Alles (bokuaka)
Pairing: Gen (Bokuto and Akaashi)
Rating: G
Length: 862w
Summary: Akaashi is Bokuto's everything, and there's no way he could ever really understand. Also on AO3.
A love letter (of sorts) to the friend who's pulling away.
heyyyy, lol, it's been a whileAkaashi is his everything. Bokuto wonders, sometimes, if Akaashi understands quite how much he means to him. Bokuto knows he doesn’t mean as much to Akaashi, so he probably doesn’t understand at all.
~~~
They met freshman year of university, randomly assigned as roommates, and living together had come as easily as breathing. Bokuto was so careful not to alienate Akaashi, tried his best to be quiet and clean, not too annoying in any way. He kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, for the fight and falling out he’d been told was inevitable (because after all, roommates aren’t friends) - but it never came, and it didn’t come the year after that, or the year after that.
~~~
Akaashi, for all he comes off cold and distant, is a popular guy. Of course he is, why wouldn’t he be? Handsome, athletic, smart - he’s got everything going for him, and people obviously realize. He has dozens of friends, and his easy social attitude seems to make him a popular choice to hang out with, for lunch or parties or dinners, day trips downtown, even as a study companion. Akaashi is distant to the string of boys eager to date him, seeming to use them for coffee more than anything else, but it never seems to take away from his appeal.
Bokuto is different.
People have always found him annoying, have told him to his face and abused him for it, but for short periods most seem to like Bokuto fine - he talks to people in class, waves occasionally if he passes them on campus - but they’re not really friends. He doesn’t see them outside of class, doesn’t go out and do things with them, doesn’t even eat lunch with them, and they don’t ask him to. They all have their own real friends to do those things with, and it’s fine, really it is, because who would want to spend more time with Bokuto than they have to? And sure, that means Bokuto doesn’t really have any friends, but that’s ok, because he has Akaashi, has had him for close to three years - until he doesn’t.
Akaashi’s single RA room senior year means they can’t live together, so Bokuto moves to an apartment off-campus. The loneliness is oppressive, living by himself after three years in someone else’s pocket, and he does his best to see Akaashi between classes. Akaashi’s new RA duties mean he’d busy all the time, but they manage to grab lunch together once or twice during mutual breaks, and on one memorable occasion there was even enough time to visit Akaashi’s room.
The distance means it takes a while for Bokuto to notice Akaashi pulling away. He accepts Akaashi’s busy schedule - Akaashi would never lie to him - but gradually he begins to notice inconsistencies, lies that whether intentional or not hurt just the same. Increasingly, Akaashi forgets plans to meet, leaving Bokuto hanging onto the hope for contact until nightfall puts an end to plans he’d still hoped they’d keep. Bokuto texts Akaashi sometimes, hoping to catch him in a free moment, but there’s always an excuse - sorry, Bokuto-san, I have a bad cold and I’d rather just sleep; sorry, Bokuto-san, I have a big test tomorrow and I need to study. They’re all perfectly reasonable excuses, until Bokuto checks his snapchat, gets a photo of Akaashi laughing in a coffee shop with Yaku just an hour after pleading off lunch for reason of illness. In Instagram, a photo at the new history museum with his “best friend” Konoha on a day he’d complained to Bokuto of busyness, both days ones Bokuto had anticipated for their loose plans together, now pushed aside.
Bokuto understands, of course - who would do things with him, if they had another option, and especially if that other option included people with interests perfectly aligned with Akaashi’s own - but the revelation still hurts. He aches with loneliness, returns every weekend he can just to escape the silence of his apartment, and watches Akaashi slip away. He keeps trying, of course, not yet ready to give up on someone who means so much, especially when they’re his only friend, but eventually, after four consecutive days of forgotten and broken plans - he gives up.
Bokuto had never put his devotion into words, but he thought it was clear - he’d do anything for Akaashi, absolutely anything he ever asked, but it wasn’t enough. Akaashi is still his everything and it’s not romantic, not really, certainly not sexual, but acknowledging the loss hurts - more than when his grandmother died, more than when they buried his dog, more than anything in Bokuto’s entire life. It hurts more, impossibly, when Akaashi tags him a few days later on an Instagram post dedicated to his best friends - tags him and a dozen other people on a photo of Yaku taken the day he’d been supposedly been sick.
But he’ll feel better, he knows, some day. This has happened before, always after three years, and every time the pain passed. It’s never been quite like this, though; Akaashi is his first, and last, everything, and no one will ever mean quite as much.
This is basically a journal entry, tbh....