#oh! dika being a daily dad joke guy is a stolen characteristic of one of my most beloved high school teachers. mr hanson shout out.

[sollucets]

okay i’m finally here to give you a prompt HSKDKSDK first of all congrats on the milestone!!! secondly, i’m thinking akkayan + 24+25 for the touch prompts? i saw those ones and immediately thought of them hanging out with kanthua + namowat and a sensitive topic for one of them comes up?

hi liz ✨✨ im finally here to give you a fic! this was a lovely prompt thank u very much 💜

24 + 25 (whispering in their ear, lips touching the skin + stroking their arm soothingly); set somewhere in the back half of e12, probably; about 1.4k of group reflection

💜

“Did you all see Aunt Waree smiling today?” Namo asks into the silence.

Akk glances up from his book. Their entire group is sprawled across various surfaces in one of the common areas of Akk and Wat’s shared dorm building, exam prep supplies scattered all around them across the furniture and the generic patterned carpet. 

To Akk’s left, Aye is tucked into the corner of a moderately-comfortable couch, a notepad propped up against his legs and his laptop balanced precariously on the armrest. He’s changed out of his uniform and into a soft-looking, pale green t-shirt. Akk thinks his lips might be shinier than before, too, but he’s really trying not to check too much. It’s been happening more often recently, the lip gloss, and it makes Akk — well. Not study.

Across from them, Kan and Thua are sitting squished together on a loveseat, both out of their uniform jackets and excessively cuddly, and Namo and Wat take up another couch. Wat sits normally, but Namo is on his back and half-sprawled across the rest of the cushions, legs nearly in Wat’s lap. 

They’re the only ones in the room; if Akk’s tenuous reputation with the Suppalo populace combined with Wat and Kan’s overprotective posturing has done them any good, it’s that any space they take up on or even near campus usually gets given a wide berth. 

“Yeah, right,” Kan says dryly, not even bothering to look up. For the most part they’ve been surprisingly industrious given the group composition, but somebody has been interrupting at almost-clockwork fifteen-minute intervals the entire time. Himself and Thua aside, most of his friends don’t have the best attention span; Aye does, actually, but he seems to be perfectly fine with interruptions as long as he gets to pester Akk during them. 

“No, for real,” Namo insists, letting his book drop open onto his chest. Akk winces. He could at least use a bookmark. “When she came into class, she was all smiley, and she even said good morning to us before the head of cl— before class got called into session. I didn’t know she could do that.” 

His last-minute word swap is likely for the sake of Thua, who’d lost his position after his suspension. To Akk, it doesn’t seem like Thua really cares about that, but they’ve all been doing kind of a lot of sidestepping around each other’s issues in group settings. Some of them are better at it than others. 

Akk has talked, one-on-one, with most of his friends; he’s cried embarrassingly into Wat’s shoulder, let Kan hit him then hug him, let Thua say whatever he needed to despite Aye’s disapproval and came out of it with the same fire-forged understanding he’d had before. He isn’t sure if the others have done something close to the same, but when they’re all together there’s an unspoken agreement to leave it alone. A group delusion, maybe, pretending that they’re normal high schoolers for just a little longer. 

Finally, Wat looks up, casting Namo a sidelong glance. “No, he’s right, I saw it. It is pretty odd, but she’s just always been the kind of person who’s very careful about her image.” 

Akk, for his part, had not seen it. Before class started today Aye had kicked him under their shared desk, and when he’d reflexively kicked back he’d gotten an inexplicably softer one in return, and then again until he realized they were just nudging each other back and forth and Aye had a silly little smile on his face (and he had one too, probably, definitely). He was not paying attention. 

So that’s why he’s mildly offended when Aye chimes in. “I saw it too.” Their eyes meet briefly, and Akk doesn’t know how to object without admitting to being embarrassing, so he’s still just frowning aimlessly when Aye continues, “She’s really been a lot more relaxed lately. Maybe she feels freer.” He doesn’t sound happy about it.

Akk gets it, he thinks; he’s had enough practice on the other end of this particular Aye habit. It’s just him being all empathetic despite himself again. He still wants to be angry with her, and he’d deserve to be, after all the school’s teachers did to him, but he can’t help seeing it from her side even though he’d really rather not. 

Wat, apparently noticing the shift in mood, sounds more subdued when he says, “I mean, it really wasn’t always so bad. Our teachers are strict, it’s— the culture, but I think it got worse this year. With— everything.” 

Akk winces. Everyone is looking up now, Kan’s face set in those serious lines that suit him surprisingly well and Thua’s eyes unreadable under his lashes. 

Uncharacteristically, Namo’s half-smile goes more sincere. “You’re right,” he says honestly. “It was better when Teacher Dika was here.”

Thua’s eyes snap to Namo and Wat’s eyes snap to Aye and Kan’s mouth half-opens as they all simultaneously realize that there’s only one person in the room who wasn’t in a different room all that time ago. He doesn’t know. 

Before he can think about it, Akk is already reaching out to put a hand on Aye’s arm. He hasn’t moved, or said anything, but Akk finds him tense under his touch, staring at a fixed point in the distance that isn’t quite Namo. His hair is coming unstyled a little, a strand falling into his eyes. 

Namo doesn’t seem to notice the temperature dropping just yet. He genuinely looks thoughtful as he continues, “Even if he was a junior teacher, it sets an example. Like Teacher Sani now.”

Akk lets his fingers travel down Aye’s bicep, hoping to get any reaction at all. He’s rewarded with Aye turning to look up at him; after a moment, his eyes seem to focus back in from wherever he’d gone to look at Akk’s face. 

“Namo,” starts Wat, sounding uncertain, but he’s interrupted. 

Swallowing audibly, Aye looks across to Namo and asks, “How was it better?” 

“Oh, right, you wouldn't have been here,” Namo says cheerily. “He was an English teacher, but he worked in student welfare, too. Not that I was there all the time, of course,” he adds after a moment, in an immediately suspicious way. “But he was a really nice guy, even when he would’ve had every reason to scold people, and I think other staff saw that.” 

That sits there in the air for a moment, until, quietly, Thua says, “He always had these jokes on the whiteboard in his office, in English, that he’d explain all the parts of even if you didn’t ask.”

Aye laughs a little at that. It’s more breath than sound, and it looks like it startles him; Akk gives in to his own urge to comfort and puts his arm fully around his boyfriend, fingers curling in the fabric of his shirt. Instantly, Aye leans into it, soft against Akk’s side even as his notes slide haphazardly out of his lap.

Kan, having clearly seen them, starts loudly trying to remember one of Teacher Dika’s whiteboard jokes, exaggeratedly mispronouncing the words to make Thua giggle. Grateful, Akk takes the opportunity to dip his head and move even closer. His lips brush skin as he murmurs into Aye’s ear, “You’re alright?” 

In his hold, Aye wiggles a little, probably ticklish, and says, “I think so. Mostly.” It comes out wondering, like he hadn’t been sure, like he’d expected it to hurt more. “I— he did that at home, too. He had printed-out lists.”

That doesn’t surprise Akk. It makes sense, he thinks, for Teacher Dika to have tried to show as much of himself as he could have. And Namo’s right; they had seen that, for better and for worse. He wouldn’t blame Aye if he never forgave anyone for what they’d done with that, if he stood up right now and demanded they shut up about him, if he said it wasn’t like they had any right to his memory. Akk certainly doesn’t feel like he does, some days. 

Aye doesn’t do any of that. He just curls all the way into Akk, breathes intentionally even, and listens to them talk with a contemplative expression on his face. The others cast sidelong glances at him from time to time, worried, and then less, and then they’re moving on, eventually getting back to what they’re supposed to be here for. 

But Aye stays tucked comfortable and close, refusing to move when they have to arrange their notes again, even though it’s not like Akk was letting go. Their friends make fun of them, but only gently, the same way they’d do for anyone else, and that too is different now.