Chapter Text
It was an obnoxiously bright day.
Kusuo found himself waiting by the side of the road. Porcelain skin and deep pink hair tried to keep cool under the shade of a nearby balcony as he waited annoyedly for the under-the-influence driver to make his appearance. He had gotten a premonition on his way home from school, and come over to prevent the accident, when he spotted a familiar head of indigo hair walking by on the other side of the street.
Kuboyasu? He hadn’t been in the premonition.
But here he was, walking by right at the time of the accident. Good grief. Now he needed to prevent the accident without revealing his powers, what a pain. And here’s the dog, too. In just a few seconds, the dog will chase after a bird into the street, and the driver will swerve too late, hitting both the dog and the electrical lines, causing the pole to fall into the office building he’s leaning against, open wires setting a fire in the building. But now that Kuboyasu is here, he can’t just use his telekinesis on the car like he intended to. Maybe he should get the guy to stop driving. Drinking and driving is really irresponsible, after all. Better get this over with.
Here comes the driver down the street, and Kusuo goes to give the guy a headache and make him pull over. Except, he finds himself distracted by the incredible senses of a certain purple-haired ex-delinquent.
“Something is wrong, I can feel it. That car is moving way too fast. They on the way to a rumble or somethin? Whatever, not my business. But it’s looking like that dog is raring to get into the street.”
The driver gets closer, and like some kind of instinct kicks in, Kuboyasu is in the street, hoisting a whole German Shepherd over his shoulder and dashing across. Looking at Kuboyasu, he realizes with exasperation that he let himself get distracted. Too late to make the guy pull over now, Kusuo raises his hand up into the air, eyes flashing as he raises the speeding vehicle into the air and over Kuboyasu. He notes with a scowl that the delinquent looks up in wonder and awe as the car passes overhead, and just the tail end catches the electrical wires. In a second, the pole is careening downward, just like in the premonition, but just as he raises his other hand to stop it, Kuboyasu is in front of him, the dog still over his shoulder, and catches the damn thing with one hand.
Good grief, really? One hand?
Kuboyasu stands before him, back turned, and Kusuo can see his muscles shifting and bulging, under his school uniform. He sees them even more in depth as his x-ray vision kicks in and he starts seeing right through his skin. Then Kuboyasu grunts as he throws the pole to the side with all his weight, letting it crash onto the sidewalk and street, and then immediately lowering the dog back to the ground, who whines and scampers back to it’s owner. He turns to face Kusuo then, panting hard and sweating. His shoulders rise and fall and his glasses are fogged as he looks down at the pinkette with worried brows, standing too close, but Kusuo is strangely frozen in place and doesn’t think to step back.
He can almost feel Kuboyasu’s breath on his face, and he regards the ex-delinquent with wide eyes. A strange feeling blooms, unwelcome, in Kusuo’s chest, and his heart is racing. Kuboyasu stares back.
“Hey, “ He huffs, breaths short and voice laced with concern. “You ok, Saiki?”
Oh wow.
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That wasn’t supposed to happen.
That was not supposed to happen.
Three hours later, and he still can’t figure out why Kuboyasu had even been there. The premonition had no sight of him, and everything would have been fine if he hadn’t shown up at all. Not to mention that Kuboyasu definitely saw him use telekinesis, and if he erased his memory with the “banana-shaped object”, it would only cause more problems down the line. The road wasn’t nearly wide enough for the car to have done anything remotely normal without having run right into the guy. What a pain.
But the worst part? The worst part is that Kusuo knows deep down that both of these problems are only a distraction to hide the real nuisance.
Maybe a few more hours worrying about how to get Kuboyasu to reasonably forget what he saw will help the real problem fade. Maybe even go away.
He knows it’s foolish even as he thinks it. The only thing these past three hours of distraction have done is exacerbate the problem. Because if there's anything more annoying than his interrupted peace, it's…
feelings.
Kuboyasu had made him feel… safe. Protected. Like. Like he could give up the responsibility of saving everyone, if even for a moment. He had basically handled the whole situation by himself, minus the car. All by just being there. Why was he there?
Why was he even there?
Was Kusuo’s premonition wrong? His premonitions were never wrong. Would Kuboyasu have been there if Kusuo himself had not? What would have happened? Why was he-
Why was his heart still pounding like this?
It’s not as though he was in any real danger. He has no reason to be so… so. Good grief, he sounds like Teruhashi. But that moment just keeps replaying in his head. Kuboyasu’s incredible speed, strength, instinct. And he had moved like that, without thought, to protect Kusuo. Kusuo, the all-powerful psychic. He should have stuck around longer. If he hadn’t rushed out like that then maybe Kusuo would know why Kuboyasu had been there. Would have heard his thoughts, and known if Kuboyasu had really been able to tell if it had been him who moved the car. But he panicked. Big feelings like that are scary, terrifying even, and he got the hell out of dodge. A polite nod and a brisk walk out of eyeshot, and he was gone. Kuboyasu had still been reeling from what just happened and. Wait.
Seconds later and Kusuo lands softly on the roof of the house right next to Kuboyasu’s place. The sun has gone down, and the lights are lit up in the houses and streets below. He turns himself invisible right away, noting Kuboyasu’s incredible senses. And not a moment too soon, it seems, because a quick glance down through Kuboyasu’s ridiculously high prison-like window greets him with the piercing gaze of the ex-delinquent.
“Strange… it’s there again. Something… I can swear something is watching me from right over there, something powerful…” Kuboyasu holds onto the thought for a moment, looking right through the psychic in question. “Well, whatever.”
It’s not stalking. He has a perfectly good reason to be there, ok? From here he can hear Kuboyasu’s thoughts and find out what he remembers about earlier. A quick listen to the contents of the ex-delinquent’s head has Kusuo’s brows furrowing in frustration.
“Mm, this yakisoba is good. Can’t believe Ma got this for so cheap.”
Kuboyasu isn’t even thinking about it anymore. What a pain. Should he just hang around over here, hoping the topic comes back up in the next ten minutes? Situations like that are pretty noteworthy for normal humans, aren’t they? Did stuff like that happen to Kuboyasu so often that it wasn’t a big deal?
“Maybe I’ll bring some to school for lunch tomorrow. I wouldn’t be able to heat it up, though…”
Kusuo decides to wait it out. It has to come up at some point, and it’s imperative to find out if Kuboyasu really knows about his powers or not. Thinking on it, he might not. If he had realized it, he’d probably still be freaking out about it, right? Not acting like everything is totally normal. He sits there for a few minutes, as Kuboyasu eats his dinner and mentally makes excuses for putting off his homework. As he waits, Kusuo’s thoughts turn right back to the subject he’s been trying so desperately to ignore.
That flash of something like warmth in his chest, when Kuboyasu had beat him to the electrical pole. Being protected. Good grief, Kusuo didn’t need to be protected! It shouldn’t matter. It shouldn’t. People like him, if you could even call them that, aren’t meant to have normal humans trying to look out for them. It’s pointless.
So why does he ache at the thought of it?
He’s pulled out of his thoughts when he hears his name in Kuboyasu’s head.
“I wonder if Saiki is okay… he ran off pretty fast after what happened. Must have been scared. Lucky I was there, then.”
Wrong, not lucky.
“He did look pretty shaken up. But… he was definitely acting weird. Kinda like Kaidou actually, when he starts thinking he’s got superpowers. Except… the car…”
So he does know. Or suspects, at least. Not good.
“Yeah, something strange is definitely going on. Maybe I should confront him about it…? Nah, something tells me he’d rip my head off if I tried. Why does a goodie-goodie like him have such a dangerous aura? I can’t shake the feeling there’s more going on here.”
Seriously not good. Kuboyasu is right on the path to figuring it out. He should erase his memory. No, he forgot. No matter what his brain tries to replace the memory with, it’ll still be abnormal. There’s no way the car could have swerved around him on such a tight street like that. No matter what he’ll still get the impression things are wrong somehow, the leap is just too big to make.
So then what? He can’t erase the memory. He can’t let Kuboyasu confront him at school, where there are so many eyes and ears and nuisances following him around. Does he have to let Kuboyasu learn the truth? Would it be better if he let Kuboyasu come to his own conclusions? No, that would be a disaster. Better to tell him outright and hope he can keep the secret. He kept his past as a delinquent a secret, right? He should be capable.
He hesitates. Should he really let Kuboyasu know this? If he does tell him, there will be no doubt, no denial. He hates being put into these situations where he feels… vulnerable.
Feelings are such a pain.
But there’s nothing to be done about it. His ten minutes of invisibility are almost up, and the decision has to be made. He teleports right outside Kuboyasu’s bedroom door.