The Witch and the Poet

Denki was eleven the first time they met, and it wasn't under the best circumstances.

The village he grew up in was on the medium side of small, just big enough to have a general store that got goods in from a bigger city every other month. His parents ran that, and his uncle ran the bar next door; it wasn't a surprise for him to come in from playing outside on any given day to find them chatting to each other. It was a surprise to scurry through the doors to find his mom with her hands on his uncle's shoulders concerned look on her face as he clutched at his chest and wheezed.

"Um." He said with wide eyes, "Is he okay?"

His mom made that face she did when there was something she didn’t want Denki to know, mouth pinched in a tight smile. But it didn't seem like she was lying when she said, "Well baby, your uncle is feeling sick. Do you think you could help?"

Denki nodded. Even if she obviously wasn't telling him everything, he could hear the urgency in her voice.

"Okay…" She breathed, "I need you to run to the little house in the woods edge of town as fast as you can. Find the hedgewitch and tell him your uncle's chest hurts. Do you remember where that is? Can you do that?"

Well that just seemed too easy, and maybe this was one of those things adults told kids to do to ket them out of the way, but his mom seemed serious and his uncle looked like he was hurting so he said "Uh huh!" turned around and bolted back out the door at a dead sprint.

He'd been to the hedgewitch's little house on the edge of town once, on a dare -- had gone right up to the door but couldn't bring himself to knock. The house and the man himself were the source of all sorts of rumors kids like to spread -- Denki had seen him before, knew he was tall, with dark hair and tired eyes. Hanta's mom said that if he didn't do his chores he'd curse him. But his mom said that hedgewitches were people who were there to help the village, and you had to respect them or they might not stick around.

Well, he'd never been disrespectful , and his uncle needed help, so Denki ran as fast as his legs would take him to the edge of town, and then down the path beyond, into the edge of the woods. The house wasn't anything special -- a single story cottage, surrounded by a little stone wall with a garden. The only thing that really gave a clue that someone magic might live there was the circle of protection painted cleanly on the door in chalky white paint.

He was wheezing for air by the time he slid to a stop outside, but his mom had said for him to go as fast as he could, Denki knocked on the door as soon as he got there. He had precious few moments to catch his breath before the door was pushed open a crack.

Denki had expected, you know, an adult. The hedgewitch his mom had sent him to come find. Instead, he found himself face to face with a boy that must have been about his age, with wild purple hair,  wide purple eyes, and with deep purple bags smudged underneath them.

Denki would have stared if he hadn't still been doubled over with his hands on his knees. It didn't matter, because this mysterious new kid was doing enough staring for the both of them.

"…Hi?" Said the boy in a scratchy voice, when he realized Denki wasn't going to be talking any time soon, "Do you need help?"

Denki shook his head.

"Not me." He gasped. "Uncle."

It took another long moment before he managed to swallow a deep gulp of air and straighten himself.

"His chest hurts." Breath in, "And my mom told me to come get the hedgewitch. Uh. Do you…?"

The boy's face fell.

"He's out  right now. I don't know when he'll be back…" He chewed on his lip and something shifted in his expression, eyes narrowing in thought "But I'm his apprentice. And chest pain was one of the first things he taught me about… Hold on for a second."

He turned back inside and Denki peeked through the door after him. For all the house had appeared plain outside, it absolutely looked like a witch lived there on the inside. Cluttered was a word that came to mind, though there was probably some order to it that Denki couldn't see. Every surface was covered with something -- there were crystals, dried plants, a wall of drawers with tiny labels and -- Denki would get excited about this later when there weren't more pressing matters at hand -- a messy shelf of books.

The purple haired kid had grabbed one, and was currently pulling open drawers and stuffing a bag full of knobby roots, leaves and strips of dried things Denki didn't recognize. It didn't take him all that long to find what he was looking for, and after a minute he turned to face Denki, clearly nervous, but determined.

"Okay." He breathed, "I think I have everything we could need, so take me to him."

Denki just nodded, baffled, and waved for the boy to follow. They didn't move at quite the sprint Denki had coming out here, weighed down as the other kid was, but he pulled him along as fast as they both could manage.

(Come to think of it, Denki was pretty sure that he'd heard someone in the store gossiping about the hedgewitch taking an apprentice almost a year ago now, but he had assumed whoever it was older than him and didn't really pay it any mind. If he had known otherwise he would have at least said hello before now!)

Despite their slower pace, both of them were panting again by the time they reached the store. Not spying anyone in the front room, Denki tugged the boy past the counter to the back, through the room where they kept the stock and into the area where they actually lived.

"Mooom!" He called, "The witch wasn't there but I brought his apprentice!"

As he suspected his mom was in the living room, still fretting over his uncle who had collapsed into a chair. They both glanced up as Denki pulled said apprentice into the room. The purple-haired boy looked between the two adults with a sharp look, and before anyone could introduce themselves, he said, "Could you start boiling some water, please?"

Bewildered as she looked by the whole situation, his mom didn't actually question it, raising her eyebrows  as she moved to grab the kettle.

The hedgewitch's apprentice, for his part, moved to the table and got to work. Denki watched with rapt attention as he set down his book, then pulled out a mortar and pestle, a tiny knife, and some of those root-looking things he'd seen before.

"Okay…" The boy's voice wavered a little but he turned to look at Denki's uncle seriously, "Chest pains and shortness of breath. Is there anything else?"

"Just kind of… Faint, I guess." His uncle huffed.

It was weird, seeing the adults take a kid his age so seriously, but they were. And, well, he seemed to have an idea of what he was doing, nodding and turning to flip through the book, confirming something with a hum and moving to cut slices of whatever plant he'd put on the table. He then put the slice into the mortar before crushing it into a paste.

"Here--" He held the bowl out to the man in the chair, "Put this under your tongue and hold it there."

Denki's uncle blinked, but obliged, pulling a face at the taste of whatever concoction he'd just put a glob of in his mouth. Around that time the kettle started to whistle, and the boy turned back to his bag and pulled out a bundle of leaves and held it out.

"Make a tea out of these and have him drink it while it's still hot." He paused for a long moment to consider something, "You can swallow the paste, too."

Denki's mom moved to do what he'd asked, pouring a cup and crushing up the leaves and then steeping them loose. By the time it was cool enough to drink, his uncle had already appeared to have crossed the threshold from pain to exhaustion. He clearly didn't like the taste of the tea, either, but he drank it without complaint.

During this, the young hedgewitch stood awkwardly in the center of the room, looking a little lost.

"That's um…" He started uncertainly, "That's everything I can do. Or everything I remember how to do at least. I hope it's enough for now but I think… I think I’m gonna go see if I can find Mr. Aizawa."

"Thank you for your help, dear." His mom shot the boy a gentle smile that for some reason had him flushing and ducking his head.

"I'll bring him here as soon as I find him." The witch replied, grabbing his things and making for the door without so much as a goodbye. Denki stared after him, open mouthed. His mom heaved a long sigh and said, "Denki darling? Can you go next door and put up the sign that says the bar's closed?"

The look on her face was still sort of tired and sort of sad and Denki didn't want to risk making that any worse. There wasn't much for him to do after that though, except wander around the store and think. He hoped his uncle was okay, but he already seemed to be getting better. More excitingly, there was a new kid in town he hadn't even known about! Denki wondered what kind of games he liked to play, and then wondered why he'd never seen him around, before deciding that he must have been busy learning hedgewitch stuff. But he couldn't do that all the time, right?

It was a little more than an hour later when the boy returned, close on the heels of a man Denki actually recognized. 

Shota Aizawa had been the local hedgewitch for as long as Denki had been alive, and probably longer than that. He always looked tired when Denki saw him, including right now, though he returned Denki's frantic waving  from the window with a slight nod of the head.

His mom was waiting for him too, and led him to the back, talking in low tones that Denki couldn't quite hear. He followed after them, not really paying attention as the witch started talking to his uncle.

"In the short term, my apprentice has already done pretty much everything that can be done." Said Aizawa, "I’m here to talk to you about making sure this doesn't happen again."

He was saying magic-y things, like telling his uncle to walk widdershins around the village at sunrise and sunset, to drink more of that tea, and less alcohol. Denki couldn't care less, all of his focus was on the purple haired boy at his side, now looking less nervous and more quietly pleased. After a moment of his mentor talking, his focus started to drift until he noticed Denki's staring. For a long second he stared back, before going stiff and dropping his eyes, hands going to fiddle with the sleeves of the dark tunic he was wearing.

Busy, maybe, but shy certainly. Denki could work with that.

Denki was eleven when he learned his name.

It was only a day after the whole uncle debacle -- Denki slept hard that night and the next morning came into the kitchen rubbing at his eyes while his mom put together a package. It looked pretty hefty -- there were pickles, preserves, some of the hard cheese they'd gotten in on the last shipment, even half a dozen eggs from their own coop out back.

"Whoa." He said, "Who ordered all this?"

"No one." His mom shook her head with a slight smile, "This is payment for the hedgewitch. It's polite to give them something if they help you out."

"Oh!" Said Denki, and then because this worked out perfectly for the plan he'd been brewing, "Can I deliver it?"

She blinked in surprise, because Denki usually didn't volunteer for things like that.

"If you want to. But Denki, you have to bring it all there, alright? They helped your uncle."

"Mom I know ."He huffed, "I wanted to go over there anyways! So I'll just bring it!"

His mom shot him a dubious look, "I'll let you, but you have to promise you won't bother the witch too much alright? Be respectful!"

"I won't!' Denki swore, because it wasn't the hedgewitch he was worried about, it was his apprentice.

And so, later that afternoon found Denki back on the path to the little house in the woods, package of gifts heavy in his arms. This time, though, when he spotted the house, there was a purple-haired someone sitting on the garden wall, head bent over a thick book, totally oblivious to his approach.

"What are you reading?" He asked in lieu of a real introduction, loudly enough that the boy jumped and very nearly fell from his spot.

 The boy yelped, and blinked up at him. After a long moment of open staring, he shook his head., "Uh, an herblore book?" And then, with a tilt of his head, "Is everything okay? With your uncle?"

"Uh huh!" Denki confirmed, "I’m here 'cause… Well I'm here 'cause I wanna be your friend, but also 'cause we're supposed to bring you stuff to say thanks for helping."

He hefted the package, which was so heavy it was starting to hurt his arms. The young hedgewitch didn't appear to pay much attention to it, instead opting to gape right at Denki with an open mouth.

"You-- you want to be friends ?" He sounded so confused about it, which didn't make sense to Denki. He'd just said so, what was hard to understand about that?

"Yeah!" And then, because it just occurred to him that he didn't know, he asked, "What's your name? Mine's Denki."

In Denki's opinion it took the boy far too long to come up with his answer, which turned out to be "…Hitoshi." And then, as though just realizing something himself, he pushed himself to his feet.

"You should um--" Hitoshi started, and then stopped, looking embarrassed, "Well, hold on just a second."

He turned to the door and pulled it open, sticking his head inside to call, "Mr. Aizawa? Someone's here with uh -- with payment."

"It's Denki!" Denki yelled after him, because he wanted to make sure Hitoshi remembered his name. The purple haired boy winced, but Denki heard a long sigh from inside, and then "Have him bring it in."

Hitoshi glanced back at him, and Denki grinned in response. Hitoshi considered him a moment longer before shrugging and pulling the door open fully. He nodded his head for Denki to go in first, so he did, this time taking in the room that he'd only gotten a glance at before. All the places he hadn’t seen were as jam packed with stuff as the places he had, and as soon as he stepped through the door he wrinkled his nose at a strange, bitter, almost burnt smell. Aizawa was across the room writing something of his own, he didn't even look up to acknowledge Denki as he entered, just waved a hand at them and said, "Put it down wherever you find an empty spot."

That wasn’t as easy as it sounded, but with a little finagling Denki slid the package onto the table closest to the door, next to a little box that appeared to be full of shiny beetle shells. Then he looked at Hitoshi. Hitoshi was looking back.

"Can I look at your book?" He blurted, and Hitoshi stiffened, "I like to read, but we only have two books at home and one of 'ems a dictionary."

The other one was the sort of book you used to teach little kids to read, and his parents kept both of them at the store for anyone in town to use. Lacking any real material, Denki had , in fact, read most of the dictionary.

Hitoshi didn’t respond to him, but Aizawa, who had looked up at them with a questioning expression that in Denki's opinion was a little scary.

"He said that he wants to be friends?" Hitoshi said helplessly.

"Ah." Responded Aizawa,"Have fun with that, then."

Hitoshi looked wildly back and forth between the two of them, then huffed out a sigh.

"I guess so. Come on."

Denki spent the rest of that afternoon reading over Hitoshi's shoulder. He tried to stay quiet, at first, remembering his mom's warning to be respectful, but he couldn’t help himself. He had questions, and thoughts, and observations, and after enough of them Hitoshi seemed to realize that Denki didn't care whether he had an actual answer for him or not and started, slowly but surely, saying things back. What could have been a boring day spent reading a book about plants and their uses became a conversation on if animals got headaches.

By the time it got too dark for them to keep reading outside, Hitoshi had the ghost of a smile on his face, and Denki knew that his plan had worked.

"You… You should go home pretty soon, the woods get pretty dark." Hitoshi said as he closed his book. He looked at Denki and hesitated with whatever he was going to say next, but Denki had something of his own to say, anyways.

"Can I come back? This was fun!"

"Ah--" Hitoshi ducked his head, hiding whatever expression he was making, "If you want…?"

"Obviously I want, we're friends now. Friends hang out!"

"We're…?" Hitoshi peeked up at him from beneath his eyelashes, "…Then yeah. Sure."

Denki beamed at him, and practically skipped all the way home.

Denki was twelve, though not for long, when he finally convinced Hitoshi to meet the rest of his friends.

He had been right when he thought Hitoshi was busy, he always seemed to be in the middle of something whenever Denki came to visit -- usually they ended up reading together, though sometimes Denki wound up the one holding the book and quizzing Hitoshi on the uses of plants, or wandering the woods with him trying to figure out what was useful and what was dangerous. Aizawa seemed to tolerate him, not really commenting on his presence either way, and most importantly letting Denki have free range of the many books in their house. He never did manage to see any actual magic, though, and when he asked about it Hitoshi had blushed and said that he hadn't learned that much yet, and that it wasn't as exciting as it sounded, anyways.

Every time he asked Hitoshi to come to the village proper, the other boy would shake his head and claim some other responsibility. The other kids didn't even believe Hitoshi was real at first, and then once, after they'd spotted him trailing after Aizawa on their way to some farmstead on the other side of the village, didn't believe that they were friends. It was only Hitoshi's wide eyed panic and insistence that " Mr. Aizawa wouldn't like that " that kept Denki from dragging them all to meet him at his house in the woods.

That meant he was constantly at work on his plan to convince Hitoshi that he should come out to play in the village. Unfortunately Hitoshi was both as shy as Denki had originally guessed and apparently the most responsible person he'd ever met. As much as he tried to hype up how fun it would be, Hitoshi's response was always that he couldn't, that he needed to spend more time studying, or brewing potions, or any number of other things.

The answer, it turned out, was asking Hitoshi in front of Aizawa.

He hadn't been needed in the store that morning and had gone to Hitoshi's house first thing, only to find the boy kneeling in the middle of the floor sorting flowers into boxes, while Aizawa appeared to be weighing out some powders to do… Something with. Denki joined Hitoshi for a while, asking every question that came to mind --earning himself a bewildered look when Denki asked if he thought a mouse would wear one of the flowers as a hat -- before announcing that he was bored and that Hitoshi should come with him to the village.

Hitoshi bowed his head and said, "Well I've got to sort these, and Mr. Aizawa wanted me to weed the garden today…"

Across the room, the hedgewitch snorted.

"Don't use me as an excuse. If you don't want to do something then just admit it."

"Ah--" Hitoshi ducked his head into his shoulders, and lowered his voice so that only Denki could hear, "I just… I'm nervous."

"Well you shouldn't be, everyone is really nice." They weren't, always, but Denki could make them be for a few hours. He grabbed Hitoshi by the arm, and despite his earlier protests, let himself be dragged along without any real fight. "Hanta's goat just had a baby. Or I guess it's a kid? 'Cause it's a goat? So I'll bet everyone is down there, 'cept maybe Ojiro 'cause he's gotta do farm stuff."

He was right, of course, Tsuyu and Ochaco were standing on the fence trying to get a better look at the baby, while Hanta was inside cleaning the pen.

"Hey!" He called, "I brought someone! Everyone say hi to Hitoshi! Hitoshi, tell everyone that we're friends."

The purple-haired boy was looking at everyone with the same analyzing stare he had when he was trying to learn something new. It took him a moment, but eventually he opened his mouth and said, "Hi." He gave a small wave, "I didn't exactly get a say in it, but I guess we're friends."

"No way - Denki, you were serious?" Ochaco leapt off the fence and bounced up to them fast enough to have Hitoshi tensing up again. Denki could tell because he still hadn't let go of his arm.

"Anyways, hi!" The excitable girl held out her hand, "I'm Ochaco! We haven't met but my dad helped build your dad's house."

"My…Huh?" Hitoshi didn't move to take her hand, face the perfect picture of confusion. Asui took that moment to lean her head back, bowling right over whatever issue that statement had brought up.

"Denki said you kept busy with witchcraft, it's nice of you to come out and meet us."

"Um I don't --" Hitoshi stuttered, "I'm still learning so…"

"No way!" Came Hanta's voice as he pulled himself over the fence, "You brought the magic kid? Can you cast a spell to finish all my chores or something?"

Hitoshi wrinkled his nose in offense at that, "That sounds like an easy way to get yourself cursed."

" Man." Hanta huffed good naturedly, "Well let's not do that then. But it's cool to meet you anyways!"

He stuck his hand out too, and Hitoshi blinked, realizing that Ochaco was still holding out hers. She grinned as he tentatively took it.

"…You too." He added as he did the same to Hanta.

"Hey, hey!" Denki piped up, "Hitoshi hasn't seen Mama Goat go crazy trying to attack the broom before."

"It's pretty funny." Hanta confirmed, and the group slowly started making their way back to the fence.

"Mm, you know there's probably a lot of places around you haven't been to if you don't spend a lot of time in the village." Asui put one finger on her chin as they walked, "Maybe we could show you around? There's a ravine not far from here that's got tadpoles  right now."

" Ooh , yeah and you've gotta see the fort we’re building in the woods behind my house!" Added Ochaco.

What followed was one of the most fun afternoons Denki may have ever had. They led Hitoshi around town, showing him their favorite spots and games; it might have taken a few hours but Hitoshi started to relax, and by the time the sun was starting to dip in the sky Denki spotted him trying to hide a tired smile.

Denki was able to convince him to come on occasion after that, and found that a surefire way to lure him out was to claim that he'd seen a new cat around town. 

But he couldn't help but notice that there was definitely a difference between Hitoshi and his other friends that he couldn't quite put his finger on. With everyone else he was happy to joke around and do any dumb idea that came to his head -- and it wasn't like he didn't do that with Hitoshi he just thought about it a little more. For some reason, he felt like he wanted to impress the hedgewitches apprentice, and after not that much consideration decided that it made sense. He didn't get to see Hitoshi as often as everyone else, and he was cool -- he was studying magic , he was going to be someone important .

Of course, it made sense for Denki to want to impress someone like tha t.

Denki was twelve, in an unseasonably warm autumn, when he learned the first rule of witchcraft.

He thought that he had a pretty good idea of how hedgewitches operated, by now. Someone would come to them for help, or else they'd go out to town to make house calls. Denki wasn't around for most of the actual working part, but based on the stuff Shinso studied, he had to assume a lot of it had to do with getting people to eat plants.

" Mr. Aizawa told me that it's good for hedgewitches to be closely connected to the community…" Hitoshi had dourly admitted one afternoon, legs dangling into the goat pen, "So I guess letting you drag me around was a good idea after all."

The purple-haired boy had taken to carrying a bag with him everywhere, even when he wasn't on witch business. Denki didn't know what exactly was inside, just that it was heavy . Hitoshi had it with him today, left sitting on the side of the creek that they were ostensibly looking for some kind of moss in. In reality, Denki was more interested in finding cool rocks, especially after Hitoshi told him that if he found one with a hole worn through the middle that he could look through it and see magic.

He was calf deep in the cold water when he thought he spotted something potentially interesting. A little downstream was a deeper spot, filled with a scattering of pebbles that, if Denki squinted, looked like they had weird little bits worn through them. If he happened to find one of those rocks with a weird little bit taken out of the middle , then he was in business. He ignored Hitoshi's call of, "Careful!" as he stepped over the slippery rocks and into the little pool. The other boy huffed at him and turned back to what he was doing with a shake of his head.

Denki didn't pay in any mind, already chest deep in the water as he sorted through stones. Most were nothing, just plain river stones, a few did have bits worn out of them like he'd thought, and he pulled those out and set them to the side, because they were kind of cool even if they weren't magic. After a bit though, he started to get bored and uncomfortable, the cold water stinging at his fingers and toes. He was about to give up and go back to join Hitoshi, but in one last effort dug his hands into the pile as deep as they would go and heaved up a bunch of stones to tumble back down in a cloud of mud. He didn’t spot anything terribly impressive -- except, when shook his hands, there was one stone still stuck firmly around his pointer finger.

"No way…" He breathed as he pried it off. Denki looked it over for a moment -- it felt rougher than he imagined it would, being a river stone and all, but there was no doubt in his mind this was what Hitoshi had been telling him about. He grinned and held up his prize, calling out to the boy in question, "Hitoshi look! I found one!"

The other boy blinked up at him in surprise, and Denki decided it was a good idea to scramble back over the rocks to show him.

It really wasn't. Denki would later reflect that he was lucky he hadn't ended up busting open his own head. As it was, he saw in slow motion how Hitoshi stood up to reach for him even though he was too far away. He put all his weight on one foot, and he slipped, reaching out to catch himself on a branch and missing it and he tumbled back into the water. He was only under for a moment, but surprise had him breathing in more water than was good for him and he wound up coughing and sputtering, not able to yell at  Hitoshi that he was okay.

Not that the other boy would have believed him. And he wasn't, actually. After the initial shock had worn off, Denki realized there was a sharp throbbing in his forearm where he'd scraped it on something coming down. He didn't dare look at it, especially not after Hitoshi reached out to help him up and said with faint surprise, "Oh, you're bleeding."

Denki… Was not the biggest fan of blood. Couldn't stand the sight of it, really. He kept his eyes firmly fixed on Hitoshi as the boy helped him out of the creek bed and onto dry land. He did his best not to tear up which was hard because his arm really hurt.

Hitoshi wasn't nearly as squeamish, he gathered his bag and gently tugged at Denki's arm to get a closer look. Denki had sort of seen the difference between Hitoshi-his-friend and Hitoshi-the-hedgewitch, and he was definitely dealing with the latter right now, lips pressed in a thin line as his expression went totally serious.

"Well the good news is that this doesn't look too deep." Hitoshi murmured, "But I'll have to pick some splinters out. Can I?"

Denki nodded and swallowed around the lump in his throat, because it wasn't like he was going to do it.

"Okay just…" Hitoshi breathed out hard, probably more nervous than he was willing to let on, "I'll try to make it hurt as little as I can, but sorry in advance."

When he put it like that, Hitoshi made it sound a lot worse than it actually ended up being -- but Denki was also squeamish and he didn't like being in pain; he also didn't want to turn into a blubbering mess in front of Hitoshi. Instead he opted for nervous chatter.

"Is t-that what you carry the bag around for?" He asked, "First aid stuff?"

"Uh-huh." Hitoshi responded absently, "I mean, there's a lot of stuff in there. The first rule of witchcraft is to always be prepared."

"O-oh yeah?" Denki suppressed a flinch as Hitoshi put something on the cut that stung . "What are the other rules?"

"Um…" Hitoshi had moved on, now wrapping a bandage tight around Denki's arm, "Mr. Aizawa hasn't told me yet, but I'm not sure if there are any? I think that's just something he says…"

Denki giggled weakly. lacking anything else to say and desperate to keep his mouth moving he said, "You're really cool, y'know?"

Hitoshi's hands stilled where they were securing the bandage. Denki's mouth did not. "Just that -- you always seem to know what to do when something happens. And you don't freak out about it? Cause I would have freaked out really bad if you got hurt…"

"Uh, that’s --" One of Hitoshi's hands went to rub at the back of his neck, "I mean I do freak out but I just--" A shrug, "Doing stuff like this is the whole point of what I'm learning."

"Well it's cool." Denki insisted, and then he remembered himself and he wiped his watery eyes, his face going pink, "And uh. Thanks."

"It's nothing." Hitoshi mumbled, "Just be more careful."

"I will!" Denki chirped, and Hitoshi gave him back his arm. It still ached, but he was at least able to look at it now. His other hand ached too, though that was from how tight he had been clenching his fingers around --

"Oh yeah!" He exclaimed, "Look!"

He held out the stone -- it was more triangular than round, and the hole wasn't exactly in the middle, but it was there. Hitoshi seemed a little surprised when he examined it up close.

"Huh." He said, "You really did find one…"

"Course I did! I wouldn't get myself hurt over nothing!" Then something occurred to Denki and he grinned, "You should have it. I'm supposed to pay back a witch for helping me, right?"

"Ah- t-that's…" Hitoshi had recovered from earlier, but now flushed red, "I-I mean that's tradition, but that's not--"

Denki reached out and pried Hitoshi's finger's open himself, dropping the rock in his palm and wrapping his fingers around Hitoshi's own so that the other boy was holding onto it.

"It's polite! And besides, it's just a rock."

"It's not just a rock, it's an adder stone ." Hitoshi's need to prove his knowledge outweighed any embarrassment he might have been feeling, but only for a moment, as he looked down at his hands a moment later "And… Thanks."

"No, the gift is me thanking you ." Denki shoved at the other boy's shoulder playfully. Hitoshi rolled his eyes in response.

"Well I'm thanking you for the gift. It's not that hard."

"Well fine!"

"…It literally is fine."

They bickered playfully for the rest of the afternoon, Denki's wound already mostly forgotten. And he was pleased to realize on a later day that his gift to Hitoshi didn't get put in the bag or with clutter of his house like everything else, but was instead worn on a long leather band around his neck.

" So I can use it, if I need to ." Hitoshi had said. Denki was just glad to be useful.

Denki was twelve, early the next spring, when he learned about love.

Winter hadn't been as painfully boring as usual this year, because Aizawa had graciously allowed him to take his books home to read next to the fire. His favorite so far was the one with actual stories, ones that were supposedly about real witches that had actually existed. Denki wasn't sure how much of the lessons inside applied to him, because he couldn't accidentally curse himself if he never did magic but they were fun to read. He'd returned that book for a book about magical creatures which was quickly becoming his second pick.

Those weren't on his mind today, though. Today was the first time in nearly a month he'd gotten to see his friends, and would probably be the only time in a while as everyone got busy with the change of the seasons. The air was still chilly, for now, and that found the group of them huddled together in the back of Ojiro's family's cow barn, sharing body heat (and unfortunately, smells) with one of the more docile heifers. Hitoshi wasn't with them that day, having gone with Aizawa to a different farm on the other side of town for a reason Denki could only guess.

Everyone was sharing what little news had happened over the coldest season. Asui's little sister had been born, and apparently Ojiro's older brother had been considering proposing to his longtime girlfriend.

"Ooh, that's really fun." Ochaco piped in, and then, because this was the kind of question she liked to ask, "If you guys had to get married right now, who would you pick?"

Hanta blanched and stuck out his tongue.

"Why do we have to? We're way too young for that!"

"Obviously, but like, if you had to. And you could pick anyone! Like… I would pick a noble lord. No, a prince!"

Denki snorted, earning himself a swat on the arm.

"Anyone, huh…" Ojiro tilted his head, "Is it really boring to just say that I hope I meet a nice girl?"

"Um, yes?" Said Ochaco, "Not even like… A nice rich girl?"

Ojiro shrugged. To his left, Asui tilted her head, "I suppose if a prince is on the table then anything is… So why not pick something like a demigod or a spirit?"

"Oh I second that." Piped up Hanta, "What about a -- what were you saying, Denks? A dryad?"

"What?" Denki exclaimed "I'm pretty sure I also said that those would like, eat you?"

"Eh." Hanta shrugged, too, "There are worse ways to go. What about you?"

Marriage had never been remotely on Denki's radar, so he wound up doing what he always did when put on the spot: he rambled.

"I mean, you're supposed to get married to someone you want to spend the rest of your life with, right? So I could pick a prince or a god or whatever but what if I turned out to hate them? Or they hated me? So I guess I'd want to pick someone I already know I don't hate, and if I was marrying them they'd have to be someone I wanted to hang out with all the time..." Actually this wasn't as hard as he thought, there was one person who he thought about hanging out with more than anyone else, "…So I guess I'd pick Hitoshi."

"Denki, that's like the one person you can't pick!" Ochaco cried.

"What!" He exclaimed, "You can pick a prince and a demigod, but I can't pick my friend?"

"I think what Ochaco means is that witches can't get married." Said Asui.

The pink-cheeked girl clicked her tongue, "I thought everyone knew that witches couldn't even fall in love. I mean, Aizawa has been here for how many years? I've never heard of him being with anyone."

"I--" Denki tried, "That… That could just be him, couldn't it?"

He tried to sound jokey but he couldn't quite manage it. For some reason, the idea had him horrified. Could he feel love or was it something he had to ignore if he wanted to stay a witch? Hitoshi was so responsible that he probably would and that sounded miserable .

"You'd know better than us, I think." Said Asui, which didn't do very much to comfort him.

"Well you can't pick Hitoshi, so who else?" Hanta leaned in, clearly trying to nudge the conversation to a less upsetting topic.

"I dunno." Denki responded glumly, "I'd also pick a rich noble, I guess."

The whole idea put him in a funk that he wasn't able to shake off for the rest of the day, or the day after. He really never had heard rumors of Aizawa liking anyone. As far as he knew, the man didn't even have any friends . Was he alone like that because he was a witch? Did that mean Hitoshi would end up like that, too? Would he have to stop being Hitoshi's friend, someday?

He had worked himself up over the idea so much that by the next time he saw Hitoshi (two days later, to return the book he'd been reading) he nearly burst into tears on the spot.

He'd walked to the house slowly and arrived to find the purple-haired boy sitting in his usual spot on the garden wall, though he looked to be watching the clouds instead of studying, for once. He hadn't noticed Denki's approach,  and Denki found himself staring for a long moment. How much longer was he going to be allowed to do this?

"Hitoshi…" He just meant to greet the other boy, but his voice warbled, and when Hitoshi blinked his eyes open his eyebrows were immediately furrowed in concern.

"Denki…?" Hitoshi greeted tentatively "…Is everything okay?"

Denki wished he could say yes. Instead, he said, "Is it true that witches can't fall in love?" He sniffed "Or get married?"

Hitoshi seemed completely baffled by the question, working his jaw like he didn't even know where to begin .

"…I don't have any idea about the marriage thing, but witches can definitely fall in love." Hitoshi tilted his head, totally unaware of how he'd undone the knot in Denki's stomach with just a few words, "I mean, Mr. Aizawa says that the best work a witch can do is for love, so I assume…" Hitoshi trailed off and there was a long moment of silence, "…Is that what you're upset about?"

"I'm not, I just…" Denki breathed out, because he finally felt like he could again, "I just realized I didn't know if Aizawa even had friends or not and I got worried."

At that, Hitoshi leaned in with a conspiratorial grin, "Actually, you know how Mr. Aizawa always goes into town when we get bards through, even though that doesn't really seem like his thing?"

"No way ." Denki gasped, "He's friends with a bard?"

Hitoshi shook his head, grin widening, "I think he's in love with a bard. And he does have at least one witch friend, even though he acts like he doesn't like them. He's just kind of grouchy." His smile fell, just a bit, "And private, so you didn't hear any of this from me."

Denki slapped a hand over his own widening grin, a weight lifted from his chest.

"My lips are sealed."

Denki was thirteen, in the middle of a muggy summer, when he discovered his passion.

He found it sort of by accident -- he'd been pulling books off of Aizawa's shelf and leafing through the first few pages to see what they were about when he saw it. There was a book he hadn't seen before, it was smaller and thinner than most everything else on the shelf, enough so that it had slipped behind the rest and remained hidden there until Denki had revealed it.

He glanced around the room -- Aizawa was out today, and Hitoshi was distracted, all his focus directed to the dried up flower that he was trying to draw. He wondered, for a moment, if he'd found something secret, something kept hidden that he maybe wasn't supposed to look at. If that was the case, well…. Just a peek wouldn't hurt, right?

The inside of the front cover had a big sloppy dedication written "To Sho." The rest of the pages were… Weird. A lot of the literature the hedgewitch kept was incredibly wordy, only occasionally interspersed with an illustration like the one Hitoshi was trying to make right now. This had a lot more white space in the pages, in some places obviously intentionally. Each page had its own little story with a title and everything. Only, they weren't all exactly stories. Some of them were, but some of them were just words .

"…Hey Hitoshi?" He slid himself over to where the other boy had spread himself and his supplies over the ground, "I think I found a spell book or something?"

Hitoshi looked up at him and wrinkled his nose, "I don't think those are actually real things…" At Denki's pleading look, he trailed off and added, "…Probably."

They sat shoulder to shoulder, heads bumping together as they read through a few pages.

"…I don't think this is magic." Hitoshi finally said, "But I'm really not sure what it is? It's like a storybook someone didn't finish or something."

"Maybe." Denki conceded, "But then why bother putting it into a book at all?"

Hitoshi could only shrug at that, and he turned back to what he was doing as Denki pulled the book into his lap and tried to divine its secrets. There was a part of him that actually liked that the passages weren't explained. When he read stories, he usually wound up wondering about what could have happened, or what something was supposed to mean. With these, sometimes nothing happened at all, it was just words and the things they made him think about.

"…Do you think Aizawa would be okay if I took this one home?"

Hitoshi glanced up at him and pursed his lips.

"…I don't see why not. I don't know if he even knew it was there."

So that's exactly what Denki did. He read that book more times over the next few days than he had the children's book they kept at home. He even went so far as to copy some of his favorite passages to keep and re-read again after he returned the book, because it seemed like every time he did something new occurred to him.

When he brought it back, Aizawa accepted it with a slow blink and a tired, "Oh, you found that one."

"Yeah." Said Denki, "What is this?"

"Poetry." The hedgewitch responded flatly.

"Huh?" Questioned Denki. "….But I thought that was all about rhyming and stuff?"

Aizawa leaned back and pinched the bridge of his nose, "Sometimes. It's more just--" He waved his other hand dismissively, "Trying to make you feel things with words. I don't really understand it, to be honest."

Because of his familiarity, Denki had lost a lot of the respect that his mom had warned him to have for the witch, and so had no problem exclaiming, "Why do you have a book of it, then?"

Aizawa heaved a long suffering sigh.

"It was a gift."

Hitoshi elbowed him in the side before Denki could say something damning like 'oh, from a bard?' . He probably could have guessed that anyways.

The hedgewitch apparently was done with the conversation and turned back to the -- Denki wasn't actually sure what he was doing but it involved the fireplace and a caldron, so he decided to leave him to it.

He took a day after that to ask everyone he knew what they knew about poetry. 

The answer: Not much.

It was a pastime for rich folks, he was told, something that bards recited when they ran out of songs. That made sense, and it also gave Denki an idea.

He was more aware than most when a bard passed through, seeing as his uncle owned the bar they tended to perform at, and so he started to, as his mom put it, "annoy the hell out of the performers." He liked the answers he got from them a lot more.

" Poetry is -- y'know, messing with words and the order they're in so you can try and lead someone's thoughts somewhere." A green-haired woman told him, " That make sense?"

Another man considered it for a long moment before saying, " It's kind of… Making words sound like a song without singing ."

On top of that, Denki couldn't help but notice that what Hitoshi told him had been right -- he only ever noticed Aizawa come to town for non-witch related reasons on the nights when there were also bards. He couldn't help but wonder, every time, if the person he was talking to was the bard. It was hard to tell, because Aizawa was the most difficult person to read Denki had ever met, and none of the travelers offered any indication of knowing him.

Except for one. One tall-blonde haired man sent the hedgewitch a wink that had the man ducking his head into his drink. It wasn't hard evidence but Denki filed that away for later. That guy had been nice -- he'd been willing to talk with Denki for a long time after he'd finished playing.

" You know a lot about poetry, little listener, are you thinking about becoming a poet yourself?"

Denki stared up at him in shock. Him? Write poetry?

"You really think I can?" He'd asked. The bard had ruffled his hair and replied, " 'Course ya' can. Writing is first and foremost about expressing yourself!"

Could he really make things like that? Words that made people feel things?

…He didn't see why he couldn't try .

His mom seemed unsurprised when he asked if she could order his own book of poetry for his birthday next year.

Denki was fourteen, in the middle of autumn, when he saw real magic for the first time.

He had begun to suspect that hedgewitches mostly didn't do magic -- that a lot of the supernatural sounding stuff that he heard Aizawa and Hitoshi tell people was just advice wrapped up in scary sounding words to make sure that they'd follow it. He'd heard Hitoshi complain about how complicated magic was, a little, but he never seemed to be around when it actually happened.

It was really unlucky for Hitoshi that things turned out the way that they did.

Hitoshi had, for the first time, been left in charge of the village on his own. Aizawa had some sort of business he had to go deal with on the equinox, far enough away that he'd be gone for the week, and had dubbed his apprentice ready to take over while he was gone. Hitoshi had acted all serious about it, but Denki knew him well enough by now to recognize that the poor teen was as nervous as he'd ever been about anything. He'd been going to visit more often to compensate, distracting Hitoshi with his newly written poems and insisting that, " This place is so boring, dude, nothing's gonna happen."

He was wrong, unfortunately. Three days later, Denki was meandering down the road to Hitoshi's house when he bumped into something he couldn't see. He heard a gasp and a squeak but when he looked around he couldn't see what had made the sound.

"…Hello?" He tried. There was a sniffle and a whimper, and a quiet feminine voice said, "Um…Hi."

Denki whipped his head around again, then up into the tree tops and down on the group for good measure.

"Y-you won't be able to see me." Another sniff, "That's um-- That's the problem."

"Wait." Said Denki, "Really? You're invisible?"

He'd read enough about spirits and fairies to know that it was probably dangerous for him to engage, but the voice sounded so sad . Especially when it said, "Yeah. I-- I heard that a witch lives here? I was hoping they could help me fix this…"

It didn't feel like the right time to say ' oh, well one does but he's out on a trip right now .' Denki tilted his head and said, "Well, I was just heading there myself, so… Let me show you?"

"T-that would be great, thank you."

Denki jumped when he felt a pair of hands settle on his arm. Hands he couldn't see the owner of. Oh dear.

Whatever this was, he was sure Hitoshi knew more about it than he did. He just hoped he wasn't leading some kind of trickster spirit right to his doorstep.

The invisible hands on his arm tightened as they got deeper into the woods. Denki thought, briefly, about informing the thing clinging to him that actually, the hedgewitch wasn't here and they were going to his apprentice. But if it was some kind of spirit, it might get angry, and if it was a person, they might get sad, and he was too scared about accidentally getting someone's soul stolen to say anything at all. Unless this was some kind of test to see how honest he was, and he should say everything?

He was nearly in a cold sweat by the time he knocked on Hitoshi's door. It took the acting hedgewitch a long moment to answer it, and when he pulled it open to find Denki on the other side he pursed his lips -- immediately recognizing that something was off . Denki knew he looked nervous, and he had long stopped knocking when he came over.

"Heyy there, sir hedgewitch--" His greeting had Hitoshi's eyebrows climbing up his forehead, "I uh-- brought a visitor."

Denki's eyes flicked over to the side where he could feel hands on his arm -- he watched Hitoshi's gaze follow and not focus on anything, because he couldn’t see it, either. Denki was half-worried that the thing grabbing him would stay quiet and force him to explain, but after a moment there was a shaky breath and a, "H-hi. I- I'm here to b-beseech your help, sir witch."

"…Right." Hitoshi shared only the briefest look with Denki before looking back at the space the voice had come from, "Well, come inside, and I'll see what I can do."

Navigating a space when there was someone invisible in it turned out to be a little awkward. Hitoshi pulled out a chair, and took a seat across from it, but there was no way to tell if their guest was sitting down or not. Denki found himself standing awkwardly behind the apprentice hedgewitch, not sure what to do with himself.

Hitoshi folded his fingers and leaned forward -- Denki couldn't help but think he looked a lot like Aizawa when he was trying to figure out a problem.

"Tell me your problem and when it started. And why, if you think you know it."

There was a slightly hysterical giggle -- from the chair, which answered that -- and then, "Well I'm invisible . And -- maybe almost a month ago, now? I-- I just sort of woke up like this, and I don't know why ."

Hitoshi blinked slowly, "And you can't see yourself?"

There was a long moment of silence, and then a frustrated sigh and, "Sorry I -- No, I can't."

Hitoshi tilted his head, pursed his lips and muttered, seemingly to himself, "Better try the obvious first, then."

The obvious apparently involved reaching into his shirt to draw out the adder stone that Denki had given him and holding it up to his eye.  He must have seen something through it, because he leaned forward with a quiet " huh ."

The person in the chair made a squeaking sound, and then a gasp as Hitoshi said, "Could you show me your arm?"

"Y-you can see me through that?"

"Mmhm." The young hedgewitch confirmed, "I might be able to tell what caused this, too.

Whatever he was looking at took a long couple of minutes to decipher, but eventually Hitoshi huffed out a sigh.

"This isn't quite a geas, but…" He squinted and leaned closer, in theory, "This is a punishment for messing with someone's offering. If you apologize and replace double what you took, this should go away…" Hitoshi rolled his bottom lip between his teeth, "But if you don't before the next full moon this becomes permanent."

Oh, that was a problem.

"Not to alarm anyone," said Denki, "but that's in like, two days."

Aizawa wouldn't be back before then -- the full moon was on the equinox this year, which was probably half the reason Aizawa had to go do whatever he was doing.

The person in the chair did -- well, Denki couldn't see what they did, but it had Hitoshi pulling his hands away like something had been jerked out of them.

"I can't get home in two days!" The voice wailed, "And I don't even know what I did !"

Hitoshi leaned back in his seat and rubbed at his eyes.

"Well…" He started slowly, "Why don’t you just tell me about what you can remember doing the day before this happened-- as detailed as you can. I might be able to put together a stopgap in the meantime."

There was a sniffle, "I don't think it was anything special…"

As she talked, Hitoshi stood to move around the room -- setting out bottles and paintbrushes, pulling out a drawer and grabbing a handful of nails only to replace them when he found some that were rustier.

The invisible person in the chair was a girl named Toru. She spent a lot of her days -- or at least that day -- hanging out with her own friends gossiping and deciding what they needed to do to catch the eye of a passing nobleman (which she apparently got , living in a bigger town like she did).

"You didn't go near any shrines that day?" Hitoshi asked as he filed rust off of the nail into a bowl.

"No." A sniff, "We don't really have those?"

She went on about nothing much as Hitoshi mixed the rust with something from one of the bottles, ending up with a thick, reddish brown paste. He was sitting down with his mixture in one hand and the paintbrush in the other when Toru said, "And then, right before I went to bed, I went out to use the bathroom and kicked over the bowl of cream that my mom puts out for the cats and got it all in my socks, which was gross…"

Denki literally bit his tongue to force himself not to say anything. He was no hedgewitch, but he'd read enough to understand exactly what had happened.

Hitoshi let her finish her story before flatly saying, "That cream wasn't for the cats."

"Wh- huh? What do you mean, what else would it be for?"

"Your mother was probably leaving out an offering for a spirit that lives in your house." The hedgewitch said tiredly, "A spirit that got offended when you stepped in it, and didn't pour any more."

"Wait." Said Toru, "That stuff is real? "

Denki almost laughed. He had to duck his head so that it wouldn't be obvious he was trying not to. He ended up having to slam a hand over his mouth when he looked up to see Hitoshi staring at air with his most exasperated expression, as if to say , you are literally cursed and sitting in a witches house right now .

"…That was a stupid question." She said. Hitoshi chose not to remark on it at all, instead giving a slow blink and saying, "Give me your arm again."

What followed was an awkward dance of Hitoshi trying to figure out what to do with his hands. He tried to balance the concoction he made on one knee so he could hold Toru's arm steady and paint, but he needed another hand to hold the adder stone so he could see what he was doing. After a minute or so of constantly switching hands, Hitoshi finally huffed in annoyance and said, "Denki, could you hold the stone so I can see through it?"

Denki was happy enough to oblige, stone in one hand and bowl of paint in the other as he again leaned over the back of Hitoshi's chair. He didn't even complain when his arm started to get tired, too transfixed on the weird visual of Hitoshi painting runes and lines only for them to disappear into thin air a moment later.

Until they didn't. Some final stroke broke the spell entirely, and in a moment Hitoshi had gone from holding air to holding the arm of a splotchy faced girl who looked to be about their age. The mark on her arm was a little circle with a triangle inside, the blank space filled in with tiny text. Hitoshi had painted some kind of inverted version onto it that looked pretty complicated.

She gasped and started crying (again, from what it looked like).

"I- I can see me." She looked up at the two of them, "You can see me, too?"

Denki couldn't see Hitoshi's expression, but he nodded, and in response Toru started sobbing in earnest, launching herself forward to cling onto Hitoshi with a hug that he was too surprised to return. A hug that lasted a little too long in Denki's opinion -- couldn't she see that Hitoshi was uncomfortable ?

Toru eventually realized what she had done and pulled away, cheeks flushed with embarrassment. Hitoshi's cheeks had gone a little pink too, and for some reason noticing that made Denki's chest feel tight.

"T-thank you so much." She wiped at her face, "How can I ever repay you?"

"Witches should only be paid with what can be afforded." Hitoshi muttered, "And don't thank me yet."

The acting hedgewitch heaved a sigh, "You need to go home and apologize to the spirit you offended. Apologize for not knowing what you did wrong, for good measure. Pour two bowls of cream, and do that every night until the black mark --" he pointed at Toru's arm, "--Goes away. Then it should be safe to wipe away what I put on you. If it starts to fade before then, you'll have to try and repaint it or you won't be visible again. I'll give you the rest of what I made, and if it runs out before that mark is gone then it's pretty unlikely you're going to be forgiven. You can come back here if that happens."

"O-okay." She said unevenly, "Is… Is there anything else?"

Hitoshi stood and took the bowl of paint from Denki to go decant it into a bottle. He seemed to consider his answer for a long moment, eventually settling on, "If the spirit confronts you about any of this, send them to me." He paused, "It's Hitoshi Shinso, by the way."

Denki stared. He might not know a lot about magic, but that sounded like Hitoshi was putting an awful lot of accountability on himself for this. He swallowed nervously.

"You should probably get going as soon as you can." Denki said, "You probably want to have as many chances as possible…?"

Hitoshi nodded in agreement and held out the bottle of paint and a brush for Toru to take.

"If you need an escort we might be able to find one. I imagine it's much more dangerous to travel alone when you're actually visible."

"No, that's okay." Toru sighed, "I'm used to making deliveries on my own, this isn't much different."

Then she bowed deeply, "But thank you so much for your help, Sir Hedgewitch and--"

She glanced up at Denki, clearly not knowing what to say.

"Denki." He introduced himself, though he felt like it was a little pointless by now.

"--And Denki."

Toru saw herself out. If Denki had been polite, he would have at least escorted her out of the woods, if not to the edge of town, but his focus was entirely consumed by the way Hitoshi slumped into his chair, head in his hands, as soon as the girl was gone. He'd kept his cool in front of the person who needed help, but now that it was just them, he appeared to be, as Denki had once put it, ' freaking out.'

"That was so dumb." Came Hitoshi's muffled voice, "Why did I tell her to give a spirit my name, that was so dumb ."

"Wh- no hey!" Denki circled around the chair, "You were just trying to make sure she didn't get in trouble for coming to you." He swallowed, "I think it's cool that you'd do all that for someone."

He pulled Hitoshi into a hug, but unlike before the other boy raised his arms and loosely hugged back, smothering his face into Denki's chest.

(In the future, when he understood what he was feeling, Denki would write poetry about the moment. For now, though he tightened the hug, as though it could crush the butterflies that had suddenly started fluttering in his stomach)

"Do you think I did that right?" Hitoshi mumbled into his shirt. Denki didn't even have to think about his answer.

"You always do."

Denki was fifteen, in the middle of a spring that made him keep sneezing, when he realized his feelings.

Denki had been even more upset than Hitoshi to find out that the situation with Toru had been a 'logical ruse ' -- set up by Aizawa to test Hitoshi and see if he was ready to take on more responsibility. He'd passed, of course, and since that day had been letting Hitoshi take care of things on his own more often. That included tonight, when Aizawa had been asked to help with some business in the next town over and again, left Hitoshi in charge.

Hitoshi was a little more used to it now, but Denki still took the excuse to go over and visit him anyways. His mom had long since decided that it was safer for him to sleep at the witch's house than to try and walk home in the dark. Aizawa had surprisingly agreed, and by now he'd stayed over at the witch's house more than a few times. It was a nice place , cozy, and with everything Denki could possibly need to distract himself with -- there were books (for reading), papers (for writing), and Hitoshi (for bothering).

They'd both had something of a growth spurt over the last year -- or to be more precise, Denki had a growth spurt, and Hitoshi was still in the middle of having a growth spurt. He was already almost a full head taller than Denki and didn't show any signs of slowing down. His voice had gotten deeper, too -- again, much more than Denki's had. The changes had come with other problems for the hedgewitch as well; Hitoshi had started developing headaches, and on top of that, had been having even more trouble sleeping than usual. The benefit to being a witch, though, was that you could just go to yourself to solve your problems.

That's what Hitoshi was doing tonight, poring over books, finding and grinding up plants to make an incense that might help him sleep. Denki was helping, albeit in a rather unfocused capacity.

"Ooh." He muttered, "This says that gingko gives good dreams. Don't you have that?"

"I think so…" Hitoshi searched the drawers until he pulled out a bright yellow dried leaf, in that distinctive shape. He considered it for a moment, then shrugged before moving to toss it in the mortar, "Eh. Might as well."

That was how the evening crept by -- Denki curled up and cozy with a book while Hitoshi dyed his fingers gray making little cones of powder. Eventually Denki yawned, and Hitoshi looked up from his work with the ghost of a smile.

"Well if you're tired, it's probably pretty late then, huh?"

"Y--" Denki yawned again, "Yeah, probably."

Denki didn't have a second thought about sharing a bed with Hitoshi, because that's what they'd always done. It had gotten a little awkward, now that Hitoshi was so tall, but they'd learned to make do. The only strange thing this time was the purple-haired boy sticking the end of an incense cone into the fireplace coals to light it up and setting it on a plate next to them to burn away. Denki wrinkled his nose.

"Well it smells good. You think it's working?"

There was a soft chuckle beside him. "Dunno. Give it some time."

Maybe it was the incense, or the relaxed evening, or the even breathing of Hitoshi beside him, but Denki didn't toss and turn like he usually did. He was actually able to, for once, lay there and drift off to sleep without any trouble.

Denki didn't tend to remember his dreams, and on the rare occasion that he did, it was usually complete nonsense. But not tonight. Tonight he was in the woods, chasing after Hitoshi -- they dodged through the underbrush and splashed through creeks and broke into a hilly clearing. The grass was slippery with dew as Denki stumbled down the hill -- but before he could tumble too badly Hitoshi turned and caught him. Denki laughed and Hitoshi laughed with him, and to thank him Denki got on his toes to press a kiss to his cheek. A smile bloomed across Hitoshi's face -- one Denki rarely got to see,  the one he gave when he forgot anyone was looking at him, usually reserved for when kittens gave him attention, now directed at him. Hitoshi cradled Denki's face in his hand and kissed him back. On the lips. And it was nice , so when he pulled away, Denki pulled him down and kissed him again. And again. And again, until the haze of sleep grew too light and the scene slipped away.

Denki faded back into awareness rather slowly, his whole body feeling heavy. His eyes drifted open to see Hitoshi, illuminated in the morning sun, sound asleep. Still not fully awake, it felt like it only made sense for Denki to reach his hand out and brush a lock of stray hair out of Hitoshi's face, to lean forward and --

Hitoshi made a tiny sound at being disturbed and Denki jerked his hand back , heart suddenly in his throat. What was he doing? He wasn't dreaming anymore! And why did he even dream about something like that in the first place ? Hitoshi was his best friend, and friends didn't --

Denki squeezed his eyes shut and buried his face into the blanket, heat crawling up his face. It was just a dream. Just a stupid dream. He shook his head like it would help him dislodge the thought, but it only had the effect of shaking the bedframe enough to creak. Hitoshi had always been a light sleeper, and with his recent troubles it was enough to make the boy stir.

Denki let out a long breath and tried to force down his panic. There was nothing even worth panicking over, because it was just a dream , and Hitoshi had no idea what he almost did!

Denki wrenched the blanket off his face and pushed himself up so he was sitting over Hitoshi, the movement prompting the other boy to squint his eyes open. When they focused on Denki, though, his face relaxed, the corner of his lips curled into a small smile and oh no, that really hadn't made the feeling go away, why was his heart beating so fast?

"Mornin'" Hitoshi slurred, then reached up to rub at his eyes, "Huh. I think that stuff actually worked."

"Yeah." Denki agreed, throat scratchy. It had worked, alright .

"--Denki." He flinched as there was a light flick to his forehead, "You were staring. You alright?"

"Yeah." He croaked again, hoping his face wasn't too red. Why was he staring ? Had Hitoshi called his name more than once? "I think I overslept, mom wanted me to help out at the store in the morning."

It wasn't exactly a lie. His mom always wanted him to help around the store, he just rarely actually did it.

"Oh." Said Hitoshi, now faintly frowning, "Well you should probably get going then."

Denki made the quickest exit he'd ever managed from Hitoshi's house, aware and feeling guilty of the worried look the other boy had sported as he'd left. But he had to go, because he had to stop thinking about it, and he wasn't going to be able to do that with Hitoshi around .

Except as he got home and started stocking shelves (much to his mom's confusion) he was still thinking about it. As he went out that afternoon to sit by the creek with Hanta as he tried fishing, he was still thinking about it. As he laid in bed that night, staring up at the dark ceiling, he was still thinking about it.

Denki had been kissed, twice, if you were only counting on the lips. Once, with Hanta, when they had agreed to see why people did it, and once with Ochaco after he'd bribed her with a fancy pastry, to see if it was any different with a girl. It was fine , he liked it plenty, but it wasn't that big of a deal. Which is why it didn't make sense for him to want to do it with Hitoshi so badly.

No , he didn't want to kiss Hitoshi. He had just dreamed about it, and that was different.

He spent the next few days not exactly avoiding Hitoshi, but certainly not going over to his house. He had to work himself out before being alone with the hedgewitch's apprentice again, and that meant at least not staring at him like an idiot every time he saw him. Which was on occasion, as he passed through town to do something-or-other. When he spotted Denki he swept him up and down with a concerned gaze, like he was trying to make sure he was okay . That look made Denki's heart start fluttering all over again, which -- ugh . Why did he have to care so much?

He couldn't keep it up forever, though. After a few days of this he looked up to a knock on his bedroom door to find Hitoshi leaning on the doorway, head tilted and eyebrows furrowed.

Denki himself was leaned over his desk, trying to put his feelings to paper, because he'd been advised that not only would it help, it would make some of the best poetry. He didn't know about the second part, but the first part was absolutely not true. The sight of Hitoshi had heat flooding back to his face entirely against his will.

"Um." Said Denki, "Hi."

"…Hi." Responded Hitoshi, one hand creeping to the back of his neck in what Denki now recognized as a nervous tic, "Are you… Okay?"

Denki didn't really know how to respond to that without embarrassing himself so he didn't. Instead he just stared, like an idiot, causing Hitoshi eyes to slip to  ground as he continued.

"It's just that you haven't visited in a few days, and you usually do. And every time I see you around town you don't… Wave or anything like usual. But I don't… Know why? If it's something I did --"

"No!" Denki cut him off, finally finding his voice. Because the very last thing he wanted was for some stupid dream to drive a wedge between them, "It's not -- Well you didn't --" He huffed a sigh, "I've just been feeling really weird since uh -- the last time I was there." And that really wasn't a good explanation, so he scrambled for one that might work, "Do you think it's possible that the incense you made could have lingering effects or something?"

That had probably been the wrong thing to say. It triggered the switch from best-friend Hitoshi to hedgewitch Hitoshi, the other boy stepping forward and leaning in as if to get a good look at the dilation of Denki's pupils. Leaning in close , which was not really helping things. Denki stayed very still.

"It shouldn't have done anything like that…" Hitoshi scratched at his chin, "I even asked Aizawa what he thought about it, and he said it sounded fine."

"W-well it's not, like, physical or anything. I just. Uh. Had a dream that I haven't been able to stop thinking about." Please just don't ask what it was about.

"Huh." Hitoshi leaned back, thankfully "It shouldn't have caused anything like that, but sometimes dreams can be…" He hummed, "Do you think it might have been prophetic or something?"

Denki blushed hard . Hitoshi was in his room, casually implying that a dream he had about kissing him might be prophetic . Not that he knew that, which somehow made it even worse.

Hitoshi saw that reaction and took it in totally the wrong way, teeth flashing in the long, cat-like smile he got when he was teasing someone.

"Or was it an embarrassing dream? You know, apparently it's perfectly normal for your body to react to things in your sleep, especially for boys our age. People mistake things like that for demons all the time."

" Shut up. " Denki wheezed. If Hitoshi continued down that path he would never be able to look him in the eye ever again. "It was just weird, that's all."

Hitoshi caught the tone and dropped the teasing, "I haven't done much dream interpretation, but if you want to tell me about it..."

Absolutely not .

" I just need to get over it, I think." Denki mumbled, "Sorry for worrying you."

Denki physically couldn't blush anymore, or else he would have when Hitoshi reached out to lay a hand on his arm.

"It's fine." He said gently, "I'm just glad you're not hurt."

And there was that genuine concern -- the thing that made him like Hitoshi so much. That--

Ah.

Shit.

Months passed, and Denki continued to have dreams, without the aid of any incense.

Denki was fifteen when he started to understand why bards sang about pining so much.

He'd eventually come to terms with it-- he wanted to kiss Hitoshi. Of course he wanted to kiss Hitoshi, who wouldn't? But he couldn't . Because they were best friends -- just friends -- and if he did, Hitoshi would probably get uncomfortable and not want to talk to him again and that would be far, far worse than not getting to kiss him. The fact that It wasn't going to happen didn't make him stop wanting it, though.

So he wrote. He wrote a lot, and a lot of the poems were probably very bad, but that was okay because he didn't intend to ever share them.

Usually Denki would show off poems, especially the ones he was proud of, to anyone, but he only shared everything with Hitoshi, because Hitoshi was the only person in town who never once questioned why he wrote in the first place.

(" It seems like it makes you happy." He'd said with a shrug, "Do you need another reason?")

 He couldn't show him these, though. It was painfully obvious who most of them were about.

…Not that everyone else didn't already know. Unable to hold it in, he'd confessed to his friends after just a few days, and they had been sympathetic for him, still not quite understanding that Hiotshi totally could kiss him back, if he wanted to. Which he didn't . Because they were friends .

Denki did his very best to keep things normal between them, but he couldn't help himself -- he started testing boundaries.

Not that he was doing anything new , exactly. He was just doing things more . Hitoshi had always seemed to begrudgingly accept Denki leaning on him, or hanging off him, or hugging him whenever the urge struck. With this new desire to be as close to Hitoshi as possible, he started indulging a lot more often -- feeling a thrill of excitement and nervousness and guilt every time Hitoshi let it happen. Once he had even huffed and put his chin directly on top of Denki's head so that he continued focusing on what he was working on with the smaller boy basically in his lap. Denki had practically short circuited at that one.

He did all this knowing he wasn't going to say anything about his feelings. It was a particularly cruel form of self torture, but sometimes Hitoshi would look at him, and he could almost imagine…

Well. Imagining was all he was going to do. And he did it a lot.

Ever since he had learned about poetry -- and if you asked his mom, even before that -- Denki had been consistently bothering the bards that came through town. Enough so that by now, almost all of them knew his name on sight.  He didn't quite mean to get advice from them about Hitoshi, but he got it anyway. In fact, it happened to be from the very same bard who'd convinced him to try writing in the first place. The bard who always winked at Aizawa when he came in, so Denki had a strong suspicion he knew what it was like to have feelings for a witch.

That wasn't what he asked about though. Not directly. Denki waited until after the bard had finished performing (an act that had involved a lot of stomping and yelling from the audience) and brought him a stack of poems he'd written since the last time they'd met. If this time a lot of them had a sleepy-eyed hedgewitches apprentice as their subject matter, that was just a coincidence. And that wasn't even what he brought up -- the first thing the bard said when he'd finished skimming through the pile was, "Wow, kiddo, you've really improved on these since the last time! You're halfway to being a bard yourself!"

And a lot like the first time they had met, Denki had sputtered and said, "Me? A bard? I don't even know how to play an instrument!"

"Some bards get by on just their voice alone, you know." The man winked at him, and Denki found himself pulled into thought.

He didn't hate the idea, to be honest. The one thing he felt like he was good at wasn't exactly appreciated here, but if he went traveling he might find somewhere where it was . It wasn't like he'd never thought about leaving -- the books he read hinted at a world so much wider than he was sure he'd ever get to see…

The bard drew his attention back with a wry smile and a lean in.

"That in mind, lemme give you some advice. Life can change fast. Sometimes you gotta make sure you make the best use of the time you've got with someone."

His eyes flickered not so subtly to where Aizawa was still huddled in the corner, which answered that, as far as Denki was concerned. He didn't have time to think too hard about it though, because his mind drifted back to Hitoshi. Could Denki stand to leave him behind? To make the best time they had together meant…

"I think I get it…" He said slowly, gathering papers, "Thank you. For uh -- Everything."

He had a lot on his mind for the rest of the night, and he carried it with him when he went to visit Hitoshi the next afternoon. He found the purple haired boy behind the house, stretched out in the dappled light that filtered between the trees. One thing that had come as a result of the hedgewitch getting less sleep at night was the increase of (attempted) naps. Denki just found a clean looking spot and laid down next to him, earning himself a single eye opening to glance him over.

"Well hello to you, too." Came the hedgewitch's deep voice, "Come to join me in the land of the sleepless?"

"Nah." Said Denki as he shifted to stop a rock from digging into his back, "I’m about to pass out right here, actually."

Hitoshi rolled his eyes and let his head fall back. Denki took the opportunity, like he usually did, to talk.

"I think I met the bard Aizawa likes last night. Or, well, I think I've met him before, but I figured out who he was."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." Denki fell silent for a long second, "He said I could be a bard, if I wanted."

Hitoshi hummed in consideration.

"I could see it. Bards seem like they have a lot to say, and you always do. You already write poetry."

Denki stared up at the sky through the leaves.

"…If I decided to do that, I'd have to travel."

"Mm." Hitoshi sounded a lot less enthused at that idea, or maybe Denki was just imagining that. "You'd have to visit a lot then, or else I'd turn into a grouch like Aizawa."

Denki chuckled, but…

Was he reading too much into things? They were talking about the bard that Aizawa was supposedly in love with. Was Hitoshi saying…?

He was still a bit too much of a coward to admit anything out loud, but with his heart thundering, Denki reached out and took Hitoshi's hand, threading their fingers together where they laid in the grass. Hitoshi squeezed it in response.

Maybe he'd like to leave someday, but there were some things worth staying around for, too.

Denki was sixteen, right when the leaves were starting to change colors, when he finally did something about his feelings.

He'd been looking for the moment for a while. Trying to figure out the words, for all that he was a self-professed master of them. But how and when was it okay to tell your friend, ' hey, I like you, but I also want to kiss you, and I'd be sad if you didn't want to kiss me back, but I'd be even more sad if you stopped being my friend '? 

He'd gone over to Hitoshi's house late in the afternoon, for no particular reason, only to find the other teen meticulously packing his bag like he did when he was about to go off and do some job. Denki had sauntered in, starting messing with the lantern on the table and asked, "What do you need this for? Planning on staying out late?"

"Mmhm." The taller boy had hummed, "New moon tonight. Supposed to be easier to find certain plants when it's dark out because they glow."

"Ooh, really?" Denki reached over and snatched a bit of folded paper from where Hitoshi had stored  in a side pocket. Ever prepared, Hitoshi had sketched out the plants he was looking for -- some kind of clover, and some kind of flower, both of which supposedly had a slight glow that was hard to spot under even faint moonlight.

"That's so cool!" Denki proclaimed, "Take me with you, I want to see!"

It was far from the first time Denki had gone with him on such an outing, so Hitoshi just shrugged and said, "Sure, if you really want."

Denki really hadn't thought it through, because if he had, he might have hesitated before going out into the dark on a chilly night with his crush. Because he had a practical need to bundle up next to him, to loop their arms together and press close as Hitoshi guided them through the woods. As always, Hitoshi allowed it, even though it was clearly slowing them down.

By now, Denki was over feeling embarrassed about it. He liked Hitoshi. Really liked him. Liked being close to him and liked hearing his low voice patiently explain things to him he would likely never need to know. Denki knew he could be flighty with his feelings, but these ones hadn't gone away, and they didn't seem like they were going to.

To Denki's surprise Hitoshi didn't lead them deeper into the woods, but out of them -- down a winding deer trod into a place where the trees started to thin out, the grass got long, and the land started to get a little hilly.

"The clover is supposed to glow a sort of pale green." Hitoshi murmured as he dimmed the lantern, "I think the flowers are yellowish."

A brief glance around didn't have Denki finding either of them, but his eyes also hadn't quite adjusted yet.. He found himself glancing up and to the side, to where he could just make out the shape of Hitoshi's face in the dark. Something glinted in his eyes, and Denki looked up to find it.

" Oh ." He gasped, tugging at Hitoshi's elbow, "A shooting star."

It was gone by the time Hitoshi looked up to see it, but that hardly mattered because it was followed by another a moment later, and two more after that.

"Oh." Hitoshi echoed, and then, as if it were more a reflex for him to say it more than an actual warning, "If you make a wish be careful how you word it."

Denki hummed a non-committal noise in response. Without really realizing he was doing it, he put more weight on Hitoshi's arm until they were both sitting in the grass, looking up at the sky. You could really see everything, on a night like this -- no clouds, no moon, more stars than he could count, and some of them streaking across the sky right in front of them.

"What are you wishing for?" He asked quietly, like being too loud would shatter the moment.

"…I don't think you're supposed to say it out loud." Hitoshi said back lowly.

Denki had wishes but couldn't quite clarify any of them with words, at the moment. If he wanted to make them, he should be looking at the stars, but instead his gaze was fixed on the profile of the boy next to him, purple eyes still fixed on the star shower above them. Until they weren't;  Hitoshi had noticed his unusual stillness and turned to check on him.

Oh, they were kind of close together, weren't they? That had been Denki's intention, but it looked like Hitoshi had just noticed it. Denki could feel the way he stiffened, and hear the way his breath caught. Couldn't see his expression all that well, but could feel the way their breath mingled from the proximity. 

It didn't make him quite as nervous as he expected it to.

It wouldn't be accurate to say that Denki kissed Hitoshi. It wouldn't be accurate to say that Hitoshi had kissed Denki, either. They both leaned in, tentatively, but not stopping until their lips brushed. Hitoshi's were cold and slightly chapped, and much, much better than Hanta or Ochako's had been. It was short and chaste and Denki felt like his heart was about to explode, mind fixed, for some reason, on the way Hitoshi's warm hand tightened its grip on his arm.

"I--" Started the taller boy as they drew away from each other, though Denki didn't let him go far.

"I really like you." Denki said in a rush, before Hitoshi could talk himself out of anything, "And that was on purpose. I've wanted to do it for a while, actually."

"Oh." Said Hitoshi. And then softly, "I didn't think those were supposed to get granted so fast."

A tremulous smile found its way onto Denki's face.

"I don't think it's over yet, if you want to get in more wishes."

The smile Hitoshi answered him with was better than the one in his dreams because it was real ; wide and almost goofy, eyes crinkling at the edges as it slowly grew.

"I might have a few."

If Aizawa noticed them returning home much later than they should have, clothes rumpled and lips bruised, he didn't mention it.

Denki turned seventeen on the day he made it big.

He was sure, at this point, that everyone was at least a little disgusted with the sappy couple he and Hitoshi had become. The hedgewitch wasn't much for PDA, but every time he waved at Hitoshi as he walked through town and got a lopsided smile back his friends would gag and roll their eyes. The fact that every single one of them had caught them making out at some point or another probably didn't help things, but what was Denki supposed to do? Not kiss his boyfriend? Ridiculous. Like it was his fault seeing Hitoshi smile made his chest swell with so much emotion he couldn't contain it?

His mom had warned him that love was a strong word to use, which meant that it fit the situation perfectly; Denki felt what he was feeling really, really strongly. 

Things were perfect -- mostly.

 Because the same advice that had convinced Denki to try -- " Life can change fast. Sometimes you gotta make sure you make the best use of the time you've got with someone. " -- was also what had him worrying that things couldn't be this good forever. The more he thought about it, the more he thought he really did want to travel. He liked his town, he liked his friends, he loved Hitoshi, but the more he thought about living his whole life there, working in the store and wasting his days away, the more something inside him itched to escape.

On the rare nights he happened to feel introspective, he brought it up with Hitoshi, who rationally pointed out that with his focus on poetry as it was, his best bet would be to head to where royalty was and try and get a patron. And when Denki, heart fluttering with anxiety, pointed out that meant he'd have to go away , Hitoshi had just fixed him with an unwavering look and said that they both knew this village was too small for him.

"And besides ." He'd added with a lopsided smile, " I know you'd come and visit. If Aizawa can handle a little long distance, I can too ."

The confidence in him -- that he'd make it, that he'd come back -- did not go unnoticed. It made something deep in his chest feel warm, and Denki held that feeling close so he could try and write about it later.

The carriage showing up early in the morning wasn't really a shock -- their little village was nestled just off a major trade route, and people on their way through stopped by all the time. What was a shock was the way it all but limped into town, one wheel barely holding on, side splintered with arrows and covered in scorch marks. It was a fancy looking thing too, and it came with a retinue, which spoke of someone important. There was certainly a story there, and one Denki was eager to figure out.

 It was quite simple for Denki to just slide into the bar and stand behind the corner as the people inside asked for lodging. Simpler still for him to wait for an angry blonde bodyguard to spit "That's Prince Midoriya to you!" only to be hushed by the soft spoken man at the front.

Prince. Prince! A prince was staying the night in his village. He seemed nice, too, insisting that everyone was paid properly for helping them out, constantly apologizing for his over-aggressive guard (which Denki couldn't exactly fault since they had apparently been attacked ). Denki hadn't spent too many years schmoozing to bards to not at least make an attempt at talking to him.

It was kind of stunning how easy it was -- just step up to the booth the retinue was huddled at, wait for the prince to talk down his own man, grin and introduce himself and wind up getting pulled into a conversation with the prince and his royal retinue . The bodyguard with the red hair turned out to be a lot more friendly than the blonde, but Denki couldn't help but prod at someone who was so easily wound up.

He wasn't even thinking about it, really. He was asked what he did around here and he mentioned it offhand, same breath as he said he helped his mom with the store next door, "--Oh, and I liked to write poetry, sometimes."

The prince got a sparkle in his eye and asked if he could hear some, Denki ran to go get it and recited some of his best to the room to a round of contemplative applause, and even then, he really didn't think anything of it, not even when the prince leaned forward and asked, "And you're self taught?"

"Well I've managed to get a couple books." He'd shrugged, "And I talk to travelers every time I get the chance, but yeah, I didn't have a teacher or anything."

And in an unusual turn of events for him, he got complimented, got told he was good , and oh, well, actually the king and the prince both had a habit of fostering talent they found when they traveled, if Denki would want to come back with them? He agreed without even thinking about it -- of course he said yes, it was that sort of opportunity that you didn't dream of saying no to, because it just didn't happen .

It was just, well, the group was on a schedule, and they were leaving tomorrow , if that wasn't too much trouble. It wasn't, not for something like this , and not with the help of his mom who had eavesdropped on the whole thing, just as curious about the nobles in town as he was. She'd cried and hugged him and gone with him to his room to help him pack, which turned out to be a whole ordeal because over the years Denki had gathered a lot of stuff and now had to decide what parts of his life were worth fitting into a beaten up old travel trunk.

Right after the fact that, and the thoughts of 'oh wow, this is really happening ' were the only things on his mind. It was only when there was a knock on his door frame, when he looked up to see Hitoshi peering into the room, eyebrows pinched in confusion and concern, that his heart dropped like a stone. Because yeah, he was leaving, but he was leaving, and...

"Hitoshi --" Denki shot to his feet unsteadily, "I, uh--"

Denki glanced at his mom, who was holding a half-folded shirt and eyeing them warily.

"I'll give you two a moment?" She offered after a long awkward silence. Denki nodded stiffly, twisting his fingers together as she stepped out of the room and Hitoshi bowed his head and stepped in. He didn't seem upset, not yet, just confused. His eyes swept around the messy room, pausing on the half-packed trunk.

"I take it there's something big going on?"

"Yeah." Denki breathed, "You know how there's a prince in town?"

Hitoshi's lips quirked up at that, just barely, "How could I not?"

"Well --" He swallowed thickly, "Long story short he liked my poetry and wants to sponsor me? And I said yes? We're leaving tomorrow, I guess, and I was going to tell you, but I've only known for like an hour --"

He wasn't cut off by Hitoshi's authoritative " Denki " but rather by the hug that practically crushed him against his boyfriend's chest.

"That's amazing." Hitoshi's voice rumbled through him, "You deserve this."

Denki clung to his shirt and didn't dare look up, because even though that's what Hitoshi said , Denki's heart was still thrumming like a hummingbird's wings. Because when he'd made his plans to travel, it wasn't anywhere as far away as the capital city -- almost a full month away on horseback , which would make coming back to visit incredibly difficult. And because it was Hitoshi.

Don’t ask me to stay . He thought, face buried in the taller boy's shirt. You're the only thing here that could make me stay .

Hitoshi didn't ask. He ran his fingers through Denki's hair. Once, twice, slowly like he was considering something, before finally saying, "Well it's good timing. I guess. For your gift."

He moved to reach for something in his pocket and Denki finally risked a looked up. Hitoshi was smiling, but there was a tightness around his eyes, and Denki had known him long enough to recognize that as the concealed sadness it was. Then he was blinking as something got pulled over his head -- a necklace, a leather cord with one of the quartz crystals he was sure he'd seen around the hedgewitch's house dangling from the end. Only it wasn't just a plain clear crystal anymore, now there were grooves carved into it, precise circles and symbols filled in with a burnished looking metal, slightly warm to the touch.

"Magic." He breathed. Denki still hadn't seen that much 'real' magic, but this was undoubtedly that.

"Yeah." Hitoshi went to rub at his neck, "It's supposed to keep you safe, and if you're traveling, well…"

A shrug, a flicker of eyes to the ground, and Denki found no use pretending like he wasn't going to cry over this, because he already was.

"It's perfect." He sniffled and wrapped his arms around Hitoshi. The hedgewitch does the same, letting out a long sigh and pressing his lips to the top of Denki's head.

"I'll miss you."

"I'll write as much as I can." Denki said, though the words were hardly understandable between the tightness of his throat and the way they were muffled into Hitoshi's shirt. And then a sob he couldn't quite repress, "I'll miss you too."

Denki may have, perhaps, not realized the fact that while he could send as many letters home as he wanted, they couldn't always afford to send letters back to him.
 
The capitol was beautiful, the palatial estate he'd been given a room in even more so. He probably wrote a letter a week when he first arrived, and sent off a thick package of pages the first time he found a messenger willing to stop at his out-of-the way village. He got a return package back three months later that held a message from nearly everyone in town. He had written more in the meantime, and sent a response as soon as he could, only for the next message from home to come back almost six months later than that.

It wasn't cheap for him to send letters, and he had a fancy new court poet's salary to work with. Back at home it was something people had to work together to afford, and that was if they could find someone willing to make the trip.

(Hedgewitches, who basically didn't make money at all, had to rely on a messenger needing a service from them and being willing to deliver a letter in return. Denki did not get very many letters from Hitoshi that didn't come with everyone else's).

In an effort not to feel hopelessly homesick, Denki threw himself into his new role. It was practically everything he dreamed it would be --The place had a library, a room as big as a village house, dedicated entirely to books! He'd probably read more than he had in his entire life in the first month of living there, and he'd hardly even made a dent. Maybe all of that reading wasn't other poetry, but he was prepared to give a speech about drawing inspiration from other sources if anyone asked.

No one did. Because around here it was perfectly normal, even valued, to enjoy reading.

As Prince Midoriya explained on the trip, the palace  was filled with other artists under his employ. Other people who, unlike almost everyone back home, actually appreciated his work. And they were, for the most part, friendly, too!

He was  the only poet. Actually, the prince seemed to be perfectly happy to support anyone he deemed interesting. Across the hall from him lived a tailor, a self proclaimed fashion trendsetter from a foreign land, and further down a reclusive painter who Denki had only ever seen stalking the halls at night. Both of their works were amazing in Denki's admittedly uneducated opinion. And there were even more staying in another wing! Denki had so far spotted a woman inventor, often smudged in grime, and had quickly made fast friends with another woman who was the leader of a dance troupe, often spending afternoons hanging out with her in the ballroom or gardens.

Apparently, as he soon learned, this had the chance to be interpreted as indecent by the nobles who sometimes also frequented the estate. Seeing as how neither he nor Mina had been raised noble, neither of them could bring themselves to care all-too much. As long as the prince didn't raise a fuss, it didn't matter.

With all this new inspiration it was both easier and harder to write than ever. Sometimes he would write about the elegance of dance or the beauty of the natural world. Sometimes he would get overwhelmed with options and find himself unable to write at all.

Sometimes he thought about writing about love, and his mind inevitably drifted to starlit nights and smoky rooms. To a place he didn't know when he'd get to go back to -- if he'd get to go back at all. He hoped that Hitoshi wasn't as lonely as he felt, sometimes; he hoped he wasn't sequestering himself away like Aizawa did but feared that he was.

He couldn't quite make himself risk traveling back though. His job was too good to put into jeopardy by going away for a few months; an opportunity he'd never get again. Maybe when he was more secured, an established poet, he could go back and visit for the holidays. He tried to comfort himself with the idea but it never quite got there -- was it fair to Hitoshi, to have to wait around for someone who could only be around a few weeks a year?

And he wasn't even at that point yet. Denki tended to write poems about feeling heartsick, instead.

As it turned out, inaction was easy.. Time passed without Denki really realizing it, until it had been a year and he was celebrating his next birthday at the manor with a party more extravagant than a village festival. Life continued on, Denki kept sending letters without really expecting replies, always pleasantly surprised when one did arrive. Another year passed that way, and another.

Denki was twenty when he got the letter.

It was nicer than what he usually got from a letter back home. Someone had splurged on high quality paper, as if that would soften the blow. It read:

Denki,

Aizawa has decided that I'm trained enough to start making my own way as a hedgewitch. Seeing as the village is so small it doesn't have a need for two, I've decided to travel. I don't know where I'm going yet, but you don't have to worry about me. As for you I know you've found plenty of wonderful things up in the capitol, I hope one of them will keep you happy.

May we meet again someday,
Hitoshi

Well, he was as concise as ever.

Denki almost let himself be optimistic about the declaration. Maybe if Hitoshi was traveling, he'd come visit? But he knew legitimate witches tended to avoid royalty where they could, and he knew Hitoshi. The hedgewitch had probably had one of his bouts of self-depreciation and decided that Denki could do better, and had left before Denki could try and send a response to convince him otherwise.
 
(He couldn't even bring himself to be upset at Hitoshi over it, really. What was he supposed to do, wait around for him forever?)
 
That didn't mean it didn't hurt, though. And it didn't make him wonder any less.

Would Hitoshi have stayed if he had? Or would they have found a way to travel together? It was too late to know, now. Now, Hitoshi wouldn't be there, even if he did manage to go back.

The first days after receiving the letter went by in a haze. When someone noticed his bad mood, he explained it away with the explanation that he'd gotten some bad news from home.

When days turned to weeks, and started to creep into months, it was Mina who sat him down and demanded he talk about it, and who encouraged him to do something to work through his feelings rather than wallow in self-pity.
 
In retrospect, his poetry from that time was horribly depressing, and only made him feel a little bit better. What helped more was being dragged to the city outside the palace -- an activity that he loved but didn't do nearly as often as he liked. He was afraid of looking irresponsible, for one thing, and he didn't exactly know how to navigate safely when his home town could fit into three city blocks.
 
Mina, who had grown up in a city, didn't have such concerns. The idea of there being enough bars close enough to be able to go to more than one in a night was completely novel to him. Once he got used to it, they started inviting others along, and Denki could now proudly say that he'd been involved in a bar fight -- which was to say that he'd stood behind Katsuki and shouted along with the rest of the crowd as he put a guy through a table.

Prince Midoriya didn't even flinch when they told him. He'd just sighed, fixed his head guard with this tight mouthed look, and asked which place he should send the money to, for the cost of repairs.

Distractions helped, but time helped more. He didn't have Hitoshi, but it wasn't as though he had lost the memories of the good times they'd had. Maybe childhood loves were supposed to be bittersweet?

Which is what it had been. A remnant of a childhood that he was now outgrowing -- even if it felt like it had been more than that, it didn't matter.  He was here now, and he liked it here, so maybe he'd let himself be happy.
 
That didn't mean he wasn't completely gobsmacked the first time someone flirted with him, though.

The whole table had laughed at him when he'd returned from the bar with drinks, mouth hanging open.

"Honey I know you're from the sticks." Mina had giggled, "I just wanted to make sure you knew she was into  you."
"I know." Denki had responded, elated, "I kinda forgot that was okay now. How bad do you think I'd be flirting back?"
"Very." Bakugo grumbled into his drink.

He was, and he didn't let that stop him one bit. In a place as big as this, he didn't really have to worry about doing something so stupid everyone in the village would hear about it (which had happened more than once). His foolishness was widely contained to the bar, his friends, and whoever he was trying to flirt with. Apparently some of the things he did were considered less stupid and more charming around here. Who knew?

And so, time continued to pass. Denki lived his life as fully as he could, which ended up being very. He didn't even realize that he'd gone from poet to renowned, maybe even a little famous poet, until the prince started inviting him to perform his works in front of people he was trying to impress. Like he wasn't some self-taught nobody from a backwater nowhere. Denki tried not to let it go to his head.
 
He was considered good, which surprised him more than he liked to admit. And that meant he started to get a reputation. And that meant people started giving him the time of day when he tried his terrible flirting on them.

The irony was not lost on him when he took a liking to a traveling bard who visited the court -- she'd liked him back, and they'd really hit it off, but she wasn't willing to tie herself down to one place or person just yet. They'd been on good terms when she'd left, but when Denki thought of her, it was with a tinge of jealousy. Sometimes, late at night, he wondered how close he had been to that being him? Where would he be? Who would he be with?

The poem that came out of that musing, about missed opportunities, ended up being his most popular one to date.  Denki was never quite sure how he was supposed to feel about that.

___ (if cutting into 2 chapters, maybe do it here?)

 
Denki was twenty two when he heard a rumor that should have been totally innocuous.
 
It started among the household servants -- whispers that the prince was bringing someone new back to the palace. This itself wasn't at all unusual -- Prince Midoriya found someone interesting practically every time he went out. What was different was the insistence that, whoever it was, the prince had found them in a brothel. Which everyone tittered about, including Denki. But he also knew the prince well enough by now to know that he got flustered at the mere hint of a dirty joke.

Denki liked the household staff, was friendly with most of them, but he was willing to bet that they were exaggerating this time.

As it turned out, he would have lost.

There was one person who knew the prince's business better than anyone else, and Denki had the dubious honor of being his friend,that was Katsuki. Katsuki, who was the prince's head guard, and as such was usually with the prince when he went on his wild adventures. Katsuki also hated rumors with a passion, so Denki waited until he'd had a few drinks -- more than a few drinks -- before leaning in and asking about this new guest the prince had invited back.

Katsuki had plenty to complain about, as usual.

"The bastard acted all full of himself, like he was so important he might be able to turn down the damn prince if he asked him to do something." He snorted, "I'm sure that was all a part of his act."

"What act?" Denki asked, not-so-subtly pushing another drink across the table. Bakugo took it before continuing.

"It's -- ugh. You know how all the nobles are getting big into magic and shit right now? Like it's some kind of fashion trend? Well Deku hears of some guy who's supposedly been in town practicing that stuff and runs off to go find him without thinking about where he's going. As fucking usual."

Katsuki was quite probably the only person in the world who could get away with talking about the prince so disrespectfully. Something to do with how they had grown up together.

"So he ran right into a brothel?" Denki supplied. Bakugo threw up his hands.

"I don't think he even fucking noticed until we left! He just runs in asking about the witch or whatever and -- ugh the guy was all 'I have a duty to the people' like doing whatever the damn prince asks isn't his duty. I bet he's a fucking con-man!"

Denki had to admit, the 'duty to the people' bit did sound pretty real, but he wasn’t the one who had met the guy. A con-man could potentially get away with an act for quite a while, depending on who he was dealing with.

"I was best friends with a hedgewitch growing up, actually." Denki said, and even all these years later the reminder made something in his chest feel a little tighter than normal, "If he's a fake, I'm sure I'll be able to spot it."

The  mysterious new guest wasn't formally announced for a few more days, though the time leading up to his arrival saw a new crop of increasingly wild rumors spring up. Was the guy seven feet tall? Did he have slit eyes like a snake? Probably not, but only time would tell.

He got his answers just  a few days later. There was a dinner party to welcome this new visitor, just like he’d had when he moved in.  It wasn't a grand affair compared to something that might be hosted for the nobility, but Denki still remembered feeling wildly out of his depth. So step one to his 'figure out if this guy was  a real witch' plan started with their reaction to everyone else.

 As such, Denki situated himself against the far wall so he could see the witch enter when he was announced. Which again, wasn't anything fancy, just Prince Midoriya  standing from his spot at the head of the room and stuttering through an introduction.

"So ah, for those of you who don't know, I've always been kind of curious about magic. It's popular enough now that people won't think that's odd, so…" There was a moment where his voice trailed to low to hear, before he started and pulled himself back on topic. It was a shame someone in his position wasn't a better public speaker. "Well, uh, more to the point, I've found a hedgewitch who's agreed to teach me about it. He'll be visiting for a while, so please be sure to treat him well!"

It was one of the servants who pulled the door open. They must have announced his name, too, but Denki missed it. He missed everything as soon as he saw who the 'mysterious new guest' was.

Hitoshi looked every bit the part of 'traveling hedgewitch' -- at least to someone who knew what they were looking for. Sure,there were  the dark clothes and jewelry. (Which… Was new. Denki was sure he would have remembered Hitoshi getting his ears pierced). The look alone would have been convincing to a layperson, but the heavy bags slung over his shoulders made him look far more credible to those who were in the know.
 
Not that Denki had even a shred of doubt for Hitoshi's authenticity. He was fairly certain that one of the bags he'd brought with him was the very same one he'd been using since they were ten, though it now sported some noticeable new patches.

There was something different about him, though it took Denki a long moment to place what. It was in the way Hitoshi carried himself -- head high, eyes up, back straight -- like he belonged there as much as any of them. Like he was confident in himself. That was new, too.

…He might also have gotten even taller. Damn it.

Denki wasn't the only one stunned into silence at the sight of him, though it probably wasn't for the same reasons. He wanted very badly to jump up and hug Hitoshi, to ask him a million questions -- hell, ask him how he'd been, but shock kept him rooted in place. Truth be told, the chance of it being Hitoshi had never even crossed his mind.

 With the exception of letters home, Denki had all but left his past behind, and the hope of Hitoshi coming to visit with it. But he couldn't think of another reason for him to be here-- for someone as reclusive as Hitoshi to come to a city? To deal with royalty ? 

Maybe Denki was a little full of himself for hoping that he was that reason. After all, if that were the case, Hitoshi probably would have at least sent a message first.

"Thank you for your hospitality." The witch said with a slight bow. Quiet chatter erupted across the room, but all Denki could focus on was the way Hitoshi looked up, eyes sweeping across the crown analytically, and, yes, definitely pausing on Denki for a second longer than anyone else.

"Ooh, don't tell me you've already been… Bewitched?" Mina laughed into his ear, nudging her elbow into his ribs.
 
"Uh." Denki said blankly. It was a good joke too. 

Unfortunately, the question she posed wasn't all that simple to answer. Because it was Hitoshi , so of course he felt something; but it was Hitoshi who he hadn't seen, and who'd been doing who knows what for five years. 

Like staying in brothels, apparently.

In the end he just sat there gaping as  Prince Midoriya invited Hitoshi to sit with him at dinner as the guest of honor. And maybe that was a good thing. Denki had no idea what pretense Hitoshi had been invited here under and if he had jumped up to greet him it might have put his visit in jeopardy, also not to mention how much etiquette he'd be breaching by barging in on that conversation. So as much as it pained him, Denki stayed in his spot, nibbled at his own food, and didn't march over to his old boyfriend and demand to know what was going on.
 
He was a little comforted by the way, every now and then, Hitoshi's eye would wander away from the prince to land on him. Not obviously, and not for very long, but because he was watching so closely Denki noticed it happen more than once. 

Other than that, Hitoshi appeared to be perfectly polite, and not half as nervous as Denki would have expected for someone who was attracting the attention of everyone in the room. If it had been anyone else, Denki would have been suspicious, but with Hitoshi it just left him baffled. He obviously wasn't going to be the same person he'd left behind, but where in the world had he picked up social skills? Certainly not from Aizawa.

Even after the meal, when Hitoshi was swarmed by others and being asked all kinds of weird, probing, questions, the witch just placidly absorbed it all, sometimes giving some clever response that actually answered nothing. That sort of quick wit was so familiar that it ached, but Denki still didn't approach. In an unusual turn for him, he realized he had no idea what to say -- at least not in front of everyone else.

So he waited -- waited until after Mina asked if he could make someone fall in love (to which Hitoshi responded that it would be unethical -- not that he couldn't) -- waited until people got more tired than curious and wandered back to their rooms. Waited until a house servant approached Hitoshi and led to his own room, which wasn't in the wing Denki was staying in, but close enough that he could get away with sneaking a peek without looking suspicious.

Hitoshi certainly noticed, though, if the sidelong glance back at him was any indication.

He might not have figured out what to say, but he had figured out a plan. A simple one, one that only involved waiting until the halls were empty so he could make it to Hitoshi's room relatively unseen, but it was more than he usually ever bothered with. Thankfully it was easy -- no one in their right mind would go out in the middle of the night to bother a witch, after all. Not unless the issue was very pressing. Denki would like to think that this counted.

When he reached the door, he hesitated. He probably should knock, but the urge to burst into the room was pretty tempting…

That hesitation cost him his dramatic entrance -- hand still raised, the door opened without him doing anything at all. On the other side, Hitoshi froze in place, blinking owlishly like he hadn't expected to see someone waiting for him.

…Denki really should have thought of what he wanted to say before coming over here. After an extended moment of silence the best he could come up with was a stiff, "Hi."

But it was enough -- Hitoshi's stoic, professional, expression finally broke, giving way to a tiny lopsided grin. An expression so familiar that Denki found tears suddenly burning in his eyes.

"Hi." Hitoshi replied, one hand coming up to rub at the back of his neck in a habit that was apparently still present after all these years, "It's uh -- been a while?"

"Yeah." Replied Denki, voice choked. And here he had thought he was going to be able to act at least a little disaffected; actually talking to Hitoshi again had Denki realizing again just how much he had missed him. He took a fortifying breath that he hoped wasn't too obviously shaky  "I guess it has. I wasn't expecting to see you here…?"

Hitoshi huffed out a breath that was his version of a chuckle. "I wasn't really expecting to be here, but I wasn't exactly going to turn down the chance." He shrugged. "Do you want to, uh --?"

Hitoshi made a vague gesture towards himself. He probably meant 'come inside and talk' or something similar, which they would get to, but Denki chose to interpret that as an invitation to hug the life out of him. Hitoshi grunted and took a half step back as Denki practically launched himself into him, but muscle memory took over a moment later and the taller man pulled him into what might have been the best hug he'd ever gotten in his life.

"Yeah." Hitoshi agreed, even though Denki hadn't said anything, "I missed you, too."

The hug lasted for much longer than appropriate by court standards, but Hitoshi likely didn't know and Denki definitely didn't care. When he finally did manage to pry himself away, Denki took the chance to give Hitoshi a more thorough once-over. He had gotten taller, and pierced his ears, and had painted his nails to hide the way they were probably discolored from messing with potion ingredients. Though he couldn't help but linger at the thin, light lines that ran across his knuckles. Scars. Those certainly hadn't been there before.

He wanted to ask, but the words died in his throat. Was it his place to do that, anymore?  Hitoshi hadn't shown up and declared his love for him or anything like that, so-- they were exes, he guessed. But he hadn't seen Hitoshi since they became exes, so he wasn't exactly sure how the taller man really felt about all that. He didn't seem angry, but Hitoshi had always held his emotions close to his chest.
 
Hitoshi's voice snapped him out of his spiral. "Do you want to come in? Catch up? I think I can manage a decent tea with what I have here…"

"Oh, do I!" Denki grasped for a subject change, as well as Hitoshi's arm so he could pull him into the room, "What's all this I've been hearing about a brothel?"

They sat across from each other at a table that was already starting to get cluttered with the variety of random things Denki had come to call 'witch garbage'. He struggled to find a place to set his teacup, and that was nostalgic in its own way.
 
The brothel thing, though, didn't turn out to be nearly as interesting as Denki had been hoping for.

"They don't judge and there's actually a pretty big overlap in client base. It just makes sense as a place to set up shop." Hitoshi explained, as though it was the most sensical thing in the world.

"So you make aphrodisiacs." Denki waggled his eyebrows. "What's there to judge about that?"

"Sometimes." Hitoshi shrugged, "Contraceptives, mostly. And uh -- turns out not everyone is super pleased about the idea of a witch hanging out in town. So being in a place that's a little more discrete is nice."

Denki frowned. It hadn't been like that, back home. Aware that he was again creeping up on the line of what might be acceptable to ask, he took a sip of tea and said, "So… Why'd you go then? I was under the impression you were gonna take over Aizawa's position."

The corner of Hitoshi's mouth quirked up at that. "Maybe someday. But he's not actually that old you know." Not to mention the fact that witches tended to live longer than most, "There were a few reasons. Witch politics. But I mostly realized I wanted to be doing more than I was around there."

Denki knew the sentiment, but he couldn't help but wonder if Hitoshi was softening the blow for his benefit.

"Well you ended up in the palace. Dream big, right?"

If anything, Hitoshi's smile only grew more wry.
"I figured I probably wasn't going to get another opportunity to visit, otherwise I would have refused flat out. What's a prince want to learn witchcraft for, anyways?"

Denki's heart did a series of complicated flips. Hitohsi had come here for him, but Denki had no idea how long he was going to be here for, and he doubted Hitoshi knew either. But if the prince liked him enough, then maybe…

"I kind of think Prince Midoriya wants to learn everything." The fact that it was popular in the court right now helped, of course, but Denki didn't mention that. Hitoshi would hate that idea, and he wanted Hitoshi to want to stay. Equally important, he wanted the prince to want Hitoshi to say, and to that end he leaned in conspiratorially, "To be honest he'll probably fall for the smoke and mirror stuff, but between you and me I think he'd actually appreciate if you were plain with him about what you do."

Hitoshi hummed noncommittally, so Denki pressed on.
"He's actually like, really smart and--" He knew this would be the kicker, "You have the chance to make sure that the next king doesn't have any weird misconceptions about witchcraft."

Hitoshi wrinkled his nose, but Denki knew he had him.
"I didn't think about that." Hitoshi said after a long moment of silence. Then he sighed, "This is actually going to be important, isn't it?"

"Probably." Denki hid a smile behind his cup. "And thanks for coming, by the way."

Denki would freely admit that he was keeping a close eye on Hitoshi. He'd told Katsuki that he'd figure out if he was a fraud, after all, and even though Denki had known that he wasn't from the moment he walked through the doors, he was more than happy to use that as an excuse to linger around and watch.

At no point did Hitoshi mention anyone he'd been with, past or present to anyone -- nor did he approach Denki to talk about them or how they'd left things. Not that he was paying excessively close attention to that, or anything. Hitoshi was acting as if they were friends -- which they were, but…

(Katsuki, in his usual gruff way, gave him the advice to get to know him before falling head over heels like he usually did. Weird as the situation was, Denki thought it might actually have been good advice).

Despite his careful eye, gauging how much Hitoshi had changed was difficult because of  how little they actually got to talk. He wasn't avoiding Denki, exactly, but he wasn’t avoiding everyone else, either, and that was new. Between his time with the prince and the way everyone else in the palace seemed to want his attention, getting a moment alone wasn't easy.  On top of that the hedgewitch made frequent trips to the town outside the palace to, as he'd put it to Katsuki, "do his duty to the people."

To Denki the solution was obvious. He'd just invite himself along.

In years past Hitoshi wouldn't have thought anything about Denki following him. Even now all he did was raise an eyebrow and ask, "Something to do in town today?"

"Not besides hang out with you." Denki shot back, "You're too busy."

Hitoshi shrugged in response, but didn't refute him. He didn't tell him to leave, either so Denki happily trailed behind him as he made his way to town. Once they were there, though, Hitoshi started making turns down streets Denki didn't really recognize (or if he’d been down them before, he might have  been more than a little drunk at the time).

 Even a palace town had places that were a little more dingy than the rest, and though it was the middle of the day, he found himself reaching for Hitoshi's elbow for comfort, as the other people on the street shot them side-eyed glares.

"So uh… What business brings you over here, anyway?" Denki asked lowly. He probably should have done that about three streets ago.

"Checking the mail." Was Hitoshi's cryptic answer. A moment later he made a sharp turn into a narrow alley. About halfway down was a door that had chipping paint on the front, showing two ladies in… Well there was no polite way to put it, they were buck naked, though anything too scandalous had been worn mostly away. That was the door that Hitoshi slowed and reached for.

"No way ." Denki bounded up beside him, "Is this the brothel?"

"It's a brothel." Hitoshi rolled his head back to look at him, and his eyes went with it, "Like I said, they tend to be good places for discretion."

He abruptly pulled open the door and walked inside. Denki stifled a nervous giggle and stepped in after him. It wasn't like there was anything he hadn't seen before, and they'd come in mid-afternoon -- well before peak business hours.

"Well, well, well, if it isn't our resident witch!" A woman's voice called out. Denki peeked around Hitoshi to see a woman with long dark hair and a dress so tight that it left exactly nothing to the imagination. She leaned on to a desk that was entirely too fancy for the establishment, chin balanced in one hand. "I hope you're not here for anything too interesting?"

"Not unless you have anything for me." Hitoshi replied evenly. Normally. Because this was normal for him bynow.

"Oh I always have something interesting for you darling. Maybe even at a discount if we include your cute friend there."

"Pass." said Hitoshi flatly, even as Denki nearly choked on his own spit. The woman threw back her head and laughed, waving off Hitoshi's exasperation with ease.

"Oh you're no fun." She teased, "But since you asked we did get a few people in looking for the usual stuff. Should be nothing you can't handle."

They made a trade -- Hitoshi handed over a package that looked to be mostly made up of little labeled vials and bags. Nothing unusual there, except that Denki had to wonder when he'd found the time to put it together. In return he received a handful of papers that he looked over with characteristic thoroughness. He paused on one, eyebrows pinched.

"Do you know if there's anywhere around here that sells genuine mandrake root? I might have to go out and gather some otherwise."

"I dunno." Denki admitted, "But I know a few places we could probably look…"

As he pondered the places he might take Hitoshi shopping, the door was pushed open again. The woman who stepped inside was dressed plainly and wore a tight expression -- certainly not the kind of person Denki would have thought would come to an establishment like this, but up until recently he had thought that about Hitosh, tooi. When she saw the three of them, she froze in place for a long moment before the brothel's madam clapped her hands together.

"Don't mind those two, darling. Anything I can help you with?"

The woman took a tentative step forward, hands clasped to her chest and leaned in close to say something too low for Denki to hear.

"Well he's the one you're looking for, then." The matron said after a moment, one long nail pointed right at Hitoshi.

"If you're looking for a witch, then yes." Hitoshi said with no pretense to it at all. His eyes flicked over to Denki for only the barest moment. "If this is something you wish to discuss privately, I'm sure Miss Nemuri doesn't mind us using her office."

" Miss ." The woman in question groused, "That's fine, but never call me that again, got it?"

"Of course, Ma'am." Hitoshi deadpanned, nodding at the door behind her as an indication of where to go. Nemuri groaned but let them pass. Denki very nearly followed them on instinct -- he'd been to plenty of consultations before -- but the tiniest flick of the witch's eyes at him stopped him in his tracks.

Right. This was something private -- that happened sometimes too, and even back then Denki had never been able to pry any gossip from Hitoshi’ about them. A total stranger's problem was even less his place.

Which left Denki alone with the madame of the seediest brothel he'd ever seen as soon as the door was shut.

"So…" She purred, "I didn't know he had any friends."

Denki decided not to take offense to that, on anyone’s behalf.

"Yeah, we go way back, actually." He chuckled a little nervously, "We pretty much grew up together."

"Oh how sweet, childhood friends." She cooed, "That must mean you have all the hot gossip on him. Embarrassing stories? Childhood crushes?"

"Um." Denki said, trying not to blush, because he knew Hitoshi would never forgive him for sharing either of those things.

Nemuri clicked her tongue, "Oh come on, give me anything . If you know him you know he doesn’t like to talk about himself."

Which was true. It had taken Denki literal years to get Hitoshi to open up. He didn't much like the idea that Hitoshi hadn't done it with anyone else in all this time. Not that this Nemuri person was really the best person to tell, but if she had to know something ....

"Well…" He hummed, "I guess there was the time he turned my skin blue."

Which had ultimately ended up being more embarrassing for Denki than it had for Hitoshi, and therefore was probably on the safer side of what he could tell without hurting anyone's feelings.

Denki loved telling stories, and with Nemuri's encouragement quickly got lost in the tale -- a few minutes became nearly twenty, and before he'd realized the door to the office was opening again.

The woman stepped out first, eyes red and puffy like she had been crying. She gave the room a nervous little head-bob of acknowledgement before all but bolting out of the building. Hitoshi stepped out a moment later, looking far more tired than he had when he'd gone in.

"Looks like I've got work to do." Hitoshi said to both of them. He paused for a moment to rub at his eyes before half heartedly waving one hand at Nemuri. "Be back next week."

He spared Denki a nod towards the door before pushing his way outside himself -- Denki rushed so as not to be left behind but Hitoshi stopped nearly as soon as he was out the door.

"Where did you think a good place to look for herbs was? That might suddenly be pressing."

"…There's a few places." Denki said warily. Hitoshi's voice had taken on a tone he'd only heard a few times, when things were really serious, "What do you need?"

Hitoshi heaved a sigh.

"A lot." A pause, and then, "She asked me to curse someone."

That stopped Denki's thoughts in their tracks. That had never come up when they were younger, outside of jokes, and jokes that Hitoshi had mercilessly shot down at that. If Hitoshi was considering using actual magic, this was already a big deal. A curse …

"Are you going to do it?" The answer somehow felt very important. Hitoshi sighed and raked a hand through his hair.

"Not without more proof, but if she's telling the truth, this is the sort of situation that would call for one. I'll look for other options, of course, but…"

But it never hurt to be prepared. Some things never changed, even if Hitoshi’s stance on curses apparently had. 

Rationally, Denki had known that life wasn't as simple as it had been when they were kids, but it hadn't really hit him until this moment.

Denki took a deep breath. "If you need any help, I'm here for you. " 

Hitoshi didn't look at him, clearly lost in thought.  "I'll keep it in mind."

In a move Denki should have predicted, Hitoshi didn't approach him for help. Not right away, anyways.

What he did do was disappear even more, to the point where if Denki didn't overhear the prince gushing about everything he was learning (or, more often, sit and listen to Katsuki bitching about the prince's gushing) he could have been convinced that Hitoshi had left the palace entirely. And in the few glances he did get of the man, he looked tired -- not just regular Hitoshi tired, but properly exhausted to the point where other people might start to notice.

Denki found himself cycling through curiosity, worry, and annoyance in turn. Hitoshi hadn't shared any more details about who was being cursed or why. One part of him respected the fact the witch was so dedicated to keeping that woman's confidence, the rest of him was getting increasingly frustrated at the fact that Hitoshi didn't seem to remember that Denki was perfectly capable of helping in situations like these. Whatever Hitoshi was doing was clearly taking a toll on him; Denki could be emotional support if nothing else, but thinking like that set him worrying that maybe Hitoshi didn't want him to be.

The next few days saw Denki doing very little aside from anxiously pace the palace grounds, trying and failing to distract himself from whatever Hitoshi was doing. Because if he didn't, he'd wind up sticking his nose into it, and he just didn't know if that was okay, anymore.

Unless it still was okay, and Hitoshi was just too awkward to ask. Which seemed wrong, because he did seem a lot more confident now, but maybe things were different when it came to Denki? Or maybe Hitoshi was expecting him to invite himself like he usually did?  As much as he wondered, Denki couldn't quite work up the courage.

When he tried to use the energy to write something, he broke no less than three quills, splattering ink all over the page in a way that he wondered if he could argue was done with artistic intent.

That was the state he was in, just after sundown, when there was a knock on his chamber door. Denki distractedly made his way over to it, trying to think of a word that flowed better than alacrity .

 After all the stress he'd given himself over it, somehow he was still surprised to find Hitoshi standing on the other side.

"Hitoshi!" His voice was a little too loud and high pitched, "Hi!"

Hitoshi didn't even blink in the face of his enthusiasm, "Hi. I need to ask you some things… If you're not busy?"

His eyes flickered down to Denki's ink stained hands, which he immediately hid behind his back with a bashful smile.

"Nope! Come in!"

Hitoshi huffed, but it sounded more amused than exasperated. But the witch's cheer was short lived, smile fading as soon as he remembered why he was there. Denki frowned, but pulled open the door to let him in regardless. If Hitoshi was asking for help, he'd do his best, no matter how much of a downer it was.

…The questions Hitoshi asked him were not terribly helpful in helping him figure out what this situation was about.

He started by asking what he knew about a list of names. The only one that rang a bell was "Yotsubashi" because it was the name of the biggest merchant family in town which meant they were involved a little bit with everything. He'd never heard anything bad, though, and said as much, which made Hitoshi frown and say he'd figured.

Then he moved on to an even more confusing line of questioning -- how the law was handled around here. Who was in charge of the courts (Denki had no clue), could the prince rule on criminal cases (he could, and had, and had been begged more than once to take a less active approach to justice), would his judgment be held by the courts below… Was there a chance he'd hear a case that sounded odd, just because Hitoshi asked him to?

"I mean, yeah, probably." Denki said, head reeling, "This is… You're taking someone to court so you don't have to curse them?"

Hitoshi huffed a humorless laugh, "More or less. If the punishment is proper it’s as good as anything I could do, anyway."

"…Sounds a lot harder though."

"Isn't it always?" Hitoshi rolled his eyes, and something in Denki relaxed that he hadn't even realized was tense.

 Hitoshi had not grown into someone who would curse a man because someone asked, just into someone who had to recognize all of his options.

"By the way, you have…" Hitoshi pointed at his own face. Denki blinked back at him, "It's been bothering me all night, so -- just --"

Hitoshi was always prepared for things, so of course he had a handkerchief in his pocket. Denki was regularly not prepared for things, especially not the way Hitoshi, casual as anything, leaned forward to scrub what was presumably ink off of his face.

He wouldn't have thought anything about this, once upon a time. Even now it didn’t register to him right away -- the way Hitoshi had taken his face in his hands to steady it and wipe off the smudge. Not until Hitoshi paused and realized for himself just how casually he'd fallen back on an old habit. It wouldn't have made him blush back then. It did now.

"R-ight. Got it." Hitoshi said as he practically leapt to his feet, somehow sounding more strained about that than the apparent trial he was setting up, "I ah -- had better get back to work. Thanks for --" He waved a hand around like it explained something, " -- Yeah."

Denki pulled himself together enough to say "Any time" right before the door closed.

It was weird to wait for a trial when you didn't know when it would be or who would even be in it, and no one else knew it was going to happen. Denki had faith that Hitoshi would figure out what he was doing, but he got asked more than once over the next few days why he was so antsy, and all he'd been able to answer was that he was waiting for something to happen.

Early one morning he caught Hitoshi's eye as he left the garden where he usually talked with the prince about magic, and the witch gave him a tired smile and a thumbs up. Later that afternoon he heard the whispers.

Some big businessman in town was being accused of some very bad things, and given how important he was, the prince had agreed to hear the trial himself, the very next day.

So, he'd clearly figured something out.

The stage was this: The prince sat in a too big chair on a tall dais, ong leg bouncing up and down. Below him, a section of the polished marble floor had been cleared away for a  few people to stand -- there was the woman that had come into the brothel, and a lanky man with thinning hair in a fancy suit.

 Rikiya Yotsubashi was a popular man, and the trial was open to the public to view, which meant that despite the fact that Denki lived in the building where it was taking place, he found it hard to find room to stand because he hadn't shown up early enough. The accused had a small group of similarly well dressed supporters who kept any of the crowd from pushing closer to him, but the woman appeared to be very nervous and totally alone.  Hitoshi was nearby, but didn't step out from the crowd to stand by her, even as Prince Midoriya called the room to order.

There was some announcing of titles and explanations of proceedings that had Denki zoning out nearly immediately, only to tune back it at the prince sighing and saying, "Well with all that said, let's get down to business. Yotsubashi, I understand that you deny all of the charges Miss Komari has leveled against you." He paused, breathed, "But for the sake of completeness I'd like to hear the story."

Yotsubashi sneered but bowed his head in ascent, and the woman Denki now knew was Komari stepped forward, hands clasped together so tightly that her knuckles were white.

Denki would freely admit he didn't know a lot about how all this worked, but it really seemed like there should be someone up there helping her, or at least offering a little support. As it was she took a shuddering breath and stuttered over a few false starts before she managed to start her tale.

It was spoken too fast, with awkward pauses and breaks to swallow back tears, but Komari's story was this:

A little over a year back, she inherited a little house in town -- her late mother's old flower shop, complete with greenhouse and growing beds. She'd never been interested in the business but didn't quite want to sell the place either. A man had approached her on Yotsubashi's behalf looking to buy anyways, but when she held firm Yotsubashi himself had shown up and agreed that she could keep ownership so long as he could rent the place.

All was fine for a while, she said, only as time went on the building never opened back up into the store it used to be. No one ever put signs back out, but she still saw people coming and going every now and then, and so… She got curious. But when she asked, she was told that they were serving ' a more exclusive clientele' . That hardly made sense to her, because as far as she knew it there was no such a thing as flowers only rich people could buy -- but she knew she wasn't experienced as she could be and asked if she could look, thinking maybe somehow they had managed to grow rare orchids or something similar.

She got told it was none of her concern, which was the first red flag. The second followed shortly after, when she'd insisted and the man she'd been meeting with had all but threatened her.

" Not in so many words, at first" Her voice had wavered, " He just leaned over me and said that I'd keep my nose out of things if I knew what was good for me."

She was actually threatened the next morning when another man showed up at her house-- even Denki didn't miss how Komari's eyes flickered to the group that had come in with Yotsubashi -- and told her that the money they gave her for rent also covered her discretion. Including the conversation they were having.

It had been mild at first -- keep asking around and we'll stop paying you . She had naively thought that meant they'd move out of the place,and she hadn’t liked them much, and so the threats quickly escalated to ' try and tell anyone and we'll hurt you .' That had scared her badly enough, but even that quickly became 'and we'll hurt your family too '. She'd only confided in a close friend -- a friend who then decided to take a sudden trip out of town right after.

Denki suspected that was around the time she'd come stumbling into a brothel asking after rumors of a witch, though she didn't mention that.

She admitted she was skeptical of alerting the authorities, with Yotsubashi having the reputation he did, she thought it wouldn't amount to much and he might actually carry through with their threats if she tried, but she couldn't live like this any longer, either.

She was in tears as she finished speaking, but her voice had held out until the end. Across the floor, Yotsubashi crossed his arms and heaved a very put upon sigh.

"You'll notice, of course, that her encounters were always with various men, who I can't admit to having any idea about. I'm well known to do my business in person when I can help it, after all, as I did when I offered to rent the place itself." He  cleared his throat, "…And that’s if these encounters ever happened in the first place. Is there anyone besides Miss Komari here who can corroborate?"

The room was silent, the onlookers peering around to see if anyone else would step forward.

"Well." Yotsubashi continued when no one did, "That being said, I'm surprised this issue made its way all the way up to this court. I hate to impose on your time, your highness."

Midoriya didn't respond right away, he leaned forward, eyebrows knitted together. If Denki knew him half as well as he thought he did, he probably thought that Yotsubashi sounded too unconcerned about all this. To most everyone else in the room, his confidence would make it sound like he had nothing to do with it, but if that were true then there should at least be a little sympathy for Komari.

He was either guilty and knew he could get away with it, or a total slimeball, and the prince wouldn't stand for either of those. He seemed to remember something, eyes widening as he sat up straight from what had become a sprawl.

"Actually there is something that can be done right now! We have a visitor in court  who's quite adept with magic, and in fact just recently showed me a spell that compels the truth."

As if waiting for his cue, Hitoshi stepped forward out of the crowd, hands clasped behind his back. He bowed his head to the prince, steadfastly ignoring the wave of murmurs that passed through the crowd.

So that was his game. Denki found himself standing a little straighter too.

Yotsubashi had gone straight backed and stiff. Komari looked like she might cry again, though the look on her face was much closer to relief.

"That's--" Yotsubashi sputtered, "Magic? You'd trust a witch, your highness? He may well compel me to speak lies!"

If you were close enough, you could see the way Midoriya's smile grew brittle. If you knew him well enough, then you knew that was an expression saved for people who had insulted his friends. Hitoshi had made quite the impact already, it seemed.

"He won't. He recently showed me how it works, actually, so I'd notice if he does anything different."

 …Denki figured that meant the prince had probably agreed to be under the spell himself, and suppressed a smile.  What a stupid selfless leader with no sense of self-preservation. He was glad for it, though.

Midoriya waved a hand. "…You don't have to agree, of course. I understand that not everyone is comfortable with magic." It would not be a good look on you if you refused was left unsaid, but the meaning rippled through the crowd anyways, "Although, either way, I would like to hear why the person I sent to investigate found the planting beds in the greenhouse empty, if business was going so well. If you're having some kind of trouble with that I'm happy to get help."

"That  --" Yotsubashi started and then immediately snapped his jaw shut; not even forced to tell the truth yet, but rapidly realizing that he couldn't lie without damning himself.

In front of him Hitoshi just shrugged as if he weren't in front of a room full of people and said flatly, "I'm sure someone who worked there has some idea, if you're not feeling up for it."

There was a long moment of quiet, the whole room holding its breath. Hitoshi ignored it completely to read into his bag and pull out a brush and a bottle of ink that even from where he was standing Denki could see was weirdly iridescent.

"It's more efficient if I cast it on everyone who needs it  at once, so step forward if you're willing I guess."

Neither Yotsubashi nor Komari stepped forward, prompting a wry half-smile from Hitoshi, "I can explain how it works as we go, if you'd like."

That was enough for Komari to gather her courage and make the step towards the witch. Yotsubashi, hands curled into fists, followed a moment afterwards.

Hitoshi's quiet explanations were lost in the murmurs of the crowd, but Denki could take a pretty good guess. He painted a complicated looking symbol over their throats, and one on his own too (which he must have practiced and memorized how to do backwards and without a mirror. Denki knew he'd been preparing for this a lot, but geez…).

And then, because Hitoshi had no care for the drama of it all , he sighed, took a step back, muttered a few words , and without warning the pressure in the room more than doubled, like a storm had suddenly rolled in and was waiting to bear down on them.

It was far and away the most powerful magic Denki had ever felt, and he had more experience than most.

Hitoshi looked back up at the prince, who was trying and failing to suppress his excitement.

"So, we've already heard Komari's story, and we can go back and have her retell that in a moment, if we need to." Midoriya leaned forward, "But we can confirm some of the bigger points like… If you knew anything about the people who came to threaten her?"

Hitoshi turned back to Yotsubashi and repeated the question directly to Yotsubashi, who'd been standing stiff ever since the topic of magic had come up.

The silence stretched on -- the prince and the crowd all leaned in waiting to hear an answer -- part of the explanation that Denki had missed and would figure out later was that, while the magic didn't compel an answer, if one was given it had to be truthful. So the hesitation was probably a way for Yotsubashi to figure out a way around the question, but when he couldn't…

"… I do." Came the strangled answer.

"And how do you know them?" The prince asked, and Hitoshi repeated.

"Various ways, your highness." The answer came faster this time, but Yotsubashi's brow was growing shiny with sweat.

Midoriya mumbled something too quietly to hear, and then asked, "Did you know that they were threatening Komari?"

Hitoshi repeated it, and the question hung in the air as Yotsubashi flexed his hands.

…He was having trouble thinking of a way of wiggling out of the question, because what else was there to say but ‘ yes’, ‘no’ , or maybe ‘ I suspected?’ Long seconds went by in silence, until the crowd began to murmur among themselves again at the lack of an answer.

" Yes ." Yotsubashi finally rasped out, and then he snarled, took a half step forward, and threw a punch at Hitoshi -- who had evidently been expecting it because he took his own step back and avoided it entirely.

Everything erupted into chaos after that -- probably what should have happened was Midoriya calling in the guards to restrain him. Instead, the prince jumped up and launched himself through the crowd -- because when people said that Prince Midoriya took an active approach to justice in his kingdom, what they meant was that when he saw something wrong he'd run in and try and stop it himself .

…Well they'd probably get Yotsubashi on assault, at any rate.

The crowd either panicked or gathered in closer to see, but as the guards caught up to their prince's actions their main action was to get all the bystanders out of danger.

That unfortunately included Denki, but even as he was shepherded out of the room, he cast a final glance around to see where Hitoshi had taken Komari by the elbow and pulled her out of harm's way, even as she'd burst into tears again.

It took more than a few hours before things calmed down enough for Denki to get a picture of what had happened. Yotsubashi had been arrested and his little gang of supporters held for questioning. With promises that he would stay in captivity, a growing number of people were gaining the courage to step forward, and with their testimony every place that they searched turned up more and more evidence of what was turning out to be a whole criminal empire -- and all because Hitoshi had wanted to bring a man to justice before trying to curse him.

It was well into the night before Hitoshi could get away from it all, and he'd surely be called away again early in the morning, but Denki stayed up to catch him anyways. After all, it was tradition for the two of them to wind down together after Hitoshi had dealt with a client, even if they hadn't done it in years. 

 At least when Hitoshi pulled the door to his room open to find Denki waiting, he didn't look terribly surprised. The witch all but collapsed over the now almost completely covered table, only remaining even a little upright because he was supporting his head with one hand.

"So?" Hitoshi shot Denki a tired smile, and Denki couldn't help but wonder if his voice was raspy because of the spell or just because he'd done a lot more talking than he was used to, "What did you think?"

When they were younger, this would have been Hitoshi fretting over everything he might have done wrong. He was so much more confident now, but the thread of insecurity was still there -- he wondered if he'd done the right thing, and if he'd done the right thing right .

He had. More than Denki knew how to explain. And had proved to Denki that, however much he had changed, Hitoshi was still Hitoshi , and that meant that Denki's feelings towards him were the same as they'd ever been.

Denki smiled back at Hitoshi, unseen as the witch's eyes slid closed.

"I think --" Denki swallowed thickly, "You couldn't have done it better."

Denki figuring out his own feelings was no less of a mess the second time around. 

He didn't plan on dancing around it or anything but he still didn't know why Hitoshi hadn't said anything to him .

Plus, on top of teaching the prince (who's interest in magic had only grown) Hitoshi was now actively helping in a massive criminal investigation. He probably didn't need anything that was going to stretch his attention further than it already was.

Not that Denki had anything to do with that when it did happen. Which it did, of course.

Not even a week after the trial, and far before most of the problems it had brought up had actually been solved, the prince another announcement:

The palace and all its staff were to prepare for a grand banquet to celebrate the anniversary of some old peace treaty and they were doing it here.

Which, you know, was exciting. The Todoroki royals and all their retinue would be visiting and the party would be grand, but it also meant that Denki had to do work . Which was to say he'd be expected to present some new poetry, sure, but mostly it meant that he had to mingle with people and look really smart and knowledgeable about things. It was exhausting every time he had to do it, but at this point Denki was well aware that his real job had a lot more to do with making his boss look good than actually writing poetry.

Which raised a whole other concern, because Hitoshi was here. And if Denki knew the prince, Hitoshi would be invited to the banquet. And if Denki knew Hitoshi, he would not play nice with nobles, at all .

He'd have to be warned. He'd have to be trained .

Now if only Denki could get a hold of him for long enough to try .

There was the whole criminal investigation thing, which Hitoshi probably couldn't get out of now, even if he'd wanted to (and Denki doubted he'd want to). Then there was the prince, and when it wasn’t him, it seemed like everyone else's enthusiasm for magic had gone up after that mess of a trial. No one else had asked to be his student yet, and Hitoshi knew plenty of sleight of hand to fool anyone asking for parlor tricks, but the thing that really irked Denki was that now everyone thought Hitoshi was approachable . Asking him out for drinks and meals and -- well, he knew exactly why he felt like Hitoshi accepted way more of those offers than he should.

He was jealous, but at least self aware enough about it not to mope too much.

Hitoshi already didn't have enough hours in the day. Denki would visit him in the evening and tell stories about some of the political maneuvering he'd done, hoping it would be enough for Hitoshi to get it , but he always did it quietly enough that the hedgewitch was able to drift to sleep between the words.

Then, with a little less than a week before the banquet, he slipped into Hitoshi's room only for the witch to look up at him looking mildly panicked.

"This party. Apparently it's going to have dancing?" Hitoshi said in lieu of a greeting. "Am I going to have to do that?"

"Um, yeah?" Denki tried very hard to smother a smile at his friend's dismay, "I mean, if someone with a higher rank than you asks you, it's really impolite to refuse."

And he probably would be asked, after the stunt he'd pulled.

"Right." Hitoshi groaned, "And I guess it's also a problem if I accept a dance and I don't know how?"

Denki giggled. Hitoshi may have picked up a bunch of weird new skills since he'd seen him last but it didn't surprise him one bit that dancing hadn't been one of them.

"Tell you what, if you manage to find the time tomorrow, come find me and I'll show you."

Hitoshi's response was a slump forward to press his face into the table and a muffled "Thanks"

He did show up, though, finding Denki as he was looking for lunch with a tug on his elbow and a, "We should probably do this somewhere people won't go looking for me."

It was an impossible task, since everyone seemed to be looking for Hitoshi these days, but Denki did his best and led him to a usually empty gallery at the far corner of the estate. Specifically, a gallery that had a life-sized portrait of a woman holding a cat that very clearly did not want to be held, because he thought it was funny and he knew Hitoshi would find it funny too.

Also, because he had actually come prepared, and had gone to Hatsume to drag one of her inventions over beforehand.

"I have no idea how this works" Denki admitted as he set one of the disks onto the rotating table that was a phonograph, "But it plays music which is what we'll be dancing to, so…"

"It looks like it's entirely mechanical." Hitoshi looked the phonograph over with bright eyes,"Interesting."

Denki snickered and pulled an obliging Hitoshi to the middle of the room by the elbow, "I'm guessing Hastume hasn't pulled herself out of her lab enough to realize you were here, or else she'd be asking you make babies --"

"What--"

"--But she pressed that record special for me to teach you how to waltz so let's not waste it, yeah?"

He didn't think of it as anything particularly intimate, at first, because it was just dancing , and the stuffy noble kind of dancing at that. Sure, they were holding hands, but it had to be just so, and Hitoshi's eyes were glued to the floor as he followed Denki's steps.

"You're taller than pretty much everyone I know, so you'll probably have to lead." He'd explained, which had only made Hitoshi blanch and mumble about notice-me-not spells.

But he had a handle on it, more or less, by the time the record ended, so when he went to start it again Denki started on the little flourishes -- the circles, the turns and spins. Hitoshi was the lead, so Denki was the one who was turned under his arm, and when he spun to face his partner it was to find Hitoshi's eyes fixed not on the floor but on him -- dark, maybe a little amused, and --

He didn't want to read too much into that look, but he couldn't not . It was Hitoshi , it was the person who he was closest to in the entire world, who he'd missed terribly and even years later had never stopped thinking about.

The music and their steps slowed to a stop, but their hands remained linked and their gazes locked together like there was nothing else in the world but the two of them.

It was better, objectively, that this happened here and not in a crowd of people like it might have if Denki had waited.

Denki went up on his toes and forward to brush Hitoshi's lips with his own in a kiss that was more tentative than even their most shy kisses as teens.

The worst part about it was the way Denki could feel Hitoshi start to kiss back, and then the exact moment where he stopped himself instead.

Denki stepped back first, letting go of their hands, face going red in an awful mix of embarrassment and regret.

"Sorry. I uh -- I should have asked, first."

Hitoshi's eyes were wide, and he held his hands in the air for a long, silent moment before letting them drop to his sides.

"…It's not that I don't want to." Hitoshi said after a long, painful moment, eyes darting away "I just don't think it's a good idea."

That first admission eased something in Denki's chest as much as the second knotted it back up again.

"Why wouldn't it be?" Denki tried to sound steady but he knew Hitoshi would likely be able to see right through him anyway. Hitoshi’s expression was twisted up in anxiety and Denki was sure his face was a mirror.

"When things go bad or… Or when people need a scapegoat for something, witches tend to be the first ones to go. Especially ones that have made a big fuss about doing magic." Hitoshi flexed his left hand, the one with the scars that Denki still didn't know the story behind, "People who try to defend them tend to get in trouble, too --" And there was no doubt that Denki would, "So it's usually safer to just leave. To move on. And it -- It hurts to get left behind."

For all he knew that it wasn't, the pain that sent shooting through Denki's chest felt awfully real. There, finally, was Hitoshi admitting that Denki had hurt him by leaving.

"You can't blame me for that." Denki snapped back, not sure if it was anger or sorrow that had the words spilling out of him.

"I don't." Said Hitoshi softly, "I never did. But sometimes the right decision can still hurt."

Like the one he would make if he thought it would mean protecting Denki. Like the one he thought he was making right now.

The lump in Denki's throat had gotten too big to speak around, and before he could manage it, the door at the far end of the room slammed open.

" YOU--" Mina stomped in with a finger pointed at Hitoshi, totally unaware of what she'd just interrupted, "Are needed by, like, six different people. And Aoyama has reached the point where he's threatening to make you wear one of his experiments if you don’t come for a fitting so you'd better get a move on."

Hitoshi stepped back, bowing his head low for a moment to hide an expression that looked an awful lot like shame, but he took the excuse to flee for what it was.

Denki stood and watched him go.

Upon consideration, Denki decided he was upset with Hitoshi.

For one thing, the witch was purposefully avoiding him now, rather than incidentally. Denki let him, instead deciding to mope in his own room at night.

It was just...

Hitoshi being so sure things would go wrong was one thing -- Denki was at least used to that level of pessimism -- but the assumption that Denki would be left behind, that he would let himself be left behind?

Infuriating.

And even then, Denki wasn't so sure he agreed that staying apart now would save them any pain later. The more he thought about it, the more he was sure that he'd regret not trying for anything with Hitoshi while he was here far more than he would having something and losing it again.

Love was worth the loss, he thought. He just had to convince Hitoshi of the same.

Luckily he had a big dramatic event coming up. Something was going to happen at that banquet even if he had to make it happen.

It was with that determination that Denki yanked himself out of bed and over to his desk to go digging for old journals. He'd never read any of these out loud, before. They'd been a private thing, back home, only shared with the select few he could trust not to make fun of him for writing them in the first place.

The poem he settled on (which compared his feelings to shooting stars) could use some editing, sure -- it was from the days when his only teacher had been himself -- but he knew that Hitoshi would still recognize it. And if he read it out loud, he'd hopefully take it for the declaration that it was -- Denki still had feelings, and he still wanted to act on those feelings for as long as the window was there to do so.

He'd read it, then he'd have to figure out a way to get Hitoshi somewhere private enough to talk, because the witch was so logical-minded that a gesture like that wouldn't be enough to convince him alone, and then Denki would tell him what he thought about Hitoshi's attempt to spare his feelings. All he had to say was something like " You're trying to keep me from pain later, but it's hurting me now." And he was sure Hitoshi would be convinced.

Denki would later note that there were a lot of variables he hadn't taken into account with that plan.

The banquet, for all it was supposed to be a celebration of peace, was actually a rather tense affair, at least as long as Enji Todoroki stayed in the room. As long as he was there, everything had to be perfect , or else he'd use it as an excuse to complain to their sickly old king about the legitimacy of his kingdom and his chosen heir and try and push for whatever tiny scrap of power he could get from it.

In Denki's opinion it was akin to torture, because as long as he was there, Denki had to stand there and smile and make the most vapid small talk with the nobles he'd brought with him (they weren't all bad, most of the rest of his family were pretty nice, actually, but that wasn't the point) and try very hard not to look at Hitoshi, who was trapped in his own spot across the room with a group of guests that looked only marginally more relaxed than his.

Aoyama had really done some amazing work with the short amount of time he'd had, for all of the lamenting he'd done over what Hitoshi was going to wear. Most of the people in the room were wearing something or other with complicated embroidery on it. Denki himself had a vest on that had a whole scene of a field in a thunderstorm that he knew had taken months to make. Hitoshi, in contrast, wore a dark shirt -- nice, flowy fabric, with something sewn onto it that every now and then caught the light and sparkled like a star. It was stunningly simple compared to everyone else in the room, and in Denki's eyes that only made him stand out even more.

He wasn't the only one who thought so, if the direction the other sets of eyes in the room kept turning indicated anything. Hitoshi was better at dealing with it and hiding it than he used to be, but as the evening wore on the attention was clearly starting to grate on him -- if he weren't known as a commoner already, the hand on the back of the neck and the lack of eye contact would have been the cause of some kind of scandal already, but as it was, Denki heard the words " charming" and " rustic" get tossed around quite a bit.

He did not grimace, but he was pretty sure Hitoshi did and earned himself a round of giggles. He just had to hope that the man lasted long enough for Denki to go rescue him.

"I think it's about time we start the entertainment, right?" Midoriya's voice floated down from where the royalty was standing with a clear note of strain to it, "The galleries are all open, of course, and we'll be having a poetry reading, followed by music and dancing!"

"Hm." The room quieted as Enji Todoroki considered his options, "I will retire to the banquet hall for now. Carry on."

Thank fuck.

As soon as Enji and his retainers left the main hall, it was like a great sigh had been released. Free at last , it said. To everyone except Denki, because now he had to work .

There was a temporary stage set up, the band would play there after him, but for now, Denki climbed the steps and gave a flourishing bow. Normally he would have someone else announce for him, but in the presence of all this nobility it would mostly end up highlighting that he wasn't.

Also, someone really needed to break the tension that was still lingering in the room. It was supposed to be a party after all.

"Ladies and gentlemen, you find yourselves in the presence of a world-renowned poet and performer. If you haven't heard of me --" He leaned forward , cupping his mouth for a comical stage whisper, "--It's Kaminari Denki. Now you have."

Then he launched into the most light-hearted, humorous poem he had prepared. (Not the funniest one he'd ever written, because the people who came to these events were prudes who'd faint at a sex joke, but it was still a pretty good one). By the end of it, most of the crowd that had gathered around were smothering smiles, and in the back leaning on an archway-pillar, Hitoshi was listening, too.

It wasn't time for that , though, not yet. There was a flow to these things that Denki had been perfecting ever since he'd arrived at the palace. Next came a poem that was a little more thoughtful, though still light-hearted enough that he spotted at least one woman hide a laugh behind a fan -- it was about bugs and flowers and spring, a little childish, but it segued perfectly into a poem that was a little more somber. Summer nights, spent warm but lonely. He looked out at the crowd at the end of that one. Looked right at Hitoshi who was staring at him with wide eyes. And without missing a beat continued on into a poem about early autumn nights and shooting stars and falling in love.

He very nearly choked on his words by the end, the combination of Hitoshi's eyes on him and the vulnerability of it all catching high in his throat. That was how he'd felt back then, it was how he felt now, and he needed Hitoshi to understand it was how he wanted to feel in the future, too.

The crowd murmured. He'd stayed silent for too long. Denki cleared his throat, looked down at the poem he'd written about winter mornings, and wished he'd saved his proclamation for the end.

But… it went over well, he thought. Maybe too well -- something a little bit more melancholy next, then tied up with something that ended on a hopeful note. When he bowed and stepped off the stage to make way for the band, he was swarmed with people praising him, asking him where he'd learned, how long had he been doing this, what was his inspiration? Which he should have expected and planned for, because it happened every time . He was suddenly in the situation that Hitoshi had been in earlier, forced to act polite when he wanted to be anything but. He was sure every passing moment was going to make talking to Hitoshi even more difficult, but causing a scene would probably make it even worse.

Hitoshi had retreated to the far edge of the crowd and remained there as groups started to disperse in preparation for dancing. He didn’t meet any of the anxious glances Denki sent in his direction, but he didn’t leave, either.

 Denki had very nearly managed to worm his way out of his own conversation when he glanced up again to see that Hitoshi was no longer alone. And it wasn't just some random noble, either -- Prince Midoriya had taken the witch by the elbow and was leading him somewhere, talking excitedly all the while.

Which -- Huh?

The prince was notoriously good at slipping away from people, so it was no surprise that he'd managed to get away from his own horde of petitioners. Him seeking Hitoshi out right now was a little odd, but they'd clearly fostered some kind of friendship. He'd probably seen how uncomfortable Hitoshi had been, too -- though the prince should really know better than to hang out near someone if he didn't want to draw attention to them.

Actually, Hitoshi would probably never hear the end of it if anyone else spotted him and Prince Midoriya leaving the party entirely together, what the fuck? Denki watched them disappear out a side door and his thoughts stalled entirely for a moment before starting to spiral to worse and worse conclusions.

The thing was that Hitoshi and Midorya were friends. Had been spending a lot of time together on account of the witchcraft lessons. Denki hadn't ever really observed those or seen the two of them interact in private at all, really, so he had no clue what that friendship was actually like. What that relationship was actually like. Considering their last conversation, Denki knew that Hitoshi's affections, as much as he didn't want to give them, still lay with him. Midoriya's however…

Well, the prince was just the right level of oblivious to not quite understand the power he had. If he confessed, he'd be super earnest about it and wouldn't realize that if Hitoshi wanted to stay , he wouldn't feel like he could say no .

"…Kaminari?" A woman in a red and white dress repeated for what must have been the third time. Shit.

"Sorry!" He blurted, "Sorry. I think I'm uh -- overheating. Feeling a little sick to be honest. Do you mind if I step out for some air?"

It wasn't even really a lie, and the remains of the group around him murmured and parted for him, appearing to be genuinely concerned. Denki gave them a tight smile and a wave and weaved his way around the crowd at the edge of the dancefloor and out the door Midoriya had led Hitoshi through.

It was a long, dimly lit hall meant for servants, not banquet guests. Denki greeted the few staff members he passed as he hastened to follow with short nods, pausing to glance in rooms and side paths and finding no sign of who he was looking for. Not until he reached the end, when the service path opened back up into another long hall on the far side of the palace -- one covered with huge windows through which he could see two figures together in the fading twilight.

The only thing in that direction would be the old guesthouse on the far edge of the palace grounds. Which would certainly be a place to go, if you wanted privacy, and really didn't help Denki draw any kinder conclusions about whatever it was that was going on here.

Denki watched them for a long moment, frozen in indecision as they disappeared into the darkness. If he got caught following them out here, he'd have no excuses for himself. But could he really just stand here and do nothing about it?

No. No he couldn't.

It was almost trivially easy to go after them unnoticed. Any observers from behind well and distracted by the ongoing party. The pair was far enough ahead that Denki might have lost them, had he not had a good idea about where they were going. As long as he was careful and didn't give them a reason to turn around (which they didn't) he'd be okay. And he was right -- by the time he caught up, Midoirya and Hitoshi had disappeared past the door of the quaint little guesthouse that sat so far away from the rest of the palace.  The door which, for some reason, they had left… Open?

Denki had only seen the place once, when he'd first arrived and gotten the grand tour. It had looked a lot more dilapidated then than it did now, and while it made sense for someone to have fixed it up in advance of all the foreign dignitaries showing up, he was pretty sure none of them were actually using it. Denki sidled up next to the doorway, finally close enough to hear a nervous laugh from the prince and "I know you're a private man, so this really seemed like the best option, but if you'd prefer something else..."

The only reason Denki didn't storm in was a combination of nerves and a wavering hope that Hitoshi would find a way to talk himself out of this situation.

"No this is… It's more than enough. Are you really sure…?"  Hitoshi sounded uncertain.

"It's as much as you deserve, if you're going to agree to what I'm asking!" And then, bafflingly, he rambled on, "I know it's a little far from the rest of town, but I've already talked to Mei about setting up a system so that people who are looking for you can let you know they're waiting…"

An amused huff from Hitoshi, "As long as I can keep visiting like I have been, that shouldn't be necessary."

"Well, I've already put the idea in her head, so you'll probably end up with… Something." A sigh, "I probably should get back before I'm missed, but just… Think about it, alright?"

And then Prince Midoriya left -- Denki dived behind a bush so as not to be seen, but when he glanced over at the man's retreating form he didn't look even slightly ruffled. At least not any more than usual.

Denki waited a beat, then two. Until Midoriya was out of earshot. Hitoshi was still in the guesthouse, the door still open, and when Denki picked himself up, brushed himself off and peeked through, the witch was standing still in the middle of the main room, looking baffled.

This was not how Denki was planning on being dramatic this evening, but he had to know.

"Hitoshi!" He ducked through the door, gesturing wildly at nothing, "What!"

Hitoshi blinked and stared for a long moment, cataloging Denki's sudden arrival and apparently deciding that he just wasn't going to ask. He made a broad gesture around the mostly empty room. 

"The prince offered me… A job, I think?"

Yeah, no. This was really not how Denki imagined this evening was going to go.

"Uh, like. A different job?"

"I think so. He basically said -- Well there's nothing basic about what he said. But apparently in some places court witches are a thing, and he wants me to do that . But because my duties lay with the people who need me and -- And a whole bunch of other shit, he thought it would be a good idea for me to live out here."

Hitoshi grew more and more agitated as he spoke, he raked a hand through his hair as he said, "It's… A lot."

"Yeah." Denki agreed as he stepped into the room, heart still beating hard but for an entirely different reason, "It is."

Denki closed the door after himself and the only light left was the moonlight that streamed through the windows. For the long moment it took his eyes to adjust, it almost looked like Hitoshi was the only thing in the world. And Hitoshi was staring at him right back, perfectly still.

"Are you going to?" Denki asked quietly, but in the silence of the room it was so, so loud, "The prince wants you to stay. I want you to stay. You can just… Stay."

Hitosh’s mouth fell open in soundless shock. Like that part hadn't even occurred to him. His eyes followed as Denki crossed the space between them, but he stayed motionless, even when he was close enough to touch.

"I could." Hitoshi breathed, just as quietly. Just as loud. "But just because the prince wants it right now doesn't mean it's a guarantee forever."

"And what is?" Denki shot back, reached out to grab one of Hitoshi's hands too fast for the other man to pull away, not that he even tried, "Maybe it'll last. Maybe it won't.  Whatever happens, I want to be there for it this time."

(That was all it took, in the end. No big speech or crying argument, just a little reassurance that he would stay.)

Hitoshi's hand tightened to around Denki's own. The expression he was looking down at him with was hard to read, but Denki had practice enough to see the glimmer of hope in Hitoshi's eyes when he whispered, "Is that so?"

"Yeah." Denki licked his lips, and Hitoshi very much tracked that movement, "If I kiss you, are you going to freak out again?"

Hitoshi barked out a startled laugh, and instead of responding with words, leaned in, cupped Denki's cheek, and kissed him first.

It felt a lot like coming home.

A hundred feelings bubbling up through his chest, Denki surged upwards to wrap his arm around Hitoshi's neck and pull him closer.

It was a long kiss, but not unusually so considering how long Denki had been waiting to take it. When they finally pulled away, it was only just enough to breathe. When Hitoshi murmured, "I missed you." They were still close enough for Denki to feel the movement of his lips, and when he replied "Likewise." Hitoshi used it as an excuse to kiss him again.

Denki was more than happy to let it continue for as long as it would last, and given the tone of the evening that might as well be forever. When they pulled apart again Hitoshi asked, "Is anyone expecting you to go back?"

"No." Denki answered without a moment's hesitation. "Said I was sick, even if anyone did go looking for me it wouldn't be out here. You?"

"No, or at least that's what the prince said." Hitoshi sounded as breathless as Denki felt. It was as though the answer gave some kind of permission, because when he leaned in to take another kiss, he was met with slightly parted lips that easily let his tongue in to explore.

It wasn't as though they had never done this before, but it had very much been a learning experience for both of them. Denki hadn't been wondering explicitly whether Hitoshi was a better kisser now, but. Well. He was . Denki was, too and eager to prove it, fuzzy memories of what the man liked had him dragging his teeth across the man's lower lip and earning a low groan, and oh , that was an awfully tight grip on his hip.

"You know." he teased the next time they broke apart, "Everyone will probably believe I really was sick if I'm not able to walk tomorrow."

Hitoshi stilled at that , moonlight highlighting his wide eyed stare. It took Denki a moment to realize the problem, heat rapidly rising to his face as he did.

He hadn't really learned to flirt until after he'd left home. That may have been one of the most forward things he'd said to Hitoshi ever . And even before, they'd never done anything like -- well, like sex. They'd gotten close, once, only for them both to realize that they didn't know what they were doing and had both ended up too flustered to continue. Denki had been gone before they'd tried again.

"Huh." Said Hitoshi after a beat, expression going a little smug, "You have been quite interested in all the things I've been doing in brothels."

He leaned into Denki's space, pressing them together thigh to chest and sending sparks shooting down his spine. The witch's gaze was much heavier, now, and Denki's stomach swooped with anticipation. He hadn't even known to miss this from Hitoshi. All his longing had up till been innocent . 

Well, mostly. 

If their time apart was good for one thing, it was the fact that they'd both stumbled through their awkward discovery phases on their own -- when Hitoshi's hands swept down his ribs, when he took Denki's lips in another devouring kiss, when he all but pinned Denki to the wall? It was very clear that he knew what he wanted.

Denki knew what he wanted, too, and with the leverage of a wall at his back climbed Hitoshi like the tree he was, legs wrapping firmly around his waist. That startled another laugh out of the witch.

"Eager to help me christen the new place, huh?"

The new place. Oh he was so staying.

"Oh, yeah." Denki quipped back breathlessly, "Every room, if you need me to."

"Well, we'll get to that later, first --" Hitoshi grunted a bit as he grabbed at Denki's ass to support some of his weight, "Let's see if our esteemed prince left me with any furniture."

Denki made every effort to distract Hitoshi as he explored the rest of his house, hands rucking up at that fancy shirt to get at the hot skin underneath. He had Hitoshi pausing, forced to lean on a wall or doorway for support when his fingers brushed up against a sensitive nipple or when he licked back into his mouth. It took far more time than it should have for Hitoshi to make his way three doors down, but Denki wasn't in any rush. Not anymore.

This room was still quite bare, but it had a desk and a bed. Denki considered if he would prefer being fucked on one over the other before mentally shrugging, because if all went well, it would eventually be both .

Hitoshi ended up dropping him on the bed, if only because it gave him the leverage to lean over Denki and fit his thigh nicely between his legs. Denki jolted, the friction as much of a relief as it was a surprise, he'd been so distracted he'd hardly been aware of the need for it building.

"Tell me how you want this." Hitoshi said, gaze burningly intense and impossible for Denki to look away from, "Because otherwise I'm probably going to fuck you into this mattress until you don't remember how to talk."

Ah, but even though they'd never done this with each other, Hitoshi still somehow knew him so well. Denki grinned up at him.

"You know you're going to have to work really hard to get me to forget that. Show me what you learned already!"

Hitoshi huffed, a slight smirk being the only warning before he reached down to palm Denki's half hard cock. Denki didn't bother to bite down on the whimper that drew out from him.  Hitoshi started working on the ties of his pants (with a lot of frustratingly arousing extra movement) and it took him a long moment to pull his thoughts together enough to start stripping off his own vest and shirt. They'd probably wrinkle where he dropped them on the ground, but Aoyama would be a lot less upset with that than he would be with any of the stains that were going to happen if he left it on.

Hitoshi paused at the sight of him, gaze locking of all places, on his chest. The worn-soft leather cord and the crystal that still hung from it.

"I guess I shouldn't be surprised that it still works." He murmured, then he leaned forward to take it in one hand, turning it over before pressing it to his lips, eyes locked with Denki's the entire time. Denki shivered from that, and the fact that Hitoshi continued to press kisses down his chest, to his stomach, to--

He yelped. To the base of his cock. Hitoshi leaned back at that, smirking for a moment before reaching down to peel off his own shirt.

Hitoshi's simpler clothes had the added benefit of coming off much more easily, though he did reach for a pocket to grab at a vial before his clothes joined the growing pile on the floor. That was most definitely slick of some kind… Denki very nearly laughed.

"Prepared for anything, huh?"

Hitoshi settled back between Denki's legs, one eyebrow raised as if he was offended. "Always."

Hitoshi's free hand kneaded at the muscle of Denki's thigh and he obliged by spreading them wider.

It was the fantasy Denki never knew to want, Hitoshi's finger circling his hole, dick pressed to his cheek, looking back at him through hooded eyes like this was all he wanted.

Denki let out a shuddering breath as one of those long fingers breached his rim. Anticipation had him tensing against his own will and want, and Hitoshi still.

"Hmm. You know --" Said Hitoshi conversationally, then turned and licked a long stripe up the side of Denki's cock, which sent sparks shooting up his spine and an stuttering moan escaping from his lips, "I've made a lot of things to help with sex, but there's one that I've always kept to myself."

"O-oh? That so?" Denki tried not to writhe as he relaxed and the long digit pushed into him fully. It was the best kind of agony -- usually Denki didn't have any patience for prep, but Hitoshi was being so thorough with it, so careful, that patience was the only option.

"Oh yes." Hitoshi teased another finger in ever so slowly, started the process of scissoring Denki open, "With just a few different ingredients, that incense I use to help me sleep can be used to guarantee wet dreams."

"That seems- sh--it-it -" Denki broke off into a keen as those fingers found the spot inside him and started stroking.

"It works quite well, actually." Hitoshi continued on as if he hadn't just turned Denki's thoughts into jelly, "Though I've only used it a few times."

"You- Hitoshi--" The man in question was making good on his promise with only his hands and mouth. As a third finger started to press inside Hitoshi changed his angle, leaned forward and took the tip of Denki's cock into his mouth. Just that much, but that was more than enough for Denki to feel the way his tongue swirled pre-come over his slit.

"You keep this up and I'm going to cum right here." He wheezed, "And then where will you be?"

Hitoshi pulled his head back with a lewd pop .

"Pretty pleased with myself, if we're being honest."

" Or ." Denki fisted the sheets and ground down on the fingers, "You could flip me over and fuck me already!"

"Well, if that's what you want." Hitoshi purred.

He pulled his fingers out, but Denki hardly had a moment to complain before Hitoshi did what he asked and bodily flipped him, face in the mattress, ass in the air, cock weeping at the sudden spike of arousal that maneuver sent bolting through him.

Denki arched back when he felt the press of Hitoshi's cock on his hole to see the other man looking back at him with a look that was so stupidly fond, it made Denki's heart clench.

"You know, now that you're here, you can do this pretty much whenever you want." Denki said, voice already rough.

"That." Hitoshi huffed, "Is a dangerous offer."

"But not one I don't mean." Denki shot back.

Hitoshi smiled at him, predator replaced with something soft as he leaned forward to catch Denki in an awkwardly angled kiss. Then he pressed in, torturously slowly, and devoured every little sound Denki made as the heat of it made Denki's limbs feel like lead. He broke away after a moment for a better angle, groaning himself as he bottomed out.

" Fuck ." Hitoshi breathed. "Denki, you're so --" A kiss to the back of his shoulder, "You're perfect. Shit."

Someone was trembling, though Denki couldn't tell if it was Hitoshi trying not to move, or himself wishing that he would . Easily solved, considering.

" Go " He moaned, "Hitoshi, please ."

The first thrust was long, as tormentingly slow and thorough as the rest of this evening had been, but it still made Denki's breath catch all the same. Hitoshi was relentless with his pace, rocking them forward together as he found the perfect angle and brushed what felt like his entire length along his insides on every pass. The heat of arousal spread through his entire body -- as promised Denki found himself unable to do more than gasp and mewl a few broken off words, everything too wrapped up in a haze of pleasure for him to even care .

He was pretty sure he screamed when Hitoshi's hand reached around and stroked him. It hardly took anything before he came with a full body shudder, lights sparkling behind his eyes -- the way he tensed clearly had some kind of effect on Hitoshi because his pace grew faster and more erratic and his hands on Denki's hips tightened and he slumped forward with a groan. Though he was at least still aware enough to not crush Denki beneath him and instead fell more to the side, pulling Denki to rest against his chest -- which he would never complain about, and especially not now.

"Hey." Denki mumbled muzzily after he'd had some time to come back to himself, "D'ja like my poem?"

"Oh, yes." Hitoshi sighed into his hair, "One of your best."

Denki squinted out the window, trying to get a good look at the flowers in the nearby garden. They were marigolds, but would it be better to describe their color as apricot or honey ? Because whatever he chose was really going to affect the meter of the rest of this poem.

Beside him, Hitoshi groaned and scratched out a few lines of his own writing. Being a court witch evidently required more paperwork than the man had anticipated.

(It turned out that exactly no one was surprised when Denki had started moving his stuff into the hedgewitches house, least of all the prince, who Denki already pretty much owed his entire life anyways).

There was the tinkle of a bell from another room and Hitoshi sighed (in relief at the chance for a break, Denki could tell) and pushed himself to his feet.

"…Today's not delivery day, is it?" Denki frowned.

"Nope." Hitoshi leaned down to kiss the top of his head, "Let's hope this problem isn't as dramatic as the last one."

It probably would be, knowing Hitoshi's luck. But that was fine.

Denki was twenty two, in the middle of the best summer of his life, when he knew who he wanted to spend the rest of his life with.