#and when ayan is defending himself he never goas for a rough or violent approach

[airenyah]

"I will kiss you" (threatening) - A Meta on Ayan's Flirting

I feel like in BL there's sometimes these characters who'll immediately make flirty comments to their love interest from the start (often even before the characters have really connected) just because it’s a BL and needs romance and flirting by force of genre.

And that usually tends to annoy me bc it often just feels so forced, but this time I absolutely LOVED Ayan’s flirty behaviour towards Akk all throughout episode 1. Because unlike most BL characters, Ayan isn’t being flirty for the sake of being flirty. Neither is he trying to make Akk fall in love with him. No, on the contrary: all his flirty behavior is a strategy with the aim of getting rid of Akk.

Hold on, I’m gonna elaborate. (And buckle up, because this is going to be long.)

So, the series immediately establishes the two opposing characters:

Akk – the rule keeper

Ayan – the rule breaker

We immediately know there is going to be a conflict of interests between them and that the story will take us to them resolving this issue.

Part 1: Teachers’ Bathroom scene

I want to start with the scene in the teachers’ bathroom. Yes, I know Ayan doesn’t actually make a flirty comment in that scene but I think it’s still an interesting scene to take a look at as it’s their very first interaction and introduces us to their dynamic in this episode. And what is their dynamic? Well, Ayan is just minding his own business and it’s Akk who keeps bugging him, threatening him, attacking him, never leaving him alone. Which leaves Ayan in a position where he has to defend himself.

We immediately get introduced to this pattern in the scene in the teachers’ bathtroom. Although really we have to go all the way back to the car accident. As it’s only been one episode, we as viewers don’t yet know what Ayan was really doing and whether he had a hand in the accident or not, but for now we can assume he was minding his own business and definitely wasn’t bothering Akk personally. It’s Akk who spots him and immediately has it out for Ayan, running after him, following him all the way to the toilets and snapping at Ayan for breaking a school rule first thing as soon as he’s caught up to him.

This is “attack” no. 1, initiated by Akk. However, Ayan remains completely unimpressed and sasses back. So Akk “attacks” again: “Why aren’t you wearing your school uniform?”

Ayan is still not having any of this “you gotta follow the rules” shit, so he firmly informs Akk that he has no interest in doing so. With that, the conversation is over for Ayan and he pushes Akk aside to exit the bathroom.

However, Akk isn’t yet done with the conversation, so he starts round 3 of “attacks”, trying to establish his authority as a school prefect.

So once again Ayan is forced to defend himself against Akk who just won't leave him alone. He does so by getting sassy again and bringing up the car accident from earlier.

Three times Akk was bothering Ayan, three times Ayan needed to find a way to make Akk lay off him. This is a pattern, that will follow us throughout the episode.

Part 2: “Catch me if you can”

Now here is where the flirting starts.

Turns out that Ayan will be in the same class as Akk and Akk immediately requests that Ayan shares a desk with him. Thanks to the incident in the teachers’ bathroom Ayan is very well aware that Akk’s offer didn’t come out of the goodness of his heart, but Ayan accepts the seat nevertheless. And Akk doesn’t plan on hiding his intentions anyway. In fact, he very explicitly threatens Ayan: “Whatever you’re here for, I’ll be watching you. Keep that in mind.”

This absolutely is an attack on Ayan’s boundaries of personal space, and now Ayan’s had enough. You wanna get all up in my personal space? Fine, two can play at that game.

I love how you can just see the moment he takes the decision to play when that tiny smile that forms on his face.

And what does he do?

He puts his hand on Akk’s thigh, turning Akk's threat into a challenge: “Catch me if you can.”

And it works. Akk is quick to push Ayan’s hand off, looking kinda uncomfortable. Ayan smiles smugly. He's won. And now he’s got a weapon against Akk.

Part 3: “You punch me once. I kiss you once.”

The scene starts out with Ayan about to enter the school. He’s standing there, minding his own business, lost in thought when–

Akk strikes again. Still bugging Ayan about the school uniforms. Ayan, rather annoyed, retaliates by questioning Akk’s world views. This pisses Akk off and he aggressively grabs Ayan’s collar.

It’s the first incident of physical violence between them and it’s initiated by Akk. Even Ayan calls him out on it: “Is the rule keeper breaking the rule by using violence against me now?”

And seeing as Ayan definitely didn’t like having violence used against him, he launches into a counterattack. However, he doesn't punch back, he doesn't use violence in return. No. Ayan has just figured out a weapon and he’s going to use it: “You punch me once. I kiss you once.”

Weaponized flirting. We love to see it.

Anyway, he makes some kissy faces at Akk to really drive home his point, trying to get Akk to let go of his hoodie. And while Akk isn’t pushing Ayan away, it still works insofar that Akk completely freezes. He goes into error 404 mode and finally shuts up.

Then the school announcement calling all the prefects cuts through, which pulls Akk out of error mode and makes him look away towards the school. He still hasn’t let go of Ayan, though, and when Akk turns back, Ayan is still leaning closer, challenging him. Now that Akk is able to move again, he finally pushes Ayan away. He finally lets go of Ayan's collar, resulting in a satisfied smile on Ayan’s face.

Ayan has the upper hand. Akk can’t quite accept defeat just yet and threatens violence again: “If I didn’t get called, you’d get hurt.” But as usual, Ayan is not impressed and only taunts him: “What a shame. You just missed a kiss from me.”

This exchange keeps going for a bit, with Akk threatening violence while Ayan keeps behaving aggressively flirty:

Akk: “What a jackass! You’ll have to deal with me one day.” Ayan: “Bring it on. Right here. Right now.” Akk: “Shut up. Don’t you think I wouldn’t hit you.”

With that last sentence Akk gets physical again, pulling Ayan’s hood with force, still not leaving Ayan alone.

So Ayan doubles down. He plays it cool, stands his ground and gets even more into Akk's space than before: this time, he’s the one grabbing Akk by his collar, pulling him closer as he goes “I just love people who are cocky.”, blowing another kiss at Akk for good measure.

This time Akk doesn’t freeze but pushes Ayan away immediately and walks off.

Ayan has won. And to rub salt into the wound, Ayan calls after Akk again to make one last kissy face at him.

You can tell it’s a strategy, because Ayan completely drops his flirty demeanor as soon as Akk is out of sight and goes straight back to business, back to where he was before Akk had interrupted him.

Part 4: Ayan writing into his notebook

I was actually gonna skip this because not much is happening here. But in the end I did quickly want to point out that here we have once again the pattern of Ayan minding his own business (writing into his notebook) and Akk interrupting him (showing up with his friends, bugging Ayan about not being in class). Ayan defends himself with a sassy comment. Lucky for Ayan, Akk and his friends leave shortly after that as they get distracted with prefect duties. Ayan doesn’t get flirty with Akk in this scene, since Akk doesn’t bother him long enough for Ayan to be forced to bring out the flirty weapons in order to get rid of Akk.

Part 5: notice board scene

This scene is actually kinda funny, bc Ayan’s flirt-to-get-rid-of-Akk strategy works, but entirely on accident.

Anyway, let’s start from the beginning. Ayan is minding his own business as usual, looking at the flyers on the notice board when Akk (who followed Ayan after class) disturbs his peace again, this time by getting physical right away, grabbing Ayan’s shoulder and turning him around while asking “What do you think you’re doing?”

Ayan is startled and you can see how for a moment he tries to figure out what to do.

In the end he decides to stay friendly, telling Akk somewhat of a truth: “Just looking at these leaflets. They’re interesting.” But in the end Ayan can’t help himself but irritate Akk just a little bit after all. “The World Remembers gang is so cool. The next Hyde Park is going to be so much fun.”

This irritates Akk indeed, who snaps at Ayan: “Don’t you even think about joining them.”

Ayan retaliates by implying feelings. “Are you worried about me? Are you afraid i’d be cursed like them?”

This starts an argument between the two of them. Akk voices his suspicions of Ayan, Ayan questions Akk's views on rules, Akk isn’t having it and deflects with “Who sent you to mess with this school?”

And this is where it gets funny. Because this comment makes Ayan roll his eyes and then he’s ready to get into some more arguing… except he suddenly notices Akk’s tilted pin and gets distracted. He’s like hold on, I really gotta fix that before we can continue our argument, but what he doesn’t expect is that this first moment of genuine connection, this first display of care overwhelms Akk. Akk quickly leaves the scene. You can tell that Ayan didn’t mean to fix the pin in an attempt to get rid of Akk from the way he watches Akk walk away with a confused face all like Huh?? Weren’t we in the middle of a fight just now?? Aren’t we going to argue some more??

Compare this with how smug he's looked so far whenever he was flirting on purpose.

Part 6: Foreign Language Department Scene

Ayan is off doing his own thing again, looking around the foreign language department and actually acting kinda shady for a change. Akk finds him in the hallway and calls out to him: “What are you doing? What are you doing here?”

For once, Akk isn’t just a minor annoyance in Ayan’s life but rather in that moment Akk’s appearance is very inconvenient for Ayan. He needs Akk gone asap, so instead of arguing or making up an excuse Ayan immediately launches into a flirt-attack, so that Akk will leave quickly as he’s done all these times before. “You’ve been following me everywhere. Are you into me, prefect?”

Spoiler alert: this time this strategy won’t work.

See, the thing is that Akk actually kinda is into Ayan now, whether Akk is aware of it or not. He’s been obsessing over Ayan all episode, constantly searching for him, researching him, thinking of him, getting close to him. And then the pin. Something happened to Akk when Ayan tried to fix the tilted pin, and it affected Akk so much, to the point where he couldn’t focus on his homework while the uniform with the pin was still in sight.

Plus, by now Akk has also gotten used to Ayan’s flirty comments. They don’t hit him out of nowhere anymore.

So when Ayan asks if Akk is into him, he does take a moment, still unsure how to deal with it, but he doesn’t look very surprised or shocked.

He swallows, and then decides he won’t be backing off. In fact, he even takes a little step closer to Ayan when he says “I’m not a friend you can play with.”

Ayan still needs Akk gone, though, so he tries again: “Do you think of me as more than a friend, then?”

And Akk falls back into his old habit of threatening violence again. And it’s actually pretty funny because he tells Ayan “If you don’t shut that foul mouth, it will get punched by me.” knowing full well Ayan said he would kiss Akk if Akk were to punch him. And Akk's saying this in the context of something LGBT having already happened to him during the pin-fixing moment, too. (Wanting and asking for a kiss much @Akk? lol)

So we get this bit of fun dialogue where they’re partly bickering and arguing, partly trying to win superiority over the other (Ayan needs superiority so that Akk will leave, Akk needs superiority so Ayan will comply to the rules and respect his status as a school prefect) and partly genuinely flirting while also slowly moving closer and closer into each other’s physical space as both of them refuse to back down.

Ayan: “Do you think of me as more than a friend then?” Akk: “If you don’t shut that foul mouth, it will get punched by me. You’re small but talk so big.” Ayan: “I’m small and what? What can a big guy like you do to me?” Akk: “I can do more than you think.” Ayan: “Do you even know what I’m thinking?”

It’s only when someone walks past that Akk pushes Ayan away. However, Akk doesn’t leave, not this time. He stays right there in order to continue arguing and to continue bugging Ayan: “What are you doing in a teacher’s room this hour?”

I know I just said something about them “genuinely flirting” while the entire point of this post has been all about how Ayan’s flirting is a strategy to get rid of Akk. Let me tell you, there’s no contradiction here, though. I said what I said. While their little exchange from above might have ended with an air of genuine flirting, the reason why Ayan started flirting in the first place was definitely to make Akk leave. And how do we know? By what comes after.

Because during that little exchange from just now Ayan learns that the flirting is no longer working. Akk isn’t backing down, he’s not running away this time. So as soon as their bickering is interrupted and Akk starts the entire argument anew by asking Ayan what he’s doing there, Ayan drops the act and changes his strategy. From then on Ayan doesn’t make a single flirty comment to Akk for the rest of the scene and tries different things instead.

First he tries a believable excuse, claiming that he's seeking advice from an English teacher. This strategy doesn't work either, because Akk calls bullshit on this claim and doesn't believe him. They bicker, then Ayan brings up the flower pot and the school curse to rile Akk up. Ayan also insults the school, which pisses Akk off and he falls back onto physical violence again, aggressively grabbing Ayan’s collar, pulling him closer and snapping at him.

Akk continues to ask “Seriously, what did the school members ever do to you? What did we do to you? Why are you ruining our reputation?”

And now Ayan is angry. Instead of trying to make Akk leave, Ayan now shoves off Akk’s hand and walks away himself.

In conclusion:

All throughout Ep. 1 Ayan was flirting with Akk with the purpose of pushing Akk away. And I cannot WAIT to see him go from

“I will kiss you” (threatening)

to

#the eclipse #akkayan #ayanakk #ayan x akk #akk x ayan #te ep1 #te meta #temetamine #akkayan meta #my meta #the past 3 days i was working on this instead of studying italian rip me who has an important italian exam in october #anyway i hope the sentences aren't too long and confusing #that's the native german speaker coming through whoops #i swear i tried my best #and i wanted this up yesterday already actually but thing is i'm also currently on holiday #anyway this is mostly just for myself anyway to sort out my thoughts #and also for p who wanted to read them #anyway interesting thing that i've noticed: #akk tends to try and solve things with violence (he's always the one grabbing ayan and pulling ayan and threatening ayan with violence) #and when ayan is defending himself he never goas for a rough or violent approach #(physical violence that is) #he mostly just talks back a lot and well. flirts. lmao #anyway i think that's a topic for a post on its own