Warning: Depressing Content

Akaashi

The Tiger had given him a calendar to keep track of the days, hopefully not weeks, of his captivity. He simply tossed it into his lap one morning where he was particularly angry, along with a leather journal. After taking a look at the first pages for January, he cringed. However, Akaashi hardly used it due to the fact that he was completely uncomfortable with himself staring back as he attempted to mark down the days of captivity. This month, the image was of Akaashi admiring a bouquet of roses outside a flower shop on Twenty Third Street. He had wondered who in the hell would've made a calendar so eerily obsessive over a person.

His inquiries over the creation of the calendar stemmed more and more simply about the Tiger and his origins. Attempting to use his psychology major, he shuffled through the potential disorders and issues that could've led to this situation. The man exhibited extremely sensitive moods, which often bounced from energetic and spastic to volatile and rude, and clearly had an extreme attachment to Akaashi but didn't quite sympathize with his pain and sufferings. In fact, he seemed a bit jovial whenever Akaashi whimpered from the contact of his knuckles and the splitting of his skin. More so, he relished in it.

He also pondered the pseudonym. Why Tiger? Selecting from a few possibilities, Akaashi concluded that it could be a twisted joke, his own way of offering up clues to solve the inquiry of his true identity, or a completely separate personality that acted independently from the vessel's knowledge, like conscious sleep walking. Akaashi leaned toward the idea of the man alluding to his true name and self, but it was just too farfetched. The man was clever and sadistic, but in a different way. He wanted to keep Akaashi, alive and well enough to function. So, Akaashi crossed out the idea of that on his check list in the small journal the Tiger had provided. He did not know anyone with a name even close to a feline origins, and the idea of one of the Nekoma players attempting this didn't seem plausible. He never really found any sort of relationship in any of those boys except for Kenma, Yaku, and Lev, who all had their own separate romantic interests. Kuroo as well, but he wasn't a factor to the equation at all.

Even the split personality idea didn't piece it all together. Someone with such a volcanic personality couldn't possibly bounce from character to character. Eventually, Akaashi decided that the man probably had a personality defect and most likely was an egotistical sociopath. On this particular conclusion, Akaashi decided perhaps it was best to stop being defensive and snappy to the man who had already shown him plenty of viciousness throughout the last few days.

Akaashi rolled out of the bed, wrapping the blanket around his shoulders as he limped to his books. Running the tip of his finger across the bindings, he finally landed on a book of anatomy and a dictionary, and eventually found a book on medieval courts and a few romance novels. Writing that story for the asshole was his best bet to avoid any further physical injury, or at least pretending he was for the time being would be a plausible idea.

After the first time the Tiger had thrown him, he had returned later with supplies for drawing and a small bag of groceries, as if in a mild apology. He asked Akaashi to speak to him, and Keiji's small, silent protest became fruitless as the man slug him across the face with enough force to send him tumbling from the ground. This event left the side of his face tender and purple, accentuating his eyes nicely in a rather sick way. That bruise turned yellow and green and blue by the next day, when he mouthed off again. This time, the Tiger split his lip. As the cycle continued, Akaashi accumulated plenty of bruises and scratches, and skinned his elbows like a genius when he tripped in the dark trying to get water.

The last time he had spoken with the Tiger, he stayed quiet and answered meekly until set off once more.

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"Your boyfriend's an idiot." The Tiger said, putting a book back in place on the shelf. "He's all over the news right now, babbling about-"

"Excuse you, Tiger?" Akaashi lifted his head from his studies, his eyes flaring a bit but he wasn't facing the man. The Tiger turned around, expression hidden behind his mask.

"Keiji, you're very awful at listening. I called your boyfriend an idiot. Well, I mean, he's not your boyfriend anymore."

Akaashi slammed his book shut, not even bothering to face him. "And you're a fucking psychopath. If my boyfriend is an idiot, then you're an emotionally unstable piece of ever loving shit-"

Akaashi raged out for a few seconds before there were quick steps behind him and the Tiger gripped a handful of his hair. He yanked back, forcing Akaashi to look up into the black of the eyes on the mask. "You really don't know when it's time to stop, or to even just give up, now do you?" He hissed, before cracking Akaashi's nose against the table and releasing him.

Akaashi yelped in pain once his head bounced against the wood, and it rebounded up. He drew his hand up to his stinging and aching nose as the door slammed shut behind the Tiger. He felt warm blood trickle down over his lip and watched it drip on the table. He stood calmly and moved to dress his wound.

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At that point, his sensitivity to pain dissolved as his body endlessly burned and bruised and stung. He had never been in so much pain at once, and it was to the point of certain injuries canceling out the others, or grouping it all together to bombard him at once until he writhed in his sheets and cried breathless tears. His delicate hands shook as he drew and wrote and planned. He decided to stop fighting with the Tiger, to relinquish all control to the man.

It wasn't an issue of giving up, giving in. He was not weak enough to simply fold under pressure. If he relaxed himself, if he allowed the man to think he was cooperating he could possibly get out of the whole ordeal in one piece. He could succumb to the surprisingly delicious food and the taste of his own blood during beatings for as long as it took, he didn't care. He was alive and breathing, however with some difficulty due to a bruised rib or two on his left.

The man hadn't chopped him up into indistinguishable pieces and ate him. If survival meant that he could someday return to Tetsuro's arms, so be it. He would survive through centuries of torture for his lover. He opened his journal after moments of intense thought, reading over the last few days of entries, before thinking of something to write. When he left this goddamned place, he hoped to use them as evidence against his captor. If he didn't survive, a tribute to him and a note to Tetsuro to forgive his absence. He wracked his brain for words, unable to form a simple fucking sentence. He had always noticed how eloquent his characters were, their wit and intelligence rivaling that of famous writers everywhere. He could never speak for himself properly at all though.

"Dear..." He scribbled out onto the paper, mumbling his words as he wrote. He paused wondering who exactly he should address this particular passage to. Then it dawned on him, that the most important person he could write to at the moment was Kuroo.

"Dear Tetsu,

i can't believe it's not butter... Hah, that was awful humor. i guess i'm not quite as funny as you, but you still are beating me on being a dork. soon, you'll be playing your disgusting guitar (because i know you most definitely didn't clean it) in front of thousands of people, and i am going to kick you, pain in the ass tetsuro. gosh, this is much harder than i thought it'd be. this is my testament to you, and my apology as well for being so silly. i wish i had looked at that note closer before. you don't even know how to properly write a damn poem even though you're a song writer; stanzas have always gone over your head. But you're probably going to watch your new anime in the hotel room without me, and i know you've probably texted and called me thousands of times by now. frankly, i don't even know what he did with my phone. in my dream of dreams, you'll face time me, hoping to watch it together even though we're miles apart, and i'll humor you and eat just to see your immature reactions. but i can't do that. at least not this time." Akaashi sniffles lightly, a tear dropping onto the page and smearing his ink slightly.

"god i love you tetsuro, with a love that is indestructible, one that rivals the love of odysseus and penelope. i am not strong, not like you, but i am smart. i can do this because of how i feel in my heart. if i die, don't cry over me, dear god. i don't want to weigh down your heart with sorrow or make some other unfortunate soul deal with your snotty ass. but i love you. oh, boy, do i love you. i love your soft words and your easy smile. i love your laugh and your touch, and the way we lay together in the morning when we have places to be. i love you and your entirety. fuck. i miss you." Akaashi rubbed his hand across his cheek, wincing. "our love is something i'm relying on to keep afloat. the man who has me, he calls himself tiger. he's ruthless really, and i'm a sassy little bitch to him because he's keeping me away from you, and i am undeterred by his pathetic little girl hits. truthfully, i'm so scared. i don't wanna die, and i don't wanna live like this, tetsuro. i'm trying to escape. i just have to figure something out." He paused. "I don't know how i will. But i'll make my way back to you. i've done it before, but this makes our past look like a cake walk. this will just take the perfect effort. i love you tetsu. love, keiji."

He scribbled out the last few words, due the the sound of heavy footsteps crossing about him, and then bounding down the stairs. He threw his blanket from his shoulders, and it flitted to the floor. He held his journal tightly in his hand as he ran as fast as his aching legs could carry him across the floor, and he lept onto the bed. his loose shirt fell over his shoulder as he dove onto his bed. He crawled across the top to the other side. he leaned half over, throwing the journal beneath the bed and picked up the story on his nightstand, pretending to read. He hadn't even noticed the time.

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