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Whenever Hitoshi closes his eyes the room goes up.
He can’t figure out a better way to describe it. Denki is more on the drunk side of crossfaded, but clearly Hitoshi landed square in the middle. He wants to close his eyes, but every time he tries, the room goes up.
They’re in Sero’s dorm room, which is probably very stupid. UA is — shockingly, Hitoshi thinks with heavy sarcasm — a dry campus with a zero-tolerance policy. Aizawa has expelled full classes before, there’s no reason to think that he’ll make an exception just because Hitoshi is-
Hitoshi hauls himself out of his sprawl, inciting another round of the spins, and reaches blindly for the can Mina has forgotten she’s holding. It’s a terrible idea, but alcohol is supposed to make you forget and it hasn’t worked yet. Maybe more will help.
A cold hand closes around his and Hitoshi looks up into a pair of mismatched eyes. He’d nearly forgotten that Todoroki was here. He and Sero have been talking quietly in the corner for most of the night, easily drowned out by the amount of noise that a drunken Mina, Hagakure, and Denki can produce. They’re lucky Iida is staying with his family this weekend. Or maybe that’s why they’re doing this today?
This is such a stupid way to get expelled. Why is he here?
Oh, right.
Todoroki eases the can out of Hitoshi’s hand while Hitoshi is caught up in his own mind. “I think you could use some water.”
Hitoshi is considering jamming his finger into Todoroki’s chest and telling him he could use some water when a sudden weight lands heavily on his back.
“Oh, live a little, Todo-kun. Don’t be a wet blanket!” Denki has draped himself fully across Hitoshi’s shoulders. He’s in danger of sloshing his beer onto Hitoshi’s crossed legs, so Hitoshi liberates the mostly full can.
This sort of casual physical affection still makes Hitoshi feel exposed, even after several months of whatever it is the two of them have been doing together. They aren’t dating per se, but they do things together. Like make out in the kitchen during class movie night. Or sneak off campus to get Hitoshi’s tongue pierced. Or make out in the locker room after training. Or overthink exactly how close together they’re walking and what the difference really is between this and dating. Or make out in Denki’s dorm room while trading handjobs at three in the morning. You know. Things.
Apparently what’s on offer tonight is Denki chewing absently on the side of Hitoshi’s neck in front of their friends. Hitoshi tries to push his head away, but Denki just clings harder. “You smell nice. What do you put in your hair?” His attention springs back after a moment and he looks up triumphantly. “Ohmygod Todoroki, if you iced your bed and then melted it you would be a wet blanket! No. Wait. Have a wet blanket. Hm.”
Todoroki frowns. “I haven’t iced my bed since I was very little. And anyway I smoked with Hanta, so I’m not one anyway. It was a, hmm... sativa? Yes.” Denki does his finger-guns at him, narrowly missing Hitoshi’s eye. “But you still need water.” Despite Denki whining like this is a personal attack, Todoroki gets up to go find them both some water.
As soon as Todoroki is gone Denki comes around to sit beside — and maybe a little on top of — Hitoshi. His fingers find the hem of Hitoshi’s shirt and start to fidget there. “You smell so good,” he says again, nosing his way back into the crook of Hitoshi’s neck. Hitoshi can feel his lips moving against his skin. “Wanna put my mouth all over you.”
From the way Denki holds his breath for a beat after saying it, Hitoshi has to suspect the innuendo is deliberate, an offer. Once Denki follows the statement with a heavy, open-mouthed lick up the column of Hitoshi’s neck, he’s certain it is. Denki sucks wetly on the skin just below his ear, making Hitoshi’s breath hitch audibly.
They haven’t… done that. Even handjobs are still fairly new to their arsenal. Mostly they’ve just gotten each other off by grinding — in one memorable instance getting too into things in the woods and having to walk back to the dorms in pants that were sticky on the inside and muddy on the outside. But Denki putting his mouth on him? Hitoshi feels a shudder run through himself in appreciation of the thought.
Denki clearly feels it, as he says “mm hmmm, all over” into Hitoshi's neck and slides his fingers up under the hem of his shirt.
Hitoshi is… drunk. He’s drunk, no- crossfaded, which is just drunk-plus, and he’s somehow already managed to mostly kill Denki’s beer since stealing it. Hitoshi is drunk and being offered a blowjob by the boy he can’t stop kissing lately. It feels surreal, and he’s tempted to push Denki down onto geometric patterned carpet and go after his neck, audience be damned. But they would have an audience if he did that. He’s certain Mina and Hagakure would make a scene catcalling and cheering them on, and he doesn’t want that. This is something they definitely want to be alone for.
Except. Except Hitoshi isn’t so sure about being alone?
Obviously he doesn’t want to get his first blowjob on Sero’s floor in front of his friends. But the idea of being alone with Denki sometimes feels strange under his skin. Dangerous. What they’ve been doing is simple: both of them get off pretty much simultaneously, an obvious give and take. This would be Denki giving, but without the easy balance of ‘simultaneous’, Hitoshi would just be taking.
Hitoshi tries to muddle through the facts of it — Denki is offering, but they’re drunk, but they’ve messed around drunk before and agreed it was great, but Hitoshi shouldn’t be left alone with someone he could- — but his hazed mind isn’t keeping up too well. He keeps swerving back to two thoughts: blowjob and taking.
While Denki’s hand has been teasing stealthlessly up the back of Hitoshi’s shirt, Hitoshi’s own hands have started to wander too. He stills them now: one low on Denki’s waist and the other where it’s creeping up the side of his ribcage. Taking.
“Denki, you know I wouldn’t-” the words get stuck partway, and Denki looks up at him with an exaggerated pout.
“Even if I want you to?”
“I don’t mean-”
“‘Tosh,” Denki says, putting his mouth close to Hitoshi’s ear, but seemingly forgetting to whisper. “I really want to.” It’s probably meant to sound seductive, but it just comes out earnest.
“It’s not that!” Hitoshi rushes out. “I want- yeah. I want that. But I just-” It is suddenly absolutely imperative that Hitoshi say this, that he make sure. “You know I wouldn’t- I would never- I’ll never use my quirk on you, Denki. You know that right?” Hitoshi winces at the way it came out a question. Nevermind that’s not the only way his quirk activates anymore, it still feels safer when he doesn’t do that.
Denki, pink-cheeked and laughing, says “But you do it all the time!”
Icy horror engulfs Hitoshi, seizing his lungs, and it’s all he can do to force the words out. “What do you mean? I don’t- I wouldn’t - Denki?” He feels like the room is spinning up and away again.
“I don’t think he means in training, Kaminari,” says Todoroki measuredly. A bottle of water is offered and Hitoshi grabs onto it like a lifeline, taking both hands off of Denki to clutch the cold plastic to his chest. Hitoshi tries to recalibrate from the misunderstanding while Denki turns to Todoroki with a questioning look. “Shinsou wants to make sure you know he won’t use his quirk on you outside of class. In your… personal time. Is that right?” He directs the question at Hitoshi, who nods.
There’s another wash of fear that nearly keeps Hitoshi from looking at Denki, but he does it. He finds a pair of confused eyes looking back. “Of course I know that. You’re really good about how you use it.”
“But I could- I could make you do things.” Hitoshi was supposed to be drinking to forget tonight, and yet. And yet. “I could make y-”
“Are you going to?
“No!”
Denki smiles, still holding Hitoshi’s eyes. “Then it’s all good. I trust you.”
The declaration is baffling, but it spreads like warm water through Hitoshi’s limbs, releasing him from the ice. He can’t think up any words, so instead he lifts Denki’s chin to kiss him on the mouth. They don’t get to enjoy much more than a brush of lips before Mina, predictably, whoops loudly.
Todoroki clears his throat awkwardly, and Hitoshi pulls his hand back, taking a gulp of his water so that he has something to else do.
Mina descends, immediately grilling them with questions. Their… thing isn’t a secret — Hagakure is exclaiming loudly about having known it, as if anyone in their circle hasn’t known it — but they hadn’t done anything to explicitly confirm it until now. Does it change anything? Maybe Hitoshi should ask. Later. For now they’re offered “shots” (taken directly from the bottle) in celebration, and the girls rib a rapidly reddening Denki. Hitoshi eases himself carefully out of the conversation.
Standing both proves just how drunk he still is and leaves him at loose ends. Sero’s earthy decor style suddenly seems dense and close instead of warm and grounding. He stumbles in the direction of the en suite, displacing Todoroki on the way.
The bathroom at least doesn’t feel heavy, but instead manages to feel disconnected from reality. The door doesn’t do much to block out the noise, but it does somehow make a bubble inside of which Hitoshi is exactly himself. But also a little bit separate from himself? Looking in the mirror while this intoxicated is a strange experience. It takes a bit for Hitoshi to believe that that is him, because he looks… kind of attractive? He’s acutely aware of the planes of his face and how they shape themselves under the light. He spends a moment moving his head this way and that before remembering why he’s in here in the first place.
The air goes out of him in a rush and Hitoshi props his elbows on the sink to hunch forward. He shouldn’t have left Denki like that. Especially after what he suggested. But it’s- it’s a lot. It’s only been a week that he’s known now.
He thought he’d known everything there was to know about his history. An absent dad and a mom who couldn’t handle a mind-control toddler. Foster care, UA, a mentor, adoption… If he’d bothered looking for a gap in the puzzle he wouldn’t have known where to check. But impressively the universe can fill in gaps that no one even noticed.
A rap on the door startles Hitoshi out of his thoughts, and he knocks a toothbrush off the counter into the trash can.
“Hey, I’m gonna come in, okay?” Great, it’s Sero. Whose toothbrush Hitoshi is urgently rinsing in the sink.
The door opens and Sero pokes his head in. “You okay?”
“I dropped your toothbrush,” Hitoshi says for lack of anything else coming to mind. “Off the counter. I knocked it off the counter.” He doesn’t want Sero to think he used it. Would he think that? He probably thinks Hitoshi was throwing up. Oh no. “I didn’t use it. It’s just wet because I washed it off.”
“That’s fine,” Sero says with a smile. “You’re good. I just wanted to see how you’re doing? You’ve been in here a while.”
Hitoshi wasn’t aware that it’s been any notable amount of time. “Oh. Am I holding up a line?”
“Not really,” says Sero.
“Kind of,” says Todoroki from beyond the door.
Hitoshi lets Sero usher him out of the bathroom so that Todoroki can break the gasket — is it still called that if he hasn’t been drinking? Probably not. The main room still feels oppressive, though, and it seems Sero can tell, because he leads them through the sliding glass door.
Like the bathroom, the balcony seems to exist in an entirely different reality than the room full of people. With the door shut behind them the noise is almost completely deadened. Suddenly Hitoshi can hear the rustling of trees and the distant chirping of the peepers.
“Rough week?” Sero asks.
Hitoshi wants to ask how the other teen is so perceptive, but the question is so perceptive that he can’t help but respond. “God, you have no idea.”
“Wanna talk about it?”
He- He really does. But. “I can’t.”
“Can’t like it’s hard to talk about? Or can’t like it’s secrets?”
“Secrets,” Hitoshi squats down, back against the cool concrete half wall. It’s much nicer than standing, so he resettles himself to sit instead. “Like, not my secrets. The kind of thing you shouldn’t be the one to share, you know?”
“That sucks,” says Sero, exhaling a cloud of smoke as he sits down too. Hitoshi makes grabby hands at the joint, still determined to hit that magical, probably mythical, point of forgetting. “It’s a cigarette,” Sero cautions.
That’s a stupid choice, Hitoshi reasons. Especially for a hero student. “It’s only when I’m drunk,” Sero adds, “Only sometimes.” That’s a stupid qualification, too. They’re all effectively athletes. Like ridiculously high level athletes. Their lungs are important. Hitoshi’s throat is important. Oh god and now he’s thinking about throats and about Denki and-
“It’s probably not going to make things worse.” He already smoked weed tonight. It can’t be that different. “Gimme?”
“That’s not really how it works?” But Sero, good man that he is, hands it over.
Hitoshi doesn’t cough, which is a point of pride, and he tries to keep the smoke in his mouth instead of inhaling fully. It probably doesn’t work, but he can’t be faulted for trying.
“God, I am being monumentally stupid tonight,” he says as he watches the cloud dissipate. It makes him feel like he felt in the bathroom: removed enough to see some distilled form of himself in sharper resolution. He feels like an aesthetic. Someone’s moodboard. He huffs something distantly related to a laugh at the thought.
“Really bad week, then.”
“I wasn’t even asked to keep it a secret.” Hitoshi thinks this was intentional. Something borne from the point that adults shouldn’t ask kids to keep their secrets. Or maybe it’s clear he’ll need to talk to someone about it eventually, if only to clear his mind. “It just feels like- It’s not something you just tell people.” But damn does he want to. It’s pounding on the inside of his sternum to be set free. It’s been pushing at the edges of his mind all the time since he learned it. “I want to stop thinking about it. But also it feels messed up to not think about it. Like, I don’t wanna become-” The words catch again, just like last time. “Hey, Sero-”
“Hanta.”
“Hanta. You know I wouldn’t- Please tell me you know I would never make someone do something they don’t want to. Like outside of hero work.”
“Of course,” Hanta’s expression is mild, open.
“I mean it,” Hitoshi insists, because he’s not sure Hanta gets it. “I’ll never use my quirk on Denki, on anyone, to get- not for-”
“Hitoshi.” Hitoshi looks up, and Sero’s face is still so calm. Somber, earnest, and calm. “I know you wouldn’t do that. With or without your quirk. You don’t need to convince me.”
Something suspiciously close to a sob lodges in Hitoshi’s throat and he looks away. There’s only the half wall beside him to look at, but he’s intoxicated enough that he can make that work. It’s painted concrete, he observes distantly.
“Did-” Hanta pauses, seeming to consider his words. “Did someone hurt you? Touch-?”
“No!” Hitoshi cuts him off. Tries looking into Hanta’s eyes to make sure he believes this, too. “It’s not that.”
“Is it someone else?”
Yes, but. Not the way he’s asking. “No one’s being hurt, no one’s in- in danger. I-” God, holy fuck, he really wants to tell someone.
“Aizawa’s my dad,”
He feels Hanta’s posture shift beside him, but nothing else changes. There’s no real reaction on his face. He just nods, asks: “He adopted you, right?”
“Yes, but.” Why is he telling Sero — Hanta — of all people? They didn’t start using given names until just now. He doesn’t get it. But Hanta’s so calm, so level, even while drunk, and Hitoshi can’t keep this anymore. It’s not his secret to tell — or maybe it is, if only partly — but he needs it out, he needs it gone. Hanta’s probably the most trustworthy person Hitoshi interacts with regularly. He’s never heard him give in to gossip. He sees him talking quietly with the other people, the way you talk to someone who is baring a part of themself. Even Todoroki, who he knows doesn’t trust easily, seems to confide in him. Hanta’s a grounding force, so Hitoshi takes a breath.
“He’s my biological father, too.”
Again, Hanta shifts, but his face stays calm. “Oh,” he says as it connects. “Did you just find out?”
“Mm,” Hitoshi nods, but that’s not the part that matters. “He’s thirty-one.”
He watches Hanta do the math, and realization slowly dawns across his face. Hitoshi remembers the similar way the epiphany had settled into him. Seated across from Aizawa and Yamada he had first wondered why they both looked so tense, had worried about his place in their lives, which is still so new. Then the slow crawl of understanding, like some awful creature burrowing into his ribcage, and then he had started to wonder instead why his new family looked so calm while imparting this bombshell. Selfishly, he still worried about his place in their lives.
Hanta says, “oh, shit.”
“Yeah,” Hitoshi says emphatically. “Yeah.”
“He was fourteen?” Well, yes, Aizawa was fourteen when Hitoshi was born, but Hitoshi has done the math a little more rigorously than Hanta. He doesn’t correct him though. It’s clear that Hanta is trying to imagine any world in which their teacher was a promiscuous middle schooler, and the thought makes Hitoshi’s stomach turn. He could leave it here, but. But the knowledge is still there, fighting him to be freed. And it feels disingenuous to let Hanta think of Aizawa that way.
Hitoshi sucks in a breath, then thinks better of it and sucks in a drag off the cigarette instead. He doesn’t do anything to keep the smoke out of his lungs this time. Fuck it. He kind of wants it to hurt. The clarity of the nicotine seeps in, and he tries again.
“Yeah. And my mo-” Hitoshi composes the thought into words in his head, grateful for the patience Hanta has been showing in his silences. “My biological mother was his foster mom.”
Hitoshi sees the moment when it finally truly clicks. Hanta’s face loses its composure and gives way to shock. “She- Holy shit.”
Hitoshi tips his head back against the concrete. The campus is gently lit at this hour, and with the surrounding forest, the stars aren’t quite drowned out by the lights of Musutafu. Hitoshi never learned their names, how to identify the constellations, but the stars regard him silently nonetheless. They probably don’t know his name, either, so that’s fair. Next to him, Histoshi can feel Hanta’s shock continue to roll off him. Maybe that’s just projection, though. Hitoshi tells the night sky the words that have been bouncing around his mind for a week. It feels like they’re knocking against his bones, ricocheting from rib to spine to skull. He’s felt them pushing through his veins like a toxin. “My mom had me because she raped a middle schooler.”
The two of them remain silent, waiting for the stars to react. Of course they don’t.
“Who then fucking happened to adopt me, because what the fuck.”
“How-” Hanta starts, and Hitoshi swears to god if he asks how that works… but he doesn’t. “How did you find out?”
To be honest, Hitoshi isn’t sure. He has a feeling that the last couple months of his mentor being both weirdly withdrawn and higher strung than ever have something to do with the story, but he didn’t ask. Didn’t want to pry about that part of it. He has a feeling Aizawa didn’t even think of the possibility until recently. Hell, they’d talked about foster parents before all this, and- “Oh shit, we talked about her before he even knew. He told me about his foster mom from middle school.” Just that she was weird about affection, sometimes laying it on thick, sometimes ignoring him. He’d never used her name. “Fuuuck. I don’t know. I think he just started putting the pieces together. Her quirk-”
“Like yours?” Hanta asks quietly. It smarts a bit to hear the question, but it is a logical leap.
Except. “No. She just talks directly into your mind. Reply-activated like mine, but no. No mind control, no mental manipulation. I guess that part was all her.”
Hanta pulls some rolling papers and his grinder out of the depths of his baggy sweater and sets about rolling a joint. Hitoshi gets lost in the process, watching Hanta’s fingers work with practiced grace, even if they’re less than steady at the moment. “He didn’t tell me until he got the test results. He apologized for doing a DNA test without asking me.”
They each take a hit in silence, Hanta studying the joint between his fingers intensely once he reclaims it. Hitoshi knows that he really shouldn’t smoke or drink any more tonight, but the softness of a high is very alluring, and the nicotine and cool air have him feeling deceptively level-headed.
After a minute or so of this, Hanta speaks again “How are you holding up?”
It’s a reasonable question, but Hitoshi doesn’t have an answer ready. “It’s weird,” he tries. “Obviously. Like I hate knowing? Or I hate knowing about the- Honestly I’d be really happy that it’s him — that he’s my dad — if it wasn’t for the, you know, literal child rape part of it.” The words feel bad coming out of his mouth. It’s hard to say them, but he knows — rather, Aizawa said that his therapist says — that euphemism can be a crutch, a way to avoid confronting uncomfortable truths. “I hate knowing, but I’d hate it more to not have known, I guess. I hate knowing that my- I hate the fact that my mom did that. That I’m related to her.”
“You’re not her, though” Hanta says firmly, still far too perceptive. “You get that, right?”
Of course Hitoshi knows that. Of course. But all his life people have shied away from him because he has the ability to override someone’s agency with a word. Sometimes it’s hard not to wonder if they see something more clearly than he does.
“That shit’s not genetic,” Hanta continues. “Plus, the other half your gene pool is a badass mo-, a complete badass. You’re not your mother’s choices.”
“I mean I kinda literally am.” Hanta frowns, opens his mouth, but Hitoshi cuts him off. “And I could. People always think I-” Hitoshi’s throat hurts, and it's a toss-up if it’s all the smoke or if it’s the emotions clawing their way up beside the confessions. “I’ve had people ask me to. Like ‘oh hey will you get her to put out?’ Like they think I’d help them rape someone. Or like they don’t get what that is, how awful it is. They think it’s okay? They think I think it’s okay?”
“But you know it’s not, and that’s what matters.”
“I know it’s not,” Hitoshi affirms, more to himself than to Hanta. “Of course I know it’s not. And I have rules about using my quirk. I make sure-” The fresh high is setting in now, and Hitoshi lets himself lean into Hanta’s warmth, just a bit. “Sorry for just- dumping all this on you.”
“Don’t apologize! It’s a lot to have to deal with alone.” Hanta looks as genuine as ever as he says it, and something unknots a little further in Hitoshi’s chest. “Like a lot.”
“Then thanks, I guess” says Hitoshi, “for listening.”
“Of course. And I won’t tell anyone. I’m sure it’d be uncomfortable for both of you if too many people knew.”
“Thanks, I- yeah.” How does Hitoshi have the luck to know such good people? “Thanks, Hanta. You’re really good, you know that? Like-” he casts about for a phrase to sum it up. “Super manly.”
Hanta laughs and scrubs a hand over the back of his head, bashful at the compliment. “Thanks, man. That’s really nice of you.”
Hitoshi squashes the urge to keep telling Hanta how great he is, because he knows he can get over-complimentary when he’s intoxicated. There was that time he told Denki how pretty and funny and cool he was for, like, five whole minutes. Denki isn’t even actually that cool, Hitoshi just likes him. Aaand now that he’s thinking about him it’s hard to stop.
“Denki wants to-” The words are out of Hitoshi’s mouth without his permission.
“Hm?” Sero is growing steadily more boneless beside Hitoshi.
“He asked about… doing some stuff, and I don’t-” The half wall is kind of rough, with tiny little points in the paint that he can press into his fingertip. The concrete of the balcony floor is smooth though. It’s kinda weird that they’re so different. “I don’t want to take advantage.” Hitoshi continues his study of concrete textures, half to avoid eye contact, half because texture.
“If he brought it up, then it’s probably not taking advantage. Like. If he wants to then he wants to and you gotta respect that.” Respect. Hitoshi hasn’t thought about it that way. “Unless you don’t want to, in which case he’s gotta respect that.”
“Oh, I want to.” As soon as the words register Hitoshi slaps a hand over his mouth, flushing. “Shit, sorry, I forgot we were talking about your friend’s sex life.”
Hanta laughs loudly. “You didn’t actually tell me anything. And anyway Denki never shuts up about sex, it’s not news if he wants to have it.” Hitoshi chokes on his own spit. “Just trust him. He trusts you, so just keep being the same person who earned that trust.”
“Trust him.” Somehow the thought seems revolutionary, despite being so simple. Obviously he trusts Denki, but he hasn’t actively thought about that fact before. Trust him.
A nudge from Hanta nearly knocks Hitoshi into the wall. “You got this. You’re good people, Hitoshi.” Hitoshi is probably never going to get over the thrill of hearing people say that. How the fuck did he wind up with so many people who believe in him? “And you can spare me the details once you two… figure out whatever it is you want.”
Hitoshi is still snickering at that when the glass door slides open and Denki slips through with the rush of voices. “Speak of the devil!”
Denki holds up his fingers to his head in a rather cute imitation of devil horns and smirks. Goddamnit, why is this what does it for Hitoshi? He holds out his arms, hoping that Denki will settle in his lap. Instead he finds himself being hauled to his feet by Denki’s firm grip on his wrists. Not fair of him to use training moves while Hitoshi’s drunk. Stoned. Both. Whatever.
“How are you two not freezing?” Hanta and Hitoshi both shrug, and Denki continues without a segue, as he tends to do. “Mina and Toru are braiding Todo-kun’s hair and talking about capoeira. You’re missing out.”
Hanta’s head snaps to the window immediately, obviously looking for Todoroki’s distinctive hair. Denki snickers. “Just go for it, man. Shoot your shot.”
“It worked for this dork,” Hitoshi adds, jerking his thumb at Denki.
“Hey!”
Hanta smiles and shrugs. “Maybe. I’ll think about it.” But he does head back inside, catching Hitoshi’s eye for a moment and giving him a nod before sliding the door shut. Somehow Hitoshi feels the confidence and support it was meant to convey.
As soon as they’re alone, Denki slides his arms around Hitoshi’s waist and presses up against him. “Seriously, you aren’t cold?”
“Mm, not really,” Denki smells like hair product and… mostly just hair product if Hitoshi is honest with himself. It’s grown on him lately. “Hey, you know. I really like you.”
Denki presses himself closer. “Same,” he says, voice muffled in Hitoshi’s sweatshirt. After a moment he pulls away and looks up. “Do you not- Are you-” Hitoshi wishes he could scrub away that persistent insecurity that Denki carries. It’s painted across his face right now, and Hitoshi feels the guilt start tapping away at the inside of his ribcage. “Did I come on too strong?” Denki finishes quietly.
“You really, really didn’t. I was so- You're so - I want-” Hitoshi can’t quite produce the right words, so he kisses Denki, hoping his mouth can still convey his meaning without them.
It seems to work, if Denki’s enthusiastic response is anything to go by. They’ve probably had better kisses, but in the moment Hitoshi can’t think of anything better than this. The taste of beer and weed and puffed shrimp chips fades after a while, which helps a lot. It also helps that it’s Denki, and everything that should seem weird and kinda gross just seems better when it’s with him. It’s terrifying and exhilarating and all sorts of things Hitoshi has tried to never hope for. It feels like his heart is freerunning through his nervous system.
Hitoshi’s body feels a little unreal, or maybe like the only real thing other than Denki, and with his eyes closed for the kiss, eventually Hitoshi starts to feel the world trying to fly up around him again. He knows it’s the spins — a night’s worth of bad choices are coming due soon, and there’s no way he’s falling into bed to do anything other than sleep tonight — but it feels a little bit like the world is circling all around him and Denki, somehow leaving the two of them alone at the center.
Or fuck, maybe Hitoshi’s just a crossfaded romantic.
The kiss finally breaks when they’re both too overwhelmed for their lips to stay connected. Denki pulls away, and his expression catches Hitoshi full blast. Something unidentifiable shows in it, and it makes Hitoshi’s stomach swoop like freefall.
“Hey,” Hitoshi says, voice hoarse.
“Hey,” Denki whispers back.
Denki tucks his face back into Hitoshi’s neck with something like shyness, and Hitoshi takes advantage of the moment without eye contact to ask the question that’s been building up behind his tongue.“Are you my boyfriend?”
Hitoshi can feel Denki’s ribs expand with his sudden breath, and unintentionally tightens his hold. Maybe it’s unfair to ask it like this, ‘are you’ instead of ‘would you like to be’, spoken softly while they’re wrapped around each other and sharing the same air. But then Hitoshi can feel Denki’s smile widen against his pulse point.
“Yeah,” Denki says, a little breathless, a little hoarse. He lifts his face, and there’s that look again, the one that manages to bare his whole heart through a single smile. “Are you mine?”
Suddenly Hitoshi is thinking about what Hanta had said. Denki trusts him. That is what's written across his face. The night — all of it; the substances, the kisses, the conversations, the silent stars, this unasked for offer of trust, all of it — has Hitoshi reeling, his heart tripping into double-time. He thinks about Hanta saying ‘just trust him,’ and he doesn’t have to think about his answer.
“Yeah,” Hitoshi says, “Yeah, I am.”