Chapter Text
Week Eleven
Bokuto
The clock ticked.
It was an analogue clock. Bokuto had never loved it. Something about the way the hands moved by – seconds, minutes, hours – trapped him in the night sometimes. Time incessantly moving forwards to its inevitable end. Hypnotizing him with its movements.
However, Akaashi loved that clock. It was a gift from his parents, included in the bedroom set they’d bought them for their wedding. Dark wood headboard and deep green covers and golden knobs on the dresser. The clock was framed in the same deep wood as the bed.
The minute hand ticked.
Bokuto closed his eyes. The empty presence in the bed next to him pronounced.
There were a lot of reasons Akaashi might have gotten up at one in the morning. Getting a snack from the kitchen since his cravings had been unbearable this time around. Or, needing to pace because he was overthinking as he was prone to doing at night. Or possibly his sometimes insomnia getting the better of him, but then again, he’d usually watch videos on his phone or work from his laptop in bed.
Tick.
Akaashi wasn’t coming back to bed.
Bokuto pushed back the blankets, thinking of the best-case scenarios but not feeling them in his heart as he made his way into the hallway. At the other end, light spilled beneath the crack on the bathroom door.
Bokuto touched the wall, steeling himself, before making his way down.
Still, it could be anything. Upset stomach. Midnight shower. Glass of water.
He knocked. “Keiji?”
Silence met him like a wall, one beat, two, followed by a whimper.
“Keiji.” He pressed his forehead to the door. “Can I come in?”
There was a shuffle. A sniff. Then, quietly, “okay.”
On the other side, Bokuto couldn’t deny what was happening any longer.
Akaashi wore one of Bokuto’s button down pajama shirts, too large on him and hanging past his hips. On one pale inner thigh, blood dripped towards his knee. More blood pooled on the tiles below him. Akaashi held a wadded-up towel, pink with the blood he’d already cleaned from his skin, but now with Bokuto here, he pulled his hands into his chest, looking small.
He hadn’t been crying before, but now he started. “Sorry. I’m so sorry. I…”
“It’s not your fault.” Bokuto closed the space between them. “It’s not, Keiji.”
Akaashi covered his mouth with a hand, trying to hold it together because it was what he did for them both. This, however, couldn’t be held by one person. Akaashi was miscarrying for the second time since they’d started trying to have a baby of their own.
Bokuto pried the damp towel from his hands and lowered the lid of the toilet seat.
“Sit,” he directed gently.
Akaashi did, trying to compose himself. Bokuto knelt down between his legs and cleaned the blood off of him. “It’s okay, Keiji. Really.”
Akaashi’s bottom lip trembled, but he fought for a shred of calm.
While he did, Bokuto stayed quiet, trying not to think too hard about what was happening so he didn’t fold completely. It lurked like a shadow though, the disappointment and the heartbreak and the rage at the unfairness of it all. Ready to pull him under if he stopped fighting against it for a fraction of a second.
When Akaashi finally spoke, his voice was hushed, “I didn’t want to wake you.”
You should have. But Bokuto wasn’t going to say that when Akaashi was already breaking. “It’s okay,” he said instead. “I’m here now.”
He cleaned up what he could, watching Akaashi’s skin prickle into small bumps at where the cool air touched his damp skin, before handing him back the towel.
Bokuto held Akaashi’s cheek, brushing a thumb beneath his eye in a silent reassurance that he loved him before getting up for the supplies in their medical cabinet. Inside he pulled out the box of disposable briefs designed for this situation or for immediately after giving birth. They would absorb the blood and keep Akaashi as comfortable as they could manage over the next few days while he miscarried their baby.
When Bokuto had gone out to buy them months ago it had been with the intention of Akaashi using them in the hospital while they took turns holding their newborn in their arms, not for this, though he’d always known miscarrying was a possibility, he had optimistically not expected it.
He handed them over, knowing Akaashi would want to dress on his own and giving him the dignity he deserved. Once Akaashi had pulled them on, Bokuto returned to his spot, kneeling on the floor at his feet and looking up at Akaashi’s tired face. “Physically, how do you feel?”
Emotionally, they’d handle when they could. When they had the space for it.
“Tired. Sore,” Akaashi admitted. “Like last time.”
Bokuto kissed his knee. “Okay. Do you want to stay here or move to the couch?”
“The couch.”
Bokuto rose to his feet, offered a hand, and led Akaashi out.
And all the while, time ticked on.
Bokuto couldn’t say this was unexpected.
They were participants in a clinical trial for a fertility treatment designed to let two Alphas conceive on their own. This was their second attempt. The first attempt had ended this way too, except in a hospital room because they hadn’t known how to handle a miscarriage previously. Now, they knew, as long as Akaashi wasn’t bleeding profusely or had a fever or was in severe lasting pain, they could let it happen in the comfort of their home.
That didn’t make it easier though.
Being on the safe side, Bokuto called their doctor and got confirmation they could stay home with strict instructions to contact her if anything changed. She wanted them to come out to the clinic tomorrow, but she would give them the night alone.
After he hung up, Bokuto rested his fist against the countertop. It’s okay. We’ll try again.
He gathered what was left of himself, grabbed the heating pack from the microwave and a bottle of water, and went to join Akaashi in the living room. Akaashi had curled into the corner of the couch with a blanket wrapped snug around him. Eyes tracing the pattern of the knit.
Until he grimaced, curling inwards.
“I brought heat,” Bokuto said, sitting next to Akaashi. His hands sought beneath the blanket, pressing the warm pack to Akaashi’s cold fingers and he took it to place over his abdomen. “Any better?”
Akaashi gave a pained breath. “Give me a second, Kou.”
So, Bokuto did, feeling utterly useless.
Exactly like when this happened last time, not able to help enough. Never enough.
He lightly drew his thumb over the creases on Akaashi’s brow and slowly, as the heat helped and the pain momentarily subsided, it smoothed. “I’m just cramping,” Akaashi said quietly. Beneath the blanket, with one hand holding the heat, his other found Bokuto’s to cord their fingers together. Then, speaking soft, but incredibly straightforward like he needed to say it to handle it, to accept it, Akaashi said, “I’m losing our baby again.”
Heartache had knit a home in Bokuto a long time ago, visiting only occasionally, rather than as a permanent fixture like when he had been a teenager, but now it hollowed him out. “I’m sorry.”
A corner of Akaashi’s lip pulled up sadly. “Me too.”
Because this was a shared pain, though differently felt by each, it was similar in its understanding of what they were losing.
Bokuto shifted, careful not to jostle Akaashi too much as he brought him closer and nuzzled Akaashi’s neck for his safe scent, calming and enduring, and Akaashi breathed him in too, relaxing against him. “I’m tired, Kou.”
“Do you want to go to bed?”
“I mean,” Akaashi pulled away so their eyes could meet, “I’m tired of getting so close, feeling so hopeful that we’ll have our baby, only for it to slip away. I’m so exhausted.”
A flicker of uncertainty filled the hollow of heartbreak. Those words sounded a lot like giving up, and while Bokuto understood them – he was tired of this too – he didn’t think now the time to overthink things in circles the way Akaashi was prone to doing. Not as physically tired and worn as they were tonight. Not while they were actively losing all they wanted and already beginning to grieve the loss.
Bokuto gave a struggle of a smile. “We’ll take some time before we try again, yeah?”
Akaashi briefly closed his eyes, letting out a soft breath. “Yeah.”