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It takes probably three minutes for the patter of rain against the hospital window to turn into something damn near torrential. Wind whistles against the glass pane while raindrops beat against it, a once-sunny sky swallowed up by grey. It’s probably the most depressing that the island has ever looked, with the way storm clouds practically devour all memories of the perpetually-tropical weather. Doom and gloom. Komaeda would call it despairing or something.
Normal Komaeda, that is—normal being the variant that Hinata has grown to expect, crazy eyes and a maniacal grin. Not this Komaeda.
“Hopeful weather out today,” this Komaeda grins. His eyes are for once not boring straight towards Hinata from his cocoon of paper-like hospital sheets, instead trained on dreary skies just a thin sheet of glass away from him. Since his breathing has returned to normal, he’s been as talkative as ever, Hinata being unwillingly subject to that.
Though ‘unwillingly’ might be a mild exaggeration. He did, after all, volunteer to keep watch over Komaeda once his condition stabilized earlier today, allowing Tsumiki to care for the others while Kuzuryu rests. So it’s somewhat self-inhibited, this subjection to Komaeda’s ramblings. But Hinata doesn’t have to be particularly happy about it, especially as the despair disease bringing a flush to Komaeda’s cheeks and flattening his bangs with sweat just makes the lucky student increasingly incomprehensible. At the very least normal Komaeda chooses when lies slip from his silver tongue, so there’s some trace of impossible-to-understand intentionality.
“I think places like this ought to rain all of the time,” Komaeda continues too-happily. “Seeing the sun is rather awful, don’t you agree, Hinata-kun?”
Responding, too, absolutely sucks in these circumstances. Hinata can’t decide whether he should play into Komaeda’s lies or respond to the poorly-concealed truth. In theory, responding to what he manages to decipher should be the best move, right? He’s still not fully sure.
“At least it’s a change of pace,” he finally offers up. Essentially a tactful evasion of both the truth as well as the words breathing out of Komaeda’s thin lips.
“What a despairing outlook!” Komaeda chirps, though admiration shines in the eyes that he turns towards Hinata. They’re especially sallow looking right now, somehow more than usual, but they’re practically glittering all the same as Komaeda’s perpetual smile upturns yet further. Hinata halfway wants to groan at the fact that Komaeda, despite everything, still managed to twist his words into some mantra of hope.
Instead, he slouches more on the uncomfortable stool he’s perched on, propping himself up with his elbows on his knees and chin in his hand. He probably looks bored, which is probably pretty rude, but he’s way too exhausted and the chair far too unsupportive for any other reasonable seated position at the moment.
“Guess it is,” he shrugs after yet again too long of a gap between words. Again managing to not decisively respond to either side of Komaeda’s words. Fence-sitting with every sentence from his mouth. He could ask, he supposes, about what Komaeda expects him to respond to in some simple yes-or-no. But, then again, he doesn’t know whether the other would be able to comprehend his question in the first place, so he’s not particularly inclined towards doing so.
“Hinata-kun must be so blessed in my presence,” hums Komaeda. “This seems rather entertaining for him!”
“It’s not that,” Hinata replies flatly.
“So he thinks time like this around me is worthless?”
“I-” Hinata starts before he takes pause and comprehends the other’s words. It’s at least some reassurance, that Komaeda apparently understands what he’s saying. That did seem like he understood, right? Hinata really hopes so, because it’ll be far less of a headache to carry on any semblance of conversation without having to layer double meanings into his own words.
“…Yeah,” Hinata finally affirms while his eyes shift slightly towards the window, with no lack of hesitancy. The response sounds halfway like a question in his tone of voice, tepid and unsure. A fair tone of voice, however, because he’s not exactly sure it’s either a good idea to admit aloud, nor something he should admit to Komaeda in particular. But it is true, unfortunate as it may be. Moody and tired as he oftentimes feels when it comes to the lucky student—especially in circumstances like these, carefree and inevitable lies spilling from Komaeda’s mouth with every word—he certainly doesn’t dislike being around Komaeda.
“…Ah,” Komaeda replies after a beat, to which Hinata pulls his eyes back from grey skies and rain. If Komaeda’s cheeks weren’t simply flushed from the fever, Hinata would almost think that the other’s face had gone reddish from his words. Green-grey eyes break from his own while Komaeda looks back outside, like the two of them are tossing the subjects of their view between one another in some desperate attempt to avoid eye contact.
The rain is still pattering against the windowpane, somewhat softer than before. There’s some delicate sense of ambience in the sound, dreary as it may be, that ends up being welcomed in the otherwise quiet hospital. Thunder cracks somewhere in the distance, though it doesn’t appear to be visible from the window’s vantage point. Komaeda’s eyes narrow at the sound.
“How’re you feeling?” Hinata asks after a few minutes pass. Komaeda shifts to turn his torso in Hinata’s direction.
“Awful,” he smiles. “Far worse than yesterday.”
“That’s good,” replies Hinata, well aware of just how off-putting the conversation would probably sound to an out-of-context ear. “Is there anything you need?”
“For Hinata-kun to leave.”
“I was planning on it. Least until Tsumiki comes to check on you.”
“That’s so cruel of you,” Komaeda sighs, “subjecting me to your presence for even longer.” Even though it’s the despair disease twisting his words, it almost sounds like Komaeda is simply being sarcastic. A surprisingly refreshing breath of almost-normal dialogue from him.
“Then I’ll leave,” Hinata shrugs, half of a shit-eating grin across his face when Komaeda’s expression falls into one of momentary woe.
“Hinata-kun,” starts Komaeda, though he stops right there. Kind of like he knows well enough that his words will twist upon leaving his mouth, and he isn’t trying to push Hinata yet further.
It’s not as though Hinata was actually planning on abandoning him (though he probably should, based on just about any semblance of logic—problem is, he doesn’t find himself listening to said logic all too often, especially when it comes to Komaeda). They both know that. At least, Hinata assumes so judging from the slight glint in Komaeda’s eyes, the over-dramaticism of his furrowed brow. But it’s kind of nice to play it up. Again, almost-normal between the two of them. A concept that ought not to exist, considering the dried neon pink probably buried under Komaeda’s bitten fingernails, but regardless one that remains. Hinata can’t convince himself to totally complain about its existence, either.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he reluctantly shrugs after a beat. “Go back to staring out the window or whatever.” Which Komaeda does happily, the sound of raindrops quietly filling the room once more. Hinata kind of does so as well, though from his vantage point, Komaeda’s figure remains blatantly visible and thereby impossible not to notice. Hospital robes draped over his skinny frame and an unruly mess of hair that drinks up the room’s bright, artificial lighting.
Honestly, with Komaeda like this, it’s almost easy to pretend he’s not the same disconcertingly scary boy that Hinata has spent the last few days, bordering on weeks, around. Like he’s normal, in a way.
So Hinata lets himself sit with that faux-normalcy, for just a little while. It’s harmless, after all.
The rain slows against the window, though the weather outside doesn’t look particularly better for it. Still weary and grey to contrast with otherwise sunny, blue skies. Raindrops slide down the glass in far more succinct branches, rather than coagulating into masses of water like they did in the heavier part of the storm. Slipping down soft trails of glass.
The sound of the door opening leaves the quiet slipping down all the same as Tsumiki stumbles into the room, bringing with her an air of typical anxiety.
“Ah, I’m s-s-sorry for, u-um, b-being so l-l-late to check i-in on you K-Komaeda-s-san!” she stammers, purple hair messy around her while she rushes to Komaeda’s bedside.
“How bothersome,” replies Komaeda as he turns towards her. “As expected of somebody so hopeless and talentless.” Though he smiles as he says so.
Rather than respond, Tsumiki looks over to where Hinata is seated—she remembers about the lying, Hinata is sure, but she looks somewhat hurt regardless. Which. Fair. It seems difficult to let words like that not be at least a little biting, even if they’re blatant falsehoods.
“H-Hi-Hinata-san,” Tsumiki starts, “th-thank you f-for w-w-watching o-over Komaeda-san, but I-I can t-t-take care of h-him f-from here.”
“Got it,” Hinata replies, finally leaving behind the awful red stool he’s been sitting on for god knows how long. He puts a hand up as if to wave goodbye to the both of them, still-smiling Komaeda and Tsumiki, whose attention has already flitted off to some miscellaneous medical readings and charts.
“Hinata-kun should have left years ago!” chirps Komaeda while Hinata sets out, making brief eye contact with the other before shutting the door once more.
He walks briskly down the hallway, mostly for the sake of staying away from its eerie blue lighting. Hinata has no doubt in his mind that it was designed by Monokuma for the sole sake of being unsettling, probably with the intent of making the despair disease endemic an even more harrowing motive for the students. Its effect is made all the worse by the creepy windows off to the side that Hinata desperately keeps his eyes averted from, keeping his pace up as he makes his way past. The soft pad of footsteps against concrete only halts once he makes his way down the staircase into the hospital’s main entrance.
“Hey,” nods Kuzuryu once Hinata enters the room, reciprocating the gesture in the other’s direction.
“Is it already time to call?” Hinata asks once he notes the surveillance camera setup that Kuzuryu stands before. He supposes he hasn’t checked the time in a hot second.
“Damn rain makes it impossible to check the time outside,” Kuzuryu grumbles while he fiddles with the setup. “But it should be.”
“Got it,” replies Hinata. Kuzuryu’s not wrong. With the dark clouds blooming across the sky, not a single lick of sunshine peeking through, it’s far more difficult to gauge what time of day it is—especially by solely looking out of a window. Plus, even though the rain has let up, what Hinata figures to be nighttime makes it harder to tell where the storm clouds end and the darkness of space begins.
Souda’s setup kicks on after a few moments, a grinning head of pink hair popping up like the night before. There’s not much to say, just a brief update on Komaeda’s tepid condition and a checkup on everyone (“Saionji still hasn’t left her room,” Nanami notes, sleepiness in her eyes apparent even through the screen’s static) before the screen flits back to black. And with that, the hospital falls into its typical ambience of nearly complete silence that Hinata and Kuzuryu depart from. They practically sprint back beneath the light rain still cascading down from the skies, only a brief wave exchanged before the both of them take shelter in their respective cottages.
Hinata halfway speeds through a quick shower, exhaustion laced through his bones even though, really, he didn’t do too much throughout the day. Lots of lounging around and monitoring Komaeda’s condition. Still, the exhaustion doesn’t matter much once he finally climbs into bed. Because he’s tired, sure—who wouldn’t be—but he can’t sleep. As is typical since ‘everything’ started.
And, yet again as is typical, after some forty-five minutes of tossing around in bed, Hinata clambers out, slips on his shoes, and (once he checks that the rain has fully let up) heads on a walk.
The juxtaposition of nighttime’s calm and the theoretical energy spent wandering around the island’s various paths is probably what drew Hinata to this routine of sorts. It balances things out, at least somewhat, providing some form of respite for often-sleepless nights. The dark skies and faint trace of moonlight just barely making the shapes before him visible—cottages into palm trees into the bridges between islands—are a welcome sight in comparison to the normal sights of Jabberwock Island, otherwise bright colors that only end up affirming Hinata’s status as ‘presently trapped in a killing game’. Dampness coats the air around him, remnants of rain that adds somewhat to the mild, brief tranquility.
And it’s quiet, something that Hinata is also unfathomably grateful for. The presence alone of others can make the island feel so loud sometimes, and though he does appreciate his classmates’ persistent vibrancy through hellish circumstances, sometimes it’s not necessarily what he needs. So he quite appreciates the almost nonexistent soundscape of the island in the trenches of nighttime, just softly bubbling waves and wind.
Plus his footsteps, too, but those are rhythmic enough to fall into the background of everything. Feeding into the ambience while his feet guide without the presence of his mind.
Maybe he should have some presence of mind, to think more about his trail down Jabberwock’s sandy pathways. But he doesn’t. Which means he ends up approaching the hospital, a fact that he only realizes when a too-familiar voice shouts down towards him and wrenches his gaze up from the pavement.
“Hinata-kun!” Komaeda waves happily, about half of his torso sticking out of the hospital window.
Hinata, understandably, doesn’t quite know what to say to the skeletal figure energetically waving in his direction from a rather precarious vantage point. There’s lots he could say—what are you doing there, stop hanging out of a window, are you insane—but he doesn’t, ultimately. Instead, after blinking dumbfounded for a moment, he raises his hand in reciprocation with a just-loud-enough, “Hey.”
“Enjoying the stars? I’m not!”
Hinata steps a little closer to the hospital, gaze turning up to meet dark eyes staring down at him. “…I- guess? Why are you, uh, hanging out of a window?”
“There are billions of other places that I could see the stars from, and the view here is terrible!” …So he doesn’t think there’s anywhere else he can see them from? “Hinata-kun should leave so he doesn’t subject himself to something so horrendous.” Komaeda rests his elbows on the windowsill, an almost comically wide grin playing at his lips that stands out even in the dark night.
He looks stupidly happy for the circumstances—being ill with a presently incurable disease, the seaside air still holding a touch of dampness and grey from the rain. The overwhelming darkness surrounding the two of them. But that perpetual glimmer of something akin to mirth remains almost moonish against Komaeda, like the stars are refracting off of him or something. Fragments of light spilling onto Hinata from the hospital window that do something to warm part of his heart.
It’s probably that warmth that makes him pause for a moment, as though genuinely considering the offer beneath Komaeda’s backwards words. Even though he isn’t. Because he wouldn’t be particularly inclined to clamber up hospital stairs and peek out of Komaeda’s open window. He’s just standing here for some other reason. Definitely.
His feet, however, don’t seem to get the memo as they start to step away, just a few moments after Komaeda’s starlit gaze draws back up to the sky. ‘Step away’, in the sense that Hinata moves away from the outside walls and towards the doors. The doors that he opens wide, and henceforth the stairs that he starts to head up, silent aside from the soft pad of shoes against the hospital’s unwelcoming concrete floor. It glimmers with something eerie in the night, the hallway’s raw blue still unsettling something in Hinata’s stomach.
Although his path is mostly straight-shot, it stutters somewhat before Komaeda’s door. Probably because he doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing. Climbing up a hospital staircase to apparently look at the stars with his concerningly ill classmate?
…That doesn’t sound so bad, actually. The problem comes when layering in who exactly Komaeda is, his insane belief system and cycles of luck and inclination towards murder plots. That ends up seeming mildly more problematic, and far less wholesome. And yet.
Though there’s nothing holding him in place, Hinata can’t quite bring himself to walk off all the same. In fact, his hand rests on the doorknob. Because a part of him does want to go through with this, for some reason, spend a little more time by Komaeda’s side and let the moonlit air wash over the both of them through a hospital window. He should have left by now, he knows full well. But he hasn’t, and instead the doorknob turns.
The door creaks open to the same rhythm that Hinata watches Komaeda’s head turn across the room. He’s still leaning out of the window, almost as though he was simply doing so the entire time Hinata clambered up the stairway. It’s preferable, Hinata supposes, to sitting and staring in wait. Considering Komaeda, he’d probably manage to make that creepy.
“You’re not actually here,” Komaeda mumbles once he meets Hinata’s eyes, head tilted slightly. Like he didn’t expect Hinata to come in the first place. Shit, was I not supposed to?
“I… yeah,” Hinata replies awkwardly.
Komaeda’s face curls into a smile in response, something happy yet again. With one hand, he makes a gesture as if beckoning Hinata over—though Hinata hesitates slightly. Komaeda is still perched on his knees, one arm holding himself up on the windowsill where moonlight whispers over pale skin. As if his movement wasn’t already clear enough (or perhaps because, yet again, it’s an open offer he waits for Hinata to refuse), the hand he had gestured with moves back to the windowsill, and he turns his head once more. Cloudy white hair covered by the room’s shadows faces in Hinata’s direction.
Something about the scene make Hinata’s stomach twist barely, while his heart goes light and wispy as wind against palm leaves. But before he can let his guts plummet a floor beneath him and root his body in place, he steps forward, crossing the room until he reaches Komaeda’s bed. He pauses there, too, before awkwardly climbing up to match Komaeda’s position.
Komaeda doesn’t turn his head when Hinata rests his elbows on the windowsill to match. Instead, eyes still locked someplace beyond either of their grasp, he says, “The stars might be the worst part of this island.”
“What, ‘cause they’re hopeful or something?”
That earns Hinata a grin, Komaeda tilting his head over a little to look at him. Their shoulders are almost touching like this, the windowframe being just big enough for a miniscule partition of space to remain between them. Some thought flits through Hinata’s mind about proximity-based contagions or whatever, but he doesn’t pay it any mind. It’s not like he isn’t already at risk working as a hospital safeguard, he figures.
“Not at all,” replies Komaeda. “You couldn’t be more wrong, Hinata-kun.”
Maybe if Komaeda were in a more clearheaded mindset, Hinata would consider asking on that. Listening to the other’s rasping voice while he explains some convoluted and flowery methodology for how the stars above them signify the duology of hope and despair or whatever. Instead, he lets Komaeda’s response brush out into the night air, to intermingle with the leftover scent of rain and saltwater that seeps through the open window.
“You can see all of the stars from here,” Komaeda says after he turns to look back out. His neck is craned upwards, as though he’s trying to fill every meager part of his vision with a view of the night sky. Hinata, on the other hand, takes in a more halfway view. The darkened shapes of the island landscape with a curtain of stars adorning the background.
“Figures for us looking out of a window,” shrugs Hinata. Komaeda hums in response, leaning yet further out of the window, almost precariously so.
“There actually aren’t any behind the hospital at all.”
Hinata cracks a grin, mostly at the absurdity of how Komaeda’s words come out. “Yeah?” he says with a glance over to Komaeda. “So behind the hospital there’s just an empty, starless void?”
The elbow next to his on the windowsill jabs at him—though it comes off as more of a nudge, what with Komaeda not being particularly aggressive about it.
“None whatsoever,” Komaeda sighs exaggeratedly. Like he’s talking to a petulant child.
“Can’t believe you’re lying to me,” says Hinata.
Komaeda sighs yet again, pulling back out of the window somewhat. They fall into a small respite of quiet proximity, wind and the sound of one another’s breath filling the open air. Hinata does get it, admittedly. Komaeda’s apparent obsession over the stars. They’re beautiful in the way they dance across the night sky, erratic and forever shining. Almost anchorlike, in a way, for though Hinata knows there’s a perpetual movement with the earth turning, in the moment the stars appear rigid in place. Like he could grab onto one and hold himself there, the dot against darkness akin to a rung on a ladder.
The effect is only accentuated when his gaze falls down to waves against the island’s coast in the distance, their movement making the stars seem stiller by comparison. Traces of sea foam are illuminated beneath moonlight that must, apparently, be stemming from someplace behind the hospital, seeing as Hinata can’t see the moon anywhere else.
He kind of wants to look at the moon. For some reason.
“We could go up to the roof,” he starts hesitantly, breaking the silence of some minutes. “See more of the stars that way.”
Komaeda turns to meet Hinata’s eyes, shadowy night still unable to stifle the in-between color of his irises, the way pale eyelids shine stark and whiteish.
“That sounds like an abysmal idea,” he smiles. “I’d sooner kill myself.”
“Geez dude,” groans Hinata while he pulls out of the window, sliding off of Komaeda’s bed. The papery sheets whisper a little with the movement. Komaeda shifts all of the way around, a delicate brush of breeze from the window pushing through his hair as he looks to Hinata’s standing figure and the hand he’s holding out. After a moment’s hesitance, he takes it.
A gesture of support, compassion for his sick classmate, Hinata reminds himself when the touch of clammy skin to his own makes his heart stutter. Stop being stupid.
Besides, Komaeda clearly needs the support. Once he slips off of the bed, woozy balance and probably some muddled combination of the despair disease’s undefined symptoms leave him partway leaning against Hinata’s side. Again, stop being stupid.
Once Komaeda has more or less found his balance—at least half of it being reliant on Hinata’s form next to him, but that's just semantics—the two start to slowly walk. Though not before Hinata mumbles a quick check in (“Are you actually up to moving around?”, receiving, “I’ll most assuredly die if I leave here,” in response. The other’s current insistence on death, especially with his precarious condition, makes Hinata’s gut churn with slight discomfort).
Carefully, the both of them leave Komaeda’s hospital room, the ever-uncanny blue lights of the hallway bathing over them. Their path to and up the stairs is blissfully uneventful, at least. Hinata maintains Komaeda’s balance with an arm under his shoulders, and it’s not long before they step through a creaky, old door onto the breezy hospital rooftop.
And. Hinata certainly can’t say he regrets the move. It doesn’t take much more than a slight tilt of the head for his vision to be utterly engulfed by starlight, a half moon peeking out of the corner as well. Deep and endless space spanning above the both of them, coating the world in a somehow light darkness. It’s the sense of night that doesn’t feel drowning or suffocating beneath an endless blanket of stars—rather, something about it feels airy. Perhaps that’s in part due to how high up they are or something like that, but it’s a nice feeling nonetheless. The niceness is only aided when Hinata again thinks of Komaeda next to him and chances a glance over towards an upwards-tilted profile and eyes that might as well have swallowed up the night sky themselves.
“Wanna sit down?”
“No.”
So Hinata guides the both of them near the edge of the roof. Perhaps it’s slightly dangerous, but he doubts Komaeda will care all that much, especially considering his earlier inclination to halfway dangle out of a window when by himself.
The both of them slowly sit down, Hinata still mostly supporting Komaeda’s weight. Their feet dangle off of the roof, a few floors up that make Hinata’s vision spin a little. Though it fades into the background once he looks back up to the star-speckled sky above the both of them.
“The stars make me want to die,” Komaeda hums without looking at Hinata. “They manage to fill a wondrous person like myself with a horrific amount of despair.”
“…So you really think they’re hopeful, huh?”
“I think that they’re fraught and ugly blemishes in the sky. And I hate looking at them.”
In a way, that thought is shallow as the tide pools scattered around the beach. But Hinata understands it all the same. The quiet sense of beauty buried beneath endless folds of darkness and the whiteish shine of the moon, not far off from the highlights bringing out the sharp angles of Komaeda’s face.
“It’s the same way I hate Hinata-kun,” Komaeda mumbles after a beat.
Hinata is well aware of how that’s attributable to Komaeda’s strangely-defined hope, the one he’s now clearly linked to the stars, the one he has time and time again talked of seeing somewhere within Hinata. Still, the likening is nice, in a way. And there’s an ironic teaspoon of honesty mixed into Komaeda’s words, laying bare the idea that some part of him likes Hinata—a sentiment that in turn makes Hinata’s chest tighten and heart flutter. He keeps his eyes pinned to the sky above, however, attached to the starry ladder rungs and clinging on for dear life. Because a part of him, he supposes, is in want of digging deeper into Komaeda’s words. In hope, perhaps, that it’s not just hope. Something like that. And he knows full well that it’s better to clutch onto the sky, lest he tumble down and actually delve into that idealistic wonder of somebody caring for him.
It’s easier, essentially, if he remains a symbol. So, symbol-like, he stays quiet, eyes still tracing around stars and constellations that he doesn’t know the names of.
“D’you know any of the constellations over here?” Hinata asks out into the dark. Sure, he knows somewhere between Komaeda’s brain and his mouth it’ll turn into a lie, but he’s curious nonetheless. Plus, he’d rather drag his attention away for the time being from any sense of biting honesty.
“None,” replies Komaeda, and a part of Hinata genuinely wonders whether he could mean all. That seems mildly unfathomable. But, then again, Komaeda does seem to have quite the infatuation with the cosmos scattered above them.
“See,” Komaeda continues, his hand coming up from the rooftop to point before the both of them, “that bundle right there would be Lynx. And if you traced a line below it, you could make out Cetus.”
Although they’re lies, it doesn’t take much in the way of effort for Hinata to suspend his disbelief. Just slightly. Because it could be true, in some other circumstance. And for some reason, far too much of him likes the idea of listening to Komaeda talk about the stars, tracing to the best of his ability the patterns pointed out by a pale hand coated in iridescence and reflecting back the moon. Perhaps it’s simply a nicer idea that Komaeda could ramble about something that doesn’t have impending doom inscribed in the footnotes.
A shoulder bumps into Hinata’s as Komaeda shifts, partially leaning on him as he points out yet another grouping of stars. “That would be the Big Dipper, Hinata-kun.”
Komaeda smiles as he says so, his hand directed towards a random spot that Hinata can’t pick out any discernable pattern from, never mind the Big Dipper. Which makes him smile a little in turn. It’s funny, after all, and there’s a sense that Komaeda pointed there as if to ensure he would understand it. Hinata glances back from the sky to meet Komaeda’s eyes while the other’s hand flutters down to rest against the rooftop once more.
They’re quiet once more, though this time with locked eyes and something tepid balancing between them. For the life of him, Hinata can’t figure out what exactly it is.
“It’s warm up here,” Komaeda notes as a certainly-not-warm gust of breeze floats past. With it, whatever was balancing tumbles down and off the rooftop, a quiet something to drift away with flecks of sand scattered around the ground.
“We can go back if you’re n-”
“Yes,” interjects Komaeda, expression obviously not matching.
“…’Kay. But if your fever starts to get worse or something-”
“It is,” Komaeda nods. Hinata’s eyes narrow at that, because somehow he doesn’t believe either side of Komaeda’s words. After a brief hesitation, Hinata brings a hand up, laying the back of his hand to Komaeda’s brow before the other has much of a chance to react.
Which is perhaps awkwardly close. They’ve been nearby, sure, for however long it’s been since Hinata clambered up the hospital steps, but actually placing a hand on Komaeda’s face makes his stomach tighten instinctually. Half-desperately, Hinata tries instead to focus on the warmth of Komaeda’s forehead. The slight sheen of sweat that leaves his bangs messier than usual across his face. The look the other gives him, eyes atypically widened, almost owlish if not for the way the corners of Komaeda’s eyes are sharpened, squinting, analytical and seeing far too deep in.
Hinata drops his hand what he hopes is just a moment later. Although Komaeda’s expression doesn’t change much, still staring at him in that same manner.
“Um. You seem good,” Hinata eventually says, face hot and words strained in a way that he prays isn’t noticeable. Not as though that’s a reasonable prayer. Komaeda has always been uncannily observant, and Hinata doubts even in his ailing state that he wouldn’t manage to take note of that. He bobs his head slightly as if to affirm his words.
Slowly, almost biting so, Komaeda’s lips curl. Smugness and perhaps mockery playing at the corners of his mouth. Hinata has to swallow back the small knot of nervousness that makes itself known in his throat.
“How unlucky,” grins Komaeda. “For me to have somebody worthless as Hinata-kun looking after me ought to mean that I’ll win at least ten lotteries in the future!”
“…Whatever,” Hinata mumbles, his eyes drawing back to the sky. Though they’re drawn back when a clammy hand runs across his forehead, an almost-mimicry of his own movement if not for the way that Komaeda’s bony fingers catch partway in his far shorter bangs. Entrenching his hand, in a sense. If Hinata’s heart felt erratic in any way whatsoever before, he’s halfway sure that it’s on the road to failure by now.
Their eyes are locked together by now. As if woven into one another irreversibly, caught within twin fish nets.
“You know, I hate looking at Hinata-kun, too. Like the stars.” Komaeda says that as though he’s incessantly picking up the fragments of conversation Hinata would’ve been inclined to cover up beneath moonlit dirt. Bringing back the almost uncomfortable trace of honesty muddled by lies. The hand in Hinata’s hair curls a little and Komaeda’s eyes narrow. There’s an analytical look to them, like he’s seeing something buried deep below and piecing it together bit by bit, word by word until he restores its entirety once more. It’s their sharpness, probably, that makes Hinata’s heart kick. The way they seem to see through him, so he can’t hide. The manner in which they trace up and down his visage, catching everything, photographic and searing all at once.
Komaeda’s eyes flit away. Again. His hand drops to the rooftop. Again. But Hinata remains stuck on his profile, the bump on his bony nose, his too-shiny irises that returned all too easily to the endless skyscape of stars above them.
“Komaeda,” Hinata breathes into the quiet, and Komaeda looks to him once more. Turns his head a little so his moonish face is put on full view. Hinata is unduly grateful for that, for the curious look of the other framed by a mess of tangled hair like webs of starlight or clouds.
He doesn’t quite know what to say now. And at the same time, he does. Perhaps it’s more that he’s wary of it, a shot in the dark that he fires regardless while Komaeda’s eyes dance across each feature of his face.
“…Do you want to kiss me?”
Komaeda’s lips are thin and muted. Not smiling, for once. Instead they’re slightly parted, while his eyes remain persistent and close. Clouds of grey-green starlight buried beneath the veil of nighttime that encompasses the two of them, shields them from the rest of the world. Rocking waves and the breeze that carries a delicate chill when this far up.
“No,” Komaeda eventually breathes.
He really is more honest like this, huh?
Though Komaeda’s nature of confusion and nonsense persists when he shifts slightly, eye contact breaking while he turns as though the two weren’t just perilously near. His eyes drag back up to the moon and stars.
To which Hinata drags them back down as his hand moves to Komaeda’s chin, tilting the other’s face. Just barely. Catching the moment between his palms where Komaeda had apparently attempted to kick it down off of the rooftop. He lingers for a moment longer on Komaeda’s face, the warmth of his skin against Hinata’s hand, the trace of befuddlement furrowing his brow, before Hinata leans in just enough to catch Komaeda’s lips with his own.
It’s as momentary as possible. Probably as a result of some mangled concoction of wariness and hesitancy between them both. Though, regardless of just how brief it was, the kiss manages to set Hinata’s heart off racing at a breakneck pace.
Neither of them had much of a chance to close their eyes, what with the millisecond of nothingness and everything that just passed. So Komaeda is still staring in the manner of his that makes Hinata feel exposed. Visible to all under moonlight, even though he’s well aware the only one here—the only one that matters much, anyways—right now is Komaeda. Is the figure sitting next to him with pale hands propping himself up on the rooftop and a face glazed by moonlight and a face that leans even closer as thin lips catch onto Hinata’s once more.
Maybe Hinata is set to perish. That sounds like something Komaeda would say after an instance of good luck. Normal Komaeda. This Komaeda would call it the unluckiest thing in the world. Yet Hinata doesn’t quite attribute the soft lips against his, his own eyes fluttering closed to revel in light effervescence, to luck.
The problem, he supposes, is that he doesn’t know what he attributes it to. Because between Komaeda’s words about hope and endless spiels of admiration, Hinata can’t help but feel that he doesn’t deserve this in the first place. Perhaps that’s why he expects catastrophe.
He doesn’t receive it. At least not yet. And there’s a part of him that wants this bad enough anyways that he pushes off wonders of despair-inducing pathogens, any other consequence of taking what ought not to be his, and he pulls Komaeda in closer with the delicate grip on his face. Like he’s desperate. Probably because he is.
So he lets himself fall into Komaeda’s lips, into the feeling of the other kissing him. The small breaks of warm breath that pass between them, that he really ought to be wary of because of the too-likely chance of getting sick of a result. Though he ignores that chance regardless. The world, those parts of the world, seem small compared to right now, a moment all-encompassing and suffocating as Komaeda kisses him back. Maybe with feelings that Hinata doesn’t deserve and expectations that he can’t meet, but for right now he lets himself take regardless.
Whenever they do eventually part, Hinata’s hand drifting down from Komaeda’s face, it goes quiet between them once more. There’s the excuse Hinata could point towards of how impossible genuine conversation is with Komaeda in this state, but that’s merely an excuse.
He’s scared, in actuality. Even though the look glimmering in Komaeda’s green-grey eyes suggests he shouldn’t be.
It’s imminent and leering, the knowledge that at some point Hinata will have to acknowledge this. That it won’t all fade into the recesses of time or tumble down high walls into the deepest pits of the ocean, no matter how much he may will it to. At some point, they’ll really have to talk, so long as the despair disease doesn’t conveniently wipe clean Komaeda’s memories. But talking almost requires Hinata to point out how he’s undeserving. To point out the potential that has swallowed him whole of normalcy.
And he’d rather not do that. At least for now.
Instead, he turns away from Komaeda and lets his gaze drift back towards endless stars.