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Nagito Komaeda was a ticking time bomb of a martyr complex burrowed deep inside a locked drawer. Hajime Hinata was a jigsaw puzzle with one piece missing, never fully finishing the picture. They were a cocktail of repressed memories and psychologist’s wet dreams, too drunk on their custom built realities to care much about anything else.
It would be safe to say they were an odd bunch, but wasn’t everyone who attended Hope’s Peak, where they studied amongst the apathetic billionaire with daddy issues, world class detective with daddy issues, and egoistical high-schooler with… everything issues. Upon first glance they seemed pretty normal: your default brunet high school boy (with drab fashion sense to boot), and complimentary white haired boy with unruly hair (we don’t talk about his fashion sense.)
All the same they were an odd couple, no matter how hard Komaeda tried Hinata would always keep up an aura of coldness to him, and no matter how hard he tried Komaeda was convinced that his life revolved around achieving “true hope” and that he should definitely help everyone else achieve it while he’s at it. In case you were wondering, no one wants to achieve “true hope” as no one knows what one earth “true hope” is and Hinata highly doubts Komaeda is completely sure.
Despite all of this they still found comfort in each other, hanging around in each other’s dorms and teaming up for nearly every school project. After all, weirdos have to stick together. They had no problem being weirdos together, because that’s what friends are for. In fact, when Komaeda’s homicidal/homoerotic/god knows what tendencies weren’t rearing their ugly faces, he was pretty decent.
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Either way Hinata wasn’t complaining. He hadn’t been for the last few years and he wasn’t going to start now.
Interestingly enough for the past few years now Hinata had… Well it didn’t matter, Hinata wasn’t fully sure that Komaeda even knew what a crush was. Not that it would matter if he did. Seeing as Hajime Hinata, certainly did not have a crush on Nagito Komaeda, who certainly was not pretty damn cute.
It started the way all crushes start, innocently wondering what would happen if you kiss them right on the lips while they were rambling on about something pointless. This for Komaeda is 99% of the time. The problem was that this natural phenomenon (otherwise known as “baby’s first crush syndrome”) only ever occurred around a certain someone. While talking to Nanami, his closest friend, he’d focus on her lips; they’d been friends long enough for him to develop some sort of crush on her. But try as he might the only response he could muster was “damn. That’s a pair of lips alright”.
This led Hinata to a shocking, ground shattering, and earth shaking conclusion: Nagito Komaeda, his best friend, was very hot, and Hinata was very gay.
But alas, as angsty fan fiction goes, they could never be. They could, quite easily actually, but Hinata was a stubborn moron, and Komaeda was still wrapping his mind around how someone could have platonic feelings for him.
Nanami was sort of like Hinata’s relationship counsellor in that respect. An unsolicited one, but still a pretty damn good one as far as teenage relationship counsellors go. Despite Nanami’s constant, and I mean constant, comments about Hinata and Komaeda hooking up, it still took him almost a year to confess to her that he had feelings for the white haired boy. Hinata had a speech prepared and everything, yet Nanami didn’t even turn away from her game when he announced it to her. She might have raised an eyebrow but that was it.
With a sigh she paused her game and rolled onto her back, facing Hinata. “Do you really think I hadn’t noticed, Hinata-kun?” She said, deadpanning the brunet.
“What are you talking about? How could you have noticed? I made sure it was a secret!” Hinata replied defensively, worried that everyone knew his hideously cheesy cat was out of the bag.
“You do always talk about him,” Nanami’s warm smile returned as she teased Hinata, making sure not to upset him too much.
“You’re not helping, Nanami.” Hinata moaned, he had always been a little melodramatic.
“I could call Komaeda-kun, if that’d make you feel any better.” You could hear Hinata’s protests from streets away. It would be a lie if I was to say Nanami wasn’t having fun. She had the boy’s best interests at heart, and light-hearted banter had never hurt anyone.
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Sonia Nevermind's parties were, to put it simply, a rite of passage at Hope's Peak. With her combined ridiculous amount of money and ever present positivity, any party at her place was memorable. No matter who was invited, Hope's Peak history would still be made: for example once someone stole Togami's phone and found his iTunes to be a cocktail of Ke$ha and music white guys listen to so they can convince themselves they're gangsters.
Togami allegedly cried for days.
Hinata was one of those people who was convinced he could hold his alcohol, until he started drinking. After a fairly modest number of shots Hinata more closely resembled a slightly sophisticated duck than a human (and Komaeda wasn’t very far behind). It had been a few months or so since Hinata had spilt the beans to Nanami, and had progressed from “wow he’s really cute but no-homo” to “I have imagined this boy in swimwear I do not know what the word dignity means nor do I care” on the crush scale.
It’s a common piece of knowledge that alcohol and fan fictions don’t go well together, the same way that a certain protagonist with unruly hair and alcohol doesn't go together. In a moment of intoxicated pure genius Hinata had decided that everyone wanted to see his totally radical party tricks. (By party tricks I mean drunken flailing and whooping) Of course his classmates, all at different levels of sobriety were more than eager to watch.
Unfortunately everyone’s favourite underage drunkard had neglected a crucial part of his “get drunk->do things->get drunk” equation. This was the “get drunk->do things->fail things->drink away the pain” part of it.
The table he was about to climb on so he could perform his coup de grace of all party tricks was littered with cups and bottles. Full cups and bottles. You know how in the movies when something goes wrong it all goes slow-mo and you can hear that one guy yell "nooooooooooo"? Yeah, that happened. Within a blink of an eye Hinata had turned from the loveable drunk to human fountain as cheap vodka and bargain booze flew in the air like a clumsy tide. It was almost beautiful. Similar to many situations this left a crowd of flustered, soaking wet, and sober people and a crowd of "whoa where'd all this stuff from" drunk-happy people.
Through all the clamour of complaints and cheers for him to go on he noticed one distinct laugh, Komaeda, completely drenched in drink, sounded as though his lungs had forgotten what air was. His wheezy hysterics overpowered every other noise for Hinata. What a piece of shit. And Jesus Christ if the amount of beer flowing through his system didn't kill him, the fact that his crush, the boy with puffy white hair and bright olive eyes was taking his shirts off definitely would. Hinata stopped for a second and thanked himself for knocking over those drinks before he realised he had been staring for far too long. Komaeda wasn't the only one following this genius plan, as most other party-goers who were in the same boat had done the same. But in Hinata's eyes no one else was as cute as the guy who was stood a few feet away and he had been staring at for too long again-
"Is there a problem, Hinata-kun?" Komaeda had noticed him, meanwhile Hinata was longing for death's cold embrace.
"No! Why would there be... Are you trying to say something?" Hinata wasn't fully sure exactly what he was saying, but was hoping to get a healthy distance between him and Komaeda because this was the exact opposite of what he wanted to be dealing with while drunk.
"Ah, I didn't mean it like that" Komaeda chuckled and Hinata went red from indignation. How dare him! Sure Hinata had been gawping at his shirtless figure but still, laughing at him? Now that's just plain unforgivable. "You were looking at me oddly, am I defiling your view, I'm sorry Hinata-kun but it can't be helped when I'm su-"
"Komaeda" He couldn't help but notice Komaeda's long winded self-deprecating rants were more frequent when he was drunk.
"Yes?"
"Come with me. And please don't start rambling or I will not hesitate to dump you in the nearest trash can." Hinata snapped, Komaeda was used to this treatment by now. It was how their friendship worked.
Hinata led a tipsy Komaeda out of the crowded main room by his wrist, because holding his hand would just be far too obvious. On his way out he swore he noticed Nanami giving him thumbs up in support, which he pulled a face at, he didn't need her help. He was Hajime Hinata, he could do it all on his own if he wanted to, which he did.
After he finally dragged himself and Komaeda away from the crowd of students and obnoxiously loud music, thy made their way to an empty room (making sure it was really empty first, as last time he and a few of his friends went to find an empty room they stumbled across... Things teenagers typically do at parties). It was only then that a concerned thought challenged the boy's inebriated logic, why did I do this?
Hinata stopped, why did he do this? It seemed to have slipped his mind that he needed an actual reason for all of this, he mind had been clouded by shirtless boys and beer: a fatal combination.
"So, Hinata-kun. What was it you wanted me for?" The tall boy asked, shrugging his shoulders slightly.
"Yeeaah, about that..." Hinata trailed off, what should he say? Maybe he could tell Komaeda how he felt and shrug it off later as drunken rambling. No, that couldn't possibly work.
"Hm? What is it? Is it me?" The not-entirely-sober-but-not-splashing-drinks-on-your-sorta-hot-best-friend teen stared at the only-a-teensy-bit-shorter boy inquisitively.
"No, uh well yeah, kind of" Hinata trailed off, too bust considering if he would die upon impact if he flung himself out of the nearby window.
"I am so sorry Hinata-kun, please forgive me! I know I'm worthless trash, please feel free to tell me so, shall I leave you alone now I'm sorry for all of this." Komaeda looked at the floor like a puppy with its tail in between its legs.
"Not like that" Hinata refrained himself from adding "you moron" to the end of his comforting reply, hoping to sound like a supportive friend.
"Oh"
"Yeah... The thing is though, that for a while, and I mean a while I've sort of... Y'know when you hear about a reaaaally good movie or something getting a sequel, and you really like the first movie, but it’s got some bad reviews so you're scared if you watch it it'll ruin the entire franchise for you?"
"Hinata-kun, I'm not sure if I follow you exactly." "No but like, the movie looks great and you want to watch it and all of your friends think you'll like it and they're like "hey Hinata do you wanna watch that film" and you're all like "no, I don't even have a crush on Komae-"
Sweet. Baby. Jesus.
The silence was so thick Hinata swore he could have made a knife out of it and stabbed himself in the chest with it 20 consecutive times. He didn't just mess up; he'd basically dropped an atomic bomb on his friendship and killed the dog just to make sure there was no way in which it could be salvaged. "Did you just say, what I think you said?" Komaeda's pupils were so dilated it seemed there was only a thin green lining tracing them.
"Maybe," Hinata knew that when he finally told Nanami of this she'd be shaking her head for weeks.
"I suppose I truly am shsl good luck!" Komaeda grinned so widely he had to close his eyes to accommodate it.
"You what?"
"Oh, I thought you were going to tell me that you wanted to be, closer to me,"
"What do you mean by closer?" Hinata felt as though he had found God; hopefully he wouldn't have to explain it all again to him! Maybe Komaeda might have reciprocated Hinata's feelings!
"You were thinking that you and I could be best friends! How amazing is it that you, the first person to ever take a real interest in me, wants to officially confirm that we are best friends!" Hinata sighed in so deeply that he could have created a black hole strong enough to take him away from the denseness that is Nagito Komaeda.
"No, no, no. No. Komaeda the thing is that I don't want to be best friends with you, or friends for that matter." Hinata paid close attention to his words, trying to make it so if it all ended badly he could pin it on the copious amount of alcohol in him.
"Huh?" If there ever was a sound that could perfectly describe heartbreak, it had been created by a drunk, shirtless, silver haired boy in some random room of an Eastern European princess' mansion.
"I want to be more than friends. More than best friends."
"What can be more than best friends?" Komaeda's brain sounded as though it was over heating as little gears in his mind tried to work hard enough to keep up with all of the shocking revelations.
"I want to hold your hand, and play with your hair, and punch you in the arm, and bake stuff with you, and wipe a little bit of the batter from your cheek, and go on dates, and watch the sunset from the roof of some beat-up car while we talk about things we won't care about in a few years. I want all of that. And I want it to be with you."
"Are you saying that you want to… date me?" The poor boy looked as though his head was about to explode from attempting to comprehend Hinata's drunk rant that would make any budget chick flick jealous.
"Are you sure you're shsl good luck, you should be a shsl detective" Hinata remarked, the drink was slowing down most of his actions, but his tongue was as quick as ever.
"Such cruel words from my previously secret admirer." Komaeda teased.
See if Hinata had to pinpoint one thing that he hated about Komaeda it was that he could and would make a joke about anything. He could be on his death bed but would still find a way to include one of his terrible jokes into the situation. And for Hinata now was not the time for Komaeda's hilarious comments.
"So what do you say, yes or no?" Hinata wasn't sure if it was the booze talking at this point, nor did he care all too much.
"What happens if I say yes?" A sly grin was plastered on the boy's face and the brunet wasn't sure if he was more attracted or concerned.
"What does it matter to you" Hinata had gone from pouring his heart out to sassy in a matter of minutes, which was absolutely fine by him.
"Would it mean that I can stand closer to you, like this?" He moved closer, almost pressing himself against Hinata, not that he was complaining. This was basically one of those awkward day dreams come true, though not necessarily in the way he thought it would.
"I suppose so" Hinata shrugged, trying to remain casual.
"And if I were to say yes, could I touch you, like this?" Komaeda smiled as he brushed one of his hands against Hinata's face, while using the other to cup the slightly smaller teen’s hip.
"If you wish," In case you were wondering, the redefined version of willpower is not melting to jelly when a very attractive, and very shirtless boy has one hard wrapped around your waist as he looks into your eyes mischievously.
"So if I said yes, could I put my lips like this?" His lips drew close to the other boy's, but stayed that way, refusing to get any closer (much to the other boy's disappointment).
"Why not?" It was similar to a game of chicken; the only difference was that neither of them would have minded losing too much.
"In that case," The brunet was about to burst from impatience. Komaeda basked in it, drawing his lips so close to Hinata's that they were almost touching, but just not quite there yet. Hinata felt like punching the pale tease. After what felt like hours, Komaeda breathed out, before he slowly, oh so slowly whispered the words Hinata had been waiting to hear all night.
"Of course."