A/N: God, it's been forever. I don't even know what happened with this story. Anyway, this is the last chapter, so,,, yeah.
It was nice to goof off and alleviate tension, and Hiro soon got so caught up in joking around with Ando that he almost forgot about matters at hand. As such, he was caught completely by surprise at a quarter to noon when the doorbell rang.
"I—I'll get it," Hiro managed to get out, although by that point he was cackling so hard (at things that objectively probably weren't all that funny) that he could barely talk. Wiping sweat off his brow, he got up from where he'd been rolling around on the floor and went to answer the door. When he opened it, he was pleased to see Kimiko and Anzu standing next to each other, hand in hand. Needless to say, the two of them looked pretty happy about it too.
"Hi," Anzu said. Then she looked Hiro up and down, eyes widening, and cringed. "Aw, man, I guess we really caught you at a bad time."
Hiro was confused at first until he looked down at his rumpled clothes, felt how hot his cheeks were, and realized how fast and heavy he was breathing. Blushing, he waved his hand. "N-no, it's not… we weren't, um…" He trailed off, realizing he sounded like Anzu's college roommate with how much he was hemming and hawing. "I'm ace, so I'm not really into that kind of thing anyway."
"Well, whatever," Anzu said with a shrug, moving past Hiro into the apartment and hanging up her coat. She was shivering a bit; Hiro noticed that all the buttons on her plaid flannel shirt were done up, which was a rarity for her. "Man, it's freezing out there! So, guess what we came all the way here in the rain to tell you guys?"
"You'll be pleased to hear that Anzu and I talked things over," Kimiko said, not giving Hiro a chance to guess—not that he'd have really needed to anyway. "We're both sorry for the things we said last night, and we both think it's in our best interests to stay together."
"Yep, it's like they always say," Anzu said with a grin. "A little precognitive ability can't get in the way of true love!"
"Do they always say that?" Kimiko gave Anzu a teasing smile. "I've never heard that one before."
From where he was still laying on his back flipping through Taro's comic, Ando lifted is head to glance up at Kimiko. "Hey, that's great!"
"It is great," Hiro agreed with a grin. Bouncing on his heels, he turned back to Anzu, motioning to the comic Ando was flipping through. "So, you lent him that, huh? I don't think it existed before I went into the past."
"Yeah, Taro and I are still pretty close; he's a super cool dude," Anzu said. Sitting down on the floor next to Ando, she took the comic from him without asking (Ando looked a bit miffed; but he didn't outwardly object) and glanced it over fondly. "His LGBTokyo series is pretty fun, but this is definitely its best-known issue. Nobody's quite sure if it's meant to be taken seriously or not—don't tell the general public, but it's definitely not."
Hiro shot Ando a look, raising his eyebrows. He thought it would be best not to mention that the two of them had just been making fun of the issue's contents—even if it was meant to be comedic in nature, which certainly seemed to be the case. In fact, now that he thought about it, Hiro had no idea why he'd assumed a bootleg version of himself dressed in a pride flag had been anything but an affectionate parody.
It occurred to him that neither Taro nor anyone else who'd read the actual Ninth Wonders series would have known that Hiro and Ando weren't straight either. Even Claire, who had figured out her sexuality long before they had, was probably still heterosexual as far as most readers were concerned, considering where the comic had left off. It was a shame too, considering how much some people needed to see that kind of representation in their media. If Hiro had seen more same-gender couples in media growing up, he probably would have realized he was bi much earlier on, and Kimiko would have figured out she was a lesbian instead of spending most of her life wondering why the only Star Trek episode she'd agree to watch with Hiro was Rejoined.
As Anzu thumbed through the comic with the countenance of someone who was long familiar with every beat of the story, Kimiko pulled Hiro aside to talk with her in the kitchen. There was a twinkle in her eye as she spoke.
"Hiro, thank you for helping Anzu talk some sense into me," she said. "I love her, I really do, and I was a fool to care that she has powers. So, out of gratitude, I'm going to offer you a small favour. Do you remember how you agreed to give me away when Anzu and I get married?"
"Of course I do."
"Well, I was wondering if you'd let me return the favour when you marry Ando."
"Oh, that'd be lovely!" Hiro was pleasantly surprised; he'd been expecting something more important, and he didn't want to be given that much thanks in return for something he hadn't played too big a part in. Despite his time-travel-related efforts, Kimiko and Anzu had stayed together of their own volition, because they loved each other and knew it was better that way. "It even makes more sense this way, since you're the older sibling."
"I suppose it would," said Kimiko. Looking over her shoulder at Anzu, she beckoned her over; Anzu blinked and did a sort of clumsy somersault over the carpet before landing on her feet and calmly walking the rest of the way. "What was that for?" Kimiko asked, biting back a snicker as Anzu brushed herself off.
Cracking her head to the side like an anime character, Anzu smiled. "Why else? I wanted to show off to my girlfriend."
"That's valid," Hiro said before realizing that the couple probably didn't want his input. Stepping out of the kitchen, he asked, "should I leave you two alone, or are we all just going to talk together?" He glanced back over at Ando—was he seriously still lounging around on the floor? "Because if we're all going to talk, it'd be more convenient to just do it in the living room…"
Kimiko's cheeks reddened as she glanced around the cramped space. "I… I guess you're right," she muttered, cringing.
As they sat down on the sofa, Anzu clapped Kimiko on the back. "Bet you thought the disaster lesbian was a myth, huh?"
"Oh, I knew it wasn't a myth," Kimiko said. "What did you think I thought you were?"
"Ouch," Anzu complained, drawing back and clutching an imaginary wound. "Babe, you wound me so with your words."
There were only three seats on the couch which were taken by Hiro, Kimiko, and Anzu respectively, so Ando sat himself down on the arm of the couch and slung his arm around Hiro. Well accustomed to his fiancé using putting his arm around him as a cover for stealing pillows, Hiro pressed his back tighter against the back of the couch so Ando couldn't slip the pillow out from behind him. True, Hiro was just as if not more likely to steal pillows, but that was only because they were soft and fluffy. Ando probably just did it to annoy him. Still, whatever his motivations, Hiro was always all about physical affection.
Anzu clapped her hands twice like somebody about to address a big crowd even though she was talking to three people who were all seated on the same couch as her (it was a tight squeeze). "So, I've got a pretty big announcement to make," she began, smiling from ear to ear. "I'm going to be collaborating with my old friend Taro on a project. He's going to be drawing and colouring it, and I'm going to be doing the writing and storyboarding… well, technically all the writing was done in the past? Or by fate or something? But I'm probably going to tweak it a little and make up most of the dialogue."
It didn't take too long to figure out what she was getting at. "Are you doing a—" Hiro began, right before Anzu confirmed his guess with an enthusiastic squeal.
"I'm writing a continuation to Ninth Wonders!"
She was quickly met with congratulations. (Hiro started clapping, but Ando and Kimiko kept their hands in their laps, so he felt kind of awkward and stopped clapping after a couple seconds.)
"Awesome!"
"Oh, cool!"
"When are you going to start work on it?"
"I already have…sort of," Anzu explained. "See, I don't remember most of the stuff that you guys said happened between then and now—" she gestured at Hiro and Ando— "but I do remember seeing some pictures floating around the internet that were supposedly the last things Mendez-san drew of you guys. You may recall it was kind of a cliff-hanger, so I wrote some fix-it fic, and I think it's safe to say it turned out pretty true-to-life."
Ando raised his hand. "Can you leave out the part about me passing out?"
"Nah. It shows you have character." Leaning over to whisper in Hiro's ear, Anzu added, "Plus, I just thought it was funny."
"One more question," Kimiko said. "What are you going to call it? Won't you have some issues with copyright?"
Anzu sighed and slumped down a bit, which Kimiko made a tsk-tsk sound at; Hiro harkened back to a childhood of being scolded for bad posture. "Yeah, copyright sucks, so it's not like I'll be able to call it Ninth Wonders Reborn or something," she said. "Or like, The Next Generation—not that it's a new generation, because it's still just you guys—whatever, you get the idea. Anyway, I haven't decided on a name yet."
"Tenth wonders," Hiro suggested, mostly jokingly. However, Anzu actually seemed to consider it for a moment before she wrinkled her nose and shook her head.
"Nah, I'll probably go with something unrelated to the original title," she said. "One thing I do know, though, is that I'm gonna make it even gayer than in real life."
A few months later, on another rainy day, Hiro happened to pass by the comic book store where Anzu worked. He hadn't seen her there in a while; he wondered if she quit. He hoped for her sake that she hadn't; Kimiko's office job paid pretty well, but Anzu shouldn't rely on her wife for all her income. He didn't see her through the store window, but he did see something displayed among the new releases being advertised up on stands next to the cardboards cutouts and novelty items (who'd want a lamp shaped like a zombie hand anyway? Admittedly, Hiro would have, but he got the feeling Ando wouldn't be too keen on it).
The front cover of the comic was drawn in a surprisingly shoujo-esque style, depicting Hiro and Ando reaching for each other with a giant clock in the background which Hiro assumed was symbolic. Below the cover art was the title, in swooping cursive letters—"Evolving Hearts¸ volume 1: Red Lightning and Soft Lighting!" Hiro wondered if Anzu should have consulted her friends about the name after all, but as he examined the cover art another person walking by on the street stopped to look as well, and after a moment murmured curiously and headed into the store.
Hiro wanted to go in and buy it himself, but somebody would be bound to notice that he looked just like one of the people on the cover. He realized that if this series took off, he and Ando might really have to keep their heads down. Since their wedding was only a few weeks away, though, maybe somebody would buy the comic for them as a wedding gift.
Oh, what the hell? Hiro would just buy it now. And if somebody in the store recognized him, well… Hiro smiled to himself as he traced his finger across the glass over the words "story by Anzu Noguchi". Being recognized hadn't hurt him too badly the last time.
~end~
