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Hitoshi was used to his class's overly social nature– had to be in order to survive three years of schooling with them– but he’s still not big on their whole ‘celebrate every little thing’ gig.
Shouto making second in the hero ranking wasn't a ‘little thing’, sure, but he doesn't doubt that they'd all still find a reason to come together and be louder than necessary anyway had none of them made the top fifty.
That's why, sat between Tooru and Koji, he's taken to not involving himself in any ongoing conversation at his table unless prompted.
It's not that he's trying to be antisocial, or emotionally distant, or rude in general (not anymore at least), but there's about three conversations happening at once on his table alone, and even if he really was that invested in the dating lives of the past class B girls, he doubts he could keep up with how quickly Mina and Tooru are listing off all of the rumours they've heard, going through every girls name like they keep a mental document to track all of the recent gossip.
Plus, it's nothing Hitoshi hasn't already heard from a source more reliable than whatever game of Chinese whispers Mina plays to get her ‘intel’.
“What?! No way!”
“Kuroiro and Kinoko… are dating?!”
“Yup!”
“But I went on a mission with them recently and there weren't any signs!”
“Speaking of which… what about the two of you? Kaminari's office is right next to yours, right, Jirou?”
“Oh, you got it all wrong!”
“You guys won't believe it! I was really worried about opening my own agency… and then I found out that the building next to Jirou's was available! I didn’t even have to think twice!"
Hitoshi tuned the rest of their conversation out after it trailed alarmingly off topic extremely quickly, as is procedure with most conversations their whole group partake in. Mina seemed to be back in rumourville, interrogating Koji for ‘details’ about his sidekick job at Mezou's agency, and honestly he's impressed how long she's managed to restrain herself from asking this time around.
It's certainly not the first time she's asked, and it certainly wouldn't be the last if her constant questioning towards Hitoshi's own love life had anything to say about it. There wasn't anyone in their class as gossip starved yet gossip filled as Mina, and it was a throne she sat on with pride.
That is to say, her bloodthirsty-shark esque drama sniffing tendencies kind of terrified him. Especially since there may or may not be a secret he's been keeping that he may or may not have neglected to tell at least four fifths of the class.
He pathetically hopes that if he avoids any and all eye contact with his tablemates, they'll just forget he's sitting there, right in the middle of them all.
Fuck.
“Soooo, Hitoshi,” Oh, sweet Jesus. “You aren't ahhh- seeing anyone, are you?”
Tooru giggles, and Koji looks down at him slowly, with a mix of sympathy and what better not be relief across his face from not being her prime target anymore. Ochako tries to stifle a chuckle behind her glass, but the thing is see-through, dammit, of course he still saw it. Tsuyu seems mildly interested, but is being respectful about it, at the very least.
“N- Err, I'm- I'm not. Seeing anyone, I mean, uh. No,” he answers, like a liar.
Thankfully though, his response was perfectly even tempered and now no one will bother him about this again for the rest of the night, and holy shit, the smug grin that hasn't left Mina's face since undoubtedly the day she was born somehow curls further upward on her face and if she didn't before, she looks concerningly like she's about to steal Christmas.
Hitoshi's left hand curls further around his glass, willing it to break with his mind just to give him some kind of out from this conversation, while his right digs its nails into the fabric of his pants, the cold metal on his finger being just about the only thing keeping him on earth.
If Tooru had visible eyebrows to raise, Hitoshi imagines they would be raised right now, as she taunts, “Oh, you don't say,” before bursting into a fit of apparently contagious laughter that consumes his entire table (taking whatever sense of allyship he felt with Koji and Tsuyu with it).
He abandons his drink to try and physically wipe away the fluster he knows is creeping steadily over his cheeks by dragging his hands down his sweat slick face. If he keeps them there awhile afterwards, hiding both himself and the confused looks he's getting from the now quieting other tables, it's nobody's business but his own.
“You don't have to tell us everything, Hitoshi, ribbit. But it would be nice to be… introduced to whoever you're dating,”
Tsuyu adds, after the laughter has died down somewhat, and the entirety of his ex-class can hear. He's not sure how the accusation has bumped up from seeing– casual, unserious, not the kind of person you mention to your friends– to dating– regular, somewhat serious, the kind of person you might bring along to meet your friends– but he doesn't like it one bit. Very well meaning, Tsuyu, but very much not appreciated.
“Dating?! Hitoshi, bro, you're dating someone??”
“...Dating?”
“Whaa‐? Dude, you've been keeping that from us?”
“You got a girlfriend before me??”
“How awfully romantique!”
Choke him with a spoon, this was not what he'd prepared himself for today.
Tenya seems to be having an off day, because when he drops his hands back into his lap and looks over, the usual noise wrangler is just sat there staring at him, equally as intrigued as everyone else. Hitoshi decides to never let Tenya near alcohol during these class meetups again, lest he not be sober enough to come to his defence next time he gets ganged up on like this.
Hitoshi then makes eye contact with the only other three people who could help him out of this situation, but they look at him with ‘So sorry about this, nothing we can do to help’, ‘You got yourself into this mess, get yourself out of it’, and ‘I fucking told you this would happen, man’ looks respectively, so he mentally curses himself out for ever trusting them and prepares to do something he really doesn't want to do; talk about it.
“Guys, guys!” Ochako stands up and bats her hands up and down the way you would to silence a gangle of preschoolers, and speaks over the onslaught of things Hitoshi hoped he'd only ever hear in his nightmares. Momentarily, he decides that he owes her his life. Momentarily didn't seem to last long at all though, because somehow in his haze of desperation for a soul on his side, he'd completely forgotten that Uraraka was definitely part of Mina's Koji Interrogation that happened not even five minutes ago.
It's only when Ochako sits back down, and looks as innocently at him as she can– what with the dark cloud shadowing her face and that blinding smile that he suspects would have killed a weaker man– that he remembers.
“Ahem, so, Hitoshi. Anything you'd like to tell us, perchance?”
–And lo, the room is silent, waiting for him to say literally anything so they all can freak out about it again.
Unluckily for all of them and his chances of making it out of this unscathed, he has no fucking clue what to say.
“You can't just say perchance. Also no, I don't think there is.”
Professional, concise, not all that believable but not exactly refutable because nothing he's actually said today has been of any substance, but anyway, denial is the route his brain’s autopilot has decided to go with. And it's doing a terrible job at it so he will be relinquishing control right now, thank you.
“Nothing you'd like to tell us, but there's something you should, riiiiight?”
Denki’s face looks more nerve-wracked than his when everyone turns towards him after hearing the knowing lilt in his tone. Kyoka elbows him in the arm, but whatever relief that brought Hitoshi is immediately gone when, in what seems to be a repeating fashion, she says, “Hitoshi, you're not a great liar, dude. You were gonna do this today anyway, just get it over with.”
Her smile is something between shit-eating and sincere, and it's somehow probably the second most reassuring smile he's received today. Oh well, fuck it.
“Wait, so you are with someone, Hitoshi?” Izuku perks up from where his table (sub Eijirou) have been virtually silent since Tsuyu first spoke.
Sigh. And now that he's been asked straight up, there aren't many ways he can– wants to– pussyfoot around this anymore. He peeks at his hands, laying docile on his thighs. He wonders if he can just flash them his ring, storm out and call it a mission success, but really he knows that'll just land him twenty confused heroes on his doorstep wondering why the hell he showed them the wrong finger.
“Yeah. Yeah, I am.” Hitoshi says, smiling only slightly, and finally. It feels like years worth of weight just flew off of his shoulders, and by the looks of it onto everybody else's, with the downright monstrous amalgamations of an expression some of his friends are giving him. He can't tell if they're about to toast in his name or spit roast him and serve him as the second course, but frankly he doesn't care. There aren't many things he's felt that were quite as freeing as this.
“Now that you guys know, we should hang out at your place next time, man! I mean, assuming Neito lets us, and all.”
Nevermind.
----
Hitoshi isn't sure what comes first; his mind fizzling out like a dead bulb, Kyoka hissing out a “Denki!” or the eleven incorrigible screams coming from both right next to him and all the way across the room.
He would feel bad for Katsuki, who levels him with glare that both looks through him and leaves him with third degree burns as he presses his fingers into his ears at the noise, but he's 93% utterly embarrassed and 7% completely terrified and both parts have him using all of his brain power to do anything but crawl up into a ball and scream ‘till his lungs croak, so he doesn't really have the capability to feel any of that right now.
Unsurprisingly, the first to gather their bearings and throw actual words at him instead of scandalised shrieks, judgemental faces and grunts of vague confusion, is Mina.
“You mean Monoma Neito?” She starts, slowly, like she expects him to yell that she's wrong and that Denki meant a different Neito entirely– which, well, he won't, because she isn't and he didn't– “Like- Like that Neito? Neito from- from highschool Neito??”
“That same one.” Hitoshi replies, and he hopes it comes out calmer than he feels right now, because the one thing he can not afford to sound is unsure. Especially when it comes to a guy like Neito, for crying out loud.
“Denki, I thought you said Monoma was married?!” Sero accuses, not a second after Hitoshi clarifies himself.
“I-I, he, uh…” Yeah, no, putting a stop to that.
“He is. To me.”
At least he didn't stutter.
“Wh-Whuh?!?”
“You're WHAT?!
“You didn't invite us–”
“–I mean, I didn't even know that you two–”
“–I thought we were friends, man!”
“Jesus christ.”
“Congrats, I guess?”
“Thanks, Mashirao.”
That seemed to have broken them all out of their stupor, though he wasn't sure if that was a good thing, given the stiff, belated congratulations he was now receiving about a marriage that had been officiated two months ago. Wasn't exactly that long ago in hindsight, but he guesses living his day to day life in the same house as his boyfriend had him feeling like they'd just been married forever. It still barely feels like more than another name to tack onto a sense of normal they'd just been living out ever since they graduated.
“...You didn't invite us to your wedding?”
Hitoshi would feel immense guilt for whatever sense of animosity Eijirou is probably assuming he holds towards him, but this isn't really his fault, so he'll leave all the sadness to everyone else for feeling like they missed out on something that never happened.
“We didn't have a big wedding or anything. Aside from us two, no one else came. We, uh, got eloped.”
That put the colour back into some of their faces, at least. He doesn't want them to think he's going soft, but he doesn't want them to think he hates them either.
“You're telling me the Monoma Neito was fine with not having the whole country attend his wedding? No marching band? No exotic dancers? Not even an interprète?”
He scoffs a little, before taking a sip from his drink. “It was his idea, actually.”
“You're kidding.”
“Just because you'd rent out the eiffel tower,” Tooru snickers, and turns Yuuga a brighter shade of red than Hitoshi's ever seen him, sending nearly everyone into a mini eruption of laughter.
If any of his friends notice how much lighter he'd been, talking about Neito with people who wanted to hear it, they don't make a point to mention it. That's fine, because he won't mention how squirmy Tooru herself got at the image of Yuuga doing something so himself at his wedding, either.
“...Now that shit’s over, can I just say that I knew the whole fuckin’ time?”
“You told Katsuki? …Over me?”
“I didn't tell him shit, Mezou. I told Denki, and then he told Kyoka, who told Momo. And then it ended there. I think.”
Shouto raises his hand from where he's been spending his own party listening to everybody rag onto Hitoshi about his relationships in complete silence for the entirety of this conversation, and now, okay, maybe Hitoshi feels a little bad. “Momo told me too, actually.”
Hitoshi raises an eyebrow at that. He didn't think Momo would be a gossip of all people.
“I-I’m sorry, Hitoshi! It was before I realised it was a secret!”
…And he almost feels bad for doubting her. Almost.
“It's fine, Momo. I didn't mind too much about keeping it a secret, anyway.”
“If that is true, then may I say I was also bestowed upon with the knowledge of your matrimony?”
“...You may?”
“I didn't know for sure, ribbit,” Tsuyu interrupted, not having said anything since she set the whole conversation off in the first place. “I always had a feeling about the two of you, I just didn't want to assume things.”
She looked apologetic– so much so that it made Hitoshi feel bad for the third time today, mainly for all of the cursing of her name he did internally the second things kicked off, and he wondered, horrified, if maybe married life was turning him soft after all.
“Well, the bastards weren't exactly subtle.” Katsuki said, and he realised suddenly that, yeah, nobody told Bakugou, he just figured it out. Because of course that asshole did. Typical.
“I'm impressed, I didn't think you knew the meaning.”
“Can it, half n’ half.”
It's almost funny how quickly the subject deteriorates after that. It gets brought up again here and there, but always only with quick, passing comments that don't last a moment too long.
Mina would ask simple questions, like how long they'd been together and whether Neito was still as ‘opinionated’ as they all agree they remembered him. Koji had wanted to know if it was Neito who had named their cats, and the answer if anyone else asked would be ‘no’ because he can't imagine not having the kind of authority that would allow you to name your cats, but he knows fearfully in his heart that he cannot lie when it comes to Koji and animals, so he says ‘yes’ and tells Koji about him and Neito's grueling month long name-storming session. Ochako wanted to see his ring for whatever reason, and he wondered absent-mindedly if he'd be seeing a similar one on her own finger soon, by the way she stared longingly at it, like a life she couldn't obtain.
It was so easy, now that it was over with. Like a bandaid he had to rip off quick. But instead of the sore red cut underneath he'd been expecting to find, all he had to see was healing skin.
He wondered if he could convince his husband to forgive him for how much slander of his name he overlooked, in light of the blissful feeling he couldn't seem to shake, even on his way out as he was now.
He'd have to, Hitoshi decided.
After all, they'd need a few more empty chairs at their table soon, and he'll be damned if he's going to pay for it alone because, damnit, furniture is expensive as hell.