Chapter Text
If you asked Satou Hiroshi when he first noticed his crush on his best friend, Saiki Kusuo, he would tell you he didn’t know.
And that was because he didn’t, at all.
It was like when you interacted with all those grumpy, adorable cats who did nothing but eat food and lounge around all day while making sure no one stepped foot in their carefully protected domain (not to say that Saiki was a grumpy cat or anything… but he would make a cute cat, now that Satou thought about it). But, with time, they’d begin to warm up to you — curling by your feet and jumping into your arms without warning — and you wouldn’t even be able to pinpoint when you decided to never let go of the cat ever again.
So, yeah, falling in love with Saiki was a slow, beautiful descent to the bottom of an ocean so deep that Satou didn’t even know he was drowning until he began to suffocate from the lack of oxygen.
And getting back to the surface was certainly going to be no easy feat.
🌺🍰🍫🍰🌺 🌺🍰🍫🍰🌺
Satou vividly remembered the first time he and Saiki officially met, and upon recalling that his first thoughts about the other teen were, He’s really cool, and good-looking too, made it slightly embarrassing as to how it took so long for him to realise that the feelings he held towards the pink-haired teen were closer to like than it was to admiration.
But sue him for mistaking his crush for a persistent fascination.
After their first interaction, they didn’t talk to each other for weeks. Satou had always assumed that it had been because he was too boring for someone like Saiki — good friends with Teruhashi, mind you — to interact with daily. It had only been much later, after they started to hang out more, that Saiki explained that he had tried not to impose himself on Satou’s life too much due to the craziness that was somehow always around him.
Satou could understand that — Saiki did have one of the weirdest friend groups known to man, after all — but had explained that he didn’t mind and expressed his desire to be the other teen’s friend.
And while Saiki was undoubtedly friends with some of the most unusual people known to man, the pink-haired teen could not be counted out as one of them.
Saiki was…odd, especially whenever they hung out together. Even before they became actual friends — somewhat friends, but not by much — Satou could easily call back to one of their first conversations, something about the weather, when Saiki had lit up like a Christmas tree and talked with him like they were discussing the latest movie buster.
He had tried to compose himself afterwards, swiftly returning to deadpan demeanour as if he hadn’t been gushing about the way the sun was in an optimal position for beach weather mere seconds ago.
As the years passed, conversations like that became the norm for Satou — rarely ever in class due to the inquisitive eyes of their classmates, but almost always in the company of just each other. He would bring up the most mundane topic, something that usually wouldn’t take more than 5 minutes to talk about, yet, somehow, Saiki would ramble on about it with him like it was the most interesting thing in the world.
Even the day he had given Saiki’s his phone number — a day at the beach for their entire grade, Satou breaking away from his usual friend group to go talk to Saiki; the teen lounging on one of the many beach chairs with a book in his hand, sunlight flickering through his pink locks and fair skin, embellishing his figure as if he was carefully carved out of delicate marble, and pretty eyes and rosy li-
“Hey, Saiki! Are you alright? You’ve been staring at Kaido-kun pretty weirdly for the past few minutes,” his own voice carried through the wind, startling both him and Saiki. Pale purple eyes drifted to him, lips parting open to speak before-
“Hey, those fish look pretty weird,” Nendo called out from the side, pointing towards something neither on the beach could see. Slowly, a terrifying smile dawned on Nendo’s face, Imma go touch them.”
The pinched look on Saiki’s face as he took in his friend’s words had elicited a breath of laughter from him, and with a tilt of his head and smiling lips, he laughed, “I’m just kidding, Saiki.”
The reaction the pink-haired boy gave him was one he had grown familiar with in the many months after — something akin to awe, the look you gave whoever brought the hot chocolate on a cold winter day–
The look most people gave Teruhashi—
It was a look Satou could recognise even in the form of a grainy picture, or possibly even from a hundred miles away.
A look Saiki had never given anyone else.
And Satou would be a liar if he said that fact alone didn’t give him immense joy.
🌺🍰🍫🍰🌺 🌺🍰🍫🍰🌺
“I’m so sorry, Satou.” Saiki’s voice was already regretful enough, heavy with a foreboding feeling not even Satou could name. The brunette on the other end let out an amused sigh, barely taking note of the smile creeping onto his face as he talked with his best friend.
“It’s alright, Saiki; you just forgot to inform me, there’s no fault in tha—”
“But I made you wait for almost an hour!” Saiki refuted, tone raising slightly in a way that reminded Satou of all the times the other teen felt frustrated with himself — as he was right now.
“You could have been there by now if I had told you,” he continued against the sound of a shutting door, the previous noise in the background dwindling to a minor inconvenience.
It was a bit after Valentine’s Day — Satou’s favourite holiday, and Saiki’s least favourite one. Usually, Satou and his mom would bake mini-cakes for his friends — or rather, she would bake while he made sure not to burn down the kitchen — and he would hand them out to them on the love-filled holiday, trying to avoid the grubby hands of his classmates out for sugar and chocolate.
He had asked his mom to be extra special with Saiki’s own in particular — a coffee jelly cake that took a majority of their cooking time but had been worth it at the stunned and adorable look on Saiki’s face upon receiving it.
Usually, on a day like this, Satou would hang out with his friends at the park where he was certain some Valentine’s Day stands would be displaying their mountain of goodies, but most of his friends already had dates, and Satou didn’t exactly feel like going to the park all alone. The day before, he had texted Saiki asking if the boy would want to go out with him for some holiday fun, and he had agreed.
Their plans had been hijacked, however, in the form of a beautiful interference called Teruhashi Kokomi.
Satou shrugged minutely even though Saiki couldn’t see him, “It’s alright, I can just go home instead—”
“Wait, no, I’ll come and get you—”
“No, Saiki, stay with Teruhashi-san and the others!”
“But—”
“No buts, Saiki.” The voice on the other end quieted. “I mean it, I really don’t mind that you decided to go with your friends—”
But I do, and I feel stupid that I do.
“—and it’s not like you could say no to Teruhashi-san, now, could you?”
Satou could practically hear Saiki’s response even from miles away, could practically see the way he shifted on his feet as he tried to find a way to work around Satou’s rebuttal.
But Saiki would never go against him, not even when he desperately wanted to.
“Are you… are you sure, Satou?” the voice on the other end returned, small and questioning, frustrated and guilty.
“Of course I am,” no, I am not, “You haven’t hung out with your friends in a while — since you’re always with me — and I’m sure Teruhashi-san misses you.”
An annoyed scoff broke through the tension, and Satou failed in muffling his laughter. “At this point, she might as well just hold me hostage with how much she does not want to let me go.”
I wouldn’t want to let go of you, either.
A comfortable silence descended on the duo, time moving slowly as Satou’s eyes drifted to the view of the setting sun — an array of colours in oranges, pinks and purples all but swimming mesmerisingly against the blank slate of the sky. Suddenly, a loud crash travelled through the phone, followed by howling laughter and accusatory yells and flowery giggles.
“Ah,” Saiki groaned, “I should probably get back before they kill each other.”
“Yeah, you probably should.”
The silence returned with no shuffles of movement carrying in through, leaving a confused Satou who stared at his phone incredulously, “Saiki? Are you still there?”
“Oh, um,” the voice stuttered, confusing Satou even more, “I just, uh… saw Teruhashi… talk to you later.” The brunette could not even get a word in before the call was ended, leaving him alone in front of a near-empty school and below a molten yellow sun.
I just saw Teruhashi, the words shouldn’t have surprised him — Saiki was probably the only person in the world who had Teruhashi obsessing over him, and even though the pink-haired teen never swayed to her charms, it wasn’t unusual for him to get momentarily stunned by her beauty.
So why was Satou even trying?
There was no way he could compete with Teruhashi of all people.
She was… perfect. Beautiful, kind, caring, attentive, affectionate — everything Satou wasn’t and much more. She was quite literally every guy’s dream girl, moulded personally by God himself to be nothing less than the human equivalent of an angel.
And who was Satou compared to her?
Who was Satou compared to Teruhashi, perfect and pretty, who liked Saiki possibly even more than he did?
The smile on his face decayed into a frown, his grip on his bags’ straps tightening with every step, the heart in his chest constricting painfully with every thought of Saiki alone with her.
Was this what suffocating felt like?
Feeling like there was not enough air in your lungs as your vision became blurred by the wetness of your eyes and the pounding against your skull?
Falling in love with his best friend was something Satou had never seen coming — and it was days like this that reminded him why he wished he never did so.