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“Is this okay?”
No.
Nagito wants to yell out that no, it’s not okay. No, he doesn’t want to kiss Hajime. Well, he does, but he shouldn’t.
No, because there are only two outcomes to this kiss and it’s that either it means nothing to Hajime and Nagito has to deal with the fact that his crush is sorely unrequited or it does mean something to Hajime and Nagito has to accept the fact that he might just be falling in love.
No, because Nagito wants to kiss Hajime so bad that it makes him feel like somehow he’s taking advantage of him. That they’re both too drunk to be making decisions and if it goes wrong then Hajime might not ever want to speak to him again.
“Yes,” Nagito whispers back instead.
“Hajime, Nagito, there you guys are! I’ve been looking for you everywhere!”
“Did you think to look in the same place we have lunch every day?” Hajime speaks up out of the two of them and Nagito opts to just wave at Chiaki. Chiaki squats down next to the two of them, pulling out her lunch and leaning against the wall of the school.
“Okay, so I haven’t actually been looking everywhere. This is the first place I looked,” Chiaki shrugs and takes a bite out of her sandwich.
“Why were you looking for us? Doesn’t the ultimate gamer have more important things to do?” Nagito asks, toying with his own food. The two sandwich halves are poorly made, a desperate attempt at lunch that he’d made in the ten minutes before he had to leave for school.
“Shut up, Nagito.”
“That’s fair.”
“Did you guys hear about Sonia’s party tomorrow? I wanna go cause I love Sonia and all, but I hate parties. I need you guys to come with me,” Chiaki explains, finishing off the last of her lunch and then pulling out her phone. She flips it sideways, likely loading up some mobile game that she’d been grinding recently.
“Are we even invited? Hajime’s a lowly reserve course student and she’s an ultimate. Why would she want him there?” Nagito tilts his head to the side as he asks the question.
“Real nice, Nagito. Last I checked, you’re the one spending all your free time with this ‘lowly reserve course student’,” Hajime trails off into a laugh. Nagito’s made jokes about Hajime being a reserve course student plenty of times before. If the jokes bothered him, he didn’t show it.
If you had gone back a year and told Nagito that his best friend would be a reserve course student he would’ve laughed at you. Hard. It wasn’t like he hated reserve course students, moreso that he saw them as slightly worthless.
(Maybe hating them would be better.)
But he’d discovered that there was something about Hajime. Maybe it was the way Hajime had actually listened to what Nagito has to say instead of pretending to listen while punctuating their sentences with a ‘that’s cool, Nagito’ like most of his classmates did.
Nagito had found that he’d rather enjoyed having someone listen to what he had to say. Even if it had been someone without a talent, though perhaps that was the perfect match for someone with a worthless talent like Nagito.
“Yeah, but I’m nothing compared to someone like the ultimate princess!” Nagito runs a hand through his hair, letting his fingers get tangled into his white locks.
“Shut up, guys! Everyone is invited. I even heard class 78 is going. So? Will you come?” Chiaki barely looks up from her phone, fingers frantically pressing at the buttons on the screen. Nagito peers over to try and see what the game is, noticing far too many power-ups active at one time than there should be allowed.
“Yeah, I guess so,” Hajime shrugs, packing up the leftovers of his lunch and shoving them into his backpack. He pulls out his phone to check the time and starts gathering his things when he realizes there are about five minutes until class starts.
“Would I really fit in with such an esteemed group of people?” Nagito grips the edge of his jacket, running his fingers along the silver zipper.
“Shut up, Nagito, are you going or not?” Hajime rolls his eyes at Nagito’s question, slinging his backpack over his shoulder.
“Yeah, I’ll come,” Nagito nods as an answer and Hajime smiles so stupidly at Nagito that it makes his heart flop upside down in his chest.
Hajime Hinata is an attractive guy. That’s pretty much a fact to Nagito. He’s gotten plenty of love confessions from girls in his grade, though he had rejected all of them. If not for the failed love confession that had brought Chiaki into Hajime and Nagito’s little ‘group’, Nagito would’ve started to think that maybe Hajime played for the other team, if you know what he means.
(Nagito wouldn’t be surprised if Hajime did like guys though. He’s not sure of the terms, seeing as he doesn’t care so much about the labels, but he’s pretty sure Hajime swings both ways. Nagito doesn’t think Hajime is weird for it though, after all, he’d be a hypocrite if he did, considering he thinks guys are a lot prettier than girls.)
Putting Hajime’s attractiveness aside, just the fact that Hajime is smiling shouldn’t be enough to make Nagito blush like a schoolgirl with a crush on a guy two years older than her. Still, he can’t deny the pink blush creeping up his pale cheeks.
“I’ll see you guys later,” Hajime waves at the two of them and begins his walk towards the reserve course buildings. Chiaki and Nagito stand up and begin to make their way to the main building of Hope’s Peak.
“So, Nagito, do you like Hajime?” Chiaki leans over to smile at Nagito before quickly returning her eyes to her phone screen.
“No! What are you talking about?” Nagito bites down on his lip at the surprise of Chiaki’s question.
“I saw you blushing at him,” Chiaki shrugs, not lifting her eyes from her game. That was something about Chiaki that Nagito had noticed early on in their friendship. She could be frighteningly perceptive when she wanted to be—and she usually wanted to be.
“I don’t have a ‘crush’ on Hajime. I’m not made for love,” Nagito blows air through his lips, running a hand through his pale white hair. His finger catches in a tangled curl and he yanks the finger through the knot.
He’d been barely ten when his parents had died—when he’d been the only survivor of a plane crash. He’d had to watch as the only people that he loved passed away right in front of him and he’d concluded that it was his fault. That it was his luck that killed his parents.
He’d been eleven when he’d decided to never love someone again because when he loved someone, something bad was bound to happen to them. That was how his luck worked. His own luck brought misfortune on everyone around him and for what? For random spikes of good luck to aid only himself.
“Whatever you say, Nagito,” Chiaki says, pulling out the chair of her desk and sitting down. Nagito took his place at his desk, running a finger along the wooden surface.
Whatever. It wasn’t like he believed there was anyone who would love him back in the first place.
Nagito: Chiaki should i wear the white one or the black one?
Nagito Komaeda has sent two attachments
Chiaki: sonia says white
Nagito: you showed the Ultimate Princess my ridiculous indecisiveness??? i don’t deserve to have someone like HER choose my outfit for me!!!
Chiaki: holy crap nagito it’s a suit she doesn’t care
Nagito holds the white suit up against his chest in the mirror, pressing it as close to his body as he can to try and imagine what it’ll look like when he’s wearing it. He then lifts the black suit up, but it only takes him a second for him to realize that who is he to go against the word of a true ultimate.
He throws on the white suit, messing with the tie until it resembles something similar to a properly tied tie. He’s not entirely sure how to tie one, but he figures that he’s done it good enough.
He stands in front of the mirror, pushing his hair back and then messing the top up. Maybe he should tie it back? Or maybe he should just gel it down flat. He pulls his fingers through his hair, thinking that maybe he should change into the black suit. Maybe he should switch out his shoes for a different pair. Maybe he should scrap this outfit entirely and pick out something completely new from scratch.
It only takes Nagito another half hour of running his hands through his hair and carefully trying to straighten out the wrinkles in his suit for him to decide that if he doesn’t stop acting like an overly self-conscious fourteen year old girl, he’s going to kill himself.
He turns away from the mirror after deciding that his hair is fine, his clothes are fine, everything is fine and he grabs his phone and makes his way to the door. His phone lights up with a text from Hajime, the message letting Nagito know that he would meet him by the entrance of Sonia’s place.
Nagito can’t exactly drive yet (he’d failed his driving test when a storm had formed while he was driving and a lightning strike had knocked a tree onto the back half of the car. No one had been injured, though Nagito was pretty sure his instructor had had a pseudo-heart attack), but Sonia’s house isn’t too far so he doesn’t mind walking. Besides, the last time he’d gone on a walk he’d found 5000 yen on the side of the road.
“I’m going out!” Nagito yells out to no one in particular considering he hasn’t had anyone in his house since his parents had died and he’d bought this larger house with his lottery money.
It only takes ten minutes for him to walk to Sonia’s house. According to Chiaki, Sonia had been staying with some distant relatives ever since she’d moved to Japan and for the first time since Sonia had moved in, they were going on a week-long vacation to some other city (Nagito hadn’t been paying full attention when Chiaki had told him). This meant that Sonia had an adult-free house for a full week, giving her the perfect place to hold a ‘hella boss party’, as she had described it.
Then again, Nagito’s had an empty house for the past seven years so he could’ve held a party whenever he wanted. The problem with that was that he didn’t think anyone would come, especially to a party that he hosted.
“Hey, Nagito!” Hajime waves at his friend from where’s standing outside of Sonia’s house. He’s leaning against the wall, leg cocked backwards so his foot can rest on the white wall. Hajime pushes himself on the wall and walks over to Nagito.
“Hey, Hajime,” Nagito looks at Hajime's suit up and down. It’s a slightly washed out cream colour that on anyone else would look absolutely horrendous, but Hajime actually manages to somehow pull it off. There’s a dark green bow tie wrapped around his neck and Nagito feels only a little jealous at just how nicely it’s tied.
“What the fuck, Nagito, who tied your tie for you? It’s a mess,” Hajime laughs, eyes falling to the poorly done tie wrapped and Nagito’s neck.
“I did,” Nagito’s eyes fall to the ground, kicking the toes of his black shoes against the pavement, “no one ever taught me.”
“Here, I’ll show you. Move your hands,” Hajime leans towards Nagito, brushing Nagito’s hands away from his chest. He pulls the tie loose and carefully begins wrapping his fingers around it.
Nagito’s hand twitches at his side as Hajime twists the tie into a loop. Nagito stares at Hajime’s hands and time almost begins to slow as Nagito watches Hajime’s hands skillfully move between the strips of fabric. Nagito’s never really noticed just how nice Hajime’s hands are.
What the fuck?
Why is he thinking about how nice Hajime’s hands are? It’s not like he likes him or anything. They’re friends after all. Even if he did, there’s no way that Hajime would reciprocate his feelings.
“There. That looks better, right?” Hajime pulls away from Nagito’s tie, smiling at his finished product. Nagito runs a hand along one edge of the black fabric, lifting his gaze from the floor to look at Hajime.
“Yeah, it does. Thanks, Hajime,” Nagito smiles and Hajime grins at Nagito’s words. Nagito raises a hand to his flushed cheek, trying to cover any blush that dares to appear on his face.
“You wanna head in?” Hajime asks, holding out a hand. Nagito grasps Hajime’s hand, carefully intertwining their fingers together. Hajime pulls Nagito towards the door, nearly tripping over the first step of Sonia’s porch.
This’ll be fun.
Hopefully.
Nagito’s grip tightens on his cup until his knuckles begin to turn white. The music is too loud, Nagito can’t even seem to hear his own thoughts. His eyes scan the centre of the room that’s being used as a makeshift dance floor, bodies of more than drunk teenagers pressing up against each other as the music blares over speakers.
Nagito doesn’t even recognize a lot of them and he prides himself on knowing the names of all the ultimates at Hope’s Peak. If he’s entirely honest, he’s not sure half of them even go to Hope’s Peak at all.
He hasn’t seen Chiaki or Sonia since the start of the party, ironic since the party was literally going on at Sonia’s house. Hajime had disappeared and reappeared in and out of Nagito’s vision throughout the night. He’s not sure how many beers Hajime’s had to drink, but he’s sure that it’s too many.
Though he feels like a hypocrite saying that since he’s probably had just about as many as Hajime.
He takes a sip of the beer in his hand, squeezing the red solo cup until he’s sure it’s going to burst. He’s only ever seen these types of cups in those extremely American teen romance movies that he watches with Hajime and Chiaki sometimes for fun and to be honest, he didn’t even know you could find them here in Japan. Leave it to Sonia to deck out a party with every single thing you could find on the first ’Party Must Haves’ list that showed up on Google.
Chiaki: u doing ok?
Nagito: yeah, i’m not sure where Hajime is though
Chiaki: texted him. he’s ok 👍
Chiaki: with sonia in backyard come if u need
Nagito shuts off his phone after his short conversation with Chiaki. Chiaki never really texted with more words than she needed and she was a frequent user of the ‘thumbs up’ emoji for reasons that Nagito didn’t really know.
“Nagito! Nagito, hey!” Hajime stumbles out from the group of people in the middle of the room. He grabs onto Nagito’s shoulder, using him as a means to hold himself upright.
“Hajime, are you alright?” Nagito grabs onto Hajime’s arms, holding Hajime a few inches in front of his face. Hajime’s breath smells like the too expensive beer Sonia had bought for the party and there’s a stain on his left shoulder that looks a little bit too much like vomit.
Nagito can only assume that he’s had just as many beers as Hajime, but it turns out his alcohol tolerance is a lot higher than Hajime’s. Not that he would’ve known that before since he’s never actually drank alcohol before.
(Underage drinking is bad. Don’t do it, kids.)
“Nagito, you’re really pretty,” Hajime raises a hand to cup the side of Nagito’s face. Nagito freezes at the sudden touch, one fist clenching at his side as he tries to act natural.
Nagito’s noticed before how handsome Hajime is, but he’s never really paid attention to the soft pink blush that creeps up his cheeks when he’s happy. To the way his shaggy hair falls just past his forehead because he can’t be bothered to go to a hairdresser. To the way his lips look like something that he would kill to kiss.
Nagito glances at the group of people in front of them. His little corner of the room is relatively empty considering most people would rather dance than stand alone at a party. He can spot most of the kids from his own class in the group, as well as a few from class 78.
His eyes fall back to Hajime, who wraps a hand around Nagito’s tie. He pulls Nagito down from the tie, leaving their faces mere inches from each other. Hajime’s eyebrows furrow together as he looks Nagito in the eyes.
He lets out a heavy breath, watching Hajime’s dark eyes look him up and down. Nagito doesn’t have a crush on Hajime and he most certainly doesn’t feel like kissing him right now.
Except maybe he does.
Nagito swallows heavily, the words he wants to say getting stuck on the tip of his tongue. His vision blurs for a second and he can’t tell if it’s the alcohol getting to him or if maybe there’s just something in the air.
Okay, so he has a crush on Hajime. It’s not a big deal. It’ll go away. Nagito doesn’t do love. Something bad always happens to the people he cares about.
“Is this okay?” Hajime’s voice is soft as he leans in closer to Nagito, lips parted gently. He still has a hand grasped around Nagito’s tie and the other one is touching the side of his cheek.
No.
Nagito wants to yell out that no, it’s not okay. No, he doesn’t want to kiss Hajime. Well, he does, but he shouldn’t.
No, because there are only two outcomes to this kiss and it’s that either it means nothing to Hajime and Nagito has to deal with the fact that his crush is sorely unrequited or it does mean something to Hajime and Nagito has to accept the fact that he might just be falling in love.
No, because Nagito wants to kiss Hajime so bad that it makes him feel like somehow he’s taking advantage of him. That they’re both too drunk to be making decisions and if it goes wrong then Hajime might not ever want to speak to him again.
“Yes,” Nagito whispers back instead.
Hajime yanks Nagito forwards by his tie, pressing their lips together. Nagito wraps his hand around Hajime’s neck, curling his fingers around the fabric of his suit. Hajime’s hand is wrapped around Nagito’s waist, one slender arm curving around the dip of his body.
Nagito can taste the beer on Hajime’s lips, but he doesn’t particularly care. Not when the taste of Hajime’s lips is just so much better. His fingers tighten around Hajime’s collar, blood rushing into his cheeks as he tries to pull Hajime closer.
He can’t tell exactly what Hajime’s doing to him, but he knows that he wants more.
For a moment, there’s no music and there’s no party. There’s no one else around them and Nagito can’t even see the group of students dancing. It’s just him and Hajime and that’s it. That’s really all he needs.
Nagito doesn’t even know if he’s going to remember this tomorrow—his brain is so clouded by the alcohol, but it doesn’t matter. All he knows is that he’s kissing Hajime.
And then there’s a problem.
Because it’s not just the fact that he is kissing Hajime. It’s the fact that he is kissing Hajime.
Nagito pushes Hajime away from the kiss, holding him at an arm’s distance. Hajime stares at Nagito, his eyebrows knitting together as he watches Nagito wipe his lips with the sleeve of his suit.
“What’s wrong?” Hajime asks, voice barely loud enough to hear over the blaring music. Nagito rubs at his eyes, running a hand through the carefully done hair he had spent so long perfecting before the party.
“Nothing. I have to- I have to go, Hajime,” Nagito pushes past Hajime, moving fast on the balls of his feet. Hajime calls out Nagito’s name, but Nagito ignores it as he runs away from Hajime.
He’s running. He’s running from his problems.
Just like he always does.
Nagito lets out a muffled scream face down into his pillow.
His phone rings once. Then twice. And it’s only after the third time that Nagito decides to pick it up, silence the ringer, and throw it across the room in hopes that it would land softly (knowing his luck though, it would probably land in a pile of unicorn shit before cracking from a fall).
He feels free to scream as loud as he wants, partly because it’s muffled by the pillow but mostly because there’s no one else in the house to hear him.
What the fuck is wrong with him?
He kissed Hajime. Hajime of all people! Last night is sort of a blur to him, but he can remember the important bits. The most important one of them being that he’d kissed his best friend and then promptly ran away from him.
He’s Nagito Komaeda! He’s not allowed to fall in love with someone.
The thought of Hajime’s soft lips flows through his mind and it takes Nagito a few seconds to remember that he really shouldn’t be thinking about that.
He twists his body off the side of the bed, falling to the ground with a crash. He debates just lying there for the rest of the day before remembering that he’s been awake since 8:00 AM and it’s nearly 2:00 PM now so that means he should probably eat something.
(Thank god he doesn’t have to go to school today.)
Nagito drags himself to his kitchen and makes a rather simple breakfast that consists of a bowl of cereal and nothing else. Barely a minute after he sits down to eat, there’s a ringing at his doorbell. He tries to ignore it, lifting a spoonful of his cereal to his mouth.
The ringing continues and it’s only after a solid five minutes of noise that Nagito decides to get up and open the door.
“What do you want?” Nagito pulls open the door, revealing an only slightly disheveled Hajime.
“Hey,” Hajime smiles his usual goofy grin, running a hand through his dark hair. Nagito’s eyes look him up and down, lingering for just a second too long on the dark eye bags beneath Hajime’s eyes that definitely weren’t there yesterday.
“Hajime?” Nagito only manages to squeeze out Hajime’s name in his shock of seeing him standing outside of his house. Hajime bites his lip, rubbing the back of his neck.
“Can we talk?” Hajime asks, shifting his weight to the other leg. He glances inside Nagito’s house, but he doesn’t enter until Nagito invites him.
“You came all this way to talk to someone like me?” Nagito gestures inside the house and Hajime follows him in. Hajime doesn’t respond to Nagito’s comment. They’ve been friends for long enough that Hajime knows how to deal with Nagito’s self-deprecating comments.
“Hey, your house is really nice! Why don’t we ever hang out here?” Hajime looks around the house, admiring the elegant furniture. Nagito had bought the house shortly after losing his parents and most of the furniture had come with the house. He’d paid some house remodeler that he can’t remember the name of to do the rest and he hadn’t touched any of it since then.
“I haven’t had guests over since both my parents died in a plane crash when I was a little kid,” Nagito laughs softly, used to dealing with the rather unfortunate circumstances that his luck always brought him.
“Oh.”
Fuck, he’s traumadumping again.
“Uh, sorry,” Hajime’s voice is soft as he scratches the back of his neck, trying to figure out how he’s supposed to comfort Nagito.
“Don’t worry about it, I’m over it. Stuff like that happens all the time,” Nagito shrugs, missing the confused look that passes over Hajime’s face (because no, things like that don’t happen all the time).
“I wanted to talk to you about yesterday. I kind of have a headache and a lot of it is blurry, but I remember the uh- the, y’know, the kiss,” Hajime stumbles over the word ‘kiss’ and Nagito can’t tell if it’s out of regret, embarrassment, or fear.
“What about it?” Nagito pulls out a seat at his kitchen table and Hajime takes the one next to him. His cereal bowl is sitting abandoned on the edge of the table, but Nagito doesn’t feel like getting up just to move it.
“I don’t know, shouldn’t we talk about it?” Hajime’s voice cracks on the word ‘talk’ and Nagito stifles a giggle in the back of his throat.
“Why should we? Can’t we just pretend it didn’t happen?” Nagito sighs, kicking his foot against the bottom of his chair. His foot starts to ache at the repetitive pain, but Nagito ignores the dull thud of his foot on the chair.
“I can’t just pretend it didn’t happen!” Hajime sticks his foot out, looping it around Nagito’s to stop Nagito’s repeated thudding against his chair.
“Why not?” Nagito clenches his hand at his side, fingernails digging into his pale skin to leave the crescents of his nails imprinted on his palm.
“Because I-“
“Don’t say it.”
“Don’t say what?”
“Don’t say what I think you’re going to say,” Nagito jumps off his seat, nearly knocking over the stool in the process. Hajime follows after him, standing up a little more carefully than Nagito did.
“What exactly do you think I’m going to say?” Hajime crosses his arms, green eyes narrowing to stare at Nagito.
“Don’t say that you love me because you don’t,” Nagito grips his arm, tightening his fingers around his arm until he’s sure that it’s going to burst.
Nagito can feel his emotions building up in his stomach like black tar that threatens to snake its way up his throat and out of his mouth.
“Of course I do, Nagito, what’s wrong with you?” Hajime’s eyebrows knit together as he takes a step towards Nagito. He reaches out to grab Nagito’s hand, but steps back when Nagito flinches at the touch.
“Because no one does! No one ever loves me,” Nagito spits out the words, staring at the ground because he can’t quite find the confidence to look at Hajime, “not even a reserve course student like you.”
“You’re wrong, Nagito,” Nagito wonders if his last statement had hurt Hajime, but if it had he did a good job at hiding it. Hajime looks Nagito in the eyes, face still twisted into a frown, “no one is unlovable.”
“You think that you can fix me. You think that you can fix the way my brain works. You can’t,” Nagito clenches his fist, leaving thin crescents in the palm of his hand. He stares down at the pale shapes, wondering if he’d be able to break skin if he pushed further, “I’m not some broken toy that you can get praise for fixing all by yourself.”
“Nagito, I don’t want to ‘fix’ you, I want to help you! I want to show you that you don’t have to hate yourself so much,” Hajime’s gaze softens as he looks at Nagito and Nagito can tell when someone is looking at him with pity. He doesn’t need pity and he certainly doesn’t need pity from a reserve course student of all people.
“Can you leave?”
“What?”
“I said leave,” Nagito repeats, not able to tear his eyes from the ground. Hajime opens his mouth as if to say something, but promptly shuts it and turns away from Nagito.
“Fine. Can you call me when you want to have an actual conversation?” Hajime walks towards the door and the only thing Nagito can do is nod as an answer. Hajime shuts the door behind him and Nagito slides down onto the floor.
Fuck.
He needs to eat.
He needs to get something in his body before he passes out from pure exhaustion. There’s a pit in Nagito’s stomach that grows and grows until there isn’t room for anything else down there.
It’s Monday. Monday morning and Nagito’s skipped school for the first time ever. He hadn’t planned on it, but for some reason his alarm hadn’t gone off and then it was noon and he was still in bed.
He hasn’t had anything to eat since his barely touched bowl of cereal the day before. He just hasn’t had enough energy to actually get out of bed and do something. He rolls over to the side, peering at the phone on his bedside table.
Chiaki: nagito?
Chiaki: u ok?
Chiaki: y arent u at school
Chiaki: hajime says ur not responding to him
Chiaki: nagito?
You have five new voicemails. Press seven to listen.
Hey, Nagito? It’s uh, Hajime here. Obviously. I don’t know why I said that since you have my number saved. I’m sorry for what I said. We both said some stuff and I know it was bad, but you can’t just ignore us like this. Chiaki and I are worried about you. We can talk about it, okay? We don’t have to make any decisions right now, but it’ll be good for us to talk. Okay. Call me back. Beep.
Okay, so you didn’t come to school. You can’t just do that. Well, I guess you can, but- ugh, you know what I mean. Can we please talk about it? I was a dick! Whatever! You were a dick too! You can’t just ignore me. Call back. Beep.
Jesus Christ, Nagito! This is my, what, third message? Pick up the fucking phone. Chiaki is worried too. Call me. Beep.
I bet you’re not even listening to my messages. That is just such a you thing to do. I’ve been thinking about the kiss. I know I was kind of drink—which going off topic, I never want to do that again—but I was on Google for a bit and do you know what they say? They say that being drunk lets put your ‘true’ inhibitions, whatever that means. I think that I definitely wanted to kiss you. I think I want to do it again. No, no, never mind that was weird. How do I delete this message? How do I- hey! Stop recording! Delete! Delete message! Beep.
I really hope that my last message was deleted. Uh, that’s for no particular reason. Don’t worry about it, Nagito. What you should worry about is calling me back. Seriously! I just wanna talk to my best friend again. Please call me back. Beep.
It’s one of the last sentences that strikes Nagito’s heart. ’I just wanna talk to my best friend again’. Nagito’s always considered Hajime to be his best friend, but he’d never imagined that Hajime would think the same thing.
(Maybe there’s a chance he feels the same way romantically too.)
Nagito opens his phone to Hajime’s contact, staring at the ‘call’ button for a few seconds. He promptly shuts off the phone and drops it onto his bed. He can deal with that after. He wants to eat something right now.
“Nagito? Thank god you called me! Did you see my messages? Exactly how many did you get?” Hajime’s voice is a little muffled over the phone, but it’s nothing that Nagito isn’t used to.
“Five,” Nagito smiles and he can practically hear the blush creep up Hajime’s cheeks. There’s a pause for a few seconds where Hajime is likely trying to remember just how embarrassing his voice mails were.
“You heard that and you still called me back?” Hajime’s voice breaks off into a laugh and Nagito can imagine the soft smile that probably crosses his face.
(Hajime’s always had a rather nice smile. Nagito had been able to notice that before he’d even had a crush on the guy.)
“It wasn’t that bad,” Nagito spins around in his chair, chewing on the kind of disgusting granola bars he’d bought last week because he thought the label of ‘cranberry white chocolate’ would be good. Spoiler alert: it wasn't.
“Are you sure we’re talking about the same thing?” Hajime laughs again and a beat of silence passes before Hajime continues on, “you wanna talk about things?”
“I guess,” Nagito shrugs as if Hajime will be able to see him. Though, he wouldn’t be surprised if Hajime could imagine it considering how close the two are.
“My place or yours?” Hajime asks and Nagito stops to think about it for a moment. Hajime’s would be the easier option. He’s never liked spending more time than he had to in his own house. It made him think of all the things that he’d lost.
Except that now, maybe he would be gaining a few things.
“Mine,” Nagito concludes.
Hajime only has to ring the doorbell once for Nagito to pull the door open for him.
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
“Did you mean what you said in the voicemail?” Nagito’s voice comes out uncharacteristically quiet, especially since he’s mostly known at school for not shutting up.
“I’m really sorry if the thing about wanting to kiss you again made you uncomfortable, I just-“
“Not that one,” Nagito cuts Hajime off, reaching for Hajime’s hand, “you said I was your best friend.”
“Huh? Well, of course, you’d be my best friend,” Hajime looks at Nagito as if that part had been a given.
“I- I care- I-“ Nagito stumbles over his words. He knows that he’s never been the best at showing affection, even in a platonic sense, “I care about you a lot, Hajime. I don’t want to lose you.”
“Don’t be dumb, you’re never going to lose me,” Hajime smiles, intertwining his fingers with Nagito’s.
“Everyone who I love always ends up leaving me,” Nagito mumbles, squeezing Hajime’s hand tight.
“Well, maybe I’ll be the first one to stay,” Hajime whispers, moving in closer to Nagito. He holds up a hand to Nagito’s cheek, pressing his fingers against Nagito’s soft skin. Nagito leans into the touch, placing his other hand over the top of Hajime’s.
“Please stay,” Nagito’s voice is barely audible, but Hajime leans even closer forward after his words.
“I will.”
And then he kisses him. This time it’s different than the party. He can’t taste beer on Hajime’s lips and he can’t hear the cheers of drunk teenagers. The only thing that’s there is Hajime.
Nagito leans into the kiss and it registers to him that he is kissing Hajime. He is kissing his best friend and he’s liking it. Hajime’s hand snakes around Nagito’s waist, pulling him in as close as he can.
“Are you sure this is okay?” Nagito whispers after pulling away from the kiss.
“Shut up,” Hajime whispers back, pulling Nagito towards him again.
Nagito’s not a hopeless romantic or anything like that. In fact, he’s not a romantic at all, but he has seen his fair share of shitty teen romance movies with Chiaki and Hajime. He doesn’t want to sound like the main female lead in one of those movies, but he swears on his life that nothing has ever felt better than kissing Hajime does.
He swears that there is nothing in his life that he could want more than the feeling of Hajime’s lips on his, pulling him in close until there’s nothing left. That’s what love should feel like.
Maybe, love is okay.