Chapter Text
Ritsu
It’s been a little while, hasn’t it?
It wasn’t like Shou meant for it to be, but seeing Ritsu at Reigen’s party made him realize that yeah- they haven’t really seen each other lately. It wasn’t hard to figure out why, Shou made little to no effort for it. Could he really be blamed though? The past few months were nothing short of insane. For one, things with the remaining Claw members had to be settled. Despite his mother, Serizawa, and some government officials claiming he shouldn’t bother himself for multiple reasons- most of all being the fact he was fourteen- it was still his responsibility anyway. The only one who was able to take his dad down in the first place was fourteen at the time- these adults had no idea what they were doing. It would be stupid to try and handle rough espers without a powerful one on scene anyway.
That was the biggest issue, but far from the only one. There was the matter of rekindling his relationship with his parents. Shou officially was living with his mother, though he appreciated Serizawa’s offer to take him in. It wasn’t necessary, he had two parents that, to his knowledge, were getting along fine. Even if one was in prison with little to no chance of parole, they could still make this oddly work. Shou was used to making odd situations work out. It didn’t matter that last visitation his mom said she wasn’t interested in seeing him that day.
Yikes. This wasn’t worth thinking about. Today wasn’t the day to get a headache. He had a solid visitation schedule with his dad down, and not much more outside of that mattered right now.
The last- the most stupid- yet most pressing issue was an idea pitched to him by his mom just that morning over breakfast. She wanted to enroll him in a public school.
Shou shuddered at the thought. There was little to no reason for him to do that and they both knew it. He was smart, athletic, and far more experienced than the average fourteen year old. He didn’t need an institution breathing down his neck and forcing him to dress or act a certain way.
“I just think it would be a nice opportunity for you to make some friends your age.” She had very gently countered. He hated when she took that tone. It was full of reason and care, and not one Shou could easily counter.
He laid back against the rooftop he was currently occupying, giving a frustrated sigh at the memory.
As much as he really wanted to argue with that, he wasn’t able to come up with anything good on the spot. His mom had only stared at him with a small smile when he insisted he still kept in touch with Serizawa, and that counted as friends enough. Apparently, even though he and Serizawa played video games together, for some reason the man didn’t count now that he was a well adjusted adult or something.
That didn’t mean he didn’t have friends, though. He did have friends! At least one friend, and he was going to secure that friendship right now. Judging by the sound of the front door of the house he currently laid on opening and closing, it seemed that said friend had just gotten home. Shou jumped down from the roof onto the balcony, using his powers to open the lock and sit comfortably at the desk, feet kicked up. All this just in time for Kageyama Ritsu to open the door to his own room and do a double take.
Shou liked how bewildered the expression on his face was. Ritsu was funny without ever trying to be.
“Suzuki?” He asked with an undertone meaning. Shou knew what he was trying to say, something like ‘Why the hell are you in my room? Is something wrong? Are you going to burn down my house again? Pretty please tell my big brother if you are!’ probably along those lines. Despite understanding, that isn’t what Ritsu said, and Shou opted to not reply to vagueness.
“Yo! Ritsu! You’re in the student council? No wonder you’re late.” Shou gestured to the arm band still pinned to his uniform. Ritsu moved to place his bag down, beginning to take the arm band off afterwards. He didn’t look entertained.
“I’m the vice president.” Yeah, that checks out. “It’s my responsibility to make sure I’m one of the last to leave- I should get into the habit if I’m going to go through with taking over the presidency next year.”
Shou spun in the chair absentmindedly, already bored.
“That’s way too much responsibility. Is the power even worth that kind of effort?” He questioned, rolling his eyes. A certain bitterness came with the thought- power and responsibility over others was ruined by his dad, and tainted by his mom suggesting he get involved in shit like that. Now probably wasn’t the best time to get into a mood about this. “You should just do whatever you want while you’re there. I mean, you already spend hours doing busy work that literally no one wants to do. You finish school just to do more work? It’s kind of stupid when you think about it.”
The world suddenly stopped spinning, and he was face to face with Kageyama Ritsu. Ritsu lifted his hand up from the armrest that he forced to a halt, glancing over Shou with a deep expression as he backed away and sat down on his bed. Clearly, gears were turning in his head. Shou stared back, trying to play off the suddenly weird tension in the room.
“Nothing’s wrong then?” Ah, right. Ritsu caught onto the fact that there’s no reason for Shou to be there, no fires or emergencies or dads trying to take over the world.
“Nope.” Shou looked away as he sunk further into the chair. He hoped he came off as nonchalant and not like a turtle trying to retreat into its shell.
“Then why are you in my room?”
“You left the window open.”
“I didn’t.”
“Fine- I’m demonstrating how easy it is to break into your house.”
“That’s a waste of your time, you wouldn’t do that.”
“You know what else is a waste of time? Staying almost three hours after school ends for some student council meeting.”
“Take your shoes off.”
“Huh?”
Shou glanced down at his sneakers, then back to Ritsu, and down to Ritsu’s socks. He probably could’ve guessed that this was something that Ritsu would take seriously. Oops. Shifting to take them off, Shou set his sneakers to the side before sitting crisscoss on the chair. Did this mean he was officially invited to hang out? Ritsu wouldn’t have him remove his shoes if he meant for him to just leave right away. That’s probably how that worked. Despite the silence building between them, Shou couldn’t help the delight that coursed through him. This was different from overthrowing Claw or running into each other at crossdressing cafes or even hanging out at Reigen’s party. It was just the two of them, together with no purpose but the need to kill time. It was fun! It was exciting! It was… a little bit awkward, honestly.
“We should do something.” Shou proposed at last, making Ritsu reply with a head tilt and a raised eyebrow.
“What do you want to do?” This is why Shou liked Ritsu. He just kinda… went along with stuff. Despite appearing stiff and boring, Ritsu was shockingly cool in strange or spontaneous situations. Part of Shou wanted to wager that he even enjoyed it. Maybe that was why he felt comfortable being so brash like this.
“Gee, it’s your house, I don’t know what there is to do here. Aren’t you supposed to host?” Ignoring the obvious issue of Ritsu not inviting him over. When Ritsu didn’t offer any solutions to that, Shou shifted gears.
“Wanna go into town?”
—
Shou didn’t see any good reason to think in absolutes. However, a first hangout felt weirdly important. Way more important than Shou was expecting or wanting it to feel. He didn’t like expectations being put on him, and normally he was pretty good at taking the pressure of expectations and slamming them into the metaphorical garbage. After all, ever since his first meeting with Ritsu he was positive they were going to end up as friends. He just took a while to get around to it. However, somewhere between Ritsu changing out of his school uniform and Shou dragging him out the window insisting it would be faster, Shou had a bit of a realization.
He had an evening to convince the guy that was kidnapped not once, but twice by his dad’s evil organization that everything between them was totally cool and that he should be his number one closest and best friend for the rest of their lives. But the second kidnapping was for a good cause! Shou needed reliable backup for his plan, just like he needed to burn down the house to protect the Kageyama family from Claw. Obviously. That stuff wasn’t worth lingering on- he had to focus on the task at hand: gaining a best friend.
It wasn’t like he and Ritsu were strangers. They’ve seen each other in public a handful of times. Shou texted him, even if Ritsu answered maybe once or twice a week. Plus what was his competition? Ritsu probably didn’t have that many friends. He had no internet presence (Shou checked) and didn’t seem like the kind of guy to be partying on the weekends. It should be an easy mission.
Now that he had him out and about, he just had to figure out stuff to do. That task was hard given he was forgetting every single thing that could be done in Seasoning City. He wasn’t from around here! Ritsu should make more effort for this.
“Wanna get curry? I saw a place a few stores down.”
“No thank you, Nii-san is cooking tonight. I promised I’d try his dinner and give honest feedback.”
Starting off weak. Really weak. There was another pause as they walked. Shou shoved his hands into his leather jacket, trying to think up another friendship solidifying solution. One that didn’t involve food.
Ritsu pathetically threw him a bone.
“I’m sure Nii-san wouldn’t mind if you joined us.” He offered, but it didn’t really sound like Ritsu wanted him to be there. He didn’t really strike Shou as the type to wanna see a lot of change in his routine.
“Nah, that’s fine, my mom’s cooking tonight, I’d rather have that.” He answered honestly. For Shou, making sure his friendship with Ritsu was secure was enough trouble for one evening. He didn’t even want to think about the existence of Ritsu’s brother. His feelings towards that guy were just complicated enough as it is.
Ritsu nodded.
“Maybe we just wander around and see if there’s something going on in the city.” Ritsu suggested, and since Shou had no further backup plans, he agreed.
They ended up just kind of… walking around for a while. They talked, well, Shou talked a lot. A lot. About cleaning up Claw- about adjusting to living with his mom- about the last movie he saw- about this new MobTube streamer he found- about some video game lore and hamsters and his opinions on the different outfits people around them wore- Has he always talked this much? It wasn’t normally a concern he had but… Ritsu really didn’t have much to say. He did come off as a ‘don’t speak unless there was something important to say’ type of guy. That was fine for group hangouts or life and death situations but c’mon, this was the time to talk, right?
He wasn’t bored, was he?
This was the first time in Shou’s life he felt worried about his impression on someone else. He knew where his ranking was at Claw- fucked up as the system might’ve been, it was easy. He was an esper that rivaled some members of the ultimate five at the ripe age of thirteen. It was simple and made sense. There were too many factors in this “real life” situation.
Ritsu was apparently Vice President of his school. That gave him social points. Shou
was scared to even go to school, that had to take away some points. His mood soured slightly as he wandered behind Ritsu at some manga store they ended up in. There was merch and books and all sorts of things to overwhelm his attention span and keep him distracted, but all of it felt disinteresting at this point. Shou didn’t feel like he knew most of these series anyway.
Ok, this is fine. Just reset mentally and get back in the game. Nothing was wrong. They were hanging out and that was fine, Shou just had no fucking clue what to do. Ritsu absentmindedly trailed through the books, finger dragging across them one by one. Did he read much? Probably, he was kind of a nerd. Plus he was already out of the manga section and moving to novels. Shou picked a random manga off of the shelf, absentmindedly flipping through the pages and pretending to read it or even care.
Here was the issue. He’s never really… done this. There was this uncertainty of what a hangout was even supposed to look like. If it went poorly, would Ritsu even tell him? He could always show up and try again, but then his track record would be tainted. This was hard, which was stupid because Shou wasn’t supposed to find things like this hard. Dealing with his parents or fighting adult espers was hard. Training with the ultimate five as a kid was hard. Dancing around weird mind games with his dad was hard. Yet he developed the skill set needed to ace all those tasks.
A more daunting thought clouded his mind all at once. If he couldn’t survive hanging out with the one guy he was already supposedly close to- someone who already knew so much about Shou personally, things he wouldn’t be able to explain to the average teen- then how the hell was he going to survive being put into school? All at once anxiety dropped in his stomach. He was beginning to panic, and he knew it. This wasn’t the time or place. He was trained to control his more sporadic emotions at difficult times, but maybe his body was having a hard time registering this as a “difficult time” given there were no rocks being thrown at his head or some bullshit like that.
Suddenly he felt like turning to Ritsu and beating the answer to friendship out of him. Shou could beat him in a fight for sure, that would be easy.
Breath. Get your aura under control.
His dad’s voice echoed in his head. It didn’t help.
He just needs to get out of his head. Shou did his best to refocus on the manga in his hands. He didn’t spend a lot of time reading manga, but he really liked the art. Lately, he was trying to sketch more. It was nice to see the little tips and tricks artists did to make shortcuts for manga panels. On the page he opened, there was a group of people at some poorly drawn (seriously, Shou could do better than this!) park hanging around and having fun. It was a wide shot, followed by a mid shot one a character. He was surrounded by the other characters, they all looked happy. The dialogue was a monologue from the boy about how grateful and fortunate he was for all his friends-
Shou slammed the book back on the shelf he found it with so much force, a few books on the higher shelves began to fall. Before Shou could react they paused, a blue aura surrounding them before neatly placing them back where they belonged. Ritsu was standing right next to him. Blood rushed to his face at the embarrassment of his outburst being witnessed. Shoving his hands in his pockets, he looked the other way.
“I hate that series too. Nii-san tried for years to get me to read it- but the art sucks. And the story is cheesy.” Shou blinked, hardly following what the hell Ritsu was talking about before the Kageyama was onto the next complaint. He held up another manga that Shou didn’t recognize- the coloring of the cover was awful though. “Have you ever read this one?”
When Shou shook his head, Ritsu continued.
“Don’t bother. Nii-san owns a copy, so I read it one summer. It’s about a member of the student council- it’s definitely written by someone who’s never been in a leadership position before. Not that leading is hard , but here’s the issue.” Ritsu stepped closer, putting a hand on Shou’s shoulder as he lowered his voice. “Student council would be a lot more fun if some of the members in it weren’t so damn annoying.”
Shou’s eyes widened. The shock turned into a loud laugh that he couldn’t have prevented even if he tried. A few people glanced over, and Ritsu put a finger up to his own lips to shush him. The small smile on Ritsu’s face told Shou he wasn’t that upset by it.
“It’s true. They’re fine people. I can just tell whenever they’re trying to shove work onto me from laziness. This one member thinks he’s really smooth about it. He’s not.” As Ritsu continued, Shou nodded along. Wow, he really didn’t care much for work drama. There was plenty of it at HQ that he rolled his eyes at. Yet he found himself hanging onto every word Ritsu said involving the treasurer of the council and how they completely messed up the budget.
“I didn’t know you had it in you to talk shit.” Shou teased finally once Ritsu seemed to conclude the story, finding themselves in an entirely different section of the store by this point.
“I’m not 'talking shit;' I’m just retelling you what happened.” Ritsu countered, “I didn’t know you had it in you to beat up books you don’t like.” He raised an eyebrow. Apparently, they weren’t moved on from this. Shou shrugged.
“The storyline sucked.”
“Why?”
“You’re the one who said you didn’t like it first.”
“I know, but what didn’t you like?” Shou frowned. Clearly Ritsu knew what he was doing. If they were gonna play a game, then fine- Shou could play a game.
“I thought the backgrounds weren’t drawn well. Also, the dumb speech that one guy gave about friendship was cheesy. It pissed me off. If they’re gonna write about friendship, they might as well do it accurately.” It was all true technically without actually hitting on the truth. Ritsu nodded.
“How do you normally do your friendship speeches?” It was asked in a playful enough tone.
“Uh- I don’t. Cause they’re cheesy. And dumb. If I’m friends with someone, I don’t need to give them a whole speech about how we’re friends.” He’s avoided topics from his dad for years. Compared to Toichiro Suzuki, Ritsu was an amateur at drilling for answers. There was a moment of no reply, as if the Kageyama was calculating his next move. Shou was already prepared.
“Ok. Well, we’re talking about it, and it doesn’t seem to be upsetting you as much anymore. You seem actually really calm right now.” Ritsu turned to fully face him. “Your aura isn’t lashing out anymore either, it definitely was while you were standing there reading it. You were staring so intensely at that book I figured that whatever was in there was making you angry but- I’m guessing I was wrong. So, what happened?” Shou stared at him with his mouth agape. Of all the things, Ritsu had to be honest and direct about the situation. Maybe Shou wasn’t prepared after all.
Half-truths. He wasn’t ready to pour his heart out to Ritsu, but maybe if he told him just a little bit. Ritsu’s never made fun of him before.
“My mom’s enrolling me in school. I don’t really wanna do it.”
“Which one?”
“I dunno, it’s closer to my side of town. Lemon Pepper Middle I think.”
“I know that one. We compete against them in soccer sometimes.” He was taken off guard a little at that as he jumped to a conclusion.
“Wait- you play soccer?”
Ritsu looked back at him.
“No. I can, but I’m not on the team.” Shou deflated a little bit. “Why? Do you play soccer?”
“I mean, kinda. I think playing sports is fun.”
“Okay, so when you join one of the teams at your school, I’ll visit your games wherever you go up against Salt Middle.” Ritsu spoke so calmly about it, he couldn’t understand the immediate joy that rushed through Shou at hearing that.
“Really? You’ll come be my personal cheerleader?”
“I can’t miss the opportunity to watch you get fouled.”
Ritsu laughed as Shou punched him in the arm. It didn’t fix things, but at least he had something to focus on now. He wasn’t going into this whole school thing completely blind anymore.
–
In the end, they hadn’t done anything crazy. Shou dragged Ritsu to a pet store to show him the hamsters. Ritsu told Shou weird facts about the architecture in a few of the buildings in the city. Apparently they covered that in class recently. Ritsu found the weirdest stuff interesting. Shou really liked how much of a weirdo he was. At one point in the evening, Ritsu showed interest in a notebook. Shou suggested they just shoplift it.
“Do you steal often?”
Shou shrugged.
“How much have you stolen?”
“I dunno, that’s not the kinda shit you keep track of. Few thousand yen worth of stuff?” Probably less than that.
Ritsu dragged Shou to his school despite it being after hours and made him donate 5000 yen to some dumb fundraiser to make up for his crimes. Sure, Shou paid for it, but he laughed at Ritsu for being such a stuck-up dork the entire time.
After a few hours they were back in Ritsu’s neighborhood, heading back towards his house. That probably meant the hangout was going to end soon, which sucked. Shou didn’t want it to end. It was the most fun he had in… well, it might be the most fun Shou has ever had.
Ritsu didn’t talk a lot, but he definitely listened.
“I don’t know the video games you were talking about earlier, but Nii-san and I have a few multiplayer ones. He’s never beaten me at Mario Kart.”
“Ohhh you’re so screwed.” Shou replied, poking him in the shoulder as he did. Ritsu gave a questioning look. “Ritsu, if you think your brother is any good at video games, then you have no idea what I’ve had to deal with playing with Serizawa.”
Ritsu didn’t laugh, it was more like a snicker, but Shou was counting it as a win anyway.
“Dinner’s probably been done for a while now. I should go.” Ritsu paused, “Are you sure you don’t want to stop by?”
This time, it sounded like maybe Ritsu considered that possibly there was a chance he actually did want him to be there. Not by much, but it was progress.
“I should go home.” They both stopped in front of the Kageyama residence. He should probably say something casual. ‘Hey, this was the best day ever, let’s just do it every day.’ Yeah that wasn’t gonna work. ‘I want friends to prove to my mom I’m socially competent, are you in or what?’ If that joke didn’t land it would be weird.
“You should text me next time you’re coming over.” Ritsu suggested. A smile spread across Shou’s face.
“You never answer my texts.”
“I still read them.”
Wow. What a dick. This was who his best friend was?
“You’re so brave for doing the bare minimum, Ritsu. Maybe I’ll text you. Maybe I won’t.”
Ritsu rolled his eyes before giving a small wave and heading towards his front door.
—
Shou went home, opting to not tell his mom about the fact that he indeed had friends. He was gonna, but it suddenly felt embarrassing to talk about Ritsu. Instead he finished dinner and laid in bed, staring at the ceiling for a while and thinking about the evening. Eventually, he grabbed his phone and pulled up Google.
‘How soon can I hang out with my new friend again without it being weird?’