Chapter Text
Gotou Hidenori watched from his desk as the girl forcibly dragged her friend into the office. She had the kid by the front of his school uniform, but he had dug both heels in and had one hand on the door frame, so the entire endeavor had turned into a battle of wills. “I’m fine, I’m fine-” he yelped, mostly out of Gotou’s view. “Takagi-senpai only stepped on my face once this time, I’m okay-!”
One of Gotou’s eyebrows lifted, as he sat his chin in his hand and watched the struggle. Granted, as he was filling in for the school nurse for the next two weeks he ought to get up and probablydo something about this situation, but since he was under strict orders not to touch Nomura-sensei’s filing system the only thing he’d had to do so far was patch up two members of the baseball club after they’d had a particularly rough morning practice.
“You are not okay, you are touched in the head,” the girl yelled, pigtails swinging angrily. She brought her heel down on his foot, and he recoiled, lost his center of balance and was yanked forcibly into the office by the diminutive, angry schoolgirl. He staggered forward, arms pinwheeling, but remarkably did not lose his balance, straightening and turning about.
“You don’t have to yell, Mari-chan,” he said, and as he turned Gotou could see that he was indeed bleeding significantly from his hairline. Gotou lifted his chin from his hand, straightening at the desk, and the girl turned toward the desk.
“Sensei, the idiot’s gotten himself-” she slowed to a stop and stared at Gotou. “Where’s Nomura-sensei?”
“I’m filling in for Nomura-sensei,” Gotou said, and stood up. The boy was staring at him too, equally surprised. “What’s going on here?”
“Oh!” The girl named Mari said, and there was a strange squeak at the end of the syllable, along with a blush on her face. Gotou gave her a strange look, but walked toward the supply cabinet as Mari explained what was going on.
“This idiot here tried to stop a fight with his face.”
“Hey!” Her friend was indignant. “I did stop the fight!”
“He successfully stopped the fight with his face,” she corrected, arms crossed over her chest. Gotou returned with bandages and antiseptic – the kid was looking away sullenly, blood streaked down his brow and smeared a bit where he had clearly wiped his sleeve over his cheek. “I would have ended it a different way, but somebody here gets upset when I do.”
“Nobody here should be fighting,” Gotou said firmly, and indicated that the boy should sit on one of the cots so that he could clean and dress the wound. “Has the incident been reported?”
From the exchanged glance between the pair, it had been reported to exactly one person – Gotou. He really, really wasn’t looking forward to that paperwork. “Let’s get you cleaned up first,” he said, just as a cell phone went off. Mari yanked her phone out and looked at it, then made a noise.
“Ahh! I’m late to meeting Moe-chan!” She turned and kicked her friend in the leg. “This is what I get for helping you!” She turned and bowed quickly to Gotou. “I leave him in your care, sensei!”
Gotou watched her run out the door, perplexed – and then sighed, and indicated the cot a second time. “Please, sit,” he said, retrieving a stool for himself to sit on. “Do you have a name?”
“Hazama Masayoshi,” the boy said, a little subdued now that his friend was gone. He sat obediently on the cot, eyes downcast.
“Hazama-kun,” Gotou said. “As a third year you shouldn’t be picking fights.”
Hazama’s head came up so quickly, Gotou moved back in surprise. “I was not picking any fights, sensei!” he exclaimed. “I was putting a stop to them! Do you know that some of the third-years take money from their kouhai, I couldn’t stand it, I had to step in!”
The paperwork was piling up in Gotou’s head right now. “Stay still,” he said instead of the first response that ran through his head – why didn’t you just look away, like everyone else? Some kids were idiots, he should know this by now. He pressed a clean cloth to Hazama’s forehead, wiping away the blood. “You shouldn’t get involved, be more concerned with your studies.”
“I can’t ignore people who need help!” Hazama said loudly, and Gotou reeled back a little, but fetched an antiseptic pad to clean the cut. “A hero doesn’t turn his back on others!”
“A hero, huh,” Gotou said dryly. “I think you watch too much anime, Hazama-kun.”
“Masayoshi.”
“Eh?” Gotou wound the bandage around Hazama’s head, taking care not to pin too much of his hair beneath.
“My name is Masayoshi, sensei.” Hands on his knees as he sat on the cot, while Gotou tied off the bandage neatly. “Everyone calls me that.”
*
So he never got around to filing the paperwork. Gotou tapped a pen to the clipboard on his desk – he was supposed to report that there was a fight, but – kids got into fights in high school. Hazama-kun had only been a little scuffed up, nothing major and he didn’t seem scarred by the encounter – going by his friend’s reaction this was a fairly regular occurrence. So – he wouldn’t file the paperwork, nobody would get in trouble, and he only had eight days left before he could put this high school behind him.
He leaned back in his chair and sighed – then realized that the door to the office was open, and three curious heads had leaned in. He straightened in his hair, recognizing the fair hair of Hazama’s friend, but not the other two – and all three let out a giggle and vanished from the doorway, letting the door slam behind them. Gotou blinked in confusion, then crossed the room to the door, opening it – but they were already halfway down the corridor, Mari’s voice echoing back “-told you he was hot, Mizuki-chan-” and he closed the door and sighed.
Eight days. He could handle this.
*
“I get the feeling that this is an ongoing problem with you,” Gotou said when he returned from lunch on Thursday to find Hazama standing before the supply closet holding a compress to the side of his head. He watched Hazama jump with some satisfaction as he closed the door behind him.
“Ahh, Gotou-sensei!” Hazama yelped as he turned around. He didn’t look to be bleeding today, which was a plus, but he was holding the compress tight against the side of his head. “I- it wasn’t anybody’s fault, I wasn’t paying attention, I’m very clumsy you see…”
“I see,” Gotou leaned against his desk. “So, is this a ‘fell down the stairs’ clumsy, or a 'hit with a soccer ball’ clumsy?”
The kid turned a strangely endearing shade of pink, flushing straight across the bridge of his nose. “H-how did you know?” His voice held a note of wonder in it that sounded a little too genuine for Gotou’s comfort.
“It’s a tired excuse,” he said, and waved a hand in the air before his face. “Sensei, sensei, I just got hit by a soccer balll,” he said in a high-pitched falsetto, and then dropped his voice back to its normal timbre. “What is it you really need, Hazama-kun?”
He was being blinked at. “I … got hit by a baseball,” Hazama said, perplexed. “Not a soccer ball.”
“Oh,” Gotou said, and put his other hand back on the desk.
*
There wasn’t really a safe place for a teacher (never mind a substitute school nurse) to smoke, so Gotou had to sneak himself out of the infirmary to the roof during a class session. It was a bit chilly out, but the sun was high in the sky, even if it was windy enough that it took him a few tries to get his cigarette lit.
The idiot child (as that was now what he had tagged Hazama Masayoshi as, given he was the only student Gotou had seen at least once a day for the past week) had been in before lunch today with a torn sleeve, a gash on his arm and a bookbag that mewled suspiciously. He listened cheerfully to Gotou’s lecture about safety, thanked him for it and asked if he knew anyone who would want a kitten. Gotou leaned back against the wall that housed the stairwell and watched the smoke from his cigarette curl into the cloudy sky.
“Gotou-sensei!” The door to the stairs banged open so hard and unexpectedly that Gotou almost inhaled his cigarette. He caught himself, although he did choke and cough, spitting the cigarette out into his hand and stubbing it out in the little pocket he carried for the butts. “Smoking is prohibited on school grounds!”
He half-turned to find – it was Hazama, both hands on his hips and a deeply furrowed brow. Gotou rolled over his indignation instantly. “Aren’t you supposed to be in class right now, Hazama-kun?” he asked.
“Sessions just ended,” he said, and Gotou looked down at his cell phone in surprise – just how long had he been standing out here, anyway? “And it’s Masayoshi, Gotou-sensei.”
“Right,” Gotou said, tucking his cell phone back into the pocket of his white coat. “I’ve got to get back to the infirmary. Could you do me a favor, and try to maybe keep your blood in your body for a continuous 24-hour period? The amount of reports I’m having to write based on your inability to do so is going to make it look like I have it out for you, or something.”
Hazama cocked his head, his arms crossed. He still stood in the doorway – and Gotou realized with a start that he was just a touch taller than Gotou himself. It wasn’t unusual – most third years were large, anyway – but it was still a little unsettling, especially when he was staring at Gotou with such vivid blue eyes. “Excuse me,” Gotou said, and brushed past him – and for some strange reason, his heart didn’t slow down until he was seated at Nomura-sensei’s desk in the infirmary.
*
Masayoshi sat with his chin in his hand, staring out the classroom window blankly. He was so absorbed in thought, he didn’t even notice that perpetual-thorn-in-his-side Maya Mari was standing beside his desk until she slammed two books down on it, startling him and everyone within earshot.
She cocked her head, hands clasped behind her now, all innocent bright smile that would fool most people, Masayoshi included if he didn’t know what actually lay behind that bubbly mask. “You,” she said pleasantly, and Masayoshi looked at the books, and then back up to Mari, perplexed expression on his face. “Have a crush on the substitute nurse.”
He stared at Mari. “I do not,” Masayoshi said, his mouth dry as he rolled the thought over in his mind. A crush? It would explain why he was thinking about the man a lot lately – but wait, hold on. “He’s a guy, Mari.”
Mari was wearing a beatific expression on her face. “So he is,” she said. “A very fine specimen of a guy, in fact. Mm.” She rocked on her heels, and leaned forward. “And you, Masayoshi-chan, have a crush on him.”
“Don’t call me -chan,” Masayoshi said, and wrinkled his nose. “It sounds like a curse coming out of your mouth. I don’t have a crush on Gotou-sensei.”
“You know his name.”
“Of course I do.” He didn’t want to mention how he’d caught the man outside on the roof when he was snooping for delinquents ditching class earlier, or the strange look that Gotou-sensei had given him that left butterflies in his stomach in a sense he’d never fathomed before.
“You don’t even know the name of the permanent school nurse.” Mari shifted her weight from side to side, grinning wickedly, her eyes alight. “I can’t even believe this, this is so perfect. Moe’s going to be over the moon, she was the one who put money on you being gay.”
“I’m not-” Masayoshi almost yelled, but his suddenly-stricken tone made classmates look over at him, and he covered his now-flaming-red face with one hand to shield the bulk of his blush. “I’m not gay.”
“See, I had you down as just oblivious,” Mari said, sighing despondently. “I hate losing bets. Anyway, I’ve thought of a brilliant plan to fix up you and Gotou-sensei before he’s gone, and the only thing it’ll cost you is some dirt on his-”
“NO,” Masayoshi wasn’t able to maintain an even tone after that, the word escaping high-pitched and horrified. He covered his face with both hands, elbows on the desktop as he leaned forward. “No, I’m not – I don’t want to be fixed up, I don’t want anything to do with – with whatever grand scheme you’re concocting, go away, Mari.”
“Eh,” Mari said, and shrugged her shoulders loosely. “Your loss. If you change your mind it’ll cost you double, though.”