Chapter Text
Souji picks apart his kushiyaki and eats the pieces individually while he listens to his colleagues.
“It’s so annoying,” Usami groans loudly, using her chopsticks to absolutely annihilate the pile of pickled ginger that came with her gyūdon. “The entire first week is so pointless. All these brats will do is sit on their phones and talk about their break.”
“It’s almost like… they’re also people, with lives and shit,” Hiruta mocks, and yeah, that’s enough to make Souji chuckle.
Kawakami snorts next to him, and he tries not to grin even more. He shoves another piece of chicken into his mouth before he can actually laugh.
“You say this shit every year, Usami,” Chouno rolls her eyes, but there’s a knowing smile on her face.
Usami grumbles irritably. “I wouldn’t have to if our administration was capable of giving us the goddamn help we need.”
Next to Souji, Kawakami brightens. “I mean, Kurusu starts tomorrow,” she tries to say casually, but it’s pretty clear to Souji that she’s excited. Does she know this new teacher personally?
Inui grins, big and bright. “That delinquent? You’ve gotta be kidding me. Is he even old enough to teach? Is he even able to?”
Kawakami leans over Souji to slap Inui’s arm, hard enough to make him yelp. “You know that shit got overturned, asshole. He was our best student that year.”
Now, Souji’s completely interested.
“Yeah, that one year; hard to be anything else when you can’t really do any—“
The rest of Chouno’s words are cut off by the very violent glare Kawakami throws her way, and Souji realizes a couple things at once: the new teacher starting tomorrow is apparently a former pupil of this school, and Kawakami actually likes him— she doesn’t like anyone except for Souji and Hiruta.
“Hey, Seta,” Inui calls from the opposite side of the table. “Are you gonna contribute tonight? We don’t do this every day, you know.”
Souji raises his eyebrows, feeling the tips of his ears burn a light pink with everyone’s attention on him. Of course he knows they don’t do this every day, that would be fucking exhausting. Most of the time, it’s more than enough that they do this once every two months, because half of his fellow teachers are kind of a nightmare. He really only talks to Kawakami and Hiruta outside school, and he never met Ushimaru— something they remind him he should be happy about frequently, because him showing up at the same time Ushimaru left two years ago was their version of a Christmas miracle. Souji has heard some of the stories, can’t even really fathom why the dude was there so long when everyone knew he was pelting kids in the face with chalk on the regular. But then, this school has apparently never exactly had a huge windmill-slam selection of teachers; he’s heard the horror stories about that fuckface Kamoshida and the old principal. Souji hadn’t known any of this when he took the job, desperately lonely and trying to get out of Osaka at any cost. The last two years of his life have been… well, exciting may not be the right word, but they’ve certainly been more interesting than staying in his hometown ever would have been.
He clears his throat awkwardly, and shoots a disgustingly coy look at the teacher. “You know I like listening, Inui- sensei.”
The loud laughs that are punched out of both Hiruta and Kawakami make the wrinkle of Inui’s nose worth it. He hates when people who aren’t students call him that, and Souji loves pushing buttons— it’s why the three of them are actually friends. They’re solely responsible for TP-ing the practice building every Halloween, and the amount of students who have called them legendary for it feels like some kind of genuine award.
“ Anyway,” Usami mutters after a few moments. “We should switch around the faculty room seating again. It’s such a burden being so close to the window in the early mornings…”
Souji barely surpresses the groan as she drones on. He reminds himself he’s grateful for this job, and stabs at a piece of pepper to shove into his mouth before he says something that might indicate otherwise.
At least a quick look at his two friends tells him he’s not alone in it.
*
The morning has flown by. A whirlwind of faces, some new and some old, a typhoon of first-day problems, and Souji had to rescue some kid from getting chewed out by Usami for stepping into the wrong class. He’s barely had time to sit and think for more than three seconds at a time, but he’ll admit that the continued mutterings from some of the students about the new teacher have piqued his curiosity. According to a lot of sixteen-year-old girls, he’s incredibly cute.
Souji grabs his empty coffee cup and heads to the faculty office for his lunch break a moment after the bell rings. He’s starving.
Conversation filters to him from just outside the door.
“… believe you almost fell down the stairs on your first day,” Inui’s voice greets him. “Goddamn damsel in distress we have on our hands now.”
He walks through the door just in time to hear Kawakami’s voice seethe, “Inui, if you can’t be helpful or eat quietly, go back to your globes and world maps.”
Souji blinks as he walks toward his desk, taking stock of the room. All the usuals are in here, the one reprieve they’ll get for today from the never-ending rush of students: Usami’s at her desk, Chouno’s sitting on top of Inui’s desk with his feet propped up close to her, Hiruta’s eating his lunch in front of the window like always, and Kawakami is reclined back in the chair by her desk with—
Oh. Wow. This must be the new teacher. Suddenly, Souji has never related to a sixteen-year-old girl more in his entire life, and Nanako was sixteen up until just a few months ago.
This teacher— Kurusu, Kawakami had called him— is almost too cute, in a puppy dog kind of way: dark blue jeans, a white button-up and a dark red tie covered with a black cardigan, tiny red buttons down the middle, a watch with a bright red medical alert on the band over one of his wrists and black nails. Clunky tan work boots with a brace just below his knee down the whole boot, glasses with thick black frames, wild raven curls, sparkling, mischievous gray eyes, pretty pink lips—
Souji blinks away before he’s caught staring. He grabs the bag on his desk and starts rifling through it without even really seeing anything in there, too distracted by those intense stormy irises across the room.
“Seta,” Kawakami calls to him, pulling him from the fruitless search through his bag. “This is Kurusu!”
“Please just call me Akira,” Kurusu says to him, with a level of patience that implies he’s had to say that a lot today, and oh wow is his voice… way more calm and collected than the spark in his eyes. And that absolutely dazzling grin.
Souji offers the most polite smile he can muster under the radiant glow of that grin, and nods in an easy little half-bow. “Nice to meet you, Akira. Call me Souji. Sorry Inui’s an asshole.”
Kawakami’s snort, Hiruta’s loud ‘ ha! ’ and Inui’s indignant huff all get drowned out by Akira’s bright giggle, and hoo boy is that more alluring than it should be.
Souji turns back to his bag without waiting for a response, intent on getting some level of self-awareness back. He’s a grown-ass man, he doesn’t need to get taken down by a tiny little giggle like a schoolgirl.
Things quiet down after that for a while, with Chouno and Inui having a conversation just a little too loud for the room and Usami rubbing her temples with the start of an oncoming migraine— it’s the first day of the new school year and honestly, Souji feels like the month he’d taken off was a long weekend at best, with how it feels like he never even left this place. Not that he’s really complaining; living with Kanji and Naoto is great, but Kanji’s been busy with tour stints for his band and Naoto is always at the station with every single second of his free time lately with a big case, and Souji really misses the company.
His periphery catches Akira grabbing his coffee cup with both hands and moving to stand, and the way Kawakami stops him before he can make it that far.
“What’s your number? Can you actually feel your leg yet?”
Akira heaves something close to a sigh, but there’s a fond smile on his face, as if they’ve had this exact interaction a million times before. He makes a big show of looking down at his watch and reaches his wrist out to show her. “Is 80 beats per minute satisfactory for me to get my own goddamn coffee?”
Souji chuckles— he likes this kid already, if he’s a little shit to Kawakami like this.
“I’m letting you slide on the sass today because it’s your first day and you almost took a nosedive outside my classroom,” Kawakami grouses. “But I am still your sensei. And don’t think I missed you dodging my question, idiot.”
Questions pop up in Souji’s mind, but he doesn’t bother to voice them. It’s really not his business, whatever is happening there.
Akira bows the moment he’s slowly pulled himself up, mocking her words with the too-formal motion before he limps to the coffee pot at the corner of the room. Was Kawakami serious about him not being able to feel his leg? He does keep weight off of it while he pours the cup, so maybe…?
Akira turns back toward Kawakami with his cup raised, eyes all kinds of defiant and glittering mischievously, and he sticks his tongue out at her before he takes a sip.
Souji can’t help the grin— he definitely likes this kid.
*
By the time the bell rings for the end of the day, Souji can feel the steady pulsing of his head like a toothache, and he empathizes all over again with Usami because he knows her migraine must be full-force and awful right now.
He gathers his bag from the faculty office to head home— usually he’d stay to start up the drama club, but that doesn’t begin until a couple weeks from now when the students settle in.
He walks through the doors to the front of the building, and his periphery catches the shock of wild black hair from earlier off to the side. He looks over and watches the newest addition to Shujin’s faculty take a deep drag on a bright red inhaler, with the rest of him leaned heavily against the concrete of the building.
Souji raises an eyebrow. Akira looks a little pale, as he tilts his head back to rest against the wall behind him, glasses reflecting the white of the clouds above.
Well, there’s no harm in making sure he’s okay. He doubts Kawakami would forgive him for letting the new guy pass out somewhere on his first day here. He steps through a few of the remaining students loitering around the entrance and wanders over to the man.
“You doing okay?” he asks quietly when he’s close enough for it to be casual.
Akira’s head tilts to the side lazily for a moment, but he straightens up a little bit when he sees Souji. He offers a smile that’s a little less dazzling, a little more forced than the one from earlier and gives a gentle nod. “Yeah— sorry, I’ll be heading out of here soon,” he murmurs, in a voice a lot more strained than what he’d used earlier. “Some kid had a really strong cologne.”
Souji doesn’t really understand what that means in this context, or why that information would be relevant to him being half-slumped against the wall. But he does pick up on the soft wheezing coming from the younger man, and it unsettles him.
Well. It’s probably better for him to stay close until he knows the guy won’t collapse on his way home, right?
Souji leans against the wall and pulls out his phone, really hoping it’s casual enough.
He can feel Akira’s eyes on him for a moment, but he stares down at the screen resolutely. Responds to a message from Naoto asking if he’d be willing to make something for dinner tonight since he’ll actually be home at a decent hour. Plans on stopping by the market to pick up enough for two since Kanji is still in America until the weekend.
From the corner of his eye, he watches Akira slowly lean down until he’s resting his hands against his knees. It can’t be all that comfortable to do with the brace just under his knee, and Souji’s more than a little concerned about the subtle trembling of his arms while they hold him up. But he stays quiet, some silent support like he used to do for his friends all the time, and waits.
Eventually, the wheezing subsides and Akira picks himself up, pulls himself back together, in a practiced way that makes Souji think he probably does this a lot. He scrubs a hand over his face and under his glasses, setting them askew until he pulls his hand away to fix them. And finally, he looks over to Souji with something close to embarrassment.
“You didn’t have to stay, you know,” he informs Souji, as he rolls his spine off the wall to stand up fully. His words don’t do very much to disguise the gratitude filtering through that sheepishness.
Souji just offers a polite, soft smile. “Eh, Kawakami seems pretty fond of you. She’d chew me out if I didn’t at least try to be civil,” he jokes.
Akira snorts, a tiny, muted thing. He leans down to retie one of his boots, winces, and then tries again a little slower. “I was barely here for a year, and somehow I made it onto her ‘protect at all costs’ list.”
Souji grins, because he’s not sure Akira really knows how accurate that is— Kawakami does not like most adults, but she’s almost fiercely protective of this particular boy, from what Souji can tell. “Were you a transfer, too?”
“I had some… shit happen in high school,” Akira offers carefully. “And it led to me being transferred here for a year. This place was barely more accepting than Yasogami, but at least I made friends here. Including a teacher-turned-maid-turned-teacher who wants to pretend I can get through my day without fucking coffee.”
There’s a lot to unpack there, Souji realizes, but he chooses one particular thing to focus on: “You were in Inaba?”
Akira jolts like he’s been shocked, boot thunking back down to the ground. At least he was done with the laces, Souji comforts himself feebly. He stares up at the older man curiously for a moment, expression unreadable even with those sharp dark eyes boring into his soul, and then he offers a cheeky grin. “Please tell me we can talk about how uncomfortable it was being around Kashiwagi.”
Souji laughs before he can help himself, before he can even really process the whole statement. It’s so absurd, he thinks, that this new teacher would have experienced some of the same things Souji did when he was there. Inaba is a backwater town if ever there was one— the chances of Akira even having heard of it before should have been close to zero— and yet here he is, begging to talk about the one out of all the batshit crazy teachers in that school who still wakes Souji up in a cold sweat at night sometimes, feeling distinctly violated with her comments and closeness. He grins back at Akira. “Do you have to take the train? If so, we can talk about her until we’re blue for all I care. That woman is a menace.”
The bright smile that overcomes Akira’s features is the sun, he realizes, and that’s only a little bit damning for having known the guy for all of a few hours.
“Only until Shibuya, but I’ll take you up on that,” Akira beams. “It’s been years and I still get nightmares.”
Souji smiles and starts walking toward the gate of the school, looking back to make sure his new friend is following. “They don’t go away even after a decade, I’m afraid.”
The groan that comes from Akira manages to make him chuckle and blush all at once.
*
Souji’s phone vibrates in the middle of dinner with Naoto, and he picks it up to check. Kawakami’s ID on the screen makes him curious, so he opens the message.
From: Sadayo, Mother Dearest
I saw you talking with Akira earlier.
For reasons Souji couldn’t possibly explain, he feels the tips of his cheeks burn bright.
To: Sadayo, Mother Dearest
I just walked to the train station with him, Peeping Mom
He sets his phone down and returns to Naoto’s idle rambling about his day.
“— and Makoto has been so excited this whole week, which is adorable of course, but like, we still need to get things done. Apparently this kid just moved back to town last week, and Makoto and all her friends are going ape shit that he’s back. It’s everything I can do to get her to focus on her case files and not some boneless idiot from my own hometown I probably would’ve arrested myself a few years ago.”
Souji blinks a bit. Stares at Naoto while he dunks his udon in the broth and swirls the noodles around before slurping them up. Those specific details add up in his brain, or at least some of them do. “Is he a teacher?”
Naoto blinks back at him. His eyes are one of the few things that haven’t changed much since his transition— six years on T, a lot of working out with Chie and Kou and Akihiko, the rather impressive goatee he’s grown all point to a man that’s so much happier than he was in his teenage years— so the vaguely shocked expression that passes over his features is one that Souji has been able to read for a decade.
“He works at your school, doesn’t he?” Naoto asks, bright hot embarrassment painting his cheeks pink. “And I just called your new colleague an idiot right to your face. I’m sorry.”
Souji offers an easy smile. He has no idea what Akira could’ve done that would warrant Naoto’s attention in his early detective days, but that may not be his business. “Don’t worry about it, dude. He’s a good kid, I think. Kawakami loves him.”
Naoto’s grateful eyes pass into mirth. “Kawakami actually likes someone that isn’t a student? That’s a genuine surprise.”
Souji rolls his eyes playfully. “Hey, she likes me, asshole.”
“That’s because you’re still a child,” Naoto tells him, quite casually. “You put a fake spider in Inui’s coffee cup three months ago just to hear him scream from across Shujin.”
He couldn’t possibly help the grin that spreads over his face. “That was funny as fuck, Naoto. Kanji laughed for three days.”
“And that is because my common-law husband is, also, still a child,” Naoto laments. He and Kanji have been together since high school, and even though Japan doesn’t allow gay marriage, they refer to each other as their husbands exclusively. Souji thoroughly believes they deserve it; more than ten years in love, moving away from their hometown, a transition that would’ve scared lesser people into backing away— they’re two of the most committed people he’s ever known. If the only downside to being their roommate is the egregious amount of loud sex they have every time Kanji is home from touring and shows, well… Souji will put up with that every day for the rest of his life if it means they can be happy.
“That’s exclusively your fault for loving him,” Souji intones, as his phone buzzes again. He looks down to see another message from Kawakami, and opens the phone on instinct.
From: Sadayo, Mother Dearest
I’ll allow that because that name made me snort tea out of my nose. What I was TRYING to say was thank you. It’s not my place to tell all his bullshit, but, well. You could both use a friend, honestly.
Souji rolls his eyes, but the affectionate warmth blooming in his chest is the same as it is every time Kawakami is looking out for someone. It doesn’t happen often if you’re not a student, and he’s exceedingly grateful he’s on her good side. Her two modes are Mother Hen and Ice Queen, and he’s seen the way she snaps at Inui or Chouno for making fun of some students— especially the ones with medical or mental health needs, things they can’t really control. And maybe that’s why he and Hiruta get along with her so well; it’s endearing to them, while he’s pretty sure their fellow colleagues have only ever seen it as an inconvenience.
To: Sadayo, Mother Dearest
I had a feeling you’d smite me if I let him pass out in the courtyard.
“When’s Kanji coming home again?” he asks once he’s set his phone back down.
“Flies home on Sunday,” Naoto answers immediately, with the soft kind of smile that divulges just how in love he is.
“You think we could get the gang up here for a welcome home party?”
Naoto blinks in surprise, but then grins. “Oh, he’d hate all that attention. Let’s do it.”
Souji chuckles as his phone pings again, and he looks down on reflex since the screen is still open.
From: Sadayo, Mother Dearest
You’re correct. See you tomorrow, dweeb.
Souji grins to himself and closes the phone before he looks back up at Naoto. “Okay, let’s finish dinner and start planning the worst welcome home party two men could ever conceive.”