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It’s dark outside and Akaashi is tired.
Tired of being perfect. Or pretending to be.
He’s on his way back home from the academy where he goes every day after classes or after club activities end. He’s been going there for years now, since he has recollection of it.
And that feeling of tiredness has been eating him inside out since a long time ago too.
He knows his parents do and want only what’s best for him. Or at least that’s what he tries to think to ease that heaviness in his heart after every scolding or every disappointed glance that goes his way and accompanies those harsh comments on his decisions and life.
Cause “volleyball is not gonna give you money, Keiji”.
“Volleyball is not gonna let you enter any of those prestigious universities or companies when you graduate”.
“You always have to be number one to achieve big things in life, son”.
He’s just tired.
And even though his parents don’t condone his volleyball career he just doesn’t really want to let that go, at least not now. Not yet.
And there’s a reason behind that. To Akaashi, volleyball means happiness. It’s sometimes hard too, of course it is. But more than anything, volleyball, no… Fukurodani, his teammates and Bokuto mean happiness to him.
They are his own personal sun.
Even his air.
He needs them to breathe. To feel a bit less lost in all that darkness that engulfs him when he gets back home each night.
He needs them to keep going.
So he won’t let them go.
And his parents had permitted that, with the only condition of him being at the very least number one in his class. In every subject.
And so Akaashi is tired.
He sleeps less than would be recommended but, then again… what can he do? He has morning classes to attend to, then volleyball practice, then academy… and when he gets back home he just wants to lay on his bed and let Morpheus take him to the land of dreams, where he can’t really feel or hurt.
But he can’t.
He has to keep on studying to keep up with his grades. He has to be number one.
And at least at the volleyball court he doesn’t need to, he doesn’t have to. Bokuto’s already there to claim that position and that eases his mind. But at home he’s all alone.
Locked in his bedroom he studies until his eyes can’t focus on the books in front of him. He crawls to bed and falls asleep barely in a couple of seconds.
And now, on his way home, he’s almost all alone in the streets cause it’s a bit late already and the streetlights are getting lit up, turning the road a pretty shade of orange and dark blue from the already dark sky.
He doesn’t want to go home to that tedious and cold darkness. So instead he just gets closer to the riverside and lies on the tinged-with-dew-drops grass.
He sighs and closes his eyes, arms opened and legs too. Then he lets time go by and for a moment he just stays like that, hearing the cicadas and the people passing by, feeling the gentle but cold caress of the wind in his face.
With his eyes still closed he hears the noises of the city and the river flowing right beside him.
A bicycle on the gravel road.
Someone walking out their dog.
A family going back home.
A family…
A home…
He wishes he could call what he had that but he doesn’t feel like if he did it’d become true.
Cause of course he had a father and a mother but they both felt like strangers to him. Just a couple of adults and him, their toy. Their perfect-to-be doll.
He sighs once again at the thought of that and embraces himself with both his arms.
It’s getting cold but he doesn’t want to move. And with the rush to get to the academy lessons on time he had forgotten his jacket at the gym lockers. “I should get it back tomorrow”, he thinks, “now’s too late to go back”.
He opens his arms once again, opening his eyes to look up at the stars in the sky. But suddenly his vision turns completely black. There’s something covering his eyes, his entire face.
Wait… there’s something covering my face?
He notices the weight of someone else above him. Of various “someone elses”.
He had been way too caught up in his thoughts to actually hear the hurried steps getting closer and closer and those familiar voices calling out for him.
“Bokuto-san?” his voice comes out in a stifled whisper.
“Hey, Akaashi!” his captain answers back with that characteristic loud voice.
“What are you guys doing here?”
“That’s what we should be asking” replies someone else. Konoha?
“Yeah, Akaashi, it’s so damn late, what are you doing here? You’re gonna catch a cold or something”. Bokuto again.
Akaashi wants to answer but he chokes up and doesn’t. Instead he bites his lower lip and scrunches his nose in an attempt to stop the tears from falling.
“We just saw that you had forgotten your jacket and, to be honest, that’s kinda unusual of you so we went out to find you and give it back”.
Oh… so that was his jacket over his face now. He realises that and smiles a bit underneath it.
He thinks about how the boys might have been going around in circles, to their gym and back, while trying to find him cause he never told them he was going to that academy to follow his parents' commands and wishes in exchange for being able to continue playing volleyball with them.
He takes a deep breath to control his body that’s began to shake, turning him into a trembling mess of emotions and he thinks about how much he loves them all. His team of idiotic owls that are now all above him, crushing his boy.
But, in all honesty, that weight doesn’t feel suffocating even though its crushing him. It feels strangely liberating.
And like that he just knows he’s made a mistake… He does have a family.
His team, his beloved team.
And that family of his is now with him and the world just seems so much brighter. And like that he knows he can keep on going for a day more, a week more, a year more.
And right there, at that very moment, he gets rid of those invasive thoughts and decides to live the “now”. To focus on that light in his life that are those silly boys.