Chapter Text
Hirose had always been the kind of person who, unless someone told him straight to his face that they liked him, would never see it coming. It caught him off guard every single time, and that hadn't changed since kindergarten, not even through his last year of high school.
So when Matsumura — who had walked out with him to the pub's back alley, since he was the only one of their friends who could stand Hirose's shitty smoking habit — stood next to him while Hirose lit up a cigarette, he didn't think much of it.
Right, he'd started smoking in his third year. It began as a dumb dare between him and Takeuchi: they'd found a pack of cigarettes left on Professor Otogiri's desk during a class change, and Takeuchi had looked at him with that stupid grin and said, "Bet you won't smoke one on the terrace." Mukai tried to stop them, but Hirose was never going to back down from Takeuchi, of all people.
Takeuchi somehow produced a lighter — even today none of them ever figured out where he pulled it from — and during lunch break the three of them snuck up to the terrace. Hirose was hesitant, Otogiri's words still rattling around in his head: how small addiction made you feel, how he wanted to quit but wanting wasn't always enough. But then Takeuchi lit his cigarette, called him a pussy for hesitating, and Hirose lit his too.
Takeuchi choked on his first drag — coughed so hard he dropped the cigarette and spent the next five minutes hacking his lungs out, while Mukai doubled over laughing, which sparked some kind of weird rivalry between the two of them. Hirose sneezed on his first drag, obviously, having never smoked in his life, and his head started spinning in this strange but not unpleasant way. He took another drag just to figure out what that feeling was. Then another. Then another. Until he found himself smoking the filter, which tasted like shit and snapped him right back to reality, with Takeuchi and Mukai now pulling each other's hair like children and him left with this weird itch to feel that strange calm again.
Back in the alley, Matsumura had more alcohol than blood in his system at that point, and that was probably the only reason he ended up telling Hirose he'd been in love with him since middle school, right up until their first years of high school. To say Hirose was surprised would be putting it mildly.
"Why?" he asked, flicking the ash off his cigarette with a light tap. "Why did you like me?"
He knew he was good-looking — he'd heard it enough times — but this was the first time a guy had confessed to him. He wouldn't have been shocked if Matsumura had just said something like "because you're cute." That's what all the girls he'd dated had said, basically. So he figured it'd be the same with Matsumura.
"I don't think there was one specific reason," Matsumura said. "I just liked you. All of you, the whole package. It was kind of obsessive, honestly. Pretty creepy, almost manic. I'm honestly glad you never noticed before now."
"You know how I am," Hirose said, shrugging. "I never really assume people like me."
"Hirose, I don't think that's why you didn't notice," Matsumura said flatly. "You didn't notice because I'm a guy."
That stung more than Hirose wanted to admit. He couldn't tell if it was the dismissive tone or what Matsumura was actually implying that got under his skin.
"Matsumura, I think I know what goes on in my own head better than you do," he shot back, his voice dripping with that smugness he defaulted to when he was annoyed. And he was annoyed — he hated when people assumed things about him, especially things they'd never bothered to actually ask about.
"Really?" Matsumura's voice was cold, almost sarcastic. "So you're telling me you've ever actually looked at a guy and thought, yeah, I'd date him?"
Something about the way he said it made Hirose want to stub his cigarette out on Matsumura's forehead. Not because he was offended — well, maybe a little — but because it made him feel weirdly guilty. Like Matsumura was angry at him for not having noticed sooner. And honestly? When he thought about it, Hirose probably could have figured it out.
He'd noticed the way Matsumura looked at him differently. The way his voice softened whenever Hirose was near. The way he'd lean down just a little when Hirose had something to say, making their height difference even more obvious than it already was — something Hirose used to tease him about all the time. And Oomori had mentioned once that Matsumura had asked for pictures of him from elementary school. So yeah. He could have put two and two together. Matsumura wasn't entirely wrong.
But it still pissed him off.
So he swallowed his pride, pushed down the guilt that was gnawing at him, and gave the most reasonable answer he could think of.
"Actually, yeah. I have liked a guy."
He wasn't completely lying. Just... bending the truth a little.
He couldn't deny that he'd had something for Professor Otogiri in those first couple of years of high school. At the time, he was convinced it was a crush, even though thinking about it made him feel like a total worm. Otogiri was attractive, sure. But later on, Hirose realized it wasn't really attraction — it was admiration. He looked up to him. That was all.
But that wasn't the point.
The point was that Hirose had never ruled out the possibility of liking guys. He hadn't exactly done anything to confirm it either, but the whole Otogiri thing had fizzled out on its own, and now Otogiri was just one of the most important people in his life. Hirose wasn't about to explain all of that to Matsumura, who was staring at him with this completely shocked expression, and honestly? Seeing him like that made Hirose feel pretty damn satisfied with himself.
"So..." Matsumura said slowly, still processing. "You like Nakamura, then?"