Chapter Text
The first day is like waking up a different person.
His eyes open on a shadowed ceiling that is no different than it had been any other day or any other week before. But something feels off-kilter all the same, and the subtle changes are enough to shove his drowsiness off in half-seconds. There’s no way he should be so awake so early.
His shoulders ache from the weight of his bad decisions. Giving in to his competitive side, letting his anger get the better of him, refusing to swallow his pride. And, of course, standing up too quickly.
His father says he’s always slept like the dead – not just in his stillness or the way he couldn’t be roused, but on his back and rigid with his hands at his sides. He's never thought much about the way the tension takes his frame when he’s asleep, about nightmares he has or even much about dreams. They’re intangible, and he doesn’t put stock in their interpretation.
Everything sort of creaks when he pushes himself up, arms strained and shaking under his own weight. This feels...
…
...this feels. No end to a sentence. Nothing to complete it. It simply exists in different vibrations than he’s used to. He’s certainly never registered feeling numb before, but now that he feels this, it’s like he has been.
He breathes in, four seconds,
Exhales, four seconds.
And he still feels it. Everything has been sped up to work within the confines of real time, as if he’d somehow managed to be moving frame-by-frame every second until now.
He could be dying.
He swallows down a noise that tries to claw its way out of his throat. In the time he’s been sitting here, contemplating the ongoing persistent motions, the way things around him seem to move physically while stationary, the minutes have brushed past him and is now six-eleven in the morning. His alarm has been off for twelve minutes.
He doesn’t know if he can make himself move to stretch. He has to put thought and effort behind just swinging his body around to let his feet hit the floor. Everything just under the skin stings and tingles. Something had the circulation forced back into him and now it’s rolling in his stomach.
His hands try to level and he grips the bed tightly. It feels like he’s falling over.
He should ask someone what it is. And his mind goes to Mondo.
He wonders if that was real.
No. He doesn’t think he’ll stretch today. He can probably manage without it. He’ll have to, because he doesn’t think he can manage to do it. He even stumbles standing upright, his head murmuring about equilibrium and the holes in IV drips and decompression sickness. He supports himself against the wall, uncertain if he’s really leaning or if it’s just his perception.
He showers, and tries to kick the water from his ears.
He’s always been an early riser, and he expects that when he leaves his room he’ll be left to wander down the halls on his own, head growing dizzy from the new speed at which he is trying to process his environments. He feels weightless, and so does everything else, fingers trembling from applying too much force to every movement. It almost surprises him that he doesn’t pop the buttons from his gakuran.
Something giddy bubbles in his chest, and he laughs, soft and weird to himself in his room. It's not the practiced chuckle he’s taught himself.
His fingers drift over his mouth.
He's three minutes behind schedule when he opens his door and finds Mondo leaning up against the wall, arms crossed over his chest, head tilted back and lips parted.
The feeling in his chest rises, some undefined affectionate noise threatening to slip out when he taps his classmate on the shoulder. He almost starts with Oowada-kun and re-thinks it before the words have left his mouth, calling “Mondo? Did you need to speak with me?”
Mondo jolts from his half-asleep position and blinks, eyes disoriented. His gaze latches on to Kiyotaka after a few seconds, lips turning up in recognition. “Nah,” he says, voice still low in tiredness, “Just wanted t’ check on you.”
He has never smiled so wide, cheeks burning and aching. “I am fine! And how are you? How did you sleep?”
Mondo looks at him like he’s said something funny, scoffing under his breath. “I’m fine. You're the one who stood up so fast ya knocked yerself out, dontcha remember?”
For a second, he hadn’t. He’d seen Mondo’s smile, and the last few months – to say nothing of last night – had disappeared. There’s something lurking obscured underneath the layers of excitement and anticipation he feels that he doesn’t want to touch at the moment, not when Mondo is asking him a question. He says “Right,” when he means yes, and starts to memorize the way Mondo’s lips tug up to reveal his teeth when he smirks. “I am a little sore,” he says, lips numb, “But it’s nothing I can’t handle!”
“Good to hear,” Mondo says, and his hand rests on Taka’s head, ruffling his hair. And that feels, too. Warm, a little too rough, like he’s never experienced another person’s touch until now. Mondo’s hand falls away and he shoves it into the pocket of his coat, looking around the hallway. “Man, I never get up this early. Whaddaya even do when no one’s up?”
“I am not the only one up,” he protests. Mondo is still smirking at him. “Not – not all the time, anyway.” He rarely stutters, but now that he’s holding back yawns he’s tripping over his words in ways he doesn’t, eyes going out to the hallway in front of them so his mind will focus on something other than his classmate’s face. “Hina and Sakura are frequently up early to practice their respective talents. A few of the older students wake early, as well.”
Mondo slouches next to him, so their heights are closer to level as they walk toward the dining hall. “’Kay. So d’you like… practice yer morals thing, or somethin’?” he asks, scratching the back of his neck.
Kiyotaka’s initial reaction is wondering how in the world he would practice something like that, but he stops himself from asking – it would only be rude. It isn’t Mondo’s fault if his ‘talent’, so to speak, is sort of vague. “Well, sort of. I suppose organizing and planning my work is a sort of practice.”
“And you gotta get up early for that?” It’s weird to hear these kinds of comments phrased as genuine questions, but for as perplexed as Mondo looks he doesn’t appear to be judging Kiyotaka on his choices.
He’s breathing easier, or something similar. There’s still a twinge in his chest when he looks at Mondo, lids heavy and movements sluggish. It’s like hiccupping. His brain flashes on repeat that Mondo got up this early to spend time with him, to know more about him. It’s real. It’s all real. “I don’t need to,” he admits, unscripted. “But the earlier you get up to get the important things done, the more time you have during the day to devote to more pleasurable endeavors.”
The corners of Mondo’s lips turn up again and Taka wonders what it is he said to inspire that response. “Yeah? Like what?”
He really must be tired. “Well, you might play video games, or spend time with friends –“
“Nah, man, I mean what do you do?” He’s got one hand on the back of his head again, looking at Taka and it’s hard for Kiyotaka to look back. “Ya don’t really seem like the type ta play video games, an’ you said you didn’t have many friends before, right? So what do you do with your free time?”
Ah. “Study.” It sounds boring, even to himself.
“Really?” He sounds concerned. It’s uncomfortable. “What about – I dunno, readin’? Don’t nerds do that kinda shit for fun?”
“I’m not sure how I feel about being called a nerd,” he says, for lack of anything else, but it only distracts Mondo for the seconds it takes him to roll his eyes. “I suppose I do, sometimes. But I spend most of my time studying. I have to, if I want to prove myself –“
He feels embarrassed, saying it all out loud. He’s never felt it before, though he’s only ever spoken about his habit when lecturing others on theirs. Never because someone had asked. No one had ever wanted to know. His cheeks burn and he can’t quite meet Mondo’s eyes, wondering what he’s thinking about the information he’s being handed. He doesn’t respond right away, and Kiyotaka isn’t sure if the idea that he wasn’t listening at all is comforting or upsetting.
But he does, eventually, say something. “I still don’t get what you gotta prove yerself for. You got into Hope’s Peak, right? Ain’t that part of your goal, provin’ normal people can do whatever they want?”
“Well, yes.” He’s still overheated. “But I can’t just stop there. I have to prove that I can do better than people like Togami –“ Kiyotaka covers his mouth with a hand, so forcefully the smacking sound echoes in the empty hallway outside the dining room. “I’m terribly sorry – I shouldn’t have said something like that about our classmate!” His voice escalates to shouting, eyes stinging as tears force themselves up to his eyelids.
Mondo’s starting to say “It don’t matter, he’s a jackass,” when Kiyotaka’s hand drops from his mouth and hits his wrist with equal force.
Mondo cuts himself off, moving so his whole body is in front of Taka’s, grabbing hold of his wrist roughly before he can hit himself again. “The fuck? Quit hittin’ yerself!” For a moment Kiyotaka can’t speak, trying to pull himself out, thoughts overridden with a need to punish himself for saying something so rude and the sudden panic of being restrained.
Mondo tugs his arm, catching him off guard and pulling Taka to his chest, his hand on Kiyotaka’s back. It’s so sudden that Taka is startled out of his thoughts, mind going black as he registers that he’s being hugged. Of all things.
Well. He doesn’t feel so much like hitting himself now. He feels embarrassed about his outburst as he calms down, matching his breathing against Mondo’s. He’s even forgotten what it was they had been talking about or how they got on the topic. And he’s not sure that it matters anymore, either.
This feels… nice.
Mondo has had plenty of friendships before. Despite all obvious flaws and drawbacks, he has been relatively popular with his peers. Even Makoto, whom he’d hit so hard he passed out within the first week of school, had hung around him with the same kind of half-terrified curiosity most of his friends held toward him. Including Chihiro – someone he’d tried so hard to soften himself for, but she still looked at him as though he was an animal only on the brink of domestication. Nearly safe, but not enough.
Kiyotaka seems to see him as a puppy. Untrained, as he views the rest of his class, in discipline and self-control, but not irredeemable or frightening. And he has, to the best of Mondo’s knowledge, never viewed him as a threat.
And now that they are friends, that they have shared so much between them, Mondo wonders how he ever thought of that as a bad thing.
They don’t quite walk arm-in-arm. That would be weird. Even for as affectionate as Mondo tends to get with his friends, how affectionate he feels he could get with this one in particular, it would be too much. But they stand so close together that Mondo finds it impossible to miss a single gesture his new best friend makes, no matter how small. And he can’t pull his eyes away, can’t look at anyone else, barely registering people staring as they interact like this. So easily.
The first day that they are friends The first week that they are friends, Mondo puts in a more concerted effort to be a part of Kiyotaka’s life than he has put in any of his friendships before. He’s more aware of himself around Taka than he is around his other friends, and his brain never really settles on what catalyzed that feeling. Makoto walks into the dining room that morning and sees them nearly hip-to-hip, laughing too loudly, and looks relieved to see them getting along, though still wary. He keeps throwing glances their direction as they talk.
“How long have they been like this?” Mondo hears him ask as he sits down beside Hina.
“All morning,” she replies, nose crinkled. “It’s gross.”
Something in the word hits him. He doesn’t know how she means it, if she means it at all, but his arms go stiff where he’s got one with a hand on his hip and the other around Taka’s shoulders. He doesn’t like the implication, if it’s there at all, and he can feel Taka’s eyes on his face in confusion. Some part of him lashes out before he even thinks it through, snapping “Hell no! Feels great, more like.”
Hina rolls her eyes where he’s expecting a shout, some kind of argument, a snap back at him. She’s gone back to her conversation with Sakura, saying something about how men are weird; but under his jacket Mondo can feel sweat sticking to his neck, his back, his arms.
He knows some people have this belief that men who are emotional or affectionate are weak. As much as he knows that he knows that it’s bullshit, he can’t seem to help but internalize some of the damage. Daiya didn’t raise him to be cold, but his environment taught him to ignore the pain. Taka seems reversed: uncontrolled volume and tears, expressive of exactly what he’s feeling as he’s feeling it. But when it comes to touch, he acts like a stranger to the feeling, and Mondo’s not about to let some kind of low-level homophobia or whatever ruin his friend’s ability to experience it.
After about two weeks, it starts to be old news. The mystique of it has worn off to the upperclassmen already, since they don’t interact that often with their class to begin with. But for that first week, no one approaches either of them, watching the two from a distance. It makes Mondo feel like he’s the subject of a documentary, but Kiyotaka doesn’t appear to notice.
Their observation is the only part of it Mondo notices. Time, on the other hand, flies by completely. It’s only when Leon drops down next to him at the table and says, “It’s been like, a month, man. You’re really friends with him, then?” that he realizes any significant length of time has passed.
It takes him a moment to realize who he’s talking about, and he scowls. “The fuck kinda question is that? Didn’ I fuckin’ say we were friends?”
“Well, yeah,” Leon says, leaning back so his chair is balancing on two feet. “But you spent, like, the first half of the school year fighting, so I didn’t think it would last. I mean, what’s an honor student wanna hang around a dumbass for?” Mondo slaps his chair so it’s pushed down with all four feet on the ground, but Leon only laughs at him. “Damn! Ultimate Hall Monitor’s rubbing off on you.”
Mondo rolls his eyes. “That ain’t his talent, Leon, you know that, right?”
“Alright then, smartass, so what is his talent?” He puts his elbow on the table, leaning in, smirking.
Because he knows that Mondo doesn’t really get it, either, only what Taka puts into it. But he’s not about to let Leon know that. “’S closer to student council president than hall monitor,” he starts.
“And technically, it’s neither,” Taka finishes. He’s accompanied by Chihiro, looking exhausted but happy, radiant blush over her face as she looks between the three of them. “May we join you?”
“Aw, Mondo, look! Your two favorite people.” Mondo jabs his side with his elbow. “I’m not stoppin’ you. Though Mondo seems to be gunning for you job in the fun-killing department, Ishimaru.”
Taka’s brows furrow, pouting. Mondo kind of wants to put out that fire before it ignites – sometimes Taka has a hard time distinguishing what is and isn’t meant to be a joke. But he doesn’t tell Leon that isn’t a part of his job description either, only asks, “Do you not know my first name?”
Leon looks as bewildered by the change in subject as Mondo is. “Huh? Yeah, I do. Why?”
“You only ever call me by my last name.” His usually intense, uncomfortable stare is pointed to the table instead of to Leon’s face. So Mondo thinks he knows what the problem might be.
“It bothers him,” Mondo says. Across the table, Chihiro puts her hand on Taka’s shoulder, and Mondo swallows with his teeth clenched. Not that it means anything, other than Taka gaining more friends than just him, and that’s good –
“Oh. Uh –“ Leon almost thwacks him in the back when he goes to touch the back of his hair. “Sorry… Kiyo?”
Taka shakes his head, but he’s smiling. “Taka, please. Or Kiyotaka. Kiyo by itself just feels…”
“Like a parent?” Chihiro asks.
“Like a lover.” Leon makes a choking noise. “Did I say something weird?”
“Kinda, dude. We just call ‘em girlfriends.” He looks to Chihiro, and Mondo hears wind rushing in his ears. “Unless that’s what you asked him to call you?”
The both of them go pink, tears gushing to the surface. They’d make, Mondo thinks, a really weird couple. “We’re not dating!” Taka shouts, and Leon laughs, trying to convince him to quiet down. “I was merely assisting her with a project! And she found herself staying up way too late, so I went to wake her this morning, that’s all!”
“Geeze, dude, I’m just teasin’ you.” Kiyotaka doesn’t look convinced. “Dude, really. I’m sure you got more important shit to worry about than dating.”
His eyes are back on the table, still watery, and Mondo’s attention follows his gaze. If they weren’t in a group like this, he’d ask what Taka was being so evasive about when he says “Yes, of course,” with only half the volume and conviction he usually does.
Leon moves again, adjusting himself so he’s sitting on his chair sideways to look at Chihiro. Mondo’s mind can’t decide which is more important right now: what Leon’s saying to her, or the fact that Taka isn’t so much as glaring in Leon’s direction as he leans back. “What about you, Chi?” he hears, and feels his neck catching fire. “You seeing anyone?”
“No, not at the moment,” she says. Her face is still flushed, looking away from them shyly.
He feels Leon’s weight against his shoulder, leaned back in the opposite direction to say directly into Mondo’s ear, “I think that’s very interesting. Did you hear that, Mondo? She’s not seeing anyone. Very –“
Mondo shoves him over in the opposite direction, this time succeeding in sending him to the floor.
Mondo’s being quiet.
Kiyotaka knows that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. He talks more than the average person seems to, and it aggravates his peers. They’ve been off-campus all day, Mondo having finally convinced him to walk around the city with him on a day off, and sometimes that tires people out. It tires Taka out, so that even with these past few months of Mondo making compromises to spend time with him studying if Taka does things he enjoys too – he’s going to have to spend some time in his room alone when they get back. But this kind of silence feels different, somehow. He can’t think of how, or why this lull sticks out to him more than others do. But Taka has stopped talking, staring at Mondo for the past seven minutes, sitting on half-wall somewhere outside the school, trying to think of a way to ask what’s going on.
(His cheeks are darker, almost red. They look… soft.)
His breathing stutters and he almost coughs. He remembers that it’s impolite to stare, even if Mondo has never called him out on it. And he’s always staring at Mondo.
There should be a good way to go about this, a way to start the conversation that doesn’t sound demanding. Kiyotaka’s never been good at conversations; starting them, holding them, ending them. And bringing up sensitive subjects is somehow worse, and even without the context he knows there’s something beneath the surface to his friend’s mood, and that knowledge alone scares the words off of his lips every time he goes to open his mouth.
He watches Mondo swallow, and it falls out. “Is something wrong, kyoudai?”
Mondo’s hand jerks, throwing rice to the ground. He looks embarrassed, almost guilty, peering at Taka from the corners of his eyes. “Nah, not – not really. Just got a lot on my mind.”
“You can talk to me about it,” Kiyotaka says, before he can help himself. And he backs up a little, making himself stare at Mondo’s neck instead of his eyes. Staring people in the eyes makes them uncomfortable. “If you want to, of course, you don’t have to –“
“I just gotta –“ He stops himself. His brows are furrowed, and there’s some sort of… strange expression. One Taka hasn’t seen before. He can’t even begin to guess what emotion it’s expressing. There are parts of a smile there, but it’s tinged with embarrassment, frustration, and something like sadness. Mondo’s eyes flutter shut and he takes a shaking breath, wiping his left hand on his pants. (kiyotaka stop staring stop staring stop staring stop) “I JUST GOT FEELIN’S FER SOMEONE –“
Mondo almost upsets the box in his hand as he goes to cover his mouth. He’s smiling more clearly now, but there’s still a weird feeling about the whole situation. Taka frowns, staring at Mondo’s occupied hand and how it’s trembling, so he doesn’t look anywhere else. “I take it these aren’t normal feelings?”
It hurts to see Mondo, of all people, look at him like this. Incredulous, like he can’t believe Kiyotaka’s asking something so stupid. It makes him feel very small, very isolated, and his cheeks hurt. It doesn’t last more than a couple seconds, but it still leaves an impression, his chest strained. “N-no,” Mondo replies, laughing nervously. “I mean. They’re romantic feelin’s.”
Oh. Oh. He feels dizzy. “And that is why you are distracted,” he says. “Are you… happy, about these feelings?”
Mondo sighs, and Taka feels it. He keeps his eyes on his own box, immobilized. “I dunno. I guess it ain’t the worst, but I keep fuckin’ up every time I try an’ talk to a girl, so I doubt it’s gonna go anywhere.”
He can feel his fingertips, too tight on the utensil in his grasp, and nothing else. “Well, if it’s someone from our class, we all know you pretty well. Even if you were to shout, I doubt that it would, er – ruin your chances.”
He hopes he’s using that turn of phrase right. Mondo grunts in acknowledgement, scraping at the bottom of his box for a couple of seconds before he stops, turning his head to actually look at Kiyotaka. And Kiyotaka feels his insides flipping over backwards, like he’s gotten too close. Mondo blinks at him, and says, “It’s Chihiro.”
Kiyotaka feels something tighten his throat, so when he swallows the food in his mouth it’s much the same sensation as it is when the seasons change and he just wakes up, mouth dry and taste in his mouth stale. There are emotions just under the surface of his skin that he hadn’t looked at closely enough to even give name to yet, muted to give him time to discount them as being something else. He didn’t want to overflow while he was still treading water, and now…
He hears it. All of it. And only that. It reminds him of those small fireworks that sit on the ground and smoke before they spark and fizz. That’s how he feels.
He pulls his eyes away from Mondo’s, staring at his food. His lashes tangle against each other, threatening to stick. There’s going to be tears, and even if everyone in his class and Mondo especially know how quick he is to cry, there’s no way it won’t look suspicious. He doesn’t have an answer to offer himself, let alone anyone else. He’s not even sure he could give him one fully-formed when it’s ready. What kind of a friend would that make him?
Taka keeps his eyes downcast and wills whatever tears there are to fall before he looks back up, clearing his throat for an uncommitted noise. “She is…” Well, what should he say? What would a normal person say? “Remarkable.”
As soon as it leaves his mouth he knows that it’s wrong. There’s no good balance for this sort of thing – to show his support without appearing as competition. To sound disinterested in the right way, without arousing suspicion. He bites the inside of his lip and hopes Mondo won’t judge him for picking such a strange adjective.
He doesn’t. “Hell yeah she is!” He never does. “She’s real nervous and shit, but once she starts talkin’ about somethin’ she’s passionate about –“ he waves his hand around, and Kiyotaka’s eyes follow it to keep from looking at his face, the fireworks in his chest burning too close to the body – “I don’t get half the shit she says, but I don’t care. I could listen to ‘er talk about it all day.”
Jealousy. He might be stabbing a little too hard, but if he doesn’t his hands might shake, his breath might choke, he might cry harder. He doesn’t look at Mondo (“She’s so small an’ cute, like a rabbit ‘r somethin’, but she’s tryin’a get stronger –“) while he’s talking about Chihiro (“She’s prolly the smartest person I ever met – I mean, like, aside from you –“) but it’s getting harder not to speak up, make it stop.
(“She looks like she’d be so soft ta hug, like she’d smell nice –“)
He waits in what he thinks is a nice approximation of patience until Mondo has run out of things to gush about, to offer the only thing he can think to say in this situation.
“Are you planning on confessing to her?”
Mondo’s quiet again for a moment. Taka doesn’t know if looking at him will be a good idea, but he risks it, very briefly. He’s still flushed, picking at his food, but at least his silence isn’t distance this time; he seems to actually be considering Taka’s question.
And when he looks back to Taka to give his answer, he’s more in the moment than he had been before. “Do you really think I should go for it?”
Taka blinks. Eyes back on Mondo’s neck. “I don’t see why not.”
It seems like Mondo’s still staring. Under any other circumstance, or any circumstance before now, the attention would have been appreciated. He hadn’t shoved any of the pieces together to make them fit or even looked at the instruction guide for an image of the outcome, but now that he’s standing in different light it’s impossible to avoid – how bright he’s shined with Mondo’s companionship, how far into his warmth he’s leaned. So to get it all now, to feel it all… it’s too much. He feels a sudden breach of privacy, like his own thoughts and feelings are suddenly being broadcast to the rest of the school.
Even though it’s just him, and Mondo. “She seems to like you. Your presence.” He doesn’t even know what he’s saying. “She – you are friends. Correct? So I don’t think, even if she did not feel the same way, that it would. Ruin your friendship.” This must all be coming out wrong, because Mondo is staring at him. But he’s never had a friend or a this before so he doesn’t know how to give advice or support for something he does not want. (and that makes him a terrible friend.) “But I don’t see why she wouldn’t feel that way – the same way – about you.”
He’s stabbing too hard again, he’s sure. He doesn’t even know why he’s bothering; there’s nothing left in his box for him to stab at, only rice, and it’s probably making his whole reaction look much stranger than it should.
But if it comes across as odd, Mondo doesn’t say so. His hand is on the back of Taka’s head again, ruffling his hair. “Thanks, man,” he says, voice gentle. “I can prolly actually tell her, now, after talkin’ to you about it.” Great. Fantastic. (he is a terrible friend for not actually feeling that way.) “I don’t think I can get that with anyone else, even in my gang.”
Again: Great. Fantastic. Taka picks at the rice without tasting much of anything, and Mondo changes the subject. They’ve got ten minutes left before they need to head back to campus, but even with six topics passed between that moment and this, Kiyotaka still feels the ache in his chest, pounding and deafening.
He thinks he knows what it is about Taka now. It’s been bugging him that he’s more invested in their friendship than he is with his gang or his other friends at school – save Chihiro, of course – and it’s made him restless when Taka’s around. He thought at first it might be that they had so many differences, he had to make sure that he wasn’t upsetting Taka or causing too much friction. That just made him worry that these feelings he was having, their whole friendship was fake and doomed to failure, and the anxiety made him sick to his stomach; but Kiyotaka hadn’t ever expected him to change, and they never struggled to find things to talk about or fit together.
So he thought instead that he’d just been a shitty friend before. And that could be part of it. Chihiro commented once that he seemed more open with the rest of their class. She didn’t say Taka was the reason, and if she implied it then that went over his head. But Makoto and Hina had chimed in to agree that in the past three months he’d been more relaxed and involved in other peoples’ lives. He doesn’t like the idea that he was a jerk before, but as long as he’s getting better at it he guesses it doesn’t matter much. Once the summer comes, and he has that break, he’ll use that knowledge to be a better leader. It’s what Taka would want him to do, anyway. Even before he gets in a relationship, he thinks he can split his time up easy: half with the gang, half with Taka. It’s just that now, it’s a third with the gang, a third with Taka, and a third with Chihiro.
But once Chihiro is in the picture differently, the whole damn frame tilts. But from this new perspective, he sees the image more clearly.
Kiyotaka isn’t there with him when he actually confesses to her, though Mondo kinda wishes he was. He knows it would look weird (and be weak, so very weak what kind of man ) to need his best friend there to help him through everything, so doing it alone really was the best option (even though he shouts less with taka they’re so energetic together but he feels calmer with him how does he) and he manages not to scare her off with his yelling, just like Taka said, and Taka –
Cuts himself off. Immediately. Some part of Mondo must have unconsciously (subconsciously? he’s never been good with words) known that he was likely to do this, and been trying un/subconsciously from the beginning to prove to Taka that he was committed to their friendship and cared. Because Kiyotaka isn’t really good at communicating with others, said he’d never had friends before Mondo, and Mondo flinches with discomfort even at the memory of watching Kiyotaka hit himself.
So when Chihiro says yes, and Taka disappears entirely, he can’t say he’s all that surprised. He feels his stomach drop out watching Taka come in the dining hall, see them, pretend very badly to get distracted by something else, and leave again. His body responds to the upset with all kinds of negatives: his shoulders sag, body threatening to curl in on itself or deflate like a balloon losing air. And he feels a shift next to him, too, guilt stabbing in with the emptiness of [BEING ABANDONED] and remembers Chihiro next to him, tears darkening the blush on her cheeks.
I can do both I can do both “I’m- I’m sorry, I’ve really- really ruined your friendship, haven’t I?”
I can do both I can do both I can “Nah,” Mondo says, “I’m sure it ain’t you,” I can do both I can do both THIS IS NOT LIKE MULTI-TAKSING “he’s prolly just,” I can do both I can have both I can do both I can do both “got somethin’ he forgot, and seein’ us reminded him.”
“Mondo…” She doesn’t look like she believes it, and he knows what she’s thinking because he is too. Am I telling her that, or myself? “Do you think he’s…” Does he like her to? If he does what do I – “Worried about being a third wheel?”
He looks down at her again, can’t remember having looked away to begin with. Can’t feel the arm around her shoulders, though it’s been there for a while. Her fingers are pressed against her lips. He forgets for three seconds about Taka, [selfish] and thinks about kissing her [bad timing] . “How’d you mean?”
Her tears look more like nervousness than anguish. She’s turned in his direction, but eyes to the side as she thinks. “Well, when the two of you first became friends… you were distant with other people. Maybe… he thinks it’s the same, since we started dating?”
Genius. He wants to call her a genius, but he’s gotten out of using that word. His hair smacks the top of Chihiro’s head and she giggles as he goes to kiss her forehead, too self-assured at the moment to think about his actions or feel embarrassed about his enthusiasm as he almost trips his way out of the dining hall, not even telling his girlfriend where he’s headed to. It’s obvious, anyway, and he hardly hears the people asking him where he’s running off to. If anyone’s going to scold him for that kind of behavior, it’s going to be Taka. At least that would get him to talk.
He has no definitive proof that Taka’s in his room, but he leans on the doorbell with his body buzzing. Kiyotaka does answer, and Mondo watches his eyes turn from irritated curiosity to something like fear and YOU HAVE BEEN A BAD BROTHER. AGAIN. YOU HAVE FAILED. AGAIN. YOU ARE
Mondo puts his hand on the door to keep Taka from shutting him out. It feels like he’s walked through spiderwebs as he leans in, eyes flickering over the scenery without really landing on anything. Taka hasn’t tried to close the door, indicate he should leave, done or said a single thing thus far to push him back. But here Mondo is, on the verge of collapse.
His eyes fall down the line of Taka’s body, past his lips and his neck to his chest as he breathes. If there’s a speech, Mondo doesn’t need to hear it. “You know we ain’t gonna stop bein’ friends, right?”
Back up, watching his chest hitch and stutter, his throat swallow. He isn’t the type to lick his lips when nervous, but Mondo watches his mouth move now, bottom lip caressed. In the quietest voice he’s ever heard Kiyotaka use, he asks, “What?”
He really should look somewhere else. Fixating on this point must make him look insincere, but if Taka starts crying he doesn’t know what he’ll do. The dizziness is back, and he feels his own body like an extension of something else: outside of his control. Tipping over. “Me an’ you. Just ‘cause I’m datin’ someone don’t change anything between us.” Taka’s lips are being pulled too thin. It isn’t any better than looking him in the eyes, so Mondo’s gaze trails up to the bridge of his nose. Just enough on the peripheral to avoid losing too much. “Yer still my best friend.” Taka’s not even looking at him anymore, unfocused just as Mondo is. “I still wanna hang out an’ eat lunch with ya and study or whatever. You don’t gotta…”
That’s right. Like before. That’s what this feels like. Being pushed out of someone’s life because they have a new interest. Losing your place and your sense of worth. Being less important. Struggling to find a way to fit in. Lashing out in anger or minimizing yourself, hoping they care and not saying a damn thing about it because that’s all just…weak.
“Mondo?”
“I’m not replacin’ you,” he says. He has to really focus on Taka, on the way his brows furrow. Just like him and – “Yer not less important to me.” Losing someone else you can’t stand to lose because you’re – “So don’t – don’t isolate yerself, alright?” Everything else more important than you – “Even when I’m hangin’ out with Chi. You know she’s your friend too, right?”
There’s something screwed up about Taka’s expression and he wonders how often he’s had that same look on his face. There’s no one left to tell him if he has. He knows Kiyotaka cries when he’s frustrated, more often with himself than anyone else, and he watches Taka’s teeth dig into his lip. “I thought you would want – space, in the first… the first couple of days –“
He watches his hand move until it’s in Kiyotaka’s hair, locks soft against his fingers, more intense a sensation than the rest of his body is experiencing. “No,” he says. “’S just weird if you ain’t talkin’.” Taka makes some sort of strangled laughing sound and against some part of his brain that’s telling him not to push anything, Mondo drags Taka to press against his chest. Hugging isn’t weird between them; Mondo is physical by nature.
But there’s a shift. Taka usually stands still, back painfully straight, allowing himself to be touched without easing up at all. Even when he’s moving casually – a hand on Mondo’s waist, on his elbow, standing on his toes to get an arm around his shoulders – it feels too angled, unnatural. He moves like he’s just learning to, following instructions for assembly to the letter. Now, now, now – his hands press into Mondo’s back until he feels them, fingers squeezing at the fabric of his jacket. Mondo can’t feel much of his body as he starts to relax, starts to come back to the real world; but he feels that. Feels Taka.
And he feels something clunk into place in a far-off way, some cog pushing a clock into movement that he can’t see.
Things have been awfully turbulent for Kiyotaka Ishimaru. Most of his life before Hope’s Peak had been stable, stagnant. He didn’t have friends or much of a life outside of school. He woke up, he exercised, he went to school, he did homework, he slept. Most of his routine remained the same when he transferred, but with new things added in. Like classmates who actually wanted his opinion on things, who tried to get him involved in activities he didn’t specialize in, and who just generally wanted him around. Like a best friend, and his girlfriend.
Kiyotaka watches their hands brush together as they walk until Mondo’s fingers wrap around Chihiro’s, hands clasped. There’s this, too; his fingers curling to make his hand a fist, because his mind can’t help but wander. He imagines, without his own permission, what that sensation must feel like, how warm Mondo’s hand would be, the comfort of that kind of pressure. And his eyes dart away, feeling guilty, praying that he isn’t blushing.
So Kiyotaka Ishimaru might be gay. He might have had his suspicions about himself for a while now, but seeing Mondo and Chihiro interacting like this has only cemented it for him. The pangs he feels – they really couldn’t be anything other than jealousy. And not, as Mondo thinks, of the ‘I am afraid of losing my best friend’ variety.
They always mistake these moments when he lets his feelings get the better of him as him politely indicating that PDA is verboten in the halls. They hide their hands between their bodies so it’s harder to see, and somehow that makes it all worse. He doesn’t hate Chihiro, or dislike her at all, but his head and his chest clamor with irrational fear whenever he’s around her. She’s smart – no; that’s not what is. She is, but more importantly, she’s observant, and that’s where the danger lies. She could know, very easily, what Kiyotaka is thinking and feeling. And even if she wouldn’t tell, he can’t stand the thought of making her uncomfortable.
Of Mondo finding out somewhere along that line.
Of making him uncomfortable.
He’s heard the vulgar saying before, that the best way to get over someone is to get under someone new. And while he has no intention of engaging in sexual intimacy with anyone just to rid himself of his now apparently massive crush on his best friend, he thinks there might be some kernel of wisdom in its lewd suggestion. In other words, he’s now going to attempt to retrain his desires to focus on someone else. Preferably someone safe.
Kiyotaka knows going in that these feelings will be fake. It’s not his intent to lead anyone on, but since he also has no intention of coming out just yet anyway it should give him time to develop actual feelings for someone who might actually be capable of returning them. Or at the very least, someone whose total abandonment won’t kill him.
He shakes his head. His thoughts have, too often, been turning dark like that. He tells himself that Mondo wouldn’t discontinue his friendship over something like that. He couldn’t – they’re too close. He made a promise to stick by his side, no matter what. That memory stuck out to him, still vivid even four months later. He’d written it down in his diary so he’d never forget, but that hadn’t ever been an issue.
The tile, the steam, dry mouth and feeling like he might pass out again –
Mondo giving him this look like he was still so concerned, shaking his shoulder, his fingers on the back of Kiyotaka’s neck, telling him it might be nice to have another brother –
(kiyotaka trying to run away from that saying you will get tired of me eventually everybody does nobody stays, trying to laugh about it, and mondo said)
“Well you ain’t gettin’ rid of me that easy!” his fingers through taka’s hair “It don’t matter what you do – hell, you commit murder? I’ll help you hide the body.” he leans in too close with his arm around taka’s shoulders and laughs “Not that I could see you doin’ somethin’ like that.” he’s never felt this kind of warmth and mondo’s eyes are so lightly colored how did he not know how did he not know “Seriously. You an’ me? We’re gonna be friends forever. And if I ever get halfway decent at this carpentry shit, I’ll build your house.” he wouldn’t leave he wouldn’t leave h-
“Hey, Taka. You mind if I sit here with you?” Safe. Speaking of. He looks up from the book he hasn’t been paying attention to and puts something close to a smile on his face, nodding for Makoto to join him. He hasn’t been paying much attention to…anything, really, recently. He’d even forgotten that he was on a lunch break, supposed to be studying. “You seem kinda lost in thought,” Makoto prompts. “Are you okay?”
This could work. He’s not exactly Taka’s type, or what he figures his type would be, based on what little he has to work with. But he is undeniably good, devoted to his friendships, open-minded… “I am a little overwhelmed, but it’s nothing I can’t deal with.”
Makoto nods. “Yeah, I can see that. I guess it’s kinda weird, huh? When two of your friends start dating. Hard not to feel like a third wheel.”
“I don’t think I’m familiar with that term.” But it doesn’t make it hurt any less.
“Oh, uh –“ Makoto scratches his cheek nervously. “It’s just – you know, you don’t really need a third wheel on a bike, right? It makes things uneven. Inevitably two wheels are gonna be next to each other, and the third’s just… an outlier, I guess.” He doesn’t quite blush.
But whatever expression it is he’s making, it’s cute anyway. “I guess that makes sense,” Taka says. “But I would think that having an extra wheel makes things more balanced.”
“On a bike, maybe, but for a car –“ he laughs. “Geeze! I think we’re putting too much thought into this.”
His laugh is almost infectious. Talking to him is…not talking to Mondo. But it’s easy. It’s not the same, but it’s something. It could work.
Mondo slams his locker door with enough force to put a dent in the goddamn thing and his only regret is that he didn’t put his own hand in the way to break it. Chihiro’s eyes go wide, and her hand on his arm has more force than it usually does. Maybe he just feels that way because he’s so tense, but he can’t help it. Why the fuck is Taka spending so much time with Makoto?
He hits his head against his locker and lets out a few choice words directed at absolutely nothing. He can’t look at Chihiro; he knows she’s not afraid of him anymore, or so she says, but he’s sure there’s something like confusion or hurt in her face and he can only focus on one source of pain at a time.
It’s been a week. He wouldn’t say Taka is avoiding him, because he still joins them for lunch. But he joins them for lunch with Makoto and twice with Hina, and when he studies it’s with Makoto and when he’s talking to someone before class starts it’s Makoto and this shouldn’t be bothering him but god dammit he feels -
Replaced.
(it shouldn’t matter. you’ve got a girlfriend now. who cares what Taka does with his time?)
Or, more importantly,
(he’s allowed to have friends other than you.)
Her voice is more confident. That’s the kind of change he should focus on: how things have gotten better, not how they’ve gotten worse. “Mondo? What’s wrong?”
“Nothin’!” It’s not fair to lie to her like this, but what the hell’s he supposed to say? That won’t make him sound like a jackass? “I’m just bein’ an idiot.”
“I doubt it’s nothing if it’s upsetting you this much,” she says. Having his feelings validated shouldn’t hurt so damn much, but if he tells her – “You know, you can tell me what it is. That’s what you do in a relationship, isn’t it? Support each other?” Well, yeah, but – “Even if you think it’s not important, I want to help you…”
He lets himself breathe heavy for a couple of minutes, listening to make sure the two of them aren’t anywhere around before he grumbles, “’s Taka.”
Chihiro’s hand rubs up and down his arm. “Oh?”
Mondo gestures with one hand at where they had been standing five or however many minutes ago, laughing and talking about something generally not acknowledging Mondo was there. “He said anythin’ to me in a week.” Chihiro opens her mouth, but he can’t stop himself from talking over her. “Not anything meaningful, anyway. He’s always hangin’ around Makoto, and it just feels like we don’t really hang out anymore.” Chihiro looks up at him, eyebrows raised, expecting him to continue. And since this has actually succeeded in making him feel a little better, he does. “I know it don’t mean much, but I got so scared ‘a losin’ him when we first started datin’ and now it’s like… It’s happenin’ anyway. Like when Daiya’d get a new girlfriend and kinda forget about me for a while, and I just had ta fend for myself for a while. Find someone else to talk to.”
He moves his arm to rub the back of his head in embarrassment, Chihiro’s hand dropping down to his waist. “That doesn’t sound dumb at all. He has been sort of distant… Have you tried talking to him about it?”
“I don’t know how! How would I even start that kinda conversation? Just accuse him of avoiding me ‘r likin’ Makoto more than me?” His mind tries to fill in the blanks on the potential for that situation, imagination depicting him losing his cool and screaming while Taka just gets upset and cries, oblivious to having hurt Mondo’s feelings.
Or even worse, bitterly snapping back that he was avoiding Mondo, filling in his absence with Makoto’s presence because Mondo picked Chihiro over him; that he’d only been lying when he said he was trying to give them space for their relationship, that he couldn’t be Mondo’s friend if –
“Mondo?” He’s been staring at the floor. He can see Chihiro’s shoes, the edge of her skirt, her socks. And he can’t make himself look up. “Whatever it is you’re thinking, I’m sure it’s not that bad.” He might make a noise akin to a whimper, pathetic and useless. “Makoto’s friendly with everybody here, I’m sure he’s just…working his way through our class, and it was Taka’s turn.”
Mondo’s brows furrow. “’S weird way of puttin’ it, Chi. You make it sound like speed datin’.” She laughs. “You really think that’s it? He ain’t just… Dunno, got sick of me?”
Chihiro giggles louder. “Mondo. Even when he’s not with you, you’re all he ever talks about. I’m sure Makoto knows more about you now than when it was your turn on the friendship-making train.”
He has to snort at that. “Train, huh? Izzat what they’re callin’ it these days?” She swats him. “I think you been playin’ too many dating simulators. Got somethin’ you wanna tell me?”
“Yes! Go talk to Taka.” Mondo rolls his eyes. “I’m serious. I’m sure he misses talking to you, too. But you know he’s not good at multi-tasking – neither of you are. Makoto probably gave him advice on talking to people, and he decided to study it instead of just doing it.”
He sighs. “God, yeah, that’s true. Treats everything like it’s school.”
And just like that, he can breathe easier, feels ridiculous for getting so worked up over an issue that had such an easy solution from the beginning. But he’s always been like that, in a way; it’s what makes his relationship with Chihiro work so well – and his friendship with Taka… What makes that worth holding onto. He just has to fix whatever it is that’s happened.
“I’ll talk to him once classes are over,” he promises, angling his head to kiss her cheek without smacking her with his hair. It’s like that with everything: just practice. Just getting it right. Things will be okay.
(They’re not.)
Kiyotaka is not a stranger to unpleasant things. People have said more than their fair share of nasty things about him, and over the years he has made it his goal never to give in to the urge to retaliate. People who rely on attacks of character only do so because they lack the evidence to back up their own claims. He’s been called stupid before, accused of being corrupt by peers whose families were affected by the stupid decisions of his grandfather. So he’s always made a conscious effort to find the best balance of being reserved, polite, keeping private things private, and being transparent.
And this letter in his locker cuts the thin line on which he’d been balancing.
He isn’t given much time to fully digest their contents and absolutely no time to try and determine who might have sent it. A teacher comes within seconds to escort him to a meeting with the Headmaster, a board room he’s never had reason to enter before. He doesn’t even stop to scold Hiro or the older student questioning him for skipping their classes before he leaves.
He’s never had much reason to even speak to the Headmaster before, and when he enters the room he finds not only Jin Kirigiri but two other men and three of his classmates waiting for him. The Headmaster begins with, “I have called you all here, because I have received word that you are being blackmailed,” and Kiyotaka tunes the rest of the conversation out.
It isn’t on purpose, but his anxiety drowns out every word being spoken. He can’t meet the eyes of anyone else or make out the exact words that they’re saying. He thinks he hears the words “murder” and “despair,” but only has a vague sense of how they’re connected. He sees his hand too-detailed, the floor beneath him blurry. He feels suddenly frozen, or freezing over, like when the throes of adolescence were at their worst and he awoke, sweating and dehydrated, to a fan plastering the moisture to his body and he shivered, covering himself back over with quilts he knew would only repeat the process.
Cyclic.
Toko tries to stutter her way through a rant while the administrators watch them through narrowed eyes. He understands what they must be thinking, even if he refuses to consider it himself. (He will, in time. He has to.) There is a likelihood that someone in this room is only pretending to be blackmailed, a way to insert themselves into the situation to gauge their reactions, assess the progress of the situation, perhaps even to revel in the chaos they’ve created.
He hears the word murder again. Because that’s what they want: one of them to commit murder, to keep their secret hidden.
For the moment, Kiyotaka doesn’t care about who, or even much about why or how they found out. There is only one thing about which he is dreadfully certain: his own stance.
“I don’t care.” The words sound soft to him, but so many eyes float in his direction that he must have said it loudly enough. He sees one of the older men’s lips move, someone he thinks might be an alumnus, but he can’t parse what words he’s saying and it doesn’t matter, doesn’t matter, doesn’t matter. “I don’t care if they tell my secret. I’m not so much of a coward that I would kill someone to keep it hidden. To even consider such a thing is ludicrous.”
“M-maybe your secret’s just n-not that important,” Toko says. Her glasses sit askew on her face, braids coming undone as her fingers tug through them. “N-not all of us can be fucking p-perfect!”
Kiyotaka glowers at Toko and tries to swallow down some of the bile feel feels making its way up his throat, tries to bite back the irritated response that comes to mind first. He closes his eyes and forces himself to consider that she is – they all are – under incredible stress, and that it isn’t his place to pass judgment on anybody else.
And after he’s allowed himself a couple seconds to breathe, he answers. “Maybe my secret wouldn’t be that important to you. I can’t decide for you what it would be worth doing to keep it secret. But for me, killing someone would be worse than people finding this out. Even if it were to bring me some sort of harm –“ Mondo, he thinks, looks up when the words leave his mouth, the light from the windows casting shadow and looking so soft and no, Kiyotaka, we cannot think about this now – “Killing someone to keep it secret wouldn’t solve anything. All it would create is more problems.”
He doesn’t want to wait and hear what Mondo will say, or Chihiro. There is a part of him that wonder if she knows what Mondo’s secret is and plummets. Would that be a better or worse thing to learn than the possibility that Mondo does not agree with him either?
He doesn’t want to hear. It’s selfish, so terribly selfish. But this is a case where, he thinks, he can allow himself to be a little selfish. He turns to the adult who’s been divulging all this information, body angled to the door and ready leave regardless of his classmates’ decisions. “Whatever method of contact you have with the blackmailer, let them know my decision.”
He doesn’t know how things always manage to do this. Go from looking up to damn near suicidal. He doesn’t even get the chance to meet up with Taka after class when he’s pulled out of it – him and Taka and Chi and Toko, for some reason. He’d think it was some sort of over-involved parental shit on Kirigiri’s behalf if it weren’t for that last one. They’re all being blackmailed, and even if he hasn’t checked his locker yet he knows, for a fact, what this piece of blackmail is. Because there’s no way it’s not about Daiya.
And his fears are confirmed when he goes by his locker. He doesn’t read the whole note, he got a good enough rundown at that meeting. He can’t imagine what in the world someone like Taka would have to hide, and even if she was condescending as shit about it he thinks that Toko must be right in thinking it’s not all that bad. Not only is it not something he’d kill over (but right, he was so right about that, Mondo wouldn’t, he couldn’t -) but he’d held strong at the threat of having it exposed. Like it didn’t even matter.
He can’t imagine what Toko’s hiding either, but he doesn’t really care. He cares about Chi, about Taka, but even those emotions are muted under the wave that’s dragging him down under.
Kill someone, or have everyone find out he already did. And then he’ll lose both of them.
Whatever it is whoever this is has over them both – there’s no way it’s the same. No way it’s even close. Even if Mondo lives the rest of his life on the straight and narrow, it’ll never be enough to make up for everything he’s done. That one instance, and everything following it up. And now that he’s the one up on the plate, it’s his turn to shut down completely.
He doesn’t deserve either of them, anyway.
He thinks Chihiro is a little distant, too. She’s next to him, but only just. Stiff, space between them, only close enough for Mondo to know she’s still there. She looks between the three of them, and so does Toko. But Mondo never looks back. To his knowledge, neither does Taka.
(though he could be telling makoto.)
He doesn’t know how much time passes. All he knows is a class meeting is being held, and those two former students are trapping them all in a classroom with the guys from the year above, demanding to know who’s been sending blackmail, making threats, manipulating the reserve course. Whatever evidence they have, it’s not enough to single anyone out, or even determine which class it’s from. Someone – Junko, he thinks – questions how they even know it was one of the ultimates, and not one of the angered reserve course students.
Someone else asks why they can’t know what the blackmail is. And the voice sounds so familiar, but everything in Mondo’s head goes hazy, vision blurring over. It’s become like those races Daiya used to take him too – loud, and overwhelming. He hears people shouting and his blood racing and a sharp voice trying to cut through the din and get people to quiet down. He hears who he’s certain is Makoto saying that it shouldn’t matter what the blackmail is, but he’s overruled by the sheer demand. It’s going to descend into total anarchy.
“If you won’t be settled –“ Taka. “Then I will say –“ Taka? “I am being blackmailed.”
He thinks he sees a lot in his peripheral vision and he feels so much alarm, watching Taka stand up. His hands are shaking, and it’s where Mondo’s gaze fixates. He feels compelled to move in his direction, but rooted by the silence. He doesn’t know how Taka does this. How he stands there and hears someone ask What could YOU be getting blackmailed for?
He watches his fingers shake, too pressed against his legs. For a moment Mondo thinks that he won’t say, and he wouldn’t blame him, and he doesn’t want him to speak and get mauled. They are vicious in here, they are predators, and he’s not ready to smell the blood of someone else he –
“I’m gay.”
It makes the noise stop everywhere, except in Mondo’s head. He hears it and he sees Taka’s hands go paler. And he wants to look up at him, but he can’t.
He wants to stand up with him, but he can’t.
He wants to chase after him, but he can’t. Once again his job, his role, his place in Taka’s life is taken up by Makoto Naegi, and he’s left with the silence filling up with murmurs and whispers and some kind of heinous laughter he can’t shout down because everything in his body is shut and locked. He shouldn’t have let Kiyotaka do that alone. And he should be standing up now, telling his classmates that if they have a problem they can talk to his fists. Or at the very least, he should be the one running down the hallway and getting winded, telling Taka that he’s not alone, he won’t be alone, that he’ll make it through this, that he’ll always stand by his side, but –
He’s not. If Makoto takes his place, he’s the better option. The friend Taka deserves. The boyfriend Chihiro deserves. The brother Daiya deserved.
(failed, step one.)
He tries to tell himself that in a fight, flight, or freeze scenario, he will always choose to fight. He has put it into his head that to run away is cowardly, to freeze means certain death. The only fighting he does now, is against himself; telling himself that running away in the situation he’d been placed in was only natural, even if his face is already stinging from the slaps he hasn’t given himself yet.
Weak. His grandfather was right. He’s weak.
But he ran away, too –
And at least Taka didn’t let this come down on him, didn’t want for this to fall out, put himself out like that, took control of the setting burning around him –
“Taka!” He doesn’t realize he’s stopped in his tracks until he hears sneakers smacking on the tile floor. He’s not surprised it’s Makoto chasing him, but the feeling echoes around in his body, uncomfortable and hollow.
Shouldn’t I have moved on? “Makoto.”
There’s nothing else for him to say. He watches Makoto try to right himself, breathing heavy, hand on his chest. “I don’t know – don’t know who would blackmail you over that!” His cheeks are still flushed, eyes shining, and Taka could almost feel something heavier for that. Almost. “But I won’t let you go through this alone! Whatever it takes, I’ll help you deal with this!”
Even if it’s not the same feeling that he gets with Mondo, Taka believes it. Wholeheartedly. It doesn’t completely calm the fear, and even though Makoto stays with him for a couple hours, helps him to calm down, it comes creeping back at night. He never eats dinner, too strung out on nerves, and he sleeps far past his alarm clock but he doesn’t really feel any kind of way about it. There’s a note slipped under his door from Makoto that he tried coming by to wake him up and that if he wants to talk, he’s free all weekend. He’ll be in his room.
Eating. He should eat. He hasn’t eaten properly in weeks. Not since the letter in his locker that- no, he hasn’t even looked at it since then, can’t remember what was on it exactly, won’t remember what was on it exactly. It would be better if he just forgot all about it.
It would be better if everybody else forgot, too. It isn’t as though the upperclassmen have ever paid him much attention, but it feels like they do now, only when he’s turned away. He feels spied upon; no different than when the note first arrived, but instead of a feeling that one person knows more than they should, it’s everyone around him. His own classmates, too. Even the ones who used to be friendly to him, view him from a distance.
His vision shadows down with a filter. Four months ago, he stood next to Mondo near here, trying to get an arm around his friend’s shoulders. People looked then, or so Mondo said, embarrassed and under his breath, blush bringing out the softer shades in his eyes. Kiyotaka didn’t feel it then, didn’t process anything but how it felt to be so close to someone, to matter.
No one’s there to shake him from his distance. His eyes slide back into focus, trained on Sayaka at the table adjacent. Their eyes meet and hers divert sharply, body turned to keep him from even looking in her direction.
She’s not the only one who’s distant. He doesn’t make his best efforts to reach out on Saturday or Sunday, but almost everyone he sees turns away. Once he sees Chihiro going back to her room, eyes bloodshot and face puffy. She waves, but doesn’t talk, only sighing and heading inside. Kyouko offers him a nod and what he thinks might be a small smile on her way somewhere else.
No one tries to talk to him. Not even Mondo.
He wants to be upset. But he feels nothing.
Monday morning, he does. He feels dread.
Having things start to collide is no reason, he thinks, to break up his routine. He awakens. He stretches. He showers. He puts on his clothes. He moves toward the dining hall.
His routine is broken there. It’s not unusual for him to eat breakfast by himself, to let the people in his class he considers positive acquaintances filter around him even if he doesn’t participate much in their conversation; but this morning he’s beaten to his usual table by Sakura and Hina. He expects the same sort of glares or embarrassed diversions he’s been getting from Leon, from Toko, the snorts of derision from Byakuya. But Hina doesn’t turn away, spoon in her mouth as she waves him over.
Kiyotaka doesn’t know what to expect. Hina covers her mouth with her hand and says something that sounds garbled in the slow-motions his brain is receiving things. Sakura leans closer to reiterate, “How are you feeling?”
There’s no polite way to ask why they care, so he won’t. “I don’t.”
“That is to be expected,” Sakura says. She inclines her head in a nod, and slides a plate of toast, eggs, rice – far too much in his direction. “You haven’t been eating,” she says. “I’m going to make sure you do it now.”
He blinks, but he can’t make his mouth work. He almost jolts when Hina’s hand touches his shoulder, watching her swallow behind her hand before she tries speaking again. “For whatever it’s worth, I don’t think you have anything to be embarrassed about.” She punctuates her words by bringing her arms up, fists clenched, ready for a fight. “You took that totally shitty situation and you owned it!”
“No one’s spoken to me,” he says. It strange, how different his voice sounds. Strained, lacking volume.
“They will come around,” Sakura says.
“And if they don’t, who needs ‘em?” Hina adds.
“Mondo.” Uh oh. He knows that tone. It’s the we-need-to-talk tone.
Mondo’s fingertips go chill along with his back, his sides, swallowing too much spit in his mouth. “Yeah?”
Chihiro’s not looking at him, eyes on her food as she picks at her rice. She’s only eaten a little, and he knows what that means, too. Nerves. And it’s taking a lot for him not to panic too hard, tell her to spit it out, internal monologue already operating at a shout. He rubs his hands on his thighs and watches her face, unblinking, as her mouth finally opens. “Uhm. It’s about Taka.”
To say that he has no idea where this is going is an understatement. He feels like he’s been turned around by force, and looks down at his own food, frowning. “What about him?” The tone of voice and everything – were they fighting? Was she upset about him being – No, she wouldn’t be upset about him being gay. That was ridiculous. So it had to be the former, right? She was crying two days ago. He hadn’t seen either of them, but she could have seen him. “You guys get in a fight ‘r somethin’?”
“No,” she says, and he can just sense a follow-up he won’t like and he feels something like… Like when the hackles raise on a dog. “It’s just, uhm.”
He hates this feeling of agitation, and it’s all he feels right now. His moods have been in flux since the letter, worse since the meeting. He bounces between feeling nothing at all, unaware of the passage of time, and feeling too much all at once, like everything caving in on him while the clock moves agonizingly slow. There are two people he has made a concerted effort not to lose his patience around: his girlfriend, and his best friend, and putting those two in conflict is the worst case scenario he can possibly think of.
(I would feel the same if it was the other way around if it was Taka having issues with Chi I would -)
“What?” He doesn’t mean to snap it that way, teeth clicking when he hits the T. This is the most he’s spoken in three? in four? in eight? days, and Chihiro looks startled and for a second something inside of him bends, gets colder and then goes numb and blank. He almost thinks he isn’t seeing anything at all until he refocuses his gaze and sees Chihiro’s eyes, wide but not lined with tears.
At the beginning of the year, she would have been sobbing. Now she only looks…decided on something. “Are you in love with him?”
He wants to laugh. In fact, his first reaction should have been to laugh. He stares at her for a moment, not processing an answer, just his own thoughts. He didn’t laugh… He didn’t laugh… Because that would have been wrong. Yeah. Being gay isn’t some sort of joke. There’s nothing wrong with it, it’s not an insult, no reason to react with humor or anger, even if the question came so far out of left field. “No,” he says, and the flat tone of his response doesn’t fall deaf on his own ears. “What makes you ask that?”
Chihiro’s eyes have turned back to her rice, fingers rubbing her lower lip as she thinks. “I don’t know how to explain it,” she confesses. “The two of you are very close. I know that’s normal for friends, but you’re also…weird around him.”
“Weird how?” Like how all his tone has suddenly disappeared?
“Well, since he’s come out, you won’t talk to him.” He freezes, hands gripping his chopsticks too tightly. They could break under the pressure, if he isn’t careful, and that wouldn’t – that would look weird. “He’s very worried, rarely leaves his room anymore. But if anybody else brings him up in conversation, you get defensive.”
(six days. it’s been six days) “How so?” Is that all he can do? (since he came out, sixteen since the letter) Ask questions?
The look on Chihiro’s face is starting to deteriorate from thoughtful to annoyed. He’s rarely seen this side of her, her patience is so strong. “Well,” she starts, voice stronger, louder, “When I first said I wanted to talk to you about him, you got…guarded. Your hands tensed, you scowled, and you started to lose your patience. I could almost see you working through your options. You were thinking which one of us you could live without.”
“WHAT?!”
“And now you’re shouting,” she continues. “It’s like you’re scared to talk to him, but you don’t want anyone else to talk about him either. And when I asked you if you were in love with him, it took you three minutes to respond. Your words were clearer when you were asking me why I thought so then they were when you said no.” She blinks, and he doesn’t know how she can be so calm when she’s asking him this. “You had to think about it, Mondo.”
Mondo doesn’t know how to start with a response, but he knows he can’t begin to formulate one while she’s looking at him like that. He pulls his eyes away to stare at his food, appetite missing, but he picks at it anyway, making himself eat. “Didn’t wanna say some homophobic shit on accident, y’know?” She doesn’t. He’s almost entirely sure she doesn’t. “Ain’t nothin’ wrong with bein’ gay. Ain’t like it’s an insult, right? An’ if I over-react like that – that’d hurt his feelin’s.”
“He’s not here right now, Mondo.” She doesn’t even give him a second to breathe. “And you haven’t spoken to him in six days. You’ve barely spoken to me in six days, but it’s the longest I’ve seen you go without talking to him since you got locked in the sauna together.” She sets down her chopsticks and turns to face him. “I’m going to ask you again. And… I’m not mad, if you are. And I’ll believe whatever answer you give me, but I think it’s best for us both if you think about it. Are you in love with Kiyotaka Ishimaru?”
He doesn’t know why his tongue still sticks to the roof of his mouth, now that he’s had time to process the question. There should be no shock, no trip, no confused thrumming in his chest.
Fear. It just has to be fear. Fear that Chihiro won’t believe him when he answers, even though she says she will. “No, Chi,” he says, telling himself the lack of tone is just calmness. “I’m not in love with Kiyo.”
She blinks, and for a second he sees confusion and disbelief start to darken the hues. But she shakes her head, and smiles. She laughs, but it sounds hollow and forced. “Alright, then.” She turns back to her food, but he sees her hands are almost trembling. He opens his mouth to ask about it, but her voice is still loud when she continues, “You still need to talk to him. I’m not the one you need to convince you’re not a homophobe.”
“I will,” he promises. “After class. You can force me, if you think that I won’t.” She laughs, and he does too. He’s not sure which one of them sounds more forced, or if the air between them feels any less tense as they finish and head back to class, fingers linked but not too tightly. Holding on, but just barely. She hasn’t asked him what his secret is, and he hasn’t asked about hers.
He wonders if he should have asked Kiyotaka. The consuming pit in his stomach says yes.
The look Makoto is giving him as he walks into the classroom is as scathing as he thinks it’s possible for the guy to get. Chihiro takes her seat near the back, seemingly tuned out to everything around her, and he can’t say he blames her. Makoto’s brows hardly have the definition or aggressive nature that Taka’s do, but he’s pulling off a pretty decent approximation of pissed off. He doesn’t stand, but his body turns in his seat, and he calls out, “Hey, Mondo?” in a voice that makes it clear Mondo has no choice but to talk to him.
So he guesses he’ll have to wait before he can talk to Taka. “Yeah?”
Makoto leans forward on his arms, against the desk. Still not physically intimidating, but there is something to be said for the pressure he’s applying. “You better not be thinking of breaking off your friendship with Taka over this.”
Just hit me where it hurts, why dontcha? “Fuck no. The hell makes you even think that?”
Like everything else in his life, it’s just posturing. He knows damn well what makes Makoto think that, and he’s probably sweating bullets because Makoto doesn’t look convinced. “You’ve been avoiding him, Mondo. Ever since he came out to the class, you’ve been distant –“
“’Cause I been dealin’ with my own shit,” he snaps. “I’m gonna talk to him after class –“
“You’d better!” Makoto rarely shouts, so when he does the effect is something else entirely. Something in Mondo’s chest feels constricted and anxious, the colors he’s seeing all distorted. He doesn’t get why this means so much to Makoto (he’s the class friend he’s everyone’s friend he’s just like -) unless he (Makoto’s just being nice he just cares about Taka’s wellbeing since you haven’t been -) and Taka are – “I don’t think you can call yourself a man if you turn your back on someone over something like that.”
Mondo hits the table and Makoto flinches, bravado forgotten for a moment. And Mondo feels embarrassed, but he’s not sure what part of this whole situation is getting to him the worst: how it all looks, being called out like this, losing his temper when he’d been so good about reigning it in…
He breathes heavily, forcing himself to swallow and count to ten. The words twist in knots in his head as he tries to form words, some kind of explanation, something that won’t be too much when three-quarters of their classmates are watching him break down. “Like I said, I just got caught up in my own shit. Know I gotta apologize to ‘im when I see him. But it ain’t that he’s gay. Ain’t got a fuckin’ problem with that, and if anyone does –“
“Are you sure?” It’s not Makoto this time, not any voice he’s used to hearing and the proximity makes him jump.
“’Course I’m sure. The fuck kinda question even is that?”
Junko tilts her head at him, hand covering half of her mouth, concealing what he’s sure is a rather unpleasant expression. “Well, you know. It’s just that, if it were me, I think I’d be a little freaked! Like, what if he’s into you?”
It comes at him again, that he should have some kind of humored reaction to the possibility he’s been given. The idea that Kiyotaka would find him attractive is utterly absurd, and maybe if he weren’t feeling cornered he’d even snort at the idea. All he does is blink, confused. “That ain’t gonna happen.” He gestures at himself. “Do I look like the kinda guy he could bring home to his cop father?”
“Well, you know what they say –“ Junko’s expression doesn’t change much, but her tone is suddenly flat, morose, though her hands are waving, fingers wiggling. “Good girls always want bad boys, right? So maybe it’s the same with gay dudes, too. And he’s like, the ultimate good, right? And you’re kinda the ultimate bad –“
“Junko,” Makoto says, voice an exhausted warning.
(but she has a point.)
(he is the ultimate bad.)
(why is taka even friends with him?)
(he can’t even get the supportive friend shit right.)
“- and you guys are like, super close!” How’s she change her emotions so quick? “So what if he’s, like, been pining over you all this time?! That would be like, super creepy –“
“Hell no it wouldn’t!” He’s been keeping his eyes fixed on Makoto, because something about the fashionista makes him so uneasy. But when she says that, implies there’s something gross about his kyoudai – “Even if that did happen, which it ain’t, I could do fuckin’ worse than Kiyotaka Ishimaru.”
He feels some immediate grief wash over him, that his words all felt wrong. Junko seems to take a second to assess him, totally blank, before her eyes and expression grow bored again. He thinks he hears her call him lame before she saunters off, leaving him staring at the floor.
“Mondo…”
Makoto’s voice is like a wave in the ocean again, calming, but it doesn’t pull him to ease. “I didn’t mean it like that,” Mondo mumbles. He hears Makoto sigh, weary, and before he can think through his words, he says, “I could do worse, only ‘cause it’s impossible to do any better than Taka.”
When he looks back, Makoto has this expression on his face…something that Mondo can’t quite interpret. His eyes seem brighter, like he’s seeing something new, and Mondo shuffles off to his seat before he can stick his foot any farther down his throat.
(he doesn’t see taka in the doorway, face pink, smiling for the first time in six days, breathing for the first time in sixteen, feeling hopeless, knowing he’s in farther than he ever planned.)
(and he doesn’t see chihiro, either.)
Having overheard, he knows that Mondo will be coming to speak to him sometime before the day is out, and even if he doesn’t, he knows why. There’s a relief on him, or off him. Whichever way, the excitement billows up too much through his chest to his face, and he feels again. It’s not perfect, and he’s not quite elated. Toko and Byakuya and Leon and Sayaka still avoid him, but Hina and Sakura and Makoto are more involved, Chihiro is going back to normal, Kyouko is how she has always been, and Mondo will becoming back soon too. Things are, he thinks, as good as they are going to be, given all consideration.
His reforming confidence trips him up. Or, rather, his vigilance down, he doesn’t notice a smack to his knee until he trips, papers flying across the floor. He’d attribute it easily to his own frazzled state, but he hears words accompany the actions that broken floorboards don’t use.
But there are bandaged hands helping him sort. He looks up with some surprise – it’s not often the upperclassmen go out of their way to interact, and what Gundham Tanaka was doing on the fifth floor he can’t imagine. “The dark gods will be coming after her,” he says, of the girl who’d sent his papers scattered through the hallway.
Kiyotaka wonders if he’s referring to his hamsters. “Thank you?” he says, unsure what the appropriate response to this certain dialect is.
“Mortals are such petty creatures,” Gundham replies. “It is one of many reasons life is better in the company of hellbeasts. Such vessels do not lie, for it is not in their nature.”
He’s never a pet before, but he nods and says “Sure” as their fingers brush beneath paper.
“Though you are bold for a mortal, which leads me to wonder…” Kiyotaka looks up to his face, half-obscured by a scarf. He sees a bulge moving along the lines of the fabric, just underneath where his fingers tug at the swath. “If this mortal drinks coffee?”
Something in him sparks, almost surprised. He’d almost be certain that he’s reading the situation wrong, but something’s telling him that he’s not. And he’s attractive, Taka thinks; unconventional, and uncompromising. Passionate. They were things he could admire. Things he could be interested in learning more about.
“I’ve never had much coffee before,” he says, “But I’d be willing to try.”