brainless. Nothing. They don’t even like you.
“Yeah,” He replies. Common knowledge of the lonely.
Are you going to allow yourself to suffer? it grates down on his spine. Allow yourself to lose even more? Allow yourself a single good moment only to have the end hurt more than the past?
He does not reply. The hands and nails and skin come back. He sinks into them because he knows when he wakes the voice will echo. It will not leave his mind for as long as these feelings persist, for as long as Akira knows they are there. He will check the floor for saltwater flood stains at the sides of his bed. He will not allow himself to be loved when conscious, one hand or two hands or four. He will not let the gray sky turn black.
He will go home no more clear than he began.
—
Can I love again?
—
After Akira comes back from his trip to the sea, his dreams turn scalding, sticking like the sand he knew he would find. He tosses and turns and lets this knowledge get under his skin— he loves, but he cannot be loved in return. He cannot let anyone know either.
They fill with water, leave salt to dry at the back of his throat, behind his teeth, under his gums. He is always the barely-used anchor of a ship, left to sit at the ocean floor. His vessel, strong and tranquil and buoyant, cuts him off its chains, and he feels himself drag down, sink far. Drown.
There’s a storm brewing, just like his mom warns him of, clouds that loom green his final view of the surface. For the ship that let him go, he wishes well, and sinks to the warm dark of a rain-streaked sea. He is safe under the waves. It is lonely still, and to feel used and thrown like garbage is never a distraction from the reality that is your life’s misguidance.
You’ve been here before. Do you remember how to swim? Do you know someone who can teach you? The tides ask him.
“What if I don’t want to?” He responds. “What if I wanna stay here?”
They laugh, bubbles that burst forth. Then lonesome will be your best friend. Do not be surprised when those that love you leave anyway.
He wakes up, after this, but his head is spinning and his half-dead body’s rocking on a ship. In sleep and in wake he is constantly lost at sea.
Akira finds his mother in their kitchen, so different from the ocean-front one, with its windows decked in gingham curtains and wooden countertops. He supposes that the half-empty fridge stocked only with the company of too much beer for a single person stays the same no matter where they travel.
“Hey, Mom?”
“Akira?” She has always answered him without looking.
“If, say, there was this anchor, right, and one day the ship it was a part of just decided to cut off the anchor and sail off, could the anchor float back up, even if it’s just lying on the seafloor? And if it could, would the anchor always be burdened by its only ever purpose having been being used and thrown away?”
She stares at him a moment, before setting down the chopsticks she was using to flip the egg, sweet, the way she likes it, over and over and over again. If Akira’s mother is anything while sober, it’s a cook. “...Excuse me?”
“Never mind,” He turns, walks towards the door, plans a gateway out of the house for the evening. He wonders if Kindaichi’s home. “Stupid question anyway.”
—
Kageyama Tobio is in love with Hinata Shouyou. Hinata Shouyou is in love with Kageyama Tobio. Kunimi Akira is in love with both of them, lives vicariously through each game they play, and will never float back up from the sea bottom.
PART II. ANSWER
—
I cannot stop looking.
—
They meet again, the three of them. Akira and Kageyama and Hinata, never a trio of friends more than strangers. Hinata comes back from Brazil, joins a pro team, has his first professional game against Kageyama, and Akira goes to watch. He’s a sucker. He doesn’t really care.
It’s just like middle school, just like high school, just like every little competition they have. It’s a dance, of sorts, and Akira thinks they have never looked so happy. Tobio found his one and only, and Shouyou found his partner. Akira is happy for them, truly, he is. He wonders what it would be like to be happy with them instead of for.
“Stupid, right?” Hinata says in an interview after. Akira is stuck replaying the same few over and over. Both of them are sweaty and smiling. “Me and my boyfriend are separated for three years, I come back, and we separate all over again!”
The interviewer laughs. “Why don’t you two just go to the same place?”
“Japan is a second home, and Shouyou has always been the first, that’s true,” Has Kageyama ever spoken so fond before? Maybe, if in a dream. “But I don’t think I could only play with him.”
“Being on the same team doesn’t always have to mean playing together every chance you get. It can also mean growing together; growing next to each other and on our own, opposite sides of the net or not,” Hinata’s grin widens. He smiles so much. Too much, almost, but not quite. Akira wonders if there’s too much at all. “It’s funny, though, because I always feel like I’m on the same team as him, so when we play against each other, no matter who wins it feels like a success. Not that I don't want to win, of course! And I like looking at him right in front of me when he wins and loses. What faces he makes. All those little things about playing against each other have become a part of why we need this, too, alongside our time playing together.”
The interviewer is clearly as infatuated with Hinata Shouyou as anyone else and lightly slaps his shoulder in joy. “You two are so sweet. Anything to say to friends or family out there?”
“No matter where we go, or what team we’re on, we will always be together.” He is truly a ball of light. “That goes for being in the stands, too.”
Kageyama meets the camera, eyes ablaze, blooming bright red with fire. A shiver goes up Akira’s spine. Who is he looking for? “We’ll wait for you. We’ve waited for you.”
—
You're no stronger than I.
—
There’s a party. Kindaichi throws it in their shared apartment because Kageyama and Hinata are leaving in four months and everyone is sad. Karasuno is sad. The Black Jackals are sad. The Adlers are sad. Kindaichi is sad. Kunimi Akira is fucking sad, the saddest of them all, an empty hollow of a person. He feels like the broken pieces of a scrap metal anchor. He is no shipwreck. He could never be.
“What are you doing after university?” Hinata asks him. Somehow the two of them had made it to each other, Akira being drawn in. He is gorgeous, truly a star in the midst of the vacancy of space, its matter. His eyes are sparkling as they ever were. His hair is buzzed shorter on the sides. Bruises on his legs. Scratches down his arm. Akira gulps his drink down like he’s dying.
“I’m going into banking. Here. In Miyagi,” Boring, nothing like São Paulo or Rome.
Hinata laughs, and he’s still beautiful. Always has been. Always will be. “Tobio did say you were smart. If only you were there for us during high school!”
“Yeah…” Akira has no way to tell him that he wanted to be, and even if he did, his mouth would never form the words. He bumps into his bedroom door, recognizes it only because it has the one handle in the house that’s mismatched. Akira didn’t even realize they were moving down the hallway.
“Is that your bedroom?” Hinata lights up. “Can I see?”
—
Akira had not meant to turn this into a therapy session, not by any means.
“I had these nightmares before, during high school,” Hinata hums his acknowledgment from his spot next to Akira on the bed. “Where I was this anchor. The boat I was attached to decided it didn’t need me anymore, so it cut me off, and I’d sink to the bottom and just stay there. I couldn’t move. I could only sit there and think about how I was used and thrown away.”
“That sucks, what the hell,” Hinata sighs. “At least they’re gone, now.”
Akira refrains to tell him that the nightmares never truly stopped, just spaced out in between dreams where he’s loved by two. Two people, two bodies, two sets of hands. Akira waits in the almost-silence, hears crickets chirp outside, the muffled bass of whatever music Kindaichi had decided to let rumble through the house. The floor shakes lightly. The door is closed.
“But who’s to say you have to be the anchor?”
Akira blinks from where he lay, back melding into the sheet. Ceiling paint above him peels back to reveal water-logged wood. Eventually, it’ll crumble to pieces like the paint that once used to protect it, if only barely, and Akira’s bones will crumble to dust beneath him, too. His colors. His iron. His skin, his paint. “What?”
“It’s just a metaphor your subconscious made up, right?” Akira believes Hinata has never had the experience of thinking past the surface level, rainbow intact, bright orange instead of muted white. Forever above the waves. If Akira is the lone anchor, Hinata has always been the ship, buoyant and strong. Akira finds he doesn’t mind this, would probably let Hinata cut him off, hurt him. “Why don’t you just change it? There isn’t any reason you couldn’t be a ship that just thinks it’s an anchor. You seem pretty ship-like to me.”
Akira thinks about Hinata Shouyou and his eyes and his legs and his orange. He thinks about Hinata Shouyou, boy, ship, ruler. He thinks about Hinata Shouyou and decides that love can be anything. Boy, man, anchor, ship. Villagebearer, king. Two people. Three people. A whole crew.
“Yeah, okay,” Akira tears his eyes away from the ceiling. It is all just metaphors, this part is true, arbitrary words that linger in the atmosphere after they’re spoken. Hinata has a way about him that makes everything else obsolete, nightmare or otherwise. Akira smiles. “I’ll be the ship.”
—
“Oh, fuck, please... Please…”
Hinata likes his temples, the slope of his neck. His forearms, the light of them, the memories of death they carry. The sand that sticks to him like ash. His body, no more human than urn.
“We…” Akira has to choke back a groan. “We have to stop. No, no, please, Hinata … You have… Please, shit... Kageyama...”
Hinata doesn’t stop. Akira has a feeling he wouldn’t even if the room was on fire around them. “He knows.”
“... What?”
“He knows I’m in here. He’s fine with it, as long as it’s you. Are you alright with that?”
His mouth, Hinata’s mouth. Sucking bruises that dot his jaw like Orion’s belt, necking him like they're teenagers. Akira nods blankly.
Hinata moves forward slightly and smiles against his temple. “My turn now. His turn later, if you want him. If that’s okay with you,” He turns into Akira, by his ear, down, down, “What you want. Only ever what you want.”
Akira stumbles on words when Shouyou goes back down his jawline, across his shoulder, trails lips, soft and sun-dressed and gentle, loving, a journey over his arms. Each press of his mouth leaves a lingering sting, scalding like the dreams of his fifteen-year-old summer. How could anyone not feel like an anchor in the face of the sun? Mountains, sculpted not by barbarous carver, but by some useless god? Life does not stop because you created two humans who fit into each other like pieces of a puzzle, nor if those two humans realize you might be the last piece they need.
“... Both,” The word is punctuated with a gasp, Hinata lifting his shirt, putting fingers to work up his stomach, splayed over his chest. “Both of you. I want… Now. Please.”
—
The creak of the hinges in the face of a lie— that Akira should allow this to be any more than a one-night stand after a party that fades like every person he once expected to stick. Their clothes line carpeted floors, Kageyama smells like sports leather and shampoo, Hinata like generic detergent and shoreline, far as the eye can see. Akira’s going to be working at a boring old bank, next year, and the two lovers in front of him will travel to separate sides of the world. This might be all Akira has left.
Two mouths, one bed, open, waiting. He will create his dreams, manifest them, make them real. Barbarous carver is he, helpless, whole, and the bodies that mark him are ships that want him, need him, chose him, chose this. They would only cut his chains if to melt him down to the base metal of his person and turn him into a ship themselves.
Come closer, they say, and so Akira comes, one meter, one centimeter, nothing. They meet him in the middle.
Learn us, they say, and so Akira learns, their skin, their voices, everything. They mirror.
Trace us, they say, and so Akira traces, their throats, their lips, everywhere. They trace him, copycat.
Let us love you, they say, and so Akira tries. When they ask to stay, he hesitates. He thinks. They love him all the same.
He watches their eyes, warm, welcoming, pleading; Akira?
Please, Akira, no matter their voices tender, gentle, asking,
After this, can we stay the night?
Don’t make this hard for me, He says, because it’s all he can say without falling off the edge,
We want you, their hands, calloused, strong, forgiving,
You want us,
Like they know.
Yes, Yes, always. Always, I want you. Weak, weak, weak,
So why? Akira is baptized, anointed,
Why aren't you allowed to want more?
“Because,” Akira whispers to an empty audience, the clock his only friend, only response. It’s four am, Kageyama and Hinata have long since left. He lay in bed bare, bruised, still wanting. “I don’t know if I could live to watch you fade from me.”
The echo of them and their parting is present in the lightest breeze through the open window above his nightstand, the second hand tick every moment. He can make love to them in the privacy of his own bedroom, when the music drowns out the rest, but he can’t let them stay. The tides rumble forth.
“I can’t—” His tears are waterfalls down the slope of his cheekbones, rush down his neck, leave streaks on his foundationless planes. Akira is made blue by the shadow of forgotten hope. Something that died a long time ago. “I can’t— I won’t— Please. Don’t leave. Not until you have to.”
We’ll wait for you, they have already gone, will no longer be solid in front of him until their next meeting, if at all, We’ve waited for you.
—
Love wasn't ever supposed to be taken as anything more.
—
Akira got a perfect score in history for all three years of high school, despite the fact he was losing the concept of time.
The past is concrete, something he can clutch with his fingers. He made eggs three days ago and they were too sweet. The sea from his trip was salty. They are facts because they have been lived. The present is to live. The future is to be lived.
Akira hates them all, but he hates the past the most. He hates that it’s unchangeable, that the brain decides it’s necessary to remember. That no matter how many people come into his life, they’ll never be able to fill whatever craters were left indented in his flesh, his heart. His dad is gone, his mom has been an empty shell since she sunk into the grave with him, his last friend is his roommate. He’s in love with two people who would sooner quit volleyball than ever stick around.
He doesn’t want to let people love him. He can’t. If it lessens, loosens, falls short of what it once was, it will always be a lasting memory, something that stays. People leave, memories don’t. Love fades. Sand sticks. Thoughts will always be a circuit in his mind, a boat in his waters, oil spilling over its sides. Akira is deathly, deathly afraid.
He won’t be able to reach in and change his decisions or fix what went wrong when it inevitably happens. Isolated. Empty. Kindaichi might as well be the only thing tying him to the Earth, to the social nature of this, what could be love. What could be Akira.
How long has it been since his father last said goodnight? How long has it been since his mother called him? How long has it been since he let someone stay more than a night? How long has it been? How long?
“I think I might just be absolutely fucking batshit crazy,” Akira mutters, and Kindaichi digs his thumb just past the balloon’s breaking point. He’s been cleaning up for the two of them since Akira came to him crying like a sick toddler in the wee hours of the morning, let him sleep in his room atop a futon on the floor. It pops, reverberates, flies around the ceiling with a noise that sounds a little like clowns in front of a bullet train; Akira’s heart regurgitates some mutual understanding back up from his throat.
“Huh?”
Akira is a clown standing on railway tracks. The last two guests from the evening before are the first two cars of that same train. “I think I might be crazy.”
Kindaichi runs a hand down from his elbow and squeezes his forearm, forever a reminder that’s he’s there and not gone. Kindaichi knows about Akira’s father, Akira’s mother, but doesn’t know about him. About Akira. About what happened last night. About them. “You’ll be okay. I’ll make you some soup, after this. No worries. You’re safe here, I promise.”
Akira doesn’t have the heart to tell him he’s not worried about the safety of their home, but the safety of his sea. His laze, the couches he wants to sit on, his intimacy. The way he avoids his emotions until he can’t anymore, until one day he’ll call Kageyama and Hinata up while they’re thousands of miles away and tell them he’s been in love with the two of them since they were first years in high school.
“Thanks,” The ocean is more salt than water. Akira is dehydrating slowly. “I know I am.”
—
I’m begging you to look back at me.
—
They meet again, and again, and again.
For the months leading up to their departure, they become way too familiar with hotels close by and Akira’s car. Intimacy in both apartments, when Akira kicks Kindaichi out, when they invite Akira over.
Kageyama becomes Tobio, no longer having to trace the lines of his given name written out on paper, years old. Hinata becomes Shouyou, beautiful in so many new ways and all the old ones, high school camp or sun-kissed. Akira no longer has roots that keep him grounded to the soil below him, and he enjoys the freedom of feet and a beating heart and hair that grows soft and warm beneath the hands of these two lovers.
He knows this is fleeting, a little fun for the two of them before they separate, so he says no more than see you when he exits and never stays until the morning. He does not bring his feelings into this mad rush against time, a countdown clock muted by waves louder than his voice. He will sap every last drop of love, every last bit of affection from their bones so he has something to hold onto. Something to relive, when they’re no longer around to be his for the night.
“Stay,” They ask each time.
“I can’t,” He says back because it’s true, he can’t stay, since one of these days he’ll wake up and they won’t be there.
Akira knows that Tobio and Shouyou are just a guidebook to prepare from, the whispered promise of their departure that is more a heavy burden to bear. Akira knows the things he is taught, like how to make Shouyou the loudest or what colors Tobio bruises on different parts of his neck or how they both fall flat after, whether it’s all three of them or Akira and one, are all simply memories they prepare for him. Nothing more, nothing less.
Akira knows that Tobio and Shouyou are only fucking with him for some last-minute fun, when they’re kilometer after kilometer away, away from each other and away from him.
He thinks he could be happy like this, even so, with this care that is shared with him all the same as the hurt, but his body is claustrophobic as ever, swept into the sea, and he knows something is still missing. What could it be, if he had been given the sun, the Earth? What is it he craves, if not this closeness?
—
Come on, look at me.
—
They’re leaving in a month. They’re leaving in a month and Shouyou wants to talk. To talk. Akira knows about talks, especially in these terms.
There are five knocks at the door, gentle. That’s Tobio. The house is a mess. Akira hasn’t slept in the twenty-four hours since Shouyou texted him. Kindaichi hasn’t been home in forty-eight, since he left on his away game, and could come home at any moment. Akira is not ready to be broken just yet.
They knock again, louder this time. Three times in the middle, right underneath the peephole. Shouyou. Right outside. Akira isn’t ready, puts on his mask of uncaring, walks to the door with a spoon in his mouth. He meets two pairs of eyes. Two bodies he’s memorized. The last two people he wants to see. They don’t step in the door.
“This’ll be quick, I promise,” Shouyou says, not a second to spare. “We have to get to practice, but we need to talk to you.”
Akira stares, tries not to let his heart split in two. “If you don’t want to see me anymore, you could’ve just called, you know.”
“God, no. Don’t even think that!”
The words echo around his head. God, no. No. Don’t think that. No. Akira sighs. If not this, then what?
“Tobio, you have to ask him first!” Shouyou sends a harsh whisper out his mouth.
Tobio coughs, Akira dreams of stealing that air. He is his own greatest betrayal. “Do you like me? Us?”
“... I mean, enough to sleep with you, sure,” Akira hesitates on the words. Who would he be, if not a liar?
“What about forever, then?” Shouyou is a finality. He does not cut corners. He takes, he wants. "Wanna go out for real?"
Akira chokes on the next breath. This is a practical joke. A prank. His heart falls still in his chest, his limbs a moment’s notice from falling off. He did not want to manifest this part of his dream.
He supposes it would make sense, for each asking of him to stay meaning more than just that need for comfort. They do tell him sweet things, remind him of his strengths, try to make him believe what he refuses to know. Akira had always imagined this being so he could cling to these ideas when their presence is filled with lack of, when his memories can only get him so far. He is lost in a routine of doubt. This would be funny if he was anyone but himself.
It is only when Akira knows that the time passed has been too long, that nightfall is close and they are in a hurry, when the clouds are languid and shade the land beneath with dark, that he decides it’s okay to breathe. He stumbles in the doorway.
“Funny joke. What even makes you think I’d say yes? I’m not an idiot,” Akira says in replace of an answer. He wishes he had a table to set down his spoon, instead licks some nonexistent remains of ice cream off of it. Nervous habits in the wake of something he’d never heard, never thought he would hear. Joke or not. Shouyou’s gaze pierces like a knife. Strikes him down.
“No, Akira, please, this is serious,” Tobio’s is embarrassed, soft. It doesn’t fit such a hardened face, Akira thinks. Pretty nonetheless. “We don’t just want you for—” He coughs, “you know, all that,” Cute. “We, I , I’ve liked you for so lo… forever, Shouyou too. We...”
“We want you. For everything, for the mornings after, for middays in between,” Shouyou picks up where Tobio trails off. Akira can’t hold onto the outline of him. “Please.”
Akira’s eyes are no longer dry. The rust has brandished holes in his metal and seeped through, hollowed his insides. The tears spillover.
“You guys are leaving the country next month. Separate sides of the Earth. And you want me? You want me to be halfway in between the both of you? Far from you? You want me to hold you back?” Rage is energy that he doesn’t want to waste, so he places his voice somewhere quiet, his throat a solid wedge, stopping. “I was never what you thought I was. I can’t meet you guys in Rome every day to battle it out like fools.”
They stand there, silent. Akira doesn't want to continue. He’s lost his ability to swallow. “You’re already leaving me physically. You’re going to forget about me in like, four minutes. I can’t lose you again, I can’t lose you in any other way, too. It would kill me,” Any way. All the ways. “We’re not on the same team. We never were.”
He drops his spoon on the floor accidentally, hears the metal clink lightly, echo in the hallway. He can’t see any longer, eyesight blurred by his own oceans, looks away from the both of them. He cannot hold onto them, and they cannot hold onto him. He will never be made for this. Shouyou starts talking again, but his ears are clogged and he does not tip his head to get the water out.
He lets go of the door, listen to it shut with the lock, but does not watch. Sinks to the ground, falls. Falls. He cuts off his own chain, laughs bitterly. He must be a ship, if he cut himself off. If he was able to. The water is dirt-laden, acidic. He is melting in his own home by his own hand.
Akira stills, covers his face, and cries. He roots himself in the sand. Allows the world to rain on him. Drowns.
—
Kindaichi comes home an hour after to Akira curled up on the kitchen tiles, wading in his tears, more salt than water. The TV has been running for too long. His ice cream has melted in the container, round, paper, disintegrating in the liquid sugar. Akira is scattered parts around the house, and Kindaichi can barely pull him from the floor.
Pajamas off, bath run. Kindaichi washes his hair for him, and Akira feels four again. It’s warm. Kindaichi gets him new clothes, makes him tea. Sends him to bed. Somewhere in their ritual, Akira realizes Kindaichi has always known, in one way or another.
“I’m here to talk,” Akira has never deserved Kindaichi. Will never deserve him. Will never deserve Tobio, Shouyou. Will never deserve what they want to give him. “If you ever want to, you know. Take your time.”
—
There’s a knock at the door three days later. Package, or something. He finds a pen he’ll use to sign.
He pulls open the door, dry-eyed, freshly-showered. Finds his mask, uncaring, unbothered, for this mailman that doesn’t even know his name, and then—
Shouyou. Tobio. Again, at his door. In front of him. Akira feels the mask crumble to dirt, fall to the carpet beneath him.
“You absolute ass,” Tobio looks just about ready to beat him into the ground with his fists, tear him apart. Not that he would ever; gentle, loving soul. Water collects in the corners of his eyes. “That’s not—”
“We don’t want you to be like us,” Shouyou covers Tobio’s mouth before he spews out the first thing he thinks. Shouyou is almost quiet. Akira has only heard him speak this way once, to Tobio. “Obviously,” Is it? “You don’t need to play volleyball or travel to Rome. You don’t need to be some extra component of us, we never wanted that. You're not some accessory.”
He bounces up, stands on his toes in front of him. Shouyou is no more than 5 centimeters away. So close, so close. Always too close.
“We want you because you make us happy. Because we see you in the stands and it makes us want to work harder. Because you’re Kunimi Akira, rusting on the ocean floor,” Akira glances over, watches Tobio’s face contort in confusion. “And we have the chains to pull you up, ‘Nimi. We want you on the waters. We want you. Kilometer after kilometer away or right at our door.”
They came back, came back even after he shut them out, after he pushed them away. Because they want him so bad, because they think he’s a good fit for them, because they think he’s important.
Akira is out of air. He doesn’t know how long he stands there, watching, waiting. Asking for a sign. Kindaichi to come home. A package to actually get delivered. His father’s ghost rising from the dirt to slap Akira right across the face and tell him to get a grip on reality.
“Please,” They speak out at the same time. No such sign arrives.
What if they leave? The tides whisper in his mind, never quite forgotten.
‘What if they don’t.’ He thinks back, a challenge. ‘What if they stay?’
He thinks of their words and their touches and the way they knew him. Shouyou; endless sky, that giant leaping ball of gas in the universe that keeps them all alive. Tobio; mountain, dirt, stone, the whole planet, where Akira rests his feet, where Akira thinks he’s always loved, unknowing or all too clear.
Tobio brings a finger to his eye, wipes a stray tear, Akira barely conscious. He tries not to smile, keeps his mask tight around his head, but can’t help the grin that pulls itself from the sea bottom with the rest of him. “I guess,” He’s laughing, he can hear it. “Yeah, sure. I guess.”
—
Yes.
—
Akira lies on the floor of an apartment that is not his own. It is warmer than his will ever be, a found family of a place, here to house the two sweetest creations the world has ever brought him.
“I wish I could tell you two stories,” He says, if only because it’s true.
Shouyou sounds a breeze in the spring from the kitchen. “Then tell some.”
“You don’t have to wish for that,” Tobio voices from his spot on the couch, snow in the winter. He is watching volleyball on TV at a low volume. He says it’s because his ears are sensitive to speaker reverb, but Akira knows it’s because he likes to hear the trill of the house. The kettle going. The music Shouyou plays. The wind through the window. Akira who drums his fingers on the wood.
He thinks for a moment. “I don’t have any stories.”
Tobio sighs. Shouyou laughs. They are two sides of the same coin. Etched different patterns in metal. They would not sink easily, even in war. Even in death.
“You know what to do when we don’t have stories?” Shouyou comes out with toast and tea, fruit jam for Akira and butter for Tobio, lemongrass tea he got addicted to in Rio. Shouyou takes both jam and butter on his, bread almost burnt. Reminds me of my two boys! he says like a fool, but Akira thinks it’s just because he likes everything that he is allowed to put in his mouth.
They both shake their heads, Akira and his boy-king who find his joy in flight, at their little sunshine prince who is not so little anymore. Anyone could tell they are all adoring, happy. With each other and the world.
Shouyou smiles like he always does, a habit built by nature, something Akira has come to love. “We make some!”
—
They get tattoos on Akira’s twenty-second birthday and proclaim it their first chapter.
“I thought you said you were the anchor,” Tobio voices when he notices the little ship on the side of Akira’s forearm. Shouyou had explained the dreams after the fact. He roams the plastic, featherlight with his finger.
Akira looks down at it. Thinks, as he always does. “That’s what I thought I was before,” He glances up. “Now, I’m the ship.”
Tobio seems to accept this response, nods at him. Trails his fingers from the tattoo down to slip into Akira’s own, still ever so gentle. Like Akira will break.
“You always were,” Shouyou moves from the chair. He was a baby during it all, tearing up. His eyes are red, like his hair. Darker. “Tobio, your turn!”
“What did you get, Shou?” They had decided it would be a good idea not to tell each other beforehand, so it would be a surprise for all of them. What they felt fit them all.
He smiles. “A sun. Because you and ‘Yama both call me by my given name!”
Tobio sits down and snorts, the tattoo artist finding blue ink, the only trademark of Tobio besides volleyball, the crash and burn, eating your weight for dinner. “That’s gross.”
“You say everything romantic I do is gross!” Akira believes Shouyou has gunpowder in his blood. “Sorry that I like you guys, or whatever. I guess I’ll just stop.”
Akira and Tobio let out separate little moans of nooo, which Shouyou giggles at. Burning fire in his chest. “Tobio, what are you getting?”
He stops, stills for a moment. His face blooms red. Pretty. “A pond. And some mountains.”
“Excuse me?!” Shouyou shouts. “Because I call you ‘Yama and you drew ‘Nimi a pond in your first love letter? And you call me gross.”
“It’s different when I do it!”
“No, it’s not!”
Akira call feel warmth spread through him, a physical telling of the fondness he knows comes from the core of himself. The familiar bickering that never fades, a part of them all. A memory.
“Hey,” They go silent and turn to face him.
“I want to meet you two in every corner of the world, even when you’re gone,” Akira says, lets his eyes wander to the ship that will never fade. A permanent reminder. He sees them smile.
Two little creatures, growing and loving, staring at Akira. They are equanimous and free and untarnished by the elements, made whole again by the same world that forgave Akira. That welcomed him when he fell, lost, into the deepest parts of it.
Akira’s journey is no longer just his own. He is not his own mapmaker. He feels a grin spread the expanse of his face, reflects back at them, love that filters through nothing.
“So where do you want to start?”
PART III. REPLY
“My wish for you, my friend — and all the other abandoned anchors that write to me from the ocean floor — is that a time will come when you can reimagine yourself, not as the poor old stalwart anchor rusting on the sea bottom, but as a fucking ship and get back on the surface of the water and do what ships do — venture forth and begin again the strange, dangerous, glorious, storm-tossed voyage of life!”
Nick Cave
—
You didn't me to tell you that, though, did you?
—
They decide to begin in Miyagi. Climb the expanse of the sky, from the place they started to the places they are going. Will go in the future. They kiss in their favorite sites, by the entrance of Sendai City Gymnasium, Shouyou’s childhood home. They kiss in places they’ve never gotten to experience altogether, walking down streets they haven’t seen in years. Bakeries and the museum where Tsukishima works (Akira is convinced they did that just to piss him off) and the park they used to practice in. They take Akira to their special spots, and Akira takes them to his apartment, his bank, both unexciting, gray brick buildings. It’s their favorite part.
“We get to see a part of you!” Shouyou says. Tobio grabs Akira around the middle. “Something we can’t get anywhere else!”
He laughs into it all, the care. The relief. The nostalgia. “There are apartments and banks everywhere, you know.”
Months go by, after they leave. Akira trusts and waits.
They travel to São Paulo the next summer, hotter weather that any beach Akira has ever been to, no matter he’s only ever been to one. It’s beautiful and bold, like Shouyou, and to love in the light of an open window is something he’d like to relive again and again and again.
They visit the Catedral da Sé, because Shouyou thinks he’ll like it, despite its purpose; such a grand cathedral it could stand without its religion. Pillars, scraping the sky, window light paving paths down its center. Akira would’ve kissed them both, in there, underneath a roof only meant to shield from rain, but could only glance at the architecture for a moment before they, all three of them, lost themselves in its arms.
“Every part of me is made up of parts of you,” Shouyou tells them both, the night before they take off, wine and dancing ending slowly but the moon just rising on skin not yet touched. Blood curdles around Akira’s bones. They are DNA, sharpened blade coming to pluck him out of his skin.
If Paris is the city of love, it is only the beauty of it; São Paulo is the city of depth, just how far you can fall. How long it takes to breathe in its essence. How long you can wade in its waters before plunging in headfirst. It is hard to leave.
Rome is new. Rome is fresh air and art and food and Tobio, Shouyou. Akira thinks they fit this best.
They fall victim to the colosseum, to the over-hyped tourism of it all, but Tobio holds his hand when they walk in, Shouyou takes more pictures than his storage allows. This place of archway walls, once used to be a tomb, fighting arena, river. They do kiss, here, in this limestone amphitheater of ruin, and Akira loves it. He thinks he can hear the echo of the charge, a memory of a past life, but it might just be Shouyou’s excitement.
Later, he gets touched like the art they map in the city, the buildings, the colors. He is an exhibit, a thing to watch, a thing to scrape, a thing to love. They mark him. He has been manifesting his dreams for years, now, has tasted the skin he could only imagine before. Has known them in Miyagi, longer than he’s known himself, in São Paulo, Rome. Would know them everywhere, if he could. Like he plans to.
Akira thinks he’s always been destined to be here, in this place with life and water and joy ringing out in the streets, even if he likes the quiet, the peace of solitude. Warm sheets, chosen with care, he knows, because Tobio remembers those things. A hand that never strays from his neck, because Shouyou remembers that. It’s unlike anything anyone had warned him of; fruitful. He is filled with wonder. It’s everything he once hoped he could feel.
Akira once saw the Earth as it is, a giant rock in one normal solar system in a universe bigger than comprehension. There is nothing special about it, and yet he had been called to it by fate or destiny or whatever people think is the reality of the universe’s gravity. That might’ve been them.
They must leave then too, but Shouyou won’t let them hop on a flight until they have planned their next adventure. An island, they’ll go, if only because of the ocean Akira wants to become more familiar with. That he wants them all to know.
In the moments in between, Akira feels on cloud nine, like he’s living in the sky, in a house made of clouds and lights and dreams he never had as any other being before. He wakes up every morning to catch the sunrise in the palms of his hands, knowing he is thought of. He runs and leap and touches the horizon with his fingertips, he memorizes the oranges and yellows and pinks that feel like kisses on his skin, he knows what it feels like to die and live and grow and break and conquer.
Akira smiles, and then he laughs. So this is freedom, is it? This is what it means to simply be? What love had felt like all along?
There are beginnings and endings to every journey Akira has ever taken, to each eternity he allows himself to swim through, and if these two pass like every other vessel Akira has loved, he will do no more than release his being and go looking again. He has let go of the fear. They took it from him.
And yet, from it all, Akira doesn’t think that will happen. He finds solace in them both, these boys-turned-men who grew wings. He finds peace in their warmth and their triumph, in their passion that grabs ahold of those around it and infects them just as mightily as their own. They are people who run with him, wait with him, pull him forward. Akira knows what it’s like for people to take him hostage to their whims. He knows what it’s like for people to stay. He knows what it’s like to let people make you vulnerable.
Sand sticks, and so does the sound of a Shouyou cooking breakfast at seven in the morning, Tobio brushing his teeth at eight. So do the ashes of Akira’s father, sitting in a container older than himself, so does his mother’s silence, made from anger. So does the wind, the sky, the sea. So do the ships. The anchors. The love. The excess of.
—
Dear Shouyou,
Dear Tobio,
Why is São Paulo so far? I miss you more than I can write to you. It’s an ache I can’t let go of, like if the sun was suddenly replaced by a big huge black hole, except we weren’t sucked in. We just had to watch it take everything else. That’s what your absence is like. This is so gay.
I'm thinking about buying a ticket to Rome, 'cause I miss you more than words can describe. The universe has knocked down all our mountains and filled our valleys with the remaining rubble. The Earth is now smooth, all because you are separated from me. Okay, seriously, this is so fucking gay.
I had to write a letter to you, with my favorite pens, the ones I know you think are stupid for a bank worker to use. I bought an orange one, on Tuesday, 'cause of your hair. Whenever we meet again, I’m going to draw on you with it, words and images and things. We can take more pictures or get more tattoos. So you will have a piece of me there.
I will make sure to draw a few extra animals in this, cats and toads and birds, 'cause I remember you told me that they are your favorite part of my letters. I really like them in yours too. I told Shouyou that I'd draw something on him so he can get it tattooed. I'll do the same for you but on paper.
Do you remember our first time together at camp? You waddled up to me like a little penguin, all curious and bright and beautiful. I hated being looked at back then, to be fair. I don’t anymore, but only as long as it’s you. Tobio maybe, too, but he gets all intense and it kind of makes me feel like a test subject. It's cute, though. I know you think so too.
Do you remember the first thing you wrote to me in your middle school love letter? It is still so clear in my mind. “I like you.” in your terrible handwriting. Most direct letter ever. Sorry that I threw it away, by the way. I don't think I ever apologized. "I like you." might have to be the next tattoo I get. What do you think? I’ll have you rewrite it.
I genuinely did not have any purpose for this letter, at the beginning, but I knew I had something to tell you. I think maybe I had a prophetic dream or something, and knew I had to write (gay). So I wracked my brain until the only thing there was you and Tobio [Shouyou], your hands, your voices. Until all I had was you. Until that was all I needed. I know you know I suck at words, but I found some.
You both took your time to let me gain trust, I know. I regret the time I made you wait for, pretending not to care. Not letting you in. But you were always there, and each of you follows like an interruption, a booming copy, paste in the midst of a sentence. You learned me regardless. You are my today, and you will be my tomorrow. I have found time again, because of you.
I will be in your debt for as long as I am alive. For pushing [waiting], for believing. For your understanding and your love and your patience. For knowing, for letting me know in return. For melting me down to my bones and my carbon, building me up anew. Strong, happy, free. Someone who allows themself to want. Someone who keeps running. And when I need to rest, you wait. You sit next to me. You wait with me. This is not some twisted version of the Tortoise and the Hare.
It is not all one-sided, though, since we are not and will never be chained to teacher and student, only intrepid adventurers. I, too, learned what it means to be loved, and love in return. To break down my walls and still my sleep. To no longer be anchor, only company for a moment, but to own the tides and capture the seas. To stare at the moon and not question it’s reason. And for every new mark you leave on me (emotionally, get your head out of the gutter), for each time we see each other again, I grow fonder. For every night I no longer spend alone. For every new way of saying you love me, even from the two sides of the planet that I am not on.
I have seen the sun and the Earth because of you. I have sailed atop the ocean that once drew me from your seafront. I have made my own. Because we, in lieu of every single train of thought I once believed to be fact, are the sum of all things. The three of us.
Much love,
Kunimi Akira, Ship