Increasing Friendship! || BNHA OCs Fic

    Takuya flicked and shuffled around a deck of cards in his hands. Every so often a card would get sucked through the gap in his hand, only to be spit back out a few moments later. ­If I could just get a card to transfer from my right vortex to my left… he sucked in another card and closed his eyes, trying to attune his senses to the feeling of a playing card inside his arm. His arm tingled, the thin hairs standing up as he felt a wave of goosebumps rising.

    Now just, shift. Shift the ace of hearts card to my left arm. Tension gathered under his brow and his mask suddenly felt very heavy. A tiny prickle began around the edges of the vortex on his left hand. Shift… the card… to my-

    “Hello, Takuya-kun, did you already eat lunch?”

    The card in Takuya’s right vortex was spit back out as his concentration was broken. “Ah!” He shuffled the ace of hearts back into his deck and slipped the deck up his sleeve. Through the semi-transparent film over the eyes of his mask, he saw his fellow classmate and friend, Shusaku Kuga, standing nearby with a small smile on his face. “Shu-kun!” Takuya stretched out his arms and rolled onto his side so that he was facing Shusaku. “I did indeed, today was seafood. It was yummy and nutritious. Which is important! What did you get from the cafeteria today?”

    “I had the usual.” Shusaku shifted on his feet, as though he wanted to move but wasn’t sure where to go. “Ah, but I ended up eating it really fast because it was getting rowdy in the cafeteria…”

    “Mmm that sounds nice.” Takuya set an elbow on the ground to prop up his head, leaning his chin on the backside of his hand, tucked away from the edge of the mask so he wouldn’t jostle it accidentally. “Who was making a ruckus this time?” His lips were stretched in a grin, which of course Shusaku could not see but Takuya couldn’t help but smile when he was talking to his friend.

    Especially when talking to his friend about the shenanigans of their classmates.

    Takuya loves shenanigans.

    Shusaku fidgeted with his tie and stepped forward a bit, though he stopped abruptly as though he hadn’t planned to move his feet quite yet. “Uh-,” Takuya saw him swallow his words.

    He’s too cute!

    “Come sit by me, Shu-kun!” Takuya wasn’t sure what was making Shusaku hesitate, but he figured perhaps his friend would be more comfortable if he took the pressure off his legs and sat down. So, he patted the ground next to him and then, without waiting for a response, rolled over onto his back in the position he’d been in before.

    There was no sound at first, and Takuya couldn’t tell if Shusaku was even there anymore as his eyes had cast upwards to the blue, cloud painted sky. But then an indiscernible mumble and a shuffle of shoes dragging over grass assured him that his invitation had not been rejected. Yay!

    “Ha!” The sudden bark of laughter, followed by a strangled squeak he almost missed, surprised Takuya so much that he drew up one of his knees. Oh, did I say ‘Yay’ out loud? He immediately forced his knee back down so that he was laying flat and a snicker found its way out of his mouth, though muffled by his mask.

    “I made Shusaku laugh! Mission accomplished!” Takuya held back a pump of his fist into the air. Though Shusaku said nothing, Takuya’s ears picked up a stifled bit of laughter. His mask shifted slightly under the force of his face splitting grin.

    Without moving his head much, he peered at Shusaku through the film of his mask, the angle mostly cropping out his friend aside from seeing the long fringe of his bangs swaying over his eyes as he walked over, head down and presumably staring at the exact spot Takuya had invited him to. As he drew closer, Takuya noticed the peek of a tight-lipped smile and a pinkish hue laid over his cheeks, probably reflected by his pink hair.

    Takuya closed his eyes, his grin becoming a smile. Shusaku seemed amused enough that he was trying to contain his laughter! Friendship points acquired!

    “Okay, I, uh, I’m here.” The air to his side whooshed as the space he had offered was filled by Shusaku, who sat down next to him with only a touch of hesitancy.

    “Welcome to the ground, where it is time to tell Taku-chan about the cafeteria ruckus!” He was giggling to himself, shifting and crushing the grass underneath him. It would surely stain his uniform, but that was the furthest thing on his mind at the moment. Shusaku flinched next to him as Takuya’s leg bumped him accidentally. Takuya noticed quickly and, though he liked being overly affectionate with others, pulled his leg back so there was an odd, but probably comfortable to Shusaku, gap between him and the other boy. He continued speaking as he did so, “Well? What happened? OH! Was it Ryu-chan again? Didn’t he once try to roast his own steak he brought from home?” Takuya’s giggles turned to laughs punctuated by snickers.

    “N-no, actually,” Shusaku’s voice was tinged with a light air to it, as though he were trying to speak through the urge to join Takuya’s laughter. “It was-, uh, well you know the lunch lady with the sharp teeth and the feathers on her head, right?”

    Takuya tilted his head questioningly as Shusaku looked back at him. Despite Shusasku not being able to see the puzzled look that Takuya was certainly expressing under his mask, he seemed to understand what a ‘headtilt’ meant and looked immediately flustered.

    “Ah-, no, you o-of course you don’t-“ He floundered, and Takuya noticed his left hand dart up to his neck. It stilled as he struggled to find his words. “Uh,” his fingers swiped over the back of his neck in a swift nervous tic before Takuya watched him drop his arm back down to grab at a patch of grass between them, a knuckle brushing Takuya’s leg as he did so. He didn’t seem to notice as continued talking, “-you don’t go to the cafeteria, so you haven’t met her, but she’s kinda really intimidating but I don’t think her food is that bad so I don’t mind when it is her on duty because she’s not like mean or anything at least not to me I don’t think-“ He’s rambling now and Takuya’s eyes are wide because this is a rare treat.

    “A-anyway so she’s on duty today and I didn’t see what happened but I was eating and suddenly there’s a huge clatter and I look over and I see Hotaru, you know her righ-“ A soft whistling wheeze comes from the deepest part of Shusaku’s lungs. At least that’s what Takuya assumes, as Shusaku brings his left hand back up, brushingvery lightly past Takuya’s leg again- which is important to note, thank you -, and jerkily flicks it up from stopping just at his neck to stopping in front of his face, shredded grass falling off his finger pads as he briefly pinches the bridge of his nose and exhales.

    Takuya is tickled, not because he finds Shusaku’s distress amusing, but because Shusaku is adorable and is trying more than he needs to. It’s endearing, really. “Hotaru, with the horns and the pinker-than-yours hair? That Hotaru, right?” With a gentle laugh that visibly startles Shusaku, Takuya sits up. Probably too quickly, as his head swims a bit from the motion, and he really didn’t plan this out because the way he shifted his body so that he could lift his upper torso has scooted him closer to Shusaku’s side and because they weren’t sitting hip next to hip, he’s now sitting up, legs angled slightly outwards from the spot between him and Shusaku, and his right arm is now just barely ghosting against the back of Shusaku’s left arm, which had fallen to his lap when Takuya started moving.

    “Y-yeah, that Hotaru.” There’s something like relief and also strain to Shusaku’s voice. Like he’s glad Takuya said something to save him from his rambles, but is also feeling like the current amount of contact between the two of them is an unsolved Rubik’s Cube that someone has suddenly shoved into his hands without so much as a ‘please and thank you’.

    Maybe a Rubik’s Cube that is only halfway completed because the upper length of Takuya’s leg is very much not ghosting and very much touching Shusaku- basically at an angle and getting the full degrees of the side of his hip and part of his leg. Ah. Takuya can sense his friend tensing as he finishes his ascent from laying flat on his back to sitting up with his arms in his lap- meaning now their arms have full contact.

    “So what was Hotaru doing?” Takuya’s voice is the same cheery octave it is usually at. With a healthy dose of curiosity that only relates to the question he has asked. It has nothing to do with that’s happening or how he can feel Shusaku fidgeting.

    Hmm.

    If Shusaku moved over a bit, he could be sitting on Takuya’s lap. This is a thought that barely registers in Takuya’s mind. It is not a suggestion for the solution to this problem.

    Definitely not.

    This is fine.

    “Sh-she didn’t like the food the, uh… the l-lunch lady was serving.” Shusaku wasn’t moving away, but he hadn’t quite relaxed either. Takuya could hear grass being torn from the ground, giving him an explanation for why he could see that Shusaku’s hands were fidgeting in his lap. “So I think she, like, she dropped the food tray and started arguing with the lunch lady.” He didn’t want Shusaku to be uncomfortable, and he didn’t want to embarrass his friend further by drawing attention to the proximity they were both very aware of, so he casually shifted so that he was no longer physically touching any points of Shusaku’s body. “She said something about her being an ‘uncultured bird brain-“

    Takuya lost it. He laughed so hard at that, that he could feel tears pricking the corners of his eyes. He wouldn’t be able to wipe them away while Shusaku was looking at him which made him laugh even more.

    Shusaku has become still as stone, but when Takuya had to clutch his stomach and rolled slightly away from him, it brought out a bubble of laughter that rushed out of Shusaku like a wave. His whole posture also relaxed, but Takuya didn’t notice because he was squinting, and his vision was blurry.

    It was also hard to see him through a mask when he was facing away, laughing into his stomach.

    “Oh my god, uncultured bird brain- that’s AMAZING! I CAN’T!” He choked on his laughter, sitting back up because his lungs don’t like it when he doubles over in a giggle fit. “What else did she say, Shu-kun?”

    “She- she said,” Shusaku was laughing and trying to talk at the same time- he had a harder time at it than Takuya, so he kept having to gulp in huge breaths of air. Sometimes, only to have them be hissed back out in a breathy wheeze. “She als-also said ‘Mystery Rice and Meatloaf my ass’.”

    Takuya leaned to the side, nearly tipping over as he laughed even louder and harder. Shusaku barely flinched this time, despite being the only thing keeping the masked boy from falling over. He was laughing too- well mostly wheezing-, and wiping tears out of the corners of his eyes.