Archive of Our Own

The funny thing is...Denki really did warn him, “One day a car’s g’nna run over you while yer shitfaced.”

The essence of his solicitude was conveyed and obtained even if Denki was brusquely interrupted by Hitoshi bomb-diving himself over his lap and crushing his dick. It was a sad loss but also beside the point, therefore, Hanta is going to pretend that everything is beautiful and nothing hurts.

Except that his ass does hurt and the effing metempsychosis of Adonis is emerging hysterically out of a luxurious matte black Cadillac Crossover in his direction. It happens subsequently to a dull boom of metal-hitting-wood and an equally muffled thump of human scraping the floor.

Hanta is briefly aware of the twinge blooming like a bush of red and white roses across his wrist as it hits the cold concrete for leverage—so that the rest of his syrupy frame doesn’t earn the pleasure of sweeping decades-old dust from the sidewalk shimmering under the glidden vintage yellow light from the diligent street lamps.

“Oh my god!” The male reincarnation of Aphrodite drops to his knees beside the wide eyed Hanta. “Are you alright? Holy shit, I’m so sorry I—” He falters mid-screeching and exhales loudly, hot breath fanning over Hanta’s flushed face. “We need—we need to get you to the hospital. Fucking hell, I’m sor—”

“Dude,” Hanta drawls before his stress hormones skyrocket up to the Milky Way. “Y’can’t take me to the hospital, ‘m fuckin’ shitfaced.”

And everything that happens after that—history.

Illustration by MeowMonster

---

Hanta is usually pretty careful when it comes to smoking weed, skateboarding, drinking and any combination of the three.

Key word is: usually.

That night, however, he overdid it. A little. Okay, a lot. Not enough to actually visit the ether from how clouded he was, but there are a scant of memories he recalls even if he forces every single brain cell to toil in search for the events in those blank flashbacks. The last time he got this drunk and high was back in high school, and those are dark times that shall not be discussed unless a gun is shoved to his temple.

Scratch that—he’s going to wrestle the gun and pierce his skull without an ounce of vacillation.

Silver light filters through the curtains, and thank god the angle of the window in ratio to his bed doesn’t indulge the rays of light in laying themselves across his face like models on tanning beds at a pool. A formless rhythm consisting of feet tottering on the floor echoes from somewhere in the apartment—probably the sad excuse of a kitchen the place offers—and the familiar humming of the music his roommate blasts every day tips his ears like a secretive whisper.

A twinge sent directly from his left wrist shakes the last haze of sleep off his shoulders when he tries to prop himself on his arms. The motion triggers a zap of obscure ache—as if it’s debating whether the grand entrance is worthy—from the area under his ribs and above his right hip where he can envision an ugly bruise sitting proudly.

Fuck. Yesterday night.

Hanta groans, wrist annoyingly itching and the rest of him sore. Figures—especially when a car whacks you at the crack of dawn.

There are ripped off memory fragments of him ambling on the pitch dark sidewalk bridging his apartment complex and the nearest park. There was a flash that made him feel like a deer caught in headlights, and the next thing he knew he was sprawled on the pavement with a sluggish figure of a handsome man kneeling in front of him. It’s kind of weird that he remembers thinking—with his brain a syrup in his skull—that the stranger is handsome, yet doesn’t picture any defined features.

(Albeit, he once hiccupped a full presidential speech into his best friend’s shoulder about how handsome he is when in reality the friend in question is a malapert nuisance with a container of vocabulary stuck up his loud-ass.)

A few cut off sentences floating up the surface enable him to piece together a brief conversation about hospital, car, and alcohol. It eventuated somewhere in the blank time frame between staggering through the door and face planting his bed, that far he can tell, but the rest of the chain dissolves into fog.

Does it mean the guy brought him to the dorm? And then what did he do? Flee?

Fucking hell. He’s a dumbass.

Knowing himself, he probably reassured the stranger he was fine, begged him to not take him to hospital due to obvious reasons, and most certainly agreed to pretend nothing of it had ever occurred to keep both his and the unfortunate dude’s dignity. It is slightly unnerving that the guy accepted the deal, because Hanta’s wrist might be fractured, if the swell of his skin is any indicator.

Well, no use in crying over spilled milk. If his wrist was broken it would have been much more painful, right? It’s probably a minimal sprain, nothing he can’t handle, and his roommate will be able to patch this up without ado.

He hopes.

---

“Ouch!” Hanta winces. “It hurts, stop.”

Iida Tenya—an obnoxiously loud smarty-pants leech that Hanta kinda-sorta got attached to ever since they were forced to share a crumpled dorm room on their freshman year—looks thoughtfully at the scowl spreading on Hanta’s face and muffles something unintelligible under his pointy nose. His thumb sinks into the irritated area of oily skin Hanta presented him two minutes ago and his other thumb rubs his square chin as if trying to get rid of something.

Disappointment in Hanta’s dumbassery, perhaps.

“It doesn’t look broken,” he reassures when Hanta whimpers at another gripe. “I’ll bandage it and you can take Ibuprofen, but if by tomorrow it doesn’t get any better I’m dragging you to the pharmacy by the ear. We’re clear?”

“A shining fucking crystal,” Hanta grumps like a cat that doesn’t get its cream and watches Tenya rummage through their overstocked first-aid kit. Future Med Student Habits, he supposes.

“I sincerely understand why you don’t want to turn to professional medical help,” he continues in a tone that is perhaps concerned and perhaps cynical because he’s a piece of ass. “But I’m in no way certified to determine whether this is a severe injury or not. It might be a fracture, like you said, but we won’t know it without an x-ray.”

“I’ll be fine,” Hanta mutters with his coal eyes planted on the blue bandage Tenya scrupulously wraps around his offended limb. “You’re smart and all that. What’s the worst that can happen?”

His roommate does one last tag around his wrist. “Your bone will heal wrongly and that’s an irreversible damage.”

“Then I’d be Bone Man and shoot bones at people, or at least pop my wrist loud enough to annoy the professor. No hay problema,” Hanta deadpans.

“Your well being is—”

“Yeah, yeah, I know.” He runs his other hand through his raven mane and slicks some invasive bangs over his scalp. “I can’t afford it right now, so it’s a pointless argument. Let’s just get over with this. I have a shift in a few hours.”

One last tug is made to lock the bandage into place, and Tenya pointedly glances at him from his stool in front of their kitchen table. “He didn’t even offer a way to contact him?”

Puzzled, Hanta tilts his head, his brows sloping downwards into a frown. “Why would he? He ran over a drunk dude at 3AM. Anyone with an ounce of brain will take advantage and fuck off.”

His phone subtly buzzes from its place on the table but goes ignored.

Tenya scrunches up his nose and Hanta thumps his head on the wood of their table, almost regretting popping the pink bubble his blue haired friend desperately wants to believe they’re floating in, chiefly sagging in the realization how ridiculous his life is. A lot of assholes roam around the world; it’s inexorable to face them. Sure, it doesn’t axiomatically have to be a near death experience, and frankly Hanta will gladly skip that interaction if he ever has a chance to revamp his life decisions, but what’s done is done and all he can do now is mope woefully.

“You gotta be more careful.” Hanta nearly misses Tenya’s remark followed by the screeching of a chair on the kitchen tile flooring. “Coffee?”

“Please,” he whines in defeat into the table.

---

Denki Kaminari—the epitome of a literal golden boy sans the ‘unusually successful at an early age’ part because he is a dubiously functional bibliophile disaster, and Hitoshi Shinsou—the answer to ‘what if a sleep deprived emo and a hard core rock enthusiast made a child’ with sarcasm and caffeine instead of blood, are an odd pair pulled out of a dumbasses to oblivious pining fools to disgusting lovers 200k slow burn fanfic.

Hanta met them at a pride parade two years ago, instantly charmed by Hitoshi’s compendious way of explaining idiots why they are, well, blockheads, and then gawking at the tiny blond castrating a 6-foot-tall godzilla daring to insult his boyfriend.

Since then he love-hates them.

They welcomed him into their life instantly and now they’re brothers alike which means he can crash at their place any hour of the day and they’ll treat him like an additional piece of furniture that was installed in the apartment long before they acquired it. That’s why he allows himself to gratuitously steal food from their stocked fridge (due to Denki’s stress cooking) for the nth time, wondering how Hitoshi’s waistline has not expanded to the door-frame extent.

The answer is probably the strained arm draped over his shoulders and the natural sweat reeking in his nostrils.

“Dude,” Hanta hooks his spider fingers under the lid of a white container and tilts it so that he can peek at its insides. “You stink. Don’t wipe your sweat all over me.”

Hitoshi’s chortle rumbles in Hanta’s ear as the purple haired Gymjock snakes his other arm into the discord of products in their fridge, skillfully maneuvers through the greek yogurt cartons, and victoriously fishes an In Jelly Protein—a rich in protein go-to diet supplement Hitoshi vacuums daily.

“You can’t barge into other people’s houses, steal their food, and complain,” he snarks while stepping aside. His heavy, muscular arm finally freeing Hanta’s shoulder line from the excessive weight.

The secretive food in the container he has been eyeing the last sixty seconds appears to be left over noodles with pork and veggies. A low growl from his stomach urges him to grab it and throw it into the microwave while Hitoshi smothers the white packet of his post-workout snack.

“Not my fault your boyfriend has golden hands when it comes to the kitchen.”

Hitoshi pivots on his heels, props an elbow on the marble top with his long fingers wrapped around the glass with the jiggly jelly drink, and smirks. “And not only the kitchen.”

“Stop being a gross, horny bastard,” Hanta bemoans just as the beeping of the microwave chimes for a mission complete. “Right in front of my fucking noodles, unbelievable.” He dramatically flutters his eyelashes as Hitoshi snickers into the glass.

With his left hand retired for the next three days at least, Hanta has to balance the hot plastic in one hand while the vapor from the heated food billows into his eyes. Placing it on the marble in a dull thump, he then turns to scout after a pair of chopsticks when Hitoshi points a finger at him.

“The hell happened to your arm?”

“Um,” he starts conversationally as he spots the cutlery. “Long story that I’m not gonna tell twice.”

Hitoshi gets the memo faster than Hanta manages to snap the sticks from their warm embrace of each other using his teeth and drops the now-empty glass into the washbasin. With sound effects of ardent chewing, the purple head strides out of the kitchen, leaving Hanta to spoil his stomach and sway from side to side in his place—because why sit like a normal human when you can stand in the middle of the kitchen and slurp noodles like a prick? His phone rumbles another string of buzzing and humming at new incoming messages from the pocket of his black tapered fit jeans, but he’s too busy munching merrily to heed it.

It doesn’t take long before his ears hear nipping and low voices whispering nonsense, and then, there are two men strolling into the kitchen—one of them, the short and blond one, yawning into his relatively tiny paw with amusing bed hair and a large t-shirt hanging from his shoulder.

“Hannie,” Denki slurs in a sleepy, hoarse, and definitely not fitting to his baby face baritone, stretching his arms out in grabby hands motions. “When did you come? I didn’t hear you.”

“A rocket can pancake this house and you won’t hear it,” Hitoshi quips and Hanta, sadly, can’t not espy the heart eyes he sends his boyfriend’s way. He would have been jealous of them if they weren’t the most abhorrent jerks he knows.

“You’re aware that it’s, like, 12PM?” Is his heartwarming greeting as he scoops the blond into a half hug. “And that our shift starts in an hour and a half.”

“Fuck work,” Denki whines into his chest, then peels himself off of Hanta at a speed of a sloth. “Plus, time is an illusion created by humans to justify waking up at ungodly hours like 10AM.”

“You probably meant 5AM—”

“Did I fucking stutter?”

Hanta decides that he’s too handsome to die young and stuffs his gob like a hamster with a mouthful of noodles. Denki grins coyly, pinching his cheek like that creepy aunt with lips a tomato red and ominous cooing that sounds more like gurgling of demons, then bounces to get his morning—err, mid-noon-ish(?) coffee.

The whistle of the rainbow painted kettle (Denki’s handy work) and Hanta’s squirrel-chewing are the only sounds in the kitchen for a few peaceful seconds. The blond snuggles to his boyfriend’s side with the cup screening his lips and abruptly exclaims, “Yah, what happened to your arm?”

“Jesus Christ,” Hitoshi gasps, then pinches Denki’s nose between two fingers. Denki demonstratively squawks. “You’re going to be the cause of my heart failure.”

“Yeah, cause it’s certainly gonna be that and not the ridiculous amount of caffeine you consume daily,” Hanta gripes like it’s going to magically pour light over the purple head and he’ll cease guzzling coffee. After swallowing another bite of food and viewing the eye roll from his tall friend, Hanta adds, “To your question, I had a run-in with an entitled bastard.”

Denki and Hitoshi blink in a blood-curdling sync. “Huh?”

---

Pronto Ikejiri Ohashi cafe’s singular enticement is free wi-fi.

The vultures writing reviews on Google (or whatever tawdry sites used these days to complain about trivial stuff that gets flushed down the toilet before it has the chance to be put on the agenda) describe it as ‘a great place to kill time’ or ‘a cozy environment with a sense of freedom’, but those are the honey-dipped alternatives for ‘the coffee costs ¥220 and I’m a broke college student’.

Fairly, some customers relish in the flower packed terrace of the atrium, some spend their time huddled in the furthest corner with their nose tucked in one of the worn out books from the library installed across the main hall that offers castoff literature rescued from the streets, others might genuinely enjoy the excuse of a sandwich served here, but those are, then again, broke college students that can’t afford anything better.

Most of the workers are college students themselves, hence, it’s a typical phenomenon to see an order asking for as many espresso shots as legally licit.

Hanta calls it ‘Heart Failure in a Cup’ and Denki’s sleep deprived boyfriend calls it ‘Caffeine Epiphany’.

The paycheck for the hours he spends on misspelling people’s names, packing takeaways, sweeping the floor, flipping wood chairs on their brothers-tables, arguing with customers, and depleting his social battery isn’t remotely satiating, but it is what it is.

His shift today starts as any other. Hanta ties the black apron he spilled coke on when he clutched it maladroitly in a haste and it puked its insides all over him, grabs the white employee tablet, punches in the extremely sophisticated code (1-2-3-4, ‘OK’) and watches with a frown as a rectangle with a green outline of a clock inside appears on the screen; writing down the time he starts off this dreadful stint.

Five hours. He can do it.

Or so has been the mantra in his head until the bell above the dirt stained glass door jingles at 2:34PM sharp. Which is four minutes into his shift.

“Welcome to Pronto!” The other coltish barista—if you guessed Denki, then you’re correct—yells over the trr-ing of the coffee machine as Hanta organizes with half-functioning arms the exclusive caffeine slaughterer for a regular sitting in the far corner with green curls and a terrible yellow sweatshirt that can potentially make any fashion designer cry. “What can I get you, sir?”

Hanta proficiently ignores them in favour of artistically slinging an inselberg of whipped cream over the cause of his, or one of the other barista’s, arrest.

Right when he slams the bell on the bar to let the waiters know it’s time to deliver the drink to its respective patron, a tap on his bicep demands attention. The routine of placing the steaming glass on a round plate with a cookie and a spoon is auto-pilot, so he swivels his head to avert his attention to the other barista.

“Hm?”

Denki leans into his personal space, or more correctly forces Hanta to crouch by tugging down his sleeve and getting access to a whisper-shot distance. “There’s a Vogue model asking to speak to you.”

Hanta’s brain functions fritz. “What?”

Subtly, with his elbow kept under the counter and out of sight of the customers on the other side, Denki points his forefinger in the direction of the cash register: the end of the waiting line for the customers.

Confusion burns into the left side of his face and panic into the right because holy shit. Is this a human or a statue?

Half crimson-red and half white hair is falling messily over the manifestation of every girls’ fantasy’s head in something akin to a bowl cut, albeit on his granite sculpted face and with the twist of the pointy bangs on his forehead creating a rectangular shape—it doesn’t resemble the horrible hairstyle half of the kids in Japan are forced to sport at some point in their elementary school career at all.

A pair of heterochromatic irises—the left is an odd hybrid of brownish dark gray, the right is a hypnotic turquoise—stare at him hesitantly, as if anticipating a battle cry and a gun shoved up the Handsome Stranger’s face. There’s a reddish, large section above the overly milky, perfect skin that reaches from his hairline halfway down his cheek—a nasty scar? A unique birthmark? The guy stands ludicrously in front of him in his Loro Piana sweater coat made of melange gray cashmere and the silver Hublot watch peeking from the sleeve on his left wrist.

“Hi,” his voice is a deep baritone that has no business planting seeds of arousal in Hanta’s gut. “I’m—uh,” his nose scrunches up and the right eye with the red skin twitches.

Shit. He looks familiar. Don’t tell him that it’s—

“Yes. I’m—yes, sorry. What—what can I offer you?” Gesturing at the menu precipitately earns him nothing but walloping a nearby glass with his square elbow .

Everything happens so fast that his brain barely processes it, and the next thing he’s aware of is Denki smoothly swooping the bungee jumping item with reflexes of a mantis shrimp.

Hanta freezes momentarily as he gawks, watching the blond sliding the glass into a plastic case of inward cordillera of cup holders used to thump a portion of dirty glasses so it’ll be easier to dip them in the water and carry back to arrange at the bar.

“Sorry,” he wheezes as his friend rolls his eyes. Despite the humiliation slipping down his spine, he averts his attention back to his customer. “What would you like to order?”

“No, not that,” Attractive Guy waves an arm in a rapid dismissal. His countenance reminds Hanta of a lost, confused cat, and the thought would have been amusing wasn’t the entire situation feeling like the walk of shame. “I’m—I was trying to say that I’m the one who bumped into you with a car yesterday.”

“Oh.” Hanta supplies very intellectually given the circumstances.

Thinking back, he recalls a face similar to this one, even though through the mist of alcohol and weed Hanta couldn’t heed details like jawline that can grate cheese and skin as slick as a greek-god statue.

Hot Dude rubs his neck like he might spontaneously combust. “You told me that you work here yesterday, and then I asked for your number. I tried to message you but you didn’t answer your phone.”

That isn’t cut off from reality either, given in the fact he’s been ignoring the urgent vibrations of the device the whole morning for no other reason but being a jackass. “Sorry, I had a hectic morning,” Hanta sets his mouth into an apologetical line but it’s as successful as climbing Mt. Everest when you’re a Clown Frogfish.

Three agonizingly long seconds that are enough for Hanta to estimate the effort of flinging himself out of the window—uncertain whether it’s due to the embarrassment of this ordeal or because the recreation of Narcissus is standing in front of him—pass before the guy breaks the awkward silence.

“Are you feeling alright? You refused to go to the hospital, are you sure you don’t need it?”

Hanta blinks to realign with reality. “Don’t worry, dude. I’m totally fine.” To emphasize the statement, he lifts the offended arm and points at it. “My roommate knows how to handle these things. We think it’s just a sprain.”

Pretty Guy squints at the bandages. “But what if it’s not? It’s my fault for not noticing you, the least I can do is making sure you’re alright.”

This kind of virtue makes Hanta think of a fairy tale, but beautiful or not he won’t get himself an equally breathtaking princess out of taking Hanta to the hospital. Not to mention that it’s definitely Hanta’s fault for skating while being shitfaced. “How is this your fault? I was the one who wasn’t looking.”

Color Splash Guy flounders. “But—”

“Listen, I’m aware that I was being…” He trails off at the lack of fitting adjectives and glazes his eyes over the counter. There is a coffee stain blotched 10 centimeters from the round rim that he should wipe when his hands cease from timorously fiddling with the hem of his black apron.

Denki kicks his ankle subtly as he passes behind his back with the plastic case of clinking glasses anticipating their hot vapor bath. “Being injudicious.”

Hanta throws his head over his shoulder with a scowl—‘a word and you’re smacked with the cash register’ kind of scowl—and growls, “Take your high ass vocabulary to the kitchen. Those glasses ain’t gonna wash themselves.”

A soft laugh follows Denki’s tap-clink-tap tempo to proceed minding his own fucking business, and Hanta faces the seemingly amused source of his morning headache (a very beautiful headache, but he’s yet reached the acceptance stage). At least Cutie has an impromptu comedy show out of this fuckery, not that it’s any kind of solace.

“I’m sorry, he’s a menace. Ignore him.”

“I’m familiar with Kaminari-san,” Prince Charming points out before adding, “we took an English course together.”

“Ah,” Hanta replies eloquently. Is there anyone who Denki does not know? “Anyway,” the raven head fishes the strings of words attempting to skedaddle away from his chain tight throat. “You really don’t have to beat yourself up. Thanks for checking up on me, though, it’s really sweet of you,” he wears a plastic customer-service smile and gestures at the menu. “Now, what can I get you?”

“Shouto, are you done ordering?” Suddenly echoes from behind, and Hanta’s heart nearly darts to his mouth. Shouto—Hanta’s brain stores that information without him giving the order to—swivels his neck toward the guy Hanta took an order from merely a few minutes ago, as he drags the caffeine poison in a cup toward himself from the counter.

So they know each other, wonders a tiny voice in his head.

With a grimace that shouldn’t be attractive on anyone yet somehow is on him, the Human Pearl sighs. “Um, yeah. I’d like a shot of espresso, please.”

---

Hanta is approximately reaching a cloud nine high to the sound of Hitoshi’s cackling—re: gargling—at a set of pictures of a tiger toting its own tail, when Denki barges to the balcony, hands rubbing in foxiness.

“Oh no, I know this look,” Hitoshi slurs through the intermittent giggles. “What’s on your mind, Munchkin?”

“Hush, you.” Denki smacks lightly at the finger wriggling into one of his loose belt loops. Hanta raises a quizzical eyebrow, as familiar as Hitoshi with this look. One eyebrow arched asymmetrically to the seam of his mouth going uptown, tiny nose scrunched up and a spark of mischief in slanted black pupils type of look.

“If it’s raiding the bank again because you wasted all your money on buying shady cookies from that Kika Obāchan, then you can go fuck yourself.” Hanta blows a hook with smudged rims, watching with a deep feeling of wrath as Hitoshi wrestles Denki into his lap.

The blond pouts. “Kika Obāchan isn’t shady, and I never wasted all of my money on her cookies. And quit being an asshole, I’m here to propose something you’d very much like.”

“Already sounds like an awful idea,” Hitoshi mumbles from where his face is buried in Denki’s neck. “I’m in.”

Rolling the joint between three fingers, Hanta leans back on the chair with a disturbed twitch of his right eye. “You just broke the simp scale in, like, infinity.”

Denki’s laugh is airy and unperturbed. “None of that, it’s actually more of vicarious embarrassment for us watching you tripping around a hot boy.”

Hanta frowns. “Is there an explanation that I want to hear or should I just write my obituary?”

“I don’t know if you want to hear it, but I can provide one, anyway,” Denki grins, heels kicking against Hitoshi’s ankles. At Hanta’s gesture of a green light, Denki continues, “Todoroki Shouto, the guy that almost ran over you, occasionally gets us free passes to Blue Flame.”

The rolled joint nearly slips from his fingers fritzing mid-shoving the butt to his mouth. “Blue Flame?” Hanta boggles.

“Mhm!” Denki then snatches Hitoshi’s joint, ignoring the guttural whimper as his chest expands from a lungful of weed. “His older brother, not sure what’s his actual name but he goes by Dabi, is the type of “mom this isn’t a phase” emo, or how he addresses himself, a rebel, and owns the Blue Flame. And, I’m quoting Shouto,” Denki lifts the free hand to air quote, “Sometimes this asshole remembers he loves his baby brother and lets him sneak friends over.”

With a quizzical pinch of his eyebrows, Hanta tries to force the syrup in his scalp to decipher whether Denki’s smirk means ‘troubles, but somewhat lawful’ or ‘havoc that will end with a handful of bad choices made and five Pandora’s boxes snapped in half.’ “And what does it have to do with me? I’m not his—”

“I can bring a plus one,” Denki says over him. Hitoshi makes a noise of offense from Denki’s back. “You’re part of Shouto’s gang, idiot,” he reprimands as the purple head juts his lips in a sad attempt to snatch the joint back but fails due to Denki pointing at Hanta with the joint. “And I decided that my plus one is going to be you, because I’m a benevolent friend who wants to help a bro out. Also, he has an underground casino, and you always wanted to try it out.”

There’s something behind Hanta’s left eyeball that he recognizes as a daily headache only Denki can cause as he exhales a large chunk of smoke. “Hitoshi was right—this sounds awful and just keeps escalating.”

“Don’t be a whiny bitch. Are you in or not?” Denki screws his eyebrows, finally allowing the suffering man whose arms are locked around his waist to take a hit.

It takes him three seconds to deduce that whatever his answer is going to be, the spark in Denki’s eyes has already decided for him, so Hanta melts on the chair with a large palm veiling half of his face like in dramatic musical videos—the environment is gloomy and dark to sell it as an actual screen shot of a scene—and mutters, “Whatever.”

Little did he know that he’s going to receive the best and worst type of torture from this on a whim agreement.

---

It’s a fancy place, minimalist-classical and tuned blue. But most importantly, however, is the alcohol—particularly whiskey—reputation earned fair and square.

Blue Flame can be either described as heaven for people who need to escape the political world not allowing them to fill their bellies with booze and burn their lungs with grass, or as the last place on Earth they’d dare to set a foot in. The world suffered through an apocalypse and there’s absolutely nothing left but this bar, type of last place.

Hanta thinks they’re being dramatic.

The reasons he has never had the pleasure of visiting this equidistant from hell and heaven place are different, though. Firstly, true to Denki’s words, you can’t go far without an invitation either from the owner or from a friend that’s in the owner’s good graces to get in. Secondly, the patrons populating the Blue Flame appearing proper in their high end suits and attire make Hanta feel demoted in his black jeans and a plain white t-shirt beneath an acid wash jean jacket.

“You see them?” Denki shouts over the bombarding music, and Hitoshi cranes his neck until wiggling with his nose in a vague direction of a large booth with an assembling circle of people eating up the empty space.

“Are you sure it’s alright to bring me here?” Hanta asks as he avoids a direct plow into a waiter rushing with an order clutched to his chest. Honestly speaking, he has no clue how Hitoshi navigates his impressive shoulder-line in this stuffed-to-the-brim space.

“I said it already, and I’ll say it again,” Denki’s finger digs into the fabric of Hanta’s jacket as he pulls him and Hitoshi closer to the group, “stop acting like a whiny little bitch.”

Words of protest die in the vicinity of Hanta’s larynx when his eyes land on the group of people occupying the table they’re heading to: the green haired regular that’s going to perish from caffeine poisoning in the near future, a scowling ash blond guy Hanta thinks he saw a few times when he dropped by the tattoo parlor Hitoshi works at, and Todoroki Shouto in his purified glory.

Suddenly Hanta remembers why this is a bad idea.

“Guys!” Denki exclaims with the energy of an electric sphere, frantically waving a noodle arm. “I see you have yet to start, good, good. It took forever to kick these two out of the house,” he grouses without heat, sliding to the further corner of the padded sofa across the other trio.

Hitoshi slides in right after him. “Literally I was the one waiting.”

“We didn’t wait that much.” The freckled guy beams, navy menu open wide between his fingers. His emerald eyes skip from the beaming blond to the poker-faced purple head and then land on Hanta like a kick to the ribs. “Ah, so this is Sero-kun! I couldn’t put a name to the face even though you’re always making my coffee. Sorry.”

“Don’t sweat it,” Hanta mutters, squeezing beside the only person he trusts at this table (Hitoshi). A man who until this day kept quiet about Hanta’s embarrassing sixteen-years-old gift from his asshole older brother—a pair of abhorrent Hello Kitty boxers, it’s a fair guess why he had yet burnt to ash—is someone to revere. “On a side note, you should consider caffeine withdrawal. I’m kinda scared one day you’re gonna have a heart failure because of that caffeine monster and I’d be found guilty.”

“That’s the goal,” the green head smiles maliciously but it gets ruined by the ash blond next to him smacking his scalp. Hanta winces sympathetically at the guy’s offended squawk.

“Dying from caffeine overdose sounds tempting,” Hitoshi muses. Denki slants him a scowl that has Hitoshi clearing his throat and changing the subject with a swift hand shake. “Anyway, the three-cups-away-from-death lech is Midoriya Izuku—”

“You can call me Izuku!”

“—and this grump over here is Bakugou Katsuki.” The grump in question doesn’t bother lifting his eyes from the menu, but according to Hitoshi’s apocryphal stories—it’s for the better. Hitoshi then points at the mouse-silent Shouto. “And you’re already familiar with this born-with-a-silver-spoon-up-his-ass fat cat so let’s skip this one.”

Shouto raises an unimpressed eyebrow.

Hanta repudiates the last statement with a phoney grin that hurts his cheeks. “Nice to meet you, call me Hanta.”

Half-registering the greetings and exuberant beams he earns in return, he lets his eyes droop to the fancy menu with prices higher than his pulse after he’s done with the minimal workout routine Hitoshi occasionally bullies him to do. The menu itself is made of paper that feels like a map from pirate movies, with actual darker stains and adorable scribbles of stars, palm trees, ships and others.

Flicking a page, Hanta smooths a pointer finger down the length of the paper, frowning at the ingredients. A minor headache works up its way from trying to figure out what a specific word he cannot even pronounce without sounding like a choking frog, and he concludes that there’s no reason for him to wander through these fancy drink titles when he can purchase perhaps a gummy bear.

“Well, clearly Eyebags is a dumbfuck, but this time he’s right,” Katsuki exclaims apropos of nothing, or it sounds like that for a man distracted by his wallet and brain wrestling each other from the want to poison his liver with alcoholic beverage versus the deducting numbers in the bank account.

Cautiously, Hanta peeks through his eyelashes, still sniffing the air before determining whether he can press the accelerator of his behavior to the floor or keep the laid back facade a trifle longer. Judging by the sudden slam of a veiny hand on the table, perhaps they’re crazy enough to drink the true colors of Hanta’s personality right away.

“You don’t get to call Toshi a dumbfuck, dimwit,” Denki hisses, teeth bared.

Hitoshi is nodding with a solemn expression and lips pressed tight as Hanta muffles a laugh into his palm.

“What did you call me?!” Katsuki fumes and it’s quite impressive how nimbly the green haired twink wrestles him into place. Meanwhile four-sixths of the table burst into hysterics at the ash blond barking like a chihuahua in a meltdown about disposing Denki in the down-below so he sees the flora thriving from its roots; Shouto quietly reads the menu.

“Kinda crowded today,” Hitoshi states after the cacophony shallows into intermittent giggling, arm slinging around Denki’s shoulders.

“Touya-nee’s coming today so a lot of assholes dropped by to try their luck getting to his good graces.” Shouto flicks a page of the menu. “I wouldn’t recommend getting under anyone’s skin tonight if you don’t want five armed men knocking at your door tomorrow.”

Hanta blinks dilatorily. “W...what?”

“Who else do you think those bears are?” Hitoshi wiggles his nose in the vague direction of the patrons. Hanta subtly squints leftwards. “You see these dudes wearing black suits? They’re probably from the local gang—” He abruptly trails off.

“Tosh?” Denki tilts his head as Hanta raises an eyebrow with his heartbeat irrationally turning its volume up in his ears. Perhaps not so irrationally, he thinks in a haze, considering he agreed to go drinking with his friends, not being surrounded by local Musutafu gangs in an enclosed area aiming to suck Todoroki Touya’s dick for whatever reason.

Hitoshi snorts through his chest. “I think I pierced that guy’s nipples.”

“TMI!” Izuku yelps.

“Incredible, never speak to me ever again.” Denki slaps Hitoshi’s arm to wriggle out of his hold which unfortunately makes Hanta wish he had some holy water to sprinkle over his eyelashes.

Heart in his mouth, Hanta clarifies, “So our chances to accidentally get shot by a drunk gangster—?”

“No, no,” Shouto lets out a puff of air that Hanta’s barely functioning brain deciphers as a laugh. “I meant it as, like, the same way you wouldn’t want to stir a fight in a regular bar. The only difference is that, well, yeah, your chances to actually get shot are probably higher.”

Hanta can barely feel his toes. “Lovely.”

“He’s being an over dramatic fuck. Nothing’s gonna happen to no one,” Katsuki grunts, then raises his arm to wave a waiter in a cocky manner begging for a dislocated jaw out of a mix of spite and solidarity.

“Yeah, so don’t be nervous, Hanta-kun.” Izuku once again smiles cheekily at him, which Hanta mirrors with a tight lipped grin of his own, still trying to get his fingers to work.

Denki and Hitoshi wouldn’t have dragged him here for a certain demise, and Hitoshi cossets Denki too much to agree coming here if there was an actual peril for anyone’s life. Also, they have Shouto on their side, so Hanta convinces himself that no arrogant gangster would be cocky enough to cause any harm to the younger brother of the owner. He hopes.

His blood is still pulsating in his wrists and a light tremor wraps over his head when he places a random order he didn’t put much thought into.

“Yo, man.” Hitoshi swoops the ashtray closer to them with his usual deadpan physiognomy, fishing out two rolled joints and a lighter. “Don’t be nervous, king. It’s really gonna be fine.”

“You could have warned a guy,” he grumps otiosely, accepting the placation with a grimace.

All he gets in return is a blasé raise of indigo eyebrows.

---

Light filters through the shutters and Hanta feels like his face is smashed with a hammer.

A vindictive hangover works its way up his neurons, surfacing deep remorse that leads every man to swear of Teetotalism until he’s given a bottle of whiskey. The low grumble he emits as he rolls over sounds like an orchestra of tractors, and the mattress he’s on is surprisingly (and suspiciously) soft.

Very much suspiciously, now that he thinks about it. The beds in the college dorms aren’t stone stiff, but let’s say that sometimes Hanta considers sleeping on the library’s bean bags. This bed, however, makes it nigh impossible for his brain to register that it’s the time to pave through the haze of sleep. Puffing out warm air through his nostrils, Hanta gradually forces his eyelids ceiling-wards.

And that’s the moment everything shatters.

Heart in his throat, Hanta darts to a sitting position, ignoring the pain exploding in his scalp from the sharp motion. Alas, he doesn’t calculate properly the trajectory of his flailing from the realization of: “Wait, where the fuck am I?” And so, instead of his right arm landing on the mattress, his palm drowns in a blank space.

Hanta is going to deny the manly screech as his entire being goes downwards. His ass hits the tile flooring concurrently to the offended wrist, which kicks another manly sound—read as: a whimper—at the harsh impact. “Fuck!” He hisses, pulling the arm to his chest and squinting from the ray of light laying itself over his nose-bridge.

Kicking the blanket off, Hanta scrambles to his feet, heaving a terrified gasp when instead of his crumpled dorm room, he spots perhaps the chamber of a prince.

There isn’t much in here, but it’s sufficient to make Hanta nauseous from jealousy. The king sized bed he just royally fell from stands in the middle of four creamy walls, adorned by expensive picture frames with tiny people captured in them. Heavy curtains fold into horizontal accordions at the sides of floor to ceiling glass viewing a green garden full of the vivids of blooms, and the marble tiles nearly glow beneath fuzzy rays of sunshine.

What the fuck. He stumbles backwards, color and cold sweat color dripping down his neck. What in the—

“Uh,” echoes an oddly familiar baritone from the vague right, “You’re awake.”

Hanta spins on the heels of his feet, heart pulsating against his teeth as his gaze lands on no one other but Shouto fucking Todoroki, clad in casual sweatpants and a shirt, standing awkwardly in the middle of the room.

“What—where?” Hanta chokes out.

Expression cagey, Shouto clears his throat. “In my room.”

“That—” Hanta gulps a lump of nerves camping between his vocal cords, “That explains absolutely fucking nothing.”

“But you asked where you were?” Shouto frowns, puzzled.

Pushing the urge to scream into the nearest pillow into the backyard of his brain camp that’s about to be entirely set on fire, the raven head shakes his still pounding-for-attention wrist until some of the ache subsides. “Okay, lemme rephrase that: why in the everloving fucking fuck am I in your room?”

On the stroke of Shouto opening his mouth, an abrupt sound of a rotor whirling in the air vanquishes whatever his response is. Hanta can sense every inch of his skin crawling from the alarming sound above Shouto’s room, his heart darting into his mouth as he swivels his head to the balcony from their left. There, like a bolt striking from out of the blue, stands a retinue of two bald brick-houses clad in black anchoring a dangling rope ladder while someone oddly familiar elegantly descends balcony-wards.

Through monumental panic, Hanta grasps two things: this man is Dabi himself—raven mane, trademark trench coat, edgy piercings and scars like he’s been caught in hellfire hidden beneath a tailored suit—and they were definitely not there merely three seconds ago.

Oh, and a bonus one—they barge in through the balcony after coming via a helicopter.

Hanta pinches himself once.

Then another time, just to make sure he doesn’t accidently dream the action. Upon not blinking awake to his phone’s alarm screaming bloody murder and Tenya’s hackneyed morning clatter, Hanta concludes it’s the perfect time to beat a hasty retreat. Alas, his feet are petrified to the flooring with a betraying ball of words freezing between his vocal cords.

Sweat soaks repellently in his armpits.

“Touya-nee?” Shouto’s eyebrows seem to slope until the entirety of the nose-bridge’ skin is crumpled. “What are you—why—?”

“I don’t have much time to waste on you, so let’s go over it briefly.” Dabi, or Touya as Hanta has heard Shouto addressing the man, glances at his obnoxiously exorbitant Rolex watch. “I came here to remind you about yesterday’s deal and enlighten you with the ground rules.”

You know, that moment, when you’re about to mad dash out of your house and suddenly remember you forgot something in your room. But then something goes south on your chase after the forgotten object and you fail to remember what it was? The feeling Hanta experiences while boggling at the man clad in a suit more expensive than his parents’ mortgage is something along those lines, especially so when it dawns on him that there’s a blank gap in his memory.

Every member of the animalia kingdom possess survival instincts that, in definition, are supposed to know what to do to stay alive. It seems, however, that Hanta either was born with none because if he did have them he wouldn’t have had in the span of a month drink himself this fucking stupid twice.

“The what?” Shouto vocalizes Hanta’s thoughts.

“Yesterday you two signed up a contract to sort out your “guilty-not-guilty” crisis,” Touya tells them while the short bodyguard beefcake rolls down a piece of paper in a swift jerky action of his hand. The taller man, Tall Beefcake, stands with his shoulders square like a tentie lioness.

A ball of nerves restricts Hanta’s airflow as he tries to swallow down the hysterical laughter trying to force its way out. “You’re lying.”

“Am I?” Touya questions, eyebrows raising smugly, and Hanta deflects.

---

“Dude,” Hanta slams the shot of whiskey against the table. He’s nowhere near being senselessly drunk, but sufficiently enough to fail registering the offended clinking that should have warned him from applying too much warm pressure on the sparkling glass. “I’ve already told you countless times that it was none of your fault. You seriously hafta let go.”

“It wasn’t countless,” Shouto grumps into his whiskey, “It was, like, three times.”

“Three too many,” Hanta notes to prove that the prime point still stands. After a second of thoughtful silence, his expression twists—a pulled up lip and quirked eyebrows. “Wait, you’ve been counting?”

Shouto stares at him like Hanta insulted his entire family. “No, I just threw a random number that sounds approximately correct.”

“Fair,” Hanta shrugs. There’s a pause in which the rest of the tawny drink goes down to Abused Liver town, and then Hanta props his elbows on the walnut table with a solemn expression. “Anyway, just let go, man. I don’t have time, energy or a clean-enough alibi to deal with the law anyway.”

His attempt at smoothly veering the subject is missed by a long shot by the way Prince Charming’s face goes a full shade paler. “You’re what now?”

Ankles crossed, Hanta clicks his tongue. “Some things are better kept unsaid.”

A metaphorical white flag waves itself in Shouto’s blown wide pupils as he scans Hanta like an x-ray. There’s a beat of noisy silence—from the clattering of glass and mixing ingredients, the rhythm of the song vibrating through the speakers and the hurried padding of feet against the flooring—that settles in the space between them. Either the alcoholic beverages sagging in his neurons blur everything like two buckets of spilled ink, or the atmosphere is charged with something.

Something an arm-reach away yet further than the other end of the globe.

“You body-slamming my car isn’t one of them,” Shouto tries again. His digits are tight around the glass sweating with condensation and mouth even a tighter line set over his pointy chin.

Unfortunately to all parties involved, Hanta has hit the reverential level of a fish memory drunk and has to ask, “Isn’t one of what?”

Shouto groans with the most emotive of miseries Hanta witnessed by far. “Isn’t one of the things that are better kept unsaid. It’s been...what? A week? It still bothers me, you could have—”

“But I didn’t,” Hanta says over him with a smug jerk of the half joint left.

“But you could.”

Perfume floats acrid in the air—a hybrid of numerous exotic fragrances that mix into a dizzying odor lying itself over the alcoholic pungence. In spite of that, Hanta lights the joint and takes a drag into the depth of his lungs, leaning on the couch with an arm over the back. Briefly flicking his eyes from the Human Pearl grimacing into his empty glass to the void seats, Hanta reaches the conclusion that his friends deserve death. Spontaneously abandoning him with a stubborn blockhead in favor of a quickie in the excessively fancy restrooms of Blue Flame is a supreme dick move.

“Fine.” Hanta taps a fingertip on the table. “If you feel this fucking bad even though I’ve reassured you it’s okay, then pay me back.”

Shouto rolls his lip between his teeth. “Pay you back?” Hanta nods once, and watches with the butt of the joint pressed to his teeth as Shouto drapes a tongue over cherry lips. “That’s... alright, sure, that’s not a problem, but how much? And what payment?”

The “how much” aspect shouldn’t be something a quick google won’t solve, because Hanta might be an asshole but he’s not a petty thief stripping the rich off fortune. As a fairly decent member of the human race, he surmises that demanding money at the amount of the hospital bill he would have paid if he went to the hospital is adequate. For the payment, logically, Hanta should either hold out a flat open hand for cash or through an app. However, there’s something so genuinely ashamed and wistful in Shouto’s heterochromic irises that punches Hanta in the gut.

Closing this case at a simple money exchange and an informal headshake won’t trace this look in his eyes away.

Now, speaking in the rational terms Hitoshi proved to be the best decision maker tool, there’s absolutely no reason for Hanta to care. Crossing paths a few times doesn’t mean they’re anything more than strangers that albeit share the same circle of friends, have nothing in common. Hanta doesn’t know what makes the guy in front of him this jittery about the whole escapade, and then again he shouldn’t even care.

He really shouldn’t, but...

Like though a dream, the smoke billowing through the slant of his lips extracts the imaginary saddle of his tongue. “You can take me to fancy places to eat?” He suggests only half joking.

“Are you trying to seduce me to a date?”

“Why, is it working?” Hanta wiggles two coal eyebrows with a coy mouth upturn.

Shouto flushes in a color not unlike a tomato as he boggles, frozen in place like a paused scene of a movie.

---

“...and then, after I accidentally overheard your banter,” the sheer amount of accentuation easily strips away the definition of ‘accident’, “I decided that as the Blue Flame’s owner, a head of a mafia and a loving family, I should help my baby brother and offer you this.”

Touya’s smirk is 100% teeth and zilch good news as he raps two knuckles against the so-called contract. From Hanta’s right, Shouto radiates morose and something blue, something that Hanta will ponder over someday in the future—when his heart won’t be pounding in his mouth—but says nothing.

Short Beefcake continues dutifully holding the new besiegement to Hanta’s exsitence flat against his thorax, like purposely clocking him with the fact that his entire life is flushed down the toilet by virtue of an ugly scribbled piece of fucking paper. Even when the fat minus banked in his parents’ bank account and the crazy landlady threatened to propel them out of their apartment Hanta didn’t feel this timid.

Squinting at the letters scribbled in an awful handwriting that, he realizes in devastation, is definitely his own, Hanta swallows a wave of bile.

Now that he ponders it over, he does remember a vague hand movement that can be definitely qualified as writing.

“This agreement is made between Hanta Sero and Shouto Todoroki,” Touya starts reading aloud, twisting the paper between two fingers so he has a direct view at the words. “The tenure of this agreement is from 25/10/2XXX until Shouto Todoroki is done paying the putative hospital bill of…” He frowns.

Shouto and Hanta lean closer to inspect the numbers attached to the ¥ symbol—and then red of neon traffic light colors all the way down from Hanta’s ears to his neck. With the hangover still hammering against his skull, he appears to be dilatory in his action of snatching the paper before embarrassing himself so hard that dying of shame won’t help him.

“Eight, one, four, five, nine, three, four, seven, two?” Touya’s baritone wavers into a bark of laughter. “Is that your phone number, dimwit?”

“I was drunk.” Hanta bites out hoarsely.

“Definitely that, and not you trying to flirt Shouto’s number out of him.” The paper rustles when Touya bends it over calcined hands, pointing at a lower part of the page. “And then you’ve put that he owes you three yen, you really are a dumbass. Guess we’ll have to take an average sum,” Touya muses considerately the written nonesess like this isn’t a scene plucked out of his worst nightmares as a kid.

Shouto is frozen like under a curse with his face the color of gypsum while they both process, painfully slowly. “How in the fuck can you take an avarage sum from a phone number and a three?”

“I don’t do maths, duh. That’s his job.” Touya throws his chin in the vague direction of Tall Beefcake already punching numbers into a calculator and Hanta suppresses a scream as well as wrestling his hands before they go all over his mane and tear it out of his scalp. “While he’s doing his magic, I’ll finish this contract with saying that the penalty for withdrawing from the contract for you,” he points a rock steady finger at Hanta’s quivering form, “is a gunshot,” before Hanta can protest Touya barrels on, “And for Shouto it’s…”

He pauses. Then bursts out laughing into his hand like a mad scientist high off of his creation. Hanta thinks he might as well go into a cardiac arrest on this odiously sumptuous tile flooring.

“I’m quoting,” Touya wheezes through his hysterics, “we will say to Enji Todoroki that Shouto is a tosspot and dick addict, lol.”

Shouto makes a weird noise of distress at the base of his throat. Hanta can’t blame him for that, especially when he’s feeling like he’s in a fever dream. A very, very horrible one.

Tall Beefcake’s irate scowl is enough to bend Hanta’s spine into two, but he battles the jerk of his muscles with the firmest glower of contention. “What if we disagree? You clearly took advantage of us being shitfaced. That’s the opposite of a cool mafia head, dude.”

“Maybe. In any case, once the deal is sealed you have two options: either commit, or face the consequences. And just to make sure that neither of you somehow, by an accident, gets the idea that this isn’t a serious contract and a serious deal...” Touya snaps two fingers as the Short Beefcake squares up his shoulders. “He’s gonna watch you from now on. Keep in mind that he’s doing a splendid job, one of the best.”

Something metallic gleams in Short Beefcake’s belt.

It goes ignored. For conscience’ sake.

Frankly, Hanta has no idea what the legal protocol is for this situation, if anything of this escalation is a smidgen lawful to begin with, but there’s a part of him imagining himself acquiring the abilities of a spiderman from out of the blue, snatching the gun he still unsure is tangible and shooting the smug grin off Touya’s face.

Judging by Shouto’s face turning green with repulsion—the feeling is mutual.

“Please tell me he’s kidding,” Hanta begs for no other reason but to hear something louder than the blood rushing to his ears.

“No,” Shouto grits his teeth, “he’s not.”

---

They avoid eye contact when Hanta scrambles out of the hellscape—read as: the matte black Cadillac Crossover—responsible for his life turning into a lame version of GTA.

Hanta blows air out of his mouth, smoothing the wrinkles of his shirt as he shifts weight from one numb foot to the other. Glancing at the parital cause of his torment, Hanta mentally slaps himself until some of the stupor ceases thrusting its fangs into his brain, and tugs the most plastic customer service smile he’s capable of. “Don’t worry, I’m not that awful to fake-date, I promise.”

To his credit, Shouto seems honest-to-god guilty when he taps on the steering wheel with eight fingertips. “So...see you around?”

Hanta ignores the popping of his bone when he nods. “Sure, text me whenever.”

---

“That psychopath came through the balcony, like, there was a fucking helicopter hovering above the house,” Hanta stresses, face the hue of snow and white knuckled fingers sinking into his hair. “Only to show us that ass-fucking contract—!”

He’s cut off by Denki’s last bit of homage toward his best friend’s dilemma pitching into hysterics as the blond face plants Hitoshi’s lap, who sits on the couch with half of his body bent over the armrest and face buried in the concave of his arm. Weren’t it for their long term friendship, Hanta would have thought the purple head is crying, but in reality, this bulky purple club-head is currently losing what is left of his pathetic life to the mirth shaking his shoulders.

Hanta’s expression twists plaintively. “Stop laughing, I might seriously get shot. I’m going to die and that’d be on you.”

“We’re not the one to sign a piece of scribbles that orders us to peg a sugar daddy,” Denki cries, rolling onto his back with his face covered by his hands.

Nausea busts in his throat as he subconsciously backs up. “I’m pegging no sugar daddy!”

“And other hilarious jokes you tell yourself,” Denki sing-songs, legs kicking the air. Hanta wields every face muscle into work so Denki can use the skills he’s learned through the psychology books he gorges and intuit that Hanta’s currently undergoing the five stages of grief leading to a possible murder of a certain yellow haired shrimp.

And yet, this asshole just grins not unlike a cat one-smack away from pawing a glass full of water over its owner’s laptop. “Dude, seriously, how bad is it to get spoiled for a month by a rich douchebag?”

Blowing air through flared nostrils, Hanta sags into the armchair cushion. They don’t fucking understand. “My smallest problem right now is being spoiled. Plus, unlike someone in this house, I’m not a gold digger.”

“First of all, Shouto isn’t a douchebag,” Hitoshi argues as he finally retrogrades from the realm of assholes laughing over their friend’s misery. The skin beneath his eyes is crumpled in that way Hanta has heard Denki waxing poetics about sufficiently to recite it verbatim. “Secondly, if Denki is a gold digger, then he dates the wrong guy.”

Denki perks up, scandalous. “You did nothing wrong a day in your life, baby.”

“That’s the most biased lie that only a simp like you can say with a straight face, but thank you all the same.” Hitoshi coos, rubbing a circle into Denki’s bicep as Hanta makes a gagging noise at the back of his throat. “Even if he was a gold digger, I want to believe he’s not dumb enough to get run over by a car and sign a contract in an underground bar, both while being shitfaced.”

At that, Hanta’s mouth bends comically lower.

It’s quite the disappointment for even thinking these two are going to treat it as anything but a hoax. Frankly, it does feel like a prank and maybe they can’t be blamed for turning it into a barrel for laughs, because, come on, what are the odds there’s a tattooed yakuza dude lurking in the bushes below the living room window with a sniper aimed at his temple?

But what if there actually is?

Hanta lets out a whimper of torment into his hands, fear sliding down his spine. His mother used to joke that a black cat crossed his path, in reference to the full load of rotten luck chasing him throughout the years. Now, more than ever, there’s a solid ground to her words.

So preoccupied with wallowing in self pity, he doesn’t instantly notice the anguished pinch of Denki’s eyebrows and Hitoshi’s fondle down the length of his cheek. It flickers like a red stop sign before a turn, halting normalcy. Shifting forth so his elbows drop to his thighs in a dull ‘plap’, Hanta frowns. “You okay?”

His arms are still quivering and legs feel like they’re stuffed with cotton.

Denki grunts hoarsely as he shields his eyeballs from the rays of stabbing light fired from the lamp above with an arm over the bridge of his nose. “Yah, I didn’t take my pills today. That’s all.”

Hanta nods, pulling the side of his mouth. He’s feeling too off the hook to heed the matter at hand. Figures, when there’s an imminent threat beneath your bedroom window.

Hitoshi, on the other hand, tucks two hands beneath Denki’s feeble frame and carefully, like he’s picking a wounded kitten from the concrete sidewalk pavement on a stormy evening, positions him supine on the sofa. “I’ll bring you the m—”

“Didn’t eat yet.” Denki rolls over, arm crossed over his hip-bones.

“Right, I was the one to kick your ass out of bed thirty minutes ago.” Hitoshi swivels his head to Hanta as he stands up. “And what about you? Or are you fed up with the bullshit you just unloaded on us?”

Hanta scrunches up his nose. “He’s got jokes, this one.”

“Don’t be rude, Toshi,” rebukes the hypocrite that barely a minute ago was laughing his ass off at the same reason Hitoshi just jabbed Hanta with. “And I can make pancakes, I’m not that dead,” he adds, visibly forcing his bones-covered-in-skin self upwards, solely to be shoved into the cushion with a snazzily tattooed arm.

“Rest, dumbass,” Hitoshi hisses, then disappears into the kitchenette.

In those rare moments of quiet—in which Hanta feels like a puppy without limbs because aside from compassing the couch and ruffling Denki’s hair he can do nothing to help his friend—he muses in the vicinity of his head that he is quite jealous of what they have.

---

The best Hanta can propose as an elucidation to why he has never had a proper, significant relationship is a shrug. It’s not like he deliberately avoids it nor is dead set on maintaining the admittedly safe status quo of being single.

It is much more simple than that.

In between third-wheeling his best friends, working a part time job as a disgruntled barista, and balancing his grades by the skin of his teeth because his life goal consists of learning mechanical engineering and finally escaping the putrid streets of his childhood residential quarter—Hanta doesn’t have spare brain cells to mull the subject over. Even if an opportunity presents itself, he usually drops it after a bizarre date or two.

Point to case: Jesus Vine girl—Ibara?—that took psychology with Denki before he was coerced to halt his studying. The blond had the purest of intentions when he triumphantly bullied Hanta to agree entertaining her on a date, but, with all due respect to Jesus, vines and stunning females—Hanta couldn’t stand her.

Now, truthfully speaking, the escapade with Shouto feels like he’s the main character of an extremely poorly written rom-com that deserves an internet scandal, a cancellation, and getting it’s scripter hung down by their guts in the middle of the desert. Which, absolutely contradicts what Hitoshi had declared one evening back then.

They were drinking beer and looking at the moon glittering dully from the star stained ether when Hitoshi had nudged his shoulder for attention and said, candidly, “Good things come when you stop searching for them, you know.”

Hanta had raised a quizzical eyebrow at him. “It’s too early for your philosophical horseshit.”

“You’ve been whining non-stop about being single,” Hitoshi slung an arm to drag Hanta into a half hug that he will never admit cherishing. “So, I’m saying that I’ve been single for painfully long, too. Den and mine first meeting was nothing special, you know. None of that cliché love at first sight or a scene plucked out of a fairy tale, yet here we are.”

“It still amazes me how you can say deep shit in such a laid back way,” Hanta snorted in defense, leaning into the minimal warmth of Hitoshi’s side.

Hitoshi smirked, a lopsided curve that meant more than some of the most saccharine smiles, rim of the bottle pressed to his lower lip. “First time meeting me?”

“Wish it was, that way I couldn’t take you seriously.”

Hitoshi had raised a pierced eyebrow and they both stared at each other for a few beats, before their bottles clashed in a meaningless dling and the rich taste of beer burned down his throat.

As far as Hanta is concerned, he never searched for all of this good Shouto dunked over him. But, all in all, this is probably not the worst thing to happen to him.

---

The next time Hanta gets to see Shouto in person eventuates with Pronto’s cash register standing miserably between them.

It’s one of Izuku’s regular escapades to poison his liver with caffeine (in spite of not being his business, Hanta really begins considering suggesting bossman to kick that serving off the menu before someone goes into a cardiac arrest in the middle of a place lacking a defibrillator if Denki isn’t present), however this time Shouto partners him from the order placement.

Hanta punches the prices of the caffeine slaughterer and a cinnamon croissant before looking Shouto in the eye for the first time in a week.

Hitherto, Shouto had only ordered Hanta and Tenya a take out because they forgot adulting includes grocery shopping. At Tenya’s wary rummage through the Shima packets and raised eyebrows, Hanta answered with a hysterical laugh through a tight throat. The brightside is that Hanta is still alive which, perhaps, makes it all more dubious.

Could it be that Touya lied and no one’s going to point a muzzle between Hanta’s eyes should he skirt the existence of the contract?

“What can I get you?” Hanta chums in the exact way he does with the rest of the patrons.

A life-and-death kind of debate crosses Shouto’s physiognomy in the span of five seconds as he squints at the large carton menu spread. Rapping his knuckles against the cash register, Hanta steals the glimpses of what’s perhaps the prettiest scowl he has ever laid his eyes on and winces disturbingly to himself.

Those simp-y thoughts are Hitoshi’s thing for fuck’s sake. He’s better than this.

“Do you need help?” Hanta offers after a girl he recognizes from his physics class glowers at Shouto like she’s about to thrust those devil-ish horns on her forehead between his shoulder-blades.

Shouto clears his throat, “I took an espresso last time but...um.”

“He actually hates coffee,” Izuku snickers into his hand.

“Then why—?” Not the time, not the fucking time. Hanta mentally shakes himself, gripping the rim of the counter for something tangible for stabilization. “If you dislike coffee, then we have several tea flavors and a marshmallow hot chocolate special for the colder seasons.” Gesturing at the screen from his left that displays a gif of the bouncing mug in a splash of cartoonish colors, Hanta nurses a sudden urge to smack Shouto’s chin until the heart-shaped gap flaunting the upper pearl-white incisors clasps shut.

“You like cacao,” Izuku asserts off-handedly.

Pink splashes over the bridge of Shouto’s nose and he slants Izuku a murderous glare not unlike a pouting puppy.

“Oh, in that case, I can get you cacao with extra chocolate.” Hanta’s eyelid fucking winks on its own accord and suddenly cracking his skull sounds tempting. If there is a god up there—please strike him down right here, on this dirty flooring in this shoddy cafe. His pride is besmirched enough.

Shouto sulks into the menu. “Fine.”

“Dude, no one’s forcing you to drink it,” Hanta chuckles over Izuku’s fiendish cackling, typing the order relying on muscle memory alone.

Pushing from the counter, Izuku pats Shouto’s shoulder before sending a suspicious smirk Hanta’s way. “Just so you know, he also like zaru soba, and there’s this restaurant a few blocks down—”

“Izuku!” Shouto hisses as he muffles Izuku’s babbling into his hand, and Hanta watches with eyebrows raised high on his forehead as the bi-colored hair prince shoos the amused green head into the furthest corner of the cafe.

Overlooking how his brain stores this information for later, albeit with some difficulty—Hanta forces his attention toward the devil-girl that drags an extra red nail along the paler trunk texture reclining like a gossamer on the polished wood. Full of hope she won’t hone her horns against his eyeballs, Hanta beams. “What can I get you, ma’am?”

Sixty minutes of noon rush is apparently more than enough to sidetrack him from Izuku and Shouto hurriedly flipping through colorful textbooks in the same hemisphere as he dutifully mistakes people’s names. With his mind polished glass clear, Hanta exits the backdoor on his way to empty the trash, indulge in a swift cigarette break and realign himself with the latest scandal quacking Twitter in his two hours offline.

Hanta nips at the cigarette butt while digging around his pockets for the lighter when he notices a silhouette from his peripheral. At first, Hanta denies the obvious resemblance of the clearing figure to his new friend Short Beefcake, entertaining himself with kicking a little at the gravel, but then—an unmistakable click of a gun slices the hackneyed street noise echoing in the alley.

Hanta suddenly recalls in disturbing detail the leer Touya wore when he forewarned:

“Maybe. In any case, once the deal is sealed you have two options: either commit, or face the consequences. And just to make sure that neither of you somehow, by an accident, gets the idea that this isn’t a serious contract and a serious deal...” Touya snaps two fingers as the Short Beefcake squares up his shoulders. “He’s gonna watch you from now on. Keep in mind that he’s doing a splendid job, one of the best.”

The bricks are stinging and cold where he presses his back against the wall. Hanta can feel his heart speeding up to nearly catapulting out of his ribcage, can hear the blood pulsating in his ears. His knees threaten to jerk from beneath him with the flow of traffic.

Cigarette long forgotten in the reeking dumpster, Hanta barges inside of the cafe. Through the blur of his vision and the desert-dryness of his throat, he spots Shouto and Izuku analyzing whatever scirbbled in the mayhem of notebooks in low voices, and rushes over with zero awareness of anything else but the fucking gangster looming behind the wall and the contract hammering in his brain.

“Shouto,” he wheezes, almost tripping over someone’s boot and glossing over a patron frantically waving for attention.

“Hanta?” Shouto startles, almost knocking the empty mug standing dangerously close to the rim of the table. “Something—?”

“Absolutely nothing,” he blurts with enough audacity to cringe at the high pitch of his voice. “Just wanted to—to tell you that I’m off in three hours.” And without granting Shouto the time and space to process, swoops the shorter into a hug full of stench and fear. “I’ll text you then so we can meet up, yeah?”

Mind-reading quirk isn’t something he’s been gifted with, just a lame tape shooting from awkwardly large elbows, therefore Hanta is unable to tell what Shouto is thinking about from how his breath hitches. Two quivering paws fist the fabric of the black apron knotted around Hanta’s hip bones as Shouto nods into the crook of Hanta’s neck.

Izuku makes a disgusting cooing noise at the base of his throat when they untangle, unaware of the sheer will power fixing Hanta upright from the skyrocketing potential of becoming a buzzfeed unsolved case.

Because they won’t actually harm the baby brother of their leader, right?

He’s going to get the short end of the stick, right?

One thing certain: any doubts about it being a hoax are buried six feet under like Hanta really, really hopes won’t be his fate.

---

From perpetual stories Hitoshi allots over a swig of cognac, Hanta got clued up about a basic rule:

Any idea qualified as Denki Idea™ equals to ‘God has Abandoned Us, No Hope for Thee’.

Point to case: Hitoshi and Denki’s very first meeting. As a new tattoo artist in town, Hitoshi was searching for guinea pigs willing to have the mark of a beginner etched to their skin. Denki, a bored high schooler with an overload of free time and a fake ID in the pocket, volunteered. With the legal age being a round twenty with no exception for tattoos, in no way was seventeen-year-old Denki supposed to be pinned under Hitoshi’s pen.

Long story short, the manager threatened to ban Denki from further purchases in the tattoo parlor, and almost did—but if there’s an exceeding fool then it’s Hitoshi who fell for Denki’s gilt eyes.

Lamentably, Hanta had no idea of this prior to becoming an inseparable trio, and so begins the woeful tale of Hanta entangling in Denki’s antics and watching Hitoshi strike every simp criteria despite sporting the emotional range of a weathered cactus.

In prospect, finding himself at the front of a three story high-rise building a handful of streets away from a large shopping district shouldn’t be that astounding… wasn’t it for the place’s reputation as the most popular entertainment in Musutafu. The first floor is an exorbitant restaurant, the second is a bar that serves tantalizing alcohol, and the top floor brings the dimly lit billiard hall that Hanta could have only dreamt of setting a foot in.

Until now.

To Denki and Izuku’s bliss and everyone else’s horror, it’s a triple date that, apparently, was Katsuki’s suggestion after Izuku whined that it’s been too long since they had a shared evening with the lovely couple of twink blond asshole and a purple troll. Hanta and Shouto weren’t on the invitation list until Denki remembered of their existence and thought it’d be a brilliant idea to help them sort out whatever is going on between them.

(A gangster in bushes and a contract tying their lives into a helluva mess. Which is not optimal, but better than ceremoniously kicking the bucket nonetheless.)

“I made a reservation,” Shouto explains at Hanta’s baffled wince when the guard outside brazenly barks at the line of people to step aside. It feels like a bizarre iteration of the crossing of the red sea, sans the death and chase parts.

Actually, scratch that: Hanta spots Short Beefcake lighting a cigarette from his comfortable position beneath the ‘smoking is strictly prohibited’ sign in the entrance hall and rushes to weave his and Shouto’s hands even though his palm is clammy and sticky.

Null reaction follows.

“Your father owns this place, right?” Izuku’s head rolls over his shoulders as he observes with wonder the protuberant ivy swirls of gold crawling five meters up. The murky lobby is illuminated in edged red hues like the silhouette of fire.

“His company, yes.”

The subtle wilt of Shouto’s shoulders goes under the radar of the two gawking couples, but Hanta feels the stricken press of fingertips against his knuckles. At loss, he squeezes Shouto’s hand, not really expecting the other to jostle like a cat awoken by a loud noise from a nap. A brief exchange of looks terminates with Hanta trampling on a lump of nerves threatening to constrict his airflow from the seam of Shouto’s mouth so, so unexpectedly cutting into his cheeks.

A smile adorned by dimples.

Hanta doesn’t know what to make out of this information.

“Well then!” Denki clasps two hands enthusiastically. “Let’s have some fun as long as we can.”

The saying ‘let’s have some fun as long as we can’ soon, as discovered, translates to: ditching Hanta alone and lonesome with an awkward Shouto glued to his side in favour of spilling body fluids in the bathrooms.

This clusterfuck could have been expected from Hitoshi and Denki but Izuku and Katsuki’s betrayal is somehow flagrant.

Hanta sulks wistfully into a vacant glass of whiskey reflecting the vintage luminance bleeding flame hues from the ceiling.

“Um,” Shouto says against his ear, barely audible over the bombarding music. “Do you want to go grab a bite somewhere else?”

Briefly considering his options, Hanta slants Shouto an examining look. Shouto’s expression is plank flat, and Denki is going to chew Hanta out for fleeing without contacting him first, but they’re horny dickbags that can’t keep their filthy hands off of each other for a damn second, not to mention that Hanta shouldn’t drink anymore now that he’s plainly vibing with a good head on relaxes shoulders. Therefore, he grins.

“I even know where we should go.”

---

“Where did you get your piercings from?”

Hanta heaves from almost vacuuming a noodle into his sinuses, holding the container beneath his chin so the sauce doesn’t drip to the asphalt.

For reasons beyond Hanta’s grasp, his brain restored the information about Shouto’s noodles preference. Hence, upon setting their feet into the night crisp out of the buildings door and without a second thought, Hanta arbitrated Shouto that they’re going to the zaru soba restaurant Izuku waxed poetics about.

“You should enjoy this chickenshit as well,” he said plainly when Shouto verified, for the fifth time, if Hanta’s one hundred percent certain with his decision.

A stubborn guy, this one.

But because luck isn’t a concept Hanta’s granted with—their plans go awry. The place is overrun to the point they’ve waited thirty minutes to just place an order, and instead of tarrying twice as long in vain hopes people would vanish off the tables, Hanta insists on a take out. “We can go to the park, it’s nearby and the weather is nice to eat outside, don’t you think?”

“Uh.” Accepting the carton packets, Hanta nudges Shouto’s ankle, motioning to move onward. “Fine, fine.”

Shouto’s shoulders are dejectedly slumped on their way, like of a child denied a toy, but the instant they plop on one of the benches and cranch the packets away—the disgruntled frown is replaced with a kitten-like sniff of his cold soba, and a smug slurp.

The local Musutafu park is relatively vacant at this late evening hour with the occasional wannabe runners kicking off the crunching carpet of fallen foliage route paved between the trees stretching skywards half naked. Night is complementary to the contrasting shades of Shouto’s existence, making him shine in a silver halo like an ethereal being.

A wall of vapor from Hanta’s hot meal separates Shouto’s curious gaze and Hanta’s idle chewing, but it doesn’t stop the shorter of the two from hesitantly stroking the curve of his proximal bone down the ridges of Hanta’s triple left earrings.

Around a mouthful of too spicy noodles, Hanta barely manages, “I did them myself.”

“Yourself?” Shouto boggles.

“When you pinch pennies for mortgage, you don’t have money for anything else,” Hanta shrugs, noticing the abashed twist of Shouto’s mouth. “When I was sixteen I decided that nah, fuck it, and begged Aniki to do my basic percing. Half of what’s on my earlobe is done by him, the other half I did to myself.”

Chopsticking a mound of soba, Shouto frowns lighty. “And what about the rest?”

“Oh, that,” Hanta twirls a finger in the chain hanging between two hooks over his right ear, “That’s Hitoshi’s present.”

“Mh, right,” Shouto hums. “He’s a tattoo artist and a piercer.”

“Mhm, he did my tattoos.” Hanta rotates the ankle of the leg propped against the bench and until his calf unveils beneath the vintage yellow of the street lamps. “That’s my first ever, and Imma be frank: I wouldn’t do that if Hitoshi wasn’t the artist behind it. And not only because he gave me a worker’s discount.”

Shouto scans the black curves of ink smoothly flitting into differently sized triangles, various inking techniques in such tune it’s nearly hypnotizing to look at. Even the thickest marks seem like a gentle wisp, like there was no effort and soul spilled into the masterpiece.

“It’s so…” He tilts his head a little, inching closer. Hanta’s muscles spasm at the sudden pounding of his heart against his ribcage out of his system. “Delicate.”

“Yeah, he’s honestly an expert in what he’s doing,” Hanta croons. “Exactly what you’d expect from someone who was so hellbent on tattooing that he ruined the skin of his thighs just to get the grip of it.”

“I’ve heard this story.” Shouto leans against the back of the bench, eyes trailing like a laser up the length of Hanta’s leg. “You said it’s your first, you have any more?”

“Of course.” Swallowing the beef, Hanta enthusiastically wedges four fingers beneath the neckline of his hoodie. Shouto’s eyes flick accordingly, mouth forming an ‘o’ shape at the snake organically swirling beneath the curve of the collar bone. “I plan doing a sleeve the moment I have the money. That’s just the beginning of it.”

Shouto goes quiet. It makes Hanta aware of how much skin he exposes, so he lets go of the cloth, rolls his shoulder until the shirt aligns itself with the curves of his body, and drops his eyes to the half finished meal he skillfully balances against his kneecap. The tips of red on his cheeks aren’t that prominent in the darkness of the night.

“You know that I can pay for that, as part of our deal,” Shouto notes. Tattoo projects cost an arm and a leg, especially sleeves, so it might actually cover approximately sixty percent of the agreed sum. Obviously Shouto would suggest this, it’s convenient to terminate the deal requiring him to spend too much everything on someone who was a nameless stranger merely two weeks ago.

“I know.” Hanta drums the chopsticks against the carton. “You don’t have to, though. I can settle on dinner dates,” he adds with a wink because he was born a moron. Something almost nauseating sinks in his stomach. Hanta wonders if that’s what they call butterflies.

“I don’t mind,” Shouto flushes strawberry pink. “You—you look really nice with tattoos.”

The compliment is like someone screwing a bottle of Coke open after shaking it up with mentos, but Hanta doesn’t understand why.

“Do you have any piercings or tattoos?” He asks instead to halt the radio static noise in his head.

“Do I look like someone who’s allowed to have any?” Shouto deadpans.

“That’s—” fair. “But do you want any?”

Shouto gazes at the gravel of the concrete. “I have another older brother, Natsuo,” he tells Hanta, sounding lightyears away. “He tried to get a piercing and got yelled at by our father because of that. I suppose that Dad is going to disown me or something if I show up with pierced ears at one of his conferences.”

Hanta’s facial muscles spasm. “The fuck? But whatshisname has piercings?”

“Touya-nee?” Shouto huffs out a laugh as Hanta nods once. “Well, considering the fact he’s the black sheep of our family, I don’t think Dad cares anymore. You’re probably going to hate me but, uh, Touya-nee most certainly did that contract thingy because he holds a grudge against me for being ‘Dad’s favorite’.” He air-quotes, and Hanta raises an eyebrow.

“Why did you air-quote?”

Shouto’s mouth is a melancholic line over his chin. “Because I don’t think he’s proud of me, and because I’m not here to please him.”

“That’s the spirit.” Slapping Shouto’s back, Hanta leans back on the bench with slight dizziness. He’s always been told that his easy-going nature paves into people’s subliminal, but he still didn’t quite expect this tragic backstory exchange that seems to uplift Shouto’s megrim even if just a little. “But you know, I think you should get an earring in spite of your father.”

Shouto fiddles with the soba with the chopsticks elegantly resting between his curled digits. “I’ve talked with Hitoshi and Katsuki about it, but dunno.”

At that moment, Hanta bolts to his feet reinvigorated—knees creaking from the cold or impressive lack of exercise. “Nonsense!” He almost shouts as he pitches the container for the nearest trash can to enjoy and pivots, grinning at Shouto’s supremely quizicall stare. “That’s it, we’re going to get your earring tomorrow.”

To his credit, Shouto tries a, “But—” that’s unceremoniously ignored by Hanta shoving a palm over his mouth.

“You’re going to get the piercing you deserve, as soon as possible.” He coaxes, a grin stretching from ear to ear on his face. “Time for you to get something out of this fuckery.”

Peeling Hanta’s large hand off his lower face, Shouto scoffs. “I’m the one paying.”

“And I’m the one making sure you’d allow yourself to do things that make you happy.” Hanta pockets his phone after letting Hitoshi know that no hangover is going to save him from piercing Shouto’s ear tomorrow. “Stop trying to fight it.”

Shouto’s fingers are like a phantom weight on Hanta’s palm as he stares at the raven head from beneath, cold soba sagging in offense in the container camping on his thin thighs. “But you’re coming with me.”

“Of course!” Prodding at the teos of Shouto’s snickers, Hanta winks. “Fake boyfriend or not, I’m not going to miss you crying like a little girl from a needle.”

At that, Shouto relentlessly sinks his teeth over Hanta’s fingers.

---

‘Thorns & Needles’ is a punk themed tattoo parlor introduced to Hanta thirty minutes after he squawked about considering a geometrical tattoo as an addition to the humble collection of earrings hanging from his earlobe.

It was also the day he discovered that, apparently, Hitoshi’s metier is tattoo art with a side job as a piercer when he feels like it or staff runs short. Kind of dumb to fail connecting one plus one considering he witnessed Hitoshi doodling in a notebook on more than one occasion. Even more stupid to boggle at the purple head’s verbal clarification, but you cannot blame Hanta on this one—Hitoshi radiates the vibe of a crazy cat lady, not a metal-head piercer slash tattoo artist.

The beep of a locked car chimes and Hanta’s grin stretches from ear to ear as he gestures at the entrance sporting black signs with gold calligraphy painted over it. “Ta-da! The best place for tats and piercings, definitely according to my extremely biased opinion.” Inserting every ounce of boast he has in his friend, he takes a step forth and throws his head over the shoulder, realizing that ‘cultural shock’ is written on every part of Shouto’s stupidly beautiful face.

“Dude.” Unthinkingly, Hanta weaves his fingers through Shouto’s loose digits and twists them in one another, ignoring the tizzy buzz of his body. “Hitoshi is a master of his craft, you have absolutely nothing to worry about.”

“Hitoshi’s work stories are horrible,” Shouto contradicts—clipped.

“And yet no one died,” Hanta dismisses as he tags Shouto inwardly through the door-frame. The bell jingles for welcome above their heads as Hanta whirls the tripping-over-himself Shouto between the walls pounding to the beats of the Metallica filtering through the speakers. Nodding to himself in approval, they reach the reception table. The surface is almost completely hidden by an avalanche of portfolio manila envelopes and scattered blue ink pens.

Propping an elbow on the wood and without realizing that Shouto’s digits crawl upwards to fist the sleeve of his hoodie, Hanta greets, “Yo, lazy-ass. I see you’re a secretary today?”

Lifting his head from the phone, Hitoshi slants Hanta an impassive expression, but then, his eyebrows rise comically high on his forehead. “Holy shit, you actually came. I thought your father would rip your ass if you set a foot in here.”

“Mh,” Shouto emits, tight lipped.

Hanta catches the cue of words escaping out of Shouto’s ears and snaps two fingers so Hitoshi’s attention is back to him. “Is this how you greet your other patrons, too?”

“No, only those who have daddy issues and an asshat dragging them here,” Hitoshi deadpans.

Hanta’s deeply offended noise is rudely interrupted by an external baritone butting in, “One day someone is going to throw one of the couches over your head, and I won’t even try stopping them.”

From the left, where supposed to be a door, is hanging a black curtain separating a large open space of a studio. There stands a guy with a thick man bun above an undercut and shark-sharp teeth stands, arms crossed over a bulky chest. Black ink weaves across the muscles of his arms into sleeves full of figures. Hanta bets it’ll take ten minutes to observe each.

“Don’t you have a cleaning duty?” Hitoshi hisses.

“Yeah, because some klutz spilled a bucket of ink,” the redhead retorts without missing a beat.

Hitoshi scowls, chair screeching when he raises to his lengthy stature. “I can also shove that bucket up your ass if you don’t fuck off.”

Redhead wiggles two black eyebrows. “Kinky.”

“Can the two of you shut the fuck up already?” Hollers another raspy voice, presumably that Katsuki guy Hitoshi runs too many gags on. “And Eijirou, get the fuck back to cleaning before I kill you.”

Eijirou guy laughs airly as he pivots on his heels, disappearing behind the wall, and Hitoshi pinches the bridge of his nose like the purge might start if he has to hear him speaking ever again. Quite funny, if you ask Hanta as someone who highly enjoys Hitoshi’s dramatics.

“So, before we were interrupted,” Hitoshi points a finger at Shouto, who resembles a tortoise trying to shrink into its shell. “I was about to ask: you finally grew the balls for that earring you wanted or did Hanta blackmail you?”

“First of all, I still don’t have enough material to blackmail him,” Hanta starts, suppressing a howl of laughter at Shouto’s pupils growing twice their size. “Secondly, saying that he mentioned it in passing and I hopped on the opportunity would be more correct.”

Shouto nods, once, gripping the cloth harder.

Ignoring the way Hitoshi’s eyes dart to their linked hands and the warm fuzzies in Hanta’s stomach from feeling Shouto’s breath on his back, Hanta raises a thumb up. There’s a gap as the reply forthcoming, in which only the screams of Metallica’s vocalist fill the ink and metal smelling space between them.

“Alright, then.” With an apathetic shrug, Hitoshi drawns half circle with his upper abdomen toward the corridor leading to the employee’s resting room. “Mina!” A pause. Hitoshi puffs air in faux irritation. “Can her beautiful majesty bring her ass over here? I have work to do.”

Hanta secrets a laugh into his hand as Shouto’s shoulders begin to relax. A rapid padding of heel-toe echoes from the other side, and a short girl wearing a purple crop top and rips-with-jeans summons from the corridor concave.

“What is it, Grump?” She asks without lifting her eyes from where terrifyingly long nails clatter against the screen of her phone.

“I need you to do the job you’re supposed to be doing.” Hitoshi exits the table built like a closed parenthesis on his way toward the right large studio with various examination tables and chairs for guinea pigs that desire a piercing or two. “Left or right ear?”

Shouto visibly falters, and Hanta once again comes to his rescue like the benevolent human being he is. Cupping Shouto’s surprisingly soft cheeks, Hanta tilts his head left and right for brief studying, like he hadn’t been memorizing his features since their first (proper) eye contact.

And every time, without fail, the conclusion, mortifying and unnerving, is the same: Shouto is beautiful.

“Let’s go for the left,” he smiles in a half-daze. It takes more effort than he dares to admit forcing his arms to drop limply at the sides of his frame and step back. “You dig?”

“Y-yeah,” Shouto breathes out, tripping over his feet as Hitoshi nudges him into the chair.

“It’ll be really quick, and don’t forget that I’ve been doing it for,” Hitoshi trails off as he applies disinfectant to needle glittering in silver, “eight years? Yeah, sounds about right. Also, I’m a certified professional.”

“And very humble.” Hanta props crossed arms on the back of the chair.

“Extremely humble,” Hitoshi agrees, yet still digs a sharp elbow into Hanta’s ribs on his way to the matte black piercing gun. “You’ve been drooling on my and Denki’s piercings long enough to finally get one of your own.”

“Wanna tell me something I don’t know?” Shouto huffs, rigid thighs beneath a taut jaw.

The offer pummeling Hanta in the brain is only fifty percent cynical, vocalized before he can throttle his vocal cords. “I can hold your hand if you’re such a scaredy cat.” Already halfway through the statement, he reaches out for Shouto’s white knuckled fist and blinks like he received a ringing slap to the face from the clutch of hands.

“I hate needles,” Shouto confesses. “And I’m still mentally preparing myself for the yelling I’m going to get from Dad when he sees it.”

“Literally fuck your dad,” Hanta snarls with a lot of feeling. “You can—and will—be a businessman greater than he’d ever dreamed of himself being, piercing be damned.”

Something crosses Shouto’s eyes—an emotion, or a spark, or a spell that tingles beneath Hanta’s nails as it crawls like a snake’s venom up his bloodstream—but it’s brief. So brief it leaves Hanta winded like after getting off a rollercoaster. That something morphs into a shy, tiny smile between the trench of two dimples, making the skin beneath Shouto’s eyes crumple.

“Thanks.”

Shouto’s paw is nearly swallowed whole by Hanta’s larger hand. Another fragment of information Hanta doesn’t know what to do with.

“Alright.” An ominous click of a gun load makes Hanta jerk with red staining the edge of his cheekbones down to his collarbones. The shirt beneath his armpits is suddenly wet and gross, as he swivels his head toward Hitoshi positioning himself in front of Shouto. “Time to gut your earlobe, pretty boy.”

Hanta barks out a laugh bordering hysteria. “You’re a fucking jackass.”

In contrast, Shouto pales.

---

Hanta doesn’t boast about being the most stalwart employee of Pronto.

Far from that, actually. If he’d give more than two fucks about this dayjob, he’d cease making fun of slash misspelling patrons’ names, throw free goods at fuming assholes when they rise to a clamor from a lock of hair dished out with their patisserie, take superfluous smoking breaks he’s ineligible for, and stop using his phone.

But if he didn’t slant a surreptitious look beneath the counter to check how long he’s bound to suffer, Hanta would have missed the ‘ping!’ of a new notification from LINE telling about an incoming photo from Shouto. A selfie from a high angle that anyone who isn’t Shouto would have looked like an ork in, exhibiting the healing silver button in the center of Shouto’s earlobe, while his free hand brushes albino hair behind his ear and sharp jawline pulling his neck muscles with its twist.

Fucking hell.

If Hanta’s ever elected as the president, the first law he’s executing is arresting beautiful people like Shouto Todoroki. This is just plainly not fair.

‘Is it supposed to look like this?’ is the text following.

Deliberately staring at the photo torn out of a hair product commercial versus feeling like an ultimate creep vie for dominance in his head.

Instead of dwelling in it, Hanta zooms into the image, inspecting the slightly reddish skin as he tries to get his suddenly numb fingers to work: ‘ye dude, its healin rn’.

Three dots float from the bottom of the screen a millisecond after the message goes on ‘read’. Hanta’s eyes flicker for a brief inspection that no one needs assistance in anything: the two waiters dutifully march between the tables hidden beneath mounds of textbooks, laptops, and coffee mugs, Denki prepares the last order that’s been placed, rush hour is over, and anyway the cafe is stacked like an overflowing sink so outsiders don’t even try wriggle through the doors.

Perfect opportunity to chit chat with Shouto even though they’ve been up each other’s ass for the past two weeks.

Hanta straightens a little in his place, tugging at the collar of his shirt to let the flare of his skin evaporate. Fixating blurry vision like through dirty glass, he conjectures that the heat in his stomach is caused by something that he ate. It’s a lame excuse that will earn him a slipper to the scalp if he says it out loud, because not only he wipes out the half of Denki’s fridge that Hitoshi doesn’t, he’s also spoiled with nigh patrician nourishments.

Speaking of the devil.

Watching his reflection appear in the fading to blackness screen, a ding of an order complete chimes through the steady rhythm of soles padding over the flooring.

“Can you tell your boyfriend that I’m skipping the death session tomorrow?”

Denki rinses the tube hissing milk from the lowly gurgling coffee machine, and weren’t the place overloaded—Hanta would have croaked something inappropriate. “Why won’t you tell him yourself?”

“Because he’s going to murder me for standing up our gym date.” At the unimpressed foot stomping the trash can’s mouth open, Hanta stresses earnestly, “Murder, Denki. We’re talking about murder here.”

“Maybe if you’d give him a good enough reason, he won’t shove your balls up your ass?” Denki supplies with a coy tilt of his head, hooking ankle above ankle as he leans over the countertop. “You know that Toshi can’t ethically hurt a fly.”

“Well, I am not a fly, and I know he will hurt me,” Hanta reproaches. “Plus, the reason isn’t good enough cause the only reason he accepts is the explosion of the world.”

Denki taps his chin. “Fair point. But what is your reason?”

“Shit tons of procrastinated assignments because—uh.”

Because he’s been with Shouto. The ease at which from being a mere stranger, Shouto has become a constant in Hanta’s routine, feels bewitched. Two weeks of tip-toeing on eggshells around one another make it feel like they’re best friends despite not even knowing Shouto’s favorite color or how many times he binged Spiderman.

It dawns on him like a cascading waterfall or a hurled brick to the face. The heat brews again—odious and nauseating to the point his knees wobble and he has to grip something to not dive ass first to the flooring.

“Because...?” Denki’s eyebrow rises warily.

Tongue tied in his mouth, Hanta avoids his friend’s gaze and clenches the device in his hand. His cheeks are practically burning; he wants to claw them off of his face. Admitting it out loud is going to confirm something that he doesn’t want to handle, not with the circumstances around it and with the obvious reality manifesting in his vision.

“Been busy,” Hanta settles on lamely.

Denki’s eyes crinkle balefully. “Busy doing what, exactly?”

Red creeps from beneath his shirt to stain his neck and cheeks. “Doing none of your damn business.”

“But Hannie, we’re best friends,” Denki wheedles, rocking on the heels of his feet. “We’re supposed to be telling each other everything, especially if pretty boys are involved.”

Hanta wants to thunk the cash register over the blond bastard’s smug expression for actually making his entire face turn the color of the cherry resting leisurely on the cheesecake with baby pink frosting. “I will tell Hitoshi you didn’t eat lunch,” he tries to threaten, but it falls on deaf ears.

Like a snake bursting forth on a mouse, Denki clasps his arms around Hanta’s middle and shakes him with his nose mashed into Hanta’s cheek. “Shouto really is a nice guy, Hannie. Toshi and I totally approve.”

Batting the limpet off his shoulders, Hanta scowls, pressing a fist to his thigh. “Whatever. I need no approval for liking someone.”

Denki purses his lips, and Hanta—with mortification brewing in his navel—realizes his mistake. “Well, I said nothing about liking Shouto, cause I didn’t want to assume anything, you know? But if that’s the case, go get ‘em, tiger.”

Squinting at his friend verifies that he’s honest-to-god happy for something that makes Hanta’s teeth ache. Because Shouto sticks around for reasons opposite of a liberated wish. Had Denki deigned to heed Hanta’s mourning, he’d have known that their new regular with a tattooed bald head is actually Short Beefcake ready to release a bullet into Hanta’s gut at any intention pronounced wrong, he’d understand why Hanta’s chest is so tight at the thought of Shouto’s dangling sweater paws or the stupidly adorable scrunch of nose when he’s perplexed.

“Rawr,” Hanta deadpans, because it’s easier.

It’s safer.

---

Plump droplets of water sag into the fabric of the towel Hanta drapes over his shoulders.

Steam wriggles through the door as he exits the crumpled dorm room bathroom, yawning into a large paw and absent-mindedly waving toward his roommate. Tenya’s framed eyes are dead focused on the laptop screen, so he doesn’t wave back nor even acknowledges Hanta’s presence. But it’s fine, Hanta will come across as a hypocrite if he denies that he himself is as responsive as a rock when he’s binge writing an assignment due in a few hours.

Hanta ambles to his room, raising a quizzical eyebrow at the door pulled a smidge open. Usually it’s closed shut when he’s out of the room, a habit of an old dog from sharing a diminutive apartment with nosy family members. But what could have possibly happened in the forty minutes he cooked himself in the vapor of hot water? A gangster realized that what he and Shouto are doing is a pissy pretendance game and decided to kick the bucket for Hanta?

As if.

Pulling the screeching door inward, Hanta manages two and a half steps before his heart trips over itself.

“Oh,” he hides a grin in his palm, “There’s a Shouto in my bed.”

“There’s indeed a Shouto in your bed,” Shouto hums from where he’s lying sideways, phone nestled in palm in front of his face with low murmur echoing from there. Hanta notices two important things: 1) Shouto’s mane is a mess on his head, carded to the side so it doesn’t screen his duo colored eyes and 2) he’s clad in navy jeans and a soft looking sweater that suspiciously resembles one of Hanta’s missing garments.

Even more information Hanta doesn’t know what to make of. He should really start going through this mental checklist before a potential heart failure.

Awkwardly standing in the middle of his plain room because he was born a moron, Hanta lifts an arm to rub the nape of his neck. The temperature seems to rise around him, specifically his cheeks— probably the climate change.

“What are you doing here?” Then he frowns. “No, better yet: how did you appear here?”

“Iida let me in,” Shouto replies without moving a muscle, looking intensely absorbed in whatever happens on-screen. “Decided to drop a visit since Dad’s being a jackass,” he adds more quietly.

With some of the shock evaporating through Hanta’s tidbit crimson ears, Hanta cautiously paces toward his bed, craning his neck over Shouto’s shoulder.

“Quite a surprise he had enough spare brain cell energy to even register someone was knocking,” Hanta muses in faux wonder, Shouto’s lips twitch and eyes crinkle in response.

The actors dashing through clogged fog in the device aren’t familiar, and after another second of staring—it dawns on him that mostly he’s staring at Shouto’s half lidded eyelashes kissing his high cheekbones intermittently. Like a predator crawling in the plain sight of an unsuspecting prey, Hanta rolls his body over two palms. The bed deeps under his weight in a barely audible creak.

Before he can slam a filter to his mouth, Hanta says, “Dude, no homo, but you look really cuddleable right now.”

Adam’s apple bobbing, Shouto lets out something—partially a strangled chortle, partially a gurgle of what Hanta imagines a dancing dog with broken legs will sound like. “No offense, but it definitely sounds homo,” he mutters, and—oh.

Ruby is a gorgeous color when it’s etched to the apples of Shouto’s cheeks.

The tidal wave of confidence that powers up the cogs of the impulsive decision making department in his brain isn’t as alien as Hanta is willing to admit, but it’s enough to give him an invisible encouraging push to the back. He flops on the bed, tucks a hand beneath the warmth of Shouto’s hip and presses them chest-to-back.

“Good thing we’re dating, then,” Hanta grins, dropping the point of his chin to the cornrow of Shouto’s hair.

It’s somewhat unnerving, the ease at which Shouto fits into the pocket of Hanta’s lanky frame, like a deficient piece of a puzzle. The voices of the actors that find themselves in some abandoned building are muffled by the heel of Shouto’s paw slipping over the speaker as the shorter man wriggles beneath the arm Hanta loops over his midriff. Their legs entangle like loose woolen threads, and Hanta playfully hooks his feet around Shouto’s ankle.

“We pretend,” Shouto amends faintly.

Hanta doesn’t want to acknowledge the fist clenching around his stomach from hearing this bold clarification that this is a game of simulacrum solely to entertain the king of assholes Touya, and buries his nose in Shouto’s scent of strawberry. There’s still something not unlike melancholy creeping from his throat to his chest. Tightening the hold around Shouto feels like amping the volume of his own traitorous heart palpitations up instead of working it out of his system.

“You’re right,” he agrees, chapped. “We just pretend.”

---

Smoke billows from the joint tip flaring in dull flame hues matching the autumn painting everything in sepia, scarlett and mustard yellows.

Hanta shudders.

A dull thud of the door ending the rectangular spiral of stairs stretching from top to bottom of the dorms building chases the evening breeze and he jerks up, blinking a few times as his sluggish eyesight steadies itself. That odd moment after staring at a certain dot in space for too long, to the point everything blurs into an undefined image that stabilizes upon squeezing the eyeballs a few times.

“I wondered where you fled to this late,” Shouto’s soft baritone tips his ears, relaxing him from the momentary panic of someone who shouldn’t catch him smoking creeping to the roof. The shuffling echoes between the flooring and sky as Hanta watches Shouto’s silhouette gracefully plop on his butt next to him. “Waking up to a cold side of the bed like some cheap hook up isn’t my cup of tea.”

But Shouto’s smile is tender, cheeks rose pink, sleep edging the slant of his eyes.

Rolling the smoking joint between two fingers, Hanta then taps on the edge, letting some crumbs sputter onto the ground beneath his dangling legs. “Sorry, I couldn’t fall asleep so I went to dramatically smoke under the moonlight like the main depressed character of a cheesy soap opera—no, crime opera.” He pauses. “Well, my brain just decided that mouth goes brr, I have no idea what the fuck I just said.”

A puff of secretive laughter blows shivers down his neck. “Mind if I join you?”

“‘s not a cigarette.”

Shouto shrugs. “I can tell by the smell.”

“You’ve been warned.” Hanta stretches his arm toward the duo hair-colored man until their fingers intertwined in those few eternal seconds it takes Shouto wiggle the joint out of Hanta’s hold. Hanta sinks a row of aching teeth into his lower lip, using it as a suppressant for the heartbeat against his ribcage.

Hanta isn’t sure what exactly he expected, but probably a part of him has been convinced the guy never touched a joint in his life. That’s why he gawks like a dimwit upon witnessing the ease at which Shouto drags a smoke and wheezes it out through the slant of his mouth.

Lips pursed, glistening like there’s glitter stuck on them, color cherry red under the daylight and pale violet at night. Even though he’s aware it’s just the lighting and shades positioning and how they’re casted over those delicate features, he can’t help but be mesmerized by the ethereal human being near him. Especially as the rest of the silver luminance paints his cheek in dull hues of gray and white.

“Earlier, when I crashed without invitation and you cuddled me,” Shouto begins after inhaling a second time. “You sounded weird.”

“I sounded weird?” Hanta wrinkles his nose as he accepts the grated grass rolled in brown paper back. “How weird?”

“Like...” Shouto’s legs dangle between the railings fencing the vicinity of the roof, and his fingers twist into two fists curled into one another. Albeit half-a-joint deep, Hanta manages to spot the tints of hesitation zipping between Shouto’s thumbs, but then, he thumps his forehead against the rods, groaning. “Nevermind, I’m not remotely high enough to have this type of conversation.”

With his brain processing information snail-like, Hanta concludes he has absolutely no clue what Shouto is trying to articulate and that the best course of action is threading a digit in one his belt loops so he can tow his friend until their shoulders press. Shouto leans into the invitation, bumping their heads lightly together.

“Sounds like a conversion for when we’re sober,” Hanta laughs easily over the pulse acceleration in his wrists. “Alright?”

Shouto’s lips ghost over his jaw. “Yeah.”

---

Twain occurrences force Hanta awake: Shouto’s finger digging beneath his ribs and a phone alarm screaming bloody murder on top of the pile of well trodden textbooks.

Hell of a way to wish someone a good morning.

“What?” He slurs through a yawn, throat parched like a dead lizard and voice gravel rough. Winching his face up from the pillow cushion, Hanta hooks two fingers around Shouto’s wrist with the sole purpose of removing the intrusive tickles that have his muscles clenching and unclenching compulsively. Only after pancaking Shouto’s arm to the bed and rising to all four with his mohawk a bird-nestle on his head—the position they’re in dawns on him.

Nonplussed Shouto, cheeks a bright pink and eyebrows pinched, stares from the frames of bi-colored hair hinged to the bed by Hanta’s mass. Hanta tempers on a heave as he darts up to his knees, a wave of heat deploying from his forehead reaches a fever pitch. Toes curling in the bedsheets, he goes for a cordial, “Good morning,” that, in practice, croaks as a wheeze.

“We’re—we’re late,” Shouto stammers a response.

On one of Hanta’s 1AM binge-scrolling through social media, he had stumbled upon a post eulogizing a man’s tone after waking up and before going to sleep. That it’s supposedly twice as attractive and deep, and with the hoarse edge and drowsy tilt Hanta just heard—he finds himself devastatingly assenting.

Mentally slapping himself before the dangerous train choo-choos its way out of the Bible station, Hanta rolls off the bed, nearly trips over his own feet in the process, and blindly grabs the device threatening to bungee jump with how aggressively it buzzes for attention. For a reason unknown, Hanta’s heart is pulsating in his ears as he slides on the decline button. A headache works its way behind his forehead from the abrupt fling out of bed. Hanta sagaciously blames it.

Pinching the bridge of his nose, he squints from the light filtering through the shatters. It takes a full sixty seconds for his brain to register the definition of being late to places, his eyes droop to the timer mockingly switching another digit on the screen of his phone, and then it dawns on him.

“Fuck,” Hanta says out loud. “Classes.”

It’s ridiculously humid in his room even though the window is pulled open a notch. The sunlight of a little bit past 9AM gives the plain walls tedious orange marks that trek down Shouto’s back as he wedges into the first clothing spotted on Hanta’s swamped desk chair. The morning buzz of traffic is coupled with their hurried tread out of the bedroom, doing the bare minimum required of a man vying the sedulous clock.

On the threshold, the key chain clinks in Hanta’s hand as he waits for Shouto to stomp his sneakers into place, for a second any sense of reality, any instinctual angry stop sign flashing bright red is replaced by something placid, a phlegmatic halt.

“I’ll text you later today.” Shouto spins on the heels of his feet, and suddenly Hanta is aware of their tight proximity that can be swallowed whole in half a step.

“Yeah.”

There’s a radio wave noise, a tv static in his ears when he impulsively leans forth. His heart is a drum in his chest and eyelashes black streaks like before fainting as smooth skin is suddenly pressed against his mouth.

It’s monumentally stupid. And brief. Like the last sip of sandy water beneath the blazing desert sun, like a malformed memory of a dream slipping away.

Everything stops.

And then—it’s gone.

Hanta inhales through flared nostrils as he backs away. Shouto’s silhouette disappears down the unsuspecting street, but Hanta’s pounding lips begging for more of Shouto’s saccharine strawberry tang siege. Heels rooted to the ground, numb fingertips tremulously press against aching teeth, before his phone’s strident ringtone chimes and reality crushes down at the force of a horse shattering glass.

In the end, he is late to class.

---

It shouldn’t be surprising that it all comes to a head when the fifth phone call goes declined.

Three days have passed since he lastly heard Shouto’s baritone, since they fell asleep in the circle of each other’s arms after sharing a joint with the stars being the only witness. Since Shouto mumbled something under the rose, that Hanta had yet figured out the meaning of. Since the thick fragrance of strawberry and an expensive cologne evaporated from his pillowcase.

Since they stupidly…so, so stupidly—

A pair of fingers snap in front of his face. “Are you even listening to me?”

One of the top ten mysteries of the world should be how the cup of tea nestled in Hanta’s hands doesn’t perform a flip-flop from the walnut table to the tile kitchen flooring from how aggressively he jerks.

“Ah?”

Tenya pinches the bridge of his nose reproachfully. “I’ve been talking about the groceries you forgot, again, and then asked if you can go or should I do that?”

“Sorry.” Hanta drags a hand down his face. “I can do that later today, or the next two times, whichever you prefer.”

From the peripheral, he notices that Tenya crosses his bulky arm over his chest, eyes raking Hanta’s slouched frame as the latter sips tea just to fill the silence in his mouth with something. There’s no new notification floating up the screen when he absent-mindedly taps on it, and that makes his stomach shrink into an ice cube. The last thing he wants to come across as obsessive, but at least the smallest attestation of Shouto being alive is better than sinking into the pit of the unknown.

“You’ve been really weird lately, more than usual,” Tenya states matter-of-factly. “Something happened?”

In lieu of responding, Hanta snorts humorlessly into the herbal liquid.

As much as Hanta loves and appreciates a sage advice, narrating what’s been harassing his dumb ass screams ‘cardiac arrest’ for a lawful person like his roommate. And, now that he thinks about it, the first thing Tenya’s is going to do is catapult Hanta to the police station. In prospect, Hanta and Shouto should have done precisely that from the very beginning—before Hanta’s heart started doing funny things in his chest at the thought of linking fingers with Shouto, before he began genuinely anticipating their not-dates.

Teeth sinking into his lower lip, Hanta’s shoulders scrunch up to his ears. It’s one thing being constantly baptized as a dumbass. Although, since entering college the nickname became more or less obsolete, Hanta can’t help but sense the repentance he experienced upon bringing another low grade at school shrinking his organs into ice cubes.

Maybe he should try calling again.

“Is it about that boyfriend of yours?” Tenya prompts impatiently.

Hanta’s head jerks lightly as blood squeezes beneath his nails. “He’s—we’re—”

Tenya raises a skeptical eyebrow. “You are?”

Words melting on his tongue and phone gripped tightly, Hanta sucks a lungful of air until it hurts, trying to articulate the most proper answer that won’t be cataloged as a lie but won’t reveal unnecessary information. Keeping quiet like a mouse doesn’t solve as much as listening to the breeze whistling outside, calling the clogged clouds carrying the downpour around the world to gather above the sky of the gloomy city.

A beat of silence passes at the length of an eternity.

“Alright, I don’t know what pandora’s box you snapped open, but I won’t force you to talk about it,” Tenya relents, dropping a hefty palm to squeeze Hanta’s shoulder. “Don’t forget the groceries, though. I’m counting on you.”

Awful idea, Hanta thinks somberly.

Yet, he flashes a toothy grin like he doesn’t fight the encompassing urge to tear his hair out one-by-one.

---

At 9PM on an uneventful Friday, Tenya takes to one’s heels, abandoning Hanta to the mercy of the liquid courage burning his throat to soreness with the corollary of swiping a thumb over Shouto’s contact number after avoiding each other for ten more days.

But who counts?

Only after the second beep goes through Hanta realizes that this is going to be either a triumphant success or so catastrophically bad Hanta will have to hole up in a bunker. However, there’s no one to dissuade him… or so he thinks until the fourth beep of call connecting suggests a failure. Just as he goes for angrily terminating the call, a hoarse shrill echoes from over the receiver and the annoying ‘calling’ status switches to running digits counting the conversation time.

“Oh, oh fuck.” Comes out a hurried wheeze. Muffled, but not enough to not decipher the phone has been picked up accidentally.

“For fuck’s sake, Shouto,” Hanta fires without waiting as he stands up, hands hitting the table and glass shot protesting jarringly. “I’ve been trying to call you for days. Wha—?”

“I can’t talk right now,” Shouto barrels over him, and only then the background noise of mingled voices registers. Shouto’s friends, perhaps? His knees are shaking as he grits his teeth, vodka sinking low, low in his shrunken stomach.

“Then when and where can you talk?” Hanta presses stubbornly.

A bit of noisy silence passes, and then Shouto’s exhale crunches over the speaker. “Wanna meet at the park in an hour? Near the fountain.” The portion of uncertainty in his tone makes it almost believable that Hanta is the jackass cutting connections and dropping Shouto like a hot potato.

Hanta scrambles out of the chair, instantly bolting toward his room. “An hour, you’d better fucking be there.”

---

Outside the sky is a glossy navy and the breeze has a chilly tilt to it. Sometime in the future, Hanta is going to recall the effoliation reds and oranges as a nebulous fit diverting his attention from the drum in his chest, the headlamps of passing traffic dragging serpentine arcs over the shingle asphalt and the flora’s life melting into the monochromatic winter hurriedly approaching.

Tonight, this is nothing but an obscured locality.

Realistically, there should be no fear zipping down his ramrod straight spine as he spots the pathos in human form swarmed by streetlight fuzzies at the other corner of the fountain.

But his knees jitter simultaneously to a clamorous crunch of a sepia leaf under his foot.

Hanta isn’t sure what to make out of the tight breath Shouto sucks in—like he’s been punched under the navel. Or at least that’s Hanta’s exegesis regarding the way Shouto jerks and then relaxes against the tree trunk towering heavenwards. “Hanta,” he exhales raggedly, a smidge automatically.

Hanta wonders if Shouto’s cold, level gaze betokens indifference or anger. It doesn’t deter his meaningful stride and the steadiness of his hands. “Hi.”

“Hi.” Another glow of flowing traffic stains Shouto’s duo irises like a vignette purloined from Picasso’s bare hands. “I didn’t expect you to come.”

“You were ghosting me for two weeks.” Hanta’s voice sounds like a wound scraped raw even for his own ears, and he stamps on the cringe bubbling alongside nauseating heat and outrageous fuzzies blooming in his stomach. “What did you expect, then?”

“I dunno,” Shouto mumbles vaguely. Hanta stops a scant inches away from a body he suddenly wants to feel as a weight against himself, especially when the phantom sensation of fingers crawls his skin like an intrusive ivy. “I thought you’d stay at home to—something. I don’t know.”

Worrying his lip between his teeth, Hanta infers that this is cowardice. Blaming the gangster’s menace being on the cards is easier than ripping off the overdue bandaid. An arcane urgency to yell at Shouto that in the past however-many days Hanta’s bearings constantly spiraled over, wanting to reach for him not because of a fear of a bullet piercing through his flesh but due to something deeper and scarier than any maim sags between his shoulders.

But there’s also anger, red and hot, squeezing under his nails. “Did you intend on ghoting me forever if I didn’t persistently call you?”

“No, I—uh. Look, I might be an asshole, but I know where to draw the line.” Shouto rubs the nape of his neck. Hanta stays mute. “I’ve put you through enough shit that you shouldn’t have been involved in the first place, and despite what you say—it is my fault.”

Tongue stiff and cumbersome, Hanta squares up his shoulders. “Your point?”

“I’ve talked to Touya-nee and forced him to stop this ridiculous whatever he wants to attain.” Shouto digs two fists in his pockets. “It shouldn’t come at our expense, doesn’t matter how bored he is. I honestly thought I’d end up in a coffin but, I’m still here, so I assume it’s okay.” The way the toe of his shoe scraps his ankle makes something morbid flood through Hanta’s veins. “It’s over, Ha—Sero. You’re free.”

Hearing ‘Sero’ coming out of Shouto’s mouth is like a swift kick to the balls.

Somewhere, in the chasm of moral sanity of a human, Hanta thinks he should feel relieved. The hefty brick saddling his shoulders should have cascaded already, crushing beneath his feet into million pieces of a past threat. He should dive head-first in the liberty nestled in Shouto’s wobbly line of lips instead of feeling like his chest is manacled.

Fisting the fabric in his sweatpants pockets, Hanta swallows hardly. “You’re really acting like an arrogant asshole.”

“What—” Shouto flounders, “I was—I didn’t—”

“Exactly, you didn’t. You didn’t do jack shit but wallowing in self pity, now, did you?”

A gust of wind rushes through the verdure as a honking police car dashes down the road. Hanta isn’t sure what emotion dominates him right now, but he’s certain that his mind draws a blank, like speaking through a void or a blackhole gaping in his chest.

“We could have just completed the contract and never think of it ever again,” he continues. “You always try to act oh-so heroically, even if it doesn’t fucking necessary. I have no idea what your brother is up to, but seriously, you could have consulted me first. After all this wading in this, we could have made it through one more week.”

Shouto chews on his inner cheek. “I didn’t want to risk it.”

“Risk what?” Hanta questions, eyebrows raised, unimpressed.

“Every—” He sucks a noisy breath. “You.”

Hanta doesn’t know if the cockiness manifests from the three shots of vodka he inhaled mid-physical debate within himself or from his nerves crawling to his brain up his bloodstream, but he can feel it—vivid and nauseating where it camps in his organs.

“You’re trying to pull the hero card on me, again.”

The relentless accussion hits a sore spot like a stone plonking into the depths of a river. In between the rustle of the leaves and a horse roar of a motorcycle engine, Hanta lets out a breathy laugh. “Now that I think of it, what were you planning to do after the contract is sealed?”

“Uh.” Shouto offers only a flippant shrug as his eyes droop to the flooring. The hem of his front jeans pockets pleats as he averts his gaze to the pattering waterstream swashing from the underwater tubes of the fountain.

Hanta initiates a step forward. His hands shake. “Look me in the eye.”

Kicking a crisp dried leaf off the pavement, his whatever pinches two eyebrows until they slope down to the bridge of his perfectly straight and high nose bridge. “Sero—”

“I said,” Hanta says over him, voice rock steady, “look me in the fucking eye, coward.”

Shouto wilts under Hanta’s exigent glare. Hanta waits.

It’s a little bit funny that in the end, there is no rose without a thorn. Hanta still doesn’t know what he himself has been denying regarding his and Shouto’s shared fate, but he’s certain about his natural trait of keeping the people he cherished close to heart but far from his core. Far enough so a blade of a stabbing knife won’t reach where his heart is pulsating loudly over the blood rushing to his burning face.

“So what should I conclude from this conversation?” He asks faintly. “Tell me, Todoroki, would you?”

Shouto’s shoulders hunch in panic. “I’m sor—”

“I didn’t ask for an apology!” Hanta throws his hands to the sides in devastation. “I’m asking for a damn explanation. What did you plan to do the moment you pay off your debt?”

Over the wail of an ambulance siren in the distance, of a neon advertisement lamp faltering down the street in a screech, Shouto finally deigns to even their gazes. “I thought that we’re going to part ways.”

“Oh,” Hanta lets out breathlessly.

“You’re—I just thought that there’s no way you’d keep around a bad penny like me, you know? That the moment this fuckery is over, you’re gonna go and live your life, finish your degree, get that tattoo sleeve you wanted.” Shouto rattles off. “I thought you wouldn’t want to see my face ever again because, frankly, I’d do the same thing if some rando ran over me with his car and then dragged into some mafia mess just because he was selfish.”

At that, Hanta is seized from head-to-toe. “What do you—?”

Shouto’s mouth cracks like a plummeted wine glass. “I wanted a new friend.”

Hanta’s memory is like a picture book flipping itself to a past point at the speed of a horse going berserker. “That doesn’t explain anything, try again.”

“I asked Denki to bring you to Blue Flame that night,” Shouto avows, looking so small and fragile. “I wanted to talk to you more because—”

Breath a ball in his tight throat, Hanta prompts, “Because?”

“You were really sweet to me back then, in Pronto, when I came to apologize.” Shouto whispers like it’s a secret. “I didn’t expect to get a friendly attitude from someone I nearly killed. I was certain you’re going to lash on me or force me to pay the hospital bill or anything but suggesting we’d forget everything.”

And still, there’s something that doesn’t add up. A plot hole in a carefully planned script despite going through it over and over again. “Then why—?”

Maybe this is just a fever dream. It’s hard to pinpoint the halt of reality and the inception of a nightmare when an ethereal man like Shouto deflates in the steadily growing space between them. Perhaps Hanta inhaled more than those three shots and he’s going to blink awake with his brain kicking against his skull in agony to an empty vodka bottle sweating condensation in the crumpled kitchen table of his dorm room.

Because, at least, it would be a plausible explantion to Touya fucking Todoroki rising from the susurrating bushes behind Shouto’s back.

A yelp jumps from the knot in Hanta’s stomach to his throat, but he stamps on it as watches Shouto’s face switching three shades of white, himself almost going to have a heart attack right here and there. Black binoculars in hands and a leaf clinging to his tailored suit, Touya gris maniacally. “Fancy meeting you here, gentlemen.”

“Are you seriously giving me this shit after eavesdropping like a cartoon villain?” Hanta wheezes stolidly at the sight of Touya footing out of the bushes.

Touya shrugs. “I always liked the villains better, so Imma take it as a compliment.” Shoving the binoculars into Tall Beefcake’s chest, he yawns into his hideously scarred hand. “Honestly though, I expected some more spice. This chickenshit is worse than 50 Shades of Gray.”

Shouto’s teeth clack. “I would very much appreciate it if you stop indulging your sadistic tendencies on faultless people.”

“Indulging sadistic tendencies?” Touya coils his expensive Rolex down his wrist. “I stopped by because I was curious if you’re going to get up each other’s throats and remind you that the deal’s status is still on-going, so if none of you wants an additional metallic feature peeking through his skin, you’d better get back on track.”

“No, you’ve eavesdropped,” Hanta mutters nonsensically under his breath on the fence of hysteria. And just a fraction before diving into the abyss of panic, he catches up on a singular moment of clarity. “What do you mean by ‘still on-going’?” His gaze darts to Shouto’s wide eyes. “Didn’t you say you two talked it over and ended the contract?”

“I did?” Shouto squeaks.

Of course, obviously stepping down equals loss of face for Touya but when it’s his own little brother’s request? Either Shouto misconstrued Touya’s words, or Touya struck another level of nuts.

“Oh, we did talk it over,” Touya agrees nonchalantly, picking at his nails. “And I told him that I can end it any minute I wish to, and I did tell him that the contract is over.” A clack of a lock jostling open couples Touya’s palm half flat open toward Tall Beefcake like a command to put something in there. The armed bodyguard fishes the morbidly familiar piece of paper out of a leather suitcase.

“I lied,” the words fall from his mouth like the guillotine.

Hanta’s nerves pitch to the hilt. His ears ring. Sanity oscillating on the line, he squares his shoulders and glowers indignantly at the hubristically leering bastard. “You half-baked sociopath, why would you even do that?”

“I already explained that the only way to end this construct is for Shouto to pay off his debt, or the deal breakers you deterred.” He skims the paper down. “Either Sero Hata gets shot or we’re telling Enji Todoroki that Shouto—”

“You don’t have to repeat that part!” Shouto aggressively chimes over him.

“If you’re so well educated in the pact, why did you think I’d actually let you off the hook this easily?” Touya raises a bored eyebrow. “C’mon, baby brother. You’re disappointing me as well as wasting my time.”

Shouto desperately searches Touya, as if looking for something that will turn the scale in his favor. But as minutes pass and a clogged layer of clouds lazily begin screening the moon shimmering silver, it seems like the fighting spirit is gradually evaporating from his tense posture.

Hanta finds himself unable to focus on anything but crimson rage tearing through his pores. If there’s something to blame Shouto for, then it’s trying to end this contract rationally. He doesn’t know what motive led Shouto to believe he can nip this situation in the bud when Touya is clearly going to forcefully enjoy the show he set off, but he knows for one that they can’t duke it out nor resort to bribery. Not when Tall Beefcake must be benching 5 plates like it’s nothing and Touya can purchase an island like it’s a piece of cake. Hell, he probably already owns one.

Wait, Hanta’s eyebrows knit pensively. Where’s Short Beefcake?

“What are you trying to get out of this?” Shouto’s knuckles are white beside his thighs.

Touya blinks, then the angle of his leer cuts deeper into his clean shaven cheek. “Nothing in particular, just two clowns entertaining me in my free time.”

Before he manages to slap a filter to his mouth, Hanta fires challengingly, “And revenge for not being dad’s favorite, am I right?”

Shouto chokes on an inhale as Tall Beefcake pierces Hanta with a murderous glare equivalent to a right cross in the jaw. Touya, whatsoever, seems completely unperturbed, vice versa, his face somehow turns into a cheshire cat smirk as he rolls his weight to his right hip.

“Maybe Shouto is the favorite, but he’s definitely not the successful one,” he laughs, a hollow, blood-curdling noise. Touya snaps two fingers and jerks his arms at him as Hanta’s pulse quickens in his neck. “Even if it’s correct, you’re still—”

BANG!

It’s quick. And brutal—like a lion honing its claws savagely. Hanta’s left upper abdomen lunges like a staggering shove to the shoulder-blade in a crowded place by hurried people bulldozing over each other. Acute ripples of pain dart rapidly in the rising temperature of his muscles wobbling in an atrocious expand-contract before agonizingly slowly snapping back into place.

“Hanta!” A voice hysterically crying out his name gets muffled by his knees hitting the cold concrete.

“Oops, this was quite unexpected and definitely unplanned.” Touya is nothing but a smudge in Hanta’s indistinct vision as he topples over. His brain desperately signals for one of his hands to loop over the pounding area but he’s paralyzed neck and crop. “But, Sho, no need for glaring daggers—your contract is officially over now!”

Even if there’s a response, Hanta doesn’t catch it before everything goes black.

---

Hanta blinks awake slowly to a caterwaul of an ambulance siren and white masked paramedics tackling him to a stretcher and tries not to laugh.

So I did get shot in the end, he thinks, consciousness fading with a needle sinking into his cubital fossa. Amazing, fucking amazing.

---

Stuffed with painkillers and reeking of disinfectant, but they release him after four days of exhausting buzzing from worried sick friends and dead-inside doctors going about their business with a set of serpentine sutures over his left shoulder-blade.

Shouto’s matte black Cadillac Crossover anticipates him in the private hospital’s parking garage with Shouto squirming uneasily in his seat as Hanta slides through the door. Hanta lets out a loud breath through his nose and slants Shouto a soft smile. “Hi.”

“Hi,” Shouto echoes tight lipped, white knuckles embedded to fingers clenching clips tight to the steering wheel. “How are you feeling?”

“Depends if I’m high off ibuprofen or not.” Wrapping the seat belt webbing over his chest and clicking the tongue into place, Hanta relaxes against the cushion back. “But I’m fine, overall. You were there when Doc said it’s nothing fatal.”

Shouto nods, stiff.

Hanta wasn’t awake to witness the world wars Shouto endured so Touya hospitalized Hanta in his mafia’s private hospital at the skirts of Musutafu and paid the invoice, but that alone is sufficient to atone for any blunders held to Shouto’s account. In the ninety-something hours Hanta has been kept under the pedantic supervision of staunch nurses, nearly 60% of the time Shouto camped at his side, with the rest 40% occupied by Denki’s dramatics, Hitoshi’s silent concern expressed by spoiling Hanta with his favorite treats, innumerable lectures from Tenya and even Izuku and Katsuki’s surprise-visit.

“Should I drive you home?” Shouto suggests, reaching out to disconnect the device hanging from a magnet above the center console.

“That also depends.” Hanta props a large elbow against the window seal as Shouto frowns into his black reflection on the screen.

The cold and algid rays of sun lay themselves over Shouto’s nose bridge as he grimaces. Hanta grins. “I’m not sure we’re on the same page, Sero.”

“We’d probably be on the same page if you stopped calling Sero,” he wheedles, scalp meeting the headrest as he closes his eyes. “You sound way better calling me Hanta, anyway. It’s like my name was made for your tongue.”

Even if Shouto obtains the attributes of a strawberry, Hanta doesn’t see it. But he doesn’t need his eyes to know that it’s the case, because Shouto sucks in a tight breath from his left that speaks the required volumes.

“But…” He trails off.

“If you’re going to say ‘this is my fault’, ‘how can you forgive me after everything I did’, all that yada yada, just push the accelerator and drive me to my dorm.” Dragging a foot on the carpeted flooring, he inhales and for the first time doesn’t feel butterflies suffocating his throat.

Lying three sleepless nights with the moon glowing from the only window in the closeted hospital room, Hanta allowed his thoughts drift in his mind with no rush, no gangster with a pistol breathing down his neck, and reached a devastatingly simple conclusion that perhaps could have saved them half of the escapade. Or maybe not, he doesn’t know. It’s pointless to obsess and ponder over immutable past events that are nothing but an unpleasant string of bad memories, a smidge of Hanta’s life that he, hopefully, can share with a certain someone.

A certain someone who sits from his left, nibbling on his lower lip and glaring daggers in the faultless Iphone gripped in his hand.

“You’re not angry?” Shouto questions hushly.

“I probably should,” Hanta shrugs. “But I’m not. I might get angry if you don’t c’mere right fucking now and kiss me, though.”

A long beat of silence passes. Not complete silence—engines of departing vehicles vroom and the automatic doors of the large entrance whoosh in acceptance at the face of stepping in and out pedestrians, a girl starts wailing and a chihuahua barks out in a pathetic dominance assertion somewhere in the distance.

Cautiously, Hanta tugs at Shouto’s hand into the space between their seats, wrenches eight digits together, and waits.

“I’m not opposed to your proposal,” Shouto finally lets out as Hanta’s heart trips over itself in his chest and warm fuzzies surge in his stomach. “I just need...a moment.”

“I can give you two moments,” Hanta cackles munificently as Shouto rolls his eyes and veils the crooked smile with the device. “Seriously now,” he squeezes Shouto’s lightly quacking paw, “if you’re not—”

The words are shoved back into his mouth by Shouto’s soft, oh-so soft lips pressing against his. There are no fireworks, no dramatic thrum of a violin and a crazy talented lady hitting commendable high notes, none of that cliché hot and cold sensation of sickness or yarned fairy tale.

There’s only Shouto’s warm hand curling along Hanta’s slack jawline, and Hanta’s giddy giggling melting against Shouto’s tongue.

---

“Oh.” Hitoshi is jamming with his head as he analyzes four printed out black and white inks Hanta flapped over his table. “These are really pretty, good choices, dude. Want me to tweak ‘em a little?”

“Mhm!” Hanta nods enthusiastically. “Those are just the source designs, the rest of the magic is at your disposal, Ace.”

Hitoshi greedily shovels the papers closer before digging with his 0.3mm pen into work, as Denki scratches his boyfriend’s nape with a cattish smirk. “Hey Sho, you know that he’s going to cry like a little girl when Toshi will tattoo that over his scar, yeah?”

“Of course,” Shouto laughs easily, chin resting in the crook of Hanta’s neck and arms concave around Hanta’s hips. Hanta wants to repugnantly scowl, but with Shouto dropping a kiss beneath his earlobe it seems kind of impossible. He settles on a half hearted middle finger that Denki answers with a teeth bared hiss, and lulls his head until his and Shouto’s temples touch.

“You’re going to get nails in your skin if you hold my hand,” he warns. Shouto shrugs plainly.

“That’s not the worst threat I’ve heard.”