here are the lists to all the prompts i made during SASO2015. (more or less. i may have let a couple slip thru the cracks but i’m not checking back for them now...)
yea i know the event was 6mths ago but i’m compiling old prompts for the Sports Winter Anime Games (SWAG) event.
br1′s theme was quotes.
1. filledx2! tadkomaki (ywpd)
"I want a red dress.
I want it flimsy and cheap,
I want it too tight, I want to wear it
until someone tears it off me.
I want it sleeveless and backless,
this dress, so no one has to guess
what’s underneath."
- Kim Addonizio
"From now on, we will be using code names. You can address me as Eagle One. Ann, code name -- Been There, Done That. April is -- Currently Doing That. Donna is -- It Happened Once in a Dream; Chris, code name -- If I Had To Pick a Dude. Ben is -- Eagle Two."
- Parks and Recreation
"I love cats. Sorry, I’m getting emotional. I love cats, I love every kind of cat… Sorry, I just, I REALLY LOVE CATS. I just want to hug all of them but I can’t ‘cause that’s crazy. I can’t hug every cat!"
- YouTuber hartmanncara
A: Why didn’t [he] make that play? Score for once!
B: Score what? A touchdown?
A: Score more points to win the game! Bengels is over there making the worst calls.
B: Bengels? Just tell me the team name, or the sport, I don’t know what -
A: Come on, Bengels! Get loose!
B: What does Bengels mean???
- YouTuber kyle (0:45)
"*goes up to a handmaiden and her feudal lord* so which is the knight and which is the liege"
- Tumblr user orcasoup
original feudal lord/handmaid quote
A: I carry a picture of my nemesis to always fill me with vengeance
B: Aye, that makes sense
A: I takes it to the bathroom, and sleep with it on the other pillow by my face
B: ......
- Kate Beaton, Hark! A Vagrant
"Well I talk way too fast
And I shoot from a glass
I keep Pope in the glovebox, Plath on the dash
And there’s nobody shotgun, I got enough gas
To get Vegas by daybreak, I’m not coming back
I’m pushin’ this luck all the way to the coast
I’m throwin it over just to see if it floats
I’m taking my chances, I’m making my own
‘Cause I’ve been pretty impatient, I’m ready to go
I’m the book that beat the speedreader
And I’m the card the dealers won’t touch
And it’s just not true I’m a maneater
All the same, we should probably go dutch"
- "Dutch" by Dessa
"You never look like yourself from the side
But your profile did not hide
The fact you knew I was approaching your throne
With folded arms you occupy the bench like toothache
Saw them, puff your chest out like you never lost a war
And though I try so not to suffer the indignity of a reaction
There was no cracks to grasp or gaps to claw"
- "Crying Lightning" by Arctic Monkeys
"I sat by your side, by the water
You taught me the names of the stars overhead that I wrote down in my ledger
Though all that I knew of the rote universe were those Pleiades loosed in December
I promised you I'd set them to verse so I'd always remember
That the meteorite is the source of the light
And the meteor's just what we see
And the meteoroid is a stone that's devoid of the fire that propelled it to thee
And the meteorite's just what causes the light
And the meteor's how it's perceived
And the meteoroid's a bone thrown from the void that lies quiet in offering to thee"
- "Emily" by Joanna Newsom
"I lost my way, I forgot to call on your name. The raw
heart beat against the world, and the tears were for my
lost victory. But you are here. You have always been
here. The world is all forgetting, and the heart is a rage
of directions, but your name unifies the heart, and the
world is lifted into its place. Blessed is the one who
waits in the traveller's heart for his turning."
- "I Lost My Way" by Leonard Cohen
"She was walkin’ around with a loaded shotgun
Ready to fire me a hot one
It went bang, bang, bang, straight through my heart
(Straight through my heart)
Although I could have walked away
I stood my ground and let her spray
(She shot me, she shot me
Bang, bang - she shot me)"
- "Bang Bang" by K'naan
19. filled! Aoyagi/Tsukishima (ywpd & HQ!!) or tsukkiken or Tsukishima bros (HQ!!)
"Sometimes I feel you're sitting next to me
Listening to my stories
Time always shows me it's hard to understand
How to be myself
Moonlight dries your tears
Moonlight hides your fears
Moonlight dries your tears
Moonlight hides your fears
Moonchild, still live in my heart
Can I ask you something, is your life better now?"
- "Moonchild" by Cibo Matto
"Oh, I'll stand with you and marvel
At the cosmos pink and bright
All the pages flipping backwards
Til time is gone and wrong is right
Rivers running up the hills and to the sky and down to the sea
Where a merman with a twinkle casts a hook in me"
- Laura Veirs, "Cast a Hook in Me"
SASO 2015 - KnB - Akashi Seijuro/Kuroko Tetsuya Team - Main Round 1 - Uncut Version - “Scattered Fragments”
by Agapanto Blu.
Yes. Since it was earlier in the summer, I got to compete in the Sport Anime Shipping Olympics. We didn’t even made it to the top ten, but it was fun all the same.
Since SASO is finished now -or it did a bit ago but I didn’t notice since now- the “secrecy” is no more to be held, thus I’m posting the whole work here and I’ll reblog the other post adding the link to this one, okay?
Have fun!(^v^)
Summary: Kuroko is dreaming of Akashi, but not the Akashi he’s actually in a relationship with.
Bokushi wants to talk to him.
WARNING: Mentions of sexual assault and abuse, but all very light and in a particular context.
Scattered fragments
It was a dream.
Tetsuya could tell by the blackness around him, by the feeling of fluctuating and by the simple fact that he was wearing his Teiko uniform with the outstanding number 15. He was supposed to be on his feet, despite the lack of a floor, so he turned to look around, more out of habit than really looking for something. Slowly he raised a hand to move his pale azure locks from his eyes, but stopped when he noticed his bare wrist.
Where was Ogiwara-kun’s…?
“Is he the only person you can think about even now? This is a shame. Your lover wouldn’t be too happy, if only he knew.”
Kuroko turned all of a sudden, shocked, but he didn’t find anyone beside him. When he turned again, he was there, right before his eyes.
Aged back to his first year of high school, arms crossed before the proud number 4 on his chest, fiery red hair cut very – too much – short and, right there, on his fine shaped face, two eyes of the same wrong colour. The boy smiled, or better smirked, and the gold of his irises flashed like two freezing cold suns. They looked like jewels that had not been worn for a long time, mesmerizing but distant somehow.
Tetsuya, instinctively, shivered and took half of a step back before realizing that the situation around him had changed. It was not black anymore, but he was in a room he seemed to remember. There wasn’t really much, just a lot of empty desks at his left and a bigger one near a full bookshelf and before a board on his right; a table stood in front of him, under a window, and a boy sat laterally on it, a leg bent with the feet laying on the chair seat and an arm stretched above the knee, his gaze fixed on him.
After a while, his sleepy brain recognized Seijuro’s old classroom. The red-head used to stay behind when they didn’t have practice and wait for all of his classmates to leave just to sit alone for a while. He used that room as his base to challenge Midorima-kun at shogi, also.
That’s not the point., Kuroko said to himself, bringing his eyes back on the golden-eyed Seijuro in front of him. It was a strange feeling to see him like that when the phantom was now twenty; he looked so little…
The boy on the chair kept on silently staring and Tetsuya realized it was his time to say something.
“Akashi Seijuro…the other, I guess?” he dared, meeting those golden orbs.
Akashi laughed at him.
“My, my… Still with that ‘other’ thing, Tetsuya?” he asked, putting a sweet poison in every single word, “Hadn’t I already told you that we both existed since the very beginning?”
Tetsuya chose to ignore the provocation.
“I take this as a yes.” he replied instead, than bowed politely, “Nice to see you again, Bokushi-kun.”
Kuroko rose again and looked apathetically at the other, but only to see Bokushi’s smile failing a bit. For a moment, he wondered why, but then the other closed his eyes and got up from his seat, but didn’t approach him.
Tetsuya stood motionless until the other opened his eyes again, then he widened his.
Kuroko shut his eyes open and jumped up, suddenly finding himself in a sitting position.
The sheets felt sweated and sticky and hot in a bad way, he felt tired despite having just woken up and his breath was laboured. His panting didn’t go unnoticed and, just when he was passing a hand through his messy hair, two others gently laid on his shoulders.
“Tetsuya?”
He turned his face quickly, almost in a hurry, and as his eyes fell slowly on a well-known twenty-year-old face he instinctively sighed in relief. Closing his eyes, he hid his face in his lover’s shoulder, posing his hands on his chest to feel his pulse and use its rhythm to adjust the one of his own frantic heart.
Akashi wrapped cautiously his arms around the teal-head’s body and left a kiss on his temple, then waited for the other’s breath to calm down before prying in the matter.
“Did you have a nightmare?” he asked slowly and Kuroko felt bad but nodded all the same. “Want to talk about it?”
This time, he didn’t hesitate in shaking his head. The last thing he wanted was for his lover to feel guilty again for what had happened back in their middle school years.
The past is in the past., he reminded himself while detaching from Akashi’s chest to lift his head and stare at his face. Two scarlet identical irises were looking worriedly at him. No point in digging it out again.
“I want to go back to sleep.” He attempted a little smile on his usually blank façade, “Can I use you as a pillow?”
Akashi stared at him for a second before lightly giggled.
“Seriously, your straightforwardness…” he began, but then he shook his head, knowing that it was pointless to even try to say anything.
Kuroko surrendered himself to Akashi’s arms and let the other bring him back down. While lying on his chest, the teal-head stole a glance to their room.
Their common futon, the wardrobe they shared, his desk full of books and papers from his Psychology class and Seijuro’s bag with his documents from the Law faculty lying beside the door. Everything was in its place, even that horrible bear-hunting-salmon wooden statue that Midorima gave them as a lucky item the day they moved in together for university; there was absolutely nothing wrong.
Kuroko closed his eyes again and inhaled deeply Akashi’s scent, that mixture of lemon and something spicy; maybe pepper?, he didn’t know but it was inebriating.
It was just a dream., he told himself while falling again in the sleep realm and letting the words from the Emperor and the tears in those golden eyes vanishing with his consciousness.
“You still hate me, don’t you?”
***
It happened a second time just the night after the first and Kuroko knew who he was going to meet the very second darkness enveloped him again.
He waited, scared, but this time the environment changed before he could spot the Emperor. It was Teiko rooftop. The sunset before his eyes didn’t catch his attention like the other boy watching it.
Akashi was turned and he could see only his back. He hoped he was just his Akashi and for the whole thing to be just a common dream, but when the boy turned he had his eyes golden.
“Back again, Tetsuya?” he asked, a smirk playing on his lips.
For some reason, Kuroko didn’t felt safe despite knowing, somewhere, that it was all just an illusion.
“I didn’t choose it, Bokushi-kun.” he hazarded to say, then he quickly turned, knowing that the door for entering again the school building was right behind him, “In fact, if you may excuse me…”
A hand grabbing painfully his wrist answered him and a shiver went down his spine, freezing the blood right in his vein. That skin too was so cold…
He felt fear approaching him with Akashi’s body, the both of them wrapping around him from behind. The red-head’s arms were enveloping his trunk, blocking his ones against it and preventing every movement from him, and his face suddenly appeared beside his left ear.
Tetsuya’s eyes widened, but he didn’t have the strength to avert his gaze from the door just a step from him. If only he were a bit faster, he could have reached it, but instead he was…
“Caught you.”
…trapped.
“May you please let go of me, Bokushi-kun?” He forced himself to sound calm and collected because he knew that losing his mind before that Akashi was the most dangerous thing he could do, but his hands were trembling. He clenched them in fists on his trousers.
Akashi giggled in his ear.
“Why should I, knowing that you don’t really mean it?” Kuroko gulped when he heard the other sniffing his hair, “You don’t want me to let you go, do you?”
“I…”
There was a sudden pressure on Kuroko’s body and his falling to the ground cut down his answer. When the world stopped spinning around, he was lying on his back on the rooftop floor, his wrists were pinned down at his head’s sides by Akashi’s frozen hands and the red-head was on all four over him, knees beside his waist.
“This fake innocence of yours... It makes me want to do so many things to your body, you could never guess.” The smirk on Akashi’s face widened. “Nor withstand, probably.”
“Bokushi-kun, I don’t really know what you’re talking about, but please let go of me.” Kuroko strived to keep his voice to a normal volume, but it was hard with the Emperor face growing closer and closer.
The Emperor brushed his nose against Tetsuya’s right cheek.
“If I were in charge,” he hissed, tightening the grip on the phantom’s wrists, “the next time you’d come into our bedroom with just a towel around your waist and your body all wet, pretending to have forgotten your clothes before taking a shower…”
“I don’t pretend to…”
Akashi’s hand flashed immediately on Kuroko’s hair and pulled them. Hard.
Tetsuya let out a moan, but that only made Seijuro smirk again before continuing.
“I’d tie you up to the bedpost face down and whip you with that damn towel of yours ‘til you’re covered in red marks and bruises.” he threatened almost growling and Kuroko’s body had a spasm under him, trying to get free, but Seijuro closed his tights a bit more and prevented him from running. “Then I’d violate you and bring you on the verge of pleasure so many times, just to deny it from you, that you’ll beg me for mercy in tears.” He bit Kuroko’s earlobe, not so hard to hurt but enough to let the phantom know that he was in his hands, “I’d completely ruin you.”
Tetsuya was trembling by now. He had no control over his legs, that were kicking and shivering and moving on their own, and he really felt tears filling his eyes, blurring his vision while waiting for him to shed them, but paradoxically the fear was too much and he couldn’t even cry. His voice was lost somewhere and no matter how much he tried, he didn’t manage to let even a single sound out of his opened and shaking lips.
Please…, he thought, Please, stop… Please…
“PLEASE!”
“TETSUYA!”
Kuroko widened his eyes.
He was panting, trembling uncontrollably, and his hands were clenched in fists on the sheets that were now all wrapped around his legs like some kind of net. He immediately started kicking them, trying to get free of them, but his body didn’t seem to move according to his volition and every movement seemed too difficult and disconnected.
His helplessness from before and from now made him start sobbing, despite his efforts to keep it in, and only when a hand grabbed his wrists together, stopping their desperate efforts, and another laid on his nape, making his face turn to hide against a soft wall of flesh and skin, warm and welcoming, reassuring, he realized someone else was there.
“Shhh…” Akashi whispered, holding him tight against his chest, “Shhh, it’s alright, Tetsuya, shhh…” Kuroko was panting, his breaths were heavy and troubled and filled his mind immediately with a lemon and spicy scent. “Nothing happened, okay? I’m here with you.” He gulped and slowly stopped trying to run from that grip. “Whatever it was, it’s all finished, Tetsuya. You’re safe now.” Seijuro’s hand was tender and caring while caressing gently his head, slipping on his messy azure locks, and Tetsuya’s shoulders relaxed. A long breath escaped his lips, letting other tension out. “Can you understand me?”
When Kuroko nodded, even Akashi sighed in relief.
The red-head let slowly go of his lover’s wrists and used his now free arm to envelope the tiny male into a comforting hug. The shorter didn’t complain, but brought his hands to his chest and pressed them on his pectorals, keeping his own face against the warm skin.
They stood like that for whole minutes, waiting for the phantom’s heart-beat to slow down. The moon shone on them though the open curtains of their room and their sheets laid in a messy bulge after Tetsuya’s fight with them; it was all silent with the exception of the boys breaths and the air in the room was stagnant for the unnatural hotness of Kuroko’s skin. Akashi didn’t really care.
“Do you feel better now?” he whispered, never stopping his hand from caressing his lover’s head.
Tetsuya gulped on his hoarse throat, but shivered all the same. He did feel better, but it didn’t mean he was ‘okay’. It had been so strange and hurtful to have Seijuro, the person he loved the most, trying to force him like that into something he didn’t want. It was painful and not physically, but emotionally; it felt more like…betrayal.
“Tetsuya.” Seijuro’s voice, full of worriedness, made him open his eyes a bit, finding out that he had been crying because they were dried and hurting and he could feel his cheeks wet, “Did something happen?”
Kuroko thought about it, but shook his head. Nothing really strange had happened beside the dreams themselves and he couldn’t really find a reason for them either.
“Sorry.” he murmured against the other’s skin, knowing very well that he was worrying his lover with his unusual behaviour.
“You don’t have to apologize over a bad dream.” Akashi immediately reassured him, giggling a bit, “I’m just concerned. It’s not really like you to get that worked up over some nightmares. You sure everything is fine?”
Tetsuya smiled.
Slowly, he detached from the red-head to look him in the eyes – those beautiful scarlet eyes – and then he posed his hands on his cheeks. Not giving him time to ask, he kissed his lips gently but stubbornly, with both passion and worshipping, drinking their flavor as if it was water for a Bedouin, ignoring its kneaded consistence and the hotness of an after-night mouth. It didn’t matter to him; this was the what he was craving for.
Akashi returned the kiss and didn’t ask anything more, but later on he kept on petting Kuroko’s head all the way again to sleep.
***
The third time – on the third night –, he found himself in Teiko’s fourth gym and he was again wearing his old uniform, still without Ogiwara’s wristband. Bokushi was on his feet in the middle of the court, right in front of him, with his hair messed and sweats on his skin; he was wearing a white t-shirt and some blue short-pants but there was nobody else there. He was also very pale and looked cold, wearing those thin clothes.
Kuroko wondered why he did look so tired if he had had nobody to play against. Was he training by himself? Then he remembered it was all just a dream and shrugged.
Akashi made a couple of steps toward him, but Kuroko met those equally golden orbs under short bangs and stepped back, keeping himself out of reach with the images of the ‘last time’ burning in his memory. Eventually, the other gave up on catching him and stopped three steps from his prey.
“It’s not like you can go anywhere, Tetsuya.” he reminded the other.
“I can always wake up.” the phantom said apathetically and Bokushi smirked, but suddenly his smile dropped in a thin line and his eyes went serious.
“Was I really that bad?” he asked.
Kuroko was surprised for a second and then he chose not to answer that. He didn’t feel like being the best person for that task, if what the Emperor was looking for was pity or comprehension.
Seijuro shook his head before turning it to the basket hanging on a side of the court. Tetsuya noticed with a corner of his eye that it was far higher than in reality; it looked almost six meters from the ground.
“You don’t want to understand.” Akashi murmured, turning completely toward the basket. Suddenly, a ball was in his hands and the red-head stared at it absentmindedly. “I was awful to you,” he kept on saying while rolling the thing in his fingers, “but I was everything Father could ask for. The very picture of the perfect son.”
Kuroko jerked a bit at the mention of his lover’s parent. Akashi-san had never been very fond of him and their relationship surely didn’t get better when the man discovered that he was fucking his son. To be precise, his son was fucking him, but it didn’t seem to be such a crucial point, at that moment. He had never met the man after the day Seijuro tried to introduce them and he honestly had no idea how things were between him and his father, since his lover never talked to him about it. He highly doubted they did reach a truce.
Surprising him, the Emperor giggled a bit – still not looking at the phantom, just at the ball – but he didn’t seem happy.
“That Seijuro you love so much, on the other hand…” he kept on whispering, but it was so bitter Kuroko couldn’t help but frown, “He’s everything you could ask for, isn’t him? But” The Emperor raised his head, looking for the basket, but it had grown even higher, even farer, “he’s getting hated by his own father.”
Kuroko hesitated, trying to catch the sense of that speech, and Akashi bent his knees and lifted his hands. It took him barely a second to shoot and Tetsuya knew that in a normal court that would have been a perfect three-point. But being it as it was, the ball fell shortly, feet and feet under the very basket.
Akashi smiled bitterly at his mistake and his arms fell limp beside his body.
“Neh, Tetsuya.” he called, staring blankly before himself, “If his dad hates him, doesn’t this make him the really bad one?”
There was something he hadn’t expected to see on Akashi’s face, but right when he was trying to get closer to him…
Kuroko opened his eyes on a low rustling beside him.
Seijuro immediately noticed he was awake and stopped looking in his bag, laid on the floor, to crawl to him. He reached the futon and stood kneelt on his side of it, over the sheets, but stretched out a hand to lay it on his lover’s cheek.
“Sorry, did I wake you up?”
Kuroko thought about it, but then shook his head. He’s always been a heavy sleeper, during night hours, so it was probably the confusing sight of his dream that woke him up, rather than his boyfriend searching his bag.
“No, I woke on my own.” he answered, pushing up his body and sitting, “What are you looking for?”
Akashi turned toward his bag and sighed, than let his body fall sat on the futon, resting his body’s weight on his hands.
“Nothing, I was just putting away some papers from Shintarou.” he sighed.
Kuroko watched the clock on his cell-phone, frowning. Seijuro had told him not to wait for him to come home, since the night before he had a meeting with Midorima-kun, and since it was a pretty common thing he hadn’t paid it too much attention and went straight to bed. It was now two in the morning and, at a closer inspection, Akashi was still dressed up in casual clothes, instead of shirtless with his pyjama pants.
“Did you just come back?” the phantom asked, a bit worried.
“We had had some troubles with the last report.” Akashi answered, shrugging and incredibly pulling off his shirt at the same time, “We needed to check it thoroughly before choosing how to act.”
Akashi and Midorima had started a company of their own some time before and Kuroko was sure proud of them, but sometimes he got worried over how much his lover worked for it, discarding his own health as a secondary matter.
“You should sleep more…” he tried to say, but the look in Akashi’s eyes as the red-head turned shut him up.
“I could give this back to you.” the man retorted, turning with his whole body now to face his lover with a deadly serious expression, “This is the third time in a row that you wake up in the middle of the night and I’d bet my hand that was for a nightmare this time too.” He leaned forward to rest his forehead against his phantom’s. “Would you really not tell me what’s happening, Tetsuya?”
Kuroko gulped and looked away guiltily.
“I told you, nothing’s happening.” he whispered, “I don’t know why I keep on having nightmares.”
“Would you at least tell me what they’re about?”
Kuroko blushed. He bent his face to hide it from Seijuro, despite being almost sure that the darkness of their room would prevent the man from noticing his shame.
“I can’t remember…”
“Liar.”
Immediately found out.
Kuroko sighed. He stretched his hands and hugged Seijuro’s neck, pouting on his shoulder.
“I don’t want to talk about it.” he apathetically whined.
Akashi sighed too, but in exasperation, then he hugged Kuroko back.
“It can’t be helped, then.” He resigned. He didn’t want to push his lover against his will, he knew that Tetsuya would eventually open up of his own volition once he felt ready and also pressing him would probably just stress him more, something he surely didn’t need in that strange troubled situation he was caught up in. However. “Please, do remember I’m here for you if you ever need help, agree?”
Tetsuya escaped the hug to teasingly kiss the other’s lips.
“Agree.” he assured, smiling again.
When the two of them laid down again, though, he was still seeing Bokushi’s tears on Oreshi’s face.
***
A bed in front of him, under a large and tall window. A desk full of homework and calligraphies at his right, against the wall. A bookshelf and a wardrobe at his left. A soft red carpet under his bare feet.
Akashi’s old bedroom.
Tetsuya had never used to come a lot, but he’d been here before; he and the red-head simply usually chose to meet somewhere or at the phantom’s house, even when they were in middle school and there wasn’t a three hours train-ride between them. It was an unspoken rule that the Akashi Mansion was slightly off-limits, especially when the householder was present.
The phantom’s wariness expired when he noticed the Emperor on the bed. He definitely wasn’t how the phantom was expecting him to be.
He wasn’t fifteen anymore. He looked almost…eight? Maybe even less. His hair were ruffled and long, his body tiny and empty of any actual strength, frail as Tetsuya had never seen him and looking as cold as in all the other dreams. He sat with his back against the headboard and had his knees bent and held tight to his chest, hugged by his arms as if he was scared of falling apart. He had his face hidden in that shelter of flesh, but all the same he looked very…vulnerable.
Kuroko remembered what had happened that time on the rooftop but even so he approached the other. He simply wasn’t able to leave a child in trouble.
The bed was king-sized but laterally put, so he had to climb on its horizontal side to sit on his knees in front of the red head.
“Are you okay?” Tetsuya asked, lying tentatively an hand on the other’s head, but then jerked when the child looked up to him.
There was a huge bruise on his left cheek.
“What happened?!” He almost shouted, that time, but managed to hold back while carefully taking the kid’s face on his hands. The bruise looked really nasty. “Who did this?!”
It seemed not to matter anymore for the whole thing to be a dream.
Surprising him, the boy took his hands to move them from his face and then gulped, but held back the clear tears in his eyes.
“Dad hates him.” he whispered, “Doesn’t this mean he is the mean one? Doesn’t this make him a naughty boy? Why isn’t he the bad one? I’m being good for Father, I’ve always been.”
Kuroko widened his eyes.
Was… Was that all those dreams were about? The truth behind the Emperor was…a child trying to please his father?
The boy lowered his eyes, not leaving the elder’s wrists.
“If we have to choose who to please and who to disappoint, if really we have to be evil to someone in order to be good for someone else” he lifted his eyes and met baby-blue ones, “doesn’t this mean that evilness itself depends on the point of view from which we look at it?”
Tetsuya stood, speechless. It feels strange to hear such words from a boy so young, somehow wrong. Did…did Akashi, the whole Akashi, think like this when he was a kid?
“Was I…” The little Seijuro gulped, clearly trying to push back his tears, “Am I really bad?”
No hesitation.
“You’re not.”
Tetsuya didn’t really think much. He simply slipped his hands out of the child’s grip and brought them all around him, hugging his little body carefully and yet tightly. He shared his warmth with that little Emperor, letting the cold in his veins slowly run out, and carefully he began doing what Akashi himself would have done to him if in reversed roles.
He caressed the kid’s head slowly, fixing affectionately his ruffled locks, and at the same time he carried him up in his arms to hold him to his chest. When he felt the boy clenching his hands on his shirt, he had like a déjà-vu and smiled to himself, even if bitterly.
“You’re not like that.” he said and then he realized he was talking to himself too, as if repeating out loud the solution to a difficult problem, “You’re just a boy looking for his father’s approval.” He laid his face on the child’s hair and a scent of lemon, but without the spicy note, reached his nose. He smiled because it seemed more suited to a kid. “You’re not evil,” he kept on whispering, “nor bad, you just…made some wrong choices. Everyone does the same, sometimes.”
The boy tightened his grip on Tetsuya’s chest but didn’t dare to look him in the eyes.
“If you really mean it, then why do you hate me?”
For the first time since the very beginning of those dreams, Kuroko didn’t want to open his eyes when he felt the world around him shaping into closed eyelids. All the same, he lifted them and looked around.
There was light. It came into the room through the open window curtains, accompanied by the view of a light snow falling down, and the shadows of the night were nowhere to be found. Everything looked different in broad daylight, but one thing hadn’t change.
Seijuro was staring at him.
He was laying on the futon beside him and had his head resting on his right palm as he looked at him carefully and attentively. He looked as if he’d been awake since a bit and Kuroko thought that it was probably true.
“You’re creepy.” he took care to point out all the same, frowning a little bit and putting on a barely noticeable pout.
Seijuro didn’t take him seriously and simply put his head down again on his pillow, so to be able to watch his lover straight in the eyes, on the same level.
“You were agitated again.” he murmured, stretching out an hand to rest it on the other’s cheek and starting to caress his zygoma, “I was thinking about waking you up, but you suddenly calmed down.” He opened up in a little smile. “Did you sort out your troubles?”
Kuroko leaned closer to his lover and deeper in his touch, but thought carefully before answering with a simple “Almost”.
Akashi didn’t pry any further.
***
It was the fifth consecutive time he dreamt about the Emperor and Tetsuya felt completely different. When he entered again Akashi’s old room, it felt different too.
Bokushi was sitting on the mattress edge and dangling his legs over it. He had a patch on his cheek and smiled fondly when Kuroko closed the door beside him.
“You shouldn’t need to come here anymore.” he pointed out and Tetsuya didn’t feel like complaining but didn’t have an explanation too.
He reached for the bed and sat beside the kid. His fingers moved, folding and unfolding themselves under two different gazes. He didn’t know how to explain himself.
“I don’t hate you.” he said in the end. It felt like the only right thing to say. “I understand you.”
Little golden-eyed Seijuro smiled. When he laid his hand on Tetsuya’s, it wasn’t cold anymore.
“You know where dreams come from, Kuroko?” he asked, but didn’t wait for an answer and his smiled widened a bit more. “Yes, you do, you’ve studied it. They come from our unconscious and are barely projections of things we’ve learnt or caught or seen or heard but that we didn’t managed, or wanted, to assimilate. They’re things we couldn’t give a sense to in any other way.”
Tetsuya looked at him from the corner of his eye.
“You’re my dream.” he pointed out.
Seijuro laughed.
“Yes, I am, because I’m what you’ve never been able to consciously accept and elaborate up until now. And yet, I am not completely. I am made of a lot of things you haven’t been able to put together because a part of you didn’t want to…see the truth, let’s say.” he smiled with no hint of sadness while looking up at Tetsuya, “Seijuro’s old classroom is where you began to fall in love with him while staring from afar; the rooftop is where you confessed to him; the gym is the place where you shared a lot of memories and his room…his room is the place you desperately wanted to be accepted in.”
Tetsuya looked around, maybe because he simply wasn’t able to hold the boy’s gaze. He laid his eyes on a picture frame on the bedside table but he couldn’t pick out the features of the red-haired woman in it. He couldn’t, in the end he had never really seen her.
“Once, during your second year, you spotted a nasty bruise on Seijuro’s shoulder.” Bokushi kept on, “You wanted to ask what it was, but didn’t have the courage to. In the end, you forgot about it, but that memory fell in your unconscious and you digged it out by manipulating it in order to make it fit your dream. You moved it to my face, so that your conscious part couldn’t pretend he didn’t notice it again.”
The little warm hand held tighter the bigger one.
“You just wanted to clear the contrasting feelings inside you. You love Oreshi, but are scared of Bokushi. How could it be, when they’re both the same person? Your brain tried to give it an explanation, but it was too hard. You needed to see it in another way, one that reality didn’t allow you to.” The kid smiled again. “And here we are.”
“I love Akashi-kun. Every single part of him.” Tetsuya whispered, still looking in front of himself, “I guess I needed some help to realize it.”
Bokushi nodded.
“Did you clear your mind, now?” he asked.
Tetsuya’s answer was a little fugacious smile.
This time, when he woke up, Seijuro was still asleep. It was Saturday and Akashi has always been lazy when it came to getting up in weekends.
Kuroko looked at him closely.
He had his red hair irritatingly ordinated on his head, as if he had just brushed them, and a peaceful expression on his face. He was shirtless in spite of the winter coldness and had the sheets barely on his waist, but his arms showed a bit of goosebumps. Sleeping on his side, he had his face completely turned toward his lover and a hand was stretched to hold his, as if to be ready to react if there was any slight change in his precious person. He was cute in his own way.
Tetsuya smiled, openly and widely, while leaning forward to kiss his semi-opened lips.
“Thank you for being born, Akashi-kun.” he whispered, careful not to wake the other up, “The whole you.”
Authoress’ notes:
I have kind of a thing for strange-vaguely-mystic stories, I guess it’s clear now XD
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Fandom: Haikyuu!!
Rating: Teen
Word Count: 1569
Relationships: Azumane Asahi & Sawamura Daichi & Sugawara Koushi
Summary:
They all have bad days, sometimes. After three years together, they've had a lot. And they look out for each other, because that's what friends do.