Archive of Our Own

Sometimes after sex, they lay in bed quietly together, enjoying the warmth of each other’s bodies and the steady thrum of their heartbeats. They make no noise except for the occasional contented sigh or loving murmur, and it’s in these moments where Hinata feels truly at peace.

Sometimes, however, Komaeda opens his mouth and disrupts the moment with whatever random thought is on his mind, and it seemed to Hinata like today would be one of those days.

“Would you be more attracted to me if I were a woman?” Komaeda asks with a casual lilt in his voice.

Hinata nearly chokes on his own spit. “H-huh?!?”

Komaeda gave a relaxed shrug. “I was just wondering if you had a preference for a thing like that,” he continued, smiling.

“Uh,” Hinata began haltingly, trying to reason with the question and process a human response.  “I don’t know,” he starts, but that isn’t necessarily true. Imagining Komaeda as a girl is difficult, because Hinata is undoubtedly very attracted to his body. Not that Komaeda was necessarily the most masculine of guys, but Hinata kinda likes aspect of him too, and- He realizes mid-thought that Komaeda is still peering at him owlishly, waiting for a more conclusive response. “I like you the way you are.” Hinata says with certainty, eyebrows pulled together in a determined expression.

“Ah, I see!” He replies, seeming a bit taken aback by either Hinata’s response or serious tone. Hinata can’t help but blush a little at Komaeda’s gently closed eyes and smile. “Thank you for humoring my silly questions as always, Hinata-kun!”

“It’s whatever.” He huffs, looking away with feigned disinterest at Komaeda’s cute expression. They start to lull back into a comfortable silence, on their sides and facing one another, legs entangled and brushing against each other’s arms. Normally right about now, Hinata  would let his exhaustion overcome him and drift off, but a thought kept buzzing in the back of his mind like an island mosquito. It would itch at him until he had a definitive answer. “Hey.. Just, out of curiosity… I guess you aren’t into girls at all?”

He thought Komaeda might have fallen asleep already, but- “Haha, not in the slightest!” He answers immediately, without a second thought.

Hinata isn’t really sure what else he expected, given that he’s never once heard Komaeda make a pass at one of the girls here. He’s only ever heard Komaeda chastise Hanamura for doing so. Then again, he’s only ever heard Komaeda fawn over his appearance anyways - or Naegi’s, but Hinata wants to quash that line of thought as quickly as possible before he feels the burn of jealousy in his chest again. “Yeah, that’s what I figured.” Hinata says with a lazy yawn, rolling onto his back.

“It’s okay that you are though, Hinata-kun!” Komaeda adds cheerily, placing a delicate hand on Hinata’s chest.

“Yeah.” He wasn’t especially concerned that Komaeda would have a problem with him being into girls, since he probably gathered that in the simulation Hinata had a brief thing for Nanami, but that was extremely complicated by everything that Komaeda brought to the table, so Hinata prefers to avoid thinking too hard about it. He’s done enough thinking about it for awhile. However, he still wants to know more about Komaeda, since they’ve spoken a lot about the… tragic events in his life, but they haven’t spoken much about their sexuality in general, unless  it was about how they felt about each other. And that usually ended with moments like what they were sharing a few minutes ago. “When did you, like, figure it out?” Hinata tries broaching the topic, out of pure intellectual curiosity, of course.

“That I wasn’t attracted to girls?” Komaeda shuffles up a bit on his elbows, giving Hinata a coy smile.

“Yeah.” Hinata tries to remain unruffled by Komaeda’s face. “Or that you were into guys.” Komaeda is still giving him that teasing look, and he can feel his poker face slowly wearing down, as it always does around him. Maybe that’s one of the reasons he likes Komaeda so much, though.

Komaeda, however, decides to have mercy on him and starts pondering his question. “Hmm. I think for me it was something that I always kind of knew, but didn’t fully understand!”

“I see.”

Komaeda pauses for a moment, with an unreadable expression on his face, and then takes a breath. “I think the first time I ever actually thought about the possibility of liking other boys was in elementary school.” Hinata sits up a bit, intrigued. Komaeda continues with a small smile. “My favorite classmate, Seisuke-kun, was always so kind to me. One day during recess, another classmate dared him to ask me out as a joke. Which had happened before, actually, but in the past it was always girls, but I always turned them down regardless. But when he asked me, I was so surprised, I didn’t know what to say. It felt like an unexplainable stroke of good luck! But since I didn’t turn him down immediately, I recall the other children crowding around us and making fun of me.” He’s still smiling.

“Oh..” Hinata feels sadness swirling in his gut, and he’s not entirely sure what to say now. “That’s horrible- ”

“It turned out fine though. Later that day, I recall Seisuke-kun falling off the slide and breaking his arm. Rumors started that I pushed him - and I truly didn’t! But everyone else was so afraid of me, they stopped making fun of me.” Komaeda says in a tone that is probably supposed to be reassuring, but Hinata doesn’t really feel reassured at all.

Hinata mostly feels the overwhelming urge to wrap Komaeda in his arms as constrictingly tight as possible.

Komaeda doesn’t seem finished nor has he picked up on Hinata’s concern.
“I guess the first time I ever had real, mature feelings towards another boy was when I was a teenager though.”

“Someone at Hope’s Peak?”

“No, of course not!” Komaeda said, looking scandalized, as if having a crush on a high school peer was an absurd and deviant idea. “He was a nurse of mine.”

“Oh.” Hinata says, feeling strangely a little sad.

“When I needed to go for treatments for the lymphoma, he was the nurse who handled the intake and administered my medicine.”

“Oh.” He says again, unsure of what to say to that.

“He was very kind.” Komaeda says with a small smile. “I knew he was just kind to me because of his job, and if he ever saw me outside of the hospital he would undoubtedly recoil with disgust, but I remember one appointment he put his hand on my shoulder.” Komaeda pauses. “I think he was trying to.. Comfort me? I insisted that the news of my prognosis didn’t bother me in the slightest, but he touched me regardless. I don’t think I could ever forget the feeling!”

Hinata thinks with a sinking realization that in this memory it was probably the first time anybody had touched Komaeda gently since his parents died as a young child.

“It was really foolish of me to have gotten so flustered over that, but as I said,” Komaeda says, averting his eyes from Hinata as if he’s ashamed, “I thought he was very kind to me.”

Hinata’s voice comes out a bit croaky. He’s not tearing up over this, right? It’s fine. “Yeah. He sounded nice.”

Komaeda shoots upright. “Oh, I’m sorry Hinata-kun if that was rude of me to say! I didn’t mean to suggest that you aren’t very kind, nobody on this planet is as kind to me as you are, nor could I possibly care for anything or anyone else as much as I do for you-”

“Hey, hey, it’s fine,” Hinata says, softly pushing Komaeda by one shoulder to lay back against the pillows. “I don’t mind at all.” Komaeda looks unconvinced. “Really, I mean it. I’m glad you told me about this.”

“I don’t want you to worry about anything like that.” Komaeda said, voice tinged with quiet nerves. “I could never have feelings stronger for anyone than you.”

Hinata feels a strange fluttering feeling in his chest.

“Besides,” Komaeda started with a faux cheerful grin, “That nurse died pretty soon after I met him anyways.”

There’s nothing else for Hinata to do except hug Komaeda and press the other’s ear against his chest, letting him relax to the sound of Hinata’s beating heart.

Hinata lets his hand pet through Komaeda’s frazzled hair, rubbing calloused fingertips between the dips of his shoulders and down his spine. “I meant what I said. You know that, right?”

Komaeda huffs a heavy sigh in response. “Mm,” he offers only a noncommittal sound. “You’re something else, Hinata-kun.”

Nuzzling into his hair, Hinata hums, “I like you just the way you are.”

Hinata thinks about the boy currently curled onto his chest, absentmindedly letting fingers play with wispy white curls. In the program, Komaeda’s mouth spewed words which were like snakes, coiling, traitorous and frightening to all around him. Despite his frail physique, he emanated feelings of threat and uncertainty, which confused and frustrated Hinata more than it ever frightened him. Somewhere, he thought, beneath the betrayal, the soft image of the boy on the beach was still living.

Thinking about the boy on the beach, suffering since he was a child, pitted against a world which methodically ripped apart everything he touched - it made the dangerous boy in the simulation someone who he wanted to comfort as well. While many of his peers dismissed Komaeda as simply being crazy, so insane that trying to reason with him would bring one to insanity too - Hinata can’t help but wonder how he would have turned out if he lived a life like Komaeda’s. The scars on his forehead remind him of already how warped someone can become in an extreme circumstance.

Maybe Komaeda was right. Maybe they are pretty similar after all.

He’s overcome with an urge to make sure Komaeda never suffers in that way again. He’ll make sure of it.

“ Ah, ” Komaeda gasps as Hinata pulls him forward, tilting up his chin, but this sound is quickly muffled as Hinata closes his mouth over his lips. A shiver dances across the back of his neck when he squeezes Komaeda’s jaw and he opens his mouth wider, thrilling in the fact Komaeda is so pliant and obedient in the afterglow of sex. His thumb lightly skims across the edge of Komaeda’s cheekbone, holding him in place, while Hinata kisses him deeply. With a sigh, Komaeda winds his arm around the other’s neck, letting himself be pulled around as Hinata pleases.

Hinata knows that Komaeda trusts him. By taking control, he can ensure that Komaeda is safe. That he’s happy.

He knows that this kiss isn’t going to lead anywhere further, Komaeda still needs time to recover until they can come together again. But still, it’s good just to lay here kissing, enjoying the taste of each other’s mouths, the way how Komaeda’s breath skitters across Hinata’s cheeks when he exhales through his nose, the way how Hinata can feel keratin and metal nails scratch absentmindedly against his nape.This kind of warmth is good, too.

Eventually, their mouths go languid against one another, and Komaeda pulls back with a dazed expression. Hinata hopes when he smiles back at him, every ounce of adoration shines through his miscolored eyes.

“Let’s take a nap,” he suggests, not ready to leave the safe embrace of their cotton sheets.

“Okay,” Komaeda murmurs, already settling into the other’s embrace, tucked against Hinata’s chest again.

They rest against each other again, the only movement in the room comes from the occasional  island breeze seeping in from the cracked window, playing with the curtains and the frills of Komaeda’s hair.

He must have fallen asleep already, as Komaeda snuffles in his sleep and it breaks Hinata from his thought, especially as he feels gentle fingers twitching against Hinata’s side, trying to snuggle in closer.

Hinata’s heart skips a beat, and he feels overwhelmed by how damn cute he is, and then flushed with embarrassment at his own feelings. How did the fear he once had dissolve into shameful adoration so quickly? He tucks Komaeda tighter against his chest anyways, buries his face into his wily mop of hair. The curls almost hide the rising blush on Hinata’s cheeks, and he thinks he can feel Komaeda smiling in his slumber.

As they lay together in their cottage, Hinata vows to himself he’ll keep that smile there, for the rest of their lives.