saviour ✰ bokuaka

[ EIGHT ]

Unlike Hinata, who was fully relaxed and eagerly wolfing down his popcorn as the movie played, Bokuto had curled himself into a ball and shielded his eyes with his sleeve anytime the frightening music turned back on. That was his strategy for avoiding the jump-scares, although it didn't always work, since—as Akaashi tried to explain—they would not be jump-scares if the music preceded them every time. Bokuto seemed to have forgotten his earlier embarrassment, putting aside his worries for a more important task: squeezing Akaashi's hand anytime he got scared.

Akaashi was thankful for the darkness surrounding them. He was also glad for the distraction of the movie, but it didn't look like he was getting much relief anyway, since Bokuto's fingers intertwined with his caused Akaashi's pulse to spike rather than slow.

The movie was highly predictable and—at least to Akaashi—not fearsome in the slightest. Akaashi was not afraid of clowns, though it seemed Bokuto was.

After another one of Bokuto's shrieks (the fifth in the minute) Akaashi leaned over to whisper in his ear and asked, "Koutarou, do you want to leave?"

"N-no, I'm, I'm okay," he stammered. Akaashi had never heard him stutter like that. He was starting to feel genuinely concerned.

"Are you sure? Because we—"

A shrill scream from the film echoed through the cinema, interrupting his sentence. Akaashi didn't even look back at the screen; he was studying Bokuto intensely—'should I be worried, am I reading too much into it?'—when he felt Bokuto's hands start to tremble.

"Koutarou. Look at me."

Bokuto obliged, putting his arm down and forcing himself to turn his head to meet Akaashi's eyes.

"On a scale of one to ten, how scared are you? Use your fingers," Akaashi said. He felt a bit bad for talking to Bokuto as if he was a primary school student, but his caretaker instincts were kicking in and he couldn't stand by and watch Bokuto suffer just to appear tough.

Bokuto put up eight fingers, then reluctantly lifted another.

"Okay. How long is this movie? Hold on, I'll search it up." Akaashi typed the name of the film into his phone, and the results told him that it was a little over ninety minutes. If the movie had started at 1:00, and it was currently 2:15, it was almost over.

"How much, um, how much is left?" Bokuto asked.

"Fifteen minutes. Do you want to wait for Hinata outside or stay and finish? I'll hold your hand through it."

"I think I c-can stay," he responded. Bokuto's shoulders visibly relaxed as he flashed Akaashi a weak smile and turned back to the screen. His grip on Akaashi's hand was still tight, but he looked slightly less nervous.

'Good,' Akaashi thought. 'He seems okay.'

Akaashi averted his gaze to the film as well, curious as to how it would end, though he wasn't following the plot much, anyway. There were more important things to be focusing on.

...

"That was great!" Hinata cheered, sitting in the backseat and waving his hands around as he relayed his favourite parts of the movie to Bokuto and Akaashi in the front. "When the killer went like, whoosh, and the guy died! How cool!"

"Yes, very cool," Akaashi assured. He was actually completely unaware of what part Hinata was talking about, since he spent half the movie panicking over Bokuto and the other half trying not to fall asleep.

Bokuto was still a bit too agitated to engage fully in the conversation, but he expressed his dislike for it.

"For the first time in my life, I'll admit that I made a bad choice with that. This stuff just isn't for me," he said.

"I'm glad you two are back to normal now. Did you have an argument or something before?" Hinata asked.

"Well, not exactly," Akaashi responded. "It's hard to explain."

"Then what happened?"

Bokuto answered for him. "It was my fault. Let's not dwell on it!"

He grinned, but it seemed forced. Then he turned on the radio, switching to the first pop station he found, and the three of them lapsed into quietude again.

'Great,' Akaashi thought. 'Just when I assumed everything was fine, we're back to where we started. Hopefully Koutarou will forget about it once Hinata leaves. What was so awful about the kiss anyway? Sure, it was unexpected, but it's unlike him to get so flustered, given how forward he is with his romantic advances every other day.'

Bokuto drove Hinata back to his house, then entered his own address into the navigation system. Akaashi debated asking him about the incident, but Bokuto seemed to have read his mind and started the conversation for him.

"Sorry about what happened before. I was so excited to go somewhere with you, I got carried away," he said, laughing quietly.

"It's fine, but why are you apologising? It's not like you committed some crime."

"Well, obviously it's weird when someone just randomly kisses you."

"Not really. I liked it."

"Huh?" Bokuto glanced briefly at Akaashi in confusion, then turned his eyes back to the road and started driving again.

"I didn't mean it like that. I just mean I wasn't uncomfortable. You were the one who made it uncomfortable."

"I thought you would be uncomfortable!"

"Well, I wasn't. Here, I'll do it to you. It's not as uncomfortable as you think." Akaashi leaned over to Bokuto in the driver's seat as soon as they reached a stoplight, and gently kissed his cheek the way he had earlier. Bokuto blushed a deep pink as soon as Akaashi pulled away.

"Oh, now you're speechless?" Akaashi teased. "I thought you'd never stop talking."

"Yeah, yeah, whatever. You're such a meanie."

"I never knew you were afraid of horror movies. The graphics weren't even realistic."

"They were realistic to me!"

Akaashi smiled. "Cute."

"Cute? You're the cute one!"

"This isn't a competition. And keep your eyes on the road, Koutarou. Wouldn't want to crash now after successfully surviving the movie, would we?"