Page 36 of Bad Daddy

He certainly wasn’t a stellar artist or anything, but with more time to spend on drawing, Danny had been seeing improvement in his sketches. This time he ended up with a little cartoon figure of a character that could possibly be considered based on Haru, based on build and hair alone. Danny gave him a sleek-looking futuristic outfit and, after some thought, also gave him Danny’s best rendition of a rocketship.

It sort of spiraled from there.

By the time Danny remembered that his phone was still on silent from his test and that he should probably check to see if Manuel had messaged him back, he was grinning stupidly to himself over the comic he had drawn out to accompany Haru’s cartoon persona. He had taken to calling it The Adventures of Captain Haruto Nakamura, Explorer of Deep Space in his head. There weren’t any words, just bubbles with images in them to act as dialogue, but Danny had definitely gotten his own narrative going.

It was silly and ridiculous and fun, and he was actually even pretty sure Haru would like it too. Danny had no idea how he’d show it to Haru without combusting with embarrassment, but that was a problem for Future Danny.

Present Danny wiggled his phone out of his pocket, eyebrows shooting up when it told him that it was already noon. He glanced back to the comic and at how much he’d managed to draw. Yeah, okay, noon checked out.

There were two voice messages waiting for him, one from Manuel sent at 11:30… and the other from Haru from just a few minutes ago.

Danny forced himself to listen to Manuel’s first.

“Hey man! Glad to hear your test went well. I think I did okay? I mean, I hope so! I’m pretty sure I did. Like, I know this stuff backwards and forwards. I just get nervous, you know? And okay, sorry, I’m babbling–yeah, I’d love to hang out! I’ve got my business admin test at four but I’d be so down to like, get lunch or something and try to distract myself until then. Let me know!”

Haru’s message was a simple, “Hey Danny. I think you should be out of your last midterm by now, so congratulations on being halfway through the semester! I’d love to see you tonight and celebrate, if you’re free, but no pressure if you’ve got other plans.”

A warm, pleased feeling trickled through Danny at Haru’s message. Haru had thought of him. He remembered both Danny’s midterm and when Danny was supposed to be done, and had sent Danny a message. Just because.

“Hi,” Danny dictated into his phone. He was smiling wide, and knew his phone was probably picking that up. “Thanks for thinking of me. And yeah I’d love to see you tonight. Just let me know when? I’m completely free.”

Then he replied to Manuel to ask if he was still interested in that debrief lunch.

Manuel replied in seconds with an enthusiastic yes, please distract me here I’m dying, so Danny left his drawings and grabbed his coat to head out.

***

Haru had asked if Danny would prefer to go out or stay in, and Danny had admitted that he’d rather not go out to eat if that was okay. Enough time had passed now that he was feeling jittery over the fact that midterms were finished and all he could do was wait for his grades, and he didn't really want to be in a loud, crowded restaurant.

So instead Haru beamed at him when he opened his door to let Danny inside.

“Chinese just arrived,” Haru said, stepping back to let Danny in.

“Awesome,” Danny said, stepping out of his sneakers and nudging them into a neat line next to Haru’s shoe rack. “Perfect timing then.”

“Was the ride over okay?” Haru asked as Danny unwound his scarf.

“Yeah,” Danny said, moving to hang his coat in the hallway closet. “Thank you for sending the ride.” Danny hadn’t wanted Haru to go out of his way to pick Danny up, so Haru had insisted on paying for Danny’s ride over. It was far from the first time Haru had done so.

“Of course,” Haru said easily. “Now come on, dinner’s ready and I haven’t seen you in like a week. You’ve got to fill me in on all your adventures.”

“It’s not all that exciting,” Danny said, smiling foolishly anyway. Haru brought that out in him. “Your life is way more exciting.”

Haru rolled his eyes as they moved to sit down at Haru’s table, where Chinese food boxes were spread all over. “‘Exciting,’ he says. I’ve been up to my elbows in potentially incriminating text messages.”

“That’s not exciting?” Danny asked, reaching for a set of chopsticks.

Haru huffed. “Well it’s not like we can talk about the potentially incriminating text messages. So I don’t even get a fun story to share out of it.” He turned plaintive eyes onto Danny. “So you’ve got to carry the conversation. Tell me all about midterms week. How did your Sign Language presentation go?”

“I told you all about that on Tuesday,” Danny said, pointing at Haru with his chopsticks. “I sent you like six messages about it. You replied to them!”

“But I missed out on all your facial expressions,” Haru said earnestly as he served himself some General Tsao’s chicken. “Facial expressions are vital to telling a story.”

“Since when?” Danny laughed.

“You literally told me that facial expressions are grammatical in Sign Language,” Haru said, with the tone of someone who wasn’t planning on losing this argument. “And I expect to get the full range of Danny-expression as he regales me with the tale of how he aced all his midterms.”

Danny’s face flushed, and he ducked his head. “I don’t know if I aced them yet,” he said, though he was stupidly pleased by Haru’s faith in him. “Grades won’t be posted for another few days at least.”

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