Chapter Text
Bokuto had always been too much for the world around her, too big and too loud and too strong. She jumped on people when she was happy, and she broke down in public when she was upset; the smallest things could bring her up or down. She went from feeling invincible to as fragile as a baby bird. She broke things she didn’t mean to and didn’t have the concentration to put them back together. Sometimes, stability in her life seemed impossible.
Then she fell in love…
… and out of love…
… and in love…
… and out of love…
Rinse and repeat.
But then she fell in love for real for real! She knew it was for real this time because it was the longest and safest and most stable relationship she had ever had, going on more than a year now. Akaashi added stability to Bokuto’s life. She possessed a solid sort of confidence that kept her level-headed even when Bokuto was being unfair (Bokuto didn't think she was being unfair, but if she apologized, Akaashi accepted it and didn’t even push for makeup sex if Bokuto didn’t want that).
Akaashi was The One, Bokuto’s soulmate. Calm and collected and durable even when Bokuto was fragile. Unbreakable...
Akaashi stood up without warning, marching over to her dresser on the other side of their dark room. Her footsteps echoed over Bokuto’s sobs, and the drawer banged off its hinges when she jerked it out of the dresser. Akaashi reached in and stuffed fistfuls of her folded clothes into her nearby gym bag, giving no thought to her usual practical concerns.
Unbreakable … until Bokuto made the biggest mistake of her life.
“Wait! Keishi, Keishi, I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! I don’t know… I didn’t mean… please.” Bokuto’s words came out garbled through her clogged nose and throat, thick with tears. She stood up from their bed on shaking legs, but didn’t know where to go from there.
This was the point in their arguments where Akaashi always suggested they take a few minutes to reflect on their actions and what they wanted to communicate before arguing. She said things like she ‘appreciated Bokuto was mad’ and whatever problem they had ‘wasn’t relationship ending, and I still love you, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t upset me, Kotoro.’
Akaashi finished filling up her bag and whipped back to face Bokuto, eyes red and hands shaking. Slanted street lights reflected off her skin from between the blinds, making her look much paler than she really was, ashen instead of warm brown. The short strands of her dark hair stuck to her cheeks with tears. Bokuto’s heart broke all over again. She had done this. She took strong, stable Akaashi and shattered her, just like she did to everything.
“You didn’t mean to?!” In the past, even when angry, Akaashi acted calm and collected… but that was the past. Seeing Akaashi like this for the first time, shaking and frenzied in her anger instead, emphasized to Bokuto the magnitude of her own fucked up depravity. Awful emotions built in her and she didn’t know what to do besides cry louder.
Akaashi grabbed her unzipped gym bag and swung it forward, hitting their vanity and scattering brushes across the surface with a clatter. “I’ve put up with a lot, Bokuto.” She hadn’t called Bokuto ‘Bokuto’ in more than a year. “I’ve put up with… with the accusations and the anger and the stupid decisions because I know you try. Because I know—” her voice grew quieter as she continued— “knew, you were a good person who never meant to cause me distress. Because I knew you loved me despite everything,”
“I do love you! I love you more than anything, Akaashi!” Bokuto begged, legs trembling and one hand pulling at her hair.
Akaashi laughed, cruel but with a sad hitch in her breath. The slanted light shifted with her movement, framing the streak of darkness over her eyes as she turned away. She continued to speak as she lifted her jewelry box from the vanity and added it to the contents of her bag, cradled by the wrinkled clothing.
“Your actions were certainly not those of someone in love. If… if you needed to get... dicked,” she spat out the word, “ down that bad, perhaps you should reconsider what you want out of a relationship with… with someone like me.”
Bokuto froze, every atom of her body revolting at both the venom in Akaashi’s voice and the visceral memories of unfamiliar bodies against her own, one less than an hour ago.
“I…” Bokuto’s voice drifted out of her soft and uncertain, “I didn’t mean—”
“No. Don’t you dare.” Akaash spun back around to face her. “I will believe you don’t mean many of the things you say or do. But I have self-respect. I will not believe you didn’t mean to cheat on me!” Her hands clenched and unclenched against each other as she went to fiddle with rings that weren’t there. “I- I’m tired of your refusal to take responsibility for your actions, Bokuto! You meant to cheat on me. You made a decision to sleep with two different people outside our relationship. Those were your choices!” Akaashi took a deep meditative breath before continuing. “And, for once in our lives, I refuse to join you in your make believe world where your actions don’t have consequences, and I was an idiot to ever cater to it.” Akaashi turned towards the door.
Bokuto couldn’t think of anything to say. Because she didn’t mean to... so why was she being blamed? She didn’t mean to! And she hurt. She hurt so much. Couldn’t Akaashi see? She didn’t... God, how could she do this to Akaashi? How could she be such a horrible person? She had never considered herself someone who would cheat, especially not on Akaashi, not on the love of her life.
“I’m sorry, Keishi. I’m sorrier than I’ve ever been over anything in my life! I was… I was so… I didn’t think. I didn’t think about you or us or anything at all and after I did it once I… I don’t know. I didn’t think it was a big deal? But I don’t know why I thought that because after the second time… I’ve never felt worse in my life. That’s why I came right home to tell you!”
“Oh! Would you like a prize? Congratulations, Bokuto, for bothering to inform me that you’ve decided I’m insufficient!” Her breath echoed around the room, chest heaving as she stood in front of the door in her pajamas with her bag slung over her shoulder, hair a rat's nest.
Despite all this, Akaashi was still the most beautiful woman Bokuto had ever seen. And Bokuto was about to lose her. She would leave, and Bokuto would be alone, and and and...
“Keis—”
“Don’t call me that! You don’t have the right!”
Bokuto’s sob broke halfway out. She couldn’t do this. Akaashi was leaving, and Bokuto couldn’t think past the need to stop her.
“I’m, I’m…” Bokuto stumbled to the end of their bed and dropped to her knees, hands on the floor. She watched them blur as she bowed her head. “Please, Akaashi. You’re not... not in-suf-ic-ient. You’re everything! You’re the most important person in the world!”
Bokuto didn’t look up even though she felt she would die if she didn’t. Her breaths hitched and strangled themselves in her chest as she considered that this might be the end. That she might have broken this just like everything else, that she lost Akaashi because… because… she didn’t even know. Because she couldn’t keep it in her pants? Because she had felt these emotions and done these things… Things that, when she thought about them, ashamed her to her core. She shivered, remembering large hands on her hips and her own hands-on broad shoulders … her stomach churned. Oh god. Why did she do that? She hadn’t thought about it. She just… she wanted to be desired, she wanted proof of it at that very second. At the moment, it had seemed necessary, something that Akaashi would understand. Now, she couldn’t imagine why she had thought that. Now she felt sick to her stomach. In part due to the current situation, but in part… in part because she felt absolutely dirty and disgusting even though she had initiated and encouraged every minute of it. “Don’t leave.”
“... The most important person in the world…”
The room stayed silent for at least thirty seconds, and hope fluttered in Bokuto’s soul.
A small puff of air, almost a laugh but certainly not one, escaped Akaashi. Clothing rustled.
“I’ve heard it from you too many times. All the exaggerations and the pedestals and… I always knew, I suppose.”
Bokuto could hear Akaashi turning away and her mind fuzzed as her emotions choked her, air escaping and refusing to funnel back into her drying shriveled lungs. Bokuto didn’t think, she just spoke.
“Please! Please, Akaashi! If you leave I’ll die! I need you! I’ll die!”
Akaashi’s footsteps stopped.
“... Is that a threat, Kotoro?”
“No! Yes! I don’t know. Stay!” Stay, stay, stay, whatever would get Akaashi to stay. Bokuto allowed her head to drift up enough to see Akaashi’s trembling fists pressed against her thighs.
… but Akaashi had stopped. She stayed trembling in the doorway. Nothing in the world would be worse than Akaashi leaving. If Akaashi left, Bokuto would be nothing.
“If you leave it means you don’t care about me! If you leave, you’re leaving me to die!” And it was true, Bokuto knew it was true. The pain she felt right now was of her bones shifting against her shaking muscles as if being grated into dust, as if Bokuto herself was being grated to dust. This pain would kill her, and telling that to Akaashi was the only way to keep Akaashi from wrenching out and mutilating a gaping bloody chunk of Bokuto’s already too empty chest.
“How dare—” Akaashi stopped herself and lowered her voice. “I am not responsible for your actions or your life.” Her voice broke in the middle, but she kept forward. “If... you need me to call an ambulance when I leave, I will call an ambulance. Do I need to call an ambulance, Kotoro?”
“Just sta—”
“I said, are you serious? Will you need immediate medical attention once I go through this door? You just said something very serious, Kotoro, and so I’m taking it seriously. Do I need to call a professional?”
The dark room stayed silent.
“N-no,” Bokuto said in a small voice. Akaashi knew she didn’t like hospitals, why would she threaten something like that, why didn’t she just stay?
Akaashi’s posture relaxed a little, but Bokuto could still see the anger and hurt in every muscle and in the forced repression in her voice. “I’ve always seen the signs, but I thought… It doesn’t matter anymore. I… I care about you, Kotoro. But this… I was right from the beginning— you are not someone I can trust.”
Bokuto’s throat closed.
“Goodbye, Kotoro. Don’t come after me.”
The door shut.
Bokuto choked, tugging on her hair hard enough to pull strands out. How could she do this? How could she be such a terrible person? How could she have made Akaashi hate her like this? Her entire world felt broken and wrong and empty. She felt broken and wrong and empty and so so gross. She deserved this. She deserved to… She needed Akaashi back. It hurt, everything hurt and Akaashi had just left! Bokuto had told her! Bokuto had told Akaashi that if she left Bokuto would die, and she still left. Someone who ever loved her would never do that. Akaashi left, and everything in Bokuto hurt, so Akaashi must want Bokuto dead.
Bokuto’s mind raced, categorizing everything in the apartment, thinking about the jagged edges of broken plates sitting in their trash.
A few strands of Bokuto’s hair came off in her fist and the sudden loss of force caused her head to bang into the footboard of the bed beside her.
The pain caught her off guard enough to let her catch herself, to have a moment of horrified, but familiar, clarity.
Bokuto scrambled for her phone, rushing through her contacts before she lost herself in her grief.