fifteen
the peace and the panic
It's safe to say that none of the full-time students of Oya were awake at a decent time the following morning, prim and proper Todoroki was no exception.
Seki was absent, busy bailing Tao's daughter out of jail. That was probably for the better, because once we all came to our senses and decided it was time to get a start on the day, the school descended into it's usual state of chaos.
Murayama and I lay in the sad excuse of a bed for a good while after all this chaos had begun, not being able to find the energy to deal with it.
"I got the absolute shit beat out of me, the least those assholes can do is let me sleep." Murayama groaned, trying to burrow deeper under the blankets, if that was even possible.
Chuckling, I curled into him, resting my head on his chest affectionately "They're worried. In their own way. And hungover, but that's to be expected."
"You took them to Sato, didn't you?"
I rolled my eyes. "You were in no condition to fight back, and we had just kissed so maybe my emotions were a little out of whack."
Rolling his eyes in response, the shorter boy finally sat up, brushing his mop of hair out of his eyes with a yawn. "I should probably go and get breakfast, then bother one of the Naka's about those bruises on my chest. Christ, do you remember which one of the Nakas knows that stuff?"
"Nakabayashi, I think. He's the one with the dumb glasses who looks like he should be at a college frat house, right?" I said, sitting up and pulling off my dusty hoodie. My hair was a wreck, but there was no way in hell I was showering in this hellhole. "Do you have a clean shirt I can steal?"
Murayama laughed "Clean is debatable, but give me one second and I'm sure I can find you something."
"You are disgusting."
___
Twenty minutes later, after we were sure that most of the chaos would have dispersed, Murayama and I made our way to the kitchen, fingers interlocked.
The kitchen was, unfortunatley, the most packed that I had ever seen it. Tsuji was leaning against the freezer, pressing an ice pack to the side of his head. Yasushi still looked half asleep, arguing with someone on the phone while he swore under his breath at the coffee machine. Shibaman had fallen asleep on the counter, Furuya shooting him a concerned glance as he drank a mug of black coffee and stared intently at his phone.
"Maybe we should come back later." I suggested, moving to back away down the hall when a familiar voice drew me back.
"Hey Yamada!" Tsukasa shouted, much to the dismay of literally anybody in the kitchen. Shibaman shot up in his chair so quickly it toppled, none of the other fighters in a rush to help him get back up. Takajo looked unusually chipper for being hungover and having the crap beaten out of him the night before.
"Guess you aren't leaving." Murayama chuckled
"You are just loving this, aren't you."
"You're like a celebrity."
Sighing, I stared down at the cracked screen of my dying phone. I had three missed calls from Noboru, eighteen text messages from Dachi, and a call from Hiroomi, who literally never calls anybody. When I saw the time, I felt like kicking myself. "Well, I missed class this morning. That's nice."
"You clearly needed a break. You've been working yourself sick all week." Furuya commented
"Okay, anybody not eating breakfast needs to fuck off, there are way too many people in here and my head is killing me." I said, a hint of annoyance in my voice.
"Your face looks terrible." Fujio remarked, shoveling a forkful of barely cooked instant shrimp ramen into his mouth.
"Yours too, Hanoaka. I think we all look like crap, last night was a disaster." I scowled as my phone lost the remainder of it's battery. "Does anybody have a phone charger?"
Tsuji nodded, reaching into the pocket of his cargo joggers. "Take it. My mom called, I'm kind of in the hot seat for missing curfew again."
"Loser." Yasushi coughed, finally giving up on his coffee and hanging up on whoever he was talking to. "I'm out. Sakura's anxiety is off the walls, Seki tore her a new one after he picked her up. She's lucky nobody's pressing charges."
"Who's Sakura." Tsukasa prodded, raising an eyebrow
"Don't look at me like that." The younger boy snapped "I've known her since we were seven, she'd probably have a mental breakdown without me."
"She's Seki's girlfriend's kid, isn't she?" I hummed, remembering the conversation Seki had over the phone the night before
"We're having a cookout for my birthday in a few days." Furuya said "Bring her around, I'm sure she'd like the company."
Yasushi shook his head "She's not exactly a people person."
"A cookout?" I hummed, turning to Murayama "Was I not invited?"
The boy shrugged, retreating into the sweater he had borrowed form me, insisting that if we were a couple now there was nothing strange about him wearing my men's hoodie anyways. "Our cookouts get a little... wild. The full-timers are lightweights, the part-timers drink too much, usually by the end of the night somebody ends up in the hospital and usually it's Todoroki."
I raised an eyebrow "And you weren't going to let me in on this chaos because..."
"It just didn't seem like your thing. You like reading books, and cooking and not chaotic barbecues!" Murayama defended
"See, now that is inherently incorrect." I said pointedly, quickly texting Daichi back to tell him I wasn't dead "I was the beer pong queen at Sato."
"Oh really." Shibaman remarked, disbelief seeping into his tone
"Oh yeah, we had an incredible table set up in one of the old classrooms, but it went the longer way of the room to create more distance." I said, eager to reminisce over the better of my Sato days.
"One day, when we aren't hungover and bruised, I'm challenging you." Fujio said, dropping the empty plastic ramen tub in the sink.
"Who taught you manners?" I joked "You don't leave dishes in the sink for me to deal with, Hanoaka, you do it yourself."
Fujio raised his arms in surrender "Alright, alright. I'll throw it out."
"Thank you. Now what are you lot still doing here, I thought I told you to piss off."
Tsukasa laughed, walking backwards towards the door "Come on guys, let's give the newlyweds some space." He laughed at his own joke before he walked into the doorframe, cursing harshly.
"Newlyweds?" Furuya questioned
"This morning, we decided to make our relationship official." Murayama clarified. "I mean, she did lead all the first years into battle for me."
"Not for you, it was a personal grudge." I laughed, grimacing at the sting in my jaw from where Noboyuki had punched me "God, it felt good to slam his sorry ass into a wall."
"And you have the bruises to prove it." Furuya pointed out "That one on your jaw looks terrible, maybe you should get Nakabayashi to look at it when he checks out Murayama."
I shook my head "I've been hit worse. I'll live."
Muryama exhaled, checking something on his phone as the rest of the stragglers cleared out of the kitchen. Shibaman looked like he was limping, but had vanished before I could say anything. The way I was worrying about these kids you'd think they were my own.
"So, I talked to Cobra-chan about the whole Mighty Warriors ambush, and he agreed to call a S.W.O.R.D meeting. Hyuga isn't too happy about it, but if Kuryu is after land again, then his gambling den is probably the first place that's gonna suffer." The boy said, frowning at the text messages. "Cobra wants you to talk. About Doubt, and about what the Warriors want from the bordertowns. Are you up for that?"
I almost said no. That was my first instinct, to close back in on myself and stay as far away from S.W.O.R.D as possible. But it was time to stop hiding. Kuryu would get theirs in due time, but I needed to stop running so I'd be there to see it. I needed to fully come to terms with what had happened, and I needed to listen to Masaki. Doubt weren't going to win any more.
"I'll do it. I'll tell them everything, right down to my stay with the Amamiyas. It's time I stopped running."
Murayama reached for my hand. "I'm proud of you." He said quietly, so that only I could hear.
"Yeah, I know. Maybe we could go somewhere in Sannoh afterwards, make a night out of it? We never did have a real first date, did we?"
Murayama rolled his eyes. "I thought my whole rooftop things was pretty suave."
"You fell asleep."
"It was almost four in the morning and I was in pain, give me a break."
Furuya laughed "You already act like you've been married for years."
I chuckled shyly, hiding my face in Murayama's shoulder. "Piss off Furuya. Don't you have somewhere else to be? Some first years to pick on?"
"Point taken." The older man shrugged, emptying the remainder of his coffee in the sink. "See you guys around, I guess."
Once Furuya had left, and the kitchen was finally empty, Murayama visibly let his guard down, dropping his head to my shoulder. "Thank god they're all gone now."
"You really aren't a people person, are you?" I laughed, running my fingers through my disastrous hair "Do you have something I can use to tie my hair back?"
Murayama smiled, reaching up towards his hair and untying the blue bandanna that he traditionally wore to keep his hair out of his face. ""Here." He said gently, pressing up onto his toes so that he could lay it over the top of my hair, tying it gently behind my ears.
"I get to wear your bandanna? What an honour."
He placed a kiss on my forehead with a chuckle, and as he moved to pull away I moved my head to catch his lips with mine, smiles creeping on to both of our faces.
Murayama pulled away, his hand never straying from my waist as he used his free hand to look for a coffee cup.
"Oh, so you're one of those guys." I grinned, raising an eyebrow.
"One of what guys?" He asked, genuinely curious as he tried to turn on the coffee maker.
"One of those guys who needs to have their morning coffee or they'd simply die."
"You aren't entirely wrong." He mused, before hitting the coffee maker with a curse. "That little punk Yasushi broke the goddamn coffee maker!"
"Did you try turning it off and on again?" I asked, reaching into the fridge for a cinnamon bun
"Of course I tried that!" He shouted back, unplugging it and plugging it back in "I'm going to kill him!" Murayama shouted before running out of the kitchen, presumably to make Yasushi buy a new coffee machine.