#i hope this works!! :D i wanted to give u some fun mysterious water murder

[mutatedangels-a]

@wynterlanding spun the underused muse roulette! ** ...and got mekhi! [ based on this plot ]

"—this is where it all went down."

Mekhi stabs the end of her surf board into the sand with a slight crunch. She pushes her sunglasses up off her eyes and onto her head, sending her swamp witch-like hair away from her face in a cartoonish way. It looks a bit like she's been zapped by electricity. Though she was born and bred on the beach, she'll never get along with the salty air and the humidity.

"You're lucky you asked me to take you out here, 'cause none of the other lifeguards would have had the cajones to rip through the caution tape," she says, bookending her words with a snicker. "Water rescue said she looked all bloated, like an overstuffed turkey, even though she apparently only drowned, like, five minutes before they found her. News crews were out here and everything. It was bananas. This one lifeguard who was supposed to be on post here got hella fired. I feel bad for him, but... He should'a been paying attention." Ironic, because she's also missing from her post right now, but she struck up a deal with Matt to watch her portion of the blue.

She folds her arms, looking out into the waves crashing along the shore, then letting out a pseudo-dramatic sigh. Then, she gives the man a sharp glance. "What'd you say your name was again? Yeah. I don't mean to rush you or anything, but my lunch break's coming up and I'd love the $20 to buy some shrimp tacos at Shelly's."

[komahinasecretexchange]

Title: So… Proposals, Huh?

Author: @thatsrightdollface

For: @namsuuuuuuu

Rating/Warnings: Somewhere between G and T, again.  :P

Prompt: komaeda and hinata are back in jabberwock island, watching the sunset on the beach (or somewhere else ill leave that up to you) just chatting and then komaeda randomly says he wants to marry the hope sleeping inside of hinata and hinata is like tf are u saying now komaeda i dont have time for ur bs (the plot twist is that they do get married)

Author’s Notes:  :D  Gift three out of three for you!!!  I truly hope you’ve had fun with them…  Happy Komahina exchange, and I’m sorry for anything I got weird!  Thank you.  :’)  This one is about 2,000 words!

It was easy to forget this version of Jabberwock Island wasn’t real. The sand was just as warm under Hajime Hinata’s feet as it would’ve been otherwise – just as likely to be filled with spiny buried shells, too, and bits of sea glass like opaque chess pieces with all their features worn away.  Knights without battles left to fight; kings without crowns worked into the makeshift bone of their tiny heads.   Sunlight catching over the ocean even stung Hinata’s eyes just as badly as the real thing did, on that boat where he lived now with all the other former Remnants of Despair.  He had thought it was funny when Nagito Komaeda asked to come back here, into the simulation where they’d met.  But hey, a lot of what Komaeda said or wanted seemed kinda funny to Hinata, and so he’d said screw it.  Why not?

Jabberwock Island had been meant as such a healing place, on that pseudo-class trip so long ago.  Too many of Hinata’s memories from that time were sour, though, obviously.   Focused on murder games, Ultimate Despair and some dumb robotic bear.  The smell of blood and sea-salt.   Class trials.  The Final Dead Room.  All that.  But not every memory was awful, Hinata supposed.  It would’ve been hard to forget how warm and comfortable things were with Komaeda at first, there, before he started in on his toxic, murder-y Hope shtick.  Before Hinata learned who all of them really were, or had been, or could give into one more time.

It wasn’t that Hinata felt a burning need to build sandcastles on Jabberwock Island again – especially given the way bizarre things always seemed to happen to Komaeda’s sandcastles, like the one that got swallowed by a huge groaning whale or the one that sank into a mysteriously-opened underground crypt they’d decided not to explore thanks to all the bloodstains.  Komaeda being the former Ultimate Lucky Student was just like that.  But Hinata hadn’t been exactly opposed to riding that Jabberwock Island carousel one more time, either.  Komaeda’d rested his cheek against the fancy mechanical horse’s hand bar thing and closed his eyes for a second, then, listening to the music.

Hinata and Komaeda were the only two running the Jabberwock Island simulation, just then, and the world seemed so quiet all around without their classmates dueling one another over snack food or screaming about the fearsome might of demonic hamsters.  That was okay, though.  Komaeda hated loud places, and Hinata knew sometimes the Remnants’ boat got to be a little much for him.  They were in pretty cramped quarters nowadays, after all, and Komaeda’s bunk was just across from Nekomaru Nidai’s.  The Ultimate Team Manager wasn’t known for a subdued daily routine, not by a long stretch, and Komaeda kept having to patch up his newly-splintered wall before seagulls flew in and attempted to nest in his hair, or a wave swept up and drenched everything he owned in sticky ocean water.  Hinata had asked Komaeda to trade bunks a few times by now, and Komaeda always glanced over him slowly, then.  Calculating.  He had something to say about that business, for sure, but he hadn’t actually said it yet.

The sun was setting over Jabberwock Island, now, and Hinata was leaning back in one of those beach chairs he and his classmates hadn’t gotten to relax in much back during their murder game days.  The sky looked sweet and syrupy citrus, like a pack of popsicles melting all over the ocean.  Once, that dripping red-pink strawberry sun would’ve made Hinata think about bleeding, first.  Probably because he’d seen so many of his friends bleeding into the sand.  Now, Hinata tried to decide if Komaeda would’ve rather had a lime or grapefruit popsicle, if he went to grab some.  Komaeda didn’t really like sweet things, but it was ridiculously hot on the islands even as nighttime came.  Maybe they’d have to get back to the boat soon, actually.  Make sure nobody’d finally sunk the damn thing.

Komaeda’s hair was pulled back into a loose ponytail low on his neck – he was burying his own legs in the sand, thoughtfully.  Slowly.  It probably meant something that Hinata’s first thought on the matter had been “Huh, maybe Komaeda’s making himself a fish tail or something?” instead of “Looks like Komaeda’s burying himself alive.”

“All I’m saying is I think I could’ve had that boss myself if I’d picked different armor,” Hinata said.  They were talking about this video game they’d been playing with Sonia Nevermind lately, back in the bowels of the Remnants of Despair boat.  It was a game that’d used to belong to Chiaki Nanami, the Ultimate Gamer – it was a game Hinata was determined to finish up even if it was super hard and took him a million years.  Hinata was playing as a Rogue that’d turned out to be frustratingly difficult to level up, the Ultimate Princess was playing a Berserker with tons of expensive weaponry and Komaeda was playing a Paladin he’d somehow managed to corrupt pretty early into the game with insanely powerful dark magic.  It was an easy conversation.  Hinata had been over this before, and he knew just as well as any of them that his character definitely couldn’t have taken on this particular boss all alone.  Sonia’s and Komaeda’s characters probably could’ve done it, though, so he had to hold his own, didn’t he?

“Oh, I’m sure,” Komaeda said, clearly unconvinced.  He patted down the sand over his ankles.  Shot Hinata a soft smile.  “I’d offer you my armor – but it’s cursed, you know.  Pretty unlucky…  I can only wear cursed armor, after all…”  That was one of the conditions of Komaeda’s dark magic thing, in the game.  He was communing with ancient eldritch creatures living behind these spooky black mirrors you could find everywhere, too.  That was gonna be an important plot thing, Hinata just knew it.

“I could try it out, at least,” Hinata said.  “Hey…  Before we head home, do you want a lime or a grapefruit popsicle?”

“Lime,” said Komaeda.  He wiggled his toes under their layers of sand.  Tipped his head over so it rested against Hinata’s arm for just the barest second.  And then he said, as if it was the most natural thing in the world, “I want to marry the hope sleeping inside of you, Hinata.  Did you know that?”

“What…  Uh.  What the hell are you saying?” Hinata asked.  He tensed up.  He thought about jerking away, but of course that would mean Komaeda tipped sidewise, if he didn’t pull back fast enough.  Komaeda would knock his chin on the beach chair armrest and probably end up with a chipped tooth or something.  Komaeda had injured more bones than Hinata’d even known existed, apparently.  The former Ultimate Lucky Student would laugh another accident off without seeming too surprised, even as he bled more bright salty blood into the sands of that super-fake, too-familiar Jabberwock Island.  “We don’t have time for any of your…  You know.  We can’t mess around like this.  C’mon.  We have to get back to the boat soon.”

“Oh, you’re right,” Komaeda said.

…

Hinata and Komaeda’s wedding was a fairly small one, in part because the Remnants of Despair were still technically on the run from international law.  Sure it was a little unconventional to get married inside a simulation, but they made it work.  The whole “simulation” bit made it a little easier for some of their more distant friends to attend, too.  Komaeda just about screamed, clapping his mechanical prosthetic hand over his mouth when he saw the actual Ultimate Hope in the audience…  And Hinata walked up the aisle to meet him holding Chiaki Nanami’s arm.  Well.  A simulated computer-program version of Chiaki Nanami, but if anyone was going to give him away nowadays it would’ve had to be her, right?  They still hadn’t beaten that particular game she’d left behind, with all those black mirrors and Hinata’s incredibly difficult-to-play Rogue, but they were getting there.  Things would come together in time…  Or else Sonia would just get fed up and kick all the enemy characters’ asses on her own, one of these days.

Hinata couldn’t honestly believe how everything was coming together around him, actually, but there it was all the same.  When he’d given Komaeda a ring a few weeks after their conversation on the beach, Komaeda had opened his mouth like he had so many things to say.   Monologues about Hope and worthiness, about his own ruinous luck – exclamations about the potential he’d always seen inside Hinata, like a sacred stone burning with light from deep under a mountain.  Something. But he’d just melted into Hinata’s arms, actually.  He’d hidden his face in the crook of Hinata’s neck and murmured, “…I thought you decided all that was just some of my bullshit again…”

The ring had words engraved along the inside of its thin white-gold band.  Hinata would probably be in debt to the Ultimate Affluent Progeny for all time, after borrowing enough to have it made.

Nanami had done up Hinata’s tie for him, just before the wedding, telling him they’d come a long way.  His hands were shaking too much to do it up himself, which was weird because, you know, this was Komaeda waiting at the end of the aisle.  This was Hinata’s Komaeda, who he knew he didn’t have to be nervous around by now.   Komaeda whose hair he’d pulled out of his face while he was seasick, and who hadn’t known what to say when he read what Hinata engraved on the inside of his ring.  Komaeda who actually hadn’t worn that ring yet, not even once.  The Former Ultimate Lucky Student was sure it would end up exploded or melted off his hand, somehow, because of who he’d always been.  And y’know, that might’ve been true, but Hinata had bought the thing for him anyway.  Hinata knew what he was getting into, here.

He’d caught just a glimpse of Komaeda in a pale cream suit, standing with his hands behind his back under a canopy hanging with shells and flowers, strung with soft lights.  Komaeda was standing so still, as if that could keep his luck from wrecking the moment just before it came.  He was waiting with his eyes closed, a peaceful smile on his face, ready to see Hinata whenever Hinata decided he was ready for him. Their friends were sitting in rows before them, on either side of a pathway lined with spiny seashells Gundham Tanaka had gotten his army of ferocious hamsters to dig out of the sand for them just that morning.   The ocean sparkled at Komaeda’s back, unknowable and huge, full of monsters and sunken ships and – well, actually…  Maybe not.  This was an artificial ocean, after all.  It existed for this moment on the sand.   So easy to forget that, huh?

Ibuki Mioda, the Ultimate Musician, played something uncharacteristically slow and gentle on her guitar as Hinata started up the aisle.  She sang a new song Hinata hadn’t heard before, about impossible luck, about proposals made that didn’t expect to be believed, about her friends who had believed in a future even when she couldn’t. Komaeda shifted when that music started up, blinking his eyes open against the glare of the sun.  When he saw Hinata watching him, he choked out a laugh.  Komaeda laughed when he was nervous, Hinata knew.

He mouthed the words, “We’re okay.  Breathe,” as he walked, and Komaeda took a deep, shaky breath.

This was all just a few minutes before that huge wave came, taking away most of the canopy and a whole table full of food the Ultimate Chef had prepared for everybody, but…  Hey.  Hinata and Komaeda each got in most of their vows before any of that, at least.  There you go.