Once he and Ando were back at their apartment—Hiro didn't feel like waiting for the bus, so he teleported them home once they were outside after making sure nobody was around—Hiro pulled out his laptop and did some research. Exactly how popular had those Ninth Wonders comics been? He'd only had a few people recognize him or Ando from those comics before, and never outside of America—only when visiting his westerner friends. Sure enough, a quick search for fan content revealed barely anything, except for an old DeviantArt account which had been deactivated for quite some time called Sapphic_chestnut.
"Ando, babe, come take a look at this," Hiro called, beckoning his boyfriend over as he pulled up a piece of fanart dated from March 2007. "It's us."
The picture, which looked to have been drawn in MS Paint, was a redraw of a Ninth Wonders panel showing Hiro and Ando in the Versa. In the redraw, there was a heart between the two, and a tiny squiggle of a signature at the bottom of the image was barely readable as Anzu Noguchi. It didn't take long to figure out that it was the same Anzu.
"So she shipped us, huh?" Ando muttered. "I guess us being together now must make her happy, then."
"I don't think she's that kind of shipper," said Hiro. "Fujoshis tend to be straight."
"Anyways, keep going," Ando said, tapping Hiro's laptop screen. The outside of the laptop was covered in cute stickers Hiro had put on, to the point where one had to look at it closely to see what colour the laptop actually was. "I want to see what people thought of me—of us!"
"I don't know…" Hiro scrolled down to check if there had been any comments on the panel redraw, but the only one was somebody asking what the original panel was from. Anzu hadn't replied to the comment until months later, and rather than stating the name, she'd simply said "it's really good! You should check it out :D". "Doesn't it kind of seem like an invasion of her privacy? Plus, there's not much to see," he added, waving his hand at Anzu's gallery.
Most of her work was for more popular things, with a heavy concentration of femslash ships—which made sense, since she was a lesbian. She had a folder labeled "9thWs", which Hiro guessed stood for Ninth Wonders, that he considered considered clicking on, but his guilt about looking at Anzu's old work without her knowledge got the better of him and he closed the webpage before Ando noticed the folder. Before closing it, though, he saved the page so he could come back to it later if need be—just in case. He didn't see himself needing to come back, but it was never a bad idea to be prepared.
The next day, Hiro's phone kept buzzing throughout the day while he was at work. He didn't check to see who was texting him, since he had somewhat of a bad track record at work due to his tendency to disappear for days or weeks at a time without warning, and he feared that getting caught looking at his phone would lead to him getting fired. When he finally checked during his lunch break, though, he saw that the person who'd been texting him was an unfamiliar number.
Scrunching up his face in confusion, Hiro scrolled through the messages. Luckily, his confusion was short-lived; it didn't take long to figure out who they were from.
"So cool meeting you & your bf yesterday! :D"
"(Hope you don't mind me texting you, btw! Kim gave me your # after you guys left)"
"Sooo… were YOU the guy I saw at the comic book store last week?"
"Bc if not I'd REALLY like to track that guy down and compliment him on his cosplay"
"Hello?"
"Oh btw I found some old fanart I drew of you in like 2006 or 2007 I think"
"***the character based off you I mean! Not the real you"
"Would you like to see it?"
Anzu's most recent message was dated from only about half an hour ago, so Hiro decided there was no harm in replying. He told her he'd love to see her art—and it wasn't a lie. Now that he knew Anzu was comfortable sharing her old fanart with him, he felt a lot less guilty about looking at her old DeviantArt account. It was interesting to see how she'd felt about the real-life events that had transpired all those years ago.
Anzu texted Hiro a picture of the fanart in question a few minutes later. It didn't look half-bad, considering the low resolution. In the drawing, Hiro was winking and doing the "nya" pose while wearing a Star Trek T-shirt. Hiro wasted no time in complimenting Anzu on her art, although she replied shortly after with "It's super cringey… I regret drawing you in such a cringey way tbh! :(" Hiro assured her that it was fine; besides, he thought the "nya" pose was kind of cute.
After wrapping up his text conversation with Anzu, Hiro saved her drawing of him onto his phone and popped into Ando's cubicle to show his boyfriend the picture. Ando barely spared a glance up from his computer screen to smile at Hiro; they both dropped by the other's cubicle so often that none of their coworkers even bothered to nag them about it anymore. Hiro gave Ando a peck on the forehead and plunked himself down on his desk.
"Oi, Hiro, do you have to go and mess up my desk?" Ando scolded, tidying up the paperwork he'd been doing which Hiro had messed up. "I love you, but..."
"Look at this picture Anzu drew of me," Hiro interrupted, not wanting to get into a discussion about his shortcomings. He was well aware of them, but he preferred to ignore them—not out of vanity so much as worry that he wasn't a good boyfriend. Surely if Ando's gripes with him were that serious, they wouldn't still be together, right?
"Anzu drew that, huh? It's cute." Ando stared intently at the phone, his cheeks turning rosy as he zoomed in on the grainy image. "I think she captured you well."
Hiro giggled and poked at his boyfriend's cheek. "You're blushing," he teased in a singsong voice. "Am I really that cute?"
Ando gave him a look that read, do I really need to answer that? Hiro grinned and hopped off the desk and into his boyfriend's lap. Technically they weren't supposed to kiss at work, so Hiro froze time around them to prevent coworkers from noticing. As their fingers interlaced, Hiro got a little shock, and he jerked back to see tiny red sparks springing up at Ando's fingertips.
"Ah… sorry about that," said Ando, clenching his hand into a fist to stop the sparks. "I just thought it'd make things more interesting."
"More painful, is more like it," Hiro muttered, wincing at the slight sting the jolt had left in his fingers.
He thought back to the bad future he'd once seen in which Ando killed him, but he quickly banished those thoughts from his head upon receiving a tender, apologetic kiss on the lips which he returned without hesitation. Whatever universe that future had existed in, the possibility of it ever coming to pass had probably come and gone long ago. For now and forever, Ando was Hiro's loving boyfriend, who Hiro trusted beyond a doubt. Getting hung up on the past (or a snapshot of a potential future from the past) was pointless. Hiro had already been hung up on too many pasts in his life, some of which he'd been in at the time. When he was with his one true love, it was best to live in the present.
