Chapter Text
If you tried hard enough, you would succeed in the end, wasn’t that right? Hinata believed it to be true, hoped it to be true. There was nothing more discouraging than to know that despite all your efforts you might never amount to anything in life; he had to believe in it.
That’s why, at an age of twenty-three, when walking down the corridor and clothed in his suit and tie, Hinata was sure a bright future laid ahead of him. He was the one who could form and build it to anything he desired if he just kept at it.
"You seem unusually bright today." A voice greeted from ahead.
At the end of the hallway, there was Hinata's partner leaning against the wall while having his arms crossed, a calm smile pulling on the corners of his mouth. It seemed no matter what Hinata did, he’d always be one step ahead of him: he, Komaeda Nagito member of the Future Foundation after half a year had passed since he woke up from the coma. Through fate’s capricious will they had become partners or so Hinata liked to think. He certainly hadn’t planned for it to happen.
Hinata had been so sure he’d be the first to arrive today, thus the change of plans left him slightly off track, setting a frown between his eyebrows. He had wanted the extra time to prepare himself.
"Oh, was I wrong?" Komaeda pushed himself away from the wall and raised an eyebrow as he did.
"No... yes." Hinata paused. "I’m fine."
Komaeda only smiled. He didn’t really seem to buy it, which wasn’t a surprise considering Hinata’s so very confident response. Nonetheless, Komaeda placed his hand on the handle of the office’s door and let himself and Hinata in with a simple “Alright then.” He wasn’t going to push the issue. How typical of him.
"I met Naegi-kun a short while ago," Komaeda continued, sauntering towards the great desk in the middle which was littered with computer cables, keyboards and several surveillance screens. "He said we’ll do this shift until the end of the week and next time they’ll let us join the outside team."
That meant five more days of sitting in a darkened room, watching surveillance cameras and receiving only images of the aftermath caused by havoc and despair. There was hardly anything captured, but the cracks of the battered streets when the camera swept over it, repeating its half circular movement over and over again. Hinata and Komaeda were in charge of alerting the guards around the Future Foundation’s headquaters via their headsets, should they spot abnormal activity, though most of the time they didn’t.
Not that they wanted something to happen. It was just a tedious task, and Hinata couldn’t say he was very fond of it.
Komaeda pressed his index against one of the screens and said, “then we’ll be able to see this with our very own eyes. Exciting, isn’t it?”
Hinata fumbled with the cables of his headset - someone had left it in a mess and now it was one great tangled mess - while he thought about how he had wanted to leave the building ever since they said he couldn’t; it did raise his pulse with a beat of elation to know he might be able to do so in a few days. If he, and Komaeda were on the same page of what ‘exciting’ meant to them, however, he didn’t know.
In all the time he got to spend with Komaeda as his partner, Hinata had never truly laid aside the wariness, which had slowly, but solidly built up inside his heart while in the simulation.
Hinata had always had the feeling Komaeda was up to something, planning something. He was so distrustful, it was almost like blind belief. But how is it that even then, Hinata would sometimes open up when he shouldn’t, and fall for Komaeda’s trap all over again? (Was it really a trap?)
He really didn’t know what to think of him, of their relationship or of himself.
Finally, Hinata had untangled the knot. “Yeah, I guess…” he answered as if absent-minded, although he had been listening all too well. He shifted in his chair, focusing intensely on the static in front of him, trying to look blank and empty: anything but nervous.
He wanted to ask. He wanted to clear up. He wanted to attempt again what he had failed, and let stay unresolved countless times before, and he had planned to do so today. It wasn’t going to get easier no matter how much time would pass. Hinata took a deep breath.
"Komaeda?"
"Hm?"
There was a slight pause, and with each passing second, Hinata’s heartbeats grew heavier. They shook him hard, had him tightly gripping the table’s edge, before he turned to the right to face Komaeda. He needed to see his expression, and Komaeda was watching him, waiting for him, all while pressing a thin line with his mouth. Hinata guessed Komaeda had sensed the atmosphere and was anticipating what was about to come. It wasn’t new after all. They had had this conversation before. Somehow it was funny how they had managed to escape it every time before it got to an answer.
Hinata licked his lips. ”Komaeda,…” he began.
"Are you in love with me?"
The first time Hinata noticed, noticed the tiniest fraction of a hint to what Komaeda might feel for him, his head was going haywire by the lack of nutrients, while his stomach, desperate for food, digested itself. He had been half starved to death. The mental snapshots of what transpired back then, when they were trapped with nothing to eat, nor drink in order to fuel their incite for murder, were blurry at best. How could he trust his memories to be truthful to reality, when he’d been barely conscious? Every time he had woken up, he’d be so confused as to what the time or where he was, always having to fight off the feeling of wanting to stay down and fade away with the next exhaling breath.
One of the fragments to burn itself into Hinata’s memory was the moment when Komaeda nullified everything he had once told Hinata. Everything Hinata thought he knew, tumbled down and crashed to dissolve in a puddle of confusion.
What was the truth and what was the lie?
Why did Komaeda need to do this-- to see if he can milk some pity off Hinata as he had said was the reason?
Hinata decided to never fully trust Komaeda’s words ever again.
And then, a change happened in Komaeda. If he hadn’t been contradictory before, now he didn’t make any sense at all anymore to Hinata. Oh, and Hinata had payed attention to everything Komaeda had said in the past, so he noticed.
He’d notice how Komaeda’s behaviour towards him had made a 180 degree turn from what seemed to be admiration to outright mockery. You’d think it was because Hinata turned out to be not a talent, to be a fraud in their midst, and having the audacity to pretend to be one of them. It was laughable, because all this time Hinata had suspected himself of being the traitor, but as it was he’d been a nobody among a faceless crowd, who wanted to be a somebody in the overpopulated world. Hajime Hinata had sold himself to be someone else. But no, Hinata wasn’t the only one Komaeda started to treat differently. The others, too, weren’t safe from scoff, and Hinata couldn’t shake it off: the recollection of Komaeda’s derisive stare. He looked betrayed in those jade toned eyes.
And that was weird, wasn’t it?
What had Komaeda expected?
What did he expect from Hinata or from anyone else? What did he expect from the talents? Suddenly, Komaeda didn’t seem to need them anymore.
And then there was the question of why this connection between Hinata and Komaeda stayed, tugging at Hinata’s insides to the point of making him sick, even though Komaeda had thrown away all this work and all the effort Hinata had invested to understand him and lit it on fire.
Hinata had wanted to confront, if he’d been strong enough. But even then Komaeda wouldn’t see him, wouldn’t see anybody, full in preparation of leaving them all without another word of guidance or clearance. Komaeda-- always pursuing his path of independence. How often Hinata wished he hated him, so he could stop thinking, stop questioning the what, the why, the purpose. But that was Hinata’s nature, to never truly judge until he knew the reason behind, and Hinata had already regretted trying to change himself once. He wouldn’t do it again.
A sharp inhale, a piercing stare: first wide-eyed and then after a blink filled with nothing but blandness. “Are we repeating that again? … Because I held your hand that time?” Komaeda coughed out a laugh, so incredibly dry. “I didn’t think you were the type to jump to conclusions so fast, Hinata-kun.”
“Then why did you react that way when I asked you the first time?”
“What way?”
Komaeda rested his chin on his hand, his expression stating ‘this is pointless’ better than words ever could.
There was no way Komaeda could’ve forgotten it: the silence. The endless silence that had been so unlike him. Hinata had dropped a bomb out of nowhere, after all, so in a way it was to be expected. Hinata still wasn’t confident it was true, when he went after a hunch that had developed only after three years of observing the puzzle pieces of the past, rather than solid evidence. Seriously, Komaeda loving him? It made Hinata’s cheeks flame up by the mere thought of it, and he didn’t know whether it was of embarrassment to even have come to the conclusion or something else.
But three years were a considerable time. A long time in which he had been able to wreck his prototype brain about what he had experienced in the simulation alongside the others. And his altered brain was merciless. It hadn’t forgotten a thing. It was like a camera, video-screening with hyperrealism. And although the time which had been the most crucial -- the one when Komaeda had hinted to the word love (or had he) -- was a hazy mess in Hinata’s mind, it was still there, and could be used in the greater picture.
Hinata had asked Komaeda once before, if he might feel something for him, and instead of dismissing it, Komaeda had closed the door on the situation, quite literally.
“You had left in the middle of the conversation.”
“Oh, that? Yes.” Komaeda said, suddenly matter-of-factly.
“Yes...? That’s it?”
“What do you want to hear, Hinata-kun?”
“How about you answering my question?”
“Rather than that, what do you hope to accomplish with asking me, hm? Is dear project hope so starved for love, that you would need mine?”
Hinata’s face reddened as blood flushed the thin veins under his skin, his heart thumping wildly. Komaeda’s words were pointedly infuriating, and frankly Hinata had never planned ahead as to what might come after the question of ‘do you love me’. Komaeda was more prepared to the situation than last time, and the difference was excruciating.
What was Hinata trying to accomplish?
At that moment, he was so riled up, Hinata could do nothing but bite his lip.
“Komaeda, you…!” he said, tightly clenching his fist. Komaeda, you…
‘Komaeda’ knew. He saw right through Hinata, like he always did. And there was a grin stretching his lips as he spoke up again. “You don’t know, do you?”
The tension in Hinata’s muscles receded: no, he didn’t.
“See, that’s what I don’t understand when it comes to you. You’re trying to establish our relationship. Why? So we can go out, and be a happy couple in this god-forsaken world? Because -- Hinata-kun -- that’s what you normally try to do when you ask someone if they love you. You’d want the affirmation so you can date, no? And you with someone like me? You’re vastly mistaken if you think we could ever be like that.”
Komaeda turned away from Hinata. He brought his attention to the screen activity in front and added a little quieter, yet firmly. “Being friends is fine by me…”
Hinata had had nothing more to say that day. Komaeda was right. How could Hinata expect an answer from him, when he scarcely knew what to do with it? Dating Komaeda had never crossed his mind. Not consciously. So why was he so insistent on making the other confess?
Hinata sensed. Hinata felt. It didn’t mean though he knew what it meant. Kamukura Izuru was a highly intellectual individual. But the right interpretation of what you felt wasn’t a given factor just because you were intelligent.
When Hinata didn’t know what to make of his feelings, he got affected by them anyway. Perhaps even more so because he didn’t know.
When Kamukura didn’t know what to make of his feelings, he threw them away: they were not needed in his abstract, straight-line world.
The current Hinata was a mixture of them both. It had always been Hinata Hajime. The fact that he changed his name didn’t change who he was and is. But the alteration of his brain had made him forget his past, drilled into him to forget being like himself and how to be human, creating instead a talented machine.
And now he was trying so hard to not block out his feelings and instead let them wash over him, however uncomfortable they may be. He wanted to reset to his default state, like a rehabilitation, working very diligently on being an ordinary, normal twenty-three year old guy.
When Hinata returned to his room that day after the shift had ended, he laid down in bed, caught by a swirl of emotions and thoughts. For the first time ever he began to think about what it’d be like to date Komaeda Nagito.