ATE

🍽️ ATE

hello, congratulations on 100! 🫶 could i request bokuto kotaro with the prompt of first dates? sending love! :)

❝ BEGIN AGAIN ❞ — bokuto kotarou

cw. gn!reader, fluff, timeskip!bokuto, first date, akaashi sets you up on a date with his best friend, acquaintances to lovers, implied that bokuto is taller than reader word count. 1.3k

rediscovering love in the form of keiji's best friend, a 6'2.9 (he says 6'3 anyway) ball of sunshine that looks at you like you hung the stars

event masterlist

the boisterous and excitable bokuto that you know is surprisingly mild outside of the court, away from his usual company, with you. he’s very sweet, listening to every word you say with bright eyes and an attentiveness you wouldn’t expect from him.

it's one of the warmest days this week, the sun blazing down on the tree you're sat under, a pseudo little shade to shield you from the glare and bright rays— between the leaves and foliage, a yellow-orange glow seeps into the gaps and paints a beautiful splash of colour across the plains of your smooth skin.

ice cream cones in hand and sitting side by side on the wooden park bench close enough for your thighs to touch, it's a welcome feeling, the warmth of the weather and his presence filling you with a sense of comfort and reassurance despite your nerves.

it’s been a while since you’ve last been on a date, time hasn’t really been on your side lately, and the idea of putting yourself out there again fills yourself with dread. you swore off love and relationships for a while after your last one and honestly? you're scared. but your trust in keiji is unwavering, and knowing how highly he thinks of the ones he holds close to him, you decided to take his word for it, even if you can't deny that you were a little skeptical at first.

keiji decided he has had enough of you lamenting about your lack of action in the love department despite not making any moves yourself and set you up on a date, making some compelling points about how "you already know bo, plus i think you two would be a good fit." "he's literally my best friend, i wouldn't set you up with a weirdo, who do you think i am?" "shut up, i've seen the way you look at him."

you don't deny that bokuto's easy on the eyes— striking hair, innocent features and the most gorgeous smile, paired with his athletic physique and outgoing personality, on the surface, what's not to like?

but really, it's been in all the little details since the day started.

him making an effort to show up early despite being prone to getting lost going to places he's never been to before, he's just bad at directions especially when he's nervous, standing by the side of the cafe twiddling his thumbs and humming under his breath. the way his eyes lit up when he first saw you, bringing a hand up to wave in greeting and instantly putting a smile on your face.

the sudden change in temperature upon stepping inside caused goosebumps to raise on your skin, and he noticed, instantly going to shrug off his light jacket and gingerly draping it over your shoulders, deciding to pick a seat by the window, "so at least a little sun can come through and hopefully keep you warm if my jacket isn't enough." he said this as he pulled your chair out for you and helped you settle in your seat like a true gentleman, and your cheeks warmed bashfully at how thoughtful he's already been in the first few minutes, than how some others have been in months.

you fell into a comfortable conversation, catching up on life since graduating and what you've been doing after that. the two of you didn't particularly keep in contact after all, having just been mere acquaintances and had more of a friend of a friend type relationship. he's hard to miss though, you've seen him on sports channels, having gone the professional route and playing volleyball in the v-league instead of pursuing a college degree or a more conventional white collar job. to be fair, you've never penned him for the type, he was beyond ordinary, and always excelled at the sport even back then, catching the eyes of numerous scouters and teams in the country.

"so," taking a sip of his drink, he locked eyes with you and jokingly asked, "when are you coming to one our games?"

with a mischievous glint and an exaggerated false nonchalance, you playfully suggested with a shrug of your shoulders, "hmm i don't know, i'm not really super into the sport or anything, but maybe i'm just waiting for the black jackal’s #12 to formally invite me to come watch. he doesn't seem too into me though, so i don't know if it'll happen, we'll see."

what came after was the cutest outburst that didn’t fail to bring a matching grin on your face, his head thrown back laughing as he processed your words, "well he's clearly missing out because have you seen yourself? if he won't do it i will."

you hated to admit it but this date was going swimmingly and you didn’t want it to end just yet, which brings you back to the present, a mental recount of the hours that just passed broken by bokuto’s hand reaching towards your face.

your breath hitches as his thumb brushes over the corner of your lip with a featherlight touch, your mind going blank at the sudden contact and warmth creeping up your neck, the tips of your ears mirroring the fresh swell of a ripe apple at your shyness.

“sorry, got a little bit of ice cream on your lip there.” he murmurs as he sheepishly retracts his hand, wiping it off on a napkin and turning to face you again while avoiding eye contact. he's so cute, and you can't decide if the dessert in your hands or the man before you is sweeter.

bokuto doesn't know if he's overstepped by doing that, but all of his worries melt away like wax when he sees you trying to hide a small smile, and completely contrary to what he felt seconds ago, gains a burst of confidence to grab your hand as you both stand up from the bench.

upon finding out that you took the train to meet him, he insists on driving you home, seeing that it was getting late. interlocking your still linked hands and lightly swinging them in the wind, you let him lead you to his car down the block, setting on plush leather seats as he opens the door for you.

the ride home is filled with chatter and silly stories, from reminiscing high school and discussing music tastes, right down to playing 21 questions like little kids and learning the basics like your favourite flowers or colour, and bokuto take down a mental note of this, making sure to surprise you with some next time. next time.

as you peer out at the passing streets and night sky, you notice that he's taking the longer way home, letting out a quiet huff in amusement. you're both on more of a similar wavelength than you initially thought, and it seems like he shares the same idea, not wanting the night to end just yet, even though you've already been together for hours.

sooner than you wanted, your house comes into view and bokuto's pulling up to the sidewalk, getting out of the car and once again opening the door for you, ever the chivalrous man.

standing before him, you look up at his youthful face, illuminated by the golden hue of your dimmed porch lights, and you're convinced he was hand-sculpted and molded by angels themselves, soft eyes overflowing with affection as he gazes down at you, “i’d love to do this again sometime, bo—“

before you can finish your sentence, he interrupts, “koutarou— you can call me koutarou.”

with a giggle, you reach up on your tiptoes, pressing a light kiss on his cheek and heading towards your door, calling out just before closing it shut behind you, “i’ll see you soon okay, koutarou?”

notes. hi anon !! pretty excited to get into this because i've never written for bo before !! this was loosely inspired by “begin again” - taylor swift if you couldn't tell by the title ♡ thank you so much for your request, i hope you enjoy this !! reblogs & interactions are always appreciated !

© yogurtkags. please do not repost, plagiarise, or translate my work.

i'm racking my brain trying to decide which challengers track i should attach to this new part of forty, love 😫

  stickers ᵕ̈        boyfie!akaashi keiji x gn reader ˎˊ˗

⋮⋮ ˒ ₍ᐢ..ᐢ₎ 𖥻 ⿻ : where does he   ⋮⋮  get them from ?

📋 content     ♡ # 𝘧𝘭𝘶𝘧𝘧 🐮     ♡ # 𝘰𝘯𝘦𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘵 🥛     ♡ # 1.4k 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘥𝘴

🧸 directory ‹ ✩  like what you read ? check out more of my blog !  •ᴗ•

akaashi always handwrites you notes on special occasions. the first one you had the pleasure to receive was for your one-month anniversary. you had seen his handwriting on the assignments you’ve worked on together or the exams he’s gotten back, but that was the first time you saw his written words dedicated to you.

you’d be lying if you said that first note didn’t make you tear up a little bit.

he always uses a black, fine tip ballpoint pen when he writes his notes to you. his handwriting is practiced and wispy—you can tell each stroke flows through to the next yet it’s not rushed, it’s careful. you know that because his words indenting ever so slightly through the paper they’re written on is evidence he’s a little heavy-handed as he translates his words to you through ink. it shows he really means those words you read off the page.

and another charming detail about your ever-growing collection of “keiji notes” is that they have stickers on them. small ones, blink-and-you’d-miss-it ones. in the margins, or in the corners, or even right by where he signs his name—laying claim to the inky confessions precededing it.

but for the life of you, you can never seem to find where he keeps them. the stickers, that is.

you’ve been together for a little over a year now—a year filled with many, many stickered notes—and yet you’ve never seen a single sticker sheet in his possession.

not in his bag…

nor his locker…

not in the drawers of his room’s desk…

nowhere!

and other than where he kept them, you had plenty of other questions. how many did he have? where’d he get them from? when did he get them? you spend so much time with him yet have never seen with your own eyes him buying them.

it was like a special mystery to you; something yet to be discovered in you and akaashi’s relationship that kept it fresh as long as it remained a secret. to preserve this little bit if whimsy, you never voiced out your curiosity. a silly part of you was convinced if you dared to even mention the stickers, next thing you’d know, they’d stop appearing in your precious notes from akaashi.

so you let it be. you accepted it without asking your questions—occasion after occasion, note after note…

،   そ   ✧   の後    🌱 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗻 ...

that was until one day: a friday night in winter as soon as school got out for the week, when the two of you were at a local corner store, splurging on snacks for a cozy night in with akaashi at his house. you had lost him in the fluorescent-lit aisles in your excitement to assemble the ultimate date night feast for the two of you.

after you’re finished carefully selecting the ramens and drinks and chips you concluded would perfectly accompany the queue of movies you and akaashi had picked over the past week’s lunch breaks, you start to roam the aisles to reunite with him.

peeking over the mountain of cheap treats you have balanced in your arms, you finally spot him in the very corner of the store, intently looking over a section of an aisle, “keiji, i’m ready to check out now!”

hearing your voice, he quickly turns around and you catch a sheepish smile creep onto his face as he leaves what he was checking out to make his way over to you. he immediately starts gathering some of the food items you have piled up in front of your face in his own arms to help alleviate your load.

with each new small snack pack akaashi took on, you get a clearer view of which aisle the two of you were standing in—it was the stationary aisle.

you look further down to where your boyfriend just was. he was looking at the corner store’s sticker sheet selection.

so that's where he gets them from.

“you think we’re really going to finish all this?” akaashi’s voice snaps your attention back to him. now with his own arms holding up a dozen or so items, he starts heading toward the self-checkout.

without getting a moment to further think about catching your boyfriend red-handed (sticker-handed?), you start trailing close behind—pointing out something along the lines of how he always pays for your date night food expenses, and so he could simply ask you to return some of the items back onto the shelves if he was so concerned.

and as the items get scanned (beep… beep… beep!) and akaashi packs them into the provided ‘thanks for shopping with us!’ plastic bags (all for him to carry out the doors of the corner store himself, so that you don’t have to worry about lifting a single finger), he defends himself with something that sounds vaguely like, “you’re too cute for me to resist. that’s not my fault!”

،   そ   ✧   の後    🌱 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗻 ...

you both make your way back to akaashi’s place under the street lights, alternating between periods where you can see each others faces lovingly looking at each other and small stretches of time where you have to rely on your voices to communicate that same emotion.

akaashi always had a way with words, written or otherwise. he’s quiet with his volleyball teammates or when he’s in class. with you, however, he makes sure your voices always mingle in his ears no matter what—always asking you to elaborate on things to hear your voice more or telling you about all the mundane things about his day that reminded him of you.

but while he thought he may have diverted your continuously flowing conversation away from the corner store sticker incident, he thought wrong.

“how many stickers do you have?” you quickly ask in a hushed voice as soon as your back-and-forth banter reached the smallest lull, beating akaashi to the punch with one of the questions that have been floating in your mind for so long.

“hm?” his voice perks up.

“stickers. like the ones on the notes you give me…” you trail off, as it feels weird acknowledging the childish touch to the heartfelt paragraphs you’ve been receiving for so long.

you’re both passing through between street lights, but you can almost hear akaashi’s smile grow in the dark as he asks, “you saw me in there looking at them?”

“yes!” now you’re in the light, and his smile is in fact there, making your heart skip a beat. but you push that thought away—he can’t charm his way out of this one—as you push him further, “now tell me! how many do you even have?”

“hm…” the rumble of his hum slices through the chilly night air as he thinks, “i have a few holiday ones, for when i write cards for the team—santa hats, birthday gifts, volleyballs, stuff like that."

“the stickers i get don't look like that,” you comment questioningly.

akaashi agrees with you with another calm hum, “yeah, well… i only really started buying the cuter stickers when– when i started going out with you, so—"

you feel your face warm up despite the cold breeze gliding past the two of you going down the street, “you still haven’t answered the question: how many?”

your boyfriend sighs and shakes his head lightly, “fine, let’s just say i have enough to keep making you notes for the rest of our lives. does that finally answer your question?”

very much delighted at his answer, the corner store bags clutched in akaashi’s hands rustled as you suddenly fling your arms around his shoulders once you reach the next street light.

akaashi lets out a huff at the sudden embrace but when he turns his head to face you, you can clearly see his smile hasn’t faded away one bit—just as content with the notion of his answer as you were.

“you really mean that?” you tease in a whisper, fingers playing with the hair at the base of his neck.

“of course i mean it,” he whispers back. he means it like he means every word he’s written to you on the page. he means it like every moment of every day he spends with you.

you lean in for a soft kiss, feeling your smiling lips against one another. akaashi’s hands are still occupied with the bags, so your arms hug him tighter and closer before you two finally pull away.

“where do you keep them?” still so close that your lips brush against akaashi’s as you speak, you try to question even further.

“oh, i can’t tell you that.”

“why?”

“can’t have you finding them and spoiling them for yourself. some of those will be for our wedding one day, after all.”

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