[Team Two] Untitled
Just a small untitled spin-off moment for my fic Someday when we're older.
Shintaro/Hokuto, G, 540w
The exit sign gleams coldly in the dimness of the emergency staircase, and the space still echoes with the slam of the door.
“What’s going on?” Shintaro asks, heart pounding. He hates to confront Hokuto like this, but he has to. Whatever it is, he can’t watch it go on for the whole day. Hokuto is being weird. “I get it, you haven’t slept much last night, but that’s not all. What is it?”
Hokuto is avoiding his eyes. “It’s noth-”
“Nope, don’t go there. You promised!”
Hokuto flinches, and Shintaro immediately regrets snapping at him - he definitely didn’t mean to sound so angry about it. But the thing is, he is seriously worried. There’s no question about it: Hokuto is being quiet and reticent today, and it’s not his usual everyday manner where he sometimes randomly spaces out. It’s the other kind of silence, where he’s obviously troubled by something he doesn’t want the others to know. He tends to get stuck in that mood whenever it hits, and often needs Shintaro’s help to get out of it. And however reluctantly Shintaro admits it even to himself, he feels a twinge of fear every time Hokuto gets on that mood. It reminds him of a rougher time when that mood was a constant, everyday presence. For both his and Hokuto’s sake, he hopes they never have to go through that again.
Yet, it’s not just that now. Hokuto is being strange in a way that Shintaro doesn’t recognize at all. The fact that Hokuto overslept on a workday is quite alarming in its rarity. He’s rarely forgetful about things, but today it seems like he’s absolutely clueless about everything. He was acting strangely during the shooting a moment ago, and he was definitely avoiding Shintaro at the end of it. And when Shintaro kissed him in the car, he looked so surprised, as if the thought of a simple kiss was something absolutely unfathomable to Hokuto.
It all makes Shintaro feel uncomfortable in a way he cannot explain. He misses Hokuto. He doesn’t get it. The man is standing right there in front of him, and yet Shintaro misses him terribly.
Hokuto stares at him with wide eyes, mouth slightly open, his shoulders tensed up and his chest moving swiftly like he’s about to hyperventilate. He looks lonely, and like he’s about to cry any second now. It breaks Shintaro’s heart to see Hokuto cornered like this.
He takes a deep breath and reaches across the small space separating them. He takes Hokuto’s both hands and rubs them with his thumbs. “You promised,” he repeats softly. You can talk to me, remember? “I know something’s up. I’ve been watching you the whole day and - it sounds silly, but it almost feels like you’re not my Hokuto at all.”
Hokuto flinches again, but he doesn’t let go, and Shintaro’s heart sinks even more.
“I’m…not,” Hokuto mumbles. Shintaro blinks, not quite following. “But I think I will be!”
It doesn’t make the slightest sense. Shintaro shakes his head slowly, trying and failing to grasp a hold at the tail of Hokuto’s thoughts.
“Explain,” he finally says completely at loss of everything else to say. “Please.”
thesecretdoor, your turn! The last word is "please".