Chapter Text
“Oh, Dai-chan,” Satsuki’s voice, familiar in its long-suffering tone, came crackling through the phone. “You didn’t.”
Daiki groaned as he flopped unceremoniously onto his bed, an adult magazine crinkling under his head. He didn’t have to strain his ears to hear his parents’ low murmurs drift upstairs, for all their attempts at secrecy. Talking about him, no doubt. He scowled at his ceiling.
“Yes, I told them that I’m a raging homosexual,” he groused miserably. (He thought he could hear his mum yell-whisper ‘but what about grandchildren?’ from downstairs. His dad, the ever complacent one, told her in a slightly lower tone that ‘we’ve already told him that his happiness comes first. We’ll live.’ While Daiki appreciated the thought, this wasn’t really the problem at hand.)
The girl snickered, the sound irritating in Daiki’s ear. “In those exact words?”
“Fuck off, I was desperate, okay? My parents have been bugging me for weeks over this stupid family dinner, and it was the first thing that came to mind,” he grumbled, before pausing to drag a hand over his face. “Fucking really, why do they even care if crazy Aunt Matsuda asks after my love life, or if cousin what’s-her-face got hitched at twenty-two? Might as well just tell them the truth that no, Daiki hasn’t gotten a girlfriend yet, yes he’s twenty-one and single, now kindly fuck off and eat your chicken.”
“But Dai-chan, you’re not even gay, are you?”
The university student let out a loud grating bark of a laugh. Him, gay? “Hell no,” he scoffed, tugging the magazine out from under his head to spare a glance at the model’s generous D-cups. “I’ve got too much love for boobs. God’s gift to mankind, they are.”
“Yes yes, I think we all know about that,” Satsuki replied dryly. “Well, how’d your parents react then?”
And herein lay the problem. “After my mum had a minor meltdown over her loss of future tiny Aomine spawns, she told me to find a boyfriend by the fifteenth.”
“That gives you …” Her soft mumbles came out tinny as she counted the days under her breath. “A bit more than a week.” She sighed for the umpteenth time this call. “I hope you realize just how ridiculous you are. Why couldn’t you just have sucked it up and admitted that you lied, and you’re not actually interested in men?”
“I just –” He let out a huffy breath. “I panicked. No – goddamnit, stop judging me and listen, Satsuki – the damage was done, and I couldn’t take it back, alright?”
“In other words, your manly pride stopped you and now you have to find yourself a boyfriend to make up for it,” Satsuki summarized flatly. At her derisive snort, Daiki had to exercise considerable self-restraint from throwing his pillow across the room in a fit of frustration. What had he done to deserve this complete lack of sympathy? “Congratulations you dork, you tried to dig yourself out of a hole, and somehow managed to land yourself in an even deeper one.”
He groaned, and turned his face to bury it in the model’s comforting, albeit very 2D chest. “Stop patronizing me and help me out here,” he groused (and most definitely did not whine, thank you very much). His grumbles were coming out muffled against the shimmery paper of the magazine, but he really couldn’t be bothered to lift his head at this point.
“You got yourself into this one, you have to admit,” his childhood not-much-of-a-friend sniffed. Daiki swore he could hear the tell-tale swish of her thick head of hair being flicked imperiously over a shoulder. “I dunno, just buy someone off Craigslist or something. Or even better, suck it up like the grown man you are and just own up to your lies.”
“Satsuki, you’re being unnecessarily difficult.”
“Now you know what I have to deal with every day,” was her clipped reply.
He harrumphed.
There were a surprising amount of boyfriends up for rent on Craigslist, Daiki came to find.
(Desperate times call for desperate measures, and he’s not above using shady websites as a means to an end.)
Granted, it was taking quite a bit of sifting – some were just too manly for his tastes (he absolutely refuses to rent out some dude who has bigger biceps than he does – no way in seven hells was he going to bruise up his manly pride more than strictly necessary, especially in front of his cursed extended family). Others were too ugly (desperate and not-homosexual as he is, he has standards), too tall (manly pride, Daiki, manly pride), too expensive (just who the hell do they think they are), too annoying (one had deemed it necessary to adorn his ad with the most ridiculous and unnecessary emoticons he’d ever had the misfortune to see; he’d closed the page as soon as he read ‘Hellooooo!! ( ´ ▽ ` )ﾉ’). But, well, a start’s a start.
At least there was a faint glimmer of hope that some bloke would save him from his imminent doom at the hands of his over-bearing family.
Not one to give up when it’s his own neck on the line, he randomly clicked on another ad – ‘Fake boyfriend rental’ it read (very succinct, Daiki thought approvingly). He was met with a photo of a small, somewhat scrawny male. Could be promising. The student leaned closer to inspect the grainy picture.
The person in the photo was reasonably pretty. With wide blue eyes gazing at something just past the camera, even lighter blue hair looking heavily windswept with the way it jutted this way and that, and lips that were parted slightly in a miniscule upwards curl, the dude was attractive enough that even Daiki can appreciate that he was decently easy on the eyes, even if his blank expression was weighing slightly on the creepy side.
(Yes, he’s definitely pretty enough, if Daiki was going to be honest with himself.)
Daiki scrolled down to where the kid’s information was listed (Age: 20, Height: 168cm, Weight: 126lbs) along with his number. He snorted indelicately – while he didn’t want to hire someone too tall, this poor soul was a good foot shorter than he is. What a midget, seriously.
Whatever. This kid was probably as good as he was going to get, as far as his remaining shreds of dignity were concerned. Daiki tugged over his smartphone and tapped the number in with deft fingers along with a brief message. He was long since resigned to his fate – he might as well get this over with.
(Even if everything goes to shit, at least Aunt Matsuda can fawn over their complementary hair colours.)
Once he had managed a satisfactory text that most definitely did not take several tries to perfect (‘saw your ad on craigslist, accidentally told parents that i’m gay and now in dire need of a fake boyfriend, send help’), he set his phone down next to him and leaned back on his chair. First step done – now, all he could do is wait. He let out a big whoosh of air, sent a cursory glance to the carefully blank screen of his phone, then clicked back to the open Facebook tab.
He jiggled his leg as he scrolled aimlessly through the feed. He’d never been particularly big on social media – he’d use it for private messaging, mostly, and occasionally writing a snarky comment on Wakamatsu’s wall because why the hell not – but today, he was taking in even less of his feed than usual. At some point the words had all began to blend together, and Sakurai’s photo of his most recent bento-making initiative was beginning to look less like a photo and more a messy blur of colour. Daiki had to blink the bleariness out of his eyes more times than he cared to count for within just the last minute.
Of course, it probably also wasn’t helping that he couldn’t stop glancing at his phone.
When he caught himself glancing over for the fifth time within fifteen minutes, he grunted and pushed away from his desk. It wasn’t like anything particularly interesting was happening on Facebook as it is, and he clearly wasn’t feeling it. He snagged his phone as he staggered over to his bed, suppressing the violent urge to aimlessly glance at his phone yet again. Daiki could feel his damned stomach twisting itself into knots. Tiny, fluttering knots, but knots nonetheless.
He was worried.
He really didn’t need to be, he knew – after all, if this doesn’t work out, he’s got a whole repertoire of ads to go through online. He couldn’t help but shift uneasily, however. Like it or not, the clock was ticking and he really wanted – no, needed this person to agree to help him out. Time was running out, goddamnit, and he didn’t particularly fancy spending another unnecessary half an hour on Craigslist looking up men of varying sizes.
He took a chance look at his phone screen again. No dice.
Flopped aimlessly on his bed, he curled over and began picking under his nails, counting the dots on his ceiling, anything really, to occupy his mind. He tried his best not to think about how disappointment curdled at the pit of his stomach.
Why did he think this would be easy? Of course it wasn’t going to be easy – he’d fucked this whole situation for himself, so it was probably some deity telling him that he was going to have to try way harder than that to right things again. He stretched his arms far past his head with a spectacular groan.
Just as he was mentally preparing himself to leave the enticing embrace of his warm blankets and spongy mattress, his phone buzzed loudly next to his head.
Smothering a distinctly unmanly yelp, Daiki rolled over and snatched his phone, heart pounding.
My apologies, I was away. Would you perhaps like to meet up briefly to talk about the details?
He let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding (shut up man, don’t be weird about this), before typing back a response.
yeah, sounds good. maji burger at 2 tmw?
Daiki tried his best not to throw up his arms in victory at the swift ‘See you then’ that appeared on his phone.