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“What are you doing?”
Hinata doesn’t know what he’s doing. He has no idea, but he does know that when he tries to think his head hurts, so he’s doing his best to just not …. do that. Perhaps he’ll regret it later. Right now he doesn’t care.
Over the dinner table – dinner had been mostly silent, a few strained stabs at conversation were made but that was it – Hinata caught Komaeda’s eye. He hadn’t thought about it. He’d jerked his head towards the door and stood up, motioning for Komaeda to follow. Just done it, struck by the sudden and pressing need to get him alone.
He wasn’t sure Komaeda would follow him, but follow him he had. Here, under the statue, seems the right place to be. The timer looms above them, ticking ominously, but Hinata doesn’t look at it. His head feels fuzzy, and everything else is tense. All through dinner his left leg jackhammered under the table, as though his feet couldn’t bear the thought of staying still, were preparing to carry him away, far away.
“Hinata ….?” Komaeda prompts, irritatingly expectant.
Hinata opens his mouth. Then he closes it again. Now that they’re together, he has no idea what he was going to say – no idea if there even was something in the first place, no reason he can articulate for why he called him out here today. But there’s definitely something, some urge to see him, and if not talk to him, then at least do something. Right now he’s having trouble thinking clearly. So he moves.
“What are you doing?”
Hinata takes another step closer and reaches out. He’s not entirely sure what he’s reaching for, but his hand fastens onto the bottom of Komaeda’s shirt, taking a small handful of crumpled fabric, and that feels right – getting closer, holding onto him.
Komaeda draws a shaky breath. “Ahhh …. Hinata, I don’t think you want to –”
“Stop talking,” Hinata says quietly. “Please,” he adds. He doesn’t want to know what Komaeda means to say, but he’s sure it will be something dishonest. And he just can’t. Can’t focus at the moment. His head hurts. He leans forward, drawing Komaeda closer with the hand on his clothes, and rests his forehead on Komaeda’s shoulder. The fabric of his jacket is soft. It also smells nice – something Hinata had no reason to suspect, and yet he still isn’t surprised in the slightest to find it so.
Hinata exhales, tension draining out of his shoulders. This, of all things, is good. More than anything else that has happened (since Kuzuryuu and Peko, since Koizumi, since Hanamura and Togami under the table – hell, since he woke up on the beach), here, with the last person he should trust, he feels okay.
It’s the way, Hinata realizes, the way that he felt when he was very young and afraid of the dark. He would lie awake at night with his covers pulled up to his chin and his eyes wide, picking terrifying shapes out of the black, until he finally closed them, and felt his heart rate settle. Not safe – he didn’t feel safe – but comforted, in the thought that, after all, the worst that could happen was only death.
Komaeda’s hands hover over his back, almost touching him but not quite. Hinata feel the rise and fall of his chest, hear his breath – shallow, faint, like he’s afraid even that might upset the moment. “I don’t even like you,” Hinata mutters, letting go of Komaeda’s shirt and sliding his arms around his waist. “I don’t even like you.” Komaeda is stiff and uncertain, but Hinata doesn’t care. He’s warm, too.
“I …” Komaeda’s voice is dry and unsettled, and Hinata hears him swallow. “That doesn’t matter to me,” he begins uncertainly, “because I …. because someone like you is so far above me …. I’m not even fit to be touched by you …. it’s ….”
Hinata’s arms tighten, and Komaeda’s voice stutters to a stop. His heart wasn’t in that one, which made it easy for Hinata to ignore his words, bury his face in his neck and breathe in the smell of his hair. Komaeda’s very presence had always been comforting. That hadn’t – that hasn’t stopped. It was one of the reasons why Hinata avoided him, after – because he shouldn’t feel comforted by that, and yet he still was. Well, now his inhibitions …. he doesn’t know where his inhibitions went, but they’re definitely not nearby.
Komaeda inhales, to try again, and Hinata suddenly can’t bear the thought of listening to him anymore. He kisses him on instinct, before he even considers what he’s doing, but once his thoughts catch up to the rest of him, he still can’t bring himself to stop. Komaeda tenses, then sighs, and his hands finally settle on Hinata’s back and press him gently closer.
It goes on for what seems like forever. Hinata’s mind is finally blank, emptied clear by the feeling of Komaeda’s mouth and his warm, soothing presence. Some part of Hinata wishes it wasn’t like this – wished Komaeda was someone he was sure about, when he is anything but.
A thought occurs to him – this is his first kiss.
Hinata pulls away, but only a breath. “I don’t know …. I don’t know about this,” he confesses, resting his forehead against Komaeda’s.
Komaeda sighs an unsteady sigh. “I don’t, either,” he admits. Honest – he’s being honest, Hinata registers, and then he’s being kissed again, and he stops caring about things like that. Maybe he doesn’t need to be sure about this anyway.
It’s a stolen moment of relief. They don’t speak again, but wrap around each other, quietly desperate, restrained but intense. Nobody interrupts – no other students, no robots. Hands shake and ache to move, to do more than just pull each other closer, but neither dares, unable to offer each other anything more than comfort and mindlessness.
Night has fallen quite decisively by the time each goes his separate way. The next time Hinata sees him, Ibuki is saluting like a soldier and Owari is trembling with fear and Komaeda himself has lost all ability to make any sense. They never speak of it again, never so much as acknowledge it happened, and Hinata pushes the whole thing to the back of his mind to deal with if he ever manages to survive this.