Chapter Text
Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women is a prestigious, centuries-old institution linked to and subsidized by the government.
As many may know by now, centuries-old institutions tend to be extremely fucking racist, homophobic, and transphobic. (And also pretty much every other -ist, -ism, or -phobia in the book.)
Like, okay, sure they let Chuuya opt out of the uniform skirts and wear pants instead, and sure they have his pronouns listed beside his new name in the attendance record, but the fact that he shares his suite with three girls— and even still goes to this school at all— really goes to show how half-heartedly it’s limping along with and adapting to the new age.
In all fairness to them, Chuuya’s the one who agreed to go here in the first place, but still. The school starts at grade 7 and that was the year Chuuya was still waging his internal debate on whether he was maybe, quite possibly, not cis, really, or just a masculine lesbian. (Like, a really masculine one.) It hadn’t exactly helped that he’d been a legacy too.
Chuuya’s mother had gone here, in all her copper-blonde, sunshine bright, all-American Gallagher-ness, and his sister Kouyou had followed suit. So when his mother had asked him “Hey [Deadname], excited for spy school next year?”, he’d pulled his father aside and asked in his quietest and most slang-filled Japanese— because his mother was not the best at languages despite her career, and though his father wasn’t either the two had developed something of an uncrackable code using references to the reality TV shows from his home country that they religiously kept up with— if it was okay if he maybe perhaps dropped out halfway through. His father had looked at Chuuya and said he could do whatever the fuck he wanted as long as he ended the day with some sort of job.
Anyway, even after Chuuya had finally gone “okay, no, for real, ‘Gallagher Guy’ not ‘Gallagher Girl’”, it turned out he really liked spy school and did not actually want to go the military school route like his brother Paul had, and when he’d said as such the administration and his mom both had gone “that’s okay honey, we’ll work something out” and he ended up just staying in school. And maybe he’d love to go someplace more coed, but the Academy has as much nationwide breadth as it does historical depth— that is to say, Gallagher is one of a kind.
Now it’s been 4 years of that, and he’s a junior taking Covert Operations for his third semester in a row when it happens. (Or really, it all happens second semester of that year, but the inciting incident was at the end of the first.)
Their instructor has them taking a practical exam, which for other classes might have involved a lab or gymnasium, but for CoveOps requires anything from street fairs to helicopter rides all the way to D.C. Today’s just happens to take place in a mall. A tacky one, with bright wall decorations and a seemingly random assortment of murals, rickety rustic benches beside curled-iron ones painted turquoise. It’s packed full of people of all different creeds, more a melting pot than anything in Roseville, Virginia is (other than Gallagher Academy, which is saying something). It’s so densely populated in diversity, in fact, that it’d be very difficult to keep track of someone going through it.
The assignment is this: split into groups of three and tail one Professor Ray Bradbury through the stores, while he’s doing his best to lose them and using every counter-surveillance tactic in the book. And outside the book. Did Chuuya mention that his instructor wrote the book?
It’s proven just as difficult as it sounds when they’re all set free in the mall after letting Bradbury get a ten-minute head start. It takes almost half an hour and 8 rotations to track him down and draw close enough to even remain within a 50-foot radius of him. Gallagher has them learning calculus-based physics at 14 and judo at 12, but these courses, the ones that show them exactly what it feels like being a pavement artist, are still some of the hardest. There’s nothing quite like getting out of a classroom and having other, real, live spies thrown at you, in even the most unexpected of circumstances.
Chuuya and his team have just found their target and tailed him for barely five minutes when it happens.
There’s a crush of people leaving the giant glass elevator that serves as the centerpiece of the mall, so Chuuya joins them as he keeps his eyes on Gin. It’s the ninth rotation: Lucy’s monitoring him, he’s monitoring Gin, and they’re monitoring Bradbury. The mall music is a cliche radio hit, it's loud from people talking over each other, and it smells like sweat and perfume. Gin stops at a sunglasses kiosk when Bradbury stops to check the wall-map thirty feet before them. Their instructor checks his watch. Loiters for around a minute before falling in step with a small group of older men, and Gin follows. They slip through the crowd and disappear behind a passing family of four, perfectly invisible as ever, and Chuuya has just enough time to whisper into his mouthpiece, I lost eyes before a hand falls on his arm and another on the flat of his back and a breathy voice says, “Oopsie-daisies.”
Chuuya turns, startled, something no good spy should ever be, and comes face to face with a smile that’s too sweet to be true and glittering brown eyes.
He hadn’t seen the boy in the crowd. He’s not sure how he hadn’t seen him, considering the fact that seeing people is quite literally his (future) job and since the boy is wearing a lavender, argyle sweater-vest over a navy button-up, which is so unlike what everyone else in the mall is wearing and also pretty stand-out-ish in general.
“Uh,” Chuuya says.
“Hello,” the boy says. “Quite the crowd, isn’t it?”
Chuuya gapes at him, speechless. The boy continues on, unfazed.
“Could I get the name of your gym? You do work out, don’t you?” The boy squeezes his bicep again, fingers long and lithe and sliding against the material of his shirt, and Chuuya feels his cheeks grow hot, still silently staring. “Or not. You sure you won’t give me a name… don’t want competition from others, maybe? Don’t worry, I doubt they’d be able to compete.”
This is… bad, isn’t it? A spy shouldn’t be catching attention like this. In fact, the entire first semester of CoveOps back in sophomore year had been entirely about not catching attention in exactly this way. Chuuya blends in. He knows he does. That’s his job and he’s good at it. So why is this boy talking to him? Why is this boy staring at him like that? (And caressing his arm like that too, because the only people who have ever touched him in that way before were giggling girls).
“Chuuya? Status?” Lucy’s voice crackles through the speaker in his earpiece.
Chuuya snaps out of it. “Do I know you?” he asks, but it comes out hoarse. He clears his throat and the boy smiles.
“From your dreams, maybe.” (The boy winks here.) “No, but please. I hurt my ankle when you caught me. Could you take me to the fountain? I was supposed to meet my friends there.” The boy lowers his head and looks up at Chuuya through his lashes entreatingly— or actually, looks down, because the boy is rather tall and Chuuya is rather not. And oh, he’s rather… charming, like this. It would be so rude to just leave him here with a sprained ankle, wouldn’t it? Chuuya may be in the middle of his final exam but he’s also not some monster, he can’t just go ignoring perfectly nice boys who ask him for help so politely.
“Oh for fucks sake,” Lucy says in his ear. “Whatever, I’ll switch out with him.”
“Yeah, I’ll help you to the fountain in the middle of the mall,” Chuuya says, emphasizing the last part so the girls know what’s going on through comms. Not that they’d need it too much.
“Thank you!” The boy beams, brighter and prettier than dappled sunlight through a canopy of summer leaves. (Woah. Huh. Wow.) He slings his other arm around Chuuya’s shoulders and suddenly drops his weight onto his side. They limp in the direction of the cherubic water fountain that’s just a tad too gaudy to fit the art deco vibe the plaza is probably going for (but perfectly fits the completely overdone look of the entire mall), and the boy chatters on beside him.
“Are you here with your friends too? Or maybe your girlfriend? I do hope I’m not taking you away from her.”
“Uh, no. I mean, friends yes, but— I don’t… have a girlfriend.”
“Is that so? Where did your friends go? Oh, not that you have to answer me. You’re waiting for them; I bet you’re usually early. Me too. It’s so useful to scope situations out beforehand, don’t you agree? Oh! Watch out for the plants!”
There’s a curtain of potted plastic flora they have to duck under to get to the fountain’s edge, and they do so on cue, at the same time. Kind of cool, how perfectly in sync it is. It might have something to do with the stranger’s agility. He less stumbles and more floats along, with the most graceful limp Chuuya has ever seen. It’s now becoming extremely clear that the boy may not have even needed help, but if that’s the case... then what was all that for?
“Are you okay?” He asks once he’s helped lower the boy to the edge of the fountain, seated on the outer ring of ceramic and still with his hand on his, like Chuuya’s a coachman, or something. Chuuya lets go because the boy’s hands are calloused yet gentle and make something in his heart jolt like it's been hooked to jumper cables. And oh, this is not the sort of jump-start he needs right now.
“Chuuya?” Gin’s voice comes back in, cutting over the boy’s response. They sound a little annoyed. “We need you back. Churro cart, in two.”
“So if you’re fine now...” Chuuya says, and steps back. Before he can leave, though, a hand on his wrist pulls him closer.
“Ah, you have a little...” The boy reaches out and tucks Chuuya’s hair behind his ear. When he pulls back he’s holding a leaf, trembling in the distant air conditioning and probably fallen from the tall ferns framing the fountain. He uses the floppy end of the leaf and taps the tip of Chuuya’s nose.
“Oh,” Chuuya chokes out, “Thanks.”
“Of course. Thank you for bringing me here Mr….”
“Chuuya, are you there?” (Lucy again.)
“You’re good now, right?” Chuuya asks. “I really should get going.”
“So my savior shall remain nameless?” The boy puts on a moue, somewhere between upset and contemplative, then nods to himself. “I suppose that makes sense according to fairytale conventions. I’ll see you soon, I hope.”
“Ah. Um. Sure.” Chuuya thinks his face might be burning.
He waves goodbye, painfully awkwardly for someone who learned how to disassemble a shotgun at age 10— his brother is a showoff who liked to sneak firearms to his baby siblings— and finally steps back through the curtain of plastic plants. Onwards to the churro cart it is. But he still looks over his shoulder one last time, back to the fountain, and when he does he sees a couple of other boys stream in from around the statue of cherubs riding seafoam, ones he hadn’t even noticed were there before (and Chuuya always takes note of every person in a 15-foot radius. It’s one of the first things they’re taught to do, in CoveOps.)
That’s not his priority though. His priority is the way that his boy, the stranger he helped to the fountain, is already waiting and watching him when Chuuya meets his eyes.
The boy smiles. Chuuya turns back and decides he really needs to focus on those churros.
“So, are you gonna tell us what that was all about?”
Chuuya readjusts his headset to stall for time. The wind whistles by outside. The clouds are puffballs above them and the earth is a patchwork quilt below. He’s pressed up against the door because Charlotte (the frailest of the Brontë’s) gets twitchy on helicopters and can’t be looking outside, and the girls love to take advantage of outdated gender stereotypes when it benefits them— meaning, it’s up to him to be a gentleman and sit at the edges along with Gin, and whatever other brave soul decides they want to almost fall out of a rapidly moving vehicle that day.
“What was what about?”
“Nothing,” Chuuya tells Isabel, who just asked and now stares at him disbelievingly. And now half the entire helicopter is looking at him. Great. Chuuya curses Lucy for even bringing it up. And then for spilling, as she goes on to explain:
“He dropped out of coms for 6 minutes 38 seconds, right when we were about to get close enough to Professor Bradbury to finally see what kind of watch he had—”
“Bulgari, by the way.”
“Thanks Agatha,” Chuuya grits out, because of course Christie’s group was the only one that succeeded in the actual objective. The rest of them aren’t getting any higher than B’s, no doubt. “Anyway, it wasn’t anything. Some guy spotted me and asked for help getting somewhere.”
“Spotted you?” Zora repeats. Also Christie’s group, but Neale Hurston is a significantly more pleasant person to be around. Not to mention, she has the best taste in hats, apart from Chuuya, which is partly why he dated her for a month last year. “You’re not supposed to get spotted. You’re… you.”
“I’m not Gin.”
She stares at him. Chuuya sighs.
“Fine, I guess it might have been kinda weird, but he also fell on me, so that probably did it.”
“Still,” Lucy cuts in. “6 minutes and 38 seconds.”
“6 minutes—” Simone de Beauvoir starts.
“38 seconds,” Isabel Allende finishes.
“He was hurt. I helped him limp over to the fountain. It’s literally nothing.”
Chuuya rolls his eyes and resolves to ignore them from now on, and takes out his phone instead. (Maybe not the best idea on a helicopter, but he gets reception, so whatever.) He responds to a text from Kouyou first, asking him how his final went. Decent, he tells her, and gets back a reply that her final went fantastic. She’s only got one more semester after this, unlike him, so it’s especially important for her, and he smiles. Then he scrolls through his emails and finds that his History of Espionage essay’s been graded. Checks his upcoming assignments. Finds his thoughts wandering back to the strange boy from the mall, because he still feels tingly about it, and hovers over his messenger app.
So he’s straight, right? He went from ID-ing as lesbian to transhet because he likes girls, really likes girls, in any and all ways except for being perceived as one, because wow, girls, is he right or is he right? But also…
Chuuya goes to his latest DMs.
Chuuya: how do you know if a guy flirted with you
Ichiyo: yikes did that happen to you??
Ichiyo: i’m so sorry :///
Chuuya: thanks but uhhh no thanks
Chuuya: so turns out i might have liked it?????
Ichiyo: sjdhsjhssjsk
Ichiyo: omg ok wait
Ichiyo: is this a might as in like 30% sure or like 90% sure
Chuuya: uhhhhh
Chuuya: might as in like definitely probably
Ichiyo: sjdhjsks !!!!
Chuuya: at this point it’s just a matter of if i actually liked him or if i liked being flirted with in general but like
Chuuya: was that even flirting you know
Ichiyo: yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah omg
Ichiyo: alright hold on okay so what did he say
Chuuya does his best to transcribe the events in as much detail as he can (which is a lot of detail, because they were all trained to have near-eidetic memories by age 15). Ichiyo determines, with an incurable amount of keysmashes as window dressing, that the boy had ‘100% been flirting without a shadow of a doubt’. So there’s that. And there’s also the fact that Chuuya had totally been all in for it. Like, didn’t even feel weird about it.
Ichiyo: wait omg what did he look like
Ichiyo: was he cute tho the jury must kno!!
Chuuya: i mean
Chuuya: objectively?
Chuuya: yeah id say so
Ichiyo: !!
Chuuya: he had nice eyes
Ichiyo: he had nice eyes!!
Ichiyo: aaaa ok ok can i ask… have you ever questioned if you liked guys before?
Chuuya: uhhh i mean keiynan lonsdale was my man crush monday for like two years
Ichiyo: HJFHDLS
Ichiyo: how come i ddint know about this!!!
Ichiyo: *dndit
Ichiyo: *dntd
Ichiyo: ***did NOT
Chuuya: LMAO
Chuuya: ichiyo ily
Ichiyo: >:(
Ichiyo: ily2 but i’d appreciate answers
Ichiyo: i’m literally dating gin, none of us are straight, you could have mentioned your affair with mr lonsdale!
Chuuya: uhhhhh idk i just felt like it wasn’t relevant
Ichiyo: kind of relevant now asdhkfgs
Ichiyo: anyway! so…. mall boy
Chuuya: mall boy……
Chuuya: ………...is cute
Chuuya: idk i think i liked it
Chuuya: liked him flirting with me, i mean, he was just…. really charming
Ichiyo: :)
Ichiyo: charming boys are wonderful
Ichiyo: i hope you figure out your charming boy situation <3
Chuuya hopes he figures out his charming boy situation too. It’s not like he’ll ever see the boy again, right? The mall boy is from D.C. while Chuuya lives and breathes Gallagher Academy. That’s two parts Virginia, three parts international gallivanting, and one part SoCal where his parents’ home is. But not seeing that boy ever again makes his stomach twist in a way that isn’t at all due to Professor Bradbury’s choppy helicopter piloting. Chuuya kind of wants to get flirted with again, looked at like he’s the coolest person in the room by miles (by that one person, specifically), and wants to be… attractive enough that this normal, non-spy boy looked into a crowd and picked him out on nothing more than his cuteness, despite the stealth tactics.
And maybe Chuuya also sort of wants to hold his hand again. And maybe see what hugging him would feel like. And try to see if kissing him would intensify the butterflies in his gut that just getting leaned on had given rise to. And…
Wait.
This is…
Gay. Fucking gay.
Oh wow. Okay, so probably not transhet then. Uh. Definitely not transhet, maybe. Like, he’s still very weird around cis dudes because they tend not to perceive him with the same boyish and even roguish charm his girls do, but Cute Boy He Met At The Mall had definitely been flirting with him in an I Want You Regardless Of Both Our Combined Babymaking Statuses sorta way. Maybe he still has layers of repression to work through even after coming out because wow, boys, is he right or is he right? Specifically one boy right now, but still.
Chuuya’s not straight.
Chuuya likes Cute Mall Boy.
Chuuya’s absolutely not straight.
So this is a revelation.
He texts Ichiyo about it pretty much instantly, and she explodes into a bundle of keysmashes, and once they’re back at Gallagher and sequestered in their dorms, tells Gin about it too. (Lucy gets to stay in the dark for now because she’s a fucking snitch who ratted him out to the rest of the helicopter this afternoon, and Louisa gets to stay in the dark because as chill as his last roommate is, she’s also gone in the library 90% of the time and they’re not close enough for it to be relevant.)
That leaves his family. He cares far less about them figuring out, like, two seconds after he figured it out himself, but his sister is also his best friend in the world (apart from Ichiyo, of course) so he at least informs her.
Chuuya does his best to tell Kouyou about Cute Mall Boy as subtly as he can during lunch the next day. The screen in the hall says they must compulsorily speak in French, which is good, because the two of them get enough practice by video calling Paul on the weekends when he isn’t off doing whatever it is that spies west-southwest of Paris do. (Maybe sneak around the Versailles and discretely peel gold leaf off the architecture.)
“Alors… il y a un garçon.”
“Tu rigoles.”
“Euh…. non?”
Kouyou drops her forkful of kimchi and leans in.
“Where did you meet him,” she asks, French as fast as a riptide.
“Um. CoveOps. The practical exam.” Chuuya winces. “He sort of spotted me in the middle of it—”
“You? During CoveOps?”
“I know, I know! He was kinda cute though, and like…”
Kouyou leans back. She shakes her head in amazement, a small smile on her lips, and wipes away a kimchi splatter from the table with her napkin. “You, liking a boy! I never thought I’d see the day.” Chuuya shrugs. His face is burning. Gin, seated at the table behind his sister’s back, looks over their shoulder and gives him a thumbs up. Kouyou continues, unseeing. “Do you have any idea about your sexuality yet?”
“Bi, probably.” Because it checks out, but also because even though he could probably ID as pan if he wanted to instead— since he doesn’t really feel any of the technical differences between them— Ichiyo is bi and he really likes the idea of matching with his best friend. She likes it too, by the way she hugged him hard enough to hurt yesterday night when he’d said so. (That girl can squeeze. The highest placement in their Protection and Enforcement exam wasn't just for show.)
“Are you telling Paul?”
Chuuya makes a face. “Ugh, no. He’s gonna be so annoying about being right again that none of us are straight. I’ll tell him after Mom and Dad.”
Kouyou laughs, but after a moment her smile fades into something more contemplative. “I’m still curious about how that boy noticed you. It’s not like you to slip up that bad.”
“Hey! I didn’t slip up this time, he just… sort of fell into me.” Though then again, Cute Mall Boy had definitely been faking getting hurt just to flirt with Chuuya, which means he’d had to spot him first. Not that any of the shenanigans did him any good: he went through all that and still forgot to ask for Chuuya’s number. Kind of ditzy, then, maybe? That’s still cute. But he hadn’t really seemed that airheaded, despite the constant stream of chatter and batting eyelashes. Chuuya’s pretty good at detecting cunning, and even if it weren’t for the obviously fake limp, there was something sly and sharp behind those doe eyes of his. Chuuya may be good, but Mall Boy clearly was, too.
Well, for your average teenager, at least.
Their winter break is 22 days long, and Chuuya’s parents are gone on a mission for the first week of that, which means Kouyou’s off to her girlfriend Akiko’s home in Kyoto, Japan, and Chuuya gets to spend 6 whole days with Ichiyo and her family in New York.
Day 4, and they’re at Central Park, just him and Ichiyo and her beautiful corgi, Pumpkin, all bundled up in his miniature neon parka. Pumpkin is adorable, and the sweetest pet Chuuya has ever known, with a capacity for cuddles unlike any other, but also a capacity for chaos and mayhem beyond even the most sugar-high toddler. The poor baby runs away into the snowdrifts, somehow getting lost despite the bright orange snow gear, and Chuuya and Ichiyo split up looking for him. And unfortunately, for as street-smart as Chuuya is, he’s only been to Central Park twice before and neither of those was in the dead of winter. The entire thing is a landscape of snow, looking the exact same in every direction, and it takes around 15 minutes before Chuuya concludes that he is, without a doubt, lost.
He’s about to reluctantly take off his mittens in the freezing air to text Ichiyo, when he runs smack-dab into someone’s chest and then the two of them fall flat on their asses on the cold, wet ground, snow rapidly seeping through fabric and creating uncomfortably damp pants.
The other guy gets up first, and holds out a hand for Chuuya.
“Thanks,” he mutters, taking the hand. “Sorry.”
“It’s cool, I wasn’t looking where I was going either.”
“Pretty sure this one’s on me,” Chuuya argues, and then looks up.
The guy is tall, has an entire head and then some on Chuuya, and has glowing brown skin and a neatly kept fade. His jacket is the same navy blue as his glasses, simple rectangular frames hiding coal-black eyes, and something about him strikes Chuuya as familiar. The guy might be thinking the same thing, because he looks at him in an odd sort of way, despite the polite smile. It’s when another person runs up to them both that Chuuya gets it.
“Hughes!” The new guy says, and even though it was softly uttered, Chuuya has the feeling that was the equivalent of a yell, for him. He skids to a stop, bumping into Hughes, who catches him by the shoulder. The new guy is also pretty tall, wearing a woolen coat over a sweater, and a fuzzy scarf and earmuff set, with auburn hair swept over his eyes. The sight of both of them together, standing beside each other, is what makes it click: they’re the same people Chuuya saw walk up to Cute Mall Boy in D.C., the same friends he was meeting at the fountain two weeks ago!
“Poe,” Hughes says, and Chuuya is trying not to look like he’s jumping out of his own skin with anticipation. Is Cute Mall Boy here? What would Cute Mall Boy be doing in New York, anyway? What are Cute Mall Boy’s friends doing in New York? Do they live in D.C. or not, then?
“We need to go back, the doctor’s looking for everyone…”
“The bus is leaving already?”
Hughes pivots, following Poe as they both turn to cut a path across the snowmen-filled field. Chuuya steps in front of them.
“Um,” he says, as they both turn to stare at him. “Hi? I mean— do you remember me?”
Poe ducks behind Hughes, shoulders hunched, and his friend just pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “Remember you? Is this a pick-up line?”
“What,” Chuuya says.
“What,” Poe squeaks.
“I’ll take that as a no, then,” Hughes concludes. He tilts his head at Chuuya, bird-like, still thinking.
“D.C…?”
Hughes’ eyes widen. “Oh no. You’re—”
“You’re the guy!”
They both turn to Poe at the outburst, and Chuuya would pay more attention to it if his vision didn’t also scan past Poe, behind him about 25 feet, to where a new figure has emerged from behind a snowman. The person turns, wearing a pastel coat and earmuffs, dark hair dusted with white flakes, accompanied by another boy, and they meet eyes. Eyes the size of dinner plates, actually, because he looks as surprised as Chuuya is to see him, because, well—
It’s him. Cute Mall Boy!
Chuuya’s about ready to get up and start sprinting (not that he’d know what to do after that) when someone comes in between them and blocks his view, so the last thing he sees is the boy’s surprised flush and hair fluffed up adorably.
“There you are!“ the newcomer says. Then he makes a show of looking down like he’s just noticed Chuuya is even there. “Oh, hello. I’m terribly sorry if my students have been making trouble for you. They’re not supposed to go missing like this.” He smiles, and something about it feels distinctly snake-ish. Chuuya observes the black ponytail and bright red muffler (innocuous) as well as the burn-scarred knuckles and favoring of his left side (totally ‘-ocuous’), then resolves to keep this man filed away in his mental database under ‘potential serial killers’.
“No, we were just talking,” Chuuya says. He cranes to see around the man, and oh boy, that’s where the party’s really getting started.
What are the chances that Cute Mall Boy and his other friend, only ten feet away now, are talking to one unmistakable bob of yellow hair? Ichiyo Higuchi, with a blaringly orange corgi cradled in her arms, is speaking loud enough for Chuuya to hear but also for her to not hear him. Not that any of this is helped by the cluster of giant snowmen and one suspicious adult man blocking him from her line of sight.
“Never saw a red-head,” a guy with a newsboy cap tells her. “But you sure you want one? You’re cute enough to do better.”
“Knock it off,” Cute Mall Boy tells his friend, and Chuuya is glad for it, because if he hadn’t then his dateability would have plummeted to rock bottom.
It still doesn’t douse the anger newspaper boy roused in Chuuya, though.
In Ichiyo too, it seems, because her back straightens and she glares him down. “Just tell me if you’ve seen him—”
“C’mon babe, already told you I didn’t see your boyfriend.”
“Shut it, Steinbeck,” Cute Mall Boy snaps, and the paperboy shrugs. Cute Mall Boy shoves him with a shoulder, in the way guys do to their friends, except the way ‘Steinbeck’ stumbles or glowers back doesn’t look very friendly at all.
There’s a low whistle in Chuuya’s ear, and he turns to see that Hughes and Poe are now watching the scene intently, too. Even the man is observing, the same serial-killer-smile in place.
“You’re her boyfriend, right?” Hughes asks, and Chuuya’s about had enough of this. He doesn’t need to answer though, because Ichiyo does in his stead, loud and firm to Cute Mall Boy, ignoring Steinbeck entirely.
“I’m looking for my brother,” Ichiyo announces without batting an eye, and Chuuya’s certain it isn’t a lie. His chest suddenly surges with warmth, because even though he already has one sister, aren’t those what his suite-mates are, along with the rest of the girls at Gallagher Academy? A school of sisters, and one best friend. (Well, except for the ones he’s slept with, actually, but he’s having an emotional moment, so let’s not ruin it.)
“You heard her,” he says, and grins over at them. “Nice’ta meet ya,” he tells Murderer in the Making and his students, and then darts over to Ichiyo from behind the giant snowman.
“Chuuya!” she calls when she spots him.
“Hey! Sorry I got lost—”
Pumpkin starts yapping and practically leaps into his arms from Ichiyo’s. Chuuya giggles as he gets licked all over the face, and Ichiyo comes up beside him too. “Sorry, gotta go!” she tells the boys, and then links her arm with his and takes off. Chuuya holds Pumpkin tight to his chest and looks behind him as they dash away, watching as the figures of five teenage boys and one adult get smaller and smaller, seeing his Cute Mall Boy’s startled face become indistinguishable and then disappear.
“Augh!” Ichiyo yells once they skid to a stop. “I hate men!”
Chuuya sets Pumpkin carefully on the slippery ground and keeps his leash wrapped around his fist. Ichiyo looks up at him and amends her statement. “Apart from you. Sorry Chuuya, you would never. And that guy who yelled at his friend, apparently.”
“About that…”
“Hm?”
“Sooooooooo you may have just met Cute Mall Boy.”
Nothing but the sound of passerby and Pumpkin barking about a group of kids. Then, Ichiyo breaks.
“WHAT? That was Cute Mall Boy?! Chuuya, you have terrible taste!”
“No, not the asshole!” Chuuya laughs. “I really got lucky, but the Cute Mall Boy is the same one who called him out.”
“You did luck out,” Ichiyo sniffs. “Wait, how are they here, though? I thought Cute Mall Boy was from D.C.? Are they on vacation?”
“I think it’s some sort of school trip, actually. I met their teacher.”
“School in the middle of December… and I thought we had it rough.”
“Yeah... weird.”
They walk in silence for a while, shoo-ing Pumpkin on when he gets caught up chasing his own tail. Then, “He really was cute, though.”
“Right?!”
Four days before the start of spring semester, also known as the day right after Paul flew back to France and Chuuya started on his winter readings to prepare for next semester’s classes, he gets an email. Or more accurate would be to say that the entire student body gets an email, but Chuuya can’t help but feel like this one is targeting him and him specifically.
The email reads:
Students of Gallagher Academy. While you have a few days left in your vacations, we urge you to remember your homework at the same time as you enjoy your family time. No matter if you’re helping your parents take down crime rings or at your hometown’s shooting range, make sure to keep your skills sharp. You have much to learn in the upcoming semester. And regarding the above, the Academy has an exciting announcement to help you along with that.
After our 131 years of establishment, we are proud to present our first-ever exchange program. As of the start of spring semester, you will all be learning, living, eating, and spying with the lovely young men of Blackthorne Institute for Boys.
We hope you’re excited. We are.
Oh, Chuuya’s excited alright. Excited in terms of his sympathetic nervous system, because this is absolutely insane. In all his 17 years of living and his century of historical knowledge about all things Gallagher, he’s never once heard of this, not even in passing after he came out.
There’s a spy school for boys? Hey universe, what the fuck.