Work Text:
Ibuki’s dorm is a place Peko’s never been-- she lives all the way across the building on the floors Peko thought only upperclassmen lived on. So instead of making her way there on her own, giving her ample time to chicken out, she’s being led there by the hand.
Well, by the wrist. Ibuki sprints along so quickly Peko stumbles under her energy. “C’monnnn Peko! We’re gonna be lateee.”
“Are people not-- Ibuki, please, a moment,” she sighs, trying not to trip onto her face. “Are people not arriving in several hours?”
She agrees with a heaving huff and slows a little, though her grin doesn’t fade. “Ibuki has to set up! And Peko-Pekoyama is going to be my helper!”
“I wasn’t informed about this,” Peko says with one brow raised, soothing the creases in her skirt. Ibuki just shrugs sheepishly, before closing the two of them within her door.
The next couple of hours are spent in relative peace. Menial tasks like cleaning and setting up are easy for Peko, carrying out Ibuki’s plan in silence alongside her. Ibuki is more than happy to make up for Peko’s lack of conversation, chattering along about their classmates. As she fiddles with the exact lighting for the third time in ten minutes, Ibuki pauses and looks up. “Pekoyama’s staying for the party, yeah?”
“I am already here,” she responds, ignoring the beat of anxiety in her chest.
“You don’t haave to stay.” Ibuki finally settles on her perfect tone of purpose and drapes herself upside down across the couch. “Ibuki would like you to stay!! But Ibuki also understands that social situations are bad and suck if you don’t want to be there.”
Peko sits herself next to Ibuki, who doesn’t even joke about looking up her skirt. “I will stay. I can always leave if I don’t want to.” Ibuki squeals and shakes her fists; Peko holds herself carefully still as not to inherit her excitement. “It’s just our classmates, isn’t it?”
“Peko-Peko’s staying!! It’s our classmates and a couuuple others. Just a few! I like the older kids too.” So Peko stays, and Ibuki puts on some music and chatters some more. Without any tasks to complete, Peko even talks back, quiet observations of-- well. The other people she knows.
The rest of Class-77B are not, really, Peko’s friends. Ibuki is her friend, she thinks. At very least, she is Ibuki’s friend the way she is her young master’s tool. Nothing can really belong to a tool, one cannot truly know a tool. The rest? Peko stays quiet in class, rarely accompanies them on their outings. They are not friends.
Soon the classmates begin streaming in, Koizumi with Saionji and then Sonia dragging Tanaka. “Mortal, slow down,” Tanaka complains, in an amusingly whining tone. Sonia’s beam never falters. Peko likes Tanaka and Sonia, inasmuch as Peko allows herself to like anything. She thinks they may have a dynamic similar to her and Ibuki, and they have always been friendly to her.
Peko hovers as the party begins to fill. She sees what Ibuki meant about older kids, now: a few second years mill around, mostly with each other, but Ibuki and the tall one with the large hair have been immersed in some sort of conversation for the better part of ten minutes. As the couch begins to fill up, she stands, making her way to the kitchen. Shaded in the wall-collum keeping apart the living space and kitchenette, Peko can sip at some punch and watch everyone else.
She keeps half an eye on all the doors, both on instinct and out of curiosity, watching people enter the party. Perhaps, in hindsight, she should have realized he would come, but she didn’t. When Fuyuhiko walks in the door and they make eye contact, Peko freezes.
It’s like something she hadn’t known was strapped across her shoulders has been lifted off. Her young master is in sight, he’s safe, Peko can relax. The impulse to smile bubbles in her in sheer- relief? Joy? Whatever positive emotion Fuyuhiko incites in her.
Peko, of course, does not smile. She knows better. Her young master does, eyes lighting up and mouth tugging upwards even as he’s clearly trying to grumble at whichever classmate brought him in, her sight of them blocked by the pillar. “Hiko?” asks his companion, and ah. Soda.
Immediately her young master’s attention is drawn away, gone right back to scowling. “Don’t call me that,” she hears him snip across the room, swatting Soda’s arm. Peko allows herself the barest hint of a smile into her drink, letting the moment pass and turning back into the kitchen.
She doesn’t talk much to the others. Tanaka stops by and calls Peko a fire overlord, which is kind of him-- Peko is pretty sure that makes them rivals, what with him being the Lord of Ice, but she will take his smile at face value. “Are you enjoying the revelry?”
“The party is nice,” Peko acknowledges. “I haven’t been talking much to the others, but the atmosphere is... pleasant.” It isn’t too loud or chaotic, despite Ibuki’s record playing. “I have never been to a high school party before.”
Tanaka nods. “I, too, am not one for mingling. It seems Dark Queen Nevermind has abandoned me for more diplomatic pursuits tonight, however.” His voice keeps the rich dramatic quality it usually has, but it’s at a lower volume, a more casual setting. Peko likes this Tanaka, slightly less booming than he usually is. Glancing around, she finds Sonia deeply engaged in conversation with one of the reserve course students.
“Ibuki wandered off as well, so now I’m just.. drinking.” She offers out her glass in an aborted cheering motion. “Punch, not liquor,” she clarifies, knowing that there is liquor aplenty here for those who want it.
“Spirits inhibit the senses,” Tanaka agrees, waving his canned soda. They fall in comfortable silence like that together, Tanaka leaning against the counter as they observe.
Peko keeps a fraction of an eye out for how her young master mingles, but carefully does not let him catch her watching. They haven’t spoken in at least two weeks, and longer before that. Since coming to Hope’s Peak he has been so insistent that he didn’t need Peko, that they should stay apart. She-- well. She didn’t understand, but she would follow his order. The separation made her anxious, after so many years at his side. Frequently she woke up in cold sweats, the thought of him at the front of her mind.
It was damnably weak. But her concern for him, she told herself, was an asset in a tool. A desire to keep him safe so strong it was distressing when she wasn't available. Weak in acceptable locations.
Eventually her and Tanaka’s amiable quiet is shattered by Ibuki, yelling about putting one of her performances on the TV. The two of them glance between each other, and Tanaka inclines his head towards the couches. Shall we go?
It is nice to be a we. Peko moves with him over to the couch, ending up settled in a corner couch. She sits careful and restrained as she always does, but Tanaka curls himself up on his knees, fitting his hands into the thick woolen curves of his sweater. One of the hamsters peeks out, and she averts her gaze before it has the chance to be intimidated, but she sees Tanaka scratch it fondly.
There’s quite a few of them gathered to see Ibuki’s show, though Tanaka and her are on the furthestmost couch and only a few of the second year stragglers are crowded around them.
Ibuki’s fiddling with the player, when all of the sudden Soda jerks his head towards them. He’s sprawled in as little space as he can be while stlil being, by technicality, sprawled. “That’s not true, is it Tanaka?”
“Are you calling upon my aid for something?” Tanaka says, uncurling from his hamsters. The slightly soft expression he has towards his hamsters goes boisterous and icy again when he looks back up.
Sonia sighs exhaustedly, one hand in her face. It’s a fond irritation though, as Tanaka makes his way over to settle their debate. It’s something about the definition of virgin blood, at which Peko raises a brow and settles back in her chair.
There’s a faint pang at the loss of Tanaka by her side, an unexpectant companion. At very least, she looks less of an... outcast, with him by her side. Peko, as a tool, is not quite a ‘teenage girl,’ but certainly plays the part of one. Still, she tucks her hands under her thighs and listens, especially as Ibuki gets her video playing.
“It’s-- oh, shit, it’s playing, move motherfuckers!” shouts one of the older students, a shock of ginger hair diving over the couch. “I wanna see Mioda perform!”
Soda yelps as the boy steals his seat, a whole chain of grumbling shuffling teenagers. “Oh fuck off,” snarls Fuyuhiko, as he is unseated entirely.
“Leon,” sighs one of the other older girls, admonishing and fond. Peko notes the information as she does everything.
Ibuki’s performance is something, for sure. It’s one of her ones away from her group, which means it’s even louder and screamier than her normal fare. There’s visuals, lights and pyrotechnics shooting in the back. They’re Hopes Peak’s own, Peko faintly recognizes the studio stored in the lower levels. Still, it’s a beautiful and creative use of what the academy gives them to back her already master-level tracks. She truly is the Ultimate Musician for a reason.
While Peko wonders if there’s an appropriate way to communicate her appreciation, the other space on the loveseat is suddenly filled. Knowing better, Peko does not jolt, instead glancing calmly to find that it is her young master who now sits beside her.
“Kuzuryu,” she says politely. It sounds foreign, still, to say.
Her young master beams over at her, a brilliant smile she hasn’t seen in quite a while. Usually Fuyuhiko is snappish and cold, burdened by the weight of responsibility, the ever looming specter of his parents. Recently he has only been more so, despite that he is out of their grip for the first time-- he just seems agitated, now. Peko wants so badly to help. It is embarrassingly gratifying to see him smile.
“Pekoyama,” he greets in return, stumbling lightly in the middle. He schools his expression into something appropriately Kuzuryu, but doesn’t manage to shake the loose posture or the slight discoordination. His face is redder than it usually is, now with flush, brow furrowed in the concentration it takes to keep still.
In his fingers is clutched a tacky plastic solo cup, which Peko recognizes as the set by the table with the spiked punch.
Fuyuhiko doesn’t drink. At all, she had been under the assumption until now, though she dutifully corrects it to usually. Strange. All the yelling and shattered plates when his father drinks... she’d thought he’d never take it up.
She feels any hint of the partygoing Pekoyama drain; watches that version of herself recede, leaving the hollowed, efficient, metallic Peko shell. A sense of danger bringing her back to her original purpose. Her wiring beats quickly in her chest and along her veins.
Tolerance at a minimum, blood alcohol level is calculated by, what? Weight, height? Age? Fuyuhiko is small among his age, small among his classmates, and therefore more easily affected by the alcohol content.
That’s not even considering the event of something stronger slipped in-- she really should have been considering that beforehand. She looks up and scans the room for others with the tell-tale red cup, and finds a few offenders. Soda among them, Saionji among them... Saionji would probably be the best comparison to her young master. Her sharp eyes track her across the party to where she drops herself into Koizumi’s arms, both swaying enthusiastically to Ibuki’s screaming. Saionji is flushed around the face but not very, loose but not discombobulated.
It doesn’t account for personal drugging. Peko has faith that the students of 77B have no motivation to do that, but a few of the older students are more shady characters. Peko’s ears ring. Her young master shows no signs of distress, but he never does. He is a better bluffer than every other student in the room combined, and more stubborn to boot. For all her years of attunement at Fuyuhiko’s side, she would have no way to know if he were to be dying at this very moment. If someone had orchestrated a plot to kill him.
She would have no way to know, no way to save him except her reflexes and her instinct and those have never been sharp enough. They have never been duller than her time at Hope’s Peak as well. Where is her sword? She needs her sword at her--
When Fuyuhiko elbows her, trying to get her attention, Peko flinches violently. The party comes back into clear focus, though the ringing hasn’t faded. “Uh,” says Fuyuhiko, scrunch-nosed and unintelligent. “Sorry,” he manages. “Are you-- you okay, Pek? I didn’t mean to...”
“Just fine,” she assures. Why did she flinch. “Are you feeling alright?”
There’s a beat of infuriating silence, where she has obviously not played her role well enough. Neither of quiet partygoing Pekoyama nor of the stoic tool. Peko wants to scream. Fuyuhiko makes a tch noise, collecting himself from his concern. “Course I’m fine. Mioda’s screamo doesn’t kill quite that fast.”
Is she supposed to laugh? Peko thinks if she tried to force it, she may-- well. It appears Fuyuhiko doesn’t mind anyway, used to Peko’s quiet way of navigating their conversation. “Just didn’t take you for a drinker,” she says, in a way she hopes is mild enough.
Where he has started to look back at the screen, Fuyuhiko looks up again. Eyes back to Peko, assessing. “Not usually,” he admits, and reaches over to set the whole drink down. "Tastes like shit, makes you act like shit, but, yaknow. Teenagers. Gotta try it once, or whatever.” Though he keeps up his Kuzuryu bristle, his eyes don’t come off of her, turning to sit against the arm of the couch and face Peko wholly.
The position has him with one knee on the couch, leg crossed over the other knee at the ankle. His posture is the sort of controlled casual that only those with stakes as high as the yakuza can carry. Even here, where Peko can see the alcohol hazing his edges, she watches how carefully he sits. It is one of her favorite things about them, this shared trait. Each position chosen carefully. Coiled, they are, like two snakes about to strike.
It reassures her bit by bit that Fuyuhiko is not spontaneously dying of a spiked drink. “What’d’ya think of Mioda’s stuff?” Fuyuhiko squints at the screen.
“She’s talented. An ultimate for a reason-- I was,” she hums. “I was watching the background effects.”
Fuyuhiko makes a huh sound in the back of his throat, fingers twitching around nothing for a moment until he remembers that he left his drink on the table. “I was thinking about her endurance. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I think Mioda’s stuff is... an acquired taste... but damn if that chick can’t scream for hours.” He watches the screen a moment longer. “Damn. The background shit is nice, actually. Can’t believe I didn’t notice it.”
“I wonder if Ibuki had help, or if that simply falls under the jurisdiction of musicians.”
After a moment, Fuyuhiko barks a short laugh. “Art.. is music,” he says with a nonsensical snicker. He doesn’t expect her to laugh in response, instead allowing them to fall into a companionable silence. “‘M glad you’re here.”
“Glad.. I’m here?”
Her young master waves a hand, scowling in a focus as he looks for words. “Talkin’ to Mioda. Coming to parties. That’s, like… good for you, I think?” His gaze is startling intent when he finally makes eye contact. “Glad you’re happy.”
Peko blinks at him, scratching the nails of one hand absently against the textured couch. Happy? Is she happy? “I don’t…” she frowns at him. “I’m sorry?”
The frustration Peko sees bubbling in him, stoked by her ignorance, kills some of the light in his eyes. He twitches for his drink again. “A life outside of me. I’m glad you’re building one, alright? That’s all. Don’t-- I--” He slams the palms of his hand into his eyes. “Just want you to be happy.”
Happy. The notion is strange. Peko is happy to serve, in the passive sense. Her life is fine. In the corner of her eye, she catches people watching them.
Soda, Nanami, and the reserve student are leaning on the back of the nearest other couch. Soda snorts something too low for Peko to catch. “This is the first time I’ve seen Kuzuryu and Pekoyama speak. I doubt it,” the reserve student responds, mostly lost in the noise of the party.
Soda gets his mouth shut for him by Nanami, who places her hand over it without looking up from her game.
Peko looks back to her young master. “They’re whispering about us. We are supposed to be strangers, per your orders.”
“God, literally fuck my orders. It’s fine, they’re just gossipin’. Better whisper about us than-- than any of the.. other bad shit.” He suddenly sits up, offering out his hand. “Here. I’m Kuzuryu Fuyuhiko. Not strangers anymore.”
For a long moment Peko just looks at him, his hand out expectantly. “Pekoyama Peko,” she returns, shaking it. Fuyuhiko grins. He has dimples, and Peko only gets to see those so often; she feels soft and warm at the sight of it.
“Now we can talk without it bein’ a fuckin.. event, yeah? Just friends?” Peko doesn’t agree, but Fuyuhiko seems satisfied, so she doesn’t interrupt him as he steamrolls right forward. Mostly to loudly talk shit about Soda and Hinata, looking directly at them. It’s smug, but friendly-- they’re comfortable.
In all, Peko is content to spend the rest of the party sitting at her Fuyuhiko’s side. When he turns his attention onto Peko, she lets him rant and ramble. It’s nice, like when they were young. After Peko learned her place, but before her young master got resentful.
Eventually he pitches forward, the low-level rocking back and forth he had been doing ending in his face on her shoulder. She carefully ignores the warmth that sings inside her at the contact. “Ah.. Kuzuryu?”
“Mmnh,” he responds. “Head hurts. Gimme a second.” Peko allows him, of course. Tool, master. She ignores how comfortable he is against her, how right it is. The seconds stretch in silence, and Fuyuhiko does not raise his head. Perhaps he is drunker than she gave him credit for.
Peko lets her eyes shut, listening to the sounds of the party. Can she afford to relax, here among her classmates? Can she afford to let her guard slip, to enjoy this moment with Fuyuhiko?
…No.
But here she is anyway. Eyes shut. Peko stays carefully still as she realizes her young master is drifting to sleep on her shoulder. Her heart swells at the realization, a harsh wave, and she squeezes her hands into fists until it abates.
“Ah, Pekoyama-- ah! You’re.. otherwise engaged.” Sonia speaks up from behind her, Tanaka hanging off her arm. She looks extremely amused at the sight of her young master on her shoulder, and Peko fights not to blush.
“I think he’s asleep,” Peko says for lack of much else, strangling the fondness out of her voice.
Perching herself on the back of the couch, Sonia giggles softly. “Exhausted, I see. Too much of Mioda’s punch?”
Peko shrugs stiffly, not certain how to engage here. She likes Sonia, thinks she is kind, but that doesn’t change her discomfort. “I suppose. I think I may escort him to his dorm.”
“Dark Queen,” says Tanaka, either sensing Peko’s discomfort or experiencing his own. Whatever he says next is either lost to the noise of the party or communicated nonverbally, for Sonia gives Peko her warmest goodbye and stands to leave with him, leaving Peko alone with Fuyuhiko once more.
Any longer with him napping on her will certainly draw attention. Though he’d said to disregard the order to stay apart, it seems strange, that Fuyuhiko would want her around so suddenly. She doesn’t trust his judgment under this influence. The best route to preserve his dignity would be to get him back to his dorm like she had said.
She jostles his shoulder lightly, and then pushes him to sit upright, eyes screwing shut even unconscious. Very unconscious, dead asleep. Peko sighs. Before she can process that it might seem odd, Peko scoops him up in a bridal carry, prepared to slip out with him. Though the party is still in full swing, the path to the door is relatively clear if she cuts back through the kitchen, holding him close enough that he doesn’t hit anything.
It is only when she catches Nanami staring does she realize that this is an inappropriate behavior between assumed strangers. She’s hovering near the door under the reserve student’s arm. There’s seemingly no Soda to be found, but the mechanic pops up soon enough, with a “Hinata!”
“Leaving the party so soon, Pekoyama?” Nanami asks, her voice so quiet Peko wouldn’t be able to hear it were they not within two feet of each other. She doesn’t spare a glance at Fuyuhiko, but Soda does, glancing rapidly between the so-called Hinata and Fuyuhiko in Peko’s arms.
Peko swallows the humiliation. “I figured I would--”
“You know drunk people can’t consent, right?” blurts Hinata. Nanami looks mortified, and Hinata gets an awkward sour expression on his face, like he can't imagine why he just said that.
“... I was just planning to deliver him to his dorm room,” she manages deciding not to comment on his implication.
“Of course,” says Nanami. “And we are going to stop bothering you now.” With that finality she shoves at Soda and Hinata until they back away, leaving Peko free to escape into the hallway.
She sighs in relief, letting out tension she didn’t even know she had. It was so dim and loud inside the dorm, the hallways are a blissful cool contrast. Fuyuhiko mumbles in his sleep and presses his face into Peko, and she scratches absentmindedly at the nape of his neck. He lives in the building across from Ibuki's, and she gets about ten feet outside before the sheer cold drags him out of his rest.
“Whhn..?” he manages, eyes blinking open. He looks up at Peko and the confusion fades off his face. Though Peko had been prepared to set him down, he simply nuzzles back into her side. He’s so much touchier, intoxicated. It is…
Peko refuses to have any feeling on the matter, positive or otherwise.
“Hi,” her young master says, muffled by his sleep and her sleeve.
“Hello, young master.”
Fuyuhiko tenses slightly in her arms, but it doesn’t last. “Don’ do that. Where are we going?”
“Your dorm room. You feel asleep.” Her young master gives a short hum of confirmation and goes quiet, clinging peacefully to her shirt. Peko, with her young master safe in her arms, feels more content than she has in weeks.
They make it up to his room without further bother, and Peko lets herself into his room with Fuyuhiko’s key. His is as spotless as his room at home is, carefully arranged and bed made. She lays him into it, jostling him into reality, where he squints at his ceiling. “Sit up,” she says, ushering him to tug off his jacket.
“Fuck off.” He yawns, sitting up. Peko backs off as he does so, letting him mindlessly strip his suit jacket and shoes. He stares at his closet for a second, contemplating, before flopping back into bed without changing.
Peko allows herself a half-second to just look at him, burying himself in his covers. “Do you want me to set you out some water and paracetamol?”
“No,” Fuyuhiko mumbles, cracking an eye open. “Just…” he reaches out a hand and grabs for Peko’s wrist, tugging until she has to kneel on the bed.
“I’m sorry?”
“Stay with me. Don’t…” his brow furrows. “Don’t like it when you’re gone.” Peko hesitates, keeping her expression carefully neutral. Her young master has stopped tugging her, simply holding her wrist and looking up with large eyes. “If you want,” he adds. “Y’don’t have to.”
“I do,” she says, before she can bite the words back. “I do, want. I just…” But Fuyuhiko lights up so brilliantly at her admission that she caves.
Peko sighs gently and, shoes off, settles into the bed. It’s strange and uncomfortable for a moment-- Fuyuhiko and her haven’t shared a bed since they were very small. But he curls right up against her, and Peko can’t help but relax against him. “Good,” says Fuyuhiko, a little nonsensical, but content. “Missed you.”
The response comes to her immediately, so strong that she bites her tongue to keep quiet. Fuyuhiko does not question her silence, so warm in her arms. It's pitiful how safe she feels like this. He is here, he is safe. She is at his side and all is as it should be. As the minutes tick by, she's certain he's asleep. "I missed you too," she murmurs, letting the noise die in the still air.
--
Nobody shuts up about it to Fuyuhiko, of course. One goddamn incident, one, and his bastard classmates won’t keep their mouth shut. The princess dropped by with some implications, and Soda-- oh, good fucking god, Soda. Fuyuhiko’s going to deck him. Or maybe deck his own past, drunken self.
“So you really didn’t sleep with Pekoyama?” Perhaps Soda’s worst crime is that he stoops when he talks to Fuyuhiko, bent at the waist to meet him at eye level. For the life of him, Fuyuhiko doesn’t get it. It’s unbearably patronizing and only serves to make him hover even shorter than Hinata, who stays perpetually hunched in on himself.
Christ, Fuyuhiko’s really the only one who bothers to hold himself to his full height. “No, I didn’t sleep with her!” he fumes for the thirtieth time, knowing his face is humiliatingly red. “Of course I didn’t sleep with her-- I would never--”
As Fuyuhiko’s speech falls into an irritated stammer, Hinata looks away with a strange look on his face. “Never? Huh.”
“Fuck is that supposed to mean!”
“I mean, just,” Hinata holds his hands in front of him, placating. He always looks vaguely unnerved, spooked by any Ultimate's shadow, but Fuyuhiko's shouting makes him actively shrink. “I don’t know, I thought it was a mutual agreement that Pekoyama is...” Hinata pauses, flailing for an adjective that isn’t either stupid or objectifying. “I think Pekoyama’s pretty,” he settles on mumbling, red high on his cheeks.
Fuyuhiko resists slapping him. Formalized school has been so good for his impulse control. Instead he buries his face in his hands as Soda contemplates, head turned up to the sky. “No, Pekoyama’s definitely pretty. I mean, she’s got nice..” he makes a gesture with his hands that implies things Fuyuhiko might have to actually hit him over. “Bones? Good jawline, stark collarbones.”
“I am begging you to say something normal about a girl,” Hinata complains.
Soda blinks. “Hot tits.” Fuyuhiko kicks him in the shins.
“Of course Pekoyama’s pretty, she’s--” a number of things that come to mind, Fuyuhiko absolutely cannot say. The way she used to smile, the way she defends me, the softness of her hair, how gentle and calm she gets when I can braid it, the intent look in her eyes. God, she’s so gorgeous, and he can’t say any of that. His face is burning. “Duh. I just mean we’re six-fucking-teen and I’m not fucking anyone!”
“Dude, you’re allowed to have sex at sixteen,” Soda says. They always get into this when sex comes up. “It’s not, like, illegal.”
Fuyuhiko wrinkles his nose. “And I will not be.”
“Fair enough,” Soda acknowledges. Then his face splits into a grin. “But it is undeniable that Pekoyama did, in fact, sleep in your room! Tanaka saw her leave.”
He sighs, long suffering. Hinata gives him a sympathetic arm pat. “Yes, you solved the fucking mystery, Pekoyama slept on my couch, can you fuck off now? Good god.”
Whatever Hinata’s faux-sympathy, he’s still a nosy bastard. “I just… didn’t think you knew Pekoyama.”
“We’re fucking classmates, Hinata! I know who she is! Is it really that unthinkable that I just let her stay over?”
“Yes,” Soda and Hinata say in unison.
He groans, miserable. He’s going to have to actually come up with a cover story for this. Which was exactly what he wanted to avoid with Peko, because he’s been trying to give her space to be her own fucking person. “Goddamnit.”
Nanami saves him when she shows up, drawing both Hinata and Soda's attention quickly enough that they shut up. She, at least, has the tact not to harass him. God, that whole thing was so stupid.
If he really thinks, though, he can’t bring himself to regret it. Sleeping in Peko’s arms gave him the best rest he’s had in months.